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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You are against the pope so much – is that because the Roman Catholic religion is the most organized religion?I am not against anyone – but I am certainly for the truth. Anything that goes against the truth, I am determined to criticize; it is a sacred duty as far as I am concerned. That the Roman Catholic religion is the most organized religion is only one of the reasons I am criticizing the pope so much. There are many other things, too.I would like to give you all the implications of my criticism. First, the Catholic Church in particular, and Christianity in general, is not a religion at all. To call it an “organized religion” is to use the wrong language. It is organized superstition. In the twenty centuries after Jesus, Christianity has been defending all kinds of superstitions, and fighting against science, against any discovery of truth. The people who have been the leaders of this war between superstition and science are the popes.In the first place, the popes down these twenty centuries have been declaring one thing: that they are infallible – which is an absurdity. But their logic is that they represent Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the only son of God. So, in an indirect way, they are the vehicles of God – how can they be fallible?But life is not logic. Your God itself is a fiction; Jesus Christ being the only begotten son is another fiction. And the infallibility of the pope is just ridiculous.When Galileo discovered for the first time that it is not the sun that goes around the earth, but the earth that goes around the sun – he was very old, seventy-five or eighty, almost on his deathbed – he was dragged to the court of the pope. The pope said, “Before you die, change that statement because it goes against the Bible. And anything that goes against the Bible is automatically wrong because the Bible is the word of God.”Galileo was a great scientist, and I have immense respect for a man who, even at the age of eighty, when he was dying, had such a beautiful sense of humor.He said, “There is no problem. I will change it; I will write in my book exactly what God has written in the Bible – that the sun goes around the earth. But one thing I must make clear to you: neither the sun reads my book nor the earth reads my book. As far as reality is concerned, the earth will continue going around the sun.“And why should you insist? Because I have every proof; I have devoted my whole life to the search, and all those who have a scientific mind are in absolute agreement with me. Sooner or later you will have to agree because one cannot remain against truth for long.”The pope said, “We cannot allow even a single statement to go against the Bible for the simple reason that if one statement becomes false, God’s infallibility disappears. And if God himself is fallible, what about Jesus Christ? What about the pope? If God can write one thing wrong, who knows? He may have written many things wrong. We cannot afford it.”For three hundred years, the popes have been fighting a hard battle against each and every scientific discovery of truth. Although nobody can be victorious against truth, they have tried their best. It is the only religion that has been fighting against science – that is one of the fundamental reasons why I criticize the pope.Even today they go on fighting science, knowing perfectly well that each time they will be defeated, and that they are fighting a losing battle. And still, they go on declaring themselves infallible. It is amazing that people can be so shameless. It is time they should learn.They burned Joan of Arc by the order of the pope because he declared that she was a witch. On what grounds, what reasoning, what revelation? – because the pope says it is so, it has to be right. The word of the pope is the law; the word of the pope is the truth. They burned a young, beautiful, courageous, intelligent woman who had fought for the freedom of the country and who had won the freedom of the country. That was the reason for the jealousy: that a woman should become so prominent that even the pope is left behind.She was burned because of jealousy; she had not committed any sin. The whole of Europe was shocked. Slowly, slowly, people started raising their voices against her murder, but it took almost three hundred years for people to be so strong about it that another pope declared Joan of Arc a great saint.One pope burns her alive because she is a witch – she is in sexual relationship with the Devil. And after three hundred years, another pope – his own descendant, his own successor, representative of the same Jesus Christ and the same God – declares that she was a saint. Her bones were taken out of the grave and worshipped, and a beautiful cathedral now stands in her memory. Now, nobody calls her just “Joan of Arc” – her name is “Saint Joan of Arc.”The pope goes on traveling around the world preaching that birth control is against God, that any method of preventing the birth of a child is anti-God – particularly in the countries of the East where people are so poor, and they are going to become poorer and poorer every day. But the pope’s interest is not that man should live comfortably without hunger. People should not die just because they cannot even get water, cannot get food.You will be surprised to know that on one hand, the pope goes on talking against birth control methods, and on the other, the Vatican has a hidden factory where they create birth control pills – because it is good business; it brings millions of dollars. You call such people religious?He goes around the world saying that Christian priests and bishops and cardinals should not get involved in politics – because he wants politicians to be in favor of him. It has been found that the same man sent one hundred million dollars to Poland, to a political party, to fight against the communists. Is this not politics?His interest in birth control is really to increase the population. Whatever consequences happen to people is not the problem. If people are poor and hungry, they can be easily converted to Christianity, and particularly to the Catholic Church. Their schools, their hospitals, their orphanages are nothing but factories for converting people into Catholics.It is now a well-known fact that by the end of this century, almost half the population of the world will be dying of hunger. You cannot even conceive of the situation where one out of every two men will be dying. All around there will be corpses and there will be nobody even to bury them or to take them to the mortuary or to the funeral. In fact, dying will be better than living amongst those corpses. The whole world will be stinking of death.The popes don’t seem to be interested in saving humanity. Their basic interest is how to get more and more people into their religion, because that is going to be their power. It is pure politics. The whole Christian theology is based on such stupid ideas that to call it “religion” is just absurd. Jesus is born of a virgin mother. The whole of medical science is against it – it cannot be possible, but it is one of their fundamentals. If you remove it, the whole edifice of Christianity falls down.They have not given the world any method for raising consciousness. They have not produced awakened and enlightened people; but they have caught seven hundred million people in the Catholic fold alone. These people are full of absurd beliefs – and even though they have eyes, they don’t see; they have ears, but they don’t hear. And if you say anything, immediately they are ready to crucify you. They are against the crucifixion of Jesus, but they are, every moment, ready to crucify you if you just tell the truth.I said in one of my speeches that the Holy Bible is the most unholy book in the whole world, because it has five hundred solid pages of pure pornography. One of my friends in America, hearing this, actually collected all those five hundred pages and published a book called the X-Rated Holy Bible. Now I have received a summons from Kanpur – ten Christian associations have made a case against me, that I am hurting their religious feelings.I cannot believe that people are so blind. If anything is hurting your religious feelings it is your Bible – I have nothing to do with it. You should ask the government to ban the Bible, or it should be labeled and listed as pornographic literature.I am not saying anything myself. Those five hundred pages are there in the Bible and those ten associations at least could have looked in their Bibles to see what I am talking about. Otherwise in the court they will look absolutely foolish.Now, they are creating agitation in every country for homosexuality to be made a severe crime. And everybody in the world knows that Pope Paul the Sixth was a homosexual. Before he became the pope, he was the cardinal in Milan – and that was the talk of the town. The whole of Milan was surprised that he was always seen with his boyfriend – a young, beautiful man. Knowing this perfectly well… Still he became the pope, and the moment he became pope, his boyfriend was called to the Vatican, and the boyfriend became the secretary. Ordinarily, secretaries become girlfriends. Here it was just a little different, but the same story.It has never been denied by the Vatican; they could not deny it – it was so factual. But if you say it, that means you are against the pope. I am not against the pope. I am just in favor of truth. But perhaps this kind of thing begins with the virginity of Mary and the birth of Jesus.I have heard…It is a story of the future, because this Polack pope seems to be very slow to die. Popes ordinarily have died within an average of one or two years at the most because by the time they become pope, they are always around the age of seventy-five, seventy-eight. They must have been hoping that this Polack would also die – but they don’t know Polacks. He has completely forgotten to die, and he is enjoying his popehood so much – no other pope has ever done such things.He is continually touring around the world, and the Vatican is going into debt: he has spent nine million dollars on traveling. The last time he went to Australia, just two days before him the British queen had also gone to Australia. More money was spent on the pope’s visit to Australia than on that of the queen of England. And these are the people who say, “Blessed are the poor.”But finally, the Polack Pope died and went to heaven with pomp and circumstance. At the pearly gates, Saint Peter stopped him and said, “Hey, you can’t walk in just like that. Who are you?”The pope answered, “Well, I am your very own representative on earth. I am the pope.”Saint Peter said, “Pope? My representative? I have never heard of you.”The pope, puzzled, said, “Ah, just tell God I am here. He will tell you to let me in.”Saint Peter yelled, “Hey, boss, a guy here says he is the pope. Do you know him?”God answered, “Never heard of him.” The pope said, “Strange, but ask Jesus. He knows me.”Saint Peter yelled, “Hey, sonny. There is a guy here says he is the pope. You know him?” Jesus answered, “No.”Saint Peter said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in. Nobody around here knows you.”The pope said, “You can’t turn me away like this. I am the pope himself. Ask the Holy Ghost. He knows me for sure.”Saint Peter yelled again, “Hey, spook! A guy here claims you know him – says he is the pope.”And the Holy Ghost shouted, “The pope, sure I know him. He is the guy that spread those dirty rumors about me and Mary. Kick him out of here.”The whole religion is founded on a dirty joke. Pope Paul the Sixth, who was the homosexual, was followed by Pope John Paul the First. He was an intelligent, liberal man who ordered an investigation of the cardinals and bishops who belonged to Masonic Lodges, which were outlawed by the Catholic Church.These Masonic Lodges have as their members only the wealthiest people of the world. They are secret societies doing secret rituals. They were outlawed by Christianity – no Christian priest, bishop or cardinal, or anybody officiating in any position, should be a member of any Masonic Lodge – because their secret rituals consist of sexual orgies and all kinds of ugly things. John Paul the First ordered an investigation of the cardinals and bishops who belonged to these Masonic Lodges. He discovered that many top Vatican officials were Freemasons, and ordered that they be removed from office.You see the hypocrisy? These are the same people who made the law that no Christian priests should become members of Masonic Lodges, but in the Vatican itself, the cardinals and bishops and archbishops were found to be members of Masonic Lodges. Because John Paul the First ordered that they be removed from office, the whole Catholic hierarchy and bureaucracy turned against that intelligent man. In the whole history of Christianity, perhaps he was the only pope who had some intelligence, some humanity, some understanding. At the same time, he ordered an investigation into the Vatican Bank which would have shown that the bank was laundering hundreds of millions of dollars of Mafia heroin money every year.These are your religious institutions. The Vatican Bank itself, which is under the pope, is nothing but the greatest Mafia organization. Hundreds of millions of dollars of heroin money. They go on talking and preaching against drugs, and behind the curtain they are dealing in drugs themselves.He also ordered a meeting to announce that the church supported birth control. He was really a man of understanding – he wanted to call the pill the “Catholic pill.” But before any of these orders could be carried out, he was found dead under suspicious circumstances.He was murdered. Vatican officials said it was a heart attack, but that is absolutely wrong because his own personal physician said he had a perfect heart – he had had no heart trouble, ever. The most important thing was that his personal physician was not called. Instead, the Vatican officials ordered immediate embalming and refused to allow his personal physician examine the body – even the dead body. They also refused a postmortem. No death certificate was issued; even up to now, officially he is living because there was no death certificate issued for him.After they had embalmed him, an autopsy was done. But once you embalm a dead body – once you take all the blood out of the body and fill it with chemicals – it then becomes impossible to find whether it has been poisoned or what has happened. But the whole situation is very clear: insiders say that papers he was clutching in his hand when the body was discovered were the papers on which he had written his will. Realizing in the middle of the night that he had been poisoned, feeling that he was going to die, he may have tried to write his will. Or he may have tried to write what had happened to him, what had been done to him. But all those papers mysteriously disappeared, along with his medicine bottle and the will. It has been thought that they mixed poison in his medicine bottle, and he drank the poison, thinking it was medicine. Once the poison started having its effect, he must have tried to write his will. He tried to write that it seemed he had been poisoned and that he was dying. The people who found him first saw the will he was clutching in his hands.The most amazing thing is: even before his body was found, orders for embalming the body were given because the people who were in the conspiracy were aware that in the morning the embalmers would be needed, so every arrangement was made beforehand. It was not an accidental death.He was followed by Pope John Paul the Second, the Polack who prohibited all birth control methods except the rhythm method – even though the Vatican actually owned a company which made birth control pills. He also dropped the church law forbidding membership in the Freemasons. He promoted Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank, to archbishop, and made him part of his personal group. This is the man who was running all the Mafia heroin money through the bank.In 1982 Archbishop Marcinkus was involved in a huge financial scandal after an Italian bank collapsed. One of his business friends was found hanged beneath a London bridge. Another colleague, who was in jail on charges of murdering a police commissioner, died from drinking coffee with cyanide. These were the people who could have been witnesses against Archbishop Marcinkus; these two people knew all the secrets, and both were killed.A warrant for the arrest of the archbishop was issued, but because the Vatican is a separate government – just eight square miles – the Italian government has no power to interfere in the Vatican. The pope was hiding the man inside the Vatican; the arrest warrant was waiting outside. These are your religious leaders.The Polack Pope also strongly reprimanded priests around the world for their involvement in politics, but he himself ordered one hundred million dollars of Vatican money to go to the Solidarity group in Poland who were fighting the communist government.I am against organized religion because the moment anything becomes organized, it has its own vested interest. Then religion is forgotten – other things become more important. Truth and the search for truth need your total involvement; nothing else should be in the way.Organized religion becomes a prison. It gives you ready-made doctrines, and your only function is to believe in them – whether they are reasonable, logical, or not. You are not supposed to experiment on your own because, who knows? – you may find something which goes against the official doctrine. But official doctrine cannot become your enlightenment. The official doctrine can make you learned, scholarly – but it cannot make you wise, it cannot make you intuitive, it cannot make you aware of godliness.I am criticizing the pope because he is not only the head of an organized religion, but also the head of a government. It is not much of a government, eight square miles, but still, he is being accepted as the head of a country; he has his representatives in the UN; he has his ambassadors in different countries.Religion is something so high, and politics is so low, that one thing has to be remembered: whenever there is a mixture of something lower with something higher, it is always the higher which becomes polluted – not the lower. It is always the higher which loses its quality of being higher. The lower has nothing to lose; it cannot fall further – it has already fallen to its uttermost.Religion and politics should be separate. The moment religion becomes organized, it becomes politics. Hence religion should not be organized at all; it should be everybody’s private, personal, intimate search. At least something should be left to the individual where he is totally free, without anybody else deciding for him, where he can open his wings like an eagle and fly across the sun – no chains, no bondages, no hindrances.Religion blossoms only in a heart which is absolutely free of all doctrines, all beliefs, all churches, all mosques. I want the whole world to be religious but not Christian, not Catholic, not Hindu, not Mohammedan. Just to be religious is enough.Can’t you see these simple facts? Honesty is honesty – it is neither Christian nor Hindu. Truth is simply truth – it cannot be Mohammedan, it cannot be Jewish. Love is simply love – it cannot be Eastern and it cannot be Western. Compassion is compassion – it does not belong to any race, to any country, to any climate; it is not dependent on any geography, or any history. These are the ingredients of a religious consciousness.Meditation is simply so scientific that just as you accept physics without bothering about whether it is Hindu or Mohammedan, you accept chemistry without ever thinking whether it is Protestant or Catholic… When you go to the doctor, you never bother whether the medicine is Hindu or Buddhist.The inner reality is simply a pure silence: thousands of flowers blossom there but they don’t belong to any organization. They are the reward of your own search, of your own inward-going.All the organized religions are basically depriving humanity of religion because they are misdirecting you. They are always directing you outward – their God is far away in the sky. When you pray, folding your hands toward the sky, you don’t realize that there is nobody to hear you.In fact, the one who is praying, the one who is alive in you, the one who is breathing in you, is God. You have just to discover it. It is hidden in the layers of your false personality. Find out, in your innocence, and life becomes a sheer joy, a song without words, a dance, a celebration.And at the very end of your celebration, there is nothing but tears of gratitude. And I cannot think or conceive that those tears of gratitude belong to any religion. They belong to the individual heart, overflowing with gratefulness toward existence.Osho,The other morning before lecture, I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to touch, with great gratitude, the floor where you walk. In that moment, I heard again that voice – it still sounds like your voice: “If you can kiss in gratitude the place on earth where I have stepped… I want to tell you, that I've stepped everywhere on this earth.” This is really too much, for I see myself in tears, kissing every spot on the earth. And again that voice comes in me, or from me, whispering, “If you can kiss in gratitude all the earth, and all that abides on the earth, you don't need me anymore.” Please, Osho, tell me that I was just imagining, that it was just a dream. You haven't said that to me, have you?The idea is Catholic. You come from the country of the pope, and that fellow goes on kissing the earth wherever he goes – even in India, where kissing the earth means kissing cow dung. When he kissed it here, that very day I said, “He has tasted something of Hindu religion.”It is just your imagination, Sarjano. There is no need for your gratitude to be expressed in stupid gestures. Just being grateful, your eyes full of tears, your heart just melting and merging with existence, is enough. Kissing the earth is just an idiotic symbol; I could never have said anything like this to you. But you love me, and you are so full of me that even if you speak in your imagination, you may hear my voice.But remember one thing: except for silence, everything else is your imagination – howsoever beautiful. Only your silence I can say has my support, because only in your silence are you close to the very center of existence. In absolute silence, you become the very center yourself. But remember to avoid any kind of imagination – all imagination – even beautiful imagination, apparently looking like the divine.It happened once…I had a few Mohammedan friends and they were followers of a Sufi mystic. The mystic used to come to the city once a year to see his disciples, and they were continually telling me, “This time when he comes, a way has to be found so that you can meet.”I said, “There is no problem with it. I can be his host; he can be my guest. That will be the best thing because he is going to be here three days, so for three days we can be together.”They liked the idea. The most impressive thing to them in the Sufi mystic was that he saw God everywhere: he would see a tree and he would go and hug the tree and start talking to the tree. Almost in a trance, he would kiss the earth; he would hold your hand and kiss it and he would start talking in a trance and address you as “God, my Lord!” People were very impressed.He came to stay with me. Before he could kiss my hand, I said, “Wait! Do you really see God in me or have you been imagining for years?” Because that is one of the traditions in the Sufis: you start imagining and slowly, slowly the imagination becomes a reality.He was shocked. There was a moment of silence – painful silence, because his disciples were there. But he was an honest man; he said, “Ah, at least thirty years ago I started on the path, and this was the path shown by my teacher: ‘Look into everything for God.’“In the beginning, it was difficult to see God in a camel, in a donkey, in a buffalo. But my master was insistent: all these forms are gods; you don’t have to judge them – your path is just to see God in everything, so that one day you can see God everywhere. And I succeeded in three years, and I started seeing God everywhere. Now I see God everywhere.”I said, “Then just listen to me. For the three days you will be here, stop imagining. Just see things as whatever they are: a table is a table, not God; a camel is a camel, not God; and a buffalo is a buffalo, not God – just for three days.”He was very reluctant and afraid and nervous, but he was staying with me, so I said, “I will remind you about this kissing and hugging – don’t forget! After three days you can do it again with a vengeance, as much hugging as you want, because no tree can prevent how much you hug it. For three days… You can fill the quota afterward, but for three days I will be constantly after you. You have to see things as whatever they are.”There was no need for three days. Within just one day, in twenty-four hours, the God that had been there for thirty years disappeared. In the morning, he was very angry at me. He said, “What have you done? I really see a table is a table! Just now I saw a man going by on a bicycle, and I saw neither God in the man, nor in the bicycle. You destroyed my thirty years of practice.”I said, “Just think a little. If something that you have been really discovering for thirty years was true, then in one day it could not disappear. For thirty years you have lived in a hallucination – you created the hallucination, and a hallucination can be so strong that all doubts disappear. Thirty years is a long time.”I told him a story of Ramakrishna which is very rare in the history of mystics. After attaining enlightenment, nobody ever tries to look into other paths to see whether they also reach to enlightenment or not – there is no point. You wanted to reach here, you have reached – now what is the point of finding out whether other roads also reach here or not? But Ramakrishna had something tremendously significant in his mind, so he gave six months to each religion that was available in his vicinity; for six months he would practice the religion and forget everything else. Of course, he was already enlightened so the path was not a problem; in six months, he would reach back to the point of consciousness.In Bengal, there is a small local group of a very strange religion: they believe that Krishna is the only man, and those who follow him are all women. They may be men, but that is only an illusion. In reality, except for Krishna, there is no other man – all are women. He is the lover and you are the beloved. In the night, the followers of that sect, men and women both, dress alike – like women. Even men sleep with a statue of Krishna in their beds – he is their husband.Ramakrishna followed that path also for six months. For others it was just a ritual; they were born into that religion, just as you are born into Christianity, or Hinduism, or Jainism. You don’t really care; it is just accidental that you are born into a certain religion and you follow it, but it is at the most a formality.But Ramakrishna was not going into those processes in a formal way: when he was following something, he was following it with totality and intensity. And almost a miracle was seen! Even in the day, he used the same clothes as women use in Bengal. Even the people of that sect told him, “In the day you can use men’s clothes; otherwise it looks very awkward.”But he said, “When I follow something, I follow it totally. I cannot divide my day from my night. And I don’t care about the world.”His breasts started growing; his disciples became very much afraid. So much intensity of projecting that even the doctors who came to know about it visited Ramakrishna and when they saw his breasts, could not believe it – because this was a physiological miracle. But his disciples whispered in the ears of the doctor, “This is nothing – he is having monthly periods!”For six months continuously… His voice changed, it became more like a woman’s. He started walking like a woman – which is very difficult; difficult because only a woman can walk that way. She has a womb inside her body and that womb gives a different kind of movement to the legs. Man has no womb inside; his legs have a different movement.He started walking like a woman, speaking like a woman, his voice changed. And when the menstrual period started, then the disciples became really afraid. They said, “We have lost him. How can we get him back?” They tried to persuade him, but until six months was up, he was not going to change his path. They said, “This path is dangerous. We don’t think that these breasts and this period are going to disappear even after six months. Your whole life you will be a laughingstock – and we are going to be laughingstocks because we are your disciples.”It took almost six months after he stopped for the change to take place again. Slowly, slowly he became a man again – otherwise he had become a woman.Such a deep psychological projection. It is because of such projections that people are experiencing Krishna, Jesus, Buddha – and when they experience it, they see it.If you say to them that it is only an illusion, how can they believe you? Their illusion looks more real than you are. The mind has the capacity to project anything and make it appear almost real – or sometimes, if the mind is very powerful, even better than the real.But my path is not the path of imagination – it is the path that does not use the mind at all. Imagination and projection and hallucination and illusion are all parts of the mind. My simple approach is transcendence of mind; so only when you start seeing absolute nothingness, utter silence, can you see that I am very close by.In that silence, you have heard me; in that nothingness, you have seen me. But if you see something, if you hear something, then it is your imagination – you have fallen from the beyond, back into the mind. Only one thing has to be remembered: the mind is the world – and going beyond the mind is the beginning of godliness.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Whenever you talk about your surgery, or hitting people hard, I can sense what you mean by it. Yet in all these years I have never experienced it myself. To me, you are like a potter: I feel your hands molding me, guiding me, leading me, strong and firm, but also with such tenderness and love as I have never experienced before. It is such a joy to be formed by your gorgeous hands. Osho, in my doubting mind a question arises: can it really be true that you are guiding me ever so gently?Nandano, each individual needs a different treatment because each individual is so unique. On the path there can be no mass surgery. You are right that you have not been hit; you don’t need it.You say, “Whenever you talk about your surgery, or hitting people hard, I can sense what you mean by it.” Only people who are so unconscious that unless you hit them they cannot wake up… Everybody is not so asleep, so unconscious. There are so many categories. A few people are just on the verge, where a small push by a loving hand will do the whole surgery; a small push and the bird is on the wing. There was a little hesitation; only that little hesitation has to be removed. A little fear of the unknown, and the only way to remove the fear of the unknown is to push you into the unknown. Because what is unknown to you is known to me, so on my part there is no question of any hesitation.You say, “Yet in all these years I have never experienced it myself.” You will never experience it. You are one of those fortunate people who need a very tender and loving treatment – a hit can destroy you, a hit can make you more afraid of the future and the unknown. The master works according to the need of the disciple: each according to his need.You say to me, “You are like a potter. I feel your hands molding me, guiding me, leading me, strong and firm, but also with such tenderness and love as I have never experienced before. It is such a joy to be formed by your gorgeous hands.” To you I am a potter because to me you are a pot! Now, to hit a pot is to destroy it – and a very amateur pot; you have not even gone through the fire test – that’s why you have not experienced it.But if you want to experience, it is up to you – just wait a little! Once you have passed through the fire and you have become hard and capable of receiving a hit… Because the hit is also so beautiful, so loving, that you will forget all the tenderness and all the love that I am showing to you – it is out of pity. When I strongly hit somebody – that too is out of love – my hit gives you dignity. It is a recognition of your strength, your integrity, your centeredness.You ask, “Osho, in my doubting mind, a question arises: can it really be true that you are guiding me ever so gently?” I have to, you are fragile. But you will not remain fragile forever. And it is a spiritual surgery, not a butcher’s shop.Rejoice in whatever you are getting. The hits will also come in their right time. Perhaps they are also a basic need, finally – just as a child is born and the cord that joins him to the mother has to be cut, although it has been his life for nine months. Cutting this life source is the most shocking thing he will ever experience – unless he meets a master. Because to cut a physical cord between two bodies is not a very big thing, but to cut the cord between your consciousness and your body is certainly the biggest shock possible. It comes, finally – when the season is right, and the moment has arrived that you have to be taken out of your body, out of your imprisonment, and left totally alone in your tremendous freedom. This is called, in the mystic language, the second birth.The first birth is from the mother’s body. The second birth is from your own body. From the first birth, you become a personality. From the second birth you become an individual. The first birth is bound to lead you one day to death. The second birth only begins, and never ends. It leads you to immortality.But whatever is needed at a certain time will be provided to you. That’s why I don’t give you a discipline. All the religions are doing that stupidity – they are giving disciplines, commandments, without even bothering to whom they are addressing – because to one, something is a medicine, and to another the same thing becomes poison.Unless you have the fortune of being with a living master, with whom you are related – not the way people are related to organizations, but with whom you are related individually, the way lovers are related, in personal intimacy – only then can care be taken, and you can be helped slowly, slowly for the final quantum jump.I can also read in your question, between the lines, that somewhere you think you are missing the hits. Right now, any hit will be dangerous. Just wait a little more and you will get as big a hit. Because what is the use of giving you small hits? I’m accumulating all your hits for a single hit: one hit and your head is gone! Be intelligent, and be patient.Mrs. Harris stood before the chimpanzee cage and watched in frozen horror as one of the chimps picked up a peanut and placed it in his rectum, then pulled it out and ate it. The distraught woman rushed over to the zookeeper and said, “I thought chimpanzees were supposed to be the most intelligent animal next to man.”“That’s right, lady,” said the zookeeper.“Then why is he doing that disgusting thing?” she countered.“Well, some boy scouts were here yesterday and gave him peaches to eat. He had trouble passing the pits. Now he checks everything for size.”Osho,The other night when you talked about the false and the real, I came to a place inside of me that could for the first time really understand you. It was as if I was looking at myself from the outside, as a body that was given to me but was not really “me”; then a layer of my personality that was also just a layer of falseness and not really “me.” And even further inside was a space that was very silent and beautiful, but that couldn't be me either, because it was neither masculine nor feminine, nor could it understand any language of words – it was just a nothingness. If none of those three things are me, then where am I?One of the most fundamental things to remember – not only by you but by everyone – is that whatever you come across in your inner journey, you are not it. You are the one who is witnessing it. It may be nothingness, it may be blissfulness, it may be silence, but one thing has to be remembered: however beautiful and however enchanting an experience you come across, you are not it. You are the one who is experiencing it.If you go on and on and on, the ultimate in the journey is the point when there is no experience left – neither silence, nor blissfulness, nor nothingness. There is nothing as an object for you, but only your subjectivity. The mirror is empty; it is not reflecting anything. It is you.Even great travelers of the inner world have become stuck in beautiful experiences, and have become identified with those experiences, thinking, “I have found myself.” They have stopped before reaching the final stage where all experiences disappear.Enlightenment is not an experience. It is the state where you are left absolutely alone, nothing to know. No object, howsoever beautiful, is present. Only in that moment does your consciousness, unobstructed by any object, take a turn and move back to the source. It becomes self-realization, it becomes enlightenment.I must remind you about the word object. Every object means a hindrance – the very meaning of the word is “hindrance, objection.” So the objects can be outside you, in the material world; the objects can be inside you, in your psychological world; the objects can be in your heart, feelings, emotions, sentiments, moods. The objects can be even in your spiritual world – and they are so ecstatic that one cannot imagine there can be more. Many mystics of the world have stopped at ecstasy. It is a beautiful spot, a scenic spot, but they have not arrived home yet.When you come to a point when all experiences are absent, there is no object, then consciousness without obstruction moves in a circle – in existence everything moves in a circle, if not obstructed – it comes from the same source of your being, goes around. Finding no obstacle to it – no experience, no object – it moves back, and the subject itself becomes the object.That’s what J. Krishnamurti continued saying for his whole life: “When the observer becomes the observed, know that you have arrived.” Before that, there are thousands of things in the way. The body gives its own experiences, which have become known as the experiences of the centers of kundalini; seven centers become seven lotus flowers. Each is bigger than the other and higher, and the fragrance is intoxicating. The mind gives you great spaces, unlimited, infinite. But remember the fundamental maxim, that still the home has not come.Enjoy the journey and enjoy all the scenes that come on the journey – the trees, the mountains, the flowers, the rivers, the sun and the moon and the stars – but don’t stop anywhere unless your very subjectivity becomes its own object. When the observer is the observed, when the knower is the known, when the seer is the seen, the home has arrived.This home is the real temple we have been searching for, for lives together, but we always go astray. We become satisfied with beautiful experiences. A courageous seeker has to leave all those beautiful experiences behind, and go on moving. When all experiences are exhausted and only he himself remains in his aloneness… No ecstasy is bigger than that, no blissfulness is more blissful, no truth is truer. You have entered what I call godliness; you have become a god.You are asking, “If none of those three things are me, then where am I?”An old man went to his doctor. “I have got toilet problems,” he complained.“Well, let us see. How is your urination?”“Every morning at seven o’clock, like a baby.”“Good. How about your bowel movement?”“Eight o’clock each morning, like clockwork.”“So, what is the problem?” the doctor asked.“I don’t wake up until nine.”You are asleep and it is time to wake up. All these experiences are the experiences of a sleeping mind. The awakened mind has no experiences at all.Osho,A year ago, on March 15th, I was visiting friends in Santa Fe. Early that morning, Mahamati and I were lying in the back of my van when it was struck from behind. Following the impact I couldn't breathe. My neck and back were aflame with pain, and I panicked. My hand discovered my mala and the struggle dropped with the deep remembrance of sannyas, and I relaxed to be aware for death. Ironically, I began to get air, just a little, and told Mati not to freak out if I dropped the body, because I was still intact. In the hospital emergency room, we both, simultaneously, felt your presence, and ecstatically laughed, to the dismay of the doctors and nurses. For seven weeks I was flat on my back, and my heart flowered as never before. The spine was fractured in two places, and this whole year I have been lazy – doing art, portraits of you, and a novel depicting my experiences with you. Osho, I am so grateful to find I can let go when death knocks on my door, and I feel so fortunate to look into your eyes once more. Thank you. Would you like to comment on my experience? Was it really you who came to the emergency room, or just our let-go to existence and life?Shahid, my whole work – day in, day out – is going from one emergency room to another emergency room. I don’t have any other work. I have so many people in the world, and they are so expert in creating emergencies, that I am running like crazy. Why do you think I have told you now to drop the mala and orange clothes? – because it is getting too much, running, without any rest!But whatever happened to you has been of great value; this is the preparation every sannyasin is going through. Life has to be a joy, a dance, a celebration. When death comes, it has to be welcomed with silence, with serenity – wholeheartedly, not holding anything back. This is a way to kill death itself.If you have lived joyously, you will be ready to welcome death too – invite her for a dance! Death is powerful only over people who have never lived, who don’t have the courage to relax peacefully in moments of death without any fear – because no accident, no disease, nothing can make even a dent in your consciousness; you are always intact.But the problem with people is they live their whole lives unconsciously – in such misery, anguish, anxiety – that it is almost necessary for them to remain unconscious. They find new ways to be unconscious: drugs, anything that makes them unconscious. But then when death comes, they fall into a deep coma. The very fear of death, the very presence of death makes them absolutely unconscious, without any anesthesia.Only for those people does death happen. Otherwise, death is a fiction. It is just moving house; your old house has become such that renovating it is more troublesome than moving into a new house. The moment the body comes to a point when it is no longer functioning organically – when its inner structure is fractured, when things are not happening as they should happen, when mechanisms have run to their full capacity…Each child brings at birth the genes which tell his whole history. In the reports of the scientists, they say that they can read the program of the first cells that began your life. Soon it may become possible – it is almost possible now – to know the great events in your life: when you will become sexually mature, at what age; when you will become old, when death will strike your body just to make you free. Death is in the service of life. Life never dies.But in unconsciousness you go on doing things that you are not clearly aware of why you are doing. You go on moving because everybody else is moving, but you don’t know where you are moving and for what. You go on living because everybody else is living, but without any consciousness.Why? Why should you wake up tomorrow morning and still go on breathing? Your whole past proves that it has been nothing but an exercise in futility, and you know perfectly well you will be repeating it as long as you are alive – unless by accident, you come across a man who is awake. And the awakened people have become so few, as centuries have passed, that it is most improbable that you will come across an awakened person.But only the awakened person can wake you up, shake you up; can give you a little consciousness of what you are doing: This is not life. This is only a slow death which will be completed in seventy or seventy-five years’ time. You are dying every day, every moment.The great masses of the world only know a slow death. Only very few people who have become awakened have known the tremendous tidal wave of life. Just as the unconscious goes on dying, the conscious goes on becoming more and more alive. The unconscious only grows old; the conscious grows up, becomes mature, reaches heights of consciousness. The seed is in everybody, but the problem is how to challenge the seed, how to call to the seed: “Don’t remain dormant!” Only the awakened person can create the presence in which your seed inside starts waking up.It was a good experience, Shahid. You remained aware in the moment of death. Now don’t take it for granted. You have to be aware each moment in life. Sometimes, particularly in accidents, people become aware because the accident is such a shock that the unconsciousness disappears. But if they survive, the unconsciousness again starts gathering around them like a dark cloud and they start living a life which is meaningless, imitative, not knowing why.Goldstein got a job in the sports section of a large department store. On his first day there, the store manager overheard him with a customer: “Look,” said Goldstein, “these fish hooks are fifty cents each. But I can sell you three for a dollar.”“I will buy them!” exclaimed the customer.“Now, you have fish hooks but you need a fishing line. This excellent nylon line normally costs two dollars for a hundred yards but I can give you two hundred yards for three dollars,” said Goldstein.“I will buy it!” exclaimed the customer.“Now you have fish hooks and a line, but you need a rod. Here is a rod – normally costing one hundred dollars, but I can sell it to you for only seventy-five dollars,” said Goldstein.“I will buy it!” exclaimed the customer.“Now you have fish hooks, a line and a rod but you need a fishing boat. Here is a boat normally costing eight thousand dollars but it is yours for five thousand dollars.”“I will buy it!” exclaimed the customer.“Now you have fish hooks, a line, a rod, and a boat but you need a trailer to carry the boat on. Normally, this one costs two thousand dollars but it is yours for eighteen-hundred dollars.”“I will buy it!” exclaimed the customer.“Now,” said Goldstein, “you have fish hooks, a line, a rod, a boat and a trailer. All you need now is a car to pull your boat and trailer. Here is a car especially made for fishermen, designed to pull a boat and trailer – normally costing ten thousand dollars, but you can have it for eight thousand dollars.”“I will buy it!” exclaimed the customer.After the customer had left with all his purchases, the manager went up to Goldstein. “Goldstein,” he said. “I’ve been running this store for thirty years and never have I seen anyone making such an incredible sale. Starting with fifty-cent fish hooks and working up to a ten-thousand-dollar car!”“What do you mean I started with fish hooks?” demanded Goldstein. “The man came in asking where he could buy tablets for his wife’s period, and I told him that what he needs right now is a week-long fishing holiday!”This is your life. Why are you doing things? Why are you buying things? How are you spending your life? You are not at all aware. You are just a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. Anybody can cheat you – the politicians are doing it, the priests are doing it, but in your unconsciousness it is absolutely natural. Only a conscious man cannot be exploited.Only a conscious man really lives. And those who really live die peacefully, silently, with a smile on their face. For the people who die with a smile on their face, there is no death – because deep down, in their consciousness, there is an absolute certainty that it is only the body that is being dropped. Life has continued always, and will continue always.Osho,At the moment, my life seems to be an endless dive into deep, dark valleys of greed, jealousy, self-condemnation; deep pain, and feeling very lost. Coming out of these valleys, I feel refreshed, more clear – like after a thunderstorm in hot summer. But the next valley follows soon afterward. Are these dark valleys a sort of cleaning, and has this to happen again and again?The question is: “At the moment, my life seems to be an endless dive into deep dark valleys of greed, jealousy, self-condemnation, deep pain and feeling very lost. Coming out of these valleys, I feel refreshed, more clear – like after a thunderstorm in hot summer. But the next valley follows soon afterward. Are these dark valleys a sort of cleaning, and has this to happen again and again?”As long as you wish, because these valleys are your creation. This is your creativity; they don’t come from outside. You have managed your life in such a way that these have become your constant companions: greed, jealousy, self-condemnation, deep pain. You cannot live without them, or you will feel very alone. However miserable they are, anyway it is your family. However ugly the mother is, no boy says that his mother is ugly.The gaps between valleys are not your creation. The valleys that you create are so painful that you cannot tolerate them continuously. Once in a while you want to be alone, and when you are alone you again feel fresh.But just look at your logic: you are consoling yourself that these deep valleys of darkness are cleansing you. Those few moments between two valleys, you think are cleansing, refreshing, because of the valleys. You are indebted to all the nonsense that you are creating yourself.What is the need of greed in life? Greed arises only because your present moment is empty, and to live in an empty moment hurts very much. To forget it you project greed into the future, thinking that tomorrow things are going to be better, a lottery is going to open in your name. But of course you have to wait for tomorrow, it cannot be just now – and tomorrow never comes. All that comes is always the present moment, which is empty. Greed is because we don’t know how to live the present moment in its total richness.The other night I saw a small anecdote about a great Zen master, Ryokan. He used to live in the mountains in a small hut. Another Zen master was staying with him. The whole day passed, talking about poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and they both forgot about food.He had to go to beg for his food in the town. By the evening, he became aware. He said, “I am sorry – to me it is not much, it is my usual habit. Sometimes I forget. But I am keeping you hungry, so I will go immediately and find something before the sun sets.” So he rushed down the mountain and his friend waited and waited and waited for three hours. No sign… He was feeling so hungry that he came out of the house – what has happened? Has there been some accident?He could not believe his eyes: Ryokan was sitting outside the house under a tree with closed eyes, a great grace on his face, murmuring – almost in a whisper – new haiku, new poetries. The guest went there, shook him and asked, “What happened about the food?”Ryokan said, “My god! When I saw the sun setting, it was so beautiful that I could not move away from this tree. From this tree, the sunset is a golden experience. I had stopped only for a moment but the sunset and its beauty impressed me so much that I forgot all about food and all about you! But here are a few beautiful haiku.”The guest said, “But haiku won’t help. I cannot sleep with such hunger.”Ryokan said, “Wait – I will go. Although it is late, I may find something.” He rushed down from the hill toward the town. The whole night, the guest was tossing and turning, and coming out again and again to see what had happened to Ryokan.In the early morning, when the sun was rising, the guest went out again – he had not slept a single wink. Ryokan was still sitting under the same tree – smiling and swaying and murmuring.The guest asked, “Ryokan, what about food?”Ryokan said, “My god! When I reached the bottom of the hill, people were asleep and it was a full-moon night. It was so beautiful, you would not believe. I have seen full-moon nights before, but never anything comparable to this. So just to enjoy it a little, I sat under a tree – and I don’t know when the night passed, but I have found some beautiful haiku.“Living in this glory of the full moon… You can understand me, and forgive me. I forgot all about food. In fact, I was wondering, when the sun started rising – what am I doing here? So I returned to my tree, from where sunset, sunrise, both have such a divine splendor.”The guest said, “You will kill me! I am going.”Ryokan said, “But at least listen to my few haiku. They are not mine, truly. Some are given by the full moon, some are given by the rising sun, some are given by the birds singing in the trees. Life has been so rich and I was so nourished by it that even the idea of food never crossed my mind.”The guest left. He said, “You seem to be a madman!” But a man like Ryokan cannot have greed.Each moment is so full of blessings, each moment is such an eternity of joy, each moment is such a dance of beauty. Greed arises only because you don’t know how to live herenow. Greed is a postponement of life. It is one of the most stupid things one can do, because it will land you in death and nowhere else.A man who lives totally in the moment – his heart full of songs, his presence radiating joy – how can he feel jealous? The whole world may feel jealous of him, but he cannot feel any jealousy. These are your wrong approaches to life, that greed and jealousy arise in you and create dark valleys. Then comes self-condemnation because you know deep down that you are the creator of your greed, of your jealousy. But self-condemnation does not help, it makes things worse. You become depressed, you start feeling unworthy of life. You start feeling that you don’t deserve even a single breath more, and that gives great pain. You have not lived life at all. Each moment has gone empty. It is great pain, great anguish – but remember it is your creation.When you become tired, and out of the tiredness there is a little relief, then you feel clean. No condemnation, no pain, no jealousy, no greed – but no energy either. You have spent all your energy in those idiotic fantasies. Because there is no energy, for a few moments, a few hours, you are left alone. It is peaceful. But this peace is not the authentic peace. It is the peace that rains on the graveyard; it is not the peace of the garden, full of songs and full of flowers.As you gather energy again, the old companions are back. This wheel will go on rotating unless you understand and jump out of it. The only way to jump out of it is to live each moment so totally that it brings such contentment, such fulfillment that you cannot be greedy. You cannot be jealous, and you cannot be in self-condemnation, and you cannot feel pain.Existence gives you one moment by one moment. So if you know how to live one moment totally, you know the whole secret of life.An Irish worker used to take tuna fish sandwiches to work every day, but a fellow worker noticed that each day he would take one bite and throw the rest away in disgust.“But if you don’t like tuna fish,” said his friend, “why don’t you ask your wife to make something else?”“Ah,” said the Irishman, “it is not as easy as that. I have not got a wife, I make them myself.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You tell us to be aware of everything – which means to be a witness to everything, every act. When I decide to be aware in work, I forget about awareness, and when I become aware that I was not aware, I feel guilty. I feel that I have made a mistake. Could you please explain?It is one of the basic problems for anybody who is trying to be aware while at work – because the work demands that you should forget yourself completely. You should be involved in it so deeply, as if you are absent. Unless such total involvement is there, the work remains superficial.All that is great, created by man, in painting, in poetry, in architecture, in sculpture – in any dimension of life – needs you to be totally involved. If you are trying to be aware at the same time, your work will never be first rate because you will not be in it.So awareness while you are working needs a tremendous training and discipline, and one has to start from very simple actions. For example, walking: you can walk, and you can be aware that you are walking – each step can be full of awareness. Eating… Just the way in Zen monasteries they drink tea; they call it a tea ceremony because sipping the tea, one has to remain alert and aware.These are small actions, but to begin with they are perfectly good. One should not start with something like painting, dancing – those are very deep and complex phenomena. Start with the small actions of daily routine life. As you become more and more accustomed to awareness, as awareness becomes just like breathing – you don’t have to make any effort for it, it has become spontaneous – then in any act, any work, you can be aware.But remember the condition: it has to be effortless; it has to come out of spontaneity. Then painting or composing music, or dancing, or even fighting an enemy with a sword, you can remain absolutely aware. But this awareness is not the awareness you are trying to do. It is not the beginning; it is the culmination of a long discipline. Sometimes it can happen without discipline too.A story I remember…A great swordsman, a great warrior, came back home and found that his servant was making love to his wife. According to custom, he challenged the servant – gave him a sword and told him to come out of the house and let it be decided; whoever remains alive will be the woman’s husband.The servant did not even know how to hold a sword – he was a poor servant, he had never been trained in swordsmanship. He said, “Master, although you are following a convention, and respecting even a servant and giving him an opportunity, this is for you just a game. I don’t know anything about swordsmanship. At least give me a few minutes so that I can go to the greatest master – who lives nearby in a monastery, a Zen monk – to have some clue.”The master agreed. He said, “You can go. If it is needed, a few hours, or even a few days, or even a few months – you can get disciplined. I will wait for you.”He went to the great warrior, the Zen master. The Zen master said, “Even years of training will not help you. Your boss is just second to me in the whole country – you cannot hope to compete with him. My suggestion is: this is the right moment to fight.”The servant could not understand. He said, “What kind of puzzle are you giving to me: this moment is the right moment?”He said, “Yes, because you have one thing certain – your death. Now more than that you cannot lose. Your master has many things to lose: his wife, his prestige, his respectability as a warrior, all his money. He is a great landlord – his mind cannot be total while he is fighting. But you can be total. You have to be total – just a moment of unawareness and you are gone; you have to be totally alert. This is the right moment; don’t bother about any discipline – simply take the sword and go.”The servant came back within minutes. His boss asked, “Have you learned anything?”He said, “There is no need of learning anything. Come out of the house!”The way he shouted, “Come out of the house,” the boss could not believe what magical change had happened to his servant. As he came out, the servant, according to convention, bowed down to the boss; the boss bowed down to the servant. It is part of the culture in Japan that you have to respect the dignity, the humanity, the divinity, even of an enemy.Then the servant started hitting the warrior – knowing nothing about swordsmanship. The warrior was at a loss: the servant would not hit where any expert would have hit because he had no idea; he would hit somewhere where no expert would have ever hit. He was fighting with such totality that the warrior started moving backward, and as the warrior started moving backward, the servant gathered more courage. He was moving his sword without knowing why, to what purpose, or where he was hitting. Since it had been decided that his death was certain, now there was nothing to worry about – all worries belong to life.Soon he cornered the master. Behind, there was the wall surrounding the garden. The master could not move backward anymore. He was so afraid of death, for the first time in his life, and he said, “Wait! You can have my wife, you can have my properties; I am renouncing the world, I am becoming a monk.”He was trembling with fear. Even he could not understand what happened. From where did this courage come? From where this totality? From where this awareness? But it can be only in such special situations that without any discipline, just the situation can create so much awakening in you.Whenever I have read this story, I have always remembered Adolf Hitler.For five years continually he was winning the war on all fronts, alone – fighting the whole world. The reason he was winning the war was that he was not listening to the generals at all.Fighting is an art; in the military you go through a long training. Hitler’s advisors were not generals and experts in military science; his advisors were astrologers. They would tell him where to attack and where not to attack, and that was the reason that for five years he went on winning – because the other side was following military science. If he had also listened to his generals, then there would have been no possibility for five years’ of continual victory.You will be surprised to know that finally Churchill had to call astrologers from India to find out where he was going to attack. It is normal and common sense that wherever the enemy is weak, you attack at that point, and wherever the enemy is strong, you avoid that point until the very last. But the astrologers have nothing to do with the army or fighting; they consult the stars.The enemy would be following military science and would be preparing at the weakest point, knowing that this would be the point where Adolf Hitler’s generals would decide to attack. Adolf Hitler would attack the strongest point of the enemy, where they were fast asleep, not even bothering – because no military scientist would ever suggest to attack at the strongest point. They were not prepared there; they were preparing at the weakest link.In a haphazard way… The enemies were simply puzzled: what to make of it? He knows nothing of the army; he knows nothing of military science. But his not knowing was immensely helpful for five years until Churchill decided, in spite of himself – knowing that it was stupidity – that astrologers from India would come to London. And from that very day, Germany started falling apart – because now astrologers were against astrologers; it was no longer a war between two armies. As stupid as Adolf Hitler was, Winston Churchill had found even greater idiots from India. Things changed – within just two months, Adolf Hitler was retreating.Whenever I have come across the story of the Zen master and his servant, I have always remembered Adolf Hitler: he had absolute certainty about astrology, he was total in his action. Not even a single doubt crossed his mind, ever. The same must have happened to the servant.When death is certain, fear disappears. Fear is only there because of death, but when death is certain and there is no way to avoid it, what is the point of being afraid? He became almost a man of total integrity – knowing nothing, but defeating the master who had been a victorious man in many combats.But this can happen only rarely, in the most extreme conditions. In everyday life you should follow the simple course. First become aware about actions which do not need your involvement. You can walk and you can go on thinking; you can eat and you can go on thinking. Replace thinking by awareness. Go on eating, and remain alert that you are eating. Walk; replace thinking by awareness. Go on walking; perhaps your walking will be a little slower and more graceful. But awareness is possible with these small acts. As you become more and more articulate, use more complicated activities.A day comes when there is no activity in the world in which you cannot remain alert and at the same time do the act with totality.You are saying, “When I decide to be aware in work, I forget about awareness.” It has not to be your decision, it has to be your long discipline. Awareness has to come spontaneously; you are not to call it, you are not to force it.“And when I become aware that I was not aware, I feel guilty.” That is absolute stupidity. When you become aware that you were not aware, feel happy that at least now you are aware. There is no place in my teachings for the concept of guilt. Guilt is one of the cancers of the soul.All the religions have used guilt to destroy your dignity, your pride, and to make you just slaves. There is no need to feel guilty, it is natural. Awareness is such a great thing that even if you can be aware for a few seconds, rejoice. Don’t pay attention to those moments when you forgot. Pay attention to that state when you suddenly remember, “I was not aware.” Feel fortunate that at least after few hours, awareness has returned.Don’t make it a repentance, a guilt, a sadness – because by being guilty and sad, you are not going to be helped. You will feel, deep down, a failure. Once a feeling of failure settles in you, awareness will become even more difficult.Change your whole focus. It is great that you became aware that you had forgotten to be aware. Now don’t forget, for as long as possible. Again you will forget, again you will remember – but each time, the gap of forgetfulness will become smaller and smaller. If you can avoid guilt, which is basically Christian, your gaps of unawareness will become shorter, and one day they will simply disappear. Awareness will become just like breathing, or your heartbeat, or the blood circulating in you – day in, day out.So be watchful that you don’t feel guilty. There is nothing to feel guilty about. It is immensely significant that the trees don’t listen to your Catholic priests. Otherwise, they will make the roses feel guilty: “Why do you have thorns?” And the rose, dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, will suddenly become sad. The dance will disappear, the joy will disappear, the fragrance will disappear. Now the thorn will become his only reality, a wound – “Why do you have thorns?” But because there are no rosebushes so foolish as to listen to any priest of any religion, roses go on dancing, and with the roses, the thorns also go on dancing.The whole of existence is guiltless. A man, the moment he becomes guiltless, becomes part of the universal flow of life. That is enlightenment: a guiltless consciousness, rejoicing in everything that life makes available – the light is beautiful, so is darkness.When you cannot find anything to be guilty about, to me you have become a religious man.To the so-called religions, unless you are guilty you are not religious; the more guilty you are, the more religious you are. People are torturing themselves as punishment, as penance. People are fasting; people are beating their chests with their fists until blood oozes from their chests. These people, to me, are psychopaths; they are not religious. But their so-called religions have taught them that if you commit anything wrong, it is better to punish yourself rather than be punished by God on Judgment Day – because that punishment is to be thrown into the abysmal darkness of hell for eternity. There is no escape, no exit. Once you enter hell, you have entered.The whole humanity has been made guilty in some measure or other. It has taken away the shine from your eyes, it has taken away the beauty from your face, it has taken away the grace of your being. It has reduced you to a criminal, unnecessarily.Remember: man is frail and weak, and to err is human. The people who invented the proverb, “To err is human,” have also invented the proverb, “To forgive is divine.” I don’t agree with the second part. I say: “To err is human and to forgive is also human.” To forgive oneself is one of the greatest virtues, because if you cannot forgive yourself, you cannot forgive anybody else in the world – it is impossible. You are so full of wounds, of guilt – how can you forgive anybody? Your so-called saints go on saying that you will be thrown into hell. The reality is they are living in hell! They cannot allow even God to forgive you.A great Sufi poet, Omar Khayyam, has written in his Rubaiyat, his world-famous collection of poetry:I am going to drink, to dance, to love. I am going to commit every kind of sin because I trust God is compassionate – he will forgive. My sins are very small; his forgiveness is immense.When the priests came to know about his book – because in those days books were written by hand, there were no printing presses. The priests discovered that he was writing such sacrilegious things: “Don’t be worried; go on doing anything you want because God is nothing but pure compassion and love. How much sin can you commit in seventy years of life? In comparison to his forgiveness, it is nothing.”He was a famous mathematician too, renowned in his country. The priests approached him and said, “What kind of things are you writing? You will destroy people’s religiousness! Create fear in people. Tell people that God is very just: if you have committed a sin, you will be punished. There will be no compassion.”Omar Khayyam’s book was burned in his day. Whenever a copy was found, it was burned by the priests, because he was teaching such a dangerous idea. If it spreads among human beings and everybody starts rejoicing in life, what will happen to the priests? What will happen to the saints? What will happen to their mythologies of hell and heaven and God? All will disappear in thin air.At least with me, Omar Khayyam is one of the enlightened Sufi mystics, and what he is saying has immense truth in it. He does not mean that you should commit sin. What he means simply is that you should not feel guilty. Whatever you do – if it is not right, don’t do it again. If you feel it hurts somebody, don’t do it again. But there is no need to feel guilty, there is no need to be repentant, there is no need to do penance and torture yourself.I want to change your focus completely. Rather than counting how many times you forgot to remember to be aware, count those few beautiful moments when you were crystal clear and aware. Those few moments are enough to save you, are enough to cure you, to heal you. If you pay attention to them, they will go on growing and spreading in your consciousness. Slowly, slowly the whole darkness of unawareness will disappear.A young man is about to be married, so before his wife-to-be moves into their apartment he has a man-to-man chat with his pet parrot.“Now listen, buddy, there is this beautiful young woman whom I am about to marry and we are going to live together in this flat. She comes from a very good family and I want you to forget all about those dirty, four-letter words that you have picked up from living with me these past few years. If I hear you utter one dirty remark in front of her, I am going to sell you to the zoo. Got it?”“Okay,” says the parrot. “Got it!”After the wedding, the new husband and wife are packing their bags for their honeymoon. There are suitcases all over the apartment, and after hours of struggle everything is packed – even the parrot’s cage has a cover on it. But suddenly they discover that one shoe has been left out. The wife tries to push it into a large suitcase but it just won’t go in.So the husband says, “You will have to sit on top and I will push it in.”They try and try but it does not work. “Let’s try it another way,” says the wife. “Let’s both be on top and push it in together.”At this point, the parrot pushes his covering aside and says, “The zoo be damned. This one I’ve got to see!”He kept in control of himself so much, but there comes a point that even he has to go to the zoo. He says, “Let the zoo be damned, but this thing I have got to see.” The curiosity… He could not believe that this kind of thing is possible.In the beginning you will also find many times that perhaps it is not possible to be working and to be aware together. But I say unto you that it is not only possible, it is very easily possible. Just begin in the right way. Just don’t start from XYZ; start from ABC.In life, we go on missing many things because of wrong starts. Everything should be started from the very beginning. Our minds are impatient; we want to do everything quickly. We want to reach the highest point without passing through every rung of the ladder. But that means an absolute failure.Once you fail in something like awareness, it is not a small failure – perhaps you will not try it again, ever. The failure hurts. So anything that is as valuable as awareness – because it can open all the doors of the mysteries of existence, it can bring you to the very temple of God – you should start very carefully and from the very beginning. And move very slowly. Just a little patience and the goal is not far away.Osho,Please talk to us of tension and relaxation. Usually, when I sit in front of you I relax all through myself. I lose any alertness I may have. When I am alert, there is a subtle tension in me which I need to maintain this wakefulness. It winds me up like a spring and then I feel horrible. How can I stay awake without this tension? How to find the stillness, though busy? I watch you move and sit with such joy.It is the same question that I was answering, just written in a different way. If you have listened to my first answer, your question has also been answered. I will just tell a small anecdote…One day a man from a small village in the mountains sees a tourist driving his car backward up a narrow road toward the top of the mountain. The man stops him and asks, “Why are you driving backward?”The tourist replies, “They told me that there is no room to turn a car around on top of the mountain.”The man says, “I have lived here all my life. I know there is enough space to turn around.”Half an hour later, he sees the tourist driving down again, backward. He stops the car and asks, “What are you doing now?”The tourist replies, “You were right. There was enough room to turn around.”Whatever I have said is simple: start being aware with day-to-day, routine actions, and while you are doing your routine actions, remain relaxed. There is no need to be tense. When you are washing the floor, what is the need to be tense? Or when you are cooking the food, what is the need to be tense? There is not a single thing in life which requires your tension. It is just your unawareness and your impatience.I have not found anything – and I have lived in all kinds of ways, with all kinds of people. I have always been puzzled: why are they tense? It seems tension has nothing to do with anything outside you – it has something to do within you. Outside you always find an excuse only because it looks so idiotic to be tense without any reason. Just to rationalize, you find some reason outside yourself to explain why you are tense.But tension is not outside you, it is in your wrong style of life. You are living in competition – that will create tension. You are living in continuous comparison – that will create tension. You are always thinking either of the past or of the future, and missing the present which is the only reality – that will create tension.It is a question of simple understanding: there is no need of any competition with anybody. You are yourself, and as you are, you are perfectly good. Accept yourself. This is the way existence wants you to be. Some trees are taller; some trees are smaller. But the smaller trees are not tense – neither are the taller trees full of ego. Existence needs variety. Somebody is stronger than you; somebody is more intelligent than you – but you also must be more talented than anybody else in something.Just find your own talent. Nature never sends any single individual without some unique gift. Just a little search: perhaps you can play on the flute better than the president of the country can be a president – you are a better flautist than he is a president.There is no question of any comparison. Comparison leads people astray. Competition keeps them continuously tense, and because their life is empty, they never live in the moment. All they do is to think of the past, which is no more, or project in the future, which is not yet.This whole thing drives people almost abnormal, insane. Otherwise there is no need – no animal goes mad, no tree needs any psychoanalysis. The whole of existence is living in constant celebration, except man. He is sitting aloof, tense, worried.A small life, and you are losing it and every day death is coming closer. That creates even more angst: “Death is coming closer and I have not even started living.” Most people realize only when they die that they were alive – but then it is too late. Just live the moment. And whatever qualities and whatever talents you have, use them to the fullest.One of the mystics in India, Kabir, was a weaver. He had thousands of followers and still he continued to weave clothes. Even kings were his followers.The king of Varanasi told him, “Master, it doesn’t look good, it makes us feel embarrassed. We can take care of you. There is no need for you to weave clothes and go into the market every week to sell your clothes. Just think of us, people laugh at us.”Kabir said, “I can understand your problem, but I have only one talent and that is to weave beautiful clothes. If I stop doing it, then who will do it? And God comes in different faces, in different bodies, to purchase clothes every week in the marketplace.”He used to address every customer, “Lord, be very careful of the cloth. I have been weaving it, not just like any other weaver – my songs are in it and my soul is in it. I have poured my whole being in it. Be careful, use it with tenderness and love and remember: Kabir has woven it especially for you, Lord.” And it was not something that he was addressing to anybody in particular – any customer!This was his contribution. He used to say to his disciples, “Whatever I can, I do. I am doing my best: I can weave, I can sing, I can dance – and I am immensely contented.”Whatever you are doing, if there is contentment and a feeling that this whole existence is nothing but the manifestation of godliness, that we are traveling on holy earth, that whomever you are meeting, you are meeting God – there is no other way; only the faces are different, but the inner reality is the same – all your tensions will disappear. The energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.Then life will not be just an ordinary, routine, day-to-day existence, but a dance from cradle to grave. Existence will be immensely enriched by your grace, by your relaxation, by your silence, by your awareness. You will not leave the world without contributing something valuable to it. But people are always looking at others, at what others are doing – somebody is playing the flute and you cannot, and immediately there is misery; somebody is painting and you cannot, and there is misery.Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of art. It will bring you great joy. It will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people; it will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.In my whole life, I have never judged anyone. If existence is happy with him, why should I be worried whether he is a thief or a murderer? Perhaps that is the function existence wants him to do. All that is needed is that he should do it with as much artfulness and as much intelligence as he can gather – with his totality. Any act done with totality becomes your prayer.Osho,Rocks easily destroy flowers. The politicians and religions sense that enlightenment, freedom, and individuality threaten their power. Is it fear alone that is the basis of the dark use of intelligence to crush man's finest blossoms? Or is there an unconscious urge for “endarkenment” too?Devageet, there is an unconscious urge for endarkenment too. It was only a hundred years ago that Sigmund Freud stumbled, in the unconsciousness of man, on a very strange instinct.Man has been, for almost ten thousand years, working on himself, on his consciousness, but it was left to Freud to find a totally new idea. He himself was shocked, but when he came across it again and again, in different patients, he had to give it recognition. The idea was that, just as there is a lust for life, to balance it in the unconscious of the human mind, there is an instinct for death. Perhaps this was one of the great contributions of Sigmund Freud to human knowledge, and for the future transformation of man.Slowly, slowly he started gathering facts, and now it is almost an established thing that in life everything exists with its opposite balancing it. If there is a lust for life – that one wants to live – somewhere hidden, there is bound to be a lust for death. In certain situations, it may grip hold of you – that’s why so many people commit suicide. Otherwise, suicide has no explanation.Devageet is asking: “Rocks easily destroy flowers. The politicians and religions sense that enlightenment, freedom and individuality threaten their power. Is it fear alone that is the basis of the dark use of intelligence to crush man’s finest blossoms? Or is there an unconscious urge for ‘endarkenment’ too?” There is; there has to be. Just as there is a longing for enlightenment, to reach the highest peak of consciousness, there is certainly, parallel to it in the unconscious of human mind, a deep urge to drown oneself into darkness, into death.It has been observed, although never made clear, by all the physicians of all the ages, that there are people who can be helped by medicine but it seems impossible to help them because they have completely lost the will to power, the will to live – completely. They don’t support the medicine. But none of the physicians found what Sigmund Freud discovered. Perhaps this had some sense in it: a man who loses the will to live is bound to replace it by something of its opposite: the will to die.Now medicine accepts that the physician can only help – by his medicines and other things – if the person wants to live. If the person has dropped the idea of living, then all those medicines are useless. Medicines don’t cure you. Your will to live cures you – medicines are only a secondary help, a support. But if somebody has moved to the opposite pole – the instinct for death, for darkness – then no medicine can pull him out.As I was reading the question, I thought about AIDS. Perhaps someday it may be found that AIDS is nothing but an unconscious desire to die; that’s why scientists are unable to find any cure for it.At this moment in history, Devageet’s question becomes even more pertinent, because one wonders that seventy-five percent of the budget of the whole of humanity is being devoted to create destructive weapons – nuclear weapons – and half of humanity is starving. Thousands of people are dying without medicine, and millions of children are dying because they cannot get very inexpensive vaccines.On the one hand, humanity is on the verge of dying of starvation, just because of overpopulation, and on the other hand, all the politicians in the world have only one desire: to become nuclear powers. Five countries are already nuclear powers, and by the end of this century, twenty-five more countries will be nuclear powers. Already, we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity seven times.It seems absolutely ridiculous now to go on piling up nuclear weapons. Billions of dollars are wasted on nuclear weapons while children are dying because they cannot get medicine, they cannot get food. By the end of this century, half of the population of the world will die from starvation, and the other half, perhaps, will die through nuclear warfare.It seems it is not only one individual, but perhaps the whole of humanity that has lost the will to live, the will to be more conscious, the will to be more aware, the will to reach the highest peak of enlightenment, to be a Gautam Buddha.On the contrary, people are waiting to disappear into darkness, into death, because life is so meaningless and so futile. There seems to be no reason to go on living. For the first time, on a tremendous scale, millions of people are feeling meaninglessness. It is creating tremendous anxiety, and it seems death is the only cure. With death, everything will subside. There will be no problem, no anxiety, no struggle, no jealousy, no tension.Perhaps, Devageet, your word endarkenment may become a contribution to our language, as the opposite of enlightenment. People have always lived unconsciously, but today, the unconsciousness has reached such a point that even death is preferable to unconsciousness.A Scotsman named Angus needed a new kilt. When he went to pick out some material at the store, he decided to purchase two extra yards of fabric to make a matching scarf for his girlfriend.He then went home and made such a beautiful kilt that when he tried it on, and looked in the mirror, he forgot all about the scarf and thought, “I shall go right now and show this to my lady.”As he ran out of the door, a thread of the new kilt caught on the doorway, unraveling the garment. Eventually, Angus was running across the heather with his jewels dangling in the dew. He got to his girlfriend’s house and knocked on the door.As his girlfriend opened the door and looked him up and down, she said, “Hello Angus, so nice of you to drop in.”“Hello my bonny lass. And what do you think of this?” Angus said, pointing down to where he thought his new kilt was.She said, “Ah Angus, it is just lovely.”Angus said, “That’s right my pretty lass, and I have got two more yards at home to wrap around your neck.”Man has always lived in unconsciousness, but the darkness was never as much as it is today. There have been nights, but always the dawn has come. This time it seems to be doubtful whether the dawn will come.I am not a pessimist, but I am no longer an optimist either. I used to be – now, I am simply a realist. The reality is that perhaps we are very close to the end of this beautiful planet, with all its beauty, all its life, and all its great achievements. There seems to be no ray of hope from anywhere. Perhaps when I am saying this, it is not me who is saying it; perhaps it is existence itself that has lost hope about humanity and its future.The only thing that I still go on dreaming for is my people. Perhaps the planet will not be saved, but those who have come to me, if they make a little effort of becoming conscious, to create a longing for enlightenment, at least they can be saved. But if you go on behaving like the masses of the world, you are also a lost case.Immense responsibility rests on you because nowhere else in the whole world are people trying, even in small groups, to achieve enlightenment, to be meditative, to be loving, to be rejoicing. We are a very small island in the ocean of the world, but it does not matter. If these few people can be saved, the whole heritage of humanity, the heritage of all the mystics, of all the awakened people, can be saved through you.If this planet dies, perhaps on another planet… There are fifty thousand planets which can sustain life; perhaps civilization has to begin from ABC on some other planet. But who will be the pioneers? These dark masses, utterly unconscious, cannot be. Only a few chosen ones who have strived hard to make themselves deserving of light, of eternal life, of some experience of godliness – perhaps they will be the ones who will be starting a new civilization somewhere in the universe, on some new planet.I have never said this before but, going around the world, I have felt such a wound in my heart that the people who need to be saved are the people who are creating every kind of barrier in order not to be saved. Even to approach them has become impossible. Seeing the whole world, I started feeling that there is now only one possibility, and that is to create a Noah’s Ark in the consciousness of those few who have come close to me. It will not be a physical thing, but a Noah’s Ark of consciousness which can move a small group of conscious people to another planet. That seems to be the only possibility to save the great heritage of humanity.You cannot depend any longer on the politicians and on the priests, and on the masses who seem to be willing, deeply desiring, to die. Death seems to be the greatest desire in the world today, and because I have been talking about life and love and laughter, I have been condemned from every corner. I can understand the reason: spreading the message of life, love, and laughter amongst people who, deep down, are getting ready to commit a global suicide. This is very contradictory to them.Perhaps we will have to meet on some other planet – this planet seems to be spent. It is not new: planets are born, planets die; stars are born, stars die – so it is not something strange. The preparations are going so well that it seems almost impossible for life to survive here on this earth. The whole blame goes on those vested interests which have kept humanity unconscious, and don’t want man to become intelligent and conscious, alert and aware. Anyway, it seems too late.The police were investigating the death of Markowitz, the dress manufacturer who had jumped from the window of his office. The detective decided to query Marlene, his lovely young secretary.“Can you offer any explanation?” he asked the girl.“Well, after working for Mr. Markowitz one month,” she began, “I got a forty-dollar-a-week raise. At the end of the second month, he gave me a beautiful black necklace. At the end of the third month, he gave me a new Thunderbird, and a stunning Persian lamb coat. Then he asked me if I would be willing to make love to him, and how much I would charge him. I told him that because he had been so nice to me, I would charge him only ten dollars, even though I was getting twenty from the other guys in the office. And that is when he jumped out of the window.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What happens to human consciousness when the people of the world suddenly realize they are in the midst of an unstoppable, devastating plague that will kill most of the people they know?It depends on the person. For one who is absolutely conscious, nothing will happen. He will accept it, just as he has accepted everything else. There will be no disturbance, no anxiety. As he can accept his own death, he can accept the death of his planet too. This acceptance is not in any way a kind of helplessness but on the contrary, just seeing the suchness of things – that everything that is born, lives, has to die.This planet was not here four million years ago; then it was born. Perhaps it has lived its whole life. Anyway, even if the human mind manages to pull through this crisis created by the politicians, the planet cannot live long because the sun is dying. In four thousand years’ time it will have exhausted all its energy, and once the sun dies, this planet cannot remain alive. Our whole life energy comes from the sun.The man of perfect awareness will simply accept it as a natural phenomenon. Just now, leaves are falling from the trees; the other evening, the wind was blowing strong and the leaves were falling just like rain. But what can you do? This is the law of existence. Everything comes into form and disappears into formlessness. So for the man who is awakened, there will not be any change in his consciousness. For the unawakened man there will be different reactions.I have heard…A man was dying. He was very old, had lived his life – there was no need to be worried about death. It was getting dark as the sun had set. The man opened his eyes and asked his wife who was sitting by his right side, “Where is my eldest son?”The wife said, “He is sitting just in front of me on the other side of the bed. Don’t be worried about him; don’t be worried about anything in this moment. Relax and pray.”But the man asked, “And where is my second son?”The wife said, “He is sitting by the side of your eldest son.” And the old man who was almost on the verge of death started to get up.The wife said, “What are you doing?”He said, “I am looking for my third son.” The wife and the sons all felt how much he loved them. The third son was sitting just near his feet.He said, “I’m here papa. Relax, we are all here.”He said, “You are all here, and you want me to relax? Who is tending the shop?”At the moment of death he is still concerned about the shop. It is very difficult to predict how different people’s unconscious minds will react. Their whole life will be reflected in their reaction – that much is certain. But everybody’s life has moved through different paths, different experiences, and the culminating point is going to be different. Death brings to the surface your essential personality.Another old man was dying – he was a very rich man. His whole family was gathered there. The eldest son said, “What should we do when he dies? We will have to rent a car to take him to the graveyard.”The youngest son said, “He always longed for a Rolls Royce. In life he could not sit in one, but at the least, dead, he can enjoy a ride – a one-way ride of course – to the graveyard.”But the eldest son said, “You are too young, and you don’t understand a thing. Dead people don’t enjoy anything. It does not matter to the dead person whether it is a Rolls Royce or just a Ford. A Ford will do.”The second son said, “Why are you being so extravagant? Anyway, a dead body only has to be carried. I know a person who has a truck – it will be more comfortable and cheaper also.”The third son said, “I cannot tolerate all this nonsense. What is the need to be worried about Rolls Royces and Fords and trucks? Is he going to be married? He is going to die. We will just put him outside the house where we put all our garbage. The municipal truck will take him automatically, no expense at all.”At this moment the old man opened his eyes and said, “Where are my shoes?”They said, “What are you going to do with your shoes? Just rest.”But he said, “I want my shoes.”The eldest son said, “He is a stubborn man. Perhaps he wants to die with his shoes on. Let him have his shoes.”And the old man, as he was putting the shoes on, said, “You need not be worried about the expense. I still have a little life left; I will walk down to the graveyard. See you there! I will die exactly by the grave. It hurts me that you are all so extravagant; even in my life I only dreamed about a Rolls Royce, or some other beautiful car. Dreaming is inexpensive, you can dream about anything.”And, it is said, the old man walked to the graveyard, his sons and his relatives following him, and he died exactly by his grave – to save money.The last thought in a dying man is very characteristic of his whole life, his whole philosophy, his whole religion. It is a tremendous exposure.One of the followers of J. Krishnamurti – an old man and very respected in India – used to come to me because his son was attorney general of Madhya Pradesh, and the MP court is in Jabalpur. He used to come to visit his son, and whenever he was there he made it a point to see me if I was in town. The old man had been Krishnamurti’s follower for almost fifty years. He had dropped all rituals, all scriptures; he was absolutely convinced logically, intellectually, that Krishnamurti was right. I used to say to him, “You should remember, intellectual conviction, logical or rational conviction is very superficial. In times of crisis it disappears, evaporates.”But he used to say to me, “Fifty years – it cannot remain superficial.”One day his son came to me and said, “My father is dying and I could not think of anybody else whom he would like to have near him – he loves you so much. Come with me; I have brought the car, there is not much time.”So I simply went with him. As I entered through the door of his father’s room, very silently his lips were moving. I went in, also very silently, because I wanted to hear what he was repeating. He was saying, “Ram, Ram, Ram,” the Hindu name of God. And for fifty years he had been saying there is no God.I shook him. He opened his eyes, and he said, “Don’t disturb me. This is no time for argumentation.”I said, “I am not going to argue, but just to ask: What happened to those fifty years? From where does this repetition of the name of God come? You insisted that there is no God.”He said, “That was okay at that time, but now that I am dying – and the doctors have said I cannot survive more than half an hour – just don’t disturb me; let me repeat the name of God. Anyway, who knows? He may be. If there is no God, there is no harm in repeating his name. But if there is a God, and you don’t die repeating his name, then you are on the blacklist. And I don’t want to go to hell, I have suffered enough here on the earth.”I said, “That’s what I was saying to you, that intellectual conviction is of no use.”He did not die; he survived. After three, four days I went to see him. He was sitting in the garden and I asked, “What about that evening?”He said, “Forget all about it. It was just a time of weakness, a fear of death that made me start repeating the name of God. Otherwise there is no God.”I said, “It means you need another experience of dying? This was your first heart attack: you survived – the second will be coming soon. At the most you can survive the second, but the third you will not be able to survive. Remember what you were saying to me.”He said, “Forget all that. I am absolutely certain there is no God.”I said, “Just let death start approaching, and immediately your superficial, intellectual convictions will disappear. This idea that there is no God is not your own, it is borrowed. It is not your own exploration; it is not your own insight; it is not part of your consciousness but only part of your mind.”People will behave differently.You are asking: “What happens to human consciousness when the people of the world suddenly realize they are in the midst of an unstoppable, devastating plague that will kill most of the people they know?”A few points can be certainly asserted. One, when the whole world is dying, all your relationships – your mother, your father, your girlfriend, your wife, your husband, your boyfriend, your children – do not mean anything. When the whole world is on the point of disappearing into death, into a black hole, the relationships that you have created in life cannot remain intact. In fact, behind our relationships we are strangers.It makes one feel afraid, so one never looks into it. Otherwise, even when you are in the crowd, you are alone; even if your name is known to people, does that make any difference? You are still a stranger. This can be seen… A husband and wife may have lived thirty years, forty years, fifty years together, but the more they live together, the more they become aware that they are strangers.Before they married, they had the hallucination that perhaps they are made for each other, but as the honeymoon ends, that illusion disappears. Every day they start becoming more and more distant – pretending that everything is all right, everything is fine, but deep down they know that their strangeness is untouched.This whole world is full of strangers. And if it was going to disappear the next moment, if it was announced on all the radios and all the televisions, suddenly you would see yourself in your utter nudity – alone.A small child had gone to the zoo with his father, and they were watching a very ferocious lion in his cage – he was walking up and down. The boy became very afraid; he was not more than nine. He asked his father, “Dad, if this lion gets out and something happens to you… Please just tell me what number bus I have to take to reach home!”In such a situation he is asking a very relevant question. He cannot conceive that if something happens to his father, something will also happen to him; but in case something happens to his father and he is alive, he needs to know the number of the bus. The father was shocked that he was not concerned about him at all. Whatever happens to him happens – his concern is to know the number of the bus.The very climate of death suddenly takes away all your masks, suddenly makes you aware that you are alone and all your relationships were deceptions, ways to forget your aloneness – somehow to create a family in which you feel you are not alone.But death exposes without fail. And this is only about small deaths. If the whole world is going to die, all your relationships will disappear before it. You will die alone, a stranger who has no name, no fame, no respectability, no power – utterly helpless. But in this helplessness people will still behave differently.An old man is about to have a date with a young woman; so he goes to the doctor, who prescribes him an aphrodisiac that will increase and prolong his libido. He takes his date to one of the best restaurants in town.When they have ordered their soup, he sends his date to powder her nose and then takes the waiter aside. “Put these pills into my soup,” he confides in him, “just before you bring it out from the kitchen.” The young lady comes back, but when, after fifteen minutes, the soup has not been served, the old man calls the waiter over. “Where is our soup?” he demands.“It will be here in a few minutes,” replies the waiter, “just as soon as the noodles lie down again.”At the time of death, the most important subject in the minds of people who are not conscious is going to be sex – because sex and death are two sides of the same coin. Life is so full of mysteries: you will be surprised to know that when people are crucified, just as they are crucified they almost always ejaculate. Doctors have been wondering why, and they have come upon the explanation that those sperm, which are alive, seeing the situation – that the body is dead – rush out of it. Their lifespan outside of the body is only two hours, but in two hours they may find some other body, some other center.First it was thought to be a very mysterious thing: Why should crucified people ejaculate? But it is just as though your house is on fire and you start escaping out of it. Your sperms are living beings, and you are dying – why should they die with you? You have been just a house to them and the house is on fire – and everybody has the right to make an effort at least to save his life.When the whole world is dying, most of the unconscious people who have been repressing their sexuality will think only of sex. They cannot think of anything else; all their interests and hobbies and religions will disappear – the world is dying, perhaps they can make love one more time before death destroys everything. They have been repressing, according to the priests, according to the society and the culture, their whole life’s libido, the sexual urge – and now it does not matter. Everything is going to disappear; they don’t need any respectability, they don’t care about religion.A man was told by his doctor that this would be the last night of his life. “As the sun rises in the morning, you will be dead. Everything has been done, but nothing seems to succeed. What do you want? If you have any wishes to be fulfilled, you have one night.”The man simply rushed home. He told his wife, “This is my last night and I always wanted to make love to you with totality, but there were so many hindrances, inhibitions. At this moment the only idea in my mind is, before I die, I should at least experience a total orgasm.”He made love. In the middle of the night he again nudged the wife and said, “The morning is coming close. I will never be able to see you again. If I make love one more time, it won’t harm you.”So he made love a second time, and as he wanted to make love again – because he could not sleep; when death is going to knock on your doors, how can you sleep? As the morning was very close he again nudged the wife and said, “Darling, just one time more.”The wife said, “Listen, you never think of others. You don’t realize the simple fact that in the morning I have to wake up. You will be gone, that’s okay, but I have to wake up – so just let me rest a little. And when you die there is going to be so much fuss, so much trouble – crying and weeping and all those things. Just go to sleep.”Once you know the person is going to die, suddenly the small thread of relationship breaks down. The world disappearing into a black hole, in the ultimate death, may perhaps make people almost crazy, may bring out all their repressed sexuality, sensuality. But it will all depend on different individuals, how they have lived. If they have lived an uninhibited, natural life, each moment given its total share, then perhaps they will simply watch it – it is going to be the greatest tragedy, the greatest drama in the world. They will not do anything but sit silently and watch. But no general law can be established as to what people will do.Only about the enlightened people can it be said, with absolute guarantee, that there will be no difference at all. They know that such is the nature of things. This is the whole approach of Gautam Buddha – the philosophy of suchness – that there is a time when the fall comes, and the leaves have to leave the tree.When the spring comes there are flowers, and in the East particularly… The West has no idea about it; in the East it is not one creation, but every creation that goes into a de-creation – just as every man, after the whole day’s work, goes to sleep in the night. This is a very potent idea. Each creation, after a time – they have even talked about the exact time, how long one creation lasts – goes into de-creation. It also needs rest. So for the enlightened person it is not anything unusual; it is part of existence itself. And as the day has ended, the night will end also – and again the creation wakes up.Modern physics is coming closer to the idea. First they discovered black holes: in space there are strange black holes and if any planet or any sun comes close to the black holes it is pulled in and simply disappears. But science understands the balance in nature, so now they are saying that there must be white holes. Perhaps the black hole is one side of the door, and the white hole is the other side of the door. From one side a planet or a star goes into the black hole and disappears from us, and from the other side, the white hole, a new star is born.Every day new stars are born and old stars are dying; life and death is a continuous circle. If life is the day, then death is the night – it is not against it; it is just rest, sleep, a time to be rejuvenated. The man of understanding will not be disturbed by it. But the unconscious people will simply freak out, and they will start doing things they have never done. They have been controlling themselves and now there is no point in controlling, there is no need.If it is known beforehand – which is not very possible, because with nuclear weapons it will take only ten minutes for the earth to disappear, so there is not much possibility that you will be informed in advance – “Get ready!” just the shock of hearing on your radios or on your television sets that within ten minutes the world is going to collapse, you may become simply frozen, paralyzed. The shock will be so big and so unfamiliar.Perhaps most of the people will die out of shock, not from nuclear weapons. Just hearing that within ten minutes the whole world is going to die will be enough – the shock will destroy their fragile existence. So how people will behave is going to be only hypothetical.Only about the enlightened ones I can say with absolute guarantee, on my own authority, that there will be no difference. If they are drinking tea, they will continue drinking tea; their hands will not even shake. If they are taking a shower, they will continue to take a shower. They will not be in shock; neither will they be paralyzed, nor will they freak out. Nor will they indulge in things which they have been repressing, because an enlightened man has no repressions in his being; he knows always only one word to say to nature – yes.They will say yes to the disappearing earth, to the ultimate death – they don’t know the word no. There is not going to be any resistance on their part; and they will be the only ones who will die consciously. The one who dies consciously enters the eternal flow of life; he does not die.Those who die unconsciously will be born on some other planet, in some other womb – because life cannot be destroyed, even by nuclear weapons. It can destroy only the houses in which life exists.Osho,You are really too much! The other night you said that you don't do miracles, but this morning, in front of my own eyes, I saw old Maitreya levitating when you danced with him. Isn't that a miracle?Anando, I still say the same: I do not do miracles. But that does not mean that miracles don’t happen. I was not doing anything, and Maitreya was levitating. I had to move quickly because if he levitates too much – he is old and may hit the ceiling!A group of men gave a testimonial dinner to Goldberg, and after they had praised him for an hour, Goldberg finally got up to speak.“Gentlemen,” he said, “when I came to this town forty-one years ago, I walked down a dirt road with one suit of clothes, one pair of shoes, carrying a dirty old suitcase. And to show you what hard work can do, along with the great opportunities this country can offer, today I own three banks, five apartment houses, and ten oil wells!”Everybody applauded, and right after the dinner a salesman walked up to the old man and said, “Pardon me, sir, I would like to ask you a question. When you came here forty-one years ago with just that one suit, a pair of shoes and an old suitcase – what was in the suitcase?”The old man said, “I had three million dollars in bonds and two hundred thousand dollars in cash.”Miracles only appear to happen; they do not really happen. When you are totally singing and moving with the energy of the whole, you still cannot levitate – but you can start hopping. That’s what was happening: old Maitreya was hopping, and Anando was just behind him so she must have been afraid – what has happened to old Milarepa? I called him Milarepa by mistake because it was expected to happen to Milarepa, not to Maitreya!For centuries it has been observed that when you are silent, joyous, and if you are sitting with closed eyes, you start feeling as if you are levitating, although if you open your eyes you will find you are sitting on the ground. You have not levitated, but consciousness can move upward and that can give you a feeling of levitation.Thousands of seekers have felt levitation; it is not physical, but with closed eyes you will feel exactly as if your whole body is moving up. It is only your consciousness which is rising up, but you and your consciousness are so identified that unless you open your eyes you will not become aware that the body has not levitated – only the consciousness went higher than the body, beyond the body. It is a law of consciousness: just as things gravitate, consciousness levitates – it is simply a balance. But there are no miracles.I have heard…Two rabbis and a bishop were very close friends. All three had gone to Israel for a holy pilgrimage, of course for different reasons. The rabbis had gone for their own religion – that is their holy land. The bishop had gone because of Jesus Christ; it is also the Christian holy land.All three went to see Lake Galilee, where Jesus is supposed to have walked on water. They went in a boat on the lake, and the bishop asked while they were on the lake, “Do you really believe that Jesus walked on water?” The rabbis looked at each other, winked and said, “Yes!”The bishop said, “Can you do that miracle also?”The rabbi said, “It is a very simple thing in these parts; it was nothing special, not a miracle.” And the rabbi got out of the boat from his corner, and walked a few feet.The bishop could not believe his eyes. The rabbi got back in the boat. The second rabbi also walked a few feet and he also came back. They said to him, “We are not Christians and we don’t believe in Jesus, but as far as walking on this lake is concerned, anybody who lives around here can do it. Would you like to give it a try?”The bishop said, “Certainly – since you two have walked, and I am a believer in Jesus Christ…” So he stepped out into the lake from his side, and the moment he stepped out he started drowning and shouting, “Save me, save me!”Both the rabbis laughed, and they said, “Should we tell the poor boy about the stones – that he has stepped out on the wrong side of the boat? If you want to walk on water, there are rocks, hidden just under the surface!”There are no miracles in the world in the sense people think about miracles. Otherwise everything is a miracle. Just that we are here is a miracle; just that the sun has again risen today is a miracle. That roses bloom, that lotuses open, that trees sway and dance in the wind – everything is a miracle.You can choose between the two: either there are no miracles, or everything is a miracle. My preference is for the second because the first is a very dry attitude toward life, and that attitude will make your life flat, without any mystery and without anything miraculous. My preference is the second. Everything is a miracle: a seed turning into a sprout, growing into a huge tree, flowering, bringing fruits – it is a miracle.Just the other day, Shunyo said to me that it is strange that old leaves are falling and new leaves have already arrived in the same place where the old leaves used to be; one has just fallen and a new leaf has started growing in its place, fresh and young. Life itself is a miracle.But I am not interested in miracles like Jesus walking on water, or bringing the dead back to life. Those are only fictions. It is strange… You can easily understand, if somebody walks on water, then he will be reported all over the world, in all the newspapers; he will make a mark in history. If somebody makes people come back to life, historians cannot ignore such a person, and such a person cannot be crucified; he should be worshipped like a God.But strangely enough, Jesus, who was a man of miracles according to Christians, was thought by his contemporaries to be only a nuisance, someone who should be destroyed. Not a single Jewish contemporary book, scripture, or inscription even mentions his name. He is mentioned only by his four disciples in the New Testament. Other than those four gospels the whole of Judea did not bother about the man – and he was a man of such qualities, at least his name must have been referred to. Even if they were against him, as an enemy his name must have been mentioned. But there is no reference in any Jewish scripture.This gave an idea to George Gurdjieff, and his idea seems to be plausible. He used to say that Jesus Christ never existed; there used to be a drama, and Jesus Christ was only an actor in that drama that was played year after year – just as in India, the story of Rama is played as a drama all over the country every year. That drama became a reality, or was made a reality by a Christian priest to create a new religion. The fiction in the drama of Jesus Christ was perfect for creating a religion, and because they created the religion, the Jews stopped the drama. That too is a hypothesis, but no Christian authority has refuted George Gurdjieff because they don’t have any evidence except for those four gospels. They are written by his own disciples and are not much different from each other; it is the same gospel written by four different people.One thing is certain, even if Jesus was a historical figure, too much mythology and too much fiction have been added to him, just to make him “the only begotten son of God.” It becomes more probable, because the same has happened to Gautam Buddha and to Mahavira – who were absolutely historical personages. There is so much reference to them in their contemporary literature, even in the literature of their enemies, that they cannot be said to be simply mythological.But to make them superior human beings, supermen, the disciples went on adding new miracles. And that can be seen: the older the book, the less miracles there were; as new books were written, more miracles were added. From where were they getting those miracles? Because in the old literature those miracles are not there.For example, in the oldest book about Gautam Buddha it is not mentioned that he was born when his mother was standing under a sal tree. To give birth to a child while standing is a very unfamiliar and very strange style. And not only that: Gautam Buddha was born standing – he stood on the earth as he came out of the womb. Not only that – he walked seven feet! And not only that, he declared, “I am the greatest awakened man in the whole history of man – past, present, and future.”To the superstitious these may seem miraculous, but to any reasonable man these are fictions, added to make Gautam Buddha a superman, a god – because unless you have a god, you cannot create a religion. All those miracles are cunning strategies to create religions.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Let's reverse the question for once: What have you learned being with us?It is the last supper. Jesus has gathered all his disciples together and there is a great feeling of gloom in the air. A single candle lights the room. Everybody can sense that something momentous is going to happen and that this may be their last meal together.Jesus pours the wine and passes the glasses around and then divides up the food and personally serves his disciples. The candle burns low and at last, all the food is gone except for one hard-boiled egg.Jesus says to Peter, sitting on his right, “Peter, my blessed disciple, would you like to eat this last egg?”“Ah, no master,” says Peter. “You must have it.”Jesus then turns to his left and says, “John, my blessed disciple, would you like to eat this last egg?”“Ah, no master,” says John. “You must have it.” Jesus asked all his twelve disciples in turn, and they all refused the last egg, saying that he, their master, must have it. Just then a gust of wind comes through the window and blows out the candle. The room is plunged into darkness and it is filled with an awesome silence.Suddenly, there is a hideous scream. Someone lights a new candle, and everyone gasps as they see Jesus with his hand stretched out for the remaining egg – and embedded in the back of his hand are twelve forks! But it was too late to learn…I have learned much. One of the most significant things that I have learned is not to feel sad when you betray, not to feel sorry when you go astray – in fact, not even to expect that you have to trust, that the relationship between me and you has to be one-sided, only from your side, not from my side at all. You are here of your own free choice; you can move away just as freely as you had come. You love me – that is your decision. You can start hating me – that will also be your decision. I am absolutely unconcerned; only then is it possible not to feel hurt, not to feel wounded.Jesus was betrayed only once, by one disciple. I have been betrayed continually for almost as much time as Jesus lived on the earth: thirty-three years. So many people I have trusted so totally have betrayed me so easily. There was a moment they were ready to die for me and just some small thing: if I didn’t fulfill their expectation – which I have never agreed to fulfill – their love changed into great hate. The same person who was ready to die for me is ready to kill me.So I have learned it the hard way that if you love, it is your decision. If you hate, it is your decision. I am almost nonexistent as far as my side is concerned: neither am I a partner in your love, nor am I going to be a partner in your hate. This is a sad lesson but it is good that I have learned it long ago. If somebody assassinates me, at least I will not have any complaint, any grudge – because to love was his freedom, to hate is also his freedom. I am absolutely out of the relationship.I will go on doing whatever I feel is needed for the growth of your consciousness. But people have been going on, changing. Such stupid expectations, and if they are not fulfilled – it seems as if they have come to me to change me, to transform me. They want me to be according to their idea of how a master should be.I give you total freedom to be yourself. I never expect anything, any ideal to be imposed on you. I don’t give you any commandments. Yet you go on carrying within your mind certain expectations that I have to fulfill, and if they are not fulfilled… And they cannot be fulfilled. Thousands of people are related to me. They have different ideals, different moral concepts. It is almost impossible – and even if it were possible, I am not a man to fit with those who are unconscious, who are themselves living in darkness.You are here to go through a transformation. It is none of your business how I live, what I say, what I do – the moment you start thinking to change something in me, the bridge between me and you is broken. It is a one-sided bridge; I am not a partner in it. I know it is hard for you but your very question implies, Sarjano – perhaps you have not read it very consciously while you were writing it. You say, “Let us reverse the question for once.” You cannot reverse it even for once. You are asking now, “What have you learned being with us?”I have nothing to learn. You are here only because of the fact that you have found a person who has nothing to learn – and particularly from you, who are groping in darkness, in unconsciousness, who are almost on the boundary line of insanity – any moment, just one step more and you are in a madhouse. Neither from you, nor from anyone else.My whole approach is – and I have been insisting millions of times – that as far as truth or the ultimate reality is concerned, you cannot learn it from anybody else. Once you have known it, there is nothing that remains to be learned.So I say to you: not even once can the question be reversed. I have not learned anything from you. You need not feel responsible for anything. Just being with you for all these three decades, it has not been a learning but simply a discovery that there is nobody in the world who is so awakened that you can even call him a friend, so awakened that you can even call him a beloved. This has not been a learning – this is simply a discovery, slowly, slowly, as I have come to know human beings.As I went around the world, my discovery has become absolutely clear: this humanity has come to a dead end. To hope for anything from this humanity is sheer nonsense. Perhaps a few people may be saved – and for them I go on creating the Noah’s Ark, knowing perfectly well that perhaps when the Noah’s Ark is ready, there may not be anybody left to be saved. They may have all gone their own ways.It rarely happens: never have so many people come in contact with anybody – either Jesus or Mahavira or Buddha – and never have so many people left Buddha, Mahavira, or Jesus. It is significant to have some insight into it. Even Gautam Buddha, a man of immense insight, was ready to compromise on minor points with his disciples. The disciple feels immensely happy if the master agrees with him – although the master agreeing with the disciple is like light agreeing with darkness, truth agreeing with that which is not truth, life agreeing with death. But because Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, and other teachers of the past have compromised on minor points, very few people have left them.I am an absolutely non-compromising person. Either you have to be with me absolutely, without expecting anything from my side, because I cannot agree on any smallest, most minute point if it is not true. Truth is indivisible. You cannot say, “I may not have the whole truth, but a little bit, a piece of it, a fragment of truth.” Truth is not divisible. Truth is almost like a circle. Have you ever seen a half circle? Perhaps you may have misunderstood: if you have seen a half circle, it is no longer a circle at all; the circle can only be full. The half is only an arc, it is not a circle. Just as the circle is indivisible, so is truth, so is life, so is existence, so is love, so is ecstasy.Either you have it or you don’t have it. If you have it, there is no question of your being here. If you don’t have it, then be absolutely clear that you don’t have it, because living in the illusion that perhaps you have a little bit of it is dangerous.What can I learn from you? Being unconscious? Being greedy? Being jealous? Being violent? What can I learn from you?As I have gone on discovering more and more people, my hope for humanity has disappeared. If you want to call it a learning, you can. I don’t see any future possible. And the time is so short before the curtain falls that you should not waste it in unnecessary things. Your life has now to be absolutely devoted to the most essential thing, the most fundamental thing: to be enlightened has to be your single-pointed concentration. Everything else has to be sacrificed for it because you cannot even postpone it for tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.Osho,Would you please comment on commitment and spontaneity. Are they opposite poles of the same energy?Commitment and spontaneity are certainly opposite poles, and of the same energy. Commitment is something like death; spontaneity is something like life. Commitment is something like darkness, and spontaneity is something like light. Although they belong to the same energy as opposite poles, you have to start from being spontaneous. All the religions of the world want you to start from commitment; all political parties want you to start from commitment.Commitment, if you start with it, is very dangerous. It is another name of slavery. It means you are saying and promising something which is not within your capacity. You are saying, “Tomorrow also, I will be the same.” But who can say what tomorrow is going to bring?Commitment means: “I will remain blind to anything else that can change my commitment.” That’s why every belief makes people blind. They have to keep their eyes closed, out of fear – they may see something which goes against their belief, their commitment.Every year, the Catholic pope declares a blacklist of books that Catholics are not supposed to read. Reading them means a certainty of your going to hell. I was talking to a bishop in Nagpur, because a few of my books had been listed by the Catholic pope as not to be read by any Catholics; whoever reads them is paving his path toward hell. And this is not new – this is an almost eighteen-hundred-year-old tradition in the Catholic Church.Before this century, they used to burn and destroy any book they decided was dangerous for Catholics. Now they cannot do that, but at least they can prevent the Catholics – who are a great majority in the world, seven hundred million people.I simply said to the bishop of Nagpur, “At least somebody must have been reading my books; otherwise how do they decide? Either the pope himself must be reading, or some associate cardinals in the Vatican must be reading – without reading, you cannot decide that a book is dangerous to the Catholic belief.”He was in a dilemma: he could not say yes, he could not say no. Because if he says, “Yes, somebody reads it,” that means that person is bound to fall into hell. And if that person is not going to fall into hell, then the whole idea is ridiculous; then nobody is going to fall into hell. It is just to keep people’s eyes closed: no facts should be allowed to be known to them that go against their belief.Commitment demands that you lose your eyes, lose your mind, lose your reason, your logic, your intelligence, your consciousness. It is almost a living death. Never begin anything with commitment.But such is the mystery of life. Begin everything with spontaneity, with natural awareness, with no commitment for anything, but always ready and open and available to anything new that you come across on the path. Only a spontaneous lifestyle can lead you to your authentic being.And this is the miracle: that once spontaneous living has led you to clarity of vision, to purity of intelligence – has destroyed all the darkness of your soul and has made everything light within you – then spontaneity itself becomes commitment.But it is not being imposed from outside, it is a growth within yourself. It is your experience to which you are committed; it is your understanding to which you are committed. You are committed to your own eyes, to your own consciousness, to your own intelligence, to your own experience. This commitment has a beauty and an aliveness. It is spontaneity becoming mature.Spontaneity was like a child; commitment is maturity, crystallization. Just as nobody can start from the middle of life, or from the end of life – everybody has to start from the childhood. Although every childhood will reach old age, and every birth will reach death, nobody can begin with death. The crescendo, the death of a life that has been lived with joy and dance and love will not be dark. It will not be an end of something but a new beginning, a new beginning of a higher spontaneity on another plane.But religions have deceived humanity in such cunning ways. Unless you are very alert, it is difficult to understand the ways they have deceived you. Spontaneity and commitment are two poles of the same energy, but there is one commitment – which is imposed from outside, which has not come as a flowering of your own spontaneity – that is a false commitment. Your being a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Jew is a false commitment. It has not grown within you, you have not lived up to it. It is not a maturity of your own consciousness, not a crystallization of your being, but something imposed from above by others. It has no roots within you. That’s why the whole world is full of religious people but there seems to be no religiousness anywhere. No religious values blossom, but just the opposite – humanity lives on an almost subhuman level.Start from spontaneity. But no tradition, no culture, no civilization, will allow it because they can control only dead people – and they can control through commitment. The spontaneous person is beyond anybody’s enslavement. If the spontaneous person grows, he will come to a commitment – but that will be his own commitment to existence, between himself and existence. No other mediator, no priest, no pope, no imam, no shankaracharya is going to stand between him and this immensely beautiful existence, this great life, this divineness that is spread all over the world.His spontaneity will bring him to a commitment, but that commitment will be out of his own freedom. It will have roots deep in his own being. He will not be a Christian – he can be a Jesus Christ. He will not be a Buddhist – he can be a Gautam Buddha. He will not be a Hindu, but he can be a Krishna; he will not be a Jaina, but he can be a Mahavira.It is because of this that I emphasize that religion is a private, personal, and individual affair. It cannot be organized. The moment you organize it, you destroy it. If we want humanity to be religious, then all the religions have to disappear. They are the barriers.There are three hundred religions on the earth. They are dividing human beings, giving them different commitments, and those commitments have nothing to do with the time, with the space in which we find ourselves. When a commitment comes out of spontaneity, it is always timely, it is never dead – it is always growing with the changes that are happening every moment. It is just a riverlike flow, it is not frozen ice.But it is very easy to deceive people because both the phenomena are so deeply interrelated. People are living in such a deep sleep – without any alertness at all – that they cannot make the discrimination between such closely connected experiences.But just a little turn makes all the difference. If you start from commitment, then you will never reach to spontaneity; you have started from death. But if you start from spontaneity, you will reach to commitment – and that commitment will not be death. Out of spontaneity, death cannot grow – only more life and more life and infinite life. But you have to be alert, just a little conscious.Two criminals were caught and went to jail. They became friends, and most of the day they were talking about how to escape. One morning, George looked so blissful that his friend Arthur asked, “Hey, what happened to you last night?”“Well,” said George, “first tell me how you spent the night.”“Okay,” replied Arthur. “I had a beautiful dream: the gate opened by itself and I walked out. In the street, there was a racing bike with ten gears and I jumped on it and rode away. Great, was it not? But now tell me about you.”George answered, “In my dream, the door also opened and two very beautiful young girls came in, stripped, belly dancing.”At this point, Arthur could not hold back and said, “George, but why didn’t you wake me up?”“Impossible,” replied George. “Don’t you remember? You were gone on the bike!”Our lives are not different than our dreams. Have you ever observed that even in your dreams, the dream looks real, as real as the life when you are awake? Perhaps more real, because when you are awake you can doubt. You can doubt – right now you can doubt; perhaps this is real or perhaps it is just a dream.There have been great philosophers in the world, like Shankara in the East, and Bradley in the West, whose whole philosophy consists of a single, significant statement: the world is illusory. There is no way to prove that it is real. One thing is certain, that you can doubt it. But in the dream, you cannot even doubt. The reality of the dream is so tremendous that you cannot dream and wonder if perhaps it is a dream. No, the dream overwhelms you completely.And we are living, although with open eyes, with different dreams. Those dreams don’t allow us the alertness to see simple things: how we are being exploited, how our dignity as human beings is destroyed, how very stupid and idiotic people become our religious saints – those who have no sharpness of intelligence. But we find strange excuses.Just a few days ago, a young Jaina nun escaped from a Jaina monastery with a young man. The whole Jaina community in that area near Indore was in such a turmoil, and the turmoil became even more significant because the girl gave a statement to the press and wrote letters to her parents saying, “Now I am twenty-one years of age and I have the right to choose my lifestyle. I don’t want to be a nun, and if you insist…” Because they were trying in every way to catch hold of her, to find where she was hiding. And Jainas are rich people. The government was supporting them, the police officers were supporting them.She gave the statement to the newspapers: “If they insist that I have to remain a nun, then I will expose the reality of the inside story of the monastery and what is going on inside there. Nobody is following the teachings that they teach to the layman outside. There are all kinds of corruption. Monks, who are not supposed to have money, have accumulated money. Monks and nuns, who are not supposed to have any sexual relationship, are having sexual relationships. I have been tortured in so many ways that if you insist, I will expose it to the whole world.” She said, “My younger sister is still there. She also wants to come out of the monastery but she is only eighteen years of age.”But still, in India, money functions like a miracle. They must have bribed the police, they must have bribed the magistrate. An arrest warrant was issued. Now, that girl has not done any harm to anybody – is she not free to have her own way of life? If she does not want to be a nun, has she to be forced to be a nun by the police and by the government and by the court? The parents started fasting. These are ways of torturing people – people think these are ways of nonviolence, they are not. The father and mother started fasting in front of the monastery, and declared they would not eat unless the girl came back. Now, it is a very subtle way of forcing the girl to come back.The prestige of the family, the prestige of the religion, the prestige of the monastery is at stake. But the girl must be courageous; she did not turn up. Before the police reached the place where she and the young man were hiding, they escaped. I hope they will come here, because they cannot find anywhere any shelter with dignity and respect. Wherever they go, they will be thought to be criminals.In fact, she has done a really courageous act; she needs immense respect and honor. Their whole effort is to catch hold of her, alive or dead. The fear is what she is going to expose about the monastery – but every monastery is doing all those things.I used to meet Jaina monks while I was traveling around India, and I was surprised. When I became intimate and friendly with a few Jaina monks and nuns, they would close the door and they were hiding Coca Cola, Fanta, in their bags and they would offer it to me. I would say, “This is a miracle! From where have you got this? You are not supposed to keep these things.” They are not supposed to keep anything with them. And they all had money, and they were all hiding their money. They all had their agents everywhere who were bringing things – even in the night – for them to eat. And none of them were celibate.I would love that girl to turn up here, because here we can give her total freedom to be herself. We don’t have any belief system and we don’t have any commitment. And from here, she can expose all that she has passed through.Osho,Referring to the present situation of the world and of humanity, the famous psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, asks himself a question: “What to do when we don't know what to do?” Could you please answer him and all of us?Chidananda, R. D. Laing is certainly one of the most sensitive psychiatrists of the world. In fact, he was the reason for sending Chidananda’s mother, Pratiti, to me. She was Laing’s patient for twelve years, and because he could not cure her, he sent her here to me. It is because of Pratiti’s coming here that Chidananda also came to the commune.The very fact that Laing accepted that what psychiatry cannot do, meditation can do, shows immense sensibility and understanding. What he is asking is, “What to do when we don’t know what to do?” If he wants a really Eastern answer – and he is well-acquainted with the Western answers; they have all failed – the Eastern answer is Basho’s haiku:Sitting silently, doing nothing,The spring comesand the grass grows by itself.R. D. Laing must have read this small haiku of Basho’s. There are moments in life when you don’t know what to do. But still you go on doing something as if all the answers need some kind of doing to find them, as if all the questions can be solved by doing. The whole of the East stands on a very different level. It says: the questions that cannot be solved by doing can only be solved by non-doing. Don’t go on searching for something else to do; there are questions which cannot be solved by any doing. In fact, every doing will make them more complicated.For example, if you are not falling asleep one night and you want to go to sleep, and you ask, “What to do?” and somebody suggests, “Do this mantra, do this chanting; count from one to a hundred and then backward from a hundred to one” – but all these efforts will keep you awake. They are not going to help you to fall asleep because doing them needs awareness, not sleep. I would say to you: forget all about sleep. What is wrong in it? If you are not falling asleep, enjoy it! Lying down in your bed, doing nothing, the night comes and sleep follows.There are things which have not to be done, which have to be allowed to happen. The West knows only one category: that everything has to be done. Unless you do it, how can it happen? But they are forgetting that there is a category which is not available to doing, which is available only to a state of relaxedness, of non-doing.I have seen an American book on relaxation, and the title of the book is You Must Relax! The very word must makes even relaxation some kind of tremendous effort. And the book has sold millions of copies because America is one of the places where people most suffer from sleeplessness.Poor people cannot afford sleeplessness; it is a rich man’s disease. Poor people snore perfectly, rich people suffer. Even sleep – which is so natural to all the animals, to all the trees – even that has become difficult for man and the reason is that our whole day is full of doing. The doing is so much that when we go to bed, the mind needs time to drop the habit – but before it can drop it, you start a new doing: methods of sleep. So you continue in the same rut of doing. You never touch a deeper layer of your being where all is relaxed, where all is at rest, where nothing moves. Just eternal silence.This is the time, certainly, to find the right answer for R. D. Laing’s question: “What to do when we don’t know what to do?” He is still asking, “What to do?” That is the Western conditioning of the mind. He should have asked, “What not to do when we don’t know what to do?” Doing has failed. Now let us try non-doing – and non-doing is another name for relaxation, another name for meditation.Basho is absolutely right. The world has known great poets but perhaps none of them was a great meditator like Basho; hence his poetry is not just poetry, it is the very essence of his meditations. Each word contains immensities. So when I repeat Basho’s haiku, don’t just listen to the words. Try to feel the content of the words, not the container – the words are only containers.Sitting silently, doing nothing,The spring comesand the grass grows by itself.He has said everything about meditation, all the essential ingredients. It is not something that you have to do; it is something that happens. You just have to wait; it happens in its own time. When the spring comes, the grass grows by itself. And just sitting won’t do, because you can sit and your mind can go on wandering around the world. Hence, he has added: “Doing nothing” – neither by your body, nor by your mind. Just sitting like a stone statue of Gautam Buddha, and waiting for the spring. There is no impatience: it always comes, and when it comes, the grass grows.The world has come to a point – and it has been brought to this point by the Western attitude of action, and always action, and condemnation of inaction. Now the East can be of immense help. Action is good, it is needed, but it is not all.Action can give you only the mundane things of life. If you want the higher values of life, then they are beyond the reach of your doing. You will have to learn to be silent and open, available, in a prayerful mood, trusting that existence will give it to you when you are ripe, that whenever your silence is complete, it will be filled with blessings. Flowers are going to shower on you. You just have to be absolutely a non-doer, a nobody, a nothingness.The great values of life – love, truth, compassion, gratitude, prayer, godliness, everything – happen only in nothingness, in the heart which is absolutely silent and receptive. But the West is too rooted in action. And there seems to be perhaps not time enough left for it to learn non-doing.You will be surprised to know that India never invaded any country – and India was invaded by almost all the countries of the world. Whoever wanted to invade India – that was the easiest thing. It was not that they were not courageous people, that they were not warriors, but simply the idea of invading somebody else’s territory was so ugly.It is a surprising fact that one Mohammedan conqueror, Mohammed Gauri, invaded India eighteen times, and he was thrown back by a great warrior king, Prithviraj. Mohammed Gauri was driven back, but Prithviraj never entered his territory.Prithviraj was told again and again, “This is too much. That man will gather armies again in a few years, and again he will invade the country. It is better to finish him once and for all. And you have been victorious so many times – you could have gone a little further. He has just a small country by the side of India; you could have taken his country and finished! Otherwise, he is a constant worry.”But Prithviraj said, “That would be against the dignity of my country. We have never invaded anybody. It is enough that we force him to go back. He is such a shameless fellow that even after being defeated dozens of times, he comes again!”When Mohammed Gauri was defeated the eighteenth time, all his armies were killed, he was hiding in a cave and thinking, “What to do now?” There he saw a spider making its web. Sitting there, he had nothing else to do, so he watched the spider. It fell again and again. It fell exactly eighteen times, but the nineteenth time it succeeded in making a web. That gave the idea to Mohammed Gauri: “I should make the effort at least one more time. If this spider was not discouraged after eighteen failures, why should I be?”He gathered his army again, and the nineteenth time he conquered Prithviraj. Prithviraj had become old, and having fought his whole life, his armies were tattered, in ruins. He was taken prisoner, handcuffed, chained – which was absolutely against the Eastern way of life.When another king, Poras, was defeated by Alexander the Great, and was brought before him, chained, Alexander asked him, “How should you be treated?”Poras said, “Is that a question to be asked? An emperor should be treated like an emperor.”There was a great silence for a moment in the court of Alexander. It was very appropriate for Poras to say this, because his defeat was not really a defeat; his defeat was through the utter cunningness of Alexander. Alexander had sent his wife to meet Poras – he was waiting on the other side of the river. It was the time when, in India, sisters would tie a small thread around the wrist of their brothers – and it was called rakshabandhan, a pledge, a promise: “You will defend me.”When Alexander’s wife came she was received just like a queen should be received. Poras himself came to receive her, and asked, “Why have you come? You could have informed me – I could have come to your camp.”That was part of the Eastern tradition: by the time the sun was down, people would go into each other’s camp – the enemy’s camp – just to discuss how the day went, who died, what happened. It was almost like a football game – nobody took it that seriously.But the woman said, “I have come because I don’t have a brother. I heard about this tradition here, so I want to make you my brother.”Poras said, “It is a coincidence; I don’t have a sister.”So she tied a thread to the wrist of Poras, as a promise: “Whatever happens in the war, remember, Alexander is my husband; he is your brother-in-law, and you should not want me to be a widow. Just remember that.”There came a moment when Alexander’s horse died as Poras attacked the horse with his spear, and Alexander fell on the ground. Poras jumped down with his spear, and the spear was just going to pierce Alexander’s chest when Poras saw his own wrist with the thread. He stopped.Alexander said, “Why have you stopped? This is the opportunity – you can kill me.”Poras said, “I have given a promise. I can give my kingdom, but I cannot break my promise. Your wife is my sister, and she has reminded me that I would not like her to be a widow.” He turned back.Even this kind of man was treated by Alexander as if he were a murderer. Alexander asked Poras, “How should you be treated?”Poras replied, “You should treat me just as an emperor treats another emperor. Have you forgotten that just a second more, and you would not have been alive? It is because of your wife – the whole credit goes to her.” But it was a conspiracy. The East cannot think of such things.Mohammed Gauri imprisoned Prithviraj – and Prithviraj was the greatest archer of those times. The first thing Mohammed Gauri did: he took both of Prithviraj’s eyes out.Prithviraj’s friend was also captured with him – he was a poet. Prithviraj told him, “Come with me to the court. Nobody understands our language, and I don’t need eyes to hit my target – you just describe how far away he is.”Mohammed Gauri was so afraid of Prithviraj that he was not sitting on his usual throne, he was sitting on the balcony; the whole court was on the ground floor. Chandra Bardai, the poet, described exactly how many feet high, how many feet away Mohammed Gauri was sitting. He sang it in a song, and blind Prithviraj killed Mohammed Gauri just through that description. His arrow reached exactly to his heart.But Chandra Bardai was very puzzled because in Prithviraj’s blind eyes there were tears. Prithviraj said, “It is not right of me, but he has forced to do me something which goes against our whole tradition.”The East has a totally different approach toward things. If the West learns something about the East, the most important thing will be that all that is great comes out of non-doing, non-aggressiveness – because every act is potentially aggressive. Only when you are in a state of non-doing are you non-aggressive. You are receptive, and in that receptivity, the whole existence pours all its treasures into you.R. D. Laing’s question is perfectly significant. Chidananda, send my answer to him also. He has been reading my books; he knows me perfectly well. He has influence in the Western psychological field; he is perhaps the most influential and most original figure today. If he makes it a point, he can spread – rather than psychological, psychoanalytical, and psychiatric ideas – what the West needs: a deep understanding of meditation, of non-doing, and of allowing existence to take its own course.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In the last few weeks you have been talking a lot about the world running fast toward a dead end, without showing any more hope that things will ever change. On the other hand, up to one month ago, you talked on the possibility that the presence of two hundred enlightened people, or even one, could save the world. Why this shift of emphasis? Did you give up on the other possibility? Did something happen within the last few weeks that made your vision change?It is true that I have been talking a lot about the world running fast toward a dead end. The reason is, factually it is running toward an end. But it was running toward its end before, too. Now I want it to be absolutely emphasized on your consciousness, so that you stop postponing your own transformation. Man’s mind is so stupid that if there is a little possibility to postpone, then he will postpone for tomorrow – unless he comes to a dead-end street where there is no way to go forward and he has to take an absolute about-turn.But things in the world are not visible to you. You may go on sleeping and the world may die. It is urgent that you take it seriously that the world may not be there tomorrow. You don’t have time to waste for anything other than your own awakening.I still know if there are two hundred enlightened people in the world, the world can be saved, but I have never told you that just one enlightened man can save the world. It is a heavy load. One single enlightened man cannot carry it; two hundred is the minimum. But where will those two hundred people come from? They have to be born amongst you – you have to become those two hundred people. But your growth is so slow there is every fear that before you become enlightened the world will be gone.You are not putting your total energy into meditation, into awareness. It is one of the things that you are doing, amongst many, and it is not even the first priority of your life. I want it to become your first priority. The only way is that I should emphasize deeply into your consciousness that the world is going to end soon.If you are not awakened before its end, you will be lost in a long journey, because evolution will start from the very beginning on some other planet. On this planet it took four billion years for man to arrive. Life began in the ocean as a fish. On another planet, if this planet is destroyed, life will continue, but it will have to begin from the very beginning – and only after four billion years you may be a human being again. It is a great risk to take.Nothing has changed in the world; everything is going exactly in the direction of death – a little faster of course – and the moment of total annihilation is coming very close. It all depends on what your priorities are. If being awakened has become your priority, and you are ready to sacrifice everything for it, then there is hope.I have told you the ancient story in the Old Testament – but that will not help today, the situation is so different. In the Old Testament there is a story about two big cities almost the same size as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The names of those two cities were Sodom and Gomorrah. The people of those two cities had become so perverted, they were doing all kinds of unnatural, psychopathological actions. Their sexuality had totally gone astray. Those two places must have been the California of the Old Testament.The story is that God tried hard to change those people. But to change anyone is a difficult task, even for a God – because the very idea that somebody is trying to change you creates a resistance, even if the change is for your good, even if there is no vested interest for the person who is trying to change you. But the very idea that somebody is trying to change you creates an unconscious resistance not to change.Finally, God gave up on the idea and decided to destroy those two cities because their very existence was dangerous. They could spread all their diseases to the whole of humanity. Sodom was so perverted that people were making love to animals; hence the word sodomy. Gomorrah had gone completely homosexual; heterosexuality had completely stopped. According to the Old Testament, God destroyed those two cities completely, but there is another version from Hasid mystics.Judaism has produced one of the most essential lines of mystics, the Hasids. The orthodox Jews don’t accept them – the orthodox can never accept the religious. But every organized religion has produced, on the margin, a rebellious group which is not organized, which has different interpretations and a different style of life. Hasidism is one of the most beautiful ways to find oneself and to find the reality of existence.The Hasids have a different version because they cannot accept God destroying two cities; there must be some way to save them. Their story is that when God became determined to destroy them, a Hasid approached God and asked him, “You are going to destroy these two great cities, but have you ever wondered that there may be, in both cities, two hundred good people? They will also be destroyed, and this will not be a good precedent. Just for the sake of those two hundred, you have to change your decision.”God thought for a moment and said, “I never looked at this side. Certainly there may be good people and they will be destroyed with the bad. No, if you can prove that there are two hundred good people, I will not destroy those two cities.”The Hasid said, “But suppose there are not two hundred, but only twenty – ten in each city. Will you destroy those good people? Does quantity mean so much to you, and not quality? What does it matter whether there are two hundred good people or twenty good people?”God had to concede to the argument of the Hasid. He said, “Of course. Prove that there are twenty good people.”The Hasid said, “And if there is only one good man who lives six months in one city and six months in another city, what is your idea? Will you destroy those cities? Will it be a godly action? Ninety-nine percent of the people can be destroyed, if they are evil, for the one percent of good people; but one percent of good people cannot be destroyed to save the ninety-nine percent of evil people.”God said, “You are very persuasive. Okay, show me, where is the good man?”The Hasid said, “I am the good man, and I live six months in one city to help people transform their ways of life, and six months in another city for the same purpose. What is your decision? Are you going to destroy me too? Is one good man not more valuable, has he not more weight than thousands of evil people?” According to the Hasidic story, God had to concede not to destroy those two cities.Orthodox Jews don’t believe in the story because it is not written in the Old Testament. The story may be a fiction, but I say to you, it is truer than any truth. It may not be written in the Old Testament, but its logic is so clear that it cannot be false. It may not be historical, but it has a spiritual reality.In the same way I have been telling you that two hundred enlightened people can save the world. Existence is very generous; it cannot destroy two hundred awakened people, who have reached to the highest peak of consciousness – which has taken four billion years of evolution. But you have to become those two hundred people! And to wake you up, I have been insisting that the end is very close. And this time it is not a parable.Jesus used it as a device: that the end of the world is very close and the last judgment day is very close. When his disciples asked him at the time of his departure, before the enemies got hold of him and it was certain that he would be crucified the next day, their last question was, “When will we see you again?” He said, “In this very life, because the end of the world is very close – but do what I have told you.”And even Christians don’t know what he has told them. The last night before he was caught they were in the mountains and he told his disciples, “This may be the last night we are together, and I am going to pray. While I am praying behind the bush you should remain awake. It is absolutely essential that you are awake to support my prayer. Don’t fall asleep.”In the middle of his prayer he came back – and almost all were fast asleep. He woke them up and said, “Have you not heard me? I had told you, you have to remain awake. Can’t you remain awake just one night? Because I will not be here with you again. Even my death tomorrow cannot help you to remain awake?” They were very sorry. They said they would try, and he went again. This went on four, five times – he would come back and they would all be fast asleep.According to me this was his last teaching: to remain awake. But Christianity has completely forgotten about it. I have not seen a single commentary by Christians on the implications of why Jesus was so insistent: “Be awake!” He was trying his hardest because once he was gone, there was every possibility they would all fall asleep, just as the whole of humanity is asleep, and they would start doing in their dreams things that are not to be done. But things that are not to be done can be prevented only when you are aware, alert.His last teaching was awareness, but the disciples failed him – not only those twelve intimate disciples failed him, for two thousand years all his disciples have failed him. The very word awareness has disappeared from the Christian idea of transforming human beings. Jesus was continually saying, “The end is very close.” That was a device – because if you feel that there is enough time, why not sleep a little more? What is the hurry? But if there is no time left at all, perhaps the shock of it may wake you up.What was only a device to Jesus to me is not a device: it is a reality. The world is going to end. I have been giving you hope because I have to do two things: on the one hand I have to make it clear to you that the world is coming to its final suicide, and on the other hand, I have to give you the hope that there is still a possibility at least for you to become awakened.Your awakening is of tremendous importance; it has never been so important before – neither with Jesus nor with Gautam Buddha – because there was enough time. Time has run out. We are at the fag end of time. To make you aware of the reality – so that you can make some effort to remain awake, to make some effort to be more conscious and not to get lost in trivia – is absolutely necessary. That’s why my insistence will go on growing, because every day the end is approaching closer.Man is so asleep he is almost in a coma, and all his actions are arising out of this state of coma. Otherwise, there is no necessity for the world to end. But we are carrying nuclear weapons within our souls. The end is going to come because of our own ignorance, our own deep sleep.I have heard…A Polack is crossing the Sahara desert on a camel. After two months alone with the camel, and dreaming of beautiful women, he starts to find the camel attractive and decides to make love to her. But as soon as he is ready, the camel stands up, walks a few feet away and stops. The Polack tries again, but again the camel stands up, walks a few feet away and stops. The Polack tries again and again with no luck.One day he finds the remains of a plane which has crashed in the desert, and just nearby a young woman, unconscious, but still alive. For days he takes care of her and she recovers totally. One morning she comes to him, looking her prettiest, hugs him and tells him how thankful she is to him for saving her life. “You have been so sweet to me,” she says, “and I like you so much that I’ll do anything for you.”Looking at her beautiful face, the man says, “Would you really?”“Yes,” she says.“Oh, I really appreciate that,” replies the Polack. “Would you mind holding that camel for me please?”Such is the situation of humanity. At least you have to come out of it – and you need a constant hitting on your head to remind you that the times are no longer ordinary. There have never been, in the whole history of man, such dangerous moments as those through which we are passing. It is no time for quarreling, arguing about theological matters; it is not intelligent to console yourself that some miracle will happen and the world war will be postponed. It is not only the world war – the attack is multidimensional.The ecology of the earth is breaking down. There are thousands of submarines moving around the earth in the ocean – and each submarine is carrying nuclear weapons so powerful that even the whole energy that was used in the Second World War is nothing compared to the energy of one submarine carrying nuclear missiles. The Soviet Union has its own submarines; America has its own submarines. Just by accident two submarines can collide, and the whole life on the planet will evaporate into smoke. And the politicians of the world are continually piling up more and more nuclear weapons.The population of the world is growing so fast that just the growth of population will be enough to kill half of humanity out of hunger and thirst. Sexual perversions have become so rampant that Sodom and Gomorrah look very outdated.Ten million people around the earth already have AIDS – which has no cure. And this number of ten million people is not accurate, because many countries have not yet declared how many people have AIDS; they don’t have any way to find it out. For example, India is not aware how many people are suffering from AIDS. Mohammedan countries are bound to have a very large number of people suffering from AIDS, because homosexuality has been there for thousands of years.Even according to very moderate estimates, by the end of this century there will be one hundred million people suffering from AIDS. And when one hundred million people suffer from AIDS, that means at least one billion people must have been involved in homosexuality. These are the multidimensional ways that death is approaching the earth.Because we have cut down so many forests, a thick layer of carbon dioxide has gathered on top of our atmosphere, two hundred miles away from the earth, where the air ends. The layer is so thick that it has already raised the temperature four degrees hotter than it has ever been on the earth and that four degrees of temperature is melting the ice of the north and south poles. If that ice goes on melting – and there is no way to prevent it – all the oceans of the world will rise four feet higher. And all your big cities are ports; they will be flooded with water, will become unlivable.If this carbon dioxide becomes a little thicker, then the snows of the Himalayas and the Alps, which have eternal snow which has never melted, will start melting. The Himalayas alone have so much ice that if it melts completely it will raise all the oceans of the world forty feet. All your cities will be drowned, and it is not a flood that is going to recede.This is one of the most dangerous things that is happening because carbon dioxide is going to accumulate more and more. The trees go on inhaling carbon dioxide. If you cut down the trees you are cutting two things: the supply of oxygen for your life, and the place for carbon dioxide to be absorbed. It is a double-edged sword – and absolutely unnecessary.Man has been trying to reach to the moon and to Mars. Before that, we were never aware where the air ends, two hundred miles above earth. All around the earth there is a thick layer of a certain gas, ozone, O3, which is a very protective layer. Because of that ozone, life has been possible on earth. That ozone has only one function: it does not allow any sun rays which are destructive to life; it returns them. It allows only those rays which are life-giving.But because of our rockets moving toward the moon and toward Mars, we have made holes, for the first time, in the layer of ozone. Now those holes are allowing in all the rays of the sun toward the earth – and death rays are also included. So when I say the end is not very far away, it is not like when Jesus says it – just a device. By the end of this century, you will see all these dimensions bringing death to you. It has to be emphasized: unless you become absolutely clear about death, you are not going to concentrate your whole energy on transforming your being.People change with difficulty. They find it easier to remain as they are – just like stones, like rocks. Change means a determined effort, a commitment to transform your energies, to take your being in an absolutely serious manner – it has not to be wasted in stupid things.A famous playboy dies, and his best friends decide to celebrate with a mourning party. Late in the night someone suggests calling Hell in order to find out where he is. “But how can you call Hell?” someone asks.“Well,” the man answers, “I guess it is just a long distance call.”So they check the telephone book and find out all about outer space calls and then dial Hell. A few seconds later a very hoarse voice answers, “This is Hell. What do you want?”Terrified by the devilish voice, they say, “We are looking for a friend.”“What is his name?”“Peter Thompson.”“He is not here.” And the devil hangs up.Totally amazed and having dropped all reference to logic, they decide to call Purgatory. They dial Purgatory, and to their relief, the voice on the phone does not sound so terrible – more businesslike. They explain that they are looking for a dead friend who is not in Hell and who just died.“Well,” the voice answers, “he is not here, either. Try Heaven.”“But he was a playboy!” his friends reply.“He has to be somewhere. Try Heaven.”So they dial Heaven, and a heavenly voice answers very softly and slowly, “Hello. This is Heaven. This is Virgin Mary. Can I help you?”Very shy, they explain the whole story.“No,” says the beautiful voice, full of echo: “He is not here. Thank you for calling. Call again.”So every day they call Heaven, and every day they get the same answer. So they call again and again; and one week later, on Sunday morning, a very sexy, foxy, quick voice answers, “Hey, this is Mary. What do you want, guys?”Looking at each other and laughing, the friends agree: “He has arrived!”Change is very difficult. A playboy will be a playboy, whether he is in hell or in heaven; he will go on doing his repetitive style of life.Being alert means you have to stop being robots. Change your routines, move more consciously; let every act become an object of awareness. Then even these few years that are left are enough – more than enough. If you put your total energy into transformation, the destruction of the earth will not be your destruction. If you can die consciously, you have found the key to a higher life, to an eternal life, to a divine life.Osho,What is this undercurrent of giggling in my heart every time I feel that you are using the whole world as a device for our growth, and that you are using us as a device for the whole world? Would you please comment?Sarjano, you will have to stop the giggling in your heart. This is not a device. There is no time left for any device at all. Your giggling is simply a rationalization: you don’t want to believe that the world is going to end because you don’t want to change. You want me to say to you that this is only a device, so that you can relax – relax in your fixed pattern of life. But I cannot lie to you.When I use something as a device, I tell you it is a device. But this is not a device, either to transform the world through you or to change you through the world. I am simply stating a very sad fact. Your giggling is nothing but an effort to erase the impact which I am trying to create.Giggle about everything else, but not about your transformation. That giggling is your unconscious trying to deceive you, telling you something or other will happen, so you need not worry. The unconscious does not want to disappear. Your unconscious is nine times bigger than your conscious; it is nine times more powerful too. You have to be very alert not to be caught in the powerful unconscious; otherwise, it will close all the doors, all the possibilities, all the potentialities of transformation.I am in absolute support of your giggling about everything in the world except the transformation that is needed within you. And the problem is that you are very serious about everything in the world, and only nonserious about your interiority.During his world tour, the Polack Pope arrives in America. When he comes out of the plane, there is a big crowd standing on the runway waving flags, shouting, “Elvis, Elvis!”The pope looks at them, full of holiness, kisses the ground, and says mildly, “My children, look: I am not Elvis, I am the pope.”He enters the airport hall and notices a mass of people standing there, dancing, waving flags, and shouting at him: “Elvis, Elvis!”A little bit indignant, he blesses the people, and very softly he says, “Oh no, my dear sheep, I am not Elvis, I am the pope.”Later on, when he finally reaches his hotel, he can’t believe his eyes: in the lobby, hundreds of people are crowding, waving flags, yelling, “Elvis, Elvis!”A little bit puzzled now, he puts his hands together, makes a cross, smiles as divinely as possible and announces, “No, my beloved little lambs. No, I am not Elvis, I am the pope.”Centered again, he goes upstairs to his suite, opens the door and suddenly sees two beautiful naked women are lying in his bed, waving little flags, shouting ecstatically at him, “Elvis, Elvis!”Immediately, jumping out of his clothes, he starts singing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog…”Your unconscious is always there, so powerful that if it gets any chance – pope or no pope – the unconscious will be the winner. You have to make your consciousness so strong that the unconscious slowly, slowly becomes weaker and finally dies. That’s the meaning of the enlightened man: one whose unconsciousness has disappeared, whose whole being is full of consciousness. Whatever I am saying, it is my absolutely clear vision that the world is very close to its end. Don’t giggle it away. Don’t find rationalizations – they won’t help.This is not the time to waste in any unconscious consolations. An immediate transformation is absolutely needed; it is an urgency which man has never faced before. In a way, you are unfortunate that soon there will be no future. In another way, you are very fortunate because this crisis is so big – perhaps it may help you to wake up.Osho,Often, when I come to see you I want some kind of recognition: a sign that you see me, that you know I exist – a look, a hand gesture, perhaps to answer a question. You never respond to this. Feeling the tension and pain this longing causes in me, I cry and then relax. An opening is there and you look my way. Osho, must I always go through this way of pain and tears to reach my inner being? I am Jewish by conditioning – could that be part of it?That explains everything – that you are Jewish by conditioning. But your question may be the question of many others. You say, “Often when I come to see you I want some kind of recognition.” This is one of the sicknesses of our souls. The whole of existence recognizes you – the birds by their songs, the trees by their flowers, the sun by its rays, the moon by its beauty – they are all recognizing you. You have just forgotten. You want recognition in a human way; perhaps in language. Existence is silent, its recognition is silent. All that you have to know is to be silent to understand the recognition.As far as I am concerned, I have given you recognition just by initiating you on the path of mysticism. I have not asked whether you are worthy or not, whether you deserve or not. I have recognized your potential spirituality without any examination, without any test.You say “…a sign that you see me, that you know I exist – a look, a hand gesture, perhaps to answer a question.” I know that you exist – and my whole effort is that you should not exist; that’s why I go on avoiding seeing you! Because seeing you may give you energy and nourishment to exist, and that is not your true existence; that is your ego, you are suffering from an inferiority complex. I want you to drop this ego which is hungry for recognition. The moment you drop it, immediately you will find there is recognition.You say, “You never respond to this. Feeling the tension and pain this longing causes in me, I cry and then relax.” If you have carefully understood your own question, it has the answer: you cry and then relax. “An opening is there and you look my way.”If you are relaxed, the whole of existence is tremendously happy. Not only am I looking at you – everything is looking at you. But the reason is your relaxation, the reason is your crying. Your tears cleanse you; your relaxation does not allow the ego to form. You have come to know the secret – that I look your way…“Osho, must I always go through this way of pain and tears to reach my inner being?” It all depends on you. If you love it, if you want it this way – only then do you have to go through pain and tears. Otherwise you can go through laughter and singing and dancing. The whole question is that in pain and tears, or in singing and dancing, the ego disappears – it is your choice.I have heard…A man noticed a sign on a restaurant saying, “You are welcome here, and you will feel absolutely at home. Come in; at least give us one chance to serve you.”The man entered. The waitress came and he ordered four burnt chappatis. The waitress could not believe what he was saying – “Vegetable without any salt,” and things like that. The waitress asked, “Are you joking?”He said, “No.” So she went, burned the chappatis, and brought the plates, feeling very weird about the whole thing – what kind of man is he? Then she asked, “Anything more?”He said, “Yes, sit across from me and nag.”She said, “You seem to be a very strange fellow.”He said, “I am not a strange fellow – just in front of your door, you say ‘You will feel at home,’ and I want to feel at home. That’s what happens in my home: burnt chappatis, vegetables without salt, everything wrong – and finally my wife sitting in front of me, nagging me. Because of her nagging, I cannot even say that the chappatis are burned, that there is no salt…”It is up to you: both are possibilities. You can relax through pain and tears, but that is not a good choice. You can relax through singing, dancing, rejoicing – and relaxation will come. Try the other way.You say, “I am Jewish by conditioning. Could that be part of it?” It certainly is. But once you have become a sannyasin, you are no longer Jewish. A sannyasin is simply a human being. Your conditioning is there, but rather than continuing the tears and pain, start singing and dancing. Even if it feels a little difficult in the beginning, the conditioning can be changed; you can be unconditioned.At the conclusion of the physical exam, the doctor summoned his patient into his office with a very grave look on his face. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, Fred,” he said, “but I’m afraid you have only got six months to live.”“Oh my God!” gasped Fred, turning white. When the news had sunk in his heart he said, “Listen, Doc, you have known me a long time. Do you have any suggestions as to how I could make the most of my remaining months?”“Have you ever been married?” asked the doctor.Fred explained that he had been a bachelor all his life. “You might think about taking a wife,” the doctor proposed. “After all, you will need someone to look after you in the final illness.”“That’s a good point, Doc,” said Fred. “With only six months to live, I’d better make the most of my time.”“May I make one more suggestion?” asked the doctor.When Fred nodded, he said, “Marry a Jewish girl.”“A Jewish girl – how come?” wondered Fred.The doctor replied, “Then six months will seem like six lives.”It is your choice, but my suggestion is: you have been married to Jewish conditioning; now get divorced. Just be a human being, rejoicing, dancing, singing. If tears come they have to be of joy, of blissfulness, of peace, of silence. And the moment you feel relaxed, ecstasy will enter your being from all sides. The whole of existence will recognize you, not only me. Ecstasy can be explained in other words: a recognition by the whole of existence that you are needed, that you are beautiful, that without you existence will be poorer.

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

The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,While reading your books and listening to your audios when I am alone, I become immensely happy and I weep, cry, and dance in aloneness. But I can't express my feelings in the presence of others, even though I wish very much to do so. Please tell me what to do.It is one of the basic human problems, because our whole upbringing creates a split in our very mind. You have to show a face to the society, to the crowd, to the world – it need not be your real face; in fact, it must not be your real face. You have to show the face that people like, that people appreciate, that will be acceptable to them – their ideologies, their traditions – and you have to keep your original face to yourself.This split becomes so unbridgeable because most of the time you are in the crowd, meeting with people, relating with people – very rarely are you alone. Naturally, the mask becomes more and more natural to you than your very nature itself.Society creates a fear in everybody: the fear of rejection, the fear of somebody laughing at you, the fear of losing your respectability, the fear of what people will say. You have to adjust to all kinds of blind and unconscious people. You cannot be yourself. That is our basic tradition all over the world, up to now, that nobody is allowed to be himself. It is because of this that the problem has arisen – it is everybody’s problem.You ask, “While reading your books and listening to your audios when I am alone, I become immensely happy and I weep, cry, and dance in aloneness. But I can’t express my feelings in the presence of others, even though I wish very much to do so.”The moment the other is there, you are less concerned about yourself; you are more concerned about what his opinion will be about you. When you are alone in your bathroom, you become almost like a child – sometimes you make faces before the mirror. But if you become suddenly aware that even a small child is looking through the keyhole, you immediately change: you become your ordinary, old self again – serious, sober, as people expect you to be. The most amazing thing is that you are afraid of those people and they are afraid of you – everybody is afraid of everybody else. Nobody allows his feelings, his reality, his authenticity – but everybody wants to do it, because it is a very suicidal act to go on repressing your original face.You are not living; on the contrary you are simply acting. And because the whole world is watching, your centuries-long unconscious holds you back – not to express, not to come out of your mask, of your personality. Everybody is hiding behind something false – it hurts. To be dishonest, to be insincere to yourself, is the worst punishment you can give to yourself.And you are not going to do something harmful to anybody – you just want to cry, and your tears will be of joy; you want to dance, and dance is not a sin, is not a crime. You simply want to share your blissfulness – you are being generous. Still, the fear is that people may not accept your blissfulness. Somebody may say it is false, somebody may say it is just acting, somebody may say you are hypnotized.It is a strange thing that if you are miserable, nobody says anything to you. In a miserable society, you fit perfectly well. But where everybody is miserable, if you suddenly start dancing you fall out of tune with the crowd.You want to express your joy but you are not courageous enough to be alone. But in fact, who cares? Perhaps people will think, once, that you are a little crazy – at the most – and once they have accepted that you are a little crazy, then there is nothing to fear. And what is wrong in being called crazy? The world has known such beautiful, crazy people. In fact, all the great people in the world have been a little bit crazy – crazy in the eyes of the crowd.Their craziness was expressed because they were not miserable, they were not in anxiety, they were not afraid of death, they were not worried about trivia. They were living each moment with totality and intensity, and because of this totality and intensity, their life became a beautiful flower – they were full of fragrance, love, and life, and laughter.But this certainly hurts millions of people who are around you. They cannot accept the idea that you have achieved something which they have missed. They will try in every way to make you miserable. Their condemnation is nothing but an effort to make you miserable, to destroy your dance, to take away your joy – so that you can come back into the fold.One has to gather courage. If people say you are crazy, enjoy the idea. Tell them, “You are right. In this world, only crazy people can be happy and joyful. I have chosen craziness with joy, with bliss, with dance. You have chosen sanity with misery, anguish, and hell – our choices are different. You be sane and remain miserable; leave me alone in my madness. Don’t feel offended; I am not feeling offended by you all – so many sane people in the world, and I am not feeling offended.”It is only a question of a very short time. Soon, once they have accepted you as crazy, they will not bother you; then you can come into the full light with your original being – you can drop all your falsities.I was a student in a university: I had chosen the university not for its own sake, but because of a professor who was so alive, so full of love, and so unafraid of the world. I had chosen the professor. And because he was in that university he invited me to join the university where he was teaching. He said he would make every kind of facility possible for me.He loved me immensely, because every year I used to go to that university for an inter-university debating competition; for four years continually I had been the winner. The very first year, he was one of the judges. He took me aside and told me, “I cannot say this to anybody else but I cannot keep it to myself either. I can say it only to you: I have given you a ninety-nine percent mark in the debate, and I am sorry, because I wanted to give you a hundred percent. But I could not gather the courage because people may think that I am prejudiced, I am favoring. I became afraid. But forgive me, because I have taken one percent from the marks which were yours.”Each year he was one of the judges, and the fourth year, when I graduated, he invited me to join the university for my post-graduation. I said, “I am coming here just because of you.”He took me the very first day to the vice-chancellor, and on the way he told me, “Don’t get into any argument – because this man, the old vice-chancellor, is very stubborn, and one has to be very diplomatic with him.”I said, “You can be diplomatic with him; I will be simply myself.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “To be diplomatic means to be somebody else, diplomacy is another name of hypocrisy. You be diplomatic – I will be simply myself. If worse comes to the worse, at the most he will not grant me the money for two years’ education and he may not grant me other facilities – but just for those facilities, I cannot be dishonest to myself.”He said, “At least can you remain silent? Don’t say anything; I will talk to him on your behalf.”I said, “I cannot promise because if he says something stupid, I cannot resist the temptation to tell him that it is stupid.”He said, “I had never realized that you are such a tough person.”I said, “It is good to know from the very beginning. This is the first day; there is still a chance: you can simply tell me and I will leave.”“No,” he said, “we will try.” He took me to the vice-chancellor.I always used to live in my own way, and the vice-chancellor had been a professor at Oxford, had lived almost his whole life in England, and had become almost a proper Englishman. He said something about my beard which I was just growing: “Why have you not shaved your beard?” My professor became afraid that this was the beginning of the end.I said, “You are asking a wrong question; in fact, I should ask why you have shaved your beard – because I am not growing it; it is growing itself. Your question is nonsensical – you could ask why I have not cut my fingers, you could ask anything. It is natural that a man should have a beard; you are being unnatural. You have to answer me – why have you been shaving your beard?”My poor professor, who was sitting by my side, started nudging me. I had to tell him, “Stop nudging me. I don’t care about all the facilities for which you have brought me to the vice-chancellor. In this moment, my only concern is that he should accept that he has asked a wrong question.”There was great silence for a moment, and the old man said, “In fact, you are logically right. And right now I don’t have an answer because nobody has ever asked this in my life – I have never thought about it.”I said, “It is your beard, and you have been cutting and cutting and shaving and shaving, perhaps for fifty years, without ever thinking about what you are doing.” So I said, “Okay, you can have time. I will come every day at eleven o’clock when the office opens; you can meet me in front of the office. You have to find the answer.”But my professor said, “We have not come here to discuss the beard! It is a question of your further education, your post-graduation, and he is the man who can decide.”I said, “I don’t care. For the present, my whole concern is to let him realize that he has lived an unconscious life.”The old man said, “From the beard you have reached to ‘an unconscious life’?” He asked my professor, “What are the requirements? I will grant him a scholarship for two years.” Free lodging, free boarding, he signed everything, and he said, “Just don’t stand every day in front of my door! If you need anything, simply come and tell me, and I promise that I will not ask anything – it was my fault.”So I said, “It is decided? Once you ask me a question, then that becomes my priority for that moment. Whatever I have to sacrifice, I will sacrifice.”He said, “I promise, and your professor is the witness.” But it was difficult for him – it would have been difficult for anybody, because I used to wear a robe without any buttons so my whole chest was exposed. And the next time I went because I wanted to be allowed to take as many books as I wanted from the library to my room; the rule that only one book could be issued at a time should not be applied to me.He said, “We can talk about that, but where are your buttons?”I said, “You are getting into trouble. You have forgotten your promise. In fact, I should ask again, that in a hot country like India… And it is summertime, and you are perspiring, and still you are using a necktie and wearing a coat? I don’t use buttons because I want my chest to have a fresh breeze. Is it something wrong?”He said, “It is not wrong.”I said, “Something immoral? Something against the rules of the university? Why should you be concerned about it? It is my chest, and I want it to have as much breeze as possible.”He said, “I forgot my promise. You are allowed to take as many books as you want. I will not even ask why you want so many books because I don’t want to get into any argumentation. One thing is decided: it is better not to argue with you.”The first meeting that I attended in which he spoke was the birthday of Gautam Buddha. The vice-chancellor was a very good orator and a good actor too. When he was talking about Gautam Buddha, tears came to his eyes and he said, “I have always felt that if I was in the time of Gautam Buddha, I would have gone and sat at his feet and learned the art of attaining more consciousness, of becoming enlightened.”I was sitting in the middle; I stood up. As he saw me standing, he asked, “Have I said anything wrong?”I said, “You have not only said something wrong, you are behaving very falsely. At least in front of your students you should not be so insincere. Whatever you have said, you don’t mean – your tears are false.”All the professors of the university were present; the whole student community was present. They were all shocked that I would say in front of everybody, to the vice-chancellor, “You are insincere.”I asked, “Have you heard the name Raman Maharshi?”He said, “Yes, I have heard it.”“Have you ever been there to sit at his feet? Because he is of the same caliber and same consciousness as Gautam Buddha. I can say with authority that even in Gautam Buddha’s time you would not have gone to him because this century is also not without enlightened people. You have to take your words back.”People used to think he was very stubborn, but perhaps he had never met somebody so authentically sincere that it could bring his original face into the public. He wiped his tears and he said, “Perhaps you are right – I might not have gone. It was just oratory and nothing else; I did not mean it. In this whole gathering, perhaps you are the only person who is listening – not only to the words, but also to the meaning behind them.“I would love that you take your dinner with me tonight, because I would like to discuss a little more. I have never come across anybody in my whole long life who has brought my original face out in front of the crowd. And something is very strange – I don’t feel angry at you; I simply feel a deep sadness about myself. Why can’t I be true? But nobody has ever pointed it out to me.”Everybody in the world wants to be true, because just to be true brings so much joy and such an abundance of blissfulness – why should one be false? You have to have the courage for a little deeper insight. Why are you afraid? What can the world do to you? People can laugh at you; it will do them good – laughter is always a medicine, healthy. People can think you are mad. Just because they think you are mad, you don’t become mad.If you are authentic about your joy, your tears, your dance – sooner or later there will be people who will start understanding you, who may start joining your caravan. I myself had started alone on the path, and then people went on coming and it became a worldwide caravan. And I have not invited anybody; I have simply done whatever I felt was coming from my heart.My responsibility is toward my heart, not toward anybody else in the world. So is your responsibility only toward your own being. Don’t go against it, because going against it is committing suicide, is destroying yourself. And what is the gain? Even if people give you respect, and people think that you are a very sober, respectable, honorable man, these things are not going to nourish your being. They are not going to give you any more insight into life and its tremendous beauty.Moreover, everybody is so much concerned with his own problems, who cares whether you are laughing, dancing? Who has time for it? It is only your mind that is thinking that the whole world is thinking about you. My own experience is that everybody is so crowded, worried, with such a rush of thoughts about himself, his life, his problems – do you think he has time even to look at you, or to think about you?One Jewish doctor to another: “All day long, I hear stories of pain and suffering: ‘Doctor, my back… Doctor, my stomach… Doctor, my wife.’ It is awful, I tell you. Tell me, Sam, how come you look so serene after a day of listening to the world’s troubles?”Second doctor: “So, who listens?”You should not be worried at all. Everybody is so concerned with his own world, they don’t have time, they don’t have energy to bother about you. Even if they make some opinion, it is their problem. You are alone in the world: alone you have come into the world, alone you are here, and alone you will leave this world. All their opinions will be left behind. Only your original feelings, your authentic experiences, will go with you even beyond death.Even death cannot take away your dance, your tears of joy, your purity of aloneness, your silence, your serenity, your ecstasy. That which death cannot take away from you is the only real treasure, and that which can be taken away by anybody is not a treasure – it is simply befooling yourself.How many millions of people have lived before you on this earth? You don’t even know their names; whether they ever lived or not does not make any difference. There have been saints and there have been sinners, and there have been very respectable people, and there have been all kinds of eccentrics, crazy, but they have all disappeared – not even a trace has remained on the earth.Your sole concern should be only one: take care of and protect those qualities which you can take with you when death destroys your body, your mind – then these qualities will be your sole companions. They are the only real values. Only the people who attain them live; others only pretend to live.The KGB knocks on Yussel Finkelstein’s door one dark night. Yussel opens the door. The KGB man barks out, “Does Yussel Finkelstein live here?”“No,” replies Yussel, standing there in his frayed pajamas.“No? So what is your name then?”“Yussel Finkelstein.” The KGB man knocks him to the ground and says, “Did you just say that you did not live here?”Yussel replies, “You call this living?”Just living is not always living. Look at your life. Can you call it a blessing? Can you call it a gift, a present of existence? Would you like this life to be given to you again and again? It is so empty. Because of its emptiness, your prayers are empty. You cannot fill your prayers with gratitude. Gratitude for what? You are doing no more than acting parts in a drama; you are not being yourself.I am reminded…A very beautiful young woman had gone to see the great painter, Picasso. She saw a photograph of Picasso hanging on the wall. She asked Picasso, “Is that your photograph? Is that you?”Picasso said, “No.”The woman said, “Strange. It looks exactly like you. Do you have a twin brother? It is so absolutely alike.”Picasso said, “It may be like me but it is not alive. And if it were me, it would have come out of the frame to give you a kiss. It is certainly not me.”Are you really yourself, or just pretending to be somebody that the crowd around you wants you to be? As far as I am concerned, a seeker of truth should begin by dropping all that is false in him, because the false cannot seek the truth. The false is the barrier between you and the truth. If all that is false is dropped, you need not seek the truth – truth will come to you. In fact, it is only language when I say, “Truth will come to you.” When all that is false is dropped, you are the truth. Nothing comes; nothing goes. There is no journey.Osho,At the risk of sounding ridiculous, in the midst of all this gloom about the future of the world, I honestly don't care if the world ends tomorrow. So what is the point of talking about it and fueling the already massive fire of doom which seems to burn eternally in the depressing mind of mankind? Enough is enough. I understand that it's “now or never,” so let's do it now. Let's dance!It is easy to say “I do not honestly care about the world,” but let your heart feel it. The world is not something that is only outside you; the world is within you too. You are the world.The question of the darkness that is coming closer and closer is significant: so that your choice becomes “now” and you stop postponing. It is true – “now or never” – but there are so few people in the world who live now. They are always living either in yesterdays or in tomorrows.Why am I insisting that there is, for the first time, a possibility that there will not be any tomorrow at all? There is an old proverb: Tomorrow never comes. But the old proverb has been only a proverb. In spite of that proverb, tomorrow has kept on coming. It may not come as tomorrow; it will always come as today – in that sense the proverb is right.But today the situation is totally different: tomorrow really may not come. I want it to sink deep in your being that we have come to the very end of the road – and there is nothing left except dancing and rejoicing. To make it now, I am destroying your tomorrow completely. I am taking it away from your mind – which is deeply involved with tomorrows. Even if you say you understand that perhaps tomorrow the world will end, deep down your mind goes on saying, “There have been thousands of wars, and the world has survived. One war more is not going to make much difference.”The mind is very clever in finding excuses, that something or other will prevent the destruction. I am not saying that the destruction should not be prevented. What I am saying is that in your mind, there should be no excuse left for postponement – so your whole energy gathers in the now, it is not spread in the future. If the whole energy is concentrated in this point, then this moment can become the moment of enlightenment. Enlightenment is nothing but your consciousness being concentrated on a single point – now and here.You say, “Enough is enough.” No, Vimal. Looking at the human mind, nothing is enough. People will go on living in their old unconscious ways – hoping against hope that although there have always been people like Jesus and Buddha predicting the end of the world, the world is still there. But this time the situation is totally different. I am not predicting the end of the world. It is simply becoming so certain, so logically certain, that there seems to be no possibility to avoid it.But my interest is not in avoiding it – if it can be avoided, it will be avoided. My interest is to make it so clear to you that it cannot be avoided, and that you don’t have any future to invest your energy in, that you have to pull all your energy back to the present moment. And the moment the whole energy becomes a pool, here and now, the explosion of light happens and you are, for the first time, absolutely yourself: an eternal being, an immortal being, who knows nothing of death, who has never come across any darkness.You say, “So let us do it now. Let us dance.” But your dance has to be total – because you can dance and still think of the future; you can dance and still think that tomorrow we will be dancing again. Dance as if this is the last dance. Dance to abandon, holding nothing back. That will bring transformation to your being and a possibility of transformation for other people too.A politician is making a speech and says, “Fellow electors, we must restore the status quo.” A man shouts from the audience, “What does ‘status quo’ mean?”The politician replies, in a rare fit of honesty, “Actually, it is Latin for ‘the mess we are in.’”On the surface it seems everything is going perfectly well, but deep down there is great turmoil in the unconscious layers of human beings. You are not even aware of your own unconscious nightmares, but humanity is suffering as it has never suffered before.It is as restless as it has never been before. It has forgotten the language of relaxation, it has forgotten the language of totality, it has forgotten the language of intensity – and all of those qualities are needed to make your meditation a revolution in your being. It is not a question of morality, not a question of character, not a question of virtue – religions have been concerned with all those things for thousands of years, and they have not been successful in changing man. It is a totally different approach, a different dimension: the dimension of energy and the concentration of energy.Just as atomic energy is the explosion of a small atom into its constituents of electrons, protons, and neutrons – it is not visible to the eyes, but the explosion is so vast that it can destroy a great city like Nagasaki or Hiroshima – exactly parallel is the inner explosion of the living cell. The atomic energy is outside and destructive – objective and destructive. The inner energy, the subjective cell of your being, has the same qualities, the same tremendous power once it explodes – but it is creative.It is a chain reaction: one cell inside you explodes, and then other cells inside you start exploding in a chain. The whole of life becomes a festival of lights. Every gesture becomes a dance, every movement becomes sheer joy. My emphasis that there is no future has nothing to do with gloom; it has something to do with you. If you can drop the idea of future completely, your enlightenment becomes immediately possible. And it is a good opportunity to drop the idea of future because the future itself is disappearing. But don’t even in any corner of your mind go on carrying the idea that perhaps this too is a device. These are the strategies of the mind to keep you the same old zombie.The mind is clever. If you want to get up early in the morning, you put on an alarm clock, and you hear the alarm… The mind is so clever, it may start dreaming that you are in a church and church bells are ringing. The poor alarm clock cannot do anything more than that; the mind has created a dream and made it possible for you to go on sleeping.The old religions were basically insistent on one thing, and that was future. You should note it: not only future in this life, but after life. Their whole program was to take your whole energy as a project for a future life, after death, in paradise far, far away. This strategy worked: it took away the very juice of human life. People were simply waiting to live in paradise; this place, this earth, became just like a waiting room in a station.Everybody is waiting for the train. And the train never comes, and people go on consulting the timetable. And they don’t improve the waiting room because it is a waiting room – particularly in India. I have traveled so much – almost hundreds of waiting rooms – and I saw why people behave differently in a waiting room than they behave in a house. They go on eating bananas and throwing banana peels all over the waiting room – after all, it is a waiting room; they are not going to live here. Their train is going to come and they will be gone. The waiting rooms are so dirty, their bathrooms are so impossible, and nobody takes any care not to make them dirtier – because everybody’s eyes are hooked on the future. They are consulting their timetables, when their train is to come, and they will go.All the religious scriptures say this world is nothing but a waiting room; your real home is far away, above the clouds. There is real living; here is only waiting. I am trying to change the whole pattern of religious thinking. I am trying to say to you: this is your home; this very moment is your paradise. It all depends on you.You do not need to be virtuous to dance totally; you do not need to be taught to dance totally; you do no need to be pious to dance totally. To dance totally all that is needed is that we accept the reality only of this moment. We will accept the reality of the next moment when it arrives, but we will not be waiting for it. All the religions have been teaching you to wait. I am teaching to live, to love, to dance, to sing – and don’t wait.It is Easter and a priest is getting cost estimates for the church flower arrangements. A Catholic florist says, “Three hundred dollars.”“Much too much,” says the priest. But the florist is one of the flock.A Protestant florist offers to do the arrangements for two hundred and fifty dollars.“Cheaper,” thinks the priest, “but he is not of the flock, and the difference is not that great.”While he is pondering, Solly Goldberg gives him a price of seventy-five dollars.“That settles it, Solly gets the contract.”On Easter morning, the flock files into a church filled with magnificent azaleas, camellias, carnations, and roses. Above the altar, spelled out in daffodils is the Easter message: “Christ has risen, but Goldberg’s prices never vary.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A short time ago you said that spring has come and many sannyasins are ready to flower. Do “flowering,” “awakening,” and “self-realization” all mean enlightenment, the ultimate truth? Or is there a difference? And can a person, after attaining, fall back into identification with the mind?There is a difference between flowering, awakening, self-realization, and enlightenment. Enlightenment is the ultimate truth – the seeker disappears but the truth is found. The pilgrim disappears but godliness is found. It is important to understand the differences.From enlightenment there is no possibility of falling back, because you are no longer there to fall back. As long as you are, there is a possibility. Only your absence is the guarantee that you cannot fall back.Flowering is just the beginning of entering within yourself – just as you enter a garden. It is immensely important, because without entering you are never going to reach to the center. But in flowering, for the first time you recognize your potential, your possibility. In flowering is the transition period, from human to divine. But one can fall back, because the flowering is so new and so fragile and your past is so old and so strong – it can pull you back; it is still there.Awakening is getting very close to your center. As you get closer to the center, falling back becomes more and more difficult because your new experience is gathering power, strength, experience, and the old is losing power. But the old is still there; it has not disappeared. Ordinarily people don’t fall from awakening, but the possibility remains: one can fall.Self-realization is reaching to your center. Many religions have believed that self-realization is the end – for example, Jainism – you have come to your ultimate truth. It is not true. Self-realization is only a dewdrop which has become aware, alert, contented, fulfilled. It is almost impossible to fall back from self-realization – but I am saying almost impossible, not absolutely impossible, because the self can deceive you; it can bring your ego back.The self and the ego are very similar. The self is the natural thing and the ego is the synthetic, so it happens sometimes that a self-realized man becomes a pious egoist. His egoism is not going to harm anyone, but it certainly prevents him from dropping into the ocean and disappearing completely. Enlightenment is the dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the vast, infinite ocean. Once the dewdrop has fallen into the ocean, now there is no way even to find it. The question of returning back does not arise.Enlightenment, hence, is the ultimate truth. What begins as flowering moves on the path of awakening, reaches to self-realization. Then one quantum leap more: disappearing into the eternal, into the infinite. You are no more, only existence is.I have told you about Kabir, India’s greatest mystic. When he was young, he became self-realized and he wrote a small couplet:Herat, herat hey sakhiRahya, Kabir, herai“Searching and searching and searching, oh my friend, the searcher is lost. Seeking and seeking and seeking, the seeker is lost.”Bund samani samund meySo kat heri jai“The dewdrop has slipped into the ocean; now there is no way to get it back.”But it was too early to say that. The dewdrop was still there, slipping toward the ocean, but it had not yet fallen into the ocean.When Kabir was dying, he became enlightened. He called his son Kamal and told him, “I have written something wrong. At that moment, that was my feeling – that I had come to the ultimate. Before I die, write this down, and change it.”The change is very small in the words, but in experience it is tremendous. He has used the same words again:Herat, herat hey sakhi“Oh beloved, seeking and searching, the seeker is lost.”Samund samana bund meySo kat hero jai“And the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop; now it is impossible to find it.” Just a little difference in the words… “The dewdrop has fallen into the ocean” – something of the self has remained in it. “But the ocean has fallen into the dewdrop…” That is the tremendous experience and explosion of self-enlightenment. The first statement was about self-realization; the second statement is about enlightenment.From enlightenment, falling is simply impossible. You are gone – and gone forever; not even a shadow or a trace of you is left behind. Up to self-realization the possibility remains – it becomes less and less, but it remains. You can start being egoistic about your self-realization: “I have known, I am a realized person. I am a saint, I have encountered God” – but that “I” is there, howsoever pious. Even its shadow is dangerous; it can pull you back.I have heard a very beautiful story about Jesus.Jesus was walking through Jerusalem when he saw an angry crowd shouting and screaming at a woman. He came closer and heard the mob accusing the woman of adultery. Jesus strode to the front of the mob, held up his arms and said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”The crowd fell silent, but one little old lady pushed to the front, picked up a huge rock, and hurled it at the sobbing woman. Jesus gently took the old lady by the arm and said quietly, “Mother, why do you always embarrass me?”Jesus’ mother! She is a virtuous woman – so virtuous that she has given birth to Jesus without any contact with any human being. She stands alone in the whole of history with the claim – even after the birth of the son – as Virgin Mary. That idea must have been too much in the old woman’s mind. Her virtue, her piousness – and God has chosen her to be the mother of his only begotten son – has become a subtle ego in her. The others were not pious. The moment Jesus said, “The first stone has to be hurled by one who is virtuous,” the mob stopped. They were all in the same boat.You can see it in your saints: a strange but very subtle ego. Spirituality has become their achievement. Somebody has all the riches of the world, somebody is the most beautiful person, somebody is the strongest, and somebody is the most pious. The question is not what it is by which the ego can get nourished – any idea can make you fall.One has not to stop until he has reached the point when he is not: when there is no claimer, when one has moved the full circle and has come back to the world, just nobody. Perhaps people may not recognize him as a great saint… And this is my understanding, that the greatest of saints have remained unrecognized, because you understand only the language of the ego. You don’t understand the language of egolessness.The greatest sage will appear to you just an ordinary man, nothing special, with no claim for any talent, for any possession, for any power, for any genius, for any knowledge – no claim at all. He has become absolutely a zero. But the zero is not negative, it is full of godliness, overflowing with godliness.Osho,Though your emphasis has been for us, as individuals, to go within to save ourselves, I guess I am still naive enough to feel that our love, our dancing, our joy could still save this beautiful planet. Can you please say something about this?The question is meaningful but very complex to understand. You say, “Though your emphasis has been for us, as individuals, to go within to save ourselves, I guess I am still naive enough to feel that our love, our dancing, our joy, could still save this beautiful planet.”It may save the beautiful planet, but you should not carry the idea within you; otherwise it will destroy your love and your dance and your joy. If deep down you are guessing: “My love, my dancing, my joy can save the whole planet” it is the strategy of the ego. You are becoming a savior. You are becoming so great that you can save the whole planet, just by your love, just by your dancing, just by your joy.Try to understand the complexity. It is possible, if individuals are full of love, full of joy, and their life is not a drag, but a dance… As a by-product it is possible the planet may be saved. But as a by-product – you cannot take the credit for saving the world.This is the trouble: if you start thinking that you are dancing to save the world, your dance is destroyed. Then you are not dancing totally, then you are not dancing here and now; then your dancing has become a means to save the world. Then your love is not pure love – it is just another means, but the end is to save the world. It will be easy for you to understand if I tell you a Sufi story.A Sufi mystic was so full of love, and so full of joy – his whole life was laughter, music, dancing. The story says God became very interested in him because he never asked for anything, he never prayed. His whole life was a prayer: there was no need to pray.He never went to the mosque, he never even uttered the name of God; his whole existence was the argument for the presence of God. If anybody asked him whether God exists or not he simply laughed – but his laughter was neither yes nor no.God himself became intrigued with that strange mystic and he went to the mystic and said, “I am immensely happy because that’s how I want people to be – not that they should pray for one hour and do everything against it for twenty-three hours. Not that they should become very pious when they enter the mosque, and when they go out they leave their piousness in the mosque and they are just their old selves: angry, jealous, full of anxiety, full of violence.“I have watched you and I have loved you. This is the way: you have become the prayer. You are, right now, my only argument in the world that something more than man exists – although you have never argued, you have not even uttered my name. Those are superfluous things. But you live, you love, you are so full of joy that there is no need for any language; your very presence becomes the argument for my existence. I want to give you a blessing. You can ask for anything.”The sage said, “But I don’t need anything. I am so joyous, and I cannot conceive there can be anything more. Forgive me, I cannot ask because I really don’t need anything. You are generous, you are loving, you are compassionate; but I am so overfull, there is no space within me for anything else. You will have to forgive me, I cannot ask.”God said, “I was thinking that you would not ask, so don’t ask for yourself – but you can ask for others, because there are millions of people who are miserable, sick, have never known anything for which they can be grateful. I can give you powers to do miracles, and you can change the lives of all these people.”The sage said, “If you are insistent, then with a condition I can accept your gifts.”God said, “With a condition? You really are strange. What is the condition?”He said, “My condition is that I should not become aware of what is happening through me, by you. It should happen behind my back; it should happen through my shadow, not through me. I may be passing and my shadow may fall on a dead tree, and the tree may become alive again – again lush green, again heavy with flowers and fruits – but I should not know it, because I don’t want to fall back.“If I know it – that I have done it, or even that God has chosen me as the instrument to do it – it is dangerous. So my condition is: a blind man may start seeing, but neither should he know that it is because of me, nor should I know that it is because of me. My shadow behind my back will do all the miracles.“If you can accept my condition, and remember that I should not know at all… Because I am so full of joy, so blissful. Don’t drag me back into the miserable world. Don’t drag me back to become again an ‘I.’”And it is said that God said to him, “You are not only strange, you are unique and rare. And this will be so: you will never know what things are happening around you. Miracles will be happening around you – wherever you will go, miracles will happen. Neither those people will know that you have done those miracles, nor you will know that you have done those miracles. I will remember the condition.”There is a possibility that the individual coming to enlightenment and celebration is bound to affect the whole destiny of humanity. But it is going to be a by-product. It is going to happen behind your back, through your shadow – not by you. Even guessing is dangerous, because that guessing can give you the ego and can destroy your joy, can destroy your dance. And if your joy and your love and your dance are destroyed, then there is not going to be any by-product to save the planet.None of my sannyasins has to become a savior. The world has known many saviors, and the world is not saved. The reason is that they were not as alert as the Sufi mystic; they started bragging about their miracles, they started nursing their egos through their miracles. Then their miracles became only magic, just tricks practiced well. There is nothing like a miracle in it.The greatest miracle in the world is that you should dance and disappear in the dance – then let the dance do whatever it can do. That you should love and disappear in the love – then let the love do whatever it can do. You cannot claim that you are doing it – you have already disappeared.In your disappearance is the whole possibility of some miracle happening. So please don’t guess; otherwise deep inside your love will remain half-hearted – you are doing it for some purpose. And when love becomes a purpose it is no longer love. Your joy will become phony, because if you are joyful for something to happen in the world, you are not really joyful – you are using joy. If your dance is a means toward an end, it cannot be total. Unless your dance is an end in itself, there is no possibility of its being total.Only a total dance, an authentic love, a whole-hearted joy, may perhaps create some miracles around you. But you will not be the one who has done them; you will not be the one who can brag about them. They will happen only when you are not. God happens only when you have moved out of the way and left yourself totally empty, spacious. It is a very strange phenomenon: the guest comes inside the house only when the host disappears.Osho,Sometimes after moments of clarity and lightness, it seems old intimates like violent feelings, jealousy, feeling furious, etcetera, come back even stronger than before, as if they were just waiting around the corner to have their chance again. Can you say something?I can say something, but those feelings of violence and jealousy and furiousness will still be waiting by the corner. Just by my saying something, they are not going to disappear – because without knowing, you are nourishing them; without knowing, your desire to get free of them is very superficial.You are not doing exactly what I have been emphasizing continuously; you are doing just the opposite. You are fighting with the darkness, and you are not bringing the light in. You can go on fighting with the darkness as long as you want – you are not going to be victorious. That does not mean that you are weaker than darkness, it simply means that what you are doing is irrelevant to darkness. Darkness is only an absence. You cannot do anything directly to it – just bring light in.It is not that when you bring light in, darkness will rush outside through all the doors. Darkness is an absence. Light comes and there is no question of absence anymore. Darkness does not go anywhere, it has no existence of its own.I will read your question: “Sometimes after moments of clarity and lightness, it seems old intimates like violent feelings, jealousy, feeling furious, etcetera, come back even stronger than before, as if they were just waiting around the corner to have their chance again.”Your clarity and your lightness are only momentary. If you bring the light for a moment and then blow out the candle, the darkness will be back again – not that it was waiting by the corner; you have created the absence of light again. Your torch of consciousness should be burning continuously; then there will not be any darkness.These feelings that you think are very dangerous are almost impotent. Violence is there because you have not grown your potential for love – it is the absence of love. People go on doing stupid things. They try to be nonviolent: they repress the violence, they make tremendous effort to be nonviolent.But there is no need for anybody to be nonviolent because you are moving in a wrong direction. Violence is a negative thing, and you are trying to destroy violence and become nonviolent. I would say, forget about violence. It is the absence of love – be more loving. All the energy that you are putting into repressing violence and becoming nonviolent – pour it into being love.It was unfortunate that Mahavira and Gautam Buddha both used the word nonviolence. I can understand their difficulty. Their difficulty was that by “love” people understand biological love; to avoid that misunderstanding they used a negative term: nonviolence. It gives the appearance that violence is the positive thing and nonviolence is the negative thing. In fact, violence is the negative thing and love is the positive thing, but they were all afraid of using the word love.Because of their fear that “love” may create in people’s minds the idea of ordinary love, they used an unfortunate word – nonviolence – and for twenty-five centuries that nonviolence has been practiced. But have you seen in any follower of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira the quality of love, the presence of love around him? He is practicing nonviolence, and there is where he has gone wrong. You will find them shrunken and dead: their intelligence does not seem to have blossomed, their consciousness does not seem to have blossomed. Just the mistake of using a wrong word has created twenty-five centuries of immense torture, in thousands of people.I want you to know that love is the positive thing, and love does not mean only biological love. You also understand it: you love your mother, you love your brother, you love your friend, you love your master; there is no biology involved. These are ordinarily available experiences of non-biological love. You love a roseflower – is there any biology involved? You love a beautiful moon, you love music, you love poetry, you love sculpture – is there any biology involved? I am taking these examples from ordinary life, just to show you that love has many, many dimensions.There is a love which is between two bodies; then it is biological. There is a love between two minds; then it is the love of two friends. There is a love between two hearts – then it is the love between the disciple and the master. And then there is the love between two beings. Then it is the love between the devotee and the master. Love has these four dimensions, and each dimension has many, many possibilities.So rather than having just moments of clarity and lightness, be more loving – loving to the trees, loving to the flowers, loving to music, loving to people. Let all kinds of love enrich your life, and violence will disappear. A man of love cannot hurt anybody. There have been even very rare and unique examples.One of the Sufi mystics, Sarmad, had a wound in his chest – the orthodox Mohammedans had tried to kill him. They could not kill him, but they wounded him very badly, and the wound became so dangerous… There were small but visible parasites in the wound, which were sucking his blood.Mohammedans, when they do their namaz, their prayer, bow down to the earth, get up, and then bow down again many times. So those parasites would fall from Sarmad’s wound, and he would take them up and put them back in the wound. People asked, “Are you mad or something?”He said, “My body is going to die anyway, the poison has spread all over the body. These poor parasites, why should they die as long as I can help them to live? And anyway they are parasites of my wound – and I am not the body. It is going to be the food of animals. So while I am alive, it hurts me that some parasite is going to die. At least as long as I am alive I will continue to put them back.” And finally he stopped praying. He said, “Prayer I can do without the ritual, but I cannot hurt these creatures.”But strangely enough, he did not die from the poison that was spreading through his body – perhaps his tremendous love became an antidote – and the Mohammedans had to cut off his head on the steps of Jama Masjid in New Delhi. And his only crime was… Mohammedans have a prayer which consists of a simple sentence: “One God; one holy book, Koran; one messenger of God, Hazrat Mohammed.” These three names come into that prayer.But Sufis simply say the part that talks about one God. They don’t bring “one holy Koran” and “one messenger of God” into their prayer. They say that there have been other messengers, it is not a monopoly; and there are other holy statements, the Koran cannot be the only one. And in the future there will be other messengers and there will be other holy statements. All that we can say is: Existence is one God.That was their crime, and the orthodox Mohammedans forced Sarmad: “You have to say the whole prayer; this is sacrilegious to pray only half the prayer.”He said, “You cannot force me. As far as prayer is concerned it is my freedom, it is my individual concern with God. If I am answerable, I am answerable to God, not to you. I am not praying to you, I am praying to God, and if I am praying wrongly, it is a matter to be settled between me and God. Who are you?” But they were powerful – and the king was Mohammedan – and they were all angry, and they cut off his head.There are many steps in the mosque in New Delhi. And when they cut his head he laughed, and his head rolled down the steps. And a strange phenomenon was witnessed by thousands of people, because thousands of people had gathered to see: the head was coming down the steps… The blood was flowing from the head, and the body was standing on top of the steps – and the head was still repeating the half-prayer.That does not seem to be historical, seems to be a mythology, but there are so many contemporary reports about it – from people who were not Mohammedans – that they have seen and they have heard it.Perhaps love can speak even without the body. Perhaps love does not need the body to be a necessary medium. Whether it is historical or not is insignificant to me; to me, what is significant is that although he was killed by cutting off his head, there was no anger, no complaint, no ill-will, no curse.And he was absolutely innocent; to pray is an absolutely individual affair. But even while his head is rolling down the steps, there is only prayer, the half-prayer.Love knows how to forgive.Love cannot hurt and cannot be violent. These violent feelings will not disappear unless their energy is transformed into love. And the true love knows nothing of jealousy. Any love that is followed by jealousy is certainly not the true love, it is biological instinct.The higher you move – from body to mind, from heart to being – all these crude feelings disappear. Love from being to being knows no jealousy. And how are you going to find such love?It is a radiation of your silence, of your peace, of your inner well-being, of your blissfulness. You are so blissful that you want to share it – that sharing is love. Love is not a beggar. It never asks, “Give me love.” Love is always an emperor. It only knows to give. It never even imagines, expects, anything in return.Be more meditative, become more conscious of your being. Let your inner world become more silent, and love will be flowing through you. People have all these problems. The problems are different – violence, jealousy, misery, anxiety – but the medicine for all these illnesses is only one, and it is meditation.And I would like you to be reminded that the word medicine and the word meditation come from the same root. Medicine means something that can cure your body, and meditation means something that can cure your soul. Meditation is meditation only because it is a medicine for your innermost illnesses.A man selling Vaseline Petroleum Jelly had gone around a number of houses in town a week before and had left some samples, asking people to see if they could find an ingenious use for it. Now he went around to the same houses, asking people what uses they had found for Vaseline.The man in the first house, a wealthy city gent, said, “I used it for medicinal purposes. Whenever my children scraped their elbows or knees, I would rub it on.”The man in the second house said, “I used it for mechanical purposes, such as greasing the bearings of my bicycle and lawnmower.”The man in the third house, a scruffy, unshaven, working-class fellow, said, “I used it for sexual purposes.”In a shocked voice the salesman asked, “What do you mean?”“Well,” said the scruffy man, “I put a whole lot of it on the handle of my bedroom door to keep the kids out!”You can give the same thing to different people and they will come out with different uses, according to their own unconsciousness. But if they are conscious, they will find only one use.A Japanese archbishop went to a very great master, Nan-in, with the New Testament, because he was certain that by listening to the beautiful statements of Jesus, particularly on the sermon on the mountain, Nan-in would be converted to Christianity.The archbishop was received with great love and he said, “I have come with my holy book, and I want to read a few sentences. Perhaps they will change your whole life.”Nan-in said, “You have come a little late, because I am changed completely, the transformation has happened. But still, you have come a long way – you can at least read a few sentences.”So he read a few sentences, and just after two or three sentences, Nan-in said, “That’s enough. Whoever has written these sentences will become a buddha in some future life.”The archbishop was very shocked. Nan-in is saying, “In some future life – this man shows a potentiality – he will become a buddha.” The archbishop said, “But he is the only son of God!”Nan-in laughed. He said, “That is the trouble. That’s what is preventing him from becoming a buddha. Unless he drops such nonsense ideas, he will not blossom to his whole potentiality.“He has beautiful ideas but side by side, he has some stupid ideas too. There is no God, so the question of being the only begotten son does not arise. In some future life – don’t be worried – he will drop them; he seems to be a man of intelligence, and he has suffered enough for his stupid ideas. He was crucified – that was enough punishment. But you should not cling to the stupid part of his statements.”The archbishop said, “But they are our basis, the foundation of our religion, that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, that there is a God who created the world, that Jesus was born of a virgin girl.”Nan-in laughed and he said, “This poor fellow, if he could drop these small fictitious things, he would have already become a buddha. If you find him somewhere, bring him here, and I will put him right. There was no need to crucify him – all that he needed was a right master, someone who could have introduced him into the mysteries of meditation.”Meditation is perhaps the master key for all our problems. So rather than fighting with problems separately – which will take lives and still you will not be out of their grip. They will stand by the corner, waiting for their chance – and naturally, if they had to wait too long, they will take as much revenge as possible.Meditation is not doing anything directly to your violence, not doing anything to your jealousy, to your hate. It is simply bringing light into your house, and the darkness disappears. [A duck appears in the garden outside the hall, and quacks long and loudly.]It is nobody but just the reincarnation of the Japanese archbishop. And it is natural that he is protesting – this is what happens to archbishops; I have again provoked him. [The duck continues quacking.]Should I provoke him again?

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it possible that things are happening inside me that I am not aware of? Is it possible for growth to happen in this way? I have heard you say, “I've been watching you” to people. Have you been watching me? How am I doing? Am I missing something? Should I be doing something that I'm not already doing?It is possible that things may be happening within you of which you are not aware, because your awareness is very small, and you are very big. Your whole consciousness is ten times bigger than your awareness, and that ten-times-bigger consciousness is absolutely in darkness. Much continues to happen in your dark inside. You become aware only when it surfaces and comes into the area of your awareness – which is very small.In fact, it is part of your biology, physiology, that you should not be aware of most things when they are happening because your awareness can become a hindrance to their happening. You eat food, but do you know how it is digested, when it is digested, when your food becomes your blood and your bones?Up to three hundred years ago, for centuries man had thought that blood is static in the body. The idea of the circulation of blood was nonexistent all over the world. Just three hundred years ago, physicians became aware that blood is constantly moving at a fast speed – the blood that is in your feet, within seconds will be in your head, and it goes round and round. Its circulation is absolutely necessary to clean all dead cells from your body, to take them away, to bring new oxygen to your cells, because each cell needs oxygen for its life.But you are not aware of it all, and in fact if you were aware, you would go mad. So much is happening inside you that it would be impossible for you to maintain your sanity.The child in the mother’s womb sleeps twenty-four hours a day, for the simple reason that in those nine months more things happen in his body than will happen in the seventy years which are to follow after his birth. Much more is happening in those nine months than is going to happen in the body between his birth and death. Hence, he has to remain constantly asleep – no awareness at all.When you are tired, when you feel spent, you need a good sleep – have you ever thought why? You need a good sleep so that your awareness does not interfere with the rejuvenating of your body. In the morning you feel fresh, ready again to work. What a miracle sleep has done to you! On a greater scale, when it becomes almost impossible for the body to rejuvenate itself, death happens. Death is nothing but a long sleep, a deep sleep, so that your soul can move into another body, into some womb. But your awareness can be a disturbance, so your death almost always happens in a deep sleep. Before you die, you fall asleep; you lose all consciousness, all awareness – it is the greatest surgery that nature does.What is true about the body and about your physiology is also true about your psychology – much is happening of which you are not aware. You become aware only when a certain situation arises: you are a peaceful man, but somebody insults you and anger arises in you, of which you were not aware. It has always been there, but hiding in the darkness of your unconscious, and if somebody insults you, immediately it is ready to react.I am reminded of one of the most beautiful stories, historical.A great Japanese emperor wanted to see Nan-in, a Zen master. Because he was the ruler over all Japan, he thought that Nan-in could be ordered to come to the court.His prime minister advised him, “Don’t be foolish. You may be the emperor of the whole of Japan, but there are a few people in the country who are beyond your domination – or anybody’s domination. You cannot order Nan-in; you can kill him, but you cannot force him to do anything against his will. And he has not left his monastery for thirty years. If you want to see him, you will have to go to the mountains to his monastery.”The emperor said, “If that is the situation, then I will go. I don’t want to kill him. I have a question, and many people have suggested to me that there is only one man, Nan-in, who can answer the question.”He went to Nan-in; he was sitting just in front of his house, on the lawn. The emperor bowed down, sat in front of Nan-in, and asked him, “I have come to get an answer: what is hell and what is heaven? I have asked many people, but what that they give as an answer is not their own experience. They are not eyewitnesses, they are only scholars – they have read about it. That I can do myself, but how can I know hell really exists? Or heaven?”At that very moment Nan-in said, “You are such an idiot – who made you the emperor of the country?”The emperor could not believe it! He had never expected, never dreamed that he would be received with such rudeness. He has not done anything wrong – just asked a question! He was a warrior. He pulled his sword out of its sheath and was going to kill Nan-in, then and there. When the sword was just hanging over the head of Nan-in, Nan-in said, “This is hell. You are standing exactly at the door of it.”A great realization! Suddenly all anger settled, a silence descended. He put back his sword, and Nan-in said, “You have turned your back toward hell, and in front of you is the gate of heaven. This is my answer.”The emperor had never thought that answers can be given through situations too. In fact, real answers can only be given through situations. But he became perfectly aware that anger, violence, rage, jealousy, and the whole gang of those kinds of qualities are what constitute hell. And love, silence, blissfulness, compassion, joy, a moment-to-moment living in gratefulness toward existence: these are what heaven is constituted of.He touched the feet of Nan-in and said, “You have answered me – and this is not the answer of a scholar, this is the answer of a man who knows. I am immensely grateful. But you really shocked me, I am still trembling! You are a dangerous man; I had come for a philosophical discussion.”Nan-in said, “We are not concerned with philosophy, we are concerned with reality. Philosophy is a game, children’s play; reality is a risk, an adventure. Only those who are courageous enough travel on the razor’s edge to find the truth.”Much is continuously happening in your psychology also. Even when you are asleep, your mind goes on working. Only a man who enters meditation, slowly, slowly becomes aware of things which are happening in the mind, of which he was never aware. And the miracle of meditation is that as you become aware of things, that which is wrong disappears and that which is right becomes tremendously strong. There is only one criterion, according to me, which decides what is right and what is wrong: that is your depth of meditation.If you are going deeper into silence and something disappears – you saw it receding, evaporating into the air – you can be certain it was wrong because the false cannot face you; it has not the guts. It cannot come in front of you, it cannot encounter you. And that which is real, good, becomes stronger, becomes more a part of your actions, of your thoughts, of your being.A moment comes in the life of the meditator when his meditation has reached to the point where his whole mind is silent and there is not even a fragment of darkness anywhere inside – all is light. Then, whatever that person does is right, and whatever that person does not do is wrong. In that state, one never thinks what to do; what is right, what is wrong are no longer alternatives. The right becomes spontaneous action, and the wrong simply becomes impossible – even if you want to do it, you cannot.You ask, “Is it possible that things are happening inside me that I am not aware of?” Yes, things are happening within you and you have to make your awareness sharper, deeper, clearer – so that you can become aware. Otherwise, all your actions come out of an unconscious state; you don’t know exactly why you are doing it, why there is such a deep urge to do it, because the urge comes from the unconscious where a ray of light has never entered.In psychoanalysis you have to completely drop whatever you say in your waking hours – it is not trustworthy. Psychoanalysis trusts your dreams more than it trusts you, because your consciousness is so small and it is not aware of all that is happening underneath. But when this consciousness goes to sleep, in your dreams the unconscious starts coming onto the screen of your mind. To know about your dreams is to know much more about you than you know yourself. Your dreams are more reliable because in your dreams you don’t deceive; there is no question. Your dreams are so private, nobody is going to know – why deceive?In your waking hours, you have a certain personality to maintain to live in the society – a certain morality, a certain code of conduct. In your dreams, all codes of conduct, all moralities, all principles disappear – you are simply natural. Whatever is within you comes in its reality, as it is.The only problem with dreams is that the unconscious knows no language; it is still the mind of the child. The child thinks in pictures – his language is pictorial, not alphabetical – so you dream in pictures. That has created a great problem: who is going to interpret those pictures? What do they mean? Because there are many interpreters, many schools of psychoanalysis with different explanations, and all their explanations seem to have some truth.The East has never tried anything like psychoanalysis, and the West has never tried anything like meditation. The East has been working for almost ten thousand years, single-pointedly, on meditation. And meditation means going beyond the mind – not getting involved in the mind, not being bothered by the mind, not being interested in its dreams – simply transcending it, simply becoming a watcher.The West has become too involved in the games that the mind goes on playing – and those games are very complicated, and they are endless. There is not a single man alive in the world who is completely psychoanalyzed, and there are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, twenty years, working hard, bringing out their dreams to the psychoanalyst. Whichever dream is psychoanalyzed, disappears, but other dreams go on coming – it seems an unending process.Perhaps somewhere far away in the past, of which no record exists, the East may have encountered something like psychoanalysis and found that it is a futile exercise. You explain one dream, another dream arises. You go on, and dreams go on arising. The East drops the whole mind with all its dreams, all its activities. They change their focus completely to a new area, a new space. Just be a watcher; don’t interpret.Sigmund Freud’s whole contribution is the interpretation of dreams, the analysis of dreams. And the Eastern experience, which is very long, says don’t get involved in analysis or interpretation – just watch. Don’t judge, and don’t try to find the meaning of it. Don’t condemn either, don’t appreciate – just be absolutely indifferent, a pure witness who has nothing to do with it.If you become a witness, you will become aware that the mind starts functioning less and less; dreams start disappearing, thoughts are no longer so much, the crowd goes on becoming less and less. A moment comes when you are there, just a witness – and there is nothing to be witnessed. The mind is utterly silent: all dreams, all thoughts, all feelings are gone. This is the moment when you will become exactly aware of who you are. Retrospectively, you will be able to see what you have been doing, and what has been happening inside you. But you are out of it; it is just a fading memory. Slowly, slowly it fades away.To live in silence, in serenity, is a totally different dimension of life: where joy is simply natural, where life is in its absolute beauty, in its utter purity and aliveness; where love is so abundant that it goes on overflowing – you cannot contain it, it is a bigger reality than you are. Life becomes a smaller phenomenon than love, and love also becomes a smaller phenomenon than light. These three L’s contain the whole discipline of inner revolution. Just being here, things are bound to happen within you of which you may not be aware, because you have not yet learned the art of watchfulness.You ask, “Is it possible for growth to happen in this way?” Yes, it is possible, but only up to a point. It cannot happen the whole way without your becoming a watcher, so be concerned about that.Instead of that you are asking me, “I have heard you say, ‘I’ve been watching you’ to people. Have you been watching me? How am I doing? Am I missing something?” Rather than being concerned whether I am watching you or not, your concern should be: are you watching yourself?I am certainly watching. The moment I see you, I see you in your totality. To me you are transparent – I even see that which you may not be even aware is within you. And I am also continuously watching my people, how they are growing, growing or not growing.You are doing perfectly well, but something is certainly missing. The thing that is missing is that you are not getting into the space of watching yourself. You cannot depend on me forever. In the beginning it is good, in the beginning it is helpful, but if it becomes a dependence, then it is dangerous. I don’t want anybody to be dependent on me, so my whole effort is to push you – as quickly as possible – into watching, into witnessing, into being a free individual, a free seeker, a searcher with total freedom.All the religions of the world have been committing one of the great crimes: they want people to be dependent on them. They never want people to become independent because that means losing customers. You are not my customers. To teach you is not my profession – it is simply my joy. I don’t want any reward for it; just that you allowed me to share my heart with you is reward unto itself.But the conditioning of the mind is so old, the conditioning that you go on hoping that somebody is going to save you: some savior, some messenger of God, but it is somebody else’s business. You want to throw the responsibility on somebody else. That will not be the right thing – at least here in this place with me.A young Irish girl was talking to the Reverend Mother about her ambition in life. “When I grow up,” she announced, “I want to be a prostitute.”The Reverend Mother gasped and threw up her hands in horror. “Did I hear you rightly? What was it you said you wanted to be?”“A prostitute.”The Reverend Mother sighed with relief, “Oh, praise the Lord,” she said. “I thought you said a Protestant.”That has been the attitude of all the religions. Here, I want you to be just yourself. And that is possible only if you become a watcher. The deeper and sharper your watching, the greater is your individuality, the more is your human dignity. Tremendous is the splendor of a person who has come to know everything that goes on within him, because by being aware, all that is false disappears and all that is real is nourished. Except this, there is no radical transformation possible.No religion can give it to you, no messiah can give it to you. It is a gift that you have to give to yourself. But the unconscious creates difficulties. Not that they cannot be dissolved, but you need a little patience, a little trust in existence. Difficulties will be there but don’t take them as difficulties, but only as challenges. It is a great adventure to go into your own being, to the very center of your existence – because that is the center of the whole existence too.Mrs. Rappaport advertised a new Cadillac for fifty dollars. Goldstein answered the ad and the first thing he asked was, “What is wrong with the car?”“Nothing,” she replied. “If you don’t want it, please don’t waste my time.”Goldstein asked for the keys and went to the garage. He backed the car out, parked in front of the house, counted out fifty dollars, and handed it to the owner. “Now you have your money, what is the catch?”“My husband just died,” she said, “and in his will he instructed that the Cadillac be sold and the proceeds be given to his secretary.”You will find mind playing many games. It has been with you for so long, it will not be easy for it if you simply drop it without giving a second thought; it will struggle to cling to you. But the secret is in watching. Don’t fight with it, don’t try to throw it away, don’t condemn it. Just watch, like a mirror, with no opinion about it – that is the greatest weapon in your hands.If you can remain just like a mirror, your mind soon disappears, and the whole sky of your inner world becomes so silent. And the silence is not dead, it is alive. It has a music of its own. It blossoms, it has a fragrance of its own. It is radiant with light – it has a light of its own. And it is part of the eternal source from where everything has come, and to where everything has to return back.Once knowing it, you are no longer the same man. Your whole life will have a new dance, a new song, a new freshness, a new youthfulness, a new playfulness, a new laughter.But my watching you will not help; you have to do it yourself. Whatever you are doing is perfectly good, but not enough – because one of the most essential things is missing. And that is, you have not yet started on the path of a watcher.Osho,These mornings, sitting in front of you, when you look at me I feel so completely seen, so understood and accepted. And yet when I look at you, all I am aware of is my blindness, my fear, and ignorance. Can you please comment?The observation in your question is very accurate. You say, “These mornings, sitting in front of you, when you look at me I feel so completely seen – so understood and accepted. And yet when I look at you, all I am aware of is my blindness, my fear, and ignorance.” It is immensely significant to see your blindness, because that is the beginning of getting out of it. The moment a madman knows he is mad, he is no longer mad.You can go into madhouses and you will be surprised to know that not a single madman accepts that he is mad. He may condemn the whole world for being mad, but he is not mad. The moment he accepts, even suspects, “Perhaps I am mad,” the madness starts melting, because it is a quality of sanity, of intelligence. Madness cannot accept that “I am mad” – that will be a contradiction. The mad person tries to prove in every possible way that he is absolutely sane.I have heard about a man who had gone mad – and not an ordinarily mad person; his madness was unique. He started thinking that he was dead. He would not go to the office. His family would tell him, “Go to the office; otherwise how are we going to survive?” But he would say, “Have you ever heard of any dead man going to the office? Have you ever heard of any dead man helping his relatives, his family, his friends to survive? I am absolutely helpless, what can I do? Nobody has any control over death; I am dead.”People tried in every way: “You are talking and you are eating and you are sleeping and you are walking – and still you go on insisting that you are dead?”He said, “I know more about myself; I don’t need anybody’s advice. I feel absolutely certain that I am dead, and if a dead man feels hungry – he eats. What is wrong with it?”Finally they took him to a psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist said, “I will settle him. He is a little rare; I have never come across… There have been many kinds of people, but he surpasses them all.”He talked with the dead man, and the dead man’s arguments to prove that he was dead were perfectly rational. Not only that: when his family left and he was alone with the psychiatrist, he pulled his chair close to him and told him, “You are also dead. I did not say it in front of those people; otherwise your whole profession would be disturbed. We are in the same boat; just as I died, you died.”The psychiatrist said, “This is too much. You are trying to convince me.”He said, “It is not a question of conviction: once dead, dead forever. Do you think somebody has convinced me? I have discovered myself that I am dead – and because I know how to discover it, I have discovered that you are dead too. It is good that they brought me here; otherwise you would have lived with the wrong conception – that you are alive.”The psychiatrist thought, “What to do with this man?” He took out his paper knife, to cut the man on his hand. Before cutting the man – just to bring a little blood – he said, “Have you ever heard that dead men don’t bleed?”The man said, “Yes, when I used to be alive, I heard the saying that dead men don’t bleed.”The psychiatrist said, “Okay, now this will be decisive.” He cut a little on the man’s hand and blood came out, and he said, “What do you say now?”The man said, “What is there to be said? It means the proverb is wrong: dead men do bleed. Now just give me the paper knife and I will show you.” He cut the hand of the psychiatrist and blood came out, and he said, “Look! There is not only one piece of evidence; now we are both proofs that the proverb is wrong. It seems nobody has ever checked, and some idiot must have spread the idea that dead men don’t bleed. Why shouldn’t they bleed? They have every right to bleed; it is not the monopoly only of the living ones.”The psychiatrist said, “Take your fees back and go home before I become convinced, because I have a wife and two small kids, and I have to take care of them. And you are so logically convincing. Once in a while the suspicion arises in my mind too: ‘Who knows? Perhaps he is right. What proof have I got that I am alive? But I have never thought about it.’ You are a great thinker, but go – before it is too late!”If you see your blindness, it is good news: it means you are starting to see. The blindness will disappear. If you see your ignorance, that brings an alchemical change. The moment you see your ignorance it becomes innocence – it is ignorance only as long as you remain unaware of it. The moment you understand that “I don’t know,” the doors of knowing have opened; if you see your fear, that’s a good sign. All these things have to be brought before your consciousness. Fear exists in darkness, and seeing your fear means it is coming into light – in the light it cannot exist.So remain alert about your blindness, about your fear, about your ignorance, and just your alertness will dispel the whole darkness of blindness, of fear, of ignorance. They are not separate things; they are separate aspects of a single unconscious mind – they all exist together and they all disappear together.It is a good beginning. As far as I am concerned, my acceptance of everybody is total. Whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are, I don’t want to impose any ideal on you that you should be something else. If you grow into something else, that is another thing, but I don’t want to give you any “shoulds” – that you must be this, that you should be this, that “unless you achieve this ideal you are unworthy of being called human.” No, as you are, you are perfectly worthy. Existence accepts you, life accepts you – and I am not against life, I am not against existence; I simply follow the way the river of life moves. If life accepts you, I accept you. People have conditions when they accept…I have heard about two lovers sitting on the sea beach on a full-moon night, and they were discussing marriage.The woman asked, “Will you always love me – always?”The man said, “I have told you a thousand and one times that I will love you always, always – but because of your question, a question has arisen in my mind. In your old age, will you look like your mother? Then I cannot love you. If you are determined to become like your mother, then forget all about marriage.”In old age, far away in the future… Nobody can predict how that woman will look – like the mother or like the father, or like the chauffeur – nobody knows! But even that far away there is a condition, and that future condition can disturb even the present. In the present, people are continuously looking at you with all kinds of prejudices, judgments: how you should be, how you should behave, your etiquette, your manners, your morality.Small things are enough to create barriers, and we are all living with our defenses so that others cannot know exactly what we are. We allow them to know only that part of our being which is acceptable to them. This is one of the foundations of our misery. People are different, and we should enjoy and rejoice in their differences, in their variety. Your judgment is not going to change anybody; perhaps your judgment may create a stubbornness in the other person not to change. Who are you to change the person?These are the secrets of life. If you accept somebody with totality, he starts changing because you give him total freedom to be himself. And someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself – you would like him to be happy; as far as you are concerned, he has given you the dignity and the honor of accepting you. It is very natural that if you see something in yourself which is not right – although the other person accepts you as you are – you would like to be even better, just for him; to be softer, to be more loving, to be more tender, just for him.I accept you as you are. I don’t have any expectations of you; I don’t want you to be molded into a certain idea, into a certain ideal. I don’t want to make you a dead statue. I want you to be alive, more alive, and you can be alive only if your totality is accepted – not only accepted, but respected.I have a deep reverence for everything that is alive, a reverence for life itself. If my reverence changes you, that is another thing; I am not responsible for it. And it is going to change you – I warn you beforehand; you cannot blame me later on.You are fortunate that you feel completely seen, so understood and accepted. If we could accept people with whom we are in some way related – friends or lovers – and understand them, and allow them not to have any defenses so they can be completely natural, the world would be so beautiful and people would be so happy. But up to now we have lived under very wrong conceptions, and those wrong conceptions have to be dropped.Two disciples of a famous rabbi came to visit him, and while they were waiting to be ushered into his presence, the rabbi’s wife brought them two cups of lemon tea and a plate with two cakes on it – one small, one big.“After you,” said one disciple to the other, offering him the plate.“No, after you.”“No, no, I insist. After you.”“No, you take first.”Eventually one of the two helped himself first – to the bigger cake. The other was outraged: “What! You helped yourself first, and took the bigger cake!”“So?” said the other. “If you had chosen first, which cake would you have taken?”“Why, the smaller one, of course!”“Well, what are you complaining about? You have got the smaller one!”All our manners, all our etiquette, are so phony – we don’t mean what we say, we don’t mean what we show. The whole of humanity has become part of a single real ideology, and that is hypocrisy. One may be Christian, one may be Hindu, one may be Jaina, one may be Buddhist. It does not matter – they are all hypocrites.I want my people to be simply yourselves, absolutely natural, and allowing the other also to be natural, accepting each other, trying to understand each other’s mystery and helping in every way so the other can become more and more authentic. Only authentic human beings can create a society which will be joyous, ecstatic, and in the real sense, human.Osho,You say, first jump and then think. But this is what mankind is doing. First going to the moon, and then realizing that rockets have made holes in the ozone layer, for instance. Sometimes it can be too late to think. On the other hand, if one thinks too much, one will never jump – jumping implies risk and unknown consequences. I am confused: can jumping and awareness go together, and how?My statement, “Jump before you think,” was not concerned with outer reality, it was concerned with your inner space. This is how your mind can change the context and then create unnecessary problems.As far as the outside is concerned, think first, think twice – only then jump. Even if the risk is that too much thinking may not allow you to jump at all, this is perfectly acceptable to you because in the outside world, what is there to lose? Doing anything without thinking in the outside world is simply stupidity.But the laws of the outer and the inner are opposite. In the inner world, if you go on thinking you will never jump, because the inner is absolutely unknown. On the outside you are not alone; there are thousands of others. The outer world is objective, visible, and if you are not going to jump, somebody else will jump.Albert Einstein was asked, “If you had not discovered the theory of relativity, what do you think – would it have ever been discovered?”Albert Einstein said, “At the most three months later; most probably three weeks later” – because all the facts were there, and thousands of scientists around the world were working on those facts. It was only a question of who solved the puzzle first. Later on it was discovered that a German scientist had discovered the theory of relativity before Albert Einstein but he had not published his paper. He was just going to publish it, but because it was so outrageously against all the old scientific findings, he went on thinking about whether to publish it or not: “I may become a laughingstock: I am going to say something absolutely contradicting the whole of scientific progress.”Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity goes against the logic of Aristotle; it goes against the geometry of Euclid, which was well established for two thousand years. And it goes against so many things which have been accepted by scientists as facts – who has ever doubted that two plus two is equal to four? Even a man like Bertrand Russell, who wrote one of the greatest treatises on mathematics, has spent nearabout two hundred and thirty-five pages to prove that two plus two is really four. But against all these comes the theory of relativity. It says two plus two can be anything – but never four.Albert Einstein took the risk and jumped ahead. But he was aware that if he did not take the jump, somebody else, within three weeks or at the most three months… How long can you prevent it?In the outside world, there are millions of people, and everything is objective. In the inside world, you are alone – you cannot take anybody as your guide, as your friend; no map exists, no guidebook exists. If you go on thinking, perhaps you will never enter into it.My statement was about the inner world. Against the old proverb, “Think before you jump,” I had said, “Jump before you think.” What is the hurry? You will be inside; you can go on thinking later on – first jump. And you are not jumping from a hilltop, you are jumping inside yourself. I don’t think that there is any possibility of having fractures, or falling into an abysmal ditch, or falling so deep that you cannot come out – it has not happened up to now. Thousands of people have jumped in, and they all have come out in far better shape than they have ever been.There is no risk. The inner journey is really the safest journey – absolutely insured – because not a single case exists in the whole of history when somebody jumped inside and came out having multiple fractures. Those who have jumped in have come out with such tremendous joy, with such deep sensibility, with such great understanding. They have found the greatest treasure which exists in existence.Mr. Cohen comes home one night and starts to pack his bags. “So, where are you going?” asks his wife.“To Tahiti.”“Tahiti? Why Tahiti?”“Simple. Every time you make love there, they give you five dollars.”Then Mrs. Cohen starts packing her bags.“So where are you going?” asks Mr. Cohen.“I’m going to Tahiti.”“Why?”“I want to see how you’re going to live on ten dollars a year.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When you talked about the ultimate death of this world, I got suddenly in touch with deep aloneness, and this voice inside me said, “Remember: each single moment, remember that you are alone.” Osho, after our death, will you still be, in some mysterious way, with our wandering consciousness?Aloneness is not something to be sad about – it is something to rejoice in. There are two words; the dictionary will say they have the same meaning, but existence gives them totally opposite meanings. One word is loneliness and the other word is aloneness. They are not synonymous.Loneliness is a negative state, like darkness. Loneliness means you are missing someone; you are empty, and you are afraid in this vast universe. Aloneness has a totally different meaning: it does not mean that you are missing someone; it means that you have found yourself. It is absolutely positive.Finding oneself, one finds the meaning of life, the significance of life, the joy of life, the splendor of life. Finding oneself is the greatest finding in man’s life, and this finding is possible only when you are alone. When your consciousness is not crowded by anything, by anybody, when your consciousness is utterly empty – in that emptiness, in that nothingness, a miracle happens. And that miracle is the foundation of all religion.The miracle is: when there is nothing else for your consciousness to be conscious of, the consciousness turns upon itself. It becomes a circle. Finding no obstacle, finding no object, it comes back to the source. The moment the circle is complete, you are no longer just an ordinary human being; you have become part of the godliness that surrounds existence. You are no longer yourself; you have become part of the whole universe – your heartbeat is now the heartbeat of the universe itself.This is the experience which mystics have been searching for all their lives, down the ages. There is no other experience which is more ecstatic, more blissful. This experience transforms your whole outlook: where there used to be darkness, now there is light; where there used to be misery, there is bliss; where there used to be anger, hate, possessiveness, and jealousy, there is only a beautiful flower of love.The whole energy that was being wasted in negative emotions is no longer wasted; it takes a positive and creative turn. On the one hand you are no longer your old self; on the other hand you are, for the first time, your authentic self. The old is gone, the new has arrived. The old was dead; the new belongs to the eternal, the new belongs to the immortal.It is because of this experience that the seers of the Upanishads have declared man as amritasya putrah: “sons and daughters of immortality.” Unless you know yourself as eternal beings, part of the whole, you will remain afraid of death. The fear of death is simply because you are not aware of your eternal source of life. Once the eternity of your being is realized, death becomes the greatest lie in existence.Death has never happened, never happens, never will happen, because that which is, remains always – in different forms, on different levels, but there is no discontinuity. Eternity in the past and eternity in the future both belong to you. The present moment becomes a meeting point of two eternities: one going toward the past, one going toward the future.You say, “When you talked about the ultimate death of this world, I got suddenly in touch with deep aloneness, and this voice inside me said, ‘Remember: each single moment, remember that you are alone.’” The remembrance has not to be only of the mind; your every fiber of being, your every cell of the body should remember it – not as a word, but as a deep feeling.The English word sin has been corrupted by Christianity – they have given it a wrong meaning. Its original meaning is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness of yourself is the only sin there is, and to remember yourself is the only virtue.Gautam Buddha emphasized one single word continually for forty-two years, morning and evening. The word is sammasati – it means “right remembering.” You remember many things – you can become an Encyclopedia Britannica; your mind is capable of remembering all the libraries of the world – but that is not the right remembering.There is only one right remembering – the moment you remember yourself.Gautam Buddha used to illustrate his point with the ancient story of a lioness who was jumping from one hillock to another hillock, and between the two hillocks a big flock of sheep was moving. The lioness was pregnant, and gave birth while she was jumping. Her cub fell into the flock of sheep, was brought up by the sheep, and naturally he believed himself also to be a sheep. It was a little strange because he was so big, so different – but perhaps he was just a freak of nature. He was vegetarian.He grew, and one day an old lion who was in search of food came close to the flock of sheep – and he could not believe his eyes. In the midst of the sheep, there was a young lion in its full glory, and the sheep were not afraid. He forgot about his food; he ran after the flock of sheep. And it was becoming more and more puzzling, because the young lion was also running away with the sheep. Finally he got hold of the young lion. He was crying and weeping and saying to the old lion, “Please, let me go with my people!”But the old lion dragged him to a nearby lake – a silent lake without any ripples, it was just like a pure mirror – and the old lion forced him to see his reflection in the lake, and also the reflection of the old lion. There was a sudden transformation. The moment the young lion saw who he was, there was a great roar – the whole valley echoed the roar of the young lion. He had never roared before because he had never thought that he was anybody other than a sheep.The old lion said, “My work is done; now it is up to you. Do you want to go back to your flock?”The young lion laughed. He said, “Forgive me; I had completely forgotten who I am. I am immensely grateful to you that you helped me to remember.”Gautam Buddha used to say, “The master’s function is to help you remember who you are.” You are not part of this mundane world; your home is the home of the divine. You are lost in forgetfulness; you have forgotten that inside you God is hidden. But you never look inside. Because everybody looks outside, you also go on looking outside.To be alone is a great opportunity, a blessing, because in your aloneness you are bound to stumble upon yourself and for the first time remember who you are. To know that you are part of the divine existence is to be free from death, free from misery, free from anxiety – free from all that has been a nightmare to you for many many lives.It was good that you became aware of a deep aloneness – don’t lose track of it; become more centered in your deep aloneness. That’s what meditation is: becoming centered in one’s own aloneness. The aloneness has to be so pure that not even a thought, not even a feeling, disturbs it. The moment your aloneness is complete, your experience of it will become your enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that comes from outside; it is something that grows within you.To forget your self is the only sin. And to remember your self, in its utter beauty, is the only virtue, the only religion. You need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan, you need not be a Christian – all that you need to be religious is to be yourself.It has been immensely good that your whole being resounded with these words: “Remember: each single moment, remember that you are alone.” You also ask, “Osho, after our death, will you still be, in some mysterious way, with our wandering consciousness?”We are not separate, even now – nobody is separate; the whole existence is one organic unity. The idea of separation is because of our forgetfulness. It is almost as if every leaf of the tree starts thinking it is separate, separate from other leaves. But deep down they are nourished by the same roots. It is one tree; the leaves may be many. It is one existence; the manifestations may be many.I am with you right now. I have been with you forever, and I will be with you for eternity – there is no other way. Knowing oneself, one thing becomes absolutely clear: no man is an island – we are a continent, a vast continent, an infinite existence without any boundaries. The same life runs through all, the same love fills every heart, the same joy dances in every being.Just because of our misunderstanding, we think we are separate. The idea of separation is our illusion. The idea of oneness will be our experience of the ultimate truth.I have heard…There are six people on an aircraft: the pilot, Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Rajiv Gandhi, the Catholic pope, and a young hippie. When something goes wrong with the plane, the pilot announces that he is taking one of the five parachutes and that they must decide among themselves who will take the remaining four.Gorbachev declares that since he is the only hope for the spread of communism, he must jump, and taking a parachute jumps out of the plane. Ronald Reagan declares that he is the only hope for the defense of the free world against the spread of communism, and he too takes a parachute and jumps.Then Rajiv Gandhi gets up. “I am the leader of the greatest nation and the greatest democracy of the world, India, and I am the most intelligent and youngest world leader; I must jump.” And he too jumps out of the plane.Then the pope rises and says to the young man, the hippie, “My son, I am old and have lived my lifetime. Take the last parachute and jump.” But the young hippie protests, “Father, hurry up. There are two parachutes left, one for each of us. Put on one of them and jump.”“But how is that?” asks the pope.The young man replies, “That guy who said he is the most intelligent and youngest world leader – he took my sleeping bag!”Just a little more intelligence is needed and you can come out of the gloom, the misery, the hell in which the whole humanity is living. The secret of coming out of this hell is to remember yourself. And this remembrance will become possible if you understand the idea that you are alone.You may have lived with your wife or with your husband for fifty years; still, you are two. Your wife is alone, you are alone. You have been trying to create a facade: “We are not alone,” “We are a family,” “We are a society,” “We are a civilization,” “We are a culture,” “We are an organized religion,” “We are an organized political party.” But all these illusions are not going to help.You have to recognize, howsoever painful it appears in the beginning, that you are alone and in a strange land. This recognition, for the first time, is painful. It takes away all our illusions – which were great consolations. But once you have dared to accept the reality, the pain disappears. And just hidden behind the pain is the greatest blessing of the world: you come to know yourself.You are the intelligence of existence; you are the consciousness of existence; you are the soul of existence. You are part of this immense godliness that manifests in thousands of forms: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in human beings. But it is the same consciousness in different stages of evolution. And the man who recognizes himself and feels that the god he was searching and looking for all over the world resides within his own heart, comes to the highest point of evolution. There is nothing higher than that.It makes your life meaningful, significant, religious, for the first time. But you will not be a Hindu, and you will not be a Christian, and you will not be a Jew; you will be simply religious. By being a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Jaina, or a Buddhist, you are destroying the purity of religiousness – it needs no adjectives.Love is love – have you ever heard of Hindu love? Mohammedan love? Consciousness is consciousness – have you ever thought about Indian consciousness or Chinese consciousness? Enlightenment is enlightenment: whether it happens in the white body or in the black body, whether it happens in the young man or in the old man, whether it happens in a man or in a woman, it does not make any difference. It is the same experience, the same taste, the same sweetness, the same fragrance.The only person who is not intelligent is one who is running around all over the world in search of something, not knowing exactly what; sometimes thinking perhaps it is money, sometimes thinking perhaps it is power, sometimes thinking perhaps it is prestige, sometimes thinking perhaps it is respectability.The intelligent man first searches his own being before he starts a journey in the outer world. That seems to be simple and logical – at least first look inside your own house before you go searching all over the world. And those who have looked within themselves have found it, without any exception.Gautam Buddha is not a Buddhist. The word buddha simply means the awakened one, who has come out of sleep. Mahavira, the Jaina, is not a Jaina. The word jaina simply means one who has conquered – conquered himself.The world needs a great revolution where each individual finds his religion within himself. The moment religions become organized, they become dangerous; they become really politics with a false face of religion. That’s why all the religions of the world go on trying to convert more and more people to their religion. It is the politics of numbers; whoever has the greater number will be more powerful.But nobody seems to be interested in bringing millions of individuals to their own selves. My work here consists of taking you out of any kind of organized effort – because truth can never be organized. You have to go alone on the pilgrimage, because the pilgrimage is going to be inside. You cannot take anybody with you. You have to drop everything that you have learned from others, because all those prejudices will distort your vision – you will not be able to see the naked reality of your being. The naked reality of your being is the only hope of finding God. God is your naked reality – undecorated, without any adjective.It is not confined by your body, not confined by your birth, not confined by your color, not confined by your sex, not confined by your country. It is simply not confined by anything. And it is available, so close: just one step inside and you have arrived. You have been told for thousands of years that the journey to God is very long. The journey is not long, God is not far away. God is in your breath, God is in your heartbeat; God is in your blood, in your bones, in your marrow – just a single step of closing your eyes and entering within yourself.It may take a little time because old habits die hard: even if you close your eyes, thoughts will go on crowding you. Those thoughts are from the outside, and the simple method which has been followed by all the great seers of the world is just to watch your thoughts, just to be a witness. Don’t condemn them, don’t justify them, don’t rationalize them. Remain aloof, remain indifferent, let them pass – they will be gone.The day your mind is absolutely silent, with no disturbance, you have taken the first step that takes you to the temple of God. The temple of God is made of your consciousness. You cannot go there with your friends, with your children, with your wife, with your parents. Everybody has to go there alone.Don’t forget the experience that has happened to you – the feeling of deep aloneness and a voice inside saying to you, “Remember: each single moment, remember that you are alone.” The day of your glory will not be far away.Osho,You shower me with love and I am so ashamed, I can't look at you sometimes. Inside I know I don't have anything to give you, and what little there is feels so inadequate. Osho, my heart is broken. Please help me.Milarepa, your question surprises me because you give so much love to me. You have given yourself to me – your music, your poetry, your dance. What can be more valuable? You have trusted me – a stranger. What more can there be that you should feel ashamed? You should rejoice because all that you had, you have given to me, without holding anything back. You have given your heart.But perhaps you don’t think that your songs, your music, your dance, your love, your trust, have any value. They certainly are the greatest value – although they don’t have any price.You are not poor. Just not to have money does not make a man poor; not to have power, not to be a president or a prime minister of a country, does not make a man poor. What makes a man poor is not to have a soul. And your soul is so full of songs, so full of dance, so full of laughter – there is no question of your feeling ashamed. You have given to me the richest gifts that anyone can give. But perhaps you have not thought of it in this way.Some of the richest people in the world are so poor inside that all their money cannot make any difference. Their money is outside, and their poverty is inside – anything from the outside cannot destroy the inner poverty. The inner poverty is destroyed only by inner values: love, compassion, silence, prayer, meditation – these are the things that make a person really rich. He may be just a beggar on the street, it does not matter, but even emperors will find themselves jealous of him. You are in a misunderstanding. Put things right.I have heard…Adolf Hitler dies and goes to heaven. He behaves so well that St. Peter tells him he can go back to earth again for a week as a treat. After twenty-four hours, he is back, hammering at the pearly gates to get in.“What is the matter, Adolf?” asked St. Peter. “You have got six more days.”“Let me in, let me in!” cries Hitler. So St. Peter unlocks the gate, lets him in and asks him, “Adolf, what is the matter? Didn’t you enjoy it?”“Enjoy it?” says Hitler. “Enjoy it? Everyone has gone mad down there since I left. I come back, and what do I find? The Jews are fighting, and the Germans are making money!”Certainly Adolf Hitler must have been shocked. His old idea, that Jews make money and Germans fight, is no longer relevant. Now Jews are giving a tough fight and Germans are making more money than anybody else in Europe.Milarepa, you also have the old idea that the man of possessions is rich, and the man who does not possess anything is poor. It is not true. The man of inner possessions is the real rich man, and the man of outer possessions is simply deceiving himself that he is rich, but deep down he knows he is a pauper.I have known the richest people, and when they expose their hearts, their eyes are full of tears – because they have all the money the world can afford, but the money cannot purchase love, the money cannot purchase peace. The money cannot purchase silence, the money cannot purchase prayer, the money cannot purchase God. So what is the use of it? Their inner being remains dark, empty.It is the inner being that counts finally, because death will take away everything else and leave you only with that which is inner. Death should be accepted as the only criterion to decide what is richness and what is poverty. That which death can take away is not richness; that which death cannot destroy is the real richness.And Milarepa, you are a rich man. You can become even richer. There is no end to it until you become enlightened, until you have reached the highest peak of the Himalayas of consciousness. That should be the goal for every human being who has any intelligence.Osho,Can you talk about the difference between so-called self-consciousness and self-awareness? Is self-consciousness a form of unawareness, or is there something of awareness in it?Self-consciousness is a disease, it is sickness. Self-awareness is health – it is wholeness. The words appear to be the same, but in fact, because language is created by unconscious people, they cannot make the fine demarcations.Self-consciousness simply means ego consciousness and self-awareness means soul consciousness. Your ego is a false entity. Because you have so much money, because you have so much power, because you are born in a very respected family, your education, your position in life – all these things constitute your ego. But your soul comes with you when you are born; it has nothing to do with anything. Whether you come from a respectable family or not, whether you are educated or uneducated – Kabir was not educated, Jesus was not educated – does not matter.It is not known whether Kabir was born from a Hindu family or a Mohammedan family. He was found on the bank of the Ganges by a sannyasin, Swami Ramananda; a small child whose parents had left him there. Perhaps he was illegitimate. But Kabir became one of the richest human beings the world has known. No family, no certainty of what religion he belonged to, no education, no riches – he remained a weaver his whole life. He would weave and go every market day into the market to sell his clothes, and that was his whole earnings; it was enough for seven days.But you cannot find a richer man – so full of bliss that each of his songs still carries something alive in it. Even after centuries have passed, the words of Kabir can echo something within you – as if Kabir were present. He has poured his heart in his words; those words are of gold.Jesus was a carpenter’s son – very poor, absolutely uneducated, had no idea about scriptures, learning, scholarship – but still he had a richness, a consciousness, so that even on the cross he did not forget to pray to God. His last words on the earth were: “Father, forgive these people who are crucifying me because they know not what they are doing; they are unconscious people.”Such compassion comes out of self-awareness. And self-awareness does not depend on anything outside you; it depends only on you. The soul is there; you have just to wake it up. It is an awakening. Avoid self-consciousness – that is sickness of the soul; and go deeper into self-awareness – that is your authentic reality.One morning a young woman got out of bed, slipped into her robe, raised the shade, uncovered the parrot, put on the coffee pot, answered the phone, and heard a masculine voice say, “Hello, honey. My ship just hit port and I am coming right over.”So the young lady took the coffee pot off the stove, covered up the parrot, pulled down the shade, took off her robe, got into bed, and heard the parrot mumble, “Christ, what a short day that was!”Man is not even that alert. You go on living like a zombie – a routine life, every day repeating the same – without ever thinking that you have not yet done the most important thing: you have not encountered yourself. You have not attained to self-awareness; you are engaged in making your ego as big as possible.But the ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable.Self-awareness is awareness of your inner world, the kingdom of God, the Garden of Eden. As you become aware of the tremendous beauty of your own being – its joy, its light, its eternal life, its richness, its overflowing love – you feel so blessed that you can bless the whole world without any discrimination.Kill the ego because it is hiding your authentic soul. And discover your soul; that will be your self-awareness. Self-awareness is the way to your kingdom, which is also the kingdom of God. It is within you. You are not to go anywhere; you have to come back home.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As I walk to discourse each morning, this thought comes before me: What have I done to deserve this blissful experience of sitting at your feet? Joyfully, sometimes tearfully, awaiting your glance upon me and then longing for the next day to dawn and bring with it yet one more opportunity of being in your presence. Osho, is this not also a type of greed?Existence is so generous, life is so bountiful that one need not deserve, need not be worthy to receive its gifts. On the contrary, one has to be absolutely humble, a nobody – receptive, available, with all the doors of the heart open, trusting – and existence showers on him flowers, like rain. The experience deepens one’s humbleness and creates a new quality in one’s being, of which one is generally not aware – that of gratefulness, gratefulness to all, gratefulness to the whole.Do we deserve life? Do we deserve love? The very idea of deserving has been implanted in us by the marketplace. What do these trees deserve? But the sun comes every day and the stars come every night, and the trees are constantly in silent meditation. They are also waiting. Waiting is not greed; waiting is simply our nature. Waiting means that our doors are open and we are ready to welcome the guest whenever he comes.A beautiful poem by Rabindranath Tagore, “The King of the Night”…There used to be a very huge temple, so huge that there were one hundred priests to worship the statues of gods in the temple. One night the chief priest dreamed, and the dream was such that it made him wake up – he could not believe it, but he could not disbelieve it either.In the dream he saw God himself saying to him, “Tomorrow is the full-moon night. Clean the whole temple, get ready – I may come any moment. For thousands of years this temple has been calling me, but the call was professional; hence it was not heard. Your call is not professional. You are the first chief priest in this temple whose heart is full of longing, full of prayer, full of waiting. You are not simply doing the rituals; your whole life is in it. So don’t forget: tomorrow I am coming and I am giving you this information in advance, so that the temple is ready to receive the guest for which it was made many, many centuries before.”It was difficult to believe that God would speak to him – he is nobody, he does not deserve it. On the contrary, he has so many weaknesses, so many frailties which every human being is prone to. But on the other hand, how to disbelieve? The dream was truer than our so-called true life.He was worried about what he was going to say to the other priests, because they will make him a laughingstock. The temple has been there for centuries and God has never come. But even if it looks awkward, embarrassing, he has to tell them, because he alone cannot clean the whole temple; it is so big, so huge.He woke up all the priests and said, “Forgive me for disturbing your sleep. I am in a dilemma: I have seen this dream.”And all the priests laughed – because priests are the only people who don’t believe in God. They know perfectly well that it is a strategy to exploit people.They said, “It was just a dream, go back to sleep.” But the chief priest could not sleep. In the morning he said, “It may have been just a dream, but who knows? If God comes and finds us unprepared, it will be such a shame. So I order you, as the chief priest, to clean the temple, to decorate the temple with flowers, with candles. Make it fragrant with incense, and let us wait. Even if it was only a dream, and God does not turn up, there is no harm. The temple needs cleaning, and it is a good opportunity.”The whole day the temple was cleaned, decorated. Delicious food was made for God, but the whole day passed and there was no sign. The chief priest was standing at the door, looking far away where the sky seems to meet the earth – the temple was in a very lonely place – but the road remained empty; nobody came.The day disappeared into night. They were all hungry because they were waiting: first God should be served. Then all the other priests said, “We had told you, a dream is just a dream. Who has ever heard of God coming to the temples? You are very naive, very simple, very innocent. Now let us eat – we are feeling hungry and tired – and go to sleep.”So they closed the doors, and ate the food that they had made for God. And because they were tired from the whole day’s cleaning and decoration and preparation, they immediately fell asleep.In the middle of the night, a golden chariot came on the road leading to the temple. The sound of the chariot coming… And the chief priest was deep down still feeling that God cannot be so deceptive, particularly to a man who has never done any harm to him. He heard the sound of the chariot. He woke up the priests, and he said, “He is coming! I have just heard the sound of the chariot, listen.”They were half asleep and they said, “Just go to sleep! You are going mad, just because of a dream. This is not a chariot, this is just the clouds making a noise, thunder.” He was alone. They silenced him.The chariot came to the door. God climbed up the long steps reaching to the temple. He knocked on the door. Again the chief priest said, “I have heard somebody knocking on the door! Perhaps God has come.”And now it was too much, annoying them in the middle of the night, utterly tired and exhausted priests. Somebody shouted at him and said, “Shut up and just go to sleep! It is nothing but the breeze hitting the doors. No God has come and no chariot has come; it has never happened.” They again silenced him.In the morning when the chief priest… He could not sleep; the waiting kept him awake, the longing kept him awake. He got up early and opened the door. “My god!” he said, “He has come” – because on the road there were signs of a chariot coming up to the door, and on the steps he could see the signs of someone reaching the door. He looked carefully: dust had gathered on the steps and there were perfect impressions of the feet. It was no one other than God, because the impressions in the dust were exactly the same as had been described in the ancient scriptures: exactly how the feet of God would make an impression.With tears in his eyes, he ran inside and made all the priests wake up. He said “You did not listen to me – it was not clouds thundering in the sky, it was the chariot of God. And it was not the wind knocking at the doors it was God himself who knocked. But now it is too late.”This beautiful poem has immense significance. God comes to every heart – because that is the temple, the only temple – and knocks on the heart. But you go on rationalizing, and your doors are closed.You are asking, “As I walk to discourse each morning, this thought comes before me: What have I done to deserve this blissful experience of sitting at your feet?” Just to be, and just to be nobody, is all that one needs to deserve. No other virtues, no other qualities, but just a simple and loving heart – a heart that is open and ready to receive the guest.“Joyfully, sometimes tearfully, awaiting your glance upon me, and then longing for the next day to dawn and bring with it yet one more opportunity of being in your presence. Osho, is this not also a type of greed?” No. Greed is violent, greed is demanding.It is simply a loving, longing, waiting. And how can one avoid the waiting and longing? The difference between greed and longing is very clear: greed is aggressive, it has to be so; it is a demand and an expectation, and then it becomes ugly. But if your heart is simply waiting, with no demand, there is no question of greed.The people who know the secret of the open heart, the secret of being nobody, are the most deserving of all that is beautiful, of all that is divine, of all that transcends our mundane existence. Nothing else is needed – just that you should be absent, a pure space, and you are ready to receive the guest. But man has believed in God in as ugly a way as possible, because his God is nothing but all his desires, all his demands. It is not a humble prayer, a humble invitation.A man is sightseeing in the mountains and is marveling at the wondrous beauty of nature. At one point he gets so absorbed in the beautiful view of the mountains that he forgets what he is doing and walks over the cliff. As he is falling, he sees a branch sticking out from the wall of the cliff. He reaches out and manages to grab the branch. As he hangs there he begins to pray, “Oh, Lord, please help me. I’m losing my strength and I can’t hold on much longer. Please God, save me.”Suddenly the heavens part and a voice comes booming down, “I am the Lord!”“Oh Lord,” cries the man, “please save me!”“I will save you,” booms the voice. “All you have to do is prove your faith in me by letting go of the branch.”The man looks down at the two-hundred-foot drop below him, thinks for a moment, then says, “Is there anybody else up there I can talk to?”Our so-called idea of God is just a means to serve us. You may not have ever thought about it, that your God is nothing but a servant. He has to do this, he has to do that. The true religious man is a servant to God; he has no demand. He has only one longing: that God may use him for his purposes. He wants to become nothing but a hollow bamboo flute, so God can sing his song through him. He simply does not want to obstruct but to remain absolutely empty, so God can make of his emptiness whatsoever he wants.This is trust. There is no value higher than trust, because trust is the purest form of love. Your tears are tears of love, and your waiting for tomorrow is just a longing of the heart – but no desire, because there is no demand.Just become more and more humble, more and more nobody, more and more spacious – because when I see you, I am not there; I have departed from myself long ago. I have allowed God to take possession of me. I have allowed him to do whatsoever he wants to do with me. I don’t know even what the next word is going to be, because it is not coming from me – it is coming only through me.Just look at my eyes; somebody else is looking through my eyes. Look at my gestures; they are not mine. Look at my signatures; they are not mine.I have lost track of myself so long ago that even if I meet myself, I don’t think I will be able to recognize him. And just being a vehicle of God, a vehicle of existence, has been such a fulfillment, such a contentment, such a benediction, that I don’t think there can be anything more, deeper, higher.I am absolutely blessed. I was also not the deserving one. I have never practiced any religion, I have never been part of any religious organization, I have never entered temples, churches, or mosques. One thing from the very beginning was clear to me: that there is no way for me to find God because I don’t know his address, I don’t know his home. In this vast universe, where am I going to find him? All that I can do is create a longing, a thirst, in every cell of my body and being, and wait. If God wants to find me, he will find me. Only he can find me; I cannot find him.And now, I can say it with absolute authority – that whenever God has happened to anybody, it was not the person’s search for God; it was simply the person’s waiting and longing. When the thirst became so much that it was impossible for God to go on hiding… This is the only quality that makes a really religious person deserving. He is a silent waiting, a silent prayer, and a peaceful spaciousness. God comes.Just don’t rationalize when he comes, that it may be the thunder of the clouds, or it may be the wind striking against the doors. Keep the doors open. Keep your eyes open, keep your heart open. He comes. He comes surely, because he has come to thousands of people in the whole history of humanity.And I don’t remember a single mystic saying, “I found God because I deserved.” The very idea of deserving is of the ego. All the mystics are agreed on the point that God found them because they cried too much, they longed too much. Their longing was heard; their tears reached God. Prayers may not reach, but tears certainly reach.Osho,Whenever my energy is overflowing, which happens very often, most of the time people give me the feeling of being too much. Then I feel guilty and the German heaviness comes back. Could you please comment?There is no possibility that the feeling of being can be too much. The being is so infinite. Your being is not your being, your being is the being of the whole universe. So your feeling of it is always too little; it can never be too much.Can you love too much? Can you be blissful too much? Can your ecstasy be too much? Those words – love, ecstasy, blissfulness – are just aspects of your being, and it has many more aspects to it.You cannot feel it too much; that is a misunderstanding. You say, “Whenever my energy is overflowing, which happens very often, most of the time people give me the feeling of being too much.” Who are the people? Perhaps it appears to them too much because they have not even experienced as much as you are experiencing.You must have heard the old parable…A frog from the ocean was on a religious pilgrimage. On the way he came near a well – he was feeling thirsty. He looked inside the well; there was another frog inside. He said, “I am very thirsty, can I come in?”He was allowed. The frog in the well asked the stranger, “From where are you coming?”The stranger said, “It will be very difficult for you to conceive from where I am coming.”The frog of the well laughed, and he said, “You have some nerve. Is your place bigger than this well?” He hopped across one third of the well and he asked, “Is your place this much?”The frog from the ocean was in immense difficulty – what to say to this poor frog? He said, “No, it is bigger.”He jumped two thirds and asked, “This much?”The frog from the ocean said, “Forgive me, it is very big.”The frog of the well jumped across the whole well, from one side to the other side, and he asked, “What do you say now? Is it still bigger?”The stranger said, “I am sorry to offend you, but your well cannot be a means of measuring the place from where I am coming. It is too big.”And the frog who had never left his well laughed and said, “You seem to be mad! Just get out of here. I have seen many frogs, but I have never seen such a mad one. They come to the well – and I am always happy to have a visitor, just to have news about the world. I have been so generous to you, and you are behaving so uncourteously.”The stranger said, “Forgive me, perhaps I am mad. But I invite you to my place, because that is the only way you can be convinced. Unless you see the ocean, you cannot believe… And I can understand why you are annoyed with me and thinking that I am mad. I must look mad to you; I can think of myself in your place.”So the people you must be meeting don’t have energy as such. Or maybe they have their energy at the minimum, so when you start overflowing with energy, they start feeling afraid. And their saying to you that you are sometimes “too much” is a condemnation. They are annoyed with you; you have touched their weakest point. They are living just as survival, and my people are making every effort to live at the maximum. Why live at the minimum? When life gives you the opportunity to live at the maximum, then sing and dance with total abandon.Still, I say to you: whatever you do, it is never “the feeling of being too much.” That is simply not possible. Your well can become bigger and bigger and bigger, but still, it can never become the ocean. And unless you become oceanic, you don’t know what it means to be too much.But the problem is, the moment you become oceanic, you are no more – only pure energy, vibrating all over the existence. As long as you are, you are always falling short of your maximum. At the maximum, you disappear. Then it is only a pure dance of energy. This pure dance of energy brings all your potentialities to their fullest expression. Only then can you say the spring has come, because you are blossoming in every dimension of your being.So don’t be bothered by the people who say that your energy, your being, your feeling is too much. It is comparative. Just tell them, “You are poor, you are living at the survival level. You have not known love and you have not known dance and you have not known celebration. You have not known life as such; you are simply vegetating, from cradle to grave, just dragging yourself somehow.”A teacher, standing in front of her class, asks, “Children, what part of the human anatomy expands twelve times when it is directly stimulated?”Little Susie, in the front row, starts giggling and laughing, trying to cover her mouth with her hand. In the back row, Johnny raises his hand. The teacher says, “Yes, Johnny?”Johnny stands up and says, “Teacher, the iris of the human eye expands twelve times when it is directly stimulated by light.”The teacher says, “Very good, Johnny. That is the correct answer. And Susie, you have a very dirty little mind, and when you grow up you are going to be very disappointed.”Osho,Eight years ago I saw you on TV. There was a report about the Pune ashram. I saw you doing the energy darshan, putting your finger on to the third eye of some people, causing them to fall down. At that moment I recognized you. It took me six years to sit in front of you. The first time you looked at me, I fell down, and there was a flash in my brain. Now, sitting in front of you, closing my eyes, I see a big, black spot. Inside this black spot there is a white one. This white spot comes nearer and nearer, whirling in a circle. But just before the black spot disappears totally, I open my eyes. Please say something about what is going on.Deva Jagat, what happened to you was tremendously significant, rare and unique. It is one of the contributions of the East to the world: the understanding that between these two eyes, there is a third eye inside which normally remains dormant. One has to work hard, bringing all the sexual energy upward, against gravitation, and when the energy reaches the third eye, it opens. Many methods have been tried to do that because when it opens there is suddenly a flash of light and things which have never been clear to you suddenly become clear.For example, yoga has tried shirshasana, the headstand, standing on your head. The basic purpose was to use gravitation to bring your energy to the third eye. Perhaps even the so-called yoga teachers of today are not aware of it, because it is not written in any scripture. It was given as one of the secrets from the master to the disciple, whispered in his ear.There have been other methods. When I emphasize watching, witnessing… That is the finest method to bring the third eye into action, because that watching is inside. These two eyes cannot be used, they can only look outward. They have to be closed. And when you try to watch inside, that certainly means there is something like an eye which sees. Who sees your thoughts? Not these eyes. Who sees that anger is arising in you? That place of seeing is called symbolically “the third eye.”Witnessing is the most refined method, because depending on the gravitation of the earth can prove dangerous. If the energy comes flowing too much, as a flood, it can destroy the very small nerves in your brain. They are so delicate that even to imagine their delicacy is difficult. In your small skull there are millions of nerves, not visible to the eyes, and they are so delicate, so sensitive that if a flood of energy comes many of them will be washed away, broken.One day science is going to enter this field. They have already begun work to discover why animals have not developed the brain. The reason is that the animal’s body is horizontal to the earth, so the animal’s energy flows all over his body in the same proportion. Those delicate brain cells cannot evolve.It was all due to man standing on his two feet; his brain is not so affected by gravitation, and very little energy reaches there. That became the opportunity for delicate cells to improve. And you can see it in your so-called yogis: you will never find a very sharp, intelligent man. They may be able to do many distortions of the body, but you will not see in their faces the aura of intelligence. They have not contributed to human consciousness in any way.What has happened to them? They themselves are not aware. Each person has to find the right time, how long he can stand on his head without destroying his brain system. According to my findings, three seconds is more than enough. Less will be better – just a little rush and you are back on your feet. Just a little rush will nourish your brain, will not destroy the delicate structure and will help to open your third eye.But it is dangerous. You know perfectly well: in the night when you go to sleep you need a pillow. Have you ever thought why? It is a protection for your brain, because if you lie down without a pillow, the energy flow will be horizontal, like the animals, and in eight hours of sleeping it can destroy your brain system completely. Even three seconds can be too much; it depends on how delicate a system you have. The idiot can stand on his head for three hours and nothing will happen, because there is nothing to destroy.The more intelligent you are, the less time is needed. For a genius it is very dangerous to stand on the head, even for a single second. That’s why I say I don’t use that method. Witnessing is the best: you close your eyes and you start watching. In that very watching, your third eye starts opening.I used to touch people’s third eyes with my fingers, but I had to stop it for the simple reason that I became aware that stimulating the third eye from the outside is good if the person continues to meditate, continues to watch – then the first experience coming from the outside will soon become his inside experience. But such is the stupidity of man that when I can stimulate your third eye, you stop meditating. You rather start asking more and more for energy meetings with me, because you have not to do anything.I also became aware that for different people, a different kind and different quantity of energy is needed from the outside – which is very difficult to decide. Sometimes somebody falls completely into a coma; the shock is too much. And sometimes the man is so retarded that nothing happens.Because you had seen on TV that by touching them with my finger on the third eye, people were going into some inner space, for these six years you must have been thinking to know that inner space yourself. So when you came here and I saw you for the first time, the experience happened without my even touching your third eye. You were almost ready, just on the verge of it.To see you is also a way of touching you. It is a remote way of touching. Psychologists have found through many, many experiments that if you look at someone for three seconds it is not offensive. It is casual – you are passing on the road, you look at someone. But more than three seconds and it becomes offensive because your eyes start – without your knowing, and without the knowledge of the other – stimulating his third eye. And if he has no idea of it, it feels as if something crazy is going on.In Hindi, words are very significant because they have been coined very consciously. In Hindi, the eyes are called lochan and the man who looks at somebody for more than three seconds is called luchcha – that is from lochan. A man who looks at a thing critically is called alochak; that is also from the same root, lochan. So it may have just been a coincidence: for six years it was lying like a seed in your unconscious, and when you came here and I looked at you, suddenly there was a flash and you fell down. But it is a tremendously fortunate state; it means your third eye can function very easily.Just try to watch with your eyes closed, and the third eye will become more and more active. And the experiences of the third eye are the door to higher spirituality. The third eye is the sixth center, the seventh is the highest. Six is very close to the highest center of your experience; it prepares the ground for the seventh. At the seventh center you become not only a flash of light, but just light itself. That’s why the person who reaches the seventh center… His experience we call “enlightenment.” His whole being becomes just pure light, with no fuel – because any light that needs fuel cannot be immortal. There is no fuel; hence the light has an eternity. It is the experience of your very being and the being of the universe.The second thing you say: “Now sitting in front of you, closing my eyes I see a big, black spot. Inside this black spot there is a white one. This white spot comes nearer and nearer, whirling in a circle, but just before the black spot disappears totally, I open my eyes.” Why do you do that? Are you asking me, or should I ask you? That is the point when you should not open your eyes.But sometimes it happens in spite of you. I have told my people to meditate with a blindfold on your eyes, so when in spite of you, your eyes want to open, they cannot open. Let the black spot disappear completely, and you would have moved into a new consciousness, into a fresh space.Deva Jagat, everything is going perfectly good, only you should not open your eyes. Perhaps you become afraid: “My god, all darkness is disappearing! Just let me see, by opening the eyes, what is happening.” But by opening the eyes, you destroy the whole experience. That is the moment to resist the temptation of knowing what is happening. Let it happen, because you will know only when it has happened.And once you have known the black spot disappearing… That black spot is you and that white spot is your consciousness. The black spot is your ego, and the white spot is your being. Allow the being to spread and let the ego disappear.Just a little courage; it may look like death, because you have been identified with the black spot and it is disappearing. And you have never been identified with the white spot, so something unfamiliar, unknown, is taking possession of you. These are the reasons why you open your eyes. Don’t open your eyes.Your mind may give any rationalization – don’t listen to the mind. When you have come to me, give me a chance; listen to what I am saying to you. If your mind comes in between, put it aside. Your mind is your misery, your mind is your bondage.An old retired Jewish widow is strolling on the beach in Miami when she suddenly spies an old Jewish man lying alone in the sun. Excitedly she trots over in his direction, stops in front of him and says, “I have never seen you around here before. What is your name?”“Max,” he replies, “and you don’t see me because I’m rarely around anywhere!”“Why, what do you mean?” asks the widow.“Because I just got out of jail – that’s what I mean!” he replies. “I was in for a year.”“Jail!” The old widow steps back a pace and surveys him critically. “What did you go to jail for?”“Oh, just petty theft,” the old man says, and shrugs.“Ah, I see.” The woman takes a step back to him. “That’s a small crime, no big deal. All the same, you should be ashamed.”“Not nearly as ashamed as I was when I got the ten-year jail sentence,” the old man sighs.“Ten years!” the widow, in alarm, stumbles back a few more paces. “God! What did you do to get ten years?”“Oh, just armed robbery.” The old man shrugs and rolls over on his beach towel.“Armed robbery! That is serious. I hope to God you are sorry for such a thing,” the widow scolds him, while at the same time returning a little closer to get a better look at him.“I was sorry all right – I’d just finished twenty years in the slammer when I picked up that sentence. I had hardly seen the light of day!” The old man sighs heavily in remembrance.“Twenty years! What kind of man are you?” The widow, panicking, leaps several yards away from him, ready to run. “What on earth did you do to get twenty years in jail?”“I murdered my wife,” the old man replies.“You are single?” she says, as she unrolls her beach towel beside him.Just a little courage. The moment you see the black disappearing completely, just a little courage. Keep your eyes closed, and it may bring you a great transformation that comes to people after lives of effort. That it is coming to you so easily can mean only one thing: in your past lives you must have worked. But the work has remained incomplete.This time, don’t leave it incomplete. Let this life be your last life in the body. When the whole universe can become our body, why should we be confined to the small body? It is imprisonment.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,This morning, again you came to me and I wonder: I know how the sun touches me, how your face enters my eyes, your voice my ears. I know those five doors to the world. But I wonder what this sixth sense is that feels you. What door do you pass to reach me so deeply, and why is it always in the morning that you touch me the most? Is openness related to the rhythm of the day? Would you please speak on senses and openness?We are part of a tremendously huge, organic unity of existence. Everything in us is related to the grass, to the trees, to the stars. Nothing is unrelated. The sunrise is not only something that happens outside – something happens within you too. As the sun rises, there is a rhythmic awareness all over the planet: the trees wake up, the flowers blossom, the lotuses open their petals, the birds suddenly start singing. Something within you also starts awakening.The night is over: a part of your consciousness which was asleep again becomes awake, fresh, rejuvenated, cleaner, younger after the rest. Hence, it is easy in the morning to be open and to be available. It is a little more difficult in the evening. As the night deepens, it becomes more and more difficult. Most children are born in the morning, just before sunrise or just after sunrise.But once you become capable of being open and available and receptive, it is not impossible to be receptive in the evening or even in the middle of the night. It is because of this that Sufis have chosen the middle of the night as the time for meditation, because if you can meditate in the middle of the night then the whole day, any time, morning, afternoon, evening, will become very easy. They start from the hardest point.It takes a little longer but their arithmetic is correct: the person who can meditate in the middle of the night when the whole existence is falling deep into sleep… And he remains awake, just like an island in the ocean. In the beginning it may be difficult, but later on he will find it is immensely rewarding because then at any time, any hour, meditation is absolutely simple.But most of the religions have chosen the morning – just before sunrise is the best time because the whole of nature is supporting you. You are not in any conflict with existence. The whole of nature is awakening, and you can simply flow with its awakening energy. Except the Sufis, all the religions have chosen the morning to begin with. That too is correct. Why not begin from the simplest and then slowly, move toward the harder?So you are right: “It always happens in the morning that you touch me the most.” I am touching you all the time. It is just that in the morning you feel me the most.The sun may have risen but if you keep your doors closed, for you it is still night. It may be that the whole world is full of light, but you can keep your eyes closed and remain in darkness. So remember, everything depends on you. I am available twenty-four hours a day, exactly the same.You are saying, “This morning again you came to me and I wonder: I know how the sun touches me, how your face enters my eyes, your voice my ears. I know those five doors to the world but I wonder what this sixth sense is that feels you. What door do you pass to reach me so deeply?”In fact, in the East, we have always thought about the sixth sense. There are five senses to go out of yourself, to go to the world, to the objective reality around you. And the sixth sense, which has been called in other words the third eye, is to go inward. If you feel me deeply, it means your third eye receives me – that is the door about which you are wondering. It is exactly between the two eyebrows and has been known for at least ten thousand years in the East.You will be surprised… And the Indians will be shocked: we have used a red mark on the third eye center for the women when they are married – nobody has ever bothered why. And that red mark that is used for a married woman is removed if she becomes a widow. The red mark is to prevent the woman from coming in contact with the divine. Her God is her husband. And if she comes in contact with the divine, then her husband is almost meaningless. Man has used every kind of strategy against women. He has used even spiritual discoveries to enslave the woman.The red color is significant. The psychology of color and the science of color is that whichever color you see – if you see something red, then one thing is certain, that that thing is not red; it appears red. The sun rays have all the seven colors of the rainbow, and when the sun rays fall on anything, if all the rays are absorbed then you see the thing as black. If all the rays are reflected back, nothing is absorbed, then you see the thing as white. It is because of this that black has some connotation with the Devil, with death, and white has become symbolic of renunciation, of simplicity, of purity.If the red ray is reflected back, is not absorbed, the other rays are absorbed and only the red is not absorbed, then you see the thing as red. If blue is not absorbed then you see the thing as blue because the returned ray falls on your eye and makes the thing appear of a particular color.Why has the red mark been used for women? It is a simple science: because the red ray is the most powerful in awakening that which is asleep. It is the most powerful ray; it hits deeply and wakes the dormant energy. It can open the third eye. Using a red mark on the third eye is preventing the red ray, so the woman remains unrelated to the divine. This door to the beyond is closed.This is sheer male chauvinism. The moment a woman becomes a widow, immediately the first thing to be removed is her red mark because now the fear is that the woman should not come in contact with another man. And the best way to prevent her is to bring her in contact with godliness because then there will be no interest for the lower kinds of love relationship; she will know the higher quality of love, prayer, trust. The widow in India is not allowed to use any other color of clothes – only white, as a symbol that she has renounced the world. Although living, she is no longer part of life.When the master initiates the disciple, he touches the disciple’s third eye with his fingers. The fingers are the most significant parts as far as energy is concerned, because energy cannot move from anything that is round – for example, energy cannot move out of your head. In the whole body, energy can move either through the toes of the feet or through the fingers of the hand. Energy needs finger-like, pointed instruments to move out.The disciple touches the master’s feet – that is one of the places where the master’s energy is available. And the master touches, with his hand, the disciple’s head. In this way, the bioenergy of the master and the disciple becomes a circle. And this circle has a tremendous feeling of blissfulness, of sweetness; of love that is not biological, that is spiritual.The West has missed it completely. Now it is recognized, at least by Western science, that human energy is also a special kind of electricity. It is bioelectricity; its specialty is that the electricity you see outside is material, and the electricity that moves in your body is spiritual. It is alive, it is a living energy; hence they have given it a name: bioelectricity, living electricity.It is your third eye. And the morning is the most potential time for it to be receptive. You should be more alert now when it happens. Close both your eyes so that no energy moves out, and the whole energy becomes available to the third eye. And when it is happening, allow it without any fear because it cannot do any harm to you. It has never done any harm to anyone, ever.If you give your whole support, the third eye can make you related with the whole existence. Your center of being will come, for the first time, in touch with the center of the universe. It is a great ecstatic experience.At first it will happen only in the morning. Then slowly, slowly, as you become accustomed to it, it may happen at other times. But whenever it happens, allow it without any reluctance, without any resistance, because just a little fear and the door will be closed. Be loving and be trusting and the door will remain open.And you have to bring this experience to the middle of the night. When you reach the same experience in the middle of the night as happens in the morning, you have conquered almost a new world, a new space. Now twenty-four hours a day, you will remain available to that which is beyond you.A subtle current of freshness, of music, of dance, will go on moving within you. A joy will pervade your twenty-four hours. Even in sleep it will be there. You will go to sleep full of joy and you will wake up with the same fullness of joy.A simple secret has to be remembered: your last thought in the night when you go to sleep is always your first thought in the morning when you wake up. You can watch it and you will be surprised. Why is it so? You have been asleep for six hours, seven hours, or eight hours. The last thought, whatever it was, the last mood, the last feeling is always going to be the first feeling in the morning. You may be asleep, but that which you have left when you fell asleep remains standing at your door. When you wake up, that visitor is still there; it has not gone.It is because of this that many religions have chosen a time for prayer just before you are going to fall asleep. If you can fall asleep with a prayerful mood – peaceful, silent – that mood will pervade your night. Your whole night will become prayerful. If you fall asleep meditating, your whole night becomes a meditation.People have been telling me that they don’t have any time to meditate. Whenever anybody has told me that, I have suggested to him, “You can meditate at least eight hours every day.” And he will look at me shocked: “What are you saying, eight hours? I don’t even have eight minutes.” And I have to explain to him, “I don’t mean in the day: start your meditation when you go into your bed and, meditating, slowly, slowly fall asleep. But meditation should be the last thing when you drown in sleep. Then in the morning, the first thing you will remember will be a deep meditative state.” And to remain eight hours in meditation is of tremendous importance. It will transform your whole life.The pope and a famous Jewish rabbi die and come to the Pearly Gates at the same time. Saint Peter greets them, hands the pope a ticket, and sends him to stand in line for a motel room.With the pope watching in astonishment, Saint Peter then escorts the Jewish rabbi to a waiting chauffeur-driven limousine which drives the man to an exclusive luxury villa.After a few days, the pope can’t take it anymore and goes to Saint Peter to complain. “Hey, Pete. I have been your faithful, celibate servant all my life. I finally get to heaven and you send me to a queue for a motel room which I end up having to share with Mother Teresa. But you send this crooked Jewish rabbi in a limousine, to a villa with air-conditioning, beautiful young girls serving him all day. How come?”“Look, Polack,” says Peter. “You don’t understand. We have never had a Jewish rabbi here before. This is for the first time; that’s why he’s being given a special welcome.”Heaven is so close by that you can step into it right now. But very few people will ever be able to make it, for the simple reason they don’t know the door. All the religions that have developed outside India have no idea of the third eye. In their scriptures there is not a single mention. And without the third eye opening, your doors to paradise are closed – because the paradise is in your very being. You can be very learned, a great rabbi; you can be a pope, very respected. Millions follow you. But you don’t know that exactly the paradise you have been seeking is not outside you. It is something within you.My effort here is to knock on your third eye. It is just knocking on the right door, and once you become aware that this is the door from where you can get connected with the whole – or you can call it “God” – but with the doors closed God may be standing at your door and still you will not be connected.I have my own ways of how to go on knocking on your third eye; I have my own subtle ways. And it is a very accurate observation on your part, Atit Parampara. What door am I using to enter you? You say, “I know how the sun touches me, how your face enters my eyes, your voice, my ears. I know those five doors to the world but I wonder what this sixth sense is that feels you?”It is just between your two eyebrows. Next time when you feel me touching you, watch carefully: you will feel something opening between your two eyes – a sensation that goes on deepening inward and finally reaches to your very being.Once this door starts opening again and again, from the same door many other things will start entering you. You have seen the rose with your outer eyes but you have not seen it from the door of your third eye. From your third eye, the rose is psychedelic; it has rays all around you, it radiates. It is so alive that you cannot think that you have ever seen it before.The green of the trees becomes so much greener that one is simply surprised at everything, feels full of wonder all around. Ordinary colored stones on the sea beach look like diamonds and rubies and emeralds because they are all radiating; it is just that we have to see them from the right sense.The sixth sense is the sense which has made man aware of the existence of godliness in the world. And that is the only sense which makes a disciple graduate into a devotee. That is the sense which allows the master to enter the innermost core of the disciple; that is the center which makes the master and the devotee one soul between two bodies. And that is the center which makes you finally aware that your being and the being of existence are not separate – they are one. You have come back home.Osho,Lately, I have begun to realize how even my lover is a stranger to me. Still, there is an intense longing to overcome the separation between us. It almost feels as if we are lines running parallel to each other but destined never to meet. Beloved Osho, is the world of consciousness like the world of geometry – or is there a chance that parallels can meet?It is one of the great miseries that every lover has to face: there is no way for lovers to drop their strangeness, unfamiliarity, separation. In fact, the whole functioning of love is that lovers should be polar opposites. The farther away they are, the more attractive. Their separation is their attraction. They come close, they come very close, but they never become one. They come so close that it almost feels like just one step more and they will become one. But that step has never been taken, cannot be taken out of sheer necessity, out of a natural law.On the contrary, when they are very close, immediately they start separating again, going farther away. Because when they are very close, their attraction is lost; they start fighting, nagging, being bitchy. These are ways to create the distance again. And as the distance is there, immediately they start feeling attracted. So this goes on like a rhythm: coming closer, going away; coming closer, going away. There is a longing to be one – but on the level of biology, on the level of the body, becoming one is not possible. Even while making love you are not one; the separation on the physical level is inevitable.You say, “Lately, I have begun to realize how even my lover is a stranger to me.” This is good. This is part of a growing understanding. Only childish people think that they know each other. You don’t know even yourself, how can you conceive that you know your lover?Neither the lover knows himself nor do you know yourself. Two unknown beings, two strangers who don’t know anything about themselves, are trying to know each other – it is an exercise in futility. It is bound to be a frustration, a failure. That’s why all lovers are angry at each other. They think perhaps the other is not allowing an entry into his private world: “He is keeping me separate, he is keeping me a little far away.” And both go on thinking in the same way. But it is not true, all complaints are false. It is simply that they don’t understand the law of nature.On the level of body, you can come close but you cannot become one. Only on the level of the heart can you become one – but only momentarily, not permanently. At the level of being, you are one. There is no need to become one; it has only to be discovered.You say, “Still there is an intense longing to overcome the separation between us.” If you go on trying on the physical level, you will go on failing. The longing simply shows that love needs to go beyond the body, that love wants something higher than the body, something greater than the body, something deeper than the body.Even the heart-to-heart meeting – although sweet, although immensely joyful – is still insufficient because it happens only for a moment and then again strangers are strangers. Unless you discover the world of being, you will not be able to fulfill your longing of becoming one. And the strange fact is: the day you become one with your lover, you will become one with the whole of existence too.You say, “It almost feels as if we are lines running parallel to each other but destined never to meet.” Perhaps you don’t know non-Euclidean geometry because it is still not taught in our educational institutes. We are still taught Euclidean geometry in the universities, which is two thousand years old.In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines never meet. But it has been found that if you go on and on and on they meet because the latest finding is that there are no parallel lines; that’s why they meet. You cannot create two parallel lines.New findings are very strange: you cannot even create a line, a straight line, because the earth is round – if you create a straight line here, if you go on drawing it from both ends and go on and go on, finally you will find it has become a circle. And if a straight line drawn to the ultimate becomes a circle, it was not a straight line in the first place; it was only part of a very big circle, and a part of a big circle is an arc, not a line. Lines have disappeared in the new, non-Euclidean geometry and when there are no lines, what to say about parallel lines? There are no parallel lines, either.So if it were a question of parallel lines, there is a chance that lovers could meet somewhere – perhaps in old age when they cannot fight, they don’t have any energy left; or they have become so accustomed… What is the point? They have had the same arguments, they have been having the same problems, the same conflicts; they are bored of each other.In the long run, lovers stop even speaking to each other. What is the point? Because to start speaking means to start an argument, and it is the same argument; it is not going to change. They have argued it so many times and it comes to the same end. But even then, parallel lines as far as lovers are concerned… In geometry they may start meeting, but in love there is no hope; they cannot meet.And it is good that they cannot meet because if lovers could satisfy their longing of becoming one at the level of physical body, they would never look upward. They would never try to find that there was much more hidden in the physical body – the consciousness, the soul, the godliness.It is good that love fails because the failure of love is bound to take you on a new pilgrimage. The longing will haunt you until it brings you to the temple where the meeting happens – but the meeting always happens with the whole. In which your lover will be, but in which the trees will also be, and the rivers and the mountains and the stars. In that meeting, only two things will not be there: your ego will not be there, and your lover’s ego will not be there. Other than these two things, the whole of existence will be there. And these two egos were really the problem that was making them two parallel lines.It is not love that is creating the trouble, it is the ego. But the longing will not be satisfied. Birth after birth, life after life, the longing will remain there unless you discover the right door to go beyond the body and to enter the temple.An old couple of ninety-three and ninety-five go to their lawyer and say that they want a divorce. “A divorce!” exclaims the lawyer. “At your age? But surely you need each other more than ever now, and anyway, you have been married so long, what is the point?”“Well,” says the husband, “We have been wanting a divorce for years now but we thought we would wait until the children are dead.” They really waited! And all the children are dead; now there is no problem, they can have the divorce – still no meeting, but divorce.Just keep your longing burning, aflame; don’t lose heart. Your longing is the seed of your spirituality. Your longing is the beginning of the ultimate union with existence. Your lover is just an excuse.Don’t be sad but be happy. Rejoice that there is no possibility of meeting on the physical level. Otherwise, lovers will not have any way of transformation. They will get stuck with each other, they will destroy each other. And there is no harm in loving a stranger. In fact, it is more exciting to love a stranger.When you were not together, there was great attraction. The more you have been together, the more the attraction has become dull. The more you have become known to each other, superficially, the less is the excitement. Life becomes very soon a routine.People go on repeating the same thing, again and again. If you look at the faces of people in the world, you will be surprised: Why do all these people look so sad? Why do their eyes look as if they have lost all hope? The reason is simple; the reason is repetition. Man is intelligent; repetition creates boredom. Boredom brings sadness because one knows what is going to happen tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. Until one goes into the grave, it will be the same, the same story.A Jewish man and a Polack are sitting in a bar watching the news on television. On the news, they are showing a woman standing on a ledge, threatening to jump. The Jewish man says to the Polack, “I will tell you what. I will make a bet with you: if she jumps, I get twenty dollars. If she does not, you get twenty dollars. Okay?”“Fair enough,” says the Polack.A few minutes later the woman jumps off the ledge and kills herself. The Pole gets out his wallet and hands twenty dollars to the Jewish guy.A few minutes later the Jewish guy turns to the Polack and says, “Look, here I can’t take this twenty dollars from you. I have a confession to make: I saw this on the news earlier this afternoon. This was a repeat.”“No, no,” says the Polack, “You keep the money, you won it fair and square. You see, I saw this on TV earlier in the day, too.”“You did?” says the Jewish guy. “Well, then why did you bet that the woman would not jump?”“Well,” says the Polack. “I didn’t think she would be stupid enough to do it twice!”But life is such… This sadness in the world, this boredom and this misery can be changed if people know that they are asking for the impossible. Don’t ask for the impossible.Find the law of existence and follow it. Your longing to be one is your spiritual desire, is your very essential religious nature. It is just that you are focusing yourself on the wrong spot. Your lover is only an excuse. Let your lover be just an experience of a greater love – the love for the whole existence.Let your longing be a search of your own inner being because there the meeting is already happening; there, we are already one; there, nobody has ever separated. The longing is perfectly right; just the object of longing is not right. That is creating the suffering and the hell. Just change the object and your life becomes a paradise.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As another of your communes takes off the ground, I strongly develop symptoms of a misfit. India, and even a commune, just does not seem to be the place where I feel comfortable. Is there such a state as “doing your own thing, content and full of gratitude” that is not just an ego trip?Prem Leeladhar, I myself am a misfit. And this place here has gone far beyond being a commune. The commune was an alternative society. But it has its own organization, its own rules, regulations. Seeing that for misfits it will be difficult to be part of even a commune, I have dropped the idea of a commune too.Here, now only individuals are living together. Nobody here is expected to be a permanent resident; whenever he feels, he can be here and whenever he feels, he can move. We are trying to give every misfit all the space that is possible. One of my sannyasins – Veeresh, in Europe – is creating “Misfit Cities.”I think you have carried the idea from the American commune. It must have been difficult for you there, because whenever thousands of people live together, they have to follow certain rules. Otherwise it will become impossible to live. Here there is no permanent residentship. As long as you feel good, be here. The moment you feel uncomfortable, the whole world is available to you; wherever you want, you can go and be comfortable. But I want to remind you: if you cannot feel comfortable here, you cannot feel comfortable anywhere else either.I will read your question. “As another of your communes takes off the ground…” That is not right. No commune is taking off the ground. I have tried hard and found it impossible. If the commune has to exist, the individual has to compromise. That’s absolutely natural and necessary. And I am so much in favor of the misfit people, that rather than dropping the misfits, I have dropped the idea of the commune itself. Now there are only misfit people here.The misfit people obviously understand each other’s needs. The need is just to be yourself, and doing your own thing. That’s why we are not developing any kind of productive activity here. Neither roads have to be made, nor houses have to be built. Because if you have to make roads and you have to build houses and you have to farm, and you have to have milk products of your own, then naturally a certain organization becomes necessary.Leeladhar is a plastic surgeon. Here we are not going to have even a medical center. There was a medical center in the old days before the American commune happened, but that needs organization.Now I want this place just to be a paradise – a holiday resort where you can relax, have a massage. Soon there will be swimming pools, larger gardens, and lawns. You can play on your instruments whenever you want, at whatever time you want. You can do your own thing. Just remember that your thing should not be an interference in somebody else’s life structure, because he also wants to be independent, just as you want. That is the only agreement: everybody is free to the limit that he does not interfere with anybody else. This much of a limit is absolutely necessary.Just think – you are sleeping and a few misfits come and start doing Dynamic Meditation in your room. They are doing their thing; they are not telling you to do the Dynamic Meditation. And by the time they have left, other misfits come and start playing on their musical instruments. Nobody is bothering you; you can go on sleeping or whatever you want to do! So this line has to be remembered.Otherwise there is no interference at all. I have dropped work completely – unless you want to do it, unless it is your thing. In the commune, work was absolutely necessary to survive. Here, you come whenever you can manage financially, for as long as you can manage to live here, but there is no question of any work being imposed on you. You can choose if you want to do something or you simply want to rest, swim, do a few groups, meditate – or not to do any group, not to do any meditation, just to be.You say, “I strongly develop symptoms of a misfit.” Again you are wrong: Leeladhar, you are a born misfit. It is not something that you are developing. I know you perfectly well. It was I who was forcing you to remain in the hospital unit in the commune, in spite of yourself. Because I wanted you to remain in the unit, you remained – but you are a misfit.The misfit has to accept one thing: that he will not be respected by the ordinary society. He will not get recommendations and honors and awards for being a misfit. I am certainly thinking to create an award, a world award each year, to be given to the greatest misfit in the world. And Leeladhar, your name is the first on my list.But the discomfort is not coming from the outside, because outside I don’t see that you are expected to do something. You are feeling uncomfortable as an inner tension; you don’t want to be a misfit, and you are. You have not accepted your misfitness with total love and joy. There is nothing wrong in it; the society needs a few misfit people. They are the people who carry the torch of freedom and consciousness from generation to generation.Do you think Gautam Buddha was not a misfit? Or Mahavira was not a misfit? The son of a king goes naked – his father was ashamed, his family was ashamed. They were willing… “You can renounce the world, but what is the need to go naked?” But Mahavira never felt uncomfortable; he accepted himself as he was.The misfitness does not come alone; it will bring disrespect from people. You have to accept it. The society is made by the people who are square, absolutely “fit” people. Any misfit is a disturbance. The society creates in every child the idea: never be a misfit, otherwise you will be dishonored, disrespected, rejected. Those ideas are still in your mind.Misfitness is your nature, and the discomfort is arising because the ideas that society gives to everybody, it has given to you too. You are not together; there is a split. Deep down you don’t want to be a misfit. I would like to suggest: drop those ideas. All respectability, all honor, is meaningless if it drives you against your nature. What can you do if you are not a lotus flower, but just a marigold? – enjoy being a marigold!Existence has no disrespect for misfit people. The sun makes no difference, the moon does not discriminate; the whole of existence accepts you as you are. But deep down within you there is a rejection, so you are in a split, in a dilemma. With this dilemma, wherever you go you will feel uncomfortable – more uncomfortable than you are feeling here, because here nobody is interested in condemning, in judging. Nobody will say, “Leeladhar, you are not what you should be.” There is no “should” here.In the American commune, you were not willing to remain a plastic surgeon. Now is the chance – nobody is telling you to be a plastic surgeon; even if you want to be, nobody is interested in plastic surgery here. If somebody’s nose is a little long, nobody objects. Or a little smaller. A nose is just functional. With the long nose or the small nose, if breathing is going well, there is no problem. Here nobody is interested in changing from a man into a woman, or from woman into a man. This is not a commune; this is simply a gathering of all kinds of misfit people who cannot fit anywhere else. Here they can celebrate their misfitness without losing respect and honor and dignity.You say, “India, and even a commune, just does not seem to be the place where I feel comfortable.” India is the oldest country which has allowed all kinds of misfit people. It is unbelievable that Indian society down the ages has never crucified a Jesus; there have been many who were claiming “Aham brahmasmi – I am God” and nobody has objected. Jesus was only saying “I am the only begotten son of God.” If they are enjoying and feeling blissful, they are not doing any harm to anybody.Gautam Buddha did not believe in God. Mahavira absolutely rejected the very idea of God. But they were not crucified – they were loved as they were. Even before them, a long passage of ten thousand years…You will find all kinds of people. Somebody is standing on his head; nobody even takes any note of it, nobody says that they are mad or something. Somebody has been standing for years, has been sleeping standing, with the support of a wooden structure – he is keeping his hands on the structure and fast asleep – and people always give the freedom: if he decides to be this way, this is his business. It is between him and God; who we are to interfere?I have seen a man who has been standing for so many years that the upper side of his body has become thin, and all the blood has gone into the legs. In medical science it is called elephantiasis; it is a certain disease. Now even if he wants to sit, he cannot sit. His legs are so thick, and they have lost the quality of elasticity; they have become almost solid. But nobody condemns him. On the contrary, people bring sweets to him, somebody brings flowers. Poor fellow is doing something great, suffering too much, unnecessarily. But if it is natural to him, then it is perfectly okay.No Socrates was ever poisoned in India, and India has known more Socrateses than any other country – thousands of them, of the same caliber, with the same logic; sometimes even a more subtle logic, very destructive to people’s prejudices. But people have enjoyed them. Whether you agree with them or not, that’s one thing, but you have to appreciate their sharpness, their intelligence.I am reminded of Ramakrishna. He was uneducated, and you will not find another misfit like him. Yet this country has accepted him as one of the incarnations of God.When he was nine years old he had an experience of deep meditation. He was not looking for it. He was just a boy coming back from the field to his home, and on the way there was a lake, a beautiful lake. It was sunset time and there were black clouds in the sky. The rains were just about to come. And as he came by the side of the lake, a line of white cranes, who must have been sitting on the bank of the lake, were disturbed by his coming. They flew across the black clouds.The white crane is snow white, and twelve or fifteen cranes in a line, moving across the black clouds… And the sunset on the lake, spreading gold all over: the beauty of the moment was such that Ramakrishna could not contain it; he fell into unconsciousness. It was too much for his conscious mind, just to say “It is beautiful” and go home.When he did not come home, people went in search. His father said, “He left the field before me.” They looked around the lake and they found him unconscious – but with such a joy on his face. When he came back to consciousness, the first words he said were, “I have known life for the first time. Up to now I have been unconscious; these few hours I was conscious.”The parents became afraid – any parents would have become afraid – that he was showing symptoms which could lead him to becoming a sannyasin, a seeker. And for centuries parents have thought, and thought rightly, that it would be good to arrange a marriage. The woman will put him right.They were afraid: perhaps he will say no. But when his father asked, “Would you like to be married?” he said, “Great! I have seen many marriages in town; it is such a joy, riding on a horse like a king.”The father thought, “He does not understand what marriage is, he has simply seen the marriage processions. But it is good he is ready.”So they found a beautiful girl in a nearby place, and when he was going there – it was summertime – to see the girl, his mother put three rupees in his pocket and told him, “If you need, use them, but there is no need to waste them. We are poor people.”And this is the way in India, which still persists over almost ninety percent of India: you can see only a glimpse of the girl. She will come and serve tea – and that is the moment when you see her for a few seconds – and she is gone.Sharda, who was going to become his wife, came to put some sweets on his plate when they were taking their breakfast. He said to his father, “My god, the girl is so beautiful!” He took the three rupees out and put them at her feet, then touched her feet and said, “Mother, you are one in millions. I am going to marry you.”The father said, “Idiot! First you call her ‘mother,’ touch her feet. And you have put your offering also, three rupees. And you are going to marry her?”Even the girl’s parents became a little afraid because this boy seems to be a little crazy. But Ramakrishna said, “I don’t see any problem in it. She is so beautiful, that’s why I touched her feet. Beauty should be respected. And she is so motherly; you can see it even from her face. That’s why I called her ‘mother.’ Every girl is going to be a mother, so why you are freaking out? And I have decided that if I am going to marry anyone, this girl is the one. Otherwise I will remain unmarried.”Both the families managed, convinced each other that he was not mad or anything, just a little off land, a little eccentric, but he was not harmful. He does things which should not be done, but he never harms anybody.They were married and the first night Ramakrishna said to Sharda, “It is private, don’t say it to anybody; I have accepted you as my mother. Let the whole world think you are my wife. I know you are my mother, you know I am your son. This is going to be our relationship.” And this remained their relationship their whole life. But rather than being criticized he is being respected for this strange relationship. His wife is his mother, and there was never any husband and wife relationship between them.There are so many stories of misfitness. A sudra queen – she was a queen, but by the Hindu caste system she was the lowest untouchable – made a very beautiful temple on the banks of Ganges near Kolkata, in Dakshineshwar. No brahmin was ready to be a priest in her temple. The temple made by a sudra, by an untouchable, had also become untouchable – and the god inside had also become untouchable. In the whole of Bengal, only Ramakrishna, when he heard it, said, “This is a perfectly good chance.” He went to the queen and said, “I am ready to be the priest” – and he was a high-caste brahmin.She said, “Have you thought about it? Your society may discard you, expel you.”He said, “I don’t have any society. And what does it matter if they expel me, if they make me an outcaste? I am not dependent on anyone. I am going to be the priest in this temple.” And he was expelled, condemned.People tried to persuade him: “If you leave this job we can give you a better job in a high-caste Hindu temple. You will get more money.” But he said, “It is not a question of money. I love the temple, I love the place, I love the silence surrounding it, the trees. And I love the goddess inside the temple.”He was expelled, but he never cared about it. Even his family stopped visiting him – because they would be expelled too – and they told him that he could not come back home. He said, “It is perfectly okay.”And his worshipping was so strange: sometimes he would worship from morning til evening, dancing and singing madly. People would come and go, and sometimes he would lock the temple and would not open it for a few days. It was reported to Rashmani, the queen: “What kind of priest have you found? Every priest worships for half an hour at the most. This man seems to be mad: when he worships, time stops; then he goes on dancing and singing from morning til evening. And sometimes he locks the temple, which is absolutely sacrilegious. Neither he worships, nor does he allow anybody else to enter!”The queen called him and asked, “Ramakrishna, what kind of worship is this?”He said, “Who says it is worship? It is a love affair. And in a love affair it is natural: sometimes I get angry, sometimes she gets angry” – he is talking about the goddess of the temple – “and when I get angry I lock the door and I say, ‘Now live for three days, four days, without food, without worship, and you will come to your senses.’”Rashmani said, “But we have never heard of this kind of worship!”Ramakrishna said, “There has never been a priest like Ramakrishna.”In the temples, when priests worship, the food is presented to the god or the goddess and then it is distributed. And Ramakrishna would spoil it completely. First he would taste everything inside the temple. Before offering it to the goddess, he would taste everything, and then he would offer it. Again he was told: “You are doing something very wrong. It has never been done.”He said, “I am not concerned whether it has been done or not. I know only one thing: my mother used to taste first, and then she would give it to me. If it was really delicious, she would give; if it was not, she would prepare it again. And if my mother can do that for me… I cannot give anything to the goddess without knowing whether it is worth eating or not.”Rashmani must have been a very intelligent woman to tolerate this misfit man. Instead of condemning him, people started coming to pay respect to him. His love for the goddess was so genuine, although it was not ritualistic. And anything genuine cannot be a ritual.One of the great logicians of Bengal, Keshav Chandra, heard about thousands of people going to Ramakrishna. He was an atheist and a great philosopher, and a very sharp logician. He challenged Ramakrishna: “I am coming on a certain day to discuss matters with you.”All the followers of Ramakrishna were very afraid, afraid because they knew that Ramakrishna knows nothing, no scripture; he makes his own songs that he sings in the temple. He is uneducated, he has never heard anything about logic, philosophy. It is not a question of mind to him.They were afraid: “It will be very embarrassing to us all, because Keshav Chandra can defeat Ramakrishna within seconds.”And Keshav Chandra came with his own disciples. He had his own society, and he was a very egoistic man. Ramakrishna jumped up from where he was sitting under a tree, hugged Keshav Chandra, and said, “I am feeling so happy that you also have come to me.”Keshav Chandra said, “I have come here to defeat you.”Ramakrishna said, “It does not matter whether you defeat me or I defeat you. From this moment our love will remain. Start defeating – I am ready.”Keshav Chandra said, “Start defeating? First you have to propose your philosophy.”Ramakrishna said, “I don’t know anything about philosophy. You will have to do both things yourself – propose my philosophy and defeat it.”Instead of Ramakrishna looking embarrassed, Keshav Chandra started looking embarrassed – where have I come? But something had to be done, so he asked, “Okay, do you believe in God?”Ramakrishna said, “Believe? I know him. Why should I believe? Only ignorant people believe.” Now what to do with this man? A belief can be criticized, but the man says he knows!Still, Keshav Chandra made great arguments against God. He said, “It is all hallucination, illusion, imagination, that you think you know God.”And each time he would make a good argument Ramakrishna would stand up and hug him again and say, “You are so beautiful, Keshav Chandra; I love the way you talk, although it does not change anything. In fact, your intelligence is a proof to me that God exists, because your intelligence is derived from existence. It cannot come from nowhere, and all that we mean by God is that the universe is intelligent. I am a poor fellow, uneducated. I am not a proof for God, but you are.”The authority and the authenticity and the sincerity. For the first time in his life, Keshav Chandra felt defeated, although the man had not argued. He touched the feet of Ramakrishna and said, “Accept me also as your disciple. Seeing you, seeing your behavior, seeing your joy, is enough to prove that dry arguments are not going to transform me. But you are a transformed man. Most probably you are right and I am wrong. Although I can prove myself right – but proving oneself right is one thing, and to be right is another thing. Your presence is the argument.”This country has accepted and loved all kinds of misfit people, and if you feel that India is making you uncomfortable, you have to be here a little longer to feel the atmosphere. I have been around the world. No country has such a groovy atmosphere. They are scientifically developed, technologically very progressive. They are rich, they are educated. This country is poor, hungry, with no science, no technology. But this country has a certain vibe which has been created by thousands of mystics. You need to be here, Leeladhar, for a little longer, so that you can start feeling the subtle vibe.My experience is that in America we created the commune, but in the American atmosphere the commune was, as a whole, out of place. There was no supporting nourishment as far as atmosphere is concerned. And then I moved around the world. I have been talking in every country, and the strangest fact is that I was talking with my own sannyasins, with whom I talk here, but something was missing. I was there, my people were there, but in the air, something was missing.Back to India, the same people… But nothing is missing. A subtle juice surrounds, a certain noosphere, a very deep and ancient flavor of mysticism, an inner richness, and communication is easier.To adapt to the Indian atmosphere takes a little time, and perhaps that also is making you uncomfortable. It is just as if you are coming from a desert into a garden. It will take a little time to feel the greenness, to feel the fragrance of the flowers. The contrast is so big. And you have been brought up in the West. Your whole make-up is that of a scientist, and this country knows nothing of science. This is the most unscientific country in the world. But it is the most religious, mystic, heartful land. It has its own juice. Give it a chance.Certainly you are not a bigger misfit than I am. In India I feel at ease. The Western tension is not there; neither is the Western speed. I am reminded when, for the first time, the British Empire was laying rails for railway trains.A British officer was looking at an Indian sannyasin who used to come every day, sit under a tree or lie down under a tree, and watch the people working, putting down the rails, making the arrangements. The officer had never seen such a lazy man: the sannyasin never did anything, he just rested there.One day the officer approached him. He had learned a little bit of Hindi because of working with Indian workers, laborers, for years. So he asked the man, “You come every day. Before we come you are here, and when we go, then you go. Why are you wasting time just lying down under the tree, lazy? You can earn money, you can become a laborer. We have a shortage of laborers. I can give you a good job.”The man was not even bothering to sit up. He was lying down and talking with the officer. He said, “The idea is good, but I don’t need money. I get food twice a day. My other brothers work on the farm. I have been always this way. And even if I earn money, what I am going to do with it?”The officer said, “When you earn enough money, then you can retire and rest.”And the sannyasin said, “This is strange, I am already retired, and I am resting! Why take this unnecessarily long route? First earn money, then retire, then rest – I am retired from the very beginning. And I am resting; I don’t do anything except rest.”There is no speed in the Indian atmosphere. Things move very slowly. You cannot even see the movement, they move so slowly. Centuries pass. If a man in Europe wakes up from his grave after two thousand years, he will not be able to understand what is happening, because in two thousand years the West has changed so much. But if an Indian comes to visit India after two thousand years, he will be perfectly at home. Almost nothing has changed!Leeladhar, your discomfort is coming from your own conditioning, one thing. Second, you have not accepted your misfitness in its totality; otherwise why should one be uncomfortable?And you can be free to do anything you want, anywhere. For example, I have not been uncomfortable anywhere around the world. I was not uncomfortable in the American jails. I was not uncomfortable in different cultures, different countries, different religions. I accept my misfitness with absolute joy.After the first three days in the American jail, the sheriff of the jail came to see me. He was wondering what kind of man I am because the inmates had become my disciples! I was talking to them about meditation. The nurses and the doctor – because I was in the hospital section – had also joined. Finally, the sheriff brought his wife and his children also: “We may not be able to see this man again, and what he is saying makes sense.”And the doctor – a woman, very beautiful woman – used to come to the hospital section only once in seven days; otherwise she was engaged in other parts of the jail. It had seven hundred inmates. But for those three days, all the nurses were there, the doctor was there, the whole staff was there. The doctor said to me, “It has never happened. You have turned my office into your class! Otherwise my office is always empty.”Because my cell was very small… It was meant only for two persons and there were twelve inmates in the hospital section. They all wanted to be with me as much as possible – six nurses, four staff people, the sheriff, the assistant sheriff, the doctor – so they moved me to the doctor’s room. And she told me, “You need not use the bathroom that is meant for the prisoners. My bathroom is for you as long as you are here.”Nirupa is here, David is here. They were staying in town to take care of me, to bring new clothes, or if I needed anything. The sheriff told me in front of them, “I would like to come to see your commune where such silent, beautiful young people – intelligent, loving – are living with you and growing with you.”He said to me, “Just David and Nirupa are enough proof that man can be transformed.” Otherwise, American kids – even the primary school kids – are taking drugs. Thirteen and fourteen year-old young boys have been found committing murders, rape, suicide. That is the American atmosphere.The jails are so full that the magistrate has to think before he sends another prisoner to the jail, because some old prisoner has to be released. The jails are packed. You can bring a new prisoner, but you have to release an old prisoner.My attorneys who used to come there – Niren was my chief attorney; he is here – could not believe it: Why was I was looking so happy and so at ease and at home? I said, “I have never been able to rest so much. The inmates are taking care, the nurses are taking care, the doctor is taking care. And they are all interested in only one thing: the moment I am released and I go back to the commune, they all want to stay in the commune for a few days.”The first day, the sheriff received a phone call from Germany asking about me, saying, “You must be surprised, because this may be the first time that you have a man like Osho in your jail.” He was not acquainted with me. He said, “No, but we have had cabinet ministers, great politicians, so it is not new to us.”But on the third day he came with tears in his eyes when I was leaving and he said, “I don’t know who has phoned, but I want to apologize because I gave him the wrong answer. In these three days so many flowers have come that we don’t have any space to keep them; so many telegrams, so many phone calls that we have to keep two extra telephones.“If you find the man, just tell him from me to forgive me. The great politicians and cabinet ministers don’t matter. I never in my whole life had a prisoner like you – and I don’t think I ever will have, in my remaining years in the service – for the simple reason that you have changed the whole atmosphere of my jail.“If you are allowed to be here for three or four months this will be your commune. You are really dangerous because all the people of my staff are coming with their wives and with their children to have a photograph taken with you.”The poor prisoners could not manage. They were coming with photographs cut from newspapers just to get my signature: “We will remember our whole lives that for three days we were with you, and in three days we have felt a change.” People were not making noise. Everybody was saying, “Don’t make noise, he will be disturbed.”I have never felt uncomfortable anywhere. The question, basically, is to accept yourself. It is an inner feeling, nothing to do with anything outside you. And I repeat: if you cannot feel comfortable here, Leeladhar, you will not find another place on the whole earth to be comfortable because nowhere else is the uniqueness of individual respected; nowhere else are you loved as you are. You have to prove, you have to deserve.Here you don’t have to prove anything, and you don’t have to deserve anything. You don’t have to be worthy of anything. This is the way you are and everybody is in a tremendous, accepting, awareness. Just give it a little time.“Is there such a state as doing your own thing, content and full of gratitude?” Yes. That’s my whole approach toward life: “…doing your own thing, content and full of gratitude.” It is not an ego trip. It is your nature wanting to be left undisturbed.And here we are not engaged in any kind of work which has to be forced on you. This place has to leave in you a memory of sheer enjoyment, of silence and beauty. And people who are non-interfering with you, and are happy in your happiness. Nobody is jealous, nobody is competitive. Nobody is even comparing. But it all depends on you. I have created the space here. Now how you use it is up to you.During the Second World War, an Italian and a German general are preparing an attack on the Russian front. When all the preparations are ready, and the attack is ready to be launched, the German general calls his servant: “Heinz, bring me my red coat.”“What, a red coat?” asks the Italian general surprised. “How come?”“Well, during the battle I may be hurt; blood may be flowing, and my soldiers, seeing blood, might get demoralized. So I always wear a red coat during battle.”“What a great idea,” says the Italian general and calls his servant.“Giuseppe, quick, bring my brown trousers!”Osho,I blew it today. One moment of unawareness feels like it wipes out those moments of awareness. While pruning in your garden I cut deeply into a living tree that I thought was dead. The very moment the ax made its death blow I knew, you knew, existence knew, I had taken life. Feeling guilt, fear, stupidity, I finished cutting the tree, carrying it out of your garden. Osho, I have cut thousands of trees and killed many, many animals in my life, but never before felt hurt as much as I did, and do, about this tree. Mukta is afraid you'll cut off her head. Spare her head and cut mine, along with my unawareness. I'm sorry.Anand Vibhavan, it is something tremendously beautiful that reverence for life is arising in you. But don’t feel any guilt, neither fear nor stupidity, because these are parasites. Just do one thing: become more alert and remember, before you cut another tree, make sure that it is dead.There is no hurry. It is simply unconsciousness; otherwise you would have found that it was alive. Perhaps the leaves had fallen and the tree was waiting for new leaves to come. And you could have waited and watched. But guilt is not the right thing.You hurt the tree; now you are hurting yourself. Reverence for life does not mean reverence only for others’ life. It also includes reverence for your own life too. Guilt is not reverence. Neither you are stupid – because you became aware; not only aware, but you felt hurt that a life is unnecessarily destroyed. It shows intelligence.And as far as fear is concerned, don’t be worried about Mukta because I have chopped her head off long ago – she believes she has a head – and I will chop your head off too. But my surgery is not painful. It brings more blissfulness to you than you have ever experienced. So there is no need to have fear. Just have awareness, more alertness, more consciousness.This garden is not just an ordinary garden. These trees have heard me as much as you have heard me, and these trees have loved me as much as you have loved me. These trees are as much my disciples as you are. So be respectful with them. With loving care, with sensitive alertness, you will not only be a good gardener, you will also become a higher consciousness – more human, more divine. Shower on these trees all your love. They cannot speak, but they are very sensitive. The latest experiments about trees are so revealing – they can even read your thoughts. Their sensitivity is far greater than man’s sensitivity.Scientists have developed certain instruments like the cardiogram. They put the cardiogram on a certain tree and the cardiogram starts making a graph of how the tree is feeling. The graph is symmetrical, and then suddenly they bring a woodcutter with an ax, and the moment the tree sees the woodcutter, the graph changes. It goes berserk, the symmetry is lost. Nothing has been done to the tree, just the woodcutter has come with the idea to cut it. That idea is being caught by the sensitiveness of the tree, and now there are scientific ways to find it out.The strangest thing is that if the woodcutter is just passing without any idea of cutting the tree, the graph does not change. It depends on his idea – his thought creates a certain wave. Every thought is being broadcasted from your mind, creating waves around you, and those waves are picked up by the sensitiveness of the tree. They are very much alive.It is good that you have become aware of it. Don’t lose this awareness because it will not only help the trees, it will help you too. It will become your meditation. Everything that is being done here has to become your meditation. This is a temple, and we are here just for a single reason: to transcend our darkness and our unconsciousness.A man goes into a men’s toilet, holding his hands outstretched, as if they are paralyzed. In the urinals, he taps another man on the elbow.“Excuse me, I wonder if you could help me. I have a problem with my hands and need assistance in using the urinal. Would you be so kind as to open my zipper?”The other man is very embarrassed, but obliges. The first man says, “Thank you very much. Now I have another favor to ask. Would you mind helping me to aim?”The second man blushes, but helps him aim. After he has relieved himself, the first man says, “You don’t know how grateful I am. Now please just do me up again.” Nearly at the end of his patience, the second man does so.The first man turns to leave, and looking at his awkwardly-held hands, says, “Good. I think my nail polish is dry now.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,As a child, one of my favorite games was to imagine I was going to die in the next minute. I enjoyed feeling the tension build up until it reached a peak and then slipped into relaxation, and I felt as if I was bubbling with happiness.Later, when I was a teenager, for a period of six months, I would frequently be awoken by a feeling of panic and fear, a sense of impending death. I would struggle to prevent my dying by hanging on to the thought of somebody or something I wanted to live for. Then the panic would subside and the fear would gradually go. The last time this happened to me as a teenager, I woke feeling the fear of death the strongest I ever had. But this time, instead of panicking, without any conscious decision, I found myself accepting death, and relaxing. Immediately, there was an explosion of light and a sense of being uplifted by bliss.It was not until some years later, when I took sannyas and one day was meditating alone, that the fear of death returned. I was overwhelmed by the intensity of it, and could do nothing to transform it or even repress it: I jumped up in a panic and tried to shake it off. Why has this fear been a constant companion throughout my life, and what is its significance for me?Dhyan Amiyo, meditation and death are very similar experiences. In death, your ego disappears; only your pure being remains. The same happens in meditation too: the disappearance of the ego and the presence only of pure isness, of your being. The similarity is so deep that just as people are afraid of death, they are also afraid of meditation. On the other hand, if you are not afraid of meditation, you will not be afraid of death either. Meditation prepares you for death.Our whole education is only for life. That is only half of education, and the other half – which is far more important, which comes as the crescendo of life – is completely missing from all systems of education that have existed before or are now in existence.Meditation prepares you for the other half; it helps you to know death without dying. And once you have known death without dying, the fear of death will disappear forever. Even when death comes, you will be silently watching it, knowing absolutely that it cannot even make a small scratch on your being. It is going to take away your body, your mind, but not you.You belong to the immortal life. Your experience was good. You say, “As a child, one of my favorite games was to imagine I was going to die in the next minute. I enjoyed feeling the tension build up until it reached a peak and then slipped into relaxation, and I felt as if I was bubbling with happiness.”Unknowingly, you were doing a simple exercise of meditation. Perhaps from your past life, you may have carried the knowledge, the experience of the meditation, but it is one meditation amongst hundreds of methods – this is one of the methods. And it is not only you, Dhyan Amiyo; many children go on playing things which are of immense importance. But they cannot understand the importance – they can only play them as a game.For example, all over the world, children like to twirl, to whirl, and naturally the parents will stop them: “Don’t do that, you may get dizzy. You may fall, you may hurt yourself.” But all over the world, children enjoy it. It was from seeing children enjoying whirling that Jalaluddin Rumi got the idea that there must be something… Because whenever he saw a child whirling, the child’s face would change. A strange grace comes to his face; he starts radiating a certain aura, and when he stops he is so full of joy.Jalaluddin Rumi tried – in the forest, so nobody made a laughingstock of him – to know what these children find in twirling. And he was amazed: he discovered one of the greatest methods of meditation, and for twelve hundred years after him, his school has been a living school. His school is called the Whirling Dervishes. In their temple, that is their prayer, that is their meditation – that is their whole religion. They go on twirling for hours together.Jalaluddin himself became enlightened after thirty-six hours of continuous, nonstop twirling. When he was asked, “There is no scripture describing this meditation; how have you found it?” He said, “Just by looking at children. I tried it myself, and I was amazed because the more you twirl, the faster you go, soon you become aware that something deep inside you is absolutely still and unmoving. The whole body is moving and the faster it moves, the more is the contrast between the unmoving and the moving. And the unmoving consciousness within is my soul. That is the center of the cyclone.”Man has much to learn from children – but who cares about children? Everybody is trying to teach them without ever thinking about a simple thing: they are coming out of life’s source, fresh. They must be carrying something which we have forgotten. If you go backward and remember, you cannot go farther back than your fourth year, or at the most your third year. Suddenly there comes a wall; your memory cannot penetrate farther back. What happened? You lived those four years – and in fact, those four years were the happiest that you have known. But your experience somehow has been blocked by the society.It is dangerous for the society that people should be so innocent, like children. Your parents, your teachers, your leaders – with all the good intentions in their hearts – are doing immense harm. They repress the child in you, and the child in you is closer to God than anything else. This is why so many mystics have insisted: “Unless you are born again, unless you become childlike again, you will not know the truth and you will not know the beauty and you will not know the mystery of existence.”You can go backward, remembering, and then suddenly comes a China Wall: that is the time when your parents and your teachers started destroying your childhood, making you civilized, making you social, teaching you manners and etiquette, sending you to school, teaching you language, and all other worldly ways, and making every effort that you forget completely your innocent days, your days of paradise.Although everybody forgets, somewhere deep down in the unconscious, the experience of those days goes on echoing. It is this echoing of those experiences that sends you in search, because you cannot accept your miserable life – full of anxiety and tension and psychological sickness – as the meaning of your being here. Vaguely, somewhere, you know that there have been golden moments also. You cannot exactly remember, but an undercurrent in your unconscious goes on creating a longing in you to find those lost moments again.Religion is basically the search for childhood: the same innocence, the same joy in things, the same fearlessness. Those magical eyes, that heart which was able to dance with the trees, the heart that was enchanted with the moon and the stars. That space in which existence was nothing but sheer glory, pure splendor.Dhyan Amiyo, either accidentally or out of some experience from the past life, you were doing a method of meditation. And that’s why, as the tension grew… There is a limit, and the next moment is going to be the moment of death. You became totally concentrated. And from the highest peak of your tension, suddenly comes relaxation. In that relaxation, you found yourself bubbling with happiness. If you had continued to do that, your life would have been immensely rich. You would not have known sadness, unhappiness. You would not have known anger, jealousy. You would have known only love, silence, joy – and for no reason at all. It is our natural state.Tension is not our natural state. That’s why, after a certain moment, tension has to disappear. For example, you can keep your hand open for as long as you want, it is its natural state. But if you make a fist, and the harder you make your fist, how long can you keep it? It is a state of tension. Soon you will find it is tiring, exhausting and in spite of you, your fist will open. There is a certain energy that is exhausted.The open hand is relaxed; no energy is being spent. Tension is just like a fist – too much energy is being spent. Soon, you will find yourself utterly exhausted and the tension will disappear. And in its wake, there will be deep relaxation. This relaxation is the space in which happiness grows, and again I repeat: for no reason at all. It is not that you are happy because of something. You are simply happy.Happiness is your nature.Unhappiness is something nurtured, you have learned it. Every credit goes to you for all your misery, but for happiness, you cannot have any credit. It is natural. You were born happy, you were happy in your mother’s womb.Sigmund Freud has a great insight – what he says comes very close to the truth. But he misses the experience of truth itself because he was only a thinker and not a meditator.It is his observation, objective observation, that the search for religion, the search for God, or the search for paradise is nothing but the search for the mother’s womb – because those nine months were sheer silence, utter joy, a peace that passeth understanding. To us those are nine months, but to the child it is eternity because the child knows no dates, no days, no weeks, no months, no calendar. Each moment is so full of joy, and nine months… It is almost an eternity to the child.That experience also remains with you, deep in your unconscious. After birth that experience continues for at least three to four years – in the girls, three years; in the boys, four years. It is strange but about everything, girls are always one year ahead. They become sexually mature at the age of thirteen. Boys become sexually mature at the age of fourteen. In life, too, girls learn better; they learn with more concentration.You can see in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities – the boys are scattered all over, their minds are always in fragments. They want to do many things. The girls are more together and more concentrated in whatever they are doing. They learn better, they learn early, and it is a historical fact that in the past, there used to be wise women who were more deeply experienced about life.Christianity destroyed thousands of wise women, burned them alive. Even the name witch – which means “a wise woman” and nothing else – became so condemnatory. And the same happened in the East. All the religions prohibited women, and I can see that the reason is a great fear that if women are allowed the same opportunity as is given to men, they will be far ahead in the experience of God. And that is against the ego of man.The male ego has done such great harm. Half of humanity has been completely prevented from even entering the area of religion. This was done out of fear. So you have Gautam Buddha and you have Jesus and you have Mahavira and you have Lao Tzu, but you don’t have women of parallel height because all the chances were taken away, all possibilities were destroyed.My own experience is that women can enter meditation more easily than men. Man has a better head – logically, intellectually, he can go far in search in the outer world – but the woman has a better heart. She’s more introvert; she can go easily, very easily, to the innermost center of her being.Self-knowledge, enlightenment, will be far easier to a woman. For a man, it is easier to become Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah. These thousands of wars would have been avoided if the woman had not been completely ignored, repressed, forced to live like a slave. And she constitutes half of humanity.I want to say to the women of the whole world that your liberation movement has not done anything, because it is in the hands of very stupid women. They are reactionaries, not revolutionaries. Otherwise, the simple and the most important thing, the first priority, is that the women should demand a separate vote, so that women can only vote for women and men can only vote for men. Just a simple and single step and all the parliaments of the world will be half filled with women. And the women will be naturally in power because man by nature has a tendency to fight. He will create parties, political parties, religious ideologies – on small, minor, trivial matters.So if the women in a parliament are one single whole, the other half, of men, will be divided into at least eight or ten parties. The whole world can move into the hands of women. And women are not interested in wars, women are not interested in nuclear weapons, women are not interested in communism or capitalism.All these “isms” are from the head. Women are interested in being joyful, in small things of life: a beautiful house, a garden, a swimming pool. Life can be a paradise, but it is going to remain a hell unless man is removed from power altogether. And he can be removed so easily.I have so many women sannyasins – more than men. And the strangest thing is that once a woman becomes a sannyasin, she remains a sannyasin. Once she starts meditating, it becomes her devotion, a part of her heart – it is not so with the man; it remains only an intellectual search. There are exceptions, but as a rule…I have seen men betraying me but not women. The reason is that the man is intellectually convinced. He is with me, but I am still alive, I am not dead. So tomorrow, I may say something with which his mind does not agree. And just a small disagreement in his mind and his path separates from mine. He is with me only to the extent that his intellect is nourished by what I am saying. The moment he feels something I am saying is not rational, he is no longer with me. All connections have dropped. And my problem is that my work is not to feed your intellect. If I talk intellectually, that is simply to persuade you toward something that goes beyond intellect, that goes beyond reason.For the woman the problem is not the same. She is with me not because she is intellectually convinced by me; she is with me because she is nourished on a deeper level than intellect. Her heart sings with me, beats with me, dances with me. Her connection is not superficial: it is that of trust, not of intellectual conviction. Hence, in the whole of history you will find a Judas around every great mystic and great teacher, but you will not find a single woman who has been a Judas. It is strange, in a long history…Mahavira has his own Judas; his own son-in-law remained with him just with that male ego, hoping that he would be Mahavira’s successor because he was his son-in-law. Mahavira had only one daughter, and the daughter and the son-in-law had both become sannyasins. For twenty years they remained with him, but the son-in-law was insisting again and again: “You are getting old. Before anything unfortunate happens, you should make it known to your millions of disciples who is going to be your successor.”Mahavira said, “Whoever is capable will succeed me. I don’t have to declare his name. Who am I? I am not a king; my treasure is not of this world. Whoever is enlightened will be recognized by the people as my successor, you need not worry about it.” Frustrated, the son-in-law went against Mahavira and took away with him five hundred followers. And he made many attempts on Mahavira’s life. Gautam Buddha had his own Judas, and the same story is repeated again and again.As far as women are concerned, the situation is just the opposite. When Jesus was crucified, all the twelve apostles escaped. They were afraid that somebody in the crowd might recognize them because they were always moving with Jesus, and everybody knew them: “Now there is no point in being here, unnecessarily getting caught. You could be in trouble. Your master is being crucified; they might at least give you a good beating.” But three women remained just at the foot of the cross, not even hiding in the crowd – and one of them was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene; a prostitute rises higher than your twelve apostles. They have become great saints, but Mary Magdalene is not remembered, is not counted amongst the apostles.The second was another woman, Martha. And the third woman was Jesus’ mother, Mary, whom even Jesus had been insulting because she was a woman. In a crowd, Jesus was speaking and his mother was standing outside the crowd. Somebody shouted, “Jesus, your mother is here and she has not seen you for years; you have been traveling all over the place. Tell the people to make way for her to come in. She just wants to see you.”And the answer that Jesus gave is ugly. He said, “Tell that woman” – he could not even say “tell my mother” – “Tell that woman that my father is in heaven and except my father in heaven, I don’t have any relationship.”This is the man who is talking about love. This is the man who is even saying “Love your enemy.” But don’t love your mother.Dhyan Amiyo, you should start your childhood’s accidental meditation because it will suit you immediately. And it has happened here also: “One day I was meditating alone and the fear of death returned. I was overwhelmed by the intensity of it and could do nothing to transform it or even repress it. I jumped up in panic and tried to shake it off.”You missed a great opportunity. Again, the same space was opening up but you behaved like a grown-up, not like a child. A child is not afraid. He knows nothing about death: he is so close to life that death is a faraway thing, inconceivable to him.You also remember: “The last time this happened to me as a teenager, I woke feeling the fear of death the strongest I ever had. But this time, instead of panicking without any conscious decision, I found myself accepting death and relaxing. Immediately there was an explosion of light and a sense of being uplifted by bliss.”You know the secret: you have to accept the fear. In acceptance, it disappears. In rejecting it, in escaping from it, you are nourishing it. You are feeding it. There is no fear because there is no death. Death is a fiction and fear is the shadow of the shadow. And you have experienced it accidentally, without doing meditation. You have known that if you remained in the space that was opening up, without fear and without panicking but accepting it, accepting even death and relaxing – immediately there was “…an explosion of light and a sense of being uplifted by bliss.”You need not be told; you know already what has to be done. So when meditating, if you come close to the same space again and fear arises, rejoice that you are close to the death of the ego. The death of the ego is another name of relaxation, because the ego is your tension. The ego is your anxiety, the ego is your anguish. The ego is your angst.The moment you are relaxed, you are not. There is simply relaxation – an immense peace and joy. And if it happens in meditation, consciously, and if you have to go through it again and again – because such an experience has to be lived again and again; that’s the only way to deepen it – soon you will find there is no fear, there is nothing to panic about. On the contrary, you are entering the most blissful experience ever. You are entering into your childhood again, in deep innocence, a freshness and a joy, and a music that is absolutely silent, without any sound.If this experience goes on growing, it will become your enlightenment one day. You will be uplifted to your highest potential. All darkness will disappear; there will be only light and there will be only ecstasy. Then there is no need to meditate. Then it becomes your natural state, just like breathing, just like heartbeats.Amiyo, you are fortunate because it rarely happens on its own. But we are so unconscious – do you see your unconsciousness? You passed through everything – you knew fear, you accepted fear, you experienced great relaxation, you experienced bliss, you experienced being uplifted by light – and still you are afraid to go into the same space.But such is our unconsciousness. We are behaving like drunkards, not knowing what we are doing, not knowing what is happening to us, why it is happening to us. And even when we are very close to something great we go on missing. Just be a little more alert, a little more aware. You have the key and that key will work to open all the doors of the mysteries of your inner being.A nervous young priest, about to deliver his first sermon, asks an older priest how he might calm down a bit. He advises the young priest to fill his water jug with martinis.Well, the new priest preaches up a storm and afterward, he asks the older priest what he thought.“You did very well, but I have just a few criticisms: there are ten commandments, not twelve; there are twelve apostles, not ten. David slew Goliath, he did not kick the shit out of Goliath. Next week, there is a toffee-pulling contest at St. Peters, not a peter-pulling at St. Toffee’s. The Holy Cross is not to be referred to as the ‘Big T.’ Please do not refer to our savior Jesus Christ and the apostles as ‘J. C. and the boys.’ And restrain yourself from calling the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, ‘Big daddy, junior, and the spook. “And lastly, kindly do not call the Blessed Virgin Mary, ‘Mary with the cherry.’”Osho,There is immense trust inside me that being with you everything happens so right that there is nothing more to do but let it happen. So I'm not forcing anything. More and more there is only this sweet, painful love for you and more silence and more laughter and more love. Yet sometimes when you speak about “doing everything for enlightenment,” a doubt arises in me that maybe I'm cheating myself: am I not doing enough?You say, “There is immense trust inside me.” But immense trust does not mean absolute trust. Howsoever immense it may be, there is space enough for doubts. So first you have to understand: just trust is enough. Don’t make it immense. Just trust is absolute. And remember, trust is not belief. Belief is in ideas, in ideologies, in doctrines, in theologies, in philosophies. Trust is just the purest form of love; it has nothing to do with any ideology. Doubt can arise if you have a belief – these are subtle connections – doubt is connected with the belief. Doubt has no possibility in trust.In fact, belief is nothing but a method of repressing doubt, and when you repress a doubt then there is always a possibility: any weak moment, and the repressed will spring up with great vengeance and destroy your whole belief system. But trust is not repressing any doubt. Trust has no connection with any kind of belief system. Trust is falling in love – not the biological love, but the love that can exist between two beings, two souls, two consciousnesses.You say, “Being with you, everything happens so right that there is nothing more to do but let it happen. So I am not forcing anything.” That’s perfectly right. Forcing is violence, forcing is repression, forcing is dangerous. Whatever you force will take its revenge.My whole teaching can be reduced to two words: Let go. Just go with the stream and you are doing perfectly well.“More and more there is only this sweet painful love for you, and more silence and more laughter and more love. Yet, sometimes when you speak about ‘doing everything for enlightenment,’ a doubt arises in me that maybe I am cheating myself: am I not doing enough?”This doubt arises only because there is some space left empty, not filled with trust. “Immense” is your trust, but immense does not mean total. And less than total is going to have, once in a while, this doubt, that doubt. Otherwise, there is nothing to doubt. You are growing in silence, you are growing in love, you are feeling more and more laughter – these are the signals that you are on the right path.When I speak of doing everything for enlightenment, you and everybody has to remember that I am speaking to so many people – not only to those who are present here, but also to those who are spread all over the world. If you take every statement personally, you will be unnecessarily getting into trouble because I have to take care of so many people who are so different from each other, and I am answering different people in different stages, in different situations.You have to always remember to look at your own growth: if it is going toward love, compassion, silence, blissfulness, joy, laughter, celebration, and silence, then remember that I must have answered somebody else. You are doing perfectly well. And sometimes these kinds of doubts can disturb your growth.Whenever I had said, “Do everything for enlightenment,” I must have been answering some – and there are many – who are so lazy, that what to say about everything, they are not even ready to do anything. They are simply waiting for me to do something. If it were possible, if nature allowed, I would have done it, but it is against the law of nature itself.You have to find your truth yourself. And for that, you have to risk everything. Truth cannot be anything other than your first priority. It cannot be one amongst many desires. It is not a desire, it is a wholehearted longing, as if you are lost in a desert and for days you have not been able to find water. Now, thirst is not a desire; now every cell of your body is crying “thirst.” There are not even words to say, it is just an experience: you are burning with thirst, you are on fire.Enlightenment is the greatest experience in human life. Certainly you have to leave your trivial engagements – but remember that I am talking to so many people that not everything is for you. You have to choose.One thing you have always to remember: if symptoms of love and joy and laughter are growing in you, then there is no need to worry. And there is no need to be in a hurry, either. It is better to go at your pace, slowly but very centered and grounded, so that you don’t have to take any step backward. You don’t have even to look backward.Drop your doubt. And remember, I am saying drop, I’m not saying repress. I am not saying fight with it. I am not saying that you have to do anything with it. Simply drop it. It has no business in your beautiful, slow growth.Remember one thing: there are seasonal flowers; within six weeks they are there but within six weeks they are gone, too. And there are trees like Cedars of Lebanon, four thousand years old, two hundred feet high. They don’t grow in six weeks. Their growth is very slow. But their beauty, their longing to touch the stars, is almost like the human longing to find the divine in existence.Drop the doubt and always remember that I am talking to so many people – their needs are different, their sicknesses are different, they need different medicines and different treatment. Whenever you have any problem, you can ask. It is good that you have asked rather than carrying it within your heart. Doubt is as dangerous to spiritual growth as cancer is to the body.Abie made a small fortune in California in the wholesale clothing business. After he provided for his family, he gave all his wealth to the local temple. He slept well at night knowing that his family was secure and that God was looking after him, so he had not a care in the world.Imagine how surprised Abie felt when his Malibu beachfront home was endangered by an oncoming hurricane. First, the local fire department came and evacuated Abie’s family. But Abie told the fire chief: “I will not leave my home. You cannot help me, only God can save me.” The waves began to crash against the shore. The road around Abie’s home was engulfed in water. Without fear, Abie decided to wait out the storm.The Navy sent in a Coast Guard cutter to rescue Abie, as the waves were now crashing against his huge front window. The captain ordered, “Abie, please!”But Abie insisted, “You cannot help me, only God can save me.”Now Abie was alone on the roof. In the distance, a tidal wave was fast approaching the shore. A U.S. Air Force helicopter hovered above Abie’s head. But Abie refused help, such was Abie’s faith in his lord and master. Well, the tidal wave did its thing, and Abie looked up at the Pearly Gates, soaking wet and totally pissed off at God.“But Abie,” the gatekeeper said, “God wants to see you right away.” Abie’s response was, “Tell God to go to hell.”The gatekeeper suggested to Abie that God is not a saint and to give God a second chance. Abie relented and was shown into God’s room. God was so pleased to see his beloved Abie.“Abie, why are you so mad at me?”Abie said, in a cool, distant voice, “Because when I needed you the most down on earth, you did not lift a finger to help me.”God said, “You’ve got to be kidding, Abie. I sent the fire department, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Air Force. What more do you want?”You have to remember that trust does not mean that you are not supposed to do anything. Trust simply means that whatever you are doing is in the right direction, because the man you trust in cannot take you in a wrong direction. But you have to do the walking.I can only show you the path, but I cannot walk for you. And there are so many paths and there are so many different people who need different paths, so each one of you has to remember that not everything that I am saying is for you. You have to be very alert: whatever helps to strengthen your progress is for you. Whatever weakens your progress is not for you; it must have been said to somebody else. On some other path it may be helpful. To somebody else, it may be immensely needed.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I heard you say the other day that you want no part of any relationship we might imagine we have with you – certainly not our hate, but not even our love. And I can't say I blame you. Nevertheless, when you stand before us, dancing, I feel like a fountain that leaps into life at the sight of you, and tumbles to your feet as if it knows that is where it belongs. I know my love is riddled with all sorts of undesirable things, but it rushes toward you without even stopping to ask my permission. Osho, please excuse the mess, but I can't help it.Maneesha, the word love can have two absolutely different meanings – not only different, but diametrically opposite. One meaning is love as relationship; the other meaning is love as a state of being.When I said I don’t want any relationship – at least from my side, because I cannot interfere with you, so I cannot say anything from your side; that you have to understand yourself – I was denying love as relationship. The moment love becomes a relationship, it becomes a bondage, because there are expectations, there are demands and there are frustrations, and an effort from both sides to dominate. It becomes a struggle for power.Relationship is not the right thing, at least for my people. But love as a state of being is a totally different word. It means you are simply loving; you are not creating a relationship out of it. Your love is just like the fragrance of a flower. It does not create a relationship; it does not ask you to be a certain way, to behave in a certain way, to act in a certain way. It demands nothing. It simply shares. And in sharing also there is no desire for any reward. The sharing itself is the reward. When love becomes like a fragrance to you, then it has tremendous beauty, and something that is far above the so-called humanity – it is something of the divine.You say, “I cannot help…” Neither can I. When love is a state, you cannot do anything about it. It will radiate, but it will not create any imprisonments for anybody, nor will it allow you to be imprisoned by anybody else.Your question is significant. I will go into it point by point. You say, “I heard you say…” This is to be remembered: whenever you state anything that I have said, never say, “You said it.” Say it exactly the way Maneesha is doing. She has learned over many years that it is not necessarily the same, what I say and what you hear.You hear according to your own prejudices, according to your own mind. You interpret and then you project that meaning, as if I have said it. The right way is, “I heard you say…” All the Buddhist scriptures start with the same sentence: “I have heard Gautam Buddha say…”I asked one very respected Buddhist monk – world famous because of his writings about Gautam Buddha – why every scripture begins with, “I have heard Gautam Buddha say…”?He said, “You bring strange questions. I have been translating these scriptures my whole life but I never thought about it. Do you think it has any meaning?”I said, “It not only has meaning, it has tremendous meaning. Whoever has written it was absolutely aware that, at the most, he could say, ‘I have heard… Perhaps Buddha was saying something else. Perhaps he was saying what I have heard, but I cannot impose my meaning, my projection on him. I can be wrong.’”And this is true, because as Gautam Buddha died… He never wrote anything, and he never allowed in his life that anything he said should be written, for a simple reason: if you are listening, there is no need to make any notes. And if you are making notes, you are not listening; your whole mind is concerned with writing the notes. You are behaving like the modern tourist, who is a cartoon character, rushing from one place to another place with a camera hanging on one shoulder, a telescope hanging on another shoulder, many kinds of lenses in a bag. Even standing before the Taj Mahal, he is not seeing it. He is photographing it. Back home when the album is ready, he will look at it with great joy from the golden memories of his tour. But he has never really seen – his being was diverted by the camera.When I was a teacher in the university, I never allowed any student to take notes – because the moment you start taking notes, you stop hearing. You know that later on you can read your notes, so there is no need to be in the present. This psychological truth is the reason why Buddha did not allow anybody to write down what he was saying. He said, “When I am dead you can write anything you want.”And the first thing that his disciples did was collect forty-two years’ discourses, morning and evening, personal interviews given to emperors, to kings, and to disciples. And you will be surprised to know that there were thirty-six schools immediately, saying that he has said this, not this. Their only difference was: they were all devoted to Gautam Buddha, but they were saying that he has said this – and there were thirty-six versions.So there are thirty-six versions of Buddhist scriptures. They are not reporting Buddha. They are reporting what they have heard – according to their consciousness, according to their intelligence, according to their presence. So it is not just when beginning a question; it has to be a deep understanding in you: always remember to make it clear that you are reporting what you have heard. It is not necessarily synonymous with what I have said.Maneesha is saying, “I heard you say” – and I appreciate her understanding in using the words I heard – “the other day that you want no part of any relationship we might imagine we have with you.”You have heard rightly, Maneesha. I don’t want any part of any relationship, imagined or unimagined. It may be very real to you – it may not be your imagination, it may be factual. You are accustomed to creating relationships, from your very childhood. A strange man, and you have to create a relationship with him as your father. You cannot ever be certain that he is your father.I have heard about a palmist who used to read people’s hands. An atheist, a young man who does not believe in God and does not believe in any kind of bullshit – palmistry, astrology – went to the palmist and said, “If your science is true, just read my hand and tell me where my father is right now.”The palmist looked at his hand and said, “Your father has gone fishing.” The atheist laughed. He said, “That’s what I say: it is all nonsense. My father has been dead for three years; how can he go fishing today?”The palmist said, “That is not my business, but the truth is, the man who died was not your father. Your real father is fishing. You go to your mother and ask. If she is sincere and honest, she will tell you that the man who died was not your father – although you had created a relationship because you were told that he is your father.”Your whole life is surrounded by many kinds of relationships. I don’t want any kind of relationship. Relationship as such, real or imaginary, is a very subtle kind of psychological slavery. Either you enslave the other, or you become a slave yourself.Another point to be noted is that you cannot enslave somebody without becoming a slave yourself. Slavery is a double-edged sword. One may be stronger, one may be weaker, but in every relationship you become the jailer and the other becomes the prisoner. From his side, he is the jailer and you are the prisoner. And this is one of the fundamental causes of humanity living in such sadness, in such a sorrowful state. You have heard me rightly: I don’t want any part of any relationship, “…certainly not our hate, but not even our love.” From my side, I will not allow any relationship; I will not nourish any relationship. But you are free to suffer – that is your birthright.How can I prevent you, if you start having a relationship of hate with me? And hate is much stronger a relationship than your love, because your love is very superficial. Your hate is very deep. Your hate is your whole animal heritage. Your love is only a potential for the future; it is not an actuality, but only a seed. But your hate is full-fledged, fully grown – thousands of years of your past moving through different life forms. It has had time and space to grow. It is only in man from where the change starts happening.I cannot prevent anybody from hating me, so how can I prevent anybody from loving me? All that I can do is to explain that the moment hate or love or anything becomes a relationship, it loses its purity. Let your love be your state of being. Not that you fall in love, but just that you are loving. It is simply your nature. Love, to you, is just the fragrance of your being. Even if you are alone you are surrounded by loving energy. Even if you touch a dead thing, like the chair, your hand is showering love – it does not matter to whom.The loving state is unaddressed. And I am not preventing you from being in the state of love, but you can be in the state of love only if you drop the old mind pattern of relationships. Love is not a relationship. Two persons can be very loving together. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any relationship. The more loving they are, the more freedom exists between them. The more loving they are, the less is the possibility of any demand, any domination, any expectation. And naturally, there is no question of any frustration.You say, “And I can’t say I blame you.” You understand it rightly. I have allowed people to have their real or imaginary love relationship with me – knowing perfectly well that their relationship is not reliable – for the simple reason that unless they are with me, there is no possibility of transforming their relationship into a state of being. No relationship is reliable, and particularly with a man with whom the relationship is one-sided. It is like a bridge which is supported only by one bank of the river, and the other bank does not support it. It is hanging in the air; it is going to fall.And I have burned my fingers thousands of times because I have seen the people who thought they loved me change to hating me, for some trivial reason. Love is beyond reason. Relationship is part of the business world. Just a slight change in the situation and it evaporates. It has no solidity.I have showered my love without any conditions, and yet there have been many people who have taken advantage of it, in many ways. And because of their loving imagination, they were expecting something from me. Man is so blind, he cannot see it. When I don’t expect anything from you, at least remember that you cannot expect anything from me either.And when their expectations are not fulfilled – and they are not going to be fulfilled – then immediately love turns into hate. And it has left wounds in my heart, because I have simply given love, never expected anything from them, and they have turned into enemies because of their expectations – in which I have no part. I have never promised them anything. Expectations are there, frustrations are there – but first they were projecting expectations; now they are projecting frustrations. Neither could they see that time, nor are they able to see this time, that they are surrounded with their own unconscious ideas. And they are suffering.And as when they were imagining love, they were appreciating me, not knowing me at all, now they are condemning me. And to condemn me they are creating lies – and perhaps in absolute unawareness. Just as they believed their imagination before, the same game continues; still they go on believing in their lies. I have been asked to refute them. That is not possible. I have loved them; they have been my disciples. It is below me to criticize their lies or to expose their lies.That’s why I want you to remember: don’t have any expectations. Love because love is your own inner growth. Being loving, you are calling your spring closer. Your love will help you to grow toward more light, toward more truth, toward more freedom. But don’t create a relationship.“Nevertheless, when you stand before us, dancing, I feel like a fountain that leaps into life at the sight of you, and tumbles to your feet as if it knows that is where it belongs.” I have not been prohibiting you. If love comes as a spontaneity, suddenly, like a fountain, asking nothing in return, then it is one of the greatest treasures.“I know my love is riddled with all sorts of undesirable things, but it rushes toward you without even stopping to ask my permission.” Love is a fire. The more pure it is… All the riddles, all the problems will be burned. It is love as a relationship which will go on creating more problems, “riddled with all sorts of undesirable things.” But a spontaneous love is a totally different thing. We don’t have another word; that is the difficulty.“Osho, please excuse the mess. But I just can’t help it.” There is no need to be worried about the mess. Just remember one thing: love is capable of destroying everything else, just don’t let it become a relationship – then love will disappear, and in the name of love, domination, politics will take place. Then problems will go on increasing.I am against all kinds of relationships. For example, I don’t like the word friendship, but I love the word friendliness. Friendliness is a quality in you, friendship again becomes a relationship.Maneesha, there is nothing wrong in love. In fact, without love everything is wrong. But love is so valuable that it should be protected from any kind of pollution, contamination, any kind of poisoning. Relationship poisons it. I want the world to consist of individuals. Even to use the word couple hurts me. You have destroyed two individuals, and a couple is not a thing of beauty.Let the world be only of individuals, and whenever love spontaneously blossoms, sing it, dance it, live it; don’t create chains out of it. Neither try to hold somebody in bondage, nor allow anybody to hold you in bondage. A world consisting only of free individuals will be a truly free world.It is one of the greatest needs of man to be needed. Hence I cannot conceive of any time when love will not be in existence. As long as there are human beings, love will remain their most cherished experience. And it is something that is available on the earth, but does not belong to the earth. It gives you wings to fly like an eagle across the sun.Without love you are without wings. But because it is such a nourishment and such a need, all the problems around it have arisen. You want your lover or your beloved to be available to you tomorrow too. It has been beautiful today, and you are worried about tomorrow. Hence marriage came into existence. It is just the fear that perhaps tomorrow your lover or your beloved may leave you – so make it a contract before society and before the law. But it is ugly – it is absolutely ugly, disgusting. To make love a contract means you are putting law above love; it means you are putting the collective mass above your individuality and you are taking the support of the courts, of the armies, of the police, of the judges, to make your bondage absolutely certain and safe.Tomorrow morning… One never knows. Love comes like a breeze – it may come again, it may not come. And when it does not come, then just because of law, because of marriage, because of social respectability, almost all the couples in the world are reduced to prostitution. Living with a woman that you don’t love, living with a man that you don’t love, living for safety, living for security, living for financial support, living for any reason except love, makes it nothing but prostitution.I would like prostitution to disappear completely from the world. All the religions have wanted that there should be no prostitution. But this is how human stupidity is: these same religions that want there to be no prostitution are the causes of prostitution, because on the one hand they support marriage, and on the other hand they are against prostitution.Marriage itself is a prostitution. If I trust my love, why should I get married? The very idea of getting married is a distrust. And something that is coming out of distrust is not going to help your love grow deeper and higher. It is going to destroy it.Maneesha, I am not preventing you from being loving. In fact, that’s my whole religion: to love, but not to destroy love by something fake – marriage or any other kind of relationship.Love is authentic only when it gives freedom. Let this be the criterion. Love is true only when it does not interfere in the privacy of the other person. It respects his individuality, his privacy. But the lovers that you see around the world, their whole effort is that nothing should be private; all secrets should be told to them. They are afraid of individuality; they destroy each other’s individuality, and they hope that by destroying each other, their lives will become a contentment, a fulfillment. They simply become more and more miserable.Be loving, and remember: anything real is always changing. You have been given wrong notions that a true love remains forever. A true roseflower does not remain forever. A living being himself has to die one day. Existence is a constant change. But the notion, the idea that love should be permanent if it is true… And if love disappears one day, then the natural corollary is that it was not true.I want you to know: love came suddenly – it was not because of any effort on your part. It came as a gift of nature. At that time you should not have accepted it if you were worried about it going suddenly one day. The way it comes, it goes. But there is no need to be worried because if one flower has faded, other flowers will be coming. Flowers are going to come forever, but don’t cling to one flower. Otherwise soon you will be clinging to a dead flower, and that’s what the reality is: people are clinging to a dead love that once was alive. Now it is only a memory and a pain and you are stuck because of respectability, because of law.Karl Marx had the idea, the right idea, that in communism there would be no marriage. And when the revolution happened in Russia, in the first four, five years, they tried to make love a freedom. But then they became aware of practical difficulties of which Marx was not aware – he was only thinking – and the greatest difficulty was that if there is no marriage, family disappears, and family is the backbone, the very spine of the society, of the nation. If the family disappears, then the nation cannot last long, cannot last forever.After just five years of revolution, the Communist Party of Russia changed the whole idea. Marriage was again supported; divorce was allowed, but very reluctantly – every obstacle was created for divorce, so that the family unit remained. Now they were interested in having a nation; without a nation there would be no politicians, there would be no government.And since then they have never talked about it – that one of Marx’s fundamental ideas was that marriage came into existence because of private property, so when private property disappears, marriage has to disappear. Nobody talks about it. I have been talking to communists, but they have fallen into the same trap as all of the religions. Karl Marx’s Das Kapital has become their Holy Bible, holy Koran; you cannot change anything in it.I said, “That’s true, I am not saying to change anything in it – but follow it!” They are not following it either. They have started worshipping it. That is the whole strategy of man to avoid any authentic revolution in the world: worship.I don’t want the family to exist, I don’t want the nations to exist – I don’t want the world to be divided into parts. I want one world consisting of free individuals living in spontaneous love, living in silence, playfulness, without any condemnation of pleasure, without any fear of hell and without any desire for a reward in heaven – because we can create the paradise here. We have every potential to create it, but we are not using it. On the contrary, we are creating every hindrance: the earth should not become a paradise.I am not against love. I am so much in favor of love – that’s why I am against relationships, against marriage. It is possible that two persons may live their whole lives together. Nobody is saying that you have to separate, but this living together will be only out of love, without interfering and trespassing into each other’s individuality, into each other’s private soul. That is his dignity.You can be loving, you can be love, so don’t feel worried about it. But if you are simply loving, if you are simply love, then there is no possibility of you turning into hate. Because there is no expectation, you cannot be frustrated.But I am talking about love as a spiritual phenomenon, not as biology. Biology is not love, it is lust. Biology is interested in continuing all the species; the idea of love is just a biological bribe. The moment you have made love to a woman or to a man, suddenly you find you are no longer interested, at least for twenty-four hours. And it depends on your age – as you become older, forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours…There is a new commander of a base of the French Foreign Legion, and the captain is showing him around all the buildings. After he has made the rounds, the commander looks at the captain and says, “Wait a minute. You haven’t shown me that small blue building over there. What’s that used for?”The captain says, “Well, sir, you see, that is where we keep the camel. Whenever the men feel the need for a woman…”“Enough!” says the commander in disgust.Well, two weeks later, the commander himself starts to feel in need of a woman. He goes to the captain and says, “Tell me something, captain.” Lowering his voice and glancing furtively around, he asks, “Is the camel free anytime soon?”The captain says, “Well, let me see.” He opens up his book. “Why, yes, sir, the camel is free tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock.”The commander says, “Put me down.”So the next day at two o’clock the commander goes to the little blue building and opens the door. Inside he finds the cutest camel he has ever seen. He closes the door.The captain hears a great roaring and screaming, so he runs up and bursts into the hut. He finds the commander naked, covered in camel hair and mud.“Ahem, begging your pardon, sir,” says the captain, “but wouldn’t it be wiser to do as all the other men do – ride the camel into town and find a woman?”Osho,Does joy arise out of the heart or out of the being? If it comes out of the heart, does it drop away when one reaches the being? If so, how come you are radiating so much joy? Osho, I am so attached to joy and grace. Do I even need to drop them?It is a beautiful question. “Does joy arise out of the heart or out of the being?” Joy arises out of the being, but passes through the heart. The heart is the first to receive the joy of the being. And the heart is the vehicle to express the joy to the outside world; hence the misunderstanding can be there, that perhaps joy arises out of the heart. It comes only through the heart; it arises out of being. But being is deeper inside. Heart is only an instrument, a medium, a vehicle.So you need not be worried, as your question shows. “If it comes out of the heart, does it drop away when one reaches the being?” The expression of joy from the heart becomes fuller as one reaches to the being, it does not drop. Reaching the being, the passage of the heart becomes cleaner, wider, more expressive. You need not be afraid that you will have to drop joy also. We are in search of joy, and the greatest joy is when you have reached the being. Then the heart will be expressing it at the maximum; right now once in a while a ray of joy passes the heart.“If so, how come you are radiating so much with joy?” I am not radiating with joy. Once you are centered in your being, you are joy, you are love, you are blissfulness, you are ecstasy. These are no longer happenings to you; these are your natural qualities.“Osho, I am so attached to joy and grace. Do I even need to drop them?” If you are attached, you will not get them in the first place; dropping is out of the question. You have to drop attachment. The moment you drop attachment, you will have joy and you will have grace.But such questions go on in everybody’s mind. They are simple, but our understanding is not deep enough to see that which is very clear. I am talking against attachment; it is attachment that is destroying your capacity to express joy and grace. But rather than dropping attachment, you are becoming attached to joy and grace.How can you be attached to something that you don’t have? You don’t have joy, you don’t have grace – just ideas, empty containers with no content. Because once you know joy, you know there is no need to be attached; it is impossible to be without joy. Once you know grace, there is no question of attachment or dropping the attachment; grace becomes your natural expression in every gesture – from your eyes, from your face, from your hands. Whatever you do, there will be grace and there will be joy.Your attachment to joy and grace makes me wonder: perhaps you have seen people like me who are joyous… Even if I try to remember, I cannot remember what misery used to be. The very language is almost forgotten. Seeing joyous people you want to imitate them. You want to grab joy and cling to it. But remember, all great values are killed the moment you cling to them. And no great value can be imitated.You see beautiful people, joyous people, loving people, silent and serene people, and a greed arises in you: “These are the qualities I must have.” That is the fear that has come into your question. You don’t have them, so the question of dropping them does not arise. First have them and then try to drop them! Nobody has ever succeeded. You will be a unique person if you find enlightenment and can drop it. You will make history.A French couple, an Irish couple, and a Polish couple are having dinner together. The Frenchman says to his wife, “Pass me the sugar, Sugar.”Not to be outdone, the Irishman says, “Could you pass me the honey, Honey?”Most impressed by these clever endearments, the Pole leans over to his wife and says, “Pass me the pork, Pig.”Avoid copying; otherwise you will do something stupid. But everybody is imitating everybody else in the world. It is very strange to see why people imitate. Can’t they find their own individuality? And can’t they enjoy being themselves? Any kind of stupid fashion and people will imitate, thinking “Perhaps if all these intelligent people are doing it and I am not doing it, I will be thought unintelligent.” But imitation is unintelligent.It is perfectly good to be in search of your being, which is the source of joy and bliss and truth and love and all that is valuable in existence. Of course it needs the heart for a few values to be expressed, and the mind for other values to be expressed. Your being is utterly intelligent, but intelligence can be expressed only through the mind. And your being is immensely loving, but love can be expressed only through the heart.Right now you have forgotten about the being and you are only carrying instruments with nothing to express. It is just like carrying a guitar, and you don’t know why you are carrying this thing and what it is all about.An ancient story is…In India there are very refined instruments of music; nowhere else in the world has such refinement happened. Just one single man – who lives in the Himalayas and comes once in a while to the plains – plays a special veena that used to exist in the past. Many musicians used to play it, but now only one person knows how to play it. It is called a rudra veena. Rudra is another name of Shiva; Shiva used to play it. To play it needs such a long discipline, four or five hours’ practice every day continually for years; only then can you bring those subtle notes out of it.The ancient story is that in one house there was a strange musical instrument which had been there for generations. Nobody knew what to do with it, and it was a nuisance. It had to be cleaned, dust would gather on it, and it was taking up space in the room. And sometimes in the middle of the night a rat would jump on it and create noise.Finally they decided, “It is useless for us; it is better to get rid of it.” So they went out and threw it on the garbage pile by the side of the road. They had not even reached back home when they heard such sweet music; they had never even imagined. So they turned back – a beggar was playing the instrument, and a crowd had gathered.The beggar knew, he was a musician, but a musician of such old and ancient instruments that even to find people who could understand it was difficult, so there was no possibility for him to earn anything. He had become a beggar so that he could continue discovering old, ancient instruments about which we have completely forgotten. And as he saw this instrument he could not believe it, because he had been in search of this instrument for years.There was utter silence in the crowd – everybody who was passing on the road stopped. The people of the house came back, and when he stopped playing they said, “That instrument belongs to us.”The beggar said, “Remember one thing: a musical instrument belongs to one who knows how to play it, there is no other kind of ownership. You have thrown it in the garbage. You have insulted an immensely valuable thing.“And what will you do with it? Again it will gather dust and you will have to clean it. Again rats will make noise in the night and disturb your sleep. This instrument can be played only if one knows how to play a few other instruments. They are the steps, and this is the end, and I have been searching for it. All other instruments I have found, but this, the final instrument, was missing. You cannot claim ownership of it.“If you can play it here, before the crowd, it is yours. Otherwise, it belongs to me.”Music is not property. It is art, it is love, it is devotion, it is prayer. You cannot possess it. The same is my feeling about your being. You have it, but you don’t possess it because you don’t know how to play the instrument of your being. All that you know is the mind, which is only a vehicle; the heart, which is only a vehicle. But they are empty. Your thinking leads nowhere. Your heart remains at the point of lust, and never gets to know love.Search for your being and everything else will follow it on its own accord. You don’t have to drop anything – you cannot drop anything. They are your innermost qualities; they will radiate of their own accord. Your heart will be full of love; your mind will be full of intelligence.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I find that the true moments of joy and peace in my life come when I am the witness. Witnessing seems to come easier when I make some effort for it, such as now, in the vipassana group. You talked recently about the futility of will, but for me it seems some effort or will is needed for the growth of awareness. Would you please comment?It is possible to create a certain awareness through effort and through will but it will not be the true awareness. That which is created by you cannot be eternal. That which is forced by you will immediately disappear the moment you drop the effort. You forget to will. And you cannot will twenty-four hours a day. Will needs tremendous energy; the effort will be very tiring.And after the awareness that is created by will disappears, you will fall deeply into unawareness, deeper than you were before. Will is an instrument for creating false things. You can create an ego through willpower because the ego is false. But you cannot create your being; it is already there. So is the case with awareness: the authentic awareness is not created by you, it is discovered by you. And the discovery needs no effort on your part because you are the problem, your efforts are the hindrances.You have to be absent – with all your willpower, with all your efforts. You have simply to give way, and then there will be a totally different quality of awareness – spontaneous, joyous, relaxing, rejuvenating, and you can never be tired of it. It is simply your nature. It will remain there even in your sleep, burning like a small candle in the darkness of sleep.That which is created by will cannot be of the beyond, it can only be something below you. It is your creation – it cannot be bigger than you. That which you are creating has a cause: your will, your effort. The moment the cause is removed, the flame of awareness will be gone. Your will was functioning like a fuel. I will not support it. It is fake. And because you don’t know the authentic, you cannot make the distinction.Please try to be in touch with the spontaneous – even just a moment’s glimpse and you will see: the difference is so vast. One is just manufactured by you, with all your weaknesses, with all your frailties, with all your unconsciousness – and the other comes from the beyond. The other is divine, and only the divine can liberate you. Only the divine can be your eternal peace, silence, blissfulness.You say, “I find that the true moments of joy…” Have you ever known untrue moments of joy? Either joy is, or is not. Have you ever experienced untrue moments of joy? What do you mean by “true moments of joy”? Certainly, you are comparing with your moments of hypocrisy, when you try to appear to be happy, joyful and you know you are not; your smile is just an exercise of the lips. The heart is not behind it; most probably it is just a way to hide your tears. You are afraid that if you don’t start laughing, you may start crying; it is better to laugh so you don’t expose yourself to others.People try in every way to hide their misery, their pain, their anguish. Just go to a Lions Club or a Rotary Club and see people – everybody seems enlightened, and the same idiots are behaving as unconsciously as anybody else twenty-four hours a day. But they are simply following a ritual. You are supposed to smile, you are supposed to look happy. Slowly, slowly you simply become a supposition.Mrs. Reagan boarded a train in Washington late one night and was escorted to an upper berth. Nancy climbed up, stretched out and tried to sleep. However, a man in the lower berth was snoring intolerably. His loud snores became so unbearable, the President’s wife leaned over and jabbed the man with her umbrella.He awoke immediately, looked up at her and said, “It won’t do you no good, lady, I had a good look at you when you got on the train.”People are showing one thing, thinking something else. Now when he was looking at Nancy, he was not showing what was going on in his mind.We have become so pseudo, and to a pseudo personality nothing of value can ever happen. I would like you to remember that either you have moments of joy or you don’t have. There is no third alternative because the third alternative will be simply fake, untrue, dishonest. And once you become accustomed to the dishonest, to the insincere within yourself, then your darkness will start getting darker. Rather than moving toward light, you will be moving toward darker spaces of your being.You say, “I find that the true moments of joy and peace in my life come when I am the witness.” You have never experienced the witness, because to experience the witness is to go beyond peace, is to go beyond joy, is to go beyond everything into absolute nothingness and silence. There is no experience.Witnessing is not an experience. Witnessing is going beyond all experiences, because experiences are other than you; witnessing is your very being. Experiences are like clouds in the sky – sometimes very beautiful – white clouds, black clouds with silver lines shining through them, or rainbows passing through them, or at the time of sunrise or sunset, when the whole sky becomes psychedelic. But the clouds are not the sky. You are not your experiences. Your experiences are just clouds in the sky of your being. When all the clouds are gone and the empty space remains, you will know what witnessing means.“Witnessing,” according to you, “seems to come easier when I make some effort for it, such as now in the vipassana group. You talked recently about futility of will, but for me, it seems some effort or will is needed for the growth of awareness.”In a way you are right, because you don’t know the real awareness. So by effort, by will, you force yourself into some kind of alertness. This alertness is almost like when you come home and find your house is on fire: suddenly, you will find a great awareness in you which has never been there. But it is because the house is on fire; the shock is so much that it has made you a little awake, has brought you out of your sleep. But you cannot go on putting houses on fire just to be a little awake.And this kind of awareness is very costly and very dangerous – costly, because it can deceive you and you can start feeling that you have become aware, and dangerous because it will take you away from the authentic experience. Try to relax; don’t make any effort, because never in the history of man has anybody become awakened through effort or will. Those who have become aware have always become aware when they had dropped all their efforts and all their will. But man’s blindness knows no limits.In the life of Gautam Buddha, who can be said to be the most well-known historical figure who reached to the highest peak of awareness… But his followers around the world and in the East – except for India, the whole East is Buddhist; it is the third greatest religion in the world – still go on missing. I have been looking into hundreds of books from Korea, from China, from Japan, from Sri Lanka, from Burma, from Tibet – but I have not found a single mention of the most important thing that happened in Gautam Buddha’s life.For six years, he made every effort. He brought his whole willpower to become aware; he left no stone unturned. Naturally, this intensity of work, effort, this arduous journey, made him so tired and so frustrated. Finally, one full-moon night sitting by the side of a small river, Niranjana in Bihar, he decided, “I have renounced the world, I have renounced my kingdom. Today I renounce even my effort and my will – even the desire to find the truth. I am so tired, so utterly frustrated that this is my second renunciation.” He dropped all of the methods that he had been trying. After six years, for the first time, he relaxed and had a good sleep, without dreams. Otherwise, his sleep had been full of nightmares, because on the one hand he had renounced everything and on the other hand, all of his efforts had led only to failure. Or fake experiences.In the morning, as the last star was disappearing in the sky, he opened his eyes and he could not believe: this is the space he has been looking for! As the last star disappeared, his ego disappeared too. As the sky became utterly empty… The stars are gone, the moon is gone and the sun has not come yet – just in that gap, he also became just the same silence, uncluttered with anything. And this was what has been known down the ages as his enlightenment. Buddhists around the world go on saying, go on writing, that he found his enlightenment after six years of arduous effort. The reality is just the opposite. He found enlightenment after he renounced all his efforts.It is true that you cannot renounce if you have not made any effort. So, you are in a good position: you are making effort and you are making use of your willpower. But remember, all these will lead you to fake experiences. And when the time comes, don’t be a coward: renounce all these experiences of joy and peace and awareness, because they are produced by will and effort. Then comes the real miracle, because your very being is eternally awake. It has never fallen asleep, but you have lost the track to reach it.Only in relaxation can you find your center of being. If you go on making an effort and running after some goal, to achieve awareness, you will go farther and farther away from your reality. Don’t do anything. At least for a few moments every day, simply be. The heart will be beating, the breathing will be going on – you are not doing anything, not even thinking. And in these moments, the whole sky opens up. It is one of the greatest wonders that what we are seeking and searching for lives together is just present, eternally present within ourselves. But because of our efforts and because of our mind to achieve, we go on missing it.Our life is a very stupid mess. This same life can be a great splendor, but we won’t allow it. We go on doing something or other, and all our doings are disturbances. This is the greatest lesson in life to learn: that the ultimate phenomenon happens only when we are not doing anything, when we are almost absent, when we are just an open door and the sun rays come dancing in and the fresh breeze passes through us. Suddenly, the whole existence starts helping us to be our true self. Witnessing is the quality of our true self. It is not a question of creating it, it is a discovery.I have heard…God is making all the creatures of the earth and is giving out sex lives to each animal. First he turns to the human. “I am giving you ten years of a good sex life,” says God.The man’s face falls. “Is that all?” he asks.“I only have so much to go around, fella,” says God. He then turns to the monkey and says, “I’m giving you twenty years of a good sex life.”The monkey says, “Oh, I don’t really need that much. Ten years would be more than enough for me.”The man, standing nearby, overhears this and says excitedly, “I will take it! I will take those extra ten years.”“All right,” says God. “You got it.” He then turns to the lion. “I’m going to give you twenty years of good sex life.”The lion replies, “You know, God, I really think I would be happier with just ten.”The man starts hopping up and down. “I will take them! I will take the other ten years!”“You can have them,” says God to the man.He turns to the donkey and says, “Now, I am going to give you twenty years of a good sex life. Is that all right with you?”“To tell you the truth,” says the donkey, “I would also be satisfied with just ten.” God gives the man the other ten years too.This story explains why a man has ten years of a good sex life, ten years of monkeying around, ten years of lying about it, and then ten years of making an ass out of himself.We are not satisfied with anything, and we go on asking for more, and we go on making our life more of a confusion. It is true in every dimension of life – even when you start meditating, you are the same man, with the same mind. Your whole life you have been creating false, pseudo, dishonest, inauthentic experiences. You know perfectly well that they are not true, but at least you can deceive others.But you don’t know a simple law: if you can deceive many people, you will be deceived in turn. By their being deceived, you will start thinking there must be something in it; otherwise, so many people cannot be deceived. Start telling a lie and by the evening – when your wife will tell it to you – it will have gone around the city. You know perfectly well that you started it in the morning. But if the whole city is agog about it, then perhaps there is something in it! Such is the madness of man that he can believe even in his own lies, and can believe so totally that you cannot suspect.One man played the role of Abraham Lincoln continuously for one year. One hundred years had passed since Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and in his honor and in his memory, a whole year was devoted to celebrate him. A drama was prepared, and all over America a great search was made to find a man who could play the part of Abraham Lincoln. Strangely enough, they managed to find a man who looked like him – the same height, the same weight.They trained him. Abraham Lincoln used to stutter a little, so they trained him to stutter. One of Abraham Lincoln’s legs was a little longer than the other, so they put the poor fellow on a traction machine and pulled one leg a little longer so he started walking like Abraham Lincoln, with a walking stick in his hand.For one year, morning, afternoon, evening, three times a day, he was playing the role. And he was doing it so perfectly that people were amazed: it seemed as if Abraham Lincoln had come back. A year is a long time. He became more and more perfect, and when the year ended, he was awarded the first prize.He came home, but he continued to stutter. His wife said, “Now, there is no need to stutter.”He said, “No need? What do you mean by no need? Abraham Lincoln has to stutter.”The wife asked, “Who are you trying to fool?”First, they thought that he was just joking, but then the joke went on so long; he would walk like Abraham Lincoln, he would talk like Abraham Lincoln. He would behave as if he were the president. Finally, they thought, “He has gone crazy. He believes it. Three hundred sixty-five days, three times every day, going through the same role…”At that very time, scientists had discovered the lie detector machine. You sit on the machine – you don’t know; it is hidden underneath – and they ask you a few questions: a clock is hanging in front of you on the wall and they ask, “What time is it on the clock?” You cannot lie, you say, “It is ten o’clock” or “twelve o’clock.” And the machine goes on marking whether you are right or wrong. They go on asking a few more questions: “How many people are here?” Now, how can you lie? Four people are there, so you say “four” and the machine makes the point again – “right.” So four or five questions are asked about which you cannot lie. And then they asked him, “Are you Abraham Lincoln?”He was tired. His family was after him, his friends were after him, he was being taken to this psychologist, to that psychologist…And finally he had decided to drop this idea, to just accept what these idiots are saying. Although he is Abraham Lincoln, what to do? If nobody is ready to believe it, how long can he argue with these people? So when they asked, “Are you Abraham Lincoln?” he said, “No.”And the machine said, “He is lying!” Because deep in his heart, he knew perfectly well – and the machine functions according to the heart. When you lie, your heartbeat loses its symmetry. When you say something true, the heartbeat goes on in the same rhythm, but when you lie, just a little jerk – and the machine catches that jerk.And the poor man was saying, “I am not Abraham Lincoln” and the machine is saying he is! When the result came out, the scientist said, “Now, there is no way. Unless he gets assassinated, he will not understand.”Don’t believe in this joy and in this peace that you are feeling. And don’t think that it is witnessing. It is not. I give you the criterion: in witnessing, there is nothing to witness. That is a simple criterion: as long as there is something to witness, witnessing has not come in.When there is nothing to witness and only a pure awareness remains, just the mirror, not reflecting anything, you have found yourself. Of course this finding will radiate joy, but it will not be your experience. Others will experience it; to you, it will be just like breathing, just natural. You will be in constant ecstasy, but others will feel it. You will radiate a new presence, a new charisma, but others will feel it.To you, it will be just like you accept your body, you accept your eyes, you accept your hair, you accept your hands; there is nothing special about it. The moment joy is no longer anything special, the moment peace is no longer anything to brag about, the moment ecstasy is just like breathing – you have arrived home.Osho,Today, I had a unique experience. After siesta, I felt myself begin waking up. I opened my eyes and next to my head I saw my hand. I got my watch to look at the time but the watch was dark: there was no time. I turned the watch toward the window's light but – darkness again. I stood up and I felt the floor under my feet. But suddenly I saw my hand, unmovable, next to my head. I got scared. But immediately a voice inside told me, “You are dreaming, with open eyes!” I relaxed and decided to continue the game; looking at my hand, I could see my whole body moving. At the end, my hand was always at the same position. Then I decided to wake up and I moved my hand and my whole body. I think I experienced something of death. Would you please comment? If it happens again, can you suggest something for me to do?It was nothing but a nightmare – not an experience, special and unique. Neither was it anything to do with death. It was just your mind. Everybody has experienced nightmares, dreams which are insane. But what happens more often is that you don’t remember them. In eight hours of sleep, you dream six hours, but you don’t remember six hours of dreaming. You remember only the last dream, when you are half awake and half asleep, just coming out of sleep. Your memory starts functioning and you catch hold of the last dream that is fleeting by.If a nightmare happens in the morning hours, then there is a possibility that you may remember it. If it happens in the middle of the night, you will not remember it – unless it is really a nightmare; something like the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler, or the gas chambers of the Second World War. If it is too dangerous, then it can wake you up – just the very danger of it. But it has nothing to do with death.It is just your mind which goes on collecting a thousand and one things, unnecessarily. It is a junkyard. You have seen a film in which there are dangerous scenes, you have read a novel in which there are murders and rapes and all kinds of crimes. You have been reading the newspaper every day. All this goes on collecting inside your mind, and in your sleep time, the mind wants to unload itself. Your dreams are nothing but an unloading of the mind. If you don’t collect unnecessary junk, you won’t have dreams.I have not dreamed for years, and not to dream gives a different quality to your sleep. It is light and very sweet, almost musical – a poetry without any words, a meditation of immense silence and serenity. But your dreams say much about you. This kind of dream shows that you are collecting unnecessary information, and all that gets jumbled, piled up. And your unconscious is not very reasonable, it knows nothing of reason, so everything gets mixed up. These mixtures create nightmares.It happened that Charles Darwin had become very old and his friend thought, “Perhaps this birthday is going to be his last; we will not be able to celebrate his next birthday.” He was feeling weak and doctors were saying that he could not last long. So all his students and all his friends gathered. And he was one of the most respected men of his times; he had given the theory of evolution which had helped humanity in many ways to grow.He loved children very much, and the children of the whole neighborhood were thinking what to present him on his birthday. Finally, they decided on a novel idea.Charles Darwin’s whole life was in studying animals, insects, birds, and he had gone around the world to study all kinds of species and how they have evolved up to man. He wanted to know each step. So the small children of his neighborhood, who were his friends, made a very beautiful present: they collected as many insects as they could find in his garden and they cut up those insects – some insect’s head, some other insect’s body, some other insect’s legs, some other insect’s other parts – they cut and glued many insects into one new insect. They did a really good job, and on the birthday when all his great scientist friends were there, they also came with their present and they said, “We would like to know to what species this insect belongs.”Charles Darwin looked at it. In his whole life, he had never seen such a thing. He remembered that he had seen the head… He had seen the body, but not with this head. He had seen the legs, but not with this body.But he was a genius. He said to the children, “Yes, I know this insect. Its name is humbug.”Your mind creates many humbugs – a head from somewhere, a body from somewhere, legs from somewhere else, a tail from somewhere else. And then you have a ready-made nightmare. This is not what you are thinking – a “unique experience” – it is simply a humbug experience. And there is no need to be worried about such experiences. They are just dreams, soap bubbles.But it is good to understand one’s mind, that you have made it just a wastepaper basket. You go on throwing anything into it. You never think, “Is this novel worth reading? Is this film worth seeing?” Whatever you see is going to be collected in your memory. You are not very intelligent about what kind of information should be allowed to enter your mind because that information is going to make your dreams; it can even affect your actions.I have been reading data that in California, whenever there is a football match or a boxing match, crime rates rise up to fourteen percent higher, immediately. It takes seven days for them to come back down slowly to the average. And what kinds of crime rates? – murders, suicides, rapes. And not only young people but even children, seeing the boxing or seeing the football match, are getting a certain feedback and they start behaving in the same way.In fact, you cannot make a successful film without murders, without racing cars at a dangerous speed, without suicides, without rapes. If you make a film without all these things, nobody is going to see it; it is going to be a flop. If you want it to be a full-house success, then make it as criminal, as ugly as possible. But you don’t know that you are feeding all that to the people who are seeing it.And there are special blue films for rich people who can afford a theater in their own houses and can invite their friends to see sex orgies, perverted sexual scenes, pornography. But a simple thing is not understood: that all this is going inside your brain. You are poisoning yourself: your dreams will reflect it, your actions will reflect it. Your life will be molded by what you collect in your memory.So if you come across such dreams, it is an indication that you have to be more careful of what goes in your mind, because it will come out in some way or other. In fact, it coming out through dreams is the most harmless way, because it does not harm anybody. But it can come out through your actions, too.Stopping to pay a call on some of his suburban flock, the priest discovered they were having a party and offered to come back at a more convenient time.“Don’t go,” implored the host, “we are playing a game you might like. We blindfold the women and then they try to guess the identity of the men by feeling their genitals.”“How dare you suggest such a thing to a man of my dignity and stature!” roared the priest.“You might as well play,” said the host, “your name has been guessed three times already.”You are living in a society which is one thing from the outside and just totally different from inside. This is not just a joke. These kinds of games have been happening down the ages, but these were happening only at the highest level of society – the super-rich, the kings, the priests. They have a beautiful facade to show to the world. They will teach morality and they will teach everything against obscenity, pornography, but in their own life, hidden behind the curtains, totally different things are happening.It is a very hypocritical world. In this world, to be interested in truth, to be interested in the search of your own being, should be conceived of as already a great blessing. A Sufi saying is that before you choose God, God chooses you. Before you begin to search for him, he has already started searching for you; you are always number two.Even in this country which is poorest of the poor, there are ugly films, obscene films, pornographic magazines – and they exist because all the religions go on insisting on repression. So everybody goes to the temple, to the mosque, to the church to pay respect to God – but in his heart, in his mind, there is all kinds of crap.If he is a little intelligent, he should not enter any temple, because he is carrying such crap inside him that he should not think himself worthy. He should just be outside the temple. The country may be poor; people cannot afford to eat, but still they will go to see a film. Hungry – but they cannot miss the film and its sexuality, its sensuality. And if you look into their dreams, you will find all that they have repressed, all that they have collected.Ronald Reagan comes to God and asks, “Tell me, God, how many years before my people will be happy?”“Fifty years,” God replies.Reagan weeps and leaves.Thatcher comes to God and asks, “Tell me God, how many years before my people are happy?”“A hundred years,” replies God.Thatcher weeps and leaves.Rajiv Gandhi comes to God and asks, “Tell me God, how many years before my people will be happy?”God weeps and leaves.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,There is a confusion in me that keeps coming again and again. The message I get from you more and more is to relax with myself, to watch and wait, but I also feel this urgency to wake up now; and then another part screams, “But how?” What do I need to do? Do I need to push myself through this wall? Could you make this clear to me?Mind is confusion; it is not that you are in confusion. And there is no way for the mind not to be in confusion. Mind’s whole structure is based on confusion. Mind is a duality; it is always split. There is no single point on which the mind agrees in totality. Half of the mind will agree and half of the mind will disagree, and whatever you choose, you are choosing only half. The remaining half is going to take revenge. The unchosen part, the leftover, will wait for its chance to show you that whatever you have chosen is wrong. And it does not matter which part you choose. Choice itself is wrong. So the first thing to be understood is that there is no mind which has ever been without confusion.One very learned American rabbi, Joshua Liebman, has written a book, Peace of Mind. It is a bestseller; Liebman is a good writer, and the book is well-presented. I wrote him a letter, asking, “Have you ever considered that peace of mind has never existed? Peace of mind is intrinsically impossible. Peace happens only when mind is not. It is not peace of mind; it is peace beyond mind.”It is almost like a lotus flower: it grows in mud and water; it is a miracle of nature that out of dirty mud and water it brings out one of the most beautiful flowers in existence. But mud and water are not the lotus flower. The lotus flower blossoms only when the lotus plant has gone beyond the mud, beyond the water, has transcended both – then it opens up to the sun, to the sky, and releases its fragrance to the wind. Although it comes from the mud, it is not mud anymore. It is transcendence.The same is true about peace. Mind is muddy; all kinds of relevant and irrelevant thoughts are jumbled there. It is a crowd, with so many fragments fighting with each other that you can call it a battleground. Mind cannot be at peace. But you can go beyond mind because you are not the mind. You can transcend and become a lotus flower. Then there is peace, there is beauty, there is bliss – and all that you have always dreamed about but have had no experience of.I will read your question: “There is a confusion in me that keeps coming again and again.” It does not have to come – but until you resolve it, it will always be there. Whenever you are unoccupied, it surfaces. It does not go and come, it is embedded in your mind.“The message I get from you more and more is to relax with myself, to watch and wait.” The message remains the same because that is the only way to transcend the mind. The watcher is always above the mind. The watcher is never part of the mind. The mind is just like a TV screen on which thoughts, dreams, imaginations, projections, desires, and a thousand and one things go on passing. The watcher is not on the screen, he is sitting in the movie hall. But the problem arises when the watcher becomes identified with something on the movie screen.You must have seen yourself sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, sometimes becoming sad – and you know perfectly well that there is nothing on the screen. It is empty, and all that you are seeing is only a projection, just a film being projected through light.I have heard…When silent movies first came into existence, a man watched a movie in the first show in London, a matinee showing. Afterward everybody left, but he remained. The manager came to him and said, “The show is over.”He said, “I want to see the second show also.”The manager said, “But what is the point? You have seen it.”He said, “It is none of your business. This is the money for the ticket. I am not going to leave.”He saw the second show, and the manager was thinking, “What happens after the second show?” The crowd left, but the man was still there, because there was still a third show. The manager asked, “Do you want to see the third show also?”The man said, “Yes. Here is the money.”The manager said, “But you have seen it twice!”The man said, “You don’t understand a thing. There is a scene in which a beautiful woman is undressing. She is just about to become nude and jump into a beautiful lake to swim. At that very moment a train passes by and that train becomes a curtain, and when the train has gone, the woman is already in the water.”The manager said, “But I still don’t understand the point.”The man said, “The point is, the train is going to be late sometime!”Now the projected film has taken on a reality in his mind. He has become identified; it is no longer a film, he is part of it. He is not waiting, he is not watching; he is participating.It happened that one of India’s very learned men, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, was invited to inaugurate a drama. He inaugurated the drama, and of course he was sitting in front.In the drama there is a character – a very cunning man, ugly and disgusting – who is after a beautiful woman, harassing her in every possible way. One day he finds the woman alone, passing on a path through a thick forest. He takes the opportunity, catches hold of the woman – he wants to rape her. This was too much: Vidyasagar completely forgot that it was a drama. He jumped on the stage, took off one of his shoes and started beating the poor character, the actor!But the actor proved to be far wiser than Vidyasagar. He took the shoe in his hands with great respect, touched the shoe to his head, and told Vidyasagar, “This is my greatest prize. I have been winning many prizes in my life, but this is my greatest prize. I could have never believed that a man of your understanding could take a drama as if it were real.”Vidyasagar woke up as if from a sleep. He said, “I am sorry, but I went on becoming hotter and hotter, and when I saw that you were going to rape the woman I could not resist the temptation to prevent you. It was my moral duty, and I completely forgot that this is not a real rape, it is just acting.”I have seen the shoe. In the actor’s family home, they keep it in a beautiful glass box. It has become a historical thing. Now it must be the fourth or fifth generation, but they say, “This is our most prized treasure. One of our forefathers received this award from the hands of Vidyasagar himself.”And certainly this proves that the man was a perfect actor: he created the situation such that Vidyasagar became identified and forgot it was just a drama and he was there to watch it, not to participate in it.This is happening continuously in your mind. The whole confusion is that you jump into the drama of the mind, which is just a screen. I have been telling you again and again just to watch. Every drama has its end, and no thought in the mind remains for long. If you can keep alert not to become a victim of your thoughts, soon fewer and fewer thoughts will be moving on the screen. And when the watching becomes perfect, the screen becomes empty. When you are ready to witness, there is nothing to witness.It is your identification with thoughts that is creating the confusion. It brings you down into the mind; otherwise your watcher is far above it. To get centered in your watching is the only way for peace. There is no such thing as peace of mind. There is only one peace, and that is when there is no mind. When there is only a watcher and nothing to watch, suddenly everything becomes calm and quiet.Hence I repeat again: relax, watch, and wait patiently. But you are saying, “I also feel this urgency to wake up now.” That’s what I mean by jumping into the drama and becoming a participant. The watcher is always in the now. The watcher knows no other tense – neither past nor future, but only the present. Only this moment is all for the watcher. It is the imagination that needs future, it is memory that needs past, but the watcher is neither imagination nor memory. He is always in the now.Your urgency is simply another name for impatience. You are hiding your impatience behind a beautiful word: urgency. What urgency is there? You cannot force things to happen before their time. The spring will come and the flowers will blossom, but you cannot force the spring. The rain will come, the clouds will cover the sky, the whole thirst of the earth will be gone, but you cannot force it – you have to be patient.And this is the beauty: the more patient you are, the quicker is the coming of the spring. If you can be absolutely patient, this very moment spring can come. Your urgency is creating a trouble for you because it is making you more and more confused, more and more restless, in a hurry. I can understand; the whole Western tradition has taught you only one thing, and that is speed.I have heard about a pilot who was a lover of flying. He had taken his girlfriend for a flight, and he was going at full speed, maximum. The girl was a little afraid. Finally she asked, “Where are we going?”The pilot said, “Don’t ask unnecessary questions. The real question is, we are going at full speed. Who cares where we are going? The going in itself is so good.”Speed has become such a problem because for centuries in the West the mind has been conditioned to do things quickly: “Don’t be lazy, be efficient.” But all this has created turmoil in the mind.Everybody is trying to become rich as quickly as possible, and naturally if you want to be rich quickly you have to find some immoral means – maybe heroin money. All the Western religious leaders are against drugs, but they don’t understand that the idea of speed, that everybody has to be fast enough… And millions are competing for the same place; naturally there is competition, there is jealousy, there is violence. It does not matter, means don’t matter; the end is to reach quickly – either to a powerful position, or to become world famous, or to have all the riches possible.But these trees don’t grow impatiently. They move with a grace, with patience, with trust. There is no hurry anywhere else except in your mind. If you really want to be in a state of peace and joy, you will have to unlearn your old habit for achieving things quickly, fast.The other day I was informed that in Japan they have invented a train that moves at four hundred miles per hour. Up to now the record was two hundred fifty miles per hour; they have broken all records. And because the train moves four hundred miles per hour, the very speed of the train creates a cushion of air and raises the train one foot above its rails – it is no longer on the rails. It is very comfortable because it is moving in the air, almost like an airplane, just one foot above the earth.And they forgot completely that Japan is such a small country. They have realized it only now, and for years they have been inventing the train. Now they have realized: “Where are we going in this train?” The country is so small that you can have at the most two stations: one from where the train begins and the other where it stops. So the train is now ready, but the land is not big enough to use it! But one wonders – for years they have been working and they never thought about the fact that four hundred miles in Japan is absurd. Japan consists of small islands. Where will you be going with such speed?You are saying, “And then another part screams, ‘But how?’” Urgency naturally creates the question: “How?” If speed is needed, then the technology is needed. “How” means technology. Meditation is not a by-product of any technology. It does not need any technology. It does not need any “how.” It simply needs now.And in meditation you are not going anywhere. You are simply being here, relaxed, utterly centered in yourself. Everything stops. For this, no “how” is needed.But because one question leads to another question, urgency creates the question how, and then the question comes: “What do I need to do? Do I need to push myself through this wall?” There is no wall! These are our unconscious confusions. Somehow we make them appear rational.A drunkard reached his home one night. His wife was tired – every day a fight in the middle of the night, and the whole neighborhood was complaining. The man was not going to change. So she had given him the keys, saying, “Don’t wake me up and don’t create any noise, because the neighbors are getting very angry. They want to throw us out. So silently open the door and go to your bed.”He came in the middle of the night, absolutely drunk. His hands were shaking, so he was holding the key, but to put the key in the lock was a problem. He kept missing the target. He said, “This is strange. This has never happened; certainly there must be an earthquake, the whole house is in such trembling state.”Rather than looking at his own hands, rather than remembering his own drunkenness, the whole earth is having a great earthquake and the house is moving – that’s why the lock is moving.A policeman was watching him from the street. He laughed. He came and he asked, “Can I help you?”The man said, “It would be great if you could help me. Hold the house for a moment so that I can put this key into the lock.”The policeman said, “It is better that you give me the key and I will open the lock.” There was no need to argue with him that the house is not shaking, that there is no earthquake happening, that it was simply that he was absolutely unconscious.The man entered the house very cautiously because his wife had said… And whenever a drunkard comes close to his wife, half of his drunkenness is gone. The wife is such a cure; nothing else works, but the closeness of the wife is enough.She was snoring in her room. He remembered what she had said: “Don’t create any noise.” So he silently went into the bathroom, but he was very puzzled because his whole face was scratched. There was blood oozing from a few places.Then he remembered that on the way home he had been fighting with another drunkard. So he tried to find some ointment to put on his face, otherwise the wife would create trouble for him in the morning. So very carefully and silently, he put the ointment on every scratch. He was very satisfied, and went silently to bed.In the morning the wife screamed from the bathroom, “Who has spoiled my mirror, and destroyed my ointment too? Who has painted the mirror with the ointment?”He said, “My god!” He had thought that he was putting the ointment on his face, but he was putting it on the reflection of his face – he was putting it on the mirror!The unconscious mind goes on doing things and creating problems. There is no wall at all that you have to push through. The real thing is that you want to push, you are in a hurry. And because you want to push, you have to imagine a wall. It is your imagination.Just try to laugh at your imagination, at your hurry, because this is not the way meditation happens. Laugh, relax, and just be in the moment – watching whatever is going on, outside or inside, in the world or in the mind. You are neither the world nor the mind. You are behind all, just a pure watching consciousness.You ask me, “Could you make this clear to me?” There is nothing to be made clear. Only one thing is harassing you: your own idea of achieving things as quickly as possible. But meditation is not to be achieved; it is already there. It has only to be discovered. And discovery needs only one thing: a silent watcher.Don’t be serious; meditation is not a serious affair. Don’t try to be a saint; meditation has nothing to do with pious egoism. Meditation is as simple as these trees growing, these birds singing.Just for your laughter, so that you can relax…One night in Washington, when Nixon was president, there was a heavy snowfall. When the president woke up in the morning, he looked out of the window and saw a beautiful blanket of snow covering the White House lawn. He snapped out of his beautiful reverie when he noticed, written on the lawn in yellow snow, “Dick Nixon is an asshole.”The president got very angry and summoned the FBI and CIA. “I want that urine to be analyzed,” he ordered them. “And I want to find out who the culprit is right now, without delay! This is top priority!”Early in the afternoon a representative of the two agencies reported back to Nixon. He said, “We have tested the urine and we know whose it is. However, there is some good news and some bad news; which would you like first?”“Oh no,” said Nixon. “Guess you had better give me the good news first.”“Well, sir,” said the man. “We analyzed the urine, and it is Henry Kissinger’s.”“Oh no,” cried Nixon, and then suddenly the realization hit him. “That’s the good news? What could the bad news possibly be?”The man answered him, “It was in your wife’s handwriting.”Osho,Please could you talk about the subtle differences between instinct and intuition?Your individuality can be divided just for the purpose of understanding it; otherwise there is no division. It is one single unity, whole: the head, the heart, and the being. Intellect is the functioning of the head, instinct is the functioning of your body, intuition is the functioning of your heart. And behind these three is your being, whose only quality is witnessing.The head only thinks; hence it never comes to any conclusion. It is verbal, linguistic, logical, but because it has no roots in reality, thousands of years of philosophical thinking have not given us a single conclusion. Philosophy has been the greatest exercise in futility. Intellect is very clever in creating questions and then creating answers, and then out of those answers, more questions and more answers. It can make palaces of words, systems of theories, but they are all just hot air.But the body cannot rely on your intellect, because the body has to live. That’s why all essential functions of the body are in the hands of instinct – for example breathing, heartbeat, digestion of your food, circulation of the blood – a thousand and one processes are going inside your body in which you have no part at all. And it is good that nature has given the body its own wisdom. Otherwise, if your intellect were to take care of the body, life would be impossible because sometimes you may forget to breathe – at least in the night, how would you breathe while you are asleep?You are already so confused with just thoughts; in this confusion, who will take care about the blood circulation, whether the right amount of oxygen is reaching to your cells or not? Whether the food that you are eating is being broken down into its basic constituents, and those basic constituents are being sent where they are needed? Something is needed by your bones, it goes to the bones; something is needed by your brain, it goes to the brain; something is needed by your skin, it goes to the skin. And continuously, twenty-four hours a day, dead cells have to be removed; otherwise they will block the passage of blood circulation.You may never have thought about it: when you cut your hair, why don’t you feel pain? Cut your fingers and you feel pain. The hairs are also part of your body, just like your fingers, but why don’t you feel any pain when cutting your hair? The hairs are the dead cells of the body; that’s why you don’t feel pain. The nails are also made of the body’s dead cells; that’s why you can cut them. And this whole, tremendous amount of work is done by instinct. You are not needed. You can remain in a coma; still the body will continue to work.I have seen a woman who was in a coma for nine months. The doctors had said that she would never revive, and even if she did revive, she would not be a human being, because such a long period of unconsciousness destroys the very delicate nervous system that makes you a human being, that gives you intelligence. So she would be just a vegetable. But her body was functioning perfectly well. Her intellect had disappeared, her consciousness had not been there for nine months, but her body was perfectly well; there was no disease in the body.Nature has left all the essential functions of your body to instinct. And it has left all that makes your life meaningful because just to exist, just to survive, has no meaning; to give meaning to your life, existence has given intuition to your heart. Out of your intuition is the possibility of art, of aesthetics, of love, of friendship – all kinds of creativity is intuitive.But the marketplace does not need your intuition. It does not deal in love, in your sensibility; it deals with very solid and mundane things. For that, your intellect, which is the most superficial part, functions. Intellect is for the mundane life with others in the marketplace, in the world, to make you capable of functioning. It is mathematics, it is geography, it is history, it is chemistry. The whole of science and whole of technology are created by your intellect.Your logic, your geometry are useful, but the intellect is blind. It simply goes on creating things, but it does not know whether they are being used for destruction or for creation. The nuclear war will be a war created by intellect. Intellect has its use, but by some misfortune it has become the master of your whole being. That has created immense troubles in the world.The master is hidden behind these three: the body, the mind, the heart. The master is hidden behind the three – that is your being. But you never go inward; all your roads go outward, all your senses go outward. All your achievements are there in the world.Only very few people in the world have traveled the path toward their being, toward their very center. When I insist that you should be only a watcher, only a witness, I am trying to bring you closer to your own being, because that is your life source – and a life source which is eternal and immortal. Knowing it, all fears disappear because even death disappears.Knowing it, you know the very heartbeat of existence. Knowing it, you have known all that is worth knowing, and you have achieved all that is worth achieving. It opens doors to all the mysteries of existence, to all the treasures of existence which belong to you. Outside you are simply a beggar. Even your greatest intellectuals are just playing with words.The father of Western logic, Aristotle, has written in his books on logic that women have one tooth less than men. That was traditionally thought to be true for thousands of years in Greece, because a woman cannot be equal in any way – how can she have the same number of teeth as man? And Aristotle – who is the father of logic – had two wives, not only one. He could have simply told Mrs. Aristotle Number One or Number Two, “Open your mouth, I want to count your teeth.” But philosophers are not experimental. He has written that women have one tooth less than men. They have to have less of everything than men.Because intellect is useful in the world, all your educational systems are techniques to avoid the heart and take your energy directly to your head, because the heart can create troubles for the head. The heart knows nothing of logic. The heart has a totally different center of functioning, and that is intuition. It knows love, but love is not a commodity of any use in the world. It knows beauty, but what are you going to do with beauty in the marketplace?The people of the heart – the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the actors – are all irrational. They create great beauty, they are great lovers, but they are absolutely misfit in a society which is arranged by the head. Your artists are thought by your society to be almost outcast, a little bit crazy, an insane type of people. Nobody wants their children to become musicians or painters or dancers. They all want them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay. Painting, poetry, dance, are dangerous, risky: you may end up just a beggar on the street, playing on your flute.The heart has been denied, and by the way, it will be useful to remember: the denial of the heart has been the denial of the woman, and unless the heart is accepted, the woman cannot be accepted. Unless the heart has the same opportunity to grow as the head, the woman cannot have liberation, because the woman is heart and the man is head. The distinction is clear.Nature has taken instinct in its own hands, and whenever you interfere with instinct you create perversions. All the religions have been doing that. For example, celibacy is interfering with the body and its instinct; then there will be homosexuality, lesbianism, all kinds of perversions. But every religion has been interfering with the body – and the body is absolutely innocent; it has never done anything wrong.If you accept the body in its absolute naturalness, it will help you tremendously. It will help your heart, nourish your heart. It will help your intelligence to become sharper because the nourishment for the intellect comes from the body. Nourishment to the heart comes from the body. And if your head, your heart, and your body are all in a symphony, then to find your being is the easiest thing in the world. But because they are in conflict, your whole life goes on being wasted in that conflict, the conflict between instinct and intellect and intuition.A wise man is one who creates a harmony between head, heart, and body. In this harmony one comes to the revelation of the source of one’s life, the very center, the soul. And that is the greatest ecstasy possible – not only to human beings but in this whole universe, nothing more is possible. It is already too much.I am not against anything. I am only against disharmony, and because your head is creating the most disharmonious situation, I want your head to be put in its right place. It is a servant, not a master. As a servant it is great, very helpful.A Dublin milkman has just finished his delivery, so he parks his horse and cart outside the pub and goes in for a drink. Refreshed after an hour, he comes out to find his horse painted bright green. Very angry, he strides back into the pub and demands, “Which of you just painted my horse green?”A seven foot Irish giant stood up and, towering over him, said, “I did. Want to do something about it?”The milkman gave a sickly grin and said, “I just came in to tell you, the first coat is dry!”Intellect is helpful. There are situations where you will be in need of intellect – but only as a servant, not as a master.Two psychiatrists who are friends happen to run into each other on the street one day. One of them says to the other, “You are fine; how am I doing?”Intellect can be helpful, but it needs consciousness to be its master; otherwise it can behave in a very stupid way. It can misunderstand things, it can misrepresent things. It needs a master to guide it, to give it a sense of direction. That master is your being.Valerie, a twenty-three-year-old typist, walked along the beach, despondent. She was flat-chested, and felt totally distraught watching the big-bosomed girls on the beach surrounded by eligible men. As Valerie strolled on the sand her toe kicked a small bottle. She picked it up and removed the cork, and out popped a genie. “Who are you?” asked the frightened girl.“I am a genie, and because you were kind enough to give me my freedom, I will grant you any wish you make.”“Oh, that’s wonderful,” declared Valerie. “I would like the two biggest boobs in the world.”The genie snapped his fingers and there appeared Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the aim of life?Life has no aim other than itself, because life is another name for God himself. Everything else in the world can have an aim, can be a means to an end, but at least one thing you have to leave as the end of all but the means of none. You can call it existence. You can call it God. You can call it life. These are different names of a single reality.God is the name given to life by the theologians and it has a danger in it because it can be refuted, it can be argued against. Almost half of the earth does not believe in a God. Not only the communists, but the Buddhists, the Jainas, and thousands of free thinkers are atheists. The name “God” is not very defensible because it is given by man and there is no evidence, no proof, no argument for it. It remains more or less an empty word. It means whatever you want it to mean.Existence is better. All the great thinkers of this century are existentialists. They have dropped the word God completely. Existence in itself is enough for them. But to me, just as God is one extreme, so is existence another extreme, because with the word existence there is no indication that it may be alive – it may be dead. There is no indication that it is intelligent – there may be no intelligence. There is no indication that it is conscious – it may not have any consciousness.Hence, my choice is for life. Life contains everything that is needed; moreover, it needs no proof. You are life. You are the proof. You are the argument. You cannot deny life; hence in the whole history of man, there has not been a single thinker who has denied life.Millions have denied God, but how can you deny life? It is beating in your heart, it is in your breathing, it is showing in your eyes. It is expressing in your love. It is celebrating in a thousand and one ways – in the trees, in the birds, in the mountains, in the rivers.Life is the aim of everything. Hence, life cannot have an aim other than itself. To say it in other words: life’s aim is intrinsic. It has it within itself to grow, to expand, to celebrate, to dance, to love, to enjoy – these are all aspects of life.But up to now, no religion has accepted life as the aim of all our efforts, of all our endeavors. On the contrary, religions have been denying life and supporting a hypothetical God. But life is so real that thousands of years of all the religions have not been able even to make a dent in it, although they have all been anti-life. Their God was not the innermost center of life; their God was to be found only in renouncing life. It has been a very great calamity humanity has passed through: the very idea of renouncing life means respecting death.All your religions are worshipers of death. It is not a coincidence that you worship only the dead saints. When they are alive, you crucify them. When they are alive, you stone them to death. When they are alive, you poison them and when they are dead, you worship them – a sudden change happens. Your whole attitude changes.Nobody has gone deep into the psychology of this change. It is worth contemplating. Why are dead saints worshipped and living ones condemned? – because the dead saints fulfill all the conditions of being religious: they don’t laugh, they don’t enjoy, they don’t love, they don’t dance, they don’t have any kind of relationship with existence. They have really renounced life in its totality: they don’t breathe, their hearts no longer beat. Now they are perfectly religious! They cannot commit a sin. One thing is certain – you can depend on them, you can rely on them.A living saint is not so reliable. Tomorrow he may change his mind. Saints have become sinners, sinners have become saints – so until they are dead, nothing can be said about them with absolute certainty. That is one of the basic reasons that in your temples, in your churches, in your mosques, in your gurdwaras, in your synagogues… Whom are you worshipping? And you don’t see the stupidity of it all, that the living are worshipping the dead. The present is worshipping the past.Life is being forced to worship death. It is because of these anti-life religions that the question has arisen again and again down the ages: what is the aim of life? According to your religions, the aim of life is to renounce life, to destroy life, to torture yourself in the name of some mythological, some hypothetical God.Animals don’t have any religion except life; trees don’t have any religion except life; stars don’t have any religion except life. Except man, the whole of existence trusts only in life; there is no other God and there is no other temple. There is no holy scripture. Life is all in all. It is the God and it is the temple and it is the holy scripture – and to live it totally, wholeheartedly, is the only religion.I teach you that there is no other aim than to live with such totality that each moment becomes a celebration. The very idea of an aim brings the future into the mind, because any aim, any end, any goal, needs the future. All your goals deprive you of your present, which is the only reality you have. The future is only your imagination, and the past is just footprints left in the sands of your memory. Neither is the past real anymore, nor is the future real yet.This moment is the only reality.And to live this moment without any inhibition, without any repression, without any greed for the future, without any fear – without repeating the past again and again, but being absolutely fresh in every moment, fresh and young, unhampered by memories, unhindered by imaginations – you have such purity, such innocence, that only this innocence I call godliness.To me, God is not someone who created the world. God is someone that you create when you live totally, intensely – with all your heart, not holding anything back. When your life becomes simply a moment-to-moment joy, a moment-to-moment dance, when your life is nothing but a festival of lights. Every moment is so precious because once it is gone, it is gone forever.Living for any aim simply means you are not living in the present. Living for any heaven is simply greed. And you are missing the present, you are sacrificing the real that is in your hands at the feet of some imaginary heaven, for which no proof exists at all.Or being afraid of hell. There are thousands of monks – Christians, Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina. They are all living out of fear and greed. It is strange that nobody sees a simple fact – that they are living for greed to enter heaven and to enjoy the heavenly pleasures, and they are living out of fear that they should not commit anything wrong; otherwise they will have to suffer hellfire for eternity. And these monks, to whatever religion they belong, are worshipped by you.These are sick people, they need psychiatric treatment. They are so full of greed that this life is not enough for them, they need some heaven. And they are so afraid, so fear-oriented, that out of their fear they have created all kinds of hells. Of course, heaven is for those who will follow the path that they think is the path of virtue. And hell is for those who will not follow the path of virtue according to them.Just a little look around, and you will be very surprised: the Hindu gods are not celibate, and according to Jainism or Buddhism, or Catholic theology, celibacy is the foundation of all virtue. What about the Hindu gods? According to Jainism and Buddhism, drinking any alcoholic beverage is a sin, but according to Christians, even on their holy days they drink alcohol. Even Jesus was drinking alcohol.Not only that, Christians brag that Jesus did many miracles. One of them was turning water into wine. Turning water into wine is a miracle – or is it a crime? According to Jainism and Buddhism, Jesus is a meat eater, a drinker of wine; he is not following the path of virtue. Even Hindu gods, according to Jainism and Buddhism, are living the ordinary life of a householder. They are not celibate and they have not renounced life – they cannot be accepted as holy.Just in the last part of the last century, Ramakrishna was worshipped by Hindus almost as a god, but being a Bengali, his food consisted mainly of rice and fish. According to the vegetarians, a man who is eating fish, destroying life for his food, is not even human, what to say about divine?Looking from the other side, Christians cannot accept Gautam Buddha as a religious person because he never served the poor, he never opened institutions for the orphans like Mother Teresa does. He never opened hospitals for the sick. He was not concerned at all with human misery, poverty, sickness, disease. He was not in the service of God’s creation. He was a selfish man, just meditating, just enjoying his own being, just reaching higher peaks of consciousness. But his ecstasy is selfish – it is not in the service of those who are suffering.Mahavira cannot be accepted as a religious man according to Christianity for the same reasons. These are all very selfish people. All meditators are selfish because they are more concerned about their own growth than they are concerned about the blind and the deaf and the dumb.What is virtue? Who is going to decide? According to Mohammedanism, animals are created by God for man to eat. There is no question of violence; their very purpose is to be nourishment for humanity – so says the holy Koran. Now, no Eastern religion can accept Mohammedanism as a religion. Mohammed married nine wives. He was continuously fighting. His whole life was a life of war, although the word that he has for his religion is Islam and Islam means “peace.” But a strange man – his religion is peace and his whole life is nothing but violence. Even on his sword it was written, “Peace is my religion.” He could not find any other place to write it.What is the path of virtue? No religion has been able to provide it – not even the criterion by which it can be judged. As far as I am concerned, I say to live joyously, contented, fulfilled, sharing your love, your silence, your peace, letting your life become such a beautiful dance that not only you feel blessed but you can bless the whole world – that is the only authentic path. Life is itself the criterion; everything else is nonessential.And each individual is so unique that you cannot make a superhighway on which everybody has to travel to find the aim of life. On the contrary, everybody has to find his life without following the crowd, but following his own inner voice; without moving in a mob, but following a small footpath. That too is not created by anybody else, but you create it as you walk.The world of life and consciousness is almost like the sky – birds fly but they don’t leave any footprints. As you live deeply, sincerely, honestly, you don’t leave any footprints and nobody has to follow you. Everybody has to follow his own, still, small voice.My emphasis on meditation is so that you can hear your still, small voice – which will give you the guidance, the sense of direction. No scripture can give it to you. No religion, no religious founder can give it to you because they have been giving it to humanity for thousands of years and all their efforts have failed. They have only created retarded people, unintelligent people, because they insisted on believing. The moment you believe in someone, you lose intelligence. Belief is almost like poison to your intelligence.I say to you not to believe in anyone, including me. You have to find your own insight, and then follow it. Wherever it leads is the right path for you. Whether anybody else is following that path or not is not the question. Each individual is unique and each individual life has a beauty in its uniqueness.Your question is very significant, perhaps the ancient-most question. Man has asked it since the very beginning. And millions of answers have been provided but no answer has been successful. The question still remains. The question is still relevant. That means… Mohammed, Moses, Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Rama – what happened to their answers? Their answers have not satisfied anyone. The question bubbles up again and again, and it will continue to bubble up because it cannot be resolved by wrong answers. And they could not give the right answers because they were all anti-life. They were all escapists; they were afraid to live.My answer is: life’s aim is life itself – more life, deeper life, higher life, but life always. There is nothing higher than life. And a reverence for life is a necessary corollary. If life’s aim is life, then reverence for life becomes your religion. Then respect other people’s life. Don’t interfere in anybody’s life, don’t try to force somebody to follow a certain path that you think is right. You can follow it, it is your freedom, but never impose it on anybody else.The world does not need any organized religion. The world certainly needs religious people – but not Hindus, nor Mohammedans, nor Christians – the world simply needs individuals in search of deeper and richer life. Not God, not paradise, not heaven. Because as life becomes infinitely deep, it is the paradise; you have entered the kingdom of God. And the doors are within your own heart.But people are blind, and tradition has been making them more and more blind. Tradition respects blind people, it respects people who don’t think, it respects people who never doubt. It respects people who are not skeptical. It wants people to be just obedient machines. Perhaps machines are, according to the traditional mind, the most religious people in the world because they never disobey.As far as my insight is concerned, a man who is not rebellious cannot be religious – rebellious against the past, rebellious against organized religions, rebellious against all those people who want to dominate you. And they have found subtle ways to dominate you: “Our religion is the most ancient!” So what? That means your religion is the most rotten! But they are trying to make it “most ancient” so that you feel awe; if for ten thousand years nobody has disobeyed, there must be some truth in it.Every religion uses the argument that it is very old, very ancient. Religions which are not very old naturally have to try the opposite argument; for example Sikhism, which is only five hundred years old, or Mohammedanism, which is only fourteen hundred years old. Their argument is that older religions are older versions of God’s message to man: “We are bringing the latest message of God to man.”Hazrat Mohammed has said, “There have been other messengers before, but after me there will be no other messenger: I have brought the final version of the message.” Hence he could say, “There is only one God and one holy book, the Koran, and one holy messenger, Mohammed. After me, anybody who claims that he has a direct communication with God is committing the greatest sin possible.”It happened in Baghdad once…A man was brought to the Caliph’s court in Baghdad. The Caliph is the chief representative of the messenger of God, Hazrat Mohammed. Omar was at that time the Caliph in Baghdad and the man was brought because he was declaring that he had brought an even fresher version than Mohammed.The Caliph said, “This is unforgivable, but you look so simple and so innocent: I will give you seven days to think it over, and you will simultaneously be punished as much as possible so that you come back to your senses. And after seven days, I will come to the prison myself to ask you, ‘What you think now?’”After seven days, he went there. The man was naked, bound to a pillar, and he had been beaten continually for seven days. He had not been allowed to sleep, had not been given anything to eat. They had tortured him as much as possible. When Caliph Omar asked him, “What do you think now?” he said, “What do I think? When I was sent by God, he warned me: ‘Listen, my messengers have always been tortured.’ He was right. Your torture has proved that I am the messenger. Now there is no need of Hazrat Mohammed; I have brought the latest message from God.”And at that very moment, from another pillar, another naked man who had been caught one month earlier because he had been declaring, “I am God”… For one month he had been tortured – he shouted from the other pillar, “Don’t believe this cheat! After Mohammed, I have not sent any messenger to the world. This man is a deceiver.”You will think these people are mad but the same kind of people have become the founders of your religions. Perhaps these people were not very articulate, were not very intelligent, otherwise they might have created a new religion. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth tirthankara of the Jainas, declares that he is the last tirthankara; now there will be no other tirthankara…I used to go to Wardha while traveling around India. In Wardha, there used to live a man, Swami Shakti Bakta. He was a learned man; he was a Jaina, very scholarly. And just joking with him, I told him, “You are so learned that you can easily declare yourself the twenty-fifth tirthankara of the Jainas.”He said, “That idea has come many times to my mind too, but Jainas are not going to accept it.”I said, “They never accepted Mahavira easily. There were eight other contenders, and it was a long, drawn-out fight in which Mahavira succeeded in convincing people that he is the twenty-fourth, the others were fake. So it all depends; if you have the ability, you may convince them.”He said, “I have the ability.”I said, “Then this is a good chance!” He declared himself the twenty-fifth tirthankara, and the Jainas expelled him. Then he was very angry with me, saying, “You destroyed my reputation!”I said, “I was giving you the greatest respect possible, making you the twenty-fifth. You should have thought about whether you have guts enough. They are not going to accept so easily, against the statement of Mahavira: ‘After me there is going to be no tirthankara; my message is complete, entirely complete. Nothing can be added, nothing can be edited out; there is no need for the twenty-fifth.’ It was on your intelligence, arguments, scholarship that the whole thing depended. I am not to be blamed.“Just look at it this way: if Jainas came to me and said, ‘You are our twenty-fifth tirthankara,’ I am not going to accept it because who wants to be twenty-fifth in a line? I am the first, otherwise forget all about it! You were stupid to accept the idea of being twenty-fifth, standing in a queue, the twenty-fifth. The moment you accepted it, that very moment I understood that now you would be in trouble. You cannot blame me.“And you had told me that this idea had occurred to you many times. It was just that you had not the courage to say it, and because I supported it, you thought at least there is one person… I am still ready to support you, but you will have to fight for it.”He said, “But how can I fight? They have expelled me.”I said, “That is your business; you tried and you failed.”All these religions have been doing the same: they closed the doors out of fear that somebody may come afterward and may change the structure of their religion, of their disciplines. And certainly it needs constant change because times go on changing. If Mahavira comes today, he himself will find that everything has changed. It was one thing to walk barefooted on mud paths – it is another thing to walk barefooted in the hot summer days in India on coal tar roads.Jaina monks and nuns all have burned feet. And what are they doing? They put towels around their feet. Now I said, “This is stupid, because that is a kind of primitive shoe. Why can’t you purchase a shoe made of synthetic leather, in which no violence is involved? Or a rubber shoe in which no violence is involved, or a cloth shoe. That’s what you are trying to do, and it looks so awkward – towels around the feet, and then binding them with ropes. You look simply stupid.” But the trouble is, Mahavira will not allow any change to happen after him.Life is not a static phenomenon. It is a flux, a riverlike flux; it needs constant change. It needs moment-to-moment awareness; otherwise you will be left behind. Not to be left behind is one of the most important steps for the growth of intelligence. The whole world is almost retarded, and the people who are responsible for your retardedness are the people you worship. They have stopped thousands of years ago and you are still following them. Meanwhile, everything has changed.Coming home early from work one afternoon, a man found his wife naked in bed, breathing heavily and quite visibly distressed. “Honey, what is the matter?” he asks.“I… I… I don’t know,” she cried, “I think maybe I am having a heart attack.”The husband freaked, and rushed downstairs to call the doctor. He was in the middle of dialing the number when his young daughter rushed in and screamed, “Daddy, Daddy, there is a naked man in the closet!” The distraught husband threw down the phone, rushed up the stairs again and opened the closet door, only to find his best friend inside.“For Christ’s sake, Ed,” the man shouted, “my wife is in the bedroom having a heart attack, and you have got to sneak around naked, scaring the kids!” Only retarded people are left in the world.At the beginning of the Second World War, a Nazi officer is forced to share a compartment on a crowded train with a Jew and his family. After ignoring them for a while he says contemptuously, “You Jews are supposed to be so clever: where does this so-called intelligence come from?”“It is from our diet,” says the Jew, “we eat a lot of raw fish heads.” Upon which he opens his basket and saying, “Lunch time!” he proceeds to hand out fish heads to his wife and children.The Nazi, getting excited says, “Wait a minute, I want some!”“Okay,” says the Jew, “I will sell you six for twenty-five dollars.”The Nazi accepts and begins to chew. He almost throws up, but the children shout encouragement, “Suck out the brains, suck out the brains!” The Nazi is on his fourth head when he says to the Jew, “Is not twenty-five dollars a lot of money for six fish heads, which are usually thrown out as garbage?”“See?” says the Jew, “It is working already!”Osho,What is intelligence? Is it a state far beyond the mind and its limits? A kind of awareness of what the mind is, without belonging to it? Is meditation connected with intelligence? And is intelligence a potential that we all have, that simply needs to be awakened? Can we raise our consciousness with intelligence?The question you have asked is of great significance: “What is intelligence? Is it a state far beyond the mind and its limits?” Yes. Intelligence is not of the mind; intelligence is one of the qualities of your being. But the mind is being used as a vehicle for it; hence the confusion. People think intelligence is of the mind – it comes through the mind. The mind is the instrument for its expression.The mind itself is only a biocomputer. It has a memory system just as any computer has: you feed the memory system and the mind keeps the memory. But memory is not intelligence. Intelligence is the clear insight into things about which you don’t have any information. Memory can function only about those things which are known to you – but life consists of the known, of the unknown, and of the unknowable. As far as the known is concerned, memory is enough.That’s what all your universities and all your educational systems are doing: they are simply feeding your memory with more and more information, and whatever is known to your memory system, you will answer immediately. That answer does not prove that you are intelligent. Intelligence is known only when you encounter the unknown, about which you don’t have any memory, any knowledge, any information beforehand. When you encounter the unknown, that is the point which is decisive. How do you respond? You can respond intelligently or you can respond stupidly.For example, Germany is one of the countries where the population is decreasing. The government is worried because the population is decreasing by three thousand people every day, but meanwhile thirty thousand people are coming from other countries as immigrants into Germany. The government is afraid that within just a decade Germany will not be the land of the Germans. Their population is decreasing and immigrants are entering the country.Here in India in 1947, when India became independent, the population of the country was four hundred million. Now the population of the country is nine hundred million – an increase of five hundred million people. Even in 1947 the country was poor, and Britain was in a hurry to give freedom to this country because soon Britain would be blamed for the poverty. The prime minister of England, Atlee, had sent Mountbatten to India with an urgent message: “Whatever happens, you have to give India freedom before 1948 – the deadline is 1948. Because we can see what is going to happen, and the whole blame will be on our heads – so be quick!”And Mountbatten did really a quick job. He gave India freedom even before 1948 – in 1947, one year earlier. Atlee was very happy. And none of the Indian leaders even thought about what the hurry was. In 1942, Britain was not ready to give freedom to India; when India was ready to fight for freedom, Britain was not willing. Britain crushed India’s revolution in 1942 within nine days. And not a single Indian leader, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, could see the point why Britain suddenly became so interested in giving them freedom. There was no revolution; after 1942, the Indian leaders had lost hope because their revolution had been crushed in nine days. This was the smallest revolution in the whole history of mankind!And then suddenly out of the blue, Britain itself decides… If the Indian leaders had been intelligent, they could have seen that there was something unknown: you are not asking for freedom and they are ready to give it to you; what new factors have come into existence? But nobody bothered about it. They were simply happy because they were getting old and if freedom did not come soon, then it would not be in their lifetimes; perhaps their names would remain in the footnotes of history, but they would not be great leaders of the country.They were so happy, like children, that freedom had come. But they never thought about it: has any empire, any imperialist country, ever, on its own, been in such a hurry to give freedom to the slaves, when the slaves are perfectly happy and no revolution is happening? And there was no possibility of any revolution for at least another twenty years.The situation was clear, but it needed intelligence. There was no question of memory because the situation was new. India had grown to the point of four hundred million people, and Britain could see by the rate of growth that the country is going to die from hunger and starvation, and they did not want to be responsible for it.I started saying in 1950 that India needed birth control, and I was condemned: “You are talking against religion. God sends the children – how can we prevent them?”I argued with them: “When you fall sick, God sends the sickness – why do you call the doctor? If God wants you to be well, he will send the medicine too.”They argued with me. The Shankaracharya of Puri himself argued with me: “Birth control methods are artificial.”I asked him, “What do you mean by artificial?” He said, “They are not created by God.”I said, “Do you think railway trains are created by God, airplanes are created by God? The medicines you are using are all artificial.”And he had heavy glasses sitting on his nose. I said, “What about this – have you come from God’s house? Have you brought these glasses with your birth? God has given you eyes and you should stay with just your eyes – what is the need of having these heavy glasses? These are artificial. Everything else artificial is okay, but birth control methods cannot be used because they are artificial.”He became so angry with me that he refused to speak from the same stage during a meeting, saying, “I cannot speak with this man on the same stage. Either he will speak or I will speak.”I was telling them that soon they would be in trouble, but even today the government is afraid, the religious leaders are afraid. It goes against their memory system; otherwise, a small intelligence would be enough to show them.Scientists are predicting that by the end of this century, India will have one billion people – that is one thousand million people, and that is the lowest estimate. The more progressive and more intelligent people have estimated that India will have one billion and eighty million people by the end of this century. Fifty percent of India is going to die by the end of this century, and when one in two people is going to die, what do you think about those who will be left living amongst corpses? Their situation will be worse than being dead. At least the dead will be at rest.But to talk about birth control or the birth control pill goes against the memory, against the system, against the mind that has been told something for centuries but is not aware that a totally new situation has arisen. India has never been the most populated country – it was China. By the end of this century India will have gone ahead of China. China is behaving more intelligently.But the really intelligent people you will find in Germany, in Switzerland, where the population is decreasing. Increasing the population is increasing death. The situation is new; it needs new methods to face it. Intelligence means the capability to respond to new situations. It comes from your being – mind is only a vehicle – a kind of awareness of what the mind is, without belonging to it. You are only intellectually thinking about it. But whatever you are saying, if it becomes your experience, it will transform your whole life.Intelligence is the quality of the witness; it watches the mind and it gives direction to the mind. Right now, whatever you have in your mind has come from the outside. Intelligence comes from the inside. That used to be the basic meaning of the word education – it means “to draw out.” But what is being done in the name of education is just the opposite – it is “to stuff in,” to stuff in all kinds of nonsense. Nowhere are efforts being made that your intelligence should be drawn out. You have it already, it just needs a passage, a way.And meditation creates that passage, that way. It makes your being the master and your mind just a servant. Memory is from the outside; intelligence is from your innermost sources, your very life, responding to situations.“Is meditation connected with intelligence?” Meditation is connected with your being, and your being has many aspects: intelligence, blissfulness, grace, gratitude, prayer, love, compassion. Infinite is the treasure of your being. Intelligence is only one of the parts. “And is intelligence a potential that we all have, and that simply needs to be awakened? Can we raise our consciousness with intelligence?” Everybody is born with the same potential. Differences exist because we are not using our potential to the same extent.You will be surprised to know that even a man like Albert Einstein, whom you can call an example of a genius, uses only fifteen percent of his potential. The people whom you think of as very talented use only ten percent of their potential. And the ordinary masses, the millions of people, use between five and seven percent. The world would be a totally different place if everybody was using a hundred percent of his potential, in different directions, in different dimensions.Meditation can only make you aware of your potential, can make the passage in which your potential can grow and can find its expression. And nobody is devoid or unequal as far as intelligence is concerned. The inequality appears only because of our use: somebody uses it, somebody does not use it.An American, a very devout Catholic, had tried for years to get a private audience with the pope. When his request was finally granted, he flew to Rome, and within the hour was kneeling before His Holiness. Kissing the ring after the pope had blessed him, the man said, “Your Holiness, I want you to know this has been the most inspirational experience of my life. I am deeply grateful. I would like to share my favorite story with you: there were these two Polacks…”“Excuse me, my son,” the pope interrupted, a little offended, “are you aware that I am Polish?”“Ah yes, Your Holiness, but don’t worry. I will tell it very, very slowly.”

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The Hidden Splendor 01-27Category: OSHO’S VISION FOR THE WORLD

The Hidden Splendor 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Last night while lying in bed and allowing my mind to wander down creative corridors, I experienced what I can only describe as a mental somersault, and I looked, for the first time, inside. I will not attempt to describe how it felt, but I can say it was more ecstatic than anything I could imagine. I felt doors that were stuck tight, dissolve, and in my trembling and astonished innocence I was aware of your compassionate presence cushioning me. Oh my precious and beloved master, what was this treasure I discovered? Is this what you call meditation, and will it be easy to find again?It has been a beautiful first glimpse of meditation. But the first glimpse should not be desired; otherwise you will destroy it. Just as it has happened on its own – you were not attempting to achieve it – allow it to come and go; don’t be greedy. That is one of the great obstacles on the path of those who are in search of themselves. A glimpse happens, it is ecstatic, and the old mind immediately grabs it and starts thinking in its old pattern: how to get it again?The mind is not going to get any experience of meditation. And the greedier the mind becomes, the less is the possibility of that relaxed state in which meditation blossoms. So one most important thing to be remembered is: forget all about it. It has come on its own; it will come on its own. It cannot be made a goal. Our mind turns everything into a goal; its whole training is for achieving: if you have achieved this much, you should achieve it again and you should achieve more.But the very desire of achieving is a disturbance, is a tension, is an anxiety. It happens to almost everybody when for the first time the sky opens inside. You were not asking for it; you were doing something else. But you were relaxed, calm, and quiet. You were ready, but you were not demanding anything from existence. Existence never yields to any of our demands. It is the demanding mind that has created all our misery.Once you have tasted something that you have never tasted before, it seems absolutely natural to ask for it again and again. But you have to understand that meditation is something not of your doing. It is not your act. It is something that happens to you in a certain space. That space is not of desire, not of demand, but of absolute relaxation and trust in nature. If it has given you one glimpse, it will give you many glimpses of a deeper nature, of a higher quality. Right now you may not be able even to imagine them, because unless you experience something, you cannot imagine it, you cannot dream about it. This is the very beginning of the journey on the path, but a very beautiful opening. If you don’t come in the way, many more experiences will follow.So the only thing to avoid is yourself coming in the way. Remember always that it is a happening, so when you are not anxious to get it, only then is it possible. Your anxiety, your tension, your greed, make your mind very confused and do not allow the relaxed space where flowers of meditation blossom. You say, “Last night while lying in bed and allowing my mind to wander down creative corridors, I experienced what I can only describe as a mental somersault. And I looked for the first time inside.” It all happened naturally. It was not preplanned. You were not looking for it.“I will not attempt to describe how I felt…” Even if you do attempt, you cannot describe it. The experience of your inner being, howsoever small, is basically indescribable. There are no words, no concepts into which you can put it rationally. It is an experience where language has never entered, where mind has never entered. It is not a mental experience; otherwise there would be no difficulty to describe it. Anything that can be described is of the mind, and anything that cannot be described is of real authentic value; it is spiritual.“I will not attempt to describe how I felt, but I can say it was more ecstatic than anything that I could imagine. I felt doors that were stuck tight, dissolve, and in my trembling and astonished innocence…” Remember these words. It was happening in your “trembling and astonished innocence.” “I was aware of your compassionate presence cushioning me. Oh my precious and beloved master, what was this treasure I discovered?” You are again asking for a description, for an explanation. And you know perfectly well that even in ordinary life there are many things which cannot be described, but only experienced.You taste something – is there any way to describe it? Is there any way to give an explanation about it? And it is an ordinary thing. You have tasted something, you have smelled a fragrance, you have heard music. You experienced it; it thrilled you. You can say what happened to you, but you cannot say what it was exactly. You know perfectly well what it is, but there exists no language. Language is created by people for mundane affairs.For the sacred there is only silence.A man came to Zen Master Rinzai, who was sitting on the beach. The man said, “I have been looking for you, and for many days I have been thinking to come to you. I want to know the essential, the very essence, of all your religious teaching – in short, because I am not a man of philosophical bent. What is it that you are teaching?”Rinzai looked at him and remained silent. A moment passed. The man felt a little strange. He asked, “Have you heard me or not?”Rinzai said, “I have heard you, but have you heard me or not?”The man said, “My god, you have not said a single word.”Rinzai said, “I was sitting silent. That is the essential part of my teaching. I thought that rather than talking about it, it would be better to show it to you. Because in words, things get distorted; in words, you start interpreting them according to your own prejudices.”The man said, “It is beyond me. Please give some words that I can remember.”Rinzai said, “If you insist, I will commit the crime of forcing something into words which is not ready, which is absolutely unwilling to be put into words.”He wrote with his finger in the sand where he was sitting: meditation.The man said, “I have come from very far away and you are making me more puzzled. First you remained silent; now you simply write ‘meditation.’ That does not make any sense to me. What is meditation?”Rinzai said, “What is meditation? What is a roseflower? A roseflower is a roseflower. You can see it dancing in the wind and in the rain and in the sun. You can enjoy its dance, you can enjoy its fragrance, its beauty, but what is a roseflower? Don’t ask such stupid questions.”He said, “But I have come from so far, with great expectations. Just a little more, so that I can understand what meditation is.”So Rinzai wrote with capital letters: MEDITATION.The man asked, “Does it make any difference whether you write in small letters or you write in capital letters?”Rinzai said, “You are only concerned with your difficulty. You are not concerned with my difficulty. Even writing it as “meditation,” I am committing a crime against meditation itself because it is an experience, not an explanation.“It is the flower of silence. It cannot be contained in words. Even the word meditation is just utilitarian. People ask and feel annoyed if they are not answered, so we answer, but all our answers are wrong.“The moment we transform the experience into an explanation, something goes wrong. It is a wordless state of being. If you really want to know it, sit with me; be with me for a few days. Perhaps my silence may affect you, because it is contagious.”Don’t ask what treasure you have discovered. You have discovered only the door; you have not even entered the temple yet. But you are on the right path and you are moving in the right direction. If you don’t allow greed, if you don’t start expecting it to happen every day, according to your desires, you will discover the treasure too. It is inside you.“Is this what you call meditation?” Just the beginning. Meditation is when mind is no more at all. Meditation is a state of no-mind. Your mind has not dissolved; it was watching, standing by the corner. And it is your mind that is inquiring about what has happened. It is not the business of the mind. Mind is meant for outward things, for objective reality. In science it is perfectly in its right place, but in religion, in your interiority, in your subjectivity it has no place at all.“…and will it be easy to find it again?” It all depends on you. If you don’t try to find it again, it will be very easy. If you try to find it again, you will make it more and more difficult. The more you try, the less of a possibility there is.The American idea of “try, and try, try again” will not help. It is good for the outside world; for the inside world, don’t try. Just wait, and wait with patience. If it happens, feel grateful. If it does not happen, don’t feel sad.I have heard about a Sufi mystic, Bayazid, who used to say after each prayer, raising his hands toward the sky, “Father, you are so generous. You take care of me so carefully, as if I am the only one to be taken care of.” His disciples were very tired of listening to it every day, morning, evening.Once it happened that for three days… Bayazid obviously was a rebel; no mystic can be otherwise. I have not heard that a mystic can be orthodox, traditional. A mystic is naturally rebellious. His religion is rebellion, rebellion against all kinds of lies that tradition goes on giving from one generation to another generation. And Bayazid had annoyed the orthodox, the so-called religious, the priests, all the vested interests who want man to remain enslaved to the past. For three days they had been passing through villages where no food was given to them, doors were closed in their faces, even water was not given and it was a desert, with no shelter. They were sleeping cold nights on the sand.And still after every prayer he was saying, “How can you manage? You have to look after such a vast universe, but you take so much care. I cannot ever return it; I don’t have anything to give to you.”The disciples finally freaked out! They said, “It is enough. Before it was okay, but for three days no food, no water… We are dying! Cold nights in the desert, hot days in the desert, and still you are telling God, ‘You are taking care of us’?”Bayazid said, “He knows what is needed and when it is needed. These three days of hunger and thirst and the cold nights and the hot days must have been absolutely necessary for us. He always takes care.”Such a trust in existence will bring, whenever you are ready, whatever you need. So be grateful if it happens and be grateful if it does not happen. That is real gratefulness. But don’t start asking, “Will it be easy to find it again?” Have you found it in the first place, or has it found you? You have not found it, so how can you find it again?It has found you. And it will find you again and again, but don’t lose your innocence in expectations, in desires. That is one of the very stupid things religious people go on doing.Two Polacks rent a rowboat and go fishing on a lake. They are catching fish after fish, and have almost two dozen by the end of the afternoon.One man asks the other, “Why don’t we come back to the very same place tomorrow?”“Good idea,” his friend answers.So the first man takes a piece of chalk, and draws an X on the bottom of the boat. “Don’t be stupid!” the friend says. “How do you know that we’ll get the same boat tomorrow?”Just remain available and grateful – waiting with a throbbing heart, not with a desiring mind; waiting with an open heart, not with a closed mind – not with the idea, “It has to happen. Why is it not happening?” If you can remember this simple thing, it will happen more often, it will happen more deeply, it will happen in new forms, in new riches, in new colors, with new significance, with deeper meanings, with higher flights. But it will always happen – it will not be your doing.Osho,This morning before discourse started, sitting on the marble, I felt as if we were one mouth singing, one heart beating, one breath breathing. I felt so much love in my being, as if we were all one being. I feel like giving a lot; I feel as if I am taking so much from everywhere, and my being wants to be useful for developing eternal love. I have the feeling we are holding each other's hands and starting to flower all together in the spring. Am I just a dreamer, beloved Osho?Friedrich Nietzsche in one of his statements says, “The greatest calamity will fall on humanity the day all the dreamers disappear.” The whole evolution of man is because man has dreamed about it. What was a dream yesterday, today is a reality, and what is a dream today can become a reality tomorrow.All the poets are dreamers, all the musicians are dreamers, all the mystics are dreamers. In fact, creativity is a by-product of dreaming. But these dreams are not the dreams that Sigmund Freud analyzes. So you have to make a distinction between the dream of a poet, the dream of a sculptor, the dream of an architect, the dream of a mystic, the dream of a dancer – and the dreams of a sick mind.It is very unfortunate that Sigmund Freud never bothered about the great dreamers who are the foundation of the whole of human evolution. He came across only the psychologically sick people, and because his whole life’s experience was to analyze the dreams of psychopaths, the very word dreaming became condemned. The madman dreams, but his dream is going to be destructive of himself. The creative man also dreams, but his dream is going to enrich the world.I am reminded of Michelangelo. He was passing through the market where all kinds of marble were available, and he saw a beautiful rock, so he inquired about it.The owner said, “If you want that rock you can take it for free because it has just been lying around taking up space. And for twelve years, nobody has even inquired about it; I also don’t see that there is any potential in that rock.”Michelangelo took the rock, worked on it for almost the whole year, and made perhaps the most beautiful statue that has ever existed. Just a few years ago, a madman destroyed it. It was in the Vatican; it was a statue of Jesus Christ after he was taken down from the cross, and is lying dead in his mother Mary’s lap.I have seen only photographs of it, but it is so alive, as if Jesus is going to wake up any moment. And he has used the marble with such artfulness that you can feel both things – the strength of Jesus and the fragileness. And the tears are in the eyes of Jesus’ mother, Mary.A madman, just a few years ago, hammered the rock that Michelangelo had made, and when he was asked why he had done it he said, “I also want to become famous. Michelangelo had to work one year; then he became famous. I had to work for five minutes only, and I destroyed the whole statue. And my name has gone around the world as a headline on all the papers.”Both men worked on the same marble rock. One was a creator, another was a madman.After a year, when Michelangelo had finished the work, he asked the shopkeeper to come to his home because he wanted to show him something.He could not believe his eyes. He asked, “From where did you get this beautiful marble?”Michelangelo said, “Don’t you recognize? It is the same ugly rock that waited in front of your shop for twelve years.” And I remember this incident, because the shopkeeper asked, “How did you manage to think that that ugly rock could be turned into such a beautiful statue?”Michelangelo said, “I did not think about it. I have been dreaming of making this statue, and when I passed by the rock I suddenly saw Jesus, calling me, ‘I am encaged in the rock. Free me! Help me to get out of this rock.’ I saw exactly the same statue in the rock. So I have only done a small job: I have removed the unnecessary parts of the rock, and Jesus and Mary are free from their bondage.”It would have been a great contribution if a man of the same caliber as Sigmund Freud, instead of analyzing the sick people and their dreams, had worked on the dreams of psychologically healthy, and not only healthy, but creative people. The analysis of their dreams will not show that all dreams are repressions. The analysis of their dreams will show that there are dreams which are born out of a more creative consciousness than ordinary people have.So don’t be worried about being a dreamer. All the people who have gathered around me are dreamers. They are dreaming of a higher state of consciousness, they are dreaming of a possibility to find the eternal source of life. They are dreaming of God. And their dreams are not sick, their dreams are authentically healthy. The whole evolution of man and his consciousness depends on these dreamers. You say, “This morning before discourse, sitting on the marble, I felt as if we were one mouth singing, one heart beating, one breath breathing. I felt so much love in my being, as if we were all one being.“I feel like giving a lot, I feel as if I am taking so much from everywhere, and my being wants to be useful for developing eternal love. I have the feeling we are holding each other’s hands and starting to flower all together in the spring.” It is not a dream. It is a dream that is becoming real, a dream that is transforming itself into reality. And it is not only you. Many people have written to me; in different ways they have felt it, and what they have felt is not their projection. It is our reality, it is our discovery.The whole of existence is one organic unity. You are not only holding hands with each other, you are holding hands with the trees. You are not only breathing together, the whole universe is breathing together. The universe is in a deep harmony. Only man has forgotten the language of harmony, and our work here is to remind you. We are not creating harmony; harmony is your reality. It is just that you have forgotten about it. Perhaps it is so obvious that one tends to forget about it. Perhaps you are born in it; how can you think about it?An ancient parable is that a fish who was of a philosophical bent of mind was asking other fish, “I have heard so much about the ocean; where is it?” And she is in the ocean! But she was born in the ocean, she has lived in the ocean; there has never been any separation. She has not seen ocean as a separate object from herself. An old fish caught hold of the young philosopher and told her, “This is the ocean we are in.”But the young philosopher said, “You must be kidding. This is water and you are calling it the ocean. I will have to inquire more to wiser people around.”A fish comes to know about the ocean only when it is caught by a fisherman and drawn out of the ocean, thrown into the sand. Then, for the first time she understands that she has always lived in the ocean, that the ocean is her life and without it she cannot survive.But with man there is a difficulty. You cannot be taken out of existence. Existence is infinite: there are no shores where you can stand aloof and see existence. Wherever you are, you will be part of existence. We are all breathing together. We are part of one orchestra. To understand it is a great experience – don’t call it dreaming; dreaming has a very wrong connotation because of Sigmund Freud. Otherwise it is one of the most beautiful words, very poetic.You are experiencing a reality, because all the people who are here are here for the same purpose: just to be silent, just to be joyful, just to be. In their silence, they will feel they are joined with others. When you are thinking, you are separate from others because you are thinking different thoughts and the other person is thinking different thoughts. But if you are both silent, then all the walls between you disappear. Two silences cannot remain two. They become one.All great values of life – love, silence, blissfulness, ecstasy, godliness – make you aware of an immense oneness. There is nobody other than you; we are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer, different dances of one dancer, different paintings – but the painter is one.But this has to be reminded to you again: don’t call it a dream, because by calling it a dream you do not understand that it is a reality. And reality is far more beautiful than any dream can be. Reality is more psychedelic, more colorful, more joyful, more dancing than you can ever imagine. But we are living so unconsciously.Our first unconsciousness is that we think that we are separate. But I emphasize that no man is an island, we are all part of a vast continent. There is variety, but that does not make us separate. Variety makes life richer – a part of us is in the Himalayas, a part of us is in the stars, a part of us is in the roses. A part of us is in the bird on the wing, a part of us is in the green of the trees. We are spread all over. To experience it as reality will transform your whole approach toward life, will transform your every act, will transform your very being.You will become full of love; you will become full of reverence for life. You will become for the first time, according to me, truly religious – not a Christian, not a Hindu, not a Mohammedan, but truly, purely religious.The word religion is beautiful. It comes from a root which means bringing together those who have fallen apart in their ignorance; bringing them together, waking them up so that they can see they are not separate. Then you cannot hurt even a tree. Then your compassion and your love will be just spontaneous – not cultivated, not something of a discipline. If love is a discipline, it is false. If nonviolence is cultivated, it is false. If compassion is nurtured, it is false. But if they come spontaneously without any effort of your own, then they have a reality so deep, so exquisite.In the name of religion, so much crime has been done in the past. More people have been killed by religious people than by anybody else. Certainly all these religions have been fake, pseudo. The authentic religion has to be born.Once H. G. Wells was asked, when he had published his history of the world – a tremendous work – “What do you think about civilization?”And H. G. Wells said, “It is a good idea, but somebody should do something about it to bring it into existence.”Up to now we have not been civilized, not cultured, not religious. In the name of civilization, in the name of culture, in the name of religion we have been doing all kinds of barbarous acts – primitive, subhuman, animalistic. And sometimes we have passed even beyond the animals: no animals eats its own species, no animal is a cannibal, except man. And you will be thinking that only in Africa a few people eat human flesh. It is not so simple to throw the responsibility on small tribes in Africa.Just a few days ago, in Palestine, people asked the government – because so many people are dying from hunger and starvation – “Can we eat human flesh?” Of course, of dead people – those who have died of starvation can at least help others to survive a little longer. And the government of Palestine has accepted the idea that it is better to eat human flesh than to die.The population is growing so fast in the world that it is not just a guess that by the end of this century, millions of people will be eating human flesh. No animal goes that low. He will die hungry, but he will not eat any animal of his own species.Man has fallen far away from reality. He has to be awakened to the truth that we are all one. And it is not a hypothesis; it is the experience of all the meditators, without exception, down the ages, that the whole of existence is one organic unity. So don’t mistake a beautiful experience as a dream because to call it a dream cancels its reality. Dreams have to be made real, not reality changed into dreams.An old man of eighty-two went to a sperm bank to make a deposit.“Are you sure,” asked the woman at the reception desk, “that you want to do this?”“Yes,” answered the old man, “I feel it is my duty to give something of myself to the world.”The woman handed him a jar and directed him to a room down the hall. When thirty minutes had passed and he did not return, the girl began to worry. She feared he might have had a heart attack or a stroke.At that moment the old man came out of the room and approached the young woman. “Listen,” he said, “I tried it with one hand, then I tried it with two hands, then I got it up and beat it on the sink. Then I ran warm water on it, then cold water over it – and still I can’t get the lid off the jar!”Don’t guess!

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have heard you say, Hari Om Tat Sat: the divine sound – that is the truth.When you speak I hear the sound of truth resonating in me, yet I am not enlightened. How is it that I can recognize that which I haven't realized?Maneesha, Hari Om Tat Sat: the divine sound – that is the truth…. It is one of the mahavakyas, the great sayings which have been embedded in the hearts of the mystics since eternity. It is not something theoretical, not something philosophical, it is something existential.Those who have gone within themselves have always heard a strange sound, which can only be called the sound of existence itself. It is difficult to reduce that sound into language. Hence for centuries, as far back as we can go, om, the sound, has been represented not by any alphabetical word but by a symbol.That symbol is beyond any alphabet. It does not belong to any language. Hence the Tibetans can use it, the people who are writing in Sanskrit can use it; Mahavira can use it, who was using a language called Prakrit; Gautam Buddha can use it, who was speaking in a language called Pali. There is no other symbol in the whole world which does not belong to any particular language, but is simply symbolic of a certain experience that can happen to anyone. And why have they not reduced it to some linguistic form? It is not without reason.The sound of om is heard only when your mind is completely silent, when you have gone beyond all language, all thinking, when there is pure silence, not even a ripple. Suddenly you hear a music. There is no instrument playing it. It seems it is simply the very heartbeat of existence. That’s why it doesn’t matter whether someone is a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jaina. It does not depend on your philosophy, on your religion. It depends on the depth of your reach toward your very inner center. There, suddenly, you are overwhelmed.It is not exactly om, but om comes the closest to expressing the sound. And the sound has been called the divine sound because it is not man-made. It is eternally herenow. Whoever wants to enter into the stream of eternal existence is bound to hear it. It says nothing, but it vibrates your being to such joy, to such celebration, to such dance that you have never dreamt of before.The word hari is used as one of the names of God. I don’t want to bring God in; I want to avoid God completely because it brings all kinds of lies behind it. Nobody has ever experienced any God. There is no evidence, no proof, no argument to support it. It is an absolutely useless hypothesis – not only useless, but immensely harmful, because so much bloodshed has happened because of the name God. It is time that we forget the word and start using something else fresh.The word hari in itself has another meaning which is far more beautiful than the word God. Hari in Sanskrit means the thief. And the sound of om, once you come close to it, certainly proves to be the master thief because it simply steals your very heart forever. Then you are part of the existence and you are no longer a separate personality.You are not. Existence is.Certainly this can be done only by a master thief: you are completely stolen, absorbed, not even a mark is left behind. Those who have used the words hari om would rather say that it is the divine sound. My own preference is to say that it is the master thief sound, which has stolen millions of hearts.But whatever you say, one thing is certain: Tat Sat. Tat means that, and sat means truth.This sound of om is our very truth, is our very being. We are made of it. The whole existence vibrates, and through different vibrations of the same sound there are different things, but they are simply different vibrations. A certain vibration creates a tree, another vibration creates a bird, another vibration creates a man, but the whole existence, according to the mystics, is made of sound. This sound is certainly the most sacred, the most divine, because there is nothing more beautiful, nothing more ecstatic. Once you have heard it, even from far away…just a glimpse and you will never be the same person again.All that we are searching for in meditations is nothing but this master thief. We are searching in our being: what kind of dance, what kind of music goes on there in the living center of your life. Strangely enough all those who have entered in have found the same answer, without exception – Hari Om Tat Sat.Maneesha, you are asking, “When you speak, I hear the sound of truth resonating in me, yet I am not enlightened. How is it that I can recognize that which I have not realized?” There are many things in this small portion of your question.When you hear me you are hearing existence itself, just the way you hear the wind passing through the pine trees or you hear the sound of running water. I have nothing to say to you, that’s why I go on speaking continually, for years. If I had something to say I would have said it. Because I don’t have anything to say, I can continue for eternity.When you hear my sound and truth starts resonating in you it is simply a bridging between the master and the disciple. If what is coming from me originated in existence itself and you are in love, in trust, feeling one with me, you will start resonating with the same truth that is making me a vehicle. It does not need you to be anybody special, it just needs a loving heart, a trusting heart with open doors so the breeze that is coming is not obstructed, so the fragrance that is flowing can overwhelm you, can surround you, can open your heart like a rose opening its petals.But your problem is, “How is it possible, because I am not enlightened?”Who said that to you?I am saying every day you are enlightened, and you are so stubborn that sometimes I also start feeling it would be better I join you and become unenlightened. Why keep this separation? Either you become enlightened or I am going to become unenlightened. There is a limit to everything!I don’t know who the person is who goes on spreading these rumors that you are not enlightened. What is the source of this knowledge? I know it, for thousands of years you have been told you are not enlightened. The people who were telling you that you are not enlightened were on an ego trip – they were enlightened, you were not enlightened; they had arrived, your journey is going to be very long, perhaps many, many lives.Their whole effort was to create a great distance between you and themselves so they could be superior to you. They are divine, they are God’s incarnation, they are enlightened, they are messengers, they are messiahs, and you…you are just an ignorant person moving from one life to another, carrying the same load of ignorance that goes on increasing with every life. These people have insulted the whole humanity.As far as I am concerned, I want to say not only are you enlightened, the trees and the rivers and the mountains and the stars, all are enlightened. Otherwise is not possible. I want it absolutely clear to you: to be alive is to be enlightened. Wherever there is life, wherever there is love, enlightenment is just hidden underneath. You may not recognize it. The whole effort is to help you to recognize it.All the meditations are nothing but an effort to feel your enlightenment – which is already the case; whether you feel it or not it does not matter. If you feel it you will rejoice, your life will become a dance, moment to moment, of tremendous glory and majesty, of grace and gratitude. If you don’t recognize it you will remain miserable, asking all kinds of idiots, frauds, “How can I become enlightened?”There have been masters like Bodhidharma. You ask him how to become enlightened and you will get such a good slap on your face that you will wake up immediately, saying, “I am sorry, I had just fallen asleep. I am enlightened.” Those days were beautiful, when it was perfectly accepted that a master can slap the disciple. Now people have completely forgotten those beautiful moments and those beautiful days and those beautiful people.It is said about Chuang Tzu that when for the first time he entered the hut where Lao Tzu, his would-be master, was living, Lao Tzu looked at Chuang Tzu and said, “Remember one thing, never ask me how to become enlightened.” The poor fellow had come for that very purpose. But Lao Tzu made it clear, “Only on this condition will I accept you as my disciple.”There was a moment of silence. Chuang Tzu thought, “It is strange. I have come to become enlightened, that is the very purpose of becoming a disciple. And this old fellow, so beautiful and so graceful, is asking such an absurd thing: if you want to be my disciple, promise me that you will never ask about how to become enlightened.”But it was already too late. He had fallen in love with the old man. He touched his feet and he said, “I promise I will never ask how to become enlightened, but accept me as your disciple.”Immediately came a hard slap, “You idiot! If you are not going to become enlightened, then for what purpose are you becoming a disciple? I was asking this promise because I could see in you such beautiful intelligence that you might have immediately realized the point of my asking. You are enlightened; there is no way to become enlightened. There is no need. In fact even if you want to become unenlightened, there is no way.”Then why has this whole humanity become unenlightened? How have they managed? Just by forgetting, just by being too involved in other things. The world is vast, and the mind goes on taking you into new desires, new longings, new achievements, new greed. Slowly, slowly a curtain falls between you and your mind, and the mind completely forgets your being. It forgets completely that there is an inner world also, not only an outer existence.The outer is very poor in comparison to the inner. But once you get involved with the outer, it is so vast that there is a possibility you may wander around in the universe for millions of lives. And you may not realize that you are wasting your time, that it is time to look in.Maneesha, promise me to never ask again, “I am not enlightened, how to become enlightened?” I have my own ways of slapping, far more sophisticated. I don’t use my hand because I am a lazy man; moreover I don’t want to hurt my hand. But I have my own ways, and I go on slapping people – and you know it well!And the last part of your question is, “How is it that I can recognize that which I have not realized?” You can recognize it – that is an absolute guarantee that you must have realized it in some unconscious way. Perhaps you have forgotten your realization. Each child is born with the realization.I have condemned Gautam Buddha’s story many times, but this time I am going to appreciate it, just to put things in balance. The story is: Gautam Buddha is born while his mother is standing under a saal tree, and he is born standing. And the first thing he does is to take seven steps in front of his mother and declare to the universe, “I am the most enlightened person ever.” I have condemned it for different reasons; now I want to appreciate it for different reasons.In fact, every newborn child, if he could, would say the same thing, “I am enlightened.” If every newborn child could walk, he would take seven steps and declare to the whole world, “I am the most enlightened person, unique.” Perhaps the story is simply a symbolic way of recognizing each child’s innocence as his enlightenment, as his ultimate experience.But he will be lost in the world. Perhaps once in a while somebody comes back to his childhood again. My effort is to bring you back to your innocent childhood again. What you have not done in your first birth you can do in your second.After I have gone from here tonight, everybody has to take seven steps and declare to the whole world, “I am the most enlightened person!” Try it, and you will really rejoice. And you will never fall back again into the old ignorance and start looking for how to become enlightened. Finish it tonight!And you are asking how one can recognize if one has not realized. It is a question like if you are given a rotten egg in a restaurant and you say, “This is rotten.” And the manager comes and says, “Are you a hen? Have you ever produced an egg? If you have never produced an egg, on what authority are you saying that this is rotten?”There is no need. You can recognize things which you may not have consciously realized, but which must be an undercurrent of realization within you. Except that there is no other way. How do you realize when you fall in love that it is love? Certainly somewhere deep inside you there must be a hidden corner that already knows what love is. How do you recognize when you see a roseflower and say it is beautiful? Have you ever seen beauty? Have you ever realized what beauty is? But certainly you realize that the rose is beautiful. I am simply saying that there must be a certain realization in your being about beauty, about truth, about the ultimate sound of existence. That’s what makes you recognize.You are much more than you think you are.You are not what all the religions have made you – sinners, condemned, just sitting in the waiting room for the train to take you to hell. And the waiting room itself is giving you enough experience of hell!The word sin is used by all the religions without paying attention to the root meaning of the word. The root meaning of the word is to forget. It has nothing to do with morality, it has nothing to do with your good actions or bad actions; it has something to do with forgetting who you are. And if you have forgotten, you can remember.Gautam Buddha continually says to his disciples, “It is not a question of realization, it is only a question of remembering. What you have forgotten you have with you”…just a little search in all your pockets – also in the pockets which you are keeping secret even to yourself.I have told you the story of Mulla Nasruddin…He is traveling in a train and a ticket checker comes, and Mulla looks into everything for his ticket. He opens all his suitcases and bags and creates so much fuss that almost half of the passengers have to move to make space for all his things that he is taking out to look for the ticket.Tired, the ticket checker says, “Forget all about it, just answer me one question and I will be satisfied. You have been looking in everything, in places where the ticket cannot be lost – you have looked in your shoes. Why should the ticket be lost in your shoes? But you have not looked in the right-side pocket on your coat.”Mulla said, “Don’t mention that. I am not going to look into that pocket. That is my only hope, that perhaps the ticket is there. I can look everywhere in the world, but not in my right-side pocket.”Everybody in the compartment said, “This is strange, the fellow thinks that perhaps…. If you think that the ticket may be there, then that is the first place to look. But no, there are different kinds of logic and different kinds of arithmetic. The man also has a point. He says, ‘That is my only hope, don’t destroy it. Let me look in the whole world first. That is the last resort.’”Tired of his search, the ticket checker says, “You simply be quiet and collect your things, because you are disturbing all the passengers, and I will not ask anything about your right pocket.”Mulla said, “That’s right. Nobody should ever make any indication toward my right pocket because I am not going to look there.”Most of us are searching for things exactly where we know they are not. Now, people are searching for God in churches, in temples, in stone statues, and nobody ever thinks, “Is God going to be met there?” The statues are man-made, the temples are man-made and nobody is looking into himself, which is the only space not manufactured by man, the only place where perhaps the ticket is. It is simply a question of remembering. But you, whether you remember or not, are by nature part of the whole.The experience that “I am part of the whole” is enlightenment. If you recognize it you start dancing. If you don’t recognize it you go on crying unnecessarily. Things which are very simple have been made unnecessarily complicated, just to cheat you, exploit you.Religion has functioned in the world as the greatest business – greatest in two senses. It accumulates more money than any other business and it goes on selling things which are invisible.Now, selling things which are invisible is a great business. You purchase something invisible, you keep it carefully in your suitcase, afraid that it may get lost – then to find it will be very difficult. So keep the suitcase locked, never open it, because who knows? – the invisible thing may have wings, may fly out.The most intelligent people in the world are also purchasing God – who is absolutely invisible – purchasing tickets for heaven, depositing bank balances in paradise. And everything they give they see with their own eyes going into the pockets of the priests. But perhaps from those pockets there are invisible ways – the money that they are giving to the pope will reach. In the Vatican the pope has a bank. It is really a branch of the original bank; you deposit in the branch and it will reach the original bank. You need not be worried about it.And this pope goes on wasting your money in unnecessarily traveling here and there. He came to India. And wherever he goes, the first thing he does is to kiss the earth. He could have done it in the Vatican. There was no need, the earth is the same everywhere, but certainly tastes are different…. When he touched down at New Delhi airport I was in Nepal, and I said to my people, “This is his first taste of Hinduism.” Because you cannot taste earth in India unless you taste cow dung, and that is the only essential Hinduism.And he wastes your money, which you think is going to be deposited in paradise. On a single trip to Australia he wasted six million dollars – twice the cost of the visit of the Queen of England, Elizabeth. And three times he has been around the world, wasting six million, eight million dollars on each trip. This is your money.Once George Bernard Shaw was asked, “Do you think a man can live joyfully just keeping his hands in his pockets and doing nothing?”George Bernard said, “Yes, it is possible. Just one thing has to be remembered: the hands must be yours, and the pockets must not be yours. Just keep your hand in somebody else’s pocket.”That has been the whole religion. And they are giving you things which even an idiot can understand…The Italian consul from Calcutta was here. Before he came here to be slapped by me he had gone to Satya Sai Baba. He seems to think himself a seeker of truth. And what happened in Satya Sai Baba’s place? There they have an arrangement that in the office you fill in a form with your name, your country, your job, and what your essential question is, what you have come to ask. And then the Italian consul was taken in.Many other people were sitting waiting for Satya Sai Baba. He was given a special place. Satya Sai Baba came in and directly pointed to him, saying, “You live in Calcutta. You are Italian. You work in the consulate.” A great miracle! And all the information he had filled in.And these idiots like Satya Sai Baba are surrounded by other idiots not only of this country, they come from far away in search of truth. And he was immensely impressed: “This is your question. You want to know this, this is your inquiry. You are a great seeker of truth.”Now, naturally he is going to write a book. I will wait for his book. Here he also got special treatment, but I don’t think he will have the guts to even refer to it. He was so afraid that he had an appointment with one of our sannyasins, Azima, to go with him to a dinner, but he simply escaped. He never reached the hotel where Azima was waiting for him for the dinner, afraid that Azima was bound to ask, “What do you think about Osho?”And it is not that he will not think about me. He will think about me day in and day out! He will see me in his dreams, because he avoided seeing me here. When I pointed at him, he was holding his hand over his face. I could not believe that such cowards…. When I passed by the side I was looking from the window of my car; he had changed the position of his hand. Now he was keeping his hand over the side of his face. These are the people who are your diplomats, your politicians, your priests.If religiousness means anything, it means fearlessness. It means taking a risk, putting at stake all that you have, all that is familiar, for the unknown; leaving the known and moving into the unknown. That simple step makes you religious. No other discipline is needed.I have continually to postpone those funny and strange questions…. their time never comes. One is so great that I think tomorrow morning I will begin with it. Now a few things to contemplate seriously…Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are the guests of the king of Saudi Arabia, who has a magic swimming pool. The magic is that if you name a liquid while jumping into the empty pool, it will immediately be filled with that liquid.Gorbachev goes first, and ripping off his clothes, he shouts, “Vodka!” and leaps into the pool, which is miraculously full of the finest Russian vodka.Thatcher goes next, and bouncing along in her bra and panties, she yells, “Whiskey!” She lands with a splash in a pool filled with the finest, twelve-year-old scotch.Not to be out-done, Reagan races toward the pool in his jockey shorts, stubs his toes on the edge of the pool and falling headlong, he screams, “Oh, shit!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,My girlfriend told me I am a little boring, not very juicy, very dependent and a victim. Then I felt very guilty and depressed and utterly unworthy. I began to feel inside me a big No: toward existence, life, love, you. Meanwhile I observed in me this destructive energy and I felt that I somehow enjoyed it!Osho, is it possible to use this energy in some creative way?Your question is an example of the stupid conclusions that mind comes to. Perhaps you may not have looked into it and its contradictions. I would like to go into the very psychology of such questions. They are not only within you, they are within many. You are courageous to expose yourself.The exposure begins, “My girlfriend told me I am a little boring.” Your girlfriend is very compassionate, because each man finally becomes very boring, not a little boring. Do you realize the fact that what you call love is a repetition, the same stupid gymnastics again and again? And in this whole stupid game the man is the loser. He is dissipating his energy, perspiring, huffing, puffing, and the girl keeps her eyes closed, thinking, “It is a question only of two or three minutes and this nightmare will be finished.”People are so non-inventive that they take it for granted that going through the same actions is making them more interesting. That’s why I say your girlfriend is very compassionate – she only told you that you are a little boring. I say to you, you are utterly boring. When the Christian missionaries came to this country, people discovered that they knew only one posture of making love – the woman underneath and those ugly beasts on top of the delicate woman. In India that posture is called the missionary posture.India is an ancient land and the birth place of many sciences, particularly sexology. A book of tremendous importance, by Vatsyana, has been in existence for five thousand years. The name of the book is Kamasutras, hints for making love. And it comes from a man of deep meditation – he has created eighty-four postures for lovemaking. Naturally the love posture should change; otherwise you are bound to be boring.Vatsyana recognizes the fact that the same love posture creates boredom, a feeling of utter stupidity, because you are always doing the same thing. He invented eighty-four postures to make the love life of couples a little interesting. Nobody in the whole world has written a book of the caliber of Kamasutras. But it could only have come from a man of immense clarity, of deep meditativeness.What is your lovemaking? If you look at your lovemaking, you yourself will feel that it is all boring. And particularly for the woman it is more boring, because the man is finished in two or three minutes and the woman has not even started. And all around the world, cultures have enforced in the minds of women that they are not supposed even to enjoy or move or be playful – that is called “dirty”; prostitutes do it, not ladies. Ladies have to lie down almost dead and let that old guy do whatsoever he wants to do; it is nothing new, there is nothing new even to see.You should not take it as a personal disrespect. Your girlfriend is telling you something really sincere and honest. Have you given her orgasmic joy? Or have you only used her to throw out your sexual energy? Have you reduced her into a commodity? She has been conditioned to accept it, but even this accepting cannot be joyful.You make love on the same bed where you fight every day. In fact fighting is the preface: throwing pillows, shouting at each other, arguing about everything and then, feeling tired, some negotiation is needed. Your love is only a negotiation. If you are a man of aesthetic sensibility, your love chamber should be a sacred place, because it is in that love chamber that life is born. It should have beautiful flowers, incense, fragrance; you should enter into it with deep respect.And love should not be just an abrupt thing – grab the woman. This hit-and-run affair is not love. Love should have a preface of beautiful music, of dancing together, of meditating together. And love should not be a mind thing – that you are continuously thinking of how to make love and then go to sleep. Love should be a deeper involvement of your whole being, and it should not be projected by the mind, but should come out spontaneously.Beautiful music, fragrance, you are dancing hand in hand, you have again become small children playing with flowers…. If spontaneously love happens in this sacred atmosphere it will have a different quality.You should understand that the woman is capable of multiple orgasms, because she does not lose any energy. Man is capable of only one orgasm and he loses energy, looks depressed. Even the next morning you can see his hangover, and as he goes on growing older it becomes more and more difficult.This difference has to be understood. The woman is on the receptive end – she has to be, because she has to become a mother, she needs more energy. But her orgasm has a totally different way of happening. Man’s sexuality is local, like local anesthesia. A woman’s body is sexual all over, and unless her whole body starts trembling with joy, each cell of her body starts becoming involved, she cannot have an orgasmic explosion.So it is not only in your case, it is the case for almost ninety-nine percent of women around the world. The whole situation has to be changed. The woman should not be under the man. In the first place it is ugly – man has a stronger body, the woman is more fragile. She should be on top of the man, not the man on top of the woman.Secondly, man should remain silent, inactive, so that his orgasm is not finished within two minutes. If you are silent and let the woman go crazy on top of your chest it will give her good exercise and it will bring her to an explosion of orgasmic energy. It takes time for her whole body to warm up, and if you are not inactive there is no time. So you meet, but the meeting is not of beauty, of love, but just utilitarian.Try with your girlfriend what I am saying. You be the inactive partner and let her be the active partner. Allow her to be uninhibited. She has not to behave like a lady, she has to behave like an authentic woman. The lady is just created by man; woman is created by existence. You have to fill the gap between her orgasms. The gap can be filled in only one way, that you remain very inactive, silent, and enjoy her going crazy. And she will have multiple orgasms. You should end the game by your orgasm, but you should not begin with it.And your woman will not call you a little boring. You will be a really interesting, real wonderful guy who is behaving like a lady! Keep your eyes closed so that she is not inhibited by your eyes. So she can do anything – movement of the hands, movement of the body, moaning, groaning, shouting…. Unless she says, “Hari Om Tat Sat!” you are not allowed to be alive, you simply remain silent. This should be the indication. “Hari Om Tat Sat” simply means: this orgasmic explosion, this is the truth. Then she will be mad after you. Right now you must be behaving stupidly, as most of the men in the world do.The second thing you say: “My girlfriend is saying that I am not very juicy.” So become a little more juicy! To become juicy is not very difficult. The juice of all kinds of fruits is available everywhere. Drink more juice, less solid food. She is giving you good advice and you in your stupidity are thinking that she is condemning you.When she says, “You are very dependent and a victim,” I can see even through your question that she is right. A victim you are, just as every human being is a victim – a victim of stupid ideologies, which have created strange guilt feelings and do not allow you to be playful. Although you may be making love, you know you are committing a sin and that hell is not far off.Becky Goldberg was telling Goldberg, “You are a great lover.”Goldberg said, “But you never told me this before. I was waiting for somebody to say that I am a great lover, but I dropped the idea because it seems I am not.”Becky Goldberg said to him, “No, you are a great lover, and I wanted to say it to you many times, but you were not there!”…making love to Becky, and Goldberg is not there. He is counting his money, doing his accounts, and his mind is doing thousands of things. In every bed where there are two lovers there are at least – I mean minimum – four people. There are more inventive people – they may have a whole crowd in the bed. The woman is making love to Goldberg and thinking of Muhammad Ali. Goldberg is making love as a duty and is thinking of so many beautiful actresses; but his mind is not there, and neither is his wife’s mind there. Their minds are in their dreams.A man told his friend, “Last night I had a tremendous dream. I have to tell you. I have been waiting for the morning to tell you the dream.” The man said, “What kind of dream?”He said, “I went fishing in my dream and I caught such big fish that even to draw in one big fish was a strenuous job for me, and I caught so many fish. I don’t know where these fish disappear to in the day.”The other man said, “Stop all this nonsense, you don’t know what I have dreamt. I found in my dream, on one side of me, Sophia Loren, absolutely nude. And I said, ‘My God, have I reached heaven?’ And on the other side was another beautiful woman. It was impossible to judge who was more beautiful.”The other friend became very angry and he said, “You idiot! You pretend to be my best friend. Why didn’t you call me?” He said, “I did call, but your wife said you had gone fishing.”Nobody is where you think he is. Nobody is at home. While making love make it a meditative process. Your whole presence has to be there, showering on the woman you love. The woman has to be there, showering all her beauty and grace on her lover. Then you will not be a victim, otherwise you are a victim.Love is not accepted by your so-called, utterly idiotic religions to be a natural and playful experience. They condemn it. They have made it a condition: unless you leave your woman you will never attain to truth. And the conditioning has been going on for so long that it has almost become a truth, although it is an absolute lie.You are a victim of traditions and you are certainly dependent. When I read your question further you will see how you are dependent – dependent on a girlfriend who tells you that you are boring, not very juicy and a victim.Your dependence shows further: “Then I felt very guilty and depressed and utterly unworthy.” If your girlfriend, by saying such simple truths, can make you very guilty and depressed and utterly unworthy, she certainly seems to be your master. “I began to feel inside me a big No.” And this is where your girlfriend has been kind, not to say to you, “You are a little bit of an idiot too.”You are saying, “I began to feel inside me a big No toward existence.” Now what has existence done? Do you think your girlfriend is existence? “…toward life.” Do you think your girlfriend is life? “…toward love.” And finally, “…toward you.” Why involve me? I have not been giving all these ideas to your girlfriend; I don’t know her. She is not getting these lessons from me about what to tell you.This shows your utter idiocy. Are you here for me or for your girlfriend? I go on saying things every day and nothing changes in you. And your girlfriend just said that you are a little boring and you don’t doubt her. Perhaps you have come here following your girlfriend. And in what way can you say no to existence, to life, to love and to me? That really is hilarious. I had not said anything and you have included me – on what grounds?Rather than listening to your girlfriend who was saying sincerely that you are boring, just a little, you should have asked her, “In what way can I become a little more interesting? Do you have any suggestions? If I am not juicy then tell me how I can become juicy.” That would have been an intelligent step. But instead of asking the girl you started having “a big No: toward existence, life, love, you.” Sometimes I think that…. I don’t even know you personally, nor your girlfriend. In what way am I involved in it?But I can understand the reason. Perhaps you may not be able to explain it, but I can see the underlying reason for your big No. You believe in your girlfriend too much – naturally you could not ask her. That shows your dependence. You must be afraid to make much fuss about these things with the girl, because girlfriends are not your permanent wives, no law prevents them from moving with someone who is more juicy. And everybody in the beginning is juicy, but just a few days together and the whole juice dries out. You start looking around for some other girl, for some other man, because they are all looking juicy.You will repeat the same thing life after life; you have done it already, without understanding the foundation. Living with one man more than a week the problem arises of how to get rid of him. He is also thinking about how to get rid of you. But it does not look right to say so to each other, so you start creating trouble, that somehow some other idiot may become interested in your girlfriend, because you both go on seeing that other girls are more juicy, other men are more juicy.It is an old story that the green grass on the other side of the fence of your bungalow looks greener than your own grass. Distance creates that phenomenon.Any woman may look to you juicier than your wife – she is just a pain in the neck. But what you don’t know is that all these women are following the same philosophy. For one or two days they are so groovy, and once they have caught hold of you the real story starts – they start becoming a pain in the neck. And the same is true about men. Meeting a girl on the sea beach, in the garden, by the side of a river, he pretends to be Alexander the Great, walks like a lion, and within two days the same fellow is reduced to a rat.Nobody talks about the reality of why this is happening, why so many people are unnecessarily made miserable. This society will never be happy if we don’t allow people to move and not get stuck in marriages, not get stuck in their own promises. Out of freedom meet with each other, and the moment you feel that you have explored the whole topography of the woman and the woman knows that she has experienced whatever is possible to experience in the man, then it is time to say good-bye to each other in deep friendliness. There is no need to hang around each other’s neck.A world completely free from any contracts between man and woman will be immensely lovely, beautiful, unboring, interesting. But we have created institutions, and to live in an institution is not a very great experience. Your marriage is an institution, although the newer generation is moving a little more freely, before settling after the age of thirty. I have been looking around the world to find a hippie who is at least of the age thirty-five. I have not found any. Nearabout thirty all hippies disappear, they become just square people whom they were fighting against before.Seeing the situation, that living in institutions – of marriage, community, society, Lions Club, Rotary Club – you cannot live joyously, you have experimented. This is the first time in history that we have a younger generation. I don’t mean that in the past there were not young people, but there was no “younger generation.” A small child, seven years old, would start following the father’s business, would start going to the fields, would start taking care of the cows; or if the father was a carpenter, would start helping him. At the age of seven he had already joined the society.For the first time in history there is a generation which can be authentically called younger and which has created a generation gap. Schools are there, colleges are there, universities are there and it takes twenty-five years, twenty-six years to come out of the university with a postgraduate degree or with a doctorate. But by that time you are no longer young. By that time you start having responsibilities: professorial, professional, family, marriage.But during the time that you spend in the hostels and in the universities, before entering life, there is a long gap in which you are not engaged in any utilitarian, purposive activity. That has created the generation gap. Men and women become sexually mature – women at the age of thirteen, men at the age of fourteen – and they will be married perhaps ten years afterward or twelve years afterward. These twelve years have created girlfriends and boyfriends.It is a great opportunity for the future to understand the whole phenomenon and its psychology. You have the choice to change the old habits, to create trouble but drop old habits. Every man needs to be aware of many women. Every woman needs the experience of many other men before deciding to marry. Their experience will help them to find the right person with whom they can melt and merge without any difficulty.“Meanwhile,” you are saying, “I observed in me this destructive energy and I felt that I somehow enjoyed it!” Everybody has destructive energy, because energy, if left to itself, is bound to be destructive – unless it is used with awareness and becomes creative.But the most important thing that you are saying is that, “Somehow I enjoyed it.” Then how are you going to change it? With anything that you enjoy you are bound to remain on the same level; you cannot change it, because you may not enjoy the change. And all this has come to your mind only because your girlfriend told you that you are “a little boring, not very juicy, very dependent and a victim.”You have energy. To enjoy destructive energy is suicidal, to enjoy destructive energy as destructive is in the service of death. If you are aware of it you have to go through a transformation. Use your energy creatively, perhaps that will make you less boring, more juicy, less dependent, less of a victim.And the most important part will be that you will not feel guilty and depressed. No creative person feels depressed and guilty. His participation in the universe by his creative actions makes him tremendously fulfilled and gives him dignity. That is the very birthright of every man, but very few people claim it.Moreover, this big no will become a big yes if the energy moves into creative dimensions. And there is no difficulty, it is so easy to use energy in creative fields. Paint, do gardening, grow flowers, write poetry, learn music, dance. Learn anything that changes your destructive energy into creative energy, and immediately the big No will become even a bigger Yes. Then you will not be angry at existence, you will be grateful. You will not be against life. How can a creative person be against life, love? It is impossible, it has never happened. It is only the uncreative people who are against everything. And if you can be creative, life-affirmative, you cannot be against me, because I am giving you the directions for becoming an authentic, sincere, celebrating individual.Your girl has raised very important questions for your life. The easiest way would be to change the girlfriend, but I suggest that your girlfriend is certainly a friend to you and that whatever she has said is absolutely sincere, authentic. Be grateful to her and start changing things. The day your girlfriend accepts you as juicy, as interesting, will be a great day in your life. So don’t be a coward and change girlfriends just because this girlfriend creates trouble in your mind, and you want to find some other girlfriend.You must know of my disciples here. You are fortunate to find a very compassionate girl. Your next choice will be very difficult; she will make you feel absolutely guilty and unworthy. Because what have you done to be worthy? What have you done not to be boring? What have you done to declare your independence? What have you done not to be a victim? It is time you should do it. You will remain always grateful to your girlfriend.I would like to tell your girlfriend, “Go on hitting this fellow until you are satisfied that he is not boring, but full of juice, utterly interesting, playful, celebrating. You may lose him somewhere on the path of life, but you will have prepared him for some other woman; otherwise the way he is now he is going to torture many women and torture himself.”He is even planning to torture me! I am absolutely out of the game, I am not a partner in your relationship. In what way have you managed to think that a no arises against me? I understand why it arises. It arises because I respect women in every dimension as being equally capable as men. They have been beaten down the ages; they have never been able to say a single thing about their husbands.Just three days ago it has been found that even in America husbands are beating their wives. But the wives have been hiding the fact up to now – because it does not look as if you have been beaten and you cannot do anything, nor does it look good to defame the husband. It does not look good to the children, if they come to know…. I used to think that wives are only beaten in India.One of the great Hindu saints, Tulsidas, who is worshipped and read all over India by every Hindu, has a strange statement: Dol ganwar pashu aur nari. Ye sab taran ke adhikari. He is categorizing women with drums – dhol means drum, ganwar means idiots, pashu means animals, and nari means woman. All these four are constantly to be beaten. The dhol, the drum, will not work if you don’t beat it. So for thousands of years Indian women have been beaten. It has been taken for granted, there is no question.I have come across situations where a husband was beating his wife and I could not tolerate it and I entered their house, and I was amazed: more than the husband, the wife was against me, saying, “He is my husband, you cannot interfere in our affairs. If he is beating me, it is perfectly okay.”So deep has the conditioning gone. Here I am taking out all your conditionings and I am preparing the future man who will respect the woman as equal to himself, who will give opportunity for her growth as he takes opportunity for his own growth. And there will not be any kind of bondage. If two persons can live in love their whole life, nobody is going to disturb them. But there is no need of any marriage and there is no need of any divorce. Love should be an absolute act of freedom. But you have also been told for thousands of years that, “If you really love then your love has to be permanent.” I don’t see that anything in life has the quality of being permanent. Love cannot be an exception.So don’t expect that love has to be permanent. It will make your love life more beautiful, because you know today you are together, tomorrow perhaps you will have to depart. Love comes like a fresh, fragrant breeze into your home, fills it with freshness and fragrance, remains as long as existence allows it and then moves out. You should not try to close all your doors or the same fresh breeze will become absolutely stale.That’s what people’s lives have become – stale, ugly – and the reason lies in their idea of permanent love. In life everything is changing. And change is beautiful; it gives you more and more experience, more and more awareness, more and more maturity.Just to change the subject…The male dinosaur has been going out with the female dinosaur for two thousand years and finally he asks her for a kiss. She agrees.Four thousand years later he asks if they might hug a little, and she agrees.Three thousand years later he says, “Look, honey, we have been seeing each other for about nine thousand years. Don’t you think it is about time we…er…you know, get it on?”She looks at him shyly, and says, “Oh, darling I would love to, but I’m having my decade.”A little Jew is wandering through the Sahara desert carrying a watermelon under his arm. He stares into the distance where he thinks he is seeing a mirage. But no, it turns out to be Pope the Polack walking toward him, carrying a car door.They greet each other and the pope asks the Jew why he is carrying the watermelon.“Every time I get thirsty I eat a slice,” explains the Jew. “And what are you doing with that car door?”“Well,” says Pope the Polack, “every time I get too hot I just roll down the window.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When you said last night that I am enlightened, it really freaked me out. It looks like I'm much more at ease with being unenlightened and searching for it, rather than just being enlightened. I don't know what the question is but I feel I need a slap to wake me up!The question you have asked must be reflecting the question of many people. It is significant in the sense that being enlightened brings a full stop to your desires, longings, searchings. All that you have done, down the ages, is only desiring, seeking, dreaming, hoping, and one is afraid to come to a point where suddenly you find there is no way to go, nowhere to go, that you have arrived.You are saying, “When you said last night that everyone is enlightened it really freaked me out.” It freaked many out, it freaked many in, but it certainly freaked. And it brought to the surface something that you must have been carrying within your unconscious. Without this freaking out it may not have come to the surface.You are saying, “It looks like I’m much more at ease with being unenlightened and searching for it, rather than just being enlightened.”You are saying something immensely significant, not only about you, but about human mind as such. It is at ease in hoping, it is at ease if there is a tomorrow. The goal may be far away, but if the goal is there it is at ease. It does not want to come to a standstill – that feels very uneasy, because we have become accustomed to dreaming, running after goals, never arriving but always trying to arrive. The goal seems to be just close by, but the distance between you and the goal remains the same whatever you do. It is almost like the horizon. You go toward it; it goes on receding back in the same proportion. This has been the training of our mind, this is what we are; hence although you are just a beggar dreaming about kingdoms you are at ease.It happens in many ways. You will not find poor people thinking about the meaning of life, you will not find poor people even bothering whether there is something like enlightenment or not. Only when a civilization becomes richer, people become educated, their bodily needs are fulfilled, do they suddenly start thinking about faraway goals. Then they start searching in many dimensions. They are searching, but deep down they don’t want to arrive at the conclusion. This is a strange dilemma, but if you understand rightly you can see the point. The point is, mind can live only in movement. When there is no movement time stops, mind stops, only you are.It was not you who freaked out, it was your mind, with which you are absolutely identified. Unless you create a distance between the mind and you – you the witness – you will remain searching. Money, power, prestige, God, paradise, enlightenment – anything will do, just it should keep you going on. Any direction is okay, just stopping is dangerous, because the moment you stop mind dies. The moment you stop your personality dies. The moment you stop you disappear into the oceanic existence; hence the fear.I have told you a beautiful story about Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his poems he has the same glimpse that is expressed in your question.In the poem he says, “I have been searching for God for many, many lives. Sometimes I saw him near a faraway star, and I was immensely happy that although the star was far away, it was not impossible to reach. And I started moving there, but by the time I reached the star God had moved to some other place. But he was visible – so far away, but inviting, creating hope. And I went on running around the universe for many, many lives.“One day it happened, I came to the house of God. I could not believe that I had arrived. It was such a shock, but still I stepped toward the door. As I was going to knock on the door my hand suddenly froze. A thought arose in me: Just wait a minute and think it over. It is written outside the door, ‘This is the house of God.’ If by chance it turns out to be really the house of God then you are finished. What are you going to do then?“For millions of years your training has been only for searching. You are perfectly disciplined as a seeker, but finding? That is absolutely new; you are not acquainted with it. And moreover, a finding of the ultimate, the absolute God, beyond which there is nothing to search…. What will you do then? What will you be? And it is going to be forever – an eternal situation of a full stop.”He took his shoes in his hands. He was afraid that as he goes back down the steps, if God hears some noise outside and opens the door…. And then he ran away, not looking back.The poem is beautiful because it says, “I am again searching him. I know him, his house; I go on avoiding it. I go in every direction, but I keep myself far away from the house where he is, because I know that meeting him is going to be my disappearance.”Enlightenment is nothing but your disappearance. It is nothing but a pure silence. Naturally one feels afraid and one starts thinking, “It is better to remain unenlightened and searching for it.” The story that I told you from Rabindranath’s poem is your story. It is everybody’s story. That’s why I say, you are enlightened, but you don’t want to recognize it. You want to find some way so that you can start searching for enlightenment again.In the search is the mind.In the search is the ego.In the search is the personality, in the search are all the saints, the sages, the prophets, the incarnations of God – in the search. The moment you arrive you are just a pure silence, a nothingness – alive, abundantly alive, overflowingly alive, full of fragrance, but now there is no movement. You will remain in this silence for eternity. I think every one of you has returned from the house, knows the way, knows the house and is still searching and seeking and asking, “Where is the house of God? Where can I find him?”The moment you understand that the reason for your search is not that you are not enlightened, the reason for your search is that the mind wants to go on living, and it can live only in your unenlightenment…. You have to choose. You can choose the mind and go on seeking for eternity that which is right now available, this very moment. Or you can choose the state of no-mind, no-movement, and disappear in the cosmos, in eternal peace, in the splendor of the universe. But it all depends on you; it is your freedom.The biblical story that God drove out Adam and Eve from paradise is certainly wrong. It is Adam and Eve who escaped, because in the garden of paradise there was no possibility of being a prophet, no possibility of being someone special, no possibility of any ego arising. In the garden of paradise you and the trees and the animals are all equal. Seeing this situation, my own understanding is that Adam and Eve escaped, they were not driven out. It was a revolt against a state where everything was available and there was no way to find anything new. Escaping from that kingdom, man started searching.I have reasons to say that…In India the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are all kings who renounced their kingdoms. Gautam Buddha was going to be the king, the only son of his old father. He escaped before he was crowned as a king. The ceremonies were prepared for – because the old man wanted Gautam Buddha to be crowned before him; he wanted to see his son on the throne. Seeing the situation, Gautam Buddha escaped. He had seen everything, he had all that was possible in those days for anybody to have in his possession. The most beautiful women of the kingdom were collected just for his pleasure. His father had made three different palaces in different places, for different seasons.In India, just in my childhood, seasons were absolutely certain. They became disturbed only after the second world war; otherwise, each season was four months. And it was absolutely determined: the winter comes exactly on one date, the winter goes exactly on one date.The old king had made three beautiful palaces in his kingdom, so when it was summer Gautam Buddha could move to a hill station; when it was winter, too cold, he could come to the plains, near a beautiful river; when it was too rainy…. He had found a place for him where it was a pleasure, not in any way a trouble.There is a place just nearby where Gautam Buddha was born…. Perhaps in the whole world that is the place where it rains the most – five hundred inches per year! In Pune it rains only seventy inches per year. Even to live in a nearby place, Khandala, is very difficult – it rains two hundred inches per year. That means for days it goes on raining, you cannot come out, for days there is no sun, for days it is just rain and rain. Just conceive, five hundred inches…. In four months there will not be a single day perhaps when it is not raining, and great floods…. The father had found a faraway place where rain was nearabout forty or fifty inches per year – just a pleasure. Gautam Buddha became tired, bored, because everything that he needed was handed over to him, even without his asking.It is a strange situation. When you are poor you want to be rich, and when you are rich suddenly you feel that you have gained everything, but you have lost hope. Now there is nowhere to go; you have come to the last rung of the ladder. Sitting there on the last rung of the ladder you look simply foolish and nothing else.This accounts for the differences in the religions which were born in India and the religions which were born outside India. It needs a tremendous psychological insight…. Jesus was a poor man. Moses was also not a rich man – he could have been a rich man, but he discovered that he was a Jew and he wanted to be with his own race. He renounced all his powers and went into a great revolt against the Egyptian kings. Mohammed was also a poor man. These three poor men created three religions outside India. The three religions created in India were all created by kings. Rama and Krishna are kings; Mahavira and Adinatha are kings; Gautam Buddha is a king. And you can see the difference between the religions, because of these people’s situations.Gautam Buddha does not promise you any paradise where beautiful women will be available to you, where rivers of wine will be flowing – strange, but not inexplicable. He is fed up with women, he is fed up with wine, he is fed up with everything that money can purchase. All that he can promise to his disciples is a pure silence.But Mohammed cannot do that, Jesus cannot do that. Jesus has to provide in his paradise all those beautiful things which poor people are missing on the earth. Mohammed provides rivers of wine, beautiful women. And you will be shocked to know, because homosexuality was very much prevalent in Saudi Arabia, in paradise beautiful boys are also provided for the sages.Jesus provides everything that a poor man can dream of and can hope for. Mahavira provides only absolute aloneness. This will not appeal to a poor man. He is already very lonely, and you have come…and to attain to that aloneness he has to go through all these disciplines. Are you mad? He wants things – he wants beautiful women, he wants beautiful men, he wants beautiful houses – and you have come here saying, “You have to fast, you have to train yourself in yoga, you have to meditate. And finally you will get a pure nothingness.”This can appeal only to the very rich. They are tired of things, they want just silence; they are tired of people, they want pure aloneness. The poor man is not tired…he has not even had the chance to be tired of money. He is hoping some day he will have money, have a beautiful house.One day I was stopped on the road – I was going to the university – and a beautiful woman gave me a pamphlet. I asked, “What is it?”She said, “Everything is explained in it, and if you are interested the phone number is given.”Going to the university, just driving, I looked at the pamphlet: a beautiful house by the side of a mountain river, great tall trees, and a question: “Do you want this house?”I thought, “In this city at least there is no such house; perhaps I don’t know it? If it is available it is worth looking into the details.”I turned the page and inside the details were given: “If you become a follower of Jesus Christ, in the kingdom of God you will have even better houses than the one you have just seen on the other side of the page.”When a poor man creates a religion it is bound to be full of your desires, your greed, your lust, and a promise that everything will be fulfilled. When a rich man creates a religion his religion is going to be a purity, a silence, a beautiful space. But you are one with that beautiful space, not separate.Looking at the religions, their holy books, you can decide whether those holy books came from poor people or from people who have known riches. And remember one thing, the poor man’s paradise is just a projection. That’s why all the religions that have been created outside India – just by coincidence – don’t have the quality, the superiority, the grandeur that Indian religions have.But India is no longer rich. Those religions were created some seven thousand years ago, some five thousand years ago, some twenty-five centuries ago. Today even the Indian masses have turned to Christianity – Christianity is now the third greatest religion in India. They have turned to Mohammedanism, which is now the second greatest religion in India. Hinduism goes on shrinking, and more and more people go on turning toward Christianity, Mohammedanism, because more and more people are poor. And Hinduism has nothing to offer to the poor people.They are not interested in nirvana, they are not interested in meditation, they are not interested in their inner being. You can see it here. If anybody descends from Mars and looks at this commune he will not be able to think that this commune exists in India. How many Indians are here?The religion that I am providing for you is the highest possible. It is not for those who are seeking employment, not for those who are hungry, starving. It needs intelligence to understand me. It needs a kind of frustration with the world – the kind of experience where you feel that all that this world provides is meaningless, that it leads nowhere, that it is sheer wastage of life. Something more is needed – something that money cannot purchase, something that science cannot produce, something that is not available in the market, something that you have to find within yourself.But why are people not interested in themselves? Perhaps in their past lives at some moment they had reached the house of God, and ever since they have been running away from it. Although they give good names for their running – they are running in search of God, they are running in search of self-realization, they are running for enlightenment – in fact they are running away from exactly these things, as far away as possible.But you cannot run because your enlightenment is your very being, whether you like it or not. Existence has not asked you whether you want to be born or not; neither has existence asked you whether you want enlightenment in your innermost core or not. Existence does not treat you as separate; hence there is no question of asking you, you are part and parcel of this beautiful universe. And this universe goes on moving into different forms, but the innermost core remains the same: the same light, the same joy, the same celebration.It is frightening to you because then there will be no movement. But I have been in this full stop for thirty-five years and not for a single moment have I felt that I am in a wrong situation.People ask me, “For two hours you don’t move your legs…” I have also thought, “Why don’t I move my legs?” Then finally I discovered that there is no need. I am not walking, why should I move? It is not only here that I am sitting like that, the whole day I am sitting in my chair just like that. And you must be puzzled about what I am doing in my room, just sitting. And there is not even grass growing!Nothing is happening and I am perfectly happy; there is not even for a single moment a desire – even to go into the ashram and see what kind of stupid things are happening. Just last night when you all had become enlightened…. Nirvano told me, “You should have been there.”I heard the noise. I said, “This is enough for me, that my people have become enlightened, just I’m worried what will happen to their enlightenment in the morning.” And I can see that you shouted unnecessarily – not even a single one of you has become enlightened! You can try it today again, because this is the place where you have to become enlightened. And just watch Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Most probably he will become enlightened before anybody else. He shouts better, he laughs better, what more is needed?Pope the Polack and a nun arrive in a small town in the middle of the Sahara desert, riding a very fresh and alive looking camel. The pope is completely exhausted and decides to have a few days vacation. He checks into a caravanserai for the night and the next morning comes out of the tent wearing his underpants and carrying a towel across his shoulder.“Excuse me,” he asks one of the Bedouins, “but can you tell me how far it is to the water?”“Oh,” the Arab replies, “a few hundred miles.”“Shit,” says Pope the Polack, “I guess I will have to stay on the beach today.”…hundreds of miles away, then it is better to stay at the beach.Amos Saperstein dies suddenly with an enormous erection. The undertaker, Moishe Finkelstein, tries everything to make it shrink. He puts cold water on it, then packs it in ice cubes, but nothing works. Finally they decide that they have only one option: they cut a hole in the lid of the coffin and cover it with a sheet.On the way to the cemetery the coffin is carried past two little old ladies sitting on a bench. “Well, there goes old Amos,” says grandma Kravitz. “I hope his family gave him a proper send-off.”Just then a gust of wind blows the sheet off the top of the coffin.“The tight fisted bastards,” says grandma. “Look at that! Only one lousy flower.”And the last, before you start becoming enlightened again…A priest with a huge prick has terrible trouble getting any woman to sleep with him. At the local whorehouse it is always the same answer, “Sorry father, I wish I could, but that monster is much too big for me.”In desperation, the priest thinks up a cunning scheme. He visits a whorehouse on the other side of the town where no one knows him, picks out a girl and takes her to the bedroom.Once they are inside the priest tells the girl he is very shy and then says, “Do you mind if I undress with the lights out?”She agrees. Then as he climbs on top of her she says, “Do you know, father, I am really glad this is what you came here for. When you first walked through the door I was sure you were just going to talk to me about…. Jesus Christ!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I always thought that one had to conquer fear, and then death would not be scary anymore. The other day I was sitting in a place in the hills where people were killed and I saw that death is sweet.Now I think it must be more like this – that death helps one to understand fear; that first you experience death and she helps you see what fear is all about. Is it like this? Can you talk about it please?Your question is based on complete misunderstanding, confusion. You will have to understand first where your confusion is. You say, “I always thought that one had to conquer fear.” This is the first point of misunderstanding.You cannot conquer fear. Fear has to be understood. The moment you start thinking of conquering it, you have already accepted its existence, its power over you. And fear is just like a shadow: you can fight with it, but you cannot win. On the path one has to be very aware whether one is fighting with something that does not exist but is only his own projection; otherwise the journey goes on becoming longer and longer.Secondly, the language of conquering is not the language of a meditator, it is the language of a soldier. We have nothing to conquer. We have to certainly understand everything concerning ourselves, our mind, its workings. For example, fear has never existed. That does not mean that people have not been afraid. That is a totally different thing. People have been afraid because they don’t understand many things and fear arises out of their ignorance.You have seen death…. You think so, because death can be seen only in deep meditation, where it withers away like darkness withering away when the light is brought in. But everybody thinks he has seen death because he has seen somebody dying.To see somebody dying is not to see death, because what is happening inside the person is invisible to you. He is only changing the house; he is moving from this body to another body. But once that consciousness that is his life moves out of the body, the body is dead. The body has always been made of dead, material things. It is the consciousness within which radiates through all that the body is constituted of and makes it look alive.And you know perfectly well, when you are depressed, sad, you look less alive. And when you are joyous, blissful, laughing, you look more alive. Life comes from the inner sources of your being and life is eternal; hence, death cannot exist. Death is only a change which you cannot see with your eyes.There have been experiments done: if there is something like consciousness or soul in man…. They have weighed a dying person. Certainly if something leaves him he will lose weight – it does not happen. Because he does not lose weight, the people who have been experimenting with such stupid things have concluded that there is no consciousness. Consciousness has no weight.So first you have to understand that fear has not to be conquered; otherwise you will remain always afraid of the conquered fear – because the conquered fear is there. You may be on top of it, but things change. You may, in a certain weak moment, be defeated by the nonexistent fear again and it will be on top of you. And you do not always have the same vitality, the same aliveness; there are ups and downs. In every state when you are not feeling a well-being, fear will come back. And the miraculous thing is that fear has no existence except in your imagination.You have not seen death. To see death there is one possibility, and that is deep meditation; the other possibility is to die. But the other possibility is not certain because death is such a great surgical phenomenon – the whole consciousness has to leave the body – and nature has made an arrangement that before people die they become unconscious.Medical science learned it very late, that when you operate, first make the man unconscious. Either local or general, but some anesthesia, some unconsciousness has to be there. He will not be able to bear the pain – and this is about small surgery. Death is the greatest surgery. Your whole consciousness is taken out of your body. Naturally you become unconscious before it happens. So even if you die – and you have died many times – you don’t remember. Because you were unconscious, how can you remember? Memory has not made any record of it.So the only certain way – a hundred percent proof – is meditation. Meditation creates the situation in which you know you and your body are absolutely separate. They are working together in deep harmony, in great synchronicity, but they are not one. Once you understand that they are not one, you know your consciousness is your life. And the moment life leaves the body, people think the body is dead.It is always somebody else who dies. Have you observed it? You never die. One feels really great that somebody else has died and you have been alive for eighty years and still death has not come. In fact, the longer you live, the less is the possibility of your dying.The data is, most people die nearabout seventy-five. Then the rate of death starts falling. Nearabout eighty, less people die. Nearabout ninety, even less people die. Nearabout a hundred, very few people die. Nearabout a hundred and fifty, it is very rare to find somebody dying. And nearabout two hundred, there is no precedent. So if you can go on pulling yourself up to two hundred, you will not die. You will see everybody else dying and you will enjoy!But seeing somebody else dying is not an experience of death. You have to go inward so deep that you are only pure consciousness. The body is surrounding you, but it is not inseparable from you. You can see the gap. That very moment you have seen that death is a fiction – the greatest fiction. But it goes on haunting people because nobody meditates, and when they die, the fear of death makes them so unconscious that it becomes impossible for them to experience what is happening.From outside you cannot experience; from inside you can experience only with awareness. But that kind of awareness is very rare. Those who have managed to create, through meditation, that crystallization of awareness are agreed on the point that death does not exist. There is no question of fear.And then you go on saying: “If you conquer the fear then death will not be scary anymore.” Nobody knows anybody in the whole of history who has conquered fear. Even your greatest warriors are trembling inside. And you are making it completely upside down. First you will conquer fear…that is a Don Quixote experiment. How are you going to conquer fear? – aikido, jujitsu, archery? Even nuclear weapons in your hand will not allow you to conquer fear.Fear is a by-product of your unconsciousness, so the only way to get rid of it, to know its bogus reality, is to become conscious. It is not a question of conquering; fear has nothing to do with it. Once you know what death is, fear disappears.You are saying, “The other day I was sitting in a place in the hills where people were killed, and I saw that death is sweet.” Great! Other people are killed and you feel that the death is sweet. If it is so sweet, why are you living? Join those dead people in the hills, get killed. And in India there are such simple ways of getting killed – just on MG road, traffic will kill you, you don’t have to manage….Strange laws exist in the world. If you are caught committing suicide, then the punishment is sending you to the gallows. A strange society we have created. The poor fellow was himself doing the same thing – that was crime. And now the punishment is the same crime. Now it is being done by the government, by the justice department. He himself may have failed, but now there is no possibility of any failure.Death can be sweet if you move from one body, one existence, one form, with pure awareness into another and higher. Then it is sweet, really sweet. But not for others, only for you.And you go on intellectually creating the whole question, based on absolute fallacies. You say, “Now I think…” Remember, thinking does not make any sense here. Here you have to know, not to think; here you have to experience, not to think.Thinking is a poor substitute for experience – and a dangerous substitute, because it will prevent you from experiencing. Do you say to your girlfriend, “I think I love you”? Either you love or you don’t, but from where does this “I think” come? And if the girl belongs to my commune, she is going to give you a good slap to wake you up from your thinking. Love is not a thinking.But you say, “I think it must be more like this…” Just imagination, guesswork, that death helps one understand fear. Death makes one understand fear, but it is not the death of somebody else, it is your own death, and that too with the condition that you are conscious.“…that first you experience death and she helps you see what fear is all about.” Seeing the death of other people should create a sadness in you, not sweetness. And it is not going to help you to understand what fear is all about. Only your death…that too with an absolute condition. Moving out of the body with full awareness will not only allow you to understand fear, it will allow you to forget all about fear. It does not exist.But people go on thinking about things which can only be experienced. It is one of the greatest problems, that thinking gives you substitutes and if you become satisfied with those substitutes, guesswork, then you will never encounter the real. It is because of this that I emphasize: first get rid of all your thinking. Be in a silent clarity, a transparency, so that you can see things as they are – not that you think about them or guess about them.Then not only fear, many other things will disappear and many new things will appear in your experience. The same energy that was involved in fear, released, may blossom into flowers of love in your being. The same energy involved in anger may become a fragrance of tremendous joy in the silences of your heart.You don’t have many energies, you have only one energy. But that energy is invested in fear, anger, greed, jealousy. This same energy, once you are alert, centered in yourself, turns into blissfulness, into ecstasy, into gratitude, into love. And a strange thing which no religion has ever talked about: every fiber of your being becomes prayerful – wordless, not addressed to any phony god. And all gods are phony. Simply out of gratitude arises the prayer toward this beautiful existence. Except for this existence, you don’t have any sacred place. This is the only holy, sacred temple. There is no other temple. All other temples are false, substitutes to deceive and cheat you.So get out of your misunderstanding and guesswork. Reality cannot be discovered by thinking and guesswork. You will come to stupid conclusions. And the difficulty is, you may cling to them.Edna and Zabriski have a lovely Polish wedding in Chicago.“Let us be good Americans,” says Zabriski, “and have a black baby.”“Okay,” says the young bride.Nine months later Edna gives birth to a beautiful white baby. Next year their second baby is white, and a year later she gives birth to another white baby.“We must be doing something wrong,” says Zabriski. “I will ask my friend at work.”So Zabriski meets his friend, Dougie, the huge black foreman, and asks him why they could not have a black baby.“Hey, man,” says Dougie. “Have you got a prick that is fifteen inches long?”“No,.” answers Zabriski.“Is your prick five inches wide?” asks Dougie.“No,” replies Zabriski.“Well, that’s your answer then,” says Dougie. “You are letting in too much light.”Osho,Could you please say something about curiosity? I often have experienced it as something which makes me feel alive and excited. But when I tried to meditate, it turned out to be a disturbance. And now, when I sit in your presence, getting more and more silent, I don't want to know anything anymore.Curiosity is childish. It certainly keeps you excited, but it has never made anyone wise, in tune with himself and the universe. Curiosity is a kind of itching in the head. You scratch, it feels good, but don’t scratch too much; scratch in different places. But itching is not going to make your intelligence more pure, more clear, more far-reaching. That’s why in meditation it becomes a disturbance. It is your old habit, so you go on being curious about everything, what it is.But in meditation you have to remain centered within yourself: no curiosity, no thinking, no question. And I am happy that you managed and that you can say, “Now when I sit in your presence, getting more and more silent, I don’t want to know anything anymore.” To not want to know anything anymore is to be at the stage of a sage. He knows nothing, he becomes again a child; he becomes immensely silent, no thought arises. He enjoys existence for the first time, because that old disturbance of knowing is no longer there.There used to be a very knowledgeable man, Mahatma Bhagwandin. I came in contact with him when I was very young and he was very old. We used to go for walks in the forest and he knew about everything. He knew the names, Latin names, of all the trees, the flowers and their uses, medicinal uses, what miracles can be done with the roots or trees or flowers or leaves. The first day I heard him continuously for the three hours we were in the forest.The second day I said to him, “You know so much, I don’t think you are going to die.”He said, “What gave you this idea?”I said, “Your great knowledge will certainly help you. I don’t know anything, but I enjoy the trees. I don’t know the name – and I don’t see the point that the name is needed to enjoy the tree, the name is needed to enjoy the flower, or its medicinal qualities are to be known.”He was a very intellectual man, but when I said this to him there was silence for a few moments as we walked. And then he said, “Perhaps you are right. In fact I have never enjoyed anything, everything has been a problem: what are its qualities, what are its medicinal properties, how it can be used, in what quantities…. You are perhaps right, that I have missed enjoying existence. I always look, curious for more knowledge.”The day he died it happened I was also in the same city. I was passing by and somebody informed me that Bhagwandin was on his deathbed. He was nearabout eighty years old. I rushed…he had almost become a skeleton; I had not seen him for five years. His last words to me were, “You were right. I wasted my life in unnecessary curiosity, I burned myself with knowledge. Innocence is the way to enjoy.”It is perfectly good that now you are not interested in knowing anything anymore. Keep alert about it. Mind is cunning, it comes from the back door. It will try a few times at least, but remain alert.Knowledge is of no use. When knowledge is not there, wisdom blossoms.Meditation is only a technique to throw out all knowledge and make you capable of seeing with innocent eyes. Then everything – the sounds of the birds, this immense silence, the sun passing through the bamboos – everything becomes such a joy that one wants to sing, one wants to play a guitar, one wants to dance, or one wants simply to sit silently and enjoy the tremendous miracle of this existence.You are moving in the right direction. Keep on moving. Never forget for a single moment that mind will try…it is old, long, long cultivated by you. It takes a little time for it to understand that it is no longer welcome. Up to that moment one has to be very alert.A Viking longship comes to the shore and out jumps a large, hairy Viking in full battle dress. He strides across the beach, climbs the cliffs, and trots into the nearest village. Finding no one around, he hammers on the door of one of the huts and a pretty girl opens it.The big Viking grabs her by the arm and snarls, “Have you been raped lately?”“No!” shrieks the terrified girl.“Okay,” says the Viking, “has your village been pillaged or burned down recently?”The girl shakes her head. The Viking releases her and runs as fast as he can back to his ship. The ship sails further up the coast to another deserted cove. Exactly the same things happen.The Viking arrives in another village and grabs the first girl he finds. “Have you been raped lately?” he asks. “And has your village been burned to the ground in the last three weeks?”The terrified girl says no to both questions and runs away.The Viking takes off his helmet and scratches his head. “Well,” he mutters to himself, “I wonder where the boys have got to?”Osho,Why do I have so much difficulty when I have to decide something, for instance, whether I should go or stay here longer? I do not seem to be able to solve such problems.You are asking the question to a wrong person because I don’t have any experience of that type. Either I do it or I don’t do it, but I am never wavering. This is the wavering mind: to be or not to be. But that is the nature of the mind. It cannot decide anything, it goes on and on…. But have you noticed one thing? Whether you decide or not, something happens. Either you go or you remain. So why waste time? Just look directly into the situation, balance the alternatives. This is the only possibility right now for you.If you have succeeded in being in deep meditation, there is no need. Meditation has a clarity – unwavering, unhesitating. It knows no alternatives, it simply goes on doing what the whole being says to do; it is undivided. But mind is split.Now you are saying, “Why do I have so much difficulty when I have to decide something, for instance, whether I should go or stay here longer? I do not seem to be able to solve such problems.” These are not problems. They indicate your divided mind, the split mind, and the trouble with the split mind is that whatever you do, you will repent. If you stay here you will continuously think, “It would have been better to have gone.” If you go away, you will look back and you will think, “What kind of stupidity have I done? I should have stayed.”When you ask such questions to me, you put me in great trouble. I cannot decide whether you should go or you should stay. You just, on the level of the split mind, weigh – what are the cons and what are the pros? Why do you want to go? What is there that is pulling you? And why do you want to stay here? What is there that is stopping you from going?Watch very impartially, as if it is not your problem but somebody else’s problem. You have to work it out, and whichever side seems to be the weightier, do it. It will not be a hundred percent total, but at least you can attain seventy-five percent. If you want a hundred percent totality then this question, or any other question, is not the issue.Meditate, so that the split mind disappears. The meditator simply goes, does things. He has no regret, no repentance; he never thinks for a single moment that he should have done something else which would have been better. He has put his whole totality in – nothing could be better than that.That experience becomes one of tremendous transformation, when you put your whole totality there. If you can be totally here, be here, then forget about going anywhere else. If you want to go, then go totally, then forget about me and this place. But do things with a totality of being; otherwise you will be always feeling guilty that you have not done the right thing, that you have missed the train unnecessarily. I have never worked that way.I was teaching in the university, and without taking any leave from the university I was traveling all over the country, because leave was only twenty days per year and I was traveling twenty days per month.The vice-chancellor called me and he said, “I don’t want to lose you. You are part of our beautiful university; without you…nobody is going to replace you. But just take a little care – everybody thinks you are here and in the newspapers we hear that you have been lecturing in Madras, in Calcutta, in Amritsar, in Srinagar. It makes me embarrassed. People bring those news cuttings to me, saying, ‘Look, he is in Srinagar.’”I immediately wrote my resignation and gave it to him. He said, “What are you doing? I am not asking for your resignation.”I said, “You are not asking, but this is what I am doing with totality.”He said, “I was always afraid…that’s why I was not mentioning it to you. Please take it back.”I said, “Now that is impossible, you will have to accept it. As far as my work is concerned, I have completed it in this university. You cannot call a single student who can complain against me. What people do in thirty days, I can do in one week, so the work has not suffered. What concern is it for you, where I am?”He said, “It is not my concern. You just take your resignation back; otherwise the whole university, particularly the students, will kill me!”I said, “There is no harm in it. You need to be killed, it is time. You are seventy-five.”He said, “You are a strange fellow.”I said, “I have been here nine years in this university. Have you come to know now that I am a strange fellow?”In the evening he came back to my home and said, “You just take it back; I have not told anybody. This resignation will hurt me.”I said, “I don’t want to hurt you. What you said was true. You cannot give me that much leave – it is almost the whole year I am wandering around the country. But you cannot tell me that I am not teaching. I am teaching your people and I am teaching all around the country. I am teaching twenty-four hours a day.”He said, “I understand. You take the resignation back.”I said, “That is impossible, I never take anything back. And I am not angry at you – in fact, I wanted to get rid of this teaching job. When I can teach fifty thousand people, why should I bother with twenty people? It is a sheer wastage. You have helped me, you should feel good about it; you should have done it before!”When my father heard about it, he came from his village to the university city and he said, “I know, with you nothing can be changed. I have not come to say to take your resignation back, because your vice-chancellor has written to me, saying, ‘Come and try to convince him to take his resignation back,’ but I know you more – he does not know you. So I cannot say anything about it. I have come only to say that if at any time you need money I will be always available, as long as I am alive.”I said, “I will not need money. I have never contributed anything to the family except trouble. And you have enough financial problems.”He said, “If you have said you are not going to take any money, there is no point in arguing with you. I will do something on my own without asking you.”I said, “That is up to you.”What he did was, he made a beautiful house with all the facilities that I would need; he put money in a bank account so that in case I wanted, I could come back. He created a beautiful garden around the house – he knew my likings. And I was not even aware of it. I became aware of it when he died. When he died, my brothers informed me, “This property is in your name and we all want to come to the ashram. So you have to sign a letter giving authority so that it can be sold and the bank account can be closed.”I said, “I don’t possess anything and I have told my father not to do any such thing, but he never asked me.” So I had my secretary give an affidavit on my account, saying that I don’t write, don’t sign anything, and she is allowed to do all kinds of transactions for me. The officials of that village knew me perfectly well, so they did not create any trouble. The house was sold, the account was closed.If you have a clarity, you simply follow your light that goes on leading you, and you don’t go astray here and there, you don’t become accidental.What you are asking is to remain split, is to remain accidental. My suggestion is, meditate a little more so that this whole conflict disappears. Then whatever the result, whether you stay here or you go somewhere else, you have my blessings. It does not matter. What matters is your clarity and a decision, a conclusion out of that clarity.Today let me leave you in silence.Be utterly quiet, as if there is nobody here…

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

Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,At various times I have heard you describe your work as “an experiment to provoke God” and “a model city for the future.” then there was the world tour.In the present context of accelerating global crisis, how would you describe your work now, and what is happening to those who have gathered around you here?There are many things you have asked. The most fundamental thing is to remember that whatever is happening here is not work. To call it work implies tension, worry, and a fear of failure. It is not work, but a playful relationship with existence.As far as the world of man is concerned, I don’t think there is much chance of converting the masses against their own past. They are creations of the past, and their past will come to its crescendo in the coming crisis. The masses will be drowned in that crisis. I feel sad about it, but the truth has to be said.Only a few people in the world will be able to survive after this global suicide, and those will be the people who are deeply rooted in consciousness: alert, aware, loving, and ready to disconnect themselves with the past completely and unconditionally, and ready to begin the New Man and the new humanity with the freshness of a child. I have been enjoying the fact that there are many people in the world who are capable of going deep into themselves. Their only hope is a self-realized being.It is too late to do anything to prevent the immense destruction that is going to happen. If we can protect only a few genuine human beings, that will be enough, more than enough. The past of humanity has been absolutely accidental; they have been doing things without knowing their consequences. Now we are suffering the consequences and there is no way to change those consequences.For example, the whole ecology around the earth has been destroyed. Life does not exist as separate islands; not a single man is an island. Everything is interwoven. You have heard these two words, dependence and independence. Both are unreal; the reality is interdependence. We are all so interdependent on each other – not only men on other men, not only nations on other nations, but trees and man, animals and trees, birds and the sun, the moon and the oceans…everything is interwoven. And the past humanity has never thought about it, that it is a cosmos. They went on thinking in terms of taking everything separately. It was impossible for people in the past to think that man and trees are connected, that they are interdependent.You cannot live without trees, and neither can trees live without you. But it is too late. Hundred-year-old, two-hundred-year-old, even four-thousand-year-old trees have been destroyed and cut to create more newsprint for all kinds of stupid newspapers, without ever giving any consideration to what you are doing. You will not be able to replace them.Just in Nepal…unfortunately it is the poorest country in the world. It has nothing except the eternal Himalayas and the deep forest, ancient and old. It has been selling its forest to different countries – that is the only commodity it can sell. In the last thirty years, half of the trees of Nepal have disappeared, and for the coming thirty years, Russia has purchased the rights to the remaining forest. And they are cutting trees not in the old way, with an ax, but by very modern techniques so that in a day thousands of trees simply disappear. Miles of land are becoming desert.These trees were preventing the rivers of the Himalayas from coming down with too much force, because the rivers had to pass all these trees and every tree was lessening the force, slowing down the flow of water. By the time they reached Bangladesh, where they meet with the ocean, the quantity of water coming was exactly as much as the ocean could absorb. But now those trees have disappeared.Rivers are coming with such great force, and with such a quantity of water, that the ocean cannot absorb it so quickly. It returns it, and Bangladesh is suffering continually, every year, from great floods, strange floods – rivers flowing backward because the ocean will not accept the water. They destroy all the crops of Bangladesh. Bangladesh is poor, and these floods are killing thousands of people, thousands of animals, destroying thousands of houses. And now Bangladesh cannot do anything. It is beyond its power to tell Nepal, “Please don’t cut the trees.”In the first place, even if Nepal stops cutting the trees, the wrong has already been done. And in the second place, Nepal cannot stop cutting those trees; it has sold them even for the future thirty years. It has taken the money to survive.A similar kind of situation exists in many areas of the world. There are many gases which are being produced by our factories which have made us aware of a strange phenomenon. Those gases move upward and make holes in a certain layer called ozone, a variety of oxygen, which covers the earth two hundred miles up, the whole area of air. Ozone is absolutely necessary for humanity, for animals, for trees, because not all sun rays are life-giving. There are a few sun rays which are life-destructive. Ozone turns those life-destructive rays back and allows only life-affirmative rays. Now great holes have been created by the gases that our factories and industries create, and from those holes, death rays from the sun are entering into our atmosphere.This earth has never been so sick; it has never been so much in danger of new diseases. Now the vested interests are not ready to listen, to stop these factories or find alternatives. And scientists are engaged only in creating more war material. No government is ready to give them support so they can create more ozone and fill up the gaps which, unconsciously, we ourselves have created.My emphasis is that our problems are international but our solutions are national. No nation is able to solve them. I take it as a great challenge and as a great opportunity: nations should be collapsed into one world government.It was tried by the League of Nations before the second world war, but it could not succeed. It simply remained a debating club. The second world war destroyed the very credibility of the League of Nations. But the necessity was still there; therefore they had to create the United Nations organization, the UN But the UN is as much a failure as the League of Nations was. Again, it is still a debating club because it has no power. It cannot implement anything, it is just a formal club.I would like a world government. All nations should surrender their armies, their arms to the world government. Certainly if there is a world government, neither armies are needed, nor arms. With whom are you going to have a war? To find the closest neighbor among the planets for some kind of war is almost impossible.Nations have become out of date, but they go on existing – and they are the greatest problem. Looking at the world, just like a bird looks, a strange feeling arises: we have everything, just we need one humanity.India has so much coal – and coal is not created in a day; it takes millions of years for wood to become coal. Then after millions of years more the same coal becomes diamonds. The elements that make up the coal and the diamond are the same. It is the coal under pressure for millions of years that creates the hardest thing in the world, the diamond.India has so much coal; Russia has no coal at all, but they have an overproduction of wheat. Half the population of India goes on starving; it needs wheat, it certainly cannot eat coal. But in Russia in the time of Stalin they were burning wheat in their railway trains instead of coal. They don’t have coal but now they have a super-technological production of crops, fruits. It was easy for them to burn the wheat, but they didn’t know that they were burning millions of people, who were dying because they didn’t have anything to eat.Problems are worldwide.Solutions have also to be worldwide.And my understanding is absolutely clear, that there are things…somewhere they are not needed and somewhere the very life depends on them. A world government means looking at the whole situation of this globe and shifting things where they are needed. It is one humanity.In Ethiopia one thousand people per day were dying and in Europe they were drowning billions of dollars worth of food in the ocean, because they have better technology for production. Anybody looking from the outside will think that humanity is insane. Thousands of people are dying and mountains of butter and other foodstuff is being drowned in the ocean. One recent year when America drowned its foodstuff, just the expense of drowning it was two billion dollars. It was not the cost of the product, it was just the cost of carrying it to the ocean and drowning it.America itself has thirty million people who cannot afford enough food. It is not a question of giving to somebody else, it is a question of giving to its own people. But the problem becomes complicated, because if you start giving free food to thirty million people, then others will start asking, “Why should we pay for our food?” Then the prices of things will go down. With the prices going down, the farmers will not be interested anymore in producing – what is the point? Afraid of disturbing the economy, they let thirty million people die on the streets and go on drowning the superfluous foodstuff in the ocean.Not only that, exactly thirty million people are dying in American hospitals, nursing homes, from diseases caused by overeating. They cannot be allowed in the home, because in the home it is very difficult to protect the fridge from those people! They are dying because they eat too much, and on the street there are people dying because they have nothing to eat. An exact number: thirty million dying of overeating, and thirty million dying with not enough food. Sixty million people can be immediately saved with a small understanding.But a bird’s eye view is needed to look at the world, all over, as one unit. Our problems have brought us to a situation where either we will have to commit suicide or we will have to transform man, his old traditions, his conditionings. Those conditionings and those educational systems, those religions that man has followed up to now, have contributed to this crisis. This global suicide is the ultimate outcome of all our cultures, all our philosophies, all our religions. They all have contributed to it – in strange ways, because nobody ever thought of the whole; everybody was looking at a small piece, not bothering about the whole.For example in India, Jainas only do business. They don’t cultivate, but they need food. They can’t cultivate because Mahavira, their teacher, has told them that if you cultivate you will have to cut plants and plants have life, and nonviolence is his teaching. So they cannot be warriors, they cannot be cultivators, and of course, nobody wants to become sweepers, to become cleaners – because in India, these people are condemned as almost inhuman.So the only alternative left for Jainas was just to do business, sell things, accumulate money. All their violence became their greed. That is the reason why they are the only people in India who don’t have beggars; they are the richest people in India. But this is a kind of sucking the blood of the society. Everything else is being done by somebody else, and the money somehow goes on moving into hands which don’t do anything.Mahavira simply thought about his philosophy, but he never thought that this philosophy could not become universal. And that which cannot become universal cannot be true. People will have to cultivate, and certainly plants will have to be cut, crops will have to be cut. This violence cannot be avoided just by not doing it yourself; somebody else is doing it for you.The situation is the same around the world. Everybody has taken a certain portion of life, ignoring the remaining parts which are essentially joined with it. There are people…for example, the man who created the Nobel Prize committee was the greatest arms producer in the first world war. He earned so much money out of the production of war materials that he created a Nobel Prize for peace.There is so much money that every year dozens of Nobel Prizes are given – with each Nobel Prize two hundred and fifty thousand dollars also are given – and this all comes only from the interest on the money. The basic money remains in the banks of Switzerland. It will continue forever to give twelve Nobel Prizes per year for creating arts, for creating peace, for creating great poetry, painting, science. And the man who created the money created it by producing war materials. The whole first world war was fought with his weapons – both sides were purchasing from him. He was the greatest arms producer. All the people that died in the first world war, he was responsible for.The same is happening today. Nobody is interested in the coming crisis, which is not far away. This century is going to end just in twelve years. Twelve years is not a long time; almost everybody present here will be able to see the end of this century. You will be fortunate if you don’t see the very end of life on this earth. Preparations are on the way to destroy the whole earth. And the people who are doing it are doing it behind great names: nations, religions, political ideologies, communism.It seems man exists for all these kinds of things – communism, democracy, socialism, fascism. The reality should be that everything should exist for man, and if it goes against man it should not exist at all. The whole past of humanity is full of stupid ideologies for which people have been crusading, killing, murdering, burning living people. We have to drop all this insanity.If nations disappear, the second great disease is religions, because they have been fighting, they have been killing, and for reasons in which nobody is really interested. I have never come across a man who is really interested in God. If you give him five rupees in one hand and God in another, he will take the five rupees and he will say, “God is eternal, we will see later on. For the moment five rupees will be helpful.”Who is interested in God except the priests? – because that is their business, and they want their business to spread.When I was being harassed in America, taken from one jail to another jail, my airplane passed over a beautiful city, Salt Lake City. In the night it looked tremendously beautiful, very planned. It is very intelligently managed by a certain Christian sect, the Mormons. Their leader was killed in America, shot dead because Mormons were teaching something against the old orthodox Christianity. They were saying that their president, their leader, had direct contact with God. That cannot be allowed. Only the pope has direct contact with God.Now, all kinds of idiots become leaders, and because he was shot and killed – it always happens – the followers became very fanatical. They created this Salt Lake City. Ninety-eight percent of the people in Salt Lake City are Mormons and all around the world there are millions of other Mormons. It is the duty of every Mormon to send at least one dollar every day to Salt Lake City, which is the capital of their religion. One million dollars every day reach Salt Lake City.What is being done with those one million dollars? The empire is spreading; Salt Lake City is becoming almost a big empire. And the people who believe in it are so fanatical – are bound to be, because their leader was saying the same stupid kind of thing as Jesus was saying. If Jesus could create such a vast Christianity…. They choose their president and every president, once he is chosen, has direct contact with God, and whatever he orders has to be followed.I would not have come to know all this about the Mormons and their city…. Just by chance, where our commune was situated in Oregon, three magistrates had to decide whether to give Rajneeshpuram the status of a city or not. One of them was a Mormon, and he was the most influential of the three. One was against; the other was just wavering, but because of the Mormon he voted for the city.The Mormon judge used to come to the commune, and he loved the place. And he himself told my secretary, “You should be alert and aware, because what has happened to our leader…. We were not doing any harm to anyone, but our leader was shot. And the man you are following is saying such outrageous things that the danger is always there.”And what happened? Because of this Mormon judge the city was recognized. For two years the city was on the map of America, in geography books. The federal government was giving money to it, as to any city; the state government was giving money to it. They managed a very tricky thing. They persuaded the president of the Mormons to send a message to the judge, “You have been chosen by God to go to Nigeria for missionary work.”I wrote a letter to him, saying, “It is very strange that in the whole world God has chosen you to go to Nigeria. I suspect there is politics behind it – Ronald Reagan wants you to be removed from the place. The only way to remove you is a direct order from God.”And actually what I had visualized happened. The moment he was removed another person was appointed and the three judges decided that the city was no longer a city. That’s what Ronald Reagan and his government wanted: first take away the recognition, then it is easy to destroy it. And they destroyed it. I had sent a message to the magistrate, saying, “You will be responsible for the destruction. You don’t understand that it is a political strategy.”After one year, when he came back, he recognized that something strange had happened. The people who destroyed the commune were also angry with the magistrate who had recognized it. They caught hold of him when he came back from Nigeria, and there was a case against him, alleging that he had taken a bribe from us. And what was the bribe?He had fifty cows. When he was going to Nigeria, after the city was recognized, he wanted to put those fifty cows somewhere and we were purchasing cows, hens, all kinds of things for the commune. And he was ready to sell them as cheap as possible; he was even ready to contribute them. Because we had purchased those fifty cows, he was dragged to court: “You recognized the city because those people purchased your cows.” Those cows could have been sold anywhere.Strangely enough those cows were purchased after the city was recognized, months after. When he has received a direct order from God, now what will he do with fifty cows, where will he take them? And where to find a purchaser so quickly? Because he was told, “Immediately move to Nigeria.” He thought that we were in need of them – and we were in need.They took revenge on him. They removed him from his post; he lost his job and then he was condemned for taking a bribe. I came to know about the Mormons because of this judge, when I heard that God had sent him a direct message. But God is so crazy. He goes on sending different messages to Hindus; to Mohammedans, against them; to Christians against them. Even to different sects of Christians, different messages. Either there are many Gods or there are many pretenders.And how do these people receive these messages? Nobody gives any evidence. They have been killing, butchering, doing all kinds of things which are inhuman. They have destroyed the one humanity, divided it into pieces.First the nations should go, if the world is to survive; second, the religions should go. One humanity is enough – there is no need of India and England and Germany. And one religiousness is enough: meditation, truth, love, authenticity, sincerity, which do not need any name – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan…just one religiousness, a quality, not something organized. The moment organization comes in there is going to be violence, because there will be other organizations in conflict. We need a world of individuals without any organizations. Yes, people who have similar feelings, similar joys, rejoicings, can have gatherings. But there should not be any organizations, hierarchies, bureaucracies.First nations, second religions, and third, a science completely devoted to better life, to more life, to better intelligence, to more creativity – not to create more war, not to be destructive. If these three things are possible, the whole humanity can be saved from being destroyed by its own leaders – religious, political, social.This crisis in a way is good because it is going to force people to choose. Do you want to die or do you want to live a new life? Die to the past, drop all that has been given as heritage from the past and start fresh, as if you have descended on this earth for the first time. And then start working with nature not as an enemy but as a friend, and ecology will soon be functioning again as an organic unity.The damage can be repaired; it is not difficult to make the earth more green. If many trees have been cut, many more trees can be planted. And with scientific help they can grow faster, they can have better foliage. Different kinds of barriers can be created in the rivers so that they don’t flood poor countries like Bangladesh. The same water can create much more electricity and help thousands of villages to have light in the night, to have warmth in the cold winters.It is a simple thing. All problems are simple, but the basic foundation is the trouble. Those three things will try in every way not to disappear, even at the cost of the whole world disappearing. They will be ready for this disappearance, but they will not be ready to declare, “We surrender to a world organization all our arms, all our armies.”The function of nations will remain only simple: railway lines, post offices, a small police force to take care of internal affairs. But there is no need of armies. Millions of people are involved in armies, which are useless. They can be put to creative arts, to farming, to gardening. And they are trained people, they can do jobs which no other people can do. An army can make a bridge so quickly – that is its training – it can create more houses for people.Science is capable now, if it is no longer engaged only in war and creating more war material, to create so much food that five times more people can live happily on this earth than exist today. Today there are only five billion people. Twenty-five billion people can live joyously without hunger, without suffering from diseases. But science should be released from the hands of nations, which are forcing their scientists to create more war material. Scientists are functioning almost like prisoners.I want it to be known to the whole world: if you are not ready to be one, be ready to disappear from this planet. But I hope there are intelligent people who would like to survive, who would like this beautiful planet to grow more beautiful, this humanity to grow more intelligent. I am afraid perhaps the whole of humanity is not even aware of the danger that is coming closer every moment.You are asking me, “At various times I have heard you describe your work as ‘an experiment to provoke God….’” It is still the same. I am still trying to provoke the God within you, the divine within you…more consciousness, more light, more aliveness, more ecstasy.Miserable people are dangerous, for the simple reason that they don’t care whether the earth survives or not. They are so miserable that deep down they may feel that it is better if everything is finished. Who cares, if you are living in misery? Only happy people, ecstatic people, dancing people would like this planet to survive forever. So my effort continues to be the same: An experiment to provoke God.“…and ‘a model city for the future.’ In the present context of accelerating global crisis, how would you describe your work now, and what is happening to those who have gathered around you here?” It is the same; nothing has changed, because the world crisis has not changed.The people who have gathered around me are learning how to be more happy, how to be more meditative, how to laugh more, live more, love more, and spread love, laughter around the world. This is the only protection against nuclear weapons. If the whole globe can learn to love and laugh and enjoy and dance, then Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev will look surprised…what has happened? The whole world seems to have gone mad!People who are happy, contented, are not the people to be forced to kill other people who have not done any harm to them. It is not strange that all the armies, down the ages, have been kept sexually repressed, because sexually repressed people are bound to be destructive. Their very repression forces them to destroy something.Have you ever watched in your own being: when you are happy, joyful, you want to create something; when you are miserable, suffering, you want to destroy something. It is a revenge. All armies are kept in repressed sexuality so the moment they get to kill that becomes their joy; at least their repressed energies are expressed – of course in a very ugly way, inhuman way, but some expression is there.Have you watched? – painters, poets, sculptors, dancers are never sexually repressed people. In fact, they are oversexual. They love too much, they love too many people. Perhaps one person is not enough to exhaust their love. They have been condemned by the priests down the ages: these poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, these are not good people. And these are the only people who have made this humanity something beautiful, who have contributed to the world some flowers of joy, some flowers of music, some beautiful dances. What have the priests done to the world? They have burnt women, calling them witches; they have killed people who belong to other faiths. They have not been creative people. They have not enhanced the earth and they have not enhanced life.We need, with these three fundamental changes, a great respect for creative people of any dimension. And we should learn how to transform our energies so that they are not repressed, so they are expressed in your love, in your laughter, in your joy. This earth is more than a paradise, you don’t have to go anywhere. Paradise is not something that has to be achieved, it is something that has to be created. It depends on us.This crisis gives a chance for courageous people to disconnect themselves from the past and start living in a new way – not modified, not continuous with the past, not better than the past, but absolutely new.Find ways to relate in a new way. Forget marriages, start thinking how to inquire into life. Forget all your beliefs, start to meditate in search of finding exactly who you are, because by finding yourself you will have found the very essence of existence. It is immortal and eternal, and those who have found it, their bliss and their benediction is inexpressible.We need more happy people around the earth to prevent the third world war. You will be amazed, surprised by my answer. You may not be able immediately to find what connection there can be between nuclear weapons and people’s laughter – there is. These nuclear weapons and these destructive war machines cannot work by themselves. They are being worked by human beings, behind them are human hands.A hand that knows the beauty of a roseflower cannot drop a bomb on Hiroshima. A hand that knows the beauty of love is not the hand to keep a gun loaded with death. Just a little contemplation and you will understand what I am saying.I am saying, spread laughter, spread love, spread life-affirmative values, grow more flowers around the earth. Everything that is beautiful, appreciate it, and everything that is inhuman, condemn it. Take this whole earth away from the hands of the politicians and the priests and you will have saved the world, and you will have changed the world into a totally new phenomenon, with a new human consciousness. And it has to be done now, because the time is very short. By the end of the twentieth century, either we will enter the first century of a new history of man or there will be no one left alive, not even a single wildflower. Everything will be dead.There are experiments going on in Russia, and perhaps in America too, with death rays. Rather than dropping a bomb, it is far easier to spread death rays, which simply kill the living people, animals, birds, trees. Only dead things – houses, temples, churches – will remain. It will be really a nightmare. And those death rays are not visible. We know that death rays exist; they are just trying to find out how to spread them, to reach a certain destination and destroy all living beings that come across them.Man has to be freed from these monsters. Our work here is to teach people consciousness, more awareness, more love, more understanding, more joy, and spread the dance and celebration around the earth. Reduced to a single statement, I can say: if we can make humanity happier, there is not going to be any third world war.Giovanni wants to have a ride on a bicycle so he decides to go and ask his friend Mario if he can borrow his. On the way he starts to think, “For sure, Mario will tell me to be careful with the bike, but I will tell him not to worry; then he will tell me that his sister wants to use it, but I will tell him that I will be back in time; then I know Mario will get scared and tell me it is not the time of year for riding bikes…”Meanwhile Giovanni arrives at Mario’s house and he looks up to the window and shouts, “Hey, Mario! Go and fuck yourself, you and your bike!”Hamish MacTavish has not seen his old friend, Gordon MacPherson for forty years. So when they bump into each other in the street one day, they rush to the nearest pub to celebrate.“It will be wonderful to have a drink together after all these years,” says Gordon.“Aye, it will,” says Hamish. “But don’t forget, it is your round.”There is an accident on the construction site. Seamus runs over to where Paddy is lying in a heap of rubble.“Are you dead, Paddy, after such a terrible fall?” asks Seamus.“Yes, certainly I am,” replies Paddy.“Ah, bejabers!” says Seamus, “you are such a terrible liar, I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”“That proves I am dead, you idiot,” says Paddy. “If I was alive, you would not be calling me a liar to my face.”The last…Hamish MacTavish is careening down the road in his old Ford car when a policeman pulls him over.“Excuse me, sir,” says the cop. “Would you mind blowing into this bag?”“By all means,” says Hamish. “Would you like me to play a jig or a reel?”“No, no,” says the cop. “This bag tells you how much you have been drinking.”“Oh, there is no need for that,” says Hamish. “I have got one of my own at home…. I married her!”No, you need one more….Pope the Polack is very sick. Doctors come from all over the world to try and diagnose his illness, and finally a little Jewish psychiatrist finds the cause of the problem.He tells the pope, “Your holiness, because you have had nothing to do with women all your life, your hormones are unbalanced and there is only one possible cure. You must make love with a woman.”“No, no!” cries Pope the Polack, “I can’t. All the vows I have taken…. I just can’t!”“But, your holiness,” replies the shrink, “you must or you will die, and this too is a mortal sin.”The pope retires for a few days to consider his fate, and then calls the psychiatrist again.“Okay,” says Pope the Polack, “I have reached my decision. I will do as you ask. But please, be sure that the girl has nice, big tits.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Every time you call homosexuality a perversion, even though you do not condemn homosexuals, I feel hurt as I am a gay. I have tried to look, to watch, to meditate on it but still my feelings, my love go naturally after men. Since being with a man I like and trust, I have felt silence and happiness. But it is difficult to accept myself totally joyfully.Osho, how can I live these moments without feeling perverted? What is the difference between being totally accepted by you and not being condemned?The question is immensely important, because the whole future of humanity depends on a few factors: one is homosexuality. First, I would like to explain to you why I call it perversion. And once you understand it, things will be simpler.There is no biological program in you for homosexuality. The biological program in your sperm is for heterosexuality. I am simply stating a fact, that homosexuality has arisen under ugly pressures in the monasteries of all religions, where it is forced to happen in the name of the purity of celibacy – and in the schools, colleges and in universities where boys and girls are kept separate and teachers and professors function as gods so that no heterosexual relationship happens.Men and women become sexually mature at the age of thirteen or fourteen. The natural thing would be to allow them the expression of their new area of exploration. Of course, all precautions can be taken so that small boys and girls don’t get into any trouble – particularly the girls, that they should not become pregnant at such an early age.In the past there was no way, but now we are in a better position. According to me, the pill is the greatest revolution that has happened in history. And now, even better pills are available. The first pill was not a hundred percent foolproof. You have to take it continuously and if you miss one day and by chance you meet your lover…. The human tendency is to think that one does not get pregnant every time, why should it happen at this time? Take the chance. But if hundreds and thousands and millions of people are taking chances, then a few pregnancies are bound to happen.The society managed forcibly to keep the two sexes apart. And I wondered myself, when I came to know that between the ages of sixteen and eighteen sexual energy, as it happens, is at its peak. It will never be the same power again.We have arranged marriages after the boys and girls return from the universities – age twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six. Their peak point of energy has already passed six or eight years back. They are on the decline. Because of this decline…. And I suspect that religions wanted this decline to happen, because with this declining force you cannot have orgasmic experience. Orgasmic experience is a flood. You are so flooded that you disappear. And I respect the orgasmic experience because my understanding is that all meditations have arisen out of it. All spirituality has arisen out of it, because it has given a taste of the beyond.By preventing young people until they are twenty-five or twenty-six, first, they will never experience orgasm. Second, they will never think that there is any possibility of a higher consciousness, of a more beautiful space within themselves; that they are not what they see in the mirror, they are much more. In an orgasmic experience they become almost one with the whole. It is the first glimpse – a window opens and they start searching for ways to widen the window, to fly in this open sky.Nobody has worked it out, how man found meditation, how he started thinking of a spiritual experience of ecstasy. To me, it is very simple. Once the boys and girls have orgasmic experience, they have already tasted the spiritual, the divine, the sacred. Now, in their whole life nothing is going to be of that height.And secondly, in an orgasmic experience one comes to know that thought stops, time stops. You come to a standstill – no movement. Those who were wise enough, they tried it in another way: how to get rid of thought, time and movement and become absolutely still. And they were surprised that it works both ways; you attain to the same orgasmic experience. But when the orgasmic experience is sexual you are dependent on the other person, and when the orgasmic experience comes out of meditation you attain a tremendous dignity as an individual – independence.Religions did not want this orgasmic experience to happen to people. And to prevent it, they created the idea of celibacy. It is ugly and very cunning – but priests are cunning. Their whole concern was their own business. If people start experiencing individually, the spiritual and the sacred, then the brahmin priest is no longer needed; neither is the rabbi needed or the catholic priest needed. They have come in direct contact with the universe in such an intimate way that there is no need for any mediator.To destroy this possibility there were two ways. In the past, they used early marriage: seven years, eight years old. Now, a seven-year old boy is not sexually mature, and neither is the girl. But because they are married, slowly, slowly they are being taught by their relatives and friends and they start playing. Sex becomes just a play to them, and at the most just a method to produce children. They don’t have any time to experience what could have turned them in a spiritual direction. This has been followed for centuries. They are too burdened too early. And the birth of children does not depend on orgasmic experience.So sex has to be understood in two ways: on the one hand it reproduces the species, which is a biological phenomenon; on the other hand, it creates an energy experience which no religion, no politician would like people to have, because that will create the greatest revolution in the world. People will have a direct contact with existence – no hell, holy scripture; no priest, no mediators. And these are the people who have been the parasites of humanity. But the times changed, education came into the world; students had to leave their home and live in hostels, boys with boys, girls with girls. That also contributed to the perversion.I am not condemning it, I am simply telling you how it happened. And when I say perversion, I don’t mean by it any condemnation. I simply mean going away from the natural course of things. If a boy from fourteen to twenty-five – that is a long period – becomes homosexual, then that becomes a deep-rooted habit in him, so even when he is married his interest is not in women. Religions don’t want men to be interested in women, nor do they want women to be interested in men. And they have made a very detailed strategy, slowly, slowly over thousands of years.In the present, monasteries create homosexuals, universities create homosexuals, armies create homosexuals. Wherever one sex gathers, sooner or later they start finding ways to release each other’s energies.So the first thing to remember: I will continue to call it perversion because it is perversion. It is against nature. Nature never produces anything which is useless. Homosexuality is useless; it does not generate anything in you. Neither can it produce children, nor can it give you an orgasmic experience. Have you ever heard of homosexuals having orgasmic experience? All they have is a sexual release. The energy accumulates and becomes a tension – it needs some release. Homosexuals know only ejaculation, they don’t know what they are missing – the orgasm.So sexual energy runs parallel in two ways. On one hand it produces children, on the other hand it can produce in you a new being. Homosexuality destroys both. And do you want me to call it a natural thing? It is destructive, it is perversion. I can understand that it may be hurting you. But if you have cancer and the doctor says to you, “It is cancer,” it hurts, but it has to be said; otherwise there is no way to operate upon you, to remove the cancer. And homosexuality has become far more dangerous than cancer. Nobody was intentionally moving in that direction, but that’s how things happen – in the unknown, in the darkness.Homosexuals, because they were perverted, created the disease AIDS. Heterosexuality creates life – life for your children and a divine life for you. Homosexuality is absolutely barren; it does not create anything. Slowly, slowly as it spread…perhaps it has been happening and we were not aware of it. The awareness came just within the last five years, when doctors found that the homosexuals with AIDS lose their resistance against any infection, and their life span is not more than six months to two years.I was the first in the whole world to make people aware of it. Governments were hiding it, doctors were not wanting to talk about it, scientists were not revealing it to the people. They had their reasons; it looks ugly if the nation has to declare that it has thousands of homosexuals. It is not a glory, it simply means that so many people have become perverted. And because of AIDS, the danger became more.To accept that one million people are suffering from AIDS in one country…. The problem is, what are the politicians going to do about it? Nothing can be done about it. There is no possibility, according to the scientists, to cure it. It is just like death, a slow death. You cannot cure death, slow or fast. And it looks ugly for nations to recognize it. Many nations have not even bothered to have a census about how many people are homosexual because they are potential AIDS patients. Doctors are afraid to tell anybody they have AIDS because then they will have to be admitted into a hospital.The disease is such as man has never known. Anything infected coming out of the body… Even kissing…because through saliva is a way for the virus to be passed on, from one mouth to another mouth.It is very strange that only one primitive tribe of Eskimos have never kissed. And when for the first time Christian missionaries arrived to convert them to Christianity, the Eskimos could not contain themselves laughing when they saw them kissing each other. Such a dirty habit! Saliva carries all kinds of viruses, all kinds of diseases. Particularly, kissing is not anything like as good as the poets have been praising it to be. It is certainly a dirty habit.Eskimos also express their love. But love should be expressed in a cleaner way: they rub their noses with each other. Noses are very clean and cool – unless they are running. Those periods are avoided; Eskimos never kiss noses if their noses are running!Sexual contact is bound to give AIDS to the partner who did not have it. A mother’s milk can give AIDS to her children. You will be surprised to know that there are now children who were born with AIDS – because the father must have been suffering from AIDS and the sperm carried the virus into the mother’s womb – small children…. When I condemned it in a world press conference, journalists laughed at me, politicians laughed at me. And they said that I was unnecessarily making a small thing too big, because I said that two-thirds of humanity is going to die through AIDS. I proposed what precautions should be taken, and now many civilized countries have adopted the same procedures – without, of course, mentioning my name.My name seems to be dynamite. Even my own people are afraid to utter it, what to say about others? Now the same journalists are reporting in great praise about their governments, that they are taking precautions. This could have been done three years ago and would have saved millions of people from catching the disease. Now, as far as I can see, it is uncontrollable.Doctors don’t want to admit it, so they simply give a certificate saying that the person does not have AIDS, because to admit an AIDS patient is dangerous: for the nurses, for the doctor. Coming in contact with such a man, the best way is simply to say, “We examined you and you are negative. You don’t have AIDS. You don’t need to worry.” They have shifted their responsibility, but they have created a danger for the society. Now this man will move….Here, there are a few sannyasins…because I have made it an absolute rule that no AIDS-positive person should be allowed to enter the gate. If he wants to go anywhere, he should go to the Vatican. The Vatican is the most responsible for creating AIDS. And the pope’s position has to be changed – not as a representative of God but as the superintendent of an AIDS hospital. All people suffering from AIDS should move toward the Vatican.I have prohibited their entry. People have to bring a certificate saying that they are negative. But you will not believe how irresponsible man can be. There are many doctors who are selling negative certificates, so you simply give some money…there is no need to be worried, take the certificate. It seems we will have to make our own lab to test people before we allow them into the campus. Their certificates can be bogus. You give just a few rupees, and in Mumbai you can get a certificate. And this is happening all around the world. But such irresponsibility has never been seen. They only think of themselves and the money that they are getting. They are not worried what harm this man can do – to his friends, to his family, to his children, to his wife.People are trying to get negative certificates because they don’t want to be condemned by the society, and they don’t want their wives and their children and their parents to feel embarrassed that they have got AIDS. Friends will no longer be friends. So to protect one’s ego, people are trying to hide the fact. And because of the hiding of the fact, it is spreading like wildfire all over the world.Do you want me to not call homosexuality perversion because it hurts you? If it hurts you, I am not responsible for your hurt. Your priests who have been teaching celibacy are responsible. But strange – governments are making laws against homosexuality, that it is now a crime. Anybody found to be homosexual can be sent to jail. But homosexuality is not the real root, the real root is the idea of celibacy.Celibacy is the real perversion, but not a single man in the whole world has condemned celibacy, because nobody wants all the religions to be against him. But I am at ease because already the whole world is against me. What more can it do? I say it definitively: celibacy should be made one of the most heinous crimes. The religions which teach it should be banned.And all celibates in the monasteries, the monks of different religions, should be told, “Get married, or at least find a girlfriend. You have lived with boyfriends long enough.”The people who have AIDS should be segregated. They should have their own small cities, where all are suffering from AIDS – the doctors, the nurses, the patients, the scientists. Then there is no danger. You cannot have, like double pneumonia, double AIDS – single is enough!If humanity functions sanely, then AIDS patients should be taken care of in remote places. They can work, they can earn, but their cities should be closed cities. They cannot move around in the world, spreading a fatal disease. And it is out of compassion that I am saying this. If the people who are suffering from AIDS understand the meaning of compassion, they themselves should move out of the crowd, live with the same kind of people who are suffering; make small villages, islands, if they want to save humanity. Otherwise, even without nuclear weapons humanity will be destroyed. And this destruction will be very ugly.If you feel hurt, book a ticket to Rome. Hit as hard as you can at the pope: “You are not the representative of God, you are the representative of the homosexuals; particularly the people who have reached the point where homosexuality has created AIDS.” The name of the Vatican should be changed: “AIDS Camp” seems to be perfectly good. And I don’t want the pope to be demoted. He should remain the superintendent of the AIDS Camp.But you cannot stop me just because you feel hurt. I am not only concerned with you, I am also concerned with the whole of humanity. To avoid hurting a single person and create a dangerous situation for many…. I cannot do that.You say, “I have tried to look, to watch, to meditate on it. But still my feelings, my love go naturally after men.” It is a very strange perversion. The natural attraction is always for the opposite polarity. Man and woman are opposite polarities, like negative and positive electrons. If you are attracted only toward men, something is wrong in you. You should go through some groups, you should learn how to love a woman. In fact, it is so ugly even to think that a man is attracted toward a man and not toward a woman.Women are doing the same because they want to be equal. The women involved in the liberation movement have become lesbians; their idea is to boycott men completely. Lesbianism is old, but not very widespread. There is a possibility that there may not be any harm in it, because two negatives cannot create anything – neither a child nor a painting. For creating anything two positives are needed. So perhaps lesbianism may not create a disease like AIDS, but one never knows. Up to now we were not aware that homosexuality was going to create AIDS. Perhaps it takes a certain time. And for the negative it will take a longer time. It is possible they may even create a far more dangerous disease.But this is sheer insanity. The people who are homosexuals should move and create homosexual communes, the women who are lesbians should move and create lesbian communes. But leave the rest of humanity. Why torture them? Why destroy them? You don’t have the right. You are completely free to do what you want to do, but don’t interfere in anybody’s life. I have every condemnation when someone interferes in others’ lives.And you are asking me, “Since being with a man I like and trust, I have felt silence and happiness.” That’s good – just go to a homosexual commune, feel happy and feel silence.“But it is difficult to accept myself totally joyfully.” Why should you not accept? If you sow the seeds you should accept the flowers too. If you accept homosexuality joyfully, and you feel happy with men and you trust men and like them, then there is no need to feel any guilt. You have chosen to die within two years. It is your choice. Make as much happiness as you can within these two years. But you are not feeling totally joyful – feel totally condemned. I am preaching totality; it does not matter what is total. Feel totally condemned, feel totally corrupted, feel totally perverted and rejoice with all the perverts.And you ask me, “How can I live these moments without feeling perverted?” There is no need. You are perverted. Why should you live these moments without feeling perverted? Live these moments knowing fully that you are perverted. Just as somebody is a man, somebody is a woman, somebody is a bird, somebody is a tree, you are a pervert.“What is the difference,” you are asking, “between being totally accepted by you and not being condemned?” I do everything totally. I accept you totally in your natural flowering, and I condemn you totally in your perversion. And for me there is no problem, I am always total. My yes is total, my no is total. But if you have chosen the no, then I will condemn you totally. You cannot question my totality.But the simple thing is – and homosexuals around the world are not doing it…. In Texas they created a law against homosexuality, that homosexuals can be jailed for years. One million homosexuals protested outside the parliament. I don’t think that homosexuality should be punished by jail. Homosexuals should be given different localities. They can live in their own world, in their own way, and be happy, but they should not be allowed to move in the wider society, spreading all kinds of dangerous viruses.But nobody seems to do anything about it. There are deserts, there are islands uninhabited. Just give them to homosexuals. Divide the world into heterosexual and homosexual – and there should be no communication between them.Or you change yourself. I know changing is difficult. Once you have become accustomed to a certain sexual behavior it becomes very difficult to change the behavior. Ten or twelve years are enough to make it your second nature, unless you are courageous enough, and can discipline yourself and drop that perversion and be natural. It is possible, but you will need guts for it.I am not only answering you, I am answering all the homosexuals of the world. It is their duty to declare that they are homosexuals. It is their duty to say that they want their own communes. It is the duty of lesbian women to say that they want their own communes. And then it is perfectly okay – you leave the world at peace. Otherwise, my prediction that two-thirds of humanity will die from AIDS is coming closer.In poor countries, we don’t even have any idea how many people are homosexuals, how many people are suffering from AIDS. The government is not interested in your life. So almost all the poor countries have no data; only the very rich countries have now become aware of the fact. And they are collecting data but the statistics should be multiplied by at least five, because it is very difficult to find someone who will admit that they are gay.Now the very word has become condemned, homosexuals are going underground. They had their restaurants, their clubs – they have changed their names; the whole process is going on. And the people who create the law, most of them are homosexuals. It is a very difficult situation. Teachers, professors, principals are mostly homosexual, because they have access to beautiful boys. And the people of power, whether they are priests or politicians, have power and they can manage very easily. But they don’t know that they are risking the whole life of this planet.If there is a choice to commit suicide, I would rather people are given poison than have an ugly disease like AIDS. If we decide to destroy the planet then destroy it. But destroy it as peacefully, as beautifully as possible, not with ugly diseases and everybody feeling guilty. And I know you are only a victim. You should not feel guilty, you should feel revengeful.Guilt is inverted revenge.Make it change into authentic revenge.Who are the people who have created the situation? These people should be punished. If the government does not punish them, then you make committees and punish them. If there are one million homosexuals just in a small state, Texas, how many millions of homosexuals are there around the world? These millions of people should make their own committees and punish the priests and the people who have been teaching celibacy. They have perverted you. You need not feel guilty, you need to feel totally revengeful – because it is not only your question, the whole life on this planet is reaching, from many directions, to an end.We can prevent politicians from using nuclear weapons, but what to do with AIDS? And people, even though they are intelligent, behave very unintelligently. One of my sannyasins and therapists, Veeresh, allows people suffering from AIDS into his groups. Just now I have been told that he tells people, “Osho teaches compassion, so you all be compassionate to this fellow. Hug him, kiss him, love him.”Now, this is a great interpretation of compassion! He should have told the man who is suffering from AIDS, “Osho teaches compassion. Now, it is your compassion not to touch people. Tell them that you are suffering from AIDS and you don’t want to spread it.” Rather than telling him that, he is telling other group participants to hug him, and they are hugging him. That fellow may spread AIDS to the whole group. And because he is respected there, naturally he will feel very good.Here, we will be creating an institute to check your AIDS report, whether it is authentic or not. I want my people to be saved not only from nuclear weapons, but also from inner causes that can destroy the whole humanity.Hymie Goldberg is telling Moishe Finkelstein about the new town brothel.“It is fantastic,” says Hymie. “You can screw all night, and when you leave they give you breakfast and twenty dollars.”“Have you actually tried it?” asks Moishe.“No,” admits Hymie, “but Becky has.”A lawyer has been trying for months to get Mendel Kravitz to pay a bill, but all his letters and telegrams are disregarded. Finally, in desperation he sends Mendel a tear-jerking letter, with a photograph of his little daughter. The lawyer writes under the photo: “Here is the reason I must have the money you owe me.”Mendel replies by sending a photograph of a beautiful redhead in a bathing suit. The caption on this picture says: “Here is the reason I can’t pay.”Mendel Kravitz is trying to make out with his secretary. He wines her and dines her and when he gets her back to his apartment, he whispers sweet promises in her ear.“If we get it together,” murmurs Mendel, “a fur coat or perhaps a trip to Europe.”The secretary takes him by the hand into the bedroom and they are soon in bed together. Later, while dressing, she asks him when she will get the fur coat he promised.“What fur coat?” asks Mendel.“You promised me a fur coat,” insists the girl.“When I am horny, I will promise anything,” says Mendel. And putting one hand over his heart and the other on his prick, he says, “When he is soft, he is hard. When he is hard, he is soft.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I was with a very strict enlightened teacher, Lee Lozowick, in America for six years. While in Boulder, Colorado, I fell in love with your sannyasins, and then you. Now, after one week in Pune, a nagging feeling has arisen in me: have I truly taken sannyas, and are you truly my master?Prem Majjhama, the question asked by you…you will have to be prepared for a shock. I am going to analyze it point by point. You say, “I was with a very strict enlightened teacher, Lee Lozowick.” I know Lee Lozowick very well. Neither is he strict, nor enlightened. And you remained with him in America for six years. That shows that you are not even intelligent either. If you were really with a master, there was no need to come here. Your innermost being would have been fulfilled, contented, blessed. If you could fall in love with my sannyasins in Boulder, Colorado, Lee Lozowick is not even worthy enough to be compared with my people there.If you have looked into your question deeply, unprejudicially, silently, then my answer will be very clear to you. In the first place, a teacher is never enlightened. A teacher has teachings; he has a whole system of beliefs. A master is not a teacher. A master is a fire you have to go through so that all that is not gold in you is burnt, and only the pure gold comes out. To be with a master is not an easy job. It is the most difficult journey one can go on.You wasted your six years. Lee Lozowick himself was with Da Free John. He is not only a fraud, he also betrayed his own teacher. Da Free John is also not a master, but at least he is a teacher of a far higher quality than Lee Lozowick. It happens all the time. People see that so many people are attracted toward certain doctrines, certain personality characteristics, and they feel they can also manage, if not so many people, then a few at least. Lee Lozowick betrayed Da Free John because he does not even mention his name, or that he has been a disciple himself. And how did he become a master? His own teacher has not recognized his enlightenment.But in America everything is possible. I have heard a wise man saying, “A fraud is someone who can tell you to go to hell so tactfully that you start packing for the trip.” That’s what Da Free John and his disciple Lee Lozowick are. And when I am saying these things, remember, I have no personal antagonism toward anybody. But I have simply to say the truth to you, even if it goes against all manners, etiquette, culture. I am not here to teach you manners, I have to hit directly into your heart with the truth, howsoever much it hurts.These people have sprung up all over the world. India has suffered from these people for many centuries, but this century is seeing a new phenomenon. The Indian frauds have created similar kinds of people all over the world – pretenders, who know nothing except some strategy that influences people to believe in them; and particularly at this time, when everybody is going down into a deep psychological crisis. Everything seems to be silent on the surface. You may not even be thinking about the third world war, the ecological crisis; you may not be thinking about AIDS. At least consciously you may not be concerned at all what is going to happen to humanity tomorrow, but deep down you cannot avoid it.Your consciousness is a separate personality, but your unconscious, as you go deeper, becomes more and more part of the whole ocean. So whatever is happening in the soul of the cosmos has ripples in everybody’s unconscious. If you can read your own unconscious, you can read the whole future that is going to happen. But you may know or you may not know about your unconscious situation.These frauds – the Indians and their by-products, mostly American – are doing a good business. It is said that psychologists build castles in the air, psychoanalysts live in them, and psychiatrists collect the rent. But I wonder who pays the rent? You! I say again, you! You pay the rent, and there are many others who are paying the rent. Those castles do not exist, nobody lives in those castles….But in a psychological crisis of this intensity – in which we are – everybody is shattered inside, is somehow holding himself together, and anybody who pretends to teach you the way toward the beyond immediately attracts you. You don’t have any way, any criterion, any measurement to figure out whether the man is true or not, whether the man is authentic or not. In the East, because the tradition is more than ten thousand years old, slowly, slowly we have figured out a few indications of an enlightened master. Those indications may be helpful to you.The authentic master is not at all interested in disciples, in the crowd, in the many numbers around him. He does not brag about it. He attracts only the very intelligent, because what he teaches and whatever he is, is understandable only by very highly intelligent people. Have you ever checked what intelligence quotient you have? Before figuring out whether a master is true or not, you should have a psychological test to find out what is your mental age.The average mental age of humanity is fourteen years. Now, people with a mental age of fourteen years are not the people to understand something of the transcendental, something of the spiritual, something of the inner. It is time for them to play football, watch boxing matches, sit before their TV, glued to it for seven and a half hours every day. But I have always been wondering…. Nobody ever thinks about how much intelligence you have. Is it enough to be a disciple? Is it enough to be accepted by a master?A master is not in any way interested in converting you to a certain system of beliefs. If any master is doing that, he is only a teacher. And a teacher carries only borrowed knowledge. He can say beautiful things, but they are all parrot-like. Sometimes he can talk even better than the masters because masters are spontaneous and the teacher has gone through many rehearsals. He is well prepared, he has done his homework, and he goes on teaching the same thing again and again to different people.A teacher continuously remains consistent with a certain current of ideology. The master is basically contradictory, inconsistent. He has to be, because what he is saying is not within his hands. It is in the hands of the universe itself, he is only a vehicle. Whatever kind of song existence brings to his lips, he cannot edit anything out of it or make any additions, improvements. A master is very raw in the sense that he brings whatever comes from existence exactly as it is. He is never a polished man.The master does not in any way humiliate you by making you disciples. By accepting you as disciples he gives you dignity and individuality. He asks nothing from you and he goes on giving to you things which have no price, but are immensely valuable. The effort of a master is to become a certain milieu, a certain presence so that he need not even say anything to you. Just sitting by his side, your heart slowly, slowly starts falling in tune with the master. And the master’s heart is in tune with the heart of the universe. Being in tune with the master, you are also in tune with the universe. It is not knowledgeability that makes a master, it is innocence.And I know absolutely, with certainty, that this fellow, Lee Lozowick, is not an innocent man. He has betrayed his teacher – and you are doing the same here. You have betrayed him. But one cannot blame him, because when he went to Da Free John he must have thought of him as a master and slowly, slowly discovered that he is only a teacher – but if a teacher can attract so many disciples, what is the point of remaining with him? And he started collecting his own disciples.If you have been with a master, it is almost impossible to desert him. Your love will prevent you from doing that. Your trust will become a Himalaya between you and the whole world. Your master is your whole universe.And it is strange that you are asking, “Now, after one week in Pune, a nagging feeling has arisen in me: Have I truly taken sannyas, and are you truly my master?” What happened to Lee Lozowick? It took you six years and still you want to go back to him. The reason is clear: it is not that you have found a master in him, you have found in him a recognition for your ego.Here, your ego is going to be destroyed every day. Unless you disappear completely, leaving only your essential being, you are not a sannyasin. What happens when a person like you, after six or seven days, takes sannyas? What is going on in his mind? He is thinking that by taking sannyas some miracle is going to happen to him. You are absolutely wrong. This sannyas that you take is not going to bring any miracle, it is simply entering into a commune of seekers, making yourself available, becoming an insider and not just a spectator. Then learn step by step the ways of love, the ways of trust; then learn step by step how to enter into your own being. The day you enter into your own center will be the true sannyas. This is only a formality.With a true sannyasin, an authentic being who has come to his own, the question will not arise, “…and are you truly my master?” There is only one way to find out whether someone is truly your master. If in his presence, if in his universe of seekers, if in his caravan of searchers, you suddenly stumble upon yourself, and you find the ecstasy that you have never experienced, and the blessing that has not been even in your dreams; and after this experience no question arises in you…. That is the very definitive thing, that no question arises in you. All questions have simply fallen, as leaves fall in the fall time from the trees. Only in that experience of the disappearance of questions, and with them thoughts and mind, will you have the answer, that you have found the true master. You cannot decide beforehand, because it is not a market; it is not that somebody has written on his door, “I am the true master.”You will have to learn patience and waiting. One never knows – it can happen today, it may take years; it all depends on you. The master simply creates a certain subtle atmosphere. That atmosphere is here. If you can get in tune with it, you are a sannyasin. And if you get slowly, slowly dissolved and become part of the dance and the celebration that is going on here, of the meditation and the ecstasy, suddenly you will realize you have come close to an authentic master.If it does not happen, there can be two reasons: either the master is not authentic or your disciplehood is not authentic. Rather than jumping to the idea that the master is not authentic, it is better first to look at your disciplehood. What have you done by becoming a sannyasin? What changes have happened to you? In what ways have you become more involved in the movement, in what way have you entered yourself, in what way has your lifestyle changed?Everything depends on you. Giving you sannyas simply means that we accept you, our doors are open to you, not more than that. Now, inside the temple what is happening will depend on you – your intelligence, your integrity, your sincerity, your authentic search for truth. And I cannot think that in six days you have found that meditation leads nowhere, that you have touched the presence of my being. But I will suggest to you, perhaps you should go back to Lee Lozowick, because I am not interested at all in gathering a crowd of unintelligent, impatient people, in a hurry.You will come back – about that I am certain. But this time you go back; first be finished with Lee Lozowick. That is what is nagging you. You are thinking that perhaps you have left your right master and here you have come into a strange world. Why not go back home? I never want anybody to be here half-heartedly. Either you are here or you are not here; there is no other choice. So you can think it over.Either say good-bye to your so-called teacher, strict teacher…strictly enlightened. That I have heard for the first time. There have been enlightened people, but strictly enlightened…! So it seems a few are lousy. Gautam Buddha is not a strictly enlightened person – a lousy person in comparison to Lee Lozowick. You just go back to him, because that is the only way to be finished with him.Now that you know me and you know my people, and you know the space that is being created here, going back to Lee Lozowick you will have something to compare him with. And if you feel to come, then come with totality. Your totality will be respected and loved. And only your totality can make you discover the master that is here.I am not a teacher, not at all. I have no teaching. I have simply a presence that I want to share with you – in my words, in my silences, in my presence, in my absence. I want you to feel that this small place is not part of the neurotic world outside the gate, that a different kind of consciousness is growing here. It is a nursery. But perhaps…it happens to many people: when they come the second time, then they recognize.It is just like a joke. There are very few people who understand when they hear a joke for the first time. Most of the women, particularly, who get it for the first time…it simply means that they have good teeth; it does not mean that they have understood the joke. The Englishman never understands when he hears a joke for the first time. He wonders what it is. He gets it in the middle of the night. Thinking about it this way and that way, figuring it out, suddenly he catches the glimpse. He says, “My God!” And then he laughs in his bedroom silently so that nobody can hear.The German never gets it. He laughs because everybody else is laughing, and if you don’t laugh they will think you are German. The Indian never gets it either. But he does not laugh like the German, just to give company to other people who are laughing. It seems to the Indian that he is too serious a person, far above, spiritual, how can he laugh? It is not that he is spiritual or far above, the real fact is that he does not understand the joke.I have been searching for a purely Indian joke. I have gone through almost thousands of books in search of a purely Indian joke. I have to confess that there exists no such thing. All jokes that are available in Indian literature are imported.Only the Jew understands it. But he understands it before you have even finished it. And to tell a joke to a Jew is a very embarrassing experience, because in the middle of the joke he will say, “Shut up! It is an old joke, and moreover you are telling it all wrong.”I have been watching. Many people have come for the first time, and only the very intelligent have remained – and remained silently, without ever thinking that any other world exists except this commune.A few remained here just to learn enough so they could go back and become great masters in their own right. They are not interested in truth, they are interested in their own egos. And now there are a few people around the world – they will not mention my name, and they have lived with me for ten years. They are afraid that somebody may recognize: “You have been Osho’s disciple.” They want to erase that part of their life completely so that they can say they are a master, unique; they have discovered the truth themselves, they are not repeating.I go on receiving their pamphlets and their leaflets and I wonder…these people are either blind or utterly unconscious. They are quoting me, in their name, and they are sending those pamphlets to the sannyasins. And the sannyasins send them to me, saying, “Look what your people are doing.” They have never been my people. They were here just to learn some strategy so that they could be masters.The third type is more sincere. They come and they don’t feel at ease. It is natural. When you change from one commune to another commune, it is changing from one river to another river. The taste of the water changes, the flow of the river changes. The climate changes, the trees on the banks are different, a different fragrance…everything changes. Naturally one feels to be back in the old, which you have become accustomed to.I want you to go back, because that will reveal to you that your six years have been a wastage, and your six days here have given you greater insight. And when you come again, you will come clean – clean of your past hanging on. This will bring you a certain maturity that you need.Little Ernie and little Elmer are outside the whorehouse, and after seeing the comings and goings their curiosity is aroused. So they knock on the door and ask the madam if they can come in and find out what it is all about, but she tells them the price is ten dollars.After saving their pocket money for weeks they amass the sum of seventy-nine cents and approach the madam again. Being a businesswoman and sensing the possibility of future clients, she takes their seventy-nine cents and tells one of the girls to give them a quick flash of her pussy for their money.Two minutes later they are leaving the place when Ernie turns to Elmer and says, “I didn’t like the look of that, did you?”“No,” replies Elmer, “I’m glad we didn’t have ten bucks’ worth.”Osho,Why are you against marriage? Women have been, certainly, the cause of their husband's enlightenment.It is certainly true that without women no man would have ever been enlightened. They create such hell that there is no way out except becoming enlightened. This also explains why very few women have ever become enlightened – and not very strictly enlightened, just so-so. The reason is that husbands are not capable of creating that great a hell. Who is going to help women to become enlightened?But I am certainly against marriage. My being against marriage has many reasons. One of them is that if there is no marriage, man and woman will be moving freely with each other. And soon you will see there are an equal number of women enlightened as men; this disparity will disappear. There have been thousands of enlightened men and perhaps five enlightened women – you can count them on five fingers. And still, their enlightenment is lukewarm. Once you have released the man and the woman from this bondage, you will be creating a situation in which nobody nags you into enlightenment.Enlightenment that has come out of nagging is not much of an enlightenment; it is simply escape. I want authentic enlightenment, and that needs absolute freedom from nagging. Nobody is nagging you, nobody is telling you to become enlightened, everybody is accepting you as you are, enlightened or unenlightened. Out of this freedom will come more authentic men and authentic women to become enlightened. But this will be out of freedom, not out of bondage. Not out of misery, despair, agony, but out of joy, out of love, out of orgasmic experiences.You can see, the quality of enlightenment will be totally different. The first kind of enlightenment is bound to be dry, juiceless…the enlightened man unable to laugh because he is completely afraid, continually defending his achievement because anybody can pull him back into the world.Gautam Buddha says to his disciples, “Never look, while you are walking, more than four feet ahead so that you will never see any woman’s face.” What kind of fear….? And these people are going to become enlightened.One disciple is going for a journey, and Buddha says to him, “Remember never to look at a woman.”The man seems to be some stubborn type. He says, “But there may be some accidental situation when, not knowing, I may have looked at a woman. Then what am I supposed to do?” He is right, because going into the world, there is every possibility of seeing a woman. You can close your eyes then, but you have seen.Buddha says “Okay, you can see, but never touch.”But the man is not in any way of a lesser quality than Gautam Buddha. He says, “There is a possibility that one may have to touch a woman. What about that? For example, a woman falls into a ditch and I am alone on the road, and unless I help her, she is going to die. Do you want me to let her die?”Certainly Buddha cannot say that, so he says, “Okay,” reluctantly. “You can touch in certain emergencies. Don’t make it a common practice. But even if you touch, don’t speak.”The man said, “This is putting me into a difficult situation. If the woman says something, do you want me not to answer? If a woman asks me where this road goes, should I remain silent, knowing perfectly well where this road goes, that she is going on a wrong road and may suffer for miles and miles and will never reach?”Just desperate with this man, Buddha says, “Do whatever you want to do!”But putting people under such conditions to make them enlightened is not my way, and I don’t think it is the right way either. Any kind of experience that may happen in this way cannot be joyous; it cannot blossom into flowers, it cannot release fragrance; it will be dry, dirty, escapist, fearful, always on guard. No, I don’t support any such enlightenment.I want you to withdraw all miserable conditions from the world, and marriage is one of the most miserable conditions.Let love be freed from the chains of marriage. Allow humanity to love, to laugh, to enjoy, to celebrate life, to experience life to its very depth.And out of this intensive experiencing of life will arise a totally different kind of enlightenment which will be able to dance, which will be able to sing, which will be able to laugh. It will have a beauty of its own, a glory, a splendor.I am introducing a totally new kind of enlightenment into the world. The old one, to me, looks rotten.That’s why I am against marriage. It will go on creating the rotten enlightenment.An optimist is a man who marries his secretary and thinks he will still be able to dictate to her.If married life was supposed to be fun, it would not start in church.Love is temporary insanity, curable by marriage.Marriage is permanent insanity, curable only by enlightenment. But that enlightenment will come out of an insanity; its roots, its juices, all will be poisoned.A single man is one who runs around and gets into all kinds of trouble. A married man does not have to run around.…He is already in trouble. This trouble creates the possibility of thinking of a life beyond, because this life is finished. If there is not a life beyond, that would be a very terrible and shocking situation.A wedding day is when rings are put on the finger of a woman and in the nose of a man.Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you sleep alone.I am describing these different aspects of marriage…Notice in a restaurant window: Don’t stand outside and be miserable, come inside and be fed up!Not to take women seriously is to ask for trouble. To take them seriously is to get it!All marriages are happy, it’s living together afterward that causes all the trouble.He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is an idiot, and he that dares not reason is a husband.The best training up to now has been marriage, if you want to attain enlightenment. But that enlightenment will be as miserable as the sources from which it is coming. I want sages who can dance, sages so innocent that they can laugh, sages so innocent that they can enjoy small things of life with such joy, sages who can live on this earth as if it is paradise, not asking for any paradise beyond. But up to now our sages have all been psychologically sick.A little time for enjoying enlightenment…. If you cannot enjoy it forever, there is no harm in enjoying it temporarily, even for a few moments. When you laugh you all look almost like Gautam Buddhas. When you sit silently, you look like a congregation in a church!Mendel Kravitz arrives at a cabaret club and asks the doorman who he should see to get a booking for his singing act.“You should see the concert secretary,” says the doorman. “By the way, you’re not a hypnotist, are you?” Mendel assures him that he is not, and goes in.The concert secretary looks up suspiciously and says, “I hope you are not going to tell me you’re a hypnotist, are you?”Mendel assures him he is only a singer, and is sent to find the organist for a tryout. The organist likes the songs but looks uneasily at Mendel. “You don’t do any side acts by chance, do you?” he asks. “No hypnotism for instance?”Mendel is tired of the question and demands an explanation.“Well,” says the organist, “last week we had a hypnotist here. He was so good that he had at least two hundred of the audience in a trance.”“What’s wrong with that?” asks Mendel.“Nothing,” continues the organist, “but half way through his act, he fell over the microphone, hurt his foot, and yelled out, ‘Shit!’ The cleaners have only just cleaned the hall.”Kowalski and his wife are celebrating their thirty-first wedding anniversary. As a surprise he comes home with a little monkey.“What’s that?” asks his wife.“It’s a monkey,” replies Kowalski. “What did you think it was? This is my anniversary present to you.”“You are crazy!” she cries. “What are we gonna do with a monkey?”“Well,” says Kowalski, “he’s gonna eat with us, he’s gonna sleep with us….”“Sleep with us?” shouts Mrs. Kowalski. “What about the smell?”“Listen,” says Kowalski, “after twenty-five years, if I could get used to it, so will the monkey.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other morning, discourse left me feeling terrified and desperate: desperate to save this incredible, beautiful planet, and terrified because the odds against us seem so high and I feel so insignificant, and helpless to do anything! The only thing I can see to do is to be here with you as much as possible, nourishing my consciousness and supporting your vision. Is there any more that can be done?I can understand your desperation, your helplessness. This is how perhaps every human being who is aware of the crisis feels. But you are not aware of a greater power: destruction is a low category power, creation is a high category power. Destruction is out of hate, creation is out of love.You have seen where hate can lead humanity, to its ultimate suicide, but you have not seen the possibility of love; growing to its height, it may simply prevent this crisis from happening. No one is insignificant, because everyone has a heart and everyone has love and everyone has sensitivity, consciousness and he can reach to the very ultimate peak of existence. A single individual can prevent this great crisis, what to say of millions of people full of love and joy and silence?I am reminded of an Old Testament story about two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. The people in both cities became absolutely sexually perverted – all kinds of perversions prevailed. The story is very beautiful; it will give you courage, it will take away your desperation. It will make you stand up as an individual, representing life and love which cannot be destroyed by any nuclear weapons, by any politicians. Even God could not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.I have to remind you at this point that in the Old Testament version he destroyed the cities. It was impossible to change those people; they had become so accustomed to perverted ways. You may not know that the word sodom means making love to animals. That’s why the whole city was called Sodom. And even today making love to animals is called sodomy. And just the vibration of the word gomorrah is enough to give you the sense of what it means: gonorrhea.But the story takes a very special turn, and that’s my point to emphasize. In the Judaic religion there is a small stream of rebels, revolutionaries – they are called Hassids. They are not accepted by the orthodoxy as authentic, because they go against anything in orthodoxy, in a tradition which does not appeal to the human heart, to reason, to sensitivity, to consciousness. They have written their own story.Their story is that there lived a man – a Hassid – he used to live six months in Gomorrah and six months in Sodom. He approached God and he said to him, “Have you taken into account the possibility that there may be one hundred absolutely natural, wise people in these two vast cities? Are you going to destroy them also, because others are perverted? Then it will be great injustice, pure injustice and it will be a condemnation to you. So you reconsider!”God had not thought of the possibility. Certainly in those two big cities, almost like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there must be one hundred intelligent, natural, alert people. They will also be destroyed, and this will not be in tune with God’s divineness, it will be simply ugly.So God said, “If you can prove that there are a hundred natural people, I will not destroy those two cities.”The Hassid said, “And if there are only fifty, are you going to destroy?”God was caught by the mystic Hassid. He said, “Even if you can prove fifty….”And the mystic said, “If there are only twenty-five? What does it matter? Does the number matter to you or the quality? – quantity or quality?”God said, “Certainly the quality.”And the Hassid said, “If it is the quality then to tell you the truth, I am the only man who is not perverted, who is living a natural, blissful life. But I live six months in Gomorrah and six months in Sodom. Are you going to destroy those cities?”God had never come across such a clever person. From a hundred he had brought him down to one. Only a Jew can do that! They know how to bargain – and he bargained. In the Jewish version of the story God destroyed those cities, but not in the Hassidic version. The cities were saved, because God could not destroy even a single person of quality, a single person of wisdom, just because the whole city had become perverted.I am telling you this so that you need not be terrified. You have to be only alert. I will read your question:“The other morning discourse left me feeling terrified and desperate.” There is no need to feel desperate and there is no need to feel terrified. If one Hassid can persuade existence to protect two cities, we have thousands of Hassids with us. Every sannyasin is a Hassid. Existence cannot allow a few idiots like Ronald Reagan to destroy this world.But that does not mean that you have to remain just silent. You have to create a great atmosphere of love around yourself which will be the protection; you have to learn to dance and to sing. Let these politicians know that this earth is still full of beautiful people – so many songs and so much music and so much creativity and so many people meditating. They are bound to have a second thought.On our part, we don’t need bigger nuclear weapons to stop the war – that’s the problem. We need something totally different. Love will provide the energy, meditation will provide you with tremendous strength. And you will not feel so insignificant, you will feel dignified and significant, because your love, your meditation, your blissfulness is going to save the world.And don’t be worried that you are helpless to do anything. The idea of helplessness has arisen because you have never been told what your resources are. You have never looked into your resources – your love, your silence, your peace, your compassion, your joy. You have never looked into all this inexhaustible potentiality of your being. And if thousands of people blossom in love, music and dance, and the whole earth becomes a celebration, then any Ronald Reagan is not going to destroy this world. He will feel helpless; he will feel guilty to destroy such beautiful people and such a beautiful planet.You ask me, “The only thing I can see to do is to be here with you as much as possible, nourishing my consciousness and supporting your vision. Is there anything more that can be done?”It is enough. More is not needed; more will keep you unnecessarily worried. And worry is like a rocking-chair – it keeps you going but gets you nowhere! There is no need to worry and there is no need to feel desperate, helpless. A few idiots have prepared death for the planet; there are millions of intelligent people who can prevent it just by their love, by their joy, by their beauty, by their ecstasy. These are far more powerful experiences, because atomic energy, or nuclear energy, is part of the material world. It is the explosion of the atom, the lowest, smallest particle of matter.We have not understood yet that nature has an absolute balance. If a small atom exploding can destroy…. Have you ever thought about a living atom of your being and its explosion? In other words, we have been calling it enlightenment. It is nothing but an explosion of your being into light. And then suddenly you have a far higher and superior power. It need not fight with the lower, its very presence will make the lower impotent.It has not been tried on a vast scale, only once in a while. But those rare instances are certainly a proof that if tried, every human being can become an explosion of consciousness – which is a far superior energy – and make all these nuclear weapons and the people who hold them utterly impotent and guilty.A few instances will help you. They look non-factual because they are rare, because not many people have tried them.One follower of Gautam Buddha, Devadatta – his own cousin-brother – was naturally jealous of the immense glory and impressiveness, and the impact of Gautam Buddha on people. Whoever came to him never returned the same. Something changed in his very being. Buddha had sown a seed; the man would return at the right time, when the first clouds started raining.But this was invisible to the blind Devadatta – not physically blind, but spiritually blind. He could not understand what the matter was. He was as beautiful as Gautam Buddha – his own cousin-brother – as educated, as cultured in the arts of those days. There was no question that Gautam Buddha was superior and he was not, because he could not see the superior aroma that surrounded Gautam Buddha.Finally he asked him, “I would like to be declared your successor.”Buddha said, “Whoever is capable of succeeding me will succeed me, I am not going to declare him. And anyway I am still alive, just in the middle of my life. And this is not my way to choose! Who am I to choose a successor? Existence itself will choose.”Devadatta became so hurt that he left the commune and made many attempts on the life of Gautam Buddha. Those attempts look fictional, because we don’t know the power of love and we don’t know the power of awareness, and we don’t know the beauty of ecstasy and its tremendous power of protection.Buddha used to meditate on a small rock at the bottom of a vast mountain. Devadatta tried to roll a big rock from the mountain in the direction of Gautam Buddha, so that that rock killed him completely and nobody would be blamed, nobody would even think that somebody had killed him. The rock came rushing down the mountain and everybody who was present was surprised, could not believe that it could happen: just two feet away from Buddha the rock stopped, changed its route, and moved away from him. Then it went on falling. It was very strange behavior of the rock; one would never think that a rock would do that. Even Devadatta was puzzled.Devadatta himself was a king of a small kingdom, and he had a very mad elephant. The mad elephant was always kept in chains in the prison because he used to kill people. Devadatta saw another possibility. The elephant was brought near Gautam Buddha and released. He rushed toward Gautam Buddha, the way he would have rushed to anybody else. But as he reached near, he suddenly stopped, and with tears in his eyes he bowed down to Gautam Buddha and touched his feet with his head.Nobody could believe that an insane elephant…how is he making a distinction? But blind people are blind people! Devadatta could not see what the rock could see, what the mad elephant could see – a subtle, invisible aura of love.When, a few years ago, a man threw a knife at me in the morning meeting…. And it seems it was an absolute conspiracy, because just before the meeting, fifteen minutes before, the police informed the office, “Today there is a danger; a man is going to throw a knife at Osho. So twenty police officers should be allowed in.”Now, this is stupid. If they knew that a certain man was going to commit a crime, they should have arrested him. Rather than that, they informed the office. As the story went on it became clear that it was absolutely a conspiracy. Those twenty police officers with loaded guns surrounded that man. The sannyasins thought that perhaps they were for our protection – that was wrong. They were for the protection of the man who was going to throw the knife. They were afraid that ten thousand sannyasins would kill that man if anything happened.And that man shouted – which is on record – “Osho, you are against Hinduism and we cannot tolerate your existence anymore.” And he threw the knife at me. Because he was shouting I stopped and listened to him, what he was saying. It is on tape. He threw the knife from just fifteen feet away and it was strange, that the knife fell away from me – eight feet away. Not only did it not touch me, it did not even touch anyone in the crowded Buddha Hall; nobody was touched by the knife.And then the police said, “It is a police case. We will arrest this man and bring him to the court.”This was all strategy. You can see how politicians work – cunningly, inhumanely. They prevented us from putting a case against the man. They said, “There is no need. Ten thousand witnesses, his words are recorded, even the sound of the falling knife is recorded, and twenty police officers of high rank are witnesses – you need not be worried. It is going to be a police case. We will take him and produce him in the court.”They took him away, presented him before the court, and the court released him, saying, “Such a thing has not happened at all.” And because we had not put any case against him, then it was too late. The police managed it in such a way that they did not insist that the case happened.But I have been thinking about it: in such a crowded place even if a blind man throws a knife it is going to hit somebody. The knife behaved exactly like the rock and the elephant. It was a police conspiracy and you can see the justice. When twenty police officers are present, when ten thousand people are ready to be witnesses; the knife is there, his shout is recorded, the sound of the knife falling on the floor is recorded…And what was the judge’s reason to reject the case? The reason was, “If it was an attempt on Osho’s life then why have they not brought the case? Why have they not reported the case to the police? And secondly, if a man was trying to murder Osho, those ten thousand sannyasins would not have let him go so easily.” And we had not done anything because the police had prevented us, saying, “There is no need.”Still, one of the most important criminal advocates of the supreme court of India, Ram Jethmalani was there – we had asked him to be present. He wanted to say something; the judge said, “You cannot speak, it is not your case.” And certainly it was not our case. But I have seen things which make me certain that what appears to be a miracle is not a miracle. I am absolutely certain that I was poisoned in Oklahoma with a certain metallic poison, thallium, but it has not been able to kill me.They put a bomb under my chair in the jail in Portland while I was at the court; they were expecting me to come any moment. I came, and the man there indicated to me to sit on a particular chair. That was also strange, because there were many chairs, I could have sat on any chair. And he immediately locked the door from outside and said, “I will be coming within fifteen minutes.” I had no idea that I was sitting on a bomb! But something went wrong; the bomb did not explode.If millions of people are full of love and meditation there is no need to feel desperate or helpless. You are given by nature tremendous power which can nullify any nuclear weapons.And that’s what I’m trying to do: to prepare you to love, unconditionally; to prepare you for friendliness even with strangers; to prepare you to drop your organized religions, because they create conflict; to drop even belonging to your nations. Formally you will have to carry their passport, but this is just a formality. Deep in your being you should not be a Hindu and you should not be an Indian, you should not be a German and you should not be a Christian.If this wave spreads – and I have every hope that it is going to spread – then you can forget all about the third world war; the second was the last. The third is possible only if there is not enough love and meditative energy to prevent it.Osho,Alone, insecure, scared, I can see a door – to God's house or death or insanity, I don't know which. Sitting with you, intoxicated by your freedom, though my mind is like a cattle train, my heart knows no question.Osho, can the curtain rise, and the world stop amid such beauty?If your mind is silent and if you are feeling in deep synchronicity with existence, and with a great love for the beauty of this planet, then the door you are standing before is neither of death nor of insanity nor of God, because God died long ago. It is the door of your own inner being, of your own inner consciousness.Don’t stand before the door, enter in and you will find yourself. There is no greater joy in the world than to find yourself. It brings such a serenity, such a settlement with everything. It simply puts you in such a harmony with nature, with existence, that life becomes a moment-to-moment ecstasy.You need not feel alone, insecure, scared. It is natural to feel that way because you are standing before the door and you don’t know who is inside – God, death or insanity. I say to you on my authority that there is no God and there is no death and there is no insanity, but an eternal rejoicing of life, love, celebration.Just enter through the door.Don’t go on standing there, because the fear is that feeling alone, insecure and scared you can escape from the door. And then it may take lives for you to find it again – and with the same problem.Be courageous and enter through the door, and you have entered the most sacred place, the most sacred that exists.Osho,Your gestures move me more deeply than your discourses. Your grace and beauty touch me even more than your silence.Osho, wiggle a toe or give us a wink.My God! You are asking very difficult things of me. I don’t know how to give a wink; I have never given a wink to anybody. And to do it for the first time will be very difficult. I know how to use both eyes together, but a wink means one eye has to remain open.Once in a while Nirvano puts some drops into my eyes, if I have mistakenly put some shampoo or some soap in it and made the eye red. You can see, this eye today is a little red. She puts in the drops, but her problem is that either I can open both eyes or I can keep both eyes closed. So she keeps one eye closed with one hand, and opens the other eye forcibly – just inexperience.I cannot hope to succeed to give you a wink, and I never do anything in which there is a little suspicion of failure. I will start trying in my room alone. When I am an expert I will give you a wink. As far as the toe is concerned, it is so lazy that even if I want to move it, it will not move. But I will make every effort to satisfy you.But you seem to be a strange person, to ask me for such gestures. Do you want me to look funny? But I can do that, because I’m not concerned at all with the world, what they think. You will just have to give me a little time for practicing.I have never moved my toe. It simply remains always enlightened, unmoving! Now to persuade it to come down from enlightenment is going to be very difficult, but I will make every effort to persuade it: “Just once in a while taking a holiday from enlightenment is not a sin! And you are not committing any sin, just moving….”Of course the problem with the wink is more difficult: whom to give it to? Because anybody who gets it will become enlightened. And with all you people, I love you so much that I can not choose somebody, to whom to give the wink. So I will have to figure it out. It is a very difficult job.Everybody knows how to wink, because they have been doing it all the time; it is a language. The toe is more spiritual than the eye, because I don’t think anybody takes any offense if you move your toe. But if you wink, particularly at a woman – and here homosexuals are not respected…. So I will have to find a woman who does not get disturbed by the wink. It is a very complicated question.Sign on a bookstore: Going out of business – words failed us!That is the beauty of the gesture, it never fails. Although nobody teaches it, it simply is understood naturally.“The world today does not make sense” – it is a statement of Picasso – “so why should I paint pictures that do?”Now, these are absurd gestures: winking an eye, whistling behind a woman. And the toe is absolutely your own invention. I have never heard that to attract a woman you have to move your toe. Perhaps it is to distract her – seeing that the man is mad…. Instead of winking his eye he is moving his toe!I am very inexperienced in such great affairs. But I promise you, I will try with the trees, I will try with the rocks, because they will not feel offended. And they will not fall in love with me either. Once I am satisfied, then I will give you a wink – not to anybody in particular. That is my way.Nirvano was asking me, “Do you see people?” Even when I am looking at you I am not seeing you. It is so tiring a job. You cannot expect of me such a thing! I love you, but I don’t know you. I know only very few people who came in the very beginning and stayed with me for all these fifteen years. But others, who have come afterward, have the same share of love.But when I am speaking, I am just speaking to the walls. I love Bodhidharma for that particular gesture. For nine years, he was sitting facing the wall. His audience was sitting behind him and he would speak to the wall. Emperor Wu asked him, “What strange kind of thing is happening here? I have never seen a speaker speaking to the wall, and the audience sitting behind listening to it.”The answer of Bodhidharma was, “It doesn’t matter. Even if I face them, I am facing a wall. But that wall is a little disturbing – somebody moves, somebody changes his posture. That distracts me. So I decided on a new method: I speak to the wall. They can go on changing their postures, coming and going, whatever they want to do. Whether they are listening or not, I am not concerned. And it is strange, that since I have started speaking to the wall there is utter silence behind me, because everybody wants to get what I am saying. Nobody is moving.”So I will have to find a way how to wink. Perhaps I can wink at the wall. And the toe is more difficult, because it is absolutely new. In the whole history of man, nobody has moved his toe as a gesture – gesture for what?There is one incident in Gautam Buddha’s life…. A great king, Prasenjita, had come to listen to him. Of course, being a great king, he was sitting in front. Buddha suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and said to Prasenjita, “Why are you moving your toe?” When he asked this, the movement stopped and Prasenjita said, “I don’t know, it just happened.”Buddha said, “Your whole life is just like that. It is just happening – accidentally. You are not conscious.”But except that incident, I have never come across any incident where the toe is even mentioned. But for your satisfaction I will practice. By the way, are you a student of psychology? Because only psychologists ask absurd questions.In America in the nineteen seventies, twice as many psychiatrists committed suicide as mental hospital patients, each year. The number has grown since the seventies – it is now 1988 – now four times as many psychiatrists are committing suicide as people from any other profession. Naturally, if you are concerned with absurd things…. Eyes are not meant to wink, and toes are not meant to be moved. When you do such things you disturb the inner ecology of your body.But once in a lifetime it won’t hurt me. Just how long it will take for me to practice, that I cannot say. You will have to learn patience. And if in your patience some understanding arises and you withdraw your question I will be immensely happy. That patience, absolute patience, may turn out to be a new birth to you. You may be reborn.There is only one problem with going through a second childhood: this time you can’t blame your parents.Just two jokes, not related to your question, but certainly related to you…Paddy lurches out of the pub and bumps straight into Father Murphy, the village priest.“Patrick,” says the priest, “I am so sorry to see you come out of such a place as that!”“Well, then,” says Paddy, turning around, “I will go right back.”Uncle Albert is staying for the weekend, and little Ernie is asking him all sorts of questions.“Uncle Albert,” he asks, “why are some men bald on the front of their head?”“Well,” replies Uncle Albert, “these men are the great thinkers.”“And what about the men that are bald on the back of their head?” asks little Ernie.“These men,” explains Uncle Albert, “are the great fuckers.”“So what does it mean,” continues little Ernie, “when they are bald all over?”“That’s obvious,” replies Uncle Albert, “these men think they are great fuckers.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is existence? Is it something like what people call God?Existence is that which is, and God is that which is not. Existence is a reality, God is a fiction. Existence is available only to meditators, people of silence; God is a consolation for sick minds, sick psychologies.Existence is not your production – God is. That’s why there is only one existence, but thousands of gods. Each according to his needs, each according to his suffering, each according to his expectations, creates a god or accepts an old belief about God.God is a great consolation, but it is not a cure. Existence is not a consolation. To be in tune with it is to be healthy and whole. All the religions of the world have been teaching God; I teach you existence. I teach you to be in tune with that which surrounds you, which is within you and without you. Once you are in tune with it, there is no death for you, no misery, no tension, no worry, but a tremendous peace surrounds you, a contentment which you have never even dreamt of.God is for those who cannot grow in consciousness, who are retarded as far as consciousness is concerned. It is a kind of toy; retarded people need it. And the moment I say it is a toy, then it is up to you how you want to make it – looking like a monkey or looking like an elephant. It is just up to you whether to give him four hands or one thousand hands. It is your creation. Strangely enough, man believes God created everything. The truth is that God himself is a creation of man’s imagination.God is the greatest lie you can ever find, because on that lie thousands of other lies depend. Churches, religious organizations go on multiplying lies upon lies, just to protect one lie.You have to understand the psychology of lying. The first thing about lying is that you need a good memory because you have to remember. You lie to someone about something, to somebody else about something else; you have to remember what you have said to one and what you have said to the other.Truth needs no remembrance. Truth is always there, just the same. You don’t have to cram it in your memory. Memory gives you a bondage, a prison; it clings around you, covers you so much, slowly, slowly that you disappear completely. Truth is uncovering yourself from all lies. And there is a sudden revelation that you are part of the immense truth I am calling existence.You don’t need any churches, you don’t need any temples, you don’t need any mosques; you need only a prayerful heart, a loving heart, a grateful heart. That is your real temple. That will transform your whole life. That will help you to discover not only yourself, but the very depths of this immense existence.We are almost like the waves of the ocean – just on the surface, and the ocean may be miles deep. The Pacific Ocean is five miles deep. But a small wave on the top will never know the depth – her own depth, because she is not separate from the ocean. She will cling to her small entity, be afraid about death, be afraid of losing herself in the vastness, the oceanic infinity. But the truth is, the death of the wave is not a death, but the beginning of an eternal life.God has been invented. It was people’s need; people needed a protector. In the immensity of the universe, a man feels so alone, so small. The vastness creates trembling in him. What is your existence?I am reminded of a story by Bertrand Russell. The archbishop of England sees in a dream that he has reached the pearly gates of paradise. On one hand he is immensely pleased, and on the other hand he is very much troubled, because the pearly gates are so vast, in both directions, that he cannot see the whole gate. It is so high that it is beyond the capacity of his eyes to see. And he himself seems to be just like a small ant, compared to this great gate. He is a little bit afraid. He is no ordinary man, he is the archbishop of England. He feels humiliated just by the gate, and the fear arises, “If this is the situation at the gate, what is the situation going to be inside?”With fearful hands he knocks on the door, but in the immensity of that space only he can hear his knock. It takes days for him, but he goes on knocking harder and harder. Finally a small window opens in the gate and Saint Peter looks out with one thousand eyes, trying to figure out who has been making a noise. Those one thousand eyes are so shiny, like stars, that the archbishop feels even more reduced – almost to a nonentity.And Saint Peter asks, “Please, whoever you are, wherever you are, come in front of me.”The archbishop declares himself. He says to Saint Peter, “Perhaps you don’t know me. You can check with Jesus Christ, I am the archbishop of England.” Saint Peter says, “Never heard of any such thing as England.”The archbishop says, “Perhaps you may not have heard about England, but you must have heard about our beautiful planet, Earth.”Saint Peter says, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but unless you give me the index number of your Earth, I cannot figure out what you are talking about. I will have to go to the library and look – if you give me the index number – to which solar system you belong, because there are millions of solar systems and each solar system has many planets.”But the archbishop has never thought that the earth has any index number. He says, “I don’t know any index number, but I am the archbishop. You just go and tell Jesus Christ.”He says, “You are giving me puzzle after puzzle. Who is this fellow Jesus Christ?”The archbishop is very much shocked. He says, “You don’t know Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God?”Saint Peter says, “As far as I am concerned, I have never seen God; I don’t know whether he exists or not. I am just a doorkeeper. Perhaps somewhere in the most interior parts of paradise somebody exists who thinks that he is God, but I have never come across….”It is such a shock that the archbishop wakes up perspiring.The story is significant because it shows how small we are and how big the universe is. Naturally primitive man was not able to adjust himself to the idea of this vastness of the universe without giving it some personality and without making himself in some way related to that personality.God was an effort of the primitive mind of man to give existence a personality. Then he becomes God the father. Then you can make some relationship with him. You may even be against him, but at least there is someone you can be for, you can be against; there is someone who is greater than you, who is going to protect you, who is your guarantee. God is simply the poverty of human consciousness.The people who attained to their inner consciousness and its highest peak, like Gautam Buddha, denied the existence of God. Anybody who has ever become inwardly healthy, gone beyond the mind which is basically sick, has denied God. God as a fiction is good for kindergarten school children. They need it – parables, fables, stories. But very few human beings have gone beyond the kindergarten school.God exists because you are not aware of yourself. God exists because you have not made any contact with your own center. The moment you know yourself, there is no God and there is no need of any God. In fact I am in absolute support of Friedrich Nietzsche: “God is dead.”The second part of his sentence is even more significant, “God is dead and man is now free.” That second part has not received much attention from the philosophers, from the mystics, from the psychologists, but the second part is the most important; the first part is not much. In fact, the first part is basically wrong. God cannot die – fictions never die. The moment you know they are fictions there is no question of their death. Neither are they born, nor do they die. God was never born in the first place – how can he die? Death is the other extreme of birth.So the first part is not very important, but that has been given much importance by theologians, because they became afraid: “This is sacrilegious, to tell people that God is dead. That means that now no religion is needed.” They became afraid for their own business. But they forgot the second part which is more important. It has tremendously significant implications. It means that God was a bondage, God was a retardedness, God was out of fear. God was not a treasure, but a heavy, mountainous weight on your heart and on your growth.Once God is removed, man’s possibility to grow and blossom is absolutely free. A God is a despot, a fascist. Without God, the world becomes freedom. Existence gives a tremendous dignity to every individual. From the smallest blade of grass up to the greatest star in the universe it gives immense significance and love; it makes no difference. There is equality and equal opportunity. And there is no need unnecessarily to pray and waste your time, to read the holy scriptures, which are the most unholy books in the world. There is no need to be exploited by the priests. You are certainly and suddenly free from all these chains. Now you can be yourself.While God is in existence you can never be yourself. You are just a puppet, your strings are in the hands of God. The ancient saying in India is that not even a small leaf of a tree moves unless God’s order is received for it to move. Whatever you are, according to religions you are made out of mud. The word human comes from humus, which means mud. And the word in Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, is admi – it is used as the name of the first man, Adam. Admi means the earth. God made man out of the earth and then breathed life into the puppet.Now, what kind of freedom do you have? Somebody has breathed life into you, and it is in his hands to stop breathing life into you any moment. Whatever you are doing, the religions believe it is your fate, it is written on your forehead. And there have been many con men who have even been trying to read what is written on your forehead. Astrologers, palmists, all kinds of cunning people have been exploiting the simplicity and innocence of humanity. There are people who are reading your hand, looking at the lines, telling you what those lines mean. The whole emphasis is that you are not living a life of your own, you are just a part in a drama, and the part that you are playing has been decided beforehand.That was the argument that the Indian god’s incarnation, Krishna – in the great Indian war, Mahabharata – gave to his disciple Arjuna. Seeing the immense massacre that was going to happen, Arjuna simply lost his nerve. He was a man of immense courage and great intelligence.He said, “I don’t see any point in this war. Even if I win…and I am certain I am going to win” – there was no other warrior of his quality – “But sitting on the golden throne of victory surrounded by the corpses of all my friends and all my enemies, all the beautiful people, does not appeal to me at all. The scene makes me feel insane. Rather than fighting, I will leave it to the other party – who is nobody, another cousin-brother. Let him rule over the country and I will go to the mountains, to the Himalayas to meditate, to become a sannyasin. I have lost all interest in fighting.”Krishna tries in every way to persuade him, but Arjuna is a great intellectual; he goes on arguing against him. Finally seeing no other way, Krishna takes the last resort and says, “It is written in your destiny. Going away, you are going away from God. This war is predetermined by God to destroy those who are not virtuous and only let those survive who are virtuous.” Now there is no argument against it, because Arjuna himself believes in God and destiny.Arjuna fought the war. Krishna was responsible, five thousand years ago, for destroying this country by giving a false argument, absolutely fictitious, to Arjuna. That war killed so many people. And it is not only that it killed people, it also destroyed the courage of the country; it became afraid of any small calamity.Two thousand years of slavery…I want to make it absolutely clear that the people who are responsible for these two thousand years of slavery are the greatest people of India. The list is headed by Krishna; Arjuna is just his shadow. Then came Mahavira, who taught people to be nonviolent to such an extreme that his followers cannot even cultivate, because plants have life; if you cultivate then you will have to kill the plants when you reap the crop. Gautam Buddha comes third, who taught people to accept, to be contented wherever and with whatever they have – poor, hungry, starving, enslaved, remain utterly contented.Their teachings were great. This is something to be remembered; otherwise I will be misunderstood by everyone. Their teachings were great, but they never thought about all the implications of their teachings. They never thought that if you teach a country nonviolence, if you teach a country to drop all weapons, when the whole world is not doing that, then you are putting that country in a state of being victimized, exploited by anyone.And for two thousand years invader after invader came to India, exploited it and went back. Finally Mohammedans came and they thought, “What is the need to go back? We can not only exploit people, but rule them and remain here.” And then came the Britishers and the French and the Portuguese, and they all tried to exploit the country. They all had their small pockets. Britain proved to be far more clever. But the Portuguese had their small islands of Diu, Daman and Goa, and the French had a small portion of the country, Pondicherry. Britain had the whole country.People have remained starved and hungry, and people have gone on dying because of hunger, and nobody has ever thought that these great principles in some way are responsible for this unfortunate situation that for thousands of years India has had to pass through. And even today nobody is trying to see all the implications. Every great principle has its own black cloud behind it. And unless you understand the black cloud also, you are soon going to be absorbed by the black cloud. If you understand it, you can avoid it.God seems to be the greatest principle that has been preached to man down the ages, but nobody has looked at its implications. If God created man then man has no individuality of his own, then he cannot claim any dignity, any freedom. There is no question of a puppet declaring, “I want to be free.” If God created the universe, then whatever has happened in the universe has had to happen. It was God’s will. No effort on our part was going to change anything.And finally you can see, if God created the world, and if he is behind nuclear weapons and the people who are creating them, then no effort on man’s part can prevent the destruction of the whole planet. To give the creation of the world into the hands of a fictitious God is very dangerous. It makes us absolutely impotent. We cannot do anything.Hence, my simple understanding of consciousness is that if God did not die with Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration, then we have to kill him! Wherever you meet him, there is no need even to say hello. First kill him and then you can say hello – just to fulfill the formality. But God is not needed at all. With God above in the sky, man will always remain a slave, and man will always remain unconscious, and man will never strive to reach to the peaks of his potential. With God removed you may feel a little fear – just out of old habit – but that fear will disappear.Once you recognize that you are standing on your own feet and you have to do something to create a better consciousness in you, to create a more loving heart in you, that prayers are useless, there is nobody to answer them…. Yes, sometimes they have been answered. At least once, certainly…A poor man asked God for months continually, “Give me fifty dollars. I don’t want much, just fifty dollars.”First he prayed, but then he thought, “Millions of people are praying, and there is one God and there are millions of prayers. Whether my poor prayer ever reaches to him…. And there must be around him so much noise – prayers from all the churches, all the mosques, all the synagogues, all the temples – who is going to take care of me? It is better that I write a letter.”He wrote a letter saying, “This is to remind you that for months I have been praying, but the answer has not come. It seems my prayer has not reached you. I can understand, because of the noise around you of so many prayers. And great people are praying – the pope and the archbishop and the shankaracharya – so who is going to take care of my small prayer? And I am not asking much – no paradise, no heaven, nothing, just fifty dollars. Finally I decided to write the letter.” And he wrote in big letters, “Fifty Dollars! Remember, it is urgent.”But then he was very much disturbed, because he didn’t know the address, whom to address it to. He thought, “The best way is to address it to: God, c/o The Postmaster General. If the postmaster general cannot find his address, who else can?” The letter reached the postmaster general. He looked, he laughed, and then he felt sad also. He thought, “The man must be in desperate need – nobody writes letters to God. And he is not asking much.”So he said to all his friends, “Please look at this poor man’s letter. You all contribute, and we will send those fifty dollars to him. At least for once let a prayer be answered.” They collected the money, but they collected only forty-five dollars. The postmaster general said, “No harm, at least we should send this much.”When forty-five dollars reached the man he counted the dollars, and he looked above and shouted, “God, remember one thing. Next time you send any money to me, never send it through the post office! Those cunning fellows have taken out their commission. I have received only forty-five dollars!”Except this, I have not come across any prayer which has been answered – and that too not fully. There is no one to answer. Existence has to be approached in a different way.God has to be worshipped.Existence has to be loved.God has to be prayed to.Existence has to be contacted in meditation.There are only two kinds of religions in the world: the religions of prayer and the religions of meditation. You can see my point. The religions of prayer all believe in God and the religions of meditation don’t believe in any god. Because meditation takes you inward, and fulfills you, there is no need to pray, there is no need for any consolation. You are in such a rejoicing, in such a blissful state; you can bless the whole world.I teach you existence, and the entry into existence is through your own being; hence meditation is not prayer – remember, it is against prayer. Prayer is part of that phony jargon about God, heaven, hell. Prayer is part and parcel of that whole rubbish. Meditation is simply the only pure way of coming in contact with existence. And this contact immediately becomes a merger and a melting. You become existence yourself. Then you are in the clouds and you are in the stars and you are in the flowers and you are in the rains. You are everywhere. You are no longer a drop, you have become the ocean.Remember the clear-cut distinction between existence and God. God is a condemnation of our intelligence. It is accepting humiliation, it is accepting that, “We are only puppets; you are the power. Whatever you want to do with us you will do. All that we can do is to pray.” It makes you so crippled. The very idea of God is nauseating. But existence has a freshness and a beauty and a truth.Never get mixed up with these two words. One is reality, one is simply fiction.Osho,We have heard your comments about jazz music.Osho, this question comes from two jazz musicians: is our love of jazz music an obstacle on the path to enlightenment?My comments about jazz music were made in a totally different context. Compared to classical music, jazz music is in the lowest category, because rather than creating a spirituality in you it simply activates your sexuality. The great classical music takes you higher, beyond your mind, to silences which can give you a taste of meditation, a taste of existence.But always remember that a certain reference in a certain context does not mean my whole approach to a thing. You are saying, “This question comes from two jazz musicians. Is our love of jazz music an obstacle on the path to enlightenment?” It depends on you. You can make your jazz music free from the lower gravitation of sexuality. You can make it connected with your higher centers of being, and then it will not be an obstacle on the path to enlightenment.In fact, as far as my people are concerned, they are going to enter enlightenment with jazz music! It has never been tried; hence it is a great challenge and must be tried.Nothing is wrong in the world if it is used in the right direction – with awareness, with clarity. You can purify anything, just as you can make anything impure. It is wholly a question of your clear understanding. If your meditation goes on growing side by side with your music, soon you will find that even jazz music starts having some quality of meditativeness. And if the distinction between music and meditation drops, then whatever classical music was able to do, you can also do it. And you can do it more rejoicingly, more dancingly, with a greater celebration.So I don’t say that there is any obstacle, but meditation must become part of your music; otherwise just your music cannot help you to go beyond the lower instincts, biological drives. It will keep you closer to the earth, but far away from the stars.Pope the Polack and Ronald Reagan meet in the middle of the Sahara desert. The pope is carrying a telephone booth, while Ronald Reagan has a car engine strapped to his back.“What are you doing with that telephone booth?” asks Reagan.“You see,” says Pope the Polack, “if a lion comes along, I put it down, go inside and lock the door. But why are you carrying a car engine with you?”“Well,” replies Reagan, “for just the same reason. When a lion comes I drop the engine and then I can run faster.”Hymie Goldberg is trying to hold a small mirror in his hand while he adjusts his tie. The mirror slips and shatters on the ground.“Oh, no!” he complains to Becky. “Now I am going to have seven years’ bad luck.”“Nonsense,” replies Becky. “My uncle Sollie once broke a mirror, and he didn’t have seven years’ bad luck.”“Really?” says Hymie, encouraged.“Really,” repeats Becky. “He died the same day.”It all depends how you understand things…Miss Goodbody, the teacher, is too shy to conduct the sex education class in school, so she asks her class to make this a homework project.Little Ernie asks his father, who tells him some story about a stork. Grandma says that she was found under a gooseberry bush. Great-grandma blushes deep red and whispers that children come from God.The next day, little Ernie gets called to report on his homework.“Well,” says Ernie, “I am afraid my family has been a little abnormal. Apparently there has been no sex at all for three generations.”Paddy Murphy is on his way home, when he comes across a woman crying hysterically.“What is the matter, lady?” he asks.“MacTavish is dead!” she sobs. “MacTavish is dead!”A few minutes later he comes across another woman sobbing, “MacTavish is dead! MacTavish is dead!”Soon he finds another woman crying the same thing, and then as he approaches the railway crossing he sees a ghastly sight.A train has run over a man and cut him in pieces. And there on the street next to the body is lying his foot-and-a-half long prick. Several women are standing around crying, “MacTavish is dead! MacTavish is dead!”When Paddy arrives home, he says to Maureen, “I just saw a terrible thing. A train ran over a guy and cut off his pecker. And would you believe it? His prick was eighteen inches long!”“My God!” cries Maureen. “MacTavish is dead!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have been in Pune for two weeks, and every day I feel more and more stupid and helpless. You say that only intelligent people who understand can be with you. Listening to you, enjoying every word you say, I wonder: do I really understand, or am I just happy to be in your presence?The same thing happened to me last time I was with you. Is there a way out of feeling stupid?The madman never realizes that he is mad. The same is the case with the stupid – the stupid person never realizes that he is stupid. To realize that you are mad is the beginning of sanity; to realize that you are stupid is the beginning of intelligence.There is nothing wrong in being stupid. But to be stubborn and to insist that your stupidity is wisdom, that is a problem. I am happy that is not your problem. You are relaxed, sensitive, understanding. This is one of the greatest understandings, to feel one’s stupidity. There is no need to go out of this circle.I have told you about Socrates. He used to say, in his old age, that when he was young he thought he knew all. As he became a little more mature, he started feeling that he did not know all, he only knew a little; there was much more which was unknown to him. A few years later, he started realizing that even the little he used to think he knew, he really did not know. It was only information; it was not his own knowing.Finally, his ultimate statement came in a certain situation. The oracle of Delphi had declared Socrates to be the wisest man of the world. Obviously the people who loved Socrates were very happy. They ran to Socrates to inform him, “The oracle of Delphi has declared you the wisest man.”Socrates said, “I used to think that the oracle never commits mistakes, but this time the oracle has committed a mistake. Go back and tell the oracle that Socrates denies it. He says, ‘I know nothing. How can I be the wisest man?’”The people were very much shocked, but out of curiosity they went back to find out what answer would come from the oracle. And they said, “We are very unhappy. We delivered your great message to Socrates but his response was very strange. He says he knows nothing, how can he be the wisest man in the world?”There was laughter and the oracle said, “That’s why. Because he has come to the point of realizing that he knows nothing, that makes him the wisest man in the world.”What do we know? Life remains a mystery. Our not knowing simply indicates the mysteriousness of life. Our knowing is so superficial; it is not worth calling knowing. So if every day you feel that you are more and more stupid, it is a good sign. You are moving toward the state of Socrates. One day the miracle will happen when you will be able to say you know nothing.Just try to experience the feeling of the freshness and the innocence of not knowing anything. The mind is unburdened. You are light, so light that it seems if you want you can fly into the sky. And while experiencing this great not knowing you have entered the temple of the mysterious universe.What we are doing here is not trying to make you more knowledgeable. We are trying to make you more innocent, utterly not knowing anything. When it happens to you spontaneously, from your heart, that you know nothing, all the doors of existence suddenly start opening for you – not that you will become knowledgeable, but you will become mysterious.That’s why I call this path the path of the mystic. The mystic is not a learned man, the mystic is an innocent man, who can dance in the rain, who can love beautiful rainbows, who can fall in tune with the universe, whose life becomes a constant rejoicing.So whatever is happening to you is perfectly right. Rejoice and be grateful to existence.Osho,If Zen is the path and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?Zen is the path and I am the gate and you live in the house. You have completely forgotten – that’s what makes the possibility of making a path, to remind you. The path is only a reminder. You have completely forgotten that you are in the house. You think you are out of the house; hence a gate is needed to bring you in.I have told you the beautiful story of Chuang Tzu…. One early morning he is sitting in his bed, covered with his blanket, very sad. His disciples have never seen him looking sad. They are worried – is he sick, ill or something? They inquire.Chuang Tzu said, “It is much more difficult than you think. Last night I dreamt that I had become a butterfly.” The students, the disciples started laughing. They said, “That is not much of a problem. Everybody thinks many things in his dreams.”Chuang Tzu said, “I don’t know about everybody, I know only this much: it has created in me a very existential question. If Chuang Tzu can dream that he has become a butterfly, why can a butterfly not go to sleep and dream that she has become a Chuang Tzu? Now the problem is whether I am the butterfly who is dreaming she is Chuang Tzu or I am really Chuang Tzu.”The disciples were at a loss how to figure out the problem. And then came Lieh Tzu, who had gone to another village for some work. He heard the situation: “Chuang Tzu is still sitting in his bed. He does not want to get up until the problem is solved. And we are all trying to solve it but there seems to be no solution. It seems to be perfectly right, that if Chuang Tzu can dream he is a butterfly then why can the butterfly not dream she is Chuang Tzu? Now we are also puzzled.”Lieh Tzu said, “Wait, I will solve the problem.” He went to the water well, pulled up a bucket of ice-cold water, went in and poured it over the head of Chuang Tzu. Chuang Tzu laughed, and he said, “You came at the right time; otherwise, the whole day I would have been sitting here, sad. You solved the problem.”Lieh Tzu said, “Do you need another bucket?” He said, “No! The water is so cold. I am Chuang Tzu, because if I was a butterfly your bucket of ice-cold water would have killed me.”Your question is beautiful. “If Zen is the path and you are the gate, then who lives in the house?” You live in the house, but you have forgotten. And to remind you, a path has to be created; to remind you, a gate has to be created. To remind you, you have to be taken on the path and given help to enter the house, which in fact you have never left.Just an imaginary game – getting out on the path, doing great disciplines, meditations, the master…. Finally the gate comes and you say, “Aha! I have arrived.” And this is the house which you have never left.Osho,I don't know.Can you tell me a joke?Your question is very beautiful. To be in the state of not knowing…what is left? Then to have a good laughter or sit in absolute silence and listen to the birds and their sounds…. Not knowing is the ultimate knowing.You have asked for a joke…Hymie Goldberg has been told by the doctor that he is dying. Becky is sitting by the bedside.“Listen Becky,” says Hymie. “Soon I will be dead and I don’t want you to be living alone. I want you to get married again.”“Darling,” weeps Becky, “don’t talk like that. I will never find another man like you.”Holding her hand, Hymie continues, “Look sweetheart, in a few weeks you will see things differently. I leave everything to you – the house, the cars, the money in the bank. You will have no worries in your next marriage.”“No, Hymie,” wails Becky, “I will never look at another man.”“And you know,” says Hymie, “those expensive hand-tailored suits I had made? I want your future man to wear them.”“What!” cries Becky. “Your suits? But Sollie is at least two inches taller than you.”You have asked for one joke, but it would be very miserly of me. I will have to tell you at least two jokes more.The Goldbergs are touring India and one day Hymie finds that he has left his watch in the hotel. He has been photographing an elephant with his trainer, so he asks the trainer what the time is.The man slowly reaches out, takes hold of the elephant’s balls, shifts them slightly and says, “It is five to one.”“My God!” gasps Hymie. “That’s incredible. Wait, I want to fetch my wife.” A few minutes later, Hymie comes racing back with Becky and again he asks the time. The man reaches out, cups the elephant’s balls as though weighing them, then moves them to one side and declares, “It is three minutes past one.”“Fantastic!” cries Becky checking her watch. Hymie digs a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and offers it to the Indian if he will show them how he tells the time. The man shrugs and folds the money in his dhoti. He motions to the Goldbergs to kneel beside him. They hold their breath as the man once again cups the elephant’s balls in his hands. Moving them to one side, he says, “Now, do you see that clock over there?”For five years in a row the Annual International Joke Contest, held in New York, has been won by Rabbi Finkelstein. But amazingly enough, this year his joke only comes second. And the organizers are forced to phone him to break the bad news.“My God!” says Rabbi Fink. “I refuse to accept the verdict until I hear the joke that beats me.”“Well,” says the man, “the winning joke this year was submitted by Osho and I am afraid that it may be a bit much for your ears. But I’ll tell you what I can do. I will read you the joke, and when I come to a part that is too much for you I will substitute it with ‘la-di-da-di-da.’”“Okay,” says the rabbi, “fire away.”The man clears his throat and then begins to read: “La-di-da. La-da-di-da. La-di-da. Fuck.”Osho,This is the very first time in my life I have the feeling of being “at home.” My heart is strongly beating and I feel a deep gratitude.Why Osho, do I lose this feeling of being at home when I am not physically with you, or even when you stop talking?To feel at home is one of the most spiritual experiences. Ordinarily, nobody feels at home anywhere. People go around the world in search of a place where they can feel at home, but wherever they go, they are the same person – they carry all their worries, their tensions, their anguishes. And because of their anguish and anxiety, they continue to feel a certain unease; otherwise, you can feel at home anywhere.This whole existence is our home. It is the anxiety, worry, tension, anguish, misery, suffering, desires…they create many, many curtains around you, and you cannot feel at ease because of them.Here you feel at ease, at home, but your problem is…. You say, “My heart is strongly beating and I feel a deep gratitude. Why Osho, do I lose this feeling of being at home when I am not physically with you, or even when you stop talking?” There is nothing mysterious in it – a very simple thing. When I am talking you have to stop chattering within yourself. That’s the whole purpose of my talking, so that you stop, at least for a few moments, the inner chatter.The moment there is no inner chatter in you, you are at home. That chattering disturbs the peace, the joy, the blissfulness. So when you are away from me, your mind goes on like crazy and you miss the feeling of being at home. And even here when I am not talking, the same happens. So you can understand. It is not a question of space, it is not a question of whether you are here or somewhere else. When I stop talking, you start chattering.What is your chatter? – rubbish, crap. Naturally you start feeling not at home. But when you are silent – and you are silent only when I am speaking…. Slowly you have to learn to be silent even when I am not speaking, even when I am not present, even when you are not physically close to me. Can’t you feel the sunrise and the birds and the trees? Everything is at ease.Except man, nobody commits suicide – no tree, no bird. Except man, nobody needs a psychiatrist. Except man, everything is exactly where it should be – perfectly happy. In these sounds of the birds, do you hear anywhere any sadness? – just overflowing joy. Not that they are talking about great philosophical ideologies, not that they are praying in their churches, not that they are specifically saying something – just the joy of overflowing energy makes them feel at home.And they don’t have anything – no money, no power, no prestige. They don’t suffer from any inferiority complex, nor from a superiority complex. They never become schizophrenic. One has to learn much from the trees, from the birds, from the animals. And your problem is absolutely clear.These meetings with you, these talks with you are not sermons in a church, where a certain belief system is being delivered to you. These are a special device, never used before by anyone. I speak so that you can be silent. I do your chattering, you do my silence – a simple bargain! The whole day I am sitting in silence; I also get tired. So twice a day I take revenge. You are chattering the whole day. Twice a day, take revenge – be silent.And you will be at home anywhere.Hymie Goldberg has a little trouble with the police and he goes to see his lawyer. “If I win the case,” says Hymie, “I will give you five hundred dollars.”“Okay,” says the lawyer, “get some witnesses.”Hymie rounds up a few witnesses and wins his case.“Now,” says the lawyer, “you won your case. What about my five hundred dollars?”“Okay,” says Hymie, “get some witnesses.”Just a simple arithmetic…. It is not a difficult job to be silent; it is immensely blissful. Suddenly you find yourself in tune with the heartbeat of the universe. And that is the greatest ecstasy that can happen to anyone. This very moment can become a momentous revolution in your life if you can taste the silence of it.It was the usual practice of Gautam Buddha that whenever somebody came to him – and every day great philosophers, thinkers, theologians were coming to him to ask questions…. Maulingaputta, one of the great philosophers of Gautam Buddha’s time, had debated with many other great saints and defeated them. Now his only desire was to defeat Gautam Buddha.He came to Gautam Buddha with his five hundred great scholars and he asked, with humbleness, “I want an open discussion with you, with the condition that if I win you and your disciples will have to become my disciples, or if you win I and my disciples will all become your disciples.”Gautam Buddha said, “Settled. But there is one thing you have to remember. You will not start your discussion right now. My routine is: for two years you and your disciples have to sit silently among my ten thousand disciples. You are not to ask a single question in these two years, you have just to listen. And after two years I will remind you that the time has come, you can start the discussion.”The condition was accepted. Maulingaputta was not just an egoistic scholar, he was a sincere inquirer. He was debating with all these saints for the simple reason that perhaps somebody can defeat him – defeat his mind, defeat his inner chattering. Somebody may question everything that he believes, take away all his thoughts, destroy them completely by his arguments. Because of this reason, he agreed with Gautam Buddha, “I will wait for two years.” And he sat by the side of Gautam Buddha.As he was agreeing, laughter was heard from a faraway corner. Under a tree, a strange fellow was sitting – a follower of Gautam Buddha, but very strange. He rarely spoke; except for this laughter, nothing is mentioned about that man in all the great scriptures of Buddhism. And it has a tremendously vast literature; it is a whole world of literature on its own. No religion’s literature can even be compared to it – they are very poor. This man’s name was Mahakashyapa and his laughter became the beginning of Zen.He had not spoken anything, but Maulingaputta was shocked: “Why should this person laugh?”Gautam Buddha said, “You can ask him. He ordinarily never speaks, never laughs. He is not a man who belongs to ordinary humanity. He is a very silent fellow. You can ask him.”Maulingaputta asked Mahakashyapa, “Why have you laughed?” He replied, “There is not much in it. Just beware of the strategy of this guy Gautam Buddha. He deceived me, and in the same way he is going to deceive you too. I laughed because again he is at his game. Two years ago I had come, and he made me sit under this tree silently for two years. I even forgot the calendar.“Two years of silence is such a long time. For a few days I remembered that one day has passed, two days have passed, one week has passed…. Then slowly, slowly I forgot all about it. One day he suddenly said, ‘Mahakashyapa, this is the day you had come for, two years ago – to have a discussion with me. Now stand up and start your discussion. What do you want to say?’”Mahakashyapa said, “You have destroyed everything that I could have said two years ago. This silence has been such a cleansing. It has taken away all the nonsense that I have carried, thinking that it is scholarship, it is knowledge. This silence has transformed me. I don’t have anything to ask, just please allow me to touch your feet in deep gratitude. Your compassion is infinite, that you did not allow me to discuss with you. Rather than that you made a condition of two years’ silence.“At first I was angry – this is strange. But then I thought, it is a beautiful place: a mango grove; beautiful faces, so silent, as if they are statues; Gautam Buddha so beautiful, so graceful. There is no harm just to sit silently and watch what is going on here, what this man is continuously saying to his people. And just listening to you, you have taken everything away.”He said to Maulingaputta, “The same is going to happen to you. If you really want a discussion, don’t accept the condition, have the discussion today. We have never been entertained by Gautam Buddha in all these years; it will be a great joy.” But Maulingaputta had agreed. And he could understand the point that unless you are utterly silent you cannot absorb the presence, the grace, the beauty of the master.He sat by his side for two years, and after two years when Buddha said, “Now two years are over. You can start your discussion,” he said, “Mahakashyapa was right. I have nothing to say, everything has dropped. Just allow me first to touch the feet of Mahakashyapa and then I will touch your feet. He had provoked me and I had felt humiliated by his laughter. I have to ask his forgiveness.” He went to Mahakashyapa and touched his feet.This is the only incident related about Mahakashyapa. But this is the source from which the river of Zen started. Mahakashyapa laughing was the beginning of a tremendous force, and it has been continuously improved by each Zen master.Bodhidharma was the sixth Zen master who improved much upon Mahakashyapa’s laughter. And in these twenty-five centuries much has been improved, much has been added, many new dimensions have opened. But when I think about it, I look at it, I find that Mahakashyapa’s laughter is still the greatest contribution. Everything else that has been added is good, but Mahakashyapa’s laughter was complete in itself. He has said everything worth saying in his laughter.It happened in the past that many masters slowly, slowly became deaf, because their only function was to talk to the disciples. The disciple’s sensitivity in listening became more and more clear, but the master had nothing to listen to. There was nobody to say anything to him. Masters have many times become deaf, because their ears are not used at all.The experience of being at home has to be spread slowly so that for twenty-four hours you are at home – waking, sleeping. But this is possible only if you learn the greatest art of being silent. Then you are settled in yourself. Then your whole energy is turned into a silent pool without any ripples.If you can attain this state…existence does not want you to fulfill any other condition. This is enough. You will be accepted, welcomed by all the mysteries and all the splendor of existence. Right now, it is a small taste. But I have made it clear to you why it is happening.You have to try it on your own. Just go into the forest and sit silently, or by the side of the river, just sit silently. Or just here in the ashram, anywhere, sit silently – just being alert of whatever is happening all around, not thinking about it, what this bird is saying. They are not saying anything, they are just feeling so joyous in the early morning with the new life that the sun has brought again – one day more to dance, to sing, to enjoy the whole expanse of the sky.Just listen to them, the way you listen to me, and you will feel at home. And slowly, slowly you have to learn that it is not a question of listening, it is a question of the inner chatter stopping. Then whenever you find the inner chattering is starting, simply say, “Shut up!” and you will suddenly be at home.Once the mind understands that you have found something greater, something better, something higher, slowly it recedes into the darkness. Its function is fulfilled; it is no longer needed; it is an unwelcome guest.

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why don't you answer my questions? Is there a certain selection before they reach you? If so, then these are the wrong persons at the right place, because they choose the stupid ones instead of mine, which have some quality. It's not only an ego-satisfaction-comparison state.Amrita Jayesh, it is a miracle that your question has been answered. The people who select the questions are certainly intelligent. Even you will have to realize their intelligence now – they have chosen your question. But still, I would like to say a few things about your question, because it is not only you, many may be feeling the same way.So many questions come and I can answer only a few questions. Naturally, many must be feeling hurt that their question is not chosen. But they are not listening perfectly well. Their question may not have been chosen, but their question is certainly answered.Answering one question I am answering hundreds of other questions too. It doesn’t matter whether it is your question. The very idea that “my question should be answered” means that you are less concerned with the question and more concerned that it is your question. If you listen silently you will find, somewhere or other, the question is being answered, just your name is not mentioned – and that is immaterial.My experience is that when I mention somebody’s name and answer the question, he is the one who is going to understand it the least. The reason is obvious. He becomes tense – it is his question – and a little worried, a little afraid. I may say something which is shocking; I may hit him, I may slap him. By asking the question he has become vulnerable; hence the moment it is your question you are listening with a tense mind. It won’t reach your heart.Others are listening with absolute relaxedness. It is not their question. In this state of relaxedness they may be able to hear much more than the person whose question is being answered. But I take every care that all the questions that reach me are answered – if not today, then tomorrow. And you are saying, “Why don’t you answer my questions?” I have answered them all. Just because your name was not mentioned you could not get them.You are saying, “Is there a certain selection before they reach you?” There is no selection. All the questions reach me. And you are asking, “If so, then these are wrong persons at the right place.” There are no persons. All the questions that come are sent to me without any selection. I go through all the questions, but take out four or five questions. And I try in every way that those other questions which have not been taken are also answered.You are saying that these people who choose, “…choose the stupid ones instead of mine, which have some quality” – but these people have chosen your question. Nobody is choosing; otherwise, certainly this question would not have been chosen. That can be said with absolute certainty. If somebody was choosing, this question would have been thrown away; it would not have reached me.And as far as stupid questions…all questions are stupid. The wise ones never ask, only the other-wise. Those who are silent and intelligent simply try to understand existence, rather than making a question. A question is a wrong direction. It takes you into the world of philosophy, where thousands of questions exist and each question has been answered millions of times by different people in different ages, and yet not a single question has come to be answered. They are still standing unanswered.There are two possibilities. If you make life, existence, love, a question you will always remain unanswered. But if you make love, life, celebration an experience, your questions will be dissolved. I am using the word dissolved, not solved. The word solution comes from the philosophical dimension. And no solution is a solution, because it creates new questions. Your authentic question does not need to be answered, it needs to be dissolved. And no solution is going to dissolve it, only your own experience.It is a natural and normal phenomenon that the questions that others ask will look, to you, stupid. And the questions that you are asking will look, to you, very intelligent, but to others they will look stupid, utterly stupid. What makes it valuable is your ego. The moment your ego is not there, suddenly the question loses all significance.But I repeat again that all questions are stupid, because those who have attained to wisdom don’t ask any questions at all. It is not that they have found the answers. On the contrary, they have lost, together, all questions, all answers. They remain together, they go together. When you are without questions and without answers, your innocence knows the deepest mysteries, the secrets, without making it knowledge. It tastes it, it becomes your blood, your bones, your marrow. It becomes your very being, your dance, but not an answer to a question.I don’t make any distinction between the intelligent and the stupid questions, but if you want me to make a distinction, the intelligent ones are more stupid than the stupid ones – because the stupid ones at least are innocent. The intelligent ones are certainly coming from the ego. They are projections of a mind that thinks, “I know.”Questions come from many different sources. Some questions come from your innocence; they may look stupid. Some questions come from your knowledgeability; they may look very clever. Some questions arise in you from your existential experiences, but they are the questions you cannot ask because you cannot bring them to language. You will have to wait. When the time is right and the season is ripe, something will blossom within you and your question will disappear. Not that there will be an answer left, but a purity undisturbed by question or by answer. Both are disturbances.I go on answering your questions, not to make you more knowledgeable, but to help you to see that knowledge is not the authentic wisdom. And the moment you see that knowledge is not the authentic wisdom, it drops away. The very seeing is enough. You need not do anything to get rid of your knowledge. In the very seeing it is burned, and what remains behind is utter silence, a purity undisturbed by any question, by any answer.This undisturbed purity and silence is the authentic wisdom. It knows without knowing; it is utterly innocent. It is exactly a rebirth.You think your questions have some quality. Don’t you think the stupid question also has some quality? You may call it stupid, but it has a quality. You may not like that quality – but likings differ. What seems to you significant may not seem so significant to somebody else. Please stop comparing.And in the end, because you must have become aware that your question is bound to be felt by anyone as a projection of ego…. You yourself have felt it. Just to cancel that, your question ends with, “It is not only an ego-satisfaction-comparison state.” If it is not an ego-satisfaction-comparison state, why are you stating it? Why are you denying it? Your very denial shows that deep down you are aware of what it is.Before I take your other question – because this is only an introduction to your question – I would like to tell something which has no quality, because before entering a very deeply qualified, distinguished, significant question, it is needed to have a good, hearty laugh.Mrs. Ivan the Terrible is having lunch with Mrs. Attila the Hun and Nancy Reagan. The three women get down to some serious gossiping.Mrs. Ivan the Terrible says, “When I want Ivan to make love to me, I send out for half a dozen naked virgins and have them ride around the bedroom bareback on ponies for an hour or two. It never fails to make Ivan excited.”“Mmm,” says Mrs. Attila the Hun, “my method is to have four pairs of women sumo wrestlers fighting in a large pool of mud in our bedroom. That usually works well to keep Attila awake long enough to make love to me.”Nancy says, “I must be luckier with my Ronnie in that way. You girls have such a mess in your bedrooms with all that mud and horse shit. If I want to keep Ronnie awake all I have to do is whisper in his ear, ‘Darling, Osho is back in America,’ and he immediately screams, ‘Get Ed Meese on the phone. Call the FBI. Call the CIA. Call the Army. And for God’s sake, give me my heart attack pills!’”Now comes Amrita Jayesh’s serious question.Osho,If there is no certain meaning in life, why this intrinsic logic of living thousands of lives until understanding transforms one toward enlightenment, and then into a non-physical existence and then…and then…. There seems to be no end – eternity?If there is no one or nothing who or which creates the world of a thousand mystic colors, why am I here? I did not ask to join in this game, or did I? Can't there be only a non-existential nothingness without anything and within nothing?It is exactly what you are saying. It is a non-existential nothingness, without anything, within or without. I am a dream, you are a dream; don’t take it too seriously. Out of nothing, just like soap bubbles, we arise, and out of nothing we disappear. And you cannot ask the question to me because I have nothing to do with this business.I am in the same boat as you are. You ask me why you are here, and I want to know why I am here!And you call it an intelligent question…Jesus and Saint Peter come down to earth to see how things are going. After traveling all day through the universe they arrive after dark near an old farmhouse. Not wanting to freak out the farmer, they decide to sleep in the barn.Jesus says to Peter, “I am going to sleep upstairs in the hayloft and you stay down here. And when you are comfortable, sing me a lullaby to help me go to sleep.” Peter agrees and starts singing softly.“Sing louder!” calls out Jesus.“But my Lord,” says Peter, “the farmer may wake up.”“Peter!” says Jesus, “do you trust me?”So Peter sings louder until the farmer wakes up, comes running into the barn and gives Peter a good beating.“Peter,” says Jesus, “do you still trust me?”“Of course,” says Peter. “A little beating can’t shake me.” So Jesus tells him to continue singing. After a few minutes the farmer runs out again, really furious, picks up a stick and beats Peter with it.When he has gone Jesus says, “Peter, do you still trust me?”“Well,” says Peter, “maybe we could change places for a little while.”“Okay,” says Jesus, “if you think it will help your trust.”So they change places and this time Peter sings really loudly, thinking to himself, “This will show him!”Sure enough, a minute later the farmer, purple with rage, comes into the barn and grabs Jesus. Then he stops and says, “No, you have had enough. Now I will give it to the idiot upstairs.”It is a very playful existence, very dramatic. It is not for questioning, it is for living intensely, joyfully, without bothering at all about what the meaning is or why we are here. All these questions appear to be significant but are really stupid.Existence is as it is. And there is nobody you can inquire to, no complaint office, no inquiry office. We simply are here – nobody knows why. So let us make this time as good as we can. Why bother about unnecessary things? Just enjoy, and don’t be disturbed by your mind chattering.Every question is stupid because nobody is there to answer it. Whom are you going to ask? Even if there was a God sitting just here among you, even he could not answer why he is sitting here. And you could not ask him, “Why have you created the world?” He will say, “Why not?” Remember, God is a Jew and Jews have a habit…. You ask a question and they will answer it with another question. You ask, “Why did you create the world?” and he will ask, “Why are you asking? Who are you? Why not create….?”It is impossible to find anybody authoritative who can answer you about why you are here. Everything seems to be perfectly good. There is no need to be unnecessarily fussy: why I am here, why you are here. Just think of those who are not here, have never been here, will never be here. Those poor fellows, they will not even have a chance to ask!Osho,Sitting silently the other morning, I felt an incredible energy inside me – and suddenly a big fear arose before I had been able to accept or realize this energy. Could you help me to understand this fear?I am so afraid of my fire burning me totally: I had a glimpse of that and my mind has stopped this process. How to become free of this fear?Life is a tremendous energy phenomenon. You are not aware of how much energy you have. Do you think atoms know how much energy they have? A single atom which is invisible to the eyes, if it explodes, can destroy a city as big as Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Within minutes everything is burned. If an atom of matter has that much energy…your consciousness is a far higher phenomenon. Your being must be carrying universes of energies – dormant of course, because you are not aware. But those who have become aware, their descriptions indicate similar things.Kabir says that in his experience of inner being, he sees as if thousands of suns have suddenly arisen. All around him suns are dancing; the light is so dazzling that it makes him almost blind. But this is not only Kabir’s experience. Many mystics have described it the same way.Your experience is just a beginning. You felt as if you would be burnt. Don’t be worried, nobody has ever burnt in his own inner energy. This energy is creative, not destructive.Any energy that comes out of meditative silence is creative. There is not a single instance of it destroying anything, it has only created: it has created a beautiful space within; it has created beautiful art, music, sculpture, poetry, painting, outside. This fire is not even hot, it is very cool.I am reminded of Moses on Mount Sinai. He had gone there in search of God and he saw a very strange phenomenon which Jewish scholars are unable to explain because it looks fictitious. He saw a fire and within the fire a green bush, unburned. He could not believe his eyes. The flames were rising high and the bush inside the flames was green, and its flowers were blossoming as if a cool breeze was passing through, not a fire.Attracted toward this majestic experience, he comes closer to the bush and suddenly he hears a voice, “Moses, take your shoes off! You are on holy ground.” The voice is coming from the bush. As he comes closer, leaving his shoes behind, he does not feel any heat; on the contrary he feels very cool. And the dialogue that happened and culminated in the Ten Commandments was not with a person, but an invisible voice coming from that green bush.Theologians have been at work trying to figure it out. As far as I am concerned, I am not a theologian, but I can understand a little bit of poetry and I think it is a poetic statement, not a theological statement. Once you see it is a poetic statement all confusion disappears. What is being said is that life, or God, is a cool energy, so creative, so non-destructive that even within the fire of it a bush will remain green and will grow and blossom.Accept this life energy – what a great philosopher, Bergson, used to call elan vital. This life force is not something to be afraid of. You have to create a communion with this life energy, a dialogue, and you will be immensely enriched, not burned. For the first time your spring will come and your flowers will blossom.Many ancient parables, stories, are in fact poetic statements, but the theologians have destroyed their beauty and their poetry by dragging them down and trying to prove that they are actual historical facts. They are not facts, they are far above facts; they are poetic realizations and poetic expressions.Whatever happened to you, don’t be afraid of it. There is no need for any fear. Rejoice with the flames of the energy, dance with those flames, have a communion with those flames and you will be finding a dialogue with existence itself. If you are afraid that you may be burned, then this very fear will stop the process, will become a barrier to entering inward into deeper realms of your consciousness. Drop this fear. Nobody has ever been burned by life energy.One has to learn to drop fear as one enters inward – because there is nobody except your own energy, and your own energy cannot be your enemy. In fact even to say “your energy” is not right. It is because of the poverty of language that we have to use expressions like that.It is better to say you are the energy. Who is there to be burnt? You are the fire itself, those dancing flames are your very being. Who is going to be burnt? You are not a separate entity. It is language that always divides and creates trouble.Drop all fear. The moment you are entering into meditation, put your fear where Moses had to leave his shoes. It is sacred ground. You are entering a temple of love, of life, of peace. There is no need of any fear. Go dancing in and it is absolutely certain that if you can be unafraid, a bridge will be created between you and the energy that is also you – but it is dormant, has been asleep and unconscious, so it appears as if it is separate from you.But once it becomes awake, soon you will see your small flame of life has disappeared into the vast energy that has arisen. You have entered into the cosmic, into the universal. And the vaster the energy, the greater the ecstasy, the more joy, the more blessings, the more laughter.Little Ernie is sitting at the back of the class, a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other when Miss Goodbody says, “Okay children, today we are going to play a game. I’m going to say a few words about something, and you try to tell me what I’m thinking about. Okay, here we go! The first thing is a fruit. It’s round and it’s red.”Little Billy raises his hand and says, “An apple.”Miss Goodbody says, “No, it’s a tomato, but I’m glad to see you’re thinking. The next one is round and it’s a green vegetable.”Little Mary says, “It’s a lettuce.”“No,” says Miss Goodbody, “it’s a pea. But I’m glad to see you’re thinking.”Just then Ernie raises his hand and says, “Hey, teach! Mind if I ask you one?”“Go right ahead,” says Miss Goodbody.“Okay,” says Ernie, “I’ve got something in my pocket, and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s got a pink tip.”“Ernie!” shouts Miss Goodbody, “that’s disgusting.”“It’s a pencil,” says Ernie, “but I’m glad to see you’re thinking.”Osho,This silence…this moment…so precious…so beautiful. To keep avoiding it and missing it seems so absurd.Osho, why? What is so difficult about dropping this whole game and just being?The question you have asked is beautiful. “This silence… this moment… so precious… so beautiful. To keep avoiding it and missing it seems so absurd. Osho, why? What is so difficult about dropping this whole game and just being?”If the whole game is dropped, and you remain just being… soon you will get tired of it, bored with it. The game also has its significance. Its whole significance is that it makes your being just silent, a beauty. Without this game, this crowd, this noise, without this marketplace your temple will not have the beauty that it has. Life is a dialectics.In the night you see the whole sky full of stars. Do you think that in the day the stars hide somewhere? They are still there where you see them in the night, but in the light of the sun it is difficult to see them. You can see them if you go into a deep well, where it is almost as dark as night.I used to have, by my house, a deep well. My family used to keep me away from it and finally they closed it, because it had chains and you could go deep into it. Whenever I could get a chance – nobody was looking at the well – I would simply go into it. There was a place from where it was so dark that for the first time I became aware that from that darkness you can see stars in the sky.To see the stars you need the darkness. And stars are so beautiful, but they will not be there without darkness. You have to understand the beauty of darkness too.Life is so beautiful, but it would not be so beautiful if there was no death. Just think – if you go on and on and on living, a point will come where you would like to die. You have lived enough; now life itself has become a boring experience, because it is the same round every day and the wheel has moved for too many years, again and again.When I say life is a dialectics I mean it exists between two polarities, and both the polarities help each other. You cannot take one polarity away; if you take one away the other will also disappear. The silence is beautiful – nobody will disagree with you – but the great moment is when you understand that the noise of the marketplace is also beautiful, because the beautiful silence and the beautiful noise are part of one whole. The day and the night, the summer and the winter, childhood and old age, all have tremendous beauty. The moment you see the beauty of both together you have transcended them.This transcendental experience you can call enlightenment, you can call awakening, you can call realization, you can call the truth – these are only different names for the same experience. But our mind always goes on trying to keep one and avoid the other.You are asking, “This silence…this moment…so precious…so beautiful.” Then why do we go on “avoiding it”, “missing it?” That too is beautiful. That makes the contrast. It is just a silver line on a black cloud. You can write with white chalk only on a blackboard. If you take away the blackboard, the writing will also disappear.To see this contradictoriness as complementary is to become mature. Then you don’t want to drop anything, then you don’t want to escape from the world, then whatever happens, you love it. The noise has its own place and the silence has its own place, and they both enrich each other.There is no need to get out of the game. The game is tremendously beautiful. Just understand that this is the game, and because of the game we have divided it into two parts; otherwise nobody is the enemy, not even death. In this absolute acceptance of everything you have already gone beyond.Grandma Faginbaum takes her grandchildren shopping and leaves the house empty, except for her parrot standing on its perch by the door. The plumber arrives to fix something in the house, and knocks on the door.“Who is it?” asks the parrot.“It’s the plumber,” replies the man. Nothing happens. The plumber knocks again.“Who is it?” asks the parrot.“The plumber,” he replies.There is silence. The plumber, who has a heart condition, is getting impatient. He knocks again.“Who is it?” squawks the parrot.“It’s the plumber!” he yells and collapses in a faint.Half an hour later, grandma returns with the kids. The little girl points at the body on the ground.“Who is that?” she asks.The parrot squawks, “It’s the plumber!”It is a game.Let it continue.Just go on laughing and enjoying – it is the plumber!

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Are all jokes irrational?It is not that all jokes are irrational. You cannot even find one joke that is irrational. But the joke has its own psychology and rationality. The psychology of the joke has to be understood and then the rationality of it will be clear.Man is so repressed that he cannot even speak certain words; he is utterly inhibited. The joke starts with ordinary words, but takes a sudden turn and catches you unawares. And that sudden turn you could not have expected; that’s why all your repressed mind, your inhibitions suddenly explode.Nobody has used jokes for cleaning your mind. It is a catharsis. The moment you see the point, suddenly you say, “My God, I was going toward a certain rational conclusion….” The joke turns at a point where you would not have expected it. That sudden turn makes you forget all your rationality, all your logic, all your language. In a split moment you are suddenly like a child.You must have noted, the jokes are only concerned with the repressed parts of your being. It is a revenge – revenge by the powerless against the powerful. They kill you, they destroy you, but you can do it better without weapons, just by a single joke! Jokes have a beauty of their own, because they bring laughter to you. And to me laughter is the moment when the mind stops, time stops and you are suddenly overwhelmed by a new energy, a new delight. These are simple glimpses to prepare you for the ultimate laughter.It is said about Bodhidharma that the first thing he did after his enlightenment was, he laughed loudly. Again and again it was asked of him why he laughed; there was no visible reason for it.He said, “I laughed because I was searching myself, and I was going round and round everywhere except within myself. Existence has played a great joke on me.”Certainly jokes are not irrational.Just look at the rationality of the jokes:Bridget, the Irish prostitute, has just finished “servicing” her client, an English gentleman.She asks him, “Hey, you don’t have that terrible AIDS disease, do you?”“No,” replies the gentleman, doing up his shoelaces, “I get a medical check each week, I’m definitely clean.”“Oh good,” replies Bridget. “Thank God for that, I wouldn’t like to be getting that again!”What did the hurricane say to the palm tree? “Hang on to your nuts, this is no ordinary blow job!”While waiting for Ronald Reagan’s press conference to start, one reporter approaches a man standing in the corner of the hall.“Hey,” he says, “have you heard the latest Ronald Reagan joke?”The man gives him an icy stare. “Before you tell it,” he says, “I must inform you that I work in the White House as his personal secretary.”“Thanks for the warning,” says the reporter, “I will tell it very, very, very slowly.”On an Italian airplane flying over the ocean, the pilot tells the passengers to enjoy the flight and that they can expect to reach their destination in four hours.Three hours later the captain has another announcement. “Folks,” he says, “I have got-a good-a news and-a bad-a news. First the bad-a news: We are-a lost. Now the good-a news: we are-a making hella-va good-a time!”I have never come across any joke – and perhaps I have come across many more jokes than any living or dead man…. There is a certain strange turning at the end, but it is not irrational. It is how human beings function, how their minds function.Every joke has a great reason. It is connected with your unconscious and the society’s torture of humanity. It brings it out in the open – in no other way can it be released – and you can be unburdened. This unburdening, this relief is the very reason of every joke.Osho,Many of us who have been with you for some time are experiencing a deepening of silence, stillness and joy within. With a tremendous gratitude to you also comes a sense of responsibility to existence to preserve this gift of life and consciousness.To realize your vision of global transformation and the New Man, it seems that meditation, love, commitment and action are all necessary. Sometimes it feels difficult to move into activity while still remaining silent and meditative.Would you speak to us about wu-wei, action from inaction?You have brought in your question many significant points. First you say, “Many of us who have been with you for some time are experiencing a deepening of silence, stillness and joy within. With a tremendous gratitude to you also comes a sense of responsibility to existence to preserve this gift of life and consciousness.”The word responsibility has been continuously used in a wrong way. It gives a feeling of burden: you have to do it, it is a duty; if you don’t do it you will feel guilty. I want to remind you that the word responsibility has none of those connotations. Break the word in two – response-ability – and you enter a totally different meaning of the word, in a different direction. Response-ability is not a burden. It is not a duty; it is not something you have to do in spite of yourself.Response-ability simply means spontaneous response. Whatever situation arises, joyously you respond to it, with your totality, with your intensity. And this response will not only change the situation, it will also change you.There are two words to be remembered: one is reaction and one is response-ability. Most people react, they don’t respond. Reaction comes from your memory, from your past experiences, from your knowledge; it is always inadequate in a fresh, new situation. And existence is continuously fresh. So if you act according to your past, that is reaction. But that reaction is not going to change the situation, it is not going to change you, and you will be in utter failure.Response is moment-to-moment. It has nothing to do with memory, it has something to do with your awareness. You see the situation with clarity; you are clean, silent, serene. Out of this serenity, spontaneously you act. It is not reaction, it is action. You have never done it before, but the beauty of it is that it will suit the situation, and it will be a joy to you to know that you are capable of being spontaneous.There are very few joys in life greater than spontaneity. Spontaneity means to be in the moment; it means acting out of your awareness, not acting according to your old conditionings. Those days are gone – those conditions, conceptions are absolutely invalid.In my university days, when I was a postgraduate student, I had to share for one year with a very stupid student. His problem was: “Everybody is saying that they have fallen in love with some girl and they are enjoying it. But no girl looks at me – neither do I know how to fall in love.”I said, “The first thing you do is, you start saying that many girls are after you. They have all fallen in love with you, but you have not yet found the right girl with whom you would like to commune – to be with her, to love her.”He said, “But this is all incorrect, because it is not happening.”I said, “Those people who are talking, it is not happening to them either. They are just talking and making others feel they are missing the most precious experience.”He said, “I will try.”He started talking – soon he became the hero. No girl was chasing him, he had no idea what love was, but people started asking him for recipes, how to fall in love.And he would come to me saying, “You have put me in a very difficult situation. I don’t know what love is, how can I give them recipes? They say, ‘So many girls are chasing you and you are not interested in them. You can introduce at least one girl to me.’ But nobody is chasing me.”I said to him, “Don’t be worried, from tomorrow morning a girl will start chasing you – the most beautiful girl in the university.”He said, “Is it a prediction?”I said, “Yes, it is a prediction. Tomorrow appear in your best dress, perfumed, smiling – don’t look sad.”There was one beautiful girl in my class. I said to her, “This man is desperate. You have not to do anything, just hold his hand and tell him, ‘I love you.’”She said, “But it may create some trouble.”I said, “Don’t be worried, I will take care. The man is so stupid, he cannot create any trouble.”The girl said, “Let us see.”After the philosophy period was over she took him aside. Trembling, perspiring, she took his hand in her hand and said, “I have wanted to say it for almost one year: you are the most charming fellow in the university! I am in deep love with you.”He came running to me; he said, “It has happened!”I said, “What has happened?”He said, “The girl took my hand, and she was so nervous to say it, but she told it beautifully: ‘You are a charming man,’ and that for one year she has been waiting to find an occasion to tell me that she is in love with me.”I said, “Now you know the whole strategy. Hold the hand, tell the person, ‘You are charming and I have been in love with you….’”He said, “All three steps I have learned perfectly well. I have been repeating them since then.”The second day he tried it on another girl and the girl slapped him. He could not believe it – how could the recipe fail? He came running to me saying, “I have been insulted before so many people. The girl slapped me – and I had done nothing, just took her hand…. The only difference was that in the first case the girl was perspiring and nervous, and in this case I was perspiring and nervous. And she slapped hard. What kind of love is this?”I said, “Remember one thing: one girl is one, another girl is another. Why should you try it on another girl? The first one would have behaved more humanly, because I had told her, ‘This poor guy is dying, continuously thinks of love, but does not know what it means and how to start.’”He said, “Perhaps you are right, I should not have gone to another girl. Then what do you suggest to me?”I said, “You write letters to the first girl.”He said, “But I don’t know how to write love letters.”I said, “Don’t be worried, I will write them – you sign.”He said, “This is very great. I am immensely grateful to you.”Almost twice or thrice a week I would write a letter, and he would take the letter and hand it over to the girl. She smiled, because this was becoming a strange drama. And she knew my handwriting.I told her, “It is very unkind not to answer his letters.”But she said, “You are getting me into more and more of a mess.”I said, “Don’t be worried, I will get you out any moment. The day you want to get out, just slap him and that will do.”So it continued for a few months. She started writing beautiful letters to him, and he would come running and show to everybody what a great love was flowering. Finally the moment came – the girl slapped him.But he said, “This is very irrational. I will go to my master, who has been teaching me how to love, and ask him what has happened.”He came back and I told him, “I was just giving you a chance – perhaps you can learn something – but you seem to be incapable of learning anything. It is finished.”He said, “My God, and what about the letters that I have written?”I said, “What will you do with those letters?”He said, “I can’t write those letters, so I’m going to take them and try them on another girl.” And he was rejected from everywhere, because everybody by and by came to know that the handwriting was mine, the letter was mine, and this fool was not even aware what love is!Response is not out of the past. You don’t have to learn it, you don’t have to be taught it; it comes out of your silence, your serenity, on its own accord. Hence I say that many of your acts are not acts, because they are coming from the memory – they are reactions. The authentic act comes from your consciousness.So the first thing is, change the wrong connotation of responsibility. The mother says, “You have a responsibility to take care of me”; the father says, “You have a responsibility to take care of me”; the whole family says, “You have a responsibility, a duty….”I had a very deep, intimate contact with my father. He was a rare man – because whatever I said would have irritated any father, but he always pondered over it, contemplated it. I said, “Listen, I don’t have any responsibility for you. You never asked if you could give birth to me. That was the point when we could have made a contract: ‘This is going to be my responsibility….’ You have brought me into existence without even asking me. It is your responsibility, not mine. If something goes wrong you will be responsible for it.”He said, “I never looked at it from that angle; perhaps you are right – what kind of contact and intimacy do you have with me?”I said, “I am response-able, not responsible. I will act out of my love for you, not because you are my father. And I will act in the moment, without referring to my memory system, because the memory is always of the past and existence is always new – they never meet.”So the first thing I want you to understand is, don’t make the whole word responsibility; break it into two: response – hyphen – ability. And it changes the whole color.“With a tremendous gratitude to you also comes a sense of responsibility to existence, to preserve this gift of life and consciousness.” You will become burdened with these ideas! You will become almost a torture to yourself.And I can see it as I go on. “To realize your vision of global transformation and the New Man it seems that meditation, love, commitment and action are all necessary.”Commitment is not necessary, because commitment is bound to become old; it will not correspond to the fresh moment. Commitment is a slavery to the past. And action you don’t have to do. If your heart is full of love, full of compassion, full of meditation, action will happen. When action happens on its own accord it is such a beautiful flower. Instead, you force yourself with unnecessary burdens – responsibility, commitment, action – and you don’t understand that the global crisis is so big and you are so small, what action can you take?I don’t have any responsibility, I don’t have any commitment, and I don’t have any action to do to save this beautiful planet – these are unnecessary burdens. Enjoy the moment, grow into your consciousness, be more spontaneous, more compassionate, more loving – no commitment, no great megalomania of saving the whole planet. Rejoice in it, and out of this rejoicing, action comes – again, as spontaneous – you don’t have to act.“Sometimes it feels difficult to move into activity.” Not just sometimes, you will always feel difficulty in moving into activity. But a pure action, uncontemplated, suddenly grips you…and you are not doing any charitable work, you are simply enjoying it.If we can make more people lovable, celebrating, more spontaneous, the global crisis can be avoided. But don’t take it seriously, be playful about it. If existence wants this planet not to exist, who are we to prevent it?Every day stars disappear into black holes and every day new stars are born from white holes. One thing has to be remembered, that anything that is born is going to die. This planet has been here for nearabout four thousand million years. Perhaps it has become old, perhaps nothing can be done to save it. It needs rest, and death is a rest.But I’m not saying that you should work to destroy, I am saying that, while things are alive, enjoy, dance, sing, love. Perhaps even the old existence may feel to let the planet live a little more. Make it as beautiful as possible, so existence itself feels that it has to be protected. You cannot protect it, but you can create the condition in which existence will feel sad to destroy the beautiful flowers, the beautiful people, the beautiful trees, great heights of consciousness.So my way is totally different. I am not a pacifist like Bertrand Russell who thought that by protesting, creating pacifists we can save the universe. No protest can save it, no pacifist can save it. Only one thing is possible: your making this universe more and more beautiful, so beautiful that existence becomes absolutely incapable of thinking to destroy it.It is not a burden, it is not a commitment. And as long as existence lets this planet continue, enjoy it, make it more juicy…each act of your life. According to me that is the only way to avoid a global suicide.“Sometimes it feels,” you are asking, “difficult to move into activity while still remaining silent and meditative.”You don’t need any activity. Silence and being meditative are enough; they are far greater forces than your small activity. And out of your silence perhaps some action may arise which will be helpful in making the planet more glorious, more splendorous. What I am trying to say is, prove to existence that this planet is so precious that to allow it to be destroyed will be sheer nonsense. Existence will have to wait again for fifty million years to bring such people, such consciousnesses as Buddha, Lao Tzu….Do you see my point? Make it so valuable that even existence withdraws, and destroys all that is being prepared for global suicide. You don’t have to act! You have simply to meditate, be silent, be loving, fill the whole world with laughter.I say unto you, laughter is far more powerful than any nuclear weapon. Fill the whole universe with love. And I say unto you, a world filled with love is not going to decide for war.No action is needed.I have been condemned by people who don’t understand the intrinsic mysteries of life. They think that I am making people inactive, telling them to meditate, to be silent. They don’t know that I am making people spontaneously active – out of love, out of beauty, out of blissfulness. That will create the greatest barrier to the destruction of the planet.You are asking, “Would you speak to us about wu-wei, action from inaction?” That’s what I am speaking about. You don’t do anything; you become so utterly silent that out of that silence things start happening around you – that is action from inaction. A man of silence is not inactive; his energies have moved into a totally new dimension of spontaneity, of response-ability, of love, of joy, of creativity, and his whole being is so precious that he creates around him a contagious preciousness.If we have a few million people in the world who are playful, who are not burdened, it doesn’t matter. If existence wants this planet to disappear, perhaps there is some significance in it. We will try to enjoy while we are here, while this planet exists. If our joyfulness, our playfulness, our flutes, our guitars, our sensitivity changes the intelligence of the universe and cancels the decision – this is not the planet to be destroyed, this is the planet to be nourished more – if it happens, good; if it does not happen then that too is perfectly good.Do you remember when you were not – were you angry, sad? Before your birth, do you remember any problem, any trouble? After your death you will be in the same position as you were before your birth.Existence is beautiful, but if it disappears, if the whole cosmos decides for it to disappear, you will not miss it; you will not be there at all. So don’t make it a fear, a duty, a responsibility to be done. Don’t feel guilty that you are so small – what can you do? However small you are, you can love, you can dance, you can celebrate whatever moments are available. And this will be action from inaction.The doctor compliments the young girl lying on his examination table.“Go home,” he says, “and tell your husband to prepare for a baby.”“But I don’t have a husband,” the girl replies.“Then go home,” says the doctor, “and tell your lover.”“But I don’t have a lover,” says the girl. “I have never had a lover.”“In that case,” says the doctor, “go home and tell your mother to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ!”My attitude is simple: this day is enough unto itself. Who bothers if you don’t wake up tomorrow? – you will not know. And an eternal sleep is such a peaceful, blissful, silence; you are not losing anything. But don’t waste your today in thinking about your tomorrow. Be a little more intelligent, alert and aware.A Polack goes into the doctor’s surgery with both his ears burned.“I have never seen such a case,” exclaims the doctor. “What on earth happened?”“I was ironing my clothes,” explains the Polack, “when the phone rang.”“But what about the other ear?” asks the doctor.“Well,” replies the Polack, “I had to phone for the ambulance.”Pope the Polack puts on civilian clothes so that he can walk around the streets without being recognized.While he is out walking, a woman comes up to him and says, “Want a blow job?”The pope says, “A blow job? What’s that?”The woman replies, “Ten dollars.”The pope is mystified, but he continues his walk through the streets. Everywhere he goes, he is met by women saying, “Blow job, blow job!” all day long.Finally, when he returns to the Vatican and the papal palace, he sees one of the nuns.“Tell me, sister,” asks Pope the Polack, “what’s a blow job?”The nun replies, “Ten dollars.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is it that, apart from sitting with you twice a day, I only find myself meditating when I am down or confused?Why is that I rarely meditate out of my joyousness?Your question touches very deeply the human heart and its workings. In the old way people used to pray only when they were in misery, suffering, some trouble. When they were happy, joyous, successful they never bothered God. It can make you aware of an intense involvement of all the religions with suffering, because only those who are suffering become victims in the hands of the priests. Otherwise, who cares about priests, who cares about holy books?When you are happy, contented, joyful, you want to enjoy your life. You don’t want to waste your time praying in a church or a temple. This must have been discovered by the priest long, long ago. All religions are based on the exploitation of this discovery. Bertrand Russell is right when he says, “If we can destroy poverty, sickness, old age, inequality and make people happy and joyous, religions will die on their own accord.” He is perfectly right in his analysis, because the joyous man has never been in any way concerned with so-called religions. But Bertrand Russell was an agnostic.My standpoint is totally different. To me it is natural that when you are sick you will go to the doctor and when you are sick you will need medicine. You don’t go to the doctor when you are healthy. You don’t go to the druggist for some medicine when you are perfectly healthy. And it is not that the so-called religions have helped you in any way to get out of misery – that would be destroying their whole business. They want you to remain in misery, hoping that in the next life you will enjoy the blessings of God, because you suffered so contentedly, you suffered without revolt against the vested interests.Politicians became interested in religion and kings were very much supportive of organized religion, because they could see a simple arithmetic. Religion provides opium to the people, a consolation, and if this opium is not provided for the people, revolt is going to happen. So those who are in power are deeply interested that you should remain sad, miserable, in anxiety, because your anxiety and your sadness will take you to the priests and they will give you the opium called hope. “Don’t be worried, pray. And if you pray with a pure heart, and if you pray with absolute belief, your prayer will be answered.”Now, it is a very tricky game. Nobody can have absolute belief. Belief as such is borrowed from somebody else, you don’t know anything about it. How can you be absolute in your belief? At the most you can repress your doubt with the belief, but the doubt is there. So when your prayers are not heard, you know it is not the fault of God or the fault of prayer: your belief is not total, your trust has doubt underneath it. Although you are praying, you know deep within you, “Who knows whether there is a God who is listening or going to answer?” This helps the priest to keep you in your miserable situation.If your prayer is not heard, then fast, purify yourself, do all kinds of disciplines and certainly your prayer will be answered. Nobody’s prayer has ever been answered. But because of this strategy, they have planted in you the idea that when your prayer is not answered, you are at fault. So you have to be absolutely pure.They demand perfectionism. And because of their demand of perfectionism they have driven the whole of humanity neurotic. Nobody can be perfect. Perfection is simply out of the question; perfection means death. You have to go on trying to be perfect – in this way evolution moves. You will be coming closer and closer to perfection, but you will never be perfect. The moment you are perfect you are finished, evolution has come to an end. The ideas of evolution and perfection are antagonistic.But all over the world, through all the ages, civilizations and cultures, every child has been forced to be perfect. And once this cancer of being perfect enters your mind, you will always feel you are not perfect, you will always feel guilty. You will pray, but you know your prayer will not be heard.But the religions have completely diverted your attention. Your suffering is being caused by the vested interests here, now, and they have shifted the whole idea to the future – and not even to the near future…to after death. Different religions have tried different strategies, but the basic thing is to divert your mind from the exploitation which is going on right now. If all kinds of consolations are dropped, you will be able to see that your problem, your suffering, your misery is being created, manufactured by man. It has nothing to do with prayer.And this is a very dangerous situation because all the religions – and almost everybody belongs to some religion – are trying to divert you from the actuality of things to dreams of paradise and heaven and all kinds of joys. These people are sellers of dreams and they fill your mind with dreams so much that you stop seeing the reality. The reality is that a few vested interests – politicians, the rich people, the priests – they are the cause of your suffering, of your anguish, of your misery, and they can be removed. But who is going to remove them? – because the people who are suffering never think that these good people can be the cause of their suffering.Secondly, you have found it very clearly in your own meditations that when you are in suffering you want to meditate, but when you are happy you don’t even think about it. You are using meditation again as a new hope, as a new consolation. You are not really a meditator. You are using meditation also as medicine. It will give you some relief, but it cannot transform you to a state where ecstasy becomes your moment-to-moment experience.You will have to learn something which has been forcibly killed by all the religions and all the politicians and all the powers; it was in their favor. We have forgotten completely that to be joyous in fact is the basic condition of meditation. When you are joyous, that is the right moment to meditate. Then you can ride on the wave of joy into higher realms. When you are suffering, meditation may help to bring you out of your suffering, but that is not much. When you are feeling a well-being, when you are feeling ready to dance, that is the moment to meditate. Then you can ride on higher waves of dancing, music, into meditation.Meditation has to be taken out of the hands of the religions. They are using it for wrong reasons, for exploitation, and they have done it for so many centuries that it has become almost an inbuilt program in us.In China a strange experiment was done. The emperor was very much impressed by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. He lived long enough to be in contact with the master Lao Tzu, then his disciple Chuang Tzu, then his disciple Lieh Tzu. These three people impressed on the emperor a very novel, original idea, but it has not been followed. The moment the emperor died the old vested interests came back and destroyed something of tremendous value.Lieh Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu had a strange idea: that no doctor should be paid by his patients, because if the patient has to pay the doctor, knowingly or unknowingly the doctor would like the patient to remain sick as long as possible – that is his business. If he cures him quickly he cannot earn much.A famous story Chuang Tzu used to tell was about an old doctor. His three sons were studying medicine.The first son came back from the university and he said, “Now you are too old, you rest. I will take care of your patients.” So the father allowed him to take care of his patients.After two days the young man came to the old father and said, “It is very strange. You are such an experienced doctor and a woman you have been treating for thirty years, I have cured her in two days. And I am fresh from the college, I don’t know much.”The father said, “You idiot, it is that woman who has paid all your expenses in medical college. She was going to pay for your two other brothers. She was rich enough, there was no need for her to be healthy. And she was my main source of income.”Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu impressed on the emperor that if the patient has to pay the doctor, you are creating a very dangerous situation. The doctor’s interest will be that the patient remains a patient as long as possible. And he will apparently show concern that he wants to cure you. He will be in a dilemma himself.The emperor asked Lao Tzu, “Then what is your suggestion? – because this has been always the case.”He said, “The solution is very simple. All doctors should be paid by the government, and the whole population should pay the government – nothing to do with the doctor. The doctor has not to be paid because he has cured a patient; the doctor has to be paid if his patient has remained healthy. Every month the patient has to report, ‘I am healthy, you can pay my doctor.’ If the patient falls sick, then the doctor cannot be paid: ‘What business are you doing here? If people are falling sick, then what use is your medicine, your knowledge, your experience?’”So a very strange system…but the emperor was impressed, it was absolutely logical. And in my understanding, one day it is going to be the system in the whole world, because its logic is very clear. The doctor should be paid for health, not for sickness. And if his patients are sick, then his salary should be cut. His interest should be in the health of the patient, not in his disease. And the patient has not to pay him, the patient has to pay to the government a certain fee to be kept healthy. The government pays the doctor to keep people healthy, and if they are not healthy, he misses his salary.But once the emperor was dead, the system disappeared, the old idea came in again – which is absolutely foolish.The priest, the religions have learned the strategy perhaps from people suffering from diseases, that they are the most vulnerable sources for exploitation. Just give them hope; all that they need is consolation. This has corrupted the whole human psychology. So when you are sick you think of meditation, when you are suffering you start meditating. But when you are down and confused, to meditate is very difficult; it is going against the current.So, on the one hand you have chosen a wrong situation in which to meditate. At the most meditation can pull you out, somehow from your downgoing, your suffering, but it cannot give you joy or ecstasy. It is enough if it can take you out of your misery. The real situation is a healthy, happy, joyous state of mind. But at that time you think of playing football, at that time you want to go to the movies, at that time you want to watch television; that is the time to go to a discotheque. In fact that is the time to meditate.When you are suffering you can go to hell: any discotheque, any restaurant, any game – boyfriend, girlfriend game. When you are suffering, these are the things to do. But when you are happy, feeling good, in tune, surrounded with a certain well-being, don’t waste it in stupid things. This is the right springboard from where you can take a jump into higher realms of consciousness, of blissfulness, of peace and ecstasy. This idea is just an old conditioning, forced upon you by those who were immensely profited by it. You have to understand it and change the situation.In my childhood it was a constant conflict between me and my father. Whenever I was feeling good, that meant a holiday from school. And he said, “You are a strange fellow. When you are sick, you have fever, you are suffering from a cold, then you go to school. You have an upside down mind!”I said, “Whether the mind is upside down or not, when I am feeling good I go to the river” – which I loved…to swim for miles or to boat. In a beautiful full-moon night the river looked almost like silver. And I told him, “I am not going to waste my time in school. When I have a fever and I cannot go to the river, school is good. School to me is a kind of hospital.”He said, “Do whatever you want to do. There is some truth in what you are saying, because you cannot enjoy the river and swimming when you are sick.”I said, “You have understood my point. Whether I am sick or I am not sick, I don’t enjoy your history, your geography anyway. So when I am sick it is perfectly good, I can waste my sickness on your school and your education. For the remaining part of my life I am going to enjoy nature, to enjoy the stars, to play the flute, to sing songs, to go to the forest and to dance there among the dancing trees. I have made a clear-cut distinction.”And in my childhood I was rarely sick, so rarely present in the school. But you will be surprised, I was not present in school but they were giving me seventy-five percent attendance every year. They were very happy that I was somewhere else!Every principal of every school, college, every vice-chancellor of every university I was taught in, told me once or twice, “If you can go somewhere else – to the library, to the botanical garden…or the whole world is there. Just don’t go to your classroom, because it creates so much trouble for us. And I promise you that we will not prevent you from entering the examination because you have not attended enough.” Seventy-five percent was the right percentage of attendance, only then could you enter the examination. “Even if you don’t come at all, just appear at the examination hall and every paper will be ready and you will be allowed to sit.”I said, “This is such a good arrangement. I am happy outside, you are happy inside. But once in a while when I am not feeling well, I want to make it clear to you, I will not allow you or your college either to be in a state of well-being. If I am not feeling well, I am going to come. So pray to God that I never fall sick. That is your only protection!”When you are feeling joyous, this is the time to come in tune with existence. This is the time when you can love the trees, the moon, the sky. This is the time you can enter into yourself very easily, with no hindrance. Meditation is not for the suffering type.There are types…. There are a few people who are born with English faces. Seriousness is an inbuilt program in them. Leave those few people for the churches, because after all, priests also need to feed themselves, to clothe themselves. I don’t want to destroy their business completely. But ninety percent of their business has to be completely destroyed.And I will suggest to you also that whenever you are sick, go to the church, go to the synagogue. Spread all kinds of infections there, weep and cry. But when you are happy and joyous it is better to go to the mountains, it is better to climb a high tree and sit there silently. Sometimes one falls…I have many marks on my feet because so many times I have fallen from trees. But in my experience the farther away you are from gravitation, the easier it is to meditate. But the trouble is, the easier it is also to fall asleep. So just make a good arrangement, tie down…I learned slowly, that again and again falling I am going to have fractures. So I would tie myself to the tree, so that if I fell asleep at least I would be hanging, but I would not fall. But even hanging from a tree, with the beautiful fresh wind blowing is such a joy….Use your joyful moments in discovering the truth, in discovering yourself, and it will be a very easy thing. People have been discovering at wrong times, in wrong seasons, and against the current. My whole approach is, go with the current – no effort, just floating, not even swimming. There is no need.In water the gravitation of the earth is less, because water functions under a different law – levitation. That’s why in water you can pick up a big rock without any effort because the gravitation is not the same, but the moment you come out of the water you cannot hold that rock. You will be amazed how much difference it makes. The water takes much of the gravitation.But even on the earth, if you are joyful, in a mood of dancing, meditation is very easy. So it is up to you to make your meditation easy and successful, or difficult and unsuccessful.Paddy’s at the bar and he’s drunk so much that the bartender asks him to leave. Paddy insists that he is not drunk, and he will prove it.“See that cat coming in the door?” he says. “Well that cat has only one eye and that proves I am not drunk.”“You are drunker than I thought!” says the bartender. “That cat is not coming in, it’s going out.”A rich young girl finds that she has developed a passion for the smell of burning rubber. So she buys herself a sports car and satisfies her passion racing around country lanes. One day she passes a young man who is hitch-hiking and stops to pick him up. The hitch-hiker settles back in his seat, thinking that his luck has really changed.Suddenly the girl stamps her foot on the accelerator and drives full speed toward a steep cliff. At the last minute she puts her foot on the brakes and the car stops inches from the edge.“Can you smell that?” she asks her passenger enthusiastically.“Smell it?” sobs the man. “I’m sitting in it!”A pretty young farm girl has been to the market one day and is walking home to her farm after dark. Soon she meets one of the lads from the neighboring farm walking in the same direction. They walk together for a little while, and the girl says, “You know, I’m not sure a weak and defenseless girl like me should be walking with a big strong chap like you after dark.”The farm lad says nothing.A few minutes later she starts again, “I’m almost afraid to be alone in the dark with you like this. You might take advantage of me.”The boy laughs and says, “Here am I carrying a pitchfork and a chicken in one hand, a washtub in the other, and leading a goat. And you think I’m going to get ideas? No chance.”The girl thinks for a few seconds and says, “Well, I only thought that if you were to stick the pitchfork in the ground, tie the goat to it and put the chicken under the washtub, I would be in trouble.”A woman is on the fifth floor of a burning apartment building, screaming, “Help, save me!”The fire truck drives up to the building and a burly fireman is soon climbing up the extension ladder. As he approaches the woman he says, “It gives me great pleasure to save a pregnant woman.”Indignantly the woman replies, “But I’m not pregnant!”“Well lady,” replies the fireman, “you’re not saved yet!”Just be joyful. And life is so hilarious…all around. You have just to look joyfully and you will not find time for suffering and agony. In this beautiful life there is every possibility for you to become a great meditator. But you have to learn to see the joyous side of life. It is full of juice, full of laughter, and if you can also laugh with it, nobody can prevent your meditativeness. Meditativeness will come on its own accord, following your joy like a shadow.What is meditativeness?Just a silence, a dancing silence.Ruthie Finkelstein is lying on her deathbed. “Moishe,” she murmurs to her husband sitting beside the bed, “I must make a confession before I go. The fact is, I have been unfaithful to you.”“I know,” says Moishe quietly.“I don’t think you understand,” pleads Ruthie. “What I mean is that I have been with another man.”“Yes, I know that,” Moishe murmurs.“Not just once,” continues Ruthie, “but lots of times – in his office, in his house….”“Yes, I know that, dear,” says Moishe soothingly.“Even in this house, in this very bed!” cries Ruthie.“Yes, I know,” whispers Moishe. “That’s why I put rat poison in your tea.”Hymie Goldberg walks into an appliance store and asks the price of a remote-controlled TV“One dollar,” replies the clerk.“You’ve got to be kidding,” says Hymie.“Listen,” says the clerk, “do you want it or not?” Of course, Hymie gives him a dollar.On his way out of the store, he sees a big refrigerator. “How much for that?” asks Hymie.“Fifty cents,” replies the clerk.Hymie pulls out fifty cents and gives it to the clerk. “What the hell is going on here?” he asks.“Nothing is going on here,” replies the clerk. “But my boss is at my house with my wife and what he is doing to her, I am doing to his business.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When you look at me in discourse – whether or not you actually see me – I feel your love pouring out of you and penetrating to my heart. At first it feels a little scary because I feel very exposed, and then I love the feeling inside my heart. Can you talk about exposing oneself?You have raised one of the most fundamental questions. Each human being has to face it. The majority face it in a cowardly way by escaping from it, by forgetting it, by not looking at it. The very few spirits who are rebellious, courageous, and want to know their own essential being, the meaning and significance of their life, who don’t want to be here accidentally, but want to be a significant, creative participant in existence, they have to go through the agony of exposure. They cannot escape.Why has it become such an agony, such a suffering to expose oneself as one is? Because you have been told again and again that you are unworthy, that you are not acceptable, that you are not of any worth at all as you are. You will have to attain to respectability by following certain rules and regulations made by others. If you want some kind of dignity you have to become a puppet in the hands of others, because they decide what you should be, how you should act, and how not.From the very first moment a child is born this ugly education starts. I was present at one of my friends’ first childbirth. The woman had been a long acquaintance – she had studied with me, she had become a teacher with me – and this was going to be her first child. Even though the husband was against my presence – why should another person be present there? – she insisted. I had no idea that there had been a quarrel and a fight. Finally the doctors interfered and they said, “There is no harm. If her feeling is that she has found a man of grace and she would like her child to be seen by the same man whom she has respected….”On the surface everything looks beautiful, but as you go deeper into analysis things start changing their colors. The mother is even deciding what the child should see first, who he is going to have his first human encounter with. The mother is deciding that. And from such decisions start our whole education.Naturally, a strange calamity falls over the whole humanity. Nobody seems to be the right person. Everybody seems to be in the wrong place. Somebody else may be in the right place, but you are never in the right place. And the person you think is in the right place is not in the right place either; he is thinking somebody else is in the right place.This whole madness is the ultimate result of a wrong educational system, which does not accept you as you are in your naturalness, in your simplicity. You may not be a great leader…. In fact there is no need for great leaders. What have they done except made history to torture small children with? They have to remember their names, do the homework. What have all your great men done?And who are these great men? – mostly criminals. Either they themselves committed the crimes: people like Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah and Tamerlane…. Just these three people killed nearabout one hundred and twenty million people. And you don’t call them criminals; they are great leaders, great conquerors. There are others who have not committed crimes themselves, but have created the very source from which crimes arise.I have heard an ancient story…God had made the world. On the sixth day everything was complete, just one thing was missing – a moral code. So he went around to the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the people who lived on the drowned continent of Atlantis, and he asked them, “Do you want a commandment?”Everybody asked, “What is a commandment?” Somebody said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”The Egyptians said, “Then what shall we do? The whole life will lose interest! We don’t want any such commandment.”God was getting tired when he found Moses. He asked, “Do you want a commandment?”Just like a fundamentalist Jew, Moses asked, “How much?”God said, “Free!”He said, “Then I will have ten.”Those ten commandments are torturing Jews, Mohammedans, Christians. Although these people are not criminals, Moses or Jesus, they are sources of certain criminality. For example, all the religious leaders of the world have made celibacy one of the most moral acts. And it is one of the most immoral acts because it is unnatural.That which is unnatural cannot be moral.I was in Greece. Amrito is here, my sannyasin. She told me that the Greek Orthodox Church believes very fanatically in virginity.I said, “That must mean all the girls that are not married in Greece are virgins?”She laughed. She herself had been a beautiful girl, had been chosen as a beauty queen in Greece, had been working as a model. She said, “Don’t ask that. If you want to know, you cannot find a single virgin. This is simply a principle. And nobody ever inquires about how many virgins there are.” Now, to make virginity a moral precept, unknowingly you are creating criminals, guilty people, psychopaths, perverted people.In the nineteenth century in Europe it was absolutely necessary that you married a virgin girl. But sometimes a girl was a virgin, but the certificate that made her a virgin may have been lost. It is a very small certificate! Just riding on a horse, you can lose your virginity. Even riding on a bicycle you can lose your virginity – because it is a small, thin skin.It is such a small, thin layer of skin that it can be broken in any accident: you fall from a tree and you lose your virginity. That’s why…. I was always wondering why nobody allows girls to climb trees. Finally I found out myself that the real reason is – nobody talks about it, perhaps nobody knows about it – that climbing a tree is very dangerous for virginity. And once lost, it is lost forever.In Europe, in the nineteenth century, there were doctors who were selling virginity. They prepared thin pieces of skin and planted them in the right place. And it was a great profession, because almost every girl is going to lose it; it is not simple to protect it. Swimming in a pool you may lose it…Now, this made the girl unnecessarily feel immoral, unworthy, afraid, that sooner or later she is going to be found out. And how can she prove that she lost it when she was swimming? She has not done anything and the virginity is gone. It created guilt and it created criminals – those doctors who provided the virginity for a certain fee were the criminals. They were exploiting absolutely innocent women.You will not believe it, but not only does the virginity have to be there, after the first night of marriage the young husband has to show the bed sheet to his family and to his friends with blood on it. It is not necessarily true, even if the girl is a virgin and has not lost her virginity, that making love to her is going to bring blood. So she has even to supply the blood, too. Those doctors who were implanting virginity also gave the woman a small tube of blood, so she just could spill it over the bed. And this was a show, exhibition; the neighborhood would see – yes, that girl was a virgin.What is your business in it? In what way are you concerned with it? But because certain idiots have made virginity a moral concept, many more things are bound to develop by the side.Similarly, celibacy has created even more crime. It has created all kinds of perversions – homosexuality, sodomy. And the reason is not in the homosexuals, the reason is in your religions. They are preaching something which is unnatural. I challenge all the religions of the world, all their shankaracharyas and their imams and their popes and their rabbis, to come to a medical college and prove that they are celibate. Only a medical examination can give you a certificate saying whether you are celibate or not. You cannot be a celibate; it is such a stupid thing.It is as if some religion arises and makes it a point that to urinate is against God. It looks to be against God! It is not a very nice thing to do. But if some religion arises and says it is against God, there will immediately be people who will say, “We will never urinate.” And we see these people drinking water…then where is the water going?We don’t need to worry about their urination, but where is their water going? Once you have drunk water it has to find a way out of your organism. You cannot go on accumulating it – you will become a reservoir! And it will be a very strange, funny situation: reservoirs all around, carrying so much load. And anybody with a sense of humor can put a knife into them and the whole city will be flooded, people will be swimming!You eat food, you drink water, you breathe air; you do everything just as any other animal does. Whether you are celibate or not, you do the same things. Just on the question of celibacy you cannot be separate. You don’t even know what is happening inside you, how your sexual energy is created. It is created by your intake of air, oxygen, by your food, by your milk.Strangely, it happened that I was staying in a rest house with a shankaracharya. And I told him, “Celibacy is an absolutely unnatural idea. Only an impotent person can be celibate. If you are potent then you cannot be celibate. You tell me what you are, potent or impotent?”He said, “I am celibate.”I said, “Then I will take you to the hospital this very moment.”He said, “You seem to be a strange man. It is a question of ideology. Where does the hospital come into it?”I said, “It is not a question of ideology. Do you know how your sexual energy is created? Do you have any scripture in which it is described? Do you have any control over it – not to create it, to prevent it? You don’t have any control over it, just as you don’t have any control over your blood, you don’t have any control over your hair. Your organism has not left anything essential in the hands of your mind. And celibacy is part of your organism – the most important part. Biology cannot leave it in your hands.”He said, “I don’t want to be in unnecessary trouble.”I said, “Trouble or not, I can bring a doctor here.”He said, “But I don’t want to argue with you.”I said, “You are arguing, because you are saying that you are celibate.”Not a single religious person – there are thousands of monks: Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina – not a single monk has been to the people who can check whether he is celibate or not. But this ideal of celibacy has been created by very good people. They have not committed any crime – Mahavira or Gautam Buddha. They have not committed any crime, but they have created something which goes on creating immense crime.According to me, they have to take the responsibility for it. With absolute respect and humbleness I want to say it, that all your religious leaders are responsible for your perversions, your pathologies, your mind going berserk. And they are the people who have condemned you. They won’t allow you to accept yourself. That’s why you are afraid to expose yourself: nobody should know that you urinate, hide it.You are hiding yourself because everything in you has been condemned. I have been looking…is there anything in man which has not been condemned by one or other of the religions? I have not found a single thing. Everything is condemned.As long as my grandmother was alive, poor tomatoes were not allowed in the house, because Jainas believe in eating only vegetables; they are vegetarians. The tomato is also a vegetarian, but it looks like a meat eater. The color looks to be of the non-vegetarian food.I had not eaten in the night up to the age of eighteen, because for Jainas it is a sin to eat in the night, it is a crime. When for the first time I went to a picnic with my school friends to a nearby beautiful old castle…. They were all Hindus, so for them food was not a problem. And they were so much interested in exploring the whole castle, and it had so many beautiful points to explore…. I was feeling hungry and tired, but I could not say anything. Finally, in the night they all prepared food.Now a great question was before me – to commit the sin or not. The whole traditional education of my family was not to commit a sin; just one night’s hunger is not going to kill you. It takes thirty days even for the sickliest person to die if he remains hungry. For the healthy person it takes ninety days, just by starvation. So just one night and you are losing your paradise and all the beauties of paradise and falling into hellfire. It was not a simple question of eating or not eating, it was a great metaphysical question. My whole existence was in turmoil.I told the boys, “I am feeling hungry, but it is against my understanding, I cannot eat. I will have to suffer the whole night.”They said, “Are you mad? We will not tell anybody. Your family will never know, nobody will ever know.”I said, “That is not the question. Their knowing is not the question. I will know, and I will feel always guilty that I have committed a sin. Then I cannot expose myself, I cannot be read as a book – open, no secret.”But the hunger was there. The whole day being on the mountain was tiring, and the food they had prepared was so inviting. And they were all persuading me, “The whole night you will not be able to sleep.”I said, “That I know. Either way I am not going to sleep the whole night.”They said, “Why either way? Eat well and sleep! We eat every night and we sleep.” And they were right; that was their experience.Finally I got persuaded by my hunger, by their arguments. And I had not eaten much. To be safe I took just a small amount of food. I was not committing a very great sin – even God will forgive a boy of eighteen years committing a small sin. But that small sin could not allow me to sleep the whole night. I had to vomit continuously. By the morning, when I had thrown everything out, I could go to sleep just for two or three hours.Those boys could not understand it: “What kind of man are you? We all slept. We were so tired that we could not even dream. One needs some energy to dream too. And we were so utterly tired and so well fed that we slept. What were you doing?” They could not understand it. But I could understand that my psychology had been polluted, that my mind had been corrupted by those whom I loved.This corruption goes back to Mahavira. My whole night’s suffering on that mountain, Mahavira is responsible for. He created the idea that eating in the night is sin. And perhaps in his situation it was right, because there was no light, no electricity, no kerosene oil, so to eat in the night was not only irreligious, it was unhygienic too. And you can understand that with so many mosquitoes and all kinds of animals, to eat in the night, in the dark, was dangerous. Anything could fall into your food.But Mahavira was not aware that a situation was going to come when man would be able to create ways of having light after the sun has set. Now there is no need to be worried. But habits die hard, and habits which have been followed for thousands of years….I used to stay in the house of one of the richest men in the world, Sohanlal Dugar. He was a rare man, and just because of his rarity he fell in love with me. I was speaking in Jaipur. Jaipur was his home, but his business was in Calcutta. So most of the time he used to live in Calcutta and for a few days in his home in Jaipur.I was speaking in Jaipur and as I finished, an old man with a great turban…and I could not think that this man was one of the richest men in the world. He gave me a bundle of one-hundred-rupee notes.I said, “What are you doing?”He said, “I want to offer this to you.”But I said, “I don’t need it. If sometimes I need…just give me your address.”He said, “My address I will give to you on the condition that you accept this money.”I said, “But, money I have never accepted from anybody.” When I was saying this, tears started coming to the eyes of the old man. I said, “Why are you crying? You should be happy, this much money is saved. I should be crying – why are you crying?”He said, “Listen, I am a rich man as far as money is concerned, but I am a very poor man as far as the heart is concerned. I don’t know how to give love except by giving money. If you reject my money, you are rejecting me and my heart and I will never forgive you.” He said, “You can take it and burn it – that is not my concern – but don’t reject it.”And that’s exactly what I did. I took it from his hands – it must have been ten thousand rupees – and burned it just then and there.And he was very happy. He said, “You have followed your principle, I have followed my principle, we both are happy. But remember, now, whenever you come to Calcutta you have to be my guest.”So after that, for almost ten years I used to be his guest three or four times a year. His whole house was centrally air-conditioned, but he would sit with me at the dining table with a small bamboo hand-fan. I would be eating and he would be moving the bamboo fan.I told him, “What are you doing? You know perfectly well that the house is absolutely air-conditioned; there is not even a single mosquito here. It is so clean. There is no need.”He said, “But it is traditional for the host to sit and fan the guest while he is eating.”I said, “It may be traditional, but it should not be stupid. In these conditions it is becoming stupid.”He said, “You don’t understand. This air-conditioning, this house, everything can collapse, because I am a gambler. Today I am the richest man, tomorrow I might be a beggar. It has happened many times – up and down. But this bamboo fan will always be with me. I cannot depend on something which I can lose; I can depend on this fan.”I said, “You are giving a beautiful argument, but deep down you know and I know that it is just old habit. In the whole of Rajasthan, everywhere, this is the habit.”That night I became aware that you can corrupt the mind in any way. In fact any kind of ideas given to the mind are corrupting. You are telling the person, “This is right and this is wrong.” This is not love and this is not education.According to me, you have to tell your children, “Be alert, be aware. To be alert, to be aware, to be more conscious – of the consequences, of the implications – is the only morality. We don’t give you particulars, what is right and what is wrong, because situations change. What is right in one situation may be wrong in another situation. We give you only awareness, so you can find with the light of awareness what is wrong in a situation and what is right. But you should remain the center of your decision. The decision should not come from outside.” If the decision comes from outside…. that has created the problem.Everybody is afraid of exposing himself. What will people say? And everybody is trying to pose according to people’s ideas: what they want, what they like. If you want their respect you have to be a puppet, but then you cannot be real and authentic; you will be a hypocrite.And the hypocrite is certainly afraid of being exposed. If somebody takes away the curtain that you were putting all over your reality, you are going to be afraid. This is the situation.Not only you are in this situation, every human being is in this situation, because up to now the right human atmosphere has not been created on this planet.One of my friends was the oldest member of parliament. For sixty years he was a member of the parliament, without any discontinuity. His name was Dr. Govindas. He was second only to Winston Churchill; Winston Churchill had been in the parliament two years longer.I used to stay with him in New Delhi. He was a fanatic about cows – the Hindu fanatic mind…. And you cannot believe that a man of intelligence, a man who has a doctorate, a man who has been for sixty years a member of the parliament, was so fanatic that he would only drink the milk of a white cow.I said, “This is strange. Up to the cow I can understand, but a white cow?”He said, “Black is a symbol of evil and bad things.”I said, “A symbol is one thing, but just a patch of black on the cow will not make the milk black.”He said, “You don’t disturb my mind. I have followed this idea my whole life.”He used to take a cow everywhere he went, because who knows? Somewhere you may not find a purely white cow. Some spots on the cow…finished, religion is finished! And Hindus think that cow’s milk is the purest foodThe reality is that the more milk you drink, the more milk you use, the less is the possibility of your being celibate. Nobody even points out the fact that the milk of the cow is not produced by nature for man. It is produced for bulls, and certainly it has a thousandfold more sexuality in it than a woman’s milk.And you can see that no animal in the whole of existence goes on drinking milk their whole life. Just when the animal is small and cannot digest solid food, for a few weeks it depends on the mother and then it is free. It is strange that man is the only person on the whole planet who goes on drinking milk even when he can digest solid food. And it is thought in India that if somebody lives only on milk he becomes a saint. To me he becomes a bull! He is dangerous, he should be kept in chains. But people worship him.But perhaps worship is, in a very psychological way, chains. When you worship somebody, when so many people give you so much respect because you just drink milk – a great creative act! – the crowd and its respect become chains.But still, this man will have to find some perversion to release his sexuality. So every day newspapers are full of stories: some great saint has been found sexually misusing small children, somewhere a bishop is found….In America, the man who was most against me in Portland was the bishop of Portland. And he was continuously saying, in every sermon, that my presence in America would corrupt people. Just recently he was caught, and has confessed before the court that he has been using small boys and girls sexually, in the name of teaching them the Holy Bible. These are the people….Now, I have been looking at these things because the question has become very prominent. Even the person below the archbishop of England – only one step more and he can become the archbishop – he is saying, “Celibacy does not include homosexuality. You can be celibate and you can be homosexual; they do not in any way contradict each other. Celibacy is only against heterosexuality. The man should not contact the woman and the woman should not contact the man, but it has no implications….”And in a way he is right, because in no Christian books, scriptures, nobody has ever thought that homosexuality…. And then there are other kinds of sexuality – there is sodomy.In faraway places – in deserts, in mountains – when you cannot have a woman or a man, people start making love to animals. That is sodomy. Certainly celibacy cannot include sodomy. Sodomy is such a saintly word! And these people are coming up with these ideas now because they have to prove that they are really celibate.Monasteries are full of homosexuals. In one monastery in Athos there are one thousand people, and they have divided the monastery in two because five hundred people are homosexuals – not a small number. Half of the monastery is homosexual. And who knows about the other half, what they are doing?These people are made unnecessarily criminal, unnecessarily unnatural, guilty, condemned. Then everybody starts having a mask: don’t show your face, just show the face people want to see. And that’s how everybody is functioning. But there are moments when one would like to drop the face, the mask, and in these moments the problem arises.You are asking, “When you look at me in discourse – whether or not you actually see me – I feel your love pouring out of you and penetrating to my heart. At first it feels a little scary, because I feel very exposed, and then I love the feeling inside my heart.”Love is one of the things that forces you to expose yourself. You cannot cheat love; that is sacrilegious. That is the only authentic spirituality, not to cheat love. If you can cheat love then there is no hope for you, because love is the opportunity to expose yourself. Whatever garbage the society has poured on you, throw it away and be utterly nude in yourself, in total acceptance, respect and dignity.Love loves you, not your clothes.Love loves you, not your masks.And love certainly creates a great question: whether to choose the mask or to choose love. The mask is a miserable life. It has not given any joy to you, it has led you more and more toward the false. Love is the beginning of a new journey toward blissfulness. Don’t miss that moment. When love calls, say yes. And when love calls, move. Move beyond your so-called personality.So your problem is simple. First you will feel scared, afraid. You have been hiding behind this mask so long that you yourself have started believing in it. You have forgotten your own face; the mask has been there so long. It happens….In the second world war, for the first time ration cards were issued. One great American scientist, Edison, had to go…everybody had to go personally to register his name, family members, dependents and get the ration card. He had never been in such a situation. He was not a social being; otherwise he would not have been able to give to humanity one thousand inventions – a single man. Nobody else has done that much. Everything that you use – you don’t know – Thomas Alva Edison is behind it. Electricity, radio, anything that you are using; your whole life is filled with his contributions. But that meant he was hidden in his lab the whole day.This was the first time that he was standing outside in a queue under the sky. When his number came, as the queue became smaller and smaller and the clerk was facing him, and the clerk said, “Thomas Alva Edison,” he looked here and there…perhaps he is searching for somebody called Thomas Alva Edison. The clerk was also at a loss – certainly this man who is standing in the front cannot be Thomas Alva Edison. He was supposed to be, because that was the order of the queue. He shouted, “Thomas Alva Edison, your number has come!” No reply. The whole queue stood silent.One man looked at Thomas Alva Edison and said, “I think the first man who is standing in the queue is Thomas Alva Edison, because he lives just near my house.” The clerk said, “You seem to be a very strange man.”Edison said, “Strange? In fact for sixty years nobody has used my name. And do you think for sixty years you can remember? My colleagues call me professor, my students call me professor, and there is nobody who ever calls me Thomas Alva Edison. It seems this gentleman may be right, because far away, sixty years back…I can hear a small murmur, ‘Yes, Thomas Alva Edison. I have heard this name before.’”There is a limit. You can forget, your own falseness can become your reality. So when love strikes you like lightning it exposes for a moment your reality. Then the fear, “Should I throw away all the falseness and be myself and risk, whether I am respected or disrespected, condemned, blamed? Whatever happens, without thinking of these consequences, should I expose myself?”When love strikes you, it fills you with fear and also underneath with joy, with a feeling of love, because a moment has come into your life when you can change from the false to the real.As for the beginning part of your question, it is a little difficult for me to say. You are asking, “When you look at me in discourse – whether or not you actually see me – I feel your love pouring out of you.” When I am looking at you, I am simply looking. I am not seeing you. And particularly when I am speaking and I look at you, it is not possible for me – because I am no longer there, just a great emptiness responding to your heart, responding to your being. Yes, love is there showering on you.It has nothing to do with seeing you or not seeing you. Even when I am exactly seeing you, if you look into my eyes it is utter emptiness. Only out of that utter emptiness does love flow. Then it flows without any address. Then it simply flows for whomsoever is ready, receptive. It is available, it comes close to you; you can be filled with it or you can remain standing on the riverbank, thirsty.An Indian mystic, Kabir, used to sing a song. The title of the song is, The Fish Is Thirsty in the Ocean. That describes you. But there is no need, it is an unnecessary misery imposed upon yourself. Drop it!A little priest, a minister and a rabbi get together and talk about the issue of “When life begins.” The priest opens by saying, “I think that life begins at the precise moment the sperm fertilizes the egg.”The minister says, “Well, I think life begins at the moment the baby draws its first breath.”Then they both look at the rabbi, who says, “Well, I think life begins when the dog has died and the children have moved out of the house.”It all depends on you when life begins. It can begin right now – the dog need not die, the children need not move out. And what kind of life will that be when the dog has died and the children have moved out?I have heard about a court case – a divorce. A man of ninety and a woman of eighty-five wanted a divorce. The magistrate asked, “But how long have you been married?”They said, “Nearabout sixty years.”The magistrate said, “If you managed for sixty years, then what great crisis has suddenly come into your life that you want a divorce?”The man said, “There is no question of crisis. We were waiting for all of our children to die. Now we are free – no burden, no responsibility – so please help us to go on our own ways. Up to now whenever we raised the question of divorce, everybody said, ‘Think of the children!’ So for sixty years we have been thinking about the children. And those idiots went on living, went on living, went on living…. Just yesterday the last one died. Now we want to live our own lives. Enough thinking about children!”It is not a question of when that great moment of transformation will come into your life; it can come this very moment. The whole existence is ready, except you. You go on finding excuses, and then you become so expert in finding excuses that it becomes almost impossible for life, love, beauty, existence to penetrate you. You see and yet you don’t see. It is all around. It touches you, it comes with the wind, but it does not enter you; your doors, your windows are closed.This has nothing to do with your question…. I am as irrelevant as the existence. What is the point of a roseflower? Or what is the point of a deer or an elephant? Was God thinking of a circus? Elephants and camels…. these are all jokes!Paddy nearly has an accident at work, and he is so shocked that he decides to become a reformed Christian. He tells Maureen that he is going to give up sex for a month.With only a few days to go before the end of the month, Paddy and Maureen are shopping together in the local supermarket. Maureen leans over a tray of apples and Paddy gets a good look at her chest and nearly goes mad. A few minutes later, Paddy sees her thigh when her dress gets tangled in another customer’s shopping cart. In the confusion, he loses all control of himself, forgetting his vow of celibacy completely.A few days later, Paddy goes to confession and tells Father Murphy that he has broken his vow. The priest tries to console him, saying that after all the days and nights of his great effort, God and the church would forgive him.“I’m not worried about God and the church,” replies Paddy, “but Maureen and I feel terrible because they won’t let us back in the supermarket!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I feel a new kind of authority and love growing in me, a clarity about myself and love for myself and others. It feels like everybody is equal for me and I don't have a special affection toward anybody. I feel free and beautiful. And all these gifts are just given to me. I don't do anything to get them. Everything just happens.Can you say something about this?Your question is a little complicated. Perhaps you are not conscious of its implications. To say the truth hurts a little – and I cannot say anything else but the truth – so be prepared. These are the games mind goes on playing within itself. And slowly, slowly it starts believing in them as if they are real.You say, “I feel a new kind of authority and love growing in me.” The remainder of the question will reveal that you don’t understand the difference between authority and authoritativeness. The reason for me to take it for granted that you don’t understand is because you are putting authority and love together.Love knows no authority.It is authority, but it knows no authority. It never feels any authority. It is just a roseflower dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind…What does a poor flower think about authority? It is again the ego from the back door that gives you the sense of authority.Only one can be true – either your love can be true or your authority can be true. But these words have never been disassociated from each other, for the simple reason that the love and authority come from the same people: the mother is the authority and love, the father is the authority and love, the priest is the authority and love. They get entangled with each other. You have never entered deep enough to see that they are not only two absolutely separate phenomena, they are absolutely contradictory.The second thing: love does not grow. It is not grass! It is born suddenly, out of nowhere. You feel the song, the dance of love, and you are amazed. It does not come with any indication: “I am coming.” It simply comes whenever you are ready, whenever your meditation is ready, whenever your being is silent – it suddenly comes, and all your being dances. It has an authority, but not authority over others. It has an authority in the sense that it is your own experience. You can say, “I am not quoting scriptures, I am the scripture.”Ordinarily, authority is always a kind of domination. And authority is always derived from somebody else.Jesus derives his authority from God; otherwise he has no argument for what he is saying – just a villager’s statements. He gets the authority because these are the words coming to him from his father who is above in heaven. And then the whole train starts – pope after pope. This Polack pope seems to have forgotten to die. Polacks are Polacks; you can’t depend on their intelligence. Down through twenty centuries, popes have lived one year, six months, two years, at the most three years, but to get rid of this Polack is very difficult.From where does their authority come? From Jesus Christ. And all down the line – the cardinals, the bishops, the priests – they all derive their authority from above. It is not their own experience.I used to live in a neighborhood in Raipur, and a priest – a Catholic priest – also lived there. We used to go early in the morning for a walk. I was very new; he had no idea who I was. I suddenly took hold of his collar and asked him, “Tell me truly: Do you know God?”He said, “My God! This is a strange situation. So early in the morning, in the darkness – I can’t even see your face, who you are. I don’t know, but those who know, they have taught me.”I asked him, “Have you asked them if they know? The same reply would have been given to you. ‘Those who know have taught us.’” That is the authority derived from others. And when you derive your authority from others, you start being authoritative over others. You have to take revenge.If you have to believe in others, you will force others to believe in you. It is simply a question of who is more powerful.A beautiful story is related by a great Indian emperor, Akbar, in his autobiography, Akbarnamma. One day in the court – and he had in his court the wisest men of the land…. He was always in search of wise people. And certainly he had great poets, painters, musicians, philosophers – all kinds of geniuses. Just by his side was standing the court joker. Every court used to have a joker – just to keep things from becoming too hard, once in a while, to bring them down to a human level, to laughter…. It was a very basic insight into psychology.Birbal was the name of the joker. Akbar, just being playful and also wanting to know what was going to be the response of Birbal – he was a very responsive person, immediate – Akbar slapped him hard. Not waiting even for a moment to think what to do, Birbal slapped the person who was standing by his side.While this was going on, people were seeing…. It went all over the capital; everybody was slapping everybody else. And in the night, Akbar asked Birbal, “Why did you act in this way?”He said, “Wait, in the morning you will know the answer.” And in the morning he knew the answer. In the night when he entered the chambers of his queen, she slapped him.He said, “My God! You are also in this game? Who told you?”She said, “Nobody tells anybody. Things are moving, the whole city is in a deeply hilarious mood. The only question is that you should hit the person who is weaker than you. I was waiting for you.”Then he remembered that Birbal had said, “In the morning you will know.” Of course Birbal could not hit Akbar, the emperor – he was too powerful. Birbal was just a beautiful man, a wise man, but not powerful. He could hit only the one next down in rank. And once it was understood, who is to hit and who is to get the hit, the game started. It ended with the queen hitting Akbar. Akbar was a very honest man to write in his autobiography, “That moment I understood the great intelligence of Birbal. He had hit me, but in a very roundabout way.”Authority has two sides. One side is: be dominated by those who have power; they are authoritative over you. And the other side is: take revenge with those who are below you, who cannot react, who have to take your hit and still smile. The husband comes home and hits the wife because the boss was very angry, and it was nasty, but still he had to smile, falsely. He wanted to hit him, but that would be dangerous – the job would be lost.The Italian consul who was here…when he was asked, “Why are you afraid of meeting Osho with somebody present, taking notes or recording – whatever you prefer?” he said, “Do you want me to lose my job?” I laughed when I heard this.I said, “I will make it certain that he loses his job.” Now it is all over the world in the newspapers, in Italy and everywhere. It would have been better if he had come and met me. His job is gone.People are living in a hierarchy. Somebody is higher than you, somebody is lower than you.One Indian saint – I should call him a so-called saint…all saints are so-called, so that does not matter. He was teaching, and I was present. He was teaching that to be contented, one fundamental rule has to be remembered: “Always look down. Look how people are suffering. Look, somebody is blind; look, somebody is crippled; look, somebody is dying. You are in a far better position. That will give you consolation and contentment.”I had to stop him. I said, “What you are saying is absolutely stupid, because a man who looks down cannot avoid looking up. There are people who are in higher posts, having more money, more power, more prestige. Do you think he has to look continuously toward the blind, the beggars? Mind does not function like that. Mind looks at both sides. And this kind of contentment…what are you going to say to the man who is blind? Tell him, ‘At least you are alive, you are not dead. Look, many are in their graves, but you are out of the grave’? Where will this stupid logic lead?”Just a few days ago, a very grumpy, negative type of mind was dying. His friends were around, and of course this was the greatest chance for him to show his negativity, sadness, misery: he has been treated by the world very badly; he cannot forgive this world. If he meets God, he is going to have a good talk with him.Then somebody said, “Cool down, at least you have one thing positive – that is AIDS. Everything else is negative. Look at the positive and be happy!”People have been told continuously to look at the positive and just ignore the negative. But by your ignoring, it does not disappear. It is there, and any moment it can explode. So you cannot have authority in this way – looking to those who are unfortunately lower than you in any area of life – because the superior ones are also there. They will make you inferior and you will feel hurt.This is a sick kind of authoritativeness. It can even become aggressive. The politicians, the criminals, the generals – they become aggressive. They want to prove actually that they have authority. They can kill millions of people, but even by killing millions of people you don’t become superior. You remain the same, just you become the ugliest creature on the earth.So first you have to understand all these nuances of authority. Yes, there is an authority which is not felt. That is the authority of love. But it is not felt, it is simply there. It does not dominate anybody, it is not superior to anybody, it is just enjoying the tremendous gift of life from the very sources. This authority will give you humbleness, not turn you into an arrogant egoist. These are the checking points: if your authority makes you humble, loving, a nobody.And you are asking, “…a clarity about myself, and love for myself and others.” You are really confused. First you say, “Love is growing.” It is not a crop. It is just a diamond you find in your clarity, in your silence, radiating. Secondly, you are saying that the love that is growing is for “myself and others.” Love knows no division: “myself and others.” Love is an experience in which duality disappears. You simply feel one, in tune with the music of the whole.“It feels,” you say, “like everybody is equal for me.” Now, I suspect something is hidden in this which is sick. “It feels like everybody is equal for me.” Nobody is equal. Equality is one of the most wrongly conceived ideas, which has created all kinds of communisms, socialisms, anarchisms. They are all based on the foundation of equality. Even people who are not communist don’t have the guts to say that equality does not exist. It has become almost ingrained in everybody’s mind.I want you to know that everybody is unique, not equal. And uniqueness gives a totally different dimension. A rosebush is not equal to the bamboos reaching to the stars. In what way is it equal? A rose is a rose, a lotus is a lotus; there is no question of equality.I am not saying that they are unequal, I am simply saying they are not equal. That is their dignity. They should rejoice, because they are simply themselves, there is nobody else to be compared with. These ideas of equality, inequality…all are comparisons. And in existence everything is so unique, you cannot compare. But I can see just between the lines…You say, “It feels like everybody is equal for me.” Do you see the point? You want everybody to be equal to you. The president of a country, the prime minister of a country, the king of a country, the queen of a country – you would like them all to be equal to you.It is not strange that two ideas have gripped the human heart more deeply than anything else. One is that of equality, because that gives you a feeling that now there is no need to prove…all are equal. And deep down you know that you are superior, because you know that all are equal – all are not knowing. In your knowledge of equality you in a certain way satisfy your superiority.And strangely, both the ideas have gripped humanity. Half of the world is communist – equality has not happened. Equality cannot happen; equality is not possible. It is against nature. You are not built for it. And it is good; otherwise, just to see equal faces, equal people would be so boring. The differences create a variety and a life with color and rainbows.The second idea is that poverty has something spiritual. Both, strangely, were created by Christianity. Jesus was not crucified because he was teaching a great philosophy or was against the tradition or was in any way dangerous. He was crucified because he consoled the poor: “You are the chosen people of God and you will enter paradise. Even a camel can enter through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot enter paradise.” This was the reason he was crucified. It was nothing to do with religion. But this was also the reason that the poor became converted to Christianity, because he was the only messiah who was giving them a free ticket to paradise. Just being poor is enough.Christianity has given many diseases to the world. One is enhancing poverty, making poverty something spiritual. It is not spiritual. It is simply our stupidity that we are poor; otherwise everything can be comfortably settled, without any poverty, without any beggars. But rather than looking at the roots, they started talking about equality. Have you seen two persons equal? – in any way? Even twins are not exactly equal. Their parents recognize one from the other.One man married a woman who was a twin. A friend asked him, “It must be a very difficult job to figure out who is your wife.”He said, “This is giving me such great joy, because there is no need to bother about who is my wife. I have two wives, and a clear-cut excuse that it is very difficult to distinguish who is who. And neither do they speak, because it would look awkward – ‘Why did you not stop him?’”Even one-egg twins have small differences. About others the differences are great. And the greater the differences are, the more unique you are – but not equal. I am not saying you are unequal, remember, I am simply denying the whole philosophy of equality. Instead I am giving you a new idea of uniqueness which is far more beautiful. It accepts everybody.Equality is something idiotic.In Greek mythology there is a story…. A king was a little crazy. He had made a beautiful guest house with a golden bed, but only a few guests ever stayed in his guest house, and they never came out alive, because his principle was that the guest had to fit with the bed. Now, this is a strange idea. And he was a powerful man; people were standing there with swords to fit the guest. If his head was too long, it was cut – what is the need of it? If you were too short, then traction…pull him from both sides. Sometimes legs would come off. Until the guest was completely comfortable, the king remained in the room.Naturally, the guest disappeared. Slowly, slowly people became suspicious. What happens? Whoever becomes a guest never comes out of the palace. Some servant leaked the message, “Nobody should ever come, because that bed is not made for man. That bed is made as a piece of art, and man has to fit to it.” Guests stopped coming to the palace; otherwise they used to enjoy the palatial pleasures. But by the first night everything was finished!Equality is something similar. Do you think you are equal in intelligence to Albert Einstein? Or even with the man who proclaimed the philosophy of equality, Karl Marx? Do you think you are equal to him?I have met many communists, and I have asked them, “Have you read Das Kapital?” – Karl Marx’s great contribution. But it is so complicated and so voluminous that they have a copy of it, just as every Christian has a Bible and every Hindu a Gita and every Mohammedan a Koran. It is the holy Das Kapital, but nobody reads it.You cannot read it. The argumentation is very complicated. And the man worked his whole life, doing nothing but sitting in the British Museum consulting books. Before the museum was opened, he was always present before the door. And when the museum was closed, he was physically forced to leave. Sometimes while reading or writing complicated philosophical questions he became unconscious, so an ambulance was called.Do you think you are equal to Gautam Buddha? Drop the idea of being equal. That simply shows you are deep down feeling the unequality. To cover it, you have come with a beautiful mask of equality. Learn a new language, a new grammar, a new manifesto, of uniqueness. That gives credit and dignity to every human being, whatever he is doing. He may be making shoes, he may be a carpenter, he may be a scientist, he may be anyone; it does not matter. But what he is doing has his own touch, his own individual flavor, his own creativity, his own signature.But your feeling does not look right. “It feels like everybody is equal for me and I don’t have a special affection toward anybody.” It would have been better to say, “I have a special affection for everybody.” Why fall into the negative? It is a protective mask – you are afraid of love. A special affection for anybody means trouble. It is better to keep out of trouble and convince yourself that you don’t have any special love for anybody. But this will shrink you. And just a moment before you were saying, “My love is growing toward myself and toward others.”Love need not be more or less. It is just a rain cloud. It showers on mountains, on trees, on streets, on people, not because these are its special favorites, but because it is too full of rain power, too full of rainwater. It has to unburden itself, so it does not matter who helps it to be unburdened.You are saying, “I am free and beautiful.” Free from what? You are not even free from the idea of beautiful. And who gives you this idea of beautiful? Your mirror? Because you don’t have any special affection toward anybody? I don’t think such a person will get special affection from anybody else either – only a mirror. You can purchase a good mirror, and whenever you are feeling a little suspicious….Women keep small mirrors in their bags. The moment they start feeling suspicious about whether they are beautiful or not, immediately they look into the mirror and they say, “Everything is good.”“And all these gifts are just given to me.” They must be given by the mirror. “I don’t do anything to get them.” Obviously – just standing before a mirror is enough. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to persuade the mirror and you don’t have to tell the mirror, “I love you very much. I really, really love you.”“Everything just happens. Can you say something about this?” I can say only one thing, that you are not grateful. If everything happens and if it is authentic, following it will come a deep gratitude. That gratitude is not in your question anywhere. And gratitude is religiousness, gratitude is the only prayer. All prayers are just man-made. Gratitude is not a word, it is a deep feeling in the very center of your being.If that gratitude is felt, everything is right; then whatever I have said, don’t take any note of it. But if gratitude is not there, then what I have said, ponder over it. Meditate more and don’t get into such stupid ideas.To me, gratitude is the greatest experience that you can have – not to God, not to me, not to anybody in particular…simple gratitude for this whole existence. These birds, these beautiful trees, this whole existence is so beautiful that not to feel gratitude about it is to remain blind, ignorant, unaware.The function of meditation is to pull you out of your blindness and make you aware of this tremendous splendor that is spread all over.A shy young man with a fine voice is asked to take part in the local play. But he tries to refuse, saying that he always gets embarrassed under such circumstances.He is assured it will be very simple, and he will only have one line to say: “I come to snatch a kiss, and dart into the fray. Hark! I hear a pistol shot.” And then walk offstage.At the performance, he comes on-stage, very embarrassed already by the bright green tights he has been forced to put on at the last minute, and becomes completely flustered at the sight of the beautiful heroine lying on the garden seat, in a white gown, awaiting him.He clears his throat and announces, “I come here to kiss your snatch, no! snatch a kiss, and fart into the fray – I mean, dart into the fray! Hark! I hear a shistol pot, no! oh shit! Yes shit! Shit on you all! I never wanted to be in this damned play anyway!”Don’t take it seriously. To live is to be playful, and with this playfulness, prayer is bound to happen. And particularly in Pune you should be very alert, calm and quiet…A sannyasin asks an Indian in a chai shop for information. He says, “Excuse me, where can I buy some shampoo?”The chaiwallah says, “You are from which country?”“Australia,” says the sannyasin.“America?” queries the Indian.“Not America – Australia!”“England? Germany?…good. You are married?”“Not married,” says the swami. “But where can I buy some shampoo?”“What you want?” asks the Indian.“Shampoo!” cries the sannyasin.“For what you want this?” inquires the Indian.“To wash my balls!” snaps the sannyasin. “What do you think?”“Oh yes,” says the Indian, “you are a tourist or you are coming for study?”“I want to buy some shampoo. Do you know where I can buy some?”“What? What you want?” says the Indian casually.“Shampoo!” screams the sannyasin.“Oh yes, you can buy,” replies the Indian.“But where can I buy it?” the sannyasin asks hopefully.“In shop you can buy,” answers the Indian.“Yes, but which shop?” pleads the sannyasin.“What you want?” asks the Indian.In desperation the sannyasin screams, “I want some fucking shampoo!”“No!” shouts the Indian, standing up, “no fucking here!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,To the Western world the terms “freedom” and “the master” are virtually mutually exclusive; for those who have met you this is wildly inaccurate. How do you redefine “freedom” and “the master” for the western understanding?Vadan and Iti, the Western world has not come in contact with the tremendous reality that happens in the meeting of a master and a disciple. Of course, it is not visible. It is just like love, but far greater and far deeper and far more mysterious.The West has known saints and followers. The saints demand surrender, the saints demand faith. And the moment you become faithful, you are no more; your whole individuality has been erased. Then you are a Christian and you are a Jew, but you are not you. The phenomenon of the master and the disciple happened in the East in its golden days, when there were people like Lao Tzu and Zarathustra and Gautam Buddha. They created a totally new kind of relationship.Everybody cannot paint like a Picasso; neither can everybody be a Michelangelo. The West has missed having a Gautam Buddha. Jesus is not at all a comparison to him. Jesus is simply a Jew, believing in all the Jewish dogmas. He is faithful – in fact, a little too much. Gautam Buddha is a rebel; he is not a follower of anyone. Neither is Lao Tzu a follower of anyone.They don’t have any scriptures, they don’t have any belief systems. They have searched on their own, alone – risking, because they are moving away from the crowd on the lonely path, not knowing where this journey is going to end, but trusting their heart, experiencing small symbolic indications that peace is growing, that love is flowering, that a new fragrance has come to their being, that their eyes are no longer full of dust, of the past…. A tremendous clarity and transparency and they know they are on the right path. There is no guide. And you will not meet anybody on the path to inquire how far the destination is.It is a flight from the alone to the alone. But once a man finds a truth on his own, naturally he becomes aware that no organized religion is needed – it is a hindrance – that no priest, no mediators are needed; they will not allow you to reach to the truth. Such a man, who has found the truth, becomes the master. The difference is subtle and has to be understood. The disciple is not a follower; the disciple has simply fallen in love. You don’t call lovers followers. Something has clicked in his being, in the presence of someone.It is not a question of him being convinced about his ideas. It is not a conviction, it is not a conversion, it is a transformation. The moment a seeker comes in contact with one who has found, a great synchronicity happens. Looking into each others’ eyes, without saying a word, something that they have never dreamt of suddenly becomes the greatest reality.It is not belief, because belief is always in philosophies, in ideologies. It is not faith, because faith is in fictions for which nobody can find an argument or evidence – it is trust. What relates the master to the disciple is trust. Trust is the highest flowering of love. And how can love make anyone a slave? The very fact that it is love that joins the master and the disciple is enough indication that the master will prepare every possibility for the disciple’s freedom; otherwise, he will be betraying love and no master can betray love.Love is the ultimate reality. He has to fulfill it in his actions, in his words, in his relations, in his silences. Whatever he does, he has to fulfill only one thing: that is his love. And a person groping in the dark, a disciple, has come to him: only a priest can exploit him, a politician can exploit him. They are in search of followers – both the priest and the politician.The politician and the priest are agreed on one point, that they need followers; only then can they become somebody. And they have divided their territories: the politician has taken the mundane world and the priest the spiritual. Between the two of them, they have made the whole of humanity slaves. They have destroyed everybody’s freedom.The greatest contribution has come from a few masters who managed not only their own freedom but also the freedom of those who loved them. It is simply inconceivable…. If you love me, how can I enslave you? If you love me, then I will rejoice only in your freedom. When I see you opening your wings into the sky toward the unknown, the far away, the mysterious…that will be my joy; not that you are tethered to a certain dogma, creed, cult, religion, philosophy. These are all different names of chains, manufactured by different kinds of people. But their purpose is the same.Because the West has not known masters, it has known popes, it has known prophets, it has known saviors, it has known saints. It is absolutely unaware that there is a dimension it has missed. And that dimension is the most valuable dimension. Because it has missed it, a great misunderstanding has arisen.It happens…you know the beautiful parable of Aesop. A fox is trying, jumping as hard as possible, to reach the beautiful, ripe grapes hanging just above his head. But his jump is smaller than the height of the grapes. Tired, perspiring, having fallen many times, he looks around to see if anybody is watching.A small rabbit, just hiding in a small bush, was watching. This was dangerous, this rabbit would spread the news all over. The fox walked away from the grapes. The rabbit followed and asked, “Uncle, just one question. What happened? Why could you not reach the grapes?”The fox was very angry. He said, “I suspected, the moment I saw you, that you were going to create rumors about me. I have not chosen to take those grapes because they are not ripe. And if I hear anybody talking about those grapes, I will kill you, because you are the only witness.”It is a small parable, but it contains immense meaning: that which you cannot reach you start condemning – the grapes are not ripe.Vadan and Iti are asking, “To the Western world the terms ‘freedom’ and ‘the master’ are virtually mutually exclusive; for those who have met you this is wildly inaccurate. How do you redefine ‘freedom’ and ‘the master’ for the Western understanding?”The word master creates confusion. It gives you the idea that you have become a slave, somebody has become your master. In the East, the word is used in the sense that you have become master of yourself, that you are no longer a slave, that you have attained freedom. Different languages, grown in different climates by different people, different experiences, are bound to create such kinds of confusion.To be master of oneself has never been a goal in the Western consciousness – it has always been how to conquer others, how to be a master of others. It is difficult to translate many Eastern words into Western language. The same difficulty is there if you want to translate quantum physics into Eastern languages; you will not find the right words, because before language comes in, the experience has to be there. Experience creates language.And if you try, very funny things are bound to happen. The eastern word for master is acharya. The word acharya means one who lives his life authentically, according to his own consciousness and awareness. And if you come close to such a person, what can he give to you? Being with him, you will learn only one thing: how to live in freedom, awareness, in deep integrity and dignity. We are using the word master for acharya.The word disciple is more fortunate, because the eastern word shishya and the word disciple have exactly the same meanings – for different reasons, but the meanings are the same. The disciple is one who is trying to learn something. The root meaning of the word disciple is the same as the root meaning of the word discipline. It means, preparing yourself to learn, to understand. It is perfectly good as it is; it can be used.As far as the word master is concerned…. The disciple has just fallen in love with the man and wants to learn the same freedom, the same sincerity, the same integrity, the same height of consciousness. The question of surrender does not arise, and the question of belief does not arise. In the presence of the master, in the climate of the master, disciples start growing into new dimensions, which they did not know they were carrying within themselves as potentials.The master does not give them anything except his love – that too it cannot be said he gives. It is simply showering, just the way the sun showers its rays on all the flowers, on all the birds, on all the animals; whoever comes close to the master is showered with love.If you are searching, if you are ready to learn, if you are not already learned, if you are not already prejudiced, if you are not already faithful, if you have not sold your soul already to some theology, to some religion, to some ideology, then just being close to the master, something starts transpiring.It is a transmission of the lamp. That’s how it has been known in the East: a transmission of light from one heart, which has come to its own fire, to another heart which is groping in darkness.Just coming closer…. Think of two candles, one lit and one unlit, coming closer and closer. A moment comes when you will be suddenly amazed – both candles are lit. The flame has jumped to the other candle. Just a certain proximity…. Love creates that proximity, and the flame jumps from one heart to another heart. There is no question of anybody surrendering, there is no question of anybody believing.But your question is significant, because even in the East you will not ordinarily find the master I am defining. The East has fallen deep into darkness. The days of Gautam Buddha are no longer a reality, but just a beautiful memory, a dream that perhaps happened or perhaps somebody dreamt.One morning a great king, Prasenjita, came to Gautam Buddha. He had in one of his hands a beautiful lotus flower and in the other hand one of the most precious diamonds of those days. He had come because his wife was persistent, “When Gautam Buddha is here, you waste your time with idiots, talking about unnecessary things”.From her very childhood she had been going to Gautam Buddha; then she got married. Prasenjita had no inclination of that kind but because she was so insistent he said, “It is worth at least one visit to go and see what kind of man this is.” But he was a man of very great ego, so he took out the most precious diamond from his treasure to present to Gautam Buddha.He did not want to go there just as an ordinary man. Everybody had to know…. In fact he wanted everybody to know, “Who is greater – Gautam Buddha or Prasenjita?” That diamond was so precious that many fights had happened, wars had happened over it.His wife laughed and she said, “You are absolutely unaware of the man I’m taking you to. It is better that you take a flower rather than a stone to present to him.” He could not understand, but he said, “There is no harm, I can take both. Let us see.”When he reached there, he offered his diamond, which he was carrying in one of his hands, and Buddha said simply, “Drop it!” Naturally, what can you do? He dropped it. He thought that perhaps his wife was right. In the other hand he was carrying the lotus, and as he tried to offer the lotus, Buddha said, “Drop it!”He dropped that too, and became a little afraid: the man seems to be insane, but ten thousand disciples…. And he stood there thinking that the people must be thinking he is stupid. And Buddha said the third time, “Don’t you listen to me? Drop it!!” Prasenjita said, “He is really gone. Now I have dropped the diamond, I have dropped the lotus; now I don’t have anything.”And at that very moment, Sariputta, an old disciple of Gautam Buddha, started laughing. His laughter turned Prasenjita toward him, and he asked him, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “You don’t understand the language. He is not saying drop the diamond, he is not saying drop the lotus. He is saying drop yourself, drop the ego. You can have the diamond and you can have the lotus, but drop the ego. Don’t take it back.”Those were beautiful days. Suddenly a new sky opened to Prasenjita. He dropped himself at Gautam Buddha’s feet in utter humbleness, and he never left. He became part of the great caravan that used to follow Gautam Buddha. He forgot all about his kingdom, forgot about everything. The only thing that remained was this beautiful man, this tremendous grace, this invisible magnetism, these eyes and this silence. And he was gripped by all this.It is not a question of belief. It is not a question of conversion, argumentation, it is a question of the highest quality of love.It is rare to find a master today, and there are many pretenders. One of the things that can be said about the pretenders is that you can recognize them immediately. The moment they ask you to believe in anything, the moment they ask you to follow a certain rule, regulation, the moment they ask you to have faith in them…never doubt, never question, have indubitable faith – these are the indications of the pretenders. Wherever you find these, escape from the place as fast as you can.But these people are all over the world, not only in the West but in the East too. It is very rare that you come across a master who gives you dignity, who gives you love, who gives you freedom; who does not create any bondage for you, and who does not make any contract, and who does not want you to be a shadow of him – he wants you to be yourself. The moment you can find a man like this, the greatest moment of your life has arrived. Don’t miss it. Pretenders are many, but authentic masters are immensely rare.It is unfortunate of our age, of our times, that we have forgotten a certain dimension completely – not only in the West. In the West they never discovered it, but in the East we discovered it and lost it. And if there are no more masters who have attained to their ultimate potential, who have become a god unto themselves, then it is very difficult for disciples who are groping in darkness, in blindness, in all kinds of diversions, to find their own dignity, their own self.My effort here is not to create disciples – that is just the preface – but to create masters, as many masters as possible. The world needs immensely, urgently, many people of awareness, of love, of freedom, of sincerity. Only these people can create a certain spiritual atmosphere that can prevent this world from being destroyed by the suicidal forces – which are very powerful, but not more powerful than love.Osho,Is it possible for a master to take the pain of his disciples in helping them to understand their enlightenment, and in the process cause his body to become sick?It is possible for a master to take the pain of his disciples in helping them to understand their enlightenment, and in the process cause his body to become sick. Theoretically it is possible, but practically it is not.When I say, theoretically it is possible, I mean, there is no barrier in its happening. But the problem is that the moment the master becomes enlightened, his grip over his own body comes to the minimum. Most of the people who have become enlightened have died either immediately or within a few minutes or a few hours. The experience is so great, and the shock to the system of the body is unabsorbable. Out of thousands, perhaps a few have survived. And there are reasons why they survived.But they suffered tremendously from sicknesses. These are not sicknesses taken away from disciples, these are sicknesses intrinsic to the experience of enlightenment. Enlightenment means suddenly becoming aware that you are not the body, and a distance is created. The old identity that, “I am the body,” was keeping you together. You start falling apart. Mostly, the shock is so much that people have died.But it has not been discussed because to discuss it…. People have thought, “Rarely does somebody become interested in enlightenment. And if you tell them that enlightenment means that you will have to suffer afterward, then anybody will simply say, ‘Then why should we become enlightened? We are good as we are.’” That part has not been disclosed. But I don’t want to keep anything secret, because I know my people can die celebrating, laughing, rejoicing. Death is not a fear to them.Just today, Anubuddha was massaging me, because my hand has been in terrible pain for many weeks. He said, “You seem to be aware of every pain point, wherever I touch. I have never seen anybody….” And he is our best body worker – very sensitive, very alert, very loving, and very successful.His work is that ordinary people, who are identified with the body, should become more aware, if there is some pain or not. “But you are not identified with the body. Then how do you become aware? And so minutely?” Because I go on telling him, “This is the right point, this is where you should work.” Nobody may have told him before, because you don’t tell the body worker – he is the expert, not you.And I go on telling him, “You missed a point just now.” And he has to go back and he finds it. So he was asking…. I told him, “After the massage.” But then I forgot, so I said, “It is better to tell it now.”Once you are enlightened, a distance starts creating itself between you and your identity with the body. That does not mean that death is inevitable. It only means that now you will not be able to control the body in the same way you used to control it in the past. But it does not prevent your awareness; it gives you more awareness. You become a witness.Just as he is working on my body…for him it is only guess work, whether some point is a pain point or not. To me it is not guess work; I am watching from within that it is a pain point.Awareness comes with enlightenment, but awareness brings its own problems. Ramakrishna died of cancer, Maharishi Raman died of cancer, J. Krishnamurti suffered for forty years continuously with a terrific migraine. The migraine was so much, twenty-four hours a day, that he said, “Sometimes I feel like hitting my head against the wall and crushing it. The pain is unbearable.”Your question is created by the disciples, because disciples cannot understand – “J. Krishnamurti suffering from migraine? No, it cannot be. There must be some hidden reason. He must have taken the migraines of many, many disciples.” And then they feel satisfied – a right explanation has been found.Ramakrishna suffered from cancer, and his disciples go on writing that he had taken the cancer of some disciple. But even if you take the cancer of some disciple, that disciple is not going to become enlightened, so what is the point? The poor fellow was suffering with cancer. At least there was something – you have taken even that.In fact, if your body sicknesses can be taken by enlightened people, you will not think of becoming enlightened. It is better to be unenlightened and let the enlightened people take care of your sicknesses, and meanwhile enjoy – unless accidentally you become enlightened, because then you cannot go back. That’s what I mean when I say, theoretically it is possible. That needs some explanation.You have two words in English, sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is when you feel superficially: somebody is miserable, somebody is sick and you feel sympathetic. You sit by the side, cry a little and then go on to the movies. What else to do? Your eyes are more clean, and now…. Empathy means that you become so one with the person that sicknesses or anything can be transferred.It happened in Ramakrishna’s life. And I take Ramakrishna’s story because others are very ancient, maybe just parables. Ramakrishna’s was just in the last century. And there were hundreds of eye-witnesses, reports and not a single denial of the fact, what had happened.Ramakrishna was going in the Ganges in a boat to the other side – a few disciples were with him. Suddenly he started saying, “Don’t beat me, don’t beat me, it hurts! I say don’t beat me!” And tears started coming to his eyes. And the disciples said, “But nobody is beating you. Is this a new game you are playing? We have seen many things you have done, but this is absolutely new.”But he was really crying and weeping and shouting, “Help me, save me! They will kill me!” The disciples said, “But what should we do? Because nobody is beating you, nobody is killing you.”When they reached the other shore, they found a sudra – one of the untouchables, the lowest Hindu category of people, who are not treated like human beings – was being beaten by his master, by his owner, because he had made some mistake. That man was half nude, and there was blood on his back and lines from the lashes.Ramakrishna’s people suddenly took away his shirt, and they could not believe it – the backs were both exactly the same: blood oozing…. And Ramakrishna said, “I was telling you, but you did not listen. They were beating me.”Then they looked at that man who was lying almost unconscious. He was a sudra but for Ramakrishna this stupid and criminal categorization of society did not exist. That sudra used to come to Ramakrishna, he was one of his devotees. Even Ramakrishna’s own people used to say, “This sudra should not be allowed.”Ramakrishna said, “Then I should not be allowed either, because I don’t see any difference. Everybody is born a sudra. Then if he becomes enlightened he can be a brahmin. If he becomes a warrior, he can be a kshatriya. If he becomes a businessman, he can be a Vaishya. And if he remains in the lower kind of work – shoemaker, butcher, fisherman – then he should be a sudra. But as far as birth is concerned, everybody is born a sudra. It is the lifestyle and the raising of consciousness that can make a difference.”But this is not the definition of the Hindus, it is not the definition of Manusmriti, the Hindu holy scripture that divides society into four classes. According to the scripture, everybody is born as a brahmin or as a kshatriya or as a sudra or as a Vaishya. It is not action, it is birth that decides. Neither Mahavira believed it, nor Gautam Buddha believed it, nor Ramakrishna.There was so much disturbance that Ramakrishna told the sudra, “When nobody is there…. By the evening all these people go away” – he used to live outside Calcutta, near the Ganges – “and you can come then. You live on the other side, so if you cannot come, I can come. We can have a little chit-chat. And you play the flute so beautifully…you can play the flute.”The man was immensely in love with Ramakrishna and Ramakrishna showered his whole heart on him. What happened on that day was empathy: so much at-one-ment that the same experience starts happening to both persons. That’s why I say, theoretically it is possible. And once in a while it has happened, not because consciously enlightened people take other people’s sicknesses and diseases on themselves, but accidentally, just like in the case of Ramakrishna.The reality is that the enlightened person is somehow pulling together his body. He has lost all desires, all ambitions. He has no impetus for tomorrow. Even to breathe one more breath he has no reason for. So suddenly a great gap goes on growing. Awareness becomes more and more clean and clear, he can witness his own body from inside, but a witness is only a witness; he cannot do anything.So all these stories that are being spread around, that some master took away a disease, are just an explanation to protect the so-called master. But how can a master fall sick? In fact, the master can fall sick more than anybody else, because he has separated himself from his body. The old clinging, the old grip is gone. Now it is a miracle that he goes on living for a few days. Hence he lives in a very calculated way.You can see me: I live in such a calculated way that all that I do is speak to you. I have saved all my breath just to give you a sense of the eternal and an experience of the ultimate. And mostly I am asleep. You cannot find a more lazy man in the world.Just today my secretary, Hasya, was saying, “I am sending the information to The Guinness Book Of Records that my master has four hundred books to his name.” And she was asking me other things also. I wanted to tell her, but I thought it was better not to say, that the miracle is that this man sleeps almost twenty hours a day and has managed four hundred books…. And he is the laziest man in the world – about that you can be certain; nobody can compete with me. You can send a challenge, to see if there is anybody.Just a few days before, one sannyasin had asked that when I look at her she feels so loved, can I wink my eye? I said, “In my whole life I have not winked my eye. I can close both my eyes or I can open both.” In fact, I am not doing the opening and closing, it happens on its own. But I don’t think that it can happen on its own that one remains closed and one open. That is not possible.Sitting in my dark room, I tried – perhaps…. But each time either both are open or both are closed – and I am not doing anything, they are going on their own!And then she said, “At least you can move your big toe.” I said, “It is possible – theoretically possible, but practically impossible. I have never done such a thing in my life. And at this stage, now, to start moving the toe will be too childish. And you know perfectly well, I don’t move my leg.” That is the difficulty poor Anubuddha has while massaging, because I don’t move. I have told him, “You can do anything you want, but don’t ask me…just don’t say, ‘Do this, do that.’ That I cannot do. If you can exercise for me, good.”My grandfather was very much interested in all kinds of gymnastics and he was always telling me to exercise. I said, “For what? Everybody dies, whether you exercise or not. And unnecessarily getting tired before entering your grave…why not rest fully? Slip into your grave!”He said, “You talk nonsense. If you exercise, you can live a few years longer.”I said, “For what? To exercise more?” It is a strange idea: live a few years more, and for what? – to exercise. I dropped it.He said, “You are incurable.”Before he was dying I told him, “Look, I have told you: exercise or no exercise, everybody has to die. When the ultimate destiny comes on its own, why unnecessarily walk to it?”He said, “At least at the time of my death don’t disturb me!”Now something nonserious…A drunk is hauled in off the street and taken before the magistrate, who asks him to explain his drunken behavior.“Well,” says the drunk, “I had ten bottles of whiskey in my cellar and was told by my wife to empty the contents of each and every bottle down the sink, or I’d be in trouble.“So I withdrew the cork from the first bottle and poured the contents down the sink, with the exception of one glass, which I drank.“I took the cork from the second bottle and did likewise with it, except for one glass, which I drank.“I then withdrew the cork from the third bottle and poured the whiskey down the sink, which I drank.“I pulled the cork from the fourth bottle down the sink, and poured the bottle from the cork of the next and drank one sink out of it and threw the rest down the glass.“I pulled the sink out of the next glass and poured the cork down the bottle. Then I corked the sink with the glasses, bottled the drink and drank the pour.“When I had everything emptied, I steadied the house with my hand, counted the glasses, corks, bottles and sinks with the other hand, which were twenty-nine, and as the house came by, I counted them again and finally had all the houses in one bottle, which I drank.“I’m not under the affluence of incohol, as some tinkle peep I am. I’m not half as thunk as you might drink.“I fool so feelish, I don’t know who is me, and the drunker I stand here, the longer I get.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other day, when you said we look like Gautam Buddhas when we laugh, a big let-go happened deep inside me and I cried for a long time. Today I feel very fragile and the crying often comes back. I cannot even meditate. Also there is some fear. Can you tell me what is happening?Also, is there an Australian joke?Riktam, when anyone has realized his buddhahood, his enlightenment, his immortality, the first thing that has happened is laughter. Laughter at himself, because he was seeking and searching for millions of years for something that he himself was.You can seek the other, but you cannot seek yourself. You can be separate from the other, but you cannot be separate from yourself. There is a possibility of distance between you and the other, but there is no possibility of distance between you and you. This is one part: one realizes the hilarious situation, that buddhas are trying to be buddhas. Naturally a great laughter arises.From the other side also it is true. If a great laughter arises for any reason, or no reason, suddenly your mind stops, your time stops. Those are the basic preconditions needed to experience your buddha-nature – only for a moment, of course, because it is not through awareness that you have attained buddhahood, but through laughter. But laughter gives you both keys, as if for a single moment in the middle of the night the sun rises and all is light.Laughter has a tremendous spiritual value. No religion has accepted it. In fact, all religions have condemned it. I can understand their condemnation: they don’t want you all to be buddhas. They don’t want you even to have a glimpse of who you are, because once the glimpse has happened you cannot remain in the old, miserable agony, anguish. You know that if time and mind stop, you are more than you can ask for…utter serenity, peacefulness, blissfulness, love, sensitivity and a sense of belonging to the universe – not just as an accident, but as an essential part.The religions have taught people to be serious. It is a very cunning strategy. It is preventing you from having glimpses which ultimately culminate in the realization of your own self.The moment you are a buddha, you are free from all religions, free from all scriptures, free from all dogmas…sheer freedom and love; a fresh breeze that never goes stale; a fragrance that goes on and on and on from eternity to eternity; a dance in which you are not alone, the whole existence participates: the birds sing on their instruments, the trees bring flowers of different colors. That is their way of contributing…poor trees, but their flowers are more precious than any stones, than even the Kohinoor, because the Kohinoor is a dead stone and a roseflower is a living reality. The whole existence in some way or other contributes to your dance.Your question is, “The other day when you said we look like Gautam Buddhas when we laugh…” I did not say you look like Gautam Buddhas, I said you are Gautam Buddhas when you laugh. Just look at the cunningness of the mind, its cowardliness. It cannot roar like a lion and say, “I am the buddha!” At the most it can say, “I think, perhaps…I may be a buddha, in some future life.”You are saying, “…a big let-go happened deep inside me and I cried for a long time.” That was beautiful. Some window opened, perhaps for a split second, and you realized what you can be and what you have become. You can be a buddha, which is your reality, and you have become a beggar, which is not your reality.Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples, “I will take away all that you are not and I will give you all that you are, and the whole transformation is complete.”Tears came. Tears have a beauty if they come out of a joyful moment, out of a let-go. Then they are almost like flowers, dewdrops shining in the morning sun. And they cleanse you of all rubbish, of all garbage, of all crap that your so-called religions, professors, preachers – and there are all kinds of peddlers around – have imposed upon you. For a moment you slipped out of their prison and you saw the full-moon night – just for a moment.The experience was so precious, you could give your whole life for that experience. But you don’t have anything else to give; it is not yours. Life already belongs to the eternal life; it is not yours. But you can shower with tears your gratitude, your prayer, your thankfulness. Words are very small; they cannot say what tears can say.Tears are silent, but still say something immense. If they come out of joy, they are the most precious experiences. They will cleanse not only your outer eyes, they will cleanse your inner eye too. They will give you a clarity.And you also felt “…fragile and the crying often comes back.” Certainly it is a great shock to realize, even for a moment, that you are a buddha. It is a shock because you cannot believe it yourself. You a buddha? Riktam, smoking cigarettes and being a buddha? But I don’t see there is any problem.A buddha can smoke cigarettes certainly in a totally different way than you smoke. You smoke because of your tensions. He can smoke just out of playfulness. But he avoids it mostly because it contains poison – and why poison the air when it is free and available? That poison, nicotine, in cigarettes is not free, it has to be paid for. It is a simple understanding.Theoretically there is no problem, but practically no buddha is going to smoke cigarettes. It doesn’t look right. Just visualize the statue of Gautam Buddha with a cigarette in his hand, smoke coming out of his nose…. No, practically it is not possible. But even if theoretically it is possible, then a buddha will do anything with the grace of a buddha, in an enlightened way.You may be doing the same thing, but it is the same only on the surface. Inside, between the buddha and you there is an unbridgeable distance.A king came to see a master; the master lived in a deep forest. He met a man and asked him, “Where can I find the way to the master’s place?” The man simply showed him with his finger, did not say anything, and went on chopping wood. The king went to the master’s place and he was surprised – it was the same man who had been chopping wood, sitting on his throne wearing the robe of a master.For a moment the king hesitated, but then he said, “I had come for other questions. This question I have never thought about, but it has become the most important one now. Are you the same man who was chopping wood?”He said, “I am the same man, and now I am going to chop you! But I chop only that part which is false, pseudo, and leave your reality – pure, simple, natural. Are you ready?”The king said, “I have not come to be chopped. I have some questions.”The master said, “All those questions are futile. First say it – are you ready? You see my ax?”The king thought, “The man seems to be mad.” He said, “I will think about it.”The master said, “These things are not to be thought about. Either you get it or you don’t; it is just a ‘click’. You have not seen in my eyes. You are so afraid and shrunken and closed, you have not allowed my love to enter you; otherwise you would have thought, ‘This idea of chopping is a great idea. A man of such love and such understanding and such realization is not going to kill me. And if he wants to kill me, it is better to be killed by such a man than by an unknown, dark death.’”The king said, “I will come again. You are making me afraid.” He never came back again.When such moments happen in your life they make you fragile, because it is a turning point. The old way is at risk. All that you have been is going to be finished and you don’t know what is ahead, what is going to happen. That is the fragileness, hesitation: to choose the past or to choose the future.Those who choose the past choose their graves. Those who choose the future are the adventurers, are the seekers.They also feel fragile, but in spite of their fragileness one thing is certain, that going back is simply stupid. You have not found anything – what is the point of going back? Going ahead there may be some new realization, a new light, a new being.And you are saying that tears are coming back again and again. Those tears are coming again and again because you have missed a great opportunity. The first tears had a different quality; they were flowers of joy. The second layer of tears is just a deep hurt, a wound that you missed.You are saying, “I cannot even meditate.” For the same reason, because in meditation what I said may become clear to you, and again the fragileness…“Also there is some fear.” You are asking, “Can you tell me what is happening? Also, is there an Australian joke?”Much is happening. You have just to become accustomed to such moments. No harm is going to happen to you. You are doing all the harm that you can do. You will not be wounded; on the contrary, all your wounds will become roses. You will not die; on the contrary, you will enter into the life stream of eternal being. It is a tremendous opportunity, the doors are open. Don’t hesitate.There is a Sufi story…. There have been not more than five or six enlightened women because women have been engaged in forcing the men to become enlightened. They completely forgot that they have also to become enlightened. But out of those five or six women, one of the most beautiful is Rabiya al-Adabiya, a Sufi woman. She was very courageous, of the quality of Bodhidharma – almost dangerously ferocious for those who used to come to her as disciples.For the master it is a question of urgency. For you, you can postpone…tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, what is the hurry? But for the master it is a question of absolute urgency, because this is his last life. He will not be coming back again. Once you have become enlightened, you start losing grip of the body; slowly, slowly all ties with the body are broken. You will be here in the trees, in the sun rays, in the ocean waves, in the stars, but not as an entity…unlimited, you will become oceanic.The master is in a hurry because nobody knows, tomorrow the master may have to leave the body. All attachment with the body which was keeping it alive is gone, and there is not going to be another life. For you there are many lives ahead, you can go on postponing.A seeker who finally became a master in his own right was Hassan. He used to sit before the mosque and pray for hours, and the prayer was always the same. The prayer was, “God, open your doors. I have been waiting long and I have been praying long. Open the doors so I can enter you and dissolve into you.” The whole city was aware: “This man is a little crazy. Mohammedans do prayer five times a day, but this man seems to be doing prayer almost the whole day. And the prayer is not much, just, ‘Open the door.’”One day Rabiya was passing, and she hit on Hassan’s head. She said, “You idiot! The door is open but you are so engaged in your prayer that you cannot see it. Stop praying and enter, the door is open!”The hit…. A silent moment…. He looked, and certainly the door was open. The same mystic became a great master. He used to tell this story again and again, saying, “A single hit from Rabiya brought me home. But my God, that woman is really strong! She stopped my mind, my prayer and then I laughed and thanked her, ‘Your grace is great, your compassion is great, because thousands of people pass here, but nobody says to me that the door is open.’”You know, Jesus had the same fallacy. He needed a Rabiya al-Adabiya. His statement is, “Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and you shall be answered. Seek and you shall find.” Rabiya would have given him good slaps, “What kind of nonsense are you involved in? The doors are open, there is no need to knock. Just enter.”Once you have entered, questions and answers all disappear. And once you have entered, you have found what was always yours; there is no question of searching and finding.If you go on allowing yourself, relaxing in these silent moments, in these gaps which are really the doors, much, so much is going to happen. What has happened to you is just the beginning. But you are caught. You cannot go back; you have to explore what is ahead. What did you have in the past except misery, agony, anxiety, anguish, fear? – all kinds of dark forces. You don’t have anything in your past. Realize it with totality, so that you can move when a new door opens. And every day, to someone or other, the window opens – or to many sometimes.And finally you are asking, “Also, is there an Australian joke?” Never heard of it. Jokes need a little intelligence. That land of kangaroos is itself a joke! But I inquired to all my Australian sannyasins – many are here – “Manage something. Create, be inventive.” Many jokes came – just wishy-washy. Just one joke I liked…Swampy Marsh, the young Australian father-to-be, is waiting anxiously outside the maternity ward where his wife is having their first baby.He is pacing the floor when the nurse comes out and says, “You have a little boy, Mr. Marsh, but you had better go and have a cup of coffee, because there might be another one.”Swampy turns a little pale and leaves. Some time later he phones the hospital and is told that he is the father of twins, but the nurse cautions, “There is another on the way, so call back later.”At that Swampy decides that coffee is not strong enough so he goes to a bar and has some beer. When he phones the hospital again he is told that the third baby has arrived and a fourth is on the way. White-faced, he stumbles to the bar and orders a double scotch.Twenty minutes later, he tries to phone again, but he is so drunk that he dials the wrong number and gets the recorded cricket score. When they pick him off the floor the recording is still going strong:“The score is ninety-six all out,” says the voice, “and the last one was a duck.”Osho,Although I'm not yet one of your sannyasins officially, perhaps you might still answer this question. The other morning you told us we needed only to stop the chattering within us to come home. My experience is different: I can drop into silence, but then I still feel some layers separating me from “home.”Could you talk about these layers and how to get through them? Twice in my life I “came home” accidentally. But whenever I look for home, my effort is in vain.The first part of your question is also important – not only for you but for others too. You are saying, “Although I am not yet one of your sannyasins officially, perhaps you might still answer this question.” A sannyasin need not be officially one. Any seeker, anyone in search of truth is a sannyasin. And a sannyasin need not be mine. A sannyasin is not a follower, but at the most a fellow traveler. If you are seeking and searching for the truth, the meaning and significance of life, it is enough.You are saying, “The other morning you told us we needed only to stop the chattering within us to come home. My experience is different: I can drop into silence, but then I still feel some layers separating me from ‘home’.” That does not mean your experience is different, it only means you can fall into silence superficially, so the chattering mind – the thing that is on the very surface – stops. But there are the subconscious mind, unconscious mind, collective unconscious mind, cosmic unconscious mind, about which you are not aware. When I say silence I mean all four. When you say silence you think only about the first, because you are aware only of the first.But it is good. People even find it difficult to stop the first layer of the mind. You are fortunate, the first layer is happening on its own. But your trouble is that you have taken it for granted that the first chattering layer is the whole mind. It is not. There is the subconscious mind….Just a few years ago scientists were trying a very strange experiment. They succeeded, but the experiment was stopped because it was dangerous. You are seeing a movie – that is on the first layer. And just in between, very quick flashes – unless you are absolutely aware you will not see them – are put on the screen: “You are very thirsty. You need a Coke.”Strangely, nobody read them. People were seeing the picture. It was such a subtle penetration into their subconscious, but the result was clear. On that day no drink was sold in the movie other than Coke. Everybody was feeling thirsty and wanted Coke.Many other experiments were done, and they were all successful in reaching the subconscious layer. But then a problem arose: if this method falls into the hands of the politicians, just as atomic energy and nuclear weapons have fallen, this can prove even more dangerous. A whole country can be sold things which are useless or dangerous. They can be given ideas and they will think they are their ideas – but they are from the Communist Party, or some other party which is in power. And then it will be difficult to remove that party from power, because it has infiltrated the minds of people continuously, for five years through all the movies, television, radio with only one thing, “This is the right party. This is my party.”It can have even more dangerous implications; hence it was stopped, as far as it is officially known. But I don’t think that it has been stopped – it cannot be. It is such a significant weapon that each political party, each religion will try to poison you through your subconscious. And you will believe that this is your idea.I have done experiments on my own – more simple, not that sophisticated; I had no instruments. I used to live with a friend and he had a very intelligent younger brother, and he became very loving toward me. We used to go for walks…. At that time that experiment was being done in Russia, in America. I thought, “Why not do it and see whether it works?” I hypnotized the boy.To hypnotize anybody is very simple. Just tell the person to gaze at some light – a light bulb – so that his eyes become tired, and tell him, “Do not close your eyes until you cannot manage to keep them open.” And the hypnotist goes on saying to the person, “Your eyes are becoming very tired, sleep seems to be coming.” The person has been told, “Fight as long as you can fight. Don’t close your eyes.”On the one hand he is fighting – that is making him more tired – and on the other hand the hypnotist is saying to him, “Your eyes feel very tired, very, very tired. Your face feels sleepy. Your body is relaxed. I don’t think you can remain for more than one minute awake. I will count for sixty seconds and then you will be deeply asleep. Just remember one thing: you will be able to listen to me even in your deep sleep, and to nobody else. So close the doors and keep just a single communication line.” Within sixty seconds, after two or three minutes of gazing, the person falls into a very strange sleep.Hypnosis, the very word, means sleep, but with a difference: not ordinary sleep, but deliberate sleep, created sleep. And because there is only one communication line, the birds may go on singing and the person will not hear. If somebody else wants to talk to him, he will not hear. Only the hypnotist has an approach. He has kept a line open for himself.So I told the boy, “The pillow you sleep on, I am going to mark on it a cross on the corner. Tomorrow at twelve o’clock you have to kiss that cross.” Absolutely irrational! – nobody kisses his pillow.The next day I and his brother waited to see what would happen. As the time came close – 11:00, 11:50 – I took the pillow and locked it into my suitcase. And the boy was becoming very fidgety, very nervous, going again and again close to the suitcase, but it was locked. Finally he fell to my feet and he said, “Please open that suitcase.”I said, “For what?”He said, “I don’t know for what, but open it, otherwise I will die! I am suffocating. Something strange…I don’t know.”I said, “Okay, I will open it.”It was just one minute before twelve. I opened the lock; he pulled the pillow out and kissed the pillow. No lover may have kissed with such romance. And he felt very ashamed and embarrassed because two persons were watching.And we asked him, “What is the matter?”He said, “I don’t know. Something in me was forcing me to kiss the pillow at the point of the cross.”Now, if your subconscious mind goes on working…and you know it goes on working. When you are asleep it is not chattering, it is dreaming. That’s why in the morning you cannot relate all your dreams, only the last ones, the tail end of the dreams. You may be amazed to know that you dream for six hours, in eight hours’ sleep. Not continuously – one or two minutes’ sleep, then again dream – but all together there are six hours of dream. How much do you remember in the morning? And that too only for a few seconds.As you are coming out of the subconscious to the conscious, there remains just a faint remembrance that you were dreaming. And within three minutes, exactly three minutes, you will forget all about it; otherwise life would become very difficult. The whole day the mind chatters. That is one part of the mind – it needs rest. In the night it rests, then the other part starts dreaming. If you remembered those six hours in the morning too you would go mad.And psychoanalysts have not yet reached the collective unconscious, neither to the unconscious, nor the cosmic unconscious – that is far away. So you have a four layer system.It is possible that you have come to silences which you feel are your home – they are not. Chattering has stopped, and the difficulty is that there is no communication between the conscious mind and the subconscious or the unconscious. There is no communication at all. Only in deep meditation, slowly, slowly does communication happen.It is the experience of thousands of my meditators that first they come with a great smile, a Jimmy Carter smile, saying that they have been able to be silent, no chattering. I said, “You just continue. Soon another layer, deeper, will surface.”Then they start dreaming – awake. Now a certain communication can be made. And when dreaming disappears…the unconscious, the dreamless sleep, is also not without its own seed thoughts. It is just like seeds under the earth. You don’t see them, but they are working. And soon there will be sprouts and flowers and trees. The unconscious is your underworld, underground.It has happened in many courts that murderers have simply denied that they have murdered. No court listens to them because all the evidence is there – the witnesses are there, the person has been murdered. But I have a different attitude. My opinion is, they murdered the person in the unconscious state. You are asking them questions in the conscious state and there is no communication between the two states. They are not lying – as it is taken in all the courts of the world, that they are lying – but they are saying authentically that they have not murdered. Certainly they have not murdered consciously, but unconsciously. They cannot remember it.The final stage is the cosmic unconscious, which becomes clear to you only when your awareness reaches to the very depth of your being, to the very center of your being.So don’t think that your experience is different. And don’t think that this experience is coming home, because once you come home you cannot go again out of the home. In fact, you are in the home already, you don’t “come.” It is only a question of deepening awareness, so that you start feeling, “My God, I have been searching my home and my home is within me.” Just don’t get mistaken that homes are outside you, and that you go in and you come out. The home we are talking about is inside you, so wherever you go the home goes with you. You cannot leave it anywhere because you are not separate from it.So coming home means only a glimpse, and a very superficial glimpse. If you meditate, and intensively, on awareness, you will not come home, you will find you are at home. And a little laughter at yourself will arise, “I have always been here and I have been searching all over the world.”There is no need of any search and there is no need to go anywhere – to Mecca, to Jerusalem, to Kashi or to Moscow. You have to close your eyes and intensify and sharpen your awareness. And it sharpens by itself as you go more and more inside.Something serious…Shimon Peres, the prime minister of Israel, Rajiv Gandhi, the prime minister of India, and Ronald Reagan from America, are driving together to a conference when their car breaks down and they are forced to spend the night at a small motel.“I’m sorry,” says the clerk, “but we have only one room left and it’s a double. But one of you can sleep in the barn. We will make it comfortable.”“No problem,” says Rajiv Gandhi, “I will sleep there.”A short while later, the other two men are getting ready for bed, when there is a knock on the door. Gandhi is standing in the hallway.“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I can’t sleep with a holy cow.”“So, I will sleep in the barn,” says Shimon Peres and off he goes. A few minutes later, he is back.“I’m sorry,” he says, “but being Jewish, I can’t sleep with a pig.”Ronald Reagan shrugs and says, “I guess I will sleep in the barn.”He leaves. Gandhi and Peres are just getting into bed, when they hear a knock at the door. They open it and standing there are the pig and the cow.

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In the old days in Mumbai, even though I felt physically so close to you, you were so far away. Now sitting here with you in Buddha Hall, where thousands of us move around you – compared to the room in Mumbai – I feel you so intimately and personally, like I never did before.Osho, have you dropped serious political talks and become more intimate and juicy? Your smile is happening more often than ever. Please comment.In a very simple question you have touched many implications. I would like to go into those implications, because without understanding them your question cannot be answered sincerely and authentically.In the days in Mumbai you were certainly physically close, but that very physical closeness destroyed the possibility of a deeper closeness, where the heart meets the heart, and where the spirit dances with the spirit. It happens because if you are physically close, people start taking you for granted.Now nobody can take me for granted, not even the prime minister of India. I live in seclusion, in isolation. It was possible in the old days for anybody to come to me at any time to ask any stupid question. You will be amazed if I tell you about all the incidents that used to happen.I was traveling from Udaipur to Chittaurgarh in Rajasthan. I was alone in the first class compartment. Suddenly I felt somebody massaging my feet.I said, “Who are you and why are you unnecessarily disturbing my sleep?”He said, “You keep quiet!”I said, “This is strange. These are my feet.”He said, “You simply keep quiet. I am very angry and I am very much frustrated, because I am also coming from the Udaipur meditation camp. They did not allow me to massage your feet and those guys were always surrounding you, so I thought, ‘Let us wait, because he will pass through Chittaurgarh.’ So I left ahead of you and I have been waiting here. Now nobody can prevent me. And I know certainly that you are so loving, you will not prevent me.”I said, “I am loving and I don’t want to prevent you, but you should also be compassionate toward me…tired after a seven day camp. I had just fallen asleep.”But he wouldn’t listen. For two hours continuously…. I had to persuade him, “If you don’t listen to me then I will have to pull the chain and call the conductor.”He said, “My God, I had never thought about that. You can do that.”I said, “I have every birthright to protect myself, at least from people like you who can’t see a simple thing: I am tired and I don’t want to talk, I want to sleep.”Just with this threat, he got off at a small station somewhere. But from the window he said, “At least touch my head.”I said, “You have tired me for two hours continuously massaging my feet, and now I have to massage your head!”He said, “You do it, otherwise I will enter the compartment again.”I had to do it. He was very happy.I was staying in a university campus, taking a meditation camp, and in the afternoon when I was sleeping, I suddenly became aware that somebody was walking on the roof. So I opened my eyes and what I saw…a professor had removed a tile and he was looking at me.I said, “Hello! Why can’t you come through the front door? Are you going to jump on me?”He said, “At the front door they don’t allow me. They say you are asleep, and as a matter of fact you are not asleep, you are talking with me.”When people think they can approach, ask, inquire at any time…. I will be available tomorrow, what is the hurry today? This taking me for granted creates the problem. You remain physically close but spiritually far away. It is difficult for me to make an effort for thousands of people separately to be spiritually close to me.And man’s mind functions in a very strange way. If you go closer to him he becomes afraid, he becomes more closed. If you want to open his heart he becomes hard, he resists. The only thing possible was that I toured around the world inviting my would-be people, and when they started arriving I closed myself in a dark cell, where there was no possibility of anybody reaching me.Strangely enough, this has opened thousands of hearts. Because I am not making any effort to open their heart, I am not interested in opening their heart, they have suddenly become open; there is nothing to be afraid of. And twice a day I am with you, you wait for me.Waiting in itself is a great meditation.Waiting in itself is the whole religiousness.Waiting for the unknown, waiting for the guest, waiting for the master – whatever form it takes, but waiting for the right season when you will also be blossoming is the whole inquiry and the search of man.I could have come into the ashram as many times as possible – it is not far away. But I have not been in the office since 1974. I have never seen anything in the ashram except my room and the meeting place where I see you, where I talk. It is not a sermon, it is not a discourse, it is simply an outpouring of a heart who loves you and wants to reach you; who trusts you and wants to enter into your deepest core; who wants to help you on the way.And knowingly I don’t come, because I want you not to take me for granted. I want you to wait for me. And sometimes I disappear, I don’t come. But even then lovingly you wait – perhaps tomorrow I will be coming, or the day after tomorrow. And those days of waiting are not without significance. They are as significant as the days when I am with you. I want you to be absolutely free of me, absolutely independent.I don’t impose any doctrine, any cult, any philosophy. I don’t want followers. I simply want people who know freedom, who know love, who know the dignity of man, who know the peaks of awareness. Only those who will know the peaks of awareness will be my friends, only those who will go to the depths of love will be my friends.I talk to give you hints, not forcing anything on you, but simply whispering in your ear. It is said that if you want a woman to hear you, you have to whisper to somebody else. Don’t talk directly, nobody is going to hear you, but whisper to somebody else. And it will be more perfect if you can find another woman. Whisper anything and your wife will hear it.I am simply whispering to you things which cannot be managed in words, in language, things which need to be understood only in the silences of the heart. Perhaps in a gesture or perhaps in the depths of the eyes, I come to you.And, Anand Murti, I have known you for almost twenty-five years. You were here in the ashram when I was away, you are here in the ashram now. I have never talked to you because I don’t want to destroy the silence that is growing between me and you. I have not even said hello to you. And this is the same about everybody who is here.And there are a few more things…. In the Mumbai days I was surrounded by Indians. Now, to be with Indians you have to be serious; otherwise they don’t think you are a religious man. You will not believe me, that in the whole Indian history of ten thousand years there has not been a single Indian joke. Laughter is simply a foreigner. India does not even allow laughter a tourist visa.You are saying, “In the old days in Mumbai, even though I felt physically so close to you, you were so far away. Now, sitting here with you in Buddha Hall where thousands of us move around you – compared to the room in Mumbai – I feel you so intimately and personally.”The reason is simply that now I am surrounded by my own people. They are not Indians, they are not Germans, they are not Americans; they don’t have a religion, they don’t have a race, they don’t have a nation; they are purely individuals. It is a gathering of friends. It is because of this that you can feel me intimately and personally, although I don’t know where in the ashram you live. I have never invited you even for a cup of tea.In this way I am showing to you what a spiritual relationship is. It does not depend on anything visible. It is purely invisible, an energy that transpires in hearts, that makes them aflame. And my people know in the deepest of their depths that they are part of this commune, part of me, and part of this universe. They have thrown away all limitations and have become citizens of the universe.You say, “Osho, have you dropped serious political talks and become more intimate and juicy?” I am the same but the people around me have changed many times. In these past thirty-five years I have been working to raise the consciousness of humanity. Many people have come and left, and it has been always good because they emptied some space for better people. It is a strange experience, that those who have left me have always left places for a better quality of people. I have never been a loser.There was a time…because, accidentally, I was born into a Jaina family; now, it is not my fault – you can call it unfortunate. But naturally, because I was born into a certain religious group, they were the first people to surround me. When people started looking at me, asking me questions, feeling that something has happened in me, the first ones were bound to be Jainas because they were my relatives, they were my neighbors. It was obvious that they would be the first. Naturally their questions were concerned with Jainism, with Mahavira. Their questions you could not ask; it would never occur to you that this also can be a relevant question.I was staying with a Jaina family. The father of the family was almost eighty years old and he had retired, according to the tradition that after seventy-five years you should retire. He had retired to a small hut outside the city. The family provided food, care, but he lived alone there chanting Jaina mantras, reading Jaina scriptures.Someone gave him my first book, The Path. He was so much impressed by the book that he could not believe it – “All my learning of the scriptures was futile, only this small book is enough. And this man, who has written this book, must be a saint; otherwise, how can he write such great truths?” When he heard that I was staying with his family – his son was very much interested in me – he came to see me.And I said, “You unnecessarily walked for miles in your old age. You could have given a message, a phone call. I could have come to you; your son has a car, there is no problem.”He said, “No, I wanted…to me this is a pilgrimage.”In Jainism, only twenty-four masters are accepted in one circle of creation. Those twenty-four masters have happened – Mahavira was the last. That was twenty-five centuries ago and now there still are thousands of years which will remain empty; there will not be another Jaina master they call the tirthankara, “the man who makes the path.”The old man was very learned and he said, “If it was in my power, I would have declared you the twenty-fifth tirthankara, but it is not according to the scriptures and it is not in my power. But I respect you exactly as the twenty-fifth tirthankara.”I said, “You should wait a little, you should watch a little. You may have to change your idea.”He said, “Never! I will never change my idea. I have come to a definite conclusion. I have seen all Jaina scriptures – you go miles and you find such small nourishment. Your small book is enough for a man who really wants to find the truth. It is enough, more than that is non-essential.”It was evening time and the sun was setting. And the woman of the house came and said to me, “It is time for your supper. The sun is setting.” In a Jaina family, you have to eat before the sun sets; otherwise you have to remain hungry.But I said to the woman, “Don’t be worried. Your father-in-law has come from miles away to see me. It doesn’t matter to me, I will eat a little later. Let me first converse with him because he has been waiting for me for years.”The moment the old man heard that I was going to eat in the night, he was so shocked. He said, “What am I hearing? I called you the twenty-fifth tirthankara and you are going to eat in the night! I have been thinking that your book is the essential for all those who are seekers of the path – and the reality is, you don’t know even the abc of religion.” This is the abc of religion, that eating in the night is preparing your path toward hell!I said, “I told you just to wait, not to make decisions, but you didn’t listen, you said you were determined. In fact just to show you how determined you were, I told the woman that I would eat after one hour.”He said, “Really? Then forgive me. I touch your feet, just forgive me.”I said, “Wait, you are making decisions too quickly.”He said, “No, I am absolutely determined. This time I am not going to change.” And he touched my feet, asked for my forgiveness.I said, “There is no difficulty in forgiving because you have not committed any crime, but one thing you should understand: the twenty-fifth tirthankara eats in the night.”He said, “You eat in the night?”I said, “I am saying it myself, and if you want, you can wait. Let the sun set and things will be clear.”He said, “My God! Then how could you manage to write such a book?”I said, “Eating in the night or not has nothing to do with religion.”But he was very much frustrated. He left and he told me when he was going, “I am going to burn your book.”I said, “That’s the right thing. But think before you burn it. You seem to be a very quick, decisive man. And each decision is absolute. I may not eat…and I was just joking when I said that I eat in the night.”He said, “Really?”Now, what can you do with such people?When I was surrounded with Jainas I had to talk with these people about things which have no importance, nothing. But those were the people and these were their questions. Slowly, slowly others started moving toward me, Jainas became a minority. Out of that minority a few are still here – very few, their percentage has fallen to one percent at the most.The second group that followed, which was certainly the closest group to the Jainas…. Mahatma Gandhi had adopted a Jaina doctrine of nonviolence, so all the Jainas became Gandhians, and all the Gandhians came close to the Jainas. At least on one point they were in agreement. So when Jainas were becoming alert that I am a dangerous man, Gandhians followed. Their great leaders – Vinoba Bhave wanted to meet me; Shankar Rao Deo attended a meditation camp; Dada Dharmadhikari attended many meditation camps; Acharya Bhagwat attended many meditation camps. And because these were the thinkers of Gandhism, all over India Gandhians started becoming interested in me.Again I was surrounded by a certain group with a fixed ideology. The day I criticized Mahatma Gandhi…. I was simply stating the facts, not even criticizing him. Somebody had asked, “What do you think about Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy of nonviolence?” Now, you would not ask that kind of question.I said that Mahatma Gandhi was simply a cunning politician. By adopting nonviolence he was managing many things. All the Jainas became his followers. They found a certain man who was in tune with them; although he was not a Jaina, he was at least nine percent Jaina. I have the percentages about Gandhi: he was born a Hindu, but he was only one percent Hindu. He was born in Gujarat, an area very dominated by Jaina philosophy; nine percent he was a Jaina. And ninety percent he was a Christian. Thrice in his life he was just on the verge of being converted to Christianity.I said to them that by nonviolence he managed the Jainas; he also managed the upper-class Hindus who are nonviolent people; he also managed to influence Christian missionaries, Christians, because Jesus Christ’s message is of love, and nonviolence is another name of love. And these were not all the benefits of accepting nonviolence. The most important thing is, India has been for two thousand years a slave country. It has forgotten what it means to be independent. It is not yet independent, its mind has become that of a slave.Two thousand years is not a small time. In these two thousand years a certain slave psychology has penetrated the Indian mind. They have become cowards. India has never invaded anybody. Small invaders, uncultured, uneducated – Mongols, Turks, Hunas, very small tribes from Central Asia – simply came, and they were not even given resistance. India has lost the nerve to fight. So when Gandhi said nonviolence, the whole of India was absolutely convinced by him, because there was no question of fighting.Indians are very much afraid of fighting. They have never fought. A small group could manage to keep this vast continent in slavery. The ownership changed from one group to another, but India remained in slavery.Secondly, Gandhi was intelligent enough to see that on the one hand Indians are not people who will fight, and on the other hand, they don’t have any weapons to fight with. Thirdly, the British empire of that day was the greatest power in the world. It was impossible to fight violently with the British empire: you don’t have weapons, you don’t have trained people to fight, you don’t know anything about fighting.Nonviolence was a political policy. It served many purposes, and served well. It shocked the British empire and it destroyed the British empire too. Britain was absolutely ready if the Indians were going to fight. But they would not fight; even if there were British soldiers killing Indians, they would simply stand and be killed. All over the world the British empire was condemned: “This is absolutely stupid. People who are not fighting, who are not terrorists, who are not revolutionaries, who are simply asking for their freedom…. And instead of giving them freedom you give them a bullet in the chest – unarmed people!”Britain was in a very awkward situation. You can arrest the people who are following Gandhi – and they were ready to be arrested – you can put them in jail, but how many can you put in jail? And what is the point? Sooner or later you will have to release them because this is an unnecessary burden on you – feeding them, clothing them. And thousands more were coming every day to be arrested. Before every jail, before every court, people were standing, waiting to be arrested: “Give us freedom or arrest us.”Nowhere in the world had such a situation ever happened. Britain got puzzled. It looked inhuman to kill these people, it looked inhuman to jail these people, and a worldwide condemnation…. And finally the whole empire collapsed, because India was the central beam. Once India was free, other smaller countries started becoming free. And with India out of the British empire, Britain itself has become such a small power that it is not counted at all as far as great powers are concerned. It was the topmost.So I said that Gandhi’s nonviolence was not a spiritual philosophy, but a political policy. And it is proved by the facts. He had promised before independence that the moment India became free, all armies would be dissolved, all arms would be thrown into the ocean. When asked, “If you do this and somebody attacks, what are you going to do?” he said, “We will receive them as our guest and we will say to them, ‘We stay here; you also can stay.’”After independence everything was forgotten. Neither the armies were dissolved, nor the arms were thrown into the ocean; on the contrary, Gandhi himself blessed the first attack on Pakistan. Three Indian Air Force planes came to receive his blessings and he came out of his house and blessed the planes. All nonviolence and all that bullshit talk that he was doing his whole life was forgotten.The moment I criticized Gandhi…. And this was only on one point. I am a man who loves to go deep into everything. If I don’t go, I don’t go at all. Once I started, I had to condemn Mahatma Gandhi on a thousand and one grounds, and on each point Gandhians disappeared; now I don’t think even one percent of those present are Gandhians – not here, even in India, because they cannot be Gandhians if I am right. I have condemned him point by point.I have not changed, just the people around me went on changing. When Gandhians disappeared then the people who were communists, socialists, who were against Gandhism thought, “This is a great chance. If he can support us….” But I had not condemned Gandhi to support communism. I had never thought about it, that this would become an opportunity for socialists and communists. And then I had to condemn them. There is no other way to get rid of such people.So all those political talks were a necessity, to find out exactly who my people are: who are without any prejudice; who have come to me; who have not come to me to hear about Christ, or to hear about Buddha, or to hear about Gandhi, or to hear about Mahavira; who have come directly to listen to me. I have my own message, I have my own manifesto to the world.So the people who are here have a totally different quality. I can talk to you without ever thinking that it can hurt you, without ever thinking that I have to somehow say things which you like. Now I can say things which are my own experience, which my own existential being is ready to express.I have never been a serious person. But I was surrounded by serious people for many years, and among those serious people it is very difficult not to be serious. It is almost like being in a hospital. You have at least to pretend that you are serious. For years I was surrounded by sick people and I had at least to pretend that I was serious.I am not serious at all because existence is not serious. It is so playful, so full of song and so full of music and so full of subtle laughter. It has no purpose; it is not business-like. It is pure joy, sheer dance, out of overflowing energy.Now I can talk to you as if I am talking to myself. There is no problem.Just the other day Chaitanya Keerti was translating a few of my talks into Hindi, and he was puzzled about how to translate the jokes, because the Indians will not be able to swallow them. Those jokes will get stuck in their throats. So I told Chaitanya Keerti, “You are an Indian, and you know perfectly well what will be troublesome – drop it. You are not only translating into Indian language, you are also translating for Indians. Keep in mind that they cannot understand jokes. You are in a totally different climate, in a different atmosphere. They are not in the same situation. They are afraid to enter the door.”I had an ear infection and a specialist, Dr. Jog, was called. He could not believe that such a beautiful ashram exists in Pune. And he lives in Pune, is the topmost expert here. He had passed, looked at the door, looked at the people, but he had never dared to enter. And then he said, “When I told my wife that it is a beautiful place and there are beautiful people, full of laughter and joy; it is nothing like what the third-rate yellow newspapers go on printing about it – lies, absolute lies – she wanted to come.”They both came one Sunday when he was free. And when he came to see me again, he said, “My wife wants to come whenever she can manage. I cannot come every Sunday, because that is the only free time for conferences, for meetings, for this and that. But whenever I can come, I will come. Can she come alone?”I said, “There is no problem. Here men are afraid of women, women are not afraid of men! This is a totally different world. You can see the scene: the swami is running away, and not one, but many mas are trying to catch hold of him, saying, ‘Where are you going? Come back!’”And he said, “One thing more, she wants to see you for five minutes alone.”I said, “There is no problem. Whenever you want, you inform me and she can see me.”He himself wondered, “What does she want to see you alone for?”I said, “That is your problem, that is not my problem. She may have some trouble with you. You may be torturing her or you must be doing something.”Even that day I had seen, as the car stopped, that his wife seemed to be intelligent, educated. They were sitting just here, and his wife showed him the thumbs-up sign. Perhaps he does not know that I have seen it. I never miss anything that is worth seeing!Now something serious…Prince Edward, the queen’s youngest son, takes a horse ride every morning in Hyde Park. And every day he sees the same beautiful girl sitting on a park bench. He soon falls madly in love with her, but is too shy to introduce himself. Not knowing what to do, he consults his elder brother Charles who is more experienced in such matters.“Simple,” says Charles. “Just paint your horse green.”“Green?” exclaims Edward.“Yes, green,” says Charles. “And next time you see her, she will say, ‘Your horse is green?’ and you can say, ‘That’s right, and my name is Prince Edward.’ And then you can take her for a drink and then you can invite her for a weekend in Scotland, and if you play your cards right, you may end up with a romp in the heather.”“Great!” says Edward. And the next morning he arrives in the park with a green horse.The girl looks up, sees him and cries, “My God, your horse is green!”“Yes,” says Edward, and then he stammers, “well, er, well, well…. I wanna fuck you!”Continuing their tour of India, Hymie Goldberg and Becky Goldberg go trekking in the Himalayas. Walking along the path, gazing at the mountain scenery, Hymie bumps straight into a yeti, one of the legendary abominable snowmen. The yeti picks up Hymie and runs off into the hills, leaving Becky wailing and crying that she will never see her Hymie again.Sure enough, a few minutes later there is a piercing shriek that echoes around the mountains and Becky fears the worst. But a short while later, Hymie comes limping down the path into Becky’s arms.“What happened?” she cries in relief. “How did you escape?”“Well,” says Hymie reluctantly, “I thought I was finished, all twisted up in the creature’s arms until I could not breathe. And then I saw this pair of balls hanging in front of my nose, so with my last energy I bit the balls as hard as I could. And you have no idea how much strength a man gets when he bites his own balls!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other day you said it was easier for one to meditate when one was elevated from the earth, such as on a tree. In Aikido, one of the fundamental principles is to feel the body connected with the gravity of the earth. Is there any contradiction in it?Aikido also teaches one to be always aware of the point a few centimeters below the navel. What is the relation between this point and our being?It raises a very historical question. Zen was born in India in the absurd laughter of Mahakashyapa, a close disciple of Gautam Buddha. He had many disciples even closer than Mahakashyapa. Mahakashyapa is mentioned only once and that mention is of when he had laughed.Mahakashyapa’s laughter was the beginning of Zen. So first you have to understand why Mahakashyapa laughed. Why had he laughed?One such beautiful morning as this, and with such beautiful, silent people as these, Gautam Buddha was expected to come and give his morning talk. Unexpectedly, he came with a beautiful roseflower in his hand. Everybody wondered – he had never before come with anything in his hand. And more mysterious was the situation, because he sat on the podium, looking at the roseflower. Seconds passed, minutes passed and people became fidgety. “Is he not going to talk today? And what is the meaning of Gautam Buddha just watching a roseflower?”After half an hour it became almost a tension: something had to be done – he did not look at people, he was looking at the roseflower. At that moment, Mahakashyapa laughed. Gautam Buddha raised his eyes and called Mahakashyapa close to him and gave the flower to Mahakashyapa. And he told the people, ten thousand sannyasins, “Whatever could be said through words I have said to you, and whatever could not be said through words I have transferred to Mahakashyapa.”This is the only mention of Mahakashyapa in the whole Buddhist canon. It is a vast literature, and for centuries, twenty-five centuries, inquirers have been asking the question, “Why did Mahakashyapa laugh? And why was his laughter accepted? Not only accepted, but raised to the highest point of communication.” Something transpired in that silent giving of the roseflower to Mahakashyapa.Since then Zen has been mysterious. It is the most pure mysticism that has existed on the earth.In India, it was called “Zan.” Buddha used – it was a revolutionary step – the people’s language. Pali was the people’s language. In the people’s language words become simple, rounded, easy. In Sanskrit the word is dhyan. But for the people, dhyan seems to be a little difficult. Buddha never used Sanskrit.You may not be aware that Sanskrit has never been a living language; it was only a language for scholars. They kept a separate system of communication among themselves. Buddha was the first man in India who revolted against this ugliness. Everything should be said in the people’s language. It should not become the monopoly of scholars, it should not give the scholar a great ego. He used the lowest language that is used in the marketplace, where things change. Words may not be accurate grammatically, but become more rounded, more usable, more simple. Dhyan became zan.In India, for example, in the villages, station – railway station – is not called “station.” It is called only “tation.” Why bother about “railway station”? That is too big a word for poor people. They simply use “tation.” And the same is true about many words. Sanskrit is very polished – perhaps the most polished language – because only scholars used it and they were very fussy about its accuracy, grammar. Buddha simply dropped that.Zan became a new stream, flowing from Gautam Buddha to Mahakashyapa. You will know what was transferred when between your master and you something happens in silence, because Buddha said, “What could be said I have said to you, and what could not be said, I have given it to Mahakashyapa. This roseflower is only a symbol of recognition that Mahakashyapa will represent the unsayable.”After Mahakashyapa it was bound to be a very small stream of seekers, because of its mysteriousness.The next great name is Bodhidharma. His master told him to go to China, not to convert China to Buddhism…. “But in China there is already a fragrance existing, created by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu. Truth is nobody’s monopoly. It will be good if you take the treasure that Mahakashyapa has given, from generation to generation, to China. And let these two beautiful streams of mystics meet.” Just as in cross-breeding the child is more strong, the same happens when two streams of thought, or of no-thought, meet, merge. Something new, far deeper than either arises, far greater than either arises.It took Bodhidharma three years to reach China. But when the master had said it, there was no question. The relationship between the master and the disciple is of such deep love that it is always yes – in capital letters. He did not even ask why; the master must know. He went to China and the cross-breeding happened. What was zan in Buddhism was made even more simple, so that the Chinese could understand and use it. It became chan. It flourished in China, and great masters arose out of the mystic experience.From China it was taken to Japan. Again a new cross-breeding…. The word from chan became zen. And in Japan it is manifested in many dimensions.Your question is very fundamental. There are two ways to disappear as a personality: one we can call “grounding” and one we can call “centering.”Mahakashyapa, Bodhidharma, they all used centering: going within to the point where nothing remains, just a pure presence, no person. The same became even more beautiful with the great heritage of Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu and Lao Tzu. They were also people of centering. They were exploring their interiority to find themselves, and what they found was an absolute absence of anybody – even the finder disappeared. Out of that state came neither the found nor the finder, neither the seeker nor the sought, but an absolute silence, alive, full of its own music, full of its own dance. Seeing this, Mahakashyapa laughed – “Buddha goes on saying to people ‘Seek yourself, find yourself’ and he is tricking them.”It is a perfectly legitimate statement, to seek yourself. But Mahakashyapa knew: when you find yourself, you are no more there. It is a very strange situation; except laughter, nothing can express it.There is an old definition of a philosopher: in the darkest night, in a dark house where there is no light – and the philosopher, moreover, is blind – he is looking for a black cat which is not there. But the search continues. And if suddenly light comes in and his eyes are cured and he thinks of all the trouble that he was taking to find the cat which does not exist, what else to do except to laugh at himself?Fools laugh at others.Wisdom laughs at itself.But in Japan the cross-breeding had a very tremendous manifestation. It has gone very far away from Mahakashyapa’s laughter – a long journey. On the journey it gathered many new manifestations, many new revelations, many new methods. In Japan it turned out finally to be the peak. And the peak was that anything can be used to find the truth. Even a warrior can use his sword, fighting with another warrior; there is no need for him to sit and meditate. The archer can find in his archery; the painter can find in his painting; the sculptor can find in his sculpture.What was in India only pure meditation, grew in Japan into many branches. Indians cannot even conceive how a warrior, a fighter with a sword can be meditative, or how archery can be a meditative method, because Indians have never tried. It needed Mahakashyapa’s laughter to travel from India to China and from China to Japan. On this long travel of a thousand years it gathered much insight.One German professor, Herrigel, could not believe – he was reading about Zen – how the art of archery can be meditation. There seems to be no relationship. It seems to be perfect that Gautam Buddha sitting in the lotus posture is meditating. But to conceive that an archer or a swordsman, whose effort is to kill the other, can be meditative….Herrigel went to Japan. For three years he was in Japan, and there he found the secret. He learned archery. He himself was an archer, a master archer; a hundred percent he was successful in hitting the target. But his Zen master said, “This is not the point. The point is not there in the target; the point is within you. Are you grounded?”He said, “In the West we have practiced archery for hundreds of years and nobody has thought about grounding. What is this grounding?”The master said, “Grounding means you become almost part of the earth and allow the gravitation to flow in you, to flood you – particularly below the navel, two inches below to be exact. The gravitation comes from all around, and settles two inches below your navel.”But Herrigel asked, “What has it to do with archery? I have to concentrate on the target.” The master said, “Forget about the target, first be grounded. And when you shoot your arrow, be relaxed, so that that gravitation shoots it, not you.”He said, “You are making strange statements. I will have to shoot, how can the gravitation shoot it?”Three years and he never missed a single target; he was a master archer. But his master would say, “No, you have still missed. I am not watching your target – who cares about your target? I am watching you; you are the target.”And why two inches below the navel? That is the center of life. It was from there you were connected with your mother. It was from there that for nine months you were supplied with everything that you needed, and you didn’t have to do anything, you were simply relaxed.Grounding means, bringing this life center within you in contact with the gravitational force, so that the gravitational force starts filling it. And a moment comes when you don’t shoot at the target. Certainly you aim, but it is as if the arrow shoots itself. The gravitational force is enough to take it to the target.Three years, and a German mind…. Finally Herrigel gave up. He said, “You are driving me crazy. Day and night I am thinking about how to do it.” And the master said, “That’s what I have been telling you. Don’t think about how to do it, let it happen. Just have enough energy so it happens.”Finally he decided to go back. Three years are enough, and not even a single time had the master said, “Good.” He always said, “You missed again.” Every day Herrigel would come and every day he would be a failure. He told the master, “I am sorry, but I could not get the point. And tomorrow I am leaving, so tomorrow I will come to say good-bye.”Next day he came. The master was teaching another disciple, and Herrigel was sitting on the bench, simply watching, because it was not his business, he was finished with it. If he cannot get it in three years, he cannot get it in three lives. It is beyond any logic, what the master is saying.So he was sitting relaxed, watching – watching the master because the master was showing the new disciple. And suddenly he saw the point. The master was so relaxed, it was not his hands which were shooting the arrow; it was so clear that some inner force was at work. Spontaneously he stood up, went to the master, took the bow and arrow and shot the arrow.For the first time the master said, “I can certify – you have achieved. You were trying with your mind, tense. Today it was just accidental – you were sitting relaxed, it was not your business, you were finished with it…. And because you were finished with it, your eyes were clear, your heart was silent, you were watching in deep peace and silence, and you could see. For three years I was trying to show it to you, but because you were in a hurry to learn quickly and go to Germany…. And just now there was no hurry – you were going to Germany.“I can certify that you have achieved not only the art of archery, but simultaneously the art of grounding. And the moment you are grounded, as the trees are grounded – with deep roots in the earth – when your body is receiving forces from the earth and you are available, relaxed, allowing them to fill your life center, the mind stops functioning, time stops.”So just by the side, meditation happens. People around the world have wondered, “What has meditation to do with archery?” But it happens. It can happen with anything. The question is, mind should stop, time should stop; you should be relaxed and allow life to take possession of you.You are asking, “The other day you said it was easier for one to meditate when one was elevated from the earth, such as on a tree. In Aikido, one of the fundamental principles is to feel the body connected with the gravity of the earth. Is there any contradiction in it?”No, only variety. Either you are connected with the earth or you are connected with the sky. You have heard the word gravitation; perhaps you have not heard the word levitation. Just as the earth pulls you toward itself, the sky pulls you toward itself. The pull of the earth is called gravitation and the pull of the sky is called levitation. So either way, you can manage. The earth is your life – so is the sky.In fact, my suggestion is that the sky is far vaster than the earth. Its energy sources are inexhaustible, more than the energy of the earth. It is enough for a small human being to be filled with the energy of the earth. But if you really want to know the universal force, it is better if you go farther away from the earth.The first astronauts were very much puzzled…they had not thought about it. Later on they were trained, but the first astronauts had no idea: as they moved out of the gravitational field, they started floating in their spacecraft, inside. They could not believe it, they became weightless. Their weight on the earth was of gravitation.You don’t have any weight. The moment you become weightless, if you are aware that this weightlessness can be associated with meditation, then exactly what happens in grounding will have happened, and far more tremendously. You will be flooded with the universal energy.But because the astronauts were Western people, they had no idea of energy. They became even more tense, more afraid, “What is happening?” Somehow they grabbed their seat belts, tied themselves to their seats. It was such a shocking experience. Just think if you start floating, going to the disco, or just on a visit to MG market…. Nobody has heard of it; hence it has no name.It was my experience that in water, in a river, gravitation is nullified. You think you have to learn swimming – it is not true, just somebody has to push you into the river and you will swim. First you will shout, “Save me, help!” And when no help is coming, then you will try to throw around your arms. They will be haphazard, not coordinated; you may drink a little water….And you know perfectly well, just float a dead body in the water and it does not drown. It does not know swimming; it has no idea. People even drown because they have thought that they don’t know swimming, and they made so much fuss and created trouble for themselves. First they will go under water while they are alive; once they are dead, they are swimming perfectly well on the surface. It seems dead people know something which we don’t know.One Japanese scientist has been proving that children need not learn swimming; they are born with the capacity. He started with one-year-old children, then six-month-old. Now he has come to three-month-old children; they swim perfectly well. Nobody has told them, “You don’t know swimming. Don’t go near the water.” And now he is trying to go back even more, toward the first day the child is born. His hypothesis is – and I agree that it will prove right – the child will swim. For nine months in the mother’s womb he has been floating. Why do you think the mother’s belly becomes so big? Do you think there is that big a child inside? It is a small pond.And mothers know: they start drinking water more, they become interested in eating salty things, because the water the child needs has to be exactly like ocean water. The first man was born as a fish, and man still is born as a fish. And even after you are born, don’t think you have gone far away from the fish. Eighty percent of your body is water – ocean water. Nobody has worked it out…. it happened to me accidentally.I was in my postgraduate class. Just behind my hostel, there was a small hillock with three trees. And it was difficult to find any place where you would not be disturbed – particularly if you were meditating. Then somebody would come and shake you: “What has happened to you? Why are you sitting here with closed eyes? Some sad news?” And thousands of students, hundreds of professors…somebody was bound to come. If you closed your doors, they would knock. And if you didn’t open the doors they would call the fire brigade, “Something has gone wrong.”I found those trees were good. I used to climb the tallest and strongest tree and sit there. It had a very beautiful place where two branches separated, and I used to meditate there early in the morning, at three o’clock – no possibility of any disturbance.I was amazed: I would sit under the tree, then I would sit on top, high on the tree and the silence would immediately deepen; the mind would stop, time would stop.Aikido is perfectly right and what I said is not against it. Just like Aikido, another science is needed. Perhaps this academy of meditation may be able to develop it. And my experience is that not only gravitation helps you to be filled with life, the tree also helps you to be filled with life – it is life.And Aikido was developed in Japan for warriors, archery for archers. I don’t think that you want to be a warrior or you want to be an archer or you want to be a boxer. You want to be a silent, joyful, loving awareness; a presence but not a person. What I am saying will help you much more than Aikido. Aikido will also be introduced soon. We will be having Aikido classes; there are a few fools, they have to be satisfied. We are going to have archery…One of my sannyasins is a master archer. She is French, she is ready to come any day if we want archery. But she is not meditative, she is just technically perfect. I will have to send her to Japan to learn the combination of meditation and archery.But what is the point? We are not going to kill the birds, we are not going to kill each other. And if you want a perfect archer, the simplest thing is….I have always loved the story of a king who was passing through a village. He loved archery; he himself was a master archer. He could not believe that in that small village there lived someone who was certainly a greater archer than himself. He had not been one hundred percent; once in a while the target was missed. But there he saw circles on trees and exactly in the middle an arrow – on many trees.He said, “This is…even the best archer cannot manage this. It seems so perfect. I want to meet the man.” So he called the people and asked, “Who is the archer?” They all laughed. They said, “Forget about him. He is the village idiot.”He said, “You don’t understand. You bring him, his archery is perfect.”The villagers said, “You don’t understand his archery. First he shoots the arrow and then he makes a circle around it. Naturally, he is perfect, always perfect. And we have told him, ‘This is not the right way. First you should make the circle on the tree and then shoot. In that way one can miss. This is a simple way, you never miss.’”Japan has been a warrior race, so naturally when Zen reached Japan it became associated with all kinds of swordsmanship, the art of archery and other things. But they have retained the essential of Zen in it. Even Mahakashyapa would not be successful in archery, but that does not mean that he is not the originator.I don’t think Gautam Buddha will be able to pass Aikido examinations. He is bound to fail. But that does not mean that this whole Aikido is just a faraway echo of Gautam Buddha’s experience of his own being. There is no contradiction. Just remember one thing: whatever you are doing…chopping wood you can be a meditator, or carrying water from the well you can be a meditator. Meditation is simply a silent thread inside you. You can do anything, just that silent thread should not be disturbed. Be careful that your awareness remains and then you can do anything.Meditation is not something separate from life. It was a great mistake of the past that people thought meditation is separate from life. When you are finished with life, one foot in the grave, then it is time to meditate – that’s how the Hindu conception is. Up to twenty-five years you should be a celibate and a scholar. Then get married up to fifty – business and all kinds of things of life…. children. And when you are fifty, then turn your face toward the forest. Don’t go yet, just turn your face, because your children may be small. So just start preparing; it is called vanprasth. Just preparation for going to the forest – twenty-five years.At seventy-five you leave. Your children will be almost forty, forty-five. They are also getting ready to be looking at the forest and preparing. At seventy-five you go into the forest. And those twenty-five years, the last part of your life, are for meditation.This was a very wrong conception. I condemn it forcefully because it destroyed this country. Firstly, it keeps meditation as the last thing on your laundry list; it is not a priority. Secondly, it creates a division between meditation and life, which is not right. Life can be meditative; meditation can be a joyful life. And thirdly, very few people live after seventy-five – particularly in India.Forty years is the average age. Now, how to divide it? Ten years for a scholarship? The other ten for marriage? The other ten for preparation to go to the forest? And by the age of thirty your ticket is given to you to go to the forest.And the idea of a hundred years is absolutely imaginative. Nowhere has a hundred years been the average time of life. Even in the most developed countries – technically, medically, scientifically – a hundred is not the average length of life. And when we are thinking about such an important thing like meditation, it should not be missed. A man who has missed meditation has missed the most beautiful experience of his life.Now a few moments for prayer…For years, the Goldberg family have been trying to persuade Hymie to buy a hearing aid. But all he says is, “Nonsense. You people should talk louder.”But one day Hymie is walking down the street when he sees a sign in a shop window: Hearing aids – sixty percent off. Hymie rushes in and within ten minutes, he has been fitted with a hearing aid.Stepping out into the street with a broad smile on his face, a voice calls him, “Hymie, hey Hymie!” It is his friend Moishe Finkelstein. “What are you doing in this part of town?” asks Moishe.“This,” replies Hymie pointing to his ear. “It is wonderful. My kids were right, I can hear like a seventeen-year-old.”“That’s great,” says Moishe. “What kind is it?”Hymie glances at his watch and says, “It’s a quarter to five.”And the last…An American from Texas goes to England for a holiday, and when he walks into a cafe, he asks the waiter for a cup of black coffee.The waiter replies, “In England, we serve tea. We have three types of tea: we have orange pekoe tea, which is eighty percent aroma and twenty percent substance; we have herbal tea, which is twenty percent aroma and eighty percent substance; and we have English tea, which is preferred.”Then the Texan says, “I don’t want tea, I want black coffee. But in Texas, we also have three teas: we have shi-t, which has eighty percent substance and twenty percent aroma; we have far-t, which has eighty percent aroma and twenty percent substance; and we have cun-t, which is preferred.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A friend told us that she once heard you say that you want us to become enlightened in the most aesthetic way possible. Will you speak on the aesthetics of consciousness? Have you ever spoken of anything else?You have raised a very significant question. All the religions that have existed on the earth have been very unaesthetic, because they denied life, they denied all the beauties, all the flowers, all creativity, sensitivity.They killed millions of people’s possibility of attaining to enlightenment through aesthetic creativity. They simply closed the door, and for centuries nobody has even asked the question, “Is it possible that just to be a musician is enough to become enlightened?” I say yes.And people who are uncreative are praised as saints. All that they have done may be fasting. But being hungry is not a great quality, and it does not enhance humanity in any way. They may have lived naked, but that does not mean they are making life more beautiful. Most of these naked saints are so ugly that it would have been better…they should be praised if they stop being naked. But their nakedness has been praised; it is thought to be a great discipline.Sometimes stupid ideas carried for a long time almost start looking like ultimate truths. All the animals are naked. I don’t see any saintliness in being naked. I am not saying that to be naked is criminal, I am simply saying that if the time is right and the climate is beautiful and you have a body worth seeing…. First stand naked before the mirror before you disturb other people. But on a sea beach, of course, you can be naked; in a good climate, in the home you can be naked. But there is nothing saintly in it, it is simply natural. Every animal, every bird is naked – except a few dogs.In the Victorian age in England, where morality became hilarious, even dogs were covered with clothes. This was thought to be very Christian. You will not believe it, even the legs of the chairs and tables were covered – because they are called legs and legs should not be left naked. Except for those few idiots, the whole world of the animals has remained natural.For man perhaps it is now difficult to be naked in all the seasons. His body is no longer capable, is no longer so strong as it was in the age of the primitive man who lived naked. For thousands of years we have protected our bodies. But remember, whenever anything is protected it becomes weaker. The more you protect, the weaker it becomes. A primitive man in the jungles of India still lives naked – in the winter, in the rain, in the hot sun – but he has the stamina and he has the body. But he is not a saint, he is simply uncultured, uneducated, uncivilized, primitive. There is nothing that can be said in praise of him.But religions have been preaching to people very uncreative disciplines, which are sometimes so funny that even to believe that thousands of people live under those beliefs seems impossible.In India, Jainism is a religion whose monks, step by step, finally become naked. In five stages of discipline, the last stage of their discipline is to be naked. Because of this stage Jainism has to deny women direct entry into their paradise. First they will have to become men, because they cannot attain the final stage of discipline, of nakedness.And the people who became naked…through twenty-five centuries continuously, thousands of people have become naked, and they have not contributed anything to the world, have not painted, have not written poetry. In fact, these are mundane affairs, worldly things, which they have renounced. In every way their disciplines have made them ugly.For example, the Jaina monk eats standing. Now, if you eat standing, soon you will have a big belly. Your chest will sink and your belly will become bigger. You will be pregnant without pregnancy! They have to eat food in their cupped hands because they cannot use any kind of instruments. What nonsense! To use a plate is not great technology. But they are praised because they are using only their hands, and that creates many problems.They cannot use a razor blade to shave their beards or their hair. And the problem becomes more complicated because they are not allowed to have a bath at all. Their discipline does not even allow them to have a mouthwash. They don’t brush their teeth, because the brush is great technology, and toothpaste is certainly manufactured in great factories. They have disowned the whole world – how can they use a brush? And why should they use one?Their logic is worth understanding, because that will explain many other things in other religions. They are the extreme and the extreme is always good to understand, because things have come to the very climax where even a blind man can see that it is stupid.They have to pull out their hair every year with their own hands. And that is celebrated as a great religious ceremony. Thousands gather to see the naked monk pulling out his hair. He cannot use a razor blade – the razor blade belongs to the materialist world. And it is worth seeing the scene when a Jaina monk pulls out his hair. Thousands of Jainas gather and women are crying, a few have fainted. The great saint is going through so much suffering.Who has told him to go through so much suffering? Anybody can give him a free shave. Now, he has imposed upon himself a stupid thing and people are praising him for his great disciplined life. This is not discipline, this is self-torture. And the reason is that he is not the body, so why should he take a bath? Now, the body without you cannot take the bath, that is certain. The body without you cannot have a good mouthwash.The reasoning goes that people try to decorate their body. Your brushing the teeth – you may have never thought – is condemned by the Jainas because it is beautifying your body, which is really part of your sexuality. Having a bath, having a beautiful body, a good hairstyle, is certainly indicative that you are interested in bodies. If you are interested in your own body, you are certainly interested in other people’s bodies also. And a man who has renounced the material world has also renounced his own body.In fact these people are not saints. Looked at without any prejudice they are psychologically sick, masochists who enjoy torturing themselves. There are many in mad asylums but people don’t know that they are Jaina saints. You are unnecessarily putting them into a madhouse. They torture themselves and they enjoy it.There are two pathological categories: One is of masochists, who enjoy being tortured, and the other is of sadists, who enjoy torturing others. And it is said that the only perfect marriage is between a sadist and a masochist. Certainly it will be perfect. The husband beats and the wife enjoys. And the husband enjoys because he is beating, or vice versa.I used to be a student of a professor whose every lecture started with the description of how he had been misbehaved with, mistreated by his wife that morning. One day I heard it, the next day I heard it, the third day I had to stand up. I said, “This is too much. I can say from the symptoms that you are a masochist.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I mean, you enjoy being tortured. Otherwise, what is the point? Here you teach economics – what relationship does it have with your wife? And before standing up I have inquired about everything. I have been to your wife too, because I never question anything without proper homework.”His wife was really dangerous. The one who chose her…and it was a love marriage! She was bigger than the professor, stronger than the professor, uglier than the professor, in every way ahead of him. And I inquired of the people in the neighborhood. They said, “They are a strange couple. The wife beats the professor.”I said, “It is not news to me, because the professor himself, every day, begins his lecture with it. Half of the lecture is about how he has been mistreated, misbehaved with by his wife. He is not hiding it. And I have seen when he relates it…the joy on his face. Both need to be in psychiatric hospitals.”But the neighbors said, “Whatever you may say, they are both happy.”I said, “That’s true. That’s the perfect marriage. The wife is perfectly happy; she beats the husband, tortures him in every way. Even with the doors open – neighbors are looking in and she is sitting on the chest of her husband.”I have never come across again such a perfect couple. And it was a love marriage. I don’t think that even before they got married things would have been different. In fact, this relationship of torture had brought them together.My understanding is that the people who are weeping and crying when a Jaina monk is pulling out his hair…. he is a masochist and the crowd is made up of sadists. They are also enjoying; those tears should not mislead you. They have come from long distances just to see a madman pulling out his hair. But what is spiritual in it?And I started asking my parents, “What is spiritual in it?” A man may be naked…it is nobody’s business, let him be naked. If he pulls out his hair, perhaps he enjoys the exercise. Let him enjoy, just take care that he does not start pulling out other people’s hair. And that’s what the Jaina saint is doing. He is pulling out his hair and he is teaching others to be initiated, so finally they will have to pull out their hair. It is done in a very indirect way, but in fact he is torturing himself and teaching others, “Torture yourself. Without torturing your body, how can you attain to the spiritual?”The division between the body and the spirit has destroyed all religions. Rather than becoming a blessing to the world, they prove to be a great calamity.I teach an aesthetic consciousness. You should learn to appreciate beauty, you should learn to create beauty, you should behave in a beautiful way. Your life should be a long story of beauty, grace, love, peace. And whatever you are doing, there is no need to renounce the world – there is nowhere to go. This is our world. We have to make it more beautiful, more graceful, more lovable. And it is possible, whatever you are doing, to do it meditatively.There have been mystics like Kabir, who was a weaver. He remained a weaver, although he had kings as his followers, thousands of followers. And he was a poor man. Very few poor people have attained to the same grace and radiance as Kabir. And all his disciples prayed, “You stop weaving. You don’t have to, we are all here to support you, give you anything you need.”Kabir said, “But my meditation and my weaving have grown so together that neither can I meditate without weaving, nor can I weave without meditation. So please don’t disturb me, just let me do whatever I have been doing.”Another mystic was Gora. He was a potter and he continued to make beautiful pottery after his realization. His pottery also became of a different quality. Something of his beauty became part of what he was making.His disciples said, “Stop, we feel ashamed. People say, ‘You go to a potter?’” – in India a potter is counted as an untouchable – “‘And you touch the feet of that man?’” But still, thousands of people became illuminated by Gora’s experience. And he remained a potter to the very end.Whatever you are doing, my approach is, make your doing your meditation. Don’t think in terms that you have to leave something and then you will meditate. Those are tricks of the mind of postponing, and you will end up in some ugly situation.To me, religion can only be aesthetic and nothing else. A religious man will be in every way graceful. His very being will be surrounded by an aura of beauty. His words will be poetry itself; his silences will touch your heart; his very being will become a dance and celebration for you. What he does is not the question. What he is is the question. Whether he is a potter or a weaver or a shoemaker….There was a shoemaker also who was a mystic, Raidas. If a shoemaker can be as realized as a Gautam Buddha, then there is no need to go anywhere. Just be wherever you are, create more beauty, create more grace in your life, in your actions. Everything should be a prayer, a gratitude to existence. Then a totally different kind of religion will prevail in the world, which will be bringing great treasures to the world.Up to now all the religions have been escapist – escape from the world. I teach you to remain in the world; just remember, don’t be worldly. There is no need to renounce the world, just don’t let the world enter into your consciousness. You can sit in the Himalayas and still go on thinking about Sophia Loren. The Himalayas cannot prevent you.Once a man came to Ramakrishna with ten thousand golden pieces. At that time the rupee was pure gold. The very word rupee is from Sanskrit; it means gold. He came with ten thousand gold pieces in a big bag and told Ramakrishna, “I have been collecting and waiting – when they become ten thousand, I am going to offer them to you.”Ramakrishna said, “But I don’t have any place to keep them. And anyway, I don’t think I need them. But I cannot refuse you either. Do one thing….” Just behind Ramakrishna’s temple was flowing the beautiful Ganges. He said to the man, “Go and throw the whole load into the Ganges.”Now, Ramakrishna was saying it. And in the first place he had offered the rupees to Ramakrishna, so they belonged to him, and he was saying it. So very reluctantly he went. His heart was sinking. His whole life he had been collecting those rupees. “And that fellow seems to be absolutely insane. What will the Ganges do with them? If he does not need them, he could have told me so. I could have taken them back. If he does not need, the Ganges does not need either. But what to do, how to argue with the man? That man is mad!”One hour passed. Ramakrishna inquired, “What happened? That man has not returned.”Somebody was sent and he informed Ramakrishna, “That man is doing a great job. He has created a big crowd. Many are swimming in the Ganges, many are standing on the bank. He takes one rupee at a time, shows to the whole crowd that it is pure gold by throwing it on a stone – the sound of the gold – and then he throws it into the Ganges.“So it is a very long process. Ten thousand rupees…and the crowd is gathering and those who can swim, those who can catch the thrown rupees, they are enjoying.”Ramakrishna said, “This is strange. I had told him to throw the whole lot.”He himself went to see. It was really a great festival there. Ramakrishna tapped the man on the shoulder and said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Nothing. Just I check whether the gold is real or not and then I count: three hundred thirty-nine, three hundred forty, three hundred forty-one….”Ramakrishna said, “You idiot. When somebody is collecting money, certainly he checks whether it is real gold or not and he also counts. But when you are throwing it away, why bother? Just throw the whole bag in one go.”He had to do that, but very sadly. He was enjoying his life’s greatest moment, because so many people were appreciating him, that this is great renunciation, throwing away wealth.All the religions have been teaching, throw away wealth. And then all around the world millions of people are starving, dying in poverty. No religion has taught, create wealth. Wealth is not something that comes from the sky; it has to be created. Not everybody is a Henry Ford. It needs intelligence, it needs inventiveness, it needs many qualities; only then can man create wealth. If all the religions had taught the people, “Create wealth and we will respect the wealthiest as the saints,” the world would not be poor. There is no reason for the world to be poor.Even today, although the population has got to five billion, the scientists say that if we put all our intelligence and scientific and technological understanding together, we can make not only five billion people healthy, wealthy, comfortable, we can make twenty-five billion people live perfectly happily on this earth. But all the religions have been teaching poverty. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” And everybody knows who is blessed! But these consoling lies have helped the poor to remain poor. Jesus says that those who are rich, they don’t have any hope. “Even a camel can pass through the eye of the needle, but not a rich man through the gates of heaven.”Now, if this kind of teaching has been rampant all over the world, you see the ultimate result. Thousands of people are dying every day just because there is not enough food. Just by the end of this century, only in India five hundred million people will die, if the situation remains the same. And there seems to be no possibility that this situation will change.India does not produce food, it only produces children. It is a very productive land! When it became independent in 1947, its population was only four hundred million. Today its population is nine hundred million. Just in forty years the population has increased by five hundred million, and within the coming ten years India will pass beyond one billion.For the first time, India will be the leading nation in the world as far as poverty, hunger, starvation, population is concerned. Up to now China has been the leader, but in the coming ten years China is going to lose its permanent position. It has been the leading nation up to now – no more.A man was saying to his wife, “In this newspaper is some report about population. It says that in every five children born on the earth, one is a Chinese.” This will not be the case after ten years – in every five children born on the earth, one will be an Indian. The wife was very much worried. She said, “My God. I am pregnant and this is my fifth child, and I don’t want a Chinese in the house!”Religions have been teaching wrong values. Man would have been in a totally different position…. They have not taught how to live in tune with nature, in tune with ecology; they have not taught how to live with each other without continuous killing, massacre, rape. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars – as if man’s only profession is to fight. For whom are you fighting?If religions had taught, “Instead of being destructive, be creative. Rather than renouncing the world, renounce the nation, renounce the race; renounce all discriminations between black and white; renounce all limitations, boundaries that divide humanity. It is one humanity. This planet is our home, and we are all responsible to make it more beautiful, more livable….” But they were teaching, “Renounce this world, escape from this world.” And where will these people escape to? They don’t escape anywhere, they simply live here. They become parasites.Now there are thousands of monasteries in China, in Japan, in India, in Europe. In these monasteries there are thousands of monks. Who feeds them? They don’t create anything. All that they have created in the whole of history is the disease AIDS, nothing else. That is their only positive contribution! Homosexuality, sodomy…but their highest point is the disease AIDS. And they had renounced the world. Then why do they go on sitting on our necks? They should go and jump into the ocean. They have renounced the world; we can tell them good-bye. But they live here, they torture us, and they go on preaching all those ugly teachings which have made this earth so suicidal, so meaningless, so utterly poor in every dimension of life.My basic interest is in bringing religiousness to life, to the marketplace, and in destroying the antagonism that has been created by all the religions between religiousness and the world. There is no antagonism. Religiousness is a beautiful flower; it can blossom in the marketplace, there is no problem, because religiousness can be reduced to a simple principle of meditation. There is no need of any other discipline.Just as you deepen your meditativeness, your awareness becomes more and more crystal-clear, your life starts becoming more moral. Not according to any scripture, because they are all old and dead, and the situation in which they were written does not exist anymore. A moral person, according to me, is one who is capable of responding to the real situation directly, not according to any principle.I am reminded of a Chinese story. There was a fair. And in old China the wells, water wells, were not protected by walls around them. They were open holes. In the night, in darkness, you could fall into a water well.A man had fallen into a water well, but there was a fair – so much noise, so many people, who would hear his…he was shouting with his whole energy, “Help, I am dying!”Just by chance a Buddhist monk passing by heard the man and looked down into the well. The man said, “Thank God you have heard; otherwise in this fair people are so mad, all kinds of noises are going on – music, dance, singing – who is going to listen to me?”The Buddhist monk said, “Don’t be worried, I will listen to you.”He said, “It is not a question of listening! You have to take me out of the well.”The Buddhist monk said, “That I cannot do, because according to my scripture, everybody has to suffer for his own evil acts done in past lives. You must have done evil acts. Suffer silently, be peaceful so that in the next life you don’t have to suffer. Take care of the next life. What has happened has happened.”That man said, “I am still alive! All has not happened. I am young, my wife is there, my children are there, and you are saying all that has happened has happened. Do something!”He said, “I cannot go against my scripture.” And he went away.He was followed by a Confucian monk. The monk said, “Confucius was right.” The man said, “I agree, but first get me out!”He said, “That will happen, but it will take time. A great revolution is needed.” The man said, “But by that time…what revolution are you talking about?”The monk said, “Confucius has written that every well should have a protective wall. I will go all over the country for your sake, for your children’s sake, saying that every well should be protected with a wall.”The man said, “But, what about me?” He said, “As for you…I cannot do anything. Nobody listened to Confucius – what can I do? But as for your children, certainly nobody will fall.”The man said, “This is a strange place. A living man is dying and these idiots are talking about great revolutions.”Then came a Christian with a rope, with a bucket, and he immediately threw the rope in and the bucket and told the man, “Sit in the bucket and I will pull you out, don’t be worried.”The man said, “This seems to be the only real religion. All those others are very cunning people talking about scriptures.”He said to the Christian missionary, “Your religion is the only true religion. But by the way, I want to ask, why were you carrying a rope and a bucket?”“Because,” the missionary said, “I am always on the safe side. Who knows? Somebody may have fallen, and this is the only way I can enter paradise. I am going to oppose that Confucian monk who is trying to make walls around every well. Then nobody will fall, and if nobody falls there will be no need of saviors. The door of paradise will be closed.”The man understood for the first time that he was not being saved. The missionary was making his own account, bank balance in paradise.All these scriptures, all these religions, all these moralities may have been useful in certain circumstances, but life goes on changing. Every moment is new. So there are two ways of receiving the new moment that is knocking on your door. One is reaction: reaction comes from your principles, scriptures, knowledge, your church. And the other is response: response comes from your awareness. Except response there is no morality. Without response, whatever you do is going to lead you into some stupidity.You see in Pune there are so many non-vegetarian mosquitoes. I have not heard of any species of mosquito which is vegetarian. You may not believe that in Calcutta the rich vegetarians have many cots in their gardens. Anybody who is ready to lie down on those cots, naked, the whole night, is paid. It happens even today.They are so compassionate about the mosquitoes, because what will happen to those mosquitoes? Their scriptures say save people, help people. They are saving people, helping people. Those people are the mosquitoes! And just giving five rupees to a man…he suffers the whole night, but it is worth five rupees. He will fight with the mosquitoes, but he will remain on the bed. And the people who are paying him are doing a virtuous act of paying the hungry.Now, this net around the Buddha Auditorium is very much against the scriptures, because it is preventing the hungry. It is very immoral – so much good food and hungry people all around, but barriers…. That’s why people are against me – I teach against the scriptures.Now a few religious things. You force me to talk about irreligion, but I don’t forget the real religious things.A young Arab returns to his tent late one night, very hungry. He lights a candle and starts to look through his bag for some food until he finds four dates. Taking out his knife, he cuts open a date to find it full of worms. He cuts open a second date, but it too has worms. The third date also has worms.He sighs deeply, blows out the candle, and eats the last date.A Canadian farmer is chopping wood to store it for the winter when an old Indian comes out of the forest and says, “Cold winter this year.”Hearing this, the farmer decides to chop more wood than usual. The following day he is still chopping when the old Indian appears again and says, “Very cold winter this year.”So the farmer keeps chopping late into the night. The following day he is at it again and by now he has a huge pile of wood when the old Indian comes by and says, “Very, very cold winter this year.”The farmer stops chopping and says, “Hey chief, how do you know that?”“Well,” says the Indian, “in my tribe we have a maxim which says: Cold weather comes to the neighborhood when you see the white man chopping wood.”Moishe Finkelstein gets a nasty letter from the tax office and he has to go for an interview. He phones his son, Fagin the lawyer, for some advice, and Fagin suggests that he wears old clothes so that he does not look too prosperous.On the way to the tax office, Moishe bumps into Mendel Kravitz who tells him that dressed in this way he looks like a rascal and that the tax officer would immediately suspect something.Moishe is very confused so he goes to visit Rabbi Nussbaum. The rabbi is out, but his wife lets Moishe into the house.“What is your trouble?” she asks. And Moishe tells her his story.“Aha!” she replies at the end of the tale. “This reminds me of when I was about to get married. I could not decide whether to wear a white nightdress and look like a virgin, or a black one and look experienced and seductive, so I asked my grandmother for advice.”“Oy!” cries Moishe. “And what did she say?”“Well,” says the rabbi’s wife, “she told me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear – you’ll get fucked anyway.’”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other night I heard you say that you are as irrelevant as existence. However, as far as I am concerned, you are totally relevant and essential. Are we in contradiction with each other?I am in absolute agreement with you. Do you see the contradiction? Logic has interpreted that which is complementary as contradictory. And logic rules our education, our minds, so whenever we see two complementary things, immediately the idea of contradiction arises. Otherwise, in one interrelated existence, how could there be contradiction?Complementariness is essential. For example, the day and night are not contradictory; they are complementary to each other. Nor are life and death contradictory; they are complementary to each other. They make one whole, one circle, complete and entire. But seen through the eyes of logic, it is hard to believe that life and death are not contradictory.It seems obvious that death is the end of life; that is not true. Death is only a beginning of a new life – a refreshment, a rejuvenation. The old body is tired. You need more experiences to become mature. You have to move through many other forms of life, and there are millions of forms of life.Moving through all these forms of life, learning by and by, step by step, inch by inch, you arrive at humanity. Humanity gives you a new opportunity of transformation, to jump out of the circle of life and death and to become part of the eternal. Those who achieve it have really lived. Those who have missed may have to learn again the old route. Who knows how many lives it takes to recognize that humanity is a point of departure, not only from death, but also from life – life as you know it – to a new immortality, to a life which can be equivalent to godliness.Logic has created many misunderstandings. It goes on insisting on the duality of things without seeing the interconnecting link.I am reminded of one incident.Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, both were fighting for the freedom of India. There was only one difference between them. That was, Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted Pakistan as a separate country, only for Mohammedans – a Muslim state – and Gandhi wanted the whole of India to remain one big and vast country. They fought continuously, and the British empire depended on their agreement. Unless they agreed…the British empire went on saying: “You are not in agreement yourselves, and we don’t want to leave the country in a chaos. If we leave it in a chaos, without any decisive guidelines, there will be tremendous massacres, and the whole responsibility will be ours.”This was their politics. Jinnah was very stubborn. Finally, seeing the situation – either you have to remain slaves or you have to divide the country – Gandhi agreed on the division. India became two countries.What I want to point out is that they both had become so much attached in fighting with each other, that they were almost intimate friends. Jinnah felt, in Karachi, the capital of Pakistan, very lonely without Gandhi; he lost all interest. And here in New Delhi, Gandhi, who used to say that he was going to live to one hundred and twenty-five years, dropped the idea and said, “I want to die as soon as possible. There is no joy.”On the surface, logic will say that these two persons were contradictory to each other, enemies to each other. But deep down there seems to be an intimacy. Jinnah was the head of his government in Pakistan. Gandhi was nobody; his disciples were running the government. Just one year after he was shot by a Hindu, which no one could have ever thought…. It was possible that he might be shot by a Mohammedan, but he was shot by a Hindu. Life has its own way.It looks strange, but deep down there is a certain connectedness. With Gandhi being alive, the Hindus in India would not be the only power, because there were Mohammedans, there were Jews, there were Christians, there were Jainas, there were Buddhists. And Gandhi wanted to make an absolutely secular state. Jinnah did a good job; he got rid of almost all the Hindus in Pakistan and made a Mohammedan state, a religious state.Gandhi could not do that. And if Gandhi was alive, then he would prevent anything along those lines. And the strangest thing is that India has the greatest Mohammedan population in the whole world. No other country has…even today, after the division of Pakistan on one side, Bangladesh on another side, India has the biggest Mohammedan population. It is the biggest Mohammedan nation.So the fear of the Hindus was, “Soon these Mohammedans, who produce children more efficiently and are allowed by the constitution to have religious freedom – and each Mohammedan can marry four women…. Soon they will be the majority in the country. Again Hindus will be living under Mohammedan rule.”Gandhi had to be removed. And the moment the news reached all over India that Gandhi had been shot, everybody, without any exception, thought that he must have been killed by a Mohammedan. I told my father, “I don’t think so, because Mohammedans have achieved what they wanted. They wanted a separate country – they have got a separate country. Whatever their demands were, they have been fulfilled. Why should they kill Mahatma Gandhi, who is not in their way at all? He was certainly killed by a Hindu.”And unfortunately that Hindu came from Pune. But the day Gandhi was killed, and the news reached Karachi…. That whole year Muhammad Ali Jinnah had not had guards, security, because he could not think that any Mohammedan could kill him. He had given them a whole country which did not belong to them.He was sitting in the garden talking to his secretary when the news came on the radio that Gandhi had been assassinated by a Hindu. Suddenly Muhammad Ali stood up, and his secretary had to support him because he was staggering. He was so much shocked by the very idea: a Hindu killing Mahatma Gandhi! Then what was possible became clear to him – he could also be killed by a Mohammedan.And actually he was killed by Mohammedans, but in such a slow way that it did not look like assassination. He was old and sick, and since Mahatma Gandhi had died he never left his bed. Everybody said, “You should be happy that Gandhi is dead.” He said, “I feel very hollow without him. He was my joy, we were party to a game. Now I am alone. Now there is nobody with whom I can play the old game. Now there is nobody who is exactly my contemporary. My only contemporary was Mahatma Gandhi; he is dead.”He became sick and to his closest disciple, Liyakat Ali Khan, he gave the position of acting head of the country, because he was not able to work. And what Liyakat Ali Khan did…. Just now the diary of the doctor who looked after Muhammad Ali Jinnah has been published. Liyakat Ali Khan moved Muhammad Ali Jinnah to a remote part of Pakistan where there was no medicine, no hospital – if you asked for any medicine it would take three weeks to reach – no railway lines, no airport, nothing, with the argument that the climate would suit him. Now he was in power.And only a doctor was given to Jinnah, not even a nurse or a servant to look after him. And the doctor’s remembrance is, “It was a political murder done in a very diplomatic way.” There would be periods of three weeks when there was no medicine. The doctor would go on giving information that medicine was needed absolutely immediately, and after three weeks the urgent medicine would arrive.My own feeling is also that Jinnah was killed. And the doctor reports in his book, “To me Jinnah confided a strange secret: ‘I have committed a mistake by dividing India and Pakistan.’” This is a very strange thing.His whole life he fought for Pakistan, and at the end he says, “I committed a great mistake, and now there is no going back. I am too old and Gandhi is not alive. If I had a little health left, I would have flown to New Delhi, to Jawaharlal, and said to him, ‘Drop this idea of two countries. It is foolish.’” But with Gandhi he could never agree.Were they enemies or complementaries? Ordinary historians will say they were enemies – they were not. Jinnah had immense respect for Gandhi, and so was the case with Gandhi. Agreement or non-agreement on political matters was one affair, but love for each other was a totally different thing.You will not believe that Gandhi had offered Jinnah, “I will make you the first prime minister of India, but let India remain undivided. And you can choose your cabinet. I will not interfere, and I will withdraw Jawaharlal and others who are contenders. They are my people; I can tell them to withdraw, let Jinnah have his government. I trust you; the country will not suffer in your hands, it will prosper in your hands. Your intelligence, your caliber, your character – everything makes it reasonable that you should be the first prime minister of the whole country. Why be the head of a small section of the country when I am offering you the whole continent of India?”But Jinnah refused. He said, “I never accept anything. I fight for it and I win it. Your idea is good, but it is your idea.” They fought their whole lives and both suffered. Gandhi was continually inquiring about Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s health: “How is he? Is he still the same warrior, with the same sharp intelligence?” And the same was true on the other side.I am just giving you an example from human reality. When your enemy dies, something in you dies too; you are no longer the same. The enemy was also part of your being. You may not have thought about it in that way, that he was complementary to you. On a wider scale the whole existence is complementary. But Aristotle, who created Western logic, could not understand this complementariness. He is thought to be the father of logic – he is not even the uncle, because his whole logic by and by is proving to be wrong.In the East, we have a totally different logical approach. It is in tune with life. Those who are not accustomed to it will say it is contradictory, it is inconsistent. But those who can understand, they can see the underlying connectedness.One morning a man asked Gautam Buddha, “Do you believe in God?” And Buddha said, “God? God does not exist. The question of belief does not arise.” And he said it so strongly.In the afternoon, another man came and he asked, “Does God exist?” And Buddha said, “Yes, absolutely yes. Without God, life would be just dead, unconscious. God is the intelligence of existence.”And in the evening another man came and he said, “I don’t know from where to begin. I am not a thinker; I don’t know whether God exists or does not exist. I have not yet taken a partisan view. Would you help me to see the reality?”Gautam Buddha, listening to him, did not answer, but closed his eyes and went into deep meditation. The man, seeing the beauty and the grace of Buddha meditating, himself fell…. You know that kind of experience: if you are sitting with a few people and one man goes on yawning, soon you start feeling sleepy also. We are not islands, we are connected, so things enter into each of us. And a man of the quality of Buddha, with such tremendous silence, created such an atmosphere that the man fell into that silence; he also closed his eyes.After one hour, Buddha shook him and asked him, “Have you received the answer?” The man touched Gautam Buddha’s feet and he said, “I am grateful. There is no question and there is no answer. There is only pure silence in the inner being of man, and that silence goes on spreading into the innermost core of the universe. But there is no question, no answer. Life is very innocent. I am grateful that you showed me the way.”Ananda, who remained always by Gautam Buddha’s side to take care of him…he was very much puzzled because he had heard all three answers. In one God does not exist; in one God exists; in another, the question does not arise. When everybody had left, Ananda asked Gautam Buddha, “Don’t disturb my sleep. I will not be able to sleep with such kinds of contradictory answers. One expects you to be consistent. If you say yes then go on saying yes, if you say no then that is your answer. But what kind of answer is this?”Buddha said, “Ananda, I have told you many times: those were not your questions and I was not answering you.”Ananda said, “I know, I have also heard you saying to me all kinds of things. But one thing is certain, I have ears and they hear. I cannot close my ears when you are answering somebody. I have heard all the three answers and they are all contradictory.”Gautam Buddha said, “Just for your sleep’s sake…. I would like to say to you, the first man who had come to me was an atheist – a confirmed atheist, well-known atheist. He wanted me to say something that supported him. He was not a seeker, he was not really on a quest. I had to shatter his ego. And the same was the case with the other man. He had come with a prejudice and he wanted to be supported in his prejudice. And that would be very unkind, to support anybody’s prejudice. I destroyed his prejudice. You simply heard those answers, you did not see what was the undercurrent.“The undercurrent was the same: to destroy the prejudice, to destroy the belief and to bring those people to real, authentic experience. That’s why I did not answer the third man, because he had no prejudice. He was so innocent that to tell him something would have been a crime. So all that I could do was, I went into meditation, and around me in the deep silence of the night…. And he was an innocent man; he also fell into silence. He experienced for the first time his own inner peace – no question, no answer. And he was grateful. He touched my feet, saying that I had solved his trouble.”The work of a master is very complex because he is working with so many people of different prejudices, different conditionings – and he has to shatter them all and make people absolutely clean, just as they were born, knowing nothing. But that knowing nothing was such a beautiful flower in the child. It filled him with wonder.Knowledge kills wonder. Not knowing fills you with mysterious experience.When the child opens his eyes and sees the birds and the sun rays and the trees and the greenery…and so many colors. He cannot describe them; he does not know even their names. But he lives almost in paradise. In his innocence is paradise.My effort here is to make you as innocent as a child. I am teaching no belief system, so the question of contradiction does not arise. No philosophy is my preaching, so contradiction does not arise. My effort is to demolish all the rubbish that you have collected down the ages. If I can remove all that rubbish from your mind and can give you a clean sky, my work is done.Without knowing, you will know. The mystery, the mysterious, the poetry of life, the music and the dance…all will become available to you.A truck driver is racing down the freeway at seventy miles per hour when suddenly a face appears level with his left-hand cab window. The driver leans over and sees that a man is standing on the saddle of his motorbike, steering with one foot on the handlebar.The truck driver rolls down his window, and the biker holds up a cigarette and says, “Have you got a light?”“I have,” says the driver holding out his lighter, “but you’d better be careful or you’ll kill yourself.”“No, I won’t,” replies the biker, “I only smoke three a day.”Logic is not the way to life – it leads away. The path that leads to life consists of a clarity just like that of a mirror: it reflects everything but holds on to nothing.Aristotle, although considered to be the father of Western logic, was not much of a logician. He has written in his books that women have less teeth than men. And he had two wives; any night he could have counted his wives’ teeth. But no, in Greece it was just as in other lands: a prejudice against women, that they must have something less than men, they cannot be first-class citizens on any grounds – even about teeth.This man gave many ideas which worked up to a point and then flopped, because they were not coming from an enlightened being, they were not coming from a deep meditation. They were just superficial thinking. Today there has come into existence a new logic: non-Aristotelian logic. Following logic, Euclid made his geometry. Now, because the father figure is falling, Euclid has been losing ground every day. There has come into existence a non-Euclidean geometry.You can enforce on small children stupid ideas – for example, that two parallel lines never meet. But nobody asks, “Can you draw two parallel lines? – exactly parallel?” It is impossible. Whatever you create is going to meet – maybe miles away, but parallel lines meet because parallel lines are created by human beings, who cannot do anything with absolute perfection.Euclid goes on saying, “The definition of a line is that it has length, only length.” But can you draw a line which has only length? However thin it is, it will have something more than length. He defines a point as that which has no length, no breadth; can you make a point without length or breadth, howsoever small it is?Now every concept of Euclid is being questioned. And Euclid is only a logical extension of Aristotle. Aristotle is not a sage; he is simply a thinker. And a thinker cannot come to conclusions which can be true – only in appearance. Only the sage can see reality as it is. It is Aristotle who divided the world into two: the material and the spiritual.It is such a coincidence, interesting coincidence, that the spiritual world is called the metaphysical. And the reason is only that in his book he has chapters, and after the chapter on physics comes the chapter…he does not call it metaphysics, he simply says that there are things which are not confined to the physical world. But because the chapter comes after the chapter on physics – meta means after, metaphysics means after physics – it has taken a strange meaning.But existence is one. You may divide it arbitrarily for certain purposes, but never for a moment forget that your division is arbitrary. Existence is one solid whole. Matter is nothing but spirit condensed; spirit is matter which has come to blossom – the difference between the seed and the flower.It is not a difference, because the seed contains the flower and the flower contains many seeds. So it is a circle, it is not a division. All divisionary ideas are dangerous. The East also has grown its own logic, but it is not Aristotelian. Buddha’s logic is a fourfold logic. If you ask him, “Is there God?” he may say, “Perhaps.” Perhaps is not an answer. If you ask, “Is there any doubt?” he will say, “Perhaps”; “Are you not certain?” he will say, “Perhaps.”Mahavira extended the idea of “perhaps” to the very extreme. His logic is sevenfold. It is one of the most complicated ideas, but very representative of reality, because he says, “Whatever you say contains only one aspect of reality. What about other aspects? You have to make other statements.” According to him, unless you make seven statements you will not be able to cover the whole reality. But those seven statements are going to be contradictory to each other.Ask him, “What about God?” and he says, “God is.” And immediately he says, “God is not.” And following that, “God is both: is, is not.” And he continues, “God is both not: neither is nor is not.” And he finalizes, “God is indefinable.”Mahavira could not gather many followers for the simple reason that only very crazy people will accept such a thing. People want definite answers. But existence is a flux, it is not definite; it is changing, it is moving. It has all aspects possible. In some way you can say, “Yes, it is true.” And in some way you can say, “It is not true.”In a court, a man was on the witness stand. There had been a murder. Another witness had said that the murder had happened inside the house, and this witness said that the murder happened under the open sky.The judge was a little puzzled. Both men were trustworthy, of integrity. Then his clerk told him, “Don’t be puzzled, both are right. The house was being built, but the roof had not been put on it. So the murder happened in the house, but it happened under the open sky.”If you watch life, you will find so many things which logically don’t fit. But that simply means you have not gone deep enough; otherwise they have to fit. They are part of this existence.Paddy is called as the prime witness in an assault case but gets things a little mixed up in his account of the affair.“It was Dennis who started it all, your honor,” begins Paddy. “He trod on my foot. So I pushed him off and smacked him on the jaw. Just then, his dog ran up and I hit him again.”“Hit the dog?” asks the judge. “No, your honor, I hit Dennis. Then I picked up a stone and threw it at him and it rolled him over and over.”“Threw a stone at Dennis?” asks the judge. “At the dog, your honor. Then he got up and hit me again.”“The dog?” asks the judge. “No, Dennis. And with that he stuck his tail between his legs and ran off.”“Dennis?” asks the judge. “No, the dog,” says Paddy. “And when he came back at me, he got me down and pounded me, your honor.”“The dog came back at you?” asks the judge. “No, Dennis, your honor. And he was not hurt at all.”“Who was not hurt?” asks the judge. “The dog, your honor,” says Paddy.The judge scratches his head and fines the dog ten dollars.After an unfruitful evening at the village dance, Ned begins his long, lonely walk back to the farmhouse. When he is halfway home the rounded, moonlit shapes of the big pumpkins in the fields remind the horny young fellow of so many shapely female asses. Settling down next to one of the pumpkins, he cuts a whole in the side and begins to get physical with it.Suddenly a voice cries out, “Hey, you! What the hell are you doing with that pumpkin?”Ned bolts upright, sees the policeman’s badge glinting in the moonlight, and thinking quickly blurts out, “Pumpkin? What pumpkin? Oh, Christ, is it midnight already?”Paddy decides to try life in the army and gets sent to a training camp. One night, he comes back from an exercise covered in cow shit.“Why are you late back in camp?” snaps the sergeant major.“Sorry, sir,” says Paddy, “but as we crossed that field full of cows my hat blew off, and I had to try on thirty before I found it again.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A lot came up for me in discourse when you said Anubuddha was so loving, so caring, so successful. The line that got me the most was, “our best bodyworker.” My need for praise and fear of rejection was hit by a strong punch in the stomach. I feel like I'm drowning; you look like the lifeguard, so I scream out for help, but you just smile and tell a joke.Osho, how deep is the water?Deva Satyarthi, I knew, as everybody else did, whose question this was! I was waiting for it; in fact it arrived almost the same day. But I waited so that you could cool down a little.You don’t seem to understand the language of this commune. Here everyone is the best! I have never come across another category. This is not the ordinary world you are in. Here things have a different meaning. And you are to be understanding enough; otherwise you will go on missing the basic points of inner growth.Just the other day, when Anubuddha was working on my hand it was hurting so much, and I had to decide whether to say to him, “Do your worst, don’t be worried,” or, “Do your best, don’t be worried.” For the first time I came to understand that the worst and the best can be the same. But it is our whole upbringing which teaches competition, jealousy, which teaches comparison and continuously keeps us in a despair.These are foundations of despair and anguish. If you are continuously comparing…. Then somebody has a little longer nose than yours, and you will feel very much hurt against God, “What kind of miserliness…. Just a little bit longer nose and I would have been a beautiful person. And he has given me a nose which looks as if he has punched it. Is it a nose or a joke? – punch line!”And you are always looking all around – thousands of people. There are people who have beautiful bodies, there are people who have great intelligence, and there are people who have money – and they all keep you in misery. They don’t do anything to you, you do everything yourself; it is a self-created hell. But continuously comparing yourself with everybody you come across, you will be never out of misery; you are following all the rules which create misery. One has to learn not to compare, not to be competitive.Satyarthi has been working on my body almost for one month and he is my best bodyworker. There is no question and no doubt about it. But he is a best bodyworker in his own way; Anubuddha is in his own way. Leela was working on my body…. My body is a kind of test for my bodyworkers. So many people…they enjoy working. I say, “Okay, torture me as much as you can. Anyway I have nothing else to do. You are doing the whole work, I am simply witnessing how much people can torture each other.”Satyarthi is one of the best body torturers. If you are feeling in the dumps, down, go to Satyarthi, because to get out of misery there is only one way: to invite greater misery. Lying down, I have nothing to do, but I go on watching what is their method of torture. Satyarthi has a very clear-cut method. First he does such a deep massage that your whole body hurts – naturally. And slowly he starts doing less deep massage and you start improving. Finally he is doing a soft massage and your whole body is healthy. It was healthy in the first place! The day I understood his trick, I told him, “Now give somebody else a chance.”But remember one thing: the moment you drop comparison, competition, all jealousy disappears. You are yourself, perfectly beautiful; as an individual, incomparable. But even the greatest people suffer from such stupid things.The man who created the greatest revolution in the world, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, had small legs, disproportionate to his body. They never reached to his feet. Special chairs were made for him; otherwise he was dangling in the air. Naturally he was feeling very inferior. The greatest revolutionary of the world…but what to do? Existence goes on joking with people. He was always very conscious that nobody mentioned his legs. And in such situations the ordinary thing is that everybody will mention his legs – what happened?A guest was coming to Hymie Goldberg’s family and he was a great politician, very powerful. And Hymie Goldberg and his wife Becky were telling their son, Herschel, the whole day, “Remember, don’t mention about his nose!”The boy was very much puzzled, “Why so much concern about his nose? Many guests have come, but nobody has told me, ‘Never mention about his….’ Why should I mention about his nose?”Then the guest came and there was great silence. And Herschel said, “My God, he has no nose! And the whole day I have been tortured: don’t talk about his nose. And Jews know what a nose is! This you call a nose?”Hymie Goldberg hit his head. He said, “The whole day I wasted telling him, ‘Herschel, you can get out and either go to play or to meet somebody or go to your grandmother’s house. But if you remain here, a guest is coming – don’t mention about his nose.’”He said, “I am not going from this place, because if something strange is coming….”Naturally, the thing that you don’t want anybody to know, everybody will know. Your very hiding will indicate that something is wrong.It is a very strange atmosphere, created by the whole world. It has a certain background behind it. It wanted to destroy the individual, take away his dignity. It wanted to destroy the joyfulness and give him misery, because only miserable people are controllable, only miserable people are able to be exploited. Miserable people are always ready to play into the hands of others, the vested interests.The vested interests don’t want individuals, because an individual, just by the very definition, is a rebel. He does not belong to any crowd, any religion, any nation, any race; he simply is himself. It is very difficult to exploit a world which consists of individuals. It is very difficult to create unnecessary wars, destruction, if the world consists of individuals. Because the world consists of miserable people, you can force them to do anything. They are always looking upward, for somebody to order them.In the army it comes to the extreme point. All the trainings in all the armies of the world are basically the same. The structure is how to destroy the individual, but in such a way that you will never think that it is destroying the individual. They call it discipline, they call it obedience, they call it courage. They call it many beautiful names. And what is the training?In the second world war when there was a shortage of people in the army, a professor in England had to be compulsorily enrolled. He resisted. He said, “Listen, I am a professor of philosophy. I cannot do anything without thinking about it. I cannot even shoot without first contemplating about the consequences.” But they did not listen. They thought, “We will manage.” They had their training.The first day he was standing in the line in the morning for parade and the commander said, “Left turn.” Everybody turned except the professor. He was thinking, “I don’t see any point, why I should turn left. There is no reason at all. I am perfectly good as I am.”The commander looked very angrily at him, but remained silent, thinking that he would take him to task afterward. Then he ordered everybody to turn to the left, to the right; to go backward, to go forward; and then finally to stand in the same place from where they had started the whole exercise. And then he came to the professor who was standing, and asked him, “Why don’t you move?”He said, “Why should I move? And what have all these people gained by moving? These are all idiots! For no reason: move left, move right, go forward, go backward. I am not an idiot.”The commander said, “This is a strange fellow. Nobody ever has raised the question.” He said to the general, “This man is absolutely uncontrollable. Whatever you say, he asks why. If you say, ‘Your shoes are not shining as they should be shining,’ he says, ‘I am perfectly happy with them as they are. And what has it to do with the training and the discipline?’ If you say, ‘Your clothes are not perfectly well ironed,’ he says, ‘It is not your problem. I like loose clothes.’”Finally he went to the general and he said, “You take this man over. He may spoil the others, because the others laugh. And others have also started thinking, ‘Perhaps the professor is right. What is wrong in loose clothes, if he likes loose clothes? What is wrong if the shoes are not shining? In what way are shining shoes going to win the war?’”“He raises such questions,” the commander said, “that I cannot manage. You take him away.”The general called the professor and he said, “You’d better work in the mess.” And he gave him a pile of peas and told him to sort out the bigger peas from the smaller peas: “Make two piles, and after one hour I will come to see the result.”After one hour he came and saw the result. The professor was waiting, looking at the peas. The peas were sitting in the same place. The general asked, “What is the matter with you? Can’t you sort out bigger peas from smaller ones?”He said, “The problem is, where to put the middle ones? And I never do anything unless I have planned it completely. I have not been able to figure out where to put the middle ones. All are not big and all are not small – there are middle ones too. You tell me, where should I put the middle ones? And if you tell me with the big ones, then why? Explain! If you tell me with the smaller ones, an explanation is needed.”He was released from the army, with honor. This type of man is not needed in the army. The army wants obedient people. Whatever is said has to be done; there is no question of why. This obedience is nothing but another name of slavery, creating a slave psychology. First, “Left, right, backward, forward” – innocent things, because you are not destroying anything, not killing anybody. But they have developed, down the ages, certain tactics.Once you become obedient and you start doing things as you are told, and you don’t ask why, then when one day you are marching with guns, the moment you are ordered to shoot you don’t think even for a moment, “Why?” That man is absolutely innocent. He has not done any wrong to you. He also has a wife, he also has children, he also has old parents waiting for him, just as your parents are waiting and praying that you will come back home soon. If the soldiers start thinking, both soldiers will throw away their guns and will hug each other and say, “It is time to go home. What is the point?”If the politicians cannot agree on certain points, that is their business. They should wrestle with each other. Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan can have a boxing match and decide – whoever wins. But why waste millions of people’s lives? Millions of people are in the army wasting their lives.Just “Left, right, left, right.”And finally comes the loaded gun, “Shoot!”Or the bomb.The man who dropped the bombs, atom bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not think for a single moment about what he was doing. His mind was completely brainwashed, completely mechanical. He had been ordered; he was obeying. Obedience is the greatest religion, not only in the army, but also in the church; not only in the politician’s world, but also in the priest’s conception of existence – obedience, just obey. And he obeyed.A man of small intelligence and individuality would have thought at least twice, “What am I going to do? One hundred thousand people will be destroyed within three minutes.” But he dropped atom bombs on two cities…two hundred thousand people. He came back to his camp, and in the morning when asked, “Did you have any rest?” he said, “Why not? I followed the order, I rested well. I am an obedient person.”Obedience is the greatest value in a world of slaves. And this is not only the case with the ordinary politician and the priest; it begins with your God himself. He was against Adam and Eve because they disobeyed. What kind of God have people been worshipping? And a God who prevents his own children from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life does not seem to be a very loving father. He seems most dangerous, a despot. And that’s what the devil managed to convince Eve of. And the devil was absolutely right.You will be surprised to know, there are thousands of devil worshippers in the world. And I can see the point, why they worship the devil. He was the first revolutionary, and he suggested the right thing. He said “These are the two most important trees in the whole garden of Eden. If you know and if you experience eternal life, what else is needed? Wisdom is enlightenment and eternal life is deathlessness – you have attained everything. God has prohibited the two most important things in life. And the reason why he has prevented you is that he is afraid that if you eat these two fruits, you will also become like God. He is jealous! He is afraid that he will lose his power. Everybody will be as powerful as he is.”Now, this fascist has been worshipped as God, and the poor fellow, the devil, has been condemned, who has been the greatest benefactor of humanity. He has not harmed anybody, he has simply suggested that these are the two things worth achieving: the wisdom of the truth, and the life which knows no death. Then it takes a totally new aroma, a beauty and a blessing.God has prevented you so that you can remain slaves, afraid of death, afraid of disease, and always a worshipper. He has destroyed your dignity by preventing you. I have always loved that for some reason, which is lost far back in the historical records, the word devil comes from the Sanskrit word divine. It exactly means God. In its origin, God means nothing; in no language does it have any meaning. It is just Godot.When I was reading Waiting for Godot I thought, Godot seems to be like a German word. The very sound of the word…. One of my old sannyasins, Haridas, was with me. I asked Haridas, “What is German for God?”He said, “The German for God is Gott!”It seems only Germans have Gott it! God does not mean anything. It is a meaningless word and you can manage to give any image to it.So I cannot condemn devil worshippers. They are growing. Just a few days ago there were reports from Australia that devil worshippers are not only worshipping the devil, they don’t allow the Christian church to continue their Sunday ritual. They throw stones at the churches, at the windows, disturb the meetings. And they are all Christians – they are not my sannyasins!Deva Satyarthi, your question is good for everybody. From this moment start learning that we don’t have any other category than the best. Everybody is the best in his own way. There is nobody else to be compared to. And once you drop this comparison business, you will feel so light and so full of joy. The same energy that goes on becoming jealousy and competition and comparison turns into blissfulness, becomes a shower of ecstasy in the deepest core of your being.That day after I talked about Anubuddha I had remembered Satyarthi, and I knew that he was going to be very much disturbed. And while passing him I had smiled at him – just to give a finish, the last touch. But he could not laugh. If he had laughed, he would have become enlightened!Little Herschel Goldberg is causing his parents much heartache by his behavior. He has already been kicked out of two state schools, so in desperation they send him to a Roman Catholic school.When Herschel gets home from his first day at school, he goes straight to his room to do his homework. Hymie comes home from work and says to Becky, “Well, how did Herschel get on at his new school?”“Fine,” says Becky, “he is upstairs now doing his homework.”“Homework?” cries Hymie. “He has never done any homework in his life!”So Hymie runs upstairs and says to Herschel, “Well, son, how come you are doing homework? Why this big change?”“Well,” says Herschel, “I am the only Jewish boy in the school, and up on the wall they have a picture of the last one who went there. And, Oy! you should see what they did to him. They nailed him to a lamppost!”Man is living in fear. He is doing everything out of fear. If he does not do it he will lose respectability; if he does not do it according to the idea of others, he will not be thought to be somebody special. It is all fear, and out of fear nothing great ever comes. Anything great is born only out of love, meditation, silence, understanding. If you create out of fear it is not creation. Your fear will be there, just like a shadow, destroying the beauty of your creation.If your creation comes out of joy, then whatever you do has a beauty, a beauty that you can be proud of. Whether anybody understands it or not does not matter.I am reminded of Van Gogh. He painted – perhaps the first painter – with his own blood. He was a poor coal miner’s son. The family was not able to send him to an arts school. And the family could not conceive – what kind of crazy idea has he got, that he has to become a painter? He left the family, but he had no other kind of education, qualification. His brother used to send him every week exactly seven days’ money for food, for clothes, for absolute necessities. And Van Gogh was fasting for four days and saving the money to purchase paints and canvases and brushes. So one day he would eat, one day he would fast.Perhaps no man has fasted so spiritually. This I call a spiritual fast, because it is in the service of creativity. It is not out of greed – you fast because you want heavenly pleasures after death. It will be counted, how many fasts you did. It is sheer greed; it is not spirituality. You give to beggars just as a way of opening an account in God’s bank. And these beggars go on saying that if you give one rupee here, there you will get a thousand in return. It is not even business; it is sheer gambling. It is not spirituality. Only a man like Van Gogh fasting can I say is spiritual.He would paint, and he was so far ahead of his contemporaries that nobody ever understood what he was painting. Not even painters could understand his paintings. He could not sell a single painting his whole life. And now his paintings are sold for ten million dollars, a single painting; twelve million dollars, a single painting. There are only two hundred left, and he had painted thousands. And he had given them just to friends, because what else to do? He had no place to collect them.A man one day came to purchase a painting. Van Gogh was very happy. He started showing him all the paintings that he thought were his best creations.The man said, “You don’t worry. You give me anything, just this is the price.”This was so insulting. He immediately threw the money out on the street and pushed the man out and told him, “Tell my brother never to send any other man to purchase my paintings. You are not the man…you don’t even have an eye for the beauty, for creativity. You don’t even want to see…. Certainly I can say this money has been given by my brother to you, just to give me a little satisfaction that at least one painting has been sold.”It was a very strange life – fasting, continuously painting, he was becoming weaker and weaker. Finally he wanted to paint the sun, so day after day he was just watching the sun – painting, but rejecting the paintings; they were not coming up to his standard. He went crazy. He was forced to enter a mental asylum. For one year he remained in that madhouse.That was the only peaceful time, where the medical and the psychiatric doctors were sympathetic to him, to his whole misery. He had done no harm. And they allowed him, from the institution’s money, to have paints and everything that he wanted. For the first time he had everything he needed to paint without being hungry. His best paintings are those which he painted in a madhouse.But still he was thought mad, because the paintings were not created for selling, the paintings were not competitive, the paintings had no ambition; the paintings were not desires and greed to become somebody special. The paintings were the children of his love. And he painted as an individual; his society could not understand them, because he did not follow the society’s symbols.For example, his trees all go higher than his stars. Now, anybody can point out, “This is not factual. Stars are far higher and your trees are going beyond the stars.” He said, “What can I do? Whenever I listen to the trees I feel that they are the desires of the earth to reach the stars. I am simply painting what I am experiencing.”He painted his stars as spirals. Everybody laughed, because stars are not spirals. Just recently, physicists have come to the idea that stars are spirals – just because of their distance we cannot see that they are spirals – and Van Gogh was for the first time validated by science. A hundred years before, with naked eyes, with no scientific instruments…the man’s clarity must have been immense. His love must have been so enormous, his silence so penetrating, that it reached to the farthest stars without any instruments, without any support. Everybody was against him, but he painted stars as spirals.A man should live according to his heart. Even if he remains a beggar, he will have a dignity which even a king cannot have. The king can lose his dignity within minutes. A man should work not out of fear and comparison and to defeat someone, but to express his own genius. And everybody has a genius of some kind.Now something for Deva Satyarthi to laugh. I don’t want anybody to be serious here. It is a temple of love, a temple of laughter. Seriousness is considered sickness by me.A woman is out riding one day when she falls off her horse and shoots straight through a hedge, where her jeans and sweater are torn off. She is lying naked and unconscious in the field when Father Murphy comes by on his bicycle.Seeing the naked girl, he runs over to see what has happened, but not knowing what to do, he places his black priest’s hat over her pussy and jumps on his bicycle to go and get help.Just then, Paddy and Sean stagger out of the pub and go over to the hedge to take a piss.Seeing the girl lying there, Paddy turns to Sean and says, “Look, that girl seems to be in trouble.”“She is,” says Sean, “and the first thing we’ve got to do is to get Father Murphy out of there.”A young cowboy, in the wild west for the first time, finds himself in a town without women. At the local saloon, he asks the other cowboys how they manage without women, and they tell him to find a sheep or a cow for a companion.A few days later, the young man walks in with a pig. He sits her down at a table and then walks over to the bar and says, “I will have a large whiskey for myself and a root beer for the young lady.”The bartender reaches below the bar and brings out his shotgun. He points it at the young man, who starts to back away.“I don’t understand,” he says. “You told me I could find a companion.”“I know,” replies the bartender, taking aim.“Then why are you pointing that gun at me?” cries the cowboy.“We told you to find a companion,” says the bartender, “but not the sheriff’s wife.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Theoretically speaking, enlightenment and women are just great. But what about practically speaking?Milarepa, without women there would not have been any enlightenment. That’s the reason why women themselves don’t become enlightened; they are continuously engaged in making men enlightened. They don’t have time enough for themselves. Their sacrifice is great.There is an incident in Gautam Buddha’s life. When he was born, he was born as an old man’s son. The father was praying to the gods; otherwise, who was going to inherit the kingdom? Finally, Gautam Buddha was born. There was great celebration. But in the whole celebration, the most important thing that happened was….A great enlightened sage used to live in the Himalayas, and people used to go to him just to feel his presence, just to look into his eyes, just to hear his words which indicated toward the wordless, his silence, his music. His very being was music. His very presence was an invisible dance. He was very old. The sage suddenly got up and rushed toward Gautam Buddha’s house. It was a long journey from the Himalayas, but he said to his disciples that he had to do it, he would not be born again.Enlightenment means ultimate death.You will not have another imprisonment in a body, in desires, in jealousies, in all kinds of uglinesses. You will be here, but a pure breeze, merged into the whole.He said, “I am not going to be born again, and Gautam Buddha has just been born. He will become, one day, the greatest enlightened one. I want to touch his feet because our meeting can happen only now.”The king was very much impressed. He could not believe it; he wanted the old sage to bless the child. He said, “Bring the child.” Rather than blessing him, he touched his feet. And tears rolled down from his eyes.The king said, “What is the matter? Is there something wrong? Is there some fatality, some danger?”He said, “No, I am crying because I will not see this beautiful being blossoming in its utter beauty. But I am happy that at least I have touched his feet.”This created a great trouble in the mind of Buddha’s father. “It means he is going to become enlightened, a sage. Then who is going to take care of the kingdom? He will renounce the world.”He called all the astrologers of his kingdom and asked them to find out the future of the boy. They all looked at his birth chart, and remained silent. Each looked at the other: “You say it, because the old man may have a heart attack.” But a young man, Konda, was not very much concerned about anything except the truth.He said, “Listen, all these old astrologers are silent because they don’t want to say something which may hurt you. But I have to say it. Whether it hurts you or not is not my business; you have called me, the chart is before me. This boy has two possibilities. Either he will become a world conqueror, a chakravartin, or he will become one of the greatest enlightened persons.”A new problem arose: how to prevent his enlightenment. All the astrologers made a suggestion. And what they suggested, in fact became the cause of his enlightenment. They knew astrology, but they did not know anything about enlightenment. They said, “Give him all luxury, all pleasures, never allow him to see anything miserable, old, dead. Not even in his garden should a dead leaf be left. In the night all dead leaves should be removed. And surround him with all the beautiful girls of the kingdom. Let life be just a playfulness to him. Then there is no need to renounce it. Obviously, one renounces life because it is not all playfulness; it is just the opposite – a long, long agony.”So Gautam Buddha’s father arranged everything: beautiful palaces for him, for different seasons in different places, far away from people. He was not allowed to move among the people. No old man, no old woman, no dead person was allowed in his palaces. And all beautiful girls were his playmates. He grew up in immense luxury; perhaps nobody has grown up the way he did.And the astrologers said, “As soon as he is old enough, mature enough, get him caught in marriage.” One of the most beautiful women, Yashodara, was chosen to be his wife. His whole life was just pleasure. The whole night was dance, song, music, women, wine, and the whole day was for rest, sleep. But this whole situation created the impetus for enlightenment.It was a special occasion every year – he had to go to inaugurate the youth festival of the kingdom. The story is beautiful. At this point, I think it becomes mythological; but it does not lose significance, it gains more significance.The gods in heaven became very worried. Twenty-nine years have passed and they are waiting and waiting that this man is going to become a buddha. Now he is married, has a child, born just a day before. They managed a small strategy: an old man, coughing, with an utterly sick appearance passed by the golden chariot.And Buddha asked his charioteer, “Channa, what has happened to this man?”The story is that Channa would not have said the truth, so a god spoke from inside Channa, “This happens to everybody. This life is nothing but a death every moment, and he has reached the last stage. Ahead of it is the graveyard.”Buddha said, “Nobody told me anything about death. I have never heard about it.” And the gods had managed for a small funeral procession to pass by the side of the chariot.And Buddha again asked, “What has happened to this man? Why are people carrying him?” And the gods within spoke, “My lord, this happens to everybody. Everybody is here to die. Life is only a prelude, a preface to death.”Great transformation was happening in the mind of Buddha. And then suddenly he saw a sannyasin. He said, “Why is he wearing orange clothes? I have never seen anybody wearing orange clothes.”And the gods spoke again, “This man is in search of something deathless before death comes. This man wants to avoid death. This man wants to know not this ephemeral life but the real life, the authentic life which has no beginning, no end. He wants to know the existential, not this life which is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of.”A great turning point. Buddha said to Channa, “Turn back, I am not going to inaugurate the youth festival. I am no longer young. If youth is going, old age is coming, death is the only certainty in life. Then before time is lost I want to seek and search for the truth.”That very night he escaped. And while he was escaping, he saw the beautiful women sleeping: somebody’s saliva was flowing, somebody had one eye open…. For the first time he saw that these women and men were just bags of skin; behind them were hidden only skeletons.If instead of Konda I had been there and if the king wanted his son not to be enlightened, I would not have suggested that solution. He became fed up with women, bored and tired; he became fed up with luxury. One becomes accustomed to everything. And the moment you are accustomed it loses all juice.He had nothing to live for in that palace; he never looked back. In the Buddhist scriptures this sentence comes so beautifully: “He never looked back.” Because he had seen everything – all luxury, all comfort, all women, all food, all beautiful gardens, palaces. What is there to look back for? The point was to find something ahead – totally different from what he had been living up to now. He was asleep; a certain awakening had come to him, and now he wanted this awakening to reach to its ultimate peak.Enlightenment is not something outside you. It is your own consciousness, growing to ultimate potentiality. It is your own lotus flower that blossoms in the silences of your heart.Women have really supported men very much by nagging them, by torturing them, by harassing them.In a small school, the teacher was asking, “Can you name an animal which goes out of the house as a lion and comes back as a rat?”A small hand was raised. The boy said, “I know him, he is my father. Outside he is a lion; inside he is just a rat.”And man has to be a rat inside. In fact, every husband is a henpecked husband. It is just a way of adjusting. The whole day he is tired – so many things, so many ambitions, so many desires, so many conflicts – and when he comes home, the wife is ready, full of energy.Hymie Goldberg comes home wearing a new hat.“My God!” says Becky, “where did you get that hat?”“At a clearance sale,” replies Hymie.“No wonder they wanted to clear it,” says Becky, “it makes you look like an idiot.”“I know,” says Hymie.“Then why the hell,” snaps Becky, “did you buy it?”“I will tell you,” replies Hymie. “When I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror, I looked so stupid that to argue with the sales clerk was impossible.”In fact, women should be given every honor for all the great awakened people. But to awaken somebody else is charity. Men have not allowed women to become enlightened. Men have not allowed women to be anything that is their potential. In the whole of history, at the most ten women have become enlightened. The fact is very sad and miserable. These women must have been very rebellious.In the Vedas, there is one woman, Gargi, and you can see her courage…The king of those days, Janak, used to have every year a great conference of the wise ones, to argue and discuss about the ultimate truth. He was himself very much a seeker. He wanted to listen to all the aspects, all the different pathways.Yagnavalkya was one of the most important wise people. He had thousands of followers. And there was a great prize also: whoever won that great contest would get one thousand cows, which were standing outside the palace with their horns covered with thick gold.It was getting hot. Yagnavalkya told his disciples, “Take these cows to the ashram.” But they said, “You have not won the debate.” He said, “That I will do later on.” He was so confident, and everybody knew that he would win, so nobody objected, not even the king – because this was absolutely not right, to take the prize before you have even entered the discussion. You have accepted yourself as victorious already.His disciples took away those one thousand cows. And Yagnavalkya was winning against other learned people; one by one, whoever stood against him was defeated immediately. But he encountered for the first time a woman, Gargi.Gargi said, “You will have to bring those cows back. You have not won the debate – I am here. I will ask a few questions and you will be finished.” Even Yagnavalkya became afraid. Nobody had behaved like this, and a woman….Gargi said, “Do you think God exists? – then give the evidence.”There is no argument that can prove God’s existence – either you believe or you don’t believe, but belief is not an argument. It is simply failure of your nerve. Yagnavalkya remained silent. She asked, “Can you tell me if anybody created the world?”He said, “Yes, God created the world.”Gargi laughed. On that beautiful, auspicious occasion, her laughter was immensely beautiful. She said, “Are you sure? Were you a witness? Or have you any other witness, who has seen you seeing God creating the world?”Now, this was difficult. Nobody had ever witnessed it. And the problem was, if Yagnavalkya said, “I witnessed,” that meant the world was already created. What were you witnessing? – you are the world. Certainly, the beginning cannot be witnessed. And if it cannot be witnessed, it cannot be proved.And Gargi said, “Neither is there God, nor is there any beginning, nor is there any end. These are all things which the parasite priests have invented, imagined, propagated…all kinds of nonsense and superstitions.”Yagnavalkya was known to be a silent, peaceful man. He forgot all about silence and peace, and he said, “Gargi, if you speak any other word your head will fall on the earth.”Now, the sword is not an argument. And Yagnavalkya had to return, in deep shame, those one thousand cows. When they were returned, Gargi said, “You can keep them. I am not interested in cows and gold. I was interested to see how much understanding you had.”There have been a few women…. Yagnavalkya, before leaving the world to go to the forest to meditate, had two wives, and he said to them, “You can divide all my possessions” – which were big and huge.But one wife, Katyayani, said, “If these possessions have not given you peace, do you think they will give me peace? If these possessions have not given you the truth, do you think they will give me the truth? I refuse. If you are going to meditate, I am going to meditate. Your going away proves that whatever we have been doing is futile. It does not create a connection with existence, it does not fill your heart with love and truth, with celebration.” And as Yagnavalkya went to the mountains, Katyayani also went in another direction to the mountains.A few women have been of tremendous courage, but most women have been crippled by men. They have not been educated. They are not allowed to read religious scriptures, they are not allowed any social contact. Half of the world has been cut away from the other half completely. This is the greatest slavery that has happened on this earth; all other slaveries are very small. But even with this slavery, women have asserted themselves once in a while. That shows the possibility.Rabiya al-Adabiya in South Arabia was one such woman. One day people saw her with a pot full of water in one hand and a torch burning in the other, running through the marketplace. They asked, “Where are you going?”She said, “I am going to burn your paradise and I am going to drown your hell. These are all inventions of the priests, with which they have managed to enslave the whole humanity.”One mystic, Hassan, was staying with Rabiya. He asked in the morning for Rabiya’s copy of Koran Sharif, and he was shocked to see that Rabiya had corrected many places in the Koran. “That is not done. The Koran is God’s word, written by God’s only and final prophet, Mohammed. You cannot improve upon it.” That’s why there are no commentaries on the Koran.Many times, many Mohammedan friends have sent me the Koran, beautifully printed, and asked me if I can comment on it. I said, “You have not commented on it for a different reason – because Mohammedans will not tolerate anybody commenting on the Koran. My reason is different: there is nothing in it to comment on.But Al-Adabiya changed many words in the Koran. Hassan was very much shaken. He said, “Adabiya, somebody has destroyed your Koran.”She said, “Nobody can even touch my Koran. I have corrected it wherever it was wrong.”Hassan said, “You think the Koran can be wrong?”Rabiya said, “The line you are reading is: when you meet the devil, hate him, curse him. I have crossed it out, because when I became myself, when my own flame became a great light around me, I could see one thing – I can only love, I cannot hate. Even if the devil comes, stands before me, I will be loving, just the same as I will be loving if God is there. It is my own experience, and I have not to follow the Koran, I have to correct the Koran according to my experience. A man is not made by books – books are made by men.”Now, such women indicate that if man had not repressed them… My own understanding is that more women would have become enlightened than men, because man’s mind is full of rubbish. And man’s mind is much more outgoing. He may go to the Everest…. Just think of Edmund Hillary standing on the Everest, how stupid he must have looked. And for only these two minutes he was on the Everest, he risked his life.Now people are going to the moon. The earth is in a mess and people are thinking of going to Mars. You cannot put your home right and people are trying to approach some other planet where living beings exist. Here in this world there is no dialogue, there is no love.Because the woman is heart-oriented there is more possibility of her being awakened. Man is more logical, more arithmetical. Perhaps he can become a great scientist, but a woman is more poetic – potentially, but we have not allowed her. She can be a beautiful dancer, she can be a musician. She will open new avenues of enlightenment through the heart. Love will become her god.You know Jesus said, “God is love.” If it had been written by a woman she would have written, “Love is God.” God must be secondary; it is a mental hypothesis. But love is a reality throbbing in every heart.We have seen people like Meera…But only very courageous women could manage to come out of the repressive social system. She could manage because she was a queen, although her own family tried to kill her because she was dancing on the streets, singing songs. The family could not tolerate it. Particularly in India, and in Rajasthan, the woman is very much repressed. And a woman of the beauty of Meera, dancing in the streets, singing songs of joy….There was a temple in Vrindavan, where Krishna had resided. In his memory a great temple was made, and the priest of the temple had to be a celibate. Now, celibacy is absolutely unnatural. It can drive you crazy, into unnatural perversions. In that temple, no woman was allowed to enter. Women were allowed only on the outside, to touch the steps of the temple. They never saw the statue of Krishna inside, because the priest was very adamant. When Meera came the priest became afraid that she would come to the temple.Two men with swords, naked swords, were placed before the gate to prevent Meera from coming in. But when Meera came – and such people are so rare, such a fragrant breeze, such a beautiful dance, such a song that brings into words that which cannot be brought into words – those two swordsmen forgot what they were standing there for and Meera danced into the temple. It was the time for the priest to worship Krishna. His plate, full of flowers, fell onto the ground as he saw Meera.He was utterly angry and he said to Meera, “You have broken a rule of hundreds of years.”She said, “What rule?”The priest said, “No woman can enter here.”And can you believe the answer? This is the courage…. Meera said, “Then how have you entered here? Except one, the ultimate, the beloved, everybody is a woman. Do you think there are two men in the world – you and the ultimate? Forget all this nonsense.” Certainly she was right. A woman full of heart looks at existence as a beloved. And existence is one.There have been a few other women – Sahajo…. But they are very few. It is a condemnation of men that you did not allow a woman to become a Gautam Buddha, that you did not allow a woman to become a Lao Tzu.The crime is so big that it is incalculable.And, Milarepa, you are asking, “Theoretically speaking, enlightenment and women are just great. But what about practically speaking?” Practically speaking, also they are great. And the day woman’s greatness is accepted, her uniqueness is accepted, her freedom, her individuality are respected, the world will be filled with more love, more flowers, with more fragrance.What has man been doing down the ages except fighting? And what has man’s genius been doing except creating more and more dangerous, destructive weapons? They are not satisfied with the nuclear weapons which exist today; they are enough to kill the whole earth seven times. I don’t understand: what is the point, now, of piling up more and more nuclear weapons? There is only one incidence – Jesus – of someone who resurrected and may have needed a second killing. But ordinarily people die only once.And the fact is, Jesus was not resurrected; he never died on the cross. He was taken off the cross before he could have died. The Jewish cross is such that it takes forty-eight hours to kill a person, because slowly, slowly blood flows out of the body. And Jesus was young – only thirty-three years old, healthy.He was taken off the cross after six hours. It was a conspiracy between his disciples and the Roman governor of Judea – Judea was in slavery. The governor was not interested in killing an innocent man who had not done anything. If he believes that he is the son of God, why prevent him? – let him believe. You can believe you are the father of God! Just a little imagination…. He had not done anything wrong, he was just a little crazy and took things literally, but he was not a criminal.So this arrangement was made: Jesus was brought down after six hours – and in six hours, nobody can die on a Jewish cross – and he was put into a cave; the guards were Romans. In the night he was removed. As he became healed, he escaped. He died in India, in Kashmir. And Kashmir was one of the parts where Jews had been living for hundreds of years.When Moses was looking for God’s city, God’s land, Israel, a tribe of the Jews got lost. In fact, Moses reached a wrong place; Israel is not worth anything. The lost tribe reached Kashmir. And Kashmir is certainly the most beautiful place in the world. If anything can be said to be God’s land, then Kashmir is. Moses himself came to look for the lost tribe and he died in Kashmir. It is strange that Moses and Jesus both died in Kashmir. And there is every evidence…. I have been to their graves.In India, nobody writes Hebrew. And those graves are not Mohammedan graves, because Mohammedan graves have to be made in a way so that the head is always pointing toward Mecca. Those two graves are not Mohammedan graves. And the person who takes care of those graves has been allowed by the Mohammedans to remain a Jew; otherwise, Mohammedans converted the whole of Kashmir. You can convert people’s religion, but you cannot convert their noses. Their noses show that they are Jews. Just look at the nose of Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi – these are Kashmiris.And you will not believe it: they are brahmins but they eat meat. No brahmin eats meat in India, but because they were basically Jews and then became Mohammedans or Hindus, the basic non-vegetarian food continued.A very detailed analysis is needed, which Christianity prevents, because if it is known that they are certainly Jesus’ and Moses’ graves then it will become a holy place for Christians and for Jews both. And you should remember that Jesus was never a Christian. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died a Jew. He never heard anything about these idiot Polack popes.In this beautiful morning, in this silence, in these beautiful sounds of the birds, it is out of place to talk about serious things. So now a few really nonserious things, in tune with this beautiful morning.Don’t destroy it with sermons.Somewhere in a little shack in the middle of Australia, Bruce, Edna and their daughter, Shirley, have finished their kangaroo stew dinner, and are arguing about who is going to do the washing up.There’s a big fight, and finally Bruce suggests that they all lie down on the floor and the first person to move does the dishes.The same night, Hamish MacTavish is driving his old pick-up nearby, when the radiator overheats. He sees the shack and walks over there to get some water.Going into the shack, he finds everyone lying on the floor, so he decides to help himself to water. On his way to the kitchen, he steps over Shirley, and in a moment of passion, jumps on her and fucks her.He gets up from Shirley and finds Edna on the kitchen floor. The temptation is too great for Hamish and he jumps on Edna too.Then he takes some water back to his car, but while he is filling the radiator, he burns his arm.Hamish rushes into the shack and cries out, “Have you got any vaseline?”Hearing this, Bruce jumps up and yells, “Okay, okay! I will do the dishes!”Paddy and Sean are deep in the mountains on a hunting trip, when they stop to rest. Paddy gazes at Sean and says, “You know, I’m a pretty big fellow. If I had a heart attack or broke a leg, how would you get me out?”“Don’t worry,” replies Sean. “Last year I shot a sixteen-hundred-pound elk, way back in the hills, and got it out all right.”“How did you manage that?” asks Paddy.“Simple,” says Sean, “it took me twelve trips.”Paddy goes to the horse races in Dublin. In the evening, he walks into a pub and orders a large brandy for himself and drinks for everyone in the bar.“And have one yourself,” he tells the bartender, generously.Half an hour later, the order is repeated, and this goes on all evening until at closing time, the bartender taps Paddy on the shoulder.“I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it,” he says, “but your bill comes to two hundred pounds.”“Does it?” asks Paddy. “Well I am sorry to hear that, because I’ve not got a penny.”The bartender leaps over the bar and starts to beat Paddy and eventually kicks him out of the door, into the street.The next evening, the pub is just opening when Paddy walks in.“A large brandy for me,” he announces, “and drinks for everyone in the bar. But I am not giving you one,” he says to the barman. “After a couple of drinks, you get very nasty!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Some scientists are concerned that man will some day relinquish his intellectual supremacy to computers – monster artificial super-brains with an intellectual power far beyond anything we can now comprehend. Another fear is that through genetic engineering, man will be capable of growing artificial intelligence to order. Or there could be a combination of both, where super-grown organic brains can “plug in” to a super-computer; or computer super-chips can be implanted into brains.Would such super-computers or super-brains be capable of taking man on a quantum leap, cutting our deadly connections with the past, or would they too be unable to escape man's idiotic conditionings?Anando, the question may not appear very serious, but it is one of the most serious questions possible. The first thing to remember is that it is going to happen. There is no possibility to avoid it; neither is there any need to avoid it. Perhaps I am the only one in the world who is in absolute support of mechanical brains taking over the work of human intelligence. The reasons are very clear, why I am in support of such a strange thing.First, what we call human mind is itself a biocomputer. Just because you are born with it does not make much difference. A better computer can be implanted in your mind – far more efficient, far more intelligent, far more comprehensive.There are always people who are afraid of every new thing. Every new thing has been opposed by religions, by churches vehemently, because every new thing changes the whole structure of human life. For example, the computer can change all the stupidity that man has shown through the whole of history. I don’t think that computers will like to create war, or computers will exploit people, or computers will discriminate between black and white, between man and woman.Moreover, you are always the master, not the computer. You can always change the program of the computer. The computer is simply a tremendous instrument, which gives you immense possibilities that are not available to you biologically. You can do things which man has never dreamt of. The computer can be a thousand times more superior than Albert Einstein. Naturally the computer can produce a science far more fundamental, far more real, not changing every day because new discoveries go on happening and the old discovery becomes out of date. The computer can reach the very center of reality.It can reveal to you whatever you want.It is an instrument in your hands.It is not a danger.And because it will be doing all the intelligent, intellectual, mental work, nobody has seen the possibility which I am telling you, that you are left very simply to relax into meditation. The computer can be put to the side. The computer can do all the thinking; you need not go on continuously chattering unnecessarily. And the computer is not Christian, is not Hindu, is not Mohammedan. It is simply a mechanical device created by human consciousness. And in return it can help human consciousness to reach to its highest potential.But every new thing will be opposed, because every new thing will make old things out of date. Old factories will close, old industries will close. There are many inventions which are never marketed in the world because the people whose business will be affected by them purchase their patents. And the scientist has not the money to make his own conception into a reality.Now there are…for example, in Japan a few scientists have discovered that railway trains need not go at sixty miles per hour. They can go at four hundred miles per hour. And what is significant is, if they go at four hundred miles per hour, just the speed alone will take them up one foot above the rails. But it is dangerous to all the owners of old railways, small stations – they can’t stop. And particularly in Japan they can have only the beginning station and the ending station – it is a small land….But they will not have accidents the way accidents happen today. They will never be late. They may even be ahead of time. And people sitting in them will never feel any bumps. In fact, railway lines will not be needed. The train has to run on rails only for a few miles, to take off, just like an airplane. And then there is no problem; it can move anywhere. It can go according to the whim of the driver, and it can take thousands of passengers.But it is not being marketed. No country is interested in the invention, because so much money is involved in the old railway trains, old railway stations. If these new trains are accepted, that whole business will go bankrupt.It is just an example. There are at least a thousand inventions which can help humanity to be more comfortable, to be more joyous, to have better clothes, better food. But they will not ever come to light, because there are people who are going to be ruined if those new things come onto the market. And new things are…. naturally, they create fear. Now, for the first time sitting in a train which is going to take off, do you think you will not be afraid?The same was the situation when the first railway train started in London – just ten or twelve miles of track. And all the churches were denouncing and condemning: God never created the train, so this must be an invention of the devil. And old trains and their engines looked like the devil! They were making people aware, “Don’t get into them.” And the organizers were not asking for any ticket. On the contrary, they were offering breakfast, lunch, free, to whoever was ready to go for the first ride in a railway train. In the whole of England only eight persons were courageous enough.The fear was created by the churches: “It is true that these trains will start, but what is the guarantee that they will stop? Once you are in, finished, the train never stops. And do you think just one breakfast and one lunch will do – forever? Prove that they will stop.” Now, nobody could prove it because the train had never even started. It was not a question of stopping.Those eight persons who entered, their families were crying and weeping and their children were pulling them out, saying, “Dad, don’t go.” Wives were crying, “Are you mad? Don’t you see? All the wise people of the land, the archbishops and the bishops and the ministers and the priests, everybody is against it. Have you gone mad, just for a breakfast and a lunch, staking your life? I will give you the money, just get out!”But those eight persons said, “We are not going to get out. We have seen enough of the world, now let us see what happens if the train does not stop – something is bound to happen. And if the driver is driving, he will also be concerned about stopping it; otherwise he will be killed – we will kill him.”They all had come with their guns so that if the driver did not stop, they could shoot the driver or force the driver to stop the train. But there was no need because there were no tracks longer than twelve miles. It had to stop after twelve miles and come back. And people could not believe it when the train came back and those eight people, smiling, with their guns, got off. They said, “Never such a beautiful thing has happened in life. Such speed!” Now nobody ever asks the driver, “Give me a guarantee that the train will stop.” Nobody goes with a gun. The train is accepted.But a train that goes at four hundred miles an hour, without tracks, is dangerous. All the churches will join together, all the religious people will join, will protest, “The government should stop it. This is very dangerous. These trains can run into cities, over people; nobody can prevent them because they don’t need tracks. Once they have taken off, they can destroy the whole earth – no need of any nuclear energy. And the people inside can enjoy all kinds of scenes.” But it will be very difficult to persuade people, first to make those trains, and then to become passengers in them.Now robots are working; they have already come into existence. And particularly in Japan, which is far more advanced in technology than any other country today, many factories are run by robots. They never tire, they never retire; they don’t ask for a salary or for a raise; they don’t make unions, they don’t go on strike. They are the nicest people you can find. And they work twenty-four hours, day in, day out. Their efficiency is perfect, a hundred percent.But it is a danger because people are becoming unemployed. Now these unemployed people are going to create trouble; they don’t want robots. But I am all in favor of robots. Everybody should be unemployed and paid – paid for being unemployed. Robots are doing the work, you get the pay. And life becomes sheer joy.Then you can meditate, you can dance, you can sing, you can go for world trips. The problem arises because we cannot think of the solution. The solution is simple. You were paid because you were producing. Now the robot is producing more, many times more, and he is not being paid. There is no need for you to remain unemployed, hungry, poor. It is such simple arithmetic: you should be paid, paid more, because now you have vacated the place for a robot which produces a hundred times more. So if your salary is doubled there is no loss.And if the whole world is unemployed and has enough money to enjoy, do you think anybody is going to join the army? People will join carnivals, circuses…. All kinds of celebrations will happen, but there is no need for war. And even if war is an absolute necessity, robots are there, just let them fight. Nobody is going to win. Both sides are robots; nobody is going to be killed. Just, every day they come back with a few parts missing; repair them and send them back. Even war can become a great joy – no question of defeat or victory.But people are afraid because they cannot conceive a certain possibility in which people don’t suffer. Anando’s question is that these computers are going to take the place of intelligence. They will be far superior in intelligence. But remember one thing: those computers, far superior in intelligence, are in your hands. You are not in their hands, so there is no problem.Up to now you have lived according to memory, which is an unnecessary burden, carrying it in your head. Twenty-five years of teaching in the schools, colleges, universities; PhDs, DLitt’s…. What are you doing? You are creating a computer, but with an old, out-of-date method – forcing small children to memorize. There is no need. The computer can do everything, just the computer has to be given information.You can buy a computer which knows everything about medical science. You need not go to a medical college; you simply ask the computer and immediately the answer is there. Your memory is not so reliable. And the computer can always be fed with new memory, because new discoveries are being made every day. The computer can be plugged into the main computer of the university, so without your even bothering, every new discovery concerning your subject is immediately fed into your computer. It waits there, you inquire, and the computer tells you.You can have a multidimensional computer which has all kinds of memory, or a one-dimensional computer which has only history – the whole history of mankind. Now, you cannot have the whole history of mankind. Do you know on what date Socrates was married to Xanthippe? The computer can tell you immediately. That unfortunate date…. I have always suspected that Socrates accepted the poison so easily because of his wife, because life was so torturous – death cannot be worse than that.How much can you memorize? Your memory has a limitation. But the computer can memorize almost unlimitedly. And there are many more possibilities: one computer can join together with another computer and manage to figure out new inventions, new medicines, new ways of health, new ways of living. Computers should not be taken as monsters.It is a great blessing. And what man’s intellect has done is very small. Once the computer takes over, so much can be done that there will be no need for anybody to be hungry, no need for anybody to be poor; no need for anybody to be a thief, no need for anybody to be a judge, because these all belong to the same profession – judges and thieves, criminals and law makers. There is no need for anybody to be poor and no need for anybody to be rich. Everybody can be affluent.But perhaps no government will allow this to happen. No religion will allow this to happen, because it will go against their scriptures, it will go against their doctrines. Hindus believe that you have to suffer because in your past life you committed evil acts. Nobody knows about past lives. They cannot accept an invention which can remove misery, poverty, sickness, because then what will happen to the theory of reincarnation, and rewards and punishments of good and bad deeds? The whole doctrine of Hinduism will be simply meaningless.If the computer can make your life as long as you want, if a computer can manage for you always to be young – no need for old age unless you want – then who cares about…. So many people will be affected. The medical profession will be affected, pharmacies will be affected, people who are living on your sickness will be affected.A young man came from the university with the degree of MD. His old father was waiting for him, because he was tired, working his whole life. Three of his sons were studying at medical college – if at least one comes back, he can take his place and support the other two. And the young man immediately said, “You need not be worried. You rest and relax, I will take care.”And the third day he approached his father and said, “Dad, the woman you have been treating for thirty years I have cured.”The father said, “You idiot! That is the woman who has paid for your education and was paying for your two other brothers. I was keeping her in this condition. She was so rich she could afford to be sick. She was not poor.”To be rich and to be sick is very dangerous. To be poor and to be sick is not very dangerous. You will be cured very soon, because you cannot pay much. On the contrary, you may ask the doctor, “What about the medicine, what about the food you have prescribed? I don’t have any money.” The doctor will think, “It is better to cure him and get rid of him.” But when a rich man is sick, then it becomes professionally a very strange dilemma in the mind of the physician: to cure him or to have him linger on – because the more he lingers on, the more money you get. If you cure him, you don’t get that money.But if computers can manage, then many professions will be affected. And these will be the professions that prevent it; they will make a thousand and one excuses: God never created a computer, computers are dangerous because they will take all intelligence away from you. What are you doing with your intelligence? – being miserable, being jealous? At least computers will not be jealous and will not be miserable. What are you doing with your intelligence? Destructiveness, all kinds of wars, all kinds of violence.Computers can give you a complete holiday for your whole life. You can relax. You will have to learn how to relax, because you have all become workaholics. For thousands of years, work, work, work hard! Computers will go against your whole conditioning about work. Laziness will become for the first time a spiritual quality: Blessed are the laziest, for theirs is the kingdom of this planet. And in their laziness, if they want, they can make beautiful gardens. It is just out of joy, for no purpose. They can paint, not to sell, but just to rejoice in the colors, the mixing of colors, the dance of colors. They can play music, not for any monetary reason, not as a business, but simply as a playful joy.What man has dreamt of in paradise, life can really become here on this planet. There is no need to go that far. And nobody knows the way and nobody has ever gone there. And those who have gone have not even dropped a card: “We have arrived!” Such miserly people – just a Christmas card…. But paradise has to be created; there is no paradise in existence. It has to come out of man’s awareness, consciousness.The computer is also part of man’s creativity. There is no need to become a competitor; you are the master. And for the first time the computer and you are separate. That’s what all the teachings of the mystics have been telling you, that your mind and you are separate. But it is difficult because the mind is inside your head and your consciousness is so close to it, so thousands of mystics have been teaching, but nobody listens. The distance is not very much. But with computers, the distance will be very clear; there will be no need for any mystic to tell you.Everybody has his own computer in his pocket and knows that it is separate. And one is free from thinking – the computer is doing it. You want to think something, tell the computer. If your old habit of chattering arises tell the computer, “Chatter,” and it will chatter. But you can be for the first time what the buddhas have been saying: just aware, silent, peaceful, a pool of consciousness.A computer cannot be aware. A computer can be intellectual, a computer can be knowledgeable; a computer can be so knowledgeable that it can contain all the information of all the libraries in the whole world – a single computer that you can keep in your pocket.It will relieve millions of people from memorizing unnecessary things. It will keep millions of people from teaching and torturing students. Examinations and all kinds of stupid things will disappear. The computer can be one of the greatest phenomena that has ever happened.It can become the quantum leap. It can break away from the past and all conditionings of the past.Hymie Goldberg answers a classified advertisement in a newspaper which says, “Opportunity of a lifetime!” He is given an address and finds himself face to face with old man Finkelstein.“What I am looking for,” explains old man Fink, “is somebody to do all my worrying for me. Your job will be to shoulder all my cares.”“That’s quite a job,” says Hymie. “How much do I get paid?”“You will get twenty thousand dollars a year,” says old man Fink, “to make every worry of mine your own.”“Okay,” says Hymie, “when do I get paid?”“Aha!” says Fink. “That’s your first worry.”Something serious for Anando…A flea calls up his travel agent on the phone. “Listen,” he says, “I have had enough of this armpit, I need a vacation. What can you do for me?”“Well,” says the travel agent, “it’s a bit late in the season, but if you are prepared for something expensive, I’ve got a celebrity mustache vacancy.”The flea jumps at the offer and the next week he moves into Robert Pickford’s mustache. However, all is not well and he phones his travel agent again.“I am really having a great time seeing all sorts of famous people and places,” says the flea, “but it is just too busy here talking and eating and drinking all the time. Can’t you fix me up with something a little quieter?”“Well,” says the agent, checking his files, “there is a last minute cancellation in the world’s most famous pubic hair.”The flea jumps for joy and that evening he checks into Raquel Scotch’s crotch.The next day he is back on the phone.“A fine holiday this has turned out to be,” he tells his agent. “I went to sleep last night and this morning I am back in Robert Pickford’s mustache!”A young man home from the sea walks into the pub. He orders a large scotch whiskey and offers a hundred-pound note.“I’m sorry sir,” says Hamish MacTavish the barman, “I have only just opened and I can’t change that.”“Well, it’s all I have got,” replies the man. “So you can either let me drink until you have got the change, or I’ll have to go somewhere else.”After an intense mental struggle, Hamish agrees to let the man keep drinking until he gets the change. Soon the young man is chatting with Mrs. MacTavish and starts buying her drinks. A dozen drinks later, Hamish looks around and the man is gone.“Where is that man with the hundred-pound note?” asks Hamish, panic stricken.“The last time I saw him,” says one of his locals, “he was going upstairs with your wife and they were both taking their clothes off.”“Thank God for that,” gasps Hamish. “I thought he’d left without paying!”Gloria rushes into Fagin Finkelstein’s law office.“I want him arrested!” she cries. “He threw me on the bed, it was terrible!”“Now calm down,” says Fagin, “and give me the full story.”“He locked the door,” she sobbed.“Aha! Kidnapping!” says Fagin, making notes. “Ten years. Then what did he do?”“He pulled up my skirt,” says Gloria.“Indecent exposure. Two more years,” says Fagin. “Then what?”“He put his hand on my…on my….” sobs Gloria.“I understand,” says Fagin, writing fast. “Attempted assault. Five years. And then what?”“Then, he did it to me!” she cried.“That’s rape!” shouts young Finkelstein. “Thirty years, or maybe the gas chamber. And all the time you were screaming and struggling?”“Well,” replies Gloria, “not exactly. It was late and I didn’t want to disturb everybody.”“Ah, shit!” shouts Fagin, tearing up his notes. “That’s just a regular screw.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Years ago Vimalkirti and I met Count Durkheim, who at that time was eighty and one of the most influential so-called spiritual leaders of Europe. He called us for a visit to warn us against you. He said that your picture on the mala reminded him of Mr. Gurdjieff whom he met in Paris. He told us how dangerous men like Gurdjieff and you are. Then he said, “I have brought Zen to Europe. Have you got my books?”How is it possible that a man who claims to have done lots of Zen sittings in Japan with various Zen masters, and has written so many books of Zen, is so unable to recognize you?Turiya, the man, Durkheim, whom you have met in Europe, and you think he did not recognize me…. The moment he compared me with his meeting with George Gurdjieff was the moment of recognition. He absolutely recognized: I am certainly dangerous, far more dangerous than George Gurdjieff was.But Durkheim was only a man of knowledge, learning, scholarship. He was a great intellectual. I have gone through all his works; I can see that he has heard only the words of the Zen masters, but he has not heard their silences. He has met their skeletons, but he has not encountered their presence, their existential essence. Durkheim certainly has introduced Zen to Europe, but his Zen is just like a paper boat: you call it a boat, but don’t start using it as a boat.He has been in the East. And he is right when he says that he has been sitting under many Zen masters, and he has brought Zen to Europe. He has brought only echoes. He has brought only a bird in the cage, not the bird with open wings in the sky. He has brought it very accurately – about his accuracy I have no doubt – and he has done his best to present Zen to people who have never known anything like it. But he himself does not know anything about it, as far as experience is concerned. As far as knowledge is concerned, he knows much; perhaps much more than the Zen masters he is talking about.If he had understood Zen he would have understood George Gurdjieff. If you have seen the full moon, you have seen all the full moons that have passed and all the full moons that will appear in the future. If he could not understand George Gurdjieff, naturally, seeing my picture and seeing you as my disciples he warned you that you were moving on a dangerous path. And if a man is afraid of moving into the path of aloneness, silence…. he may understand the word silence, but he has not tasted it. He has not looked into the eyes of George Gurdjieff.Durkheim may have introduced the word zen, but it is George Gurdjieff who introduced the East to the West, without even mentioning it, without even claiming it – because the very claim that, “I have introduced Zen” comes from the ego. Gurdjieff never talked about Zen, and he was living Zen. Certainly he had his own individuality – of the same caliber as Bodhidharma, and as colorful and as unique. He was not a carbon copy of anybody else; he was himself – so much so that perhaps if Durkheim could not understand him it is understandable.For example, if you wanted to be initiated by Gurdjieff…. The initiation used to happen in the night after a long meal, dining, wining. Gurdjieff himself was a great cook, and he would cook food for his disciples. And he would go on forcing, “Eat!” He would force alcohol, drugs on the disciples, and they were shouting, “It is enough, we are going mad!” But unless you were really mad he was not going to listen.Finally, in his congregation only he was aware, everybody had fallen: somebody was shouting, somebody was saying something – muttering, moaning, crying, weeping or laughing – or somebody was just sitting silently, wooden…it was a scene. And Gurdjieff was watching every disciple, because what you never say in your conscious state comes out when you are unconscious.The whole Sigmund Freud psychoanalytical movement depends on your dreams. They are not worried about what you say, they are worried about what you dream. Strange people, because you have come to them, they should listen to your disease, your problems, and they say, “Don’t be worried about your problems, you bring your dreams. Your problems are just on the surface and your dreams are your roots.”But Gurdjieff was not one to waste time like psychoanalysis does – for fifteen years a person goes into psychoanalysis. When he goes in he is a little sane; when he comes out he is absolutely insane.A man used to think that he was a woman. Naturally his family were worried, his wife was very much worried, his children were worried. But he was completely unworried; he said, “What can I do? If I am a woman, I am a woman. I am not doing any harm to anybody.”Finally he ended up on the couch of a psychoanalyst. After three years of psychoanalysis he met a friend. The friend asked, “How is the psychoanalysis going?” He said, “It is going perfect.”The man was a little interested in the psychological movement. He said, “It is going perfect? Has it helped you?”He said, “Helped? First I had some doubts; now I don’t have any doubts.” The friend said, “That’s great, but what was the thing that you had doubts about?”He said, “I am a woman. In these three years the psychoanalyst has convinced me, and I have convinced him that we both are women. And we are enjoying the company.”Psychoanalysis has not helped anybody.Gurdjieff was not interested in wasting your time and your money. What psychoanalysis can do in twenty years he was able to do in one night. A man who has never eaten meat – the first thing was to force him to eat meat. If you want to be a disciple of Gurdjieff….Now, you can conceive it. If you are a vegetarian, to eat meat goes against your whole conditioning. You are bound to vomit. You will vomit and he will bring more meat for you. This will continue till the vomiting stops. That means your conditioning about meat is erased.If you have never been drinking, he will force you to drink so much that you are bound to start doing things you could have never conceived – but they were inside you. And before he can accept you as his disciple, he wants to know you from your very roots, because from there will begin the work of transformation.Now, naturally people like Durkheim and almost the whole world of so-called religious people were against Gurdjieff. His methods were strange, but he transformed more people than all the so-called religions, organized churches, psychologies. A single man has done an immense service, and without using the name of Zen. What he was doing was Zen, but it was his way of doing it.Certainly Bodhidharma will not agree, neither will Buddha agree; but they will not disagree either. They will not agree with his methods, but they will agree with the man. The man was certainly crystallized – the ultimate peak a man can reach. Now, what path he has followed you may not agree with, but he has reached – that you have to concede.I am not in agreement on many things with George Gurdjieff – or with anybody else – but that does not mean that I don’t recognize that there have been Himalayan peaks of consciousness. They followed a certain path which does not agree with me. I will condemn that path and I will condemn that method, but I will respect the man. That creates in many people’s minds contradiction.That’s what happened to Durkheim. He had heard the words, beautiful words of Zen masters, but he had not seen a single unique Zen master like Bodhidharma or like Mahakashyapa. And if he could not recognize George Gurdjieff’s realization, naturally he would deny me and warn you not to be with me – because Gurdjieff was using very crude methods: forcing meat or alcohol, drugs on people. I am also destroying your conditioning but in a far more refined way.Have you heard the Zen story…. There was a competition of swordsmanship. And swordsmanship in Japan is a very refined art. From different provinces, three competitors had come to the final. Even the emperor was present. He himself released a fly from a small box and the first swordsman immediately cut it into two.He released another fly and the second swordsman cut it into three. He released the third fly and nothing happened, the fly simply went away. The swordsman moved his sword, but nothing happened. People laughed – just as you laughed. But you will have to laugh again, because the man said, “These people and you are laughing, but that fly will not create any more children!”Such a subtle operation…. I was that swordsman! I do my work. Durkheim cannot understand my work if he cannot understand Gurdjieff, whose work is very crude and primitive, but of course absolutely right. My work is very sophisticated. That’s why only very intelligent and sophisticated people, who can see what has happened to the fly, are my people. Those who have seen the first two warriors and think that they are great warriors don’t understand much. Certainly they know the technique, but their technique is very primitive, very visible.Durkheim, rather than becoming a man of Zen himself just became a reporter, writing what Zen masters are talking about, translating it. He forgot completely that he had himself to become a master, only then could he understand what he was writing, what he was listening to.A certain similarity of consciousness is needed to understand the deeper ways of the heart. Many people have written in the West, and the story is almost always the same – except about one man, Alan Watts. And they all have written well. A few have done almost an impossible job, writing about something they know nothing about! They have done it very accurately, but they remain the same ordinary people. They were not transformed.Durkheim is not a buddha. And these are the people who will prevent anybody, because they start thinking of themselves as an authority; because they have written a few books they have become an authority. So to Turiya and Vimalkirti he said, “You should not be with this man, this is dangerous.”Turiya, if he is still alive, tell him that as far as dangerousness is concerned he is right. And just because I am dangerous it is worth being with me.You will not gain anything by being with Durkheim. There is no danger, no risk; he is simply a translator, a good translator. I appreciate his capacity as a translator, but not as a man who has understood the truth. It is good that you did not listen to him and continued on the dangerous path with me.Vimalkirti has already gone beyond. The German royal family is perhaps the oldest royal family in Europe: one thousand years old. And in all those one thousand years, Vimalkirti was the only one who was really royal. He was my personal guard, so I watched him sitting silently for hours, day in, day out. He was here against everybody – and those were not small people: against Queen Elizabeth of England, who was telling him, “This man is dangerous.” All the royal families of Europe were certainly worried that the last descendant of the oldest royal family, of Germany, had fallen into the hands of a dangerous man.But he did not listen. And he is blessed because he ignored all these idiots – they may be royal; they may be royal idiots; they may be kings and queens and princes and princesses. And people like Durkheim must have been thinking that the royal descendant of the last emperor of Germany should not follow such a dangerous group, which is condemned all over the world.But for anybody who has any guts, this is the very point: that I have only either friends or enemies. Enemies are many; they don’t count, they are uncountable. Friends are few, but they are the people who are going to inherit this earth. They are the people who are going to create possibilities for more consciousness, for more love, for more laughter, for more joy.In a strange way, a tremendously great responsibility has fallen on you. You don’t have any power except your love. You don’t have any atomic weapons except your laughter. You don’t have any destructive forces, but you have a creative heart, a creative intelligence and a tremendous secret of meditation, of entering into your own mystery. And your mystery and the mystery of the universe are not two, they are the same.If Durkheim is still alive – I even suspect that he was never alive – tell him to come here and just be here without any prejudice. He may have been with Zen masters, but he has had no possibility to be in a commune where Zen is the very breathing, is the very heartbeat. We don’t mention it – there is no point, it is our whole being. In this very silence it is our breath and it is our heart. And we are ready to share it with anyone who comes without any prejudice.Lastly you say, “Finally he said, ‘I have brought Zen to Europe. Have you got my books?’” Zen masters have been known to burn books. And a man who is saying, “I have brought Zen. Have you read my books?” is not able even to see the contradiction. He has brought books; he has not brought Zen. And Zen is not confined to books. Zen is a flavor, a spiritual aroma, a contagious blissfulness.Have you brought that meditativeness in which thousands of roses blossom in the heart? Then you will not invite anybody to read books. You will invite them to meditate, to dance, to sing and to disappear in their dance. And perhaps after all this, those books may be useful just to understand your own experience; those books may help to give you the right words, exact expressions. Not vice versa – you don’t go from books to Zen.Zen comes first and overwhelms you. And it is so new and so unknown that you are puzzled and you don’t know in what space you have entered; there a master’s book can be helpful. It can give you some indications that you are not lost, some milestones. It can describe some qualities of which you don’t have any past experience.Let me repeat this, because it is never said in this way: Zen comes first and then you can read it in books, not vice versa, that you read the books and then you understand what Zen is. That’s not the way things work.Durkheim worked hard, and I have immense compassion for him. Wherever he is, in this life or in some other life, he needs a master of the quality of Gurdjieff. Only then he may be able to understand.Gurdjieff perhaps was the first man from the East who penetrated into the Western consciousness. He was a very strange man, and he passed through strange experiences and learned on his own, without any master. He moved in many monasteries, in many groups, and never belonged to any one, but collected fragments of forgotten teachings. And he was of tremendous intelligence, to join all those fragments and make a system out of them which can certainly transform man. But it is very primitive; it is a bullock cart method. It will take you, but when you can reach there without even moving an inch, when you can reach there just sitting here…then only have you understood the difficulty of Gurdjieff.His father died when he was nine – a small child coming from a nomad tribe, moving from one tribe to another tribe. And those tribes were ancient tribes; they had their methods. Collecting fragments from everywhere and working out…. But he was in a strange position. He was a Caucasian, so he had no knowledge of any contemporary language. But he worked out, somehow in broken language, how to indicate methods.If he had not been found by Ouspensky, the world would not have known anything about him. He himself was not able to communicate. He knew, but just like you have a taste on your tongue but you don’t have any word for it, and you don’t have the talent…. neither did life give him the opportunity to grow the talent, the intellect.It was one of the great meetings of this century, when Ouspensky discovered him in a refugee camp in Constantinople. The first world war had ended, and Russia had entered the revolutionary period which culminated in the 1917 revolution. Now there was no possibility in Russia for a man like Gurdjieff. The country was in the possession of the materialists, who don’t believe that there is any consciousness, who don’t believe that there is any possibility of evolution. And they were killing all kinds of mystics. Gurdjieff escaped and he was found by Ouspensky. Ouspensky was a world-known mathematician.And there you will understand the difference between Durkheim and a man of Zen: a man who writes about Zen and a man who lives Zen; a man who composes poems about love and a man who loves; a man who simply contemplates and a man who experiences.Ouspensky had written great books before meeting Gurdjieff. One of his books I love as I love no other book. His way of writing is so precise – he was a mathematician. He brought mathematics to language with such a beauty that the mathematics came to language but the poetry of the language did not die, but was enriched. And he talks with such authority that you cannot think that this man knows nothing, but is a great scholar. He has read much and collected teachings from different sources, polished them, refined them, given them more beautiful words, but he himself he is just an ordinary man – nobody would have thought this.It is a strange coincidence that he found Gurdjieff, because he was searching….He had come to India in search of a man who really knows – not a man of knowledge, but a man who really knows. And even in India he could not find a man who really knows. And then he went back to Moscow and somebody said, “You are unnecessarily wandering here and there. There was a man here in Moscow while you were gone. I am not interested, in fact I am afraid of meeting such people, but I feel that is the man you are searching for. You are searching for the man who knows, but it is a dangerous encounter.”Ouspensky went in search of where Gurdjieff had gone – he had escaped from Russia. Ouspensky met him in a refugee camp in Constantinople. It was night; a dozen disciples were sitting around Gurdjieff silently, doing nothing. Ouspensky became fidgety, “What is going on? Nobody speaks, night is becoming darker and deeper. And I have come and the man who has brought me, he is also sitting with closed eyes. I was thinking that he would introduce me.”Finally Gurdjieff said, “Take this paper” – no introduction – “and go into the other room. And write on one side what you know and on the other side what you don’t know. Bring me that paper, because that which you know I will never talk about to you. That which you know already, that is finished. That which you don’t know I will talk about. I will take you to those spaces which you don’t know.”Ouspensky, in that cold night, sitting alone in the room with a small candle, for half an hour, could not figure out what he knew. Does he know God? Does he know himself? What does he know? And he had written so many books, with such authority, without ever thinking that this was egoistic: without knowing you are writing.“But this man is a totally different man, because I was not even introduced, that I have come to be a disciple.” Perhaps a silent communication…. the man who had brought him was an old disciple of Gurdjieff, a musician who used to play for him. Something must have transpired. “But suddenly he gave me this paper.”And holding the paper in his hand he could not write a single thing that he knew. He returned the paper blank and he said, “Seeing you, it is impossible to be insincere. Seeing the real authority, it is impossible to pretend to be authoritative. I don’t know anything. Accept me or reject me, but I am an ignorant man.” Ouspensky started writing about Gurdjieff’s teachings; he was a profound writer. He made Gurdjieff’s name world famous.His methods were strange, because nobody had heard that these are religious methods. But there are secret streams…. There are religions, superficial, which exist in churches and temples and synagogues, and there are religious streams underneath which you don’t know about, but which continue to carry the eternal treasure.Gurdjieff would talk, but nobody was able to understand what he was talking about. Even to write a book would take twenty years. And his way of writing a book you will not believe. He would write a book in Paris in a crowded cafe, sitting in the middle of a crowd of people coming and going – many people were shouting, somebody was getting drunk, and Gurdjieff was writing. Many times Ouspensky asked, “Why don’t you move to a silent place?”He said, “It does not matter. In fact in these places I have learned a few words; these people go on talking so I have learned a few words. In silent places, who is going to tell me?”But he slowly, slowly managed, through Ouspensky…methods which were not known he made available. A very old method, called stop… The disciples dance; the dancing becomes more and more maddening, the music becomes more intense. It comes to a peak, where the dancer forgets himself, becomes almost a puppet in the hands of an unknown energy of music that is surrounding him. And at that moment Gurdjieff says suddenly, “Stop!” And everything has to stop: the music, the dance.You are not even to adjust yourself comfortably, because in a dancing position you may be standing on one leg. You are not to move, you have to remain…. you may fall; that is another thing. You are not to do anything on your part, you simply stop. And it is such a beautiful exercise. When you stop suddenly time stops, everything stops, and the whole existence becomes just pure silence, a serenity and a deep experience of yourself and of the whole. But sometimes…that’s why he was called dangerous.In Tiflis he was staying with a few of his disciples. He was inside a camp and outside was a canal, dry, and people were collecting wood inside it. The winter was coming and more wood would be needed; they were thinking to stay there for three months to meditate. Suddenly somebody opened the canal, not knowing that these people were carrying wood through the canal. Gurdjieff was inside the tent, and from there he suddenly shouted, “Stop!”Those who were cunning, they thought, “He is inside the tent, he does not know what the situation is. If we stop we will be drowned. And he is not looking, so just jump out and stop there!”Except one single disciple, everybody jumped out. They waited, but when they found that the water was coming up to their noses, then they thought, “It is too much. Now this spiritual search is going to finish me.” They jumped out. Just one disciple remained as he was. Water was flowing over his head and Gurdjieff came running out, jumped into the canal, and pulled out the disciple. He was almost unconscious, but he was transformed.Just that moment of decisiveness created an integration in him: Whatever happens, if he has agreed to the master to stop then he will stop; if it brings death then death is welcome. In that welcome of death do you think you can remain the same as you were before? You become steel. This is what Gurdjieff calls crystallization; you for the first time become an individual.He brought the disciple to the tent, forced the water out of his body, warmed the body, wrapped it with blankets. And to the remaining disciples who had jumped out and were still standing outside, he said, “Just get lost! You are not the people to be with me. I am too dangerous for you. And you are too cunning, you are not sincere.”In New York he was giving a demonstration of the stop exercise. He had a group of thirty disciples, trained for years – dancers, musicians – and he was giving a demonstration. There came a point when the dancers were coming to the edge of the stage, and even the people who had gathered to see became afraid that the dancers were going to fall from the stage. And exactly at that moment, Gurdjieff, who was standing by the side smoking his cigar, said, “Stop!”Everything stopped. People started falling over each other, but nobody moved, everything was silent. Many had fallen off the stage, many had fallen over them; the people who were in the hall were standing in awe! They could not believe what was happening. That silence and that total agreement, that contract with the master and the fulfillment of it was so beautiful, so dignified that even the people in the theater became silent. They had never seen such a thing.Now, who is going to join such a man? He had his own ways. It was an ancient exercise of the Sufis. And an ordinary man seeing him smoking a cigar will say, “What kind of enlightenment is this? This man is smoking a cigar and he goes on smoking his cigar and everybody has fallen. Somebody may have got a fracture; the musicians have fallen, their instruments are broken – what kind of man is this? And he is smoking a cigar and standing there enjoying the whole scene!”But the reason needs tremendous understanding. He never wanted, in the West, to call himself enlightened, because that would create a distance and people would not be able to understand. Already what he had brought was so far away that to call himself enlightened would make it more difficult.In the East you can become enlightened, there is no problem; many people become enlightened and then become unenlightened. Nandan, just two or three days ago became enlightened, went beyond love, and just now…. What to do? One falls in love again. So one puts the enlightenment off for later on, postpones it for the time being. Finally one has to become enlightened, but don’t miss this chance, because this boyfriend is not something permanent.Here every romance lasts not more than seven days. By the seventh day people are thinking how to get rid of each other. And when they get rid of them, then it is very easy to become enlightened – having nothing to do, no boyfriend, no girlfriend, what do you want? One finds it easier just to become enlightened!Now, Nandan was worried that if I came to know then I would say, “This is again a case of being German.” Germany has some quality. I have more German disciples than of any other country. And the German parliament has to prevent me from entering Germany. But that does not matter. Even the parliament is afraid. Their fear is that anybody who goes to Pune never returns!Now, here there are so many problems: either boyfriend, girlfriend…. If somehow you avoid boyfriend, girlfriend problems, then comes this enlightenment. For a few days one remains enlightened, and then one day one wakes up and says, “It is enough, now give the chance to somebody else.”Just a few serious things…A Polack and a Jew are riding together in the same train and start chatting.“How is it possible,” asks the Polack, “that you Jews are so successful in business?”“It is simple,” replies the Jew. “We have good-luck charms.”“What are they?” asks the Polack.“Well,” replies the Jew, “it is something we carry with us all the time that brings us good luck.” And he pulls a plastic bag out of his pocket and begins to unroll it. Inside is a fish head.“Wow!” says the Polack, poking the fish head. And he asks if the Jew is willing to sell it.“Twenty dollars and it’s yours,” replies the Jew.The Polack hands over twenty dollars and pockets the fish head. But ten minutes later he is upset. “I have just realized,” says the Polack, “I could buy at least ten fishes in the market for twenty dollars.”“Aha!” says the Jew. “You see, it’s working already!”Hymie Goldberg is touring Ireland in his car when he finds Paddy hitch-hiking, holding a cow.“I can give you a lift,” says Hymie, “but I can’t take your cow.”“Oh, that’s okay,” says Paddy, “she will follow us at her own speed. “So Paddy gets in and Hymie is soon driving at thirty miles per hour. The cow is trotting along behind. Hymie speeds up to forty miles per hour and the cow is still keeping pace. At fifty miles per hour Hymie sees that the cow is right behind, but he notices that she seems to be getting tired.“I’m a bit worried about your cow,” says Hymie, “her tongue is hanging out of her mouth.”“Which side of the mouth?” asks Paddy.“On the right side,” replies Hymie.“Oh, that’s all right then,” says Paddy. “That just means she wants to pass you!”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the “dark night of the soul”? And is it out of date? Looking inside me and all around me, I only see more joy, contentment, lovingness, appreciation of life and of what is. Looking back, I see a lot of misery, heaviness, pain – but they seem to be related to wrong upbringing and unnecessary self-torture, not to any dark night of the soul.Yet, I seem to remember you also talking about having, yourself, gone through deep despair, related to the search for truth. So I wonder, is this relaxing more and more into the joy of being alive, with such beauty all around, with slowly growing watchfulness – is this just fine; or are we, am I, somehow just staying on the surface and not moving into the depth of the “search”? And why am I asking?The question you have raised is very significant in the context of the whole human past. Every religion has been life-negative. And when you negate life, you create misery for yourself; when you go against life, you are going in darkness. Life is light, but no religion in the world has existed up to now which does not teach people attitudes leading to darkness, despair, depression, guilt, sinfulness. They all reduce your dignity, your humanity – it is their vested interest.I agree with Bertrand Russell only on one point: where he says, “If every human being becomes happy, comfortably happy, religions will disappear.” Nobody has taken note of the significance of his statement, what the implication of it is. Its implication is that religions need misery, despair, unhappiness, for their very survival. And they have a vast investment.Now the Catholic Church is the greatest firm, compared to any business firm in the world. Six hundred million people, almost a nation, are under the thumb of a Polack pope. So much money and power and prestige is bestowed on religions, their deities, their temples.In India there is a temple in the south which has so much income every day that it runs a whole university. Perhaps that is the only university in the world that a temple runs – all the salaries and everything. And still the temple goes on becoming rich, because the superstition is that if you donate to the deity of the temple, you will get a millionfold in the other world. Now, who is going to miss such a chance?And you can see it clearly, that you remember about God and about heaven and hell, and about the Bible and the Koran and the Gita only when you are miserable. Have you ever seen somebody who is happy and rejoicing carrying a Bible? He will carry a bottle of wine; this is not the time for carrying a Bible. And who reads these Bibles, Vedas? Just old people who are coming close to death and are becoming afraid – afraid perhaps there may be a God. Perhaps they are going to encounter God, and if he asks any question…. naturally he will ask any question. It is better to do some homework.A man who was a salesman of dictionaries and encyclopedias was telling the woman, standing on her doorstep, “This is the latest encyclopedia. You and your children, all will be benefited by it.” But she said, “We have it already. You can see, there in the corner.”The man looked in the corner. There was a book of the same thickness. He said, “That is not an encyclopedia, that is the Holy Bible.” The woman could not believe it – from that far, how could he judge that the book was the Holy Bible? She said, “That amazes me. You are certainly a man of knowledge. How could you manage to see that that is a Holy Bible?”He said, “Anybody can conclude that, seeing the layer of dust that has gathered on the Bible.”Who opens it? People become interested only when they are almost in their graves. I say almost, because they don’t want to take any chance. To be on the safer side, look into the holy book, read something here and there. If God meets you and inquires, and you can’t answer, you are bound to be in trouble.I have never seen a man who is joyous, blissful, peaceful, and rejoicing in all that the existence offers you – its silences, its rain, its music of the wind passing through the pine trees, its people…all that it gives you. If you cannot dance, then perhaps you don’t know the language. You have been forced to forget the language of dance; you have been forced to forget the language of love.Everything valuable has been condemned: love is sin; even to rejoice in the world is preparing your path to hell. The only way to God and to his paradise is, torture yourself, and torture as perfectly as possible. Renounce everything that can give any joy to you. Escape from every place where people are happy, where people are loving. Go to the mountains, to the monasteries where other idiots have gathered before you. Read the same stupid stories of the Bible every day. And naturally, if a man can read the Old Testament every day, even if he has any intelligence, he will lose it. Then begins the dark night of the soul.You are more fortunate than I am. You are saying, “Even you have talked somewhere about having yourself gone through deep despair, related to the search for truth.” I was not so fortunate to meet a man like me! I met all kinds of fools; it was sheer fortune that I never became convinced of any life-negative attitude.That remained my criterion: unless I find a source which affirms love, which affirms beauty, which affirms flowers and the stars; unless I find the source from where all that is great has arisen – great poetry, great art, great painting, great architecture…. I am not going to be convinced by any person whose whole contribution in life has been destructive.It is a strange phenomenon. Politicians have been destroying, in wars, continuously. Religious people are destroying not others but themselves, very piously, and feeling great. But whether you commit suicide or you commit murder, in every case you destroy life. It doesn’t matter whether it is suicide or murder; the politician commits murder, and your so-called saint commits suicide. This was so clear to me that I never followed any life-negative approach.I had to struggle alone, without any guide, without any friend, without any map. It is a miracle that, surrounded by all these religious teachings, I was not convinced by anybody. I remained stubborn, absolutely trusting only one thing – you can call it love, you can call it life, you can call it light…. But to me, destruction cannot be the goal of existence, only creation. That which creates is the only authentic religious consciousness. You can understand my problem, why all the religions are bound to be against me, and why I am going to be against them.In a world news conference, the first question was asked to me by a woman reporter, “Don’t you believe in coexistence?” I simply said, “No.” Everybody was shocked. All the reporters, all the news media people – nobody was expecting such an answer. Coexistence means compromise; coexistence means, “I know you are my enemy, I am your enemy, but what to do? Neither I can destroy you, nor you can destroy me, because nobody wants to go to jail. So it is better to talk about a great philosophy of coexistence.”I believe in love, but I don’t believe in coexistence. But unfortunately every husband and every wife are living in coexistence, not life; tolerating each other as much as possible.They can see the superstitions of religions, but again they compromise, because so many people…who is going to be against six hundred million Catholics? And you have to live with them, you have to work with them. It is better to compromise, it is better to remain silent; it is better to ignore points where you differ. Your life is a life of compromise. And a life of compromise is a life of the dark night of the soul.I have never compromised. Either I am right or I am wrong. There are not degrees – that I am a little right. There are not percentages – that fifty percent I am right, fifty percent you are right. Right is a hundred percent; otherwise it is not right. And a lie is a hundred percent a lie; otherwise it is not a lie.But from the very childhood, in every sphere of your life you are told not to come in conflict – be polite. In other words, always manage some compromise. But when there are so many compromises – politically, spiritually, socially – you become a stranger to yourself. You have so many masks, you lose contact with your original face. And a mask cannot enjoy, it is dead. It cannot laugh, it cannot love. Only the original face is capable of understanding the language of the universe.Love is the language.Dance is the expression of your gratitude.There is no question of any dark night of the soul, but I had to pass through it because nobody told me. There was no reference anywhere in the whole literature of the world. I went to this saint and to that saint. And if I see all kinds of idiots doing all kinds of stupid things, I cannot tolerate it. When I see something stupid, I make it a point to make that man alert, that this is stupid.A saint was fasting for sixty days, and thousands of people were coming every day to touch his feet – a great spiritual master. Seeing that so many people were going, I thought, “There is no harm. Perhaps this is somebody in whose eyes I can see the light, in whose gestures I can see the grace.” And there I saw a half-dead, utterly stupid man. I asked him, “Before you die, answer me at least, what relationship is there between spirituality and starvation? And if starvation is spiritual, then why are people trying to remove poverty from the world? People should try to remove richness from the world, so that everybody becomes spiritual.”That man looked at me and he said, “You are asking me a strange question. For thousands of years fasting has been considered to be spiritual.”I said, “I am not worried about thousands of years. You have the experience of sixty days – what spirituality have you gained? Just give me some indication.” He looked here and there – what indication could he give?I said, “The only indication is that within a few days you will die. But there is still time if you have courage – it needs great courage to disappoint the worshippers. When you have thousands of worshippers, it needs tremendous courage.” I said, “I can bring delicious food for you. These people will be very much against me, but if you are ready…”He said, “Don’t talk about such things. Don’t seduce me! You are trying to drag me out of my spiritual path.”I said, “I am simply wasting some money for your food, I am not dragging you. Once you are okay, then you can drag yourself anywhere you want to go. For a few days I can manage to keep you in my house. You can get well, and then go on any path you want. But right now you are going into death, it is not a path.”The man thought for a moment, understood clearly that what I was saying was right. But to disappoint so many people…. And it was not only a question of disappointing so many people, it was a question of losing respect in the eyes of so many people.He said to me, “Please, don’t disturb me.” Because I went every day with the same proposal, with greater persuasion. And the man was getting more and more persuaded and more and more afraid of me.Finally he said to his disciples that if I come he does not want to see me. “Prevent this man from coming, because one or two days more and he will convince me – because I cannot give any argument about why being hungry is spiritual.” And if being hungry is spiritual, then why are you drinking water? Stop drinking too. That will make you more spiritual. In fact, why waste the time of so many people? Just commit hara-kiri! Why make such a circus? But these circuses have been going on around the world for ages.And what do these worshippers see in these saints? They are suffering, they are being tortured. It touches a very strange thing in human psychology. You enjoy people being tortured, and you enjoy more if the people are torturing themselves. Then nobody is responsible. The crowd that follows such saints are sadists; they love to see torture. And the people who are torturing themselves are suffering from another psychological disease – they are masochists. They enjoy torturing themselves and enjoy also the great respect that is coming to them.But no religion in the world has given respect to love or to joy or to music or to dance or to any creativity that beautifies existence. They are all against it. Their whole business is to convince you that your authentic blissfulness is not in this world. Jesus says, “My kingdom of God is not of this world.” This is, in essence, the teaching of all the religions. Their kingdom is beyond death, a fiction. Torture yourself if you want to enter their fictitious paradise. And meanwhile let the priest enjoy the power, the money; let the priest enjoy the ego.In fact, seen in the light of psychological analysis, the whole humanity has been, up to now, sick. But because the sickness is so prevalent, it is very difficult to think that it is sickness. You never think that your nose is something wrong, but if you have instead of five fingers, six fingers, you think something is wrong.I used to work in a university, and one university teacher had twelve fingers. She used to hide them, and I said, “You are an idiot. You should make other people feel that ‘You are missing. I have six – you have only five.’ What is wrong in having six fingers? Why feel guilty about it? Make some use of it and let others feel that they are missing the sixth finger.” But it is difficult because millions of people have only ten fingers.That’s why every language in the world has ten basic mathematical digits, because man started calculating, in the primitive days, on his fingers. And a person like me still counts on the fingers and still gets lost after the fourth – it becomes so complicated! You will be surprised, all the languages have, strangely, agreed without even being in contact; they have developed ten basic digits. And then it is repetition – eleven and twelve and thirteen…. After ten you can go on repeating as long as you want, but ten is the base. It simply means that man has always had five fingers, so nobody thinks anything wrong about five fingers, or anything right about five fingers. One simply takes it for granted; that’s how things are.The psychological sickness of enjoying either your own torture or somebody else’s torture is the very foundation of all your religions. And you will not believe how inventive these psychologically sick people have been. Just a few examples…. I will have to count on my fingers, and I know I will get lost!In Russia there was a Christian sect – most prominent, because nobody could do what they were doing. Every religion has been teaching celibacy, but they had done the ultimate: they started cutting off their sexual organs. A man who cut off his sexual organs would become a saint – so simple. That means people who are born…a few people are born impotent; they are born spiritual people. You may not be aware – in the world outside India, perhaps they don’t show themselves the way they do in India.In India they have their own organizations and their only work is…they are neither man nor woman. They don’t have any sexual organs. They look like men, and they use the clothes of women; they are very strange people. Their main center is Lucknow, their headquarters; they have their president. And their only work is, when somebody is born, they go and dance and celebrate and get rewarded. They move from one place to another place in groups, finding out if somebody has been born. They look strange, very ugly.But in Russia, thousands of men used to cut off their sexual organs in great ceremonies. Thousands of people would come to see it – if they cannot cut, at least they can see the great saints who are renouncing sexuality completely. And they don’t know that sexuality is not in the sexual organ. Sexuality has its center in your brain. That’s why you can dream a sexual dream, and if you start thinking of sexual images, immediately your sexual organ will be ready to act. But the source is in your mind. The soldier does not act on his own accord! Even if you cut it off, do you think you will not think of sex anymore, your dreams will not be sexual? They will be more sexual. Of course, you cannot do anything.And women were not going to remain behind when so many men were becoming saints so easily. Poor women started cutting off their breasts – thousands of women. Before the Russian revolution, they made it a law that anybody doing such harm to the body will be thought a criminal. It continued for centuries. It is crime, but it is the same kind of crime whether you fast, you torture the body or you can take the vow of celibacy, then you torture the body. Or you can learn from yogis distortions of all kinds. It takes a long time and training and discipline, and all that you can do is stupid distortions unnecessarily.Somebody is standing on his head…Do you think a man standing on his head becomes spiritual? All it simply says is that he is an idiot. He will lose all intelligence, because man has intelligence just because he is the only animal who stands on legs, against gravitation. So a very small quantity of blood reaches his head. Because of the small quantity of blood very fine nerves have grown in the brain. If you stand on your head, all the blood rushes toward your head, destroying this delicate system. It is so clear. Have you seen any yogi – and in this country, for thousands of years there have been millions of yogis – who has contributed to life anything – anything intelligible, anything understandable? But they become great saints.In Varanasi, which is the Hindu capital, you will still find people lying on a bed of thorns. And flowers are showered on them, and sweets and coconuts. That man was a nut himself, and now you are offering him coconuts! I have been with these people, and I became friendly with such a coconut, to find out his secret. He said, “Do you want to become a saint like me?”I said, “Really, I want to become a saint like you. This is such a beautiful job, and you are the most expert here.” I puffed up his ego as much as possible. I told other people also, “You are just wasting time unnecessarily. The real saint is lying there in that corner.” More flowers, more coconuts started coming. The man became very friendly. He said, “Come on, I will tell you the truth.”One evening when there was nobody…. And on the bank of the Ganges where he used to lie it was now silent. The day had ended, the sun had set – just a little light before the night came. He showed me his back. And what I suspected was the truth. On your back there are points which don’t feel pain and there are points which feel very much pain. You can tell a friend to take a needle and prick a few places on your back, and you will be surprised that there are a few places where you cannot feel the needle.Those beds are made in such a way that the needles touch only the painless spots. It is simple cheating, but it is called saintliness. But if you say this, you are against religion, you are against tradition; you are destroying and corrupting people’s faith.There is a record of a certain Christian sect in the Middle Ages which used to have shoes made in such a way that needles were coming up inside the shoe, entering the feet. They would make wounds and the monk would walk on those shoes. They would make belts with needles entering inside the body, and those needles would make wounds. And people would worship the monks.There was another sect that was very highly praised. Every morning, the saint had to stand naked under the sky and beat himself. Blood would start coming out, and people were gathering around churches to see these scenes. In Mohammedanism there is still a sect in which the person beats just on his chest until he becomes unconscious. And when he becomes unconscious, then people touch his feet. Then people take the dust on which he has fallen, because he is a saint. These ideologies and similar kinds of different ways of torturing created the dark night of the soul.To you, to my people there is no dark night of the soul. For me it was. I had seen that it was a tradition-oriented, self-torturing ideology which dominated all over the world, every religion. But I went on questioning, until I was satisfied that something was in tune with life. Those were the days of despair, because I was trying to find and there was no answer anywhere for any question.Nobody could tell me what is the meaning of our being here, what is the significance. Why should I go on living? If today has been a wastage, tomorrow is going to be a repetition. Those days were days of despair. But I went on questioning; I did not compromise; I did not get consoled with some bogus, hocus-pocus ideology. I never said to myself, “One has just to live, so don’t go on digging into the roots. Just accept whatever is offered – millions of people are living without any problem, why should you create problems?”But I never accepted any belief, I never accepted any idea. And slowly, slowly the ultimate result was, a tremendous silence started happening to me. My friends, my family, people all became afraid – it seemed I was going mad, because they had seen only mad people in such situations. I would sit for hours staring at nothing. My friends would ask, “What are you staring at?”I said, “Nothing.”They asked, “Then why are you staring?”I said, “What else to do? It is a difficult world. If I sit with closed eyes, people ask, ‘Why are you sitting with closed eyes?’ If I don’t close my eyes, they think I am going mad – ‘Why are you staring?’ If I stare at somebody he becomes fidgety. He starts becoming angry – ‘Why are you staring at me?’”Psychologists have found that you can look at a person without making him annoyed only for three seconds. More than that and he will start becoming annoyed – why does this man go on staring at me? Just try. And I said, “I have nothing else to do. And here I don’t see anything worth seeing; you are worth seeing, so I am staring.”But my inner world was becoming so silent that either with closed eyes or open eyes there was not a single thought moving. This silence was the beginning of my learning the language of universal silence. This is what I have called hari om tat sat. It has nothing to do with any religion. It simply means the divine sound: that is the only truth.Everything else is a fiction. Everything else is ephemeral, illusory. But the music of the universe, if you can get in tune with it…. And there is nothing to be done. You don’t have to be on a fast, because if you are on a fast you cannot get in tune with the universe; you will get in tune with your hunger. But even in this end part of the twentieth century, in the most evolved countries like America, stupidities continue.One man, the founder of EST, Erhardt, was here. He has been earning millions of dollars, but finally people found out the trick – they have been befooled. That’s why so many religions have arisen and disappeared. There was a time when they became the fashion; they appealed and everybody started saying, “This is great!” And particularly in America, any stupid thing and you will find people who will say, “This is great. Far out!”What Erhardt was doing was such a simple strategy: a weekend seminar for two weeks; one seminar for two hundred and fifty dollars. For two days you have to be from the morning till late in the night sitting in the hall, listening to all kinds of nonsense. And you are not allowed to go to the toilet – that was the spiritual discipline. But the bladder is the bladder; it becomes full sooner or later.People will keep holding, they will become tense as time will pass, and they will look all around – everybody is tense, but it needs courage. You cannot be allowed, otherwise you will miss it. And nobody asks what it is that you will miss. And finally somebody will get it. There will come a moment when you cannot control; there is a limitation. And finally one man proves courageous enough and urinates in the hall. And immediately others start, because everybody is ready.You can try it alone, although it will not be so effective alone. When after a long, tense control you relax, it feels so great! It is a spiritual experience. And you cannot say to anybody that it is not, because you have paid two hundred and fifty dollars. So you go on spreading the message, “I have got it. What it is, is inexpressible. One has to get it, only then one understands.” And spreading by word of mouth, that a few people are getting it just for two hundred and fifty dollars…give it a try.Women were first to get it because their bladder control is not that great. Man can control a little longer. So women became leaders, almost saints, because they got it first. And when a woman is getting it, then it hurts the ego of the man: “Forget all about it and get it.” Now he has stopped that business because everybody has got it. And now nobody is ready; everybody understands that they have been befooled. But for almost ten years he made thousands of people enlightened.It is certainly a great experience, and you don’t have to depend on anyone, you can try it alone. There is no need to waste two hundred and fifty dollars. Just one morning go on controlling, and soon there will come a moment when it will happen. You don’t have to do it. That is how Zen has come to the West: it happens, you don’t have to do it; it is effortless effort. But when it comes it brings such peace. One feels so much at ease, forgets all anxiety. One has arrived. Although tomorrow the same rut…. but now you have the key. Whenever you want to arrive – a simple strategy. But in a very well-educated, sophisticated society, if people can be deceived, what about the whole past of humanity?All the religions have been deceiving you. They have been deceiving in the name of God. They have been deceiving that you will get rewarded after death, and if you don’t listen you will be punished by hellfire for eternity. And people believed it.I have heard about Christian missionaries in the Middle Ages, shouting and beating on the table about what will happen to the sinners. And describing it in such detail that ladies will faint, children will start crying. Even men will start perspiring. “Hellfire. Somehow one has to save oneself from hellfire. Only God can save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you.” And the strangest thing is, Jesus Christ could not save himself. My people in America made a small sign to be put on cars: Moses earns, Jesus saves, Osho spends. Now, what stupidity!You need not be worried, there is no dark night of the soul for you. There will be only a starry night, full of light and joy, with a dawn coming closer every moment. I want to insist on it.It appears very strange, but I cannot resist. I have to declare it, that you are the first religious people in this world, in the sense that you can laugh, that you can love, that you can live, that you can enjoy small things of life without bothering about fictions. And if you can learn to enjoy this life, this moment, then if there is any other life, you know how to enjoy it.In this life learn to enjoy. Discipline your senses to be more musical; discipline yourself to be more sensitive, intelligent, because whatever is going to come…. I don’t say what is going to come – who cares? – because whatever will be said will be simply a fiction again. Whatever is going to come tomorrow, we will enjoy it with more intensity, more clarity, more discipline, more love.And the same is true about after death. If there is life after death…. I say there is, but I don’t want you to believe it. There is no need to believe. Just live this life, and if any life happens after this life you will be able to enjoy. And if nothing happens, nothing happens. There is no harm; you simply are not.What was the problem when you were not born? Everything was going perfectly well. One day you will die, and everything will go perfectly well. Either you will be – then you know how to enjoy – or you will not be, so there is no problem for you. My understanding is simple and clear.Something serious…Paddy and Seamus are sitting in the pub, having a drink together.“A burglar got into my house at three o’clock this morning,” says Paddy, “while I was on my way home from the pub.”“Did he get anything?” asks Seamus.“He certainly did,” says Paddy. “The poor guy is in the hospital. My wife, Maureen, thought it was me!”Hymie Goldberg walks into where the last supper is being held. He sits down at the table and says to the waiter, “Give me a scotch and soda.”“I’m sorry sir,” replies the waiter, “all we are serving here is wine.”“Okay, some wine then,” says Hymie, “and give me a mushroom pizza and a large salad.”“Sorry sir,” says the waiter, “but all we are serving is bread.”“My God! Only bread and wine?” yells Hymie. “The guy who’s giving this party should be crucified!”A man goes into a pharmacy and buys a pound of arsenic poison. Next week he comes back and asks for a packet of sleeping pills.“I’m sorry, sir,” says the pharmacist, “but you need a prescription for them.”“My God!” says the man. “Last week you sold me a pound of arsenic poison and I did not need a prescription for that.”“I know,” replies the pharmacist, “but arsenic is not addictive.”Paddy wakes up in hospital, covered in bandages, and notices Seamus sitting at his bedside.“What happened to me?” asks Paddy.“Well,” replies Seamus, “you had a few too many drinks last night, and then you made a bet that you could jump out of the window and fly around the pub.”“Why didn’t you stop me?” Paddy screams.“Stop you?” replies Seamus. “Hell, I bet twenty-five dollars on you.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You once said, “The moment is rare when eternity penetrates time.” Can you speak more on this?The question seems to be simple but the answer is very complex. And the complexity becomes multidimensional because the answer can come only from your own experience, not from outside. Just as the question is arising in you, the answer has to also be part of your interiority. But I will go into a little detail, to explain what I mean when I say that the moment is rare when eternity penetrates time.Time is that in which we live – it is horizontal. It is from A to B to C to D; it is in a line. Eternity is vertical. It is not from A to B and from B to C. It is from A to more A to still more A. It goes on upward. The moment is rare because it happens only when meditation has reached ripening, maturity, when you have touched your innermost core.Then suddenly you become aware that you are a crossroad. One line goes horizontal; in other words, mediocre, ordinary, meaningless and leading finally to death. The horizontal line is continuously moving toward the graveyard. I have told you the story, significant in many ways – to be reminded:A great king in his dreams saw a shadow and became afraid even in the dream. And he asked, “What do you want?”The shadow said, “I have not come to ask for anything. I have come just to inform you that this evening at the right place, when the sun is setting, you will breathe your last breath. Ordinarily I don’t come to inform people, but you are a great emperor; it is just to pay respect to you.”The emperor became so afraid that he woke up, perspiring, could not think what to do. The only thing he could think of was to call all the wise men, astrologers, prophets and to find out the meaning of the dream. Dream analysis is thought to have originated with Sigmund Freud – that is not true. It originated with this emperor, one thousand years ago.In the middle of the night, all the prophets of his capital, all the wise men, all those who were concerned in some way with the future – dream readers, they were told the story. The story was simple. They had brought their scriptures and they started arguing with each other: “This cannot be the meaning,” or, “This is bound to be the meaning.”They wasted time; the sun started rising. The king had an old servant whom he treated just as a father because his father had died very early. He was too young, and his father had given the guardianship to this servant and told him, “Take care that he becomes my successor and does not lose the kingdom.”And the servant managed. Now he was very old, but he was not treated as a servant. He was almost as respected as a father. He came close to the emperor and said, “I want to say two things to you. You have always listened to me. I am not a prophet and I am not an astrologer and I don’t know what all this nonsense is that’s going on. The scriptures are being consulted. One thing is certain, that once the sun has risen, the sunset is not very far away.“And these people, the so-called knowledgeable people, have never come to any conclusion in centuries. Just in one day they will quarrel, argue, destroy each other’s arguments, but you cannot hope that they will come to a consensus, a conclusion.“Let them have their discussions. My suggestion is, you have the best horse in the world” – those were the days of horses. “You take the horse and escape from this palace as fast as possible. This much is certain, that you should not be here; you should be far away.”It was logical, rational, although very simple. The king left the great intelligent and wise people arguing – they did not even notice that the emperor had left. And he certainly had a horse worth an empire. He was very proud of the horse; there was no other horse known of that strength. And there was such a love between the horse and the emperor, such a deep affinity, a kind of synchronicity. The king said to the horse, “It seems my death is coming. That shadow was nothing but death. You have to take me as far away from this palace as you can manage.”The horse nodded his head. And he fulfilled his promise. By the evening, as the sun was setting, they were hundreds of miles away from their kingdom. They had entered into another kingdom in disguise. The king was very happy; he got down from his horse. He was tying the horse to a tree – because neither had he eaten anything nor the horse. So he said to the horse, “Thank you my friend. Now I will make arrangements for your food, for my food. We are so far away, there is no fear. But you proved the stories that were told about you. You became almost like a cloud, with such a speed.”And as he was tying the horse to the tree, the dark shadow appeared and said to the emperor, “I was afraid that you might not be able to make it, but your horse is great. I also thank him. This is the place and this is the time. And I was worried – you were so far away, how could I manage to bring you? The horse served destiny.”It is a strange story, but it shows that wherever you are going horizontally, with whatever speed, you will end up in some graveyard. It is strange that every moment our graves are coming closer to us – even if you don’t move, your grave is moving toward you. The horizontal line of time is, in other words, the mortality of man.But if you can reach to the center of your being, the silences of your innermost center, you can see two roads: one horizontal, another vertical.You will be surprised to know that the Christian cross is not Christian at all. It is an ancient, Eastern, Aryan symbol, the swastika. That’s why Adolf Hitler, who was thinking that he was of the purest Aryan blood, chose the swastika as his symbol. A swastika is nothing but two lines crossing. In India, without knowing why, at the beginning of every year, business people will write in their books, begin their new books with a swastika. The Christian cross is simply a part of the swastika. But it also represents the same thing: the vertical, the horizontal. Christ’s hands are horizontal; his head and his being are pointing in a different direction.In a moment of meditation, you suddenly see that you can move in two directions – either horizontal or vertical. The vertical consists of silences, blissfulness, ecstasies; the horizontal consists of hands, work, the world.Once a man has known himself as a crossroad, he cannot be disinterested, he cannot be unintrigued about the vertical. The horizontal he knows, but the vertical opens a door to eternity, where death does not exist; where one simply becomes more and more part of the cosmic whole; where one loses all bondages, even the bondage of the body.Gautam Buddha used to say, “Birth is pain, life is pain, death is pain.” What he was saying was, to move on the horizontal line, you are continuously miserable, in pain. Your life cannot be a life of dance, of joy. If this is all, then suicide is the only solution.That’s the conclusion the contemporary, Western philosophy of existentialism – of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger, Kierkegaard and others – has come to, that life is meaningless. On the horizontal plane it is, because it is simply agony and pain and disease and sickness and oldness. And you are encaged in a small body while your consciousness is as vast as the whole universe.Once the vertical is discovered, one starts moving on the vertical line. That vertical line does not mean you have to renounce the world. But it certainly means that you are no more of the world, that the world becomes ephemeral, loses importance. It does not mean that you have to renounce the world and escape to the mountains and the monasteries. It simply means that you start – wherever you are – living an inner life which was not possible before.Before you were an extrovert; now, suddenly you become introvert. As far as the body is concerned, you can manage very easily, if the remembrance is there that you are not the body. But the body can be used in many ways to help you to move on the vertical line. The penetration of the vertical line, just a ray of light coming into your darkness of horizontal life, is the beginning of enlightenment.You will look the same, but you will not be the same. Those who have a clarity of seeing, to them you will not look the same either. And at least for yourself, you will never look the same. And you can never be the same. You will be in the world, but the world will not be in you.Ambitions, desires, jealousies will start evaporating. No effort will be needed to drop them, just your movement on the vertical line and they start disappearing because they cannot exist on the vertical line. They can exist only in the darkness of the horizontal, where everybody is in competition, everybody is full of lust, full of will to power, a great desire to dominate, to become somebody special.On the vertical line all these stupidities simply disappear. You become so light, so weightless, just like a lotus flower: it is in the water, but the water does not touch it. You remain in the world, but the world has no longer any impact on you. On the contrary, you start influencing the world – not with conscious effort, but just by your sheer being, your presence, your grace, your beauty. As it grows inside it starts spreading around you.It will touch people who have an open heart and it will make people afraid who have lived with a closed heart – all windows, all doors closed. They will not come in contact with such a person. And to convince themselves why they are not coming in contact with such a person, they will find a thousand and one excuses, a thousand and one lies. But the basic fact is that they are afraid to be exposed.The man who is moving vertically becomes almost a mirror. If you come close to him, you will see your real face – you will see your ugliness, you will see your continuous ambitiousness, you will see your begging bowl.Perhaps another story will help you:A man, early in the morning, a beggar with a begging bowl, entered the king’s garden. The king used to come for a morning walk; otherwise it was impossible to meet the king – particularly for the beggar, the whole bureaucracy would prevent him. So he had chosen a time when there was no bureaucracy, and when the king wanted to be alone, in silence with nature, to drink as much beauty and aliveness as nature was showering. The beggar encountered him there.The king said, “This is not the time – I don’t see anybody.”The beggar said, “I am a beggar. Your bureaucracy is too long, and for a beggar it is impossible to see you. I insist that you give me an audience.”The king just thought to get rid of him. He said, “What do you want? Just say and you will get it. Don’t disturb my morning silence.”The beggar said, “Think twice before you offer to give me something.”The king said, “You seem to be a strange man. In the first place, you entered without any permission into the garden, insisting that you have to have an audience with the king. And now I am saying that whatever you want, just say it. Don’t disturb my peace and don’t disturb my silence.”The beggar laughed. He said, “A peace that is disturbed is not peace. And a silence that is disturbed is just a dream, not a reality.”Now the king looked at the beggar. He was saying something of tremendous importance. The king thought, “He does not seem to be an ordinary beggar, that is certain.” And the beggar said again, “I want you to think it over, because what I want is just for you to fill my begging bowl with anything and I will go. But it has to be full.”The king laughed. He said, “You are a madman. Do you think your begging bowl cannot be filled?”He called his treasurer and told him, “Fill his begging bowl with diamonds, precious stones.”The treasurer had no idea what had happened. Nobody fills beggars’ bowls with diamonds. And the beggar reminded the treasurer, “Remember, unless the begging bowl is full, I am not going to move from here.” It was a challenge between a beggar and a king.And then there followed a very strange story. As diamonds were poured into his begging bowl, the moment they were poured in they would disappear. The emperor was in a very embarrassed state. But he said, “Whatever happens, even if my whole treasury is gone, I cannot be defeated by a beggar. I have defeated great emperors.” And the whole treasury disappeared. The rumor reached the capital, and thousands of people gathered to see what was happening. And they had never seen the king in such a trembling, nervous breakdown.And finally, when nothing was left in the treasury and the begging bowl was still as empty as it was before, he fell to the feet of the beggar and said, “You will have to forgive me, I did not understand. I have never thought about these things. I did my best, but now I don’t have anything else to offer you. And I will think that you have forgiven me if you can tell me the secret of your begging bowl. It is a strange begging bowl – just a few diamonds would have filled it. It has taken the whole treasury.”The beggar laughed and he said, “You need not be worried. This is not a begging bowl. I found a human skull and out of the human skull I made this begging bowl. It has not forgotten its old habit. Have you looked into your own begging bowl, your own head? Give it anything and it will ask for more and more and more. It knows only one language: more. It is always empty, it is always a beggar.”On the horizontal line, only beggars exist because they are all rushing for more, and because the more cannot be fulfilled – not that you cannot get to a position you want, but the moment you get it, there are higher positions. For a moment maybe a flicker of happiness, and the next moment, again the same despair and the same race for more. You cannot fulfill the idea of more. It is intrinsically unfulfillable. And this is the horizontal line, the line of more and more and more.What is the vertical line? Of being less and less and less, to the point of utter emptiness, to the point of being nobody. Just a signature – not even on sand, but on water. You have not even made it and it has disappeared. The man of the vertical line is the authentic sannyasin, who is immensely happy in being nobody, immensely happy with his inner purity of emptiness because only emptiness can be pure; who is absolutely contented with his nothingness because only nothingness can be in tune with the universe.Once this tuning with the universe happens, you are in a sense no more. In the old sense, you are no more. But you are for the first time the whole universe. Even the faraway stars are within you, your nothingness can contain them: the flowers and the sun and the moon, and the whole music of existence. You are no more an ego, your “I” has disappeared. But that does not mean that you have disappeared. On the contrary, the moment your “I” has disappeared, you have appeared.It is such a great ecstasy to be without the feeling of “I,” without the feeling of any ego, without asking for anything more. What more can you ask? You have nothingness. In this nothingness you have become, without conquering, the whole universe. Then the singing birds are not only singing outside you. They appear outside because this body creates the barrier.On the vertical line you become more and more consciousness and less and less body. The whole identification with the body disappears. In nothingness, these birds will be within you; these flowers, these trees and this beautiful morning will be within you. In fact, then there is no without. Everything has become your vision. And you cannot have a richer life than when everything has become your within. When the sun and the moon and the stars and the whole infinity of time and space is within you – what more do you want?This is exactly the meaning of enlightenment: to become so nonexistent as an ego that the whole oceanic existence becomes part of you.Kabir, a great Indian mystic – he was uneducated but has written such tremendously significant statements. They may not be grammatical. One of his statements he corrected before he died. He had written a beautiful statement when he was young. It was, “Just a dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf in the early morning sun, shining like a pearl, into the ocean.” He said, “The same has happened to me.”His words are, “I have been searching, my friend. Rather than finding myself, I got lost in the cosmos. The dewdrop disappeared into the ocean.” Just before dying, as he was closing his eyes, he asked his son, Kamal, who himself proved of the same caliber and of the same status – and sometimes one thinks that he was a man of more courage than Kabir.Kabir was very courageous against all traditions, orthodoxy, everything. But Kamal even criticized Kabir when he found something wrong in his statements. He told Kamal, “Please change my statement, which has been praised all over, that ‘My friend, I have been searching for myself, but rather than finding myself, I got lost, just as the dewdrop disappears into the ocean.’ Change it.”Kamal said, “I had always suspected that there was something wrong in it.” And he showed him his own writing, in which he had already corrected it. The correction – even before Kabir realized – had been done already. That’s why Kabir called him Kamal: “You are a miracle.” Kamal means miracle. And the man was a miracle. He had changed the line that Kabir wanted:“My friend, I was seeking and searching myself. Rather than finding myself I have found the whole world, the whole universe. The dewdrop has not disappeared into the ocean, but the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.” And when the ocean disappears into the dewdrop, the dewdrop is simply losing its boundaries, nothing else.On the vertical line, you become less and less and less and less. And one day, you are no more.A Zen master, Rinzai, had a very absurd habit, but beautiful. Every morning, when he would wake up, before opening his eyes he would say, “Rinzai, are you still here?”His disciples said, “What kind of nonsense is this? You ask ‘Rinzai, are you still here?’”He said, “I am waiting for the moment when the answer will be, ‘No. Existence is, but Rinzai is not.’”This is the ultimate peak human consciousness can reach. This is the ultimate benediction. And unless one reaches to this peak, one will remain wandering in dark pathways, blind, suffering, miserable. He may accumulate much knowledge, he may become a great scholar, but that does not help. Only one thing, a very simple thing, is the essence of the whole religious experience, and that is meditation.You go inward. It will be difficult to get out from the crowd of your thoughts, but you are not a thought. You can get out of the crowd, you can create a distance between you and your thoughts. And as the distance grows bigger, the thoughts start falling like leaves which have died – because it is you and your identity with the thoughts that gives them nourishment. When you are not giving them nourishment, thoughts cannot exist. Have you met any thought somewhere standing by itself?Just try to be indifferent – the word of Gautam Buddha is upeksha. Just be indifferent to the whole mind and a distance will be created. And then come to a point from where all nourishment to the thoughts is stopped. They simply disappear; they are soap bubbles.The moment all thoughts disappear, you will find yourself in the same situation, asking, “Rinzai are you still here?” And you will wait for that great moment, that great, rare opportunity when the answer will be, “No. Who is this guy Rinzai?”This silence is meditation. And it is not a talent. Everybody cannot be a Picasso and everybody cannot be a Rabindranath and everybody cannot be a Michelangelo. Those are talents. But everybody can be enlightened because it is not a talent; it is your intrinsic nature, of which you are unaware. And you will remain unaware if you remain surrounded by thoughts. The awareness of your ultimate reality arises only when there is nothing to prevent it, when there is nothingness surrounding you.The vertical line is rare. It is perhaps the only rare thing in existence because it takes you on the journey of eternity and immortality. The flowers that blossom on those paths are inconceivable by the mind. And the experiences that happen are unexplainable. But in a very strange way the man himself becomes the expression. His eyes show the depths of his heart, his gestures show the grace of the vertical movement. His whole life radiates, pulsates and creates a field of energy.Those who are prejudiced, those who are already determined and concluded – I feel sorry for them. But those who are open, unprejudiced, have not concluded yet, they will immediately start feeling the pulsation, the radiation and a certain synchronicity between the heart of the man of the vertical, and the heart of the man who is not yet vertical. The moment the synchronicity happens, in that same moment you also start moving vertically.These are words simply to explain things which are not explainable through words. But those who are intelligent enough, not intellectuals – those people are full of rubbish. Never get mixed up between being intellectual and intelligent. Intelligence is a pure clarity of seeing, a perceptivity. The intellectual is a computer; he is a memory.Intelligence is not memory. Intelligence is a sharp sword which penetrates directly into reality, once it sees it.It is said that Mahakashyapa, himself a prince, had gone to see Gautam Buddha. But he was very simple, innocent, unprejudiced, having no belief systems, no philosophy, no theology. He simply touched the feet of Buddha, looked into the eyes of Buddha, and everything happened: some transfer of light, something invisible, some meeting of the heart, some merging – he never asked a single question to Gautam Buddha.Even others became aware of the fact: “All the disciples ask questions. This Mahakashyapa is strange. He simply sits under a tree; he has almost monopolized the tree. Everybody knows, ‘Don’t sit there, Mahakashyapa will sit there.’ He sits there – if Buddha speaks, good; if Buddha does not speak, good.”Slowly, slowly older disciples approached Mahakashyapa, particularly Sariputta who was a very close disciple of Gautam Buddha. He asked Mahakashyapa, “Don’t you have a question?”Mahakashyapa said, “All my questions were answered the moment he looked into my eyes. Since the moment I touched his feet I have not been a body. I am just a consciousness and the body is my house. All identity with the body was broken in a single, split moment.”He is described in the Buddhist scriptures only once, when another king was offering Gautam Buddha a great, valuable diamond and Buddha said, “Drop it!”Reluctantly, because it was a very valuable diamond, but before ten thousand people if you have offered it and Buddha says, “Drop it!” He dropped it. He had also brought a very rare flower: a lotus which had blossomed out of season. It was not the time for lotuses. He offered Buddha that flower and Buddha again said, “Drop it!” He dropped it but he felt very strange, hurt: “My gifts are not being accepted.”And Buddha said, “Drop it!” Now he had nothing to drop, so he looked all around, “What to make of it? Is this man mad? I dropped the diamond, I dropped the flower – those two things were in both my hands. Now I don’t have anything to drop.” This is the moment where Mahakashyapa is mentioned – once only.Ten thousand sannyasins were utterly silent because it was a strange thing, Buddha had never done that. He had accepted – anybody who brought a flower or a gift, he would accept it. But Mahakashyapa sitting under his monopolized tree laughed loudly. He had not spoken to anybody; he had been there for four years. This was the first time he had made some kind of expression. He laughed. And this was even more hurtful.The king said, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “I am laughing because you are not dropping yourself. He is not concerned about your flower and about your diamond, drop yourself! And I say it with my own experience – before he said anything, I had dropped myself. He had to lean and hold me up, and our eyes met and everything happened.”Mahakashyapa is perhaps the most mysterious disciple of Gautam Buddha, but the most perceptive. That was a rare moment, when Buddha looked into Mahakashyapa’s eyes. That was the moment when eternity penetrated time, when the vertical penetrated the horizontal. And just a single moment can be such a radical change. Beautiful were those days, golden are their memories. It looks very far away and faint now.But my effort here is to make this small island a part of eternity, where those innocent moments, those innocent experiences are still possible. Nothing is said, nothing is heard, and yet the heart starts dancing in tune with the master.The universal and the eternal are the same, only man has become more and more drowned in darkness. In India, the seers have named this part of time Kaliyuga – the age of darkness. They were certainly very perceptive.Just a few days ago, the editor of Illustrated Weekly wrote an article about me in which he said a few significant things. He is not a religious person, neither does he believe in any spirituality. But in our commune, what he saw and felt he could say was his closest experience of spirituality.Somebody from England wrote a very angry letter to him which was published. The man said, “What has happened to you? Either you have been bribed or you have been hypnotized.” Looking at his letter, it became something more important. Because if anybody tells any lies about me, if anybody is against me, nobody will say to him, “You have been bribed by the enemies of Osho.” And nobody will say or even conceive that, “You have been hypnotized by the people who are against Osho.”Many people have told me, “We want to come, we want to understand. But then people start saying, ‘You are being hypnotized. If you are not saying anything against Osho then certainly you are being hypnotized.’” Just twenty-five centuries ago, do you think Mahakashyapa was hypnotized? Do you think anybody would have said to him, “Either you have been bribed or hypnotized”? Those were days when people were not so closed and allowed some fresh breeze to pass through them.Now everybody seems to be completely closed. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan. Before experiencing anything they have decided what is true and what is false. Before coming in contact with a living source, they have covered themselves completely, defensively. They are afraid that if they open up, all their prejudices will look stupid and all their belief systems will fall down.I am here in my own land, but I consider myself a foreigner. People are afraid to enter the gate of the commune. The fear is of hypnosis. And they don’t understand what hypnosis is.The fact is, they have been hypnotized from their very childhood to worship a monkey god because no intelligent man will do that. They have been hypnotized to worship an elephant god. This is possible only through constant repetition, from the very childhood, by the whole society around them, so that it becomes a conditioning in them. Otherwise, they will also think – what are they doing?But they never think. Thinking is one of the greatest crimes. So nobody thinks, everybody believes. But if you want to reach to the heights of a Buddha or to the heights of a Chuang Tzu, then you will have to drop all belief systems. And you will have to drop all thoughts which have been given to you by others, which are borrowed.A man came to Chuang Tzu one day and was arguing. Chuang Tzu said, “Wait. Just I want to know one thing: would you like to use somebody else’s shoes?”He said, “Why should I use somebody else’s shoes?”Chuang Tzu said, “You are so alert about your legs, about your feet, but you are not so aware about your head because every thought that you have is somebody else’s. It is not yours. You have heard it, you have read it, you have been told, you have gathered it from the atmosphere, and you have never thought that you don’t have a single thought of your own.”In fact, there is no thought which is your own. There is only clarity, perceptivity, silence, understanding, intelligence which are your own. And with these you can be ready for eternity to enter into the world of time.It is the greatest moment. I cannot conceive of anything more valuable or more precious. It makes you the whole universe; it takes away all your boundaries which are really an imprisonment. It makes you a bird on the wing in the open sky.Now something serious, because we have been in a nonserious world so long…A man goes into a bar and orders a beer. When he is served he reaches into his breast pocket and lifts out a perfectly formed little figure, four inches tall. Then he pulls out a thimble and places it on the bar. “A beer for my friend here too,” he requests. “And go easy on the head.”“Is he for real?” asks the bartender. “He is,” says the man.“Can he talk?” persists the bartender. “He can,” replies the man.“Arnold,” he goes on, “tell this guy about the time we were on safari and you called the witch doctor a black son-of-a-bitch.”Silverman is killed in an accident and Mendel Kravitz is sent to break the news to his wife.“Be careful how you tell her,” advises a friend. “She is a very delicate woman.”Mendel knocks on the door and Mrs. Silverman comes out. “Are you the widow of Silverman?” he asks.“Certainly not,” she replies.“Want to bet?” asks Mendel.An African tribe is living through a famine and having a bad time with its crops. The chief calls a meeting and says, “We will send a telegram to the Russians, telling them that we are having agricultural problems and need their help. They will send seeds, tractors and one hundred young technicians to help us.“Then we will send a telegram to the Americans, telling them that the Russians are helping us. And the Americans will send us seeds and tractors and one hundred technicians. When all the technicians arrive, we will eat them.”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Over the past five years I've spent many weeks in isolation at Dharmagiri, practicing Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. I've never experienced such pain, suffering and doubt ever before. Presently I feel very exhausted, tired, yearning deeply to connect with my heart. My interest in the meditation practice is passing away.Osho, is this type of meditation practice necessary? Is it helpful? Can awareness and celebration alone pierce to the depth of the mind and dissolve the darkest nights?The Vipassana meditation was invented by Gautam Buddha, and for twenty-five centuries Buddhists have been torturing themselves. Now, who told you to go to Dharmagiri to S.N. Goenka, to learn a meditation for which the whole context is missing? The meditation was perfectly right for a man like Gautam Buddha. Always remember, everything is related, interdependent with a certain context.A German poet, Heine, was lost in a forest for days. Utterly tired, exhausted, hungry, he could not find the way; neither could he find anyone who could show him the way. In the nights he was resting up on the trees; otherwise wild animals would destroy him. And there came the full-moon night. He had written many poems…the moon had been one of his most loved objects, and he had written beautiful songs about it. But that night, tired and hungry and afraid, he looked at the full moon and he could not believe it – what he saw in the full moon he had never seen before. And he had been a lifelong moon gazer. That night he saw a loaf of bread!What you see depends on you. People see the faces of their loved ones, people see their dream girls in the moon, but nobody has ever seen a loaf of bread. But his experience was absolutely authentic – but only in his context.I am reminding you of this because people tend to forget that life is a very interwoven, interdependent, cosmic whole. You cannot take a part out of it and keep it alive, meaningful. I will not tell you to do Vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam Buddha. Poor Goenka cannot understand this. He is just a businessman. What does he understand about the context in which Vipassana arose?Gautam Buddha had lived in tremendous luxury, surrounded by beautiful girls, beautiful palaces. The whole night was a celebration; the day was for rest, the night for dances and drinking. Out of this experience he became tired. He had seen all the beautiful girls; there was nothing more to be seen. He had seen that every man and woman is just a skeleton, covered with a thin skin. Just think for a moment: here all of you are skeletons covered with thin skin! This body and its beauty fades very soon.He had seen all that was possible in those days for a man of power and riches to see, but he could not find peace, contentment, silence. He could not find himself. Utterly frustrated, he moved out of the palace one night – because this life is going to end in a few days, or in a few years. It is not something to cling to. Each moment death is coming closer; before death grabs you, you have to figure out something which is eternal, which is immortal.All that you see around you is made of the same stuff as dreams are. Do you think you are for the first time on the earth? On the same earth millions of people have come and simply disappeared into thin air.Scientists have calculated that the place you are occupying has been occupied by at least ten people before you. You are sitting on ten corpses! And don’t think much of yourself, because you cannot get out – you will be the eleventh. And remember, it is not a laughing matter for you. Those ten corpses will laugh at you: “Look, the poor fellow was thinking of great things and finally is flat on the pile of corpses.”Gautam Buddha’s search for truth, for himself, for the source of life which is eternal, cannot be the search of a poor man who is hungry, who is searching for a loaf of bread. But people have completely forgotten Gautam Buddha. They have taken his meditation out of context. He could meditate because there was nothing else in the world to think about, to desire, to be ambitious for. The world was, in a way, finished the day he left his house; he never looked back.I am reminded of a beautiful story…Buddha was afraid that if he went into the mountains of his own kingdom, his father’s armies would find him; he would not be able to escape. He was the only son of an old king, who was hoping that he would succeed him. And he had made a big kingdom for him. So he immediately passed beyond the boundaries of his kingdom to the neighboring kingdom. And the king was very furious. He ordered the armies not to leave even a single inch unsearched: “Look around, all over the country.”Gautam Buddha was not found, but he was not aware that the kingdom he had entered belonged to a friend of his father. So the father informed this king and other kings surrounding his kingdom, “You have to find my son. In my old age at least you can do this much for me; we have been friends.”The neighboring king found Gautam Buddha and he said, “If you are angry, if you have fought with your father…. It happens. It is not something strange or unfamiliar; fathers and sons have always been fighting. Don’t be worried. I have only one daughter and no son – get married to my daughter and you will have two kingdoms together. Your father is old; he cannot live long. And my kingdom is far bigger than your father’s. He is my friend and I have come with a request. You have everything to gain, nothing to lose. You get a beautiful wife, a great kingdom, and of course your own kingdom is there. You will be a greater king than me or your father because your kingdom will be bigger than the kingdoms we have. You will have two kingdoms together.”Gautam Buddha said, “You don’t understand the point. I have not fought with my father, I have not been angry with him, and I have not come here in search of a girl. I am not interested in a kingdom, howsoever big it is. But I would like to ask you a few questions; you are my father’s friend. First tell me, you say your girl is very beautiful – is this beauty going to remain forever? Will she not one day be old?”The king said, “You ask strange questions. Everybody becomes old.”“And do you think,” Gautam Buddha asked, “she will never die?” The king laughed. He said, “You are hilarious. Everybody dies.”Gautam Buddha said, “I don’t want to get married with someone who is going to die.”The king said, “She is not going to die tomorrow.”Gautam Buddha said, “You cannot give any guarantee. Are you sure you will be alive tomorrow?”The king said, “I have never thought about it. I hope that I will be alive, but I cannot be certain. But you are creating anxieties in my mind. I had come to take you to the palace and it seems you are trying to convince me to follow you to the mountains.”Gautam Buddha said, “It is better – there is still time, it is still light; maybe you have a few days more to live. Devote these few days to a search for something which cannot be taken away from you. Your youth will disappear, your beauty will disappear, your kingdom will one day belong to somebody else. And what does it matter, when you are dead, to whom your kingdom belongs, whether he is your son or somebody else’s son?”The king said, “You are a dangerous fellow. I don’t want to talk to you.”He informed Gautam Buddha’s father, “I have met your son; he is in the mountains in my kingdom. I tried hard, but he is very convincing. And he has created such anxiety in me that I have not slept since. I am continuously thinking of death – what is going to happen after death? What have I gained by having this big kingdom? I am a poor man inside. I have never looked into my own being; I am not even acquainted with myself. I request to you: don’t try to prevent him, let him go and let him search. What we have missed, perhaps we can hope he will find it.”Gautam Buddha could sit silently, desireless, thoughtless, moving inward, because the outside had lost all interest. He had seen it – that it is just a phenomenon, the way you see a film. But there are idiots who even seeing a film will cry, will weep, will laugh, because they will become identified and they will forget that there is nothing on the screen, it is just a projected film. Our whole life is not much more than that, but to know it you have to go through it. Gautam Buddha had a great chance to experience life and see its futility. This gave him the opportunity to sit in deep silence, undisturbed.Vipassana was discovered in these moments.My own effort here is not to give you any meditation like Vipassana directly. This place is not a place of ascetics – people are enjoying everything. I want you to enjoy and to see the futility of it. I want to see how many times you become enlightened and how many times you become unenlightened. I know one day you will simply get tired and you will say, “Finished!”Not finished like Nandan – she has started again. But she is going to be finished one day. When she says good-bye to her last boyfriend it will be possible for her to meditate; particularly a meditation like Vipassana. Otherwise you can sit with closed eyes and beautiful girls will harass you.That has been the experience, down the ages, of thousands of meditators: it is strange, the moment you sit to meditate, suddenly, from nowhere, such beautiful girls start coming. And you open your eyes and there is nobody.And not only girls. If you have not known money, thoughts of money; if you have not known power, thoughts of power; if you have not known what it means to be a celebrity, then a deep desire to become famous…. And the mind will go on weaving a thousand and one thoughts and desires.And so-called teachers like Goenka will go on teaching you, “Don’t allow these thoughts in your mind.” And the more you push them away, the more they will come close to you. You will throw away one girl and you will find there is a queue of girls, and at the end of the queue is standing Sophia Loren. Now, naturally you think, “Vipassana can be done later on.”A man said to his friend, “Last night was just the greatest experience of my life.”The other asked, “What happened?”He said, “I went fishing and I caught such big fish that I could not believe it. Even to carry one fish to the shore was difficult. And the whole night I was fishing.”The other said, “This is nothing. You are saying you had the greatest experience – the greatest experience happened to me. Last night when I dreamt, what I saw I could not believe. On one side was Marilyn Monroe, utterly nude; on the other side was Sophia Loren, utterly nude.”The other man could not contain himself. He said, “Stop. Why did you not call me? At such a moment! And what were you going to do with two such women? One is enough for you; one you should think of for your friend. You call me your best friend? – this is great friendship.”The man said, “You haven’t heard the whole thing. I had gone to your home to find you, but your wife said you had gone fishing!”If life has not been a rich experience – if it has been a repressive, religion-dominated, conditioned phenomenon – you cannot do Vipassana.In twenty-five centuries, millions of people have been doing Vipassana. How many have become Gautam Buddhas? My own analysis is very simple, but very significant: you should not repress anything in your life. Live a non-repressive, joyous life. Soon you will find all those joys and all those pleasures are empty.Unless you have found through your own experience that pleasures are not pleasures, but simply toys to keep you ignorant, to keep you engaged…. Once you have found that through your own experience – remember that is most fundamental; it has to be your own experience – then Vipassana is the simplest meditation. You don’t have to go to any businessman to learn it.Buddha had never gone to S.N. Goenka. These kind of people existed at that time too – businessmen who were ready to teach you at a certain price.I have never met or seen Goenka, but I saw one of his interviews. He says that he met me in Madras. In my whole life I have been only once in Madras, and I remember perfectly, I have not met any Goenka. He is simply lying. And his Dharmagiri is not very far away from here. If he wants to meet me he can come any day – perhaps a five-hour drive. But he does not have the guts, because I am very merciless. When I see a fox pretending to be a lion, then I do what needs to be done: expose the fox, take away the hypocrisy. He has not lived a life of love, he has not lived a life of pleasures; he has not lived at all that which can create the context in which Vipassana is possible.He is simply a refugee from Burma. And because Burma is a Buddhist country, everybody knows what Vipassana is; just as every Christian knows the Christian prayer, every Buddhist knows Vipassana. Coming from Burma he knew the structure, intellectually, of what Vipassana is. And here he found many people searching for meditation.And he does not create a situation in which to be associated with him becomes dangerous for you. He is a non-controversial businessman. You will not offend anybody if you go to Dharmagiri. But if you come here, you don’t see many Indians here. The reason is clear: to be associated with me in any way is to be condemned by the outside society. People start saying that you have also been hypnotized, you have also become corrupt.Dharmagiri is safe, because he does not say to you, “You have to drop tradition, you have to drop your conditioning, you have to get out of all the knowledge that has been forced upon you. Unless you are so clean, unconditioned, unorthodox – neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian – you will not be able to enter the world of meditation.” He does not say anything like that. You just enter Vipassana as you are. Nothing is demanded from you, that you are first to go through a fire to be purified, that you have to get rid of the society which is utterly polluted.I was surprised when I was in America: almost every week somebody would phone from San Francisco, somebody from New York, saying, “We are coming from Mumbai,” or, “We are coming from Pune and we want to meet Osho.” I told my secretary to tell those people, “Osho has been there in Pune for seven years – couldn’t you manage to see him? He will come back again to Pune, you can see him then.”Strangely enough, not a single one has turned up. I have been here for two years. Those people who phoned – from Mumbai, from Pune – they have not dared to enter the door. In America they were happy that nobody would know that they had been to see a dangerous man. Here the wife will start crying, the children will say, “Papa, where are you going?” The neighbors will crowd around saying, “Don’t do this. Just look at your old parents.” It will become a scene.And you yourself deep down are such a coward that you believe in all the lies that have been spread. You never come here to check – who is being hypnotized? But the trouble is, people say, “Once you are there you will become hypnotized, you will start saying the same things.” It is a very strange world.One German sannyasin is here. He is an old, experienced journalist. He had come from Stern magazine to write of what was happening here. But he was a man of integrity; he reported exactly what was happening. They refused his report. They said, “You have been hypnotized.” If you lie you are not hypnotized, if you say the truth you are hypnotized. They did not publish his article. He insisted and finally they published it, but he had to change much in it. But he became so disgusted that he resigned and came back. And since then he has been here, he has been in America; he is again here.There are many writers who have had a strange experience: if they write just a positive account, factual, neither for nor against, nobody is ready to publish their books. They say, “These books won’t sell because they don’t have any sensation. Make them sensational.” But how to make them sensational? Lie, create fictions which do not exist, and publishers are ready and magazines are ready to publish them. And these books and these publishers and these magazines spread unfounded things all around the world. So people are so much afraid that even to mention my name is dangerous.One of my sannyasins who is a Nobel Prize winner asked the president of the Nobel Prize committee, the King of Norway, “A man has written five hundred books and you have not taken any note of it.”The king suggested to him, “Remember never to mention his name. This time you did because you were not aware, but next time it will be dangerous for your job” – he has a big post – “it will be dangerous for your reputation. You simply forget about this man.”And he told me, “I could not believe that he was not even ready to listen about you. He did not even inquire, just for manners’ sake.” On the contrary, from that day the king kept a certain distance from him. Whenever there was a meeting of the Nobel Prize committee he did not allow him to come close to him; he showed absolutely that a certain China wall had arisen between himself and the poor Nobel Prize winner. And the only crime he had committed was that he had mentioned my name.Indira Gandhi, who was a very powerful woman, had at least six times made appointments to come here to see me, and every time, just one day before, a phone call would come, “An emergency has arisen and the meeting has to be postponed.”In fact, now the meeting is postponed forever! My secretary asked Indira Gandhi, “Why do you do this? If you don’t want to come, we are not asking you to come. You ask us, that you want to come.”She met me once in Delhi and she said, “Since then that man’s eyes have been haunting me and I want to see him again. And whatever he has said has changed the whole of history. I want his advice on other problems.”My secretary said, “Then why do you go on canceling? – because this is absolute nonsense, that every time on the very day some emergency arises.”She said, “To be honest to you, there has been no emergency, just my colleagues, my cabinet stands in the way. Everybody says, ‘Don’t go there, you can even lose your prime ministership. There will be so much turmoil – just avoid.’”Just by going for a meeting with a man who has no power, who is not interested in politics! But I can understand, those politicians were right. If she had come here Mohammedans would have said, “We are not going to vote for you”; Hindus would have said, “That man has spoken against our Vedas, we are not going to vote for you. That man has spoken against our shankaracharya.”A powerful woman like Indira Gandhi is so cowardly that she cannot come when she wants to come, because of the fear that the voters may start objecting, “You have been to a man for some advice. And any advice that man gives is going to be dangerous. In the first place you will be hypnotized.” And she asked my secretary, an intelligent woman, well educated, “Is it true that whoever goes to meet Osho becomes hypnotized?”People like Goenka are non-controversial, kindergarten school teachers. They don’t understand the complexity of meditation.Vipassana comes in the end; you cannot begin with Vipassana. To begin with Vipassana you will have to go through what you are saying – the dark night of the soul. And you will not find the dawn anywhere. The dark night will go on becoming longer and darker. It is a simple psychology: you are not prepared, you have not done your homework, and you have started a work which needs a tremendous background of experience.They are all against me because I want you to live first as hotly as possible.I used to go to Ahmedabad. One of my sannyasins, Jayantibhai, would take me from the airport or from the railway station, and suddenly on a bridge he would accelerate the speed of the car. And I would say, “What is the matter?”He said, “The matter is that board.”Because I had been telling him again and again, “That board is very religious. You should once in a while go near the board and look at it.”It was an advertisement, but very beautiful. It said, “Live a little hot. Sip a Gold Spot.”I said, “I am not concerned about Gold Spot, but live a little hot!”People live lukewarm. They live just at the minimum, because from that minimum they are protected from many dangers. If you don’t want to fall, crawl – you are safe! And that’s what you are doing in your life. I say live hotly while the season lasts. And this season will not last forever. Don’t hesitate, because in that hesitation you are losing time.A roseflower does not hesitate to open in the early morning sun, knowing perfectly well that by the evening the petals will fall and not even a mark will remain behind. Whether that roseflower ever existed or not, it will be the same. But while the sun is rising and the morning breeze is welcoming to dance, the rose dances.All the religions have destroyed your dance. They have made you crippled, they have destroyed your sensitivities. They have dulled your intelligence and then they say, “Do Vipassana.”A man who has lived hotly is bound to do Vipassana – but in the evening. He has seen the day. It was beautiful, but it was ephemeral; it is gone. Now begins the search for that which comes and never goes.One of the great Hindu scriptures is Badarayana’s sutras. The first sutra is: Athato brahma jigyasa – now the inquiry into the ultimate. That “now” has been for almost two thousand years or more a problem – how to interpret it? Because this is the beginning. Books don’t begin from now. It seems as if something has preceded it.And now there are many commentaries on Badarayana’s Athato, but no one has got the point. The man was saying, “You have lived hotly, you have loved deeply. You have done everything that you wanted to do, unrepressed, uninhibited. Now it is time for the inquiry into the ultimate. But only now. If you have not lived at the maximum, that which has been left unlived will go on lingering in your mind. That which has been repressed will go on asking for your attention. Your heart and your mind will be pulled by the unlived, the repressed, the denied, the condemned, and you cannot sit silently.”Otherwise Vipassana is not an effort, it is a very simple experience. After the whole hot day of life, when you see the futility of it all…you have to see. You cannot see from other people’s eyes; you have to see the futility with your own eyes. Then what is the problem? You sit silently, you settle silently within yourself, into your very interiority.The word Vipassana simply means perceptivity, clarity, seeing directly into truth. But if something you always wanted – it may be a small thing – is there in your unconscious, it won’t allow your perception to be pure. It will try again and again, “I am still unfulfilled.” First have the experience that you have denied yourself.And all these religions have been teaching you to deny this, to deny that. They have driven the whole of humanity bananas; otherwise human beings are beautiful as they are. If they live naturally, one day they are going to ripen, one day they are going to mature. One day they are going to graduate from this so-called world of desires, ambitions, jealousies. After that graduation, Vipassana is not a doing. It is a non-doing. You simply sit silently and it starts showering over you as if the whole sky is rejoicing in your silence.One of the stories about Manjushri, a disciple of Gautam Buddha who became enlightened, depicts it correctly. He is sitting under his tree, silently, and flowers start showering on him. Those flowers are not visible, but they are fragrant, and they have tremendous power to transform your whole being.It was in a way good that you went into isolation at Dharmagiri practicing Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka. It has been a good experience. You say, “I have never experienced such pain.” You deserved it. Why did you go there?You say, “I have never experienced such suffering and doubt ever before. Presently I feel exhausted, tired.” Very good. At least you are alive! Just a few days rest, a few days nourishment in my commune and all pain, all suffering, all doubt and all tiredness will disappear. If you have understood me correctly it has already disappeared. You will be dancing and singing and rejoicing.We have so many meditations here, but I have put Vipassana at the very end. First go through all other kinds of experiences, purifying, so that you can become capable of entering Vipassana. People want to jump into paradise directly, and they don’t see the place where they are standing, that if they jump from there they will have multiple fractures. One has to reach to the steps and one has to move step by step, consciously, cautiously. It is a pilgrimage.But this experience has been really good. You needed it. It will be easier now for you to see my arrangement of meditations. You are saying, “My interest in the meditation practice is passing away.”Your interest in Dharmagiri should pass away, not in meditations. Just it is too fresh…the wound is open. Just wait, and in a few days you will be doing Vipassana here. But here Vipassana is a juicy experience; it is not dry.I have a few criticisms against the Vipassana that is being practiced in Buddhist lands. They have all made it very dry, desert-like; nothing blossoms, no greenery; everything is simply businesslike. I want you to learn meditation as a play, as playfulness. Your meditation and your love should be synonymous. And that’s what you are asking. You are asking, “I am yearning deeply to connect with my heart.”That guy, S.N. Goenka, has disconnected you from your heart, because in the Buddhist tradition there is no place for the heart. It is a very dry approach to reality.Buddha never even mentions the word love. He was so afraid that for twenty years continuously he did not allow women to be initiated into his commune – because women are impossible. They will bring some juice, whatever you do; something will start growing in the desert, some flowers. It is impossible for a woman not to be the heart. It is very easy for the man not to be the heart. The woman is the heart and the man is the head. And once you deny women, then there are only dry heads – coconuts!My approach is, I never make any distinction, whether somebody is woman or man. Anybody who is a seeker of the path is welcome. Hence this is a totally different commune; such a commune has never existed before. Here you can sing and dance, here you can fall in love and fall out of love, there is no harm.Life is accepted in its totality. And in this total acceptance arises the awareness that will enable you to meditate. And this meditation will be far richer than any Vipassana of Gautam Buddha. This meditation may create songs in you, may create dances in you, may give a new impetus to creativity in all dimensions of life.Your silence should not be the silence of a graveyard, your silence should be the silence of a garden. Once in a while a bird starts singing, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it. Once in a while the breeze comes with its song, passes through the pine trees, but it does not disturb the silence, it deepens it.I do not teach you the desert. I teach you the garden, the garden of the heart. That is where, with great respect, I differ from Gautam Buddha. I love the man, but that does not mean I have to agree with everything done by the man. His meditation is heartless, and a meditation that is heartless is not of any worth. I want a meditation that can laugh, that can dance.You suffered well. This is what in the East people call the law of karma. You must have committed some grave sin in your past life; otherwise, why should you go to Dharmagiri? – Dharmagiri of all places! But in a way it is good. That evil act and its punishment is finished. Now you can start afresh.I teach you a meditation which is totally different from anything that has ever been taught in the name of meditation.Now a few things just to relieve your pain and your suffering and your tiredness, and to help you to forget that you have been to Dharmagiri – you simply dreamt about it, there is no such place as Dharmagiri. This guy S.N. Goenka does not exist; it was just a nightmare.A man parked his car on a street in New York. But when he returned he found that someone had smashed into the rear end of his car.On the windshield he found a note that read:Dear Sir, I just smashed into your car. The people who saw the accident are watching me. They think I am writing down my name and address, so you can contact me regarding the damage. They are a bunch of idiots!Hymie Goldberg is stopped in the street by a neatly dressed salesman who says, “Sir, would you like to buy a toothbrush for ten dollars?”“Ten dollars?” cries Hymie. “That’s robbery!”The salesman seems hurt. “Well then,” he says, “how about a nice piece of homemade chocolate cake for ten cents?”This seems fair, so Hymie hands ten cents to the man and unwrapping the cake takes a bite. Suddenly he screams and spits out the mouthful. “My God!” he shouts. “This cake tastes like shit.”“It is,” replies the salesman. “Wanna buy a toothbrush?”Tired of being a Yuppie, Bogart decides to leave the city life and buy a small farm. He goes to a sale of farm animals and asks to buy a rooster.“Out here,” says the salesman, “we call them cocks.”“Okay,” says Bogart, “give me a cock. And can you sell me a hen?” he asks.“Out here,” says the salesman, “we call them pullets.”“Okay, give me a pullet,” says Bogart. “And what else do you have for sale?”The salesman explains that he has a jackass for sale, so Bogart buys that too. As he is leaving, the salesman warns Bogart that sometimes the jackass stands still and won’t move until he is scratched between the ears.Sure enough, on his way home the jackass stops and does not move, and Bogart has forgotten what the salesman had said.Grandma Faginbaum happens to be walking nearby and stops to ask if she can help. Just then Bogart remembers about scratching the jackass between the ears.“Ah, yes, you can help me,” says Bogart. “Would you hold my cock and pullet while I scratch my ass?”

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Hari Om Tat Sat 01-30Category: THE MANTRA SERIES

Hari Om Tat Sat 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A few months ago I had what seemed to be a great realization – that all you have ever been teaching is witnessing. At the time I was very excited about it but this has faded, leaving me after twelve years of sannyas still with the question: what am I doing with my time here? And the feeling that there is some dimension that I am not yet experiencing or that somehow I am still missing you. Would you say something about this, and maybe a prayer for me?To expect is to be disappointed. Jesus says, “Seek and you shall find it.” I disagree with him absolutely, categorically. I say unto you, “Seek and you will never find” – because the searching mind cannot be silent, the searching mind cannot be at ease. The searching mind is always looking into the future; it is never here-now. The searching mind distracts you from reality.Jesus again says, “Ask and it shall be given to you.” And I say unto you, “Ask and you have missed it” – because the asking mind is the mind of a beggar. This beautiful existence belongs to the emperors, not to the beggars. And you don’t have to have an empire to be an emperor. Just look at me: I don’t have any empire, but that does not destroy my being an emperor. In fact the people who have empires are not emperors, they are imprisoned in their own empire, worried, continuously afraid of being invaded – a thousand and one worries. What kind of being an emperor is this?Jesus also says, “Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you.” I don’t want to disagree with the poor carpenter. He would have been a beautiful sannyasin. He was just a little eccentric, but that is not a bad quality; it gives some color to life.The statement “Seek and the doors shall be opened unto you” is again the same thing – between you and the future. You seek, then the doors shall be opened.I say unto you, “Don’t seek. Don’t ask. Don’t knock and disturb the neighbors! The door is open – enter.”I have spoken about one of the most beautiful women, Al-Adabiya, a Sufi mystic of very rare quality. She was passing by the side of the mosque…she never went into the mosque. If this whole existence is not his temple, then man-made houses will be too small; he cannot be a guest in those small houses. They are going to remain empty and waiting.She had heard many times of another seeker, who finally became a master – and he became a master because of Al-Adabiya. There is a limit…he was continuously praying, sitting outside the mosque, “God, open the door, let me in.” She tolerated him for a few days, but the point came when she could not tolerate it. She hit him hard on his head and said, “You idiot, open your eyes! The doors are open, and there is no need to pray for it.”A crowd gathered. Hassan was very much respected as a religious man, a man of prayer, and Al-Adabiya was thought of as something crazy; she was always doing crazy things. Now she had done the last crazy thing. But to Hassan something happened. He looked into the eyes of Adabiya, touched her feet and said, “I am sorry, please forgive me. The doors are open.”How can existence close the doors to its own children? You expect and you create a tension in your being: somewhere, some day, in some life, you will become enlightened. But if I say to you, “I am ready to make you enlightened right now,” you will say, “Just give me a little time to think. I have to ask my wife. And just to conceive of myself enlightened seems impossible. I am an ordinary man, living in the ordinary world.”But the people who became enlightened, they were also living in this world. This world is not ordinary. You cannot find any other world which is more extraordinary. In this vast universe, this small planet is very tiny. Just our sun is thousands of times bigger than this earth, and this sun is considered to be a mediocre star; there are stars millions of times bigger. And the expanse of the universe is infinite.This earth is blessed: blessed with life, blessed with love, blessed with the possibility of your becoming aware, alert, conscious, enlightened. And nobody is preventing you. But in your drunkenness, in your unconsciousness are arising so many problems.A drunkard reached his home. His wife was tired – every night he would come home late, completely drunk, and disturb the whole house and the people. The wife gave him the key finally, saying, “You don’t have to disturb anybody. We know we cannot change you. The more we make the effort to change you, the more you drink. So keep this key and when you come, open the door silently and go to your bed. Don’t disturb anybody’s sleep and don’t create the quarrel that we have been passing through for years.”The drunkard was very happy. That day he drank as much as possible – there was no fear now. And then he staggered toward his house. On the way, two things happened. One was, a lamppost…he got struck by the lamppost. And he looked all around, could not believe it. He had always known that there was only one lamppost, and he was surrounded by twelve lampposts! He went this way and that way, but he would get hit again by the lampposts.A policeman was watching from the road, felt mercy for the poor man – he had hurt his whole face, scratched it – so he came to rescue him. The drunkard asked, “Just this evening when I left the house, there was only one lamppost. Who is the idiot who has made twelve lampposts? And they won’t let me out. Whichever way I go, the lampposts are preventing me.”The policeman said, “Don’t be worried. Look again in the morning, when you have awakened. Right now, go to your home and go to sleep.”He followed him to his home, and now another problem arose. He could not manage to put the key into the hole of the lock. His hands were trembling, the lock was trembling. He managed this way and that way, but the hole of the lock and the key behaved as if they were conspiring against him.The policeman laughed and he said, “Can I help you?”The drunkard said, “It will be great if you can help. Just hold the house steady; it seems there is an earthquake happening.”While all this was going on, the wife, from the first floor, opened the window and asked, “What is the problem? Is the key not working? Should I throw down another key?”He said, “No, the key is perfectly right, just throw me another lock!”Somehow the policeman and the wife managed to get him into the house. He was worried because he knew that on his face there were scratches and blood, and in the morning the wife was going to find out. So first he went to the bathroom to clean off the blood, and he saw himself in the mirror.He said, “My God! Those posts…. I have never done anything harmful to them and they have been so nasty with me. Let morning come and I am going to go with an ax and cut down all those twelve lampposts completely. There was no need, even in darkness I was moving perfectly well. Those lampposts….” And then he thought, “If my wife sees me there will be trouble, so somehow the scratches have to be covered with some ointment.” He looked for some ointment and he found, instead of ointment, his wife’s lipstick.He said, “This seems to be perfectly good ointment,” and he put it on every scratch. In the morning, the wife shouted from the bathroom, “Who has destroyed my lipstick? Not only the lipstick, but who has painted the whole mirror?” Obviously he was looking at his face in the mirror, and wherever there were scratches….Man is living in a very unconscious state.And whatever he does goes wrong.Your question, Krishna Prabhu, is useful for everybody. You are asking, “A few months ago I had what seemed to be a great realization.” After a few months, you will again feel that some great realization is happening. These realizations are just projections of the mind. It is because of the poverty of language that there is difficulty to say that one day you find that every moment is a moment of realization.Is not this moment a moment of realization? Are not these birds and this sky and this silence a realization? Is not this intensity of thousands of people waiting for the unknown not a realization? Don’t make realization a special treat; make realization your usual life. Everything that you have to pass through is a realization.But you have been blinded by all the vested interests. They have been using self-realization like a carrot, hanging far away. Once in a while you find a glimpse of the carrot and you say, “My God, this is it!” But the moment you have said, “This is it!” all realization is finished. Realization has to be synonymous with life, not something like an extracurricular activity.I cannot see why you cannot understand this simple point. Waking in the morning, fresh, rejuvenated after sleep is a realization. Chopping wood, carrying water is a realization. Looking at the stars, looking in the eyes of people, holding hands with people and feeling the warmth is a realization. Even being tired is a beautiful space, but you have made it ugly by giving it an ugly name. Your tiredness simply means you have lived your day, now is the time to relax. And relaxation is a beautiful realization – a silent sleep….My approach is to bring down your gods, your goals, your realizations to this moment, and to make everything that you do an act of love and creation. Unless your whole life is a beautiful flow of experiencing the millions of mysteries which surround you, you are just being befooled by the priests, by hanging some fictitious carrots before you. Even the carrots are not real, because they are so far away, you will never reach; so you will never know whether they are real or not.But those carrots keep you worried, tense, expecting, concerned. It is a miracle that once in a while you believe you have realized. Perhaps you are tired of expecting and you imagine that you have realized. But how long is your imagination going to last? Soon it will fade away, and then comes a deep failure, a feeling of utter frustration.You say, “A few months ago I had what seemed to be a great realization – that all you have ever been teaching is witnessing. At the time, I was very excited about it, but this has faded, leaving me after twelve years of sannyas still with the question: What am I doing with my life here?”Do you think I know what I am doing with my life here? I am enjoying talking, you are enjoying listening. What else do you want? Do you want to become Alexander the Great? – only then you will be satisfied? But even Alexander the Great died in utter frustration. He had conquered the known world and then he realized that he did not know even himself. He said to his people, “When you carry my casket to the graveyard, let my hands hang out.”They said, “This is not done.” He said, “It is my order and it is my last will, whether it is done or not. But it has to be done with me.”They said, “But what strange idea is this?” He said, “It is not strange. I want people to see…because thousands of people will participate in the last procession of my life. I want them to see that I am dying with empty hands. Conquering the whole world has not even filled my hands, what to say about my inner being. I am dying like a beggar.”Unless you understand a very simple thing it is none of your business to bother about what you are doing here. You will have to do something somewhere. The question will be there – what are you doing here? The trees don’t ask, they just dance in the breeze. The flowers don’t ask what they are doing here. The birds are more sane than man.A man reached his home earlier than expected. His wife was lying naked on the bed and there were shoes by the side of the bed. He recognized the shoes – they belonged to his best friend. Angry and frustrated, he looked all around, in every nook and corner. Finally he found him hiding in the closet, and he asked him, “What are you doing here?” And the man must have been a man of utter sanity. He said, “Everybody has to be somewhere. The question is not meaningful. I am standing here!” Now, what to do with such a man?Philosophers, theologians, thinkers have created hundreds of questions to torture you. I don’t want you to be unnecessarily in a self-torture. Just to be here is so beautiful, it does not need any other reason to be here. Just watch for a moment, just remember what I had said about witnessing that has given you great excitement. That excitement was wrong; excitement is not understanding. If you have heard my word witnessing peacefully, silently, allowed it to sink deep into your heart, there will be no excitement.The birds are singing, the sun has risen, the trees are basking in the sun rays, and we are here in one of the most unique gatherings of people: silent, not asking for God or anything, not asking, not desiring, not being ambitious, just simply enjoying being whatever we are. And who is going to answer your question? So the question will torture you your whole life – what are you doing here? – wherever you are. Even if you meet by chance God himself, you will have to ask, “What am I doing here? And what are you doing here?”It is not a question of doing, it is a question of being – relaxed, joyous for no reason at all.We are the universe. These kinds of questions create more questions. Questions are Indians – they don’t believe in birth control. They are very religious people. They go on creating only one thing: more questions.Now first, “What am I doing with my time here?” Who told you it is your time? “And the feeling that there is some dimension that I am not yet experiencing.” These are ways of torturing yourself. “…or that somehow I am still missing you.”Strange, I am missing you, you are missing me; it is hilarious. And what will you get by not missing me? The question will persist: what are we doing here together? Be simple and get out of these self-torturing questions. I answer your questions to destroy them, not to answer them, because any answer will bring new questions.Everything is as it should be. Nobody is missing anything. But if you want to crucify yourself then create such questions – that you must be missing something. But what gives you this idea that you must be missing something? And everybody in the world has that question lurking in their mind: we are missing something. Have a good laugh, jog and jump. If you cannot dance, do anything bizarre, and enjoy!Life is in itself the answer.Nobody is missing anything.Your heart is beating perfectly – otherwise take a cardiogram. I become puzzled. I don’t have any of my own puzzles, just your puzzles: Why are these people always running in some direction to find something? There is nothing to be found. What you will find is already within you; it is your life energy. Let it sing, let it dance, let it experience peace, let it enjoy blissfulness. And you will start blossoming, and your spring has come.But people go on thinking that something is missing. Why do they think that something is missing? Because they have not been allowed to know the art of life. On the contrary, they have been told everything that is against life. That has created the problem. Certainly you are missing God, but I promise you, God is not missing you. And after all, who is this god that you call “God”? And why should you miss him? And what are you going to gain by not missing him? It will be very boring company.Just think for a moment that you are with God for twenty-four hours. That will be the most boring and anguish-creating thing. You don’t have anything to say to him and he has nothing to say to you.I used to travel in India for twenty years continuously. And I enjoy all kinds of things. One day, I got on the train in Mumbai and many people had come to see me off. As I entered my air-conditioned coupe, there was another man inside also. He was watching all the people outside from the window. He certainly thought that I was a very important person – so many rich people touching my feet. And as I entered inside the coupe he fell flat on the floor and touched my feet.I said, “What are you doing? I am a Mohammedan.” And he was a high-cast brahmin.He said, “My God! No, it cannot be true, you must be joking.”I said, “I never joke.”He became very much fidgety. I sat there. After two minutes he again said, “No, you are just joking.”I said, “I am not joking, I am a Mohammedan.”He said, “My God, in this cold night I will have to take a bath.”I said, “You go and take a bath.”So he went and took a cold bath and came back shivering, and I started laughing. He said, “Why are you laughing?”I said, “I was just joking.” And he fell again to my feet.He said, “I knew from the very beginning.”I said, “No, not that time. This time I am joking. I am a Mohammedan.”He said, “You will drive me crazy! Now I have to take another shower.”I said, “It is up to you, I don’t say anything. You are doing all these things on your own.”He said, “That’s true.” He took another bath and came in. I closed my eyes and did not say anything to him. But he could not sit restfully. He again asked, “Tell me the truth. Were you joking?”I said, “If I tell you the truth, you will have to take another bath. So it is better I keep my eyes closed.”But he could not…because it is such a sin for a high-cast brahmin in India to touch the feet of a Mohammedan. He said, “But if you are a Mohammedan, then why did all those people – none of them was a Mohammedan – come to see you off?”I said, “I am a Mohammedan mystic. I tell people which horses are going to win in the race.”He simply jumped up again and touched my feet. He said, “Forget about Mohammedanism or Brahmanism, just give me a number. I am in a financial difficulty.”I said, “You don’t understand at all. You again will have to go to the shower. It is not easy for me to give the number of the horse that is going to come first in the coming race, and I cannot give it to somebody who distrusts me.”He said, “No, I will trust you. If you say, I will not take a shower again.”I said, “Promise?”He said, “I promise.”I gave him a certain number – just any number. He said, “But what is the guarantee?”I said, “When the race happens, then you will know the guarantee. Right now, it is just a fictitious number. That is my business – I cheat people.”He said, “What? So this horse is not going to win?”I said, “In my whole life, I have not been in any contact with horses. I don’t understand their language, they don’t understand my language. But if people want to be exploited, I go on giving numbers. And before the horse race I move to another place.”He said, “My God, so this is useless?” He threw it out of the window. “I will have to take another bath.”I said, “You promised. As a high-cast brahmin, breaking a promise is a sin.”He said, “You will kill me! And we have to travel for twenty-four hours together.”People have been cheated by the priests, by the politicians, by the pedagogues for centuries. They were giving them fictitious numbers; those horse races don’t happen.You are not missing anything. The moment you realize, “I am not missing anything,” all your problems will disappear. It is up to you. There are only two alternatives: either to get it right now and become blissful, or to postpone and remain miserable. My preference is, get it right now.And what I have said for you about witnessing is nothing but a simple art of seeing. You are breathing, you are seeing, your heart is beating, you are surrounded by a beautiful universe. What more do you want? And are you certain that even if something more is added, you will not want more again?The realization is instantaneous. It is not from point A to point B. It need not go anywhere – to Mecca or to Moscow or to Kashi or to Lhasa. Wherever you are, just enjoy the moment. I cannot conceive a better situation than this.The trees must be laughing at you. Do you think the crows are doing it for some purpose? Just clearing their throats – early morning clearings. Do you think anybody is saying to the flowers to open and release their fragrance? No, it is all intrinsic. Only man has forgotten the language of being intrinsic. And the language of being intrinsic is the language of religion. Any moment decide, “This is enough” – and become enlightened.It is not a question of becoming enlightened after arduous disciplines. It is a question only of deciding: “From this moment I am going to enjoy totally and fully whatever is available.” And witnessing will follow on its own accord.And finally Krishna Prabhu is asking, “Would you say something about this and maybe a prayer for me?” Prayer to whom? There is nobody to listen. The universe does not understand human language, but it understands love, it understands laughter, it understands peace, it understands silence – not the words, but the experiences.So I cannot pray for you because there is no God who is going to answer your prayer. But I can make a device in which a prayerfulness happens, not only to me but to you too.Paddy is a drunkard and yet Maureen has never tasted alcohol in her whole life.“Hey, you drunk,” she says one day, “give me that bottle. I want to taste whatever it is that has made you the bum you are.”Taking the bottle of cheap whiskey, she takes a good gulp from it. “Yuk,” she gasps, “that’s the most vile-tasting liquid that has ever passed my lips. It tastes terrible.”“You see,” says Paddy, “and all these years you thought I was having a good time.”Different things make different people feel insecure. For instance, to make a German feel insecure, tell him a joke.To make an Italian feel insecure, agree with him.To make an Australian feel insecure, talk to his girlfriend in German.To make a Polack feel insecure, invite him home to play with the dog.And to make a sannyasin feel insecure, tell him he is enlightened.Outside the classroom it is snowing hard. “Boys and girls,” says Mrs. Goodbody, “you must be very careful not to catch colds in this weather. I had a dear little brother, only seven years old. One day, he went out in the snow with his new skis. He caught a cold, pneumonia set in, and three days later he was dead.”A hush falls over the classroom and then little Ernie jumps up to his feet and asks, “Can I have his skis?”Moishe Finkelstein goes into a jewelry store to buy his wife Ruthie a present. “How much is that?” he asks the clerk, fingering a silver crucifix.“That is five hundred dollars, sir,” replies the clerk.“Nice,” says Moishe. “And how much without the acrobat?”Kowalski, the Polack farmer, is struggling to hold a pig above his head while the pig eats apples from a tree. A man passing by watches this for a moment and says, “Why don’t you pick some apples and put them in a trough? It will save you time.”“Don’t be a dummy,” snorts Kowalski. “Pigs don’t care about time.”

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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OmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.At the heart of this phenomenal world,within all its changing forms,dwells the unchanging Lord.So, go beyond the changing,and, enjoying the inner,cease to take for yourself what to others are riches.Continuing to act in the world,one may aspire to be one hundred.Thus, and only thus, can a man be freefrom the binding influence of action.Unillumined indeed are those worlds cloudedby the blinding darkness of ignorance.Into this death sink all those who slay the Self.Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Today we are entering one of the most enchanting and mysterious worlds – that of the Upanishads. The days of the Upanishads were the highest as far as the spiritual quest is concerned. Never before and never afterward has human consciousness achieved such Himalayan heights.The days of the Upanishads were really golden, for many reasons. The most important of them is contained in this seed mantra:Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateThe emphasis of the Upanishads is on wholeness. Remember, it is not on perfection, but on wholeness. The moment one becomes interested in being perfect, the ego enters. The ego is a perfectionist, the desire of the ego is to be perfect, and perfection drives humanity toward insanity.Wholeness is totally different, its flavor is different. Perfection is in the future, it is a desire. Wholeness is herenow, it is a revelation. Perfection has to be achieved, and of course every achievement takes time, it has to be gradual. You have to sacrifice the present for the future, today for tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes, what comes is always today.Existence knows nothing of future and nothing of past, it knows only the present. Now is the only time and here the only space. The moment you go astray from now and here, you are going to end in some kind of madness. You will fall into fragments, your life will become hell. You will be torn apart, the past will pull a part of you toward itself and the future the other part. You will become schizophrenic, split, divided. Your life will be only a deep anguish, a trembling, an anxiety, a tension. You will not know anything of bliss, you will not know anything of ecstasy because the past exists not.People go on living in their memories which are only footprints left on the sand; or they project a life into the future, which is also as nonexistential as the past. One is no more, the other is not yet, and between the two, they lose the real, the present, the now.Wholeness is of the now. If you can simply be here, then this very moment the revelation! Then it is not gradual, it is sudden, it is an explosion.The word upanishad is tremendously important. It simply means sitting down close to a master, it is a communion. The master is living in wholeness, he is living herenow, he is pulsating herenow. His life has a music, his life has a joy, a silence of immense depth. His life is full of light.Just to sit silently by the side of a master is enough because the presence of a master is infectious, the presence of the master is overwhelming. His silence starts reaching your very heart. His presence becomes a magnetic pull on you: it pulls you out of the mud of the past and the future. It brings you into the present.The Upanishad is a communion, not a communication. A communication is head-to-head and a communion is heart-to-heart. This is one of the greatest secrets of spiritual life, and nowhere else, at no other time, has it been understood as deeply as in the days of the Upanishads.The Upanishads were born nearabout five thousand years ago. A secret communion, a transmission beyond the scriptures, a communion beyond the words. This is what the upanishad is: you sitting silently, not just listening to my words but listening to my presence too. The words are only excuses to hang the silence upon. The silence is the real content, the word is only a container. If you become too interested in the word you miss the spirit.So don’t be too interested in the word. Listen to the heartbeat of the word. When a master speaks, those words are coming from his innermost core. They are full of his color, of his light. They carry some of the perfume of his being. If you are open and vulnerable, receptive, welcoming, they will penetrate into your heart and a process is triggered.What Carl Gustav Jung calls synchronicity, explains exactly what happens between a master and a disciple. It is not the same as what happens between a teacher and a student. Between a teacher and a student there is a communication – information is transferred by the teacher to the student, but there is no transformation, there is only information. The teacher himself is not transformed, he himself has not arrived. He is repeating words from other teachers, he may be even repeating words from other masters, but he has not known himself, his words are borrowed. He may be very scholarly, he may be very well informed, but that is not the real thing. Information is not the real thing – transformation. And unless one is transformed, he cannot trigger the process of transformation in others.Carl Gustav Jung calls this synchronicity. The master cannot cause your enlightenment; it is not a scientific process, it is far more poetic. It is not a law like the law of cause and effect; it is far more liquid, far looser, far more flexible. The master cannot cause the enlightenment to happen in you, but he can trigger the process, and that too only if you allow, not against your will. Nothing can be done to you unless you are totally receptive. This can happen only in a love affair.Between the teacher and the student there is business, between the master and the disciple there is a love affair. The disciple is surrendered, that is the meaning of sitting down. He is surrendered, he has put his ego aside. He is simply open, in tremendous trust. Of course, doubt will hinder the process.Doubt is perfectly good when you are collecting information. The more you doubt, the more information you will be able to collect because each doubt will create questions in you and questions are needed to find answers. But each answer will be doubted again in its own turn, creating more questions, and so on and so forth.But with a master doubt is a hindrance. It is not about asking a question, it is a quest of the soul, it is inquiry of the heart; it is not intellectual curiosity. It is not curiosity, it is far more important – it is a question of life and death.When one is tired of all questions and all answers, when one is fed up with all philosophy, only then one comes to a master. When one has accumulated much information and still remains ignorant, and all that information does not create any light within his soul, then he comes to a master, to sit by his side. There are no longer any questions. He now knows one thing, that all questions are futile. He has tried and he has seen the whole futility of it. Now he sits in silence, open, available, receptive, like a womb.The disciple becomes feminine, and only in those feminine moments the master, without any effort on his part, starts over-flooding the disciple. It happens naturally. The disciple is not doing anything, the master is not doing anything – it is not a question of doing at all. The master is being himself and the disciple is open.When your nose is not blocked by a cold and you pass by the side of a flower, suddenly the fragrance is smelled. The flower is not doing anything in particular, it is natural for the flower to release its fragrance. If you are open to receive it you will receive it.The word upanishad means coming to a master, and one comes to a master only when one is tired of teachers, tired of teachings, tired of dogmas, creeds, philosophies, theologies, religions. Then one comes to a master.The way to come to a master is surrender. Not that your being is surrendered – only the ego, the false idea that you are somebody, somebody special. The moment you put the idea of the ego aside the doors are open for the wind, for the rain, for the sun, and the master’s presence will start entering you, creating a new dance in your life, giving you a new sense of poetry, mystery, music.It is synchronicity. The master is beating in a certain rhythm, he is dancing on a certain plane. If you are ready, the same dance starts happening in you – in the beginning only a little bit, but that’s enough, that little bit is enough. In the beginning only dewdrops, but soon they become oceanic.Once you have tasted the joy of being open you cannot be closed again. First you may open only a window or a door, and then you open all your windows and all the doors. And a moment comes in the life of a disciple when not only windows and doors are open, even the walls disappear. He is utterly open, available multidimensionally. This is the meaning of the word upanishad.The Upanishads are written in Sanskrit, Sanskrit is the oldest language on earth. The very word sanskrit means transformed, adorned, crowned, decorated, refined – but remember the word transformed. The language itself was transformed because so many people attained the ultimate, and because they were using the language, something of their joy penetrated into it, something of their poetry entered the very cells, the very fiber of the language. Even the language became transformed, illuminated. It was bound to happen. Just as it is happening today in the West, languages are becoming more and more scientific, accurate, mathematical, precise. They have to be because science is giving them its color, its shape, its form. If science is growing, then of course the language in which the science will be expressed will have to be scientific.The same happened five thousand years ago in India with Sanskrit. So many people became enlightened and they were all speaking Sanskrit; their enlightenment entered it with all its music, with all its poetry, with all its celebration. Sanskrit became luminous. Sanskrit is the most poetic and musical language in existence.A poetic language is just the opposite of a scientific language. In a scientific language every word has to be very precise in meaning, it has to have only one meaning. In a poetic language the word has to be liquid, flowing, dynamic – not static, allowing many meanings, many possibilities. The word has not to be precise at all, the more imprecise it is the better because then it will be able to express all kinds of nuances.Hence, the Sanskrit sutras can be defined in many ways, can be commented upon in many ways – they allow much playfulness. For example, there are eight hundred roots in Sanskrit and out of those eight hundred roots thousands of words have been derived, just as out of one root a tree grows and many branches and thousands of leaves and hundreds of flowers. Each single root becomes a vast tree with great foliage.For example, the root ram can mean first, to be calm, second to rest, third to delight in, fourth cause delight to, fifth to make love, sixth to join, seventh to make happy, eighth to be blissful, ninth to play, tenth to be peaceful, eleventh to stand still, twelfth to stop, to come to a full stop; and thirteenth God, divine, the absolute. And these are only a few of the meanings of the root. Sometimes the meanings are related to each other, sometimes not, sometimes even they are contradictory to each other. Hence, the language has a multidimensional quality to it. You can play with those words and through that play you can express the inexpressible, the inexpressible can be hinted.The Sanskrit language is called devavani – the divine language. It certainly is divine in the sense that it is the most poetic and the most musical language. Each word has a music around it, a certain aroma.How did it happen? It happened because so many people used it who were full of inner harmony. Of course those words became luminous. They were used by people who were enlightened, something of their light filtered to the words, reached the words; something of their silence entered the very grammar, the very language they were using.The script in which Sanskrit is written is called devanagari. Devanagari means dwelling-place of the gods, and so certainly it is. Each word has become divine because it has been used by people who have known God or godliness.This Upanishad we are entering today is the smallest, it can be written on a postcard, and yet it is the greatest document in existence. There is no document of such luminosity, of such profoundness anywhere in the whole history of humanity. The name of the Upanishad is the Isa Upanishad.The world of the Upanishads is very close to my approach. In fact, what I am doing here is giving a rebirth to the spirit of the Upanishads. It has disappeared even from India, and it has not been on the scene for at least three thousand years. There is a gap of three thousand years, and in these three thousand years India has destroyed its own achievement.The first thing is that the Upanishads are not antilife, they are not for renouncing life. Their approach is whole, life has to be lived in its totality. They don’t teach escapism. They want you to live in the world, but in such a way that you remain above the world, in a certain sense transcendental to the world, living in the world and yet not being of it. But they don’t teach you that life has to be renounced, that you have to escape from life, that life is ugly or life is sin. They rejoice in life. It is a gift of God, it is the manifest form of God.This fundamental has to be remembered. The Upanishads say that the world is the manifest form of God and that God is the unmanifest form of the world, and every manifest phenomenon has an unmanifest phenomenon inside it.When you see a flower, the flower is only the manifest form of something inside it, its essence, which is unmanifest, which is its soul, its very being. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot find it by dissecting the flower. For that you need a poetic approach, not the scientific approach. The scientific approach analyzes, the poetic perspective is totally different. Science will never find any beauty in the flower because beauty belongs to the unmanifest form. Science will dissect the manifest form and will find all kinds of substances the flower is made of, but will miss its soul.Each and everything has both, the body and the soul. The body is the world and the soul is God, but the body is not against the soul, the world is not against the God. The world manifests God, expresses God. God is silence and the world is the song of that silence. And the same is true about you. Every person has both the manifest, the bodymind structure, and the unmanifest, your consciousness.Religion consists in discovering the unmanifest in the manifest. It is not a question of escaping anywhere, it is exploring your innermost depths. It is exploring the silent center, the center of the cyclone. And it is always there, any moment you can find it. It is not something that has to be found somewhere else, in the Himalayas or in a monastery. It is within you. You can discover it in the Himalayas, you can discover it in the marketplace.The Upanishads say that to choose between the absolute and the relative is wrong. Any choice will make you partial, you will not be whole. And without the whole there is no bliss, without the whole there is no holiness, without the whole you are always going to be a little bit lopsided, insane. When you are whole you are healthy because you are total.The relative means the world, the changing, phenomenal world; and the absolute means the unchanging center of the changing world. Find the unchanging in the changing. And it is there so there is no question, you just have to know the technique of discovering it. That technique is meditation.Meditation simply means becoming attuned to the unmanifest. The body is there, you can see it; the mind is there, you can see it too. If you close your eyes you will see the mind with all its activity, with all its working. Thoughts are passing, desires are arising, memories surfacing, and the whole activity of the mind will be there; you can watch it.One thing is certain, the watcher is not the mind. The one who is conscious of the activities of the mind is not part of the mind. The watcher is separate. The witness is separate. To become aware of this witness is to have found the essential, the central, the absolute, the unchanging.The body changes: once you were a child, then a young man or a young woman, then old age… One day you were in the mother’s womb, then you were born, then one day again you die and disappear into the womb of existence. The body goes on changing, continuously changing.The mind goes on changing. In the morning you are happy, in the afternoon you are angry, in the evening you are sad. Moods, emotions, feelings go on changing, thoughts go on changing. The wheel goes on moving around you. This is the cyclone, the phenomenal world is the cyclone. It is never the same, not even for two consecutive moments.But something is always the same, always, never changes – it is the witness. To find that witness is to find God.Hence, the Upanishads don’t teach you worship, they teach you meditation. And meditation can be done anywhere because the question is to know the witness. If you go into a monastery the same method will have to be applied there, if you go into the mountains the same method has to be applied there. You can be in the home, in the family, in the marketplace – the same method.In fact, in the world it is easier to see the changing. When you go to the desert it will be more difficult to see the changing because in the desert almost nothing seems to change, or the change is so subtle that it is not visible. But in the marketplace, sitting by the side of a road, you can see the change continuously, the traffic on the road changing; it is never the same.Living in the monastery is living in a static world, in a dormant world. It is living like a frog in a pond, in a well, enclosed. To live in the ocean will make you more aware of the changes.It is good to be in the world – that is the message of the Upanishads. The Upanishadic seers were not ascetic. Of course they renounced many things, but the renunciation came not through effort, it came through understanding, it came through meditation. They renounced the ego because they saw that it is just a manufactured entity by the mind. It has no reality, no substance in it; it is pure shadow, and to waste your life with it is stupid. To say that they renounced is not right, it will be better to say that because they became so aware, it withered away of its own accord.They became nonpossessive. It is not that they did not possess things, but they became nonpossessive. They used things. They were not beggars. They lived joyously, enjoying everything that was available to them, but they were not possessive, they were not clingers. That is true renunciation, living in the world and yet remaining absolutely nonpossessive. They loved, but they were not jealous. They loved totally but without any ego trip, without any idea to dominate the other.This is what I am trying to do here, and there are fools in India who think I am against Indian culture. Of course I am against what has happened in these three thousand years – that is not true culture, that is a deviation, that is ugly. That has made India poor, that has kept India a slave for twenty-two centuries. That has made India so starved, unhealthy, unhygienic, for the simple reason if you teach people that life is not good to live – it is only worth renouncing, it has no value, the only value it has is to renounce it, the only virtue is to be antilife – naturally life is going to suffer.But this is not the message of the Upanishads, and the Upanishads are the very soul of this country, and not only of this country but of all the people who have been religious anywhere. They will find in the Upanishads their very heart. They will rejoice in the Upanishads because the Upanishads teach wholeness.The relative has to be lived as the relative, knowing that it is relative, knowing that it is changing, and remembering continuously the unchanging. Abide in the unchanging and go on living in the changing. Remain centered in the unchanging, but allow the changing, beautiful world to move around you with all its seasons, with all its colors, with all its beauty, splendor. Enjoy that too because it is the manifest form of God. This is a very holistic approach.The first sutra:Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.That means the ultimate, the absolute, the hidden aspect of reality, the invisible, the unmanifest. You can call it God, truth, nirvana, Tao, dhamma, Logos. That is the whole.This is the whole, too. And by this is meant the phenomenal world, the manifest world, the world that surrounds you. That means your center, this means your circumference. And both are whole, in fact both are one whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.From that emerges this, and out of wholeness only wholeness can be born. You cannot dissect wholeness. You cannot divide wholeness. Out of wholeness only wholeness is born, so both are whole.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Although the wholeness comes from the whole it does not mean that the whole, the original whole, starts losing something. It loses nothing, it still remains the whole. This is a tremendously important statement. It will be good to try to understand it through your experience.You love somebody, that does not mean that because you have given some love to somebody your love is less than it was before. It remains the same, it is not less because you have given, on the contrary, it may be even more. It is not ordinary economics. In the ordinary economics if you give something, of course you will have less. If you have ten rupees with you and you give five to somebody you cannot still have ten rupees, and certainly you cannot have fifteen rupees; you will have only five rupees left. This is the ordinary economics, the economics of the outside world.The inner world is totally different. You give love, and you still have the same love or maybe even more because by giving, your love starts flowing. It may have been dormant, stagnant; by sharing it starts flowing. It is like you draw water from a well, the moment you draw water from a well, more water starts coming to the well from the hidden springs, to fill the space. If you don’t draw the water from the well the water will become dirty, it may even become poisonous. And the springs will not be used, they will become blocked. If you go on drawing water every day, more and more water will be flowing into the well and the springs will become bigger because they will be used more.But people live in the outside economics even in their inner life. The wife becomes very angry if she finds her husband being friendly with another woman. The husband becomes aggressive, jealous if he finds that his wife was having a good time with somebody else, just enjoying, laughing. This is sheer stupidity. It is not understanding the inner world and the inner meta-economics. He is still thinking in terms of money – that if his wife has laughed with somebody else that means she will not be able to laugh with him anymore, so much laughter is lost. Now he is a loser, and of course that creates anger.In fact, if the wife does not laugh with many people, does not enjoy friendship, is not loving to many people, her love sources will die, she will not be able to love her husband either. She will forget how to love, her springs will dry up.That’s why you see husbands and wives looking so sad and bored with each other, it is bound to happen. They are going against a natural inner law, you have more the more you give. Giving does not destroy anything in you, in fact it is creative. The person who loves many people will be able to love his wife or her husband more totally.But humanity has not yet understood this simple phenomenon. We are still behaving in a very childish and stupid way.It is as if your beloved asks you, “You can breathe only when I am there and when I am not there, stop breathing because so much breath will be lost, so much life will be lost. And when you come home and you have been breathing in every place, everywhere, you will be almost dead. So when I am not with you, stop breathing!” And the husband also insists, “When I am not at home stop breathing, so that when we are together great breathing happens!” But both will die.That’s how we have killed love in the world, we have killed everything valuable because our whole logic is stupid. It is good that the husband goes for a morning walk and breathes in the fresh air, jogs and runs on the seabeach, and enjoys the sun. And the wife also goes and enjoys the flowers and the trees and the grass. When they come together they will be able to be more alive with each other, more loving to each other. They will be at their peak, they will be full of life juices to share. But this has not happened yet.My sannyasins have to remember it: jealousy kills love, possessiveness kills love. Be non-jealous if you want great love to happen, if you want your life to grow multidimensionally it needs freedom. You need freedom and the person you love needs freedom. Only in freedom is there expansion, growth.The word that the Upanishads use for the absolute is brahman, it comes from a Sanskrit root bri. Bri means to grow, to expand. Hence for the universe the Sanskrit word is brahman.It is only in this century that Albert Einstein discovered the idea, the hypothesis that the universe is expanding. Five thousand years before Albert Einstein the Upanishads were saying the same thing, that the universe is continuously growing and expanding. The name they gave to the universe, brahman, means that which goes on expanding, which is continuously growing. There is no end to that growth, no limit to that growth.A sannyasin, a meditator, has to live his life in such a way that everything goes on growing, expanding, without any limit. Your love, your joy, your silence, your life – everything should be allowed to grow. And it can happen only if you allow the same in others.But what we have been doing for thousands of years is just the opposite: we encroach on each other’s territory, we destroy everybody’s space in the name of love, in the name of friendship. We use beautiful words to hide ugly realities.If you really love a person you will allow all the space possible to the person, you will never encroach on his or her freedom. That is the only indication of your love, not those stupid love letters that you write. Any fool can do that – a computer can do far better than you do! A computer can write love letters, there is no problem in it. Your love can be proved only by one thing: how much freedom you are giving to the other – even the freedom to love others, that is the only indication of your love.And the miracle is, the more we allow each other to love as many people as possible, you will find the person infinitely loving toward you because love is not money, love is not a commodity. It is an inner energy, which grows by sharing, which dies by not sharing.Every Upanishad begins with a seed mantra. The seed mantra means it contains the whole Upanishad. If you can understand the seed mantra you have understood the whole Upanishad. The whole Upanishad is just the tree that grows out of the seed mantra. This is a seed mantra: Om purnam adah purnam idam purnat purnam udachyate purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyate.The whole Upanishad is contained in this small sutra. What follows is just a growth out of this seed. This is the unmanifest part of it, then the whole Upanishad is the manifest part of it.Each seed mantra is preceded by the mystic sound om, that contains even the seed mantra. If you understand om you have understood everything. The Upanishads are written in such a beautiful way: first Om… If you can understand that, there is no need to go ahead. Om means nothing; it is not a word, hence it is not written alphabetically, it is a symbol.It contains three sounds: A, U, M. These are the basic sounds: A, U, M; all other sounds come out of these three sounds. This is the basic trinity of sounds, then the whole music of life grows out of this.Om means exactly what Zen people call “the sound of one hand clapping.” Om is the innermost music of your being. When all the thoughts and desires and memories have gone, have disappeared, and the mind is absolutely quiet and silent, there is no noise inside, you start hearing a tremendously beautiful music which does not consist of any meaning. It is pure music without any meaning, gives you great joy, fills you with celebration, makes you dance. You would like to shout, “Alleluia!” But the music itself has no meaning, it is pure music, not polluted by any meaning.Om represents that inner music, that inner harmony, that inner humming sound which happens when your body, your mind, your soul are functioning together in deep accord, when the visible and the invisible, the manifest and the unmanifest are dancing together. When they are like two lovers in a deep love embrace, merging, melting into each other, the manifest making love to the unmanifest, the unmanifest making love to the manifest, when the manifest and the unmanifest are no longer two but have become one.This is represented in the Upanishads by the number one hundred. The number one hundred is used to symbolize the ultimate state of oneness. The two zeros in the number one hundred represent this and that, the manifest and the unmanifest, the phenomenal and the nomenal – two zeros. Both are whole, and when both these wholes become one, the number one in one hundred represents that oneness.One hundred is a symbolic number, it has a message. The two – the body and the soul, the world and God, the changing and the unchanging, the time and the timelessness, the matter and consciousness, are represented by the two zeros. When those two zeros become one, when they are not antagonistic to each other – as in these three thousand years the so-called religious people have done… They have destroyed this beautiful symbol, they have put those two zeros against each other. They have created a life-negativity, instead of affirming life they have condemned it as sin. When these two zeros merge in a love affair, in a deep lovers’ embrace into each other, then oneness is born; that is represented by number one in one hundred.A full material existence with a full spiritual life: that is wholeness. And that’s my message to you. Be a spiritual materialist – or a materialist spiritualist – because to me they are not separate. The inner aspect is spiritual, the outer aspect is material.The religions have divided humanity into materialists and spiritualists. Now Soviet Russia, China and other communist countries think they are materialist. They are communist – they deny God, they deny consciousness, they deny the soul, they deny the unmanifest, they believe only in matter. The word matter means that which can be measured; the matter comes from meter – that which can be measured. They don’t believe in the immeasurable. But the immeasurable is there: whether you believe in it or not does not matter. Your belief or disbelief makes no difference to reality. The immeasurable is there, and not only the mystics are saying it is so – now even the physicists are saying so, that the immeasurable is there.Existence is immeasurable, it is so vast it cannot be measured. And the vastness is also expanding, every day becoming bigger and bigger. It is already infinite, and it goes on becoming more infinite. It is already perfect, and it goes on becoming more and more perfect – from one perfection to another perfection. It is never imperfect, so it is not a question of from imperfection to perfection. It is always perfect, it is always infinite, but it goes on expanding.This is the paradox of modern physics. This has been a paradox to all the mystics, but they were not worried by it. That’s why they are called mystics; they accept the paradox, they enjoy in the paradox. They love the paradoxical because they know truth can only be paradoxical. But modern physics is very much puzzled because physics is rooted in logic and logic cannot accept paradox. It has to be either this or that; it is always either–or.Mysticism is never either–or, and if it is either–or then it is not mysticism. Mysticism is both–and!All religious, so-called religious people are against me: Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, for the simple reason that I am teaching wholeness. I am teaching my sannyasins to be spiritual materialists – because both are! What can we do? It is not a question of our choice, it is already the case. Matter is there and the consciousness is there. Logicians are always choosing.The so-called spiritualists of the world go on trying to prove that the world is illusory so that they can prove that only spirit exists, the world does not exist – it is maya, it is illusory, it is untrue, it is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. And the materialist goes on doing the same from the other polarity. He says there is no consciousness, consciousness is an epiphenomenon. Karl Marx says that, “Consciousness is a byproduct of matter and nothing more, it has no substance of its own. Matter is real and consciousness is only a shadow.” It is the same logic.Berkeley says, “Consciousness is real and matter is only a shadow, a thought, nothing else but a dream.” But their logic is the same, both are afraid of accepting both, both are choosing one. They live in the world of either–or.But the true mystic, the Upanishadic mystic, accepts both; he does not even call them two – they are one appearing as two. These two are aspects of one reality: the inner and the outer, the material and the spiritual.So to me there is no problem; be scientific and religious, be materialistic and spiritualistic. Live in the world and live joyously, but also remain centered in your consciousness. This is bringing the Upanishads back. It is a resurrection.At the heart of this phenomenal world,within all its changing forms,dwells the unchanging Lord.Everywhere God is present, all that is needed is the eyes to see. Then you will see him in the rocks and in the stars and in the birds and in the animals and in the people around you. But the first experience has to happen within you, only then will you be able to see him everywhere else.So, go beyond the changing,and, enjoying the inner,cease to take for yourself what to others are riches.The unchanging is God and the changing is the world. …go beyond the changing… Not against the changing, remember – beyond. Beyond is not against. Beyond means live in it, but live in such a way that you remain above it, like a lotus flower. It grows in the lake but goes beyond the lake. It lives in water, but the water cannot touch its velvety leaves. Even in the morning when dewdrops gather on the leaves or petals of the lotus they remain separate. The dewdrops are there on the leaves and you can see them, so beautiful in the morning sun, like pearls, but they are separate. The leaf remains absolutely dry, the dewdrops cannot make it wet.That’s the way of a sannyasin, that’s the way of the Upanishads: living in the world and yet not being of it.…go beyond the changing, and, enjoy the inner… Don’t enforce – enjoy the inner, and then you can understand my approach very easily. It is not a question of forcing. Meditation should not be enforced, you should not start a kind of regimentation, a violent discipline. You are not a soldier, you are a sannyasin!A sannyasin simply enjoys the inner, he enjoys the outer also. He enjoys. He enjoys the outer and on the same wave of enjoyment he enters the inner – it is the same wave. It is like breathing: the breath comes in and the breath goes out. Do you think these are two separate breaths? It is the same breath that goes out and comes in and goes out and comes in; it is the same breath, it is the same process. The same breath comes in and goes out.Enjoy the outer, ride on enjoyment, and enter the inner also with the same joy, with the same dance. Don’t create a division – there is none. All divisions are manufactured by the priests, the hypocrites, the moralists. They go on creating demarcations: “This is outer and this is inner.” There is no line that can demark what is outer and what is inner; they are part of one process, one whole.Just as you come out of your house – when it is too cold in the morning, you come out of the house to sit in the sun, to take a sunbath. And when it becomes too hot you get up and go in. There is no question of enforcing; just a little awareness that now it is too hot, so you move in, into the shade to the coolness of the house. And when it is too cold inside, just a little awareness and you come out.Enjoy the outer and the inner in the same way, and go on moving, riding the same wave of enjoyment. And don’t create any distinction – it is the same wave, same reality.So, go beyond the changing, and, enjoying the inner… Don’t make it something very serious. Don’t make a long face, that you are meditating because you are a sannyasin. Look at the pictures of your saints – such long faces that to live with these saints will be a hell! I don’t think these saints can ever enter heaven, or, wherever they will go they will create their hell. The hell is in their seriousness.Once Buddha was asked, “What do you say happens when an enlightened person dies? Does he go to heaven?”Buddha said, “Don’t ask nonsense questions! Wherever the enlightened person is, there is heaven. Wherever he is, it does not matter where – wherever he is. If he goes to hell, hell will be transformed. His presence carries its heaven around himself.”Heaven hangs around the buddha, around the awakened person. You cannot send an enlightened person to hell – impossible. And you cannot send your so-called saints to heaven – impossible. Hell is so ingrained in their beings, wherever they are they will create boredom for themselves and for others.Saints are not good company, even sinners are far better. I have lived with both, and, believe me, sinners are far better company than saints. Saints are utterly boring. Saints are very juicy only if they are saints in the sense of the Upanishads, in the sense I call my sannyasins.My sannyasins are saints, but not in the ordinary sense of being a Hindu saint or a Jain saint or a Christian saint. The Christian saint seems to be the worst – so boring that I can believe Friedrich Nietzsche saying that God is dead, he must have committed suicide! Surrounded by all these saints, what can he do, what else can he do? He must have committed suicide, feeling utterly bored. And this company is going to be there for eternity now. You cannot escape.The Upanishads are full of joy, full of flowers and fragrance. …enjoying the inner – not enforcing it – cease to take for yourself what to others are riches.And the Isa Upanishad is not saying to renounce the world. It says: …cease to take for yourself…Don’t possess, don’t become owners of persons or things, just use them as a gift of the universe. And when they are available, use them; when they are not available, enjoy the freedom. When you have something, enjoy it. When you don’t have it, enjoy not having it – that too has its own beauty.If you have a palace to live in, enjoy! If you don’t have, then enjoy a hut and the hut becomes a palace. It is the enjoyment that makes the difference. Then live under a tree and enjoy it. Don’t miss the tree and the flowers and the freedom and the birds and the air and the sun. And when you are in a palace don’t miss it – enjoy the marble and the chandeliers.Go on enjoying wherever you are, and don’t possess anything. Nothing belongs to us. We come empty handed in the world and we go empty handed. The world is a gift, so enjoy while it is there. And remember, the universe always gives you that which you need.A Sufi mystic used to say every day in his prayers, “Thank you, God, for all that you go on doing for me. How can I repay? I feel so grateful.”Once it happened that he was traveling and for three days they were refused shelter because they were thought to be heretics, they were thought to be anti-religious, rebellious. They were not given food, not even water, and no shelter. For three days, hungry, thirsty…And the third day when he was praying, again he was saying to God, “Thank you! How I can repay you? I feel so grateful.”Now it was too much, his disciples said, “It is time to say something!” They said, “Wait – just a moment! For what are you thanking? For three days we have been hungry, thirsty, no shelter, in the desert, at the mercy of wild animals. For what are you being thankful?”The Sufi laughed and he said, “You don’t understand – this is what I must have needed for these three days. God always gives to me whatsoever I need. This must have been my need, otherwise he would not have given it to me. I am thankful for it. He always takes care. He does not bother what I desire, he always gives what he feels is right. I am thanking him: three days fasting, three days no shelter, for three days the open sky with stars in the desert, sleeping in the desert, and no wild animal has attacked us. And why are you looking so sad? It must have been our real need.”This is trust, and this is a joyful attitude. This is real sannyas.Continuing to act in the world,one may aspire to be one hundred.Continue to act in the world, and now remember: …one may aspire to be one hundred. It does not mean only a long life. Of course, it also means that because the Upanishadic seers were not against life; they wanted to live long and live joyously, so it was perfectly good – that meaning is perfectly right.Aspire to live long and aspire to live deep, and aspire to live intensely and passionately – perfectly right – but don’t forget the symbol of one hundred. That is its true meaning, the higher meaning, the invisible meaning.…one may aspire to be one hundred. Even living and acting in the world you can become one. Those two zeros of this world and that, those two zeros of the body and the soul, those two zeros of the changing and the unchanging, can meet and merge into one even while you are acting in the world, so there is no need to renounce.Thus, and only thus, can a man be freefrom the binding influence of action.Not by renouncing action but by acting in such awareness, in such deep meditativeness, one becomes free of action and its binding effects.Unillumined indeed are those worlds cloudedby the blinding darkness of ignorance.The Upanishads call people ignorant. If they are living in the half, they are ignorant. The materialist is ignorant, the spiritualist is ignorant because both are unaware of the whole. Only the one who knows the whole, knows.Into this death sink all those who slay the Self.And dividing your being in two is like slaying your very being, murdering yourself, killing yourself. Don’t cripple yourself, don’t paralyze yourself. Accept your totality and live it joyously.Ompurnam adahpurnam idam purnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What is God?God is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. If even a lie is repeated continuously for centuries, it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to, there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy.God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience, like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will just be nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.Man has lived under this impression of God as a person and two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above in the sky and you have to praise him, to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world and of the other world. This is a sheer wastage of time and energy.On the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists, they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of godliness.The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons.Godliness is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no longer valid, meditation becomes valid.Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue between you and God, then there is an “I-thou” relationship, the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent. There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled. One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality of existence. Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms – the flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.This experience is godliness. And it is everybody’s birthright because whether you know it or not, you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it.The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality – they are both absolutely alike. There is only one small difference, the enlightened person is aware. He recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating. He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive: this aliveness is God.The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier, they don’t allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you. Once you have seen the light within, you will be able to see it everywhere.God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form, only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all names become his.Then a person lives in prayer – he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden, if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine, if he relates then his relating is divine.The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core because that is the secret of the whole existence. That’s where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don’t talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don’t bother about prayer, their whole emphasis is on meditation.Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed. Samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all the workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind: your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams; becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware of inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to live it – that is the only way to know it.The second question:Osho,Your discourse on the Isa Upanishad was so beautiful. I have heard it said that the Upanishads are commentaries on or extensions of the Vedas. Is this true? I bow to you.The Upanishads are not commentaries on the Vedas, neither are they extensions of the Vedas. Of course, Hindus go on insisting that they are commentaries or extensions of the Vedas, but that is a falsehood perpetuated by the priesthood for their own reasons.In fact, the Upanishads are rebellions against the Vedas. Another name for the Upanishads is Vedanta. The priests have been saying that Vedanta means the culmination of the Vedas; the word can be interpreted that way, but in fact it means the end of the Vedas and the beginning of something absolutely new. The Vedas are very ordinary compared to the Upanishads.The Upanishads say that there are two kinds of knowledge: the lower and the higher. The lower knowledge is the realm of the priesthood, the scholars, the pundits; and the higher knowledge is the world of the buddhas, of the awakened ones. The priest is a businessman, his whole effort is to exploit people in the name of religion. He oppresses people, dominates people, and of course he goes on saying, “It is for your own sake.” He makes people afraid of hell and greedy for heavenly joys. This is a psychological trick. He knows people are afraid, he knows people are greedy, so these are the two things that he goes on manipulating: fear and greed. And this is done by all the priests of all the religions in all the traditions all over the world.The Upanishads are rebellions against the priesthood. The Upanishads are not at all commentaries on the Vedas – the Vedas are very mundane, ordinary. Yes, once in a while you can find a sutra in the Vedas which is beautiful, but that is only one percent at the most. Ninety-nine percent is just rubbish, while the Upanishads are one hundred percent pure gold – they are statements of those who have known.The Vedas are full of prayers asking for worldly things: better crops, better cows, more money, better health, fame, power, prestige. Not only that, the Vedas are continuously praying, “Destroy our enemies, destroy those who oppose us.” They are full of jealousy, anger, violence. They have nothing to do with the Upanishads.The Upanishads are not commentaries and they are not the culmination of the Vedas either. The Upanishads are a totally new beginning. The very word upanishad is of immense importance. The word upanishad is derived from the Sanskrit root shad. Shad has many meanings and all are significant. The first meaning is, “to sit.”The Zen people say:Sitting silently, doing nothing,The spring comes and the grass grows by itself.That is the meaning of shad, just sitting silently in deep meditation, not only sitting physically but sitting deep down psychologically too. You can sit physically in a yoga posture, but the mind goes on running, chasing; then it is not true sitting. Yes, physically you look still, but psychologically you are running in all the directions.Shad means both sitting physically and psychologically because body and mind are not two things, not two separate entities. Body and mind is one reality. We should not use the phrase “body and mind,” we should make one word, bodymind. The body is the outer shell of the mind and the mind is the inner part of the body. Unless both are in a sitting posture, not running anywhere – into the past, into the future – not running anywhere, just being in the present, now and here… That is the meaning of shad, it is the very meaning of meditation.It also means to settle. You are always in a chaos, in a state of turmoil, unsettled, always hesitating, confused, not knowing what to do, what not to do. There is no clarity inside; so many clouds, so much smoke surrounds you. When all these clouds have disappeared, when all this chaos has disappeared, when there is no confusion at all, it is called settling.When one is settled absolutely, clarity arises – a new perspective. One starts seeing what the case is. The eyes are no longer covered by any smoke, for the first time you have eyes to see that which is.The third meaning of shad is to approach. You are confused, you are living in darkness, you don’t know who you are, you don’t know the meaning of your life, of your existence. You have to approach somebody who has arrived home, who has found the way. You have to approach a Buddha, an enlightened master – a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a Jesus, a Mohammed. You have to approach somebody who is afire with godliness, aflame, who is radiating godliness, in whose presence you feel bathed, refreshed, in whose presence something starts falling from your heart – the whole burden, anguish, anxiety – and something starts welling up within you: a new joy, a new insight. Hence, the meaning to approach.Upa-ni-shad is made of three words. Shad is to sit, to settle, to approach – to approach a master, to sit by his side in a settled, silent state. And from the prefix upa which means near, close, in tune with, in harmony, in communion. When you are settled, sitting silently by the side of the master, doing nothing, running nowhere, then a harmony arises between you and the master, a closeness, an intimacy, a nearness, a possibility of communion, the meeting of the heart with the heart, the meeting of the being with the being, a merging, a communion. And ni meaning down, surrendered, in a state of prayer, in a state of egolessness.This is the whole meaning of the word upanishad: sitting in a settled state, unconfused, clear, approaching the master in egolessness, surrendered, in deep prayerfulness, openness, vulnerability, so that a communion becomes possible.This is upanishad – what is happening right now between you and me. This sitting silently, in a deep, loving, prayerful mood, listening to me not through the intellect but through the heart, drinking, not only listening – this communion is upanishad. We are living upanishad, and that is the only way to understand what the Upanishads are. It has to become a living experience for you.The Vedas consist of all kinds of knowledge from those days. They are a kind of Encyclopedia Britannica, of course very primitive, at least ten thousand years old – at least. It is possible they are far older. Scholars are not decided, there is great controversy about the time when the Vedas were composed. The possibility is they were not composed at one period, they were composed at different periods. There are people who say they are at least ninety thousand years old, so from ninety thousand years to ten thousand years, a long stretch of time.The Vedas are called samhita. Samhita means a compilation, an encyclopedia. They contain all kinds of things, all kinds of information from those days. The Upanishads are pure religiousness, nothing else. Each single word is a finger pointing to the moon. They are not compilations of all kinds of knowledge, their whole insistence is for immediate experience of that which is. The emphasis is on direct experience, not borrowed – not from scriptures, not from others. It has to be your own truth, only then does it liberate.Jesus says, “Truth liberates.” Certainly truth liberates, but it has to be your own. If it is somebody else’s, then rather than liberating, it imprisons. Christians are imprisoned, Jesus is liberated. Hindus are imprisoned, Krishna is liberated. Buddhists are imprisoned, Buddha is liberated. Liberation comes by experiencing the truth on your own, it has not to be just an accumulation of information, it has to be an inner transformation.The emphasis of the Upanishads is on an immediate and direct experience of godliness. And why borrow when it is possible to drink directly from the source? But information seems to be cheap. Transformation seems to be arduous. Transformation means you will have to go through a great inner revolution; information requires no revolution in you, no radical change in you. Information is simply an addition; whatsoever you are, you remain the same, but you become more and more knowledgeable.Knowledgeability is not wisdom; knowledgeability is, on the contrary, a hindrance to wisdom. The more knowledgeable you become, the less is the possibility of attaining your own experience because knowledge deceives – it deceives others, it deceives you. It goes on giving you the sense as if you know, but that as if has not to be forgotten. That as if can easily be forgotten and one can be deceived.Remember one very significant saying in the Upanishads: Those who are ignorant, they are bound to be lost in darkness; and those who are knowledgeable, they are bound to be lost in a far more and far bigger darkness than the ignorant ones.The ignorant person is at least sincere: he knows that he does not know, at least this much truth is there. But the knowledgeable person covers up his wounds, his ignorance, his black holes. He covers them with scriptures and he starts pretending that he knows. He is harming others, but that is secondary – far more significant is that he is harming himself. He will be lost in a far deeper darkness.That’s why it is very difficult for pundits, scholars, the so-called learned people, to become enlightened; it is a miracle if it happens at all. Sinners are more easily ready to go through the transformation because they have nothing to lose – except their chains, except their ignorance. But the knowledgeable person is afraid to lose his knowledge, that is his treasure. He clings to it, he protects it in every possible way. He finds rationalizations, excuses why the knowledge has to be protected. But, in fact, by protecting his knowledge he is simply protecting his ignorance. Hidden behind knowledge is his ignorance. The knowledge is just a mask that covers his original face. You cannot see his original face, he himself cannot see it. He is wearing a mask, and looking in the mirror he thinks, “This is my original face.”It is very difficult for the knowledgeable to drop his knowledge and to become ignorant again. Unless he gathers enough courage to become ignorant again, to become like a child again – innocent, not knowing anything, what Dionysius calls agnosia, moving into a state of not knowing…It is certainly very arduous for the knowledgeable person – his whole life he has been accumulating knowledge. He has wasted his whole life, he has invested his whole life in knowledge. How can he drop it? So he protects it, he fights for it.And this is the most amazing thing in the world: the prisoner is fighting so that you cannot take him out of the prison. Of course he is very clever and very cunning, so he can play with words and he can quote scriptures, but all his quotations are parrotlike; he has no understanding.The Upanishads emphasize direct experiencing. The Vedas belong to the priests, to the scholars, to the brahmins, who are the oldest priests in the world. And of course, because they are the oldest they are the most cunning in the whole world. No other religion can defeat the Hindu priest, obviously: he has lived for so long, he has become very clever in exploiting, he has become very cunning in rationalizing, in protecting.The Upanishads are a totally different dimension. Of course they don’t speak the language of rebellion, they are very soft, but the rebellion is there. Because the Upanishads could not create the revolution, Buddha had to speak in a harsher tone.Buddha speaks the same truth as the Upanishads, but his way has changed. Seeing that the Upanishads have failed to have any impact – because the priests also started managing the Upanishads and they started saying that the Upanishads are nothing but commentaries on the Vedas – Buddha had to be more alert. He was not as soft as the Upanishads. Of course his message is the same, but two, three thousand years had passed since the Upanishads were composed and one thing Buddha had become absolutely clear about: that you have to be very harsh, very hard. He has sharpened his sword.Twenty-five centuries have again passed, the same period. The Upanishads and Buddha are divided by twenty-five centuries, between me and Buddha again twenty-five centuries have passed. I have to sharpen my sword even more because Buddha has also failed.The ignorance of man is so deep and the priests are so cunning that one has to be really hard. If one has compassion one has to be cruel, only then this whole stupidity that exists in the name of religion can be destroyed and man can be freed. Man needs freedom from all cages, from all fetters.The third question:Osho,Would you please say something about sincerity?Man can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others – the puritans, the moralists – or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illumined, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery. Still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure, that their life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted of bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still their egos insist that the children should be obedient, they should follow their dictates.Hindu parents will force the child to become a Hindu, and they will not even think for a single moment what has happened to them. They have followed those same ideas their whole life and their life is empty, nothing has flowered. But they enjoy the idea that their children are obedient and they are following them. They have lived in misery, in hell, and their children will live in misery and hell, but they think they love their children. With all good intentions they destroy the future of their children.The politicians try in every possible way that the society should live according to their ideas, and of course they pretend to others and to themselves that they are doing public service. All that they are doing is destroying people’s freedom. They are trying to enforce certain superstitions that were enforced on them by their parents, by their leaders, by their priests.The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, they are all trying to create a false humanity, they are creating insincere human beings. They may not have intended to do so, but that’s what has happened. A tree is to be judged by fruits, it does not matter what was the intention of the gardener. If he was sowing seeds of weeds and hoping, intending, desiring that roses will come out just because of his good intentions, roses are not going to come out of the weeds. He has destroyed the whole field. To impose a certain structure of character on anybody is to make him insincere, is to make him a hypocrite.Sincerity means to live according to your own light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be good, is not to be virtuous – the most important thing is to be meditative so that you can find a little light within yourself and then start living according to that light. As you live it grows and it gives you a deep integrity because it comes from your own innermost being, there is no division.When somebody says to you, “Do this, this should be done,” naturally it creates a division in you. You don’t want to do it, you wanted to do something else, but the parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in power, want you to follow a certain route. You never wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you will not have any involvement with it. You will go through it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not out of your freedom.The first disciples of Jesus had chosen him, it was their choice and they had chosen a very risky path – to be with Jesus was dangerous. It has always been so. To be with anybody who gives you freedom is dangerous because he will make you so independent that you will continuously be in a fight with the society, with the establishment, with the vested interests. You will be in a constant struggle your whole life. Of course that struggle is worth it and it is not a curse, it is a blessing because only through that struggle you grow, you expand. Your consciousness becomes more and more clear, it becomes a peak. You have to pay for it – it is not cheap, hence the risk.The few people who followed Jesus were taking a dangerous path. They could have been crucified, and they were tortured in many ways. But today to be a Christian has no risk, hence it is bogus.The people who followed Buddha were living dangerously, and to live dangerously is the only way to live. But they were sincere people, they followed their own inner voice against the whole society, against the whole tradition, convention. They followed a rebel and became rebels in their own right. Buddhists were burned alive just as early Christians were burned alive, thrown to the lions and to the wild animals, tortured in every possible way. But still they attained the ultimate experience of godliness – they paid for it. But to be a Buddhist now is very convenient – there is no problem about it, anybody can be a Buddhist. And the same is true about all religions.Right now to be with me is dangerous. You will continuously be in trouble, wherever you will go you will be opposed. You will be opposed by the Christians, by the Hindus, by the Mohammedans, by the Jains, by the Buddhists. You will be tortured, you will be condemned, you will not be accepted anywhere, but you will become sincere, you will have some authenticity. And you will suffer all these tortures joyfully because you have chosen them.Even to choose hell is beautiful, rather than to be forced to live in heaven. If you are forced to live in heaven it is hell, and if you choose hell it is heaven because it is your own choice. It brings your life to its highest peak.Sincerity means not living a double life – and almost everybody is living a double life: he says one thing, he thinks something else. He never says that which he thinks, he says that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that which will be approved, accepted, he says that which is expected by others. Now, what he says and what he thinks become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about beautiful things and lives an ugly life.This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It has been a very nightmarish past.The new man is an absolute necessity now because the old is utterly rotten. The old is continuously in conflict within himself, he is fighting with himself. Whatsoever he does he feels miserable. If he follows his own inner voice he feels he is going against the society, against the powerful people, against the establishment. And that establishment has created a conscience in you; that conscience is a very tricky procedure, a strategy. It is the policeman inside you, implanted by the society, who goes on condemning you: “This is wrong, this is not right. You should not do that, you should feel guilty for it – you are being immoral.”If you follow your voice, your conscience is at daggers with you; it will not give you any rest, it will torture you, it will make you miserable. And you will become afraid – afraid that somebody may find out. And it is very difficult to hide because life means relationships – somebody is bound to know, somebody is bound to discover. You are not alone.That’s why the cowards escaped to the monasteries, to the Himalayan caves, just for the single reason that there they will not be found out at all. But what kind of life can you live in a cave? You have already committed suicide. To be in a cave is to be in a grave – and alive! If you are dead and in a grave, that seems right – where else can you be? But alive and in a grave – it is real hell!In the monasteries people are living a miserable life, that’s why they have such long faces – not that they are religious. Those long faces are the simple outcome of a cowardly life. If you are in the world living with people you cannot hide for long, you can deceive a few people for the time being, but not forever. And how can you deceive yourself? Even if you are not found out by others, you know that you are living a double life – and the guilt…Everybody is guilty. The priests want you to be guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to fast and do other kinds of penances and other kinds of austerities so that you can punish yourself. These are all punishments. But how can you be happy? How you can be cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life where you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, condemning yourself?If you choose not to follow your inner voice and follow the dictates of others – they call it morality, etiquette, civilization, culture – then too that inner voice will start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that you are being untrue to your nature then your morality cannot be a rejoicing, it will only be an empty gesture.This is what has happened to man: man has become schizophrenic.My effort here is to help you to become one. That’s why I don’t teach any morality, any character. All that I teach is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost. Because if you follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is going to be your reward, and looking backward you will find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no longer any division, no longer any split in you, then you will see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have paid is nothing compared to it.You ask me: “Would you please say something about sincerity?”Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation.The fourth question:Osho,At this moment the Christian Broadcasting Company, NCRV, in Holland, has started a series of eight programs on spiritual movements entitled: Not to Be Believed. The producer-minister, Sipke van der Land, who has been here with his crew to film you and life at the ashram, called the first program: Bhagwan, Sex Guru from Pune. At the end of the film he comments, “Bhagwan never looks at you, he looks over us. What kind of mastership is this, in which someone pulls people toward him without paying any attention to them? Jesus humiliated himself to be equal with us as a servant, but not Bhagwan. Bhagwan raises himself above humanity – haughty, a strange ruler.”Could you please comment on this?The Christian, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, they cannot understand me – they are determined not to understand me. It is against their vested interests. They are afraid of me and they will try in every possible way to confuse people.Because it is a Christian broadcasting company they must have come with prejudiced ideas, they must have come with a closed mind. They had already come with conclusions, hence whatsoever they say only shows something about them, nothing about me. And remember, their title is right: Not to Be Believed!They have received many letters – I have received many letters too – and there have been many comments in the newspapers in Holland. Almost all the newspapers have commented that their whole program about me does not give any indication about the title, Bhagwan, Sex Guru from Pune. Their whole program has nothing to do with the title. People are meditating, people are sitting silently listening to me, people are working. It has no relationship at all with the program. What they have tried to project with what they have filmed is totally irrelevant. But they were not even aware, it seems, that the title has no relevance with the program – it has nothing to do with sex.And what has this director replied? – because the newspapers asked the director, “Why have you given such a title, which has no reference to the program at all? It shows a prejudiced mind.” So he has answered, “That was our very purpose, that’s the very purpose of a Christian broadcasting company, to expose everything that is not Christian.” They are not concerned with truth – as if truth is Christian! Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan.He should be reminded that Jesus was not a Christian himself. Christianity never existed in those days. Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew. I may be a little bit of Christian – in fact, more Christian than Jesus! – but Jesus cannot be Christian at all. First they should condemn Jesus – why he was not Christian. That will serve their purpose more accurately.They should make a film about Jesus. Jesus was traveling with a prostitute, Mary Magdalene – he must have been a sex guru! He was always in the company of gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes, which this director would not approve of. Jesus himself was a drunkard. He should make a film on Jesus.There are rumors that Jesus was a homosexual. I don’t know how far they are true, but there is a possibility because he was constantly traveling with those twelve boys! And religious people are known, very well-known, to be homosexuals. Homosexuality is a religious phenomenon. When you keep men separate from women and women separate from men, homosexuality is a natural byproduct.He has also said in one interview to a newspaper, that “Bhagwan’s sannyasins say, ‘We feel immense energy, we feel the presence of Bhagwan transforming us.’” And he says, “I lived there for a few days, I didn’t feel anything.”When Jesus was crucified there were at least one hundred thousand people present. Did they feel anything? If they had felt anything Jesus would have been saved. Those one hundred thousand people could have easily saved him because there were only a few policemen, they could have been destroyed, killed by the masses. But nobody could feel any energy, nobody could see any godliness in Jesus. In fact, people were mocking and laughing at him.They were waiting for him to show some miracle and they were shouting, “You have been showing miracles, we have heard. We have heard that you used to walk on water, we have heard that you have given sight to the blind people, we have heard that you have cured incurable diseases, we have even heard that you raised Lazarus from death, you revived him – now show us a miracle!”And these people came back home very frustrated because no miracle happened. Jesus died like any ordinary man. And remember, these were simple people – not journalists!This director from NCRV, if he had been present there, would have become very frustrated because he would have gone there with the whole crew to film some miracle, and it was not happening.Do you think Hindus felt the energy of Buddha? Do you think Jains felt the energy of Buddha or Buddhists felt the energy of Mahavira? Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries, lived in the same part of the country, Bihar, moved in the same villages and towns continuously for forty years, many times stayed in the same village and once at least stayed in one house – half was occupied by Buddha and half by Mahavira – and still their disciples were not able to feel the energy of the other. What was happening? Could not the Jews feel the energy of Jesus?It is a simple phenomenon to be understood. To feel the energy you have to be in a certain state. It is like – he will understand this better – it is like carrying a radio set with you, but if you don’t turn it on, no music will flow through it. Even if you turn it on and you don’t fix the needle at a certain point, it will not receive. One needs openness, and the needle has to be at a certain point, a deep harmony is needed. Whether it is with Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira does not matter; whomsoever you are attuned with, you will feel the energy.But he is like a man who stands before the sunrise with closed eyes and he says, “There is no sun because I cannot see it. And the people who are saying that there is, are all false – not to be believed – because I cannot see it, and I have been standing here for hours.”You have to open your eyes to see the sun. And the sun is a gross phenomenon; the energy of a master is a very subtle phenomenon – unless you are in deep love you will not feel it.And he says, “Bhagwan never looks at you.” In a way he is correct. I never look at you because you are two: the false and the real. I am not concerned with the false. I don’t look at your mask. I don’t look at the accidental in you, I look to the essential, I look to the very core of your being. I am not concerned with your masks and your personality, my whole concern is with the center of your being.Why should I look at you? He must have felt it because I remember perfectly, I never looked at him because there was nothing to look at, just an empty man, a container without any content. Why should I waste my time looking at such people? It is only out of compassion that they are allowed, and this too is not going to happen very much any more. In the new commune I am going to prevent all these people coming in.I certainly look, but my ways of looking are my ways, I look behind the mask because that is where my work is.He says, “…he looks over us.” That is true because I look at the transcendental self in you and that is something over you, above you, surpassing you. You are far more than your body, far more than your mind, and I look to that far more. That is the real thing and that has to be brought into your focus. I am not a psychoanalyst – I am not concerned with the superficial but with that which surpasses you. I am concerned with your beyond.And he says, “What kind of mastership is this in which someone pulls people toward him without paying any attention to them?” The ego needs attention, the ego feeds on attention, the ego wants that attention should be paid to it; it is constantly hankering for attention. While he was here he must have been hankering for attention.It has been one of the problems here. Whenever people come here – journalists of all kinds – their whole effort is that the commune should pay great attention to them. They want a private interview with me, they want to ask me questions directly. I am not a politician. Of course, if they go to the president or the prime minister of any country they will give them great attention. I am not interested at all in what they write, in what they show on the television. I am not concerned at all with whether they write negatively or positively, whether they make a film supporting me or condemning me. It is all the same to me.I exist here for my sannyasins, my whole energy is for them. It is not to be wasted on stupid people. So he must have felt that no attention is being paid to him – and I deliberately never pay any attention to such people. They come with closed minds, they come with great egos – and we are not here to nourish their egos. In the new commune they will be debarred, that will be the only attention we will pay to them.And he says, “Jesus humiliated himself to be equal with us…” What I am going to say has nothing to do with Jesus; it has something to do with what this man, the director of NCRV, is saying. So remember it.He says, “Jesus humiliated himself to be equal with us…” That simply means he knew that he was not equal with you. “He humiliated himself to be equal with us.” He was not – I am, so why should I humiliate myself? For what? I am simply equal, there is no need to humiliate.“He humiliated himself to be equal with us as a servant…” I am neither a master nor a servant; I don’t possess you, I don’t own you. If Jesus tried to be a servant to you, that means somewhere deep down he must have been self-conscious that he possesses you, that he owns you – otherwise why? You are not a servant to me, why should I be a servant to you? We are all friends here. There is no need to be a servant or to be humiliating oneself.Do you think this is true? Jesus called himself the only begotten son of God – the only. How can he be equal to you? You are born out of sin, he was born out of a virgin mother. I am not born out of a virgin mother! My mother is here, you can ask her. And I am not the only begotten son of God because there is no God at all, so there is no question of my being the only begotten son of God. This is all sheer bullshit!The Christian God must be homosexual because the whole trinity consists of three men – no women at all. On the earth Jesus is born out of a virgin mother. That is nonsense, absurdity – illogical, unscientific. Secondly, he is the only begotten son of God. God must have carried him in his womb because he is not a woman, and there is no woman in the Christian trinity – unless the Holy Ghost functions in double ways.This is not right about Jesus. He violently dragged the money changers out of the temple, that is not the way of a humble man. With a whip in his hand he chased them out of the temple. I have not done anything like that. I never enter a temple – I never think any temple is worth entering. And this whip – is this the way of a humble man? And driving the money changers out of the temple!Jesus cursed a fig tree because they were hungry. Jesus and his disciples were hungry and the fig tree was without figs. He became very angry, he cursed the fig tree. The fig tree died immediately! This is how a humble man behaves? Then why was he crucified if he was so humble?And doing all those so-called miracles – walking on the water, raising the dead – is this the way of a humble man? Those are all strategies to prove superiority, all those miracles.This man, the director of NCRV, is talking sheer nonsense. He knows nothing about Jesus, he knows nothing about me!And he says, “…but not Bhagwan. Bhagwan raises himself above humanity – haughty! A strange ruler.” I have never ruled anybody. I never come out of my room to rule anybody. What kind of ruling has he seen here? I never order anybody, I don’t give any commandments to anybody. I have never said that I am above humanity. What I am saying is that everybody is above humanity. Humanity is only a bridge, not a place to live but something to be surpassed.And Bhagwan, the word bhagwan, creates misunderstanding in Christian minds because they immediately translate it as God. Bhagwan simply means the Blessed One, and I am certainly a Blessed One – I cannot deny it. Just to be humble have I to falsify, start lying about myself? I am blissful, I am the Blessed One – and you can be blissful and you can also be the Blessed One. What has happened to me can happen to you because this is your birthright too.But he had come with a particular idea. In a way it is good that people are becoming so afraid of me. It is good, it shows that the impact is making them tremble. Holland is becoming one of my most important orange countries. Christians are becoming afraid – it is good. Make them as afraid as possible. Make everybody afraid of you. Let them all tremble before they collapse. It is good.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is this a new phase of your work – two complete discourses without a single joke?Thank you for reminding me. I had forgotten all about jokes! Here are two jokes for the two discourses:A young man was driving home from work one night in the pouring rain when he noticed an attractive woman, standing on the footpath, soaking wet. He stopped and offered her a ride home. When they arrived at her apartment, she invited him in for a drink.After a few drinks, one thing led to another and very soon they were in her bedroom making love. Suddenly he realized that it was quite late and his wife would be furious with him.Before leaving he asked the young woman for a piece of chalk. He placed it behind his ear and then proceeded to drive home.At home his wife screamed at him “Where have you been?”“You will never believe this, darling,” the man replied. “I was driving home from work this evening in the pouring rain and I stopped to pick up a woman who was standing on the footpath. I drove her home, she invited me in, we had a drink, and I have spent the last two hours making love!”“Don’t bullshit me!” the wife snarled. “You have been down at the pool hall again with the boys. I can see the chalk behind your ear!”And the second:A jealous husband hired the very best detective in town to spy on his wife. The detective reported back after a few days, his arm in a plaster cast.“What happened?” the husband asked eagerly.The detective began: “At two o’clock, Saturday afternoon, I saw your wife walking hand in hand with another man.”“Where did they go?” the husband demanded.“They checked into a hotel and were given a room on the second floor.”“And then?” the husband urged.“Then I climbed up a tree and sat on a branch watching them through the open window. They sat on the edge of the bed, kissing and hugging. Then he took off his clothes…”“And then, what happened then?” the enraged husband blasted.“Well, then she took off her clothes…” the detective continued warily.“Tell me, tell me what happened next!” yelled the husband in a rage.“Well, sir, you see, at that moment the branch I was sitting on broke. I fell to the ground and could see no more!”You get…? You missed it! Think it over later on!The second question:Osho,Could you please tell me your opinion about J. Krishnamurti, who is saying that you won't be free and therefore not happy as long as you follow any tradition, religion or master?Gautam the Buddha has divided the enlightened persons into two categories. The first category he calls the arhats and the second bodhisattvas. The arhat and the bodhisattva are both enlightened; there is no difference between their experience, but the arhat is not a master and the bodhisattva is a master. The arhat has attained the same truth but he is incapable of teaching it because teaching is a totally different art.For example, you can see a beautiful sunset, you can experience the beauty of it as deeply, as profoundly as any Vincent van Gogh, but that does not mean you will be able to paint it. To paint it is a totally different art. Experiencing is one thing, helping others to experience it is not the same.There have been many arhats but very few bodhisattvas. The bodhisattva is both enlightened and skillful at teaching what has happened to him. It is the greatest art in the world. No other art can be compared with it because to say the unsayable, to help people come out of their sleep, to find and invent devices to bring what has happened to him to those who are thirsty for it and help them to get it, is a rare gift.Krishnamurti is an arhat, he is not a bodhisattva. His enlightenment is as great as anybody else’s enlightenment; he is a Buddha, a Jesus, a Lao Tzu. In enlightenment there are no degrees, either one is enlightened or one is not. Once a person is enlightened he has the same flavor, the same fragrance as anyone who has ever become enlightened or will ever become enlightened. But to relate the experience, to communicate the experience is not possible for all.Once Buddha was asked, “How many people have become enlightened amongst your disciples?”He replied, “Many.” He pointed: “Look!” Manjushree was sitting by his side and Sariputra and Moggalayan and Mahakashyap. He said, “These four people are present here right now – they have become enlightened.”The inquirer asked, “If they have become enlightened why are they not as famous as you are? Why does nobody know about them? Why don’t they have thousands of followers?”Buddha said, “They have become enlightened but they are not masters. They are arhats, they are not bodhisattvas.”The arhat knows it but cannot make it known to the others, the bodhisattva knows it and can make it known to the others. Krishnamurti is an arhat. Because of this he cannot understand the beautiful world of a master and his disciples.You ask me, Wolfgang, “Could you please tell me your opinion about J. Krishnamurti, who is saying that you won’t be free and therefore not happy as long as you follow any tradition, religion or master?”He is right. If you follow a tradition, religion or master – remember the word follow – you will not be free and you will not be blissful, you will not know the ultimate truth of life: by following nobody knows it. What can you do by following a tradition? You will become an imitator. A tradition means something of the past, and enlightenment has to happen right now. A tradition may be very ancient – the more ancient it is, the more dead.A tradition is nothing but footprints of the enlightened people on the sands of time, but those footprints are not enlightened. You can follow those footprints very religiously and they will not lead you anywhere because each person is unique. If you remember the uniqueness of the person then no following is going to help you because there cannot be a fixed routine.That’s the difference between science and religion: science depends on tradition. Without a Newton, without an Edison, there is no possibility for Albert Einstein to have existed at all. He needs a certain tradition; only on that tradition, on the shoulders of the past giants in the world of science, he can stand. Of course when you stand on the shoulders of somebody you can look a little farther than the person on whose shoulders you are standing, but that person is needed there.Science is a tradition, but religion is not a tradition; it is an individual experience, utterly individual. Once something is known in the world of science it need not be discovered again, it will be foolish to discover it again. You need not discover the theory of gravitation – Newton has done it. You need not go and sit in a garden and watch an apple fall and then conclude that there must be some force in the earth that pulls it downward, it will simply be foolish. Newton has done it, now it is part of human tradition. It can be taught to any person who has a little bit of intelligence, even schoolchildren know about it.But in religion you have to discover again and again. No discovery becomes a heritage in religion. Buddha discovered, but that does not mean you can simply follow Buddha. Buddha was unique, you are unique in your own right, so how Buddha has entered truth is not going to help you. You are a different kind of house, the doors may be in different directions. If you simply follow Buddha blindly, that very following will be misleading.Traditions cannot be followed. You can understand them and understanding can be of immense help, but following and understanding are totally different things.So Krishnamurti is right when he is against following, but when he starts saying that you need not even understand, then he is wrong. Then he is speaking the language of an arhat and he is unaware of the world of the bodhisattva. Understanding is possible – you can understand Buddha.What is he doing for forty years? What efforts has he been making for forty years? How did Wolfgang come to know Krishnamurti’s ideas? He is trying to explain, he is trying with great effort to make you understand. You cannot follow Krishnamurti, but you can certainly understand his vision, his perspective, and that will be an enrichment. It will not bring you enlightenment, but it can be used as a stepping stone.Krishnamurti says he is fortunate that he has not read any religious scriptures. That is not right. In the first place it is not factual – he has been taught all the ancient scriptures when he was young, not only of one tradition but of all the traditions because he was brought up by theologists, Theosophists – great synthesizers of all the paths and all the religions and all the traditions. Theosophy was one of the greatest efforts ever made to bring all the traditions closer to each other: Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism. Theosophy was trying to find out the essential core of them all, and Krishnamurti was taught in every possible way all that is great. He may have forgotten about it, and I know that he must have forgotten because he will not lie, he will not say anything deliberately untrue. But he lived in a kind of hypnosis for twenty-five years.He was taken possession of by the Theosophists when he was only nine years of age, and then he was brought up in a very special way. Many secret methods have been tried upon him: he has been taught while he was sleeping, he has been taught while he was in deep hypnosis, so he does not remember it at all.Only recently Russian psychologists were trying to find ways to teach children while they are asleep because if we can teach children while they are asleep, much time can be saved. And one thing more, when a child is asleep he can be taught more easily because there is no distraction. His unconscious can be taught directly, which is easier. When we teach a child through his consciousness it is difficult because ultimately the teaching has to reach the unconscious, only then it becomes yours. And to reach the unconscious through the conscious takes a long time, a lot of repetition. You have to go on repeating again and again and again, then only slowly, slowly it settles to the bottom of the conscious, and from that bottom slowly it penetrates the unconscious.But in deep sleep, or more precisely in hypnosis – hypnosis means sleep, deliberately created sleep – you can teach directly to the unconscious, the conscious can be bypassed, and something can be put into the unconscious. The conscious will not know anything about it.Krishnamurti was taught all the great scriptures in a deep hypnosis, he has completely forgotten. Not only that, he has even been manipulated to write while he was in hypnosis. His first book, At the Feet of the Master, was written under hypnosis. Hence he simply shrugs his shoulders when you ask about that first book, which is really a rare document of immense value. But he simply says, “I don’t know anything about it, how it happened. I can’t say that I have written it.”Krishnamurti has been experimented upon by Theosophists in many subtle ways, so he is not aware that he has been acquainted with all the great scriptures and all the great documents, and what he goes on saying has reflections of all those teachings. They are there, but in a very subtle form. He cannot quote the scriptures, but what he says is the very essence of the scriptures.A tradition has to be understood, and if you can understand many traditions, of course it will enrich you. It will not make you enlightened, but it will help you toward the goal, it will push you toward the goal. Don’t be a follower of any tradition – don’t be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. But it will be unfortunate if you remain unaware of the beautiful words of Jesus, it will be a sheer misfortune if you don’t know the great poetry of the Upanishads.It will be as if a person has not heard any great music: Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner. If one has not heard, something will be missing in him. It will be a misfortune if you have not read Shakespeare, Milton, Dostoevsky, Kalidas, Bhavbhuti, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran. If you have not been acquainted with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, something in you will remain missing. The same is true if you have not read Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Basho, Lin Chi, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus. These are very different, unique perspectives, but they will all help you to become wider.So I will not say that traditions are useless, I will say they become dangerous if you follow them blindly. Try to understand, imbibe the spirit. Forget the letter, just drink of the spirit. It is certainly dangerous to belong to a religion because that means you are encaged, imprisoned into a certain creed, dogma. You lose your freedom, you lose your inquiry, your exploration.It is dangerous to live surrounded by a small philosophy. You will be a frog in the well, you will not know about the ocean. But to understand is a totally different phenomenon. The very effort to understand all the religions of the world will make you free of creeds and dogmas.That’s what’s happening here. I am talking about all the religions for the simple reason that you don’t become addicted to one standpoint. Life is multidimensional. Certainly Moses has contributed something to it, which nobody else has done. Unless you understand Moses you will miss that perspective, that dimension, you will be that much poorer.The people who listen to Krishnamurti, they start following him. There are Krishnamurtiites who have been listening to him for forty years or even fifty years. I have come across old people of the same age as Krishnamurti who have listened to him for fifty years, since 1930, and they have reached nowhere. All that they have learned is a kind of negativeness: “This is wrong, that is wrong.” But what is right? About that there seems to be not even a glimpse in their being.Don’t become part of a religion, but visit, be a guest to all the religions. In the temple there is a beauty, in the mosque also, a different kind of beauty, in the church again a different experience. And this is our whole heritage, the whole humanity’s past belongs to you. Why choose?The follower chooses. He insists on being a Christian; he will avoid the Upanishads, he will avoid the Dhammapada, he will not bother about the Koran. He is unnecessarily crippling himself, paralyzing himself.I also say don’t follow, but I will not agree with the statement: “Don’t try to understand.” Trying to understand is not following; your understanding becomes clearer, more sharpened.Krishnamurti goes on reading detective novels. Is he following those detective novels? Is he trying to become a detective? If he can read detective novels, what is wrong in reading the Upanishads? And detective novels are just ordinary, juvenile, childish. The Upanishads are the Himalayan peaks of human consciousness. Don’t follow them – there is no need to follow anybody.My sannyasins are not my followers, they are just my companions. The word satsang, the word upanishad, means the company of a master. The disciple is a companion, a fellow traveler, and of course if you are traveling with somebody who knows the territory, who has explored the territory, your journey will become easier, your journey will become richer, your journey will have less unnecessary hazards, you will be able to reach the goal sooner than alone.Traditions become dangerous only when you cling to them, then certainly there is danger. Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening. If you become a part, then it is dangerous because then the tradition becomes a hindrance to you for exploring. The tradition insists on belief – believe in it and believe without inquiry. That’s what people are doing, what Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are doing – believing in something they have never inquired into. And to believe in something without inquiring is very disrespectful toward truth and toward your own self. No, belief is not going to help – only knowing can free you.And he says the same about a master. It is true about ninety-nine percent of so-called masters, but it is not true about the one, the real one. He is ninety-nine percent right because wherever there are real coins there are bound to be false coins too. A tradition is dead; a religion is a philosophy, a belief, a dogma. If you believe in it, it appears significant, its arguments appear to be very great. The moment you stand by the side and look with a detached view, you can see the foolishness, the stupidity. You can see that there are assumptions which have not been proved, not been established.One morning a great philosopher was seen walking down the street touching every pole that he passed. Someone asked him, “Hey, professor, why are you touching all those poles?”The philosopher grinned and said, “And why are you not touching all those poles?”It is difficult to answer why you are not touching!The philosophers have their own arguments, you may not be able to argue against them. They may silence you; they may bring great proofs, logical arguments, rationalizations. They may silence you, but that is not going to help.After giving a speech at Columbia University, the noted philosopher, Bertrand Russell, was answering questions from the audience. One student’s critical question brought him to a full stop. For a whole minute he said nothing, his hand over his chin. Then he peered at the student and rephrased the question, making it more precise. He asked the student, “Would you say that this is still your question?”The student answered delightfully, “Yes.”Again Lord Russell thought, this time even longer, and twice seemed about to speak. Then he said, “That’s a very good question, young man. I don’t believe I can answer it.”But there are very few philosophers like Bertrand Russell who will accept that they can’t answer. They will invent answers, they will go on and on creating proofs, inventing proofs. For every kind of nonsense you can find proofs, you can argue.Religions are all based on theologies, and the very word theology is a contradiction in terms. Theo means God, logy means logic – logic about God. In fact, there is no logic about God; there is love but no logic. You can approach the phenomenon God or godliness through the heart, through love, but not through logic.By following a tradition or religion, what are you doing? Your approach is bound to be through the head. Following is always from the head: you are convinced logically, hence you follow, but it is not a love affair.A love affair is possible only when you find a living master. You cannot fall in love with Jesus now, you cannot fall in love with Buddha now; they are no longer here. Those dewdrops have disappeared into the ocean. You can fall in love only with a living master. Buddha must have been very beautiful, but love can happen only between two living hearts.Krishnamurti is right about ninety-nine percent of so-called gurus, but one has to take the risk. If you become too cautious you will never be able to find the true one. To find the true one you will have to pass through many untrue ones.An American seeker reached Everest after a long, arduous journey around the world in search of a master. And finally he found a great, ancient old man sitting silently on top of the Everest.The American seeker said, “Ah, great guru, I have devoted my entire life to the quest for truth, honesty, love and justice. I have traveled to the four corners of the earth to experience every agony and every passion. Now I come to you to ask, where do I go from here?”The guru said, “Go back and do it all over again, my son.”“Thank you, thank you! What can I ever do to repay you?”And the guru said, “Got any American cigarettes on you?”He is right about ninety-nine percent of gurus, but he is wrong about one percent, and that one percent is really what matters. He is wrong about Buddha, he is wrong about Lao Tzu, he is wrong about Jesus.But to find a living master one has to search, and in fact, all those false gurus help you in a way because experiencing them you become aware of that which is false. And to know the false as false is the beginning of knowing the true as the true, the real as the real. If you are absolutely clear about the false, suddenly you become clear about what is real, what is authentic. So even the false gurus are serving in an indirect way to the real seekers.A master is one who will not tell you to follow him, but he will certainly tell you to be silently with him. It has nothing to do with following. A real, authentic master does not want to create pseudo replicas, carbon copies, he helps you to discover your original face. He will not impose any structure on you; on the contrary, he will help you to get rid of all imposed structures. He will not condition you, he will only uncondition you and then leave you to yourself. He will not recondition you.When you move from one false guru to another false guru, then it happens: the new false guru will uncondition you and then recondition you. If you become a Hindu from being a Christian you will be unconditioned first so that you can get rid of your Christianity, and then Hinduism will be imposed on you.That is what is happening to Hare Krishna people: now they are being conditioned as Hindus. They have lived in one kind of prison called Christianity, now they will be living in another kind of prison called Hinduism. It is the same, it makes no difference, only the prison is different. You get out of one prison and immediately you enter another.The real master will take you out of one prison and will prevent you from entering another prison. Certainly it is difficult to find a real master, but that does not mean that one should not try to find, that does not mean that it is impossible – difficult of course, but not impossible. And when you have come to a master who simply imparts his love, his being, his presence, who shares his joy, his laughter with you, and there is no desire to condition you, to force you into a certain pattern, then his presence can be of immense catalytic significance, he can be a catalytic agent. In his presence something can start happening in you that may not happen alone for centuries, maybe for lives.J. Krishnamurti is a beautiful man but one-dimensional, very linear, one line, he follows one track. Hence you will not find any contradictions in him. For fifty years he has been simply repeating the same thing again and again. Unknowingly he has conditioned people. Just by repeating the same thing again and again for fifty years he has hypnotized people. He has created a great difficulty for those people, he is not a master himself, he cannot impart his experience. He is an arhat, not a bodhisattva. And he has prevented those people from going in search of some other living master. He has created a real mess in many people, they would have been in search of a master but he has prevented them. His logic is clear, appealing, very appealing to the egoist, particularly to the so-called intelligentsia, very appealing because the so-called intelligentsia is always afraid of surrender, of dropping the ego – they are egoist people. And when he says, “There is no need to follow, there is no need to go to any master, there is no need of any initiation,” they feel very happy. Their ego is saved but their ego is there.Now even the ego has the support of Krishnamurti, and all his arguments will be used by the ego. And that’s what has happened to thousands of people who have listened to him. He has not been a blessing because of his linear logic.In the ancient days people like Krishnamurti used to remain silent. That was the way of the arhat because he knows that he cannot impart, he has no skill, he remains silent. He does not go around the world telling people, “I cannot impart and nobody else can do it either.”This is the first time an arhat has been trying to teach people, and of course it is a contradiction. The arhat is not supposed to teach, and when an arhat starts teaching he will teach against teaching, and the people who will become interested in him will be egoists.You can find the very cultured egos around Krishnamurti, and they are there because he has become their rationalization, there is no need to surrender. And the irony is, the amazing fact is that Krishnamurti himself passed through many initiations, he had many masters.In fact, I had no master and he had many masters, but maybe that’s why he is against masters and I am not against – because I had had no experience of the false. I have never been with any master, I have worked on my own. It took long, many lives, but I have never been initiated by anybody. Maybe that’s why I have a soft corner for the masters.He has been forced and regimented in every possible way by the Theosophists. They had many secrets available to them and he was initiated into all kinds of ceremonies and into all kinds of secret esoteric mysteries, which are not available to the public. He must have become tired.One fact has to be remembered always; he was not willingly there, he had been chosen and adopted. He belonged to a very poor brahmin, the son of a very poor brahmin, so poor that he was not even able to educate his children. When Annie Besant and Leadbeater found these two brothers, Krishnamurti and Nityananda, swimming in a river by the side of Adyar, where the headquarters of the Theosophical Movement is, the world headquarters near Madras… Leadbeater had a certain sensibility to find out talents, he discovered many talented people. He had a certain sense to see immediately the possibility, the potential. He immediately told Annie Besant – they had gone for a morning walk and he saw these two children, Nityananda must have been eleven and Krishnamurti was nine. And he said, “These two children are of immense value, they can become world teachers.”So they searched. They found out they belonged to a very poor man; the mother was dead, the father was just a very poor clerk in an office. It is difficult to educate, to feed the children rightly. When he heard that Annie Besant wanted to adopt them he was very happy, he willingly gave the children to Annie Besant.And of course, Nityananda and Krishnamurti were both taught like princes or even better than that. They had the most learned tutors, they went through private education in India, in France, in England, in America, all around the world. They were kept away from the public so they didn’t become polluted, they didn’t become contaminated. They were prevented from meeting ordinary people. They were brought up as special people, chosen ones – chosen to be world teachers. Great discipline was imposed on them. Of course it was all unwillingly, they had not chosen the path themselves. There must have been a resistance – naturally, obviously, deep down they must have resisted.Nityananda died, and my feeling is he died because of too much rigorous discipline – fasting, getting up early, three o’clock in the morning. He became ill, still the discipline continued. They were hard taskmasters, they wanted to make supermen, and of course when you want to make somebody a superman the discipline has to be hard, arduous.Nityananda died. That too has been a wound in Krishnamurti’s mind, in his heart, that his brother was almost killed by the discipline. Twenty-five years of rigorous training must have created an antagonism, a resistance.So when the time came for them to be declared – the Theosophists gathered from all over the world and Krishnamurti was to declare himself the new incarnation of Gautam the Buddha, the World Teacher – when he stood on the platform to declare, everybody was shocked, people could not believe because he simply denied. He said, “I am nobody’s master I don’t accept any disciples, I don’t teach any discipline, and I dissolve this whole organization that has been created around me.”A certain organization was created around him – six thousand members all over the world. The organization was called The Star of the East. He dissolved the organization. He distributed the money back to the donors because it had a lot of money. He shocked everybody. They had worked so long on him and he simply escaped at the last moment.That wound has remained in him, and he cannot forgive all those masters, their disciplines, their teachings – he cannot forgive, hence he is against. And he himself is an arhat, he cannot be a master. And the whole past of his life is full of resistance.My experience is totally different, just the opposite. I had nobody to impose anything on me, whatsoever I have done I have done on my own. Hence I don’t see any antagonism in me against masters, against disciplehood.But certainly about ninety-nine percent I will agree with him: Muktananda, Reverend Moon, Prabhupada, all kinds of stupid people, exploiting – exploiting the great search that has arisen in humanity’s heart.Man is on a new borderline, he is going to enter a new territory. A new step has to be taken, hence, the great inquiry all around the world about truth, about meditation, about the inward. The outer has failed. Science has proved illusory, all its promises have gone down the drain. And man knows now absolutely that what we have been doing up to now was basically wrong – the journey has to be inward.Now there are charlatans, people who can exploit this opportunity, but this is understandable, nothing can be done about it. The seeker has to pass through all these exploiters, deceivers, hypocrites, and has to be aware so that one day he can find the true man – the man who can uncondition you and will not recondition you again, who will leave you in absolute freedom to be yourself.Beware of the false masters – and there are many and of many kinds. They come in all sizes and in all shapes and they can be very attractive because they fulfill your expectations.The real master will never fulfill your expectations, he has no desire to manipulate you. Fulfilling your expectations means a deep desire to manipulate you. You have to be alert, watchful. If somebody is trying to fulfill your expectations, know perfectly well he himself is not free – he cannot impart freedom to you.In India, as in other countries and other traditions too, people have expectations, certain expectations. For example, a Christian expects that the enlightened person should be similar to Jesus. Now that is absolutely impossible. Jesus cannot be repeated, need not be repeated. To repeat Jesus you will need the whole context and that context is no longer possible. Jesus existed in a Jewish world, with all the expectations, desires, hopes and promises. Now that world has disappeared, two thousand years have passed. So much water has gone down the Ganges, nothing is the same any more. How can Jesus be repeated?But the Christian expects a true master to be just like Jesus. No true master can be just like Jesus. Jesus was not like Moses himself – that was the trouble. That’s why Jews were so antagonistic, they were expecting him to be just like Moses. Moses lived in a totally different world; he belonged to the Egyptian context, he grew out of that context, he makes sense only in that reference. Jesus cannot be a Moses, it is impossible. The Jews were expecting him to be a Moses, and because he was not, they killed him.Now Christians are doing the same: they expect the true master to be a replica of Jesus, an imitation of Jesus. No true master can be a replica; only some fool can imitate, only some mediocre person can be a carbon copy. This is such a deep insult of one’s own being – to copy somebody else – that no man of intelligence can ever do it. But the same is true about other traditions.The Buddhists are waiting for Buddha to come, and he has to be exactly like the Buddha. The Jains have their expectations and the Hindus have their expectations. The Hindus cannot accept Mahavira as an enlightened master because he is not like Krishna, and the Jains cannot accept Krishna as an enlightened master because he is not like Mahavira. Jains cannot accept Buddha as an enlightened person because he is not like Mahavira, and Buddhists in their own turn cannot accept Mahavira because he is not like Buddha. No tradition can accept the enlightened persons of other traditions because the expectations differ.For example, Jains think that the enlightened master should be naked. Now Jesus does not fulfill that, Mohammed is not naked, Zarathustra is not naked, Krishna is not naked; on the contrary, Krishna loved beautiful clothes, he loved ornaments.In those days in India, men used to wear ornaments and that seems to be really logical and natural. If you watch nature you will see it: look at the peacock. The female peacock is unornamental, it is the male peacock that is ornamental. Don’t be misguided, when you see the beautiful peacock with its rainbow colored feathers, remember it is the male, not the female. The female is beautiful just by being female, she needs no ornamentation. It is enough to be female. The poor male needs some other gadgets.When you listen to the beautiful sound of the cuckoo, remember it is the male, not the female. The female need not have such a beautiful singing voice, just to be female is enough. The female simply sits hidden in a mango grove, and the male goes on pouring his heart, writing love letters!The whole of nature is proof that the female looks ordinary and the male looks very beautiful. It is strange that man has started behaving in the reverse way. Why do women try to be beautiful, use ornaments and lipstick and false eyelashes and whatnot? It is crazy! Let the man use all these things, he is poor, he needs something. The woman is perfectly beautiful as she is. Just to be feminine has a grace, a beauty, there is no need for any other addition.In Krishna’s time things were perfectly natural, men used to wear ornaments. If you have seen Krishna’s statues, pictures, you will see he is wearing silk robes, colorful robes, with a crown with a peacock feather on it, and with a flute, trying to do what the male cuckoo goes on doing, and he is standing in a dancing pose.Now Jains cannot accept him as an enlightened person, this is not the way of being enlightened. He looks like an actor! According to Jain mythology he has gone into seventh hell – seventh is the last. Only the very dangerous people are thrown into the seventh. Even Adolf Hitler will not reach the seventh; he will be somewhere, at the most third, not more than that. Krishna is in the seventh and Krishna will not be freed in this phase of creation.Jains have cycles: one cycle means one creation; then the whole creation becomes dissolved, disappears into nothingness, and then another creation begins, another cycle. Krishna will be released only when the second cycle begins, not in this cycle. When all these suns and moons and stars and this whole universe dissolves through the black holes, when all is gone and left – nothing is left – then the second cycle starts. Krishna will come back only after the first creation is gone, not before that, it will take eternity. They are very angry at Krishna – what kind of enlightened person he is.These expectations! Jains cannot believe that Jesus is enlightened because according to them an enlightened person cannot be crucified – impossible. In fact, they have this myth that when Mahavira walks on the road, and he is a naked man without shoes, and you know the Indian roads… And Mahavira walked twenty-five centuries ago, just try to imagine what kind of roads – he must not have been walking – roadless roads!The story is, when he walked on the road, even if a thorn is there it immediately turns upside-down because the enlightened person is finished with all his karmas, he cannot suffer any pain anymore. Pain is suffered because of your past karmas, you must have committed some sin in the past. He is finished with all the sins, he is completely free from all karmas, so no pain is possible. What to think, what to say about crucifixion?Jains cannot believe Jesus to be enlightened. According to them, it is not the Jews who are crucifying him, it is not the Roman governor who is crucifying him; it is his past bad deeds, past karmas which are creating this pain for him, this agony for him.If you just watch all these expectations you will be able to understand that no enlightened person can ever go according to your expectations, he has to live his life authentically. And if he wants to exploit you he will fulfill your expectations. If he wants to exploit the Jains he will go naked, he will fast, and they will be happy – he is a great man. If he wants to fulfill the expectations of Christians he will become a Mother Teresa of Calcutta: serve the poor, the crippled, the ill. If he wants to fulfill the expectations of the Mohammedans he will become an Ayatollah Khomeiniac – take the sword, because that’s what Mohammed did. And remember, Mohammedans believe that it was out of compassion because if somebody is going into hell, even if he can be prevented by a sword, he should be prevented. Anybody who is not a Mohammedan is going to hell, so convert everybody into a Mohammedan; by whatsoever means it has to be done, but it has to be done. So Ayatollah Khomeiniac is the most perfect Mohammedan master right now!These fools can pretend because they have to look at the crowd, what are their expectations; they can fulfill their expectations. But a true living master is bound to be totally free from your expectations. He cannot adjust with you, if you have to be with him you have to adjust with him.That’s why egoists find it difficult to be with a master, and they enjoy the company of Krishnamurti – for the simple reason that he is not asking you to dissolve your ego or surrender or to adjust in any way. He is not asking anything of you. He is not giving you any insight, he is simply making clear the standpoint of an arhat. But the arhat has never been helpful to anybody, and he cannot be helpful.Now there have arisen many new kinds of gurus, they are mushrooming all over the world. There are religious gurus and then there are psychoanalysts and therapists. They are taking their place, they are becoming very important. And of course they understand something about the mechanism of the mind and they can help you a little bit, but they themselves are in a deep mess.Conversation between two psychiatrists:“Most of my patients are disturbed. Let me ask you some questions – to give you an example. Which has smooth curves and sometimes is uncontrollable?”“A baseball pitcher, of course.”“Next, what wears a skirt and has lips that bring you pleasure?”“Obviously, a Scotsman playing a bagpipe.”“You know the answers, but it’s amazing what strange replies I get from my patients!”These psychoanalysts, now they are the New Age gurus. They know certain tricks about the mind, but they have no idea of the innermost core of your being. You have to be very careful and cautious because there has never been such a tremendous desire for transformation, hence there are bound to be many people who will not miss this opportunity to exploit you.In that sense Krishnamurti is right, but only about ninety-nine percent. And to me that is nothing to be compared with the remaining one percent. Those ninety-nine percent can be ignored, that one percent should not be forgotten because that is the only hope – a master who can make you free, who does not make you a slave; a master who can make you unconditioned and does not recondition you, a master who does not give you any doctrine, dogma, a creed to believe in, but shares his joy, his celebration with you.The last question:Osho,Please tell a joke which I can laugh at for the rest of my life.There is no joke like that, it is impossible. It cannot happen in the very nature of things because a joke can be laughed at only when you hear it for the first time. You cannot laugh at it for the rest of your life, unless you are so stupid, so utterly stupid, that each time you hear it you have completely forgotten that you have heard it before. And you will be telling it to yourself because who is going to tell it to you your whole life? I can tell you only once, then you will have to tell it to yourself. Either you have to be utterly stupid or mad!I have heard about a man who was sitting in a waiting room on a railway station, and the train was late – as Indian trains always are. In India they say the timetable exists so that you can know how late the train is. Otherwise how will you know how late it is? Late it is going to be! And in India they say a ticket is valid for twenty-four hours. It is valid for twenty-four hours because nobody knows when the train will come. If it comes in twenty-four hours, that too is a miracle.So he was waiting, sitting in his chair, and the other people in the waiting room were getting a little bit puzzled. Finally one person became so curious he could not contain his curiosity. He said, “Sir, I should not interfere, but what is going on?” – because the man was sitting there with closed eyes, his lips were moving. Sometimes he would giggle and sometimes he would frown, sometimes he would laugh loudly and sometimes he would make a gesture with his hands as if he is throwing something away. What was going on?The man asked, “What are you doing? It is none of our business and we should not interfere, and it is absolutely private what you are doing, but excuse me, if you can enlighten me a little bit?”The man said, “There is nothing private about it – I am telling jokes to myself!”The man said, “That’s… That I can understand. Sometimes you giggle and you laugh loudly – you must be having fun. But sometimes you frown and you make such ugly face and you throw something, push away something by your hands.”He said, “Yes, when I hear a joke that I have heard before!”He is telling jokes to himself!Now, one joke for your whole life? It has never happened! You can only laugh at the first time because the whole art, the secret of a joke is the unexpected ending. That is the whole secret – the unexpected turn. The joke first moves in a certain line, and then takes such an unexpected turn that logically you are shocked for a moment. You were moving along with the joke expecting certain things to happen, and then what happens is not the logical thing. Something illogical happens – and it is the illogical that makes the joke beautiful, that makes you burst into laughter.Logic is not fun, it is a serious thing. When you start hearing a joke, of course your mind starts functioning logically. You start expecting logically that this is going to happen, this is going to happen, and then something comes at the end that you could not have imagined. It is so illogical, so ridiculous. It is so absurd! The shock… The whole energy was going in one direction, mounting up to a climax, and then suddenly everything goes berserk. The whole energy explodes into laughter. It is a certain tension that is released. The logic creates tension and the joke releases it. That is the punch line which does the trick.But this can happen only once. If you know the punch line, then it is very difficult for you to enjoy it because you will be expecting it. You already know it, now it has become part of your logic. So there cannot be any mounting energy, there cannot be any tension, you will sit relaxed.A man entering middle age had been bothered for some time by his prick. It had grown very crooked and had sprouted warts and hairs in the most inappropriate places. His condition had worsened over the years and he decided to seek medical advice.The local doctor examined his tool thoroughly and stated that amputation was the only possibility for a specimen such as his.The poor fellow went to another doctor for a second opinion. He also gave the thing a very thorough examination, then stated that it had to come off.Now in a state of panic, the man went to a specialist for a final opinion. The specialist examined the prick at length, leaned back in his armchair for a while in contemplation then said, “No, sir, I think that amputation is unnecessary.” The patient sighed with relief. “Yes,” continued the doctor, “in no time at all, it will fall off by itself!”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,My friend who has a PhD in computing, and whose thesis was on artificial intelligence, says that man is a biochemical computer and nothing more. Buddha has said that all things are composite and there is no self, no soul, no spirit, no “I,” which seems to agree with my friend's viewpoint. Could you please help me because I feel that there is something missing from these views, but I can't see it myself.Man certainly is a biocomputer, but something more too. It can be said that about ninety-nine point nine percent of people are only biocomputers and nothing more. Ordinarily one is only the body and the mind, and both are composites. Unless one moves into meditation one cannot find that which is something more, something transcendental to body and mind.The psychologists, particularly the behaviorists, have been studying man for half a century, but they study the ordinary man, and of course their thesis is proved by all their studies. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, has nothing more in him than the bodymind composite. The body is the outer side of the mind and the mind the inner side of the body. Both are born and both will die one day.But there is something more. That something more makes a man awakened, enlightened, a Buddha, a Christ. But a Buddha or a Christ is not available to be studied by Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others. Their study is about the unconscious man, and of course when you study the unconscious man you will not find anything transcendental in him. The transcendental exists in the unconscious man only as a potential, as a possibility; it is not yet realized, it is not yet a reality. Hence you cannot study it.You can study it only in a Buddha, but even then studying is obviously very difficult, very close to the impossible because what you will study in a Buddha will again be his behavior. And if you are determined that there is nothing more, if you have already concluded, then even in his behavior you will see only mechanical reactions, you will not see his spontaneity. To see that spontaneity you have also to become a participant in meditation.Psychology can become only a real psychology when meditation becomes its foundation. The word psychology means the science of the soul. Modern psychology is not yet a science of the soul.Buddha certainly has denied the self, the ego, the “I,” but he has not denied the soul, and the self and the soul are not synonymous. He denies the self because the self exists only in the unconscious man. The unconscious man needs a certain idea of “I” otherwise he will be without a center. He does not know his real center. He has to invent a false center so that he can at least function in the world, otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of “I.”You must have heard about Descartes’ famous statement: “Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am.”A professor, teaching the philosophy of Descartes, explained what he means by “I think, therefore I am.”A student stood up and said, “I know that I think, thinking is there. I can see it, but I don’t see the conclusion to which Descartes’ statement leads. I think, that much is certain, but I don’t know who I am.”The professor looked around the classroom, as if he is looking for the person who has asked the question. And then he said, “Who is asking the question?”The student raised his hand and said: “I am.”And the professor said: “So you know who you are!”One needs a certain idea of “I,” otherwise functioning will become impossible. So because we don’t know the real “I” we substitute it by a false “I” – something invented, composite.Buddha denies the self because to him self is simply another name for the ego, with a little color of spirituality, otherwise there is no difference. His word is anatta. Atta means self, anatta means no-self. But he is not denying the soul. In fact he says when the self is completely dropped, only then you will come to know the soul. But he does not say anything about it because nothing can be said about it.His approach is via negativa. He says, “You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the self.” He goes on denying, eliminating. He eliminates everything that you can conceive of, and then he does not say anything about what is left. That which is left is your reality: that utterly pure sky without clouds, no thought, no identity, no emotion, no desire, no ego – nothing is left. All clouds have disappeared, just the pure sky.It is inexpressible, unnamable, indefinable. That’s why he keeps absolutely silent about it. He knows that if anything is said about it, you will immediately jump back to your old idea of the self. If he says, “There is a soul in you,” what are you going to understand? You will think that he calls it soul and we call it self – it is the same. The supreme self, maybe, the spiritual self; it is not ordinary ego. But spiritual or unspiritual, the idea of my being a separate entity is the point.Buddha denies that you are a separate entity from the whole. You are one with the organic unity of existence, so there is no need to say anything about your separateness. Even the word soul will give you a certain idea of separateness, you are bound to understand it in your own unconscious way.Your friend says, “…that man is a biochemical computer and nothing more.” Can a biochemical computer say that? Can a biochemical computer deny the self, the soul? No biocomputer or any other kind of computer has any idea of self or no-self. Your friend is doing it – certainly he is not a biochemical computer. No biochemical computer can write a thesis on artificial intelligence. Do you think artificial intelligence can write a thesis about artificial intelligence? Something more is needed.And he is absolutely wrong in thinking that Buddha also says the same thing: “…that all things are composite and there is no self, no soul, no spirit, no ‘I’…” He is wrong to think that Buddha agrees with his viewpoint – not at all. Buddha’s experience is of meditation. Without meditation nobody can have any idea what Buddha is talking about. Your friend’s observation is from the standpoint of a scientific onlooker. It is not his experience, it is his observation. He is studying biochemical computers, artificial intelligence, from the outside. Who is studying outside?Can you conceive of two computers studying each other? The computer can have only that which has been fed into it, it cannot have more than that. The information has to be given to it, then it keeps it in its memory – it is a memory system. It can do miracles as far as mathematics is concerned. A computer can be far more efficient than any Albert Einstein, as far as mathematics is concerned, but a computer cannot be a meditator. Can you imagine a computer just sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself?There are many qualities that are impossible for the computer. A computer cannot be in love. You can keep many computers together – they will not fall in love! A computer cannot have any experience of beauty. A computer cannot know any bliss. A computer cannot have any awareness. A computer is incapable of feeling silence. And these are the qualities that prove that man has something more than artificial intelligence.Artificial intelligence can do scientific work, mathematical work, calculation – great calculation and very quickly and very efficiently because it is a machine. But a machine cannot be aware of what it is doing. A computer cannot feel boredom, a computer cannot feel meaninglessness, a computer cannot experience anguish. A computer cannot start an inquiry about truth, it cannot renounce the world and become a sannyasin, it cannot go to the mountains or to the monasteries. It cannot conceive of anything beyond the mechanical – and all that is significant is beyond the mechanical.A policeman starts chasing a car after noticing that the driver is a computer, a robot – wearing a hat, smoking a cigar and driving with one hand hanging out of the window.He finally succeeds in stopping the car. He approaches it and sees to his surprise that there is a man sitting next to the computer.“Are you mad?” exclaims the officer, “letting your computer drive?”“Excuse me, officer,” replies the man, “I asked him for a lift!”Yes, in stories it is possible, but not in reality.Mr. Polanski enjoys playing with cuckoo clocks. One rainy Sunday morning he takes his cuckoo clock apart and puts it back together again.At twelve o’clock the family gathers, waiting for the pretty little bird to sing its song – nothing happens. They wait till one o’clock – no cuckoo. At two o’clock they are still waiting for the bird to appear. Finally at three o’clock, the little door opens and the cuckoo comes out.“Dammit!” it squeaks. “Do any of you guys know the time?”The second question:Osho,You spoke yesterday about Krishnamurti and masters, and that we can understand, we can know, we can surrender, and we can fall in love with the master, but we should not follow and believe in the master. Is it possible to surrender without believing? My heart says to me that to surrender and to believe is the same. I cannot feel the difference. What is surrender and belief? I want to believe. I need to believe! If you say that meditation is the source and I do meditation, I believe you, I trust you.Surrender is not possible at all if you believe because belief is of the head, and surrender is of the heart. Belief means you are convinced logically, intellectually, that what is being said is right. The argument appeals to you. Belief has nothing to do with the heart, it is absolutely of the mind, a mind phenomenon. Belief is not a love affair.Belief means intellectually you are convinced because you cannot see any argument that can destroy it, all the arguments that you can manage prove it. But deep down there is bound to be an undercurrent of doubt. Belief cannot destroy doubt, it can only cover it up. It can cover so perfectly that you may forget about the doubt, but it is always there. Just scratch any believer a little bit and you will find the doubt there. That’s why believers have always been afraid of listening to anything that goes against their belief.The Catholic Church goes on prohibiting the Catholics: “Don’t read this, don’t read that.” They go on putting books on their black list, which are banned for the Catholics. The Vatican library has thousands of tremendously beautiful documents; for thousands of years they have been gathering all those scriptures that they have burned, banned, prohibited. But they have kept a few copies in the Vatican library just as a historical past, and what has been done in the past and what has been destroyed in the past – some proof of that. Anything that went against Christianity was destroyed.The same has been done by Mohammedans, by the Hindus, by almost all the believers of the world. Why this fear? – because they are all aware of the fact that the believer is not free of doubt, the doubt is there and anybody can raise the dust again. Somehow they have managed to settle it, somehow they have covered the wound, but the wound has not healed. It is there, and underneath the cover it goes on spreading.People believe in God, but does that mean their doubt has dropped? If the doubt is no longer there, what is the need of belief? Belief is an antidote, it is a medicine. If you are healthy no medicine is needed. If there is no doubt in you, no belief is needed.Belief is very superficial, it divides you. The believer is only the superficial part of you and the remaining part, the major part, the nine-tenths of your being, remains full of doubts. There is turmoil within every believer and he is afraid, really afraid to come across something that may disturb his belief – and anything can disturb his belief.Communists are not allowed to read anything against communism. In Soviet Russia, the government does not allow anything that goes against communism. Why this fear? The fear is because they know that if things against communism come into their country, people will start thinking again, their doubts will arise.The first thing you have to understand is that believing is of the head and surrender is of the heart. Surrender is not a belief, it is not an intellectual conviction – it is just the ultimate in love. You cannot give any proof for your surrender; you can give a thousand and one logical proofs for your belief, but for your surrender you cannot supply a single proof. And whatsoever you say will look absurd to yourself, it will fall short. Surrender has a transcendental beauty, and belief is so ordinary and the proof is so mundane.That is the trouble, why people feel a little embarrassed if you ask about their love. If you ask a man why he has fallen in love with a certain woman he will feel a little embarrassed. You are asking something which cannot be answered, hence the embarrassment. Why? He can manage to say something, but neither will he be convincing you nor will he himself feel that it is worth saying. He can say the woman is beautiful, that’s why, but these are all rationalizations, not reasons for his surrender.Surrender has no reasons, no motives at all. Surrender simply means a happening, not a doing. Belief is a doing: you do it, you make every effort; but surrender happens from the beyond. You are simply possessed by it.Lovers know it, how they become possessed. If you say, “Because the woman is beautiful,” the other person can say, “But nobody else has fallen in love with her. And she has been beautiful even before you had met her, and she is beautiful, but I have not fallen in love with her. How come you have fallen in love with her?”In fact, that is a rationalization, it is not true. Somehow he is trying to save his face. He does not want to say that he does not know why it has happened – it has simply happened. He does not want to accept that he is living something irrational, that he has allowed something illogical to happen to him.The reality is, the woman looks beautiful because you have fallen in love with her, not vice versa. It is not because of her beauty that you have fallen in love, otherwise the whole world would have fallen in love before you. Just the opposite is the case, she looks beautiful to you because you are in love. Love beautifies.Falling in love with a man or a woman is the lowest kind of love. When you fall in love with a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna it is the highest kind of love, the crescendo. It is just far out! It is outlandish! You cannot even give any reasons for your ordinary love – what reasons can you give when you fall in love with a master? There are no reasons at all.Just the other day Vivek was telling me a joke. She said, “Osho, do you know why the Jews have short necks?”And I said… [Osho shrugs his shoulders]And she said, “Yes, that’s why!”When you love, what can you say except shrug your shoulders? And if you go on shrugging your shoulders the whole day you will have a short neck!Anna, you ask me, “Is it possible to surrender without believing?” Not only is it possible without believing, it is only possible if there is no believing. With belief there is no possibility – belief is a false substitute. Surrender happens out of trust, and trust and belief are not synonymous.That is where Anna is confused: she thinks trust and belief are the same – they are not. Belief is of the head, trust is of the heart. Belief has arguments about it, trust has no arguments. Belief is intellectual, trust is supra-intellectual. You cannot say a single word in favor of your trust, and if you say you can be immediately refuted very easily. Any fool can destroy your argument for trust because in fact there is no argument possible.You say, “My heart says to me that to surrender and to believe is the same.” It is not the heart, it is the head. You are confused. You don’t know what is the heart and what is the head – and this is the case with almost everybody. People live through their heads. Even if they love, they love via the head. They say, “I think I am in love.” I think – that comes first and then comes love. It is not a question of thinking at all, whether you think or not does not matter. If you are in love, you are in love. Love does not come via the head.You say, “My heart says to me that to surrender and to believe is the same.” No, it is your head which is telling you that both are the same – to believe is to surrender. This is the language of the head, belief is the language of the head. Surrender belongs to a totally different dimension, it has nothing to do with belief. That’s why belief can be disturbed, but surrender cannot be disturbed.This has been my experience of working with thousands of sannyasins. It almost always happens that whenever a man comes to me his approach is intellectual. There are a few exceptions, it is not an absolute rule, but it can be said that almost ninety-nine percent men are head oriented. When a man comes to me he comes through logical conviction. Listening to me, trying to understand me, if he feels convinced he becomes a sannyasin.But his sannyas has not much value. Any day he can drop the sannyas. Anybody can destroy his belief because it is based on logic, and logic is just a game. If you come across a person who is more logical than you he will destroy your proof.I have never come across a single proof that cannot be destroyed. In fact, to prove anything is difficult. To disprove is very easy. If you say, “The sunset is beautiful,” it can be argued it is not, and more easily. Anybody can object, anybody can say, “Give me the proof! What do you mean by beauty? What is beauty? How can you prove that this sunset is beautiful?” And you will be at a loss. You know it is beautiful, but that knowing is not of the head, that knowing is of the heart – and the heart cannot argue, it simply knows.The problem is the head has all the questions and the heart has all the answers. The head has all the doubts and the beliefs, and the heart has only the trust. That is the flavor of the heart.There is a beautiful story by Chekhov, a parable:In a village there was one man who was thought to be an utter idiot, and of course he felt very offended. He tried in every way to convince people, but the more he tried the more it became known that he was a fool.A mystic was passing through the village, and the idiot went to the mystic and said, “Somehow save me – my life has become impossible. The people of this place think I am an idiot. How can I get rid of this because it is torturing me day and night. It has become a nightmare! I am even afraid to face anybody in the town because wherever I go people start laughing. I have become a laughingstock! Only you can show me the way. What should I do?”The mystic said, “This is very simple. From tomorrow morning, start asking people such questions which cannot be answered.”He said, “For example, what?”The mystic said, “If somebody says, ‘Look, how beautiful is the rose!’ you immediately raise the question: ‘Who says? What is the proof? What is beauty?’ If somebody talks about time, immediately ask, ‘What is time?’ If somebody asks about God, ask him, ‘Give me the proof!’ Somebody talks about love – don’t miss the opportunity – just go on asking. Don’t make any statement from your side. You simply ask the questions and make people feel embarrassed because these are the questions nobody can answer!”Within seven days the villagers thought the man was one of the greatest geniuses because now he was not making any statement, so he was not available for them to refute. He was simply denying others.That is the whole art of atheism: just go on saying no, and nobody can convince you. Yes comes from the heart, and the head is very efficient in saying no. And nobody can prove…nothing can be proved by the head. And the higher the value, the more difficult it is to prove.When men come to me they come through the intellect, their sannyas is not very reliable. But when women come to me, and of course again there are exceptions, but very few – the same proportion. Ninety-nine percent women are going to remain sannyasins.That’s why I have given my commune to be totally disciplined, to be controlled by the women sannyasins – for the simple reason that their approach to me is through the heart, they are more reliable. One percent men are reliable, one percent women are not reliable – they can drop sannyas. But ninety-nine percent women are reliable, they come through the heart. Nobody can refute their hearts; their approach is through trust and love.You have to understand the difference between the head and the heart. It will take a little to understand it because the society has made everybody confused. Everybody is in a mess – nobody knows where the heart is and where the head is.Just be here – Anna is new – soon you will be able to feel the difference clearly.You say, “I cannot feel the difference.” Yes, right now it will be difficult, but become a little more silent. In silence the distinction will come very loud. You say, “I want to believe. I need to believe!” That’s why it is difficult for you to know the difference. You are desperately in need to believe, you are afraid not to believe because you don’t know anything about trust. Once you know of trust, who bothers about belief? Who cares? Belief is nobody’s need. It is the strategy of the priests imposed on you that belief is a need – it is not a need. Trust certainly is a need, is a nourishment, but belief is just artificial food, maybe very colorful, but not nourishing.You say, “If you say that meditation is the source and I do meditation, I believe you, I trust you.” Please, trust but don’t believe. And of course, meditation is the way, the source – that’s why I have given you the name Dhyan Anna. Dhyan Anna means meditation, prayer. Through meditation you will come to prayer. Prayer is the highest form of love, of trust. Through meditation one finds the heart, and prayer arises. And through meditation ultimately one finds the being. And the moment you have found the being there is nothing more to be found, you have come home.The third question:Osho,You can read in the Bible that Jesus warned about other masters coming in the future. Do you think his warnings were also including you? Your message is very different from important parts of the teachings of Jesus. How is it possible that enlightened masters can say so many contrary things?One thing of great import has to be understood first: Jesus became enlightened only at the last moment on the cross. Hence the statements that he has made before that experience are not of an enlightened person – close, very close, approximate, but as far as truth is concerned there is nothing like approximate truth.This thing has not been told to Christians at all, that Jesus became enlightened at the very last moment. On the cross he became enlightened, on the cross he became a Christ.To me the cross is important not for the same reasons as it is for Christians. To them the cross is important because Jesus was crucified, and the cross has become the symbol of crucifixion. To me that is absolutely wrong – that is a kind of life-negation, that is worshipping death, that is making too much fuss about crucifixion.I call Christianity “Crossianity” because it is not concerned with Christ, it is more concerned with the cross. I also love the symbol of the cross, but for a totally different reason: not because of crucifixion but because Jesus became enlightened on the cross, he became aware of the immortality of his ultimate being. To me it is not crucifixion, not death, but the beginning of eternal life.At the last moment Jesus says to God, “Have you forsaken me?” And that shows that he was still living in the mind, expecting, desiring, hoping – even from God. There were a few expectations that at the last moment some miracle would happen. Not only the people who had gathered there were expecting a miracle looking at the sky – that a divine hand will appear and Jesus will be raised to ultimate glory, he will be saved at the last moment – but Jesus himself was also waiting.He says, “Have you forsaken me?” What does it mean? It is a complaint, it is not a prayer; it is frustration, it is disappointment. And disappointment is possible only if there was some deep desire, some longing to be fulfilled. God has failed him – he has not come to his rescue. He was hoping.These are the signs of an unenlightened person. These are symbolic of the ego, of the head, of the mind, of the very process of the mind.But he was a man of great intelligence too: immediately he recognized that what he is saying is wrong, the very desire is wrong. One should not expect anything from the universe, one should not feel disappointed, one should not feel frustrated. This is not trust. This is not a love affair. This is not an absolute yes, it is a conditional yes: “You fulfill these conditions, then of course I will be grateful. But because the conditions have not been fulfilled I am angry.” There is anger in his voice; there is anxiety, disappointment.But he understood the point, and immediately he corrected it. A single moment and he is no longer Jesus, he becomes Christ. Suddenly he looked at the sky and said, “Forgive me! Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done – not mine. Let thy will be done!”This is surrender. He has dropped the mind, he has dropped the ego and all the expectations. “Let thy will be done.” In this egoless state he became enlightened. But unfortunately it happened at the very last moment, and he had no time left.Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment, hence whatsoever he says has a totally different significance than what Jesus says in the New Testament. It is poetry, beautiful, but still he is groping in the dark, making every effort to reach the light, but he reached the light at the very last moment. He could not say a single word. He died enlightened, but he could not live enlightened. He died too early – he was only thirty-three. If you understand this, then your question will be very simple.You ask me, “You can read in the Bible that Jesus warned about other masters coming in the future.” That is the fear of an unenlightened person, the fear that somebody may replace him, that somebody may come and may convince people of other things. That fear is perfectly understandable in an unenlightened person because he is jealous. There is fear that once he is gone his teaching may be destroyed. He is too much concerned about the future.The unenlightened person lives in the past or in the future, and Jesus did both things in the New Testament. He is talking continuously about the past, he is trying to prove that “I am the Messiah you have been waiting for. I am the man who has been predicted by the prophets of old. The Old Testament has simply prepared the way for me.” He is too much concerned about the past. He is too much concerned in convincing the Jews that he is the expected Messiah. Who cares?People have asked me, “Buddha, we have heard, is going to come back after twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries have passed. Are you the Buddha?” Why should I be? I am just myself. Why should I be the Buddha? He did his thing, I am going to do my thing. I am not anybody’s carbon copy! Why should I be a Buddha? If he wants to come, that is up to him, but I am nobody’s incarnation.Hindus have asked me, “Krishna says, ‘Whenever there is need I will come.’ Are you that one?” I am not, absolutely not! I am just myself. If Krishna has to fulfill his promise he will come!Jesus is too much concerned about the past. In fact, that concern brought him the whole trouble. If he had not bothered about being the Messiah, Jews may not have crucified him because then they started asking about the signs that the Messiah had to give. Then they started asking, “You have to fulfill this and you have to fulfill that – only then we can accept you, that you are the Messiah.” And then he went into unnecessary argumentation, but his whole effort was to prove that “I am the expected Messiah.” This is concern for the past, and only an unenlightened person is concerned about the past.He is very much concerned about the future also. He warns about other masters coming in the future. “And beware of them,” he says, “because they will distract you, they will distract you from the path” – the path that he has shown. He is making sure that no follower is taken away from the fold, even when he is gone. This is too businesslike!The reason is that he became enlightened at the very last moment and he had no time to correct, to change his statements. His statements were made in an unenlightened state.That’s why you find his approach toward God very childish. He calls God, abba – papa, daddy! There is no daddy – daddy is dead! It is childish. It is the need of a child because the child cannot be without the father. Hence God becomes the father.A strange thing has happened, now Christian priests are called fathers. A monastery is defined by someone as a place where unwed fathers live: they don’t have any wives, they don’t have any children, and they are fathers! What kind of fathers are these? But if God can be a father without a wife, then of course they can also be fathers without wives. Catholic priests being called fathers. Catholic nuns being called mothers, sisters, Mother Superiors! People who have renounced life, renounced families, are still clinging to some ideas of the family. Now God becomes the father, but the father is needed.Jesus remained a little childish in his approach toward God. Buddha has a maturity, tremendous maturity. He is so mature that he can say there is no God; existence is enough, more is not needed. There is no creator, creation is enough. Creation itself is divine creativity, it is the process of creativity.This fear of Jesus simply shows the fear of a Jew, a businessman. He is afraid his customers may go to somebody else. He is making sure that even in the future the customers never leave the shop. He will be gone, that much is certain, sooner or later he will be gone, but he is making sure that his priests will go on dominating the world; his representatives, his popes, will go on and on always dominating the world.The very idea to dominate the world, to change the whole world into Christianity, is in some subtle sense an ego trip, an ego number. But it is understandable from an unenlightened person, you cannot expect more than that.And you ask me, “Do you think his warnings were also including you?” The future is absolutely unknown. Nobody knows the future, not even the enlightened person knows about the future. That is the beauty of the future: it is unpredictable. Yes, a few inferences can be made, but they are only inferences.But all the religions have tried to prove that their founders are all-knowing, omniscient. Jains say Mahavira is omniscient: he knows the whole past, whole present, whole future. And that is sheer stupidity because it is a well-known fact – Buddha has mentioned it, they were contemporaries – that Mahavira is known to have begged from a house where nobody had lived for years, and he was standing in front of the house with his begging bowl!He was told by the neighbors, “That house is empty and has been empty for years. You are an omniscient person – can’t you see that there is nobody in the house?” And he knows all about the future – he does not know about this house in front of him! In fact, if people have not lived in that house for many years, even an unenlightened person will be able to infer, looking at the situation of the house – the dust that has collected, the doors that have been closed for years – that nobody lives here. You can see easily whether people live in this house or not. Where people live, the house has a different quality, aliveness; where nobody lives, the house is dead.Buddha also mentions just jokingly that once Mahavira was walking on the road early in the morning. It was a winter morning, too much mist was there, and he stepped on the tail of a dog. When the dog barked, then he became aware that there was a dog. And he knows all about the past and all about the future!Nobody knows about the future or about the past. The enlightened person knows only himself, and that’s enough. Knowing himself, essentially he knows everybody – essentially, remember, not in details. Essentially he understands everybody because he knows himself. Knowing himself he knows your potential, your possibility. Knowing himself he knows that you are in darkness. Knowing himself he knows how he has reached his light, and he can help you to reach the same light.But the enlightened person knows only himself and nothing more. He knows himself totally, absolutely. His whole being is full of light, but that does not mean that he knows everything about the whole existence and past and future, all. That is sheer nonsense! Because of this nonsense so many problems have arisen for religion.The Bible talks about the earth as if it is flat. That was the problem, that in the Middle Ages the scientists who discovered for the first time that the earth is a globe, circular, round, got into trouble because they were going against the Bible, and the Bible is omniscient. How can you dare to say something against Moses, against Jesus and all the prophets – because they talk about the earth as flat.The Bible thinks that the sun goes around the earth, and one can understand why because we all see the sun moving, in the morning rising and in the evening setting. We see the arc of the sun going around, it is a common inference.When, for the first time Galileo discovered that this is wrong, this is only apparently so, it is a visual illusion, the truth is just the opposite – the earth goes around the sun, not the sun around the earth – he got into trouble. He was very old when he discovered it, seventy or more, and very ill. When his book was published, he was summoned by the Pope. He went there. He must have been a man of great understanding. I love that man. Many have condemned him for this same thing, but I don’t condemn him. I respect him for the same thing for which he has been condemned for three hundred years or more.The Pope asked him, “Have you written this?”He said, “Yes, I have written it.”The Pope said, “This goes against the Bible. Are you ready to change it? Otherwise you will be killed or burned alive.”He said, “I am perfectly ready to change it. You need not take so much trouble burning me – forgive me. I declare that it is the sun who goes around the earth, not the earth. But remember, my declaration will not make any difference – the earth will still go around the sun. Who bothers about Galileo?” He said, “Neither the sun will listen nor the earth will listen. But if it is offensive to you, I am perfectly ready to change it!”People have thought that he was cowardly; I don’t think so. He had a sense of humor! He was not a coward, but he was not stupid – that much is certain. It would have been stupidity to insist on such a small thing. Why bother about it? He was not suicidal – that much is certain. If he had been suicidal, if he had carried some idea of suicide in him, then this was a good chance to become a martyr. Then suicide takes spiritual color: one becomes a martyr, a revolutionary.But he laughed at the whole thing like a joke and he said, “I will change it immediately – I declare!” But he reminded the Pope that, “My declaration won’t make any difference at all – nobody listens to me.”There is the point, which he made clear at the end and he corrected with a footnote. In the footnote he wrote, “Although I am correcting it because it goes against the Bible – and I am the last person to disturb anybody’s religion – the truth is the earth goes around the sun.”These people… If you try to look into the Vedas, into Gita, into the Bible, into the Koran, you will find thousand and one things that are absolutely wrong, but I can understand why they are wrong. They were writing thousands of years ago, and at that time that was the general notion, they were simply talking in that way.Even today although we know that the earth goes around the sun, our language still carries the old idea – sunrise, sunset – and I think it is going to remain forever; we will not change the language. What does it mean now? It means nothing. There is no sunrise and no sunset because the sun never goes around the earth, so what do you mean by rising and setting? But the language carries the old idea because the language was created in those days.Neither Jesus knows nor Mahavira nor Buddha nor anybody else about the future, but the followers try in every possible way to make their master omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent! These are all ego trips. And if the master himself is yet unenlightened he will pretend himself.Jesus certainly says, “Be alert, cautious because there will be many who will come and who will speak in such a way, in such a convincing way that you can be distracted from the right path.” He is simply afraid. Otherwise, the right path should not be afraid at all.The truth is going to win. It is not Jesus or Krishna or Buddha or Mahavira who are going to win: it is always the truth that wins. So why be worried? But to keep people imprisoned these warnings help, these warnings make people afraid.He knew nothing about me, he cannot know. I don’t know anything about the coming masters in the world, and I will not make you beware of the coming masters. I would like you to enjoy all the masters you will find in the future. Don’t miss a single opportunity. Enjoy the truth from whatsoever source it comes. The question is of being with truth, not with me. If you are with truth you are with me. Truth is nobody’s possession, it is neither mine nor Christ’s nor Buddha’s.In Buddha’s time, Buddha was the most clear-cut expression of truth, that’s why people were with him. In Jesus’ time, a few people were with Jesus because they could see something beautiful in him. And this has been always so. It you are with me you are not with me – you are with truth. Because you feel truth being imparted, communicated, showered on you, that’s why you are with me. So wherever you find truth in the future when I am not here, nourish yourself from it. Don’t cling to people. People are insignificant. Truth is significant.And you ask, “Your message is very different from important parts of the teachings of Jesus.” It is bound to be so, because two thousand years have passed. How can I be exactly the same as Jesus and why should I be? There is no need. In two thousand years much has changed: the language, the people’s understanding, the people’s approach. Man has become more mature. Jesus speaks in a very childish way.Of course, the people, the masters who will come after me will be speaking in a far better way than I am speaking, obviously because they would have learned more. As time passes, better and better expressions will be available. But we start clinging and that creates trouble.Jesus spoke in his context, I am speaking in my context. He could not speak in the way the twentieth century will understand. I cannot speak in the way that Jesus had chosen because those people are no longer here for whom he was speaking. A different humanity is here, a far more mature, far more ripe humanity is here.Man has come of age. Now to talk about God as the father is foolish, after Sigmund Freud it is foolish. Jesus had no idea of Sigmund Freud. I have to take care of Sigmund Freud too because Sigmund Freud will say that talk about God as the father is simply a projection, and he is right. It is your longing to belong to a father figure, it is your childish desire to be dependent on somebody – you don’t want to be independent. Now after Sigmund Freud I cannot speak in the same way as Jesus spoke, but the ultimate experience is the same; the expression will be different.What Jesus experienced at the last moment on the cross I have experienced, but that experience is of absolute silence. To bring it into language, to create methods to help others to experience it, certainly I am in a far better position than Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira. Naturally, the masters who will follow me will be in a far better position than me. They will have a far more accurate approach toward truth because man is continuously growing. Man is not deteriorating, man is growing, man is reaching to higher peaks.And you ask, “How is it possible that enlightened masters can say so many contrary things?” They only appear contrary because the language changes, expressions change, ways and methods change; otherwise they are not contrary. And a man like me is bound to be not only contrary to Jesus and Buddha and Mahavira, I am going to be many times contradictory to myself for the simple reason that I am trying to bring all the religions in to a higher synthesis; different approaches have to be joined together. I am creating an orchestra.Buddha is a solo flute player. Of course when you are playing the flute solo it has a consistency, but it is not as rich as when the flute becomes part of an orchestra. Then it has a totally different kind of richness, multidimensionality. But then you have to be in tune with others, you have to be continuously alert not to fall out of step. Somebody is playing a tabla, and somebody is playing the sitar, and you are playing the flute; all three have to be in harmony. And of course they are three different instruments, very different from each other, but to bring them into harmony can create a higher kind of music.Jesus is a solo player, Buddha too, Mahavira too. In the past it was bound to be so because they all lived in small worlds. Buddha never went out of Bihar, just a small province of this country; Jesus was confined, Krishna was confined. Now the whole world has become a small village, a global village. You can see it – the whole world has gathered here! Buddha was not so fortunate, he was surrounded by Biharis. Jesus was surrounded by Jews, Krishna was surrounded by Hindus. They could only be solo players; they were bound because their listeners, the people they were working with, were of a certain tradition.Now I am working with all the traditions together. Jews are here and Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Parsis and Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists. All traditions have gathered here. It is a unique experiment in the whole history of humanity, it has never happened in this way.Even people who are moving in different countries are still carrying their solo instruments. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: he works in the West, but the method that he calls Transcendental Meditation is a very old Hindu method of chanting a mantra; it is neither transcendental nor meditation, it is just the old rubbish of chanting a mantra! Any word will do, you go on repeating it continuously. It creates a state of autohypnosis and nothing more. Although he is working in the West, he is using only an autohypnotic method invented thousands of years ago by the Hindus.Now there are Zen monks working in America, there are Zen centers in America, but what they are doing there is the old method of Buddha. There are Sufis working in the West, but they are using the method invented by Jalaluddin Rumi, one thousand years old.I am using all the possible methods, and when all these methods meet of course there is going to be great contradiction. If you don’t understand you will see only contradictions and contradictions. If you understand then you will understand the harmony of all these instruments together.People are doing Vipassana, Sufi dancing, Yoga and Tantra; and using Zen methods, Zazen and other methods. And not only the old methods – they are doing all that has happened in this century after Sigmund Freud, all the psychological methods, all the psychotherapy groups.This is a meeting of the whole world. It is a universal religiousness that I am creating here. It is bound to be multidimensional if you understand. If you don’t understand, if you still cling to a certain tradition, then it will look contradictory to you.The last question:Osho,What is the difference between experiencing and indulging?The difference between experiencing and indulging is that of awareness; there is no other difference, no other distinction. If you are not aware, it is indulgence. If you are aware, it is experiencing – the same thing. It may be eating food, it may be making love, listening to music, enjoying the night sky full of stars – whatsoever it is. If you are not consciously there, if you are not a witness to it, if you remain unconscious, mechanical, robotlike, then it is indulgence. If you are aware, then it is experiencing. Experiencing is beautiful, indulgence is ugly. But remember the distinction that I am making.In the past all the religions have labeled things, I am not labeling things. They have labeled things: “This is indulgence and this is experiencing.” I am not labeling things – things cannot be labeled. Things are the same.Buddha eating his food and you eating your food – as far as the outer, objective viewpoint is concerned both are doing the same: you are eating, Buddha is eating. What is it? Buddha is experiencing, you are indulging. The difference is not in the act, it is in your awareness. Buddha eating is eating as a witness, and he will eat only that much which is needed because he is totally aware. He will enjoy food, he will enjoy more than you can enjoy because he is more aware. You will not enjoy the food; you simply go on stuffing it, you don’t enjoy. And you are not there at all to enjoy, in fact, you are somewhere else, always somewhere else. You are never where you are – somewhere else. You may be in the shop, you may be in the field, you may be in the factory, you may be talking to a friend: physically you are eating, but psychologically you are not there.Buddha is there totally: physically, psychologically, spiritually. When he is eating he is simply eating.A Zen master, Rinzai, was asked, “What is your sadhana? What is your spiritual practice?”He said, “Nothing much, nothing much to brag about. It is very simple, when I feel hungry I eat and when I feel sleepy I go to sleep.”The man said, “But that’s what we all do!”Rinzai said, “There you are wrong. Take your words back! Because I have lived like you, I have both the experiences. I have lived like a robot. The way you are, I have been, so I know the difference. You eat when you are not hungry, you eat because it is time to eat, you eat because the food is delicious, you eat because you are invited to eat. You don’t care what is the need. You sleep because it is a habit, whether you need it or not is not the point. And while you are eating you are not only eating, you are doing thousand and one other things – maybe making love in your fantasy. And when you are asleep certainly you are not doing only one thing, sleeping – you are dreaming. The whole night your mind goes on and on creating dreams upon dreams.”So I don’t label anything as experiencing and indulging. The question is of awareness.Two drunks in a tavern see a bug fall down on the bar. The first drunk says, “A bug.”The other nods and says, “A bug.”The first peers again and says, “Ladybug.”The other drunk says, “Damn good eyesight!”A talkative drunkard at a circus looked mystified at a contortionist as the performer went through his act. Unable to control himself, he cried, “What is the matter? You look like I am drunk!”There is a story about a small youngster who was abandoned by his parents in Yellowstone National Park. He was raised by a pack of wild dogs. Years later he was found walking on all fours, eating raw meat and living in the open. He was put in school where in one year he breezed through grammar school, high school, and college. The day after he got his PhD he was killed – chasing a car.Even if you get your PhD you are going to chase the car – unconscious habit! Knowledgeable you can become, but that is not going to transform you, you will continue to indulge. You can escape from the world, but that will not make any difference, you will still indulge.Learn how to be aware.A train is speeding through the countryside when, from a distance, the driver notices what looks like a couple involved in passionate lovemaking, lying right on the tracks.The engine driver pulls the whistle…once, twice, then again and again, but there is no response from the couple. The engine driver starts to panic and, as a last resort, slams on the emergency brake. The lovers continue in their play, oblivious.Finally the train screeches to a halt just a few feet away from the couple. The engine driver is furious. He gets out of his cabin and storms over to them.“What the fuck are you doing?” he screams at them. “Didn’t you see the train coming? Didn’t you hear the whistle? You should be at home, behind bedroom doors!”The man on the tracks looks up at the driver very coolly and says, “Listen mate, she was coming, I was coming, and you were coming, but you had the brakes!”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The one Self never moves,yet is too swift for the mind.The senses cannot reach It.It is ever beyond their grasp.Remaining still, It outstrips all activity,Yet in It rests the breath of all that moves.It moves, yet moves not.It is far, yet It is near.It is within all this.And yet without all this.He who sees everything as nothing but the Self,and the Self in everything he sees.Such a seer withdraws from nothing.For the enlightened, all that exists is nothingbut the Self.So how could any suffering or delusion continuefor those who know this Oneness?He who pervades all, is radiant,unbounded and untainted,invulnerable and pure.He is the knower, the one Mind,omnipresent and self-sufficient.He has harmonized diversity throughout eternal time.Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Om represents the music of existence, the soundless sound, the sound of silence when your whole being hums with joy. Om represents the ultimate harmony, what Heraclitus calls “the hidden harmony.” To become one with this music of existence is to attain flowering, fulfillment.The moment you lose your discord with the whole, the moment you are in tune with the whole – attunement simply means at-onement – when you are one with the whole, every fiber of your being, every cell of your being dances, for no reason at all. It is the dance for dance’s sake, joy which is uncaused, hence it is eternal – joy which is unmotivated, joy which is not dependent on anything. It is your intrinsic, natural music, your spontaneity.All the Upanishads begin with this remembrance:OmThat is the whole.This is the whole.That represents the innermost core of this. It is called that because it is not known to you yet. Those who know, for them there is only this and no that, or only that and no this. The duality disappears, but for the blind the duality is there. Everything is dual, if you are not fully aware, divided.This means that which you can see and that means that which is invisible. This is the wheel and that is the axle. The wheel moves on the axle but the axle moves not. All movement depends on something unmoving. All change depends on something eternal. Time depends on timelessness. Birth and death happen into something which is never born and never dies.This represents all that is known to the unenlightened, and that which is known when you become enlightened. When you are full of light you have clarity, perception, transparency; you can see through and through. In that vision, this starts melting into that, the circumference disappears into the center. The center is naturally hidden, it is bound to be hidden; only the circumference is available to the senses. You can see only the surface, you cannot see the depths. If you go to the ocean you can only see the surface and the superficial turmoil, you cannot see the depth. To see the depth you will have to dive deep, and as far as the ultimate that is concerned, only diving deep won’t do; you will have to dive so deep that you disappear totally, become one with it. In that oneness God is realized.The people who go on arguing about God know nothing about God. Those who know, they cannot argue about God. Yes, their very presence is a proof, their very existence radiates the ultimate, their thisness is overflowing with thatness; but they cannot prove logically, intellectually the existence of God. God is not an object hence it cannot be put before you. It cannot be made a collective experience.That’s why science goes on denying God, and science will go on denying God because science depends on collective observation. It believes only in that which can observed by everybody. It believes in the rock because the rock can be watched by everybody, everybody can agree that it exists.The word object is significant. Object means that which hinders. If you try to pass through a wall, you will be hit hard by the wall. The wall is an object: it objects to your passing through it. You cannot pass through a rock – it objects, it prevents, it hinders.God is not an object – you can pass through God, you are passing through God every moment. You are breathing God, your very heartbeat is God’s heartbeat. But God is so close… Even the word close is not right because the word close or closeness shows a distance.This fan is close to me, but it is separate. This microphone is even closer, but still it is separate. The body is even closer, but it is still separate. God is inseparable with you, hence even the word closeness is not right. God is your very being, your very consciousness. It cannot be an object, it cannot prevent you; it helps you, it nourishes you. It is your subjectivity. Because it is your innermost core it remains hidden even from yourself – unless you take a one hundred and eighty degree turn, unless you recoil upon yourself.You must have seen the symbol – a very ancient symbol and very significant too – of a snake eating its own tail. Many ancient mystery schools used that symbol, it is certainly very indicative. The snake eating its own tail means a one hundred and eighty degree turn. The snake is turned upon itself, the consciousness has recoiled upon itself.And the snake is represented in almost all the wisdom cultures of the world. Jesus says, “Be ye as wise as a snake.” And in the East the snake, the serpent, has symbolized the inner energy of man, kundalini; hence it is called serpent power. The energy is coiled at the lowest center of your being. When it uncoils, the snake starts rising upward. It simply represents that there is something in the snake which can be used as a metaphor.The snake can catch hold of its own tail, the dog cannot do it. Dogs try – you must have seen dogs trying – and the more they try, the crazier they go because the tail goes on jumping with them. They think it is something separate. They try to catch hold of it, and when they cannot catch hold of it… Of course they try desperately, but the more they try the more they are at a loss. Only the snake can do it, no other animal.The same happens in enlightenment, your energy starts moving upon itself, it becomes a circle.God is your subjectivity, you cannot find God anywhere else. But once you have found God within you, you will find him everywhere else too. All the arguments are stupid, and these arguments are really childish. Whatever proofs have been given of God are so childish that one wonders what these theologians were doing. They prove only one thing by their arguments, that they were fools!God is an experience, unprovable because your senses cannot reach him. If God were an object, your senses would be able to reach. God is not a thought either, hence your mind cannot grasp it. But we have made God an object, statues have been created. Those statues are objects, they are made of stone or wood or some other material. And to make God an object is the greatest blasphemy because God is subjectivity. You are changing the whole idea of God, you are reducing it into a thing. God is not a thing.That’s why Gautam the Buddha calls God nothingness. Remember, when he uses the word nothingness he means no-thingness – he does not negate. He is not saying there is no God, the word nothing simply means it is not a thing.And the temples and the churches have all made God a thing, even though there may not be any statue – in the mosques there are no statues. But people are praying to God as if he is there, not deep in your own consciousness but somewhere else. It is the same – whether you are bowing down to a statue or to a God somewhere above the clouds, still it is an object. To whom are you praying? Your prayer means that you have accepted the idea of God’s separateness from you – he has to be prayed to. You are the prayer and he is the prayed. You are the praiser and he is the praised. The separation is accepted, and that is irreligiousness.But people go on fighting everything. In fact, they want to fight; fight seems to be their joy. Then God is one of the most beautiful excuses to fight because it can never be conclusively decided.In a one-horse town in front of the general store, two men were fighting. A ten-year-old boy was among the spectators who were enjoying the battle. A stranger came along and asked the youngster what was going on.“My father and a man are having a real fight,” explained the boy.“Which one is your father?” the stranger asked.“That,” said the boy, “is what they are fighting about!”And this is what religious people have been doing for centuries. They think they are creating great philosophical ideas. Professors of philosophy and professors of theology don’t know anything about themselves, but they are trying to prove that their idea of God is true. They themselves live in absolute unconsciousness. If they were not unconscious they would not argue about God; they would live God, they would radiate God. God would be their fragrance, their presence.An absent-minded professor of philosophy was going out to dinner one evening with his wife.“I don’t like that tie you have on,” she said. “I wish you would go upstairs and put on another.”The professor quietly obeyed. Minute after minute passed until finally the impatient wife went upstairs to see what had happened. In his room she found her husband undressed and getting into bed.Old habit! The moment he took off his tie, he thought the time had come to go to bed.And these are the people who go on proposing great systems of thought. Immanuel Kant has created one of the greatest philosophical systems in the world, and he himself was such an unaware man that it seems almost impossible how a man can be so unaware. There are thousands of anecdotes about his life.One day he came home after his evening walk. He was a very regular person in his habits, in his routines. He never got married for the simple reason that a woman may disturb his pattern. He never allowed any friendship because then you have to be polite to the friends. And if you want to go to bed and your friend is sitting there, just out of etiquette, mannerism, you have to go on talking. He was such a mechanical man that at exactly nine – and nine meant nine, not a minute before, not a minute after – he would go to bed. He never married for the simple reason that women are illogical and they won’t understand, and there will be unnecessary quarrels.He kept a servant, and the servant used to only declare time. There was no need to say anything, he would simply come and say, “Sir, it is nine,” and Kant would jump into bed.The servant was puzzled that it was almost ten in the night and his light was still on, so he went to have a look at what had happened. He looked from the window and he could not believe his eyes: Kant was standing in a corner of the room with closed eyes, and his walking stick was lying on the bed. When he came from his walk he forgot who is who – just a little confusion! And it was nine o’clock so there was no time to even think about the matter, to figure it out, who is who. He was in such a hurry!The servant came in, shook him, and asked, “What is the matter? What are you doing?”And he said, “I was also thinking what is the matter because I am feeling very tired! Now I know what the matter is.” When he saw the walking stick on the bed resting, then he realized.And these people have created great systems of thought, and they talk about God and they talk about truth and they talk about love and they talk about beauty, and they define what is virtue and what is sin. So unconscious!In the East we have a totally different approach. You cannot think such a phenomenon with a Gautam Buddha or with an Upanishadic seer because the whole approach is of being more and more conscious. One has to be a flame of consciousness, one has to be alert and aware. On the one hand is Immanuel Kant on the other hand is Gautam Buddha.His chief disciple Ananda, who lived with him for forty years and served him with great love – he used to watch Buddha in every possible way because he was continuously following him like a shadow, and each of his movements was beautiful, it was graceful. He also watched him when he was asleep because he used to sleep in the same room in case the master needed him in the night. He used to watch him while he was asleep. Awake or asleep, his grace was the same, his beauty was the same, his silence was the same.One day he asked Buddha, “I should not ask such questions, it looks so stupid, but I cannot contain my curiosity. You sleep, but I have watched you for hours. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and watch you, sometimes just before you get up early in the morning I watch you, but my experience has been such that it seems to me that you are still awake even while asleep. You look so alive, so fresh! And one thing more – you never change your posture. You go to sleep and you wake up in the same posture. What is the secret of it?”Buddha said, “There is no secret in it. The body goes to sleep – once you are awake you are awake! Whether it is day or night makes no difference, the inner flame goes on burning. The body goes to sleep because the body gets tired, and now there is no mind anymore so no question of the mind arises at all.” There are only two things.In the unenlightened person there are three things: the body, the mind, the soul. And because of the mind he cannot see the soul. The mind is a turmoil, a chaos; it is all smoke, it is all clouds. The enlightened has no mind, there is only silence. So he has the body and he has the soul. The body tires, needs rest, but the soul is never tired, needs no rest: it is always awake. The body is always asleep and the soul is always awake. The nature of body is to be unconscious and the nature of the soul is to be conscious. These are intrinsic qualities. Once the mind is no longer there, then even in your sleep only the body sleeps, not you.In the East we have called these people religious; those who have known such awakening, which cannot be clouded by any sleep anymore. The West has been thinking about Kant and Hegel and Fichte and Bertrand Russell and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein – these people, as if they are great explorers of truth. They are thinkers.And remember always, only a blind man thinks about light. The man who has eyes knows it, he need not think about it. These are blind people – howsoever clever they are in argumentation, they are blind.The Upanishad belongs to the seers. It expresses that which is experienced in the ultimate accord where you are no longer a separate entity from the whole, when the dewdrop slips from the lotus leaf and becomes the ocean.The first sutra:The one Self never moves,yet is too swift for the mind.You will come across many self-contradictory statements, for the simple reason that truth is paradoxical. It has to be paradoxical for the simple reason that it contains the whole, and the whole means the contradictory also is contained in it. It contains both the poles: the negative and the positive. It contains the day and night, life and death, summer and winter. It contains all opposites, in it those opposites are no longer opposites, they are complementaries. So don’t think of them as contradictions.To the seer – to the one who has come to the ultimate peak of meditation, one who has attained samadhi – all the polarities are joined together into one existence. They are not separate, nothing is separate. Existence is one organic unity, hence to say anything about it will have to be paradoxical if it has to cover the whole truth. So you will come again and again from different sides. The contradictions have to be dissolved, they have to be talked about, so that you become aware of their complementariness.The first is: The one Self never moves, yet is too swift for the mind. It never moves and yet it is too swift, unmoving and yet moving. But remember, these two phenomenon are not separate – movement and non-movement. Again let me remind you of the metaphor of the wheel and the axle: the axle remains unmoving, it is because of the unmoving axle that the wheel moves. They support each other. If the axle also moves then the wheel will not be able to move. By remaining unmoving it is supporting the wheel to move.The world is the wheel. The Sanskrit word for the world is samsara. Samsara simply means the wheel – literally it means the wheel. That’s why Sanskrit is a language belonging to a totally different category; it is a transformed language, transformed by the seers. Each word has been coined in such a way that it can be used in two ways: it can be used in a mundane sense; it can also be used in a sacred sense. It is the most expressive language about the ultimate, about the inexpressible.The Sanskrit word for the world is samsara. Samsara means the wheel. It goes on moving. But don’t forget the axle, the very center upon which the whole movement depends, and it has to be unmoving. The wheel and axle are not enemies; they are in partnership, a deep friendship. They are together, they are bound in a deep togetherness.The one Self never moves, yet is too swift for the mind. One more thing has to be understood: whenever the Upanishads say the one Self, remember, it is exactly what Buddha says when he calls the ultimate reality no-self. Their expression is opposite to each other. The Upanishads speak the language of affirmation. Buddha speaks the language of negation. The Upanishads are via affirmativa, and the approach of Buddha – or at least the expression of Buddha – is via negativa. Both are valid approaches, it depends with whom you are speaking.The Upanishads were spoken in a different context; they were spoken twenty-five centuries before Buddha arrived – from today, five thousand years before today. It was a totally different world. The Upanishadic seers were not moving from one place to another place, they were not talking to the crowds, they were not arguing with the skeptical minds. They were only talking to their disciples, the chosen few, it was a totally different context. To talk to your own disciples is certainly different than to talk to those who are skeptical, doubtful, antagonistic.The days when the Isa Upanishad was born, were the days of innocence, deep innocence. People were simple, non-philosophical. They were not very concerned about logic; they were trusting people, honest, sincere, authentic. And the Upanishadic seers lived in their small ashrams.The ashram, the commune of the master and the disciples, is an Upanishadic discovery. It is not a monastery, that is a totally different phenomenon. In English, ordinarily ashram is translated as monastery – it is not a monastery. A monastery is something against the world. A monastery means you have escaped from the world. A monastery simply shows a condemnation of the world.The ashram is not a condemnation of the world. Rather it is a learning place, where you learn the art of how to live in the world. People used to go to the Upanishadic masters to learn how to live in the world.In those days this was the process of life. Assuming that a person was going to live a hundred years, life was divided in four parts. The first twenty-five years everybody had to be with some awakened master so that he can have a taste of the beyond, so he can have some experience of the sacred. This first stage was called brahmacharya. Remember, to translate brahmacharya as celibacy is not right. The word brahmacharya simply means living like a god, living with the experience of the brahman, the absolute, living meditatively. If I am to translate brahmacharya I will translate it as the life of meditation.Those twenty-five years, the beginning part of life – it will look strange. Why has God to be experienced in the beginning? – for many reasons. First: the first part of life is the most innocent part, the most courageous, adventurous, alive, intelligent. Once you become burdened with life’s experiences you start becoming cunning. To live in a world and not to be cunning is very difficult. To face the world you will have to be cunning, to face the world you will have to be on guard, cautious; otherwise you will be cheated, you will be exploited. To be in the world you have to be continuously fighting and competing, you have to be ambitious and violent and aggressive. And if all these experiences become part of your consciousness – and they are bound to become part – then trust will be more difficult, doubt will be more easy.I have heard…A man was going to commit suicide. At the moment he was to jump from the bridge into the river, a gentleman who was coming back from his club prevented him.The gentleman asked him, “What is the matter? Why are you destroying your life?”The man said, “I am in desperate need of a hundred dollars and I have lost all trust in humanity.”The gentleman, who had prevented this would-be suicide, gave him a hundred dollars. The man who was going to commit suicide was puzzled, shocked, and he said, “How can I show my gratitude to you? You have helped me to regain my trust in humanity.”In the morning, the gentleman who had given that hundred dollar bill to the man saw in the newspapers that a man has committed suicide from the same bridge that he had saved the man from last night. And the way the newspapers described it, it seemed to be the same man.He could not believe what had happened because the man had said that now he would not commit suicide. He was committing suicide because he had lost all confidence in humanity, and what is the point of living with people in whom you cannot trust.He rushed to the police station to see the body. Yes, it was the same man. He was very much puzzled. He could not figure out what had happened.That evening he met one of his friends, with whom he had been gambling the night before, and from whom he had won the one hundred dollar bill.His friend said: “What did you do with that hundred dollar bill? Because now I must confess, it was false.” Now everything became clear, why the man had lost his trust in humanity again.At the point of suicide somebody had given him a false one hundred dollar bill. Seeing that it is false, he must have jumped immediately. Enough is enough!In this world you are bound to be corrupted. This world is so corrupted. It is because of this fact that in the days of the Upanishads, the knowers, the seers, had decided that before you have any experience of the world it is better to have some taste of God – because that taste will save you from the corrupting influences of the world. If you have known something higher, then the lower cannot disturb you; if you have known something deeper, then the superficial does not matter. It is very scientific and very psychological.The first part of life, twenty-five years, had to be devoted to meditation – living with a master, serving the master, being with the master, enjoying his presence, rejoicing his presence. It was not a monastery; it was a school, an academy, a real university to learn the art of life.And after twenty-five years when the second stage used to begin – it was the stage called the stage of the householder, grihastha. Then one gets married, goes to work in the world, earns money, lives a worldly life, but now he has an inner center, a grounding. The world cannot disturb him, and he knows that that experience has to be again achieved, that light has to be again achieved. Whatsoever glimpses he has got in those first twenty-five years will haunt him, will remind him again and again that this world is only momentary. He will not become mad after money or power or prestige. He will do all the actions of the world but remain deep down unmoved. He will become a wheel as far as the outside is concerned, but inside he will remain an axle, unaffected, cool. Whether success comes or failure, it will be all the same. Whether he becomes rich or poor it will be all the same. Whether he becomes very famous or remains a nobody, it is all the same because he has experienced a joy within himself, now he cannot be deceived by anything from the outside.And this experience is also needed to enforce, to reinforce the first experience of twenty-five years. This is an examination, this is the criterion whether what you have achieved you have really achieved, or it was only in the light of the master, in his presence, something borrowed. You have to go into the world – that is the test – so that you can see that it is something that has become part of your own being and nothing can take it away. Even coming away from the master is not going to affect it, it is your own, authentically your own. This is a beautiful, scientific procedure.After twenty-five years when the person will be reaching the age fifty, his children will be ready to come from the ashrams, from those extraordinary devices for learning. His children will now be ready. They must be nearly twenty-five years old and they will be on the way back home. Now they will be getting married and they will take the place of the father.Try to see the Eastern insight into human psyche: when the son returns home and he gets married, if the father still goes on reproducing children, it is ugly. It is like when your small son is born and he plays with toy boats and you are also playing with toy boats. It will be stupid, you will simply show that you are retarded. If you go on carrying a teddy bear… It is perfectly okay for a child, but a man of fifty years carrying a teddy bear and who cannot go to sleep without a teddy bear will be ugly; it will show immaturity, the man has not grown.Fifty is the time – enough! Twenty-five years you have lived in the world, it is enough to see that it is only a drama. It is enough to give you an experience of its falseness, of its illusoriness. It is made of the same stuff dreams are made. It is enough to see. And now your children will be playing the same game, and you are also playing the same game; it does not look right.The moment your son comes back, in the days of the Upanishads, the father will start removing himself from the jobs, the work, the money, the power game – all the games. Now the son has to be given the place, not reluctantly – rejoicingly, happily. Now let him play the games. Otherwise fathers are also in the same game, their children are in the same game, even their grandchildren are in the same game. The grandchildren are chasing girls and the grandfathers are chasing girls! It looks so ugly, as if nobody seems to have grown up. Maybe physically they are old, but not psychologically mature.To grow old is not to grow up, remember it. To grow up is a psychological process. So when a man turned fifty he would start giving place to his children, and there was no competition. Now there is every competition in every field.Somebody like Morarji Desai, at the age of eighty-five still trying again to be the prime minister of the country… Then what about the children? If you are interested in the teddy bears, then what about the children? What about the young people who really need space and opportunity? These old fools go on and on, they don’t stop. There is no retiring age for the politicians, no retiring age for the wealthy. They never retire, they only die. Only then reluctantly they have to retire, otherwise they won’t retire.There is a college in London, a medical college; the man who founded the college, who gave the money, presided his whole life on the board of the directors, and when he died his will was opened and all were puzzled and shocked. His will said, “All my money is for the college, provided I still continue to preside.” After death – and he is still presiding! After two hundred years he is still presiding in that medical college. His body has been preserved. His body sits in the place of the chairman and when the board meets, he presides. Of course somebody else does the work as acting president, but the real president is there in the chair! People don’t even want to retire after death – he has not retired.Now just think of that meeting, how the other directors who are alive will be feeling, sitting with a dead man, a corpse! And he is the president, and they must be addressing him, “Sir, president sir!”But this is the situation all over the world. In Sri Lanka a man of ninety years is now the prime minister. Now these dead people are bound to create bad feelings in the younger generation, and they say it is the younger generation who are wrong. It is not so.When people used to live not that long, when people used to live not more than seventy years, it was okay; the younger generation could tolerate them, hoping that they are going to die sooner or later – don’t get into a hurry, don’t kill them. But medical science has now made it possible for people to live indefinitely.In Russia there are thousands of people who have crossed the age one hundred fifty, and they are still working. Now what do you want? The younger generation is bound to be angry. Sooner or later younger people will start killing these old people – they have to be killed! How long you can tolerate? They will destroy your whole life! By the time you are a hundred they may die, but then other younger people are there who will push you into the grave!It was very psychological that when your children returned from the gurukul – the ashrams were called gurukuls. Gurukul means the place where the master lives and his family. His disciples are his family. Where the master lives with his disciples – the family of the master, the commune of the master.When the children start coming, the father, the mother, the elders, have to vacate and joyously because now they are being relieved. Twenty-five years they will still remain in the home so that they can help their children to be in the world, so they can hand over everything to the children. By the time their grandchildren start coming home they will go back to the ashrams.This is the full circle of life, four stages. It begins in the ashram, it ends in the ashram. It begins in the ashram as a disciple and it ends in the ashram as a master. The circle is complete. A man after seventy-five years of age: twenty-five years’ experience with a master, then twenty-five years’ testing time in the world, then twenty-five years of slow withdrawal, not a hasty renunciation, a very meditative withdrawal, slowly, and then back into the forest, into the ashram. Now he comes as a master in his own right; a fully lived life, experienced in all possible ways, sacred and mundane, he becomes a master himself – and children will be coming again.The master in the Upanishads was talking to innocent people, unpolluted by the world, not skeptical, uncorrupted; trusting, loving.Buddha after twenty-five centuries was speaking to a totally different audience. Ashrams had disappeared, died; the whole beautiful institution died. It died because of the Jains – they are the culprits because Jains insisted that the masters should not live in one place. Jains have a very life-negative attitude and they are as old as the Upanishads. They insisted on asceticism, they insisted on renouncing the world, and they insisted that one should not live in one place because if you live in one place long enough you may get attached to the place. Their fear of attachment was so much, they were so obsessed with the fear, they were living in a kind of phobia, in a panic.The Jain muni, the Jain monk, is allowed to stay only three days in a town, then he should leave because if he stays longer than that there is a possibility he may start growing friendship, he may become loving to people, he may become attached to the place, to people, he may not like to move.Jains are against ashrams. An ashram means the master lives there permanently with his disciples. Jains insisted that the Jain monk should be a wanderer; he should not stay anywhere. They destroyed the beautiful institution of the Upanishads, they destroyed it completely. And they appealed more to people because people are so foolish, they become attracted to any kind of unnatural thing. They became attracted to the Jain munis, they thought these are the real renouncers of the world because the Upanishadic seers lived very ordinarily, just as everybody else lives. The only difference was they used to live in forests. Of course, to live in the forests was far more beautiful than to live in the marketplace. They were not against the marketplace, but they knew the beauty of the forest, the nature and all its joys and all its climates. They were not there against the world, they loved the beauty of nature. They were not there for any negative reason, they were there for a positive reason. They loved the trees, the wild animals, the flowers, the silence of the forests. They were in immense love with the forest. They were poets. Their going to the forest was not renunciation, it was rejoicing in nature. Remember the difference.Jains started a totally different kind of tradition in India – the tradition of the wanderer – and they destroyed the whole institution of the ashram. And the wanderers cannot be masters because what can you teach in three days living in a place? And they go on moving. They are afraid, very much afraid of relating to people. What can they teach? They are themselves afraid, living out of fear, their whole orientation is fear of the world. They destroyed the beautiful universities that existed around masters.My effort here is to again create a real ashram, a real commune. That’s why I want to move to the forests. I am not against the world, against the marketplace, but I know the beauty of the hills, of the lakes, of the oceans, and I would like you to experience it and to experience it with me so you can share my vision, so you can dance with the trees and sing with the birds, so that you can start feeling the humming sound that comes when you meet with the universe – om – so that you can feel that music, the eternal music, the celestial music.Buddha came after the Jains had completely destroyed the institution of the ashrams. He had to talk to the skeptical, he had to talk to the crowd, he had to talk to people who had never known any meditation. Hence, he had chosen the expression of the negative. He would say, “The ultimate is a no-self.” But the Upanishads say, “The ultimate is the supreme Self,” but they both mean the same thing.The senses cannot reach It.It is ever beyond their grasp.Obviously the senses are to grasp the objective world. You can see the whole world with your eyes, except your eyes themselves. If you want to see your eyes you will have to use a mirror, and then too you are not seeing your eyes, you are only seeing their reflection in the mirror. And those are not your eyes, just a reflection, and the reflection may not be correct; it all depends on the mirror and the quality of the mirror. The mirror may be made in India! You may be seeing somebody else’s eyes which have nothing to do with you. And you must have seen, there are many kinds of mirrors: in some mirrors you look very small, in some mirrors very tall, in some mirrors very fat, in come mirrors very thin. It all depends on the mirror how you look. In fact, I don’t think there is any mirror which exactly represents you one hundred percent; there cannot be.See the point: your eyes are capable of seeing everything except themselves; your hand can grasp everything except itself. Your senses are made for the external reality, they are your grasp toward the external. But to the internal they are impotent; they cannot grasp your interiority, and that is where your reality is. They can catch hold of the wheel, but the axle remains beyond them.Remaining still, It outstrips all activity,Yet in It rests the breath of all that moves.It is the axle. …in It rests the breath of all that moves. And once you have experienced your absolute, unmoving center, then you know all activity depends on it – although it is not active.This is the meaning of the Upanishadic emphasis of action in inaction, or the Zen emphasis of effortless effort, or Bodhidharma’s statement that if you can just sit silently doing nothing, everything will happen. You are not to do anything, just sit silently so you can have an experience of your axle. Sitting silently you become more aware of the axle than of the wheel. If you are active you remain on the wheel, the merry-go-round – or the sorry-go-round, it all depends on you – more or less it is a sorry-go-round! You cling to the wheel and the wheel goes on moving.Sitting silently simply means settling at the very center where all activity ceases, but it is also the source of all activity. The inactive is the source of activity, the nothing is the source of all things.It moves, yet moves not.You walk, you go for a morning walk; in a way you are moving, in a way you are not moving. Your body is moving, your mind is moving, but your consciousness is the same. You were a child, then you became young, then old. Everything has moved and yet nothing has moved, your consciousness is still the same.That’s why it is very difficult: if you don’t keep a record, if you don’t have a birth certificate, if you don’t have a calendar, it is very difficult to judge your age. If you close your eyes and you try to figure out how old you are, you will not be able to figure it out at all.That’s why if you go to the primitive tribes where no clocks exist, no calendars, and nobody knows when he was born because people cannot count beyond their ten fingers… Even the person who can count the ten fingers is thought to be very literate, educated, cultured. He becomes the priest or the chief. If you ask people, “How old are you?” They will not be able to answer you, there is no way.You cannot judge by your own inner being, some outer measurement is needed. Why? – because when you close your eyes and you look within it is always the same, it never changes – and in a way, everything has changed. You will not be able to recognize your photograph when you were one day old – or do you think you will be able to recognize? And in the mother’s womb, in nine months’ time, you passed through all the stages that life has passed through – millions of years. First you were like a fish and finally you were like a monkey – and very few people grow out of that stage!Darwin may be right about a few people: a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu… In fact, I cannot count even Darwin! He may be right about a few people, that they have evolved beyond the monkeys, but as far as others are concerned they have only descended from the trees – that is true – but they have not evolved. They have not become better than the monkeys.Just watch your mind and you will see: the monkey goes on jumping. Your mind is a monkey and it takes longer jumps – quantum leaps – than any monkey can ever do. The monkey can jump from one branch to another branch, from one tree to another tree, but not much, but you can jump from the earth to the moon. Your mind has become a greater monkey.Every child comes to that stage in the mother’s womb. If you are shown a picture or a series of pictures you will not be able to believe that this is you! The first day in the mother’s womb, do you think you will be able to recognize? It will just be a dot, almost invisible to the naked eye, you will need a microscope to see it. But then all those changes are peripheral, at the center you are still the same. Nothing has changed, nothing ever changes.Watch when you are going for a morning walk tomorrow: the body moves, but something in you remains unmoving.It moves, yet moves not.It is far, yet It is near.It is far if you go through the mind, it is very far. In fact, it is so far you will never reach it. But if you go through meditation it is very near, nearer than your own ego – it is the nearest. It is your very being, but it depends. If you go through the mind, then you have taken the longest route possible; if you go through no-mind, then you have taken the shortest route possible.It is within all this,And yet without all this.It is within and without both. But first you have to experience it within because that is the nearest point, the nearest door you can enter the temple of God. And then once you have experienced it as your very self you will know it is everybody’s self. Then you will see it in the trees and in the rocks, in the animals, in the people – you will see it everywhere. Once you have recognized it within yourself you cannot miss recognizing it anywhere.He who sees everything as nothing but the Self,and the Self in everything he sees.Such a seer withdraws from nothing.Remember these tremendously significant words: Such a seer withdraws from nothing.The whole idea of renunciation is non-Aryan, but Indians think that that is their culture. That is just absolute unawareness of what they are talking about. Renunciation is a non-Aryan phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the Indian culture or Indian religion. It has come from the Jains, and Jains are not part of Indian culture.When Aryans came to India, nearabout ten thousand years ago, India was a very civilized country. When the Aryans came, India was flourishing, it was not unpopulated. Now explorers have discovered Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. These two cities must have gone through tremendous calamities because both the cities show indications that they were destroyed seven times. They have excavated and they have found seven layers; the oldest is the seventh at the bottom. One is unable even to comprehend how old the oldest is, but somehow it was destroyed – maybe a great earthquake, some upheaval in the earth – and it is covered with earth. Then the second time again the city was populated and the third time… Seven times it has been populated and destroyed.Naturally it has been destroyed by some natural calamity and the possibility is that the Himalayas were rising up very close by, and when such a great mountain rises, then all around it there are great upheavals, bound to be so. Such a great, huge… the greatest mountain coming up means everything will change for thousands of miles around. And the Himalayas are still growing. It is the youngest mountain in the world – still growing, still becoming higher. But when the first time it must have arisen out of the earth you can think what calamity must have surrounded the whole of North India; Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were destroyed seven times.In Harappa and Mohenjo-daro statues have been found which can only be related to the religion of the Jains – naked statues, sitting like Mahavira in a lotus posture or standing like Mahavira, meditating. Only Jains are known to meditate standing, no other religion has prescribed meditation to be done in a standing posture. And they are all naked – only the Jain religion has believed in naked masters. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro must have survived a little bit. The Jain religion seems to be far older than the Hindu religion, it must have come from Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro must have been Jain cultures, remnants of it remained and they infiltrated the Aryan mind.Otherwise the Aryans have never been in favor of withdrawing from life, they have always rejoiced in life. But Jains have contaminated the whole mind; they have succeeded in corrupting the whole idea.Such a seer – says the Isa Upanishad – withdraws from nothing.There is no need to withdraw because all is God. To withdraw from the world means to withdraw from God’s manifestation. It is an unholy act to withdraw, to renounce. The Upanishads believe in rejoicing, not in renouncing, and that’s my approach too.Hence I would like to say to the so-called defenders of Indian culture that they are not really defenders of Indian culture. I am, because whatsoever I am saying is rooted in the Upanishadic vision: Rejoice in everything because all is God! From the lowest to the highest, everything is divine. I am certainly against the Jain attitude of withdrawal, renouncing, but I am not against the Upanishadic attitude – I am all for it.For the enlightened, all that exists is nothingbut the Self.The supreme self, God himself.So how could any suffering or delusion continuefor those who know this Oneness?There is no question of suffering or delusion. The moment you drop your ego and you become one with the whole, all suffering disappears. Suffering is only illusory; it is a dream, a nightmare. When you wake up, all dreams disappear. Just like that – when you become awake, aware, all suffering disappears. Life becomes a sheer joy, a dance, a celebration!He who pervades all, is radiant…God means that which pervades all, and he is very radiant. All that you need is to open your eyes. But first you have to see his radiance within yourself, then only will you be able to recognize it on the outside. He is unbounded because the universe is vast and there are no boundaries. He is untainted because there is no other thing that can taint it.These are immense declarations: you are untainted, you are radiant, you are unbounded. Just drop the ego and you become one with this infinity, with this eternity that existence is. He is invulnerable and pure. So are you.He is the knower, the one Mind…What Buddha calls no-mind, the Upanishads call …the one Mind… but they mean the same thing.He is the knower… God is the knower. When you become a knower you are a god. To know is to be a god because he is the knower:…omnipresent…He is present everywhere because there is nothing else that can be present.Remember, the Upanishads don’t believe in any Devil, any Satan, they don’t believe in any hell because all is divine. How can there be a hell? Hell is your creation, the shadow of the ego. It is just a delusion – it exists not.He has harmonized diversity throughout eternal time.God is the harmony of all that is, and you can watch – everything is harmonious. The trees are swaying with the wind, there is harmony. They are not fighting the wind, they are dancing with the wind. The stars are moving in tremendous harmony. This vast existence is a great orchestra. All is tuned with everything else. There is no conflict, no division, no disharmony.Only man can believe that he is separate because he has consciousness, and consciousness gives you the alternative. Either you can think yourself separate – then you fall in misery and hell – or you can try to understand the oneness and suddenly there is bliss. To be one with the whole is bliss, to be separate with the whole is misery.Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashisyate.OmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Sitting fretfully, squirming endlessly, does the spring still come and the grass grow by itself?The spring still comes. It does not depend whether you are sitting silently or fretfully, whether you are sitting or not sitting at all. It does not depend on you, it comes on its own accord. The grass goes on growing, but if you are not sitting silently you will miss it. It will come, but you will not be able to feel it. It will come, but you will not be able to experience it. The grass will grow, but you will not grow.The sun rises, the night disappears, but the light is only for those who have eyes and only for those who open their eyes; otherwise you will remain in darkness. The sun will be there, the light will be there, but you will not be bathed in its light. You will remain the same.The whole question is whether you are closed or open. Silence opens you, the inner noise keeps you closed to existence, both within and without. The outside is a beautiful world – the whole sky with the stars, the flowers, the birds singing, the clouds floating, the rivers, the mountains. And the inside world is even far more beautiful because the outside is the manifest part of the inside and the inside is vaster than the outside. The unmanifest is unlimited, the manifest is bound to be limited. The unmanifest contains all the future possibilities; the manifest contains only that which has become actual in the past. The unmanifest contains all the universes that will ever happen in the coming eternity. Of course, it is far bigger than the outer.Between the two is the mind. Between the within and the without there is a wall – a China Wall of thoughts, desires, memories, expectations, frustrations… And because of the thick wall and the constant noise that is bound to be there – each memory hankering to be listened to, each desire nagging you to be fulfilled, each imagination forcing you to be realized, each expectation torturing you, goading you so that you can succeed in fulfilling it… The noise is great, there is great conflict. The desires are antagonistic to each other.If you want to be powerful, of course you will have to choose a few desires and you will have to leave a few desires. There are desires to be famous, desires to be wealthy, desires to be powerful, and desires to be healthy, and desires to be loved, and desires to be creative; they cannot all be fulfilled simultaneously. And whenever you choose, the unchosen desires will nag you; they will try to drag you toward themselves.This chaos cannot allow you to see either the beauty that surrounds you or the beauty that resides in you. It cannot allow you to see the rainbows on the circumference and it cannot allow you to see the source of all joy, of all truth, of all beauty within you – the kingdom of God within you.You ask me, “Sitting fretfully, squirming endlessly, does the spring still come…” Certainly, the spring comes, but not for you; you are not available, you are not there. You are so occupied, so engaged, that you can’t see out, you can’t see in. Your eyes are covered with layers of desires and thoughts.The grass certainly goes on growing because the grass is sitting silently doing nothing – but you are not sitting silently doing nothing. If you can sit silently doing nothing like the grass, you will also grow.That’s the way the ignorant become enlightened: becoming silent, just now. Just a moment of silence, a pause and you can hear the songs of the birds and you can suddenly feel the silence. Then there are no longer five thousand sannyasins here; the Buddha Hall is empty, and that emptiness is a great experience. It is ecstatic.The spring is felt suddenly – it can be felt right now. Then nothing distracts you. This noise of the plane is not a distraction, it will even deepen your silence, it will become a contrast to the silence, it will help define the silence.The outer noise is not a distraction, but the mind inside remaining continuously in an insane state is the only distraction.There are foolish people who renounce the world in search of silence. The world does not disturb you, what disturbs is your mind – and they don’t renounce the mind. When a Hindu becomes a monk he still remains a Hindu. Do you see the absurdity? He has renounced the Hindu society, but he still carries the idea of being a Hindu. If you have renounced the Hindu society, then this idea of being a Hindu was given by the same society, how can you carry it?Somebody becomes a Christian monk, but he still remains a Christian – a Catholic, a Protestant. The mind is so stupid; if you look at its stupidities you will be surprised, amazed. How can you be a Catholic if you have renounced the world? But people renounce the world, they don’t renounce the mind – and the mind is a byproduct of the world! The child is raised by the Hindus, then he becomes a Hindu because the parents are cultivating Hindu ideology – or Christian, or Mohammedan, or Jain.Just the other day I was talking about how Jainism destroyed the beautiful concept of the Upanishadic ashrams. When I passed around the Buddha Hall going back, I looked particularly at my Jain sannyasins – they were not looking happy. Even my sannyasins! But whenever I criticize Hinduism – and I have seen the same sannyasins so joyous – of course the Hindus feel offended. Even my sannyasins somehow go on carrying their minds deep down.I don’t teach you to renounce the world, I teach you to renounce the mind. And that’s what is meant by this immensely beautiful Zen saying:Sitting silently, doing nothing,The spring comes and the grass grows by itself.All that is needed on your part is to be absolutely silent. And that’s exactly the meaning of the word upanishad: sitting silently, doing nothing, by the side of a master – that means by the side of a spring, allowing the spring to possess you, to take you along with it like a tidal wave.Your inner being is not something that has to be developed, it is already perfect. No spiritual development is needed, it only has to be discovered. Once silence falls over you, you start discovering it. It is the noise and the dust that the mind creates that goes on hindering the discovery.The second question:Osho,My parents are so disappointed in me, they worry all the time. They have made my being here possible, so how can I turn from them? What do I owe to my parents?The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood. Man has not yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it, he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection. But, when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves and to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don’t help beyond a certain limit.To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing, any animal can do it. It is a natural biological instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary, very few people are really capable of being parents.The criterion is that real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.But that’s what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has ever been able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in turmoil. He knows death is coming closer every day, he can feel death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized. He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands – he will go just the way he had come, with empty hands.Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain as unfulfilled as the parent, will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases, we go on infecting children with our ideas that have not proved valid in our own lives.Somebody has lived as a Christian, and his life shows that no bliss has happened through it. Somebody has lived like a Hindu and you can see that his life is a hell. But still they want their children to be Hindus or Christians or Mohammedans. How unconscious man is.I have heard…A very sad, mournful man visited a doctor in London. Seating himself in a chair in the waiting room and glumly ignoring the other patients he awaited his turn. Finally the doctor motioned him into the inner office where after a careful examination the man appeared even more serious, sad and miserable than ever.“There’s nothing really the matter with you,” explained the doctor, “you are merely depressed. What you need is to forget your work and your worries. Go out and see a Charlie Chaplin movie and have a good laugh.”A sad look spread over the little man’s face. “But I am Charlie Chaplin!” he said.It is a very strange world. You don’t know people’s real lives, all that you know is their masks. You see them in the churches, you see them in the clubs, in the hotels, in the dancing halls, and it seems everybody is rejoicing, everybody is living a heavenly life – except you of course because you know how miserable you are within. And the same is the case with everybody else. They are all wearing masks, deceiving everybody, but how can you deceive yourself? You know that the mask is not your original face.But the parents go on pretending before their children, go on deceiving their own children. They are not even authentic with their own children. They will not confess that their life has been a failure; on the contrary, they will pretend that they have been very successful. And they would also like the children to live in the same way as they have lived.You ask, “My parents are so disappointed in me…” Don’t be worried at all – all parents are disappointed in their children! And I say all, without any exception. Even the parents of Gautam the Buddha were very disappointed in him, the parents of Jesus Christ were very disappointed in him, obviously! They had lived a certain kind of life – they were orthodox Jews – and this son, this Jesus, was going against many traditional ideas, conventions. Jesus’ father, Joseph, must have hoped that now he is growing old, the son will help him in his carpentry, in his work, in his shop – and the stupid son started talking about the kingdom of God! Do you think he was very happy in his old age?Gautam Buddha’s father was very old and he had only one son, and he was born to him when he was very old. His whole life he had waited and prayed and worshipped and did all kinds of religious rituals so that he could have a son, because who is going to look after his great kingdom? And then one day the son disappeared from the palace. Do you think he was very happy? He was so angry, violently angry, he would have killed Gautam Buddha if he had found him! His police, his detectives were searching all over the kingdom. “Where is he hiding? Bring him to me!”And Buddha knew it, that he would be caught by his father’s agents, so the first thing he did was he left the boundary of his father’s kingdom, escaped into another kingdom, and for twelve years nothing was heard about him.When he became enlightened he came back home to share his joy, to say to the father, “I have arrived home,” “I have realized,” “I have known the truth – and this is the way.”But the father was so angry, he was trembling and shaking – he was old, very old. He shouted at Buddha and he said, “You are a disgrace to me!” He saw Buddha – he was standing there in a beggar’s robe with a begging bowl – and he said, “How dare you stand before me like a beggar? You are the son of an emperor and in our family there has never been a beggar. My father was an emperor, his father was too, and for centuries we have been emperors! You have disgraced the whole heritage!”Buddha listened for half an hour, he didn’t say a single word. When the father ran out of gas, cooled down a little – tears were coming out of his eyes, tears of anger, frustration. Then Buddha said, “I ask for only one favor. Please wipe your tears and look at me; I am not the same person who has left the home, I am totally transformed. But your eyes are so full of tears you cannot see. And you are still talking to somebody who is no more. He has died.”This triggered another rage and the father said, “You are trying to teach me? Do you think I am a fool? Can’t I recognize my own son? My blood is running in your veins – and I cannot recognize you?”Buddha said, “Please don’t misunderstand me. The body certainly belongs to you, but not my consciousness. And my consciousness is my reality, not my body. You are right that your father was an emperor and his father too, but as far as I know about myself I was a beggar in my past life and I was a beggar in a previous life too because I have been searching for truth. My body has come through you, but you have been just like a passage. You have not created me, you have been a medium, and my consciousness has nothing to do with your consciousness. What I am saying is that now I have come home with a new consciousness, I have gone through a rebirth. Just look at me, look at my joy!”The father looked at his son, not believing what he was saying. But one thing was certainly there: that he was so angry, but his son had not reacted at all. That was absolutely new – he knew his son. If he was just the old person he would have become as angry as the father or even more because he was young and his blood was hotter than the father’s. But he was not angry at all, there was absolute peace on his face, a great silence. He was undisturbed, undistracted by the father’s anger. The father had abused him, but it seemed not to have affected him at all.He wiped his tears from his old eyes; looked again, saw the new grace…Your parents will be disappointed in you because they must have been trying to fulfill some expectations through you. Now you have become a sannyasin, all their expectations have fallen to the ground. Naturally they are disappointed, but don’t become guilty because of it, otherwise they will destroy your joy, your silence, your growth. Remain undisturbed, unworried. Don’t feel any guilt. Your life is yours and you have to live according to your own light.When you have arrived at the source of joy, your inner bliss, go to them to share. They will be angry – wait because anger is not anything permanent, it comes like a cloud and passes. Wait! Go there, be with them, but only when you are certain that you can still remain cool, only when you know that nothing will create any reaction in you, only when you know that you will be able to respond with love even though they are angry. And that will be the only way to help them.You say, “…they worry all the time.” That is their business! And don’t think that if you had followed their ideas they would not have worried. They would have still worried, that is their conditioning. Their parents must have worried and their parents’ parents must have worried, that is their heritage. And you have disappointed them because you are no longer worrying. You are going astray! They are miserable; their parents have been miserable, and so on, and so forth up to Adam and Eve. And you are going astray! Hence the great worry.But if you become worried you miss an opportunity, and then they have dragged you back again into the same mire. They will feel good, they will rejoice that you have come back to the old traditional, conventional way, but that is not going to help you or them.If you remain being independent, if you attain the fragrance of freedom, if you become more meditative – and that’s why you are here: to become more meditative, to be more silent, more loving, more blissful – then one day you can share your bliss. To share, first you have to have it, you can share only that which you have already got.Right now you can also worry, but two persons worrying simply multiplies worries. They don’t help each other.You say, “…they worry all the time.” It must have been their conditioning. It is the conditioning of everybody in the world.A rabbi was the guest of a family. The man of the house, impressed by the honor, warned his children to behave seriously at the dinner table because the great rabbi was coming. But during the course of the meal they laughed at something and he ordered them from the table.The rabbi then arose and prepared to leave.“Anything wrong?” asked the concerned father.“Well,” said the rabbi, “I laughed too!”Don’t be worried about their seriousness, about their worrying about you. They are trying unconsciously to make you feel guilty. Don’t let them succeed because if they succeed they will destroy you and they will also destroy an opportunity for them which would have become possible through you.You say, “They have made my being here possible…” Be thankful for that, but there is no need to feel guilty. “…so how can I turn from them?” There is no need to turn from them, but there is no need to follow them either. Go on loving them. When you meditate, after each meditation pray to existence that “Something of my meditativeness should reach my parents.” Be prayerful for them, be loving to them, but don’t follow them. That won’t help you or them.You say, “What do I owe to my parents?” You owe this: that you have to be yourself. You owe this: that you have to be blissful, that you have to be ecstatic, that you have to become a celebration unto yourself, that you have to learn to laugh and rejoice. This is what you owe to them: you owe to them enlightenment.Become enlightened like Gautam the Buddha and then go to your parents to share your joy. Right now what can you do? Right now nothing is possible. Right now you can only pray.So I am not saying turn away from them. I am saying don’t follow them, and this is the only way you can be of some help to them. They have helped you physically, you have to help them spiritually. That will be the only way to repay them.The third question:Osho,Why is it I feel fully alive only when I am in love? I tell myself that I should be able to spark myself without the other, but so far no luck. Is this some stupid “Waiting for Godot” game I am playing with myself? When the last love affair ended I swore to myself I was not going to let the same old deadening process happen, but here I am again feeling half alive, waiting for him to come.One remains in need of the other to that point, up to that experience, when one enters one’s own innermost core. Unless one knows oneself, one remains in need of the other. But the need for the other is very paradoxical, its nature is paradoxical.When you are alone you feel lonely, you feel the other is missed, your life seems to be only half. It loses joy, it loses flow, flowering; it remains undernourished. If you are with the other, then a new problem arises because the other starts encroaching on your space. He starts making conditions upon you, he starts demanding things from you, he starts destroying your freedom – and that hurts.So when you are with somebody, only for a few days when the honeymoon is still there… And the more intelligent you are, the smaller will be the honeymoon, remember. Only for utterly stupid people can it be a long affair, for insensitive people it can be a lifelong thing. But if you are intelligent, sensitive, soon you will realize what you have done. The other is destroying your freedom, and suddenly you become aware that you need your freedom because freedom is of immense value. And you decide never to bother with the other.Again when you are alone you are free, but something is missing because your aloneness is not true aloneness; it is only loneliness, it is a negative state. You forget all about freedom. Free you are, but what to do with this freedom? Love is not there, and both are essential needs.Up to now humanity has lived in such an insane way that you can fulfill only one need: either you can be free, but then you have to drop the idea of love… That’s what the monks and nuns of all the religions have been doing: drop the idea of love, you are free. There is nobody to hinder you, there is nobody to interfere with you, nobody to make any demands, nobody to possess you. But then life becomes cold, almost dead.You can go to any monastery and look at the monks and the nuns, their life is ugly. It stinks of death, it is not fragrant with life. There is no dance, no joy, no song. All songs have disappeared. All joy is dead. They are paralyzed – how can they dance? They are crippled – how can they dance? There is nothing to dance about. Their energies are stuck, they are no longer flowing. For the flow the other is needed, without the other there is no flow.The majority of humanity has decided for love and dropped the idea of freedom. Then people are living like slaves. Man has reduced the woman into a thing, a commodity, and of course the woman has done the same in her own subtle way: she has made all the husbands henpecked.I have heard…In New York a few henpecked husbands joined hands together. They made a club to protest, to fight – the Men’s Liberation Movement, or something like that! And of course they chose one of the most henpecked husbands for the president of the club.The first meeting happened, but the president never turned up. They were all worried. They all rushed to his home and they asked him, “What is the matter? Have you forgotten?”He said, “No, but my wife won’t allow me. She says, ‘If you go out, I will never allow you in!’ And that much risk I cannot take.”I have heard that on the doors of paradise there are two signs – there are two doors in fact. On one sign is written: “Those who are henpecked should stand here.” This is the door for them. The other door is for those few rare human beings who are not henpecked. St. Peter has been waiting and waiting that some day somebody will come who will stand by the other door which is not meant for the henpecked ones, but nobody ever stood by that gate.One day St. Peter was surprised: a very small, thin, weak man came and stood there. Peter was puzzled, amazed. He asked the man, “Can you read?”He said, “Yes, I can read – I am a PhD, a professor of philosophy!”Then Peter said, “This door is only meant for those who are not henpecked husbands. Why are you standing here when the whole queue is standing at the other door?”He said, “What can I do? My wife has told me to stand here! And even if God says to me…I cannot leave this place unless my wife allows!”Man has reduced woman into a slave and the woman has reduced man into a slave. Of course both hate the slavery, both resist it. They are constantly fighting, any small excuse and the fight starts.But the real fight is somewhere else deep down, the real fight is that they are asking for freedom. They cannot say it so clearly, they may have forgotten completely. For thousands of years this is the way people have lived. They have seen that their father and their mother have lived in the same way, they have seen that their grandparents have lived in the same way. This is the way people live – they have accepted it. Their freedom is destroyed.It is as if we are trying to fly in the sky with one wing. A few people have the wing of love and a few people have the wing of freedom – both are incapable of flying. Both wings are needed.You say, “Why is it I feel fully alive only when I am in love?” It is perfectly natural, there is nothing wrong in it. It is how it should be. Love is a natural need, it is like food. If you are hungry, of course you will feel a deep unease. Without love your soul is hungry, love is soul nourishment. Just as the body needs food, water, air, the soul needs love. But the soul also needs freedom, and it is one of the strangest things that we have not accepted this fact yet.If you love there is no need to destroy your freedom. They can both exist together, there is no antagonism between them. It is because of our foolishness that we have created the antagonism. Hence the monks think the worldly people are fools, and the worldly people deep down know that the monks are fools – they are missing all the joys of life.A great priest was asked, “What is love?”The priest said, “A word made up of two vowels, two consonants, and two fools!”That is their condemnation of love – because all the religions have condemned love, they have praised freedom very much. In India we call the ultimate experience moksha. Moksha means absolute freedom.You say, “I tell myself that I should be able to spark myself without the other, but so far no luck.” It will remain so. It will not change. Rather you should change your conditioning about love and freedom. Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.If you cannot make it happen in this commune, here with me, you cannot make it happen anywhere else. This is the beginning of a new humanity. Of course it is only a seed now, but soon you will see it will grow into a vast tree. But we are experimenting upon many things. One of the dimensions of our experiment is to make love and freedom possible together, their coexistence together. Love a person but don’t possess, and don’t be possessed. Insist on freedom and don’t lose love. There is no need. There is no natural enmity between freedom and love, it is a created enmity. Of course for centuries it has been so, so you have become accustomed to it, it has become a conditioned thing.An old farmer down South could barely speak above a whisper. Leaning on a fence by the side of a country road he was watching a dozen razorbacks in a patch of woodland. Every few minutes the hogs would scramble through a hole in the fence, tear across the road to another patch of woodland, and immediately afterward scurry back again.“What’s the matter with them hogs anyway?” a passing stranger asked.“There ain’t nothing the matter with them,” the old farmer whispered hoarsely. “Them hogs belongs to me and before I lost my voice I used to call them to their feed. After I lost my voice I used to tap on this fence rail with my stick at feeding time.”He paused and shook his head gravely. “And now,” he added, “them cussed woodpeckers up in them trees has got them poor hogs plumb crazy!”Just a conditioning! Now those woodpeckers are driving them hogs plumb crazy because when they do the knocking they rush, thinking that it is food time.That’s what is happening to humanity.One of the disciples of Pavlov, the founder of the conditioned reflex – the discoverer of the theory of the conditioned reflex – was trying an experiment on the same lines. He bought a puppy and decided to condition him to stand up and bark for his food. He held the pup’s food just out of reach, barked a few times, then set it on the floor before him. The idea was that the pup would associate standing up and barking with getting his food and learn to do so when hungry.This went on for about a week, but the little dog failed to learn. After another week the man gave up the experiment and simply put the food down before the dog, but the pup refused to eat it. He was waiting for his master to stand and bark! Now he had become conditioned.It is only a conditioning, it can be dropped. You just need a little meditativeness. Meditation simply means the process of unconditioning the mind. Whatsoever the society has done has to be undone. When you are unconditioned you will be able to see the beauty of love and freedom together, they are two aspects of the same coin. If you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom – that’s a gift of love. And when there is freedom, love responds tremendously. When you give freedom to somebody you have given the greatest gift, and love comes rushing toward you.You ask me, “Is this some stupid ‘Waiting for Godot’ game I am playing with myself?” No. “When the last love affair ended, I swore to myself I was not going to let the same old deadening process happen, but here I am again feeling half alive, waiting for him to come.”But just by swearing, just by deciding, you cannot change yourself. You have to understand. Love is a basic need, as basic as freedom, so both have to be fulfilled. And a man who is full of love and free is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. And when two persons of such beauty meet, their relationship is not a relationship at all. It is a relating. It is a constant, riverlike flow. It is continuously growing toward greater heights.The ultimate height of love and freedom is the experience of God. In God you will find both: tremendous love – absolute love – and absolute freedom.The fourth question:Osho,Why are you not getting bored while you are telling the same stories and the same jokes?Divakar Bharti,The first thing to be understood is that Divakar Bharti is an Indian, and Indians are absolutely unable to understand jokes! They don’t have any jokes in India. I have not come across a single Indian joke. Indians are serious people – spiritual people, religious people. They only talk of great things: God, heaven, hell, the theory of karma and rebirth.When you tell a joke to an Indian he feels offended…you see? He feels offended, insulted! Look at his face, he feels embarrassed. Talk about something esoteric – bullshit him! – and then he is perfectly happy. He never laughs, he cannot; laughter is beyond him. He has forgotten laughter.That’s why the question has arisen in you. Otherwise each joke, in a different context, is different. The joke in itself may be an old one – and in fact, there are no new jokes in the world. The proverb that there is nothing new under the sun may not be right about other things, but about jokes it is absolutely right. If Adam and Eve come back to the earth they will recognize only the jokes and nothing else. The same jokes, but the context goes on changing, and in a different context the same joke has a different meaning.But because you cannot understand the jokes you must be feeling bored.G. C. Lichtenberg has a profound statement. He says: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.I have heard…It is said: The gravest fish is an oyster, the gravest bird is an owl, the gravest beast is a donkey, and the gravest man is an Indian fool!There are fools of all kinds, they come in all shapes and sizes, but the Indian is the best. Each race reacts, responds differently to jokes.If you tell a German a joke, he laughs once, just to be polite. If you tell the same joke to a Frenchman, he also laughs once because he understands immediately. If you tell the same joke to an Englishman he laughs twice: first to be polite, and second in the middle of the night when he gets it. If you tell the same joke to an American he laughs, but not loudly, and he says, “I have heard it before!” If you tell the same joke to a Jew, instead of laughing he says, “It is an old joke, and what is more, you are telling it all wrong!”I don’t feel bored because I cannot feel bored – it is simply impossible for me. I have completely forgotten how to feel bored. You can go on telling me the same joke again and again and I will always find some new meaning, some new nuance, some new color, some new dimension to it, but I cannot feel bored because I am no more. To feel bored you need the ego, it is the ego that feels bored. When the ego is no longer there it is impossible to feel bored.A simple-minded old woman had a cow that fell sick. In her distress she called the rabbi to pray for its recovery.To comfort the poor woman, the rabbi walked around the cow three times intoning, “If she dies, she dies, but if she lives, she lives.” Happily the cow recovered.Some time later the rabbi became ill and the woman, recalling how he had cured her cow, visited him. She walked around his bed three times, solemnly repeating, “If he dies, he dies, but if he lives, he lives.” Where upon the rabbi burst out into sidesplitting laughter that soon led to his recovery.I cannot feel bored – I am no longer there. And I don’t remember what I have said to you yesterday, so how can I tell the same joke again? It is never the same, it cannot be. I never remember what has been said by me, and I have been telling people thousands of things for the last twenty-five years. I never read any of my books. I never listen to any of my lectures – why should I feel bored?But you are in the wrong place here. This is not a place for serious people like you! You should find some old Hindu monastery.The little red man woke up, opened up his little red curtains and looked out at the little red sunrise. He showered in his little red bathroom, put on his little red clothes and left his little red house. Getting into his little red car, he drove through the little red town to his little red office block. There he went up in the little red elevator to the tenth floor, walked along the little red corridor and entered his little red office. He sat down at his little red desk and read his little red newspaper. Deciding that his life was too boring to live any more, he took out a little red knife and slashed his little red wrists.Ten minutes later his little red secretary entered his little red office and found her little red boss covered in little red blood. She grabbed the little red telephone and phoned the little red hospital. Soon a little red ambulance arrived. The little red attendants rushed into the little red office, put the little red man on a little red stretcher and raced across the little red town to the little red hospital. Quickly they carried the little red man into the little red operating theater and placed him on a little red table.One minute later the door to the little red operating theater opened and in walked a little green man. “Sorry!” he said. “I seem to have walked into the wrong joke!”This is not a place for you – a little red world and you are a green man here! You have walked into the wrong joke – walk out!The last question:Osho,How do you always find new names to give to your sannyasins?It is a secret!Two women were looking in the new arrivals section in a bookshop. One woman was very interested in a book. The title of the book was, How to Torture Your Husband. She said to the other woman, “Look at this book! I am going to purchase it. Are you also interested in it?”“No, the other woman said, “I have my own system!”I also have my own system, but I cannot tell you. Certainly I have given more names than anybody may have ever given in the whole history – there are almost two hundred thousand sannyasins in the world! But my system is such that I can give names to the whole humanity.A Red Indian boy was asking his father, “Father, how do you give names to new children? Your name is Black Horse, my mother’s name is Buffalo, my uncle’s name is White Cloud – how do you manage to find out what is the true name for the new arrival, the new child?”The father said, “It is not difficult – we have a system. Whenever a child is born, the eldest member of the family – the grandfather, the grandmother or the father – goes out of the house, and whatsoever he sees first… For example when my grandfather went out he saw a black horse, that’s how I was named Black Horse. But why are you asking Two Dogs Fucking?”That was his name! I have my own system, but I cannot tell you.Just the other night I gave sannyas to a beautiful woman, her name is Diotima. I called her Dhyan Diotima. Diotima is a mythological name. In Greek mythology Diotima is the priestess of love or goddess of love. But it can be derived from another root also, diota. Diota means a jar with a neck and two handles.So I told the woman, “This is your situation right now: a jar with a neck and two handles. That’s what a woman is all about! But through meditation you can become a priestess of love. That transformation is possible. Otherwise you will remain just a jar with a neck and two handles!”It is not very difficult, and the more names I have given the easier it has become because I have become more proficient. I can find some way, either from the root of the word – and there are different roots; even in one language a word means many things. Sometimes a word has different roots in different languages. In one language it means one thing, in another language it means another thing. And it is very easily possible to play with words, names are nothing but a game.I give you a new name only to make you feel that names are not important. Your old name can simply disappear because it was only a label, it can be changed. You are not the name. To insist on this fact, to emphasize this fact upon your consciousness, that the name is not your reality…Every child comes into the world without a name, but we have to give a name, it has some utility. It is absolutely false, but in a vast world with millions of people it will be difficult to manage if nobody has a name, it will become almost impossible to manage. Some names are needed; they are false, but they work, they have a utility. They have no reality, but utility certainly they have.But ordinarily you grow with your name, in fact, you become conscious only later on. Your name is deeper than your consciousness, hence there arises an identity with the name. You start feeling, “This is my name, this is me.”When you become a sannyasin I want to destroy that identity because this is the beginning of destruction of all identities. First I destroy the identity with the name, then I will destroy the identity with the body, then the identity with the mind, then the identity with the heart. When all these identities have been destroyed you will be able to know who you are: the unidentified, the nameless, the formless, the indefinable. And that is only a pure witness in you. Nothing can be said about it, no word is adequate to explain it.Hence, I change the name to give you a break, to give you the idea that your name is just a given thing. Your old name disappears, a new name becomes your reality, but now you will not get so identified because now you are more mature. The first name was given when you were a small child, you were not aware. Now you are a little bit aware. And by becoming a sannyasin you are becoming committed to more and more awareness, to a life of witnessing in which all identities have to be dropped.A man is absolutely free only when there is no identity left. You are neither a Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan, you are neither an Indian nor a Japanese nor a German, you are neither a man nor a woman. You are just a pure consciousness, and that consciousness is eternal. The Upanishads are talking about that consciousness.The only thing to be learned in the communion with the master is that witness, that watcher, that seer, that watcher on the hills who is beyond everything. Everything falls short to that which is transcendental. To know that transcendental reality of you, I start by changing your name. That is just taking one brick out of your false edifice. And then if you allow me to take one brick, I will go on taking other bricks. I change your clothes just to give you a discontinuity with the past.You have to become discontinuous to the past. Unless you die to the past you cannot be reborn, you cannot be here-now. The past has to be completely dropped and forgotten – it was a dream, nothing more – and out of the past arises the future. If the past is dropped, the future disappears. Then the only reality is now and here. And to be here and now, absolutely here and now, is to know all that is worth knowing, is to really live an authentic, sincere life, a life full of truth and bliss and godliness.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Can an enlightened person be wrong? This refers to what you told us about J. Krishnamurti, who keeps on saying that one does not need a master, which is actually not right. Please comment.An enlightened person can never be wrong. Neither is J. Krishnamurti wrong, but he never considers the situation that you are in. He considers only the space in which he is, and that freedom is part of enlightenment.The enlightened person has reached the highest peak of consciousness, his abode is on Everest. Now it is his freedom to speak according to the peak, the sunlit peak where he is, or to consider the people who are still in the dark valley, who know nothing about the light, for whom the peak of the Everest is only a dream, only a perhaps. This is the freedom of the enlightened person. Krishnamurti speaks in terms of where he is.I speak in terms of where you are, I consider you because if I am speaking to you, you have to be taken into consideration. I have to lead you toward the highest peak, but the journey will begin in the dark valley, in your unconsciousness. If I talk about my experience, absolutely inconsiderate of you, I am right but I am not useful to you.An enlightened person is never wrong, but he can be useful or he can be useless.J. Krishnamurti is useless! He is perfectly right, about that there is no question because I know the peak and what he is saying is certainly true – from the vision of the peak. Those who have arrived, for them the journey becomes almost a dream phenomenon. For those who have not arrived the journey is real, the goal is just a dream. They are living in two different worlds. When you are talking to a madman you have to consider him, if you don’t consider him you cannot help him.Once a madman was brought to me. He had this crazy idea that one afternoon when he was sleeping, a fly had entered his mouth. And because he used to sleep with his mouth open, nobody could deny the possibility. Since then he was very much disturbed because the fly was roaming inside him, jumping inside him, moving in his belly, going to his bladder, circulating in his bloodstream, sometimes in his head, sometimes in his feet. And of course he could not do anything because he was continuously occupied, obsessed with the fly.He was taken to the psychoanalysts and they said, “This is just in your mind, there is no fly. No fly can move in your bloodstream, there is no possibility. Even if a fly has entered, it must have died. And now six months have passed, it cannot be alive inside you.”He listened, but he could not believe it because his experience was far more solid. He was taken to the doctors and everybody examined him and they did everything, but finally they would say, “It is just a mental thing. You are imagining.” He would listen to what they were saying, but he could not trust because his experience was far more certain than their words.His family brought him to me as a last resort. The man was looking very tired because he was being taken to one person, then to another, then all kinds of physicians: allopaths and homeopaths and naturopaths; and he was really tired. In the first place the fly was tiring him, and now all these “pathies,” medicines. Everybody was insulting him – that was his feeling. They were saying that he was just imagining. Is he a fool or is he mad, that he will imagine such a thing? They were all humiliating him – that was his feeling.I looked at the man and I said, “It is so clear that the fly is inside!”For a moment he was puzzled. He could not believe me because nobody had said that to him – because nobody had considered him. And they all were right and I was wrong – there was no fly, but the madman has to be considered.And I said, “All those fools are just wasting your time, you should have come here first. It is such a simple thing to bring the fly out, there is no need to bother. Medicines won’t help – you are not ill. Psychoanalysis will not help – you are not crazy.”And immediately he was a changed man. He looked at his wife and said, “Now what do you say? This is the right man,” he said, “who really knows. And all those fools were trying to convince me that there is no fly. It is there!”I said to him, “It is simple – we will take it out. Lie down.”I covered him with a blanket and told him to keep his eyes closed and said, “I will do some mantra, some magic, and we will bring the fly out. You just keep quiet so that the fly sits somewhere. Otherwise the fly is continuously running – where to catch it?”He said, “That looks logical. I will keep absolutely still!”And I said, “Don’t open your eyes. Just remain silent, breathe slowly, so the fly settles somewhere, so we can catch hold of it!”Then I rushed into the house to find a fly. It was a little bit difficult because I was trying that for the first time, but finally I succeeded – I could get a fly in a bottle. And I came to the man, I moved my hand on his body, and I asked him, “Where is the fly?”And he said, “In the belly.”And I touched the belly and I said, “Of course it is there!” And I convinced him that I perfectly believed in him and then I uncovered his blanket and showed him the fly.And he said to the wife, “Now see! Give this bottle to me, I will go to all those fools and take all the fees that they have taken from me. I have wasted thousands of rupees, and all that they did was they told me I am mad. And now I don’t feel the fly anywhere because it is in the bottle!”He took the bottle and he went to the doctors.One of the doctors who knew me, came to see me. He said, “How did you manage? Six months a fly can live in the body? And that man has taken his fee back from me because he was making such a fuss that I said, ‘Better give it back to him!’ And he proved that he was right!”I said, “It is not the point who is right.”Gautam the Buddha defines truth as that which works. This is the most ancient pragmatic definition of truth: that which works. All the devices are truth in this sense: they work. They are only devices. The Buddha’s work is upaya. Upaya exactly means device.Meditation is an upaya, a device. It simply helps you to get rid of that which you have not got in the first place: the fly, the ego, the misery, the anguish. It helps you to get free of it, but in fact it is not there. But it is not to be told…Krishnamurti has been doing that. He has been telling crazy people that the fly does not exist and you don’t need any doctor. I say to you the fly exists and you need the doctor. Because just telling you that the fly does not exist is not going to help you at all.For thousands of years you have been told the ego does not exist. Has it helped you in any way? There have been people who have said, in this country particularly, that the whole world is illusory, maya, it does not exist. But has it helped India in any way? The true test is there: whether it has helped, whether it has made people more authentic, more real. It has not helped at all. It has made people more deeply cunning, split, schizophrenic; it has made them hypocrites.All the religions have done this because they don’t consider you. And you are far more important than the ultimate truth because the ultimate truth has nothing to do with you right now. You are living in a dreamworld, some device is needed which can help you to come out of it. The moment you are out of it, you will know it was a dream – but a person who is dreaming, to tell him that it is all dream is meaningless.Have you not observed in your dreams that when you are dreaming it looks real? And every morning you have found that it was unreal. But again in the night you forget all your understanding of the day – again the dream becomes real. It has been happening again and again, every night the dream becomes real, every morning you know it is false, but that knowing does not help. In the dream one can even dream that “This is a dream.”And that’s what has happened in India: people are living in maya, deeply in it, and still saying, “This is all maya.” And this talk too is part of their dream, it does not destroy the dream. In fact it makes the dream more rooted in them because now there is no need to get rid of it because it is a dream! So why get rid of it? It does not matter.In a subtle way all the religions have done this, they have talked from the highest peak to the people for whom that peak does not exist yet. The people are living in darkness, and you go on telling them that darkness has no existence. It is true – darkness has no existence, it is only the absence of light – but just by saying to people that darkness has no existence is not going to bring light in.That’s what Krishnamurti is doing. It has been done by many people, Nagarjuna did it – Krishnamurti is not new, not at least in the East. Nagarjuna did it. He said, “Everything is false. The world is false, the ego is false, nothing exists. Because nothing exists you are already free. There is no need for any meditation, there is no need for any master. There is no need to find out any device, strategy, technique because in the first place there is no problem. Why go on looking for solutions? Those solutions will create more problems, they are not going to help.”Nagarjuna did it; before Nagarjuna, Mahakashyap did it, and it has been a long tradition. Zen people have been saying the same thing for centuries. Krishnamurti never uses the word zen, but whatsoever he is saying is nothing but Zen – simple Zen.Zen says no effort is needed, nothing has to be done. When nothing has to be done, what is the need of a master? – because the master will tell you to do something. Nothing has to be done. What is the need of the scriptures? – because the scriptures will tell you to do something, to know something. Nothing has to be done. Nothing has to be known. You are already there where you are trying to reach.And I know this is true, but to talk about this ultimate truth to people who are living in tremendous darkness is futile.No enlightened person can ever be wrong, but only few enlightened persons have been of help. The majority of enlightened people have been of no help at all, for the simple reason that they never considered the other.In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say, “Don’t consider the other.” It was one of his basic teachings: “Don’t consider the other. Just say what is absolutely true.” But the absolute truth is truth only when experienced, people are living in relative truth.My approach is different from Krishnamurti’s. I know that one day you will come to that point where nothing is needed – no master, no teaching, no scripture – but right now the scripture can be of help, the methods can be of help, and certainly a living master can be of immense help.The function of the master is to give you that which you already have and to take away that which you don’t have at all.The second question:Osho,Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc. certainly were enlightened masters. But Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and whatsoever has developed from them, have not much to do with the ideas of the masters. Osho, I am sure you are an enlightened master too, but what can we do, or what at all is possible to do, to prevent Oshoism?Hermann, nothing can be done at all, and don’t waste your time. Whatsoever has happened was natural. Christianity was bound to happen, it was inevitable. When a man like Christ walks on the earth he will leave footprints on the sands of time, and people will worship those footprints. Christianity is nothing but worship of the footprints, it leads you nowhere. But it is bound to happen.It is as inevitable as the birth of a child bringing death in; you cannot avoid death. If the child is born, death is going to happen. And of course we have known that so many people were born before and so many people have died, so when your child is born you may try to do something so he need not die. That is impossible – birth brings death.When a living master is there, sooner or later the master will be gone and there will be a dead teaching left. That dead teaching becomes Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism; it will become Oshoism too. Nothing can be done about it – in fact, your very concern is the beginning of it, even the fear. That means Christianity has not happened yet, but the anti-Christian has arrived.I am alive! Oshoism will happen when I am gone, but to you it has already happened and you are trying to find ways to prevent it. And why should you bother? Who are you to decide for others? You are not a sannyasin, you are not part of my commune, you have no communion with me, you have not tasted of the wine that is available here – and you are worried about others, that these people will worship the bottles when the wine is gone! [At this point a cuckoo bursts loudly into song…]Look! It always happens exactly at the time – even the birds agree with me. The bird was saying, “Hermann, you are a fool!” Drink right now! Who are you to bother about the future? And why should you prevent people from Oshoism? If they want it, then that is their business. Why you should take the responsibility? Why should you prevent people from their freedom? If they want to worship something dead they are entitled to it!But to me you are far more foolish than those people. At least they will be worshipping a bottle – and you are missing the wine! Drink the wine and leave the bottle. If people want to play with the bottle they will play, they are collectors. There are collectors who collect bottles of wine, and sometimes it helps too.I have heard one case…In the First World War two brothers separated. The father divided all his property because he was getting old and he was worried about the younger son – because he was a drunkard and he will destroy the whole thing, and even the eldest son will suffer because of the younger. So he divided them equally.And a miracle happened. In the First World War the value of money went so low – as it always does in wartime, things become very costly and money loses its purchasing capacity. The drunkard had a habit of collecting bottles. He finished all the money, he drank and he enjoyed. And the other son was so miserly that he was clinging to the money that he had got, but money was going down every day.And the miracle was this: a moment came when the money became almost useless, almost valueless, and the younger son sold all his bottles and he had more money than the elder brother. He enjoyed the wine and he sold the bottles. And the elder was a fool – he was just clinging to the money.Life is very mysterious and the ways of God are very strange. God is always for the drunkards! He loves these crazy people.If you really feel that I am an enlightened person, then what are you doing here? Drink out of my enlightenment! Others are drinking. And I don’t think that you think that I am enlightened because the way you say: “Osho, I am sure you are an enlightened master too…”You are not sure. When people are not sure, only then they use the word sure. If you are sure, then take the jump in! Then why are you standing on the bank? And while the river is alive, do something so that you can quench your thirst. And leave it to others.Oshoism is bound to happen – I am not worried about it. It is a natural phenomenon. Don’t become obsessed with it. Christianity has happened, Buddhism has happened, Jainism has happened, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, all kinds of “isms.” They are not unnatural, otherwise they would not have happened.There are people who can connect themselves only with dead masters – and you seem to be one of those people, you can also connect with dead masters. Now you are so concerned about Jesus, Buddha, Krishna because they are dead. Now a few are Christians – they are concerned with the dead. Now a few are anti-Christians – they are also concerned with the dead.Bertrand Russell has written a book: Why I Am Not a Christian. Why bother about it? There are people who are writing books why they are Christians and there are people who are writing books why they are not Christians. Both are wasting their time!Friedrich Nietzsche became so obsessed with anti-Christianity that in the last years of his life, when he went mad, he started signing his name as “Antichrist Friedrich Nietzsche.” Friedrich Nietzsche became secondary, that anti-Christ attitude became more primary. And he was not really anti-Christ, he was only anti-Christian, but when you start moving in a certain direction, if you are logical, you will reach the logical end. This was the logical end. First he started condemning Christianity, and then slowly, slowly he found that Christianity is a byproduct of Christ, so naturally he started condemning Christ, and for everything! Sometimes he would go to such absurd lengths to condemn Christ and he would find such rationalizations, such excuses, that one has to say one thing, that he was really imaginative and really logical.For example, Jesus at the last moment prays to God on the cross, “Forgive these people my father, because they know not what they are doing.” It is one of the most beautiful utterances, but Friedrich Nietzsche became so obsessed with anti-Christianity that he cannot accept even such a beautiful statement. And if you are not interested in accepting anything as beautiful, if you are bent upon finding something wrong, you can always find it. He found something wrong even in this. He said, “This means Jesus thinks only he knows and everybody else is ignorant.”Look at his approach. Jesus is praying to God, “Forgive these people. They are crucifying me only because they know not what they are doing.” Friedrich Nietzsche condemns it – even this beautiful statement is condemned. He finds a logical reason that this shows only an egoistic approach: “I know, and all these people are fools, ignorant. They know not, so forgive them.” This asking, praying to God to forgive the people, is an egoistic approach; it is not love, it is ego, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.Jesus has said, “If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too.” Now this is one of the greatest statements ever made by anybody, of tremendous beauty, of deep love, of nonviolence – but Friedrich Nietzsche condemns it. He says, “This is humiliating to the other person. This is insulting the other person’s integrity, his humanity. When somebody hits you on one cheek and you give him the other you are showing him, ‘Look how saintly I am, holier-than-thou, and you are just an animal.’ You are insulting him!” Nietzsche says it will be far better to hit him back because that means you have accepted him on equal terms; you are not lowering him. And if you listen to his logic you can find there is something in it.Logic is a game, it can be played from both the sides. Logic is a prostitute – it can be with anybody, whosoever is ready to pay.Nietzsche remained concerned against Christianity and against Christ his whole life. Now this is sheer wastage. There are people who are praying to Christ and there are people who are condemning Christ, but both are concerned with the dead person. And if you are concerned, I think praying is far better than condemning because the person who is praying may get something out of it, but the person who is condemning is not going to get anything out of it.My approach is that if you happen to meet a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, don’t miss the opportunity. And don’t become concerned about others – respect them. They have their own life and they have to decide about it. And millions will always decide to be with a dead master because that is convenient, comfortable. A living master is always uncomfortable, inconvenient.Just think of yourself being with Jesus when he was alive, there were a thousand and one difficulties…One day Jesus was a guest in a house and Mary Magdalene came – and she was a prostitute. She started washing Christ’s feet with a very costly perfume, with a very costly oil. Judas could not tolerate it – he was a socialist. He is the real founder of communism in the world; Karl Marx, etcetera, are just offshoots.He immediately said to Jesus, “This is not right! This perfume, this perfumed oil is so costly that if we sell it we can feed all the poor of this town for at least three days. This is sheer wastage – you should not allow such wastage. A man like you should immediately stop.“Secondly” – now he is far more religious than Jesus – “a prostitute should not be allowed to touch your feet, it is prohibited. A man like you, a man of God, should not allow a prostitute to touch him.”Jesus said, “Look at her heart. Thousands of people come to me, but rarely I see such love, such surrender. How can I say to her, ‘Don’t touch me.’ That will be ugly!”Now to be with this man who is going against the whole tradition of religion is dangerous. To be with this man who is allowing the woman to destroy a precious thing that can feed the poor people…and what does Jesus say? Jesus says, “When I am gone the poor people will still be with you, so there is no hurry, you can feed them later on. While the bridegroom is here, celebrate!”Now, will you be ready to say yes to Jesus? Immediately your rational mind will say, “This is not right! He is not concerned about the poor people at all. He is not concerned about the tradition of the sages at all. He is very unsocialistic, he does not understand anything of economics, he is not compassionate to the poor.”Do you think Mother Teresa of Kolkata would have agreed with him? Impossible! She would have said, “This can help many orphans. We can open a school for the poor children or we can purchase medicine for the ill, and what are you doing?”Do you think Jesus could get a Nobel Prize? I don’t think – impossible. You would rather agree with Judas – he is more rational, more socialist than Jesus.To be with Buddha would have been difficult for you because to be with Buddha means surrender, total surrender. The ego has to be put aside.It is very easy to be with dead masters because to be with dead masters is very nourishing to the ego – that you are a follower of Jesus, follower of Buddha, follower of Krishna. But to be with Krishna would have been really impossible – he had sixteen thousand wives! Would you agree with this man? What kind of enlightened man is this Krishna? Sixteen thousand wives! And they were not all married to him – many he had stolen – they were married to other people. How can you agree with this man?And he persuaded Arjuna to go into war, and the reasons that he gave were, “The soul is eternal, so don’t be bothered. You can kill – the soul is not killed, only the body, and the body is dead anyway. So there is no violence involved because the soul is immortal and the body is mortal. You are only separating the immortal from the mortal, there is nothing wrong in it – just separating the essential from the nonessential.”Do you think you would have agreed?That’s why people create Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism – it is easier, very easy because then you can manage the dead master according to your ideas. You can put your ideas in his mouth, you can ignore the ideas that go against you, you can interpret, manipulate, rationalize; you can do thousand and one things because the master is no longer there.So many people need dead masters, that is their need. And remember one economic law: wherever there is demand there will be supply. Because people need dead masters, that’s why the Pope is needed – a representative of a dead master. The Shankaracharya is needed – a representative of a dead Shankara. Ayatollah Khomeiniac is needed – a representative of a dead Mohammed. People need, that’s why these things happen, and nothing can be done about it.My concern is not at all about the future. I accept the way things are, they cannot be otherwise. My insistence is while I am here, if you are really interested in transforming your life, then the opportunity is available. Don’t miss it.The third question:Osho,I always feel that I have to ask you a lot of things. I feel a burden inside. But every time I form a question it looks ridiculous and stupid.It is ridiculous and it is stupid – you are perfectly right in not asking. And even if you ask, do you think I answer? I never answer any question, I simply destroy the question! It is not answering it, it is destroying it. It is hitting the question from all sides. It is a kind of murder: murdering the question, and, if possible, the questioner too! So nothing is left because if the questioner is left he will again ask.You see here are five thousand people. Many are killed already! They don’t ask, they have understood that I never answer any question. I just play around the question a little bit, and if you are acquainted with me and I know that you will not escape, then I start hitting you. If I think you will escape, then for a few days I behave very politely!I never answer anything. I am an ancient Jew…Once a rabbi was asked by a Christian priest, “Rabbi, will you please give me a straight answer to a plain question? Why is it that the Jews always answer a question by asking one?”The rabbi reflected for a moment, then replied, “Do they?”The prosecutor was questioning a Jewish witness.“Do you know the man who has just testified?”“How should I know him?” said the Jew.“He said you borrowed five thousand dollars from him. Did you?”“Why should I borrow money from him?” said the Jew.Visibly annoyed, the judge interrupted, “Why do you answer every question put to you with another question?”“Why not?” said the Jew!In a lawsuit for damages the Jewish lawyer for the plaintiff had long experience with juries. He gave force to his words by all kinds of body movements, waving his arms, hammering with his fists, his face expressing a raging storm of feelings. Finally he sat down, his voice drained, his body exhausted.The defense counsel arose, who was also a Jew, and began to mimic his opponent. He swung his arms freely in front of the jury, twisting and distorting his face, pointing with fingers, tearing his passion to tatters – without ever uttering a word.After a few minutes he smoothed his hair and straightened his tie and said quickly to the jury, “Now that I have answered every argument of my learned opponent, let me discuss with you the facts in this case.”You see my hands go on making all kinds of gestures? That is just an old Jewish tradition!You ask, “I always feel that I have to ask you a lot of things.” Everybody feels that because the mind is like a tree. Just as on a tree leaves grow, on the mind questions grow. And my effort here is not to prune the leaves because pruning simply makes the foliage thicker. My effort here is to cut the roots, the very roots, so the tree dies.Everybody comes here with a lot of questions, but whether you ask them or not they are worthless. I answer them just to keep you engaged here, to keep you occupied. And side by side the real work goes on; in meditations, in therapy groups, I have put people to cut your roots. I go on answering so that you feel that your philosophical inquiry is satisfied, and you remain occupied with questions and answers. And I have put my people…meanwhile they are cutting your roots. Sooner or later your roots are gone, then the leaves disappear of their own accord.When all questions disappear, the answer is found, never before it. The answer is never found by questioning; the answer is found by dropping all questions, questioning as such because the answer is your own experience of silence, joy, godliness. That is the answer. Unless that is found, questions will go on arising.But it is good that you yourself have started feeling that “Every time I form a question it looks ridiculous and stupid.”All questions are ridiculous and stupid.The fourth question:Osho,In the Mahabharata, Yudhishthira was asked a question: “What is surprising?” (kim ashcharyam) by a yaksha. If you were in his place, what would be your answer?The most surprising thing in life is that nobody seems to be surprised! People take life for granted; otherwise everything is a mystery, everything is simply amazing. It is a miracle that a seed becomes a tree, that as the sun rises in the morning the birds start singing. It is a miracle! Each moment you come across miracles and still you don’t look surprised. This is the most surprising thing in life.My answer would have been that people take life for granted – this is the most surprising thing. Only children don’t take it for granted. That’s why children have beauty, a grace, an innocence. They are always living in wonder, everything brings awe. Collecting pebbles on the seashore or seashells… Watch the children, with what joy they are running, with what joy they are collecting – just colored stones, as if they have found great diamonds; collecting flowers, wild flowers, and look into their eyes; or running after butterflies, watch them. Their whole being, each cell of their body is mystified. And that’s the most important quality that makes life worth living.The person who loses his quality to be surprised is dead. The moment your surprise is dead, you are dead. The moment your wonder is dead, you are dead. The moment you become incapable of feeling awe, you have become impotent.To be born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad is the quality that makes life worth living – not only worth living, but worth dancing, worth celebrating.An old farmer visited a circus for the first time. He stood before the dromedary’s cage, eyes popping and mouth agape at the strange beast within. The circus properly began and the crowds left for the main show, but still the old man stood before the cage in stunned silence, appraising every detail of the misshapen legs, the cloven hoofs, the pendulous upper lip, and the curiously mounded back of the sleepy-eyed beast.Fifteen minutes passed. Then the farmer turned away in disgust. “Hell!” he exclaimed. “There ain’t no such animal!”Rather than feeling surprised people would like to deny: “There ain’t no such animal!” That makes you at ease again, otherwise a restlessness arises in you.I have heard about a general, a great military general who was posted in Paris. One morning he took his small son to the garden, just for a morning walk. He was very happy that the child was so fascinated by the statue of Napoleon mounted on a horse, a big marble statue. The child said, “Daddy, Napoleon is so beautiful, so great! Can you bring me every day when you come for a morning walk, just to have a look at the great Napoleon?”The father, being a general, was very happy that the child is also becoming interested in people like Napoleon: “This is a good sign. Sooner or later he will also become a great general!”After six months he was transferred, and he took his son for the last time to the garden so that he could say good-bye to Napoleon. And the son went there, tears in his eyes, and he said to the father, “I have always wanted to ask one question, but I become so fascinated with the great Napoleon when I come to the garden that I always forgot to ask the question. Now this is the last day and I would like to inquire. Who is this guy, always sitting on top of poor Napoleon?”I was reminded of this story just a few days ago. In a press conference, Morarji Desai was asked, “If people want you to become the prime minister of India again, will you be ready?”And he said, “Yes, if people want me to ride on a donkey, even then I will be ready.”I was reminded about this story. There will be a problem: how will people know? “Who is this guy riding on poor, poor Morarji Desai?” And how will they make a distinction who is who?That’s why in India, in a marriage procession when the bridegroom goes to the house of the bride, he rides on a horse. A small child asked his father, “Why does the bridegroom always rides on a horse? Why not on a donkey?”The father said, “You don’t understand. If he rides on the donkey, then how is the bride going to find who is the bridegroom? A donkey riding on a donkey will be very difficult to make distinctions!”Morarji Desai riding on a donkey! It will be a really great joy to see a donkey riding on a donkey!If you look at life you will find everywhere immense surprises.He was fifty and had spent the best years of his life with a woman whose constant criticism had driven him mad. Now, in poor health and with his business on the verge of bankruptcy, he made up his mind. He went to the dining room, fastened his tie over the chandelier, and was about to end it all. At that moment his wife entered the room.“John!” she cried, shocked at the scene before her. “That is your best tie!”A young man vacationing in the upper Midwest woods decided to write to his girl, but having no stationery with him, walked to the trading post. The attendant was a young, well-stacked girl with a sensual appeal.“Do you keep stationery?” he asked.“Well,” she smiled, “I do until the last few seconds, and then I go wild!”Just look around!A soldier disembarked in New York after two long years abroad and was met by his beautiful wife.Alone at last in their room at the hotel, they were disturbed by the sudden clamor in the corridor and a cry of “Let me in!”The rattled soldier jumped out of bed and panted, “It must be your husband!”His distracted mate reassured him. “Don’t be foolish!” she said. “He is thousands of miles away somewhere in Europe!”One just needs a clear perspective, and each moment you are in for a great surprise.She was very nearsighted and very pretty, but too vain to wear glasses on her honeymoon and unable to wear contact lenses. When she returned from her honeymoon, her mother immediately got in touch with the oculist. “You must see my daughter at once,” she pleaded. “It is an emergency!”“There is nothing to be excited about,” he reassured her. “She is nearsighted, that’s all.”“That’s all?” repeated the mother. “Why, this young man she has got with her is not the same one she went on her honeymoon with!”The only thing that is most surprising is that you don’t look surprised. And this is how your life becomes a life of boredom, a life of sadness.Bring your surprising quality back as you had it in your childhood. Again look with those same innocent eyes. Dionysius calls it agnosia, a state of not knowing, and the Upanishads call it dhyana, samadhi, a state of not knowing. It is not ignorance.Ignorance and knowledge belong to the same dimension: ignorance means less knowledge, knowledge means less ignorance; the difference is of degrees. Agnosia, samadhi, is not ignorance; it is beyond both ignorance and knowledge. It is a pure state of wonder. When you are full of wonder, existence is full of God.The last question:Osho,I spent thirteen years in different nuns' convents, and was born in a family composed of one priest, two nuns, one monk and one missionary. With such a number, any jokes you tell about these people provoke a healing laughter for which I am grateful. Could you tell us some more good ones?This is really surprising – such a great family, and you still survived! Not only that, you have arrived here! That’s what makes me hopeful about humanity, that’s why I never lose hope.Two men met at a bar and struck up a conversation. After a while one of them said, “You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation. A few years ago I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter and we got married. Later my father married my stepdaughter. That made my stepdaughter my stepmother, and my father became my stepson. Also my wife became the mother-in-law of her father-in-law. Then the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This boy was my half-brother because he was my father’s son, but he was also the son of my wife’s daughter, which made him my wife’s grandson. That made me the grandfather of my half-brother. This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the sister of my son, my mother-in-law, is also the grandmother. This makes my father the brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my father’s wife.“I am my stepmother’s brother-in-law, my wife is her own child’s aunt, my son is my father’s nephew – and I am my own grandfather. And you think you have family problems!”Feel grateful to God, to be born in such a family is rare. It is a unique opportunity!A Catholic nun in a small residential hotel complained to the desk clerk that the man in the adjoining room kept annoying her with indecent songs.“You must be mistaken,” replied the clerk politely “Mr. Pritchard never sings any songs.”“I know,” replied the Catholic nun, “but he whistles them.”Grandma was in her eighties. She tired easily, had little appetite, and was sometimes confused mentally. Her son called the doctor, who arrived shortly and was shown up to Grandma’s room. Half an hour later he came down.“There’s no need to worry,” he explained. “I have given her a thorough examination and there is nothing really wrong with her except her age. She will be all right.”Son and daughter-in-law, much relieved, went upstairs to see her. “Well, mother,” asked her son, “how did you like the doctor?”“Oh, so that was the doctor?” she said. “I thought he acted rather familiar for a clergyman!”The young couple moved from their small town to the big city, leaving behind family and relatives, mostly elderly. Their young son still continued to include them in his nightly prayers. One night he seemed to have forgotten Uncle Joseph. Strangely enough, the next day they learned that Uncle Joseph had passed away.Some months later he again skipped a name in his prayers – Aunt Mary. The next day they learned that Aunt Mary had passed away.Thereafter they listened most carefully to his nightly prayers to discover if any blessings were left out. Sure enough, several weeks later, after “God bless Mommy” he omitted “God bless Daddy.” This panicked his father, who did not dare go downstairs all night or even leave the bedroom, but stayed in bed worrying about his child’s supernatural powers of prophecy.The next morning they got word from their former hometown that their friendly priest had died.And the last:A salesman is forced to share a room with a rabbi in a crowded hotel. He enters the room and finds the rabbi kneeling in a corner, rocking on his heels while murmuring his prayers.“Hi!” says the salesman. “I’m your new roommate.”The rabbi nods without interrupting his prayers.“Well then, which bed shall I take?”The rabbi points to one bed, continuing to pray.The salesman nervously unpacks his bag, then all of a sudden says, “Say, rabbi, do you mind if I bring up a girl?”The rabbi, still praying, holds up two fingers.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is there something wrong with me? I feel proud to be a Polack!There is nothing wrong with being a Polack. Polacks are as beautiful as anybody else, or a little more, a little more juicy.A sign outside a police station read: “Man Wanted For Rape.” Next day three Polacks applied for the job.But it is certainly wrong to feel proud. Whether one feels to be proud as an Indian or as a Polack or as an Englishman, it does not matter. These are just excuses. The real thing is that the ego wants some support. The ego cannot stand on its own feet, it needs crutches. It claims, “My country is the best country in the world, my religion the most superior, my culture the most evolved,” and so on and so forth.Anything can be used as a prop for the ego, and that’s certainly wrong, particularly for the sannyasin because the whole effort of sannyas is to drop the ego in all its possible forms, subtle or gross, manifest or unmanifest, direct or indirect.One has to be constantly aware of the tricks of the ego, its ways are subtle. If you throw it out from one door, it enters from the other door – and in a new disguise. Unless you are really alert it is going to grab you from behind.Many times you feel the misery that is created by the ego and many times you have dropped it, but it again creates new temptations. And because the temptations are new you think it is not the old ditch you are falling in. It is the same ditch – of course painted with fresh colors, changed a little bit here and there, renovated…Beware of the ego. Pride is not good for a sannyasin. That’s the only difference between a sannyasin and a non-sannyasin. The old idea of sannyas was to renounce the world; my idea of sannyas is to renounce the ego because even if you renounce the world the ego will go on hidden within you wherever you go. In fact, when it starts taking on spiritual colors it becomes far more difficult to get rid of it.Just as if your chains are made not of ordinary steel but of the purest of gold, studded with diamonds – then you would not like to drop them. To you they will appear like ornaments, and if somebody says, “These are chains,” you will be offended, you will be angry.A Hindu is offended if you say to him that to be a Hindu is to be in a prison. A Mohammedan is angry if you say to him that to be a Mohammedan means to be a slave. The same is true about the Christians and the Jains and the Buddhists.But to be proud simply means you are thinking yourself separate from existence. Secondly, you are thinking of yourself as special.To be a sannyasin means to be just natural. You are not higher than anybody and you are not lower than anybody. You are simply part of the same existence. How can one be lower or higher? It is not only a question of being on equal terms with human beings; you are on equal terms with the trees, with the rocks, with the stars. Simply, there is nobody inside you who feels separate. This is true equality, and the true equality is always rooted in equanimity, equilibrium.To feel higher in any way is simply a proof that deep down you are suffering from an inferiority complex – it is just a compensation. The politician feels higher than others because he has power, political power. The wealthy feels higher than others because he has power, economic power. And the so-called spiritual person also feels higher than others because he has again the same kind of thing: power – spiritual power, purity, morality, virtue. But these are nothing but properties.In my vision a sannyasin is utterly ordinary, and in that very ordinariness the extraordinary explodes.The second question:Osho,The other day in darshan you were talking about women and transforming their energy. You said that in the past, masters such as Jesus, Mahavira, and even Gautam the Buddha were not able to understand and transform women's energy and allow it to come to a peak. You said that this time here with you it will be possible for women as well as for men to flower and come to a peak. Somehow, I was very deeply touched by this. Can you say something more about this difference between man and woman and how you work with us in different ways?The difference between man and woman is not much. The difference is simple. It is like a man by your side is standing on his head: what is the difference between you, who is standing on your legs, and the man who is doing a headstand, a shirshasana? In fact, none! You are both the same, but in a way there is a difference. The difference is that the man who is standing on his head is upside-down. That’s the only difference between a man and a woman.What is conscious in man is unconscious in women, and what is unconscious in women is conscious in men. Man is man only in his consciousness; in his unconsciousness he is woman, feminine. That’s why whenever you feel a man in any way moving closer to his unconscious he becomes softer, feminine, loving, tender.That’s why the people who are condemned by the society, the sinners, are more loving people than your so-called saints. Your so-called saints are hung up in the conscious, they don’t allow their unconscious, they repress it. They disassociate themselves from their unconscious. They condemn it. They create a distance between themselves and the unconscious, they define themselves only through the conscious. That’s why they look so hard.Look at the faces of your so-called saints: the moralists, the puritans, the people who are continuously carrying the load of “holier-than-thou.” Just look at their faces and you will find hard lines, stiffness, uptightness – a quality that cannot be called soft, tender, loving.Watch the so-called sinners, the condemned people, and you will be surprised that they have more tender hearts. They are more loving people, more companionable. You can enjoy the company of the sinners, you cannot enjoy the company of the saints. If you put four saints together they will be constantly quarreling – quarreling about stupid things: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, how many hells there are. Buddha says there is only one hell, Mahavira says there are seven, Sanjaya Vilethiputta says there are seven hundred!If you put a dozen saints in one house there will be no peace at all in that house, they will be constantly barking at each other. Sometimes I am fascinated by the idea that dogs may be reincarnations of saints – barking at anything, and particularly at a few things. For example, all dogs are against uniforms: they will bark at the postman, the policeman, the sannyasin. Maybe they are angry at their own past life!But sinners are very friendly for the simple reason – I am not telling you to become sinners, I am simply making a point so that you can understand why sinners look so soft, loving, human, and why saints look so inhuman. The reason is the sinners are closer to their unconscious and man’s unconscious is feminine.The same happens with intellectual women, particularly the women who belong to the Liberation Movement. They are harsh, ugly, hard, and constantly argumentative. They become unloving, they become very egoistic. They are a new version of female saints, for the simple reason again because they have gone against their natural unconscious spontaneity. They are living in their heads. They have dropped the very idea of the unconscious, they are not allowing their instincts. They are lopsided, they have lost their balance.The balanced man is neither man nor woman; he is a mixture of both, a synthesis rather. His masculinity compensates his femininity. They are not at daggers with each other; they are dancing in tune, in deep harmony, together. There is great accord.So the difference is not much, the difference is very little. Of course it has become very big because for at least ten thousand years man has dominated the scene. He has repressed the woman in himself and because of that he has repressed the woman on the outside too. He had to – both are part of one logic.If you allow your own inner woman freedom to meet with the man inside you, to have a deep togetherness, an orgasmic quality, so that as far as your consciousness is concerned it is no longer split as man and woman; it is one, it is human, it is whole. It is no longer a conflict, it is a concord. It has attained the highest synthesis possible. When this happens one is whole, whether one is man or woman does not matter.But for centuries man has dominated, and the only way to dominate is to destroy the outer woman, to reduce her into a slave, to reduce her into a commodity, sellable, purchasable, something of the marketplace. This is the ugliest thing that has happened in the past. Because of this, the whole past of humanity is rotten, unbalanced, insane. And if the man represses the woman on the outside, of course he cannot allow the woman inside either: he has to repress that too.The woman has been told that she has to be womanly, that means she has to reject all that is masculine in her. She has been forced to go to the very extreme of being a woman and the man has to be completely denied. And this has been taught as if it is something of great value – as culture, as religion, as civilization. The woman has to be shy, the woman has to be in every possible way dependent on man. She has to be a servant, not a companion, not a friend.This idea affected everything, even religion. And the people like Jesus, Mahavira, Gautam the Buddha, these great persons who are the very salt of the past humanity, the few people who had flowered, even they could not absolutely go against the social structure. I can understand why they could not go against the social structure because they had to work with a society that was not of their making, it was already there.Buddha had only forty years to work. Now you cannot transform everything in the society. He had to decide whether he has to work and create something or he has just to fight. If he has to fight for every single inch, then no work would have been possible. He had to compromise. He accepted many things that I know were accepted very unwillingly.The same is true about Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Jesus, Mohammed. They had to function in a particular society, which was given, already there, and it had existed for thousands of years. They decided it was better to work silently and help a few people to become enlightened rather than fight with the society and waste their whole time, and not help even a few people become enlightened. That was the choice before them.Buddha was not willing to allow women to be initiated as sannyasins for the simple reason that the Indian society has been very repressive, it has created great walls between men and women. To destroy those walls would have released a chaos. It would have released so much repressed energy that Buddha did not think that he would be able to help anybody, everything would go berserk. Hence he postponed as long as he could.When the women became very insistent, and particularly when his own stepmother asked to be initiated, he could not refuse. He owed much to this woman because his own mother died the very day he was born. He was brought up by his stepmother with such care, with so much love, he had never felt that she was a stepmother; he had never missed his mother. When his stepmother asked to be initiated – and she was getting very old, and death was coming close – he could not say no. Very unwillingly he said yes.But when he said yes to his own mother, then other women also said, “Now you have accepted one woman as a sannyasin, then why debar us?” And it was logical. The door opened.And Buddha said very sadly, “My religion would have lived for at least five thousand years and helped thousands of people to become enlightened, but now it will only exist for five hundred years.”And that’s how it happened because once the women came in, the repressed male sannyasins started getting infatuated. They had lived in compartments and suddenly they were free – suddenly the women were there, and beautiful women. The first sannyasins had almost all come from royal families. It almost always happens when a man like Buddha arrives on the earth, it is the most intelligent ones who come first to him. It is natural because only they can understand.You can see it happening here: the most intelligent people in the world, from every nook and comer of the world, have arrived here. But the Indian masses go on ignoring as if it has nothing to do with them. They are not yet at the level of that intelligence where they can understand what is happening here. What to say about ordinary masses?Just the other day the Pune magistrate gave his judgment concerning the case of one madman who had thrown a dagger at me, obviously intentionally to kill me. He has freed him, and the reason that he has freed him, the most basic reason that he has given, is really worth consideration. I laughed at it. I enjoyed it!The reason that he freed him is that if it was an attempt to murder me, then I would not have continued my discourse! Who can continue talking when somebody is trying to murder you? But he does not know me. I would have continued even if I had died – I would not have finished before ten!But he cannot understand, and I can understand him – he cannot understand. When somebody is trying to kill you, can you go on speaking the same way? His argument seems to be very valid. So what to say about the ordinary masses? – even an educated magistrate thinks in the same way.Once Buddha allowed women to enter his commune, the repressed male sannyasins started losing their grip on their own consciousness. It happened because of repression. That’s why Jesus and Mahavira were also of the same opinion.I can allow for the simple reason that twenty-five centuries have passed and in these twenty-five centuries much has happened, particularly in the West. That’s why my appeal will be far more in the West than in the East because in the East nothing much has happened. Karl Marx has not happened in the East, Friedrich Nietzsche has not happened in the East, Sigmund Freud has not happened in the East, Carl Gustav Jung has not happened in the East, Albert Einstein has not happened in the East.The West is far more ready. The West has gone through a great revolution about sex, about the discrimination between sexes. The West has dropped the old nonsense. That’s why it is possible for me to allow man and woman to be here together. And you can see the difference: when Indians come here they create trouble.For the six years I have been here, at least over three to four hundred thousand westerners have visited the place. Not a single Westerner has tried to rape an Indian woman. What to say about rape – they have not even bothered about Indian women, they have not even thought about Indian women! But so many Indians have tried molestations, efforts to rape; all kinds of things they have done. And they go on asking me why Indians are not easily allowed in the ashram. They come for wrong reasons, even the well educated.Just a few days ago the manager of the Ambassador Hotel – rich, well educated – came to see, and when he found Padma working in her department alone, he immediately grabbed her breasts! And the first thing the man had asked Sheela was, “Why don’t I see many Indians here?” And when he was caught red-handed Sheela told him, “Now you know the reason why so many Indians are not there in the ashram. We have to throw them out, just as we are throwing you out!”One government officer, an SDO, had come to investigate the morality of my sannyasins, and Sheela was showing him around the ashram. When he found that Sheela and he were alone he asked Sheela, “Can I kiss you?” And he had come to investigate the morality of the ashram! And because Sheela reacted and shouted at him he had written a very nasty and wrong report about the ashram, and he has been one of the reasons that we could not get the Saswad land for the commune. He created every possible trouble. And he was sending messages: “If Sheela comes to me, then I will help you!”Now these are the people! Buddha had to work with these people, and Jesus, and Mahavira. They can be forgiven. They wanted to help both man and woman, but the trouble was the society.To me there is a possibility. I can choose people from all over the world who are ready to drop this stupid division between sexes. Of course the approach will be different: the woman will start with love and end with meditation, and the man will start with meditation and end with love. Only this much difference will be there. To the man, love will come as a consequence, as a fragrance of meditation. To the woman, meditation will come as a consequence, as a byproduct, as a fragrance of love.But whether the man or the woman, when they reach the highest peak of consciousness, the Everest of consciousness, they will have both exactly balanced: meditation and love.The third question:Osho,How about telling us a little esoteric bullshit?Bullshit is simply bullshit! Even if you make it esoteric it does not change its quality – it still stinks! You can give it a beautiful cover, a beautiful packet, but the content will be the same. You can wrap something beautiful around it, but that will only be a wraparound. When you dive deep into it, then you will know you have fallen into a ditch full of bullshit!A sannyasin and a newly arrived non-sannyasin are sitting together in Vrindavan cafe. “Hey, Swami,” says the non-sannyasin, “you have probably been around this place for a while. Can you tell me what Osho is teaching you?”The sannyasin ponders over this for a while, then says, “It’s like this: imagine two guys walking along a road, they both fall into a ditch. One of them gets dirty, the other does not – which one of them is going to have a shower?”“The dirty one, of course!” says the non-sannyasin.“No. The dirty one sees the clean one and he thinks himself to be clean. The clean one sees the dirty one and he thinks he is dirty, so the clean one is going to wash himself. Now imagine they fall into a ditch again – who is going to shower now?”“Now I know,” answers the non-sannyasin, “the clean one!”“No. The clean one realizes while showering that he was clean, and the dirty one realizes while the clean one is taking a shower, so now the right one showers! Now imagine they both fall into a ditch again – who is going to shower now?”“From now on, of course, always the dirty one!”“No. Have you ever seen two guys fall into a ditch three times, and one always comes out dirty and the other always clean?”A Catholic priest was walking along a cliff by the sea when he heard the shouts of someone in difficulty. He saw a man who obviously could not swim struggling for his life in the water.“Save me, save me, father! I am drowning!” cried the young man.“Are ye Catholic or Protestant, son?” asked the cleric.“Protestant, father!” gasped the young man as he went under the water. The priest began to walk on.“For God’s sake, father, save me!” screamed the terrified boy surfacing again.“What religion are ye, son?” shouted back the priest.“Protestant, father!” spluttered back the answer. The priest again began to walk on as the unfortunate youngster went under for the second time.“For the love of God, save me, father!” screamed the boy in desperation.“What religion are ye, son?” came the demand again.After a moment’s hesitation the young man shouted, “I’m a Catholic, father!”The priest immediately threw off his clothes, dived into the sea and swam strongly to the boy, catching him by the hair as he went under for the third and last time.“What religion are ye, son?” asked the priest again, as he held the young man’s head above the water.“Catholic, father!” came the response.The cleric smiled, let go the young man’s hair, and as he sank said, “Good, die in faith!”The fourth question:Osho,Why are the so-called authoritative scholars, theologians, and philosophers on religion against you?It is natural. They philosophize about God – I know. They think about light – I see. They read the scriptures – I have read the universe. We cannot agree.It is like a blind man collecting information about light. How can he agree with the man who has eyes? Although he collects information about light, information about light is just information, it is not an experience. The experience is bound to be totally different. The experience is qualitatively different, it is not only a question of quantity. It is not that I know more than they know or less than they know, it is not a question of more or less. I simply know, and they have been collecting information from others. Their knowledge is borrowed, and of course the man who lives with borrowed knowledge, whose whole life depends on borrowed knowledge, is bound to be afraid of the man who has experienced it.They have always been against, it is nothing new. If they were not against me, that would be surprising. That will be almost unbelievable! Their being against me simply proves that man has not learned anything, as if the evolution of man has stopped long before. They still behave in the same way they behaved with Jesus, with Buddha, with Krishna. Their behavior has not changed, and I don’t see that it is going to change ever because of their vested interest. Men like me are dangerous to their business.It is a question of life and death for them. Their whole profession depends on borrowed knowledge, and my insistence is to help you to know it on your own. The moment you know, all that is borrowed fades away, becomes irrelevant, meaningless, loses all significance. And with it disappear all the priests, all the theologians, all the philosophers, all the scholars, the pundits.Right now you respect them, you honor them because you feel ignorant and you think they know. And the blind are leading the blind! You are far more honest – at least you recognize your blindness. Your scholars are far more cunning, they don’t recognize that they are ignorant. Deep down they know it, but they don’t show it. They go on hiding it in every possible way. And people like me start exposing them – how can they tolerate it?It has always been a known fact that scholars are one-dimensional. They have to be one-dimensional if they want to be scholarly. If a man tries to know everything about God – and remember about. By knowing God he will become multi-dimensional because God means the whole existence. By knowing God he will know the whole, but by knowing about God he has to become one-dimensional. He has to focus his mind, he has to go on narrowing his consciousness, he has to pinpoint it. Naturally he knows more and more about God, but less and less about everything else. His knowing becomes only inclusive about God and excludes everything else.That’s why authorities always behave foolishly. As far as their own field is concerned they are great experts. If you ask any question about something which is not part of their expertise they are at a loss – they are as foolish as no fool can ever be because fools have a little bit of multidimensionality. But the scholars are absolutely one-dimensional, they are fixed on one point, they are specialized people.In the beginning, just two thousand years ago, there was only one knowledge without any divisions; it was called philosophy. In the days of Aristotle it was called philosophy; philosophy meant all knowledge. So if you look in Aristotle’s books – he is the father figure of the Western philosophy – you will find everything, things that have nothing to do with philosophy at all.For example, how many teeth a woman has. Now what has that got to do with philosophy? And even about that he is wrong. He had two wives, not only one – he could have counted very easily. And as far as a woman’s teeth are concerned you need not even ask her to open her mouth – it is always open! You can count very easily, there is no trouble. And having two wives and committing such a mistake! He says that women have fewer teeth than men. The logic is how can women have anything equal to men? He never bothered to experiment.But his books contain everything. They contain biology, religion, philosophy, mathematics, logic, language, aesthetics – everything possible. They contain physics. That’s how the name metaphysics was born because in Aristotle’s books, after physics comes religion. Metaphysics simply means the chapter next to physics. After the chapter on physics there is a chapter on religion, hence it was called metaphysics.If Aristotle comes back he will be absolutely puzzled. If he goes to Oxford there are three hundred and sixty-five subjects taught. He would not be able to believe it – three hundred and sixty-five subjects! And they are growing more and more every day– branches of branches of branches.I have heard a future story…A man goes to his optician. He is suffering from pain in one of his eyes, and he tells the doctor.The doctor asks, “Which eye, right or left?”And he says, “Left.”And the doctor says, “Sorry, but I have specialized only in the other eye. You have to go to somebody else.”A man’s son came back from the medical college and the man asked his son, “In what you have specialized?” He was an old physician, the old kind of physician who used to treat every kind of disease.The son said, “I have specialized in the nose.”And the father asked, “Which nostril?”Yes, it is going to happen one day – right nostril or left nostril, and you will have to go to different experts.This is the way of specialization; one becomes narrowed, one starts knowing more and more about less and less. And a moment comes, is bound to come – at least logically it can be conceived that it will happen one day. If this is the process of science – knowing more and more about less and less – then one day somebody will declare, “I know all about nothing.”The process of experiencing is totally different: it is knowing less and less about more and more. And a moment comes when one knows nothing about everything. That’s what Dionysius calls agnosia, that is the state of meditation: one knows nothing about everything. He has become absolutely multidimensional. He is simply aware, not a knower. There is no knowledge, he is simply wise.Now how can the expert agree with the wise man? The expert cannot agree with the Buddha, impossible; their dimensions are totally different. One knows more and more about less and less, the other knows less and less about more and more. One reaches ultimately to know everything about nothing, the other reaches ultimately to know nothing about everything – they are following diverse paths. But the Buddha experiences and the expert only accumulates information.A very pretty secretary, wearing a sweater and miniskirt, passed through a chemistry lab.“Get a load of that!” said one of the scientists to the other.The other glanced at the well-stacked figure and replied indifferently, “So what? She’s nine-tenths water!”“Sure,” said the first, “but what surface tension!”A great scientist riding on a bus had noticed a clock on a building that showed nine-thirty. Farther on he saw another clock, this one showed nine-fifteen. “Good heavens!” he cried. “I must be going the wrong way!”A story is told about a professor of English who was indisposed and stayed home one day. “What happened?” one of the students asked his daughter.“He is terribly upset,” she disclosed. “Last night an owl in one of the trees kept repeating, ‘To who? To who?’ instead of ‘To whom?’”The newlywed wife was a professor of philosophy – and it almost always happens with the professors of philosophy – suffered from insomnia. She kept waking up her husband whenever she heard noises downstairs.Finally he said, “Go to sleep, dear, please. Burglars don’t make noises!”So she started to wake him up every time she heard nothing.That is logical! That is philosophical!Before beginning a postmortem the doctor wanted to check the chest. The cadaver was wheeled into the X-ray department and placed properly in the apparatus by the pretty technician, then she put the photographic plate into the control panel. As she stuck her head out from behind it she said automatically, “Please take a deep breath and hold it!”A technician is a technician! They function automatically. Experts function very unconsciously. They know not what they are doing, they know not what they are saying. They know nothing because their whole consciousness is full of dead facts and information. They can talk about love, but they have never loved. They can talk about God…And remember the meaning of the word about. About means around. Around and around they go, but they never touch the center of it. It cannot be touched just by knowing about God. You can quote the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, the Vedas, that is not going to help, unless you can speak out of your own inner communion.And Jesus said unto them, “Who do you say I am?”And they replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process.”And Jesus said, “What?”Now this language! Even the Polack Pope would have understood – this is the language of the Christian theologian: “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process.”And Jesus said, “What!”You ask me, “Why the so-called authoritative scholars…” They are not authoritative, they are quoting others. What authority can they have? Authority should come from your own authentic experience. That is the only source of authority, there is no other source of authority.A Ramakrishna can speak authoritatively, a Raman can speak authoritatively, but not Vivekananda; he is just a scholar. Mahavira can speak authoritatively, but not Gautam Ganadhar, his disciple, who is just a brahmin pundit collecting information, taking notes, compiling what Mahavira has said. Jesus can speak authoritatively, but not the popes.The irony is that these people are thought to be authoritative because they can quote exactly the words of the scriptures. But the words of the scriptures can be quoted by a computer more efficiently, more accurately! It can be done by a mechanical device; no consciousness is needed for that, no awareness is needed for that. One need not be a Christ to repeat the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God.” This can be repeated by a record, a gramophone record!Have you seen the symbol of the most famous gramophone company: His Master’s Voice? – the dog wagging its tail. A gramophone record can do it, and that’s what these popes are doing – His Master’s Voice – the shankaracharyas are doing, ayatollahs, imams are doing – just repeating.A small child was teaching his parrot all the four-letter words. His mother heard, was shocked. She came running in and she said, “What are you doing? Have you gone mad? You are destroying the parrot – you are teaching him four-letter words!”And the child said, “No Mummy, I am just telling him, ‘Please remember, these words are not to be repeated by you!’ Just the way you have taught my father and my father has taught me, I am teaching him and I am telling him, ‘Remember to tell your children not to repeat these words. These are very ugly and dangerous words.’”You can teach a parrot and he can repeat anything, but a parrot is not an authority. Machines can do, computers can do, in a far better way.So don’t call these people authorities – they are not. They are befooling others and perhaps themselves. They are not real philosophers, they are more foolosophers than philosophers! The very word philosophy means love of wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all.Wisdom happens only through meditation, it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor.Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.The better word for philosophy will be philosia – not only love for wisdom but love for seeing the truth. Sia means to see, philo means love – love to see. That’s exactly the Indian word for philosophy, darshan. Darshan means philosia. Don’t translate it as philosophy. Doctor Radhakrishnan and others have done a great disservice to the East by translating darshan as philosophy. It is philosia.In the East our interest has always been to see the truth because by seeing the truth, as the Isa Upanishad says, you become the truth itself. Only by becoming the truth do you have authority, then the truth speaks through you. You are just a medium, a vehicle, a hollow bamboo flute, and God starts singing through you.That miracle has to happen here to my sannyasins. That’s what my only teaching is: become a hollow bamboo flute. Don’t hinder. Let God flow through you naturally, spontaneously. And if you allow your nature and spontaneity, just as every river reaches the ocean you will also reach the ultimate ocean of God.The last question:Osho,You are talking and talking and I hear flowers and silence and laughter everywhere.Come now! Admit it! Are not you in the tradition of Gautam Buddha's great Italian disciple, Maha-Gossipa?I am nobody’s disciple, and I am nobody’s master either. I am not your master, just a friend on the way, a fellow traveler. And I am nobody’s disciple because nothing can be learned from anybody, and I am nobody’s master because nothing can be taught.I can allow you to be with me. Something can happen which is neither done by me nor done by you. Nobody can claim, “I am the doer of it.” It can simply happen, just as in the morning the sun rises and the flowers open and the birds start singing. The sun cannot say, “I have opened the flowers.” The sun cannot say, “I have managed this whole orchestra of music that suddenly has arisen on the earth.” Neither the birds can say, “It is because of our singing that the sun has risen.”You must have heard an old story of a woman who had a hen. She believed that it was because of her hen that the sun rises, because early in the morning just before the sunrise the hen gave a joyous shout. She was very proud because she was the only one who had a hen in the village.Nobody seemed to be grateful to her, so one day out of disgust she said, “I am leaving this village, and then you will know! The sun will never rise in this place because I am taking my hen away.”She left the village. When she reached another village, and of course when the hen shouted with joy in the morning, the sun rose there and the woman was tremendously happy. She said, “Now, now those fools will realize, the sun has risen in this village, it cannot rise there! Now it will always be night there!”Neither the birds can say nor the flowers can say, “The sun has risen because of us,” nor the sun can say… It is a synchronicity. This word is very beautiful, it was coined by Carl Gustav Jung. You understand the law of causality: in the law of causality one thing functions as a cause and the other thing happens as an effect. Wherever the cause is produced, the effect is bound to follow. It is a mechanical process. You heat the water to a certain degree and it evaporates, heating is the cause and evaporation is the effect.Synchronicity is a noncausal relationship. Things happen, but you never know who is the cause and who is the effect. They happen simultaneously.That’s the beauty that happens whenever you are with a buddha. The buddha is not a master, you are not a disciple; you are not learning anything from buddha, the buddha is not teaching anything to you. It is just being together. It is a love affair! Being together and something happens, something that is beyond both. Something is triggered. At the most it can be said that the buddha functioned as a catalytic agent, but whatsoever happens, happens in you; he has not caused it.Hence I say I am not anybody’s disciple nor I am anybody’s master. But you have found the right name for me: I am an Italian, Maha-Gossipa! Remember me not as the man who has given you a great gospel but as a man who has given you many gossips. My gospel is my gossip!At a local businessman’s club four members got together after a few drinks and began to confess their secret vices.“I must own up,” said the leading banker, “that I gamble. Every week or so I place a bet on the horses, not too much, but I have been doing it for years.”“Well, I will come clean of my weakness,” said the prominent executive. “No one in town has ever seen me drunk, but twice a year I drive to another town where I am not known, rent a motel room for a few days, get stoned, and return home feeling better than ever!“I am not ashamed to admit that my weakness is women,” said another important businessman. “I have to be very discreet, of course, but with a cautious secretary it can be managed easily enough. I have never yet been found out.”The fourth member of the group, who had been listening intently, said nothing. He was the rabbi of the village. The others expected him to reveal something, but he shrugged his shoulders as is the way of all the Jews of all the ages. He simply shrugged his shoulders.“Well,” asked one of them, “Rabbi, how about you?”“I would rather not confess,” he said shaking his head. They looked at him with suspicion. What could he be covering up? Each of them accused him of being a poor sport, especially since they had all opened up.Finally the rabbi gave in. “All right,” he said reluctantly, “if you must know my weakness, it is scandal – and I can hardly wait to get out of this place!”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Into a blinding darkness go they who worship action alone.Into an even greater darkness go they who worship meditation.For It is other than meditation,It is other than action.This we have heard from the enlightened ones.Meditation and action –he who knows these two together,through action leaves death behindand through meditation gains immortality.Into a blinding darkness go they who idolize the Absolute.Into an even greater darkness go they who dote on the relative.For It is other than the relative,It is other than the Absolute.This we have heard from the enlightened ones.Ompurnam adahapurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.P. D. Ouspensky has written a tremendously significant book, Tertium Organum. The fundamental of Tertium Organum is based and rooted in this sutra: From the whole comes the whole, yet the whole remains behind, intact. From that comes this. That is whole, this is whole, but even though it has come from the whole, the whole is not reduced in any way. It remains the same, as if nothing has been taken out of it.This is a strange mantra, one of the strangest ones because it goes against the very idea of arithmetic. It belongs to meta-mathematics. The ordinary mathematics will not agree with this. If you take something from anything, then that much is reduced in the original, and if you take the whole then nothing is left behind.Ouspensky has done a great service to humanity by proposing a higher mathematics, a mathematics of the beyond. That’s what the Upanishads are.First, the whole is not a finite entity. If it is finite, then of course if you take something out of it, it will be reduced, it will not be the same anymore. The whole is infinite, so whatsoever you take from it, it remains still the infinite.Where can you take it? The whole pervades all, so the very idea of taking is just an idea. As far as reality is concerned nothing is taken out of it and nothing is added unto it, it is always as it has always been.Secondly, in ordinary mathematics the whole is the sum total of its parts. In the higher mathematics that is not so: the whole is not the sum total of its parts, it is more than that. That more is very significant. If you cannot understand that more you will remain absolutely unaware of the religious dimension of things.For example, the beauty of a roseflower, is it just a sum total of its parts? It should be, according to the ordinary mathematics – it is not. The beauty is something more. Just by putting all the chemicals: the water, the earth, the air, and everything that constitutes the flower – even if you put all that together, the beauty will not arise. The beauty is something more, hence in analysis it disappears.If you go to the chemist, the scientist, to inquire about the beauty of a rose, he will analyze it. Analysis is the method of science. Analysis means breaking it into its parts so that you can know of what it constitutes. But the moment you break it into parts, the invisible more disappears. The invisible more exists in the organic unity, you cannot analyze it. It is synthesis. It is totality.The same is true about all the higher values. A beautiful poem is not just the words that compose it; it is something more. Otherwise anybody who can put words together in a rhythmical form will become a Shakespeare, a Kalidas, a Milton, a Shelley. Then any linguist, grammarian, will become a great poet. That does not happen. You may know the entire grammar of the language, you may be acquainted with all the words of the language, still to be a poet is a totally different phenomenon. Poetry comes first then come the words, not vice versa – it is not that you arrange the words and the poetry arises.Once, a few of the students of Charles Darwin played a trick on the great scientist – because he was continuously searching about all forms of life and he was always categorizing to what species a certain animal or insect belongs to.It was his birthday and his students thought of playing a trick, just a joke. They dissected many insects and glued their parts – legs from one insect, wings from another, head from the third one, the body from the fourth, and so on. At least from twenty insects they managed to glue together a new insect which exists nowhere.They brought it to Charles Darwin and they said, “Here is a great surprise for you, as a birthday present. You may have never come across this insect! And we have been hiding it for this day. Can you tell us what species it belongs to, what is its name?”Darwin looked at the insect and he asked only one question to the students: “Does it hum?”They said, “Yes, when it was alive it used to hum.”“Then,” he said, “it is a humbug!”You can put parts together, but you will create only a humbug, you will not be able to create life. You will not be able to create a new form, a new manifestation of something living.The Upanishads talk about two trinities. One is called satyam shivam sundaram. Satyam means truth. Shivam means good, virtue, goodness. Sundaram means beauty. The Upanishads say these three are beyond ordinary mathematics.They also talk of another trinity: Sat-chit-anand – sat, chit, anand. Sat means being. Chit means consciousness. Anand means bliss. The Upanishads say this trinity also belongs to the higher realm, the world of synthesis, wholeness. It is beyond ordinary logic, ordinary mathematics.These two trinities are far more beautiful, far more meaningful than the Christian trinity of God the father and Christ the son and the Holy Ghost. Compared to these two trinities the Christian trinity looks very immature, childish. Sometimes even children have more insight than the Christian trinity.When Sigmund Freud said that God the father is nothing but a deep desire of an immature person to cling to the father, the idea of father, it is a father fixation, he was right. But he had never heard about satyam shivam sunderam or sat-chit-anand. He would not have been able to say anything derogatory about these ultimate visions.The Christian trinity is certainly very childish, and I say to you, sometimes even children are far more intelligent.A small child was asking another child, his friend… They were learning the alphabet and the first child asked the second, “Why it is so that B always comes before C?”And the other child said, “Obviously, you can see only if you are. First you have to be and then only you can see! That’s why C comes after B. How can it come before?”Now even these two children are far more developed, far more perceptive than the Christian trinity – father, son, Holy Ghost – what nonsense they are talking about!Higher values are truth, good, beauty, being, consciousness, bliss. Why they are called higher? – because they don’t come within the realm of the lower mathematics. The lower mathematics means the whole is simply the sum total of its parts, that defines the world of the lower mathematics. The higher mathematics, the meta-mathematics, means the whole is more than the sum total of its parts.You cannot know beauty by analysis; it needs a different vision, a synthetic vision. The poet can understand beauty, not the scientist. The painter can understand beauty, but not the chemist. Truth can be understood only by a mystic, not by a philosopher. It can be understood by a lover, but not by a logician. It can be comprehended by intuition, but not by intellect. Intellect divides; intuition puts things together, and not only puts things together – it creates an organic unity.Life can be looked at in two ways: the scientific, the analytical, or the religious, the synthetical.Today’s sutras are of such great value that they are incomparable in the whole of religious literature. Even in the world of the Upanishads – there are one hundred and eight Upanishads in all – these sutras are incomparable, unique.The first sutra:Into a blinding darkness go they who worship action alone.Into an even greater darkness go they who worship meditation.Action means that which is external to you, meditation means that which is internal to you. Action is outer, meditation is inner. Action is extroversion, meditation is introversion. Action is an objective approach; science is rooted in it, hence science insists on experimentation. And because science insists on action, experiment, it destroys all that is more than the external – it denies. It simply denies the world of interiority, the world of subjectivity. It is so absurd that science accepts the outer without accepting the inner. How can the outer exist at all without the inner? It is nonsensical.If there is a coin, it is bound to have two aspects, you cannot find a coin which has only one aspect to it, only a one-sided coin; it is impossible. Howsoever thin you make it, it will always have two sides to it. You cannot make it so thin that it has only one side.But science goes on insisting on this foolishness: that the external is true and the internal is false. It believes in matter, but it does not believe in consciousness. It says matter has validity, and science asks for objective validity. Of course the world of subjectivity cannot have an objective validity – it is so obvious. The very asking is wrong. The inner cannot come and manifest itself as the outer, but science is blind about it. Those who believe in science say that consciousness is illusory.Karl Marx, who thinks he is creating a scientific communism, says that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, a byproduct of matter. It does not exist in its own right; it is just a combination of material elements, chemistry, physics. It is just a combination, nothing more than that. When a person dies the elements start falling apart and then there is no consciousness left. Hence there is no immortality, no soul. Man becomes just a machine with a wrong notion that it has a soul. Man is not a he or she but only an it.This scientific approach has colored even the world of psychology. In fact, ninety percent of the psychologists should not use the word psychology at all; it is just wrong for them to use the word because they deny the psyche, and still they go on using the word psychology.Ninety percent of psychologists belong to the school called Behaviorism: Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others. They say man is nothing but his behavior, there is nobody inside him. The inside exists not; whatsoever man is, he is on the outside. Hence he can be studied just like any object, any other object. He can be studied like any other machine.The Isa Upanishad says: Into blinding darkness go they who worship action alone. They are falling into a blinding darkness by only following the outer, the extrovert, the objective. They are losing all sense of the inner. They will exist like robots.That’s why it was so easy for a man like Joseph Stalin to kill millions of people. You see the strange world of logic? Krishna could say to his disciple Arjuna, “You can kill, there is no problem because the soul is eternal; it cannot be killed, it cannot be burned. No weapon can enter it. Nainam chhindanti shastrani: there is no way – no sword, no spear can even touch it. Nainam dahati pavakah: neither the fire can burn it. The soul is immortal, eternal; only the body dies.”Hence he says to his disciple Arjuna, “Don’t be worried, don’t feel guilty. You can kill because nothing is killed: Na hanyate hanyamane sharire. When you kill a body, nothing is killed because the body is already dead and the soul is immortal, so who is killed? The body is already dead, has always been dead, it is matter. And the soul has always been immortal, is still immortal. You are only de-linking them, and there is nothing wrong in de-linking them. You are just separating them – separating the essential from the nonessential. In fact, you are doing a great service to the person you are killing! He himself was not able to separate the essential from the nonessential, you have done it for him.”Joseph Stalin could kill millions of people – the logic was totally different, but the result is the same. That’s why I say the world of logic is very strange. Joseph Stalin is a scientific communist, a fanatic follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He says there is no soul, so nothing is killed – you can kill. The body is only matter, and the matter will remain. The air will remain in the air, the earth will go back to the earth, the water will go to water, and all the elements will be dispersed back. There is no soul, so nothing is killed. Without any guilt he killed millions of people.Arjuna also killed millions of people without any guilt. Mao Zedong did the same, but their approaches are very different. But it seems, to deny one – either the external or the internal – is dangerous. Its ultimate outcome will be destruction.Hence the Isa Upanishad is right: Into a blinding darkness go they who worship action alone. Into an even greater darkness go they who worship meditation.Meditation alone again leads to another extreme. Meditation means the internal, the subjective; it means introversion. And obviously the introverts start denying all external reality, they start saying it is maya, it is illusion.Karl Marx says the inner is illusory, an epiphenomenon. And Shankara and Berkeley say the external is illusory, the internal is the only truth. Both are incapable of accepting the totality. They choose, they are not choiceless people.Religion is born out of choiceless awareness. The first, who has chosen action alone, becomes a scientist. The second, who has chosen meditation alone, becomes a philosopher. But both miss the whole.And remember one thing: the half-truth is far more dangerous than the untrue itself; the partial truth is more harmful than the untrue itself. Why? – because it is very difficult to refute the partial truth because it has something of truth in it, although it is partial, but because of that presence it is difficult to deny it.It is difficult to deny Karl Marx and it is difficult to deny Shankara. Both are believers of one aspect of reality, neither of them are religious. One is moving toward the external, the other is moving to the internal, and reality is both and more.That’s my approach here, the total approach to life. Therefore I don’t say to my sannyasins, “Escape to the monasteries or to the Himalayan caves.” I don’t say, “Renounce the world.” Renouncing the world means renouncing action. Then what will you be doing in your caves and in your monasteries? Then only meditation is left.In the past this has been the case: either a person lived in the world, then he was very active, but his action was superficial because there was no meditation in him, no depth, no inner world. He was just his behavior, he was just his outer garb, his periphery. Naturally he created a superficial world with no depth, with no height; he created a very poor world.Then there was the other extremist who escaped from the world. Seeing its superficiality, seeing its peripheralness, he renounced it. Of course he started going deeper into himself, but his going deeper into himself became uncreative. He has depth, but that depth remains unexpressed. He was silent, but there was no song in it. And when a silence is without song it is dead, it has depth but no manifestation.You may be a great painter but unless you paint, what is the point of being a great painter? You may be a great poet but unless you sing, what is the point of your being a great poet?So, on the one hand there were people who had chosen action, the world – the extroverts; and on the other hand were the introverts who had chosen their own being. Both were lopsided. Hence I agree with the Upanishads: life has to be total, not lopsided. Only then is there balance and in that balance is music, in that balance there is a center and a circumference. In that balance you are rooted in yourself, but you are not uncreative, you are creative.The monks, the nuns, down the ages have been absolutely uncreative, they have not contributed anything to the world. In fact, the superficial people have contributed far more, hence this emphasis. The Isa Upanishad says: Into blinding darkness go they who worship action alone. Into an even greater darkness… Remember the emphasis. Into an even greater darkness go they who worship meditation. Alone!The Upanishads are really courageous, they say the truth as it is, with no compromise. Nobody would have thought that the Upanishads would be so hard on meditation. It can be easily understood that they are hard on the extrovert mind, but they are harder on the introvert for the simple reason that the extrovert is superficial, but at least he has contributed something to the world.You can see it? The East has lived with meditation alone and the West has lived with action alone. The West lives in a kind of blindness, but the East lives in a deeper darkness, in a deeper blindness. The Western mind is superficial, but it at least has contributed much: technology, industry, scientific farming. It has given people a better standard of life; it may not have given them a better quality of life, but at least it has given them a better standard of life. It has given them better houses, better roads, better cars, better airplanes. It may not have given them a better consciousness, but it has contributed, it has been creative – of course superficially. But the East, which became escapist in the name of meditation, became basically a dropout, it has not contributed even that much.What have your so-called saints in the East contributed? It is poor because of those saints, and it is going to remain poor unless those saints are no longer respected. But people go on respecting the same old rotten traditions. They cannot see – deeper is their blindness, darker is their darkness. They cannot even see who the cause of all this misery is.Twenty-two centuries of slavery in India. Who is the cause of all this? Your saints, your mahatmas, your so-called sages who escape to the monasteries, who escape to the Himalayan caves, to the forests, to the jungles – and you have worshipped them, you have respected them. When you respect somebody it means deep down you would also like to be like him, that’s what respect means.The word respect is beautiful, it means seeing again and again – re-spect. When you pass a beautiful woman, if she is really beautiful you will have to look again and again. That is respect, seeing again and again. You will walk slowly, you will find excuses to go back, you will enter the same shop the woman has entered, you will start asking for the same commodities she is purchasing so that you can be on the same counter. You will not be looking at things, you will be looking at her. This is respect – the literal meaning of the word.When you respect a person it means you are fascinated, infatuated. You would like to be like him. And the East still goes on respecting the same fools who are the cause of its misery, its starvation, its whole ugly state.People are dying. Sixty percent of people in India are starving, and by the end of this century India will be the biggest country as far as population is concerned. It is going to surpass China. By the end of this century it will be the most populated country. Right now its problems are immense – what is going to happen by the end of this century? A great calamity is waiting. At least half of the population will die through starvation, famine, floods. By God’s grace something is bound to happen!Who is responsible for all this? – the people who have insisted at least for three thousand years continuously that the real is inner and the outer is maya, illusory, why bother about it?In the whole world things have changed, except in this unfortunate country. India is not yet part of the twentieth century, it lags behind at least one thousand years. People in India have not yet even been able to provide themselves with simple toilet facilities. The whole country is used as a vast latrine and nobody seems to be bothered about it. It is taken for granted. The whole country is living in unhygienic conditions, in illness, but that too is taken for granted. We have found explanations and rationalizations for it – that it is because of our past karmas that we are suffering. That means all the sinners are born only in India and all the saints are born in the Western countries – which are materialist. They should not go there at all! But these are ways to avoid seeing the truth. The truth is that you have praised the inner too much and destroyed the outer.I agree with the Upanishad, that if you have to choose between action and meditation it is better you choose action. It will lead to darkness, but it will not be as dark as it will be if you choose only meditation alone. But there is no need to choose in the first place – you can have both! When you can have both, why choose?For It is other than meditation…The truth is other than meditation.…It is other than action.The truth is far more than action: it is both and more. And you will know the more only if you are capable of creating a synthesis between the outer and the inner, between action and meditation. Meditate, but let your meditation be expressed in action. Act, and let your action become a part of your meditation. There is no dualism, there is no antagonism between the two. One can act meditatively. One can dance meditatively.When you dance meditatively your dance starts having a new flavor – something of the divine enters it – because if you are dancing meditatively then the ego disappears, the dancer disappears. That is the whole art of meditation: disappearance of the ego, disappearance of the mind. The dancer become thoughtless, silent. The dance continues and the dancer disappears. This is what I call the divine quality. Now it is as if God is dancing through you, you are no longer there.One of the greatest dancers of this age was Nijinsky, and by coincidence there must have happened a certain synthesis between dance and meditation in him. He was not the master of it because he had never learned the art of meditation. It must have happened, just as a consequence of his total effort to go into dance, his total commitment.A miracle used to happen – once in a while Nijinsky would take such high jumps, leaps in the air, which were not physically possible because of the gravitation of the earth. The spectators were simply mystified, they would miss a few beats of their hearts. It was a miracle to see Nijinsky moving, as if there was no gravitation – he would take such high leaps and so easily.The second thing was when he would start descending back, he would come as a feather comes, very slowly, as if there is no hurry, as if the gravitation is not pulling him like a magnet. It is, according to scientific rules, impossible, but what can you do when it is happening? Even scientists observed Nijinsky and they were puzzled.Again and again Nijinsky was asked, “How do you manage it?”He said, “That I cannot say because when it happens I am not there. I have tried to manage it and I have always failed. Whenever I try to manage it, it doesn’t happen. Once in a while when I forget myself completely, when I am utterly abandoned, it happens. It happens on its own, I cannot manage. I cannot say that tomorrow it will happen. You are not the only one who is surprised. When it happens, I am myself surprised, utterly surprised because I become weightless.”A meditator can be a dancer, in fact a far greater dancer than anybody else. A dancer can be a meditator, a far greater meditator than anybody else. A painter can be a meditator, and then his painting will have a totally different fragrance, a different flavor, a different beauty.And this is so about all the actions – whatsoever you are doing, don’t renounce it, transform it through meditation. Action has to be transformed, not renounced. The world has to be transmuted, you are not to escape from it. It is a God-given opportunity.Remember, the ultimate truth cannot be reduced either to action or meditation: it is both and more. Never forget the more because if you forget the more you will miss the whole point – you will miss the higher mathematics. It is transcendental, it is surpassing all dualism and all polarities. It is not just the sum total of its parts, it is something more – like beauty, like music, like poetry.This we have heard from the enlightened ones.Remember, these Upanishads were not written by the masters themselves; these are notes of the disciples. The masters have always believed in the spoken word and there are reasons for it. The masters have never written books. The spoken word has a lively quality to it; the written word is dead, it is a corpse.When I am speaking to you, it is a totally different thing than when you will be reading it in a book, because when you are reading in a book it is only a word, when you are listening to the master it is more than the word. The presence of the master is overpowering. Before the word reaches you, the master has already reached, he is already over-flooding you. Your heart is breathing with the master, beating with the master in the same rhythm. You are breathing in the same rhythm. There is a communion, an invisible link. The presence of the master, his gestures, his eyes, the words spoken by him are ordinary words, but when spoken by a master they carry something of the beyond; they carry some silence, some meditativeness, some of his experience because they come from his innermost core.It is like passing through a garden – even though you have not touched a single flower, when you reach home you can still feel the fragrance of the garden; your clothes have caught it, your hair has caught it. The pollen of the flowers was in the wind. You have not touched anything, but the fragrance was in the air; it has become something, part of you.The master simply means a certain noosphere. The word noosphere is coined by Chardin, one of the very strange men of this century. He was basically trained as a scientist, he was a geologist, but his whole heart was that of a mystic. It is very unfortunate that he belonged to the Catholic Church, and the Pope prevented him from publishing any of his ideas while he was alive. He was such an obedient person, he followed the order, so while he was alive nobody came to know about him. His books were published only posthumously, but those books are of tremendous import because he was a scientist and yet a meditator, a man of great prayer. There is a certain synthesis. His approach is very clear, like that of a scientist and yet full of poetry.But the world missed a direct communion with Chardin. The Catholic Church is the culprit – they prohibited. They have always been against anything new happening in the world. So only when he died did his friends start publishing his books. Now the people who have come across his books can see what the world has missed because now they are only words – beautiful words.Chardin coined the word noosphere. We are acquainted with the word atmosphere; atmosphere means the air that surrounds you, the climate that surrounds you. Noosphere means the world of subtle vibes, thoughts, feelings, that surrounds you.A master carries a noosphere around himself, I call it the buddhafield. Jains have a very specific idea about it, they worked very hard to find it, find out exactly what it is. And I think no other tradition has discovered all the details about the buddhafield that surrounds a master like Mahavira. Jains have worked – they were a little bit scientific in their approach – and I agree with their discoveries about the buddhafield.They say a master has a buddhafield around himself extending in all the directions for twenty-four miles – a circle with the radius of twenty-four miles becomes a buddhafield whenever a person becomes enlightened. No other tradition has worked it out with such scientific detail – they have even measured the length, how big the circle is that surrounds the awakened person.Whosoever is a little bit open entering the buddhafield will start feeling something strange that he has never felt before. But it happens only if one is open.Many people ask me, “If we come here and don’t become sannyasins, will not we be able to receive your grace?” From my side there is no problem, I am not addressing my energy to anybody in particular, it is simply there. It is a noosphere, it all depends on you. To become a sannyasin simply means that you are dropping all your defenses, that you are withdrawing all your arguments, that you are opening your windows and doors to me – that’s all. It is a gesture from your side that you are vulnerable, that you are receptive, sensitive, that you are available. I am available whether you are a sannyasin or not, it does not matter. I am available even to these poles of the Buddha Hall! But what can I do – if they are not orange they will miss!A sannyasin simply means a readiness to receive. The energy is there, if something is missing it is on your part.All the masters of all the ages have depended on the spoken word for the simple reason that the spoken word comes directly from their innermost core. It carries the fragrance of their inner world, the richness of their inner world, the beauty of their inner world. It is soaked with their inner being, it is full of their energy. By the time it is written it will be not the same thing.The spoken word means a communion between the master and the disciple. The written word is not a communion, it is a communication; anybody can read it. The student can read it, he need not be a disciple. The enemy can read it, he need not even be a student. Somebody can read it just to find faults in it, just to find something so that he can argue against it.But with the spoken word it is totally different. Even if the opponent comes, the spoken word dances around him. There is every possibility that although he has come with a conclusion, a fixed idea, his fixed idea may become a little bit loosened, he may become a little relaxed. He may start looking again before he takes any decision. He may start putting his a priori ideas aside. The rumors that he has heard can be easily put aside if he comes in contact with the spoken word.That’s why the disciple who has written these beautiful sutras, recorded them – they are his notes – says: This we have heard from the enlightened ones.He is not saying, “This is my experience.” He is not saying, “I am the writer of these beautiful sutras.” His humbleness – that is the sign of a disciple. It has disappeared from the world; the very phenomenon of the disciple has become more and more rare, it has become almost nonexistential. Otherwise there was nobody preventing him from signing these sutras. He could have said, “These are mine.”Just a few days ago a book in Marathi was published in Mumbai. He has stolen a whole chapter from one of my books – the whole chapter without any change, not even a single word has been added or deleted! And he has used that whole chapter as an introduction to his book. It is one of my introductions to Ashtavakra Gita, and when it was found, a letter was written to him saying, “How has this happened?” He didn’t reply. Then a notice was given to him – then he came running and he said, “I was not aware of the law.” But he was told it is not a question only of law.“Were you not aware that you were translating the whole chapter into Marathi without changing a single word? You have not mentioned from where you have taken it, you have not asked our permission, but that is not of much importance. You have not even mentioned…even that is not of much importance. We had written a letter to you, you have not even replied to that.”People have lost all sincerity, and this is not only so with the ordinary people – sometimes it even happens with my sannyasins. When they go back to their countries and they start a center there, sooner or later – only a few of them, but that too should not happen – they start functioning as if what they are saying is their own. They start pretending that they are enlightened people, that they are masters. If you are enlightened people, there is no problem. If you are a master there is no problem, but you are not! They go on coming to me, and they go on asking the same stupid questions they used to ask before, but back in their own countries they start behaving as if they are enlightened or masters in their own right. They repeat my words.Just the other day I saw a booklet from a commune in Spain. The commune is run on absolutely the same lines as my commune, they even call themselves “the orange people.” They call themselves sannyasins, they use orange clothes, they wear a mala. The only difference is that there is no locket in the mala, instead of the locket they have this Hindu symbol om. They do Dynamic Meditation, they do Kundalini Meditation, they do Nadabrahma. They change their names, they use Sanskrit names, Indian names, but they don’t want it to be known that they belong to me – a commune of thirty people behaving independently!The man who is the head has never been here, but he goes on sending his people. Many people have come here, they take sannyas here, and when they go back the only change that has to be done is to drop the picture from the locket and replace it with om, and everything is okay.In their brochure they have used my words, my statements, without mentioning me, just translated into Spanish, and it has become their own. And you will be surprised, they run a mala shop, a boutique, a Vrindavan cafe. It is a true carbon copy!People have lost all truthfulness. The person who has taken these notes has not even given his name, but he repeats again and again: This we have heard from the enlightened ones.And remember, he does not say, “This I have heard” even. “We have heard…” He is simply representing the whole world of the masters’ disciples. He is not even using the word I, that “this I have heard.” This we have heard from the enlightened ones.“Those who have known, we have heard it from them.” He does not bring himself in at all.Just the other day I received a letter from Sudha. A few days ago she wrote a letter saying, “Osho, I am in a great conflict. I cannot leave you, I cannot live without you, and yet when I am in the commune I don’t feel absolutely surrendered to you. That makes me feel sad. I want to be absolutely surrendered, to drop all my mind and all my ego. That I cannot do, and because I could not do it you have sent me to the West. But I cannot live in the West either! I hanker for your presence, I want to be back home as soon as possible.”She said this to one of our sannyasins, Gunakar, who runs a beautiful center in Germany, Karuna. She talked to him on the phone and Gunakar wrote her a letter saying, “Come to me and I will help you to get rid of Osho, I will help you to go beyond this attachment.”Now he runs a center for me – helping people to get rid of me! He was here. Twice he tried to become enlightened and failed. He will declare he has become enlightened and then he will come to his senses again. Now running a center he is imitating, now he is trying to help people to go beyond the attachment.Sudha has done a good job of writing a letter to him, saying, “I don’t want to get rid – I want to get rid of myself, not Osho! And I don’t need your help. First help yourself. Physician, heal thyself first!”But Gunakar is getting into stupid ideas. Just a few days before he wrote a letter to all the members of UNO: “I represent Osho, I represent the hierarchy of the esoteric masters, and I want you to do these things. Unless these things are done, the world is not going to be saved.” Now he is trying to save the world – he has not even been able to save himself!But these egoistic ideas are bound to happen because deep down the ego has lived for so long that it does not want to leave you. Even when you think you have dropped it, it simply hides somewhere, in some dark corner of your unconsciousness, and it starts functioning from there.This is the true way of a disciple to say:This we have heard from the enlightened ones.Meditation and action –he who knows these two together,through action leaves death behindand through meditation gains immortality.Words that should be written in gold, far more precious than any diamonds can ever be. This is my whole approach:Meditation and action – he who knows these two together… It is so clear. And in India people go on reciting the Isa Upanishad, but I don’t think that they ever ponder over what they are reciting. They are all escapists, they are all renouncers of the world – they have left action behind. If they have understood the Isa Upanishad and its message, they will be my sannyasins, not the old, traditional ones.My sannyasin represents togetherness of action and meditation. He is in the world and yet not of it. He is like a lotus flower coming out of dirty mud, but transforming the mud into the beauty of a lotus – living in a lake, yet untouched by the water, absolutely untouched.A true sannyasin should be in the world, in action, and deeply rooted in meditation. Your roots should be in meditation, your branches should be in action. You should be like a tree. Its branches go high in the sky, they are longings for the stars; it goes on rising high. But remember, a tree goes high only if its roots go deep, in the same proportion: deeper the roots, higher the branches; higher the branches, deeper the roots. They balance each other. The roots have to be in meditation and the branches in the world – in the full sunlight, dancing in the wind, whispering with the clouds; and deep inside you, in the inner world, growing roots into meditation. Then you will be a full tree.Up to now two types of people have existed: a few have existed without roots of course, without roots a tree is bound to be false. And a few people have existed just as roots without trees, and just roots are ugly. Have you seen beautiful roots? Flowers are beautiful, but flowers need foliage, branches, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain, the wind. They need the whole world, then those colorful flowers… These both have to be together; only then you will be an integrated, whole being.The worldly has only branches but no roots, hence he is dull, juiceless, dry, dead, a corpse, just somehow dragging, out of old habit. And your monks, your nuns – Catholic, Hindu, Jain, whatsoever their denomination – they are just roots, ugly, not worth looking at. No question of respect, not even worth looking once! The question of twice does not arise – and without any flowers.My sannyasin has to be both, with roots in the interior world and with flowers in the exterior world. My sannyasin has to be both, capable of intellect and also capable of intuition. There is no need to choose, whatsoever God has given has to be used to its fullest.…through action leaves death behind and through meditation gains immortality. It is only through action, through creativity, that you go beyond death. Action functions as negative, it is the art of removing hindrances. For example, you are digging a well. Action means removing all the layers of earth and the rocks – if sometimes needed, dynamiting the rocks, drilling so that you can find the water sources. The function of action is negative; it is removing hindrances, obstacles, obstructions. The function of meditation is the realization of that which is. When the water starts coming up, meditation is drinking of the water to quench the thirst. Both are needed – action to remove the rocks, and, meditation to make you capable of drinking the ultimate, the wine of the ultimate.…through action leaves death behind and through meditation gains immortality. These are two aspects of the same phenomenon. If you don’t leave death behind, how you can enter the world of immortality? Leave time behind so that you can enter the timeless, the deathless.Into a blinding darkness go they who idolize the Absolute.Philosophy idolizes the absolute. Bradley, Hegel, Shankara, they idolize the absolute and they deny the relative. The relative means it is illusory; absolute is true, and whatsoever is relative is illusory.Into an even greater darkness go they who dote on the relative.Science emphasizes the relative. Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Jainism has a little bit of scientific attitude hence Jains were the first to contemplate on the theory of relativity. Albert Einstein without knowing it is a Jain! Before Albert Einstein, twenty-five centuries before him, Jains discovered syatvad. Syatvad means the theory of relativity. Einstein says everything is relative. Syatvad can literally be translated as perhapsism. Everything is just a perhaps, nothing is absolutely certain, just a perhaps.If you ask Mahavira, “Does God exist?” he will say, “Perhaps.” If you ask him, “Are you absolutely sure about it?” he will say, “Perhaps.” He will never budge from his perhaps. Everything is only a perhaps because everything is relative. Nothing can be said absolutely, certainly, categorically. It depends, and one thing can be looked at from many standpoints.Syatvad, perhapsism, has seven standpoints. If you ask about God, Mahavira will give you seven statements. He will confuse you more than you were ever confused before! He will say, “Perhaps God is,” his first statement. “Perhaps God is not,” his second statement. “Perhaps God is both,” his third statement. Fourth: “Perhaps God is and inexpressible,” his fourth. “Perhaps God is not and is inexpressible,” fifth. “Perhaps God is and is not both, and also is inexpressible.” You may have come to him with a little bit of understanding for or against, but he will destroy all your standpoints. He will give you the whole perspective, from all the standpoints.That’s what Albert Einstein has done, of course in a more scientific way; Mahavira’s way is far more philosophical. Albert Einstein used to say, “At the most only one dozen people in the whole world understand what I am saying.” Not that there are not many more intelligent people in the world, but the very idea of relativity has something fundamentally wrong about it.Something can be relative only if you accept the absolute. If you don’t accept the absolute, then what do you mean by the relative? Even the meaning of the word relative loses all significance, it loses meaning. Relative simply means that which is not absolute, but what is absolute? According to Albert Einstein there is nothing absolute: all is relative. And according to the absolutists there is nothing relative, all is absolute. Then what do you mean by absolute? The very term has meaning only in contrast to the relative.The Upanishads are very clear. They say: Into the blinding darkness go they who idolize the Absolute.Because they have chosen again one side of the coin: the unchanging, the axle. And: into an even greater darkness go they who dote on the relative. They have chosen the other side, the wheel, the moving, the momentary, the temporary, the changing. But change is possible only on the foundation of no-change. The wheel cannot move without the axle. And what is the meaning of the axle if there is no wheel? They are together and they are meaningful only in their togetherness.The Isa Upanishad is trying to make it clear to never choose, remain choicelessly aware and accept life as it is, don’t impose any choice of your own. The absolute is there. The relative is there. Your mind is relative, but your consciousness is absolute. Your body changes, your mind changes – they are like a wheel – but your witnessing consciousness is like an axle, it remains always the same, never changing. It is on that axle that the mind-and-the-body wheel moves. They are not against each other; they are supporting each other, they are complementary to each other. This high synthesis is the message of the Upanishads.For It is other than the relative,It is other than the Absolute.Because it is beyond both and more.This we have heard from the enlightened ones.The disciple again and again repeats it so that you don’t forget that he is not speaking on his own authority, he is simply recording the words of the master. This sincerity is part of disciplehood, and only through this sincerity can a disciple one day become enlightened.Enlightenment happens only if you become more and more sincere and authentic. And you have to be very alert because the ways of the ego are very subtle, it would like to claim that which you don’t have. Beware of the ego!Ompurnam adahapurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,We Indians know that we have been caught in serious diseases for centuries, but when such a great doctor like you refuses us, what will become of us?I am not refusing anybody, but I certainly have to refuse your diseases. I cannot accept your diseases, no physician can do that. Those who accept your diseases are your enemies. Your diseases have to be mercilessly destroyed, whoever you are: Indian, German, English. Diseases come in all forms, sizes and shapes. You may be a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew, it does not matter.The whole past of humanity has been full of many fundamental errors, but they have existed for so long that they have almost become part of you, hence the feeling that I reject you. I am simply rejecting the disease, but you are identified with the disease. You think your diseases, the sum total of your diseases, is what you are. That’s not true, you are not just your diseases, you are something beyond all that has happened to you in the whole past. All that has happened is only a conditioning; it can be dropped, it has to be dropped. Hence I condemn it, but your ego feels hurt. I cannot help… I cannot have any compassion for any kind of disease.When diseases exist for a long time, and they are given from one generation to another generation, they become very respectable. You forget that they are diseases, you start thinking that they are specialties to you.For example, T. M. Ramachandran has asked, “Osho, why do you say that nothing has been happening in the East? Great, great things have been happening in the East as well. Is not Hinduism and its way of life the greatest religion in the world?”What is this Hindu way of life? It is utterly life-negative. Even to call it a way of life is not right. It can be called a way of death, but not a way of life. How can anything life-negative become a philosophy of life?Hinduism teaches you to reject life, to renounce life. You worship the escapist people; you call them saints, mahatmas. Those who have gone against the world, those who have rejected the world, those who have condemned the world and all that it contains, they are thought to be people of God.God exists in the manifest world as the unmanifest center of it all. The moment you reject the flower you also reject its fragrance; if you escape from the flower you are escaping from the fragrance too – and God is the fragrance of existence. Those who go against life are basically going against God.You have heard the proverb: Man proposes and God disposes. Hinduism does just the opposite: God proposes, man disposes. It is God’s proposition – this existence, this life, but man disposes it.George Gurdjieff, one of the greatest masters of this century, used to say, “Your mahatmas are all against God.” He is absolutely right, one hundred percent right because your mahatmas are denouncers. They negate. They make you feel guilty of love, of life, of laughter. They make you feel guilty if you are joyous, if you are cheerful. They make you feel guilty if you enjoy food, if you enjoy friendship, if you enjoy any kind of relationship. They make you feel guilty for all that you enjoy and they impose things upon you for which there is no enjoyment in you.All that you can do with these negative attitudes is nourish your ego. Hence your mahatmas are the most egoistic people in the world. But when one starts thinking of diseases as if they are something great, then it becomes very difficult for you to listen to the physician.I don’t reject anybody. To me it is all the same whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. Your diseases are a little bit different, but not basically because all the religions that have existed in the past have used a similar strategy and that is to create guilt. That has been the technique of the priest to dominate you, make people feel guilty of small joys – and of course those joys are natural and spontaneous.When a person becomes guilty of his own nature he starts rejecting himself, he starts dying. It is a slow kind of suicide. He becomes sad, he becomes drained off, his life loses flavor. And then of course, trembling, he has to go to the priest because the priest knows the way, how to go beyond this guilt. The priest creates the guilt in the first place – it is his trade secret – and then you have to go to the priest because there is nobody else who can guide you. That is the business of the priest, to guide you about spiritual affairs. And you are feeling so sad, so miserable; you need help, you need somebody to support you. You need somebody to teach you ways, means, methods, so that you can get rid of your guilt.But the priest goes on creating more guilt in you. He creates so much fear of life in you that Hinduism became obsessed with the idea of how to get rid of birth and death, how to get rid of avagaman – coming and going into existence.Life is so beautiful!Rabindranath, one of the great poets of all time, was on his deathbed. A friend – a very religious friend, of course – told him, “Pray to God that this should be your last life, you should be freed.”Rabindranath opened his eyes – his last moments, but he became angry and he said, “Shut up! I am praying to God, ‘your life has been such a beautiful gift to me, give it to me again and again. I would like to come back to see the sunrise, the sunset, the starry night, the flowers, a bird on the wing, the green trees, your rivers, your mountains, your people. I would like to come again and again and again! It is so vast and inexhaustible, and it has not been a misery to me.’”Rabindranath is against your whole tradition of the so-called Hinduism. He is one of the most insightful persons that was born into this unfortunate country. He lived joyously, he lived a life of celebration: he loved poetry, created poetry; he loved painting, he created many paintings – he sang, he danced.This is true prayer! And because of this I say Rabindranath is not a Hindu. He was so much against renunciation that he dared even to write a poem against Gautam the Buddha. The poem is of immense beauty and of great meaning too.Buddha had left his young wife and a child who was just one day old. Buddha was only twenty-nine years of age and he escaped – that was the ancient Hindu way. He escaped into the forest to find God.Rabindranath describes Buddha’s renunciation and describes that when he became enlightened he came back home to share his experience.Yashodhara, his wife, asked him one question that he could not answer. He stood before Yashodhara with his eyes looking at the earth, ashamed. Only Rabindranath could have dared such a poem. What was the question that Yashodhara had asked? She had asked a very simple question, “Now that you have become enlightened, please answer one of my questions that has been haunting my days and my nights for all these years that you have been away. Since you left I have been tortured by this question and I have been waiting because only you can answer it.”The question was, “Whatsoever you have found in the deep silence of the forest, was it not possible to find it here in the palace with me, with your child, with your old father who has almost gone blind crying and weeping for you? And just look at me! I have become so old within these six years, just waiting every moment for you, waking up in the night again and again, maybe – you had left in the night, you may have come again. Dreaming about you. Ask your son, he has been continuously asking me, ‘Where is my father?’ The whole kingdom is sad, the palace is sad, it has become a cemetery. Just answer one of my questions. Whatsoever you have found in the forest, was it not possible to find it here?”And Buddha stood ashamed. He could not answer.This is a parable invented by Rabindranath, but it has great significance. Rabindranath is saying God can be found now and here. There is no need to go into the forest; there is no need to renounce the wife, the children, the old parents. There is no need to go against life. Going against life is like trying to go upstream, fighting with the river – an unnecessary fight. Relax, rest, enjoy and God can be found anywhere because he is everywhere.Hinduism is life-negative, that’s why it has respected the ascetics. Now, the ascetics are nothing but masochist people, absolutely ill, psychologically ill. The ascetic is the person who enjoys torturing himself, and Hindus have respected the ascetics. The more you torture yourself, the greater a saint you are. So if you lie down on a bed of thorns, thousands will gather to worship you. If you fast for months, then your name and fame will spread to all the corners of the country.And one of the strangest things is that nobody ever asks, “What has this man contributed to life?” Lying on the bed of thorns is not a contribution; it does not make life more beautiful, it does not enrich existence in any way. Just fasting for months is not a creative act – it is destructive, it is really suicidal.Hinduism is suicidal. That’s why it was possible for this country to remain in slavery for twenty-two centuries – for the simple reason that nobody is interested in life, so what does it matter who rules it? It is all a dream, it is all maya. Let anybody rule it.This country has lost its soul because only people who love freedom can have souls. This country only talks about the soul, but slaves can’t have souls. But slaves can always rationalize, in fact they have to rationalize, just to console themselves.Hindus have become great rationalizers, they rationalize everything: “It is fate, nothing can be done about it. God has decided so. Not even a leaf falls from a tree without the will of God, so how can the country be a slave without the will of God? He must have chosen, we have simply to accept the fate.”When one starts accepting the fate one becomes lazy, sloppy, lousy because then nothing is left for you to do.It was the morning after, and he sat groaning and holding his head.“Well, if you hadn’t drunk so much last night you wouldn’t feel so bad now,” said his wife tartly.“My drinking had nothing to do with it,” he answered. “I went to bed feeling wonderful and woke up feeling awful. It was the sleep that did it!”You can always rationalize. You are not responsible – whatsoever had to happen, had to happen. What can you do about it?India has remained the poorest country in the world, and nobody thinks that Hinduism is the cause of it. If you believe in fate you will not endeavor to become rich, you will not make any effort to be scientific, you will not create technology, industry. You will simply wait. Whenever God changes his will, things will change. As far as you are concerned, nothing can be done about it.A newly rich dame had bought a summer place in the Himalayas and hired a village woman to do the housework.“I am a person of few words,” she haughtily told the old woman. “If I beckon with my finger, that means ‘come.’”“Very well, madam,” replied the old Indian woman. “I am a person of few words myself. If I shake my head from side to side, that means ‘I am not coming.’”Just watch what you are talking about. A great religion, the greatest religion, and what has it given to you: poverty, starvation, illness. The whole country is living undernourished, sixty percent of people are starving, and nothing is being done. Problems go on increasing and Hindus simply go on sitting, worshipping the elephant god Ganesh, or the monkey god Hanuman, or the holy mother cow, and hoping that these elephants, monkeys and cows are going to help! It has now become so deep rooted that something drastic is needed.That’s what I am trying to do. Naturally I will offend the unintelligent crowds, I can only be understood by the very intelligent few.Barfly: “What’s that drink you are mixing?”Bartender: “I call it a rum overture.”Barfly: “What’s in it?”Bartender: “Sugar, a dash of clam juice, and rum.”Barfly: “How is it?”Bartender: “Stimulating. The sugar gives you energy and the clam juice gives you drive.”Barfly: “And the rum?”Bartender: “Ah, that! That gives you ideas about what to do with all that energy and drive.”I am mixing a rum overture! You need some drive and you need some ideas what to do with that drive and energy.I am not rejecting anyone, but I have to reject all these life-negative attitudes. India has become a country of hypocrites for the simple reason that whenever you deny nature that is bound to happen. Nature will assert, is bound to assert. You can repress it for the time being, but not for ever, and whatsoever is repressed will take revenge on you, it will come back with vengeance, it will come back.So on the one hand you will see Hinduist morality, puritanism, and on the other hand you will see the Hindu obscenity.The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana was the first book on obscenity in the whole world. Only in this century Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, these people have started thinking about sexual postures, sex energy and what it is all about and what can be done about it. But Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutras are three thousand years old. Vatsyayana was a Hindu, and Hindus have respected him. They have called him maharishi, the great seer. On the one hand the so-called moralists and on the other hand The Kama Sutras of Vatsyayana and the Koka Shastra of Pundit Koka. Pundit Koka was a Kashmiri Hindu brahmin of the highest caste and his book is fifteen hundred years old, and one of the ugliest in the world. And he was an ordained Hindu.Who has created the temples of Konarak, Puri, and Khajuraho? On the one hand Hindus have been teaching brahmacharya, celibacy, as the highest goal for humanity; on the other hand they were making sculpture so obscene that it is incomparable. Nowhere else in the world exists any temple like the Khajuraho temples. And it was not only one temple, it was a whole city of temples. At least one hundred temples still survive; there must have been a thousand temples – the ruins are there – and each temple has thousands of obscene postures. They must have taken hundreds of years to make. And if you see Khajuraho you will not believe!These people who publish magazines like Playboy and Playgirl should come and learn from Khajuraho. Whatsoever they are doing is just ordinary. They cannot compete with Hindu fantasy for the simple reason that they cannot compete with Hindu repression! Once you repress something natural, it starts coming into your mind, it starts moving toward your head. It may disappear from the sex center, which was a natural phenomenon, but now it enters your head.This has driven the whole Hindu culture toward a very schizophrenic existence. It seems almost impossible how to relate these two phenomena going together.Pundit Koka of Kashmir – and he is not alone. In the name of Tantra almost ninety-nine charlatans have been bringing sex from the back door. In the tradition of Tantra you will find only one percent authentic masters; ninety-nine percent are just pseudo, tricky people. In the name of Tantra they are bringing the whole sexuality from the back door.Pundit Koka says that if you really want to move deep into the phenomenon of sex then you have to find a woman of the lowest caste. She has not to be your wife because with your wife you will not be able to enter a really fantastic world of sexuality. Her topography is known to you, her geography is known to you, there is nothing to explore. So find a woman who is not your wife.Secondly, the woman has to come from the lowest caste because they are more alive people. The higher the caste, the people are more and more bloodless. If you go to the lower castes then people are more alive, more wild. Hence I say to you that Coca-Cola must have originated with Pundit Koka – Cola must have been his girlfriend. That’s why it is so juicy, it is a discovery of the great tantrikas – Coca-Cola!I am not rejecting Hindus, Jews, Jains or anybody. I have no antagonism with anybody. I don’t belong to any tradition, hence for me all the traditions are the same, but because I don’t belong to any tradition I can see the diseases clearly. When you belong to a tradition you cannot see, your eyes are clouded, you are prejudiced.Repression brings hypocrisy, and you can see it in India everywhere. People will say that the world is illusory and at the same time they will be as greedy about money as nobody else in the world is. This is strange, but not really if you go deeply into it because they are denying something natural – the world is given to you by God. If you deny it you will have to become obsessed with it, every denial becomes obsession.“Renounce money!” these people go on saying. If you go to Vinoba Bhave, who represents Hindu tradition, and you take a few notes in your hand, he will immediately close his eyes – he does not see money. Now poor paper, just printed, and makes the Hindu mahatma so afraid that he closes his eyes! It cannot be the currency notes; it must be some deep fear, some greed. He does not touch money.On the one hand these people go on saying that gold is nothing but dust, but they will not touch gold.I had asked Vinoba when I met him – he was very eager to meet me, so I said, “Okay now it is your responsibility. If you want to meet me, then I am no longer responsible. Whatsoever happens, transpires, transpires!”I asked him, “If you say that gold is just dust, why don’t you touch gold? You touch dust!”In fact, Vinoba Bhave believes in naturopathy – mud packs, mud baths. He is very at ease with mud, enjoys it. Then what is wrong with gold? I take gold baths, gold packs! If it is the same, why bother? But it is not the same. If he is afraid of touching gold and is not afraid of touching dust, then he is being cunning, deceptive – not only to others but to himself too. Then don’t call gold just dust, then gold has some speciality which dust has not got.You will find Hindus more greedy than anybody else, more full of sexuality than anybody else, more full of sexual fantasies than anybody else, more full of attachment than anybody else. And still you go on saying that Hinduism is the greatest religion in the world? What nonsense are you talking about? Hindus are the most dishonest people for the simple reason that they have not been honest to accept the realities of life.A man met a friend he had not seen for years and asked him how he was feeling.“Awful,” replied the friend. “In addition to my high blood pressure I have got arthritis and bronchitis.”“I am sorry to hear it. What about your job?”“Oh, I’m still at the same thing I’ve been doing for the past twenty years – I’m selling health foods.”This man must have been a Hindu! Selling health foods and suffering from high blood pressure, arthritis and bronchitis!We all know the legend how Diogenes, the great Greek mystic, used to go about with a lantern looking for an honest man, even in the bright daylight. Some modern cynics ask why the cynic philosopher didn’t go about in broad daylight without his lantern. Others ask why he didn’t look in a mirror. Naturally enough, the legend appears in joke-lore. One story tells how Diogenes had spent several hours after dark searching crime-ridden New Delhi for an honest man, and was very weary. A passerby, recognizing him, asked, “What luck?”“Everything considered, not so bad,” reported Diogenes. “I still have my lantern!”In Delhi that is really lucky if you can save your lantern, even in the bright day! Some politician is bound to grab it!The Indian politician is the worst kind of politician in the world, for the simple reason that he belongs to a very ugly, ill, canceric civilization. Hinduism is on its deathbed, or maybe it is already dead and people are worshipping a corpse because it stinks.I would like to change this whole situation. Hindus, if they are courageous enough, will disconnect themselves from their past, that will be a resurrection. And they can prove, certainly, a great blessing to the whole world because for centuries they have not worked, their potential has remained unactualized. It is like a farm that has not been cultivated for centuries. If you cultivate it right now it will give you the best crop possible because for centuries it has been accumulating potential.Hindus can assert a new era in the world: if they resurrect, if they drop out of their old past, if they disconnect themselves from their tradition, if they can have a new birth, they may prove the most intelligent people in the world. Their contribution can not only transform this country, it can be a boon, a blessing to the whole life on the earth because they have genius gone wrong; they have intelligence gone astray. If it comes to the right dimension it will be good for their own health, it will be good for the health of the whole world.The same is true about other races too. Any race that remains clinging with the past remains clinging with corpses. One has to live in the present because the future is born out of the present. And India is living in the past. Out of the past nothing is born, clinging to the past is wasting your time.Everything in India is past-oriented. People are reading the story of Rama, and these are the days all over the country when they will be playing the drama of Rama. Every year they go on playing the same drama, for thousands of years they have been doing it. They are not even bored by it! It seems they have lost all intelligence. They go on seeing the same thing, repeating the same thing, as if there is nothing else to do. And they go on talking about the golden age – in the past, it is always in the past.Remember this, a child always thinks good days are to come; the old man always thinks good days, golden days are past. The child is future-oriented, the old man is past-oriented, and the young man, if he is really young – which is very rarely so… Physically there are so many young people in the world, they constitute the majority. But many of them are still in their childhood psychologically, and many of them have already passed into old age psychologically.If somebody is really young he lives in the present. Now is the only time for him and here is the only place for him. He does not waver between past and future because both are nonexistential. That which exists is the present. The young person lives in the present, and the same is true about civilizations.The young civilization lives in the present, and if a civilization continuously lives in the present it remains young. That is the whole secret of remaining young. The new civilization, just born, immature, childish, lives in the future; and the old civilization lives in the past. You can immediately see and decide and categorize any civilization, to what category it belongs.India lives in the past; it is getting old, shrinking. It has lost the joy of life, the youthfulness, the freshness. Countries like Russia, China live in the future. Their golden age is to come, when the classless society, the utopia conceived by Karl Marx will happen, when there will be no class, no poor, no rich, no one dominated and no one dominating, no bourgeoisie, no proletariat. When the classless society and the stateless society are born, somewhere far away in the future, then humanity will have a golden age.Countries like India live in the past, the golden age has passed long before. Man is falling down. There is great enthusiasm in China because the future seems to be very alluring; there is no enthusiasm in India. India became free before China, but China has been able to solve many problems that are of a vaster dimension than Indian problems because China has the greatest population in the world. But it has been able to solve those problems, it has been able to become a strong country.India has remained poor; its problems have increased, and there seems to be no possibility that it can solve its problems the way it is moving. Its golden age has passed; there is no enthusiasm, there is no spirit. People are simply dragging.America is young, lives in the moment, hence there is great exploration going on about everything: science, religion, philosophy, art – new forms of art; new methods, new ways to reach the moon, to Mars and finally to the stars; new methods, quicker methods to enter meditation, samadhi. In every dimension America is interested to explore, the young man’s adventurous spirit is there. They are going to the farthest corners of the world to explore all possibilities.India is old, dying. China is still being born, just now growing toward a future. America is young.The future can give you better possibilities than the past, but still the future is nonexistential; sooner or later you will get tired of it. Russia is more tired than China because for sixty years they have been waiting and waiting, and now the hope is turning into a hopelessness. Now it is becoming more and more clear that that stateless society is never going to happen. In fact, the state has become more powerful than ever before. Even the czar was not so powerful as Joseph Stalin was. The czar was thrown by revolution, but in Russia now there is no possibility of any revolution. The state has become such a vast, powerful, technically equipped organization that nobody can revolt against it, nobody can organize any revolution against it. Even to talk anything against it is dangerous, even to think may be dangerous in a few years because now they are discovering that every child can be fixed with an electrode in the head and that electrode will go on informing the government computer what the person is thinking, what he is trying to do in his brain. Even brain waves can be traced, subtle indications can be discovered, and before the man has even uttered a single word he will disappear.And those electrodes can also do another work: they can implant any idea in the person and you will never be aware that you are carrying an electrode inside your brain because within your skull there is no sensitivity. If a stone is inserted inside your skull you will not feel that there is a stone. There are no sensitive nerves in the brain.A person carried a bullet in his brain for nine years, absolutely unaware. It was discovered by accident through x-ray, that in the First World War he had been hit by a bullet, and then the wound healed and the bullet remained inside for nine years, and he was not aware at all.Electrodes are very small things, they can be inserted when the child is born in the hospital. And of course in Russia every child is born in the hospital, so every child can be inserted with an electrode and that electrode will function in two ways – it will inform the government what the person is thinking, and it can do one more thing: the government can manipulate the person through the electrode; it can insert ideas through radio waves, through remote control. And the person will think, “These are my ideas,” he will never think that these ideas are coming from some other source.In Russia, a revolution is absolutely impossible, hence people are becoming more and more hopeless seeing that Marx had said the state will wither away – once capitalism is gone there will be no need for the state – but the state has become stronger and stronger. Marx’s prediction has gone absolutely wrong, just the opposite has happened.The same is going to happen to China. Right now they are very enthusiastic, but soon they will settle into the same slavery as Russia has settled into.The people who are past-oriented, like the Hindus, are living with a long, long dead past – and carrying it. It is a mountainous weight, they are crushed under it. There is no hope in the future. The Hindus think that the best days were in the beginning; they don’t believe in evolution, remember – they believe in involution. Evolution means we are reaching higher peaks. Hindus believe we are deteriorating, coming lower, every day, the highest age was in the beginning; now we are at the lowest, Kaliyuga, the last. This is the very low state of humanity and there is no hope.For a country to be really alive, to be really adventurous, exploring, enjoying, celebrating, it has to be constantly young, neither in the past nor in the future. I am against both the Hindu approach and the communist approach. I would like the whole humanity to be young and to remain young forever, and the way to remain young is to go on dying to the past and not bother too much about the future. The future will take its own course. When it comes, if we are here we will respond to it, otherwise our children will respond to it. Why bother about it too much?Live right now. Live as deeply and passionately as you can because that is the only way to discover God. That’s the only source to uncover the hidden secrets of life. God is not against life, God is the innermost core of life. Hence I teach a life-affirmative religion. I don’t teach Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity; I only teach a kind of religiousness. The world is fed up with all these “isms.”There are three hundred religions and at least three thousand sub-sects of those religions. The world needs one universal religiousness.My sannyasins don’t belong to any religion at all, they simply belong to a new phenomenon – a religionless religiousness. The essential of religion, of all the religions, will be saved, but the peripheral will have to be dropped, the nonessential will have to be simply burned.The nonessential has grown too much in Hinduism, it is ninety-nine percent nonessential. And the same is true about other religions too, more or less, because Hinduism is the oldest one. Christianity is only two thousand years old, Mohammedanism only fourteen hundred years old, Sikhism only five hundred years old – of course, they are not that old so they have a little more life. But Hinduism, Jainism are very ancient – Jainism perhaps even older than Hinduism, hence more dead, hence more in the grave, not even on the deathbed, Hinduism is on the deathbed, at least Jainism is already in the grave!We need a rejuvenation, not of something old but of the essential which is eternal. I call that eternal religiousness, sanatan dharma. Aes dhammo sanantano – the eternal religion. It has nothing to do with Hinduism, it is nontemporal. Meditation is the most significant part of it, and out of meditation, the transformation of your whole character.I am not against anybody, but I have to say the truth as it is. I cannot compromise – truth is always uncompromising. I cannot be polite either because that politeness will not help. I have to be mercilessly hammering continuously on all that is wrong and all that is ill. Chunk by chunk all the nonessential, ritualistic religion has to be destroyed. When only the essential is left you will see the youngness of it, the freshness of it, the fragrance of it.And the world is now in a great need because man as he exists now, cannot exist any more. Either he has to commit a global suicide or he has to come out of the past like a snake moving out of the old skin. He has to be reborn.Only a new man can survive, the old man is incapable of survival in the future. Science has grown so much that unless we bring religion also to the same par, there will be no balance. Religion is lagging far behind and science is growing so speedily every day that if we don’t also bring religion to the present, science and religion cannot meet. And in that meeting is the only hope.The meeting of science and religion will create the new man, the new synthesis.The second question:Osho,You have spoken many times about Zen masters, and today you said that J. Krishnamurti is Zen and Zen means no teaching. Can you explain this point?Zen certainly means no teaching at all, no doctrine. That’s what J. Krishnamurti has been saying for fifty years or more. He never mentions the name Zen, but that does not make any difference; what he says is exactly, essentially the same.But on one point there is a great difference. Zen says there is no teaching, truth cannot be taught. Nobody can give you the truth, truth has to be discovered within your own soul. It cannot be borrowed from the scriptures. It is not possible even to communicate it, it is inexpressible; by its very nature, intrinsically, it is indefinable. Truth happens to you in a wordless silence, in deep, deep meditation. When there is no thought, no desire, no ambition, in that state of no-mind truth descends in you – or ascends in you. As far as the dimension of truth is concerned both are the same because in the world of the innermost subjectivity, height and depth mean the same. It is one dimension, the vertical dimension.The mind moves horizontally, no-mind exists vertically. The moment the mind ceases to function – that’s what meditation is all about, cessation of the mind; total cessation of the mind – your consciousness becomes vertical, depth and height are yours.So either you can say truth descends, as many mystics like Patanjali, Badarayana, Kapil and Kanad have said. It is avataran – coming from the heights to you. Hence whenever a person becomes self-realized he is called an avatar. Avatar means truth has descended in him. The word avatar simply means descending from the above, from the beyond.But the other expression is as valid. Adinatha, Neminatha, Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, these mystics have said that truth does not come from the beyond, it arises from the deepest source of your being. It is not something coming down but something rising up, welling up.Both expressions are valid to me, two ways of saying the same thing – that the dimension is vertical. Either you can talk in terms of height, or in terms of depth. But truth never comes from the outside, so nobody can teach you.As far as this point is concerned, Krishnamurti is absolutely Zen. Truth cannot be taught, cannot be transmitted. Zen masters – Bodhidharma, Lin Chi, Bokuju, Basho – they have all been emphasizing one point, that Zen is transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words. On this point J. Krishnamurti is in absolute agreement with Zen.But there is one more thing in Zen which is missing in J. Krishnamurti, and because of that he has utterly failed. He could have been of great help and upliftment to humanity, but he has utterly failed. In fact, I don’t know another name in the whole history of humanity who has so utterly failed as J. Krishnamurti. No other enlightened person has been such a failure. The other thing that is missing is the cause. It is a little bit delicate and you will have to be very attentive about it.Zen says truth cannot be transmitted, hence it can only happen in a master–disciple relationship. It cannot be taught so there is no question of a relationship between the teacher and the taught – because there is no teaching so there is no teacher and no taught. But it is a transmission. Transmission means heart to heart: teaching means head to head.When the disciple and the master meet, merge, melt into each other, it is a love affair. It is a deep, orgasmic experience, far deeper than any love because even lovers go on carrying their egos and egos are bound to clash, conflict. The master and the disciple exist without egos. The master’s ego has evaporated – that’s why he is a master – and the disciple surrenders his ego to the master.Remember, by surrendering the ego, the disciple is not surrendering anything in particular because the ego is just an idea and nothing else. It has no substance, it is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. When you surrender your dreams, what are you surrendering?If you come to me and you say, “I offer all my dreams to you,” you are offering, but I am not getting anything. You may be thinking that you are offering great dreams of golden palaces and beautiful women and great treasures; you are offering great dreams, but I am not getting anything.When you offer your ego to the master you are offering something as far as you are concerned because you think it is very substantial, very significant. When you surrender you think you are doing something great. As far as the master is concerned he is simply laughing at the whole thing because he knows what your ego is – just hot air, nothing much to brag about!But a device, a simple device, can help immensely. It is a device. The master says, “Surrender the ego.” When he says, “Surrender the ego,” he is saying, “Give me that which you don’t have at all, but you believe that you have. Give me your belief – I am ready to take it. Let this excuse help you.” You may not be able to drop it on your own, but in love with the master you may be able, you may gather courage to risk. Love encourages you to risk. In love you can go to any lengths. When you are in love with the master and he says, “Give me your ego,” how can you say no?To be with a master means in a state of saying yes, yes, and again yes! It is an absolute yes, unconditional yes. So when he says, “Give me your ego,” you simply give your ego to the master. To you it is very important; to him it has no meaning, no substance, no existence, but he accepts it.The moment you drop your ego, the meeting starts happening. Now two zeros start moving into each other. Two lovers enter each other’s bodies, that is a physical phenomenon and the orgasm that happens is a physical thing. The master and the disciple are lovers of the spiritual plane: two zeros, two egoless beings enter each other. In that merger something is transpired. Not that the master gives you something, not that you take something, but because of the meeting something happens, out of the meeting something happens – something which is greater than the master and greater than the disciple, something more than the meeting of these two, something transcendental.That part is missing in Krishnamurti. He says truth cannot be taught, but he has missed the other point. Yes, it cannot be taught, but he is a logical person and that is his problem. He is trying to put his enlightenment very logically, he does not want to bring any illogicality in it, any paradox in it.Now, Zen people don’t bother about logic, they live the ultimate paradox. They go on saying there is no teaching, and truth cannot be taught. And still Zen masters are there, and Zen disciples are there. People have raised questions, skeptical people have always raised questions: “What is this? On the one hand you say truth cannot be taught, and on the other hand why do you initiate, why do you accept people?”The Zen masters have always laughed because this paradox cannot be explained. If you want to really know it, you have to become a disciple, you have to become a participant, you have to become part of the mystery; only then will you have the taste of it. It is a taste, no explanation can help. If you have tasted sugar you know it is sweet, but no explanation can give you the idea of sweetness. If you have seen light you know what it is, but to the blind man you cannot explain, it is utterly futile.Zen masters have never bothered, hence their statements are very paradoxical.One Zen master, Ikkyu, was staying in a temple, just an overnight stay, but it was a cold night and he was shivering. In the middle of the night he got up and found one of Buddha’s statues, a wooden statue, and burned it, and was very happy with the fire and the warmth.The priest of the temple, seeing the light and the fire inside the temple, could not believe what was happening. He was a little suspicious when he had allowed this Ikkyu to stay for the night in the temple, but he had not thought that he would do such a thing. “He will set the whole temple on fire!” He rushed in and he found he had burned one of the most beautiful statues of the Buddha. And he was of course angry, and he shouted at Ikkyu, “What you have done? And you think you are a Buddhist? And you are wearing the yellow robes of the Buddhist monk! And I have even heard that not only are you a Buddhist monk, you are a great master and you have many followers! And what have you done?” The statue was completely burned.Ikkyu took his staff and started searching in the ashes for something. The priest asked, “What are you looking for?”He said, “I am looking for Buddha’s bones.”In the East we call the bones flowers. When a man dies we collect his bones after the body is completely burned. Those bones are called flowers.So he said, “I am looking for Buddha’s flowers.”Even the priest could not resist laughing. He said, “You are crazy! How can you find flowers in a wooden statue?”Now it was the turn of Ikkyu to laugh, and he laughed and he said, “Then you are not so stupid as I thought! Bring… There are two more statues in the temple and it is still a long night. Why don’t you also join? It is so warm, and we will also burn those two other statues; when there are no bones in it, certainly it is not a real Buddha – just wood.”The priest became so afraid of this madman he threw him out. It was dangerous to keep him inside the temple – he may burn the other two statues! The temple only had three statues.In the morning when the priest opened the doors he saw Ikkyu bowing down in front of the temple before a milestone. He had put a few flowers – must have gathered some wild flowers – he had put those flowers on the milestone and was doing his morning prayers and meditations. He was repeating the famous Buddhist mantra: “Buddham sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the master, Buddha. Sangham sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the commune of my master. Dhammam sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the ultimate truth that my master realized.”The priest came, shook him and said, “What are you doing? You are really absolutely mad! This is a milestone, this is not Buddha! You have burned a Buddha statue in the night, and now before a milestone you are doing your prayers and saying, ‘Buddham sharanam gachchhami, sangham sharanam gachchhami, dhammam sharanam gachchhami?’”Ikkyu said, “It is not a question whether it is a statue or not, the question is my heart. It is morning time. I am doing my prayer. Any excuse will do. In the night I burned one excuse – that was only an excuse, it was not Buddha. This is another excuse, and this is far simpler because I can find the milestone anywhere. I need not be dependent on any temple, on any statue.”The priest said, “You are very illogical!”And that’s what has been told to the Zen masters down the ages – since the days of Mahakashyap, the first Zen master, the first Patriarch, it has been again and again said that, “You are paradoxical. On the one hand you deny that there is no teaching, on the other hand you become disciples, masters. On the one hand you say there is no prayer, on the other hand you pray to Buddha.”You have to be very, very alert to understand the paradox. The prayer has to be out of your overflowing love, it has nothing to do with the statue or the stone. Those are just excuses. Buddha is everywhere – to Buddhists, Buddha means God. The stone is as much Buddha as the statue. The whole existence is full of buddhahood, godliness, and the master has experienced it.The disciple accepts the master so that he can come closer to him. In saying yes to the master he becomes attuned with the master. The word attunement is beautiful it means at-onement. He becomes one with the master. In that oneness something that cannot be given through words is transpired through the being – something like bringing an unlit candle close to a lit candle. There is a certain point when the unlit candle comes within that limit – suddenly the flame from the lit candle jumps into the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing at all, but the unlit candle gains infinitely.Now the reverse process is happening, when the disciple comes to the master he gives his ego and thinks he is losing much – and the master gets nothing. When the master gives something he gives infinitely, he gives his light, but he loses nothing, his light remains the same. From one lit candle you can light millions of candles, and the lit candle loses nothing at all, although the unlit candles gain infinitely.This point is missing in J. Krishnamurti, hence whatsoever he is saying is Zen, but he is not doing Zen – saying but not doing.I am saying and doing both, and only doing can bring fulfillment, flowering. Just saying is not going to help. Whether you say positively something about truth, or you say something negative about truth, it is useless. Even saying that truth cannot be told is meaningless. What is the point saying again and again for fifty years that truth cannot be told? Then why bother? Say once, “Truth cannot be told,” and every day repeat “Ditto!” That’s enough! And go home. There is no point in saying it again and again, unless by saying it you are encouraging the people toward some other phenomenon.Truth cannot be said – this is one part. The second part is: but truth can be transpired. It can be shared, not told but shared. And for that sharing the love affair of the disciple and the master is a must; without it, it is not possible.The last question:Osho,What do you have up your sleeve?Nothing much, just few jokes for you! The first:A man who had lost all his money at the gambling tables in Las Vegas begged a dime from another patron to use the men’s room. One of the stalls was not locked, so he saved the dime, and then used it to play a slot machine. Luckily he hit the jackpot.With the money he tried another machine, and again he won. Fortune continued to smile on him as he went and played the crap tables and roulette wheels, running his winnings up to a million dollars.He told his extraordinary story all over Las Vegas – at bars and parties. Always expressing gratitude to his benefactor, he said he would split the million with him. After several weeks, among a group of men at a bar, one of them exclaimed, “I am the man who gave you the dime!”“I am not looking for you,” the lucky man answered. “I am looking for the guy who left the door open!”The second:Jim Smith ran into an old friend on the street who was sporting two black eyes. After greeting each other, Jim asked, “Say, where did you get those shiners?”“At church,” was his friend’s reply.“How?” Jim asked, somewhat astonished.“Well,” began his friend, “I was sitting behind a big fat lady in church. When she stood up I noticed her dress was caught in the crack of her butt. I reached over and pulled it out and she turned around and socked me in the eye!”“Wow!” said Jim, amazed. “But how did the other eye get black?”Sighing, his friend said, “When I realized that she did not like what I had done, I put it back!”And the third:Johnny the Sperm and all his little friends were preparing for their big thrust out into the world. They were exercising and building up their strength. Johnny said to the other sperms, “Listen, fellows, I want to be number one – I want to be the first to become a human being!”They were all hanging around when suddenly the bells of Jerusalem rang, “Gong! Gong! Gong!” Johnny took the lead – he was number one, but suddenly all the other sperms saw him turn around and start racing back toward them.‘Hey, Johnny!” they yelled. “What’s wrong?”“False alarm, boys,” Johnny called out to them. “It’s a blow job!”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,When answering the following you will be speaking to about half a million radio listeners in Europe; most of them may not have heard anything about you yet.If one of the listeners to this program is devoted to socialism, what would you tell him?If one of the listeners is a practicing Catholic, what story would you have for him?If one of the listeners is a potential seeker, what message would you have for him? However, if your message is silence, how would you convey this silence on radio?First, I am not for socialism because to me freedom is the ultimate value, nothing is higher than that. Socialism is basically against freedom, it has to be, it is inevitable because the very effort of socialism is to bring something unnatural into existence.Men are not equal, they are unique. How can they be equal? All are not poets and all are not painters. Every person has unique talents to him. There are people who can create music and there are people who can create money. Man needs absolute freedom to be himself.Socialism is dictatorship of the state, it is a forced economic structure. It tries to equalize people who are not equal; it cuts them into the same size, and they have different sizes. Naturally to a few people, to a very few people it will fit, but to the majority it will be a crippling phenomenon, paralyzing, destructive.I appreciate freedom in every sphere of life, so that everybody is allowed to be himself. The society is not the end but only a means; the end is the individual. The individual has a greater value than the social organization. The society exists for the individual, not vice versa. Hence I believe in laissez-faire.Capitalism is the most natural economic structure, it has not been forced, it has grown. It has not been imposed, it has come on its own. Certainly I would like poverty to be eradicated from the world, it is ugly, but socialism cannot do it. It has failed in Russia, in China; in every country it has failed to eradicate poverty. Yes, it has succeeded in one thing – it has made everybody equally poor, it has distributed poverty.Man is so foolish that if everybody else is as poor as you are, you feel more at ease, you don’t feel jealous. The whole idea of socialism has arisen out of jealousy. It has nothing to do with understanding man, his psychology, his growth, his ultimate flowering; it is rooted in jealousy. A few people become rich, those few people are targets for everybody else’s jealousy – they have to be pulled down. Not that you will become richer by pulling them down, you may become even poorer than before because those few people know how to create money. If they are destroyed you will lose all capacity to create richness.That’s what has happened in Russia. The rich people have disappeared, but that has not made the whole society rich, everybody has become equally poor. Of course people feel happier in that way because there is nobody who is richer than them. Everybody is equally poor, all are beggars, it feels good. Somebody rising higher than you, and your ego is hurt.People talk about equality, but something fundamental has to be understood: men are not psychologically equal. What can be done about it? Albert Einstein is not equal to any Tom, Harry, Dick – he is not. You can, sooner or later, start equalizing people as far as intelligence is concerned. Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley are not equal to other people, they have a dimension of their own.One thing I agree on, that there should be freedom for everybody, and equal freedom for everybody to be himself. To put it more precisely, freedom means that everybody is free to be unequal. Equality and freedom cannot go together, they cannot coexist. If you choose equality, freedom has to be sacrificed and with freedom all is sacrificed. Religion is sacrificed. Genius, the very possibility of genius is sacrificed; man’s higher qualities are sacrificed. Everybody has to fit with the lowest denominator, only then can you be equal.It is like you are going to climb a mountain – if all have to be equal, then the person who is the laziest will become the criterion; everybody has to move according to the laziest. The first will not be the criterion but the last. This will be a great calamity. If the last becomes the decisive factor, then what about those who are like Everest?And my observation is that every individual is born with some specific talent, some specific genius to himself. He may not be a poet like Shelley or Rabindranath, he may not be a painter like Picasso or Nandlal, he may not be a musician like Beethoven or Ravi Shankar, but he must have something. That something has to be discovered. He has to be helped so that he can discover what he has brought to the world as a gift from existence.Nobody comes without a gift, everybody brings a certain potential. But the idea of equality is dangerous because the rose has to be the rose and the marigold has to be the marigold and the lotus has to be the lotus. If you start trying to make them equal, you will destroy all: the roses, the lotuses, the marigolds, all will be destroyed. You can succeed in creating plastic flowers, which will be exactly equal to each other, but they will be dead.And that is what is going to happen if socialism becomes our way of life in the whole world. Man will be reduced to a commodity, he will be reduced to a machine. Machines are equal. You can have millions of Ford cars exactly equal to each other. They go on coming through the assembly line, absolutely the same as each other. But man is not a machine, and to reduce man to a machine will be destroying humanity from the earth.Do you think in Soviet Russia, Gautam Buddha is possible, Jesus Christ is possible, Lao Tzu is possible? And what to say about Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu? I ask you, is even Karl Marx possible? Even Karl Marx is not possible because Karl Marx has an intelligence of his own and he will not be tolerated. He is not an ordinary person, certainly he is not a part of the so-called proletariat. He was part of the most refined bourgeoisie.He never worked his whole life. From morning to evening he was sitting in the British Museum studying. In fact, the British Museum has never again come across another scholar of the same caliber. He was so intrigued with his studies, so fascinated, that when closing time came he had to be forcibly thrown out every day because he would insist, “Just wait a little more, let me finish this book. Don’t disturb me! What does it matter if you close the museum half an hour late? If I don’t do this work, tomorrow I may have completely lost track of it. Let me finish it!” He had to be forced, physically forced…And it happened many times that he was found almost in a state of coma; studying continuously he would become so dizzy he would fall unconscious, he would fall in a swoon, and he had to be carried on a stretcher to his home.Now this man is no longer possible. In the first place, the British Museum is not possible in Russia.I have heard…An American journalist was visiting Russia. He asked a professor, thinking that a professor will answer him intelligently, but whatsoever he asked, the professor always started his answer, “Yes, just the other day I read in Pravda…”The Russian word pravda means the truth. What irony, it should mean the lie! The Pravda is the most deceptive newspaper in the world, but it means the truth.He would always start, “I have read in Pravda…”Disgusted, the journalist finally asked, “Have you not got any opinion of your own?”The professor said, “Yes, I have got my own opinions, but I don’t believe in them!”In Russia there is no freedom of thought because freedom of thought means the beginning of inequality. Freedom of thought means man is not a machine, and then two men cannot be equal.The idea of equality is absolutely unpsychological. I can accept it only in one sense, that everybody should be given equal opportunity to be himself – and that means to be unequal. You have to understand this paradox: everybody has to be given equal opportunity and freedom to be himself, and that simply means everybody has to be given equality to be unequal.Poverty can be destroyed – there is no need for socialism. Poverty can be destroyed only by a higher capitalist system. Karl Marx predicted that the first country to become communist or socialist would be America; his prediction proved absolutely wrong. He had never thought that a country like Russia or China was ever going to become communist; Russia and China are economically very backward. In the days of Karl Marx, Russia was living in the world of feudalism, even capitalism had not happened there.If Karl Marx comes back he will be absolutely unable to understand how it happened that Russia became the first communist country, the first socialist society. He was hoping America would become the first communist country. Why was he hoping that? – because if capitalism grows and reaches a peak of producing wealth to the maximum, poverty will disappear naturally because when wealth is too much, nobody wants to hoard it. You don’t hoard air, it is available. It is freely available, it is so much there. You don’t hoard anything that is not in scarcity.People are money minded, greedy because money is scarce. If you don’t hoard it, if you don’t cling to it, somebody else will snatch it away from you. Before somebody else does it, you have to do it. Otherwise you will be a loser. And the only way to destroy poverty is to create so much wealth that greed becomes irrelevant. When wealth is enough, poverty will disappear. Of course there will still be people who have more wealth and people who have less wealth, but that is natural and nothing is wrong in it. Somebody will be more intelligent and somebody less intelligent, and somebody will be more healthy and somebody less healthy, but we can create a society where everybody can attain his maximum. Even then inequality is bound to remain, and there is no need to destroy it because that creates variety, and variety brings richness. It is good that people are not equal.Poverty should go, but the only way for it to go is to produce more wealth, to industrialize society more scientifically, to bring more and more technology, and with a deep understanding of nature so your technology and industry don’t destroy nature. They should become part of ecology, they should not go against it. That is the highest scientific development. It cannot happen through socialism, it can happen only through capitalism.The word capitalism has become very derogatory, but I am not worried about that. I believe in capitalism and not in socialism because to me capitalism is the only hope for freedom, for growth, for individual uniqueness. It has a respect for the individual; socialism is disrespectful of the individual. Socialism does not believe in the soul of man, it cannot believe because if you believe in the soul of man then you cannot behave as if man is a machine. You have to give respect to the uniqueness of every individual. Not to give that respect means committing suicide.The second thing you ask: “If one of the listeners is a practicing Catholic, what story would you have for him?” It is good to be a Christ; it is ugly to be a Christian – Catholic or Protestant, it doesn’t matter. It is good to be a Buddha, but ugly to be a Buddhist. When you can be a Christ, why settle for less? When Christ-consciousness can flower in you, when you can become a buddha in your own right, when you can experience what Buddha and Christ have experienced, then why be just a follower, an imitator, a carbon copy? I am against carbon copies.My effort here is to help you to discover your original face, so whether you are a practicing Catholic, or a Protestant, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, it is all wrong. Love Christ, but don’t be a Christian. Love is a totally different phenomenon. If you become a Christian you are addicted to Christ, you become dependent on Christ. If you are a Christian, you are bound to be anti-Buddha, anti-Mahavira, anti-Lao Tzu, anti-Zarathustra, anti-Patanjali. Just choosing Christ and becoming anti to all the other great awakened individuals who have walked on the earth is becoming poor, unnecessarily poor. When you can claim the whole heritage of humanity, when all the buddhas, all the awakened ones can enrich your being, why narrow down your consciousness? Why become focused and obsessed with Christ or Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna?A Catholic means he is obsessed with Christ, a Hindu means he is obsessed with Krishna, a Jain means he is obsessed with Mahavira, and obsession is a psychological disease.One should be open, one should be available to the stars, to the moon, to the sun, to the wind, to the flowers, to the birds. One should be available to all because this whole belongs to us.Love Christ because love is not excluding others, love is an inclusive phenomenon. If you love Christ you have to love Buddha too because that is another aspect of being a Christ. If you love Christ you have to love Mahavira too because that is again another aspect of the same fulfillment: Buddha, Christ, Mahavira, Mohammed, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak – different aspects of the truth.Truth is multidimensional. Why choose one dimension? Why become linear? Why be so miserly, even in your spiritual love? Why not be open and available, vulnerable to all, so they can all dance in your being?I would like my sannyasins to be lovers of all. Enjoy all kinds of flowers. Don’t become addicted to the rose, because the lotus has its beauty just as the rose has its beauty. Where is the problem? Cannot you enjoy the rose and the lotus together? Just one thing has to be understood: if you love beauty you can enjoy all, if you love truth you can enjoy all the awakened ones.But a practicing Catholic does not love truth – he believes. No believer is a seeker of truth, all believers are non-seekers. They have already believed without inquiring, without going on an exploration, without adventuring into unknown territory. They have already become prejudiced.What do you mean by “a practicing Catholic?” What can you practice in the name of Catholicism? Whatsoever you do will be nothing but an effort of conditioning yourself according to your belief. It will be a state of autohypnosis, and autohypnosis is not going to help you to become awakened.Religion is not a question of practicing at all. If you practice you will miss religion and its beauty. Religion is the experience of a spontaneously flowing consciousness. Practicing means imposing something upon yourself, cultivating a character. Religion has nothing to do with cultivating a character. It is an inquiry into, “Who am l?” It is going inward, reaching the very rock bottom of your being, to the ground of your being, discovering your center. And from that discovery an explosion happens and your old character simply disappears like a nightmare, and a new quality arises in you. You are more alive, more joyous, more full of love, more full of celebration. This state of celebration makes you aware that existence is not dead. Because you are alive, you can contact the living sources of existence, that’s what God is. God is not a person, but only the experience that the whole existence is a living phenomenon, it is not matter alone. It is throbbing with life. It is overflowing with life; it has a heartbeat. The moment you know that the universe has a heartbeat you have discovered God. But first, please, discover your own heartbeat; discover your own center.Religion is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering. It is not a question of belief. Beliefs are all against truth, they make your mind prejudiced. Belief means you don’t know, still you pretend to know. Belief is a lie, it is hypocrisy.So whether somebody is a practicing Catholic or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, all practicing people are dangerous. They are false, pseudo; they are not authentic, they are not real. The real person is a seeker.The third thing you ask: “If one of the listeners is a potential seeker, what message would you have for him?” My whole message is only for him, the potential seeker. These are the qualities of a seeker: first, he will not be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist; he will not be an atheist or a theist. To seek, this basic requirement has to be fulfilled – you have to put aside all your beliefs because if you carry your beliefs then your beliefs will distort your vision. Beliefs are like colored glasses, they will make the whole of existence the same color as your glasses. It will not be the true color of existence, it will be impaired by your glasses. You have to put aside all your glasses. You have to contact reality directly, immediately. There should be no idea between you and existence, no a priori conclusion.A real seeker has to be in the state that Dionysius calls agnosia – a state of not-knowing. Socrates said at the very end of his life, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” This is the state of a true seeker.In the East we call this state meditation: no belief, no thought, no desire, no prejudice, no conditioning – in fact, no mind at all. A state of no-mind is meditation. When you can look without any mind interfering, distorting, interpreting, then you see the truth. The truth is already all around, you just have to put your mind aside.The seeker has to fulfill only one basic thing, he has to drop his mind. The moment the mind is dropped, a great silence arises because the mind carries your whole past; all the memories of the past go on hankering for your attention, they go on crowding upon you, they don’t leave any space within you.The mind also means future. Out of the past you start fantasizing about the future. It is a projection out of the past. You have lived a certain life in the past, there have been a few moments of joy and many, many dark nights. You would not like to have those dark nights, you would have your future full of those joyous moments. So you sort out from your past, you choose a few things and you project them into the future, and you choose a few other things and you try to avoid them in the future. Your future is nothing but a refined past – a little bit modified here and there, but it is still the past because that’s all that you know.One thing very significant to be remembered: those few moments of joy that you had in the past were basically part of those long dark nights, so if you choose those moments, those dark nights will come automatically, you cannot avoid them. The silver linings in the dark clouds cannot be chosen separately from the dark clouds. In the dark night you see the sky full of stars, in the day those stars disappear. Do you think they evaporate? They are still there, but the context is missing. They need darkness, only then can you see them. In the night, you will be able to see them again. The darker the night, the shinier are the stars.In life everything is intertwined with each other. Your pleasures are intertwined with your pains, your ecstasies mixed inevitably, inseparably with your agonies. So your whole idea of the future is sheer nonsense. You cannot manage it, nobody has ever been able to manage it because you are trying to do something which cannot be done in the very nature of things. It will simply be a repetition of your past.Whatsoever you desire is not going to make any difference. It will again and again be the repetition of your past, the same past, maybe a little bit different, but not because of your expectations – a little bit different because life goes on changing, people go on changing, existence goes on changing. So there will be a few differences but not basic differences, only in the nonessential parts. Essentially it will be the same tragedy.Dropping the mind means dropping the past, and with it of course the future disappears. Dropping the mind means you are suddenly awakened into the present, and the present is the only reality there is. The past is nonexistential, so is the future. The past is no longer, the future is not yet, only the present is. It is always now – only the now exists. The meditator starts merging and melting with the now.And that’s what silence is. It can be conveyed to your radio listeners. Just these pauses, these wordless moments, when you start feeling the now, the here; when suddenly you become aware that five thousand people are sitting here, but as if there is nobody at all. The Buddha Hall is absolutely empty.When we are in the present, silence descends. You can hear the birds chirping, but they don’t disturb the silence; they enhance it, they beautify it.Take my message to your people. First: freedom is the ultimate goal and socialism goes against it, hence I favor a state of laissez-faire. Secondly: nobody can practice religion. Religion really means your spontaneity, your nature; you cannot practice it, you have to allow it. You have to remove all the barriers that prevent the flow of your nature. It is like a stream prevented by rocks – remove the rocks. There is no question of practicing, it is already there. It is your nature. When the hindrances are no longer there you start flowing, just like a river moving toward the ocean.Each consciousness moving toward God, toward the ultimate ocean, is religious. Religion is neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan. These are all political games played in the name of religion. A religious person is simply religious, natural, spontaneous, living out of his own light.Buddha said to his disciples, and this was his last message on the earth: “Be a light unto yourself.” Live according to your own light, not following and practicing somebody else’s light because that will make you only a carbon copy, and howsoever beautiful the carbon copy is, it is still a carbon copy.Discover your originality – and it cannot be done by practicing! Practicing means imposing some ideas from others, trying to act as others would like you to act. Act as you would like to act. Take the risk – it is dangerous.To be religious is to live in danger – it is not security. To live in religion means constantly exploring the unknown and ultimately the unknowable.And thirdly: be a seeker, never be a believer. If you cannot say, “I know God,” please don’t say, “I believe in God,” because that is falsifying. That is not even being true about God, not even being sincere with God. With whom are you going to be sincere then? If you don’t know, say, “I don’t know.” At least that is true. Don’t pretend that you know because pretensions are dangerous. They will deceive others and they can deceive you too.Only a seeker can become a meditator. Meditation means absolute silence. It is only in silence that one comes to know, one comes to love, one comes to dance in tune with existence.The second question:Osho,What are you trying to do here exactly?Govind Narayan, it is a very difficult question to answer. In the first place I am not trying to do anything, the very word trying does not fit with me. If somebody asks you, “Are you trying to love this woman?” What will you say Govind Narayan? Trying to love? Either love is, or love is not. Trying to love simply means you don’t love, hence you are trying. But what can you manage by trying? Empty gestures. You may say to the woman, “I love you,” a thousand and one times in a thousand and one ways, but deep down you will know that it is only an effort, your heart will not be with it.I am not trying to do anything. I am just being myself. Then whatsoever is happening is happening – it is a happening! What is happening here, remember, it is not being done by me. You cannot make me responsible for whatsoever is happening here. I am not responsible at all! It is happening certainly, but neither am I doing anything nor my sannyasins are doing anything. But in this non-doing something transpires.But Govind Narayan is not a sannyasin. He must be a casual visitor, hence the question has arisen in him. He will not understand what I am saying, but he may understand this:Tu jism ke khushrang libason pai hai najanTu jism ke khushrangTu jism ke khushrang libason pai hai najanMain ruh ko mohtaje kafan dekh raha huinKya puchhte ho hal mere karobar kaAaine bechta hun main andhon ke shahar main.Tu jism ke khushrang libason pai hai najanMain ruh ko mohtaje kafan dekh raha huinKya puchhte ho hal mere karobar kaAaine bechta hun main andhon ke shahar main.Roughly it can be translated:Don’t ask me sir, what I am doing here.You are proud of the dreamlike psychedelic colorsof the body and the mind,but I can see death knocking at your doors.You are lost in a dreamworld, and I can seedeath approaching every moment closer and closer.Don’t ask me sir, about my business here.I sell mirrors in the city of the blind!“Aaine bechta hun main andhon ke shahar main. I sell mirrors in the city of the blind!” And this is certainly a city of the blind. This whole earth is full of blind people: blind because they cannot see death approaching; blind because they cannot see that life is evaporating every moment; blind because they cannot see the momentariness of all that they are accumulating; blind because they don’t know from where they come, why they come, to where they are destined; blind because they are not even aware who resides at the innermost core of their being.When Alexander the Great came to India, and he came at a very right, ripe moment – Buddha had left his body only three hundred years ago, his vibe was still alive. People were still filled with the joy, with the silence that they have experienced in Buddha. He had gone, the flower had disappeared, but the fragrance was still in the air, still lingering. It lingered on for at least five hundred years.Alexander was very much surprised, he had never felt such a quality. He came across many people he had never come across in his whole life. They were strange – they talked a strange language, they lived a strange life. He was mystified.He met a naked fakir and he was so impressed by the man’s beauty, his grace, his silence, his bliss, that suddenly he felt his own poverty. He was the conqueror of that time, the conqueror of the then known world, the greatest conqueror ever. He felt his beggarliness before this naked beggar because he could see he himself was empty. This naked man was overflowing with meaning, with joy, with splendor.Alexander begged from this beggar, “Give me some gift that can be of help to me!”The beggar pulled out a small mirror – so the story goes – from his bag, and gave the mirror to Alexander the Great. Seeing that it was just an ordinary mirror, and very cheap too, Alexander said, “Do you think this is such a great gift? From a man like you I was expecting something really miraculous!”The naked fakir laughed and he said, “It is more than you could have ever expected. Keep it safe for the day when the question arises in you, ‘Who am I?’ and then look into it.”Alexander could not resist the temptation. That very night when he was alone, he looked into the mirror and he was surprised, he saw his original face.This must be a story because no mirror can show you your original face – unless that mirror means meditation. Meditation can show you your original face. The story simply says that the beggar gave him the secret of meditation, it is a metaphorical way of saying. Meditation is a mirror. All the mirrors can only show the physical face, but meditation can show you your spiritual face.And that’s what I am doing here. “Aaine bechta hun main andhon ke shahar main. I am selling mirrors in the city of the blind!”It is really a city of blind people, mad people, dead people; all kinds of strange people have gathered on the earth. It seems the earth must be a dumping place for the universe because scientists say there are at least fifty thousand planets on which life exists, so they must need some place to dump. They must be using earth as a dumping place because it is so full of mad people, so full of dead people, so full of mediocres, stupids…A couple of jazz musicians, real gone, were watching a crater erupt.“Man,” cried one, “dig that crazy cigarette lighter!”A young woman who had been completely broke for many weeks found a ten-dollar bill in the gutter. Overjoyed, she rushed into the nearest supermarket and spent it all on groceries. As she was walking out with her parcel she collided with a drunk and landed on the pavement amidst a mess of milk, coffee powder, broken eggs, and tomato sauce.Seeing her dream of a feast shattered, she burst into tears and began sobbing bitterly. The drunk staggered to his feet and gazed in fascinated silence at two eggs floating in a pool of tomato sauce. Then he looked at the woman and spluttered, “Don’t worry, lady, it would not have lived anyway – its eyes were too far apart!”A drunk was staggering down the road in the middle of the day, obviously much the worse for wear, and almost collided with a Catholic priest who was on his way to visit an elderly parishioner.“‘Scuse me, Rev’rend,” slurred the drunk, “but can you direct me to Alcoholics Anonymous?”The priest’s contemptuous expression brightened visibly and he shook the drunk warmly by the hand. “My son,” he intoned, “I am pleased to see that even in your intoxicated state you can see the error of your ways, and have had the good sense to go and join Alcoholics Anonymous.”“Join? The hell!” said the drunk. “I am going to resign!”A young boy was chasing crows away from some young plants in a field, shouting, “Fuck off! Fuck off!”A priest was walking by, called the boy over and remonstrated with him for the use of bad language.“Remember,” he pontificated, “God is everywhere and hears every word you utter. Do not offend his ears with such language! Besides, if you shout, ‘Shoo, shoo!’ loudly enough, they will fuck off just as quickly!”The third question:Osho,It is said that Zarathustra had loudly laughed when he was born. Is it true?It must be true because a man like Zarathustra comes into the world with a great insight. He must have seen the world immediately – he must have seen the whole crazy scene! It depends how much intelligence you have got. A few people take their whole life to realize that they have been living in a madhouse. He must have seen at the first moment that “This is a crazy place I am entering!”And it is not only Zarathustra – every child, the moment the child becomes capable of focusing properly, he starts smiling because he is then able to see what his father looks like!A recent story tells about a baby who was giggling and laughing minutes after he was born. The obstetrician noticed he had unusual muscle control, his tiny left fist being tightly clenched. When the doctor pried it open he found a contraceptive pill.Zarathustra must have laughed! Whether he laughed or not, I am not concerned about history, but to me his laughter is very significant. The world is in such a mess. Ordinarily children are born crying – that too is their judgment! They are saying, “My God! So this is the world I am born into?”Zarathustra has a different attitude, from the other extreme – he laughed. He must have been a man like me, hence I have very deep love for Zarathustra.A rabbi and a Hindu monk, who was obviously a teetotaler, happened to be seated together in the dining car of a train. When the rabbi ordered a martini, the Hindu monk was shocked.“I would rather commit adultery!” he scoffed.“I didn’t know they gave you a choice here,” replied the rabbi.An army recruit from the country was being given his physical examination. “Well, that’s everything but the urine test,” said the doctor. “I want a specimen of yours in one of those little bottles on that shelf down at the other end of the room.”“What did you say, Doc?” asked the young man.“Just urinate in one of those little bottles down there,” repeated the doctor.The recruit still looked doubtful. “Do you mean all the way from here?” he asked.A rambling man thought up a new scheme for winning sympathy. He rang the doorbell, then got down on his knees and started nibbling on the grass. “What are you doing there?” asked the lady when she opened the door.The tramp rose weakly to his feet, clutched his stomach in mock pain and moaned, “Ma’am, I am so hungry I just had to take to eating grass.”“Why, you poor man, stop eating that dry old grass!” cried the woman sympathetically. “Go around in the back where the grass is greener and longer!”A man won a turkey in a raffle and brought it home, but his wife was annoyed. “Who wants the bother of plucking it?” she said in a huff.“If that’s the way you feel,” he replied, “I will pluck it and cook it myself.”So he busied himself plucking it and when he was finally through, he trussed it and put it in the oven. But he forgot to light the gas. After washing up he settled down to read. Half an hour later he heard a muffled voice say, “What are you going to do about it?”Without taking his eyes off the newspaper he said, “Do about what?”The voice answered, “I am getting cold. Either put my feathers back or light the gas!”If Zarathustra laughed, what is wrong in it? He must have seen the whole stupidity, that he has to live with these people, and he started with a laugh.The noted agnostic lecturer, Robert G. Ingersoll, said once: “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”He is wrong – Zarathustra did. Of course, about ninety-nine percent religions Ingersoll is right, his statement is significant. He says, “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.” It is true about Jesus, about Buddha, about Mohammed, about Krishna; it is absolutely true. These people don’t seem to have any sense of humor, except Zarathustra. Maybe Ingersoll had never heard about Zarathustra.He is the only man known who started his life with laughter – he must have had an immense sense of humor. To begin your life with laughter is not an easy matter. He must have prepared for it for many lives, he must have come ready.Christians say Jesus never laughed in his whole life, maybe they are right. I don’t want to believe it because that means a great condemnation of Jesus, but if Christians say it, then of course, who I am to disagree with them? They are the authoritative people, at least about Jesus – they own Jesus!The Protestant Church in Germany has banned my books in the churches, in the church libraries. It has been given to all the priests, to all the churches, that my name, even my name, should not be mentioned in any sermon. Nothing should be quoted from my books, even to refute it, because people become interested.This may be one of the reasons why Jesus succeeded in changing almost half the humanity to Christianity – because people are sad. Zarathustra did not find many followers. You know his followers are only confined to Mumbai – only a few thousand. Why did Zarathustra fail? Maybe that laughter is the cause; he has a sense of humor.People are serious, sad, miserable, hence the cross of Jesus seems to be very appealing because their life is also on the cross. They can understand Jesus and his agony – they are passing through it. Their whole life is nothing but carrying a cross. They can find a deep affinity with Jesus, his crucifixion – they are also crucified. But what affinity can they find with Zarathustra? Why Zarathustra failed?Buddha has found millions of followers, all of Asia is Buddhist. Christians have found millions of followers, half the earth is Christian. Mohammedans are next to Christians – and Mohammed has no sense of humor at all. With a sword in his hand he is very serious, really serious. He is very concerned about your welfare. If you don’t listen to him, he is ready to fight with you, but he is determined to convince you because he is determined to save your soul. Even if he has to use the sword he has to save you. How can he allow you to fall into hell? It is for your own sake.Zarathustra is the only person who has not been able to find followers. I can see the point, with a sense of humor who is going to listen to you?I am trying again something like Zarathustra. My effort here is to prove Ingersoll wrong. I am trying to found a religion based totally on the sense of humor!Shakespeare and others have punningly described the foolish pretender to philosophy as foolosopher. By the same wordplay the philosophy of foolosophers is called foolosophy.Bertrand Russell was always critical of foolosophers, for their lack of both common sense and a sense of humor. He tells how he was once near death with pneumonia, delirious for three weeks. After he revived, the doctor said to him, “When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher, every time you came to yourself you made a joke!”Russell wrote afterward, “I never had a compliment that pleased me more.”He himself was a serious man. In his delirious state he must have forgotten all his philosophy and seriousness, must have become more relaxed, must have forgotten that he is a philosopher and he has to be serious – must have joked.To me a sense of humor should be the foundation stone of the future religiousness of man. There is no need to be so serious. Man is the only animal who has a sense of humor. You have never seen buffaloes laughing, or donkeys. Only man can have the feeling of the ridiculous, of the absurd. It needs great intelligence to have a sense of humor. On the lower planes it does not exist and not all human beings have it. Those who exist on lower planes of intelligence are bound to be serious – serious like the donkeys. Donkeys are very serious people, always thinking about serious things, it seems, very disturbed with all the problems of the world.I have watched donkeys very closely. From my very childhood I have been very interested in donkeys. If Pavlov could find many things about man by studying dogs, if Skinner can find many things about man by studying white rats, if Delgado can find many things about man by studying monkeys, I wonder why these people have missed the donkey? He comes closest to human beings – a serious philosopher, a pundit, a scholar, a theologian! Who has ever heard a donkey laughing?Zarathustra seems to be of the highest caliber, of the most refined intelligence. At the first sight of the world he laughed. He could not contain himself, he could not resist the temptation, seeing where he has landed.The old professor of philosophy who was retiring addressed his class: “Men, I have two confessions to make before I go,” he said. “The first is that half of what I have taught you is not true. The second is that I have no idea which half it is!”A pious old gentleman heard a tough kid on the street swearing at his playmate. “Don’t you know,” he admonished the youngster, “it is wrong to use such four-letter words? God will punish you.”The youngster looked at the man with scorn. “God can’t hear me,” he said. “He’s way up in heaven.”“Young man, God is everywhere.”“Is he over in my house?”“He certainly is.”“Is he in my yard?”“Of course.”“You’re crazy – we haven’t got a yard!”Children are far clearer, you cannot befool them so easily. And at the first moment when the child opens his eyes his clarity is absolute: no priest has come in, no politician has corrupted him yet, he has not been conditioned by Catholics and Protestants and Hindus and Mohammedans, he has not been told all kinds of lies and beliefs and superstitions. His eyes are clear, he can see through and through.Zarathustra did the right thing – he laughed.Once Diogenes asked alms from a man with a philosophic bent of mind. “Before I give you a drachma,” said the man, “convince me why I should do so.”“If I thought you were amenable to reason,” Diogenes told him, “I would recommend that you go and hang yourself.”Who is amenable to reason? It is an irrational world. Diogenes is right, the man was asking, “Convince me – why should I give you anything? Why? Diogenes’ answer is right: “If I thought that you can understand reason, then the only thing I would suggest for you would be to go and hang yourself because what are you doing in this irrational world? Such a reasonable man!”The laughter of Zarathustra looks irrational, but it is not irrational. Seeing the irrationality all around he must have been perceptive, very perceptive.The story is strange. There are many miracles talked about people like Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, but they are almost the same. The miracle of walking on water is repeated in thousands of stories, it is nothing special to Jesus. The miracle of curing people from their incurable diseases is nothing new to Jesus. It is the same miracle being done by so many people around the world, in every tradition, in every religion. Even the miracle of raising the dead is not new, that too is a common miracle attributed to many people.But this miracle of Zarathustra is simply unique, no other person has been attributed with this miracle. Nobody has ever thought about it. And it is far more significant than raising the dead because raising the dead is not going to help. Lazarus has to die finally, has to die sooner or later, so what does it matter – this week or the next week? He may have lived a few years more – so what? Curing a man from his illness does not matter much because death will still come, other diseases will come. Even if he starts seeing, he was blind before, what does it matter? So many millions of people have eyes, what has happened to them?In fact, there is a Sufi story about Jesus, not related by the Christians in their scriptures. They must have all avoided it. The Bible is not exactly true, much has been edited out of it. Anything that was going to create trouble for the theologians, for the priests, for the popes, has been edited out, left out. But there are always a few people who will not miss such an opportunity, they will collect all those rejected parts because they are far more important than the accepted ones.This story is a rejected story by the Christians, but the Sufis have preserved it, and they have done a great service to humanity.Jesus enters a town and he comes across a man who is lying in the gutter shouting ugly words, completely drunk. Jesus comes close to him to help him, looks at his face and recognizes that this man is well known to him. He was very ill, Jesus saved him, dragged him almost from the door of death.He shook the drunk and asked him, “Do you recognize me?”He said, “Yes, I recognize you perfectly well. You are the man who created the trouble! I was going to die – why have you saved me? And now why have you come again? Are you going to do something more?”Jesus could not believe the way the man was behaving, as if Jesus had done something wrong to him. Jesus said, “Why are you so angry?”The man said, “I am angry because I was going to die and the whole thing was going to be finished, and you saved me! Now I don’t know what to do with my life. You see, I am lying down in the gutter – you are responsible. Now I am simply trying to forget myself and my problems and my anxieties by drinking as much as I can. And I know it is poison, but what else to do? Why have you saved me? I have been looking for you – it is good that you have come by yourself. Answer me!”Jesus could not answer him. The man was asking a relevant question: “Why have you saved me? For what? For this gutter? For drinking and trying to forget my miseries?”Jesus moved on, very humiliated, shocked.He saw another man who was running after a prostitute. He prevented the man – he forgot the first man – just old habits! He prevented the second man and said, “What are you doing? Has God given you eyes just to lust after women? Even to think of lust is sin – you will suffer in hell!”And the man said, “Stop all this nonsense! It is you who cured me of my blindness. I was perfectly happy with my blindness because I had never seen a woman, so I was never disturbed, I never cared who was passing, man or woman, it was all the same. It is you who cured me. Now what should I do with these eyes? These eyes feel attracted toward beauty. And remember, at the last moment on the Day of Judgment, I will point to you – that you are responsible. I was an innocent blind man. You gave me eyes, and I had not even asked. I was just sitting, you came and touched my eyes and you cured me. You did not even ask me!”Jesus was now really shocked. He didn’t go into the town, he left the town. When came out he saw a man preparing to hang himself from a tree. Again he forgot – old habits die hard! He reached the man and said, “What are you doing?”And this man was nobody else but Lazarus! He said, “So you have come again. Get lost! I am committing suicide – enough is enough! And how you came to know? Last time my sisters invited you, Martha and Mary, they invited you. I was dead – at last I was dead, resting at peace, and you came and resurrected me. And now again you are back! You won’t allow me any peace? How long do I have to live, and why should I live? What is the point of it all?”All these miracles are meaningless, but Zarathustra’s miracle of laughing at the moment of his birth is really significant.A great Zen master lay critically ill. As his doctor prepared to leave he said cheerfully, “I will see you in the morning.”Although the dying master knew his hours were numbered, he could not resist quipping, “Of course. But will I see you?”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,For days now I have been on fire inside. I feel the unknown in part of me, and I am afraid to jump. Everything is cuckoo, and it's beautiful and scary at the same time. Push me, Osho!On fire.Crazy, baby, crazy! That’s what I am here for, to set you on fire. Once it starts happening nothing else is needed to be done. Then it goes on growing by itself, in spite of all your fears. They cannot prevent the fire. They are natural – they come from your past, but the past is impotent when it confronts the present. The fire is present, the fire is now, and the fears come from the past, they are already dead. They belong to the nonexistential, and the nonexistential cannot do anything to the existential.They are like darkness. The darkness can be very old, ancient, millions of years old, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. It cannot say, “I am very ancient, so how can you dare? You are just a small candle and you have come into existence this very moment, and I am so old, so ancient.” But there is no time for darkness to say all that. The moment the candle is lit, the darkness starts disappearing. The problem is how to light the candle; once it is there, there is no problem at all. If the candle is not there then darkness is very real, too real – although it exists not. It is only an absence.Once the fire is inside, even just a small part of you is on fire, that will do – it will spread. It is not a fire that dies. Once it is there it is going to consume you totally; that is inevitable.My work ends the moment the fire is on. Then the fire will do… You say, “For days now I have been on fire inside. I feel the unknown in part of me, and I am afraid to jump.” It is natural to be afraid to jump. To jump into the fire is like killing yourself. In a sense it is suicide – the ego is going to die, hence the fear because we have existed as an ego, that is our identity. To drop it means death. The mind cannot conceive what else will be left once the ego is gone. The mind knows only the ego; it knows nothing behind, beyond. It knows nothing of the transcendental. The mind is part of the ego and when the ego starts dying, the mind starts dying, and it creates all kinds of fears, anxieties. It is just self-defense.But once the fire is lit, the mind is finished. It may take a little while for the fire to spread to the whole jungle of your being, but the mind cannot do anything to prevent it.The moment the mind becomes impotent, the work of the master is finished. Then he simply watches. Then he enjoys the disappearance of your ego, your mind, your whole so-called personality.You say, “Everything is cuckoo…” In the beginning it will look like that because the mind is our logic, and the fire is going to destroy our logic because life is more than logic. In fact, life is illogical, it has to be because it contains contradictions. Logic is a choice, you go on choosing that which is consistent with your idea. Life is far more than that.If you believe that life consists only of days, then you will ignore the nights. You will not take any note of the nights because they will create confusion. Then what will happen to your idea, your prejudice, that life consists only of days? You have to cling to your idea, the nights seem so be confusing. You have to deny, you have to keep closed to the nights. You have to say they are illusory, they are dream-stuff, they are unreal, the real is the day. This is how the mind tries to be consistent and logical. If it accepts the night, then the logic starts disappearing, then the contradiction has happened, then the consistency is lost.If you accept only the flowers or only the thorns you will avoid the opposite, and life consists of polar opposites. Life cannot be consistent, remember – only death is consistent. Hence logic is more in tune with death than in tune with life. Life is vast, it is so vast it can easily take in the contradictory, in fact, it rejoices in contradictions. On the same rosebush it grows flowers and thorns. How can it be logical? Logic will say, “Either grow thorns or grow flowers.”Logic means either–or, and life means both–and. Hence the moment the mind starts slipping, dying, one feels as if one is going mad.In the East we have continuously observed the phenomenon. We call it a kind of spiritual madness. In Bengal the mystics have been called Bauls. Baul means the mad one. In the Sufi tradition the mystic is called a mast. Mast means a mad one. And Jesus, Bahauddin, Francis, Eckhart, Kabir, Chuang Tzu, these are all mad people for the simple reason that they have not chosen, they have accepted life as it is in its totality.Up to the time of Albert Einstein, science remained very consistent, very logical. Albert Einstein is the first mystic in the world of science. He introduced a scientific mysticism, and he disturbed the whole edifice of the old science. After Albert Einstein, science, particularly physics, which was his field of work, is no longer the same because he accepted contradictions. In fact he said, “When I had started my work I had thought that life and logic were synonymous – my work was to solve problems logically – but as I went deeper I became aware that life is not synonymous with logic, it contains contradictions. And in fact because of those contradictions it is beautiful, because of those contradictions it has a certain tension; that tension gives it aliveness, it gives it possibilities to be dynamic, moving.”At the end of his life he said, “Now I cannot say that life is a problem. To call life a problem is a logical statement because a problem means something that can be solved through logic, if not today then tomorrow. Sooner or later logic will find a way and the problem will be dissolved.”Einstein said, just two days before he died, “Life is no longer a problem for me, it is a mystery.”The difference between mystery and problem is immense, qualitative. A problem can be solved logically, a mystery cannot be solved logically or in any other way. A mystery has to be lived, accepted as it is. There is no way to solve it. Life is a mystery; it is a mystery because it is contradictory. And thousands of contradictions are there, but those contradictions give it variety, vastness.So in the beginning when the mind starts losing its grip upon you, it feels as if one is going cuckoo. But to be a cuckoo is really far more beautiful than to be a pundit, a professor, a theologian, a priest, a politician. Have you not heard the distant call of the cuckoo, how beautiful it is? And the cuckoo is crazy! The beauty of the cuckoo’s song is transcendental. It should not be so – looking at the mundane life, looking at ordinary life. The cuckoo goes on singing as if it lives in another world.All my sannyasins have to be cuckoos! They have to learn the song: the Song of Solomon, the song of love, life, laughter.The only thing beautiful in the Old Testament is the Song of Solomon, everything else is ordinary. Of course Jews and Christians are very much embarrassed by the Song of Solomon, they would like it not to be in the Old Testament. It does not look religious: it praises life, it is very fleshy, it is very alive. It praises love, it is sheer poetry. But they cannot deny it, it is there. All that they can do is either ignore it or give it some esoteric meanings, which are all nonsense.It is a very simple song, it is not a parable and it is not metaphorical. It is very direct, immediate. It says exactly what it says, it is like two plus two are four.Read the Song of Solomon, it will help your inner fire. It is one of the greatest documents in the world, one of the most beautiful. Even the Bhagavad Gita, compared to the Song of Solomon, has not that beauty. It sings the song of the earth, it is rejoicing in the ordinary. And the moment you rejoice in the ordinary you transform the ordinary.There are two things in the Old Testament: one is the Song of Solomon and the other is the Ten Commandments. Remember this about the Ten Commandments:Two men were wrangling vehemently about something when one of them said, “The trouble with you, Bill, is that you don’t agree with anybody on anything. I’ll bet you don’t even accept the Ten Commandments.”“That’s not true,” disagreed the other. “If you make only one small change in them I’ll agree with all of them.”“That’s certainly surprising,” said the first man. “What’s the small change you want made?”“Just strike out the word ‘not’ all the way through.”That’s what the Song of Solomon is, the small word not has been struck out all the way through.You ask me, “Push me, Osho! On fire…” That I am doing without ever asking anybody’s permission! I never come from the front door because nobody would allow me from the front door. I never knock, I never ask, “May I come in, sir or madam?” I enter as a thief, I enter from the back door. And certainly I have to enter as a thief because you are asleep. Knocking on the door won’t help. You will rationalize in your sleep, “It must be the wind, or an airplane passing by, or something else.” You will rationalize, turn over, dive under the blanket and start dreaming again. Maybe knocking on the door can trigger a few dreams in you, that’s all it will do. You are so fast asleep I have to come from the back door.In India we have one thousand names for God. One whole scripture is devoted just to the names. Nothing else is written in that scripture: Vishnu Sahasranam – One Thousand Names of God. Just names are counted from one to one thousand. The most beautiful name that I love is Hari. Hari means the ultimate thief.Just two days ago I was giving sannyas to a beautiful sannyasin. I have given her the name Haridasi – surrendered to the ultimate thief! And when I told her, “Your heart is stolen,” for a moment she was transported into another world. Her hand suddenly went on her heart and I said, “It is not there!” And she understood the point immediately. She lost a few heartbeats, tears of joy came to her eyes. She could not speak a single word, her voice was choked. It is bound to happen when your heart is gone!I go on doing things in my own way. And with you I am not worried. You are on fire, your heart was stolen long before. I am pushing you, and I am absolutely certain that the thing that you are all here for is going to happen to you. Fortunately you are not a Polack, otherwise there was a danger…Have you heard about the new Polish parachutes?They open on impact, but they are having great difficulty with them because most Polacks miss the ground!The second question:Osho,Years ago you seduced us, the blind, into buying your miracle mirrors. We bought them, thinking they were cheap and good-looking. But soon they showed us our ugly faces and we were scared. But before we broke those mirrors, you encouraged us to go on looking, to go on watching, to go on witnessing, and in bargain, you extracted from us the price of our very life.However, looking back, Osho, I find I have not paid a thing to you. It has all been a gracious gift from you – for nothing. How shall I say thank you, Osho, for all this, and for persevering with us and making us stick on until we really saw our original faces in the miracle mirrors of meditation?Still I cannot help wondering, Osho, why and how so many keep on missing you. Are they scared of the super-salesman?Osho, what are they waiting for? Whom are they waiting for, when this gift of gifts is incessantly showering all over?The work of a master is really the work of seduction, he seduces you into the unknown. There is no other way, only seduction can be helpful. You cannot be convinced of the unknown, whatsoever you can be convinced about is bound to be the known. The unknown is unknown. You have not tasted of it, you have not even heard anything about it, you have no idea what it is.I can convince you of that which you have already some idea, but the unknown is absolutely unknown – and not only unknown, it is unknowable too. There is no way to know it because it is the intrinsic quality of the knower himself. It never becomes the known. At no point does it become the known. The deeper you go into it, the more you realize that it is not only the unknown but the unknowable, because it is the center of the knower himself. How can the knower himself become the known? That is impossible, the knower will always stand beyond the known, surpassing the known.Hence the work of a master is actually of seduction. He allures you, he fascinates you; he promises you bliss, truth, freedom – he gives it many names. He makes you afire with longing. A moment comes when the longing is so intense and passionate that you take the jump. It is really mad! No logical person can do it.Hence, I have to slowly destroy your clinging to logic. I have to shift your energy from the head to the heart because the heart is illogical and from the heart there is a possibility, a bridge, a rainbow bridge toward the unknown and ultimately toward the unknowable.Hence the word seduction actually describes the entire work of all the buddhas. But the people who are clinging too much to logic cannot be seduced. If they ask first to be convinced, then there is no way. If they ask for proof, then there is no way. If the master himself is a proof, then there is a way. If the presence of the master is enough to give you the joy that can take you into the adventure, if the very presence of the master gives you courage to go into the uncharted, only then does the journey ever begin.One thing is certain, once the journey begins you cannot come back. A journey begun is already half the work done, once it begins it has to reach its climax. Only the beginning part is the most difficult part.Hence I have to talk about the miracle mirrors, and I have to praise those miracle mirrors of meditation. I have to go on saying what great ecstasies they are going to give to you. You are not interested in meditation, you are not interested in looking at your original face, but you are certainly interested in being ecstatic.But when you take the mirror in your hand for the first time, it gives you agony, not ecstasy because you have to encounter all that is ugly in you – because the ugly is on the surface. But once you have seen the ugly you cannot rest at ease with it. That’s the only hope because nobody can rest at ease with his ugliness. Once seen, you have to destroy it, you have to remove all the masks that are ugly, you have to peel the entire skin that is ugly. And behind the surface there is tremendous beauty. Behind the masks – and there are many masks – your original face is nothing but God’s own face. In your originality you are not separate from God, in your personality you are separate.Personality comes from the Greek word persona, it means the mask. In your individuality you are one with God. Then you have the beauty of a Buddha, Krishna, Christ, the same grace. But before one can reach it one will have to peel one’s ugly layers like one peels an onion. When you peel an onion tears come to your eyes, it is painful. Your false masks have remained with you so long that they have almost become your faces. Removing them is not like removing your clothes, it is actually like peeling your skin – it hurts. Hence, only the courageous can be interested in inner transformation.You ask me, “Osho, why and how so many keep on missing you?” They are cowards, they don’t have any guts. They don’t want to risk anything. Without risk, nothing can be gained in life. The higher the peak you want to reach, the greater the risk.The way of inner search belongs only to the gamblers, not to the businessmen. And people are very calculating, they are constantly calculating, they are always thinking in terms of calculation. Not even for a single moment are they ready to risk anything. They want every kind of security, guarantee, safety, only then will they budge an inch. In the spiritual inquiry there is no safety, no security. In fact, that’s why it has such tremendous beauty, it is an adventure.The adventure cannot be secure, it is going beyond the boundaries of the known. When you are living within the boundaries of the known, things are secure; you know everything, you are efficient. When you move beyond the known you are taking a risk. You may lose the known, and who knows whether you are going to gain anything in this adventure or not?You ask me, “Are they scared of the super-salesman?” They are simply scared of truth because they have lived in so many lies for so long they are afraid. If truth comes in, all their lies will collapse. And they have invested not only this life, but so many previous lives in those lies. Their investments are great and truth is going to shatter them. They are not bold enough to allow the truth to come in, to accept the fact that if truth destroys the lies, it is better that those lies should be destroyed sooner than later – because if you don’t destroy them today, then tomorrow one more day is lost, then next life one life more is lost, and your investment in the lies becomes bigger and bigger. It is better to finish it quickly, the sooner you do it the better. But for that, a certain kind of youthfulness is needed.In this country particularly there are only two categories of people: children and old people; the youth does not exist. From childhood people simply move into old age. The time of youth, youthfulness, rebellion, adventure, never happens.With me, only young people – young in the spirit, I mean – can have any communion. And not only with me, it has always been so. With Buddha, with Jesus, with Lao Tzu, it was always the case; only a very few youthful adventurers went with these dangerous people. They attained great treasures, but those treasures are not certain, not guaranteed; there is no insurance.You say, “…before we broke those mirrors, you encouraged us to go on looking, to go on watching, to go on witnessing, and into the bargain, you extracted from us the price of our very life. However, looking back, Osho, I find I have not paid a thing to you.”There is no need to pay anything to me because whatsoever I am giving to you is not mine, it is God’s. It is as much yours as it is mine. What I am giving to you has been given to me. This is the way I am thanking God – by giving it to you.The only way to feel thankful is to share it with others. Spread it far and wide. Whatsoever you have experienced, share it. Don’t be worried about what people will think of you – they will think you are mad! But if you talk to one hundred people at least there is a possibility of one person coming along with you. That’s more than enough, it is a great reward. If you can transform one person even that is enough. Millions are bound to remain in darkness; nothing can be done about it because that is their choice, it is their freedom. If they decide to remain in darkness, who are we to force them into light? We can go on trying, but ultimately it is going to be their decision.The only way to show our gratitude to the master is to help others. If it has been a gracious gift to you, give it to others as a gracious gift. Give it without any idea of giving, only then is it gracious. Give it without any idea of reward, only then is it gracious. Simply give it for the sheer joy of giving it.You also say, “How shall I say thank you, Osho?” It has not to be said. You need not say it, but I am hearing it. Your very silence is enough. It can be said only through silence, there is no other way to say it. Words are very inadequate.And lastly, you ask, “Osho, what are these people waiting for? Whom are they waiting for, when this gift of gifts is incessantly showering all over?”This world has been driven crazy – crazy not in the sense of a spiritual madness, crazy in the sense that people have become split, people have become schizophrenic, people have been reduced to the lowest state of intelligence because all the oppressors, the exploiters the leaders, the gurus, they all wanted it in this way. Man should not be allowed to be free, man should not be allowed to be rebellious, man should not be allowed to be intelligent. Intelligent people are dangerous for the status quo, for the establishment. The establishment wants people to be slaves, machine-like, robots, and they have succeeded. They start destroying a child the moment the child is born, they start crippling him, paralyzing him.It is a very strange world. First they cripple you, then they provide crutches for you. When they provide crutches for you they say, “Look what great service we are doing for you!” First they make you blind and then they give you glasses so that you can see a little bit. First they make you dependent and then they start telling you how to be free.We are living in a very strange world. Up to now humanity has lived in an insane way. It is ridiculous and absurd, and it is time that this should be finished.That’s what my effort here is through my sannyasins: to bring a new kind of man in the world, which will be divinely mad but not schizophrenic – a new man centered in his being. That is the meaning of the word individual, he will be indivisible, you cannot split him.A woman approached a psychoanalyst and asked him, “Can you split me into two?”The psychoanalyst could not believe his ears. People had been coming to him suffering from a split personality, and this woman is asking, “Can you split me in two?”He said, “What is the matter with you? Why do you want to be split in two?”The woman said, “I feel so lonely!”If you watch around yourself you will be surprised how insane a humanity we have created.After several rounds of drinks at the cocktail party, a woman turned to her husband, “Henry, don’t you dare take another drink. Your face is getting all blurred already!”A big three-hundred-pound man was being led to the gallows. He looked at the trap and asked the hangman, “Are you sure that thing is safe?”A researcher in sociology making a survey of homosexuality rang the bell of an apartment. The man who answered the door responded to his question, “Homosexual? I have never heard of that word. Wait, I will ask my wife.”Turning his head, he called, “Ernest!”The morning after she left on her honeymoon, a bride returned home. She related: “I took off my clothes. Then he took off his clothes. Then he put on my clothes and left! And he has not come back!”A rabbi was telling a story…“One day a poor woodcutter found a baby in the forest, but he didn’t know how to feed him. So he prayed to God and a miracle happened – the woodcutter grew breasts and could feed the baby.”“Rabbi,” interrupted a listener, “I don’t like this story. Why put such a weird thing like breasts on a man? If God is almighty he could have just dropped a bag of gold to give the woodcutter enough money to buy food for the baby.”The rabbi meditated on this for a while then said, “Why should God spend such a lot of money when he can just do a miracle?”In a deserted bar, two people were seated at opposite ends of the room. The Jew and the Jap had been drinking for some time without noticing each other, when suddenly the Jew got off his stool, walked over to the Jap, and punched him on the nose. The dazed Japanese, struggling to his feet, asked the Jew why he did that.“That was for Pearl Harbor,” replied the Jew, and walked back to his stool.After a few more drinks the Jap got off his stool and walked over to the Jew. He punched him very hard on the nose. The Jew, from his crumpled position on the floor, asked what that was for.“That was for the Titanic,” stated the Jap.“But that was an iceberg!” complained the Jew.“Well,” responded the Jap, “Iceberg, Greenberg, Silverberg – they are all the same!”When the flood was finally over and the animals were going out of Noah’s ark, the elephant turned around and said to the flea who was behind him, “Stop pushing me!”This is the world we are living in! People have been driven to the lowest intelligence possible, and to raise their intelligence back up is an arduous task.It is a miracle if somebody listens to me, understands me, and starts transforming himself. It is happening to you – you are blessed. Very few are so blessed in the world.The third question:Osho,What is nostalgia?Nostalgia is the longing to go back to the good old days when you were neither good nor old.The fourth question:Osho,Aren't you ever afraid that instead of the creation of a new kind of man, this is the creation of a new kind of sheep?I am not afraid at all because even if a new sheep is created, it is better than the old sheep – at least it will be new! To be new is good, to be new is fresh, to be new opens new possibilities. Hence I am not afraid.But you must be attached to the old kind of sheep, hence you are afraid. I can only try to give birth to a new man, but the birth cannot be absolutely guaranteed. I will do my best. It does not matter to me whether I succeed or fail. What matters is whether I tried my best or not – and I am trying my best. And that’s all that I am interested in.I am enjoying my work. Who cares about the result? The people who care too much about the result simply waste their energy because caring about the result takes much of their energy. Then they become worried about the result – that is a distraction. Then the end becomes far more important than the journey itself.To me the journey itself is enough, the search itself is more than enough. To me the means and the ends are not separate, they are inseparable. Hence, what I am doing, I am enjoying. What happens, that is not at all a question to me.But why are you worried? You must be interested in keeping people in their old traps. I can do only one thing… You have heard the old proverb – this is a new edition of that old proverb:You can lead a hippie to water, but you cannot make him bathe.I will lead the hippie to the water – that much I can do – I will persuade him, but then it is up to him to take a jump into the river or not. Who I am to throw him into the river? I can show him the way to the river, I can even lead him to the river, then it is his freedom. If he chooses to remain the same I am not going to disturb his freedom, I am not going to do anything against him.I love every person as he is. I love my work, it is not work to me at all because I love it – it is just a play. But with you there seems to be some problem inside you. Your question has nothing to do with my work, it has something to do with your prejudices.You ask me, “Aren’t you ever afraid that instead of the creation of a new kind of man, this is the creation of a new kind of sheep?” I am trying to create the new man. Even if out of one hundred, one new man is created, that will bring the whole consciousness of humanity a step forward, a step upward. There is a possibility many will become only a new kind of sheep, but then too it is not bad, that too is a gain. It is better to be alive, young, fresh, new, even though you are a sheep.But you must somehow be deeply interested in keeping people in their old patterns, your investment must be there. Your prejudices must be those of a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Mohammedan.Two musicians were walking in a street, when a large bell from a building being demolished fell nearby with a loud clang. “What’s that?” asked one.“I’m not sure,” said the other, “but I think it was B flat.”People have their own languages, their own prejudices, and they cling to their prejudices. Even though their prejudices have been a sheer misery for them, still they cling.If you are an old sheep, at least become a new sheep – orange! It will not be a very great revolution, but even a little change is good. Just for that little change – and a little change may open doors for greater changes.Two hobos sat with their backs against an old oak tree. Before them flowed a rippling stream. It was a delightful day, yet one of them was disconsolate.“You know, Slim,” he said, “this tramping through life is not what it used to be. Things are getting tougher every year. I used to hop a freight chugging up a steep grade very easy, but these diesels go like mad. And I’m getting tired of spending my nights in a cold barn and on park benches, wondering where my next meal is coming from. And odd jobs are getting scarcer all the time…” His voice trailed off as he sighed.His companion turned to face him. “If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you hang it all up and find yourself a real job?”The first tramp raised his head and opened his mouth in amazement. “What!” he cried. “And admit I’m a failure?”Even a tramp, a hobo, a beggar does not want to accept that he is a failure.The way you have asked the question simply shows that you are an old sheep – Catholic, Protestant – and you are afraid of the new sheep. You are not concerned about the new man. The old sheep is worried because what is going to happen to the old prejudices, the old conclusions, the old ideology? It seems as if it will be a deep discontinuity with the past, as if one dies and is reborn.But those who are ready to drop the old are not sheep. The very courage to drop the old is enough to prove that they are lions. The very courage that they are ready to come out of their old skins, their old prejudices, old ideologies, religions, philosophies, shows one thing very clearly, categorically: they are not sheep. And that very courage is the hope for the birth of a new man.Just put your old prejudices aside, and then try to understand what is happening here. Get a little bit involved, participate in what is happening here. You have lived according to your old beliefs. If you are contented, I will be the last person to disturb you; but if you are contented, why are you here? For what? You must be discontented.This is one of the strangest things about man: even if he is discontented, he goes on believing, pretending that he is contented. And whenever there is an opportunity to change – and he is looking for an opportunity to change, this is the strangeness – when he finds the opportunity to change, he clings to the past.A doctor was consulted by a prizefighter, who was troubled with insomnia.“Have you tried counting sheep?” asked the doctor.“Yes, but it doesn’t help. Every time I get up to nine I jump up!”An old prizefighter! The moment he gets to nine he cannot resist. Instead of giving him a good sleep it will disturb him – he jumps up. People function mechanically, unconsciously. Your question has come out of your unconsciousness.The tavern was near an army camp, and the pretty barmaid was popular with the enlisted men, especially since she preferred them to the overbearing officers.One night a polite young private was sitting next to a cocky first lieutenant who tried to date her. When the lieutenant went to the men’s room she put her face close to the private and whispered, “Now is your chance, soldier!”The private looked at the tempting red lips and then cried, “That’s right!” And he hastily drank the officer’s beer.You are here, but not really here. And the way I talk must be so difficult for you to understand. If you have been listening to the sermons by the priests in the churches or in the temples or in the mosques, then what I am saying here will look very irreligious, will look very strange to your ideas of what spirituality should be. But I cannot talk the way you are accustomed to hearing. You may be waiting for some esoteric bullshit!Kohn was home from seeing his doctor and meets his friend who asks, “Wha-wha-what is wrong wi-with you?”“I’ve got prostatitis,” replies Kohn.“Wha-what…wha-wha-what is that?”“I piss the way you talk!”The new man can only be created with everything new: the way I talk, the way my people live, the way they behave, all has to be totally different from the old man. The new man cannot believe in your rotten morality – your morality has only created hypocrites. The new man can live only authentically, he cannot be concerned with your moral and immoral ideas. He can live only meditatively. He cannot be thought as a man of character, the way you have become accustomed to think of religious people.The new man will not be a man of character, the new man will be utterly characterless. But when I say, “characterless,” please don’t misunderstand me. I am not talking the way you understand. To me the characterless man is the only man who has character. I call him characterless because he does not follow any dictates from the outside; he lives according to his own light, he lives meditatively. His character does not come from his conscience.Conscience is an agency implanted in you by the society; it is not yours. Don’t say the conscience is yours – it is not yours. It belongs to the Christian church, it belongs to the Hindu religion, it belongs to the Jain philosophy, it belongs to the communist ideology. It has nothing to do with you. It is implanted by others in you. It is a very subtle strategy to dominate you from within. On the outside they have put a policeman, the magistrate, the court, and on the inside they have created a conscience.The real man, the new man, will live according to consciousness, not according to conscience. Of course, whatsoever his consciousness feels right, he will do, whatsoever the risk, whatsoever he has to pay for it. Even if he has to pay with his life he will be ready to pay it because there are higher things than life itself. Consciousness is far higher than life. But he will not follow conscience.The man of conscience is known as a man of character – that’s why I call the new man characterless because he will not have any conscience, he will function out of consciousness. His commandments will be coming from his own center, and when they come from your own center they give you freedom. Out of freedom life takes a new flavor, a new beauty. You do right, but now the right is not decided by others; it is no longer a slavery, it is absolute freedom.The new man will live out of meditation, out of consciousness, out of his own inner light. The new man will be an individual, not part of any collectivity.My sannyasins here are not a collectivity. Each of my sannyasins is related to me directly. It is not a church, it is not an organization, it is a love relationship. And because they all love me, of course they start feeling love for each other too. That is secondary. Their love toward me is primary, then their love for other sannyasins is secondary, they are fellow travelers. But nobody is bound to follow me or to follow anybody else. It is a commune of fellow travelers, fellow seekers.There is no qualitative difference between me and my sannyasins. The only difference is a very slight one, very small one – I am aware of my inner world, they are not aware, but they have the inner world as much as I have it. I don’t have it more, they don’t have it less. They have the whole kingdom of God within themselves. I am not special in any sense. I am not claiming that I am the son of God, I am not claiming that I am an avatar of God, I am not claiming that I am a tirthankara. I am simply saying one thing: that I was asleep, now I am awake; you are asleep and you can be awake also. I have known both states – the state of being asleep and the state of being awake – and you know only one state, of being asleep.But remember, the person who is capable of sleeping is capable of awakening. The very fact that he can sleep is an indication that he can be awake. There is no difference at all.I will go on trying to help people to be awake. The awakened man will be the new man: he will not be Christian, he will not be Hindu, he will not be Mohammedan, he will not be Indian, he will not be German, he will not be English. He will simply be an awakened being.But it is possible that there may be a few people who will only turn into a new kind of sheep, but that too is not bad. As far as being the old sheep is concerned, it is better than that. So if you are an old sheep, become a new sheep, and from there the journey starts, a possibility. If the old sheep can become a new sheep it is a radical change. The sheep deciding to be new – it is a revolution. And if this much is possible, then much more is possible too.The fifth question:Osho,What is your definition of a politician?If a man dodges cars, he is a pedestrian. If he dodges taxes, he is a businessman. If he dodges responsibilities, he is an executive. And if he dodges everything, he is a politician.And the last question:Osho,Once you told a joke for Purna who was leaving. I am staying. Will you tell a joke for me too?Okay.A Jewish rabbi decided to sit in with the priest in his confessional box to learn the principles of the Catholic religion. Two women came, one after the other, and confessed to having had intercourse with their boyfriends, not only once but three times. For penance the priest told them to say three Pater Nosters and put ten dollars in the poor box.The priest was called away urgently to give last rites to a dying man. He told the rabbi to stay and hear the confessions for the rest of the people. “Just remember to get the ten dollars,” he said before leaving.The first confessor was a young girl who told the rabbi that she had had intercourse with her boyfriend.“Three times?” questioned the rabbi.“Oh no, Father, just once,” replied the girl.“Are you quite sure it wasn’t three times?”“No, Father, only once,” insisted the young girl.“Well,” suggested the rabbi, “I tell you what. Just say three Pater Nosters, put ten dollars in the box, and the church will owe you two fucks.”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Absolute and relative –He who knows these two together,through the relative leaves death behindand through the Absolute gains immortality.The threshold of Reality is veiled by golden light.Reveal it, O Lord, for my dharma is to know the Truth.O Lord of Light, the knowing one,the golden guardian, giver of life to all,spread apart thy rays, gather up thy brilliance,that I may perceive thy finest and most splendrous nature,that cosmic spirit which lies at thy heart.For I myself am That!Let my breath merge with the cosmic breath,may my body be as dust,Remember, O mind, remember what has been done.Remember, O mind, remember what has been done.O Agni, show us the right path,lead us to eternal freedom,thou who knowest all.May we not be diverted from our goal,for with all devotion we submit ourselves to Thee.Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashisyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness,Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.The greatest contribution of the seers of the Upanishads is that they have made this world and the other world synonymous. They have dropped the idea of the mundane and the sacred. That represents the absolute, the ultimate, the further shore. This represents the immediate, the herenow, this shore. Both are one because: That is the whole. This is the whole. There is no distinction at all.The ordinary religions live by condemning this world, and by condemning this world they praise the other world. The Upanishads have a totally different approach, they praise this world with all its beauty, splendor; through praising this world they praise the other world. This approach is life affirmative.The Upanishads are in tremendous love with life. They don’t teach renunciation, they teach rejoicing. They would have agreed with Jesus when Jesus says again and again to his disciples, “Rejoice! Rejoice! I say again to you rejoice!” The Upanishads have a very aesthetic approach toward life – not the approach of an ascetic but the approach of a poet, a painter, a musician, a dancer. Their approach is in no way pathological.But that vision has completely disappeared. Instead of that ecstatic vision of life, for three thousand years humanity has lived with a very sadomasochistic idea: torture yourself and teach others so that they can also torture themselves, because that’s the only way to make God rejoice. This is really a condemnation of God, as if God is a torturer, as if he enjoys people being in pain and anguish.Even today we go on praising the ascetic attitude. The person who tortures himself becomes a great saint. If he fasts, starves his body, lies down on a bed of thorns, stands naked in the cold, sits in the hottest season surrounded by fire, then we have great respect for him.This respect simply shows that our minds are in a very ill state. We are not for health, for wholeness, for joy, for bliss. We are suicidal, murderous. And in the name of religion great suicide has been committed. The whole of humanity has become suicidal.To understand these last sutras of the Upanishad, remember one thing: to the Upanishads, the beyond is not against the world, it is an intrinsic part of it. The beyond is also the within of the world; it is not far away, it is deep down here and now. Just as a river needs both the banks, life needs both this and that.When you look at a river you see two banks, but if you dive deep into the river you will find those two banks are not separate; underneath the river they are joined together, they are one. In the same way this and that are one. They appear divided, but that is only an appearance, don’t be deceived by it. Dive deep so that you can find the ultimate unity.The so-called masochists, ascetic saints, have been talking of advaita, oneness, but that seems to be only talk, just lip service because the way they behave, the way they live, simply shows duality. They renounce the world. If the world is illusory, why renounce it? What is there to renounce? Nobody renounces one’s dreams. When you wake up in the morning you don’t make a great declaration to the world that “I have renounced all my nighttime dreams!” When you wake up, you simply know those dreams were not part of reality, they were just fantasies of the mind. There is nothing to renounce, they have evaporated by themselves. And if you insist on renouncing the dreams, that simply shows that you are still dreaming. Now your dream is that of renouncing the dreams – a new dream. The old dreams are replaced by a new dream.Somebody is trying to conquer the world, a man like Alexander, and somebody else is trying to renounce the world, a man like Shankara. But both are agreed upon one point: that the world exists. Shankara says it is unreal. If it is unreal, then where are you going, then why you are renouncing it, then why this insistence, this emphasis? The whole emphasis proves just the contrary of what is emphasized.When I was a student, one of my professors in the university always used to talk about his bravery, fearlessness, so much so that not even a single day passed by when he would not mention in some way or other that he was a brave man. I listened for at least two, three months, and then I stood up and asked him, “Insisting every day that you are a great, brave man, simply shows that there must be some cowardice in you, otherwise why this insistence? To whom are you trying to prove? We are not asking whether you are a coward or a hero. We have not come here to inquire about your bravery or your cowardice, whatsoever it is, we are not interested in it. Why do you go on insisting?” And from any reference, from any context he would jump to the conclusion, as if he was always just looking for any excuse to prove that he was a brave man.He was shocked. He called me home in the night and told me, “You are the first person who has made me aware of a certain fear in me. I am really a man who is full of fears. I am not trying to convince you – in fact, by talking to you I am trying to convince myself. And I am thankful,” he said, “although when you said it for the first time before others I was shocked, angry, enraged. But later on when I thought about it calmly, quietly, I realized the fact of it.”The people who go on emphasizing the world is illusory are simply trying to prove to themselves that it is illusory, but they know it is not. They are trying to create a great smoke around themselves that it is illusory, worth renouncing: “It is worthless, there is no meaning in it!” But why this insistence? If there is no meaning in it, there is no meaning in it. If it is illusory, it is illusory. You need not say it.These so-called saints have written so many books proving that the world is illusory. These saints have been talking about the illusoriness of the female body, that it is ugly, it is not beautiful: “Just look within the skin, it is nothing but bones, blood, pus, mucus.” Whom are they trying to prove these things to? Why this continuous insistence? There seems to be a great attraction in them for the woman’s body. They are trying to create defenses.The Upanishads never say a single word against the world and that seems to be a more truthful vision. The world is there, it is real. Of course its reality is relative and that’s a fact, everybody knows its reality is relative. You love a woman today, tomorrow you may not love. Today it had seemed to you that you would love her forever, and tomorrow all that idea has simply evaporated. Just a day before you were ready to die for her, and a day after you are ready to kill her!It is a relative world, nothing is permanent here that is true. Everything is changing, flux-like, it is momentary. But that does not mean that it is unreal, that it is illusory. Even though it is momentary it is true, it is real. It has a relative reality.The other world, the beyond, the absolute, has a totally different kind of reality, it is non-relative. But both are real. The relative and the absolute are two aspects of the same reality. Watch a river, in one way it goes on changing, in another way it is the same river. Watch your mind, the mind goes on changing – every moment something new comes, something old dies – but in another way your consciousness, your watcher, is the same. You can experience both these things within you, the mind is a relative reality and your consciousness is an absolute reality.You go to see a movie. The screen remains the same, but the scenes on the screen go on changing. Both are real. The scenes are there for a moment and then they are gone, but the screen remains the same. Because of the scenes you cannot see the screen. When the scenes stop, the projector stops, suddenly the screen is there utterly empty. That is the experience of the absolute: it is emptiness, just a white screen; nothing moves, nothing changes. It is eternal, timeless. But the world of time, the world of change is also part of it.Remember the metaphor of the wheel and the axle: the axle is absolute and the wheel is relative. But the wheel needs the axle, without the axle the wheel cannot move – on what will it move? And the axle needs the wheel, without the wheel it won’t be an axle at all. They are complementary, not antagonistic.This and that are two aspects of the same coin.The sutras:Absolute and relative –He who knows these two together,through the relative leaves death behindand through the Absolute gains immortality.See the point: one who knows these together! The Upanishad is not saying know the absolute and renounce the relative. It is saying know them together in their togetherness. Only then is your knowing whole, only then is your knowing total. The person who turns away from the world remains as lopsided as the person who remains in the world and forgets the beyond. Both are partial, and to be partial is to be ill because then you cannot have your whole being, only a fragment. And to only have a fragment is to suffer, is to be miserable.Hence my observation is that the worldly people suffer in one way and your so-called spiritual people suffer in another, but both suffer. Suffering comes from the partial truth. Bliss is the fragrance of the whole.Bliss comes only when you live life in its totality. The totality includes this and that and it does not make any hierarchy. That is not higher than this, that is hidden in this. This is the visible part of that, and that is the unmanifest part of this. This is the body of that and that is the soul of this.You can see within yourself the body and the soul are living in absolute harmony. In the same way God and his existence are living in deep harmony, there is no conflict. The conflict is created by your so-called religious people. They have created all kinds of unnecessary struggles.Hence true religion will be closer to the Upanishads than to Shankaracharya, than to Mahavira. It will be far closer to the Upanishads. This Isa Upanishad is the very essence of the whole Upanishadic philosophy of life.Absolute and relative – He who knows these two together through the relative leaves death behind and through the Absolute gains immortality. The absolute cannot be known by any method, it cannot be known by any teaching, it cannot be known by any scripture. The absolute cannot be known as an object of knowledge because it is the very center of your innermost core, it is the foundation of all your knowing. Hence it cannot be known as the known. No method will help, no teaching will help, no philosophy will be of any support in fact, they will hinder. To know the absolute, one has to drop all doctrines, all philosophies, all ideologies, all methods.Just the other day somebody had asked, “Is it possible to find God by practicing Yoga?” God cannot be found by practicing anything – neither Yoga nor Tantra nor Zen nor Tao. God cannot be known by practicing anything whatsoever. Who will practice? All practices are confined to the mind and the mind practicing something means the mind is strengthened more and more through the practice, the mind is exercising and becoming stronger. Every practice strengthens the mind, and the mind belongs to the relative, it is the very foundation of the relative.You can practice Yoga: you will have a better body, a better mind, you will have a better memory, you will have a longer life; all these things are possible. If you go deep into practicing Yoga you may even start having few miraculous powers, siddhis, because you will discover subtle forces of the mind and the body which are not ordinarily available, which are not functioning. You will come across many new energies which you have never suspected.Psychologists say a major part of the brain is not functioning, and they are puzzled because if it is not functioning then why is it there? It seems to have no purpose and nature never creates anything without any purpose – it must have some purpose. But psychology has not yet been able to find any purpose and psychology may not be able to find it. Unless Yoga, Tantra, Zen, Tao and all these methodologies of reviving subtle energies of the mind are included in scientific research work, psychology may not be able to find any function.Even physiology has not found functions for a few things, hence they are ready to remove your appendix every time because it has no function. The doctors are ready to remove your tonsils any moment because they don’t seem to have any function – as if nature can grow something in you that really has no function. Then why should your appendix exist at all? Ordinarily – physiology is right and psychology is right – they don’t have any function; but if you enter the world of Yoga you will be surprised even your appendix has a function, your tonsils have a function, and the major part of the brain which is nonfunctioning starts functioning.You can start reading other people’s thoughts. This will be done by a new center in the mind, the old centers cannot do it. You can even start projecting your thoughts into other people’s minds, they will think they are thinking those thoughts. In fact, you are flooding their minds by your thoughts. You can have great powers of deceiving, they will not be able to see how you are doing it – they will not be able to see how you are materializing a Swiss watch out of the air. You just know one simple technique – how to prevent them from knowing what is happening just in front of their eyes.But all these things have nothing to do with knowing God, the ultimate; all these thing are part of the relative: magicians can do it, hypnotists can do it, mesmerists can do it and there are many ways to find out these secrets. These are not very spiritual things, in fact only non-spiritual egoists become interested in these things.The absolute is found only when you have dropped all knowledge: all scriptures are burned, all theories are rejected, the mind itself is put to sleep; then the absolute emerges. It is your very nature. When all the clouds have disappeared the sun shines forth.But methods can help to get rid of the relative. They can help you to become more powerful as far as the body is concerned, the mind is concerned. They can also help you to get rid of the relative, they can help to remove the barriers. When I am talking to you, that’s exactly the purpose of my talking to you – to help you to get rid of the relative. All the methods of Yoga, Tantra, Zen, and Tao are negative – negative in the sense they don’t give you the absolute, but they help you to be finished with the relative.The sutra says: …through the relative one leaves death behind and through the Absolute one gains immortality. You can see the point – death represents all that is relative and immortality represents all that is absolute. Death represents time, change; and the absolute represents eternity.In Sanskrit we have the same word for both time and death. We call death kal and time also kal. Sanskrit may be the only language in the whole world that has the same name for time and death. That’s why it can be said truthfully that Sanskrit is the only language transformed by the insight of the seers, all other languages have remained ordinary. For ten thousand years, thousands of people in the East have become enlightened, and they have changed the very structure of Sanskrit language. They have given it the color of their enlightenment, they have made words luminous, they have given those words new meanings, which cannot be given by unenlightened persons. Now to call time and death by the same name is a great insight. It is not a question of knowing linguistics, it is a question of experiencing something tremendously valuable. Time and death are the same. To live in time means to live in death, and the moment time disappears, death disappears. So when you are utterly silent, when no thought moves in your mind, time disappears; you cannot have any idea what time it is. And the moment time disappears and the clock of your mind stops, suddenly you enter the world of the timeless, the eternal world, the world of the absolute.Jesus is asked by a seeker… It is not reported in the New Testament, but it is part of the Sufi tradition. A seeker asks Jesus, “What will be the most significant thing in your Kingdom of God?” And the answer is amazing. Jesus says, “There shall be time no longer. That will be the most significant thing in my Kingdom of God – there shall be time no longer. There will be no past, no future; there will be only present.”And let me tell you that present is not part of time. Of course ordinarily in the schools, colleges and the universities you have been told and taught, and your dictionaries go on saying again and again that time has three tenses: past, present, and future. That is absolutely wrong – wrong according to those who know. The past and the future are time, but the present is not time, the present belongs to eternity. The past and the future belong to this – the world of the relative, change. Between the two penetrates the beyond, the transcendental, and that is the present. Now is part of eternity.If you live in time, death is bound to happen. In fact, to say “bound to happen” is not right – it is already happening. The moment a child is born he starts dying. It takes seventy, eighty years to die, that’s another matter. He dies, slowly, miserly, in installments, a little bit every day, every hour. He goes on dying, dying, dying… Then the process is complete after seventy years or eighty years. When you say that somebody has died today, don’t be misguided by your statement, he has been dying for eighty years, today the process is complete.There is an ancient Chinese tradition in the Taoist school. It seems to be the only tradition in the whole world where, when a child is born the family cries, they weep because the birth is nothing but an arrow moving toward death. They don’t celebrate it, they feel very sad. Another being has entered the world of death, how can you celebrate it?If one wants to celebrate, then death is the right thing to celebrate. One person has completed the process of dying and perhaps he may not be born again; perhaps he has entered the beyond, or at least this death process has ended. Maybe he will start another death process, but that is in the future and we don’t know anything about it. Celebrating birth is ignorance, celebrating death is understanding.…through the relative one leaves death behind… If you use the methods of meditation you will leave the mind behind, and the mind is both the source of time and death. The mind is time. The mind is death. One aspect of the mind is time, another aspect of the mind is death. Through meditation, through watching the mind, you can leave death behind.But this is only a negative process, the Upanishads call it neti neti – neither this nor that, the process of elimination. “I am not this – the body, the mind. Then who am I?” First eliminate the nonessential, put it aside, and go on eliminating all that is nonessential until only the essential is left. And what is essential? How will you decide that only the essential is left? When there is nothing left to be denied, nothing left to be eliminated. Go on emptying your house throw all the furniture out. When there is nothing left to be thrown out, then a great revelation happens, you gain immortality; the absolute arises in you in all its beauty and splendor, in all its ecstasy. It over-floods you, it starts radiating; it starts reaching even to others who are available, receptive, vulnerable.The threshold of Reality is veiled by golden light.Now the Isa Upanishad reminds the seeker to be aware. When you enter the world of absolute reality you will come across a golden veil, very beautiful, so beautiful that many have become enchanted and stopped there.The threshold of Reality is veiled by golden light. All darkness disappears and there is such a golden light, so psychedelic, you have never experienced anything like it. You think you have come home. Wait, beware, this is just the light that surrounds reality. You have to penetrate this light to reach the very center of reality. When you come close to a flame, the flame is surrounded by golden light. Remember, the golden light radiates from the flame, but the golden light is not the flame itself. When you look at the sun you see a golden light radiating from the sun. We are far away from the sun; it takes ten minutes for sunlight to reach us, and ten minutes for light is a long distance because light travels by tremendous speed, ultimate speed. Scientists say that that is the last, more speed is not possible. Light travels 186,000 miles in one second – in one minute, 60 times more. In ten minutes, 600 times more. It is far away, but we can see the light, the rays are reaching us.Remember, these rays are coming from the sun, but these rays are not the sun itself. If you want to reach the sun you will have to go beyond these rays. This sun is nothing compared to other suns, which are far bigger. Even this sun is not a small sun, it is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and this is a very mediocre sun in the universe. There are greater suns than this, millions of times bigger.In the night when you see stars you think they are very small – you are wrong. They are very far away, that’s why they look small; they are far bigger than the sun, but their distance is almost unbelievable. The closest sun next to this sun is four light years away, the rays from that sun reach us in four years; from this sun it takes ten minutes, from that sun it takes four years, and that is the closest. There are suns from where it takes millions of light years for the sunlight to reach us, and there are a few suns conceived by the physicists whose light has not reached the earth yet, since the earth was made. And there is a possibility that there may be suns even farther away whose light will never reach the earth because in the meanwhile the earth will disappear. It came into being, for millions of years it existed, the light was traveling and traveling with that tremendous speed of 186,000 miles per second. By the time the light reaches, the earth would have died, that light will never reach the earth.But all these suns, great suns, are nothing compared to the ultimate reality. Kabir says, “The moment I penetrated my innermost core, I found as if suddenly millions of suns had risen” – not one, millions of suns. Naturally, the Upanishadic seers are making you aware:The threshold of Reality is veiled by golden light. And the light is so beautiful, so blissful, that you can be caught in the net of it and you can start thinking you have arrived. Many scriptures of the world say God is light. The people who have said that have misunderstood, they have thought the golden light as God itself.God is neither light nor darkness, he is both and beyond. Unless you reach that ultimate which is always beyond the duality, transcendental to duality, go on remembering you have not come home yet. Go on inquiring, go on exploring.The Upanishadic seer prays to God:Reveal it, O Lord, for my dharma is to know the Truth.The Upanishads start in meditation and end in prayer. This is the right sequence. Nobody can start with prayer because if you start with prayer, your prayer will be false, it cannot be true. You will be asking for some ordinary things – money, power, prestige – because that is where you are. Your prayer will be part of your mind, and the mind is full of desires, hence your prayers will be full of desires and demands.Go and listen to people who are in prayer in the temples, in the churches. What they are asking?Even a man like the great Emperor Akbar used to pray for more money, more power. Once a great Sufi mystic, Farid, went to see him. He had never gone to Akbar. Akbar used to come to see him. Farid lived very close to Delhi, and Akbar had tremendous respect for Farid. He had asked him to come to the palace, but Farid would laugh at the whole idea and he would say, “You can always come whenever you want. Why bother me?”But one day the villagers where Farid lived asked him, “We don’t even have a school in our village, and the great emperor comes to you. You can just give him a hint and immediately it will happen. You can just say that we need a school.”Farid said, “If I have to ask something from him, then it is better I should go.” And he went to see Akbar.When he reached Akbar’s palace he was well received, everybody knew about him. Akbar was in his small prayer house that he had made inside his palace. He ritually did all the five prayers every day, as a Mohammedan is required to do. He was doing his morning prayer. Nobody was allowed to enter the shrine when Akbar was praying, but the guards did not prevent Farid, they could not think of preventing him.He went in, he stood behind Akbar. Akbar was one of the greatest emperors who has ever lived on the earth. India has known only two great emperors: one was Ashoka, another was Akbar. They had the greatest kingdoms possible – the richest men of all the ages. And Farid was shocked. Akbar was not aware that Farid was standing behind – nobody, not even his wife, was allowed to enter. So he was just praying to God, talking to God, unaware of the fact that somebody was listening.As he ended his prayer he raised his hands toward the sky and said to God, “Give me more money, more power, more kingdom.”Farid was shocked: “This man has so much, and still he is begging.”He turned away. He immediately left the shrine. But as he was going down the steps, Akbar saw him. He rushed, fell unto his feet and said, “Why have you come? You could have asked me to come! And now why are you leaving?”Farid said, “I had come to make a small request, but seeing that you are still a beggar I thought it is not right to make the request. My villagers had asked you for a small school, but now I cannot ask because that means you will become a little less rich than you are; a little bit of money will have to be put for the school. No, I cannot ask you. Moreover, if you are asking God, I can ask God myself. Why should I ask through you, through your agency? But,” Farid said, “I had never thought of asking anything from God, that’s why I am such a fool that I came to you. But you have opened my eyes. I have been praying my whole life, but the idea never happened to me that one should ask anything.”Prayer can be of two types. One: the ordinary prayer that is being done all over the world; Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, all are doing it. They have not transcended the mind, so their prayer is full of their desires.To attain real prayer, first you have to become silent, first you have to pass through the alchemy of meditation. Meditation helps you to get rid of the mind, and when there is no mind you can pray, but that prayer will have a totally different quality to it.This is the prayer: Reveal it, O Lord, for my dharma is to know the Truth. The seer is saying, “I have done whatsoever I could do: I have meditated, practiced Yoga, watched my mind, I have dissolved the mind, eliminated all that was stupid in me, mediocre in me, unintelligent in me. But from all that effort I have attained only the golden light, your veil. Now unless you remove it, nothing is possible. Whatsoever I could do, I have done – my doer is finished, my doing is finished. I have come to the very end of my tether, now my road ends here. Now only you can take me further ahead.”Prayer begins only when you have done everything that you can do, then your prayer has authenticity. It means, “Now what can I do? Everything that was possible for me I have done, and this is what I have attained: great light, great benediction, great bliss. But still I feel that this is just the outermost part of your being. Now only you can help.”You can ask for help when you have done all that you can do, not before that. Prayer comes only after meditation.That’s why I don’t teach prayer to you, I teach meditation because I know only after meditation is prayer possible. And the beauty is that if you have meditated well, prayer comes on its own accord, there is no need to teach it. Just as a flower opens and the fragrance is released, exactly like that when meditation is happening, the fragrance of prayer comes on its own accord, it simply happens. Then the prayer can be only one: Reveal it, O Lord, for my dharma is to know the Truth.The word dharma is untranslatable, that’s why the translator has left it as it is. Ordinarily dharma is translated as religion, which is wrong, absolutely wrong. Religion is a very ordinary thing; religion means a creed, a theology, a theory, a hypothesis, a doctrine. Dharma means your innermost nature, swabhav your self-nature. Dharma means your deepest longing for truth, your ultimate thirst for being. It is there in everybody’s center. It is a seed, it can become a flower.Two things have to be done. The first is the meditative part, it will help the plant to grow, it will help the buds to arrive. And then you have to pray, the second part is prayer. If you start forcibly opening the buds you will destroy the whole beauty, you will destroy the fragrance, even the possibility of fragrance. Then you have to pray: Reveal it, O Lord, for my dharma is to know the Truth.My deepest longing is to know the truth, the ultimate truth, the naked truth and nothing else. I don’t want this golden light. I cannot be contented with this. Your veil is beautiful – of course it is your veil, hence it is beautiful – and something of you is radiating out of the veil, but I want to see you in your absolute nudity, I want to see you unveiled. Hence reveal, unveil O Lord, and this only you can do, I cannot do. I have come so far that I can see your veil, but more than that is beyond me.Prayer is significant only when you have done all that you are capable of, then your prayer has a sincerity.O Lord of Light, the knowing one,the golden guardian, giver of life to all,spread apart thy rays, gather up thy brilliance,that I may perceive thy finest and most splendrous nature,that cosmic spirit which lies at thy heart.For I myself am That!O Lord of Light… Remember, God is the lord of light but not light itself, he is also the God of darkness. He is the lord of this and that both. He is the lord of both the shores of life. O Lord of Light, the knowing one, the golden guardian, giver of life to all, spread apart thy rays…The prayer is now: “Allow me to see you as you are: …spread apart thy rays… Give me little bits of windows, doors: …spread apart thy rays… so I can have a few spaces to enter you. Otherwise, your rays are so beautiful they can prevent me, I can get allured by them, I can become hypnotized by them. I am in a danger – if you don’t help me, I will think I have come to the very end.”…gather up thy brilliance… See the prayer: …gather up thy brilliance… Don’t shine so much because I cannot even open my eyes – how can I see you? …gather up thy brilliance… Help me – withdraw your brilliance. Gather up your rays so that I can see you, so that I can: …perceive thy finest and most splendrous nature… And I want to see you because I am not separate from you. Unless I know you I will not be able to know myself.…that cosmic spirit which lies at thy heart. For I myself am That! I am that. This is the ultimate statement of the Upanishads: I am that! This “I” does not mean the ego, this “I” simply means your pure existence, without any ego in it. It is more amness than I-amness. There is no “I” in it, it is pure existence. One simply is.The moment you are without the ego, just utterly empty of the ego, without the self, just pure consciousness with no idea of any “I” at the center of it, then you are that, then there is no difference.That’s what al-Hillaj Mansoor was crucified for. If he had been in India we would have loved and respected him as an Upanishadic seer, but he was killed. He declared: “Ana’l haq – I am the truth!” Mohammedans could not tolerate him, that was too much. Anybody declaring, “I am the truth,” seemed to them that it was sacrilegious, that it was against their religion, that it was egotism, that this man is saying that “I am God.” Truth means God. “Ana’l haq – I am the truth, the ultimate truth!” But they could not understand, they could not see. They were unable to feel Mansoor’s being.He was not saying that al-Hillaj Mansoor is the truth. He was saying al-Hillaj Mansoor is no more, and what is left now is the truth. When he was saying, “I am the truth,” in fact he was saying, “I am no more, only the truth is.”The words of the mystics have to be very cautiously understood, otherwise there is every possibility of misunderstanding. The Upanishads say: “Aham Brahmasmi – I am God, I am absolute, I am the ultimate truth.” But it has nothing to do with “I.” In fact, they are trying to convey something that is not conveyable. They are saying, “I am not, now only God is. Hence I say I am God.” Now God is speaking, they are no longer speaking. For I myself am That!Let my breath merge with the cosmic breath…This is the prayer, only after meditation is it possible. Let my breath merge with the cosmic breath…I should not be in any way separate from the whole. I should breathe with the whole. I should dance with the whole. This is ultimate let-go. Ordinarily we are continuously pushing the river, fighting the river, trying to go upstream. Hence, we are miserable because we cannot win, we are bound to fail.You cannot win against the whole; you are just a part, such a tiny part, trying to win against the whole. It is sheer stupidity. But you can win – you can win with the whole, not against the whole. You can win if you merge with the whole. You can be a conqueror.That’s why we have called Mahavira the jina, the conqueror. Why have we called him the conqueror? – for the simple reason he dissolved himself with the whole, he merged with the whole. His breathing was no longer separate, his heartbeat was no longer separate. His heartbeat and the heartbeat of the universe were in deep rhythm, they were in tune, there was a great communion happening.Let my breath merge with the cosmic breath,may my body be as dust…Forget my body – I know I am no longer in it. Please just think of me as consciousness. This is the prayer.Remember, o mind, remember what has been done.This is a very significant sutra, hence the Isa Upanishad repeats it:Remember, O mind, remember what has been done.Remember, O mind, remember what has been done.The first statement – Remember, o mind, remember what has been done – means remember what has been done by others to you. They have made you identified with the body. As the child is born we start conditioning the child, as if the child is nothing but the body. Hence we separate the boys from girls. We insist again and again that a girl has a feminine body and the boy has a masculine body. Directly, indirectly, we emphasize the fact so much that it becomes a conditioning. Anything repeated again and again becomes a conditioning. The woman becomes identified with the body and the man becomes identified with the body.Then we start emphasizing a new identity with the mind, with ambitions, desires. We go on and on stuffing our children with all kinds of nonsense. We want them to become great, famous, wealthy, powerful, presidents, prime ministers, this and that. Nobody seems to be concerned to tell them, “You are neither the body nor the mind – you are something transcending both.” Our whole education is miseducation because of this, and it is a long process. Almost one third of your life is wasted in education – twenty-five years. When you come back from the university as a PhD, one-third of your life has gone down the drain. And they have conditioned you to be a body and to be a mind.Remember, o mind, remember what has been done. Remember all that has been done to you by others so that you can uncondition yourself.Remember, o mind, remember what has been done. Why this repetition? They both have different meanings. The first meaning is remember what has been done by others to you. The second meaning is remember what has been done by yourself to you. The others are not the only culprits, you have done much to yourself too. You have participated, you have accepted, you have never rebelled, you were very obedient to all kinds of superstitions.If your parents said, “You are a Hindu,” you became a Hindu. You never said, “Why?” You never asked a question. Your parents said, “You are a Jain,” and you became a Jain, without ever inquiring, without ever asking. You were ready to be a slave, slavery was very acceptable to you.So remember that too, what you have done to yourself. You have betrayed yourself, you have not been true to yourself, you have been false. Even when you wanted to say no, you have said yes because it was comfortable, convenient. When you wanted to rebel you obeyed because rebellion can lead you into danger, obedience is respectability. When you wanted to cry and weep you still smiled.You have been false to yourself, you have not lived an authentic life. You have not been true. You have been wearing masks upon masks, you have never asserted your original face. You have never dared to be just yourself. You have never risked. You were always ready to bow down to authorities, they may be religious or political. You were always ready to be enslaved by the establishment: it may be Christian, it may be Hindu, it may be Buddhist; it does not matter. Even people you respect very much are basically slaves.Just the other day I was reading a letter from a Protestant Christian. He has written a letter to Mother Teresa of Calcutta because now Mother Teresa is thought to be one of the great saints in the world. Since she won the Nobel Prize, she has become one of the most respectable persons in the world. This Protestant Christian went to Mother Teresa’s orphanage where she collects children from beggars, abandoned children, poor children, and he wanted to adopt a child. That’s what Mother Teresa has been doing her whole life: collecting orphans and then giving them to families, and she has been respected for that.But he was asked whether he is Catholic or not. He said, “I am a Protestant.” He was refused – he could not adopt a child. He had to be a Roman Catholic. He was very much puzzled. This woman is thought to be a great saint, one of the greatest servants of the society, but the whole service and the whole mission is basically a Catholic strategy to convert people into Catholicism. It is a trick, a political trick. All those orphanages are not really for orphans, they are to increase the number of Roman Catholics. They have nothing to do with beggars, it is a political game. Even a Protestant – he is also a Christian – cannot be allowed to adopt a son. All those children are going to the Catholics, so Catholics go on becoming more and more, so they have larger numbers in the world. This is a way of converting, exploiting poor people, exploiting their poverty.Even Mother Teresa is nothing but an agent of the Catholic Church. Your so-called saints, although they are thought to be saints, still belong to certain churches, religions, sects; they have not gone beyond. They cannot say, “I am just human.” They cannot simply say, “I belong to the universe – not to the Catholic Church or to the Protestant Church or to Hindus or to Buddhists – I belong to the cosmos.” They are not in tune with the cosmic breath.She is dancing according to the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church. She is dancing to the tune of the Vatican, of the Pope. And even in India people think she is a great saint. They write letters to me, “Why don’t you do something like Mother Teresa?” Should I start converting people to the Roman Catholic Church? But behind beautiful facades ugly things are hiding.All these Christian missionaries serving poor people and the ill and the sick have nothing to do with poor people or sick people. Their whole effort is how to purchase people through bread, through butter, through medicine, through better hospitals – just how to purchase people through money, how to make more Catholics in the world.Somebody converts people through the sword, somebody converts through money, and somebody simply goes on torturing their children, crippling, paralyzing their intelligence.So: remember, o mind, remember what has been done to you by others, and also remember what has been done to you by yourself because others can do it to you only if you allow them to do it. I know small children cannot do anything, they cannot rebel, they are helpless. They have to depend on their parents, and because of their helplessness they are exploited.Children are the most exploited people in the world, and the misery is, their own parents are doing tremendous harm. They may be thinking that they are doing something good, something great, they may be thinking that they are helping their children to become good people. But what Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans have done to the world? The whole history is full of blood because of these religions. Man has not been able to become one, humanity has remained divided, and continuous wars, crusades… Kill each other in the name of God, in the name of religion. And when you kill anybody in the name of religion you are not a murderer. If you are killed in the name of religion, your paradise is absolutely certain. People have been bribed to kill and to be killed.If a parent really loves his child, he will not condition the child in any way. He will help the child to inquire on his own, to become a seeker.The Upanishads don’t belong to Hindus. Remember! The same cannot be said about the Koran; the Koran belongs to the Mohammedans. The same cannot be said about Ramayana; Ramayana belongs to the Hindus. The same cannot be said about the Bible; the Bible belongs to the Christians. But one thing can be absolutely categorically said about the Upanishads: they don’t belong to the Hindus, Mohammedans Christians – to anybody; their whole approach is cosmic, it is holistic.O Agni, show us the right path,lead us to eternal freedom,thou who knowest all.May we not be diverted from our goal,for with all devotion we submit ourselves to Thee.O Agni… Agni means fire. The translator has also left it untranslated for the simple reason that to translate it just as fire will give you a wrong impression, a wrong idea. Agni is a metaphor and metaphors become more difficult to translate, they have something poetic in them. Literally it means fire, but the metaphor is of the fire within you, the fire of a deep, intense, passionate longing for truth, the fire of longing to be with the beloved, to be one with the cosmos.Buddha’s last statement on the earth was, “Be a light unto yourself” – and this is the last sutra of the Isa Upanishad: “O fire, o my fire, my inner fire, my longing to be one with my beloved …show us the right path. Now nobody can lead me, only my inner passion for truth can guide me. No outer person can be of any help.”The master can help you to get rid of the relative, there the function of the master ends. Then you have to depend on your own inner insight, your own intuition, and that insight is called the fire. It is fire because it burns and consumes you as a separate entity, as an individual. It reduces you to nothingness. It is fire, but out of this fire a totally new life is born.…show us the right path, lead us to eternal freedom… Only this fire can lead you to the eternal freedom. When you are consumed completely, when you are free of yourself, then you are absolutely free. Remember these two expressions: freedom of the self and freedom from the self. The second is the meaning of absolute freedom, not the first. Freedom of the self again simply means the ego has come from the back door. Freedom from the self itself is total freedom, absolute freedom. When you are not, you are really free.It is a paradox; when you are, you are in bondage because your mind is a bondage, your ego is a bondage. When you are not, your imprisoned splendor is released.Thou who knowest all. May we not be diverted from our goal… Now this prayer has to be a constant fragrance to the seeker, “My Lord, help me not to be diverted” because as you enter the inner world, greater treasures are revealed. And there is every possibility you may stop somewhere and you may think that it is the end. The danger becomes more and more as you go deeper because greater riches, greater wealth, greater kingdoms become yours. And you have lived in such poverty that anything can enchant you.There is a beautiful parable…A mystic used to live under a tree, and he saw for years a woodcutter coming every day, an old man. The whole day he would cut wood and sell the wood, and then too it was difficult to feed himself, his wife and children.One day the mystic asked the woodcutter, “Will you listen to me?”The woodcutter used to respect the mystic. In the early morning when he came he would bow down to the mystic, and then by the evening he would take the wood back home, he would again bow down to the mystic.The mystic said, “Listen, don’t waste your life cutting wood. Just go a little ahead and you will find a copper mine, and that will be enough. Do one day’s work and it will be enough to keep your family perfectly comfortably, conveniently, for seven days, and there will be no need for you to work every day.”The man did not believe. What can this mystic know about the copper and the mines? He had never seen him leave his tree. “He is always sitting there under the tree with closed eyes – what can he know?” But then he thought, “What am I going to lose? Let me give it a try.”He went ahead and found a copper mine, and he was immensely pleased. Now he worked only one day and for the remaining week there was no need to work. It was enough to feed his family, not only to feed but even invite guests, friends. And all were surprised that he had become suddenly rich.One day the mystic said, “You are such a fool! Just go a little ahead and you will find a silver mine – and one day’s work, and for six months you need not work at all.”The woodcutter was perfectly happy with the copper mine, and he did not believe this mystic – again! But he said, “For the first time he turned out to be right. Who knows? Let me give it a try!”He found the silver mine, and he was immensely happy. One day he will come and for six months he will disappear, and he lived in luxury for those six months.One day he was coming, and the mystic said, “But you are just a fool! Just go ahead a little bit more and you will find a gold mine!”Now this was too much! The woodcutter could not believe that this could be his fate – impossible! But again he was seduced by the idea – he went and found the gold mine. Now he became so rich that for years he would not come, and even if he came, he would not bother even to bow down to the mystic. “Who cares about this fool? He just goes on sitting under the tree, and he knows where the gold mine is, still he has not bothered…”One day the mystic called him and he said, “You don’t come to see me any more, you don’t bow down to me, but, still, I am now getting old and I cannot wait anymore. Just a little ahead there is a diamond mine – and why are you wasting your time with gold? You can find diamonds!”And the man found the diamonds, now for years he would not come. And one day the mystic sent a message saying, “Come quickly because I am on my deathbed and I have to reveal to you the last secret.”He could not believe – what could be more than diamonds? That is the end! There can be nothing, there cannot be anything more. But he came. He asked, “What is the matter? Now you are again trying to tell me to go ahead?”He said, “Yes, because if you go a little bit ahead you will find a treasure which is inexhaustible. This mine will be exhausted soon.”The woodcutter said, “I don’t believe you anymore. And I am perfectly happy – why should I go? And if you know that there is some inexhaustible treasure, why do you go on sitting under this tree?”The mystic said, “That inexhaustible treasure is within me, and that’s what I have called you for, to tell you just go a little ahead. If you go a little ahead you will find yourself, and that’s the real treasure.”But it was too much for the poor woodcutter even to understand. He laughed at the whole idea and he said, “You must have gone crazy! I am perfectly happy.”The mystic died. After many years the woodcutter thought – his death was also coming closer – “Maybe he was right, I should go a little further.” He went a little further and he found such a beautiful forest that he wanted to sit under a tree. And it was so silent that he wanted to close his eyes. And it was so tremendously peaceful that he started sinking within himself. And he found the treasure the mystic was talking about, but it was found within himself.The seer of the Isa Upanishad is saying: May we not be diverted from our goal…Unless you have found your ultimate being you have not found anything, remember. And go on praying to God that we should not be diverted: …for with devotion we submit ourselves to Thee. Meditation is effort, prayer is surrender. Meditation is your doing, prayer is becoming available to God; whatsoever he wants to do with you, you are ready. It is submission, it is devotion, but devotion comes only after meditation.Ompurnam adahpurnam idampurnat purnam udachyatepurnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashishyateOmThat is the whole.This is the whole.From wholeness emerges wholeness.Wholeness coming from wholeness,wholeness still remains.Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I would like to fall in love, but I am afraid of beautiful women, and so afraid of love, and I don't know why.Why is it so hard for me to fall in love?Love is the hardest thing in the world, the most arduous. It really needs guts to be in love. That’s why people have escaped from the world in the name of religion for thousands of years. They were not really escaping from the world, they were escaping from love. It was the fear of love that drove them away to the deserts, to the mountains, to the monasteries. But they were not even courageous enough to accept the fact that they were afraid of love, they covered it up with beautiful religious words. They condemned the world rather than condemning their own cowardliness.Humanity has worshipped these people as saints – cowards have been worshipped. And naturally, if you worship cowards you will also become a coward. One should choose very carefully and cautiously whom to adore because whomsoever you adore you start becoming like him – unconsciously, unknowingly. If a man escapes from the war we call him a coward, we condemn him, he has betrayed. But the people who escape from the battle of life are thought to be heroes, are thought to be doing something great. Their basic fear is of love. Why is there so much fear of love?The first thing that love requires is dropping of the ego. It is easy to protect your ego in the name of religion, in the name of virtue, morality, puritanism, character – beautiful words to decorate the ego, to nourish and feed it. Hence your so-called saints are the most egoistic people in the world, and you can see it. The facts are so immense, so self-evident, that there is no way to deny them. Your saints have caused more bloodshed on the earth than anybody else, for the simple reason that wherever there is ego there is going to be bloodshed. But when you hide behind beautiful facades you not only deceive others, ultimately you yourself are deceived.Love is one of the most dangerous phenomena. You have to put aside your ego, only then can it blossom. Love is real spirituality, but when I use the word love you can again misunderstand – to the other extreme – you can start thinking in terms of lust. Love is not lust either. It is not the so-called religion and it is not the so-called worldly life. Love is different from both.Love is a transcendence of lust and ego. Religious life gives you ego and destroys love, and the irreligious life gives you lust and destroys love. These are the two extremes: ego and lust. Exactly in the middle of the two is love; it is neither ego nor lust, it is transcendence of both.Lust means you are trying to exploit the other, and naturally there will be fear. The fear will be that the other may exploit you. To get into a relationship means getting into a space where you are thinking to exploit, and the other is also thinking to exploit. Both are going to use the other as a means. Hence there is great attraction, the opportunity to exploit the other, and great fear because you may be exploited.Lust can never be free of fear, the ego can never be free of fear. Hence the people who have escaped into the deserts, into the mountains, into the monasteries, are still afraid, trembling, because you can escape from the world but how will you escape from your nature?Love is a basic need. You can escape from the world, but you will still need food. You can escape from the world, that doesn’t mean that now there is no need for food. Love is food for the soul, just as food is food for the body. One cannot avoid love. If one avoids love, one is avoiding life. To avoid love means to commit suicide.Your saints have committed suicide, your sinners have committed suicide. In a way they both are the same because they exist on the polar opposites.My sannyasin has to transcend the polarity, the opposition. He has to go beyond both. Beyond lust means never be cunning, never try to use the other; that is ugly, that is inhuman, that is irreligious, that is violence, pure violence. To respect the other as an end unto himself or herself is the way of the sannyasin. Avoid being cunning.A Jew who had won the first prize in a state lottery was suddenly besieged by relatives and friends who had previously ignored him. But he refused to give or lend them any money.“You now have more money than you will ever spend,” said one. “Why are you so unkind?”I have two good reasons,” explained the lucky winner. “First, I hate my relatives, and second, I love my money!”To love somebody means to respect, it means not to exploit. To love somebody means to give love and all that you have without any idea of getting anything in return. If there is even a slight idea, a slight motivation, it is cunningness, it is lust. Even to ask for gratitude is wrong. Love is possible only when you love for love’s sake.A rich widower invited his three sons and their wives to a birthday dinner at his home. As they sat down at the table he explained why he had brought them all together.“This is my fifty-eighth birthday, as you know, and I am about to change my will. Because of my disappointment at not being a grandfather, I am going to give $250,000 to my first grandchild.” Then he bowed his head and said grace.When he looked up he found himself alone at the table.This is how people are behaving with each other! Their minds are full of lust, greed, a thousand and one motives, and they go on calling all this love.It is not anything personal to you, to be afraid of love or to feel, “Why it is so hard?” It is everybody’s problem, but it has been created by a long stupid conditioning. Instead of helping you to become clear about what love is, instead of helping you to love without any motivation, you have been taught to love with motivation. You have been taught to love in an artificial way.The mother says to you, “Love me because I am your mother,” as if love is a logical proposition: “Because I am your mother, therefore you have to love me.” And the poor child feels at a loss, he cannot understand how to love. You may be the mother or the father, that does not mean that love will arise inevitably. If it arises inevitably toward the mother and toward the father and the brothers and the sisters and the relatives, then there would have been no need to tell anybody to love your mother, your father. It does not arise naturally, it has to be cultivated.The child is certainly helpless, he starts pretending. He becomes a politician from the very beginning – he starts learning diplomacy. He becomes a follower of Machiavelli. He starts pretending to love the mother because he needs the mother, he cannot survive without the mother. He smiles at the father. That smile is false, it is not coming from his heart. But this is how from the very beginning his love is poisoned.Later on we say, “Love – it is your wife. Love – this is your husband.” We go on saying this stupid thing to everybody: “Love – because…therefore…”Love is not a logical proposition, either it is there or it is not there. If it is there, help it to grow; if it is not there, accept it. There is no other way. But don’t create an artificial phenomenon.But the mother has lived without love, she has not been loved by the husband. He loved her because she was his wife, because he had to love, it was a social duty that he had to perform, it was a formality. So she is hankering for love, she starts exploiting the child.Many women are interested in children not because they want to be mothers, but just because it is easier to exploit a child for love than anybody else because the child will be absolutely dependent on you. To be a mother is a rare phenomenon. To hanker for children is a totally different thing, it has nothing to do with being a mother. That hankering comes from a totally different source.To be a father is even more difficult than to be a mother because to be a mother is at least instinctive, biological. A father is a social invention, a social institution. A father has been created, he does not exist in nature, hence it is even more difficult to be an authentic father. But everybody wants to be a father – to prove his manhood, to prove that he loves his wife, to prove that he is reproductive, that he is really a man. But these are not things that have anything to do with love.And then there is the need to dominate the children. He cannot dominate the wife – the wife dominates him. The wife allows him to show the world that he is the master, she allows it because she is so self-confident about her mastery over him that she does not bother. On the outside he can play the game of being the husband. He knows, she knows, everybody else knows who is the real master.The father is hankering to be a master, he wants to dominate somebody. He cannot dominate the wife, he cannot dominate the boss in the office, he cannot dominate anybody. Children are needed, it is a desire to dominate. And then he starts asking the children, “Love me – I am your father. You have to love me!” As if love can be managed. Everything becomes false. By the time you are young your love is almost plastic, it has lost all spontaneity. It has become very cunning, very calculating.Two women met for the first time since graduating from high school. The first one asked, “Have you managed to live a well-planned life?”“Oh yes!” said her friend. “First I married a millionaire, then an actor. My third marriage was to a preacher and now I am married to an undertaker.”“What do all these marriages have to do with a well-planned life?”“One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready and four to go!”This is a well-planned life! Remember this sutra: “One for the money, two for the show, three to make ready, and four to go!” This is how people are living.You ask me, “I would like to fall in love…” It is not a question of liking. One simply falls or one does not fall. You would like to fall in love – then it is not going to happen. Falls don’t happen through liking, you simply stumble and you fall. You are trying to manage a fall. You can manage, but it will not be a real fall – no fracture, nothing! You can put down a Dunlop mattress and fall on it, but you will simply look stupid and nothing else. A little bit embarrassed, that’s all.You ask, “I would like to fall in love, but I am afraid of beautiful women…” Only that seems to be a little bit intelligent! Beautiful women are dangerous, ugly women are good, they have to be good. Fall in love with an ugly woman. This is one of the observations of thousands of years – whenever a woman is beautiful she need not care about being nice. It is enough to be beautiful, why should she be nice too? She will be nasty! Ugly women are very nice, they have to be, otherwise who is going to fall in love with them? Their faces, their bodies make you feel like running away to the very end of the world and never looking back – they have to compensate. They compensate by being nice, by being very loving. They become your mamas, they take care as if you are a small child, they breastfeed you. They become absolutely necessary, they make you utterly dependent, so that you can tolerate their ugliness.That you are certainly saying with some intelligence. And when you are thinking and planning a well-planned life, then fall in love with an ugly woman. It will be difficult in the beginning, but then it is sweet all the way. Always think of the future – that’s what calculating people do. What it is? Just a bitter pill in the beginning, it’s okay, but then it is very health giving. Ugly women are medicinal, but beautiful women are sweet in the beginning and very bitter in the end.And this is not my advice to you, Gautam Buddha also says the same thing in a different context, of course. He cannot be so truthful as I am. He says: The world is sweet in the beginning but very bitter in the end, and the other world is very bitter in the beginning but very sweet in the end. It is a totally different context, but it is significant in your context too.The beautiful woman looks beautiful and you are tempted, but remember the great philosophers who say that beauty is illusory, it is nothing but just on the surface. When you see a beautiful woman always remember the great philosophers, that inside she is nothing but bones, blood, pus, etcetera, etcetera. Keep a skeleton in your bedroom, meditate over it, and whenever you see a beautiful woman project the skeleton. That will scare you! And whenever you see an ugly woman feel compassion – compassion is good, it is great service. In fact it is conquering the world! To fall in love with an ugly woman is to be a saint, and your reward will be great. She will be nice to you, and always nice to you.The only problem is, here you will not find an ugly woman. Somehow ugly women don’t fall in love with me, that’s the trouble. So you are in a wrong place.A traveling salesman once found himself in a howling storm near a washed-out bridge somewhere in the hinterlands. Since he could drive no further he got out of his car and went to the nearest farmhouse. An old man answered the door.“Can you put me up for the night?” asked the salesman.“Yes, you can stay here,” said the farmer, “but you will have to sleep with my son.”“Your son?”“That’s right.”“Excuse me, said the salesman, “I must be in the wrong joke!”You are here in a wrong joke, you will have to find the right joke for yourself. Here you will not find an ugly woman, that will be difficult. You say, “I would like to fall in love, but I am afraid of beautiful women, and so afraid of love, and I don’t know why.” There is not much to know in it, it is very simple and obvious. It is not something great to contemplate upon.He: “Have you ever loved anyone as much as you love me, Mary?”She: “No, John. I have sometimes admired men for their looks or intelligence or money. But with you, John, it is all love – nothing else.”At lunch one woman said to her friend, “I don’t know what to do. The other night I dreamed that John was having lunch with some blonde, and they were laughing together.”“Oh, for God’s sake, Helen!” protested her friend. “It was only a silly dream.”“Only a dream,” repeated the other. “But if he does such things in my dreams, can you imagine what he must do in his?”Fear is natural because the woman means the beginning of the world, the woman means the beginning of the trouble. Before the woman there is no world and after the woman there is no world. Before the woman there is all darkness, after the woman there is all light. But between the two is the problem, and everybody has to pass through it.The aggressive wife was raking her husband over the coals for having said something tactless when some friends called. “And don’t sit there,” she continued sharply, “making fists at me in your pockets either!”Among the objects displayed in the Vatican Library are two Bibles close together: a huge one about two feet thick, the other a tiny one less than one inch square.One of the guides tells visitors, “This big Bible contains everything Eve said to Adam, and this little one contains everything Adam said to Eve.”I can’t see why you don’t understand – it is so obvious! People have always been afraid of the woman for the simple reason that man functions through the head and the woman functions intuitively. They can’t agree on anything, there is no possibility of agreement. The woman jumps to conclusions, and the trouble is she is almost always right! The man goes through a very long, arduous, logical process to reach a conclusion, and, again, almost always he is wrong.So to fight with a woman – that means to love a woman – you are doomed, you are bound to fail. You cannot win a single argument because her ways of arguing are so puzzling. You want her to sit down calmly at the table and discuss, and she starts crying and throwing things. Now you don’t know what to do. It is your money she is destroying so you cannot throw other things because that will be simply foolish. And the whole day you come home tortured by the world, you want some moments of peace, and the whole day she has been getting ready, exercising. She is ready for a fight! You come home completely defeated, and she is fresh and ready to fight. Now how can you win? You don’t want to fight at all, you want to be left alone to read your newspaper, and she throws your newspaper.She cannot tolerate anything that you do – except Dynamic Meditation. That comes very close, that makes women afraid. I invented the Dynamic Meditation for poor men – at least one defense! You can simply shout and jump and start hoo-hooing, and that she will understand. She will calm down and she will start agreeing with you, otherwise she is going to create trouble. That is one of the ancient feminine methods – of course she has never called it meditation. I call it meditation, to give it a religious color!So these are a few clues for you. If you want a peaceful life, find a homely woman and your life will be peaceful – of course without joy. You can’t have both together. It will be peaceful, completely peaceful, but there will be no ecstasy in it. It will be as if you are already dead, there will be no excitement. It will be flat, like a flat tire, stuck in one place, sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass does not grow by itself. How can the grass grow under a flat tire? It is impossible. You can go on sitting and waiting, springs will come and go… That is the first possibility.The second is, take the risk, fall in love with a beautiful woman. There will be great excitement, ecstasy, but there will be trouble too. Heaven and hell come in the same package. You will have a few heavenly moments, but they are worth it – for all the hell that will follow, they are worth it. And they will teach you a lesson. That’s how one finally becomes a buddha. Without the women there would have been no buddhas, about that I am absolutely certain. There would have been no religion, no Buddha, no Mahaviras. It is because of the woman.Many women ask me the question, “Why have women not become enlightened?” How can they become enlightened? Who will drive them to become enlightened? That is the point. They drive man to become enlightened. Finding no other way in life, he becomes enlightened. It is simple! I have not answered it yet, but today I thought better to say it and settle it forever. Never ask me again, “Why women don’t become enlightened?” There is no need! Their function is to make people enlightened – to drive them crazy, so sooner or later they start meditating, sooner or later they want to be left alone. They are finished! Their dreams are shattered. They are disillusioned. It is the great work of women, the whole credit goes to women.Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, they were possible only because the woman was continuously forcing them – either become enlightened or go crazy! And they decided to become enlightened. They said, “It is better to become enlightened.”It is good to pass through the experience. So choose a beautiful woman and fall wholeheartedly, don’t hold anything back. The deeper you love, the sooner you will get free of it. The more passionately you go in, the more quickly you come out.The second question:Osho,In lecture yesterday you spoke about the master's work: keeping his disciples from settling for less than “freedom from the self.”In the West, much is made of the experience “This is it” – that nothing can be different than it is, right now!Is this a copper-mine experience?How can there be anything else?I also say this is it, but when I say this is it, it has a totally different meaning. It is not the same statement as is being made in the West. The statement in itself has no meaning of its own, the meaning comes through your experience.Man can live on different planes. When Gautam the Buddha says, “This is it!” he is using the same words as you use. The words are exactly the same and the dictionary meaning is the same, but the existential meaning is totally different, it may be even diametrically opposed to your meaning.In the West it has become fashionable to say, “This is all, to live right now is all there is.” But the people who are saying it have no idea of meditativeness, have no idea of absolute silence, thoughtless awareness, they have not experienced witnessing. Hence what they are saying, “This is it,” is nothing more significant than their mind.So if your mind is full of lust, your “This is it” will be only lust and nothing else. If your mind is full of greed, full of anger, full of jealousy, then how can it have the same meaning as it has when Chuang Tzu says, “This is it?” It is not possible to have the same meaning. Meaning comes from the person, his presence, his realization.The West has got clichés from the East. Now Zen has become very fashionable in the West, not that the West is capable yet to understand Zen. Zen, the very word zen, comes from dhyana. Buddha himself never used the Sanskrit language, he was the first enlightened person in India who used the language of the people. That was one of the things that made the priesthood, the brahmins of India, antagonistic to Buddha. Among many things, that was one of the major things because the priests of India have always used Sanskrit as their language, it was their property. Only the scholarly people could understand it, the masses were absolutely ignorant about it. Hence what was written in the scriptures was known only by a few priests, and of course through that knowledge they were powerful. And they never wanted it to be known by the masses, otherwise their power would be lost, their vested interests would be destroyed.Buddha was the first man who dynamited their whole establishment. He used the language of the people. The language of the people in Buddha’s time was Pali. In Pali, dhyana is pronounced as jhana. Because Buddha used the word jhana it changed its color. When it reached China through Bodhidharma it became ch’an because in Chinese jhana cannot be written, in Chinese there is no alphabet. Chinese is a pictorial language, so the closest picture that they had which could express the word jhana was ch’an or ch’ana.And from China it reached Japan. They use the same pictorial language, but their pronunciations are different. In Japan it became Zen, in a way it came back to the original place. It came closer to Buddha’s jhana. It became Zen.Now the West has not yet understood what it is all about, but Zen has an appeal for the simple reason that it is very absurd, illogical, paradoxical. The West has become fed up with logical philosophies: with Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein; it has become fed up. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, two thousand years of logical thinking has not led anywhere except to a point where the West feels that life is absolutely meaningless and accidental. Now this is the right situation for any illogical philosophy to become fashionable.Western painting has become illogical. You can see it in Picasso, Dali, Cezanne and other painters; painting has become absolutely illogical, absurd. Poetry has become illogical – Ezra Pound and others. You can read it, but you will not find any meaning in it. Novels, plays, all other art forms have taken a turn; they have become very illogical. This illogicalness is the outcome of two thousand years of logical effort, which has completely failed, it has not provided any significance and meaning to man’s life.In the same flood of illogicalness, Zen also has become influential, but the reasons for its influence are totally different. It is not that the West has experienced meditation, it is simply a reaction against logic that Zen has become so appealing. The absurd anecdotes, the absurd lives of the Zen masters, seems appealing because it has no logical construction.A great Zen master, Ryokan, is known in Japan as the Great Fool – a great master of the same caliber as Buddha is known as the Great Fool for the simple reason that his whole life was absurd, unpredictable. If you ask him a question he may hit you on the head. If you don’t ask him a question he may hit you on the head. He used to say, “Ask me a question and I will beat you, don’t ask me a question and I will beat you!” He used to throw his disciples…Once he cut one of his disciples’ fingers with a knife, and when the finger was cut and the disciple was in deep agony, he said, “This is it!” In that moment the disciple became enlightened because he was meditating for twenty years. Don’t forget those twenty years. In the West those twenty years are completely forgotten. Those twenty years have brought this climax. At the right moment the master gave the last push. He wanted to bring him to the present, and cutting the finger is so painful that you cannot think of the past, you cannot think of the future, you cannot fantasize anymore. For a moment everything stops. It is like an electric shock, you are suddenly herenow. But those twenty years of meditation had created a different quality; the shock became a satori. Just by cutting somebody’s finger, you cannot make him enlightened, but Ryokan did the miracle.Ryokan lived in such a way that anybody would call him a fool, an idiot, and he enjoyed the word idiot very much; he himself used to call himself an idiot. He would forget his robe, will reach the marketplace naked – with his shoes on! He would forget about everything.He had written a list of things that he had to take when he went out, and he has pasted the list on the door so that he could look at the list, what things he had to carry: his staff, his robes, his shoes, his cap. And even this was written: “Where you have to put the cap – on the head.” Otherwise he would forget, he may put the shoes on the head! But still the same thing continued because he would forget to read the list.This Ryokan helped many people to become enlightened. His illogical ways, his absurd methods, proved of tremendous help. Now in the West people will love Ryokan, they will feel at ease with him. They are fed up with Aristotle. Aristotle has become Aristotlitis – a great disease! They don’t want to do anything with Aristotle, they want something more alive, something more paradoxical because life is paradox, it is not logic.Remember, life is not logical and cannot be understood by just logic. Life is far more than logic, far bigger than logic. It is not arithmetic. So there are planes to understand.The West is not yet capable of being herenow, he has only heard the word. And there are different motives why the western youth, particularly the new generation, has become infatuated with Zen-like things. The Third World War is gathering around. Life seems to be very fragile, it had never been so before. Wars have always been there – in three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars – so war is not a new thing, but something new has happened. The Third World War will be the last war, it will be a total war. It will destroy not only humanity, but all life on the earth. The clouds are becoming darker and coming closer every day. It is creating a great fear. The Western new generation is freaking out.Now because the world can end, the whole future, Zen seems to be appealing: “Live here and live now because there is no future. Tomorrow may never arrive.” This is a totally different reason why the West has become interested in right now.This has to be remembered, the motive is different. The Eastern mystics, from Buddha to Ryokan, were talking about the beauty of now-here for totally different reasons. Not that there is no future – there is infinite future, eternity, but the future never comes. All that comes is now, now is the only reality. When the future comes, it also comes in the form of now. When tomorrow comes it will come as today, so you have to learn the art of being here, living today because tomorrow will come, but it will also be another today. And if you know how to live this day, you will know how to live that day which will be coming. This is a totally different vision.These are the four planes, which have to be understood. First is the body. On the bodily plane – the man who lives identified with the body – if he says, “This is it,” he will only mean food and sex and nothing else. His “This is it” will contain only two things, food and sex, which are not very different either. Food is nourishment for you. You cannot survive without food. And sex is nourishment for the coming generations. They cannot survive without sex. Your parents’ sex has created you, your sex will create your children. The society needs sex as food; it is food, it is survival for the society, just as food is your survival.Food and sex are deeply connected. Hence it always happens if somebody starts controlling sex, becomes a celibate, he will start eating more; he will substitute his sexuality with food. It almost always happens when women get married they start becoming fatter, for the simple reason that before marriage they were interested in sex, after marriage they become fed up with it. They start feeling as if the man is exploiting their bodies. Reluctantly they go into it, but they are fed up. Then their interest changes toward food.The people who starve themselves for any reason – maybe naturopathy, dieting, or some religious reason, fasting – the people who will starve themselves will become full of sexual fantasies. Hence Jain monks are more full of sexual fantasies than anybody else because of the fasting. It is a natural change, their energy starts moving from one pole to another.Anybody who knows only his body, his “This is it” simply means food and sex. That’s what is happening in institutes like Esalen – food and sex. That’s what is happening all over America. Sambuddha comes from America.The second plane is the mind. With food and sex you can have pleasure and pain. On the body level, if your body is satisfied, you will have a pleasant feeling; if it is not satisfied you will feel pain. The second phenomenon above the body is the mind. The mind goes a little higher than pleasure, it starts experiencing happiness and unhappiness. With the body there is only duality, food and sex, only two dimensions; with the mind there are many dimensions. The mind opens up a greater world: music, poetry, painting, dance, etcetera, etcetera. It opens up many dimensions, you can enjoy more.With the first you are just like an animal, your “This is it” will be nothing but animalistic. With the second, if you know that you are more than the body, higher than the body, you will have many dimensions, more richness. You become human, you rise above animals. When you say, “This is it,” now it will be music, poetry, painting, dance; it will have a totally different meaning.On the third plane is the soul, the self. With the body the duality; with the mind, manyness, multitude; with soul only oneness, and that is meditation. You will know the real meaning of “This is it” only when you arrive at the third point.And with the fourth… In the East we have called it the fourth, simply the fourth, turiya; we have not given it any name because no name is possible, it is inexpressible. With the fourth, turiya, there is neither two nor many nor one. You can call it either wholeness or nothingness. Buddha used the word nothingness, the Isa Upanishad uses the word wholeness, they mean the same thing. The zero symbolizes both, nothing and the whole. This is the state of bliss, ecstasy.On the body level, pleasure is opposed by pain; on the mind level, happiness is opposed by unhappiness; on the soul level, joy is opposed by misery. But on the fourth, bliss is not opposed by anything, bliss has no polar opposite to it.Where you are on these four planes will make the difference. When I say, “This is it,” I am talking from the fourth plane. And when in America, in the institutes like Esalen, people are talking about “This is it,” they are talking about the first plane, the body.You ask me, “In the West, much is made of the experience ‘This is it,’ that nothing can be different than it is, right now!” Yes, nothing can be different than it is, but you can be different. The world is the same – to the buddha, to the enlightened, to the unenlightened – but you are different and that makes the difference. That’s the difference that makes the difference. The world is the same: Buddha moves here, you move here, gods live here, dogs live here; it is the same world. But because their awareness is different, their depth and height is different, their “This is it” will be different too, their “now” will also be different.So when I am talking about now, my now contains both this and that. When in the West people are talking about now, their now only contains this.Remember what the Isa Upanishad says: This is whole. That is whole. The whole comes from the whole, still the whole remains behind.This is the fourth state, turiya, the ultimate state beyond which nothing happens. Unless you have reached it you are living at the copper mine. You have to move to the silver mine, then to the gold mine, and then to the diamond mine, and then to the beyond.The third question:Osho,What would be the best thing to do if you were mad?Change your mind!The fourth question:Osho,I have taken a vow to remain a celibate my whole life, but why do I still suffer from sexual thoughts, fantasies and dreams?It is natural. It is because of your vow. Nobody can change one’s life by force. The vow is simply a violent act against yourself. It will only repress your sex, and the repressed will take revenge; it will come on again and again and again. You will push it from one door, it will enter from another door. You cannot get rid of it so easily, so cheaply.Just the other day, Morarji Desai revealed that when he was the prime minister he had visited a nightclub in Canada, just to find out what was going on there. Now, why should he be interested in a nightclub? And whatsoever is going on there, why is he interested in it? At the age of eighty-two! And he had kept it a secret up to now, he never revealed it before.A repressed sexuality will haunt you to the very end of your life. Even when you will be dying you will be full of sexual fantasies.It is still time – beware! Life is never changed by vows, life is changed by awareness. Never take a vow. A vow simply means that you are forcing something upon yourself. Try to understand. When there is understanding there is no need to take a vow, your understanding is enough. You see something is wrong and it drops.Seeing is enough, understanding is enough, no other discipline is ever needed. Whenever you need some other discipline it means your understanding is lacking, something is missing in your understanding. You are trying to compensate your understanding by taking a vow, but the very taking of the vow shows that you are afraid of your sexuality. Then it will come, then it is bound to come.And now you are asking me, “…why do I still suffer from sexual thoughts, fantasies and dreams?” You must be hoping that by taking a vow all this will stop. It is your vow that is causing it. If you have lived a natural life, if you have gone through the world and all its experiences of good and bad, pleasure and pain, you would have learned something; you would have come out of the world with understanding.But for centuries the so-called saints have depended on violence. They talk about nonviolence, but they go on doing violence to themselves.“I am sick and tired of being left alone every weekend,” growled the golf widow at breakfast one Saturday. “If you think you are going out to play today…”“Nonsense, dear,” the husband interrupted, reaching for the toast. “Golf is the furthest thing from my mind. Please pass me the putter.”If you just force things they will erupt, they will come back.A seventy year-old man went to see the doctor.“I have been in practice for twenty-five years,” the doctor told him, “and I have never heard of such a complaint. What do you mean, your virility is too high?”The septuagenarian sighed. Pointing to his head, he said, “It is all in my mind.”“The virility has gone too high – it’s all in my mind.”Now, you have taken a vow. Your sexuality is repressed at its natural center, it has reached your head, and that is far more dangerous because it will poison your head. Now it will come in dreams, in thoughts, in fantasies.Just go for a fast one day and you will see what I mean – you will think of food the whole day. Ordinarily you don’t think about food at all, food is not a problem. When you feel hungry you eat, and then all is forgotten. But go for a fast, and suddenly food becomes your obsession. It is a simple psychological fact.But religious people have been really stupid, they go on denying simple facts, and they can always rationalize. They will say, “It is because of your past lives’ bad karmas that you are still suffering from sexual thoughts.” They will tell you to practice yoga, stand on your head, and all kinds of nonsense.Just last week I was reading about one yogi, Dhirendra Brahmachari, who goes on showing his yoga postures on the television. Last week he was telling his audience, “Do you know how I remain so healthy? I am pulling my anus upward right now, but you cannot see it because I am wearing clothes.” And then he said that his disciple, a girl who sits by his side to show yoga postures, “She is also holding her anus upward, but you cannot see because she is wearing clothes.”The girl must have gone red! It is good that India has not yet gone for color TV – in black and white you cannot see whether the girl is blushing or not. But then you have to do all kinds of nonsense things. Now, pulling your anus upward will simply force your sexual energy to go into your head, that’s what its purpose is. It is trying to bring the sexuality toward the head, and you will be in more danger.That’s the purpose of shirshasana, the headstand. Standing on your head, the basic purpose is to force your sexual energy to go toward your head. Because of gravitation, if you stand on your head, naturally your sexual energy starts moving toward the head. But how long can you stand on your head? Sooner or later you will have to stand on your feet.This messing around with centers is one of the problems all the religions have been facing.Gurdjieff, one of the great masters of this age, used to say that man has become so ugly for the simple reason that none of his centers is functioning in a natural way; every center is being interfered with by other centers, they have all become entangled. His whole effort was how to disentangle them, how to bring the energy to each center that belongs to it.And that’s my effort here too, to bring the energy to the right center, where it belongs. When all your centers are functioning naturally you will have a deep silence in you, you will have a subtle harmony in your being, a joy will surround you.You must have lived according to the old, traditional way; your name shows that. Giri is one of the most ancient traditions of Hindu sannyasins, you will have to come out of it. You will have to come out of your orthodoxy, out of your superstitions.An elderly spinster went to see her doctor and complained that her sleep was being disturbed by dreams of a young man who was constantly following her and flirting with her.The doctor prescribed some pills, but a couple of weeks later she was back.“What is the matter now?” he asked gently. “You are sleeping better now, aren’t you?”“No,” she said, “Now I can’t sleep because I miss that young man so much!”Life cannot be avoided easily. The only way to go beyond is to go through. Life is an opportunity to grow, don’t avoid it. If you avoid it you will remain retarded.Now what is happening to you cannot happen to any of my sannyasins, it is impossible because my sannyasins are living naturally, accepting whatsoever God has given. He knows better than you. If he has given you sexuality, then it means that there is something to be learned through it. It is your creative energy – don’t repress it. Refine it, certainly, make it as pure as possible because it is your sexual energy that will create many things in your life.It is a well-known fact that great poets naturally find that they are transcending their sexuality. Great painters, great dancers, great musicians have always found it very easy to go beyond sex – but not the so-called monks and the saints. They have found just the opposite; the more they have tried, the more they were disillusioned, the deeper they got into the mess.This fact has to be meditated upon. A musician creates music, hence his sexual energy is used in a nonsexual way. A dancer creates dance, he need not create children. He becomes a creator of something higher – what is the need to create the lower? Even animals can create children, that is nothing special to man. In fact, animals are far more productive – even mosquitoes can defeat you! That is nothing special to you.Now there are two ways: either repress sex, as has been done by all the so-called religious traditions of the world, or transform it.I am for transformation, hence I teach my sannyasins to be creative. Create music, create poetry, create painting, create pottery, sculpture – create something. Whatsoever you do, do it with great creativeness, bring something new into existence, and your sex will be fulfilled on a higher plane and there will be no repression. Let your sex become more and more love and less and less lust. And then finally let your love also become a little higher – that is prayer. Lust is the lowest form of sex, love higher than sex, and prayer is the ultimate transformation.The meditative person can transform his sexuality without any antagonism, without any conflict. He is in deep friendship with all his energies, sexual or others, he is not in any fight. Why fight with your own energies? Love them, rejoice in them, and help them to transcend the lower forms, the animal forms. Let them move from the body toward the turiya, the fourth.This is a totally different process. That’s why I am so much opposed because I am against all the repressive traditions, all the so-called moral, puritan stupidities. I simply call them stupid. I am not a polite person. If a spade is there, I call it a spade – in fact, a fucking spade! I want to be clear and straightforward. Two plus two is four to me, neither more nor less.A sannyasin went to visit an old friend living in a big town. The only lodging he could find was in a very dilapidated hotel. The receptionist told him he would have to share a double bed and take his breakfast – toast, jam and coffee – upstairs with him that night.He entered the room and was surprised to find a gorgeous blonde lying naked on the bed, fast asleep. He prepared himself for bed, said his prayers and lay down to sleep.Fifteen minutes later, he turned over and looked in the direction of the beautiful girl. “Should I or shouldn’t I? No! I must not!” he said to himself, and turned over and tried to sleep.Half an hour later he turned around again, looked toward the girl and said to himself, “No, I must not! I won’t! It is not proper!” So he turned over again and went back to sleep.But after half an hour he sat up and said out loud, “I just can’t resist any more. I don’t care whether I am breaking any rules or not.” So he got up, walked over to the foot of the bed, then poured his coffee, buttered his toast, and ate his breakfast!This is possible only for a sannyasin. For you it will be very difficult, impossible!Once a Zen master was asked, “What sort of sex life do monks get?”The Zen master said, “Nun!”Don’t repress, try to understand your sexual energy and you will be surprised, immensely surprised, that it is not your enemy, it is your friend. It is not a curse, it is a blessing because it is the source of all your creativity. Have you known any impotent person to be creative? Have you known any impotent person to create great music, painting. poetry? And why the so-called monks down the ages have not been creative? They have not contributed anything to the earth, they have not enriched the earth. They have not been a blessing, on the contrary, they have proved a curse. Why? – because being repressive of their sexuality they became uncreative, they cannot create.Creativity is sexual, basically sexual. When the painter gets lost into his painting it is the same orgasmic joy that two lovers have when they meet and merge into each other, for a moment they are no longer separate. The painter gets the same joy, longer, deeper, far more profound, when he is lost with the painting. A dancer comes to the highest point…Hence, my emphasis on dance and music here in my commune. I want everybody to be a dancer, a singer, for the simple reason because that is the most natural, spontaneous way of transforming your sex. When the dancer is completely lost, when there is only dance and no dancer left, he experiences the greatest orgasm, more total than any sexual orgasm can ever be.If you accept your sexuality, if you embrace it with deep love and gratitude toward God – knowing that it is his gift, so that there must be something in it that has to be discovered – it is not to be rejected. Rejecting it will make you uncreative, and the uncreative person remains a miserable life. That’s why your saints look so sad, with such long faces, almost dead and stinking.Look again – look again into your own being, into your own existence, and you are in for a great surprise.A man was asked by his wife to bring home a live chicken for a special meal she was going to prepare. He bought the chicken after work and was on his way home when he realized that he had forgotten his front door key. He knew his wife would not be home for a few more hours, so he decided to pass the time by going to the cinema.He could not carry the chicken inside so he stuffed it down the front of his trousers, then bought a ticket and went in. He sat down toward the front of the cinema, next to two old ladies. He soon became very engrossed in the film and did not notice that the chicken had poked its head through his fly buttons.“Winifred,” whispered one of the old ladies, nudging her friend. “Look at that big thing poking through that guy’s fly!”Winifred grunted, “Ah, Millie, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all!”“I know that,” replied Millie, “but have you ever seen one that eats popcorn?”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You have been speaking on several occasions against socialism, and yet I feel that in this commune the first experiment of an alive socialism is happening. Is this another of your contradictions?Real socialism can only be the fragrance of a commune deep in meditation. It has nothing to do with the social structure or the economy. Real socialism is not a revolution in the society, it is not social, it is a revolution in the individual consciousness.If many people who are going through an inner revolution live together, then there is bound to be a new quality. You can call it socialism, the better word will be communism – out of the commune. Only a commune can have communism, but a commune exists only once in a while. When Buddha was alive a commune grew around him, he called it sangha, another name for commune. The meaning of sangha is where the initiates have dropped their egos and are no longer functioning like islands, but have become one with each other – where a communion is happening. Communication is between the heads, communion is between hearts.Whenever so many hearts open, become flowers, a great fragrance is released. That fragrance surrounds a Buddha, you can call it a buddhafield. The energy is totally different, there is no politics involved in it.Politics belongs to the world of the ego. The game of politics is an ego number, how to be more powerful than the other. It is ambition in its ugliest form. It is sheer cunningness, exploitation. It is an effort to enslave others. It is not possible at all for meditators because for meditation the basic requirement is to drop the ego. You cannot play the games of the ego anymore. There is no question of being higher, more powerful than the others. In fact, there is no question of the other.The moment “I” disappears, instantly the “thou” also disappears. “I” and “thou” exist together, they are like two sides of the same coin. Drop your “I” and you will be surprised that for you there is nobody who is other than you, the reality appears as one organic whole. But it is possible only with a center.When Buddha died his commune existed for at least five hundred years, but slowly it died, slowly it withered away. It remained alive while a few people continued to become enlightened and went on replacing the Buddha. When there was nobody enlightened anymore, when there was not the center, the whole field disappeared. When there is no sun, how can there be rays? It is an individual phenomenon.If Buddha is there, the commune is bound to happen, it cannot be prevented. It is inevitable. The real seekers will start moving toward Buddha from the farthest corners of the world. It is just like when a fragrant flower opens, bees start queuing from faraway places. Suddenly the fragrance becomes a magnetic pull – but only for the bees, not for everybody. The dogs will pass by the flower without ever looking at it. It does not exist for them, they are not sensitive toward it.Buddha exists only for those who have the sensitivity, the perception, the availability, the openness, the search. Many came across Buddha and missed him. Millions of people encountered him, but could not recognize him. To them he was just another learned man, just another saint. And India has always been full of saints. There was nothing special for them in him. They listened to him, they gathered a little bit of knowledge from him and went on their way.But those who had the sensibility, who had the heart that can dance with this fragile energy of a Buddha, this delicate perfume; were lost, completely lost and dissolved, merged. Out of these merged individuals the commune arises, the buddhafield, the sangha.It happened with Jesus, of course on a smaller scale because Jews have never been very interested in the interiority of man. They are extrovert people, their whole religion has remained extrovert. Jesus was recognized only by a very few people, those few people can be counted on the fingers.It happened again and again around these precious diamonds: Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Lin Chi, Baso, Bahauddin, Jalaluddin, Kabir, Nanak – again and again. But the problem is, when the master dies, the commune starts withering away. Maybe for a time being a sequence of masters continues…For example, after Nanak, nine other masters followed. After Adinatha, the first Jain master, twenty-four tirthankaras followed – from Adinatha to Mahavira, a long span of time, almost three thousand years. But it is very rare. It cannot be enforced by the government, by any outside agency, then it will be plastic.You are right, it is one of my contradictions. I am against socialism, which is imposed as an economic, political ideology on people because then it destroys something that is very precious – it destroys the individual. Rather than destroying the ego it destroys the individual, it enhances the ego. The ego is represented by the personality.These two words have to be understood very clearly: the personality is that which is given to you by the society; and the individuality is that which you have brought with you from the beyond, it is a gift of God. The individuality has no ego in it, it is egolessness. The personality is nothing but ego.The society imposes a certain structure, a certain pattern around every individual, the society is very much afraid of authentic individuals. It creates a false personality because the false personality can easily be manipulated, enslaved, dominated. The personality is very obedient. The personality is very dependent on the society because the society has created it.If you go against your personality that the society has created, you will lose all respect, your ego will start collapsing. And that creates great fear in you, so you go on fulfilling the demands of the parents, of the teachers, of the priests, of the politicians, of all kinds of people who surround you and try to exploit you in every possible way. They depend on personality, and they go on enforcing the personality against the individuality. The individuality has to be repressed, completely forgotten, so that you start living in the false and the phony.Socialism destroys individuality more than any other kind of political ideology because socialism means society is the goal, not the individual. The individual has to be sacrificed for the society, not vice versa, the society cannot be sacrificed for the individual. In fact, society is a beautiful word and behind that beautiful word is hiding the ugly state. It is really the state that dominates in socialism, and the state does not want any kind of individuality in people. It effaces all individuality, it creates robots. It wants everybody to be just an efficient machine, nothing more.This kind of socialism I am certainly against, but there is certainly a different kind of socialism that I am absolutely for. But the process is totally different, just diametrically opposite: the individuality has to be saved and the personality has to be dissolved.That is the meaning of surrendering to a master: you surrender the ego, not the individuality; individuality cannot be surrendered. When you surrender on your own, when you are not forced to surrender, when it is not a question of submission – out of your love and joy, out of your understanding you surrender – it is your choice and your decision when you surrender, of course you surrender the false; the true cannot be surrendered. You are the truth. You simply put aside all that has been imposed on you, conditioned upon you. In the presence of a master only the false disappears, and the true comes in its absolute flowering.In a commune of a buddha everyone has individuality, nobody has any personality. Nobody is egoistic, but everybody has his uniqueness, he contributes to the commune in his own unique way. Everybody is respected for whatsoever he is doing, there is immense respect for the individual.You can see it happening here. The well-trained psychoanalyst, who could have earned thousands of dollars per month in the West, may have a PhD or a DLitt and other educational qualifications, is respected in the same way as the toilet cleaner, there is no difference. The toilet cleaner has the same respect, the same individuality, he is contributing in his own way.Many times it is happening here that a PhD decides to drop all that he has learned and he wants to become a cleaner. There are a few PhD’s who are toilet cleaners. This may be the only place in the world where PhD’s have found the right work! There are MD’s who are cleaning the toilets. They have been told, “You are MD’s, why don’t you work in the Medical Center?” They say, “Cleaning is so beautiful, so relaxed! We don’t want to bother with the Medical Center anymore.”There are famous well-known poets, painters, authors, who have published much, and they may be making shoes or just working in the carpentry or doing some manual work in the garden because one thing is absolutely clear: your job makes no difference, your individuality is intact everywhere. Your job does not give you any higher position, it does not create any hierarchy. Everybody is doing in his own way, wholeheartedly.The commune can happen only in the presence of a master; otherwise, your unawareness is such that you will start fighting, quarreling, and your ego games will come in. That happens each time a master dies. If there is a chain of masters then it is okay, otherwise very difficult.For example, Jesus could not create a chain, he was not given enough time. He worked only three years, from the age of thirty to thirty-three. There was not enough time for him, he was crucified at thirty-three, he had no time to work.Buddha worked for forty-two years, he created a great line. He triggered many people, from Mahakashyap to Manjushree, Sariputra, Modgalyayan, Purnakashyapa, and many others became enlightened while he was alive and they carried the torch.If a chain is created then the commune goes on living, but it is a very fragile phenomenon, very unpredictable; it may happen, it may not happen. Even if it happens, then too it cannot be a permanent phenomenon. One cannot conceive that it will go on and on forever, it can stop anywhere. The world is such a desert, and the stream that buddhas create is such a small stream, it can be lost in the desert anywhere.The only true commune exists while the master is alive. I am all for that kind of communism.The communism that exists in Soviet Russia or China is not my cup of tea. It is really exactly the opposite of what I am trying to do here. Communism should arise spontaneously, and differences are many. For example, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin – the communist unholy trinity – these people were talking of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that means the dictatorship of the lowest.In the commune of a buddha, in the first place there is no dictatorship, although for the outsiders it may seem that there is a dictatorship. For the outsider, if he comes here, he will think this is my dictatorship, although I never order anybody. I have never even visited the office once in these six years! I don’t know who is living where, how many people are living in the commune. I have not visited the other houses of the commune. I simply know the way to my room! I cannot find even in my own house, Lao Tzu House, the rooms of other sannyasins who are living with me. Vivek has been telling me, “One day give us a surprise – come to the kitchen!” I have never been there, I really don’t know where it is. So, in fact, I will not be able to find it unless I am guided by somebody. I have some idea where it should be, but it is very vague.Anybody from the outside will think that I am the dictator, that is absolutely wrong. People here are working out of their love, nobody is ordered. And if they ask me and I say something, it is always a suggestion, never an order. They are free to accept it or not accept it. They always accept it – the credit goes to them, it has nothing to do with me. If they don’t accept it, they are perfectly free to do that way.In a real commune, the commune of my vision, the highest becomes the center. In the communism of Karl Marx, the lowest dominates, it is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Naturally, these are two totally different things, polar opposites.When the highest – and by highest I simply mean one who is no more, one who has become one with the whole, one who has no longer a separate existence, one who is no longer pushing the river, one who is flowing with the river, one who is in a deep let-go, one who is just a vehicle, a hollow bamboo on the lips of God. And if God sings, of course the hollow bamboo becomes a flute, but it all depends on God. The song does not belong to the flute, it belongs to the singer.Through the buddha, through the enlightened person, God starts flowing. It is the highest, the most supreme that creates a real commune. The communism that exists in Russia and China is dominated by the lowest. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong belong to the lowest type, the most violent, murderous people that have ever existed on the earth.The name of Joseph Stalin means a man of steel. That was not his real name. Stalin means a man of steel; it is not his real name, it is because of his hardness.A buddha is represented by a lotus flower, not by steel. In the East the lotus flower has been the symbol of all the buddhas – very fragile, very delicate, with a subtle perfume, not aggressive at all.If you surrender to a buddha it is your own decision, it is your freedom, you are not made to surrender. And when many people surrender to a buddha they are really surrendering to their own future, to their own ultimate potential. The buddha simply represents what can happen to them. He is just a reflection of their ultimate flowering.When you surrender to a buddha you are really surrendering your lower reality to your own higher reality, the buddha is just an excuse. Then a real commune comes into existence. It is out of love, out of meditation and prayer. It is not based on violence; it is not rooted in the lower qualities, the animal qualities of man.In that sense you are right, that a real commune is happening here, but it is not the first experiment, remember. The experiment has happened many times before. But it always looks like that. When you fall in love you think, “This kind of love has never happened before, it is something unique.” And in a way it is – for you it is a new experience. You have never been in love with a buddha, so to you it is a new experiment. Otherwise for thousands of years humanity has existed, and many times small oases in the desert have arisen. But the desert is vast and hard.Remember one fundamental law: whenever the lower comes in conflict with the higher, the higher is destroyed, not the lower. If you clash a rock with a lotus flower, don’t hope that the rock will be destroyed by the lotus flower, the lotus flower will be destroyed. The higher is more fragile.That’s why I say the woman is a higher sex than man: she is more fragile, she is more flowerlike. Man is harder, a little bit of rock is still in him. Man is closer to the animal than the woman. Man is more aggressive than the woman, the woman is receptive. And because of this higher quality of the woman she has been destroyed by man. The rock is always going to win against the flower.Such communes have existed again and again. They cannot be totally destroyed because God has a tremendous investment in these communes. They cannot be destroyed, they will go on coming again and again, but the vast world is desertlike. The greater humanity has not yet been transformed, although the possibility of such communes is becoming more and more.Man has evolved, has matured, and particularly today. The time has come when thousands of such communes can erupt, explode all over the world. And that’s what I am intending to do by creating so many sannyasins and then sending them back to their countries so that thousands of communes start functioning.I would like to create a chain of communes all around the world, so this commune does not remain only one oasis in the vast desert, but becomes interlinked with many communes. That type of interlinking has never been done before, that will be new. Communes have always existed, but many communes functioning all around the world was not possible before, it is possible only today. Science has made it possible. The world is now so small, it is almost like a village, a global village. Man has come so close that now this possibility exists.I have got two hundred thousand sannyasins working all around the world, two hundred communes slowly growing. Soon there will be thousands of communes around the world, and this will be the first chain of communes surrounding the whole globe. The possibility of their success is becoming more than it was ever before, for the simple reason that science has come to such a growth that unless religion also reaches the same point, humanity is doomed. Everything has become lopsided. It was never so before, in fact just the opposite was the case.Buddha’s commune was far more advanced than the technology and the science of Buddha’s day. Mahavira’s commune was far more advanced, far ahead of the society, than the inner growth of man; there was a big gap. Now the gap is there, but it is a totally different gap. The society, science, technology, have gone further ahead than man’s inner growth. Now the society and the science and the technology have prepared the ground, we can use this opportunity. We can help man come to the same growth, and that will be a balancing thing. All those communes in the past created an imbalance, they were out of tune. They were far ahead of their time, hence they were doomed to fail.But this time one can hope we may succeed, for the simple reason that we are not going against or too ahead of time. Time is ready and ripe and we are in tune with it. Only we are in tune with it, the whole society is falling behind – the modern technology, the modern science. All your so-called churches, religions, are far behind modern science.What I am doing here is a very balancing phenomenon. Now religion can exist on a far higher level than it has ever existed because science has provided the right background. And moreover, science has created a tremendous fear in the world that science can destroy the whole humanity. Now the only hope is that religion can save it. And when it is a question of survival, millions of people are bound to become interested in meditation because only meditation can save them. Nothing else can save them. If man remains the same and science goes on developing, then the very developed science will become a mountainous burden on man.It is a well-known fact that somewhere in the past, one hundred thousand years back, there were huge animals, far bigger than elephants, ten times bigger than the elephants. What happened to those huge animals? They suddenly disappeared from the earth, only their skeletons have been discovered. What calamity happened? No calamity from the outside, but they became too huge. The burden of their bodies became so much that they could not carry it; they became incapable from inside. Their inner being remained very small and their outer body became too big, it lost balance.The same is happening today with man; his inner soul is too small and his outer technology, his science, has become too huge. It can bring a Third World War, a total war because it is a question of life and death, it has never been such a question before. There is a hope that religion can explode, and millions of authentic seekers are searching for it.We can create a chain around the world of such communes, and the whole world can be transformed into a buddhafield. Only then is there a possibility of a communism arising out of love and arising from the highest sources, from the Everests – not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a trust, a surrender to a buddha. Out of that trust and surrender a totally new kind of communism can be born.In that sense I am for communism – but communists will be very much against me because if my type of communism succeeds, then their type of communism is bound to fail.The second question:Osho,Your talks are very logical, but on the other hand your way of working is so illogical.What is this mystery? Please explain.My talks are logical because when you come to me you come obsessed with logic. I can start communicating with you only through logic. But as you start relaxing with me, feeling that your mind is not in danger, then I start working illogically because life is bigger than logic, far bigger than logic. The working has to be illogical because working means I will be creating a situation for a transformation of your total being, it cannot be logical.My talks are logical only for the simple reason that if I start talking illogically you will escape, you will not be able to connect with me. So I come to the valley of your darkness to hold your hand, and then slowly I persuade you, seduce you to come toward my heights.A clever college student had lost a textbook and put up a notice on the students’ bulletin board. But instead of the customary “Lost” heading he captioned his notice “Sex.”Below it he wrote: “Now that I have your attention…”Who bothers to read the bulletin board? There are so many notices. And who bothers to read the notices with the caption, “Lost”? But if the caption is “Sex,” then it is very difficult – difficult for the students, difficult for the professors, difficult for the vice-chancellor, difficult for the chancellor to miss. He has to read it.I am logical only so that, “Now that I have your attention…”Life is not logical, it is supra-logical, logic is only a small fragment of it. Watch, and you will see what I am saying. Watch yourself – are you logical in your life? Have you fallen in love with a woman logically? Can you give any proof why you have fallen in love with a certain woman and not with somebody else? In fact, you cannot argue even that love is existential, you cannot even prove love’s existence. It is one of the most difficult things to prove, that love has any existence. Science cannot give any support.You can go to the cardiologist full of love and ask him, “Just check my heart, it is throbbing with love! Just look at the diagram on your graph, whether something is there or I am just befooling myself.” And he will say, “There is nothing wrong with your heart, you are perfectly normal.”Your heart can even be dissected and no love will be found there. That’s why science cannot prove love – love is not matter. Science cannot prove your soul, the soul is not matter. The word matter is significant, it comes from meter; it means measurable, that which can be measured. Matter is that which can be measured. But there is something in you which is immeasurable, that is beyond the scope of science, mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry.If you go to the chemist he will find all that is chemical in you, but he will not find the formula for your love. If you go to the biologist he will find everything about your hormones, etcetera, but he will not find anything like love in you. He will say, “It is just a hormonal thing. You are deluded, you are hallucinating.”Diogenes was watching an archer at practice who was so clumsy that Diogenes went and sat down next to the target. “This is the safest place to be,” he explained.A couple of American sailors had been shipwrecked in the mid-Pacific and had been living on a desert island for several years. One day one of them found a bottle washed ashore – a king-size Coca-Cola bottle he had never seen before. He examined it, then a sudden hysterical shock overcame him.“Joe!” he cried in terror. “Look at this Coca-Cola bottle – we have shrunk!”This is logical. The Coca-Cola bottle has become so big, the only logical conclusion is: “We have shrunk!”Diogenes went into a theater on one occasion, just as the audience was crowding out. Upon being asked why, he explained, “I have been opposing people all my life!”A burglar broke into a small factory and noticed a sign on the safe: “Don’t waste dynamite. This safe is open. Just turn the knob.”He did so. At once the place was flooded with light and a bell rang loudly.As he was taken to the police station he said, “My faith in human nature has been shattered!”“Why do you look so sad?” Johnny asks his friend.“Well,” his friend replies, “my wife drove herself over a cliff!”“That’s horrible!” exclaims Johnny.“But that’s not the worst of it,” continues the friend. “It was a brand new Mercedes!”He was despondent. “The woman I love has just turned me down,” he told his friend. “She won’t marry me.”“Don’t be so disheartened,” said his friend, trying to ease his misery. “Don’t you realize a woman’s no often means yes?”“But she didn’t say no,” he answered. “She said phooey!”Life is strange! If the woman says no you can understand yes, but if she says phooey, then what are you going to understand?Mulla Nasruddin was in hospital. A lady doctor knocked on the door. “Come in,” said the Mulla.“Take your clothes off, please,” said the doctor.“All of them?” inquired Nasruddin.“Yes, all of them.”After taking off all his clothes, the lady doctor gave him a thorough examination. When she was finished, Nasruddin said, “I want to ask you one thing.”“Yes?” she said.“Why did you bother knocking?”Just watch all around, and you will find life is not logical – it is the most illogical thing.She was looking for a parking space and found one near a sign saying, “No Parking On This Street.”A policeman was standing nearby, so she called to him, “Can I park here?”“No,” he said.“Why not?”“Can’t you read that sign? It says ‘No Parking’.”“But what about all those cars parked there?”“Listen, lady,” the policeman said, “they didn’t ask me!”Watch life and you will see its illogicalness. It is so apparent that if you really want to change life you have to take account of all its illogicality.I can talk logically because language belongs to logic, but I cannot work logically. Existence does not belong to logic. Language is created by logic, it is very logical. Grammar and language, mathematics, everything that has been invented by man is logical. Mathematics is very logical, but life is not.Mystics have always known it, physicists have come to know it only recently, just within these fifty years. After Albert Einstein’s discovery of the theory of relativity they had to encounter the illogical world, the illogical existence. And then they realized that for three hundred years science has been living only in a very small place lighted by human logic. It is just like a candle lighting a small place, and the whole existence is dark, very dark.If you study Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity you will be very much puzzled, you will not believe that these are the words of a scientist. Albert Einstein’s theory proposes that if a man leaves on an air spaceship with the same speed as light he will never grow old. For example, if you leave today on a spaceship with the same speed as light, that is 186,000 miles per second, and after fifty years you come back, all your friends will be in their graves or maybe very old, and you will be exactly the same, of the same age because time stops at that speed.Now this is very illogical. Why should time stop at such a speed? And Einstein was asked again and again, “Where is the logic?” He said, “What can I do? If existence functions that way, I can only say how it functions.”When the atom was broken, split, and electrons were found, physicists had to go through a new experience. It was very crazy because electrons suddenly disappear from one point and appear at another point, in between the two points they are not.For example, I disappear here and appear in my room – that is very illogical, but that’s what electrons have been doing forever, we were just not aware of it.When this phenomenon was known it was very puzzling. Eddington said that physics is becoming mysticism. Even mystics cannot do such miracles, no mystic has been known to do it. They have walked on water and they have raised the dead, but even Buddha has to walk from one village to another – not just appearing in one village, disappearing, appearing in another. Then in forty years time he would have done at least the work of four thousand years!But when physicists were asked, “How do you explain it?” They said, “We cannot explain it. This is how it is.” They were asked, “It does not fit with logic.” So they said, “We have to change logic!” Logic will have to fit with it, existence has no obligation to fit with logic. Why should it fit with your logic? Logic is man’s invention; existence is not. Man himself is part of existence, and then man invents logic, just a part of man. The whole of existence is vast, immense, you cannot hope that it should fit with your logic.Hence many things have changed. Although in the schools and colleges and universities we still go on reading Newton, Edison, Eddington, modern science has gone far away from the ordinary logic.The ancient Euclidean geometry is replaced by non-Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry is absolutely illogical, Euclidean geometry was logical. Euclidean geometry says, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” Non-Euclidean geometry says, “There can be no straight line ever. Straight lines don’t exist at all, they cannot.” And you will be puzzled – why? If you ask them why, they say, “Because the earth is round, whatsoever you draw is just a part of a big circle. It is a small piece so it looks straight, but nothing is straight.”For example, this floor you are sitting on is just straight, but it cannot be, it only appears. You go on expanding this Buddha Hall and then you will come to know that it becomes round because it will go around the earth. So even this small Buddha Hall is part of that big earth, and the earth is round.No straight line exists, can exist because in existence everything is spherical. All stars are spheres. All planets are spheres. You cannot find a place where you can draw a straight line. Wherever you draw, it will be just an arc, of course so small that you cannot see; for you it seems straight, but it is not straight.Ordinarily we are trained for mathematics with ten digits, from one to ten. The reason why there are ten digits has no mathematical reasoning behind it – the only reason is that man has ten fingers because the primitive man started counting on his fingers, hence the ten digits. What kind of logic is this? And mathematicians have tried…One of the greatest mathematicians, Leibniz, tried with only three digits – one, two, three, that’s all. After three comes ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty. So in Euclidean geometry the world is a totally different world, in non-Euclidean geometry it is totally different. If you understand Leibniz, then two plus two is not four, it is twenty because four does not exist at all.Albert Einstein tried with two digits, one and two. He said, “Even three is unessential. Science should go only with the essential, one and two.” And then comes ten, and that way, Einstein says, everything can be worked out. Yes, less than two won’t do, at least two digits will be needed. So that is the most essential, all nonessential is dropped.Even science is no longer logical, cannot be. It has come to a point where logic has fallen far behind.Mystics have never been logical. I am not a logical person, but just to persuade you, just to attract your attention, I start with logic. But I always end in some illogical thing!The last question:Osho,I am an ex-Catholic monk. I am leaving for my country tomorrow. Will you tell me a few jokes for my other Catholic friends?The first:A Catholic, a communist and a black Southern Baptist arrived at the Pearly Gates on the same day. Saint Peter came out and the Catholic threw himself face down in front of him and cried, “Oh, Saint Peter, great have been my sins. I don’t deserve to enter Paradise!”“Have faith,” said Saint Peter, “for our Lord is both great and forgiving. Spell God!”The Catholic was taken aback, but waveringly said, “G.O.D.” Trumpets sounded, an angelic choir began to sing, and the pearly gates swung open. The Catholic got up amazed and walked into heaven.The communist, watching all this, quickly fell to his knees and started to cry, “Oh, Saint Peter, I have been a communist all my life. I have not been in a church in all these years – surely I don’t deserve to get into heaven!”Saint Peter smiled and said, “Brother, all men are the same in the eyes of God. He is great and forgiving. Just spell God!”The communist took a deep breath and quickly said, “G.O.D.” No sooner had he finished than once again the trumpets sounded and the great choir of angels sang out. The pearly gates opened and the communist happily entered heaven.The black Southern Baptist immediately threw himself on the ground, started crying and beating his chest: “Oh, Saint Peter, it is no good! I’ve been a wicked man, drinkin’ and runnin’ with loose women. But I’ve been to church every Sunday and I reads the good book!”Saint Peter looked at the black man and smiled, “All right, brother, God is great and forgiving. To enter through these gates all you have to do is spell Engelbert Humperdinck!”Second:A monk from a Catholic monastery wrote to his mother, “On cold mornings I often miss the old pot under the bed.”She wrote back, “On cold mornings you often missed it at home too!”Third, and the last:Sister Mary was taking tea to Mother Superior. When she reached Mother Superior’s room she bumped the tray and spilt the tea.“Oh, shit!” Sister Mary said. “I spilt the tea. Oh damn, I said shit. Oh Christ, I said damn. Oh fuck, I said Christ!”Enough for today.

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I Am That 01-16Category: THE UPANISHADS

I Am That 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I am feeling helpless. I don't know what I can do any more. It is as if everything I do won't change this, it only makes things worse. But also doing nothing does not make things better. You say that emptiness is bliss. For me it seems to be dull and boring; it is like being dead. When there is nothing I cannot see any beauty in it. I am fed up with it, I want to get out of it. Please answer me, but please don't answer me like this: that taking sannyas would change everything and make everything beautiful. Thank you.Alexander, the first thing is to understand that life remains the same whatsoever you do. It is already perfect, it cannot be improved upon. The very idea of improving it is egoistic, it is the cause of our misery. It is the way it is, there is no need to improve it. Enjoy it! Don’t waste your time in improving it. If you try to improve it you will feel helpless, obviously because you will be failing again and again, falling short. Your desire can never be fulfilled – it isn’t in the very nature of things.Aes dhammo sanantano. Gautam the Buddha has said, “This is the way things are.” Whenever people used to ask him, “How can we improve upon things?” he would always say, “Aes dhammo sanantano.” There is no need to improve, there is no way to improve.In this Isa Upanishad we have come across this truth again and again. Om. That is perfect, that is whole. This is perfect, this is whole. The whole comes from the whole, the perfect comes from the perfect. How can it be imperfect? The whole comes from the whole, yet the whole remains behind. Everything is as it should be.Unless this is understood… Buddha calls it tathata, suchness. The rose is the rose, the marigold is the marigold. The effort to make a marigold a rose is doomed to fail. Then there is helplessness, misery, failure. The ego feels hurt, wounded.This is the first thing: a deep, total acceptance of things as they are. Then life enters a different dimension – the dimension of joy, celebration because then the whole energy is available to dance, sing, to be.Now the whole energy is engaged into improving, into changing, into making things better.You say, “I am feeling helpless.” You are causing this helplessness yourself. You say, “I don’t know what I can do any more.” You have already done enough, that’s why you are feeling helpless. Stop doing! And when I say stop doing it does not mean do nothing. That is the second thing to be understood: when I say stop doing, don’t misunderstand me – I am not saying do nothing. Stop doing simply means stop pushing the river, flow with the river. It is already going toward the ocean. It will take you to your destiny, whatsoever it is – xyz, it is unpredictable. Where the river will enter the ocean nobody knows, when and where, and it is good that nobody knows. It is good because life remains a mystery, a constant surprise. One feels wonder on every step, a great awe surrounds one.But misunderstanding is always possible. Because I say, “Don’t try to improve, doing nothing is the best,” that does not mean that you become inactive. It simply means you don’t make any effort to improve upon things, you relax. You will still be doing things, but now there will be no effort in your doing, there will be no doer in your doing, they will simply be happening.When you feel hungry you will eat, that is not doing. When you are not feeling hungry and you force yourself to eat, that is doing. Forcing is doing. When you feel sleepy you sleep, that is not doing. But when you are not feeling sleepy and you force yourself to go to sleep, that is doing. When you are feeling fast asleep, then trying to wake up is doing. When the sleep is over of its own accord and your eyes open up, that is not doing.Eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, sleep when sleepy. Let go. Don’t try to struggle, don’t make life a conflict. Enjoy it! And then each moment is precious and you will never feel helpless and you will never feel that nothing is getting better because you are not expecting it to get better.It is already the best world that can be, the most perfect existence that ever can be. But your ego wants to improve upon things. You think you know better than existence itself? You are just a small part of it, you are just a small ripple in the infinite ocean. And you want to improve upon the ocean? That is just being foolish. Relax! Dance in the sun while you are. Sing a song. It is beautiful to be and it is also beautiful not to be. When the wave rises – good! For a moment enjoy the sky, the air, the wind, the sun, the rain. And when the wave disappears – good! Go into deep rest.Nothing is ever born and nothing ever dies. Things only move between manifestation and unmanifestation. They become visible, they become invisible. To become invisible is a resting place. Just as after each day you need deep sleep in the night to rejuvenate you, to make you again young and fresh, in the same way after each life you need death. Death is a deeper sleep and nothing else. After each life your body is so tired, you need a new body, a new manifestation. The old wave disappears, but the water in that wave remains in the ocean, it will come again in a new wave. The old is continuously becoming new – allow it. Simply allow life and go with it in deep trust.This is what I call religiousness – this trust. It is not a belief. Belief is always in dogmas, creeds, theories, philosophies, ideologies. This is not belief, this is simply trusting existence. We have come from it, it is our source. We are not outsiders, we are insiders. And we will go back to the source – it is our source. Coming out of it is good, going back into it is good. All is good. To feel it brings rejoicing – all is good. That’s the meaning of trusting in God: that all is good.You are unnecessarily getting into trouble, you are trying something absurd. You are trying to pull yourself by your own shoestrings. You will feel helpless. You cannot do it. You are like a dog chasing its own tail, it is not possible. The faster the dog will jump, the faster the tail will also move away. It will drive the dog crazy.It is said that if you want a philosopher to remain engaged, just give him a piece of paper and on both sides write PTO, so he will look on this side and then turn it over, and then PTO again is there, so he will turn it over – and he will go crazy, but he will remain occupied!You are being too philosophical.You ask me, “You say that emptiness is bliss.” I don’t say – it is so! Aes dhammo sanantano. And what you are saying, you are saying. I am not saying, “Emptiness is bliss.” What can I do? It is! It is my experience, and what you are saying is simply a statement without any experience. You have not experienced emptiness, but now see what a great problem you have made out of something that you have not experienced.You say, “For me it seems to be dull and boring.” As if you have experienced it! Think over the matter again. Have you ever experienced emptiness? And in emptiness how can there be boredom? If there is boredom it is not empty – it is full of boredom. If there is dullness it is not empty; the mind is there feeling dull, feeling bored. Emptiness cannot be boring, it cannot be dull. Emptiness is simply empty of everything. You cannot say anything about it. But you have not experienced it, you have just thought about it.Yes, if you think about emptiness it will look boring, it will look dull, it will look dead. But the people who have experienced it: – Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mahavira, Bodhidharma, Bahauddin, Nanak, Kabir – not a single person has said that it is boring. You are really an exception! If you have experienced it then you are denying all the awakened people, but you have not experienced it at all. I can say it because I know what emptiness is.When I say emptiness is bliss I am not saying that emptiness is full of bliss – don’t misunderstand me. Emptiness is bliss is simply making you aware of their synonymousness. You can call it empty or you can call it bliss, the words are synonymous. Emptiness is bliss because there is nothing which can bore you, which can make you feel dull, which can create anxiety, which can make you afraid, which can create anguish. There is nothing at all. Because there is nothing the whole mind has gone, that state is called bliss. One can call it emptiness, one can call it bliss; these are just two expressions for the same phenomenon.Buddha insists on calling it emptiness, shunyata, and the Upanishads emphasize calling it bliss – and they are talking about the same phenomenon. Buddha’s insistence is far better because it is more applicable to you. You are bound to misunderstand the Upanishad because the Upanishad’s way of telling is positive. It says it is bliss, and in you certainly it creates greed, you start searching for bliss. You are miserable and you want bliss, you desire bliss; you start making every effort to improve things so that you can be blissful. You go astray because of the word bliss and its positivity.Buddha became aware of this phenomenon. Twenty-five centuries have passed between Buddha and the Isa Upanishad. The Isa Upanishad is perfectly right, it is bliss, but to say it to you is not right because you are bound to misunderstand it. Hence Buddha changed the whole expression, he said it is emptiness.Calling it emptiness is of tremendous importance because nobody wants emptiness – Alexander does not want emptiness. It does not create greed in you. Who will be greedy for emptiness? The very negativity of it destroys greed, desire, ambition and ego.Again and again Buddha was asked, “What happens when one becomes empty?” And he would remain silent. He would say, “Don’t ask me. Become empty and see what happens.” He would never say, “Bliss happens,” for the simple reason that you will immediately jump upon the idea of bliss. And to you bliss will mean only pleasure, at the most happiness – something of the mind, something of the body – but it will not be exactly what bliss is.It is neither of the body nor of the mind. It is a transcendence – a transcendence of all that you know, of all that you have ever experienced, of all that you are. It is better to call it emptiness, it cuts you from the very roots.But twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha again, and people are so stupid that they will misunderstand everything. They misunderstood the Isa Upanishad, which talks about bliss. Buddha tried to move to the other extreme, started calling the ultimate state emptiness, shunyata, just zero, pure zero and nothing. It worked for a time being, while he was alive. It always works when the master is alive – it works. Any method becomes magical when the master is alive, any word becomes significant when the master is alive. It is the charisma, it is the presence of the master that makes things work, it is his magic.Once Buddha was gone, the same people who have misused the word bliss started misusing the word emptiness. People like Alexander, they started thinking emptiness is boring, emptiness is dull. Emptiness is nothing but death. What is the point of attaining emptiness? Without knowing anything about emptiness, they started condemning it.Buddhism was uprooted from India for the simple reason that Buddha used totally negative terms, and India has become accustomed of positive, affirmative terminology. Buddha seemed very strange, not belonging to the tradition, antagonistic to tradition. He was trying to help.Now I am trying to do both the things together. I am saying bliss is emptiness – another effort. The Upanishads said it is bliss, Buddha said it is nothingness. You have escaped from both, I am trying to catch hold of you from both the sides. I say emptiness is bliss, bliss is emptiness.You are saying things that you have not experienced at all. You say, “When there is nothing I cannot see any beauty in it.” When there is nothing, do you think you will be there? When there is nothing you will not be there! There will be something which cannot be called “I,” which cannot be identified with the ego. So who will be there to see beauty? There will not be beauty and there will not be the seer, there will be just silence: no I, no thou, no subject, no object, no duality; a pure oneness, an utter silence.But you got caught in your own words.You say, “I am fed up with it…” As if you are living in it – you are fed up with it. You have not even tasted a single drop of nothingness, emptiness, and you are fed up with it. How tricky is the mind. How cunning is the mind! And how politically it finds ways to avoid certain things. How it rationalizes!Just one month ago a friend, Ajai Krishna Lakhanpal, has written a letter and asked me: “I am ready to take sannyas today. If you give me sannyas today I am willing, I am ready to surrender. But my own choice would be,” he said, “that I would like to take sannyas after one month, on 25th October because that is my birthday.”Seeing his but…because I don’t like buts! Otherwise, when somebody asks for sannyas I insist now. What can be said about tomorrow? You cannot be sure of tomorrow. Tomorrow may come, may not come. Even if it comes your mind is constantly changing. How can you be sure of tomorrow? Tomorrow your mind may give you some other ideas.Seeing his but… It was the first time I allowed him, the first person I have allowed – just for a change, to see what happens. I said, “Okay, 25th October, settled. You take sannyas 25th October.” Yesterday was 25th October. I told Sheela to call Ajai Krishna and ask him, “What happened? The 25th has come!” Now he has found rationalizations. I was expecting – that but was enough to show me. He has found rationalizations.He wrote a letter again and now he says: “I know that I had promised you to take sannyas on 25th…” And that time he had written, “It is because of my birthday. And secondly, I would like to ask my mother’s permission. I know she will say yes, so there is no problem about that.” And now he says, “My mother has said yes, but she says she will not be very happy about it. She says, ‘Yes, if you want to take sannyas you can, but I will not be very happy about it.’ And I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” Moreover, one of his gurus, Kammu Baba, had told him a few years ago – he is dead, he is no longer alive – that never hurt the feelings of your parents. “…so I cannot hurt her feelings.”Mind goes on finding rationalizations. It never sees things directly, it tries to evade. Now if Kammu Baba is right then Buddha was wrong. He hurt the feelings of his parents, his wife, his child very much. Then Mahavira was wrong, then Jesus was wrong, then Nanak was wrong. Then except Kammu Baba – and I don’t know whether Kammu Baba has said it to Ajai Krishna or he has invented it, or he has thought that he had said it. Then the whole spiritual tradition will be wrong.Jesus said to his disciples, “Unless you hate your parents you cannot follow me.” And that is nothing…Once it happened that a great king, Prasenjita, came to see Gautam Buddha. When he was sitting in front of Buddha, a man came, touched Buddha’s feet – a very old man, one of his disciples, a sannyasin – and he said, “I am going now on a long journey to spread your message. Bless me.”Buddha looked at Prasenjita and said, “This man is the answer to your question.”Prasenjita was asking, “I would like to become a sannyasin, but my old mother may feel hurt – she is too old.”Buddha said, “Look at this man. He has killed both his father and mother!”Prasenjita was very disturbed: Killed? Father and mother? And Buddha is appreciating the man! When the man left, Prasenjita said, “I don’t understand! You praised that man and you said he has killed his father and mother!”Buddha said, “Yes, psychologically. Not really, not physically, but deep inside he has dropped the clinging with the father and the mother?”Ajai Krishna is forty-five years old and still clinging to the apron of the mother! Now when he is going to become mature? It is time. One should kill – not the mother on the outside, but the clinging in your inner world.That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Unless you hate your father and mother…” He does not mean to hate your father and mother; he means deep down you have to uproot the whole conditioning, the whole clinging, the whole attachment. Only then can you become mature, centered, grounded. Only then can you be an individual in your own right. But mind goes on finding subtle strategies to avoid reality.Now, Alexander, you are saying, “I am fed up with nothingness, emptiness. I want to get out of it.” And you must have believed what you are writing. You have no idea of nothingness and you are fed up with it, and you want to get out of it. The real thing is how to get into it!You ask me, “Please answer me, but please don’t answer me like this, that taking sannyas would change everything and make everything beautiful.” No, taking sannyas will not change anything, but it will certainly make everything beautiful! The world remains the same, just the vision, the attitude, the approach changes.And, Alexander, don’t be a coward. You have such a great name Alexander – don’t be a coward!But Alexander himself was a coward in this sense. He was told by Diogenes, one of the greatest mystics of his time to: “Stop this foolish effort to conquer the world. Look at me, without conquering the world I have conquered!”Alexander looked at Diogenes and felt the beauty of the man, the grace of the man. He was lying naked on the bank of a small river, taking a morning sunbath. The place was absolutely silent and Diogenes looked so beautiful that Alexander felt jealous for the first time in his life. Alexander had everything. He had conquered almost the whole world, just India was left out, so he was coming toward India and was certain that he would conquer India too. But he felt jealous of Diogenes, a naked fakir with nothing, not even a begging bowl. Buddha at least used to carry a begging bowl, but Diogenes had thrown the begging bowl also because one day he saw a dog drinking water from the river, and he immediately threw the begging bowl in the river, saying to the dog, “Master, you have taught me a great lesson! If you can manage without a begging bowl, why can’t I?”He had nothing, and yet he had something that was missing in Alexander. Alexander immediately said, “If next time God will ask me to come back to the world, I would like to be Diogenes rather than Alexander.” But, mind you, he said next time – postponing for the next life.Alexander laughed because he has said something great. He thought Diogenes would appreciate – but Diogenes said, “Don’t be a fool! Don’t try to deceive me. What do you mean, ‘next time’? If you are so interested in being Diogenes, why not now? Now or never! And who is preventing you? God is not preventing you. This bank is big enough for both of us. Throw your clothes in the river, lie down, take a sunbath. You need not even bother about food because I go to beg, and I will bring enough for you too. Simply rest here, forget all about the world. Be Diogenes right now!”Alexander said, “That is difficult. Right now I cannot do it, but I will come one day. First I have to finish my conquest – I have to conquer the whole world!”Diogenes said, “Two things I have to say. One: remember, if you have conquered the whole world, then what will you do?” And Alexander was only thirty-two at that time. “What will you do when you have conquered the whole world? Do you know? There is no other world. You will be at a loss. At least right now you are occupied, busy without business, but if you conquer the whole world then the real problem will arise, what to do next? – because there is no other world.”And it is said, Alexander felt sad even listening to the idea that there is no other world. He was shocked. He immediately felt a great sadness descend on him and he said, “Don’t say such sad things to me. First let me conquer this and then I will see. And I will come to see you when I have conquered the whole world.”Diogenes said, “Nobody comes back – you will not be able to come back. Don’t be so certain about the future. One can only be certain about this moment.”Actually it happened that way, Alexander died on the way, he never reached back home. He was only thirty-three when he died, and he really died for the same reason that Diogenes has pointed out to him. The moment he conquered India he became very depressed, so much so that he became an alcoholic, he started drinking too much. What to do now? He died of too much drinking, he died as an alcoholic. He killed himself – it was suicide. Otherwise he was perfectly healthy, but he was continuously drinking day and night.Your name is Alexander – be a little aware! Don’t do the same foolishness again. You have come the next time, and still you don’t want to become a sannyasin! And I am nobody else but Diogenes asking you to take the jump, become a sannyasin. Nothing will change, but everything will become beautiful. Thank you!The second question:Osho,Pope John Paul has stated recently that if a man looked lustfully even at the woman who is his wife he could likewise commit adultery in his heart. What do you say about it?What can be said about it? A Polack is a Polack is a Polack! Pope or no pope, a Polack remains a Polack. Now this is the ultimate in stupidity, one cannot surpass it – even to look at your own wife with desire is adultery! Then why in the first place should one get married? Just to commit adultery?In a way he has made a very difficult thing simple. One of Milan’s newspapers seems to be far wiser. The newspaper writes: “Life is hard for the adulterer – an endless round of cover-ups, tricks, juggling of the daily calendar and the need to buy useless and expensive presents for two women at once. Now the Pope has removed all these vows because you can have infidelity in your own house!” This seems to be far more intelligent. It is really beautiful and juicy to have adultery with your own wife. A great idea!But these repressed people are bound to do such things.I have come to know that for the whole year, the whole past year, in his weekly sermon he has been talking about sex – for the whole year condemning, condemning. Now why should he be so concerned about sex, for one year continuously condemning? There must be something inside him, some wound that has not healed.At the marriage counselor’s, the husband accused his wife of being frigid.“That’s not true!” she said. “I don’t disapprove of sexual relations.” Then turning from her husband to the counselor she continued, “But this sex fiend expects it every month!”The woman must have been a Catholic. The Catholics have done one of the greatest harms to humanity. Christianity has been one of the most repressive religions and what has happened out of this repressiveness is just the opposite of it. It was bound to happen, it was inevitable. The pendulum has moved to the other extreme in the West, and the responsibility wholly and solely rests on the shoulders of the church. People have become indulgent, people have become really too obsessed with sex.For two thousand years Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, has been repressing, condemning. But now a point has come when the volcano has erupted. What you see now in the West is sheer indulgence, ugly.Sex is beautiful, but it can become ugly in two ways: either you become repressive and it becomes ugly, or you become indulgent and it becomes ugly. Sex is beautiful if it is accepted naturally, as part of life. There is no need to condemn it, there is no need to praise it either. When is humanity going to accept things easily, in a relaxed way?But these people have not learned any lesson, and they go on interpreting scriptures according to their own inner turmoil.What the Polack Pope was doing was simply making a commentary on one of the statements of Jesus. The statement is totally different, but just a jugglery of words, just a little change, and the whole thing has gone wrong. This is the original statement of Jesus. Jesus says: “You have heard it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”Now the woman is one thing and the wife totally another. The Polack has read wife instead of woman – your own wife! And of course he can play with words. He can say, “Of course your wife is also a woman.” True, but what is the meaning of her being your wife? Why does one get married? – to live a natural, untroubled sexual life. But to change the word woman into wife is really ugly; it is against Jesus, it is not true to his message. But you cannot expect anything better from the Polacks.How do you recognize a Polack in a busy shoe store?He is the one who tries to put on the shoe boxes.Now, trying to change woman into wife is exactly like that – trying to put on the shoe boxes instead of the shoes!Two Polacks are driving a lorry that is three meters high. They drive past a road-sign indicating a tunnel up ahead two meters high. One Polack turns to the other and says: “Just ignore the sign, Sol. I know that at this time of the day the police are not going to be there!”Wykowsky, the window washer, was called in by a homeowner to give an estimate. “How much to clean the windows on the ground floor?”Wykowsky pulled out a pad, scribbled a minute and replied, “Two dollars a window.”“On the second floor?” asked the homeowner.Again Wykowsky wrote on the pad and answered, “One dollar fifty cents a window.”“And the basement?”“Five dollars a window,’ said Wykowsky.“Wait a minute!” said the homeowner. “How come two dollars for the windows on the first floor, a buck and a half for the second floor, and you want five dollars for each of the basement windows?”“Mister,” said the Polack, “don’t you realize the size of the hole I have to dig to put the ladder in?”At a Polish wedding:The ceremony had taken place in the ballroom of the town hotel. The newly married husband came down from the bridal suite and said to a buddy, “My best friend be upstairs in bed with my wife!”“What are you going to do about it?” asked his pal.“Nothing,” replied the Polack. “He is so drunk he thinks he be me.”The Polack was on his honeymoon, but he was too inexperienced to know the difference between love and nymphomania because he had just escaped from a Catholic monastery.The first morning after the wedding he rose, walked over to the window of the hotel, and raised the shade. The day was dark and gloomy and the rain was falling in torrents. Disgusted, he lowered the shade and climbed back in bed.The next morning the young man rose again and lifted the shade. It was still raining. Once more he lowered it and crawled back into bed.The third morning he staggered out of bed, tottered over to raise the shade – and went up with it.All that I can say is that one cannot expect anything better from the Pope – he is a pure Polack! What he has said is absolutely absurd – mental adultery with one’s own wife? But in a way this is one of the oldest ideas in the Catholic Church. Sexual pleasure is suspect. In fact, all pleasure is suspect. These so-called religious people are afraid of pleasure, they are against all pleasure. They want your life to become so utterly depressed, gloomy, sad, that you are bound to start looking for some other life – life beyond death. Their whole effort is to destroy your life herenow so totally that the only shelter left for you is in the life after death. Then you become available to the priests to be exploited.If you are happy, if you are enjoying life, if you are living each moment with pleasure, a dance in the heart and a song on the lips, if your life is a sheer festivity, you will not bother much about the churches and the temples. If your life is a ceremony, who cares about the life beyond? This very moment, if you are living totally, all concern for the future disappears.These churches, these priests, all depend on your desire for a future life. Their whole strategy is to destroy your pleasure here so that you become interested in pleasure of heavenly life. And do you see? – what they deny here they supply there.Here they say that to love a woman is sin. And in heaven? – you will be provided with beautiful women. In some religions even beautiful boys will be made available to you, so homosexuals need not be worried! Here they condemn wine and there in paradise, streams of wine are flowing. Here they insist on prohibition and there all that is denied and prohibited will be made available in a thousandfold way.Hindus say that all the pleasures are wrong, but in heaven you will be sitting under wish-fulfilling trees – kalpavriksha – and whatsoever you wish will be immediately fulfilled, instantly, not even a single moment’s distance between the desire and its fulfillment. Naturally, they have to destroy all possibilities here, so you become focused on the future. And then they can exploit you because they have the keys of the future.If you are a Catholic only then you can be saved, or if you are a Mohammedan only then you can be saved, or if you are a Hindu only then you can be saved. The strategy is the same. The trick is the same. All the priests have been using the same trade secret: destroy pleasure in people’s lives, make them as miserable as possible – once they are miserable they are bound to fall unto your feet and ask for your advice and guidance.There is nothing wrong in pleasure. Even in physical pleasure there is nothing wrong, it is a God’s gift. If God was against the body, he would not give you the body in the first place; if he was against sex, he would not give you sexual energy, sexual desire and longing. If all these things are given to you by nature, they are natural. Yes, one thing is certain, don’t remain clinging to the physical pleasure only because there are higher possibilities, greater potential in you.So I say physical pleasure is beautiful in its own place, but that is not the end of life. You can have psychological pleasures – psychological pleasures are called happiness. Listening to beautiful music: Beethoven or Mozart or Ravi Shankar. Listening to great poetry: Kalidas, Bhavbhuti, Shakespeare, Milton. Listening to nature: the birds, the wind passing through the trees, the dance of the trees in the sun; or looking at beautiful paintings, great sculpture, architecture – these are pleasures of the mind.The physical pleasures are two: food and sex. Nothing is wrong in them, so don’t repress them because repression will bring indulgence. Accept them in a simple, innocent way, and then move ahead. That is not the end, it is only the beginning of the journey.Even the pleasures of the mind are not the end, then there are joys of the spirit. Meditation, silence, prayer, these are the joys of meditation, joys of the soul. And still there is the ultimate, the turiya, the fourth – even to go beyond the self. That’s what Buddha calls attaining the zero, nothingness. Just being, without any idea of “I.” That is inexpressible, it is called bliss.These are the four planes: pleasure, happiness, joy, bliss. And the higher you go, the richer you become. But remember, the higher contains the lower. The ultimate, the fourth, is fourth only because it contains all the three. It is not against the three, those three are its foundations, stepping-stones, ladder. The higher contains the lower, the lower does not contain the higher. Once this is understood, then the lower is good as far as it goes, although it does not go far enough.So, go as far as it goes, but don’t stop there. There is still more to life. Explore! Move from the body to the mind, from the mind to the self, and from the self to no-self, anatta, nothingness. Only then will you know the ultimate unfolding of your being. That is bliss, the one-thousand-petaled lotus blossoming.And lastly, what the Polack Pope has said is male chauvinism. He talks about men lusting after women but not the reverse. Women are not considered at all – they are not worth consideration. Nobody bothers about them. He is talking about men, that man should not lust after women, but not about women. What about women? Nothing has to be said. They are not counted as human beings, they are commodities, far lower. They don’t have any future, they don’t belong to the spiritual world.For centuries this male chauvinistic attitude has prevailed. In India the so-called saints go on saying that the woman is the door of hell, but they don’t say the same thing about men. They go on condemning the women, but they never say anything about the men. If the woman infatuates man, then the man infatuates woman.But even your saints are not true sages – they are male chauvinistic pigs. Otherwise man and woman are two aspects of the same humanity, they require the same respect. But the whole past has been condemnatory about women. It only shows one thing, nothing else, that deep down your saints were afraid of women, hence they were creating all kinds of barriers around themselves: “The woman is the door to hell.” They were trying to convince themselves that the woman consists only of bones and blood and pus and mucus. And what do they consist of? – gold, silver, diamonds?It is very strange. Not a single saint says what he consists of – and he comes from the woman. From the woman’s womb he comes, brings all the blood and the bone and the pus and the mucus from the woman, and he condemns the woman. He is really afraid, afraid of his own sexuality, afraid because he has been told that sex is sin. And of course to him the woman symbolizes sex.Nobody bothers about the woman, about what is her situation. In fact, women are very nonaggressive as far as sexuality is concerned. No woman can rape a man, only a man can rape a woman. Man’s sexuality is aggressive, woman’s sexuality is receptive. Woman can live without sex far more easily than man, hence nuns are far truer than the monks – the monks are hypocrites. But the poor woman is condemned continuously.I would like to change this whole ugly tradition. The woman will be respected only when sex is also respected, remember it. The woman will be accepted only when sex is also accepted as natural.These popes, these shankaracharyas, these imams, these so-called saints have created a very ugly situation. It has to be completely destroyed and a new beginning has to be made in which man and woman are no longer separate, are no longer thought of separately – in which man and woman are considered equally because they are two aspects of the same sex, two sides of the same coin.The third question:Osho,Is this world insane?It seems so. At least up to now it has been insane. Man is not born insane but is driven toward insanity by the priests, by the politicians, by the parents, by your whole educational system, by your morality, by all that is enforced upon you, by all the conditionings. You are driven insane.Man need not be insane, but it has not been possible yet to accept man in his naturalness. We create a structure around him, we prune him, we go on and on giving a certain form and pattern to him. We don’t allow him to be himself.And that’s my whole effort here, to accept humanity with deep respect, love, trust, so that man can regain his sanity. And the problem is that man is driven insane by your so-called well-wishers. The people who are trying to help you are the people who are poisoning you. Great mischief is being done by public servants, missionaries, by the so-called saints. They are the most mischievous people in the world – not intentionally, not consciously, but that’s the ultimate result of whatsoever they have been doing. They have been driven insane by other saints and they are driving you insane. And if you don’t follow them you feel guilty, if you follow them you become hypocrites. They don’t leave you any other alternative, only two alternatives: either be insane like them or feel guilty. And both alternatives are ill, sickening.Watch life all around you and you will find in every possible way that man is insane.When the seven year old started school, his mother suggested softly, “Son, put a smile on your face and have a happy time!”But when the lad returned home his face was a big frown.“What happened?” his mother asked. “I thought you were going to smile and have a happy time at school.”“It didn’t work, Mom,” he said. “I tried to keep smiling, but the teacher thought I was up to something and was always giving me dirty looks!”Nobody wants you to be happy. If you are happy, everybody will become suspicious of you: “You are up to something. Why are you looking so happy?” If you are sad you are accepted – you are part of the crowd. Everybody is sad and you are also sad, it fits. But if you are dancing and rejoicing then you are crazy, mad. Then you have to be put into hospital, you have to be treated, given electric shocks or something because how can you be happy? How can you be so blissful? When the whole of humanity is suffering, you have to suffer.The crowd has always been against the people who were blissful. They crucified Jesus, they poisoned Socrates, they murdered Mansoor. And their only sin was that they were trying to be blissful, that they were not part of the mob, the sad, sick society. They were trying to be individuals.The marriage counselor was asking a woman some questions about her disposition. “Did you wake up grumpy this morning?”“No,” she answered. “I let him sleep.”A woman driver passed a red light and collided with another car. Jumping out of her car, she snapped at the other driver, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You are the third car I hit this morning!”When a customer was told he could no longer buy his favorite patent medicine, he angrily berated the chemist.“But I tell you, it has now been banned,” the chemist insisted. “Now you need a doctor’s prescription because it is habit forming.”“It is not habit forming,” the customer cried, “I know it’s not because I’ve been taking it every day for twenty years!”A client was complaining to a marriage counselor that his wife’s immaturity was causing his marriage to go on the rocks. “She is so immature,” he charged, “that every time I take a bath she comes in and sinks my boats!”The elderly millionaire emerged from his exclusive club feeling despondent and hopeless, and slowly climbed into his limousine.“Where to, sir?” asked his chauffeur.“Drive off a cliff, James,” was the reply. “I am committing suicide!”A leading sexologist interviewed on television was asked, “What do you think of the view that impotence is on the rise?”“I think the question is self-contradictory!” he replied.It is an insane world!In old age, Diogenes stopped a veteran and asked, “What were you in the last war?”“Oh, I was only a private,” replied the veteran.Diogenes rocked as if about to fall. “Ye gods!” he gasped. “At last!” Then after catching his breath he blew out his lantern and went home.Think over it – it is a little difficult.And the last question:Osho,You sure make a great sit-down comic! What would happen if you stood up?I don’t know, but I can try!Enough for today.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Can you say who you are?I am an invitation for all those who are seeking, searching, and have a deep longing in their hearts to find their home.I am an answer to the question that everybody is, but cannot formulate – a question that is more a quest than a question, more a thirst than a verbal, mental inquiry; a thirst that one feels in every cell and fiber of his being, but has no way to bring to words and ask.I am an answer for that question which you cannot ask and you cannot expect that it could be answered.When I say I am the answer, I don’t mean that I can give you the answer…yes, if you are ready, you can take it. I am just like a well, ready for you to throw your bucket and draw the water for yourself. I have it but I cannot reach to you without your efforts.Only you can reach to me.It is a strange invitation.It will take you on a long pilgrimage and it will end only where you already are. You will have to move many steps and on many paths just to come to yourself, because you have gone far away from yourself. You have completely forgotten the way back.I am a reminder, a remembrance, of the lost home.As a person I do not exist.As a person I only appear.I exist as a presence.Since the day I came to know myself, the person disappeared. There is only a presence, a very living presence that can quench your thirst, that can fulfill your longing. Hence, in one word I can say I am an invitation, of course just for those who have a deep longing in their hearts that they are missing themselves – a deep urge, that unless they find themselves, everything else is meaningless. Unless it is your a priori concern, your ultimate concern, such that if it is needed you are even ready to lose everything for it, but you cannot drop it….There are thousands of desires, but as far as longing is concerned there is only one: to come back home, to find your reality. And in that very finding, you have found all that is of any value – blissfulness, truth, ecstasy.Jesus used to say, “If you have eyes to see, see. If you have ears to hear, hear.” Of course, he was not talking to the blind and to the deaf. He was talking to people just like you. Perhaps he was talking just to you, because you are not new.You are as ancient as the whole existence.You have always been here.You may have come across many masters; you may have come close to many buddhas, but you were too much engaged in trivia. You were not aware of your longing.I am an effort to provoke the dormant in you, to wake up the asleep. The fire is there, but is burning very low because you have never taken any care of it.My invitation is to make you aflame, and unless you know a life which is luminous and aflame all your knowledge is just a deception. You are gathering it to help you forget that the real knowledge is missing. But however great is your accumulation of the other, the objective, the world, it is not going to become a substitute for your self-knowing. With self-knowing suddenly all darkness disappears, and all separation from existence.I am an invitation to take a courageous jump into the ocean of life. Lose yourself, because that is the only way to find yourself.Osho,Each time I see you, I am shocked by your beauty. You've got to be the most gorgeous being that has ever happened!Osho, in what way do you experience your own beauty?There is no way to experience your own beauty.All knowledge needs a certain distance between the knower and the known. If the beauty is physical then there are ways to know it – you can see yourself in a mirror. But if the beauty is coming out of your silence, out of your peace, out of your inner splendor – it may radiate from your physical being but it does not belong to your physical body, it is not physical – then there is no way to know it yourself, because it is not reflected in a mirror. You can experience it.The most important thing to remember is that the beauty that you have seen in me is not my own, it is yours too – it is everyone’s. The bodies may be different, but the inner fire is the same. And when that fire starts radiating from your body, it creates a certain grace, a certain beauty. It is no one’s monopoly. It is everybody’s intrinsic potentiality.If you can see my beauty, that’s an indication of seeing your own beauty, because I am nothing but a mirror to you. But it often happens…looking in the mirror you may see a beautiful face, and if you are asleep or drunk or half-asleep, half-awake, you may think the mirror is very beautiful. But the mirror is just a mirror; it is only reflecting you.One drunkard was torturing his wife by continually coming home late. Every night it was a fight. Finally, the wife gave up and she told the man, “You keep the key. Unlock the door from the outside and come in silently. Don’t disturb my sleep, and don’t create any nuisance so that the neighbors are disturbed. Just come and go to sleep.”The drunkard was very happy. That day he drank as much as he wanted; now there was no question of any problem arising out of it. Then he came home. He tried to be as silent as possible – opened the door, went into the bathroom to change his clothes, looked into the mirror and said, “My God.”All his face was scratched. Blood was oozing, because he had been in a fight in the pub. He said, “Right now I have managed perfectly silently, but in the morning the wife is going to discover these scratches and this blood, and that will bring the whole problem again – the same fight. Somehow I have to hide the scratches; I should at least put some ointment on them.”He looked all around. He could not find anything except his wife’s lipstick. He thought it looked like an ointment, and it was very helpful because it covered the scratches, the blood. He was very happy at his success, went to his bed, and there was no quarrel, no fight. It was one of the most beautiful nights of his life!But in the morning, the wife shouted from the bathroom, “Are you mad or what? You have destroyed my lipstick. Not only that, why have you been painting the mirror?”He was, poor fellow, trying to put the ointment on his face, but his face was in the mirror. So in the mirror wherever there were scratches or blood on his face, he did a great job of painting – the lipstick was finished and the mirror was spoiled.He could not believe how it could have happened. He said, “I did not want to disturb you so I tried some ointment, and only this thing looked like ointment. I don’t know what happened to me, why I have put it on the mirror. I was putting it on my own face!”In life, what you see shows much about you, not about what you are seeing. The same sunset looks beautiful to one person, and to another, sad. And to another it doesn’t matter; he remains indifferent. The sunset is the same. It looks beautiful to the person who is capable of being in tune with it, who is capable of being silent and a mirror to reflect it into his own being; who can drink out of it, its colors, its radiance, its splendor.The same sunset looks sad not beautiful to somebody else because he is sad; he projects his sadness onto it. And the third person lives in a way which can be called the way of indifference. He never looks at the sunset or the moon or the trees or the flowers or people. He has eyes but he never uses them. He is in such a rush, in such a hurry to reach somewhere he knows not where…just a tension, a constant running after shadows. He does not have time to waste to look at a stupid sunset.It all depends on you.If you see the beautiful in me, something beautiful has arisen in you.Two men were riding on a train for the first time in their lives. One of them had a bunch of bananas. He offered one to his friend and began to peel one for himself. Just then the train entered a tunnel.“Have you tasted your banana yet?” asked the first man, very alarmed.“No, I haven’t,” replied his friend.“Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t,” said the first man, “I took one bite and went blind.”We are very much enclosed in our own psychology, and we project that psychology all around.A man of silence finds this whole world is full of silence. Even the sounds only deepen the silence. And a man full of noise never becomes aware of the immense silences in the night. It all depends on you. Your world is nothing but you, projected.It is a good indication that you feel beauty in me – don’t stop there. It is not an objective experience, something beautiful is growing in you. Notice it, and a day will come you will see everybody beautiful around you, everything beautiful around you.Only be satisfied when you cannot find anything which is not beautiful. When you have become capable of looking at the beauty of everything that exists and lives, you have reached to a flowering of your own being.Your question can be looked at very easily from a different point. You say, “Each time I see you, I am shocked by your beauty. You’ve got to be the most gorgeous being that has ever happened! Osho, in what way do you experience your own beauty?”There are people who see me as the antichrist. The American government, in conspiracy with fundamentalist Christians, destroyed the commune in America. And now they have raised a memorial in Wasco County where the commune was – a marble memorial, a memorial saying that they succeeded in getting rid of the antichrist.It all depends on you what you see.It always refers to you.Two small children were standing inside an art gallery because it was raining and they could not find any other shelter. So they entered the gallery. Standing there soaked with water, dripping, one boy looked at a Picasso painting and he said, “My God, we should get away from here! If they catch us they will say we have done it. Some idiot has spoiled everything. We have not touched it, but we are in a position we will not be able to defend.”It is said, that once Picasso’s car was stolen. He reported it to the police station, and the people knew him. They said, “It is very sad and sorry. Do you have some details and a description – number plate, what kind of car?”He said, “I never looked at the number plate, but I can draw a sketch.” So he drew a sketch of his car and the police searched hard. And finally, they caught one horse, one washing machine and the Eiffel Tower!The Picasso sketch gave them all these ideas – and it was a sketch of a car! Picasso’s way of thinking, way of looking at things, was strange and crazy. He was a great genius, but a little outlandish.A very rich woman wanted him to make her portrait. He said, “I don’t generally do that kind of painting because my fee is so much. Secondly, nobody seems to be satisfied when the portrait is finished. It will be almost one million dollars. If you are ready to pay I can do the portrait.”The woman said, “One million or two million, it doesn’t matter, but I want a portrait by you.”So he made the portrait. It took many sittings and the woman became more and more puzzled as she saw the portrait coming up. When the portrait was complete she said, “Only one question, I want to know where my nose is. Everything is okay, but at least I should know where my nose is. From there I can figure out the eyes, the mouth, my ears – that can be the center for finding myself.”Picasso said, “I told you in the very beginning…! Now it is a trouble to find the nose – who knows where your nose is! I have painted it, that is true, but in so many sittings I can’t remember exactly where I have put it. You take it home and contemplate; perhaps you may find it. It is there, that much is certain. It is there, this much I can guarantee because I remember I have painted your nose. But don’t harass me! You are paying money for the portrait not for these questions. If you had told me before that you would ask questions I would have refused, because who takes care where your nose is, and in what way does it matter? Somewhere it must be in the portrait. If somebody asks you, you can say, ‘Just look, you will find it.’ Just one thing: if you or somebody else finds it, inform me.”Picasso became one of the great painters. But all his paintings are, to say the least, insane. He himself was insane; he was pouring his insanity into colors on the canvas – it was his projection. He was a genius. He could manage to paint, and paint in many original ways. Naturally, if you cannot find the nose, the portrait is original. What more originality can you expect? He has worked hard but his way of seeing….I had a professor in my university…I used to listen to him with closed eyes. Finally, he could not resist the temptation. He said, “What is the matter with you? Whenever I talk to you, you close your eyes.”I said, “To talk with you and to see your eyes – one going this way, one going that way – makes me dizzy. Sometimes I look to whom you are talking, because you never look at me.”Those eyes were such that when he was talking to you one thing was certain, he would not be looking at you. That’s the only way he could look at you: when he was looking somewhere else.I said, “Either you get your eyes fixed or please forgive me. I want to listen to what you are saying; I don’t want to get dizzy.”The way you see the world, the way you see people, the way you see trees…all depends on you.You live in a world of your own creation.There are as many worlds as there are people because everyone is living in his own world. No two persons agree about anything. Somebody thinks a woman beautiful, and others laugh at the very idea: “If this woman is beautiful then…finished! Then what can be called ugly?”So, Jalada, it is perfect for you to see beauty in me, but it is part of your own seeing, it has nothing to do with me. I am just a victim! Today I am beautiful, tomorrow if you are angry at me, then too remember. If you see that this is the antichrist, remember, it is your own idea.It reminds me that there have been found a few inscriptions contemporary to Jesus’ life, which describe him as the ugliest man possible. Not only was he ugly, he was also a hunchback. And his followers have described him as one of the most beautiful men. Christians never even raised the question: What about those inscriptions? But fortunately, I am no one, neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist, so I can see from a distance.My feeling is that both descriptions may be right. It looks absurd – how can both descriptions be right about one man? They are not descriptions of Jesus, they are descriptions of the people who were describing him.Those who loved him, because of their love they created a beautiful personality. Those who hated him, out of their hate have created an ugly man. And they were not satisfied even with that – they had to make him a hunchback. They had to reduce his height to four feet six inches; they had to make him a pygmy.This has to be understood deeply, because then you don’t create the illusion and make it objective. You should always remember that whatever you see in the world is your own projection. Yes, there is a state when you are beyond mind and all projections have dropped. Then you see the world as it is. It is just unimaginably beautiful, but that beauty is a totally different kind of beauty, it is not your projection.The moment you go beyond your mind, you suddenly become a mirror – then you reflect reality. Within the mind you project reality; you don’t reflect. Being with me, meditating for years, something must be getting out of the mind, beyond the mind. And you will be absolutely certain that some transcendence is happening when if not only in me but in everybody you start seeing the beautiful, the authentic, the sincere – even in those who are not beautiful, who are not sincere, who are not truthful. It doesn’t matter; their actions don’t constitute their being. Their being is far bigger than their small, tiny, actions.It is a good indication: you love me. Naturally, you can see something beautiful, but trust in it only when you start seeing that beauty everywhere, when the whole of existence becomes beauty.The ancient seers of India have described existence in two ways. One way they have called satyam shivam sunderam. Satyam means truth, shivam means good, sunderam means beautiful. This is one expression of the ultimate experience. Another trinity by a few other seers has one thing certainly in common – satyam, the truth. Sat-Chit-Anand: sat means the truth, chit means consciousness, anand means blissfulness.Both are right; it is their choice. They could not avoid one thing: truth. If they had a poetic approach, then the good and the beautiful were naturally experienced. If they were of a different disposition, more of a mystic than of a poet, then consciousness and blissfulness became part of their trinity.It is because of these statements that I say religions born outside of India are very childish. Just see these trinities and compare them with the Christian trinity: God the father, God the son, and the holy ghost.It is not even comparable to Sat-Chit-Anand: truth, consciousness, bliss or to satyam, shivam, sunderam: truth, good, beauty. These seem to be experiences. God, the son and the holy ghost…I don’t think anybody has ever experienced them. And the experience would be more like a nightmare!But it all depends on you. Just as your dreams are yours and show something about your mind, so are your ideas while you are awake. They show something about you, and this is to be remembered by every seeker. This is a turning point. We are easily objective but our reality is subjective. We see things there which are our own projections.A poet looks around the trees in a different way. He sees many greens, not one green. His sensitivity is so deep that he can make very subtle distinctions in the green of one tree and the green of another tree. You ordinarily simply see that the trees are green, but not even two leaves are exactly the same green. It needs a very sensitive, artistic, poetic, approach – it depends on you; you live in your own world.J. Krishnamurti used to say, “You are the world.” Once this is understood tremendous changes are possible. You will not throw tantrums at others. You will become more centered, you will become more subjective and introvert. Your world will start losing objects; it will become more of a subjectivity – and that is your truth.Once you are centered in your being, beyond mind, then you can see the world as it is. Only very few people have seen the world as it is. Everybody sees it as his mood, his emotion, as his idea suggests to him.It has to be remembered continuously, that whatever you see, it is your own projection. Unless you start seeing the same everywhere – in the friend and in the foe – then your experience has entered into a new realm.Irving Levensky, a leading dress manufacturer, decided to go on an African safari. After spending six weeks in darkest Africa, he returned to Seventh Avenue. Everyone who worked in his show room gasped when he walked in the door.Irving, who was six feet tall when he left New York, was now little higher than two feet. His employees all looked at him and asked, “Mr. Levensky, what happened?”He replied, “Never, but never, under any circumstances, call a witch doctor a schmuck!”It is better not to call anything to anybody – just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you – no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness.This watchfulness, I call meditation.Osho,Sometimes I am blessed by this overwhelming feeling that this commune is becoming gently one body, one organism, one heartbeat. Am I dreaming? Am I once more the usual utopian? Oh, amore, please tell me it is not a dream.It is a dream that is coming true, but it is a dream – not your dream, but the dream of everybody who is here.It is impossible to find a man who is not carrying a dream of utopia, of a world which is better, more human, more beautiful, more loving; a world without conflicts, wars, discriminations, a world sensitive, compassionate, understanding. Every human being carries in some corner of his consciousness the dream, and it is not a new phenomenon.From the very beginning the dream has been present in humanity, and efforts have been made to make a reality of it. Almost all efforts have failed, not because of any intrinsic difficulty, but because of a vast world that surrounds you. Your dreams are not in tune with the vested interests of the world, and they are more powerful – immensely powerful. The dreamer is very delicate, very fragile, just like his dream.It is a communion of dreamers.We created a dream in America, but the American establishment could not tolerate it, because the dream of human beings living in peace and love as an organic unity is against all politics, against all those who are in power. It is against all the so-called religions, because if you succeed in creating a dream here and making it a reality, who is going to bother about their heaven and hell and God?Bertrand Russell is right when he says that if people were really happy, religions would disappear. Religions have a vested interest in the misery of people. The people have to be kept miserable; otherwise, what will happen to Christianity, to Hinduism, to Judaism, and millions of priests who are living as parasites because you are miserable? In your misery you need some kind of consolation!In the first place they make you guilty, and in the second place they ask you to go to the church to confess to the priest. The priest will fine you and will pray for you to God, that you should be forgiven – it is such a game! And it has been going on for centuries and still man is so asleep that he does not see in what ways he is being manipulated.No child comes with any feeling of guilt and if you don’t teach him guilt, he will never know about it. He will live a natural, uninhibited, beautiful life, but that will destroy the whole profession of the priests. And now the psychoanalysts have also joined in that profession; they are the latest version of the priest.Just the other day, I was reading that a patient said to the psychoanalyst, “Last night I did not dream.” The psychoanalyst was saying, “Tell me about your dreams. Unless I have your dreams I cannot analyze them and I cannot help you.”The psychoanalyst became very angry. He said, “You are very uncooperative. Why did you not dream? Without dreams what can I do? My whole profession, my whole expertise depends on your dreaming. Continue to dream, and unless you cooperate, I am at a loss; I cannot help you.”The psychoanalyst wants you to continue dreaming. That has become his vested interest. The priest wants you to go on committing sins. The priest will be at a loss if nobody commits any sin.In a small school, the teacher was telling the children how to go to heaven. And after one hour’s continuous effort to make those small boys and girls understand, finally she asked, “Can anyone tell me, what are the requirements to go to heaven?”One small boy said, “You have to commit sin.”She said, “What? How have you managed to get this idea in your mind?”He said, “Without committing sin, how is God going to forgive you? And without forgiveness, nobody can enter into paradise.”The child was saying something immensely significant. The priests, the saints go on teaching: Don’t sin. But they don’t mean that; remember, they go on saying it because they know the human nature, that you will sin. If they were for a moment made aware that people had decided not to sin, they would be in difficulty. You would have taken their whole profession.The pope this year declared that anybody who confesses to God directly is committing a grave sin, you have to go through the right channel. Naturally, because if people start confessing to God directly, raising their hands to the sky and saying, “God, I have committed this sin, please forgive me,” what will happen to the church? What will happen to the money that goes on flowing into the church because you commit sin?I have heard….A bishop was very friendly with a rabbi. They became friends because both were interested in golf. And they had decided that on Sunday after the bishop was finished with the confessionals, they would go to the golf course. The rabbi waited, but it was becoming late. So finally, he came to the church to see what was the matter. He went inside.In the Catholic church the priest sits behind a small window with a curtain. On the other side stands the man who confesses his sin, and the priest gives him the punishment: “Donate ten dollars to the church and never do such a thing again,” although, deep down he wants him to do it every day. It is natural, because from where is the money going to come?The rabbi said, “It is becoming late.”The bishop said, “What to do? There is still a long line waiting, but you can be of help. You just sit here, so I can wash, change my clothes, and get ready. Meanwhile, you do the confessional.”The rabbi said, “But I don’t know what confessional is.”The bishop said, “It is very simple. You have just seen that man who raped a woman; I have fined him ten dollars. So just five dollars, ten dollars…fine them and tell them that they will be forgiven, and not to do it again.”The rabbi said, “Okay, I will try.”Of course, on the other side the people were not aware that there had been a change: the bishop was no longer there and the rabbi was sitting there. And one man said, “Father, you have to forgive me, I committed rape twice this week.”The rabbi said, “Son, don’t be worried. Just put thirty dollars in the donation box.”The man said, “But last time when I committed rape, you asked only for ten dollars. Is the rate going higher?”The rabbi said, “Don’t be worried my son, ten dollars are in advance. You can commit another rape.”Utopia is what every human heart carries within him, particularly the younger generation, because as you become older you become less and less optimistic. Seeing the reality and its ugliness, seeing that all the powers are against any utopia, any freedom for human heart, any love, they don’t want the world to become a paradise, because then they will be out of employment, and nobody is ready to lose his bread and butter.So as you grow old, you slowly, slowly start thinking that utopias are utopias, and you start compromising with the society. But there are a few crazy people like me who go on dreaming in spite of the society, in spite of the whole world. And howsoever difficult the dream seems to be to materialize, still my heart says there is no harm in making another effort. Perhaps one day, if not in my life, then in the life of future human beings, utopia will become a reality.When the commune in America was crushed, almost bulldozed criminally, anyone in my place would have dropped the idea – but I am stubborn! I will go on till my last breath…or even after that.What is happening here again is that the dream is becoming true. And we have learned much in the destruction of the commune in America – it has not been a bad experience. Learning is always good, and learning always comes through failures. The commune had succeeded, almost succeeded.Here, we will avoid those possibilities of destruction. It is better to continue to dream for a better humanity than to settle into sadness and pessimism. Things are still coming together again. People are returning and they are more experienced now. They know not to have a structure that is capable of being destroyed. Something totally new, a more organic body, not a dictatorial regime; no enforcement of ten to twelve hours’ work, but a more joyous, life-affirmative. Each according to his need, each according to his choice. We are making every effort not to disturb anybody’s individuality, not to sacrifice any individual for the commune. On the contrary, make every individual as strong as possible, because that will be the total strength of the commune – and the seeds have started sprouting.You are right when you say, “Sometimes I am blessed by this overwhelming feeling that this commune is becoming gently one body, one organism, one heartbeat. Am I dreaming?” No, it is a reality that is happening.“Am I once more the usual utopian?” We are making every effort to change the meaning of the word, utopia. The meaning of the word utopia is that which never happens, and we are determined to change the meaning. We are committed to the idea that utopia is that which can happen. Its old definition has to be changed totally. Utopia is the very heart of human beings. A man without dreams for a better humanity is not a man, he is a desert.“Oh, amore, please tell me it is not a dream.” It is both: it is not a dream because the dream is turning into reality, but it is still a dream because much more has to be done. You should not be satisfied.This is a dream which goes on growing with new possibilities, with new dimensions. But we are determined to create it, to make it a reality. This is our religion. We are not interested in going to paradise; we are interested in making the paradise come here. It all depends on our love, on our silence, on our peace, on our meditation, and being aware and alert not to fall again into any trap of the vested interests.Once the tree has become strong, has gained roots in the earth, it will be difficult for anybody to destroy it.I believe in the earth.I repeat Zarathustra who said to his disciples, “Never betray the earth.” All the religions have betrayed the earth.The earth is the only reality.Everything else talked about by religions is only fiction to distract you. We don’t want religions which are interested in a future heaven after death. Our interest is here, now – before death. What is the point of thinking about after death? This has been the routine because people could not succeed to create something beautiful in life. They started postponing it beyond death because nobody knows what happens beyond death; so it was a very good postponement.I am not for postponing it, not even for tomorrow. Whatever can be done should be done right now.Don’t betray the earth; don’t betray the present.Don’t betray your dream; your dream is your very soul.At a party an elderly bishop tired of social engagements sank wearily into a chair. His hostess rushed up suggesting that he have a cup of tea.“No tea,” grunted the bishop.“Coffee?”“No coffee,” was the solemn reply.“Scotch and water?”“No water.”Just avoid Scotch. Just avoid unconsciousness. Water is perfectly good. Be clear in your vision, be conscious in your efforts. The dream is gaining roots and I hope soon we will see the flowers. They are not far away.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Shunryo Suzuki, one of the first Zen masters to live and teach in the West, was once asked why he never spoke much about satori, enlightenment. The master laughed and answered, “The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.”Could you please comment.Zen in the West is in a very strange context. The master you are talking about, Shunryo Suzuki, must have felt immense difficulty to express himself, because Zen has a language of its own. It has a climate different from any other climate that exists on the earth.To bring Zen to any country is a difficult task. One has to be ready to be misunderstood. Suzuki’s statement seems to be clear, and anybody who will read it will not have any difficulty to understand it. But whatever he will understand will be wrong.The master was asked, “Why don’t you speak about satori?” – the Japanese word for enlightenment. And he answered the way a Zen master should answer knowing perfectly well he could not be understood, he is bound to be misunderstood. He said, “The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.”The statement is clear; linguistically there is no problem, there is nothing to be understood in it. Suzuki is saying, “I have never talked about it because I have never had it.” Now I will have to give you the whole background, the climate in which the meaning of the same sentence turns into exactly its opposite as you understand it.Zen has an absolute certainty that no one can have satori or enlightenment; you can have things. You can have money, you can have power, you can have the whole world, but you cannot have enlightenment.Enlightenment is not a thing; it is not possible to possess it. Those who say they have it, don’t have it – they don’t even understand the abc of it. One becomes enlightened – that’s what Suzuki is saying. There is no distinction between I and enlightenment, so how can I have it? The I disappears completely into enlightenment just like a dewdrop disappearing in the ocean. Can the dewdrop say, “I have the ocean”? The dewdrop is the ocean – there is no question of having it. This is the first thing to be clearly understood.Suzuki was an enlightened master; that’s why he denied it. If he were not enlightened, but was only a scholar, learned about Zen, he might have felt very embarrassed to deny it. He might rather have lied, and nobody would have been able to detect his lie. He could have said, “I have it, but the experience is inexpressible; it was so simple, that’s why I never talk about it.” But the man really had it. To really have it means you can’t have it; you disappear.As long as you are, there is no enlightenment.The moment there is enlightenment, you are not.You disappear just like darkness disappears when there is light. Darkness cannot possess light; you cannot possess enlightenment.I don’t think that the statement of Suzuki would have been understood by the people who asked the question and who received the right answer. It needs a totally different context to understand.The Western education is so much of a nourishment to the ego…in fact the Western psychology supports the idea that a person should have a very clear ego – powerful, aggressive, ambitious; otherwise, one cannot survive in the struggle of existence. To survive, first you have to be, and you have to be not only defensive, because the right way of defense is to offend, to attack…Before anybody else attacks you, you should attack. You should be first, not the second, because to be defensive is already losing the battle.And because of the Western psychology, the whole educational system supports the idea that a man becomes mature as he attains a more and more crystallized ego. This goes against the experience of all the buddhas, of all the awakened ones. And none of these psychologists or educationalists have any glimpse of what awakening is, of what enlightenment is.Those who have become enlightened are agreed, without any exception, on the point that the ego has to disappear. It is false, it is created by society; it is not your original face, it is not you.The false must disappear for the real to be.So remember these steps: first, the false must disappear for the real to be, and then the real has to disappear into the ultimately real. People are living so far away from their ultimate home – they are not even real, what to say about the ultimate? For it, they have to first move away from the ego. They have to experience in meditation their own center.But this is not the end. Meditation is only a beginning of the journey. In the end, the seeker is dissolved in the sought, the knower in the known, the experiencer in the experience. Who is going to have satori? You are absent; you are non-existent when enlightenment explodes. Your absence is an absolute necessity for enlightenment to happen.Suzuki is absolutely right: “The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it.” I am absolutely certain that those who heard him are bound to have thought that he had had no experience of satori. That is simply the meaning of what he is saying. Unless there was somebody who had experienced egolessness, and finally selflessness, Suzuki was without fail, bound to be misunderstood.But he was a man of immense daring, of great courage, to introduce Zen to the West. Not many people were impressed. Many certainly entertained Suzuki’s statements, his anecdotes from the annals of Zen; they thought them strange jokes. But there were a few who understood not what the man was saying, but the man himself. He turned a few people on; he has the same distinction as Bodhidharma who planted the seeds of Zen in China.Suzuki can be compared to Bodhidharma. He planted the seeds in the West, and Zen became, in the Western climate and mind, a new fashion. Suzuki was very much disturbed by it. He was not introducing a new fashion, he was introducing a new revolution and a new style of being. But the West understands things only in that way – every two or three years a new fashion is needed; people become bored with the old.And Suzuki was received with joy, because he had brought something which no Christian or Jew was even able to comprehend. He attracted many people of the new generation; a few of them remained true to the master to the very end. Many traveled to Japan just because of Suzuki. Hundreds of Zen classics were translated in Western languages because of Suzuki. Now it is possible to talk about Zen and still be understood, and the whole credit goes to a single man, Shunryo Suzuki.It has never to be forgotten that words don’t exist without context. If you forget the context, whatever you will understand is going to be wrong. If you understand the context, it is impossible to misunderstand.Berkowitz was crossing Washington Avenue on Miami Beach when he was hit by a passing auto. Several passersby picked him up and laid him down on a bench. A kindly, silver-haired lady approached the injured man and asked, “Are you comfortable?”“Ehhh! I make a living,” sighed Berkowitz.In the Jewish context he could not understand the word comfortable in any other sense than in the sense of making a good living. He said, “Yes.” He has the accident, but he cannot understand the word comfortable in the present context of accident. Perhaps he may be dying, perhaps he is badly hurt, but his context remains as his old mind which thinks only of money, earning.This has to be remembered while you are studying Zen – the differences of context.It is said: To arrive at the truth, the German adds, the Frenchman subtracts, and the Englishman changes the subject!I have heard…You can always tell a man’s nationality by introducing him to a beautiful woman. An Englishman shakes her hand, a Frenchman kisses her hand, an American asks her for a date, and a Russian wires Moscow for instructions!Osho,Can you please say something about the difference between the spiritual question, “Who am I?” and the psychological trauma of “Who am I?”?It is exactly the difference I was just talking about – the difference between the ego and the self.The ego is your false idea of who you are; it is just a fabrication of the mind. It is your own homemade mind-manufactured concept, but it has no corresponding reality to it. It is perfectly good as far as the world is concerned because there, you are dealing with other egos. The moment you go beyond your mind, you also go beyond your ego, and suddenly you realize that you are not what you have always thought yourself to be – that your reality is totally different, that it does not consist of your body or of your mind, that in fact you don’t have any word to express it.But it is still not the ultimate reality; it is just in between, between the ultimate reality and the ultimate falsehood. It is better than the false, but it is lower than the really real. You are still carrying a certain idea of separation from existence. That separation keeps you unavailable to all the blessings which are your birthright. If you can drop those walls and open yourself to the immensity of reality, you will disappear as a separate entity.But this is only one side. On the other side you will appear as the eternal, the immense, the vast reality – the oceanic experience, which is the only experience of enlightenment or liberation.You have to get rid of the ego first. That is your psychological trauma, or better, your psychological drama. There are religions which have accepted the false ego as the end of all, there is nothing beyond it. That is the religion of all the atheists of different trends, a communist. Or the atheist may not be a communist, but the atheist in any form stops himself at the ego; that is his ultimate reality.He is the poorest man in the world. All other religions except atheism…because I take atheism also as a sort of religion, a lower form of religion than other religions. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, go a step further. They all insist to drop the ego and to recognize your authentic reality, your real self.But there are religions like Zen which go to the very end of the road. They are not satisfied just by dropping the ego. They are satisfied only when there is nothing left to drop – even the self is gone – when the house is absolutely empty, when you can say, “I am not.”This nothingness is creating the space for the ultimate to blossom. It does not come from anywhere else. It has always been there, just cluttered with rotten furniture, with unnecessary things. As you remove all those things and your subjectivity becomes empty – just as a room becomes empty as you remove everything from it – in this emptiness of your subjectivity, blossoms the flower of ultimate experience – you are no more.Naturally, you cannot have your old miseries, your old traumas and dramas. You cannot have any connection with your own past; you have abruptly cut yourself away from all that you used to be. Suddenly a new, totally fresh opening…in a way, you disappear. In a way your authentic essence has the first opportunity to come into its full glory, into its absolute splendor.This is what enlightenment is. It is a negative process: negate the ego, the psychological; negate the self, the spiritual. Go on negating until nothing remains to negate – and the explosion! Suddenly you have arrived home, with the revelation that you have never been out of your home. You have always been there, your eyes were just focused on objects.Now all those objects have disappeared. Only a witnessing, pure awareness, has remained. This witnessing is the end of all your misery and all your hell. It is also the beginning of the golden gate – the doors are open for the first time.Two white rats were chatting through the bars of their laboratory cages. “Tell me,” said the first white rat, “how are you getting along with Dr. Smith?”“Just fine,” replied the second rat. “It took a while, but I have finally got him trained. Now, whenever I ring the bell, he brings me my dinner.”It is such a strange world. The psychologist, Dr. Smith, must be thinking he is training rats, and the rats are thinking they are training Dr. Smith! The games of the ego…The wife thinks she is training the husband. All wives are training their husbands their whole lives; the husbands are training their wives. It seems life is just to train and to be trained – for what?A woman reached Pablo Picasso. She wanted a portrait; the portrait was made. She was absolutely satisfied. She said, “Just one thing, you have forgotten to put great diamonds around my neck, a great diamond ring, diamond bracelets.”Picasso said, “But you don’t have them.” She said, “It doesn’t matter. I have cancer, and I am not going to survive more than six weeks. And I know my husband is going to marry immediately after I die. He is just waiting for my death, although he goes on saying, ‘My dear, without you I will not be able to live a single moment.’ I know that without me he will not be able to live a single moment. He will immediately find another woman!”Picasso said, “I don’t understand the relationship of what you are saying and the diamonds.”She said, “You don’t understand the woman’s mind. I want my portrait, after my death, to be seen by the woman who my husband is going to marry. Then she will torture him, ‘Where are these diamonds?’ I cannot leave him, even if I am dead. He has to be trained, he has to be kept under control.” Great idea!People have forgotten completely to live. Who has time? Everybody is training everybody else, how to be – and nobody seems to be satisfactory, never.If one wants to live, one should learn one thing, to accept things as they are, and to accept yourself as you are. Start living. Don’t start training for a life sometime in the future. All the misery in the world is created because you have completely forgotten to live; you have become engaged in an activity which has nothing to do with life.The moment you are married to a man, you start training him to be faithful. Live while he is faithful – it will not be more than two weeks; two weeks is the human limit! Live as deeply as possible – perhaps your living and loving deeply may help him to remain faithful the third week also. And never project too much; three weeks is enough.My own experience is that if you have lived three weeks lovingly, the fourth week will follow. But you start disturbing things from the first moment. Before you start living, training is needed; you spoil the time by training, and a man who could have loved you for at least two weeks becomes bored within two days.One woman never married. And when she was dying, a friend asked, “Why have you never married? You are so beautiful.”She said, “What is the need? As far as training is concerned I train my dog, and he never learns! Every day I am training and he still comes home late in the night. I have a parrot who tells me everything a husband is expected to say. In the morning he says, “Hello darling!” I have a servant who steals, who continuously lies. What need have I for a husband? Everything is being fulfilled.” A husband is needed for these things?A wife is needed, not to have an experience of intimacy and love, but to make an exhibition of her; just to show around the neighborhood and make everybody jealous that you have such a beautiful woman. Load her with all the ornaments and make everybody jealous of your richness; otherwise, how are you going to show your richness? A wife is a show-window; she shows your achievements, your power. Naturally, you have to train her how to become more social, how to help you in your businesses.The saying seems to be perfect that behind the success of every great man there is a woman – in many different senses. Sometimes just to escape from her, one becomes madly engaged in earning money.When Henry Ford was asked, “Why did you go on earning and earning, when you have earned so much? It was time to enjoy and relax.”He said, “That was not the reason for earning. I was engaged in earning first to escape from my wife, and secondly, I became interested in whether I can earn more or she can spend more.” A competition, a lifelong competition!People get involved in strange dramas. Very few people live authentically – they just act.A man is sitting in a cinema, and the wife is continually reminding him how the hero is showing his love so deeply to his wife. Finally, the husband says, “Stop all this nonsense! You don’t know how much he’s paid for it! And moreover, it is only acting; it is not reality. I will certainly say he is a good actor.”The wife said, “Perhaps you are not aware that in actual life also they are wife and husband.”He said, “My God! If that is true, then he is the greatest actor I have ever seen; otherwise, even on the stage, to show so much love to your own wife is simply beyond human capacity. He is almost a genius as far as acting is concerned.”People think love is only for actors. It has been noted by psychoanalysts that people are sitting in front of their TV’s for hours. An American watches TV six hours per day on average – that is the average. There may be few maniacs watching nine hours, ten hours, twelve hours. Slowly, slowly watching movies, watching television, watching a football match, watching a tournament, people have simply become observers; they don’t love. Some actor loves – they simply watch. They don’t play; some professional players play – they watch. They don’t do anything; they are glued to their chairs and are just watching everything. But watching and doing are totally different. They feel completely satisfied that they have seen a beautiful film on love. They are completely satisfied that they have seen a great boxing tournament. And they themselves are just onlookers.It is something of a great calamity that has reduced millions of people to onlookers. And the people who are being watched are actors. They are not in real love, they are being paid for it. They are experts in deceiving people, pretending that what they are doing is real. Their tears are false, their smiles are false, their love is false, their anger is false. What kind of world have we created? The doers are all acting because they are paid for it, and the remaining nondoing world is simply watching.You are here to live.You are here to dance.You are here to experience life.Others are doing it for you. On your behalf people are loving, people are playing, people are doing all kinds of things. And what is left for you? – just to watch. Death will not be able to take much from you – only your television, because you don’t have anything else.This is the false ego that has created a false life pattern and lifestyle.Drop everything false.Be authentic and true; that is the first step. And once you are authentic and true, you will see how beautiful it is. And that will create the longing to go beyond, in search of the ultimate truth, the final statement and the final experience, beyond which nothing else exists.A famous surgeon went on safari to Africa. When he came back his colleagues asked him how it had been. “Ah, it was very disappointing,” he said, “I didn’t kill a thing. I would have been better off staying here in the hospital!”Fifteen minutes after the Titanic sank, Morie and Louis find themselves on the same overturned raft. The water is freezing, sharks are cruising by, and the raft is slowly sinking. “Ah well,” said Louis, “it could have been worse.”“Worse? How could it be worse?” screamed Morie.“Well, we could have bought return tickets!”People are almost crazy – a tremendous cleansing is needed – and most of their insanity is because of their false life; it is not satisfying. False food cannot be nourishment, false water cannot quench your thirst, and false ego cannot give you real life. It is simple arithmetic.Osho,When you spoke of meaning and context, it set bells ringing in me. Meaning, not just of words but of everything, depends on context – especially my life. You have a vast context, Beloved master. Will you please speak about your context in this place, this world, at this time? Did you choose it, or did existence put you here knowing that whatever humanity needs, you are the best man for the job?Devageet, as far as I am concerned, I have never done anything. Whatever has happened, I cannot take the credit for it. Since the day I came to know my nothingness, things have been happening but I am not the doer. Existence has taken over. I am not even concerned whether what is happening is going to succeed or fail; it is none of my concern. Hence, you cannot call it my “job.” I am as much part of existence as the trees, as the moon, as the stars.The whole functions in an organic way.Everything is related to everything else.The smallest blade of grass is connected with the greatest star millions of light years away. All are functioning, and there is nobody who is dictating.Existence is, in itself, the master.And whatever happens is spontaneous: nobody orders it, nobody follows. This is the greatest mystery.Because this mystery could not be understood, people from the very beginning started imagining a God. Their imagination of a God is only their psychological difficulty in accepting this tremendous universe, running spontaneously on its own without any accidents. Not even a traffic policeman – and millions of stars…!Just the other day Hasya brought me the news that in California a very new thing has suddenly come into being. During the last week five persons have been shot dead. And this new thing is happening on the streets, because the streets have become so small and the traffic is so great that cars are almost not moving. Roads appear as if they are parking lots.And people are carrying guns in their cars because they become so annoyed that the man ahead is going so slow and it gets on their nerves. They have been honking their horns, but nothing is moving. Thousands of horns are honking all around. And in the last week five persons parked by the side of the road, took out a gun and shot the man ahead whom they didn’t know – and he was in the same trouble, he was not creating it. The problem was just that the man was ahead. And this is just the beginning. Last week it started, now it will grow. Because when things start, it is very difficult to stop them, particularly in California!Almost all the races of the world have conceived God. It is simply a psychological problem, it has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with philosophy. It is simply incomprehensible, it is inconceivable how this immense universe is running without any controller, how it has come into existence without any creator. Just because people could not stretch their imaginations and their logic, they invented…just to console themselves that there is nothing to worry about; otherwise, it would be very difficult even to sleep.Millions of stars and galaxies are moving, and who knows in the night where the crash is going to happen? Nobody is looking after it all. There is no policeman, there is no court, there is no law – but strangely, everything is going so smoothly.Seasons change and the clouds come with rains. Seasons change and new leaves and new flowers…and it has been going on since eternity. Nobody keeps the record. Nobody tells the sun that it is time; there is no alarm clock that goes off exactly in the morning to tell the sun, “Get out! Get out from your blankets!” Things simply are going perfectly right.In fact, my own denial of God is based on the same reasoning. I say God is not because no God can manage this immense universe. Either it can be intrinsically spontaneous…it cannot be managed from outside. Unless there is some inner coherence, some inner organic unity, no outside controller can go on managing it from eternity to eternity. He will get bored and shoot himself, because what is the purpose? Nobody is going to pay him; nobody even knows his address!I have heard, a man wrote a letter to God because he needed fifty dollars very urgently. And not knowing the address, he sent it to: God the Father, c/o The Postmaster – because the postmaster must know! The postmaster opened the letter. What was the letter, to whom was he supposed to send it – to God? He read the letter and he felt sorry for the man; he must be in really great trouble. He had described that his mother was dying, and he has no money, no employment, no money for food, no money for medicine. “Just for once, send fifty dollars and I will never ask again.”The postmaster said, “Something should be done because this man should not feel disappointed.”The postmaster himself was not very rich, so he asked all the people in the post office to please contribute something – forty-five dollars was managed. He said, “Something is better than nothing; only five dollars are missing.” He sent forty-five dollars.The man was very angry. He said to God, “Listen, next time you send, never send through the post office because those people have taken their discount, five dollars.”My own understanding is that it cannot be managed from outside. That is more inconceivable: why should any God take the trouble, and how long can he manage? Sometimes he will get tired, and sometimes he will be on holiday. What will happen on holidays? And when he is tired or has fallen asleep, what will happen? Roses will stop growing, stars will be going on the wrong path, the sun may start rising from the West – who will prevent it? – just for the change, just for one day.No, from outside it is impossible – God is absolutely absurd – nobody can manage existence from the outside. The only possibility is from the inner; it is an organic being.The moment you forget yourself as a separate being, you become part of it. You have been part of it; you were unnecessarily carrying the idea of being separate and feeling burdened. I have not felt burdened at all about anything. Whatever happens I have not even thought that it could have been otherwise. Why should it be otherwise? Who to complain to? Because I don’t have anybody to pray to, I cannot complain either. A deep acceptance, and you have gone beyond misery.Yes, my context is vast – but it is not my context, it is the context of the whole. It is functioning perfectly well – nothing ever goes wrong. But if you take yourself separately, then you are unnecessarily becoming burdened. My whole teaching is: drop all the burden on the whole, be free of all burden, and live spontaneously and totally and without any guilt.There is nobody who can punish you, and there is nobody who can reward you. You are part of the whole; you are not doing it. The whole is doing through you, whether you know it or not. The moment you know that it is the whole which is functioning through you, you become absolutely free of all responsibility.My colleagues in the university used to say they have never seen a more irresponsible man than me. And they said, “We cannot conceive that a man of your understanding never feels any responsibility for anything.” It was difficult for them to understand that to be responsible, first you have to be.I have left myself far behind, and since then there is no responsibility. Whatever the whole manages through me, the whole must be responsible for it. I don’t come in its way. I don’t even think whether it is right or wrong, whether it should be done or not. Who am I to judge? This, I call let-go.Hymie Goldberg died and went to hell. He immediately started giving orders and bossing everyone around.“Stop it,” said Satan. “One would think you owned the place.”“I do,” said Hymie, “my wife gave it to me while I was on earth!”I don’t own anything just because I don’t have a wife! I cannot even own hell. Nobody can send me there. I simply go on living moment to moment without bothering about the past, without bothering about the future. Anything that happens, happens, I accept it with absolute gratitude.Certainly, the context is vast, and for those who will come close to me, for those who have come close to me, that makes understanding me or my life almost impossible; it has become part of the ultimate mystery. Unless you realize the mystery of the whole you cannot have any conception where I am. I am certainly not what appears to be my place, my space.If you look into my eyes, you can see into the depths which go beyond me.If you listen to my silences, you will hear the silence of the sky – it is not mine.And I would like you also to be in the same space, where you have nothing that you can say is yours, where nothing belongs to you because you belong to the whole.Just a joke for Devageet; I don’t know why it should be said, but that’s why I have told you I don’t have any reason to do anything – just this joke wants to be told, and I cannot do anything about it!Stella and Eunice are in the kitchen preparing vegetables and gossiping on a Friday night when Eunice looks out of the window. She sees her husband, Bernie, coming up the walkway with a bouquet of flowers.Eunice turns to Stella and says, “Oh, no! He’s bringing flowers. That means the whole weekend I will be on my back with my legs up in the air.”Stella replies, “What’s the matter? Don’t you have a vase?”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I feel warm love in your presence and now I realize that when I am not close to you it does not happen in the same way. Is it still true that time and space do not make any difference in the great affair between master and disciple?It is always true that space and time make no difference in the great love affair between the disciple and the master. It is not sometimes true and sometimes not true; it belongs to the realm of the eternal. But in actual experience, particularly in the beginning, the love of the disciple is still not so pure; it still has expectations. It is not desireless yet; it is polluted by many things.Because of this pollution of desires, expectations, it appears that space and time make a difference. They don’t make any difference as far as love is concerned, but your love is not just love; it has many more things involved in it. Even the expectation of enlightenment is enough to destroy its purity.The principle is about the pure love – love that is simply happy for no reason at all, love that has already joined the dance of the master in the heart. Then the master is not outside you; you carry him within yourself, wherever you are. That’s why space and time don’t make any difference. But if the master is still outside – an object of love – then certainly, space will make a difference, time will make a difference. The difference comes in through impurities, and the impurities are such that it is almost unavoidable in the beginning, because you cannot think of the desire for enlightenment as an impurity.In fact, for you the great love affair between the master and the disciple is happening only because of your longing for enlightenment. Naturally, when you are close you feel more confident. The closer you are, the more you feel the presence of the master. The further you go away, your confidence starts shaking because the master is still only a means to a certain end.The day Gautam Buddha died…there were ten thousand disciples who always followed him on his long journeys. In that great crowd of disciples, there were people like Sariputta, Maudgalyan, Mahakashyapa, Manjushri, Vimalkirti, and many more who had already become enlightened, who had already crossed the barrier between the master and the disciple, who had entered into the world of the devotee.When Gautam Buddha died it was a great shock to everyone – even to his closest disciple, Ananda; he burst into tears. He was older than Gautam Buddha – Buddha was eighty-two; Ananda must have been nearabout eighty-five or even more – he burst out just like a small child whose mother has died. But Manjushri, Vimalkirti and Sariputta remained utterly silent, as if nothing was happening, or whatever is happening does not matter.Many disciples were shocked by the coldness of Sariputta and others – they could not understand. They could understand Ananda bursting into tears; in fact, they thought that Ananda was the most intimate. And Sariputta and Maudgalyan and Mahakashyapa – they were sitting silently. People asked them, “When Ananda is crying, why are you silent?”Sariputta said, “Because for me, my master can never die. Death cannot make us apart. He has only left the body, but he is here; my heart is still feeling – in fact, feeling more than ever – his presence.”And the same was the answer of the other enlightened disciples…not a single tear in their eyes. They were not hard, they were not cold. They had simply crossed the barrier between the master and the disciple. Either you can say they had entered into the master’s consciousness, or you can say they had allowed the master’s consciousness to enter into them. It means the same thing: the two had disappeared; now there was only one.People’s understanding was absolutely wrong that Ananda, who had burst into tears, must have loved the master more. Asked, he said, “I am crying because he was alive, and for forty-two years I have been his most intimate disciple – intimate in the sense that I was always with him. In these forty-two years not even for a single day was I separate; even in the night I used to sleep in his room, just to be present in case he needed something. I am not crying because I was the most intimate, I am crying because even with such a long physical intimacy I have remained separate from him. Something has remained like a barrier.”Gautam Buddha was not dead yet. He had closed his eyes, and he was relaxing into the eternal. He came back, opened his eyes, and said to Ananda, “Don’t be worried. It was my presence and your love towards me that was the barrier, because your love was motivated. You wanted to become enlightened before anybody else, and you were always deep down jealous when other people were coming to their potential, coming to their source.“Deep down you felt hurt that you were so close and yet others were becoming enlightened who had come after you. You could not rejoice in their enlightenment. You could have rejoiced, you could have celebrated, but your mind was focused on your own enlightenment – you were too much. And your unconscious continued from the very first day, holding on to the idea that you are a cousin-brother to me, and my elder brother.“Although, after the first day you never mentioned it, still the psychological memory was there. Consciously, deliberately you became a disciple, but unconsciously you always knew that you were the elder brother; you could not dissolve with me. But don’t cry, because the moment I am dead, within twenty-four hours you will become enlightened. Without my death, you cannot become enlightened.”Ananda still could not console himself. He said, “After twenty-four hours you will not be here. To whom am I to say whether I have become enlightened or not? And I don’t know when in the eternity of time I will meet a man like you – a consciousness so great and so vast.”Buddha said, “Don’t be worried; it is going to happen. I was watching continuously. I was myself puzzled why it was not happening to you. You want it too much.”And these are the problems: wanting enlightenment too much, and you will miss it; holding the desire anywhere in your unconscious to achieve it, you will not achieve it.Relaxing, forgetting all about enlightenment, forgetting all about the future, living in the present, your love will attain to a crystal clear purity, undefiled by any desire, even the greatest desire of enlightenment.Then you will not feel the distinction between the master and yourself; then you can carry the master within your heart. Then wherever you are, your master is with you. The duality is dropped; the two flames have become one. It is not your flame, it is not the master’s flame – when those two flames become one, they become universal. In separation, you are a disciple and there is a master – in becoming one, the disciple disappears, the master disappears; what remains is only a pure awareness.The transformation of love into pure awareness is the alchemy one has to learn by being close to a master. By being close to a master you can enjoy the warmth, his presence, his words, his heartbeat. But as you go far away you will not be able to listen to the same heartbeat; you will be again yourself – back to zero. You will hear the heartbeat but it will be your own. Close to the master you are overwhelmed.The secret to learn is to purify your love.Drop all ambitions.There is nothing to be achieved.All that you want is already present in you. The master is not going to give you anything that you don’t have. In fact, the master goes on taking away things which you think you have but you don’t have. And the master cannot give you, of course, that which you have. He can only take away all the barriers, all the hindrances, all the obstacles, so only that which is your own, remains behind. In that unpolluted space, the distinction between the master and the disciple is no more. That does not mean that you don’t feel grateful to the master. In fact, only after this has happened, you feel for the first time a tremendous gratitude.Sariputta was going very reluctantly on a message tour. Buddha had asked him to go to his own kingdom – he was a prince before he became a disciple. Buddha said, “Now it is your responsibility and your compassion to go to your people – to your father, to your mother, to your whole kingdom. What you have achieved, let them become aware of it. It is their potential too; share it.”He was very reluctant to leave. Buddha said, “What is the reluctance? – because now I am within you. I am sending you away, knowing perfectly well that you will not feel any distance.”Sariputta said, “Distance is not the question. I can go to the farthest star, still you will be within my heart. The trouble is, here I touch your feet every day. You may be in my heart, but how am I going to touch your feet?”Gautam Buddha said, “You are an enlightened being. You don’t have to touch my feet.”Sariputta said, “Before enlightenment, it was a ritual. Just because every disciple was touching your feet, I was touching also. But now it is no longer a ritual. Now it is authentic gratitude, because without you I don’t think I would have attained to myself. Although it was always within me, I don’t think that alone I was able to discover it – not at least in this life.“Your compassion, your love, your continuous showering of blessings slowly, slowly removed all that was not me. Now when I touch your feet it is not a ritual, it is a heartfelt nourishment. I feel nourished. The day I miss touching your feet, I feel a great gap. And I know that you are within me.”Buddha said, “Do one thing. All you who have become enlightened will have to learn to be away from me, and yet not away from me. It is true you cannot touch my feet, but from wherever you are just turn towards the side you think I am and bow down to the earth. My body belongs to the earth. If you touch the earth with the same gratitude, you have touched me.”Sariputta went away. And the people of his kingdom could not believe it; he had become such a glory, such a magnificence, such a beauty. All this was miraculous, but their curiosity was that every day – morning, evening – he would turn towards the direction where Buddha was dwelling far away, and touch his feet with tremendous gratitude. They said, “You are an enlightened being; you don’t have to touch the earth.”He said, “I am not touching the earth. I have learned a new secret, that the body is nothing but earth, that the earth contains not only the feet of my Buddha, my master, but all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future. Touching it, I am touching all those who have become awakened and made the path clear for me, showed me the way.”Even when Buddha died, he continued…towards the same direction where Buddha’s body was lying at the last moment. He never felt any separation. And it was not only for him, it was the same for all twenty-four disciples who had become enlightened.Ananda became – just according to the prediction of Gautam Buddha – enlightened after twenty-four hours. He in fact did not move from the place. He closed his eyes when Buddha died and remained without eating, without drinking, without sleeping. Those twenty-four hours were the greatest time of his life, a time of transformation from an ignorant being into an awakened soul. He opened his eyes only when the tears had disappeared and a smile had come to his face.Manjushri was close to him. He said, “What happened? You were crying; you were sitting as if dead, and suddenly you are smiling.”Ananda said, “I am smiling because his prediction proved right. It was the impurity of my love that was the hindrance. And now he is gone, there is no question of feeling like his elder brother, of feeling any attachment. In his funeral pyre, as his body disappeared into the smoke, all my attachments also disappeared.”It is not necessary that I have to be on a funeral pyre before you can become enlightened. I can be if you need it. One day I will be, but it will be far more beautiful if the day I am on the funeral pyre, you are without tears. As I disappear from the body you know I have become more involved deeply within you, within the whole existence.Osho,Help! I am falling to pieces! Is it just my monthly premenstrual emotional turmoil? This time it feels more like an emotional deep cleaning. All these tears and pains seem to remove something old to make space for something new, even though I have no idea what it is. I feel excited and scared at the same time, and I don't know what to hold on to anymore.Osho, what is happening?A purification is happening. It has nothing to do with your monthly period. It may be coincidence that both are happening together, but because you have been capable of dropping your miserable relationship, which very few people are capable…Look at Latifa – old great Om is back! It took me so much trouble to separate them…because both were miserable, but misery is something at least to hold on to. Both must have been feeling very alone without misery.Misery functions almost like a magnet. People complain about it, but not really to get rid of it; they complain about it just to brag about it. They are really saying, in fact without saying, “Don’t think I am alone; I am miserable!” And because misery hurts, they are in a dilemma: if they leave the misery, that means leaving the miserable relationship. Then they feel very lonely, and then they are reminded of the Western proverb – and nothing is more miserable – “Something is better than nothing.” At least there was something to talk about, to question, to figure out – and now you are just sitting in your room doing nothing.Ginsberg returned home from a trip abroad on business to find out that his wife had been unfaithful. Very upset, he interrogated his wife, “Was it that dung heap Goldsberg?”“No.”“Was it that pile of filth, Levensky?”“No.”“Was it that swine, Morrie Levy?”“No.”Finally Ginsberg exploded, “What’s the matter with my friends? Not good enough for you?”People are so attached to misery they are searching and looking for it. You are in a beautiful space. Just remember not to miss, that you don’t have anything to hold on to – there is no need. Why should one have something to hold on to? Are you a passenger in a commuter bus, that you have to hold on to something? And even if you want to hold on to something, avoid for the time being, human beings; otherwise, they will start the same old story again.With great difficulty you have been able to finish a miserable relationship. Rejoice in it. And as far as holding on is concerned, anything…a teddy bear! And don’t laugh, because you know the great bodyworker, Satyarthi? He still holds on to a teddy bear. He cannot go to sleep without his teddy bear. And it is an old dirty teddy bear, an old relationship, ancient friendship, from his very childhood…he has become greasy! He may be wanting to escape, but Satyarthi is holding on and he has strong hands. His art is deep massage, and I think he must be doing that massage to the teddy bear.An outdoor man who had gone on hunting expeditions all over the world – always accompanied by his wife at her insistence – told his troubles to a friend one day.“Yes sir,” said the hunter, “I’ve taken that woman into the jungles of Africa, the jungles of Borneo, and the jungles of Malaya. The only trouble is, she always finds her way back!”So, it is good. Hold on to anything. Keep the doors closed because the old misery may come back, the old miserable fellow will be also in the same space – what to hold on to? Strange ideas…because I have lived my whole life without holding anything, and I don’t see why you cannot.Just learn to live. It is just a habit; there are people who cannot sleep without their intimate enemy, because it is a ritual. First they have to fight – a good pillow fight, saying everything dirty that can be said to each other, and then, feeling tired, they fall asleep. Alone, one feels almost lost; one does not know who he is. But there is no need. It is only a question of giving a little time for your consciousness to become acquainted with aloneness.Once you are aware of the beauty of aloneness, the purity and the ecstasy of it, you will never think to hold on to anything. And a relationship is possible without holding on to each other. Then the relationship also has a beauty. You are not dependent on each other; the other is not a teddy bear; nor should you allow the humiliation of being a teddy bear for him.You stand as two pillars of a temple, separate but supporting the same roof. Your love is just like the roof: you are both supporting it, but you stand alone, in your beauty, in your silence, in your meditation.You are doing perfectly well. You ask me, “Osho, what is happening?” Nothing is happening, and that’s what is needed. This constant desire that something should happen keeps one unconscious: running after shadows, throwing parties, going from here to there, to this person, to that person, for something to happen. But just watch your whole past – has anything ever happened? One only deludes oneself that things are happening.Stop deluding yourself.All is perfectly good.There is no need for anything to happen.The moment you relax and you don’t desire for any happening, you will be surprised – millions of things are happening. So many birds are singing, so many trees are blossoming. Just get out of the imprisonment of your own making, and all around things are happening.The whole of existence is always in a celebration – participate in it. Dance with the trees, dance under the moon. Just for a few days, avoid human beings – I am saying just for a few days, just to give you a gap to become acquainted with the nonhuman existence around you. Otherwise, you become so miserable with human beings, you don’t have any time, nor do you have a clear eyesight. Everything becomes dismal and dizzy, and you cannot see the tremendous universe all around you, in eternal ecstasy.Be acquainted with this existence, and after this acquaintance and the bliss that will arise out of it, you can share it with a human being – and without holding, without any attachment, just being with a human being as if you are with a stranger. You don’t know who he is, nor does he know who you are – and there is any need to know. Let yourself be a mystery and let him be a mystery. It is good if you can have a few moments of joy and celebrate together, but the moment you see that holding starts, beware…you are getting back into the misery again.It does not matter with whom, holding on is the fundamental cause of all misery. If you can relate without any relationship, just a casual friendship, you will feel grateful. There was no need for it to happen, but still existence has allowed you to be with a stranger for a few hours or a few days. Don’t expect too much. That’s why I am saying a few hours, a few days – not even a few weeks. Because the more you expect, the more is the possibility to cling, to hold.One strange woman from the Philippines…I have never forgotten her; she is a sannyasin. She told me that after being in so-called relationships and always finding, strangely, that every relationship ends in hell, “I decided not to have any relationship, but only casual meetings with strangers.”She said, “I can tell it to you – I don’t say it to just anybody: In a train I meet somebody. I don’t know him; he does not know me – we enjoy the time together. And then a station comes – he gets out. And the moments have been beautiful while we were together. Now, perhaps we will never see each other, but those beautiful moments still go on lingering in the memory.”She said, “Since I learned that, I have been only with strangers. I have not even bothered to find out their names. I remember them only by their faces. And anyway there is no need to remember, because there is no possibility of meeting them again.” But I have seen that the woman has a tremendous freedom and a great beauty.Out of this understanding – of not creating a relationship but only moments of relatedness, friendship, or better only friendliness; not falling in love but only enjoying love without creating any bonds, without giving promises for tomorrow or taking promises for tomorrow – just live the moment joyfully. And when tomorrow comes it will also bring its own gifts.Whatsoever pains and tears you are passing through are all cleansing. And you can feel it, that something new is happening: “Even though I have no idea what it is.” There is no need to have any idea. Let it happen, because having an idea means again you make it a mind thing. Let it happen; it is a cleansing of the unconscious. And it is good that it is happening in your premenstrual emotional turmoil – that will clean your body and your mind, both together.Just wait…. Some stranger is bound to knock on your doors. Never be afraid of strangers, because everybody is a stranger. However long you have lived with a person, you remain strangers. And being with a stranger has a freshness. Never hold him, and never allow him to hold you. Make it clear: “Our meeting is out of freedom; freedom is a greater value to me than love. Because if love destroys freedom, it destroys itself; if love enhances freedom, it enhances itself.”Freedom is our most precious treasure. Don’t lose it for anything. And anything that comes out of it as an offshoot – love, friendliness – will have a great beauty to it, and will never create any misery; there is no point. The moment you see misery is arising, say good-bye; become strangers again as you have been before.One thing I have observed which is very difficult for human beings to maintain: either they can love or they can hate, but they cannot remain just strangers neither hating nor loving. Remember, hate is also a relationship. And if you are going to have a relationship then it is better to have love, because in the misery of love there may be a few moments which are beautiful. But in the misery of hate it is all dark night – no stars, no moon, no light, no possibility of anything; it is poisonous.These are the secrets to learn: Love, but keep as much apart as the pillars of a temple – don’t come too close. Being at a distance is always good; a fresh breeze can pass between you. Coming too close, the bad body odor, the bad breath…and there are a thousand and one things. Life unnecessarily becomes a continuity from one hell into another. Just the names change, but the reality of misery remains continuous.My vision of a good world is that people will be individuals, meeting with others, sharing their joy, their love, unconditionally. And not expecting that tomorrow also will be the same – they will remain aware of the constantly changing existence.Your love, your friendliness is also going to change. And when it changes don’t cling. Allow it to change. Be like a river, constantly moving; don’t become a pond.All marriages are ponds. They don’t go anywhere, they are simply there. Water is evaporating every day and they are becoming more and more dirty. One day there will be only dirt.The river is constantly flowing, and because it is constantly flowing, it remains always fresh. The freshness is in its flow.Your life should be like a river.And you will have to move through many scenes – why get caught up with one scene? Why go on reading the same page again and again and again? It is destructive. Once, it is beautiful – twice, it is dangerous. Keep your eyes fresh, and keep your consciousness available, available in both ways: to allow someone in and to allow someone out, with no hate but only gratitude.Slowly, slowly… Love is not the ultimate, it is just a training school for learning how to be alone. This togetherness is so painful that finally, even the most retarded learn that to be alone is the secret of being blissful.Even Niskriya has learned it! He is a silent fellow; he tolerated as long as possible. He has no time for anything except his work, but even to him it became a trouble and finally, he had to get rid of it. Since then, he is looking very happy. I have just been wondering how long he will remain happy. It is possible – he may remain happy – he has his camera to hold on to!So you can find something. Anything will do except a human being; these are the most dangerous animals around. Don’t get caught up. Unless you are certain that you are capable of getting out of any relatedness, don’t enter in.Keep the door open; don’t close it. And keep the future clean without any promises to be fulfilled.Osho,Since I started meditating four years ago my life has changed tremendously. Changes are happening; it is not that I have an insight and then I start doing something. This has been a time of waiting. There is a feeling that something wants to express itself, and that I have to allow it. Am I waiting for something to grow strong enough or am I just lazy? Or am I waiting for Godot?Beloved master, thank you for your being here.Things are growing.Since you started meditating, much water has gone down the Ganges, and much has changed in your consciousness. But don’t ask for more; let existence take its own time. Remember Ta Hui – the more you hurry, the more you are delayed. You cannot do anything better than existence is doing already. Simply leave yourself in the hands of existence.This relaxedness people have misunderstood always as laziness. It is not laziness. It looks like laziness to workaholics who cannot sit down, who have to do something because they are afraid the moment they stop doing something, they will have to know themselves. And that is their fear – who knows who they are? It is better to avoid the encounter.Relaxation is to be at ease. Whatever is happening to you is perfectly good.You say, “Since I started meditating four years ago my life has changed tremendously. Changes are happening, it is not that I have an insight and then I start doing something. This has been a time of waiting. There is a feeling that something wants to express itself, and that I have to allow it.” That’s how it should be. Your mind is worried about what is happening because what is happening is going to take all the functions of mind out of its control. Hence, the mind is creating questions: “Am I waiting for something to grow strong enough or am I just lazy? Or am I waiting for Godot?” You are not waiting for any Godot.Meditation is simply a waiting for the unknown, for the unpredictable, for the incomprehensible. And the more the waiting is pure, the more grace arises out of it. No hurry, no desiring, no expectations, just waiting and millions of things will happen. In fact, the things that are going to happen to a meditator are so vast you can not conceive of them, you can not have even dreamt of them; they are beyond the capacity of the mind to conceive.You just wait and let things happen to you – not according to you, but according to existence itself. Existence has not to be according to you; you have to be in tune with existence, according to existence.This is the only difference between the non-meditator and the meditator. The non-meditator always wants existence according to his ideas, and falls naturally into miserable states, because existence is too big; it cannot follow your ideas, your prayers, your expectations, your demands. The proverb is true that man proposes and God disposes – but there is no God to dispose. In fact, in the very proposal, you have disposed of it. You have created a failure for yourself because you wanted to succeed.So there is nothing to expect, nothing to desire. Existence is so abundant that if you are simply waiting it starts showering flowers on you. A life of waiting, without any expectations, is the only religious life I know of.A Broadway bookie was given a parrot in lieu of cash payment. The bird’s vocabulary included choice phrases in English, French, Spanish and German. Sensing a winner, the bookie hauled the bird off to his favorite bar. “Speaks four languages,” he said to the bartender, who snorted in disbelief. “Wanna bet this bird can speak four languages?” the bookie challenged.Annoyed, the bartender finally agreed to a ten-dollar wager. The bookie turned to the parrot and said, “Parlez-vous francais?” There was no response. On the street the bookie glared at the bird, “You fink!” he exclaimed, “I’ve got ten bucks riding on you and you clam up on me. I oughta strangle you.”“Don’t be a jerk,” the parrot replied. “Just think of the odds you’ll get tomorrow.”Just wait for tomorrow. My own experience is, every day brings so much that when I think retrospectively I cannot conceive that I could have expected it – and it always brings in abundance! Existence is so compassionate and so sharing, but only to those who don’t demand. Desirelessness is the foundation of all great happenings.Just wait in trust and everything that existence has will be revealed to you.The Lone Ranger is about to be hanged by rustlers who caught him spying on their camp. His only hope is Tonto who managed to escape and go for help. As the bandits are putting the noose around the Lone Ranger’s neck, he sees three horses approaching at a gallop. Sure enough, as they get closer, he can see that it is Tonto on the first horse, but he can’t make out who the other two riders are.The Lone Ranger finally sees that Tonto is riding with two beautiful naked women. The riders burst into the robbers’ camp and Tonto rides up to the Lone Ranger saying, “Kemosabe, I have returned with the people you asked me to get.”“Tonto, you idiot,” says the Lone Ranger, “I told you to go get a posse!”It is better not to ask for anything; otherwise, there is always frustration.Don’t ask, and you will be fulfilled.Just trust silently and wait, and miracles are always happening to the meditators. The greatest miracle is the revelation of the mystery of oneself.You are perfectly on the right path. Beware of your mind – it will try to disturb you, to distract you, to create doubts. Just put it aside. This great affair has nothing to do with the mind.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,George Gurdjieff has said: “You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape.”What are the prisons that I call “home”?George Gurdjieff is one of the most significant masters of this age. He is unique in many ways, nobody has said things in the contemporary world the way Gurdjieff has said them. He is almost like another Bodhidharma or Chuang Tzu, apparently absurd but in reality giving great pointers towards the liberation of human consciousness.You are asking about one of his significant statements. He often used to say, “You are in prison.” Sometimes he went even more deeply into the reality of it, and instead of saying, “You are in prison,” he would say, “You are the prison.” That is more true.If you wish to get out of prison – or better to say, if you don’t want to be a prison – the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison, or that you are the prison. For any seeker of truth, this is something to always remember as one of the first principles.The tendency of the human mind is to deny those things which are ugly, to hide those things which he does not want others to know – and to hide them in such a way, in such depths of the unconscious that even he himself becomes unaware of them. This way he maintains his superficial personality.Gurdjieff had a story about it…There was a magician who used to live in faraway deep forests. He had many sheep because they were his only food. He kept all the sheep in the deep forests just to kill them – day by day, one by one. Naturally, the sheep were very afraid of the man, and they used to run off into the forest, afraid that any day can be their day. Their friends were gone – there is no certainty – tomorrow they may be gone. Out of fear they used to go far away, deep into the forest. And to find them every day was a tedious job.Finally, the magician did a trick. He hypnotized all the sheep and told them, “You are an exception, everybody else may be killed but you can never be killed. You are no ordinary sheep, you have a divine privilege.” To some he said, “You are not sheep at all: you are lions, you are tigers, you are wolves; only sheep are killed. You need not hide yourself in the forest – that is very embarrassing, a lion hiding himself in the forest out of fear that he will be killed – only sheep are killed.” And in this way he managed to hypnotize all the sheep, in different ways.He even said to a few sheep, “You are men, human beings, and human beings don’t kill each other. You are just like me. Never be afraid and never escape out of fear.” Since that day, no sheep escaped or hid in the forest, although they all saw every day that one sheep was being killed, slaughtered. But naturally everybody thought, “That must be a sheep: I am a tiger, a lion, a human being. I am special and exceptional, I have a divine privilege.” So many different stories he put into their minds.Gurdjieff says that unless you realize the first thing: that you are in prison, that you are the prison, then there is no hope for freedom. If you believe that you are already free, you are a hypnotized sheep who believes he is a lion – exceptional, with no need to be afraid – who even believes he is a human being. He goes on seeing other sheep being killed, and still remains in a hypnotized state, never aware of his actual situation. To be free, if you already know that you are free, there is no problem.All the religions together have, perhaps unintentionally, created a tremendous hypnotic state. People believe they have immortal souls. I am not saying that they don’t have, I am simply saying that they don’t know what they are believing. And because they believe they have an immortal soul, they never discover that they already have it. They have been told, “You are the very kingdom of God,” and it is so comfortable and so consoling to believe. But then there is no way to seek and search and find whether your hypothetical belief has any truth to it, or is just a hypnotic trick used by the society to keep you unafraid of death, to keep you unafraid of disease, old age, to keep you unafraid of your loneliness.Your God may just be a psychological hypnosis. It is not your discovery – that is true, that much is absolutely true. It has been implanted in your mind, and because you go on believing in it, your belief prevents any adventure in seeking the truth.Ordinarily, you have been told continually that unless you believe, you will not find. But the truth is just the opposite. Belief is a barrier, it is not a bridge. Those who believe never find because they never even begin the search, there is no need.You are in prison and you think you are free. You are in chains but you think they are ornaments. You are a slave but you have been told that you are humble, that you are simple, that this is the way a religious person should be. You are surrounded by many hypnotic strategies society has developed down the ages. And those hypnotic strategies are the root cause of your ignorance, of your misery, of your unenlightened state.So the first thing to realize is that you are in prison. The moment you recognize that you are in prison, you can no longer tolerate the prison. Nobody can tolerate it, it goes against human dignity. You will start looking for ways to get out of it. You will start looking for people who have already got out of it. You may start seeking and searching for outside help beyond the walls, because beyond the walls there are people ready with every kind of help. But they are absolutely helpless if you believe that you are living in absolute freedom.If you believe this imprisonment is your home, then of course it is absolute nonsense even to think of getting rid of it. The wall that keeps you a prisoner, you think is a protection. Then there is no question of making a hole in the wall and getting out, or finding a ladder, or taking some help from the outside. A rope can be thrown from the outside, a ladder can be arranged from the outside, but this is possible only if the basic thing, that you are in prison, is recognized. George Gurdjieff consistently insisted, “This is a basic realization. Without it there is no progress towards enlightenment. If you think you are free, you can’t escape.”“What are the prisons that I call ‘home’?” All so-called homes are nothing but prisons because they don’t give you freedom, they only give you security, safety, and instead they take away your very being, your freedom, your joy, your dance. But certainly they give you security, safety – and naturally you have to pay for it.The price you have to pay is immensely high in comparison to what you get. You have to sell your very soul. But then what is the point of safety and security? You were searching for security and safety for your being, and in the very search you have sold your being. Now you are secure and safe, but what is the point? For whom is the safety and security? It does not serve you, it serves those who have managed to convince you, “If you give your soul, your being, we will take care – then you need not be worried, then we are responsible for your safety and security.”The moment you give up your responsibility, you give up everything. Then you are just an empty shell, without any meaning and without any essence. Your homes are nothing but beautiful prisons – made by you, decorated by you. You think they are protecting you; they are destroying you. Certainly they protect you from the rains and they protect you from the winds and they protect you from the sun, but for these trivia they destroy you completely. You lose all joy, you lose all freedom, you lose all sense of direction. You lose the very purpose you are here for. You get lost in your own home.You become too concerned about the furniture and about the decorations, and you forget yourself completely. This forgetfulness is a kind of deep psychological sleep.Your wife, your husband, your children – nobody is yours. All are man-made arbitrary relationships, even your own children are not your own. They come through you, they don’t belong to you. You belong to the past, they belong to the future. There is no connection, there is no relationship; hence, as man has become more and more intelligent a great generation gap has come into being.One great Russian novelist, Turgenev, has written a book – perhaps his best, his masterpiece – Fathers And Sons. The whole book is about the struggle between fathers and sons, because fathers would like the sons just to be their replicas. Naturally, they will not allow them any freedom. They expect obedience; they expect their sons to be their carbon copies.Even God the Father was expecting obedience and nothing else, what to say about ordinary fathers? He was angry because of disobedience, and his anger was too great in comparison to the disobedience. The disobedience was created by him. He provoked it; he created the curiosity in the children, Adam and Eve, to eat from certain trees by preventing them – that is the easiest way.I lived in a place; just next to me was a very beautiful house, with a very big garden and compound, with a big wall surrounding it. And in India, such places are used as urinals. A good wall and immediately you feel the urge. And the man was very angry. He was a retired general. He asked me what to do: “It is strange because there are so many houses, but people go on urinating around my house.”I said, “The reason is that you have not put any notices up.”He said, “What kind of notice?”I replied, “Just put a few notices around, all over the wall: ‘Don’t Urinate Here.’”He said, “That’s a good idea.”He called a painter and wrote all over the wall, with big letters: “Don’t Urinate Here.” And from that day anybody who passed by from that road had to urinate! It was such an invitation, otherwise one might not have been reminded. But, “Don’t Urinate,” and suddenly you feel that this is the right place. You can see so many marks where people have already urinated. And the signs on the wall certainly show that the owner knows that people urinate here; otherwise, what is the need of putting such signs?In one of the capital cities of India, Bhopal, I was surprised to hear that people have to put small signs even in their sitting rooms: “Don’t Spit Here,” because that is the only city in India where people spit anywhere. Even in the sitting room it is common practice. And those signs don’t prevent anybody from doing it. When I saw this I told the doctor with whom I was staying, “I have never seen such instructions anywhere else in India. And here in your city, in every house – how did it start?”He said, “I don’t know.”I said, “Somebody must have first put up a sign, spitting must have come afterwards.” It is a temptation.In the Garden of Eden, so many trees – and God indicated a particular tree: “This is the tree of knowledge. Never eat the fruit from it.” There was no need of any serpent to convince Eve, God convinced her himself; he is the serpent. And then the punishment for it is unbelievable. Even today we are suffering because Adam and Eve disobeyed.Religions have created all kinds of crimes in the mind of man just by prohibiting them. They have also created ideas which prevent man from doing any searching. They say, “Believe,” and belief is cheap. You don’t have to do anything. Gurdjieff had to go to such an extent that he started saying to people, “You don’t have souls. It is a wrong idea implanted in you by religions that everybody has a soul.”He had to say such a thing just to wake you up to search whether it is true or not; otherwise, everybody was perfectly asleep. What is the need to search? You already have it, God is within you. So do other things which, if you don’t do, you will not get: become a president, prime minister, become the richest man in the world, conquer the world because these things will not happen on their own. As far as God is concerned you already have him; he is within you, you don’t have to go anywhere. Any day, any rainy day when you can’t go anywhere to conquer the world, and you don’t have anything else to do – to fix the mechanics of your car, or to fix your wall clock, or to fix your radio or television even though they are functioning perfectly well, but you don’t have anything else to do. Any day, when you don’t have anything to do, you can search for God. He is within you, in your pocket.Gurdjieff is perhaps the only man in the whole history who insisted against all religions that you don’t have a soul, that a soul has to be created; then you have it. You are not born with it, you are born only with the possibility. If you make a great effort, perhaps you may achieve it. Otherwise most people are born and die; there is no soul that survives.He was telling a compassionate lie. He was not right, but I cannot say that he was telling the lie for any other reason than compassion. It is true you are born with a soul, but it has become such an accepted fact that you don’t even look within yourself. Somebody needs to shatter your idea that you are born with a soul, to tell you that inside you are just empty, hollow. Perhaps this may shake you up, wake you up. Perhaps this may give you the idea to look inside at least once, if there is a soul or you have been deceived.George Gurdjieff helped more people in this century than anybody else because he created a great longing: “Don’t die before you have created a soul, otherwise nothing will survive your death. Crystallize your being so that death cannot destroy it. But you are not born with it, you have to create it.”The idea of all the religions, although true, has not been helpful, it has become a hindrance. Gurdjieff’s compassion is great. All the religions were against him, obviously because that is the one point they all agree on – that everybody is born with a soul. But Gurdjieff’s point is more psychological, and more effective in creating liberation. He says you are just empty, and you will remain empty unless you make the effort, with a determined will, to create a center within you. There is possibility, potential, but you have to make it an actuality. His insight was great.Since Gurdjieff, people have forgotten it completely. He was alive just thirty years ago and within thirty years people have forgotten this great teacher who was compassionate enough even to lie; just to shock you, just to create an opening in you so that you can start searching whether what all the religions have been saying has any truth in it or not.The first thing he says is to realize you are in prison. The first thing that can also be said is: you have to realize that you are not yet. You have to be. You are a seed, but you have to find the right soil, and nobody else can do it for you. If you go on depending on priests and your so-called saints, you will miss this great opportunity that life has given to you. And one does not know whether you will get a second chance or not. It has to be made emphatically clear to you that there is a possibility that once missed, you have missed it forever.Gurdjieff created great turmoil in a few intelligent people, and he put them to great work in finding themselves. I don’t agree with George Gurdjieff as far as his methods are concerned, but as far as this statement is concerned I agree totally. It is simply a psychological fact.There are people who believe they are intelligent. In fact, it is very difficult to find somebody who believes he is unintelligent. If you can find somebody who believes he is unintelligent, there is a possibility for him to be intelligent. But for all those who already believe they are intelligent, you can’t help them. And certainly this whole humanity is not intelligent. Their actions show it, their behavior shows it, their misery shows it – it shows nothing but their retardedness.But their belief is that they are geniuses – life is just not giving them the right opportunities to show their talents; otherwise, they could have been Picasso, or Sartre, or Bertrand Russell, or Martin Buber; there is no problem. It is just because life is preventing them, otherwise they have everything. It is not so.Now education is universal, particularly in advanced countries, but even universal education does not create universal geniuses. Everybody is educated but even that does not give you the same talent. Man is living in a kind of half-awake and half-asleep state, and it is very easy to believe that you are great – great in intelligence, great in beauty, great in everything – rather than finding greatness, creating greatness because that will require effort, tremendous effort. Enlightenment is the ultimate intelligence. If you already believe you are intelligent, you have stopped yourself from growing.Just watch exactly where you are. Be very impartial about judging yourself. See exactly, even if it hurts, that you are a slave – of some political ideology, of some religious theology, of some racial stupidity. Just watch and be very impartial and objective about yourself, and you will find what Gurdjieff calls your prisons. Once you recognize your prisons, it is not difficult to get out because they are your own creations.Bernstein died and went to hell. The receptionist asked, “Where do you want to go?”“Do I have a choice?” asked the surprised Bernstein.“Certainly! This anteroom is surrounded by closed doors. Just listen at each one and decide which you want to enter.”Bernstein listened at the first door and heard horrible shrieks of agony. He went to the second, then the third always hearing screams, cries and yells. Finally, at the seventh door he heard nothing but gentle murmuring.He said quickly, “I’ll take this one.”The door was flung open and he was propelled inside. He found himself up to his lower lip in a vast sea of shit. With him were millions of others, standing on tiptoe, muttering, “Don’t make waves! Don’t make waves!”Whatever you have made your life, is your own choice. Even in hell you have a choice – everywhere you have a choice. Your life is your own creation. Once you recognize it, then every change is possible.Churchill’s commentary on man was: “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” Man is a very strange animal, strangest of all the animals you see. He goes on believing in things which are not, he goes on believing in things which he has not. He never makes any effort, even to find out one very fundamental thing: who he is, from where he comes, and what his destiny is, where he is going.People discuss all kinds of things, and people read about all kinds of things, but generally they never bother about themselves. It seems they take themselves for granted, and that’s what Gurdjieff wants to stop. Don’t take yourself for granted. Look inside, search for who you are and whether you are or if there is just emptiness and something has to be done to bring the seed to sprout, to take care of the seed so that one day it can blossom.Sinking uneasily into the depths of the psychiatrist’s couch, the patient sighed, “Doctor, I have a problem.” He loosened his collar and continued, “I’ve got one son in Harvard and another at Yale. I’ve just gifted them with twin Ferraris. I have a townhouse on upper Fifth Avenue, a summer home at East Hampton, and a sprawling ranch in Venezuela.”“Well,” smiled the psychiatrist, obviously impressed, “either I missed something or you really don’t have a problem.”“Doc,” the harried chap croaked, “I only make seventy-five dollars a week.”Naturally you will have problems. You make seventy-five dollars a week and you imagine all these things: two Ferraris, two sons – one at Harvard, one at Yale – a townhouse, a house in the hills, a big ranch in Venezuela, and seventy-five dollars a week! People create their problems. People are utterly poor in their consciousness, and go on believing that the kingdom of God is within. In your poor consciousness, you can have only a very poor God – seventy-five dollars a week. Your God is as rich as your consciousness is because God is another name for your consciousness.Osho,How to be aware, especially during anger? This feeling is so strong it comes always like thousands of wild horses running. I am really tired of it! Can you help me, again?You have the simplest problem, you are making too much out of it, “…like thousands of wild horses running.” That much anger would have burned you. From where do you bring thousands of wild horses?I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was having an interview to be employed on a ship, and there were three officials interviewing. One officer said, “A great cyclone, tidal waves, and the ship is almost sinking – what will you do?”Mulla said, “No problem. I will do what is technically right. I will stop the ship and lower down a heavy support.”The other officer said, “But another tidal wave is coming, and the ship is just going to sink. What are you going to do?”Mulla said, “The same – I will lower down another heavy support, every ship carries them.”The third officer said, “But another tidal wave…”And Mulla said, “You are unnecessarily wasting my time. I will do the same – lower down a heavy support to make the ship stable against the tidal wave.”The first official asked, “From where are you getting all these heavy supports?”Mulla said, “It is strange. From where are you getting these tidal waves? – from the same source! If you can imagine, why can’t I imagine? You go on bringing as many tidal waves as you want, and I will go on lowering heavier and heavier supports. Anyway, the ship has to be saved. It is not a question from where – you know from where you are bringing those tidal waves.”Anger is a very small thing. If you can just wait and watch, you will not find “thousands of wild horses,” if you can find even a small donkey that will be enough. Just watch it and it will go, slowly. It will enter from this side and will go out from the other side. You just have to have a little patience not to ride on it.Anger, jealousy, envy, greed, competitiveness – all our problems are very small, but our ego magnifies them, makes them as big as it can. The ego cannot do otherwise; its anger has also to be great. By its great anger, and great misery, and great greed, and great ambition it becomes great.But you are not the ego, you are only a watcher. Just stand by the side and let all the thousands of horses pass, let us see how long it takes for them to pass. There is no need to be worried. As they come – they are wild – they will go. But we don’t miss even a small donkey, we immediately jump on it. You don’t need thousands of wild horses, just a small thing and you are full of anger and fire. You will laugh about it later on, at how stupid you were.If you can watch without getting involved, as if it is something on the screen of a movie theater or on a TV screen – something is passing – watch it. You are not supposed to do anything to prevent it, to repress it, to destroy it, to pull out a sword and kill it because where will you get the sword from? – from the same source as the anger is coming. It is all imagination.Just watch, and don’t do anything for or against. And you will be surprised, that which was looking very big, becomes very small. But our habit is to exaggerate.A small boy comes running home and tells his mother – he is not more than three years old: “Mum, a great lion, roaring loudly, was running after me for miles! But somehow I managed to escape. Many times he came very close. He was just about to attack me when I started running faster.”The mother looked at the boy and said, “Tommy, I have told you a million times not to exaggerate! How can you find a lion in the city, and you have been running for miles? Where is the lion?”The boy looked outside the door. He said, “He is standing there. But, to tell you the truth it is just a small dog – very small! But when it was running after me, it appeared… You tell me not to exaggerate, and right now you have been exaggerating that you have told me millions of times.”Our minds are very exaggerating. You have small problems, and if you can stop exaggerating and just look, then by the door a poor small dog is standing. And there is no need to run miles; your life is not in danger.When anger comes to you, it is not going to kill you. It has been with you many times before, and you have survived perfectly well. It is the same anger that you have been through before. Just do one thing new which you have never done. Every time you get involved with it, fighting; this time just watch, as if it does not belong to you, as if it is somebody else’s anger. And you are in for a great surprise: it will disappear within seconds. And when anger disappears without any struggle, it leaves behind a tremendously beautiful and silent and loving state.The same energy that could have become a fight with the anger is left within you. Pure energy is delight – I am quoting William Blake: “Energy is delight” – just energy, without any name, without any adjective. But you never allow energy to be pure. Either it is anger, or hate, or love, or greed, or desire. It is always involved in something; you never allow it in its purity.Every time anything arises in you, is a great chance to experience pure energy. Just watch, and the donkey will go. It may raise a little dust, but that dust also settles on its own; you don’t have to settle it. You simply wait. Don’t move from waiting and watching, and soon you will find yourself surrounded by a pure energy which has not been used in fighting, in repressing, or in being angry.Energy is certainly delight. Once you know the secret of delight, you will enjoy every emotion; and every emotion arising in you is a great opportunity. Just watch, and bring a shower of delight on your being. Slowly, slowly all these emotions will disappear; they will not come any more – they don’t come uninvited. Watchfulness, or alertness, or awareness, or consciousness, are all different names of the same phenomenon: witnessing. That is the keyword.Miss Johnson, the English teacher said, “Today we are going to do definitions. When you define something, you say what it is. Now, Wesley, will you define ‘unaware’?”Wesley replies “It’s the last thing I take off at night!”We are all living in such a situation! The poor boy must have heard “underwear.” Nobody is conscious, nobody is listening to what is being said.A young child was asked by the teacher, “What was the Polack pope’s first miracle?”A little boy said, “He made a lame man blind.”The Communist Party in Russia had a membership drive. The rules were as follows: Any communist who could recruit a new member would no longer have to pay dues. If he got two members he would be permitted to leave the party. And if he recruited three members, he would receive a certificate stating that he had never belonged to the party in the first place.It is such a strange world. If you are aware, then everywhere miracles are happening. But you don’t see miracles because rarely are you aware, very rarely. Most of the time you keep your eyes open; most of the time you don’t snore, but that does not mean that you are awake. It simply means that you are pretending to be awake. But deep inside are so many thoughts, so much confusion, so many wild horses, that how can you see anything? How can you hear anything? So although your eyes are open, they don’t see. And although your ears are open, they don’t hear.It is a strange phenomenon that God made eyes in a different way from ears. You cannot close your ears; you can close your eyes. You have eyelids to close, to open, but what about your ears? God never bothered to give little ear-lids because he knew you are so involved in the mind you don’t need them. Your ears are always deaf; you don’t hear, or you hear only what you want to hear.Bedfellows Rule: The one who snores will fall asleep first. Naturally!I have heard…A bishop was very angry at a man who was snoring loudly. He caught hold of him later on and told him, “It is not right! While I was giving the sermon, you were snoring.”The man said, “I am sorry. Next time I will take care.”The bishop said, “You have to take care because there were so many people asleep and you were disturbing them all. I am not worried about my sermon, I am worried about my congregation which was fast asleep. And you were snoring so loudly, you might have woken people up. They were having a morning nap after a tiring night, and I don’t want to disturb anybody. It is also a great help to me because I go on repeating the same sermon every Sunday. Otherwise I would have to prepare a new one again and again, and it is unnecessarily tedious. I have been using the same sermon for years – nobody objects because nobody has heard it.”Go into any church and you will find people fast asleep; it is a place to sleep, to have a little rest from the worldly affairs, from the world and its tensions. Man is asleep twenty-four hours as far as spirituality is concerned. And in your sleep you see anger, and you see greed and they become so magnified, so big that you get caught in their net very easily.A man who knows the simple art of watchfulness has a golden key. Then it does not matter whether it is anger, or greed, or sensuality, or lust, or infatuation. It may be any kind of disease, it doesn’t matter – the same medicine functions. Just watch, and you will be free of it. And watching, slowly, slowly as the mind becomes more and more content-less, one day mind itself disappears. It cannot remain without anger, without fear, without love, without hate – all these are absolute necessities for mind to exist.By watching, you are not only getting rid of anger, you are getting rid of part of the mind. And slowly, slowly one day you are suddenly awake, there is no mind at all. You are just a watcher, a watcher on the hills. That is the most beautiful moment, the most glorious dawn. Only from then on does your real life begin.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am afraid – afraid of enlightenment. What is beyond enlightenment? What to do after the goal of living is reached? What do you aim for? It is like falling into a bottomless pit. You fall – no bottom, no goal. Then what do you aim for? What is beyond the goal?Cliff – obviously it is not my pilot Cliff, because the question does not show the guts of a pilot – but whoever you are you have raised very significant questions. I am saying questions because there are many. You have condensed them into a very small question.First you are saying, “I am afraid, afraid of enlightenment.” This can be taken as a general state of human mind; otherwise there is no reason why so few people have ever become enlightened. And those who have become enlightened have been shouting for centuries of its joy, its bliss; its ultimate truth, beauty; its eternity and its going beyond death. But the larger part of humanity has not paid any attention to it. Naturally, your question comes from the deepest core of humanity.It is not only your question, everybody is afraid of enlightenment. And the reason is clear why one is afraid: the fear is of losing yourself. For the same reason people are afraid of love; for the same reason people are afraid of trust; for the same reason they remain enclosed in all kinds of fears, miseries, anxieties and anguish, because at least these feel familiar. And one thing is certain, they don’t ask you to be lost. The more painful your life is, the more you are.Perhaps deep down you desire pain, you desire misery, you desire anguish, because that keeps you clearly defined. You are afraid of the same things for which you also have a longing. On the one hand, there is a longing to go beyond all fears, beyond all anxieties, beyond all suffering. But the problem becomes complex, because being beyond suffering you are also beyond yourself – you are the suffering. You are the prison, that’s why you are afraid to get out of it. On the contrary, you try to console yourself in every way, that “This is not a prison, this is my home.”So you are living in a dilemma: you want to go into the open sky and open your wings and fly across the sun. But on the other hand, you are afraid you may never be able to find the way back to your cozy, familiar space. Although it is painful you have become accustomed to it; although there is suffering it is like an old friend. The beyond invites you, calls you to take courage. But it also creates a trembling within you, because going out of the cozy circle of your misery and your hell, you know for certain – you may not be very conscious of it – that your so-called personality will melt away into the vast…just like any ice block.The fear is, is there something beyond your personality? You are not aware of it, you have never come across it – you have never met yourself. You know only the superficial that has been told to you. You don’t know on your own authority your essential, your inner. And of course nobody else can say anything about your inner. It is not available for observation; it is not available to be an object. Science cannot find it. Logic feels absolutely inadequate. Reason has not the wings to fly to the inner.Karl Marx used to say, “I will believe in God only if he is caught in a test tube and scientists unanimously declare that this is God – after dissection and autopsy to find whether he is really divine.” Karl Marx was representative of you all, of the wider humanity; he is saying, “How can I believe in God? Science has no proof for it.” And science has no proof either for your self. It can dissect you, it can cut you into as many parts as possible, but it will not find you; it will find only a dead corpse.Only very recently have geniuses become aware that what we have been doing in physiology, in biology, in medical sciences, is not right. The moment you take blood out of my body and then you test it, it is not the same blood that is flowing in my body. In my body it is alive, it has a life of its own; outside my body it is a dead thing. And you cannot conclude from the analysis of the dead about the living. You can take anything out of the human body, but the moment you take it out, you have taken it out as a dead thing. In the human body it was an organic, living, breathing, alive part.A few very sensitive medical surgeons have become aware of the fact that something has to be done about it, because in the medical colleges they go on studying the corpses, skeletons, to decide about living human beings – there is such a great logical fallacy. But they are also feeling impotent – how to approach life? All that they know is – their whole technology, their whole methodology is to know – the object, and you are not the object. Hence, science is never going to accept your living being – it is beyond its limits. Logic cannot accept, reason cannot accept, philosophy cannot accept.And your fear, on top of it all, is that nobody is there to give you a certainty that beyond your superficial personality there is something more. You will disappear as you are, and you will appear in your authentic reality. This is the fear. People are afraid of coming closer to each other, even in love; they keep each other at arm’s length. They want to come closer, but a fear…to be too close, you can be lost.With love, the problem is not so great – but going beyond your ordinary self, your accepted face that you have seen in the mirror, that others have told you is very beautiful, or is ugly…. All your knowledge about yourself is dependent on others’ opinions.I used to have a very beautiful professor, Professor S.S. Roy. Now he is retired from the Allahabad University as head of the philosophy department. In fact, he was the cause of my going to the university where he was teaching in those days. He insisted. And I could not say no to him; he loved me too much.One day we discussed…and every day we were discussing a thousand and one things. Our relationship as student and professor had got lost long before; it had become a very deep friendship. And he loved sharp arguments; he himself was a great logician. And I said the same thing to him, “Your idea of yourself is only a collection of opinions of others; you don’t know yourself.”He said, “You will have to prove it.”The next day I went to his wife – and she was very loving towards me because I was always going to their home. She knew that her husband had never been interested in any student in this way. I had become almost part of the family; I had spent many days there, whenever he wanted. He invited me many times to his home to discuss his doctoral thesis, which had been accepted by Cambridge University – he was working on the philosophy of Bradley in comparison to Shankara. Late into the nights we would go on discussing.I told his wife, “Tomorrow I am doing an experiment and you have to help me.” She was all willing. It was a small experiment. I told her, “When Professor Roy gets up in the morning, you have to say to him: What is the matter? Could you not sleep? Just hold his hand: Do you have a fever? You look so pale. And write down exactly what he says.”He said, “Who is looking pale? I am perfectly healthy. I have slept well and I don’t have any fever. What kind of idea have you got?”She said, “I was thinking to call the doctor.”He said, “Have you gone mad? When I am saying that I am perfectly okay…if there were fever I would know first. And I have seen my face in the mirror; there is no paleness or anything. Are you kidding or something?” She noted every single word the way he said it.I had talked with his gardener: “When he comes out to go to the university, just run and hold him, and tell him: You are wobbling, what is the matter? Are you feeling dizzy? And touching his hand, say: My God, you have fever!”And to the gardener, he said, “I could not sleep as deeply as I always sleep, and perhaps you are right. I am feeling a little dizzy. But I will go to the doctor.” The medical department was very close to the philosophy department. So he said, “I will go.”He used to walk; the distance was almost one mile. Next was the post office, and I had told the postmaster…and they were very close friends, because both were Bengalis. I had told the postmaster, “You be out when he comes by, and just say: Roy, I don’t think you should go to the university today; you need rest. You look almost a faded shadow of yourself. You don’t look to me…what has happened?”And to the postmaster he said, “I myself was thinking – should I go? I have never been absent. I have never taken any holiday, but perhaps I should go and inform the department that it is difficult, and go to the doctor and come back.”Just by his side used to live another professor, of economics, who had a beautiful car. And I had told him, “Tomorrow you should not come out of your house before Roy has passed the post office. Just watch, and then bring the car, and stop by his side and say to him, What is the matter, man? You come in. I will take you to the doctor, you are not in right condition to walk one mile.”And Roy said, “You are perfectly right. I was wondering that if somebody comes I can ask for a lift. You are so kind. I am feeling dizzy; I could not sleep the whole night. And I have a strange fever that does not show on the body, but I know there is something feverish inside…perhaps a brain fever? I looked in the mirror and my face looks absolutely white.” And he had said just the opposite to his wife just five minutes before!I told the professor of economics, Dr. Sahai, “The whole journey, go on talking about his sickness and tell him that it is old age, and not to be worried: It happens to everybody. Perhaps brain surgery…but don’t be worried, I am here just by your side. I will take care of your family. My feeling is that you need hospitalization.”And Roy said, “Hospitalization? I was thinking just a visit to the doctor will do.”The professor of economics said, “You are not taking the thing seriously. Perhaps you have a brain tumor or something; otherwise, why are you feeling dizzy, wobbly, and a fever which is not showing on your body? On the contrary, your body seems to be cold. It must be something to do with your brain. You have been working too hard on your doctoral thesis. And I have told you there is no need. You have a doctorate; there is no need for another doctorate from Cambridge. You are unnecessarily…and you are now old. You should recognize that there is a time when one can work, and there is a time one should understand how far one is capable of going.”And Roy said, “Perhaps you are right; I should drop that project. It is three-fourths complete – what a pity that I have to drop it; it is a great thesis.”Nobody had compared Shankara with Bradley, and both are very similar in their vision. But they were not acquainted with each other. Shankara was fourteen hundred years before Bradley, so there was no possibility for him to know about Bradley. Bradley was just in the beginning of this century, and even he was not aware of Shankara, because he was an original thinker. He was not interested in studying other philosophers; he was more interested to bring out his own ideas.But they have both come to the same conclusions.But Roy said, “Perhaps you are right – I should not put too much strain on myself.”And then I had told the peon in front of the department, who used to sit outside the department to give appointments and other things…he was a strong man. I told him, “You simply take Professor Roy in your hands. Even if he resists don’t worry. I promise you there will be no trouble for you.”He said, “If you promise, then there is no problem. So what do you want?”I said, “You should force him onto the sofa: Lie down! You are not in a state to walk or to sit, and I am going to call the doctor. And just note down what he says.”And when he forced him there was no resistance. He was very happy, and said to the peon, “I never thought that you were so kind. I needed to rest. Now you bring the doctor.”It was a very small, but very beautiful university – perhaps the most uniquely situated in the whole of India, on a hill above a vast lake, and so many lotus flowers, and thick, lush greenery all around the university. The doctor came, because he was just next door, and I had told him, “Be ready. Inject him with just pure water. Do all kinds of testing, and tell him, ‘You are not in a position to do any mental work for at least three months. I hope that the brain tumor will subside by itself if you don’t exert yourself. There will be no need for surgery, but one cannot be certain about such things, and I will have to talk to the head surgeon.’”And Professor Roy said, “You just bring your car and take me back home.” And the head of the department had not yet come, so he told the doctor, “I am not in a position to write; you write that I am not feeling well and I am going back home, and perhaps it will take some time for me to get myself together.” He signed the note, and you could see – his handwriting was very beautiful, but that day his signature was shaky.Back home, he slept the whole day. He could not eat anything; he said, “I have no appetite.” The wife became afraid about what kind of experiment I was doing. He was talking about a brain tumor, and surgery, and three months rest!And then I went and collected all the notes from everybody in serial number: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…and I went to Professor Roy. He was under a blanket – in hot summer! I said, “Just please read these notes.”He said, “I am not in a position…”I said, “Don’t be worried; I am in a position, I can read to you. From the very morning, these are your seven statements.”And when he heard his statements, he said, “You rascal!” He threw away the blanket and he said, “Hell to that brain tumor; I have nothing. I knew from the very beginning that it was a strange conspiracy! But I never thought about you, that you would do such a thing to me. You could have killed me! I have to phone to the head surgeon because he is to come to check me and decide whether I should rest or an immediate operation is needed!”I said, “No operation is needed; the operation is complete! This is what I wanted to prove to you, that you live by the opinions of others, you are not independent. You can’t trust even your own feeling that you are healthy. If so many people repeat something, you go on falling. Just look at your statements.”This is your personality – this is not your individuality. You cannot do such a thing with an individual who has a groundedness. The fear is because you don’t have any experience of your innermost being; all that you know about yourself is what people have said. And these are the people who don’t know anything about themselves – what can they know about you?Everybody is afraid of enlightenment, because who knows? Once your personality disappears maybe everything disappears. Then what is the point of such an enlightenment? It is better to remain unenlightened – at least you are. And death may come whenever it may come, but right now you are alive – why unnecessarily commit a suicide?Enlightenment appears to your personality as a suicide, and in fact it is a suicide. But the suicide of personality is the beginning of individuality. The death of your personality and ego is the birth of your real authentic being, of your immortality. You will have to gather courage, and remember Michel’s Rule for Prospective Mountain Climbers: The mountain gets steeper as you get closer to the top.So as you come closer to enlightenment – and that is the greatest mountain – it gets steeper, and more and more dangerous as you come close to the disappearance of your old personality with which you were so identified.But I tell you, I have survived. I have lost my personality; that’s why I am not at all concerned what people think about me. The whole world is against me, but they don’t even create a small stir in me. It does not matter whether they are against or for; it is their business, their problem. I know myself, and I know that what I am doing and what I am trying is intrinsically right. Nobody, just because they are in the majority, can destroy my truth.Truth has never been the opinion of the majority; it has always been an individual achievement. The majority is interested in crucifying the truth, but it is not ready to accept it.You can understand the psychology of it all. For two thousand years Christians have been thinking about Jesus and his crucifixion. And I am utterly disappointed with the whole two thousand years’ theology, because they have not looked at the psychology of the crucifixion. Why did people crucify Jesus? He had not done any wrong; he has not committed any crime. But the majority was turning against him because he was telling them, “Drop your ego; be humble. Drop your so-called false identity; just be nobody. Blessed are those who stand last in the line.”He was talking against the ambitious majority. They did not crucify Jesus, they crucified the truth that was hurting them and was making them afraid: if they become impressed by this man, there is a danger. They may lose half the bread in the hope of the whole bread, and there may not be any bread at all. It is better to keep the half and not to lose it in the hope of getting the whole. That is the majority’s mind.You say, “I am afraid – afraid of enlightenment.” It is natural, so don’t be serious about it. In a way, it is a good symptom – at least you have become interested in enlightenment; otherwise, you would not be afraid. Just go into the town and you will not find anybody…ask people, “Are you afraid of enlightenment?” And they will say, “Why should we be afraid?” They have never bothered about it. It is not a problem to them, they have never thought about enlightenment. They will think you are crazy. “Why should we be afraid of enlightenment?”Just the other day I was looking at a newspaper clipping. It was a statement against me, that the world is coming to an end but I seem to be the only person who is not going to change, who is still talking about enlightenment. As far as I am concerned, I take it as a compliment. When the world is coming to an end, this is the right moment.Take the risk; anyway it is going to end.Why not take a chance and become enlightened?The world is coming to an end – you will end with it. So now there is no fear: before the world ends, end your personality, and at least you will be saved. The world may end, but you will not end. And the person who has criticized me is right. I will go on insisting. My insistence will become more and more powerful as the end of the world comes near, to make more and more people interested in enlightenment because there is no problem about losing; you can put the fear aside.The fear is a good symptom – it means you have become interested in enlightenment and your mind is trembling. You have become interested in the great adventure, the great affair, and your small personality is worried that this is the end. As for the small personality, which consists only of public opinions, it is going to dissolve – naturally.It is said that every river before entering the ocean stops for a while and looks back – a moment of hesitation about what she is going to do. Ahead is the vast ocean, in which she is going to be lost. Back, she had a personality of her own – her own mountains, valleys, forests. The whole journey, long journey, maybe thousands of years, thousands of miles… Naturally, it is understandable to hesitate for a moment. But I have never seen any river go backwards. You can hesitate, but you cannot go backwards.Cliff, you have come to the cliff! You have to take the jump. Only by taking the jump will you prove your mettle.“What is beyond enlightenment?” First things first! Out of fear you are thinking that it seems enlightenment is bound to happen; now be clear what is going to happen after it – “What is beyond enlightenment?”Beyond enlightenment is all – the whole universe. Beyond enlightenment you are no more a small dewdrop, you are the ocean.“What to do after the goal of living is reached?” You are not supposed to do anything. I can see all your concerns are very human. You know one thing, that now you cannot avoid enlightenment; you may be afraid, but you have to take the jump. Naturally, you are asking, “What is beyond enlightenment?” And even if something is there – “What to do after the goal of living is reached?”You have never thought about what you have done as far as your birth is concerned – have you done anything? What are you doing as far as your life is concerned? Do you think you are breathing? If it was up to you to breathe, you would have been dead long before; just in anger, or in some love affair, you would forget to breathe. Or in the night, will you sleep or not? Or keep yourself awake just to continue breathing, because if you fall asleep and breathing stops, in the morning who is going to get up? No, breathing you are not doing.Existence is breathing.What are you doing as far as your inner structure of life is concerned? Do you digest? Are you responsible for changing food into blood, into bones, into marrow? These are not your concerns. Your concern ends with the taste buds, and the moment the food is swallowed it goes into the hands of existence; it is no more your concern.One day try to be continuously aware what is happening in your stomach, and then you will have a good disturbed stomach for at least one week! Your consciousness is not needed, the stomach is doing its work on its own. Your brain consists of seven million cells, and each cell is doing its own function, and you are not needed – they don’t even ask your advice. Has any part of your body stopped you sometime and asked you, “What to do? – I am at a loss?” They are never at a loss; they are part of the cosmic organism. They have an inbuilt process; they go on doing their things.The moment you become enlightened and disappear into the ocean, you will not be asked to do something – to type, or to dig, or to prepare piesta…or is it pizza! You are not supposed to do anything; you are gone. Now the universal force has taken possession of you. Things will be happening, but they will not be your doing.“What do you aim for?” You have reached beyond aim. Aim is a concern of the ego. The ego cannot exist without an aim – some ambition, some desire, some infatuation, something to be achieved tomorrow.The ego is a tension between today and the future. The moment there is no ego, there is no tension. You simply live in a state of let-go.Then, wherever the river takes you, wherever the life force takes you, you simply go. It is not your goal; you have become part of the whole. Now whatever is the goal of the whole…and I don’t think there is any goal. The whole is perfectly happy in singing and dancing and enjoying; in flowers, in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, in the stars. There is no goal. The whole is perfectly happy just to be, herenow.If there is no aim, you start thinking it is like falling into a bottomless pit. Then what to do and what to aim for? “What is beyond the goal?” You are really in trouble! You will not be satisfied unless you are enlightened. All these problems: first, “What is the goal?” Then, “What is beyond the goal?” You want to determine the whole eternity!Your question should be just about enlightenment. Beyond that, existence takes care.Who has given you the name, Cliff? – that’s what I have been wondering. Such a dangerous name! Use your intelligence to see that the fear is arising out of the false in you, the fear is not arising out of the real. The real is really deeply challenged by the idea of enlightenment. But be intelligent; otherwise you may listen to the personality and forget to listen to the individuality.Meditate more, so that your intelligence can become more clear, unclouded, and all fears will disappear. And all other questions are just nonsense; they will also disappear. All that you need is a little more meditation, a little more sharpness of intelligence.Paddy and Maureen planned to get married, so they went to the doctor for a physical checkup. The doctor then tried to explain sex to them, but Paddy just listened with a dumb expression on his face. So the doctor took Maureen over to the examination table, made her lie down, and then made love to her. “Now do you understand?” said the physician.“Yes,” said Paddy, “but how often do I have to bring her in?”A great question! Just become enlightened, Cliff! Don’t get worried about so many problems. You will be lost in a jungle of a thousand and one problems. And enlightenment is a simple process; it is just becoming your authentic self. And it is so luminous that in its light all darkness disappears, and with the darkness all the doubts, all the questions. And a tremendous insight arises that you are not separate from existence; hence there is no question of goal, no question of direction; no question where you are going, why you are going.Then just to be part of the whole is so immense and so overwhelming, one feels fulfilled and contented. There is nowhere to go; you have arrived.The theatrical agent, trying to sell a new strip act to a nightclub manager, was carrying on very excitedly about a girl’s unbelievable seventy-two, twenty-six, forty, figure.“What kind of dance does she do?” the manager inquired, impressed by the description of the girl’s figure.“Well, she doesn’t actually dance at all,” the agent replied. “She just crawls out onto the stage and tries to stand up!”With that kind of figure…how can you dance? Even if you can stand up, that’s enough! Let me repeat the figure – seventy-two, twenty-six, forty!You have come to the right place. Here we are not giving you any goals, any heaven, any paradise. We are not selling any future to you. We are not in any business – the churches are, the temples are, the synagogues are. I am teaching you that there is no goal and that there is no meaning, but there is great joy, and great love, and great blissfulness. And all that you have to pay for it is to drop your false ego, your false personality.Become silent. In your silence, all questions will disappear. And the dance will begin, whatever the figure! Because as far as your inner being is concerned, it has no figure; it is just a luminous flame which can dance. It has been eternally there, repressed by you. You are the greatest enemy of yourself. My effort is to turn you into the greatest friend of yourself.Osho,I feel really confused about this whole enlightenment business. On the one hand, you say, “Be thoroughgoing in your search for enlightenment.” but on the other hand, the very desire to become enlightened prevents it.How to solve this dilemma?You are saying something significant, but you have to understand that life is not a rational thing; it is very irrational, because it is mysterious.The contradiction that you see in my statements is not a contradiction. It appears like contradiction, something inconsistent, but I will try to explain to you that there is no contradiction at all. But you will come across in my statements many times the same things, and the reason is that you have never gone beyond the ordinary mind and its consistency. I remember Oscar Wilde as saying, “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” A little imagination is needed to understand that the contradictory is complementary.For example, before I take your question…Some examples are needed from your ordinary life experience; otherwise you will never be able to understand it.Can you deliberately make any effort to sleep? When sleep is not coming, what are you supposed to do? Thousands of tricks have been suggested; nothing works. People say to drink a glass of hot milk. You can drink, but the hot milk will make you even more awake. People have been told to take a bath, but a good bath will make you more fresh, and less sleepy. People have been told to jog, to jump…all kinds of things; nothing helps. Sleep comes only when you completely forget about it. You just lie down, and you don’t try in any way to bring sleep in; it is not in your power. You have to completely forget everything, and it comes. It comes only when you are not desiring it.Now there are two problems: first you have to desire; otherwise, why should you go to sleep? You have to have a certain need, a desire, a longing for sleep; otherwise why…? So in the beginning a desire is needed, but in the final stage the very desire becomes the disturbance. So first you have to desire, and then you have to forget all about it. This is how sleep comes.Your question is, “I feel really confused about this whole enlightenment business.” It is a confusing business, but those who can manage to pass through it become the most un-confused people in the world.“On the one hand,” you say, “Be thoroughgoing in your search for enlightenment.” Yes, it is true. First I have to create a longing for enlightenment; otherwise, enlightenment is non-existent on your laundry list. Nobody wants enlightenment; people are wanting all kinds of things, but enlightenment is a very rare variety. Only very unique people even become interested in it. So first I have to insist: “Be thoroughgoing in your search for enlightenment.”First I have to create the desire, the longing, the passion, so strong that you drop all other small things and put your total energy into the search for enlightenment. Once you have done this, half of the process is complete.Then begins the other half: “But on the other hand, the very desire to become enlightened prevents it.” When you have been very thoroughgoing in your desiring, in your search, you will not find enlightenment. The more you search, the more you will be frustrated, because it is not something outside you that you can find. It is not something that you have to travel to, it is something within you.So when you have become thoroughly a seeker, a searcher – frustrated, so utterly in a state of defeatism that you have lost everything else; you staked everything else for enlightenment, and there seems to be no sign anywhere – then you have been thoroughgoing. Unless you are thoroughgoing, you will come to this frustration because you will know that you are not thoroughgoing – perhaps that’s why you are missing.So first be thoroughgoing. Your total energy should be involved in the search; then comes frustration. At that moment the master says, “Now you have done enough search. Now drop all searching; just sit silently.” And you can sit silently only if you have been running so long and you are tired, your mind is tired. And when the master says, “Now, sit down silently. Doing nothing the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself – no desire, no demand,” there is no contradiction – this is the whole process.Half the process is to bring your whole energy into the search, and the second part is to make you sit down and drop the whole search. And suddenly it is there because it is your innermost core – no search is needed. But without this thoroughgoing search, you would not have been able to sit down silently. To make you sit down silently, you have to be made to run for miles.Only when you are utterly tired and frustrated, then you can drop even the idea of finding enlightenment. Then you are utterly silent. You have forgotten about property, money, possessions, power, prestige, long before, because you staked everything for enlightenment. Now, the only thing to be dropped that you still have is the desire for enlightenment – that is the last desire to be dropped. But first it has to be created.This is the trouble that is creating confusion in you: if you don’t desire, how are you going to drop it? You have to desire so totally that you can drop it totally too.And this is the mystery of enlightenment….Ask, do everything that is possible, and then finally – tired, exhausted – you need to relax; you even let go of the idea of enlightenment, it is all futile. In this silence, when there is no desire stirring your mind, you suddenly find you are the enlightened one.That enlightenment was not somewhere else, it was within you. But it needed utter silence, no desire. How to create this state of no desire?I used to stay in a house with a friend; he had a child – very charming, but very active, constantly asking questions, constantly doing this and that, too full of energy. He was the first child. The mother was tired, the father was tired; the child was able to tire anybody. He started doing his exercise on me too, but I said, “Listen, I have a certain condition.”He said, “What is the condition?”“That I only answer any question if you fulfill the condition.”He said, “I am ready.”I said, “You just go around the block seven times as fast as you can. And don’t try to deceive me, because I know exactly whether you have been deceiving or not. When you come back I will see if you are perspiring…perhaps tears have come to your eyes. Then I will answer.”He said, “Okay.”He went round the block. It was a big house, and for this little boy, seven rounds were too many. When he came back he simply fell down. I said, “Rest a little, and then you can ask.”He said, “I have forgotten all questions. Just don’t harass me; just let me rest.”I said, “That’s perfectly okay.”He fell asleep. His mother came; she said, “This is strange. He tires us all. What did you do? He is fast asleep.”I said, “I have my own ways of making people enlightened!” I have learned a secret: first exhaust the energy which has become their infatuation, their greed, their ego, their lust for power, and all kinds of things. First exhaust it.”So first I teach a thoroughgoing search. And once you have been around the block seven times, and tears are coming to your eyes, and you have not found enlightenment, I will say to you, “Just rest a little; then we can discuss enlightenment.”And you will say, “I don’t want even to discuss this business of enlightenment; I am utterly tired.” Just rest, and in that very rest, you become aware of your inner flame. So there is no contradiction, it is simply the strategy.Unless you are exhausted you will remain interested in something or other. When you are exhausted all your interest disappears; all that you want is to be silent, at ease, relaxed – and that is the moment when enlightenment happens. It is not an object to be found; it is a realization of a silent being.That’s how it happened to Gautam Buddha. For six years he was thoroughgoing in his search; perhaps nobody has been so thoroughgoing. He did everything that anybody suggested. He fasted for months; he became almost a skeleton. There exists a statue of the days when he was fasting – he was fasting under a master. The fast was a special way where you have to reduce to smaller quantities every day.Unless you come to one grain of rice as your whole food for twenty-four hours – and he had come to one grain of rice, just one single grain…if you see that statue you will be surprised how thoroughgoing he was. All flesh has disappeared; you can see all his bones. His whole skeleton is simply covered by the skin. You can see that he has exhausted every possibility; if he goes a little further he will be dead.That very day, when he had come to the point of one grain of rice a day, he had gone to take a bath in the River Niranjana. It is a small river; I have been to the place. But even in that small river, he was so weak that the current of the river was more powerful. I have been there; the current is almost nonexistent. But in his situation it must have been so much that he could not gather energy enough. Energy comes from your food, and for months he had been cutting down on food. Now he had come to the last point – his whole reservoir…. That’s what your flesh is. So when you fast, in the beginning your weight goes down by two pounds per day.Addressing a conference of vegetarians, I told them that fasting is a kind of cannibalism. They were very shocked – fasting, and I am calling it cannibalism? I said, “It is cannibalism because where do those two pounds disappear to? You have eaten them; you have used your own meat. Because you are not eating meat you think you are not using meat, but it is your own, and inside.” Just in the sheer activity of living, one pound, two pounds, is gone. After seven days your activities become less; then you lose one pound per week.Gautam Buddha must have come to the point where there was nothing to lose; he was just bones. And the statue is tremendously significant. It is a bronze statue showing every bone. You can count all the ribs; they are just covered with dried skin, because the skin also needs nourishment. He could not get out of the river; he was so weak that he was hanging on to a root, just to protect himself from the current of the river.At that moment, hanging on to the root of a tree, he came to think, I have become so weak that I cannot even cross a small river…And in India, the world is thought to be a great ocean – Bhavasagar, the ocean of being – and you have to cross it. Only then will you become enlightened. He thought, It is beyond me, this enlightenment business. I cannot cross this poor River Niranjana; how can I cross the ocean of being? – I am finished. I dropped all desires; today I drop the desire for enlightenment too. I don’t have any energy for any desire.That night he slept without any desire. He had no idea what he was going to do tomorrow morning. For six years he was so much involved in searching for enlightenment, but now he had no energy even to think what he was going to do tomorrow morning. He slept one of the deepest sleeps of his life – no desires, no dreams, no thought. And when in the morning he opened his eyes, the last star was disappearing. It was still a little dark, a little before the sun would be rising. As the last star was disappearing, he simply watched it disappearing – utter silence all around. And suddenly he became aware of his own light. He heard for the first time the still small voice that there is no need to search anywhere: You are it.But without those six years of thoroughgoing search this moment would not have arrived. Do you see that there is any contradiction? Contradiction only appears; deep down there is a great coherence. You can say both things. That’s why there are two divisions of Buddhists: one says enlightenment happened because of six years of thoroughgoing search, and the other one says enlightenment happened because he dropped even the desire for enlightenment.But as far as I am concerned, I don’t belong to any sect, to any religion, to any party; hence, I can see clearly without any prejudice that both the schools are only half right. Those six years of thoroughgoing search created the space to be silent – so silent that even interest in enlightenment is no longer there. That’s why enlightenment happened.He became aware of his own inner being. All outside search has disappeared; hence, the one hundred and eighty degree turn. His consciousness turns inwards, because there is no goal outside, there is no way, and there is nothing to be done.Your question is significant, but remember: there is no contradiction; both are essential parts of a single process. But first start with thoroughgoing search. Don’t from the very beginning think that if it has to be dropped, why not drop it from the very beginning? – you cannot. First you have to have it.Then why at all desire from the very beginning? – because you will be desiring other things. The problem is first to give you a great desire for enlightenment, so all other desires become combined into a single, one-pointed goal. And then when you get frustrated…because you are bound to get frustrated, nobody can find enlightenment with thoroughgoing search. But by thoroughgoing search one finds frustration – such utter frustration that one becomes silent. One wants just to rest, not to do anything. Even if enlightenment knocks on the door, one is not interested. One has no energy even to open the door.In that moment, your inner flame is seen for the first time. And this seeing of the light inside you is the ultimate experience.It is the most beautiful, and the most glorious, the greatest splendor there is.Enlightenment as such is already there.You are a buddha, but you are not aware of it. How to make you aware of it? Down the ages, this has been the way, and I don’t see there is any other possibility. You will become aware of it only in utter silence. But the utter silence, a state of no-mind, a pure space, needs all your desires to be exhausted – so it is a device.Gather all your desires, make your life one-pointed towards enlightenment – and I assure you, you will not find it! But without this, nobody has found it either.One day when you get frustrated, you say, “To hell with enlightenment!” That is the day the miracle is going to happen. It happens always only in that moment.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Sitting with you in discourse and hearing you talk about enlightenment and silence, I feel immensely blessed, sometimes almost touching this space of coming home, and silence comes to my mind.But as soon as you leave through the door and the music stops, immediately the chattering inside starts again. For me it is much more difficult to become silent when I am meditating alone, but so easy in your presence.Is this natural in the relationship between a master and a disciple?It is very natural. Being in the presence of a master, silence happens on its own accord. Just as in the deep Himalayas, where the snow is eternal and the silence almost ancient…just sitting there under a tree, you start feeling, falling in tune with the immensity that surrounds you.To be in the presence of the master is even more deep-going. Because what is the meaning of being in the presence of the master? It is being with someone you love, someone you trust; someone with whom you are ready to go into the unknown. Being in this climate, you forget your trivial matters; and forgetting comes easy, not by your effort.The master is silent and silence is contagious.His heart slowly, slowly brings you also into a synchronicity. You start beating with his heart, in the same rhythm.This is a beautiful experience in itself, but it is only a lesson on the path; it simply gives you a glimpse. Silence has to come to you in your aloneness, then it is your own. Otherwise, silence in the Himalayas belongs to the Himalayas; you are simply overwhelmed. And the silence in the presence of the master belongs to the master; you are simply touched. That’s why, as soon as you are left alone to yourself, your old mind is back; it has just been waiting by the side. It comes with a vengeance.You have to understand one thing: that the presence of the master simply gives you an indication that you are capable of silence, that mind is not your master. That it is not an impossibility; that you can have a little taste of it. Whilst being alone, remember it: that the mind is just a servant mechanism.Watch it; it is very ancient, and your silence is very new. Your silence is almost like a roseflower and your chattering mind is like a rock, very ancient, very old. It can crush the roseflower at any moment unless you are aware, unless you learn one lesson – that mind may go on, yakkety-yak, chattering, but you should not become part of it.Certainly you are not the mind, just as you are not the body. You are within the body, within the mind, but your center is separate from the cyclone. It has a totally different quality to it. Silence, stillness is just natural to it; it is its flowering.We have got mixed up. Being too close to the mind, working twenty-four hours with the mechanism, you have forgotten the distinction.Just this much has happened, that you have forgotten something which is very essential. The original root from which the word sin comes, means forgetfulness. To me this is the only sin. All else are just mistakes which can be corrected. And once this sin is dropped, many other mistakes, fallacies, will disappear on their own accord.A simple strategy is needed; I call it meditation. You can call it anything – awareness, alertness, remembering, watchfulness; the names don’t matter. What matters is that you should be able not to get into the chattering of the mind. Just be a watcher. Don’t participate. Just stand aside and see. Don’t even try to stop its chattering, because even in stopping it you have lost your watchfulness. You have become a participant – unfriendly, but still you have become a participant in the process.This is a very simple phenomenon once you see the point that you can stand aside and let the mind go. Don’t judge what is going on in the mind as right or wrong. Don’t evaluate, just remain an indifferent watcher. The mind is almost like the traffic on the road. It is none of your concern to think about everybody who is passing on the road; it is just a habit.You may have heard about a great English linguist, Dr. Johnson, whose dictionary is still used. He had got into the habit, while going for a walk, of touching every electric pole. If by some chance, he would forget to touch and then remember, he would go back. He could not go ahead without touching it because he would feel something is missing. He became so identified with the habit that no friend liked to go with him, even for a morning walk, because it looked so stupid…“I am standing in the middle of the road and you have gone back to touch an electric pole? Why do you do that?”And he said, “That’s the question: Why do I do it? But if I don’t do it, it seems something is missing.”Your mind and your getting involved with it, are not very different. You have to learn to disidentify yourself.See the mind working.Be watchful.But don’t make any judgment, either to stop it, or to help it, or to prevent it. In no other sense should you move from your indifference.You will be surprised: a miracle is waiting for you. The moment you are completely indifferent, standing by the side, the traffic on the road slows down. Less thoughts are coming; bigger gaps between thoughts are happening. And those bigger gaps will give you such a beautiful peace, such silence.So two things are happening: the mind is slowing down and gaps of silence are enriching you, nourishing you, making you stronger to become disidentified. You have learnt the secret; now the key is in your hand. Watching, finally one comes to a point when one thought leaves and another thought does not come for hours. One is simply watching and the road is empty.This silence is yours.The silence in my presence, or in the Himalayas, or in a silent deep forest is not yours. You are simply overwhelmed by something so great that your small mind simply stops. But it is not much of a gain, you should not become habituated to it; otherwise, whenever you want to be silent you have to come close to me. That has become a dependence.No real master would like his disciples to be dependent on him. The whole effort of an authentic master is to make you independent, to make you a master. How long are you going to remain a disciple?But it is all in your hands. I can give you the glimpses at the most. But those glimpses are keys; you should learn something from them. One thing is certain, you are capable of being silent. A second thing is certain, that your mind stops. Now the only thing to get hold of is how to do it on your own so that wherever you are, you are surrounded by silence and all its beauties and blessings.There is a rule called Finagle’s Eighth Rule: Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.Don’t blame me for your silence – take responsibility. Even when you are here, I may be the triggering point but the silence is yours. I may have been a catalytic agent, but the silence is yours.After acquiring enough money from handouts, an inhabitant of the Bowery decided to take his refreshment at one of Wall Street’s better drinking establishments.A financial tycoon seated next to him was visibly appalled at the appearance and odor of the down-and-outer – so much so, that he turned to the man and pointedly said, “‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ – John Wesley.”His words were ignored by the bum.A few minutes later, the financier again intoned loudly, “‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ – John Wesley!” Still he was ignored.Finally, the visibly irritated financier shouted in the man’s face, “‘Cleanliness is next to godliness’ – John Wesley!”To which the skid row bum calmly replied, “‘Screw you’ – Tennessee Williams.”The poor fellow must have been holding himself as much as he could. But an old habit…finally, he could not manage; it was too much. He forgot completely where he was and that he had to behave in a mannerly way.Your mind has collected all kinds of rubbish – it is a bum. And whenever you are sitting alone, you don’t have anything to do, the mind has every opportunity to exhibit all its accumulations. And it is because you become interested in it, remember: being disinterested in it is also a kind of interest; being against it is also a kind of friendship. It is a love-hate relationship. You wanted to be silent, but just your wanting won’t help. Even if you shout to it, “Stop! Don’t go on chattering,” it is not going to listen.In fact, the only way mind has ever become silent is whenever you are utterly indifferent – as if it is not your mind and it does not matter whether it chatters or not. When your indifference is so deep that it does not matter if it chatters…Let him chatter.If the mind stops chattering, don’t start patting your back. Just remain calm and quiet, alert and watchful…and mind has always stopped. Meditation has never failed if you have followed the right rule.Osho,When I heard you telling the story of Buddha sending Sariputta back to his kingdom, this sudden fear arose: if I got enlightened, you wouldn't send me back to Texas, would you?Sarito, it seems you are from Texas. Nobody has ever heard that any Texan has become enlightened, so it is a very faraway possibility. Texan and enlightened? – it has never been heard!Moreover, if by being a sannyasin you have dropped the idea of these stupid divisions of nations, states, races, religions, and you have become simply a human being, an inhabitant of this whole beautiful planet, you may become enlightened. But certainly I will not send you to Texas, because there is a famous rule of Mars: An expert is anyone from out of town. In Texas nobody is going to hear you. I will send you somewhere else.But I will send you, certainly, so beware of enlightenment. If you don’t want to go, don’t become enlightened!But I think it is worth going. It is worth going anywhere, because once you are enlightened, you need to share it. You have to go to those who are still groping in the dark. With enlightenment necessarily comes a deep feeling of compassion. The people may not listen to you; the people may even feel irritated and annoyed by you; the people may even be condemnatory of you, but still you will have a deep compassion.Whatever they are doing is bound to be – they are ignorant. You have also been ignorant and you have also behaved in the same patterns. Now you are out of darkness, you can understand: those who are in darkness are going to behave accordingly. But they need help – in spite of themselves they need help.And by giving help to those who are living in unawareness, in unconsciousness, your own enlightenment will become richer. It will grow new dimensions to it. So it is not only helping them; you are also being helped immensely. Sharing what you have, you will have more of it.Existence is never in favor of hoarders, of misers.Existence believes in abundance.Otherwise what is the need of so many flowers? – just a few chosen flowers, lotuses, roses, would have been enough. What is the need of millions of flowers? There are hundreds of scientists, continually discovering new species of flowers…and there are still places where man has not reached.I know a place in the Himalayas where there is a flower valley. I have looked down into it, but it seems nobody has ever descended there. The mountain is so steep that it seems almost impossible to get down to the valley; it is thousands of feet deep. And the flowers look so rare, with such rare colors; I have not seen those flowers anywhere else.I have inquired of experts, but they say nobody wants to get into trouble. If somehow one could reach down there, then coming back is out of the question. People have looked, they have photographed. They have enlarged the photographs, and they were amazed that these flowers don’t belong to any species that we know. And this may not be the only place like this.We have thought up to now that Everest is the highest peak of the Himalayas. But just a few days ago the Chinese discovered a new peak which is higher than Everest. It is a Himalayan peak, but in the whole past nobody had even thought that there was anything higher than Everest. And there are thousands of places in the Himalayas which have never been reached by human beings. They all grow strange flowers, with a strange perfume.Existence is very abundant. And if you want to be part of existence – and that’s what enlightenment is, becoming part of the whole – you cannot be a miser. You will have to reach people. They will prevent you, because the blind person does not want to hear about light. It hurts him because it makes him feel again that he is blind. He would love to know that there is no light, that it is only a fiction and there are no people who have eyes; these are just very cunning people. The blind man will be very respectful to the person who declares, “There is no light and there are no eyes and you are a perfect being. You need not feel humiliated that you are lacking something.”But this is the trouble. If you talk to the blind man about light, he is going to be angry with you because you are hurting him. But without hurting him you cannot help him. You cannot take him to a physician; you cannot help him to be cured. You cannot give him the world of light and colors and beauties.Eighty percent of life consists of eyes; a blind man lives only twenty percent. This is the ordinary blindness. The unenlightened perhaps does not see at all in the spiritual sense.Enlightenment brings one hundred percent a new light, a new life, and a new laughter to your being.Sarito, you yourself would like to go to Texas, although Texas is not the right place. But if you become enlightened, don’t be worried – you can find people here who are unenlightened; help them. Why be concerned about Texas? And in Texas nobody is going to listen to you. You have heard the rule: An expert is anyone from out of town.In Hindustani there is a similar proverb: The drums which are very distant – it seems almost an echo – they are the most beautiful drums.In ancient Hebrew there is a proverb; Jesus has quoted it: A prophet is never respected by his own people.In fact, instead of respecting, they crucify their own prophet. It is always good to reach to strangers because they will be able, at least just out of courtesy, to listen to you. If you go to your own people who have known you as blind, they cannot believe that now you have become enlightened.I will not send you anywhere – you will ask to be sent somewhere, to help someone. I am saying it out of my own experience. After enlightenment, I could have rested and not bothered unnecessarily about people from whom I can get only condemnation. They are not crucifying me because it is a little out of date. They are not assassinating me because they have learned one thing: once you assassinate an enlightened man, the assassination becomes the cause of a tremendous tradition. The people who were never interested in the man become immediately interested – “Why have you assassinated him?” If Jesus had not been crucified there would have been no Christianity, no possibility at all.So the fools have also learned something: condemn, say all kinds of lies against people you would like to crucify, but don’t crucify. You have done it once, and you are still suffering. Two thousand years have passed, and Christianity goes on growing. Jews can never forgive themselves that they did such a stupid act as crucifying Jesus; otherwise, how many followers had he? – twelve uneducated apostles, villagers, fishermen…not a single rabbi, not a single learned professor, not a single man belonging to the higher society.And these twelve beggars who had gathered around Jesus had nothing to do with religion. Their whole interest was, “He is the only begotten son of God”; if they go on clinging to him, there is a possibility for them to enter into paradise!On the last night when Jesus is about to be caught, you can see their desire. They are not worried about his being caught; they are not worried about the rumors that he will be crucified, they are worried: “Lord, in paradise of course you will have the second place to God, but what will be the order for us? Who will be the third? Who will be the fourth?” – a poor lot, greedy, not concerned with religion at all. Their concern is that in this life they have suffered much; they have been poor, uneducated. At least now there is a chance to hang around the only begotten son of God. And when on the last judgment day he chooses the people who are to be taken into heaven, of course those twelve apostles will be the first; they are making it guaranteed. At the last moment they are asking such nonsense.Gautam Buddha also asked his disciples, “Do you have something to ask?” And he had ten thousand disciples, but they all simply remained silent.They said, “You have said so much, and we have not practiced even that. Don’t make us feel ashamed. In this last moment of your life we would like you to relax and be silent. We don’t have any question; we don’t want to disturb you at all.” This was a totally different kind of assembly; they were concerned for their master that his death should be silent and peaceful. He had done so much.But Jesus had a different kind of gang. They were all interested in how to enter into paradise; Jesus was just the right person to hang around. If somebody had proved that he was not the only begotten son of God they would have been the first to escape. Then why unnecessarily waste your time? Just go back and catch fish, or farm your fields, or go to your orchards. Don’t waste time unnecessarily – you are poor already.The moment you become enlightened, a tremendous desire will arise in you to share it with all and sundry.A wealthy, ninety-five-year-old multimillionaire is meeting with his financial adviser. The adviser is very excited and tells the old man, “I just found out about an investment I can make for you which will double your money in just five years!”“Five years? Are you kidding?” exclaims the old man. “At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas.”Who knows? By the time they are ripe, you may not be here. Experience teaches a few things. My experience is that once you are enlightened, you are so full, just like a rain cloud, you want to shower. Yes, even in Texas!Osho,To sit with you is like drinking from a mountain stream. My own attempts at meditation and moments of love bring, at the most, city water. How can I find your clarity and silence in me?About silence and clarity, we will discuss later. First be sure that the city water is not from Pune – it is polluted!It is true; you have given a good comparison. You say, “To sit with you is like drinking from a mountain stream. My own attempts at meditation and moments of love bring, at the most, city water. How can I find your clarity and silence in me?”There is no qualitative difference between the water in a mountain stream and the unpolluted water coming from your tap – there is no qualitative difference. If you have tasted, the difference will be in richness. The stream water is cool, fresh, always new. It is coming from melted snows from the high mountain.All that you have to know is that even if you have started to taste the ordinary city water, you are on the right way. To reach the mountain stream, you will have to raise your consciousness to that height. You don’t have to become a mountain climber, you have to become a consciousness climber.There are schools in the world where mountain climbing is taught; in this school, we teach you how to climb higher in your consciousness, because that is the only real height.And you have it within you – the highest possibility of consciousness. It is just that you have not worked, or not even seen upwards to your own height. You are involved in so much trivia that you don’t have time, just a little time for clarifying your own consciousness. You go on postponing. Small and ordinary things you don’t postpone, but all that is higher, all that is really valuable, you go on postponing.In Hindu scriptures they have divided life into four parts. And at the time they divided life into four parts, the highest age of man was not more than forty. Their division in the scriptures is that up to twenty-five years you should be a celibate and a student; up to fifty, which was very rare, you should be a householder, raise children, run businesses, earn money, fulfill desires, ambitions – be worldly, in a single word. Up to seventy-five years, you start by and by, slowly, slowly to get out of your trivial, ordinary life; after seventy-five you become a sannyasin. Great strategy! Neither will you live nor will you ever become a sannyasin.This is a way of postponement, very cleverly done – a good division, to postpone any effort of raising your consciousness.It is not strange that the Vedas, which define this way of how life should be…Those Vedas are written by hundreds of learned people – not a single one was an enlightened soul. Even the so-called seers of the Vedas not only have their married wives, but also have purchased women from the marketplace – because women were still sold.Now what kind of seers were these people, who could purchase a woman like a commodity? And what respect could they have towards a commodity? Women were auctioned; hence, in Sanskrit, for “wife” there are two words – people have forgotten the distinction. One is patni; patni means your married wife. Another is vadhu; vadhu means your purchased woman. You can use her as a wife, but her children will not be able to inherit anything from you because she is not your legal wife.Even the so-called seers living in the forests were doing all such things. I don’t think any of them…I have looked very closely into each sentence in the Vedas. I could not see that any one of them had reached to the heights of Gautam Buddha. In fact, ninety-eight percent seem to be very stupid people, very ordinary.Artie Finkelstein was advised by his doctor that he had a very rare disease, and the only remedy was a daily glass of fresh mother’s milk. Artie finally found a young lady who was willing to sell her milk, and Artie sat down and nursed on her breast.After about five minutes, the woman looked at him and breathlessly asked, “Is there anything else you would like?”“Well,” said Artie, “Er…maybe a cookie?”Idiots are idiots! And the more aged they become, the more idiotic they become. Even small children seem to be more clear, more crystal clear than your so-called old idiots.“I had tea in a Jewish house yesterday,” said little Sadie.“How did you know it was a Jewish house?” asked her mother.“Well, because they had a fork in the sugar bowl!” replied Sadie.Even small children…Murphy has his Sixth Rule: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.And they are all around….Raising your consciousness is not something that you have to plan, that you have to carefully work out; it is a simple phenomenon.The Fourth Workshop Principle says: The more carefully you plan a project, the more confusion there is when something goes wrong.It is always better to remain simple, and my teaching is very simple. In just one word I have summed up the whole of religiousness: Be alert of your thoughts, and they will die of their own accord. And as less and less thoughts are there, you become more and more weightless; you start rising high, without any effort.Soon you will be able to taste the fresh mountain stream. It is your own consciousness at its best.You are asking, “How can I find your clarity and silence in me?” Just drop all that is rubbish; just look at the whole furniture of your mind. Perhaps you are carrying unnecessary things – how many of your thoughts are really of any use? Just sit down one day and write. Close your door and lock it, so there is no fear and you can be authentic. Just write down exactly whatever arises in the mind. Don’t edit; don’t add anything to make it look beautiful. Don’t be worried that it looks as if some madman is writing it; nobody is looking at you. Just a ten minute exercise of writing exactly everything that is within you – neither adding anything nor taking anything out – and then read it aloud so that you can hear also that this is your mind. It is a madhouse. So many voices: irrelevant, relevant, meaningless, not at all related to anything, and they are all running around. But you have allowed them, you have nourished them, just by being not alert.There is a small anecdote in Gautam Buddha’s life…A great king, Prasenjita, has come to listen to his discourse. Of course, it is his capital, his kingdom; he is sitting in front and while Gautam Buddha is speaking, he is continuously moving his big toe.Finally, Buddha stopped and asked Prasenjita, “Do you know that your big toe is moving constantly?” He immediately stopped. Buddha said, “Don’t stop. Let it move, but be aware that it is moving.”But he said, “There is no need.”“Then why was it moving? It is your toe, and you are not aware of it.”This is our state of unawareness. You are doing all kinds of things, most of them without being conscious. Why are you doing them? Smoking a cigarette – have you ever bothered about why you are doing it? When fresh air is available you are making your breathing dirty with nicotine, poison, smelly, destroying your lungs – and paying for it! Many governments have decided that on every packet of cigarettes there should be some statement saying that it is harmful to your health. The manufacturers were very angry, and they tried to prevent this from being done, because this would destroy their business – and it is a big business. But medical science was absolutely insistent that it should be written. Then it is the individual’s responsibility. He has read it, and still he is smoking; then he is taking his own responsibility.It was thought that the cigarette business would fall down, that very few people will be so stupid as to read it and still smoke. This is the state of humanity; the business has not disappeared. There are more factories, and there are more cigarettes, and there are more smokers. And it is not that they don’t know how to read. The doctor goes on saying, the wife goes on saying, the friends go on saying, “Stop, it is destroying your lungs. It is cutting your life; it is dangerous; even cancer is possible through it.” But it makes no difference.That’s why I say humanity is living in a deeply unconscious state. If you are conscious, just a little bit conscious, your life pattern will start changing. You will drop many things which you were doing, and you will start many things which you were postponing.The day you start being alert and aware, you have taken a great step towards the heights of your own being. And it will not be long, if you persist, to reach to the fresh mountain stream water. Otherwise your whole life remains polluted, remains without any adventure, without any song, without any music, without any clarity.It is your birthright to have clarity and silence. And if you don’t have them, it simply means you have not tried to find what are your hidden qualities, what is your hidden splendor. You have been living outside the house, just in the porch. You never enter into the house; you don’t know the treasures that are in the house.People don’t feel that they are lost, because they don’t care at all about themselves.Rune’s Rule is: If you don’t care where you are, you aren’t lost! Obviously, if you don’t care then wherever you are it is perfectly good.Create a little care about yourself.Life is very precious; don’t waste it carelessly.Just a little care, and tremendous is the benefit. Because as you start being careful, alertness will come automatically. Consciousness will start growing in you; your actions will reflect your clarity, your silence, your beauty, your grace.And I am not asking of you something superhuman; it is just your human right. But nobody else can give it to you, you will have to claim it. It is not in the hands of governments to declare it in their constitutions – that won’t help.You have to do a little work upon yourself. Every man has to be a little artistic in finding and creating his own being, giving it beauty and grace, intelligence.But people go on living so stupidly…the only reason seems to be that they find everybody else is also living the same way, so perhaps that is the right way; the majority cannot be wrong!A man had gone to picnic with his wife, and the wife stopped at a place near a pond with beautiful trees and said, “This seems to be the right spot.”The man said, “Certainly. Fifty million mosquitoes cannot be wrong!”Truth is not a question of majority; truth has always been a finding of the individual. The majority has always lived in lies, in fictions, in fabricated ideas, which are consoling.Truth needs a little effort on your part to drop all that is false, fictitious, superstitious, given to you by your parents and by your society. And immediately you will find your intelligence is becoming sharper.Just rely on your own intelligence and you will find clarity. And just to have intelligence is to have such a treasure – just to look at things without any prejudice, without any preconceived idea. Slowly, slowly clarity grows…but give it an opportunity.It was the first day of the new term at Princeton, and a black freshman was learning his way around the campus. Stopping a distinguished looking upperclassman he inquired, “Say, can you tell me where the library is at?”“My good fellow,” came the reply, “at Princeton we do not end our sentences with a preposition.”“All right,” said the freshman, “can you tell me where the library is at, asshole?”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How are one-pointedness, concentration and meditation related to each other?One-pointedness, concentration and meditation are not related to each other at all. This is one of the confusions prevalent all over the world.One-pointedness is another name for concentration, but meditation is just the opposite of concentration. But in most of the books, in most of the dictionaries, and by the so-called teachers, they are used as if they are synonymous.Concentration simply means one-pointedness. It is something of the mind. Mind can be a chaos, a crowd. Mind can be many voices, many directions. Mind can be a crossroads. Ordinarily, that’s what mind is, a crowd.But if the mind is a chaos, you cannot think rationally, you cannot think scientifically. To think rationally and scientifically, you have to be concentrated on the object of your study. Whatever the object is, the one thing necessary is that you are pouring your whole mental energy onto that object. Only with this much force is there a possibility to know the objective truth; hence, concentration is the method of all sciences.But meditation is totally different. First, meditation is not of the mind. It is neither one-pointed mind nor many-pointed mind; it is simply not mind. Meditation is going beyond, beyond mind and its boundaries. They cannot be related; they are opposite to each other.Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind.The West, particularly, has not known meditation. It has remained confined to concentration – hence all scientific progress, technology – but it has not known the inner science of silence, peace, of being a light unto oneself.One-pointedness can reveal the secrets of the outside world. Meditation reveals the secrets of your own subjectivity. It can be said, concentration is objective and meditation is subjective. Concentration moves outwards; meditation moves inwards. Concentration is going far away from yourself. Meditation is coming home to your innermost center. Mind, reason, logic, all point towards the outer – to them, the inner does not exist at all.But this is a fundamental law of the inner reality that nothing is ever accomplished in the inner world by a reasonable man. It is an irrational, or better to say suprarational approach – to know oneself you don’t need mind, you need utter silence. Mind is always concerned with some thing or many things. There are thoughts and thoughts, ripples upon ripples – the lake of the mind is never ripple-less.Your inner being can be reflected only in a mirror without any ripples. No mind – absolute silence of all thoughts, absence of the mind completely – becomes the mirror without any ripples, without even a single fluttering of thought. And suddenly, the explosion: you have become aware for the first time of your own being.Up to now, you have known things of the world; now you know the knower. That’s exactly what Socrates means when he says: Know thyself. Because without knowing thyself – I want to add to the Socratic advice – you cannot be yourself. Knowing thyself is a step to being thyself, and unless you are yourself, you can never feel at ease. You can never feel contented; you can never feel fulfilled; you can never feel at home in existence.Some discomfort, some misery…you are not exactly aware what, but a constant feeling that something essential is missing; that you have everything and yet something which can make everything meaningful is absent. Your palace is full of all the treasures of the world but you are empty. Your kingdom is big but you are absent. This is the situation of the modern man; hence, the constant feeling of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, angst.Modern mind is the most troubled mind that has ever existed for the simple reason that man has come of age. A buffalo is not disturbed about the meaning of life – the grass is his meaning of life; more than that all is useless. The trees are not interested in the meaning of life; just a good shower and a rich soil and a beautiful sun and life is a tremendous joy. No tree is an atheist; no tree ever doubts. Except for man, doubt does not exist in existence. Except for man, nobody looks worried. Even donkeys are not worried. They look so relaxed, so philosophically at ease. They have no fear of death, no fear of the unknown, no concern for the tomorrow.It is only man and his intelligence that has given him a very difficult life, a constant torture. You try to forget it in a thousand and one ways, but it goes on coming back again and again. And this will continue until your last breath unless you know something of meditation, unless you know how to turn inwards, how to have a look at your own interiority.And suddenly, all meaninglessness disappears.On a very high level, you are again as at ease as the trees. At a very high consciousness, you are as relaxed as the whole of existence. But your relaxation has a beauty to it – it is conscious, it is alert. It knows that it is. It knows that while the whole of existence is asleep, it is awake.What is the point of a beautiful sunrise if you are asleep? What is the beauty of a rose if you are asleep? Mind is your sleep, concentrated or not. Meditation is your awakening. The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.Remember that any teacher who says to you that concentration is meditation is committing a great crime. Not knowing that he is misleading you, and misleading you on such a fundamental subject, he is far more dangerous than somebody who can kill you. He is killing you far more significantly and deeply. He is destroying your consciousness; he is destroying your very possibility to open the doors of all the mysteries that you are.Albert Camus has one beautiful statement to remember: “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.” Naturally, when mind is not there, no-mind cannot be a rational concept. It is absurd. It cannot say anything reasonably – where it is, what it is, what it signifies. It can only indicate mystically – hence all the parables of the world. The mystics could not say in a logical way what they have experienced. They went around telling stories, parables, which can be understood on two levels: one of the mind and one of the no-mind.That is the beauty of a parable. You can understand it just like any other story, but it was not meant to be just another story; it was meant to give you some hint, some hidden hint towards that for which mind is absolutely inadequate. I will give you a few examples.A blind man is brought to Gautam Buddha. The blind man is not an ordinary man, he is a great logician. And his whole village is tired of his logic. They are very annoyed and irritated by the blind man, because he refuses to believe that light exists. And he requires of the whole village that if they say light exists, they have to give him proof: “I can touch things; let me touch your light. I can taste things; let me taste your light. I can smell things; at least let me smell your light. I can hear things; beat the light so I can hear the sound. Do something. These are the only four senses I have.”Light is neither available to the nose nor to the ears; neither to the mouth, nor to the hands. Unless you have eyes, there is no way to prove that light exists.Gautam Buddha said to the people, “You have brought him to a wrong man. You have all given all kinds of proofs, and you have not been successful. What can I do? Take him to my personal physician. He is just sitting behind me. He is the greatest physician of our time; perhaps he can cure the blind man’s eyes. He does not need any argument, he needs treatment. He does not need any evidence, logical proof about light; he simply needs eyes. Then there will not be any question or any doubt or any asking for evidence.”He was given to the physician. It took six months for him to cure that man from his blindness. The day he saw light he cried and went from house to house in the village to offer an apology, “Forgive me. Although I was being rational and logical I had no idea that unless you have eyes, you cannot be given any proof that cannot be rejected by you, argued against.” Although the whole world knows that light exists, the whole world cannot make a single blind man convinced of it.Your consciousness is not available to the mind. Your mind is not the right vehicle to know yourself. Unless you have a new eye – what in the East we have called the third eye, symbolically…. These two eyes open outwards. Just as a symbol, the third eye opens inwards. The two eyes are for the duality of the world, the one eye is for the singleness of your being.As you start looking inwards, you are amazed: you were ignoring yourself, and that was the trouble. That was why you were in misery, anxiety, suffering. You were trying everything to remove the misery, but it was caused by your unawareness, by your unconsciousness, by your ignorance of your own being. That was the cause. And unless that cause is removed, you will never have a taste of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of immortality, of the divineness of existence.The pretty young thing came slamming into her apartment after a blind date and announced to her roommate, “Boy, what a character! I had to slap his face three times this evening!”The roommate inquired eagerly, “What did he do?”“Nothing,” muttered the girl. “I slapped him to see if he was awake!”But nobody is awake. Spiritually, we are all asleep. Meditation is a way of awakening.Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. But you have been told by Christians, by Hindus, by Mohammedans, by all your so-called organized religions to concentrate on God; concentrate on a certain mantra; concentrate on the statue of a Buddha, but concentrate. And remember, whether you concentrate on a hypothetical God which nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever met, for which no proof, no evidence exists anywhere…. You can go on concentrating on an empty hypothesis, that is not going to reveal you to yourself.Concentrate on a statue which is man-made, manufactured by you; you can go on concentrating but you will not find anything to transform your being. Or concentrate on scriptures, mantras, chantings…but all those efforts are an exercise in utter futility.Go beyond the mind – and the way beyond the mind is very simple – just become a watcher of the mind, because watching immediately separates you from the thing you watch. You are watching a movie; one thing is certain, you are not an actor in the movie. Watching the road and the crowd passing by, one thing is certain; you are standing by the side, you are not on the road in the crowd.Whatever you watch, you are not.The moment you start watching the mind, a tremendous experience happens – a recognition that you are not the mind. Just this small recognition that “I am not the mind” is the beginning of no-mind. You have transcended the crowd, the voices, the chaos of the mind; you have moved into the silences of the heart.Here is your home, your eternal being.Here is your deathless, essential existence.Knowing this has never been transcended by anything more blissful, more ecstatic.You may have heard about Segal’s Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.Mind is not only two, it is many. A man with mind is not sure of anything. He is doubtful about everything; he is unsure about everything. And a life of doubt and unsureness is not a life; you don’t have any roots anywhere. And without roots you cannot have flowers, and you cannot become fruitful. Your life will remain barren, a desert where nothing grows.Two women in a train were engaged in an argument. At last, one of them called the conductor. “If this window is open,” she declared, “I will catch cold and will probably die.”“If the window is shut,” the other announced, “I shall suffocate.”The two glared at each other. The conductor was at a loss, but he welcomed the words of a man who sat near. These were, “First, open the window; that will kill one. Next, shut it; that will kill the other. Then we can have peace.”That is what you have to do with your mind if you want peace, peace that passeth all understanding.Osho,I have tried to write questions to you, but it is impossible. When you were in silence, I became aware that your silence is an invitation for meditation. It is pure celebration; it is not a burden or a duty or a bother. It is a coming closer to you; it is joy.My heart is overwhelmed to sit at your feet. In deep love I say, “Thank you, Osho for this invitation.”There are no questions which are really of any significance, because questions are asked by the mind. And the mind cannot find any answer.The answer is in the death of the mind.All questions are in the mind and the answer is beyond it; hence, if you are intelligent, you will find it very difficult to write a question. People who go on writing questions are not really alert to the fact that these questions cannot be answered. Yes, you can be shown a way where you can find an answer, but nobody else can answer your question; just like nobody else can breathe for you, and nobody else can drink for you, and nobody else can eat for you. You will have to do these things yourself.It is good that you felt it was impossible to write questions. It is impossible because the mind cannot even have any idea of the right question, because to know the right question is to know the right answer. If you can recognize the right question, it is not so far away to recognize the right answer. A mind that can recognize the right question is certainly capable of recognizing the right answer. But all your questions are wrong.There are millions of questions and there is only one answer. Questions are very complex and the answer is very simple. The questions have created so many great philosophies in the world, so many great systems of thought, systems of belief, great traditions of religion. But none of them have come to the answer that fulfills, to the answer that dispels all the questions, because the answer is your being, very being.The answer is not to be found in any scripture, nor can it be given by any teacher. Those who know never answer your question; they simply destroy your question. They make you aware of a quest, not of a question. Their invitation is for a quest, not for a question, because only a quest can lead you finally to the space where you find not a verbal answer, but an existential answer – yourself.A man stepped into a very crowded bus. After a while he took out his glass eye, threw it up in the air, then put it back in again.Then, minutes later he again took out his eye, threw it up in the air, then put it back in again. The lady next to him was horrified.“What are you doing?” she cried.“I’m just trying to see if there is any room up front.”With a glass eye! Your questions are just like that. And the more you would have tried, the more you would have found that it is impossible – there is no question which is of any worth.But then you suddenly fell upon something for which you were not looking. Because I was in silence, you thought perhaps that was my message to you – to be silent. And this invitation for silence became your meditation.Now you can say to me: “It is pure celebration. It is not a burden or a duty or a bother – it is a coming closer to you; it is joy.My heart is overwhelmed to sit at your feet. In deep love, I say, ‘Thank you, Osho, for this invitation.’”Remember Fetridge’s Law: Important things that are supposed to happen do not happen, especially when people are looking for them.When you are not looking for anything, a certain silence descends on you. And in that silence things start happening that were never happening before when you were looking for them.It is a very mysterious life.It does not follow your ordinary arithmetic.When you are running too much after silence, and peace, and meditation and enlightenment you simply get tired, bored, exasperated. It is never found that way. You cannot find anything of value while you are running. And naturally, your mind says: Run a little faster, you are not running fast enough. And the faster you run, the more tense you are, the more your eyes are blurred, the more dust you gather. You don’t know where you are running because you don’t know which direction the truth is.It is not in running after it, it is in sitting silently. And while you are perfectly a pool of peace, truth arises within you. You never reach truth; it is always truth that reaches you. But you must be at your home, and mostly you are never at your home.I have heard about two men, great friends, who were talking to each other. And one said, “Boy, last night was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I had gone fishing and caught such great fish that even to carry one alone, by myself, was so tiring; it was such a burden. The fish was so long you wouldn’t believe it. And not one, I caught so many fish. The whole night I have been carrying them, just carrying them.”The second man said, “This is nothing, you don’t know what happened to me last night. I dreamt that on my one side is Sophia Loren – in my bed, under my blanket. I said, ‘My God!’ because I looked at the other side and I saw Marilyn Monroe. It was such a juicy night.”The first man who had been catching fish the whole night said, “You idiot. Why did you not call me?” The second man said, “I did call, but your wife said you had gone fishing.”People are never at home. Truth comes many times and knocks at the door, but your wife says you have gone fishing.You are always gone somewhere.Sitting silently you are at home.And truth is not something that comes from outside, it arises out of the intensity of your silence. In fact, the intensity of your silence, a great silence crystallized, is truth.Truth is not something other than silence.A small silence becomes the door to greater silences, and finally, the silence itself becomes so condensed – Gurdjieff used to call it the crystallization – you find yourself. In that very finding you have found the truth. Then life is a sheer joy, a song, a dance, a celebration.Osho,Could you say something to me about fear? What is fear? Will meditation help me overcome my fear of death? Why am I afraid to let go into something more powerful than me?You have asked many questions in a single small question, and all are significant, significant for any seeker.First, you are asking about fear. There are many fears, but fundamentally they are only offshoots of one fear, branches of one tree. The name of the tree is death. You may not be aware that this fear is concerned with death, but every fear is concerned with death. Fear is only a shadow. It may not be apparent if you are afraid of going bankrupt, but you are really afraid of being without money and becoming more vulnerable to death. People go on holding money as a protection, although they know perfectly well that there is no way to protect yourself against death. But still, something has to be done. At least it keeps you busy, and keeping yourself busy is a kind of unconsciousness, is a kind of drug.Hence, just as there are alcoholics, there are workaholics. They keep themselves continuously involved in some work; they cannot leave working. Holidays are fearful; they cannot sit silently. They may start reading the same newspapers they have read three times already that morning. They want to remain engaged, because it keeps a curtain between themselves and death. But reduced to its essentials, the only fear is of death.It is significant to realize that all other fears are only offshoots, because then something can be done if you know the very roots. If death is the basic and the fundamental fear, then only one thing can make you fearless, and that is an experience within you of a deathless consciousness. Nothing else – no money, no power, no prestige – nothing can be an insurance against death except a deep meditation…which reveals to you that your body will die, your mind will die, but you are beyond the body-mind structure. Your essential core, your essential life source has been here before you and will remain after you. It has changed through many forms; it has evolved through many forms. But it has never disappeared, from the very beginning – if there has been any beginning. And it will never disappear to the very end, if there is any end…because I don’t believe in any beginning and in any end.Existence is beginningless and endless.It has always been here and you have always been here. Forms may have been different; forms have been different even in this life.The first day you got into your mother’s womb, you were not bigger than the full-point on your question mark. If a photograph is shown to you, you will not recognize that this is you. And in fact, even before that…Two persons were arguing about how far back they could go, how far back they could remember. One could remember his childhood nearabout three years of age. The other said, “That is nothing. I remember the day my mother and father went to a picnic. When we went to the picnic, I was in the father. When we came back from the picnic I was in my mother!”Will you recognize yourself as you were when you were in your father? A picture can be shown to you; it can be enlarged so that you can see it with your bare eyes, but you will not recognize it. But it is the same life form, the same life source that is throbbing in you right now.You are changing every day. When you were just born, just one day old, that also you will not be able to recognize. You will say, “My god, this is me?” Everything will change; you will become old, youth will be gone. Childhood has been lost long before, and death will come. But it will come only to the form, not to the essence. And what has been changing all along your life was only the form.Just the other day I looked at Chitten. I said, “My god, what has happened to this poor man?” Later on, I tried to find out if he has become a punk or what; he used to be a sane sannyasin. But nothing has happened to him, just to his hair, to his beard. He is the same; he is still sane.Your form is changing every moment. And death is nothing but a change, a vital change, a little bigger change, a quicker change. From childhood to youth…you don’t recognize when childhood left you and you became young. From youth to old age…things go so gradually that you never recognize at what date, on what day, in what year, youth left you. The change is very gradual and slow.Death is a quantum jump from one body, from one form into another form. But it is not an end to you.You were never born and you never die.You are always here.Forms come and go and the river of life continues.Unless you experience this, the fear of death will not leave you. You are asking, “Will meditation help me overcome my fear of death?” There is no other way. Only meditation…and only meditation can help.I can say, all the scriptures can say, but that will not help; still a doubt may remain. Who knows, these people may have been lying, or these people may have been deceived themselves. Or these people may have been deceived by other literature, by other teachers. And if a doubt remains, the fear will be there.Meditation brings you face to face with the reality.Once you know on your own what life is, you never bother about death.There are beautiful stories about people of meditation, how joyfully, how jokingly they have taken their death. One great master, before dying asked his disciples, “You know me perfectly well, that I have lived always in my own way. I want to die also in my own way. Just suggest some unique idea.”The disciples said, “This old man has tortured us his whole life. Now, what original idea about death…? People are afraid of death, and this fellow is asking for some original idea of how to die.”Somebody suggested to sit dying in a lotus posture. Somebody else said, “This is not new, people have died sitting in a lotus posture.”Then the old man said, “Reject it! Find something absolutely original, and be quick because my time is running out.”Somebody suggested to die standing. People usually die lying down on their beds. That is the most dangerous place, because ninety-nine percent of people die on their beds. Beware of the bed! In the night when your wife has gone to sleep, slip down and sleep on the floor. Move into the bathroom, but don’t be on the bed. That is the place where death has found ninety-nine percent of its victims. Avoid it!Somebody said, “This is a little new, but it is not absolutely original because I have heard about a master dying standing – just one man, but it is still imitating.”Then somebody said, “Then do one thing. Stand on your head; do a headstand – we have never heard that anybody has done that.”It is very difficult. Even to fall asleep standing on your head is very difficult, because so much blood is running to the head it keeps you awake. Dying is much more difficult. In the night you keep your head on a pillow, so that less blood is reaching the head; otherwise, the blood flow keeps your brain cells awake.Intellectual people need two pillows, three pillows. Then with great difficulty they can stop the rush of the thoughts. Now standing on the head, so much blood, because of gravitation, goes to the brain that it won’t let it fall asleep. Dying will be much more difficult because death is a deeper form of sleep.But the old man said, “I like that idea. Just be certain that nobody has done it.”All his disciples said, “It is true; nobody has ever done it. You can do it and feel happy that you are dying in an original way, in your own style.”And the old man stood on his head and died.Then all the disciples became very disturbed. What to do now? They had known about people dying on a bed: you give them a bath, you change their clothes, you take them to the funeral pyre. But what to do with this fellow? – he is standing on his head. Nobody has died this way, so nobody knows actually what should be done, from where to start.Somebody suggested his sister. His older sister was also a great master; she lived in a nearby monastery. It was better to call her before taking any action than later on to be condemned for something that you should not have done.They called the sister and asked, “What are we supposed to do? He has died standing on his head.”The sister said, “He has always been nasty.” She was also a great meditator. She came close and told the old man, “Stop all this mischievousness! At least at the time of death, don’t be ridiculous. Behave!” And she pushed him so he fell, poor man, laughing.The disciples said, “This is strange. This old woman is also something.”And she went back, telling him, “Go to the bed and die, just as it is supposed to be done. Just do it properly. I am not going to come again. And you fellows, don’t be worried. Whatever way he wants to die, let him die. Just drag him to the funeral pyre.”The disciples said, “It was good we called; he was still alive.”Naturally, it is very difficult to die standing on your head. The poor man tried hard, but could not manage. And finally, because in the East it is not right to disobey elders, he lay down on the bed and died.Then before dying he said, “This time I am really dying; you can start your ritual.”Still they watched, pinched, took every care because this man was strange. “We thought that he had died before, and who knows, he may still be playing a joke. Death is a joke? We had been always so afraid….” They pinched, but found he was really dead.Another master before dying told his disciples, “Listen, I have already taken a bath and I have changed my clothes, fresh, new, so you need not…after I am dead, don’t try to deceive me. You are my disciples, you have to follow my order. After my death, no bath, no changing of clothes. I have already done it for you.”They said, “Yes, we are all witnesses.”He said, “Then remember, nobody should interfere.”They knew their master; he was such a man that if you interfered, he might open his eyes. He had been beating them his whole life, and they did not want him to beat them again, even after death.So, they simply followed. And what had he done? – he had played the last joke. As the fire caught his body – he had hidden firecrackers inside his clothes; that’s why he did not want them to change his clothes – firecrackers started exploding beautifully all around. And people started laughing; they had never seen such a death.But the disciples said, “He was a man who could laugh at death because he knew there is no death.”Meditation is the only way to discover your deathlessness.Then all fear disappears. All other fears also disappear, because they were just offshoots, branches – maybe gone far away from the roots, but still they were connected with the roots.Finally you are asking, “Why am I afraid to let go into something more powerful than me?” It is the same fear. All fear, all is the same. You are afraid of going into something more powerful than you because a dewdrop dropping into the ocean is bound to disappear; it is death to the dewdrop. The more powerful will absorb you; hence, the fear.But if you know that your life is the greatest power in existence, there is nothing more powerful than it, not even nuclear weapons can absorb it…once you become certain about it, then the dewdrop knows it is not his disappearance in the ocean, it is the ocean disappearing in the dewdrop. It is the dewdrop becoming as vast as the ocean. It is not disappearance; it is becoming infinite, unbounded.After Brezhnev’s death, the central committee of the Communist Party met to choose his successor. After his unanimous election as general secretary, Uri Andropov, the former chief of the secret police announced: “Very well, comrades, now that you have voted, you may lower your arms and come away from the wall.”This was voting! Naturally, it was unanimous.Death is such a fear. But if you have just a small glimpse of your own being then even in the Soviet Union death does not happen.When Khrushchev came to power, addressing the first meeting of the Community Party, he condemned Joseph Stalin as strongly as possible. He said, “At least one million Russians have been killed after the revolution by a single man, Joseph Stalin. Thousands are in madhouses; thousands are in jails; thousands are forcibly hospitalized and thousands have been sent to Siberia for their whole lives. They cannot return to Russia, and life in Siberia must be the hardest in the whole world, just to survive.”One man from the back of the meeting said, “Comrade Khrushchev, you have been a central committee leader with Joseph Stalin your whole life. Why did you not say it before?” There was great silence.Khrushchev said, “Whoever has asked the question, the question is significant. I am going to answer, but you first please stand up.” Nobody stood. Khrushchev called three times, “Stand up, so I can at least see your face.” But nobody stood, and nobody repeated the question. Khrushchev said, “Do you know why I was silent, why you are silent? You know that if you stand up, you will disappear. I knew that if I said anything against Joseph Stalin, I would not see another sunrise again.”Death is such a fear. Even to Joseph Stalin, who was so powerful, death was such a fear that he never allowed his wife to sleep in the same room. Who knows? – in the night she may make an effort to take his life. Yes, she is his wife, but just being a wife does not mean anything. Everybody is a stranger in this world, and just by going to a registry office you can’t become known to each other. He never allowed anybody to be friendly with him. In his whole life nobody ever put their hand on his shoulder. That was not possible. He always kept people far away, following the old rule of Machiavelli, that the most dangerous people to those who are in power are those who are closest.The vice president is the most dangerous to the president. Because he is so close, the temptation is easy to push this man away in some way and capture the power yourself.These powerful people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Benito Mussolini are as much afraid of death as anybody else; all their power makes no difference. Only very few people like Gautam Buddha or Bodhidharma or Chuang Tzu have been able to go beyond the fear of death.You can go beyond….It is within your power and it is your right.But you will have to make the small effort of moving from mind to no-mind.A joke for you to remember at the time of your death…It seems there was a captain in the KGB, whose stupid son had great difficulty understanding the concepts of the party, the motherland, the unions, and the people.The captain told the boy to think of his father as the party, his mother as the motherland, his grandmother as the unions, and himself as the people.Still, the boy did not understand. In a rage the father locked the boy in a wardrobe in the parental bedroom.That night the boy was still in the wardrobe when the father began to make love to the mother. The boy, watching through the wardrobe keyhole, said, “Now I understand: The party rapes the motherland while the unions sleep and the people have to stand and suffer.”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In the story of the Buddha twice swatting an insect from his head, how did he know that he was not aware the first time, and how can he have not been aware? I ask because, although I am perceiving myself to be gradually more aware, yet I cannot identify who is the perceiver. The worst thing is that the mind takes the opportunity of relative silence to enter a hall of mirrors with watchers watching watchers, who are watching watchers who are not watchers.Osho, could you illuminate or eliminate me?Both the things are the same: to illuminate you, or to eliminate you. They are two aspects of the same experience.Without your elimination, illumination is not possible.You are the only barrier to your own realization.You have raised a question which has tortured humanity, particularly the intellectual part of humanity, for centuries. In logic it is called infinite regression. But existence is not logical if you remember that, then the problem disappears. If you think that existence is logical, then the problem becomes insoluble.It is apparently true that you can watch the mind but somebody else behind you can watch you, the watcher. But you can go on and on; there is always somebody behind who is watching. In logic it is an absurd situation.In simpler terms it is something like God creating the world. Who created God, because without creating, nothing can exist? That was the premise on which God was supposed. How can this whole existence be there without a God creating it? But it creates the same problem: How can God be there without being created? Where are you going to end? Your alphabet will end…. A God is created by B, and B is created by C, and soon you will come to X, Y, Z; and after Z there is nothing except jazz music. The whole long pilgrimage of logic ends in something illogical.The very logical people have never supposed the first God because it is the beginning of a trouble which will never end, and you will get more and more into mud.But in existence things are different. As far as God is concerned, I cannot say anything – I have traveled my whole being, and I have not found him anywhere. And all the religions insist that he is within you. I don’t know about the without – it is a vast universe; he may be hiding somewhere – but as far as my own consciousness is concerned, I am absolutely aware there is no God. And if it is not within my consciousness, it cannot be in any other consciousness either, because the quality of consciousness is the same. Just as the light is the same whether it is in a small candle flame, or in the big sun, or in the faraway stars – the quality is the same.You can watch the mind because you are not the mind.That is the whole reason to watch it:To become aware that you are separate.Existentially, no problem arises because you cannot watch this watcher. You have come to the very end of the rope; in the very first step you have completed the journey.Logically, you can manage to create the problem. Watcher one watches the mind; watcher two watches the watcher number one…and then go on ad absurdum. Don’t make it a puzzle. That will be risking your own possibility of becoming aware.It is not a logical conclusion.Logic has no dominance over existence.There is only one watcher; you cannot go behind it. If you can go behind it, then it was not the watcher, it was part of the mind – mind was befooling you. A part of the mind can watch the other part. But if you have become completely unidentified with the mind and you are simply a watcher – not a thinker, not part of the mind in any way – you have come to the end of the rope in the very beginning. There is no beyond it; however you try, you will not be able to go beyond it, you will always remain the same watcher.It is the experience of the meditators – they have all tried – that perhaps behind the watcher, they may find some other watcher. But the watcher as a word creates the problem. It is not watcher, it is really watching. It is a process; it is complete in itself. You cannot jump out of it and watch it. You are it, so you cannot go behind yourself.It is possible to watch the mind because you are not the mind, so you can step back and have a look at the mind. And this stepping back and having a look at the mind, is the greatest transformation that can happen to man. Freed from mind, you are freed from all that was binding, imprisoning, enslaving – your miseries, your sufferings, your desires, your fears.The watcher has no disease; the watcher is simply a mirror, reflecting. And the miracle of the process is that the more you become clearly distinct from the mind, the mind starts disappearing. That is the elimination.Mind exists with your support; it has no source of nourishment other than your support. And the support you can give to the mind is of identity; you have to become one with the mind. Then mind as a parasite goes on living. But the moment you are separate from the mind, the parasite dies. You can see it disappearing just like smoke, into thin air. Only watching remains.You cannot watch it, you are it.You know it, but you don’t watch it; you feel it, but you don’t watch it; you live it, but you don’t watch it, because you cannot go behind it. It will be still the same watcher.It is good that existence is not logical; otherwise there would have been no buddhas, no awakened people. There would have been number one, number two, number three… There are unending numbers, and the whole process would become tedious. But the process does not exist; it is only mind that can create the problem and can stop you from going into existential experience.So to eliminate you is the only way. To illuminate you, to make you enlightened, the only way is to kill you, to kill you as an identity with the mind.As the mind is left – like a snake leaves its old skin and slips out of it – you have done the whole pilgrimage from darkness to light, from the finite to the infinite, from death to deathlessness.You are asking, “In the story of the Buddha twice swatting an insect from his head, how did he know that he was not aware the first time?” When you have a headache, how do you know? Can you prove you have an headache? It is impossible. That does not mean that headaches don’t exist.One of my teachers, a very beautiful man, an old Mohammedan and a very colorful man…he never married. Once I asked him, “Why did you never marry?”He said, “I cannot afford my clothes, my beautiful house, and a wife too. Either I can afford a wife…but then there is no house. And I love to have a new suit of clothes every day. He had three hundred and sixty-five suits, so his choice of the same dress came only once in a year, and by that time people had almost forgotten that dress. He lived a very colorful life and was a very loving man.Before beginning a class, as the school opened, he always introduced himself with the words, “There are a few things you have to remember with me: I don’t believe in headaches, in stomachaches, and things like that. Unless you can prove something, don’t say anything; just sit and do the work. Don’t ask for a holiday because you have a headache.”He was very logical. Either prove…but how to prove a headache? I was wondering what to do with this man, because he is blocking all the avenues to escape from school! And I was rarely in the school; I always had something: a headache or a stomachache – which are very beautiful escapes; you don’t have to prove them, you have just to say and you are freed. It was going to be difficult with this man – but I found a way. He had created a mental problem; mind could not solve it. But existence is always available to help you.Just in front of his small bungalow there were two beautiful mango trees. The mangoes were not ripe yet. Mangoes have to be taken away from the trees before they are ripe because the moment they are ripe, the parrots know before you know. And parrots love mangoes; in hundreds they come. Only an unripe mango is safe! And they were really very big mangoes.I climbed the tree…because every evening he used to go for a walk. With his colorfulness, beautiful dress, a beautiful staff in his hand, with a beautiful cap…every day everything was new; he even had three hundred and sixty-five beautiful staffs, to go with each suit of clothes. I saw him going out and then I climbed the tree. He used to come back when the sun had almost set, but still there was not absolute darkness; there was still light. When he came under the tree, I hit him with a big mango. An unripe mango hits almost like a rock and he said, “Awk!”I said to him, “Stop the noise. You will have to prove that you have some pain, some ache in your head.”“You come down first,” he said. “Why did you do that?”I said, “It is in answer to your introduction today. It was the first day of your class. I am a student and I need as many holidays as I want. A headache is one of the best excuses, or a stomachache, and you have blocked those doors. You say, ‘You can have a holiday if you show me your fever; I can check it. If you have a wound, I can check it. If you have broken your leg, I can check it. But headaches and stomachaches, and like things, I don’t believe, so never ask for a holiday.’”I said, “Now, can you prove that your head is hurting? I know it must be hurting; you know it is hurting, but can you prove it?”He looked at me and he said, “Listen. It is a compromise with you. You need not say that you have a headache because that will give the idea to others. You simply raise your hand. If you raise your hand I will give you the day free.”I said, “There is no problem. You could have said that before. You could have saved your head from being unnecessarily hit by a mango.”The other students were very troubled, because whenever I would raise my hand, he would tell me to go home and rest. The students thought, What is the communication? A few others tried raising their hands and he asked, “What do you mean by raising your hand?”They said, “We don’t know. But why do you allow one student when he raises his hand? And he raises it almost every day!”Because the students were continually asking me what was the secret, I said, “That is not possible for me to say, because that is a commitment between me and him. And he is keeping his promise so I will keep my promise.”If you start thinking about this special question of how Buddha became aware of the insect he removed unconsciously by waving his hand…How do you become aware of your headache? How do you become aware of the headache that you had yesterday? Right now maybe, but about yesterday’s? – you may be imagining. Do you have any proof that yesterday you really had what you are talking about today? But you know and everybody else knows, because a headache is a common experience.Awareness, watchfulness, is not a common experience. It can be common; it should be common because that is the only possibility for the liberation of human consciousness. But don’t make it a mind problem; otherwise, it will become like the famous puzzle of Bertrand Russell.I have told you the puzzle…Once in England, a great mathematician, Godel, was writing a great treatise on mathematics, on the foundations of mathematics. And his assumption was that there is no problem that cannot be solved by mathematics. He had worked almost thirty years for that great book; it was very comprehensive.Bertrand Russell was also working in collaboration with another mathematician, Whitehead, on a book – Principia Mathematica, the fundamental principles of mathematics – which would be all-inclusive; there would not be any need for any other book as far as mathematics is concerned.Both of the mathematicians were of the same caliber, of the same genius. Godel was almost completing his treatise, because he was an older man than Bertrand Russell. It was almost a thousand pages of complicated argument to prove mathematics is the fundamental science and the only science which has no flaw.Just at that time, when he was going to give it to the publisher, Godel received a letter from Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell had himself received a letter, from the librarian of the British Museum – he had received a few letters. The British Museum was ordered by the government to compile catalogs of all the libraries of England. So they ordered all the libraries to compile catalogs of all their books. And they should compile two catalogs; one they should keep in the library and the other they should send to the British Museum. Then the British Museum would compile a final catalog in which all the books of the country, including the British Museum, would be included. They would make two catalogs: one would remain in the British Museum and one would go to the Ministry of Education from where the order had come.A few librarians became puzzled about something like your question. When they compiled the catalogs, one remained with them and one was going to the British Museum. Now the problem was whether to put that catalog also in the catalog – because it was a book in the library – or to leave it out. Both seemed to be not right. How can you put the catalog itself in it? And not to put it in means you are leaving one book in the library without being cataloged.So they wrote questions to the librarian of the British Museum. He himself was puzzled by the same problem: whether to put the final catalog also in the catalog…which looks absurd because a catalog is for other books, not for itself. But there was this final catalog in the British Museum which remained uncataloged, so rather than sending it to the Ministry of Education, he sent the question to Bertrand Russell, knowing that he was a great mathematician. And he was a great mathematician, so great that I don’t think anybody reads his book. The book is so complicated that just to prove that two plus two is four, he devoted two hundred and fifty big pages. All the complicated arguments…you cannot even think to write one page about the simple subject, two plus two is four.But when he received the letter from the librarian, Bertrand Russell was puzzled. What to do? Just then he remembered: Old Godel thinks that everything can be solved by mathematics. It is better to send it to him.He sent him the puzzle, saying “What do you suggest? According to you, every problem can be solved and it is a mathematical problem.”Godel thought over it, but could not find the way. And because he could not find the way, he did not publish his book. He said, “If I cannot solve a simple puzzle, on what grounds can I claim that mathematics is capable of solving every problem?”You are saying: one can become aware, and one can become aware of one’s awareness. Or one can become aware of one’s unawareness and then can become aware of one’s awareness of unawareness – but where it will lead?In existence there are no problems.Mathematics is only an extension of logic. If the question had come to me and not to Bertrand Russell, I would have simply said, “A catalog is not a book.” And it is finished.You are required to compile a catalog of books in your library and a catalog is not a book. That’s all that is needed: a definition. A catalog is simply a catalog of other books, but the catalog itself is not a book because it deals with no subject; neither is it philosophy, nor is it logic, nor is it mathematics, nor is it physics. It has no subject matter; hence it is not a book. So there is no question of including it. Once you think of including it, the problem is arising because you have not defined what a catalog is. Neither Bertrand Russell nor Godel thought of the possibility of defining it as a catalog, not as a book. That would have solved the whole thing. But they were more interested in the puzzle and the possibility of its mathematical solution.Awareness to me is not a puzzle.It is not even part of any philosophy.It is an existential experience.Just become aware of the mind and then try to become aware of awareness, and you will fail. If you can become aware of your awareness, that will prove that the first awareness was not awareness, it was part of the mind. Once you are aware you have come to the dead-end. Your journey is complete.You say, “…although I am perceiving myself to be gradually more aware, yet I cannot identify who is the perceiver.” You cannot. It is not in the nature of it to know the ultimate. You can be the ultimate, but you cannot be the knower of the ultimate; otherwise, there will be a division between the knower and the ultimate.The ultimate is the situation where knowing and knower dissolve into each other and become one, where the knower is the known. In J. Krishnamurti’s words, “Meditation is when the observer is the observed.” All distinctions disappear.So remember Bucy’s Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.One needs to be a little unreasonable too. It brings great joy and spice in your life, being a little unreasonable. A reasonable man is simply flat.And existence is not reasonable at all; it is simply there without any reason. If it were not there you could not have complained. If it is there you cannot explain why it is there. It is simply there.Irving Levensky was asked by his wife to buy a chicken for Saturday night dinner. He bought the chicken and was on his way home when he remembered that he didn’t have his house key and his wife would not be home for hours.He decided to pass the time by going to a movie. In order to get into the cinema, he stuffed the chicken into his trousers.He sat down and began watching the movie. It fascinated him so that he didn’t notice the chicken sticking its head through the fly of his pants.Two women were sitting next to him, and one of them nudged the other. “Look,” she said, “look at that thing there sticking out of the man’s pants.”The other replied, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”The first one said, “Yes, but this one is eating my popcorn.”Existence is very absurd.Osho,How can we keep the most beautiful gathering of rebels and seekers who ever existed on the earth from becoming an established society?The authentic rebellious man has no such problem; he never becomes part of any establishment.There was a very unexpected experience in the communist revolution in Russia. When the revolution happened, that was in 1917, a great uneasiness was felt in the revolutionaries. The topmost revolutionaries, Lenin, Trotsky, and their colleagues, were all in a strange situation, and one man, Joseph Stalin, took advantage of their puzzled state.Stalin was not a revolutionary, he was one of the great establishment makers. Just to create the establishment – because the country was in a chaos after the revolution; there was no order, no law – the idea of the revolutionaries was to have individuals as free as possible, teach them to be responsible so there would be no need of law and no need of the law-establishing agencies of the police, the court, the judges.Lenin was also of the opinion that marriage should disappear, because it is one of the fundamental establishments. All other establishments use it as their foundation. But when they were not in power, it was easy to think such things; when they came into power, then the real problems were there.Leaving individuals free, society was becoming full of crime. Responsibility was not arising, because responsibility is not just an idea – unless one is alert enough, meditative enough, silent enough, to take all the responsibility of his life and not to disturb, not to interfere with anybody else’s life, it is very difficult.It is well known, but not well established, that Lenin, the head organizer of the revolution, was poisoned by the secretary of the party, Joseph Stalin. But the poison was given very slowly, over a long period of time of two years. Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, has written that it was absolutely certain that he was being poisoned because she was not allowed to change the doctor – the doctor was appointed by Joseph Stalin, was in his service. He was not treating Lenin, he was simply poisoning him slowly.Krupskaya could see – she was an intelligent woman – that instead of getting well, he was getting worse. The more the treatment, the more he was drowning – something was wrong. Why this insistence that the doctor should not be changed when the doctor is not succeeding in curing him? It was a natural question that the doctor should be changed.Trotsky was the foreign minister in the new government of the revolutionaries, but he was as authentic a revolutionary as Lenin. He wanted no ranks in the army – somebody lower, somebody higher. Everybody should be equal: “We are creating a society of equality; at least the government should give proof to the society that the people who belong to government are equal in rank.”But the generals were not ready to be equal with ordinary soldiers. It is a childish game in the world, but even childish games are played by your oldest people. Just having a few colored stripes on your coat makes people feel very special; one color more added and they rejoice. It seems children are growing old certainly, but they are not growing up; they are not becoming intelligent.So all the generals of the armies were against Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin was naturally in conspiracy with all the generals. They were all agreeing with him because he was going to keep them on as great generals, marshals, colonels, all the categories. He was going to give them more power.So naturally they conspired with Joseph Stalin, and Trotsky had to run away, out of the Soviet Union – and he was the defense minister; he was the head of all the armies. And he was also the foreign minister, because he was the most educated, most intelligent person of all the revolutionaries. Lenin was a great organizer, but was not a great intellectual or a great orator. He was number two, in that sense, to Trotsky.Joseph Stalin’s professional murderers followed Trotsky. He was killed in Mexico, and killed very brutally with a hammer on his head, and in a very strange situation. He was writing the biography of Joseph Stalin…because Stalin was destroying the whole revolution; he was not a revolutionary.Trotsky has written a tremendously insightful, very big, biography. He was completing the last page, and as he had put the final full stop – that was the moment; it is just a coincidence that he was looking at the last line, finishing it – the hammer came down on his head, and his head was broken into pieces.His blood is splashed all over the last page of his hand-written biography. It is still in a museum in Mexico, on exhibition. It is one of the great biographies, and written by an enemy. Trotsky and Stalin were enemies, enemies in the sense that Joseph Stalin was never a revolutionary. All he wanted deep down was to replace the czar and become a czar himself – and he became it. He became the worst czar that has ever existed.In Russian history the worst czar was Ivan the Terrible, but he was nothing compared to Stalin. He poisoned Lenin, he killed Trotsky, and he went on killing other great revolutionaries. He was satisfied only when all the great revolutionaries who were responsible for the revolution were finished. He replaced them with people who wanted law and order, and society and organization. He created the greatest establishment ever created, and with such strength that the whole country became a concentration camp.It is very difficult for rebels and seekers to remain rebels and seekers. They will be rebellious even if the revolution has happened. Any revolution is bound to create another kind of establishment, and the authentic rebellious man will again revolt, revolt against the revolution he himself has created but had never thought would become an establishment. The authentic rebel never becomes part of any establishment.The problem is that the rebels are very few, and the retarded masses are so many that unless every individual is a rebel, an establishment is bound to follow. The rebel is bound to fight against his own revolution, which is turning into a new establishment. Up to now no revolution has been able to succeed because the moment it succeeds it starts becoming another establishment. The people who had power change, but the people who come in their place are more powerful. And it is more difficult to change them, because they know all the strategies that they have used in changing powerful people. So they will not allow any of those strategies.For seventy years in Russia there has not been a single rebel, because you cannot just become a rebel in a single moment. To be rebellious needs a certain understanding, a certain alertness, a certain unprejudiced mind. Russia is the only country in the world where revolution is impossible, and this is a very strange situation. It is the country where revolution succeeded on a great scale. But the moment it became a success, suddenly the water turned into ice; it became the establishment. And the rebels who are authentic cannot be tolerated anymore by the same group who changed the whole society.Stalin was afraid of Trotsky, he was afraid of Lenin. They had to be finished because they were people who would risk everything, but would not drop their rebelliousness; they would not become a new establishment.What you are asking for is a society where everybody is so aware that no law is needed; where everybody is so peaceful that no police are needed; where everybody is so loving that rape and murder and heinous crimes become impossible; where everybody is unrepressed, uninhibited; where everyone has lived his life according to nature. There will be no need of any establishment; government will only be a functional entity like the post office, or railway trains.Who cares who is the postmaster general? Have you ever heard? No speech, no photograph is ever published in the newspapers about who is the postmaster general. He is managing a great complex, but it is only functional.Governments should be functional, they are servants of the people. But through the establishment, through power, they become the masters of the people. And very retarded people, when they become masters, destroy all that is delicate, all that is beautiful, all that is great.But you can be a rebel even in a society which wants you to be part of the establishment. Don’t compromise. Even life itself is a lesser value than your individuality and your rebelliousness.Your rebelliousness is your very spirit.You are truly a man only when you are rebellious, when you can say no to anything that goes against freedom, that goes against man’s dignity. When you are ready to go to the gallows without any grudge, because you are sacrificing yourself for something far greater and more beautiful – for freedom, for individuality, for expression, for creativity; you are sowing seeds for future generations – you will not be sad. You will be immensely happy that you have not been forced to become a slave; that rather than being enslaved, you preferred the gallows.Unless in this society a person is ready to choose crucifixion rather than consolations, medals, and Nobel Prizes…only such a man can be a rebel and can be truly spiritual. We hope that one day there will be a society where everybody will be so rebellious.But rebellion does not mean reaction or destruction; rebellion means your highest flowering of consciousness. Unless rebellion brings enlightenment to you, you cannot save it; you will have to compromise. And to compromise is to lose your self-respect, is to lose your dignity as a man.Up to now the society has lived under a false idea that people are free. Nobody is free; there are a thousand and one ways to enslave you. Only very rarely have a few people risked everything and remained individuals even at the risk of death – but they are the very salt of the earth. They are the people who have maintained humanity’s evolution. Evolution depends on only a very few people; they can be counted on your ten fingers. Others live a life of middle-class comfort, and for that comfort they sell their souls in the marketplace.You are asking, “How can we keep the most beautiful gathering of rebels and seekers who ever existed on the earth from becoming an established society?” If people are really rebels, not just because of their minds but because of their meditation, then there is no problem. With Gautam Buddha there were ten thousand meditators; there was no establishment. Nobody was higher, nobody was lower; nobody had to be ordered. Even Gautam Buddha has never ordered anyone to do a single thing; he simply shared his vision. It is up to you whether to participate in that vision or not. That is going to be your decision, and that is going to be your responsibility.Freedom brings responsibility.Those ten thousand people around Gautam Buddha lived a rebellious life; they renounced society. People think that all the religions of the world have renounced society for the same reasons; that is wrong. Except Gautam Buddha, all other religions have renounced the world to gain something in the other world. It is not renunciation; it is pure business, almost a lottery, because here you lose very small things, and there you get a millionfold reward in paradise.Here you lose a woman who is just a pain in the neck; there you get hundreds of beautiful young women who always remain young, who don’t perspire, who don’t use deodorants, who have a natural perfume arising out of their bodies; their age is fixed, they have not gone beyond sixteen. For millions of years they are just sixteen. It is perfectly good to renounce a wife here who is nothing but a trouble, in the hope of getting beautiful women there.I have heard that when Muktananda died, one of his disciples was so devoted to him that he could not live another day – the next day he also died. Naturally, the first thing was to look around for where his great master Muktananda was.He was very much ashamed to see that he was lying down under a beautiful tree – flowers were showering from the tree and Muktananda was lying down naked with a beautiful woman. As he came closer he said, “My God. He was always against pleasures, but perhaps this must be a reward for his great celibacy.” Coming closer he saw that it was nobody other than the great film actress, Marilyn Monroe. He fell to the feet of his master and said, “My master, I always knew you would be greatly rewarded.”Monroe said, “You idiot! You don’t understand anything. I am not his reward; he is my punishment!”But people are hoping. Only Gautam Buddha has not given a hope for the future life to his disciples. He has given them the whole kingdom of the present, not of the future. And their renunciation of the world is not against the world. He is the only one who has renounced the world, and his followers have renounced the world, not against the world but against the establishment of the society. They have created a gathering of rebels with no order, with no system except their own consciousness, their own conscience.He was working on those people to be deeply meditative. Then there is no need of any establishment. You always do the right thing; you cannot, even if you want to, do the wrong thing. You don’t need any supervision, you don’t need somebody to keep you within the law. Once you have learned the law of love, then all other laws are of no use to you.Gautam Buddha pulled them out of society for the simple reason that in society they will have to compromise; their consciousness is not so strong that they can remain without compromise.I don’t want my people to leave the world, because twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha, and it is time that people should be strong enough in their awareness so they can remain in the society without compromising. Although it is far more difficult, it is a great challenge to live in society and not be part of it, to live in society but not allow society to live in you.That’s my special contribution to the religious experience and to the rebellious human beings. In the past they used to escape out of the establishment, but that shows cowardliness, fear. Be in the society and live according to your own consciousness, whatsoever the consequences. It is better to suffer those consequences than to escape and show your fearfulness, because fear cannot allow you to rise to your ultimate height. The society can be used as a fire test of whether your rebellion is just a mind game or it is a spiritual growth. Those who are rebellious because of their spiritual growth don’t have to fear that they will become part of established society.Moishe Finkelstein, a tailor from a small Ukrainian village, applies for membership of the Russian Communist Party in Kiev.“Who was Karl Marx?” asks the Commissar.“Never heard of him,” replies Moishe.“Who was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin?”“Never met him,” answers Moishe.“Who was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?”“Can’t say I recall the name,” replies Moishe.“Mr. Finkelstein, are you taking us for idiots?” asked the irritated Commissar.“No,” replies Moishe, “Do you know Irving Levensky?”“Never heard of him,” replied the Commissar.“So, do you know Bernie Heikleman?” Moishe asked again.“No,” was the reply.“So you know Hymie Goldberg?” Moishe asked again.“I don’t know who you are talking about,” replied the irritated Commissar.“Well,” says Finkelstein, “that’s how it is – you have your friends; I have mine!”And this is how the compromise goes on happening in everybody’s life….The out-of-work actor came home to find his house in a shambles. Lamps were knocked over in the living room, drapes were torn, and in the bedroom the bedspread was ripped and the sheets torn. On the bed lay his wife, badly beaten and bruised, sobbing her heart out.“What happened? Who did this to you?” raged the actor.“I…I fought as long as I could, but he was too strong,” wailed the wife. “He…he…”“Who?” rasped the actor. “Tell me and I’ll find him and tear him limb from limb.”“It was your agent,” said the wife. “He came while you were out.”“My agent?” the actor brightened. “Tell me, quickly, does he have a part for me?”He has forgotten everything. Out of employment, you cannot fight with your agent.In life, you go on compromising without knowing, not only with the society but even with your family. Even the people you love demand compromise. Nobody likes the individual; everybody wants to overpower you, to dominate you.The husband wants to dominate the wife; the wife in her own ways tries to dominate the husband. The parents dominate the children; the children also in their own way dominate the parents. It is a constant struggle going on in multiple ways, where nobody is allowed to be just himself, where to be oneself is a crime.But to accept the challenge and to remain yourself, in spite of all the odds, is a great joy. To keep your individuality intact, undamaged, in a society where everybody is trying to dominate you…I don’t think it is good to escape from such a society. In the Himalayas, in deep forests, you may think you are yourself – but that is a false notion, because there is no context in which you can put it to the test.The society is every moment a test.And here, to be just yourself, not out of arrogance, not out of your egoistic feelings…Those people who are arrogant will have to compromise, because there are more arrogant people. Those who are egoists will find sooner or later somebody else who can crush them.There are different kinds of powers. People slowly, slowly learn not to stand erect, but they start crawling on the ground. In this society, to remain erect and yourself – without arrogance, without ego, but just out of your silence, just out of your awareness – is a tremendous experience and experiment.I have lived life the way I wanted; it was difficult but it was immensely rewarding. It gave me the feeling that although society may be powerful, if you have guts no power can enslave you. They can kill you, they can destroy you, but they cannot enslave you. And to be destroyed is not undignified; to be killed is not against your individuality, against your dignity, against your pride. In fact, these sacrifices will make you more and more authentically yourself.Deep down, if you are a meditator, you know your body can be taken away but your being cannot even be touched – your immortality is sure. Hence, I am adding to rebelliousness a new phenomenon. There have been meditators, but they escaped from the society, and there have been rebellious people who were destroyed by the society. I am bringing two very great qualities together that the world has not known before: the meeting of rebelliousness and meditativeness, the meeting of rebelliousness and religiousness. To me, rebelliousness and religiousness are two sides of the same coin.There is no need to be afraid because there is nothing that can be destroyed in you. And that which can be destroyed will be destroyed whether you are in the Himalayas, or hiding in the monasteries. The body is going to be destroyed, so there is no need on the part of the body, on the part of the mind, to be ready to be enslaved. This happens because you are not aware of anything more than the body-mind structure. My effort is to make you aware of your immortality.Once you have tasted the very source of your life which is eternal, then nothing can make you do things which are not in tune with your own being. You will say yes only when you feel that this yes is not the yes of a slave but a man of freedom. You will say no if you see that saying yes will be only falling into slavery. But this is possible only if you become aware of your being.The old rebels were only intellectually rebellious. My rebel has to be spiritually rebellious, and that makes a tremendous difference. The intellectual rebellion is superficial and can be purchased, but the spiritual rebellion is not a commodity in the market; you have transcended the world.I don’t want you to escape the world, I want you to transcend the world – living in it, going through all the fire because you know nothing can destroy you. This certainty can create a gathering of rebels without any establishment.And if any functional kind of mechanism is needed, that is not a problem. Where there are so many people, something functional will be needed, But remember it is functional, it does not give you any status. A prime minister or a president of a country are nothing more than functional entities; they have a utility but they don’t have any status.Real status comes only from your realization of yourself, not by sitting on a golden throne. If people bow down to you, remember they are bowing down to the throne, not to you. Tomorrow somebody else will be there. Yesterday there was somebody else and people were bowing down.I have heard it happened in Jagannathpuri…It is one of the Hindu religious cities, and it has a great chariot, very ancient, dedicated to God. Jagannath means God, the lord of the world. Once every year, the chariot goes through the streets and millions of people gather. Once it happened that a dog was going ahead of the chariot, and thousands of people were falling on the ground, touching the earth. And the dog said, “Great, I must be someone very special!”Millions of people, but all your presidents and all your prime ministers are in the same position as the dog. People are respectful towards them, not because of them – once they are out of power, nobody even remembers them.Before the Russian revolution, the prime minister of Russia was Kerensky, one of the great powerful men in the world, because Russia is one-sixth of the whole world; it is one of the greatest countries. Kerensky was so powerful, but the revolution disturbed everything. The whole family of the czar was killed. Not even a six-month-old baby was left. Kerensky escaped, and for almost fifty years nobody heard anything about him. In the beginning, for three or four years, people thought, What has happened? But then the people forgot.In 1960, Kerensky died in New York; he had been running a grocery store for all these years. He lived long, he was a hundred years old when he died, but he had changed his identity. And running a grocery store…nobody even bothered who he was.These so-called powerful people don’t have any power. There is only one power, and that comes from within.Any power that comes from outside is not yours.As it has come, it will be taken away. So if you are intelligent you will not think yourself anybody special; you are just functional.In a society of greater consciousness, more intelligence, government will become just a small functional order, it will not be an enslaving mechanism. On the contrary, it will help individuals to become more sharp in their intelligence, deeper in their meditation, and flowering in their enlightenment with great grace.Only this kind of evolution in consciousness, which is going to happen… Perhaps we are born in the right age when the transformation is going to happen, because the situation is such that either the whole of humanity will die, or it will have to change. And I don’t think anybody wants to die.The only alternative is to be more conscious, more alert, more alive, more loving – and create a new world with a new man, bring a new dawn to humanity.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,My friend, Chintan, is just starting six months of heavy chemotherapy. You have already sent him such beautiful messages for his meditation while passing through this.Now, Osho, do you have some jokes for him too?Chintan is certainly passing through a difficult stage, but everybody has to finally pass through the difficult stage of death.Only a meditator is capable of passing through it as if it is a joke. He can pass through it laughing and singing, because he knows that the fire cannot burn and the death cannot destroy him.There is no sword that can cut him.He belongs to the eternal life.Once a small glimpse of the eternity is achieved, there is no life which can be destroyed by anything. It can be removed from one form into another, but death cannot do more than that – just the changing of the house.To the non-meditator death is the end, to the meditator, a beginning. It is a new beginning, a fresh beginning, freed from the old rotten body, the old mind. It is a resurrection; every death is a resurrection. But if you don’t know it, you will die unconsciously without experiencing the beauty of resurrection.If you can die consciously, death is only a door into a new life on a higher plane. But to die consciously, one has to live consciously. You cannot manage to die consciously without a long, meditative, conscious life. Only a conscious life is rewarded with a conscious death – it is a reward, but only to the conscious man. To the unconscious man, it is the end to all his efforts, ambitions, desires. There is only darkness ahead, not a single light and no possibilities left.Death simply takes away the whole future.Naturally, the unconscious man is immensely afraid and deeply trembling, knowing that death is coming closer every day. Since your birth the only thing that has been certain is death; everything else is uncertain and accidental. Only death is not accidental; it is an absolute certainty. There is no way to avoid it or dodge it. It will catch hold of you in the right moment at the right place.I have always loved the beautiful Sufi story…A king dreams in the night that a dark shadow is putting her hand on his shoulder. He looks back. He is horrified. It is just a dark shadow, but the shadow speaks and says, “There is no need to be worried. I have just come to inform you – it is not routine; you are a great king; it is an exception – otherwise I never come to inform anybody. I come without any information.”The king said, “But who are you?”The dark shadow laughed and said, “I am your death, and be prepared. Tomorrow, as the sun will be setting, I am going to come to you.”Naturally, this nightmare woke him up. Even after he was awake, knowing well that it was only a dream, he was trembling and perspiring. And his heart was beating so loudly he could hear it himself. He immediately called the council of all his wise men, and particularly the royal astrologers, prophets, and told them the dream. He asked them the meaning of it – is it true that death is going to happen? The astrologers may be able to figure it out.The wise men, the philosophers, the astrologers, the prophets, all started arguing about the dream. Perhaps it was the first dream analysis! But they could not come to any conclusion, just as they cannot come to any conclusion today. All the dream analysts, the so-called psychoanalysts, differ in their interpretations. You take the same dream to all and you will get different conclusions about the dream. You will be more confused than ever.And so was the situation of the king from the middle of the night till the morning; he became more and more confused because everybody was saying something different. And when the sun started rising, the old man who used to serve the king…He was not only a servant, he had helped the king from his very childhood. He had taken care of him, because his mother had died and his father had appointed the man to take care of the child because he was his most trustworthy bodyguard. So the king respected him almost like his father.The old man said, whispered in his ear, “These great thinkers and philosophers and astrologers have argued for centuries and they have never come to any conclusion; do you think they will come to any conclusion within twelve hours? Forget it; that is not possible. These are the people who know only how to argue; they never come to any conclusion. They argue well but the question is not the beauty of the argument, the question is what is the conclusion of all your philosophies? There is no conclusion at all. No two philosophers agree with each other.”The king asked him, “Then what do you propose?”He said, “My understanding is let them discuss; there is no harm. But you take our fastest horse and get away as far as possible from the palace. It is dangerous to be at this place, for at least the coming twelve hours. After the sun has set, you can start turning back, but not before that.” It looked practical. The old man said, “These people can go on arguing; there is no need to stop them. If they come to any conclusion, I will follow you immediately. The best way is towards Damascus, another capital of another kingdom. So I will know where to find you, to give you their conclusion. I will come behind you.”The king was convinced by the old man. He left all those great philosophers discussing, and slipped quietly out of the palace with the best horse he had. The whole day the horse was running as fast as possible. They did not stop to eat or even to drink water. It was not a time to think of water or food. And the horse seemed to be in a certain understanding that it was a very critical moment for his master.They reached near Damascus, just outside the city, as the sun was setting. They stopped in a mango grove and as he was tying the horse to a tree, he patted it and he said, “You prove to be a great friend. You have never run so fast before; you must have understood my situation. And we have come hundreds of miles away.”As the sun was setting he immediately felt the same hand on his shoulder from behind. The shadow was there and said, “I also have to thank your horse. I was worried whether you would be able to reach this place at the right time or not. That’s why I had come to inform you. This is the place destined for your death, and your horse has brought you right on time.”Whether you run or you stay it doesn’t matter death comes. Death has started coming closer to you from the very moment you were born. In what form it comes does not matter.Bertrand Russell has said that if there were no death in the world, there would have been no religion. He has some great insight there: without death, who was going to bother about meditation? Without death, who was going to bother to know about the secret mysteries of life? One would have remained always concerned with the mundane and the worldly. Who would have turned inwards? There would have been no Gautam Buddha.So death is not just a calamity, it is a blessing in disguise. If you can understand, if you have this much intelligence – that after birth, death is approaching every moment closer – you will not lose your time in trivia. Your priority will be to know what this life is before it ends: Who is living in me? What force? For every intelligent man and woman this is the priority. Everything else is secondary to knowing oneself.Once you know yourself, there is no death.Death was only in your ignorance.In your meditative consciousness, death disappears just as darkness disappears when there is light brought in. Meditation brings the light in, and death is found to be the greatest fiction. It appears only from the outside that somebody is dying. From the inside nobody has ever died, and that is where your life source is.Chintan is taking his death very joyously, very peacefully. He will die consciously. He is giving every indication that death cannot make him unconscious, cannot knock him unconscious. He will retain his consciousness, and he will have a laugh as he will be dying, because the whole world is living in an illusion.Life is neither born nor dies.It has been before birth; it will be after death. Birth and death both are small episodes in the eternal stream of consciousness and light.You are asking for some jokes for him….Giovanni bumps into his friend Alfredo on the streets of Rome, and notices that his friend is looking very depressed.“How was your holiday in-a Miami Beach?” he asks.“Mama mia,” replies Alfredo. “It was-a terrible. I go-a to Miami and check into-a bigg-a hotel. In-a the morning I go down to eat-a breakfast. I tell-a the waitress, ‘I wanna two pissis-a toast.’ She bring only one piss. I tell-a her, ‘I want two piss.’ She say, ‘Go to the toilet.’“I say, ‘You no understand, I wanna two piss on-a the plate.’“She say, ‘You better no piss on da plate, you sonna va bitch.’ I don’t even know the lady and she call me sonna va bitch!“Later I go eat at the bigga restaurant. The waitress brings me a spoon and knife but no fock. I tell-a her, ‘I wanna fock.’ She tell me, ‘Everyone wanna fuck.’“I tell her, ‘You no understand. I wanna fock on-a da table.’“She say, ‘You better not fuck on-a table, you sonna va bitch.’“So I go back to my room in-a hotel and there is no shits on-a my bed. I call the manager and tell-a him, ‘I wanna shit.’ He tell me to go to the toilet. I say, ‘You not understand. I wanna shit on my bed.’“He say, ‘You better not shit on-a bed, you sonna va bitch.’“I go to the check-out desk and the man at the desk say, ‘Happy Holidays, Peace to you.’“I say, ‘Piss on you too, you sonna va bitch, I gonna go back to Italy.’”Just tell Chintan: Avoid Italy and go anywhere else.Osho,You say everybody is beautiful. Can you talk about the beauty of Ronald Reagan?Everybody is certainly beautiful. When I say this, I mean potentially, I do not mean actually. If actually everybody was beautiful, this world would have been a paradise.Potentially everybody is beautiful – yes, even Ronald Reagan. But the actuality is what matters. Actually, he is the ugliest man today, Adolf Hitler number one. Kaddafi has called him “Adolf Hitler number two.” I made a statement that Kaddafi should correct his statement. He is not Adolf Hitler number two, he is Adolf Hitler number one. The real, poor Adolf Hitler, has become number two.Adolf Hitler had very little power. Ronald Reagan has millions of times more power, and he is as fascist and as fanatical as any Adolf Hitler. This is the actuality.Everybody is beautiful but everybody does not prove to be beautiful, because very few people attain to their potential; they go astray. They don’t grow to be what they were born to be. They grow in an insane society and naturally, learn the whole art of being insane. Because here, whoever is more insane will be the winner.The sane person will stand out of the race. And the insane will not take any note – whatever happens to him or to others, and whatever the cost, he is going to be on the top.Your presidents and your prime ministers are your most insane people. Their right place is in madhouses, but they are ruling the whole world. In three thousand years they have managed five thousand wars. And the insanity has gone on growing; it has not been stable. Today it has reached its peak, and Ronald Reagan is standing on almost an Everest of nuclear weapons, ready to destroy the whole of life on this beautiful planet.Hence, I have to make this strange statement: I love him; I respect him as a human being if he comes back to sanity…but he is going more and more insane and senile. Retarded, he has always been. It would have been perfectly good if he had remained in Hollywood as a cowboy actor. But when he became the president, he started behaving in the same way as if he was acting in a cowboy film.It is real life; it is not a film, but he has not been able to assimilate the fact.When he became the president, he came to the White House with his only friend, a chimpanzee. Now, if you cannot find any friendship in human beings and you find friendship with a chimpanzee, it shows something about you. It also shows something about the chimpanzee – that he is an intelligent fellow.On the first day they had both gone for a walk on the beach. An old drunkard watched these two fellows. He could not believe it and he could not resist the temptation either. He went close to them and said, “Mr. President, it does not look right to have a chimpanzee as your friend. It is humiliating to the whole of America.”And as Ronald Reagan was going to say something, the drunkard said, “You shut up – I am talking to Mr. President.”This man Ronald Reagan has gone completely astray, and he is now the most powerful man. In the hands of a great insane person is so much power that you are living moment to moment in tremendous risk. He can blow up the whole earth just by pushing a button, and I don’t think that he will hesitate to do it.His fanatical and fascist mind is capable of doing any idiotic thing. He has behaved with me, with my people, with the commune – a group of meditators in a desert, just five thousand people in a vast desert of one hundred and twenty-six square miles, far away from any American town, at least twenty miles away from any town…. He became so much interested in destroying the commune – which had not done any harm to him, or to his country – just because he could not tolerate a peaceful commune, joyous and happy and celebrating.Hundreds of news media people and visitors from all over America had started coming to see what was happening: how in five years we had transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. My garden alone had three hundred peacocks, and the commune had almost two or three thousand deer. It was such a dream come true.As the news started spreading in America, Ronald Reagan began to fear that people would ask: If these people can turn even a desert into an oasis and can live so beautifully and so peacefully, with no court, with no law, with no government, why should the richest country of the world not live as peacefully and as joyously and as lovingly?Why should there be thirty million beggars on the street in America? And we had absorbed a few hundred beggars into our commune. Those beggars could not believe it when we behaved with them on equal terms. They wrote letters to me saying, “For the first time we have recognized that we are also human beings. You have given us dignity and respect; otherwise, we had been treated almost like dogs, stray dogs.”Ronald Reagan and his government became absolutely antagonistic for the simple reason that we were so successful in creating a utopia. He could not tolerate us; he destroyed the commune. He had the power; he arrested me for no reason. He fined me sixty lakh rupees for no crime, and after that I was deported from America and the commune was crushed. Now, where there were five thousand people living, and where every year on festival days for one month, there used to be twenty thousand sannyasins – a great festival of love and joy and meditation and silence and creativity…After I was out of America, his own US attorney gave a statement in a press conference that they had no evidence against me of any crime; hence, they could not send me to jail. Moreover, they did not want to make me a martyr. That shows their deep desire – they wanted to kill me, but they prevented themselves because that may have strengthened the sannyas movement around the world. Thirdly, he said, “Our priority was just to destroy the commune and not allow Osho into America for fifteen years.”I was not thinking that they would continue their harassment, but even today that harassment continues. They have forced all the governments of the world to pass laws so that I cannot enter – not only America, but any country in Europe. Now this is absolutely criminal. Wherever I was, he forced that government to deport me.Just the other day I found out that one archbishop of Greece has been caught at the Paris airport, hiding a large amount of heroin in his religious paraphernalia. I was deported from Greece and I was just a tourist. I was going to be there for only two weeks more; I had already been there two weeks. I was deported on the demand of the archbishop, the highest authority of the Greek Orthodox church, on the grounds that my presence in Greece will destroy its tradition, will destroy its religion, will destroy its morality.I could not believe that we are living in the twentieth century. I had not even left my house, the compound. And if a religion, a morality, a church, twenty centuries old – because the Greek church is the oldest church as far as Christianity is concerned – can be destroyed by a tourist in two weeks’ time, is it worth saving?But the force behind was Ronald Reagan. In Uruguay I was given a one-year resident’s permit. The president was interested in me. He had been reading my books and he was very happy that I had come to Uruguay. That would open the door of Uruguay to international visitors, sannyasins. It is a poor country and it would be an economic help to the country. It is a beautiful country, a small country.But as I was given the one-year resident’s permit, immediately, special agents from Ronald Reagan arrived. And Ronald Reagan himself phoned the president of Uruguay, saying, “Osho has to be deported within thirty-six hours. You have a choice: If you want to keep him in Uruguay, you can, but then you have to return all the money that has been given to you as loans in the past; that comes to billions of dollars. And the money that you are going to get in the coming two years, which also comes to billions of dollars, will be canceled. You can choose.”The secretary to the president of Uruguay told me, “I have seen for the first time, tears in the eyes of the president, and he said, ‘Osho’s coming to Uruguay at least has made one thing clear to us, that we are living in an illusion that we are independent. We are not even free to accept a guest in our country. Now America is blackmailing us. They know that we cannot pay all the loans; we don’t have…and we cannot afford to have the future loans withdrawn because all of our plans for the coming five years will have to be dropped. Our whole economy will collapse.’”He agreed, “I will send Osho away, although it is against our legal court and against the constitution of Uruguay. Once you give a man one year’s residence, unless he commits some heinous crime – murder, rape, or something of that category – you cannot take away his residential status. But I am ready to commit something against the constitution. I will send him; I will persuade him to leave by himself.”But Ronald Reagan insisted, “No, he has to be deported; he has not to be persuaded to leave.”The president of Uruguay begged him that this was going too far: “In the first place he has every right to stay, because he has not committed any sin. He never goes out of his house. Secondly, to deport him what cause will we show?”President Ronald Reagan was stubborn. “That is not our problem, but he has to be deported.”The president of Uruguay tried. He sent a messenger to me, “Shift your jet plane from the international airport to a small airport nearby. And leave from there, because the American Embassy is watching the international airport. There will be no need for us to deport you.”But American detectives must have been watching the president; they must have been watching me also. Before I reached the small airport, the American ambassador was there ahead of us and he had phoned the president to send all the officials with all the necessary documents for deportation: “Without deportation he cannot be allowed to leave the country.”I was deported. I had to be stopped for two hours at that small airport, and for no reason. But they have made my passport a historical document. I had been deported from twenty-one countries without any reason – against the constitutions of twenty-one countries.Reagan’s idea has been to close the whole world to me and then force the Indian government – which he is doing continuously – to allow no sannyasins to reach me. I have been informed by my friends from Washington that the attorney general said, “Our whole effort will be to completely silence Osho.”One reporter asked, “What do you mean by silence? Do you mean that he should be assassinated?”The attorney general said, “No, we don’t mean that, but it will almost be assassination.”The strategy is that no other country allows me to enter. My country of course cannot deport me, but it can prevent people from reaching me.Many television companies have written saying, “We are continuously being refused. We are asking to come to Pune; they immediately refuse, and they don’t give any reason why.”Newspapers have been refused permission to reach me. Thousands of sannyasins from all over the world have been refused visas. Somehow thousands have already got their visas, because now I have taken away the orange robe, the mala – so they cannot figure out whether the person is a sannyasin or not.I am not a serious man, so I have told my sannyasins, “If they ask you, simply ask, Who is this man Osho? Do you want us to go to him? Where is Pune? We were never thinking of going but you seem to be interested…” Although many people have got visas, some have been turned back from Mumbai airport and from Calcutta airport, back to their countries. This is because, the American government has given the Indian government a whole list of the people who were living in the commune. They are asking continuously, that every sannyasin who is here should give the police commissioner his full address and how long he is going to be here, so that, even if you have reached me one time, the next time you cannot. We have not given any names; we have asked them, “On what grounds are you asking? If you are asking one religious institution, you should ask all the religious institutions of the country to keep a record of anybody who comes there and make a report every day. And if you want, you can open an office in front of the ashram, and anybody who comes you can take his name. That is your business; that is not our business. It is not our concern and it is against our philosophy and religion to discriminate between people of different countries or different races, or different colors. And we will not do anything against our own thinking.”So they are at a loss what to do, because if they do anything against the constitution we are going to fight. But Ronald Reagan goes on insisting. The American Embassy goes on insisting to the Indian government to prevent people from reaching here. Twice, the American Embassy has been here to watch how many people there are around the ashram. And now the police commissioner has asked US, “Why does the American Embassy come again and again to the ashram? This is strange.”They should ask the American Embassy. How do we know? And why should we bother? If all the embassies of the world start coming it is perfectly good. We are not doing anything criminal here.But this man Reagan has lost his humanity.You say everybody is beautiful – but everybody does not actualize his beauty, does not actualize his consciousness. Everybody is capable of enlightenment, but that does not mean that Ronald Reagan is enlightened. Everybody is beautiful, but that does not mean that when you see a beautiful cobra, you should not avoid it. Even if you are enlightened, please avoid it! Appreciate the beauty, but avoid it.What is the difference between a dead snake lying in the road and a dead politician lying in the road? Whom will you avoid first? If Ronald Reagan is lying dead on the road and a dead snake is lying on the road, I suggest, although both are beautiful, that you avoid Ronald Reagan first! Politicians cannot be trusted whether they are really dead or not.And if you see a politician and a snake lying dead, you will also see one thing: there will be skid marks in front of the snake, not in front of the politician.Osho,What is the hidden mystery in the silence between the pages in front of you?All that I want to say to you is in my gaps. I use the words only to create gaps. So when I am simply looking at the pages, I am giving you a chance to receive the message which cannot be said in words, which can only be relayed, transferred, in utter silence.There is an ancient proverb: “People will believe anything, if you whisper it.” Particularly if you want the women to hear anything, whisper it! But I go one step further. If you really want to express the truth, don’t say anything about it, just leave the gap. Let people hear without your saying anything. That’s the only way truth has always been transferred – from one silent heart to another silent heart.In utter silence is the only possibility to meet, to merge, to share.A joke for you. The purpose of the joke is not the joke. The purpose is the laughter that follows, because in that laughter your thinking stops. In that laughter, you are no more mind. And after the laughter, just a very small gap and I can reach to the deepest core of your being.An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian were arguing about the nationality of Adam and Eve.“They must have been English,” the Englishman offered. “After all, only a gentleman would share his last apple with a lady.”“They surely were French,” the Frenchman asserted. “They were so hopelessly in love.”“They could only have been Russian,” declared the Russian. “Who else would walk around naked, have but one apple to eat between them, and think they were in paradise?”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Over the last few months I have been going through an amazing process of letting go of my attachments, of clearing the way for my heart to expand to you, the divine.Thank you, Osho, for showering me with so much love. Am I worthy of so much?Everybody is worthy of much more, much more than he is receiving. But the responsibility of not receiving more is yours.People live a closed life. They keep all their doors and windows of the heart completely shut. It happens because of a natural phenomenon that the child is so small and so helpless, and so dependent and is always in fear; everybody is bigger and more powerful. His experience of fear in the very beginning starts the process of closing the heart.Fear is a closing process.Love is just the opposite, the opening process. Unfortunately, the way humanity has lived, it has lived in fear. Even if it loves, it is out of fear. And a love out of fear is absolutely false. It is better to be loveless – because at least it will go on hurting you to the point that you will have to change – than to have a substitute false love which consoles you, deceives you and keeps you where you are, a closed being.The child is told by the parents to love them; it is almost an order. Love cannot be ordered. If through an order something resembling love happens it is false, and deep inside there is hate because nobody wants to be ordered, manipulated. But every parent is manipulating his own children: I am your mother – love me!What is so great in being your mother? What is so great in being your father? If there is something great, the child will start loving you and then there will be a totally different world. The child will learn to love on his own, not because you have ordered but because of the way you are.Love arises out of deep respect and gratitude, seeing your beauty and grandeur, seeing your unconditional love which asks nothing in response, not even love. If the parents can shower the child with love without asking for any response from him, the response will come. And this response will have an authenticity; it will come from the opening of the heart. The child will know that there is no reason to fear. These are not the people to be afraid of; you can open, and this is the beginning of a totally different life. Once you have learned that, the open heart is not only capable of receiving love from your parents, it is also capable of receiving love from the whole existence.The whole secret is a simple thing – the opening of the heart. But what actually has been happening is that neither of the parents loves each other. The husband loves because he is a husband; he is supposed to love. The wife loves under submission, because she has been enslaved through marriage; she has to love.When there is some compulsoriness, the beauty of love disappears and the reality of love changes completely to its opposite. Husband and wife love each other and hate each other too, simultaneously. They hate because they have to love under compulsion, under the rules of society, convention, law. The husband can demand love; the wife can demand love, but it is a demanding love; in subtle ways they demand, not directly.As the husband comes home…the wife was perfectly okay listening to the radio, looking at the television, singing to herself, and as the husband comes, she immediately lies down and suddenly, the headache!The story is that Adam was constantly bothering God: first, he was alone and he had no idea that there was something missing in his life. But then he saw a bull doing something to a cow. And he ran to God and said, “What is happening? What is that bull doing to the cow?”And God said, “You don’t bother me again and again. I have told you, the bull is loving the cow.” And all the animals and the birds…and Adam was again and again asking. Finally, God became tired and told him, “I will give you a wife also.”And the next day, in the morning, Adam ran after God and said, “Just a minute, please, what is a headache?”The first night, the very first night of humanity’s beginning, and the headache is the first problem that arises – the wife had a headache.These are ways of manipulating. When your wife has a headache, naturally you have to be loving. This is not a time to quarrel or fight or to argue or tell her things that she has done wrong. Some other time – this is not the time; she is already suffering. The headache is a way to ask for your sympathy, but it is not love. The man will show sympathy; and sympathy is ugly in comparison to love. Always remember: all these qualities are relative.Sympathy is good in comparison to antipathy, but sympathy is very poor and ugly in comparison to love.You have heard about Albert Einstein’s law of relativity. Somebody has reduced it to a simple maxim: the theory of relativity says that it all depends on which side of the toilet door you are. If you are inside time is going fast, and if you are outside time is going slow. It is the same time, just the door is creating the whole trouble.Love is something that can blossom in its beauty only when unasked, when it is not demanded. When it comes on its own, even unconsciously, it has tremendous beauty. The moment you demand, it may come because the wife is dependent on you…and in certain ways, the husband is dependent on the wife. Love happens between two independent people not between two slaves of each other. And the poor children are brought up by these two persons who themselves don’t know the secret of the opening of the heart.Naturally, they start from the very beginning. The mother goes on saying, “He is your daddy, smile!” as if these things can be ordered. Smile…and the poor child has to smile. Now what is there in this dodo you call daddy that the poor child has to smile? And the poor child does not understand what this fellow has done that he has to smile. But he has to smile; that smile becomes, naturally, a Jimmy Carter smile, absolutely false. The child starts becoming a politician; he smiles because he knows that way he is appreciated, thought to be a beautiful child. If he does not smile, he is thought to be unworthy, and nobody wants to be condemned as unworthy. That’s how, slowly, the child starts learning false things: false smiles, false love, false respect.In a more conscious and authentic world, the husband and the wife should first learn how to remain independent and yet allow love to pass through. They should not come too close. Kahlil Gibran is right when he says to the lovers, “You should stand like the pillars of a temple – far apart, yet supporting the same roof.” Your love should be supported by you, but you should leave enough gap for each to have his own individual territory, his own individual space, his own individuality.You should not trespass on each other. But what to say of trespassing? Husbands and wives become detectives, FBI agents – against each other. They are continuously looking out of the corners of their eyes: What is happening? This is not love. This is domination; this is pure animal sexuality. A child is born out of this situation, and unfortunately has to be brought up by these people. They themselves don’t know what love is; they missed the train. Now they will train the child to miss the train. And this goes on from generation to generation.Just the other day, there was a question from Veena – how to open the heart? It is just like somebody asking how to open the eyes. If you were forced from the very beginning and ordered to open the eyes, perhaps you would have retaliated by closing them. That would have been your assertiveness, your individuality, and you may have forgotten completely how to open the eyes. Now, do you think there can be some training to open the heart, some discipline, some technique? That will be another mistake. You can pretend that your heart is open. That’s all that will happen by your discipline and training and technique.What is needed is a deep understanding of why the heart is closed. There is no need to be worried about opening it. Just knowing why it is closed, you will come upon all those fears that have closed it. Now those fears are not there, but once you have closed the doors and the windows, they have remained closed.Now nobody is forcing you; now you are grown up enough. You can assert yourself; you can be an individual. You can say to your father, “If you are lovable, I will love, but not because you are my father.” You can say to your mother, “Create the quality of lovableness and I will love you – not only I, but others also will love you – but not because you are my mother.”Love is not a rational thing. It is not a syllogism: she is your mother; hence you have to love her. Wherever any kind of compulsoriness comes in, love is very delicate and disappears.Everybody is much more worthy than he can even dream of, to receive love, to share love, to rejoice in making love your very life.Birth is not in your hands, neither is death in your hands. Between birth and death only one thing is in your hands, and that is love. And unfortunately, that which was your only freedom is not available to everybody.You are saying, “Am I worthy of so much?” You are worthy of much more. Just learn to be receptive, just learn to be humble, just learn to be simple, just learn to be trusting. Even if the whole world deceives you, still trust, because that is their problem if they are deceptive; it is not your problem.What happens? A single man deceives you and you start distrusting the whole of humanity. Do you see the absurdity of it? Even if the whole of humanity deceives you, I say to you, still trust – because trust is much more valuable; it has an intrinsic value. It does not depend on whether people are trustworthy or not. And if you can trust in spite of their untrustworthiness, you may create a revolution in their hearts also, because they are also as human as you are.They are also victims of the same society and the same pattern as you are. You are fortunate if you have opened one window. You are fortunate if by accident a door has been flung open. You are fortunate not to be part of the closed humanity.Now, this little opening has to be made bigger. In fact, a moment has to come in the life of love when all the windows and doors disappear; not only that, but all the walls disappear also.You are just under the open sky, under the stars and you will be showered from all directions, all dimensions, with so much immense love and blissfulness that you cannot believe why it is happening to you.It is the only miracle in the world. Walking on water is not a miracle; it is just a stupidity. Turning water into wine is not a miracle; it is a crime. The only miracle I am aware of is a completely, totally open heart. No situation, no condition can close it.Meditation will help you. Meditation is almost a golden key, a master key which opens many doors. It can open the door of love too. As you become silent, as you become peaceful, as you become aware of your life force, as you become aware there is no death, fear disappears. And with the disappearance of the fear – from the very roots – now there is no point in keeping your heart closed. You can open your heart to friend and foe, to those who are familiar and to those who are strangers. And you will receive gifts which you had not ever imagined.You are saying, “Over the last few months, I have been going through an amazing process of letting go of my attachments.” It is an amazing process, but it is the process I have been telling everybody my whole life; that your attachment is a barrier, it is not a bridge.Your attachment keeps you unaware of your own great potential. The more you become attached to things, to people, the more you become a slave. Attachment is another beautiful name of spiritual slavery. A man who is attached to money is a slave.I used to know a man…I have never come across another of the same quality of attachment. He was so money mad that even if you had a one hundred rupee note, he would say, “Just let me touch it.” And he would touch it as if he was touching his beloved, with such romance. It was impossible to give him money and to get it back. I inquired about him from all the people who knew him. They said, “He has never returned anybody’s money. And people feel full of pity. Nobody is angry about it. They just think he is insane, obsessed with money.”Walking on the street on a fullmoon night, he suddenly picked up something and then threw it away and said, “If I meet this man I will kill him. The son of a bitch spits mucous as if it is a rupee; it shines in the light.”Such was his madness. He had a small cloth shop, and for a few months I used to live just by the side of his shop in a small house. I was puzzled to watch the whole show that went on in his shop. There were people whom he knew would ask for things on credit. He would immediately give me a sign and then hide in the back of the shop in the bathroom. He always avoided one old woman in particular. And I had to tell her, “He is not here.”But one day I said to her, “What is the matter? Whenever you come you never find him here.”She said, “There is nothing the matter. He is afraid of me because he owes me money. And naturally, I will purchase things and I will tell him, ‘Deduct it from the money you owe.’”I said, “If that is what is the matter, then he is hiding in the bathroom.”She said, “Really.”I said, “You go in.”She said, “Well it does not look right.”I said, “You go in and open the door.”So she went and opened the door. He came running out. He was very angry with me. I said, “If I had known that this was the reason, I would have never deceived that woman that you are not in the shop. You owe money to her?”He said, “I owe money to everybody. In this whole area, nobody can say that I don’t owe money to them. But you know me; I cannot return money once I get it. It is almost like a heart attack to give the money back.”It is verging on insanity. All attachments although different in degree, are a kind of putting yourself down and making something so important that people are ready to die for money; people are ready to die for power. People are ready to do anything to fulfill their ambition. All these attachments destroy your worthiness. They take away all that is beautiful and valuable in you. You become smaller than the things you are attached to and infatuated with.A man who has no attachment has tremendous freedom; he has nothing to lose. And if everything is lost, he will not look back even a single time.I have told you the story of Diogenes…He used to live naked. He is the only man in the Western world who can be compared to Mahavira in India. Both were contemporaries; both lived naked. Both had immensely beautiful bodies and were very strong people.Diogenes was going to the river. He used to carry only a begging bowl. Mahavira did not use any begging bowl because everything that you become used to creates a subtle, psychological slavery.Mahavira used to make a cup with his hands to drink or to take food. But Diogenes, like all old renunciates, used to carry a begging bowl. He was running towards the river; he was so thirsty and it was hot. And just then he saw a dog running by his side. The dog jumped ahead of him in the river and started drinking.Diogenes felt very much offended, but he also felt deeply grateful to the dog…. he has shown him that a begging bowl is not needed! You can drink water without it, why carry it unnecessarily? “If a dog can manage to live without a begging bowl, I am a man; I can manage.” First, he threw away the begging bowl, and he said, “That was my only possession – and I was thinking that I had overcome all attachment, but throwing that bowl, I knew that now I had become really free. Otherwise, I used to keep an eye out in case somebody might steal the begging bowl.”It was a beautiful bowl presented to him by a king and beautifully carved. In the night also he used to touch the begging bowl once or twice to see that it was still there. He said, “Since the moment the dog taught me the lesson, I have felt such freedom, and such a burden has been relieved from my heart.”If this is the situation with a begging bowl, what will be the situation of people who are possessed of so many things, so possessive that things become their only life? And remember, the moment you become attached to a person, the person is no more a person. You have changed the person into a commodity, into a thing. Only things can be possessed.If a husband possesses the wife, he has reduced her into a thing, and the wife can never forgive him. If the wife possesses the husband, she has committed the greatest sin by reducing a human being into a commodity. Only things can be possessed, not conscious human beings.But you possess even your children. You say, “This is my child.” You should be more aware. You should say, “This child has come through me. I have been the passage, but he does not belong to me. He belongs to existence.” If this insight settles in you, then you will not try to make the child a carbon copy of you.What can you teach the child? All that you know is of the past; it is dead, it is gone, it will never come back. And the child has to live in a future about which you don’t have any understanding. There is no possibility for you to know the future. Prepare the child for the unknown; prepare the child to be adventurous. Prepare the child to learn to live dangerously, because the more safety and security you ask, the more you are enclosed in a prison of your own making. A prisoner cannot be a lover.Only freedom knows the fragrance of love.Only freedom knows your immense worthiness. And that does not give you any ego, any arrogance. It makes you really more humble than ever – you don’t deserve it; still existence out of its abundance has given you so much. You learn for the first time the sense of gratitude, gratefulness.To me, gratitude is the only prayer. Nothing has to be said, just a feeling of gratefulness. But people are full of complaints not gratitude.Veena has just asked how to open the heart because she had written a letter which was ugly, and now she has written another letter. She thinks she has improved upon the first one, but the basic points are still there. She used to live in this house and, to make a bigger library, seventeen people from the house have been moved into other houses in the campus; the whole campus is one. She was never grateful that she was in the house, but she is complaining very seriously that she has been moved from the house. She is not worried that sixteen other people have also gone.Those sixteen have written letters of thankfulness, that they are grateful that they lived in the house with me, and they are grateful that they have been chosen to make a place for the library. They are immensely happy and thankful. Only she is complaining, asking why she has been moved to another house. She is living with her boyfriend in the room; she knows that we don’t have enough space for people…We are trying to find more and more places, and within two or three months, you all will have places in the ashram. But just my name, and the price of any house goes up three times. So it is a little difficult, but I know you are living in difficulties outside. The same flat that was rented for seventeen hundred rupees per month before our coming back to Pune is now being given to sannyasins for eight thousand rupees per month. Prices have gone seven, eight times higher.But Veena will not feel grateful that she is in the ashram. She will not think that thousands of sannyasins are living outside, paying too much, eight or ten times more than the market price.Two thousand sannyasins are living outside, and she is demanding that she wants a separate room to herself. That means a separate room for her lover and a separate room for herself, perfectly aware that we don’t have a space.Demanding, and when your demand is not possible at this moment to fulfill, you become closed; you become angry. She has been angry, so angry that I was puzzled. Whenever I would come, she was sitting with folded hands, but she would never open her eyes. She is perfectly aware that if I see her eyes, I will immediately see what is going on in her. To avoid that…she was keeping her eyes closed, and I knew that she was boiling within.Rather than feeling grateful that you are part of a commune where everybody loves you, everybody respects each other, where there is no hierarchy, where there is nobody higher and nobody lower, that you are living in a totally new world, a miniature experiment…she is concerned about stupid things. That’s how the mind functions, and then it becomes closed. And when it is closed then she is angry that I am not loving towards her.My love is available, just as the light of the sun is available. You just have to open your eyes. My love cannot be addressed to particular people, because love to me, cannot be a relationship.I am love.I can share with you.I am sharing every moment.Those who are capable of receiving it will receive it, as much as they are capable – and their capacity depends on the opening of their hearts. But an angry heart or a fearful heart cannot be open.It is simply a question of understanding. You don’t have to force your heart open; that won’t help. You have simply to understand. It is just like you were putting two plus two is equal to five. Now no training is needed, just a simple understanding that you have been counting wrong – finished. Start counting two plus two is four. Don’t ask what to do with five, how to get rid of five.Life is mostly a question of understanding. So just understand and pay attention to whatever life has given to you. Are you worthy of it? We are not worthy of anything…. Intelligence, love, life itself; we are not worthy. “If you had not been given life, you could not have registered any complaint in the complaint office: why have I not been given life when everybody else – Tom, Dick, Harry, everybody else – is given life?” No, there would have been no possibility.Life is given to you. Capacity to grow is given to you. Every opportunity to come to your ultimate peak of consciousness is given to you. A heart that can blossom in love is given to you. Just feel grateful to life, and as you will feel grateful, you will become more and more worthy, and more and more humble – no grudge, no complaint.This is exactly the state of a religious man. It does not need you to belong to any organized religion for you to become religious.Religiousness is your gratefulness towards existence.Such beautiful trees, such infinite sky, so many stars and you have not paid for anything. This immense universe is given to you with all its beauty, sunrises, sunsets, and all the flowers and beautiful people. Just watch and you will be aware that so much is already given, but you are taking it for granted. You have never looked at it as a gift from existence without your asking, without your demanding.Once you start seeing all that has already been given, your heart will be full of gratitude. And that gratitude will open all the doors, all the windows. Existence is bridged by only one thing and that is gratefulness. Then miracles start happening to you. Then mysteries go on opening their doors to you. The more humble, the more simple, the more grateful, the more worthy you become – and your worthiness has no limits.Isaac Asimov has made a beautiful statement: “God loves all men, but is enchanted by none.”Existence loves everybody – and a man who has disappeared as an ego, as a personality, is nothing but a vehicle to existence. He does not love; he is love. I would like to remind you about Oscar Wilde. He says, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”If you will see what miracles are happening around you, within you, you will respect yourself too, you will love yourself too. If the whole existence loves you, you will love yourself. And that is the only romance that knows no divorce. But it is not arrogant, it is not egoistic. That has to be remembered, because ego is a closing factor.Arrogance divides you from existence.To be nobody is the greatest achievement in the world. But we are living in a very insane world – and when I say insane world, I only mean the insane humanity – it goes on demanding and it has no gratitude for anything. Everybody thinks that he is very worthy; life is just not giving the right opportunities. One should understand in a different way. Whatever is given, you don’t even deserve that. There is no right to demand; everything is given out of abundance, not because of your right.A woman went to her psychiatrist and said, “Doctor, I want to talk to you about my husband. He thinks he is a refrigerator.”“That’s not so bad,” said the doctor, “it is a rather harmless complex.”“Well, maybe,” replied the lady, “but he sleeps with his mouth open and the light keeps me awake.”We are living in such a world where you never see that you are mad. Everybody is throwing all their garbage on other people. The woman thinks that the husband is insane, and in actuality, she is insane. She believes that he is a refrigerator, and the problem is not that he is a refrigerator – he can go to hell – the problem is he sleeps with an open mouth and the light keeps her awake the whole night!Always remember – whenever you start condemning anything, remember always – whenever you are going to complain against existence: have you made a list of what has been given to you by existence?No! Nobody has any idea even that anything has been given. But if any small thing is missing you make so much fuss about it; that shows your insanity.The same person is utterly blissful just because so much is available, and without asking.He has never asked for this wonderful world and he has been given it. And he has not even thanked the universe.Osho,All these years with you in the commune I did what I was told. Now, it seems, it is all up to me…But…Who am I to know what to do? By the way, I'm German.Siegfried Deven, even without your saying I would have known you are a German!All the dictators in the world are created by us because we want somebody else to tell us what to do. There is a very subtle reason for it: when you are told by somebody else what to do, you don’t have any responsibility for whether it is right or wrong. You are free of responsibility; you don’t have to think about it; you don’t have to be worried about it. The whole responsibility goes to the person who is giving you the orders to do something.People like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Ronald Reagan are not just there in their powerful positions because of any quality of theirs. They are there because millions of people want to be told what to do – without anybody dictating to them they are at a loss.We create the dictators.Adolf Hitler was almost crazy, but a nation, one of the most intelligent nations in the world which has created a great tradition of philosophers, thinkers, theologians of the first rate…Even in this century Germany has produced people like Martin Heidegger, who is perhaps this century’s greatest philosopher – but he was also a follower of Adolf Hitler.It seems almost incomprehensible that a man of the qualities of Martin Heidegger…I have looked into all the philosophers of the world; Martin Heidegger seems to have such a genius, such a great originality in approaching things from absolutely new directions – but he was a follower of Adolf Hitler; he supported him. I was wondering what could be the reason – and the whole nation supported that madman. The reason is that nobody wants to have any responsibility. But the moment you lose your responsibility – you think it is a burden, somebody else takes it – you also lose your individuality, you also lose your freedom.Your responsibility is not separate from your freedom, your individuality. Once you drop your responsibility on somebody else’s shoulders, you have reduced yourself into a nonentity. Of course, now nobody will blame you if something goes wrong, but you have lost your soul.People condemn the dictators, but nobody thinks what the psychology is, how dictators are created, who creates them? We are the people who create them, and we create them in the hope that they will take the responsibility. But we are not aware that with the responsibility goes our freedom, goes our individuality, goes democracy, goes freedom of thinking or expression – everything.We have lost our soul the moment we put our responsibility into somebody else’s hands. And there are people who enjoy to dominate, to dictate; these are insane people.So it is a strange situation. People want to be unburdened of responsibility, and of course there are a few people who are ready to take all the responsibilities, because they are also taking all your freedom. They are taking all your rights, your very individuality; they are people whose only will is for power. They have a different kind of insanity, but it seems to be very fitting. There seems to be a certain synchronicity between the people who want to get rid of responsibility without knowing that they are getting rid of their very soul, and the other insane people, who love only one thing, power.In the commune, you were happy…because I was not at all involved in the commune; I was in silence and isolation. And naturally, a clique took all the responsibility, and you were very happy to work twelve hours, fourteen hours a day. Even God became tired in six days. You were working seven days. You had no other time, even to think about yourself. Why did you love it? There is some psychological background to be understood…You loved it because it helped you to forget yourself. You loved it because it helped you to be so occupied from the morning till night and then falling asleep…never finding a small gap of time just to see that your life is slipping by and you have not done anything even to be introduced to it. Death is going to knock any day on your doors, but you are not prepared – all these worries had no time, because you were so tired. But you were happy.Here, nobody is dictating to you.It was all contrary to me, because I was in isolation and silence; I was not interfering in anything. The moment I started speaking, the clique that had become the dictators all escaped from the commune. They knew it perfectly that I would disturb the whole dictatorship. That dictatorship could not be continued; it was destroying people, killing them, killing their very spirituality. The whole clique disappeared immediately as I started speaking, the moment they saw that I had come into the commune, and I would not tolerate the kinds of structures that they had maintained.I want you to be meditative; I want you to have some time to relax; I want you to have some time to think about the vital problems of life, and to do something about them.And we have all the arrangements for meditations, for group therapies, for counseling, for all kinds of possibilities that can help you to become a spiritual giant.The work is needed because you need food, you need clothes. So, it is good working five hours – and that should also not be too tight. Here we are not going to create an army to conquer the world. We are creating a commune of individuals with their own spirituality, unhindered, uninterfered with. We want them to cleanse their minds, sharpen their intelligence and enter into the deepest center of their being. Those four, five hours’ work is just to keep you alive so that you can meditate, so that you can realize one day a consciousness full of light, full of joy.Here nobody is going to tell you what to do. I want you to find what you can do the best, what you would like to do; that which you can enjoy, which will not be a burden, which will not be imposed on you, which will be your own creativity.I want your work also to be part of your spiritual growth; not against it, but for it. But that can come only from your own spontaneity. You have to take the responsibility on yourself.I want individuals to be absolutely free, responsible, alert, aware, neither allowing anybody to dictate to them; nor allowing themselves to dictate to anybody. It has to be a beautiful communion. It is not based on any dictatorial ideology. It is based, basically, on ultimate freedom.And if freedom is the ultimate goal then it should be your first step too, because only the first step will lead you to the last step. It is not possible that your whole life you are just a beast of burden, doing things that people tell you to do and then suddenly one day you will become enlightened. That is not possible.You will have to take all the responsibility for what you are doing. And you will have to grow in your consciousness and awareness so that only the right flows through your actions, so that whatever you do beautifies the commune, helps people.This is a gathering, not a crowd; it is a brotherhood, not a factory. Here, every individual has an equal opportunity to grow into whatsoever he wants to grow. And my whole effort is that you should not be interfered with. Naturally, you will find it difficult, but don’t be stuck to your Germanhood; that is a kind of disease.The world has suffered two world wars because of Germans. Don’t be too much concerned that you may go wrong. It is always good to go wrong sometimes. Just don’t go wrong again on the same point – do something else, some new wrong. Always be in search of some novelty. Mistakes are absolutely needed for learning, but one should not commit the same mistake again.And everybody has to be aware of it: nobody is responsible for you. And you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. Even if you commit something wrong there is a famous law, Steward’s Law: It is easier to be forgiven than to get permission.And remember another law; it is dangerous, so never follow it: It is called Jacob’s Law: To err is human. To blame it on someone else is even more human.Don’t do it, ever. To err is human and to accept your responsibility is the dignity of a human being. Don’t go on thinking what to do – do something! Parkinson’s Law is: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.Don’t delay. Do something that seems appropriate in the situation and congenial to your spirit. And it is not that you have to go on doing continuously; doing is not the goal of life. Being is the goal of life. Doing is only to support your survival so that you can find your being. So don’t wait for somebody else to tell you.But all these centuries that man has passed through, this has been the case – always looking to the politicians, looking to the priest; looking to neurotic-type people who proclaim themselves prophets, the son of God, messengers of God…People who don’t want to take any responsibility immediately fall into their trap.All your prophets, and all your messengers of God are so ordinary. Your holy scriptures are not even worthy to be called great literature; it is third class journalism, nothing much more. And they are bringing laws and rules and regulations for you and people have accepted all kinds of nonsense just in order not to seek and search themselves.To avoid search, to avoid seeking, people have even avoided thinking – somebody should do the job for them! The people who have been giving you your moral codes, your ethics, your life styles are the people who remind me of another law, Maud’s Law: A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking. All the conclusions that your prophets have given to you are nothing but where they got tired of thinking.Just the other night, I was looking at a beautiful story. I became interested because it was saying why Moses and all his Jews, his followers, went on wandering in the desert for forty years. So I became interested because it seemed the man was going to give some idea why. The idea suggested was that they had lost a quarter so they looked all over the desert; it took forty years. Nobody knows whether they found the quarter or not; I don’t think so.The people you have been following are great people, great in their neuroses. This rule will explain it to you. Woop’s Rule for Drinking – they have given you ideas for everything: I always drink standing up because it is much easier to sit down when I get drunk standing up, than it is to get standing up when I get drunk sitting down.Avoid these thinkers. They have dictated to humanity for long enough. Now, stand up on your own two legs. Remember that you are alone, there is no God, there are no messengers, and there is no dictator. You have to be decisive about your own life. It is your life and you have to live it according to your own style. Only then you can make your life a celebration; otherwise it is burdened with so many rules and regulations that you cannot dance with that much burden.Deven, I think a few jokes may do for you. My only fear is that you are a German and whether you will get them or not, because they say that when you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice; once, just to be polite, and then in the middle of the night when he gets it. A German laughs only once, because everybody else is laughing. And if you tell a joke to a Jew, he will not laugh at all. On the contrary, he will say to you that it is an old joke and, moreover, you are telling it all wrong.But I think being here with me for so long, you may have started getting, if not the whole joke, something of it…!A priest and a drunken bus driver arrived at the pearly gates where they met St. Peter. “I am the village priest and would like to be admitted to heaven,” said the priest.“And I am the village bus driver and I want to come in too,” said the drunk.“Okay,” said St. Peter. “You, Mr. Priest, will have to wait over there for a few years, but you Mr. Bus Driver, you can go right in.”“But wait a minute,” said the priest, “I preached every Sunday in church and taught people how to pray and be good. He is nothing but a drunkard.”“Listen,” said St. Peter, “when you preached everybody slept. But when he drove, everybody prayed like crazy.”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Am I coming or going?The coming and going are happening simultaneously. Each moment you are dying, and each moment you are resurrecting. Each moment goes on becoming past, and past is nothing but another name of the dead. Each moment goes on bringing the future in, and the future is life. The small present moment is simply a moment of transition where death and life meet.So your question is not so simple as you may have thought, nor is it an ordinary question. It is concerned with our very existence; this is the way life is happening to us every moment. But we are unaware that something goes on dying in us and something goes on coming fresh and new. We are not aware – and all this transition happens within you, within your very heart.But because we are not aware even of the heart, we are not even aware of our interiority. Our whole lives we are outside of ourselves – always somewhere else, but never at the center of our being. If even for a single moment you are at the center, you will see that coming and going are happening simultaneously, that life and death are meeting each moment.To know this is of tremendous importance. That means it will change your whole perspective – you will not think of death as somewhere far away in the future. And you will not be afraid of it because it is happening every moment. What we usually call death is not death but simply that life stops coming in; the body is no longer worth living. Life starts looking for some other vehicle, some other medium to express itself. Death has always been coming, but because life was not going you continued to live. With every breath, you inhale life and you exhale death.Have you ever thought about whether any man in this whole millennium has ever died during inhalation? Can anybody manage to die with inhalation?Death will always be at one with exhalation.Inhalation is the continuation of being alive.If you see this, then death is not somewhere far away. There is no need to fear; it is every moment with you, just like a shadow. By knowing it you will never try to postpone living, because you cannot be certain whether in the next moment life will be coming back or not; there is no guarantee. And it is not unfortunate that there is no guarantee; it keeps you more alert, more watchful, and it keeps you more in tune with the present moment.If things were guaranteed you might not be able to live life with surprises, with mysteries; then life and death would be simply mechanical happenings and you would be just a machine. Your always being available to life and to death makes you a living being; you are not a machine. And to be mechanical in your behavior is to reduce yourself from your dignity. That which is going, say good-bye to it, and that which is coming, welcome it with deep love and deep gratitude.But most of the people have chosen not to live. Of course they cannot choose not to die; that is beyond them. But they can choose not to live, by living in a lukewarm way. Most of the people have given their living into others’ hands; others are living on their behalf.Slade’s Law says: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy man; he will always find an easier way to do it.And life is certainly one of the most simple and at the same time, complex phenomena. People have distributed it: others are living for them; they are living for others. Parents are living for children. I have always felt amazed when somebody has said to me, “I am living for my wife,” or “I am living for my husband,” or “I am living for my children.” Nobody can live for anybody else. This is a simple mind trick to befool you; you can live only for yourself. Life on behalf of somebody else is just not possible.That’s why there are millions of people in the world, but the quantity of life is very small. Five billion human beings, and the life is almost non-existent: there is no song, no dance; there is no joy, no love. On the contrary, people are putting their whole energy into creating more destructive forces. Anybody watching from another planet is bound to think that the planet earth has gone crazy. But it is not new, this craziness is very ancient; it has always been so.One of the great thinkers, and a scientific thinker, Arthur Koestler, is of the opinion – very firm opinion – that from the very beginning something has gone wrong as far as the human mind is concerned. And unless that wrong is corrected, people are going to continue fighting, destroying each other – any excuse is enough and people are ready to kill. My own feeling is that people are ready to kill because they don’t know how to live. If they know how to live, they will respect life, they will have a reverence for life, and killing will become impossible. War will be an impossibility for any intelligent human beings.Our wars prove nothing else except our stupidity. What are we proving by war? Whom are we trying to conquer? It is our earth and it is one. All demarcations and lines are drawn by us; they are not on the map.When the first Russian astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, came back from the moon – he was the first man to have such a close look at the moon, and the first man to have such a faraway look at the earth – he said he was amazed that in that moment he could not conceive some part of the earth as Russia, some part America, some part India, some part China; there were no parts. And the whole earth is as luminous as the moon – it needs only distance to see the luminosity, because the sun’s rays are being reflected back.If you look from the moon, the earth looks like the moon and the moon looks like the earth. The moon does not shine on the moon. It is in our eyes from far away that the reflected rays of the sun give the light to the moon. Yuri Gagarin was not aware before this that a miracle was going to happen: the moon becomes just like the earth, and the earth becomes luminous. The earth is eight times bigger than the moon and so its light is also eight times greater. It is tremendous. It is unimaginable.When he came back to Moscow, the people asked him, “What was the first idea in your mind when you saw the earth from the moon?”He said, “You will have to forgive me – I forgot completely that I am a Russian. I simply said, ‘Ah, my beautiful earth.’ Those were the first words that came into my mind.”To see a simple fact, one has to go that far? It is our beautiful earth. It belongs to no race, to no nation; it belongs to us all. But rather than using our life energies and forces, our intelligence, for rejoicing, we are working hard in manufacturing death. It seems the only function of life is to manufacture death; it is utterly absurd.This planet has the capacity to become a paradise, but it is up to us. The poor mountains cannot do anything; the poor trees can dance in the sun, in the rain, but they cannot do anything more than that. It is man alone who can transform the whole atmosphere from death orientation to life affirmation.And to me, the man who is life affirmative is authentically religious, not the people who go to the churches every Sunday, or the people who go to the mosques, or the people who go to the synagogues. Those people are deceiving themselves by purchasing religion very cheaply, without risking anything, without transforming themselves. They have managed to create beautiful toys to play with: statues of God, scriptures descended from heaven, messengers and prophets imagined by us…because we love the very idea that God cares and sends messengers to us.We have believed in those messengers because of our ego. We have believed in God because of our ego: that God created man, and God created man in his own image, and God created man as the ultimate creation. After that he did not create. This is his last signature of his creativity; since that he has retired.To me, it has a totally different meaning. Man has believed that he is created by God because that gives him a feeling of great ego: “I am no ordinary person, but a creation of God.” But to me, the very idea of God is ugly, and the idea that he created man makes man just a puppet. The idea that you are created by somebody – manufactured, maybe handmade – takes away all dignity and all pride and all self-respect. Then you cannot have any soul of your own. Then you are certainly a mechanism and nothing more.And moreover, you are in the hands of a whimsical God. In the first place, why did he remain silent for eternity and not create you? According to Christianity, he created man exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. I presume it must have been Monday, the first of January; that is a logical conclusion. He cannot create you on any other day, because before the creation there cannot be any calendar. So whichever day he created you was the first of January, and the first year of Our Lord!That reminds me: One Jewish astrologer was very famous and well known for his accurate predictions. Adolf Hitler, although reluctant – but knowing perfectly well that the man had predicted things which had come to pass, which did happen – finally agreed to allow him to read his destiny, because his destiny was the destiny of the nation. In his eyes, his destiny was the destiny of the whole world – and not just for one year; his idea was to have a one-thousand-year rule over the whole of humanity.The Jewish astrologer came, studied the stars when Adolf Hitler was born, looked into his books and said, “Only one thing is certain: you will die on a Jewish holiday.”Adolf Hitler said, “It is a strange prediction; what do you mean by it? Which holiday?”The astrologer said, “That’s not certain. Only this much is certain, and this is certain because any day you die will become a Jewish holiday!”In the same way, any day God created the world must have been the first of January; there is no other way.And just six thousand years ago…What about before that? That’s why I call him whimsical. This whimsical God remains silent for eternity – never created anything – and in just six days he created the whole world. And since then nothing is known about him. On the seventh day he rested – okay, allowed. But one has to come back to the office on Monday! He never came back to the office. And moreover, it is dangerous if he returns to the office; what will he do? Now, the only thing left is to destroy. And a God who creates the world without any reason is also capable of destroying it without any reason. Neither do you have any answer to your question why you have been created, nor will you have time to ask why you have been destroyed. Because once you are destroyed, you are destroyed. Who is going to ask?The whole idea of God creating man has taken away the beauty of life, the joy of life; it has turned you into mechanisms. I want to take God away from your life, so that you can feel yourself for the first time independent, free, not as a created puppet but as an eternal source of life. Only then you can rejoice.The world looks so sad, so Christian. It is not only Jesus Christ who is sad. He can be forgiven; he is a poor fellow on the cross. You don’t expect that he should smile and say hello to you! But he represents almost everybody – not only the Christians but everybody looks as if he is on the cross, the invisible cross…so serious.Perhaps Jesus was right that everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulder. Why in the first place should everybody carry the cross? Can’t you find anything else to carry? I cannot accept the idea. Nobody should carry the cross, either for yourself or for anybody else. You should not carry the cross at all. There are beautiful things to carry: you can carry a guitar. And if you like very heavy things, you can carry very heavy things: an old big-sized piano, but something beautiful, something that is worthy of an intelligent man – not a cross.I see the whole humanity drowned in a sea of sadness, and the reason is that you have been conditioned to be sad. Your religions don’t want you to sing and to laugh and to dance, because people who laugh and sing and dance are fundamentally of independent character. They have a certain uniqueness and individuality of their own. They are not slaves, and they will not agree to be slaves whatever the consequence. And this world only wants you to work for some vested interests, and work hard; it does not want you to waste your time in meditating, or playing on the guitar, or dancing under the stars. The vested interests will not like this idea. They would like you to be serious, sad, so that you can be enslaved easily, so that you can be purchased easily, so that you can be exploited easily.Just think for a moment of the whole world laughing, dancing, singing – just for one hour. All kinds of slaveries will disappear, and all nations will disappear, and all religions will disappear. Naturally, the presidents and the prime ministers and the popes and ayatollahs will look very shocked. What is happening? And they will join sooner or later, because what is the point of standing amongst the whole humanity dancing and enjoying? And nobody even asking why, what has happened – nobody has time, everybody is enjoying. Soon you will see the pope also in the crowd, because looking from the outside at the rejoicing people will be so awkward, so embarrassing. There is every possibility that if Jesus were alive he would come down from the cross and start dancing, forget all about the cross and Christianity!Who cares about God? – only miserable people. Who goes to the churches? – only people who are close to death, old people afraid of coldness and aloneness and darkness and the grave. And one never knows how long they will have to wait in the grave before the last judgment day comes. It is going to be a long, long wait in the grave, where you cannot even move; dancing is out of the question!On the last judgment day I can guarantee you there is going to be no judgment, because there will be billions and billions of people: all those people who have been lying in the graves for centuries, all of you, and all the people of the future up till the last judgment day comes. The crowd is going to be so big that it is almost impossible…And remember, half of the crowd will be women; there will be so much chattering and so much searching – everybody is looking for his husband or his wife. I don’t think that there is any possibility, particularly on that day, of any judgment. The whole idea is nonsense. In one day…! And why should these poor people wait in their graves?So when people come close to their graves, when they feel that their one foot is in the grave, they put their other foot in the church! Who knows, maybe all these stories that have been told in the church are true, and anyway there is no harm – why take the chance?Before I was deported from Greece, the archbishop of Greece threatened the government that if I am not immediately deported, he is going to dynamite and set fire to my house. And all the people who are in there with me, he is going to burn them alive. This is the representative of Jesus who says, “Love your enemy” – I am not even a friend – and “Love your neighbor.” He has forgotten to say, “Love the tourist.”These people are religious heads! And why was the archbishop so troubled by me? Because in the garden of the beautiful house by the sea where I was the guest of a famous film director of Greece…It is an ancient, beautiful house, renovated, with a big garden, and under a tree I used to sit and talk to the people. And people gathered from all over the world who had not seen me for almost a year, or two years, or five years. I was close so they all had come. We were not doing any harm to anybody; we were simply singing, dancing. There was music; I was answering their questions.What was troubling the archbishop? – because he must have been troubled very much; otherwise nobody threatens to burn somebody alive.The joy…people are dancing, people are loving to each other, there is nothing but rejoicing – no prayer, no Jesus Christ, no cross. He became afraid: “This is going to destroy our younger generation.”I came to know from friends that ninety-four percent of Greeks are registered as Christians, but only four percent of the people ever go to the churches – out of ninety-four percent! And who are the four percent? I inquired how many people this particular archbishop has in his congregation. A woman who is my sannyasin simply laughed and said, “I was worried that you would ask that question; it is very awkward. Only six old women are his whole congregation.” And he was threatening for fifteen days continuously that he would bring a protest against me. I was waiting; we were all waiting to enjoy the protest. We would have welcomed them with music and dance, but they never came.Finally I asked, “What is the matter? Every day it is being postponed.”And they said, “You don’t understand his situation. He goes on making these threats, but he cannot bring a protest because who will come? – six old women, and one old archbishop! Seven in all; it will look hilarious.”But he managed to make the government afraid, because the government depends on votes, and ninety-four percent of the people are Christian. Their archbishop has to be listened to. They may not go to the church, but still, their conditioned minds are the same.Against the law, against the constitution, I was deported. I was arrested immediately. And they were so afraid; the government was so much afraid. I was asleep when the police came to arrest me, and my people said to them, “Come, sit down and have tea and we will wake him up.”But they said, “We are not going to wait a single minute.”And they rushed and started throwing rocks at the windows, beautiful windows of that house. John had come to wake me, and when I woke up I could not understand what was happening on the first floor. I was sleeping on the other floor.The police had dynamite also. It almost looked as if the house was being dynamited, because they were throwing big rocks and destroying beautiful glass windows; it was so noisy. I could not see the point. I asked the man who took me into police custody, “What is the point of it all?”He said, “I don’t understand myself.” The government just seemed to be absolutely afraid of the threat that the archbishop was going to burn twenty-five people who were living in my house.I said, “For fifteen days he has continuously been threatening to bring a protest against me; that has not happened. Can’t you see that a man who cannot bring a protest can neither have the guts, nor the support? Who will carry all that dynamite…those six old women?”Even the police were sad, and they could not believe it: “We have not even seen your people in the city; they never come out. They are just enjoying themselves in the garden of your house.”Just by the side of the window at the police station where I was sitting, two women police officers were standing to prevent sannyasins from reaching me. Sannyasins had come and surrounded the whole police station, and they started dancing and singing. Now it is not criminal to dance and sing, but the police officers said to me, “Stop your people; they are dancing and singing.”I said, “Dancing and singing – is that against any law?”The officer said, “It is not against any law but it is making us very frightened.”Those two policewomen who were standing just by the window, to watch the window, allowed the sannyasins one by one to come and to talk to me. And finally they said to me, “We are sorry that this is happening in this country, in this century. We hope that you will come again.”The policewomen told me, “The people of the island where you are staying are inquiring what they should do, because everybody has felt so wounded and hurt by the behavior of the government and the archbishop.”I sent the message: “Tell them they all should come to the airport to show the archbishop just who can protest against whom!” And when I came to the airport, there were almost three thousand people; the whole airport was full of people. It was a small island; perhaps everybody from the island had come except those six women!Religions have lost their grip over man, but not over man’s unconscious. Consciously, people can see the point; it is so simple: this kind of behavior is not only inhuman, it is according to their own religion absolutely against Jesus Christ, against The Holy Bible. But their unconscious is beyond their own power; they could not go to the archbishop to stop him, to say, “You are humiliating us, you are humiliating Jesus Christ, and your behavior is against Christianity.”Nor could the government say to the archbishop, “You should resign; you should not be in such a post. To an innocent person who has not done anything, your behavior, your constant threat – and ugly threats, that you will burn twenty-five people alive – is not gentlemanly, to say nothing about it not being Christian.” But neither the government seems to have courage, nor the people. It is as if man has lost all his guts.I have been around the world and my experience is that over the centuries religions have been castrating humanity; they have been destroying all your courage, all your dignity. You have become so accustomed to being a slave that you cannot revolt. And that’s what is needed, urgently needed, that the whole of humanity revolts against all limits and boundaries, prisons and chains.I came across a statement of Karl Marx; I don’t agree with him, but with this statement it is impossible to disagree. He says that all the religions have put flowers on your chains. So you see only the flowers, you don’t see the chains.Throw away all the flowers and throw away all the chains. Only then will you be able to have a heart of your own, an individuality, and existence can become full of laughter. We are not here to be unnecessarily miserable, but it seems we are trained, so well trained to be miserable that even if there is an opportunity we will miss it.In Bali there is an old saying: If you are happy you can always learn to dance. But basically man is not happy. He is so unhappy that just to forget his unhappiness he goes on drinking alcoholic beverages, uses drugs – marijuana, hashish and opium – just to forget, at least for a few hours, his miserable state.And there is no reason at all to be miserable. In fact, misery should be very exceptional; happiness should be simply natural. You should not ask anybody, “Why are you looking happy?” But this is the situation. If you are looking happy and smiling and enjoying yourself, everybody will look, stare at you, as if something has gone wrong: What has happened to this poor fellow? Why is he smiling and enjoying? – there seems to be no reason. And somebody is bound to ask, “What is the matter?” Some policeman is going to come asking, “Why are you creating this crowd in the traffic? Why are you smiling? Why are you dancing?”Is it necessary to show some cause to be healthy and happy? But nobody asks anybody who is miserable; nobody even stops to look at him. To be miserable is accepted as our natural state. There is no need to inquire about any cause, about any reason. If you think about it, you will not believe to what an insane state man has fallen.A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. “I have some bad news and some worse news,” says the doctor. “The bad news is that you have only twenty-four hours to live.”“Ah, no!” says the patient, “What could possibly be worse than that?”The doctor answers, “I have been trying to reach you since yesterday!”Man cannot fall into a worse state. But he has fallen; he has forgotten the laughter every child is born with; he has lost his way to health and wholeness.The door opens right this very moment – always herenow, where life and death are continuously meeting. You have chosen death orientation because it was in the interests of those who are in power, and you have forgotten that life is passing by while you are being drowned in sadness.Once Confucius was asked by a disciple how to be happy, how to be blissful. Confucius said, “You are asking a strange question; these things are natural. No rose asks how to be a rose.” As far as sadness and misery are concerned, you will have enough time in your grave; then you can be miserable to your heart’s content. But while you are alive, be totally alive. Out of this totality and intensity will arise happiness, and a happy man certainly learns to dance. I agree with the old Bali proverb.We want the whole of humanity to be happy, and to be dancing, and to be singing. Then this whole planet becomes mature, evolves in consciousness. A sad man, a miserable man, cannot have a very sharp consciousness; his consciousness is dim, dull, heavy, dark. Only when you laugh heartily, suddenly like a flash all darkness disappears.In your laughter you are your authentic self.In your sadness you have covered your original face with a fake identity that the society expects of you. Nobody wants you to be so happy that you start dancing in the street. Nobody wants you to have a hearty laughter; otherwise the neighbors will start knocking on your walls, “Stop. Misery is okay; laughter is a disturbance.” Miserable people cannot tolerate anybody who is not miserable.The only crime of people like Socrates was that they were immensely happy people, and their happiness created immense envy in the great masses which are living in misery. The masses could not tolerate such happy people; they have to be destroyed because they provoke inside you a possibility of revolt, and you are afraid of that revolt.Once a man falls in love with rebellion, he is on the right path.An old Russian story…The people of Chelm were terrible worriers; they even worried about how much they worried. So the mayor and the rabbi appointed Ira the candle maker to do all the worrying for the people of Chelm. And for this he would earn four rubles a week.The scheme did not work because Ira went home to Ruth and said, “Wonderful, I have got four rubles a week; we have nothing to worry about!” Naturally, he was thrown out from his employment – that was the reason that he was going to get four rubles a week, so that he could worry for the whole town. But he forgot completely…just the joy of having four rubles a week for nothing. Naturally, he said, “Now there is nothing to worry about.” But that’s how he lost his job!Paddy was feeling under the weather, so he went to see his doctor. “I just can’t find any cause for your illness,” said the physician. “Frankly, I think it is due to drinking.”“In that case,” replied Paddy, getting up to leave, “I will come back when you are sober!”“All right,” said the psychiatrist, “tell me why you hate your sister so much.”“But I don’t have a sister,” said Hymie Goldberg.“Look,” said the psychiatrist, “if you want me to help you, you have got to cooperate! You can’t say that you don’t have a sister.”His psychoanalysis can’t start if you don’t have a sister! And certainly, your cooperation is needed. This is the world; it can’t be worse.Osho,Please, how can I fall into a deep acceptance of, “I don't know”? I don't know.My God! I don’t know myself! I am searching…!There is no need to fall into a deep acceptance of “I don’t know.” Either you know or you don’t know. There is no question of acceptance. If you know, it is perfectly good; if you don’t know, it is even better! Why are you making a problem out of it? If you don’t know, it is perfectly okay I think, with everybody here…no objection! It is the most beautiful state.Not knowing is the ultimate state of wisdom.Socrates said in his last statement, “I know nothing.” And he had to say this because the Oracle of Delphi had declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the whole world. The people who heard the Oracle rushed towards Socrates just to inform him, “The Oracle of Delphi has declared you the wisest man in the world.” And Socrates said, “I am sorry to disagree, because I know nothing.”The people were shocked; they were thinking that they were bringing good news. They went back and asked the Oracle, “What is the matter? You declare Socrates the wisest man in the world, and when we inform him, he says, ‘I know nothing.’ There must have been some mistake.”And the Oracle said, “I have declared him the wisest man because he knows nothing; he has become an innocent child, clear and pure.”Knowledge is a kind of disturbance in your innocence. It is a burden, it does not help you; it simply makes you more and more puzzled, worried – doubts arise. And you think gathering more and more knowledge is going to help? It does not help; it simply makes you more tense. What ultimately helps is dropping all knowledge. But if in the very beginning you feel, “I don’t know,” you are blessed – enjoy it.It is not a question of acceptance, because acceptance does not mean enjoying it. You may accept something with reluctance; you may accept it because there is nothing else to do. No, rejoice in your not knowing; make it innocence. Don’t say, “not knowing,” because that is a negative idea. That’s why it has become a problem how to accept it. Call it innocence and there will be no problem of acceptance. You will rejoice it, you will dance it, you will sing it.Have you heard this?Hymie Goldberg, who only weighs seventy pounds, goes to Texas on business. He checks into a hotel which is fifty stories high, and is shown into a suite the size of a ballroom. Overwhelmed, he goes down to the bar and is served a drink that is so big it takes both hands to lift. “Everything is big in Texas, pal,” says the bartender. When his dinner arrives, the plate is the size of his dining room table at home. “Hey pal, everything is big in Texas,” says the waiter.Finally, overcome by all this, Hymie decides it is time to go and try out his super-king-size bed, but he loses his way in the hotel’s vast corridors. Opening the door of a darkened room, Hymie falls into the swimming pool with a great splash. When he comes to the surface, he begins to shriek, “Don’t flush it!!! Don’t flush it!!!”Naturally he was thinking that this must be a toilet, everything is so big.Just enjoy life. And you can enjoy life more when you know nothing. The more you know, the less is the possibility of enjoying life. I have never seen knowledgeable people even laughing; it is below them. Laughter is one of the greatest qualities of the evolved intelligence of humanity, because except man, nobody else laughs in the whole of existence. And to think laughter below you is to forget that it is the highest peak of consciousness.A man was drowning in a river and was shouting for help, saying, “I can’t swim, I can’t swim!”“So what?” shouted back a drunk from the bank, “I can’t play the piano, but I’m not shouting about it!”Wishing to surprise her husband with a new wig she had just bought, the wife put it on and strolled unannounced into his office. “Do you think you could find a place in your life for a woman like me?” she asked sexily.“Not a chance,” he replied, “you remind me too much of my wife!”So, don’t be worried about your ignorance, just learn to call it innocence. Always use right words, words which are life affirmative, which don’t condemn you. Then the idea of how to accept it does not arise. And if you have to accept something, you cannot rejoice about it; it can be only out of compulsion, out of necessity. I don’t want anybody to live a life of compulsion or a life of necessity. One should live a life of abundance, a life of innocence, a life out of freedom of the heart. Innocence is a great quality; don’t call it ignorance.The priest has just finished his sermon on charity, and so passes his hat around for donations. The hat goes around the whole congregation and then comes back to him as empty as when he sent it out.The priest looks inside, then shrugs and looks up to heaven and says, “Thank you Lord for small mercies. At least I got my hat back!”In such situations, rejoice! There is no point in complaining or making a fuss about it; just be happy that your hat is back!As far as I am concerned, innocence has not to be accepted, it has to be relished, danced, rejoiced – it is a blessing.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have been your sannyasin for seven years and I am unable to express my gratitude, as it gave my life direction and joy and grace and more.Now, being here for only one week, I realize that I have always had a need for personal guidance from somebody tuning into me and my questions. This strong need was only reinforced during a counseling session today, here.Beloved master, would you please comment?The way you are growing in silence, in your meditations, in your grace, and the way the gratitude is coming to you, you don’t need any personal guidance. You need to be more and more open to the impersonal existence. The idea of personal guidance is mind’s old habit to become dependent on someone; and I am struggling hard against your habits.The whole existence is available to guide you – and you are now in a position to be in direct contact with the universe. As your gratitude deepens, as your grace becomes more and more clear, as your silence becomes more and more rooted in you – it is the universe itself which takes you into its own hands. Those hands are invisible, but they are there; you are not orphans in the universe. You are immensely needed and loved, you are just not aware of it.My own suggestion is to drop the idea of personal guidance, because anybody will try to guide you according to his mind, according to his ideas of how you should be. That’s what all the teachers of the world have been doing: imposing their idea, their image on people who are searching and seeking guidance. It is one of the most dangerous games to play, because in it you are always the loser. If the teacher succeeds in imposing certain directions, certain patterns, disciplines, according to me it is not guidance; it is misguidance. Because nobody knows your unique self – only you can know it. And you have to grow according to your nature, not according to anybody’s guidance.To me, to be natural, to be spontaneous is enough. All guides have been misguides. And you can see it: the whole universe of humanity is living in tremendous misguidance. Otherwise why should there be so much insanity? Why there should be so much misery, so much agony and spiritual suffering? The reason is that nobody has been allowed to be just himself, his natural being.Your so-called religions don’t trust nature; they trust in holy scriptures; they trust in dead words spoken thousands of years before by people we do not know. Whether they knew anything, or they were just creating fictions…unless you know, you can never be certain. But they are molding you according to patterns created in the past. This process of molding people into Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, goes against the very basic human right; it does not allow you to be your natural self. And unless you are yourself, you cannot be happy.Just think, if there were teachers teaching roses that they have to become lotuses… Fortunately, roses don’t care about teachers and religions and churches. But just think for a moment: if people were there who were telling the roses to be lotuses, the marigolds to be roses, what would be the ultimate outcome of it?Roses would try to become lotuses, which they can never become; it is not their self-nature. They can only be roses, beautiful, immensely graceful, fragrant. But if this idea of being somebody other than what their nature is, is imposed on them, two things will happen: they will never become lotuses, but their whole energy will be wasted in trying to become lotuses. And the second thing is they will not be roses either, because from where will they find the energy to be roses? That whole energy is making an effort for the impossible.Actually the same has happened with humanity. Everybody is giving you an idea; everybody is ready to tell you how you should be.All “shoulds” and all “should nots” have to be abandoned. You simply have to listen to your own inner voice. And wherever it leads, just go without bothering whether people think it is right or wrong.If you can become just your own self, if you can blossom into your intrinsic nature, then only you will have blissfulness – a peace which cannot be expressed in words, and a certain poetry to your being; a certain dance to your being, because you will be in tune with existence. To be in tune with yourself is the only way to be in tune with existence. Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you.I don’t give you any discipline – I don’t tell you, you should be this or that. I simply say you should become silent, so that you can listen to your still, small voice. That is your real guide; the guide is within you. I know hundreds of psychoanalysts, psychologists, so-called counselors. They are burdened with all kinds of problems, but they have just learned the technique, either from education or from the libraries. And they go on advising – to advise is so simple. In their own lives they are not what they are advising. If you watch the life, as I have watched very closely the life of people like Sigmund Freud – the topmost counselors in the world: Karl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Assagioli – I have been simply shocked to see that these people have become the guides to millions of people.I remember one small incident…Wilhelm Reich, as a young psychoanalyst, was deeply interested to meet Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He had read in the universities and he was a genius, perhaps of a far greater quality than Sigmund Freud himself. Sigmund Freud was in his old age, just the last years, and this Wilhelm Reich was asking again and again for an appointment. Finally he got the appointment. And the way Sigmund Freud treated him is so inhuman, just because he was a young man, fresh from the university.He had come with some significant questions, and he had created in his own mind a great image of Sigmund Freud, naturally. He asked, “I have come from far away to inquire a few things: One, you insist that unless a man is psychoanalyzed, completely psychoanalyzed, he will never be out of confusion and misery. Can you show me a man who has been completely analyzed, so I can just meet him and see what a completely clear man would be like? I have read about it, but I don’t have any personal experience of meeting somebody who is beyond confusion and is pure clarity.”Sigmund Freud became angry, and he said, “What kind of nonsense…psychoanalysis is not a simple thing. It takes decades for anybody to become completely psychoanalyzed.”Reich was shocked, but he said, “You have been working your whole life. Have you psychoanalyzed any person completely, so that I can go and see the person? Because other than that there is no proof that what you are saying has any significance as far as science is concerned.” And seeing Sigmund Freud getting angry…because Sigmund Freud was not accustomed to such questions, he was surrounded with cronies, yea-sayers. Whatever nonsense he would say, they would say that it was a great truth. Seeing Sigmund Freud getting so angry, Reich said, “Drop that subject. I want to know whether you have been psychoanalyzed totally or not.” And Sigmund Freud had to tell him, “Get out! And never again try to come to me; you don’t know how to behave.”The reality is that all his life Sigmund Freud was being asked by his colleagues again and again, “Just as you psychoanalyze us, now we know the technique, why don’t you get psychoanalyzed, by any of us you choose? We would like to have a look into your inner world of dreams, imaginations, desires, to see whether what you claim to be absolute clarity, peace, integrity is there inside you or not?”He refused continuously; he never allowed himself to be psychoanalyzed, and he is the founder of psychoanalysis. Why was he so afraid to be psychoanalyzed? He knew perfectly well that it is easy to advise others, but it is difficult to transform yourself. He was suffering from ordinary human problems, the same tensions, the same misery, the same repressions, the same inhibitions, the same taboos. And he was afraid to open up his dream world because that would show things which would be a proof that although he was the founder, he himself was not what he was trying for the whole of humanity to be. The same is the situation today. Psychoanalysts themselves once in a while go to another psychoanalyst to be psychoanalyzed, because they have become too burdened with problems. It is such a stupid game.If Gautam Buddha says anything about meditation it is his own experience, not just a theoretical, intellectual formulation. If he says something about the inner light, he has seen it. If he says it is possible to go beyond mind, he has gone beyond mind, only then he says it. And the people who watched him for forty-two years continuously never found any flaw, never found him at any time angry, at any time miserable, at any time sad. One cannot pretend for forty-two years continuously; one needs holidays! Even to pretend for a few hours to be what you are not is such a tension and such a burden that you are going to drop it and expose yourself at the slightest excuse.This is the difference between the Western psychoanalytic movement and the Eastern movement for meditation.I have told you a Sufi story…A woman was very much impressed by a Sufi mystic, and she was very worried about her only son. She was living for him; the father was dead. That boy was her life, and she wanted him to become something.The boy was too attached to eating sweets and all kinds of junk. She tried hard; everybody, the teachers, the priests all tried, but the boy was absolutely indifferent to their advice; he continued to eat sweets.He was the only son, so finally the mother would relax and would give him what he wanted; otherwise, he would remain hungry. But he would not eat anything that he did not want to eat; he would eat only things that he wanted to eat. And those were things which were not healthy, which were not nourishing, which could create problems later in his life.The Sufi mystic had come wandering into the village, and the woman thought it was a good chance. That man has such a tremendous and powerful aura around him, perhaps he may be able to change this stupid boy’s mind. She took the boy…she had been taking him to anybody who could help; it had become almost a routine thing. The boy went there very reluctantly, very resistant; it had become almost a question of his own self-respect.When the woman told the Sufi master about the situation, he said, “You will have to forgive me. Right now I cannot say a single word to this beautiful boy. I am old, I am seventy years, but it will take at least two weeks for me to be able to say something to him.”The woman could not believe him. Anybody, any idiot was ready to advise. And a great mystic followed by many, many people, says to the boy, “You will have to forgive me; you came and I cannot advise you right now. You will have to give me two weeks at least.”The boy for the first time dropped his reluctance, his resistance. For the first time he was respected, he was accepted as a dignified human being; he was not condemned out of hand. And the old man was really concerned, he wanted to give him some advice which would be of importance; he needed at least two weeks’ time. The mother was absolutely shocked, could not believe that this great mystic cannot advise a small boy right now on such a trivial matter. But what to do? They had to wait two weeks.After two weeks she came again. This time the boy came very joyously. In fact, he was very eager about how fast the days were moving, and he was counting because he wanted to see the mystic again. “He is a totally different man from all other men you have taken me to.” The woman was surprised because the boy was always resistant, reluctant. He went against his will, was forced to go – and this time he is so eager! He cannot wait for two weeks; those two weeks look like two years.Finally the day came, and in the early morning the boy took a shower, changed his clothes, got ready. The mother said, “What is the hurry?”He said, “I want to see the man. He is the only man that I have felt respects others.”Otherwise, advising others is a kind of humiliation; it is saying: I know and you do not know. I am the guide and you are the guided. I am the teacher and you are the taught. It is enjoying a certain egotism at the cost of humiliating the other person.They went, and the woman first asked, “Before I ask about the boy, I want to know why it took two weeks for you – is it such a great philosophical problem?”The mystic said, “If it were a philosophical problem I would have answered immediately; it is an existential problem. I am seventy years old; he is just seven years old. I have lived ten times more than the boy, still I love to eat sweets. And as long as I myself eat sweets I cannot say anything. These two weeks I tried not to eat sweets, and to see what happens. My advice will depend on my own experience, not just on the common opinion that sweets are bad. They may be bad, but if I cannot drop them at seventy years of age, to expect a small boy to drop them…I cannot advise that.”The boy was immensely impressed. A man at this age tortured himself for two weeks? And he said to the boy, “My son, it is very difficult. I managed to drop sweets, and I have managed now for the rest of my life – but to advise you I feel a little shaky. You are so young. To drop sweets if you love them will be arduous, and to impose this idea on you I will be almost being violent and violating your individual right. So all that I can say is, it is good and it is healthy, but it is very difficult. It is a challenge. You can choose whether you are ready to take the challenge. I have dropped them for the rest of my life; only now have I the authority to say to you that you can also drop. But it is certainly a difficult thing. Are you ready for a challenge, an adventure?”The boy said, “I drop them right now, and for my whole life. If you can drop them, why can’t I drop them? And you are so old; I am so young. You are getting weaker; I am getting stronger. I can take the challenge; you don’t feel worried about it.”The mother could not believe what is happening: it is a miracle. The boy is persuading the old man, “I will be able.”The old man said, “My feeling is, you should also think about it for two weeks, try…”The boy said, “No. I am dropping them right now in your presence, with your blessings.”The people you go to for personal counseling are in the same boat in which you are; they have the same problems. Here, I have all kinds of psychotherapists, and they are good at their work technically. They know how to help people, but they don’t know how to help themselves. They write their problems to me, and they are the same problems for which they are known to be good counselors, good therapists. To know something technically is one thing, and to know something existentially, experientially, is another thing.As far as you are concerned, you are already moving on the right path. These are good symptoms that you are feeling a sense of direction, joy, grace, and more; these are indications that you are on the right path – you don’t need any personal counseling. You need to be yourself more and more, more integrated, more natural, more spontaneous. You have found the path, now anybody else can disturb it. It is possible that you may go to a counselor who has not even grown as much as you, but he is very knowledgeable. His expertise is great; he can talk about things and distract you from the path.A meditator needs no personal guidance. A meditator, on the contrary, needs only one thing: the atmosphere of meditation. He needs other meditators; he needs to be surrounded by other meditators. Because whatever goes on happening within us is not only within us, it affects people who are close by. In this communion people are at different stages of meditation. To meditate with these people, just to sit silently with these people, and you will be pulled more and more towards your own intrinsic potentiality.I don’t want you to become somebody else, a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ. I want you to become just yourself, anonymous, nobody special, but blissful. And you are already on the right path. You have taken a few steps; now just go on moving, trusting yourself, and on each step your confidence will become deeper.Never ask for advice, because everybody is so unique and so different that there has never been any person like you before, nor is there going to be another person like you again. So really, no guidelines for you exist. But existence is greatly compassionate. It has given you the whole program of your life in a seed form. If you don’t ask anybody, and just silently listen to your own heart and go on following it, you will reach the space where you can feel at home; where suddenly you realize who you are, where suddenly you feel a synchronicity with the whole existence.All that is natural, the trees, the clouds, the mountains, the oceans, with all of them you will find a certain harmony. You will not find harmony with machines, big and great computers, factories, automobiles, railway trains. You may not find any harmony…there is no question, because these are heartless, lifeless things. They don’t know how to sing; they don’t know how to dance. Have you seen any computer dancing? Have you heard of any computer falling in love with a woman computer? Only machines will be left out.With all that is natural and all that grows, all that blossoms, all that moves and breathes, all that has a heartbeat, you will find a tremendous harmony. Your heartbeat will be merging and melting into the universal heartbeat – no personal counseling.I am not a counselor. Never even for a single moment in my life have I thought that somebody should be according to my ideas. I share my ideas, I share my experiences – not so that you should become a certain ideal; I share with you as fellow travelers. It may harmonize with you. You may find that it comes suddenly to your awareness that this is very natural for you; that you were not aware of it, you have become aware. But it is not my idea then. It is your own idea of which you have not been aware. I share my ideas with you, not to make you into certain prototypes, but to give you an insight into your own nature.I know myself, I know my nature; I know that all my well-wishers, my parents, my teachers, my professors, my friends, have tried their hardest to make me something else. And I am immensely grateful to existence that I never listened to anybody; I simply went on following my own inner voice. Whether it leads me into hell or into heaven I have not cared, because my feeling is that if my nature leads me into hell then perhaps that is the place where I belong. In heaven I will be an outsider, I will feel unfit.Wherever my nature leads is the place that can give me the feeling of joy and the feeling that life has tremendous meaning, that it has great splendor; that it is a miracle just to breathe in and breathe out; that nothing can be more perfect if you reach to the climax of your own nature.Avoid advisers – because they are so available all around that whether you ask their advice or not they will give it. People love to give advice; it has a certain joy. People would love to create their own carbon copies, and they will feel very happy that they are the original and everybody is just at the most a true copy.You have your own originality.It is better to remember it always.Never go against your inner feelings.Very few people in the world have come to the flowering, and the reason is that very few people have been rebellious enough against the so-called advisers. Very few people have dared to find their path and have not followed the superhighway where everybody is going. But those are the few people who have helped humanity, its whole evolution, its whole intelligence. Just take away those few people and man will be back to where Darwin thinks he started growing to be a human being.The crowd must have laughed at that time also. When a monkey came down from the trees and stood on the ground on his two feet, the whole crowd of monkeys must have laughed, giggled: “Look at that character! Look at that fool who is going against tradition, against our forefathers, against our religion, against our race.” But they must have condemned that monkey who rebelled against the whole culture of the monkeys, their civilization; they must have said, “You have fallen down.” Naturally, he has fallen down from the trees. And as time passed, he must have become weaker. Monkeys are far stronger than you are; they have to be, they are doing continuous exercise jumping from one tree to another. You have to do something else; you cannot do that kind of jumping now. You are not capable; your body has changed completely.But the first monkey who came down must have been a genius, must have wanted to explore life on his own rather than with the crowd and the mob. Other monkeys are still hanging on the trees – they are traditional people! They believe in their ancestors, they believe in their golden past and they don’t want to change. To change, one needs courage – and to be alone, and to make your path. And make your path by walking it; don’t look for a ready-made path. It may have served somebody else but it was not made for you.If one remembers some self-respect and dignity of his own being, then there is no need of anybody to teach you, to help you. You are born as a complete being, with all the potential. You just have to work on your potential and you will find the goal.Leo Tolstoy is reported to have said – and before I quote him, I have to give you the background….He had the most miserable life possible. He was born in a super-rich family, a distant cousin to the royalty. He himself was a count; his wife was a countess. Both families were within the ten topmost families of Russia, but he was utterly miserable. He could not manage to live his life with his family, with his wife, and the reason was simply that both were of totally different natures. The wife could not even look at him. To him the way he was behaving was saintly. He used rotten clothes the way beggars do, old secondhand shoes, and lived in a way only a beggar is supposed to live. Naturally, the wife could not tolerate him. She has lived like a queen, and she was one of the richest women in Russia.But Leo Tolstoy was a Gandhian, you will be surprised to know. Although Gandhi came later, in the last days of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and he had written a few letters to each other. And Mahatma Gandhi declared that he has been under three masters; one is Leo Tolstoy, another is Henry Thoreau, and the third is a Jaina monk, Shrimad Rajchandra. These three people impressed Mahatma Gandhi.Mahatma Gandhi was working in South Africa but he was very much impressed by the lifestyle of Leo Tolstoy. His wife was so angry that they were not even talking to each other. Talking meant always a fight. They had different natures. Tolstoy was trying hard to make his wife live a simple life, the life of poverty because, “blessed are the poor.” He was a fanatical follower of Jesus Christ. Literally, he was living a poor life – and the wife was feeling absolute repugnance. She wanted him to live like a prince, as he really was. They quarreled their whole lives, both trying to make the other be according to his ideas, or her ideas. This is an extreme case, but this is the story of all families: nobody is allowed to be himself – people go on manipulating.Maneesha is writing a book about her experiences with me. Just the other day I heard that her mother from Melbourne, Australia, has written a very angry letter, “First you made me condemned by the Christian society here in Melbourne, and now you are trying to write a book, I hear. That means you would expose it to the whole world, and particularly in Melbourne where I will have to suffer.”And it is not any exception. Devageet has received a letter from his mother saying, “Stop writing the book,” because he is also writing a book. Now these poor mothers are in great anxiety. What are these people going to write about them? – that must be a deep fear. Secondly, they will expose that Christianity is no longer relevant, that something new, something basically discontinuous with the past is needed. And that’s what sannyas is. So they must be afraid of the crowd, of the church, of the congregation, of the priest; what they will say: “Look what your son has done,” or “Look what your daughter has done. You did not bring them up rightly; they have gone astray.”Everybody is concerned that everybody else should not go astray. And what do they mean by astray? You should not go in a different direction than they are going. And you know their whole life is misery, you know their whole mind is full of anxiety and agony; you have never seen them joyous. You have never felt a deep harmoniousness with your own parents. And they have tried in every way – in your helplessness, because every child is helpless – to force you onto the way that they think is right.But their whole life proves that they are not right. If their life was a life of joy and songs and celebrations, the children would have followed without any punishment, without any harassment, without any torture. And now Maneesha and Devageet are not small children; they have their lives, they have their lifestyle and they want to share it with the whole world. Why should their mothers be so concerned? What is the fear?Leo Tolstoy says, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I cannot agree with him; I would rather change the whole statement to the contrary: All unhappy families resemble one another, but each happy family is happy in its own way.And the same is true about individuals: All unhappy individuals resemble each other; only happy individuals have a uniqueness. Happiness, growing towards blissfulness, makes you unique in a world which is full of misery.Always remember, the whole effort of psychoanalysis and other therapies, and other so-called wise men is nothing but to help you remain normal, to help you remain part of the crowd. The moment you try to become an individual you will be condemned, because five billion people cannot be wrong – although they are suffering in hell. But the number is never decisive about truth.Ralph Waldo Emerson has made a statement: “To be great is to be misunderstood.”I knew one very beautiful man…There were only two men in India who were respected so highly as to be called “Mahatma”; Mahatma means the great soul. One was Mahatma Gandhi and another was Mahatma Bhagwandin. I was very much interested in Mahatma Bhagwandin, just as he was very loving towards me. I was a small child when we became friends, because he had stayed with my family. He had come to deliver some lectures in the town, and we used to go for morning walks together. By and by, we forgot completely that he is very ancient, old. We started arguing and discussing.It was just by coincidence that he was on his deathbed in Nagpur and I was coming from Wardha, from a lecture tour. Somebody in the train told me, “Mahatma Bhagwandin is very, very sick, and there seems to be no possibility that he will survive more than a week.” So I stopped at Nagpur and went to see him.He was almost dead; he had become absolutely like a skeleton. He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand, and he said, “I am worried about you, that you will be misunderstood your whole life. There is still time for you to agree with the masses, whether they are right or wrong.” And he was saying it out of compassion. He said, “Because I have suffered my whole life, and I have been condemned, I don’t want you to be condemned.”I said, “Do you want me to be a hypocrite and respectable? Do you want me to be something other than my nature allows me?”He said, “I knew you would argue, and I know that you are right. It is just a fatherly feeling; I have suffered my whole life because I always was in favor of unpopular movements, unpopular ideologies…and you are far more dangerous, you are against everybody.”I said, “I have to be against everybody. I have to be just myself. And anybody who wants to pull me in some other direction is not my friend.” I said, “I understand your love, but you should also understand my situation. I would rather be condemned by the whole world than go against my nature. Because who cares about the world? They cannot bring me the truth; they cannot bring me the meaning; they cannot bring me the significance. What can they give to me? – respectability, honor? And what am I going to do with respectability and honor? Those are all bogus words used to cheat people. I simply want to be nobody; I am going to stick to myself. And this is my promise to you as you are dying. Remember my words even when you are dead, that I will…”He said, “I knew you wouldn’t listen. And I am happy that you are absolutely determined.” He had tears of joy in his eyes – not of sadness, joy. He said, “If you had agreed with me, I would have felt very sad that the world has lost another individual. But you don’t agree with me, even when you see I am dying. In such a situation anybody will say, just to be polite, ‘Yes, whatever you say I will do.’ Even in such a situation you are not ready to accept. I can die joyfully because I have loved you and I have watched how you are growing – of course with a concern that you will be condemned by religions, by governments, by masses.”But what about all your psychotherapists, your leaders, your teachers, your universities – what is their function? Their function is to keep you within the fold; to keep you just a sheep amongst the crowd of sheep and never allow you to be yourself. They are all angry with me for telling this to young people who have not yet died – because people mostly die nearabout thirty years of age, that is average. And then they are buried when they are seventy. That is almost forty years that people live a posthumous life; they have died long before.The day you decide that it is better to be a hypocrite and just do whatever everybody else is doing and not be different, you have died – you have committed suicide.My whole teaching is:Don’t commit spiritual suicide.You don’t need anybody else to guide you, because whoever guides you will guide you wrongly. He cannot know your nature and he cannot look into your future. He has no eyes, and there is no possibility. How can you see in a seed the flowers that will come one day years after? All that can be done is that the seed should be given a right soil – not right advice. Not that you have to be a lotus, or you have to be a rose.Care should be taken that the seed is not destroyed, that when small leaves start growing out of it, they are not destroyed. That’s the function of the master: not to guide you but just to protect you when you need protection, when you are so fragile, so new. Just growing, the new leaves coming out of the earth, entering into an unknown world where strong winds blow, heavy rain falls, there is every possibility that you may be destroyed. The function of the master is not to lead you. The function of the master is to help you, to protect you, but only to the moment when you can stand on your own. Then slowly, slowly detach himself from you so that you can dance alone in the sky under the stars in your full glory.Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe has made a beautiful statement: “All theory, dear friend is gray. But the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.”Avoid theories; they are all gray.Let the dead people discuss theories.The living have something more golden, something more alive. They have to love; they have to meditate. They have to become enlightened before death knocks on their doors.Also remember that life is not the way it is lived in California! California is almost a vast crazy place where people are going from one master to another master, just like any fashion. Just as they change their toothpaste, they change their masters. Just as they change their soaps, they change their teachers, their counselors, their psychoanalysts. Oscar Wilde used to say, “Fashion is a form of ugliness, so intolerable that we have to change it every six months.” There is no need.Just the other day, I received a letter from a sannyasin saying that he is going to a teacher; has he my blessings? Can he go? People are in a strange situation; they want to ride on many boats. They are creating their life in such a way that it will be a disaster. If you are growing well…and he writes that his meditation is going well, he is starting to see things that have so far been only words. Now at this fragile moment, going to somebody is dangerous. But if I say, “Don’t go,” I interfere. And I would not like to interfere, even if you are going wrong.So I have informed him: I cannot bless because I don’t know to whom you are going, but you are intelligent enough. If you feel that the person is going in some way to nourish your growth, which is going perfectly right even according to you – you are feeling that you are absolutely on the right path, that misery is disappearing, that suffering is disappearing, that you are no more worried; that a kind of playfulness, weightlessness is arising – if you are aware of all this…. Remember, that if anybody can be of nourishment, it is perfectly good to go.But in fact, there is no need to go anywhere, you are going so right. Go more deeply into it, rather than going sideways.Go straight like an arrow.Osho,Can you talk about the relationship between silence and blissfulness? Is silence all that is needed? Does everything else follow?There is no relationship between silence and blissfulness; they are two names of the same thing.Silence is blissfulness, not in the dictionaries, but in actual experience. And I don’t see that in actual experience it can be different to different people. As you become silent, you cannot be worried, you cannot be tense; you cannot be miserable, you cannot be noisy, you cannot be chattering continuously. Otherwise, how can you be silent?And when all these stupid activities are gone, silence simply clears the ground for blissfulness to be discovered. They are almost the same phenomenon because they happen simultaneously. As you become silent, a certain sweetness, a certain fragrance, a certain beautitude spontaneously arises in you.But your silence should not be a repressed stillness; you should not be silent by force. If you are silent by force, if you have repressed your mind then rather than doing meditation you are doing gymnastics, fighting with the mind. It is possible you can force the mind to be silent, but then there will be no blissfulness. There will be just emptiness and a silence of the graveyard, not the silence of the garden; something empty, not something overflowing.The silence that comes out of meditation is not an empty experience, it is very positive – it is overflowingly positive. And what is there to overflow in silence except blissfulness? So, please check. If your silence is not bringing blissfulness then you are trying to have a wrong kind of silence – blissfulness is the criterion – then stop doing what you are trying to do.In meditation, silence comes on its own accord. You simply go on watching the mind without any control, without any repression, and silence comes suddenly just like a breeze, and with the silence, the fragrance of the flowers – that is your blissfulness; it is your own fragrance which you were not capable of knowing because there was so much noise.The mind was creating so much fuss, thoughts were creating so many dark clouds, emotions and moods, it had become a thick barrier between you and your real self. When the barrier is removed, it is as if you have removed a rock which was preventing a stream, a fountain.And the moment you remove the rock, suddenly the fountain bursts forth in a great dance of joy. Your blissfulness is not something that comes from outside, it springs from within you. Just the rock of your mind – thoughts, miseries – has to be removed. It is not that you have to repress it, because by repressing it you will be repressing the fountain behind it too.So the question can arise if your silence is a wrong kind of silence. You are asking, “Is silence all that is needed?” Yes, absolutely yes. Silence is all that is needed, and everything else follows on its own accord.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Lately, I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing. It seems like such a long process – does it have to take a long time?The longing to go beyond the mind is the only longing worthwhile. All that man desires and hopes for is utterly meaningless. In success, in failure, in every possible way it leads you nowhere.It is not only that you feel the pain in failure – the pain and the defeat and the agony. Those who succeed also feel the same pain in a different way, perhaps more deeply than those who have failed, because they have succeeded in what they wanted and yet their inner being is as dark and as empty as ever. They have everything on the outside and nothing inside. In fact, all that they have succeeded in attaining, in achieving, becomes a contrast and shows their inner emptiness more clearly than those who have failed to attain.It is just as if you write with white chalk on a white wall: it doesn’t show. You have to write it on a blackboard and then it shows clearly. The emptiness, meaninglessness shows more clearly on the blackboard of success than it shows on the mind and its screen of failure. In failure there is still hope; in success there is no hope. You have already arrived, and your arrival is the death of all your hoping.It is a very strange experience that the only successful lovers are those who never meet, are never allowed to meet by the society, by the parents, by the situations. They are the only successful lovers; the world remembers them for centuries. But once the lovers meet, then all hope and all romance from life simply evaporates.There is one longing amongst all longings, and that is the longing to go beyond mind. But there is a contradiction in this longing, because all longing belongs to the mind: how can the mind long, desire, to go beyond itself? So the longing to go beyond mind has not to be understood in the same way as any other desire, any other ambition.In fact to call it longing is not right. It is an understanding more than a desire. It is an understanding of the agony and the pain of mind that makes one feel it is better to go beyond. It is not something in the faraway future as a goal, but something that has to be allowed to happen right now.If you can see what mind has done to you and what it is continuously doing to you, how much misery and how much suffering it goes on creating, then the very understanding of the misery of mind is enough to go beyond. You don’t ask how to go beyond, you simply cannot remain in the mind. You are in the mind because you are not clear that your misery is caused by the mind. You go on throwing the responsibility on something or other.Jean-Paul Sartre has said – and when a man like Sartre says something it is significant; his statement has become immensely famous: “The other is hell.” In an ordinary way it appears to be right, because you always suffer because of others: your wife deserts you; your husband does not love you; your children are turning into hippies. It is always the others who are creating misery; otherwise you would be in paradise.In this ordinary sense his statement has meaning, and that’s why it has become so famous and so important. But deep down it is rooted in ignorance.The other is not hell, the other is only a mirror.The other only reflects your mind, your face.I have heard an ancient parable…A woman who was very ugly was against mirrors. She was so much against mirrors that she did not allow any mirror in her own home. Her antagonism was so deep that if she saw a mirror in somebody else’s house the first thing she did was to break the mirror. And people asked, “What is the matter, why have you broken the mirror?”She said, “The mirror makes me ugly; otherwise I am perfectly well. If there was no mirror, I would not have been ugly.”The same is the situation when Jean-Paul Sartre says that the other is hell. It is you, it is your mind. And because Sartre goes on depending on this understanding, a man of his caliber and genius never transcends mind, never even thinks of it. It is unfortunate that such beautiful people with such sharp intelligence remain unaware of a simple fact that in your relationships it is your mind that is reflected. In your misery it is your mind; in your jealousy it is your mind; in your hate it is your mind; in your lust for power it is your mind.Once you see the multidimensional capacity of the mind to create hell for you, the very understanding takes you out of it. You don’t have to long, you don’t have to desire; you don’t have to do anything else other than understand the mind.You are saying to me, “I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing.” Superficially, anybody will say that a spiritual desire has taken possession of you, but I am going to be a little hard on you.First, the feeling is part of the mind, the longing is part of the mind, to have some experience is a desire of the mind…and to have something even more is the very nature of mind. It can be reduced to a simple statement: Mind always asks for more. It may be money or it may be meditation, it doesn’t matter – mind goes on asking for more.Even if you get God himself, the mind will still ask the same thing: something more. What are you going to do with this God? Now you are stuck forever. Just think of yourself getting stuck with God forever! The mind may even suggest to you, “It is better to lose this fellow rather than to remain stuck with him; either get something more…or even less will do, but a change is absolutely needed.”Mind is a continuous thirst for more.It never finds fulfillment.So you have to understand one thing, that this longing should not be part of the mind. This desire to experience something more should not be mind deceiving you in the name of religion, in the name of spirituality.The only way to avoid the mind and its deceptions – and they are very subtle – the only way is to drop these words: ongoing, experience, more. Rather try to understand the mind, what it is. Look into every nook and corner of the mind, from where all desires arise, all longings arise, from where all passions arise. Just look into this source of all your life.With the very understanding that the mind is the hell, you will find yourself beyond it; you will not have to go beyond it.It is almost like when you find your house is on fire. When you see it on fire, you don’t think and contemplate what to do. You don’t consult holy scriptures for right instructions. You simply jump out of the house – whether it is a door or a window it doesn’t matter; whether you are properly dressed or not it doesn’t matter. You know a great crowd is waiting, but if you are in your bathroom and suddenly find the house is on fire, you will jump out of the window naked. You will forget to take even the towel with you. It is not a time to think of all these trivia and the crowd is not going to be angry with you, even in Pune. Even the police commissioner is not going to take any action against you. In such a situation ordinary laws don’t apply.The transcendence from mind has happened only to a very few people in the world. And the reason is that most people get deceived by the mind. The mind itself starts asking for transcendence, for going beyond, for searching the truth, and you forget that these are subtle devices of the mind to take you astray from one single thing: that is a deep understanding of mind itself.Neither transcendence is needed nor going beyond is needed nor any spiritual experience is needed. What is needed is a total understanding of your mind and its structure and its functioning. And that very understanding, without any effort on your part, will become the transcendence, will take you beyond, will give you the experience that mind was only dreaming about and deceiving you.Your question is certainly arising from the mind, because the next thing it says is: “It seems like such a long process.” Understanding is not a long process. Understanding is immediate. You come across a snake on the road – understanding does not take a long time. You simply jump out of the way without even thinking what you are doing.In my childhood, in front of the house in which I used to live were only shops. On my side of the road there were residential houses, but on the opposite side there were only shops. So after nine o’clock at night the shops on the other side of the road were closed and it became utterly dark -at that time electricity had not come to my village – and we used to frighten people, people who were very strong, particularly those who bragged so much about their strength.Just nearby there was a gymnasium, the most famous in the area, where people were body-building, and they had champions. And we were very small but we knew that whether you are a champion or a great wrestler, it does not matter. We used to purchase paper snakes from the market and we would put them on the other side of the road attached with a thin black thread held in our hands, while we sat in our house. Nobody in the house was concerned that we were doing anything; we were simply sitting, just holding the thread and watching for the right person.Whenever we would see some great wrestler coming we would start pulling our thread slowly. And as the snake came on the road the scene was worth seeing. The wrestler would forget everything: he was carrying a lamp in his hand, the lamp would fall down and the wrestler would run so fast – sometimes he would fall down.And a crowd would gather, “What has happened?”And he would say, “There was such a great snake.”The people said, “This is strange, every night the snake appears.”One day they tried to look for the snake, “It has to be found because some day somebody is going to be killed by the snake.” And they found a paper snake, they found the thread, and they found me hiding behind my grandfather’s bed! Seeing that something difficult is happening, I simply put the thread around my grandfather’s leg; he was asleep. The crowd woke him up – I also was with the crowd, asking, “What you are doing?”He said, “I was asleep. What is the matter? Who has put this thread around my leg?”And the crowd also saw that he had been fast asleep and that somebody else was behind the game. And this snake appears every day after nine o’clock, and it has made people so afraid that many people have stopped going out of their houses after nine o’clock.And they said to my grandfather, “Be watchful next time; just remain alert and watch who is doing this trick.”My grandfather knew who must be doing it. But I was with the crowd saying, “You have to be a little alert.” And when everybody was gone he said, “You rascal! You are doing this. I have seen you in the daytime with that snake and that thread…but this is too much, that you put it around my leg.”I said, “There was no other way. There was nobody else except you. I was hiding behind you when I saw that I was going to be caught and I said, “It is good, because nobody can find fault with a sleeping old man. So you have to forgive me, but it was such an urgent situation.”When you come across a snake, whether it is paper or made of rubber or plastic or dead does not matter. It does not take any time to freak out; it is not a process. You say it is a long process, “such a long process – does it have to take a long time?”Somebody has sent me the Ashram’s Law of Shortcut: The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.It is very difficult to find any shortcut here…but there is no need either if you follow rightly my understanding, my approach. Time is not involved at all; neither is any kind of distance.This very moment you can look at your mind, and you can see all that your mind contains. And that will be enough just to be finished with it. It is not a question of time; it is not a question of effort. It is only a question of clear understanding.That’s what we don’t do. We fight with anger, we fight with jealousy, we fight with everything, but fighting never helps because it takes time. And fighting shows one thing absolutely: that you don’t understand that by fighting you cannot go beyond mind. Fighting is simply one part of mind fighting with another part. It is like making both my hands fight with each other. Do you think any hand is going to win? It depends on me; I can make the right hand win or I can change the idea and make the left hand win. But I know perfectly well that it is within my power: both hands are mine.Any conflict in your mind, any split in your mind is just a game. You have become two teams, football teams or… And you can go on playing the game and you can enjoy that you are on a spiritual pilgrimage, that you are a great seeker – but you are just playing football. And you are playing for both sides; there is no question of any victory, no question of any defeat.That’s what so-called religious people have been doing and are still doing. Their rituals, their prayers, their austerities certainly take time. And not only do they take time, they never arrive anywhere, they remain the same persons. Maybe they have repressed their sexuality, but the sexuality is there. Repressed, it becomes more dangerous because it becomes more deep-rooted in your unconscious, from where it will create a thousand and one perversions.I have heard that three rabbis were standing on the railway station. They were going somewhere, obviously. And finally the youngest one said, “Now it seems the train is going to come and I should get the tickets.”So he went to the window and saw a beautiful woman working on her register. The young rabbi said to the woman, “Lady, how much will it cost for Titsburgh?” He forgot that he is going to Pittsburgh.The woman was very angry, and said, “You are a religious man…” The rabbi felt very ashamed. He came back and told the other rabbis, “You can purchase the ticket because I am feeling very nervous, and in my nervousness I have said something wrong.”They said, “But tell us what you have said wrong.”He said, “I cannot repeat it. And don’t make me feel more guilty; I am feeling very bad.”So the second rabbi, more elderly than the first, said, “I’m going. What kind of nervousness is this? Just purchasing the ticket…” And the moment he saw those beautiful tits he forgot everything – his old age, his austerities, his rituals, his prayers; all were forgotten. And of course, because he was older he committed more mistakes because his unconscious and his repression were greater. He said, “Just give me three tickets for Titsburgh and the change you can give me in nipples.”The woman was outraged. She said, “You rascals! You are pretending to be rabbis? The first one came and now you have come, and you are worse than the first.”And the second rabbi came back trembling. Then the oldest rabbi said, “What is the matter with you idiots? Just purchasing a ticket…What happens on the window?”The second one said, “You go and see yourself. Something goes wrong. I was not thinking that I can do such a stupid thing, but it simply came out.”The old rabbi said, “That window seems to be mysterious. But let me try.” And of course he was a very strict disciplinarian, a perfectionist, and the oldest of all. He kept himself very alert seeing that two persons have failed and something is wrong there. He saw the tits but he understood immediately, Okay, so this is the problem: Pittsburgh must be becoming Titsburgh!He took the right approach and said, “Lady, how much will it be for Pittsburgh?”The lady said, “You are really a religious person. Those two fellows are so ungentlemanly. They should not be accepted as rabbis.”The rabbi said, “You are right. I will put them right, but I’m going to put you right too! You are not dressed properly. And remember, when you die Saint Finger on the gate of heaven will show his peter at you!”The old man became angry…But you cannot get away from the repressed; it is going to come in some way or other. Now Saint Peter becomes Saint Finger, and the poor finger becomes peter.Perversions are the only achievement of the repressed approach of all your religions. It has created a very perverted humanity. I will not say to you to do something to transcend mind – I will say to you: the only scientific approach is to understand. First understand mind, which is your reality. Why be in such a hurry of going beyond it without understanding it? Understand it and the very understanding is transcendence. The moment you have understood your mind you are beyond it. You will find yourself beyond it within a split second; it won’t take any more time. It is not a process, it is a quantum leap.My effort is to continuously emphasize that meditation is nothing but watching the mind, understanding the mind, seeing all its subtle and cunning ways. And once you have become perfectly aware of all its conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers you are already out of it. In your very watching you have gone beyond. And beyond the mind there is no desire for more, because beyond the mind you go on growing more and more into infinity. There is no need to desire, it happens spontaneously.So the first thing is an understanding of the mind and the second thing is to rejoice in spontaneous growth.The young nun rushed into the mother superior’s office and exclaimed, “We have got a fresh case of syphilis in the convent!” The mother superior looked up and said, “Thank God. I’m sick to death of red wine!”It is a little difficult. The nun has reported to the superior mother that they have received a fresh case of syphilis. And the superior mother said, “Thank God. I’m sick to death of red wine. Always red wine, red wine…At least something fresh has come.”A doctor received an urgent phone call. “Doctor,” said the voice. “My wife swallowed my fountain pen two hours ago.”“Why did not you phone me sooner?” asked the doctor.“I have been using my pencil up to now,” replied the husband, “but the lead has broken and I don’t have a sharpener.”Life is so ridiculous and so hilarious, that if you just try to understand your mind, you will have a great laugh at yourself and what you have been doing.Once one of the girlfriends of Pablo Picasso said, “If my boyfriend would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings he would fall over in a dead faint.”But Picasso is not aware what he is painting. The girlfriend is saying, “If some day on the road he meets the women he paints, he will forget all painting; he will faint and fall over on the road.” But Picasso is not aware that all his paintings are nightmarish. And he has been working so hard on those paintings all his life. And he was a genius, but he must be absolutely unconscious of what he is doing.What are you doing? What goes on in your mind? What kinds of paintings do you make? What kinds of dreams come to you? What things make you jealous? What things make you infatuated? Just watch. You have been given, free of charge by your biology, a whole television set which needs no change of any batteries or any electricity; it runs continuously from the cradle to the grave. And who knows it may be running even in the grave.Brain surgeons have become aware of the fact that the brain can be taken out from your skull and put into a mechanical head. All that it needs is oxygen and blood for everything to run through the mechanical head exactly as it used to run in your head on your body. Your brain continues to function. It does not know that the man has changed. It goes on dreaming, it goes on thinking; it goes on making plans, it goes on being jealous.Brain surgeons have been very shocked that the brain does not need you at all; it goes on by itself. And it is very frightening that a brain without a body, just mechanically supported for its nourishment is perfectly well and it goes on doing the same old exercises.You are being used by your brain almost like a mechanical support, nothing much more. This brain certainly has to be transcended, but to transcend it you are not to fall into the trap of taking any support from the same brain. If you take any support from it, you will never be able to get out of its trap. The only way not to take support is just to watch, wait and see all its functions. And you will feel immensely relieved immediately, because it has nothing to do with you, it is just a biocomputer.And this understanding that “I am separate” is the transcendence, is what you mean by going beyond.Osho,In my first few months here, while meditating, a few times I came across a very intense space where it was as if time had stopped. But now it does not happen, and I can feel that there is some expectance in me, though I remember that the space only came when I was not looking for it. Even though I feel so good while meditating – especially in your presence – so full and rich inside, I wonder where those spaces went and how I can get back to the innocence of non-expectance.Your question almost answers itself. But perhaps you have managed the answer only intellectually. Your question seems to be real, but it also implies the answer. The answer seems to be your intellectual understanding of the situation.I will read the question to make it clear to you, because that clarity will change everything.“In my first few months here, while meditating, a few times I came across a very intense space where it was as if time had stopped. But now it does not happen, and I can feel that there is some expectance in me…”That expectance is preventing it. And it seems that intellectually you understand it. You say, “…though I remember that the space only came when I was not looking for it. Even though I feel so good while meditating – especially in your presence – so full and rich inside, I wonder where those spaces went and how I can get back to the innocence of non-expectance.”Any method – that’s what you are asking for: How can I get back into that innocence of non-expectance? Any method, whatever its nature, will make things more complicated, because you will be doing it to get into a space which comes only when you are not expecting it. Intellectually you seem to have understood the fact that it was only when you were not expecting it, it came suddenly. And now there is a subtle expectance and you are wanting to know how to get into that state again.You simply forget all about those spaces. You are feeling good in meditations, why bother about a space where it seemed as if time has stopped? What are you going to get out of it? And moreover, it was only “as if.” Even if time had really stopped, what is the gain? Perhaps the battery of your quartz watch was finished…time stopped. There is no other time except in your watches.A man charged into a jewelry shop, slammed his fist angrily on the counter, removed a wrist watch from his pocket and shook it under the nose of the saleswoman. “Damn it! You said this watch would last me a lifetime,” he roared.“Yeah,” said the woman, “but you looked pretty sick the day you got it.”Don’t be bothered about time stopping, great spaces happening. Feel good because you are feeling rich and full inside. Enjoy this fullness; enjoy this richness. Become so much involved in it that perhaps you will find again that time stops, that again that space opens up, far bigger, far more deep, far more intense, because it will be the second time.But you have to be involved in some rich experience so deeply that there is no need for it. These things happen only when you don’t need them. They follow the same law as banking: If you need money, no bank is going to give you any; if you don’t need money, every bank is going to persuade you to have some. They are willing to give you as much money as you want for as long time as you want. Bankers seem to understand this wonderful working of existence. When someone needs something don’t give, because it will be lost; it will never be returned. When somebody has so much money that he does not want anything – he can open a bank himself – then all the banks are ready to lend on lower interest rates.Perhaps existence follows the same law. The more you run after something the less is the possibility of your getting it. The moment you stop, and you drop the very idea, suddenly you have got it.And you can forget those spaces only if you can create another dimension of richness, affluence, blissfulness – and that is opening up through your meditation so there is no need to worry. And worrying, you will not be a winner. Those spaces came by themselves. Let them come when they come. When they come enjoy them, when they don’t come don’t even look back, don’t even think about them.This is something very essential to learn on the path; otherwise, you will get stuck on every point. Whenever something beautiful happens, it will always happen without your knowing.Unexpectedly the guest comes.But you feel so good that you start expecting. Now you are going against the law. The guest has come only because you were not expecting, and now you are expecting – not only expecting, but deep down demanding. And existence is very shy, it won’t come. Get involved in something deeper and richer in another dimension. And that is happening for you, so there is no problem. You are not empty, you are feeling full and rich. Feel more rich and more full. Go deeper into meditation and you will forget those spaces, because your meditation will bring greater spaces, greater richness, greater experiences. And then suddenly, one day you will find not the same spaces that you had found, better ones; it is always getting better. On the path of meditation it is always getting better.So never ask for anything to be repeated, because that way you will be a loser. Something better was going to happen and you were asking for something less. That past space had happened when you were not so deep in meditation. Now you are deep in meditation, you have earned more. You have become more worthy. At that time you were not feeling so rich and so full. Now you are feeling so rich and so full, you need not worry. Something greater will happen.But if you go on asking and hoping for those same spaces, you will be preventing those spaces because existence never repeats. And you will be preventing better spaces because you are not looking for the future; you are looking backwards at the past.There is no technique to forget. You are asking for a technique, how to become again innocent and be non-expecting. By any technique whatsoever it is not possible. It is possible to get better spaces. Why should you hanker for those old, rotten, already experienced? – They are secondhand. Why not wait for fresher and deeper and more nourishing, more ecstatic experiences which are waiting ahead on the path? But, if you go on looking backwards, you are stuck.Don’t get stuck with anything.Howsoever beautiful it is, there is a possibility of something better ahead.I have always told a Sufi story…An old man, a woodcutter, was so old, but still he had to go to chop wood in the forest and bring it back. He was just able to afford food one time a day, and he was in his old age. And when the woodcutter used to go in the forest, a Sufi mystic was always sitting on the way, under a tree, the same tree. He always used to touch the feet of the mystic, and the mystic used to laugh.Finally, one day he could not contain his curiosity. He said, “I touch your feet twice every day, going into the forest and coming back from the forest. And it is strange, you always laugh – Why? I am a poor man, uneducated, but this much I can understand: I am paying respect to you, and you are laughing. This does not seem to be appropriate.”The old man said, “I’m laughing because you are an idiot. Where you have been chopping wood, just a little ahead there is a copper mine. And with the same effort that you make in one day to get enough wood for your one meal, with the same effort you can get enough copper for two meals every day for seven days. Six days you can rest; one day you can work. I have been laughing because it is strange that a man has been coming this way his whole life and he never goes a little more. He always gets stuck with the same trees. And just ahead of those trees…”The next day the man went a little ahead and he was surprised. He was very happy. He came and he touched the feet of the master and said, “I am sorry that I could not understand your laughter.”Then he used to come only once a week. But the master started laughing again. So he said, “What is the matter, why have you started laughing again?”The master said, “You seem to be such a sticking guy. Just ahead of that mine there is a silver mine. Can’t you imagine anything? Can’t you see that there is so much ahead?”He said, “I never thought about it. But you are strange also. You know – why don’t you tell me?”And the master said, “There are a few things one should find for oneself; that helps your intelligence to grow. I had to say because my time is finished. And I cannot just wait anymore for you to discover. So just today go a little further and find a silver mine.”He found a silver mine. Now it was needed only to come once a month. But he got stuck there. And the master said, “I have never seen such a fellow. Don’t you know that there exists gold too?”He said, “Where?”“Just a little ahead. And it seems that unless you are forced, you will not move,” said the master.That day he went a little ahead and found a big gold mine. He said, “My God, my whole life I could have carried so much gold I would have become almost a king! And that mystic is such a strange fellow. He knows everything and he never said anything to me.” But that day he thought “Now I have to make one effort on my own. Perhaps there is something more ahead.”And there was. There was a diamond mine. He said, “My God! So many diamonds. And that mystic knows everything? And he thinks I am an idiot! Now I think he is an idiot. He knows, and he goes on sitting under the tree doing nothing, just waiting for people to give something to him. And his disciples beg and bring food to him, and he knows all this. And he thinks that I’m the idiot. Today I am going to tell him, ‘You are an idiot. What are you doing sitting here, knowing all that perfectly well. I am an ignorant man and I don’t know what is ahead, but you know.’”So he came back. With great courage he showed the diamonds and the mystic laughed. He said, “That’s good. But don’t get stuck.”He said, “But what can be ahead of it?”The mystic said, “Ahead of it? I am; otherwise why am I sitting here? I have something more valuable than diamonds. So when you are finished with your diamonds you come and sit under my feet. It is my last days and I would like to share with you something more than diamonds. But you had to pass through these stages; otherwise you would not have understood that this poor fellow, who depends on people’s food, who is just a beggar, can have something inside him which is far more valuable than the whole diamond mine.”The old woodcutter dropped the diamonds there and he said, “I am finished. If that is the case then I am not going to leave you.”The old man said, “You can sit also. There is enough space under the tree. And it is beautiful and very shadowy. And my people bring food enough, so it will be enough for both.”The woodcutter said…he was an ignorant man, not a thinker, not a philosopher, not religious; he has never thought much, he has never dreamt; if he was brought to a psychoanalyst, the psychoanalyst will refuse him because he will not be cooperating. If he will ask him, “Tell me about your dreams,” he will say, “I don’t have any dreams.” Then the psychoanalyst cannot do anything. Without dreams he cannot help anybody.He sat by the side of the saint. And as the night grew deeper, the silence and everything became quiet and calm. He also became quiet and calm and suddenly, he started feeling the vibration of the mysterious man. He could not see anything, but his heart was dancing. He could not say anything, but his whole being was for the first time in a state of joy. He has never known anything except misery, poverty and suffering.Early in the morning, before he could even say thanks to the saint, the saint died. But he had left behind him another saint. When the followers of the old saint came they could not believe. The old man is dead but a new fellow is sitting by his side with the same vibe.Those followers have tasted the joy and the peace of the old man. That’s why they used to come from a faraway town to bring his food. Just to be with him for a few minutes was enough. It kept them running twenty-four hours, celebrating life. They could not believe that the old man has played such a game with them. He is gone but he has left a representative. They offered his food to the woodcutter and the woodcutter became the saint. Nothing was said, nobody declared that he was the successor, but he proved to be a far greater saint, because he was an ignorant man, and suddenly silence turned all his ignorance into innocence.All that you need is to forget always what happens, and remember always there is much more. There is no need to long for it because it always happens whenever you are right. Whenever you are in a right tuning you hear the music from the beyond. And whenever you are in a right space the whole existence celebrates with you.There is no technique to forget, just a simple understanding. If a woodcutter can go ahead, why can’t you go a little deeper into your meditation? That memory of a beautiful experience is holding you back. Forget all about it. It is not worth remembering because much more is there.Keep yourself available for much more. On this path there is no poverty, there is always more and more richness.On this path you don’t become finally a beggar, you become an emperor.The plane hit a storm and was going up and down and sideways. A little old lady was getting very nervous and suddenly she shouted, “Everybody on the plane pray!”A Scotsman sitting next to her said, “I don’t know how to pray.”“Well, do something religious!” the old lady cried.So he got up, took off his hat and started making a collection.That’s the only thing he knows that is religion.Don’t just wait for those spaces, there are greater religious spaces ahead. Don’t get stuck with prayers.“Before sending you to the chair,” said the judge to Moishe Finkelstein, “is there a last request you would like to make?”“Yes, judge,” said Moishe, “I would like to have a look at my wife first, then I will feel more like dying.”People have strange fixations. Don’t bother about what happened in the past. What is happening right now is so beautiful, is it not? Then why create any disturbance. Just go deeper into it.That which is available will open new skies and many, many spaces. And then you will wonder how foolish it was to expect your kindergarten experiences. Those were just little glimpses of the unknown. The whole unknown is still waiting for you to experience it.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I realized that it is easier to become silent while listening to you than in any other meditation. When you stop talking everything seems to stop for a moment and I get a glimpse of what meditation can be! These are the most precious moments for me! Osho, why is it easier to become silent in your presence?The question you have raised is significant not only to you, but to many more who are not fortunate enough to be in my presence, but who will be reading these words or listening or seeing this on the video screen all over the world.The question arises almost for everyone, that the way I talk is a little strange. No speaker in the world talks like me – technically it is wrong; it takes almost double the time! But those speakers have a different purpose – my purpose is absolutely different from theirs. They speak because they are prepared for it; they are simply repeating something that they have rehearsed. Secondly, they are speaking to impose a certain ideology, a certain idea on you. Thirdly, to them speaking is an art – they go on refining it.As far as I am concerned, I am not what they call a speaker or an orator. It is not an art to me or a technique; technically I go on becoming worse every day! But our purposes are totally different. I don’t want to impress you in order to manipulate you. I don’t speak for any goal to be achieved through convincing you. I don’t speak to convert you into a Christian, into a Hindu or a Mohammedan, into a theist or an atheist – these are not my concerns.My speaking is really one of my devices for meditation. Speaking has never been used this way: I speak not to give you a message, but to stop your mind functioning.I speak nothing prepared – I don’t know myself what is going to be the next word; hence I never commit any mistake. One commits a mistake if one is prepared. I never forget anything, because one forgets if one has been remembering it. So I speak with a freedom that perhaps nobody has ever spoken with.I am not concerned whether I am consistent, because that is not the purpose. A man who wants to convince you and manipulate you through his speaking has to be consistent, has to be logical, has to be rational, to overpower your reason. He wants to dominate through words.One of the very famous books of Dale Carnegie is about speaking and influencing people as an art – it has been sold second only to The Holy Bible – but I will fail his examinations. He used to run a course in America to train missionaries, to train professors, and to train orators. I will fail on all counts. First, I have no motivation to convert you; I have no desire anywhere to impress you. And I don’t remember what I have said yesterday, so I cannot bother about being consistent – that is too much worry. I can easily contradict myself, because I am not trying to have a communication with your intellectual, rational mind.My purpose is so unique – I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being.Most of the people in the world don’t think that it is possible for mind to be silent. Because they don’t think it is possible, they don’t try. How to give people a taste of meditation was my basic reason to speak, so I can go on speaking eternally – it does not matter what I am saying. All that matters is that I give you a few chances to be silent, which you find difficult on your own in the beginning.I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking, and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap. And your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it – naturally it becomes silent. What can the poor mind do? If it was well known at what points I will be silent, if it was declared to you that on such and such points I will be silent, then you could manage to think – you would not be silent. Then you know: “This is the point where he is going to be silent, now I can have a little chit-chat with myself.” But because it comes absolutely suddenly…. I don’t know myself why at certain points I stop.Anything like this, in any orator in the world, will be condemned, because an orator stopping again and again means he is not well prepared, he has not done the homework. It means that his memory is not reliable, that he cannot find, sometimes, what word to use. But because it is not oratory, I am not concerned about the people who will be condemning me – I am concerned with you.And it is not only here, but far away…anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence. My success is not to convince you, my success is to give you a real taste so that you can become confident that meditation is not a fiction, that the state of no-mind is not just a philosophical idea, that it is a reality; that you are capable of it, and that it does not need any special qualifications.You may be a sinner, you may be a saint – it does not matter. If the sinner can become silent, he will attain to the same consciousness as the saint.Existence is not so miserly as religions have been teaching you. Existence is not like the KGB or CBI – watching everybody to see what you are doing, whether you are going to the movie with your own wife or with somebody else’s wife. Existence is not interested at all. The problem of whether the wife is yours or not is just a man-created problem. In existence, there is nothing like marriage. Whether you are stealing money, taking it out from somebody’s safe or from your own, existence does not and cannot make the difference. You are taking out the money from the safe – that is a fact – but to whom the safe belongs, that is absolutely of no concern to existence.Once George Bernard Shaw was asked, “Can a man live his life so lazily, just keeping his hands in his pockets and enjoying?” George Bernard Shaw said, “Yes, just the pocket should be somebody else’s!”Keeping your hands in your own pockets, you cannot survive! And the fact is that almost everybody has his hand in somebody else’s pocket. And that fellow may have his hand in somebody else’s pocket, so he cannot stop you because by stopping you, he will be stopped. So he has to accept it, and if he has his hands in a richer pocket, he does not care about you. Go on doing whatsoever you are doing, just don’t create a disturbance.Existence has no morality as such – it is amoral. For existence there is nothing wrong and nothing right. Only one thing is right – your being alert and conscious. Then you are blissful.It is very strange that no religion has defined “right” as being blissful, or defined “virtue” as being blissful. And they were in a difficulty to define it exactly as I am defining it because their concern was that in the world, the people they think are sinners look happier than the people they think are saints – the saints look absolutely unhappy. And if they say that blissfulness is the criterion, whether you are right in tune with existence or not, this will destroy their whole superstructure. The saints will look like sinners and the sinners will look like saints.But this is my criterion because I don’t care about the scriptures, I don’t care about the prophets, I don’t care about the past – that was their business and their problem. I have my own eyes to see, why should I depend on anybody else’s eyes? And I have my own consciousness to be aware, why should I be dependent on Gautam Buddha, or Bodhidharma, or Jesus Christ? They were not dependent on me. Obviously, there is no spoken or unspoken agreement. They lived their lives according to their own understanding and insight; I am to live my life according to my understanding and my insight.My effort here to speak to you is to give you a chance to see that you are as capable of becoming a no-mind as any Gautam Buddha – that it is not a special quality given to a few people, that it is not a talent. Everybody cannot be a painter, and everybody cannot be a poet – those are talents. Everybody cannot be a genius – those are given qualities from birth. But everybody can be enlightened – that is the only thing about which communism is right. And strangely enough, that is the only thing communism denies.Enlightenment is the only thing, the only experience where everybody is equal – equally capable. And it does not depend on your acts, it does not depend on your prayers, it does not depend on whether you believe in God or not. It depends only on one thing and that is a little taste, and suddenly you become confident that you are capable of it. My speaking is just to give you confidence. So I can tell a story, I can tell a joke – absolutely unrelated!Every intellectual will condemn me, saying, “What kind of speech is this?” But he has not understood my purpose; it is not a speech, it is not a lecture. It is simply a device to bring confidence to you and to your heart that you can be silent. The more you become confident, the more you will be able. Without my speaking you will start finding devices yourself. For example, you can go on listening to the birds, and they suddenly stop, and they suddenly start. Listen…there is no reason why this crow should make noises and then stop – it is just giving you a chance…. You can find them, once you know – even in the marketplace where there is so much noise, everything is going on, crazy.Just the other day I came to know that in Greece the government was very much worried about the taxi drivers because they were not following any rules, any regulations of traffic. Their taxis were going anywhere they wanted, against the red light! Finally they decided to specially train the taxi drivers for a week, and they announced three big awards to the perfect taxi driver.For first place, they could not find anyone; the police were searching for someone to give the prize to, but they could not find anyone. In fact, the moment they found one taxi driver who was behaving exactly the way he should on the road – the moment they tried to stop him to give him the first prize, he became afraid seeing the police, and he ran against the red light and spoiled the whole game! He did not think that they would give a prize; he must have thought that he was bound for trouble – he did not care. Just in front of the police, just a moment before he was going to be the first award winner he ran against the light.In seven days’ time they could not find anyone. They could not find a taxi driver to give him the prize, because the moment the taxi driver saw the police standing there, he became even more crazy. The seven days’ experience showed that the police and its presence had been making taxi drivers more nervous, and they were getting the whole traffic into a mess.I don’t follow any rules. I have read books; for example, I mentioned Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends And Influence People, but my whole life I have been doing just the opposite: how to influence people and create enemies. And I have been successful in that!Your question is, “I realize that it is easier to become silent while listening to you.” The reason is that you are attentive; your mind is still because you want to listen to me. When I stop, your mind cannot start quickly, and before it starts, I start again! I am watching you! I give you only this much gap, so you cannot start your taxi again; otherwise you will run against the red light, and create more chaos.So my speaking is not oratory; it is not a doctrine that I am preaching to you. It is simply an arbitrary device to give you a taste of what silence is, and to make you confident that it is not a talent – that it does not belong to any specially-qualified people, that it does not belong to long austerities, that it does not belong to those who call themselves virtuous. It belongs to all, without any conditions; you just have to become aware of it. And that’s my whole purpose in speaking to you.Once you are certain that you can be silent, then your whole focus will change. It is not a question of discipline, it is not a question of being prayerful, it is not a question of believing in God and all kinds of nonsense. It is a question of feeling your own possibility, and once you have known the possibility and become confident about it, the whole religion in your vision will have a different color.It is a question of silence and consciousness and blissfulness – it has nothing to do with sins and virtues and confessions. Existence does not bother about your sins – what sin can you commit? What punishment should be given to poor human beings? Religions have been giving, for small things, eternal hell. One has to be a little just also.Bertrand Russell has counted all the sins that he has committed, and all the sins that he has thought to commit but he has not committed, and all the sins that he has committed in his dreams. He has given the whole list and has asked the Christian theologians…and he has remained unanswered for more than half a century. Now he is dead; fifty years he waited for the answer. He was asking, “These are all that can be counted as sins: these things I have committed, these things I have only thought, these things I have only dreamt. How much punishment can be given to me on these grounds? The strictest judge cannot give me four and a half years of jail, and Christianity is going to throw me into eternal hellfire!”To be punished for eternity you need another eternity to commit sins; otherwise it will not be just. In his book, Why I Am Not A Christian – he was born a Christian, but as he became aware of the stupidness of the whole Christian theology, he wrote the book – he has asked these questions but none of his questions have been answered. The only answer was that his book was banned by the pope. It was put on the pope’s blacklist, which is published every year for the Catholics, saying that “You should not read these books.”I am fortunate, my books are also on the list. In the Middle Ages the pope used to burn these books; now it is difficult. But he can at least prevent Catholics, at least old Catholics who are afraid of death and who are coming close to it. It is difficult for him to burn the books; it is difficult for him to prevent even the new Catholic generation. In fact, just by his order that this book should not be read, it becomes more attractive.The only answer that Bertrand Russell got was that his book was put on the blacklist and his name was put on the blacklist: “This book certainly, and any other book by this man should not be read by Catholics because he can disturb your belief. He is an agent of the devil” – this is the answer.He has asked very pertinent questions. He says that on the one hand, Jesus says, “Love your enemies”; he goes even to the point of saying, “Love your neighbors”…which is of course more difficult, because enemies are far away but the neighbors are always sitting on your back.But Jesus himself threw the moneychangers out single-handedly. He was so enraged that he turned their tables and he threw them out of the temple of the Jews. What authority did he have? And what happened to the love? His authority was only his imagination saying, “I am the son of God and you are spoiling the place of my father by making business here.” And those people were really helpful. Poor people could get money on interest from the temple, and the temple was taking less interest than any other moneylenders outside. It was really to protect the poor from the moneylenders.And the temple needed some money to run. It was a big temple, hundreds of rabbis; it was the very center of their Jewish life. Throwing those people out of the temple just on the idea, on the assumption, for which he has no proof, that he is the son of God. And he behaved with such anger, such arrogance. Bertrand Russell wants to know – what happened to his preachings?Jesus comes hungry with his followers to a village, and the villagers are against them; they refuse, they don’t give them shelter. Hungry and tired, he comes across a tree and he curses the tree because there are no fruits on it. It was not the season. What can the poor tree do? And the trees are not expected to fulfill your demands. His cursing the tree shows that he was a very angry man, blindly angry. And Bertrand Russell has classified all these things, and asked for the answers, but nobody has answered a single point.My own understanding and experience is that the idea of sin, the idea of virtue, the idea of reward, the idea of punishment, heaven and hell, are simply ideas to exploit you, to keep you under control. It is a psychological bondage, because I don’t see any point….My own experience is that if you can be silent, and if you can transcend mind and your consciousness can grow, it does not matter what you are doing; your actions are not counted at all, only your consciousness.Actions are very small things, but up to now all the religions have been counting your actions, not your consciousness. They have been training you how to act rightly, and what has to be avoided. But nobody was saying that unless your consciousness rises you will not be authentically religious.And it was a surprise to me that as you become silent, as you become conscious, more alert, your actions start changing – but not vice versa. You can change your actions, but that will not make you more conscious. You become more conscious, and your actions will change – that’s absolutely simple and scientific. You were doing something stupid; as you become more alert and more conscious, you cannot do it.It is not a question of reward or punishment. It is simply your consciousness, your silence, your peace, which makes you look so far away and so deep into everything that you do. You cannot do harm to anybody; you cannot be violent, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot be ambitious. Your consciousness has given you so much blissfulness…what can greed give you except anxieties? What can ambition give you? – just a continuous struggle to reach high on some ladder.One very successful man, perhaps the richest man of that time, was asked, “What have you learned from your life, because from poverty you have become the richest man in the world?” He said, “What have I learned? I have learned only one thing – climbing the ladder. That is my only experience. I have reached to the highest rung of the ladder, and now I look stupid! Where else to go?”As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts…It is as if you are in a dark house, and you are stumbling over furniture and over things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible.What I am saying is, bring light in and stumbling will disappear, because when there is light why should you stumble over things? Every time you stumble, every time you hit your head on the wall, it hurts. It is a punishment in itself – a wrong act is a punishment in itself; there is nobody recording your acts. And every beautiful action is a reward unto itself. But first bring light in your life.Meditation is an effort to bring light and to bring joy and to bring silence and to bring blissfulness, and out of this beautiful world of meditation it is impossible for you to do anything wrong.So I have changed it completely. Religions were insisting on action; my insistence is on consciousness, and consciousness can grow only in silence. Silence is the right soil for consciousness. When you are noisy you cannot be very alert and conscious. When you are conscious and alert, you cannot be noisy – they cannot co-exist.So my speaking, my talking should not be categorized with any other kind of oratory; it is a device for meditation to bring confidence in you which has been taken away by religions. Instead of confidence, they have given you guilt which pulls you down and keeps you sad. Once you become confident that great things are available to you, you will not feel inferior, you will not feel guilty – you will feel blessed. You will feel that existence has prepared you to be one of the peaks of consciousness. But you have not been going accordingly; you have been following the priests who have destroyed your dignity and your pride.You say, “I realized that it is easier to become silent while listening to you than in any other meditation,” because in those other meditations you are alone. It will take a little time to gain confidence – that’s why I am speaking morning and evening, almost for thirty years continuously. Perhaps two or three times in these thirty years, I have stopped because I was not feeling well; otherwise I have continued to speak.Every morning and evening I want to give you the confidence that you are losing in your meditations. When you are meditating, of course it is you who are meditating; your mind goes on with its old habit. And many people who have not been given the confidence have turned back. They try meditation for a few days and it becomes a failure and a sadness that it doesn’t happen. And they start thinking, “Perhaps my evil acts of the past life” – which the religions have forced in your mind – “or perhaps my belief in God is not total; something is wrong with me.”I want you to be absolutely certain that nothing is wrong with anybody; all wrongs have been fed into you.Religions have not been helpful in creating a better humanity. They have only destroyed all that was beautiful in man; they have stopped its growth, they have cut the very roots. Man has remained a pygmy in the world of consciousness.I have changed the whole focus. I don’t say to you that you have to do this, you have not to do that, that this is sin and this is virtue. I say only, simply be alert and conscious and silent and blissful, and everything else will follow. Alone, it will take a little time for you. As your confidence becomes more and more solid, then alone also you will be able to be silent.With me, to be silent is easier because of one other reason – I am silent; even while I am speaking I am silent. My innermost being is not involved at all. What I am saying to you is not a disturbance or a burden or a tension to me; I am as relaxed as one can be. Speaking or not speaking does not make any difference to me.Naturally, this kind of state is infectious. Seeing me, being here in my presence, looking into my eyes…even watching my hands, you can feel that they are the gestures of a silent man. Slowly, slowly you become infected, contagious; moreover, around a silent man there is a certain energy field created.You can try one beautiful experiment: just put some sand on a plate and then when somebody is playing music, put your plate with the sand on top of it. You will be surprised to see that every sound makes a change in the pattern of the sand on the plate. It goes on changing with every sound. Classical music will put all the sand in a very silent, very harmonious state; it will create a pattern of harmony. The same sand, the same plate and any stupid kind of modern music – from jazz to the skinheads – and you will be surprised that your sand is in a chaos. It loses all harmony, it loses all peacefulness, and patterns are created which show immediately to anybody disharmony, discord.A man of silence moves with a certain field of energy around him, and if you are receptive, his vibe starts touching your heart.Have you noticed? A husband and wife, if they have really been in love, non-possessive, non-jealous – and if they have helped each other to remain individuals and they have deep respect for each other – living a long life, for fifty years together, you will be surprised to know…it is a well-known fact noticed down the ages that they start looking almost the same. Their voices, their eyes, their faces, their gestures…they become so harmonious with each other.Certainly, between a master and disciple the phenomenon is a millionfold greater, because there is no conflict at all. And particularly with a man like me – I am not in any way forcing you to be disciples, and I will not prevent anybody from leaving me. I welcome you when you are here; if you leave, my welcome remains the same. My love does not change. You can go away, you can even betray me, but my love remains the same. There is no contract between me and you; you are here out of your freedom, any moment you can go. I am here out of my freedom; you don’t bind me.In this state of freedom the master and disciple can come closest, and naturally energy flows from the higher to the lower. It is just like water coming from a mountaintop towards the valley.Lao Tzu has actually called his philosophy of life “the watercourse way.” When the master and disciple are so deeply in tune, because they are not in any bondage, both are meeting out of their freedom – and an authentic master never thinks himself higher than the disciple, although the authentic disciple can conceive of the master as higher than anything – energy flows slowly to the depths of your being. Meditation becomes almost a by-product; silence happens on its own accord. Your heart itself starts dancing with the master.I was reading a statement of Walt Whitman, the only American I have any respect for. He says, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” I agree on this point – every master celebrates himself and sings himself. Anybody who is interested joins the dance. And slowly, slowly there is no master, no disciple, but only the dance, only the celebration.But this is only half of the statement; the other half I don’t agree with. That’s where he shows his Christian roots: “And what I assume, you shall assume.” That disturbs the whole thing. Again it has come to the same point – “What I believe you should believe, what I assume you should assume.” Then there comes a subtle domination. No, on that point I cannot agree.I would have loved to agree with everything that Walt Whitman says, but I cannot go against reality. It is enough – “I celebrate myself and sing myself” – and if you rejoice in it, you join. It is not a question that you have to assume what I assume, that you have to believe what I believe, that you have in any way to be dependent on me. You are participating because you love the dance, you are participating because you love to celebrate; you are participating because for the first time you have come across a man who takes life as a celebration not as a burden or a punishment.It is enough that you enjoy the song of the master. Your enjoyment will bring you closer. It is enough that you enjoy the dance; it will make you dance. It is enough that you love the celebration, the very idea that life is celebration. And then slowly, slowly there is a melting and a merging. A time comes when it is difficult to find who is the master and who is the disciple.Masters and disciples, if they have lived long enough in tune with each other, become almost alike – without any effort of trying to become alike, because that would be forced and that would be false and that would be hypocrisy. Just dancing together, sitting together, being silent together, a merging is bound to happen.You say, “When you stop talking, everything seems to stop for a moment and I get a glimpse of what meditation can be.” You have forgotten to note one thing. What you have noted is right, that you get a glimpse of what meditation can be. You have forgotten to note that you are capable of having such silent moments, that you see that meditation is not something impossible, that it is not only for any exceptional category of people, that it is available to everybody. You have pointed out one thing absolutely correctly, but you have forgotten to see that you are also capable of being silent, which is very important to remember.Because I cannot go on speaking the whole day to keep you in meditative moments, I want you to become responsible. Accepting that you are capable of being silent will help you when you are meditating alone. Knowing your capacity…and one comes to know one’s capacity only when one experiences it. There is no other way.You are saying, “These are the most precious moments for me. Osho, why is it easier to become silent in your presence?” In my presence you forget your own ego, you forget yourself. The emphasis should be not on me, the emphasis should be on you, on the fact that in my presence you love me, you respect me, you trust me, so you put aside your defense measures – your ego is your defense measure.Pay more attention to it, to why you become silent. Don’t make me wholly responsible for your silence, because that will create a difficulty for you. Alone, what are you going to do? Then it becomes a kind of addiction, and I don’t want you to be addicted to me. I don’t want to be a drug to you.The so-called masters and teachers of the religions of the whole world – I have come across almost all kinds and all categories of teachers – want their disciples to be addicted to them, to be dependent on them. That is their power trip. I don’t have any power trip. I love you, whether you are with me or not with me.I want you to be independent and confident that you can attain these precious moments on your own.If you can attain them with me, there is no reason why you cannot attain them without me, because I am not the cause. You have to understand what is happening: listening to me, you put your mind aside. Listening to the ocean, or listening to the thundering of the clouds, or listening to the rain falling heavily, just put your ego aside, because there is no need…The ocean is not going to attack you, the rain is not going to attack you, the trees are not going to attack you – there is no need of any defense. To be vulnerable to life as such, to existence as such, you will be getting these moments continuously – soon it will become your very life.If you ask me, I have almost forgotten the taste of misery; and because I have forgotten the taste of misery and suffering and anxiety, I have also slowly been forgetting the taste of joy, blissfulness, ecstasy – they have become natural. Just as a healthy man does not feel continuously that he is healthy, only sick people become interested in health. The moment that you have become healthy…coming out of your sickness, you will feel health but when it becomes your natural experience of every day, every moment, you don’t have any contrast of sickness to compare it with.You don’t know your head unless you have a headache – have you observed it? Do you become aware of your head? You become aware of your head only when you have a headache. A headache gives you the idea – people who have not experienced headaches, don’t know what it is to have a healthy head without any headaches.All our experiences depend on their opposites. If you cannot taste the bitter, you cannot taste anything sweet either – they go together. If you cannot see darkness, you cannot see light. And if you are continuously in one state, you start forgetting about it.That’s what I call going beyond enlightenment – the day you start forgetting that you are enlightened, the day it becomes just the natural course of your life, ordinary, nothing special. The way you breathe, the way your heart beats, the way your blood runs in the body, enlightenment also becomes part of your being. You forget all about it.When you ask the question, I am reminded that yes, there is an experience called enlightenment. But when I am sitting alone I never remember that I am enlightened, that would be crazy! It has become such a natural, ordinary experience.First go beyond mind. Then go beyond enlightenment too. Don’t get stuck anywhere until you are simply an ordinary part of the existence, with the trees, with the birds, with the animals, with the rivers, with the mountains. You feel a deep harmony – no superiority, no inferiority.Gautam Buddha had some glimpses of going beyond enlightenment. He mentioned it, that there is a possibility of going beyond enlightenment. He did not say that he had gone beyond it, but he recognizes the fact that there should be a state when you forget all about enlightenment. You have been so healthy, you have forgotten all about health; only then have you come home. Finally even enlightenment is a barrier – the last barrier.Now a joke for you, not related to anything! I am grateful to you that you allow me to say anything that I want; you don’t object….Grandpa Goldstein got drunk one night and no one could find him. They looked everywhere – behind the barn, in the hay shed, but no Grandpa. Finally, Bernie heard the pigs snorting and went to check. There was Grandpa Goldstein lying in the mud with an old sow, stroking her belly.“Gee, honey,” Bernie heard him mutter, “I have been sleeping with you for forty-nine years and this is the first time I have noticed your nightgown has two rows of buttons!”…I think this much meditation for this morning will do!

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Modest though my experience of awareness is, when it is happening I feel intoxicated. It is a far more subtle, but headier drunkenness than anything that makes one unconscious.Is this a case of illusion or a case of divine wine?Awareness and divine intoxication are contradictory only in language but not in experience. In experience they are synonymous. But the divine intoxication is not at all similar to ordinary intoxication. It is not unconsciousness – it is too much consciousness.You become so small, and the whole ocean of consciousness…you start drowning in it. Particularly in the beginning it feels as if you are becoming drunk. But the difference is clear: you remain aware that you are drunk. The ordinary drunkenness is unconscious; you are not aware that you are drunk. And that is a very fundamental difference.You can be intoxicated just by too much consciousness because you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing; it is bigger than you. And in the beginning it is so sudden and so much that you feel almost without any control over yourself. That’s why the idea of drunkenness arises.Because in intense awareness you start forgetting your ordinary mind – your so-called ego, your mundane worries, your trivia of worldly matters – there is a certain similarity with intoxication. The whole infatuation with intoxicants has remained down the ages, although all the religions, all the governments, all the masters, all the teachers, all the moralists, all the puritans – everybody has been against intoxicants. But they have not been able to prevent humanity from becoming more and more infatuated with newer drugs.Older drugs are there in their place; new drugs are being continuously added – now man can manufacture synthetic drugs, certainly far more unconsciousness-creating than any drugs found in nature. One is surprised to know why, when everybody has been against, they have not been able to prevent it. The reason is very simple, and not far away to find. It is too obvious; perhaps that’s why one feels in a state of ignorance about the cause, about the reason.Man’s life has remained miserable, so miserable that he wants to forget it, at least for a few hours, just to have a little rest. And all the religions and all the governments and all the so-called social servants have not been able to alleviate misery from human life. But without removing the cause, they have been forcing man not to drink alcohol, not to take marijuana. It was absolutely certain that they were going to fail. The cause has to be removed, not the symptom. The symptom will go on its own accord; just remove the cause.And when in intense awareness you suddenly forget all your worries, miseries, suffering, tensions, it appears similar – that’s why one feels as if one is divinely intoxicated. Divinely because you have not taken any intoxicant, but there is a tremendous difference too, not to be forgotten: that you are aware.Any ordinary drug makes you simply unconscious. Meditation brings awareness, but awareness is such a big phenomenon that you are bound to be drowned. And in the beginning the experience is so much, so intense, that you are almost erased, as if you have disappeared. But it is not illusion. It is not any kind of hallucination.And to call it divine wine is just being poetic. It is pure awareness which does the same work that is expected by people through intoxicating drugs. Intoxicating drugs remove symptoms; awareness removes the very cause. Drugs simply give you a few hours of forgetfulness, and again the misery is there – and with a vengeance, because it has to wait for six hours; it becomes more intense.Awareness cuts the very root of being miserable, in anxiety, in anguish. And because it cuts the very roots, after you have come down from the heights of awareness you don’t find misery – you find a peace, a silence, a very mild sweetness and a very subtle fragrance, left behind the tide, the tidal wave that had come and overtaken you.It is perfectly beautiful. There is nothing illusory in it. It is absolutely existential. It has nothing to do with intoxicants. Only in appearance, in the beginning, you will feel as if you are intoxicated.Irving Levinsky was walking around New York City thinking how crowded and impossible city life was becoming. When he saw a man lying in the gutter. Irving walked over and said to him, “Are you sick, can I help you?”“No, it is okay,” said the man. “I have found a parking space so I have sent my wife out to buy a car.”Intoxication is one thing: this kind of thing is not possible through awareness. Through awareness you can feel in the beginning things which look strange – happy for no reason at all, smiling or laughing for no reason at all. And it becomes a vicious circle: when you laugh then you see that “This is stupid, why I am laughing?” Then you laugh more and then it becomes difficult to stop. Just seeing yourself laugh without any reason it appears as if you have gone mad, because you have never understood, never experienced that being joyous, laughing, is natural and healthy.It does not need to have any cause. Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man – they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don’t start asking, “Why am I happy?” When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: “What is happening to me?”Just this morning I quoted Walt Whitman, and he says, “I am the celebration, I am the song.” It is one of his most beautiful poems, in which he sings the song of himself: “There is no reason. It is my nature to be a celebration, to be a song, to be a festival.” It is just healthy. It is just to be yourself.While Walt Whitman was alive he was very much condemned, just because he was so happy for no reason at all – just because he could dance alone, sing, not for anybody else but just for himself, or just as if he was the song, he was the celebration itself. Christian seriousness could not understand him. The ordinary humanity thought him either mad or drunk. But he was not drunk and he was not mad; he was one of the most intelligent men America has ever produced.Intelligence is a celebration.It is a festival of lights and it is a long series, a chain of songs, joys, festivities. It is only the unintelligent who remain sad and do nothing to remove it. It is the unintelligent who accept sadness, misery, suffering, behind beautiful names: fate, kismet, luck – all these words are nonsense. But these words help people to remain miserable.The man of awareness gets out of all that is unnatural and certainly finds sources of juice within himself. The mystics of the East have even defined God as raso vai sah; “he is just juice.” There is no word in English to translate exactly the depth and the meaning of the word ras – juice is a literal translation.When you are happy for no reason at all you find a certain juiciness inside you – you are not dry. Your saints cannot dance, they are so dry. You can dance only if you are full of juice. And the mystics who defined God as raso vai sah had a tremendous insight. They are removing the God of the theologians, the God of the philosophers, the God of the so-called religions. They are creating a totally new concept of God with which I can agree:It is the juice of life.It is the celebration of life.It is the festivity of life.It is the flower and the fragrance.But people are living, even in their ordinary wakefulness, a kind of sleepy life. The whole of humanity seems to be under a spell, as if they are all walking in hypnosis, as if they are all suffering from somnambulism.You may have heard about sleepwalkers who get up in the middle of the night and without waking, with open eyes, without stumbling, reach directly to the kitchen, find the fridge, open it, eat anything to their heart’s content, and in the day they are dieting! And the doctor is puzzled and they themselves are puzzled – “What is the matter? The more I diet the more my weight is going up.”And there are almost ten percent of people capable of somnambulism. They can walk in their sleep, they can do things, and in the morning they will be disturbed: “Who has done this?” And not just ordinary people; there are cases on record of very great geniuses.Madame Curie, one of the first women ever to receive a Nobel Prize, was struggling for three years to solve a mathematical problem, and was becoming almost hopeless. Every angle, every dimension, every process she tried, but she was not reaching the right conclusion.Tired one night, working on the same problem, she fell asleep. When she woke up it was almost morning. She had slept three, four hours just on the table, her head on the papers on which she was working to find the conclusion. And she could not believe her eyes: in her own handwriting the conclusion was written. There was no process, but the conclusion was there.She could not believe it, because she had been working to find this very same conclusion…and all the ways she had tried, she had reached somewhere else but never to this point. And certainly nobody else could do it, because the door was locked, her husband was not at home and the servant did not even understand arithmetic. Looking carefully, she found it was her own handwriting – not very accurate, because it had been written in sleep.And then she closed her eyes and tried to remember whether there had been any dream, and she found that she had dreamt that she was working on the problem, had found the conclusion, and she was writing it – she remembered it. And then she remembered the whole process.Now, when she was writing the answer she must have been writing with open eyes. She was a somnambulist, and this was a sudden discovery. Then it was found that many times she had been wandering through the house asleep.And to disturb anybody who is walking or doing something in his sleep is very shocking. The person may get a heart attack, because he cannot believe what he is doing, how it happened to be.In New York a case happened…One man every night in his sleep, in the middle of the night, used to jump from his building to the terrace of another building, almost ninety-storey-high buildings – if he were to fall from there it would be impossible to find his pieces. And the jump was really long; even professional jumpers in the Olympics would have refused, seeing the gap between the buildings. Just a little less, one step less, one inch less, and you are gone.But people became aware of it, and every night it became a show. A crowd used to gather at the exact time when the man would appear on his terrace, would jump to the other terrace, and would jump back. People would watch it with awe, not believing in their eyes.Slowly the crowd became bigger. When it was small they remained silent; when the crowd became bigger it was difficult to keep it silent. One night when he was jumping, the crowd, new people, simply cheered him, and he woke up in the middle of his jump. And you can conclude what happened: he fell from ninety storeys, just in front of the crowd, shattered into pieces. He himself could not believe what was happening. And he had done it so many times….A wife begins to get a little concerned because her husband has not arrived home on time from his regular Saturday afternoon golf game. As the hours pass she becomes more and more worried, until at eight o’clock the husband finally pulls into the driveway.“What happened?” says the wife. “You should have been home hours ago.”“Fred had a heart attack at the second hole,” replies the husband.“Oh, that’s terrible,” says the wife. “But why are you so late?”“Well,” replies the husband, “for the next sixteen holes it was hit the ball and drag Fred, hit the ball and drag Fred.”Do you think these people are awake? They may not be called somnambulists, but they cannot be called conscious, they cannot be called really awake. The poor fellow had a heart attack, he has died! Now it was time to stop the game, but the game cannot be stopped and naturally, it was a difficult job to drag the dead man and then to play the hole and then again drag…If you watch your life and the life of people around you, you will find a thousand and one cases where people are thinking that they are aware and alert, but they are not. Their action does not show alertness or awareness.While crossing the railway lines one day, Paddy was hit by a train and badly injured. He spent six months in hospital but was finally released. While he was walking home he saw a toy train set in a shop window. He rushed inside, picked up a hammer and started smashing the toy train to pieces. The shopkeeper came running over, shouting, “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”“It is okay,” replied Paddy, “it is dead now. But you have to kill these things before they grow up and get really dangerous.”Osho,I am always touched when you speak of each of us having a unique individuality, but I think I am often confusing personality with individuality. Is this individuality something genetic, unique to each incarnation, or is it the essence which moves with us through incarnations?Osho, can you say something which will help us come to know our individuality?It is not only you but almost everybody who misunderstands the difference between personality and individuality. Most people live their whole lives thinking that their personality is their individuality.The distinction is very subtle. Personality is that which is given to you by the society, culture, civilization, education; in other words, by others – people are giving you their opinion about you and you are collecting those opinions. Those opinions are creating your personality.You must have observed very small children whose personalities are not yet developed. It takes time; for at least three to four years the child remains more of an individual than he may perhaps ever be again. He is authentic, sincere. He does not take any note of others’ opinions.It is because of this that if you want to remember your past you can go back only up to a certain moment – and that moment will be the age of either four years or three years, at the most three years. After that there is a complete blank. You have been here during those three years, but you don’t remember anything. You were nine months in your mother’s womb – you don’t remember anything at all.The reason you cannot now remember these three years is because you had no personality. It is the personality which accumulates opinions of others and creates a false identity, a certain idea of “Who I am.” You don’t know exactly who you are, because to know who you are you will have to dig deep within yourself through the whole rubbish that has accumulated in the name of personality. You will have to become a child again.That’s what is meant when Jesus says, “Unless you are born again you cannot understand what I’m saying.” And it was said to a rabbi, well learned, a man named Nicodemus. He was a professor in the Jewish university of Israel. He wanted to meet this charismatic young man – so courageous…hiding behind crowds, Nicodemus had heard Jesus many times. He himself was a professor but he had never heard anybody speak the way Jesus was speaking, with such authority. He was not quoting the scriptures, he was simply quoting his own experience – hence the authority.Nicodemus became interested but he was not courageous enough to come to Jesus in the daytime, because if others see, what they will think? Jesus was uneducated, a carpenter’s son – perhaps what you call an illegitimate son, because virgins cannot give birth to legitimate sons. And he had no acquaintance with the ancient traditions of Judaism but he was speaking like a born prophet.Once in the middle of the night when there was nobody else and all his followers had gone to sleep and Jesus was doing his last prayer, Nicodemus came in darkness and said, “Forgive me. I am not a courageous man, I am a coward. I wanted to meet you many times but in the crowd, before the crowd, I could not gather courage. So I have come in the middle of the night, but I had to come. Please forgive me for disturbing you.”Jesus did not ask Nicodemus what was his question, what was his inquiry. On the contrary, he simply said, “Unless you are born again, you will not understand me.”What does he mean by “born again”? He means unless you become a child again, unless you put your whole personality aside. Individuality to individuality, there is a possibility of a communion. With your personality standing in between – you are a great professor, you are a learned scholar, you are a famous man; all these troubles are standing in between – it is impossible to reach you. You will misunderstand me, you will distort me, you will interpret me, you will make whatever you want to make out of my statements.”And what Jesus is saying is my own experience – continuously being misunderstood by people who are expected to be intelligent. It is strange but it is not only happening with me, it has always happened. If truth is not misunderstood then there is something wrong with the truth. If a man is not misunderstood then that man has nothing significant to say.What you know about yourself is your personality. You know that you have a certain name – are you aware you had come in the world without a name? You have a certain education, a certain qualification – you know you were not born a doctor or an engineer or a professor. These are things added to you. Your degrees, your name, your fame…all these things are added to you.But this is what you are. As far as you are concerned, if all these things are taken away from you what will you be? Just a zero…. A plain slate, all writing has been removed.Your personality is all that you know about yourself – I am making it absolutely simple so that you can be alert – and your individuality is that which you don’t know and you are.Meditation is an effort to get rid of personality and to reach to your living sources of life, your individuality, your flame, that you have brought from your mother’s womb – and that you had before your birth, even before you entered the womb of the mother. You have had your individuality since eternity. It is your essential consciousness which is covered with so many layers of so many lives that it is lost completely and you have forgotten the way how to reach back to it.And every life goes on adding more and more layers of dust around your essential life. That essential life is immortal; your personality is mortal.Your personality is dependent on other people; hence you are always afraid of other people. A famous man can become nobody if people change their minds. And people change their minds so easily. There is not much difficulty in it.Who is Richard Nixon now? Do you ever hear anything about poor Nixon? He has lost his personality; by losing his presidency he has lost all. Now he is living almost anonymously, as a nobody.It happened in Napoleon Bonaparte’s life…He was defeated only once – all his life he had been winning. The battle in which he got defeated by the English general Nelson was a very cunning one. Nelson was not of the same caliber as Napoleon Bonaparte…but he had brought seventy cats in front of his army. His whole army was wondering – what is the matter? Why these seventy cats?It was a secret that Nelson had come to know from his detectives that in his childhood, when Napoleon Bonaparte was almost a six-month-old baby, a wild cat had jumped on him – almost playfully; it didn’t harm him, but it left a deep fear in the small child’s mind.It became the first impact on his personality, it became his foundation. Everything else came afterwards. He could fight barehanded with a lion or with a tiger with no fear – the man was immensely courageous. But in front of a cat he simply lost all his nerve. It was beyond his powers to remain himself; his very foundation of personality slipped. And it was beyond him because it was deep in his unconscious, so he could not do anything; he had no idea even.Only a woman who had been taking care of him, his nurse, was aware of it. But out of fear she had not told anybody, because it was her fault. She had left Napoleon, this little baby six months old, in the garden, and had gone to meet her boyfriend just behind the bushes. So it was her fault.She never told anybody but somehow – perhaps she may have told the boyfriend – Nelson’s detectives found out.Nelson was afraid that there was not much possibility of his victory against Bonaparte, because he was continuously winning. And this was going to be a decisive moment: if England was defeated then there was nobody else who could defeat Bonaparte. So every effort was made to find out some weakness in his personality.One thing must be said in favor of Nelson. He may not be a great general – he was not – but he was certainly a better psychologist than a general. Before going to the war front he looked into the personality structure and he came to know that Bonaparte was not afraid of anything except a cat. That’s why he brought seventy cats – not only one – not to take any chances.All along the front of his army there were cats. There was no possibility that Nelson is allowing Napoleon Bonaparte not to see the cats. And the moment Bonaparte saw the cats – not only one but seventy – it was suddenly as if all his power slipped out of him. He became so nervous that he told his assistant general, “You take charge. I cannot be in the front; I will be in the back. You arrange the battle, I am no more in my senses.”The assistant general could not understand what had happened. But it was clear that Napoleon Bonaparte had gone pale, looked almost as if he were dying. Something very essential had simply gone out of him. This was the battle in which he lost – it was not the victory of Nelson, it was the victory of cats against a six-month-old baby Napoleon.He was imprisoned on the small island of Saint Helena. Of course he was given all the facilities that should be given to a great man of his caliber, and because he was having almost a nervous breakdown he was given a doctor, a nurse, a beautiful house…and he was not imprisoned like any prisoner, he was just kept on the island. The island was vacated completely. Only he was there, a few guards were there, the doctor was there. He was allowed to move on the island, on the beach, to swim; he was given every facility, knowing that he was passing through a tremendous personality crisis.One day as he was going to the ocean, to the beach, a woman who must have been taking care of the horses of the guards, was coming from the other direction, carrying a big load of grass. It was a small footpath; the doctor was with him and the doctor shouted to the woman, “Move out of the way! You don’t understand who is coming – he is Napoleon Bonaparte!”But that woman was an uneducated woman. She had never heard of Napoleon Bonaparte or why she should move.Napoleon Bonaparte said to the doctor, “You are wrong. The time is gone when mountains used to move just with my orders. Now it is better I should move out of the way of a poor woman who is just carrying grass for the horses. You forget all about the Napoleon Bonaparte I once was. I am no longer that man.”He was saying a very essential truth. He had lost his personality. He died very soon after. Only one thing could have revived him: not medicine but meditation, if somebody had made him aware that “What you have lost was not yours at all. You have still got your essential being and there is no need to be worried. What you have lost was false and what is real is still within you.” But one has to be aware of it.You are too much identified with the false, the personality – that’s the meaning of the word; it comes from the Greek persona, and persona means a mask. In Greek theater actors used to wear masks; the sound was theirs but the face was not theirs. Sonar means sound – sound coming through a mask. You don’t know who is behind it. The only real thing is the sound that is coming out; anything else that you are seeing is just false.But with you things have become far worse; even the sound is not yours. That too has been a training, a discipline. You have been corrected continuously by your parents, by your teachers – how to speak, how to sit.I was being shown around a Christian theological college where they train missionaries. It is the biggest institution in Asia for training Christian missionaries and ministers and priests and bishops.I was surprised…I had to stand outside the door with the vice-chancellor who was showing me around. A professor was teaching the students, when you are delivering a sermon in the church, how you should stand, how you should look at the audience, where you should speak loudly and where you should speak almost in a whisper, where you should raise your hand, what gesture should be used at a particular point, where you should beat on the table…I was horrified. I could not believe that this is religion. I said to the vice-chancellor, “If this is making Christian missionaries who are going to convert people into Christians…” I asked him, “Do you think Jesus had gone through any college, through all these gestures and training and voice? He was an uneducated carpenter’s son. There were no theological colleges at that time, particularly no Christian colleges. And still none of your missionaries – and you have millions of missionaries around the world – speaks the way Jesus spoke.”The authority was not out of training. It was not out of personality; that is the difference. That’s why I said to him, “Although there have been hundreds of popes in these two thousand years, none of them has been crucified because none of them spoke with that authority. None of them spoke with that poetry, none of them spoke so dangerously – and they all represented Jesus! I will not accept anybody as a representative unless he is crucified.”I said, “You teach these missionaries to carry a small cross, folding. They should always keep it with themselves and when Jesus is crucified, unfold the cross, stand with their hands on the cross, look upward the way Jesus looked…that is the last and the real thing.”The vice-chancellor said, “You are making a joke of our religion.”I said, “I am not making a joke, you are making a joke by teaching all these people. You are not even allowing them their own voices – voice training programs, voice test!” And your voice can be changed, its pitch, its vibration can be checked and you can be trained how to change it, how to bring a new quality to it, more forceful or more peaceful, more musical.And they had a department where they were testing people’s voices, training their voices. They were even giving them hints about where they should raise their hands. Now, that hand is going to be false – it is personality.Jesus also had raised his hand at that point but that was individuality. It was not a training. Nobody had told him – it was spontaneous, it was coming from his own inner being.So remember: whatever you have learned from others is not you. That is your persona, and you have to find your innocence again. You have to find your essence before people started putting layers on you, before people started civilizing you, making you more cultured, more educated.You say, “I am always touched when you speak of each of us having a unique individuality, but I think I am often confusing personality with individuality.”Not often – always. Because once you know your individuality you will never again get confused. Once you have seen the real, how can you think of the false as real? Once you know the real, the false has disappeared from your consciousness completely.So whatever you are thinking of as individuality and personality are both personalities. One may be deeper, more unconscious, more rooted so that you cannot recognize that it is false; one may be superficial, a fresh layer, so you can recognize it as false. But both are personalities.The moment you know your individuality you are finished forever, in a single blow, with all that is false. Suddenly you have no name, no fame, no religion, no nation. Suddenly you are just a pure consciousness, just a human being – not even your body, not your mind, not your heart, but just a pure source of life.That source of life goes on transmigrating from one form into another. Once you discover it your journey is coming to an end. Totally discovered, you are enlightened. Then there is not going to be any more birth for you, any more imprisonment into a body, into a personality – you have attained to freedom.Individuality is freedom.That’s why it touches you; even the word uttered goes deep inside you like an arrow.And the individuality is bound to be unique. The personality is created by the society, so it wants everybody to be almost similar – the same dress, the same haircut, the same mannerism, etiquette.For example if you meet somebody here and you start rubbing noses with him, you will be thought mad because that is not part of the culture here. But when Eskimos for the first time saw Christian missionaries kissing each other, they said, “These idiots! They think they will teach us religion, and they are so dirty; they don’t even understand the abc of hygiene. They are mixing saliva with each other, and they think they are showing love!”Kissing is absurd to the Eskimos; they have never kissed in their whole history. And seen from their viewpoint it seems they are right: kissing mouth to mouth is really dirty. Just think of it, what you are doing – exchanging millions of germs. This you call love? You are giving your diseases to the person you love and that person is giving his diseases to you, and you both are in love? A great exchange is happening in the name of love!I favor the Eskimos, they are hygienic. Rubbing noses is very clean – noses are the cleanest and coolest part of your face. And it is possible that because of the spread of AIDS, the whole world will have to follow the Eskimos sooner or later. Kissing is going to be prohibited by law – not for moral reasons but just for scientific reasons.Even shaking hands is not very scientific. The Hindu way of welcoming each other with folded hands is absolutely right. Not for any religious reasons, just for purely hygienic, scientific reasons, because the virus could pass even through a handshake. It can pass through perspiration; it is possible for the virus to pass through anything coming out of your body – saliva or perspiration. And people’s hands are perspiring. It is dangerous.Now I have been brought pictures from American magazines, from European magazines, of police with gloves on their hands because they were preventing a protest march of gay people. Now to touch the gay people is dangerous. But who knows who is gay? Popes have been gay, presidents have been gay, prime ministers have been gay, great philosophers have been gay. You would be surprised if you knew the list of great gay people…Socrates was gay. Just now I told you about Walt Whitman – he was gay. There have been hundreds of poets and painters, writers, novelists, world-famous people, and they were gay.It is better to fold your hands and keep away. Whoever invented the folding of hands must have been a very alert person.For different reasons these things have come into existence. Shaking hands has not come out of love; neither has folded hands come out of love. These have both come out of showing the other, “I am not carrying any weapons. You can accept me as your friend – I am not your enemy.” When both hands are there you can see that the other person is not…Even shaking with the right hand is enough because if a weapon has to be carried it will be carried in the right hand, unless you happen to be a leftist!These welcoming signs, their origin is not very beautiful, it is ugly. It is just a test that the other person is not your enemy, that you can trust he will not attack you. Both are showing that they can trust each other.Slowly, slowly the origin of things is always forgotten and then you think this is something great. Folding the hands or shaking hands – they are really, in a way, ugly. They show suspicion, they show distrust. But in every culture there is bound to be some kind of gesture. And everybody is brought up in a certain culture, in a certain atmosphere. He learns those gestures.It happened that when Japanese sannyasins started coming here I was in trouble in the beginning because they have absolutely different gestures. Nobody else has the same gestures in the whole world. How have they managed to have such gestures? For example saying yes, everybody in the world except the Japanese moves his head up and down. The Japanese move their heads sideways. Everywhere else that means no, but not in Japan. In Japan it means yes.So when I used to talk with them I was at a loss. I am asking, “Are you meditating?” and they are saying, “No.”“Why have you come? You are wearing a mala, are you a sannyasin?” And they are saying, “No.”“Then why are you wearing the mala?”Finally one sannyasin who understood a little bit of English told me, “You are not understanding those poor fellows. They don’t understand you. In Japan for ‘yes’ you have to move your head sideways and for ‘no’ up and down.”I said, “It is very difficult. How have you managed because the whole world is in agreement about that?”There must have been some deep reason why the Japanese developed a certain gesture so different from everybody else.But all that you know, the way you behave, is learned from others, is taught by others. This is all your personality. The personality cannot be unique, it is social. Individuality is not social, it is existential. In existence everything is unique; every tree is unique, every flower is unique, every star is unique.Existence believes in uniqueness.Society is always fearful of uniqueness.It does not like anybody to be unique. The unique seems to be a stranger. Society wants uniformity, not uniqueness. You should eat the same things they are eating; you should use the clothes they are using; you should not try to show that you are separate from the crowd. The crowd never forgives anybody who looks like an outsider, a stranger. It tries in every way immediately to force you to become part of the society. Then people feel at ease.But you are destroyed; your individuality is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the crowd; hence, when you hear me talking about unique individuality something deep inside you is stirred. Something that is your real being needs some help, needs some support, needs some invitation to come up and throw away the personality.Your being a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew are all personalities – throw them away. And then you are just all one, pure human beings. And in that purity you will find uniqueness because every flame will have its own shape, will have its own light, will have its own fire. Every flower of your being will have different fragrances.And if some day a better humanity arrives on the earth and this old rotten humanity disappears there will be variety, and variety will be respected and loved. Variety makes life more rich. If everybody is a unique individual we will have a world tremendously rich, because everybody will be showing his own talents, his own genius in his own way, in his own style. Nobody will be a carbon copy of anybody else. Everybody will be original.And there is no other way except meditation to discover your individuality.During the hotel-room shortage Bernie was given a room with two beds and told that they would have to rent the other bed to someone else. He was in bed reading when the other occupant, Shirley was shown in. Shirley was a beautiful blond.She glanced at Bernie and started slowly to undress, exposing everything to her best advantage. When she was finally nude Shirley posed for some time in front of the mirror, first this way and then that.Finally, she got in bed and leaning over as near as she could, whispered, “How would you like to come in my bed?”“No, thanks,” croaked Bernie, I’ve already come in mine!”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,“There is so much magnificence in the ocean…Waves are coming in, waves are coming in….” and once again I seem to be desperately running for dry land! My sweet Osho, how about yet another intensive lesson on drowning?Radha, when the invitation of the ocean comes don’t run away from it.The ocean is the very beginning of life, not only metaphorically, but factually. We are from the ocean, physically. And we are from a vaster ocean, invisible to the bare eyes, spiritual. And when the invitation comes, running towards dry land is running towards your own grave.Only the graveyard is outside the ocean.Life is in being oceanic.William James has given this word, oceanic to the world. The ocean has always been there, but once in a while a man of insight gives it a totally new dimension. He is the first man to use the word oceanic in the sense of vastness, infinity, eternity, immortality. It is always there; waves upon waves go on coming. Just as in the ordinary ocean, so in the ocean of consciousness: waves upon waves, unending joy, unending dawns, unending celebration.Why should you think of running? But it is not rare; almost everybody thinks of running away from the ocean, from anything that is bigger than you, because the fear is you will be overwhelmed, you will disappear.You don’t need any lesson in drowning; the ocean will do the whole work. You simply don’t run. You simply go on sitting silently and let the ocean take you over. Don’t be worried that this is going to be your death. That is the fear that comes to every mind the moment it is close to the infinite. It is a very small, very tiny thing. It has made its own cozy life, although it is dark and miserable, poor, spiritually poor.But it seems to be safe in a way, that you are not being overwhelmed by something bigger than you. And unless a man learns how to be overwhelmed, he will miss everything that is of value. He will miss love; he will run away from love, because love is bigger than you and very overwhelming. Such a person will run away from truth. Lies are good; they are smaller than you. They are your own creation; how can they be bigger than you? But truth is not your creation; in fact, you come from the sources of truth. Naturally, the fear arises when you come across truth.Silence is overwhelming; all noise is yours.Silence belongs to existence.With a noisy mind, chattering day in, day out, you are comfortable. And you have become identified with this small mind, this small personality, which you are not in reality. But you can know only if you allow yourself to be drowned in love, in truth, in silence, in an ecstasy that knows no beginning, no end. There is no other way to know yourself, other than drowning yourself in the very source of your life and the very goal of your life. People would like to have a little sample before they drown. It is not a marketplace; truth cannot be given to you in small pieces as samples, nor can love.Mulla Nasruddin wanted to learn how to swim. He approached the teacher who used to teach children to swim; the teacher was very willing. He said, “It is not difficult. In a day you will know it.”In fact, everybody is born with an intrinsic capacity to swim. It is only a remembrance that is needed. So, it is not really something new added to you, but something that you were not aware of, but was always part of your being. The child in the mother’s womb swims, floats in water. And the water has the same constituents, chemicals, salt as the ocean. This fact has given scientists the idea that life must have been born first in the ocean. It is still born in the ocean: a pregnant woman starts eating more salty things, because she has to keep the balance of exactly the same amount of chemicals that make up the oceanic water.There is no way to give you a sample of life; either you live or you don’t live. So Mulla’s teacher said, “Don’t be worried, to swim is a very minor thing – you can see that small children are learning…”Mulla was a little afraid. He said, “I can see small children learning, but I am not a small child.” And out of nervousness and fear he slipped on the stone steps before he could enter the river. He fell down and he got up and started running without saying a single word to the teacher.The teacher said, “Mulla Nasruddin, what happened?”He said, “It is enough. I will first learn to swim and then I will come close to the water; otherwise, I am not going to take the risk.”But how are you going to learn swimming on your bed? You can throw your hands and your legs around. It may give you some fracture or something, but it will not give you the art of swimming. Only water has that capacity to revive in you a hidden secret which you already know.One Japanese professor has been trying to teach children. First he started to teach twelve-month-old children how to swim. It was great news; nobody had ever thought that a twelve-month-old baby could swim. Then he went on reducing: ten-month-old, nine-month-old, six-month-old…now he is working on three-month-old babies. And his next step is that the first-day-born baby should be put immediately into a small lukewarm tub and allowed to swim, because he already knows intrinsically and just needs the opportunity.Millions of people don’t know how to swim because they have never been given the opportunity; otherwise, it is too beautiful an experience to miss. To be in the water, is to be back in your very life-giving original source. It can revive you; it can give you a freshness and rejuvenation.You are doing just like Mulla Nasruddin – running for the dry land. That is running for your grave because only graves are dry. The whole life is oceanic. You don’t need to learn how to drown. You have just to learn not to escape, not to run away, and everything will be done by the oceanic feelings of silence, love, truth, meditation. They will drown you. It is not that when floods come, houses start learning how to drown; they simply drown.And your dry land is not very dry…!If Radha runs toward dry land, that would be Italy. It is one of the juiciest places on the earth, and very slippery – so much piesta! It has made every Italian greasy. They don’t need any other kind of lubrication; their whole being is full of lubrication. Where will you find dry land in Italy? In Italy it is absolutely difficult.One woman has just gathered a ten-thousand membership for the Radical Party of Italy. She is a beautiful woman, an actress, well known. She allowed herself to sit in a square in Rome, and anybody who wanted to touch her breasts or kiss her had to enroll as a member of the Radical Party.Now, in Italy, instead of ten thousand she has enrolled fifteen thousand. And she fought the election for membership of parliament by sitting absolutely naked in a convertible car. She went around her constituency…you can play with her body the way you want, but remember, you have to vote for her. And naturally, people enjoyed it immensely; she got more votes than anybody else. All great politicians and leaders are left far behind.The speaker of the parliament had to declare, “I will allow this lady in parliament if she promises that she will not do tricks like this here in parliament house, because that will be an insult to the great house of the representatives of the country.” She has not promised. And I think there is no provision in any constitution of any country, that you cannot be naked in parliament.You can do all kinds of things. Nobody has ever thought that these things have to be written into the constitution. Now, perhaps in Italy they will have to make some amendments, because in the first reception given to her by the Radical Party, she did another great thing that perhaps only in Italy is possible. She came naked and started pissing on the front line of the gathering. Those were the most important people, and the whole crowd clapped and laughed. This is a dry land? Nobody thought that she would do such a thing. Nakedness was okay; they had become accustomed to this. Now they are all wondering what she is going to do next.Just learn to be silently available for whenever a tidal wave of existence comes to drown you. It is not your death; it is your real life. You were dead before it. These tidal waves of love and truth and beauty and celebration will give you authentic life, life as it should be. And I know you so well that you cannot find any home anywhere else.Wherever you are, you will feel thirsty for me.And remember…I am not going to be here forever, so don’t escape from the ocean.Look…The ocean has started raining and is sending messages through the winds, through the dance of the trees. Accept the invitation of something greater than you, that makes you great.The old proverb says: “A man is known by the company he keeps.” Never keep company with smaller things, because they make you small. Keep company with vast experiences – they make you great. They bring you to your ultimate splendor and glory.One thing I can promise to you – if you want to try it you can try – run for the dry land and I am coming with you!In Italy sannyasins are collecting thousands of signatures against the Italian government’s order that I cannot enter Italy. They even wanted me to become the president of the Radical Party. I refused. I said, “This is not radicalism what you are doing; this is sheer stupidity. It may create a little nuisance, but it is not going to transform man.” They wanted me to become the president, because then they have more weight to put over the government. Their constitution allows that they can choose the president from anywhere in the world. The secretary will be an Italian and he is the real head. The president will be a formal head. But I refused. I said, “Your Radical Party is not radical enough for me. It is more on the ridiculous side.”But if you go there, I am coming. I have always felt a soft spot for Italians. I don’t know why. I have not even tasted spaghetti, and I will never taste it; just the name makes me afraid.If people start finding a dry land in Italy, then the ocean has to fall. It is not the ocean that is coming to you, it is me – and you are afraid of me. You have long been associated with me and now the spring is close and the hesitancy and the fear…What will the unknown bring to you?I informed you to come into Lao Tzu and work in the library. You became frightened, because to be too close to me is dangerous. You have chosen to continue to work in the kitchen making spaghetti. You know that spaghetti is a protection; I will not come to that side. There is no need to go to Italy. Just here if you can go on making spaghetti – even if I smell it that is enough – I will not come close to that place. That is the only security from the ocean. There is no need to learn how to drown or how to swim, just remain drowned in spaghetti. That will keep me away.But you cannot escape. You have crossed that line a long time ago. I know my people who have crossed the line from where they cannot return. And I know my people who have still not reached that line.Just yesterday I heard about one sannyasin who has said that he agrees with me sixty percent. Agreeing sixty percent actually means the difference between his agreement of sixty percent and disagreement of forty-nine percent is only eleven percent. Now this person can escape any moment.But I don’t think you agree with me sixty percent. And I have never asked anybody how much you agree with me. Either you are with me or you are not with me. There is no question of agreement, because I am not teaching you any doctrine that you have to believe. Whether you believe sixty percent, seventy percent or fifty percent, you believe.I am simply making my own meditation available to you in different ways, through groups, through therapies, through meditation, through talking to you. You have not to agree or disagree; those are childish things. Either you have to experience me, and that is going to be a hundred percent, or you have not to open to me, and that is going to be a hundred percent. Either you open or you don’t.That that time has passed; you cannot close yourself to me. Wherever you are you will remain open. And now I am not going anywhere, for the simple reason that without going physically I can reach to my people if they are open to me. Even if physically I reach those who are not open to me it is pointless. Even if you go you will be coming back, because the moment you leave me you will start thinking again to come. So don’t do unnecessary exercises.You have come, you have been one of my oldest sannyasins who has never for a moment thought that they can be against me. But the fear is natural: the closer you come, the more you will feel afraid. So when you are coming closer, come fast, faster than your fear.An Eskimo proverb is: On thin ice one should run fast. Everybody who is around me is on thin ice. Don’t stand there! Run fast! Your speed has to be faster than the breaking of the thin layer of ice. And according to your weight, you have to run really fast.Anyway you want to run, why run for a dry land? Run towards me. I have been calling you all, inviting you, persuading you, slapping you to wake up because you go on falling asleep. Just two or three days ago I had to slap Veena because she was falling asleep. Now she looks awake.A little six-year-old girl came to the kitchen and asked, “Mommy, can I have babies?”“No, of course not, dear,” her mother replied.The little girl turned around and ran back outside shouting, “Okay boys, same game, same game.”For many lives you have been playing the same game of running from the ocean for dry land. This time try a new game of running towards the ocean, towards the overwhelming. Running away is cowardly. Running towards the ocean, the overwhelming is living dangerously. And only one who lives dangerously, lives; others simply vegetate.Osho,Are there two kinds of memories, a factual memory, and a spiritual memory? If yes, is there a connection between them?There are two kinds of memories, but they are not a factual memory and a spiritual memory. They are a factual memory and a psychological memory.There is nothing like a spiritual memory. Your being, your spirit, has no past and no future; it is always in the present. It has no memories and it has no imaginations, no dreams. It is pure existence, uncontaminated by the dead past that is no more, and by the future that is not yet. But there are two kinds of memory: the factual memory and the psychological memory. And the difference between the two has to be understood because it is of great significance for you all.A factual memory keeps you only a watcher; you are not involved in it. For example, you remember that yesterday somebody insulted you…If you simply remember that somebody insulted you, it is factual. But if you still are angry, you still want to take revenge, you are still waiting for some opportunity to insult the person, then it is psychological memory.I have only factual memories. I am not involved in any way emotionally with those memories. They have happened, but I don’t have any psychological reaction attached to them.As you become more and more a meditator, your psychological memory will start disappearing, but the factual memory will become very clear, because now your energy is not divided. The psychological memory was creating a kind of darkness around the fact. You were not detached; you were not a faraway observer. You were too much attached to it – for or against does not matter.As you become more and more a witness of your mind, a disidentification arises with the mind and all its contents. Your memory will become very clear, crystal clear, because now there is no fog of your emotions and reactions around it. You can meet a man who has insulted you as if he has never insulted you, although you know factually that he has insulted you. But because you are not affected by his insult you know that it is his problem. You have not taken the insult, you have not accepted it. Now he is absolutely free to say something, whether he says it or not. He can keep it in his mind; it is his problem. You have not become part of his problem and anxiety.It happened one night that a man could not sleep…He was tossing and turning. His wife said, “What is the matter?”He said, “The problem is that tomorrow morning I have to give back a million-dollar loan and I don’t have a single dollar to give back. Tomorrow morning I will go bankrupt. How can I sleep?”She said, “Who has given you the loan?”The husband said, “It is nobody other than my friend who lives just in front of our house.”The woman opened the window and called, “Fred, Fred.”In the middle of the night, Fred jumped out of his bed and answered, “What is the matter?” He opened his door.She said, “My husband has not a single dollar to give you tomorrow morning. Now you worry and let him sleep.”It is so simple once you are not psychologically attached to it. Fred was perfectly well, asleep, perhaps happily asleep thinking that tomorrow morning he is going to get one million dollars. Now, there is no possibility of any sleep. What has happened? Nothing has happened; just a statement from the woman, but now it is a psychological problem. She has shifted the problem. She told her husband, “Now you rest. You were afraid to be exposed. I have exposed you. You were worried what people will think. Now let him worry how he is going to find one million dollars.”A factual memory is perfectly mechanical. It is just like the memory of a computer. But a psychological memory is your identification.I have heard about a very strange case in a psychology conference…An old, well-respected, world-honored psychologist is reading his paper, but he is finding it very difficult. He is perspiring, although it is an air-conditioned hall. He has read thousands of papers, so he is not a new man afraid of the audience, and most of them are his students. He is so old, eighty years old.But something is strange that he cannot manage to concentrate on his paper. Just in the front row is a beautiful lady; she is also a psychologist, his own student. And by her side is one of his colleagues, old colleagues, of the same age. They both have been students of Sigmund Freud and they have lived almost twenty years together under the same master.That other old fellow is playing with the breasts of the young woman psychologist. Now it has nothing to do with the psychologist. He is neither the old man who is playing with the breasts nor is he the woman who has the breasts. But the disturbing factor is that the woman is absolutely unaffected; she is listening to the paper.This is creating trouble in his mind. What is the matter? The woman could have stopped him, but rather than stopping him, she is absolutely quiet about it as if nothing is happening. And the old man is enjoying tremendously. This is affecting the speaker who is standing in front. He cannot concentrate, because between his paragraphs, he has to look and see whether that thing has stopped or not.The whole conference is worried about what has happened to him? This is not the way he has ever read, and it is a very important discovery that he has made about man’s mind, but his presentation seems to be very strange. Finally, he finished without waiting for the people to ask questions, which was part of everybody’s paper. When you bring some new theory you have to satisfy other people working on the same ground that what you have found is valid. He did not wait for that; he simply stepped down, almost stumbled, and asked the young lady, “Why are you not stopping this dirty old man?”She said, “It is not my problem; it is his problem. I am not losing anything. And if he is enjoying it in his old age, let him. Perhaps he has missed his mother’s breast – before he wanted to leave it he was taken away. Perhaps his mother died early and he had to live on bottled milk. There can be a thousand and one reasons. Perhaps his wife’s breasts are not worth playing with. But it is not my problem; I am perfectly at ease, without any disturbance. If he is feeling some satisfaction in his old age, let him.”It looks strange, but it makes the difference between the factual and the psychological. The factual is there, but the woman is certainly beyond getting identified. She has certainly understood a few fundamentals of life. Both the two old men who are colleagues are disturbed. The one who is playing with her breast must be afraid if anybody is looking at him what they will think. He cannot be without worry of being caught red-handed. And if the woman starts shouting and stands up…He is a well-respected man, and this will be very humiliating.The other fellow is not at all concerned with the thing – could have remained just a watcher; it is not his business – but he becomes psychologically involved although there is no need because factually he is out of it. You can become involved in things in which you don’t have to get involved. Involvement has become people’s habit. And if you get involved in other people’s problems, then what about your own problems; how can you remain detached?One old psychoanalyst and his young assistant were coming down the elevator after finishing their work for that day; it was already late. They should have finished three hours before, but the patients went on and on telling their dreams. It had been a very tiring day, and the young man was getting tired every day, so tired that he was thinking of dropping out of this business. Although the profession is the most highly paid profession in the world he was thinking of doing anything else – this was torture.But he was wondering that the old man, his teacher and now his colleague, does not seem to have any worry. So on the elevator – finding him in seclusion, nobody else was there to hear – he said, “I wanted to ask, Professor, one thing. You never get tired, you are old; I get so tired with all kinds of rubbish and nonsense. The whole day listening, listening, listening; I cannot sleep in the night. Those patients torture me – even in the night they become my nightmares. The whole day I am tired and in the morning I get up utterly tired. I am thinking that this profession is going to finish me. What about you, I wondered. You look as fresh by the evening when we are returning as when you come into the office in the morning to start the work.”The old man said, “You don’t know the secret. Who listens?” And he showed him from his pocket two earplugs. He said, “This is the protection. Once the patient is on the couch – and Sigmund Freud has very cleverly arranged that the patient cannot see the psychoanalyst; he sits behind the couch – the moment the patient has started, I immediately take my plugs, close my eyes and just sit silently. It is such a meditation. It is so beautiful. He is paying for my meditation. Otherwise, I would have been dead long ago. I wanted to tell you myself, but I was waiting for you to ask. Never tell it to anybody else; particularly the patients should not become aware that they are not being listened to – and the problems are almost the same.”The whole psychoanalytic process is that the person who goes on talking about his worries, concerns, anxieties, just by talking feels relieved. It is not a question that you have to listen to it; if he could talk to a wall that would do the same as psychoanalysis. But it is difficult to talk to a wall; you look a little weird talking to yourself. The more highly you have to pay, the quicker you get better, because then you start bringing up all the rubbish quickly. If you pay cheap fees then you go slowly – first layer, second layer, third layer, and there are so many layers of crap. And you don’t want to expose yourself so quickly. But when you are paying too much, you don’t want to waste so much money and you immediately come to the basic layer.The question is not that the psychoanalyst should listen to you; the question is that you should believe that he is listening to you. That is what helps you. If the psychoanalyst listens to you, he may become psychologically involved. Then it is tiring; then he may carry it over into the night: he wants to sleep, but what he has been listening to and thinking about is not complete yet, so he has to go on thinking. Unless his whole mind is satisfied, everything is complete, sleep will not come.But there is no spiritual memory. When you pass from one life to another life, two things go with you: your spiritual being and your psychological memory. Your factual memory is left behind. Your factual memory is part of the brain, and your psychological memory is your mind, and you have to learn the distinction between brain and mind.Mind is created by the identification of your being with the brain. It is an epiphenomenon; it has no existential reality. The brain has an existential reality. It is a biocomputer, a perfectly good mechanism. But when your being becomes attached to the brain, a third entity comes into being which is the epiphenomenon. It comes only out of identification. That is why all the great masters have been insisting on disidentifying yourself with whatever goes on in your brain.This is the way to dissolve the mind; otherwise, this fog of the mind will follow your spirit wherever you go. That is why it is possible to remember about your past lives. But the remembrance is only psychological, it is not factual. So you cannot depend on its really being true. It may be; it may not be.Because you make so much fuss about small things psychologically, your remembrance will carry that exaggeration. The fact is no longer there, and there is no way to find out how longer you have exaggerated it. So people who remember their past lives either as an accident, a freak of nature, or through certain techniques which take you back into your past life, should not depend on what they remember. It is psychological impressions which may be correct or which may contain some fact, factuality, but they cannot be absolutely right.I have studied many cases because they happen more in India than anywhere else. In other countries where Christianity is predominant, Islam is predominant or Judaism is predominant, the very conditioning prevents people from remembering their past lives. But in India, all the three religions agree only on one point, reincarnation. So there is no conditioning against remembering your past life.Whatever nature creates as a barrier is so that you don’t go crazy; one life is enough. If you remember two or three lives and you have been passing through hundreds of lives, you are going to be crazy. One life is enough to make you insane – one wife is enough! When you remember hundreds of lives, you will remember wives too, and all the torture that you have gone through. And all the failures and all the humiliations, all the diseases, sicknesses, and all those deaths and the pain…it will be unbearable.Hence, the natural process is that after each life it is as if a door closes. And it does not allow the past life’s memory to infiltrate into your life. But sometimes, there may be some accident, there may be some freak of nature or if somebody is himself trying to break the barrier, then there are techniques to break it.The man who invented the techniques for breaking the barrier is Mahavira. He calls his technique jati-smaran, memories of your past lives. And his technique is absolutely perfect. But I don’t suggest that anybody goes into it, because you have to settle this life and that is enough. All that is only psychological impressions.Studying people, I was wondering how they remember things which cannot be true. Nobody remembers that he was ordinary and he is ordinary right now. Everybody remembers that he was Alexander the Great, he was Nadirshah, he was the Emperor Ashoka. I have never come across any single person who remembers that he was nobody, just a shoemaker or a cloth merchant; nobody remembers. And certainly, what they are remembering is their psychological desire of that life; it has nothing to do with any factuality. They wanted to be Alexander the Great and they could not.But that desire, that longing, that repressed idea has come with their minds. And now, they remember as if they were Alexander the Great. And right now they are just a shoemaker. It is against evolution. If you were a great man – good or bad – you will have moved directly more into that dimension. Either you would have become even worse – if you were a Tamerlane or Genghis Khan or Nadirshah, then you may become something worse – or remembering that you have been wrong in those lives, you may have risen in consciousness; you have become a wise man, a nonviolent man, a man of purity, innocence.But that doesn’t seem to be the problem. You are just very ordinary. That shows your past has not been extraordinary. But their memory is very certain and they don’t forget it. The easiest way to lead anybody into his past lives without breaking the barrier…because I don’t like to break anybody’s barrier; it is dangerous. It is opening a flood of so many memories you may not be able to contain them in your head; you may burst forth; you may start doing things which nobody has ever expected; you will not be in your own control.So the methods of Mahavira are perfectly right, but dangerous. And I don’t propose that anybody uses any kind of method that breaks the barrier. Without breaking the barrier the past can be remembered, and that is through hypnosis. You can be made unconscious. In your unconsciousness you can be taken back slowly: first, to the moment of your birth in this life which you don’t remember consciously; then, to the day you got impregnated which you don’t remember; then, slowly backwards to your death in the past life. Naturally, if that comes first, it will be like reading a book from the back.First, you will be dead, then you will become the old man, then you will become the young man. First your children will be born and then you will get married. The whole story will be going backwards. The beauty in unconsciousness through hypnosis is that you will not remember anything. When you wake up the hypnotist will know and he can tell you that this is what you remember of your past life. But it will not disturb you, because you don’t remember; your conscious mind remains without being flooded.To check whether the man was really getting into his past life or just imagining, dreaming, I have hypnotized the same person a hundred times. He comes always to the same memory. Certainly, it is not imagination. Certainly, it is not dreaming. It is very difficult to dream the same dream again. And he is unconscious, so he cannot manipulate. He comes back to the same point again.Now scientists, particularly brain surgeons, have discovered seven hundred centers in your brain which contain all your life. And the strangest phenomenon that they discovered, and could not believe in the beginning, but had to believe because there is no other way, is that those seven hundred centers each control one aspect. For example, one controls your sex. Ordinarily, you think that the genitals is where sex is. It is not the genitals; it is in your brain from where your genitals are just offshoots. Your hands are controlled by the brain, your legs, everything; your tongue, your eyes, everything is controlled from the brain. And if you touch with an electrode – a very thin needle with electricity running through it – if you touch a center, suddenly the man starts doing things. For example: if you touch his dream center, even if he is awake he starts talking as if he is in the dream. You take away the electrode and he stops talking. The great surprise was that if you put the needle again on the same center, the man does not start talking from the point where he has stopped. He starts the dream again from the very beginning.It seems there is an automatic reversal process. You have to reverse a tape, but your brain reverses immediately. When you put the needle on the dream center again it starts from a b c, not from the point where it has stopped. If you take the needle away again, it reverses so quickly that no time is lost. Put the needle back and it starts from a b c again. If the man was saying, “I am Alexander the Great…” – if you have touched his past life memory center and he was saying, “I am Alexander the Great,” and if you take the needle away and put it back again, he will again start with, “I am Alexander the Great.”Your brain contains all the memories, psychological memories of your past lives. But the more you meditate, the more you go on erasing all psychological memories. Begin first from this life, then slowly, slowly your meditation gets deeper and the past life’s memories are also removed, erased. And a man with no psychological memory at all is the man we call enlightened. I am trying to give you different dimensions of enlightenment.Just a joke after a serious matter in which you had to contain your laughter. It has no concern with the question; it concerns you. So my tapes, my videos, my books should be read with the idea clearly that I am not concerned what I am saying, I am more concerned to whom I am saying, and why I am saying.My concern is not theoretical.It is absolutely practical.So just to erase the seriousness which I know…past lives, new information, psychological memories, spiritual memories, factual memory. These are not the things that are going to help you have a good laugh. This is none of those memories….“Mommy,” asked little Sadie, “does everyone have their legs up in the air when they go to heaven?”“No,” the mother replied. “Where did you get such a silly idea?”“Well, I just came from the bedroom. The maid had her legs up in the air and was screaming, ‘God, I’m coming. God, I’m coming.’ But daddy was on top of her and he would not let her go.”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Does psychological therapy help to go beyond the mind?Psychological therapy can help you to understand the mind, but it cannot lead you beyond the mind.Only one thing leads you beyond the mind and that is meditation. Meditation has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but psychotherapy can create a ground by giving you a better understanding of your mind to go into meditation. It cannot lead you directly into the transcendental, but it can be a help, just the way you prepare a garden. First, you prepare the soil, but that is not the garden. And just preparing the ground, removing the weeds, the grass, any wild growth, stones, roots, still it is not the garden – this much psychotherapy can do.Now you will have to put seeds, give nourishment to those seeds, care and love and protection. And slowly, slowly the bare ground will start becoming greener. One day there will be flowers and fruits.Psychotherapy is only a cleansing process, but it is like all cleansing processes. You have to clean your house every day; it is not as if once you have cleaned it you have cleaned it forever. Within twenty-four hours again dust gathers. You have to take a bath every day, or twice; otherwise you will start getting dirty.Psychotherapy is good as a cleaning method, but it does not go beyond that. And if you remain addicted to psychotherapies you will have to clean yourself again and again. You will have a better understanding of the mind but just that much is not enough to create the world of the beyond. For that, seeds of meditation, awareness, watchfulness are absolutely necessary.And once you have gone beyond the mind, psychotherapy becomes meaningless. Going beyond the mind simply means you have realized your own being. Now mind is left far behind. Going beyond the mind also means that now mind is going to function as a servant and you are the master. So whenever you need to, you can use it. Right now the situation is just the reverse. You are not the master, and the mind uses you. The mind is almost blind and it directs your life and sooner or later you are going to fall into a ditch. All minds lead finally to misery, to suffering.Meditation is the only possibility for creating a space where blessings shower.I am not against psychotherapies. I am simply telling you they can be used as a foothold to jump into meditation. You can jump into meditation directly too, but you will find it a little difficult because you don’t have a clean mind and a clean understanding. The mind will put every weight on you and drag you backwards. Psychotherapy is instrumental, helpful, but alone it is meaningless. I am using psychotherapy in this commune as a means towards meditation, as a help, as a preparation.But in the West psychotherapy is used as an end to itself; hence psychotherapy in the West is not of much use. Unless it becomes a stepping-stone for meditation, you are moving in a circle. Every day you will have to clean. Once in a while you will have to go to a psychotherapist. People become addicted because it gives you a clean feeling, but that clean feeling remains only for a few days; again you have gathered all the rubbish.Psychoanalysts ordinarily give their patients two sessions per week, for years, ten years, fifteen years, and still nobody is beyond the mind. After fifteen years of psychoanalysis one simply becomes addicted to psychoanalysis; now it has become a necessity. If you don’t go twice a week to a psychoanalyst you gather too much tension, too much dust, you feel too dirty, too heavy. Now you have created a new problem. Psychology rather than giving you freedom has given you new chains. It is as addictive as any alcohol or any drug. Nothing is wrong in it; in itself it is helpful and beautiful, but you should use it for something better.Psychoanalysis is good but the good is the enemy of the best. You should not get addicted to the good. You should use the good as a stepping-stone for the best; otherwise it turns into an enemy.Even psychoanalysts are very embarrassed by the fact that there is not a single man in the whole world who has been perfectly psychoanalyzed. And I am amazed at their stupidity. Hoping that some day some man will be perfectly psychoanalyzed is exactly like hoping that some day some house will be perfectly clean and there will be no need to clean it again. It is absolutely absurd. The house will need cleaning continually, because as time passes dirt gathers.Even the cleanest mirror needs cleaning once in a while because dirt gathers on it, vapor gathers on it; it does not reflect clearly, it starts reflecting distortions. There will never be any man perfectly psychoanalyzed, because the process in itself is only of cleaning. Can you get your clothes cleaned forever, perfectly cleaned? They will again become ready to go into the laundry. So the people who are going continuously into psychotherapies are going into a kind of laundry, dry cleaning. It is good, but good is not enough.Vijen, in a sense it can help if you use it as a means and you don’t forget that it is not all. In another sense it can be a disturbance, a barrier, if you think that this is all and there is nothing else beyond it.That’s what is happening in the West. Psychotherapists think this is the ultimate, but they have not produced a single buddha. Even their founders, Freud or Jung or Adler are not awakened people. They are living in the same misery, in the same suffering as you are living. They are full of fear. They don’t know anything about death, that it is a fiction. They have not experienced their own being. They are just scratching on the surface. Mind is your surface; your being is in the center. How much you clean your surface does not matter, it is not going to lead you to the center. If you can use psychotherapy as a means it is good. If you think it is the end it is the enemy of your transcendence. It all depends on your intelligence.A Jew asks his rabbi, “I have two problems. I have asked my boss a dozen times already, but he is determined to fire me at the end of the month.”“And what is the other problem?” asks the rabbi.“Ah well, my wife does not get pregnant, although she stays home and prays all day,” answers the Jew.“You are doing it wrong,” suggests the rabbi. “Next time you stay at home to pray and send your wife to ask the boss.”Three months later the happy Jew thanks the rabbi: “Your help has worked! The boss has rehired me and my wife is pregnant!”The rabbi was certainly a great psychoanalyst and did help the poor fellow. If you need this kind of help then psychotherapy is good, but don’t ask for more.Osho,I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life.Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?My God! I wonder whether you have been listening to me. Every day, morning and evening, I’m telling you to drop the ego and you are asking me a great question: “Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?”And you are also saying, “I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life.…does my ego need nourishment?”That will destroy whatever relaxation you have, and that will stop your growth going inwards. It will make your trembling more strong and the cloud that is covering the blissfulness of your life will become darker. Nourishment of the ego is against your authentic being; it cannot help you in any way. It can only destroy you – destroy you as you are destined to be by your nature.Ego is a false mask; it will hide your original face. Don’t ask for its nourishment. In fact, cut off all nourishment to it. Let it die. The death of the ego will be the beginning of your real life. The more the ego becomes strong, the less is the possibility of any realization of yourself.Little Ernie was taking a walk in the park with his father, when suddenly a bee settled on a rock in front of them. Just for spite, Ernie picked up a piece of wood and smashed the bee, whereupon his father said, “That was very cruel, Ernie, and for being cruel you will get no honey for a year.”Later, Ernie deliberately stepped on a butterfly. “And for that, young man,” said his father, “you will get no butter for a year.”When they returned home, Ernie’s mother was fixing the dinner. Just as they entered the kitchen, she saw a cockroach and immediately crushed it. Ernie looked at his father mischievously and said, “Will you tell her, Dad, or shall I?”Your question really makes me wonder how you have been listening. And perhaps this is the state of many of you. You listen to what you want to listen, not what is being said. You go on continuously interpreting according to your old prejudices. Your mind is continuously interfering; it does not allow what is being said to reach to your heart. What reaches to you is something else, distorted, disfigured, maybe so distorted that it is almost the opposite of what has been said.One has to learn very earnestly the art of listening. It is a difficult art, and the greatest difficulty is that everybody thinks he knows it. Just because you can hear, you think you can also listen. And these are two differing things, so different that unless you start listening you will never know the difference.In the dictionaries they mean the same thing, but in actual life hearing is only because you have ears. Listening happens when just behind your ears there is no noisy mind but a silent, receptive alertness. If there is a continuously chattering mind behind the ears you only seem to listen. Then there are going to be misunderstandings.I myself was very shocked when I came to know that psychologists have discovered that the mind does not allow ninety-eight percent of information to reach you. It only allows two percent; ninety-eight percent is simply rejected in many different ways. Either it gives it a new color, a new meaning, or it misses it deliberately, takes it into a different context where the meaning changes. But the distortion percentage is ninety-eight percent. The two percent it allows without distorting, because it agrees with its old structure.So it listens only to itself. Those two percent are agreeable to the mind and so it immediately allows them in without creating obstructions, without creating arguments, doubts, misinterpretations. And language is vulnerable; each word can mean many things. The mind has the capacity to choose any meaning it wants, any meaning that fits with it.The art of listening is based on silence in the mind, so that the mind does not interfere, it simply allows whatever is coming to you. I am not saying you have to agree with it. Listening does not mean that you have to agree with it, neither does it mean that you have to disagree with it. The art of listening is just pure listening, factual, undistorted. And once you have listened then comes the point whether you agree or not, but the first thing is to listen.If you listen to something which is true there is no question of disagreement. If it is untrue, naturally you have to disagree with it. But your agreement or disagreement should come not from the prejudiced mind, but from the unprejudiced heart. Listening is from the heart, and hearing is from the mind, it is very superficial. And because the heart is deeper, any word that enters you first has to encounter the mind. Before it reaches the heart, the mind has done many things with it.A man is standing at the bar and another guy walks up to him and says, “Are you Joe Smith?”The man says, “Yes.”The guy says, “Were you in Chicago a few weeks ago?”Joe says, “Just a minute,” and takes out his notebook, turns some pages, and then says, “Yes, I was in Chicago a few weeks ago.”The guy says, “Were you in room two one three?”Joe looks in his notebook and says, “Yes.”The guy says, “Did you meet Mrs. Wentworth in room two one four?”Joe looks in his notebook and says, “Yes.”The guy says, “Tell me, did you make love to Mrs. Wentworth?”Joe scans his notebook again and says, “Yes, I made love to Mrs. Wentworth.”The guy says, “Well, I’m Mr. Wentworth and I don’t like it.”Again Joe looks in his notebook and says, “You know, that’s funny. I did not like it either.”This is what you call hearing. He agrees perfectly, but he hears only what he wants to hear; he understands what he wants to understand.And this is almost our everyday situation. At least here with me, you have to change this pattern, you have to be utterly silent because things are being said to you which can bring a transformation in your whole life. Here you are not learning geography or history or philosophy; here you are learning the very art, the alchemy of transformation. It is not collecting knowledge and information and becoming more knowledgeable.The effort here is just the opposite: to make you less knowledgeable and more innocent, to the final point where you can say, “I don’t know anything.” Just like a newly born child, you are pure consciousness, unscratched, unspoiled. This is the state of a sage, of a wise man. His life has a completion. From childhood he began and he moved the whole circle of life. Back he has come again to the same point that he has left in his childhood, the pure consciousness which knows nothing but reflects everything. He is capable of understanding everything exactly as it is without any distortion because he has no prejudices to distort. The state of the sage has no preconceived ideas to mix and to mess and to disfigure.There is a story in the life of Lao Tzu. I have loved it very much…He used to go for a morning walk deep in the mountains very early before the sunrise when it was dark and there were still stars in the sky. And he used to go to the peak from where the sunrise was the most beautiful. And he would stand there sometimes for hours, just watching the sunrise, listening to the birds, seeing the trees dancing with joy and life, opening their flowers, releasing their fragrance. And then he would come back.One of his neighbors used to come with him. And he knew that Lao Tzu did not want to talk at all, because that would be a disturbance in his deep communion with nature. He had told him, “If you don’t use any words not even hello, you can come. Silently you can join me, silently you can follow me, silently we come back; there is no need to say even good-bye. Words have to be completely dropped if you want to come with me.”The neighbor loved it all. He had never thought that things can be so beautiful because he had never seen the world with such a silent peaceful mind, and with such a beautiful man who must be vibrating his silence and his blissfulness to the neighbor. Because they had been doing it for years now, the neighbor had completely forgotten that it was a strange type of morning walk.People go, and they talk and they discuss and they argue. They don’t look at the trees, they don’t look at the disappearing stars, they don’t look at the rising sun. They are so much involved with their minds that who is there to look at all the beauty, all the joy of existence, the life again coming back from its sleep as the sun has set the day before. There is everywhere celebration, in the trees, in the flowers, in the birds.The man was immensely grateful to Lao Tzu that he allowed him to be with him for so many years. Lao Tzu said, “But I had implored you not to use language. Why are you using language today after so many years?”He said, “A problem has arisen. A guest is staying with me and he also wants to come tomorrow.”Lao Tzu said, “The condition you have to tell him. He should remember that nothing has to be said on the way, then he can come.”And the guest thought, It is a strange condition. Not a single word, not even hello, not even a good-bye when departing…!But his host said, “He is a very different kind of man and he will not relax the condition. So please forget all your etiquette and mannerisms. Simply come with me, remain just like a shadow, and the experience is tremendous.”The experience was tremendous. When they reached to the highest peak from where they could see the sun rising just underneath, deep down in the valley, he forgot the condition; it was so beautiful. He had never seen such a thing, not even in a dream. He was so overwhelmed that he said to Lao Tzu, “It is so beautiful.”Lao Tzu looked at the host. Suddenly the guest remembered that words are not to be used. Nothing was said. But as they reached home Lao Tzu told his neighbor, “From tomorrow don’t come.”He said, “But you are punishing me too much, and I have not spoken a single word. This guest is new; he does not know you. And he has also not said much, just that it is a beautiful sunrise.”Lao Tzu said, “You say it was just a little? That fellow is very talkative. Although he was not saying I could hear his chattering mind. All the way he was chattering: This is beautiful, that is beautiful, and finally, he asserted. Does he think that we can’t understand beauty, that he has to tell us? I was present; you were present; he was present. We were watching the same sunrise; what was the need to say anything? No, he is too talkative. And because you brought him, and you disturbed my morning, from tomorrow nobody comes with me.”The neighbor finally persuaded him and he allowed him back after a week, but told him, “Never ask if any guests can come. They don’t know how to be silent; they are too new. I have never felt any difficulty with you, because not only do you not say anything, you don’t think anything.”Thinking and speaking are not basically different. In front of a silent man, whether you think or speak it is the same. Thinking is talking with yourself inside. People don’t hear it because they are engaged within themselves; they don’t hear even when you talk to them. How can they hear your inner chattering. But a man like Lao Tzu, in the deepest meditativeness, is able to catch your chattering almost like whispering. Even that much is a disturbance and you will not be able to listen to what is being said.Gautam Buddha used to initiate people, and the first thing was for two years not to use language at all. Naturally, two years is a long period, and if you don’t use language, slowly, slowly your inner chattering also stops because it is getting no more nourishment from outside. How long can you continue playing football on your own? You need a partner. Slowly, slowly you become fed up repeating the same things, because what new information will you be getting? You have repeated the old information many times.I have heard…People were waiting in the waiting room of a railway station. The train was late. A man was sitting on an easy chair and everybody was interested in watching the man. Sometimes he will giggle, sometimes he will even laugh loudly, sometimes he will throw something away. Everybody was silently watching and wondering what he is doing. Sometimes he will make a bad face as if something bitter has come into his mouth, and sometimes he will smile so sweetly.Finally they could not contain themselves. The train was getting later and later and that man was weighing heavier and heavier on their minds. One of them gathered courage and went to the gentleman and asked, “You have to forgive us, but everybody in the waiting room is interested to know what you are doing?”He said, “Doing? I’m not doing anything. I’m just telling jokes to myself.”They said, “That makes sense why you sometimes giggle and sometimes laugh. But why do you sometimes throw something and make a bad face?”He says, “When I hear some old joke I throw it away.”Now if you are telling jokes to yourself, all are old. From where are you getting new jokes? And how long will you deceive yourself? If for two years you have to sit silently just telling jokes to yourself, by the time two years have passed everything is old. You will be throwing with both the hands, and not a single giggle!After initiating anybody into sannyas the first thing Gautam Buddha used to say was, “Now for two years be completely silent. Do not use language. If you want water then show the symbol; just be dumb. Act dumb, as if you cannot speak, so you are showing that you need water or you need food. You can point to your stomach when you are feeling hungry. Use symbols as if you cannot speak.”Two years were a long time, but after two years people were so calm and quiet, so radiant, so full of energy. Your constant chattering is destroying your energy. So Buddha used to remind them, “Now your two years are over, you can use language just if it is necessary. But now you are capable of listening to what I am saying.”But many of his disciples even after two years did not use any language. The silence of being dumb…and symbols were working perfectly well. They have survived the two years just by making symbols, the very essential. You cannot talk philosophy in symbols; you cannot argue for or against God just by symbols. You can ask for water, you can ask for food, you can ask for shelter; you can say that you are feeling feverish or you are feeling cold or you are feeling too hot – just small day-to-day things which can be counted on your ten fingers.Only then do you become capable of listening; otherwise you only hear. And if you are capable of listening there is nothing left for you to do. In that silence you will be able to see without any argumentation within you what is right and what is not right. The right immediately makes you so joyful and the wrong immediately makes you sad and aloof. It is a totally different kind of differentiation than mental talk: “This is right; this is wrong.” On what grounds can your mind say, “This is right”? It is your prejudice; it is your preconceived idea.But the heart has no preconceived ideas. It simply sees clearly. It has eyes but no ideas. It has a clarity but no prejudices. With that clarity it can see where the door is and where the wall is. It does not have to think about it. Only a blind man thinks, Where is the door? Only a blind man starts finding the door with his walking stick. You don’t do that; you don’t even think about the door. If you want to go out, you know, you see. There is no need of thinking, you simply go out of the door.It is not because you are not thinking that first you will try to go through the wall, and then you think about where the door is. And after a logical syllogism you decide, “This must be the door.” This kind of process does not take place when you have eyes. Silence becomes your eyes. Silence becomes your criterion of what is right and what is not right. And the decision that comes out of silence transforms you. You don’t have to do anything.Mahavira, another contemporary of Gautam Buddha, a man of the same height of consciousness as Gautam Buddha, has made two divisions of people who attain to truth. One division he used to call the shravaka. It means one who is capable of listening. Shravan means listening, and shravaka means the listener, one who is capable of listening in the sense I have defined listening; one who need not do anything else, just listening will be enough.If you have a master with you, a man who knows, then listening is enough. If you don’t have a master with you naturally listening will not help. Then you have to be a sadhu. So these are the two categories who travel towards truth. The sadhu means the monk. He has to follow certain disciplines; he has to perform certain austerities, fasting, praying, chanting, the reading of the scriptures. He has to do a thousand and one things which for the listener are not needed.The art of listening is the simplest method of transformation.Osho,You don't exist as a person and yet you are the being that I love most. You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet. You are just silence and yet I can only sing your song. You have no name and yet I'm helpless in crying your name. You tell us every day the inexpressible cannot be said, and yet I can't help but try again and again.You know my gratitude and yet I cannot resist to touch your feet and whisper: Thank you, Osho. Even more today, because you free me from saying no to you.But now I have a question:Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?Sarjano, you are asking: “Now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?”It is very natural to say yes when you love, just as it is natural to say no when you don’t love. But there is still a deeper layer where you love so much that you can even say no. Your love gives you that power. Your love does not make you a slave, particularly as far as I am concerned.You can say yes out of fear. Then your yes has no value. Your yes is valuable only when it comes out of your love. The value is not in your yes; the value is in your love. If you can understand this then you can understand another thing also: if your no comes out of your love, it has the same value as your yes, because the value is neither of yes nor of no; the value is of your love. Love is absolutely capable of saying yes or no, because love knows no fear.Love trusts so much that it can say no without any difficulty. Saying yes is very natural, but there may be times when you have to say no. But the no is coming from a loving heart without any disrespect, on the contrary, with great respect. You respect so much that you know that your no will not be taken as a disrespectful or negative attitude.Love gives freedom.Love is freedom.So you need not be worried that you cannot ask for anything. Always remember that you are free to say yes or no to me. I am not your enslaver; I am not your jailer. Not in any sense is there a bondage between me and you. All that exists is freedom and the love that freedom brings.In this freedom and loving atmosphere everything is acceptable: your yes is acceptable; your no is acceptable. And unless this is possible, your love is not deep enough.What you have said in your whole question is more a statement and very truthful, honest and sincere. There was only one question in the end that I have answered, but I would like to discuss your statement. I am not answering it because there is no question in it. I am discussing it so that it can become clear to all those who are present here. Because one day everybody has to come to this state from where Sarjano is speaking.He is saying, “You don’t exist as a person, and yet you are the being that I love most.”It is not only true about me. Anybody who does not exist as a person, but only as a presence, will be loved more than anyone else. Simply because he does not exist as a person, he attracts, provokes, invites your love. His absence is a tremendously powerful magnet. His absence is not emptiness; his absence is overflowingly positive. The person is not there, but the presence is intensely there. And what is the difference between the person and the presence? – the same difference as there is between the flower and its fragrance. The flower is a person, the fragrance is only a presence. You cannot catch hold of it, yet you can be overwhelmed by it.A person has boundaries, limits. And one who has limits cannot give you unlimited freedom. He himself is not unlimited. Only a person who has died as an ego and has resurrected only as a pure being, a presence, has no boundaries. Obviously he is capable of giving you freedom; in fact, he cannot give you anything else. He has no boundaries. He can also give you a world without boundaries. And naturally, you will love such a presence more than you can love any person.A person is a very small thing.A presence is a vast sky full of stars.“You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet.” I know nothing, it is true. And only a man who knows nothing is innocent. Knowledge corrupts because it gives you prejudices, it makes you mechanical. If you ask a question to a knowledgeable man he will not answer your question directly, he will simply repeat some dead, ready-made formula. He knows; his answer will come from his knowledge.My answer will come from my innocence; hence, my answer will be a direct response to your question. A learned man cannot respond to you – he appears to answer you, but the answer is ready-made; it is not a fresh, spontaneous response. It is a prerecorded answer; it does not pay any attention to you. The answer would have been the same even if it was asked by somebody other than Sarjano.But my answer will be different to each person, even though the question is the same, because I am responding each time not only to the question, but more basically to the questioner. The questioner is the context. The question is symbolic only. I have to answer the questioner more. The question is only an excuse, so my answers will be different although your question may be the same. It creates great difficulty to so-called scholars.One professor of Bhagalpur University has been doing research for his doctorate on my thoughts almost for seven years, and he becomes more and more confused. He has inquired several times, “Which answer is right? Because for the same question you have given so many answers. You have created such trouble for the scholars who will be working on your work when you are gone.”That’s the way scholars work. They never work on living people, they work on dead people. They will work on Kabir, they will work on Gautam Buddha; they will work on Raidas, Meera, whom they condemned when they were alive. Raidas was a shoemaker and in India a shoemaker is not supposed to be a saint. But what to do if a shoemaker becomes a saint? He was ignored, condemned. No brahmin could go to him to ask a question.Kabir used to live in Varanasi, which is the Jerusalem of Hindus or the Mecca of Hindus. It is their ancientmost city and perhaps it is the most ancientmost city in the world. All Hindu learned scholars belong to Varanasi. And Kabir lived in Varanasi but he was not a brahmin. In fact, by his profession he was a weaver. And weavers belong to the fourth class of the sudras, untouchables. But only by profession was he a weaver; by his birth nobody knows whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan, because their parents…certainly he was illegitimate, as people call children if they are not out of marriage.According to me there are no illegitimate children; there are only illegitimate parents. And when I say illegitimate parents I don’t mean those who are not married, but those who give birth to children without any love. Marriage is a formal thing. Love is the reality, the substantial reality. Any child which is born out of a formal marriage without any love, I call those parents illegitimate.Perhaps Kabir was born out of a pair who were not married. Out of fear of the society they left the child on the banks of the Ganges. A Hindu monk, certainly a great sage, Ramananda, had gone to the Ganges early in the morning in darkness. And the little baby who was to become Kabir was lying down on the steps of the Ganges. And as Ramananda passed by, the little baby just took his feet in his hand. Now Ramananda could not leave the child touching the feet of the master although it was going to be a condemnation for Ramananda, as to where he got the child – most probably it is his own child and illegitimate!Persons like Ramananda don’t care at all about the crowd and their opinions. The child has caught his feet and he could not leave the child there, knowing perfectly well that some parents have left him. He brought the child to his monastery. He was a famous Hindu monk and had thousands of disciples and they were all against him: “What are you doing unnecessarily taking a condemnation? Give the child to us; we will leave it there or we will leave it in some orphanage.”Ramananda said, “It is not that there is any question. The child has touched my feet, and I cannot refuse anybody who is ready to surrender himself.”They said, “You are getting into unnecessary trouble. The child knows nothing; it is just accidental. You must have been passing by and he caught hold of anything. It was not addressed specially to you, ‘I am your disciple.’”But Ramananda said, “You don’t understand. I know this child, not to whom he belongs in this life, but on his hand is written Kabir.Kabir is a Mohammedan name which means God; it is one of the names of God. In Mohammedanism there are one hundred names of God. One of those one hundred names is Kabir. So certainly the child seems to be born either out of a father who is Mohammedan or a mother who is Mohammedan or perhaps both are Mohammedan, but it does not matter.Ramananda said, “I can look into the past life of the child. He has been my child, my disciple before too. It was not accidental that he caught my feet. He simply reminded me, ‘Your poor disciple…’”People said, “You are getting into unnecessary trouble. Nobody is going to believe these stories. And you will be unnecessarily thought immoral, characterless.”Ramananda said, “That doesn’t matter.”He raised the child and his prediction became true. Because he said, “One day this child will be a greater man than me. I will be remembered only because of Kabir.”And it is true. Ramananda would have been forgotten. There have been many Ramanandas, many Hindu saints whose names have been forgotten. But Kabir proved to be such a great man that obviously while Kabir is remembered you cannot forget Ramananda.But because Kabir was not a brahmin, and certainly he was illegitimate in the eyes of the society, brahmins, the higher cast people, were not even ready to go to listen to him. They heard him secondhand. They wanted to know everything about him because the people who were going to him were changing so miraculously. He was one of the highest categories of consciousnesses. The same category as Gautam Buddha or Lao Tzu or Mahavira.You reminded me of him by saying, “You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet.” Knowing that I know nothing, if you still put your questions at my feet, you are sure to find the answer. It won’t come from me, it will arise within your own being, out of your humbleness. Just because you have put your questions at my feet shows immense trust, an innocence. And your trust will not go unfulfilled.“You are just silence and yet I can only sing your song.” It is true. I am just silence, but I am not a dead silence, I am not the silence of a cemetery. I am the silence of the mountains, the silence of the deep forests. My silence and my song are not different. My silence is a song; it has a music of its own. It has a dance too of its own. So you are right, Sarjano.“You have no name and yet I’m helpless in crying your name.” Knowing that I have no name, if you cry my name in your helplessness you will be helped, because you are not calling me in ignorance, just believing in my name. You know perfectly well that I don’t have any name. But one has to address some name – it is arbitrary. Namelessness is the reality but you cannot point a finger towards nothingness, towards silence; you cannot pinpoint. Still it is our human weakness, we have to use names.Silence has no name but we have called it silence. Existence has no name but we have called it existence. Enlightenment has no name but we have given it a name. It is our human weakness and frailty. But if we are aware of the fact that we are calling the nameless, then there is no problem, any name will do.I told you Mohammedans have one hundred names for God. I must remind you that in fact they have only ninety-nine names. One name they have left as nameless. That is the real name. Unfortunately the language is incapable, but they have done well. They say, “God has one hundred names,” and then they give the list. The list has only ninety-nine. I have asked many Mohammedan scholars, “How do you explain this? Is there some mistake, some error? Either the man counted wrongly or he has forgotten one name.” And not a single Mohammedan scholar could give me the right explanation because learning is very poor.And when I said to them, “I have my own experience. I am not a Mohammedan, but I can give you the answer: The reality is the man has done it deliberately. Whoever has written these ninety-nine names knows perfectly well that one name is missing. But that is the true name which cannot be pronounced; hence he has left it. The number one hundred is given, but the name is not written. So the man was neither counting wrongly nor has he forgotten it.”When Jews write God they never use the O in the spelling. They use G-D, because the real essence, the very center is not capable to be pronounced. They have found a beautiful way; they leave out the O. And in a sense the English O is also exactly the same as the English zero. You can take it in both the senses, that God’s real name can only be zero, nothingness, what Gautam Buddha called shunya, zero; he has exactly called it zero.It is perfectly right if you know that I don’t have any name and still you call my name in your helplessness; you are not committing any wrong.“And yet I’m helpless in crying your name. You tell us every day the inexpressible cannot be said, and yet I can’t help…” Nobody can help. The inexpressible cannot be said, but yet every effort has to be made to say it, knowing perfectly well every effort is going to fail, but just making the effort is significant. Whether it succeeds or fails, that is secondary. You make the effort knowing that it is inexpressible, yet you tried. You tried and you gave ninety-nine names, but finally you accepted your defeat that no name can be given.But a number can be given at least: the number one hundred. It is beautiful that the man gave the number at least. Just as the English O in God can also be interpreted, in fact should be interpreted, as zero which is God’s name. And that has been dropped because it is not possible for human lips to utter it. The number one hundred has also tremendous meaning. One meaning is that the inexpressible is perfect; one hundred is a perfect number. There have been different mystical ways but all have failed. But that failure is not something to be taken in sadness. That failure also shows that although we have not been able to express his name, we have caught hold of the nameless. We will not be able to count him but we have counted everything and only he remains uncounted; that is a way of counting.“And yet I can’t help but try again and again. You know my gratitude and yet I cannot resist to touch your feet and whisper: Thank you, Osho.”It is true for every seeker past, present, future, that nobody can show gratitude to existence but still one has to say something. Not that that saying expresses the real experience of gratitude, but at least symbolically it gives you a certain satisfaction. You cannot express it in its totality, but you can give it a symbolic name.In fact what do we know, even about small things? You call a roseflower red, but what do you know about red? If it was called yellow what difference would it make?One of the great philosophers of the contemporary world, G.E. Moore, has asked the question, “What do you mean by yellow?” And all that you can do is take him to yellow flowers, marigolds, and show him that this is yellow. And he said, “That’s what I am trying to tell you. Even a small and mundane ordinary thing like yellow is inexpressible; it can only be shown. And you ask, ‘What is good? What is beauty? What is God? What is consciousness?’”You don’t understand that these things also can only be indicated. They can be shown. I can take your hand in my hand and show you the path. I can give you the direction where you will find consciousness. But I cannot express it; I cannot give you any explanation right now without your own experience. And if you have experience you don’t need any explanation.Lastly you are saying, “Even more today, because you free me from saying no to you. But now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?”There is no question, no problem at all. You can say yes to me, and you can say no to me with the same love, with the same trust, and I will understand your love. I don’t care about your words. I will know your heart and I will know the depths of your being.Yes and no are just trivia.You have made people serious, and I hate seriousness; hence this joke…The psychiatrist had been working with the patient, a sex maniac, for many months. Finally, things had reached a point where the doctor thought that only hypnosis may help the unfortunate patient. The doctor swung a pendulum in front of the man’s face and said, as the hypnotists do, “I want you to imagine that this is a big old clock pendulum, ticking away, and soon you will be asleep. Ding-dong sleep. Ding-dong sleep.”The patient lay still for a moment and then jumped up, shouting excitedly, “Doctor, it works! It works! My ding-dong is asleep!”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You often talk to us about grace.It seems to be such a beautiful word but my understanding of its meaning feels limited. I know that it is something you have.Could you speak some more about it?Grace is one of the great mysteries of life. It is not something physical, not psychological but something spiritual. It is not within your power to create it. Any created grace will be false, phony.Grace comes as a flowering of your being.The moment your meditation reaches to the deepest core, to the very center of the cyclone, a tremendous silence, peace and blissfulness arise within you. Grace is the total effect of all these qualities: silence, peace, love, compassion, blissfulness, ecstasy. When these things arise in you, their flame, their fire starts radiating from your physical body. They are so much they start overflowing. That overflowing of your inner ecstasy is what can be defined as grace.So it is possible a man or a woman may not be beautiful physically, but when grace arises their physical beauty or their physical absence of beauty is completely changed. Whatever their physique is, is overwhelmed by something inner which is far more powerful.It is just like a lamp: the flame is inside; what you see outside the glass of the lamp is the radiation. The glass may be beautiful; the glass may not be very beautiful. The glass may be made of crystal; the glass may be made in India. Once the inner flame is lit you don’t see the glass, you see the light. When the inner flame is not lit you will see the glass because there is nothing else to see. Then you will differentiate between a beautiful man and an ugly man, a beautiful woman or a homely woman. Just to avoid the word ugly they have found a beautiful word, homely.But these distinctions remain only if the inner light is still dormant. Once the inner light comes radiating through the body, you don’t see the body, you see a beautiful radiance, a beautiful aura surrounding the person. That is grace.Grace transforms your physical body completely, because nobody can see now exactly what your physical body is. The grace is so stunning, every gesture becomes so beautiful. Your eyes radiate a totally new silence. They open to such great depths that they become almost unfathomable. Your words are not just language, something more is added to them. A fragrance, a beauty, a music, even your prose sounds like poetry. Ordinary words start having an extraordinary effect because your inner experience gives them authority.Before, they were empty, just used cartridges, they had nothing in them. Now they are still the same words; the container is the same, but the content is a new addition to it. Now the content radiates through the words, and you can see it in many ways.Gautam Buddha was born on the boundary line of India and Nepal. Now Nepalese are not known for much beauty. They are part of the Mongolian race. Their size is small, their faces don’t show the beauty that you will find in Kashmir. But Gautam Buddha’s statues are in a way not factual.I don’t believe that such a beautiful man was born on the border of India and Nepal. I have been over the whole territory of Nepal and I have never come across anything resembling this beauty. Perhaps Gautam Buddha was also just an ordinary Nepalese, but why have the statues been made so beautiful? The artists, the sculptors were not seeing only the physical frame of Gautam Buddha, they were also seeing a tremendously powerful aura around him that was making him so beautiful. And it would have been wrong to make his statues as he would have looked before enlightenment. So those statues are all made after his enlightenment.Almost the same has happened with Jesus. There has been an inscription found in the rocks near Galilee that describes Jesus Christ as an ugly man, extraordinarily ugly. If you had seen him he was repulsive. His height in that inscription is only four feet five inches and on top of it all, he is described as a hunchback. Now you cannot call such a man beautiful. But all the statues and the descriptions by the disciples in the gospels do not mention that he was a pygmy, four feet five inches high, that he was ugly and repulsive, that he was a hunchback. They describe him as poetically, as aesthetically as possible.And I am absolutely certain that they are not making it up. It is not their desire to present Jesus Christ their master to the world as beautiful. They have seen his beauty, but that beauty is not the ordinary beauty; that beauty is of grace.From the other side also you can see that you can sometimes find very beautiful people, physically – if you look they are tremendously beautiful – but if you are living close enough to them you will find their ugliness starts coming out of their physical structure. Their physical structure may be like Cleopatra, but Cleopatra to me was not a beautiful woman. She may have had the form of a beautiful body but her intentions and her state of consciousness were very ugly. She cannot have any grace; she was selling her body to anybody, just to remain the queen of Egypt. She was not using the army to fight, she was using her own body. And great generals like Anthony were caught into her trap. She was using her beauty for ugly ends. She could not have grace.So it is possible that a man or a woman may be physically beautiful, but if his inner being is full of darkness that darkness will show. There is no way for her to cover that darkness by any kind of makeup. In ordinary photographs she will look beautiful. But in Russia one scientist photographer, Kirlian, has developed very sensitive films that also take the photograph of your aura. They not only take your physical frame, but the light that surrounds you, that surrounds every living being, even the trees.Even the leaves have an aura of their own. And that aura makes such a difference. If a man has grace he will have a tremendously beautiful aura, so stunning to the eyes that you will forget about his physical body whether it was beautiful or not.Christians have not been able to explain the inscription and the discrepancy with the gospels because they don’t seem to understand the law of grace. Kirlian is the first man as far as science is concerned who has changed the whole approach. He takes photographs of the aura; his photographs are not only of you, but the subtle light that is radiating from you. There are people who have almost no aura. Their bodies may be beautiful but their personalities will be ugly. Their intentions and ambitions and their desires will be of a very low character.Kirlian has photographed people – simple people, innocent people, gardeners, farmers, fishermen – with no desire to become the president of a country, no desire to become a prime minister, not even in dreams. It is enough for them if they can survive. They have nothing, but still in the evening they will play on their flutes, they will dance, they will sing. They have beautiful auras in the photographs of Kirlian. He has opened doors of a new dimension which has not been much taken care of because it is of no use for warmongers.As your death approaches your aura starts shrinking. It means your life is gathering itself at the center from where it can leave condensed – the way you close your shop.He has been puzzled by many things. For example: you have five fingers on the hand and even if one finger is cut off in an accident, in a Kirlian photograph there are still five fingers. The one that is no longer there still shows its aura; the aura is still there even though the physical part is gone. There will be a difference, because the physical fingers which are still there will show a substance in the middle of the aura. But that one finger which is missing will show simply a photograph of the aura; there will be no inner substance. It is nonsubstantial, but still the aura is there.Working deeply on it, he has given such a great contribution to medical science, but nobody seems to use it. No government is interested in life; all governments are in the service of death. Seventy-five percent of national incomes are wasted on the armies and arms. People are living only on twenty-five percent of all income.Just the other day I was reading a calculation of a scientist who says this is the highest peak of production in the world ever. We can feed more people than there are on the earth. There is no need for anybody to die through starvation. Science has provided every possible technology, but no politician, no political party is interested in it; no government is interested in it. Their interest seems to be very insane.If it was in my power, I would put all the presidents and all the prime ministers into madhouses. That is the right place where they belong. They are sick people; in fact, only a sick psychology can be ambitious. A healthy psychology is not ambitious – you are happy as you are, so there is no need for you to become a president of the country. Then will you be happy? No president is happy, because happiness has nothing to do with your post, with your money, with your power. It has something to do with your inner change, inner transformation.Kirlian has found that six months before a person is going to die his aura starts shrinking. If care is taken, that man can avoid death for a few more years. In the same way he has found that before a disease shows itself on the body, six months before, he can guarantee that his disease is going to come, although medically there is no way to check on him. The only way is when the disease comes. Before the disease happens a different kind of darkness starts to appear on that part. And different diseases have different kinds of colors.If Kirlian becomes part of the authoritative medical world there is no need for people first to fall sick and then to be cured. Their disease can be prevented even before they have become aware of it. Six months is enough time to cure it and to check by Kirlian photography whether it is curing or not.In the East for centuries there has been the idea that six months before your death, you stop seeing the tip of your nose because your eyes start turning upwards. A dead man’s eyes are turned completely upwards; you can only see the white. That’s why in every country, immediately a dead man’s eyes are closed, so nobody else becomes afraid; nobody gets an unnecessarily fearful impression. Because if you meet a man with completely white eyes, no black, you are going to freak out. Perhaps you may get paralyzed then and there and fall down.But it takes six months for the eyes slowly to turn up. Because they are turning up, the person cannot see the tip of his own nose. What Kirlian is saying has confirmed that old proverb to be absolutely right, that the time is six months. And it is not only true about men, but about leaves, about birds, about animals. And on leaves, his work is tremendous.One of my sannyasins sent me a thesis just a few days ago. Listening to me he became interested and he worked a whole doctoral thesis on the auras of the leaves. Before a leaf starts dying you cannot see: it is still green; it is still alive. There is no way to say that it is going to die soon, fall and disappear. But through Kirlian photography other leaves which are going to live show a bigger aura, and the leaf that is going to die within six months’ time starts showing a smaller aura. The day it will die it will not show any aura, as if the whole light of life has become condensed inside. Now it does not radiate. It is ready to leave this form of life for another form.But man can be immensely helped. If Kirlian photography is used on a wider scale there is no need of so many hospitals, so many doctors; there is no need of so much surgery, so many medicines. And this is the problem: It is the establishment which is preventing Kirlian photography from becoming part of medical science because it will make many surgeons, almost all surgeons obsolete, unemployed. It will throw all the doctors on to the streets. All the great manufacturers of medicine will be out of business and bankrupt.These are the problems because the establishment goes on preventing. Nobody thinks of man as such; everybody thinks about his own interest, money, power, investment. There are many inventions lying down in government warehouses. Governments purchase them, and then don’t bring them onto the market, because the people who are supporting those governments with money will be affected.A few days ago I told you about one Japanese scientist who has been in Hiroshima for one year. He risked his life. He allowed himself to be open to the radiation that has still there. But it is lessening every day; the quantity is smaller, but the radiation is there. And his thesis was saying that radiation from atomic explosions or nuclear weapons can be used for creative purposes. The first immense experience was that although he is sixty-five and has been living one year in Hiroshima – ordinarily it was expected that he would die of radiation – now he looks nearabout the age of forty-five. He is sixty-five. He has become younger, he has lost twenty years, and he has become stronger.He has created a few things, and because I have talked about him – he must have heard my tape or seen the video; perhaps I am the only man who has taken an interest in him. He is coming on the tenth of September. And he has sent me nearabout twenty thousand dollars’ worth of inventions that he has made…a belt with uranium inside it which radiates in very minute doses…. And he has been experimenting that if you keep that belt on your body for one year it will give you tremendous energy, youth, long life; many diseases that you would have suffered from, now you will not.He has also sent a small soap-like thing. That too is covered…You have to keep it in your bathtub and within ten to twenty minutes the bathtub starts almost functioning as a hot springwater. It becomes hot, and just resting in that water is enough to keep you healthy and there is no question of you developing any diseases.He has also sent a small bottle of which you have to take just two drops in water. For ten minutes it keeps the water radiating and after ten minutes it changes the whole quality of the water. It becomes sweeter, tasteful and immensely energy-giving.One of the most significant war material producers in America is Lockheed. He has informed me that they wanted the sole copyright of the belt and all that he has invented. Whatsoever price he wants Lockheed was ready to offer him, but he refused. And he did well because Lockheed would have used them for destructive purposes. They would not have come on to the market for ordinary people.With modern science this has become a problem that any invention, any discovery needs so much money and so much mechanism that only governments or very big firms like Lockheed or IBM or people like these can afford to produce them. A scientist alone cannot work; he does not have the right instruments which are too costly.But he was surprised that at least there is one man who supports him. I have proposed that all the scientists of the world should make a world academy of scientists without any question of nation or race. And they will make it their fundamental constitution that they will function only for peace purposes. They will function only to help man live longer, live better, live more peacefully, live more beautifully; live without disease, without old age, live more intelligently. They are not going to work for any government, communist or capitalist, Russian or American, to destroy this planet.The same has been the case with Kirlian. His discovery is now almost fifty years old, but no government, no medical institution has given much attention to him. And he has given you one of the great secrets. He can prevent all kinds of diseases happening.The grace is your aura, and as your inner being becomes more silent your aura becomes more radiant. And just as Kirlian’s photography has been able to catch the aura which your ordinary eyes cannot see, a disciple in love and trust starts seeing things which an ordinary observer, outsider, will not be able to see. He starts seeing a grace; he starts hearing the music. He starts feeling a certain fragrance arising from the man, who is centered in his being, who is no longer a personality but has become innocent individuality; whose connection is no longer with the society but existence itself.His life is of love; he is love. That radiance of love and peace and silence is all part of his grace. That’s why I said the word grace has tremendous meaning because all that meditation gives you can be put together in one word, and that is grace.But don’t create a desire for it; don’t long for it. It comes if your meditation goes deep. You cannot do anything with grace directly, you can only wait. Your waiting has to become so deep, so trustful, that grace will come when the time comes. Just as the trees go on waiting for the spring – when it comes, it comes. They are not running after spring; they are not making any speed. They are not creating any action movement: “Why does spring come only once a year…why not twice, and why does it not remain always?” The whole world is silently waiting. Except man there is no impatience anywhere.Impatience makes you ugly.Impatience is a disturbance in your meditation. Learn to wait. Be patient and trust that existence will give you whatever you are ready for. All that you have to do is to go on deeper in meditation, beyond mind into silence. No thoughts, no emotions, no moods, just a silent watchfulness and waiting for whatever existence finds you ready for.Grace comes, but it comes without a whisper. You suddenly find it. You feel it within. You feel it in your movements; you feel it in your sleep; you feel it in your speech – everywhere you are engulfed. But the only thing that is needed on your part is a deep waitfulness. Meditation will create watchfulness and you have to learn the art of waiting.Philosophical Phyllis said she has learned three discouraging things about men. One, they go to war and kill each other when, if only they would be patient, they would die a natural death. Two, they climb trees and knock down apples when, if only they would be patient, the apples would fall to the ground. Three, they pursue women when, if only they would be patient, women would pursue them.One has to learn the art of waiting and then millions of things will happen to you which never happen to impatient people.A man fell out of a tenth-storey window. He’s lying on the ground with a big crowd around him. A cop walks over and says, “What happened?”The guy says, “I don’t know, I just got here.”You have also just got here. Be a little patient, then you will start experiencing things.In a school in one of Chicago’s poorer districts, a questionnaire was sent home with a girl pupil requesting information regarding the number of brothers and sisters, her father’s occupation, et cetera.The next day she returned with a scrap of paper on which was written the following:There are eighteen children in my family. My father can also do plumbing and carpentry work.Just wait. People are engaged so much. Now think of that man: eighteen children and still he can do plumbing and carpentry work.Give a little time to yourself and in the end you will find that is the only time you have really lived. Even if you can just give one hour out of twenty-four hours to yourself, to your meditation, to your silence – just being, not doing anything, just waiting and learning to wait. In the end of your life you will be surprised that your twenty-three hours have gone to waste. Only that one hour, whatever you have gained in that one hour is still with you and is going with you; even death cannot take it away.Just one hour can give you immense peace, silence, blissfulness, and slowly, slowly the aura of grace will arise around you.Osho,Can you talk a bit more about acceptance?Chintan, I understand your question….Chintan is on the verge of death. The doctors have told him that he cannot survive more than two months, and almost one month has passed. He had inquired of me when the doctors had said he has some canceric growth which was not operable, and was growing fast. Naturally, he was shocked. A young man who has not seen life yet, has not yet lived, just in the middle…naturally he was very shocked.He wrote to me and I told him, “There is no need to be shocked. You are fortunate because you know the exact time when your life will be finished. Others are not so fortunate; they don’t know. Their life may be terminated tomorrow. Because you know exactly that within two months you are going to die, live these two months as intensely and as joyfully and as meditatively as possible. You cannot postpone. Others can postpone because they are not aware when they are going to die. You are in a good situation because you cannot postpone. You have to do everything now.”He understood and he has been very happy, very joyous, meditating, dancing, singing. And his friends have written to me, “We could not believe such a change. His doctors are in wonder; they have never seen anybody taking his death so beautifully, so lightly.”His question needed this context for you to understand, when he says, “Can you talk a bit more about acceptance?”Human languages are very poor. The word acceptance has a hidden reluctance. You may not have looked into the word, but when you say, “accept it,” there is a hidden reluctance, a kind of compulsoriness, because there is nothing else to do. So why make fuss a about it – accept it.This kind of acceptance is not true and authentic. I would say, enjoy it. Unless your acceptance is enjoyment, unless your acceptance is wholehearted – without any reluctance, not out of any compulsion, not out of a particular situation but out of your understanding…Acceptance becomes a beautiful experience if it is at the same time enjoyment. You are not accepting under the pressure of circumstances; you are accepting on your own accord, with joy, with a deep welcome. Then only you understand what acceptance can do to your being. In a single moment it can change you, transform you from an ordinary human being into an awakened human being.But don’t accept reluctantly. That is deceiving yourself because deep down you don’t want to accept. Just after two months you are going to die? And naturally, when somebody said, accept it, what else to do? There is nothing. The doctors are doing the chemotherapy – they are doing everything that is possible. But they know that nothing is going to help; the cancer has gone beyond the limits of their cure.Seeing the situation you can accept it, but there will be a negativity inside you. You are accepting because nothing else can be done. If there was some possibility to try you would not accept it. I don’t call this authentic acceptance. Authentic acceptance has no negative tone in it, no reluctance, no resistance, no compulsiveness. It is not because of the pressure of things and situations and our helplessness. Don’t accept out of helplessness; accept out of your strength.Two months are so much to live. One can live as intensely and totally in one second as people live in their whole life. But their living is very thin, spread all over a long time. That does not mean that they are the fortunate ones, because authentic living needs great intensity and great totality, not a thin layer. A lukewarm survival is not living. But if you know that the next moment you are going to die you will drop everything that you were involved in, and the only priority will be to know yourself.Before death comes at least be aware who you are. You don’t have time to postpone.It happened that one man used to come to a mystic Eknath for many years. He was a devotee but there was a doubt in his mind that was continuously pinching him. And because there were always many disciples he could not ask. So one day he came very early, before sunrise. Eknath was just coming out of the river. He had taken a bath before his morning meditation in the temple. He reached Eknath and said, “Forgive me for disturbing you at this time, but I have been carrying a question my whole life.” And he was a young man, healthy, strong; he said, “And I cannot dissolve it, it continues. It is a disturbance between me and you.”Eknath said, “What is the problem?”He said, “The problem is that I have seen you for many years, but I have never seen you sad. I have never seen you angry, I have never seen you jealous; I have never seen you in any negative state of mind. You are always smiling and always joyous and relaxed as if there is no worry in the world, no problem in the world. You don’t seem to be concerned even about death. You take it so lightly.“And the problem is that a doubt arises in me whether you are an actor or you are really enlightened? One can manage to act smiling, always showing joyousness, taking everything lightly, never seriously. Is it just a discipline? Have you trained yourself for it? Or is it something that has happened to you – it is not your doing but a natural, spontaneous understanding that has arisen out of your meditations? That question has been bothering me, because one man can manage to pretend. You see actors in films and you know they are the most miserable lot in the world, but in the film they look so joyous, so happy, so loving, so peaceful, so courageous. If this is possible to do in a film or in a drama, then why is it not possible to do in real life? You need just a little control not to show your real feelings but always to go on acting.”Eknath said, “Wait a minute. Before I answer your question I should not forget something that I wanted to tell you. I have been forgetting for three days, and it is important; so first I will tell you that thing and then I will answer your question. Just three or four days ago I happened to look at your hand, and I was very shocked. Your lifeline is finished; just such a small fraction has remained so that you may be able to live seven days at the most. On the seventh day as the sun will be setting you will be dying. This I have been forgetting and this too is as important as your question. Now we can discuss your question.”The man stood up. He said, “I don’t have any question and I don’t have any time to discuss. If death is coming within seven days why should I worry whether you are real or unreal. That is your business; it is not my problem.”The man started going down the steps. There were many steps to the temple, and Eknath watched him. Just five minutes ago he had come so strong, so young, and now he was going just like an old man, wobbling, taking the support of the railing that he had never taken before, afraid to fall. And when he reached home he simply went to bed directly, even though it was not the time, it was morning – he had just got up from the bed. He collected the whole family and told them what Eknath had said.It was inconceivable that Eknath will lie; there is no point in lying. So there was crying and weeping, and that man stopped eating. What is the point now when you are not going to live?But a strange thing started happening as he became settled with the idea that death is coming and nothing can be done. “Why not use this time for the meditation that I have been postponing for many years? Eknath goes on saying every day to meditate, put your energy into discovering yourself, and I have been postponing it, because what is the hurry? I am a young man and these things, meditation and knowing yourself belong to the old people when they have nothing else to do. Anyway they are out of work, retired. That is the right time to meditate and find out who you are. Right now you have to find out many other things – money, power, prestige, respectability. This is not the time to waste in finding yourself. That you can do at any moment when you will not be of any use in life, and life will reject you by retiring you.”It is strange that everywhere when people are retired, their colleagues gather together just to say good-bye to them, and they always give them a pocket watch. That I cannot believe…what is the idea? But now I know. They give them a pocket watch as, “Not much time is left to remind you, but now, do the essential things that you have been postponing.”The man lay down, started watching his mind for the first time and became utterly silent within two or three days. But the whole family and other relatives and friends from far away arrived. They were even more disturbed. Death is coming; that is a shock. And what has happened to this man? He does not open his eyes; he does not eat; he does not take any interest. This was a time to meet the family, the friends, because who knows when you will ever meet these people again; there is not much chance.But he is not interested in anything. He did not even allow them to call a physician. By the fourth day they could not believe that he was looking so beautiful, so graceful, so silent. His whole bedroom almost had the same quality which exists around a man of silence or which exists in a living temple, where not only statues are, but some living master is also present.People came with great words prepared, dialogues which one needs to say, because it is very embarrassing to come to a man who is going to die. What to say to him? You cannot talk about movies, you cannot talk about politics, you cannot talk about football games, you cannot talk about boxing. What is there to talk about? It is very embarrassing if somebody is dying and you have to leave. Then one prepares a dialogue to console him, “Don’t be worried; everybody dies. It is not that it is happening only to you. And then there is God: you have been a virtuous man, and your heaven is absolutely guaranteed.”One has to prepare things like that because now the worldly things that one gossips with each other are of no point. But as they entered, even this dialogue was not possible, the man was so silent. On the seventh day he opened his eyes and asked his family, “How much time is left for the sun to set?”Reading this story I remember why that pocket watch is given to people: so they don’t even need to ask anybody else; just look at your pocket watch and be finished. Never present a pocket watch to anybody, because that simply means that you have taken it for granted that this man is gone. The pocket watch is the last present.And the people said, “The sun is just about to set within a few minutes.” And he was showing such grace, such joy, such blissfulness, that the family could not believe the metamorphosis that these seven days have been. They all knew he was an ordinary man. The wife knew, the father knew, the brothers knew that he had nothing special, but in seven days he has gone far beyond them.Exactly as the sun was setting they all started crying and weeping. And he was saying to them, “Be quiet. There is nothing to worry about.”At that moment Eknath arrived. The whole family touched his feet and told him, “Save him. Can you do anything?”Eknath said, “With death there is no possibility. Just let me see him.”So they all respectfully moved and gave way to Eknath. The man was sitting silently with closed eyes, looking almost like a marble statue of Gautam Buddha…in just seven days, and he was an ordinary person. Eknath called his name and said, “I have come to see you and to tell you that it was only a device. You are not going to die. You have a lifeline that is very long. You will live almost as much as you have lived. You have lived only half the lifeline, so there are many years to live. This was a way to answer your question.”The man said, “My God. I never thought that this is a way to answer my question.”Eknath said, “There was no other way. Whatever I would have said to you, you would have remained with doubts. A man who can pretend for years to be happy can also lie that he is enlightened. I wanted to give you some experience of it, that it is not acting. And these seven days have given you the experience. Have you received the answer or not?”The man stood up, jumped out of the bed – for seven days he had not left the bed at all – touched the feet of Eknath and said, “Your compassion is great. Unless your compassion was so great, you would not have lied. But you have answered my question. Now there is no doubt at all. And I cannot see that any doubt in the future is possible. I have known the space in which you are living.”Eknath said, “It does not matter whether you are going to die after seven days or seventy years. Once you become aware that you are going to die, it does not matter when.”The awareness of death makes you live life as totally, as joyously as possible. Death is not your enemy. In fact, it is an invitation for you to live intensely, totally, to squeeze every drop of juice from every moment. Death is a tremendous challenge and invitation. Without death there would not have been any Gautam Buddha, any Jesus, any Lao Tzu, any Tilopa. There would not have been any Kabir, any Raidas, any Mansoor, any Sarmad.It is death and its awareness that makes you live as totally, as deeply, as consciously as possible. Before death knocks on your doors you should be able to see the eternal life within you. Then there is no death; death is a fiction. It is a reality only to those who have not lived, not lived in its completeness, in its entirety.For those who have lived there is no death.It is only a change – just changing the house.I am reminded…One night a thief entered into Mulla Nasruddin’s house, and Mulla Nasruddin was trying to sleep. He had only one blanket, so half was used as a bed and half to cover himself. But sleep was not coming because the mosquitoes were so interested in keeping him awake. They are great teachers who are continuously making an effort that you should not fall asleep. Their whole teaching is awareness. I always thought that these mosquitoes seem to be old masters trying their old teaching. Now they cannot speak, but they can manage to keep you awake.So Mulla was turning and tossing, and then suddenly, he saw a thief entering. It was a dark night and the door was open. The thief was amazed. He hardly figured out that some man is sleeping; the house seems to be completely empty and all doors are open – a great opportunity. So he entered inside the house and went on going to the innermost room, not being aware that he is being followed by Mulla Nasruddin.Suddenly Mulla stumbled on something so the thief became aware. Mulla said, “Don’t be worried. I have been living in this house for thirty years; and I have not found anything up to now. But perhaps with your expertise…we can both try to find something. Fifty-fifty?”The thief could not believe it. What kind of man is this? It is his own house. The thief became a little afraid; this man seems to be either mad or very dangerous. And Mulla said, “Don’t be worried. If you are not agreeing on fifty-fifty, you can have sixty, I can have forty – or whatever you want. I have wasted thirty years searching and searching and I have not found anything. So whatever you want me to give, even five percent commission will do. You try. And I have brought a candle.”He lit the candle and he said, “Because it is dark it will be difficult for you. So I will keep the candle and you search.”The thief said, “I have also been stealing for the same time, thirty years, but I have never met a man like you. You amaze me.”But there was nothing at all, so they went around the whole house. They could not find anything. Finally the thief said, “You are right, there is nothing to find.”As he was going out – he had been into other houses before and he had left all the things that he has stolen from other houses outside the house – Mulla went with him, threw his blanket also in the pile. The thief said, “What are you doing?”He said, “Nothing. I am coming with you, just changing houses.”The man said, “This is an unnecessary trouble and this man seems to be a little crazy.” He said, “You can take your blanket.”He said, “No. Either fifty-fifty…”But he said, “I have stolen these things from other houses.”He said, “That does not matter…otherwise the police station. Fifty-fifty? This is my only business. I keep my house open and the thieves come; they do the business.”The man said, “You seem to be the greatest thief in the world. You never go out; thieves come by themselves.”He said, “It has been happening. But if you want I am prepared to come with you, because what is there in this house?”The man became so afraid of Mulla because he could not put him into any category. He said, “You can keep everything, just leave me…And I will never come back.”Mulla said, “As you wish, but I was always thinking of changing my house. You will also get the blanket and the whole treasure that you have stolen from other houses, and me who can advise you. You are just amateur. You may have been stealing for thirty years, but you don’t know much. I don’t go anywhere and thieves come by themselves and fifty-fifty, sometimes even more, sometimes a hundred percent. Because I am always happy to change the house and they are afraid to take me to their house.”The man who knows himself knows death as only changing the house. Acceptance is not the right word, but there is no other word; this is the difficulty.I would say, Chintan, rejoice!Make all these days a celebration.And if you can make all these days a celebration, your death will be found to be a fiction. These days of celebration and meditation and silence and joy and love will create in you the capacity to die consciously. And one who dies consciously knows that death is nothing but changing the house. And it is always for a better house because life always goes upwards; it is an evolutionary process.I was really shocked by the American government particularly, Ronald Reagan’s government. They have prohibited the universities and colleges and schools to teach Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Books on the theory of evolution have been burned or removed from all libraries, because this theory of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. You may not immediately get the difference, but the difference is there.God created everything so there is no question of any evolution. He created monkeys as monkeys, and he created men as men – not that the monkeys have evolved into man; there is no evolution. God has made the world perfect. Evolution is possible only if things are imperfect.This fundamentalist, fascist, fanatical idea of Ronald Reagan has been imposed on the whole of America, and nobody is protesting that it is against the constitution of America. It is against democracy; it is against freedom of expression. The American constitution makes it clear that religion should not interfere with people’s lives, particularly via government powers: the government should be neutral. But this is not neutrality.And to stop the whole of America knowing anything about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution is dangerous, because it means you cannot evolve. You are what you are. It is dangerous. I am not saying whether Charles Darwin is right or wrong; that is not my business. I am saying that the idea of evolution should not be taken away from people’s minds. In fact, they should be made more aware that for thousands of years we are not evolving – we should evolve.And now outside we have got everything. Evolution should take on a different dimension, an inner evolution. But to destroy the whole idea…! Ronald Reagan has done much harm to America, but this is his greatest harm, because this will mean that if the idea of evolution completely disappears from peoples’ minds, then wherever they are, God wants them to be there: in misery, in suffering, in anguish, in angst. But that’s what God wants, and there is no possibility of evolution.I don’t support the particulars of Charles Darwin, but I support the essential fact that evolution has been happening, because we have seen man becoming a Gautam Buddha. I don’t agree that monkeys have become men. And even if they have, it does not bother me; it is perfectly good.My concern is for the future, not for the past. I want man to evolve. It does not matter whether monkeys evolve into men or not, but man can evolve into superman, into new man. But that evolution will happen only through deep meditation, watchfulness, waiting and accepting life with joy, and accepting death with joy, with no reluctance, without any pressure, but from your innermost feeling.Everything that is, is beautiful.It can be more beautiful – there is no limit to evolution. Particularly for consciousness there is no limit; it can go even beyond Gautam Buddha, beyond Bodhidharma, beyond all the great awakened people of the past, because consciousness has no limits. It is as vast as the sky, as the whole universe.Chintan, accept with joy and dance and song.Just a little joke so that you go from here not with serious faces. This temple believes in laughter and I want everybody who comes here to go laughing. Even on the way, when he remembers – a little giggle. In the night, in the middle of the night, then he remembers – a good laugh.A good laugh is the greatest prayer.A little boy on a picnic strays away from his family and suddenly realizes he is lost and night is falling. After running around and shouting for a while he becomes very frightened and kneels down to pray with uplifted hands.“Dear Lord,” he says, “please help me to find my mummy and daddy and I promise I won’t hit my sister anymore.”Just then a bird flies overhead and shits right into his outstretched hands. The boy examines it, looks up to heaven and says, “Lord, don’t give me this shit, I really am lost.”Everybody is really lost. Very few people have reached their home. But your pilgrimage of finding your home should not be serious and sad and heavy; it should be of laughter and song and dance. If you can find your home dancing, laughing, it is true finding. By sadness and seriousness you are bound to find some graveyard, not your home.We need people who are seekers but not serious. That kind of seeking, serious and sad, has not led man anywhere.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When you were responding to Sarjano's question, I heard you say that a disciple can say no to the master if the love is deep enough.I can understand your saying no to us out of your love, but not the other way round.Do you mean that the disciple must have the freedom to say no but in fact would never wish to or need to? From my experience, when I have said no to you I have denied myself and then suffered the consequences.How can there be any situation in which the devotee would say no to the master?Maneesha, the question you have asked raises many questions: questions about love, questions about freedom, questions about the master and disciple and their relationship.Life appears to be very simple but as you go deeper into it, it becomes more and more complex. And the ultimate complexity is that life consists of contradictions. If you understand, those contradictions become complementaries. If you don’t understand those contradictions become opposites.But in the ultimate organic unity there is enough space for both yes and no. It will not be ultimate organic unity if there is only space for yes, if there is space only for light, if there is space only for love, and not their opposites.Our mind looks at things in categories of opposition, but mind is not the ultimate decisive factor. The ultimate decisive factor is a state of no-mind. In a state of no-mind everything is possible. The incomprehensible is also possible; the impossible is also possible.Apparently you are right, that the disciple cannot say no; how can the disciple say no to the master? In what situations? It has been the tradition that no has always been taken as negative. With me, things have a far deeper meaning and significance. No is not necessarily negative and yes is not necessarily positive. You can say yes out of fear, then it is negative. You can say no out of love. You love so much that you are not worried even to say no. The no becomes affirmative; it is no longer negative.As far as I am concerned, I am not part of any old category of masters. I am a new beginning in the sense that the old master demanded surrender. I don’t demand anything from you, because to me surrender is a subtle spiritual slavery. Of course, with a master the surrender feels beautiful but even if slavery is decorated with flowers I cannot be deceived by it.I want my people to be individuals living in freedom. If they love me it is out of their freedom, not out of fear, not out of desire, not out of some longing for achievement. The old disciple was surrendering himself because he wanted to be enlightened. The master was being used as a means. I don’t allow myself to be used as a means. That is ugly.The old master was using the disciples for his own egoistic ends. The masters in the past used to brag about how many disciples they had. The number of the disciples decided the greatness of the master. The master was also dependent in a certain sense on the disciples. It is something to be understood that you cannot make anybody dependent without yourself becoming dependent too. And the same is true if you are independent, you would love to make everybody independent. Because independent individuality has such beauty and grace, such joy, such freedom to fly in the sky with no boundaries and no chains, with no conditions, no expectations, that a master would love his disciples to be ultimately free, free even of himself.Zarathustra has said to his disciples: “Beware of me.” That small statement contains great meaning, because a disciple can renounce everything to be one with the master, to come closer and closer to the master; he can even sacrifice himself. But in this sacrificing he will enjoy a certain unburdening, because now he is no longer responsible. The whole responsibility is on the shoulders of the master. The disciple has become a sheep and the master has become the shepherd. Now the shepherd will take care.One can think in this way that the sheep has attained a certain freedom – freedom from responsibility. But becoming a sheep, even if you become free, your freedom has no meaning. It is fear; it is irresponsibility. In a deeper sense you have lost yourself to gain something. It is not out of love that you have surrendered to the master; out of love there is no surrender, there is no need.Love is a far bigger phenomenon than any surrender. Surrender is of the mind and surrender is an effort. Love is of the heart and it is not an effort. You suddenly find yourself in love with someone. Even if you try to be in love with someone you cannot succeed. No effort is going to be successful. Love comes just like the spring comes, and when love comes it brings many flowers.There have been two kinds of masters. The majority of the masters in the past demanded surrender, total surrender. It was a kind of spiritual slavery. The master was enjoying a great ego, and the disciple was enjoying a great unburdening from all responsibilities. Now the master is going to save him. Now the master is his salvation, liberation, enlightenment. All that he could do he has surrendered himself. He has become an absolute yes.To me this kind of relationship was not healthy, something was basically wrong. Because of this situation in the past one man stands separate from the whole crowd of masters, and that is J. Krishnamurti. He denied he was a master and he refused to accept anybody as a disciple; this was another extreme. The other masters were demanding absolute surrender. J. Krishnamurti has lived with masters who have asked absolute surrender from him, and as he became more and more mature he saw the whole game: the master enjoys the ego, the disciple enjoys irresponsibility. But neither the master is a true master nor the disciple is a true disciple; both are exploiting each other.There is no question of love when there is exploitation. Krishnamurti refused to be master of anyone and he refused to allow anyone to think that he is a disciple. He has taken a great step but he has moved to the very extreme. And always remember: if one extreme is wrong the other extreme cannot be right. The right is always somewhere exactly in the middle, the golden mean. Only in the middle is there balance, and only in the middle, exactly in the middle, is there transcendence of the polarities, of the opposites.My position is exactly in the middle. I don’t ask any surrender from you; hence, I am not on the old track. I don’t deny you the beauty of being a disciple. I don’t insult you; I don’t reject you. I accept your love, but I will not accept your surrender. In accepting your love and your disciplehood I am your master, but there is no relationship of surrender.I am not here to erase your individuality.I am here just to erase your ego.That does not need any surrender, it needs a deep meditative understanding on your part.I can give you love, I can share my own understanding with you, but there is no condition attached to it. My joy will be to see you as a growing individual in total freedom. And in total freedom, yes is as much possible as no.I can understand Maneesha’s problem, that no is very difficult, more difficult to a master who does not ask surrender. No becomes more difficult because the master allows it. If the master does not allow no, he is repressing something in you, and his not allowing no does not destroy the possibility of no in you. On the contrary, the master himself is afraid that if you are not prevented, you can say no.The yes from you is meaningless if you are not free to say no. Your yes has meaning only because you are absolutely free to say no. It does not mean that you have to say no. It does not mean that there will be a situation where you have to say no. In fact it will become more and more impossible for you to say no.To say no is easy when you are prevented, prohibited. Then, it becomes a question of your individuality; it becomes a question of your spiritual freedom. And certainly anybody who has any dignity is bound to find situations where he would like to say no. If he does not say it he is behaving as a hypocrite. He is not saying no because he is afraid to lose the love of the master and to lose the possibility of getting higher states of consciousness.But this is business, this is cunningness. And there should not exist any business or any cunningness between the master and the disciple.Krishnamurti has moved to the very extreme: no master, no disciple. But that created an absurd situation, for his whole life, and he lived long, ninety years. He started being a teacher at the age of fifteen, and he wrote his first book At The Feet Of The Master at the age of fifteen. It was so early that later on he could not even remember whether he had written it or not. It appeared as if in a dream, far away, just an echo.From the age of fifteen to the age of ninety, almost seventy-five years continuously – no master has been teaching so long. Gautam Buddha was teaching for only forty-two years; so was Mahavira. Jesus taught for only three years, because at the age of thirty-three he was crucified; he started his teaching career at the age of thirty. Perhaps Krishnamurti is the only person who has been a teacher for seventy-five years.But the question is that his situation is very absurd. If he does not accept himself to be master and he does not accept you as disciples, then what is he doing for seventy-five years? Running around and around all over the world what is he doing…to whom he is talking?The word disciple does not mean anything else other than a learner; that is its original meaning. If he is not talking to people who are ready to learn, then what is the point of talking? And if Krishnamurti is not a master, from where does he get the authority to talk, to say anything to anybody? He goes on denying that he is a master, and everybody knows he is a master. And he goes on saying, “You are not the disciples,” and everybody who listens to him, learns from him, feels a certain disciplehood.Both are denying actualities. Out of fear that they may not get trapped into the past relationship of master and disciple. This whole seventy-five years of J. Krishnamurti are full of fear, the fear of the past heritage, centuries of master and disciple relationship, because it has become a spiritual slavery. The disciple could not say no. Rather than allowing the disciple to say no he simple denied that there is a disciple. It is not a great revolution; it is just a reaction, moving from one extreme wrong situation to another wrong situation, another extreme.I am standing exactly in the middle. I can see both the extremes, the right and the left. And I can see that both are half, incomplete. Both are not going to help anybody to attain to spiritual freedom. The first because it insists on surrendering, and the second because it simply denies that you are a disciple. And Krishnamurti goes on teaching for seventy-five years continuously, and becomes angry when the listeners don’t listen rightly.You will be surprised to know that Krishnamurti used to become very angry at times when he saw somebody listening to him for fifty years and still he has not understood anything. He would just look at the people and beat his head – it was absolutely natural. I will not say that it was unnatural, but he created the situation. In the very first place he denied disciplehood, and then he wants them to understand him.I accept the status of a master and the status of a disciple. There is nothing wrong in it if the master and disciple are not exploiting each other. If the disciple is not using the master as a means to enlightenment, liberation, and the master is not using the disciple for his own aggrandizement, for his own ego-fulfillment. I want disciples and masters to stand side by side in deep love, with no question of any surrender, with no expectation from the master that you have always to say yes.My own experience is the more you are prohibited from doing something the more there is a desire to do it. Prohibition is a kind of provocation.I don’t prohibit you.It does not disturb me or my individuality if you say no. On this point Maneesha is right, that whenever she has said no, she has suffered the consequences. But that is up to you – not my expectation. It is going to be your understanding that when you say no, you have taken yourself as if you are wiser; you will suffer the consequences.I have not said to Sarjano, “You will not suffer the consequences of your no.” But it will not be from me: not that I will be annoyed, not that I will be irritated, not that I will be angry. It is perfectly okay with me whether you say yes or no. But for yourself there is going to be a difference. Yes means you are listening and following what I am saying. No means you are deciding for yourselves. As far as I am concerned you are absolutely free to decide for yourself, but then you have to be ready for the consequences also.Freedom brings responsibility.That’s the meaning I continuously repeat, and I know you don’t understand. Everybody likes freedom and nobody likes responsibility, but they come in the same package; you cannot separate them. I give you freedom and I give you responsibility. You cannot complain about me, because you are always free to say no. You cannot say that I have inhibited you, because I have not asked that you say yes whether you want or not. You cannot blame me.This is absolutely true, that whenever you will say yes, you will find a peace, a silence. And whenever you will say no, you will find a deep burden on your heart, almost a wound. But you are creating that wound. And I will not prevent you, because I know that preventing provokes people to do the same thing that is being prevented.A famous Tibetan story…A man was serving an old master continuously, bringing food, bringing water from the well, massaging his feet. And the old man used to say, “Why are you wasting your time?” because the old man understood perfectly that there must be some desire.Finally, one day the man said, “I am serving you because I want to learn some miracle, just one miracle.”The old man said, “But I don’t know any miracle. You have unnecessarily wasted your time. You should find somebody else who knows about miracles.”But the man said, “I have been told that you always deny that you know any miracles, and you go on continuously performing miracles. I have been told, ‘Don’t listen. Go on serving him. One day he will tell you some secret, but only when he finds you are ripe.’ Perhaps I am not ripe yet.”After a few days the old man saw that this man is still unnecessarily working. “Somebody has put the idea in his mind that I perform miracles. Perhaps miracles happen, but they happen on their own. I am not the performer.”With people of great consciousness things happen just on their own. Just as when the sun rises birds sing; it is not that the sun is performing a miracle. Flowers open their petals, not that the sun is performing a miracle, just the presence of the sun and things start happening. The presence of a very conscious awakened man is enough for many flowers to open, for many birds to sing.The old man said, “It seems you will not leave me unless I tell you the secret.”The man said, “That’s true.”So he said, “I will tell you the secret. I wrote a small mantra, the Tibetan mantra om mani padme hum.”Om means the eternal sound of existence. Diamond in the lotus, mani padme hum: mani means diamond, padme means lotus. It means the eternal sound and the diamond in the lotus. It expresses the meaning of enlightenment: the eternal music all around, the beauty of the lotus, and inside the lotus the light of a diamond. In a small mantra they have condensed the whole experience of enlightenment.So the old man said, “Take this mantra and repeat it five times, just five times. First take a bath, change your clothes to fresh clothes, close your door, sit alone and repeat the mantra five times. Then you will be able to do any miracle you want to do.”The man rushed, he did not even show his gratitude or even say just a Thank You. He simply rushed down the steps of the temple. When he was just in the middle the old man shouted, “Wait, I have forgotten one thing. While you are repeating the mantra remember one thing: don’t think of any monkey.”The man said, “Why should I think of a monkey? I have never thought of it in my whole life!”The old man said, “That’s okay, just remember that. No monkey allowed at all. If the monkey comes in you have to repeat the mantra five times again.”The man said, “But why should the monkey come?”The old man said, “I don’t know. I have told you the secret. This is the secret my master has told me.”But he could not even get down the steps before he started thinking about monkeys. He said, “My God, I have not started the mantra yet and monkeys are coming.” He will close his eyes and there were monkeys and monkeys, giggling, making faces at him. He said, “It is a strange mantra. I have not started yet.”He reached home crowded with monkeys. Wherever he will look, he could see only a monkey. He went inside, took a bath, but it was no use. Even in the bathroom, inside the bathroom with the door closed, monkeys were sitting all around. He said, “That old man is such an idiot. If this monkey was the trouble he should not have mentioned it. Elephants are not coming, camels are not coming, lions are not coming; nobody is coming except the monkey.”Then he sat in a lotus posture with closed eyes but it was useless. The monkeys were nudging him; the monkeys were sitting; it was a congregation of monkeys all around. He was very worried. His wife passed, and he looked and sometimes it looked as if she is a monkey and sometimes she looked… “No, no, she is my wife.” His father passed. And sometimes he looked like an old monkey, and sometimes he looked like the father. The man said, “I’m going mad.”Five times was too much. Even to complete the mantra om mani padme hum, just those four words, and there were so many monkeys. The whole night he tried hard. He took a bath many times. He thought perhaps the clothes are not as fresh as they should be, so in the middle of the night, in the cold winter, he stood naked. Now there was no question of dirty clothes or anything. But the monkeys were sitting in lotus posture all around. He started shouting at them and they laughed.By the morning he was almost mad. He said, “That old man is tricky. For years I served him. Finally he gave me the secret and managed to destroy the secret by keeping the monkey with it.”He went back to the old man, returned the mantra and he said, “Keep it with you because those monkeys…”The old man said, “You said they never come to you.”He said, “I have not dreamt or seen or even thought about a single monkey in my whole life. There are millions of animals I have not thought about; there is no need. If you had not said the word I would have been able to perform miracles but now it is impossible.”The master said, “What can I do? That monkey comes with the mantra. Without the monkey the mantra is useless. Unless you can avoid the monkeys you cannot perform miracles.”He said, “I have forgotten all miracles. I just pray that you take your mantra and relieve me of the monkeys, because I am afraid that the mantra is gone but the monkeys may not go. And I have small children and a wife and an old father. I have to take care of them. I cannot go on fighting with these monkeys the whole day and night.”The old man said, “Once you have left the mantra with me they will not come. They are very religious people.”The man went. And he was surprised, he looked all around, no monkey. When he reached home, the wife looked like the wife, the father looked like the father and the children looked like the children. He said, “It is strange.” He took a bath, the bathroom was empty. The mantra was short. He said, “Although I have returned his written mantra, I have been repeating it the whole night, so I have remembered it. There is no harm…now I can repeat it.”The moment he started one monkey appeared just as he said Om. And a few monkeys were around saying Om. He dropped the whole idea. He said, “I should go to my shop and look at my business. This idea of performing miracles is not for me.”If I say to you, “Never say no to me,” you will find many, many times the desire to say no; hence I give you absolute freedom. It is up to you to say yes or to say no. You are to decide your own destiny. I can only help you, suggest to you, show you the way. But you can say, “I don’t want to go” – I cannot force you. You can accept my understanding. You can reject it, and in your rejection I don’t think that there is less love. That’s why I said if you deeply love me you will not be worried by saying no. But I have not mentioned anything that will happen to you.By saying no you are relieving me from responsibility. You are taking the responsibility into your own hands. Now if things go wrong you cannot complain about me. When you say yes and things go right I cannot brag about it. The yes is yours; the no is yours; the consequence will be yours.I love you enough – hence I give you total freedom. If you love yourself enough, you will be aware what no can do to you and what yes can do to you.I teach you awareness and then leave you. A man of awareness will not try to go through the walls, he will find the door. A man of awareness will pick up roses and will avoid the thorns.I give you freedom, and in giving you freedom I feel absolutely free. I don’t have any burden of solving, saving, liberating humanity. I don’t have any burden at all. I am absolutely weightless. I am not a savior, not a messiah, not a messenger.I have chosen a third category. Just as Krishnamurti is alone on the extreme left, I am alone in the middle. And Krishnamurti is reacting against the tradition. I am not reacting, I am simply acting out of understanding. I can see where the old pattern went wrong. I will not do just the opposite because just the opposite will also go wrong. I am doing something exactly in the middle.So I don’t deny your discipleship. I don’t deny it because I respect you. I love you. I cannot say I am not a master because I know, I have experienced, I can share it with you. Then it is up to you to say yes or no.Maneesha is right. So as a footnote remember her, that no will bring its own consequences. It is not that I will punish you, your no will punish you itself. Yes will bring its own rewards. It is not that I will reward you; yes brings its own rewards.Between me and you there is no relationship other than of love. But it is good that Maneesha has raised the question; otherwise, there was a possibility that many may have misunderstood.The concerned doctor is trying to convince the patient that he is overweight. “Now just step on the scales,” says the doctor. “There…you see? Now look at this chart and compare your weight with the average weight for your height. You are way overweight.”“No, I am not,” says the patient. “I am just six inches too short.”It is a very difficult world – misunderstanding is possible everywhere.The matronly woman was alone in the house watching her favorite television program when her husband burst through the front door, stalked into the bedroom without saying a word, and began packing his suitcase.“Where are you going?” she demanded.“I resigned from the firm today. I’m sick and tired of you, and I’m going to Australia. I’m told that the young ladies there will gladly pay five dollars a night for the services of a good man, and I intend to live off the earnings from my lovemaking.”He then continued to pack. Suddenly his wife pulled her suitcase from the closet and began packing her own clothing. “And where do you think you are going?” he demanded.“To Australia,” she laughed. “I want to see how you are going to live on ten dollars a month.”Osho,Whenever any emotions get triggered, my attempts at watching usually result in mind trips, unless I do something like run around Buddha Hall a couple of times first.I feel that if I could turn all this energy in, instead of out, great things could happen.While you talk to us about watching, it feels so simple. And basking in your silence, I wonder how it can be a problem.Beloved master, what am I missing, or am I too impatient?Prashanto, the first thing is to remember that the exact purpose of Buddha Hall is what you are doing.Go on running as long as you don’t fall down. Fall down on the ground not by any effort, but just let it happen by running continuously. The time will come when you will fall down. Then rest there and you will find immense peace and great silence which you have never known.This is exactly the purpose of Dynamic Meditation: to exhaust your energy, so the mind has no more supply of energy to create thoughts and dreams and imaginations. So you are using the Buddha Hall perfectly correctly for the first time, knowing that that is the purpose of it.I have never told anybody, because then from tomorrow you will see there will be two big crowds running.Exhaust the outgoing energy and suddenly you will find you are in. To go in, you don’t need any energy, you are there. The outgoing energy has to be exhausted, so you cannot go out. As far as going in is concerned that is a wrong idea; nobody goes in. How can you go in? That’s where you are! You can go out – that’s okay.So go to Buddha Hall and run as much as you can. Don’t stop in the middle thinking that it is too tiring. Go on, go on, let the body according to its own wisdom fall down. Don’t act, don’t try to deceive, because you are deceiving yourself. And if you can allow the body to go on running till it falls, then lie down there on the ground, and you would be surprised that you have never known such peace, such silence, such deep meditation.Gautam Buddha himself… If you go to Bodhgaya where he became enlightened – that’s why the name of the city has become Bodhgaya. Gaya must have been the name of the town but when Gautam Buddha became enlightened, bodh means enlightenment, so the city of Gaya became Bodhgaya. There is a temple in his memory made almost two thousand years ago and there is the tree under which he used to sit.If you go to Bodhgaya you will still find what I have described to you by the side of the temple and nearly two hundred stones in a line. For one hour Gautam Buddha used to sit and meditate, and for one hour he used to walk on those stones and meditate. When he became tired of walking he would sit; when he became tired of sitting he would walk. This way he exhausted his outgoing energy.One day he found there is no energy at all for any outgoing. He remained in. And this remaining in revealed to him his luminous being, his ultimate consciousness.In language it is a problem; we say, go in. You cannot go in, because if you go in, then that “in” will also be out. You can only go out; you cannot go in.In, you are. What do you mean by “in”? It is not the inside of your house; it is where you are. There you don’t need going, all that you need is that you don’t have any energy to go out, so naturally you remain still and silent and in. Suddenly there is an explosion of light and bliss and ecstasy.So you have found a beautiful meditation. Continue, and you will find many more from tomorrow on the way. Don’t chitchat with anybody. The moment you enter the path by the side of Buddha Hall forget that anybody else exists in the world: you and the road, till you fall down. Then in a day you can achieve something which you may not be able to achieve in one year’s Dynamic Meditation. This is the ultimate dynamic meditation!I have not told people but you have found it, so now I have to recognize it.Just remember one thing, that you are not to stop by yourself. Because if you stop you will miss the point, you will always stop before the energy is finished. That’s why I’m saying go on and on and on till you cannot go on, and you fall. Don’t pretend to fall, because those are all deceptions that you can detect yourself. You know perfectly well when you are pretending to fall and when you are really falling.So don’t misunderstand me. The real thing will happen only when automatically you find yourself falling. You are just a watcher, not a doer. And a tremendous experience is possible.The father was having a heart-to-heart talk with his son before the boy’s marriage.“Son,” he said, “I have two bits of advice for you before you get married. First, you must tell your wife, right from the start, that you insist on spending one night each week out with the boys.”“And what,” asked the son, “is the second bit of advice?”His father smiled and said, “Don’t waste it on the boys.”Hymie Goldberg goes for his weekly visit to the doctor and says, “Doc, I snore so loudly that I keep myself awake. What can I do?”The doctor rolls his eyes and says, “Why don’t you try sleeping in another room?”So just get exactly what I am saying.A Jew and an Irishman were fishing in separate boats some distance apart. The Irishman got a bite and was so nervous that he fell out of the boat. He sank twice, and as he was coming up the second time, the Jew rowed over and called out: “Mister, can I have your boat if you don’t come up again?”People have their own understanding. Just get exactly what I have told you, and when something happens report to me, because everybody will be waiting, “What happened to Prashanto?” And tomorrow everybody will be watching! I have made you a hero within a second.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,In Canada, where I live, I have been asked to participate in national politics. Should I refrain, given the state of politics in the West, or should I accept and use the experience as another dimension of my process?It is well known what I think about politics, but I will not say anything to you, this way or that.My whole approach to my people is that of freedom. You have to act out of your own intelligence. You don’t have to depend on my advice.I go on giving you my experiences, my attitudes, but there is no compulsion that you have to follow them. You are not my followers, you are my friends.I cannot impose my ideas on someone I love; I give you absolute freedom to do whatsoever your intelligence, your meditativeness allows you. And I don’t think you will go wrong.Just don’t be attracted by ambition, don’t be attracted by power, because those infatuations are destructive. And the people who become attracted by things like money, power, prestige, miss one thing: that is life.Balzar has a law about it: Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans. A politician has no life, he is always making other plans, and meanwhile life goes on slipping by. But still, it is going to be your choice.I never want to be remembered by you as someone who forced, manipulated, dominated you according to his ideas. I can share everything with you, but the final decision has to be yours, because that’s how one matures. If you feel like going into politics, just think what you can contribute, or you will also become part of the whole dirty game that goes on in the name of politics.You are asking me, “Should I get into the gutter?” I will not prevent you. If you enjoy it is perfectly okay with me! But always remember, don’t take part in anything unless you are ready so that you can improve it, you can give it some refinement – not only about action, but also about talk. Cogglin’s Law is: Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence. It is a tremendously beautiful statement: Don’t talk unless you can improve the silence – very insightful.Don’t go into politics unless you can improve humanity and you can improve people’s humbleness…not getting into a competitive will to power, because that kind of thing happens only when you are feeling empty inside. I have never heard of any politician becoming enlightened – that will be a contradiction in terms – nor vice versa, have I ever heard of any enlightened man being a politician.You think you will be exploring a new dimension through the gutter? Through the gutter you will get into a deeper gutter, a bigger gutter, the main gutter. It is not a dimension; it is simply falling from your intelligence, it is not maturity. A certain retardedness is absolutely necessary in politics. If you feel you qualify…! You have to be continuously lying, you have to be promising things which you know perfectly well you cannot deliver.Just the other night I was reading about a rabbi who wrote a letter to a friend, but a very strange letter. He wrote a small paragraph and then left almost the whole page, and signed underneath. That is not the way people write a letter. When you write a letter, you sign underneath it…this much gap. The man was also puzzled when he received the letter. He inquired of him, “What is the reason for leaving such a big gap between the letter and the signature?”He said, “It says in the scriptures, ‘Keep yourself as far away from lies as possible.’”But still, if you like there is no problem; there are many sannyasins in the same gutter in different countries. A certain cruelty, inhumanity, cunningness are the basic requirements for you to become a politician. So I am worried whether you have all these prerequisite conditions. Innocence is of no use; that will bring failure. Silence is of no use, truthfulness is of no use, to be sharply intelligent is no use. And remember one thing: politics gives you power, but it gives you power by making you a beggar. All politicians are beggars, whether they may be presidents or prime ministers.Every five years, and they are standing on your door with their begging bowl. They are, in fact, servants of the people. At least they have to pretend after each five years. For five years they can believe they are masters, but they cannot befool anybody of intelligence.And this reminds me that the people from whom you are going to beg for votes are ignorant, prejudiced, are not contemporaries. They belong to past centuries, many centuries back; they are superstitious. If you want to have their votes, you have to fall to their standard; they are not going to rise to your standard.To be a politician is a tragedy. But still, if you want to make your life a tragedy I have no objection. The whole politics around the world misses anything significant for the future. It is too much concerned with trivia, small, ugly conflicts. It is not interested in reality to improve the destiny of humanity, to give new dreams to people, to bring more poetry into their lives. On the contrary, it destroys their dreams, it destroys their hopes; it destroys their trust in other human beings, because they have been continuously cheated by the politicians, exploited.Oscar Wilde has said, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth glancing at.” But no politician can remain successfully in politics with a utopian mind; he has to be practical, pragmatic. He has to forget fundamental things, that through wrong means you can never reach the right end. Only the right means justify the rightness of your ends. But no politician can manage to follow right means towards right ends. He may talk about right ends, right values, but all his means will be wrong, and through wrong means you never reach to right ends; they don’t connect.You have to be mean. You have to be destructive. If needed, you have to commit all kinds of crime. If you can do all these things, only then you can become a politician. It is an absolutely foolish and absurd game, and particularly for a sannyasin who is searching for higher values, who is looking for inner reality – who is thinking of beauty, truth, good. Politics is just the opposite. A sannyasin is trying to find his authentic being, and the politician has to create a false personality according to what people need.A politician has to say things which he does not mean but which satisfy people. He can never speak his mind; in fact, people who have gone deep in understanding the psychology of politics, say in politics mind is not needed at all. We don’t see any politician functioning in a way that shows his genius. There have been millions of geniuses, nobody was attracted towards politics, only very mediocre people. In a way they represent the unintelligent, unevolved masses. They are the representatives of the slaves.I have heard…A great politician’s brain surgery was being done. When the surgeons opened his brain they saw so much rubbish and garbage that they thought it is better to take the whole mind out of the skull and clean it; they have never seen anything so dirty. So they left the politician in anesthesia, so he was not aware, and they went into another room.Meanwhile, the politician came out of anesthesia, was resting on the bed, when a man came rushing and shouted, “What are you doing here? You have been chosen as the president.”He said, “My God! What am I doing here?” – and got up.The surgeons looked from the other room, and said, “Hey! Where are you going? Your brain is here; we are cleaning it!”The man said, “Now I don’t need it! Clean it well and keep it. When I am no longer the president of the country I may need it, but right now there is no problem.”What use is a mind to the president?Presidents are chosen who have no minds of their own, so they can simply function as rubber stamps.Politics is a strange world, but if you want to have some taste of the ugliest part of human beings, you can go into politics. Just remember one thing: going in is easy, getting out will be very difficult, almost impossible. It is getting into deep imprisonment by your own desires. But there are people who are jailbirds; they like prison. I have known many politicians; I have not seen anything worthwhile in their lives. They have staked everything just to be in power. And what will these people do with power? They will create more wars, they will create more weapons, they will create more possibilities for a global suicide.These are my ideas about politics, but these are my ideas, you don’t have to follow them. If you are feeling a certain urge for power, go into it. Of course I cannot bless you. I will feel sad and sorry for your going in a wrong direction, but I cannot prevent you either, because any interference in your life is against my whole approach. So please, meditate over it.Go around Buddha Hall; you will find Prashanto there, either enlightened or dead! That is far better than going into politics.Osho,I have been in some long relationships for many years. When I hear you talking about jealousy and fighting and all these passionate things in relationships, I become really shaky, because it seems I never experience these things really strongly. Last night I got very sad about it, and the question came up whether I ever really loved somebody, whether I really did let go and lose control.Beloved master, do love and hate, fighting and harmony, coolness and passion really always belong together?There are always exceptions. My feeling about you is that you are being sad unnecessarily. Life allows exceptions: very rarely you will find a couple who is not in a love-hate relationship but simply in love. Naturally, this kind of love will have a certain coolness about it, it cannot be hot.To make it hot, you have to bring the opposite in; then fighting and quarreling and arguing gives a certain excitement to your energies. And when tired of fighting and arguing, you again move – the pendulum goes on moving between love and hate. When your pendulum moves towards love, you feel strong love because of the contrast. It depends on your likings: people like hot-dogs! Dogs are enough, but they want hot dogs!Your love is of a silent type, peaceful. There are rivers which are mountainous, falling from mountains as waterfalls into the valleys; there is much going on. And there are rivers which flow in the valleys silently, so silent that you cannot see that they are flowing. But I don’t think that you have to be sad about it; it is a higher quality of love which is cool, without any excitement, without any heat.Don’t you love ice cream…a cool breeze, a silent house; no pillow fighting, no plates being broken? I know it brings a little spice in life when pillows are going like missiles in the air, but that kind of spice…? That kind of excitement is stupid.A love that can be cool, and without a hot passion, is a higher quality. Every love should become of that quality.An ancient seer of this country has made a very strange statement. For centuries in this part of the world, when people get married they go to some master, to some wise man to have his blessings; that is conventional. That is more important than the marriage done by the priest. The blessings of a wise man or an enlightened man, if you can find one, will not be just words. He will shower you with all his love, with all his grace, with all his flowers of silence and peace.One of the ancient seers of the Upanishads has a very strange blessing for couples who come to him: “I bless you, that you will have ten children, and finally the husband will become your eleventh child.” It looks absurd – what kind of blessing is this? But I feel that the man had a great insight.The growth of love should finally be so cool, so passionless that the husband becomes almost a child to the wife, because a woman is intrinsically a mother. In real love, the woman functions as a mother, even to the husband. How they can hate? But it rarely happens, and as the world has gone farther and farther away from their own selves and silence and peace and coolness, their life as husband and wife has also gone in the same way.So when I am talking, I am talking not about the exceptions – now, people like you are exceptions – I am talking about the general rule. But it is good that you ask the question; it makes my answer complete. I have talked about the majority; now, I am talking about a very small minority in the world – they are the true lovers. Their love knows no friction, but only deep understanding of each other. So don’t be worried about what I have been saying about the majority, about the world at large. You don’t have to follow; you are perfectly going right.Bennett’s Accidental Discovery says: First, most auto accidents are caused by people with driver’s licenses, so I tore up my license. Secondly, according to the latest statistics, most auto accidents happen within eight miles of your own home, so I moved.Don’t be stupid about these statistics, and about these accidents. Just watch your own inner feeling. If you are feeling happy with your cool and silent, without-any-conflict love, you need not start being childish, immature. You don’t have to follow others.The people who are fighting with their spouses are really very repressed people; their repression is great. All the religions and all the cultures and all the educational institutions are repressing people, teaching them to repress sex. Repressed sex is very poisonous, because then it will not be satisfied with one woman or with one man. That is really the cause of fight, the cause of all jealousies, the cause of making spouses into KGB agents. They are watching each move of the other person.The husband cannot even look at a beautiful woman passing by if the wife is with him, because even looking at her is going to cause immense trouble at home. It is strange. If you love your wife and your wife loves you, and you see a beautiful flower or a beautiful face or a beautiful moon, there is no difference. But because of repressedness, the wife knows the husband would like to have as many women as possible; she has to be on guard. And because the husband knows his repression, he is aware that wife is also repressed in the same way.I have heard about a big computer they have invented in New York which answers your questions. A boy went and asked, “Can you tell me where my father is?”And the computer said, “Your father has gone fishing.”The boy laughed. He said, “This is absolutely wrong. My father has been dead for three years.”The computer laughed and said, “My son, that was the husband of your mother who died three years ago. Your father has gone fishing!”But this goes on happening because for thousands of years so much sexuality is repressed that it is not possible to be satisfied with one woman, with one man. There is no basic difference, and the moment you put the light off any woman is the same, any man is the same. Small details may be different, but the repressed desire is discontented. A humanity without any sexual repression will not have this kind of relationship which is continuously nagging, fighting, harassing each other.This is the greatest psychological problem facing humanity: how to get rid of the repression that religions have planted in everybody’s unconscious. It has gone so deep in the bones, in the blood, in the marrow, that one existentialist philosopher has said, “I would like to make love to all the women of the earth; still, I cannot say I would be satisfied.” He is saying something true, sincerely true. And he is saying something not only about himself, he is saying it about all human beings, men and women both.But this is madness. You don’t say, “I will not feel satisfied unless I have eaten apples from every tree of the world.” That kind of statement will not be relevant at all. But the existentialist philosopher’s statement has a relevance; he is saying something true. That does not mean that he does not love, but his love is not capable to remove the deep-rooted, repressed sexuality; it is not enough. He wants more, and he wants change.These are the reasons of conflict. You are fortunate if your life has been moving like a silent river without any unnecessary conflict, friction; otherwise there are everyday scenes, and this continues all your life.I have heard that ninety-year-old Herbie, who tried to seduce a fifteen-year-old girl was arrested for assault with a dead weapon!It is saddening. Ninety years old and you are not beyond sex, you are not beyond childish things; it is because of repression.Man has to be completely released from all kinds of inhibitions and repressions, and love will become a very silent and cool affair.Osho,Passing through the gate of this Mandir for the first time in eight years, I felt a kind of fragrance which has stayed with me ever since. Is it possible to take this fragrance with me when I leave?Oh, beloved master, it is so beautiful, and I am so grateful to spend this time with you, even if I cannot take this fragrance with me.The fragrance that you have felt in this temple of seekers is not something that you can leave behind. This fragrance contains love, meditativeness, silence, trust, life-affirmative values, a song of gratitude, a dance with the trees and with the stars…. This fragrance is an experience of a totally new atmosphere that does not exist in the outside world. If you meditate, you will become the same temple. Then, wherever you go the fragrance will go with you like a shadow; even others will feel it.It is not the first time that such a question has come to me. The moment they enter the gate many people have felt suddenly, as if they are entering into another world – the air is different, the vibe is different – as if they have come home. And there is bound to be a certain fragrance, because so many people are meditating, and slowly, slowly their inner-being flowers are opening. The whole purpose of all these people to be here is absolutely different from any gathering anywhere outside in the world.These are the people who are in search of the essential, existential life source. They are at different stages of evolution in consciousness, but they are all radiating something of higher stages. So when you enter the temple, you will find the air is different, the trees are different, the people are different. And if you also become a meditator, as I know you are becoming, this fragrance will start coming from within your own being. Even others may feel it wherever you go.I want my sannyasins…I have taken away the clothes which made them distinct; I have taken away their malas. But still people feel that they look a little different from others; still the airport officers catch hold of them! In Indian embassies when they go for a tourist visa, they immediately get the idea that they are going to Pune; Pune has become synonymous with my name. And many sannyasins have wondered – they are not wearing the orange, they are not wearing the mala – how they have become suddenly suspicious?A sannyasin will have a certain fragrance, a certain style, a certain way which is subtle; it may not be very apparent to the eyes, but it can be detected.I would like you to be known as separate from the crowds, not by your clothes not by anything outer, but just by your very being – your silence, your peace, your love, your eyes.Every gesture of you should declare that you are a sannyasin.One day the pope gets a phone call from God. God says to him, “Since you have been such a good pope, I wanted you to be the first to know.”“The first to know what?” asks the pope.God says, “I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that from now on, the world will have only one religion.”“That’s wonderful,” says the pope. “Now everyone will be at peace, and everyone will get along with one another – that’s great. But what is the bad news?”“In a few days,” says God, “you will be receiving a phone call from Anando in Pune!”That one religiousness is not going to be Catholic or Christian. That one religiousness is going to be this fragrance that you have been feeling here. Once our people are ready, they will go on spreading it all over the world; it needs it tremendously.Just remember one thing: Never be miserly. Share your experiences here with me your silences of the heart, your flowering of the being. Go on sharing the song that you have heard here, that music that is all around you.Sometimes I feel sad for a few people. One old sannyasin, Kabir, wrote a letter to me, saying “Osho, I want to share what has happened to me in all these years living with you. But can I talk about you without mentioning your name?” This cowardliness should be dropped.I want you not to be sheep, but lions.I want you to roar about the experience, because the world is so deaf that unless you roar they won’t pay any attention. And the moment you mention my name, even if they are dead, they will wake up! Without my name, they will feel goody-goody, and you will feel very goody-goody. But only with my name, will you be able to judge whether those people have any intelligence, any awareness, any understanding, or whether they are just mediocre people with prejudiced minds.Share without being miserable, without being miserly, and share with authority. You have nothing to lose.It is a tremendous challenge to change this whole earth into a paradise, but you will not be able to do that if you are cowardly or miserly. There are many sannyasins who remain silent and don’t share just out of the fear that they may be condemned: “You have also fallen from the traditional religion, from the convention,” they simply remain quiet. That’s not right; that is not compassionate. That is cruel. If you know something, share it for two reasons, because the humanity needs it, and the second reason is that the more you share, the more you will have of it.MacTavish, O’Rourke and Hymie Goldberg were mourning the loss of a mutual friend. MacTavish said, “As you well know, my friends, I am a thrifty Scottish soul. But there is a legend in my family that if one places a wee bit of money in the casket so that it may be buried with the body, it will ease the way into the next world. For the sake of our friend, I will place ten dollars in the casket with him.” And with a flourish, he released a ten dollar bill and let it flutter onto the dear departed’s breast.O’Rourke had no intention of being outdone. “Well,” he said, “this strikes me as near superstition, but I will also contribute that sum.” And a second ten dollar bill joined the first on the dead man’s breast.Goldberg said at once, “Do you think I won’t join in this kind deed?” And whipping out his check book, he quickly made out a check for thirty dollars, placed it on the dead man’s breast and took the two ten dollar bills as change!Don’t be that miserly. Share with your full heart, because it is not only for the benefit of the other, it is also for the benefit of your own being. The more you share, the more open you will become. Your sharing is not a loss. In the ordinary world of economics, if you give things to people, you lose them.I have heard…A man stopped his car by the side of a beggar. He was in a good mood; he had won a lottery. He was surprised by the beggar, because his clothes were very costly, although very old and dirty and rotten, and his face also looked cultured, educated. But life had been hard – it seems he belonged to a very good family, and some calamity had happened. He stopped his car; he was in a good mood, took out a ten rupee note and gave it to the beggar, and the beggar laughed.The man said, “Why are you laughing?”The beggar said, “I am laughing because this is the way I finished all my money, my whole heritage that my father has left. I also used to have a beautiful car, but I was giving to everybody – whoever needed. I laughed, because if this is the way you are also going, soon you will be standing by my side.”In ordinary economics, when you give things you lose. But in the spiritual world laws change. There, if you don’t give you lose: if you keep your doors and windows closed, your blissfulness, your silence, all become stale. But if you go on sharing, fresh waters will be coming from the eternal sources of life, and your blissfulness will remain always fresh and fragrant. And it will go on growing wider and wider.As far as I am concerned this is the only real charity, to share your innermost treasure with people, familiar or strangers, and to turn their eyes also inwards. Because seeing your treasure, they will be reminded of their own treasures. Experiencing your fragrance, you will be putting them on the search of how they can also be so fresh, so fragrant, so graceful. From where can they get this beauty that does not belong to the world, this music without instruments, and this poetic atmosphere without words?Sharing with people is putting them on the right way: in search. And if they know what happens to the real seeker, they will not go on any wrong path.The Indian constitution says three things are charitable: giving to the poor, making hospitals for the sick, opening schools for the uneducated. It is a shame that this should be the only kind of charity mentioned in the constitution of a country which knows far higher realms of charity. The constitution was written by people who had no idea – they were politicians. They could not conceive that there can be some higher charity.To me these are good but not great. The constitution would have been far richer if it had mentioned sharing your spiritual experiences with those who are poor in spiritual experiences.I have been fighting for years with the Indian government. They are not ready to believe that this institution is a charitable institution, and they cannot understand that there are deeper treasures, higher consciousnesses, and those who don’t have them – they are poor.Sharing your spirituality, sharing your meditation, sharing your love at least should have been mentioned in the constitution, particularly of a country which has been for centuries the land which has attracted seekers from all over the world. But this constitution was not written by seers or enlightened people, but by those third-rate politicians, those dwellers of the gutter. They cannot see anything more than the fragrance they feel in the gutter; that is the only fragrance they know of.I would like you not to be bothered by constitutions and other things. You have to understand the higher economics: share so that you can have more.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Can you please speak on discipline and meditation?It is a very strange question because every day, morning and evening, I am speaking on discipline and meditation. If anybody reads your question, he will think that for the first time I have to speak on discipline and meditation! Where have you been for so long?You remind me of two old friends; they meet on a street in Leningrad…“How is life treating you,” asks one.“Just great,” replies the other.The first one looks at him dubiously and says, “Have you been reading the papers?”“Of course,” replies the other, “how else would I know!”People know about their own lives by reading newspapers, and I have been telling you every day about meditation and nothing else, and you are asking…!Okay…A little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Norwegian. She keeps staring and staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, “Pardon me, are you Jewish?”“No,” he replies. A few minutes go by and she looks at him again and says, “You can tell me – you are Jewish, aren’t you?”He answers, “Definitely not.”She keeps studying him, and says again, “I can tell you are Jewish!”In order to get her to stop annoying him, the gentleman says, “Okay, I am Jewish.”She looks at him and shakes her head back and forth and says, “Really, you don’t look it!”I am wondering from where to begin! Meditation is the only contribution the East has made to humanity. The West has made many contributions, thousands of scientific inventions, immense progress in medicine, unbelievable discoveries in all the dimensions in life. But still, a single contribution of the East is far more valuable than all the contributions of the West.The West has become rich; it has all the technology to be rich. The East has become poor, immensely poor, because it has not looked for anything else except for one thing, and that is one’s own inner being. Its richness is something which cannot be seen, but it has known the highest peaks of bliss, the greatest depths of silence. It has known the eternity of life; it has known the most beautiful flowering of love, compassion, joy. Its whole genius has been devoted to a single search – you can call it ecstasy.Meditation is only a technique to reach to the ecstatic state, to the state of divine intoxication. It is a simple technique, but the mind makes it very complex. Mind has to make it very complex and difficult, because both cannot exist together.Meditation is the death of the mind.Naturally, mind resists every effort for meditation. And if you go on without listening to the mind… It is clever and cunning enough to give you false directions and call them meditation.Just today I was informed about one of the people who has been for many years a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He is now here meditating, but he continues his master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s meditation too.What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. It is a mind trick. Just one thing is missing in it – I have been telling you about the monkey – and the person who is here should remember it! Transcendental meditation works only if you don’t remember the monkey. So from tomorrow morning, be careful! The slightest remembrance of the monkey, and transcendental meditation is meaningless.In fact, after eighteen years being with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and doing his transcendental meditation, what is the need to come here? But mind is so cunning that he is consoling himself that perhaps it is his master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has sent him here. But why should he send you here? I don’t consider that he knows anything at all about meditation. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching in the name of meditation has been known for centuries in the East by almost everybody that it is a psychological trick. It is not harmful. On the contrary, it can give you a little rest; it can give you a good feeling as if you have taken a shower. But it is not meditation, because it cannot take you beyond the mind.Any effort made by the mind cannot take you beyond the mind. This is a very fundamental rule to remember. The so-called transcendental meditation is just an example. There are many of the same kind prevalent all over the East, but they don’t bring enlightenment. They don’t bring awakened consciousness and that is the only criterion to decide whether they are right or not. A tree is known by its fruits, and a technique is known by what it achieves.Transcendental meditation is representative of all the meditations which mind has suggested to you; it is a cunning way to take you astray. Mind remains safe, not only safe, but becomes stronger. All these techniques are of concentration. You concentrate on some word, holy word – the name of God, or any mantra – and you repeat it as fast as you can, just inside your mind. The faster you can do it the better; the speed helps two things. The mantra or the name of God – even your own name will do; it has nothing to do with God – any meaningless word will do because the technique depends on something else. It depends on fast repetition, so fast that there are no gaps left in between. Because there are no gaps, thoughts cannot arise; thoughts need a little space.This is one thing: that you go on repeating a word faster and faster, and as you go on doing it for years, you really become an expert. So one thing it does is that it does not give a chance for any idea to enter into your mind. The second, more fundamental thing it does is that it creates tremendous boredom. Obviously, anything continuously repeated is going to create boredom, and boredom is the basis of auto-hypnosis.When you become bored, you start falling into a sleep, which is not exactly sleep because it is deliberately created; hence it has a different name – hypnosis. Hypnosis means sleep, with a difference, that it is deliberate.Sleep comes naturally – on its own, spontaneously. Hypnosis is deliberate sleep – you create a situation in which it is bound to happen. This deliberate sleep is immensely healthy, and even ten or fifteen minutes in a hypnotic state gives you a good relaxation which hours of ordinary sleep cannot give. And when you come out of it, you will feel very fresh.I absolutely agree that if you are doing it only for this purpose – relaxation, a freshness comes, but it never takes you beyond the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind, because mind itself is repeating? By repetition, it does not need to think; repetition itself becomes a substitute for thoughts. And by repetition it falls into a deep sleep – dreamless sleep, which gives you immense freshness, rejuvenation.Naturally, you can be deceived that this is meditation – you can go on doing it your whole life. It is healthy, it is good, it is nourishing, but it is not meditation.Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.Watching is the key of meditation:Watch your mind.Don’t do anything – no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God – just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don’t disturb it, don’t prevent it, don’t repress it; don’t do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing – without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.The watcher is never part of the mind and as the watcher becomes more and more rooted and strong, the distance between the watcher and the mind goes on becoming longer and longer. Soon the mind is so far away that you can hardly feel that it exists…just an echo in faraway valleys. And ultimately, even those echoes disappear. This disappearance of the mind is without your effort, without your using any force against the mind – just letting it die its own death.Once mind is absolutely silent, absolutely gone, you cannot find it anywhere. You become for the first time aware of yourself because the same energy that was involved in the mind, finding no mind, turns upon itself. Remember: energy is a constant movement.We say things are objects, and perhaps you have never thought why we call things objects. They are objects because they hinder your energy, your consciousness. They object; they are obstacles. But when there is no object, all thoughts, emotions, moods, everything, has disappeared. You are in utter silence, in nothingness – rather in no-thingness; the whole energy starts turning upon itself. This returning energy to the source brings immense delight.Just the other day, I quoted William Blake, “energy is delight.” That man, although he is not a mystic, must have found some glimpse of meditation. When meditation comes back to its own source, it explodes in immense delight.This delight in its ultimate state is enlightenment.Anything that helps you to go through this process of meditation is discipline: perhaps taking a good bath, being clean and cool; sitting in a relaxed posture with eyes closed, neither hungry nor overloaded; sitting in a posture which is most relaxing…having a look at the whole body, every part and whether there is any tension. If there is any tension, then change the posture and bring the body into a relaxed state.In the East it has been found, and found rightly, that the lotus posture – the way you must have seen the statues of Buddha; that is called the lotus posture… It has been a discovery of thousands of years that that is the most relaxed state of the body. But for Westerners who are not accustomed to sitting on the ground, the lotus posture is a nightmare! So avoid it, because it takes almost six months to learn the lotus posture; it is not necessary.If you are accustomed to sitting on a chair, you can find a way, a posture, a chair made in a certain way that helps your body to relax all its tensions. It does not matter whether you are sitting in the chair or in the lotus posture or lying down on the bed. Sitting is preferable because it will prevent you from falling asleep.The lotus posture was chosen for many reasons. If one can manage it without torturing himself, then it is the best, but it is not a necessity. It is certainly the best situation in which you can enter into watchfulness. The legs are crossed, the hands are crossed, the spine is straight; it gives many significant supports to being watchful. First, in this position, gravitation has the least effect on the body because your spine is straight. So the gravitation can effect a very small portion. When you are lying down, gravitation effects your whole body. That’s why for sleeping, lying down is the best posture. Gravitation pulls the whole body, and because of its pull, the body loses all tensions. Secondly, when you are lying down, if the purpose is to sleep then you should use a pillow because the less blood reaches to your mind, the less the mind will be active. The less blood reaches to the mind, the more possibility to fall asleep.A lotus posture is a great combination. It has the least effect of gravitation, and because the spine is straight a lesser amount of blood reaches to the mind, so mind cannot function. In that posture you cannot fall asleep easily. And if you have learned the posture from your very birth, it becomes so natural. The crossing of the legs, the crossing of the hands have a significance. Your body energy moves in a circle; the circle is not broken anywhere in a lotus posture. Both your hands…one hand gives the energy to the other hand; your one foot gives energy to the other foot – and the energy goes on moving in a circle. You become a circle of your bio-energy.Many things are of much help. Your energy is not being released so you don’t get tired. Your blood is reaching in a lesser amount so the mind does not function too much. You are sitting in such a position – your legs are locked, your hands are locked and your spine is straight – sleep is difficult. These are just supports; they are not essential.It is not that one who cannot sit in a lotus posture cannot meditate, meditation will be a little difficult but the lotus posture is only helpful, not absolutely needed. And for the people from colder countries where sitting on the ground is not possible – their bodies for centuries; their parents and their parents’ parents from Adam and Eve…. Have you seen any picture of Adam and Eve sitting in a lotus posture? In fact, it would have been very good for them, because sitting in lotus posture they could sit naked and yet nobody would have been very much aware of their nakedness. That’s how the Jaina monks sit, always in lotus posture. You cannot see their genitals. Their legs are crossed, their hands are crossed; this functions almost as a protection for their nakedness.But if for centuries people have never sat, then it will unnecessarily create trouble; your body structure has taken a certain mode. It is better to follow the body and its wisdom: use a chair. The whole thing is you should be comfortable so that the body does not draw your attention. That’s why tension has to be avoided, because if you have a headache then it will be difficult to meditate. Again and again, your attention will go to the headache. If your leg is hurting, or if there is any slight tension anywhere in the body, it immediately alarms you. It is natural and it is part of the body’s wisdom.If it does not alarm you then there is danger: a snake may be biting you, and you may go on sitting; your clothes may catch fire, your body may be burning, and you may not be aware of it. So the body immediately alarms wherever there is any trouble. That’s the reason to create a relaxed position in which the body need not alarm you, because every alarm will be a disturbance in your meditation.So the first thing of discipline is a relaxed body and closed eyes, because if you have open eyes, then so many things are moving around, they can be a disturbance. It is perfectly right for the beginners to use a blindfold, so that you are completely inside, because it is your eyes, your senses that take you outside. Eyes take eighty percent of all your outgoing contact – eighty percent is through the eyes, so close the eyes.For the beginners, it is good if they can use earplugs. Close the ears so no noise from the outside disturbs you. It is only for the beginners; all the precautions are for the beginners. And then just watch your mind as if the mind is nothing but a traffic of thoughts or a film – a movie passing on the TV screen. You are just a neutral observer.This is the discipline. And if this discipline is complete, watching comes very easily, and watching is meditation. Through watchfulness mind disappears, thoughts disappear. And that moment is the most blessed moment: when you are fully awake and there is not a single thought, just a silent sky of your inner being.This is the moment when energy turns inwards; the turning-in is sudden, abrupt. And as the energy turns inwards, it brings immense delight, orgasmic delight. Suddenly your awareness becomes so rich because the energy is nourishment to your awareness. The energy coming back creates almost a flame of your being. You see all around pure light, silence – utter silence, and an immense centering.You are now at your very center.At the right moment, when you are exactly centered – the explosion. That explosion, we call enlightenment. This enlightenment brings you all the treasures of the inner world, the whole splendor. It is the only miracle in the world: to know oneself and to be oneself, and to know that one is deathless, one is beyond the body, beyond the mind; one is just pure consciousness.So the discipline is just a support, the essential thing is witnessing, watching – that is meditation. But in the name of meditation, there are hundreds of so-called teachers who go on exploiting people. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became well known in the West, because the West was not aware that in the East, even the villagers are doing the so-called transcendental meditation. Everybody chanting, repeating the name of God – it is an enjoyable exercise. I am not against it; it is perfectly good, but don’t call it meditation and don’t call it transcendental. Those are wrong words for it.It is hypnotic auto-suggestion and nothing more. It will never give you the light that Kabir talks of, “As if thousands of suns have arisen all around.” It will not give you what Rumi calls as if the whole sky is showering flowers, and the whole being is filled with perfume, unearthly, not of this world.”It will not give you the ecstasy that Patanjali, the founder of Yoga, continuously insists on in his yoga sutras. He says that samadhi, ecstasy is very similar to sleep with only one difference that it is alert. If sleep can be awake, if sleep can be full of awareness, then it is samadhi, it is ecstasy. It will never give you the buddha nature. It gives you ordinary mental rest – physical relaxation; hence, I am not against it.Whatever Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other people like him are doing is good, but they are calling something meditation which is not. That’s where they are leading people astray. If they had remained sincere and authentic and told people that this will give you mental health, physical health, a more relaxed life, a more peaceful existence, it was right. But once they started calling it transcendental meditation they have raised a very trivial thing to an ultimate significance which it cannot fulfill. People have been in transcendental meditation for years, and in the East, for thousands of years. But that has not become their self-knowing, and that has not made them Gautam Buddhas.If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition – that is witnessing. Learn from Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support – immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.Your question will not be solved until you start on the path a little bit; otherwise, you will ask again, “What is meditation?” Just my explaining it to you is not enough; you will have to move on the path.Hymie and Becky Goldberg are about to take their first flight on an airliner. Hymie spends a while enjoying his comfortable, reclining seat and watching the pretty stewardess walking up and down the aisle. Next he looks out of the window and says excitedly, “Becky, look at those people down there, they look like ants.”Becky leans over, has a look and then says, “They are ants, you idiot…we haven’t left the ground yet!”Hymie Goldberg was so interested in watching the pretty girls going up and down the aisle, he had completely forgotten that the airplane was still standing – it had not moved! So looking at the ants, he thought they must be people from such a height.That’s why you meditate with closed eyes!Osho,How you talk about the same old things day after day and yet produce a new revelation with each sentence is to me the greatest miracle in existence. Would you care to comment, please?It is very simple. First, because I have nothing to say, so I am free to say anything. I don’t know what is going to be my next sentence; hence, it is not a burden or a trouble; it is spontaneous. I am not an orator who has to practice and rehearse. I love people, and I love to share my experience with them. I don’t remember the past; hence, it is very difficult for me to repeat it. And because I look more at the questioner than his question…and all questioners are different; their questions may be almost the same. Looking at the questioner, my answer changes, I respond to the person. I don’t have any doctrine to preach, so I don’t have to be consistent. I enjoy absolute freedom.In the past history of mankind, only poets have been given a certain license that they can use a little bit of freedom not to bother about the grammar and the language and the rules and the regulations. They had to be given that much license, otherwise they could not have poetry. That is the difference between prose and poetry: prose has to follow rules, regulations, grammar, linguistics; poetry has a certain freedom. I am even using prose with absolute license, because I don’t see there is any reason to follow any limits.All that I know is if what I am feeling is conveyed to you, whether it is right grammar or wrong grammar, whether it is the right word or the wrong word, is irrelevant. If I have conveyed my joy, my love, my peace, my blissfulness to you, any word is right. And because I have so much overflowing experience of my being I can go on for a millennium talking about it – from different aspects, different angles, different directions; it will remain inexhaustible.You have heard speakers, orators; I don’t belong to their category. I simply enjoy gossiping! It is not a gospel – I am not serious about it. Seriousness to me is psychologically sick. Healthy people will not enjoy gospels; they are boring. And you can see in any church you will find people asleep. The Sunday sermon is a good morning nap; people go to the church for that good morning nap…no disturbance. And the sermon is almost the same, it helps sleep.I have heard that one great preacher was very much disturbed. He was a very learned rabbi. His trouble was that an old millionaire, who had contributed the most to the synagogue, used to sit just in front of him and sleep and snore loudly. It was not a trouble that he was snoring, it was a trouble because his snore disturbed other sleepers! And his snore kept many other sleepers awake. That disturbed the preacher because that meant every Sunday you have to bring a new sermon – people are awake.It is a good agreement between preachers and their congregation, that the congregation will sleep and the preacher will preach. He can go on preaching the same thing every time. There is not much to preach either. In all the four gospels, it is only one story repeated four times, the same incidents reported by four journalists! And not very educated either! So what can the poor preachers do? What can the rabbis do?I have been looking through the Talmud, and it is so tiring that anybody who suffers from sleeplessness, I suggest the Talmud – you can just manage two or three pages! It is so much nonsense, and on that nonsense rabbis go on interpreting, interpretations upon interpretations. And the original is basic rubbish. I have always suspected because the name “rabbi” seems to be so close to “rubbish” that there must have been some past connection between rubbish and rabbi!But somehow the rabbi had to stop that old man – and he found a way. He used to come with his grandchildren – a little boy, sometimes a little girl – but he always used to bring a little child with him. The rabbi one day took the child aside and said, “Listen, my boy, if you can keep your grandpa awake, particularly when he starts snoring – you can nudge him – I will give you four annas.”The boy said, “Settled!”And the next sermon day it was really great; the boy did not allow the old man to snore. The moment he would snore, the boy would nudge him.The old man was amazed, “What has happened?” The boy had never done such a thing before…always sitting silently. Outside he asked, “What is the matter?”The boy said, “Nothing is the matter. I am getting four annas to keep you awake, because your snoring is disturbing the whole congregation.”“Who is giving you four annas?” the old man asked. “I will give you eight annas if you sit silently and don’t disturb my snoring.” The boy said, “That’s perfectly good – agreed!”Next time the rabbi looked again and again at the boy, and the boy started looking downwards, and the old man was snoring. And the rabbi said, “What is the matter?” He many times made the indication, but the boy would not look at him at all. He continued to look downward. After the sermon the rabbi took the boy aside, and said, “You seem to be very cunning. Have you forgotten?”He said, “No, the old man is giving me eight annas not to disturb him.”The rabbi said, “I will give you one rupee.”He said, “That’s perfectly good – promised.”Next time he again started nudging the old man. The old man said, “Have you forgotten?”The boy said, “I have not forgotten. Now the rabbi is giving me one rupee, and business is business!”A true Jew!I don’t know what is going to come through me. I am almost a vehicle, I have left myself almost completely in the hands of existence. So whatever existence wants to convey to you, I am available. That’s why I went on stopping many times because it is not in my hands, it is in the hands of existence. If something goes on flowing, it is okay – and if it is nothing, I wait. I wait for existence to pick up the last thread.Veena, you say that it is the greatest miracle in existence. I can agree with you. I myself feel it, that either I am mad – because for thirty years I have been continuously speaking, nonstop… Now I am speaking much less; otherwise five lectures per day had been my usual routine from morning till late night. Naturally, I thought either I am mad or it is a miracle. There are only two possibilities; I am happy with either!A Russian citizen who was visiting the West was besieged by many questions from persons wanting to know more about communism.“You mean to tell me,” asked a curious host, “that by being a communist, you share everything?”“Yes,” came the reply.“You mean,” the host continued, “if you had two houses you would give me one?”“Of course.”“And if you had two cars, you would give me one?”“Certainly,” replied the Russian.“And if you had two stoves, or televisions, or refrigerators you would give me one of each?”“Naturally,” said the Russian.“And if,” the host went on, “you had two shirts, you would give me one?”“No,” replied the communist emphatically.“Why not?”“Because I have two shirts!”I simply enjoy talking, just as I enjoy silence. I have to keep some balance. Most of the time I am silent, and then naturally, I have to take a little holiday from silence. Then I talk to my heart’s content. I do only two things: I talk to you, and then I go to sleep! In the morning I wake up, I talk to you, and then I go to sleep. My twenty-four hours are divided into two things: talking and sleeping!My sleep is my silence, my ecstasy, my samadhi. My talking is my sharing with you what I have found in my sleep!

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,This question is asked by a trembling heart, written by a trembling hand. My gratitude feels so inadequate for your gift. Why do I feel so unworthy of you?There are certain symptoms of falling in love. One of them is a feeling of unworthiness, because love is so vast, and you are so small. You cannot earn love, it comes on its own accord; suddenly it starts showering on you.Naturally, because you have not earned it, you cannot feel worthy of it. As love deepens, the feeling of unworthiness deepens. If a person in love does not feel it, that means the love is superficial, and the man has too big an ego. Only in that situation – when your ego is too big, and your love is a superficial affair, not the great affair Ta Hui was talking about…Before the great affair of love, it is absolutely necessary and inevitable, that one should feel unworthy. Nothing is wrong in it; it is exactly as it should be. Out of this unworthiness, slowly, slowly transformation happens. I can predict it will happen to you too, because your feeling of unworthiness is not just an intellectual question. Intellect never asks such questions; ego does not allow such questions; mind is not capable of asking such questions.Mind and ego and intellect – they all take it for granted whatever happens in their lives is not enough. They are worthy for more; hence the question cannot arise from those sources. The only source that remains is the heart, which is always true and always sincere. And once the heart starts feeling unworthy, it does not give a sadness to you but a gratefulness. Slowly, slowly unworthiness turns into gratitude: you are not worthy of something and it has been showering on you; you cannot even understand why existence has chosen you.One of Gautam Buddha’s disciples, Manjushri, became enlightened sitting under a tree. The moment he became enlightened, suddenly flowers from the tree started showering on him. Those who were around, they could not believe what is happening. There was not any strong wind. There is no reason why so many flowers go on showering on Manjushri. He was sitting silently with closed eyes; perhaps he was not even aware.They reported to Gautam Buddha. He looked where Manjushri was sitting under a tree, and he said, “He has become what his destiny was; he has come to his flowering. And not only is his inner being full of joy, even the tree is celebrating.”These kinds of stories for centuries had been taken as metaphors, poetry, beautiful anecdotes. But now we can say they are factually possible on scientific grounds. Trees are very sensitive, more sensitive than you are. They join you in your celebration; they join you in your mourning. Of course, you are not aware, but now scientists have found ways to figure it out. They have made a small instrument like a cardiogram, which is attached to the tree, and the cardiogram starts working, making the graph of the tree’s sensitivity.When the tree is at ease, relaxed, the cardiogram makes the graph very symmetrical. If a woodcutter comes with his ax, with the idea to cut the tree…He has not started cutting and he has not even said that he is going to cut the tree, but if he has the idea, the tree is even sensitive to the idea. And suddenly the graph starts trembling just like your heart trembles…writing, your hand is trembling. The whole tree starts trembling deep down, and it can be caught on the graph. The graph is no longer symmetrical; it goes crazy.Not only is it that the tree which has to be cut becomes aware of your thought, your thought creates a vibration around you which a simple heart can catch hold of. Other trees surrounding the tree – friends and companions which have been together for years, have joined in sadness when there was no rain, have joined when the rain comes and brings great joy and blessings. They have passed through many falls and seen themselves standing naked against the sky, and have seen many springs together when great foliage comes and when flowers start blossoming. A certain communion, a certain friendliness has arisen in them.So it has been found that the tree which is going to be cut starts trembling, catches the thought. But other trees nearby also start trembling…just the idea that one of their old friends is going to be destroyed. Strangely enough, scientists have been shocked that it means trees are more sensitive than human beings: you don’t know what thought is going on in the person who is sitting by your side; every mind is broadcasting its thoughts all around, and you are catching them but you are not aware.They have tried bringing the same woodcutter again, but with no idea of cutting the tree. He comes with his ax, the graph continues exactly the same, symmetrical, showing that the tree is not worried because there is no idea in the woodcutter’s mind – and the other trees also stop trembling. And when the gardener is brought who has nourished those trees, cared for them, has loved them, in lonely moments has even talked with them…I had a gardener, an old man, a very beautiful man – and he was not just professionally a gardener, he loved trees. I have seen him, when there was nobody and he thought nobody was watching him; I have seen him talk to the trees.Once I caught hold of him, because he was continuously winning every year; almost five years he was with me and every year he was winning the corporation prize for bringing the biggest roses. I asked him, “What is the matter; you talk with trees?” He said, “I love them, I feel them. I can tell you, but not anybody else, because I trust you will understand, that it is not one-sided; they also answer in some way or other. I have not been winning these prizes because I am a great gardener.”The city was big, and there were many millionaires in the city. They had great gardens and many gardeners. And they were all puzzled because they were all trying to win the prize, but this old man went on winning.He said, “It is just my talking to the trees, saying, ‘Don’t forget in the right time to give me the biggest flower. It is a question of my prestige and your prestige.’” And he said to me, “It has never failed. Those other gardeners are doing hard work with more manure, more chemicals. They are doing everything that the art of gardening will suggest, but this is beyond the art of gardening.”As the gardener is brought, all the trees feel so immensely happy that the symmetrical graph becomes almost a dance. Just as it has become crazy out of fear, so out of love it again becomes not the ordinary silent tree, but showing a tremendous joy as if the tree is jumping, dancing. And you can see the difference between the graphs. When the tree is afraid, the graph will show you that these lines are coming out of fear. And when the tree has suddenly seen the gardener who has taken care and grown it like his own children, the graph dances. And you can see in the graph that it is not out of worry, but out of a gratitude and out of a welcome – a friend has come. And other trees also do the same.Man is capable of receiving immense joy if he only learns how to be grateful. So you are on the right path. But don’t go on thinking in terms that you are unworthy, because that has to be transformed into gratitude. It is certain, nobody is worthy. What have you done to be alive? What have you done to have such beautiful eyes? What have you done to have this potentiality of becoming a Gautam Buddha? You have not done anything; it is just coming out of the abundance of existence. Existence has so much that it has to share out of sheer necessity to unburden itself; it is overflowing. And if people remain thirsty, it is their own fault.There is an ancient saying in India that you can remain thirsty standing on the bank of a river. Unless you learn how to bow down, fill your hands with water, the river is not going to jump towards you. It is available; just a little humbleness on your part, a little receptivity on your part, and you can quench your thirst.Everything that is great in life is abundantly available; just don’t shrink in your unworthiness. It is a beautiful first step to experience it, but then for what are we worthy? Neither for life, nor for love, nor for this beautiful body – we are not worthy for anything; we have just taken all this for granted. This is the irreligious mind.I don’t call a man irreligious who does not believe in God. I don’t call a man irreligious who does not go to the temples or churches. I don’t call a man irreligious if he denies heaven and hell and all that nonsense. But I call a man irreligious if he does not feel unworthy of all that he has received and is receiving every moment. With every breath, with every heartbeat life is continuously giving you. The same life is capable of giving you immense blissfulness, of which you cannot even have an idea unless you have tasted it.Just change your unworthiness into gratefulness, into thankfulness. And to me, this kind of gratitude is the only true prayer. You don’t have to say anything – just the feeling of gratefulness that I don’t deserve, I don’t see why so much has been given to me and so much goes on showering on me. What can I do except be grateful?This gratefulness should sink deep in your consciousness, in your very fibers and cells of body. You will simply become gratefulness, then it is prayer. And the things that are called prayer are just false. Millions of temples and churches and synagogues, and millions of people continuously praying…but their prayers are false because they are always asking for something. They are never thanking for what they have already received.In their prayers if you look, you will find the beggar, the ungrateful beggar. And you will also find in all the prayers of all the religions – I have looked as deeply as possible into every religion – there is a certain complaint that things are not as they should be: “Others are getting more; I am not getting that much.” These are not prayers, they are simply wasting their time. They have not even come to understand the meaning of prayer.It is not in the words, it is prayerfulness. And prayerfulness means only one thing, and only one thing, gratefulness – a gratitude that goes on sinking deep into your being for everything: for trees being green, for rain coming down to quench the thirst of the earth. And when the first rains come, the sweet smell coming from the earth is earth’s gratitude. And the trees becoming green, and bringing millions of flowers, that is earth’s thankfulness, that is earth’s prayer. That’s how you should be; that’s how your prayer should be – nothing but a gratefulness.Slowly, slowly man goes on forgetting what complaint is, what grudge is. As he becomes more attuned with gratefulness, he forgets completely that he has to ask for something. Things are coming without his asking. He has just to keep his doors open and the guest comes. He has just to wait, and wait lovingly, prayerfully.I am giving you the meaning of prayer in a way no religion has ever given it to humanity; their prayers are so childish, stupid. A gratefulness will make you more and more capable of receiving gifts.The so-called religions that have overruled man’s mind for centuries are mostly fictions. I have come across Albert Camus’ very strange but beautiful and true statement: “If God did not exist, we would have to invent him” – otherwise, to whom are you going to complain? On whose shoulders are you going to throw all your responsibilities? With whom are you going to be angry? Who is going to be your security, safety…?Camus is saying something very important when he says that if God did not exist we would have to invent him, and if God did exist, we would have to abolish him. If God did exist why would we have to abolish him? – because it would be intolerable. To be so grateful to him would look like humiliation: you are unworthy and he goes on giving to you – you could not forgive him; he is insulting you, he is making you aware of your unworthiness.I have a friend who was at a time education minister. He used to come to me once in a while, and one day he told me something that he would not have told anybody: “I have thought many times to bring it to your notice, but then I stopped myself. But there is a limit, I have to tell it to you.” He was born a poor man, and he was adopted by a rich man, a very rich man, who had no children. So he suddenly rose from poverty to be a super-rich man.He started giving money to his relatives who were poor, because he himself belonged to a poor family; his relatives were poor, his friends were poor. And now he had so much, and he had got it without any effort, and he was in a position to help everybody. He really helped all his relatives, his father, his brother, his sisters, his friends, and he made all of them very rich. I was aware of the fact.He told me “The problem is, I have been so generous to everybody who was even faraway connected – a faraway cousin, or just an acquaintance – but if I saw that they were in trouble, I gave them as much as they wanted; I gave them more. Now they are all flourishing, they are all rich. But one thing strange is that they don’t feel obliged towards me! On the contrary, most of them never come to see me or meet me; in fact, they avoid me. It hurts me very much, that I have done so much…and what kind of ungrateful people are these?”I said, “You don’t understand the deeper psychology behind it. You have given them, but you don’t know that the giver always insults the person he is giving. In the very giving you have become higher and the person who has received has become lower. If you are an understanding man, you will see this is actually what happens. I want to ask you one thing: Have you ever accepted any help from them?”He said, “I don’t need it – why should I accept their help?”I said, “That’s where you are humiliating them, insulting them. What is wrong? – small things. If you just phone a friend whom you have helped, who is now rich, has a factory of his own, cars of his own…if you just ask him, ‘Send two cars; I need them very much.’ You may not need, you have enough cars! Just let those cars come, and after an hour send them back. You don’t need, but let that man feel that he can also give something to you, that he is not always on the receiving end. He is sometimes on the giving side also.“Or you can tell some friend, ‘In your garden I saw such beautiful roses. Can you send me a dozen roses today?’ And he will be immensely happy to send those dozen roses. It doesn’t cost him much, but he will start forgiving you, and he will start being grateful to you.”The man said, “Perhaps you are right. I have never, never asked anybody for anything, because I don’t need. And I never thought that just giving to somebody, and always giving and never taking…”“Anything, anything without any value…a few flowers or just calling the person and saying, ‘I am feeling very lonely. Can you come and be with me for breakfast or for the lunch? – I will be immensely grateful.’ You would have helped those people to regain their dignity. You have given them money but you have made them beggars, and nobody can forgive you, this is utterly inhuman.”And he said, “I understand, but I will not be able to do it; it is against my ego.”I said, “That is then absolutely clear why they are avoiding you: they know that you are giving to them, not because they are poor but because you are rich. You are not concerned with their problems and worries and difficulties. You are just exploiting their misery, their suffering, their poverty for your own ego fulfillment; ‘I have been a great help.’ And you are bragging continuously…How can they forgive you?”That’s what Albert Camus means when he says that if God did exist and was available to humanity, we should have to abolish him because it would become intolerable: he goes on giving and he will not ask for anything from you because he has everything – the whole belongs to him! He would take away all your dignity. You can forgive somebody for anything, but you cannot forgive anybody who destroys your dignity as a human being, who takes away your pride.Fortunately, there is no God, and particularly for you. There are people who believe in God: deep down they are angry with him. They may pray and they may show their respect, but deep down they think, “Why is my wife suffering from cancer? If God is compassionate, then where is his compassion? I have been praying for years, why am I poor? The people who never pray and never come to the church or the temple or the synagogue are rich! I am honest and I am trying to be as sincere as human frailty will permit, but I remain poor, a failure, a nobody…and the people who are mean and cunning and can do anything to achieve power and money – they are successful. The priests go on saying that God is just. Where is your justice?”These things go on remaining in your unconscious – you may not say them because they may make God very angry. In fact, in the Talmud, the Jewish God says exactly the words, “I am a very angry God. I never forgive; never take me for granted.” A very beautiful sentence is: “I am not your uncle, remember.” That is very Jewish, but their God is a Jew, you cannot do anything about it. He is reminding you, “I am not your uncle, so don’t expect any niceness from me. I am your father.”You know there is a difference between the father and the uncle: uncles are always friendly; fathers are authoritarian, powerful people; you belong to them. It is very rare to see a son and a father being friendly, trusting each other, telling each other their innermost thoughts and feelings. But you will always find people immensely friendly with their uncles. They will not say things to just anybody which they can say to their uncles; some different quality exists.Such a God is not only Jewish, such a God is the God of all primitive people. In all primitive, holy scriptures he is very angry. If he was available in the world, Albert Camus is right, we would have to kill him. It would become intolerable – his interference in everything, his commandments for everything, and his anger, and his violence, and his torture; his blackmailing that he will throw you into hellfire for eternity if you don’t listen to him. And if you are obedient, in other words if you are just a slave, you will have all the joys of paradise. Such a God would not be tolerable, particularly to those who have some pride of being individuals. It will be easier to finish him.In fact, Sigmund Freud sometimes comes to very great insights; he was certainly a genius. But unfortunately these people never came in contact with any meditation; otherwise they would have given the world tremendous contributions. Still, because of their genius they had glimpses and insights. One of his insights, which may not be factual is certainly psychological. The psychological is far more significant to understand than the factual, because the factual is ordinary, outside you; the psychological is within you and controls you.Freud says that people worship God as father because some time in the beginning they must have killed some dominant father, somebody who was too dictatorial. It is a well-known fact that many kings have been killed by their sons because the king was going on and on living. And the son was becoming old and it seemed that he was not going to live to be a king; the only possibility was the death of the father. Many kings have imprisoned their fathers and taken over the throne, because they saw that there seemed to be no possibility of his natural death – at least while there was time to enjoy being a king! What would be the point when you are seventy-five or eighty when your father dies and you succeed? Within a year or two you would be gone too.There is a possibility factually, but there is no historical record of it; hence, historians have rejected the insight. But I am not a historian and I think history is simply bunk! My concern with God is for psychological reasons.Sigmund Freud says that because somewhere in the past man had to kill the father he felt the guilt of what he had done. And out of that guilt he started worshipping the ancestors, the fathers, the elderly people, the old people. All this respect has arisen out of a guilt which has settled in the human heart. Man started inventing a God as father, raising temples in his memory, statues, priests praying, worshipers worshipping.Behind this whole scene and drama of religion, Sigmund Freud finds only one single fact and that is: somewhere in the past man has behaved so badly with his father – perhaps murdered – that he cannot forgive him. So the only way is to pray, make God your father, the creator of the world. All these hypotheses…It was a very original insight.A man who has no guilt will not go to a church, will not go to a confessional in a Catholic church. For what? – unless one enjoys talking about so-called sins…!I have heard…One woman was coming every Sunday to the confessional, and confessing the same sin that she had been raped. The bishop said, “That is not your sin, you don’t have to confess it – let the person who has raped you.”She said, “But I enjoyed it! That’s why I have to confess it. I pretended to resist, but deep down I enjoyed.”The priest said, “Even if you enjoyed it, you have been forgiven. You have donated to the charity box, and I have prayed for you to God. And this is the third time…who is this man? Is he the same man raping again and again every week?”She said, “I have to confess, he has raped me only once, and because I enjoyed it he did not bother to rape me again. He looked embarrassed…what is the point? In fact, he must have felt he had been raped, tricked. So I go into places where he hangs around; the moment he sees me, he escapes.”But the priest said, “If it has happened only once then what is the point every week to come to the confession?”She said, “I enjoy the idea and to tell you in detail. It is nothing to me – ten dollars I can give as a punishment, and you can pray for my sin. But I enjoy even describing it.”My own feeling is that the number of people who confess in the Catholic church, most of them have not committed those sins. They simply enjoy the idea, “I raped a woman.” Perhaps they want to rape a woman, but it is a difficult job. But to confess is very simple, just ten dollars. And for ten dollars, enjoying the idea that I raped the woman…At least the priest is convinced and he will convince God too.Sigmund Freud seems to me to be psychologically right; otherwise there would be no temples, no churches, no mosques, no gods. Man needed someone to pray to, needed someone to complain to, needed someone to throw all responsibility onto. But if he was available in the world, just in the MG market, he would have been killed – and particularly in Pune.You will be surprised to know that this MG Road is named after Mahatma Gandhi; MG is short for Mahatma Gandhi Road – and Pune has killed, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi! The day a Puneite assassinated Mahatma Gandhi sweets were distributed and there was celebration. And now they are calling their main market MG market. This is the guilt that somehow has to be erased, so they have raised the statue to Mahatma Gandhi. Strange…you kill the man and then you raise the statue.You must have seen on the hills, just nearby the bridge, there is one beautiful bungalow where Mahatma Gandhi used to stay. The people to whom that bungalow belongs used to come to listen to me in Mumbai. And when I was moving to Pune, I said to those people, “That bungalow is empty and that will be the best place for the ashram because of the hills around; the road goes round and round – and the whole hill part belongs to the bungalow. For the ashram it will be perfect, and whatever your price…”They said, “It is not a question of price, it is because Mahatma Gandhi used to stay there, so we have made it a memorial.” Now it is a Mahatma Gandhi memorial – there is a statue, there is a memorial.Just by the other side of the river there is one palace, Aga Khan Palace, where the British government used to imprison Mahatma Gandhi, as a special concession, because it is not a jail; it is a palace, it was used for Mahatma Gandhi. Whenever the government wanted to put him in jail the palace was used, and he was free to move in the gardens. He was provided with his secretaries, with his wife; he continued to function just as if he was outside. In fact, he was in a better position; outside he used to live in small huts because poverty was his philosophy. Here he was living in the Aga Khan’s Palace, one of the most beautiful buildings in Pune, with a vast garden.His wife died while he was in prison in the Aga Khan Palace. His wife’s samadhi is in the Aga Khan Palace, so now the Aga Khan Palace has also become part of a memorial. Because Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned there and his wife died there…And it was a group of Hindu chauvinists of Pune who killed him. And now they are trying to somehow erase the guilt feeling – making memorials, making statues, giving names to the streets.Sigmund Freud is right in my understanding that man must have behaved badly in the past with their elders, particularly the fathers. And there is a possibility that fathers may have been killed, because they were holding all the power – and all the power included all the beautiful women of the clan. The sons were young, they needed beautiful women; the father was old but he was holding all the beautiful women: unless he dies, there is no possibility for the young people to have those beautiful women, they were that old man’s property.Psychologists have been trying to find the same pattern in monkeys. If you see monkeys sitting on a tree, you will be surprised to know that on top is the oldest monkey, the most powerful monkey. He is the president! Nobody else will be allowed to sit on the top of the trees; that is a question of prestige and power. And around him are all the beautiful females. He is old but even the youngest females first have to be under his control. Then underneath that are other elders, and underneath that are the young people.Naturally, there is every possibility – and it happens – that the older monkey is killed by the younger monkey because he is taking away their whole life. He has lived enough and he goes on living – and he is holding all the power. There is a deep will to power in everybody, and particularly the power over the females. Nobody can even look at those females while the old man is alive. They don’t have any other money and treasure and kingdoms; their only property is the females. On this point of the females, many old monkeys are killed.Perhaps this discovery by the scientists led to the insight of Sigmund Freud that one day men killed their fathers – had to kill, had to remove them, otherwise they wouldn’t allow you to live at all.If God did exist, it is absolutely certain he would have been assassinated – it would have become absolutely intolerable. But fortunately, he does not exist so nobody can assassinate him. But unfortunately, people have created a hypothetical God which neither you can assassinate nor you can communicate with. It is a simple hypothesis, but still it helps people to get rid of their guilt.The priest is the beneficiary; he keeps the hypothesis alive. He fights for the hypothesis, because all that comes to God as offerings to erase the guilt of people reaches the priest. So the priest’s whole work is to make more and more people guilty. This is a business and a very subtle structure: make people guilty about everything, every pleasure.In Jainism, even to eat food tastefully is a sin; you should not eat tastefully. You can eat, but don’t take the taste, don’t enjoy it. That is possible only if your taste buds are operated on; otherwise it is not possible. Your tongue and your taste buds…and they are not many, they can be removed very easily. Then you won’t taste anything. But that is not the idea. The idea is that because of those taste buds you will have to taste and then you will feel guilty. And once you are guilty, you are in the hands of the priest.Now sex is not in your hands. Feeling good and happy with a restful night is natural, but Jainism condemns it. Jaina monks should eat only one time a day, and that too, standing because being comfortably seated you can eat more; standing you will get tired yourself. And it looks so embarrassing – a crowd, and you are standing, and you have to take your food in your hands.The Jaina monk is not allowed to have anything as his possession. So how much can you take in your hands? – and you cannot take twice. So they are hungry. To think of food or to think of women or to think of any pleasure is a sin – even to think, even to dream. And I cannot conceive that a Jaina monk can avoid dreaming about food, or that so-called celibates – Jaina, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus – can avoid dreaming about women? And the priests say that whether you dream or you actually act it does not matter: even to dream about good food is as sinful as actually eating it because the question is of your mentality; to dream about a beautiful woman is as sinful as having a beautiful woman.All the religious priests for thousands of years have been managing to find all those areas where you are weak, where nature can be condemned. And you cannot do anything because it is a natural thing, so naturally, you will feel guilty.Guilt is the whole foundation of your religions.The priest needs you to be guilty, and because of guilt you need God – who is going to forgive you? What are your prayers? “Forgive us, we are sinners and your compassion is great. Forgive us father.” And there is nobody to listen to you!Because God is just a hypothesis, assassination is not possible. You cannot find him anywhere. Albert Camus is right: if God did not exist, we would have to invent him. That’s what we have done, we have invented him. If God did exist we would have to abolish him. The existential problem is what I have told you, the feeling that I am unworthy.It is true:Nobody is worthy.We have received everything for no reason at all.Being grateful to existence is the only authentic religion, and it does not need to have an adjective to it – Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. It is simply gratefulness.You are on the right track; just don’t get stuck at unworthiness, that is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is gratefulness. This is the negative side; that is the positive side.Remember, always to go with the affirmative, the positive, and you will never go astray. The ultimate affirmation comes the day when you explode into light, into joy, into bliss, into song, into dance. All that will create more and more gratefulness in you.You will become just a prayer.Osho,The other morning, when you mentioned about a pocket watch being the last present for people who retire, I was amazed, because when you left for America I was at my village, and I received by mail a unique present from you – a very beautiful Seiko pocket watch! I was delighted by this rare gift, but today I feel a bit shaky!Osho, could you please tell me something about the significance of this gift?Sardar Gurudayal Singh, I remember the pocket watch that I have sent you. I have been giving watches to hundreds of my sannyasins. The significance is simple, so you need not be worried by what I said yesterday.It was not a retirement gift; a sannyasin is never retired! He becomes enlightened, but retirement is not possible neither before enlightenment nor after enlightenment. Retirement does not exist in the world of a sannyasin, so you can drop your fear and worry; it was not a retirement gift. I have been giving watches to many people because my whole message is: be watchful!So don’t misunderstand me…A man in New York for the weekend, struck up a conversation with a young lady in the bar. After a few drinks he suggested that they buy a bottle and go to his room; she agreed. When the girl began taking off her clothes, the man asked, “Say, how old are you?”“Thirteen,” she replied.“Thirteen? Good Lord,” said the man. “Get your clothes back on and get out of here.”At the door the girl paused and said, “Superstitious, eh?”In America, the number thirteen is very superstitious! You will find in hotels that after the twelfth storey comes the fourteenth. The thirteenth storey does not exist at all because nobody is ready to stay on the thirteenth floor.I have seen one book: a man had done great research work proving that this superstition of the number thirteen is not just superstition, it has a scientific background. I was very much amazed so I went through the book. It was sheer nonsense what he had done. He had collected the number of accidents which had happened on the thirteenth date, the number of people who died on the thirteenth, the number of people who got cancer on the thirteenth…all kinds of calamities that happened on the thirteenth. He had collected such a list that anybody would be greatly impressed that certainly this number thirteen is dangerous.I wrote a letter to the man saying, “Unless you do the same research for the eleventh and for the twelfth – just two dates will do, one before thirteenth…and find out what happens on the twelfth, what happens on the eleventh, all the calamities…And unless you find that more accidents happen on the thirteenth than on the twelfth or eleventh, that more people die on the thirteenth than on any other date, your thesis is just nonsense. This way you can prove any date dangerous, because people are dying on every date, every day. There is no quota given for dates.”I received a letter saying that the man had died; unfortunately he died on the eleventh! One of his friends replied that the man himself had missed the thirteenth. But in America that superstition is very prevalent. People don’t want the number thirteen on their car; they avoid the number thirteen in every way. In the army you won’t find a soldier whose number is thirteen.Sardar Gurudayal Singh, that retirement watch is also a superstition, but it is possible that whoever invented it first may have had some idea similar to me, that now a man is retiring, life is in a way finished. It is good to give him a watch because the days are few, time will be rushing by faster than ever. So it will be helpful to keep him alert, watchful. Time is not money, time is life, and to give a watch…Now it has become superstition nobody bothers what is the meaning. Nobody knows either the people who are giving or the person who is receiving…but just a golden pocket watch.But when I have given watches – and I go on giving – that does not mean that you are retired. That does not mean that your days are finished, “Just count the hours on your watch.”It means: Be watchful, be aware and alert.Every moment is full of danger and full of ecstasy. If you can use it for awareness and watchfulness, it becomes a great ecstasy, the juiciest experience of life. But if you are not aware, some moment, some day, you are going to die…Don’t die before destroying your ego.Let the ego die first so that you can realize your real immortal being.I have given it to you, Gurudayal, just to be watchful, because one can get into any trouble – particularly a man like Gurudayal.A few days ago somebody came to me to inform me that Sardar Gurudayal Singh was going to marry Mukta. I said, “I am telling enough jokes, and he is trying to be a practical joke!” And Mukta is also great! She has found poor Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He is a rare man, a happy man, but to find him for marriage…! And he is such a fellow he will not say no. He has known life in many colors: he has been in the army, he has fought in the wars; he has been my bodyguard for many years, and he is of a simple and innocent heart. If somebody approaches him for marriage at this age, he will say okay.Somehow I have persuaded Mukta not to do such a thing, because he is living a free life. He has divorced his wife long, long ago; he has not a single worry in the world. He is one of my most profound sannyasins – poor, but immensely rich because he can laugh more beautifully than anybody else. I don’t have to know where he is sitting. When he starts laughing I know because his laughter, even in his old age, comes louder than anybody else’s.No need to worry about that watch! Just be watchful; don’t get into any trouble. Now, getting married to Mukta…You will be in trouble; she will be in trouble. She is enjoying fully. She has divorced her husband long ago; you have divorced your wife – both are free. But I must say that Mukta has an eye to find a real man!Two jokes for Sardar Gurudayal Singh…“You will be poor and unhappy until you are forty,” said the fortune-teller to her customer.“Then what?” asked the worried customer.“Well, by then you will be used to it,” the fortune-teller replied!A man approaching retirement went along to see the company doctor for one final checkup. To his horror the doctor said, “I don’t know quite how to put this, but your heart is on its last legs and you have only got six months to live.”“Is there nothing I can do?” asked the shocked man.“Well,” said the doctor, “you can give up alcohol, and cut out smoking. Don’t eat rich foods, no dancing, and don’t even think about sex!”“And this will make me live longer?” the man asked hopefully.“No,” replied the doctor, “it will just seem longer!”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Hearing you speak the other morning, it finally came to my consciousness that I am sexually repressed.I can't remember being sexually repressed before the AIDS scare started. Also, being rejected sexually by a boyfriend has contributed; although I share the responsibility for that – or try to.I can remember a time when, with no boyfriends, I would feel my sexual energy and yet it would need no outlet. It would stay in my body and I would feel orgasmic all over.But now I feel imprisoned by repressed sex and need your guidance.Shunyo, you are simply confused. You are not sexually repressed. You are simply an English lady. It seems you had forgotten it.Just a few days ago a drunkard was arrested in France. He was making love to a dead woman on the beach. When asked, he said, “I thought she is English.”Don’t be worried about repression. And moreover you are coming to the age when everybody feels disturbed, particularly women from the West. Middle age is a troublesome and anguish-creating state.A few things for you to contemplate…First, one has to recognize that one is getting into middle age.Middle age is when you still believe you will feel better in the morning.Middle age is when you want to see how long your car will last instead of how fast it will go.Middle age is when you are home on Saturday night, the telephone rings and you hope it is not for you.Middle age is when you change from stud to dud.Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.These are just symptoms I am telling you, so…!People who have been here with me for almost ten or twelve years cannot be sexually repressed. That is my whole condemnation all over the world; you can call it my reputation. And asking me a question about sexual repression is just destroying my reputation!Two men sitting in a bar were commiserating about married life. “I know a man,” says one, “who has been married for thirty years and he spends every evening at home.”“That’s what I call love,” says the other.“Oh, really?” replied the first, “the doctor called it paralysis.”It all depends how you take it.You are not sexually repressed. You suddenly remembered that you are an English lady…where are you?…what are you doing here?A commissar was visiting a collective farm to check on the season’s crops. “How are the potatoes?” he inquired.“The potatoes are so plentiful,” a farmer replied, “that if we put them end to end they will touch the feet of God.”“How can that be?” blurted the commissar, “there is no God.”“Well,” the farmer answered, “there are no potatoes either.”Shunyo, all that has happened is that that crazy Milarepa has escaped from you. But don’t be worried; he is crazy enough, he will come back.You can rely on me, I will see to it that the poor fellow comes back. He will roam about in the ashram a few days. You enjoy the freedom, and don’t be worried; he cannot get lost. Finally he is going to come to you.This has been going on for years. I have been watching it, I have never said anything to you. It is not something new. Hundreds of times he must have left you and he has come back. He is a very tame fellow. You have just to give him enough rope, so that he can enjoy the idea that he is free.There is nothing to worry about. You simply enjoy a few days of peace and silence, and paralysis.It is very rare to find time to be alone, to be oneself. It is fortunate to find some people who once in a while escape, before they get caught somewhere else. And he has proved so reliable that many times I was thinking, now he is lost – and I see him back again.You just have to learn patience. And by the way, it is a good excuse to learn patience, waiting and trusting that he will come. Suddenly, one night he will start knocking on your door.I don’t think that there is any other woman who can tolerate him long enough except Shunyo – she is almost immune to Milarepa.Osho,For ten years I have thought that when you said there is no time-space separation between the master and the disciple, and when you said the disciple has to melt into the master so that their hearts beat together, I thought that you were simply being poetic. The other evening when you were talking about this relationship, I suddenly got that you mean what you say so poetically.I would like to take you home with me in my heart, my beloved master, and I am a slow learner with a frightened heart and only six weeks.Will you come with me this time?The first time you were right, when you thought I was simply being poetic. The second time you were wrong, when you started thinking that I mean what I say so poetically – I don’t mean. If I start going into everybody’s hearts it will be impossible to put me together again!You can love me wherever you are.You can feel me wherever you are.But poetry is poetry; don’t make it something pragmatic and practical. When I talk about melting and about merging and about having a heart-to-heart communion, don’t take it that that’s actually what I mean. Those are only indications towards a very subtle phenomenon in which I remain I, you remain you. In fact, you become more yourself than you have ever been before.If love cannot give you individuality, uniqueness, that love is impotent. The power of love consists of giving you freedom and authentic individuality and being. That’s the way to take me with you.When you become an individual, peaceful, silent, utterly free from all kinds of bondage, then your freedom, your uniqueness, your love all indicate that you are taking me home.You should not take me as a person.You should take me as the values which I am teaching to you. If you take those values with your heart, you are taking me; hence I say again, the first time you were right when you thought I was being poetic. Poetry should never be understood literally; it is symbolic, but it is significant. Just because it is only symbolic does not mean it is insignificant. Its significance certainly does not consist in being factual. It is something much more than fact, it is truth itself.Ordinarily we don’t make any distinction between fact and truth. Factually you cannot take me in your heart – that is an impossibility. But truthfully, you can take me in your heart. That will mean my fragrance, my joy, my meditativeness, my ecstasy, my presence but not my person.If you can understand this there is no problem – I can come with you.Just one thing to be remembered: what kind of vehicle are you using?A Frenchman, a German and a Russian were boasting about the modes of transportation at their disposal.“I drive a Renault to work,” said the Frenchman. “On Sundays I drive my Peugeot. And when I go abroad, I drive a Citroen.”“I drive a Volkswagen to work,” said the German. “On Sundays I drive my BMW, and when I go abroad I drive a Mercedes.”“As for me,” said the Russian, “I take the bus to work. On Sundays I drive around in my little Moskvitch. And when I go abroad, I drive a tank.”So just be careful if you are taking me in you heart, that you don’t drive a tank – I am a peaceful person and I don’t want to go to war! But as far as my presence is concerned you are absolutely allowed to take me with you.My whole effort here is not to create an illusion in you, but on the contrary to destroy all possibilities of illusion. Man has lived under all kinds of illusions; he is surrounded by hallucinations. When you fall in love with someone it is very rarely a true experience. More often it is only an illusion, an idea, a projection. When you see someone as beautiful it is more your biology that is creating the illusion of beauty. Once your biological infatuation is finished the beauty will disappear; the same woman will not look beautiful at all.From the very beginning the woman has known the psychology of man better than man understands woman’s psychology. In fact, man has been continuously saying that woman is a mystery. I don’t see any mystery anywhere. I have known more women than perhaps anybody else in the world, and I have known men also. None of them is a mystery. Everything is absolutely clear, but you don’t want to see it clearly – you want to go on having illusions. Illusions are sweet, nice, beautiful. The truth, the bare, naked truth is not so sweet.Gautam Buddha continuously says that when you see a beautiful woman, don’t forget that she is just a skeleton, just as you are a skeleton, covered with a bag of skin. Maybe someone has a little longer nose and somebody has a little smaller nose, and somebody has round eyes and somebody has a different shape, but inside it is the same blood, bones, flesh. Beauty seems to be only skin-deep.If you have X-ray eyes you will be surrounded with skeletons all around.Just recently it happened in Europe that one woman was driving a crane and she struck an electric pole. The shock was so tremendous, she fell down in a coma. She did not die, but after a few hours she came back to consciousness with a strange phenomenon: her eyes had become X-ray eyes. Now she is suffering from a tremendous migraine…but doctors are using her in the hospital as an X-ray machine. She has opened a new dimension. Because of too much electricity the eyes have changed. Now they can see deep down inside you, and she is completely horrified. She cannot open her eyes because she cannot see your face; she can see only your skeleton. She cannot see your skin and your beautiful nose. She is the first woman who sees people as they actually are, without any illusions.Asked, “Do you feel some difference between beautiful people and ugly?” – she laughed. She said, “There is no one who is beautiful and no one who is ugly. All are skeletons and horrible.”A man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he thought he was Ronald Reagan. But this caused a problem for the staff because they already had a Ronald Reagan on the books and the director thought it might cause trouble. But then he hit upon a brilliant idea. On his first night at the hospital, one of the staff put him in the same cell as the other Ronald Reagan in the hope that this confrontation would bring one or both to their senses.The next morning he called the new man to his office and asked how his first night had been.“Oh, doctor,” replied the man, “I have been living under a delusion for many years.”“That’s an amazing insight,” said the doctor excitedly. “Please go on.”“Well,” continued the man, “for as long as I can remember, I thought I was Ronald Reagan, but I’m not.”“That’s very good,” said the doctor. “So who are you?”The man looked at the doctor, smiled sweetly and said, “I’m Nancy.”People go on changing their illusions.I want you to come out of all the illusions and just see reality as it is. It is simple and it is beautiful. In the beginning you may be shocked because your delusions are destroyed. But as you will become more and more accustomed and in accord with existence and reality, you will feel a tremendous freedom and a great sense of authenticity.Gautam Buddha’s statement is on record that to experience truth in the beginning is bitter, in the end it is very sweet. But illusions are totally different, just the contrary: in the beginning they are very sweet; in the end they turn out very bitter. In fact, this should be the criterion: something that is sweet in the beginning, be aware of it; it is illusion. Soon you will be awakened out of it and it will hurt and it will feel very bitter. It is better to experience truth, which is bitter in the beginning but in the end proves to be the sweetest experience possible.So when I am talking to you, I have to be poetic for the simple reason that there are things which cannot be said in prose. There are things which can only be hinted at in a poetic way. But poetry can always be misunderstood because poetry is symbolic and you cannot take it as actual. The moment you take poetry as literal and factual, you are creating an illusion which will sooner or later be destroyed by the reality.No illusion can live for long.Every illusion has a very small lifespan.I don’t want you to get into any kind of illusory relationship with me. I have been talking about the master and the disciple relationship from different angles, emphasizing many things; this also should be remembered, that all that has been said to you about it is poetic and symbolic.You cannot merge or melt actually, but you can merge and melt by dropping your ego. That’s exactly the intention, that you drop the ego; that between the master and the disciple there will be only two persons – the master and the disciple – not four persons, the ego of the master and the ego of the disciple and then the master and the disciple behind their egos.That is happening in almost all your relationships. On every bed where you find a couple, just look closely, you will find four persons: two real persons and two unreal persons. Those two unreal persons are created by both projecting something onto the other. Naturally there is going to be disillusionment. Every relationship comes into a state of disillusionment; then it really hurts. Never create any relationship with projection.Avoid your ego, avoid your mind.Just see clearly without any thoughts disturbing your vision and you will never create a relationship. You will have relatedness, you will have deep intimacy but there will be no relationship, no binding; otherwise every relationship becomes a kind of marriage. And the moment something becomes a marriage it has turned into an imprisonment. Certainly, the master disciple relationship cannot be allowed to turn into a marriage; that will destroy its whole purpose.The whole purpose is to give you freedom, to help you to be free from all kinds of chains which you have mistaken for ornaments; to take you out of your imprisonment which you have taken as your home; to make you aware that your religion, your nation, your race, your caste, your ideology, all are different kinds of imprisonments, and they all turn you into prisoners.They decorate their chains with flowers, they make their chains with gold, but it does not matter whether the chains are made of gold or of steel – chains are chains, and they destroy your dignity. They destroy your humanity, they reduce you into a slave. The whole of humanity is living in many kinds of slaveries.The slavery has become multidimensional: you belong to a race, you belong to a nation, you belong to a religion, you belong to a political party…. And all these are causes of your slavery; all these are destructive to your spirituality.An authentic human being does not belong to any religion, does not belong to any nation, does not belong to any race. He is simply part of existence. Why belong to small trivial crowds when you can belong to the whole universe? And with belonging to the whole universe there is an immense difference.When you belong to the whole, it gives you freedom because the whole is unlimited and there are no limitations, no boundaries.The whole can never become a prison to you.The awakened man lives in the whole, belongs to the whole universe. He does not belong to small cages howsoever beautiful they may be.I want my people to belong to the whole. That’s the only way I can help you, and I can show my love to you and my respect to you. It has not been the case in the past: no master has been respectful towards his disciples. He has asked that the disciples should be respectful towards him; that they should be grateful towards him; that they should be surrendered to him. These are very subtle games of the ego.If you love, if your love is real, you will not ask for surrender. If your love is real you will have tremendous respect, it does not matter whether you are master or disciple. Respect, reverence for life, does not need any special qualification. You will be respectful to the trees and to the birds and to the stars too.A master who is not respectful to his disciples has no right to have any respect from the disciples either; it is a mutual understanding and awareness. The master is not in any way holier-than-thou or higher-than-thou. He may be more experienced in certain ways, he may be richer in his inner world, but that does not create any hierarchy. All hierarchies are created by the ego, and to be a master, to be an awakened person, the first thing is to drop the ego then you cannot create any hierarchy.There is a beautiful story about Gautam Buddha’s past life…He loved to relate about his many past lives. At least twenty-four past lives he has related in his discourses to his disciples – beautiful stories. It does not matter whether they are historically true or not. There is no way to find it out, and there is no reason to be worried about whether they are historical or not – they are significant.He says, “In one of my past lives, when I was as unconscious as you are, when I was as miserable as you are, when I was searching for a master as you have come to me searching for a master, I heard about a man who had become enlightened. Immediately I rushed and when I reached a great crowd had already arrived.“I touched the feet of the man who had become enlightened and the most surprising thing was that I had no thought of touching the feet – it simply happened. Just the presence of the man was so immense, I found myself touching his feet without my will, without my thought, without my preparation, without even my readiness. I had just come to see out of curiosity whether he was really realized or not, and what had happened.“As I came close to him something transpired and I touched his feet. I stood back and even a greater miracle happened: that man touched my feet.“I said to him, ‘What are you doing? You are awakened, enlightened; I am an ignorant man in search of a master, and masters don’t touch the feet of the disciples.’“And the awakened man said, ‘I don’t belong to that category of masters. I am ready to touch everybody’s feet because I know they are all going to become enlightened one day or other. And there are only seven days in a week! Somebody becomes enlightened on Monday and somebody becomes enlightened on Sunday – it does not matter. One thing is certain, that everybody carries inside him a buddha. And I can see in you that it is not going to be long before you will be enlightened. I can see the seed has already died and that new sprouts have started growing within you. Seeing your great future, I touched your feet, and also to remind you that when you become an enlightened man, remember that one enlightened man has touched your feet when you were just a disciple.’”Gautam Buddha used to relate this story again and again to his disciples saying, “I have as much respect towards you as you have. I have found the truth; you are searching for it. It is not much of a difference. I have arrived; you are arriving.”I don’t want to create any kind of illusory relationship between me and you. I want to stand alone and I want you also to stand alone, and in our aloneness we shall meet.In our aloneness, in our freedom we shall have reverence and we shall have love, but our love will not be a bondage, and our respect will not create a hierarchy.Osho,Please say something about the disciple's aloneness and courage.The first thing to realize is that whether you want or not, you are alone.Aloneness is your very nature.You can try to forget it, you can try not to be alone by making friends, having lovers, mixing in the crowd…But whatever you do remains just on the surface. Deep inside, your aloneness is unreachable, untouchable.A strange accident happens to every human being: as he is born the very situation of his birth begins in a family. And there is no other way, because the human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence.Other animals are born complete. A dog is going to remain a dog his whole life, he is not going to evolve, grow. Yes, he will become aged, old, but he will not become more intelligent, he will not become more aware, he will not become enlightened. In that sense all the animals remain exactly at the point of their birth; nothing essential changes in them. Their death and their birth are horizontal – in one line.Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upwards, not just horizontal. Most of humanity behaves like other animals: life is just growing old – not growing up. Growing up and growing old are totally different experiences.Man is born in a family amongst human beings. From the very first moment he is not alone; hence, he gets a certain psychology of always remaining with people. In aloneness he starts feeling scared…unknown fears. He is not exactly aware of what he is afraid of, but as he moves out of the crowd something inside him becomes uneasy. To be with others he feels cozy, at ease, comfortable.It is because of this reason he never comes to know the beauty of aloneness; the fear prevents him. Because he was born in a group he remains part of a group, and as he grows in age he starts making new groups, new associations, new friends. Already, existing collectivities don’t satisfy him: the nation, the religion, the political party…. He creates his own new associations: Rotary Club, Lions Club. But all these strategies are just to avoid one thing: never to be alone.The whole life experience is of being together with people. Aloneness seems almost like a death. In a way it is a death; it is the death of the personality that you have created in the crowd. That is a gift of others to you. The moment you move out of the crowd you also move out of your personality.In the crowd you know exactly who you are: you know your name, you know your degrees, you know your profession; you know everything that is needed for your passport, your identity card. But the moment you move out of the crowd, what is your identity, who are you? Suddenly you become aware that you are not your name – your name was given to you. You are not your race – what relationship has race with your consciousness? Your heart is not Hindu or Mohammedan; your being is not confined to any political boundaries of a nation; your consciousness is not part of any organization or church. Who are you?Suddenly your personality starts dispersing. This is the fear: the death of the personality. Now you will have to discover freshly, you will have to ask for the first time who you are. You will have to start meditating on the fact: Who am I? – and there is a fear that you may not be at all. Perhaps you were nothing but a combination of all the opinions of the crowd, that you were nothing but your personality.Nobody wants to be nothing.Nobody wants to be nobody.And in fact everybody is a nobody.There is a very beautiful story…Alice has reached Wonderland. She came to meet the king and the king asked, “Alice, did you meet a messenger coming towards me?”She said, “I met nobody.”The king said, “If you met nobody, why has he not arrived yet?”Alice was very much puzzled. She said, “You are not understanding me rightly. Nobody is nobody.”The king said, “That is obvious that nobody is nobody, but where is he? He should have reached here by this time. It simply means nobody walks slower than you.”And naturally Alice was very much annoyed and forgot that she is talking to the king. She said, “Nobody walks faster than me.”Now the whole conversation goes on with that “nobody.” She understands that he is saying, “Nobody walks slower than you.”“…and I am a fast walker. I have come from the other world to Wonderland, a small world – and he is insulting me.” Naturally she retorts, “Nobody walks faster than me!”The king said, “If that is right then why has he not arrived?”And this way the discussion continues.Everybody is a nobody.So the first problem for a disciple is to understand exactly the nature of aloneness. It means nobodiness; it means dropping your personality which is a gift to you by the crowd.As you move off out of the crowd you cannot take that gift with you in your aloneness. In your aloneness you will have to discover again afresh, and nobody can give you the guarantee whether you will find anybody inside or not.Those who have reached to aloneness have found nobody there. I really mean no body. No name, no form, but a pure presence, a pure life, nameless, formless. This is exactly the true resurrection, and it certainly needs courage. Only very courageous people have been able to accept with joy their nobodiness, their nothingness. Their nothingness is their pure being; it is a death and a resurrection both.Just today Hasya was showing me a small, beautiful cartoon: Jesus hanging on the cross, looking at the sky, is saying, “It would have been better if alongside God the father I had Allah the uncle. It would have been better; at least if God was not listening, Allah might have helped.”Having just God for his whole life he was very happy proclaiming, “I am the only begotten son of God.” And he never talked about God’s family, his brother, his wife, his other sons and daughters. In the whole of eternity what has he been doing? He does not have a TV to waste time, to pass time. He does not have any possibility of having a movie hall. What does this poor fellow go on doing?It is a well-known fact that in poor countries the population goes on exploding for the simple reason that the poor man has no other free entertainment. The only free entertainment is to produce children. Although it is in the long run very costly, right now there is no ticket, no problem, no standing in the queue…What has God been doing for the whole eternity? He has created only one son. Now on the cross he remembers that it would have been better if God really had a few brothers, sisters, uncles. “I could have asked help from somebody else if he is not listening to me.” He is praying and he is being angry saying, “Why have you forgotten me? Have you given up on me?” – but there is no answer.He is waiting for the miracle. The whole crowd that has gathered to see the miracle by and by started dispersing. It was too hot, unnecessarily. Nothing is going to happen; if something was going to happen it would have happened.After six hours there were only three ladies left who were still believing that a miracle may happen. One was Jesus’ mother – naturally, mothers go on believing that their child is a genius. Every mother, without exception, believes that she has given birth to a child which is a giant.Another woman who loved Jesus was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. That woman, although she was a prostitute, must have loved Jesus. Even the disciples, the so-called apostles, who became second to Jesus in importance in the history of Christianity, all twelve escaped just out of fear of being caught and of being recognized – because they were always hanging around with Jesus, everywhere. You never can believe the crowd: if they were caught, they might have been crucified, if not crucified at least beaten, stoned to death. Only three women were left.The third was another woman who loved Jesus. It was love that remained in the last moments in the form of these three women. All those disciples must have been with Jesus just in order to get into paradise. It is always good to have good contacts, and you can’t find a better contact than the contact with the only begotten son of God. Just behind him they will also be able to enter through the gates of paradise. Their disciplehood was a kind of exploitation of Jesus; hence there was no courage. It was cunning and clever, but not courageous.Only love can be courageous.You are asking about aloneness and courage. Courage comes out of love…. Do you love yourself? Do you love this existence? Do you love this beautiful life which is a gift? It has been given to you without your being even ready for it, without your deserving it, without your being worthy of it.If you love this existence which has given life to you, which goes on providing every moment life and nourishment to you, you will find courage. And this courage will help you to stand alone like a cedar of Lebanon, high – reaching to the stars but alone.In aloneness you will disappear as an ego and personality and you will find yourself as life itself, deathless and eternal. Unless you are capable of being alone your search for truth will remain a failure.Your aloneness is your truth.Your aloneness is your divineness.The function of the master is to help you to stand alone. Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of.The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp his knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.“Has not watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?” she asked.“Yes,” said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, “never to get married.”He has learned a great lesson: Remain alone.It is really very difficult to be with others, but we are accustomed from our very birth to be with others. It may be miserable, it may be a suffering, it may be a torture but we are accustomed; at least it is well known.One is afraid to step into the darkness beyond the territory, but unless you go beyond the territory of the collective mask, you cannot find yourself.Groucho Marx has made a beautiful statement for you to remember: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.”The teacher of a class of ten-year-olds is too shy to conduct the sex-education class and so she asks her class to make this a homework project.Little Hymie asks his father who mumbles something about a stork. His grandmother said he came from a cabbage patch and his great-grandmother blushes and whispers that children come from the great ocean of existence.The next day, little Hymie is called by the teacher to report on his project. Little Hymie says to the teacher, “I’m afraid there is something wrong in our family. Apparently nobody has made love for three generations!”In fact, very few people have loved at all; they have pretended, have been hypocrites deceiving not only others but have deceived themselves too.You can love authentically only when you are.Right now you are only a part of a crowd, a cog in the wheel. How can you love? – because you are not. First be; first know yourself.In your aloneness you will discover what it is to be. And out of that awareness of your being love flows, and much more.Aloneness should be your only search.And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.You are only one thing: the watcher.And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived on every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being your self, of being your true self.In that experience is hidden the very treasure of life. In that experience you become for the first time an emperor; otherwise you will remain a beggar in the crowd. There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars.Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home – those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don’t need to conquer it; it is already conquered.By knowing oneself you have conquered it.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How is it that going into something consciously has such a power to reveal all the threads which make up the tangle?The reality is just the opposite. All our tangles in life are created by our unconsciousness, so the moment you become conscious those tangles disappear. It is not the power of consciousness that makes them disappear. It is the power of unconsciousness that creates them.All the tangles of life, of love, of relationship are created by our unconsciousness. We don’t know what we are doing, and by the time we become aware it is too late. What has been done cannot be undone. Our unconsciousness is very supportive to the ego – they have a co-existence. Coming of consciousness will not only disperse all the tangles, it will also disperse you as an ego. It is a very complicated and complex phenomenon.In your unconsciousness you do something. It is almost certain that once you have done something wrong that has created misery in you, around you, you will come to your senses. But you cannot undo it because the ego comes in between. You cannot even say, “I am sorry.” Just a simple apology may disperse the tangle but the ego won’t allow even that. And you are almost a victim; you are not doing things. Your unconsciousness, your unawareness goes on forcing you to do things.Just last night I answered Shunyo’s question very lightly and very lovingly and very joyously. I joked about it, but she was pissed off – I could see her face. Milarepa was angry.You don’t know what you are doing. What you are doing is almost beyond your hands; you are reacting. If Shunyo had heard what I was saying…I was simply saying, “Don’t take it seriously.” I was laughing about it, but she could not laugh. You all laughed because it was not your problem. The more you laughed the more you made her serious.In each person’s life the time of change comes. And one of the greatest things to remember is that when you change a certain pattern of life, you have to change naturally. It is not in your hands. Biology makes you capable of sex at the age of thirteen or fourteen; it is not your doing.At a certain age, as you are coming closer to forty or forty-two, the biology’s purpose is finished. All those hormones that have been propelling you are disappearing. To accept this change is very difficult. You suddenly start thinking as if you are no longer beautiful, that you need a face-lift.I have heard about a woman who was saying to the plastic surgeon, “I need a face-lift.”The surgeon looked at her and he said, “There is nothing wrong; it is just age. Don’t be worried about it. Why unnecessarily go to the trouble? But the woman was insistent, so the doctor said, “Okay, but it will cost five thousand dollars.”The woman said, “That much money I don’t have. Can’t you suggest something cheaper?”The doctor said, “Yes. You can purchase a veil.”It is one of the Western problems. In the East no woman is worried. Things are accepted as they come. Acceptance has been the basic foundation of Eastern life. The West is continuously imposing on nature, demanding how things should be. Nobody wants to become old, so when the time of transition from one stage of life comes, a very strange phenomenon happens – and that is what is happening to Shunyo. I did not say it because I did not want to hurt her.It is going to happen whether I say anything about it or not, just as a candle comes to the very end, has only a few seconds more before it will be gone. At the last moment the candle suddenly becomes bigger with all its power.Nobody wants to go.It is a well-known fact to medical science that people at the time of death suddenly become completely healthy; all their diseases disappear. This is the last effort of their life – to resist death. The people who are related to them feel very happy that suddenly all diseases have disappeared. The person has become calm and quiet, but they don’t know that it signifies death. The diseases have disappeared because their function is fulfilled: they have killed the man. Now it is the last spurt of life.The same happens with every biological change in life. When sex is becoming irrelevant, you start thinking of sex more than ever, and suddenly a great spurt…. That is what is giving her the idea that it seems she is sexually repressed – because so much sexuality is suddenly overwhelming the mind.The mind can only understand logically, rationally one thing: from where is this sexuality coming? – it must be coming from the repressed unconscious. That is what Sigmund Freud and their followers have been teaching to the whole world. They are right on many points; they are wrong on many points. Particularly about this point, the transition when you are no longer young and the hormones in you are going to disappear, and the interest in sex is going to die – before dying it will explode with its full force.If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will say that you are sexually repressed. I cannot say that, because I know that this sudden overwhelming sexuality will be gone by itself, you don’t have to do anything. It is the signal that life is passing through a change. Now, life will be more calm and more quiet. You are really entering into a better state.Sex is a little childish. As you become more and more mature, sex loses the grip over you – and it is a good sign. It is something to be happy about; it is not a problem to be solved. It is something to celebrate.In the East no woman ever feels the trouble of the transition from youth to old age. In fact, she feels immensely happy that now that old demon is gone and life can be more peaceful. But the West has been living under many illusions. One is the illusion that there is only one life. That creates immense trouble. If there is only one life and sex is disappearing, so you are finished. Now, there is no more opportunity; there will not be any more excitement in life. Nobody is going to say, “You are beautiful and I love you and I will love you forever.”So first, the illusion of one life creates a problem. Second, the psychoanalysts and other therapists have created another illusion that sex is almost synonymous to life. The more sexual you are, the more alive you are. So when sex starts disappearing one starts feeling like a used cartridge: now there is no point to live; life ends with sex ending. Then people try all kinds of bizarre things: face lift, plastic surgery, false breasts. It is stupid, simply stupid. People start trying wigs; they start trying dresses which are sex-provoking. Almost all Western women are starving – they call it dieting! The idea in the West is that a woman is beautiful if she is not fat. And nature has some other idea: the woman has to be a little fat because for nature the woman is a mother. A mother needs extra fat for the child, because when the child is in her womb he will need food. And when the child is in the womb, the mother starts feeling nausea; she cannot eat, she starts throwing up. She needs emergency fat in her body so she can feed the child because the child needs food; he is growing fast.Science says that in the nine months in the mother’s womb, a child grows so fast that he will never grow so fast again in his seventy years. In nine months he passes through almost the whole evolution of man, from the fish…all the stages. His requirements have to be fulfilled by the mother – And she cannot eat…you can imagine. It is troublesome to have a child in your belly. I don’t think any man is ready to be pregnant: he will commit suicide; without any doubt he will jump from a fifty-storey building, “I am finished…pregnant…?”Just think, the idea that you have a child in the belly, and you will go crazy. But how to get rid of it…The mother goes through immense suffering, great sacrifice; hence, in the East we have not created the idea of a skinny woman. Of course, the skinny woman looks more sexually attractive, younger. The fat woman looks less sexually interesting, because she loses proportions. Her waist is no longer very small. Her body has gathered so much fat that nobody will feel attracted towards her. She does not have the necessary attraction for the human mind.The East has accepted that a woman has to be a little more fat than a man, a little more rounded.Just the other day somebody brought me a book of pictures taken by one famous photographer and on the front page was Sophia Loren. In the East she cannot be conceived of as very beautiful: she must be dieting – and dieting is nothing but the rich man’s idea of starvation.The poor people starve by themselves. The rich people starve in a costly way under professional guidance. The fear that you will not be attractive, that you will no longer be looked at by people…You will pass through the street and nobody will look at you; who is going…?It is a great need of man, and particularly women, to have attention – attention is nourishment. A woman suffers immensely when nobody pays attention to her. She has nothing else to attract people by; she has only her body. Man has not allowed her to have other dimensions where she can become a famous painter, a dancer or a singer, a learned professor. Man has cut all other dimensions from the woman’s life where she can be attractive and people will pay respect even while she becomes old.I have to remind you of the meaning of “respect”: it means looking back. When somebody passes by: re-spect. It has nothing to do with honor; it has something to do with your being suddenly aware that a beautiful thing has passed.Woman is left only the body by man, so she is so much concerned with the body that it creates clinging, possessiveness, fear that the person who loves her, if he leaves, perhaps will find another person. And without attention she starts feeling almost dead: What is the use of life if nobody is paying attention to you? She does not have an intrinsic life of her own.Man has taught woman that her life depends on others’ opinions about her. You can see all over the world that beauty competitions are arranged only for women, and the woman does not even revolt against these ideas. Why not for men? Just as you choose a Mrs. or Miss Universe, choose a Mr. Universe. No, nobody bothers about the man’s body. He can grow fat; he can become a Winston Churchill. Still he attracts attention because he has power.In the same book just beside Sophia Loren is Winston Churchill – ugly, as fat as you can conceive, the whole face sagging. He needs a face-lift – not Sophia Loren – but he will not bother; there is no need. He can have power, he can be the prime minister. He can be this and he can be that…Man has managed over the centuries to have all the other dimensions of attracting people, and he has left to woman only one dimension: her body. He has made woman just a vegetable. And naturally, the vegetable starts being worried if there are no customers.It is not a coincidence that in the most sexually perverted country, France, while being in love with a woman, you say, “I want to eat you.” Are these people cannibals? Is the woman a vegetable or what? “I want to eat you” shows a great respect for the woman! When nobody says to her, “I want to eat you,” she thinks, “I am now finished. Life has come to an end!”But here with me you have to learn something. The first thing is a deep acceptability of all the changes that nature brings to you. Youth has its own beauty; old age has its own beauty too. It may not be sexual, but if a man has lived silently, peacefully, meditatively, then old age will have a grandeur of its own.Just as the snow-covered peaks look beautiful, the white hairs of old age also have their own beauty – and not only beauty, but wisdom too, which no young man can claim, because all his behavior is stupid. He is running behind this woman, running behind that woman.The old man has stopped all this running business. He has settled in himself. He is no longer dependent on anybody else. The old woman should follow the same way. There should be no difference between men and women.That is why I was simply laughing and joking about Shunyo’s question because I did not want her to become serious about something which is natural. And if Milarepa feels angry, he simply proves what I have been saying, that he is crazy.Now he is running after younger women. This shows that you are not maturing, not learning that what you call love is not love, but biological slavery. Love happens only when you are beyond biological slavery; then love has a beauty. Biological slavery and the biological relationship are so ugly that for centuries people have decided to make love in darkness without light, so they don’t see what they are doing.Particularly the woman is very sensitive when you make love to her; she immediately closes her eyes. Just to see this nasty thing that is happening…I have heard that when Henry Ford died he was received with a great welcome in heaven and even God thanked him: “You have done great service to humanity by creating so many cars – you are a great creator.”Henry Ford said, “That’s okay, but you are not that great a creator. You have put man’s body in such a stupid way that the loveliest part people think about, dream about is so close to the dirtiest part. Could you not find somewhere else in the whole body?“Why has love to be sandwiched between the ugliest parts? You don’t have any sense, no aesthetics. The exhaust pipe is so close to the most lovely part that I cannot believe that you are a great creator” – and he was right.God has committed many mistakes. This is one of the major mistakes. The loving part could have been anywhere else: you have a six-foot-long-body, so much territory! And what kind of a stupid god…where he puts the loving parts?Not only is it to be accepted when life is going through a biological change, but it has to be rejoiced that you have passed over all that stupidity, that now you are free from biological bondage; it is only a question of conditioning.When you ask me questions you should remember that I never in any way want to hurt you. Even sometimes if I have to avoid the truth, I avoid it but don’t hurt you. If you get hurt about something that must be your own mind. But perhaps you are just a victim in that too – it is unconscious.You are asking, “How is it that going into something consciously has such a power to reveal all the threads which make up the tangle?”They have been made in your unconsciousness. They have been made in the darkness of your being. And when you bring light, naturally you see all the tangle: how you have created your misery, your suffering, your anguish, yourself. Seeing it is enough – all those tangles disappear.A conscious man never creates any tangle; he lives more intensely than anybody else. But his life is without any tangles for the simple reason that in consciousness you cannot create tangles.Abbie’s wife had just died and he was standing over the grave and sobbing uncontrollably. His best friend put his arm around him and said, “Abbie, time is a wonderful thing. Believe it or not some day you will want to start a new life again and be with people, maybe even get married again. Listen to me: Time heals wounds.”Abbie looked at him and replied, “I know, I know…but what am I going to do tonight?”Such is the unconsciousness of man. The wife died in the morning and he is worried about what he is going to do in the night – tonight! And you are talking about time: that some day wounds will be healed. What about tonight?I have heard an ancient story, Arabic, that a man’s father died and all the old people of the neighborhood came and said, “Don’t be worried, son. If you have lost your father, we are here. Don’t think for a single moment that you are fatherless. We are all your fathers. You can come always to us in any difficulty, any problem.”He was very much consoled, seeing the concern of his neighborhood people. He had never thought that they would be so considerate.And then his mother died and all the old women came and said, “Don’t be worried. We are still alive. You can look at us as your mother and whatever your mother was doing for you, we can do. There is no problem about it.”He was very much consoled. And then his wife died, and not a single wife from the neighborhood came to say don’t be worried we are here. Whatever your wife was doing, we will do…!The man was very angry. He stood in front of his house, watching if anybody would come or not – and nobody came. Finally, he started shouting, “You nasty people. When my father died all the old people came. When my mother died all the old women came. And now my wife has died and no young woman is coming – what kind of neighborhood is this?“…absurd, illogical! I am waiting from the morning for somebody to turn up, but nobody has come.”One has to accept life. But your unconsciousness does not allow you to accept life as it is. You wanted something else.It is perfectly good when sex disappears. You will be more capable of meditating. You will be more capable of being alone. You will be more capable of being blissful, without any misery because the whole game of sex is nothing but a long misery – fighting, hate, jealousy, envy. It is not a peaceful life.It is peace, silence, blissfulness, aloneness, freedom which give you the real taste of what life is.Two women are talking in a tearoom at four o’clock over two large, gooey ice cream sundaes and little sugary cakes. They have not seen each other since high school days and one is bragging about her very advantageous marriage.“My husband buys me whole new sets of diamonds when the ones I have get dirty,” she says, “and I have never even bothered to clean them.”“Fantastic,” said the other woman.“Yes,” says the first, “we get a new car every two months.”“Fantastic,” says the other.“And our house…” pursues the first woman, “Well, what is the use of talking about it, it is just…”“Fantastic,” finishes the other.“Yes, and tell me, what are you doing nowadays?” asked the first woman.“I go to the charm school,” says the other.“Charm school! Why, how quaint. What do you learn there?”“Well, we learn to say, fantastic, instead of bullshit.”In your unconsciousness everything is bullshit. And when you become conscious, it is really fantastic: all tangles disappear, all problems disappear. But you need not go to a charm school to learn it, because in a charm school deep down the woman is saying, “Bullshit.”And she is just repeating like a parrot, “Fantastic,” but she means bullshit. Not in a charm school, but in a school where your unconsciousness slowly, slowly disappears leaving a luminous being within you – then there is no tangle in life.I have lived a very strange life. Anybody else would have found so many tangles in it, so many troubles. I have also passed through all kinds of tangles, troubles, problems, but I have remained unscratched; I have enjoyed the journey. Whatever life brought to me, I have enjoyed it. I have tried to make the best out of it, whatever it is.There is no point in crying and weeping over spilled milk. Any situation can be made a learning, a step towards maturity, can be turned into a beneficial opportunity. That is what I call intelligence; otherwise, what is the difference between intelligent people and unintelligent people.It is true consciousness has tremendous power, but it is not used in revealing and dispersing the tangles of your life; they simply disappear as you become conscious.Gautam Buddha used to say that when the lights are on and from the windows people can see that the master is awake, thieves don’t come close. When the lights are put off, only then do thieves come close to the house to see whether the master has gone to sleep and it is the right time to enter. He was saying this about consciousness. He used to call sex, greed, lust for power, position, respectability all thieves. They come to you only when they see that there is no light in the man; inside it is all dark.Once you are radiating consciousness and light, those thieves don’t come close to you. But consciousness has its own power. It is simply in the presence of consciousness that tangles disappear. The power is not used for dispersing the tangles and problems; the power is to bring blissfulness. The power is to bring peace, silence, at-homeness, at-easeness and a tremendous ecstasy, a divine drunkenness.Life becomes for the first time self-oriented; you don’t have to beg from others for anything. Nobody can give you blissfulness; nobody can give you ecstasy. Nobody can give you the sense of immortality and the dance that comes with it. Nobody can give you the silence, which becomes a song in your heart.What can people give to you? In fact, the power of consciousness gives you so much that you become capable of sharing with people. For the first time, you can give to people. They are living in darkness; they haven’t seen any light. They don’t have any idea what a conscious being is. They don’t have any conception, comprehension of the power of consciousness, how many flowers shower, how much fragrance becomes natural to you.You can give, and you can give them a taste and you can give them a direction, so they can also find the same power which is dormant in them.A conscious man awakened can help millions of people to move towards the source of joy, real and authentic life, to pure love which knows nothing of hate, which knows nothing of jealousy, which has nothing to do with body and biology – which is just a spiritual communion, a feeling of deep compassion for your innermost being.Yes, the power of consciousness gives you many things. The treasure is inexhaustible, but your problems and tangles that have been created by unconsciousness – for them no power is needed, just the presence of consciousness is enough.Osho,Can you say something about virtue?Fantastic! Here, we are not concerned about virtue at all. Virtue is for people who are unconscious; it is a training for them to say, “Don’t say bullshit, say fantastic!”Virtue is a training a discipline imposed on unconscious people. All the religions talk about virtue as being against sin. They have made fixed categories. Some things are condemned as sin and some things are praised as virtues. The virtuous man will have immense reward after death, and the sinner will be condemned to hellfire for eternity.This is the strategy of fear and greed, because man can be easily manipulated by these two things – fear and greed. Heaven is nothing but greed exaggerated; so hell is fear exaggerated, and human beings are afraid of eternal hellfire. Out of fear they somehow try to avoid whatever is sin. And the trouble is anything that gives you joy, anything that gives you pleasure is sin.Out of fear they lose all contact with life, they become dry and dead before their death. There is only one consolation: that they are declared saints, they are worshipped. Just their ego is satisfied greatly; otherwise they are suffering deep down immensely.That is why your saints cannot laugh: laughter needs a little juice. There is no juice in them; everything is dry. They are deserts where nothing grows green. So on the one hand the pressure of fear…I have seen pictures of the Middle Ages: there were Christian preachers who made so much fuss about hell and its tortures that just to be in the church listening to their sermons many ladies used to faint. Just the idea that they were going into such detail…what would be done to you? The people thought the preachers were great according to how much they could infect people’s psychologies. The greatest preacher was one in whose congregation almost everybody fainted.A deep fear psychology, a deep guilt psychology on the one hand, and on the other hand greed to be fulfilled as a reward. You will be getting everything in paradise: all those things which are sins here on the earth, they will also be available to you.Mohammedans are against alcohol, but in their paradise there are rivers of alcohol. You don’t have to go to a small pub, you can drink, you can drown, you can swim. All the rivers, they don’t consist of water – pure wine. Here it is condemned: you should not fall in the trap of love. A woman is condemned and in the heaven – in every religion’s idea of heaven – women are freely supplied. Of course, according to your virtue you will get. If your virtue is great perhaps, Sophia Loren – it all depends on your virtue.A strange game has been played with the human mind. Thousands of girls…I say girls, because they don’t grow in age. They don’t have to feel like Shunyo; they are fixed for eternity at the age sixteen. In fact, they are prostitutes, eternal prostitutes, but they are thought to be rewards for saints. How many other saints have used those rewards, because since the beginning the same staff has been working, not even a shift change. I have never come across anything about a shift change or any staff change in the holy scriptures – the same young women.They remain always young. They don’t perspire; they do not need deodorants. They must be certainly made of plastic, because only plastic does not perspire. A real skin is bound to perspire if it is alive, because through every pore of the skin you are breathing in. And perspiration is a natural way of keeping you at the same body temperature.If it is too cold you start shivering. You may not be aware why you are shivering. You think it is because of the cold; it is to keep your body temperature continuously the same. Shivering gives you inner heat. In the hot season you perspire. You perspire so that your water, perspiration is taken away by the heat; it evaporates so the heat does not affect your temperature. It simply evaporates your perspiration. It leaves you without increasing your temperature; otherwise, if there was no perspiration, your life span would not be very big.The life span can be measured in many ways: in years, seventy years, but as body temperature from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten – just twelve degrees is your span of life. If there was no perspiration, your temperature would be as high as the heat is around you. The moment you pass one hundred and five, you would start getting dizzy. The moment you pass one hundred and seven, you would be falling into a coma. The moment you pass one hundred and ten, you would have passed away.It is perspiration that saves you; it is your life savior. But those poor plastic girls…and eternal promise for all joys!The Hindu heaven has certain trees, which they call kalpavriksha, wish-fulfillment trees. You don’t have to order a cup of tea or a woman or a car; you don’t have to order anybody; you don’t have to call any bearer or give a call to some agency. You just sit under the wish-fulfilling tree – and they are all over heaven, everywhere – you just sit underneath and you say whatever you want, and immediately, instantly, it will be provided.There is a beautiful story of a man, who by some accident stumbled into heaven. He had no idea where he had reached. He was sitting under a kalpavriksha. He was feeling very hungry. He had been traveling a lot and that is how he had stumbled somehow by accident into heaven.He said, “I am feeling hungry but I don’t see any hotel anywhere, any restaurant, nothing. I don’t see even a single man. But I am feeling very hungry, if I could get some good food…” Immediately beautiful women appeared from nowhere with all kinds of sweets and delicious foods. He was so hungry that he did not pay attention to where all these things were coming from.He started eating, feeling perfectly well. He was tired. He went to sleep. Before going to sleep, he thought that sleeping on the ground, uneven with stones, if someone could arrange just a mattress, and suddenly – he could not believe – again beautiful women appeared with a beautiful bed and they put him on the bed. But he was so tired that he still did not think what was going on.When refreshed, he awoke. He thought, my God, there is nobody here who has brought the food, and I have not said to anybody; I just thought about it! And he looked at the beautiful bed, “Who has brought this? I had simply thought about lying down on the ground. It seems there must be ghosts around.” That was the natural conclusion, because he was not aware that he was in heaven, under a kalpavriksha.“There must be ghosts all around, my God” – and immediately ghosts appeared, because whatever you would say…The moment he saw the skeletons of ghosts dancing all around, he said, “My god, they are going to kill me” – and they killed him. The man never came back.Religions have used fear to prevent you from living, and greed to help you so that you can be patient and hope that great things are ahead. Just the small things you are leaving, and for eternity you will enjoy all the pleasures that you want – and you don’t have to pay for them.Virtue is the currency of heaven.The more virtuous you are, the bigger a bank balance you have in heaven. I don’t teach you virtue because your virtue is false, because deep down there is greed.I teach you only awareness.Out of awareness whatever you do is virtue according to me. And out of unawareness whatever you do is sin according to me. And according to me, your sins are not going to take you to hell. Your sins immediately give you hell – here, just now. And your virtues are not going to give you an eternity of paradise. Your virtues give you joy, blissfulness, the moment you act with full awareness.The punishment and the reward is immediate: the reward follows your action. But it depends where your action will lead you. It can be unconscious action, then hell herenow. It has nothing to do with geography; it is something to do with your psychology.Acting consciously, you are in paradise wherever you are. Once you have learned, you will not ask, “What is virtue?” You will ask, “What is awareness? What is consciousness?” You will ask, “What is meditation?” – because that is going to make you conscious and make you alert.What brings misery is sin.Whatever brings joy is virtue.Alfred North Whitehead has made a beautiful statement: It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious.To me, it is absolutely obvious that virtue or sin, heaven or hell are secondary. The primary is your alertness, your awareness, but people won’t ask the obvious. These are by-products, and by getting entangled with by-products you will be in trouble.There is a tale concerning Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson on board a train…They passed a flock of sheep and Watson said, “A sizable flock, Holmes.”“Ah, exactly seven hundred and eighty-four in number, my dear Watson,” said Holmes sleepily.“Good heavens, Holmes,” said Watson. “Surely you can’t have counted them.”They are in a train; the train has passed the sheep. The flock is left far behind and it must have taken a single moment to pass.“Not directly,” said Holmes. “I made use of a simple trick any school child knows. I merely counted the legs and divided by four.”Just don’t get into nonsense; otherwise, you will always feel what Leonardo da Vinci has confessed in his letters: I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. Now, Leonardo da Vinci is one of the greatest geniuses, and whatever he has done is incomparable. There is nobody else who even comes close to him. But even such a great man feels a little guilt, “I have not reached the quality it should have.”This is the atmosphere that religions have created in the world. They don’t allow anybody to be at ease, even the greatest genius. They go on telling you that you are still not doing right; you are still far away from the goal. You are still unworthy; you are always unworthy. They will not leave you at peace so that you can enjoy life and love life and be grateful to God, and be grateful to the universe – which both mean the same to me.God is not a person. It is this whole universe – these trees, these clouds, the sun, the stars, you and everybody, whether asleep or awake, whether committing sins or virtues, you are part of one organic universe.If you commit a sin…The word sin has been contaminated by the religions; otherwise it simply means in its roots, forgetfulness, unawareness. It means exactly what I am saying to you. Sin is your unawareness. Any action done in unconsciousness is sin. But religions have completely destroyed the original meaning of the word. Whatever you are doing consciously is virtue and there is no ready-made list of what are virtues, because in a different situation, the same thing may become sin. The thing that was virtue in one condition, in one context, may not be virtue in another context; it all depends. But how are you going to know whether in this context it is virtue or sin.Those dead categories that have been given to you like the ten commandments, fixed forever, they don’t take account of the fact that life is continuously changing and you are moving every moment into a new situation – and a new situation needs a new response. So I don’t give you, I can’t give you any ready-made list to avoid these things, that these are sins and avoid them because they will lead you to hell. I cannot exploit you and your fears and I cannot say to you that these are the commandments, if you follow them yours is the kingdom of God, because in life things go on changing.It happened…I had a friend; he was a professor in the university – a very learned professor of Sanskrit. He wanted to go to Tibet because many scriptures in Sanskrit on Buddhism had been burned by the Hindus in India. But their translations exist in Tibetan still, so he wanted to translate them back into Sanskrit.It was a great idea and he was well versed in Sanskrit. He had been learning Tibetan for years and now he was ready. But he was a brahmin by caste, a very orthodox brahmin.In India it is perfectly good to get up at five o’clock, early in the morning and have a good bath in the nearby lake or in the nearby river, and then do your prayer, meditate. Only after that can you enter into the mundane world of your profession, your life, your family.In Tibet, the Tibetan holy book says that only one bath a year is allowed; Tibetan monks are the dirtiest people to find. I have been harassed by Tibetan monks.When the Dalai Lama came for the first time – escaped from Tibet with thousands of Lamas – I was taking a camp in Bodhgaya and all the Lamas first came to pay respect to the place where Gautam Buddha had become enlightened. I was taking a camp just there in the compound of the memorial temple for Buddha. I had never come across Tibetan Lamas. But such are habits, they die very hard. They use, I think three or four layers of clothes, one on top of another. Their clothes are greasy, dusty and they will not take any bath because their holy scripture says once in a year is compulsory.When my friend reached Tibet, he continued to follow his pattern of life in India. He could not manage to be there more than three days, because he had to take a bath early in the morning, five o’clock, according to the brahmin religion. Without taking a bath you cannot eat; that is a sin – and in India it is certainly right. But in Tibet the whole context is different. To take a bath in ice-cold water, five o’clock in the early morning is to freeze yourself to death. Food is not a problem. You will not be able to eat food. In three days he got so tortured by this morning bath.One day he tried; it was too much. The whole day he was feeling as if his blood was frozen. And for another two days he could not eat because he could not take the bath. So he had taken only one bath in Tibet and one day he had eaten and two days he remained without food. But he thought, How long will it be because I cannot survive without food, neither can I survive with the bath. It is better to go home, forget all about those scriptures; it is none of my business.He came back. I was surprised when I saw him back, “…so quick you managed to translate.”He said, “Forget all about translations. Congratulate me that I am alive.” And when he told me I said that this is stupidity.In Tibet you should look at the context, not at your Hindu idea of virtue and sin – that is stupidity. Mohammedans have been allowed by their founder, Mohammed, four wives, and it is perfectly virtuous to have four wives.Mohammed himself married nine wives. Obviously he was a prophet, no ordinary man, but, it was perfectly right in those times because the Arabs were continuously fighting and killing. But only men were killed; it was against their culture to kill any woman. The women were raped, but not killed.So there was a strange situation; there were four times more women than men. If he had insisted that monogamy was virtue, as is being insisted all over the world – polygamy or even bigamy is a crime, is a sin – he would not have been right. Because if monogamy had been virtuous, what would have happened to the three women who are left without men? They would corrupt the whole of society. They will become prostitutes and the whole society would become an ugly scene. So Mohammed is perfectly right; I support him.But not now in India, where women and men are equal as they are everywhere, nature keeps a balance, an exact balance. To keep the balance nature has to take care: it gives birth to one hundred and fifteen boys when it gives birth to one hundred girls, because fifteen boys will pop off before the time of marriage – boys are weak and fragile.The ordinary idea that women are weak and fragile is just male chauvinistic imposition. Nature knows better: fifteen boys per hundred are going to die. Girls don’t die; they have a greater resistance against diseases. They are not so often sick and they live longer than men, five years longer all over the world.So by the time the marriageable age comes, there are a hundred boys and a hundred girls. Monogamy seems to be absolutely right in this context, but Mohammedans go on insisting that it is part of their religion…So even in India they are allowed to have four wives. It is such an ugly situation because it means three men will remain without wives. So the Mohammedans abduct women from other religions.Hindus particularly are very touchy people. If a woman has been forcibly taken by the Mohammedans to their homes, even if they have not touched her she will not be accepted back in the Hindu fold, she has to go to the Mohammedans. She has fallen below the dignity of a Hindu.So Mohammedans have been continually stealing women from other societies. They have to, because what to do with the three men that are without women? Those three men will start relationships with others’ wives and that will create a mess. And the Indian constitution, which, in the name of religion, doesn’t want to interfere in any religion, cannot do anything to prevent Mohammedans from this polygamy. And those four women that they marry, they use as economic, financial help; they work and the husband rests. This is great!The Mohammedan priests go on insisting on no interference, because a man with four women can create four children per year, very easily, but a woman with four men cannot create four children; she will create only one child. The population of Mohammedans goes on increasing as nobody else can increase the population the way they can. So you will not be surprised that India has been divided; Mohammedans have taken Pakistan and made it separate. The country has been cut into three parts: one side is Pakistan, given to Mohammedans; another side is Bangladesh, given to Mohammedans. And still, within forty years, in India Mohammedans are again number two to Hindus.Again they can ask for another country. And you will also be surprised that India is a Hindu country but the number of Mohammedans in India is more than in any Mohammedan country in the world – not even Arabia, or Egypt, or Iran, or Libya, or Palestine…No Mohammedan country has so many Mohammedans as India has.India is the greatest Mohammedan country in the world if you take the number of the Mohammedans. And the number goes on growing four times more. Hindus are simply puzzled what to do because soon they will be outnumbering Hindus. They have taken Pakistan, they have taken Bangladesh, and it is not far away when they will be the majority and Hindus will become the minority in their own country.Situations, contexts should be taken into account and that is possible only if you are living a very alert and conscious life; otherwise you will follow dead, ready-made things which may have been relevant at some time. Those times have changed and they have become irrelevant, but the list continues to be the same.So I don’t give you any list. I have been asked by priests, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, that I should make a clear-cut statement: what are sins, what are virtues and what are my fundamental principles of religion?I said, “My first fundamental and the last fundamental is that religion cannot be a fixed thing. It has to be spontaneous. It has to come out of your awareness. Nobody can decide it. No catechism can be given according to me.I can only teach you awareness and then you find out with your awareness, with your own light where to go, what to do.Anything done with awareness is virtue.Anything done with unawareness is sin.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Since my arrival here I have been living intensely, and I see that the present is only poetry.I thank you deeply for your being here with us. I am leaving in a few days and I feel that you will be everywhere I go, but I am scared of the noise of the world. I do not want to lose myself there.Can you tell me something?Once you have tasted the inner silence, the noise on the outside does not matter; it is not a disturbance at all. The only disturbance comes from your inner noise, the chattering noise inside, the continuous rush of thoughts – that is the real marketplace. What is outside, is outside; you can pass through the marketplace in absolute silence. If your inner being is not disturbed, then what is happening outside cannot have any impact on you.The fear arises only because we are not certain of our own silence – our silence is very vulnerable. And in the beginning, it is natural – it is nothing to be worried about. All that is needed is that the inner silence should be more crystallized. In fact, going into the outer world can be of immense help because it becomes a test. Use it as an opportunity to test your silence. And once you start feeling silent in the crowd, then you will be overjoyed – then you can be certain that this silence is yours; otherwise sometimes one is deceived.In the mountains you can be silent, in the deep forest you can be silent, in the middle of the night under the stars you can be silent – but that is not your silence. It is just the outer silence penetrating you. In fact, there is no difference – outer silence penetrating you, or outer noise penetrating you – both are the same; you are under the impact of the outside. Hence I don’t give any value to the silence that you feel coming from the outside. This silence will not be much help; when noise comes, you will be overwhelmed by the noise.The silence has not to be of the mountains, of the stars, of the silence of the deep night, nor the silence of this commune. Here everybody is silent – at least, trying to be silent! With so many people trying to be silent, one can just become part… But it is the same: you can become part of a commune and feel silent; in the crowd you can become part of the crowd and you will feel noisy. In fact, you are not yet. All your experiences are dependent; you don’t exist as an individual. That is the fear; otherwise it does not matter.I used to have a friend who was condemned in the whole city – he was a thief, and you can say he was a master thief. For almost six months he would be in jail, and six months outside. Nobody in the city even wanted to talk to him.From the jail he used to come directly to my house. He was a very lovable man. And whenever he would come from the jail to my house, naturally everybody in the family was disturbed. My father again and again insisted to me that this friendship was not good. I said, “Why do you believe in him and not in me? Am I your son, or is he your son?”And he said, “What kind of argument are you giving me?”I said, “I am saying exactly the right thing. You don’t believe in me, you believe in him. You are afraid I will be affected by him – you are not giving even a single thought that I may affect him. Why do you think I am so weak?”He said, “I have never thought from this angle – perhaps you are right.”Slowly, slowly that man became accepted by my family. It took a little time; there were many reasons for them to reject him. The first reason was that he was a Mohammedan; second, he was a thief.I had to sit outside the dining room because they would not allow him in the dining room. In a Jaina family, no Mohammedan can be allowed in the dining room. Even for guests or customers, separate plates, glasses, saucers, cups – everything is kept, but it is kept separate; it is used only for them. And I insisted that when I invited him for food, I was going to eat with him – I could not insult him. He may be a thief, he may be a Mohammedan, it doesn’t matter; I respect his humanity. So the only way was that I would also have to sit outside the dining room. And my friend used to say, “Why do you unnecessarily continue to fight with your family?”And slowly, slowly my respect towards him changed him. He was angry with me, saying, “Your respect prevents me from being a thief, and I don’t know anything else. I am uneducated.”He was an orphan, and there was no other way for him except either to beg or to steal, and certainly stealing is better than begging. Begging degrades you very badly; by stealing, at least you are using your intelligence, your courage.He was angry and said, “Now my life has become really a problem, and you are the cause. I cannot steal because I cannot betray your trust, your love and your respect. And nobody is ready to give me employment.”So I took him to my father and I said to him, “Now my friend wants employment. You are against his stealing, now give him employment; otherwise you will be responsible for his stealing. The poor fellow is ready to do any work, but nobody in the whole city is ready to give him work because he is a thief. People say to him, ‘Bring certificates from where you have been working. Who has ever employed you ever in your whole life?’ And he has no certificates.”I told my father, “Listen, somebody has to give him work the first time; otherwise, how can he get a certificate? You give him employment, and then you can give him a certificate. And I guarantee that he will not steal and he will not do anything wrong.”On my guarantee my father employed him. All other friends of my father said, “What are you doing, giving a job to a thief? He will deceive you.” But my father said, “My son has given his guarantee, and I have to give the man an opportunity because my son’s reasoning is right: If nobody gives him an opportunity, then everybody is pushing him towards the jail. And the whole society is responsible for pushing him towards the jail. He wants to work, but if nobody is willing to give him work…. What do you want – that he should commit suicide or what?”Once a person goes into jail, then it becomes his only place, his home. Then within a few days he is back, because there is nobody outside to give him any protection, any dignity, any respect, any love. It is better to be in the jail.He proved tremendously trustworthy, and finally my father had to accept. He said, “You are right. I was thinking that I was taking an unnecessary risk. I had not thought that your reasoning was going to work. He is a professional thief – his whole life has been just going in and out of the jail. But you were right.”My father was a very sincere man and very truthful; he was always willing to accept his mistakes, even in front of his own son. He said, “You were right, that I trusted more in him – I thought he would spoil your life. I did not trust that you might transform his life.”Giovanna, it all depends how much you trust your silence, how much you trust yourself, how much the silence is arising from your inner sources. Then there is no problem – you can go in the noisy world and you will remain silent. And it is possible that you may change a few people you come in contact with. Why trust that they will be able to change you? Why accept your weakness?Go in the world with courage and with strength, and the noise of the world will not be a disturbance. And your silence will help people to become silent. Talk about your experience of meditation to your friends, to your family. It is always helpful to provoke in people an invitation, to provoke in people a longing, that they have been missing something that you have attained. And the more you spread your experience and share your experience with people, the more you will be protecting yourself; they will not be able to influence you.Start spreading your fragrance and your silence and your experience. That becomes a subtle protection around you, and that also becomes a tremendously transforming force. Rather than going with fear, go with blissfulness, spreading the experience that has happened to you.You say the present is pure poetry – that is so valuable; share it. And trust that the higher value is always victorious. The noise cannot win over silence, and misery cannot win over blissfulness, and darkness cannot win over light. These are fundamental rules of existence.Just follow these fundamentals and you will be enriched in the marketplace even more than you can be enriched here. Because there, you will become stronger – you will find the challenge to become stronger. And each time you come, you will come here to refresh yourself, to go deeper, to find greater peaks of consciousness and then go into the world. Make it a point that the world has not to be renounced. The world needs people who are silent.In the past, the silent people have deserted the world; they have escaped to the mountains. In my opinion, they were cowards and escapists. They have not helped the world to evolve more, to become more mature, to become more peaceful; they simply escaped just out of fear that the world would destroy them.I want my people to go into the world and destroy the world’s noisiness, the world’s ugliness, greediness. It is a challenge, and it is very exciting. Always remember: the best defense is attack! Attack people with your peace, with your love, with your silence, with your joy – that’s the best defense, and that is a great service to humanity too.Sid Levensky, aged eighty-three, goes into the confessional at Saint John’s Cathedral. The priest asks him, “Have you anything to confess?”“Yes,” says the old man, “my wife died two months ago. Two days after she passed on I met another woman. She is twenty-two years old. I have been sleeping with her since the day I met her. Sometimes we do it two or three times a day.”“And how old are you?” asks the priest.“Eighty-three,” Sid replies.“Oh dear!” says the priest, “Go home and say ten Hail Marys.”“I can’t do that,” says the old man, “I’m Jewish.”“Then for God’s sake, why are you telling me all this?” asks the priest.“Oh, it’s not just you,” replies Sid, “I’m telling everybody!”So just go and tell everybody!Osho,I have been around you for eight months now, yet I feel I rarely really let you in.What can I do, Osho?As far as I am concerned, I would suggest that you don’t do anything. It is your effort, your desire that is preventing me being within you because all desire, longing, closes the doors.And you are asking, “What can I do?” If you can do nothing, that will be the best – you just leave this idea. What are you going to do with me inside you? I am perfectly happy wherever I am! And I can help you from the outside more easily.And this eight months, you say, “I feel I rarely really let you in.” It means sometimes, not “really,” but you let me in. Why are you engaged in this unnecessary mind game? There is no need. It happens, but it happens only when you are not waiting for it; it happens only when you are not making any effort for it.It is one of the most difficult things to understand, that there are things which happen not by your doing, but by your not doing, your sleep – if you make an effort, then it is impossible. People have been doing all kinds of things: chanting mantras, repeating numbers from one to a hundred and back, from one hundred…ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…to one. And again, going up, coming down, going up, coming down.In fact, all this effort keeps them awake. But these are the suggestions of so-called wise people, who are all around, ready to give advice like, “Repeat the name of God.” That will keep you awake! The only thing that can bring sleep is to forget all about it – do something else, anything will do. Just lying down, what is the harm? Have a good rest, why be worried about sleep? And when you are at ease, with no worry, no chanting, no mantra, no God – you are just resting – you will find slowly, slowly sleep is coming, enveloping you. You will not know when you have fallen asleep.Do you know exactly at what time you enter from waking into sleep? You have been sleeping every day for your whole life, but do you remember, any night, even a single time, the exact moment when you entered into sleep? Even if you look at your watch, sleep will be gone. That much effort on your part is enough to disturb it. Sleep comes only when you have completely forgotten about it.And this is a vicious circle: people who are suffering from sleeplessness cannot forget it for a single moment, and that creates sleeplessness. And the more they are suffering from sleeplessness, the more difficult it becomes for sleep to come.There are many things in life which need absolute relaxation on your part. They will come when the right moment is there, and the right moment means when you have forgotten them completely.It happens often that you remember somebody – seeing him, you know him, you know his name, it is just on the tip of your tongue. But why is it not coming out? The more you try…It becomes a very weird experience – you know, you perfectly know, you are absolutely certain that you know the name, you know the person. There is not the slightest doubt in you, but somehow it is stuck just on the tongue – it does not come out. It becomes a very strange feeling.And then you start doing something else. How long can you go on sitting with this strange, weird feeling? You just go in the garden, start digging a hole, planting a tree, or pruning the trees…and suddenly it is there. When you had forgotten completely to remember it, it suddenly comes – surfaces to your consciousness. But it surfaces only when you have forgotten to remember it.These eight months you must have been trying hard to feel me inside you. In the first place, there was no need. You have to feel yourself; that is the basic thing that you have not done. You don’t know your own inside – how can you feel me inside you?Just first do the homework: feel yourself, your interiority, your inner being. And the moment you feel your inner being, you will be so overwhelmed with joy, relaxation, at ease, that there is a possibility you may feel me also within you. You may feel stars, you may feel the sun, you may feel the whole existence within you. But first, feel your within.Let me say it this way: If you can feel your within, the without also comes within. You become so expansive, your consciousness becomes so vast, it spreads all over existence. It is one of the most beautiful, most blissful experiences.And I have no objection if you feel me within yourself – from my side, I am absolutely willing to come in. But you don’t know that the doors of your inner subjectivity are closed. First, get settled inside. Before you invite the guest, please become the host; otherwise, what am I going to do in an empty house? I am a lazy man. Unless you are there to take care of me, I am not coming!Max Levensky is dragged out of bed at three a.m. one morning and is hauled before the KGB. He is accused of being anti-Russian and is then interrogated.“What is the definition of a communist?” demands the KGB man.Max replies immediately, “Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin.”“And what,” continues the interrogator, “is the definition of an anti-Communist?”Max thinks for a moment and then says, “Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin and understands them.”You just try to understand yourself, and then everybody will be coming in – Marx and Lenin…! But the first thing first. The only thing that can be said is: the basic need is to know yourself, be yourself, and everything else will follow. The understanding of yourself opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence.Osho,You often tell us that we should not judge ourselves or other people.I am a teacher and because of my job I have to judge the students.Now that I am going back to Italy, I am worried about how I shall manage with my job. Can you give me some help?My saying that you should not judge does not mean that you cannot say to a student, because you are a teacher, “The answer you have brought is not right.”It is not judging the person, it is judging the act. And I am not telling you not to judge the act – that is a totally different thing.For example, somebody is a thief – you can judge that stealing is not good. But don’t judge the person, because the person is a vast phenomenon and the act is a small thing. The act is so small a piece…that small piece should not become a judgment about the whole person. A thief may have many beautiful values: he may be truthful, he may be sincere, he may be a very loving person.When I say don’t judge a person, I am not saying that you are not allowed to say that somebody is committing a mistake. Somebody is falling into a well – I am not saying that you should just stand silently without judging. This judgment, “Don’t go that way” – perhaps that man is blind and you have to prevent him; otherwise he will fall into the well. But preventing him, seeing that he is blind, does not mean that you are condemning him. The moment you start thinking in terms of condemnation then judgment enters, and I am against that kind of judgment.One student is doing something which is not right. You are a teacher, your very function is to put the student on the right path. It is your love, it is not your condemnation; it is your compassion, not your judgment. But most often what happens is just the opposite: people start judging the person rather than the action. Actions have to be corrected – and particularly in a profession like teaching, you have to correct; you cannot allow students to go on doing wrong things. That will be very cruel, uncompassionate.I have been a teacher myself, but I have never judged a single student as far as his person, his being is concerned. But that does not mean I have not corrected them if they were wrong. For example, I was sitting one day with the vice-chancellor. He loved to talk with me whenever he could get a chance and could find me, because I was very rarely present. And most often I avoided passing by his office because he used to tell his peon that if he saw me, to just bring me in. He loved to talk; he enjoyed a good argument.I was talking with him, and a girl came crying. So he said to me, “Just a moment,” and he asked the girl, “What is the matter? Why are you crying?” She said a certain boy, a student in her class had been harassing her for almost the whole year. “He throws small pebbles at me in the class, he writes letters to me.” And the vice-chancellor said, “Don’t be worried, I will call him and put him right; such things cannot be allowed. He will be punished, you don’t be worried. And if he does not stop, I will expel him from the university.”I was listening, and I said, “Just wait a minute. I want to ask the girl a few things.”He said, “Of course, you can ask. If you can help in the matter, it will be very good.”I asked the girl, “Are you really hurt by his throwing pebbles at you and writing love letters to you? Be honest! The day he does not write a love letter to you, don’t you wait for it?”The vice-chancellor said, “What are you talking about?”I said, “You just keep quiet. When I am talking, you just be a gentleman – keep quiet.” The girl stopped crying. I said, “Do you understand? If no young man harasses you, will you feel good? Don’t you know there are girls who are not harassed by anybody, and they are suffering?”The vice-chancellor said, “What are you saying?”I said, “You keep quiet, I am going to solve the matter completely. I will talk to that boy also.”He said, “You need not talk, because the way you are talking…”I said, “Now I have taken the matter in my hands.” I asked the girl, “Are his love letters not written well? Then I can teach him how to write love letters! Because every girl wants love letters – I don’t see that there is anything unnatural in it.”Now the vice-chancellor was boiling! He said to the girl, “You go away.”I said, “She can go only when you answer a few questions in front of her. When you were a student, just remember those old days – those beautiful days. Have you not written love letters to girls?”He looked at me, he looked at the girl, and he said, “My God, what…” For a moment he was silent.I said, “Be honest!”He said, “Yes I have written…”I said, “And just a moment before, you were expelling that boy from the university and you had forgotten completely.”Every young man will write letters, and if somebody does not write, the function of the teacher is to help him: “Are you a dodo or what?”As far as my classroom is concerned, from the very first day I entered after the long summer vacations, my first thing was…because in India the girls sit on one side, boys sit on another side, and in between there is a big space. My first thing was, “Just get mixed.” They would look very embarrassed….I said, “Just get up, and you can choose whomsoever you want, but get mixed! I cannot tolerate this stupidity because this is the cause – you have to throw stones, you have to write letters…What is the need? Just sit next to each other, and if you want to say something, whisper. Whisper – I can stop; I can give you time. For fifteen minutes you do whatsoever you want to do. I will keep my eyes closed and meditate, so that after fifteen minutes we can concentrate on the subject matter. This is more primary.”Students were very much afraid of me. With hesitation they would mix up; still they would sit so that they would not touch each other. I said, “What nonsense – do you think each other untouchable? Sit relaxed. And if you want to nudge the girl, or the girl wants to nudge you, it is perfectly okay; nature demands it. And because you are prevented, then you start ugly behavior. Now, taking the air out of the girls’ bicycles – that I don’t think is natural! That is sheer stupidity. Harassing them on the road, saying ugly dirty words – I don’t think that is right, nor is it worthy of you.“If you want to say something, write a beautiful love letter. If you don’t know how to write, I am here – I am available. Anybody, male or female, can come to the common room where I sit. I will teach you how to write love letters.”My class was the most silent class, and I told the vice-chancellor, “Sometime you can come and you can see – nobody is doing anything to anybody because they are allowed; I accept it as my responsibility that they should be allowed to be as natural as possible. Every girl should feel that she is loved, desired, that there are people who look at her with loving eyes. Every boy wants to be loved. And this is the time when they should pass through these experiences.”I said to the girl, “What do you want? Tell me exactly. Do you want the boy to be expelled?”She said, “No.”“Do you want him not to write letters to you?”She said, “No.” The vice-chancellor said, “Then why have you come here?”I said, “It is very simple – she simply wants your attention. She wants to say to the world that she is being loved, somebody is writing love letters, and without telling others there is no joy in the thing. The whole world should know that she is no ordinary girl – exceptionally beautiful – people are throwing stones.”The vice-chancellor said to the girl, “Now you go, because listening to such things…he can even spoil me. You just leave the room, and if you don’t want to do anything against that boy, never come again.” And when the girl had gone, he said, “You should not do such a thing, because if people come to know…”I said, “In fact, you are afraid of your wife, it is not about people. And I am going to tell your wife that this old man is teaching…in front of me, he has been teaching that love letters are natural.”He said, “You were saying natural!”I said, “You were listening silently! Do you agree with me or not?”He said, “I agree, but don’t go to my wife – that is the only woman I am afraid of.”I said, “Then you have to behave.”Just don’t judge so quickly, and don’t judge the person. Judge actions, and correct them, and don’t correct them according to tradition, convention, according to so-called morality, according to your prejudices. Whenever you are correcting somebody, be very meditative, be very silent; look at the whole thing from all perspectives. Perhaps they are doing the right thing, and your prevention will not be right at all.So when I say, “Don’t judge,” I simply mean that no action gives you the right to condemn the person. If the action is not right, help the person – find out why the action is not right, but there is no question of judgment. Don’t take the person’s dignity, don’t humiliate him, don’t make him feel guilty – that’s what I mean when I say, “Don’t judge.”But as far as correcting is concerned: unprejudiced, silently, in your awareness, if you see that something is wrong and will destroy that person’s intelligence, will take him on the wrong paths in his life, help him.The job of the teacher is not just to teach futile things – geography, and history, and all kinds of nonsense. His basic function is to bring the students to a better consciousness, to a higher consciousness. This should be your love and your compassion, and this should be the only value on which you judge any action as right or wrong.But never for a single moment let the person feel that he has been condemned. On the contrary, let him feel that he has been loved – it is out of love that you have tried to correct him.Conrad was six years old. Although he was six, he had never spoken a word. His parents took him to the psychiatrist, but it didn’t help. But one evening at the dinner table, Conrad looked down at his plate of food and said, “Take away this muck, it tastes terrible!”His parents were elated and wept with joy. “You can talk!” cried his mother. “How come you’ve never spoken before this?”“Up to now,” said Conrad, “everything has been fine!”Don’t judge people – try to understand them. Now he is saying such a beautiful thing: “What is the need to speak when everything is going fine? Only for the first time something is terrible!”A guy lying in a hospital bed, coming around from an anesthetic, wakes up to find the doctor sitting beside him. “I have got bad news and good news for you,” says the doctor. “Would you like the bad or good first?”“Aaagh,” groans the guy, “tell me the bad.”“Well,” says the doctor, “we had to amputate both your legs above the knee.”“Aaagh,” groans the guy, “that’s really bad.”After recovering from the shock, he asks the doctor for the good news.“Well,” said the doctor, “the man in the next bed would like to buy your slippers!”Just don’t be serious! Don’t think that you are a teacher so you are in a very serious job. Look at life with more playful eyes…it is really hilarious! There is nothing to judge – everybody is doing his best. If you feel disturbed by somebody, it is your problem, not his. First correct yourself.I have my own way of looking at things…. I was a teacher for nine years, and I never judged a single student. I have never examined a single examination paper, because I told the vice-chancellor, “If I really examine, nobody is going to pass. And if I am going to pass a few people, why should the others not be passed? So things are clear – you can decide – either I can pass everybody, or I can fail everybody.”He said, “You always bring strange ideas! I have been a teacher my whole life; this idea never happened to me.”I said, “This is exactly what I am going to do, so you can decide.”He said, “It is better you don’t take any examination papers. I will inform the in-charge that you should not be given any papers to examine.”I said, “That’s perfectly right, because that saves me the trouble of judging people unnecessarily.”Only once they appointed me as a superintendent of the whole examination. I said, “You are doing something wrong – you don’t understand me.” That was my first encounter with the new vice-chancellor. I said, “You don’t know me. The old man knew me; he never committed any mistake like this.”He said, “What are you saying? Is it a mistake?”I said, “It is a mistake because you don’t know me. But give it a try!”So he said, “Okay.”He came two or three times to see what was happening, and he was feeling terrible when he heard me telling the students, “Listen, if you have brought notes hiding in your pockets, I have no objection. Just don’t be caught. Do it cleverly, watchfully, because it is not a sin – but you should not be caught. To be caught is the crime.”The vice-chancellor was standing there, listening. And I said to them, “I will try my best to catch you. So you decide. I give you two minutes – if you are afraid of being caught, just bring everything that you are hiding and put it on the table, and I will not say anything to you. But after that, if you are caught, then your whole year is spoiled.”Immediately, students started bringing their notes – one boy had written answers on his shirt, inside. So he said, “What am I supposed to do? I have no notes but I have written many things on my shirt, inside – should I give the shirt?”I said, “You have to give it.”The vice-chancellor was standing there. He said, “What is going on?”I said, “You keep quiet. I told you beforehand, if I am the superintendent things will be going according to me.”I told the boy, “You take your shirt off, put it here.”He said, “But it is too cold.”I said, “That’s not my problem – why have you….”So he had to take off his shirt. And the vice-chancellor said, “This is too much.”I said, “I cannot help….” And nobody was doing anything – they had even brought books, whole books. They were hiding them behind their coats, shirts, pants, everything came out!And I said to them, “Now you can start answering your questions. And don’t be worried, if you cannot answer something, I am here; I am here to help you. You can just raise your hand and I will come and try to help you.”Nobody raised his hand. I said, “What is the matter?” They were afraid, because this has never happened – a superintendent telling them, “I will help you.” I said, “This is just human. You are in difficulty, and I am sitting here doing nothing….”That was the first and the last time…. The vice-chancellor said, “You are a strange person. That boy is shivering – how can he write?” It was a cold morning…the examinations used to be early in the morning, seven o’clock…. Somebody’s pants had been taken, because people used to write on their pants – people do all kinds of things.They had their ways, and I knew. I have also been a student, and I knew all kinds of things. That was very easy, to write on your pants – nobody will be able to see. But I told them, “It doesn’t matter, even if you have to sit naked…sit naked! Next time you will not do such a thing. But I am not uncompassionate to you; if you are in need of some answer that you cannot find, I will give it to you; you just have to raise your hand. Because according to me, all examinations are absolutely absurd.”If it were up to me, I would allow the students to have all the books available. Only a very intelligent student can find out the answers from the books in three hours. And you will be able to judge their intelligence in a better way; otherwise somebody has just crammed five answers, and he knows nothing else, and he comes first in the class. And somebody else knows everything, just has missed those five questions, and he is a failure.This is not a good examination; they should be allowed to have the whole library available to them. They can go to the library, they can find the answer, they can write it. In three hours, they have to find as beautiful answers as possible. And only intelligent students will be able to find them.In the Russia they have changed this old idea of examinations. Now books are available – all the books concerned are available in the hall where the students are given their examination; they can consult any book. It is far better, because the ultimate concern is to know the intelligence of the person, not his memory. So students need not memorize anything – they have to understand things. In examination time they can either just from their intelligence give the answer, or they can look in the books. But if in a five hundred page book you have to find one answer, you need some intelligence – mediocres will not be able to find the answer, they will become so nervous…And there is no need that a person should have to wait for one year. I told the vice-chancellor, “If I am going to be the superintendent I will follow my ideas, I don’t care what is conventional. The conventional is not necessarily the right thing. I will give them all the available material; they can find out. Only the intelligent people will be able to find out. And those who have not been successful should be given a chance again after one month. What is the problem that they should wait for one year?”Finally, there is no need of any examinations if every teacher goes on giving marks in his diary every day to the students. And every year, all the notes from all the teachers are collected. And based on those counts the students are moved, either upward or downward. Because there are many who deserve to go back – they have somehow slipped, they should not be allowed…they should be put back; they should earn better marks and go ahead again.And this should remain available: if a teacher finds that an intelligent student has unnecessarily to wait six months more for examination, he should recommend that the student be moved right now to a higher class, because he has enough intelligence. There is no need for him to wait six months more. Teachers should be the decisive factors. In that situation, nobody fails, nobody passes – people simply move. A few move faster, a few move a little slower; everybody according to his pace. Nobody is condemned as a failure, nobody is praised as first-class, nobody is praised as a gold medalist. All these things teach people unnecessary ambition, and ambition is poison.You are a teacher; you should try in every way to change the very structure of teaching, particularly your teaching. And slowly, slowly things move. You should tell other teachers, “There are many things wrong with the education system itself, which nobody bothers about. And you are judging students; the first thing should be a right system of education.” The whole system is rotten, old, out of date; it has to be completely changed.So I am not saying don’t judge. Particularly systems, conventions, traditions – judge them! But don’t judge individuals. If their actions are wrong, help them to get free of those wrong actions. If they are going in wrong directions, help them to find right paths. And this should be your love, this should not be your judgment.“Young man,” said the judge, looking sternly at the defendant, “it is alcohol, and alcohol alone, that is responsible for your present sorry state.”“I am glad to hear you say that,” replied Paddy, with a sigh of relief. “Everybody else says it is all my fault!”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The harmony I feel with you, the vision of love and flowering, trembles within me. I feel a giving of everything to this wonderful gift of life. Something is happening through me or with me or in spite of me – and I know this is home.Beloved master, beloved mystery, who am I?The mystery of life always happens in spite of you. In the beginning there is no other alternative possible. Only in the end does it start happening through you. But it can happen through you only when you are not. Then you become a hollow bamboo which can be turned into a flute and the song can pass through it.In the beginning you are – you are too much.So when the first experience of mystery starts happening it is in spite of you. And it is good to understand that life is far bigger than you can conceive and its power is immense beyond our any conception; just we are waiting patiently, searching patiently, knowing perfectly well that we don’t know the way, knowing perfectly well that we have lost our original eternal home – knowing perfectly well that we are unconscious. All our efforts, our search, our seeking is groping in the dark.It is good to remember our situation. Do your best. In spite of your darkness, blindness, unconsciousness, whatever you can do, do. But remember, it is not going to happen through your doing. It is going to happen because you are longing for it so deeply that existence cannot resist, cannot remain indifferent to you.So although you are not prepared, nobody is prepared. Nobody knows the way, nobody knows where the home is, nobody knows in which direction to move, what discipline to follow.But there are two kinds of people: those who are not aware of their situation of darkness and blindness, and those who think that they are not blind, that they are not in darkness; that they know the way, that they know where they have to go, that they know what they have to do.These are the people to whom existence cannot happen; they are too much. And all that they know is absolutely false, they have not experienced it. But their falsity is so much identified with their being, it is their ego which says, “You are not blind. There is no darkness and all that is needed you know it through the scriptures, through the old masters, through reading, learning, studying.” But all that is borrowed; it is not going to help.No two persons reach the end on the same route. Hence Gautam Buddha may have reached through a certain path and Chuang Tzu may have reached through another path, but their paths are no longer useful for you. In fact, it is impossible to find their paths either. Their paths disappear just as the birds flying in the sky don’t leave any footmarks.So you cannot find out from where the world has reached to the heights, and you cannot follow because there are no footprints. All there is, is what is written in your scriptures…and you try. The Buddhist tries the way Buddha may have followed. In the first place there is no way to find what way he has followed, because the way is inner and nobody is capable of giving an expression to it. So what is written is a faraway echo in the minds of the disciples.It is a strange story to remember that the man who remembered the most of what Buddha has said in forty-two years…And Buddha continuously resisted their efforts to write it down because he did not want to leave any scripture behind nor did he want to leave any statue of himself. He wanted to disappear just as if he has not come. One of his names is Tathagata. It has two meanings; both are significant. One is: the man who taught the philosophy of suchness. The other is more literal but has a tremendous significance. Literally the word Tathagata means just came, just gone, leaving no mark behind, just like a breeze comes you feel it and the coolness of it, and it is gone. Neither do you know from where it comes nor you know where it goes.So for his whole life Buddha did not allow his statements to be compiled. And in the end he said to them, “No statue, no memorial should be made of me because I want to disappear as if I had never been. Because whatsoever is left behind becomes the hindrance for people; it does not help them.”There is a great insight, very profound – and such egolessness, such simplicity, such humbleness that he wants to disappear silently without any footprints, because nobody can follow anybody else. Nobody can become wise by reading and studying scriptures.So that greater part of humanity which believes that they know, they are the ones to whom the mystery is not going to happen. But if you are searching, knowing perfectly well that you know nothing – you don’t even know that your ignorance is absolute; it is not that a little bit you know and a little bit you don’t know – in this humbleness, in this acceptance that I don’t know, the mysteries start happening. They happen in spite of you. You cannot manage – they are not manageable, they are not under your control – but once they start happening they make their way through you.Slowly, slowly the ice of your ego melts and a passage is made. Existence starts singing its songs, sending its music, giving you directions; helping you to find the doors of all that is mysterious and is not available to the mind but only to the man of heart, to the man of humbleness – to the man who is perfectly aware that he knows nothing.And it is good that you ask, “Beloved master, beloved mystery, who am I?”You are Satyadharma. This much you should remember; otherwise in the ordinary life you will get lost. Once you forget that you are Satyadharma then you don’t know where you are going and what you are doing.I have told you two small stories…One is about George Bernard Shaw. He is traveling in a train from London to some place and the ticket checker comes. Bernard Shaw looks into everything, opens this suitcase, that suitcase, all the pockets, and the ticket is missing. He starts perspiring and looks very much afraid and concerned.The ticket checker says, “I know you; everybody knows you. The ticket must be somewhere; there is no problem. You will find it. Don’t get so nervous and excited in your old age” – he was ninety.The ticket checker said, “I will not disturb you, I am going. You just relax.”George Bernard Shaw said, “You don’t understand. It is not the question of the ticket. Who is bothering about the ticket? The question is where am I going? Can you tell me where I am going? Without the ticket…now I have got into a tangle. I am not searching for the ticket for you – I don’t care about you or anybody. But the problem is: Where am I going?”The ticket checker said, “My God, that is impossible for me to figure out where you are going. Now I can understand why you are feeling so nervous. Your hands are trembling.”The second anecdote is about Mulla Nasruddin in the same situation as George Bernard Shaw. The ticket checker is asking for the ticket and he is looking everywhere. Other passengers are puzzled that he looks into every pocket but he leaves one pocket. He does not touch that one.Finally, the ticket checker said, “You have looked everywhere but you don’t look into this pocket.”He said, “Don’t talk about that pocket. That’s my only hope and I don’t want to destroy that hope. If it is not there I’m finished. Then it is nowhere else. So I cannot open that way. I will look everywhere possible…”He had thrown all the clothes and everything out of the suitcases. The ticket checker was at a loss, the passengers were at a loss. But Mulla was absolutely reluctant, “Whatever happens, I am not going to touch that pocket. That I will leave because at least there is a hope that perhaps the ticket is there. If the ticket is not there then I am completely finished.”The problem is the same: I don’t know where I am going. So as far as the world is concerned, you are Satyadharma – and there are two Satyadharmas here. Remember, you are not the other one. To make it clear, the other one is German; so don’t get mixed.Just as you call me beloved master, beloved mystery, I call you beloved disciple, beloved mystery. Behind Swami Satyadharma everything is a mystery. Satyadharma is just a facade for the outside world, just a utilitarian identity; it is not your reality; but behind it is a mysterious being. You are becoming aware of gifts of existence, of mysteries. Something is happening through it; just allow it.Your function is not to prevent, not to be reluctant. Join your hands with whatever is happening. That’s what I mean by let-go.Let existence cleanse you.Allow it total power over you.Don’t be worried that you will be destroyed, because you will be destroyed. There is no need to worry; it is absolutely certain. When things are certain there is no worry. It is only the uncertainty that creates worries.You will be destroyed…. That which will remain undestroyed in you is your authentic self. That which is destroyed is your personality, your false self; it needs to be destroyed. You can use that destroyed part in the world because they won’t understand if you say that you are a mystery. Even your family, your wife, your children, your parents will think you have gone mad if you say, “I am a mystery.” Nobody is a mystery and only you are a mystery? – where did you lose yourself?So as far as the outside world is concerned you are Satyadharma – not the other one; that you have to remember! This is a problem for sannyasins because they have the same names, many. You can get lost and start thinking, Who am I? And naturally, you are a mystery, but a German mystery or an Italian mystery…this much you should remember: that you are not a German mystery.For the outside world, completely keep your old false identity, your name, your profession, your qualifications. But inside you will know that it is only utilitarian, not real, useful; useful in the society, but when you are alone you are not Satyadharma and you are not Italian or German or English.You are not even your body.You are not your mind.You are just the pure mystery behind.Now there is no way to describe it, you will have to experience it, and you are moving rightly towards that experience. Just don’t in any way knowingly out of fear hinder the process. There is no fear: only the false will die and the real will remain always and always. That is the definition of the real: That which remains.The false is just useful. In the crowd of the world you need a name. The reality is nobody has a name, but it will be a very difficult world if everybody drops the name because it is false. Then you won’t have any address. The postman cannot find you anywhere because everybody is a mystery! You will create troubles because you are not the husband and you are not the wife and you are not the father and you are not the child – everything outside will be disturbed, will become a chaos.Outside keep everything as it is.Inside don’t be identified with it.This is the whole secret of finding yourself without being condemned by the society as mad.A traveling salesman was just on the point of checking into a hotel when he caught sight of a stunning young woman who was without doubt giving him the full come-on treatment. He strolled over to her and nonchalantly exchanged a few words with her, behaving as though he had known her all his life. Then they both walked to the reception desk and booked in as man and wife. After a one-night stay, the salesman went to collect his bill and check out. He was appalled to be presented with a bill for one thousand pounds.“Look here, this is out of the question. I have only been here for one day,” he cried.“Yes sir,” replied the receptionist, “but your wife has been here a month.”So don’t get into such trouble. On the outside remain exactly what you are, Satyadharma.Osho,You advise watching patiently the untangling of the Gordian knot that ties me to the past. Some part of me is happy to do that; another part wants you to slash the knot asunder. Is this laziness or masochism or a mind trip?It is not masochism, nor is it a mind trip. You are sincerely wanting to get out of the entanglement. You want to be free of all entanglement; you want to come out of the prison. What you are calling the Gordian knot, you want it to be slashed.It is a sincere and authentic desire, but the trouble arises because this desire is also from the mind. So one part of the mind is ready to cut the Gordian knot and another part of the mind is always against. It is not a special question about the Gordian knot that divides you.Mind’s functioning is through duality. The right word used for that is dialectics. Karl Marx has used that word as a foundation of communism. He calls his philosophy dialectical materialism. He says the society evolves through dialectics, and by dialectics he means it will be helpful to you for your development – and what he says has some truth in it.The meaning of dialectics is that one part functions as the thesis, another part functions as the antithesis and out of the conflict of the two comes the third part, a synthesis. Synthesis on its own accord becomes again thesis and creates antithesis, and their conflict brings a new synthesis. This is how step by step evolution happens.And he is right, although he used his philosophy to support a political ideology. That is fictitious, but the idea of dialectics in itself is absolutely correct.He says that the proletariat, the poor are the thesis, and the rich, the capitalists are the antithesis. Now there is going to be a class struggle, a revolution, a fight between thesis and antithesis that will create the dictatorship of the proletariat as the synthesis. On its own then it will become the thesis and it will create its antithesis as democracy of the proletariat. And out of the conflict between the two will arise another synthesis.Every man’s capacity to think is limited. That synthesis never becomes thesis. He has come to the end of his row; he has arrived at a state where there is no class, no government. He has achieved the utopia. Now there is no need of any conflict, any revolution. But I don’t see that evolution is going to stop anywhere. So he has used a very significant principle of philosophy for his political ideology. And as he reaches to his ultimate goal he forgets all about dialectics. That is not only his fault – everybody’s. The religions say God created the world, and when you ask them who created God – finished. They have come to the end of their row.The Jainas in India say that man has been evolving, not in his physiology as Darwin thinks – that in physiology he is evolving from apes or monkeys or gorillas – but Jainism says man is evolving through different animal consciousnesses, not physiologically but in his soul. It seems more accurate than Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin does not have any evidence.The whole thing seems to be hypothetical because nobody has seen any monkey, because if in the past, thousands of years ago, some monkey became a human being, why are other monkeys not becoming human beings now? They are now more evolved as man has evolved. Now they will be jumping every day! Suddenly you see a monkey, and he jumps and becomes a man and says, “Hello, where are you going? I am coming too.”Nobody has encountered any monkey becoming a man. And the difference between a monkey and man is so great that it cannot be possible to take a jump suddenly. Monkeys know how to jump, but that does not mean they can jump and become a human being. They can jump from one branch to another branch – that’s perfectly okay – but they cannot jump from one state of consciousness into a totally new state of consciousness, because it needs a new brain, a different size of brain; it needs a different structure of the body. Just to stand on two legs a monkey will need so much bodywork that he will not survive.It has happened in Lucknow…A boy was found who had been raised by wolves in the forest, and just the other day a girl was found. She was the same age, thirteen, and she had been raised by animals. So the boy and girl walk on all fours – naturally, they have imitated their parents.It has happened in Calcutta too. They tried to make him stand on two legs, thinking that the man should be restored to humanity – they killed him. Just the effort to make him stand on two legs was so difficult because he now had a fixed structure. For fourteen years he had walked on all fours; now suddenly he could not stand.And the same happened in the Lucknow case: in six months they had killed the boy. I put the whole responsibility on the stupid idea that these people should be restored. They were perfectly beautiful; there was no need. This boy who was killed in Lucknow by the scientists and the doctors…They were giving him all kinds of medicines and injections and bodywork and massage. And the boy was so strong that they needed four or five people to catch hold of him; otherwise he used to run faster on his four feet than any runner. He could have come first in any Olympic race anywhere; he was a wolf.It would have been more humane to leave him back in the forest. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. Now a girl has been found in Europe and they have immediately started working on her to restore her. They will kill her. I can predict it – because this “restoration” is not possible; it would take a lifetime.As for the Lucknow boy, in six months the whole success for the scientists and the doctors was that he learned one word: the name Ram that they had given to him. That was their whole success – and they enjoyed very much, that they had done “great service.” All they did…There are five billion human beings, what is the point of taking a beautiful wolf back into humanity, and rejoicing that he has learned the name Ram?And thousands of people were coming – he had become an exhibition – to ask him, “What is your name?” And he would say, “Ram” – with anger. According to his mind, it was purely torture because traction was being done.Suddenly a monkey cannot become…And Charles Darwin also was looking for a middle link. The monkey must have become first a middle link between man and monkey, and then from middle link he may have moved to monkey. He never could find any middle link; his hypothesis remains hypothesis.All these philosophers go on using some idea. Once they get attached to it they extend it into a philosophy, into a whole system. That’s what Marx did. But dialectics is a natural phenomenon, particularly as far as man’s psychology is concerned: mind functions through dialectical ways.You will never find mind without any split.I keep coming across very intelligent people…. I wanted one of our sannyasins who is a very intelligent legal expert, to come here – and there is no problem in coming. His wife is also as educated as he is. They were both colleagues in law college, his wife was a magistrate. He has been in the commune. The wife had also come, but because they had a small child she went back and took a job as a magistrate. Now that her husband has gone back to join her, she has dropped out of her job. So I told both of them they could come here. He informed me that ninety percent he wants to come, but ten percent of his mind thinks of security, safety; the child, his education, old age, the future…I have come across such people all my life, and I have asked them only one thing: If you are intelligent enough, then why are you choosing the ten percent part of your mind against the ninety percent? You are not realizing at all that you are choosing ten percent of the mind – and you are afraid to choose the ninety percent.And mind is never going to be a hundred percent for anything. That is not the way mind functions, it is out of the question. Mind’s function is always to be divided on every question: a thesis, antithesis, and then you have to find out the synthesis, and you have to function according to the synthesis.So there is no problem about your being a masochist; you are not on a mind trip either. It is simply the way of the mind that it never functions as a total unit. In fact, if you see the dialectics in life you will find it in many places. You walk, that is dialectical. If both your legs move together one hundred percent you will fall down. Fifty percent remains static, fifty percent moves. Then the other fifty percent becomes static and the static part starts moving. That’s how you walk; that is dialectical philosophy. That’s how a bird flies; that’s how you use your hands.Even your mind is not one single piece; it has two hemispheres. Your right hand is connected with the left side of your mind and your left hand is connected with the right side of your mind. So if something goes wrong with the left side of the mind, for example paralysis, then your right hand will be paralyzed.Both have different functions. The right side of the mind thinks and the left side of the mind feels, and thinking and feeling are just like two legs. They cannot join together; otherwise there will be no progress in life. You will remain static.So it is simply a matter of not understanding the nature of mind. You have one part of the mind ready – let it go and do its job. That is the moving leg, and the other part is the static part. And you think that you would like me to slash the knot asunder. I cannot do that because I love you.Once I started doing things for you, you would become dependent on me. And that is the last thing that I will tolerate. I would not like you to be dependent on me. I can give you the way, I can show you the way, but I will not walk for you. You will have to walk yourself, because I want you to be absolutely independent and free. Today I am here, tomorrow I may not be here.If you become dependent on me, as has been happening all over the world for centuries – people become dependent on the masters, and the masters enjoy the dependence. Neither are the masters authentic nor are the disciples intelligent – and humanity has remained static.Are you aware of the fact that for centuries there has been no evolution? If monkeys have become human beings at some time, what have human beings done? – they are stuck. At least some daring human being should take a jump and start flying, do something! But you know perfectly well that if you try flying, there will be no evolution, only multiple fracture.It has happened to a few people under LSD or under impact of some drug – particularly LSD gives these ideas that you can fly. And one woman flew out from an eighty-storey building, from the eightieth floor. She simply flew out of the window. And you know what would happen…so it happened.LSD is a very harmless drug, but it should be used under medical supervision, because it gives such ideas, great ideas, and the mind is no longer functioning so there is no opposition; there is a one hundred percent surety – and that is very dangerous. A one hundred percent surety is not favorable to evolution. It is good that the mind should be divided for and against, discuss, argue, and slowly, slowly progress.But one thing is strange, that for at least one million years there has been no evolution as far as man is concerned. You cannot call this evolution: one person becomes a Gautam Buddha or one person becomes a Bodhidharma or one becomes a Ta Hui – you cannot call that evolution. The whole of humanity is stuck somewhere.What is the problem? The problem is, humanity is not moving with the part of the mind which is for evolution; it is staying with the part of the mind which is not for evolution. You have to learn only one thing, that you have already a part of your mind ready, happy to do that. So do it! Don’t bother about the other part of the mind. That mind is pulling you back; it represents your past. And the mind that is feeling happy and excited to do something, it represents your future. Choose the future.Don’t depend on somebody else, because that dependence is dangerous. It is not only one question that can be solved, there are a thousand and one questions – and your evolution depends on your own readiness to risk, your own acceptance of danger.You are in a right position; there is no problem. Just listen always to the part of the mind that is for the future, that is for the unknown, that is for evolution, and the other part will come following behind.Once you are decisive, the other part of the mind will immediately follow you. It will remain against you until you are decisive. And the decision has to come from looking at the fact of which mind is for the future and evolution, which mind is going to give you a better life, a better understanding, a better consciousness – choose that and the Gordian knot will be slashed without any effort on your part or without any need from outside help.A woman leaned over her side of the fence and asked the little boy next door how he was getting on with his new stepfather.“Great,” he replied, “every morning he takes me out in the boat to the ocean, puts me in the water and then I swim back to the beach.”“But is not that a bit dangerous for a little boy?” asked the woman.“Oh, that’s easy. The hard part is untying the knot and getting out of the bag.”It is certainly a little harder…but if you can manage to do it, it will give you a sudden quantum leap for a higher consciousness.Osho,You often talked about psychoanalysis and related therapies. Would you please comment on more recent developments like Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy and – the latest fashion – Voice Dialogue? Can these therapies help a person who is already meditating to see himself and his games more clearly?In the first place psychotherapies like Fritz Perls’ Gestalt therapy and others are already old; they are not new. The only new thing which is the latest fashion is Voice Dialogue – but they are all just mind games.They cannot contribute anything to a man who is already meditating – no psychotherapy has the quality of meditation, because no psychotherapy has produced a single enlightened being. Their founders were not enlightened and the enlightened beings in the East never bothered about any psychotherapy. They have not even bothered about psychology or mind itself, because for them the question was not to solve the problems of the mind, for them the question was how to get out of the mind which is easier. Then the problems all are finished, because once you are out of the mind, the mind has no nourishment to go on creating problems; otherwise it is an unending process.You get psychoanalyzed, whether old or new fashions it doesn’t matter; they are just variations of the same theme. Your mind feels a little fresh and good after a psychological session, because you have unburdened yourself. A little understanding of mind also comes – that keeps you normal.In fact, all psychotherapies are in the service of the establishment; their function is not to let people go abnormal. Somebody is going outside the herd and the norms of the herd and doing things which it is not supposed that you should do…! They may be harmless but the society cannot tolerate such people. They have to be brought to the normal, to the average standard.The psychotherapist’s work is to clean your mind. It is a kind of lubricating your mechanism – it functions a little better and you start becoming a little more understanding about the functionings of the mind, although that does not make any revolutionary change. And it is possible you may solve one problem, but you have not removed the cause.Mind itself is the problem.So you can remove one problem, mind will create another problem…It is just like pruning the trees: you prune one leaf and just out of self-respect and dignity the tree will grow three leaves in the place where there used to be one. That’s why gardeners go on pruning; that gives trees more foliage, more leaves.The same is the situation with the mind: you can remove one problem by understanding it – and it is costly – but the mind is still there which has created the problem, and psychoanalysis does not go beyond the boundaries of the mind. The mind will create a new problem, more complicated than the one that you have solved. Naturally, because the mind understands you can solve that kind of problem, it creates something new, more complicated, more foliage.Meditation is a totally different thing than psychoanalysis or any therapies which are confined to the mind. It is simply a jumping out of the mind: You have your problems – I’m going home.Because mind is a parasite it does not have its own existence. It needs you inside in it, so it can go on eating you, your head. Once you jump out of it, the mind is just a graveyard. All those problems that were too big drop, they simply drop dead.Meditation is a totally different dimension: you simply watch the mind and in watching you come out of it. And slowly, mind with all its problems disappears; otherwise the mind is going to create strange problems.The other day in England a court released a murderer. It is a very strange case, and it may give impetus to many people to murder. The murderer was in the second world war fighting in Japan. And he pleaded in the court that in the night he dreamt that the Japanese were chasing him, and they were just about to get hold of him. He became so frightened and he wanted to survive, so he caught hold of the neck of one Japanese and killed him by pressing on his neck. And as the Japanese was killed, he awoke from the dream and the Japanese was no one but his wife.The court was in a difficulty what to do, because he had not done it consciously, in awareness. Now to punish him does not seem right, even in a traditional England, where anything new takes years to be accepted. When the whole world will accept it then England will try!The judge must have been a man of great understanding, but he has also opened a door of dangers. Now anybody can kill his wife and say, “What can I do? Japanese were following…” It is a precedent that you have released one man, acquitted completely from committing any crime.Now you are able to commit crime. You just have to pretend that you are asleep, and there is no way for the court to find out whether you were really asleep and the Japanese were really following you in your dream. The poor woman was fast asleep, he jumped up and killed her – and perhaps he is right…But now there will be cases which will not be right. Perhaps what he is saying is true; he has been in the war in Japan and that may have come as a dream from his unconscious; and out of fear, to protect himself, he started fighting with the Japanese. And there was nobody else in the room except the wife close to him just on the bed, so he jumped, caught hold of the Japanese…Mind is your only problem.All other problems are just offshoots of the mind.Meditation cuts the mind from the very roots.And all these therapies – Gestalt and Voice Dialogue and Fritz Perls – we can use them for those who have not yet entered into meditation just to have a little understanding of the mind so they can find the door from where to get out.We are using all kinds of therapies which are helpful, but not for the meditators. They are only helpful in the beginning when you have not yet become accustomed to meditation. Once you are meditative you don’t need any therapy, no therapy is helpful then. But in the beginning, it can be helpful, and particularly for the Western sannyasins.I don’t suggest it much for Eastern people that they should do therapy groups. For example, Japanese have been found not to understand that in an encounter group if people are fighting it is just playful fighting. They really start fighting and they can become dangerous; they can kill somebody.Different cultures…Japanese have been writing letters to me saying that in the therapies they are telling us that you hate your mother, your father – and it is absolutely wrong! We will kill the therapist! Japan has a totally different culture. The very idea that you hate your mother – and the person will commit hara-kiri. He will kill himself because it is so shameful.I have come to know such stories of hara-kiri that you cannot believe. One famous historical case happened three hundred years ago. A very well-known master of martial arts forgot, when he went to meet the emperor, to bow down. In Japan you have to bow down even to your enemy when you go to fight.Both bow down to each other because one never knows who will be left alive. At this moment enmity and friendship don’t matter. At this moment when one person is never going to be seen again and will not even be able to ask for forgiveness, they give respect. And it is authentic, it is not formal.Going to the emperor and forgetting to bow down…and he forgot because he was a great master and thousands of people who were learning under him were all bowing down to him. So he had become accustomed to people bowing down to him, and then he would respond by the same gesture. It was such bad manners that when he was made aware that he had committed a great crime because he had not bowed down to the emperor, he committed suicide.That is the routine process. There is no other way except that to show that you really feel repentant. It is not so easy as in the West where you can just say, “I’m sorry” – that is very formal and very easy. Japanese take things very seriously. The only way you can say, “I’m sorry” is by hara-kiri – one feels so ashamed of himself that he cannot allow himself to live anymore.The more strange thing is that his three hundred intimate disciples committed hara-kiri because their master had behaved in a shameful way. They were not at all concerned, but because their master has fallen in grace, how can they stand in the world with grace and dignity? Three hundred disciples committed hara-kiri. This is a historical fact, and this kind of thing has been happening in Japan for centuries.So one sannyasin has written to me, “The therapist goes on insisting, ‘You must hate your mother…’ Either I will kill the therapist or I will kill myself if he is right. Because I don’t see that I have ever hated my mother.”And in fact the situation is different. In Japan almost one-third of the girls don’t marry; they remain with their mother. In the rest of the world the situation is different. And what psychoanalysis has found does not apply to the Japanese. It applies only to the Western mind and its upbringing.Sigmund Freud is right only about the Western mind and its tradition. When he says that every girl hates her mother because she loves the father, the whole thing is based on their understanding of sex, that one loves the opposite sex. So girls love the fathers, the boys love the mother. But the girls cannot express their love, particularly they cannot be sexually related with the father, and the mother is related sexually. So they become jealous of the mother – the mother is their enemy. The boys become enemies of the father and because of that the boy cannot make love to the mother.The Japanese cannot even think of this; even Indians cannot think of this – just a totally different upbringing. Indians cannot believe what kind of nonsense this is. And for the Japanese things are very difficult. If you insist and you convince him that he hates his mother or he hates his father – and the whole psychoanalysis depends on these kinds of things: who you hate, why you hate…And they go on digging deeper and they prove to the person that from very childhood there has been a jealousy and that is creating all the problems.“Why can’t you love your wife?” – the psychoanalyst will come to the conclusion that you wanted to love your mother – and your wife is not your mother – and the wife does not love you because she wanted to love her father and you are not her father. So you are bound to fight continuously. You have fallen in love with the girl because something in her resembles your mother. And the girl has fallen in love for the same reason: something in you resembles her father.So you have married your mother; she has married her father. This is psychoanalysis. And because neither she is behaving like your mother nor you are behaving like her father, problems arise.But to say to a Japanese, “You have married your mother,” is simply out of the question. To say to an Indian, “You have been secretly loving your mother and you wanted a sexual relationship with her…”; he cannot even think…”Are you in your senses or…”In India the tradition is that the son loves his mother almost like a goddess. He loves his father and respects his father next to God. And the difficult thing is that even the people in the East who are teaching or who are in the profession of psychoanalysis, as professors or as practitioners, they have all learned from the West and they don’t understand that the East has a totally different orientation.And Sigmund Freud or Jung or Adler or Assagioli or Fritz Perls have no idea. Not even in their dreams have they thought that people can be different from the Western people.In the East psychoanalysis is not of much help. For the Westerners, I like them to go through groups just to clean the mind. With a clean mind, to enter into meditation is easier. But if you don’t enter meditation and you simply depend on cleaning the mind, then you will be cleaning the mind for your whole life and you will not go anywhere else. Because of its different orientation the East should find seats in the universities for meditation, not for psychoanalysis.One of the great Indian psychologists who was the head of the department in the Hindu university of Varanasi belonged to a village near my village; and moreover, he was father-in-law to one of my friends who had studied with me. He was one of the most respected professors of psychology, but he was condemned by everybody because people, thinking that he would be able to help them with their mind problems, would go for psychoanalysis, and psychoanalysis brings…They would ask, “Whom do you hate?” And the Indian would find himself at a loss because everything comes down to sex – and the Indian cannot accept that idea. It is not the same orientation as in the West.This man’s name was Laljiram Shukla. And because his son-in-law was my friend, the son-in-law was continuously telling him that he must meet me at least once. He was an old man. I was just out of the university. He invited me to come to Varanasi because his son-in-law was continually praising me. It became a psychological problem for the psychologist that the son-in-law was more interested in me, and not interested in him and was continually praising me. It became a challenge to him.I was not aware what the situation was. When he invited me I thought perhaps it was because of my friend; he may have talked about me, so I went. I was a guest in his house, and I immediately became aware of a certain tension.I asked my friend, “What is the matter?”He said, “The problem is that I have been talking about you not knowing that he was feeling very offended. But he never showed it, and now, because you are here – and many other professors have become interested; all his students, nearabout twenty postgraduates, they are all coming in the morning to meet you – he is feeling very much wounded.”So in the morning he exploded. He started arguing with me, and because I told him, “All your education is from the West; all that you are talking is simply nonsense in the East – what do you know about meditation? All your knowledge is about the mind, and that too of a certain mind, the Western mind. You are betraying the East by teaching people all kinds of nonsense, which does not make any actual impact on them, because that is not their problem.“I have never seen anybody, I have looked in so many people’s minds…In the East nobody is jealous of the father, nobody wants to make love to the mother, but without these things the psychoanalyst will say, ‘If you want to be cured you will have to cooperate.’”And I argued with him – I had to because he was so angry with me that I could not understand why he had invited me. And because he could not answer, I asked him directly, “I ask you, have you ever in your childhood wanted to make love to your mother? Have you ever thought in your childhood to kill your father because he was your competitor for the same sex object, the mother?”He cooled down, and he said, “Never. I never thought about these things.”I said, “What are you doing now? Imposing on people ideas which are not their problems, are you helping them or destroying their integrity? You are telling them that their problems are things which are not their problems.”In the East for centuries the problem has been how to get beyond the mind – the only problem, the single problem. But for the Western mind, because it has developed in a different way, it has never thought about transcending mind. I have looked into Jewish sources, into Christian sources; there is not a single statement in the whole history of the West where somebody has made an effort to go beyond the mind.They have used the mind to pray, they have used the mind to believe in God; they have used the mind to become religious, virtuous, but they have never even thought that there is a possibility of going beyond the mind.In the East that has been the only, single search. The whole genius of the East has been working for one thing, no other problems: how to go beyond the mind. Because if you can solve your problems wholesale just by going beyond, then why go for retail solving of problems. The mind will go on creating; it is a very creative force. You solve one problem, another problem arises. You solve that problem, another problem arises.It is a good business for the psychoanalyst, because he knows you are never going to be cured. You are not going to be cured of the mind; he cures your specific problems. Your mind is there, the source. He never cuts the roots, he only cuts leaves, branches at the most, but they go on growing again – the roots are there.Meditation is cutting the very roots of problems.I repeat: the mind is the only problem, and unless you go beyond the mind, you will never go beyond problems.It is strange that even today, the Western psychologists have not even pondered over the fact that the East has created so many enlightened people. None of them has bothered about the analysis of the mind.Just as in the Western literature – religious, philosophical, theological – there is no idea of going beyond the mind, in the same way in the Eastern philosophical literature there is nowhere any mention that psychoanalysis or psychology is of any importance. The West has lived with the mind and the East has lived beyond the mind, so their problems don’t seem to be the same.Ugly things can happen when you impose. For example, Erhard was running the movement of EST – and it looks stupid to the Eastern meditator. What he was trying to do is so hilarious, but people felt very good. You will also feel very good if you do it, without paying him the two hundred and fifty dollars fee for you to become enlightened. And how you become enlightened is a very simply process.You are not allowed to go to the bathroom, so your bladder goes on becoming more and more filled with…and it starts hurting – and you are not allowed to go to the bathroom. And the session continues from the morning till night. The whole day to contain yourself, to resist the temptation…!In such a situation who is listening to what nonsense he is talking? You are trying to hold yourself so that in some unaware moment…And then it starts happening, because how long can you do it? Particularly women don’t have any control on the bladder; man has a little control, but women don’t have.So one woman starts pissing – and when one starts…And Erhard used to say, “That is great!” And she feels certainly immensely relieved. First you created the tension and the tension became too much; it became anguish, agony. And now, she feels so released: It is enlightenment.” She says, “I have got it” – and then follows a chain… Somebody else starts getting it, somebody else starts getting it – they used to fill the whole hall with urine. And they have paid two hundred and fifty dollars – you can do it on your own!If this is enlightenment, just close your room, and if you need some help it can be very easy; your friend can tie you so you cannot go to the bathroom. Then, contain yourself as long as you can and there comes a moment when you cannot contain. Then the bladder simply takes over. You are simply surprised by what is happening. And such a great relaxation and relief follows, such peace that you have never known – peace that passes understanding!These idiots have been creating new fashions in psychology, in psychoanalysis, therapies – and earning millions of dollars, and cheating people. It is not enlightenment. And if this is enlightenment then there is no need to be enlightened. It is perfectly good to go to the toilet…forget all about enlightenment.The East has never bothered about the mind, has not even taken any note of it, has ignored it. From Patanjali to Gautam Buddha, to Shankara, to Ramakrishna, to J. Krishnamurti – the whole tradition does not bother about the mind. The mind is mentioned only for one purpose: how to transcend it.Hundreds of methods have been found which can help you to transcend the mind, and once you are beyond the mind all its problems look as if they are somebody else’s problems. You attain to a state of a watcher on the hills, and all the problems are in the valleys. And they don’t have any impact on you; you have gone beyond them.The West has remained utterly mind centered. In the West the only thing they have thought about is matter and mind. And matter is the reality and mind is only a by-product; beyond mind there is nothing.In the East matter is illusory, mind is a by-product of all your illusions, projections, dreams. Your reality is beyond matter and mind, both.So we divide reality in the East into three parts: matter, the outermost; the soul, the innermost; the mind is in between the two. Matter has a relative reality; it is not absolutely real, just relatively real. The mind is absolutely unreal, and the soul is absolutely real.This is a totally different categorization of humanity. In the West the categories are simple: matter is real, mind is just a by-product, and there is nothing beyond mind.So remember, if you are meditating then nothing else is needed. If you are not meditating, then these psychotherapies may be helpful as a stepping-stone for meditation.It was sunrise, and the young athlete was doing push-ups on the beach when a drunk appeared.The drunk weaved his way to within a few yards of the perspiring young man, sat down on the sand and laughed and laughed.“What the devil are you laughing about?” asked the annoyed young man.The drunk laughed and said, “Don’t look now, but somebody stole your girl.”Unnecessarily doing push-ups…The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind – utterly useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that’s why again and again they get cheated by frauds. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and become so light that you will start rising upwards! – and you can find idiots everywhere…And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by…even if you levitate, what purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people were hopping.Trick photography was being used and spread. People were shown to have levitated, and they had levitated with their mattress also – that was strange. The mattress also has become yogic, spiritual…!He was continually asked, “Give a public demonstration of your levitation” – and he could not. A case was brought in the Supreme Court of America by seven of his own disciples, who had been working hard on levitation and found that it was absolute nonsense – they were just hopping! So they had brought a case against him, demanding ninety million dollars. He has been cheating the whole world, and he has accumulated tremendous money.Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dropped that idea because he could not give a public demonstration. He came with a new idea, and this new idea is yogic flying – even greater. And what is the purpose of yogic flying? – if one person can learn to fly, then ninety-nine persons in the world will become meditative and silent and peaceful.A big business, because it means for five billion people to become peaceful – no war, no conflict, just blissfulness – millions of people will have to learn yogic flying. Again, he was aware that he would be asked to give a public demonstration. He has given one demonstration in Europe, and now another is planned in America soon. And what people saw was, it was the same hopping, but now it is hopping not only in one place, you go on hopping…Every frog knows it! And it is so stupid that people are paying millions of dollars to learn what the frogs know without any difficulty. They are giving public demonstrations and they don’t even see that they are being absolutely stupid. A few have become so expert that now there are hurdle races; small hurdles are places and they hop over the hurdles. They are great spiritual people.But I don’t see the connection. Even if they can hop, and go on crossing the hurdles, in what way is this going to create peace in the world…? Nor can it create peace in the person who is hopping. It will create more retardedness in him. The very idea that he has accepted this stupid thing shows that he has no intelligence at all. And what peace, how can peace be attained by these kinds of things?He is now proposing to the world that if millions – he has calculated exactly how many millions of people are needed to learn hopping to prevent the third world war.I don’t believe that man is so stupid that he gets caught by such frauds. People are learning. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has opened an academy in Switzerland where thousands of people are learning hopping.The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the West has not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and gathers followers because they don’t know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a mantra nor hopping nor levitation…These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle – the whole mystery of life.

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am also getting old. Would you tell me a few laws for middle age also?Everybody is getting old. Since the day you were born, you have been getting old – each moment, each day. Childhood is a flux, so is youth – just old age never ends, because it terminates! That is the unique quality of old age, that it brings you to ultimate rest. But you want a few laws for middle age…You are a man of medicine, you should know better.As far as I am concerned, I have never been a child, never a youth, and never become old and never will die. I know only one thing in me that is absolutely unchanging and eternal. But just for your sake…There are many laws about middle age, because all over the world people become old. And many thinkers have been thinking, What is this old age?The first law is De Never’s Lost Law; obviously about old age, the law can be the last: Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.You know perfectly well you are getting old, now don’t speculate on that, that will make you more miserable.The law is beautiful, never speculate on that which can be known for certain. In fact, in life, except death nothing is certain; everything can be speculated upon, but not death. And old age is just the door to death.Middle age is when you begin to exchange your emotions for symptoms.Lendel’s Law: You know you are getting old when a girl calls “No,” and all you feel is relief.Old age is when you start to turn out the lights for economical rather than romantic reasons!Old age is that period of life when your idea of getting ahead is staying even.Old age is when you can do just as much as ever, but would rather not.Old age is a mysterious experience, but all these laws have been found by the Western mind. I have not been able to discover anybody in the whole literature of the East talking about old age. On the contrary, old age has been praised immensely, because in the East it has been thought that you are not old. If your life has simply moved on the horizontal line, you are only aged. But if your life, your consciousness, has moved vertically, upwards, then you have attained the beauty, the glory of old age. Old age in the East has been synonymous with wisdom.These are the two paths: one is horizontal, from childhood to youth, to old age and to death; another is vertical, from childhood to youth, to old age, and to immortality. The difference in quality of both the dimensions is immense, incalculable. The man who simply becomes young, and old, and dead, has remained identified with his body. He has not known anything about his being, because being is never born and never dies; it is always, it has been always, it will be always, it is the whole of eternity.On the vertical line the child becomes young, but the youth on the vertical line will be different from the youth on the horizontal line. Childhood is innocent, but that is the point from where these two different dimensions open up. The youth on the horizontal line is nothing but sensuality, sexuality and all kinds of other stupidities. The youth on the vertical line is a search for truth, is a search for life – it is a longing to know oneself.A man on the vertical line cannot be called young if he is not meditative, and the same is true about old age. On the horizontal line, old age is simply trembling, afraid of death; I cannot think of anything except a graveyard, and darkness which goes on becoming darker and darker. It cannot conceive of himself except as a skeleton.On the vertical line, old age is a celebration; it is as beautiful as man has ever been. Youth is a little foolish – is bound to be; it is inexperienced, but old age has passed through all the experiences – good and bad, right and wrong – and has come to a state where it is no longer affected by anything concerned with body or mind.It is a welcome! Old age on the vertical line is keeping its door open for the ultimate guest to come in. It is not an end, it is a beginning of a real life, of an authentic being.Hence, I continuously make the distinction between growing old and growing up. Very few people have been fortunate to grow up; the remainder of humanity has only been growing old. And naturally they are all moving towards death. Only on the vertical line does death not exist; that is the way to immortality, to divinity. And naturally, when one becomes old on that dimension, he has a grace and a beauty and a compassion and love.It has been noted again and again… There is a statement in Buddhist scriptures that as Buddha became older, he became more beautiful. This I call a true miracle. Not walking on water – any drunkard can try that. Not turning water into wine – any criminal can do that. This is a true miracle: Buddha became more beautiful than he was in his youth; he became more innocent than he was in his childhood – this is growth.Unless you are moving on the vertical line, you are missing the whole opportunity of life. But here our whole effort is to block the horizontal line and open the blocked vertical line. Then every day you are coming closer to life, not farther away. Then your birth is not the beginning of death, your birth is the beginning of eternal life. Just two different lines and so much difference.The West has never thought about it; the vertical line has never been mentioned because they haven’t been brought up in a spiritual atmosphere where the real riches are inside you. Even if they think of God, they think of him outside. Gautam Buddha could deny God – I deny God. There is absolutely no God for the simple reason that we want you to turn inwards. If God is – or anything similar – it has to be found inside you; it has to be found in your own eternity, in your own ecstasy.To think of oneself as a body-mind structure is the most dangerous idea that has happened to people. That destroys their whole grace, whole beauty, and they are constantly trembling and afraid of death, and trying to keep old age as far away as possible. In the West, if you say to an old woman, “You look so young,” and she knows she is no longer young, she will stand in front of the mirror for hours to check whether any youthfulness has remained anywhere. But she will not deny it, she will be immensely happy. In the East, nobody says to an old woman, “You are young”; on the contrary, old age is so respected, loved, so that to say to somebody, “You look younger than your age,” is a kind of insult.I am reminded of one incident that happened life…I was staying in Chanda – a far corner of Maharashtra – with a very rich family, and they were very much interested in an astrologer. They loved me and I used to go at least three times per year. That was their quota, and I used to stay there for at least three or four days each time. Once when I went there, without asking they had arranged with the astrologer to come and to look at my hands and tell some things about me. When I came to know about it, everything was fixed; the astrologer was sitting in the sitting room. So I said, “Okay, let us enjoy that too!”I showed him my hand; he pondered over it and he said, “You must be at least eighty years old.”Of course, one of the daughters of the rich man freaked out, “This is stupid. What kind of astrology…”At that time I was not more than thirty-five – even a blind man could have measured thirty-five and eighty! She was really angry, and she told me, “I am finished with this astrologer. What else can he know?”I said, “You don’t understand. You are more Westernized – educated in the Western style. You have been to the West for your education – you can’t understand what he was saying.”She said, “What was he saying? It was so clear there is no need to understand; he was simply showing his stupidity. A thirty-five-year-old young man, and he is saying that you are eighty years old.”I said, “Be patient.”And I told her a story about Emerson…A man asked Emerson, “How old are you?”Emerson said, “Nearabout three hundred and sixty years.”The man could not believe…and he had always believed in Emerson that he is a man of truth! What had happened – a slip of the tongue? Or had he become senile? Or is he joking?To make things clear he said, “I did not hear what you said. Just tell me how much…?”Emerson said, “You have heard it – three hundred and sixty years.”The man said, “I cannot believe it. You don’t look more than sixty years.”Emerson said, “You are right in a way: on the vertical I am three hundred and sixty, and on the horizontal I am sixty.”Perhaps he was the first Western man to use this Eastern expression of horizontal and vertical.Emerson was immensely interested in the East, and he had a few glimpses which bring him closer to the seers of the Upanishads. He said, “Actually I have lived sixty years; you are right. But in sixty years I have lived as much as you will not be able to live even in three hundred and sixty years. I have lived six times more.”The vertical line does not count years, it counts your experiences. And on the vertical line is the whole treasure of existence – not only immortality, not only a feeling of divineness, but the first experience of love without hate, the first experience of compassion, the first experience of meditation – the first experience of the tremendous explosion of enlightenment.It is not a coincidence that in the West, the word enlightenment does not have the same meaning as in the East. They say that after the black ages, dark ages, came the age of enlightenment. They refer to people like Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers as very enlightened geniuses. They don’t understand that they are misusing a word, dragging it into the mud. Neither is Bertrand Russell enlightened nor Jean-Paul Sartre nor Jaspers.Enlightenment does not happen on the horizontal. Even in his old age Jean-Paul Sartre was still running after young girls. Bertrand Russell changed his wife so many times, and he lived long on the horizontal – almost a century. But even in his old age, his interests were as stupid as young people.The East understands that the word enlightenment has nothing to do with genius, has nothing to do with intelligence, it has something to do with discovering your real, authentic being. It is discovering God within you.You need not be worried about laws. Those laws are all on the horizontal line. On the vertical line there is love, no law; there is the growing experience of becoming more and more spiritual and less and less physical, more and more meditative and less and less mind, more and more divine and less and less of this trivial material world in which we are so much enmeshed.On the vertical line, slowly you feel desires disappearing, sensuality disappearing, sexuality disappearing, ambitions disappearing, will to power disappearing…your slavery in all its aspects disappearing – religious, political, national. You become more of an individual. And with your individuality growing clear and luminous, the whole humanity is becoming one in your eyes – you cannot discriminate.There are great experiences on the vertical line; on the horizontal line there is only decline. On the horizontal line the old man lives in the past. He thinks of those beautiful days, those Arabian nights when he was young; he thinks also of those beautiful days when there was no responsibility and he was a child running after butterflies. In fact, for his whole life he has been running after butterflies – even in old age.Mulla Nasruddin was passing along a street…And he saw a beautiful young woman so he gave her a good nudge. The woman was shocked, because Mulla was old; all his hairs were pure silver white. The woman said, “You should be ashamed – all your hairs are pure white. You are the age of my grandfather – you should have been dead by now. You are showing your ugliness….”Mulla said, “Listen, my hairs are white, that’s true, but my heart is still black – dark black.”On the horizontal line, that’s what happens – your hairs will become white, but you don’t become white. In fact, on the contrary: as you grow old, you become more and more infatuated by desires, because now you know that ahead there is only death. So you enjoy as much as possible, although enjoying becomes difficult, physically you have lost the energy. So the old man on the horizontal line becomes cerebrally sexual; he is continuously thinking of sex.Psychologists have been watching thousands of people, and they have concluded that every man thinks of a woman at least once in three minutes. Just check it! That will show you on what line you are – horizontal or vertical. And each woman thinks of a man one time in seven minutes. That is the difference that creates conflict. The moment the husband comes and asks, “Dear, what about it?” and she says, “I have a headache, don’t torture me any more…” The difference is that she thinks of it only one time in seven minutes, that means one day in seven days…!The man thinks of the woman one time in three minutes, that is average. In old age those three minutes shrink into one minute. The old man has nothing else to do but to think – and what else is there to think about? He imagines beautiful women.One day Mulla Nasruddin was sitting on his balcony watching the beautiful sunset…And suddenly he shouted to his servant, “Bring my glasses, bring my glasses quickly!”The servant said, “What calamity has happened?” He brought his glasses.Mulla said, “You idiot, when I say quick it mean quick. We missed the opportunity.”The servant said, “I don’t understand, what opportunity?”He said, “Such a beautiful woman was going by, but my eyes can’t figure out whether she is a woman or a man, whether she is really beautiful or I am imagining. Glasses were needed, but by the time you brought the glasses she was gone.”The servant said, “You are under the wrong impression; she was not a woman! He is my brother who has come to see me. Nobody else has passed.”The old man is continuously thinking of the past – this is the psychology. The child thinks of the future because he has no past; there is no question of thinking of the past – no yesterday. He thinks of days to come, the whole long life. Seventy years gives him space…. He wants to become big enough quickly to do things that all the big people are doing.The old man has no future – the future means death; he does not even want to talk about the future. The future makes him tremble. The future means the grave – he talks about the past.And the same is true about countries. For example, a country like India never thinks of the future. That would mean it had become old; it is symptomatic. It always thinks of the past. It goes on playing the life of Rama and Sita; for centuries the same story…every village performs that drama. It goes on thinking about Buddha and Mahavira and Adinatha and Rigveda and the Upanishads.Everything has passed. Now the country is simply waiting to die; there is no future. According to the Indian idea – and that is the idea of the old mentality, the mind of the old man – the best age was millions of years ago; it was called Satyuga, the age of truth. After that man started falling.You can see the psychological parallel; there are four ages: childhood, the young man, middle age, the old man. According to these four he has projected four ages for life itself. The first age was innocent, just like a child – very balanced. They give the example that it has four legs just like a table, perfectly balanced. And then the decline starts….In India, the idea of evolution has never existed, but on the contrary just the opposite idea. The word is not even used in the West – you may not have even heard of the word – but in India they have been thinking about involution, not evolution: “We are shrinking, we are falling down.”In the second stage of the fall one leg is lost; the table becomes a tripod. It is still balanced, but not as much as it was with four legs. In the third stage it loses another leg; now it is standing only on two legs, absolutely unbalanced. And this is the fourth stage: even two legs are not available; you are standing on one leg – how long you can stand?The first stage is called Satyuga, the age of truth; the second is simply named by the number; treta is the third, because only three legs are left. The second is called Dwapar. Dwa is exactly what two is in English; this “two” comes from the Sanskrit dwa; moving through many other languages it becomes twa, and then finally it becomes two. And the fourth age they have called Kaliyuga, the age of darkness.We are living in the age of darkness. This is the mind of the old man: ahead there is only darkness and nothing else. The child thinks of the future, of the golden future; the old man thinks of the golden past. But this happens only on the horizontal line. On the vertical line, the past is golden, the present is golden, the future is golden; it is a life of tremendous celebration.So rather than being worried about the laws of old age, think about which line your train is moving on. There is still time to change trains; there is always time to change trains because from every moment that bifurcation is available. You can shift, shift from the horizontal to the vertical; only that is important.Osho,Can you say something again about coming to the master and going back to the world?Again?It seems you have heard it before. Where were you that time? And are you certain you will be able to hear this time?I can say…in fact I am saying everything again and again and again, but you are not ever at home so you don’t know. You think I am saying new things every day – from where can I get new things? I have stopped reading; for twelve years I have not touched a single book. I don’t meet people, so I can’t gather gossips or gospels. I don’t go anywhere. I just talk to you and go to sleep!In sleep do you think I can find new things every day? My sleep is dreamless, contentless – just a pure silence. It is another name for meditation to me.Nirvano just takes care that once in a while I sleep, or else the body suffers; otherwise the whole night I am awake. I have divided the day into two parts because there is nothing to read. I have read so much, and now I am utterly bored when I come to look at books. I already know what these idiots will be writing. And there is no other source….The only thing is that you feel what I am saying is new, that you have never heard it before. You have been here, but I will not refuse your question. I will repeat it again! But before I say anything about it, to wake you up I will tell you a story. I use stories and jokes to keep you awake! If I start talking about pure philosophy there will be complete silence and people will start snoring!For centuries people have been snoring whenever religion, spirituality, philosophy and meditation were discussed. And all the great masters have been in immense agony because of their compassion – what to do with these people? But I have found a way: there is no need to say to you, “Wake up!” I simply tell you a joke when I see you are slipping into sleep. Then you just straighten up, open your eyes, look all around – I don’t allow anybody to snore!A man from Warsaw in Chelm on a business trip, was walking down the street when he was stopped by Yossel the chimney sweep. “Zalman!” cried Yossel. “What has become of you? It’s so long since I have seen you. Just look at yourself.”“But wait,” replied the stranger, “I’m…”“Never mind that,” said Yossel. “I can’t get over how much you have changed. You used to be such a big man, built like an ox. And now you are smaller than I am. Have you been sick?”“But wait,” replied the stranger, “I’m…”“Never mind that,” said Yossel. “And what has become of your hair? You used to have a fine head of black hair, and now you are completely bald. What has happened? You know, I don’t see how I ever recognized you. Zalman, what has become of you?”“I have been trying to tell you,” the man replied. “I am not Zalman.”“Oy,” replied Yossel, “You have gone and changed your name as well!”If one does not want to listen, what to do! You will find some way out.Your question is beautiful. You say, “Can you say something again about coming to the master and going back to the world?”The moment you have found a master, wherever you are the master will be with you.Finding the master means drinking from his well.Finding the master means becoming yourself – so attuned with the master, so in accord, in such a deep harmony, that you only appear two, but you have become one. The bodies are two, but the inner flames of your life have become one. Once you have found the master, there is no way to go anywhere where you can be without the master.If going to the world you find yourself alone, without the master, that simply means only one thing, without any doubt – you have not found the master yet.There is a beautiful story about Mahakashyapa, one of the most significant disciples of Gautam Buddha – perhaps just second to him, or maybe just equal to him. He never asked any question, he never bothered Buddha about any problem. Finally, Buddha became concerned, “What is the matter? Everybody is asking, everybody is receiving the answer, and this Mahakashyapa never asks anything. And if he does not ask there is no point in answering him – what am I going to answer?”He called Mahakashyapa. With tears, Mahakashyapa came to him and he said, “The only thing is that I am afraid of enlightenment.”Buddha said, “You are strange. You have left your kingdom and you have become a sannyasin, and now you are afraid of enlightenment?”He said, “That’s true, that’s why I don’t ask anything, because I am afraid if I become enlightened you will send me away to spread the message, the word. I have been watching; those people who have become enlightened have been sent away, and I cannot live a single moment without… Just leave me alone. I don’t want any enlightenment, I just want to be with you. And I can be with you only if I am unenlightened; once I am enlightened I know you will send me.”Buddha said, “I promise you, I will not send you. But just out of that fear, don’t prevent yourself from becoming enlightened – you don’t know what it is!”Because of the promise of Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyapa became enlightened on the second day. All this time he had been becoming silent, peaceful – no question, no answer; the chattering of the mind had gone away. For twenty years he had been sitting in deep closeness with Buddha, and his love for him was so much that he was ready to drop the idea of enlightenment.You will find very few disciples who will be ready to drop the idea of enlightenment. They will say, “This is stupid. For enlightenment we have come to a master, and then for the master we drop the idea of enlightenment! It does not make sense.”But once Buddha promised him, the next day he became enlightened. And Buddha called him, “Mahakashyapa, now you have to go and spread the word.”Mahakashyapa said, “And what about your promise?”Buddha said, “A promise was given to an unenlightened man! You are no longer the same man; that man has gone. To you I have never given any promise.”Mahakashyapa said, “That’s true. That man is gone, but be kind enough…Forget about the promise because you are tricky, you are getting out of it. Let me be here.”But Buddha said, “What will you do here? Don’t you know that once you have become enlightened, wherever you are I am with you? I am you. What is the difference between my enlightenment and your enlightenment? Just a day ago you were an unlit candle; today you have your own flame – and the flame is the same. Today you are a buddha yourself.”Mahakashyapa touched his feet and said, “I will go, but just allow me one thing, that wherever I am I can bow down towards your direction and touch your feet. Your feet will not be there, but I can touch the ground and kiss the ground. This much you will have to allow me.”Buddha said, “I can allow you. There is no harm in it, but what will others think? They will think you are crazy. First you are going to talk about meditation, enlightenment – they will think you are a little strange – and when they see you kissing the earth and touching the earth with your head then it will become certain to them that you are really mad.”Mahakashyapa said, “That you can leave to me. That is my problem; you should not interfere in it. First you tricked me into enlightenment – for twenty years I was so happy. Now I am more happy and more blissful. For twenty years I was happy in spite of my ignorance, now I am happy, simply happy – there is no ignorance, there is no darkness. I am grateful to you. I know you are within me now, but whatever the world thinks I will continue to touch your feet – at least from far away, just in your direction.”And his whole life he continued. People were amazed seeing him every morning, every evening, “What are you doing?” But he was such a luminous figure, nobody could think that he was mad. In fact, they had never seen such a man of genius, intelligence, awareness, love, compassion, blissfulness – twenty-four hours in ecstasy. So they could not think that he was mad, but what was he doing?”He said, “I bow down to my master’s feet. He must be a thousand miles away, just in the direction…I cannot forget my gratitude towards him. If he had not tricked me I would have remained unenlightened forever.“Just for me to become enlightened, my master was even ready to lie. He promised me – knowing perfectly well that he was not going to keep his promise – and he is a man of his word; I have never seen him going against his word. But his compassion was so much, and his love was so much, how can I forget him?“It does not matter where he is I bow down in gratitude morning and evening, and that is my most precious time. I am blissful, I am ecstatic, I am enlightened.”But I want you to know that he said to people again and again, “Even my great ecstasy is less than the ecstasy I feel when I bow down to my master. Whatever I am is his compassion and nothing else.”You need not be worried if you have found the master in me. Then wherever you are you will find me very close, nearby – just following you like a shadow. But if you get lost into the world, that will also be a good experience, to understand that you have not found the master. In any case, these are the only two alternatives – either you will find me in your gratitude, in your love, in your peace, in your silence, in your meditations, in your joy, or you will forget about me in the crowd. In both of the ways it will be a beautiful experience and a beautiful test.I want everybody here…those who are essential to run the commune should remain here; otherwise, people should come and go. They can manage it to be here for three months – be here three months and go back into the world.The day you can start finding me wherever you are is the greatest day of your life.Osho,Loving to hear you laugh, loving your jokes, loving you – beloved master, would you speak to us about laughter?When you are hungry you don’t want somebody to speak on food! When you are in a river drowning, you don’t want somebody else to talk about the art of swimming. There are right moments and right situations, and there are things which can be talked about, yet misunderstood.Laughter is a mystery. It is better to experience it than to hear someone talk about it. But one becomes curious, “What is laughter?”Laughter is the most intelligent factor in you.Buffaloes don’t laugh, and if you meet a buffalo laughing you will go mad! Then it will be impossible to bring you to sanity. No animal laughs. Laughter needs a very sensitive intelligence. It means that you can understand the ridiculousness of a certain situation.What are jokes? They are a very clever arrangement. They take you in a direction logically, rationally, you start expecting that now this is going to happen, this is going to happen…and it goes on happening according to your expectations. Then comes a sudden turn and something happens which you could never have imagined. That brings laughter to you.It is a very internal process of your rational expectation. If what you were expecting happens, there will be no laugh. But if you see something that you could not have conceived and everything went well up to the end – and then suddenly something happens that makes you immediately forget all your reason, logic, mind…Laughter is the only ordinary experience when you are no longer a mind, and I use it to give you glimpses of no-mind, of meditation, of a transcendence of mind. Perhaps I am the first man in the whole history of mankind who has been using jokes as a preparation for meditation. Jesus would not laugh; Buddha will not laugh; Lao Tzu is not heard to have ever laughed…They were serious people, and they were doing serious work!It will be good to understand a small incident which began the tradition of Zen. Those are the people who understand – the only people on the earth, a small stream who have understood the meaning of laughter because their origin is in laughter.It was again Mahakashyapa…He was sitting under his tree – he was sitting under his tree for twenty years. It had almost become his tree; nobody else used to sit under that tree. Everybody knew that that was the place for Mahakashyapa and not to disturb that man. “He never asks, he never says anything, he never talks – why disturb him? Just leave him alone.” It had become an accepted fact. But one day he laughed – and that day was his day of enlightenment.A great king, Prasenjita, asked his wife… His wife was a disciple of Gautam Buddha, a lay disciple, not a sannyasin, but immensely interested in Gautam Buddha and hoping that one day her husband would allow her to become a sannyasin. Prasenjita was not interested in sannyas; he was interested in increasing his kingdom, to make it bigger and bigger. He was always fighting, invading new areas.By chance, Buddha had come into the capital of Prasenjita, and the wife was insisting, “You have to come with me to welcome him because it doesn’t show culture, refinement if you don’t come. A man of the caliber of Gautam Buddha happens in millions of years. Kings and queens are a rupee a dozen! You can find them anywhere; they are not worth much. You will be forgotten, but Gautam Buddha’s name will remain till the last man has become enlightened. You may be remembered if you go to Gautam Buddha and touch his feet. Just this small act on your part will make you historical.”And that is true – who would have heard about Prasenjita? There were hundreds of other kings at that time, and we don’t know anything about them, but Prasenjita is known. And because the wife was insistent, he said, “Okay, but I have to present something to him.”He had a very beautiful diamond. Other kings were jealous of that diamond; perhaps that was the best diamond available in those days. So Prasenjita said, “What else can I offer to him? I will offer this diamond.”The wife said, “You don’t understand, a diamond or a stone is equal to him. It will be better that you take a lotus flower, because to him the lotus flower represents a revolution – it comes out of dirty mud. And it is the most beautiful flower on the earth, most fragrant, the biggest flower. It comes from the dirt, it crosses the water and stands on top of the water. This is a great revolution: dirt turning into such a beautiful…“So velvety are the flowers, leaves and petals that when dewdrops in the night gather on the big petals and big leaves, they are so velvety that the water cannot touch them. They remain on the lotus leaves, but the lotus leaf remains untouched by them. The lotus flower remains in the water but the water does not touch it – that gives it another significance that a man should live in the world untouched by it. He should live in the world but not allow the world to enter him; he should live in the dirty world, but he has the possibility of becoming a lotus flower.”So the lotus became a symbol for the transcendence from the trivial matters of the world. Gautam Buddha is represented in thousands of temples sitting on a lotus flower. That lotus flower represents his philosophy – it has become a symbol. So she said, “In our beautiful pond at the palace I will find the best and biggest lotus flower – you take the lotus flower.”The husband did not think that a lotus flower had any value in comparison to his diamond which could purchase a whole kingdom. So he said, “Okay, I will take both, and I will see which he prefers. This is my first meeting, so let me judge the man.”He touched the feet of Buddha and wanted to give the great diamond. Ten thousand disciples were present. They could not believe the radiance of the diamond, its clarity, purity, its perfection – and it was so great. There was complete silence, because everybody was watching what Buddha was going to do now, because it was against his disciplines to have anything more than three changes of clothes and one begging bowl – that had to be the only possession for any sannyasin. Now what was he going to do…? Was he going to refuse the king? – that will be insulting. Was he going to accept it? – but that will be against his discipline. So there was great silence and great curiosity.Buddha saw the diamond and told Prasenjita, “Drop it!”Very reluctantly, he dropped it, because now there was no way… He has presented, and the man is saying “Drop it.” Under the impact of Buddha and those ten thousand people – in which there were nearly two dozen enlightened people – he dropped the diamond. Then he brought from the other hand the lotus flower, thinking that perhaps his wife was right.Buddha said, “Drop it!”Prasenjita could not believe what kind of man he was, “I have brought presents and he goes on saying, ‘Drop it.’”The third time, when he had dropped the lotus flower, his hands were empty, but Buddha said loudly, “Drop it!”He said, “I don’t have anything to drop.”That was the moment when Mahakashyapa for the first time in twenty years started laughing, madly. Prasenjita was very much offended, but Gautam Buddha called Mahakashyapa gave him the lotus flower, and told him, “From you will start a totally new and unique, fresh stream.”That fresh stream has developed into Zen – but it was born in the laughter of Mahakashyapa.Prasenjita said, “I don’t understand what is happening…why this man laughed.”Gautam Buddha said, “He laughed because you could not understand my third request to drop it. I wanted you to drop your ego. I am not concerned with lotus flowers, not concerned with diamonds. I only am concerned with one thing, your ego. Unless you drop it, you have not dropped anything. And I cannot accept your diamond or your lotus flower, because that will enhance and nourish your ego.“That’s why Mahakashyapa laughed because the poor emperor does not understand the language of a mystic – but he understood it. In ten thousand sannyasins he was the only one who understood what I meant – and he laughed. I have chosen him to be the first for a new stream of seekers, so he is the founder of Zen.”Zen was founded in laughter, and for twenty-five centuries the tradition has continued to produce enlightened people. Most of the traditions have died but Zen still brings flowers. Perhaps, rooted in laughter, it is rooted in the highest consciousness.Rabinovich sits down in a cafe and orders a glass of tea and a copy of Pravda.“I’ll bring the tea,” the waiter tells him, “but I can’t bring you a copy of Pravda. The Soviet regime has been overthrown and Pravda isn’t published anymore” – Pravda is the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.“All right,” says Rabinovich, “Just bring me the tea.”The next day Rabinovich comes to the same cafe and asks for tea and a copy of Pravda. The waiter gives him the same answer.On the third day, Rabinovich again orders tea and Pravda. This time the waiter says to him, “Look, sir, you seem to be an intelligent man. For the past three days you’ve ordered a copy of Pravda, and three times now I’ve had to tell you that the Soviet regime has been overthrown, and Pravda isn’t published anymore.”“I know, I know,” says Rabinovich. “But I just like to hear it.”Two Jews sat in a coffee house discussing the fate of their people.“How miserable is our lot,” said one. “Pogroms, plagues, quotas, discrimination, and Adolf Hitler… Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we’d never been born.”“Sure,” said his friend. “But who has that much luck – maybe one in fifty thousand?”Try to get it!It was at the office Christmas party. As they lay on the office reception couch in the darkened room, their breath came hot and fast.“Oh, Melvin, oh Melvin,” she said passionately, “You’ve never made love to me like this before. Is it because of the holiday spirit?”“No,” he panted. “It is probably because I am not Melvin!”It is possible, when you have a hearty laugh, mind stops, because mind cannot laugh. It is structured seriously, its function is to be serious, miserable, sick. The moment you laugh, it does not come from your mind, it comes from the beyond, from your very inner spirit. According to me, all the religions have missed one of the dimensions of the greatest importance, a sense of humor. And they have made the whole world serious.I want my people to fill the world with laughter, joy, songs, and dances. We are not seeking for any paradise – we are seeking how to create the paradise, herenow, because we are not interested in things after death. If we can create a paradise herenow, certainly we will be able – even if we meet in hell – to create the paradise there.All my people are condemned by all the religions, so I hope we will be reaching hell. But they are to be warned, “Don’t send my people to hell, because they will turn the hell into a far better paradise than you have with your old, dirty and dry saints who cannot even smile!”I trust absolutely that when a million sannyasins enter into hell with their guitars and songs and dances and jokes the whole quality and the whole atmosphere of hell is going to be changed – I think even the devil will join you! He will become a sannyasin: Swami Anand Devil!

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Who is this ghostwriter who is making the golden rules?As far as I am concerned there is only one golden rule, that there are no golden rules. What are known as golden rules are only gold-plated. These so-called golden rules are obviously made by people who have gold. You can see that these rules are not golden but only gold-plated…Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.Many a romance begins when a girl sinks into his arms – and ends up with her arms in his sink.Bachelor: A man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.Milligan’s Law of Home Economics: Two can live as cheaply as one, for about half as long.You’ve heard of the three ages of woman: youth, middle age and, “You are looking wonderful.”Golding’s Law of Typecasting: The world is divided into two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t.The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.Women are entirely to blame for men’s lies; they keep insisting on asking the most awkward questions.A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.Klein’s Law of Possibilities: Nothing is impossible for people who don’t have to do it themselves.In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.Middle age: Later than you think and sooner than you expect.Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative.Percy’s Law of Laziness: The world is divided into two sorts of people, those who are willing to work and those who are willing to let them.Karl Marx says, “To do is to be do.”Albert Camus says, “To be is to do.”And Frank Sinatra says, “Do be do be do.”Osho,Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?Love and meditation are not two things; hence, the question itself does not arise.Love is a meditation and meditation blossoms in love. Of course when I use the word love I don’t mean the love that ordinarily is understood by the word, I don’t mean the biological infatuation – anyway it is not love. It is simply your chemistry, not you which feels attracted, and under the chemistry’s illusion you think you are in love. But that kind of love every animal, every bird knows perfectly well.Only man seems to be deluded, and deluded so much that all the animals in the world except man have a certain season when they are infatuated – their season of reproduction, a very limited period in the year when biology overtakes them, makes them completely blind; forces them almost against their will. Have you seen two animals making love? And have you ever seen them smiling? They look so bored that how to get out of it seems to be the only problem that is troubling them.The whole year they look more relaxed, more at ease, more in tune with nature and with themselves, but when the reproduction season comes they all start looking sad, serious, saintly. They forget their playfulness; they forget their freedom. Suddenly they feel themselves under a kind of hypnotic trance; in fact, it is a chemical trance.That’s why scientists are able to change sexes very easily. A man can become a woman, a woman can become a man – just a very small change, a change in the hormones, in the chemistry of their bodies. Just a few more hormones and the woman will start growing a mustache and beard.Now there are many people in the world who have changed their sexes. Sometimes it has happened automatically because man consists of both, man and woman. Something is contributed by your father, something is contributed by your mother, so you are both: your father and your mother, part man, part woman. Whichever is more in percentage, perhaps sixty percent man and forty percent woman, then you are man or it may be otherwise, then you are a woman.This percentage of hormones can be changed just by giving you injections. And in the developed countries there are already men who have been born as women, and women who have changed to men. But in the beginning the very idea came to mind because once in a while there was an accidental case. For example, in the very beginning of this century in London there was a case. A man fell in love with a woman and he married the woman. But after the marriage he was very much amazed that the woman slowly started changing into a man.After a year he was so much ashamed because the whole town was laughing at him: his woman had turned completely into a man. He went to the court for divorce. The court was puzzled; there had never been a case like that before the court. And the man was perfectly reasonable. He said, “I married a woman; I have never married a man. Why should I marry a man? Obviously the marriage is canceled; in fact, I don’t need any divorce, but just not to be illegal, I am asking for divorce.”His wife was sent for a medical examination. There was no need because she had a mustache and beard; her breasts had disappeared. There was not much need, but not taking any chances the judge said, “Let her be medically examined. If the doctor’s report says she has become a man then there is no question, your divorce is accepted.”That gave the idea to the scientists that perhaps the woman has a very small difference between her male hormones and female hormones. Perhaps she is fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man, and by some change, climate, food, some medicine…it can be anything that has altered the proportion between man and woman in her. The difference was very slight, very borderline, and she became a man.This opened a door of great research, and it was found that every man can become a woman and every woman can become a man.This reminds me that in the East, from the very beginning, almost ten-thousand-year-old statues are available in which Shiva and his wife, Parvati, are represented as one personality: half man, half woman. It is a beautiful aesthetic and artistic sculpture, and that’s how it has been thought always: a beautiful metaphor, but nobody has thought of it as a reality.The people who created that statue must have come to know that every man is carrying a woman within him and every woman is carrying a man within her – and this change is not impossible.My own feeling is that in the future many more people will be changing – because why not have both the experiences in one life? Most intelligent people will change – the unintelligent always are afraid of any change – otherwise, you have lived as a woman for thirty years, now it is time, why not have a look from the other side? Why go on living on this bank? The scenery from the other side is also very beautiful.Only then will the old idea of the poets that the woman is a mystery will be solved. You can become a woman and know what the mystery is. You can become a man and know what the mystery is. There is no mystery at all; it is just a poetic conception. The difference is only biological, chemical, hormonal.I don’t call that kind of infatuation love; I call it lust. And to be confused between lust and love has created your problem.You are asking, “Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?” Lust and meditation you cannot experience at the same time.Lust is against meditation.It is desire, an ugly desire.It takes you towards unconsciousness.Meditation is the greatest longing, the only longing which cannot be called a desire. And it takes you upwards towards more consciousness.Now both things you cannot do – going upwards towards more conscious being and going downward towards more unconscious being; you cannot do them both at the same time.But love and meditation are both reaching towards higher states of being. Meditation is a state of thoughtlessness, a state of silence, serenity, tranquility – a state of blissfulness. There is no reason why love should be against it. Out of blissfulness love will flow. In fact, only a meditative person can be a loving person, and only a loving person can be meditative, because both are going beyond the unconscious mind, the dark mind, the blind mind, and opening the doors of light and the beyond.They are different names and their different names have a certain meaning and significance. Meditation is possible even if you are alone. In fact, it is possible only when you are alone, in your aloneness, utter purity…no crowd of thoughts or emotions or feelings, just a flame of being conscious.Meditation is the discovery of your own self.But once you have discovered the treasure a tremendous need arises in you to share it. That sharing is love. Meditation is like the sun and love is like the radiation reaching to faraway flowers to open, for birds to sing, to make the whole living world alive, fresh, rejuvenated. Exactly what the sun is doing to the whole solar system, meditation does to the whole human world: it radiates love.And if meditation does not radiate love then one is in some fallacy. What he is thinking is meditation is not meditation. It may be concentration, it may be contemplation, but it is not meditation.Concentration is of the mind, one pointedness of the mind. Contemplation is also of the mind, not one pointedness but one subject matter. If you are thinking about light you go on thinking about light, higher and deeper and more possibilities and implications of light; but you keep track of one dimension.So we can define contemplation as thinking in one single dimension, not going astray, not going here and there; not allowing many different sorts of thoughts but one singular path, moving in the same direction. Science depends on concentration and philosophy depends on contemplation. Religion depends on meditation.Meditation is when mind is not functioning at all, when mind is absolutely silent and still, as if absent. In this absentness of mind your authentic being surfaces. Your mask disappears and your original face is encountered for the first time.For the first time you know who you are.And this experience of oneself is the experience of one’s divineness. Out of this divineness radiates love. It is not addressed to anyone in particular; it simply radiates to friend and to foe, to the familiar and to the stranger; it does not know any discrimination.When the sun rises it does not rise only for roses and not for marigolds. It does not rise only for rich people and not for the poor. It does not rise only for the strong and not for the weak. It rises unaddressed. It radiates in all directions. Whoever has eyes will be able to see it. Having eyes simply means whoever is receptive, whoever is sensitive will be able to see it. The sun does not rise only for the blind.Only a blind man can pass a man of meditation without feeling his love. I mean spiritually blind, one who does not have any idea of who is within his being; who knows himself according to others, what they say. His knowledge of himself is nothing but a collection of opinions of other people. He does not know himself directly, immediately; and because he does not know himself he remains closed; otherwise it was not possible to crucify Jesus.Those who crucified Jesus must have been spiritually blind. The man was absolutely innocent, and he was full of love. He had not harmed anyone; in fact, he was trying to help everyone. But it is a strange world. Here there are more blind people than those who have eyes. And because the people who have eyes and receptivity are in a minority they remain silent. It is very unfortunate that the blind are very articulate and those who have eyes, seeing that the majority are blind, remain silent. They go on seeing that Socrates is being poisoned by the blind and they don’t protest.In my eyes the people who poisoned Socrates or crucified Jesus or murdered Mansoor or assassinated Sarmad, they were less responsible than those who knew that what was happening was absolutely wrong but remained silent out of fear.There is a beautiful incident…When Al-Hillaj Mansoor, a Mohammedan mystic, was being very primitively assassinated…Jesus’ crucifixion is far more sophisticated; Socrates’ poisoning is even more sophisticated, but nobody has suffered as much as Al-Hillaj Mansoor. First they cut his legs – they killed him piece by piece, just to torture him as much as possible, to the optimum – then they cut his hands. Then they destroyed his eyes with hot iron rods – they went on piece by piece.Thousands of people had gathered to watch. Al-Hillaj Mansoor’s master, Junnaid, a famous teacher, was also present. Of course he was absolutely against what was happening, but the weakness of the good… Seeing the majority he remained silent. He knew that Mansoor was born after thousands of years; he was one of the rarest flowers. Junnaid had been a teacher of thousands, but none of his students, none of his disciples had reached to the same heights as Mansoor – all this he understood.People were throwing stones before the assassination began. He did not want people to know that he was not throwing stones, so instead of throwing a stone he threw a roseflower, just to show that he had thrown. Now in thousands of stones, who can find out what he had thrown? People saw that he had thrown something.But Mansoor could see. When thousands of stones were falling on him, hitting him, and blood was flowing all over his body, he could see that a roseflower also fell on his face. And he knew that this roseflower could only be thrown by his master Junnaid. He shouted from his cross, “Junnaid, these thousands of stones are not hurting me so much as your roseflower; it has created a wound in my very soul.”This statement is tremendous: “Thousands of stones have not hurt me. These are people who don’t know me – but you know me; I had grown under your shadow. Still, instead of protesting, you are so cowardly that you are afraid that if you don’t throw something people may start suspecting that you may be a friend…” And tears came to his eyes.And Mansoor said, “These tears are not for these stones; these stones are not worth my tears. These tears are for the man who has thrown the roseflower to me.”And still Junnaid remained silent….The good man is responsible. The silent man, the man who has understood is responsible for all that has happened in the history of man against the people who were just pure love, pure silence, pure godliness.But perhaps nothing can be said to those good people either, because if they had come out there would have been another assassination and nothing else. That’s what Junnaid said afterwards, and he was right. Other disciples asked him, “It was very shameful when he called out your name. You behaved as if you were not Junnaid. It is shameful that you did not protest when your greatest disciple was being tortured – tortured brutally.”No, even animals don’t torture in that way. If you want to kill someone, kill. But to cut him piece by piece is so condemnable.The other disciples said, “You should have protested.”Junnaid said, “Do you think it would have saved him? I have also thought about it. It is not that I have not felt the tragedy, I have felt as much hurt as Mansoor. I loved him, but I knew that if I had come out and protested, then instead of one man, two men would have been assassinated. Nothing would have been achieved by it.”But still I feel it would have been better that two men were assassinated instead of one. I differ from Junnaid, because there may have been a third man who would have come out, and three men may have provoked courage in many more. It is not that in that vast crowd there was only Junnaid who saw that it was absolutely inhuman and ugly – and there was no crime. The crime was simply that Al-Hillaj Mansoor had said, “I am God,” ana’l haq, and simultaneously he said, “It is not that only I am God – you are also. I know it; you still have to know it. That’s the only difference.”So he was not speaking because of his ego, he was speaking because of his experience. He was not denying godhood to anyone. He was simply saying, “Your God seems to be asleep; my God is awake. One day it was also asleep and I was as ignorant as you are. One day you will be also as awake as I am. It is only a difference of time.”Such a compassionate man. Why has humanity behaved so badly with these people? One of the reasons, fundamental reasons is that their height hurts people’s egos. Their silence, their love, their beauty, their grace, their blissfulness… Everything hurts people, because they are living in dark holes, in misery, in suffering, in anguish, and somebody is standing on the hilltop, sunlit, surrounded by fragrant flowers. They cannot forgive such a man.This is something to be deeply understood and remembered, that up till now man has proved by and large barbarous. All talk of civilization is nonsense. All talk of culture, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, is simply bullshit. Because the way we have behaved with our best sons and daughters is not cultured, is not human. It is subhuman or perhaps even below animals.No animal murders another animal of his own species. No lion will kill another lion, howsoever hungry; he would rather die than kill. But man is the only animal again. He is unique in many ways: he is the only one who kills people of his own species – not only kills but eats.Just a few days ago in Palestine the people demanded from the government, “We should be allowed to eat the dead people because there is a shortage of food – and it seems utterly uneconomical not to eat the dead people.” Their demand was ugly but more ugly is that the Palestinian government has accepted their demand, saying that it is okay. The government cannot supply food. On what grounds can it deny them?First they will start eating people who died naturally and then they will start eating people who have been killed on purpose. That has happened in Buddhist countries: in China, in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan. You will find hotels where it is written, “Here only the meat of the naturally dead animals is available.” Now so many natural deaths of animals don’t happen anywhere in the world that they can supply food for the whole country. How many animals do you see dying naturally?Those boards are absolutely false, as false as you will find in India. Every restaurant, hotel, sweetshop…they will all have a board saying, “Only pure ghee is used here.” And everywhere vegetable ghee made by vegetables, not by milk, and sometimes even by rotten vegetables, not even the best quality vegetables, is available. From where can they get so much pure ghee? You cannot even get pure milk.I was a postgraduate student and the man who used to supply the milk to all the students in the hostel was known as a very saintly man; he was really called Santa Baba, because everybody thought, He is so honest; he is supplying pure milk. He always used to come with his son, carrying the milk.I heard him many times. If somebody asked “Santa Baba, is the milk really pure?” He would immediately put his hand on his son’s head and say, “If I have mixed water in the milk my son will die.”Naturally people thought…I heard it many times. I started thinking that there must be some clue to the mystery, because I used to take his milk and I knew it was not pure. It was so thin that it was more water than milk. One day I took him aside and I said to him, “No need of your son…and no need for you to put your hand on his head. You just tell me one thing. Is it really true?”For a moment he was silent and then he said, “It is not true.”I said, “You are every day offering your son.”He said, “It is very simple. I never mix water into milk; I always mix milk into water. So I am not making any wrong statement.”You cannot get anything pure.I have heard about Mulla Nasruddin, that he wanted to commit suicide. So he went and got poison with great difficulty from a chemist. He had to bribe him because from where would he get the prescription for poison? Without the prescription the chemist said, “I cannot give you anything; you have to have a doctor’s prescription.”He said, “Who is going to give me the prescription? I want to commit suicide. You take these one hundred rupees or two hundred rupees, because I am going to die. What am I going to do with the rupees afterwards?”So he bribed him, went very happily home, mixed the poison in the milk, drank it, slept, waited and waited and waited, and there was no death coming, not even sleep! Many times he woke up, looked all around – whether he was in hell or heaven…but his wife was snoring by his side.He said, “My God, how long is this poison going to take? The chemist was saying the moment you put it on your tongue you are gone…”And it was becoming morning. The whole night he had been waiting. Morning came and his wife was still snoring by his side. He rushed to the chemist – he was just opening the doors of his shop – and asked him, “What is the matter?”He said, “What can I do? You know, in this country you cannot find anything pure. Everything is mixed. In a way it is good; nobody can commit suicide – at least by taking poison.”A man of love is really the only man who is cultured, who is civilized. And such a love arises only as a fragrance of meditation; hence my insistence on meditation. Unless we turn people towards meditation on a vaster scale – as it has never been done before – there is not much hope for the future, for future humanity.But I am not a pessimist, not a single inch. I am an absolute optimist. I will believe to the very last moment when the world is committing suicide in a world war, to the last moment I will trust that man will wake up. Seeing such a tremendous tragedy ahead, how can people remain asleep?Now there are only two alternatives: either suicide or meditation. Life has brought us to such a point where there are not many roads; just two roads, two possibilities, simple choice. Either humanity chooses to commit suicide under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, or humanity chooses to meditate, to be silent, to be peaceful, to be human, to be loving.Only through meditation can we defeat the politicians – and the politicians need to be totally defeated. Their power has to be destroyed forever. Their nuclear weapons and their atomic weapons have to be thrown in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. And if they want to jump with them they can jump also, because they are the greatest criminals in the world.Ordinary criminals may murder somebody and you take them to the gallows. Adolf Hitler kills eight million people, alone. Joseph Stalin kills one million Russians, his own people, without any difficulty. All these politicians continue creating more and more weapons to destroy humanity. And they are the leaders, they are the guides of people.With these blind politicians dominating the world there is no hope.I invite the whole humanity, because this is a decisive moment, this is the time when a great revolution is needed, a revolution against all politicians, without any discrimination of whether they are socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist; whether they believe in democracy or they believe in dictatorship – it does not matter.For the first time all politicians are standing together to destroy humanity, and if we can make man free from the political jargon… The only way to free man is to make man loving, peaceful. So he simply drops the weapons and he says, “They are not needed. We are not going to kill each other. And if you have so much urge to fight, then the presidents and the prime ministers can have boxing matches – and we all will enjoy. It will be really great.”What is the need to destroy so many innocent people for a few idiots who cannot come to a solution; seeing perfectly well that the time is becoming shorter and shorter and any accident is possible – and there will be no humanity at all.I have heard that the third world war happened, and a monkey sitting on a tree says to a female monkey, “Darling, should we start it all again?” And he has an apple in his hand. “Eat it again”…and God will throw you out of the Garden of Eden and the beginning of another humanity….But that humanity will again end up in some Ronald Reagan – it won’t be different. The only difference that can be called a difference is the difference of consciousness. And meditation is nothing but a science of creating that difference.You are asking, “Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?”And I am saying to you: Love is only possible if meditation is possible. They are both two wings of the same bird. And if you want the bird to fly high in the sky of consciousness, both the wings are needed, love and meditation, but not your kind of love.You should remember the difference between your kind of love and the love I’m talking about.The husband and wife were having a terrible argument. Finally the wife threw up her arms and exclaimed, “Why did I have to marry you to find out how stupid you are?”“You did not have to,” replied the husband angrily. “You should have known it the minute I asked you.”Who is going to ask you except a stupid person! That very moment it was clear, there was no need for so many years to wait to find out. I am not talking about this love.The new fully-automatic airplane was making its first cross-country flight. A recorded announcement said, “This is the first all-automatic jet. There is no pilot, no crew. Press a button and we take off. Press another button and dinner is served. Press another button and we land. Nothing can go wrong…can go wrong…can go wrong…can go wrong….”And we are sitting on a volcano of nuclear weapons – and everything can go wrong! Just press a button…Your question is not only a personal question. It has now become a question for the whole of humanity, the whole earth. But unfortunately, in five billion people it is difficult to find even a few hundred people who are sincerely interested in finding what meditation is – not by studying about it but by experiencing it.Time is running short. Every moment we are coming closer to a situation which may be deliberately created or may be just accidental. We have known the experience a few days ago. In France something went wrong; in Russia something went wrong. You cannot trust machines. Man has not trusted man but he has trusted machines more.You will be surprised to know that in Japan, which is the most technologically advanced country in the world today – it has left America far behind… Its currency is now the most valuable; the dollar rates second. In America the greatest rich man has only four and a half billion dollars. In Japan the richest man has twenty-one billion dollars. And Japan is the only country where thousands of robots, mechanical men, are functioning and working in the factories. They are cheap, because they don’t get temperamental, they don’t go on strike, they don’t ask for wages. The question of a pay rise does not arise. They work twenty-four hours a day with no shift change.But suddenly, last month a strange thing happened – that’s what I call an accident. In one factory five persons were killed by the robot mechanical men; something went berserk. Those robots simply grabbed the people who were passing by, gave them a good hug – finished. Engineers could not believe what was happening, “Is it some kind of love that has arisen in the heart of the robot?”And not only one, five robots in one factory – just in one day. And from that day people are keeping far away. Even engineers are looking from far away because to come close if the robot falls in love with you… Then just a good hug, and you are finished. I am not talking about this kind of love.Man also does this kind of love, not only robots. If you watch men… How many men have killed how many women although they are alive? How many men have been killed by women although they are alive, but just alive, breathing, surviving? But they don’t know any life. Love has destroyed their life. This is not the love I am talking about.Love should enhance life, make it richer and more beautiful and more blissful. Lovers should give more freedom to each other, more individuality, more dignity. But what is happening for centuries is just the opposite. Lovers are trying to dominate each other, to destroy each other, to enslave each other. I am not talking about that love. That love cannot go with meditation.“My wife thinks she is a chicken,” the husband explained to the psychiatrist.“That’s a serious delusion,” was the reply. “How long has this been going on?”“Three years,” mumbled the husband.“Three years?” said the shocked shrink. “Why did you not bring her in before now?”“Well,” replied the embarrassed husband, “frankly, we needed the eggs.”This is going on with almost every couple; they are driving each other crazy. This is not love. If this is love then what is hate?The very idea of domination, the very desire to be powerful over others shows a poverty of soul. It shows that you don’t have power over yourself; hence the desire to have power over others.That’s why I say the politician is the poorest person in the world, because his desire is to have power over millions of people. This desire shows his poverty. He has no power over himself and he wants to have power. But it does not matter…he may have power over one person or one million people or one billion people – it does not matter. His inner feeling of inferiority, that he has no power within himself will remain the same. He can deceive the world but he cannot deceive himself.That’s the difference between the politician and the religious person. The religious person searches for power over himself, and the politician searches for power over others. The politician is bound to be violent, destructive, ugly, barbarous.Only a man who wants to be the power over himself, who wants to know where the source of his life is, from where he is getting his energy, where the life and energy source within him are….The search for it is meditation.Finding it is enlightenment.And once you have found it you have so much, in such abundance, that you cannot help sharing it. You become a rain cloud which wants to shower on the thirsty earth. And you must have smelled the sweet fragrance that comes from the thirsty earth, from the first rain cloud’s shower on it, in gratitude, in thankfulness.A man of meditation like Gautam Buddha showers his love – he is a rain cloud, or better to call him a love cloud, who showers his love to all those who are thirsty, to all those who are aware that love is showering.But the majority are so foolish, they immediately open their umbrellas. They protect themselves from love, they protect themselves from Gautam Buddhas, they protect themselves from Socrates…. Strange people. Something is basically wrong, and that is, they don’t know themselves and they don’t know their thirst and they don’t know what nourishment they need.Love is the nourishment that is missing in the world.Yussel Moscowitz had lost all interest in life, so he went to see his psychiatrist. The usually patient shrink decided to use shock tactics this time and said sharply, “What would happen if I cut off your left ear?”“I could not hear,” replied Yussel with a sigh.“Then what would happen if I cut off your right ear?” barked the shrink.“I could not see,” said Yussel, beginning to show signs of boredom.The psychiatrist became alarmed. “This is serious. Why do you say you could not see if I cut off your right ear?”“Because,” said Yussel with a yawn, “my hat would fall over my eyes. Both the ears gone, how can I see?”The people you think are psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, the people who are helping humanity to become more sane, are the most insane people in the world. The statistics are very clear. From no other profession do so many people go mad as from the profession of psychiatry. The proportion is double that from any other profession.In the past the professors used to be champions of going mad; now they are number two. Number one is the psychologists. They commit suicide four times more than any other profession – and these are the people who are helping humanity to be sane, normal, healthy, intelligent. These are the people supposed to teach you how to live and how to live joyously. These are the people who claim that their function is to teach the art of living.But if these people are going to teach the art of living it is going to be a really dangerous art of living. It will not be the art of living, it will be the art of at the most vegetating.The professor asked the young girl in his psychology class, “Which part of the body expands to ten times its natural size under an emotional impact?”Blushing, the girl replied, “I would rather not answer that.”The professor called on the boy sitting next to her who promptly replied, “The pupil of the eye.”The professor turned back to the girl and said, “Your confusion shows three things. One, that you did not do your homework; two, that you have a dirty mind; and three, that one day you will be sadly disappointed.”

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The Invitation 01-30Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

The Invitation 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Will you give me a few more laws to come out of my confusion?Devageet: When all else fails, read the instructions.Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.Moscow is the city where, if Marilyn Monroe should walk down the street with nothing on but shoes, people would stare at her feet first.When people agree with you, you must be wrong.Women’s minds are cleaner than men’s; they change them more often.After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women. Before that age he had feelings.I have told Devageet, “You must cut your sex life to half.” He inquired of me: “Which half? Thinking about it or talking about it?”The human race never solves any of its problems – it only outlives them.Assumption is the mother of all screwups.What you resist, you become.No matter how many excellent decisions you make in a working day, people will only remember the single bad one.No man is lonely while eating spaghetti – it requires so much attention.You can always find what you are not looking for.In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.Don’t ever prophesy, for if you prophesy wrong nobody will forget it, and if you prophesy right nobody will remember it.One can survive everything nowadays except death.Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil: to deny life.If you can keep calm while all those around you are freaking out, then you don’t understand the problem.Inscription on the tombstone of Peter the Pessimist: I knew this would happen one day.A KGB agent comes across a Jew reading a Hebrew grammar book on a bench in Gorky Park. “Hey, Jew,” he says, “Why are you bothering to read that? You know we will never let you go to Israel.”“Well,” says the Jew, “I’m reading it in case they speak Hebrew in heaven.”“And what if you go to hell?”“Ah,” sighs the Jew, “Russian I already know.”So if you really want to get out of confusion, Devageet, read Russian. That’s where you are bound to go!A woman was filling out an application form at the bank when she came to the space for age. She hesitated a long time. Finally, the clerk leaned over and said, “The longer you wait, the worse it gets.”Osho,You are the only hope. Please give me a push.Almost everybody needs a push, because almost everybody is just on the border.Enlightenment is not far away; you are not to go miles in search of it. All that you need is to open your eyes and just see clearly where you are, because in that very place and in that very moment you are already enlightened.Enlightenment is not something that you can make a goal of, it is your reality. It is really foolish to search for it, because the one who is searching for it, is himself the enlightenment. It is not an achievement, it is a discovery or to be more correct, it is a rediscovery. You knew it at a time when society had not corrupted your mind, when you were still so small that you were incorruptible, so innocent that the society was not capable of teaching you anything to condition your mind. It is the layer upon layer of conditionings that is hiding your light.You don’t have to go anywhere.You just have to put aside all the conditionings; but it is very difficult. It is difficult because you think those conditionings are tremendously important.Just today I saw where one newspaper had published one of my talks in which I have said that Adolf Hitler, Krishna and Manu are not much different from each other. Obviously the editor was bombarded from all over the country with letters condemning it: “You should not publish such a thing. Krishna and Manu cannot be compared to Adolf Hitler.”Before I go deeper into it, I would like to tell you something about Adolf Hitler. I received a letter from the president of the neo-fascist party, asking me that I should stop speaking against Adolf Hitler, “because it hurts our religious feelings.”Even I was shocked. It rarely happens that I am shocked. I said, “My God, religious feelings are hurt?!”And the president says in the letter, “Perhaps you are not aware that Adolf Hitler was a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah.”Now somebody is hurt because I have said something against Adolf Hitler. And what have I said? – that he has killed millions of people single-handed, just because of a prejudice against Jews. A childish prejudice, because Jews believe – and they have suffered for that stupid belief for almost four thousand years – that they are the chosen people of God. Moses gave them this idea: You are the chosen people of God.Naturally, they have been hated by everybody else. Nobody can accept, “You are the chosen people of God.” And particularly Adolf Hitler was very angry. His people, the Nordic Aryans and Germans, they are the chosen people of God. How dare Jews say that they are the chosen people of God?Of course, these two chosen people of God cannot live together; one has to be demolished! Hitler alone killed almost six million Jews and millions of other people wherever he invaded. And this is the reincarnation of a Jewish prophet, Elijah – and he is killing Jews in millions!And the president of the neo-fascist party is threatening me, that I will have to suffer dangerous consequences if I speak again against Adolf Hitler. And when I said that I don’t see much difference between Krishna, Manu and Adolf Hitler, Hindus must have felt the same: their hearts are hurt, their religious feelings are hurt.But Krishna is responsible for the great war in which India suffered so much. Millions of people died in the war, and he was the man who provoked Arjuna to fight. It was a family war, between cousin-brothers, Arjuna and Duryodhana. They were fighting for the kingdom, and when Arjuna saw millions of people in the battle field who were all related to each other – because it was a family quarrel…some relatives were on this side, some relatives on that side; some friends on this side, some friends on that side.Even the grandfather of Arjuna, who loved Arjuna immensely, was on the opposite side. He loved Arjuna and he hated Duryodhana, but he loved the father of Duryodhana, Dhritrashtra, who was a blind man. Feeling compassion for the blind man he wanted his son to become the king – but he loved Arjuna. Now it was a very strange, tangled situation. Dronacharya, the teacher of both Arjuna and Duryodhana – he taught them the art of archery – was the greatest archer of those days, and he loved Arjuna because he even surpassed his master in archery. Duryodhana was far behind, but still Dronacharya had chosen to fight on the side of Duryodhana because there was more possibility of winning. Duryodhana was a cunning man and he had one hundred brothers. Dronacharya had many wives, and being old there was nothing else to do.Those one hundred brothers had thousands of relatives and friends. They were really powerful, they were all cunning, and they were bent upon having the kingdom.Arjuna had only five brothers. And those five brothers were deceived by Duryodhana and his brothers into a game of gambling. And in that gambling they lost everything, even their wife. The five brothers only had one wife. Then Duryodhana sent all the brothers for thirteen years to hide in forests and mountains, saying if they were found they would be killed.So for thirteen years they had been wandering, hiding themselves in mountains and forests, and being chased. Somehow they survived. Now was their only chance. Duryodhana was already in power, he had the kingdom in his hands and the armies and everything – the treasure – and in thirteen years these people had become utterly poor, weak; they had lost contact with friends, families.But when Arjuna saw the situation – he was certain about his archery, and he was certain that he could win. But a great question arose in his mind: What is the point? If I have to kill my own brothers and if I have to kill my own grandfather who has loved me, and if I have to kill my own master who has created a great archer out of me…What is the point, even if I win, of killing millions of my own people? Whether they are on this side or on that side, they will be killed.It is simply a massacre without meaning. I don’t care about such a kingdom. And what is the point of sitting on a golden throne when your own people, all of whom you have loved, for whom you would have liked to live… Surrounded by their corpses, sitting on the golden throne…Arjuna thought, I would feel so embarrassed, so ashamed that I am afraid I would commit suicide. I would not be able to tolerate that situation. If I am defeated then two million people are going to die. If I win, that victory is not worth it.He decided not to fight. It was Krishna who persuaded him. The whole of Shrimad Bhagavadgita is a persuasion. Arjuna goes on arguing against war and violence, and Krishna goes on insisting, “It is your duty, it is your destiny. It is God’s decision that you should fight. And this so-called ideology that you are talking about of nonviolence, of no war, of not killing is nothing but hiding your cowardice, your escapism.”So finally he managed to persuade him to be for the war. And that war destroyed this country forever. After that war – and it is called The Great Indian War, Mahabharata – after that great war India became poor, lost nerve, was invaded by all kinds of small tribes, barbarians, nomads; it has remained a slave country for two thousand years, such a vast country.It is going to be the greatest country in the world as far as population is concerned, and it has been dominated by small nations, small tribes. People simply lost nerve, they simply dropped the very idea of fighting. Mahabharata, the great Indian war, was such a deep wound that India lost its guts.If I have compared Krishna with Adolf Hitler, I don’t think I have done anything wrong. But the prejudices are such that people are not ready to see their conditionings.Krishna was a non-vegetarian; Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Krishna had sixteen thousand wives, and only one out of sixteen thousand was his real married wife. The remaining were all other people’s wives, whom he forcibly snatched from their families, from their small children, from their husbands, from their old parents.He destroyed sixteen thousand families and I don’t think he would even have recognized those sixteen thousand women. He treated women almost like cattle. Any woman that caught his eye was immediately taken away by his soldiers to his palace.Hitler remained a bachelor his whole life. Just for three hours before he died he married. And the only thing he did with his wife after the marriage was to commit suicide because the enemy was dropping bombs on Berlin. He had lost the war. And the woman was insisting for years, “We should get married.” But he had been saying, “Wait till I am victorious; I don’t have time for anything else. Once I’m victorious and I have proved that the nomad Nordic Germans are the highest and holiest and the God-chosen race…I have no time for anything else.”When he saw that now there is no question of any victory, he is finished, the whole of Germany is gone, his capital is being bombed, he is being searched – and he was hiding in an underground basement – he allowed the woman… He told his secretary, “Find any priest and bring him immediately; I want to be married. Let this woman’s desire be completed.”A priest was brought in the middle of the night. They were married and after the marriage he took poison, and the wife took poison. And he had ordered his people that after they were dead to immediately pour petrol over them and burn their bodies completely. They didn’t even want the enemy to get any trace of their bodies.Adolf Hitler had no habits like smoking or drinking. He used to get up early in the morning and he used to go to bed early in the evening. He was almost a mahatma, a great soul.But Hindus will be hurt, because they think Krishna is the reincarnation of God himself; they are hurt because of a conditioning. If they have a little intelligence to see, then they can see that both persons have perpetuated war, violence, cruelty, destructiveness.Manu has for five thousand years ruled over India, particularly its morality, its caste system, and the harm that he has done to this country is incalculable. Millions of women have burned themselves alive because of Manu, because he prescribes that every wife who is sincerely faithful to her husband should jump in the funeral pyre when her husband dies; she has no right to live anymore. Because of him millions of women down five thousand years have burned themselves alive. This is so ugly.It is because of Manu that one fourth of India has remained untouchable. They are called the sudras; they are not accepted as human beings…subhuman beings. Even their shadow is thought to be untouchable. If a sudra passes by you and his shadow falls on you, you have to immediately take a bath to purify yourself.These sudras have been killed for any small reason: if they have entered into a street which is prohibited to them, if they have heard even words of Hindu scriptures, the Vedas. They were killed because it is prohibited that they should be educated and they should know anything about the Vedas; because the Vedas would become dirty if these poor people know anything about them.These sudras have not been accepted in society. They cannot live inside the city; they have to live outside the city. They have remained utterly poor, and they have been doing all the dirty work of the society. They don’t have any dignity, any respect. They are not accepted in any way to be human beings. You don’t see them. They live outside the city in their small bamboo huts, which any time – and this has been happening even today, any day…Hindus, high-caste Hindus, go to their villages, burn their bamboo cottages, burn living beings, rape their women and kill all of them. And it is because of Manu.And if I have put Manu and Krishna and Adolf Hitler in the same category, then anybody who says I am wrong I am ready to accept the challenge. Rather than writing to that newspaper editor – and that coward editor immediately has written an editorial asking for forgiveness, that it was his fault that he published my statement. It is not his fault. My statement is my statement, and I stand by it. And anybody who thinks that I am wrong I am ready for any public discussion on the point.But just conditionings, nobody is ready to look at the actual facts. No Christian will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning. No Mohammedan will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning.Your only problem in life is the religion in which you were born, the society in which you were born, the family in which you were born. But it is unfortunate there is no other way, at least up to now; this is the only way.And because you are born in a certain religion, in a certain ideology, in a certain morality, you become so conditioned and so attached to all these ideas which are not yours. You become absolutely incapable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. This is the problem which keeps you unenlightened; otherwise there is no other problem.Not only do you need a push, everybody needs a push, and really a hard push. Unless you are shocked and awakened from your deep sleep, from your unconscious acceptance and identity with others’ ideas, you will never become an individual; you will never come to know your own light, you will never come to know your own innocence and the flowers that blossom in your innocence.You have to get rid of all your knowledge; you have to get rid of all your so-called religions. You have to be as innocent as a small child. You are born just as human beings, not as Mohammedans, not as Hindus, not as Christians. All these are prisons in which you have been put from your very beginning, so you have completely forgotten that they are prisons. They appear to be cozy homes; they are not.It needs tremendous courage to drop out from these prisons. But I think every man, every woman has the courage. Just an invitation is needed, and an encouragement is needed. And a support from a commune, from friends is needed so that you are not alone; there are other people also on the same path in the same rebellion.Remember one thing. If you really want to be alive, contemporary, fresh, and you want to have a future not full of darkness and death but full of eternity and blissfulness, then you will have to take a little risk. A risk of dropping all kinds of borrowed knowledge, all that has been given to you by others, so that you can find what is your own.I am reminded of one great mathematician, P.D. Ouspensky. He was world-famous when he met Gurdjieff, his master. Gurdjieff was not known outside of a small circle of seekers. He was made famous, world-famous, because of Ouspensky. But the day Ouspensky arrived to meet Gurdjieff, he had already written a very important book.Perhaps there are only three books which can be said to be really important.One is written by Aristotle. The name of the book is Organum. It means the first principle of wisdom. The second book is written by Bacon, who is the father of all modern science. His book’s name is Novum Organum, new principle of wisdom. Aristotle is thought to be the father of Western logic, mathematics and related sciences, and Bacon is certainly the most important figure who has created the whole of science, the whole technology that has made the West strong, rich, affluent, healthy.And the third important book is Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum, the third principle of wisdom. This seems to be the most important of the three. And the first thing Ouspensky had written inside the book, not out of any egoism but out of sheer truthfulness, “Before the two Organums existed, Tertium Organum, my book, had already existed, because it is more fundamental than those two, Aristotle’s and Bacon’s books.”It is certainly one of the most well-written books I have come across, and I have seen more books than perhaps any living human being.When Ouspensky reached Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff was nobody and Ouspensky was a world-famous mathematician. Gurdjieff gave Ouspensky an empty paper and a pencil and told him, “Go into the other room” – no other introduction – “and first write down on one side what you know on the fundamental questions of life, and on the other side write what you do not know – because this will be decisive. Whatever you know I will never discuss with you. You know it, there is no need. Whatever you do not know I will teach you.”There were at least twenty disciples sitting in that dark room, doing nothing, just silently sitting. Ouspensky had not expected such an introduction. The man who brought him had been resisting for almost nine months saying, “Unless the master says ‘yes,’ I cannot introduce you.” And after nine months of waiting he was brought into his presence, and this was the behavior that he got.He said, “It is strange,” but he went into the other room – there was nothing else to do. And for the first time in his life he started thinking, Do I know it, do I know anything about God? – and I have been writing about God. Do I know anything about the human soul? – and I have been writing about it. Do I know anything about consciousness? – and I have been writing about it.He could not write a single word on the side where he was supposed to write what he already knew. He came back after half an hour and returned the paper empty. And he said, “Forgive me, I tried hard. But really I don’t know anything. You will have to teach me from abc.”This is the way to drop your conditionings. This is the way to realize your ignorance. What your ignorance is finally turns out to be your innocence. It looks like a death when everything that you know and that you have been attached to is taken away. But on the other side it is a resurrection.So if you really want to wake up and if you also want to become part of the great hope for humanity and the future of man, then die to the past, so that you can be reborn to the future. Less than that will not do; more than that is not needed.Osho,What does it mean to love myself?One has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don’t know who you are. Who are you going to love?If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, “How beautiful you are,” will not refuse to accept it.I have heard…Two old men meet on a street corner. “Where have you been for the past eight weeks?”“In jail,” says the second man.“In jail? How come?” says the first man.The second old man replies, “Well, about eight weeks ago I was standing on a street corner and this beautiful young girl rushes up with a policeman and says, ‘He is the man, officer. He is the one who attacked me.’ And you know, I felt so flattered, I admitted it.”How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest – and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about.Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don’t know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don’t have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence – no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence – suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all.In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.And you have to understand the difference. When you say, “I love you,” what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings.Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening.Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love.You are asking, “What does it mean to love myself?”It means meditation.It means to be yourself.And nature will bring love as a reward.Just don’t listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don’t claim any right. You have not earned it.So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That’s what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives?You will hate yourself. And that’s what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.The old priest was warning his congregation about sin.“Sin,” he said, “is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed – and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex.”“Father,” came a voice from the back of the church, “are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?”You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears – but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio.“Okay folks,” he began, “God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick.”The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly.His wife looked at him with contempt and said, “You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!”Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence…in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason – not to get any reward in heaven – because compassion is a reward unto itself.A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, “You are not poor! Paradise is within you.”“You need not be beggars, you are born emperors.” You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home.Love will come, and will come in abundance – so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions.Just discover your hidden splendor.Life can be simply a song, a song of joy.Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle.I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not.A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home. We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it.In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra.To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid. It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness.There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise.All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness.Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sekito said:“My teaching, which has come down from the ancient buddhas, is not dependent on meditation or on diligent application of any kind.“When you attain the insight as attained by the Buddha, you realize that no-mind is buddha, and buddha is no-mind; that no-mind, buddha, sentient beings, bodhi, and klesa, are of one and the same substance while they vary in names.“You should know that your own no-mind essence is neither subject to annihilation nor eternally subsisting, is neither pure nor defiled. It remains perfectly undisturbed and self-sufficient. The same is so with the wise and the ignorant. Your no-mind essence is not limited in its working, and is not included in the category of mind, consciousness, or thought.“The three worlds of desire, form, and no-form, and the six paths of existence are no more than manifestations of your mind itself. They are all like the moon reflected in water, or images in the mirror. How can we speak of them as being born or as passing away?“When you come to this understanding, you will be furnished with all the things you are in need of.”Friends, good evening. And good news…! This evening we are starting a new series of talks: I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here.The statement of Friedrich Nietzsche that God is dead, is only symbolic because God has never been in the first place – not even born. How can he be dead? But it was a tremendously powerful symbol to declare that God is dead.It was a recognition that we have been worshipping a lie. And not only were we worshipping, we were being destroyed by a lie. We had been exploited by the priesthood of all the organized religions. Our dignity has been destroyed. We have been turned into puppets in the hands of a fiction.His declaration that God is dead simply means that man is born. That is the other side of the coin. And because man is born, he brings freedom to the earth, he brings joy to the earth, he brings dignity to the earth. And he destroys all that was clinging to the ultimate lie, God – all the superstitions, heaven and hell, all theologies, all religions… All kinds of false programming of man’s being have also died with God.Hence, I celebrate myself and I celebrate you.Friedrich Nietzsche’s statement also includes another part: “God is dead, therefore man is free.” God was the slavery of man, he was the bondage. He was the prison that did not allow humanity to rise to its ultimate heights. He was keeping the whole of humanity reduced to subhuman beings, sinners. His death is a great moment to celebrate.His death means man has come of age. He is no longer a child and he does not need a father figure. He can stand on his own feet. He is not a sheep, as all the religions have been telling him, and he does not need any shepherds. Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira, Mohammed, Moses… No prophets are needed, no saviors are needed, no messengers of God are needed. They were all megalomaniacs, and in the name of God they have been pushing human consciousness to the lowest levels of existence.The death of God cleans the whole sky outside and cleans the inner world also, completely – cleans you of all the belief systems, cleans you of all prejudices, cleans you of all guilt. That is what he meant by freedom. Freedom from guilt was possible only if God was dead. And once you are free from God you have the whole sky to yourself, both inner and outer – you can open your wings in utter freedom. Without any inhibition, and without any suppression, you can live your life with joy, with song, with dance.God not being there is a great event, the greatest event that has happened in the whole history of mankind. The absence of God gives you a certain solid presence. For the first time you are individuals, independent souls – not creatures who have been created, but individual consciousnesses which have been in existence from eternity to eternity.This is a glorious moment for those who can understand all the implications of God’s death. They will immediately celebrate it; it gives you a new sense of direction, a new uniqueness, a new destiny. It makes you a master of your own destiny. Nobody is there to guide you, and nobody is there to dominate you, and nobody is there to give you commandments.In Nietzsche’s statement, for the first time, man comes of age. But very few people have heard that God is dead and they are still worshipping him. They are still praying in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques. They are still holding the lie as if it is the truth. And because of that lie their whole life becomes phony. They cannot laugh, they cannot enjoy. Their only duty, propounded by all the religions, is to be masochists – torture yourself as much as you can. The more you torture yourself, the greater saint you are.All the religions have been preaching nothing but masochism. That gives me a deep insight into God. Man has to be masochist, guilty – torturing himself, torturing and destroying his own roots in nature, going against nature, suffering all kinds of stupidities because God was a sadist. All the religions, unknowingly, are propounding a God that is a sadist. He loves humanity to suffer. He loves people to torture themselves. He does not like your laughter, he does not like your joy. He does not like your pleasure, your blissfulness, your cheerfulness. He does not like your songs, and he does not like your dances and your celebrations. He has taken away all that was beautiful on this earth. He hates the earth! He is against the earth. He is against life itself.So what your saints have been doing all these thousands of years, in the name of God, is nothing but committing a gradual suicide. The more dead you are, the more you will find followers. The more alive you are, the religions will condemn you, the masses will condemn you, all the idiots of the world will be together to destroy you.Joy is not acceptable. Laughter is not acceptable. A sense of humor is not part of any religion. Life has become sadness, misery, anguish, anxiety. Who is responsible for all this? The first responsibility is a fictitious God who is represented by the priesthood around the world. Millions of people in this priesthood are living on your blood. They are parasites not priests. And their whole function is to keep you miserable because only a miserable person can bow down to a fictitious God. They have been respecting, giving prestige and honor to those who were nothing but insane people.Anybody who goes against life is insane. Life is all that we have. If you go against it, you are committing suicide. Maybe it is very slow suicide – it may take a few years for you to die. One religion, Jainism – unfortunately I have been born into that religion – even supports the idea of suicide. Other religions unconsciously support it, but Jainism is clear about it.It preaches that if you want to commit suicide, commit it because this life is not worth living. This earth is not your home, your home is beyond the clouds. They call it santhara, but it actually means slow suicide. Whenever a man goes on santhara, he immediately becomes a great saint. Santhara is a fast unto death – no food, and in the end no water. For a healthy man to die it takes almost ninety days, and those ninety days are of immense self-torture. Jainism is simply making conscious that which every religion has as an implication.What have all the saints of the world been doing? And what is saintly in their actions, in their behavior, in their style of life?A man, who was worshipped very much by the Christians in Egypt, remained sitting on a high pole for twelve years! It was the ruins of an old palace, and only one pillar was standing high. It was very difficult; it was a small place to remain on for twelve years. He could not sleep, he had to tie himself to the pillar. He could not come down even to go to the toilet, so he was defecating from the pillar, pissing from the pillar – and people were worshipping him!He must have suffered immensely just to get this honor, honor from the ignorant masses. Just to get this prestige of being a great saint, he was living in utter dirtiness, ugliness. And he dropped from the pillar only when he died. A great memorial exists in his name because he has done the greatest penance against the original sin of Adam and Eve.Strange ways have been found to take your pride. Now, Adam and Eve have committed a sin? I don’t think they have committed any sin. They were simply provoked by God to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and from the Tree of Eternal Life. To prohibit anything is to provoke – it is a simple psychology. God could have learned much from Sigmund Freud.In the Garden of Eden where God lived, there were millions of trees. If he had not prohibited those two trees, I don’t think that even by now we would have found them…millions of trees with beautiful fruits. We would have still been chewing grass in the Garden of Eden just like the buffaloes. If anybody committed the sin it was God himself.And why did he prohibit his own children from eating from the Tree of Knowledge? No father would do it. Every father wants his children to be as wise as possible. Why should a father prevent his own children from eating the fruit which will make them eternal, immortal? Every father would love – even ordinary fathers on the earth would love their children to be immortals.What kind of God was this? And if this is God – who prevents his children from becoming wise, from becoming Socrates, and Gautam Buddha, and Lao Tzu, this is not a God worth having. If he has not died by himself, then somebody has to murder him. He has tortured humanity enough.It is a strange fact that it was the Devil who persuaded Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. He showed her why God was preventing them. He did not want anybody to be equal to him – and you call this God compassionate? And you call this God love? The Devil was far more loving, far more compassionate. In fact, he showed man the way of wisdom, the way of immortality.God is preventing his own children because he does not want them to be wise, he does not want them to be immortal. If they are immortal and wise, then they will be equal to God and he is afraid of their equality – a very jealous God. In fact, the Old Testament declares it through God himself. God says, “I am a very jealous God.” He certainly is. He was jealous of his own children. He is not even worthy to be called a father. If the Devil had not told Eve, “You have to eat these fruits, only then will you know in your innermost being that you are also gods…”As the story is, it makes it clear that the Devil was more in favor of human individuality, respect, dignity. God was against man from the very beginning. The whole evolution that has happened in science… Science in its very roots means knowledge. Anything that has evolved in the inner consciousness of man – the awakened ones, the enlightened ones who have come to know that life is eternal, it is a beginningless, endless festival – would not have been possible without the Devil. The Devil was the first rebellion against a dictatorial God.And I have to tell you that the word devil is much more meaningful than the word god. God simply means nothing, but devil comes from the Sanskrit root div. From div are derived devil and day in English; in Hindustani from dev, devata, which mean divine; from div, divas, which mean daybreak, the beginning of the day, the end of the night. The Devil seems to be more divine than God. God seems to be really a very mean fellow, and it is good that he is dead, otherwise somebody would have to shoot him. It is good that he died by himself, and we had not to have his blood on our hands.But once God is no longer there, your freedom becomes a tremendous responsibility. It should not fall down into licentiousness, it should rise into enlightenment. Freedom brings responsibility. And I want you to understand that responsibility does not mean duty, it means only the ability to respond. Ability to respond to what? – to every situation, moment to moment. You should be so aware that you can find original responses to every original situation. Nothing in existence ever repeats.They say history repeats itself – man is an idiot. But existence never repeats itself because existence is intelligence, wisdom, eternity. History will also stop repeating once there are millions of buddhas around the world, millions of people who have the sense of being alert, aware, conscious, and who feel that they have a great responsibility moment to moment – not according to any scripture but according to everyone’s consciousness.Freedom brings many fruits, and many flowers, and many gifts to you. The death of God is not something to be sorry and sad for. It is something to rejoice, something to dance, something to celebrate. At last man is free from guilt, man is free from a constant judgmental eye from the sky.It is strange that the Holy Bible says, “Judge ye not,” but God does only one thing, judge. And they have also determined a day called The Judgment Day. To man it is said, “Judge ye not” – and God is continuously judging, and is going to judge finally at The Judgment Day. What kind of contradiction…?Just today I have received a letter from a few Christians saying that the Bible says, “Judge ye not.” But I am not a Christian, and I don’t have any obligation to follow the Bible. I am not a Hindu… I am not a person who belongs to any religion, so I don’t have any obligation to follow the Holy Bible or holy Koran, or holy Bhagavadgita. All holy scriptures, as I have looked into them, are absolutely unholy.These four or five Christians who have written a letter to me want me not to judge Christians or Catholics because the Bible says, “Judge ye not” – and they are judging me! And their Bible says, “Judge ye not.” I am not a Christian so I have no obligation to follow the Bible. They are Christians, they should not judge me. I am free to judge, and I am free to judge everybody because I don’t have any prejudice against anybody. I don’t belong to any organization, to any system of beliefs. A God who teaches people “Judge ye not” himself goes on judging – and you don’t see the contradiction?Jesus says, “God is love,” but there seems to be no love flowing from the skies to humanity. In three thousand years we have fought five thousand wars. What kind of God is there who allows Genghis Khan to be born? Tamerlane to be born? Nadirshah to be born? These three generations of one family killed one hundred million people, and they were never defeated.What kind of God allows President Truman to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What kind of God is allowing all the stupid politicians of the world to pile up nuclear weapons which will only prove to be a global death?But as I told you, God is a sadist. He enjoys when you are suffering. He enjoys when you are in pain. He enjoys when you are poor. He enjoys when you are starving to death. His enjoyment is simply sick!The word sadism comes from a French count, de Sade; he used to torture women. He was a super-rich man, a count, and had a vast territory under his control, so any beautiful woman would be dragged to his torture chamber. You all have love chambers; he had a torture chamber – that was his love chamber. As the woman entered, she could not believe what was going to happen because all over the walls were hanging different kinds of instruments of torture. He also used to carry a box, a portable torture chamber – because who knows? He may find a woman in a hotel room and he may not have his instruments.All those instruments… First he would force the woman to be naked – not in a loving way – he would tear off her clothes, he would scratch her body, he would start beating her…and he had all those instruments. You have heard only the word screwing – he really used to use screws to make holes in the woman’s body. Unless there was blood he did not get excited. When he saw the woman in utter torture, then he was in great sexual excitement, then he would make love.And perhaps something of de Sade exists in every masochist man. Unless there is a pillow fight, unless there is some conflict before going to bed, a man seems not to be excited. A woman who beats him, hits him, throws things at him, excites him.The only perfect couple possible in the world would be if one partner was a sadist, and the other partner was a masochist. Masochist also comes from another count that enjoyed torturing himself. His name was Masoch; hence the word masochist. Both were imprisoned for insanity, both were found guilty; one of torturing others, and one of torturing himself.God must be a sadist on a far bigger scale than de Sade. He is omnipotent, omnipowerful, omnipresent – everywhere. You cannot escape him; his eyes of judgment are following you day and night, twenty-four hours, wherever you are. He is threatening you that you will fall into hellfire for eternity.Even a man like Bertrand Russell refused to be a Christian for the simple reason… He has given many other reasons, but the first reason was “I cannot accept a God who is so unjust.” In Christianity there is only one life; even if you live a life of a hundred years, as Bertrand Russell almost managed to live, a century… He counted very honestly the sins that Christians call sins – they are not sins, they are just natural experiences. They have been converted into sins to torture you. Making love to a woman is not sin, but it has become a sin. Both are feeling immensely guilty that they are doing something against God.So he counted all those so-called sins which are not sins, but just for the argument’s sake he counted all the sins that he had committed. And he also counted all the sins that he had dreamed about, but he had not committed. Still he said, “The strictest judge cannot put me in jail for more than four and a half years, and God is going to throw me into hellfire for eternity! There seems to be no proportion.”If you go on committing sin and don’t do anything else, just sin and sin and sin from the moment you are born till the moment you are in your grave, then too, an eternity of hellfire is not just, it is not justice.God seems to enjoy hellfire. God seems to enjoy poisoning all your pleasures – you should not enjoy any of your senses. Different religions have different emphases, but the point is the same. Mohammedans are not allowed to listen to music. Strange. It is sin because you are enjoying a sense, your hearing. You are giving pleasure to your ears, so you are not to be allowed to listen to great music.I cannot conceive in what way music can be a sin. But the idea is that enjoyment is sin, so whatever you can enjoy has to be condemned.Jainism says you should not enjoy taste, you should eat without any taste. You are putting man into such a guilt. How can he avoid tasting? When it is sweet, it is sweet! When it is bitter, it is bitter! On the tongue there are sensitive buds which decide the taste. Unless you have plastic surgery and remove all the buds from your tongue, you cannot manage not to taste the food.But they have poisoned your enjoyment. Just small enjoyments – eating your food with love and joy with friends is condemned. And it is not only one sense, but all five senses.Gautam Buddha is against touching a woman – even touch is a sin. Touching a woman is a joy; she is warmer than you, she is more fragile than you, she is more beautiful than you. And what is wrong if touching a woman gives you joy? Joy cannot be wrong. And you are not harming anybody, you are not interfering by touching the woman against her will. She enjoys being touched; you enjoy being the toucher. Why should God come in between?But he is always there, following you as a judge. He has become your inner conscience. Your inner conscience is false. It is created by the religions. So God does not depend only on himself, he depends on the priests to create a conscience in you. It is not consciousness, it is conscience – a false entity which continuously goes on saying to you, “This is not right. The scriptures are against… God is against… Don’t do this!” And your whole nature wants to do it.Jaina monks are not even allowed to have a bath or a shower every day because that is enjoying the coolness of water, enjoying your body’s freshness. You can see these people are criminals. The Jaina monk is not even allowed to clean his teeth. He cannot use any toothbrush, or any toothpaste, or any mouthwash. It is so difficult to talk to a Jaina monk – his breath is so disgusting, his whole body is disgusting.In a hot country like India you perspire, and Jaina monks have to travel on dirty, dusty paths. They cannot ride in any vehicle because that is pleasure; they have to walk. So they are walking on dusty roads in villages, and they perspire under the hot sun, blazing hot, showering fire on the earth… They become ugly, they become really tanned. Their bodies, their skin shrinks. And dust upon dust, layer upon layer…All the religions have shared in some way or other the desire that man’s every pleasure should be poisoned. Only then, because he is miserable, will he turn toward the priest to get some advice. Make him miserable, take away all the possibilities of pleasure.I have not come across any Indian woman who knows what orgasm is. In fact, in the Hindi language there is no word equal to orgasm. The Indian woman has never known orgasm. Even the Western woman has started to know about orgasm just thirty years ago. It was due to the research of psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Masters and Johnson opened a new door to women’s pleasure.For centuries women did not know what orgasm was, so naturally, they were disgusted with sex. They thought that the man was simply using them because they were not getting any enjoyment out of it. But the reason was that the man had not been allowing them to have an orgasm.In the very primitive days he must have become aware that a woman can have multiple orgasms, and a man can have only one orgasm. So a man is not competent to fulfill a woman. Either he has to call his friends, or he has to get some hormonal injections, because a woman ordinarily is capable of having six orgasms.It is better not to let her know that she is capable of any orgasm. It can be avoided because the woman’s vagina is insensitive. It has to be insensitive because it will be giving birth to a child. If it was sensitive, the pain of the birth of a child would have immensely increased; it is insensitive and still there is pain.So the woman’s orgasm has nothing to do with the vagina; that is just a reproductive mechanism. Her orgasm is not dependent on a man making love through the vagina – that is good for reproduction. She has a separate part, just a very small part – the clitoris – which is not in the way of man’s making love to her. Unless the man understands the physiology of the woman, which ordinarily no man understands…Man is the only inexperienced lover in the world because neither he has any experience before marriage, nor the woman has any experience before marriage. This is a very strange world. When two people are going to live together for their whole lives, they don’t have any experience, they don’t know what to do.The woman’s clitoris is the organ which gives her pleasure, and it is not part of her vagina. Man’s ejaculation is just two minutes or three minutes at the most. And he has to be quick because if you are committing sin, you commit it quickly. Don’t do it for too long, otherwise, remember hellfire.Unless a man understands the physiology of a woman, which he has never bothered… Her whole body is sexually sensitive. Man’s whole body is not sexually sensitive. The man’s sexuality is very local; it is just in his sexual machinery. The woman’s whole body is sexual, and unless the man plays with her whole body and arouses her body – that is foreplay… No man wants to do it because it will take too long, and one has to be quick before God comes in. So no more foreplay.Christians introduced the missionary position, in which the beauty is under, and the beast is on top. The poor woman has to lie down almost dead, and only then is she considered to be a lady. Only prostitutes enjoy; no woman of honor will groan or moan, or start gibberish or screaming out of joy. So she has been told to be completely dead while the man is making love. It is one-sided love. The other side is completely dead; the other side has not been aroused.The people who understand sexology say the woman should be on top so that she has more possibility of movement, and the man should be underneath her so he can remain silent because his ejaculation happens in just two minutes! If he remains silent, he can manage twenty minutes or thirty minutes. A woman needs at least ten minutes to become aroused. This disparity is there, and it can be fulfilled only if the man understands that the woman is not just a mechanism to be used. She is also a soul, equally alive, and has all the rights to pleasure that you have.So foreplay is needed, and the man should be underneath and the woman should be on top. The man should lie down like a lady, and the woman should be a real rascal! Only then is there a possibility that they come to orgasm at the same time. When they both start throbbing and getting out of control, that is the moment when they know what sex contains. It is not only a reproductive organ, it is also an organ of immense pleasure. And that pleasure, according to me, gives you the first glimpse of meditation because the mind stops, time stops. For those few moments there is no time, and there is no mind, you are just utterly silent and blissful.I say it – it is my scientific approach to the subject – because there was no other way for man to find out that you enter a blissful state if there is no mind and no time. Except for sex there was no other possibility for the mind to understand that there was some way of going beyond mind, beyond time. It was certainly sex which gave the first glimpse of meditativeness. And I am being condemned all over the world because I am telling people the truth.Nobody has come up with any other idea to explain how you have found meditation. You cannot find it by just walking on the side of the road – it is lying there and you go over and pick up meditation. Where have you found meditation? Not a single person in the whole world… And I have been discussed around the world, condemned, just because I am talking about going from sex to superconsciousness. But nobody has given any explanation why they are condemning me because of my book – which has been translated into thirty-four languages, has gone into dozens of editions, and is read by all the monks whether they are Hindu, Jaina, Christian, Buddhist. Monks are the best customers for that book.Here there was a Jaina conference just a few months ago, and my secretary, Neelam, informed me, “It is strange. Jaina monks come and they ask for one book only, From Sex to Superconsciousness. Then they hide it in their clothes and just go silently out of the door so nobody finds them out.”The book, From Sex to Superconsciousness, is not about sex, it is about superconsciousness. But the only possible way for man to find that there is a door, a way to go beyond his thoughts into eternal silence… Even though it lasts only one moment, that moment is eternity – everything stops. You forget all the worries, all the tension.Have you ever heard of any man having a heart attack while he was making love? It should have happened more often if what the religions are saying were true. God would be so angry, that at least he could give a heart attack. Hellfire will be after death; right now…But no man has died while making love because making love takes away your stress. It is stress that can give you a heart attack. It is stress that can drive you mad and insane. It is sex that keeps you sane, keeps you normal, keeps you within the boundaries of sanity. Otherwise you are going to be a pervert, and perversion does not give you the same key to superconsciousness.Homosexuals cannot have the same experience that is possible in a heterosexual relationship. Nor can lesbians have the same orgasmic experience. But ten percent of American men have accepted that they have homosexual tendencies, and thousands of women have married women – lesbian couples. This year it is expected that forty thousand babies will be born out of lesbian couples. From where are these babies coming? From artificial insemination. Now hospitals are not only carrying a blood bank, but a semen bank. So when a lesbian couple wants a baby, the one who is ready to take the trouble for nine months gets an injection of somebody anonymous. An injection is not a joy. An injection cannot give you any orgasm. Although doctors call it “the prick,” it is not the prick.When my personal physician, Amrito, came for the first time from England – and he is a member of the Royal College of Physicians, highly educated – he would say to me, “Now comes the prick!” Then I would start laughing, “Amrito, this is not the prick. You have been misguided.” Now he silently gives me the injection without saying anything.These forty thousand babies will be born this year in America through injections. Now those women are completely out of the possibility of having an orgasm. And there are homosexuals all around the world, even very intelligent people.I have chosen this title, I Celebrate Myself from one of the most important poets of America, Walt Whitman. But he was a homosexual – that’s where he goes wrong. All his poetry becomes superficial; he knows nothing about orgasmic joy. But you will be surprised to know that even a man like Socrates was a homosexual; hence he could not become a Gautam Buddha. Howsoever intelligent, and howsoever great a logician he was, his dialogues are great, but something was missing. He is not a man of great consciousness. He has become unnatural, he has gone against nature.But religions are forcing people to go against nature. The third man in England’s hierarchy of the church… The archbishop of the Church of England is equivalent to the Polack pope. This man has only one man between him and the archbishop, and there is every possibility that this bishop will some time become the archbishop of England. He has come with the idea that celibacy simply means no heterosexual relationship, but it does not include homosexuality, it does not include masturbation, it does not include making love to an animal – sodomy, bestiality. It does not include anything. Celibacy simply prevents you from being heterosexual. Great religious leaders…!Fifty percent of the monks in the monasteries are homosexual. And there are possibilities that places such as the monastery of Mount Athos where thousands of monks live… They have not seen any woman since they have become monks because no woman is allowed to enter – not even a six-month-old girl is allowed into the monastery. When I heard this, I thought, “Are those monks, monks or monsters?” And they have their own church state, so they have their own guards and police.For one thousand years, no woman has ever entered the monastery. And anybody who becomes a monk in the Mount Athos monastery cannot leave again alive. Only when he is dead will his body be taken out; it is a lifelong commitment. No intelligent man can commit himself even for tomorrow. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?That’s what I call responsibility. A man who is responsible will not commit himself to anything, will not promise anything, because who knows about tomorrow? Let tomorrow come and we will see. I will respond with my totality whatever the situation, but I cannot commit myself. I have never promised anybody anything. I have never committed myself to anything in my whole life. Let tomorrow come. One never knows, this may be my last day and I may not be there tomorrow to fulfill my promise.Time goes on changing – I may not be the same tomorrow, you may not be the same tomorrow. Today there is great love between me and you. Tomorrow, who knows? Love disappears, not only disappears, but sometimes turns into hate.A man of awareness lives moment to moment – that is his celebration. He enjoys everything of the world without any inhibition. Because God is dead he need not be worried. And with God, hell is dead, hellfire has been put out. With him, heaven is also dead. So don’t be greedy for heaven, and don’t be afraid of hell. Just live moment to moment with a dance, with a joy, with cheerfulness, with courage.Encounter every situation with your total consciousness, without any guilt. Enjoy music, enjoy food, enjoy love – enjoy everything that is natural.God has been against nature, God has been against enlightenment, and God has been against your experience of eternity. God was your enemy. It is good that he is dead.This is the good news for this evening. Now your questions.The first question:Osho,I have been surrounded since my childhood by people who wanted me to believe in God and to follow his commandments.Why are the God believers always trying to convert others?This is a very delicate question.You may not immediately grasp why God believers are always trying to convert others. The reason is that they have their own doubts, and by converting others they are able to repress their doubts. If they can convert many people… By converting others they are also converting themselves. When they see that a thousand people have started believing in God: “Perhaps God is. My doubt was useless.” When they see that the whole world believes in God: “The whole world cannot be wrong.” That is the argument, very ancient, as ancient as man: the whole world cannot be wrong. And I say unto you, only single individuals, rare individuals have been right. When something is believed by the whole world, remember, it is certainly going to be wrong. The masses are living like somnambulists, sleepwalkers, in utter unconsciousness. Their belief systems cannot be right.I have told you a small story…A journalist died, and as journalists are pushy people he knocked immediately on the Pearly Gates. He took it for granted that he was going to heaven and that he was going to have an interview with God. This would be the first interview ever.Saint Peter opened the doors. He asked, “What do you want?”He said, “An interview with God, and this is my card.”But Saint Peter said, “You cannot enter heaven. Your name is not on the list. And anyway we don’t need any journalists. We have a quota: one dozen journalists, and they are already in.”And they are useless in heaven because nothing happens, nothing sensational. All the saints are almost dead – sitting on their white clouds, playing their harps, “Alleluia! Alleluia!” Now this is going to be forever, so what news…?George Bernard Shaw exactly defined what news is: when a dog bites a man, it is not news; when a man bites a dog, it is news.But in Heaven, there are no dogs, only dead-as-dodo saints.“So the newspaper started,” Saint Peter told him, “but only the first issue was published. There was no news for the second issue. So even those twelve journalists are just waiting for nothing.“It is good you knock on the other door; that is hell, and there is always great news there. Everything that you may not have even imagined is happening because all the great intellectuals are there, all the great politicians are there, all the great criminals are there… Everybody of any importance is there. So go there.”He said, “But being a journalist, I cannot go so easily. You will have to give me at least twenty-four hours to have a look around heaven. If I can persuade some journalist from your quota to go to hell, are you ready to accept me?”Saint Peter said, “It doesn’t matter. If somebody is ready to go to hell, you can take his place. This is good. For twenty-four hours you can have a walk around.”The moment he entered heaven he started spreading a lie that there was going to be a very great newspaper starting soon in hell, and a chief editor, and an associate chief editor, assistant editors, and all kinds of journalists were needed. He went on spreading the news so it reached all the twelve journalists.After twenty-four hours he went to see Saint Peter, to inquire whether anybody had left. Saint Peter immediately closed the door and told him, “You remain here. All twelve have left.”He said, “My God! All have gone? Then I don’t want to be here. Something must be right, otherwise I could not have convinced twelve people.”Saint Peter said, “Are you sane or insane? You created the lie.”He said, “I know I created the lie, but there must be something corresponding actually happening. I cannot remain here, just open the doors!”That is the reason every religion is interested in converting people: every religion, every priest, every pope, every saint, every Ayatollah Khomeini, every shankaracharya, is deep down full of doubt because belief cannot destroy doubt. Belief can only repress doubt. A blind man can believe in light, but that does not mean he knows light. All your believers are blind people who don’t know anything about the truth. Hence the doubt is just repressed underneath the belief.To keep one’s belief strong enough, one needs to propagate it continuously. That’s why all the religious propagandists you see are fundamentalist, almost fanatics, fascists. Have you seen the Jehovah Witnesses? They go on shouting, beating their drums, shouting whether you listen or not. They don’t look at your eyes, they just look at the ground and they go on shouting, and they go on reading passages from the Bible. People purchase their Bibles just to get rid of them.Why are these people so interested in converting people? The psychological reason is they are afraid. Their own belief is very thin; anytime doubt may arise. Doubt is very existential. Belief is only a program that has been given by your parents, and by your priests, and by your teachers, and by your society. But it is only a program.In the Soviet Union they are giving a different program: there is no God. Every child believes that there is no God. All communists believe there is no God.Half of the world is communist now, so half of the world for the first time believes there is no God. It is not that they know, it is not that they have explored the outer sky, or they have explored the inner consciousness and have found that there is no God. They just have been told, just as you have been told that there is God.Every religion tries to convert people because those who are inside the fold are full of doubt. When the fold starts growing, their doubts are settled, their belief becomes thicker, weightier: “So many people cannot be wrong.”And have you seen this? Whenever a person moves from one religion to another religion, the new religion that he has entered gives him great respect and honor. The older religion condemns him, that he has betrayed, but the new religion gives him great honor because he has confirmed their belief: “Even people belonging to other religions are coming into our fold. Our fold must have the truth, otherwise why are people coming?”All these missionaries all around the world bringing people to Catholicism are just making the Catholics inside the fold believe, “You are the real religion, and other religions are just so-so.”A man of truth never tries to convert you. A man of truth conveys his experience to you. He shares his experience with you, but that does not mean that you have to agree with him. And it does not mean either that you have to disagree with him. It was his joy to share, and that’s where he is finished.No man of truth has been ever a missionary. All missionaries are trying to convince the insiders that they are right because outsiders are coming in. All missionaries are trying to convince themselves too that their belief system must have some truth in it: “Otherwise why do people get converted?”So that is the reason God believers are always trying to convert other people. Otherwise, conversion is interference in other people’s freedom. You can enjoy sharing whatever you have experienced with your friends, with their consent – not your beliefs but your experience. And if you have no experience, be honest, be truthful. Say, “I don’t have any experience. I have only a bunch of beliefs others have given me, which are not my experience. I am carrying borrowed knowledge, I don’t know anything on my own, hence I cannot recommend anything to you.”What am I doing here? I am not trying to convert you to any religion, or to any cult, or to any creed. I don’t have any belief system, I don’t have any theology, I don’t have any philosophy, I don’t have any religion. What I am trying to convey is my experience of truth. If it can be of any use to you, you can use it. If you see it is not of any use to you, that’s perfectly all right. It is your freedom, I will not interfere in your freedom. I will not trespass your individuality. I respect you, I love you. How can I convert you?So no man of truth, no man of compassion, no man of authentic experience is ever a converter. It is all those believers, who are afraid of their own doubt, who want to keep the insiders in, and go on bringing new people from outside. It helps the believers to have thicker beliefs, and thicker beliefs also make your intelligence retarded. The thicker the belief, the more retarded the intelligence. No belief helps your intelligence to grow, even though there is space enough to grow. When you go on pushing beliefs and hiding your doubt in your unconscious corners of darkness, you are crippling yourself. You are destroying your own buddhahood, you are destroying your own potential.You could have been one of the enlightened ones, but you will remain just a Catholic, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. And these are all fictions, beautiful fictions. You can enjoy them as stories, as novels, but don’t call them “holy” scriptures.Four hundred and eighty-eight pages in the Holy Bible are pure pornography. I sometimes wonder why people go on missing those four hundred and eighty-eight pages – not one page, or two pages. I told one of my friends to pick out all those pages, and he has published a book of four hundred and eighty-eight pages taken out of the Old Testament. Every passage is so obscene, so ugly, and you go on calling it the Holy Bible. Even playboys and their magazine Playboy, and the playgirls and their magazine Playgirl, and Penthouse are nothing compared to the Holy Bible.They are nothing compared to the temples of Khajuraho in India. Even Mahatma Gandhi was so ashamed that he wanted the thirty temples of Khajuraho… They are great sculpture. Nowhere have men and women been sculpted so beautifully – but they are making love, they are utterly naked, and millions of statues in those thirty temples…There used to be one hundred temples; seventy have been destroyed by the Mohammedans. Thirty were saved because they were hidden behind thick forest. Mahatma Gandhi wanted them to be covered with mud so nobody could see them.You must have heard about the three famous monkeys of Mahatma Gandhi – he used to keep them on his table. Even though he is dead, they are still sitting on his table. Those three monkeys were sent from Japan by a friend. They are a beautiful piece of sculpture, but they are not complete. They came from China to Japan, and the original set used to be of four monkeys, not three.The fourth monkey seems to have been taken by the friend out of the set, or perhaps… I suspect Mahatma Gandhi himself cut the fourth monkey out of the set. I have to describe the monkeys so you can understand why he should have cut it out – because the original set is not three.The first monkey is keeping his hands on his ears. The second monkey is keeping his hands on his eyes. The third monkey is keeping his hands on his mouth. And the fourth monkey is missing – I know the fourth monkey. In the original set the fourth monkey was holding his hands on his genitals.Mahatma Gandhi interpreted them – I don’t agree with his interpretation. He interpreted that the monkey who is holding his hands on the ears says, “Don’t listen to anything evil.” And the monkey who is holding his hands on the eyes says, “Don’t see anything evil.” And the third monkey who has his hands on the mouth is indicating, “Don’t say anything evil.” Now, you can understand why the fourth monkey has been dropped – in fact he should not have been dropped if Gandhi had really been a man of truth. The fourth monkey is the logical conclusion: “Hide the origin of all evil.”But this is not my interpretation. Knowing the people, and knowing that Charles Darwin has this great idea that man has come from monkeys – and there is every possibility because your mind still functions like a monkey. My interpretation, when I went to see Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram… He was dead, but his son Ramdas was my friend, so he invited me and showed me around. It is an ugly place; Mahatma Gandhi was a great self-torturer and he forced torture on other people.I said, “These three monkeys… Where is the fourth? – because I know the whole set.”He said, “I have never heard about the fourth.” And he told me Mahatma Gandhi’s interpretation.I said, “That is not right. Looking at humanity, looking into humanity’s psychology… The first monkey says, ‘Don’t listen to the truth because it will disturb all your consoling lies.’“The second monkey says, ‘Don’t look at the truth; otherwise your God will be dead and your heaven and hell will disappear.’“The third monkey says, ‘Don’t speak the truth, otherwise you will be condemned, crucified, poisoned, tortured by the whole crowd, the unconscious people. You will be condemned – don’t speak the truth!’“And the missing fourth monkey says, ‘Hide your pleasures. Hide your enjoyment, don’t show it to anybody.’”People can respect you if you are miserable, but if you are happy everybody is jealous of you.People have been asking me why my commune failed in America. It did not fail. The reason it was destroyed by the violence of the American government was that it was such a successful experiment. Never has there been a commune in the whole history of man that was so successful.That was the trouble. If we had failed, nobody would have bothered about us, but we succeeded. In five years we fought against the greatest power in the world – and we had no power. We were not a nation, we had no army, but we had truth on our side. The commune was destroyed because it was successful.The fourth monkey is saying, “Keep your pleasures, your joys, hidden. Don’t let anybody know that you are a cheerful man, a blissful man, an ecstatic man, because that will destroy your very life. It is dangerous.”And looking at humanity I can say without any doubt that my interpretation is far better than Mahatma Gandhi’s. He himself was teaching celibacy for his whole life. But he was an honest man, about that I have no doubt. His honesty is clear. Even at the age of seventy he was having nightmares about sex, and in his dreams he was ejaculating – at the age of seventy! This is a whole life of suppression. Otherwise by the time a man is forty-two, if he has lived his life joyfully, without guilt, without any God, without any religion, just naturally, flowing with nature with a deep relaxation, in a let-go, by the time he is forty-two he will become aware that these pleasures were very momentary. And now death is approaching, he has to find something more eternal.These pleasures will have indicated the way to him, that if in a sexual orgasm, time and mind stop and you feel as if you are part of eternity… You disappear as an ego and you become simply one with the whole. It happens only for a moment, but it can happen. If you can manage to go beyond the mind and beyond time on your own – no need for a woman, no need for a man… Every man, every woman is capable of going beyond. Once you know it is possible, then you can manage it.That’s what meditation is – just getting beyond the mind and beyond time, and you have entered eternal silence, eternal life. And once you have tasted that life, your whole existence becomes a celebration.The second question:Osho,Would you agree with Stendhal when he says, “God's only excuse is, that he does not exist”?Absolutely!If God existed, he would have been murdered long ago. Man could not have tolerated him; he was an enemy. It is good that he does not exist, so you can go on praying – just think…There is a story, a very ancient story…Once God used to live just in the marketplace, but the whole day, even in the night, people were knocking on the doors and complaining about everything: “This is not the right kind of world you have created. Why is there so much sickness? If you are the creator, then why do you create bodies which are sick? Why is there old age, and why is there death?”So people tortured him so much, the old story says, that he called a council of his angels and asked them, “I will either die out of this constant torture, or I will have to commit suicide! Can you tell me what I should do? These people don’t leave me for a single moment and their demands are such that I cannot fulfill them. One woman comes and she says, ‘Tomorrow, remember, no rain because I am trying to dry my wheat.’ And another man says, ‘Tomorrow I absolutely need rain because I am sowing my seeds.’ Now what am I to do?“And there are millions of people shouting and angry because their desires have not been fulfilled, their prayers have not been heard.”So the angels thought. One angel said, “It is good if you move to Everest, the highest peak of the Himalayas.”God said, “You don’t know, but I am omniscient, I know everything – past, present, future. Soon there will be a man who will reach the highest peak of the Himalayas. And once one man has found me, there will be buses and airplanes, and all kinds of vehicles. And they will make roads and hotels, and again there will be the marketplace. You don’t understand: it will only be just a little peace for a short time. That won’t do. I will have to change my place again.”So somebody suggested, “Why don’t you move to the moon?”He said, “You don’t understand because you don’t know the future – just after Everest they are going to go to the moon. So I will have to change again. Show me something from where I have not to change!”Then an old angel came close to him and whispered in his ear, “The only place man may never think of is within his own heart. You just sit there…”He has disappeared from everywhere. Perhaps you can encounter something of divinity in your own being. In your own life you may find something which is godly. You will not find God as a person, you will find a quality, a fragrance, a presence; a certain air, a certain energy which is not yours, which belongs to the cosmos.Stendhal is perfectly right: “God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.” That is saving him; otherwise there was no safety, no security.Friedrich Nietzsche, in his Thus Spake Zarathustra, comes to a point where Zarathustra is coming down from his mountain cave where he has lived for many, many years. And he finds on the way an old hermit’s hut, and the hermit is praying to God. Early in the morning, as the sun is rising, the hermit is praying.And Zarathustra murmurs to himself, “Is it possible that this old hermit has not heard that God is dead?”When Zarathustra goes down he tells the crowd, “Have you heard the news that God is dead?” They all start laughing.They say, “You must be insane. Living in a cave for many, many years alone has made you a crackpot.”Nietzsche himself became mad in the last phase of his life because he declared really good news, but he could not manage to find something to replace God. He could not find the celebration of life, he could not find the experience of the living stream within. He remained in a vacuum – in a vacuum you are going to be mad.More people go mad in the West than in the East. More people commit suicide in the West than in the East. More people murder in the West than in the East. It should be otherwise: the East is so poor that people should commit suicide, should go mad, but they don’t. What is happening?The Western mind has come to know God is not there – an immense vacuum. And man cannot live without meaning, man cannot live without significance, man cannot live without joy. If God is dead, man has become absolutely empty, and man cannot live in emptiness.He needs the juices of life flowing through him. He needs to blossom into a beautiful lotus. He needs to sing songs, he needs to play music. He needs all the blessings that existence makes available to you.The Western man is more educated, is richer, hence his bodily needs are almost fulfilled. He looks at the sky and finds the sky is empty – there is no God. This understanding that there is no God, rather than becoming good news to the Western man, has become bad news. He feels accidental, unnecessary – there is no reason why he should be here.The East knows three religions which don’t have any God – Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism – three religions which are not centered on God. And these three religions seem to be saner than the religions which have come out of Judaism – Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. The three Eastern religions seem to be saner because from the very beginning there is no God. So they don’t have to look upward in the sky, they have to look inward. That is the only place they have to explore for truth.Prayer is not the way; meditation is the way.And those who have come to the ultimate experience of meditation – a Gautam Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Mahakashyapa, a Mahavira, a Lao Tzu, a Chuang Tzu, a Ma Tzu, a Sekito – don’t even talk about God. That which does not exist – what is the point even to say that he does not exist? It is simply out of the question to discuss God, to discuss heaven and hell.Hence I want you to understand that Zen has come as a flowering out of the meeting of Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu. It is the meeting of dhamma and Tao. It is a crossbreed of Bodhidharma and Chuang Tzu. These two religions have reached to the highest peak, and they are unorganized religions. Where they have become organized they are dead. For example, in Tibet it became organized, it died. In Sri Lanka it became organized, it died.Wherever religion becomes organized it dies because it is immediately a desire for power, a desire to dominate. It becomes politics instead of religion.Organization destroys the individual, sacrifices the individual, and the individual is the only one who can know the highest peaks of consciousness and the depths of consciousness.Out of the meeting of Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu, Zen is born. Zen is neither Buddhism, nor is it Tao; it is both, just as you are both your mother and your father. You are neither – something of your father, something of your mother is flowing in you.Zen has come to the highest point of expression. It has become almost synonymous with eternal life. Adam and Eve could not eat the fruit of eternal life, they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. They had only eaten the fruit of knowledge. But Zen gives you the other tree, the tree of eternal life.So in this series we will be discussing Zen, as equivalent to eternal life.God is nowhere. Life is now here. And Zen is the master key to open the doors of the mystery of life.The sutra. Sekito said:“My teaching, which has come down from the ancient buddhas, is not dependent on meditation or on diligent application of any kind.”The word meditation here may give you a feeling of misunderstanding, of confusion, because in English there are three words: concentration, contemplation, meditation. None of these three words is capable of translating the Sanskrit word dhyana, which became in Buddha’s language – he used Pali, a different language from Sanskrit – jhana. And when Bodhidharma took the message to China, from jhana it became ch’ana. And when Rinzai took the message from China to Japan, from ch’an or ch’ana, it became Zen. It came closer to Buddha’s jhan or jhana.But there is no equivalent word in English; even the word meditation gives the idea that you are meditating upon something, concentrating upon something, contemplating about something, meditating upon something – but dhyana or Zen are without any object.Zen means you are neither contemplating, nor are you concentrating, nor are you meditating, because there is no object. You simply are – silent, no thought, no mind.It is because of this that Sekito includes meditation also: “One does not need meditation or a diligent application of any kind to become the enlightened one.”But for your understanding and clarity, when I use the word meditation – it is a poor word, it does not have the same quality as dhyana or Zen – I use it because there is no other word in the English language.There is a reason why there is no other word – the West never came to the point of dhyana. It never came to the point where one simply is – neither doing anything outwardly, nor doing anything inwardly. One simply is – a pure isness, an utter silence. That brings you to your very center, and the moment you are at the very center you start growing into a buddha, into an enlightened one. Your awareness for the first time opens its petals, the way a lotus opens its petals when it is daybreak and the sun starts rising, when the night is over.Sekito is right: no special discipline is needed. No special application of any kind is needed. No mind effort is needed – that’s what he means by meditation. What you need is just to leave everything aside. Transcend the body, the mind, the heart. Just go on transcending till you come to a point which is the end of the road. There – you simply are.Basho says:Sitting silentlydoing nothing,spring comes –and the grass grows by itself.You don’t have to do anything, you have just to sit silently doing nothing because any kind of doing is going to take you away from yourself. When you are not doing anything, the whole energy gathers inside; it is not invested anywhere. The moment you pass your mind, all the energy that was invested in thoughts is released. When you pass your heart, all the energy that was invested in your emotions, feelings, sentiments, is released.Now you are becoming so full of energy. This abundance of energy gives you the first taste of existence, and as this energy becomes a pillar of tremendous height and depth, you have found the connection with the cosmos. You are no longer alone. In fact, you are no more, only existence is. Then existence, the cosmos, life, is a sheer dance. I teach you to be dancers. I teach you to be lovers. I am absolutely life affirmative and all your religions are life negative.I am utterly devoted to the present moment. Don’t move into the past because that is memory; there is no relevant existence to your memory anymore. Don’t move into the future because that is only imagination.Just remain here, and you will be surprised. If you are just now here, all thoughts disappear because all thoughts are either of the past or of the future. No thought is of the present.The present is so pure, so clean, so clear, just an opening into the cosmos. This is Zen, and this is the key to enter life eternal. The very feel of life eternal takes all tensions, anxieties of old age, of sickness, of death, and birth away from you.You have never been born and you will never die. It is the body that has been changing; you have been changing houses. But you are the reality, the truth. The truth is not outside you, it is at the innermost hidden center.So Zen simply means doing nothing, just being. And in that utter silence of being, you slowly, slowly relax, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. You suddenly start blossoming; your eyes start having a new depth. Your gestures start having a new grace; your every act becomes sheer joy. It may be just chopping wood, it may be just carrying water from the well – it doesn’t matter.Once you know you are not accidental to existence, once you know you are existence itself, life takes a tremendous quantum leap. You are no longer confined to the body, you are no longer confined to the small mind. You become vast and infinite, and only in this vastness and infinity can you rejoice, can you be blissful.This vastness has become available to you because God is dead; otherwise he was occupying every place, he was watching you from every side. He was judging you continuously, poking his nose into your affairs, condemning you: “This is wrong, don’t do it.” And all his commandments were against life.I have heard an old story…When God made the world he went first to the Babylonians with his commandments and asked them, “Would you like to have a commandment?”They said, “First, we would like to know what the commandment is.”And he said, “Thou should not commit adultery.”They said, “Forget all about it. Without adultery there is no joy in life. Just take your commandments away.”God was very disappointed, “What kind of people are these?”He went to the Egyptians who asked the same question.“What are the commandments? First we have to know it before we take one” – and nobody was ready to take it.And then he found Moses who asked the wrong question. When God said, “Would you like to have a commandment?” Moses said, “How much? How much does it cost?”God said, “It is free.”Moses said, “Then why one? I will have ten.”But when God is no longer there, all his commandments disappear and all his holy scriptures disappear, and the world becomes one for the first time. No religions, no religious boundaries, no discrimination – without God, humanity is one.Zen teaches you not only to be one with humanity, but to be one with the trees and the rivers, and the mountains and the sky and the stars. This whole universe is our being. We are just flowers of different colors giving a beautiful variety to existence. We are expressions of existence, unique expressions. That gives you pride, that gives you dignity. That gives you an intrinsic honor, a self-respect which you were not able to have if God was alive.But the whole of humanity has not heard even yet. They are still praying to a fiction, and that fiction is making the whole humanity schizophrenic, neurotic, obscene, ugly.Three rabbis were sitting on a park bench one evening…They used to come to that park every evening – old rabbis. One was seventy-five, one was eighty-five, one was ninety-five – all retired.The youngest rabbi who was seventy-five looked very sad. The second rabbi who was eighty-five asked him, “What is the matter? Why are you so sad this evening?”He said, “What to do? I have to tell you, so that I can be unburdened. It happened that a beautiful lady was a guest in my house and when she was taking a bath, I looked through the keyhole at her beautiful proportionate body.”Both the rabbis started laughing.The second rabbi said, “You idiot. Everybody does that in their childhood.”But the youngest rabbi said, “You have not heard the whole story and you have interfered. I was caught red-handed by my mother.”Those two rabbis said, “We know. Everybody gets caught. This is nothing to be sad about.”But the man said, “You don’t understand at all. This happened today! It is not a question of childhood.”They said, “Then it is a serious matter.”“But it is nothing,” the second rabbi said. “What is happening to me, you don’t know…”His problem was that he had not made love to his wife for three days. And both the rabbis started laughing because they knew what his “love” was. At the age of eighty-five, one leg in the grave, one leg out – what was his love? They already knew, so they both laughed.He said, “Why are you laughing?”They said, “We are laughing at your love. Don’t be worried about it.”His love was that he would take the hand of his wife before going to sleep, squeeze it three times, and say goodnight. That was his love.But wives are wives, and even this much love the wife was not allowing him for three days. She would turn and say, “I have a headache; just go to sleep.”So he said, “For three days she has had a headache. At exactly the moment I try to make love to her, she says, ‘I have a headache; just go to sleep.’”The third, the oldest rabbi said, “You are all idiots. You don’t understand real problems. The real problem is happening to me. Just this morning when I was going to make love to my wife she started screaming, ‘Are you a sex maniac? The whole night you have been making love again and again and again.’”So he said to his friends, “It seems I am losing my memory. I thought it was the first time.”A repressed humanity is going to have all these problems. But who has created all these problems? Your God, your priests; they are the greatest criminals because they very piously appear to be your well-wishers, but they have destroyed everything in you.Zen wants you to resurrect, to take hold of your life again, which you had given to somebody else to be taken care of. Be a master, and you will start blossoming flowers of beauty and blissfulness and ecstasy, and a divine drunkenness.Sekito says:“When you attain the insight as attained by the Buddha, you realize that no-mind is buddha…”Just going beyond the mind, and you have become a buddha. It is such a small passage, so small a journey – perhaps a single step. But because you are not total, I tell you about three steps. I divide one step into three steps because you are hesitant to take such a jump – one step. Otherwise there is only one step: from mind to no-mind. But you hesitate to go beyond the mind, you are afraid you may go insane. That is true. If you go beyond the mind from the wrong door, you will be insane.There are two doors to go beyond the mind: one goes below the mind, one goes beyond the mind. Both are outside the mind. If you enter from the lower door, you will be insane, and you will be lying on a psychiatrist’s couch. If you enter no-mind from the higher door, you will be a buddha. No buddha has ever suffered from any madness, any neurosis, any psychosis – nothing.“When you attain the insight as attained by the Buddha, you realize that no-mind is buddha and buddha is no-mind…”– they are synonymous –…that no-mind, buddha, sentient beings, bodhi, and klesa, are of one and the same substance while they vary in names.”Everything is made of the same stuff, the same existence, the same consciousness of no-mind; only names differ. You can call it anything – nirvana; you can call it salvation; you can call it liberation. But these are different names of the same space which accurately described is just no-mind, or beyond the mind. You appear in a space which has no limits, no boundaries, and suddenly you become aware that your being has been here since eternity, and it is going to be here forever.This very no-mind is the buddha, and this very moment is the lotus paradise. You don’t have to go anywhere. You have to just sink inward to find the bottom of your being.“You should know that your own no-mind essence is neither subject to annihilation nor eternally subsisting, is neither pure nor defiled.”It is so pure that you cannot even call it pure because it is never defiled. Anything pure can be defiled, but it is so pure you cannot even call it pure. It cannot be defiled, its purity is absolute. No dust ever gathers on the mirror of your consciousness.This makes a tremendous point. The sinner and the saint are both capable of going into no-mind because the sinner cannot defile his no-mind, the saint cannot purify it. It is always beyond duality.It is so pure and so innocent – available to the sinner, available to the saint. Both have to go beyond their minds. The sinner has to go beyond the sinning mind, and the saint has to go beyond the saintly mind. But both have to go beyond the mind, and they reach to the same space of absolute purity. It is transcendental to all dualities; it simply is. You cannot name it, you cannot utter a single word about it.One of the most important logicians of the West, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has written in his great work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus… He wrote in a very strange and special style, the style that has been used in the Zen people’s sutras. He would write just in small stanzas and put numbers. Every stanza, every line was complete in itself, made a complete statement. So he would number – not the pages, but he would number the first sutra, the second sutra, the third sutra, the fourth sutra…One of the maxims – sutra means maxim, the smallest condensed statement – I came across when I was a student says: that which cannot be said should not be said. A complete statement: if you cannot say anything about no-mind, then please don’t say anything because whatever you say will be wrong. Whatever you say will not be exactly what you wanted to say. So please don’t say anything about that which is inexpressible.I wrote a letter to him, but he had died. His friend sent me a reply: “If he was alive he would have accepted your amendment. He was a man of tremendous honesty and he would not have thought that you were criticizing him.”I was not criticizing. I was simply saying to him, “You are saying, ‘That which cannot be said should not be said,’ but you have said something about it. Remove this maxim. Even to say this much is saying something. That which cannot be said should not be said – you have said something about it.” Nothing can be said about the no-mind, including this sentence: nothing can be said about no-mind.It is a pure experience – you can experience it. You can have it, you already have it. You can dance with ecstasy when you come to recognize that it has been always there, you just never looked at it. You were so occupied outside, so involved in trivia that the essential got lost. But it is there waiting.“It remains perfectly undisturbed and self-sufficient. The same is so with the wise and the ignorant.”The wise and the ignorant are made of the same stuff: no-mind. The ignorant have not to become wise before they enter no-mind. They can enter no-mind from the very place they are – the sinner, the ignorant, the wise, the knowledgeable. Wherever you are, your distance from no-mind is the same.This is a grand rebellion against all religions. It does not say the sinner has first to become a saint, the immoral has first to become a moral person. Zen gives you a tremendous insight that wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever your actions, nothing can defile, nothing can disturb it. From your very space you move directly into no-mind. From different spaces you move to the same center, and you will find your being absolutely clean, utterly clean. It has never been otherwise.“Your no-mind essence is not limited in its working, and is not included in the category of mind, consciousness, or thought.“The three worlds of desire, form, and no-form, and the six paths of existence are no more than manifestations of your mind itself.”All your so-called disciplines, methods, Yoga… All your prayers, are just gimmicks, projections of your own mind. Drop everything!I am reminded of a great Catholic bishop…He had a beautiful parrot who used to recite the entire Catholic prayer. It was a precious parrot; he was shown to all the guests, and he would recite the whole Catholic prayer. And he was such a pious, saintly parrot. He was trained – he used to have a rosary in one hand, and he would go on saying, “Alleluia, Alleluia!” Everybody was surprised that such a pious parrot…But he looked very sad, as every saint always looks – you cannot become pious without becoming sad. Because he was looking so sad, the bishop was always worried what to do; otherwise he was absolutely normal.One day he went to see one of the members of his congregation, a woman, who had got a parrot just that day. And the parrot owner had told her, “I don’t want to sell this parrot to you. You can take any other parrot. We have got many in our shop.” But she became so interested in the parrot – it was a very beautiful specimen.She said, “I will pay anything, but only for this parrot.”The man said, “I have to tell you that this parrot comes from a very ugly place. He used to be in a whorehouse so he uses four-letter words. That is why I am trying to prevent you from taking it.”But the lady said, “I will teach him, but I will take it.” He was so beautiful looking that she thought, “If he can speak four-letter words, what is the problem? Just a little training will be needed.” But it was simply impossible. He would say anything in front of the guests, in front of the neighbors. He would shout anything – all kinds of obscene words.So when the bishop came for his weekly visit, she told him her misery, “What to do? I have purchased this beautiful parrot…”The bishop said, “Don’t be worried. I have a very pious, saintly parrot, who goes on continuously moving his beads on the rosary, has the entire prayer and recites it so perfectly. I will take your parrot and keep it in the same cage as my parrot. And he is such a saintly person he will teach this parrot.” So he took the parrot.He put the parrot in the same cage, and he went in the house. As he came out, he could not believe his eyes. The saintly parrot had dropped his rosary and was sitting very close to the other parrot. And the bishop said, “What happened? Why have you dropped your rosary? And why are you not reciting Ave Maria or Alleluia?”The parrot said, “I was praying for a woman, and I have got it. No more rosary, no more prayer. I have got such a beautiful girlfriend. Get lost!”Your so-called saints and your so-called sinners are not much different – only their masks are different. And my experience is that your sinners are more innocent than your saints. I have seen criminals, I have seen murderers. I used to visit the jails, and then I was finally jailed in America. I lived as an insider in five jails, and I found such beautiful human beings, far more beautiful than the politicians, than the priests – utterly innocent people.Zen gives equal opportunity to sinners and saints, to the good and to the bad, because its understanding is very clear. Its insight is so deep that the distance from no-mind is equal.So it does not matter what kind of things you have been involved in. Whether you were doing things which people think are wrong, or whether you were doing things which people think are right – it does not matter! Those were all your mind phenomena. Just go beyond the mind. When the saint drops his mind, and the sinner drops his mind, they enter into the same space, the same buddhahood.This is the great rebellion of Zen. And this gives you a totally different kind of religiousness. This makes you dance, live with totality, with no inhibition, with no guilt, because wherever you are, the moment you want to enter your eternal life, you can take a jump. From any point in existence, from any kind of personality, you can drop that personality and move into utter silence.No religion has the guts, no religion has that courage – Zen is really daring. It belongs only to the lions, not to the sheep of Jesus Christ.“They are all like the moon reflected in water, or images in the mirror.”If a saint comes in front of a mirror, the mirror does not bother that he is a saint. A sinner comes – the mirror makes no discrimination. The sinner is equal to the saint, to the idiot, to the so-called great scholar. The mirror mirrors equally.The no-mind is your mirror. In front of the mirror everyone is equal.Zen gives you a totally new concept of spiritual communism. All religions are against communism, only Zen has the capacity to absorb communism. You may be an atheist, it does not matter. You may be a theist, it does not matter. The distance from no-mind is equal.So I never ask you who you are. Whether you are an atheist, whether you are a theist – it is your business. Whether you are a communist or an anarchist – it is your business. Whether you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, it does not matter. What matters to me is, whatever kind of mind you have, make it the jumping board and jump into no-mind. No-mind knows no differences, it is one cosmic whole. And to me, the man of no-mind is the only religious man. All else is just pseudo.He is saying:“They are all like the moon reflected in water or images in the mirror. How can we speak of them as being born or as passing away?”You are never born, you have always been here. You have always been in the space, in the time, here and now; you will never die. Death and birth are both superficial episodes in a long eternal life – small things; they don’t matter.“When you come to this understanding you will be furnished with all the things you are in need of.”I have been telling you again and again that you don’t need any morality, you don’t need any discipline. But if you come to no-mind, all that you ever needed will be furnished. You will become immensely compassionate. You will have the grace which is almost not of this world. You will have love without any conditions. You will share your joy, your blessings, to all and sundry – not only to friends, but also to strangers. You will become just like a rain cloud which goes on showering without bothering whether it falls on the stones, or on the road, or on the roof, or in the field, or in the garden. When you have abundance, who cares? You simply go on sharing. Anybody who is receptive will take it, who is not receptive will not take it. But that is not your problem.A buddha is choicelessly good. It is not that he is practicing a certain morality, following certain commandments. It is simply that he cannot do anything wrong. His consciousness, his light, is so clear that he can see exactly what is good. He knows the good is a reward in itself, not that you will have a reward in heaven. And the bad is a punishment in itself, not that you will have a punishment in hell. So there is no heaven, no hell.Every action brings its joy or its misery. A man with clear eyes can see. And I don’t think anybody is going to choose misery, is going to choose pathology, is going to choose something ugly and obscene. If you have eyes, you will choose the most beautiful, the most glorious, the most majestic. It will come spontaneously.Gyodai wrote a haiku:For my sake,do not light the lamp yet,this evening of spring.These small haikus are as beautiful as small dewdrops on the lotus leaves in the early morning sun. They shine more than diamonds, more than pearls.“For my sake…” It is a beautiful spring evening. Slowly, slowly the darkness is coming. The sun is setting, the birds are returning to their trees. The fragrance of the flowers is all around. The flowers of the night are opening their petals.Darkness has its own beauty; it is very clean, and it makes every separation disappear. Everything becomes one. Darkness has a depth which light misses. Darkness has a silence which light does not have.So when the darkness is descending, and he can smell the night flowers opening, and the birds coming back to the trees making beautiful sounds, he says, “For my sake, do not light the lamp yet” – don’t disturb this beautiful spring evening – “this evening of spring.” Let me rest, let me watch this transformation from light into darkness.Light is very superficial, darkness has depth. Light comes and goes, darkness remains. You don’t have to bring it in; you can’t push it out. You cannot directly do anything with darkness, you can do only something with the light. You bring the light in – darkness disappears. You take the light out – darkness comes in. In fact, it never went anywhere; it was there, the light just covered it. When the light is gone, darkness is left.Light is momentary because it depends on fuel. And fuel – even the fuel of the sun is one day going to be finished because it is giving so much light, radiating every moment. It is becoming poorer every moment. Scientists think that it will take at least four million years for the sun to die. But in the eternity of existence, four million years don’t matter.Every day some suns are exhausted, become old, dead, finished. The physicists say they enter black holes, they disappear. And every moment, as suns are disappearing, new suns are being born. Science has not yet discovered white holes. I think if there are black holes there must be white holes. If black holes pull stars and planets and they disappear, they die, then perhaps on the other side is a white hole from which after some time of rest – maybe nine months in the womb – they come out, again born.But nothing in existence dies. Everything goes on, and everything gets tired. There is a moment to live and there is a moment to die. But your essential being simply goes from action to no-action. And when it has again gathered energy, it is rejuvenated, it becomes fresh; it comes back again from a new womb.Only a buddha never comes back. His death is final because he has no desire left. It is the desiring mind that takes you into another womb. A buddha, a man who has realized his no-mind, is completely empty of desires, ambitions. Now there is no need for him to enter another womb and suffer nine months in a prison. Then getting out of the prison is not a pleasure either. And the whole life again starts, the whole round. The same journey, the same youth, the same romances, the same failures, the same frustrations, and the old age, and the fear of death…Zen’s interest is how to help you to get rid of this circle of birth and death. The only way is going beyond the mind. It is the mind that contains all your ambitions, desires, tensions, anguishes, anxieties, angst. If you get out of it, you are the awakened one. You have come to the point from where you can move into the cosmos directly. You become part of the whole, or more accurately, you become the whole.Maneesha’s question:Osho,In his poem, “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman writes:“You shall possess the good of the earth and sun… You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books….“There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now, and there will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”Beloved Master, from the deification of a fiction to the celebration of one's self – is this not the essential difference between the old and the new man?Maneesha, it is exactly the difference between the old man who lived under a slavery, and the new man who would have come out of the slavery of God, of churches, of religions.The old man never really lived, he followed borrowed knowledge. He was always dictated to, dragged from this point to that point. The new man will live out of freedom, spontaneity, awareness. He will not have any scriptures, he will not have any dictators, he will not have any gods. He will be himself the ultimate consciousness. This is real growth.And it is time, the right time! We have lived in slavery enough. Now drop it – in toto! Move into an open sky. Open your wings, the whole existence belongs to you.The new man is going to be an emperor, in the sense that he will be the master himself. He will not allow any other master. He will not allow any other slavery. He will not allow nations, he will not allow races, he will not allow caste systems. He will not allow all kinds of religions and their superstitions. The new man will be absolutely clean and fresh and innocent like a child. And out of that innocence arises a divine being, the buddha.The buddha is the new man.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the light!Jerry and Judy are sitting at breakfast one morning when Judy sighs and puts down her toast.“Darling,” she says, “I have been thinking about that time when you were shipwrecked. All the newspapers called you a hero because you survived alone in the Indian Ocean for three months on a life raft.“And yet I feel, darling,” continues Judy, “that you have been hiding something from me ever since. What happened?”“Well, dear,” replies Jerry, trying not to look like Mickey Mouse, “since you have been so wonderful to me, I must confess I am hiding something from you! There was a lovely girl on that raft with me. We were on that ship together when it sank. We were the only ones that survived.”“A-ha!” cries Judy.“It was not like that, dear,” explains Jerry. “It is true, she was a prostitute, but she saved my life! We had no food, no water – all we had was ourselves and our will to survive.”“I see,” snaps Judy. “So what did you do?”Jerry takes a long drink from his coffee cup and continues. “You have to understand the conditions out there, dear. We had no food, no water. All we had was our own naked bodies.”“You have already told me that!” interrupts Judy, sharply.“We held each other tight,” continues Jerry. “All we had was our bodies – naked under the burning sun.”Judy does not say a word. She just stares at him as though he is a snake.“All right! All right!” cries Jerry, as he cracks under the strain. “You want to know the truth? We fucked! Yes! We screwed all the time! If it had not been for that wonderful girl I would never have survived. Believe me – she saved my life!”Slowly, Judy pours herself another cup of coffee. “I don’t like it,” she says. “But I suppose I will have to live with it. But just one thing. Have you ever seen her again?”“Just once, dear,” replies Jerry. “I met her in Las Vegas last summer at our sales convention.”“And what was she doing?” snaps Judy, suspiciously.“The same thing, dear,” replies Jerry. “Still saving lives!”On the Buckingham Palace lawn one afternoon, Prince Edward – the rather dim son of Queen Elizabeth – is sitting reading Playboy magazine. He looks up at his brother, Prince Andrew, and asks, “Hey, Andy, you’ve got brains: tell me – what is a fox pass?”Andrew thinks for a moment, and then says, “Oh, you mean, faux pas! That’s a French expression which means a social blunder.”Edward looks at Andrew blankly. “What do you mean, ‘a social blunder’?” asks the dim prince. “Give me an example.”“Well,” explains Prince Andrew, “remember last Sunday when the Archbishop of Canterbury came to lunch, and mother took him for a walk in the rose garden?”“Yes, I remember,” says Edward. “What about it?”“Just listen,” continues Andrew. “Remember the archbishop pricked his thumb on a thorn? It was bleeding a lot, so mother brought him into the palace. They went into the bathroom together, and stayed there for a long time. And when they came out, we all went for lunch. Do you remember all that, Edward?”“Sure, I remember,” replies Edward.“Now,” continues Andrew, “do you remember, as I was just passing the pudding to you, mother said, ‘Archbishop, is your prick still throbbing?’ And then the archbishop replied, ‘No, Your Majesty, the swelling has gone down since you massaged it in the bathroom.’“And then the pudding flew out of my hands and spattered all over everybody, and you shouted out, ‘Shit!’ Do you remember all that?”“Yes, I remember!” cries Edward, excitedly.“Well,” says Prince Andrew, “when you shouted ‘Shit!’ – that was a faux pas!”One afternoon on the little Greek island of Crete, the local theatrical group is performing the famous Greek drama, “Eat-a-Puss Rex.” Young Spiro Sphincter, an amateur Greek actor, gets a small part in the play. He only has to come onto the stage, approach a beautiful girl lying on a bed, and say the words: “I would love to kiss your lips and steal away!”But on the opening night Sphincter is really nervous. He comes onto the stage, his knees shaking, he stumbles over to the girl in the bed, and stutters, “I would love to kiss your… I would love to kiss your…” but his mind goes blank.He tries again.“I would love to kiss your…”Suddenly, someone in the back jumps up and shouts out, “Pussy!”Instantly, Old Mrs. Acreepolis, sitting in the audience, has a severe stroke and falls over dead.The next day at her funeral, in The Holy Orthodox Church of the Blessed Bleeding Virgin, Bishop Cretin, who has now got only three old ladies left in his flock, swears revenge: “We have got to stamp out this kind of filth!” cries Cretin. “I am going to put a stop to this moral decay!”So that evening at the theater, Cretin is sitting at the side of the stage with a loaded shotgun on his knee and a stick of dynamite in his pocket, looking mean and menacing.Sure enough, in the second act of the play, the young actor Sphincter comes bounding onto the stage, stumbles over to the girl in the bed, and announces, “I am going to kiss your… I am going to kiss your…” But again his mind goes blank.There is a ripple of light laughter from the audience, and immediately Bishop Cretin jumps to his feet and cocks his gun.“All right, everybody,” screams Cretin, “I will blow the head off the first son-of-a-bitch who says ‘Pussy’!”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent, and close your eyes. Feel your bodies completely frozen. This is the right moment for turning inward.Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward the center of your being which is just below the navel, inside. Two inches below the navel…Rush inside with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Unless you have that urgency and intensity, you can never reach to the center. It is not far away, it is very close; it only needs intensity and a deep feeling of urgency.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you are coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you like soft rain. You can feel the coolness of it.A little more… And suddenly you find immense peace arising from the very center of your being, surrounding you like incense.Just a little more… And you will start feeling immensely calm, quiet, tranquil, blissful. Just one step and you are at the center. The moment you reach to the center you are almost drunk by the divine.You disappear.In place of you, there is sitting the image, the symbol of the Eastern awareness, enlightenment, Gautam the Buddha.It is your very nature. Everybody is by his very birth a Gautam Buddha. Very few people go deep enough to recognize it; they remain outside their whole life. You are the most fortunate people on the earth, who are trying to reach to your innermost nature.Being the buddha simply means being alert, aware, conscious. It means you have become only a witness. This word witness has to be remembered because this is the only quality that buddha is made of.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind – this is the way to transcend body and mind.Witness, finally, that you are only a witness.This is how one becomes a Gautam Buddha, the highest peak of consciousness ever achieved.A great ecstasy arises in you – you have never known it before. You are feeling in tune with the universe; your heartbeat has become harmonious with the heartbeat of existence.To make this witness deeper and more clear, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But go on remembering only one thing – that you are a witness, nothing else. This is your transcendence.And as your witnessing deepens, you start melting into the universe as ice melts into the ocean. Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness – ten thousand buddhas have become one oceanic consciousness. We are separate on the periphery, but we are one at the center. The center is the center of everyone.At this moment, rejoice. And gather all those fragrances that are surrounding you – the blissfulness, the ecstasy. Drink more and more from this eternal current of your life. And persuade the buddha to come with you – he is your nature, he has to come with you. He has to become your very day-to-day life; he has to express his grace in your actions, in your words, in your silences of the heart.That day, you will feel the most blessed person in existence when you disappear and only buddha remains.These I have called the three steps of enlightenment.The first step, the buddha comes behind you as a presence – very solid, very tangible, you can feel it. You can feel its fragrance, you can feel its power; it fills you with great cheerfulness.The second step, the buddha comes in front of you; you become the shadow. And slowly, slowly the shadow starts disappearing.The third step, you are no more. Not even a shadow is left, only buddha remains – a transparent consciousness, an eternal life. Those who come to this experience are the real people who can celebrate life.I celebrate myself. And I want you all to celebrate yourself.Become a dance, become a song. Become a lotus, become a spring. There is no religion and there is no God to prohibit you – you are free from all superstitions, you are free from all God-oriented theologies, you are free from all rubbish that everybody in the world is carrying within himself. Throw it out so that your inner world is completely clean and ready to welcome the buddha.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Now come back. But come back as a buddha, with the same grace, the same silence, the same peace, the same blissfulness. Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the golden path that you moved on, the immense opening that happened at your very center.You found yourself so close to existence that it started flowing in you. Its dance became your dance; its celebration became your celebration. Its immensity, its grandeur, its splendor, became your splendor.And see, just behind you is the buddha, with all its transparency, utter silence…This is the first step.Soon you will be able to take the second step. You will become the shadow, and buddha will become almost your very heart, your very heartbeat.At the third and final step you will not be any more. You will be absent and life will be present.Then begins the celebration.Unless life is a celebration, you have lived in vain. Unless life turns into a Gautam Buddha, you have been wasting a tremendous opportunity given to you by existence.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When Daiten first came to Sekito, the master asked him, “What is your no-mind?”Daiten replied, “The one who speaks is it.”At this, Sekito shouted, “Kwatz!” – and left.Ten days later, Daiten again came to Sekito and asked, “The last answer I said to you was not no-mind. What is no-mind?”Sekito said, “Without raising eyebrows or moving eyeballs, bring your no-mind here.”Daiten said, “There is no no-mind to be brought.”Sekito said, “Basically, no-mind is. Why do you say no-mind is not? That is the wrong statement.”At this, Daiten was greatly enlightened.Friends, first, a few questions.The first question:Osho,To us, are the words God and no-mind synonymous?No, not at all. God can never be synonymous with no-mind. God is always there, far away. God has been always referred to by the word that – invisible, just a fiction. No-mind has been always referred to as this.No-mind is your reality, your ultimate nature; God was a mind-created lie. No-mind is your truth, your splendor, your very universe. They cannot be synonymous. God does not exist; no-mind exists. God is only a belief; no-mind is an experience. God has been the cause of all your mental sickness. No-mind is pure health, wholeness.The moment you utter the word God you immediately start thinking of him as a person, as a creator. No-mind is not a person; on the contrary, your very personality disappears, only then does no-mind start blossoming. No-mind is not a creator. It has always been here, and will remain always here; it is always now. No-mind is your eternity, your very source of life.God was just an excuse to exploit humanity and to keep humanity in a very subtle and invisible bondage. God has been your prison; no-mind is your freedom. God has been in the hands of the priests, and the priests are doing the ugliest job in the world because their whole business depends on a lie.No-mind has no priests, it is simply there inside you. And once you experience it, suddenly you become aware that no-mind is not your property, is not your monopoly. The first experience appears to be that it is your no-mind, but soon you become aware that no-mind contains the whole universe, it contains the whole existence.God has always been an outsider. You cannot create anything if you are not an outsider. The Hindus refer to God as a potter, but the potter has to be outside the pot, only then can he create it. If he is inside the pot, the pot is already created. What is he doing inside the pot? The potter has to be outside, only then can he create the pot. All religions have the same idea in different symbols – but God is an outsider.If there is a God, you are only creatures, created people. Without God you are buddhas, uncreated people. God is the heaviest burden that man has been carrying and because of that there is no progress, there is no evolution. The heavy burden, the chains, go on pulling you backward. They don’t allow you to move faster to the higher peaks of evolution.God has to be completely demolished from your minds. It is an absolute necessity and urgency. Once you drop God you will be surprised how many other lies simply disappear. He is the source, the foundation of all lies. Just watch God disappearing and you will see heaven has disappeared, hell has disappeared, fear has disappeared, dread, greed… They are simply gone. God was the source. For the first time you can breathe at ease.God was judgmental; no-mind has no judgment. God was continuously condemning you; no-mind is a blissful, ecstatic state. God is just programmed into your mind.In the Soviet Union they program differently. They program no-God, but both are programs. The atheist does not know that there is no God, nor does the theist know that there is a God. Both are belief systems, contrary to each other. But that does not mean that one is right and the other is wrong. Both cannot be right, but both can be wrong – and both are wrong.An authentic man will not accept any belief system, either of the atheist or of the theist. He will explore on his own what the truth is; he will not like secondhand knowledge. You never think about it, but you would not like to wear somebody else’s shoes. You would not like to wear somebody else’s secondhand clothes. But your whole mind is secondhand, and not only secondhand, in fact, your mind has been going from hand to hand to hand for millions of years. Living with this mind is not living at all.Your mind is borrowed – your life cannot be sincere and honest. Your mind is borrowed – your morality cannot be truthful, it will only be hypocrisy. How can you manage any truthfulness, any sincerity, any authenticity, any originality, out of a borrowed mind? God is the oldest lie and no-mind is a fresh original experience.God is no where; no-mind is now here.No-mind is equivalent to life, is equivalent to existence. God is against life, God is against existence. Can’t you see that all the religions are against life? They don’t want you to live. They start crushing, condemning as sin anything that makes you joyous, anything that makes you really alive.No-mind simply allows you to be natural. It gives you an opportunity to be natural, to be relaxed, to be at ease – no guilt, no inhibition, no suppression. Nature is accepted in its totality, it becomes your very heart, your very being.There is no morality from outside. That outside God was creating all the things from outside that are imposing on you. And everybody around the world is carrying mountains of beliefs, moralities, commandments. They are all inventions of the mind.No-mind is not an invention of the mind, it is a discovery. You don’t have to invent it, it is already here. You just have to be here also – and the meeting, and the transformation… And out of that meeting and transformation arises a totally new kind of morality, a new kind of spontaneity, a new kind of natural grace, a new love for existence, a new reverence for all that is here, for all that surrounds you.But everything that comes from your very innermost being is being prevented by your God, by your priests, by your scriptures. They are your enemies. You have to take it very clearly. Unless you understand who the obstacles are, you will never reach no-mind.God is the biggest obstacle to no-mind. Because of God, the God-oriented religions could not manage any kind of meditation; meditation goes inward, and God is outside. And because God is outside, all the God-oriented religions have invented prayers.Prayers are for an outside God, and nobody has seen that God. A few people have pretended – either they were lying or they were hallucinating, but nobody has seen God. It is one of the most unproved hypotheses. Don’t carry with you unproved hypotheses; they become very burdensome. As time passes they go on gathering more weight. The weight becomes so heavy that you stop growing. There is no space left for you to grow. You are surrounded by all kinds of rubbish, furniture, rotten… You don’t have any space to move.If God is there, you don’t have any empty space, you don’t have any empty sky. You don’t have any possibility to evolve – there is no space. Where are you going to evolve? God is filling every place. That’s why religions insist that he is omnipresent. If he is omnipresent, then there is no space left for you. If he is all over, then wherever you go you will be struggling against God.No-mind is a pure space. It simply gives you an opening which goes on widening as your experience becomes ripe. Finally, you find there is only pure space all around you, infinite and eternal – and you can open your wings. It is your home – you can fly as high as you want. There is no weight dragging you downward, dragging you backward. The experience of weightlessness is synonymous with no-mind.A strange Sufi story…A Sufi mystic was staying in a disciple’s home. But he used to pray to God so loudly that the neighbors started complaining. In the middle of the night he would start shouting so loudly – you have to shout loudly if you want to reach to an invisible God. You don’t know where he is. Nobody knows his telephone number, nobody knows his address. Blindly, you are just raising your hands toward a sky which never answers because there is nobody to answer.Looked at scientifically, people who are praying to God are absolutely insane, neurotic, because they are praying to somebody who is not there, and they are talking to somebody who has never been there. No answer ever comes.That Sufi used to shout loudly. Finally, the disciple decided that it was better to keep him in the basement at night. So they arranged a bed in the basement of the house, so he could pray as loudly as he desired and nobody would be disturbed.But in the middle of the night the whole neighborhood gathered, and they said, “Why have you put him on the roof of your house?”He said, “Roof? We have put him in the basement.”But they went up to the roof and he was there praying to God so loudly. And when you are praying from the roof, naturally your sound goes on waking all the neighbors.The disciple asked, “How did you manage to go to the roof?”The mystic said, “I had to because God will not hear me from the basement.”Mohammedans have great pillars around their mosque, high pillars they call minarets. The priest goes to those pillars because if you pray from the high pillars there is a possibility God may hear you.Hindus have in their temples – Tibetans too – different kinds of bells, gongs. Did you know their purpose is to attract the attention of God? So you give a good beat on the gong and God will listen to you. Then after giving the beat on the gong, or the drums, or the bells, you can pray.In the Hindu temple the bell is at the entrance and the bigger the temple, the bigger the bell. The richer the temples, the bigger and bigger the bells… A deafening sound. First you have to ring the bell to wake up God for him to listen to you. But you don’t know where he is. Your gong, your bells are just resounding in the empty sky. There is nobody to be wakened.No-mind is a reality that you can experience, but for that no prayer is needed. You don’t have to look outside of you. You have to close your eyes and you have to look inward, without any idea of what you are going to find. If you have any idea of what you are going to find, then most probably you will imagine it, and you will think you have found it.Go inward without any prejudice because all prejudices are part of the mind. Your Jesus, your Krishna, your Rama, are all part of your mind. If you carry any prejudice with you, you remain confined to the mind. If you want to transcend the mind and reach to the no-mind, which is the ultimate consciousness, pure consciousness, the very essence of existence… But for that, prayer is of no help, nor are temples of any help, nor are scriptures of any help.No philosophy is needed, no system of beliefs is needed, no theology is needed. All that you need is to unload yourself of everything that has been forced upon you.Unload yourself. Unburden yourself. Drop everything that has been given to you by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by your leaders. Drop everything that has come from outside. Throw it out! And suddenly you will find your mind is giving way into no-mind. You have only to drop the rubbish – and God is part of the rubbish, the heaviest part.So there is no possibility of God and no-mind being synonymous.Here, we are searching without any belief, without any hypothesis. We are simply going into our subjectivity, into our interiority.As far as I am concerned, your body is the only temple. As far as I am concerned, your subjectivity – silent, peaceful, just an empty space – is the very source you have come from, and is the very goal you are going toward.When the source and the goal meet, you are enlightened – the whole circle, the whole pilgrimage is complete. You have left the source as ignorant, you have come back to the source again as innocent. You have again become a child.One birth is given by your parents, another birth you have to manage by yourself. The second birth is the birth which matters. The first birth is going to end in death. The second birth is the beginning of eternity: no death, no end, no beginning.No-mind is the whole universe, and it is not possible to find this no-mind by worshipping, by prayer, by believing. This mind needs you to be completely cured of all past-oriented ideologies, from all organized religions, from all scriptures, from all that has been forced upon you. It is phony, it is plastic.Real roses come onto the bush from its interiority. You can hang plastic roses on the bush, but they will not be fragrant, they will not be alive. And because they are not alive they are not going to die. They will just hang there. They are already dead; they are man-manufactured flowers.God is a man-manufactured idea. No-mind is not your idea. No-mind is not manufactured by man. No-mind is a gift of existence. You can only be grateful, you can only be in deep gratitude when you find no-mind. You will not find even a single word to say to existence. Even saying “Thank you” will look very superficial.In the West it is very formal, you even say “Thank you” to your mother, you thank your father – not that you really mean it, it is just part of formality. In the East it is totally different. I have never thanked my father, I have never thanked my mother. It is so superficial, it is so formal. When you love someone you cannot utter the words “Thank you.” It will destroy the whole beauty of the experience.So when you come to no-mind, you are utterly dumb.Kabir has made a statement. He says the experience of no-mind is gunge keri sarkara – as if the dumb man has tasted sugar. He cannot speak. He knows taste, but he is dumb; he cannot speak.The experience of no-mind is inexpressible. You can have it, you can dance in celebration, but you cannot say anything about it. Your dance certainly will shine with a new joy, with a new ecstasy, with a new drunkenness. Your dance will show a new radiation, a new aura around you. Your eyes will be shining. For the first time they have seen something worth seeing. Your whole being will be throbbing with joy because you have come back to the original source.Let the gods die. Don’t carry them. People are carrying dead gods, and when somebody is dead and you go on carrying him, you start stinking. All religious people stink because they are carrying a dead body.There is a beautiful Hindu mythology…Shiva is one of the gods of the Hindus, one of the three gods, the trinity of Hinduism. Shiva’s wife dies, but he won’t accept her death. His mind was constantly telling him, “If you go around the country there may be somebody who can resurrect her.”He used to live in the Himalayas, so he came down with the dead body of Parvati, his wife. The very word parvati means daughter of the mountains – a beautiful woman, but dead. He carried the corpse around the country, asking everybody, “Is there any physician, any man of miracles?”The body was deteriorating, and soon it started falling into pieces. The legs dropped in one place, the hands dropped into another place… Hindus have twelve holy places; those twelve holy places are the twelve places where Parvati’s parts dropped. But even though parts were dropping, Shiva continued around the country until he found that the last part had dropped. It must have taken him years.But your carrying a dead God is a longer pilgrimage – millions of years. And you go on believing that someday, somewhere, God will materialize. Meanwhile you go on carrying the corpse. The corpse is destroying you because it is rotten, and it is making a rotten humanity.God is a sickness; you have simply to drop it. But the only good thing is that you are carrying the sickness, so you can drop it. It is your belief, so you can throw it out. It is not something that is a part of you, it is something that you are holding unnecessarily. It is not holding you! This is the only beautiful thing about it – that you can drop God.One day I dropped God, and since then I have felt so weightless, so blissful. I used to carry the dead body myself, but I realized that the body was dead – no breathing, no heartbeat – it was up to me whether to carry it or drop it. And as I dropped it, for the first time I felt myself as an individual. The dead body was overwhelming me, it was covering me from all the sides. It had become my personality.For a moment I felt naked because the personality had dropped, the masks had dropped. But soon I knew that this nudity, this nakedness was natural. Everybody is nude behind the clothes. The moment you drop your clothes… Have you ever felt a certain freedom just on the seabeach as you drop your clothes? You suddenly feel the sun on your body, the wind blowing on your body, and a tremendous sense of freedom – just by dropping clothes, which are not of much weight.God is very heavy. It goes on becoming heavier and heavier as time passes. A moment comes when it is heavier than you – you are crushed under the mountainous load. Unless one is free from God, one knows not what freedom is.So God cannot be synonymous with no-mind. No-mind is really the antidote to the disease called God. No-mind is your freedom. All chains dropped, all thoughts dropped, all feelings dropped… Suddenly you find only the purest essence has remained. All that was covering it, layer upon layer, has been dropped. This dropping I call meditation. Finally only a witness, a sakshin, remains – just a pure awareness. This is ultimate freedom, and the authentic religion is for ultimate freedom and ultimate liberation.God-oriented religions cannot even give you a sense of freedom, or a direction for freedom. Their whole effort is to direct your mind toward God. Fill your mind with God, repeat his name again and again so it becomes ingrained in your mind. The more ingrained it becomes, the more difficult it will be to leave it. The sooner you leave God, the better. And you will have to leave one day, so why not now? One cannot live a lie forever. Only truth can be lived forever.You have to believe only in lies, you don’t have to believe in the truth. Truth has to be discovered. I teach you purely the attitude of an agnostic – one who does not believe, who does not disbelieve, but who is a seeker, a searcher, an explorer.Certainly the first thing to be explored is your own inner being. That is the closest life throbbing, everything else is a little far away. The man of intelligence will first look inside his own house before he goes searching on the moon and on Mars. First he will look inside to see what is there. And those who have gone inside have never come empty handed. They have come with so much bliss, so much ecstasy, with such an abundance that they start sharing because as they share they come to understand the inner economics.The more you share the more you have. If you don’t share, you won’t have even that which you had. Jesus says, “Those who have shall be given more, and those who have not, even whatsoever they have will be taken away.” I cannot agree with him. I say unto you, the more you give, the more you will have; the less you give, the less you will have. If you don’t give at all, you won’t have anything left.Sharing is the only compassion; sharing is the only service; sharing is the only way the awakened one lives. That is real character. That is authentic morality. That is true religiousness.You don’t have a God, but you become godly. Hence I say, the moment you drop God you are moving in the right direction of becoming godly. You will be divine in your ecstasies, in your silent spaces of the being. You will be divine. But you will be divine because you will be participating in the divine existence. Everything is sacred to the man who has come to know himself, who has discovered his hidden secret of life. Everything becomes sacred.A story is told about the mystic Nanak…He went to Kaaba, the holy place of the Mohammedans. It is a beautiful story.He reached Kaaba by the evening, but his fame had already reached, so people were waiting for him. They received him, welcomed him, but he was very tired. So he said, “I would like to go to sleep, I have been walking miles and miles.”So they prepared a bed under a tree, but he turned the bed. Mohammedans don’t sleep with their legs toward Kaaba, but he turned the bed so that his legs were toward Kaaba, and his head was on the opposite side.When the head priest of Kaaba heard about it, he came running. He said, “We thought you were a great mystic, but you don’t even seem to be religious. You don’t understand that you are hurting our feelings. You are keeping your feet toward the most divine and the most holy land! You should turn your feet.”Nanak laughed. He said, “As far as I am concerned, wherever I turn my feet I find they are toward the holy land because to me the whole existence is holy. Now, if you think there is some place which is unholy, please turn my legs. I am willing!”There was a silence. The priest could not say that there was some place that was unholy. But it could not be tolerated either, that this man continued to keep his feet toward Kaaba…I think up to this point it is factual. Beyond this point it becomes more and more symbolic, but even that is significant.Finally, the priest decided to turn his legs and turn his head toward Kaaba. But they were utterly disappointed, surprised. They could not believe their eyes. Wherever they moved Nanak’s legs, Kaaba moved.This must be symbolic, but it is significant. It is poetry, but it gives you the feeling that, if everything is holy and sacred, it does not matter where you keep your legs; it will always be toward the sacred land. The whole existence is sacred for a mystic. Nanak showed his understanding very clearly. Only a man of no-mind can do that.A man of no-mind knows that everywhere life is throbbing – in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains. Even the Himalayas are still growing. It is the youngest mountain in the whole world, but really powerful because it has got the highest peaks in the world and they are still growing – one foot per year. But that means it is alive, it is not a dead mountain. It is reaching toward the stars, perhaps very slowly – it is not a small mountain. And for mountains, even to rise one foot in one year is quite fast. Looking at eternity, if the Himalayas go on growing in this way, soon they will be touching stars; it won’t be long.When you see life everywhere, in the stones – perhaps fast asleep so that you cannot feel it, perhaps a different dimension – in the trees, so that you cannot understand it… But everything is so abundantly alive, all that you need is space and perceptivity of no-mind.God is your blindness. No-mind is going to give you fresh eyes to look again at the universe.The second question:Osho,Nietzsche made the observation that when “ordinary people” are in an unpleasant situation, “They always seek to get out of it with the smallest expenditure of intelligence.”Is God simply the first and last resort of a retarded humanity?Yes, absolutely yes. God is the invention of the retarded, of the idiots, of the imbeciles, of the people who want a shortcut so they don’t have to exert any intelligence. God is the belief of the unintelligent. God is the belief of the unconscious. God is the belief of those who are still asleep and dreaming. The moment you wake up, all dreams disappear, and with the dreams your God will also disappear.No-mind is waking up from the sleep of the mind. No-mind is a sunrise.Mind has been a long, long, dark night, and no-mind blossoms into tremendous intelligence, not intellect. Intellect is part of the mind, intelligence is part of no-mind. It is a totally different phenomenon. And when that fire of intelligence rises in you in great flames, you don’t find any God anywhere, but you certainly find everything is sacred because everything is alive.So, a great reverence for life is what I teach you. But you will know life only when you have touched your own life. Then you will know the criterion for what is alive. Right now you don’t know the criterion for what is alive.The third question:Osho,Through my own recent encounter with death, I came across many stories of people from diverse cultures and of different religious backgrounds, who temporarily left their bodies and appeared to observers to be dead. They reported seeing a “being of light,” which was totally loving and compassionate.Could this “being of light” be the basis on which the concept of God has been created?No, not at all. This experience is authentic. It happens sometimes to people who have almost died – not completely, but almost. They see a luminous being. It is their own being, it is not God. In meditation you will encounter the same luminous being without dying.Meditation is a kind of death. You are separated from the body, you are separated from the mind – that’s what death does. You are separated from the body, you are separated from the mind. Suddenly you become aware of a luminous being, which you think is separate from you because you have never seen such an experience before. If you have been a meditator, you will recognize: “This is me.”You are a light, luminous body inside this body – a flame, an eternal flame of light. But those who have almost died and come back to life – because they don’t have any experience of meditation – think they have seen something, a luminous being. They remember it vaguely, faintly, a faraway echo, but they remember it. They have seen something luminous. Naturally they cannot conceive that they have seen themselves.God is not based on the experience of people who were almost dead and have come back again to life. But meditation knows exactly what has been happening to these people – they have encountered themselves. But because the encounter was for the first time, and so quick… Just like a flash it came and went away, and they were back to life. Naturally they think they have seen some object, some person standing there with a radiant, luminous body – because they have known only objects in their lives; they have never known the subject.A meditator will not commit such a mistake. A meditator will recognize immediately – whether alive or dead – that he is the luminous eternal light.The sutra:When Daiten first came to Sekito, the master asked him, “What is your no-mind?”Daiten replied, “The one who speaks is it.”At this, Sekito shouted, “Kwatz!” – and left.Daiten is not yet enlightened, but he must have been a great scholar. He has read in the scriptures that the no-mind is the one from where all that is original comes. When a buddha speaks, he is not speaking borrowed words. His speaking is coming from no-mind. No-mind is flowing in his words, hence the beauty.The same ordinary words on the lips of a buddha certainly become magical, alive. Very ordinary words suddenly take a totally different flavor, a new fragrance. They start being poetic. They have around them a certain aura. That’s why the words of a buddha start ringing bells in your heart.He is not speaking strange words. You know those words, you use those words. But when a buddha speaks those same words, because they are coming from no-mind, they carry some space around them that makes the awakened one’s words so authoritative. The awakened one is not authoritative. He does not command you, he does not give quotations from the scriptures to support as an evidence. He is his own authority.I have been telling stories, and people who don’t understand me have sometimes written, “Your stories go on changing. Sometimes you say one thing, sometimes your story completely changes.” They are only listening to the mere words, not to me. They are blind people, they cannot see that my story is a response to the people to whom I am talking. In the present moment it takes a new shape, a new meaning, a new dimension.My stories go on changing because life goes on changing. What can I do about it? Sometimes it is spring and there are flowers all over, and sometimes it is not spring and the trees are standing naked without any leaves. What can I do? Life goes on changing. My stories are not dead, they are as alive as I am alive. They are coming from a living source.And great scholars and professors, linguists, those belonging to different religions, have told me: “I like your story, but it is not in the scriptures at all.” I said, “Then you should put it in. Your scripture is not growing, it is dead. If you like the story, if you felt there was some meaning, then put it in your scripture.”Buddha is not the end of the world. There are going to be buddhas after Gautam Buddha. There will be buddhas after me, after you, and certainly they are going to continuously improve. It is not an effort, it is a spontaneous phenomenon.When I start a story I don’t know what shape it is going to take. I am as surprised as you are – “My God! This story is not the story I have heard before.” But what can I do? It is not my mind. Mind has a memory system, so it goes on repeating the same gramophone record, and gets stuck at the same point each time. If it is an ancient gramophone record, the needle goes on stopping at the same place. You start again; again it will stop at the same place.Once I was participating as a student in an inter-university competition for eloquence. I was the first one to speak, and the second person came from the Sanskrit University of Varanasi. It is devoted completely to Sanskrit scriptures and language. But the student must have been feeling a little inferior to the other students who came from different universities because in the Sanskrit University they don’t teach English. So he must have crammed one statement in English of Bertrand Russell, just to make an impression.But he was nervous. As he started, after three or four lines, he said, “Bertrand Russell has said…” – in English – and then he stopped. His mind went blank. I was sitting just by his side because he was the second person to speak. The whole auditorium was full of students and professors, and there was a great silence when he stopped. I thought I should help him, so I told him, “Repeat again.”And when you have crammed something, you can repeat it only from the very beginning. So he said, “Sisters and brothers…” So the whole audience started laughing. He again repeated those three or four sentences and came to the point, “Bertrand Russell has said…” – and a full stop.I said, “Repeat!”Finding no way out, he again started, “Brothers and sisters…”And it was such a joy – for ten minutes it continued. I would say, “Repeat,” and finding no way out… And I was the only help. Everybody was laughing.And he would say, “Sisters and brothers…” – and finished! Everybody was waiting for these three sentences, “Bertrand Russell has said…” – full stop.After ten minutes, the chairman, the vice-chancellor of the university, himself was laughing, and he told the boy, “Just sit down. Don’t be worried, everything is okay. Just sit down” – he was perspiring. And the chancellor said to me, “You should not have done this.”I said, “I was simply helping him. I never thought that he was a gramophone record. I thought some time he may slip ahead – ‘Bertrand Russell has said…’ But he proved to be a gramophone record, broken. It was not my fault. And anyway, he gave such a joyous evening. Even if you give him the first prize, I am ready, because he has given as much joy as nobody can give.”Now scientists have found that your memory system functions exactly like a gramophone record. They have opened the brain for other reasons, but somehow they found that if they put an electrode on the memory point in your brain, you start saying something. And if they take the electrode away, you stop and your brain automatically reverses. Again when they put the electrode back, you start from “Brothers and sisters” – again the same. Take the electrode off, and you stop.They have discovered that the mind has an automatic reverse system – once you have stopped, it goes back to its original place. You touch that spot again and the person starts saying the same thing. There is no reason for him to speak – nobody has asked anything. But he is helpless – the memory starts repeating like a record.Daiten must have been a scholar. He has quoted this sentence, not from his own experience but from scriptures.What is he saying? When Sekito asked him: “What is your no-mind?” Daiten replied, “The one who speaks is it.” One who speaks originally. If one speaks only that which is borrowed, it is from the mind. But if one speaks originally, spontaneously, then it is coming from the space called no-mind. But he forgot the word originally. That happens to scholars; it cannot happen to a buddha. Whatever is coming, is coming from the very source. But when you are repeating a scripture which is not your experience, there is going to be some difficulty.If he had said, “The one who speaks spontaneously – that is the place of no-mind…” He has forgotten that one word original, and perhaps it was not written in the scripture itself because no buddha has written a single word. All scriptures have been compiled by their disciples, sometimes after the death of the master. Sometimes hundreds of years have passed and then disciples of disciples… Generations have passed.The four gospels of Jesus were recorded after his death, and not immediately – three hundred years afterward. Now, nobody was a witness; all the witnesses were dead. And these gospels were recorded by people who had not seen Jesus. They had not even seen Jerusalem. Now biblical research scholars have found that even the geography that they have mentioned in the four gospels is wrong. These people have never been to Israel. They have heard from others, who have heard from others, who have heard from others.That’s why I have spoken on Thomas’s gospel which was written in India. He was a direct disciple of Jesus, but his gospel is not included in the Holy Bible. It was discovered just thirty years ago, but it is the most beautiful because at least Thomas was a witness. And it has tremendous beauty because it is not only that he was a witness to Jesus, but that here in India he went through a transformation.He meditated, he practiced Yoga, he lived like a sannyasin and moved from monastery to monastery. Buddha’s air was still there. Buddha was gone five hundred years before, but his fragrance was still alive. So in his gospel there is a certain authority which is lacking in the four gospels of the Bible. First he was a witness, he had heard Jesus, and secondly he himself had experienced the truth. The combination of the two gives a greater authority to the fifth gospel of Thomas than the Holy Bible.Thomas is the only man in the whole world whose body has not deteriorated. His body is still in a church in Goa. Every year, at Christmas time, his body is brought out of the church and his coffin is opened for any observer, for any scientist, for any researcher. Nobody has been able to figure out why it looks so fresh, as if he had died just now. There seems to have been no device used. It is not kept frozen, it is in a hot country, but even the skin does not look as if it is dead. He looks so fresh. I have been to see the body.Jesus’ miracles may have been a myth, but this man really managed a miracle. After two thousand years he is the only person around the world whose body looks as if it has died just now – or perhaps he is fast asleep. No smell, and if it can remain for two thousand years; there is no problem for it to remain forever. Care has to be taken that nobody disturbs it.There have been efforts to disturb it by Hindus, by Mohammedans, by people who are not Christians, because it is a great argument in favor of Christianity. But Thomas was not a Christian, he never knew about Christianity. He came just after Jesus was crucified. He left Jerusalem for the simple reason that Jesus must have told his close friends – and Thomas was one of those who was very close to him – about India, and about the universities of Nalanda and Takshsila, and about meditation.So now that Jesus was crucified, he saw there was no point in being there, and he left. He came by ship, so he landed in South India. But he traveled all over India, and met all kinds of mystics who were deeply rooted in meditation. His body is a proof that he must have followed a certain method which was known to the Tibetan lamas, to the Ladakh people.They used to use a certain method of meditation when the meditator was dying; at the last moment, a certain process called Bardo. It was nothing but a posthypnotic suggestion. When a man is dying, he is in a very vulnerable state. And if he has been a meditator, then he is perfectly awake. Death is coming, but he is perfectly awake. He can be hypnotized and told, “When you leave your body, the body will remain intact as it is.” You have to continue repeating so that it enters not only in his mind, it enters even in his bones, in his marrow, in his blood.Bardo is a very intensive hypnosis. It is also possible to give directions for the future to the soul that is leaving the body; both can be done. The body can be preserved by posthypnotic suggestion. But you cannot do it if the man has died. Then there is nobody to listen to a posthypnotic suggestion. The man has to be alive, just on the verge of death. You give him the posthypnotic suggestion: “Your body will remain intact, will remain intact… You go on.” And if he is a meditator, even the bones, the blood, the body starts listening. The soul will leave, but the body will remain completely as the soul has left it. This was one way that Bardo was used for the body.And there was a second way. You can give suggestions to the leaving soul as to what kind of womb will be good: “Choose rightly. Don’t be accidental.” Millions of people are making love, and millions of people are dying. So those souls are roaming around, finding a couple who is making love. This is accidental. Because they die unconsciously, they unconsciously grope in the darkness, and whoever comes close by, just by chance they enter that womb.Bardo prevents the accidental. It gives the soul a right direction: “You need a certain kind of womb, so don’t be in a hurry. You have been a meditator, and you have to find a mother, a father, who will allow you to meditate – not only allow you to meditate but who will help you to meditate, who are themselves meditators. So don’t be in a hurry! Choose a couple.”Sometimes the man of meditation takes time to find the right womb; ordinary persons immediately enter a womb. Bardo gives two kinds of possibilities: the body can be kept, and the soul can be given a sense of direction where to go. But this is possible only if the man has been deeply into meditation, has been practicing meditation for a long time, and was capable of remaining conscious when death comes because death is the greatest operation.Nature has managed it so that nobody should die consciously, just as a surgeon will not be ready to operate on you if you are conscious. First he will give you chloroform or something that makes you unconscious. Then he can operate on you because you don’t know what is happening. You are so deeply asleep that things can be removed from your body, bones can be cut, replaced, anything can be done.Death is the greatest operation because the whole seventy-year attachment to the body has to be broken. Nature has managed – this is the wisdom of nature, the intelligence of nature – that a person who is not capable of detachment with the body, who does not know “I am not the body,” should be made unconscious. Otherwise he will be passing through tremendous anguish and anxiety.So it is natural wisdom, but it is not applicable to the meditator. The meditator can afford to die consciously without any pain, without any anguish, without any anxiety.Daiten replied, “The one who speaks is it.” At this, Sekito shouted, “Kwatz!” – and left. This shout says to Daiten, “Shut up! It is not you, it is borrowed. I can see the deadness of your statement.” Shouting “Kwatz!” is saying “Shut up!” And then he left immediately because there was no point in wasting time with this man, he was just a dead scholar.Ten days later, Daiten again came to Sekito and asked, “The last answer I said to you was not no-mind.”He realized. He was sincere, at least, honest.First he had tried to deceive Sekito – you cannot deceive a master, that is impossible. He looks through and through you. He knows from where the answer is coming: from the mind or from the no-mind. It is so clear to a master from where the answer is coming. Any answer from the mind – “Kwatz! Shut up!”He must have thought about it: “Why did the master behave in such a hard way? And I was a stranger, a new person. Certainly there must be some reason why he behaved without any compassion. I must be wrong.” And then in ten days’ meditation he understood, “What I said was only a repetition of scriptures.” So he came back.Ten days later, Daiten again came to Sekito and asked, “The last answer I said to you was not no-mind. What is no-mind?”“Please tell me. I don’t know.” An authentic seeker begins with “I don’t know because all that I know is not mine. It does matter. I may have much knowledge, but as far as I am concerned, I don’t know.” This acceptance is the beginning of the search. If you know already, there is no need to search, there is no need to seek.Sekito said, “Without raising eyebrows or moving eyeballs, bring your no-mind here.”Strange, but masters are strange people. They have their own ways of pushing you into the unknown territory of your own being.Sekito said, “Without raising eyebrows or moving eyeballs, bring your no-mind here.”Daiten said, “There is no no-mind to be brought.”In the first place, I don’t know what no-mind is. In the second place, if it is no-mind how can you bring it? It is not a thing. It is not even a thought, it is pure awareness. It cannot be brought here as an object for your observation.”Sekito said, “Basically, no-mind is.”You cannot bring it – I can understand. It is not a thing, it is not a thought, it is only pure isness, thisness, suchness.“Basically, no-mind is. Why do you say no-mind is not?”It is the only isness in existence. Because you cannot bring it, you think, “It is not. That’s why I cannot bring it.” You cannot bring it because no-mind is the whole universe. How can you bring it? It is already here.This very moment it is here, as it was in front of Sekito.“Why do you say no-mind is not? That is the wrong statement.”Just say you don’t know. Say no-mind is not a thing, not a thought, hence it cannot be brought. But don’t say no-mind is not. No-mind only is – pure is.At this, Daiten was greatly enlightened.…Hearing this statement, that all that is, is no-mind. Isness and no-mind are two names of the same thing. This presence of life in the trees, in the stones, in people, in birds… This vast isness, this presence is no-mind. You don’t have to bring it here, it is already here. You cannot take it anywhere else.As far as time is concerned, it is now. As far as space is concerned, it is here. If you are silent, you will immediately become aware of it.This statement made such a deep penetration into Daiten, he was greatly enlightened. If an authentic seeker, sincere seeker, who does not hide himself behind false knowledge, borrowed knowledge, who does not pretend that he knows without knowing, accepts “I don’t know,” he is already very close to the truth. He has accepted his innocence, now there is no barrier. No God, no scripture, no knowledge – he is just as close as one can be to no-mind. A little push by the master, a little statement, and he will be drowned into existence. That drowning into existence is enlightenment. Disappearing into existence is enlightenment.I have always loved a story from China…The emperor of China was a great painter. At his seventy-fifth birthday, he was feeling old, and perhaps the day was not far away when he would have to leave the body. So he arranged a great competition before he would leave the body: a competition for painting throughout China.First, in every state there would be a competition, and one painting would be chosen. Then the final would be in the capital, and the emperor would choose which the greatest painting was. He himself had been a competitor and had painted a beautiful painting.All the painters came from all over China. They all brought the great canvases that they had done. Only one man came without any painting, just paint and a brush – strange fellow!The emperor asked, “Where is the painting?”He said, “I don’t like old things. I will paint freshly here and now. You have to give me a room because I don’t paint on canvas, I paint on walls. Give me the biggest room in your palace and don’t disturb me. And keep a guard so that nobody disturbs me. I don’t know how long it will take because it is going to be a spontaneous thing. I don’t know what I am going to paint. I am just going to paint out of spontaneity, whatever happens, however long it takes.”The king said, “I am getting old, that’s why I have arranged this competition. You have to be quick and fast.”He said, “I don’t know; it may be quick… Tomorrow morning I may inform you that the painting is complete, or it may take longer. I cannot promise.”No man of understanding can ever promise anybody because who knows about the next moment? All promising is in ignorance.The king said, “You are a difficult person, but I can see in your eyes, and I can see in your face – perhaps you will be the greatest painter.” So he gave him the biggest room in the palace – and there were many big rooms – with a plain wall so he could paint, and he closed the doors.The painter said, “Nobody should enter, not even you, until the painting is complete. I will come out for food or anything I need.” And he kept a curtain also so that even the guards could not have a look inside at what was happening behind the curtain.It took him three years, and the king was asking, “What are you doing? I may never be able to see your painting, I may die!”The painter said, “It does not matter. If you die, you die. If you are alive, you will be able to see it. But I cannot do anything in a hurry.”The emperor had to wait.Four years passed, and one morning the painter came out and said to the emperor, “The painting is complete. You are welcome.”Such curiosity had arisen in the emperor’s mind. For four years he was thinking, “What is that guy painting?” He himself was a painter. It did not take four years for one painting. And when the painter came, the emperor immediately followed him. They went behind the curtain.The painting was just unbelievable; it looked so real. He had painted a huge forest, so green, lush green, almost three-dimensional. And a small path was going and going… And then it disappeared into the thickness of the jungle.The emperor asked, “Where does this path go?”The painter said, “Let us… Come with me. We can walk and see where the path goes. Without experience you will not know where it goes.”The story is, both went onto the path – the guards were watching – and as the path turned a corner, they both turned and since then nothing has been heard of them.This story is symbolic – you cannot enter a painting. It says that you can enter the isness of things. The painter has made the painting so alive that branches were moving in the wind. The path was no ordinary path and the symbolic meaning is: if you cannot enter a painting, the painting is not worth calling a painting. But entering does not mean physical entry. Entering means you get lost completely: you are no more, only the painting is.That’s how you enter meditation – you are no more. You come across a tremendous isness; everything disappears, you disappear, yet that isness remains. That experience of isness is enlightenment. This story simply gives a symbolic representation of enlightenment.A painter is not worth the salt if he himself cannot disappear into his own painting. Picasso is reported to have said, “When I am painting, I am no more, only the painting is.”Nijinsky has said many times in his life – because he was asked again and again – “When I am dancing I am no more. As long as I am, the dance is superficial. When only dancing remains, and I am no more, then it has a tremendous quality.” It was observed by scientists, and they could see the tremendous quality. Whenever he forgot himself completely in dancing, he used to jump higher than gravitation allows. Scientists were simply at a loss how to figure it out because that much of a jump is not possible.And even more miraculous was his coming back… Gravitation pulls everything so fast. You see every night – you think stars are falling. All around the earth, six thousand stars fall every day to the earth. They are not stars: stars are very big, a thousand times, a million times bigger than the earth. If one star falls, we are finished. Those are not stars, those are small stones which have been left hanging in space.When the moon separated from the earth – once it was part of the earth… You have the great oceans, the great Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, and the Atlantic; these oceans were created by the mud and the stones and everything from these places falling out – in the beginning the earth was liquid. The moon is just the combination of that matter that has fallen from the earth. But it created great oceans – the Pacific is five miles deep.But when such great lumps fell out, many small pieces also fell out. Those small pieces are just floating in space, millions of pieces of stone of different sizes and the earth’s gravitation pulls these stones downward. At the point where the atmosphere begins, it is two hundred miles deep. Around the earth is two hundred miles of atmosphere; up to that point there is air. Beyond that there is no air; it is pure space, even air is not existent. Sometimes those small stones – and there are a few big stones also… The stone in the Mohammedans holy place, Kaaba, is also one of the stones that has fallen from outer space, but it is a very huge stone. In every museum you can find stones which have reached to the earth.But what happens when they enter the earth’s atmosphere by chance? Gravitation pulls them so fast that the friction with the air makes them turn into a fiery stone, a fire. That is why you can see them up to a point, and then suddenly they disappear. If the stone is small, then it comes to a certain point and it is burned out. The force of gravitation is such that only very big stones can reach the earth, otherwise they disappear in the air somewhere.Nijinsky’s coming back down was absolutely against gravitation. He came just as a feather comes, slowly. Both things were against gravitation: first his jump, and then his coming down like a feather as if he had no weight; as if gravitation could not work on it.He was asked about it again and again. He said, “I have tried, but whenever I try, it does not happen, so I cannot say anything about it. When I am not, when I get completely disappointed and forget all about it, that one day suddenly it happens. When I am not trying to do it, it happens. I am not, only the dance is. When I am not, only the dance is.” Nijinsky was perhaps the greatest dancer in the world.But it is a misfortune that these people were born in the West. They had no idea that they were so close to no-mind. They needed a master just to give them a little push. Nijinsky would have been a Gautam Buddha, and Picasso would have been a Gautam Buddha. They have come so close. But the West has no idea how to go on, how to go into the painting.Just move on, on the road and get lost. When you are lost, that will be your great experience. When you are no more, only existence is.And this existence gives you such bliss, such ecstasy, such eternity, that you are bound to feel a tremendous sacredness, a great reverence for life and this vast universe which has given birth to you.One day it will allow you to disappear again into the oceanic consciousness. This entering into the oceanic consciousness is enlightenment.Shiki wrote:The moon rises –leaf upon leaf upon leafflutters down.He must be sitting under a tree, and it must be fall. The moon rises… He is watching the moon rising.Zen has many ways of meditation. Watch the moon rising; the emphasis is on watching, not on the moon. Watch the sun rising. The emphasis is on watching, what I am calling witnessing to make it more clear – witness the sun is rising. And witness …leaf upon leaf upon leaf flutters down. And you are just a witness.On one side the moon is rising, on the other side: …leaf upon leaf upon leaf flutters down. And between these two you are just a mirror, no judgment.He is not saying that the moonrise is beautiful, and he is not saying that the …leaf upon leaf upon leaf… are creating beautiful music in the air. No, he is not making any judgment. He is simply describing what he has been witnessing, just like a mirror, showing you the moon is rising, and …leaf upon leaf upon leaf… are fluttering down. He is just a watcher.This is the whole secret of Zen.Maneesha’s question:Osho,St. Bernard wrote: “Who is God? I can think of no better answer than: ‘He who is.'”Eckhart stated: “Thou must love God as not-God, not-spirit, not-person, not-image, but as he is – a sheer, pure, absolute One, sundered from all twoness and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.”If one substituted the pronoun “he” with “it,” would not these two Christian mystics be speaking the language of Zen?Maneesha, you can change the “he” into “it,” and certainly they will be speaking the language of Zen, but you cannot do that. It is their statement, not yours. They are still saying “he.” They are not even saying “she”; “it” is far away – although they have come very close to the point. That’s why both the saints were in trouble with the orthodox church, particularly Eckhart who was tortured, harassed, threatened with expulsion if he published his books. His books were published after his death because of these statements.The statement is tremendously good, but still, somehow the faint image of God is present. “Who is God? I can think of no better answer than: ‘He who is.’” Using the word he and saying “who is,” is very close; only the he is standing in between.That’s what I have been telling you – even a very thin concept of God as a person is going to create enough of a barrier for you.St. Bernard has come very close, but to be close is still to be at a distance. Closeness is a kind of distance. What does it mean? You may be one inch away, or one mile away, or one thousand miles away – you are away. Even one inch away – you are away. That one inch is as thick as the Wall of China, solid rock.When St. Bernard says, “He who is,” using the word he, he accepts a personality, and not only a personality but a male personality. Both are wrong. Existence is neither male nor female. It expresses in both – as female, as male – but it itself is simply pure isness. Its expression will be manifold, but its essence is the same. A woman in her interiority is as pure a consciousness as a man in his interiority.If St. Bernard had really experienced isness, he would not have used the word God or he. He seems he must have been a great giant, but only intellectual. Many times philosophers have come very close, but then they go on in a round and go far away. Just coming close is not enough, but even this was condemned by the church, by the pope.Certainly St. Bernard has some conception of a male God, and you cannot change his statement. If you change his statement, then it comes exactly to what Zen is. But then it will not be the statement of St. Bernard, it will be your statement.So I would say that he came very close, but because of the “God,” and because the programming in his mind of the Christian God was still there, that prevented him from the quantum leap from mind to no-mind. His idea is still within the mind. He has logically and rationally worked out that if God is there, he can only be described as “He who is.” But this is not the exact experience.The exact experience will not use the word God, will not use the word he. It is male-chauvinistic, and it gives a personality to existence which it has not. It is infinite, so it cannot have a personality. It cannot be called who, and it cannot be called he. So St. Bernard is still not enlightened – intellectually great, logically great, but existentially still a little far away from the truth.Eckhart comes even closer, maybe just a fragment of an inch away, when he says, “Thou must love God as not-God, not-spirit, not-person, not-image, but as he is – a sheer, pure, absolute One, sundered from all twoness and in whom we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness.” He has come very much closer than St. Bernard, and hence he was more condemned than St. Bernard because he was destroying the whole Christian theology.But still I say he is within the framework of the Christian God, although he seems to be a far more refined intellect than St. Bernard – a very thin barrier, a Japanese rice-paper barrier. But that is enough to keep your eyes closed.His statement is beautiful: “Thou must love God as not-God.” But why use the word God at all, if it is to be loved as not-God? Why not say, “Thou must love not-God, not-Spirit, not-person, not-image, but just the sheer existence, pure, absolute One, sundered from all twoness, and in it we must eternally sink from nothingness to nothingness”? But his beginning, “Thou must love God,” is a Christian programming.Zen has dropped all programming. It has dared as much as human consciousness is capable of. Now, making this statement has a certain compromise with the church. “Thou must love God” – so the Christian church is satisfied that he is still talking about God, although a little crazy because he says, you must love God as not-God. Then who is he? A woman? A man? A tree? The ocean…? What do you mean by “not-God”?Christianity condemned him, but because he was saying, “Thou must love God,” they told him not to publish such writings while he was alive because they would create doubt in people’s minds. And they have been doing that even today.They prevented a great French scientist, Chardin, who discovered the Peking man, from publishing his papers: “Because your papers will go against Christianity.” And because he was an ordained priest, he had to follow the orders from the Vatican. They destroyed a great man. He could have contributed much. But if you don’t have any feedback, if other scientists don’t know what you are writing, what you are discovering, and you don’t know their opinions… It needs constant feedback.Science grows not by one scientist, it grows among all the scientists. There is a constant dialogue going on through papers, through conferences, through books, through periodicals… A constant dialogue is happening all around the world. That’s how science tries to figure out the best hypothesis about anything.Now, preventing Chardin from publishing, from attending any conferences, from writing books while he was alive – and of course when you are dead somebody else will write it, you will not… Somebody else does not have the same scientific background, nor the same discovery. And after your death what happens to your ideas will not be a feedback; you will not be able to improve upon it. They destroyed a great scientist of the same caliber as Albert Einstein.But I am also angry at Chardin. Rather than stopping his writings and researches, why did he not resign from being a Christian priest? He resigned from science in favor of Christian superstition. Nobody has raised the question that he was also part of the whole slavery game; everybody has condemned the Vatican.I condemn the Vatican, but I also condemn Chardin – Chardin more than the Vatican. The Vatican has been doing that for centuries – that is not new. But why was Chardin such a sheep? Why could he not gather the courage? A man of such tremendous intelligence should have left the priesthood. What was in it? A religion that prevents you from declaring truth is not worth being part of.But he proved a coward – he stopped writing. And now a Chardin society exists in France which publishes his works and papers and his researches – but it is too late. If somebody raises a question, Chardin is not there to answer. And by the time Chardin died, other scientists had come to better hypotheses. If he had been allowed, or if he had had the guts to come out of the church, he would have managed to refine the work. It is a continuous growth and evolution. Science is not something static.When Albert Einstein was asked, “If you had not discovered the theory of relativity, do you think it would ever have been discovered?” Albert Einstein said, “It would not have taken more than three weeks.” And finally it was found that somebody in Germany had already discovered it before Albert Einstein, but he was a lazy guy and did not publish the paper. So it had been found not after three weeks, but three weeks before.Einstein was right: when something is there, sooner or later it has to be discovered. You cannot go on missing it, if there is a truth in it.Eckhart also proved to be a little cowardly, just like Chardin. He came very close, but he continuously maintained that he loved God. Of course he has those conditions “…as not-God…” Then as what? And if you are loving only the isness of existence, then why go on calling it God? Why continue that old superstition, that old lie? Just a compromise with the Vatican, just a fear that if you don’t do that much you are taking a risk with your life.I was born into Jainism, and when I started speaking against their ideologies – and when I say anything, I say it with my total being – they were unable to answer me. Their highest command decided to expel me from Jainism. But I wrote to them: “You need not expel me, I expel your whole Jainism and your whole Jaina society. You need not expel me, I have already expelled you.” So they were shocked, they could not figure out what to do. They could not expel me, I was already outside – what does it matter? And I don’t think it has done any harm to me.Compromise is always cowardly. Truth never compromises.Maneesha, both these people were very close to Zen, but both were cowards. God makes people cowards. Religion makes people cowards. Otherwise, what was the risk? Eckhart should have left Christianity, St. Bernard should have left Christianity, and then they would have been the very first Zen masters in the West. But they missed that great opportunity, that great dignity. They remained slaves of the Christian church.I want you to be lions and not sheep as Jesus wanted you to be. He has insulted humanity very badly.It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh – a really great time. Put on the light because I want to see the faces of my people laughing!Three women – Betty Boobs, Lucy Legs, and Nellie Knickers – meet at an old high-school reunion. They soon start gossiping about the men they have married, and what they are like in bed.“My husband, Bob,” says Betty Boobs, “is like a 1989 Rolls Royce – comfortable, sizable, powerful, and very satisfying!”“My husband, Larry,” says Lucy Legs, “is like a 1970 Cadillac – still fairly comfortable and satisfying, but lacks performance sometimes. Generally, quite a good ride.”“Hmm, my husband, Norbert,” says Nellie Knickers, “is like a vintage Model-T Ford.“Really?” say the other two, staring at Nellie in amazement. “Why do you say that?”“Well,” continues Nellie, “what I mean is – he manages to rally twice a year, but he has to be started by hand!”On the forty-second floor of the Fast Buck Brokers building, executive vice president, Bilbo Ballbag, is interviewing girls for a secretarial job.After examining many talented and capable applicants, Bilbo finally hires Gorgeous Gloria for the job.After two days, Gloria is bending down to get something from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, and Bilbo Ballbag gets an eyeful. He immediately calls her into his office.“Look, Gloria,” he says, his eyes playing with her tits, “I wonder if you would mind working with me over the weekend?”“Sure,” says Gloria, giving Bilbo a wink, “that would be great.”“Good,” replies Bilbo, “we can get all this extra work done aboard my luxury sailboat!”“Ah, dear,” says Gloria, “but I get terribly seasick.”“Don’t worry!” says Bilbo, perspiring as he loosens his tie. “I will take care of everything.”That evening, on his way home from work, Bilbo stops in at the drugstore. He goes up to the counter and approaches Victor Vaseline, the clerk.“Give me a pack of Trojan condoms,” says Bilbo, “and a bottle of seasickness pills.”“Yes, sir,” says Victor, fumbling around under the counter, and discreetly handing Bilbo the two items. “It is none of my business, sir,” continues Victor, “but if it affects you like that, why do you bother?”Among the early Christians, it was rumored that the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was blessed with enormous sexual machinery, which used to terrorize all his followers, men and women alike.As the story goes… On that fateful day on Calvary Hill, Jesus had been hanging on his cross for a couple of hours, staring up at the sky, waiting for Godot.He looks down and sees his favorite girl, Mary Magdalena, weeping in the crowd, and feels a stirring of the spirit in his loincloth.“Mary! Mary!” Jesus calls out. “Come closer!”Hesitantly, Mary walks out of the crowd toward the cross. She comes closer, but stops in her tracks when she sees the huge growing lump in Christ’s knickers.“Mary! Mary!” moans Jesus. “Closer, come closer!”Mary shuffles forward nervously, eyeing the ever-growing mountain in his underpants – then she stops again.“Mary! Mary!” gasps Jesus. “I have something from the Holy Ghost to impart to you – come closer!”“Ah! Christ, No!” cries Mary, her eyes popping out. “Don’t give me anymore of that Holy Ghost shit! I can see your resurrection from here!”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent…Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to enter inward. Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward the center of your being, which is just below your navel, inside – two inches below, exactly – with an urgency, as if this is the last moment of your life. Only those people who had this urgency, this intensity have ever reached to their center.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you come closer to your inner center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain with all its coolness. And inside you, a great peace arises, a peace that passeth understanding.A little closer – and you feel so blessed.A little closer, and you are getting drunk with the divine. Just one step and you are at the center of your being, utterly ecstatic.As you get centered, you are no more, just a pure isness. This isness we have symbolically called the buddha. This is your original being.Centered, silent, no longer your old being – utterly naked, just a pillar of light… You are the buddha.Everybody is born with a hidden buddha in him.The word buddha means the awakened one. It is everybody’s eternal birthright.The buddha has only one quality: watching, witnessing.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.And finally, witness that you are only a witness – just a mirror reflecting everything.At this moment you are the most fortunate people on the earth. Everybody is concerned with trivia; you are entering the essential and the eternal.You can feel a tremendous reverence for existence, a great joy in the sacredness of everything. The whole universe becomes your home; you are not an outsider.To make your witnessing deeper, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But go on remembering that you are only a witness.As your witnessing deepens, you start melting into an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas disappear into one consciousness, into one ocean of consciousness.Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has turned into an ocean of consciousness without any waves and without any ripples – utterly silent and quiet.This is your real space, this is your no-mind. From this no-mind you can enter the cosmos. This is the door, the opening. Collect the peace, the silence, the blissfulness, the ecstasy, the divine drunkenness, before Nivedano calls you back.And also persuade the buddha to come behind you – he is your dhamma. He is your nature; you have just never requested him. And he has been waiting and waiting, hidden deep inside you. A sincere request, a welcoming heart, and he is bound to come behind you.This is the first step of enlightenment: Gautam Buddha behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is miraculous, the shadow is not dark; the shadow is pure light, pure presence. You can feel the warmth of it, you can almost feel the touch of it. It surrounds you with a new fragrance, and it gives you a totally new dimension to live.Your everyday acts start changing their color, their approach. Your very life becomes meditative.At the second stage, the buddha comes in front of you, and you become the shadow. To be a shadow of the buddha is a beautiful experience. And the experience goes on becoming deeper and deeper as the shadow disappears.At the third and final stage, there is no more of you – not even a shadow, only the buddha is.This isness is the master key to open all the doors of the mysterious existence that surrounds you. Once you have the key, you are the master of your own being. There is nobody above you, there is nobody below you. For the first time you experience a tremendous communion with the whole existence.I call this the only authentic spirituality, the only authentic religiousness.Now don’t forget to request the buddha to come behind you…Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back… But come as a buddha, with great grace, peace, silence.Sit down for a few moments, just to remember the golden path that you have traveled, the center that you have found within you, the opening into the cosmos, and all those fragrances from the beyond; the silence showering on you, and the warmth of the buddha who has come behind you. You can feel him. It is your very nature. It is you in your truthfulness, in your existential experience.If the first step is complete, the second will follow automatically. When the second is complete, the third will follow automatically.The day you will complete the third step will be the most fortunate day in your life. That day you will be awakened from a long, long sleep, a spiritual sleep. That day you will become enlightened. Then there is no more birth, no more death. You have become one with the whole.This is the only holiness I know of. There is no other.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One time, when Daiten came to Sekito, the master asked him, “Are you a Zen monk or an ordinary monk?”Daiten replied, “I’m a Zen monk.”Sekito asked, “What is Zen?”Daiten replied, “It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”Sekito said, “Excluding raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, bring your original face and show it to me.”Daiten said, “Please Osho, exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, and look at me.”Sekito said, “I have excluded them.”Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”Sekito said, “What is the no-mind you have given to me?”Daiten said, “Not different from you, Osho.”Sekito said, “No concern about you.”Daiten said, “Really, there is not a no-mind nature.”Sekito said, “Is there not a thing with you also?”Daiten said, “If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”Sekito said, “The real thing cannot be obtained. So, that is what you understand. Retain it firmly and keep it.”Daiten then left Sekito and retired to Mount Reian in southern China, where many disciples would later gather around him.Friends, I have been saying for years that it is time that the politicians should be watched, and they should be looked after by psychiatrists, psychoanalysts.Since nuclear weapons have come into existence, the politicians have become immensely powerful. Power certainly corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It not only corrupts, it gives you megalomania. And every politician is a split personality; he has to be. He says one thing, he does another. He always has a mask to show to the people, and his real face is always hidden. The longer he remains in power, the more possibility of his going neurotic, schizophrenic.It was okay in the past because the politicians could not do much harm, but today it is absolutely different. A single politician who is mentally, psychologically sick can destroy the whole beautiful planet.I have been waiting for psychoanalysts and psychiatrists themselves to declare this situation, and the declaration has come today.Two psychiatrists, very famous, known worldwide, Dr. Jablow Hershman and Dr. Julian Lieb, wrote in the Washington Post recently that there should be a shrink in the White House. At present there is an official physician for the president, but no psychiatrist. They said, “In this nuclear age, when the president of the US can start a nuclear war, one has to make sure that he is mentally stable, and not subject to euphoria, manic depression, or suicidal tendencies.”They cited several examples:President Nixon, before he resigned, had been miserable for months – avoiding people, taking long walks alone. He refused to talk about how he felt, and had drawn away from his family. He was not sleeping enough, and once could not sleep for four nights in a row. He was drinking too much, sometimes before lunch. He had become unpredictable: one minute close to tears, the next furious over some bit of nonsense, and an hour later on top of the world. Sometimes he seemed out of focus. He rambled or gave orders that were ridiculous. One night he walked the halls of the White House talking to the portraits on the walls. He hinted of suicide.Such episodes are usually kept under wraps, but we have begun to realize how widespread the phenomenon is – from the periodic inertia of Ronald Reagan, to the latest revelations about Lyndon Johnson, to the details of incapacitating conditions suffered by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.It would be a good sign if every president, not only the American president, but every prime minister – whoever has the power to destroy this world – had a personal psychiatrist looking after him. But that is not enough. Man is body – the personal physician can look after it. Man is mind – the psychiatrist can look after it. But man is something more too. So what these two psychiatrists, Hershman and Lieb, are suggesting is an incomplete cure.Every president, every prime minister, every king around the world, should also have a master of meditation. Only then can we be safe, and this planet can be safe.Psychiatry can only help to keep the mind normal, at the most, but its limit is the mind. But man’s existence is far bigger, it is beyond the mind. That beyond has to be understood also, and only that beyond can create the right sanity. That beyond can make you peaceful and silent, creative, celebrating. Once you know something of the beyond, you are no longer suicidal, and you are no longer murderous.Nuclear weapons will disappear from the world if we can make the politicians understand the absolute necessity of it. Just as they are not feeling embarrassed by having a personal physician, they should not be embarrassed by having a personal psychiatrist, and they should not be embarrassed by having a personal master of meditation. These have become absolute necessities.If we want the world to survive, the politicians have to be kept under control by intelligent people, by people who know the secrets of life, of eternity; the people who can impart that energy, that understanding, that experience of the innermost being. This is the only possibility, otherwise there is no hope for humanity, and no hope for life – no hope for Gautam Buddhas, people rising to the highest peak of consciousness, to the deepest depth of consciousness.And this planet is special. It is a very small planet, but it is absolutely unique because it has life, consciousness and the opportunity for evolving into Gautam Buddhas. It should be saved at any cost. We cannot afford a global suicide.I thank Dr. Hershman and Dr. Lieb for their suggestions, but I would like them to know that their suggestions are incomplete. More psychiatrists go mad than any other profession – four times more. More psychiatrists commit suicide than any other profession. More psychiatrists are vulnerable to all kinds of mind sicknesses because the psychiatrist is not a meditator. This is our whole inner poverty.The psychiatrist knows about the mind, but mind is not in itself the eternal source of life. It can slip at any moment into neurosis. At any moment it can become megalomania. A little power…I am also worried about the psychiatrists who will be looking after the presidents and the prime ministers. They themselves may turn out to be megalomaniacs because they now have great power!So their suggestion is good, but it has to be supported by a master of meditation who can look after the president or prime minister, and also can look after the psychiatrist. Do you understand what I mean?It is absolutely urgent because we don’t have much time before somebody goes crazy. Any moment the destruction of the earth is imminent.The questions from sannyasins.The first question:Osho,I heard you say existence is nonjudgmental, but our minds are full of judgments.Where do they come from? Are they also related to the idea of God?Existence is nonjudgmental.It is one of the greatest contributions of Zen to humanity that you need not be a saint to be awakened. You can be awakened from any angle, from any dimension of life.It is almost like somebody is dreaming that he is murdering someone, and somebody else is dreaming a very sweet dream that he is serving the poor people. Somebody is dreaming that he is very virtuous, a saint, and somebody is dreaming that he is a murderer, the worst kind of criminal.Do you think the saintly dreamer will wake up sooner, and the sinner and the criminal will take a little longer time to wake up? They will all wake up exactly at the same time, by the same method. Just throw a bucket full of ice-cold water and they will jump out of their beds. It does not matter whether they were dreaming of sin or they were dreaming of virtue.Zen’s understanding is – and I absolutely support it, it is my own experience – that you can wake up wherever you are, whatever you are doing; your actions, your personality, your character, don’t count at all. This is a tremendous declaration because all religions have been telling you, “First you have to become a saint, only then can you enter the paradise of God.”Zen gives you a tremendous equality. It does not matter what you are doing, it does not matter how you are behaving, it does not matter what is your personality – polished, crude, uncultured… You can wake up by the same method – meditation – directly, without changing anything in your character, in your actions.Existence in this way is nonjudgmental. It gives life to the sinner, it gives life to the saint, without any discrimination. It gives love, showers silence over all, without any discrimination.Your question is, where do these judgments come from? Fundamentally, originally, they come from the fiction of God. But a fiction cannot do anything, the fiction has to hire living people. They come from your priesthood, from your popes, your shankaracharyas, your imams, your Ayatolla Khomeniacs.Just now, a Mohammedan has written a book about the holy Koran. It has been banned by Rajiv Gandhi – and he has not read it – because the Mohammedan pressure in India is of immense importance. They vote in a solid block and they are second to Hindus – they create fear. They asked that the book should be banned. It is being banned in many countries which are Mohammedan.Ayatolla Khomeini came on the radio in Iran and declared that wherever this man is, he has to be immediately killed, murdered – not only the person who has written the book, but the person who has published it, and the person who has printed it, and the person who has the sole agency to sell it. All four have to be butchered wherever they are. And it is the duty of every Mohammedan to finish them off as quickly as possible and burn all the copies of the book. Not a single copy should remain anywhere in existence. And that man has done an immense job of analysis.This you call a world which is democratic? This you call a world where there is freedom of speech?These priests are the source, the immediate source. In the name of God they have made your minds judgmental. Without understanding anything, you are carrying judgments in your mind.The moment you see something, a judgment immediately arises. You don’t have to make the judgment, it has become almost automatic. You see a rose and suddenly you watch a judgment arising: “This is beautiful.” But the moment you say, “This is beautiful,” the judgment is hiding the rose. The judgment is coming from past experiences of roses. But this is a new rose, you have never met it before, it has never before been on the earth. For the first and last time it has come into expression. You may have seen roses, but this one is not the same. All your judgments about other roses are figments of your memory.The robotlike arises in you: “This is beautiful” – not that you have understood its beauty, not that you are existentially in direct contact with its beauty, not that your eyes are absolutely pure and rejoicing the beauty of the rose. The judgment comes and you destroy the rose. The judgment stands between you and the rose, and you are lost in past memories of roses that you have seen before. But this is not one that you have ever come across.Any judgment is past oriented, and existence is always herenow, life is always herenow. All judgments are coming from your past experiences, your education, your religion, your parents – who may be dead, but their judgments are being carried by your mind and they will be given as a heritage to your children. Generation after generation, every disease is being transferred as a heritage.Only a nonjudgmental mind has intelligence because it is spontaneously responding to reality.I want you to drop God; I want you to drop your scriptures. I want you to drop your parents. I want you to drop everything that has been given to you with all good intentions – that does not matter. Those good intentions don’t have any weight but they have made you judgmental.So immediately, without knowing, without understanding, without experiencing, you come to a judgment. The judgments come immediately, so quickly that if you are not alert enough you are not going to be able to get rid of them. They are just waiting there in your mind, in the storage of your memory. The moment you see something, the moment you hear something, immediately comes the judgment: “It is right, it is wrong. It is according to my mind, hence I agree with it.”But if you are agreeing according to your mind you are not agreeing, you are simply getting your mind to become stronger.The function of the master is a very delicate one. He has to take away all your mind, slowly, slowly so that a certain pure space exists in your mind. Only then have you the eyes to see, and the ears to hear. Then everything goes deep, without any obstacles, to your very center of being.Everything in existence is nourishing. Everything in existence has its own purpose, is fulfilling its own job. That which you deny according to your borrowed knowledge is needed by existence, otherwise it would not have been there. Anything that is happening anywhere must have some support from existence, otherwise it will simply drop dead.Life needs variety. Just think of a world where everybody is a saint – it will be the worst world, the most boring. And the boredom will become so heavy that it will create only one desire: how to finish yourself because you cannot finish all the saints. Only you can commit suicide to get out of that boredom. If all the people were of the same size and had the same faces… Howsoever beautiful the faces, howsoever beautiful the personalities, if they were all the same, carbon copies of carbon copies, you would be utterly bored. Knowing one woman, you would know all women, finished – there is no opportunity to have another experience. Knowing one man, you would have known all men.And that is not right because every man is different and every woman is different. Every rose is different from other roses, every flower is different from other flowers.Just now, as I was getting ready to come here, taking my bath, the cuckoos in my garden were really going cuckoo! But I wondered that every cuckoo has its own song to sing. I could make out clearly how many cuckoos there were. Their songs were different, their sounds were different.Existence takes care of variety.Sinners are also needed in this world – they make life more cheerful. Saints are also needed as an example that you should not follow them. They are as dead as dodos. They are good examples to avoid. Sinners are nice people. I have never seen a sinner sad and I have never seen a saint joyful. It is strange; if religions were true, it should have been otherwise. But religions are not true.Sinners have a quality of innocence which saints don’t have. They are very calculating, very cunning. What they are doing in their saintliness is just purchasing some good land, some good house, some bank account in the other world. They are so greedy that they are not satisfied with this beautiful planet and this beautiful dance of life. Sinners are not greedy people, they rejoice in small things – a beautiful woman, delicious food, just a little drink; and they are so happy to dance and sing and celebrate. These are the real salt of the earth. They are needed. And saints are needed so that you can avoid them.But remember, everything in this world has its own place and has its own dignity, and by your judgment you are destroying the dignity of someone, you are interfering in somebody’s territory.A man who is full of judgment becomes ugly, become unbearable. A man without judgment is always welcomed by everyone because he will never interfere in your territory, he will never trespass your spirituality and your dignity.All your judgments are coming from the priesthood in the name of God. God cannot do it by himself because he is a lie; he does not exist, he has never existed. But priests go on supporting the lie, it is their very profession. If God is completely exposed, then the priests have no way to continue their exploitation of humanity. They are selling God to almost the whole of humanity – a God which does not exist.I have heard about a shop in New York which was advertising: “We have manufactured invisible hairpins.” Certainly there were queues of women. Invisible hairpins? No woman can resist the temptation.One woman looked into the box when she got it – of course you cannot see invisible pins – seeing the box empty, she asked the salesman, “Are you sure that there are invisible hairpins inside?”He said, “To be frank with you, we ran out of invisible hairpins almost two weeks ago, but the empty boxes are selling. But the truth is, there are no invisible pins, and only empty boxes were selling from the very beginning.”You can sell invisible pins to people… God is the most invisible thing in the world. Perhaps some day we may invent invisible pins, but God cannot be manufactured. And a God manufactured by us will not be much of a God. We would like to change the model every year, and those who are super-rich would like to change every six months.Because God is nowhere to be found, the priests can go on thriving on the business. They know perfectly well – they are the only people who know – that God does not exist. But they cannot say it because what would happen to their whole profession? A millions-of-years-old profession, supporting millions of priests around the world – and they are the highest people everywhere. They don’t want to lose it, they don’t want to miss their whole business.So they go on creating more commandments, more judgments, they go on creating more theological fictions and they go on feeding your mind. Their whole purpose is that your mind should be full of all kinds of rubbish, so you cannot have any space to be intelligent – because if you can have an empty mind, no-mind is not far away. The empty mind becomes the door to no-mind. When the empty mind becomes a stepping-stone to no-mind, it creates no problems, no obstacles.So your mind has to be filled with the holy Koran, with the Holy Bible, with the holy Gita, and there are thousands of scriptures. You can choose whatever kind of rubbish you want – it comes in all sizes and all shapes. There is immense choice. There are three hundred religions on the earth. You can’t imagine a new religion, they have exhausted all possibilities. Three hundred religions about one God – you can choose. You are free to choose but you are not free not to choose.And that’s what I am teaching you: don’t choose.Explore, discover, don’t decide before you have realized. And realization, liberation, freedom, will give you an insight into everything. You will feel compassionate and loving to the whole life that surrounds you, nonjudgmental.I have told you the story of a Zen master…A thief entered his house without knowing that it was a Zen master’s house – it contained nothing. The Zen master felt very embarrassed. The night was cold and he had only one blanket that he used in the day to cover his body, and in the night to cover his body to go asleep. That was all that he had, and the whole house was empty.He felt so compassionate toward the thief that when the thief was leaving, he threw the blanket on his shoulders and told him: “Please accept it. You came without informing me. If you had just informed me at least three days before, I would have gathered something for you. I feel for the first time really poor. I cannot give you anything; this house is empty.”And the thief was very much afraid of this man. He was standing naked in the cold winter night and he had given his only possession, the blanket. But the man was strange, he was saying to him, “You should first inform me and then you can come. But give me a little time so I can beg from people and keep something for you. This is not right for you to come so suddenly without any information.”The man certainly was strange. The thief had come across hundreds of people – everybody was angry, everybody was handing him over to the police. He had suffered in jails so many times. Everybody was abusive, everybody was insulting. Out of jail, life was difficult. Nobody was ready to give him a job, so finally, he had to commit another crime just to go to jail because that had become his home. At least he had food, shelter, clothes.This man was strange. The thief became afraid of him – he rushed out of the door. And the Zen monk shouted, “Stop! That’s not right, come back. First give me a ‘Thank you’ so that you don’t feel guilty that you have stolen anything – I have given it to you.“And then close the door. You have opened the door, at least this is your responsibility to close the door. I am naked, the door is open. The cold wind is blowing and you don’t have any compassion.”So he gave him a “Thank you,” and while he was leaving and closing the door, the saint said, “Perhaps someday this ‘Thank you’ will save you, this closing the door will be of much help to you.”The thief could not understand what help it could be. But that night, looking through the window to the full moon in the sky, the Zen master wrote a small haiku which said:I am so poor.I would have lovedto give this moon to that thief,but I don’t possess it.Two years afterward the thief was caught again in a very dangerous case – perhaps he would get a lifelong imprisonment.The judge asked him, “Can you bring anybody as a witness that you are not a criminal? We don’t have any evidence, we have only circumstantial evidence that you have committed a crime. If you can produce a man of dignity to support you, that you are a man who is not capable of doing such a crime…”He remembered the Zen master because that was the only person who could support him. He told the judge the name of the Zen master.The judge said, “You are referring to a Zen master – I know him. If he says you are not a criminal, the case is finished.”The Zen master came and he said, “The man that you are saying is a criminal is so nice. When I gave him a blanket, he thanked me and when I told him to close the door, he closed the door. He is so obedient, such a nice person. The blanket was not much, it had holes, it was old, but he received it as if I was giving him an empire. He was so grateful – just leave him.”The case was dropped; the Zen master was well-known, even to the emperor.The thief followed the Zen monk, and the Zen monk asked him, “Where are you going?”The thief said, “I am not going anywhere, I am coming with you. I have found a man who has no judgments and who has returned my dignity to me. For the first time I feel I am a human being and there is someone who loves me, there is someone who feels for me, and there is someone who has compassion even for a man who has never done anything good.”The Zen master said, “Don’t judge yourself.”This is the trouble. People judge others and they judge themselves too. When they judge themselves they feel guilty; when they judge others they take people’s dignity and honor. This judgmental mind is a double-edged sword, it cuts both ways. It cuts you, it cuts others. It has destroyed the whole of humanity.Drop this judgmental mind, and with this judgmental mind you will drop all your religions, all your moralities. You will become an innocent child, rejoicing in everybody and his uniqueness.The second question:Osho,It seems that many of us are still plagued with guilt, even though we have been in your surgery a long time. No matter what it is, we feel guilty if we do, guilty if we don't – a no-win situation. And the deeper it is, the more subtle and elusive it seems to be.Will we ever be freed from this insidious emotional blackmail? Is this the surgery you have been doing in these discourses on God?What do you think? By killing God I am killing your guilt. I have no concern with God because he does not exist. But I have to be very discreet not to kill your guilt directly, because you will stand in defense. So I kill the Gods – that is my indirect way to kill your guilt. Otherwise I have no concern with God. Without God you cannot be guilty, and that is certainly my concern.I am operating on God – that is an indirect way of operating on you. It is a very strange kind of surgery, in which God is to be cut into pieces so that your clinging to God disappears and your clinging to God’s commandments disappears. When there is no God, suddenly you will drop all morality, and all so-called duties, virtues. Suddenly you will become a pagan.I love the pagan. I want the world back in the hands of the pagans. All the religions have destroyed the pagans because they were people without any judgment, without any God, without any morality – just simple, innocent, flowing with nature, in a deep let-go. So whatever was spontaneous they were doing, whatever was coming from their nature they were following. There was no question of guilt, there was no situation like a no-win situation.The pagan was always victorious. Whatever he was doing or not doing, he had his dignity, his honor. I want you to be pagans, that is the first step to being a buddha. I have chosen Zorba as an example of a pagan, and that is the very foundation. On that foundation you can make a shrine for the buddha. But without the foundation, the buddha is hanging in the air like a balloon. You can worship it, but you cannot be nourished by it unless your roots are deep into the earth. Your branches cannot grow into the sky, you cannot touch the stars without deep roots in the earth. First you have to be very earthly, earthbound, only then will you start growing toward the stars.Without roots in the earth you become simply a star gazer, you don’t grow toward the stars. You simply look at the buddha, you worship, you pray. But neither worship is going to help nor is prayer going to help. What is going to help is a real foundation; and that real foundation is to be without God, to be without scriptures, to be without discipline, to be without any commandments. Be a free man, don’t be a spiritually enslaved person.Once you have attained freedom from all these fictions, mythologies, you will feel so great, so fresh, so young, and so alive, that the dance will come by itself; so abundantly rich in your innermost being because your innermost being is the place from where you are joined with the cosmos. Your roots in the cosmos grow from your innermost center. Once you have accepted existence as it is, you have accepted yourself also as you are.If you want to improve on existence, on other people, you cannot be at ease with yourself. Your own judgments will kill you. You have never thought about it: whenever you are judging somebody, you are judging yourself also. If you condemn somebody as a thief, you are condemning yourself also. You may have done many kinds of stealing – you may have stolen thoughts from other people, you may have stolen hypotheses from other people.It is not only money, anything that you take from others without being grateful to the person, without his knowledge, is stealing. Money is the most ordinary thing in the world, there are far higher values. When you imitate, you are stealing. If you imitate Jesus, if you imitate Buddha, what are you doing? – you are stealing their personalities. You are a thief of the worst kind and you cannot feel at ease.I have never judged in my life. I have loved all kinds of people; just their uniqueness makes them more lovable. And because I have loved all kinds of people without discrimination, I have no way of feeling guilt, I have no way of rejecting myself. I have loved myself immensely.These two go together: if you judge others you will feel guilty, and you will also be continuously judging yourself – whether it is right or wrong. Both have to be dropped together because they are two sides of the same phenomenon. And it is so easy. Don’t ask me how long it will take – that is a cunning way of postponing. It does not take time, it needs understanding. And that understanding is possible now, this very moment. You drop all your judgments – you drop all your guilt. They go together down the drain.Then you will live like a healthy animal, and out of your health and out of your healthy animal will arise the greatest experience possible. As you become natural you are coming closer to the experience of the buddha.Only Zorbas can be buddhas. Gautam Buddha himself was a Zorba. Buddhists don’t understand it. For twenty-nine years of his life – the first part of his life – he had as many beautiful women as any man in the whole of history. He had all kinds of comforts and luxuries that were available in those days. He lived in so much luxury, so much drinking, dancing, singing – that was his whole life for twenty-nine years. What does not usually happen to you even by the time you are eighty years, happened to him by the age of twenty-nine.He became fed up – everything was repetition. Because he was surrounded with so many women, he became fed up with women. You don’t become fed up because of your wife. Your wife is a protection, she does not allow you to look this way or that way, she keeps you looking straight forward, looking ahead – four feet ahead, not above! And you don’t want to create unnecessary trouble for yourself, so you have to follow. And because she is imposing certain moralities on you, she has to follow those moralities herself; otherwise she will not be able to impose them.It is a very complex system. The husband becomes the prison to the wife, the wife becomes the prison to the husband. Both are slaves and both are masters; both are prisoners and both are jailers – and both want to get rid of the other! But both have values – that marriages are made in heaven, and what God has put together you should not put asunder.Now, no marriage I have seen happens in heaven. God himself does not have a wife and he has escaped far away from women – perhaps millions of light-years away… There is no possibility of finding any woman. But the desire is there, so he comes once in a while to create a Jesus Christ. Once in a while, he has to be forgiven… The poor fellow is living with a Holy Ghost. I have been trying to find whether this Holy Ghost is a man or a woman; perhaps he is capable of functioning in both ways!I have heard a story…When Henry Ford died… He was a perfectionist and a great man, one of the greatest, richest people. He came from a poor family and all that he created was by his own effort, with his own intelligence.So when he met God in heaven, God asked Henry Ford – because he was the right person to ask – “What do you think of my creation? You are a perfectionist, I know. You have created the best cars and you went on improving and improving and improving. What do you think of my creation?”He said, “Your creation needs tremendous improvement.”God said, “For example?”He said, “For example you have put the pleasure center of men and women in the wrong place. The woman’s pleasure center is between two exhaust pipes!”He was a manufacturer of cars, and he seems to have been right: “What kind of dirty fellow are you? The pleasure center is at the dirtiest place. Could you not put it somewhere else? In the hands…?” And I think his criticism is right. God was just shocked – he used to think that Henry Ford was a Christian!But when you force judgment on people, these people are going to force judgment on God if by chance they meet him.The judgmental mind is going to judge everybody, it is going to judge the person himself. Everything becomes miserable, everything seems to be wrong, everything seems to be negative. He always goes on counting the thorns in a rosebush and never looks at the flower. There is no time to look at the flower, counting the thorns takes his whole life. He always looks at the dark side of things. If you ask him, he will say, “It is a miserable world. Between two nights there is only one day!”His whole perception is to condemn and he feels good in condemning. But he does not know that when he is condemning others he is also condemning himself. Deep down he will feel guilty.Don’t postpone. Don’t ask me how long it is going to take – it depends on you. If you are miserable and feeling caught in a no-win situation, then why carry it? If I could drop it, why can you not? I am not a messiah, or a prophet, or an incarnation of God. I don’t have any miracle powers with me, I am just as human as you are. If I could do it, who is preventing you?Perhaps you have started enjoying your misery. Perhaps you have become habituated and it seems that if you drop your misery you will be empty. Yes, you will be empty, but just in the interim period which is very small. For a moment you will feel all is lost, but soon you will see your emptiness starts becoming filled with a totally new energy that you have been repressing by your judgments, and guilt, and morality, and religion, and God.Suddenly you will feel from your own very sources new, fresh waters of life are rising like fountains. Soon you will find yourself filled with tremendous contentment, filled with light, joy, blissfulness – not only filled but overflowing. Such an abundance is possible, but you have to take the risk of being empty. And it is not much because what you are losing is only misery, guilt, sadness, suffering, hellfire; what you are dropping is not worth keeping.Once you are clean, you are ready for existence to assert itself with all its grace and beauty, with all its wisdom and enlightenment. But for a moment you will have to be empty. Before the new enters, the old has to go. Before the truth enters, the false has to leave.You have certainly been blackmailed. The whole of humanity has been blackmailed, and the blackmailing continues. It starts from the very childhood and it goes on even when you are going to your grave and the priest is giving a sermon. From birth to death the priest is blackmailing you in the name of God, in the name of great things. The politician is blackmailing you in the name of nationalism, patriotism. Your own parents are blackmailing you in the name of obedience and respect for the elders.Once I participated in an all-India seminar of professors, arranged by the federal government under the auspices of the education ministry. All the professors were discussing only one thing – one professor after another, another, another, another – that the problem was that students don’t have any respect, and something had to be done about it. It seemed everybody was in absolute agreement.When it came for me to speak, I said, “All these people are talking nonsense.”The education minister was shocked, and all the professors who had fallen asleep woke up. I said, “It is not that students are not respecting, the problem is that the professors are not worthy of respect. You are taking the whole problem from the wrong side; that’s why you cannot solve it.“And I am saying it from my own experience. I have been a professor for nine years and nobody has been disrespectful to me. Because I respect my students, how can they disrespect me? I respect them, I love them, I give them freedom. I tell them: ‘If you want to leave the class, you can leave silently without disturbing anybody. Don’t ask me; you don’t need to. Whenever you want to come into class, you can come. Don’t ask me because your asking me disturbs me and disturbs the class.’”When I first entered the university, I could not believe my eyes: the girls were sitting on one side, the boys were sitting on the other side, and in between there was a big gap. I said, “What is the matter? To whom am I going to talk? To this gap? And I don’t have the kind of eyes that go this way…“So if you want me to teach, you have all to bring your desks into the middle and be together because I hate to see you throwing letters – it is ugly. Why not sit beside the girl and enjoy the warmth and share your love? You are old enough – you don’t need any control. I don’t think you are cannibals and that you will eat the girl or do something… So get mixed immediately!”They looked at each other thinking, “This is a very strange situation. Every professor functions like a constable, keeping us apart, and this fellow seems to be strange…”I said, “Be quick, otherwise I will leave the class and I will never come again!”Unwillingly they had to pull their desks together. With great embarrassment they went to the girls who they had been throwing stones at, whose bicycles they had been puncturing. The girls were very much… And I said, “Be close to each other. Why are you shrinking to this side and the girl is shrinking to that side? That gap between you has to be filled. Be together!”They reported to the vice-chancellor: “What are we supposed to do? Another professor comes and he asks, ‘What is happening? Put your desks apart! Who has done this?’ And we are continually carrying the desks from side to side.”So the vice-chancellor called me and he said, “This is not right on your part.”I said, “Have you ever been young?”He said, “Yes.”I said, “Then be frank. Have you ever loved a girl when you were a student?”He looked all around to see that nobody was listening. I said, “There is nobody. Only I am here, and you can be truthful.”He said, “Yes.”I asked him, “Have you ever punctured their bicycles, thrown stones?”He said, “Yes.”I said, “Then you understand everything. You are creating an unnatural situation. Now my students will not puncture anybody’s cycle, they will not throw stones – they don’t have to. And this is absolutely natural. They are sexually mature – they became mature long ago when they were fourteen and thirteen. Now they are twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-five. You have been torturing them for ten years continuously, blackmailing them against biology, against existence, against nature. This is the time they should have as many experiences as possible before they choose a woman or a husband.”You go shopping… Even for small things you go to many shops to check the price, to see the product. You are going to live with a woman or a man your whole life and you have not been shopping…? First go shopping. Just go around and have as many experiences as possible. If you are intelligent, all these experiences will make you richer. Then you will be capable of finding a woman or a man with whom you can be in deep love and friendship.There is no need for divorce. There will be few divorces if we give children enough experience. Then they will know that there are slight differences between man and man, woman and woman. And they will also come to know with what kind of woman, with what kind of man they feel the most at ease, at home. You don’t give them any opportunity. This is sheer blackmail.Your parents are responsible, your God is responsible, your priests are responsible, your teachers are responsible – your whole society is responsible. But ultimately you are responsible. Why are you living in this prison when the doors are open? Get out! And don’t ask me how long it will take. It depends on you whether you run out of the prison, or walk in such a way that you will be caught again and put back into your cell.A small child was late to school one rainy day, and his teacher asked him, “Johnny, you are always late. Again you are late?”He said, “What can I do? It was so slippery that I would put one foot forward and I would slip two steps backward.”The teacher said, “If you are right, then how did you manage to get here? One step ahead, two steps backward… You could never have got here.”He said, “You don’t understand. I started walking toward my house! Finally, I got to school.”So it all depends on you – it is a very slippery way. If you really want, this moment it can happen. But if you postpone, then perhaps never. Now or never.The sutra:One time, when Daiten came to Sekito, the master asked him, “Are you a Zen monk or an ordinary monk?”Daiten replied, “I am a Zen monk.”Sekito asked, “What is Zen?”Daiten replied, “It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”There is a certain ancient method coming from Taoism to Zen – it can give you a very empty mind. If you just close your eyes and move your eyeballs, soon you will see you are getting dizzy, just as the whirling Dervishes in Sufism get dizzy by whirling. But when the Sufi Dervish gets dizzy, he starts feeling the center of the cyclone. His whole body is moving, but there is something at the very center which is unmoving – that is his very being.For Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi it took thirty-six hours of continuous whirling. He went on and went on and went on. And that is the whole secret of it – you should not stop because you are feeling tired, you should go on and on till you fall. Not that you have to manage to fall, you just go on whirling. A time is bound to come when you cannot manage not to fall. You will fall down almost dead. I say almost – the whole body is utterly tired. But there you can see the difference: the whole body is so tired and so dead, it wants to go back to the earth just to rest. You will see inside you there is still a center full of light, full of energy, not tired at all. Contrast is needed to see that center.Zen has a far simpler method. There is no need to stand and whirl. You just sit down and roll your eyes, your eyeballs, faster and faster, and soon you will see your whole head is whirling. A moment comes when this very whirling of the head inside gives you the passage which leads to your very center below your navel.In Zen they call it the hara – it is your very life source. You must have heard that in Japan, suicide is called hara-kiri. If you push a knife in just two inches below your navel, it will hit the hara center which is your life source. So without a single drop of blood, the person dies because he has hit the life center and opened the door for life to fly out into existence. They have found the best method to commit suicide. But how did they find it? They found it through meditation. The same center is your birth, and the same center is your death.So when you are whirling your head, you will find a passage which is not touched at all by your whirling – either by whirling the body, or just by moving your eyeballs. Both do the same function – you reach your life center.Perhaps this Zen monk had been using that method for meditation. So he said,“It is raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs.”Sekito said, “Excluding raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs, bring your original face and show it to me.”Neither eyebrows nor eyeballs contain your original face, the buddha, the awakened one. So leave them aside, these are unnecessary things, nonessential: “…bring your original face to me.”Daiten said, “Please Osho, exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs and look at me.”Daiten was certainly very close to enlightenment. He is saying to Sekito, “Please Osho – oh, great master – exclude raising eyebrows and moving eyeballs and look at me. This is my original face.”Sekito said, “I have excluded them.”Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”…If you have excluded the eyebrows and the eyeballs, I have given my original face to you.These dialogues are so valuable, so mysterious. But once you have got the knack of understanding them, they give you such tremendous keys to open the mysteries of life.Daiten said, “I have given it to you.”Sekito said, “What is the no-mind you have given to me?”Daiten said, “Not different from you, Osho.…It is the same: you have it; I have also got it. There is no need for any explanation, there is no need for any answer from you. It is the same: “Not different from you, Osho.”Sekito said, “No concern about you.”Daiten said, “Really, there is not a no-mind nature.”He is saying, “Once I have found my original face, I am no more. And when I am no more, my mind is no more, my no-mind is also no more. In fact, my individuality has melted into the cosmic whole. Don’t ask me personal questions, I am no longer a person, only a presence.”Sekito said, “Is there not a thing with you also?”…Are you sure that you don’t have anything left that needs to be dissolved?Daiten said, “If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”When you don’t have anything, you have the real thing, the very essence of existence, the very essence of life. When you lose yourself, you have found really yourself for the first time. This is the mystery of existence.By losing, you find. By dissolving, you arise. By disappearing, you find yourself becoming the whole – not disappearing but expanding to infinity.A great statement from Daiten:“If there is not a thing anymore, that is the real thing.”Sekito said, “The real thing cannot be obtained.”“The real thing cannot be obtained” means that the real thing is always there. So there is no question of achieving it, obtaining it, finding it, reaching it, realizing it. All these words are meaningless. It is already there; you have never lost it.“The real thing cannot be obtained. So that is what you understand. Retain it firmly and keep it.”Daiten then left Sekito and retired to Mount Reian in southern China, where many disciples would later gather around him.He became a master in his own right, not saying a single word when Sekito said, “If you understand this, then: retain it firmly and keep it.” He has given him the seal of enlightenment: “You understand it, you are very clear about it. I have tried to trap you into a question, but you always managed to get out of it. So now that you have got it, retain it, keep it.”Daiten did not say a single word. In deep silence, in deep gratitude – which is beyond words – he simply left and moved to a mountain in southern China: …where many disciples would later gather around him.You are life, eternal life. You are existence, infinite existence. You are pure no-mind. Just misguided, misdirected, you have forgotten yourself. All that is needed is, in the words of Gautam Buddha, “Sammasati – just remember yourself.” You don’t have to go anywhere, just a remembering of a forgotten language, a remembering what you already are. It is not a realization because you have never been otherwise.You don’t have to go to any Kaaba or to any Jerusalem or to any Kashi, you have just to remember, in a silent state, your authentic being. And suddenly, all that you thought was important becomes false. All that you thought – power, prestige, money, respectability – just disappear like dreams of no meaning at all. Suddenly, with an easy heart, you start living life in a totally new way, out of your spontaneity, out of your simplicity, out of your innocence.Then whatever you do is good; then whatever you do is beautiful. Then whatever you do is coming out of your ultimate purity which has never been contaminated. Then your grace is the same as that of Buddha, and your clarity is the same as all the buddhas. You are fully awake, the night is over, the dreams are finished, the sun is rising. And the inner sun only starts rising, it never sets again.Buson wrote:A flash of lightning!The sound of the dewdripping down the bamboos.These small pieces of a meditative mind: A flash of lightning! Visualize, you can see it: A flash of lightning! The sound of the dew dripping down the bamboos. Listen quietly and you will hear the sound of the dew dripping from the bamboos.A man of utter silence comes to know so many things which are happening around you, but you are so occupied. Have you ever heard the sound of dripping dew from the bamboos? You are so occupied, you are so full of thoughts, that these subtle experiences around you which have tremendous beauty just escape you, just pass by your side. But you are occupied, you don’t look at them. Your ears, your eyes, your mind – everything is full. There is no space for any new experience to enter you.Meditation makes you spacious, it cleanses all your senses. It makes your sensitivity so sharp that the smallest fragrance passing by your side, and you will immediately get it. Just a small sound, even the sound of silence, will be heard so loud and so clear.We are living in trivia and we are missing all that is great in existence. Only a man of no-mind, a man of enlightenment, knows what beauty is, what joy is, what ecstasy is. And the moment you know what ecstasy is, you know you don’t need any God, you don’t need any commandment, you don’t need any discipline. Everything comes out of your no-mind, fresh. You live for the first time in freedom without bondage.I define sannyas as living in freedom without bondage, living in freedom from every commandment, from every discipline, from every morality, from every religion.This life in freedom is the only authentic life there is. And this is eternal – no beginning no end.Maneesha’s question:Osho,In his book, Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley writes: “Religions that make no appeal to emotions have very few adherents.”Looking at how many Christians there are in the world as compared with those drawn to Zen, it would seem true.Are people attached to the idea of a God because it excites the emotions? That may include fear as well as love, but at least one feels something, and is for the time being taken out of oneself.No. Maneesha, Aldous Huxley is a great thinker, but he is not an awakened buddha. What he is saying is logically true, but not existentially true.“Religions that make no appeal to emotions have very few adherents,” but those are the only religions there are. The religions that attract people and appeal to their emotions are not religions, but mock religions, pseudo-religions, fake.Authentic religion goes beyond emotions, feelings, sentiments, thoughts – that is your whole mind. But inauthentic religions which are more interested in exploiting people than freeing them, making them slaves rather than awakened, are bound to appeal to your emotions. Obviously, these religions have many more followers than Zen. But these religions are not religions, that’s why so many people are attracted to them.When the masses are attracted to anything, you can be certain something is wrong because the masses consist of retarded people; their mental age is not more than ten. So there are traps for them. There are religions which conceive of God as a female, a beautiful woman. Suddenly you start feeling emotions arising – God must be the most beautiful woman in the whole existence; you become possessed with romance.That’s where the Sufis get stuck – they conceive of God as a beautiful woman. They are the lovers, and God is the beloved; they are male, and God is female. Now, they are simply transferring all their biology, moving it from ordinary women made of bones and flesh and blood and mucus – and perhaps false teeth, and false hair, and rubber breasts…!The scriptures don’t talk about rubber breasts, false teeth, plastic surgery, false hair, but when the scriptures were written, these things were not available. So they have talked only about the bones, and the flesh, and the blood, and the mucus. God must be a golden woman – no perspiration, no need for deodorants. God must be eternally young.This is transferring your biology to a fake idea, a fiction. But this is not religion. This is driving you mad because if you want to love, you have to understand that the real women exist here, not in heaven. And what is the problem?I have always wondered… The people who have written scriptures – and I have listened to great saints in this country – continuously talk about women as flesh, and bones, and blood, and nothing else. And I always wondered what they think about their own bodies? Are they made of gold? Or platinum? Not a single scripture talks about a man’s body, only a woman’s body.My understanding is that these people are still deep down hankering for women. To repress that hankering they go on condemning the woman. They are not condemning for you, they are condemning for themselves so that they can repress the desire for a woman.Now this is a transfer – that God becomes a woman. I will give you another case which will be simpler…Meera, one of the most famous Indian women saints, thinks of God as a man, a young man, Krishna. She is the beloved and he is the lover. She sleeps with a statue of Krishna in her bed.She got married – she belonged to a royal family so she got married to the prince of another royal family of Rajasthan. But the prince was utterly disgusted because she told him on the first night, “My husband is Krishna. Don’t touch my body, it will be sacrilegious. Only Krishna can make love to me, not you.”Certainly the prince was absolutely angry, and never went again into the room where Meera used to live, sing songs and dance in front of Krishna. Her whole idea about Krishna was that he was a real man in the sky, and it was only a question of a few years before she would meet him. But preparation was needed – she had to make a heart-to-heart contact.It is all repressed sexuality. The more she avoided a man, the more her love for Krishna grew, because sexual energy needs some expression in some way.She left the palace, started dancing in the streets and singing songs of Krishna. You have to just look into the songs and you will see how sex is dominant, predominant: “When you come I will be waiting for you in my bed. When are you coming? The night is beautiful, the night flowers have blossomed, all lovers have reached to their beloveds, and I am waiting alone – when are you coming?”These are subtle expressions of sexuality, sensuality. Her songs are very sensual. She had poured all her sensuality and all her sexuality into her songs, and Krishna became her hallucination. She dreamt of Krishna, she sang of Krishna, she danced with Krishna – she kept Krishna close to her heart.She was worshipped by people as a great saint, but those who understand a little bit of psychology would have suggested, “You need psychiatric treatment, you are simply sick.”These people have attracted many people, obviously. You already have your sexuality, so just a little turn… You already have your emotions and feelings, so just a little turn… It is all a mind game.So Catholics can number six hundred million people, but Zen is only for the chosen few, the very elite. Its appeal is not for the masses; its appeal is only for the very intelligent who can look beyond the mind where there is no feeling, no thought, no sentiment. You have simply gone beyond your body chemistry, biology, physiology. You have entered a space which can only be called no-mind.So, Maneesha, it is true that the religions that make no appeal to the emotions have very few adherents, but they are the only religions worth calling religions. And the religions which attract millions of people… You can see it – the lower and more pseudo the religion, the more people will be attracted to it. Now, what has the Catholic religion in it except fictions? Just take out those fictions and nothing remains. There is nothing essential.Biblical scholars are continuously pointing out that the miracles told about Jesus are not true. They never happened because no contemporary source even reports them. And the miracles were such that they could not have gone unreported. It is a very simple thing. A man just puts his hands on a blind man’s eyes and the blind man starts seeing; a man turns water into wine; a man makes dead people come back to life again… Do you think such a man will go unreported? And he was not a Christian, so you cannot say that because he was Christian, Jews have not reported him. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. Jesus never knew that he was a Christian.Christianity was born three hundred years after Jesus’ death. He never knew that people would know him as Christ. Christ is the Greek word for messiah; messiah is the Hebrew word.Christianity seems to be the lowest religion, hence it attracts the greatest mass. As religions go higher, less and less people are attracted, because less and less people can understand it.Intelligence is not widespread. How many people can understand the theory of relativity by Albert Einstein? When he was alive, it was a well-known fact that there were only twelve people around the world who could understand what he meant by relativity.Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers of this century, wrote a book on Albert Einstein. He called it The ABC of Relativity. And when he met Albert Einstein, Einstein asked, “Why have you written the ABC, why not the whole thing?”Russell said, “I only understand the very beginning. I can’t claim that I understand the whole implications of your theory. I have written the ABC because that’s what I understand. Some day somebody will write the XYZ – perhaps you can write it.”Only twelve persons around the world – does that make the theory of relativity wrong? And six hundred million Catholics “know” that Jesus is born of a virgin woman – only stupid people can believe that. That Jesus walks on water – only stupid people can believe that. All these fictions have been created to attract the masses.I have heard about an archbishop of England who was visiting Jerusalem. He had two old friends, both of whom were very learned rabbis. So he informed them, “I am coming and I want to see every place where Jesus has been.”Obviously he was interested to see the sea of Galilee where Jesus used to walk on water. The two rabbis took him in a boat to the place where he used to walk. The archbishop asked, “Can you also walk; you are great rabbis?”They said, “Of course.”He could not believe it. He said, “Then just give me a little example, just a few steps.”So one rabbi got down from the right side and went walking on the water – the archbishop could not believe it.Those two old rabbis said to him, “Can you do it? We don’t believe in Christ; you believe in Christ. If your faith is enough you can walk.”Now it was a question of faith. Faith was at stake. The archbishop was hesitating and trembling inside. But in front of these two rabbis, to be defeated would not be right. So he said, “Okay, I can. I have faith. If you people who don’t believe in Jesus Christ can walk, why cannot I?”And he went from the left side of the boat and immediately started drowning and shouting, “Save me! Help!”So the two rabbis pulled him back. They said, “What happened?”He said, “I don’t know, but I have faith.”“Your faith does not seem to be worth much,” those two rabbis said.Finally, the rabbi who had gone out said to the other rabbi, “Should we tell the boy the right thing?”The archbishop heard their whispering. He said, “What are you whispering?”They said, “The truth is, you got out from the wrong side. On this side, the right side, there are stones just below the water. The water is just covering them by one inch, not more than that. Jesus used to walk here, and every Jew can walk who knows these rocks. It is not faith, it is rocks!”Just take away all the miracles, and what remains of Jesus? Take away the virgin birth, what remains of Jesus? Take away his claim which is absolutely pathological: “I am the only begotten son of God,” what remains of Jesus? Just an ordinary carpenter’s son riding on a donkey – a laughingstock!So the Vatican has just now informed all the churches not to pay any attention to biblical scholars: “Because if you pay attention to them they will destroy your whole religion.” This is their whole religion.But Gautam Buddha has not done any miracles, so you cannot destroy Gautam Buddha so easily. He is not born out of a virgin, and he is not the only begotten son of God. No nonessential is there, so you cannot take away anything. But certainly he becomes more difficult for the masses to understand.His approach can be understood by the very intelligent people. So even in India… He was born in India, but his religion disappeared from India. The masses of India could not follow him. He did not give them what Maneesha calls “something.” He gave them nothing because nothing is the pure space.Something is bound to be something in the mind. Nothing is the beyond-mind.Gautam Buddha disappeared very quickly after his death. For two thousand five hundred years there has not been a single Buddhist in India. Even in the temple which the king Ashoka built as a memorial at the side of the bodhi tree where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the priest is a brahmin. There was no Buddhist even to be at the memorial to take care of the temple at the memorial.That brahmin does not believe in Buddha. He was paid and he is still being paid by Buddhists from outside India. He does not believe in Buddha, but he takes care. His family has been taking care of the temple for hundreds of years, generation after generation – just a caretaker. He does not believe in Buddha, he does not think that Buddha is the right person to belong to.But Buddhism spread in China and Japan, in Tibet and Sri Lanka, in Korea and Taiwan – it reached faraway places. In Mongolia, in Afghanistan, in a few states which now belong to the Soviet Union, Buddhist statues and temples have been discovered.It is so widespread, but the reason for its spread is that the Buddhists who went to these places started compromising. Buddha was a noncompromising man. No man of truth can be compromising – it does not matter. What matters is truth in its purity. But how many people are able to rise to that height, to that consciousness, to understand? Surely very few people.So all the Buddhists around the whole continent of Asia are not true Buddhists, they have compromised with their local religion, they are mixed. If Buddha comes back, he will simply deny all these Buddhists because they are doing something which he was against, absolutely against. And they are all doing all those things just as a compromise.Only Zen has not compromised – that’s why my respect for Zen. It has remained a very small thin stream of masters. It never became a mass religion – it cannot. The day it becomes a mass religion it will not be a religion anymore. My love for it, my respect for it, is because it is absolutely non-compromising, it is not interested in gathering crowds. It is interested only in the highest evolved human beings. That is my interest also. That’s why you cannot see masses coming to me.The day masses start coming to me, I will not come. I hate the unconscious masses. They have been the cause of killing people like Socrates, killing people like al-Hillaj Mansoor, killing people like Jesus. There is every possibility that Gautam Buddha too was killed by being given poison. They made many attempts to kill Mahavira.The masses are against the truth because truth is going to shatter all their lies. What Maneesha is calling “something” – that something is a lie, a consolation.No man who loves the truth is going to console you. He is going to destroy all your consolations. He is there to take away all your lies so you can rise to the ultimate peak of consciousness. But that peak comes to you when you are no more.When there is nothing inside you, then the whole existence simply starts showering on you flowers of peace, love, silence, ecstasy, a divine drunkenness.Aldous Huxley is not right because he does not understand the difference between an authentic religion and a fake religion. He is a man of rational and logical understanding, but not a man who can be called meditative. It is because of this he started taking LSD. He wrote a book called Heaven and Hell in which he preaches that LSD gives you real samadhi, real enlightenment.A chemical can give you enlightenment…? And after six hours, eight hours, twenty-four hours, enlightenment disappears and you are again your old fucking self!This is the right time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights!One night, the German Zen master, Stonehead Niskriya, decides that he wants to get a date…It is very difficult for Zen masters to get a date. He used to have a girlfriend…When I was telling you that I cannot see this way… [With crossed arms raised high, Osho indicates to both sides of the auditorium, simultaneously.] That girlfriend used to see this way! She always missed the Zen master Niskriya, so she never knew who he is. But even she escaped. So he went to Germany – you can see, here he could not find a single girl! So he went to Germany and picked up a punk girl. Even that punk girl has escaped! That’s why Niskriya is missing from his place. He has a fever.Somebody has to have some compassion on him. He was thinking to go to Goa – not for Goa, but just to find another punk. So this story comes right on time…One night, the German Zen master, Stonehead Niskriya, decides that he wants to get a date. But recently, he has had trouble getting any women to go out with him because they are afraid of his fierce appearance and his Zen stick.So Stonehead has an idea. He disguises himself in a big overcoat, a black hat and sunglasses.Then he goes into the Zorba restaurant and sits down next to Ma Papaya Pineapple. They begin to talk. Stonehead buys her a piece of pizza, and one thing leads to another, and finally Stonehead invites Papaya back to his room.Papaya thinks this guy looks a bit weird wearing sunglasses at night, but thinks to herself, “Ah! What the hell! My chakras are open this week!” And they go off together.When they get to his room, Stonehead turns off all the lights. “Well, Papaya,” he says, “I only like to do it in the dark. Is that okay with you?”“Sure,” says Papaya, and they begin to get undressed.Papaya is sitting on the edge of the bed in total darkness and Stonehead is standing next to her. When he bends over to take off his socks, Papaya reaches out in the dark and touches Stonehead’s shiny, bald head, hovering near her face.“Wow!” exclaims Papaya in shock. “You had better be careful with that thing!”An international team of eminent zoologists gathers in Africa to do research on the life cycle of the elephant in the wild. When a year is over, all the scientists publish their reports.The Englishman’s report is titled: The African Elephant at Tea Time.The American’s report is titled: Fast-food Cheeseburgers and the Modern African Elephant.The Italian report is titled: Fitting an Elephant into a Ferrari.The French report is titled: The Seventy-two Love Positions of the African Elephant.The Russian report is titled: How to Hide Your Elephant from the KGB.The German report is published in five volumes entitled: An Introduction to the African Elephant’s Left Testicle.And, finally, the Polish report is titled: Elephants? What Elephants?Young Father Fever is having problems again. So he goes for some fatherly advice from his superior, Father Fornicate.“Tell me, my son,” says Father Fornicate, “are you still having trouble with those nasty fantasies? You know, things like crotchless panties, French ticklers and hot buttered nuns?”“No, no!” cries young Fever, “this time it is the big M – you know, masturbation!”“Ah! Masturbation!” replies Father Fornicate, crossing his legs and gritting his teeth. “Yes, one of my favorite subjects! What do you want to know about it?”“Well,” replies Fever, perspiring, “is it as bad as they say?”“My boy,” intones Fornicate, uncrossing his legs and adjusting his robe, “it used to be believed that masturbation led to insanity and blindness. But that is no longer thought to be true.”“I am not worried about that,” says Father Fever, trembling. “I read in the latest Vatican report that masturbation can be the cause of a serious reduction in hearing – even deafness!”Father Fornicate leans forward and says, “What?”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent…Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to turn inward.Gather all your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward your center of being – it is just below your navel, two inches below exactly, inside – with an urgency as if it is your last moment of life. Without such urgency and intensity, nobody has ever reached the center of his being.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you are coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain. You can feel the coolness of it.A little closer and you find a great peace arising from your own life sources, surrounding you like fragrance.Even the night is helping you. The whole existence is helping you. Not only are you meditating, the whole existence is meditating with you.Just one step more and you are at the center of your being, utterly drunk with the divine, an authentic ecstasy which is not produced by any drug like LSD, but is part of your opening of the inner lotus.Once it is with you, it is forever and it transforms your whole life, your activities, your responses.At the center, with this ecstasy you are no more, only a pure space.This pure space we have personified as Gautam the Buddha. It simply means the awakened consciousness. The face of the buddha is everybody’s original face. In this space, suddenly you find you are no more but buddha is your original face. You are no more but life is, eternal life – without beginning, without end. You are no more, but existence is.And this isness brings you tremendous liberation. This isness is the only salvation. Nobody else can give it to you, you already have it. All that is needed is a remembrance, it is a forgotten language. You got too occupied with trivia and forgot the essential.At this moment, you are the most blessed people on the earth just because you are traveling inward, whereas everybody is going outward.One thing to remember: buddha consists of only one quality – awareness, watchfulness, remembrance, witnessing. You can call it anything, but I prefer the word witnessing. To make it clear to you what it means:Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.Witness that you are only a witness, just a pure mirror reflecting, responding to every situation.To make this witnessing deeper and clearer, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But go on remembering only one thing: witnessing. Witnessing is the whole secret of meditation, the master key to all the mysteries of existence and life.As your witnessing deepens you start melting. Your separation disappears, all boundaries are dissolved, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have become one solid consciousness, one oceanic consciousness.Collect all the experiences that are happening within you, the silence, the peace, the bliss, the ecstasy, the divine drunkenness, and persuade your buddha to come with you, to follow you.These are the three steps of enlightenment.The first step, buddha comes following you like a shadow – it is your nature, your eternal nature.The second step, buddha comes ahead of you; you become the shadow.And the third step, you disappear into the buddha. Not even a shadow is left of you. Only buddha is, only life is, only existence is.This brings you immortality, eternity. It makes you whole with the cosmos, one with the whole. It is the ultimate sanity and the ultimate health and the ultimate holiness. This is Zen.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back, but come back as buddhas – very silent, very peaceful, with a great grace.Sit down for a few moments, just to remember the golden path that you have traveled, and all the flowers that have showered on you of silence, peace, joy, ecstasy, and the opening into the eternal, into the ultimate, into the absolute cosmos.Take care of the buddha who is just behind you as a silent presence. But you can touch it. It is tangible, you can feel its warmth. It will transform your ordinary acts into extraordinary responses.It will bring to you a choiceless awareness where you simply do spontaneously what is good; a totally new kind of morality that springs out of your spontaneity, a totally new kind of life that is lived moment to moment with absolute dedication to existence.A new freedom, a new sky to open your wings, and a new celebration without any reason, without any cause. Just overflowing energy, overflowing juices of life, overflowing ecstasies, overflowing songs and dances.To transform life into a celebration is the only authentic science of religion.I celebrate myself and I want you to learn the art of celebrating yourself – for no reason, for no cause. Just to be is enough, more than enough. To be part of the whole is such a great metamorphosis that you cannot resist – you have to dance, you have to sing, you have to express your joy, your blissfulness. You have to share it.Sharing your blissfulness is the only charity; sharing your joy is the only gratitude. Existence has given you too much, share it. The more you share, the more you will have it. The less you share, the less you will have it. If you don’t share it, you won’t have it at all.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Sekito’s Song of the Grass Hut.I make a grass hut in which inside there is no worldly treasure. I eat and sleep naturally and easily. When I made the hut, the reeds were new. When the hut gets torn, I cover it with reeds again. The person living in the hut is always there. He does not belong to inside or outside. I do not live where ordinary people live; I do not love what ordinary people love.Although the hut is small, it contains the dharma world. A man of Zen understands it well. Bodhisattvas of the supreme vehicle have no doubt about it, but the mediocre are bound to be dubious.If I were asked whether this hut breaks down or not, I would say that the subject is originally both in the breakable and unbreakable. I don’t live in the north or south or the west or east.The foundation of the hut is the most solid. Under the green pine tree, in the hut’s bright window – even a golden palace can’t compare. If I cover myself with the old quilt, everything settles. Then I don’t understand anything.Living in this hut, I stop looking for any solutions. Who would put them proudly in the show window for the people to buy?When evening comes and the sun is setting, I come back to the hut. My being is so vast that there are no divisions. Meeting with the intimate teachings of the ancestral master, I made a hut with grasses and don’t think of leaving. I just let the hundred years go as they pass by.If I move with my hands open, there is no problem. A thousand words, ten thousand solutions, only keep you in ignorance. If you want to know the immortal person in the hut, why do you go away from this skin bag?Friends, I hope that the Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, will cancel the ban on Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. It is absolutely innocent. The fanatic Mohammedans who are trying to destroy the book, to ban the book, perhaps have not read it.Rudolph Salman Rushdie was born in India as a Mohammedan, then he moved to England, and has become a worldwide literary figure. Being born in India, he has every right of an Indian citizen too. The Indian constitution gives to every individual freedom of speech and freedom of expression as a fundamental human right.Salman Rushdie’s book has only one mention of Mohammed, which is not at all condemnatory. It is a factual thing that he describes, and it has already been accepted by the Mohammedan theologians for centuries.The incident is concerning the earlier version of the Koran, in which Mohammed accepted three female deities. Later on, he canceled those verses concerning the female deities and declared that the verses were inspired by the Devil. Now it is a well-known fact that Mohammed changed those verses. If Salman Rushdie writes about it, it is not condemnatory, he is simply stating a fact which has been accepted. He has simply picked up theological information and written it into his book The Satanic Verses.In Pakistan, five people have already been killed because they were outside the American Embassy. The book has been published in England and now it is going to be published in America. And they were demanding from the American Embassy that it should not be published in America, “Otherwise we will destroy you.” Just to protect them from these fanatical Mohammedans, who know nothing about the book, but have just heard the rumor, the police had to fire at and kill five Mohammedans – and it is a Mohammedan state.India is a democratic secular country. Rajiv Gandhi’s banning the book simply shows fear. And the fear of Rajiv Gandhi should not be against the constitution of India, against the laws of India. The ban should be immediately removed. That’s why I said perhaps he has not read the book himself; otherwise he would see that it is a beautiful fiction.And now even Mohammedan scholars are coming out in favor of Salman Rushdie. Of course, they are all outside Iran. Inside Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini is the worst kind of butcher. He would have killed anybody who raised the question. And I question whether he has himself read the book or not because the book contains nothing, nothing that should cause four persons to be murdered as a punishment. That is against Islamic law and against Iran’s constitution. But in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini is the law, is the constitution.He should be condemned from all corners of the world, whether one is a Mohammedan or not. He is taking away a human right, and that too, unnecessarily, because Salman Rushdie’s book contains nothing condemnatory about Mohammed. Just stating a historical fact which has been accepted for fourteen hundred years by Mohammedan scholars is not a crime. And Ayatollah Khomeini’s going on the radio and declaring: “It is the duty of every Mohammedan around the world to kill these four persons – Salman Rushdie, the writer, the publisher of the book, the printer of the book, and the sole agent of the book. These four persons have to be killed without any mercy”…Salman Rushdie is hiding in England, and has canceled his tour of America to promote the book and its publication there.I was waiting to tell Rajiv Gandhi, waiting until some Mohammedan scholars raised their voices. And all around the world voices are being raised.I have received this news report:Eminent Muslims, including the former chief justice of Madras High Court, Justice Ismail, have unequivocally condemned Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence on author Salman Rushdie and all those associated with the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, describing it as against all law, including Islamic law.Islamic scholars stated that ‘The sentence was dubious on theological, not to mention legal grounds.’Hesham El-Essawy, spokesman for Britain’s estimated one million Muslims, said, ‘Anyone carrying out Khomeini’s order would be guilty of murder. We very much regret and denounce Khomeini’s statement. Threats like this, or any violent response, is not the correct religious response. It is a very dangerous development and will give Rushdie sympathy where it is not deserved.’British MP’s have also called for the British government to formally protest to Iran.One has to be very aware about the fanatic and fascist attitudes of religious leaders. A great consciousness is needed, particularly for those who are in power, so that they don’t misuse it. Banning Salman Rushdie’s book is a misuse of power, and I condemn it with my whole heart.I have nothing to do with the book, or with Islam, or with the writer. My concern is that these things become precedents for destroying freedom of speech, freedom of expression, which are necessary foundations for a cultured society, for a humane society.I hope that Rajiv Gandhi comes to his senses and takes the ban away. And the same should be done around the world by all the political leaders; otherwise all creativity in poets, in novelists, is bound to be destroyed. And they are the very salt of the earth, they are the only people who are creating something. Religious leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini have not contributed anything to the world, to its beauty, to its truth, to its culture, to its civilization. They have only destroyed. But they destroy in the name of God and poor God cannot even say anything because he does not exist.The second thing I was going to say to you, before I take the questions from the sannyasins, is that I came to know this day that Chinese sannyasins are a little bit upset because I may have told you that a few of the Zen masters are Japanese, and their disturbance is that they are Chinese.I am not a very informed person. I don’t speak out of information, I speak out of my transformation. I know that Zen belongs to no country, so to me it does not matter whether they were Chinese, or Japanese, or Indians. At least Zen should not be confined to any country, to any race, to any language. It belongs to the whole universe. So what is the fuss all about?I have never read the sutras. Maneesha finds the sutras; I simply speak spontaneously. My concern is Zen, not China or Japan. And you will see Sekito himself says, “I don’t belong to the east, I don’t belong to the west, I don’t belong to the south, I don’t belong to the north.” If Zen is also to be confined to a race, to a language, to a certain part of the earth, then it is not Zen.So you have to be very clear. Neither am I a scholar, nor am I knowledgeable, informative. What I am saying is my moment-to-moment response. And my consideration for Zen is that it belongs to the whole universe.So don’t be bothered. It is good that you got upset. I love upsetting people. And do you see the trivia that you get upset about? What does it matter whether Sekito was born in China or Japan?I don’t belong to India, I belong to this vast universe, and I want you also to belong to this vastness. Why be confined to small prisons created by politicians and priests?The whole effort here is to bring you back to the vastness and infinity and eternity of the universe. And still you think about China and Japan and India? Then in China there are many states, and in every state there are many districts, and in many districts there are even smaller units…A Zen master is simply a Zen master. He belongs to Zen, not to China, not to Japan, not to India. I would like you also to be clear about it. These boundaries have to be dropped. Why cling to such small meaningless, mediocre things? Why not open up yourself to the whole universe, this vast sky, the beyond? Zen belongs to the beyond.Don’t be mediocre. I don’t want my sannyasins to be mediocre; I want my sannyasins to be universal citizens.The first question:Osho,Now being free from the concept of God, is our newly found dignity that you spoke of the other day, not prone to become entangled in the ego?You will not be entangled in the ego because the ego is part of your mind, just as God is part of your mind. Both are fictions; both are relative. The moment you drop God… If you have guts to drop God, you certainly will have guts to drop the ego – that is a smaller God within you. And once the bigger brother is dead, the little cousin-brother will die. First you have to kill the big brother; it is his reflection in you. Your God is an egoist, an arch-egoist, and he gives you the idea of the ego.Don’t get confused between dignity and ego. Dignity is very humble, very simple, very innocent; it belongs to the trees. When they blossom in spring, just look and watch their pride, their dignity. Just watch when a peacock is dancing. Those psychedelic colors, and the beautiful dance – do you think there is any ego? But there is certainly dignity.Dignity is a totally different phenomenon, it is self-respect. Ego is domination over others. Dignity is just standing on your own feet, independence, freedom; it is not domination over others. The moment you start thinking of dominating, you are falling into the trap of the ego. And God is the greatest ego because he created everything, he dominates everything. He is present everywhere, he is all-powerful. And his reflection in the priests… The pope claims that he is infallible. Now this is ego.A man of dignity, a man of self-respect will not say such things. Certainly he will walk straight with his head raised in dignity. He will not walk like a slave, surrendered, subdued. He will walk like a lion and roar like a lion. But that is your intrinsic energy, your intrinsic power.The power that depends on others creates the ego. The power that comes from within your own sources of life creates dignity. Meditation brings tremendous dignity, a great grace, but not even a shadow of ego is found in it.If you are capable of murdering God, you will certainly be capable of murdering his image in you. In fact, the moment God is no longer there, you will suddenly be surprised. Where has the ego gone? If the moon is not there, the reflection in the lake of the moon will disappear.To me, egos are reflections of one moon in different ponds, in different lakes, in different oceans, in different rivers – millions of reflections. But just remove the moon and all the reflections are removed. You don’t have to remove every reflection. It will take millennia to remove all those reflections. And in fact, if the moon remains, you cannot remove the reflections.So I am hitting directly on God’s head. Zen masters have been hitting on poor disciples’ heads. I am hitting the very source from where your ego is arising. God removed, you will not find the ego at all, it is a reflection.The Bible says that God created man in his own image. This causes ego. You are the highest creature in existence because God created you in his own image, and he created all the animals for you to eat. These are your religions, scriptures which are telling you to destroy the ecology of existence, which are telling you to destroy beautiful animals which bring grace and joy all around you. But God himself says in your holy scriptures, “I have created everything for your use.” He is giving you the first incentive for the ego.Once God is removed, you will simply find your ego is gone. It was the shadow, the reflection of God. And then you will find a totally new phenomenon, a dignity which is not a domination over others, which is not superiority over others. It is simply the joy that existence loves you, that existence creates you, that existence needs you, that you are not accidental. This gives you dignity, this gives you honor, and it is not dependent on others. It comes from your own innermost experience of your being.The moment you find yourself existential, that you belong to the whole cosmos, and the whole cosmos belongs to you, there arises a tremendous splendor in your being – Himalayan peaks of consciousness, Pacific depths of consciousness. That brings you the lion’s roar. You realize for the first time that you are not a slave. You realize for the first time that you are not a created creature. You realize for the first time that existence is your home, you are not an outsider, and existence is nourishing you every moment.There must be a certain purpose, a certain destiny that existence is seeking through you to reach, a certain height of consciousness, a certain height of love, a certain height of compassion, understanding, wisdom, enlightenment. Existence is trying in every possible way to create a buddha in your very innermost being. The moment you are a buddha, there is dignity without any superiority.There is dignity in a roseflower. Do you think it has any power over anybody? It is so delicate, so vulnerable, but it has tremendous dignity. When it is dancing in the sun, in the rain, in the wind, it knows existence has created in him one of the most beautiful things.Dignity arises out of meditation. Ego arises out of mind. So don’t be worried about it; meditation will take care. You will not become an egoist, that’s an impossibility.The second question:Osho,In the first lecture of the series, God is Dead, Now Zen Is the Only Living Truth, you said: “Existence needs you.” For me this is like a new belief because I don't know this.I have not told you to believe it; I have not told you to disbelieve it. It is my experience, I am sharing it with you. You don’t have to believe it, you don’t have to disbelieve it. You have to inquire into it. You have to go to the same depths, to the same heights from where I am speaking, to the same center of your being. Then you will understand it, not believe it. You will know it. Existence needs you, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.Why should you be here? Why should existence bother to keep you eternally alive?But if you start believing in my statements, you are misunderstanding me. I am not here to create any belief system in you. Whatever I say is not to be believed or disbelieved. It has to be simply understood and inquired into. Search inside yourself for what I am saying, to see whether it is true or not. Put it to the test. I know that when you put it to the test, you will come to experience it.I am not converting you toward any theology, belief, any philosophy. I don’t do that kind of dirty work. There are enough missionaries around the world doing that. I destroy your beliefs, and you start believing in me?Please, don’t believe in me! Belief in anyone is ignorance – I am included in it. Just listen to me, and then put whatever you hear and understand to a fire test. Go into the exploration. I don’t want you to believe because I know what I am saying is truth. You don’t have to believe it, you have just to inquire and you will find it.The people who tell you to believe are not certain about their truth – for example Jesus, who goes on saying to people, “Believe in me.” If he was certain about his truth, he would never have insisted on belief. He would have said, “Explore. Inquire. Search.” I am simply giving you an incentive, a sense of which direction to go. Then find yourself. Because it is truth, you have to find it, and you will find it. Only lies have to be believed.So, all those messiahs and prophets and incarnations of God who have talked you into beliefs, are destroying your truth. They are taking you away from your innermost realization. They are taking you away from your own buddhahood, from your own nature, from your own truth.My effort is totally against all the messiahs, and all the avatars, all the tirthankaras, all the prophets, and all the messengers. My work is not only totally different, but absolutely against them. They were creating beliefs. I am destroying beliefs because I know the truth. And I know that if you inquire – I am absolutely certain – you will find it.So why should I insist on belief? Only people who are not certain about their own experience, those who are concerned that if you go deeper inside you may not find what they are saying, insist on believing.So you never go. Once you believe in a thing, all search stops. That’s why I want you to be open, no belief system. Just inquire into your own consciousness, and you are going to find all that is truthful, all that is beautiful. You will realize that, when you are centered in your being, existence needs you because you are nothing but projections of existence, the hands of existence reaching for the stars.Evolution of consciousness is just the greatest ambition of existence, and it has trusted you with a tremendous responsibility.Rise above the mind which is a social product. Rise above everything that others have forced upon you, and be authentically yourself. Try to find what it is that you are in your innermost being which never changes. The body goes on changing from childhood to youth, from youth to middle age, from middle age to old age, from old age to death.The mind moves even faster. Every moment it is changing. In the morning it is one thing, in the evening it is something else. But behind mind and body there is some space which is absolutely eternal and remains the same whether your body is that of a child or of an old man, whether you are alive or dead. It does not matter to your innermost consciousness. That is the only truth, and realizing it you will see how much existence needs you.You are its greatest potentials on the way to become Gautam Buddhas.Now the sutras:Sekito’s Song of the Grass Hut.I make a grass hut in which inside there is no worldly treasure. I eat and sleep naturally and easily. When I made the hut, the reeds were new. When the hut gets torn, I cover it with reeds again. The person living in the hut is always there.He is talking about the body; the hut is only a symbol. The person living in there is always there. That will give you a clue that the hut is just a symbol, otherwise sometimes the person will have to go out to find food, to find water. But the person remains there always.He does not belong to inside or outside.– how can he belong to China or Japan?I do not live where ordinary people live…Where do ordinary people live? – in the body, in the mind. Sekito is saying:I do not live where ordinary people live; I do not love what ordinary people love.What is the love of ordinary people? – money, power, prestige.Sekito is saying, “I also love, but not the way the ordinary people love, and not the objects that ordinary people love. I love their subjectivity. I love their subjectivity because I know my own subjectivity. Just as I am there always, they are also always there. They may know it, they may not know it. I don’t love their bodies. I don’t love their minds, but I love that which is behind and beyond their bodies and their minds.“I don’t love the way they love. They always love with conditions and conditions and conditions. They destroy their love because of so many conditions attached to it. I simply love because it is my nature to love. I have come to the point from where love is overflowing. There is no condition attached to it.”If you receive Sekito’s love, or my love, you are obliging me and Sekito. You could have refused. It was within your power, but you received it with joy. You are not to be grateful to me or to Sekito. I have to be grateful to you. I was too full of love, and you came on the way and unburdened me. I have to be obliged to you, and I have a deep gratitude toward you.Although the hut is small, it contains the dharma world.The hut is small in the sense that it is within you, but the moment you realize – not as a concept in the mind, but as an actual experience beyond the mind – you suddenly see that the smallest center of your being contains the whole dharma world, the whole world of nature, the whole existence. A small seed contains so much, it can make the whole earth green. Your smallest center contains so much that the whole universe can be filled by it. Once you know it, you know it; it is without limits and without boundaries.A man of Zen understands it well.…That although the hut is small, it contains the whole existence.Bodhisattvas of the supreme vehicle have no doubt about it, but the mediocre are bound to be dubious.And the world is full of mediocre people.Just today somebody has written an article against me – as an example of a mediocre mind – because I sent a telegram to Rajiv Gandhi. It said, if you are honest and truthful, then throw away all your weapons, arms, into the ocean, and let your armies be dissolved. Put all those people into the fields, into the orchards, into farms, into gardens, to create and to work.The telegram was in response to his address of an international gathering of scientists, and he was telling them that there was no need for nations, there was no need for boundaries, there was no need for arms, there was no need for wars. My telegram was simply to provoke him and focus his mind: “Can you do it? And if you cannot do it, you don’t have the right to tell others to do it.”I was simply making it clear to him that he is not capable of doing it. Nobody else is capable of doing it for the simple reason of the fear of being invaded. But if you are not capable of doing it, you should understand that nobody is capable of doing it. Then don’t talk nonsense.My telegram was not an appeal to him to throw away the arms into the ocean and dissolve the armies. I was trying to check upon his intelligence. He has not answered because he knows perfectly well this cannot be done.He was simply imitating Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi had said it to Louis Fischer, an American writer who was living with Gandhi and preparing a biography of Gandhi. Louis Fischer asked Mahatma Gandhi, “When India becomes independent” – it was before independence – “what are you going to do with the arms, because you are nonviolent, and you preach nonviolence? What are you going to do with your armies? What will happen to your factories which produce a tremendous amount of arms?”And without any hesitation Mahatma Gandhi said, “I will throw all these arms into the ocean, and I will make all the armies retire and go back to work. We don’t need armies, we need more people, strong people to create more food, more clothes.”The obvious question was, and Louis Fischer asked it, “What will happen if some foreign country invades you?”And Mahatma Gandhi, without any hesitation, again said, “We will receive them as our guests, and we will tell them, ‘If you want to live in this country, you are welcome.’”Rajiv Gandhi was simply imitating Mahatma Gandhi. It is very good to use sweet words, but the point is that even Mahatma Gandhi did not prove true to his own promises. He was the first man to bless three airplanes full of bombs who were going to attack Pakistan. They came over the house where he was staying in New Delhi, Birla House, with one of the most super-rich families in India. He talked about poverty, and he lived in Birla House which is a palace…The three airplanes, before going to Pakistan, came as close to the house as possible to receive the blessings of Mahatma Gandhi. And he came out of the house and he blessed them: “Go and be victorious.” Seeing his hand raised as he was standing in the garden of Birla House, those three airplanes were the first to attack Pakistan. And this was the man who just a few years back was talking about throwing arms into the sea and receiving invaders as guests.So I was simply provoking Rajiv Gandhi to come to his senses: “Don’t talk nonsense.” I have every right as a citizen of this country to ask that the prime minister of this country does not talk nonsense. If he is honest, he should answer me and ask for an apology for those things he said to the international conference of the scientists – or he should do what he has said!Now this man has written a whole article against me, saying that I am suggesting to Rajiv Gandhi to throw away all the arms and dissolve the armies. “Then what will happen if somebody attacks?” – this man asks me – “Have you gone mad?”I have sent him the answer: “First think about Gandhi. Was he mad? And you are a dim-witted fellow that you could not understand the telegram. You are a mediocre. You don’t have even the capacity to understand that the telegram was not an appeal, it was a response to his absolutely nonsense words to the international conference.”And Rajiv Gandhi contradicted himself after just four days. Then he was addressing Hindu chauvinists. Then he said, “We should save our national heritage.” And just four days before that he was saying, “All boundaries of nations should dissolve.” From where has the national heritage come now? And if you are going to save your national heritage, why should others dissolve their national heritage? – “We should be patriotic!”Politicians have so many masks. I was just trying to pull off his mask and let him see his original face. But this idiot who has written the article did not understand the meaning of the telegram. It was against Mahatma Gandhi, it was against Rajiv Gandhi. It was against all the politicians who say one thing and always do just the opposite.But this is how it has been since man started growing on this planet. The mediocre are bound to be dubious, they cannot understand. Only bodhisattvas, the potential buddhas… That is the meaning of the word bodhisattvas. You are all bodhisattvas, potential buddhas in the seed, in the essence.So when you go to your very center in meditation, I start calling you buddhas. Particularly at that moment are you a buddha. You will again fall and become a bodhisattva, but slowly, slowly you will start feeling the difference between a bodhisattva and a buddha. I want this distance to disappear. The bodhisattva turns into a buddha, dissolves into the buddha. Only buddhas know exactly what is the truth. And only they are capable of not misunderstanding.If I were asked…says Sekito:…whether this hut breaks down or not, I would say that the subject is originally both in the breakable and unbreakable.Now you can understand clearly that he is not referring to any hut. He is saying, “Whether this hut breaks down or not does not matter.” One who is living in it, the subject, your interiormost consciousness which is living in the body, is not affected whether the hut is breakable or unbreakable.Even in your death you never die. Even in your birth you are never born. You have always been here. Birth and death have happened many times, just small episodes in an eternity-to-eternity long life.I don’t live in the north or south or the west or east.Where is China? Now where should I put this fellow Sekito? When I don’t find any place, I put people in Japan because that is the most crowded place in the world – no land! So I go on increasing the crowd there.So don’t be worried. Japan has to be worried, why should you be worried? I hope that sooner or later the emperor of Japan is going to object saying, “You are sending too many people to Japan, and we are already so crowded.”Tokyo is the most crowded city in the world. Now they are creating artificial islands because there is nowhere to go. It is a small country, and had an immense increase of population after the Second World War. That always happens after war because nature immediately replaces. Seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that so many people have died, nature immediately rushes and starts bringing more and more children. It is a well-known fact that after every war there is a boom of children. They suddenly go on and on. It is very difficult to stop them.So Japan had a great boom of children. And Japanese children are really beautiful. What happens to them afterward is a tragedy. The Japanese children are so beautiful. I don’t think anywhere else such beautiful children are born – just like Japanese dolls. But something goes wrong. When they grow up, then all that beauty simply disappears. Then they look like rats, but very dangerous rats. I have always wondered what happens – such beautiful children suddenly disappear.I love Japan because of those children. And I love Japan because of the second birth, when a man again becomes a child – those are the Zen masters. So forgive me please.A man of Zen belongs to the universe, not to the south or the west or the east or to the north.The foundation of the hut is the most solid. Under the green pine tree, in the hut’s bright window – even a golden palace can’t compare.I am reminded of an ancient parable…A poor man is in his hut. It is the middle of the night and the hut is so small that only the husband and wife can sleep in it. That’s enough space, that is all.And somebody knocks on the door…It is raining so much, and the dark night – perhaps somebody has forgotten the way. They lived deep in the forest.So the husband told the wife, who was near the door, “Open the door.”The wife said, “But there is no space.”The husband said, “It is not a palace, it is a poor man’s hut; there is always space. Only in palaces is it very difficult to find space.”The wife said, “You always say strange things. In the middle of the night that fellow must be drenched with water. It is pouring, and you want him to come in?”He said, “Yes, just open the door. Nobody should go away from my door.”So the woman reluctantly opens the door, and then asks, “What should we do?”He said, “There is no problem. We were lying down, now we will sit. There is enough space for three persons to sit and we will talk. We have not seen anybody coming from the city for many days, so he may have some news, and he will gossip. And the night is not long – half is already gone, half will also go.”So the man comes in and they sit. The man looks around and sees that he has intruded upon their privacy – there is no space. But there is no way of going out, there is too much rain and it is too dark, and he has forgotten the way. So he said, “Forgive me.”They said, “There is no problem. It is not a palace, it is a poor man’s hut. There is always enough space.”So they started talking, and suddenly another man knocked on the door. And this stranger inside was sitting close to the door, so the man, the owner said, “Open the door.”The stranger said, “What? There is no space!”The man said, “If I had listened to my wife, who was saying there is no space, you would not have been inside. Just open the door. There is enough space, we just have to sit a little closer. And you, who have been given space, should not object.”Reluctantly that man opened the door and another man came in. And he said, “Forgive me, but there is nowhere to go. The light from your hut has been my only safety. I have been walking all the way just looking at your hut – a small light from the window. So forgive me for intruding.”The man said, “You are not intruding. We can sit closely and it will be warmer also. You are drenched and you must be feeling cold. So the more people who are inside, the warmer it will become. Sit down and be close.”Now this new stranger is sitting closest to the door, and a donkey comes and knocks on the door with his head.The man said, “Please open the door because I know that donkey loves me. He always comes. And when there is trouble, the poor fellow has nowhere to go. Just open the door.”The second stranger who was sitting by the side of the door said, “What? For a donkey…? Where is the space?”The man said, “This has been the problem, and I have been creating space. We will create space, don’t be worried. We are sitting, we will stand, and the donkey can be just at the center – and he is such a lovely philosophical-minded fellow. We will all enjoy him.”Those strangers said, “You are a very strange fellow.”He said, “I am. Otherwise you would not have been in. My wife is absolutely rational, she would not have allowed anybody. So please open the door. It is my hut and you should not forget you are only a guest. Another guest has come. Just open the door.”So he had to open it, but very reluctantly, angry that a donkey was being brought in. And the donkey entered and stood in between, and all those people stood up.“Now,” the man asked, “do you see how a poor man’s hut is so spacious?“It is not a question of the hut, it is a question of the heart. If you have space in the heart, you have space in the hut. In the palaces there is no space in the heart, that’s why there are empty palaces, but no space. Doors would not have been opened for you.“This poor donkey has no chance of entering into a palace, but a poor man’s hut respects everybody.”So he says: The foundation of the hut is the most solid. Under the green pine tree, in the hut’s bright window – even a golden palace can’t compare. The foundation is on a rock. You know Sekito – he used to remain on a rock, that’s why he became famous as Stonehead. A completely shaven head that looked like a stone, and he was always sitting on a stone. And it was the master Nangaku who ordered his people to make a hut for him – around him, because he was a strange fellow, he would not even move.So the foundation was really strong. It was a flat rock, and he remained sitting while Nangaku’s people were making the hut around him. He did not say anything – whether to make it or not to make it, he did not take any note.A man reported to Nangaku: “That fellow is very strange. We are making a hut around him, and he does not even inquire what we are doing.”Nangaku said, “I know him. Even when he was not enlightened he was very strange. And now that he is enlightened, he is the strangest man. But finish the job; don’t be bothered by him, and don’t be afraid of him. He is a very softhearted man, just his head is like a stone, hard.”He is right. If you are really alive, then even a small hut with a window goes on giving you a sunset, a sunrise, the moon and the whole sky full of stars, a beautiful pine tree and the fragrance of the pine filling the hut. Who cares about palaces?He is saying that a man of consciousness is in a palace everywhere. His palace is this whole sky. His foundation is absolutely solid, his center is absolutely solid. Now it doesn’t matter where he is. Wherever he is, he is the emperor. Wherever he is, he is in the palace.If I cover myself with the old quilt, everything settles.There is no sun, there is no moon, there is no sky, there are no stars – everything simply disappears, there is no world. The moment I cover myself with the old quilt,Everything settles. Then I don’t understand anything.This is the beauty of a Zen master. He can accept his ignorance. He can accept: “I don’t know anything.” Out of this not-knowing arises tremendous wisdom. Out of this ignorance arises innocence. Out of this not-knowing, this darkness of not-knowing, comes a fresh sunrise. This not-knowing is not the mediocre man’s not-knowing. This not-knowing is beyond the mind.Mind can be a knower, it can be a non-knower – those are possibilities of the mind. But beyond the mind you can only say, “I am.” Or perhaps even “I” is not needed, perhaps “am” is also not needed, only existence is.It is a tautology to say “existence is” because isness is what is meant by existence. So just isness, a pure isness without any disturbance of knowledge, information… But the purity of it and the beauty of it is beyond limits. Its abundant blossoming of all the qualities that man has always cherished, hoped, dreamed, have become realities. But they are coming from an innocence. All those flowers, all those lotuses are blossoming out of not-knowing.A mirror does not know anything, but when you come in front of the mirror it immediately responds, reflects. A Zen master functions in the same way. You put a question to him – he is not filled with knowledge or ready-made answers. You put a question to him, and just like a mirror he reflects your question. The answer is coming out of not-knowing. It is not from scriptures, it is from absolute awareness and spontaneity.Living in this hut, I stop looking for any solutions.The man who has gone beyond has no doubts, has no beliefs, has no questions, has no answers. He simply is, and this isness is the ultimate blossoming of your potentialities.Who would put them proudly in the show window for the people to buy?A man who has become a buddha, a man who is enlightened can share with you all that he has, but he has nothing to sell.All the religions are selling. They are selling God, they are selling beautiful places in paradise, they are selling bank accounts in paradise. They are selling everything and pocketing the money from you. And you are not getting anything, and you don’t know anything about what is going to happen after death. You don’t have even a receipt to show to God: “I have deposited so much money with the priest. Where is my bank account? He has not given me even the number of the bank account.” And one never knows.One thing is certain: everything you give to the priest goes into his pocket. It never reaches beyond that. And how can the priest manage? He himself does not know the address of God. Where has he to send it?He is simply selling things which don’t exist. But because he is giving you hope and consolation for after death, you feel it is good to purchase something for the long journey after death. One never knows, he may be right. At least it is a great consolation that you are prepared. You have done the homework, and you can go into the darkness of death. It is a tunnel, whether it will end anywhere or not you have no idea. But at least while you were alive you dropped the fear of death. The priest was giving you the consolation, you were giving your money.God is for sale. All churches, all denominations, all religions are selling God. They are the most dangerous people in the sense that they are giving you hopes which will never be fulfilled, and they are giving you consolations you will be utterly disappointed in.Hence, I don’t want to give you any hope, any promise. I simply want you to explore on your own. If you can find something, good. If you can’t find something, I am helpless. But I know if you search deeply enough you are bound to find. If I have found it, if Sekito has found it, then there is no problem for anybody. Every human being is born as a bodhisattva. It is only a question of turning the seed into a plant, and then the roses will come on their own.When evening comes and the sun is setting, I come back to the hut. My being is so vast that there are no divisions. Meeting with the intimate teachings of the ancestral master, I made a hut with grasses and don’t think of leaving. I just let the hundred years go as they pass by.He lived one hundred years – the whole century.But he is saying, “I don’t go anywhere or leave the hut. I am utterly contented. There is no need to go anywhere in search. I have found it; it is within me.” So a hundred years have passed by the side, but Sekito remains almost a child. Those years have not been a corruptive influence on him. He has remained a tabula rasa, nothing is written on his slate. Utterly empty, nobody special, but hundreds of people managed to reach, finding his slippery path.A certain magnetism arises with enlightenment, and those who are searching, knowingly or unknowingly, are pulled, sometimes in spite of themselves. They don’t want, but something is more forceful than their wanting or not wanting. A challenge is coming from some direction, and they start moving.You can see people here from all over the earth, from every nook and corner, and I am the most condemned man, the most notorious man around the world. Why should you be here? All the governments are against me, all the religions are against me, all the nations are against me, but it does not prevent you. Something far more powerful is pulling you. You had to come; it was impossible to resist. And once you have come, it is very difficult to go away.Even if you go away, you will be carrying me with you – not in your luggage, but in your heart because luggage gets lost many times. Don’t trust luggage. And I don’t like to be in a suitcase. I don’t have any!Avirbhava has all the suitcases. She carries things for me in her suitcases – eighteen in total. I wonder where she lives in the room when there are eighteen suitcases. Perhaps keeping her feet in one suitcase and her head in another…? Yes? [Osho turns toward Avirbhava who shrieks and squirms in her seat. Eyebrows raised and chuckling, he enjoys the situation.]If I move with my hands open, there is no problem. A thousand words, ten thousand solutions, only keep you in ignorance. If you want to know the immortal person in the hut, why do you go away from this skin bag?Your skin bag, your body, your hut, contains the buddha. If you really want to live without any problems and without any solutions, without any questions and without any answers – just a pure innocent life, undisturbed by anything – then don’t go anywhere else. In this very bag of skin, in this very body is the buddha, and in this very place is the lotus paradise.Sekito’s statements are tremendously beautiful. It is absolutely right to call them Sekito’s Song of the Grass Hut. It is a song, and sung with great dignity and with great joy.Issa wrote:I have nothing at all –but this tranquillity!This coolness!Perhaps he was writing for you. Just watch this tranquillity, this coolness – I have nothing at all. But to have such tranquillity and such coolness, you don’t need anything. You have all. You have the whole universe within you – in the dewdrop the whole ocean, in the seed the whole greenery of the earth.“I have nothing at all…” Issa is right. He does not possess anything, but a great tranquillity surrounds him, and this coolness that penetrates deep into the very center of your being. That tranquillity is present here, and that coolness is possible to be felt by you.Issa has put the whole of Zen into a small haiku: “I have nothing at all – but this tranquillity! This coolness!”Maneesha’s question:Osho,Alan Watts had a novel idea for how Easter should be spent. “Every Easter Sunday should be celebrated with a solemn and reverent burning of the Holy Scriptures,” he suggested, “for the whole meaning of the resurrection and ascension of Christ into heaven – which is within you – is that God-manhood is to be discovered here and now, inwardly, not in the letter of the Bible.”What do you think of his idea?Just great!Maneesha, it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights! I want to see my people laughing, celebrating.In Leningrad, in Soviet Russia, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been allowed to build their own special church called The Kingdom Hall. At the first service, there is a lot of hooting, shouting, fainting, preaching and sermonizing before the service finally comes to an end.Perspiring, old Grandma Botovitch, shuffles up to the front of The Kingdom Hall. She prostrates herself under a huge statue of Jesus nailed to the cross, and then lifts her head and plants a big wet kiss on Christ’s feet.Officer Molotov, of the KGB, has been watching Grandma Botovitch closely from behind a curtain. He marches over to the old woman and says, “Would you kiss the feet of our great leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, like that?”“Sure,” replies Grandma. “If you nailed him up like this!”The pub door swings open and Chicken Chopper walks in with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. He goes over to the bar where Dick Puller is smoking a cigar and drinking a beer.“Have you got a light?” asks Chicken.“Fuck off!” says Dick Puller.“Hey!” says Chicken. “I only asked for a light!”“I heard you,” snaps Dick. “Fuck off!”“Hey!” cries Chicken. “Why won’t you give me a light then?”“Because if I do,” replies Dick, “you will buy me a drink. Then I will have to buy you a drink. And then we will both get drunk. And then we will both become friends. And then I will invite you over to my house. And then it will be too late for you to go home, won’t it?”“Gee! I guess so,” replies Chicken.“Yes! That’s right,” snaps Dick Puller. “And then you will want me to give you a bed at my house – won’t you?”“Well, yes,” replies Chicken. “Maybe.”“And my daughter is a real beauty,” continues Dick, “so you will want to sleep with her – won’t you?”“Yes, sure!” exclaims Chicken.“And then,” continues Dick, “you will make her pregnant, won’t you?”“Yes!” cries Chicken.“But you won’t marry her, will you?” asks Dick.“Ah yes I will!” cries Chicken Chopper. “I will marry her!”“Ah no you won’t,” says Dick, “because I am not giving you a light!”Two Englishmen, Charles and Henry, are getting drunk at their local pub, The Duke and Tart, in London one evening. They see Paddy and Sean, the two Irishmen, at the other end of the bar, and decide to pick a fight with them.“Just watch this, Charles,” says Henry. “I will make that Irish idiot so pissed off that he will have to hit me, and start a fight.”So Henry wanders over to Paddy and says in a superior tone, “Listen here, my good man, do you know Saint Patrick?”“Yes sir, certainly,” says Paddy, putting down his beer glass. “Well, I don’t actually know him personally, but I do know of him, certainly sir!”“Well, then,” continues the Englishman, “you must know that he was a poofter – or to put it more bluntly, a bloody homosexual!”“Ah! No, sir,” replies Paddy, politely, “I did not know that. That’s certainly interesting though – a poofter, you say?”“And not only that,” continues Henry, still trying to provoke him, “but Saint Patrick was a shithead, as well!”“Really?” replies Paddy. “That is amazing. Well, you live and learn, don’t you, sir?”Henry gives up and goes back to the other end of the bar. But Charles, seeing Henry’s failure, jumps to his feet and says, “Leave it to me! I will get him going!”So Charles staggers over to Paddy and says, “Listen here, you idiot, do you know that Saint Patrick was an Englishman?”“Yes, sir, I do,” replies Paddy, “your friend just told me!”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent… Close your eyes, and feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment. Everything is tranquil, a great coolness surrounds you. You can move inward very easily.Gather all your energies, your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment of life, rush toward your center of being. It is just exactly two inches below the navel inside you.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you start coming close to the center of your being, a great silence descends over you like soft rain.It is closer… And peace starts growing in you – very luminous. This peace has been called by the mystics, “The peace that passeth understanding,” because it is beyond mind. It is closer… And you start becoming drunk with the divine.The final step into the very center – and you are pure ecstasy, a dance without movement, a song without words, a music without sounds.This is your original being. Zen calls it the original face which you have been carrying eternally with you. It resembles symbolically the face of Gautam the Buddha. Not knowing it, you are only a bodhisattva. Knowing it, you are a buddha.At this moment you are a buddha. Buddha has only one quality – that of witnessing.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.And finally, witness that you are only a witness.This is the whole secret of meditation, the master key of Zen, which can open all the mysteries of existence, all the doors upon doors, skies upon skies. There is no end to it, only a beginning.Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “Ignorance has no beginning but an end. Enlightenment has a beginning but no end” – a very significant statement. Let it sink deep in you. This moment you are so vulnerable you can allow it to sink in you. It will blossom into tremendous experiences.I repeat: “Ignorance has no beginning but an end. Enlightenment has a beginning but no end.” You are at the beginning point. From now on starts a journey into the infinite, into the eternal, into the ultimate, into the absolute.To make the witnessing more clear, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But go on remembering that you are not the body, you are not the mind, you are only a witness. And as the witnessing starts becoming deeper and deeper, you will suddenly feel a great melting of consciousness, all boundaries disappearing.Gautama the Buddha Auditorium becomes an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas dissolve into one consciousness, an oceanic consciousness without any ripples or waves.The whole existence starts rejoicing with you. It starts showering invisible flowers over you.At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth because all the others are concerned only with the trivia. You are working and searching for the essential, for the eternal.All are concerned with lies and consolations about God. You are working and trying with intensity to find the truth. The truth is that existence is enough unto itself, it needs no God. It certainly needs every living being to rise to such heights as Gautam Buddha.Collect all these flowers, these fragrances from the beyond. You have to bring them with you. And persuade Gautam Buddha – it is your birthright, it is your nature – to come behind you.He will come first as a shadow, but the shadow will be very solid, a foundation for enlightenment. It will have immense warmth surrounding you, it will be almost tangible.On the second step, the buddha comes in front of you – you become the shadow. Your shadow is just a shadow, it starts disappearing in the light and radiance of the buddha.At the third stage, the final stage where you become enlightened, you disappear. You have been just a shadow, a fake personality, a mask. You disappear completely, only the buddha remains.This remaining consciousness is your essential being. It is your existential truth, it is your life. To know this, every moment becomes a celebration.I celebrate myself, and I hope soon the day will come you will be celebrating yourself. And when thousands and thousands of people around the earth are celebrating, singing, dancing, ecstatic, drunk with the divine, there is no possibility of any global suicide. With such festivity and with such laughter, with such sanity and health, with such naturalness and spontaneity, how can there be a war?The Third World War is not going to happen. I predict it! It is not going to happen because of you, because of my people around the earth. They are the only hope. Only millions of buddhas are capable of creating the atmosphere for peace, for love, for compassion, for celebration.Life is not given to you to murder, to destroy. Life has been given to you to create, and to rejoice, and to celebrate.When you cry and weep, when you are miserable, you are alone. When you celebrate, the whole existence participates with you. Only in celebration do we meet the ultimate, the eternal. Only in celebration do we go beyond the circle of birth and death.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back… But come back as buddhas, carrying with you all the peace, the silence, the grace.And sit down just for a few seconds to remember the golden path that you have followed, all the experiences that you have encountered, and the buddha that has come with you. Feel the warmth, the radiance, the light, just behind you.The day will come soon – soon the spring will be here – and the buddha will not be a shadow to you, you will become a shadow to the buddha. And once you are a shadow, then the final step is very easy. The shadow disappears in the light, in the luminosity of the buddha, the awakened one.The third step happens so spontaneously. You are no more, only existence is.This brings you to the celebration I have been talking about. Unless you are full of songs, full of dances, overflowing life, abundance of love and compassion, you have not lived at all. You were simply slowly dying, dying, dying.I want you to live intensely, totally, because only those who live intensely and totally are transformed. Only they know what is the ultimate secret of life.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Gosetsu after becoming a monk under Ma Tzu, came to Sekito and said, “If you settle this with one word, I will stay here. If not, I will leave.”Sekito, knowing that this man had promise, made a gesture, but Gosetsu did not get it. So Gosetsu took his leave and made for the gate, when Sekito called to him “Teacher!”Gosetsu turned around, and Sekito said, “From birth to old age, it is only the fellow there and nothing else – don’t look anywhere further.”At this, Gosetsu was greatly enlightened. He stepped on his stick to break it and stayed there.Once, Sekito said to his assembled monks, “Even if language is used, it is irrelevant.”Hearing this, Yakusan said, “Even if language is not used, it is irrelevant.”Sekito said, “Here, even a needle cannot get through.”Yakusan said, “Here, it is like planting a flower on a rock.”Sekito indicated his approval of what Yakusan said.Friends, I have been telling you that God has been the greatest poison to humanity and its evolution toward ultimate peaks of consciousness. Ayatollah Khomeini has supported what I have been telling to you, by declaring a death sentence on Salman Rushdie and three others for simply publishing a factual statement. No law of any country supports it. No constitution in the world supports it. But this has been the attitude of the priests all down history.A second ayatollah – ayatollah simply means a religious leader – not Khomeini, but another ayatollah, and there are two thousand ayatollahs in Iran, has come up with a better support to my argument. Now he has declared that if Salman Rushdie’s head is presented to him, he is going to give 2.6 million dollars if the person who presents it happens to be an Iranian. If it is a non-Iranian, then one million dollars.From every Mohammedan country, including Pakistan, death squads have moved into England to kill those four people – and if not the four, at least Salman Rushdie for writing the novel, and to bring his head to Iran.Now, this will show you why I have been condemning all God-oriented religions. It is because the God-oriented religion is in the hands of the priests. God does not exist, the priest exists. And the priest does not know any civilization, any culture. Murdering a man is not an argument, it is really accepting defeat. A cultured society needs dialogue. If you have something against Rushdie, you have every right to say it and criticize him – that is human. If you feel he is wrong, you have all the freedom to criticize him.But religions don’t believe in dialogues, they believe in murder, in the sword – that is their argument. To me, it is their defeat. These people have been keeping the world retarded. A few people from India, and from other countries who have condemned Ayatollah Khomeini and the other ayatollah, have been receiving anonymous phone calls saying that they will also be killed.Here in India, one of my friends, Madhu Mehta, made a statement condemning Ayatollah Khomeini. He is a man of immense intelligence, culture, education. He leads a certain movement called the Hindustani Andolan, the movement for a new language which will not be Hindi, the language of the Hindus, and which will not be Urdu, the language of the Mohammedans, but a combination of both, Hindustani. Of course, he has no support. Neither Mohammedans are ready to support him, nor Hindus, but he goes on. For years he has been working on it.That seems to be the simplest way for India to have a national language, otherwise this country is never going to have a national language. For forty years – more than forty years – the constitution has declared Hindi the national language. But the government has not been able to implement it because the Mohammedans are against it and think Urdu should be the language. And there are thirty-two languages accepted by the constitution as state languages. They all are claiming that they should have the right to be the national language. Now, thirty-two languages fighting among each other – there seems to be no way.Madhu Mehta has received an anonymous phone call that he also will be killed and that anybody who says anything against Ayatollah Khomeini will be murdered. Are we living in the twentieth century, or some thousand years back where only killing and murder is the argument? Whoever kills, whoever wins in killing is the right person?It is very easy to kill a Gautam Buddha. Any idiot can do it. In fact, only an idiot can do it. But that does not prove that the idiot’s idea of religiousness is correct, nor does the death of a Gautam Buddha prove that his philosophy is wrong. In fact, it just does the opposite. It proves that the unconscious and retarded humanity, for which all the religions are responsible, have a tremendous poverty of philosophy, of argument, of a cultural and civilized dialogue. And it goes back as far as you can see.Socrates was poisoned by the masses – that was not an argument against his philosophy. The reason? The reason was: “He is destroying our religion and our morality, and corrupting the youth.” Socrates was one of the most intelligent persons who has ever walked on this earth. And anybody who has intelligence is not going to support a God-oriented religion, or a God-dictated morality because it is coming from the priests, not from God. The priest is interested in keeping the whole of humanity as retarded as possible. That’s what makes him powerful, holier, higher and more superior.There are two ways to become superior: one is to evolve your consciousness and become a buddha; another is to keep the whole of humanity retarded so that to them you appear higher.I am reminded of a small anecdote about one of the most significant emperors of India, Akbar:Akbar was a Mohammedan, but not a fanatic and he gathered all kinds of religious people at his court, from different religious sources. He had in his court all the intelligent people of the country, without any discrimination of religion or caste.One day he came to court and asked all his wise people, “I am trying to solve a problem and I need your help.” And then he drew a line on the wall and asked those people, “Can you make it smaller without touching it?”Obviously, you cannot make a line smaller without touching it, so they were all at a loss. But every court in the past used to have a man of immense sense of humor, so that the court kept balanced, did not become serious, tense, stressed.Birbal was Akbar’s man of a sense of humor. He stood up finally, went to the wall, drew a bigger line underneath Akbar’s line and made it smaller without touching it.The priests have been trying in every way to keep humanity at the lowest intelligence. This is their way of keeping themselves holier and higher.If everybody starts growing in consciousness, intelligence, awareness, that is going to destroy all the fictions about God, heaven and hell, and it is going to destroy all the business that the priests are doing around the world. Millions and millions of priests are just parasites. Unless we get rid of the priests, it is very difficult to get rid of God – they are very deeply connected. It is easy to get rid of God if there is no priest because God does not exist and the priest does.It is the priests who have programmed your minds as Christians, as Hindus, as Mohammedans, in the name of God. And it has been going on for centuries.As far as I am concerned, I don’t think humanity has a mental age of more than seven years.In America, where our commune was destroyed by the fundamentalist Christians… Ronald Reagan himself is a fundamentalist Christian, a fanatic. And the only reason to destroy the commune was that they could not tolerate a Godless commune living so happily, so joyously, singing songs and dancing and celebrating without any fear, without any inhibition, without any guilt.The Attorney General, Ed Meese, admitted it before a press conference. Once they had deported me, he accepted that I had not committed any crime, but I had to be deported. He said, “Our priority was to destroy the commune, but without deporting Osho we would not have been able to destroy the commune.”Why was it a priority for them to destroy the commune and to propose thirty-four absolutely imaginary crimes against me? In fact, they were committing a crime against five thousand people who had simply escaped from centuries-old slavery and declared their dignity and freedom. This was intolerable. People declaring their independence and freedom? Their dignity and their prestige and their pride? Their individuality? This could not be tolerated by any fanatical so-called religious person.I had said at a press conference that in Oregon, where the commune was situated, people are retarded. All the politicians were angry; the whole of Oregon was angry. And finally, the University of Oregon decided to make a survey – that was the only civilized way to prove me either right or wrong. And their conclusions are immensely valuable.They surveyed cross sections of society in Oregon, and they surveyed the commune. They were puzzled. They found that the average mental age of Oregonians was seven years, and the average mental age of the sannyasins was fourteen years – double that of any Oregonian. And if we take into account the whole of humanity, I don’t think that the mental age will be more than seven. It will be less than seven years because millions of people are far more retarded than the Oregonians. When the average is taken, it may come to three and a half at the most.People have been kept in this slavery just so that a few people can enjoy superiority. Obviously these people who have enjoyed superiority – the brahmins, the priests, the ayatollahs, the imams, the rabbis, the popes – will not easily allow human beings to declare their independence.You have to understand deeply. My whole work here is to make you declare freedom and total independence from all prisons – religious, national, racial. Only that is going to give you a life of celebration. Your freedom will give you the space to dance, to sing, to celebrate. My vision of religiousness is that of sheer celebration, a tremendous joy in life, in love, in creative actions. This is my manifesto, the manifesto of Zen.Unless humanity is taken out of their prison cells – we are living in the dark ages – every vested interest is going to be against me, it is going to be against you. Every manifesto of freedom will be crushed.It is not accidental that Socrates is poisoned, that al-Hillaj Mansoor is murdered, that Jesus is crucified, that Sarmad is killed, that many attempts were made on the life of Mahavira, that many attempts were made on the life of Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha died from food poisoning and there is every suspicion that it was deliberate poisoning. He was certainly a religious man; as he was dying he told his disciples, in particular Ananda – he called him close and whispered to him, “It does not matter that I am dying. I am concerned about the man who has given me the food that has poisoned me. You have to protect him, otherwise the people who love me will kill him.“So spread the idea around my disciples, and my lovers, and my sympathizers, that two persons are the most blessed: the one who for the first time gives nourishment to the enlightened one – of course, that is the mother – and the second is the one who gives him his last food. These two persons are the very blessed ones. Create this rumor, so that the person who has poisoned me should not suffer unnecessarily.”This is the way of a religious man – a great concern even for the murderer. Unless we fill this earth with such people, humanity is not going to have all the great experiences which every human being has the birthright to attain.Everybody is prohibited from making this earth a lotus paradise, and from experiencing the very consciousness of a Gautam Buddha in his own body. All religions are against you because they are against freedom, and they are against human culture, civilization. They are against any kind of dialogue. Murder is their argument.This simply shows the poverty of all religions, and this also shows that humanity has to revolt against these religions, these churches, these temples, these mosques. A great revolt, a rebellion can only give you the opportunity to grow, otherwise you simply grow old, you don’t grow up. And remember the difference between the two.Growing old is not of any worth, every animal does it, it needs no intelligence. Growing up is a totally different experience. Growing old is horizontal; growing up is vertical, it leads you to heights, it leads you to depths.Strangely enough, you will be surprised to know that time is horizontal. One moment passes, another moment comes, another moment, another moment… It is in a line, a horizontal line. Time is horizontal, and mind is also horizontal. One thought is followed by another thought, and by another thought, and by another thought, but in a line, in a row, a procession, or just like traffic – but it is going horizontally.Meditation is vertical, it is going beyond mind and beyond time. And perhaps, ultimately you will find that time and mind are equivalent, two names of the same phenomenon – the horizontal procession of thoughts, of moments. Meditation is to stop both time and mind, and suddenly you start rising up in eternity. Eternity is not part of time, and eternity is not a thought; it is an experience.It is a difficult task to get rid of God and God-oriented religions, and to get rid of the priests who are supporting this lie by threatening people with murder. These murderers should be exposed and they should be dethroned. The basic need is a deep understanding of your own divinity. Then there is no need for an external God, and then there is no need for any mediators between you and God.Meditation is a rebellion, perhaps the most fundamental rebellion against all fictions, against all lies, and against all those who are living on those fictions and lies.I teach you rebellion, I teach you revolt. I teach you freedom of your individuality. Destroy all kinds of prisons, destroy all kinds of lies – and you can destroy them only by meditation. Rise beyond time and mind, and you will find not only that you are divine, but the whole existence is divine, life is divine. And you enter a totally new dimension that has been completely blocked by scriptures, by priests, by God, by heaven and hell, by all kinds of fear, by all kinds of greed.It is a very unnatural phenomenon that a person goes on growing physically but his mind is stuck somewhere below seven years. It cannot be natural! The mind is kept retarded, otherwise just as your body grows, your physiology grows, your mental age will follow simultaneously. When you are seventy years old, your mental age must be seventy years old. But it is seven years old.According to me, if this is possible then the opposite is also possible. If a man of seventy has only the mental age of a seven-year-old child, then the reverse is also possible. A man of seventy may have the mental age of seven hundred years.Once Emerson was asked, “What is your age?”And he said, “Three hundred and sixty years.”The man who had asked could not believe it. Three hundred and sixty years…? He said, “I did not hear, please repeat what you have said.”Emerson said, “You have heard: three hundred and sixty years.”The man said, “I cannot believe it. You must be joking! You don’t look more than sixty years old.”Emerson said, “Yes, my body is only sixty years old, but my consciousness is six times more than sixty. I count my age according to my intelligence, not according to my body because I am not the body, I am my intelligence.”Religions have kept you chained because a man of intelligence is not going to believe in any lies. So intelligence has to be crippled, and all the religions have been involved in this crippling process.In Japan, there is a certain method, which is ugly to me, but which is very much appreciated by the Japanese people. There are four-hundred-year-old trees which are only six inches high. They look very ancient, but their height is only six inches. And the strategy that has been used is the strategy that has been used against every human being by your religions, by your God and God-oriented theologies.The trick is very simple. For four hundred years a family, generation after generation, keeps a tree. It is kept in a pot which has no base, so they can go on cutting the roots from the bottom. If you don’t allow the roots to grow, the tree cannot grow tall. They don’t touch the rest of the tree; it simply becomes older and older and older. But the tree does not reach to the height which was its potential because the roots are being continuously cut.Intelligence is your root.They show those trees as if it is an art. To me, it is against nature, against those poor trees. You have not allowed them to grow. And perhaps if those trees have a certain kind of mind, a certain kind of intelligence, they will think, “This is how we are: six inches high.” They will not be able to discover at all that they have been kept imprisoned by cutting their roots – because they don’t see the roots.You don’t see your roots in existence. Only a meditator comes to see his roots in existence. Those roots have been cut completely, continuously, century after century, generation after generation, by the priest. You have been kept retarded in intelligence.People ask me why the masses don’t come to me. They cannot understand me. Only very intelligent people who have a certain individuality and a certain sense of freedom, can understand me. The masses can only murder me. Only the intelligent, the elite…To understand me you will have to go through a transformation, you will have to look into your roots. Who has been cutting those roots? Who are these rats who have been cutting your roots? All your rabbis, all your bishops, all your ayatollahs, all your shankaracharyas… They are the rats who are cutting your roots. And they don’t give you a chance to have a fuller life. Otherwise every person will have a tremendous life of such great fulfillment: “Who cares about what happens after death?” One has lived so totally, loved so totally that who cares about what happens after death?There are only two possibilities: either you die, then there is no problem, or you continue to live. And you know how to live, you know how to be total, so you will live more totally without the body. You will have the whole sky available to you. So whether you are atheist or theist does not matter. What matters is to live life so totally that death becomes absolutely unimportant. Only two alternatives are left: either you will die… So what is the problem?Do you think you had any problem before you were born? Just think of that. You had no problem, you were not there. So how can the problem exist without you? Do you remember any problem before you were born?I say to you, that is one side; the other side is death. You won’t have any problem if you really die. If you don’t die, you will have all the opportunities, more than you have now. But you have to discipline yourself for living so abundantly that if you survive death, you will be able to live more abundantly because you will have more space to dance, more space to celebrate.As far as I am concerned, I know there is no death. But I don’t want you to believe it, I want you to experience it.The religions have been creating all kinds of devices to keep you blind and in darkness. An ancient saying describing a philosopher says that a philosopher is a man who is blind, in a dark house where there is no light, searching for a black cat which is not there.This is not the description or the definition only of a philosopher. This is exactly the description and definition of all human beings. Religion has kept them blind, in utter darkness, telling them lies, and telling them to find it: a black cat that is not there! All religions are telling you to find God, and you don’t have eyes, and you don’t have any light, and God does not exist. God is the cat!And you go on groping and stumbling. The more you grope, the more you stumble; the more fractured you are, the more despair and anxiety and anguish you have that perhaps others have caught the cat and you have not fulfilled the promise. Your hands are empty and death is coming every moment closer and closer. Naturally the whole of humanity has lost its sense of humor. People smile only a lipstick smile. It does not go beyond the lipstick. And lipstick makes women so ugly – anything fake makes people ugly.Even my sannyasins, when they go back to the west, start painting their lips. When they come back, it takes a few days to clean that dirt that they have been putting on their lips. I can’t conceive that any man of intelligence could kiss a woman who is wearing lipstick! That lipstick is almost a Wall of China – you don’t reach the woman at all. At least I am certain about me. The moment I see lipstick, I know that this woman is phony. Avoid it; it has no soul, it is just a mask.Just a few days ago, a very rich young Indian woman – because Indian women don’t use lipstick unless they are very rich and convent educated – came because she is the owner of a magazine and a newspaper. She wanted to write a story about me, and she wanted a photograph with me.Anando, my legal secretary, was telling me that she is a very beautiful woman. When I saw her, I saw only the red lipstick and nothing else. I tried to avoid her face, and I told Anando, “You were telling me this woman is beautiful? Have you not seen her lipstick?”No falsity can be beautiful, only authenticity, sincerity. As you are, in your utter nudity, you have a beauty, you have an individuality.But all the religions are creating hypocrites. Not only is their God a lie, but they have caused the whole of humanity to be in deep hypocrisy. Pretend – that is their preaching. Exhibit that you are a moralist, that you are a puritan, that you are a saint. They have not allowed you any transformation. They have only given you masks, personalities, and they have deprived you of the individuality which is your eternal right.Declare your eternal right, and that right will destroy the gods and the priests because they are conspiring together against whole of humanity.Your God is not a creator of life; he is the enemy of life because life is truth and God is a lie. But he continues to live because of the priesthood. That’s why the priesthood has no evidence, no argument for God, only murder.Now this nonsense that a man who has not done any harm to anybody, but has simply stated a fact that Mohammed himself had accepted: that the Devil inspired him to write a few verses describing three female deities…This is a strategy, the same as I told you about the American TV preacher Bakker, who has been one of the most famous TV preachers. This is a new kind of priesthood arising in America. Millions of people used to listen to him every Sunday. He was talking about celibacy, and he was found red-handed in a sexual relationship with a woman. And then it was discovered that he was also having homosexual relations with his assistant. And because he was caught red-handed he immediately said, “I was forced by the Devil!” It is very easy to throw the blame on the Devil.It is strange. He had been having these love affairs his whole life, and he did not tell anybody in all these sermons – every Sunday for years – “I am being forced by the Devil…” Suddenly now that he is caught… If he had not been caught, he would have remained the representative of God.But strange, when I saw this, that the man was now blaming the Devil…! That the Devil was forcing him to make love to his secretary, to make love to his assistant who was a male, to make love to other women who were part of his congregation: “It was the Devil!” But how do you know it was the Devil and not God? If you were not caught – and it is such an easy device…Then all the criminals can say in court, “I was inspired by the Devil. I have not murdered, it was the Devil who was forcing me to murder. I have not raped, it was the Devil!” Then no criminal can be punished – “If you want to punish, punish the Devil.”Bakker, after one year’s penance, is back on the TV – again as God’s representative!Watching his whole strategy, I was reminded of a woman who was confessing to a Catholic priest…The woman said, “I have been raped.”The priest said, “You have been raped continuously for six weeks. Every Sunday you come… How do you manage it?”She said, “It is the same person. And it is not once, sometimes he rapes me twice a night.”The priest said, “Do you understand the meaning of raping?”She said, “I understand.”“The same person goes on raping you for six weeks? Sometimes even twice a night… And you just confess? And again the raping continues. Why do you confess?”She said, “I enjoy confessing. It gives me such joy, almost exactly the same as when I am raped. Just the whole scene…”And she used to describe it in absolute detail, minute detail.Now can you conceive people’s blindness? Bakker is back…Jainism, which is one of the most refined religions in the world, declares that no woman can become enlightened. But one woman managed to become enlightened. The whole reason that a woman cannot be celibate was because of her menstrual period. A man can pretend to be celibate, can manage, but how can a woman pretend that she is not having the menstrual period? And particularly in the religion of the Jainas because you cannot become enlightened unless you become nude.So there are five stages… Slowly, slowly you drop your possessions, and the final stage is of the muni – the muni becomes naked. Now, how is a naked woman going to deceive people when her period comes? This was the trouble.People condemn me that I am concerned about trivia, and Mahavira and twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas were concerned about the woman’s period! And because of the period – because you cannot hide it, particularly when you are nude – the woman cannot become enlightened, she cannot be celibate. She cannot change her biology, nor does any man ever change his biology. It is beyond the mind’s control. No man has ever been celibate. They are all pretenders, all hypocrites.But one woman, Mallibai, was very courageous – because women are courageous, particularly in a society like India where the woman has to hide herself in a sari… The sari is very beautiful in hiding the woman, her proportions, her curves of the body. The sari is a beautiful device. You only see the woman’s face, you don’t see anything else. And in such a country, in such a culture, the woman will be shy to be nude.But Mallibai must have been a tremendously daring woman. I have immense respect for that woman who stood nude. And unwillingly they had to accept that she was enlightened. You cannot deny enlightenment, but they managed to once she was dead. They changed her name from Mallibai to Mallinath. Now Mallinath is a man’s name. Nath changes everything. Bai means a woman, and mallibai they changed into mallinath.And not only that… In Jaina temples you will find twenty-four statues of the tirthankaras, but you will not find any statue of a woman – they are all naked, so you can discover it.I used to harass my father every time I went with him to the temple, “Where is Mallibai in these twenty-four statues?”And he used to say, “I don’t know at all, and you continue to ask again and again. Whenever you come with me, the first thing you ask is about Mallibai. And how am I supposed to know? The twenty-four all are male, not one is female.”I said, “What happened to Mallibai?” They have changed even the statue. It is not of a woman, the statue is of a man. The name changed, the statue changed – because they have to save this male chauvinistic idea that only a man can become enlightened.All the religions in some way or other have condemned the woman. So Mohammed must have felt that when Khadija died, it was time to change those three verses. Now the blame goes to the Devil.The Koran is one of the strangest books because it has not been written in a continuity – one verse today, one verse ten days later… Mohammed was uneducated. He did not write it himself; he used to dictate whenever he found something worth dictating. So many Mohammedan friends have asked me, “You have spoken on many religions, why don’t you speak on the Koran?”I said, “Do you want me to be murdered?” I have something else to do meanwhile. Finally, when I think that it is time for me to leave the body, I will speak on the Koran. And I will manage to have one of my sannyasins kill me and get 2.6 million dollars for my work! But not while my work is still incomplete. These priests all around the world are holding the whole of humanity in their clutches. They are vultures, not human beings.This is your work: to spread the message of freedom, of individuality of a religiousness which is a quality, and not to be a member of any organized religion. It is purely an individual affair, just as love is. It is the greatest and highest and the purest love with existence.You have fallen in love with a woman, this is a small matter. You have fallen in love with a man, this is a small matter. Once you fall in love with existence itself, with life itself, then it is the great matter. Zen masters call it “the great matter.”But it is individual, it has nothing to do with any institution. In institutions, only mad people live. When people call marriage an institution, I agree. It is an institution because in institutions only mad people live.Religion has nothing to do with organization. The moment you organize truth you kill it. A bird on the wing is one thing. You can catch hold of the same bird and put it in a golden cage. Outwardly it is the same bird, but inwardly it has lost its freedom. It has lost its joy in the sun, in the rain, going beyond the clouds. It has lost its sky, its space; it is not the same bird. In appearance it is the same, but in truth it is a slave.The bird on the wing was in total freedom, dancing over the clouds, going across the sun toward the unknown without any fear. But now, there is nowhere to go – although the cage is golden. All responsibility is taken by the owner. The bird will have his food, nourishment, everything… But it is selling the soul too cheaply.Don’t be encaged in any religion. Be religious.Create the vastness of sky which is already there. You just have to discover it within you. And you will be free of all prisons, of all religions, and of all the Holy Bibles, the holy Koran, the holy Gita; none of them is holy. The only holy place is within you. And once you have known it, then you know that it is within everybody. Wherever there is life, all over there is sacredness, holiness.You are not only being prevented from growing into your intelligence, you are being prevented from knowing the authentic divineness of existence, the authentic sacredness of life.These priests are murderers – not literally – actually. They have murdered more people than the politicians. And they are still there; they are still openly declaring and supporting murder. Anybody who opposes it has also to be murdered. They know only one language – that of murder. They have not learned anything that can be called human; they are animals. But even animals are more cultured.The first question:Osho,God is a fiction of the mind, an invention of religious politicians. But my mind wants fictions, hopes, future. Is this natural?No, not at all. You have been programmed, you don’t know what nature is. All these hopes that you think your mind needs are created.The old economists used to say that wherever there is a demand there will be supply. Now things have completely changed. Manufacturers of all kinds of goods first start advertising, they have not yet manufactured the thing. They put more money into advertising than in producing the product because that advertising creates a false need in people’s minds that they need it. Once the need is there…It is a false need because they have never needed it. Just the advertisement consistently, constantly, hammering on their heads from every television set, from every radio, from every corner of the street, from every magazine, from every newspaper – how long can you avoid it? You are surrounded continuously by the same advertisement and soon you start feeling that you need it, you cannot live without it. It is not even produced. When the manufacturer finds that people have started feeling the need, then he manufactures it. So now it is a created need which you take for granted, as if it has been your natural need.These priests, religious politicians, have been doing the same kind of advertising for thousands of years. They give you the idea, and they preach continuously. Their scriptures are continuously preaching all the old methods. And they are now using the new media also: television, radio, satellites, to propagate lies.You think you need – your mind wants fictions. No, these fictions are created. Just don’t tell a child there is a God and he will never feel the desire to find God. It is so easy to understand. In the Soviet Union nobody is searching for God because they have a totally different programming, the communist programming, atheist programming. From the very childhood the child is told there is no God, but that in the past, people were so stupid they used to worship a lie, a fiction.One of my friends, Rahul Sanskrityayana, a scholar of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit, was a Buddhist monk. But he also became interested in communism because of the simple similarity that Buddha has no God and Marx also has no God. So he started becoming interested in Marxism, and finally he became a communist. The Soviet Union asked him to go to Moscow University to teach Sanskrit there. So he went to Moscow.Out of India, in Moscow, things were different. Here it would have been impossible for him to remain a Buddhist monk and yet fall in love. In the Soviet Union there was no difficulty. He fell in love with a beautiful woman, Lola – she was also a professor in the same university and she had two children.But the Soviet government did not allow him to take the wife or children out of the Soviet Union. He could live there, but he wanted to come back to his own country. And he was also afraid. In a way the government was fulfilling his innermost desire – how could he go to India with a wife and two children? He would be condemned by everybody, particularly the Buddhists: “You are a monk!” So, in a way, he was happy that the government itself did not allow it, so there was no question.He came back. He told me, “When I first went to the Soviet Union, I asked a small boy, ‘Do you believe in God?’ He said, ‘God? People used to believe in that in the dark ages. If you want to see a statue of God, you can go into the museum.’”But this is also programming. It is not that these small boys know there is no God, or that even Karl Marx knew there was no God. Only a man of immense meditation can know whether God is or is not.So you are programmed, and the program is so deeply ingrained that you think it is your nature. Your fictions, your hopes, your future – nothing is natural.Nature knows nothing except this moment. Nature knows nothing about hopes and desires and wants. Nature simply enjoys whatever is available this moment, now and here.You are asking if it is a distortion, a reflection of a sick culture. Yes, absolutely and categorically, yes. It is a distortion, a reflection of a sick culture. And you are asking: “Is the state of grace that I seek hidden from me by nature for some purpose?” There is no purpose. Purpose again brings in the whole lot of lies. Existence simply is.Just look at it from this angle. When you are sick you go to the doctor and you ask, “What is the cause of my sickness?” You ask for the diagnosis. But when you are feeling healthy, do you go to the doctor and say, “Diagnose the cause of my health. Why am I feeling so happy?” You don’t go to the doctor, or to the psychiatrist, or to the psychoanalyst. And if you go, that means you are mad. If you ask, “Why am I feeling so happy…?”No, happiness needs no cause. It is your simple nature, you are intrinsically happy. No cause, no purpose, no goal is needed. Life is enough in itself. It needs nothing else to complete it. It is complete. It is entire. It is already what it has to be. So there is no purpose in existence and no goal in existence.Existence is a sheer dance.Picasso was constantly bothered by people because his paintings seemed to be purposeless, meaningless. Once a critic was staying with him and he was painting. He watched and watched, and he said to Picasso, “Why are you wasting your time? This is nothing. There is no purpose in your painting.”He said, “This is strange. I am at least painting. And why are you sitting behind me? For three hours you have been wasting your time and you are telling me that I am wasting my time. I am enjoying immensely. There is no need for any purpose. Just painting, just playing with these colors is so great. Who cares about the purpose and the meaning and the goal?“Why don’t you go into the garden and ask the roses, ‘What is the purpose of your being? Why are you dancing without purpose? Why are you looking so happy and smiling? Shut up! You don’t have any purpose, and you are dancing in the wind and under the sun. What is the great idea? Why are you spreading your fragrance?’“Why don’t you go into the garden? And if a rose need not have a purpose, why should my paintings have a purpose? They are existential.”And the man was perfectly right, just in a wrong place. These people like Picasso needed the environment of Zen, but they were living in the West where everything has to have a purpose, otherwise you are insane. Why are you doing it? They can’t understand that just doing it can be out of sheer joy. Playing with colors is a sheer joy in itself. Trying to find meaning in it is just your programming: everything has to be meaningful.I was a student in the university, and I was winning all kinds of debates, eloquence competitions, all over the country. I had filled the head of my department’s office with all kinds of trophies and cups – gold and silver. And he started telling me, “If you go on winning in this way, I think I will have to move out of my office. There is no space left.”I said, “You don’t have to move out, I will move all the trophies and all the cups.”He said, “No, that is credit to the department.”I said, “Then you have to decide whether you want to be in the office or not.” And finally he had to move out of the office. He created another small office on the verandah where he used to sit because his whole office became a showplace for any guest.One day he asked me – because in my own university there was going to be a national university competition – “Why do you go on unnecessarily traveling long distances? What is your purpose?”I said, “I don’t have any purpose. I love it – that’s my way of playing. That’s my way of telling stories which have no purpose at all. Just the sheer joy of overflowing life. I am not old enough to think about purpose.”He said, “What?”I said, “Yes, I am not old enough, and I will never be old enough to think about purpose and meaning. I rejoice in whatever I am doing. There is no purpose.”Do you think talking to you there is any purpose? I just enjoy it. You enjoy listening, I enjoy talking, it is complete. There is no need beyond it. If something happens within it, that is not my responsibility.If you become enlightened, it is your problem. So be careful!I am just enjoying talking, you are enjoying listening. In between these two things anything is possible. You may become enlightened, but remember, never condemn me for your enlightenment. It is just your problem, not mine. I have my problem – you don’t worry about it.So I told the head of my department, “There is no purpose. I enjoy talking. I love a heart-to-heart talk.”That day the competition was going to be held. There used to be two persons from each university – one opposing the subject and one supporting the subject. I was opposing the subject, but my partner became so nervous… It was his first time to come to the stage.The student who used to come with me around the country had died in an accident, so I had to find a new partner, and that was his first time. I tried hard to prepare him, to repeat his speech many times, but finally when the time came, he disappeared.So the vice-chancellor asked me what to do. I said, “I can manage. First I will speak in support – because my partner is missing, and I don’t want to lose that prize – and then I will oppose.”He said, “My God! You will do both?”I said, “Just try. It will be a great enjoyment.”So I spoke for it, and I spoke against it, and I had both the prizes, first and second.As I was going out, the vice-chancellor took me into a corner and said, “It was a miracle. When you were speaking in favor of it, I was thinking what will you do? You are giving such a great argument in favor, I don’t think you will be able to oppose it. But when you started opposing, I thought, My God! – your arguments are so clear. What happened to the other arguments…?” He said, “But I want to ask you one thing, that’s why I have pulled you out of the crowd. Do you have any convictions of your own?”I said, “I just love talking. You have heard only two sides – there are many sides. And if you want some day I can speak from many points of view. These are only two polar opposites, but there are middle positions and there are at least seven positions on each subject.”He said “That would drive me mad. Just these two positions are driving me completely out of my mind. I don’t think I am going to sleep because I am wondering what is right.”I said, “That is your problem. I enjoyed the whole game, and I have got both the prizes. And this is far better. If you can convince other vice-chancellors that only one person should come to represent both sides, it will be far easier for me because I won’t have to prepare the other person. It is better and easier. I don’t have any belief, I don’t have any prejudice. I am utterly open. And because I love it, it is a game.”Your life should be a playfulness, not a purpose. Your life should be a fun, not goal oriented. It should not be business, it should be pure love. What is the purpose of love? If there is no purpose in love, why should there be purpose in meditation? Why should there be any purpose in nature and existence?Purpose is always an end somewhere far away that you have to achieve. Purpose is an achievement of a distant goal, it is never herenow and life is herenow. It is not going anywhere, it has no purpose.And you don’t understand the implication of the word purpose. Once purpose is fulfilled, life will be dead. Then there will be no need for existence – the purpose is fulfilled, the game is finished. Because it is an ongoing game, eternity to eternity, it can’t afford to have a goal, it can’t afford to have a death, it can’t afford to have a purpose.Unless you understand how to live purposelessly, you have not understood the meaning, the significance of life.Life has everything that it needs in itself; it is intrinsic, not outside. It is an unfoldment of more and more joy, of more and more blissfulness, of more and more ecstasy. But the unfoldment is in the present. As you go deeper and deeper, and higher and higher, you become more and more playful. And to be playful takes all seriousness away.Purpose makes people serious, and I consider seriousness to be sickness of the soul. Laughter is health, but laughter has no purpose. It is so beautiful in itself, it need not have a purpose. It is not a means to any end. It is means and end both together.And finally, you are asking: “Is my identification with the ego a necessary stage in a natural process?” No, it is again a created phenomenon by the priests, by the politicians, by your parents. The child is born without any ego. Have you ever watched a small child who says – if his name is Johnny – “Johnny is feeling thirsty”? He never says, “I am feeling thirsty,” It will come later on when programming has happened. In the beginning the child says, “Johnny is feeling sleepy.”One of the Hindu mystics, Ramateertha, never said “I” in his whole life. He would always say, “Rama is tired. Rama is hungry…”He went to America. Here, the people who surrounded him, understood him, but in America he seemed to be using a very strange type of language: “Rama is feeling thirsty.” People would look around wondering, “Who is Rama?” And they asked him, “Why don’t you simply say ‘I am feeling thirsty’?”He said, “That I cannot say, because there is no ‘I.’ So I just use the name, which is a false thing, apparently false because it has been given. It is a label put on me, but there is no ‘I’ in me. And my innermost space is neither thirsty nor hungry. It is the body, and the label of the body is Ramateertha. It is not my name. I am nameless and formless; name and form belong to the body. So I cannot use the word I because there is no corresponding reality to it inside me.” And he was absolutely right.The ego is created by ambition, by desire, by greed. Everybody is telling you: “Become somebody special. Have power, prestige, respectability, money, things that matter in the world.” All these create slowly, slowly the idea of the ego, of superiority, of holier-than-thou, higher-than-thou. This ego creates your saints, this ego creates your so-called priests, your politicians, your presidents, prime ministers. This is all the projection of the ego.But ego has no natural existence. It is a by-product of a certain programming that society manages to befool you with. Once you see that the ego is false, handed over to you by others, the whole house of falsity simply disappears, like darkness when you bring light in.Meditation will bring the light from your very center, a cool fire. And when your interior becomes luminous, you will not find any ego, any I. You will simply find the whole existence pouring into you.The ego is also an imprisonment. Being egoless you are again out of the golden cage.My parents used to say to me, “The way you are going, you will end up being nobody.” And somebody else would say, “You will end up in being good for nothing.” I have ended up being nobody, good for nothing. But I am enjoying this good-for-nothingness, this nobodiness so much that each moment has become a splendor, a magic, a miracle.Out of this nothingness arises my freedom, my wholeness. Out of this nothingness I meet with existence with an easy heart, relaxed, in a deep let-go. There is no ego, no somebody to prevent me. I don’t have any borders, any limits. In this nothingness I have arrived at the very source of existence.I would love you also to be good for nothing, a nobody. And then you will find a tremendous dignity – for no reason, but just because the whole existence is overflowing, and all around you flowers are blossoming, stars are dancing. For the first time when you are nobody, you feel your heartbeat and the universe’s heartbeat are in deep synchronicity. That feeling is the greatest experience in existence, the most divine, the most godly.Now the sutras:Gosetsu, after becoming a monk under Ma Tzu, came to Sekito and said, “If you settle this with one word, I will stay here. If not, I will leave.”His question certainly shows he is coming from Ma Tzu. Ma Tzu is the strangest master that ever happened. He must have heard this statement from Ma Tzu, or in the air of Ma Tzu where there were many people just becoming afire, coming to their real home.He is asking Sekito, “If you settle this…” Remember the word this. The whole emphasis is on this – “If you settle this with one word…” He is saying, “If you can say what this is with a single word, I will stay here. If not, I will leave.”Sekito, knowing that this man had promise…His very question showed an intense longing to understand this. But he does not want to go into details, he does not want any unnecessary commentary. He wants simply a single word: “Settle it and I will stay here; otherwise I leave.”A man fiery enough, bold enough, daring enough to challenge a man like Sekito. Sekito, knowing that this man had promise – he could see the promise in his eyes, in his very air, in his very approach – made a gesture… A silent gesture. Even a single word is too much. That was the emphasis of Sekito, “Why are you asking for even one word? One word leads to another and to another, and then comes the whole theology and the whole philosophy, and the whole religion goes on growing. Words and words, and you forget all about this.“So I won’t use even a single word – that is too much. You have already gone, you have already passed this. You have moved into language from existence. And that is the greatest distance in the world: the experience of this, and making a statement about it. That is the greatest distance possible. Even stars are not that far away. They may be millions of light-years away – that does not matter. The distance between this and the statement about this is the greatest distance between two points.” Sekito avoided even a single word.Always remember, one thing leads to another and to another, and then there is no end. You are lost in a jungle of words. So he would not say even a single word, he simply made a gesture. And his gesture was immensely profound, but it was utterly silent.Gosetsu did not get it. He wanted a word. He was looking for the word, that’s why he missed the gesture. Whenever you are looking for something, you will miss the truth. Don’t look for something; just go empty-handed, without any projection, without any prejudice, without any belief. Perhaps he had come from Ma Tzu hearing his words, and he wanted Sekito to say something greater, in a single word, condensed. But one word or one thousand words makes no difference.Sekito is utterly truthful, absolutely honest. Not uttering a single word, he simply made a gesture. And in his gesture there was thisness. In his gesture was suchness. In his gesture was the whole of existence. In his presence and the gesture everything was contained; nothing was left out. Nothing was said, but everything was indicated – a hint, a naked truth without clothes. All words are clothes. The more words, the more clothes. Finally, you have layer upon layer of language, and the truth is lost in the jungle.But Gosetsu missed it because he was waiting for a word. His focus was on a word, otherwise he would not have missed it. He was alert and waiting for the word, and the word did not come. Because of his narrowing mind upon a word, he missed the vastness of this that Sekito was indicating with a gesture.Never look for anything. That which is, will declare itself to you. Simply be silent and wait. Yes, waiting is the right approach to truth. Wait, be a witness, be patient. Keep your door open for the guest because one never knows when the guest will come and knock on your door.Do you remember a small poem by Rabindranath Tagore, “The King of the Night?”There used to be an ancient temple, very ancient. The temple was vast. It had thousands of statues and a thousand priests. The high priest dreamed one night that God was saying to him, “Tomorrow sometime I am coming to visit the temple. Clean it, prepare it. I am coming for the first time. You have waited long, now the time has come.”He woke up in the middle of the night. He called all the priests from their bedrooms. They were surprised: “What is the matter?” It had never happened before.The high priest said to them, “I had a dream. Although it is a dream, who knows? It may be true, it may be just an indication that he is coming.”They laughed, they giggled. They said, “You are getting old, you are getting senile. A dream is a dream, and you disturbed our sleep.”The high priest said, “I am sorry, but I have to tell you not to take chances. There is nothing wrong in cleaning the temple and preparing the richest food, the best room for him to rest. Anyway this is going to give the temple a good spring-cleaning. It has not been cleaned for hundreds of years, so this is good chance. If he comes, good; if he does not come, there is no harm.”They could see the argument.And he said, “If we don’t do anything and he turns up, then don’t blame me. I will not be responsible. I have told you.”They all felt that there was some grain of truth, a very convincing argument in it. So the next day they cleaned the whole temple. It was vast. To clean it – and it had not been cleaned for hundreds of years – was a tremendous job. They called many other people – a thousand priests and hundreds of other people from the nearby villages who used to worship. So they came, and all the statues were cleaned – fragrance, flowers, garlands, great sweets and delicious food was prepared. God was coming for the first time. But they all knew deep down, “It is just a dream, and we are unnecessarily being harassed, but what to do?”They waited and they waited and they waited. It was sunset and he had not turned up. And the priests were becoming angry because they could not eat unless God had taken food first. Every day they were offering food to the statues, and statues don’t eat – that is the only good thing about statues. So they would offer food and they would take it back; now it had become sacred, God had given it as a gift. It became prasad, it became holy, sacred. Then they would eat it.But today was different. God himself was coming and, if he found them eating before he had come, there was going to be trouble. But by the evening they became very angry with the high priest. They said, “Your dream has disturbed our night, has disturbed our day. We have been laboring the whole day and we are hungry, and we cannot eat, we cannot drink. And now it is sunset, the day is finished. So it is better that we now offer our food to our statues, take it back, eat it and go to sleep.”The high priest could not say anything more. He also felt that they were right, but deep down his dream was so vivid and so colorful that only with reluctance did he allow them.He could see their argument: “How long do we have to wait? The day is over, we have waited enough.”So they ate. They were tired, so they went to sleep early…And in the middle of the night the chariot of God came, the chariot’s wheels making a great noise on a dusty road. Somebody heard the noise and half-asleep and half-awake he said, “Look! It seems he has come. I have heard the noise of a chariot’s wheels.”Somebody else shouted, “Shut up! Now don’t bring that subject up again. Do you want to disturb our sleep again? It is not a chariot, it is just clouds thundering in the sky. Go to sleep!”And then the chariot stopped in front of the temple, but the door was closed. Still, he went up the steps – there were many steps to the temple.There are temples in India with one hundred steps, two hundred steps, three hundred steps and then you find the main door.God knocked on the door. And again, another priest heard the knock. He said, “Listen, somebody is knocking on the door. Perhaps he has come.”Again somebody shouted, “Will you not stop? Can’t you allow us to rest? There is nobody knocking on the door. It is just the wind!” So they again went to sleep.God waited. There was no sign of anybody coming to open the door, so he returned to his chariot.In the morning, they saw that a chariot had come up to the door on the dusty road. They could see the marks of the wheels of the chariot, and they could see on the dust that had gathered on the steps, that somebody had walked up to the door. But now it was too late – nothing could be done. They missed it.This is a small poem by Rabindranath Tagore, emphasizing one point: waiting. It is never enough. Waiting consciously, alert, witnessing whatsoever is happening, but not asking for a certain hypothesis to be fulfilled – because the mind has the capacity to create any hallucination you ask for. You can see Christ, you can see Krishna, you can see anybody you want.Mind has the capacity to dream, and it has the capacity to dream with open eyes – that is called hallucination. If you go on asking for something, it will appear as if it is real. Mind can give reality to all kinds of lies.So you have to put aside all your prejudices, all your conceptions, all your projections; put all your Gods aside. You have to enter your own being just watching, waiting, trusting existence that whenever a time is ripe and your spring comes, the grass will grow by itself.Every tree trusts existence – the spring comes, the flowers blossom, the fruits arrive. Why can’t you wait for the right time? Why should you make demands on nature? A demanding mind is not the mind of a seeker. A seeker simply waits and allows existence its own time, its own wisdom. Whenever you are ripe, whenever you are really ready, the door will be opened for you. You don’t have to knock.Jesus says to you, “Knock and the door shall be opened.” I say unto you, “Don’t knock, wait! When the time is ripe, the door shall be opened unto you.” Knocking is demanding, knocking is interfering. Knocking is not trust. Knocking is forcing existence to appear in a certain way according to your hypothesis, according to your belief system. No, no knocking; just wait and watch.Jesus says, “Ask, and it shall be answered.” No, never ask, otherwise it shall never be answered. Just wait. In the right moment you will find the answer.Jesus says, “Seek, and ye shall find it.” I say unto you, “Don’t seek, otherwise you will never find it,” because seeking means you already know what you are seeking. Seeking means you already believe in a certain hypothesis. Seeking means you already have an idea about truth. This is dangerous. No seeking, just waiting in utter silence, in tremendous trust. As your silence deepens, you will see things are happening on their own accord. And as things start happening on their own accord, your trust deepens. This is almost spontaneous.By just waiting Gosetsu would have understood the gesture of Sekito. But he was asking, demanding. Just look at his statement: “If you settle this with one word, I will stay here.” As if Sekito needs his staying there. He is making a bargain: “I will stay here if you explain this in one word” – now this is a demanding mind. “If not, I will leave.” Whom is he threatening? But because of this he was full of bullshit and missed.But even though he missed, Sekito knew that beyond this bullshit there was someone very promising, a bodhisattva. Once the nonsense was dropped, the bodhisattva will surface as a buddha, as an awakened soul.Sekito, knowing that this man had promise, made a gesture, but Gosetsu did not get it. So Gosetsu took his leave and made for the gate, when Sekito called to him, “Teacher!”You have to understand the difference between a master and a teacher. The master is one who knows, the teacher is one who knows not but is knowledgeable. He has collected much information, but he has not gone through the transformation. So when Sekito called to him, he used the word teacher, not master.He was full of knowledge; his question shows it. He has heard much, read much. He is a scholar, a knowledgeable person, learned; hence he called him teacher.Gosetsu turned around, and Sekito said, “From birth to old age, it is only the fellow there and nothing else – don’t look anywhere further.”What is he saying? He is saying, “What are you asking for? It has been there within you from birth to death, from eternity to eternity. And just by turning back, you have yourself given the answer. Just look there, don’t go anywhere else, turn back. Turn inward – that is a complete turn back. Don’t go further, just turn in, turn back, and you will find this – the suchness of existence, the tathata. It has been there always.”This turning around: “From birth to old age, it is only the fellow there…” Who has turned? Who has heard the word teacher? And who has followed the word and turned around? This is it! The fellow there inside you:“The fellow there and nothing else – don’t look anywhere further.”At this, Gosetsu was greatly enlightened. He stepped on his stick to break it and stayed there.People who walk on the mountains take a stick as a support on the steep mountains. So he has come with a stick to the mountain where Sekito Stonehead was sitting on a rock.You know that Ma Tzu said to another person who was going to Sekito, “You are going. That’s perfectly good, but do you remember Sekito’s path is very slippery?” He was sitting on a rock and the path was very slippery, so anybody going there had to bring a stick with him.This action of Gosetsu, of breaking the stick, shows that now he had found his master and there was no need to go anywhere. He was not going down that steep hill again. Finished! He had heard it, he had found it. This gesture on his part shows that now he is going to stay forever. All bridges were broken. With that stick breaking, all the bridges that lead backward to the past were finished. He had found the man, he had fallen in love. He knew: “You are the master.”He became greatly enlightened by this simple act of Sekito calling him “Teacher!” and his turning around and Sekito saying to him: “This fellow has been there always and always. Don’t go further.”An immense statement, but it needs a very alert mind. First, he had asked the question, he was full of his question and wanted one word. There was wanting, desiring, and all kinds of things. Now, just as he was going out of the hut – he had dropped the idea of finding anything from Sekito – suddenly he heard: “Teacher!” And he turned. He must have been utterly empty because there was no question. He had not asked anything. In that silence he heard that impeccable, that profound sentence: “This fellow who has turned around has been there always and always.”A single statement from a master sometimes triggers a chain reaction and leads a silent being into enlightenment. This is one of the most important gifts from Zen to humanity.Once, Sekito said to his assembled monks, “Even if language is used, it is irrelevant.”All language is irrelevant as far as truth is concerned.Hearing this, another master, Yakusan, said, “Even if language is not used, it is irrelevant.”Language certainly is irrelevant. You may not use language, you may keep your mouth shut, but the language is going round and round in your head. So just not using language is not enough – that too, is irrelevant. Language or no language, both are irrelevant.Sekito said, “Here, even a needle cannot get through.”He is saying, “Here, even a needle cannot get through. As far as truth is concerned, the path is so narrow, only a witnessing, silent witnessing can pass through. It is far more subtle than even a needle. Even a needle is too solid, too tangible, too material, it cannot enter into the immaterial space of your being.”Yakusan said, “Here, it is like planting a flower on a rock.”Both masters are enjoying pulling each other’s leg. That can happen only in the world of Zen; otherwise, Ayatollah Khomeini…! These kinds of playful dialogues between masters are of immense beauty.What Sekito said was absolutely right, and what Yakusan said is also absolutely right. They are using different expressions.“Here, it is like planting a flower on a rock.” You can’t plant a flower on a rock. Putting language in the service of truth is just like planting a flower on a rock where it cannot grow. It will simply die. The moment you bring truth to language, it dies on the way.But just not using language is not enough either. You have to use silence. Not using language is negative; using language is the positive side – but both belong to language. Saying is positive; not saying is negative – but both are irrelevant. You have to indicate without using language, or without not using language. You have to create a device, a gesture – maybe just a look into the eyes of the disciple, or just as Sekito called him “Teacher!” and he turned around, utterly empty. He caught him in the right moment.When he first came he was too full of knowledge. Now he has dropped the idea of being with Sekito, so he was caught suddenly. And whenever you are caught suddenly, your mind cannot function. The mind needs time before it can figure out what is the matter. Just a small space of no-mind and no-time, and suddenly he realized Sekito is saying, “This fellow who has turned around, this fellow is the answer. And this turning around is enough. Don’t go further!”Sekito indicated his approval of what Yakusan said.He did not say anything, but just indicated his approval. We don’t know how he indicated. Maybe he just took Yakusan’s hand in his hand and pressed it, or just looked into his eyes and showered his love, or just remained silent and closed his eyes, radiating the vibe of the man who knows his nothingness.It is not said how he indicated, but there are millions of ways – according to each, a master uses a certain way to indicate. But he approved what Yakusan was saying. Both were saying very significant statements.Zen is not argumentative. It is what Martin Buber would have loved: it is a dialogue, a dialogue in which two persons are not forcing their ideas on the other, where two persons together are trying to find something existential. It is not a question of defeating the other or being victorious. A real dialogue is when two persons are discussing just to find the truth. And truth is nobody’s monopoly – nobody is a winner, nobody is defeated. Truth is victorious, and both are surrendered to the truth. You have to remember in all these dialogues this different quality.Socratic dialogues are argumentative, they are logical. Zen dialogues are absolutely beyond logic, beyond mind. They are very mysterious, but far more profound than any Socratic dialogue. Even Martin Buber’s understanding of dialogue is not the ultimate understanding, because he continues the dialogue with these two words: I and thou. But in the Zen dialogue there is no I, no thou.Two Zen masters, both are empty, and playing just like children playing on the seabeach – running around, finding colored stones and seashells… Two Zen masters are just like children – shouting, shrieking, screaming, for no reason at all.You know Avirbhava’s shrieking… That is Zen shrieking – for no reason at all. Because I don’t do anything to her! But I miss her when she is not there at the door. She is almost like a gong declaring: “The Master has come!” When she is not there, I miss her. Her screaming is just like a small child, so innocent, without any purpose. But she is total when she screams, it is not from her mind, it is coming from deeper spaces. So even sometimes when I have entered the hall, she goes on screaming. My car goes away and then she drops on the ground with immense joy.The dialogue of Zen has a difference to Socratic dialogue, or to Martin Buber’s idea of dialogue. Martin Buber could not drop the idea of I and thou; hence he remained in the mind, could not enter into the beyond. And the Zen sky is of the beyond.Boncho wrote:The nightingale singing.Thin snowflakes.Do you see any connection? Do you see any logic?“The nightingale singing.” That’s one thing. “Thin snowflakes.” That is completely another. But in a meditative mind nothing is separate. All things are joined together. “The nightingale singing” and the “Thin snowflakes.” Both are part of one existence, they cannot be separated. Only mind separates them: this is one thing; that is another. And how are you putting them together? But they are together, and not only these two. Then the bamboos cracking, and the wind blowing through the pine trees, and the clouds coming with great lightning – everything is connected.In these two small sentences he has said that everything is so connected with each other that you cannot create separations: “The nightingale singing. Thin snowflakes.”I have heard that scientists say that if – and someday it is going to happen – the sun loses all its energy… It is losing it every moment; it is burning out. One day it will be simply a black hole, no light will be coming to the earth. It takes ten minutes for the light to come to you, so if the sun dies… And it is bound to die. Everything that is born needs one day to rest. Everything gets tired, everyone gets tired. Even suns are going to die, and new suns are being born.It will take four billion years, they say, to die. But in an eternity, four billion years are just like four seconds, or maybe not even that much. But they say if the sun dies, then you will still get light for just ten minutes. So for ten minutes only, life will exist after the sun dies. And then there will be no life without the sun, no warmth, no life.But they have not looked at it from the other side because they don’t know that there is another side also. It is true that the sun gives us life, but it is one-sided. If on the earth life disappears, I say unto you the sun will die immediately. It will not take even ten minutes because life is a continuous communication, it is a dialogue.If we need the sun, the sun needs us. Without us, do you think the sun will have a sunrise? I am absolutely certain that without life on the earth, the sun will not rise again. For whom? For what? No flowers, no nightingales, no people, no birds. On a dead earth even the sun will be ashamed to arise because everything is so deeply connected – from the smallest grass blade to the greatest sun in the sky.Our sun is a very mediocre one, it is middle class. There are suns far bigger than it, but even the smallest grass blade on the earth is connected to the farthest star. They are all cousins, parts of the same existence.But Martin Buber could not understand that between I and thou there can be a discussion, but not a dialogue. A dialogue needs no I, no thou.When I read his book, I and Thou, I immediately wrote a letter to him – he was alive – asking him to please try to understand, “No I, no thou.” And I said, “That is an absolute necessity for a dialogue. What you are talking about is not dialogue, it is only discussion.”I received a small note from him saying, “I will think it over.” I replied immediately, “Thinking is not going to solve it. Thinking is the barrier. It is thinking that is making you propose that there is dialogue between I and thou. I am speaking from a state of no-thinking. No I, no thou, then there is a dialogue, and very playful dialogue.”He did not answer again, seeing that whatever he would say would be part of thinking. He was a great thinker, no doubt, but even the greatest thinker has nothing to say about the truth. Only the space which is beyond thought brings you closer to life and existence. And when two persons are settled and at ease with existence, there is no I, no Thou, just a play. That play can be called a dialogue. Only Zen masters know what dialogue is.Maneesha’s question:Osho,Hubert Benoit suggests that even those people who are sufficiently intellectually evolved not to believe in a personal God, still retain the concept, although in different terms.He says, “They imagine their satori and themselves after their satori, and that is their personal God – a coercive idol, disquietening, implacable. They must realize themselves, they must liberate themselves. They are terrified at the thought of not being able to get there, and they are elated by any inner phenomenon which gives them hope.”Beloved master, would you agree that there is a danger of this happening to meditators?Maneesha, Hubert Benoit has written a very scholarly book on Zen, The Supreme Doctrine, but it is only an intellectual understanding, although he went to Japan, and he lived in Zen monasteries and watched the meditators. He thinks that he has known the inner story and that is wrong.Just being in a Zen monastery does not mean you have become an insider. You are still a spectator – you are watching others meditating. You are not meditating, and unless you meditate there are bound to be such questions arising in you.So Hubert Benoit has written a very beautiful book for intellectuals. He is a giant, and I don’t think there is any other book from any Western philosopher or thinker which conveys something about Zen in a better way than Hubert Benoit’s The Supreme Doctrine.But still it is intellectual, highly polished, refined. His arguments are beautiful, but not based on experience; they are not existential. That’s why he could say that even people in their satori think they are. But if they think they are, then that is their personal God – again it asserts. They denied the God, but now they themselves become the God. But this is an outsider’s viewpoint. He does not know what satori is.In satori, or in samadhi – satori is the Japanese word for samadhi – one is not. So who is there to think of himself that he is God? Gautam Buddha uses the word anatta. In the Pali language, which was the language Buddha used, atta means self, and anatta means no-self. In samadhi, in satori, you come to a point when you suddenly remember you are not – just a pure space, throbbing with life, dancing with joy, but you are no more. You are dissolved just like ice melting and becoming the ocean.He is concerned because he does not know the real experience of satori. He says, “They must realize…” There is no question of realization. There is nobody to realize, and there is no question of must. In the vocabulary of Zen there is no must.I have read a book written by a famous American author, Napoleon Hill, You Must Relax. Now if there is must, how can you relax?Now Hubert Benoit says, “They must realize.” There is no one to realize. Whom is he talking about? “They must realize themselves, they must liberate themselves.” From whom? There is nobody. This is liberation: when you are not. It is not a question of liberating yourself because if you liberate yourself, you will be there.But it is the problem of all intellectuals. They can’t look beyond the words, beyond logic and language. “You must realize,” and “They must liberate” – but liberate? Neither is there one who is unliberated, nor is there one who is forcing them to remain unliberated. There is only liberation!The meditator comes to see that he is liberated from himself. He is no more – that is his liberation. But looking from the outside, even a man of such a refined and cultured mind, Hubert Benoit, misses the point completely.Once you are in deep meditation, you are not – this is liberation, and there is no other liberation.It has been long enough to be serious. It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the lights! It is good you can be serious when it is dark, but when the light comes, laughter follows.One afternoon in Doctor Feelgood’s office, Buster Chubbs comes staggering in. He is the most haggard-looking patient Doctor Feelgood has seen in a long time.“I cannot sleep, Doc,” moans Buster, pulling on his thinning hair. “I have got dogs to the left of me, dogs to the right of me, and dogs running all around me! They bark all night – and I am telling you, they are driving me crackers!”“Don’t worry,” says Feelgood, sympathetically. “There is a new sleeping pill on the market called Knock Out. I have been having a lot of success with it. Try it.”Buster Chubbs calls in at the drugstore, buys a box of pills, and staggers home. One week later, he is back in Feelgood’s office. He looks even worse than before.“It is no good, Doc,” groans Buster. “I have not slept all week. I am up all night chasing those goddam dogs. And even when I catch them, they refuse to swallow the pills!”Young Duncan MacPherson tiptoes into the room where Hamish MacTavish is sitting by the fire, reading his newspaper.“Mister MacTavish,” says young Duncan, nervously. “I have come to ask for your kind permission. I would like to ask you if I can marry your daughter, Tillie.”“Well, well, lad!” says Hamish, looking up. “Before I say a word about the matter, my boy, have you seen my wife, Mrs. MacTavish?”“Yes, sir,” replies Duncan. “But I still prefer your daughter!”The scene is outside Moscow in the heavy snows of midwinter. Colossus G. Magnus, the greatest Hollywood movie director of all time – known as Big G. Magnus – is ready to complete his most daring epic, the multi-billion dollar movie: “Napoleon Eats Russia!”Across the vast snowy plain, Big G. Magnus has constructed four huge towers, each complete with camera, lighting and sound crews.Gigantic snow machines are standing ready to whip up an instant blizzard of snow. The crews are ready, and the cast of five thousand soldiers, with horses, cannons, swords, and everything, are poised and ready to go.The big snow fans slowly start to blow, and suddenly, director Magnus, sitting in tower number four, shouts out, “Action!”An incredible flurry of battle follows with fury and authenticity. For forty minutes the Russian and French armies clash, recreating history among booming cannons, and screaming men and horses.Finally, Big G. Magnus shouts out through his microphone, “Cut!”Immediately, all the actors, technicians, and crews burst into loud cheers and applause.“Big G.” smiles to himself with satisfaction, and reaches for his telephone. He dials up film tower number one.“You got everything, Paddy?” asks the director.“Mister Magnus,” hiccups Paddy, “it is Thursday – the power failed! We did not get a single shot!”It seems Pune also belongs to Russia – every Thursday the power fails!“What?” screams Magnus, slamming down the phone and dialing tower number two.“Seamus,” shouts the director, “how was it?”“Mister Magnus,” replies Seamus, “please don’t get mad, but my cameraman forgot to put film in the camera.”“Idiots! Turkeys!” shouts Big G. “You are all fired!”Frantically, Magnus dials up tower number three.“What about you, Sean?” he cries, perspiring. “How did it go?”“Ah! Mister Magnus,” replies Sean. “Never was there such a scene! It will make film history! You are a genius…!”“Cut the bullshit, Sean!” shouts Big G. “Did you get it all on film?”“On film?” asks Sean. “You wanted me to photograph it? I thought it was a rehearsal!”“You moron!” roars Magnus. “You imbecile! You will never work for me again!” And he slams down the phone.Big G. Magnus mops his forehead with a handkerchief and then turns to his own cameraman, Stonehead Niskriya.“Jesus Christ!” shouts Magnus. “Thank God you are here, Stonehead! I am sure everything here is okay.”“Absolutely!” confirms Stonehead Niskriya. “First class – number one.”“Enough film in the camera?” asks Big G.“Plenty, Mister Magnus,” replies Stonehead.“Sound okay?” asks Magnus.“You bet!” replies Stonehead. “Perfect sound.”“Those new lights from Berlin working okay?” asks Magnus.“Just great!” enthuses Niskriya.“Thank God!” shouts Magnus.“Ja,” says Niskriya. “I am ready to start when you are!”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Stop. Close your eyes…Be silent… And feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to look inward. Gather your energy, your total consciousness, and rush toward the center of your being. It is just below the navel – two inches below the navel, inside. The Japanese call it the hara. It is the center of life. You have to move faster, with an urgency as if this is the last moment of your life. Now or never.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you are coming closer to the center, a great silence descends over you, just like falling rain, very soft rain. You can feel the coolness of it.A little closer to the center, and a great peace surrounds you. Your whole inner being becomes full of light, a luminosity you have never known before, a blissful moment, utterly ecstatic.It is the right time to step into the very source of your life. You will feel drunk with the divine. You will find the original face. Symbolically Gautam Buddha’s face has been accepted in the East as everybody’s original face.Just remember one thing: the buddha has only one quality, that of a witness.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.Witness that you are only a witness and nothing else. This will take you deeper and deeper into the source of your being. It will open doors into eternity.To make this witnessing more and more deep, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But remember you are only a witness. You are not the body, not the mind, just a pure witness. And immediately, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium starts becoming an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas disappear as separate beings into one oceanic consciousness.This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. Everybody is concerned with trivia, nobody cares to look inward. Everybody’s eyes are focused on objects which are not going to help you, which are not going to be with you.Death will take everything away from you – money, power, prestige. Death will leave only one thing: that is witnessing. If you have it, there is no death. If you don’t have it, there is only death and nothing else.There are three steps which can be remembered at this silent moment.The first, the buddha follows you behind like a shadow.The second, instead of buddha being your shadow, you become the shadow of buddha.And the third, you disappear even as a shadow, only the buddha remains.Only the witnessing pure consciousness remains – no I no thou, no God no soul, just a vast nothingness. An immense universe opens all its doors to you, it pours into you abundantly, splendors, miracles. Your life starts becoming a magic, a grace, a beauty, a truth.Gather all these experiences you are having now. You have to bring them from the center to the surface, to your ordinary day-to-day life.And persuade the buddha to come along with you. He is your dhamma, he is your nature, he is your Tao. He is bound to come. He has been waiting and waiting, but you never invited him. You never even bothered about him.It has been long, a millennia that he has been sitting there just like a seed. Allow him space. Invite him so he can surface just like a lotus coming from the dirty mud, passing beyond the waters and opening its petals to the sun and to the moon and to the stars.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back… But come as a buddha. Come with grace, silence, peace. Settle down just for a few moments to remind yourself of the golden path you have traveled, and the great silence, peace, ecstasy that you have experienced. You are still drunk with the divine.You can feel the buddha just behind you, his warmth, his love, his presence. He is only a presence, he is not a person.I hope the first step will be followed by the second, the second will be followed by the third, and it will not be long before one day you will find yourself no more and only existence is. That will be the most glorious day of your life. Not only will you celebrate, the whole existence will celebrate with you.Celebration is my manifesto. Let it be your manifesto too.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Shodai, who was born in 738 in China and died in 820, was a disciple of Sekito.Shodai stayed at Mount Nangaku under Sekito for three years, then went to Mount Shuko where he saw Ma Tzu.Ma Tzu asked, “What did you come here for?”Shodai said, “I came here for Buddha’s Jamuna darshan.”Ma Tzu said, “Buddha has no Jamuna darshan. Jamuna darshan is the world of delusion. You are from Mount Nangaku, but it seems that you have not yet known that you need Sekito. So you should go back.”Hearing that, Shodai went to Sekito. On meeting the master, Shodai asked Sekito, “What is buddha?”Sekito replied, “There is no buddha nature in you.”Shodai asked, “What about all living beings?”Sekito replied, “They have buddha nature.”Shodai asked, “Why don’t I have it?”Sekito said, “Because you don’t accept it.”At this, Shodai decided to stay there.Later, he lived in the Shodai-ji temple and did not go outdoors for thirty years. Whenever a seeker came to him, he would say, “Go away – you don’t have buddha nature.”Friends, a famous psychoanalyst, Franz Strunz from Munich, has been studying the behavior of children in dreams and he has found that Sigmund Freud’s original idea was not right.Sigmund Freud’s original idea was that the child – every child, particularly in the civilized and cultured world – lives under repressive morality, repressive priesthood, repressive parents, and he cannot understand exactly why his natural and spontaneous behavior is unacceptable. He is not yet grown up in the mind – the mind will come slowly – but he has been born as a natural being, so he finds it absolutely difficult to understand why his natural behavior is condemned.Because he has to be dependent on the parents – and he is utterly helpless – he has to accept the God that the parents believe in, and he has to accept all the commandments in which the parents believe. And they drive the child to the church, or to whatever religious organization they belong. This is the beginning of programming the child.Sigmund Freud’s original thesis was that under these circumstances the child finds freedom only in his dreams. The parents are no longer there, the priest is no longer there, God is no longer there: no morality, no condemnation, no repression, no inhibition. In his dreams he lives a very natural and very pleasant life. That becomes a substitute for him. And I am absolutely in agreement with Sigmund Freud.The child does not yet know what is dream and what is real, it takes a little time. That is why you cannot remember if you go back in time. Up to the age of four you may be able to remember a few things; beyond that is a complete blank, but things were happening. From your birth, up to the age of four, things were happening, but you don’t have any memory of them because you did not yet have a mind.The mind is a social product. It takes at least four years to program the child to be ready to accept anything that is told to him; he knows if he denies it, he will suffer punishment – not only here but in hellfire.But up to the age of four, in his dreams he enjoys absolute freedom. Hence Sigmund Freud said that children’s dreams are very pleasant, very beautiful. In fact, the child can cope with reality only because of his dreams. The dreams are compensatory.This man, Franz Strunz, has been surveying hundreds of children and their dreams and his conclusion is that Sigmund Freud was wrong. So first I have to tell you the statement:Sigmund Freud’s views on child dreams have been challenged by Munich psychologist, Franz Strunz: Sigmund Freud claimed that children’s dreams revealed the pleasure-oriented nature of nocturnal figments of an imagination, which was not hampered by the suppression and repression of the adult emotional make-up, and which aimed at making secret wishes come true.Obviously, dreams are very private. Nobody can enter your dreams and nobody can know what you are dreaming. The child has absolute freedom, but he is not free when he is awake – naturally he compensates. Whatever has been denied in his waking life, he fulfills those wishes in his dream. And because he cannot make the distinction that the dream is just a dream and the reality is a totally different matter, he is completely happy. He can tolerate this society and this repressive culture, and these unnatural demands made by religions, their God, their priests, just because he has a freedom at least when he is asleep.This has been challenged by this Munich psychologist:Strunz’s research showed that children’s nocturnal fantasies are mainly accompanied by stifling feelings of uneasiness and upset, and that all kinds of threat animals, thieves, robbers, murderers, catastrophes, death and frightening strangers greatly disturb sleeping children.“Most children,’ he said, ‘are paralyzed with fear by the dangers they dream about.”I absolutely disagree with this Munich psychologist. In a hurry to criticize Sigmund Freud, he has forgotten that Sigmund Freud was surveying the dreams of totally different children. A great thing has happened in between that he has not taken note of: that is television.It is television that has changed children’s dreams – it has done what God could not do, what the priest could not do, what the parents could not do. They used alphabetical language, logic, which the child was not yet capable of understanding. The child lives in a primitive way. He can understand pictures; his language is pictorial. His dreams are very vivid, very colorful and very alive.Television has created a great impact on children, on their behavior, on their dreams, because dreams and television look alike. Now, the child cannot tell the difference between television and dreams. And on the television he sees all these things that this Munich psychologist is trying to use as a criticism of Sigmund Freud’s fundamental hypothesis: “…stifling feelings of uneasiness and upset, and all kinds of threat animals, thieves, robbers, murderers, catastrophes, death and frightening strangers greatly disturb sleeping children.”All this is the gift of television. It has nothing to do with Sigmund Freud’s fundamental hypothesis; that is still right.But this is how even your psychologists, world-famous people, behave unconsciously. He has completely forgotten that a new thing has happened between him and Sigmund Freud – and that is television. And it has changed not only the child’s dreams, but his behavior too.The child sees all kinds of robberies, rapes, murders, thieves, all kinds of dangerous people on the television. They are pictorial. The sermons of the priest were not pictorial, they were linguistic. His parents’ teachings were linguistic, and he was not yet able to understand language and logic. But he understands pictures. So, television has given all kinds of threatening, sensational, dangerous ideas to children’s minds. It is television that should have been noted by the psychologist. But rather than focusing on television, he has immediately gone to criticize Sigmund Freud.I am taking this as an example to give you a sense that even your psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, are as unconscious as anybody else. There is no difference.Not only have the dreams changed, but even the behavior of children. In America, just a few days ago a child went into school with his father’s gun and killed four children at random. And it was not that they were enemies or anything – just random. He fired just because he had been watching continual killing, murder on the television…a great excitement. And it is not an exceptional case.Young boys have been found trying to rape small girls. The idea is being given by television. Children of the age of seven and eight are taking drugs. They have left hippies far behind. At least to be a hippie you used to be eighteen, nineteen, twenty…Hippiedom exists only from twenty to thirty. After thirty, the hippie disappears – in his place comes the yuppie. By the time he is thirty, he starts understanding that this way of life is not going to last long. Now his parents are refusing to support him, and the hippie has to change into a square world. He has to go back to the same society, clean shaved, well dressed, looking very professional and efficient. And yuppies have proved that they are capable of doing things. Now they have their homes, their cars, their wives, their children. And nobody can imagine that these people used to walk around the streets dirty, unclean.Uncleanliness had become their philosophy. It was a reaction; their parents were telling them, “Cleanliness is just next to God.” And they have heard the news that God is dead. Now who is next to God? Cleanliness? The reaction was against the parents and their constant effort to repress their nature. They started moving to the one extreme, the other extreme. They started to have a philosophy of uncleanliness, dirtiness. But then they became dropouts and society would not accept them; they became misfits.But they could manage this only up to the age of thirty. By that time their parents were fed up – they had been trying hard, but they were not listening at all. They were not going to the church, they were moving toward Kabul, Kulu Manali, Kathmandu, Goa… And ending up in Pune! This was their route. You know what route has brought you here – Pune was the dead end!But the new children are taking drugs because they are watching all kinds of drug stories on television, and certainly they become interested. Children are very curious to explore anything that they see on television. Seven-year-old children are taking drugs, hard drugs, and it is becoming a widespread danger in America.Their dreams are full of dangers, murders, suicide – that’s what they are watching for almost seven-and-half hours on average per day. You cannot expect… If you are wasting one third of your life on television, then it is going to have a deep impact. Children understand the language of pictures and television brings all these colorful sensational stories. Their dreams have changed, their behavior has changed.I would like this Munich psychologist to survey a place where television has not entered, and I am absolutely certain he will have to support Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis. If he really wants to go deeper into his search, he should go to the aboriginals, where television has not even entered. Even the priest has not reached, even God is unheard of. People are living naturally: no repressive, no inhibiting morality. If Franz Strunz goes to those places, he will be surprised.First, he should explore countries where television has not yet come because they will be the children Sigmund Freud has studied.I know children in India… Almost ninety percent of Indians, or even more than ninety percent, has no idea of television or movies. In small villages, I have come across people who have not even seen a railway train. Electricity has not reached many places, so there is no question. And television has just been introduced to India, so only big cities – like Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai may have television, but not the major part of the country. He can study the children in small villages.I have studied children for my own purposes, and I can give a guarantee that if television and movies have not reached, you will find Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis absolutely correct. And if you go to the aboriginals…One tribe of the aboriginals in particular, in Burma, has been studied by psychologists who could not believe that the tribe has never been in any war. They don’t fight with each other – not even in their dreams. They don’t have as many dreams as you have. There are hundreds of people in that tribe who have never dreamed. When you talk about dreams, they just look at you – “What are you talking about? When we are asleep we are asleep. What do you mean by dream?” In their language there is no word for dream.And if, once in a while, a child dreams, or a man dreams something – for example, having a fight with some neighbor, or having a love affair with some woman – first thing, in the early morning, he has to confess the dream to his parents. And then all the elders of the village gather together to figure out who the person is that he has murdered in his dream, or was fighting with him in his dream, or who the woman is that he has fallen in love with in his dream. They figure it out. He gives the complete detailed description, very vivid and very real. So they can figure out who the person is – it is a small tribe.Then the elders tell the person who has been dreaming, “You should take sweets and flowers and gifts to that woman, let her know that you have misbehaved with her in the dream, and you have come to be forgiven. Go with an apology to the woman or to the man with whom you have been violent. And unless they forgive you, don’t return, sit there.” And obviously, the person had nothing to do with it – you have not murdered him, you just dreamed of it – so obviously, he is willing to forgive you.It has been their culture for thousands of years that even dreams have to be taken into account. And the ultimate result is that the people ordinarily don’t dream. Only once in a while does somebody dream, and that happens only when he has repressed something natural. For example, he has been looking at a woman with lust, but could not express it in reality; hence the dream comes as a substitute for wish fulfillment.That society knows a far better psychoanalysis than our so-called civilized world. They have been psychoanalyzing for thousands of years and their method is far more effective. They have relieved people’s sleep completely of dreams. They know authentic sleep, what Patanjali calls dreamless sleep.He divides your states of mind into four: the so-called waking state, the dream state, then deeper is dreamless sleep, and deeper than that is samadhi, a real awakening. The first is called so-called waking; the last is called real awakening, which makes you a buddha.But these aboriginal tribes don’t have the dream state at all. From the waking state they simply move into dreamless sleep. And they are innocent, utterly graceful. Not a single war in their whole history, not a single murder in their whole history, not a single suicide in their whole history… They are just like flowers – innocent, natural. You call yourself civilized and you call them uncivilized, primitive, pagans?So if this psychologist is really interested, first he should study people who don’t know television, who don’t know movies, and he will find the hypothesis of Sigmund Freud to be absolutely correct.Then he should study those aboriginals who have lived naturally, without any repressive church, without any Christianity, without any God, without any priest. Just like animals, just like birds, just like trees, part of this immense existence, naturally flowing, they don’t have dreams at all. Once in a while somebody may have a dream, but only once in a while. And then the elders of the society gather together to decide what has to be done.First, one has to figure out who really was the person he dreamed about. He gives all the details and then goes with an apology and some gifts – sweets, fruits, flowers; they are poor people. He just offers these gifts and asks for their forgiveness. In his dream he has been nasty to them, angry to them, violent to them, lustful to them. Now it is absolutely obligatory that he should ask for their forgiveness: “Unless they forgive you, just sit down in front of their house…”This is a more authentic psychoanalysis – not lying on the couch of a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst and just talking about your dreams. It goes on and on because every day you are repressing so much that it bubbles up in the dreams. No psychoanalysis has ever been complete. There is not a single man in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete.It cannot be complete because every day you are creating fresh material for new dreams. You go on getting analyzed and you go on getting repressed by the priest in the name of God.God and the priest together have conspired against human consciousness so deeply and so violently that they have disturbed your waking state, they have disturbed your dream state. And because these states are so disturbed, you cannot go beyond. This disturbance keeps you engaged and occupied.People who are moving directly from the waking state to the dreamless sleep are very easily capable of slipping down to the fourth state. That’s why the ancient Zen masters continuously say you have just to relax, you don’t have to do anything.It is not a question of doing, it is a question of non-doing. Just relax and rest, so that you can reach to the fourth stage where you are suddenly awake for the first time. Then you know that your so-called wakefulness was not authentic, it was a very small, thin layer, very fragmentary, not of much use.You will be surprised to know that in the aboriginal societies there are no buddhas. There is no need. Those people are naturally entering finally into the fourth stage. As they become more and more experienced, and become more and more peaceful, centered, they start moving into the fourth state without any effort, without any teaching, without any scripture.If you understand me, a natural life will end up in enlightenment without any effort. You will suddenly find you are enlightened. That’s why no recognition is given to the enlightened person. That is a natural phenomenon, just as every rosebush, if watered well, if allowed to have some sunlight, if given good soil, will come to flowering. That is not a miracle.Every man comes to flowering, he becomes a Gautam Buddha without any effort. And because every natural human being is bound to become an enlightened person, no recognition is taken of it. It is just as childhood is followed by youth, youth is followed by middle age, middle age is followed by old age and you know that old age is followed by death. It is just a natural sequence.Buddhahood should be a natural sequence. It is not, because of your God and your priest and your scriptures; they are preventing you. Freedom from all these is absolutely necessary.And strangely enough, every government knows that television is harming people immensely, ruining their physical health, ruining their mental sanity. Still, because the television stations are owned by all the great corporations which support the politicians for their elections… The churches have their own television stations, radio stations, magazines, newspapers – in different names so you do not know it.One of the British publishers, Sheldon, has published nine of my books. I had no idea that it was just a front, and behind it was the church. When the church authorities became aware that my books were being published, then I came to know. The man who was the manager of Sheldon Press must have been sympathetic to my thoughts, my approach to things. So without asking the church, he continued publishing; he published nine books. And then he informed me, “The church has found that I have been publishing your books, so they have put an absolute ban on it. So please forgive me, I will not be able to publish any more. And they have ordered that whatever books have been published should be given for recycling –– so they can be destroyed.”But the man must have been in great love with me. He did not give them to the recycling factory. He sold them to a secondhand bookstore and informed one of my sannyasins, “You can get them from the secondhand bookstore.” So we got all the books at a throwaway price, but it was the Sheldon Press manager who managed it. Then we became aware that Sheldon was a fake name. You would not think that it had anything to do with the church.I have been informed from Germany that all the great newspapers are owned by the church, but you would not know. Television stations are owned by the church, radio stations are owned by the church. Satellites are owned by the church and big corporations…People have not looked into the big corporations. They are international like Coca-Cola. Only the Soviet Union was not aware of Coca-Cola, but now Comrade Gorbachev has brought Coca-Cola into the Soviet Union. Now the only international thing is Coca-Cola. Wherever you go you find billboards declaring, “Things go better with Coca-Cola.”There are ten rising corporations and one survey says that in the coming ten years, there will only be those ten corporations in the whole world because they are purchasing all the small corporations. The small corporations cannot compete. The ten corporations will have all the wealth of the world, in different names, so you will not even suspect a new kind of imperialism – and a very subtle kind where you will not be able to figure out who is behind it.The corporations own almost all the television stations. Their interest is not in people’s psychology or their disturbance; their whole interest is that fifty percent of television time is devoted to advertisements – that is their income. But that income is possible only if millions of people are watching their programs, otherwise nobody is going to advertise.To attract millions of people to the programs they have to make it as sensational as possible. It has to be a triangle story: two women and one man, or two men and one woman. And then murder, and suicide, and mental sickness, and insanity and all kinds of sensations have to be brought every day. It is the same story that goes on and on.They don’t allow you to see the whole story. They give you a fragment and then comes the advertisement. When you are getting hot, excited, then suddenly comes the advertisement. In that hot state, vulnerable, you immediately swallow the advertisement. You don’t care whether it is healthy or whether you need it or not, it simply makes an imprint on your mind.And again the story comes, so you don’t even have time to think over what has got into your mind; they don’t give you the chance to think. Again the story starts and you forget all about the advertisement. A fragment again, and again the same advertisement is repeated. It goes on from six o’clock in the morning till twelve o’clock in the night. And people are just being imprinted by all kinds of nonsense and stupidity.Television has become one of the great dangers to humanity. It could have been a great bliss, a great blessing. It could have been tremendously useful as education.According to me, all television stations should belong to the universities, to the colleges, to the schools. And they should have programs which educate people. No advertisements – that is not education, that is mis-education, that is exploitation. They should teach people history, geography… Small children who cannot get it through language, will be easily interested in learning history, in learning geography, in learning other kinds of subjects. Sciences, literature, fiction, poetry, painting, all kinds of arts can be brought to children of all grades.So there must be television stations for small children, and then there should be some for the college graduates. And there should be television to the highest grade, postgraduate and researchers. Professors have to be continuously made aware of all new kinds of discoveries, otherwise they are lagging behind, almost twenty years behind. They studied twenty years ago when they were in their postgraduate classes, but that knowledge has become out of date.To update professors will be very easy with television. To bring students tremendous interest in all kinds of subjects, in whatever they are interested… If they are interested in music, they can be taught music, musical instruments. If they are interested in painting, they can be taught painting, sculpture. They can be taught meditation. There are all kinds of possibilities, once television is taken out of the hands of the exploiters and out of the hands of the religious preachers. And then the children will prove Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis absolutely.This man has taken a revengeful attitude. It always happens. Because Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychology, every psychologist feels to take revenge, just as every child feels to take revenge with the parents.This research simply shows a very deep hidden secret of this psychologist – that he wants to take revenge on the father figure, Sigmund Freud. Otherwise, it is so simple to understand that technology has brought so many things to the children which were not available in Sigmund Freud’s time. The new children were not available for him to study, nor was he aware of the aboriginal children. He was aware only of Christian and Jewish children – both repressive religions.Christianity is a child of Judaism. So is Mohammedanism. All three religions born outside of India are branches of Judaism and are repressive. God is angry, God is jealous, God is going to punish you with eternal hellfire. But these words do not get into the minds of the children. They start after four years of age, but television can be watched before they are four years old.Small children are watching television because they know the language of pictures and color. Their world consists of pictures. That is why in children’s books you have to first print a big picture. If you want to teach them what a mango is, you have to put a big picture of a mango. Saliva comes first; then comes the word mango. Looking at the picture, the child starts feeling to eat it and the picture becomes associated, by and by, with the word mango. As the child grows, the picture of the mango becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. In the university, pictures completely disappear from the books; words become very small, longer, complicated, and sentences become complex. Now the child has moved from pictorial language to an alphabetical language – from pictures to words. Now words don’t have color, and words don’t have that kind of impact which a child can understand.So what this psychologist has to understand – I am going to send him the whole discourse – is that his hypothesis is absolutely wrong and biased. It is just revenge against Sigmund Freud. Otherwise, a conscious researcher would have looked at what changes have happened between the time of Sigmund Freud and our time.Are the children the same that you are surveying? They are not the same children. Then you cannot condemn Sigmund Freud’s hypothesis because he was studying a different kind of children. Those children are disappearing from the West completely, so this hypothesis will be accepted. That’s why I have brought for your consideration that this hypothesis is wrong. This hypothesis is bound to be accepted because you can study the children and that will support it. But the reason is television, not the children. Remove the television and you will find children exactly as Sigmund Freud found them. But he also missed the aboriginal children who don’t have any dreams at all.He could not have conceived that there are people who don’t have any dreams because the Christian-Judaic religion is so repressive. People who have been brought up in that culture cannot conceive that there are still aboriginal people around the world, hidden in deep forests, who are absolutely natural beings. Those people have never heard that there is anything to be repressed.Just in the middle of India there is a state, Bastar. It used to be an independent state under British rule. The king of Bastar was my friend; he became my friend by a strange coincidence…We were traveling in the same train compartment and we looked alike. He had a beard exactly the same size as I had at that time, and he used to wear the same kind of long robe with a lungi wrapped around. So we were sitting in the same compartment looking at each other. I was thinking, “This is strange.”And he was looking at me and watching, thinking, “What is the matter?”Finally, he said to me, “We look so alike. From where are you coming?” I told him. He said, “Strange… And where are you going?”We were going to the same place, Gwalior. And we were going to be the guests at the same palace of the Gwalior maharani, the queen of Gwalior. We were both going to participate in an annual conference she used to call a World Conference of All Religions.He was going to represent the aboriginal idea. They are pagans, they don’t have any organized religion or dogma; they don’t have any holy scripture, they don’t have any priest. And because he was an educated person, he was going to represent the pagans.I was invited by some misunderstanding. The maharani must have read some of my books and thought that I was a religious person. On the first day of the meeting she became very worried; at least fifty thousand people were there in the palace grounds…Gwalior’s palace is very big and has acres and acres of greenery around it, with small bungalows, all in a walled garden. Almost half of the city belongs to the palace. And just behind the palace is a huge mountain where they run a school for all the princes of the country and even outside the country. That school belongs to the palace. It was created just for Gwalior’s sons and daughters in the beginning. Then it became a royal school for all the royal states of India.It is a beautiful palace and it has a huge ground where fifty thousand people can sit. But when I spoke, she was completely shattered. She could not sleep. At twelve o’clock in the night she knocked on my door. I had left her at ten o’clock after the meeting. I could not think who would be knocking on my door, so I opened the door, and it was the queen herself.She said, “I cannot sleep. You have shattered my whole mind. And now I cannot allow you to speak tomorrow.” The conference was going to continue for seven days and I had spoken only once. And she said, “My son wants to see you, but I have prohibited him.” She said, “Whatever you said feels to be true, but it goes against all our beliefs, all our religious feelings.”I said, “Do you think about truth, or do you think about lies and consolations?”She said, “I can understand, but my young son who is going to be the head of the state is too young, and he will be immediately impressed by you.” She requested me, “Just for my sake – even if he comes, don’t allow him in.”So I said, “If I am not going to speak, then I don’t have to stay here. You have asked me for seven lectures, and just one lecture and you are finished. Let me do my job. Those fifty thousand people will ask for me.”She said, “I know, because you were the only one they seemed to be interested in and there was absolute silence. I have never seen such silence in the crowd. The priests go on speaking, who cares? They are telling the same thing again and again, year after year, the same dogmas. For the first time,” the queen said to me, “I understood what it means to have pindrop silence. So they will be asking, but it is difficult because all the other participants are absolutely against you.”Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians were all there, so they approached the maharani after the lecture, “If this man remains here for seven days, then we are leaving. We cannot sit together on the same stage because he is destroying every religion.”I said, “They are so many, they can defend. I am alone” – there were twelve people on the stage with me – “They have enough time and there are twelve of them, they can defend.”The maharani said, “I know they cannot. They don’t have the guts, they don’t have the argument, they don’t have any idea how to defend. And you have destroyed their smallest things, which I could not have conceived could be destroyed!”Just before me, one of the shankaracharyas was speaking, and he told a small story which I love to tell myself, but when anybody else tells it, that is a different matter.It is an ancient story he was telling:The story is that ten blind men were crossing a flooded stream. Being frightened, they were holding each other’s hands. Somehow they managed. It was not deep, but the current was forceful. They reached the other side and somebody among them said, “We should count because we don’t know if the river has taken somebody away, or we are all together still.”So they started counting. Each person counted and it always ended with nine because he was leaving himself out. He would count the others: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine – one man was missing! They all tried, but it always stopped on the ninth.A man sitting by the side of the road was watching all the nonsense that was going on. All the ten blind men had started crying and weeping because one of them, a friend of theirs, had been taken by the current.So finally, the man came up and he said, “What is the matter?”They said, “We were ten, and one person has gone with the river. Now we are only nine.”The man immediately looked – they were ten. So he said, “I have been watching. Now I will count. Stand up! I will go on slapping. First I will slap the first person one slap, and I will say ‘One!’ Then I will slap the second person twice and I will say ‘Two,’ and the third person three times, and I will say ‘Three.’ And I will count this way.”They said, “Any way… Just bring back our tenth man.”So he counted – and they were ten. And they were rejoicing, although they had been beaten well.It is an ancient story. And the shankaracharya was telling it to show that this is the way we are: forgetting ourselves and looking around the whole world; trying to find peace, trying to find bliss, trying to find God, and not looking inward, not counting ourselves.After him I was to speak, and for the first time I had to criticize this story, which I have told you. But my context was totally different!So I said to the shankaracharya, “Your story is absolutely stupid because you have first to explain how they came to know they were ten. Before they started moving into the river, how did they manage to count? And if they knew how to count, how did they forget it just by crossing the river?”Now he was at a loss.I said, “There are only two possibilities: one is that somebody else has counted them, just as somebody else counted them afterward.”He said, “Perhaps.”I said, “That’s the trouble with borrowed knowledge. Because somebody else has counted them, that created the trouble. It was not their own understanding that they were ten. It was somebody else’s understanding that they were ten; they were carrying borrowed knowledge. That borrowed knowledge is not going to help. When they themselves counted, the borrowed knowledge did not help at all. Again they needed somebody else to count them, again the borrowed knowledge.“I am against borrowed knowledge because it is not going to help you. It is going to create more misery, more anguish, more anxiety. What happened to those blind people?” And I asked the shankaracharya, “Whatever you know, is it your knowledge or just borrowed? And be honest because I have ways to check whether it is your knowledge or borrowed.”He said, “I don’t know myself; I am a scholar. I know the Vedas, I know the Upanishads, but I don’t know myself.”I said, “Then you are a blind man. Sooner or later, passing through any current, you will be in difficulty. You will always remain dependent on others, you will never be free. And without freedom there is no spirituality.”For the first time I suddenly found the criticism. I had never thought about it!But the queen said to me, “This is dangerous. You finished that shankaracharya, and everybody was laughing and enjoying. Now that shankaracharya is very angry. He is sitting in my palace.”I was staying in the guest house. Everybody had a guest house. They had at least twenty guest houses in a thick garden with huge ancient trees. The shankaracharya was sitting in the main palace where the queen and the king lived. And he said, “I am not going to leave unless you make the arrangement. Either we will all leave – twelve persons…”I said, “Don’t be worried, I will speak for three hours continuously. Those twelve persons are not needed. I will manage the fifty thousand people. In fact, tomorrow you will have difficulty because more people will be coming. These fifty thousand people are going to tell at least one hundred thousand people. So don’t be worried, there is going to be a double gathering. You have to make arrangements. Let these twelve people go, I will manage the seven days.”She said, “But I cannot do that. I am an orthodox Hindu.”I said, “That does not matter. I will finish all orthodoxy in seven days.”She said “That I can understand. You will, but I cannot tell all those religious leaders to go away. They are twelve and you are alone.”I said, “That does not matter. I am enough for those twelve. If they don’t want to sit on the same stage, make another stage for them, and I will just sit alone on my stage. I will take care of each of the twelve.”She said, “You are going to create trouble, and I want no trouble.”I said, “You don’t understand. If you want to keep those people, you will be in trouble.”At that moment the Bastar maharajah also came in. He was staying in the next room in the guest house with me. And he said to me, “You have done a great job, and if you have to leave, I am coming with you.”That’s how we became friends. And he invited me to his state. So from Gwalior I went directly to Bastar. It is far away from Gwalior. And he introduced me to the people of Bastar. They are aboriginals, and they live almost naked. They put only a small piece of cloth around themselves when they come to the main capital, Jagdalpur – otherwise, in the forest, in the mountains they live naked.You can ask a woman, even by touching her breast, “What is this?” She will not feel embarrassed, she will not feel offended. She will say, “This is just to give milk to my child,” with no idea of: “You are being offensive, you are touching my breast.” She is not going to scream and go to a police station; in fact, there is no police station there.The people are so innocent that rarely does it happen that somebody kills someone. It has happened perhaps twice in this maharajah’s lifetime. Then the person who has killed comes to the capital himself because only the capital has police station and court. He goes to the police station and informs them: “I have killed a man and I need to be punished.” Otherwise no one would ever have known that he had killed anybody. Nobody goes into those deep forests. They live in caves; nobody goes there. And they have such beautiful caves.They are such beautiful people. You will not find anybody fat, you will not find anybody thin – they all look alike. They live long, and they live very naturally. Even about sex they are very natural, perhaps the only natural people left in India.What they do has to be done all over the world, if you want people not to be perverted. Behind all kinds of mental sicknesses is sexual perversion. In Bastar I found totally natural people for the first time.After a girl and a boy come of age – that is thirteen and fourteen… They have in their villages, in the middle of the village, a small hall just made of bamboo. The moment a girl starts having periods, she has to stay in the central hall. By the time a boy is fourteen, sexually potent, he has to live there. All the girls and the boys who have become sexually mature start living together, sleeping together, with one condition – and that is a beautiful condition – that no boy should sleep with a girl for more than three days. So you have to become acquainted with every girl of the village, and every girl has to become acquainted with every boy of the village.Before you decide to marry someone, you must know every woman of the village, so no question arises afterward that you start feeling lustful for some other woman. You have lived with all the women of your age, and you make your choice after experimenting with all the women.There is no jealousy at all because from the very beginning everybody is living with every girl. Every boy has the chance to be acquainted with every girl of the village, and every girl has the chance to be acquainted with every boy of the village. So there is no question of any jealousy, there is no competitive spirit at all. It is just an experiment, an opportunity for every child to know sex with different people – and then find out who suits you and with whom you were the happiest, with whom you settle harmoniously, with whom you felt your heart. Perhaps this is the only scientific way to find a soul mate.But these people are called uncivilized. And missionaries are doing a great job of civilizing them: opening schools, hospitals. They don’t need hospitals. They are such healthy people and these missionaries bring all kinds of diseases to them. They have never heard about gonorrhea, they have never heard about all kinds of perverted diseases. The missionaries bring the diseases and then the hospital.The missionaries bring the idea to them that they are poor. They have never thought about it – they are all equal, equally poor. There is no question of comparison and they are living perfectly well, and healthy, on one meal a day. They are healthier than anybody else in the world.Just recently scientists have been experimenting on rats and they were puzzled. They kept two categories of rats; to one category they gave as much food as they wanted – American rats. And to the other category, the Bastar rats, they gave food only once a day. And they were surprised. The rats who were given whatever they wanted, lived to be only half of the age of the rats who were fed only once. They lived to double the age – twice the American fellows!So Bastar people live longer, although they don’t know how long they have lived because they cannot count. They live up to one hundred years very easily, one hundred and twenty very easily. If you search deeper in the forests, perhaps you can find a person who has lived one hundred and fifty years. They don’t know it – you have to figure it out. And they don’t look that old either.Even the oldest person goes on working. Life is hard, but it is beautiful. Every night – particularly when it is full moon – they dance to abandon. The whole day they have been working hard and in the night they dance. All the women, all the men together; there is no question that you have to dance with your wife. People go on changing partners. It is a social phenomenon. There is no question of possessiveness – that you should dance with your own wife and if she is dancing with somebody else, then you are looking jealous, you are looking murderous.I have watched their dances. They look so beautiful. There is no question of any lust because they are fulfilled, sexually fulfilled, physically fulfilled.They don’t have dreams. I have asked many. I have asked the maharajah. He said, “They don’t have dreams, but I have because I am an educated person. They destroyed me. I was born in these hills and I would have loved to remain just as uneducated, as uncultured as these people. Their joy is infectious, their laughter is infectious. But they don’t have any dreams.”There is no need for dreams. A dream is a need created by a repressive morality, by a repressive God, by a repressive priesthood. They are the people who have created dreams. And then another priesthood has come into being, the psychoanalyst. They exploit your dreaming. One priesthood has created the dreams, another priesthood… And both were Jews.Jesus was a Jew, and Sigmund Freud was a Jew. One Jew has created Christianity – the most repressive religion in the world – and the other Jew has created psychoanalysis to analyze your dreams. And both are having great fun. They are the most highly paid people: psychoanalysts and missionaries, and the priests and the bishops, and the cardinals and the pope…Psychoanalysis will remain incomplete unless it comes to understand the people who don’t have dreams. Then you will have to change the whole idea. It is not that by analyzing people’s dreams you are going to give them mental health. The question is how to help them move from dreamless sleep to relax into the fourth stage called turiya, samadhi, satori, where one becomes utterly awakened, the state of a Gautam Buddha.And some good news before I take the sutras: a famous New York sculptress, Martine Vaugel has just now taken sannyas from the New York Center of Neo-Sannyas International. She is a world-famous sculptress. She must have been listening to my tapes, and must have been hearing Sardar Gurudayal Singh’s name every day. So, without seeing him – she has not yet come to Pune, and she has not seen Sardar Gurudayal Singh… But this is the sensitivity, creativity of an artist. She has made a statue of Sardar Gurudayal Singh and has sent me a picture of the statue to see whether she is right. And I was amazed. She is absolutely right. The picture looks almost like Sardar Gurudayal Singh.[Osho holds up the photograph of Sardar Gurudayal Singh for all to see. In response, everyone cheers and claps.]Sardar Gurudayal Singh, take your picture![Osho holds out the photograph for Sardar to take.]The first question:Osho,So-called modern Christians, particularly young Protestants, talk about God as if he is not a person: “God is everywhere, in every being, in every tree, in nature” – not a person hidden in the clouds.Do they get the point, or is it just out of cunningness, because they see that the old-man God has no grounds at all and no future?It is out of absolute cunningness that they go on saying that God is not a person. Then why do they go to church? Then why do they continue to pray to God as a person? If God is not a person, prayer should be stopped, going to the church should be stopped. If God is not a person, then Jesus cannot be his begotten son. Then you have to drop the idea that Jesus is especially related to God.If God is really everywhere, then he is no more in Jesus Christ than in you. Then why should you worship? Then what is the function of the priest, if there is no God as a person? The priest has to disappear.That’s why I say these people are simply repeating the approach of Zen – which has become known to the West now – that there is no God. But they cannot say exactly, “There is no God.” That hurts their programmed minds. So they are finding excuses in such a way that it appears God is, but it is not a person.But they don’t understand the implications. They say, “God is everywhere.” If God is everywhere, then no place can be called sacred. If God is everywhere, in every being, then you cannot be violent to the animals, you cannot hunt animals, you cannot kill animals for your food. You are killing God. If God is in every being, then everybody has to be vegetarian. Nobody can be nonvegetarian; otherwise you are killing God and eating God.In every tree in nature… And you are cutting down trees, you are destroying the ecology of nature. Just when India became independent, there were nearabout one hundred and fifty million hectares of trees in the country. Now there are only sixty million hectares. Over half of the trees in India have been cut down. And the Christians are now saying that God is everywhere, even in trees…? Hindus have been saying it for centuries that God is everywhere. That is the meaning of omnipresent. And if God is everywhere, then why do you go to church, why do you go to the temple, why do you go to the mosque? And why do you listen to the sermons? Why do you carry a Holy Bible or a holy Koran?I don’t think a nonpersonal God can write the Vedas and the Bible and the Koran – or a nonpersonal God can send messengers and prophets and messiahs. Then, if you are honest, all your holy scriptures have to be burned. And if you are honest, all your churches have to be demolished. And your priesthood has to be told: “You have exploited enough; now start working. Unless you work you will not have anything to eat.”If you don’t do that, then it is mere cunningness because you cannot prove a personal God anymore. You are trying to create an impersonal God, but your whole religion continues to be the same. It does not change.It is such a great change from a personal God to an impersonal God that your whole religion will go through a revolution – no church, no priest, no holy scripture. Then the whole of existence becomes the holy scripture.And if God is everywhere, there is no need to pray. The closest is your own being, so first find God in your own being.But still these Christians are not interested in meditation. These Christians are still praying to an impersonal God. Prayer is absolutely absurd. And if these Christians do understand the implications, then Christianity disappears and the pagan appears again. That was the only problem. Christianity killed millions of pagans who believed in the whole of nature, in the whole of existence as divine; who worshipped trees, who worshipped the moon, who worshipped the sun, who worshipped rivers, mountains, anything – because everything was sacred. Christianity destroyed those pagans and converted them into Christians – from an impersonal God to a personal God, from natural people into repressive maniacs!And now if you again disperse the personal God into the whole of existence, you will have to disperse the whole of Christianity. You will have to disperse all the religions and the whole earth will be full of pagans, zorbas.That is my effort – to create the zorba as a solid foundation for a buddha. Zorba is the earth. Buddha is the sky. And when these two meet there is communion. When these two meet, there is synchronicity. When these two meet, there is revolution. You are no longer the same, nor is the world the same any longer. Everything changes into a totally new perspective. New doors open, and a new human being, and a new, fresh existence without any priests to poison your nature.No, these people, the so-called new Christian theologians, are just deceiving themselves and other Christians because their whole structure remains the same. Just God… They cannot support through logic or evidence and they can see the point of Zen, at least intellectually; not to feel inferior, they are talking about an impersonal God.That’s what Eckhart was doing, that was what Saint Bernard was doing – trying to make God impersonal. But they don’t understand that it means destroying the whole structure of your religion. If they truly understand the phenomenon they will destroy all Bibles, all churches, popes, the Vatican… All should be finished, there is no need. God is everywhere – there is no need for any priest to stand between you and God. He is surrounding you, he is in the air, and he is in your blood and in your bones. He is in your very marrow and he is in your inner space – as he is everywhere.But to know that he is everywhere is not a logical conclusion. To know he is everywhere has to be an existential experience. First you have to go into yourself. Unless you know it in yourself, you cannot say it is in the trees and it is in every animal and it is in every living being. You are a living being – first enter yourself.These Christians are not talking about meditation at all. So, all the talk is simply to deceive themselves and others, as if they have risen to the same height of Zen. Just by talking you cannot do that. You have to give evidence, proof, by your every gesture, by your every action, by your every word.But I watch, I have been aware of these new Christian theologians, and their behavior is the same as any Christian. That behavior proves that their understanding is just to camouflage people’s minds, to create confusion. They are protecting the old God with a new name – “impersonal God” – because their whole religion remains the same.How can it remain the same if God is impersonal? That is the equivalent to there being no God, only godliness, a quality pervading the whole cosmos.There is a beautiful story…Al-Hillaj Mansoor, who became finally a great enlightened being, was murdered by the Mohammedans. He was a poor man and he wanted to go to Kaaba because it is the duty of every Mohammedan to go for a holy pilgrimage to Kaaba, at least once in his life. If you don’t go at least once, you are not a Mohammedan. So even the poorest Mohammedans sell their houses, their land, and go at least once to Kaaba.Mansoor was very poor. His father and mother died when he was very young, so he was almost an orphan, a beggar. The neighbors helped him up to his youth and then he started to collect money – because there was no education for him.There is a special month every year when Mohammedans from all over the world go to Kaaba. Many people from the village were going and he started telling them, “I would like to come.” But they said, “You don’t have any money,” so he collected money from every house. But by the time he had collected money, the other pilgrims had already left.So alone, he started his journey. Just outside the village, underneath a tree was sitting a man who was going to become his master – Junnaid. And he said to the young man, “Where are you going?”Al-Hillaj said, “I am going to Kaaba. All the pilgrims from my village have already left.”Junnaid said, “Come here!” The voice of Junnaid was such, his eyes were such, that al-Hillaj could not say no. Junnaid said, “Give me the money! There is no need to go anywhere. I am the Kaaba and I have come to your village just for you. You can make seven rounds of me, just as the other pilgrims will be making seven rounds of Kaaba. That is a stone – I am a living human being.”Al-Hillaj was so magnetically drawn to the man that he gave all his money to him and made seven rounds.And Junnaid said, “Now you can go to your village. And I will be leaving tomorrow morning, so if you want to come with me, you can come.”He went to the village. The villagers asked, “What happened? You had gone to Kaaba” – it used to take three months walking to Kaaba and three months to come back – “and you are back just within half an hour! Where is the money?”Al-Hillaj said, “What to do? I met Kaaba just outside the village. He was sitting under a tree.”They said, “You idiot! You have given the money to that Kaaba?”He said, “He asked, and he told me to make seven rounds around him. So I made seven rounds and I am feeling so fulfilled, and so dignified that Kaaba himself has come.”They said, “Come with us. We want to see who this man is who has cheated you. You are a simpleton! How can Kaaba come here, and for you?”He said, “You can come. Tomorrow morning I am leaving with Kaaba.”They said, “Come with us. First let us see who this fellow is – he is a man?”Al-Hillaj said, “Of course. And a very magical man. I think it is Kaaba personified.”They said, “You keep quiet, just follow us.” The whole village gathered, and they could see… The man had a tremendous light around him – it was night now – and they could feel as they started coming closer to him that he was in deep silence with closed eyes. The light was radiating. Al-Hillaj was not wrong, there was an immense attraction, the man had charisma.They all went around him and Junnaid opened his eyes and said, “First put out the money! I have traveled to your village and you are doing your haj without paying. First bring the money!”Al-Hillaj said, “Now you know that he is not an ordinary Kaaba, he speaks too!”And the whole village brought and gave him whatsoever they could bring.Junnaid allowed them to make a round and the day after, he left with al-Hillaj. The whole village had come to send them off. They thought, “This al-Hillaj, although he was an orphan, proved to be more blessed than we are. He has found a master.”Only the enlightened man can say that there is no God because he knows God is a quality, is the fragrance; you cannot catch hold of it, but it is everywhere. Wherever life is, wherever laughter is, wherever love is, that quality pervades, penetrates your heart. And in meditation it goes to the deepest part of your being. Only then can you say there is no God. That does not mean you are atheist, that simply means you are denying a personal God, a creator God, and you are accepting existence itself as divine. But then there is no church and then there is no priest, and then there is no holy scripture.If these neo-theologians are really sincere, honest, human beings, they should start destroying the holy scriptures – at least the Christian ones, since they are Christians. And they should start demolishing the Vatican, taking away the power from the priests, and abolishing the monasteries.But they are not doing anything of the kind, so it is all bullshit – just bullshit and nothing else.The sutra:Shodai, who was born in 738 in China and died in 820, was a disciple of Sekito.Shodai stayed at Mount Nangaku under Sekito for three years, then went to Mount Shuko where he saw Ma Tzu.Ma Tzu asked, “What did you come here for?”You can see the difference between so-called religious people and the Zen masters. Ma Tzu knew that he was coming from Sekito. Rather than feeling happy that he had got a disciple from Sekito and his number of disciples had at least increased by one, Ma Tzu said, “What did you come here for? Sekito was enough for you.”This is the beauty of Zen – an immense reverence for everyone who is enlightened. There is no competition at all. The word competition is never heard of in the world of Zen; no effort to convert anybody. Ma Tzu simply asked him, “Why have you come here? For what? Everything was available where you are coming from.”Shodai said, “I came here for Buddha’s – birth celebrations – Jamuna darshan.”Buddha’s birthday was coming. And Buddha’s birthday has a very special coincidence. He was born on the same full-moon night as he became enlightened, in the same month, on the same full-moon night, as he died eighty-two years afterward – the same month, the same full-moon night. A strange man – birth, enlightenment, death, all happened on the same full-moon night, in the same month of the year. So his birthday is also his enlightenment day. It is also his death celebration. In a single day, all three experiences happened. So for Zen the full moon has become something special because everything that happened to Buddha happened on the full-moon night.In every Zen monastery on the full-moon night people just sit under their trees and watch the full moon. The full moon has become symbolically connected with Gautam Buddha. And just watching and witnessing the full moon, they enter deep meditation.The full-moon night has a specialness that is now being recognized by science itself. They have to approach it from the wrong side because scientists are living on the wrong side of the earth, in the West. They became aware that more murders happen on the full-moon night, more suicides happen on the full-moon night, more people go insane on the full-moon night… Strange: the full-moon night certainly affects people and their psychology. It is a known fact that it affects the ocean. On the full-moon night, the waves become very tidal – as if the ocean is trying to reach to the moon. Man consists of eighty percent ocean water, so something in him also starts feeling a subtle vibration. Scientists say that the first living being was the fish. Man is the other end of progress – in the beginning was the fish. So we have a very deep connection. Our real forefathers lived in the ocean – they were fish.So don’t eat fish! You are eating your own forefathers and that is nasty. And I see people carrying tinned fish – tinned forefathers! And people love eating fish…If life was born in the ocean, then life is bound to be affected when the ocean is affected. There is a deep connection, underlying currents. But Western psychologists became aware from the wrong side: suicide, murder, madness. The East became aware that more people have become enlightened on a full-moon night; in fact, almost all except one, Mahavira.He became enlightened on the no-moon night, amawas. The full-moon night is called purnima – the moon has become perfect, purna. And the no-moon night is when there is no moon at all, absolute darkness. Except Mahavira, nobody has become enlightened on amawas, the no-moon night. Mahavira’s name was not Mahavira – Mahavira means a great warrior. His name was Vardhaman. But because he became enlightened on amawas, no-moon night, he proved that he could go against the current. It was natural for everybody to become enlightened on the full-moon night, but this fellow Mahavira tried to go against the normal order of things and still managed to become enlightened.In India, people have completely forgotten why every year on a particular amawas, no-moon night, they celebrate Diwali, a festival of lights. You must have seen people putting all kinds of candles, lamps, lights in their houses. This is the night when Mahavira became enlightened. And this festival is in remembrance of Mahavira, but nobody even thinks of Mahavira.Those firecrackers are in celebration of Mahavira. He certainly did something unique which never happened before and never happened afterward. So it is perfectly right to call him Mahavira, a great warrior. A very strong man – otherwise it is almost impossible for anyone to become enlightened on the no-moon night.In Zen, on the full-moon night of every month, they watch the moon the whole night. And as they go on witnessing the moon, a deep tranquillity and silence descends over them, particularly on the night when Gautam Buddha was born, became enlightened, and died. So this is a special, very special night for the people belonging to the small stream of Zen.Shodai said, “I have come here for Buddha’s birthday celebrations.” Ma Tzu was a very famous master; Sekito was not that famous. Slowly, slowly he became famous after his death, but Ma Tzu was famous while he was alive – very famous because of his strange behavior. Shodai must have thought that on the celebrations of this moon, it would be good to go to Ma Tzu – something might transpire. So he said, “I have come here to celebrate the birth of Gautam the Buddha.”Ma Tzu said, “Buddha has no birth, no death – Buddha is eternal.” Life has no beginning, no end, it is eternal. The very word birth belongs to the world of delusion because that which is authentic in you is never born. It has been coming from one house to another house, from one body to another body, but it is eternal in itself. So no birth, no death happens to it. It happens only to the outside of the house, which becomes tattered so it has to be renewed, or else you have to move into a new house.Ma Tzu said, “Buddha has no birth, no death. The very idea of birth and death is delusion.”“You are from Mount Nangaku, but it seems that you have not yet known that you need Sekito.”He is your master. I don’t think it is the right time for you, or that there is any need to change your master. You have not allowed your master to transform you yet.“So you should go back.”You cannot stay here.Hearing that, Shodai went to Sekito. On meeting the master, Shodai asked Sekito, “What is buddha?”All the way coming back he must have been thinking, “Ma Tzu said there is no birth of the buddha and no death of the buddha. Then what is the buddha?”The buddha is equivalent to awakened life.Sekito replied, “There is no buddha nature in you.”Shodai asked, “What about all living beings?”Sekito replied, “They have buddha nature.”Sekito was strange in his own way. Ma Tzu had very strange behavior; he went to the extreme. But Sekito was not just a normal enlightened master either; he had his own uniqueness. He said, “All living beings have buddha nature, but Shodai, you don’t have it!” This is a very strange statement. Why does this poor Shodai not have buddha nature? When all living beings, even animals, even trees have buddha nature – only Shodai has not!Shodai asked, “Why don’t I have it?”Sekito said, “Because you don’t accept it.”The only question is of recognition, of accepting, of remembering. Even if you have immense treasures but you are unaware of them, what is the point whether you have them or not?An ancient story says that a master and his disciple were moving from one village to another. But they started late because people were trying to persuade them to stay a little longer in their village. Starting late, the master was continuously looking into his bag. That he had never done before. The disciple was behind him and he was thinking, “What is the matter? Why does he go on looking into the bag and then close it?”Again and again the master said, “We should go faster, we have to reach the other village before sunset.”The disciple simply could not believe it because there had been many nights when they stayed in the wildest parts of the forest, where there were all kinds of dangers, and the master had never bothered. They had slept soundly under the trees, knowing perfectly well there was danger all around. But what had happened today? He wanted to reach the other village before sunset. There was danger – what kind of danger?Then they stopped at a well, and the master had to wash his face and do his evening prayer before the sun set, so he was in a hurry. He gave the bag to the disciple and told him, “Keep it carefully.” That too was strange. He had given the bag to him many times, but he had never said, “Keep it carefully.” Of course he had always kept it carefully.So when the master started drawing the water from the well, the disciple looked in the bag. And then he knew what the problem was: he was carrying a golden brick, a complete brick of pure gold. He knew now what the danger was. So while the master was praying – and he was praying quickly, and fast – the disciple threw that golden brick into the forest and took a stone of the same weight and put it in the bag.The master quickly finished his prayer and immediately took the bag and felt the weight. The sun was setting and it was getting dark. Feeling the weight and touching the bag, he was perfectly satisfied. They started walking and the master said, “We have to run. We have to reach the village some way; we cannot stay in the forest in the night. It is dangerous.”After two miles of running, both were tired, huffing, puffing… Finally, the master said, “It seems we are on the wrong track because there seems to be no village ahead. Far away we can see not even a single light. And there is danger…”The disciple said, “Don’t be worried, I have thrown the danger near that well.”He said, “What!!” He looked, he took out the stone, and he said, “You threw away that brick of gold? I told you to keep it carefully!”And the disciple said, “I have kept it carefully! For two miles you have also been keeping the stone carefully. Not knowing that it was a stone, you were worried. Now can we stay overnight?”He said, “Now there is no problem. You really threw away the whole danger.”They slept very well in the night.If you don’t know, you can carry a stone as if it is gold. And you can carry gold as if it is nothing, if you don’t know.You are carrying a tremendous treasure within you – buddhahood, enlightenment. But unless you realize it, whether it is there or not does not matter. It is the same.That’s why Sekito said, “You don’t have it. All other living beings may have it, but you don’t have it. That much is certain. All living beings are not here, so I don’t know, but about you I know – you don’t have it.”He said, “But why? Why make me an exception then? Every living being has it…!”He said: “Because you don’t accept it.” You don’t explore it, you don’t recognize it. You don’t remember a forgotten language.At this, Shodai decided to stay with Sekito.Ma Tzu was right. This was the right man for him.First he must have felt a little disappointed in Ma Tzu, a little humiliated that he had been sent back. But now he recognized: “Ma Tzu was right. Sekito has the secret in his hands, and he is my master. Ma Tzu has a different discipline and he would have to begin from ABC. Sekito has been working for years over me.”So now everything was clear why he had been sent back. “Go to the same master who has been working on you. He has been working perfectly rightly. His method is his; my method is different.”But methods don’t matter, they are pure devices to bring you a certain awareness, a certain realization, a certain deepening of your consciousness. This statement: “Because you don’t accept it, you don’t have it. Just realize it and you have it – you have already had it for centuries, but you have never looked at it”… At this, there must have been a lightning flash in Shodai’s mind, in his consciousness. He decided to stay with Sekito.Later, he lived in the Shodai-ji temple…He created a temple and lived there. It used to be called the Shodai-ji temple:…and did not go outdoors for thirty years.This is simply both symbolic and factual. He did not go outside the temple for thirty years. After this statement of Sekito – “You have it, but because you don’t accept it you don’t have it” – for thirty years he did not go outside the temple. Nor did he go out of himself for thirty years, he went on in and in and in. Those thirty years he was not even counting. The only thing that mattered was that he had to remember the hidden secret of buddhahood. He had to give birth to his own buddhahood – and he had gone to Ma Tzu for the celebration of Buddha’s birth.How can you celebrate Gautam Buddha’s birth if your buddha is still unborn? You can’t understand what Buddha means, you can’t understand what this festival is for because you have not come to your own festival.First you have to celebrate yourself.Only then can you celebrate all the buddhas, awakened or asleep, only then can you celebrate the whole existence. …and did not go outdoors for thirty years – neither out of the hut nor out of himself. He went on in and in he went on digging.Whenever a seeker came to him… Seeing the temple and knowing that Shodai was inside meditating for thirty years, people used to bring rice, food, water. But he never asked anybody and he never went out.In the East, to bring food has been a very virtuous act, if somebody is meditating so deeply that he has no time for food, no time to beg, no time to go out. People have a tremendous reverence for meditators. They may have been poor and they may have cut their own food into two pieces – one they would eat, the other piece they would go and offer to Shodai.In the East, meditation has not been thought of as a personal matter. It is not that you are doing something selfish for your own self; it is something that you are doing for the whole of existence. If you blossom, you will be a proof to everybody that they can also blossom. You will become an argument for the inner world. You will become an incentive for others also to explore – it is possible; it is not impossible. It is not only that Gautam Buddha can become enlightened, Shodai also can. He has been refused by Sekito – “You don’t have it!” This hit him hard.But this was a device of Sekito. Shodai needed that much of a hit. So he retired to a temple, meditated for thirty years, became enlightened. But whenever anybody would come to him, he would say, “Go away – you don’t have a buddha nature.”The same device that had been used on him by his master, he went on using his whole life. And he helped many people because the moment he would say, “You don’t have buddha nature,” immediately they would ask, “What about other living beings?” And he would say, “Of course, they have it.”Naturally, the same dialogue happened again and again, and the person would say, “You are being absurd. If everybody has it, why have I not?” And he would say, “Because you don’t accept.” Just remember – it is a forgotten nature. Just go in.Shodai was not very inventive – that’s what I call a “normal” Zen master. He simply had one small statement. Even that small statement helped many, but could not help a really great number of people because the people who came to him were not in the same state that he was, when he asked Sekito. He had been meditating with Sekito for years. He was just on the verge – the last hit…The people who were coming were absolutely beginners, so with many nothing transpired. Once in a while, if a man had come from some other master… Perhaps the master was dead, or perhaps he had become tired – how long had he to wait? And he became anxious: “My master is becoming old and I am not yet enlightened…” Shodai succeeded by hitting people like this who had been meditating and were just on the verge. He knew only one hit – a poor Zen master.There are poor Zen masters and rich Zen masters and super-rich Zen masters. You are caught up with a super Zen master! I hit you without hitting you. I hit you in so many ways, from every direction possible, and my hits are not cruel and primitive. They are very contemporary – in fact very few contemporary people are going to understand me. Perhaps a century, or two centuries afterward, my hits will shake people into awakening. But, right now, you are caught up and you cannot go anywhere because you will not find me anywhere in the world. You will find just poor masters. Those super-rich masters have disappeared from the world.We are living in a poorer world spiritually than before. Materially we are living in a richer world, but spiritually it is a very poor world. When Ma Tzu was there and Sekito was there and Rinzai was there and Nangaku was there, Yakusan was there… There were so many masters just in Japan – or in China! When Gautam Buddha was here in India, there were eight masters just in the small province of Bihar, and they transpired hundreds of people into enlightenment.But you are blessed. You have found a super-rich Zen master. Don’t miss this opportunity because the world has been becoming thinner and thinner as far as spirituality is concerned.You have to create a great rebellion around the earth. You have to upset all the organized religions. Only then will people be liberated from their mind programs. And to liberate anybody from his mental programming, conditioning, is one of the greatest virtues. You are helping that man toward freedom. But you can help only if you are free. If you are not free, there is no possibility of helping. A blind man cannot help another blind man. First you have to open your eyes and recognize your buddhahood, and then it is very easy to trigger the same experience in others.There are many who are ready, on the verge, but there is nobody to push them. Everybody needs a push, and everybody needs a certain proof that buddhahood is a reality.You will be surprised to know that when the Christian missionaries first came to India – and they were the first to translate the Buddhist scriptures into English – they did not think that a man like Buddha had ever been there. It seemed to them almost an impossibility; they had never heard about enlightenment. They had heard about prophets coming from God, they had heard about messiahs, messengers, they had heard about the only begotten son, Jesus. They believed in them, but they had never heard about enlightenment.Was Moses enlightened? Was Jesus enlightened? They had no answer. They had never heard about the phenomenon at all. So Buddha was a strange phenomenon. The early missionaries simply canceled the idea that he was a historical person. It took almost one hundred years of research for Christian missionaries to accept that Buddha was a real human being, not a fiction. This shows that they had believed in fictions.So they thought, deep down… Nobody can believe in Jesus and his miracles. Howsoever great an effort you make to believe, the doubt will remain underneath and will surface whenever your belief is shaken by something – and it will be shaken by anything because a belief has no evidence, no proof.Every Christian, every Jew, every Mohammedan, every Hindu, is living under such beliefs which they themselves know cannot be true. But out of fear they are accepting it.But fear cannot transform you. There is only one way to be transformed and that is to find your buddhahood. That will give you proof that other buddhas have actually happened.If you can become a buddha, you are the argument, you are the proof. Unless you know buddhahood you cannot come to a trust that such a miracle is possible. And it is the greatest miracle. Walking on water is just stupid; it is not a miracle.It happened once…A man came to Ramakrishna who had trained himself in a certain Yoga method. There are Yoga methods by which you can throw all the air out of the body so you become a vacuum inside. You cannot remain in that vacuum for more than ten minutes, but ten minutes is enough to show that you can walk on water. If you are a vacuum you can walk on the water.But it takes almost eighteen to twenty years to learn that method of creating the vacuum. Once you have created a vacuum you can do strange things. I have seen a man in my childhood, and my memory is absolutely clean about him; I can see him still because he was doing such a strange thing. From his prick he would drink water! And that is possible only if you can create a vacuum inside. Then the vacuum pulls the water, pumps the water in. But I have come across only one man. I have tried hard to find somebody again…I asked him how long did it took for him to do and he said, “It is a very difficult job. It took at least twenty years for me to create the vacuum.” And only for ten minutes…!”A man came to Ramakrishna and he said, “I have heard much about you, but can you walk on water?”Ramakrishna said, “That’s nothing. You can?”He said, “Of course.”Ramakrishna said, “I prefer riding on a cloud. Do you know the art?”He said, “No, I have never heard.”Ramakrishna said, “How long did it take for you to learn the knack?”The man said, “For eighteen years continuously I have been…”Ramakrishna said, “You are an idiot because when I want to go on the Ganges…” They were sitting by the side of the Ganges, under a beautiful tree where Ramakrishna used to sit and just watch the Ganges flowing. The place where Ramakrishna lived is beautiful; it is outside Kolkata, a very silent, peaceful place. Just one temple existed there at the time in which he lived, right on the bank of the Ganges.So Ramakrishna said, “Whenever I want to go there, you see that ferryboat? – it takes only two paisa. And that too, the boatman does not take from me. He says, ‘Not from you. I earn enough, I can take you without it.’ So when I can go to the other side without even giving two paisa, why should I waste eighteen years of my life in learning to walk on the water? Do you think it is something of spirituality? All the fish are doing that and there are so many water animals… So what is the point? How do you think it is connected with your spiritual growth? You wasted eighteen years in sheer stupidity. And I don’t ride on the clouds either. I was just trying to show you that even riding on the clouds will not be of any value.”The real value is: are you acquainted with your buddha? It is the only thing that matters.When Christians, the missionaries, came to know about Buddha and his scriptures they were amazed because the sutras of Buddha have such beauty that the Bible simply fades away, looks very childish.One great missionary in Japan had gone to see a Zen master and he believed he could convert him. His idea was that if he could convert this Zen master – to whom even the emperor of Japan went and he had large following – he could convert the whole of Japan. The emperor would be converted, thousands of his disciples would be converted. So rather than working on ordinary people, it was better to work on this man. There are certainly beautiful statements in the Bible, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, so he took the Bible.He was greeted by the Zen master, and he said, “I have brought you my holy scripture. I would like to read it to you and I would like to know your opinion.”So he started reading the Sermon on the Mount. He had gone two or three lines when the Zen master said, “Stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life he may become enlightened.”He did not even listen to the whole sermon. He said, “Just stop. Whoever wrote it, in his next life will become enlightened. But right now these sutras are coming from an unenlightened person.”Shocked, the missionary could not understand: “Jesus Christ is unenlightened?”The idea of enlightenment has never happened in the West. The very idea is missing. So it was very difficult for them to understand that there has been a totally different kind of people. They have always believed in God, his son – who is not possible without God – his prophets who come from God, his messengers who came from God. Everything comes from God. That hypothesis is fundamental. If you deny that, then the whole of Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, all three religions flop down. They simply disappear with one hypothesis which is absolutely unproved.Here they came to understand a totally different process. A buddha does not come from above, he comes from below and he rises upward. You see the difference: he becomes godly as he goes on upward. And all the Christian or Jewish or Mohammedan prophets and messiahs come from up to down.Buddha is an evolution. It is an intrinsic potentiality that starts going upward like a tree and when the spring comes, it blossoms. They have never thought that man becomes godly; they have always thought only God can come down. Hindus believe in incarnation – God comes as Krishna, God comes as Rama… And it is absolutely clear that God has been coming so many times – and the world is such a mess! What has God done to the world? God comes in Krishna as a perfect incarnation – and what has that perfect incarnation done? Nobody asks the question: “Why has he come in the first place?” And if he has come, then what has he done?Krishna has promised that he will come and Hindus still believe that he will be coming. His promise is: “When there is danger, when humanity is in pain and anguish and anxiety, when atheism spreads in the world, when saints are tortured… Whenever there will be such a crisis in religion, I will come.” But I have been asking so-called Hindu saints, “The last time he came, what did he do? And why are you waiting for him? The last time he proved nothing. Even if he comes, he is not going to do anything. And how many times has he come?”Hindus believe that he has already come twenty-three times; he still has to come the twenty-fourth time. But twenty-three times he has been a failure. That is enough proof: the twenty-fourth time he is not going to be a success.What have the prophets of the Jews done? And what have the prophets like Jesus or Mohammed done to Christianity or to Mohammedanism? They have created an ugly human psychology, neurotic. They have not helped the evolution of consciousness.So Buddha is completely a different category. He is not coming from any hypothesis downward. He is not special. He is just an ordinary human being like you and me, but he starts growing his potentiality upward. He touches the very stars, he grows roots into the earth, goes to the deepest possibility. He stands vertical, leaves the horizontal plane of consciousness which belongs to the animals. He is really a rebel, an authentic rebel.Naturally, every word that has come from him has tremendous meaning because he is not accepting any lies, any consolations. And he is not giving any lies to people or any consolations. He is simply saying what his experience is, and that it can be your experience also.Buddha created a totally different world and following him, masters upon masters, but certainly they remain a very thin stream. Buddha belongs to the very intelligent people. It is not for the mediocre, it is not for the retarded, it is not for the masses.But if the intelligent people of the world rise into buddhahood, they will help the whole of humanity at least to see what is possible for a human being, what is hidden in us. And if thousands of people can bring it to blossoming, why cannot we?Every buddha becomes a proof, an argument to the whole of humanity. He raises the level of existence spiritually; each buddha goes on raising the level of humanity without your knowing. You are closer now after twenty-five centuries than you were when Buddha was alive.Most of you must have been around him. Most of you must have been around other buddhas because you are not new to the world. You have been here always, but you never managed up to now to go as intensely as possible. Hence my insistence: don’t miss this opportunity.You have to decide – you have to be very decisive: “I have to bring my potential to its ultimate flowering. I have to become a celebration, a festival. I have to contribute to the beauty and truth and the divineness of existence.”Basho wrote:Early spring a nameless hill knee deepin the gauze of morning stillness.These are all statements of meditators, and Basho is a great master and simultaneously one of the greatest haiku poets.Early spring… Just visualize: Early spring… It has just come fresh. The trees have been waiting for it, the earth has been waiting for it. Those who have some aesthetic sense – the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the sculptors – they have been waiting for it. It has come. Early spring… Such a joy follows it, such freshness all around. Such a fragrance of flowers.A nameless hill knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness. Even the hill is feeling the spring breeze, knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness. Not only am I kneeling down in my gratitude for existence, for this fresh spring, but once more, the mountain is also knee deep – is as grateful as I am.Early spring a nameless hill knee deep in the gauze of morning stillness. Those small hours before the sunrise, when the night is just going and the sun has not arrived on the horizon, are the most peaceful. And meditators have found that that is the best time to meditate – particularly in the East, when those moments are the coolest in the day.Perhaps it may not be true about the West; it may be too cold. Perhaps for the West the best time will be midnight. It is good for the East also, but the early morning when the flowers are just opening to welcome the sun, and the birds are fluttering their wings getting ready to sing their songs and dance into the air…And that stillness… Night is gone, almost gone, and the morning is not yet born. That in-between moment has been given a special name in the East, sandhya. Sandhya means the interval between day and night. So it comes twice – in the morning and in the evening when the sun has set and the night has not come. So these two times are called sandhya, intervals.In those intervals you can meditate more deeply than at any other time. It is just an existential experience of thousands of meditators.Basho is expressing his own experience in this haiku.Maneesha’s question:Osho,Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian, asserted that “God will remain somehow remote and ‘out there,' unless there is a complete turnabout in which all references to the high and the beyond are translated into terms of depth. This infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all beings is God. That depth is what the word God means. He who knows about depth knows about God.”Would you like to comment?Maneesha, Paul Tillich and all neo-theologians are trying their hardest somehow to save God and there is no way to save him, he is already dead!Now he is giving another idea: take God from there beyond the clouds and put him deep down. But what is the difference? Deep down where? – in America? Because from this place, if you go on digging, you will suddenly see, “My God! All the Americans are walking upside down. Are they doing shirshasan, headstand?” Because from here you will exactly reach America – the shortest way. People are unnecessarily flying: just dig a hole! It can be started from both sides – from America toward India, and from India toward America. And the meeting will happen just in between.But as far as America is concerned, India will be the depth. As far as India is concerned, America will be the depth. Where are you going to put God? In the depths? They are just trying absurdities to save the name God because the danger is that God is becoming more and more of an impossible hypothesis to prove.So change his place. Take him out from the clouds, take him from there in the beyond, and put him there in the depths. But you cannot save him. He is dead there in the beyond, and he will be dead in his grave in the depths. You are only digging a grave. Paul Tillich is just a gravedigger and nothing else.You can clearly see what he is saying, “God will remain somehow remote and ‘out there,’ unless there is a complete turnabout…” But still the distance will be the same. First he was beyond in the clouds; now he will be deep inside the earth. In fact, it was easy to go to the clouds, going inside the earth will be more difficult. And you don’t know what is inside the earth, volcanoes… It is all hot and melted. The deeper you go, you will come to a point when everything is melted; fire, still alive, that comes through the volcanoes. You can see it. You are putting God there? I like the place. That will be his funeral pyre.“This infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all beings is God.” But he will cling to the word God. There is no change, just the place has been changed. God is the same – he has moved house. “That depth is what the word God means.” First he was the height, now he is the depth, but he is.“He who knows about depth knows about God” – great! Those who have known the depth or the height are the people who have declared there is no God. There is only a quality, a fragrance, which you cannot catch hold of, but you can feel overwhelmed by. But it is not God, it is the very flavor of existence itself. It is the very life.Why create an unnecessary hypothesis? Be a little scientific. In science it is an accepted fact that no unnecessary hypothesis should be accepted. Do with as few hypotheses as possible because every hypothesis creates new problems and solves nothing – and particularly unproven hypotheses which for centuries man has been trying to prove and has failed. All theologians have failed. No theologian has been able to give any proof for God.They are trying, Maneesha, to do something impossible. God is dead, and it is good and great that God is dead because it brings freedom and dignity to life, to existence. It destroys our spiritual slavery, it gives us a great pride that we are existence and nobody is above us.One of the Baul mystics, Chandidas, has made a beautiful statement: “Sabar upar manus satya, tahar upar nahi.” He is a Bengali mystic; the statement is in Bengali. “Sabar upar manus satya – above all is the truth of man. Tahar upar nahi – and beyond that there is nothing.”This is what I call the dignity of man, of life, of existence. Why unnecessarily drag humanity into slavery? Paul Tillich and all those who are trying to save God, the neo-theologians of Christianity, are going to fail because all that they can do is give new words, new meanings, new references, new addresses. But when you reach, you will find nothing. Neither is he beyond there, nor is he in the depth somewhere hiding. God does not exist and has never been in existence.Life exists. Celebrate life; rejoice life. Let life be your freedom, your pride, your dance, your celebration.This is the right time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Put on the light!Old Miss Crumbum, the Jehovah’s Witness, is going round from door to door collecting money to send missionaries abroad. She knocks on the door of Hamish MacTavish, the Scotsman, and when Hamish opens the door, she starts her speech.“Praise the Lord, good sir!” intones Miss Crumbum. “We are planning to send twenty Witnesses of Jehovah to the African countries. Please give generously for our missionary service overseas!”“Absolutely not!” replies Hamish. “I totally disapprove of those foreign missions.”“But, good sir!” cries Miss Crumbum. “The scriptures command us to feed the hungry!”“Well, that’s fine,” says Hamish, “but surely we can feed them on something cheaper than missionaries?”The new priest in the village, young Father Fever, is coming to visit the Sidebottom household. So little Sally’s mother gives her daughter some instructions.“If the new priest asks you your name,” says Mrs. Sidebottom, “say Sally-Jane. And if he asks you how old you are, say you are seven years old. And if he asks who made you, say, ‘God made me!’ Can you remember all that?”“I think so,” says Sally.A few minutes later, young Father Fever arrives, puts down his hat and his Bible, and walks up to little Sally. He pats her on the head and says, “I am Father Fever, your new priest. And what is your name, little girl?”“Sally-Jane,” replies Sally.“And how old are you, Sally-Jane?” asks the priest.“Seven years old,” replies Sally.“Well, that is nice,” says Fever. “And do you know who made you, Sally-Jane?”Little Sally hesitates for a moment, and then says, “Shit! Mom did tell me, but I have forgotten the guy’s name!”Late one evening on the little Greek island of Crete, old Mrs. Lilypopolis is weeping into her black handkerchief, mourning the recent death of her old friend Mrs. Acreepolis.“Ohhh!” wails old Mrs. Lilypopolis to Bishop Kretin who is holding her hand, “God is so unjust! He is knocking off us old ladies one by one. I must say, Bishop Kretin, that my faith in the Blessed Bleeding Virgin is beginning to wobble.”“Don’t worry my child,” comforts Bishop Kretin, impatiently. “You are only ninety-seven years old, you have lots of life in you still. Just pray to God Almighty and everything will be fine.”But over the next few days, old Mrs. Lilypopolis gets freaked out. She starts looking around for something else to strengthen her faith. One night she is wandering around the streets of the village and finds herself in Madam Goggle’s fortune-telling parlor.“I have been a Blessed Bleeding Virgin Christian all my life,” says old Mrs. Lilypopolis, “and you are a spiritualist and a pagan, but I have come to you because I have lost faith in Bishop Kretin. I come to you in the hope of receiving the answer to one question.”Madam Goggle nods her head and closes her eyes, lapsing into a deep trance.“Go ahead,” she says in a spiritual voice, “tell me your question.”“I want to know,” says old lady Lilypopolis, “when I die, will I go to heaven – I mean my Christian heaven – to be reunited with my friends, Mrs. Souvlaki, Mrs. Theocrapolis and Mrs. Acreepolis, in the glory of eternal paradise?”After some time in a deep trance, Madam Goggle opens her eyes and speaks, “I have asked the sacred ones if you will go to heaven,” moans Madam Goggle. “And their answer is… Their answer is…” And the old fortune teller rubs her thumb and forefinger together under the old Greek woman’s nose.“Oh, yes!” cries old Mrs. Lilypopolis, fumbling in her purse and bringing out a handful of money. She puts it on the table and then Madam Goggle continues.“Well, there is some good news and some bad news. First the good news… Yes, Mrs. Lilypopolis, because you have been such a good person you will be transported by the heavenly angels to paradise – to the Golden Throne in the skies. And there you will remain throughout eternity with all the other blessed virgins, sitting on God’s knee.”“Oh!” cries old Mrs. Lilypopolis, “Oh, I am completely overwhelmed!”“Wait!” continues Madam Goggle. “And the bad news is…”“But, Madam Goggle!” interrupts the old lady. “After such wonderful good news, what news could possibly be bad?”“Well,” says Madam Goggle, “you will be going there tonight!”Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent…Close your eyes… And feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to enter your inner world. You have to reach just below your navel, two inches exactly below, inside.Gather your energy and total consciousness and rush with a deep urgency, as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth. Only those who have such urgency and intensity ever reach their center of life.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you are coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain falling. You can feel the coolness.A little closer, and you find an explosion of light. Your inner world becomes luminous.A little deeper, and flowers of blissfulness, flowers of ecstasy suddenly start showering on you. Existence is rejoicing in your inner journey. This is the only spiritual pilgrimage.Just one step more and you are standing at the very center of your being. This is the state of a Gautam Buddha, the space of all the buddhas. At this moment you are no more, only the buddha is. And the buddha has only one quality: witnessing.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.And witness that you are only the witness.This pure witnessing opens all the closed doors of existence and life, of song and dance, of the ultimate celebration of becoming one with the cosmos.To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax… But continue to witness.That is your very eternity – no beginning, no end… Infinite, inexhaustible, sacred.This is your original face. We in the East have symbolized Gautam Buddha’s face as everybody’s original face – that is only a symbol. Recognize it! And rejoice in its recognition.At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth. Everybody is concerned with trivia, you are trying to explore the very center of life and existence.Other than this, there is no religiousness.Other than this, there is no spirituality.And this experience is absolutely individual, it has nothing to do with the collective, with the society, with an organized religion.From this opening, you can see there is no God, there is only godliness surrounding you – all around limitless. The height is infinite. The depth is infinite, but you don’t find any God anywhere. On the contrary, you start melting and disappearing.Gautama the Buddha Auditorium has become an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas have joined together into one consciousness.This is your truth, and this is the beauty of the truth, and this is the divineness of the truth.One who knows this center and this opening into existence, knows all.Collect as many flowers as you can of serenity, of tranquillity, of silence, of peace, of ecstasy, of a divine drunkenness. You have to bring all these juices of life from the center to the surface of your day-to-day life. You have to start living like a buddha, with the same grace, with the same beauty, with the same truth, with the same authenticity, with the same originality.This opening and the experience of it will bring you a dignity which is not ego, a pride which is not ego, but simply a joy, simply a remembrance that you are existential, not accidental. Hence, the possibility of celebration.The accidental person lives in anguish, in anxiety, in angst. The existential person lives in celebration, in love, in grace, in gratitude.Do not forget to persuade the buddha to come with you.These are the three steps of enlightenment.The first step, buddha comes behind you as a shadow. But the shadow is luminous, it has tremendous warmth, and it surrounds you with a new fragrance, fragrance of the beyond.The next step, the second step, you become the shadow, buddha comes in front of you. Your shadow goes on becoming thinner and thinner as buddha becomes more and more solid and existential.A moment comes and the third step happens on its own accord: your shadow has disappeared, you are no more. Only the buddha is, only life is, only existence is. Hence the celebration.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back… But come with all the glory and the splendor of a buddha, with all the grace and silence and peace.Sit down just for a few seconds to remind yourself of the golden path that you have followed, and the depth you have reached within yourself, and all the experiences. And feel the presence of buddha behind you.The day is not far away when the first step will turn into the second step, and the second step will turn into the third step. You will be no more. And when you are no more there is dance, there is song, there is joy, there is celebration of life.I celebrate myself and I teach you nothing else but celebration.Religiousness has fallen into wrong hands and they have made the whole world sad and miserable. I want the world to be filled with laughter, with joy, with festivity.The whole life, moment to moment has to be lived as a celebration. That is the only religious life. You have every potential and every opportunity.Just a little relaxed effortless melting into the ocean that surrounds you, and the dance begins. And the dance never ends.

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I Celebrate Myself 01-07Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

I Celebrate Myself 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One day, Sekito announced to everybody that the next day they would weed the grass in front of the Buddha Hall. The following day, all the monks gathered with sickles in their hands, but only Tanka came with a tray filled with water. Before coming there he had washed his hair, but it was not yet shaven. Now he kneeled down in front of Sekito, and seeing him, Sekito laughed, and shaved Tanka’s head. As the master usually did, Sekito gave Tanka some specific commandments, but as he did so, Tanka walked away covering his ears with his hands.Tanka then left for Kosei to see Ma Tzu. Arriving at the monastery, he went into the hall and, climbing on the statue of Manjushri, sat there. The other monks were astonished and told Ma Tzu, who came in, looked at him and said, “My son is Tennen.”Tanka came down, made a bow and said, “Thank you for giving me a dharma name.”Ma Tzu then asked, “Where do you come from?”Tanka said, “I come from Sekito.”Ma Tzu said, “The path on the stonehead is slippery. Did you fall over?”Tanka replied, “If I had fallen over, I wouldn’t have come here.”Friends, first the questions.The first question:Osho,It seems that never has any God-oriented religion been more anachronistic than it is today; yet curiously, Christianity at least seems to be blooming. Born-again Christians, Jesus freaks, and fundamentalist Christians are rife.Are we seeing the phenomenon you have described when something is about to die? You have compared it to a candle going out, having a last, final spurt of energy before it splutters into extinction.It is exactly what has happened. Not only is Christianity going out of existence, all religions as such are already out of date. They are living a posthumous life.Whatever they have been teaching to humanity has been found to be criminal. Their God is a fiction, a lie. They have all been telling people to be truthful, and they are teaching lies about heaven and hell and God. They have made the whole of humanity hypocritical.The misery that you see all over the earth is created by your religions. Once you make a man feel guilty, he cannot enjoy life, he cannot rejoice in existence. You have cut his roots, the very roots that nourish his joy, his blissfulness.All the religions have been against humanity. They are bound to go into extinction. The sooner they disappear from the earth the better. Man needs to sing with the birds, to dance with the trees. Man needs to rise to the heights of a Gautam Buddha.The religions have not been helping the evolution of consciousness; on the contrary, they are the greatest obstacles. Religion has become a business in the hands of the priests. And certainly an authentic religiousness has nothing to do with business. It has something to do with your blossoming, it has something to do with your initiation into eternity, into truth, into beauty, into good.Religiousness has no way to make humanity spiritually a slave – but that’s what religions have done. Everybody is enslaved, oppressed, exploited, and everybody is being poisoned by the religions, forced to be unnatural. The moment you force somebody to be unnatural you are committing the greatest crime against existence.All the religions, God-oriented or not God-oriented, have been teaching man to renounce life. They are anti life, they are against everything that can make you a whole person. Not only physically, not only psychologically, but spiritually too. They have been cutting you into pieces and they have been trying for centuries, insistently, to enforce the idea of renouncement. This is not a right approach to existence.The moment you start renouncing, you start shrinking. Rather than growing, rather than becoming vaster and infinite, you start shrinking into yourself. You lose all interest in existence, in love, because you are told to torture yourself. Renunciation from the world is another name for self-torture. And how can you expect a man who is torturing himself to dance? How can you expect him to be ecstatic? He is committing a slow suicide.God-oriented religions and not-God-oriented religions are both going to disappear. Religion is an individual matter; it has nothing to do with collectivity. It is not a social phenomenon, it is very private, absolutely private, your innermost affair. Even love is not so private because at least two persons are involved in it. In meditation, nobody is involved – only you are. It is absolutely individualistic.I teach you to be individuals. Never belong to any organization, never belong to any holy scriptures, churches, temples. Never belong to any monastery. This whole existence is available for you – rejoice in it, celebrate in it.No religion teaches celebration; they teach celibacy! I am absolutely against celibacy and all for celebration. I am making every effort to bring a new approach toward life which the past humanity has missed – a new freedom, a new sky to open your wings. All religions have been cutting your wings, putting you into cages and making you believe that this is all that life is. There was a reason for them to do this. Unless you take away people’s individuality and destroy their wings and their freedom and cut their roots of nourishment, you cannot enslave them. It is impossible to create armies and wars; it is impossible to make millions of people suffer in poverty – they would have revolted long ago. But religions are keeping them subdued by the fear of God, by the fear of punishment in hell, and by the greed that if you follow their commandments you will be immensely rewarded.I have told you about this man Salman Rushdie. Ordinarily, the way Ayatollah Khomeini and the other religious leaders of Iran have behaved, people would think is very strange from a religious man. I want to tell you it is not – this is what religions have been doing for centuries.Mohammed himself carried a sword his whole life, killing people, and he has given the name Islam to his religion, which means peace! On his sword, “Peace is my message” was written in letters of gold – on the sword!Ayatollah Khomeini is behaving exactly like all the religious leaders. It is absolutely irreligious behavior, but Ayatollah Khomeini is not the only one responsible for it, he is simply a representative of the whole past history of religions: killing, murder, crusades, fights over strange things.Christians, Mohammedans and Jews have been fighting over a strange idea which can be shared very easily: that Jerusalem is the holy city. So what is wrong? All three religions can enjoy going to Jerusalem. But they have been fighting. Jews have been claiming, “It is our holy city.” And Christians of course were saying, “It is our holy city because Jesus was crucified here.” And Jews are saying it is their holy city because the most ancient Jewish temple used to exist in Jerusalem. There is still the great wall where Jews weep, cry – that is their prayer, in front of an ancient wall. You will find hundreds of Jews every day standing in front of the wall or kneeling down in front of the wall. It is their holy city.And then came the Mohammedans and with a strange fiction they have made it their holy city. The fiction is that Mohammed went to heaven sitting on his horse, and just on the way to heaven he stopped for a rest in Jerusalem. Now, I cannot conceive how Jerusalem comes on the way to heaven. It does not exist somewhere in the clouds.So the rock on which he had rested for a few minutes before ascending to heaven is the holy rock, and because the holy rock is in Jerusalem, Mohammedans have been claiming, “It is our holy city.” And all three religions have been fighting and killing for hundreds and thousands of years. I cannot understand why they cannot all share the holy city – they can all go and worship. But the very claim that it is theirs is absolutely nonreligious.A religious person has no possessiveness. These are not religious people, they belong only to pseudo-religious organizations. And they are doing everything wrong in the name of God. That gives a sanctity to their immoral acts.Ayatollah Khomeini’s death sentence on four persons was absolutely immoral, absolutely unspiritual. And then another ayatollah came and declared that he would give 2.6 million dollars to the person who brings the head of Salman Rushdie to Iran.I was hoping Salman Rushdie would prove to be a man of integrity – he did not. He has started falling from integrity, from individuality. Today he has sent to Ayatollah Khomeini: “I can feel that I have hurt so many people’s religious feelings…” Yesterday, Ayatollah Khomeini said that if Rushdie asks for forgiveness and is ready to receive a penance, then he can save his life. Otherwise there is no way.This statement is not accurately speaking an apology, but just a recognition that he had unconsciously hurt the feelings of thousands of Mohammedans and that he would be more careful in the future. But he was not aware that Ayatollah Khomeini is not a sane man. He rejected the statement, and said again on the radio, “Rushdie has not apologized and we reject whatever he has said.”Now Salman Rushdie has started falling. Soon he will have to apologize and after apologizing, Ayatollah Khomeini will ask him to do penance. “Come to Kaaba and fast for one month…” Salman Rushdie has taken a wrong move. This is how people have been kept imprisoned out of fear.I was hoping that a man of the intelligence of Salman Rushdie would prefer death to apologizing. He has not committed any sin and he has not done anything wrong. I was hoping that he would put Ayatollah Khomeini in a corner. He should ask him, “On what grounds are you saying that I have committed anything against Islam? Tell me exactly the reason that you are asking for an apology, or giving me the sentence of death.” And that would have exposed Ayatollah Khomeini because none of these ayatollahs have given a reason.Rushdie simply stated a historical fact, that a few of the verses which Mohammed wrote in an earlier version of the Koran he dropped later on, saying that he had been inspired by the Devil to write these verses. Now, this is a historical fact, it is not Salman Rushdie’s imagination. Why should he ask forgiveness?He should have said, “Give me the reasons,” and he would have put these fanatics into a corner because they cannot say what really is the problem. I want you to understand it because that will give you an insight into the murderous instinct of all the religions. This does not make any sense because it is a well-established fact, accepted by Mohammedan scholars for centuries, that a few verses have been dropped. And the statement of Mohammed is well-known to those who have ever studied the Koran and the history of Islam. So they cannot really say these are the verses that are creating trouble because then the question immediately arises that they are historical facts.For the same reason, Galileo was called by the pope because he had written that it is not the sun that goes around the earth; on the contrary, it is the earth that goes around the sun. But the Bible states the commonsense view. Just as we see the sun rising in the morning and going around from the east to the west, setting, so it appears that the sun is going around the earth.This is a commonsense view, but the question that Galileo had asked the pope was, “Why are you are so afraid of a truth? I have been experimenting; this is my whole life’s work. And even if I withdraw the sentence that you are wanting me to withdraw, neither the earth is going to change its course, nor the sun, because they don’t read my books. The earth will go on circling the sun. But why are you afraid?” Galileo had asked, and he had cornered the pope: “Either you prove that I am wrong on scientific grounds… It is not a religious matter at all. What has religion to do with whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth goes around the sun? It has nothing to do with any spirituality, it is a scientific area. If anybody can prove anything scientifically against me, then of course I will withdraw. But why are you afraid?”Cornered in this way, the pope had to accept that the real problem was: “We are not concerned whether the earth goes around, or the sun. Our concern is that even if one sentence in the Bible is found to be wrong, the whole credibility of the Bible goes. Then it is not a work of God. God is infallible, God cannot commit such a mistake. He made the earth, he made the sun, and he does not know who goes around.“The point is that one sentence proved wrong will create doubt about the whole authenticity of the Bible, so we cannot allow you to create this doubt in people’s minds.”Galileo was very old, almost on his deathbed. He had been dragged from his deathbed to the court of the pope. He said, “I don’t want to get into any unnecessary trouble. I am already dying. So I will cancel the sentence.” And he must have been a man of a great sense of humor. He canceled the sentence. But in a footnote he wrote, “Although I am canceling this sentence, the fact is that the earth goes around the sun. They are not going to listen to me; they don’t follow any religion and they are not Christians.”Certainly the earth is not Christian, neither is the sun Christian. And certainly whoever wrote the Bible is not omniscient, is not infallible.Hundreds of facts have been found in these three hundred years after Galileo which go against the Bible, which go against the Koran, which go against the Vedas, which go against every religious scripture in the world. All these holy scriptures are full of common sense, not of any scientific inquiry, nor of any spiritual inquiry.It is so strange to read the holy scriptures. They look such rubbish that even newspapers seem to be more important. And if God is writing, or his special messengers are writing these scriptures, they cannot be counted sane.My whole understanding is that all these prophets and messiahs and avatars and tirthankaras – the founders of all the religions – are basically megalomaniacs, great egoists. This is the greatest ego in the world, that you are related with God in a manner nobody else is related.That’s why Jesus excludes the idea that there is another son, another brother to him, or another sister. God has only one begotten son and that is Jesus Christ. Why does Mohammed close the doors: “I am the last prophet of God; now there will be no more prophets coming. So the holy Koran is the final message from God; no correction can be made in it”… But he himself corrected it and he himself accepted that he was inspired by the Devil.Religions have been repressing truths, and now it is time that the truth should be declared, freedom should be declared, individuality should be declared. Man has lived under slavery long enough. The night has been too long; a new dawn is needed. A new man is needed, a new humanity is needed, and that humanity necessarily needs all these so-called religions to disappear from the earth.They are taking their last breaths, so your question is exactly right. The same is the case with a candle going out – having a last final spurt of energy before it splutters into extinction.This happens to man also. Physicians have been observing for centuries that before death, a person becomes perfectly healthy; all his diseases disappear. And they could not understand: “What is happening?” He is going to die, the logical thing would be that his diseases become more dangerous because they are going to kill him. But at the last moment all diseases disappear.It is the last spurt of energy. Before going into darkness, the candle flares up. Physicians have often been deceived by this flaring up of energy; they think they have cured the person. And by the time they have reached home, the phone rings to say that the man is dead. They were thinking they had cured him because everything becomes normal before death. The man is making his last effort – of course unconsciously – to remain alive. He is for the first time being total, so all the energy is gathered. That gathering of the energy gives a false appearance of health, as if he is cured.All these religions are gathering their whole energy – the last flare-up of life before they disappear forever with their God, with their priests, with their monks, with their churches, with their holy scriptures. That day will be the greatest day in the history of man. Man will become free.Hence I say that the days for celebration are coming closer. Get ready!Celibacy is no longer scientific; we have to fill up the gap with celebration. Renunciation is no longer logical, rational; we have to fill the gap with rejoicing. That is the reason so-called religious people are against me; they can see what I am saying destroys their lies and their fictions and their consolations. This destruction they call “Having their religious feelings hurt.”Just today, a man has asked the government of India, “Just as you have banned Salman Rushdie’s book, why don’t you ban Osho’s books which are far more dangerous?” It is true, they are far more dangerous. Rushdie has not done anything and is unnecessarily being harassed. If you harass me, it will be absolutely right because I am stating things against every religion.But to ask the government to ban my books is to accept defeat. Why can’t you argue with me? Why can’t you bring a dialogue into existence? If you think your religious ideology is right, I am ready for any challenge to discuss it. Why are you afraid? In a cultured society, in a democratic nation it is against the constitution to take away anybody’s freedom of speech. I am ready to confront anybody – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina, Buddhist. Whoever they are, I am ready to confront them, but because they don’t have any way to answer my questions they immediately take the course of asking the government.The Indian government is secular, it has no way to defend any religion or anybody’s religious feelings. And it is barbarous to ask the government; it simply shows you are primitive and you don’t know how to behave in a civilized way.If Ayatollah Khomeini was a civilized, sane man, he would have asked Rushdie, “Are you ready for an argument?” To declare a death sentence… And Mohammedan criminals, professional murderers have already entered Britain from different Mohammedan countries. Even Pakistan has sent people. I was shocked because the father of the woman who is now the president of Pakistan, Bhutto, was sentenced to death for no reason at all. He was the most prominent person in Pakistan, the most influential person. Because of him, the man who was in power – he was a military general, it was a military dictatorship – was afraid to call elections, so he was tolerating and making excuses and postponing. But how long can you postpone? People were asking again and again, “Why are elections not happening?” And the reason was that Bhutto was alive. He used to be the president of the country and this was a takeover by the army, by force. Bhutto had to be killed before the elections.So they brought all kinds of imaginary crimes that he had not committed. He was a well educated man, and he was not a fanatic. They killed him. No appeal was granted to him; he could not appeal to the president for mercy. It was against Pakistan’s constitution, against Pakistan’s law, but General Zia, who was in power, was not a man of any influence in the public. He had come into power by force and violence because he was the commander-in-chief of all the forces – the navy, the air force, and the army.It was just luck that a few days ago, General Zia, with his seventy-four most intimate people from all the armies, had an accident, an airplane accident, and all seventy-five people died.This woman is General Zia’s enemy and has been fighting from Britain, trying to get into Pakistan. And General Zia was not allowing her; people would have sympathy for her because her father had been killed illegally, unconstitutionally. But when Zia was dead, she immediately rushed to Pakistan and she has been elected. Now she is the president – a young woman, well educated, but she is doing the same stupidity as Zia did. Zia killed her father without any reason or rhyme, simply because he was the most impressive person in the country and Zia could not stand against him and win the elections. That was the reason.Now, I was thinking that this woman would behave in a different way – she has been educated in Britain, just as her father was educated in Britain. Firstly, she is a woman and has more heart than any man. Secondly, her father has been killed. She should reconsider the very desire for killing people. And now she has sent a death squad to Britain, professional murderers, to kill Rushdie and the other three persons who are involved in the publication of the book.It seems people don’t learn at all. That’s why history goes on repeating. The repetition of history simply shows that people don’t learn at all. Otherwise, there is no reason for history to repeat – if you learn, you only commit a mistake once, not twice. That’s what learning means: commit as many mistakes as you want, but only commit each mistake once. Committing mistakes is not bad, it is the only way of learning; you have to commit mistakes. If you don’t commit mistakes, you cannot find the way from this darkness that surrounds the earth. But don’t commit the same mistake, otherwise you will be in a vicious circle.Committing the same mistake again simply shows you are unconscious, you are not behaving consciously. Now, this woman, Bhutto’s daughter, is doing the same as Zia was doing. And the man, Rushdie, has not done anything wrong. But he seems to be a coward. And because of these cowards these insane people have been in power.I am ready for any argument with anybody because I know their whole religious belief is absolutely unfounded. They cannot prove God, they cannot prove heaven, they cannot prove hell. They cannot prove that God created the world because there is no witness. How have you found it? Who told you? Obviously there cannot have been any witness when God created the world. If there was a witness, the world was already there. It is intrinsically rational to accept that there cannot be any witness – because there was no world. From where will the witness come? So God cannot have a witness; then how have these people come to know? From whom?Their whole idea is based on the lie of God. I always strike at the very foundation, I don’t bother about the branches and the leaves. I cut the very roots. And they cannot defend because they don’t have any foundation to their temple.I once went to see a temple near Indore which is very rare. The temple was in a very small village. It is a Jaina temple and the Jainas have the mythology that the temple has fallen from heaven. It does not look very heavenly…And it fell because the gods – Jainism does not believe in God, it believes in gods – and the devils were fighting about who should own the temple, and the fight was going on just above the clouds. So they became so engaged in fighting that they lost control of the temple and the temple fell near the village.The only reason they could manage this mythology was that the temple has no foundation. You can put a thin wire underneath and you can go around the whole temple. The wire goes through to the other side. Then two persons can take the wire and go around the whole temple – it is a round temple, it has no foundation at all.So this has given the idea that it must have fallen; how can you make a temple without a foundation?It can be made, there is not much problem in it. It is a small temple, and just some architect’s imagination to make something absolutely new… He had raised this temple without any foundation.But when I went to see the temple – a few friends had accompanied me from Indore, they were all amazed… They said, “Perhaps the mythology is true.”I said, “You are idiots! No temple has any foundation. No church has any foundation. No belief system has any foundation. This temple is a proof!”Humanity requires a totally different approach. We should discuss. Why is there so much fear about discussing? The fear is valid – they know they cannot win. All their religions are slipping out of their hands; they cannot win, they are fighting a losing battle. If they are men of intelligence, it is better that they come out of the temples and churches and monasteries and declare their independence.My whole effort is to give you freedom from all chains, from all prisons, so that you can celebrate life.Friedrich Nietzsche’s statement, “God is dead; hence man is free”… But free for what? That, he had no idea of. That’s why he went insane. God was dead and God had been the consolation. Now the consolation is gone and there is a vacuum. If you leave the vacuum, the whole of humanity is going to be mad.Great intellectuals in the West have committed suicide or gone mad. In fact it has become almost a criterion: if you don’t go mad or you don’t commit suicide you are not much of an intellectual! The greatest intellectuals have gone mad, have suffered suicide, because they could not find how to live without God. Without heaven and hell, how to live? They suddenly saw their future was complete darkness, death. To live for death…? Without God they lost all reason for living.My whole effort is that before your God is taken away – and it is going to be taken away because it has no foundation in truth – you should learn the art of living. You should learn the art of celebration so you never suffer the vacuum which creates insanity and all kinds of neurosis, psychosis.Even the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud… He did not believe in God; he said that God is a father fixation – and his analysis is correct, intellectually correct. That’s why you call God “the Father” and that’s why you call even the Catholic priest “father” – who has no wife, no children! What kind of father…? At least God has only one begotten son, something to brag about. But these Catholic priests, unless they have illegitimate children, cannot claim to be called fathers. It is very strange – what kind of father…?Sigmund Freud is right that the child grows up with the idea that the father is his security. He is so powerful to the small child, seems to be all-powerful, he can do anything. But as he grows he finds that the father is not all-powerful. His security starts disappearing, he starts feeling insecure, unsafe.Sigmund Freud’s analysis was that this fear of losing security and safety has been the cause of creating a Father God far away in the sky, who never dies, who is always there to protect you. He is compassionate – Jesus says, “God is love.” He will be very loving and very compassionate, so you need not be worried about anything. All that you have to do is to believe in God.But once this God is found to be dead, as Nietzsche found, we are carrying a corpse, God is dead… Nietzsche was not aware that he himself was going to get into trouble because his own make up was of a father-fixation psychology. Now, he found that the father – even the ultimate father – is dead. These temporary fathers go on dying, it is okay. “Daddy” has been always dead, nothing much in it. But the eternal God… To find him dead is such a shock that although Friedrich Nietzsche wrote it, after writing it he immediately went mad.The moment he concluded Thus Spake Zarathustra, where he states this sentence that “God is dead and man is free,” he started behaving strangely. And finally his friends, and particularly his sister who was taking care of him, had to put him into a madhouse.He could not find the alternative. “God is dead and man is free” – but free for what? That he does not say at all in the whole book. And just to be free is not enough. Free from something is not enough, you have to be free for something. So there are two sides of freedom – from and for. You can be free from God, but if you don’t have any freedom for, you will go mad. That consolation has been very ancient and very deep rooted; it will kill you. You cannot live in insecurity, you need an immediate alternative – freedom for.Freedom for celebration, freedom for meditation, freedom for rejoicing, freedom for dancing – because God is dead. Now there is nobody above you and you are ultimately free from any spiritual slavery. Now you can dance without any guilt. You can love without any guilt. You can live as abundantly as possible. There is nobody to dominate you, and there is nobody to send you commandments, and there is nobody to frighten you with hellfire, and there is nobody to provoke your greed for heavenly pleasures.Sigmund Freud analyzed from a different angle, psychoanalysis. But he found himself in the same trouble as Nietzsche. He never went mad, but almost touched the boundaries. Because God was no longer there, death became the only thing that man is moving toward. He became so much afraid of death – God was a security, he would be there to welcome you after death. Now there is no one, now once you enter this tunnel of death there is no way out. He became so afraid that even the word death was prohibited. He had hundreds of disciples, he created the whole movement of psychoanalysis, and it was prohibited in his presence ever to mention the word death. It was so frightening that the moment somebody mentioned death he would fall into a fit and start foaming from the mouth.And this is your great psychoanalyst. But he was suffering from the same problem. God was the security. He psychoanalyzed people and found that there is no God, it is just an invention of a sick mind. Logically right… But what about himself?You will be surprised to know that Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis, but he himself was never psychoanalyzed because he refused to be. He was asked again and again by his disciples who had become well-known psychoanalysts. They said, “It will be good if you yourself get psychoanalyzed. Now we are ready, you have prepared us so we know the whole technique. And we would like to look into your dreams. It will be an immense treasure to find out the dreams of the man who found dream analysis.”He refused. And the reason he refused was he was afraid; he was boiling with the same repressed desires as you are boiling. It would be a great threat to his whole movement if people came to know his dreams. They would be as sexual, as criminal, as anybody’s – maybe more. Why was he afraid? He knew his dreams.And that shows that the man was not well psychologically, although he was the founder of psychoanalysis. And this goes on and on. Psychoanalysts themselves are the most highly vulnerable group of people to become insane. They go on psychoanalyzing each other, but that does not bring sanity, that brings only normal insanity.The whole of humanity is normally insane – a few people become abnormally insane; they go beyond the border of common sense. But the difference between your insane and the so-called sane is only of degrees. Perhaps you are ninety-nine degrees and the other person has gone to one hundred and one – past that line. And all that psychoanalysis is to bring him back to the ninety-nine degree of insanity. One hundred and one degrees is dangerous.The whole of psychoanalysis and all kinds of other schools that have developed – analytical psychology, or psychosynthesis, Assagioli, Carl Gustav Jung, Adler, and then there is a long line of people who are inventing their own therapies – are as sick as anybody. Your priests are as ignorant as anybody, your psychoanalysts are more in danger than you are because they know there is no God. Your philosophers, your giants of intellect are more in danger than the retarded people. The retarded people don’t worry at all; they don’t know that God is dead. They have not heard it yet.But sooner or later they are going to hear it. How long can it remain a secret? The priests have been keeping it a secret too long, and now they are themselves becoming aware that there is no God, as they used to believe. So they are inventing new Gods – a last flare-up of energy before the candle goes out and it becomes dark.My effort is not an ordinary religious sermonizing. My effort is that before this candle goes out, you should have your inner light ready, so you don’t fall into darkness, that you don’t go mad. I want you to consciously drop God, to consciously drop all lies and fictions in the name of religion, and start the other side. First, freedom from, and then the other side, freedom for – freedom for celebration, freedom for rejoicing.Now there is no longer any point in renouncing. Nobody is going to reward you; don’t unnecessarily torture yourself. The whole sky is open for the first time; just open your wings and enjoy this freedom.Very few people are capable of enjoying this freedom because they don’t know how to dance. They have become crippled. They don’t know how to sing, they don’t know how to love. People say to each other, “I love you” – but just ask them, “What do you mean?” They will shrug their shoulders and they will say, “I don’t know… What is love?” Their love is just a fiction.You cannot love anybody unless you know yourself. You are not there – who is going to love? You cannot love anybody unless love starts like a flood and starts overflowing you. First you must have love, then you can share it.But do you have love? It is a by-product of meditation. Only people who have meditated deeply know what love is, and then there is no question of “falling” in love. Then comes the rising in love, you go higher and higher; your love becomes your religion, your love becomes your very existence.I teach you love, not renunciation. I teach you celebration, not celibacy. I teach you to be natural, to be existential. Then you will find yourself being very creative in some dimension or other, and you will not be suffering from a vacuum.Celebration has to fill up your vacuum, otherwise the whole of humanity is going to suffer badly. These religions are dead. Sooner or later everybody is going to recognize the fact and then there will be an immense vacuum which God used to fill. It was a lie, but it was a great consolation that there was somebody who was caring for you, who was your security. Even in death you need not be worried – beyond death is paradise.But now there is no paradise, no God. Nobody is waiting for you beyond death. You will be going alone. You have to learn how to be alone. You have to learn how to rejoice to be alone. You have to learn how to dance – alone; there is no need for spectators. And there is no need even for partners. You can dance alone the way a rose dances in the wind, in the air, in the sun, in the rain. Do you think the rose is waiting for spectators or for partners?Meditation gives you deep insight into your aloneness. And remember the difference: aloneness is not loneliness. If you don’t learn aloneness, you will feel yourself very lonely. God no more, all consolation gone, no paradise after death… Suddenly you feel accidental, not wanted by existence, not needed by any God. You don’t have any purpose, you don’t have any meaning. Suddenly your whole personality which was supported by lies, falls down. This is what brings neurosis, breakdown.Unless you learn meditation, you cannot change your breakdown into a breakthrough. The whole alchemy of meditation is to change breakdown into breakthrough, to teach you freedom for.Freedom from is simply clearing the ground, creating a dancing hall, removing all Gods and temples who are cluttering the whole space. You cannot dance in a church, where everywhere you see all around Jesus crucified with a long face – and you can celebrate this situation?A small boy was found doing homework for the first time. His parents were surprised because he never did it.They asked, “What is the matter? We have been telling you to do homework and you never listen – what happened?”He said, “The new school…”They had changed him from his old school because they had changed neighborhood, so he had to go to a new school. The new school was a convent school and the little boy said to his parents, “In this school they have one Jew named Jesus, crucified everywhere – and I am the only other Jew in the whole school! So I have to do homework and everything they say. I do it immediately because I don’t want to be crucified!”He is being very sensible and very rational. He is only the second Jew… He is just number two – one has been already crucified. Maybe he was not doing his homework or something…You cannot dance when Jesus is crucified. When all your Gods are watching you, you cannot love. It is loving in a crowd of Gods, who will be all pointing their Saint Finger toward you: “You are committing a crime!”You have to throw away all these Gods. They are all man made, so there is no need to be worried; they are our creation. We have invented beautiful lies to console ourselves, so we are absolutely capable of throwing them away; nobody can prevent you.But you have to learn, side by side: as you are clearing the ground, start singing a tune. Start moving your legs; get out of the crippledness of centuries. It is not only Jesus who was crucified – all those who believe in Jesus are living a crucified life, crippled. Of course Jesus cannot dance! That would have been a real miracle, if he had danced on the cross. He could not even laugh – that would have been a real miracle. But he is so sad that perhaps he is having second thoughts…He shouted at God, with anger, “Have you forsaken me?” because he was waiting for six hours, and not a single white cloud. The whole sky was blue, as far he could see. There was no sign of God coming.At least he could have sent some saints – if he was not coming, then servants would do. But somebody should have been there! Six hours he has been on the cross, waiting and waiting, and looking all around, and finally finding, “It seems that I have lived in a false consolation.” He died in sadness.That sadness pervades every church. And that sadness has become ingrained all over the world. Not only among the Christians – because Christianity is the biggest religion in the world; half of the earth is Christian – other religions have been immensely influenced by Christianity without their knowing it.For example, a man like Mahatma Gandhi. I have looked very carefully and I have found that he was ninety percent Christian, nine percent Jaina, one percent Hindu – and he was born a Hindu. What happened? In his life, three times he was just on the verge of being converted into Christianity. His wife just made such a fuss that he stopped. He said, “Okay, wait…” It was the wife who prevented him from becoming Christian. Many wives are doing a great job! She would start beating her chest and crying, “We are Hindu, and what are you doing?” She would make such a scene that neighbors would gather and they would say, “This is not good. She is right – why are you becoming a Christian?”But he was influenced, and this is happening all over. You can see how Christianity is influencing other religions – because they serve the poor, every religion starts serving the poor. Otherwise they will not look so religious as the Christians. The Christians are taking care of the orphans, so Hindus have to open orphanages, otherwise their religion will look a little unconcerned about suffering people. So they open hospitals, which they have never done in the past. They have been in existence thousands of years before Christ and they have never made hospitals, they have never served the poor. They have told the poor, “You are suffering from your evil acts of the past life, so there is nothing to be done. Just finish it! Get cleared out.”But Christianity has been a tremendous influence. It has poisoned almost the whole of humanity, made them sad and miserable.So once you start feeling a vacuum, your sanity is at risk. Before the vacuum comes, I want you to learn how to fill it with beautiful songs and flowers and ecstasy, and a divine drunkenness and a festivity.The only art of life is to transform it into a celebration.The second question I have already answered. It is:Osho,Is it because of God that society created madhouses?Of course! Without God there is no need for madhouses. The pagans who don’t have any God never go mad. Animals never go mad – I mean animals in wildlife. Animals in a zoo of course go mad because they are living among insane human beings. In a zoo, they start being influenced by human beings; only in a zoo do they start behaving unnaturally. Only in a zoo has it been found that animals turn into homosexuals because they can’t find a female animal.A zoo has to be studied very carefully – your monasteries are zoos where you cannot find a woman; your nunneries are zoos where you cannot find a man. Then women turn into lesbians and men turn into homosexuals.You can see all the perversions in a zoo. In a zoo, animals go mad – but only in a zoo. It seems that human insanity is infectious. But in the wild, in the forest, no animal has been ever found insane – utterly intelligent, utterly sensitive, alert, completely alert. Because they don’t have God, they don’t need any madhouses.God creates guilt. Guilt creates unnatural behavior. Unnatural behavior leads you into the madhouse. It is a very cunning device. Priests and psychoanalysts are in a deep conspiracy without perhaps knowing it. The priest creates the mad, and the psychoanalysts try to cure them. And back they go to the church!People are moving between the church and the couch of the psychoanalyst, and they don’t understand the secret conspiracy.The third question:Osho,Could it be that the word God in ancient times, before the priests, was used by people to explain the unexplainable, the divine existence, the nature of being, the buddha?Before the priest there was no God – not even the word. God and priests come simultaneously. In fact, the priest needs to come in first; then he brings God in. God cannot exist without priests.There was no God before the priests. People were just pagans; they loved life, they rejoiced in life. They had no idea of heaven or hell. This earth was enough, this life was too much; they lived moment to moment. In fact, they had no idea of calendar and time because they had no watches and no calendars. They had no idea when the year ends and when the year begins. They had no idea how many days are in a week, how many days are in a month, how many months there are in a year. All these things came very late.If you had gone to the real, the original, people on the earth they were the happiest people ever. They simply lived without fear, without greed. They loved nature. Everything was mysterious, miraculous. A sunrise again and they danced; a full moon again and the whole night they danced to abandon. They had no God and they had no madhouse; they had no priests and no psychoanalysts. They had not heard about the Buddha, yet they were all buddhas. But very natural buddhas, not philosophizing about it, so they never used words like inexpressible, “…unexplainable, the divine existence, the nature of being, the buddha.” All this nonsense comes afterward!When the priests came, they took the power in their hands and declared, “We represent God.” It took a little longer for the priests to invent God and slowly, slowly refine it. And they are still refining and trying to deceive humanity, even into the future. That was what Paul Tillich was doing – trying to improve on the image of God: “If God has failed as someone far away there, beyond, perhaps we should change his place.”That shows that it is our idea that he is there: “We should change our idea. That idea has failed; it worked long enough. Now put God into the depths. Not faraway there, but faraway there.” But it is always far away because they cannot put it close by. Close by, you will see this is not God. So it has to be far away – either way, this side or that side. But “far away” has to be there between you and him, an unbridgeable distance so you never can come to see him and take a close-up photograph.No photograph exists because nobody has ever been close to God to take a photograph.Priests have been trying to improve the image so it appeals again to the newer generations, but now they cannot manage it. Once it is declared God is dead, you may go on giving him artificial breathing, but everybody knows he is on artificial breathing. Just switch off and the fellow is gone.A little biographical note before the sutras:As a young man, Tanka Tennen first studied Confucianism.Confucius seems to be a giant in creating confusion! He has confused the whole of China for centuries. He has no God, but he substitutes God with morality and he makes so much of moral preachings that people have to live in a tight space, almost imprisoned. He became a great influence over China.He was a great intellectual, no doubt, but he never looked beyond intellect. So whatever he says is just rationalization, creating more convenient societies. Etiquette, morality, behavior, are all based on creating a better society. It is because of Confucius that China easily became communist, although Confucius lived twenty-five centuries ago, a contemporary of Gautam Buddha and Lao Tzu and Socrates.China’s conversion to Communism is strange because it was a poor country, it did not have a capitalist class to exploit. It was still feudal, with landlords; it was an agricultural society. It has not come to technology yet.Marx failed in all his prophecies. He is the greatest failure as a prophet. He never said that Russia would become communist, or China would become communist, no. He could not conceive of it because these countries were not even capitalist; Communism can only come, according to him, after capitalism has developed to its climax and society is completely divided between the proletariat, the have-nots, and the bourgeois, the haves – a clear-cut distinction. Naturally the haves will be in the minority and the have-nots will have a tremendous majority.In his Communist Manifesto the last line is: “Proletariat of the whole world unite. You have nothing to lose except your chains.” When you have nothing to lose, revolution is possible. But if you have something to lose, you cannot become part of a revolution; there is danger, you may not get anything. And what you have got may get lost – it may also be taken away.The revolutions of China and Russia were never conceived of. Not even for a single moment did it come to Karl Marx’s mind that they would become the first communists – vast countries, together almost half of the world.China became communist because of Confucius, because Confucius was absolutely materialist. No God, no heaven, no hell; you come from nothingness and you go to nothingness. There is no life before birth, and there is no life after death. So all that you have got are these seventy, eighty, ninety, perhaps one hundred years. Make the most of it. His whole teaching is of a materialist morality because you are not alone, you are living in a society; you have to take care that you don’t trespass other people.His whole idea is ethical, not religious. He managed to lay the foundation of the Chinese mind, and Karl Marx immediately got a completely ready-made foundation: materialist, atheist, believing only in this life, no eternal being, no eternal life. That was the reason China easily became communist. Confucius had done almost half the work.But he was a well-known teacher, so people used to go to him as a great scholar. Even the emperors used to send their sons to learn how to be utterly moral. That would give an ego – he created ego. He believed in strengthening your ego, polishing your ego; giving it prestige, an image that would be respectable in society. But he had nothing of religiousness in him.So when this young man, Tanka Tennen, first studied Confucianism… He had gone there in search of something essential, not outward behavior. One day he was on his way to the city, frustrated with Confucius; all that Confucius was saying was about social behavior. He was the first behavioral psychologist.One day he was on his way to the city when he came across a man of Zen, who asked where he was going.Tanka replied, “I am going for the government service examination.”That was the most respected, prestigious profession, being a student of Confucius, he would be accepted for any high post. The very recommendation that he had been with Confucius, was grounds enough that he was the right man.The Zen man said, “Master Ma Tzu is working in Kosei county. That is the place for choosing buddhas – you must go there.”Rather than going into government service, at least give it a try. Ma Tzu is very close by, where buddhas are blossoming. You can go to the government service any time – but Ma Tzu may not be available. Such a great master is so close by, just working in Kosei county. You must go there.Suddenly, the hidden desire that had led him to Confucius… And Confucius had completely changed his search for truth. He used to say, “There is only behavior – good behavior, bad behavior – there is no truth to be found. Don’t waste your time.” So he overpowered the young man, convinced him that the best thing is, “You are intelligent, you go into government service. And with my recommendation you will be immediately accepted.”Suddenly a hidden seed surfaced. Because of this man of Zen… A man of Zen simply means a man who has become a buddha but who is not a master. He knows the truth, but he has no way of conveying it. He is a mystic in his own right, but he is not a master; he is not articulate enough to convey to you the inexpressible in a device. He does not know how to transmit the lamp. That type of mystic is simply called in Zen, “a man of Zen.” He is as experienced as any buddha, but he is not a master; he knows the truth, but he has not the way to lead others to it. But his personality will be luminous, his eyes will have a different quality, his gestures will have a different grace.So when this man of Zen met the young man and told Tanka, “Master Ma Tzu is working in Kosei county; that is the place for choosing buddhas – you must go there,” without any hesitation, without thinking again that he was going to become a government officer and that he has suddenly moved on a different path altogether, Tanka went to Kosei. He did not even answer the man, “I am going.”Such a deep search must have been hidden, and forced deeply into the unconscious by Confucius. It suddenly surfaced. Seeing this man was enough: “The path is toward Ma Tzu.” If this man, who is not a master, has an aura of mystery around him, an energy, a charisma, then what about Ma Tzu? Without saying anything to the man…Tanka went to Kosei right away. When he saw Ma Tzu, the master pulled Tanka’s head toward him and looked at him – into his eyes – face to face, for a long time. Then Ma Tzu said, “Sekito of Mount Nangaku will be your master.”He was looking into this young man’s eyes – what kind of potential has he? Who will be the right master for him? Should I accept him? Will it be quicker with me or with Sekito?And you can see the non-competitive world of Zen. He saw in the young man’s eyes that Sekito would be a far more suitable master for him than he would. So he told him, “Sekito of Mount Nangaku will be your master.”Seeing Ma Tzu, he could see the difference between a man of Zen and a master of Zen. A man of Zen is a small flame; a master of Zen is the whole forest afire.And when Ma Tzu looked into his eyes, he was also looking into the eyes of Ma Tzu. He could see the compassion, the great love. It is out of compassion and love that Ma Tzu tells him, “Go to Sekito. That will be quicker; here it will take a little longer. Why waste time?” And he was so impressed by Ma Tzu that he immediately followed his advice.So Tanka went to Mount Nangaku. When he saw Sekito, Sekito said to Tanka, “Go and work in the rice-polishing room.”It almost always happens in Zen monasteries that when a new initiate comes in, the master witnesses what will be right for him in the beginning, even as he enters the room – the way he walks, the way he sits. He has to be trained according to his potential. No Zen master ever imposes himself on anybody. Sekito, looking at him, felt that he first needed to learn waiting. He said, “Go and work in the rice-polishing room.”Tanka made a bow and left for the dormitory. He worked in the kitchen for three years.He never went again to ask Sekito, “How long do I have to polish rice?”A Zen master creates such a tremendous trust. It is not belief – belief is in theories, theologies. Trust is a personal intimacy, a feeling: “He understands me; that’s enough. Now whenever the time is ripe he will call me.”People have waited not only three years but thirty years, polishing rice.Once it happened…A man was polishing rice for thirty years, and the master had told him, “Unless I call you, you should not come. You are not to attend the scholarly discussions in the monastery, you are not to read the scriptures. You simply polish rice from the morning till late in the night. There are ten thousand monks, and you have to take care of the rice.”So for thirty years the man completely forgot thinking – because what is the need of thinking when you are just polishing rice every day for thirty years? Almost half of his life had gone into polishing rice. And it is such a simple process that you don’t need any mind, you don’t need any thinking. He had been prohibited from going to the discourses, going to the sermons, going to the discussions of the monks, told not to read scriptures. He had been prevented completely from anything that could create a mind. He had been given a simple task that was going to uncreate the mind. Whatever mind he had got would be uncreated.These people were of great strength, integrity. Just to wait for thirty years, without any complaint, without even seeing the master again… And because the master had said, “This is the only thing you have to do.” The man was not even talking to any other monk. People had completely forgotten about him.He lived in a small hut by the side of the kitchen. In the morning he would enter the kitchen; late in the night he would fall back into the hut, go to sleep. This was a simple process. In thirty years’ time there was no mind.And an incident happened. The master was getting old and, seeing that his death was coming close, he informed the ten thousand monks – excluding the one who was just polishing the rice – “If anybody wants to be my successor, he should come in the night and write on my door just the essence, the very essence of Zen.”There were great scholars, and the whole monastery knew who was the most scholarly person; perhaps he would be chosen. That scholarly person, when the master had gone to sleep, stole very silently so that nobody would find who had written it. He was even afraid; he knew the master. You could not deceive him, that was certain. And he himself knew that he knew nothing of Zen as far as experience was concerned, although he could make a scholarly statement. But that old fellow was not going to be deceived by scholarship.He wrote a beautiful statement on the door, very silently so that the master did not wake up: “Zen is nothing but getting out of the mind, and the beyond opens its doors.” But he did not sign it, afraid, and very cautious – “If he finds it right, I will stand up and say I have written it. If he finds it wrong, I will simply sit silently.” That old fellow used to beat the disciples.In the morning, when the master opened the door and saw the sentence, he said, “Who is the idiot who has written this?” And there was no answer from the ten thousand monks.So he washed it off and said, “Don’t destroy my door! Unless you know… I can die without a successor, but I will not have any scholar to be my successor.”Of course the statement was perfectly good, you could not improve on it: “Zen is going beyond the mind.” It could not be condensed more clearly and accurately. But masters have their own ways of finding…Two monks simply passed by the rice polisher. People did not even know his name, they simply called him the rice polisher. They did not consider him even a monk; he had never told anybody that he had been initiated, and nobody ever bothered about him, what his name was. He never came to the discourses, he never came to meditations, he never came to scholarly discussions. And the whole campus was agog with all kinds of philosophical discussions; when scriptures were read, sutras from Gautam Buddha were read, he never went. What kind of man…? Just doing one thing; people had completely forgotten for how many years he had been doing it.Two men were just passing by, discussing, “The sentence was perfectly right, but this old fellow is very strange. How did he manage to find out that it is a scholarly statement, not existential, not experiential?”For the first time the rice-polisher monk laughed. In thirty years that was the first expression. Those two monks looked at him, and they said, “Why have you laughed? We have never seen you laughing…”He said, “I laughed because whoever wrote that must be an idiot!”They said, “Exactly – these were the words of the master! Can you write something better?”He said, “I don’t know how to write. I have forgotten. In thirty years the little bit I knew how to write, I have forgotten. And anyway who wants to be the successor?”They were shocked, “This man is strange. Thirty years completely silent, and suddenly exploding…”In the middle of the night the master came to the rice-polisher and he said, “Can you improve upon it?”The rice-polisher monk said, “There is no mind; how are you going to go beyond it? And there is no beyond – all is here and now. One has to go nowhere, not even beyond mind. Mind is a fiction, and the people have created another fiction of going beyond the mind. But forgive me. I don’t want to be your successor. I am so happy. You are such a great man, you gave me such a meditative job…”The master said, “You will have to accept my successorship because there is nobody else whom I can trust. They are all filled up with scholarship and all kinds of knowledge. You are the right person and I have been waiting for these thirty years to see if perhaps you would be the successor. This waiting proved to me absolutely that you must have experienced something that is keeping you centered, without any worry, no tension. You have not even uttered a single word to anybody; you just do your job and go to sleep. But one thing: these scholars and these ambitious people will create trouble for you. So I have brought my robe and my staff and my cap” – these are the things that the successor gets from the master – “So take this robe, this staff, and this cap.” He put it on the rice-polisher monk’s head, and told him to escape from the monastery as quickly as possible.“Just go deeper into the mountains. Those who need will reach you. But beware! If anybody finds it out from this monastery, they are going to kill you. They will not accept a rice-polisher monk as their master.”So the poor fellow took the robe, the staff, and escaped. But while he was escaping from the gate, the gatekeeper saw him with the robe and with the hat and the staff of the master. So he immediately informed all the ambitious monks who were trying, working out how to improve, “Now stop! The man has been chosen.”They said, “Who is the man?”He said, “Do you remember a man who came thirty years ago and never spoke for thirty years? The rice-polisher? I saw him just going out of the gate with the master’s staff and cap on his head, and he was carrying the robe in his hand and running!”So, many ambitious people took their swords and rushed toward the way the guard had told them. And they soon found that poor rice polisher, surrounded him with their swords, and told him, “Give the robe. You don’t know a single word about Zen.”The poor man laughed. He said, “Do you think there is a word that one has to know before he knows Zen?”They were shocked. It was true, but still their ambition… They could not accept him. But he said, “There is no problem. Keep your swords in their sheath, there is no need to be worried. This is the cap” – he threw the cap on the ground – “And this is the robe, and this is the staff. If you can take it, take it.”But although they were ambitious, they had a certain sensibility, living with the master so long. How could they take it? If the master had given it to him, then it would be absolutely wrong. And they knew that they knew not, and this fellow seemed to know. It did not matter that he was a rice-polisher.So they touched his feet and said, “We were wrong. We were just ambitious. Please come back.”He said, “But I don’t want to be the successor. I had refused, but the old man was so insistent. Please take all these things. Whoever wants to be the successor, he can. I am going to the mountains.”They said, “No, you have to come back.”He became the successor.Zen is a very strange path. No scholarship is needed, no knowledge is needed. What is needed is an immense silence, and waiting, watching. Whenever the time is ripe, existence pours all its mysteries into you.So for thirty years he worked in the kitchen.Now the sutra:One day, Sekito announced to everybody that the next day they would weed the grass in front of the Buddha Hall. The following day, all the monks gathered with sickles in their hands, but only Tanka came with a tray filled with water. Before coming there he had washed his hair, but it was not yet shaven. Now he kneeled down in front of Sekito, and seeing him, Sekito laughed, and shaved Tanka’s head. As the master usually did, Sekito gave Tanka some specific commandments, but as he did so, Tanka walked away covering his ears with his hands.He was giving the gesture: “I don’t need any knowledge, I know it. Don’t fill my ears with nonsense. Don’t fill my ears with words. I have come to experience the wordless.” That gesture shows that Tanka had arrived.Tanka then left for Kosei to see Ma Tzu. Arriving at the monastery…It was Ma Tzu who had sent him to Sekito; now he had completed the job. He got his head shaved after he had completed the job. Ordinarily, when one becomes a monk his head is shaved. But because he was told immediately to go to the kitchen and work there… In those three years just waiting and watching and being aware, he realized his very nature. That very nature is the buddha, so now was the right time to be initiated. Before it, it would have been a formal initiation. Now it was going to be authentic initiation. And that’s why, when he bowed down in front of the master, Sekito laughed – “This fellow is really clever! He has not even shaved his head for these three years. He was waiting for the moment when he would be really worthy of initiation.”He shaved his head, and as every master does after shaving the head – that is the initiation process – he gave him a few commandments. But as he gave the commandments: Tanka walked away, covering his ears with his hands. He was showing absolutely to Sekito: “You don’t have to teach me anything. You have put me in the device and I have come to the space where no teaching is needed.”Tanka then left for Kosei to see Ma Tzu because he was his original master, who had looked into his eyes and directed him to the right place where he could become quickly a buddha. He needed to show his gratitude, to show what he had attained and get his recognition.Arriving at the monastery he went into the hall and, climbing on the statue of Manjushri, sat there.Manjushri is one of Gautam Buddha’s very important enlightened disciples. He chose the statue of Manjushri – there must have been other statues, of Sariputra, of Mahakashyapa, of Maudgalyan, other disciples who had become enlightened when Gautam Buddha was alive. So they are the original forces. He had chosen Manjushri for a particular reason. I have to tell you a little bit about Manjushri.Manjushri was always sitting under a tree, the same tree. He never asked a question to Gautam Buddha, never read any scriptures. Every day he would come whenever Gautam Buddha was talking, in the morning, in the evening. He would sit under the tree with his eyes closed. And everybody was wondering why he did not ask anything.One morning, as Buddha came, Manjushri was sitting under his tree. Suddenly, flowers from the tree started falling over Manjushri. The tree must have been blossoming with hundreds of flowers and they were showering like rain. Buddha told all the ten thousand disciples to look at what was happening. All looked – they could not believe their eyes. Why were all the flowers suddenly falling on Manjushri’s head, his body, his lap? He was almost covered with flowers.Gautam Buddha declared: “Manjushri has become enlightened. Even the tree is giving him recognition. Existence is celebrating.”And Manjushri had arrived without asking a question, without getting an answer – just waiting silently. Nature was celebrating. One of nature’s ambitions was fulfilled: again a man had become a buddha, had reached to the ultimate consciousness.Tanka certainly chose the statue of Manjushri to sit upon:The other monks were astonished and told Ma Tzu, who came in, looked at him and said, “My son is Tennen.”In Chinese, tennen means natural. That was the very quality of Manjushri. He had become attuned with nature. Just sitting with that tree, he had become almost one with it. So when he became enlightened, the tree could not resist the temptation to shower all the flowers – not a single flower was left on the tree. All the flowers had showered.So Manjushri’s enlightenment is called natural, spontaneous enlightenment, with no method, with no device. Tennen means natural, and when Ma Tzu saw Tennen sitting on the statue of Manjushri… All the disciples of Ma Tzu were stunned, they could not believe how this man was behaving. But Ma Tzu could see: the man had changed. It was no longer the same man whose eyes he had looked into. He simply said, “My son is Tennen.” My son is just natural, a natural buddha.Tanka came down, made a bow and said, “Thank you for giving me a dharma name.”He accepted that word tennen as his dharma name, his sannyas name. Since that time he started calling himself Tanka Tennen. Tanka, the natural one.Ma Tzu then asked, “Where do you come from?”Tanka said, “I come from Sekito.”Ma Tzu said, “The path on the stonehead is slippery. Did you fall over?”Tanka replied, “If I had fallen over, I would not have come here.”I would have waited. I have not fallen over, I have risen above.That’s why he was sitting on the head of Manjushri – declaring, “I am another Manjushri and I have not fallen over; otherwise I would not be here. I would not have come to show my face to you again without becoming a buddha.”This man, Tanka Tennen, became a master in his own right. But his whole teaching was just to be natural.That’s my whole teaching: just be natural. Nature is dhamma, nature is Tao, nature is Zen. And the moment you are natural, flowers will shower over you. The moment you are natural, not only will you celebrate and dance, the whole existence around you will dance and celebrate.Hakuin wrote:Your singing-and-dancingis none other than the voice of dharma.Your celebration, your singing-and-dancing… is none other than your very nature. And this nature has been crippled by your so-called religions – your God, your priests, your theologians.Zen is a rebellion against all religion. It is all for religiousness, but not for religion. Religiousness is a totally different phenomenon than religion. Religion is a doctrine, a creed, a cult, an organization. Religiousness is simply a quality that naturally blossoms in you. You have just to go deep down into yourself to find the seed of the buddha that exists at the very center of your being.All our meditations are concerned only with one thing: how to take you to the seed where the buddha is hidden, just as flowers are hidden in a seed. And once you have reached the center, the seed starts growing.Then, becoming a buddha is not a faraway phenomenon. You have started becoming a buddha, you have started on the path which brings the transformation. Right now you are all bodhisattvas, buddhas in essence, in seed. If you can find the center of your being, you have found the very center of existence.Just finding it, something immediately starts growing in you – a huge buddha suddenly surfaces. You disappear. You are completely gone into the ocean, just like a dewdrop. You are no more, only life is – dancing, celebrating.Maneesha’s question:Osho,Nietzsche suggests that man only searches for truth because he presupposes that truth is a consolation, a cure. But, he says, perhaps truth, “Exists only for souls which are at once powerful and harmless, and full of joy and peace… Just as it will no doubt be only such souls as these that will be capable of seeking truth.”Do you agree with him?Maneesha, I absolutely agree because what he is saying is absolutely true. But it does not suit the lips of Friedrich Nietzsche. It would be perfectly right if a Gautam Buddha said it.You have to understand the difference. Friedrich Nietzsche is only an intellectual; he came to this conclusion as a logical conclusion. He has stumbled almost on the right thing, but it is stumbling in the dark. A Buddha does not stumble in the dark, he is living in an immense luminosity.So what he is saying is right, but the man who is saying it is not right. I agree with the statement, I don’t agree with Friedrich Nietzsche.It will be a little difficult for you: the distinction is very delicate. His statement is correct, but it is not his experience. He himself was not a man of joy – very sad. He was not a man who could dance or sing; that was far below him. He was a serious philosopher. Philosophers don’t dance. They look at the dancers as stupid: “What are you doing?”But even without a clear-cut experience, Nietzsche is a rare phenomenon. Buddhas have always been saying that, but a man who is not enlightened has stumbled unconsciously upon a truth that is not his experience, but only a logical conclusion.It is perfectly right that the majority of people who search for truth are searching for truth because they presuppose that truth is going to be a consolation, a cure. They are sick people. Their old consolation has gone away: God is dead. Now they are seeking for truth in place of God, so they can be again consoled.Prayer is dead, so they are searching for meditation. Perhaps meditation can be the substitute. But these are the people who will not find it.He says truth, “Exists only for souls which are at once powerful and harmless, and full of joy and peace…” He was not full of joy or full of peace; he was one of the most tense persons who has ever walked on the earth. And finally he had to be admitted into a madhouse. His anxiety became so serious that to keep him in the house was dangerous; he had to be handed over into a mad asylum.But what he was saying is perfectly right. Only a man of peace, silence, joy, a man who is capable of singing and dancing, a man who is capable of celebrating, is the man who is capable of seeking and finding the truth.I am trying in every possible way to make you nonserious, nontense. Laugh, dance, sing, celebrate, because the nonserious are the people who will find immense power arising in themselves which is now dormant. These are the people who will have power, but will not harm anybody with their power. Their power will be a blessing to the world. It will not be the power that destroys, it will be the power that creates. These will be the creators.And these will be the people who know. These will be the people who have disappeared in joy, in dance, and are no more. Only a consciousness, a pure consciousness remains. That pure consciousness we have called the awakened consciousness, the enlightened consciousness; we have called it samadhi or satori. Gautam Buddha is just a name, representative of this ultimate blossoming.It is time to be nonserious! Time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh…Martha Grumble and Mildred Mousebreath, two middle-aged housewives, are sharing confidences over a cup of coffee.“I don’t know what to do about my husband anymore,” sniffs Martha. “He never comes home until three in the morning.”“Oh dear!” sighs Mildred. “My husband used to be like that – but not anymore.”“Really?” asks Martha. “What made him change?”“What made him change, my dear,” says Mildred, smiling, “is that every time he crept through the door at three o’clock in the morning, I would sweetly call out, ‘Is that you, Raymond?’”“Is that all there is to it?” asks Martha.“That’s right!” explains Mildred.“But I don’t understand,” says Martha. “Why would that stop him?”“Simple,” explains Mildred. “Because his name is Sidney.”Jack Jerk stays out late one night and comes home at three o’clock in the morning. He walks into the bedroom and finds his wife Jill Jerk lying awake, naked, in the bed.“Where the hell have you been until three in the morning?” screams Jill, furiously.Ignoring her, Jack takes off his coat and opens the bedroom closet. To his amazement, he finds a naked man crouching on the floor.“Who the hell is this guy?” shouts Jack.Jill sits up in bed and cries, “Don’t change the subject!”It is a sunny morning on Cape Catastrophe beach, and Prunella Polygon, a very homely-looking girl, is rambling along daydreaming. She stumbles and trips over a bottle lying in the sand, and nearly faints when the top of the bottle flies off and, “Poof!” – a genie pops out.The genie stretches and yawns and then looks at Prunella and announces, “Ah! I am forever in your debt, young lady. You have freed me from a prison of a thousand years. Ask anything and I will fulfill your desire.”Prunella Polygon cannot believe her good luck and does not hesitate.“I want a figure like Sophia Loren,” she says, “and a smile like Raquel Welch, and hair like Bridgette Bardot and tits like Samantha Fox. And eyes like Elizabeth Taylor and an ass like Marilyn Monroe.”The genie takes a long look at Prunella and says, “Honey, please put me back in the bottle.”Nivedano…[Drumbeat][Gibberish]Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Be silent…Close your eyes… And feel your body to be completely frozen.This is the right moment to turn in.Gather all your energy and with a total consciousness, rush toward your center of being. The center of your being is just two inches below the navel, inside your body.All that you need is an urgency, as if it is going to be the last moment of your life. With great urgency and intensity, rush toward the center.Faster and faster…Deeper and deeper…As you are coming close to your center, a great silence descends over you just like soft rain. You can feel it. You can feel the coolness of it.A little more deep, a little closer to the center and a tremendous peace arises in you, overwhelming you. As you are coming closer, suddenly there arises a luminosity: your whole being becomes light.Now step into the very center. And you start feeling drunk with the divine. This is what is called ecstasy. Out of this ecstasy is all celebration.Centered in your very being, you are no more. You have come to the seed – the bodhisattva has dissolved into the buddha.The face of Gautam Buddha is the original face of every human being. The only quality Gautam Buddha has is witnessing.Witness that you are not the body.Witness that you are not the mind.And finally, witness that you are only a witness. This pure witness – sakshin – is your ultimate freedom. It is your enlightenment, it is your liberation.It is entering into the eternal dance of life. It is because of this that I say again and again, I celebrate. To me, life is celebration. Existence is celebration.Witness the eternal dance that is happening inside you. This dance has to become your very flavor, your very fragrance. And invisible flowers are showering over you. You cannot celebrate alone, existence participates from all dimensions. Nature rejoices when anyone comes to the very center of being. A part of nature has become awakened.To make this witnessing deeper, Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Relax…Be in a let-go.This is the peace, the joy, the silence, the power that is harmless, that is creative. This is what Nietzsche has stumbled on in his darkness and blindness. But you are going with open eyes to the very heartbeat of the universe.The whole universe except the so-called religions is in immense celebration every moment – in the birds, in the trees, in the rivers; in the oceans, in the mountains, in the stars. All around you there is nothing but celebration. You have to participate in it. Throw out all the barriers. They are only fictitious, and reality has immense power.Witnessing will do the job. Witnessing is another name for meditation.At this moment, Gautama the Buddha Auditorium is becoming an ocean of consciousness. Ten thousand buddhas are melting like ice in the ocean – no waves, no ripples, absolute silence.Remember, enlightenment has three steps.The first is that the buddha you are experiencing within you follows behind you like a shadow. It is your very nature, your dhamma. It is your tennen.The second step, after experiencing the buddha behind you, his warmth, his love, his truth, his compassion, his divine drunkenness… You slowly become his shadow. He comes in front of you – that is the second step.Your shadow starts slowly, slowly disappearing. As you melt into the buddha – that is the third and final step – you are no more.Only the buddha is – you are no more.Only an enlightened awareness is – you are no more.Only life is celebrating. A sheer dance of joy… A song that has no words in it, a music without any sound.Eternity in your hands. You become one with the cosmic whole.I celebrate myself. I hope soon you will be able to say the same: “I celebrate myself.”Before Nivedano calls you, collect all these experiences. You have to bring them to your day-to-day life. The grace, the beauty, the truth, the honesty, the intensity of living – and the witnessing has to be your very breath, your heartbeat.Persuade the buddha – he is your nature; you have never requested it, you have never welcomed it. That’s why it has been there hiding in the very center of your being.Help it to come along with you. It is bound to come. It has come thousands of times, to thousands of buddhas. It is every living being’s birthright. Just ask him to come along with you and he will transform your whole life – in every gesture, in every word, in every silence you will find his presence, his light.Nivedano…[Drumbeat]Come back… But come as a buddha, full of joy. A great serenity, a pure silence… Sit down for a few moments just to recollect, to remind yourself of the golden path that you have followed inward, and the silent, peaceful space that you have encountered.You have seen your original face, the face of the buddha.Feel the presence of the buddha behind you – the warmth, the coolness, together; the power and humbleness together. The silence – utter egolessness and yet a tremendous dignity. This is what makes one celebrate life.There cannot be anything more than existence is already. Just participate in the dance. Celebrate to your abandon, and all the mysteries and all the secrets of existence and life will be opened unto you.It is my promise. It is the promise of all the buddhas, past, present, future.