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Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 01-10Category: Kabir

Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the saint of the masses?I am not an Indian – neither am I an American or a Chinese. I don’t believe in countries and I don’t believe in any political divisions. Because of political divisions, humanity has suffered enough – no more of that nonsense! I have to live somewhere, so I live here, but I don’t belong to India. I am not a nationalist, because all nationalism is in some way or other a form of fascism.If you think you are an Indian or a German or a Japanese, you are a fascist – and you are a danger to humanity, to peace, to love, to progress. You are not a religious person. A nationalist is never a religious person, cannot be. And a nationalist is a neurotic. The whole of human history is enough proof of it.I am not an Indian – the first thing. And the second thing: I am not a saint either.You ask me: “Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the saint of the masses?” First, I am not an Indian, and second, I am not a saint. The very claim that one is a saint is a condemnation of everybody else. In that very claim, others are condemned. If I am a saint then you are a sinner – you have to be sinners, otherwise how can I exist? To create one saint, you will need millions of sinners. It is very costly and uneconomical.I would like a world where the sinners and the saints have disappeared – they are two aspects of the same coin. Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching: “When the world was really natural and religious, there was not a saint and not a sinner.” When the saints entered in the world, sin entered. When you say somebody is a saint, you have started divisions: the good and the bad, that which has to be done and that which has to be avoided. You don’t accept life in its totality; you become a chooser.And I teach choiceless awareness. I don’t teach any choosing on your part, because whatsoever you choose is going to be a wrong choice – because you will be there as a chooser. Accept the total and don’t go on labeling things – this is good and that is bad.The division between the sinner and the saint is again an egoistic division. It is very oppressive. It condemns. It is very hateful. A saint looks at you with holier-than-thou eyes: “I am the chosen one, and I am going to heaven and you all are going to hell.” No, that is not my outlook at all.I declare you are also holy, divine. There exists not a single being who is not holy. To me the word holy means whole. We belong to one whole; we are all holy, we are parts of one universal consciousness, we are ripples of one ocean. That’s what Kabir was saying yesterday: the wave is not different from the ocean. Even the dirty wave is not different from the ocean. Even the dirty wave is as much part of the ocean as is the clean wave.And what you call dirty and what you call clean are human conceptions. A person can be a saint in one country and may not be thought of as a saint in another. A person can be a saint in one century and may not be thought of as a saint in another. Just think: Mohammed with a sword in his hand. Can any Jaina or Buddhist call him a saint? It is impossible. A sword in the hand? Mohammed cannot be called a saint according to the Jainas and the Buddhists. Can Mohammedans call Mahavira or Buddha a saint, when people are suffering and being tortured and you are just sitting under your bodhi trees doing nothing? What type of sainthood is this? These are escapists, not saints.You may be surprised to know that Jainas don’t call Krishna a saint. They call him the greatest sinner ever because he persuaded Arjuna to go war. Arjuna was going to become a Jaina monk, he was saying, “I don’t want all this war, all this violence. I want to renounce this world. This is not worth it,” and Krishna persuaded him, “Do your duty. If God has willed it so, let it be so. Simply say ‘amen,’ and go into it. Just become a vehicle, instrumental.”Arjuna argued and argued, but finally Krishna persuaded him. So Jainas say the whole responsibility of the Mahabharata War, the great Indian war, goes to Krishna. He is responsible for the whole violence.Do you know what the Jainas have done to Krishna? They have thrown him into the seventh hell. Of course, they are free to do so because they write their own stories. In the Jaina puranas, Krishna is in the seventh hell, the worst hell, and he will have to be there up to the very end of this world.Now who is a saint? How do you define a saint? And who is going to define it, and who decides the criteria? Different philosophies will define differently.I am not a saint, because I don’t allow myself to be defined by anybody else. I am just myself. Call me sinner, call me saint – that is your attitude – but I am simply myself. And I leave myself undefined because, to me, reality is indefinable and I am part of reality, as you are part of reality.When you want to renounce something, renounce definitions, renounce categories. Don’t allow anybody to pigeonhole you.The moment you know your indefinable quality, you have transcended the world and you have attained to nirvana, you have become enlightened. An enlightened person is not a saint nor a sinner, cannot be. These are the categories of unenlightened people. People who have not yet become aware – they think in terms of good and bad. One who has become aware knows nothing as bad, nothing as good. He is simply a witness to all.So I am neither an Indian nor a saint.“Like all other Indian saints, why do you not like to be the saint of the masses?” And who are these masses? These neurotic people all around, this insane world all around – these are the masses? Who are these masses? These people who are blind – these are the masses? This vast darkness all around the earth…?I don’t belong to the masses; I cannot. I belong to the whole but not to the masses. The politicians belong to the masses – because they have to exploit the masses and they have to lead the masses, of course they have to follow the masses too. If you want to become the leader of the masses, then you have to show that you follow the masses. That is the bribery you have to pay. If you want to exploit the masses, you become the saint of the masses.I am not interested in any sort of exploitation. I am myself. If somebody wants to partake of the truth that I am, he can come. He can participate in my being.And remember, I don’t allow an easy approach, because I want everybody to know well that truth has to be paid for. You have to sacrifice much. It is not cheap. And I don’t want to make it cheap. I don’t allow you an easy approach towards me. I will create all sorts of hindrances between you and me. Only those who are really seekers and have an intense fire in them will be able to approach me.I am not interested in the masses at all. I am not a politician, and I am not interested in becoming a leader of the masses, nor the servant of the masses, because those are just diplomatic games, political games.I am here, available. If you have the intense desire and thirst, you can approach me. And again I repeat: the approach is not easy. I will hinder you in many ways; I will test you in many ways. Only when I feel that you are really ready to surrender, to sacrifice yourself, only when I see that truth is even more valuable to you than your life, then you belong to me – otherwise not.This question has come from some Indian who has fallen into the wrong company here. He should not be here, really. He has asked at least fifteen questions, all foolish. But he seems to think that he knows much.Friend, you are in the wrong company. Escape from here! These are mad people, these are not scholars here, and I am not interested in scholars and I am not interested in pundits and people who think they know. If they know, they know –why should they come here? What are you doing? Such a wise guy, what are you doing here? You should not be here in the first place. You know already? Very good. I am happy that you know. Then go to the masses and help the masses and become a saint of the masses. What are you doing here? Why are you wasting time here?If you don’t know, only then come to me. And if you don’t know, then don’t ask questions as if you know. Then ask questions out of your ignorance.These questions are parrot-like things; you simply go on repeating words.I have heard:Once upon a time there was a parrot who could say only three little words: “Who is it?” One day when the parrot was alone in the house there was a loud knock on the door.“Who is it?” screeched the parrot.“It is the plumber,” the visitor responded.“Who is it?” repeated the parrot.“It is the plumber, I tell you,” was the reply from the outside. “You called me to tell me your cellar was flooded.”Again the parrot called, “Who is it?”By this time the plumber became so angry that he fainted. A neighbor rushed over to see the cause of the commotion and, gazing at the unfamiliar face of the prostrate plumber, he asked, “Who is it?”The parrot answered, “It is the plumber.”The pundit is a parrot, and a very foolish parrot at that, because parrots can be forgiven, but human beings cannot be forgiven so easily.If you know, there is no need to be here. If you don’t know, then please never ask questions from your knowledge, from your so-called knowledge. The first lesson here is to know that you don’t know.And I am not saying that you don’t know. If you know, it is very good; but I am not interested in knowers. You can go and teach the masses and help the poor people. It is because of you and people like you that they are still poor, and it is because of you and people like you that they are still living in hell. And they will live in hell unless leaders like you stop serving them. Unless do-gooders like you stop doing good, they will remain in their misery.But my interest is only in those people who have come to know that they don’t know, that they are ignorant. In India it is very difficult. Knowledge has become part of the Indian blood. For centuries they have been like parrots, repeating shastras, scriptures, memorizing – not knowing anything but feeling very egoistic that they know. Whenever such a person comes here, I am simply surprised: why should he come here? Out of all the places, this place is not for you, people like you – not at all.Only come here if you can throw your knowledge away outside the gate. Where you leave your shoes, leave your knowledge too, your head too. Only then can you understand what is happening here. If it is not possible for you, there is no need to come.And I am not interested in the masses, because if you are interested in the masses you have to be manipulated by the masses. I am not in any way a mass man, because I am very individual. I have my own way, my own life, my own style, and I don’t allow anybody to interfere with it. If you want to become a man of the masses, the whole mass interferes with you. They teach you how you should sit and how you should stand, and what you should say and what you should not say, and what you should eat and what you should not eat, and when you should go to bed and when you should get up. They teach you everything.It is very ironical that the people who think they are leaders of the masses and gurus of the masses in fact are the slaves of the masses. The masses teach them how to be. They don’t have any freedom. And the masses go on looking from everywhere: “Are you really following what the masses want to be followed? Are you really following the idea of the masses, what a saint should be like?” Or if you are not following it, then you become a fallen saint, then you are a sinner.I don’t allow anybody to dictate my life. I don’t allow anybody’s life to be dictated by me. That’s why I don’t give any discipline to my people. I simply confer freedom on them and the responsibility to be free. Never interfere with anybody’s life, and don’t allow anybody to interfere with your life. Be individualistic. I am not a socialist, I am not a communist. I believe in the individual. I am absolutely an unashamed individualist.I was moving around the country, I was moving among the masses for many years, but I was surprised to see the fact that the masses try to manipulate you. Rather than learning anything from you, rather than taking anything from you, they try to manipulate you.Let me tell you one story I was just reading the other day:Farmer Jones, of Clinton, New Jersey, made history at the State Fair one day when he bought a prize rooster for the highest price ever paid in the history of the poultry trade. When he got it home, however, he found he simply could not control the rooster’s romantic tendencies. Not only the hens, but the ducks, geese, and swans, not to mention a few stray nanny goats and sows, fled before the rooster’s tireless onslaughts.Farmer Jones finally collared his bird and grumbled, “I did not pay a record price for you to waste your energies on every form of animal life in New Jersey. You are henceforth to confine your activities exclusively to the hens. Keep on the way you are going, and you will die of exhaustion.”The rooster made light of his owner’s fears, but sure enough, Farmer Jones found him a few mornings later flat on his back, his eyes glazed, his legs straight up in the air, with a couple of buzzards ominously circling closer and closer above him.“What did I tell you, you darn fool?” roared the farmer. “I knew the life you were leading would get you sooner or later!”But then, to his amazement, the supposedly expired rooster opened one eye and whispered hoarsely, “Pipe down, will you? When you are trying to romance a buzzard, you have got to play it their way!”If you want to become a saint of the masses, you can become one only in their way. I am not interested in anybody else’s way. I have found my way and my goal. I only allow people here who are ready to understand me and who are no longer obsessed with wanting to control me or are obsessed with wanting to be controlled by me. I am a free man, and I confer freedom on you. My sannyas is a declaration of freedom. It is not a discipline. It is a freedom.The second question, from the same gentleman:Osho,Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms? If so, then why do you preach that your sannyasins should live as they like? Mind always goes the wrong way if not restricted.And who is going to restrict the mind? The mind of the society? Who is going to restrict the mind? The-mind of the dead people, the dead moralists, the dead priests? Who is going to restrict the mind? You? Who are you, except the mind?The first thing to be understood: up to now humanity has lived under a curse, and the curse is that we have never been allowed to trust our nature. We have always been told, “Trust your nature and you will go wrong.” Mistrust, restrict, control – don’t go according to your feelings. We have been told that human nature is somehow basically evil. This is stupid, this is foolish and poisonous. Human nature is not evil. Human nature is divine. And if the evil has arisen, it has arisen because of restrictions. Now let me explain it to you.You never see animals going to war. Of course there are fights sometimes, but they are individual fights – not world wars with all the crows of the East fighting with all the crows of the West, or all the dogs of India fighting all the dogs of Pakistan. Even dogs are not so foolish, neither are crows! Yes, sometimes they fight, and there is nothing wrong in it. If their freedom is violated, they fight, but the fight is individual. It is not a world war.Now what have you done? You have repressed humanity and you have not allowed individuals to be angry sometimes – which is natural. The ultimate total result is that everybody goes on gathering his anger, goes on repressing the anger – then one day everybody is so full of poison that it explodes in a world war. Every ten years a world war is needed. And who is responsible for these wars? – your so-called saints and moralists, do-gooders, the people who have never allowed you to be natural.Have you ever seen any dog killing another dog? Yes, they fight sometimes – but just fight. Never has a dog killed another dog. Man is the only animal who kills another man. No crow has ever killed any other crow, no lion has ever killed another lion. Man is the only species of animal who kills its own kind. What has happened to man? Has he fallen lower than the animals? Then who is responsible? Only one thing is missing from the animals: they don’t have saints, moralists. Priests – Christian and Hindu and Mohammedan and Jaina – they don’t have. They don’t have temples, mosques, Bibles and Vedas, that’s all. That is the only difference.There are still a few primitive societies where, down through the ages, murder has never happened, because nobody has poisoned their mind for morality, nobody has trained them to be moral. They are natural people. When you are natural you function harmoniously. Sometimes you become angry, but that is natural – and it is momentary.A person who never becomes angry and goes on controlling his anger is very dangerous. Beware of him, he can kill you! If your husband never becomes angry, report him to the police. A husband who sometimes becomes angry is just a natural human being, there is no fear about it. A husband who never becomes angry will one day suddenly jump and suffocate you. And he will do it as if he is possessed by something. Murderers have been telling the courts down through the ages, “We committed the crime, but we were possessed.” Who possessed them? Their own unconscious – repressed unconscious – exploded.Have you watched a simple fact? If you have a picture of a beautiful bitch and bring it to a dog, he will not be interested at all. Dogs are not playboys. Not that they don’t love bitches, they love them tremendously, but they will not be interested in a picture, in pornography – because to create pornography you need saints. First repress the sexual instinct, the natural instinct, and tell people that it is wrong and evil. When they repress their sexual instinct, the repressed instinct finds outlets. Now it is difficult to go and watch a beautiful woman passing by on the road. Then what to do? Lock your room and look at the Playboy magazine. That is safer, nobody comes to know. You can hide your Playboy magazine in the Bible and you can pretend you are reading the Bible. Only man is pornographic. No other animal is pornographic. These are simple facts.Who has made man pornographic? Primitives are not – still are not. Women are naked and move naked – and without any fear. And what type of civilization do you say you are living in? A woman cannot pass through the roads without being pinched on the bottom, without being treated inhumanely. A woman cannot walk in the night alone – and this is civilization! And people are just obsessed with sex twenty-four hours a day.Who has given this obsession to man? Animals are sexual but not obsessed; they are natural. When sex becomes an obsession, it takes perverted forms; and these perverted forms are rooted in the moralizers and their teachings.The so-called religious people have never trusted human nature. They talk about trust, but they have never trusted existence. They trust rules, laws; they never trust love. They talk about God, but the talk is just empty talk. They trust in the police, in the courts. They trust in hellfire. They trust in creating fear and in creating greed. If you are saintly and good and moral, you will have heaven and all the pleasures of paradise, firdaus. Or, if you are not moral, then you will suffer hellfire – and eternally, remember, forever and forever.These are fear and greed. They have been manipulating the human mind through fear and greed. And they want you to become free of fear and greed – and their whole teaching is rooted in it. They don’t trust.I trust you and I trust your nature. I trust animal nature. If nature is allowed its own course, yes, there will be a little anger sometimes and there will be a little flaring up too, but nothing is wrong in it. It is human and it is beautiful. But there will be no war.Psychologists say all your weapons are phallic. Because you could not penetrate a woman’s body, you penetrate somebody’s body with a sword. The sword is a phallic symbol. It is beautiful to love a woman, but to penetrate somebody’s body with a sword is ugly. But this is how things have been.You ask me: “Is it not harmful to an individual and also to society to live without the barriers of norms?” You have lived with barriers and with norms. What has happened? Look at the state of humanity today: it is a neurotic earth, a great madhouse. This is what has happened because of your norms, idealism, perfectionism, morality; this has happened because of all your commandments. The whole earth has turned into a neurotic camp, a big madhouse. And still you are afraid, and still you go on. This is a vicious circle.It is as if you make a person fast and when he fasts of course he becomes hungry, and he starts looking obsessively for food. Then, thinking and seeing that he has become obsessed with food, you put him in chains, because otherwise he will break into somebody’s kitchen. Now you put him in chains because you say that if he is not put in chains, he is dangerous – he can break into somebody’s kitchen, he cannot be relied upon. Then you put him in chains and you continue forcing him to fast. And then you become more and more afraid because he is going mad. This is a vicious circle. In the first place, why has he become so obsessed with food? Your disciplining him too much with fasting has created this illness. Fasting is not natural.Yes, sometimes it happens in animals, but they don’t believe in fasting, they don’t have a philosophy of fasting. Sometimes it happens. One day the dog feels sick and he will not eat. This is natural. He simply does not eat because he does not feel like eating. He moves with his feeling, it is not a rule. Nobody has taught him to fast. In fact he will go and eat grass and vomit; the grass functions and helps him to vomit. He will vomit. Nobody has taught him. And he will not eat unless the desire to eat arises again. He moves with nature. When he feels like eating, he eats; when he does not feel like eating, he does not eat. This is what I would call real life.Sometimes when you feel like not eating, don’t eat. I am not against fasting. I am against the philosophy of fasting. Don’t make a rule that every Sunday you have to fast. That is foolish, because how can you decide that every Sunday you will not feel like eating? Sometimes it may be Friday when you don’t feel like eating. Then what will you do? You will force yourself to eat because it is Friday. When you feel like eating, eat. When you don’t feel like eating, don’t eat. Move with your feeling, and by and by you will be in tune with your nature.To me, to be in tune with nature is to be religious. My definition of religion is to be in tune with nature. And that is the meaning of the Indian word dharma; it means nature, intrinsic nature. Trust nature and don’t violate it.But you have been taught to violate it, so when people who have lived starved lives come here, to this place – which is a totally different phenomenon, they have never seen a place like this, no ashram like this has ever existed – they are very surprised. They come here to see sad people, dead people – dragging themselves around somehow, chanting mantras, reading books – and when they see people dancing, men and women dancing together, holding hands; people hugging each other, people so full of love and joy, they say, “What type of religion is this? Religion has to be of the cemetery, it cannot be of life. Religion has to be negative. Men and women holding hands? This is dangerous. We cannot trust men, we cannot trust women. This is dangerous; this is playing with fire. Create restrictions, make Great Walls of China!”No, I trust nature. I don’t trust your laws. Your laws have corrupted the whole of humanity. Enough is enough! The time has come. Now all the old, rotten religions have to be burned completely and a totally new concept of religion has to arise – life-affirmative, a religion of love and not of law, a religion of nature and not of discipline, a religion of totality and not of perfection, a religion of feeling and not of thinking. The heart should become the master, and then things settle on their own.If you can trust nature, by and by you become quiet, silent, happy, joyful, celebrating – because nature is celebrating. Nature is a celebration. Look all around. Can you see any flower which looks like your saints? Can you see any rainbow which looks like your saints – or any cloud, or any bird singing, or the light reflecting in the river, or the stars? The world is celebrating. The world is not sad. The world is a song, an utterly beautiful song, and the dance continues. Become part of this dance and trust your nature.If you trust your nature, by and by you will come closer to the cosmic nature. That is the only way. You are part of the cosmic. When you trust yourself, you have trusted the cosmic in you – through that goes the way. From that small thread, you can reach to the very goal. Trusting yourself, you have trusted existence which has made you. Not trusting yourself, you have distrusted existence which has made you.Who has given you sex? Of course existence has given you sex. And who has taught you brahmacharya and celibacy? Your so-called saints. Your saints are against existence. Who has given you hunger? Existence. And who has taught you fasting? Your saints.I am for life and against your saints because your saints are against existence. I teach you to be natural, to be spontaneous. And I don’t teach you repression, restriction. I teach you freedom. If you restrict yourself too much and repress yourself too much, you will die before your death, and then you will live a stale life.Let me tell you one beautiful story:They tell about a wise old rabbi in the heart of Russia whose advice was slavishly followed by the members of his synagogue. One morning he was cornered by a troubled follower who explained, “I invested all my savings in two hundred chickens. When I went out to the coop this morning, a hundred of them had died. What should I do?”“It is the voice of the Lord,” quoth the rabbi. “Say a prayer. Then double the sales price of the chickens you have left and you will not have lost a single kopek.”But the next morning the villager was back to report, “Another fifty of my chickens perished last night.”“The ways of the Lord are sometimes mysterious,” said the rabbi. “The fifty chickens that have survived are obviously the finest and the most valuable of the flock. Say another prayer of thanks and again double the sales price and you will not have lost a single kopek.”Alas! The next morning the last fifty chickens had bitten the dust. “Now what should I do?” wailed the villager.“My son,” quoth the rabbi, “I have lots more invaluable advice I could give you, but what use would that be to you? You have no more chickens.”When I look at your so-called religious people, I see they have no more life. No advice can be of any help to them. They are dead people. They should really be in their graves. They are walking illegally. They are ghosts; they are living a posthumous existence. They have committed suicide and are still walking and moving. I feel sorry for them, but these people are dangerous too because they go on doing the same to others that has been done to them by others. They go on teaching the same nonsense to other people. They go on crippling small children, paralyzing new life springs, poisoning new wells. That’s what they can do. That’s all that they know. They have been unable to live; they make others unable to live.Watch. Never get into the trap of a man who is dead. It is better to be irreligious. It is better not to believe in God and not to go to the church and the mosque and the temple, but be alive – because life is the real church of God. Forget all about God and nothing is lost, but start destroying life and everything is lost – because life is God.I teach you life, love, because that’s how I see God is.And these bondages that have been created by religion are just your idea. If you become aware, you can drop them immediately, instantly.“How come,” the hostess of a kid’s birthday party asked a little girl in attendance, “that your younger brother is so shy? He has not moved from that corner all afternoon.”“He is not shy at all,” answered the little girl. “He has never had on a necktie before – and he thinks he is tied to something.”All your religions are just neckties. You are not tied to anything. It is just your idea that you are tied.Drop all discipline and all ties and start moving – and let God live through you, and let God live through you in freedom. Trust freedom and trust God, and you will never be a loser.I am not saying there will always be flowers and more flowers in your life. No, there are thorns, but they too are good. And I am not saying that your life will always be sweet. Many times it will be very, very bitter, but that’s how life grows – through dialectics. I am not saying you will always be good. Sometimes you will be very bad, but one thing will be certain about you: when you are bad you will be authentically bad, when you are good you will be authentically good. One can trust, one can rely upon you. When you are angry, one can rely on it that your anger is not false, not cold; it is hot and alive. And when you love, one can rely upon you that it is hot and warm.Remember, a person who cannot be angry cannot be loving. The roses grow only with the thorns. If you cannot be hotly angry in some moment, you cannot be hotly in love. Because you cannot be hot, you cannot be warm; you remain frozen. And if you have repressed anger too much, you are always afraid to move in love, because who knows?A man came to me and he said he could not move into deep orgasm while making love – a perfectly healthy young man. What has gone wrong with him? He cannot move into orgasm, or at the most the orgasm remains only local, it does not spread all over his body – and a local orgasm is not of much significance. When the orgasm is total and every fiber of your being throbs with new life – you are refreshed, rejuvenated – for one moment you become part of existence, part of the tremendous creativity that surrounds you. You lose yourself. You are no longer an ego, you melt. You don’t have any boundaries then.I inquired about his anger. He said, “But why are you asking about anger, because my question is about love? I cannot love deeply.” I said, “Forget about love because first we have to think about anger. Because if you cannot love deeply, that means you cannot be angry deeply.” He was surprised, but that’s how it turned out to be. From his very childhood, he had been brought up in a very religious family and he had always been told not to be angry, to control anger. He has learned to control. He has become so efficient that he does not know that he controls. He has really become a controller. Now the control has become unconscious. He is a very controlled person. Everybody respects him; he will succeed everywhere in society. He is a success, but in his inner life he is a failure – he cannot even love.I told him, “Start by being angry, because my understanding is that when you are coming to a peak in your orgasm, you cannot allow it, because if you allow it, you are afraid that with it, maybe the anger – the repressed anger – may also be allowed.”He said, “What are you saying? I always dream that I have killed my woman. And I always dream that I kill her, suffocate her, while making love to her. And I am afraid that if I lose control I will not be able to resist the temptation to suffocate and kill her.”Now the anger has become a great force inside him. He is so afraid to uncontrol, how can he love? It is impossible. And if you miss love, you will miss prayerfulness and you will miss godliness too.This repressive society, this repressive civilization has failed utterly. Yet you are not aware.I have heard a beautiful story:In the days when Khrushchev – and somehow we miss him – was Mr. Big in the Soviet Union, he often admitted that Stalin occasionally treated him like a court jester or clown, and ordered him, “Dance the gopak!” “And,” Khrushchev would add, “I danced.”Somebody in the crowd would always cry out, “Why did you let him make a fool of you?” and Khrushchev would demand sternly, “Who asked that question? Stand up!”Inevitably, nobody answered, and after the appropriate pause, Khrushchev would conclude, “That, comrades, is why I danced.”Just out of fear: Stalin can kill, Stalin is death. And your priests have been death – representatives of death, not of God.I represent life. Your priests have been in conspiracy with death and they have crippled life. Your priests talk about God, but it seems they are partners with the Devil. A great conspiracy…And they have destroyed the whole human mind. They have uprooted you from your feeling part; they have made you hung up in your head. Now you don’t know how you feel; that’s why you cannot trust your feelings and you always have to look to somebody to tell you what to do.In childhood the parents go on telling you, “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Then in the school, you have the teacher; then in the university, the professor; then in society, the boss, the politician, the leader. Everywhere you are being told what to do and what not to do. And you are always seeking somebody to dominate you so that you can become dependent – because you don’t know how to get commandments from your own heart, from your own being. You always depend on some authority outside. This is ugly, this is miserable, this should not be.I am not an authority here, at the most a midwife, but not an authority. I can help you to be reborn, but I cannot dominate you, I cannot dictate things to you. You hanker for it. People come to me and they say, “Osho, tell us exactly what we have to do.” But why can’t you listen to your own heart? You have life bubbling inside you. The spring is there, the source is there. Go in. I can tell you how to go in, I can teach you the devices for going in, but take your commandments from there. There is a Bible inside you – the real book, the Veda, the real knowledge.Get your instructions from there, and once you start getting your instructions from your innermost core, you will be a free man and a happy man. A free man is happy; an unfree man is never happy. You are not meant to be slaves. You are meant to be masters. That’s why I call my sannyasins “swami.” Swami means a master, one who has taken his reins in his own hands.The third question:Osho,While I was roaming around near Mumbai, I stopped at Muktananda's ashram for a couple of days. Unexpectedly, while I was there he poured on me much grace and very special attention, even though the first thing I said was that I am a disciple of Osho. I felt honored by him yet was a bit uncomfortable. Mainly, I felt guilt towards you. I am back now with you but very confused. Please help me.First thing, whatsoever you do, never feel guilty – whatsoever you do. To go to Muktananda’s ashram is not a sin. It may be your karma, but it is not a sin! You have not violated any rule, because I don’t have any rules. How can you violate them? I don’t give you rules, because you are such neurotic people that out of the rules you will create guilt. Never associate guilt with me, around me, in association with me. I don’t want you to make, to create, any guilt, to ever feel guilty. Whatsoever you do, do it totally.Now, you have been to Muktananda’s ashram: you should have been there totally. You must have been thinking about me there, and you must have been feeling guilty. You have been taught wrong things.To be with me is not a monogamy. It is not a husband-wife relationship – that the wife cannot look at another man or the husband cannot look at another woman. I make you absolutely free. How many times do I have to repeat it? You can go to Muktananda or anywhere – you can even go to hell. And if you wander around Mumbai too much, suddenly one day you will find yourself in hell, remember – because a direct route goes from Mumbai to hell!And this is surprising, how you managed to reach Muktananda’s ashram by wandering around Mumbai. It is far away from Mumbai. But it may be the same guilt: you cannot even take the responsibility that “I went.” You cannot even say that? How poor. You cannot even take your responsibility that “I went to Muktananda’s ashram.” You say, “While I was roaming around near Mumbai, I stopped at Muktananda’s ashram – for a couple of days”! Just look at the absurdity.Be responsible. If you have been there, you have been there, and nothing is wrong in it. Muktananda is also God; maybe a mediocre god but still a god. You are allowed to go to mediocre gods too. And don’t feel guilty, because you are already punished – Muktananda is a punishment! What more punishment do you need?Remember responsibility always. Whatsoever you do, do consciously; don’t wander. The questioner is trying to say that it was not conscious, deliberate – “by chance.” But nothing is by chance; everything is your responsibility. Don’t be accidental. This is one of the ways – how we try to throw responsibility onto others’ shoulders. Your act is your act. Next time, please, if you go, there is no need to wander so much. You can go directly.And then “a couple of days” – just by wandering. A couple of minutes may have been okay, but a couple of days means you wanted to be there. But nothing is wrong in it. What I am insisting on is: accept it, that you wanted to be there.And it is good. I know how you feel. You are shopping for a guru, and it is a supermarket. There are many gurus in the world, and how can you just decide that this man is the right one? You will have to go here and there; sometimes to Muktananda, sometimes to Sai Baba, sometimes to somebody else – nothing wrong in it!If something of me has penetrated your heart, you will come back. If not, then it is good that you don’t come back. If something beneficial happens to you there, then allow it to happen, with all my blessings, because that is what we are trying to do. If it happens in Muktananda’s ashram, good. It should happen, that is the point. I do not have any obsession with Pune, that it should happen in Pune. If your enlightenment happens in Muktananda’s ashram, very, very good. I will be happy, tremendously happy it happened. Pune is not the point. This small piece of land…how many people can become enlightened here? The whole world is yours; become enlightened anywhere you want, choose any place.And it is natural for the mind to go here and there. One wavers a little and then by and by one settles. And it is good that one should waver a little. So don’t force yourself. If the idea arises, which is natural, to go and visit some other ashrams and see what is happening there… You may be just deceived here. Who knows? I may be just a fake, a fraud. So who knows? Just go and see what is happening there. Maybe something is really happening there and you are benefited. Good. If not, I am available here; you can come back. But don’t create any guilt.“Unexpectedly, while I was there he poured on me so much grace and a very special attention, even though the first thing I said was I am a disciple of Osho.” That’s why! It is so simple and so political; there is nothing much in it, it is not a mystery. Next time go without wearing orange, without a mala, shave your head so he cannot recognize you; and then see.Mulla Nasruddin died. He went to heaven, but of course, as you are worried about going to some other ashram… He lived a few days in heaven and then he said to God, “I have never seen hell. And who knows, maybe things are better there. And rumors have come that they have air-conditioned it and much dancing and drinking goes on there and all the beautiful people of the world are there. Here there are only sad saints, holy people, sitting dusty and dirty under the trees. No song – not even a newspaper! No radio, no TV. And rumors are that all the politicians are there and all the scientists are there and they have created a beautiful place.”God said, “You can go and see and have a visit,” and a two-days’ visa was given to him.He went and he was received with great celebration. And it was really beautiful; he had never even dreamt of such a beautiful place. He thought, “What nonsense! Even God would enjoy being here. Nobody knows that hell has changed completely, and we go on believing in old books where heaven was praised and hell was condemned. Now things are totally different; things are the other way around!”For two days he enjoyed it. He gambled and drank and danced, and all the beautiful women from Cleopatra to Marilyn Monroe – all were there. And it was tremendously beautiful, and two days just passed like two seconds. He was very sorry.He went back and said to God, “I don’t want to be in heaven. Please give me a permanent visa; I want to go there.”God said, “But remember, once you have a permanent change of your address, you will not be allowed to come back.”He said, “Who wants to come back? Don’t waste time! And I don’t want to go through the red tape. Give me an order immediately. I want to go to hell, and I don’t want to stay here a single moment.”And of course, it was arranged. He reached hell, and suddenly almost a dozen devils jumped on him and started beating him. He said, “What are you doing?” And he looked around; that beautiful scene was not there – and fire and flames… He said, “This looks like the old hell. Have I missed something? Have I reached the wrong place?”They said, “No, you are in the right place.”“But,” he said, “just the other day I was here for two days and it was so beautiful.”They laughed and said, “That was not the real hell. It was just a showpiece for the visitors. Now you have come here as a permanent resident; now you will know the real thing.”Next time, don’t talk about me. If you talk about me, certainly, it is simple and diplomatic that much grace and love and attention should be given to you.And it worked too: “I felt honored by him…” Special attention – who will not feel honored? Here I never give any special attention to anybody. Even if you want to see me you will have to wait for days. An appointment is not so easy, and I don’t pay any special attention to anybody, because I really mean to work here, I mean business.Special attention is given to you just to buttress your ego, and that’s how things go on. The guru buttresses the ego of the disciple and the disciple buttresses the ego of the guru – a mutual understanding and things go well and everything runs smoothly. They go on lubricating each other.Here, there is nothing of that sort. I am very businesslike. I don’t give any special attention to you, because the very desire to get special attention is wrong. What are you going to do with the special attention you get? You will feed your ego. Everybody wants to be specially attended to. Why? – because everybody wants to be somebody special.So of course, there is nothing mysterious in it: “I felt honored by him…” The special attention worked on your ego.If you want to be here with me, remember, I am not playing any game of the ego with you. Things are straight, direct. You are here to dissolve yourself, and I am here to help you die. It is going to be arduous, but all growth is painful.But if you want children’s toys, then you can go anywhere you want to. Maybe you need them right now. Maybe you are still childish, juvenile, not a mature person. Then you will need something like that.But never feel guilty. I don’t want you to feel guilty for anything, whatsoever it is. Unconditionally, I want to say to you that I don’t want to create guilt in you.The last question:Osho,It is found that remembrance of “beloved' or “darling” is more spontaneous and easy than the remembrance of “God” or “the supreme self.” Why is it so?It is so simple. Why should it not be so? Your beloved is real; your God is just a bogus concept, empty, immaterial, just a word. If you go deep in it, there is nothing in it. Your God is just a word; your beloved is a reality. My God is a reality; your God is not a reality. Your God is just a word heard unconsciously; it goes on reverberating, vibrating in you, but it is just a word. What does it mean? It has no meaning. Your beloved, of course, is significant.That’s why I say forget about God the concept, the word, the theological idea; rather love, love your beloved, and love her so deeply, or him so deeply, that a moment comes when you can feel the beloved not as the body but as the soul. That will be the door of the temple of God. Love totally, and through total love, prayerfulness becomes, by and by, a natural phenomenon. Love is transformed into prayer. Each beloved, each lover, becomes a window to existence.So I don’t teach you to go against love. I teach you to go through love. That is the whole difference between my teaching and the teaching of the traditional, so-called saints. I teach you to go through love; that is natural. But go so totally, be so utterly lost in it that by and by it is not just a superficial thing; you can start feeling the soul of the other. In that moment, you will be able to see the whole of existence filled with soul.If you have looked into the eyes of your beloved and seen something of the ineffable, the indefinable, then look at the tree and you will see the same thing there too. Then look at the rose and you will find the same eyes there too. Then run around and you will see he is everywhere. But the first glimpse will be in your beloved, and that is natural.Love is the natural way to godliness.Two very small boys were playing marbles together when a very, very pretty little girl walked by. One of the boys exclaimed fervently to his pal, “Brother, when I stop hating girls, she is the one I am going to stop hating first!”From the very childhood, from the very beginning, love takes a grip on you. Maybe you are not yet able to define it, maybe you can still think only in terms of hate, that you will “not hate” this person. It is a negative definition of love; still love is negative. By and by it will become positive. By and by even the positivity will disappear; it will become existential. Then it is prayerful.If you can go on diving deep into love, one day you will find that you have arrived at God.Mistress Mulla Nasruddin complained to the school principal that her thirteen-year-old son seemed to be spending most of his time staring at the girls in their summer miniskirts.“Don’t worry,” were the principal’s reassuring words. “He is just going through a stage that won’t last more than the rest of his life.”Love is something that lasts your whole life. You begin in love; you should end in love – then the circle is complete. You are born out of love; you should die in love – then the circle is complete.But your God is bogus, your God is out of fear; or your God is just a concept given by others to you.A little girl – a 1974 model – had been on dozens of jet planes in her time, but this was her first overnight journey in an upper berth of a Pullman car. Somewhat frightened, she called out at regular intervals to her mother below, “Mommy, are you there?”After many hours of this, a gentleman across the aisle piped up, “Yes, mommy is here. And I am here too. We are all trying to get a little sleep. So for heaven’s sake, stop that confounded noise.”There was a moment of silence, and then a quavering little voice called out, “Mommy, was that God?”That’s your concept of God: fear. Your God means your father magnified; your headmaster magnified, or the head constable. What do you mean by your God? You don’t have any experience.Rather than thinking of God as your father, it is better to think of God as your beloved – because a father is an authoritative figure, unnatural, social, formal. Once it never existed; once again it may disappear. It is better to think of God as your beloved, and it is better to move through the beloved toward the ultimate beloved. And you will be moving naturally, spontaneously, and there will be no repression, and there will be no unnecessary harshness in your lifestyle – you will not become a masochist.And if you can go to God laughing, why go weeping? If you can go to God dancing, then why not go dancing? I don’t teach you a God who is against life and love. I teach you a God who is the very depth, the very ground of life and love.You can drop the word God if it creates trouble for you. Replace it with love, and let love to be with a lowercase l, not with a capital L. Don’t make much fuss about it. A lowercase l, ordinary love – the love that happens between two friends, that happens between a husband and wife, that happens between a child and a mother, that happens, always happens, in relationship.Become more and more loving and you will be closer to God, more and more close. The day your whole being is a state of love, you have arrived: God is revealed to you. Yes, Jesus is right when he says, “God is love.” But my insistence is even more than Jesus’. I say, “Love is God.” Jesus says God is love; I say love is God. And the word God has become very dirty because it has been used and misused by politicians and priests for so long. It is a dirty word now; you can drop it. Love is fresher, more virgin, more existential, more true.Love, and whomsoever you love, you will find he has become a god. Love, and you will always find God in the end.Enough for today.

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Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 01-10Category: Kabir

Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Il. 22. Man tu par utar kanh jaihoTo what shore would you cross, O my heart?There is no traveler before you, there is no road.Where is the movement,where is the rest, on that shore?There is no water; no boat, no boatman is there;there is not so much as a rope to tow the boat,nor a man to draw it.No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there:no shore, no ford!There, there is neither body nor mind: and where is the placethat shall still the thirst of the soul? You shall find naught in that emptiness.Be strong, and enter into your own body,for there your foothold is firm.Consider it well, O my heart! Go not elsewhere.Kabir says: “Put all imagination away,and stand fast in that which you are.”II. 81. Satgur soi daya kar dinhaIt is the mercy of my true guruthat has made me to know the unknown;I have learned from him how to walk without feet, to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to drink without mouth, to fly without wings;I have brought my love and my meditationinto the land where there is no sun and moon,nor day and night.Without eating, I have tasted of the sweetness of nectar,and without water, I have quenched my thirst.Where there is the response of delight,there is the fullness of joy.Before whom can that joy be uttered?Kabir says: “The guru is great beyond words,and great is the good fortune of the disciple.”Godliness is within and without because only godliness is. In fact to say “God is” is a repetition because God never “is not.” Godliness is the very isness of existence. We can say, “The house is” because once, the house was not, and once again the house will not be. To say, “The house is” is okay, because the “is not” is possible. We can say “The man is” but we cannot say “God is,” because only it is – always has been, always will be. Godliness is the very isness, Godliness is existence itself.Then why say the word God at all? Why use it? We use it very symbolically, to indicate something. When we say “God is” we mean existence is not without a soul. We mean that existence is not dead. We mean that existence is alive, throbbing with love, compassion, consciousness, conscience; that existence is intimate; that there is a possibility of addressing existence and there is a possibility of getting the response. When we say “God is” we mean that existence allows the possibility of a dialogue. You can have a dialogue with it; you can call it “thou” and it will not be meaningless; and you can be in such a state that prayerfulness becomes possible, that communion becomes possible.That’s all the word God carries. Existence is not like a dead rock; it is an alive flower. It will respond to you. If you love it, love will flow toward you. If you move toward it, it will move toward you. If you seek it, it will seek you. Existence is not careless. If you are in love with existence, existence is in love with you. That’s all that we mean when we call existence divine or when we say “God is.” Remember it. It is a poetic way of saying a truth. It is not a fact. It is poetry, it is romance. And religion is romance with existence.Yes, it is more like falling in love rather than arguing toward a conclusion.That’s why Kabir says God is within and without, but the journey has to start from the within. Unless you have known godliness within, you will not be able to comprehend it in the outside. Unless you have seen him within yourself, you will not be able to see him in the trees, in the birds, in the stars. How can you see him in the tree, in the rock, if you have not been able to feel him within yourself? Your center of being is the closest door to God. If you have not been able to enter from there, you cannot enter from anywhere else.God is within and without, both, because only he is; still, the journey starts from your innermost core. First you have to look withinwards. If from the very beginning you start looking for God in the outside, your God will be nothing but an imagination, a falsity.This point has to be understood very deeply. The whole approach of Kabir, the whole approach of all the mystics of the world, depends on this. If you see God outside and you have not seen him within, it is going to be just a dream, a projection, a wish fulfillment; so don’t start the journey that way. The journey starts by closing the eyes; the journey ends by opening the eyes. First, one closes the eyes in meditation, goes deep into oneself. When one has realized, touched the very core, has known who is there, one opens the eyes – and finds him all over, spread everywhere.But you cannot begin from the outside. That’s where organized religion misses the whole point. The Christian goes to the church, the Hindu goes to the temple, the Mohammedan goes to the mosque. The Mohammedan travels thousands of miles to go to Mecca, the Hindu goes to Kailash; and Kabir says he is neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash. He is within you. Not that he is not in Kaaba and Kailash! Once you have found him within yourself you will find him everywhere – but then there will be no point in going to Kaaba and Kailash because wherever you are, wherever you look, you will find Kaaba, you will find Kailash.There is a very beautiful story in the life of Nanak, another great mystic of the same caliber as Kabir.Nanak went to Mecca; he traveled with some Mohammedan travelers who were on a pilgrimage. They reached Mecca, the holy stone of Kaaba. It was evening and the sun was setting, and they were very tired, and Nanak immediately fell asleep.The travelers, the companions, were very surprised. They used to think of Nanak as a very holy man, but he was doing something stupid: his legs were towards the Kaaba when he lay down and fell asleep. They became very afraid: this is a sacrilege! And by the time they could do something about it, the chief priest had come, and he said, “Who is this man? Is he an atheist? Does he not believe in God? He does not seem to be a Muslim. Throw him out of here!”All this noise and talk, and Nanak opened his eyes, and he said, “What is the matter?”They said, “This cannot be allowed. Your legs are towards Kaaba, and this is a sin.”Nanak laughed uproariously and he said, “You can put my legs anywhere you like, but, one thing before you do it, tell me if it is not so: wherever my legs are, they will always point towards God – because he is everywhere.”Up to this point, the story seems to be absolutely realistic; then it becomes a parable.The priest was very angry. He took hold of the feet of Nanak and turned his feet opposite to Kaaba. And the parable says Kaaba turned toward Nanak’s feet. And he moved him in every direction, and Kaaba turned to that direction.Now, it is a parable; I don’t say now that it is realistic. Half the story seems to be exactly right. The other part seems to be very poetic – true, but not factual. It is very significant though. Godliness is everywhere.Once you have found it within, you will find it everywhere. Then you cannot find a place where it is not. But don’t start the journey from the outward; don’t start going to Kaaba and Kailash, to the temple and the mosque, otherwise you have taken a wrong step. And one wrong step leads to another. You start imagining.Once a Sufi stayed with me. He had many disciples, thousands of disciples, and his disciples used to come to me and say their master is great, he sees God everywhere – in the trees, in the rocks, in the birds, animals, even in dogs; everywhere he sees God.When he came to stay with me, the first night we sat together, I looked at him. He was a very beautiful man – but I could see that his God was a projection; he was living in his imagination, in a reverie, in a dream. The dream was beautiful, because when you dream about God everywhere, even the dream changes your life – even the idea that God is everywhere brings tremendous changes – but it is not radical. It is mental, it is a mind game; it is a sort of auto-hypnosis.I asked him, “Please, tell me how you started to see God everywhere.”He was very reverent to everything. He would go and bow down before a rock, any rock, and he would go down and touch the tree; he was really very reverent and he had a very peaceful quality all around him. He was a poet, but not a mystic. I asked him, “Tell me how you started to see God.”He said, “How I started? I started to think, continuously, ‘God is everywhere,’ and whatsoever I would touch, I would think, ‘Here is God.’ I would look into the eyes of a man, and I would say, ‘Here is God.’ And I would repeat it and repeat it, and by repeating it continuously for three years, one day it suddenly dawned over me: he was everywhere.”I told him, “Do one thing. It took three years? Do one thing. You will be here with me for seven days. For three days stop thinking about God.”He said, “What do you mean? I cannot do it. For thirty years I have been continuously thinking about God, and it has given me tremendous peace and I have been very, very blissful – and why should I stop for three days?”I said, “Just to see whether, if you stop for three days, you can still see God or not. If you cannot see him, then these thirty years you have lived in a beautiful dream – sweet, but a dream all the same.”He became intrigued. He was afraid to try it, but then he became more and more interested too. Whenever you become afraid of something, you become infatuated too. First he denied it, but I could see that he would not be able to resist the temptation. Next morning he said, “Okay, I will try. I trust God, and I know he is everywhere. Just by not thinking do you think I will not be able to see him?”I said, “I don’t say anything. There is no need to conclude right now. Let the experiment be done. For three days stop thinking, stop imagining – stop altogether. Just move backward, thirty years back. Become that man who has never thought about God and who has not projected God everywhere.”By the third day, the man became ordinary. The aura disappeared, his eyes became empty. That peace was no longer there. He started crying, and he said, “You have disturbed me very much. My whole experience is lost.”I said, “I have not disturbed you. You can start imagining again. I have simply showed you one truth, that even if you go on imagining for thirty lives, it will remain your imagination. You have started wrongly – and it is time you changed, because this is of no use. Thirty years of constant auto-hypnotizing, and gone within three days? It is of no worth.”Start from the inner first, rather than projecting God. It is going to be a projection – you don’t know whether God is or is not. You know only the word, you know the tradition, you know the priest, you know the image that has been put into your mind. If you are a Christian, you can project Christ very easily and you can see Christ very easily. It will be a hallucination; it will be a sort of neurosis. If you are a Hindu, you can see Krishna very easily, you can project. If you are a Buddhist, you can see Buddha.Mind can create the illusion so beautifully and so realistically that even reality itself pales down before it, becomes faint, looks unreal. And you have been doing it every night in your dreams. You know, your mind has a faculty – a faculty to create images. Not only to create images but to make them appear so real that again and again you forget. Every night you dream, every morning you come to know that it was a dream and not a reality; and again when you dream the next night, again you become a victim, again you forget that it is a dream, again it looks real, absolutely real.Even absurdities look real; that which cannot be imagined to be – even that! You are talking to your wife and suddenly your wife turns into a horse. And even then the doubt does not arise. In a dream the doubt never arises. You trust even this. You cannot say, “What nonsense. How can it be?” No, everything is possible in a dream, and your trust is tremendous. In the morning when you are awake, all is gone, and you laugh. And this has been going on for years – again you will fall a victim.This is the dream faculty of the mind. A part of the mind functions as a projector – just exactly like the projector in the movie house. The projector is hidden behind – you never look at the projector, you don’t even think about the projector. You look at the screen. The screen is empty; the projector goes on. Just a game of light and shadow – and you become so absorbed, you become so lost. You are real and the screen is absolutely false, but you forget yourself, and whatsoever is going on on the screen takes a reality of its own. And you know it is not real, but you go on forgetting again and again.Sometime, try it in a movie house. It is a good meditation. Just try to remember that it is unreal, that it is unreal… Go on remembering that it is unreal and the screen is empty, and you will be surprised: for a few seconds you can remember; again you have forgotten, again it has become the reality. Whenever you forget yourself, the dream becomes real. Whenever you remember yourself – that “I am real,” you shake yourself – the screen becomes unreal and all that is going on becomes unreal.Let me put it in this way: the world looks real in the same proportion in which you are unconscious, asleep. The more aware you become, the world becomes more and more unreal.Even this so-called world becomes unreal, so what to say about your ideas? You project God, you project this and that – heaven and hell. They are all projections. You give them reality by becoming unconscious.So a man who thinks of God as surrounding him, as everywhere, has started a wrong journey. What will he do? He can only auto-hypnotize himself. This is not going to lead to knowledge, to realization. This is getting into the unreality even deeper than before. This is getting into a sort of neurosis.That’s why Freud is right when he says that the so-called religions are nothing but collective neuroses. The so-called religions are! Buddha may not have been a neurotic, Jesus may not have been a neurotic, but Christians are, Buddhists are. The difference is Buddha started from within, from inwards, and the Buddhist starts from the idea. Jesus looks into his being, and the Christian looks at Jesus, looks outside. There is the whole difference.Kabir says:To what shore would you cross, O my heart?There is no traveler before you,there is no road.If you go outside of your being you will be lost, Kabir says. …There is no traveler before you – whom will you follow, my heart? …There is no road – how will you seek God? Where will you go to seek him?Where is the movement,where is the rest on that shore?There is no water, no boat, no boatman is there;there is not so much as a rope to tow the boat,nor a man to draw it.But you can fill your screen of the mind with your own imagination. You can imagine a road, you can imagine a master leading you, you can imagine the goal; you can create a dream.In reality, there is no road. In reality, there is no other shore. This is the only shore there is. This is the only reality there is. There is no other reality; there is no separate reality. Reality is one. You can approach it in two ways: either with eyes full of dreams or eyes without any dream.No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there;no shore, no ford!If you go into the without, you will be moving into nothingness, emptiness. Of course, you can fill this emptiness with your own images and with your own ideas, but you are creating a neurosis – a religious neurosis, but it is a neurosis. When you go to the temple and you pray to a god who is outside you, what are you doing? Have you ever thought about it? Go to the madhouse, to the lunatic asylum, and see there. Somebody is sitting there and talking to his wife, and there is nobody around. He is sitting alone and talking to his wife. And you know that he is mad; the wife is not there and he is talking, he is imagining. He not only talks from his side, he answers from his wife’s side too. This is a madman, you say. And then you go to the mosque, temple, church, and somebody is bowing down to some god nobody can see. Is it in any way different? It is again madness.To whom are you praying? Who is there outside you? Your prayer is a sort of dream which you are creating. Yes, Sigmund Freud is right – as he is right in many things. He has a tremendous grip on truth. Religion seems to be a collective neurosis – but the religion of the Christians, the Hindus, and the Mohammedans; not the religion of Buddha, Jesus, Nanak, Kabir; not the religion I am talking about.The real religion consists of going inwards. And when you want to go inwards you have to drop all thinking, you have to drop all images. You have to become completely empty – only then can you go inward. To go inward, this is a basic need, that all thinking stops completely. Then you cannot hypnotize yourself. Without thinking, hypnosis cannot exist. All imagery stops. Only in that state of no-imagination, no-thought, no-mind, one comes to feel the reality that is there at the innermost core of your being.Once you have felt it there, then open your eyes and you will see it everywhere. Now it is totally different; the quality is no longer the same. Before, it was an imagination; now it is a reality. It is not that you are creating it. Now it is there. It is a revelation.But ordinarily, we are accustomed to looking outside. Our eyes open outward. When you close your eyes you see only darkness and nothing, or at the most, you see reflections of the outside passing. You close your eyes and you see the outside world reflected: a friend’s face; somebody has insulted you, and the episode; or you have gone to the market to purchase something and you are haggling with the shopkeeper. Things like that – just reflections of the outside. Either you look outside or you look into the reflections of the outside.But the eyes cannot see withinwards, and the ears cannot hear withinwards, the hands cannot touch withinwards. All the senses open toward the outside; they are meant for it. The senses are bridges. They are meant to open outside – they reveal the surface of reality not its depth. If you want to know the depth, you will have to go beyond the senses into your own being. There you see without eyes, there you hear without ears, there you touch without your hands.But our habit is very, very powerful, so when a person becomes fed up with the world, feels frustrated with the world, sees that there is nothing there, and starts thinking about religion, again the old habit works: he again starts looking for God outside. He was looking for money, now he looks for God. First he was looking for political power, now he looks for religious power. But he looks outside. His old habit remains the same; he has not changed at all.I have heard about a closemouthed politician who shot his girlfriend and was convicted of murder in the first degree. Just before he was hanged, he was asked, “Have you anything you wish to say?” His answer was, “Not at this time.”Just old habit. Now there is going to be no time anymore, he is going to be hanged, but that was his old habit. A politician always tries to avoid answering anything. Even if he answers, he never answers; he goes roundabout. You cannot figure out whether he says yes or no. It is very difficult to conclude as to what he is saying. Or simply he refuses…and this man is going to die next moment, and he says, “Not at this time” – and there is going to be no time anymore. Just the old habit!The mind is trained to look outside, so when you start looking for God, also, you start looking for him outside. You go into the scripture – the Bible, the Veda, the Koran, the Gita – or you go to a priest or you go to the temple or you go to somebody for advice, but you never go inward. And the only place to go is to go in.The only place to be is to be in! From there the door opens, from there you knock at the doors of reality, from there comes the realization of that which is.And you have been gone so far in the outside world – after money, after power, after sex, after this and that – that it takes very long to come back. And you come back very reluctantly.I have heard:A moonshiner in the Georgia hills was caught red-handed by a posse of revenue agents. The moonshiner, despite his seventy years and long gray beard, tore himself loose from the sheriffs grasp, and headed cross-country with the speed of a gazelle. The sheriff, a kindly – and lazy – soul, marveled at the old boy’s agility, and said, “Let’s let him go.”Five days passed, however, and the moonshiner failed to return. Just as his relatives and neighbors were concluding that his unusual exertions had been the death of him, he stumbled home in a state of complete disrepair. “Where you been, Beauregard?” asked his partner.The moonshiner simply answered, “I have been coming back.”He had gone so far away – five days it took for him to come back.And you have been gone so far away, for so many lives.But don’t start calculating how long it will take for you to come back, because wherever you are, you can close your eyes and you are in. It is not a question of really coming back. Wherever you are, you close your eyes and you are in.It is almost as if somebody is running away from the sun, his back toward the sun as he is rushing far away, and far away, and then one day he realizes this is foolish – the sun is the source of life. What is he to do? Will he have to travel the same distance that he has traveled away from the sun? No. He just turns his back and the sun is there. The sun has always been there.This is what is known as conversion. Conversion means a turning of one hundred and eighty degrees – a sudden turn. This is what I call sannyas: a sudden turn. It is not a question that you will have to come the same distance again that you have traveled away. You cannot travel away from existence! How can you travel away from yourself? Wherever you go you remain yourself. You can go to hell, and you will remain yourself. You can go to the moon or to some faraway star; you will remain yourself. And wherever you are ready to close your eyes, turn your face inward – the inner reality starts revealing.So it is not a question of calculating how many lives we have been gone away. It is a moment – a sudden moment of illumination.You may have been reading Zen stories. And all the Zen stories have one very absurd thing: the satori, the Zen enlightenment, happens very suddenly. You cannot figure it out, how it happened. The master hits the disciple on the head, and the story simply says: “And he became enlightened.” Now this seems to be absolutely absurd. How can a sinner – a man who has been doing so many wrong things in his life and just a single moment before was unenlightened, ignorant – become enlightened within a single moment?Yes, this is how it happens – time is not needed. Time is needed to travel outward. To come in, time is not needed, time is not the factor. Space is needed to go outside. Space is not needed to come inside; space is not the factor.Yes, it is how it happens. Sometimes just a hit from the master, or sometimes just a look from the master, and it can happen. And not only that, sometimes it can happen without the master.It is said about Lao Tzu that he was sitting under a tree when he became enlightened, but he was not doing anything. Buddha was meditating; Lao Tzu was not doing anything, not even meditation. He was just sitting, and an old leaf fell from the tree, started falling, slowly, lazily, like a feather, and he watched it falling, and it settled on the ground…and he became enlightened.Now, there was no master, and he was not even meditating. What happened? Just watching the leaf falling? In that very moment, he must have become so tremendously aware, so absorbingly aware, that the mind stopped, there was no thought. He simply watched the leaf falling. The leaf settled on the ground; something settled in himself too. He was no longer the same person. The old is dead, the new is born. It is a rebirth.And this is what I teach you too. So don’t be very calculative and arithmetical; it is not needed for the inner journey. Just be quiet, silent; relaxing more and more; more and more in tune with nature: sitting more and more with closed eyes, just doing nothing – not even meditating, just doing nothing. If nothing happens don’t be worried. If you can accept that nothing is happening, that too is okay. Then someday something is going to happen which will transform you.One day, for no visible cause at all, one settles. Or something absolutely irrelevant may become instrumental. You are sitting with closed eyes – a child starts laughing loudly, and the very laughter becomes the old leaf. Or your wife has dropped something in the kitchen, and the very noise, and suddenly something is broken inside you, a breakthrough.It can happen any moment, it can happen in any situation, because it is your innermost nature. It is already there; it has not to be produced and it has not to be created. You have brought this treasure with you.But you go on looking outside and you remain a beggar. Come in and become emperors.There, there is neither body nor mind:and where is the placethat shall still the thirst of the soul?You shall find naught in that emptiness.Be strong, and enter into your own body…Don’t go outside.Kabir is a great lover of the body – and all the great mystics have been lovers of the body – because the body is the real temple of God. And if you find somebody condemning the body, know from the very beginning that he knows nothing. If somebody is against the body, he has not known anything at all. He does not even know the abcd of spirituality. He has not even begun. If he condemns the body he is still afraid of the body. If he condemns the body he is a dualist: he thinks himself separate from the body. If he condemns the body he still has great lust and greed in him. If he condemns the body, it means the body still tempts him too much and he shivers and trembles before the body. He is antagonistic to the body because he has not yet been able to understand what this beautiful phenomenon is that we call the body. The body is the temple of God. God is enshrined in it; God is embodied in it. It is God’s body.Be strong, and enter into your own body… If you don’t enter into your own body, you will be chasing shadows and nothing will be the outcome. You can go on rushing and speeding, and you will never reach anywhere because the place to reach is within you. The goal to reach is in the seeker; the seeker is the sought.Be strong… And what does Kabir mean when he says, “Be strong”? He means, then don’t be weak; these people who are against the body are all weaklings. They have become afraid of their own body. When you are afraid of somebody, you are thought to be a coward, but think of the person who is afraid of his own body. He is the worst coward. You cannot find a weaker person than him.There are so-called saints who will not allow their body to rest. They are afraid because if you give the body rest, then the body demands more. They will not give the right food to the body. They will fast because they are afraid: if you give food to the body, the body creates energy. Energy wants to delight, energy wants to love, energy wants to dance; so don’t give food to the body. Fast, starve the body. They slowly kill the body, by and by.I have heard:Mulla Nasruddin was going for a long trip to London; he had to go. He persuaded his brother to take care of his Siamese cat while he was away.Nasruddin dearly loved that Siamese cat, but the brother definitely did not. The very moment Nasruddin set foot back at the airport, therefore, he phoned his brother to check on his cat’s health. The brother announced curtly, “Your cat died,” and hung up.For days, Nasruddin was inconsolable. Finally, however, he phoned his brother again to point out, “It was needlessly cruel and sadistic of you to tell me that bluntly that my poor, poor cat had passed away.”“What did you expect me to do?” demanded the brother.“You could have broken the bad news gradually,” grumbled Nasruddin. “First, you could have said the cat was playing on the roof. Later you could have called to say he fell off. The next morning you could have reported he had broken his leg. Then, when I came to get him, you could have told me he had passed away during the night. Well – you did not have it in you to be that civilized. Now tell me – how is Mama?”The brother pondered momentarily, then announced, “She is playing on the roof.”And your so-called saints are always playing on the roof – just killing themselves, gradually. They are suicidal people, your saints are suicidal people. Of course, not courageous enough to do it in one stroke. They do it slowly – starving, torturing the body, destroying the body by and by, in steps. Other suicidal people are more courageous; they do it in a single moment. And these people go on lingering, playing on the roof.Kabir is not against the body. He cannot be. He knows that the body is the temple of God. When you starve the body, you starve God himself. When you don’t allow rest to the body, you don’t allow rest to the God embodied there.Be worshipful; be respectful toward your body. God has chosen it to be his residence.And the body is a miracle; it is tremendously beautiful, tremendously complex. There is no other thing so complex, so subtle as the body. You don’t know anything about it. You have only looked at it in the mirror. You have never looked at it from the within; otherwise it is a universe in itself. That’s what the mystics have always been saying: that the body is a miniature universe. If you see it from the inside, it is so vast – millions and millions of cells, and each cell alive with its own life, and each cell functioning in such an intelligent manner that it seems almost incredible, impossible, unbelievable.You eat food, and the body transforms it into blood, bones, marrow. You eat food, and the body transforms it into consciousness, thought. A miracle is happening every moment. And each cell functions so systematically, in such an orderly way, in such an inner discipline, that it seems almost not possible – millions of cells. Seventy million cells are there in your single body – seventy million souls. Each cell has its own soul. And how they function! And how they function in such a coherence, in such a rhythm and harmony. And the same cells become the eyes and the same cells become the skin and the same cells become your liver and your heart and your marrow and your mind and your brain. The same cells specialize – then they become specialized cells – but they are the same cells. And how they move, and how subtly and silently they work.There is a possibility that cancer is nothing but some cell going insane inside you, who has lost track, who is no longer functioning intelligently and has gone berserk. There is a possibility that cancer is nothing but a cell gone out of tune. Otherwise millions and millions of cells are working in such a sane way that even your human society is nothing compared to it. Your society is almost insane – as if everybody is a cancer cell.In your body, God is manifested. You have to go withinwards. You have not yet acquainted yourself with this temple.Be strong – don’t be a weakling and don’t be a coward and don’t try to escape from the fact of your body. Rather, penetrate into it, go deep into it, go into the mystery of it.Be strong, and enter into your own body: Don’t look for God in the sky, look for God within your own body. Kabir is very realistic, very scientific.…and enter into your own body,for there your foothold is firm.…because there you are rooted. The body is your earth; you are rooted in the body. Your consciousness is like a tree in the body. Your thoughts are like fruits. Your meditations are like flowers. But you are rooted in the body – the body supports it. The body supports everything that you are doing. You love; the body supports. You hate; the body supports. You want to kill somebody; the body supports. You want to protect somebody; the body supports. In compassion, in love, in anger, in hate – in every way – the body supports you. You are rooted in the body; you are nourished by the body. Even when you start realizing who you are, the body supports you.Don’t kill the body. Don’t be a masochist, don’t torture it. It is your friend; it is not your enemy. Listen to its language, decode its language, and by and by, as you enter into the book of the body and you turn its pages, you will become aware of the whole mystery of life. Condensed, it is in your body. Magnified a millionfold, it is all over the world. But condensed in a small formula, it is there present in your body. Decode it there first. And there is no other way to decode it anywhere else.Be strong, and enter into your own body, for there your foothold is firm.Consider it well, O my heart! Go not elsewhere.Kabir says. “Put all imagination away,and stand fast in that which you are.”Listen to these beautiful and tremendously significant words:…O my heart! Go not elsewhere.There is no need to go anywhere. All is already given to you. You are a fool going anywhere and begging for it. God has made you from the very beginning as an emperor. He never creates beggars. If you have taken the role of a beggar, it is simply your responsibility and your stupidity.Kabir says: “Put all imagination away…”This idea that you are a beggar is also your imagination. And the next idea, when you get fed up with your begging, desires, ambitions, and you start reading the scriptures and you come across great sayings – “Aham Brahmasmi” – “I am God” and then you start imagining “I am God,” that too is imagination.Rather than imagining, drop all imagination, move into a state of no-imagination. That’s what he means: Go not elsewhere. Imagination is the way to go somewhere else. Listen to it: whenever you imagine, you go away from yourself. You fall asleep in the night – you fall asleep in the night here in Pune, and then in a dream you dream you are in New York, Timbuktu, Peking. It is imagination. In the morning you find yourself in Pune – you had never left Pune; the whole night you were here – but in your imagination you had gone to so many places.Exactly the same is the case: you have never left your divinehood, your godhood. You have never left that, there you are rooted. But in imagination sometimes you became an animal and sometimes you became a tree and sometimes you became a man and sometimes you become angry and sometimes you become very kind, sometimes you are a gentleman and sometimes you are a robber. You go on imagining. Sometimes you think you are a child and sometimes you think you are young and sometimes you think you are old, sometimes you think you are a man and sometimes you think you are a woman – but these are all imaginations.Deep down, you are only godliness and nothing else. These are all roles that you choose yourself. You create, you project, and then you enter into your own projections. “Go not elsewhere, O my heart! Consider it well.”Kabir says: “Put all imagination away…”That’s what meditation is all about: putting imagination away. But there are foolish people who bring their imagination to their meditation too. In meditation also they start imagining; they start imagining a thousand and one things. Somebody imagines he has seen Krishna, somebody imagines his kundalini is rising, somebody imagines his sahasrar is opening, somebody imagines something else, and people have different imaginations. These are all imaginations.When you feel your kundalini is rising, don’t get involved in it – let it rise. Remain aloof and detached, and say, “Okay, this must be some imagination.” You have heard so much about kundalini rising. You must be reading the books of Gopi Krishna – kundalini rising – and so many yogis are talking about it. It is in the air, so you become infected with the idea. Then you are waiting for it to rise. Not even simply waiting, but in a subtle way, trying to help it to rise. You are ready to support it. Just a slight thing – an ant crawling upon your spine – and it is there and suddenly you are full of energy. And you have imagined it and you have created it. Now it becomes again another ego trip.You have read in books that the third eye will open, so you are waiting for it, and when you close your eyes – consciously, unconsciously – you look for the third eye, and you start imagining. One day, you can see the light there – imagination is tremendously powerful. It can create whatsoever you want to create.Now look: in India, Jainas have existed as long as the Hindus – one of the oldest religions of the world is Jainism – but Mahavira never talked about kundalini, and the Jainas’ twenty-four tirthankaras never talked about kundalini. Down through the ages, down through the centuries, Jainas have not talked about kundalini, so it never rises in a Jaina saint – never – because they never read about it. So it never arises in a Jaina saint. Buddhists don’t believe in it, so it never rises. Christians, Mohammedans, never heard about it, so it never rises.Something else happens to Buddhists: chakras open. And, you will be surprised, when Hindus think about chakras, seven chakras open; when Buddhists, five – only five, two simply disappear – because Buddhists talk about five chakras, and Hindus talk about seven. And there are tantrikas who talk about nine!And you will be surprised, once a man came to me and he said, “Nine chakras have opened.” I said, “Wait. There are thirteen in all.” He said, “What? I have never heard about it. Buddhists talk about five, Hindus talk about seven, and tantrikas talk about nine. Thirteen?” I said, “I have discovered more.” And after three months he came and he said, “Right you were – now the thirteenth has also opened!”I had just put an idea in his mind – “thirteen.” And how can it be when he has arrived so far, to the ninth…he created four more. It is not so difficult.Forget all about your imaginations; otherwise you will be trapped by your mind. If you see something, remember, it is imagination. If you feel something, remember, it is imagination. If you experience something, remember, it is imagination. When the experiencer is left alone without any experience, then there is no imagination. When the knower is left and there is nothing to know, then there is no imagination. When there is pure awareness without any content, then there is truth. And Kabir insists: “Put all imagination away…”God is not an experience, God is not an object. God is the very experiencer within you. You cannot see God. God is the one who is seeing through you. You cannot see God; you cannot reduce him to an object. You cannot put him in front of you, otherwise God will be separate from you. No, God cannot be experienced. And those who claim that they have experienced God are imagining things, deluded. You cannot experience God. You can be God, but you cannot experience God – because you are God, how can you experience God?God is not separate from you. So when all imagination is brushed aside and only pure experiencing remains – just the light, not falling on anything, without any content, just you are, just isness, being…“…and stand fast in that which you are.”Don’t go anywhere in imagination. Stand fast in that which you are, and you will know what God is. Knowing yourself, you will know God. Knowing the knower, you will know God. God never comes as an object of knowledge. He is your consciousness, he is your very being.It is the mercy of my true guruthat has made me to know the unknown;I have learned from him how to walk without feet,to see without eyes, to hear without ears,to drink without mouth, to fly without wings;I have brought my love and my meditationinto the land where there is no sun and moon,nor day and night.It is the mercy of my true guru… Kabir says it is not by your effort that you attain to godliness. It is by the mercy of the true guru, it is by the mercy of the master. Kabir believes tremendously in the mercy of the master. Let us try to understand it.First, the word guru. Guru means one who has gravitation, around whom you suddenly feel as if you are being pulled. The guru is a tremendous magnet, with only one difference. There is a man who has charisma – you are pulled, but you are pulled towards him. That is the man of charisma. He may become a great leader, a great politician. Adolf Hitler had that charisma; millions of people were pulled towards him.Then what is the difference between a charismatic leader and a guru? The difference is tremendous. The difference is when you are pulled towards a guru you suddenly feel that you are being pulled inwards, not outwards.When you are pulled toward Kabir, Nanak, Buddha, you have a strange feeling. The feeling is that you are being pulled towards them and at the same time you are being pulled inwards – a very strange paradoxical phenomenon.The closer you come to your guru, the closer you come to yourself. The more you become attracted towards the guru, the more independent you become. The more you become surrendered to the guru, the more you feel that you have a freedom you never had before.So it is a very subtle difference. Remember it. If you are pulled towards a man and that pull creates a slavery, that man is not the guru. That man may have charisma, may have magnetic power – maybe his great intelligence, his physical beauty, or his sheer vitality pulls you – but you will be going away from yourself. It will be an infatuation. You will be obsessed with this man, and you will be off your center. Avoid such people; these are the greatest mischief-mongers in the world. Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander – these are the people who have created great havoc, because people feel tremendously attracted and people feel like surrendering.Remember, if your surrendering gives you freedom, then the man is a guru, a master. If your surrendering makes you a slave, makes you a robot as all the followers of Adolf Hitler were turned into robots, mechanical… They lost their souls; he simply exploited their souls. They lost all their awareness. This happens in the spiritual world also, because these charismatic people are everywhere. So make it a criterion inside: if by the presence of your guru, of your master, you are becoming more and more free, more and more independent; by surrendering, the paradox is happening – that by surrendering you are gaining more willpower, by surrendering you are becoming powerful not impotent – then you are near the guru.The guru is one who pulls you towards himself just to throw you back into your own being. He functions as a mediator; via the guru, you arrive to your own self. Because you cannot go directly, he helps you via him. But his whole effort is to make you yourself.A true guru will never impose himself upon you. He will never impose his lifestyle on you. He will never give you any rigid discipline. He will not force you, regiment you; he will not try to create soldiers of you. No, he will help you to become yourself. He will help you to be yourself, whatsoever that is. He will help to give you more and more understanding about yourself. You will become more and more centered, rooted, near him. More and more you will feel he has given you back to yourself – that which was lost or forgotten, he has made you aware of it.That’s what I say to my sannyasins: that I have nothing else to give to you. I give you back to yourself. You surrender to me, and I give it back to you.It is difficult for you to know yourself right now because you have lived in forgetfulness for so long. You need a shock. I give that shock to you, but I don’t give you any discipline. And I don’t enforce any style of my life on you, because each person has to find his own lifestyle and each person is so unique that each person has to live in his own way. Nobody else’s lifestyle is going to help you. You will become second-rate, secondhand; and God loves only firsthand people. Never be a carbon copy. If somewhere you are forced to become a carbon copy, avoid that place like the plague, escape from there.It is the mercy of my true guruthat has made me to know the unknown; I have learned from him how to walk without feet,to see without eyes, to hear without ears,to drink without mouth, to fly without wings…Because the inner world is without any senses – eyes are not there, ears are not there, mouth is not there, wings are not there. And this is the miracle of a master: that he helps you to see without the eyes. And it is simply a prasad, a gift. It is only out of his compassion that it happens. No effort is needed on your part, and no effort is needed on the master’s part. When the disciple is surrendered and the master is really a master, it simply happens on its own accord.When the disciple is surrendered and the master is ready, there is a communion, and something jumps from the soul of the master to the disciple – an exchange of energy, a shock, an electroshock – and suddenly you become aware of your own reality.I have brought my love and my meditationinto the land where there is no sun and moon,nor day and night.And now Kabir says, “By the mercy of my master I have come to a point where I am neither a man nor a woman, nor a sun nor a moon, where all duality is lost, night and day are lost, summer and winter no longer exist, God and the Devil are gone. I have come to where only one exists: the nondual, the advait, the one. I have come to a union.” This is the meaning of the word yoga: to come to a union. I have fallen into unity with the whole.Without eating, I have tasted of the sweetness of nectar,and without water, I have quenched my thirst.Where there is the response of delight,there is the fullness of joy.This is of great significance. If you are delighted, joy will descend on you. Delight is human, joy is divine. When you are delighted, you will feel great joy descending on you.That’s why I go on insisting sing, dance, delight, celebrate. That’s what you can do. Joy is not within your hands. You can delight in small things – a flower, a bird singing, a beautiful child, a beautiful woman. You can delight in small things – in food, in sleep, in the morning breeze, the sunset, in the stars. You can delight in small things.If you can delight in small things, suddenly you will see great joy is descending on you. Joy comes from the whole; delight creates the capacity to receive it. To remain delighted is enough to become a religious person. If you can celebrate continuously, that’s enough – then God is going to descend on you. You are creating the receptivity. The response of delight creates the heart, makes it ready, makes it receptive, opens your doors.There is a great saying of Jesus, incomparable. Jesus says, “Those who have, to them more will be given; and those who have not, even that which they have will be taken away from them.” A very absurd-looking saying: those who have, more will be given to them. Does not look very democratic, does not look very communistic, socialistic. Looks very anti-Communist. Those who have will be given more? This is unjust. And those who have not, even that which they have will be taken away. But the saying is of tremendous significance, one of the most secret sayings. Yes I also repeat it – and all the mystics have said that in different ways; that’s what Kabir is saying.If you are delighted, joy will be given to you. If you have a little delight, more joy will descend on you. If you are silent, more silence will come to you. If you have, more will be given to you; if you don’t have, even that which you have will be taken away.Before whom can that joy be uttered?And that joy is such that when it descends it is inexpressible. Delight can be expressed: you can dance, you can sing, you can hug, you can hold hands. Delight is human and can be expressed. Joy is superhuman and impossible to express.Kabir says: “The guru is great beyond words, and great is the good fortune of the disciple.”Yes, to become a disciple is to be fortunate. To find a master is the greatest blessing that can happen to a man on the earth. It is very rare to find a master and it is very rare, when you have found one, to surrender to him. But if it happens at all, the greatest thing has happened. More than that is not possible in life. Let me explain it to you, what the master exactly means.God is far away – just a word, we have never experienced him. The master or guru functions as a midway station. God is superhuman, far away, difficult to conceive of. The guru is human, and yet divine. The guru is like us, and yet not like us. He is a bridge between man and God; he is just on the middle point. Exactly, the guru balances existence. The disciple is man, God is not man; the guru is both. On one side, he belongs to humanity; on another side, he belongs to God. One of his hands is with the humanity; his other hand is in the hands of God. He becomes the bridge. That’s why we call the guru a god-man or a man-god. That’s why Jesus goes on saying, again and again, “I am the son of God, and I am the son of man.” He is a guru, he is a master.It is very difficult for Christians to explain why he says again and again, “I am the son of man.” It would have been more logical if he had said only one thing: “I am the son of God.” But why does he say, “I am the son of man”? If he is the son of God, then he is no longer part of humanity – then he is as far away as God himself, then what is the point of his coming to the world? It is meaningless. He had to become the son of man – only then does he relate with us. Then he is a relative, then he is a brother, then he is part of our family.That is the mystery of the guru. The guru is more mysterious than God. God is simple. Man is simple. The guru is very mysterious – because paradoxes meet in him, contradictions meet in him. The guru is a meeting place of man and God, a crossroads, a sangam, a meeting of the two rivers, of two different dimensions.The seeker is ignorance; God is knowing, wisdom. The seeker is darkness; God is light. The guru is a twilight.In India we pray at the time of twilight. The Sanskrit word for twilight is sandhya, and by and by it became synonymous with prayer. Twilight is prayer, the moment to pray. Twilight is representative of the guru. In India the sayings of the saints are called sandhya bhasha, “the language of the twilight.” They speak in metaphors which belong to two worlds: to the human and to the divine.There is a story about Kabir that when he arrived home and faced God, he was very puzzled because the guru was standing there with God. He was very puzzled about whom he should bow down to first, the priority – to God, or to the guru? And then he touched the feet of the guru and said, “Because without you, I would have never known God – so you come first. Through you I have known, so you come first. God can wait, because without you there was no God for me. It is only through you he has become a reality. I bow down to you.”Kabir says: “The guru is great beyond words,and great is the good fortune of the disciple.”There are millions of people; very few become seekers. There are thousands of seekers; very few become disciples. To become a disciple is a rare privilege because only by becoming a disciple does one become connected, linked, with a master. Then your destiny is not alone, then your destiny is linked with a master.People come to me and they say, “We don’t want to take sannyas. Won’t you help us?” I say, “I will help you, but you will not be able to receive it. My help will not be of much use, because you will not be there to receive it.” By becoming a sannyasin, you become response-able.And the word responsible I use in the literal sense: response-ability. By becoming a sannyasin, you become response-able toward me, you become receptive toward me, your heart opens, you can trust me, and you become vulnerable. And then, only then, I can shower on you and I can lead you to the unknown – the land where there is no moon and no sun and no day and no night; and the land where there’s no space and no time; and the land where you will be flying without wings and you will be seeing without eyes; and the land where nectar is flowing but no mouth is needed to drink of it.That is possible only if you have taken the jump of disciplehood. Yes, blessed is the man who is courageous enough to become a disciple.It needs courage, it needs guts, it needs tremendous willpower to surrender. Never think for a single moment that it is weaklings who surrender. Never. Weaklings cannot surrender. Cowards cannot surrender. It is only very, very strong people who can surrender. Surrender is possible only if you are very grounded, centered: you know that you can surrender and yet you will not disappear into the surrender; you know that you can surrender and yet surrender is going to bring freedom to you.Enough for today.

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Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 01-10Category: Kabir

Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,The Current of 18th December has an interview with Dr. Abraham T. Kovoor, eighty-year-old rationalist and atheist from Sri Lanka, in which he refers to and criticizes you. What do you have to say about it?Dr. Abraham T. Kovoor seems to be a nice old man, but a little senile. Senile, I call him, because a person cannot be both together – a rationalist and an atheist. It is impossible. Either you can be a rationalist or you can be an atheist. A rationalist cannot believe in anything. A rationalist cannot have any belief – in God or in no God. A rationalist suspends all belief. A rationalist can only be an agnostic; he can only say, “I do not know.”The moment you say “I know,” you are no longer a rationalist. The moment you say “I know that God does not exist,” you are as irrational as the person who says God exists. You have lost track.How can you say God is not? The whole existence has not yet been measured. There are depths upon depths, there is much still unknown. A little is known; far more remains unknown and unknowable. How can you say dogmatically that God is not?A rationalist will avoid all temptation of dogmatism. He will say, “I do not know.” Socrates was a rationalist, Buddha was a rationalist, Nagarjuna was a rationalist, but they were not atheists. Atheism means you are against theism; you have chosen a belief. To believe in God is a belief; to believe in no God is again a belief. You remain a believer.To be a rationalist is very difficult, arduous, because man wants to cling to some belief.Now this T. Kovoor is eighty years old. For eighty years continuously he has been traveling around, arguing, saying to people that God does not exist. This seems to be absurd. If God does not exist, he does not exist. Why bother? And why waste your precious life for something which does not exist? It is absurd, it is irrational. But if you look deep into it, he is clinging to this no-belief. This disbelief has become his practice, his religion. Now he cannot simply rest; he has to argue – argue against God, argue against religion, try to prove that God does not exist. For what? What is the point?Your precious life is wasted. And he believes that he has only one life; after death there will be no life. Then this is foolhardy, then this is simply stupid – to waste your life in the service of something which does not exist. And you don’t have a soul, he says, and there is going to be no more life, this is the only life there is. And he has devoted his whole life to nonsense. How can he be a rationalist?A rationalist will say that life is mysterious. We are trying to know, we have come to know a little, but much more is still left; so the conclusion cannot be decided right now. We will have to wait till the very end. When everything is known, only then can we come to a conclusion.A rationalist has to live without a conclusion. A rationalist has to live without a philosophy, without a religion.T. Kovoor has made a religion out of his atheism. He is not a rationalist, because rationalism and atheism cannot go together. That’s why I say he must be suffering from senile dementia.The second thing I would like to say is that he is senile and yet juvenile, too, because atheism is a phase of adolescence. Every intelligent person becomes atheistic at a certain age. Near about the fourteenth year, everybody becomes atheistic. That’s a natural part of growth because the child needs to say no. It is a psychological need. Up to the age of fourteen, the child has lived protected by the mother, the father, the family; now he wants to be himself. And he wants to say no because only by saying no can he feel himself to be free, can he have a sense of freedom. He starts saying no to everything. If the father says, “Don’t smoke!” he will smoke, because that is the only way – to deny the father is the only way to grow. If the mother says, “Don’t do this!” he has to do it; it is a must. If he does not do it he will never have any backbone. He will be impotent. He will not have any power. He will be unable to define himself, who he is. He has to say no.And when you say no to your father, you say no to the ultimate father, naturally – it is a corollary. The child has to deny everything to get free. He has to kick at everything that his parents believe, that the society believes. This is natural and good.If you have never been an atheist you will never really become a theist, because one who has not said no, how can he say yes? His yes will be impotent. Your yes is meaningful only when you have said no.But it is a phase and, naturally, people grow out of it. Atheism is a phase. After atheism comes theism. Theism is also a phase. First you say no to feel yourself, then you become a hard ego. Then it hurts. Then you have to say yes to relax. First you say no to become an ego, strong enough to be on your own, then one day you feel that it is now hurting, it has become too hard. You have to drop it; you have to say yes. You become a theist.But, to me, religion starts only when you have dropped both – no and yes both. Then you come to silence, you don’t say anything. A really religious person is not a theist. He has simply become silent. The no is gone, the yes is gone.I myself was an atheist – and I was stubbornly atheist. I was thrown out of one college just because of that, expelled, because the professor said, “It is impossible to teach this boy!” My no was so big that even for ordinary, small things I would not say yes. If the teacher asked me, “Can’t you see these walls?” I would say, “I can see them, but I don’t know whether they are or they are not, because in dreams I see walls and they are not.” And he would ask, “Can’t you see I am standing here?” I would say, “I see you, but I cannot trust whether you are there or not because once I saw you in my dream and in the morning I found you were not there.”He got very puzzled and confused, and I confused him so much that after eight months of effort he simply resigned from the college. He said, “I cannot come. This boy is going to drive me crazy. Either he has to be expelled or I have to be relieved of my duties.” Of course, I was expelled from the college. I had not done anything wrong, but I enjoyed no-saying tremendously. I loved it.Then, of course, naturally I grew out of it, because the purpose was fulfilled. Then I became a theist. But one day I found even the purpose of yes-saying was fulfilled. I am now neither: I am neither an atheist nor a theist. I am simply here, without any yes, without any no. I am tremendously silent. I don’t divide into this and that, into yes and no, into for and against.That why I say Dr. Kovoor must be suffering from senility and still he is a juvenile. He has become stuck at the age of fourteen. His physical age must be eighty, but his psychological age cannot be more than fourteen.And I say it from my own experience. I have passed through these phases. His psychological age cannot be more than fourteen. And that’s how things are: many people never grow beyond the fourteenth year. They remain adolescent, juvenile. Somehow it happens that by the time you become sexually mature, whatsoever is in your mind becomes fixed, becomes imprinted deeply. Fourteen is the age when you become sexually mature. Ordinarily what happens is that you become stuck there. Whatsoever your ideology, you become stuck with it; then you don’t change. If you are a Hindu, you become a Hindu and you remain a Hindu. It is good to be born as a Hindu, but to die as a Hindu is ugly. It is good to be born as a Christian, but to die as a Christian? That means your whole life has been a wastage. One should grow out of all confinements – theistic, atheistic.Dr. Kovoor is not a rationalist, otherwise he would have grown up. Irrationalism has two alternatives: theism, atheism. A rationalist can only be an agnostic – like Nagarjuna, Buddha, Socrates. They don’t say anything about God; they keep quiet. If you ask Buddha, “Does God exist?” he keeps quiet, he does not answer, because to say yes is wrong, to say no is wrong. The question is so vast it cannot be contained in either yes or no. God means the whole existence. How can you deny and how can you affirm?Dr. Kovoor must be having a very childish concept of God – a great king, emperor of the world, sitting somewhere in heaven on a high golden throne, ruling from there. This is stupid, the very idea is stupid, and he has been fighting against this stupid idea. When the idea itself is stupid, your fight is meaningless. And he has been fighting with dummies, and by fighting with dummies he has become well-known and is thought to be a great rationalist. He is not, nothing of the sort, not a rationalist at all.He has been fighting with very ordinary minds – for example, Satya Sai Baba; he is an opponent of Satya Sai Baba. Now Satya Sai Baba is neither a mystic nor a philosopher, just an ordinary magician. You can demolish him. And Kovoor goes on challenging him and he never answers. It is very simple to fight with Satya Sai Baba. Kovoor has never fought against a really rationalist mind.A rationalist mind is sharp like a sword. A rationalist mind means: I cannot believe in anything unless I have experienced it, and I cannot disbelieve in anything unless I have experienced it. Has he experienced God? Has he ever meditated? Has he ever gone into the inner lab? Has he ever known a single moment of no-thought? Then all his assertions are just meaningless.Have you tried to know God? You are fighting with ordinary people, whose beliefs is just mumbo jumbo. You can fight with them and you can prove to them that their argument is not right, that their belief is not right. An ordinary man has no foundation; it is very easy to demolish his arguments. In fact he has no arguments.But if you are really a rationalist, then you have to go into the experimentation of it. You should move into yoga, you should move into meditation, you should go deep into ecstasy, and from there you should assert whether God is or not.This is one of the most precious experiences of history, that whosoever has gone withinward has become a mystic. Nobody has gone in and remained a non-mystic. Without any exception, whenever a person has meditated, he has felt the very heart, the very core of existence.God is not a person. God is just a symbol to show a certain quality in existence. For example, if there is no God it simply means life is meaningless. If there is no God it simply means this cosmos is not a cosmos, it is a chaos. If there is no God it simply means that life is accidental, there is no reason for it to be there at all. God is a symbol. To say “God is” is just another way of saying that life is meaningful. To say “God is” is another way of saying that life has poetry in it, music in it, coherence, harmony. To say that “God is” is to say that existence cares about you, it is responsive toward you, you are not uncared for – the universe is not indifferent toward you. The universe loves you, the universe feels you, the universe is a mother, is a father. These are symbolic ways of saying the same thing: that God is.The word God is not metaphysical. The word God is just poetic. And there is no need to argue against poetry. Poetry can only be understood. Poetry is not an argument, it is not a syllogism. You cannot prove or disprove it.To say “God is” simply means that we are not in a world of strangers, that we are not strangers here, that we are at home, that we can relax and rest, that there is beauty, that there is love, that there is a possibility to grow. The moment you say there is no God, what are you saying? You are saying now there is no possibility to grow. You are stuck; there is nowhere to go.If you are really a rationalist you will have to commit suicide. A real rationalist person cannot live. Why? For what? I would like to ask Dr. Kovoor why he is living at all. There is no God, there is no soul, there is no meaning, there is no love, there is no poetry; why do you go on dragging yourself? For what? Why are you burdening the earth?In the same interview, to which I am coming, the reporter asks, “Dr. Kovoor, you are against the godmen and you are against religion. Your life must be in danger. Have you ever been threatened?” And he says, “No, I have never been threatened, but I always take precautions.” For what? If you die nothing dies, because in the first place there was no soul. If you die nothing is lost. You were just a coincidence, an accident. If Dr. Kovoor dies, nothing dies.With God, all values disappear, all beauty, all ecstasy, all love, all significance. Why are you taking precautions, for what?He says, “I don’t believe in any existence after death.” Have you known death? Have you experienced death? Without experiencing death, how can you say that there is no existence beyond death? This is not very rational. This is very childish. This is very mediocre, not even intelligent. Unless you have passed through death, how can you assert that there is no life beyond death? You can only say, “I don’t know.” You cannot say, “I know there is no life.”And if there is no life after death, how can there be life before death? If there is no life after death, then there was no life before birth. There is no life before birth, there is no life after death; just suddenly between birth and death life exists? – out of nothing, out of the blue? This is not very rational. For something to exist, there has to be a continuity.The Pune river exists. You cannot say, “Before it enters Pune it is not; after it leaves Pune it is not. It just exists in Pune, suddenly.” You will be thought to be a madman. If the river enters Pune, it must have existed before Pune; otherwise from where will it enter Pune? If it leaves Pune, it must go somewhere.The existential remains existential. There is no existence coming out of nonexistence, and existence cannot go into nonexistence. You can ask the physicists. They have not yet been able to destroy a single atom. You cannot destroy anything – and you cannot create anything either. You cannot destroy a grain of sand. Science has progressed so far, so much, but we are incapable of creating a single grain of sand or of destroying a single grain of sand. You can grind it, you can change the form, but it will remain in another form. Only the form changes; life goes on.And he says, “I believe there is going to be no life after death.” And who is this who is saying all this nonsense? Who is this? Matter cannot talk. And who is taking precautions? Life must be interested in protecting itself, life must have an intrinsic mechanism to protect itself. For what? The seed protects itself; the hard crust that exists around the seed is a protection. It protects itself so that it can grow into a tree. You protect yourself to grow. If there is no growth, then why protect yourself? Why not go and jump into the sea? And in Ceylon the sea is very close and beautiful. Why not jump into the sea and finish it? For what are you protecting yourself and taking precautions?Even in an atheist like Kovoor, life wants to live – a tremendous desire to live. For what? If the desire exists there must be a meaning to it. And the meaning is that life in itself is not the end. Life is just a passage. Life in itself is just the journey, not the goal. Life in itself is just a process of reaching somewhere.A rationalist, if he is really a rationalist, has to commit suicide. He has nothing else to do here. But Kovoor is not a rationalist. He is atheistic, that’s true.And atheism is the lowest form of religion. Why do I call it the lowest form of religion? Because it is the least productive, the least creative. Have you watched? Down through the centuries, theistic religion has been so productive, so creative – Khajuraho, Ajanta, Ellora, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, the great churches and cathedrals, the great temples of the East, the great statues of Buddha. All painting, all sculpture, all music, all drama, all poetry, has come out of theistic religion. Atheists have not created anything. That’s why I call it the lowest form of philosophy. They have not created anything; they have been the most unfertile, impotent people. They have not created any book that compares to the Gita or the Bible or the Koran. They have not created anything whatsoever. Their whole effort has been this: to state that there is no God. Is it enough: just to go on declaring there is no God? They have not challenged the intelligence of man.From Charvak to Dr. Kovoor, their whole history is the history of impotence. All that is beautiful has come out of the religious people, the theistic people.There are three hundred religions in the world – so much variety, so many possibilities. Atheism is just monotonous. It does not even have another variety. You cannot choose; you don’t have anything to choose from. Atheism is just atheism.And Dr. Kovoor has not said a single thing that is original – eighty years of sheer wastage. Whatsoever Charvak said three thousand years before, the atheists have just been repeating. They are parrots. In religion there is tremendous variety. Mahavira says something, Buddha says something else, Jesus still something else, Mohammed brings another dimension, Moses opens another door, and Zarathustra is calling you to see from his eyes. Tremendous variety, so many dimensions, so many possibilities challenge humanity and bring out the best in you.Atheism is just uncreative. In fact it has to be so because there can be no creation out of a negative attitude. The negative attitude is more like death than like life. “No” is death; “yes” is life. When you say yes, doors open; when you say no, all doors close. Religion has been very, very productive, and still goes on producing, still is creative, still is not exhausted and spent. And atheism? It has never been alive, a dead philosophy, repetitive.And the beauty, or the irony of it is that if atheists disappear, theism can survive because it does not depend on atheists. Just look at it. If there is no atheist, there is no problem for one who believes in God, but if there is no believer in God, atheism will disappear. It is dependent; it has no independence. If all the world drops religious attitudes and everybody says, “Yes, we don’t believe in God,” what will happen to atheism? It is a negative attitude; it depends on the theist. The theist said “God is” and the atheist said “God is not.” His whole energy comes from the theist. If theists disappear, atheism disappears, simply, without leaving a trace.The no cannot exist without the yes, but the yes can exist without the no. That’s why I say yes is powerful. It has its own life; the no has no life of its own.And it is only stupid people who become entangled with the no so much – people who cannot create. And it is very easy to say no, remember, because nothing is involved in saying no. To say yes is dangerous because then you will have to commit. If you say no, there is no commitment, there is no exploration, you don’t go on any adventure. If you say yes, then the journey starts and you move in danger. It is arduous. A yes-sayer has to go to explore the unmeasured. The no-sayer has stopped himself – he is not going anywhere, he is stuck, he becomes stale and stagnant. He stinks.Now, the interview proper. The Current asked where he will be after death. Kovoor said, “I will not be anywhere… I do not believe that I have a soul.”I remember, once Mulla Nasruddin invited his friends to his house. In some moment of excitement in the coffeehouse he was bragging about his generosity, and then somebody said, “Mulla Nasruddin, if you are so generous, why don’t you invite us someday?”He said, “Come right now, all of you.”Thirty, forty people followed him. As he reached closer his home, he became afraid of the wife. He said, “Now there is going to be trouble.” He asked his friends, “Wait. You know how things go between a husband and a wife. First let me go in and persuade her and let me release the news by and by. Forty people, suddenly – she may drop dead. Wait.” So they waited.He went in and told his wife, “A few people are waiting outside. Simply go and tell them that Mulla Nasruddin is not at home.”She said, “What are you saying? And you have just come with them! And I have seen you coming!”He said, “Forget about that; now this seems to be the only way out of it. Go and just tell them that he is not at home.”So she went and she said, “What are you doing here? For whom are you waiting? Mulla is not at home.”They said, “Are you kidding? He came with us, and he just went in, and we are watching the door and he has not gone out. He must be in!”Now the wife and the friends started arguing, and Mulla forgot. He came out and he said, “What do you mean? He may have gone out from the back door!”Dr. Kovoor says, “I believe that I have no soul.” Who is this declaring “I am not”? Even to declare “I am not,” you have to be there. To believe or not to believe is not the point. To declare belief or unbelief, you have to be there.If there is no soul, then go and ask the same question to a rock. Ask the rock, “Is there a soul or not?” and the rock is not going to say, “I don’t believe in any soul.” The rock will not say anything; there is nobody to deny or affirm. In fact, you cannot deny yourself. It is not possible. You cannot say “I am not.” It is self-contradictory.He says, “I will not be anywhere.” It is impossible not to be anywhere. You will be somewhere. You are somewhere, Dr. Kovoor. Your body may dissolve into matter, your mind may dissolve into the atmosphere – but everything that is in you will be there. Nothing will be lost.And this concept of soul is just a symbol. It simply shows that you are a unity – body, mind, and something beyond it, because you can watch your own thoughts. Who is the watcher? You cannot be totally identified with your mind. You can see a thought entering in the mind and moving. Who is this seer?He has never tried meditation, it seems. A simple technique would be of tremendous help to him. Although he is eighty, it is never too late. A little technique of just sitting silently and watching will make him aware that the body is there as the outer shell, then thoughts are there as the inner shell, and there is at the very hub just a witnessing, just awareness. That awareness is soul. That awareness will be somewhere, because it is somewhere right now. It cannot disappear; nothing ever disappears. Forms change; the reality remains. But he says, “I do not believe…”That’s what I mean when I say he is not a rationalist. A rationalist will never talk in terms of belief or no belief. He will talk in terms of experience. He can only say, “I have not experienced yet, so how can I say without experiencing whether there is a soul or not? And I am not dead yet, so how can I say?”Socrates was dying, and somebody asked, “Are you not afraid, Socrates?”He said, “Why should I be afraid? Because I don’t know what is going to happen? The first thing: maybe the atheists are right. Listen,” he says, “perhaps atheists are right and I will simply disappear. Then there will be nobody left, so why fear? For whom to fear? There cannot be any anguish for me, because I will not be there. If atheists are right, then I will not be, and when I am not, fear cannot exist. I will not be tortured. Or maybe theists are right and I may continue. And if I continue, then why fear? I will be there. So I will see what happens, but I have not yet died. Wait, let me die. Only then will I know whether I survive or not.”This is pure rationalism. A rationalist cannot assert such things, that “I don’t believe in a soul.”Then, The Current asked him, “Does Osho have a soul?” It amused me very much. How can you ask somebody else about my soul? And he could not even gather courage to say, “How can I know about Osho? He may have, may not have.” What he answered is sheer nonsense. He said, “I do not know much about Osho.” As if by knowing much about me he will know whether I have a soul or not. Even if you live with me for a hundred years and you know much about me, you will not know me. Knowing much about me will not help because there is no way to enter into me, you can only watch my behavior. You cannot see me; you cannot enter into my interiority, into my innerness – and that innerness is what soul is.Matter has only an outside; matter has no inside. Listen to it attentively: matter has no inside. You can break matter and you will find the same matter inside that you found on the outside. It has no inside; matter only has an outside.But a man has an inside. I say “I love you.” You can cut me and try to find out where love is, and you will not find it. Of course Dr. Kovoor talks, says things, asserts, makes statements, but if we cut him we will not find any thinking inside, no thoughts, not even this thought that “I don’t believe in the soul.” When you cut a man, the inside disappears. When the man was there in his organic unity, the inside was there. The inside is what we mean by “soul.”How can you know my inside? Only I can know it. He does not even know his own inside; he has never been there. He is an extrovert; he has never entered his own temple. He has never come to his own innermost shrine. He has not encountered himself.And he says, “I do not know much about Osho.” That’s why he cannot say whether Osho has a soul or not. Knowing “about” won’t help. Unless you know yourself, it is not going to help. I can say that Dr. Kovoor has a soul because I have come to know my own soul. In that very recognition I have recognized the soul of everybody. Notwithstanding what he says, I can say he has a soul, because I have come to know my soul. I don’t know much about him either, I have only seen his photographs, but I can say he has a soul, because his eyes show fire, sincerity. He is a sincere man – more sincere than your Satya Sai Babas. That much I have to concede: he is a sincere man.Sincerity shows his soul. He is an honest man. He has not deceived anybody. He may be deceived himself; that is another matter. He is deluded; that is another matter. But he has never deceived anybody. He has a soul, a very sincere, religious soul.But I can say that, not because I know much about him, but because I know myself – that’s why I say it. He cannot say anything about me because he does not even know himself.It is not a question of knowing about me. If you ask me about somebody in China whose name I have never heard, if you say, “A certain man, Ching-chang, does he have he a soul?” I will say, “Yes, if he exists, he has a soul.” I have not even heard his name, and I don’t know whether Ching-chang can be a Chinese name or not – it looks Chinese – but if Ching-chang exists, he must have a soul. That much is absolutely certain. It is not certain because I know anything about Ching-chang. I have not even seen his photograph, I have never heard about him, I have just invented the name here, now. But I can say he has a soul – if he exists at all – because I know: I know myself. Knowing myself, I have known all human beings. Knowing myself, I have known the whole of life. Not only do I say that you have a soul and that Dr. Kovoor has a soul, I say trees have a soul, and animals and birds.And I say to you the whole of existence is full of soul. That’s what we mean when we say “God is”: existence is full of soul. Existence has an interiority; it is not just the surface. It has a depth, it has meaning. It is not a chaos; it is a cosmos. It has a destiny, a direction. It is going toward a certain fulfillment. It is moving toward an orgasm, ecstasy.And then he goes on saying – which was not asked, hence I call him senile – “But the cult spread through him shows the mental derangement of his devotees. It is as bad as the Hare Krishnas.” Now the question was about me, not about my devotees. A rationalist will stick to the question. There is no need to go to my devotees. He does not know much about me, and I think he does not know anything about my devotees, about my disciples. He may have heard some rumor, but that is not the way of a rationalist. He should come here, he should see my devotees. And seeing from the outside won’t help much. He should dance with them. It will be a beautiful scene – eighty-year-old Dr. Kovoor dancing, Kundalini-ing.And he says that “the cult spread through him shows the mental derangement of his devotees.” This shows many things. First, he believes that the mind can be in a derangement. That means he believes there is a certain arrangement of the mind. Arrangement brings soul back; arrangement brings God back. If you say the mind is deranged you accept some criterion, you say that there is a certain way in which the mind is arranged rightly – otherwise you cannot say this is deranged. You have a certain concept of how the mind should be. If you have some concept of how the mind should be, you have brought a value in from the back door. This cannot be allowed for a rationalist.How should the mind be? Harmonious? Loving? Compassionate? Intelligent? How should the mind be? And if there is a “should,” then existence is not accidental. Then you have a value. And if you have a “should” about the human mind, why should you not have a “should” about the whole?He is not a rationalist at all, poor fellow. He does not know anything about rationalism. He has not done his homework. He may have collected a little bit from here and there, but he does not know the intensity of a rationalist’s intelligence.A rationalist is more like Sartre; he will say everything is meaningless. A rationalist will be more like Samuel Beckett – absurd. Samuel Beckett’s plays go on, move in absurdity, because the whole of life is absurd. There is no possibility of any coherence, meaning. All is mad. So somebody asks you about A and you talk about B; that too is okay because there is no way to know what is okay. There is no way to judge what is what. It is a chaos.Samuel Beckett’s famous play, you may have heard of it or read it, is called Waiting for Godot. Two vagabonds wait under a tree; they wait for Godot. Nobody knows who this Godot is – it is “Chang-ching.” The word looks like God – Godot – but it is just apparent. Nobody knows exactly. They also don’t know, but they wait – and every day they wait.Again in the morning one says to the other, “What do you think? Will he be coming today?” and the other says, “I hope so. He should be coming by now. We have waited long enough.”By the evening they become tired and one says, “It is too much now – enough is enough. Why should we continue waiting?” and the other says, “Yes, why should we continue waiting?” Then one says, “Now we should stop waiting; we should go,” and the other says, “Okay, we should go.”But they never go. And nobody raises the question “We decide to go but we never go.” It is an absurd world.Somebody asked Samuel Beckett, “Who is this Godot?” He said, “If I knew, I would have written it in the play myself.”And this way it continues: Godot never comes. Abruptly the play starts, abruptly it ends. And those two persons go on waiting. For whom are they waiting?All waiting is hopeless. If you are really a rationalist, then you cannot hope. If you hope, you bring God in. God is the hope, soul is the hope, the possibility of growth is the hope.Now, he says my disciples are mentally deranged. Then he must have some criterion. What criterion is there? Is Dr. Kovoor the criterion? If people are like him, then are they rightly arranged? Then he seems to be the ultimate value. Then Mahavira was deranged because he walked naked; Kovoor has never walked naked. Then Buddha was deranged because he left his kingdom and beautiful women and a child and all the pleasures – abnormal, deranged. Then Jesus was deranged because he was saying that he was the son of God. What nonsense! God does not exist, so how can his son exist? He must be hallucinating.One of the very famous thinkers of the West, Albert Schweitzer, wrote a book on Jesus to protect him against the psychoanalysts’ attack, because Schweitzer was afraid that sooner or later the psychoanalysts were going to say that Jesus is deranged, is mad. In 1914 he wrote a book to protect Jesus. He tried hard, but he could not come to a positive conclusion. The conclusion that he arrived at was this: that there are not enough facts to prove that Jesus was mad. This was the conclusion – of a follower! Not enough proof to prove that Jesus was mad – very negative! He says we cannot prove that he was insane, but we also cannot prove that he was sane. This is even worse. At least if you call a man insane, something is settled. Now this is putting him in limbo, hanging in between – sane or insane? And who is the criterion and how do you create the criterion?My disciples are the sanest people possible on the earth because they are not accumulating insanity. That is the whole secret of catharsis. He must have heard that my disciples scream and shriek and shout and dance and go mad. He should come!Madness is when it is beyond your control. Have you watched my disciples meditating, shrieking, shouting, going crazy? Then suddenly Chaitanya orders them, “Stop!” And they stop. Go to a madhouse and say loudly, “Stop!” Nobody will stop. That’s how you judge madness. This is a willed madness; they are in control. They are doing it; it is not happening to them. They are going into it. They are releasing the pent-up energy.People go mad because they don’t release. Then the energy goes on accumulating and it becomes too much. One day it explodes. Then Chaitanya will go on saying, “Stop! Stop!” and you will not stop, because you cannot stop; now it is beyond you.If Kovoor goes mad he will not listen to “Stop!” If my disciples go mad, if somebody comes and says, “Stop!” they will immediately stop. It is within their power. It is catharsis; it is not madness.And it seems he has not heard anything about modern trends in psychotherapy. He does not know anything about Arthur Janov’s primal therapy. He does not know anything about encounter, growth groups, humanistic trends. He does not know anything about psychodrama. He has not heard anything. He is a very, very ancient, dead man. He is not contemporary at all. It seems he has not read anything other than Charvak and Epicurus and Karl Marx. He is out of date.Dr. Kovoor, you are dead! You don’t know anything about what is happening in the world; you are not a contemporary.These people here around me are going to be the sanest people in the world because they are not accumulating. They have come to know a secret: how to release and how to drop everything that goes on accumulating inside, and always remain virgin, fresh, young – sane. Sanity does not have anything to do with control. Sanity is a natural state. If you control anger, one day suddenly you will find it has overpowered you. Release it.I believe in release, in catharsis, because I believe that is the only way to remain sane. To remain sane in an insane world is a difficult thing because people all around are stuffed with all sorts of illnesses – anger, sex, jealousy, possessiveness, hatred. They have been taught to control themselves from their very childhoods. They have become just like volcanoes; they are sitting on the volcano. People are not sane; people are insane.Animals are saner, trees are saner – and I am teaching you to be natural. And to be natural is to be in tune with existence. To be natural, to be spontaneous, is to be religious.And he says, “It is as bad as the Hare Krishnas.” No, there too he is not right. It is worse than Hare Krishna. The Hare Krishna people are very simple, almost simpletons. They don’t know anything about life. Prabhupad has attracted the lowest, the stupidest people of the world, foolish people. No, sir, this is worse than that. These people around me are very intelligent. These are not simpletons; these are very intelligent people.And Hare Krishna is not going to bring any revolution in the world. It is traditional. What I am doing is worse, Dr. Kovoor. It is going to bring a tremendous revolution in the world. It is going to shatter your old world completely. I am creating atomic explosions – sooner or later they will explode all over the world. They will shatter your whole society, your whole so-called civilization. They will shatter the whole past. These are totally new beings.I am helping a new world to be reborn, a fresh consciousness, a new consciousness.Hare Krishna people are nothing. Maybe a sort of entertainment, amusing, eccentric, but they have no future. They have a past. My people have no past; they have a future.And the future is always dangerous – because if the future is allowed, the past has to be dropped. Only by dying to the past does one become available to the future.I would like Dr. Kovoor to come. Come here, taste some energy from my people – although it is very late, but better late than never. If you can have a taste of something of the beyond before you die, it will be good. Sooner or later, Dr. Kovoor, you will be dying. It is better to have some preparation. It is better to be ready for an after-death life. It is possible.And when I say it is possible, I am not talking theoretically. I am a very practical man, down-to-earth. I am a Jew! – I mean business. If you come here and allow me to dismantle you a little, to destroy you a little, I can create you again. This is a promise.The second question:Osho,You say it can't be said. And somewhere it is written: what can't be said can't be whistled either.Wrong, because I am whistling it every day. It can’t be said, but it can be whistled. And you know it too, that when you can’t say something, you find ways to whistle it. You want to say to some woman, “I love you,” and you can’t say it; then what do you do? You hug her. It is a way of whistling. You hold her hands, you look into her eyes, helpless, knowing well that you can’t say it, but still you impart, you commune. I am doing it every day.Yes, that is right. Truth cannot be said. Nobody has ever said it, nobody is ever going to say it. By its very definition it is ineffable, inexpressible – but it can be whistled! Buddha whistled, Mahavira whistled, Jesus, Zarathustra, Mohammed… I am whistling it every day.Of course I have to whistle it again and again because you don’t listen. And I have to whistle it again and again because every day I find I missed again. It is so difficult to say it, it is so impossible to say it. I try and then I say, “Let us see tomorrow. Let us improve it a little more. Maybe there is some other way and it can be whistled a little better.”It cannot be said, that’s true; but it can be whistled. I am a proof of it – every day.The third question:Osho,You often say that life is fun. Still, sometimes you seem to be taking things very, very seriously.That, too, is fun.The fourth question:Osho,I love the way you walk. Why do you walk how you walk?Thank you!I am a drunkard, and I cannot do better. There is no art to it; it is just my drunkenness.And if you also want to walk like that, you will have to become like me. Don’t try to imitate it – because you can imitate a drunkard, but by that you will not become drunk. You can imitate a drunkard perfectly – even better than the drunkard himself – but you will not become drunk. Become drunk.I am drunk with the divine. It is a miracle how I am here. When I stand on my feet, I say, “So, old boy, you are doing it again?” It is a miracle how I stand. It has become very, very difficult for me to be here on the earth. The wings have grown and the sky is waiting and my boat has arrived long before. I should have left this shore, but I am in deep love with you mad people, so I go on lingering a little more. I say, “A little more.” I go on postponing. I go on persuading the powers that would like me to leave now. I say, “Wait a little more. I can drive a few more people crazy.”And the last question:Osho,You say, “Surrender to me.” Does this not show that you are full of ego?Sure! I am the greatest egoist you can find – ever! My ego is so vast that you all are included in it. It is so vast that trees and animals and rocks are included in it. It is so vast that stars and the moon and sun are included in it. It is so vast that the past, present, and future are included in it. Hence I say to you, “Surrender to me.”Krishna says to Arjuna in the Gita: “Sarva dharman parityajya mamekam sharanam vraj” – “Leave all your religions and come to my feet.” He is also the same type of egoist as I am. Buddha says, “Come to me, and I will deliver you.” He is also the same type of egoist. And Jesus says, “I have come into the world to deliver everybody.” What pure egos!Yes, you are right, sir. I am a great egoist. But remember, my ego is inclusive of all; hence it is not an ego at all. It is so inclusive that it is empty. It is so all-inclusive that there is no sense of “I” in it.Enough for today.

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Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 01-10Category: Kabir

Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Il. 103. Naco re mero man, matta hoyDance, my heart! Dance today with joy.The strains of lovefill the days and the nights with music,and the world is listening to its melodies.Mad with joy, life and deathdance to the rhythm of this music.The hills and the sea and the earth dance.The world of man dances in laughter and tears.Why put on the robe of the monk,and live aloof from the world in lonely pride?Behold! My heart dances in the delight of a hundred arts;and the creator is well pleased.I. 105. Man mast hua tab kyon boleWhere is the need of words,when love has made drunken the heart?I have wrapped the diamond in my cloak;why open it again and again?When its load was light,the pan of the balance went up:now it is full, where is the need for weighing?The swan has taken its flightto the lake beyond the mountains;why should it searchfor the pools and ditches anymore?Your lord dwells within you;why need your outward eyes be opened?Kabir says: “Listen, my brother!My lord, who ravishes my eyes,has united himself with me.”Ecstasy is a language that man has completely forgotten. He has been forced to forget it, he has been compelled to forget it. The society is against it, civilization is against it. The society has a tremendous investment in misery – it depends on misery, it feeds on misery, it survives on misery. The society is not for human beings. The society is using human beings for its own means. The society has become more important than humanity. Culture, civilization, the church – they all have become more important. They were meant to be for man, but now they are not for man. They have almost reversed the whole process. Now man exists for them.Every child is born ecstatic. Ecstasy is natural. It is not something that happens only to great sages. It is something that everybody brings with him into the world; everybody comes with it. It is life’s innermost core. It is part of being alive. Life is ecstasy. Every child brings it into the world, but then the society jumps on the child, starts destroying the possibility of ecstasy, starts making the child miserable, starts conditioning the child.The society is neurotic, and it cannot allow ecstatic people to be here. They are dangerous for it. Try to understand the mechanism; then things will be easier.You cannot control an ecstatic man; it is impossible. You can only control a miserable man. An ecstatic man is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. He cannot be reduced into a slave, you cannot destroy him so easily; you cannot persuade him to live in a prison. He would like to dance under the stars and he would like to walk with the wind and he would like to talk with the sun and the moon. He will need the vast, the infinite, the huge, the enormous. He cannot be seduced into living in a dark cell. You cannot make a slave out of him. He will live his own life and he will do his thing. This is very difficult for the society. If there are many ecstatic people, the society will feel it is falling apart, its structure will not hold anymore.Those ecstatic people will be the rebels. Remember, I don’t call an ecstatic person revolutionary, I call him a rebel. A revolutionary is one who wants to change the society, but he wants to replace it with another society. A rebel is one who wants to live as an individual and would like no rigid social structure to exist in the world. A rebel is one who does not want to replace this society with another society, because all the societies have proved the same. The capitalist and the communist and the fascist and the socialist, they are all cousin-brothers – it doesn’t make much difference. Society is society. All the churches have proved to be the same – the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan.Once a structure becomes powerful, it does not want anybody to be ecstatic, because ecstasy is against structure. Listen to this and meditate over it: ecstasy is against structure. Ecstasy is rebellious. It is not revolutionary.A revolutionary is a political man; a rebel is a religious man. A revolutionary wants another structure – of his own desire, his own utopia, but a structure all the same. He wants to be in power. He wants to be the oppressor and not the oppressed; he wants to be the exploiter and not the exploitedHe wants to rule and not be ruled. A rebel is one who neither wants to be ruled nor wants to rule. A rebel is one who wants no rule in the world. A rebel is anarchic. A rebel is one who trusts nature, not man-made structures; who trusts that if nature is left alone, everything will be beautiful. It is!Such a vast universe goes on without any government. Animals, birds, trees, everything goes on without any government. Why does man need government? Something must have gone wrong. Why is man so neurotic that he cannot live without rulers?Now there is a vicious circle. Man can live without rulers, but he has never been given any opportunity – the rulers won’t give you any opportunity. Once you know you can live without the rulers, who would like them to be there? Who will support them? Right now you are supporting your own enemies. You go on voting for your own enemies. Two enemies stand in a presidential contest, and you choose. Both are the same. It is as if you are given freedom to choose the prison, which prison you want to go in. And you vote happily – that I would like to go to prison A or B, that I believe in the Republican prison, I believe in the Democratic prison. But both are prisons. And once you support a prison, the prison has its own investment – then it will not allow you to have a taste of freedom.So from his very childhood the child is not allowed to taste freedom, because once he knows what freedom is, then he will not concede, he will not compromise – then he will not be ready to live in any dark cell. He would like to die, but he will not allow anybody to reduce him to being a slave. He will be assertive. Of course, he will not be interested in becoming powerful over other people. These are neurotic trends. When you are too interested in becoming powerful over people that simply shows that deep down you are powerless and you are afraid that if you don’t become powerful, others are going to overpower you.Machiavelli says that the best method of defense is to attack; the best way to protect yourself is to attack first. These so-called politicians all over the world – in the East, in the West – are all deep down very weak people, suffering from inferiority, afraid that if they don’t become powerful politically then somebody is going to exploit them – so why not exploit rather than be exploited? The exploited and the exploiter, both are sailing in the same boat, and both are helping the boat, protecting the boat.Once the child knows the taste of freedom, he will never become part of any society, any church, any club, any political party. He will remain an individual, he will remain free and he will create pulsations of freedom around him. His very being will become a door to freedom.The child is not allowed to taste freedom. If the child asks the mother, “Mom, can I go outside? The sun is beautiful and the air is very crisp and I would like to run around the block,” immediately – obsessively, compulsively – the mother says, “No!” The child has not asked much. He just wanted to go out into the morning sun, into the brisk air, he wanted to enjoy the sunlight and the air and the company of the trees. He has not asked for anything! But compulsively, out of some deep compulsion, the mother says no. It is very rare to hear a mother saying yes, very rare to hear a father saying yes. Even if they say yes, they say so very reluctantly. Even if they say yes, they make the child feel that he is guilty, that he is forcing them, that he is doing something wrong.Whenever the child feels happy, doing whatsoever, somebody or other is bound to come and stop him: “Don’t do this!” By and by the child understands, “Whatsoever I feel happy in is wrong.” And of course he never feels happy doing what others tell him to do, because it is not a spontaneous urge in him. So he comes to know that to be miserable is right, to be happy is wrong. That becomes the deep association.If he wants to open the clock and see inside, the whole family jumps on him – “Stop! You will destroy the clock. This is not good.” He was just enquiring into the clock; it was a scientific curiosity. He wanted to see what makes it tick. It was perfectly okay. And the clock is not so valuable as his curiosity, as his inquiring mind. The clock is worthless – even if it is destroyed nothing is destroyed – but once the inquiring mind is destroyed much is destroyed; then he will never inquire for truth.Or it is a beautiful night and the sky is full of stars and the child wants to sit outside, but it is time to go to sleep. He is not feeling sleepy at all; he is wide awake, very, very awake. The child is puzzled. In the morning when he feels sleepy, everybody is after him – “Get up!” When he was enjoying, when it was so beautiful to be in the bed, when he wanted to take another turn and have a little more sleep and dream a little more, then everybody was against it… “Get up! It is time to get up.” Now he is wide awake and he wants to enjoy the stars. It is very poetic, this moment, very romantic. He feels thrilled. How can he go to sleep in such thrill? He is so excited, he wants to sing and dance, and they are forcing him to go to sleep – “It is nine o’clock. It is time to go to sleep.”Now, he was happy being awake but he is forced to go to sleep. When he is playing he is forced to come to the dining table. He is not hungry. When he is hungry, the mother says, “This is not the time.” This way we go on destroying all possibility of being ecstatic, all possibility of being happy, joyful, delighted. Whatsoever the child feels spontaneously happy with seems to be wrong, and whatsoever he does not feel at all seems to be right.At school a bird suddenly starts singing outside the classroom, and the child is all attention toward the bird, of course – not toward the mathematics teacher who is standing at the board with his ugly chalk. But the teacher is more powerful, politically more powerful than the bird. Certainly, the bird has no power, but it has beauty. The bird attracts the child without hammering on his head, “Be attentive! Concentrate on me!” No, simply, spontaneously, naturally, the consciousness of the child starts flowing out of the window. It goes to the bird. His heart is there, but he has to look at the blackboard. There is nothing to look at, but he has to pretend.Happiness is wrong – wherever there is happiness the child starts becoming afraid something is going to be wrong.If the child is playing with his own body, it is wrong. If the child is playing with his own sexual organs, it is wrong. And that is one of the most ecstatic moments in the life of a child. He enjoys his body; it is thrilling. But all thrill has to be cut, all joy has to be destroyed. It is neurotic, but the society is neurotic.Whatsoever was done to the parents by their parents, they are doing the same to their children. This way one generation goes on destroying another. This way we transfer our neurosis from one generation to another. The whole earth has become a madhouse. Nobody seems to know what ecstasy is. It is lost. Barriers upon barriers have been created.It is a daily observation here that when people start meditating and start feeling the upsurge of energy, when they start feeling happy, they immediately come to me: “A very strange thing is happening. I am feeling happy, and I am also feeling guilty, for no reason at all.” Guilty? They are also puzzled. Why should one feel guilty? They know that there is nothing – they have not done anything wrong. From where does this guilt arise? It is coming from that deep-rooted conditioning: that joy is wrong. To be sad is okay, but to be happy is not allowed.Once I used to live in a town where the police commissioner was my friend; we were friends from our university student days. He used to come to me, and he would say, “I am so miserable. Help me to come out of it.” I would say, “You talk about coming out of it, but I don’t see that you really want to come out of it. In the first place, why have you chosen to work in this police department? You must be miserable, and you want others also to be miserable.”One day I asked three of my disciples to go around the town and dance in different parts of the town and be happy. They said, “For what?” I said, “Simply go.” Within one hour, of course, they were caught by the police. I called the police commissioner; I said, “Why have you caught these people?” He said, “These people seem to be mad.” I asked him, “Have they done anything wrong? Have they harmed anybody?” He said, “No, nothing. Really, they have not done anything wrong.” “Then why have you caught them?” He said, “But they were dancing on the streets! And they were laughing.” “But if they have not done anything harmful to anybody, why should you interfere? Why should you come in? They have not attacked anybody, they have not entered anybody’s territory. They were just dancing. Innocent people, laughing.” He said, “You are right, but it is dangerous.” “Why is it dangerous? To be happy is dangerous? To be ecstatic is dangerous?” He got the point; he immediately released them. He came running to me; he said, “You may be right. I cannot allow myself to be happy – and I cannot allow anybody else to be happy.”These are your politicians, these are your police commissioners, these are your magistrates, your juries, your leaders, your so-called saints, your priests, your popes – these are the people. They all have a great investment in your misery; they depend on your misery. If you are miserable they are happy.Only a miserable person will go to the temple to pray. A happy person will go to a temple for what? A happy person is so happy that he feels God everywhere. That’s what happiness is all about. He’s so ecstatically in love with existence that wherever he looks he finds God. Everywhere is his temple. And wherever he bows down, suddenly he finds God’s feet, nothing else. His awe, his reverence, need not be so narrow that he has to go to a Hindu temple or a Christian church. That is silly; that is meaningless.Only miserable people who cannot see God, who cannot see God in a blooming flower, who cannot see God in a singing bird, who cannot see God in a psychedelic rainbow, who cannot see God in the floating clouds, who cannot see God in the rivers and in the ocean, who cannot see God in the beautiful eyes of a child, they go to the church, they go to the mosque, they go to the temple, they go to the priest, and they ask, “Where is God? Please show us.”Only miserable people become available… Yes, Bertrand Russell was almost right when he said that if someday the world becomes happy, religion will disappear. I say almost right, ninety-nine percent right. I cannot say a hundred percent right because I know of another type of religion which Bertrand Russell is not aware of. Yes, those religions will disappear – he is right about those religions – the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan, the Jain, the Buddhist – they will disappear, certainly they will disappear. If the world becomes happy, they are bound to disappear, because who will bother? But he is only ninety-nine percent right; he is one percent wrong. And that one percent is more important than the ninety-nine percent because another type of religion – real religion, ecstatic religion, religion which has no name, religion which has no code, no Bible, no Koran, no Vedas, a religion which has no scripture, no adjective to it, just a religion of dance, a religion of love, a religion of reverence, a religion of benediction, pure religion – will arise in the world when people are happy.In fact these religions that exist are not religions. They are just sedatives, tranquilizers. Marx is also right, of course, only ninety-nine percent – that religion is the opium of the masses. He is right. These religions help you to tolerate your misery. They help you, they console you, they give you hope that “Yes, today you are miserable; tomorrow you will be happy.” And that tomorrow never comes. They say, “In this life you are miserable, but in the next life…” Be good, be moral, follow the rules of the society, be a slave, be obedient and in the next life you will be happy. And nobody knows about the next life. Nobody ever comes back and says anything about it. Or if they don’t believe in the next life, they say, “When you have gone to the other shore, to heaven, there will be your reward” – but be obedient to the priest and the politician!There is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician. They are two sides of the same coin. They help each other. And they all are interested in you remaining miserable – so the priest can have a congregation and the priest can exploit you; and the politician can force you to go to war in the name of the nation, in the name of the state, in the name of this and that. And it is all nonsense, but he can send you to war. Only miserable people can be enlisted for war; only deeply miserable people can be ready to fight, can be ready to kill and be killed. They are so miserable that even death seems to be better than their life.I have heard Adolf Hitler was talking to a British diplomat. And to impress him – they were standing on a third floor – Adolf Hitler ordered one German soldier to jump, and the soldier simply jumped without even hesitating, and of course died. The British diplomat could not believe it; it was unbelievable. He was very shocked. This wastage? For no reason at all! And to impress the diplomat more, Hitler ordered another soldier, “Jump!” and the other jumped. And to impress him even more, he ordered a third soldier.By this time, the diplomat had come to his senses. He rushed and stopped the soldier and said, “What are you doing, destroying your life for no reason at all?” The soldier said, “Who wants to live in this country and under this madman? Who wants to live with this Adolf Hitler? It is better to die! It is freedom.”When people are miserable, death seems to be freedom. And when people are miserable, they are so full of rage, anger, that they want to kill – even if the risk is that they may be killed. The politician exists because you are miserable – so Vietnam can continue, Bangladesh, the Arab countries. War continues. Somewhere or other, war continues.This state of affairs has to be understood – why it exists and how you can drop out of it. Unless you drop out of it, unless you understand the whole mechanism, the conditioning, the hypnosis in which you are living; unless you take hold of it, watch it, and drop it, you will never become ecstatic, and you will never be able to sing the song that you have come to sing. Then you will die without singing your song. Then you will die without dancing your dance. Then you will die without having ever lived.Your life is just a hope; it is not a reality. It can be a reality.This neurosis that you call society, civilization, culture, education, this neurosis has a subtle structure. The structure is this: it gives you symbolic ideas so that reality by and by is clouded, becomes clouded. You can’t see the real, and you start becoming attached to the unreal. For example, the society tells you to be ambitious; it helps you to become ambitious. Ambition means living in hope, living in the tomorrow. Ambition means today has to be sacrificed for tomorrow.Today is all that is there; now is the only time that you are, you ever will be. If you want to live, it is now or never.Society makes you ambitious. From your very childhood you go to the school and ambition is put into you. You are poisoned: grow rich, become powerful, become somebody. Nobody says to you that you already have the capacity to be happy. Everybody says that you will be happy only if you fulfill certain conditions: that you have enough money, a big house, a big car, and this and that – only then can you be happy.Happiness has nothing to do with these things. Happiness is not an achievement. It is your nature. Animals are happy without any money. They are not Rockefellers, and no Rockefeller is as happy as a deer or a dog. Animals have no political power – they are not prime ministers and presidents – but they are happy. The trees are happy; otherwise they would have stopped blooming. They still bloom, the spring still comes. They still dance, they still sing, they still pour their being at the feet of the divine. Their prayerfulness is continuous, their worship is always happening. And they don’t go to any church; there is no need. Godliness comes to them. In the wind, in the rain, in the sun, godliness comes to them.Only man is not happy, because man lives in ambition and not in reality. Ambition is a trick. It is a trick to distract your mind. Symbolic life has been substituted for real life.Watch it in life. The mother cannot love the child as much as the child wants the mother to love him, because the mother is hung up in her head. Her life has not been one of fulfillment. Her love life has been a disaster. She has not been able to flower. She has lived in ambition. She has tried to control her man, possess him. She has been jealous; she has not been a loving woman. If she has not been a loving woman, how can she suddenly turn and be loving to the child?I was just reading a book of R.D. Laing. He sent me his new book just two, three days ago, The Facts of Life. In the book he refers to an experiment in which a psychoanalyst asked many mothers, “When your child was going to be born, were you really in a welcoming mood, were you ready to accept the child?”He had made a questionnaire. First question: “Was the child accidental, or did you desire the child?” Ninety percent of the women said, “It was accidental; we did not desire it.” Then, “When the pregnancy happened, were you hesitant? Did you want the child, or did you want an abortion? Were you clear about it?” Many of them said that they hesitated for months over whether to have an abortion or have the child. Then the child was born; they had not been able to decide maybe because of other considerations. Maybe religious considerations – it may be a sin for them, it may create hell for them; they may have been Catholics or Hindus or Jainas, and the idea of violence, that abortion is violence, prevented them – or social considerations, or the husband wanted it, or they would like to have a child as a continuity of their ego. But the child was not liked. Rarely was there a mother who said, “Yes, the child was welcome. I was waiting for him and I was happy.” And even of those who said this, the psychiatrist writes, “We were not certain whether they were being honest. They may have just been saying it.”Now a child is born who is unwelcome. From the very beginning the mother has been hesitating: to have it or not to have it. There must be repercussions. The child must feel these tensions. When the mother was thinking to abort the child, the child must have felt hurt. The child is part of the mother’s body; every vibe will reach the child. Or when the mother thinks and hesitates and is just in limbo over what to do or what not to do, the child will also feel trembling, shaking – he is hanging between death and life. And then somehow the child is born and the mother thinks it is just accidental – they had tried birth control, they had tried this and that, and everything failed and now the child is there – so one has to tolerate it. That tolerance is not love.From the very beginning the child misses love. And the mother also feels guilty because she is not giving as much love as would have been given naturally, so she starts substituting. She forces the child to eat too much. She cannot fill the child’s soul with love, so she tries to stuff his body with food. It is a substitute. You can go and see. Mothers are so obsessive. The child says, “I am not hungry,” and the mothers go on forcing them. They have nothing to do with the child, they don’t listen to the child. They are substituting: they cannot give love, so they give food. Then the child grows: they cannot love, they give money; money becomes a substitute for love.And the child also learns that money is more important than love. If you don’t have love, nothing to be worried about, but you must have money. In life he will become greedy. He will go after money like a maniac. He will not bother about love. He will say, “First things first. I should first have a big balance in the bank. I must have this much money; only then can I afford love.”Now, love needs no money; you can love as you are. And if you think love needs money and you go after money, one day you may have money, and then suddenly you will feel empty because all the years were wasted in accumulating money. And they are not only wasted – all those years were years of no love, so you have practiced no love. Now the money is there, but you don’t know how to love. You have forgotten the very language of feeling, the language of love, the language of ecstasy.Yes, you can purchase a beautiful woman, but that is not love. You can purchase the most beautiful woman in the world, but that is not love. And she will be coming to you not because she loves you; she will be coming to you because of your bank balance.Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman – very homely and ordinary, but she had much money and she was the only child of her father, and the father was old and dying. Mulla was deeply in love with the woman, and one day he went to her very excitedly because the father was approaching death very fast, and he said, “I am dying.” Mulla said to the woman, “I am dying; I cannot live without you a single moment.”She said, “That’s okay, but I have bad news for you. My father has made a will, and he has given all his money to a trust and I am not going to get any money. Mulla, do you still love me?”Mulla said, “I love you, and I will always love you – though I will never see you again. But I will always love you and I will always remember you!”All love disappears. This is symbolic. Money is a symbol, power – political power – is a symbol, respectability is a symbol. These are not realities; these are human projections. These are not objectives – they have no objectivity. They are not there. They are just dreams projected by a miserable mind. If you want to be ecstatic you will have to drop out of the symbolic. To be freed of the symbolic is to be freed from society. To be freed of the symbolic is to become a sannyasin. To be freed of the symbolic you have taken courage to enter into the real. And only the real is real. The symbolic is not real.The third thing before we enter into these beautiful sutras of Kabir: What is ecstasy? Something to be achieved? No. Something that you have to earn? No. Something that you have to become? No. Ecstasy is being and becoming is misery. If you want to become something you will be miserable. Becoming is the very root cause of misery. If you want to be ecstatic – just now, herenow, this very moment – look at me! This very moment: nobody is barring the path. You can be happy. Happiness is so obvious and so easy. It is your nature. You are already carrying it. Just give it a chance to flower, to bloom.Ecstasy is not of the head, remember. Ecstasy is of the heart. Ecstasy is not of thought; it is of feeling. And you have been deprived of feeling. You have been cut away from feeling. You don’t know what feeling is. Even when you say “I feel,” you only think you feel. When you say, “I am feeling happy,” watch, analyze, and you will find you think you are feeling happy. Even feeling has to pass through thinking. It has to pass through the censor of thinking; only when thinking approves of it is it allowed. If thinking does not approve of it, it is thrown into the unconscious, into the basement of your being, and forgotten.Become more of the heart, less of the head. The head is just a part of you; the heart is your whole being. Heart is your totality. So whenever you are total in anything, you function from feeling. Whenever you are partial in anything, you function from the head.Watch a painter painting – and that is the difference between a real artist and a technician. If the painter is just a technician who knows the technique of how to paint, who knows the know-how, who knows all about colors and the brushes and the canvas and who has gone through the training, he will function through the head. He will be a technician. He will paint, but he will not be totally in it. Then watch a real artist who is not a technician. He will be absorbed in it, drunk. He will not only paint with his hand, and he will not only paint from his head. He will paint with his whole being; his guts will be involved in it – his feet as much, his blood and bones as much, his marrow. Everything will be involved in it. You can watch it, you can see, you can feel he is totally in it, lost. Nothing else exists. He is drunk. In that moment, he is no more. He is not a doer. The head is a doer. In that moment of total absorption, he is not a doer; he is just a passage, as if God is painting through him.When you come across a dancer – a real dancer, not one who is a performer – then you will see that he is not dancing, no. Something of the beyond is dancing in him. He is totally in it.It is said about the great dancer Nijinsky that there were moments when he would take such a leap that it was physically impossible – gravitation does not allow that big a leap.He was asked again and again, “How do you do it?” and he would say, “I am as surprised as you are. And I cannot manage to do it. When I try to do it, it never happens, I fall very short, but when I am in the dance and I am completely lost – when I am not – it happens, as if gravitation suddenly is no more. I become weightless, I don’t feel any weight – as if something starts pulling me upward rather than downward.”This pull upward is known in yoga as levitation. Yes, it happens in meditation too. Nijinsky was unknowingly moving into deep meditation. The dance was so total that he became a meditator and levitation happened.Whenever you are totally in something, you are ecstatic. When you are partially into something, you will remain miserable, because a part will be moving separate from the whole. There will be a division – a split, a tension, anxiety.If you love from the head, your love is not going to give you any ecstatic experience. If you meditate from your head…Just the other night, one woman from the West was saying to me that she has come here because she has seen many people coming here, becoming sannyasins, whose lives have been transformed and who have become so happy. That’s why she has also come here – to become happy. She is meditating, but nothing is happening. She is trying hard, but nothing is happening.I told her, ‘‘Nothing is going to happen. You start from a very wrong place. Your motivation is the barrier: you are coming from the head. Those people who have become sannyasins, have not come with a motive, with greed. You have come with a motive, with greed. Your mind is already poisoned. You have come with an idea, and you are watching for when it is going to happen. It will never happen, because you will never allow yourself to be totally in it. A watcher will stand by the side and will see whether it has happened yet or not.”I used to go to a river to swim, and I loved it. And whenever I would come back, one of my neighbors always used to watch me, and he would see that I was very ecstatic.One day he asked, “What is happening? One day he asked, “What is happening? I always see you going to the river. And for hours you swim in the river and you remain in the river. I am also coming, because you look so happy.”I said, “Please don’t come. You will miss, and the river will be very sad. No, don’t come, because your very motivation will be a barrier. You can swim, but you will be watching for when that happiness is going to happen. It will never happen – because it happens only when you are not.”Swimming can become a meditation, running can become a meditation – anything can become a meditation – if you are not. Ecstasy is of the heart, is of the total.Dance, my heart! Dance today with joy.Says Kabir, Dance my heart! By heart is meant your total organic unity. Dance today with joy. And dance today, not tomorrow. Let the dance be here and now, and let it come from your totality. Abandon yourself; become a drunkard.The strains of lovefill the days and the nights with music,and the world is listening to its melodies.Mad with joy, life and deathdance to the rhythm of this music.Yes, joy is mad. And only mad people can afford it. The ordinary sane person is so clever, so cunning, calculating, he cannot afford joy, because you cannot control joy. Just as I said a joyful man cannot be controlled by the society, let me say this also to you: that you cannot control your joy, you cannot control your ecstasy. If you want to remain in control, you will never be joyful; then you can only be miserable. Only misery can be controlled – by the society or even by you.Many people come to me, and they say they would like to get out of their miseries, but they are not ready to move into a state of uncontrol. They want to control joy too. They always want to remain in control. They always want to remain the master, the boss. That is not possible. The boss has to go. Joy can erupt into your being only when all control has been removed. Joy knows no control. It is wild.And I say to you existence is wild, and joy is the first step towards it. Ecstasy is wild. You cannot control it. You have to lose all control. You have to drop into it, into the very abyss of it – and it is a bottomless abyss. You go on dropping and dropping and dropping and you never arrive at the bottom because there is no end to joy. It is a nonending process, it is eternal. And it is so huge, how can you control it? The very idea is stupid.Mad with joy, life and deathdance to the rhythm of this music.And when you are madly dancing, madly singing, when you are joyful without any control, without your presence, when the joy is so full, overflowing – you are flooded with it and all control is abandoned – then you will see a miracle: death and life dancing together. Because then, all duality disappears. If you are dual, duality appears. If you are nondual, duality disappears. When you are split, the whole world is split. It is your own split that is projected onto the screen of the universe. When you are in a non-split state, integrated, one, organic, orgasmic, then all duality disappears.Then life and death are not two, not opposites, but complementaries dancing with each other hand in hand. Then bad and good are not two – they are dancing with each other hand in hand. Then matter and consciousness are not two. This is what is happening inside you: the soul is dancing with the body, the body is dancing with the soul. They are not two, they are one, they are absolutely one, manifestations of one. The body is nothing but visible soul, and the soul is nothing but invisible body.And God is not somewhere above in the heavens. He is herenow in the trees, in the rocks, in you, in me, in everything. God is the soul of existence, the invisible, the innermost core. And the inner is dancing with the outer. And the sublime is dancing with the profane. And the holy is dancing with the unholy. And the sinner is dancing with the saintOnce you have become one, suddenly all duality disappears. That’s why I say a really wise man is also a fool, has to be, because foolishness and wisdom dance together. And a really sage person, a saint, is also a rascal, has to be – it cannot be avoided. God and the Devil are not two. Have you ever thought about the word devil? It comes from the same root as divine; they belong to the same root. They both come from a Sanskrit root, diva; from it comes deva, from it comes divine, from it comes devil.Deep down, the tree is one. Branches are many, moving in different dimensions, directions; leaves are millions; but the deeper you go, you come to one, one tree.Mad with joy, life and death dance to the rhythm of this music. The hills and the sea and the earth dance.When you are in a dance, everything dances with you. Yes, the old saying is true: when you weep, you weep alone; when you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. When you are miserable, you are separate.Now look at this. Misery separates you; separation makes you miserable. They are together, they are one package. Whenever you are miserable you suddenly become separate. That’s why the ego cannot afford to be happy, because if you become happy the ego cannot exist – you are no longer separate. The egoist cannot afford to be ecstatic. How can he afford to be ecstatic, because in ecstasy the ego will not be there? That is too much. He would like to remain miserable. He will create a thousand and one miseries around him just to help the ego to be there.Have you watched it? When you are really happy, your ego disappears. When you are really happy, suddenly you feel a deep atonement with the whole. When you are miserable you want to be alone; when you are happy you want to share.When Buddha was miserable he went to the forest, escaped from the world. What happened after six years? When he became ecstatic he came back, back to the marketplace. When Mahavira was unhappy, miserable, he escaped from the world, he renounced the world. When he became happy he came back to the world.Now Jainas don’t talk about Mahavira coming back to the world; they only talk about his renunciation. Their scriptures only say that he renounced the world. That is only half the story – and not the peak, just the beginning of the story. Yes, for twelve years he lived alone in the forest, not uttering a single word. He was so miserable, he separated himself from the whole world. He remained lonely.Then one day the spring came, and the flowers started blooming, and he was full of ecstasy, he came back to the world. The Jaina scriptures don’t talk about it – and that is the real part of the story, the more significant part: that he comes back to the world, that he moves amidst people, that then again he starts talking, then again he starts singing, then again he conveys, shares. Whatsoever he has attained has to be shared.In misery you are like a seed. In ecstasy you become a flower, and your fragrance, of course, has to be released to the winds.You can watch it in your life also, in a small way of course. When you are unhappy you close your doors, you don’t want to see your friends, you don’t want to go anywhere, you don’t want to participate in anything. You say, “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.” When somebody becomes very, very unhappy, he commits suicide. What is the meaning of it? What is suicide? Suicide is just an effort to go so far away from the world that one cannot come back. It is moving into loneliness absolutely, irrevocably, so that you cannot come back. That’s what suicide is.Have you ever heard about any man committing suicide when he was happy, when he was ecstatic, when he was dancing? No, when the dance arises, you burst forth, you throw your doors open, you call your friends, you call your neighbors, and you say, “Come. I am going to give a feast and let us dance and let us have a little fun. I have much to share and I would like to give it to you.” And whosoever comes to your door, you greet him, you welcome him. Anybody is welcome in the moment when you are happy. When you are unhappy, even those who have always been welcome are no longer welcome.The hills and the sea and the earth dance. With you that happens. If you dance, the whole existence becomes a dance. It is already a dance. Hindus call it a ras-leela: God is dancing, and around God the stars and the moon and the sun and the earth and the whole existence. The whole existence is dancing around God – God is Krishna and the whole existence is his gopis, his girlfriends. This is the ras that is continuously going on. But you will know it only when you learn the ways of dance, the language of ecstasy.The world of man dances in laughter and tears.Beautiful is Kabir! His sayings are of tremendous significance.The world of man dances in laughter and tears. And when you laugh, sometimes you will laugh… When you dance sometimes you will laugh and sometimes you will weep too, but now your tears will have a totally different quality to them. They will not be of sadness. They will come out of your depth, out of your overflowing heart. They will be of joy and cheer, they will show your rejoicing.You have known only one sort of tears, and those are of sadness and sorrow, because you have known only one thing that overfills you sometimes – and that is sadness, depression, sorrow, and that flows through your tears. You have not known the other quality – rich tears. These are poor tears – ill, neurotic. You don’t know healthy tears, tears of well-being – when you are full of love and you don’t know how to express it, when you are full of joy and you don’t know how to express it and you are so overflooded that tears start flowing.Tears are just an overflow, and Kabir says, The world of man dances in laughter and tears.You may have seen it happening to a madman sometimes: a madman sometimes laughs and weeps together. Sometimes it happens to my sannyasins, and they come to me very scared and they say, “What is happening? Laughter is okay, tears are okay, but both together? That simply shows I am going crazy.” You are not going crazy. You are becoming one, your duality is disappearing. Your tears and laughter are becoming joined together. Hand in hand they are going to dance together. Your schizophrenia is over; your division has fallen away. Now you are becoming undivided. Now you are becoming a unison; a unio mystica is happening. So everything is joining together; the polar opposites are coming closer and becoming one – tears and laughter together.Why put on the robe of the monk, and live aloof from the world in lonely pride?Yes, Kabir is right. Up to now this has been so. The monk has lived in lonely pride. He has separated himself from the world: he has put on the robe of the monk, he has shaved his head, he has declared to the world, ‘‘I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me. I am no longer a part; I am going away.” And he has become very egoistic. That is one of the ways to feel pride, to become proud.The psychology of pride has to be understood. A man becomes rich – the richer he becomes, the more aloof and distant he becomes. He is not easily approachable; it is impossible. Even to his intimates he is not available. And in America it is happening that even his wife, his children, are not very close now. He is so far away, aloof. His richness has become a pyramid, and he is sitting on the top, very, very far away.A man who achieves political power, like Adolf Hitler, becomes very aloof. He did not have a single friend. It was said about Hitler, “Either you are a follower or you are an enemy, but he has no friend.” There was not a single person who could have put his hand on his shoulder and talked to him intimately, talked with him intimately – impossible. He would never allow anybody that intimacy, that closeness.With richness, with power, with knowledge, with asceticism, the same thing happens again and again. And the monk is also another way of living in lonely pride. Kabir is right.That’s why I have changed the total concept of sannyas. I tell my people to live in the world, to be in the world, to be in the crowd, to live ordinary life – in a very extraordinary consciousness. Join them together: the world of the householder and the world of the monk – bring them close. Let the marketplace become your monastery; let your monastery become a marketplace. No more dualism, no more of the pride of the monk.My sannyasins feel very puzzled – particularly the Indian sannyasins, because they have lived in lonely pride for thousands of years. They come and they say to me, “This doesn’t look good. I am still a householder; I live with my wife and with my children. How to wear orange? It is very difficult.”Women have come to me crying and weeping, and they say, “What have you done? You have given sannyas to my husband; now what will happen to me and my children?” I say, “Don’t be worried. Nothing is going to happen. Your husband will be with you.” They say, “We cannot accept that.” One woman came to me and she said, “What have you done? You have made my husband a sannyasin; now I cannot make love to him. How to make love to a sannyasin? This is simply absurd; never has been heard of before. No, it is not possible.”The world of the monk and the world of the householder have existed up to now, hitherto, as enemies, separate. I have tried to bring them together. If Kabir comes back, he will not write this line again. He will not say, “Why put on the robe of the monk?” He will say, “If you belong to this guy Osho, okay.”…and live aloof from the world in lonely pride?No, my sannyasins are not living in lonely pride, Kabir. I can assure you.Behold! My heart dances in the delight of a hundred arts;and the creator is well pleased.This is a beautiful sutra. Try to understand it. God is the creator: all the religions of the world have been talking about it, but nobody seems to have understood rightly what it means, what its implication is.God is the creator. If it is true, then only through creation can you arrive close to him; there is no other way. If God is the creator, then become creative, and creativity will be your prayerfulness. Paint, sing, dance, compose poetry, make a statue – anything – but become creative. Plant a garden. Anything – small, big, whatsoever; the proportion is not the question – anything, but be creative.If you are cooking in the kitchen, then cook creatively; then make it more and more artful. Then don’t just go on doing it in a routine way. Let it be your poetry, your sculpture, let it be your song. Whatsoever you are doing, be creative, bring the new in. Go on exploring the unknown. Innovate, invent, discover, create something – because if God is the creator then whenever you become creative, you come close to him. Whenever you are creative, God is the creator in you.But up to now the religious people have lived very uncreatively. They don’t create. They simply remove themselves from the world. They don’t compose poems, they don’t paint pictures, they don’t carve statues. They simply become aloof; they become uncreative. To become uncreative is to go against God.Behold! My heart dances in the delight of a hundred arts;and the creator is well pleased.Where is the need of wordswhen love has made drunken the heart?Kabir says, “Now there is nothing to say. I can only dance. I can sing, and my song will also be wild and mad, because I don’t know logic anymore, I don’t believe in words anymore. Language, ordinary language, is not enough to hold what I am to express.”Where is the need of words – now words are not needed; even silence will do – will do better – when love has made drunken the heart?I have wrapped the diamond in my cloak;why open it again and again?Now God has become a part of my heart, and I cannot go on exhibiting him again and again. Those who want to see him, let them come close, let them inquire, but I am not going to convince anybody and I am not going to talk about my God to anybody. If somebody wants, he should come to me, he should inquire – he should surrender, he should open his heart.When its load was light, the pan of the balance went up: now it is full, where is the need for weighing?And I don’t argue anymore and I don’t judge anymore and I don’t philosophize anymore. I don’t theorize anymore – there is no question of weighing up. God has already happened; truth is known. There is no longer any groping.The swan has taken its flight to the lake beyond the mountains; why should it search for the pools and ditches anymore?Listen to this. It is not that you have to drop the world. It is that you have to know what God is. Then all that is ugly drops on its own accord. I am not teaching you to drop anything, to renounce anything. I am saying realize something that is already within you, that is your innermost core. Once realized, many things will disappear.The swan has taken its flight to the lake beyond the mountains, why should it search for the pools and ditches anymore?You go on looking for ecstasy in sex, you go on looking for it in money, in power, only because you don’t know real ecstasy. If you have known once, you will stop. All these dirty places are of no meaning to you. Not that you renounce them; they simply become irrelevant.Your lord dwells within you;why need your outward eyes be opened?Kabir says: “Listen, my brother!My lord, who ravishes my eyes,has united himself with me.”That meeting place is within you. There the ultimate union happens, the ultimate marriage, where you and the whole meet and dissolve into each other, and disappear into each other. That disappearance of the two into one is what ecstasy is.I have heard about a soldier in the Second World War who would drop his rifle on the battlefield and run to pick up any little scrap of paper, would examine it eagerly, then sorrowfully shake his head as the paper fluttered to the ground.Hospitalized, he remained mute, his compulsion obscure and intractable. He wandered forlornly about the psychiatric ward, picking up scraps of paper, each time with discernible hope followed by inevitable dejection.Pronounced unfit for service, one day he received his discharge from the army, whereupon, receiving the discharge form, he found his voice. “This is it!” he cried in ecstasy, “this is it!”Ecstasy is the ultimate freedom, and then one simply shouts in joy, “This is it! This is it! Eureka! I have found it.”And the irony is that you need not go anywhere to find it. It is already there. It is your very core, your very being. If you decide to find it, you can find it this very moment. It does not need a single moment’s postponement. An intense thirst can open the door. A great urgency can right now make you free.Enough for today.

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Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 01-10Category: Kabir

Ecstasy The Forgotten Language 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Are you the only enlightened person in this ashram? If yes, is it impossible to enlighten or to be enlightened near an enlightened person?Since I became enlightened I have never come across a person who is not enlightened. You see only that which you are. Before I became enlightened, the same was the case with me – the whole world used to appear tremendously asleep, in darkness, in death, unenlightened, because you are reflected everywhere continuously. Every other person is just a mirror – you see yourself. So don’t be worried about others; think about yourself. That should be your problem.Others are not your problem. Whether they are enlightened or not, how does it concern you? Why should you be worried about it? If somebody wants to remain unenlightened, it is absolutely his business to decide about it. If they want to play the game of being unenlightened, it’s perfectly okay. If you have become fed up with the world, if you are fed up with your anguish and anxiety and you have realized that now it is time to awake, then there is no difficulty. Nobody can prevent you, nobody is preventing you. It is only your own decision to play the game as an unenlightened being or to play the game as an enlightened being, it is only a question of inner decision.In a single moment, in one stroke, you can become enlightened. It is not a gradual process, because enlightenment is not something that you have to invent. It is something that you have to discover. It is already there. It is not something that you have to manufacture. If you have to manufacture it, of course, it will take time; but it is already there. Close your eyes and see it there. Be silent and have a taste of it. Your very nature is what I call enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something alien, outside you. It is not somewhere else in time and space. It is you, your very core.I was staying at Mulla Nasruddin’s. One morning when we were sipping tea, the wife of Mulla Nasruddin told him, “Mulla, you swore terribly at me in your sleep last night.”Mulla Nasruddin laughed and said, “Who was asleep?”You are not asleep. Whatsoever you are doing, you have chosen to do it. It is your choice. And I insist that it is your choice, because if it is your choice, then it can be dropped immediately, the moment you are ready to change your choice. You have chosen your life to be this way – the way of agony, anguish.Certainly you will ask, “Why should one want to choose a life of agony, anguish, anxiety, pain, suffering? Why? Why should one choose a life of sorrow?” There are reasons, great reasons behind it: because only in sorrow can you be. In ecstasy you disappear. Only in pain can you exist as an entity. In bliss you are lost, as a drop is lost in the ocean. You are afraid to lose yourself; hence you have chosen the ways of agony.They create the ego: the more you suffer, the more you feel you are. Suffering gives you a definition. It makes you feel solid; it gives you a feeling that you are separate from the whole. That’s why you have chosen it. Nobody has chosen sorrow and suffering directly. Indirectly, you have chosen to be an egoist, hence you have to choose suffering. Without suffering you cannot be an egoist. The ego cannot exist without a sea of suffering around it. The ego is like an island in a sea of suffering.You are enjoying your ego – you are continuously strengthening it, decorating it, making it more and more valuable. This is your choice.Once you see that the ego is deeply connected with suffering and without suffering it cannot exist, then if you don’t want to suffer, you drop the ego. You forget all about the language of the ego – the language of the ego is the language of agony – and then things are very simple.I have heard:A little boy worrying through his very first day at school, raised his hand for permission to go to the washroom, then returned to the class a few moments later to report that he could not find it.Dispatched a second time with explicit directions, he still could not find it. So this time the teacher asked a slightly older boy to act as guide. Success crowned his efforts.“We finally found it,” he told the teacher. “He had his pants on backwards.”This is the situation. You are enlightened beings, just your pants are on backwards. You need a little, slightly older boy to guide you, that’s all. That’s what a master is meant to be.Nothing is missing; nothing can be missing. You are born enlightened. Then you have chosen a life of suffering and agony. You can live enlightened, you can die enlightened. It depends on you. It is a question of sheer choice.“Are you the only enlightened person in this ashram?” In this ashram you will not even find trees unenlightened.“If yes, is it impossible to enlighten or to be enlightened near an enlightened person?” It is not a question of being near an enlightened person. If you don’t choose to be, you can be here forever and you will not choose to be. If you choose to be enlightened, you can be enlightened anywhere.I am needed, a master is needed, because your desire to be enlightened is not very strong, not very intense. You don’t feel the urgency, you don’t feel thirsty enough for it. It is not your first priority. Maybe it is somewhere on your shopping list – just at the end. If any money is left, if any time is left, and the market remains open, you will see, but it is not first. First comes the world, and then comes godliness. Of course, you never come to godliness, because the world is vast – one thing leads to another, and it goes on and on. It has to be your first priority. I am needed only to help you to put enlightenment on your list as the first priority, that’s all. If you can put it there yourself, then you can become enlightened anywhere.I became enlightened without any master, so there cannot be any problem for you. If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. The master is not a must. It has become a must because you are so lethargic, because you are so unwilling to move toward ecstasy, because you are so attached to the ways of sorrow and anguish.You have become so attached to the prison, you don’t want to get out of it. Even if the door is left open, you don’t escape. You go on deceiving yourself; you don’t even look at the door. You go on deceiving yourself that the door is closed and the guard is there. And there is nobody! The door is open and the guard is not there – but you want to remain in the prison, you have become too attached. You have invested too much in the prison. In fact you have started looking at the prison as your home. The outside world looks strange and wild, and you feel afraid.People are afraid of freedom, and people are afraid of knowing life too deeply. People are afraid to love, people are afraid to be. They have lived long in the dark; now they are afraid of light – afraid they will not be able to open their eyes, afraid they will be dazzled, their eyes may be destroyed, afraid because their life in the darkness has become a settled routine. It is secure. Why take any chance? Why go into the unknown and the uncharted?The darkness has become too familiar; otherwise you can become enlightened anywhere. It is your treasure. You can claim it any moment. It is a surprise as to why you have not claimed it up to now.And remember, nobody else can enlighten you against yourself. If you have decided to remain the way you are, then there is no possibility. All the Buddhas and all the Christs and all the Krishnas all put together, they cannot do anything! You will remain the same as you are, and it is good in a way that it should be so. If you can be enlightened by somebody else, against your wishes, then that enlightenment cannot be very valuable. It cannot be a freedom. If you can be forced to be enlightened, then that too is going to be a slavery, a bondage – a new bondage.No, it is absolutely your choice! Choose it or leave it, but remember always, it is your responsibility.There are many people who come to a master, and they surrender just so that they stop feeling responsible. That is a wrong type of surrender. Surrender means “I am ready to cooperate” – that’s all. It does not mean “Now you are responsible, and if I don’t become enlightened then you will be responsible for it.” Then, nothing is going to happen even through surrender, because the surrender happened in the first place for wrong reasons.When you come to me to be initiated, this is the whole meaning of initiation: that you tell me that “I am ready,” that “I will not hinder your efforts,” that “if you help me, I will welcome it,” that “if you knock at my door, you will find me ready to receive you,” that “I am ready to become a host to you,” that “I will cooperate,” that “my yes is total.” That is the meaning of sannyas, the meaning of surrender: that “I will not say no,” that “I will not resist,” that “I will not fight you.” It is not throwing away responsibility. It is simply dropping resistance. Not dropping responsibility, but only resistance – and once resistance is dropped, things start happening on their own accord. I am just an excuse.Exactly, a master is what the scientists call a catalytic agent: it does not work; its presence is enough. It simply helps by being present. A master cannot do anything to you in reality, but his presence… You feel more trust. You cannot trust yourself, that’s why you need to trust me. If you can trust yourself, there is no need. If you feel enough unto yourself, there is no need. If you don’t feel enough, you don’t feel confident enough, you don’t feel that you will choose the right thing, you don’t feel that you will move in the right direction, then surrender is helpful. You trust somebody you feel has known, somebody you feel loves you, will not harm you, somebody you feel has more than you. You trust him. You hold his hand.And all that happens always happens within you – and it happens without the doing of the master. Enlightenment is not something that can be done by anybody. Just relax in trust and it starts arising in you. It was waiting there for the moment when you can say yes. If you can say yes to the whole, good, there is no need for a master.If you cannot say yes to the whole sky – it may seem too huge – then say yes to a window. The master is a window; it opens toward the sky, it brings you toward the sky. The master is just a passage. Pass through the master in trust, in love, in surrender, and things will start happening.The second question:Osho,When I came here I was tense. People looked unfriendly, not open. Now all that has changed; everyone is beautiful. I have had similar experiences before, but they have always faded away. I hope it is now wisdom and will not fade, but I fear it may be knowledge and I will lose it.Look at a roseflower. If it is real it will fade by the evening; if it is a plastic flower it will not fade. Knowledge is more permanent than wisdom, because wisdom is real and knowledge is just artificial. You are thinking in wrong terms.You tell me that it has happened before, also – these moments, these openings – but then they fade, they disappear, they become part of your memories. Now you want something permanent. This very idea is full of greed. If you want something permanent, you will have to choose something false, because only the false is permanent. The real is momentary – the real is always momentary. It exists for a moment and then it is gone. It is strong, and fragile. It is tremendously strong: when it is there it is there in totality. When it is gone it is gone. Only the false is permanent, but out of greed we seek permanence.Love is fragile, like a roseflower. Marriage is a plastic flower; it stays. It is artificial, legal, social. Love is unreliable. It is there, and when it is there it is tremendously beautiful. You fly in the high skies – you are turned on; everything looks full of delight, joy. The whole existence becomes a feast, a celebration, a dance. From every nook and corner God starts looking at you, and then suddenly it is gone – as suddenly as it had come one day, suddenly it is gone. The magic disappears, the charm is no more, the poetry fades; only ashes are left, dead, stale.Afraid of this fragile reality, man has created his permanent reality against it – to be secure, to be certain. You cannot rely on a girlfriend, you cannot rely on a boyfriend; you can rely on a husband or a wife. A wife and a husband are plastic. A girlfriend is a wind; nobody knows whether she will be lingering around you the next moment or will be gone and will have chosen another part of the world or another tree to have an affair with. Nobody knows. Out of nowhere, one moment it is and another moment it is gone. It may not go, it may go, but nothing is certain about it. Afraid of this uncertainty – out of greed, out of fear – man has created marriage. Marriage is an ugly thing. Love is beautiful.Can’t you see the ugliness of a plastic flower? And why is a plastic flower ugly? In the first place, to be permanent it has to be dead because life implies death. Only dead things never die. If you are alive you are prone to dying. The more alive you are, the more prone to death. The more vibrant with life, the closer is death. In every dance of life you will find death present, deeply present.That’s why it happens when you are deeply in love with somebody, suddenly you start thinking about death. Have you watched it? Lovers start thinking about death. Money changers never think of death. A poet in a deep moment of communion with nature starts thinking of death. A dancer at the peak, when everything is exploding, becomes afraid: death is there. When you are at a crescendo of any experience, you will always find death present. Why? Because whenever life is there death is there.People have decided not to live at the maximum, never to go to the optimum. Live at the minimum – at the minimum you can avoid death, because at the minimum you are almost dead. The contrast is not there. When you are very, very alive, death comes very close by; the contrast becomes very clear. People are afraid of death; that’s why they live at the minimum. People are afraid of change; they start loving things which don’t change. A house is more unchanging. A country, a creed, a temple, a god of the theologians, seems to be more permanent. People avoid looking at the momentary – and reality is momentary, it is flux, it is a process. Everything is moving dynamically. It is riverlike.You tell me, “When I came here I was tense. People looked unfriendly, not open. Now all that has changed…” Nothing has changed, only you have changed. The people are the same – you can ask them. They were tense because you were tense, they were unfriendly because you were not friendly. Nothing has changed. People have not changed; they have not suddenly become friendly. You have changed, you have opened, you have relaxed. You are no longer asking that they should be friendly; rather, you have started to be friendly yourself. And suddenly you see they are friendly.Whatsoever you are, you will always find. And whatsoever you find, remember, it is you. It is nobody else.This happens to everybody who comes here. In the beginning he comes with great expectations, as if the whole ashram will dance because he has come, and they will celebrate and there will be a great festival. These expectations lurk in the mind. And then one comes here and Sant won’t even allow you easily in through the gate! And he looks very unfriendly. He is directed to be that way there. And suddenly your hopes and expectations disappear.I help with it. They should be destroyed, because with those expectations and hopes you will continue to be an egoist. With those hopes and expectations you will remain the old. They have to be dropped.This is a situation, this ashram is a device. Here we try in every way to put you off. If you persist, then great is the payoff. If you escape, it is good for you and it is good for me too, because as it is I have enough responsibility for enough people. Unless you are really ready to go into deeper things and you have not come here as a curious person, you have not come here with some ambition still lurking in your mind, with some politics in your mind… Only if you have come here as a real authentic seeker will you stay. Then you will stay whatsoever happens around. You will not bother about it. You will say, “It is okay. There must be some reason in it.”If you persist, persevere, you will start feeling that people are friendly. You have dropped your expectations; that’s why they start looking friendly. They are the same people: neither friendly nor unfriendly. This place is very neutral. We are not interested in converts, in new converts. We are not interested at all; we don’t take much interest. We are neutral. If you come it is your responsibility to come. If you choose you choose. We don’t persuade you in any way. You cannot blame us later on, that “You persuaded us.” That much is certain, you cannot blame us: if you stayed, you stayed because you had chosen to stay. From the very beginning things are clear.Now you say, “…everyone is beautiful. I have had similar experiences before, but they have always faded away.” Good that they faded away. If they had remained, you would have been stuck. Then you would not have grown. Everything should come and go. It prepares you for a greater experience. It has to go away. If you are stuck with one experience, then there will be no growth in your life. Feel happy, feel grateful that they have faded away; otherwise you would not be here. You are here because your past faded away.But you are here, it seems, still with a wrong desire: that now you will find something permanent. No, I don’t deal in the permanent at all. I deal in the momentary and the eternal – and they are both the same. The permanent is a false thing. The momentary and the eternal are the real things. But let me explain it to you…Ordinarily, in your dictionaries you will find permanent as if it is a synonym for eternal. It is not. The eternal is always momentary. Look at the roseflower again. In the morning it is there; by the evening it is gone. It was momentary. But it will come again – tomorrow in the morning another flower… It has always been coming. The eternal peeks through the momentary, the eternal looks through the momentary. One roseflower goes, another roseflower comes, that goes, another is coming; in fact the one goes just to make place for the other. The beauty is eternal. The “roseness” is eternal. Roseflowers come and go; the roseness is eternal.Live in the momentary. And live in the momentary without any desire for the permanent; otherwise you will miss the eternal. Live in the moment so tremendously and totally that you forget the permanent. The permanent is a projection into the future, the permanent is your desire. It has nothing to do with reality. The eternal is the depth of the momentary – the eternal is in the moment. The permanent is horizontal, linear; the eternal is vertical.Somebody is swimming on the surface of a deep river; that’s how the permanent is. And somebody dives deep into the river; that’s how the eternal is. Dive deep into the moment and you will touch the eternal. Look into the roseflower. Yes, this roseflower is momentary, but look deep, dive deep, and suddenly you will see hidden behind this roseflower is roseness. Hidden behind this momentary roseflower is beauty eternal, divine. Flowers will come and go; flowering remains. Roses come and go; roseness remains. Lovers come and go; love remains. Your woman may die, your man may disappear, may escape. These are all roses. Love remains.My teaching is: trust love. Don’t betray love. Love is something that will happen again and again – with another woman with another man, with another friend. It will happen again and again; it will flower again and again. Don’t get stuck. Your wife has died. Of course you feel sad and you cry, and it is good, but don’t get stuck. Now don’t decide to remain a widower for ever and ever. This is foolish, this is stupid. And don’t think that falling in love again will be a betrayal of your wife, no. You had fallen in love with your wife in the first place because of love. Another love will arise, another love will arise… Don’t betray love. Persons come and go.Don’t hanker for the permanent, otherwise you will destroy the reality of the person. If you hanker for the permanent, then you don’t look into the real; then you start trying to fix it so that the wife remains forever your wife. You start becoming possessive. Thinking that this roseflower may fade away, you take it away from the plant, because on the plant you have seen flowers disappear – in the evening the petals start falling and the flower is gone. Before it is gone, you cut it from the plant. You can put it in a safe-deposit box, you can lock it up, but by cutting it from the plant you have already made it die. Now it will simply rot in your safe-deposit box. You have not even allowed it a beautiful death.Don’t hanker for the permanent; otherwise you will destroy the reality of the person. If you hanker for the permanent, then you don’t look into the real; then you start trying how to fix so that the wife remains forever your wife. You start becoming possessive. Thinking that this roseflower may fade away, you take it away from the plant, because on the plant you have seen flowers disappear – in the evening the petals start falling and the flower is gone. Before it is gone, you cut it from the plant. You can put it in a safe-deposit box, you can lock it, but by cutting it from the plant you have already made it dead; now it will simply rot in your safe deposit. You have not even allowed it a beautiful death.Don’t be so cruel, don’t be so unkind. The flower was beautiful on the plant, on the bush. It was alive there. Its life belonged to the life of the bush. Let it die there; that death is beautiful. But now you have taken it away. I have seen people putting roseflowers in their bibles; then they become dry and dead. You don’t allow the flower a beautiful death – and your Bibles are also like dead flowers.Remember, when you start possessing the woman or the man, you are killing: you are putting a flower in the safe-deposit box. You rush to the court to get married; you are making it a legal thing. Love dies when law comes in; love cannot exist with law. Love is lawlessness. Love is so spontaneous, how can it exist with law? It is impossible. Love has disappeared from the earth because there is too much law. Unless law disappears from the earth, there is no possibility for love to appear again. And without love there is no possibility of prayerfulness. And without love there is no possibility of godliness.Religion does not consist of laws. It consists only of one thing, and that is love.“I have had similar experiences before, but they have always faded away.” Good. This is how it should be. Don’t look back, look forward. More is to come. Don’t close your eyes, and don’t cling to the past. More is to come – you are growing. Better and deeper experiences are waiting for you.“I hope it is now wisdom and will not fade…” Wisdom always fades away. Only knowledge remains.“…but I fear it may be knowledge and I will lose it.” If this is your notion, you will be in trouble. Wisdom always fades. Wisdom need not remain there as a wound. It comes and goes like a breeze. Of course each moment of wisdom makes you wiser and wiser, but this is how wisdom makes you wise: you become aware that reality fades, that reality is momentary, that reality comes and goes, that nothing is permanent. Everything is eternal! Nothing is permanent. The permanent is human desire; the eternal is existence’s nature.Everything comes again – never the same, yet it comes again. Spring has gone, it will come again. Summer has gone, it will come again. It will be there again – yet never the same. Your childhood is gone, but many other children will be born. Your youth is gone, somebody else will become a youth. Your old age is disappearing, somebody else is becoming old. You are dying, somebody else is getting ready to die. Death continues, life continues, love continues, and we are just vehicles of these eternal forces.So drop the idea of the permanent. Live in the moment, and you will know the eternal.The third question:Osho,Oh, the religion! The adoration of the past! The beauty and sentimentality of the past!Since I was a little child, I have always felt like thinking about the past and getting a feeling of sweet pain, that the past is gone, and crying sweet and warm tears and really enjoying the whole thing very much – this whole thing called nostalgia. Sometimes I really love my past. Having a past to play with, I feel blessed. Am I a fool?So I hear you and agree with you, intellectually, that the past is nonexistential and unreal, but I seem to feel different about it. What is going on?If nostalgia is just a trick of the ego, which it must be, then why does it comes as a good warm feeling?How can the Devil be sweet?Or how can my feelings be unreal?Or if my feelings are unreal, what is left?The one question is not one question; it is seven questions. So we will have to be surgical. Excuse me. We will have to cut this question into seven parts.First: “Oh, the religion! The adoration of the past!’’ Religion is not the adoration of the past. It has nothing to do with the past. Religion is possibility, not past. Religion is potentiality for the future, not past. Religion is not looking backward; it is looking forward. Religion is not memory, but hope. But you have been trained to look at the past because you have been trained not by religious people but by Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. These are not religious people. You have been conditioned by the priests and the popes and the shankaracharyas. These are not religious people.If you come to a religious person, he will give you hope for the future – he will give you a fire for the future. He will not talk about the dead past. To look at the dead past is dangerous. For one thing, it cannot be repeated. Second, one who goes on looking back cannot live the future. It is as if you are driving your car looking only in the rearview mirror. You are doomed! The rearview mirror is not for that. Only when you reverse your car, it’s okay, use it; or sometimes somebody is honking his horn from behind, then look – but don’t get obsessed with the rearview mirror. It may be a beautiful mirror, but please, look ahead. You are driving into the future. Looking backward and driving into the future is dangerous; then an accident is almost predictable. It is not an accident, it is a certainty. It is going to happen.Remember, all movement is toward the future. You cannot move toward the past. Movement is only toward the future, but you can look toward the past. And if you go on looking toward the past, still you are moving toward the future, and if your life becomes accidental, prone to accidents, and you collide and bump, and this and that, and your whole life becomes a misery, it is natural. Look where you are going. Don’t look to the past where you have been.No, you must have been taught by Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans; that’s why you think, ‘‘Oh, the religion! The adoration of the past!” Religion has nothing to do with the past, because religion has nothing to do with the dead. It is a concern with life, a commitment to life.“The beauty and sentimentality of the past!” There is nothing beautiful in it. How can the dead be beautiful? You don’t know what beauty is then. Beauty is always in the alive. Beauty is always of the present. But if you have become blind to the present, then of course you know only one beauty, and that is of the past. And that is not beauty at all. Beauty is throbbing, pulsating with life. Beauty is always herenow; it is not in the past.But to be herenow needs great courage. To be herenow needs great awareness. To be herenow needs great intelligence. So people have chosen not to bother with the herenow; they look back, they look at the past. Now no intelligence is needed to look at the past – any stupid person can do that. Anybody can look at that which has happened. To look at that which is happening needs subtle, tremendous awareness, and that is the way the future is going to happen.The future is constantly turning into the present; the present is constantly turning into the past. The past is out of your hands. You cannot do anything with it. Then don’t get stuck with it, because nothing can be done about it. You cannot undo it. You cannot change it. It is impossible. It is futile to waste time with it. But there are people, millions of people – they are the majority – who go on thinking about the past, who go on decorating it in their memory. They are missing the real. They have become involved with the unreal, with the gone. These people are dead people.There is nothing beautiful in a grave. There is nothing beautiful in a skeleton. It simply stinks. A dead body simply stinks. There is nothing beautiful in it.Beauty needs life, because beauty needs a heartbeat, beauty needs pulsation, streaming, energy, vitality. The past is just a memory. You are just playing a tape when you start looking at the past; you are just looking at a movie. It is no longer anywhere. It is just in your head, and it is mechanical. Now scientists say that it is absolutely mechanical. They have found that if electrodes touch certain centers of the mind, certain memories start unfolding. You think you are free? You are wrong!If your skull is opened and a certain spot is touched with an electrode, some electricity is given to that spot, a certain memory will start. You will see you are a child. Suddenly! You were not thinking about it. You will see you are a child, running in the garden in the morning sun trying to catch a butterfly; and you have fallen and you have broken your leg. And if the electrode is taken away, the memory stops. Again if the electrode touches the same spot, the same memory repeats in the same way again: you are a child in the garden running in the morning sun trying to catch a butterfly, you have fallen, you have broken your leg. Take the electrode off; the memory disappears. Put the electrode on again; the memory starts again, ditto, in the same way: you are a child…This is a mechanical thing, and you cannot stop it! Remember, when the electrode is there, do whatsoever you want to do – shake your head and try to get rid of it, you cannot. The tape is running, the film is moving, the film is on the projector. Your mind simply functions as a screen. Nothing is beautiful in it. It is a mechanical thing.To be herenow you have to be aware, not mechanical. To be in the past any machine will do; you are not needed.Sooner or later, when a person dies, a person like Albert Einstein, they will take his tape out. Right now it is difficult, but sooner or later they will find the way to take the brain out and keep it alive as a machine, and then they can play it; it can be projected on a screen. Einstein will not be there, but his memories will be there and they will be played on a screen, and he will again and again discover the theory of relativity – and he is not there.Mind, when functioning as the past, is a mechanism. When mind thinks about the future, again, it is the past projecting into the future. When you start thinking about tomorrow, what is your tomorrow? Just a modified form – a little decorated, retouched here and there; just your yesterday projected again. Maybe there are a few things you don’t want. Your woman nagged you too much yesterday. You don’t want her to nag you again, you don’t want her to do that again tomorrow. Maybe you drop that. You were eating in a Chinese restaurant and it was tremendously delicious and you would like to eat there tomorrow again – and a little more. This is how your tomorrow comes, from the gone yesterday – a little retouched here and there, decorated, polished, modified, refined, but it is the gone yesterday projected again.Only the present is not mechanical. Only the present is real. Only this moment is real. And only this moment is beautiful.“…I have always felt like thinking about the past and getting a feeling of sweet pain, that the past is gone, and crying sweet and warm tears and really enjoying the whole thing very much…” People do that, they go on enjoying the past very much, because they don’t have any future and they don’t have any present. These people are dead people, corpses walking on the streets.Stop getting into the past too much. Detach yourself. Get out of your past. Yes, sometimes it can be very sweet, because you are completely free to choose. People choose good things from the past and go on dumping the bad things in their basement. That’s why everybody thinks their childhood was paradise. It is not so. Ask the psychologists. They say it is a chosen part; you have chosen a few pages. Whatsoever you feel was beautiful, you have chosen and you go on looking at it. And not only that, you go on magnifying its beauty, its sweetness, its goodness.And this only shows one thing – this obsession with the past shows only one thing: your present is ugly. This shows only one thing: that you are impotent as far as the present is concerned. A really potent man or woman, a really vital person who lives in the present, will not have time to go into the past. The present is so absorbing, the present is so enchanting, the present is so tremendously alive, why should one go back to the past? You go back to the past only because you have not yet learned how to be in the present.And to be in the present is to be religious, because to be in the present needs awareness. And awareness is the very key of all religion.“Sometimes I really love my past. Having a past to play with, I feel blessed. Am I a fool?” Certainly, absolutely – and a perfect fool at that! Get out of this, and the sooner you do, the better. Be a little wiser with your life.“So I hear you and agree with you, intellectually…” There is never any agreement intellectually. This is a way of saying that you don’t agree with me. “Intellectual” agreement? It is not an agreement at all. It is as if somebody comes and says, “I love you very much – intellectually.” What do you mean? Intellectually? How can love happen intellectually? How can you agree with me intellectually? Maybe you cannot argue, maybe you feel yourself a little at a loss as to how to argue with me – you feel silenced – but it is not agreement. To agree intellectually is not to agree at all. Unless you agree totally, you are not agreeing.“I hear you and agree with you, intellectually, that the past is nonexistential and unreal…” I am not giving you any theory or philosophy. I am simply stating facts. There is no question of agreement or disagreement. When I say the trees are green, do you agree with me intellectually, or do you disagree with me? You simply look at the trees and you say, “Right. Trees are green.” When I say the past is gone, am I talking some philosophy to you, am I preaching some philosophy to you? “The past is gone” is as much a fact as “the trees are green.” You know it, I know it, everybody knows it: the past is gone. The past means that which is gone. The past is the past. Do you have to agree with me about this too? Then either I am mad or you are mad!If I say the sun has risen and you say, “Yes. I think I will agree with you…” About facts one need not agree or disagree. Just look at the fact. Either it is a fact or it is not a fact. How can you hesitate between agreement and disagreement? Either I am stating some fictitious thing or I am stating a fact. Just look into the fact.The past is gone – you are no longer a child, or you are no longer a young man. The past is gone. Let the gone be gone. That’s what Jesus says when he says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” Let the gone be gone, and look at that which is.And now one thing to be remembered: a person who is so obsessed with the past, his past is not reliable either. Because, for example, today, right now, I am talking to you. This is the present. Tomorrow it will have become the past and then you will think about it – Osho talking to you and how beautiful it was. Look at the foolishness of it. One doctor used to come here, and he would continuously take notes. I asked him, “What do you go on doing?” He said, “I take notes because you say such beautiful things, I would like to remember them later on.” “But when I am talking right now, then you are taking notes. Your notes are not reliable, because you don’t hear me: you are concerned with the notes too much. Your concern with the notes simply says you are too concerned with changing the present into the past, and then you will enjoy.”Yes, there are people…there is a certain category of people called tourists. It is a sort of neurosis. They go to the Himalayas. They don’t look at the Himalayas – they are continuously clicking their cameras and looking at the guidebook and listening to the guide. The Himalayas are not a concern at all. And if you ask them they will say, “Yes, back at home, resting in our armchairs, we will look at the album.”Don’t be a tourist. The tourist is a certain sort of neurosis. When you are facing the Himalayas, tell the guide to keep quiet, because whatsoever he says is meaningless. The Himalayas are there, you are facing Gourishankar; let everybody keep quiet. Look at it, face it, encounter it. It is tremendously beautiful. Don’t bring your camera in; the camera will falsify it. And the camera can give only one aspect; just a small window will open, and the whole Himalayas was available in its totality, and you missed that. And back home you will look with nostalgia at how beautiful the Himalayas were – and you were never there! You were with your camera and you were listening to the guide and you were looking at the guidebook and the map – and you were never there. Maybe when you were in the Himalayas you were thinking about your home – with nostalgia!I cannot trust that you had a real past. Your past is gone, and even that past cannot be very real, because you don’t know how to live in the present – how can your past be real? Not even as a memory is it worth trusting. First live in the present. Let the present have its total impact on you, then your past will have something, a true memory. Otherwise your memory is not reliable. You may be imagining it, you may be dreaming about it.While I am talking to you, be here with me. When you are in Pune, be in Pune. Otherwise there are people – when they are in Pune they think of Philadelphia, and when they are in Philadelphia they will think of Pune. They go on falsifying everything.“If nostalgia is just a trick of the ego, which it must be, then why does it come as a good warm feeling?” Because you don’t know how to be warm herenow, because you don’t know how to be loving herenow. You are cold and frozen herenow, so you seek warmth in memories. You are tremendously poor. I feel sorry for you.“How can the Devil be sweet?” The Devil is always sweet. God is sometimes bitter too, but the Devil is always sweet. He has to be sweet; otherwise how will he deceive you? He cannot afford to be bitter. He has to always buttress you.“How can my feelings be unreal?” I am not saying that your feelings are unreal. I am saying feelings exist in the present. In fact the word feel has no past tense. I don’t know about language and the grammarians, but I say to you, the word feel has no past tense – cannot have. Feel means feel herenow. Thinking is always in the past; thinking has no present tense. You cannot think herenow. The moment you think, you are lost, you have lost track of the present. Feeling is always of the present; thinking, always of the past.Try it. And I am stating a fact: try it. If you think, you always think of that which is gone or that which has not come yet; both nonexistential. Thinking is nonexistential. Feeling is existential. If you love a person, and you feel the love, you feel herenow. How can you have the feeling of yesterday? You will think that you felt yesterday; you cannot feel it. And to think that you felt is not feeling; it is thinking. It is a deception.And, “If my feelings are unreal, what is left?” I am not saying your feelings are unreal. I am saying you are unreal. And when you are not left, existence is. Existence only knows the present; existence has no past and no future. Existence always is. You cannot make a sentence “Existence was”; it will be meaningless. You cannot say “Existence will be”; that too will be meaningless. Existence is always is; existence is isness, the absolute present.When you are not there… And you are nothing but your past. What are you? Just a collection of the past. Drop your past, and you are not. The ego is nothing but a collective name for your whole past; and when you don’t live in the past, you start living egolessly. Then moment to moment you go on dying to the past, you go on renouncing the past, and each moment you are fresh, young, virgin. And in that virginity is life.The soldier returned home unexpectedly on a fast leave. A few minutes later he was in bed with his wife when the janitor knocked on the door. “My God,” the soldier screamed, jumping out of bed, “it is your husband!”“Don’t be silly,” said his wife. “My husband is in Germany.”Get it? They both forgot the present. The soldier has come home on a fast leave and immediately gets into bed with his wife, and the janitor knocks on the door. Of course he must have become afraid, as he must have been becoming afraid in other people’s houses with other people’s wives, and he suddenly jumps off the bed and says, “My God, it is your husband!” And he is the husband! “Don’t be silly,” says his wife. “My husband is in Germany.” She must have been sleeping with others. And both are in the past.People are so unaware of the present. People are not in the present at all. That’s how they are missing life. Life is the present, and you are not in the present. To be present – in the present – is to be in meditation. That’s all meditation is about. To be present is to be prayerful.The last question:Osho,Once in a while, my mind looks at your close disciples, like the tall English guy with the sad face. One hears his sad voice as he reads the sutra. The guy never smiles, never lets go. Do people become very serious if they are so near you?I am not serious, and a certain balance is needed. Teertha balances me. He has to be serious on purpose. When the master is not serious, disciples have to be serious.You can ask Narendra, one of our sannyasins. His father is a beautiful man – a little crazy. For thirty, forty years he has been crazy. Small children will watch him – his own children will watch him – because he can steal. He can take things from the money box and disappear – the father. So small kids, they will just sit there in the shop and watch. When the father can steal, then the children have to watch. Otherwise ordinarily it happens the other way: the father watches, and the kids steal.This is how it is happening here. The master is nonserious: the kids have to be serious. It certainly balances things. Teertha is not serious; he has to be on purpose.But you need not be worried about others. That is not mannerly, and that is not good at all. It is impolite, inhuman. You should not be concerned with others. Why should you be worried? And who are you to decide what others should do? The very idea that you have to decide that “others should do like this” is a deep political ambition to become powerful, to manage, to suppress.Now, you say, “Once in a while, my mind looks at your close disciples…” Don’t waste time. Look at yourself. In fact there is not much time – you cannot afford it. Life is short and much has to be done. Don’t waste your time, because God will not ask you why Teertha was serious. He will not ask you. It is not something you will be asked. If he wants to ask, he will ask Teertha. He will ask you about you, and then you cannot say, “I cannot answer because I was too busy looking at other people and what they were doing and my whole life was wasted in that.”“The guy never smiles, never lets go.” But it is possible that if somebody lets go, the smile may disappear. If the smile is forced, pretentious, then let-go will help the smile go. It is not necessary for you to relax when you smile. It depends.Somebody may start crying when he relaxes – and he may have been laughing before. Now he relaxes and he starts crying. Somebody may have been very, very sweet and smiling, and when he relaxes, suddenly he becomes serious. There is no necessity about it. If his smile was false, then when he relaxes he cannot smile. If his sweetness was false, when he relaxes he cannot be sweet. If his softness, politeness, was just hypocrisy and he relaxes, then he cannot be polite. It depends.So there is no necessity that in a let-go everybody has to smile. These ideas of how everybody should be are wrong. When I say let go, I am simply saying be natural. If to somebody it happens that he feels natural when he is serious, then it is perfectly good. Then don’t impose having to laugh on him. Why? Who are you? You never seem to allow people freedom. Sometimes you say they have to be serious – don’t laugh. And sometimes, if you turn to the other extreme, you start saying, “Now nobody is allowed to be serious – laugh!” Both are wrong.Allow the other his being. If seriousness is natural, good. The whole world cannot laugh. In the world there exists a certain balance. Just as half are women and half are men and half are introverts and half are extroverts and half are people with will and half are people with a tremendous quality of surrender, in exactly the same way, half the people when they are relaxed will laugh and half the people when they are relaxed will become serious. That’s a balance. The world is a great balance.But I have the feeling that the person who has asked must have suffered from seriousness himself, otherwise why should he be worried? You can laugh! Teertha’s seriousness is not a hindrance to you. He is not going to prevent you. But if you feel that somebody is serious and you feel a certain hindrance yourself to laughing, that means deep down in your unconscious you are a serious person. In fact you are finding ways and means to be serious here; you are finding a rationalization. So now if you think, and if I say to you, that people who are very close to me become serious, then you would also like to become serious and come close to me. You are trying to find a rationalization. It is your outlook, and your outlook always shows something about you.I have heard an anecdote of the night Houdini, the great magician, first introduced the trick of putting a dozen needles and a piece of thread into his mouth, and then producing them all neatly threaded. “I want a gentleman in the audience,” he announced, “to examine the needles and thread, and then look into my mouth to make sure nothing is concealed there.” An elderly little man climbed up to the stage, and peered intently into Houdini’s bridgework. “Well,” said Houdini finally, “don’t just stand there. Tell the audience what you see.”The little man said, “Pyorrhea.”He was a doctor. When you say something about somebody, you say something about yourself.Never be concerned about others. My whole effort here is to give you all freedom, total freedom, to be whatsoever you can be. Seriousness is also beautiful if it is natural. Then it is a flowering. The whole world laughing and nobody serious will not be a very deep world. It will be very superficial. Laughter has a beauty of its own, a flowering – but seriousness… When I say don’t be serious, I mean don’t be unnaturally serious. When I say laugh, I don’t mean laugh anywhere for no reason at all. When I say laugh, I mean allow laughter. If it comes don’t repress it. And the same I say about seriousness. If it is natural to you, if it is a natural climate to you and you feel good and happy in it, then perfectly good. There is no need to be worried about it.Remember, the unnatural has to be dropped and the natural has to be allowed flowering, expression. If you are here in this world to sing a serious song, sing it. That’s your destiny. If you are here to dance and laugh, dance and laugh. That’s your destiny.And each person is unique; and each person has to go toward truth in his own way. Never impose your style on anybody else. That is violence.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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He who rules men lives in confusion;he who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.Yao therefore desiredneither to influence othersnor be influenced by them.The way to get clear of confusion and free of sorrowis to live with Tao in the land of the void.If a man is crossing a riverand an empty boat collides with his own skiff,even though he be a bad-tempered manhe will not become very angry.But if he sees a man in the boat,he will shout to him to steer clear.And if the shout is not heard he will shoutagain and yet again, and begin cursing –and all because there is somebody in that boat.Yet if the boat were empty,he would not be shouting,and he would not be angry.If you can empty your own boatcrossing the river of the world,no one will oppose you,no one will seek to harm you.The straight tree is the first to be cut down,the spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.If you wish to improve your wisdomand shame the ignorant,to cultivate your character and outshine others,a light will shine around youas if you had swallowed the sun and the moon –and you will not avoid calamity.A wise man has said:“He who is content with himselfhas done worthless work. Achievement is the beginning of failure,fame is the beginning of disgrace.”Who can free himself of achievement and famethen descend and be lostamid the masses of men?He will flow like Tao, unseen,he will go about like life itselfwith no name and no home.Simple is he, without distinction.To all appearances he is a fool.His steps leave no trace. He has no power.He achieves nothing, he has no reputation.Since he judges no one,no one judges him.Such is the perfect man –his boat is empty.You have come to me. You have taken a dangerous step. It is a risk because near me you can be lost forever. To come closer will mean death and cannot mean anything else. I am just like an abyss. Come closer to me and you will fall into me. And for this, the invitation has been given to you. You have heard it and you have come.Be aware that through me you are not going to gain anything. Through me you can only lose all – because unless you are lost, the divine cannot happen; unless you disappear totally, the real cannot arise. You are the barrier.And you are so much, so stubbornly much, you are so filled with yourself that nothing can penetrate you. Your doors are closed. When you disappear, when you are not, the doors open. Then you become just like the vast, infinite sky.That is your nature. That is Tao.Before I enter into Chuang Tzu’s beautiful parable of The Empty Boat, I would like to tell you one other story, because that will set the trend for this meditation camp which you are entering.I have heard…It happened once, in some ancient time, in some unknown country, that a prince suddenly went mad. The king was desperate – the prince was the only son, the only heir to the kingdom. All the magicians were called, miracle makers, medical men were summoned, every effort was made, but in vain. Nobody could help the young prince, he remained mad.The day he went crazy he threw off his clothes, became naked, and started to live under a big table. He thought that he had become a rooster. Ultimately the king had to accept the fact that the prince could not be reclaimed. He had gone insane permanently; all the experts had failed.But one day, again hope dawned. One sage, a Sufi, a mystic, knocked on the palace door and said, “Give me an opportunity to cure the prince.”But the king felt suspicious because this man looked crazy himself, more crazy than the prince. But the mystic said, “Only I can cure him. To cure a madman, a greater madman is needed. And your miracle makers, your medical experts, all have failed because they don’t know the ABC of madness. They have never traveled that path.”It looked logical, and then the king thought, “There is no harm in it, why not try?” So the opportunity was given to him.The moment the king said, “Okay, you try,” this mystic threw off his clothes, jumped under the table and crowed like a rooster.The prince became suspicious, and he said, “Who are you? And what do you think you are doing?”The old man said, “I am a rooster, more experienced than you. You are nothing, you are just a newcomer, at the most an apprentice.”The prince said, “Then it is okay if you are also a rooster, but you look like a human being.”The old man said, “Don’t go by appearances, look at my spirit, at my soul. I am a rooster like you.”They became friends. They promised each other that they would always live together – and the whole world was against them.A few days passed. One day the old man suddenly started dressing. He put on his shirt. The prince said, “What are you doing, have you gone crazy, a rooster trying to put on human dress?”The old man said, “I am just trying to deceive these fools, these human beings. And remember, even if I am dressed, nothing is changed. My roosterness remains, nobody can change it. Just by dressing like a human being do you think I am changed?” The prince had to concede.A few days afterward the old man persuaded the prince to dress because winter was coming, and it was becoming so cold.Then one day suddenly, he ordered food from the palace. The prince became very alert and said, “Wretch, what do you mean? Are you going to eat like those human beings, like them? We are roosters and we have to eat like roosters.”The old man said, “Nothing makes any difference as far as this rooster is concerned. You can eat anything and you can enjoy everything. You can live like a human being and remain true to your roosterness.”By and by the old man persuaded the prince to come back to the world of humanity. He became absolutely normal.The same is the case with you and me. And remember, you are just initiates, beginners. You may think that you are a rooster but you are just learning the alphabet. I am an old hand, and only I can help you – all the experts have failed, that’s why you are here. You have knocked on many doors, for many lives you have been in search – nothing has been of help to you.But I say I can help you because I am not an expert, I am not an outsider. I have traveled the same path, the same insanity, the same madness. I have passed through the same – the same misery, the anguish, the same nightmares. And whatsoever I am doing is nothing but persuading you to come out of your madness.To think oneself a rooster is crazy; to think oneself a body is also crazy, even crazier. To think oneself a rooster is madness; to think oneself a human being is a greater madness – because you don’t belong to any form. Whether the form is that of a rooster or of a human being is irrelevant – you belong to the formless, you belong to the total, the whole. So whatsoever form you think you are, you are mad. You are formless. You don’t belong to any form, and you don’t belong to any body, you don’t belong to any caste, religion, creed; you don’t belong to any name. And unless you become formless, nameless, you will never be sane.Sanity means coming to that which is natural, coming to that which is ultimate in you, coming to that which is hidden behind you. Much effort is needed because to cut form, to drop and eliminate form, is very difficult. You have become so attached and identified with it.This Samadhi Sadhana Shibir, this meditation camp, is nothing but to persuade you toward the formless – how not to be in the form. Every form means the ego; even a rooster has its ego, and man has his own. Every form is centered in the ego. The formless means egolessness; then you are not centered in the ego, then your center is everywhere or nowhere. This is possible, this which looks almost impossible, is possible, because this has happened to me. And when I speak, I speak through experience.Wherever you are, I was, and wherever I am, you can be. Look at me as deeply as possible and feel me as deeply as possible, because I am your future, I am your possibility.Whenever I say surrender to me, I mean surrender to this possibility. You can be cured because your illness is just a thought. The prince went mad because he became identified with the thought that he was a rooster. Everybody is mad unless he comes to understand that he is not identified with any form – only then, sanity.So a sane person will not be anybody in particular, cannot be. Only an insane person can be somebody in particular – whether a rooster or a man, or a prime minister or a president, or anybody, whatsoever. A sane person comes to feel the nobodiness.This is the danger…You have come to me as somebody, and if you allow me, if you give me an opportunity, this somebodiness can disappear and you can become a nobody. This is the whole effort – to make you a nobody. But why? Why this effort to become a nobody? Because unless you become nobody you cannot be blissful; unless you become nobody you cannot be ecstatic; unless you become nobody the benediction is not for you – you go on missing life.Really you are not alive, you simply drag, you simply carry yourself like a burden. Much anguish happens, much despair, much sorrow, but not a single ray of bliss – it cannot. If you are somebody, you are like a solid block of stone, nothing can penetrate you. When you are nobody you start becoming porous. When you are nobody, you are really an emptiness, transparent, everything can pass through you. There is no hindrance, there is no barrier, no resistance. You become a passivity, a door.Right now you are like a wall; a wall means somebody. When you become a door you become nobody. A door is just an emptiness, anybody can pass, there is no resistance, no barrier. Somebody, you are mad; nobody, you will become sane for the first time.But the whole society, education, civilization, culture, they all cultivate you and help you to become somebody. That’s why I say religion is against civilization, religion is against education, religion is against culture – because religion is for nature, for Tao.All civilizations are against nature, because they want to make you somebody in particular. And the more you are crystallized as somebody, the less and less the divine can penetrate into you.You go to the temples, to the churches, to the priests, but there too you are searching – how to become somebody in the other world, how to attain something, how to succeed? The achieving mind follows you like a shadow. Wherever you go, you go with the idea of profit, achievement, success, attainment. If somebody has come here with this idea he should leave as soon as possible, and he should run as fast as possible from me, because I cannot help you to become somebody.I am not your enemy. I can only help you to be nobody. I can only push you into the bottomless abyss. You will never reach anywhere, you will simply dissolve. You will fall and fall and fall and dissolve, and the moment you dissolve the whole existence feels ecstatic. The whole existence celebrates this happening.Buddha attained this. Because of language I say attained – otherwise the word is ugly, there is no attainment – but you will understand. Buddha attained this emptiness, this nothingness. For two weeks, for fourteen days continuously, he sat in silence, not moving, not saying, not doing anything.It is said that the deities in heaven became disturbed – rarely it happens that somebody becomes such total emptiness. The whole existence felt a celebration, so the deities came. They bowed down before Buddha and they said, “You must say something, you must say what you have attained.” Buddha is said to have laughed and said, “I have not attained anything; rather, because of this mind, which always wants to attain something, I was missing everything. I have not achieved anything, this is not an achievement; rather, on the contrary, the achiever has disappeared. I am no more, see the beauty of it,” said Buddha. “When I was, I was miserable, and when I am no more, everything is blissful, the bliss is showering and showering continuously on me, everywhere. Now there is no misery.”Buddha had said before: “Life is misery, birth is misery, death is misery – everything is miserable.” It was miserable because the ego was there. The boat was not empty. Now the boat was empty; now there was no misery, no sorrow, no sadness. Existence had become a celebration and it would remain a celebration for eternity, forever and forever.That’s why I say, it is dangerous that you have come to me. You have taken a risky step. And if you are courageous, then be ready for the jump.The whole effort is how to kill you; the whole effort is how to destroy you. Once you are destroyed, the indestructible will come up – it is there, hidden. Once all that which is nonessential is eliminated, the essential will be like a flame – alive in its total glory.This parable of Chuang Tzu is beautiful. He says that a wise man is like an empty boat.Such is the perfect man –his boat is empty.There is nobody inside.If you meet a Chuang Tzu, or a Lao Tzu, or me, the boat is there, but it is empty – nobody in it. If you simply look at the surface, then somebody is there, because the boat is there. But if you penetrate deeper, if you really become intimate with me, if you forget the body, the boat, then you come to encounter a nothingness.Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, because to become nobody is the most difficult, almost impossible, the most extraordinary thing in the world.The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary – then who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted.This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: “A perfect man is like an empty boat.” Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere.When the mind is not there life will remain a movement, but it will not be directed. You will move, you will change, you will be a riverlike flow, but not going anywhere, with no goal in view. A perfect man lives without any purpose; a perfect man moves but without any motive. If you ask a perfect man, “What are you doing?” he will say, “I don’t know, this is what is happening.” If you ask me why I am talking to you, I will say, “Ask the flower why the flower is flowering.” This is happening, this is not manipulated. There is no one to manipulate it, the boat is empty. When there is purpose you will always be in misery. Why?Once a man asked a miser, a great miser, “How could you succeed in accumulating so much wealth?”The miser said, “This has been my motto: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow has to be done today, and whatsoever is to be enjoyed today has to be enjoyed tomorrow. This has been my motto.” He succeeded in accumulating wealth – this is also how people succeed in accumulating nonsense.That miser was also miserable. On the one hand he had succeeded in accumulating wealth, on the other hand he had succeeded in accumulating misery. The motto is the same for accumulating misery also: whatsoever is to be done tomorrow, do it today, right now, don’t postpone it. And whatsoever can be enjoyed right now, never enjoy it right now, postpone it for tomorrow.This is the way to enter hell. It always succeeds, it has never been a failure. Try it and you will succeed – or, you may have already succeeded. You may have been trying it without knowing. Postpone all that which can be enjoyed, just think of the tomorrow.Jesus was crucified by the Jews for this reason, not for any other. Not that they were against Jesus – he was a perfect man, a beautiful man, why were the Jews against him? Rather, on the contrary, they had been waiting for this man. For centuries they had been hoping and waiting: “When will the messiah come?”And then suddenly this Jesus declared, “I am the messiah for whom you have been waiting, and I have come now. Now look at me.”They were disturbed – because the mind can wait, it always enjoys waiting – but the mind cannot face the fact, the mind cannot encounter this moment. It can always postpone.It was easy to postpone: “The messiah is to come, soon he will be coming…” For centuries the Jews had been thinking and postponing and then suddenly this man destroyed all hope because he said, “I am here.” The mind was disturbed. They had to kill this man, otherwise they would not have been able to live with the hope for the tomorrow.And not only Jesus, many others have declared since then, “I am here, I am the messiah!” And Jews always deny, because if they don’t deny, then how will they be able to hope and how will they be able to postpone? They have lived with this hope with such fervor, with such deep intensity, you cannot believe it. There have been Jews who would go to their beds at night hoping that this would be the last night, that in the morning the messiah would be there.I have heard about one rabbi who used to say to his wife, “If he comes in the night, don’t waste a single minute, wake me up immediately.” The messiah is coming and coming, he may come at any moment.I have heard of another rabbi – his son was going to be married, so he sent invitations to the marriage to friends and he wrote on the invitation, “My son is going to be married in Jerusalem on such-and-such a date, but if the messiah hasn’t come by then, my son will be married in this village of Korz. Who knows, by the time the day of the marriage comes, the messiah may have come. Then I will not be here, I will be in Jerusalem, celebrating. So if he has not come by the date of the marriage, only then will the marriage be here in this village; otherwise in Jerusalem.”They have been waiting and waiting, dreaming. The whole Jewish mind has been obsessed with the coming messiah. But whenever the messiah comes, they immediately deny him. This has to be understood. This is how the mind functions: you wait for the bliss, for the ecstasy, and whenever it comes you deny it, you just turn your back toward it.Mind can live in the future, but cannot live in the present. In the present you can simply hope and desire. And that’s how you create misery. If you start living this very moment, here and now, misery disappears.But how is it related to the ego? Ego is the accumulated past. Whatsoever you have known, experienced, read, whatsoever has happened to you in the past, the whole is accumulated there. That whole past is the ego, it is you.The past can project into the future – because future is nothing but extended past. The past cannot face the present – the present is totally different, it has a quality of being here and now. The past is always dead, the present is life, the very source of all aliveness. The past cannot face the present so it moves into the future – both are dead, both are nonexistential. The present is life; neither can the future encounter the present, nor can the past encounter the present. And your ego, your somebodiness, is your past. Unless you are empty you cannot be here, and unless you are here you cannot be alive.How can you know the bliss of life? It is showering on you every moment and you are bypassing it.Says Chuang Tzu: Such is the perfect man – his boat is empty. Empty of what? Empty of the I, empty of the ego, empty of somebody there inside.He who rules men, lives in confusion;he who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.He who rules men, lives in confusion. Why? Because the desire to rule comes from the ego; the desire to possess, to be powerful, the desire to dominate, comes from the ego. The greater the kingdom you can dominate, the greater the ego you can achieve. With your possessions your inner somebody goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Sometimes the boat becomes so small and the ego becomes so big.This is what is happening to politicians, to people obsessed with wealth, prestige, power. Their egos have become so big that their boats cannot contain them. Every moment they are on the point of drowning, on the verge, afraid, scared to death. And the more afraid you are, the more possessive you become because you think that through possessions, somehow security is achieved. The more afraid you are, the more you think that if your kingdom could be a little greater, you would be more secure.He who rules men, lives in confusion… Really, the desire to rule comes out of your confusion; the desire to be leaders of men comes out of your confusion. When you start leading others you forget your confusion – this is a sort of escape, a trick. You are ill, but if somebody is ill and you become interested in curing that man, you forget your own illness.I have heard…Once George Bernard Shaw phoned his doctor and said, “I am in much trouble and I feel that my heart is going to fail. Come immediately!”The doctor came running. He had to climb three staircases, perspiring. He came in and without saying anything, just fell down on a chair and closed his eyes. Bernard Shaw jumped out of his bed and asked, “What has happened?”The doctor said, “Don’t say anything. It seems I am dying. It is a heart attack.”Bernard Shaw started helping him; he brought a cup of tea, some aspirin, whatsoever he could do. Within half an hour the doctor was okay. And then he said, “Now I must leave, give me my fee.”George Bernard Shaw said, “This is really something. You should pay me! I have been running around for half an hour doing things for you and you have not even asked anything about me.”But the doctor said, “I have cured you. This is a treatment and you have to pay me the fee.”When you become interested in somebody else’s illness you forget your own, hence so many leaders, so many gurus, so many masters. It gives you an occupation. If you are concerned with other people, if you are a servant of people, a social worker, helping others, you will forget your own confusion, your inner turmoil – you are too occupied.Psychiatrists never go mad – not because they are immune to it, but they are so much concerned with curing and helping other people’s madness, that they forget completely that they can also go mad.I have come to know many social workers, leaders, politicians, gurus, and they stay healthy just because they are concerned with others.But if you lead others, dominate others, out of your confusion you will create confusion in their lives. It may be a treatment for yourself, it may be a good escape for you, but it is spreading the disease.He who rules men, lives in confusion… And not only lives in confusion, he also goes on spreading confusion in others. Out of confusion only confusion is born.If you are confused, please remember – don’t help anybody, because your help is going to be poisonous. If you are confused don’t get occupied with others, because you are simply creating trouble, your disease will become infectious. Don’t give advice to anybody, and if you have a little clarity of thought, don’t take advice from someone who is confused. Remain alert, because confused people always like to give advice. And they give it free of charge, they give it very generously. Remain alert! Out of confusion only confusion is born.…he who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. If you dominate men, you live in confusion; if you allow others to dominate you, you will live in sorrow, because a slave cannot be blissful.Yao therefore desiredneither to influence othersnor be influenced by them.Someone of the name Yao – Chuang Tzu is talking about that man. Yao therefore desired neither to influence others nor be influenced by them. You should not try to influence anybody – and you should be alert, not to be influenced by others. The ego can do both, but it cannot remain in the middle. The ego can try to influence, then it feels good dominating; but remember that the ego also feels good being dominated. The masters feel good because so many slaves are dominated, and the slaves also feel good being dominated.There are two types of mind in the world: the mind of those who dominate – the male mind, and the mind of those who like to be dominated – the female mind. By female I don’t mean women, or by male, men. There are women who have masculine minds and there are men who have feminine minds. They are not always the same.These are the two types of mind: one which likes to dominate and one which likes to be dominated. In both ways the ego is fulfilled because whether you dominate or are dominated you are important. If someone dominates you, then too you are important because his domination depends on you. Without you, where will he be? Without you, where will his kingdom be, his domination, his possession? Without you, he will be nobody. The ego is fulfilled at both extremes; only in the middle does the ego die. Don’t be dominated and don’t try to dominate.Just think what will happen to you. You are not important in any way, not significant in any way, neither as a master nor as a slave. Masters cannot live without slaves and slaves cannot live without masters – they need each other, they are complementary. Just like man and woman they are complementary. The other is required for their fulfillment.Don’t be either. Then who are you? Then suddenly you disappear because then you are not significant at all, nobody depends on you, you are not needed.There is a great need to be needed. Remember, you feel good whenever you are needed. Sometimes, even if it brings misery to you, even then you love to be needed.A crippled child, always on the bed and the mother always saying: “What to do? I have to serve this child and my whole life is being wasted.” But still, if this child dies, this mother will feel lost, because at least this child needs her so totally that she has become important.If there is nobody who needs you, who are you? You create the need to be needed. Even slaves are needed.Yao therefore desiredneither to influence othersnor be influenced by them.The way to get clear of confusionand free of sorrowis to live with Taoin the land of the void.This middle point is the land of the void, or the door to the land of the void – as if you are not, as if nobody needs you, and you don’t need anybody. You exist as if you are not. If you are not significant the ego cannot persist. That is why you go on trying to become significant in some way or other. Whenever you feel that you are needed, you feel good. But this is your misery and confusion, and this is the base of your hell.How can you be free? Look at these two extremes. Buddha called his religion the middle path, majjhim nikaya. He called it the middle path because he said that mind lives in extremes. Once you remain in the middle the mind disappears. In the middle there is no mind.Have you seen a tightrope walker? Next time you see one, observe. Whenever the tightrope walker leans toward the left, he immediately has to move toward the right to balance; and whenever he feels he is leaning too much to the right, he has to lean toward the left.You have to go to the opposite to create balance. So it happens that masters become slaves, slaves become masters; possessors become possessed, the possessed becomes the possessor. It goes on, it is a continuous balance.Have you observed it in your relationships? If you are a husband, are you really a husband for twenty-four hours? Then you have not observed. In twenty-four hours the change happens at least twenty-four times – sometimes the wife is the husband and the husband is the wife, sometimes the husband is again the husband and the wife is again the wife.And this goes on changing from left to right. It is a tightrope walk. You have to balance. You cannot dominate for twenty-four hours because then the balance will be lost and the relationship will be destroyed.Whenever the tightrope walker comes to the middle, neither leaning to the right nor leaning to the left, then it is difficult for you to observe unless you yourself are the tightrope walker; in the middle the mind disappears. Tightrope walking has been used in Tibet as a meditation, because in the middle the mind disappears. The mind comes into existence again when you lean toward the right, then the mind comes again into being and says: “Balance it, lean toward the left.”When a problem arises, the mind arises. When there is no problem, how can the mind arise? When you are just in the middle, balanced totally, there is no mind. The equilibrium means no mind.One mother, I have heard, was very worried about her son. He was ten years old and he had not yet spoken a single word. Every effort was made but the doctors said, “Nothing is wrong, the brain is absolutely okay. The body is fit, the child is healthy, and nothing can be done. If something were wrong, then something could be done.”But still he would not speak. Then suddenly, one day in the morning, the son spoke and he said, “This toast is burned.”The mother couldn’t believe it. She looked, she got scared, she said, “What! You have spoken? And spoken so well! Then why were you always silent? We persuaded and tried and you never spoke.”The child said, “There was never anything wrong. For the first time the toast is burned.”If there is nothing wrong why should you speak?People come to me and they say, “You go on speaking every day…” I say, “Yes, because so many wrong people go on coming here and listening. There is so much wrong that I have to speak. If nothing is wrong then there is no need to speak. I speak because of you, because the toast is burned.”Whenever it is in the middle, between any extreme or polarity, the mind disappears. Try it. Rope walking is a beautiful exercise, and one of the very subtle methods of meditation. Nothing else is needed. You can observe the rope walker yourself, how it happens.And remember, on a rope thinking stops because you are in such danger. You cannot think. The moment you think, you will fall. A rope walker cannot think, he has to be alert every moment. The balance has to be maintained continuously. He cannot feel safe, he is not safe; he cannot feel secure, he is not secure. The danger is always there – any moment, a slight change of balance and he will fall – and death awaits.If you walk on a tightrope you will come to feel two things: thinking stops because there is danger, and whenever you really come to the middle, neither left nor right, just the midpoint, a great silence descends on you such as you have not known before. And this happens in every way. The whole of life is a tightrope walk.…Yao therefore desired to remain in the middle – neither be dominated nor be dominating, neither be a husband nor be a wife, neither be a master nor be a slave.The way to get clear of confusion and free of sorrow is to live with Tao in the land of the void. In the middle the door opens – the land of the void. When you are not, the whole world disappears because the world hangs on you. The whole world that you have created around you hangs on you. If you are not there the whole world disappears.Not that existence goes into nonexistence, no. But the world disappears and existence appears. The world is a mind creation; existence is the truth. This house will be there, but then this house will not be yours. The flower will be there but the flower will become nameless. It will be neither beautiful nor ugly. It will be there, but no concept will arise in your mind. All conceptual framework disappears. Existence: bare, naked, innocent, remains there in its pure, mirrorlike beingness. All the concepts, all the imaginations, and all the dreams disappear in the land of the void.If a man is crossing a riverand an empty boat collides with his own skiff,even though he be a bad-tempered manhe will not become very angry.But if he sees a man in the boat,he will shout to him to steer clear.And if the shout is not heard he will shoutagain, and yet again, and begin cursing –and all because there is somebody in that boat.Yet if the boat were empty,he would not be shouting, and he would not be angry.If people go on colliding with you and if people go on being angry with you, remember, they are not at fault. Your boat is not empty. They are angry because you are there. If the boat is empty they will look foolish, if they are angry they will look foolish.Those who are very intimate with me sometimes get angry with me and they look very foolish. If the boat is empty you can even enjoy the anger of others, because there is nobody to be angry with, they have not looked at you. So remember, if people go on colliding with you, you are too much of a solid wall. Get a door, become empty, let them pass.But even then sometimes people will be angry – they are even angry with a buddha. Because there are foolish people – if their boat collides with an empty boat, they will not look whether there is somebody in it or not. They will start shouting; they will get so messed up within themselves they will not be able to see whether there is somebody in it or not.But even then the empty boat can enjoy it because then the anger never hits you; you are not there, so whom can it hit?This symbol of the empty boat is really beautiful. People are angry because you are too much there, because you are too heavy there – so solid they cannot pass. And life is intertwined with everybody. If you are too much, then everywhere there will be collision, anger, depression, aggression, violence – the conflict continues.Whenever you feel that someone is angry or someone has collided with you, you always think that he is responsible. This is how ignorance concludes, interprets. Ignorance always says, “The other is responsible.” Wisdom always says, “If somebody is responsible, then I am responsible, and the only way not to collide is not to be.”“I am responsible” doesn’t mean, “I am doing something, that is why they are angry.” That is not the question. You may not be doing anything, but just your being there is enough for people to get angry. It is not a question of whether you are doing good or bad. The question is that you are there.This is the difference between Tao and other religions. Other religions say: Be good, behave in such a way that no one gets angry with you. Tao says: Don’t be.It is not a question of whether you behave or misbehave. This is not the question. Even a good man, even a very saintly man creates anger because he is there. Sometimes a good man creates more anger than a bad man, because a good man means a very subtle egoist. A bad man feels guilty – his boat may be filled, but he feels guilty. He is not really too spread out on the boat, his guilt helps him to shrink. A good man feels himself to be so good that he fills the boat completely, overfills it.So whenever you come near a good man, you will always feel tortured – not that he is torturing you, just his presence. With so-called good men you will always feel sad, and you would like to avoid them. So-called good men are really very heavy. Whenever you come into contact with them they make you sad, they depress you, and you would like to leave them as soon as possible.The moralists, the puritans, the virtuous, they are all heavy, and they carry a burden around them, dark shadows. Nobody likes them. They cannot be good companions, they cannot be good friends. Friendship is impossible with a good man – almost impossible, because his eyes are always condemning. The moment you come near him, he is good and you are bad. Not that he is doing anything – just his very being creates something, and you will feel angry.Tao is totally different. Tao has a different quality, and to me Tao is the deepest religion that has existed on this earth. There is no comparison to it. There have been glimpses, there are glimpses in the sayings of Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna – but only glimpses.Lao Tzu or Chuang Tzu’s message is the purest – absolutely pure, nothing has contaminated it. And this is the message: it is all because there is somebody in the boat. This whole hell is all because there is somebody in the boat.Yet if the boat were empty,he would not be shouting,and he would not be angry.If you can empty your own boatcrossing the river of the world,no one will oppose you,and no one will seek to harm you.The straight tree is the first to be cut down,the spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.If you wish to improve your wisdomand shame the ignorant,to cultivate your character and outshine others,a light will shine around youas if you had swallowed the sun and the moon –and you will not avoid calamity.This is unique, because Chuang Tzu is saying that the halo of saintliness around you shows that you are still there. The halo…that you are good, is sure to create calamity for you, and calamity for others also. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu – master and disciple – both have never been painted in pictures with halos or auras, like Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, or Mahavira. They have never been painted with an aura around their head, because they say if you are really good no aura appears around your head; rather, on the contrary, the head disappears. Where to draw the aura? The head disappears.All auras are somehow related to the ego. It is not Krishna who has made a self-portrait, it is the disciples, who cannot think of him without drawing an aura around his head – otherwise he looks ordinary. And Chuang Tzu says: “To be ordinary is to be the sage.” Nobody recognizes you, nobody feels that you are somebody extraordinary. Chuang Tzu says: “You go in the crowd and you mix.” Nobody knows that a buddha has entered the crowd. No one comes to feel that somebody is different, because if someone feels it then there is bound to be anger and calamity. Whenever someone feels that you are somebody, his own anger, his own ego is hurt. He starts reacting, he starts attacking you.So Chuang Tzu says: “Character is not to be cultivated,” because that too is a sort of wealth. And so-called religious people go on teaching: cultivate character, cultivate morality, be virtuous.But why? Why be virtuous? Why be against the sinners? Your mind is dual, you are still ambitious. And if you reach paradise and you see sinners sitting there around God, you will feel very hurt – your whole life has been wasted. You cultivated virtue, you cultivated character, while these people were enjoying themselves and doing all sorts of things which are condemned – and here they are sitting around God. If you see saints and sinners together in paradise you will be very hurt, you will become very sad and miserable – because your virtue is also part of your ego. You cultivate saintliness to be superior, but the mind remains the same. How to be superior in some way or other, how to make others inferior is the motive.If you can gather much wealth, then they are poor and you are rich. If you can become an Alexander, then you have a great kingdom and they are beggars. If you can become a great scholar, then you are knowledgeable and they are ignorant, illiterate. If you can become virtuous, religious, respectable, moral, then they are condemned, they are sinners. But the duality continues. You are fighting against others and you are trying to be superior.Chuang Tzu says: “If you cultivate your character and outshine others, you will not avoid calamity.” Don’t try to outshine others, and don’t try to cultivate character for this egoistic purpose.So for Chuang Tzu there is only one character worth mentioning, and that is egolessness – all else follows it. Without it, nothing has worth. You may become godlike in your character, but if the ego is there inside, all your godliness is in the service of the Devil; all your virtue is nothing but a face and the sinner is hidden behind. And the sinner cannot be transformed through virtue or through any type of cultivation. It is only when you are not there that it disappears.A wise man has said:“He who is content with himselfhas done worthless work.Achievement is the beginning of failure,fame is the beginning of disgrace.”…very paradoxical sayings, and you will have to be very alert to understand them; otherwise they can be misunderstood.A wise man has said: “He who is content with himself has done worthless work.” Religious people go on teaching: Be content with yourself. But yourself remains there to be content with. Chuang Tzu says: “Don’t be there,” then there is no question of contentment or discontentment. This is real contentment, when you are not there. But if you feel that you are content, it is false – because you are there, and it is just an ego fulfillment. You feel that you have achieved, you feel that you have reached.Tao says that one who feels that he has achieved has missed already. One who feels that he has reached has lost, because success is the beginning of failure. Success and failure are two parts of one circle, of one wheel. Whenever success reaches its climax the failure has already started, the wheel is already turning downward. Whenever the moon has become full there is no further progress. Now there is no further movement. The next day the downward journey starts and now every day the moon will be less and less and less.Life moves in circles. Whenever you feel that you have achieved, at that moment the wheel has moved, you are already losing. It may take time for you to recognize this because mind is dull. Much intelligence is needed, clarity is needed, to see things when they happen. Things happen to you and you take many days to recognize it, sometimes many months or many years. Sometimes you even take many lives to recognize what has happened.But just think about your past. Whenever you had a feeling that you had succeeded, immediately things changed, you started falling – because the ego is part of the wheel. It succeeds because it can fail; if it cannot fail then there is no possibility of success. Success and failure are two aspects of the same coin.Chuang Tzu says: A wise man has said: “He who is content with himself has done worthless work.” …Because he is still there, the empty boat has not come into being yet, the boat is still filled. The ego is sitting there, the ego is still enthroned.Achievement is the beginning of failure,fame is the beginning of disgrace.”Who can free himself of achievement and famethen descend and be lostamid the masses of men?He will flow like Tao…Be alert and attentive.Who can free himself of achievement and famethen descend and be lostamid the masses of men?He will flow like Tao, unseenhe will go about like life itselfwith no name and no home.Simple is he, without distinction.To all appearances he is a fool.This is how a wise man is – a fool.To all appearances he is a fool.His steps leave no trace. He has no power.He achieves nothing, he has no reputation.Since he judges no one,no one judges him.Such is the perfect man –his boat is empty.The ego cannot flow like a river. It is frozen. How can a frozen river flow? The ice must melt, only then can it flow. Frozen, you have a form – melted, the form disappears. Frozen, you are somebody, somewhere, a name – melted, the name is lost, “somebodyness” disappears. You have become nothing, formless. Only when you are not frozen do you flow, and when you flow you are like life itself because life is a movement. Only death is unmoving, only death remains where it is. Life goes on moving and moving and moving – it is a continuous flow.If you have succeeded, you are frozen because now you are afraid to melt – because if you melt the whole success will be lost. Your success is part of your frozenness. If you have become famous you are frozen, now you are dead, now you cannot melt. You have to protect yourself, your fame, your respect, your reputation. You have to protect, and you have to remain with your past. You cannot move into the unknown future, because who knows, the unknown path may lead you to somewhere where the fame is lost, the reputation is lost. So you will move only on the trodden path, on the charted, on the known. You will move in the circle of memory, on the wheel of memory.Life never moves on the trodden path, it always moves into the unknown. Every moment it is moving into the unknown and if you are afraid of the unknown you are frozen, you will be dead. Life will not wait for you. You have to melt and only one who has no reputation to save, no fame to protect, can move with the unknown and can move happily. He has nothing to lose. Hence, Buddha’s beggars – nameless, homeless, nothing to protect, nothing to preserve. They could move anywhere, just like clouds in the sky, homeless, with no roots anywhere, floating, with no goal, no purpose, no ego.He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like life itself with no name and no home. This is what a sannyasin means to me. When I initiate you into sannyas, I initiate you into this death, into namelessness, into homelessness. I am not giving you any secret key to success, I am not giving you any secret formula for how to succeed.If I am giving you anything, it is a key to how not to succeed, how to be a failure and unworried, how to move nameless, homeless, without any goal, how to be a beggar – what Jesus calls poor in spirit. A man who is poor in spirit is egoless – he is the empty boat.Simple is he, without distinction. Whom do you call simple? Can you cultivate simplicity?You see a man who eats only once a day, who wears only a few clothes or remains naked, who doesn’t live in a palace, who lives under a tree – you say this man is simple. Is this simplicity? You can live under a tree and your living may be just a cultivation. You have cultivated it to be simple, you have calculated it to be simple. You may eat once a day, but you have calculated it, this is mind-manipulated. You may remain naked – that cannot make you simple. Simplicity only happens.Simple is he, without distinction. You feel that you are a saint because you live under a tree, and you eat once a day, and you are a vegetarian, and you live naked, you don’t possess any money – you are a saint.And then a man passes who possesses money; condemnation arises in you, and you think, “What will happen to this sinner? He will be condemned to hell.” And you feel compassion for this sinner. Then you are not simple. Because distinctions have entered, you are distinct.It makes no difference how the distinction has been created. A king lives in a palace – he is distinct from those who live in huts. A king wears clothes which you cannot wear – they are so valuable that he is distinct. Then a man lives naked on the street and you cannot live naked in the street – so he is distinct. Wherever distinction is, ego exists. When there is no distinction, ego disappears; and non-ego is simplicity.Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.This is the deepest saying that Chuang Tzu has uttered. It is difficult to understand because we always think that an enlightened person, a perfect man, is a man of wisdom. He says: To all appearances he is a fool…But this is how it should be. Among so many fools, how can a wise man be otherwise? To all appearances he will be a fool and that is the only way. How can he change this foolish world and so many fools…toward sanity? He will have to be naked, and go under the table and crow like a rooster. Only then can he change you. He must become crazy like you, he must be a fool, he must allow you to laugh at him. Then you will not feel jealous, then you will not feel hurt, then you will not be angry with him, then you can tolerate him, then you can forget him and forgive him, then you can leave him alone to himself.Many great mystics have behaved like fools and their contemporaries were at a loss – what to make out of their lives – and the greatest wisdom existed in them. To be wise among you is really foolish. That won’t do; you will create much trouble. Socrates was poisoned because he didn’t know Chuang Tzu. If he had known Chuang Tzu, there would have been no need for him to be poisoned. He tried to behave like a wise man among fools, he tried to be wise.Chuang Tzu says: “To all appearances the wise man will be like a fool.”Chuang Tzu himself lived like a fool, laughing, singing, dancing, talking in jokes and anecdotes. Nobody thought him to be serious. And you could not find a man more sincere and serious than Chuang Tzu. But nobody thought him to be serious. People enjoyed him, people loved him, and through this love he was throwing seeds of his wisdom. He changed many, he transformed many.But to change a madman you have to learn his language, and you have to use his language. You have to be like him, you have to come down. If you go on standing on your pedestal then there can be no communion.This is what happened to Socrates, and it had to happen there because the Greek mind is the most rational mind in the world, and a rational mind always tries not to be foolish. Socrates angered everybody. People really had to kill him because he would ask awkward questions and he would make everybody feel foolish. He would put everybody in a corner – you cannot answer even ordinary questions.If somebody insists, if you believe in God, then Socrates will ask something about God: “What is the proof?” You cannot answer, you have not seen. But God is a far off thing; you cannot even prove ordinary things. You have left your wife at home – how can you prove, really, that you have left your wife at home, or that you have even got a wife? It may be just in your memory. You may have seen a dream, and when you go back there is neither house nor wife.Socrates would ask penetrating questions, analyzing everything, and everybody in Athens became angry. This man was trying to prove that everybody is a fool. They killed him. Had he met Chuang Tzu – and at that time Chuang Tzu was alive in China, they were contemporaries – then Chuang Tzu would have told him the secret: “Don’t try to prove that anybody is foolish because fools don’t like this. Don’t try to prove to a madman that he is mad, because no madman likes it. He will get angry, arrogant, aggressive. He will kill you if you prove too much. If you come to the point where it can be proved, he will take revenge.”Chuang Tzu would have said, “It is better to be foolish yourself, then people enjoy you, and then by a very subtle methodology you can help them change. Then they are not against you.”That’s why in the East, particularly in India, China and Japan, such an ugly phenomenon never happened as happened in Greece – Socrates was poisoned and killed. It happened in Jerusalem – Jesus was killed, crucified. It happened in Iran, in Egypt, in other countries – many wise men were killed, murdered. It never happened in India, China, or Japan, because in these three countries people came to realize that to behave as a wise man is to invite calamity.Behave like a fool, like a madman, just be mad. That is the first step of the wise man – to make you at ease so you are not afraid of him. This is why I told you that story.The prince became friendly with this man. He was afraid of others, doctors, learned experts, because they were trying to change him, cure him, and he was not mad. He did not think that he was mad, no madman ever thinks that he is mad. If a madman ever comes to realize that he is mad, madness has disappeared. He is no longer mad.All those wise men who were trying to cure the prince were foolish, only this old sage was wise. He behaved foolishly. The court laughed, the king laughed, the queen laughed. They said, “What? How is this man going to change the prince? He himself is crazy and seems to be deeper in madness than the prince.”Even the prince was shocked. He said, “What are you doing? What do you mean?” But this man must have been an enlightened sage.Chuang Tzu is talking about this type of phenomenon, this phenomenal man.To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace. You cannot follow him. You cannot follow an enlightened man – no, never – because he leaves no trace, there are no footprints. He is like a bird in the sky, he moves and no trace is left.Why does a wise man not leave traces? So that you should not be able to follow. No wise man likes you to follow him because when you follow you become imitators. He is always moving in such a zigzag way that you cannot follow. If you try to follow him, you will miss. Can you follow me? It is impossible, because you don’t know what I am going to be tomorrow. You cannot predict. If you can predict, you can plan. Then you know where I am going, then you know the direction, then you know my steps. You know my past, you can infer my future. But I am illogical.If I am logical you can conclude what I am going to say tomorrow. Just by looking at whatsoever I have said in my yesterdays you can conclude logically what I am going to say tomorrow. But that is not possible. I may contradict myself completely. My every tomorrow will contradict my every yesterday, so how are you going to follow me? You will go crazy if you try to follow.Sooner or later you will have to realize that you have to be yourself, you cannot imitate.His steps leave no trace. He is not consistent. He is not logical. He is illogical. He is like a madman.He has no power. This will be very difficult to follow because we think that the sage has power, that he is the most powerful of men. He will touch your blind eyes and they will open and you will be able to see; you are dead and he will touch you and you will be resurrected. To us a sage is a miracle worker.But Chuang Tzu says: He has no power – because to use power is always part of the ego. The ego wants to be powerful. You cannot persuade a wise man to use his power, it is impossible. If you can persuade him, it means some ego was left which can be persuaded. He will never use his power because there is no one to use and manipulate it. The ego, the manipulator, is no longer there, the boat is empty. Who will direct this boat? There is nobody.A sage is power, but he has no power; a sage is powerful, but he has no power – because the controller is no longer there. He is energy – overflowing, unaddressed, undirected – there is no one who can direct it. You may be cured in his presence, your eyes may open, but he has not opened them, he has not touched them, he has not cured you. If he thinks that he has cured you, he himself has become ill. This I – “I have cured” – is a greater illness, it is a greater blindness.He has no power.He achieves nothing, he has no reputation.Since he judges no one,no one judges him.Such is the perfect man –his boat is empty.And this is going to be your path. Empty your boat. Go on throwing out whatsoever you find in the boat, until everything is thrown out and nothing is left, even you are thrown out, nothing is left, your being has become just empty.The last thing and the first thing is to be empty; once you are empty you will be filled. The all will descend on you when you are empty – only emptiness can receive the all, nothing less will do, because to receive all you have to be so empty, boundlessly empty. Only then can the all be received. Your minds are so small they cannot receive the divine. Your rooms are so small you cannot invite the divine. Destroy this house completely because only the sky, space, total space, can receive.Emptiness is going to be the path, the goal, everything. From tomorrow morning try to empty yourself of all that you find within: your misery, your anger, your ego, jealousies, sufferings, your pain, your pleasures – whatsoever you find, just throw it out. Without any distinction, without any choice, empty yourself. And the moment you are totally empty, suddenly you will see that you are the whole, the all. Through voidness, the whole is achieved.Meditation is nothing but emptying, becoming nobody.In this camp move as a nobody. If you create anger in somebody and you collide, remember, you must be there in the boat, that’s why it is happening. Soon, when your boat is empty, you will not collide, there will be no conflict, no anger, no violence – nothing.This nothing is the benediction, this nothing is the blessing. For this nothing you have been searching and searching. But unless the searcher is lost, there can be no fulfillment.And now that you have come, don’t go back filled with yourself. Go empty. Move in this wide world as an empty boat, and all the blessings of life, all the blessings that are possible in existence will be yours. Claim them but you can claim them only when you are not. This is the problem – how not to be. And I say to you it can be solved. I have solved it, that’s why I say it.It will be difficult for you to meet Chuang Tzu. But I am here. You can look in me, you will find the same empty boat. I’m talking to you, but nobody is talking to you. And I’m not claiming any wisdom, I’m not claiming anything. I have no powers to cure you, no miracles will happen here, because I’m interested only in the ultimate miracle – when somebody becomes ordinary. That is the ultimate miracle. Meditate on it, pray for it, make all efforts for it. And remember only one thing – you have to become the empty boat.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The man of Tao acts without impediment,harms no other being by his actions,yet he does not know himself to be kind and gentle.He does not struggle to make money,and he does not make a virtue of poverty.He goes his way without relying on others,and does not pride himself on walking alone.The man of Tao remains unknown.Perfect virtue produces nothing.No self is true self.And the greatest man is nobody.The most difficult thing, almost impossible for the mind, is to remain in the middle, is to remain balanced. To move from one thing to its opposite is the easiest. To move from one polarity to the opposite polarity is the nature of the mind. This has to be understood very deeply, because unless you understand this, nothing can lead you into meditation.Mind’s nature is to move from one extreme to another. It depends on imbalance. If you are balanced, mind disappears. Mind is like a disease: when you are imbalanced it is there, when you are balanced, it is not there.That is why it is easy for a person who overeats to go on a fast. It looks illogical, because we think that a person who is obsessed with food cannot go on a fast. You are wrong. Only a person who is obsessed with food can go on a fast, because fasting is the same obsession in the opposite direction. It is not really changing yourself. You are again obsessed with food. Before you were overeating; now you are remaining hungry – but the mind remains focused on food from the opposite extreme.A man who has been overindulging in sex can become a celibate very easily. There is no problem. But it is difficult for the mind to come to the right diet, difficult for the mind to stay in the middle.Why is it difficult to stay in the middle? It is just like the pendulum of a clock. The pendulum goes to the right, then it moves to the left, then again to the right, then again to the left; the whole clock depends on this movement. If the pendulum stays in the middle, the clock stops. And when the pendulum is going to the right, you think it is only going to the right, but at the same time it is gathering momentum to go to the left. The more it moves to the right, the more energy it gathers to move to the left, to the opposite. When it is moving to the left it is again gathering momentum to move to the right.Whenever you are overeating you are gathering momentum to go on a fast. Whenever you overindulge in sex, sooner or later, brahmacharya will appeal to you, celibacy will appeal to you.And the same is happening from the opposite pole. Go and ask your so-called sadhus, your bhikkus, sannyasins. They have made it a point to remain celibate, now their minds are gathering momentum to move into sex. They have made it a point to remain more and more hungry, starving, and their minds are constantly thinking about food. When you are thinking about food too much it shows that you are gathering momentum for it. Thinking means momentum. The mind starts arranging for the opposite.One thing: whenever you move, you are also moving to the opposite. The opposite is hidden, it is not apparent.When you love a person you are gathering momentum to hate him. That’s why only friends can become enemies. You cannot suddenly become an enemy unless you have first become a friend. Lovers quarrel, fight. Only lovers can quarrel and fight because unless you love, how can you hate? Unless you have moved to the far extreme, to the left, how can you move to the right? Modern research says that so-called love is a relationship of intimate enmity. Your wife is your intimate enemy, your husband is your intimate enemy – both intimate and inimical. They appear opposites, illogical, because we think: one who is intimate, how can he be the enemy? One who is a friend, how can he also be the foe?Logic is superficial, life goes deeper, and in life all opposites are joined together, they exist together. Remember this, because then meditation becomes balancing.Buddha taught eight disciplines, and with each discipline he used the word right. He said: “Right effort,” because it is very easy to move from action to inaction, from waking to sleep, but to remain in the middle is difficult. When Buddha used the word right he was saying: “Don’t move to the opposite, just remain in the middle. Right food” – he never said to fast. Don’t indulge in too much eating and don’t indulge in fasting. He said: “Right food.” Right food means standing in the middle.When you are standing in the middle you are not gathering any momentum. And this is the beauty – a man who is not gathering any momentum to move anywhere, can be at ease with himself, can be at home.You can never be at home, because whatsoever you do you will immediately have to do the opposite to balance. And the opposite never balances, it simply gives you the idea that maybe you are becoming balanced, but you will have to move to the opposite again.A buddha is neither a friend to anyone nor an enemy. He has simply stopped in the middle – the clock is not functioning.It is said about one Hasid mystic, a magid – that when he attained enlightenment suddenly his clock on the wall stopped. It may have happened, it may not have happened, because it is possible, but the symbolism is clear: when your mind stops, time stops; when the pendulum stops, the clock stops. From then on the clock never moved, from then on it always showed the same time.Time is created by the movement of the mind, just like the movement of the pendulum. Mind moves, you feel time. When mind is nonmoving, how can you feel time? When there is no movement, time cannot be felt. So scientists and mystics agree on this point: that movement creates the phenomenon of time. If you are not moving, if you are still, time disappears, eternity comes into existence. Your clock is moving fast, and the mechanism moves from one extreme to another.The second thing to be understood about mind is that the mind always longs for the distant, never for the near. The near gives you boredom, you are fed up with it; the distant gives you dreams, hopes, possibility of pleasure. So the mind always thinks of the distant. It is always somebody else’s wife who is attractive, beautiful; it is always somebody else’s house which obsesses you; it is always somebody else’s car which fascinates you. It is always the distant. You are blind to the near. The mind cannot see that which is very near. It can only see that which is very far.And what is very far, the most distant? The opposite is the most distant. You love a person – now hatred is the most distant phenomenon; you are overeating – now fasting is the most distant phenomenon; you are celibate – now sex is the most distant phenomenon; you are a king – now to be a monk is the most distant phenomenon.The most distant is the most dreamy. It attracts, it obsesses, it goes on calling, inviting you, and then when you have reached the other pole, this place from where you have traveled will become beautiful again. Divorce your wife, and after a few years the wife has gained beauty again.A film actress came to me. She had divorced her husband fifteen years ago. Now she is old, less beautiful than she was when she and her husband were separated. Their son was married last year, so at the marriage she met her husband again, and they had to travel together. The husband fell in love with her again, so she came to me and asked, “What should I do? Because now he is proposing again, he wants to get married to me again.”She was also fascinated. She was just waiting for me to say yes. I said, “But you lived together, there was always conflict and nothing else. I know the whole story – how you were fighting, quarreling, how you were creating hell and misery for each other. Now again…?”The distant always becomes fascinating. You can move into the same rut and then again you will start thinking of the opposite. Remember, mind always thinks of the opposite, is always fascinated with the opposite. So if you are rich you will have a fascination for poverty. All rich people think that poverty has such a freedom no rich man can enjoy. Whenever a king passes and he looks at a beggar sleeping under a tree – the traffic moves but he is not disturbed, he can sleep even in the market, what beautiful sleep – and the king feels jealous. Kings are always jealous of beggars, and kings always dream that they have become monks, sannyasins.It is not a coincidence that Mahavira, Buddha, all the tirthankaras of Jainas were kings. They came from the palaces, they had left their kingdoms. For a king, the beggar is always the attraction. This country has been the country of kings and beggars, both. At the one extreme kings have existed, at the other extreme the beggars. And we have raised beggars to the highest peak of glory. Buddha called his sannyasins bhikkus – beggars. He was a king. He was fed up with all that being a king implies. He was fascinated with the simple life, the innocent life of a beggar.But ask some beggar…he is not happy. If kings are not happy how can beggars be happy? He is unhappy and he is just waiting for the chance when he can also become a king. Go into his dreams and you will find him always becoming an emperor. Beggars dream of kingdoms, kings dream of becoming sannyasins, renouncing everything. Beggars dream of possessing the whole world, kings dream of not possessing anything at all.For the mind the opposite is magnetic, and unless you transcend this through understanding, the mind will go on moving from left to right, from right to left, and the clock will continue.It has continued for many lives, and this is how you have been deceiving yourself – because you don’t understand the mechanism. Again the distant becomes appealing, again you start traveling. The moment you reach, that which was with you is now distant, has appeal, it becomes a star, something worthwhile.I was reading about a pilot. He was flying over California with a friend. He told the friend, “Look down at that beautiful lake. I was born near it, that is my village.”He pointed to a small village just perched in the hills near the lake, and he said, “I was born there. When I was a child I used to sit near the lake and fish; fishing was my hobby. But at that time, when I was a child fishing near the lake, airplanes always used to pass in the sky, and I would think of the day when I would become a pilot myself, I would be piloting an airplane. That was my only dream. Now it is fulfilled, and what misery! Now I am continuously looking down at the lake and thinking about when I will retire and go fishing again. That lake is so beautiful…”This is how things are happening. This is how things are happening to you. In childhood, you long to grow up fast because older people are more powerful, young men more powerful. A child just longs to grow up immediately. Old people are wise, and the child feels that whatsoever he is doing is always wrong. Then ask the old man – he always thinks that when childhood was lost, everything was lost; paradise was there in childhood. And all the old men die thinking of childhood, the innocence, the beauty, the dreamland.Whatsoever you have looks useless, whatsoever you don’t have looks useful. Remember this, otherwise meditation cannot happen, because meditation means this – understanding the mind, the working of the mind, the very process of the mind.Mind is dialectical, it makes you move again and again toward the opposite. And this is an infinite process, it never ends unless you suddenly drop out of it, unless you suddenly become aware of the game, unless you suddenly become aware of the trick of the mind, and you stop in the middle.Stopping in the middle is meditation.Thirdly, because mind consists of polarities, you are never whole. The mind cannot be whole; it is always half. When you love someone have you observed that you are suppressing your hatred? The love is not total, it is not whole; just behind it all the dark forces are hidden and they may erupt any moment. You are sitting on a volcano.When you love someone, you simply forget that you have anger, you have hate, you have jealousy. You simply drop them as if they never existed. But how can you drop them? You can simply hide them in the unconscious. Just on the surface you can become loving, deep down the turmoil is hidden. Sooner or later when you are fed up, when the beloved has become familiar – and they say familiarity breeds contempt… It is not that familiarity breeds contempt – familiarity makes you bored, contempt has always been there, hidden. It comes up, it was waiting for the right moment, the seed was there.The mind always has the opposite within it, and that opposite goes into the unconscious and waits for its moment to come up. If you observe minutely, you will feel it every moment. When you say to someone, “I love you,” close your eyes, be meditative, and feel – is there any hatred hidden? You will feel it. But because you want to deceive yourself, because the truth is so ugly – that you hate a person that you love – you don’t want to face it. You want to escape from the facticity, so you hide it. But hiding won’t help, because it is not deceiving somebody else, it is deceiving yourself.So whenever you feel something, just close the eyes and go into yourself to find the opposite somewhere. It is there. And if you can see the opposite, that will give you a balance, then you will not say, “I love you.” If you are truthful you will say, “My relationship with you is one of love and hate.”All relationships are love/hate relationships. No relationship is of pure love, and no relationship is of pure hate. It is both love and hate. If you are truthful you will be in difficulty. If you say to a girl, “My relationship with you is one of both love and hate; I love you as I have never loved anybody and I hate you as I have never hated anybody,” it will be difficult to get married unless you find a meditative girl who can understand the reality; unless you can find a friend who can understand the complexity of the mind.Mind is not a simple mechanism, it is very complex, and through mind you can never become simple because mind goes on creating deceptions. To be meditative means to be aware of the fact that mind is hiding something from you; you are closing your eyes to some facts which are disturbing. Then sooner or later those disturbing facts will erupt, overpower you, and you will move to the opposite. And the opposite is not there in a distant, faraway place, in some star; the opposite is hidden behind you, in you, in your mind, in the very functioning of the mind. If you can understand this, you will stop in the middle.If you can see – I love and I hate – suddenly both will disappear, because both cannot exist together in the consciousness. You have to create a barrier: one has to exist in the unconscious and one in the conscious. Both cannot exist in the conscious; if both exist they will negate each other. The love will destroy hate, the hate will destroy love; they will balance each other, and they will simply disappear. The same amount of hate and the same amount of love will negate each other. Suddenly they will evaporate – you will be there, but no love and no hate. Then you are balanced.When you are balanced, mind is not there – then you are whole. When you are whole, you are holy, but mind is not there. So meditation is a state of no-mind. Through mind it is not achieved. Through mind, whatsoever you do, it can never be achieved. Then what are you doing when you are meditating?Because you have created so much tension in your life, now you are meditating. But this is the opposite of tension, not real meditation. You are so tense that meditation has become attractive. That is why in the West meditation appeals more than in the East, because more tension exists there than in the East. The East is still relaxed, people are not so tense, they don’t go mad so easily, they don’t commit suicide so easily. They are not so violent, not so aggressive, not so scared, not so fearful – no, they are not so tense. They are not living at such a mad speed where nothing but tension is accumulated.So if Mahesh Yogi comes to India, nobody listens. But in America, people are mad about him. When there is much tension, meditation will appeal. But this appeal is again falling into the same trap. This is not real meditation, this is again a trick. Then you meditate for a few days, you become relaxed; when you become relaxed, again activity arises, and the mind starts thinking of doing something, of moving. You get bored with it.People come to me and say, “We meditated for a few years, then it became boring, then there was no more fun.”Just the other day a girl came and she was saying, “Now meditation is no longer fun, what should I do?”Now the mind is seeking something else, now it is enough! Now that she is at ease, the mind is asking for more tensions – something to get disturbed about. When she says that now meditation is no longer fun, she means that now the tension is not there, so how can the meditation be fun? She will have to move into tension again, then meditation will again become something worthwhile.Look at the absurdity of the mind: you have to go away to come near, you have to become tense to be meditative. But this is not meditation, again this is a trick of the same mind; on a new level the same game continues.When I say meditation, I mean going beyond the game of the polar opposites, dropping out of the whole game, looking at the absurdity of it and transcending it. The very understanding becomes transcendence.Mind will force you to move to the opposite – don’t move to the opposite. Stop in the middle and see that this has always been the trick of the mind. This is how mind has dominated you – through the opposite. Have you felt it?Whenever you make love to a woman, after it you suddenly start thinking of brahmacharya, and brahmacharya has such an alluring fascination at that moment that you feel as if there is nothing else to achieve. You feel frustrated, deceived, you feel that there was nothing in this sex, only brahmacharya has the bliss. But after twenty-four hours, sex becomes important again, significant, and again you have to move into it.What is the mind doing? After the sex act it started thinking about the opposite, which again creates the taste for sex.A violent man starts thinking about nonviolence, then he can easily be violent again. A man who gets angry again and again always thinks of non-anger, always decides not to be angry again. This decision helps him to be angry again.If you really want not to be angry again don’t decide against anger. Just look into the anger and just look at the shadow of the anger which you think is non-anger. Look into sex, and at the shadow of sex, which you think is brahmacharya, celibacy. It is just negativity, absence. Look at overeating, and the shadow of it, fasting, which always follows overeating. Overindulgence is always followed by vows of celibacy; tension is always followed by some meditation techniques. Look at them together, feel how they are related; they are part of one process.If you can understand this, meditation will happen to you. It is not really something to be done, it is a point of understanding. It is not an effort, it is nothing to be cultivated. It is something to be deeply understood.Understanding gives freedom. Knowledge of the whole mechanism of the mind is transformation. Then suddenly the clock stops, time disappears – and with the stopping of the clock, there is no mind. With the stopping of time, where are you? The boat is empty.Now we will enter this sutra of Chuang Tzu:The man of Tao acts without impediment,harms no other being by his actions,yet he does not know himself to be kind and gentle.The man of Tao acts without impediment… You act always with impediment, the opposite is always there creating the impediment; you are not a flow.If you love, the hate is always there as an impediment. If you move, something is holding you back; you never move totally, something is always left, the movement is not total. You move with one leg but the other leg is not moving. How can you move? The impediment is there.And this impediment, this continuous moving of the half and nonmoving of the other half, is your anguish, your anxiety. Why are you in so much anguish? What creates so much anxiety in you? Whatsoever you do, why is bliss not happening through it?Bliss can happen only to the whole, never to the part.When the whole moves without any impediment the very movement is bliss. Bliss is not something that comes from outside, it is the feeling that comes when your whole being moves, the very movement of the whole is bliss. It is not something happening to you, it arises out of you, it is a harmony in your being.If you are divided – and you are always divided: half-moving, half-withholding, half saying yes, half saying no, half in love, half in hate, you are a divided kingdom – there is constant conflict in you. You say something, but you never mean it because the opposite is there impeding, creating a hindrance.Baal Shem used to say – his disciples used to write down whatsoever he said, and he used to say: “I know that whatsoever you are writing is not what has been said by me. You have heard something, I have said something else, and you are writing still something else. And if you look at the meaning, the meaning is something else again. You will never do what you have written, you will do something else – fragments, not an integrated being.” Why are these fragments there?Have you heard the story about the centipede? A centipede was walking – a centipede has one hundred legs – that’s why he is called a centipede. It is a miracle to walk with a hundred feet, even to manage two is so difficult. To manage one hundred legs is really impossible, almost impossible. But the centipede has been managing it.One fox became curious – and foxes are curious. In folklore the fox is the symbol of the mind, of the intellect, of logic. Foxes are great logicians. The fox looked, she observed, she analyzed, she couldn’t believe it. She said, “Wait, one question! How do you manage, how do you know which foot has to follow which? One hundred legs! How does this harmony happen, that you walk so smoothly?”The centipede said, “I have been walking but I have never thought about it. Give me a little time.”So he closed his eyes. For the first time he became divided: the mind as observer, and himself as the observed. For the first time the centipede became two. He had been living and walking, but his life had been one whole; there was no observer standing looking at himself, he was never divided; he had been an integrated being. For the first time division arose. He was looking at his own self, thinking. He had become subject and object, he had become two, and then he started walking. It was difficult, almost impossible. He fell down – how do you manage one hundred legs?The fox laughed and he said, “I knew it must be difficult, I knew it beforehand.”The centipede started crying and weeping, tears came to his eyes. He said, “It has never been difficult, but you have created the problem. Now I will never be able to walk again.”The mind has come into being; mind comes when you are divided. The mind feeds on division. Hence, Krishnamurti goes on saying that when the observer has become the observed you are in meditation.The opposite happened to the centipede. The wholeness was lost, he became two: the observer and the observed, divided; the subject and the object, the thinker and the thought. Then everything was disturbed, then bliss was lost then the flow stopped. Then he became frozen.Whenever the mind comes in, it comes as a controlling force, a manager. It is not the master, it is the manager. And you cannot get to the master unless this manager is put aside. The manager won’t allow you to reach the master, the manager will always be standing in the doorway managing. And all managers only mismanage – mind has done such a great job of mismanaging.Poor centipede, he had always been happy. There had been no problem at all. He had lived, he had moved, he had loved, everything; no problems at all, because there was no mind. Mind came in with the problem, with the question, with the inquiry. And there are many foxes around you. Beware of them – philosophers, theologians, logicians, professors all around – foxes. They ask you questions and they create a disturbance.Chuang Tzu’s master, Lao Tzu, said: “When there was not a single philosopher, everything was solved, there were no questions, and all answers were available. When philosophers arose, questions came and answers disappeared.” Whenever there is a question the answer is very far away. Whenever you ask, you will never get the answer, but when you stop asking, the answer has always been there.I do not know what happened to this centipede. If he was as foolish as human beings, he would be somewhere in a hospital, crippled, paralyzed forever. But I don’t think that centipedes are so foolish. He must have thrown the question out. He must have told the fox, “Keep your questions to yourself, let me walk.” He must have come to know that division wouldn’t allow him to live, because division creates death. Undivided you are life, divided you become dead – the more divided, the more dead.What is bliss? Bliss is the feeling that comes to you when the observer has become the observed. Bliss is the feeling that comes to you when you are in harmony, not fragmented; one, not disintegrated, not divided, undivided, one. Feeling is not something that happens from the outside. It is the melody that arises out of your inner harmoniousness.Says Chuang Tzu: The man of Tao acts without impediment… Because he is not divided, so who is there to impede? What is there to function as an impediment? He is alone, he moves with his wholeness. This movement in wholeness is the greatest beauty that can happen, that is possible. Sometimes you have glimpses of it. Sometimes when you are suddenly whole, when the mind is not functioning, it happens.The sun is rising…and suddenly you look, and the observer is not there. The sun is not there and you are not there, there is no observer and no observed. The sun is simply rising and your mind is not there to manage. You don’t see it and say, “The sun is beautiful.” The moment you say it the bliss is lost. Then there is no bliss, it has already become the past, it is already gone.Suddenly you see the sun rising, and the seer is not there, it has not come into being yet, it has not become a thought. You have not looked, you have not analyzed, you have not observed. The sun is rising and there is no one, the boat is empty; there is bliss, a glimpse. But the mind immediately comes in, and says, “The sun is beautiful, this sunrise is so beautiful.” The comparison has come in and the beauty is lost.Those who know say that whenever you say to a person, “I love you,” the love is lost. When the love has already gone it is always said – because the lover has come in, how can the love exist? The division has already come in, the manager has come in? The mind says, “I love you,” because in love there is no I and no thou. In love there are no individuals. Love is a melting, a merging, they are not two.Love exists, not lovers. In love, love exists, not the lovers, but the mind comes in and says, “I am in love, I love you.” When I comes, doubt enters; division comes in and love is no longer there.You will come many times to such glimpses in your meditation. Remember, whenever you feel such a glimpse, don’t say, “How beautiful!” don’t say, “How lovely!” because this is how you will lose it. Whenever the glimpse comes, let the glimpse be there. Don’t do what the centipede did – don’t raise any question, don’t make any observation, don’t analyze, don’t allow the mind to come in. Walk with a hundred legs, but don’t think about how you are walking.When in meditation you have the glimpse of some ecstasy, let it happen, let it go deep. Don’t divide yourself. Don’t make any statement, otherwise the contact is lost.Sometimes you have glimpses, but you have become so efficient at losing your contact with those glimpses that you cannot understand how they come and how you lose them again. They come when you are not, you lose them when you come again. When you are, they are not. When the boat is empty, bliss is always happening. It is not an accident, it is the very nature of existence. It doesn’t depend on anything – it is a showering, it is the very breath of life.It is really a miracle how you have managed to be so miserable, so thirsty, when it is raining all over. You have really done the impossible! Everywhere it is light and you live in darkness. Death is nowhere and you are constantly dying; life is a benediction and you are in hell.How have you managed it? Through division, through thinking – thinking depends on division, analysis. Meditation is when there is no analysis, no division, when everything has become synthesized, when everything has become one.Says Chuang Tzu: The man of Tao acts without impediment, harms no other being by his actions. How can he do harm? You can harm others only when you have already harmed yourself. Remember this; this is the secret. If you harm yourself, you will harm others. And you will harm even when you think you are doing good to others. Nothing can happen through you but harm, because one who lives with wounds, one who lives in anguish and misery, whatsoever he does will create more misery and anguish for others. You can give only that which you have got.I have heard…It happened in a synagogue, a beggar came and he told the rabbi, “I am a great musician, and I have heard that the musician who belonged to this synagogue is dead, and you are searching. So I offer myself.”The rabbi was happy, the congregation was happy because they were really missing their music. Then the man played – it was horrible! It was more musical without his music. He created a hell. It was impossible to feel any silence in that synagogue that morning. He had to be stopped, because most of the congregation started to leave. People escaped as fast as they could because his music was just anarchic, it was like madness, and it started to affect people.When the rabbi heard that everybody was already leaving, he went to the man and stopped him. The man said, “If you don’t want me, you can pay for this morning and then I will go.”The rabbi said, “It is impossible to pay you, we have never experienced such a horrible thing.”Then the man said, the musician said, “Okay, then keep it as a contribution from me.”The rabbi said, “But how can you contribute what you don’t already have? You don’t have any music at all – how can you contribute? You can contribute only when you have it. This is not music; rather, on the contrary, it is something like antimusic. Please take it with you, don’t contribute it to us, otherwise it will go on haunting us.”You give only that which you have. You always give your being really. If you are dead within, you cannot help life; wherever you go you will kill. Knowingly, unknowingly, that is not the point – you may think that you are helping others to live, but still you will kill.A great psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, was asked once – because he was studying children, their problems – he was asked, “What is the most basic problem with children? What do you find at the root of all their misery, their problems, abnormalities?”He said, “The mothers.”No mother can agree with this, because every mother is just helping her children without any selfishness on her part. She is living and dying for the child. And yet psychoanalysts say mothers are the problem. Unknowingly they are killing, crippling; knowingly they think they are loving.If you are crippled within, you will cripple your children. You cannot do anything else, you can’t help it, because you give out of your being – there is no other way to give.Says Chuang Tzu: The man of Tao…harms no other being by his actions. Not that he cultivates nonviolence, not that he cultivates compassion, not that he lives a good life, not that he behaves in a saintly way – no. He cannot harm because he has stopped harming himself. He has no wounds. He is so blissful that from his actions or inactions only bliss flows. Even if it may appear sometimes that he is doing something wrong, he cannot.It is just the opposite with you. Sometimes it appears that you are doing something good – you cannot. The man of Tao cannot do harm, it is impossible. There is no way to do it, it is inconceivable – because he is without divisions, fragments. He is not a crowd, he is not polypsychic. He is a universe now and nothing other than melody is happening inside. Only this music goes on spreading.The man of Tao is not one of much action – he is not a man of action, the least possible action happens through him. He is really a man of inaction, he is not much occupied with activity.But you are occupied with activity just to escape from yourself. You cannot tolerate yourself, you cannot tolerate the company of yourself. You go on looking for somebody as an escape, some occupation wherein you can forget yourself, where you can get involved. You are so bored with yourself.A man of Tao, a man who has attained the inner nature, a man who is really religious, is not a man of much activity. Only the necessary will happen. The unnecessary is cut out completely, because he can be at ease without activity, he can be at home without doing anything, he can relax, he can be company for himself, he can be with his self.You cannot be with yourself, hence the constant urge to seek company. Go to a club, go to a meeting, go to a party, a rally, move into the crowd, where you are not alone. You are so afraid of yourself that if you are left alone you will go mad. In just three weeks if you are left absolutely alone without any activity, you will go mad. And this is not something said by religious people, now psychologists agree with it. For only three weeks, if all activity is taken away from you, all company taken away, if you are left in a room – within three weeks you will be mad – because all your activity is just to throw out your madness, it is a catharsis.What will you do when you are alone? For three or four days you will dream and talk within, an inner chattering. Then this will become boring. After the first week you will start talking aloud because at least you can hear your own voice. If it happens that you are passing along a dark street in the night you start whistling. Why? How is this whistling going to give you courage? How is this whistling going to help you? Just listening to it you feel that you are not alone, somebody is whistling. The illusion of two is created.After the first week you will start talking aloud because then you can also listen. You are not alone, you are talking and you are listening as if somebody else is talking to you. After the second week you will start answering yourself. You will not only talk, you will answer – you are divided. Now you are two; one who questions, one who answers. Now there is a dialogue – you have gone completely crazy.A man was asking his psychiatrist, “I am very worried, I talk to myself. What should I do? Can you help me?”The psychiatrist said, “This is nothing to be worried about. Everybody talks to himself. Only when you start answering, then come to me, then I can be of help.”But the difference is only of degree; it is not of kind, it is only of quantity. If you start talking to yourself, sooner or later you will start answering also, because how can one go on simply talking? The answer is needed, otherwise you will feel foolish. By the third week you start answering – you have gone crazy.This world, the world of activity, business and occupation, saves you from the madhouse. If you are occupied, energy moves out; then you need not care about the inward, the inner world, you can forget it.A man of Tao is not a man of much activity – only the essential activity. It is said of Chuang Tzu that if he could stand, he would not walk, if he could sit, he would not stand, if he could fall asleep, he would not sit. Only the essential, the most essential, would he do, because there is no madness in it.You do the nonessential, you go on doing the nonessential. Look at your activities: ninety-nine percent are nonessential. You can drop them, you can save much energy, you can save much time. But you cannot drop them because you are afraid, you are scared of yourself. If there is no radio, no television, no newspaper, nobody to talk to, what will you do?I have heard…One man, a priest, died. Of course, he expected to go to paradise, to heaven. And he reached, and everything was beautiful. The house he entered was one of the most wonderful ever dreamed of, palatial. And the moment a desire came, immediately a servant appeared. If he was hungry, a servant was there with the food, the most delicious he had ever tasted. If he was feeling thirsty, the desire was there – even before the desire had become a thought, just the feeling – and a man will appear with drinks.So it continued, he was very happy for two or three days, and then he began to feel uneasy because a man has to do something, you cannot just sit in a chair. Only a man of Tao can just sit in a chair and go on sitting and sitting and sitting. You cannot sit in a chair…The man became uneasy. For two or three days it was okay as a holiday, as a rest. And he had been in so much activity – so much public service, mission, church, giving sermons. He was a priest and he was so much involved with the society and the community, so he rested. But how much can you rest? Unless your being is at rest, sooner or later the holiday ends, and you have to come back to the world. Uneasiness arose; he started feeling discomfort.Suddenly the servant appeared and asked, “What do you want? This is not a want; you are neither thirsty nor hungry, just uneasy. So what should I do?”The man said, “I cannot sit here forever and forever, for eternity, I want some activity.”The servant said, “That is impossible. All your desires will be fulfilled. What is the need of any activity when every desire is to be fulfilled by us? For what do you need activity? It is not provided here.”The priest became very uneasy and he said, “What type of heaven is this?”The man said, “Who said this is heaven? This is hell. Who told you this is heaven?”And this really was hell. Now he understood: without activity, this was hell. He must have gone mad sooner or later. No communication or talk, no social service to be done, no pagans to be converted to Christianity, no foolish people to be made wise – what could he do?Only a man of Tao could have changed that hell into a heaven. A man of Tao, wherever he is, is at peace, at ease. Only the essential is done, and if you can do the essential for him, he is happy. The nonessential is dropped.You cannot drop the nonessential. Really, ninety-nine percent of your energy is wasted on the nonessential. The essential is not enough, and the mind always hankers for the nonessential because the essential is so little, so small, it can be fulfilled easily. Then what will you do?People are not much interested in having good food. They are more interested in having a big car because good food can be obtained very easily. Then what? People are not interested in having good healthy bodies. That can be attained very easily. They are interested in something which cannot be attained so easily, something impossible, and the nonessential is always the impossible. There are bigger houses, bigger cars, they go on getting bigger and bigger and you are never allowed to rest.The whole world is trying to fulfill the nonessential. If you look at industry, ninety percent of industry is involved with the nonessential. Fifty percent of human labor is just wasted on that which is not useful in any way. Rather, fifty percent of industry is devoted to the feminine mind, the feminine body: designing new dresses every three months, designing new houses, clothes, powders, soaps, creams; fifty percent of industry is devoted to such nonsense. And humanity is starving, people are dying without food, and half of humanity is interested in something absolutely nonessential.To reach the moon is absolutely nonessential. If we were a little wiser we would not think about it. It is absolutely foolish wasting as much money as could feed the whole earth. Wars are nonessential, but humanity is mad, and it needs wars more than food. It needs to go to the moon more than food, more than clothes, more than the essential, because the essential is not enough.And now science has created the greatest horror, and that horror is that the essential can be fulfilled very easily. Within ten years, all the needs of humanity can be fulfilled; as far as the necessities are concerned this whole earth can be satisfied. Then what? Then what will you do? You will feel in the same position in which the priest found himself. He was thinking he was in heaven, and then he found that it was hell. Within ten years the whole earth can become a hell.The nonessential is needed for your madness to remain engaged. So moons are not enough, we will have to go further, we will have to go on creating the useless. It is needed. To be occupied, it is needed.A man of Tao is not a man of much activity. His actions are the most essential – those which cannot be avoided. That which can be avoided, he avoids. He is so happy with himself there is no need to move in actions. His activity is like inactivity; he does without there being anybody who is doing.He is an empty boat, moving on the sea, not going anywhere.Yet he does not know himself to be kind and gentle. Allow this point to penetrate deep into your heart. Yet he does not know himself to be kind and gentle – because if you know, you have missed the point; if you know that you are a simple man, you are not. This knowledge makes it complex. If you know that you are a man of religion, you are not, because this cunning mind which knows is still there.When you are gentle, and you don’t know, when you are simple, and you are not aware of it, it has become your nature. Then you are not aware of it. When something is imposed you are aware of it. When something is alien, you are aware of it. When something is really natural you are not aware of it. Look – somebody becomes rich, and newly rich, then he is aware of his house, of his swimming pool, of his riches, and you can see that he is not an aristocrat because he is showing it so much.A newly rich man ordered three swimming pools for his garden. They were made, and he was showing them to a friend. The friend was a little puzzled. He said, “Three swimming pools? For what? One will do.”The newly rich man said, “No, how can one do? One is for hot baths, one for cold baths.”The man asked, “And the third?”He said, “For those who cannot swim. The third is going to remain empty.”You can see if a man has newly acquired wealth – he will be showing it. A real aristocrat is one who has forgotten that he is rich. A man of Tao is the aristocrat of the inner world.If a person shows his religion he is not yet really religious. The religion is still like a thorn, it is not natural, it hurts, he is eager to show it. If you want to show your simplicity what type of simplicity is this? If you exhibit your gentleness, then it is simply cunning, nothing gentle exists in it.A man of Tao is an aristocrat of the inner world. He is so attuned to it, there is no exhibition – not only to you, he himself is not aware of it. He does not know that he is wise, he does not know that he is innocent – how can you know if you are innocent? Your knowledge will disturb the innocence.It is said, once it happened…A follower of Hazrat Mohammed went with him to the mosque for a prayer, the early morning prayer. And when they were returning, many people…it was summertime, early morning, and many people were still asleep in their houses or just on the street, a summer morning and many people were still asleep…The man very arrogantly said to Hazrat Mohammed, “What will happen to these sinners? They have not been to the morning prayer.”And this man has gone only for the first time. Yesterday he was also asleep like these sinners. A newly rich man wanted to exhibit, to show off, even to Mohammed: “Hazrat, what will happen to these sinners? They have not been to the morning prayer, they are still lazy and asleep.”Mohammed stopped and said, “You go home, I will have to go back to the mosque again.”The man said, “Why?”He replied, “My morning prayer is wasted because of you; keeping company with you has destroyed everything. I will have to do my prayer again. And you remember please, never to come again – better that you were asleep like the others; at least then they were not sinners. Your prayer has done only one thing – it has given you the key to condemn others.”The so-called religious person is only religious so as to look at you with a condemning eye, so he can say that you are sinners. Go to your saints, your so-called saints, and look into their eyes. You will not find the innocence that should be there. You will find a calculating mind looking at you and thinking about hell: “You will be thrown in hell, and I will be in heaven because I have been praying so much, five times a day, and I have been fasting so much.” As if you can purchase heaven…! These are the coins – fasting, prayer – these are the coins he is trying to bargain with.If you see condemnation in the eyes of a saint, know well that he is a newly rich man; he is no aristocrat of the inner world, he has not yet become one with it. He knows it – but you know something only when it is separate from you.One thing has to be remembered here: because of this, self-knowledge is impossible. You cannot know the self, because whenever you know it, it is not the self, it is something else, something separate from you. The self is always the knower, never the known, so how can you know it? You cannot reduce it to an object.I can see you. How can I see myself? Then who will be the seer and who will be the seen? No, the self cannot be known in the same way that other things are known.Self-knowledge is not possible in the ordinary sense, because the knower always transcends, always goes beyond. Whatsoever it knows, it is not that. The Upanishads say: neti neti – not this, not that. They say: Whatsoever you know, you are not this; whatsoever you don’t know, you are not that either. You are the one who knows, and this knower cannot be reduced to a known object.Self-knowledge is not possible. If your innocence comes out of your inner source you cannot know it. If you have imposed it from the outside you can know it; if it is just like a dress you have put on you know it, but it is not the very breath of your life. That innocence is cultivated, and a cultivated innocence is an ugly thing.A man of Tao does not know himself to be kind and gentle. He is gentle, but he doesn’t know; he is kind, but he doesn’t know; he is love, but he doesn’t know – because the lover and the knower are not two, the gentleness, the kindness, the compassion and the knower, are not two. No, they cannot be divided into the known and the knower. This is the inner aristocracy, when you have become so rich you are not aware of it. When you are so rich, there is no need to exhibit it.I have heard…It happened once, Henry Ford came to England. At the airport inquiry office he asked, he inquired about the cheapest hotel in town. The man at the office looked – the face was famous. Henry Ford was known all over the world. Just the day before there were big pictures of him in the newspapers saying that he was coming. And he was, asking for the cheapest hotel, and his coat looked as old as he himself.So the man at the inquiry office asked, “If I am not mistaken, you are Mr. Henry Ford. I remember well, I have seen your picture.”The man said, “Yes.”The clerk was very puzzled, and he said, “And you are asking for the cheapest hotel, and your coat looks as old as you yourself. I have also seen your son coming here, and he always inquires about the best hotel, and he comes in the best of clothes.”Henry Ford is reported to have said, “Yes, my son’s behavior is exhibitionist, he is not yet attuned. There is no need for me to stay in a costly hotel; wherever I stay I am Henry Ford. Even in the cheapest hotel I am Henry Ford, it makes no difference. My son is still new, afraid of what people will think if he stays in a cheap hotel. And this coat, yes, this belonged to my father – but it makes no difference, I don’t need new clothes. I am Henry Ford, whatsoever the dress; even if I am standing naked, I am Henry Ford. It makes no difference at all.”When you are really attuned, really rich in the inner world, you are not concerned with exhibition. When you first go to a temple, your prayer is a little louder than others. It has to be. You want to show off.Showmanship is part of the ego, what you show is not the problem. You show, you exhibit, then the ego is there, the boat is not empty – and a man of Tao is an empty boat. He is gentle, not aware; he is innocent, not knowing; he is wise, that’s why he can move as a fool, not worried. Whatsoever he does makes no difference, his wisdom is intact, he can afford to be foolish. You cannot.You are always afraid that somebody may think you a fool. You are afraid, if others think you to be a fool, you will start suspecting it. If so many people think you a fool your self-confidence will be lost. And if everybody goes on repeating that you are a fool, sooner or later you will come to believe it. Only a wise man cannot be deceived, he can appear as a fool.I have heard about one wise man who was known as The Madman. Nobody knew anything else about him, his name or anything, he was just known as The Madman. He was a Jew, and Jews have created a few really wise men, they have something of the inner source. That is why Jesus could be born among them.This madman behaved in such a foolish way that the whole community became disturbed because nobody knew what he was going to do. On the religious days, Yom Kippur or other festivals, the whole community was afraid because it could not be predicted what this rabbi would do, how he would appear there, how he would behave. His prayers were also mad.Once he called the court, the Jewish court, all the ten judges of the court. The court came because the rabbi had called, and he said, “I have a case against God, so you decide how to punish this fellow, God. And I will give all the arguments which prove that God is unjust and a criminal.”The judges, the people, became very afraid, but they had to listen because he was the rabbi, the chief of the temple. And he gave all the arguments like a lawyer in court.He said, “You created the world, and now you send messengers telling us how to renounce it. What foolishness! You gave us desires and now all your teachers go on coming and saying: “Be desireless.” So what do you think you are doing? If we have committed any sins it is really you who are the culprit, otherwise why did you create desire?”What should the court have decided? He was right, but the court decided that this man had gone completely mad. So the court decided to expel this madman from the temple.But this man is really saying a fact. He loves God so much – it is an I/thou relationship, so intimate. He asks, “What are you doing? Enough now, stop, no more fooling.” He must have loved the divine so much that he could behave in that way.And it is said, in the story, that God immediately stopped when he called. He had to listen to this man.It is said that the angels asked, “Suddenly you stopped, what happened?”God said, “That madman, he is praying. I have to listen, because whatsoever he says is true, and he loves me so much that there is no need to follow any manners.” In love, in hate, everything is permitted, everything is allowed.This madman was passing and a woman came to him. She asked, “I have been longing and longing for a child for forty years now. And if within three or four years a child does not come, then it will not be possible. So help me.”The madman said, “I can help, because my mother was in the same trouble. She waited and waited for forty years and no child came. Then she went to Baal Shem, a mystic; she told him, and he intervened. My mother gave him a beautiful cap. Baal Shem put the cap on his head, looked up and said to God, ‘What are you doing? This is unjust. There is nothing wrong in the demand of this woman, so give her a child.’ And after nine months, I was born.”So the woman said, beaming, happy, she said “I will go home and I will bring you such a cap, more beautiful than you have ever seen. Then will the child be born to me?”The madman said, “You have missed. My mother never knew the story. Your cap won’t do, you have missed. You cannot imitate religion, you cannot imitate prayer. Once you imitate you have missed.” So whenever people came to this madman, he would say, “Don’t imitate, throw away all the scriptures.”When this madman died he had all the books that had been written about him burned. And the last thing he did, he said to his disciples, “Go around the house and have a search, and tell me that nothing is left, not even a single letter written by me, so that I can die at ease. Otherwise people will start following, and when you follow, you miss.” So everything was gathered and burned. When everything was burned he said, “Now I can die easily, I am not leaving any traces behind.”This type of wise man is not afraid. How can a wise man be afraid of anybody? What he says is meaningless. He can to all appearances be a fool, he need not exhibit his wisdom.Have you observed yourself? You are always trying to exhibit your wisdom, in search of a victim to whom you can show your knowledge, ability, just searching, hunting for somebody weaker than you – then you will jump in and you will show your wisdom.A wise man need not be an exhibitionist. Whatsoever is, is. He is not aware of it, he is not in any hurry to show it. If you want to find it, you will have to make effort. If you want to know whether he is gentle or not, that is going to be your discovery.He does not struggle to make money,and he does not make a virtue of poverty.Remember this. It is very easy to make money and it is also very easy to make a virtue out of poverty. But these two types are not different. A man goes on making money, and then suddenly he gets frustrated. He has achieved, and nothing is gained – so he renounces. Then poverty becomes the virtue, then he lives the life of a poor man and then he says: “This is the only real life, this is religious life.” This man is the same, nothing has changed. The pendulum moved to the left but has now gone to the other extreme.He does not struggle to make money… This you will understand; the other part is more difficult.…he does not make a virtue of poverty. He is neither poor nor rich. He is not making any effort for money, he is not making any effort to be poor – whatever happens he allows it to happen. If a palace happens, he will be in the palace; if the palace disappears, he will not look for it. Whatever is happening, he will be with it, his bliss cannot be disturbed. He is not struggling for money, he is not struggling for poverty.He goes his way without relying on others…This you can understand easily.He goes his way without relying on others,and does not pride himself on walking alone.The opposite has to be dropped immediately. You depend on others, your wife, your children, your father, mother, friends, society; then suddenly you drop – and you escape to the Himalayas. Then you start priding yourself: “I live alone, I don’t need anybody, I am free of that world.”Even then you are still not alone because your aloneness still depends on the world. How could you be alone if there was not a world to leave? How could you be alone if there was not a society to renounce? How could you be alone if there was not a wife, children, a family to leave behind? Your aloneness depends on them. How could you be poor if there was no money to be left? Your poverty depends on your riches.No, a perfect man, a man who is really a sage, the man of Tao, he goes his way without relying on others. Because if you rely on others you will suffer, if you rely on others, you will always be in bondage. If you rely on others, you will become dependent and weak. But that doesn’t mean that you pride yourself that you walk alone. Walk alone, but don’t take pride in it. Then you can move in the world without being a part of it. Then you can live in a family without being a member of it. Then you can be a husband without being a husband. Then you can possess without being possessed by your possessions. Then the world is there outside, but not within. Then you are there, but not corrupted by it.This is true loneliness – moving in the world without being touched by it. But if you are proud, you have missed. If you think, “I have become somebody,” the boat is not empty, and again you have fallen victim to the ego.The man of Tao remains unknown.Perfect virtue produces nothing.No self is true self.And the greatest man is nobody.Listen… The man of Tao remains unknown. Not that nobody will know him, but it is up to you to discover him. He is not making any effort to be known. Any effort to be known comes from the ego, because ego cannot exist when you are unknown, it exists only when you are known. It exists, feeds, when people look at you, when they pay attention to you, when you are somebody important, significant.But how can you be significant if nobody knows you? When the whole world knows you, then you are significant. That is why people are after fame so much, and if fame cannot be achieved then they will settle for being notorious – but not for being unknown. If people cannot praise you then you will settle for being condemned, but they should not be indifferent to you.I have heard about a politician. He had a great following once, many followers, many who appreciated him when he was not in power, because in politics everything is momentary. When you are not in power, you look very innocent because when there is no power, what can you do, how can you harm? So your real nature comes only to be known when you get power.Look at the Gandhians in India before independence – so saintly. And now everything has gone to the opposite extreme. Now they are the most corrupted. What happened? A simple law: when they were not in power they were like doves, innocent; when power came they became like serpents, cunning, corrupted, exploiting.Your real nature is known only when you have power. When you can harm, then it is known whether you will harm or not.Lord Acton has said: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” No, that is not right. Power never corrupts, it only brings corruption out. How can power corrupt? You were already corrupt but there was no opportunity. You were already ugly but you were standing in darkness. Now you are standing in light, so will you say that light makes you ugly? No, light only reveals.This politician was very much appreciated, loved, he had a charismatic personality. Then he came to power and everybody was against him. Then he was thrown out of power, his name became notorious, he was condemned everywhere, so he had to leave his town because people would not allow him to live there, he had done such harm.So with his wife he was looking for a new residence in a new town. He traveled to many towns just to look and see where he should stay. In one town people started throwing stones at him. He said, “This will be the right place, we should choose this town.”The wife said, “Are you mad? Have you gone crazy? The people are throwing stones.”The politician said, “At least they are not indifferent.”Indifference hurts you most because the ego cannot exist in indifference. Either for me or against me, the ego can exist, but don’t be indifferent to me because then how can I exist, how can the ego exist? The man of Tao remains unknown. That means that he is not seeking people who should know him. If they want to know, they should seek him.Perfect virtue produces nothing. This is one of the basics of Taoist life.Perfect virtue produces nothing, because when you are perfectly virtuous nothing is needed. When you are perfectly virtuous there is no desire, there is no motivation. You are perfect. How can perfection move? Only imperfection moves. Only imperfection desires to produce something. So a perfect artist never paints a picture, and a perfect musician throws away his sitar. A perfect archer breaks his bow and throws it away, and a perfect man like Buddha is absolutely useless. What has Buddha produced – poetry, a sculpture, a painting, a society? What has Buddha produced? He seems to be absolutely unproductive, he has done nothing.Perfect virtue produces nothing, because it needs nothing. Production comes out of desire, production comes because you are imperfect. You create something as a substitute because you feel unfulfilled. When you are absolutely fulfilled, why should you create, how can you create? Then you yourself have become a glorious creation, then the inner being itself is so perfect, nothing is needed.Perfect virtue produces nothing. If the world is virtuous, all utilitarian goals will be lost. If the world is really virtuous there will be play and no production. Then the whole thing will just become a game. You enjoy it, but you don’t need it. A perfect sage is absolutely useless.No self is true self. When you feel that you are not, for the first time you are, because the self is nothing but a synonym for the ego. That is why Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, they all say there is no self, no atman. Not that there is not – they say there is no atman, there is no self, because your ego is so cunning it can hide behind it. You can say, “Aham brahmasmi, I am brahman, Ana’l haq, I am God,” and the ego can hide behind it.Buddha says there is nobody to claim, there is no self within you. Buddha says you are like the onion: you peel, you go on peeling the layers, and finally nothing remains. Your mind is like an onion, go on peeling. This is what meditation is – go on peeling, go on peeling, and a moment comes when nothing is left. That nothingness is your true self.No self is true self. When the boat is empty then only for the first time you are in the boat.And the greatest man is nobody. It happened: Buddha renounced the kingdom. Then he was searching from one forest to another, from one ashram to another, from one master to another, walking. He had never walked without shoes but now he was just a beggar. He was passing a river, walking by the side of the river, on the sand, and his footprints were left.While he was resting in the shade of a tree one astrologer saw him. He was coming back from Kashi, from the seat of learning. He had become proficient in astrology, he had become perfect, he had become a great doctor of astrology, and he was coming back to his home town to practice.He looked at the footprints on the wet sand. He became disturbed because these footprints could not belong to a man who walks on the sand without shoes in such a hot summer, at noon. These feet belong to a great emperor, a chakravartin. A chakravartin is an emperor who rules the whole world. All the symbols were there, that this man was a chakravartin, an emperor of the whole world, of the six continents. But why should a chakravartin walk on the sand with naked feet, without any shoes, on such a hot summer afternoon? It was impossible!He was carrying his most valuable books. He thought, “If this is possible I should throw these books in the river and forget astrology forever, because this is absurd. It is very, very difficult to find a man who has the feet of a chakravartin. Once in millions of years a man becomes a chakravartin and what is this chakravartin doing here?”So he followed the footprints and he reached Buddha. He looked at him sitting, resting under a tree with closed eyes. He became more disturbed, this astrologer, he became absolutely disturbed because the face was also the face of a chakravartin. But the man looked like a beggar, with his begging bowl just there by his side, with torn clothes. But the face looked like that of a chakravartin, so what to do?He asked, he said, “I am very disturbed, put me at ease. I have only one question to ask. I have seen and studied your footprints. They should belong to a chakravartin, to a great emperor who rules over all the world, the whole earth is his kingdom – and you are a beggar. So what should I do? Should I throw away all my astrology books? My twelve years of effort in Kashi have been wasted and those people there are fools. I have wasted the most important part of my life, so put me at ease. Tell me, what should I do?”Buddha said, “You need not worry. This will not happen again. You take your books, go to the town, start your practice, don’t bother about me. I was born to be a chakravartin. These footprints carry my past.”All footprints carry your past – the lines on your hand, your palm, carry your past. That is why astrology and palmistry are always true about the past, never so true about the future, and absolutely untrue about a buddha, because one who throws off his whole past moves into the unknown – you cannot predict his future.Buddha said, “You will not come across such a troublesome man again. Don’t worry, this will not happen again, take it as an exception.”But the astrologer said, “A few more questions. I would like to know who you are. Am I really seeing a dream? A chakravartin sitting like a beggar? Who are you? Are you an emperor in disguise?”Buddha said, “No.”Then the astrologer asked, “But your face looks so beautiful, so calm, so filled with inner silence. Who are you? Are you an angel from paradise?”Buddha said, “No.”The astrologer asked one more question: “It is not good manners to ask, but you have created the desire, the urge. Are you a human being? If you are not an emperor, a chakravartin, if you are not a deva from paradise, then are you a human being?”And Buddha said, “No, I am nobody. I don’t belong to any form, to any name.”The astrologer said, “You have disturbed me more now. What do you mean?”This is what Buddha meant:And the greatest man is nobody. You can be somebody, but you cannot be the greatest. There is always someone greater somewhere in the world. And who is somebody? You are the measure. You say that this man is great – but who is the measure? You.The spoon is the measure of the ocean. You say, “This man is great.” You say, and many like you say, “This man is great” – and he becomes great because of you.No. In this world, whosoever is somebody cannot be the greatest, because the ocean cannot be measured by spoons. And you are all teaspoons measuring the ocean. No, it is not possible.So the really greatest will be nobody among you. What does it mean when Chuang Tzu says, “The greatest will be nobody”? It means it will be immeasurable. You cannot measure, you cannot label, you cannot categorize, you cannot say, “Who is this?” He simply escapes measurement. He simply goes beyond and beyond and beyond and the teaspoon falls on the ground – immeasurable.God must be nobody. He cannot be somebody because who will make him somebody? You? – then you have measured. Then you have become greater than God, then the teaspoon has become greater than the ocean. No, God cannot be measured. He will remain a nobody.I’m reminded of this madman again, this Jew. He used to say in his prayers, “God, you and I are two strangers in this world.”So one day a disciple heard his prayer that he was saying: “God, you and I are two strangers in this world.”The disciple asked, “What do you mean? God and you, strangers?”He said, “He’s nobody and I’m also nobody – immeasurable – neither can you measure him nor can you measure me.”Somebody means you are measured. You are labeled, categorized. You are known. Nobody means you remain unknowable. Howsoever you know, whatsoever you know, your knowledge will not exhaust him. You will know that this is not the boundary. And the more intimate you become, the greater he becomes, the more immeasurable. A moment comes and you simply throw your teaspoon, you simply stop the effort to measure. And only then are you intimate with the great man, the man of Tao.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Hui Tzu was prime minister of Liang.He had what he believed to be inside informationthat Chuang Tzu coveted his post,and was plotting to supplant him.When Chuang Tzu came to visit Liangthe prime minister sent out police to arrest him,but although they searched for three days and nightsthey could not find him.Meanwhile, Chuang Tzu presented himself to Hui Tzuof his own accord, and said:“Have you heard about the birdthat lives in the south –the phoenix that never grows old?“This undying phoenix rises out of the south seaand flies to the seas of the north,never alighting except on certain sacred trees.He will touch no foodbut the most exquisite rare fruit,and he drinks only from the clearest springs.“Once an owlchewing an already half-decayed dead ratsaw the phoenix fly over.“Looking up he screeched with alarmand clutched the dead rat to himselfin fear and dismay.“Prime minister,why are you so frantic,clinging to your ministryand screeching at me in dismay?”The religious mind is basically non-ambitious. If there is any sort of ambition, then to be religious is impossible, because only a superior man can become religious. Ambition implies inferiority. Try to understand this because it is one of the basic laws. Without understanding it you can go to temples, you can go to the Himalayas, you can pray and you can meditate, but everything will be in vain. You will be simply wasting your life if you have not understood the nature of the mind – whether it is ambitious or non-ambitious. Your whole search will be futile, because ambition can never lead to the divine. Only non-ambition can become the door.Modern psychology also agrees with Chuang Tzu, with Lao Tzu, with Buddha, with all those who have known that inferiority creates ambition. Hence politicians come from the worst stuff in humanity. All politicians are sudras, untouchables. It cannot be otherwise, because whenever the mind feels the inferiority complex it tries to become superior – the opposite is born. When you feel ugly, you try to be beautiful. If you are beautiful, then there is no effort.So look at ugly women and you will come to know the nature of the politician. An ugly woman is always trying to hide the ugliness, always trying to be beautiful. At least the face, the painted face, the clothes, the ornaments, they all belong to the ugly. The ugliness has somehow to be overcome and you have to create the opposite to hide it, to escape from it. A really beautiful woman will not worry, she will not even be conscious of her beauty. And only an unconscious beauty is beautiful. When you become conscious, the ugliness has entered.When you feel that you are inferior, when you compare yourself and you see that others are superior to you, what will you do? The ego feels hurt – you are inferior. You just cannot accept it, so you have to deceive yourself and others.How do you deceive? There are two ways. One is to go mad. Then you can declare that you are an Alexander, a Hitler, a Nixon. Then you can declare easily because then you don’t bother what others say. Go to the madhouses all over the world and there you will find all the great people of history still present.When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was alive, at least one dozen people in India believed that they were Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Once he came to a madhouse to inaugurate some new department. And the authorities of that madhouse had arranged for a few people to be released by him because now they had become healthy and normal. The first person was brought to Nehru, and introduced, so Nehru introduced himself to the madman who had become more normal and said, “I am Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India.”The madman laughed and said, “Don’t worry. Be here for three years and you will become as normal as I have become. Three years ago when I first came to this madhouse this is what I believed – I was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India. But they have cured me completely, so don’t worry.”This has happened in many ways. Lloyd George was prime minister of England. In the war days, at six o’clock in the evening there used to be a blackout and nobody could move outside their houses. All traffic stopped, and everybody had to go in some shelter. No light, no electricity was allowed. Lloyd George was on his routine evening walk. He forgot.Suddenly the siren… It was six o’clock and his house was far away and he had to walk at least a mile. So he knocked on the nearest door and said to the man who opened it, “Let me rest here for the night; otherwise the police will catch me. I am Lloyd George, the prime minister.”The man suddenly grabbed him and said, “Come in. This is the right place for you. We have three Lloyd Georges already!” It was a madhouse.Lloyd George tried to convince the man, but he said, “Don’t try, they all try to convince; you just come in, or I will beat you.”So Lloyd George had to keep quiet for the whole night, or he would have been beaten. How could he convince them? There were already three Lloyd Georges and they had all tried to prove it.One way is to go mad – then you suddenly declare that you are superior, the most superior. Another way is to go politician. Either go mad or go politician. Through politics you cannot suddenly declare – you have to prove that you really are the prime minister or you are the president. So it is a long way. Madness is the shortcut to fame, politics is the long way. But they reach the same goal.And if the world is to become a sane, normal world, then two types of people have to be cured: madmen and politicians. Both are ill. One has taken the long route, one has taken the shortcut. And remember well that the madman is less harmful than the politician because he simply declares, he never bothers to prove it; the politician bothers to prove it – and the proof is very costly.What was Hitler trying to prove? That he was the most superior, the supreme-most Aryan. It would have been better for the world if he had gone mad, and declared through the shortcut; then there would have been no Second World War.Politicians are more dangerous because they are madmen with proofs. They are madmen working, reaching, achieving a goal, just to hide the inferiority in them. Whenever somebody feels inferior, he has to prove it, or simply hypnotize himself – that he is not inferior. You cannot be religious if you are mad, in this sense. Not mad in the way a Saint Francis is mad – that madness comes through ecstasy, this madness comes through inferiority. The madness of a Saint Francis or a Chuang Tzu comes out of superiority, comes out of the heart, comes from the original source. This other madness comes out of the ego, comes out of inferiority. The soul is always superior and the ego is always inferior.So an egotist has to become a politician somehow or other. Whichever profession he chooses, through that profession he will be a politician.What do I mean when I say politics? I mean the conflict between egos, the struggle to survive. Between the egos – your ego and my ego in conflict – then we are politicians. When I am not in conflict with anybody’s ego, I am a religious man. When I don’t try to be superior, I am superior. But this superiority is not opposite to inferiority, it is an absence of the feeling of inferiority.This distinction has to be remembered. There are two types of superiority. In one you have just hidden the inferiority, covered it, you are using a mask – the inferiority is there behind the mask. Your superiority is just superficial; deep down you remain inferior, and because you go on feeling that inferiority, you have to carry this mask of superiority, of beauty. Because you are aware that you are ugly you have to manage to be beautiful, you have to exhibit, you have to have a false face. This is one type of superiority; it is not real.There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of inferiority, not opposite to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t compare, how can you be inferior? Look, if you are the only one on earth and there is nobody else, will you be inferior? To whom? With whom will you compare yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone what will you be, inferior or superior? You will be neither. You cannot be inferior because there is no one ahead of you; you cannot declare yourself superior because there is no one behind you. You will be neither superior nor inferior – and I say to you that this is the superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority arises. Don’t compare, and you simply are – unique.A religious man is superior in the sense that the inferiority has disappeared. A politician is superior in the sense that he has overcome his inferiority. It is hidden there, it is still inside. He is just using the garb, the face, the mask of a superior man.When you compare, you miss; then you will always look to others. And no two persons are the same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every individual is superior, but this superiority is not comparable. You are superior because you cannot be anything else. Superiority is just your nature. The tree is superior, the rock is also superior because the whole of existence is divine. How can anything be inferior here? It is existence, overflowing in millions of ways. Somewhere existence has become a tree, somewhere existence has become a rock, somewhere existence has become a bird, somewhere existence has become you. Only godliness exists, so there is no comparison. And existence is superior, but not to anything – because only godliness is, and there cannot be any inferiority.A religious man comes to experience his uniqueness, comes to experience his divineness, and through his experience of divineness he comes to realize the divineness of all. This is nonpolitical because now there is no ambition, you have nothing to prove, you are already proved; you have nothing to declare, you are already declared. Your very being is the proof. You are…it is enough. Nothing else is needed.Hence, remember this as the basic law: if in religion you also go on comparing, you are in politics, you are not in religion. That is why all religions have become political. They use religious terminology, but hidden behind is politics. What is Islam, what is Christianity, what is Hinduism now? – all political groups, political organizations doing politics in the name of religion.When you go to the temple to pray, do you simply pray or do you compare? If somebody is there praying, does comparison arise in your mind? Is he praying better than you, or are you doing better than him? Then the temple is no longer there. The temple has disappeared, it has become politics.In religion comparison is not possible; you simply pray, and prayerfulness becomes your inner being. It is not something outward to be compared. This incomparable prayerfulness, incomparable meditation, will lead you to the intrinsic superiority of all existence.Buddha says: Don’t be ambitious, because through ambition you will always remain inferior. Be non-ambitious and attain to your intrinsic superiority. It is intrinsic, it is nothing to be proved or achieved, you already have it, you have got it. It is already there – it has always been with you and it will always remain with you. Your very being is superior but you don’t know what being is there. You don’t know who you are – hence so much effort in seeking your identity, in searching, in proving that you are superior to others. You don’t know who you are.Once you know, then there is no problem. You are already superior. And it is not only you that is superior – everything is superior. The whole of existence is superior without anything being inferior, because existence is one. Neither the inferior nor the superior can exist. The non-ambitious mind comes to realize this.Now, we shall take Chuang Tzu’s sentences, this beautiful incident which really happened. Chuang Tzu was coming to the capital and the prime minister became afraid. He must have heard the news that Chuang Tzu was coming through the secret police, the CID. And politicians are always afraid because everybody is their enemy, even friends are enemies, one has to protect oneself from friends because they too are trying to push or pull you down.Remember, nobody is a friend. In politics, everybody is an enemy. Friendship is just a façade. In religion there is no one who is an enemy. In religion there cannot be any enemy; in politics there cannot be any friend.The prime minister became afraid – Chuang Tzu was coming. And Chuang Tzu’s superiority was such that the prime minister thought that he might try to become prime minister. It was dangerous, and of course Chuang Tzu was superior; not superior in comparison to anybody else, he was simply superior. It was intrinsic.When a man like Chuang Tzu moves, he is king; whether he is living like a beggar or not, it doesn’t make any difference. He is a king wherever he moves. A kingdom is not something external to him, it is something internal.One beggar, a monk from India, went to America at the beginning of this century; his name was Ramateertha. He used to call himself “The Emperor.” The president of America came to see him; he looked around – he was just a beggar! The president asked, “I cannot understand. Why do you go on calling yourself The Emperor? You live like a beggar. You have even written a book – Why?” He had written a book: Six Orders of Emperor Ram.Ramateertha laughed and said, “Look within me, my kingdom belongs to the inner world. Look in me. I am an emperor. My kingdom is not of this world.”Because of this, Jesus was crucified. He was always talking of the kingdom. He was always saying, “I am the king.” He was misunderstood. The man who was the king, Herod, became alert. The viceroy, Pontius Pilate, thought this man dangerous because he talked about the kingdom and the king, and he had declared, “I am the king of the Jews.” He was misunderstood. He was talking of a different type of kingdom, which is not of this world.When he was being crucified the soldiers poked fun at him, threw stones and shoes at him, and just to mock him, put a crown of thorns on his head with the words, King of the Jews, written on it And when they were throwing stones and shoes at him they were saying, “Now, tell us something about the kingdom, tell us something, you king of the Jews!”He was talking of some other kingdom, not of this world; that kingdom is not without, that kingdom is within. But whenever a man like Jesus walks, he is the emperor. He cannot help it. He is not in competition with anybody, he is not hankering for any crown of this world, but wherever he moves ambitious people become afraid, politicians become afraid. This man is dangerous, because the very face, the eyes, the way he walks, he looks like an emperor. He need not prove it, he is the proof. He need not utter it, need not say it.When the prime minister heard through the secret police that Chuang Tzu was coming, he thought he must be coming to the capital to supplant him; otherwise, why come? People only came to the capital for that. One never goes to Delhi for anything else. People come to the capitals in search of ambition, in search of ego, identity. Why should he come – a fakir, a beggar? What is the need for him to come to the capital?“He must be coming to take my seat, my chair. He must be coming to the king to say, ‘I am the right man. Make me prime minister and I will put every wrong right. I will solve all your problems.’”And the man had a glory around him, a charisma. The prime minister became afraid. Prime ministers are always inferior. Deep down the inferiority complex is there, like a disease, like a worm eating the heart, always afraid of the superior.Hui Tzu was prime minister of Liang.He had what he believed to be inside informationthat Chuang Tzu coveted his post,and was plotting to supplant him.Politicians cannot think otherwise. The first thing to be understood: you think of others according to what you are. Your desires, your own ambitions give you the pattern. If you are after money you think that everybody is after money. If you are a thief, you are always checking your pocket, again and again. That is how you show that you are a thief. Your inner desire is the language of your understanding. Politicians always think in terms of plots, conspiracies – “Somebody is going to supplant me; somebody is going to throw me out.” Because that is what they have done; plotting is what they have been doing all their lives. Politicians are conspirators; that is their language. And you look at others through your mind, you project onto others things which are hidden deep within you.Hui Tzu thought, “This Chuang Tzu is plotting to supplant me.”When Chuang Tzu came to visit Liangthe prime minister sent out police to arrest him,but although they searched for three days and nightsthey could not find him.This is beautiful!The police can only find thieves – they understand each other. The mind of the policeman and the mind of a thief are not different – thieves in the service of the government are the police. Their mind, their way of thinking is the same, only their masters are different. A thief is in his own service, a policeman is in the service of the state – but both are thieves. That is why policemen can catch thieves. If you send a sadhu to find a thief, he won’t find him, because he will look at others through his mind.A rabbi was passing. A young man was standing there, it was a religious day and he was smoking, and smoking was forbidden on that day. So the rabbi stopped and asked the young man “Don’t you know, young man, that this is a religious day, and you should not be smoking?”The young man said, “Yes, I know that this is a religious day.” Still he continued smoking – not only that, he was blowing smoke in the rabbi’s face.The rabbi asked, “And don’t you know that smoking is forbidden?”The young man said arrogantly, “Yes, I know it is forbidden.” And he continued.The rabbi looked at the sky and said, “Father, this young man is beautiful. He may be breaking the law, but nobody can force him to lie. He is a truthful man. He says, ‘Yes, I know this is a religious day, and yes, I know it is forbidden.’ Remember this on the day of last judgment, that this young man could not be forced to lie.”This is a beautiful rabbi. This is the mind of a sadhu. He cannot see wrong, he always sees right.The police could not find Chuang Tzu. They could have found him if he had been an ambitious man, if he had been plotting, if he were thinking in terms of politics – then he could have been caught. The police must have looked in places where he was not, and their paths must have crossed many times. He was a beggar; the police must not have noticed that he was a beggar, a non-ambitious man. He was not plotting. He had no mind for plots, he was like the breeze. The police searched and searched for many days and couldn’t find him.You can find only that which you are. You always find yourself in others, because others are just mirrors. To catch Chuang Tzu, a Lao Tzu was needed. Nobody else could catch him, because who could understand him? A buddha was needed; Buddha would have caught hold of him immediately: “Here he is!” But a policeman? – impossible! Only if he were a thief would it be possible. Look at the policeman, the way he is, the way he talks, the dirty, vulgar language he uses; it is even more vulgar than thieves use. The policeman has to be more vulgar, otherwise thieves would win.I have heard…A man was caught, and the magistrate asked, “Tell me, when you were caught, what did this policeman say to you?”The man said, “Can I use the vulgar language that he used, here in court? Will you not feel offended?”The magistrate said, “Leave out the vulgar language and say what he said.”The man thought and said, “Then…he said nothing.”The police came back to Hui Tzu and reported: “This man cannot be found, there is no such man.” They must have had a picture, they must have been given a picture, some way of identifying this man Chuang Tzu, how he is to be found, how he is to be caught, what type of man he was.But Chuang Tzu has no identity, he has no face. Moment to moment he is a flow, a liquidity. Moment to moment he reflects, responds to existence. He has no fixed abode, he is homeless, faceless. He has no name. He is not a past, he is always a present, and all photographs belong to the past.It looks absurd, but it is said, and it is beautiful and meaningful, that whenever there is a man like Buddha, you cannot photograph him. Not that you cannot photograph him – but the moment the photograph is there, Buddha has moved. So it is always of the past and never of the present. You cannot catch Buddha’s present face. The moment you catch it, it has passed. The moment you understand, it is already gone.One of the names of Buddha is Tathagata. This word is really wonderful, it means: just like the wind he came and he is gone, thus came like the wind and thus gone. You cannot photograph a wind, a breeze. Before you have caught it, it has already gone, it is there no longer.Chuang Tzu could not be found because the police were searching for his past and he lived in the present. He was a being, not a mind. Mind can be caught but being cannot be caught. There are no nets. The being cannot be caught. Mind can be caught very easily, and you are all caught in some way or other. Because you have a mind, a wife, a husband will catch you; a shop, a treasure, a position, anything will catch you. There are nets, millions of nets. And you cannot be free unless you are free of the mind. You will be caught again and again. If you leave this wife, another woman will catch you immediately. You cannot escape. You can escape this woman, but you cannot escape women. You can escape this man but where will you go? Before you have left one, another has come. You can leave this town, but where will you go? Another town will catch you. You can leave this desire, another will become the bondage. Because mind is always in bondage, it is already caught. When you drop the mind, then the police cannot catch you.This Chuang Tzu was without mind. He was a mindless beggar, or an emperor, it means the same. He could not be caught.When Chuang Tzu came to visit Liangthe prime minister sent the police out to arrest him,but although they searched for three days and nights,they could not find him.Meanwhile, Chuang Tzu presented himself to Hui Tzuof his own accord, and said…Suddenly on the third day or the fourth day Chuang Tzu appeared of his own accord. This type of man, this manner of man, Chuang Tzu, cannot be caught. He always appears of his own accord. It is his freedom. You cannot catch him, you can only invite him. It is his freedom to appear or not.When there is mind, you are always caught. The mind forces you, you are its prisoner. When there is no mind you are free. You can appear, you can disappear of your own accord. It is your own freedom.If I am speaking to you it is not that you have asked a question, it is of my own accord. If I am working with you it is not because of you, it is on my own accord. When there is no mind there is freedom. Mind is the basis of all slavery.Chuang Tzu appeared of his own accord and told a beautiful parable. Listen from the deepest core of your heart.“Have you heard about the birdthat lives in the south –the phoenix…a mythical bird……that never grows old?”A Chinese myth, beautiful, and carries much meaning. Myth is not truth, but truer than any truth. Myth is a parable, it indicates something which cannot be indicated otherwise. Only through a parable, through poetry, can it be said. Myth is poetry, it is not a description. It indicates the truth, not an event in the outer world; it belongs to the inner.“Have you heard about the bird that lives in the south?” In China, India is the south, and that bird lives here. It is said that when Lao Tzu disappeared, he disappeared into the south. They don’t know when he died – he never died. Such people never die, they simply go to the south – they disappear into India.It is said that Bodhidharma came from the south. He left India, and then he waited nine years for a disciple to whom he was to transmit the treasure of Buddha. He transmitted it, and it is said that then he disappeared again into the south. India is the south for China. Really, India is the source of all myth; there exists not a single myth all over the world which has not arisen here.Science arose out of the Greek mind, myth arose out of the Indian mind. And there are only two ways of looking at the world: one is science, the other is religion. If you look at the world, one day through science, another day through religion…If you look at the world through science, it is looking through analysis, mathematics, logic. Athens, the Greek mind, gave science to the world, the Socratic method of analysis, logic and doubt. Religion is a totally different pattern of looking at the world. It looks at the world through poetry, through myth, through love. Of course, it is romantic. It cannot give you facts, it will only give you fictions. But I say fictions are more factual than any facts, because they give you the innermost core, they are not concerned with the outer event. Hence, India has no history. It has only myth, puranas; no itihas, no history, just mythology.Rama is not an historical person. He may have been, he may not have been. You cannot prove it; nobody can say anything, whether he was, or not. Krishna is a myth, not an historical fact. Maybe he was, maybe he was not. But India is not bothered whether Krishna and Rama are historical. They are meaningful, they are great poetry, epics. And history is meaningless for India because history contains only bare facts, the innermost core is never revealed. We are concerned with the innermost core, the center of the wheel. The wheel keeps on moving, that is history, but the center of the wheel, which never moves, is the myth.Said Chuang Tzu: “Have you heard about the bird that lives in the south – the phoenix that never grows old?” All that is born grows old. History cannot believe in this bird, because history means the beginning and the end, history means birth and death. The span between birth and death is history, and the span between the birthless and the deathless is myth.Rama is never born and never dies. Krishna is never born and never dies. They are always there. Myth is not concerned with time, it is concerned with eternity. History goes on changing, myth always remains relevant. There is not, and there can never be, a myth which will become out of date. Newspaper is history, yesterday’s newspaper is already out of date. Rama is not part of the newspaper, he is not news, and he will never be out of date. He is always in the present, always meaningful, relevant. History goes on changing; Rama remains there at the center of the wheel, unmoving.Says Chuang Tzu: “…that lives in the south – the phoenix that never grows old?”Have you ever seen a picture of Rama or Krishna which belongs to their old age? They are always young, without even a beard or mustache. Have you ever seen any picture of Rama with a beard? Unless there was some hormonal defect, if he was really a man – and he was a man – then the beard must have grown. If Rama was historical, then the beard must have been there; but he was beardless, we have pictured him beardless, because the moment the beard grows you have already started becoming old. Sooner or later it will turn white. Death is coming near and we cannot think that Rama dies so we have washed his face completely clean of any sign of death. And this is not only so with Rama; the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are all beardless, no mustaches. Buddha and all the avatars of the Hindus had no beards, no mustaches – just to indicate their eternal youth, the eternity, the timelessness, the foreverness.“…the phoenix that never grows old.” There is time – in time everything changes – and there is eternity. In eternity nothing changes. History belongs to time, myth belongs to eternity. Science belongs to time, religion belongs to the nontemporal, the eternal.In you also, both exist – time and eternity. On your surface the wheel, time – you were born, you will die, but this is only on the surface. You are young, you will become old. You are healthy, you will be ill. Now you are full of life, sooner or later everything will ebb, death will penetrate you. But this is only on the surface, the wheel of history. Deep down right now, eternity exists in you, the timeless exists. There nothing grows old – the phoenix, the south, the India, the eternal. Where nothing grows old, nothing changes, everything is unmoving. That south is within you.That is why I go on saying that India is not part of geography, it is not part of history, it is part of an inner map. It doesn’t exist in Delhi, it never existed there. Politicians don’t belong to it; it doesn’t belong to politics. It is the inner. It exists everywhere.Wherever a man comes deep down into himself he reaches India. That is the reason for the eternal attraction, the magnetism of India. Whenever a person becomes uneasy with his life, he moves toward India. This is just symbolic. Through physical movement you will not find India. A different movement is needed, where you start moving from the outer to the inner, to the south, to the land of myth, and the deathless, “…the phoenix that never grows old.”“This undying phoenix rises out of the south seaand flies to the seas of the north,never alighting except on certain sacred trees.He will touch no foodbut the most exquisite rare fruit,and he drinks only from the clearest springs.”This soul, this innermost core of your being, “…never alighting except on certain sacred trees,” this inner bird, this is your being. It alights only on certain sacred trees.“He will touch no foodbut the most exquisite rare fruit,and he drinks only from the clearest springs.“Once an owlchewing an already half-decayed dead ratsaw the phoenix fly over.Looking up he screeched with alarmand clutched the dead rat to himselfin fear and dismay.”Chuang Tzu is saying: “I am the phoenix, and you are just an owl with an already dead rat, chewing it. And you are alarmed that I am coming to supplant you. Your position, your power is nothing but a dead rat to me. This is no food for me. Ambition is not a way for life, it is only for those who are already dead. I have looked into ambition, and I have found it useless.”Once it happened…A woman came crying and weeping to a rabbi, but the rabbi was at his prayer. So she said to the secretary, “Go in, and even if his prayer has to be interrupted, interrupt. My husband has left me. The rabbi should pray for me, that my husband comes back.”The secretary went in and interrupted the prayer. The rabbi sent the secretary back to the woman, saying, “Don’t worry, the husband will come back soon.”The secretary went back to the woman and said, “Don’t worry, don’t be sad. The rabbi says that your husband will come back soon. Go home and be at ease.”Happy, the woman left, saying, “God will reward your rabbi a million times over, he is so kind.”When the woman left, the secretary became sad, and told someone who was standing there that this was not going to help: “Her husband cannot come back, poor woman, and she left here so happy.”The bystander said, “But why? Don’t you believe in your rabbi and his prayer?”The secretary said, “Of course I believe in my rabbi and I believe in his prayer. But he has only heard the petition of the woman, and I have seen her face. Her husband cannot ever come back.”One who has seen the face of ambition, one who has seen the face of desire, one who has seen the face of lust, will never come back to desire, to lust, to ambition. It is impossible, the face is so ugly.Chuang Tzu has seen the face of ambition. That is why he says: “Your post, your power, your prime-ministership, is just a dead rat to me. Don’t screech, and don’t get dismayed.”“This undying phoenix arises out of the south seaand flies to the seas of the north,never alighting except on certain sacred trees.He will touch no foodbut the most exquisite rare fruit,and he drinks only from the clearest springs.“Once an owlchewing an already half-decayed dead ratsaw the phoenix fly over.Looking up he screeched with alarmand clutched the dead rat to himselfin fear and dismay.“Prime minister,why are you so frantic,clinging to your ministryand screeching at me in dismay?”This is the fact, but only once you know it, only then. Listening to a Buddha, or to a Jesus, or to a Zarathustra, you have always heard: “Drop desiring and bliss will be yours.” But you cannot drop it, you cannot understand how bliss can happen when you drop desire, because you have tasted only desire. It may be poisonous, but it has been your only food. You have been drinking from poisoned sources, and when someone says, “Drop it,” you think, “then I will die, thirsty.” You don’t know that there are clear springs, and you don’t know that there are trees with rare fruit. You look only through your desire, so you cannot see those fruits and those trees.When your eyes are filled with desire they see only dead rats. Ramakrishna used to say that there are people who cannot see anything else than the objects of their lust. This owl can sit at the top of a high tree, but he is only looking for dead rats. Whenever a dead rat appears on the street, the owl becomes excited. He will not become so excited, he will not even see, if you throw him a beautiful fruit. He will not see, he will not become aware; the information never reaches him because the desires work like a screen. Continuously, only that which your desires allow enters you. Your desires are just like a watchman standing at the door of your being. They allow only that which appeals to them.Change this watchman; otherwise you will always live on dead rats. You will remain an owl, and that is the misery, because deep within you the phoenix is hidden and you are behaving like an owl. That is the discontent. That is why you can never feel at ease, that is why you can never feel blissful. You cannot feel – how can a phoenix feel blissful with a dead rat? He is always a stranger, this is not the right food for him.And this you have felt many times. Making love to a woman or to a man, you have felt many times that this is not for you. The phoenix asserts itself but the owl is much noisier. The phoenix cannot be heard, the voice is very subtle, silent, not aggressive. In moments of peace and meditation the phoenix says, “What are you doing? This is not for you. What are you eating? This is not for you. What are you drinking? This is not for you.”But the owl is very noisy and you have believed in the owl for so long that you go on following it just like a habit. It has become a dead habit. You simply follow it because there is the least resistance. The rut is there. You don’t have to do anything. You simply run on the track, and go on running – the same desires, the same lusts, the same ambitions, and you go on running in a circle. No wonder you live in anguish, you live in a nightmare.Let the inner Chuang Tzu assert himself, let the inner phoenix assert itself. Listen to it, it is a still, small voice. You will have to calm down, you will have to put this owl to sleep; only then will you be able to listen. This owl is the ego, the mind; the phoenix is the soul. It is born in the south, out of the sea. It is not a part of the land, it is not part of the mud – out of the vast sea it is born. It never grows old, it never dies. It alights only on rare, holy, sacred trees, eats only exquisite rare fruit, drinks only from the clearest of springs. Those springs are there, those holy trees are there. You have been missing them because of the owl, and the owl has become the leader.All meditation is nothing but an effort to make this owl silent so that the still small voice can be heard. Then you will see what you have been doing – chewing a dead rat.Chuang Tzu is right. The prime minister was unnecessarily in dismay. When you, your inner phoenix, comes to live its life, the owl, the prime minister, will be in very much dismay in the beginning. Your mind will create every type of hindrance to meditation because the mind is afraid, the prime minister is afraid – this Chuang Tzu, this meditativeness, is coming to supplant him.Your mind will catch hold of the dead rat, and will scream, scared, as if somebody is going to take that food away from you. In the beginning it will happen – and you have to be alert and aware of it. By and by only your awareness will help.Whenever one starts meditating, the mind becomes rebellious. It starts all types of arguments: “What are you doing, why are you wasting time? Use this time! Much can be done in it, much can be achieved. That desire has been waiting for so long and there has been no time, and you are wasting time in meditation? Forget it. Those who say that meditation is possible are deceiving you. These Buddhas, these Chuang Tzus, don’t believe them. Believe in the mind” – says the mind. It creates all kinds of doubts about everybody, but it never creates any doubt about itself.I have heard…One man was talking to his small child. The child had written a letter as part of his homework and was showing it to his father. There were as many spelling mistakes as there were words, even more. So the father said, “Your spelling is awful. Why don’t you look in the dictionary? When you feel in doubt, look in the dictionary.”The child said, “But, Dad, I never feel in doubt.”This is what your mind is doing. It says to Buddha, “But Dad, I never feel in doubt.”Mind never doubts itself, that is the problem. It doubts everybody – it will doubt even a Buddha. If Krishna knocks at your door, it will doubt; if Jesus comes it will doubt. It has always been so, you have been doing it continuously.You doubt me but you never doubt yourself, because once the mind starts doubting itself it is already going out of existence. Once self-doubt arises the base is broken, the mind has lost its confidence. Once you start doubting the mind, sooner or later you will fall into the abyss of meditation.Baal Shem, a mystic, died. His son, Hertz, was a very sleepy person, very unconscious. When Baal Shem was dying he was fast asleep, and Baal Shem had said, “This night is going to be my last.”But Hertz had said, “Nobody can know when death will come.” He doubted. Baal Shem was his father, and thousands believed that he was the messiah, the man who would lead millions to salvation. But the son doubted, he fell asleep. He was awakened at midnight. His father was dead. He started crying, weeping. He had missed a great opportunity, and now there would be no possibility of a meeting. But he never doubted his mind, he doubted Baal Shem.Then in dismay and despair, he started crying. He closed his eyes and for the first time in his life, when the father was dead, he started talking to him. His father had called him many times: “Hertz, come to me.” And he would say, “Yes, I will come, but there are other, more important things to do first.”This is what your mind is saying. I go on calling you: “Come to me.” You say, “There are other more important things right now. I will come later on; wait!”But death had broken the bridge. So Hertz cried and started talking to his father, and he said, “What should I do now? I am lost. I am in darkness. Now how can I drop this mind which has deceived me? I never doubted it, and I doubted you. Now it makes me very sad.”Baal Shem appeared inside Hertz and said, “Look at me. Do the same.” As if in a dream Hertz was seeing Baal Shem go to the top of a hill and drop himself into the abyss. And he said, “Do the same.”Said Hertz, “I cannot understand.” Really, doubt arose again: “What is this man saying? This will be suicide.”Baal Shem laughed, and said, “You are still doubting me, not doubting yourself. Then do this.” In his vision Hertz saw a big mountain, all aflame, like a volcano, fire all over, rocks splitting, and the whole mountain breaking into fragments. Said Baal Shem, “Or do like this. Let the mind be thrown into an abyss, let the mind be burnt up completely.”And the story goes that Hertz said, “I will think it over.”Whenever you say, “I will think it over,” you have started doubting. Doubt thinks, not you. And when there is no doubt, faith acts, not you. Doubt thinks, faith acts. Through doubt you can become a great philosopher; through faith you will become a Chuang Tzu, a phoenix which never grows old, which is undying. Through doubt you can penetrate the mysteries of time; through faith you will enter the door of eternity.I have heard…Two men were once lost in a forest. It was very dangerous, the forest was so dense, it was night, darkness and wild animals all around. One man was a philosopher and the other was a mystic – one a man of doubt, the other a man of faith. Suddenly, there was a storm, a crashing of the clouds, and great lightning.The philosopher looked at the sky, the mystic looked at the path. In that moment of lightning, the path was before him, illuminated. The philosopher looked at the lightning, and started wondering, “What is happening?” and missed the path.You are lost in a forest denser than that in the story. The night is darker. Sometimes lightning comes. Look at the path.A Chuang Tzu is lightning, a Buddha is lightning, I am lightning. Don’t look at me, look at the path. If you look at me, you have already missed, because the lightning will not continue. It lasts only for a moment, and the moment is rare when eternity penetrates time; it is just like lightning.If you look at the lightning, if you look at a buddha – and a buddha is beautiful, the face fascinates, the eyes are magnetic – if you look at the buddha, you have missed the path.Look at the path, forget the buddha. Look at the path. But that look happens only when there is no doubt, when there is faith; when there is no thinking, no mind.Chuang Tzu has not to be thought about. Don’t think about him. Just let this story penetrate you, and forget it. Through this story the path is illuminated. Look at the path, and do something. Follow the path, act. Only action will lead you, not thinking, because thinking goes on in the head, it can never become total. Only when you act, it is total.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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If a man steps on a stranger’s footin the marketplace,he makes a polite apologyand offers an explanation:“This place is so crowded.”If an elder brothersteps on his younger brother’s foothe says, “Sorry,”and that is that.If a parenttreads on his child’s footnothing is said at all.The greatest politenessis free of all formality.Perfect conduct is free of concern.Perfect wisdom is unplanned.Perfect love is without demonstrations.Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee.All that is great, all that is beautiful, all that is true and real, is always spontaneous. You cannot plan it. The moment you plan it, everything goes wrong. The moment planning enters, everything becomes unreal.But this has happened to humanity. Your love, your sincerity, your truth, everything has gone wrong because you have planned it, because you have been taught not to be spontaneous. You have been taught to manipulate yourself, to control, to manage, and not to be a natural flow. You have become rigid, frozen, dead.Life knows no planning. It is itself enough. Do the trees plan how to grow, how to mature, how to come to flower? They simply grow without even being conscious of the growth. There is no self-consciousness, there is no separation.Whenever you start planning you have divided yourself, you have become two – the one who is controlling and the one who is controlled. A conflict has arisen, now you will never be at peace. You may succeed in controlling but there will be no peace, or you may not succeed in controlling, then too there will be no peace. Whether you succeed or fail, ultimately you will come to realize that you have failed. Your failure will be a failure, your success will also be a failure. Whatsoever you do, your life will be miserable.This division creates ugliness, you are not one, and beauty belongs to oneness, beauty belongs to a harmonious whole. All culture, all civilization, all societies, make you ugly. All morality makes you ugly because it is based on division, on control.I have heard…Once Baal Shem was traveling in a beautiful coach with three horses. But he was wondering continuously. For three days he had been traveling, but not even once had any of the horses neighed. What had happened to the horses? Then suddenly on the fourth day, a passing peasant shouted at him to relax control. He relaxed, and suddenly all three horses started neighing, they came alive. For three days continuously they had been dead, dying.This has happened to you all, to the whole of humanity. You cannot neigh, and unless a horse neighs the horse is dead, because neighing means he is enjoying, there is an overflowing. But you cannot neigh, you are dead. Your life is not an overflowing song in any way, a dance that happens when the energy is too much.Flowering is always a luxury, it is not a necessity. No tree needs flowers as a necessity, roots are enough. Flowering is always luxurious. Flowers come only when the tree has too much, it needs to give, it needs to share.Whenever you have too much, life becomes a dance, a celebration. But society doesn’t allow you to dance, to celebrate, so society has to see that you never have more energy than necessary. You are only allowed to live at starvation level. You are not allowed to be too much, because once you are too much you cannot be controlled, and society wants to control you. It is a very subtle domination.Every child is born overflowing. Then we have to cut the energy source, we have to prune the child from here and there so that he becomes controllable. And the root of all control is to divide the child in two. Then you need not bother, he himself will do the controlling. Then you need not bother, he himself will be the enemy of his own self.So they tell the child, “This is wrong. Don’t do this.” Suddenly the child is divided, now he knows what is wrong, now he knows what part of his being is wrong, and his head becomes the controller.Through division intellect has become the controller, the master. If you are undivided, you will not have any head. Not that the head will disappear or the head will fall off, but you will not be head-oriented – your total being will be you.Right now you are only the head, the rest of the body is just to sustain the head. The head has become the exploiter, the dictator. And this has come through conflict, the creation of conflict in you. You have been taught that this is good and that is bad. The intellect learns it and then the intellect goes on condemning you.Remember, if you condemn yourself you will condemn everybody – you will condemn the whole. And a person who condemns himself cannot love. A person who condemns himself cannot pray. A person who condemns himself, for him there is no God, there cannot be. A condemning mind can never enter the divine temple. Only when you dance, only when you are ecstatic, not condemning, only when you are overflowing, with nobody sitting in control, nobody managing, does life become a let-go. It is not formal, it is natural. Then you enter, then everywhere is the door. Then you can reach the temple from anywhere.But right now, as you are, you are schizophrenic. You are not only schizophrenic when a psychoanalyst says that you are. There is no need for any psychoanalyst to analyze you. Society creates schizophrenics; division is schizophrenia. You are not one. You are born one but immediately society starts working, great surgery is to be done, you are operated upon continuously, to be divided. Then society is at ease because you are fighting with yourself, your energy is dissipated in the inner fight, it is never an overflowing. Then you are not dangerous.Overflowing energy becomes rebellion. Overflowing energy is always rebellious, overflowing energy is always in revolution. It is just like a river in flood – it doesn’t believe in the banks, in the rules, in the laws, it simply goes on overflowing toward the sea. It knows only one goal – to become the sea, to become the infinite.Overflowing energy is always moving toward godliness. This is missing in our world, not because of science, not because of atheists. It is because of the so-called religious people. They have divided you so much that the river goes on fighting with itself. Nothing is left to move, no energy is left; you are so tired fighting with yourself, how can you move toward the sea?One of the basic laws of Tao, of Lao Tzu, of Chuang Tzu, is that if you are spontaneous it is the highest prayerfulness; you cannot miss God, whatsoever you do you will reach him. So Chuang Tzu never talks about God; talk is irrelevant, it isn’t needed. He talks only of how to bring out the wholeness in you. The holy is irrelevant. When you become whole, you become holy. When your fragments dissolve into one, your life has become prayerfulness. Men of Tao never talk about prayer, it is not needed.Spontaneity, living as a whole… But if you want to live as a whole, you cannot plan. Who will plan? You cannot decide for tomorrow, you can live only here and now. Who will decide? If you decide, division has entered, then you will have to manipulate. Who will plan? The future is unknown, and how can you plan for the unknown? If you plan for the unknown the planning will come from the past. That means that the dead will control the living. The past is dead, and the past goes on controlling the future, hence you are so bored. It is natural, it has to happen. Boredom comes from the past, because the past is dead and the past is trying to control the future.The future is always an adventure, but you don’t allow it to be an adventure. You plan it. Once planned, your life is running on a track. It is not a river.When you run on a track you know where you are going, what is happening. Everything is just a repetition. Who will plan? If mind plans, mind is always of the past. Life cannot be planned, because through planning you are committing suicide.Life can only be unplanned, moving moment to moment into the unknown. But what is the fear? You will be there to respond; whatsoever the situation, you will be there to respond. What is your fear? Why plan it?The fear comes because you are not certain of whether you will be there or not. You are so unconscious, that is the uncertainty. You are not alert.You are going to an interview for a job, so you go on planning in the mind what to answer, how to answer, how to enter the office, how to stand, how to sit. But why? You will be there, you can respond.But you are not certain about yourself, you are so unalert, you are so unconscious, you don’t know – if you don’t plan, something may go wrong. If you are alert, then there is no question. You will be there, so whatever the situation demands, you will respond.And remember, this planning is not going to help, because if you cannot be conscious, cannot be aware in a situation when you are planning, then that planning is also being done in sleep. But you can repeat it so many times it becomes mechanical, then when the question is asked you can answer. The answer is ready-made, you are not needed. It is a fixed pattern, you simply repeat it; you become a mechanical device, you need not be there at all. The answer can be given, it comes from the memory; if you have repeated it so many times you know you can rely on it.Through planning life becomes more and more unconscious, and the more unconscious you are, the more you need planning. Before really dying, you are dead. Alive means responding, sensitive. Alive means: whatsoever comes, I will be there to respond, and the response will come from me, not from the memory. I will not prepare it.See the difference: a Christian missionary or a Christian minister, a priest, prepares his sermon…I once visited a theological college. There they prepare their ministers, their priests – five years’ training. So I asked them where Jesus was prepared and trained, who taught him how to speak.Of course these Christian priests are dead, everything about them is planned. When you say this, that gesture is to be made – even the gesture is not allowed to be spontaneous. When you say that, you have to look this way, even the eyes are not allowed to be spontaneous. How you have to stand, when you have to be loud, and when you have to whisper, when you have to hammer the table and when not – everything is planned.I asked them where Jesus was trained. He was not a minister at all, he was not a priest. He never went to any theological college, he was the son of a carpenter.For two thousand years Christian priests have been trained, but they have not produced a single Jesus, and they will never produce one again because Jesus cannot be produced. You cannot produce Jesus in a factory. And these are factories, these theological colleges, where you produce priests, and these priests are just boring, dead, a burden – it is obvious that it is going to be so.There are two types of religion. One is of the mind – it is dead. That religion is known as theology. There is another type of religion – the real, the spontaneous. It is not theological, it is mystical. And remember, Hindus have one theology, Mohammedans a different one, Christians again another, but religion, the mystical religion, is the same; it cannot be different.Buddha and Jesus and Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu, they are the same because they are not theologians. They are not talking from the head, they are simply pouring from their heart. They are not logicians, they are poets. They are not saying something from the scriptures, they are not trained for it, they are simply responding to a necessity in you. Their words are not ready-made, their manners not fixed, their behavior not planned.Now we will enter Chuang Tzu’s sutra:If a man steps on a stranger’s footin the marketplace,he makes a polite apologyand offers an explanation:“This place is so crowded.”Apology is needed because there is no relationship, the other is a stranger. Explanation is needed because there is no love. If there is love then there is no need for an explanation, the other will understand. If there is love, there is no need for apology, the other will understand – love always understands.So there is no higher morality than love, there cannot be. Love is the highest law, but if it is not there then substitutes are needed. Stepping on a stranger’s foot in the marketplace, apology is needed, and an explanation also:“This place is so crowded.” In reference to this, one thing has to be understood. In the West even a husband will offer an apology, a wife will offer an explanation. It means that love has disappeared. It means that everybody has become a stranger, that there is no home, that every place has become a marketplace. In the East it is impossible to conceive of this, but Westerners think that Easterners are rude. A husband will never give an explanation – no need, because we are not strangers and the other can understand. When the other cannot understand, only then apology is needed. And if love cannot understand, what good is apology going to do?If the world becomes a home, all apologies will disappear, all explanations will disappear. You give explanations because you are not certain about the other. Explanation is a trick to avoid conflict, apology is a device to avoid conflict. But the conflict is there, and you are afraid of it.This is a civilized way to get out of the conflict! You have stepped on a stranger’s foot, you look – violence is in his eyes – he has become aggressive, he will hit you. Apology is needed, his anger will subside with an apology – it is a trick. You need not be authentic in your apology, it is just a social device, it works as a lubricant. Then you give an explanation just to say, “I am not responsible, the place is so crowded, it is a marketplace, nothing can be done, it had to happen.” Explanation says that you are not responsible.Love is always responsible, whether the place is crowded or not, because love is always aware and alert. You cannot shift the responsibility to the situation, you are responsible.Look at this phenomenon – apology is a device, just like a lubricant, to avoid conflict, and explanation is shifting the responsibility onto something else. You don’t say, “I was unconscious, unaware, that is why I stepped on your foot.” You say, “The place is so crowded!”A religious person cannot do this, and if you go on doing this you will never become religious, because religion means taking all the responsibility that is there, not avoiding, not escaping. The more responsible you are, the more awareness will arise out of it; the less you feel responsible, the more and more unconscious you will become. Whenever you feel that you are not responsible you will go to sleep. And this has happened – not only in individual relationships, on all levels of society this has happened.Marxism says that society is responsible for everything. If a man is poor society is responsible, if a man is a thief, society is responsible. You are not responsible, no individual is responsible. That is why communism is anti-religious – not because it denies God, not because it says there is no soul, but because of this. It shifts the whole responsibility onto society; you are not responsible.Look at the religious attitude, which is totally different, qualitatively different. A religious man thinks himself responsible: If someone is begging, if a beggar is there, I am responsible. The beggar may be at the other end of the earth, I may not know him, I may not come across his path, but if the beggar is there, I am responsible. If a war goes on anywhere, in Israel, in Vietnam, anywhere, I am not participating in it in any visible way, but I am responsible. I am here. I cannot shift the responsibility onto society.What do you mean when you say society? Where is this society? This is one of the greatest escapes – only individuals exist – you will never come across society. You will never be able to pinpoint it; this is society. Everywhere the individual is in existence, and society is just a word.Where is society? Ancient civilizations played a trick. They said: God is responsible, fate is responsible. Now communism plays the same game saying that society is responsible. But where is society? God may be somewhere, society is nowhere; there are only individuals. Religion says: You are, rather, I am responsible. No explanation is needed to avoid this.And remember one thing more: whenever you feel that you are responsible for all the ugliness, for all the mess, anarchy, war, violence, aggression, suddenly you become alert. Responsibility penetrates your heart and makes you aware. When you say, “This place is much too crowded,” you can go on walking sleepily. Really, you step on the stranger’s foot not because the place is crowded, but because you are unconscious. You are walking like a somnambulist, a man walking in his sleep. When you step on his foot, you suddenly became aware because now there is danger. You make the apology, you fall asleep, and again you say, “The place is crowded!” You start moving again.I have heard about one simple villager, who had come to the city for the first time. On the platform at the station someone stepped on his foot and said, “Sorry.” Then he went into a hotel, someone again clashed with him and said, “Sorry!” Then he went into a theater and someone almost knocked him down, and he said, “Sorry.”The villager said, “This is beautiful, we never knew this trick. Do whatever you want to do to anybody and say sorry!” So he hit hard a man who was passing and said, “Sorry!”What are you really doing when you say sorry? Your sleep is broken, you were walking in a dream – you must have been dreaming, imagining, something was going on in the mind – and then you stepped on someone. Not that the place was crowded – you would have stumbled even if no one were there, even then you would have stepped on someone.It is you, your unconsciousness, your unconscious behavior. A buddha cannot stumble even if it is a marketplace, because he moves with full consciousness. Whatsoever he is doing, he is doing it knowingly. And if he steps on your foot it means he has stepped knowingly; there must be some purpose in it. It may be just to help you wake up; just to make you awake he may have stepped on your foot, but he will not say that the place is crowded, he will not give any explanation.Explanations are always deceptive. They look logical, but they are false. You give explanations only when you have to hide something. You can watch and observe this in your own life. This is not a theory, this is a simple fact of everybody’s experience – you give explanations only when you want to hide something.Truth needs no explanation. The more you lie, the more explanations are needed. There are so many scriptures because man has lied so much, then explanations are needed to hide the lies. You have to give an explanation, then this explanation will need further explanation, and it goes on and on. It is an infinite regression. And even with the last explanation nothing is explained, the basic lie remains a lie – you cannot convert a lie into a truth just by explaining it. You may think so, but nothing is explained by explanations.Once it happened…Mulla Nasruddin went on his first air trip, and he was afraid but he didn’t want anybody to know. It happens to everybody on their first air trip. Nobody wants this to be their first. He wanted to behave nonchalantly, so he walked very bravely. That bravery was an explanation: “I always travel by air.” Then he sat down in his seat and he wanted to say something just to make himself at ease, because whenever you start talking, you become brave; through talk, you feel less fear.So Nasruddin spoke to the passenger next to him. He looked out of the window and said, “Look, what a height! People look like ants.”The other man said, “Sir, we have not taken off yet. Those are ants.”Explanations cannot hide anything. Rather, on the contrary, they reveal. If you can look, if you have eyes, every explanation is transparent. It would have been better if he had been silent. But don’t try silence as an explanation. As an explanation it is of no use. Your silence will be revealing, and your words will reveal – it is better not to be a liar! Then you need not give any explanations. It is better to be truthful – the easiest thing is to be true and authentic. If you are afraid, it is better to say, “I am afraid,” and accepting the fact, your fear will disappear.Acceptance is such a miracle. When you accept that you are afraid and say, “This is my first trip,” suddenly you will feel a change coming over you. The basic fear is not fear, the basic fear is the fear of the fear – no one should know that I am afraid. No one should know that I am a coward. But everybody is a coward in a new situation, and in a new situation to be brave will be foolish. To be cowardly only means that the situation is so new that your mind cannot supply any answers, the past cannot give the answers, so you are trembling. But this is good! Why try to supply an answer from the mind? Tremble, and let the answer come from your present consciousness. You are sensitive, that is all; don’t kill this sensitivity through explanations.Next time you try to give an explanation, be alert. What are you doing? Trying to hide something? Trying to explain away something? Nothing like this will be of any help.A man who had become newly rich went to a beach, the most costly, expensive, the most exclusive, and he was spending madly just to influence the people around him. The next day, while swimming, his wife drowned. She was carried to the shore, a crowd gathered, so he asked, “What are you doing?”One man said, “We are going to give air to your wife, artificial respiration.”The man said, “Nothing doing, give her the real thing. I can pay for it.”Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you don’t do, whatsoever you say, whatsoever you don’t say, reveals you. Everywhere mirrors are all around you. Every other person is a mirror, every situation is a mirror – and whom do you think you are deceiving? And if it becomes a habit to deceive, ultimately you will have deceived yourself and no one else. It is your life that you are wasting in deceptions.Chuang Tzu says: explanations show that you are not true, you are not authentic.If an elder brothersteps on his younger brother’s foothe says, “Sorry,”and that is that.Two brothers… When the relationship is more intimate, the other is not a stranger. Then no explanation is needed, the brother simply says sorry. He accepts the blame. He says, “I have been unconscious.” He is not shifting the responsibility onto somebody else, he accepts it and that is that. The relationship is closer.If a parenttreads on his child’s footnothing is said at all.There is no need, the relationship is even closer, more intimate. There is love, and that love will do. No substitute is needed, no explanation, no apology.The greatest politenessis free of all formality.Perfect conduct is free of concern.Perfect wisdom is unplanned.Perfect love is without demonstrations.Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee.But all these perfections need one thing – and that is spontaneous awareness; otherwise you will always have false coins, you will always have false faces. You can be sincere, but if you have to make any effort then that sincerity is just formal.You can be loving, but if your love needs effort, if your love is of the type which Dale Carnegie talks about in How to Win Friends and Influence People, if that type of love is there, it cannot be real. You have been manipulating it. Then even friendship is a business.Beware of Dale Carnegies; these are dangerous people, they destroy all that is real and authentic. They show you how to win friends, they teach you tricks, techniques, they make you efficient, they give you the knowhow.But love has no knowhow, it cannot have. Love needs no training, and friendship is not something which you have to learn. A learned friendship will not be a friendship, it will just be exploitation – you are exploiting the other and deceiving him. You are not true, this is a business relationship.But in America everything has become business, friendship and love also – and Dale Carnegie’s books have sold millions of copies, hundreds of editions, next only to the Bible.Nobody knows how to be a friend, it has to be learned. Sooner or later there will be colleges for love, training courses, even by post, lessons you can learn and apply. And the problem is that if you succeed then you are lost forever, because the real will never happen to you, the door is completely closed. Once you become efficient in a certain thing, the mind resists. The mind says: This is the short cut, and you know it well, so why choose another path?Mind is always for the least resistance. That is why clever people are never able to love. They are so clever they start manipulating. They will not say what is in their heart, they will say what will appeal. They will look at the other person and see what he wants to be said. They will not speak their heart, they will just create a situation in which the other is deceived.Husbands deceiving wives, wives deceiving husbands, friends deceiving friends… The whole world has become just a crowd of enemies. There are only two types of enemies: those you have not been able to deceive and those you have been able to deceive. This is the only difference. Then how can there be ecstasy in your life?So this is not a learning… Authenticity cannot come through schooling, authenticity comes through awareness – if you are aware, if you live in a conscious way. Look at the difference: to live consciously means to live openly, not to hide, not to play games. To be alert means to be vulnerable, and whatsoever happens, happens. You accept it, but you never compromise, you never purchase anything by giving up your consciousness. Even if you are left totally alone, you will accept being left alone, but you will want to be consciously alert. Only in this alertness does real religion start happening.I will tell you a story:It happened once, in ancient times: there was a king who was also an astrologer. He had a very deep interest in studying the stars. Suddenly there was panic in his heart because he became aware that the coming year’s harvest was going to be dangerous. Whoever will eat the coming year’s harvest will go mad. So he called his prime minister, his adviser and counselor, and told him that this was going to happen, that it was a certainty. “The stars are clear. The combination of cosmic rays is such that this year’s harvest is going to be poisonous. It happens rarely, in thousands of years, but this is going to happen this year and anybody who will eat will go mad. So what should we do? The prime minister said, “It is impossible to provide for everybody from last year’s harvest, but one thing can be done. You and I can both live on last year’s harvest. Last year’s harvest can be gathered, requisitioned. There is no problem, for you and me it will be enough.”The king said, “This doesn’t appeal to me. Then all my devoted people will go mad – women, saints and sages, devoted servants, all my subjects, even children, and it doesn’t appeal to me to be an outsider. It would not be worth saving myself and you; that will not do. I would rather be mad with everybody else. But I have another suggestion. I will mark your head with the seal of madness and you will mark my head with the seal of madness.”“But,” the prime minister said, “How is this going to help anybody?”The king said, “I have heard: it is one of the ancient pillars of wisdom, so let us try it. After everybody has gone mad, after we have gone mad, whenever I look at your forehead I will remember that I am mad. And whenever you look at my forehead, remember that you are mad.”The prime minister was still puzzled; he said, “But what will it do?”The king said, “I have heard from wise men that if you can remember that you are mad, you are mad no longer.”A madman cannot remember that he is mad. An ignorant man cannot remember that he is ignorant. A man who is in a dream cannot remember that he is dreaming. If, in your dreams, you become alert and know that you are dreaming, the dream has stopped, you are fully awake. If you can understand that you are ignorant, ignorance drops. Ignorant people go on believing that they are wise, and mad people think that they are the only really sane ones. When someone becomes really wise, he becomes so by recognizing his ignorance. So the king said, “This we are going to do.”I don’t know what happened, the story ends here, but the story is meaningful.Only alertness can help when the whole world is mad, nothing else. Keeping yourself outside, going to the Himalayas, will not be of much help. When everyone is mad, you are going to be mad, because you are part and parcel of everybody; it is a totality, an organic totality.How can you separate yourself? How can you go to the Himalayas? Deep down you remain part of the whole. Even living in the Himalayas you will remember your friends. They will knock in your dreams, you will think of them, you will wonder what they are thinking of you – you go on being related.You cannot go out of the world. There is no place outside the world, the world is one continent. Nobody can be an island – even islands are joined with the continent deep down. You can just think superficially that you are separate, but nobody can be separate.The king was really wise. He said, “It is not going to help. I am not going to be an outsider, I will be an insider, and this is what I will do. I will try to remember that I am mad, because when you forget that you are mad, then you are really mad. This is what is to be done.”Wherever you are, remember yourself, that you are; this consciousness that you are should become a continuity. Not your name, your caste, your nationality, those are futile things, absolutely useless. Just remember that I am; this must not be forgotten. This is what Hindus call self-remembrance, what the Buddha called right-mindfulness, what Gurdjieff used to call self-remembering, what Krishnamurti calls awareness.This is the most substantial part of meditation, to remember that I am. Walking, sitting, eating, talking, remember that: I am. Never forget this. It will be difficult, very arduous. In the beginning you will keep forgetting; there will be only single moments when you will feel illuminated, then it will be lost. But don’t get miserable; even single moments are much. Go on, whenever you can remember, remember again, catch hold of the thread again. When you forget, don’t worry – remember again, again catch hold of the thread, and by and by the gaps will lessen, the intervals will start dropping, a continuity will arise.And whenever your consciousness becomes continuous, you need not use the mind. Then there is no planning, then you act out of your consciousness, not out of your mind. Then there is no need for any apology, no need to give any explanation. Then you are whatsoever you are, there is nothing to hide. Whatsoever you are, you are. You cannot do anything else. You can only be in a state of continuous remembrance. Through this remembrance, this mindfulness, comes the authentic religion, comes the authentic morality.The greatest politenessis free of all formality.If you are not formal, then nobody is a stranger. Whether you move in the marketplace or in a crowded street, nobody is a stranger, everybody is a friend. Not only a friend, really, everybody is just an extension of you. Then formality is not needed. If I step on my own foot – which is difficult – I will not say sorry, and I will not say to myself, “The place is very crowded!” When I step on your foot, I am stepping on my foot.A mind which is fully alert knows that consciousness is one, life is one, being is one, existence is one, it is not fragmented. The tree flowering there is me in a different form; the rock lying there on the ground is me in a different form. Then the whole of existence becomes an organic unity – organic, life flowing through it, not mechanical. A mechanical unity is a different thing – it is dead.A car is a mechanical unity, there is no life in it, and that is why you can replace one part with another. Every part is replaceable. But can you replace a man? Impossible! When a man dies, a unique phenomenon disappears; disappears completely, you cannot replace it. When your wife dies or your husband dies, now how can you replace them? You may get another wife, but this will be another wife, not a replacement. And the shadow of the first will always be there; the first cannot be forgotten, it will always be there. It may become a shadow, but even shadows of love are very substantial.You cannot replace a person, there is no way. If it is a mechanical unity then wives are replaceable parts, you can even have spare wives. You can keep them in your storeroom and whenever your wife dies, you replace her.This is what is happening in the West. They have started to think in terms of mechanism. So now they say nothing is a problem – one wife dies you get another, one husband is no more, you get another replacement. Marriage in the West is a mechanical unity, that’s why divorce is possible. The East denies divorce because marriage is an organic unity. How can you replace a live person? It will never happen again, that person has simply disappeared into the ultimate mystery.Life is an organic unity. I say you cannot replace a plant because every plant is unique, you cannot find another, the same cannot be found. Life has a quality of uniqueness. Even a small rock is unique – you can go all over the world to find a similar rock and you will not be able to. How can you replace it? This is the difference between organic unity and mechanical unity. Mechanical unity depends on the parts; the parts are replaceable, they are not unique. Organic unity depends on the whole, not on the parts. Parts are not really parts, they are not separate from the whole – they are one, they cannot be replaced.When you become alert to the inner flame of your inner being, suddenly you become alert that you are not an island, it is a vast continent, an infinite continent. There are no boundaries separating you from it. All boundaries are false, make-believe. All boundaries are in the mind; in existence there are no boundaries.Then who is a stranger? When you step on somebody, it is you; you have stepped on your own foot. No apology is needed, no explanation is needed. There is no one else, there is only one. Then your life becomes real, authentic, spontaneous; then it is not formal, then you do not follow any rules. You have come to know the ultimate law. Now no rules are needed. You have become the law – there is no need to remember the rules now.The greatest politeness is free of all formality. Have you looked at people who are polite? You will not find more egoistic people than these. Look at a polite person, the very way he stands, the way he talks, the way he looks, walks; he has managed everything to look, to appear, polite, but inside the ego is manipulating.Look at the so-called humble people. They say they are nobodies, but when they say it, look into their eyes, at the ego asserting. And this is a very cunning ego, because if you say, “I am somebody,” everybody will be against you, and everybody will try to put you in your place. If you say, “I am nobody,” everybody is for you, nobody is against you.Polite people are very cunning, clever. They know what to say, what to do, so that they can exploit you. If they say, “I am somebody,” everybody is against them. Then conflict arises because everybody thinks that he is an egoist. It will be difficult to exploit people then because everybody is closed, against you. If you say, “I am nobody, I am just dust on your feet,” then the doors are open and you can exploit. All etiquette, culture, is a type of sophisticated cunningness, you are exploiting.The greatest politeness is free of all formality.It happened that Confucius came to see Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu’s master. And Confucius was the image of formal politeness. He was the greatest formalist in the world, the world has never known such a great formalist. He was simply manners, formality, culture, etiquette. He came to see Lao Tzu, the polar opposite.Confucius was very old, Lao Tzu was not so old. So to be formal when Confucius came in, Lao Tzu should have stood up to receive him. But he remained sitting. It was impossible for Confucius to believe that such a great master, known all over the country for his humbleness, should be so impolite. He had to talk about it.Immediately he said, “This is not good. I am older than you.”Lao Tzu laughed loudly and said, “Nobody is older than me. I existed before everything came into existence. Confucius, we are of the same age, everything is of the same age. From eternity we have been in existence, so don’t carry this burden of old age. Sit down.”Confucius had come to ask some questions. He said, “How should a religious man behave?”Lao Tzu said, “When the how comes in, there is no religion. How is not a question for a religious man. The how shows that you are not religious but that you want to behave like a religious man – that is why you ask how.”Does a lover ask how one should love? He loves! Really, it is only later on that he becomes aware that he has been in love. It may be that when the lover has gone he becomes aware that he has been in love. He simply loves. It happens. It is a happening, not a doing.Whatsoever Confucius asked, Lao Tzu replied in such a way that Confucius became very disturbed: “This man is dangerous!”He went back; his disciples asked, “What happened, what manner of man is this Lao Tzu?”Confucius said, “Don’t go near him. You may have seen dangerous snakes, but nothing compares with this man. You may have heard about ferocious lions, they are nothing before this man. This man is a dragon walking on the earth, he can swim in the sea, he can go to the very end of the sky – very dangerous. He is not for us little people, we are too small. He is dangerous, vast like an abyss. Don’t go near him, otherwise you will feel dizzy and you may fall. Even I felt dizzy. I couldn’t understand what he said, he is beyond understanding.”Lao Tzu is bound to be beyond understanding if you try to understand him through formality; otherwise he is simple. But for Confucius he is difficult, almost impossible to understand, because he sees through forms and Lao Tzu has no form and no formality. Nameless, without any form, he lives in the infinite.The greatest politeness is free of all formality. Lao Tzu was sitting, Confucius was waiting for him to stand up. Who was really polite? Confucius waiting for Lao Tzu to stand up and welcome him and receive him because he is older, is just egoistic. Now the ego has taken the form of age, seniority.But Confucius could not look directly into the eyes of Lao Tzu, because Lao Tzu was right. He was saying: We are of the same age. Really, we are the same. The same life flows in you that flows in me. You are not superior to me, I am not superior to you. There is no question of superiority and inferiority, and there is no question of seniority and juniority. There is no question, we are one.If Confucius could have looked into the eyes, and seen that those eyes were divine. But a man whose own eyes are filled with laws, rules, regulations, formalities, is almost blind, he cannot see.Perfect conduct is free of concern.You conduct yourself well because you are concerned. You behave well because you are concerned.Just the other day a man came to me. He said, “I would like to take the jump, I would like to become a sannyasin, but there is my family, my children are studying at college and I have a great responsibility toward them.”He is concerned. He has a duty to fulfill, but no love. Duty is concern; it thinks in terms of something that has to be done because it is expected, because “What will people say if I leave?” Who thinks about what people will say? The ego. “What will people say? So first let me fulfill my duties.”I never tell anybody to leave, I never tell anybody to renounce, but I insist that one should not be in some relationship because of duty – because then the whole relationship is ugly. One should be in a relationship because of love. Then this man would not say, “I have a duty to fulfill.” He would say, “I cannot come right now. My children are growing, and I love them, and I am happy working for them.”Then this will be a happiness. Now it is not a happiness, it is a burden. When you carry a burden, when you even turn your love into a burden, you cannot be happy. And if you have turned your love into a burden, your prayer will also become a burden, your meditation will also become a burden. Then you will say, “Because of this guru, this master, I am caught, and now I have to do this.” It will not come out of you, out of your totality; it will not be overflowing.Why be worried? If there is love, wherever you are, there is no burden. And if you love your children, even if you leave them, they will understand. And if you don’t love your children, and you go on serving them, they will never understand, and they will know that these are just false things.This is happening. People come to see me and they say, “I have worked my whole life and nobody even feels thankful toward me.” How can anybody feel thankful toward you? You were carrying them like a burden. Even small children understand well when love is there, and they understand well when you are just doing as a duty. Duty is ugly, duty is violent; it shows your concern but doesn’t show your spontaneity.Says Chuang Tzu: Perfect conduct is free of concern. Whatsoever is done, is done out of love – then you are not honest because honesty pays, you are honest because honesty is lovely.Even businessmen are honest if honesty pays. They say: Honesty is the best policy. How can you destroy a beautiful thing like honesty and turn it into a best policy? Policy is politics, honesty is religion.One old man was on his deathbed, dying. He called his son and said, “Now I am dying I must tell you my secret. Always remember two things – this is how I succeeded. First, whenever you make a promise, fulfill it. Whatsoever the cost, be honest and fulfill it. This has been my basis, this is why I succeeded. And the second thing, never make any promises.”For a businessman even religion is a policy, for a politician even religion is a policy – everything is a policy, even love is a policy. Kings and queens never marry ordinary, common people. Why? It is part of politics. Kings marry other princesses, queens, and the concern is about which relationship will be more profitable for the kingdom. If two kingdoms become related, they will become friends, they will not be antagonistic. So with whom should the marriage be made?In India, in olden days, a king would marry many women, hundreds, even thousands. It was part of politics, so he would marry the daughter of anybody who had some power, so that he could create a network of power relationships. The person whose daughter you have married will become your friend, he will help you.In Buddha’s time India had two thousand kingdoms. So the most successful king was the one who had two thousand wives, one wife from every kingdom. Then he could live in peace, now there was no one antagonistic, inimical toward him. Now the whole country became like a family. But how can love exist in such a concern? Love never thinks of consequences, never hankers for results. It is enough unto itself.Perfect conduct is free of concern.Perfect wisdom is unplanned.A wise man lives moment to moment, never planning. Only ignorant people plan, and when ignorant people plan, what can they plan? They plan out of their ignorance. Unplanned they would have been better off, because out of ignorance only ignorance arises; out of confusion, only greater confusion is born.A wise man lives moment to moment, he has no planning. His life is just free like a cloud floating in the sky, not going to some goal, not determined. He has no map for the future, he lives without a map, he moves without a map – because the real thing is not the goal, the real thing is the beauty of the movement. The real thing is not reaching, the real thing is the journey. Remember, the real thing is the journey, the very traveling. It is so beautiful, why bother about the goal? If you are too bothered about the goal, you will miss the journey, and the journey is life – the goal can only be death.The journey is life and it is an infinite journey. You have been on the move from the very beginning – if there was any beginning. Those who know say there was no beginning, so from no beginning you have been on the move, to the no end you will be on the move – and if you are goal-oriented, you will miss. The whole is the journey, the path, the endless path, never beginning, never ending. There really is no goal – goal is created by the cunning mind. Where is this whole existence moving? Where? It is not going anywhere. It is simply going, and the going is so beautiful, that is why existence is unburdened. There is no plan, no goal, and no purpose. It is not a business, it is a play, a leela. Every moment is the goal.Perfect wisdom is unplanned.Perfect love is without demonstrations.Demonstration is needed because love is not there. And the less you love, the more you demonstrate – when it is there, you don’t demonstrate. Whenever a husband comes home with some present for the wife she will know that something is wrong. He must have stepped out of line, he must have met another woman. Now this is the explanation, this is a substitute; otherwise love is such a present, no other present is needed. Not that love will not give presents, but love itself is such a present. What else can you give? What else is possible?But whenever the husband feels that something is wrong, he has to put it right. Everything has to be rearranged, balanced. And this is the problem – women are so intuitive that they know immediately, your present cannot deceive them. It is impossible, because women still live with their intuition, with their illogical mind. They jump immediately, and they will understand that something has gone wrong, otherwise why this present?Whenever you demonstrate, you demonstrate your inner poverty. If your sannyas becomes a demonstration you are not a sannyasin. If your meditation becomes a demonstration you are not meditative, because whenever the real exists, it is such a light – no need to demonstrate it. When your house is lighted, when there is a flame, you do not go to the neighbors and tell them, “Look, our house has a lamp.” It is there. But when your house is in darkness you try to convince your neighbors that the light is there. Convincing them, you try to convince yourself that this is the real. Why do you want to demonstrate? Because if the other is convinced, his conviction, her conviction, will help you to be convinced.I have heard…Once Mulla Nasruddin had a beautiful house, but he got bored, as everybody gets bored. Whether it was beautiful or not made no difference; living in the same house every day, he got bored. The house was beautiful, with a big garden, acres of green land, swimming pool, everything. But he got bored, so he called a real estate agent and told him, “I want to sell it. I am fed up, this house has become a hell.”The next day an advertisement appeared in the morning papers; the real estate agent had put in a beautiful advertisement. Mulla Nasruddin read it again and again and he was so convinced that he phoned the agent: “Wait, I don’t want to sell it. Your advertisement has convinced me so deeply that now I know that for my whole life I have been wanting this house, looking for this very house.”When you can convince others of your love, you yourself become convinced. But if you have love, there is no need, you know.When you have wisdom, there is no need to demonstrate it. But when you have only knowledge, you demonstrate, you convince others, and when they are convinced, you are convinced that you are a man of knowledge. When you have wisdom, there is no need. If not a single person is convinced, even then you are convinced, you alone are enough proof.Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee.All guarantees are because of insincerity. You guarantee, you promise, you say: “This is the guarantee, I will do this.” While you are giving the guarantee, at that very moment the insincerity is there.Perfect sincerity offers no guarantee because perfect sincerity is so aware, aware of so many things. First, the future is unknown. How can you make a guarantee? Life changes every moment, how can you promise? All guarantees, all promises, can be only for this moment, not for the next. For the next moment nothing can be done. You will have to wait.If you are really sincere and you love a woman you cannot say, “I will love you for my whole life.” If you say this, you are a liar. This guarantee is false. But if you love, this moment is enough. The woman will not ask for your whole life. If love is there this moment, it is so fulfilling that one moment is enough for many lives. A single moment of love is eternity; she will not ask. But she is always asking because in this moment there is no love. So she asks, “What is the guarantee? Will you love me always?”This moment there is no love and she is asking for a guarantee. This moment there is no love and you guarantee for the future – because only through that guarantee can you deceive in this moment. You can create a beautiful picture of the future and you can hide the ugly picture of the present. You say, “Yes, I will love you forever and forever. Even death will not part us.” What nonsense! What insincerity! How can you do this?You can do this and you do it so easily because you are not aware of what you are saying. The next moment is unknown; where it will lead, no one knows, what will happen, no one knows, no one can know it.Unknowability is part of the future game. How can you guarantee? At the most you can say, “I love you this moment and this moment I feel – this is a feeling of this moment – that even death cannot part us. But this is a feeling of this moment. This is not a guarantee. This moment I feel like saying that I will love you always and always, but this is a feeling of this moment, this is no guarantee. What will happen in the future nobody knows. We never knew about this moment so how can we know about other moments? We will have to wait. We will have to be prayerful that it happens, that I love you for ever and ever, but this is not a guarantee.”Perfect sincerity cannot give any guarantee. Perfect sincerity is so sincere that it cannot promise. It gives whatsoever it can give here and now. Perfect sincerity lives in the present, it has no idea of the future.Mind moves in the future, being lives here and now. And perfect sincerity belongs to the being, not to the mind. Love, truth, meditation, sincerity, simplicity, innocence, all belong to the being. The opposites belong to the mind and to hide the opposites the mind creates false coins: false sincerity, which guarantees, promises; false love, which is just a name for duty; false beauty, which is just a face for inner ugliness. Mind creates false coins, and nobody is deceived, remember, except yourself.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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What is this three in the morning?It is about a monkey trainerwho went to his monkeys and told them:“As regards your chestnuts,you are going to have three measures in the morning,and four in the afternoon.”On hearing this all the monkeys became angry.So the keeper said:“All right then,I will change itto four measures in the morning,and three in the afternoon.”The animals were satisfied with this arrangement.The two arrangements were the same –the number of chestnuts did not change,but in one case the monkeys were displeased,and in the other case they were satisfied.The keeper was willingto change his personal arrangementin order to meet objective conditions.He lost nothing by it.The truly wise man,considering both sides of the questionwithout partiality,sees them both in the light of Tao.This is called following two courses at once.The law of the three in the morning: Chuang Tzu loved this story very much. He often repeated it. It is beautiful, with many layers of meaning. Obviously very simple, but still very deeply indicative of the human mind.The first thing to be understood is: the human mind is monkeyish. It was not Darwin who discovered that man comes from monkeys. It has been a long-standing observation that the human mind behaves in the same patterns as the mind of the monkey. Only rarely does it happen that you transcend your monkeyishness. When mind becomes still, when mind becomes silent, when there is really no mind at all, you transcend the monkeyish pattern.What is the monkeyish pattern? For one thing, it is never still. And unless you are still, you cannot see the truth. You are wavering, trembling so much that nothing can be seen. Clear perception is impossible. While meditating what are you doing? You are putting the monkey in a position of stillness, hence all the difficulties of meditation. The more you try to make the mind still, the more it revolts, the more it starts getting into turmoil, the more restless it becomes.Have you ever seen a monkey sitting still and silent? Impossible! The monkey is always eating something, doing something, swaying, chattering. This is what you are doing. Man has invented many things. If there is nothing to do he will chew gum; if there is nothing to do he will smoke. These are just foolish occupations, monkeyish occupations. Something has to be done continuously so that you remain occupied.You are so restless that your restlessness needs to be busy somehow or other. That is why, whatsoever is said against smoking, it cannot be stopped. Only in a meditative world can smoking stop – otherwise not. Even if there is danger of death, of cancer, of tuberculosis, it cannot be stopped, because it is not a question of just smoking, it is a question of how to release the restlessness.People who chant mantras can stop smoking because they have found a substitute. You can keep chanting Ram, Ram, Ram, and this becomes a sort of smoking. Your lips are working, your mouth is moving, your restlessness is being released. So japa can become a sort of smoking, a better sort, with less harm to the health.But basically it remains the same, that your mind cannot be left at rest. The mind has to do something, not only while you are awake but even when you are asleep. Watch your wife or your husband sleeping some day, just sit for two or three hours silently and watch the face. You will see the monkey not the man. Even in sleep much goes on. The mind is engaged. This sleep cannot be deep, it cannot be really relaxing, because work is going on. By day it continues, there is no discontinuity; the mind goes on functioning in the same way. There is constant inner chatter, you go on talking with yourself, an inner monologue, and there is no wonder you get bored. You are boring yourself. Everybody looks bored.Mulla Nasruddin was telling a story to his disciples – it must have been a day like this. Suddenly the rain started, and a passer-by, just to protect himself, came under the shed where Nasruddin was talking to his disciples. He was just waiting for the rain to stop but he couldn’t help listening.Nasruddin was telling tall stories. Many times the man found it almost impossible to resist interrupting because he was saying such absurd things. But he thought again and again, “It is none of my business. I am just here under the shed because of the rain, and as soon as the rain stops I will go. I need not interfere.” But at one point he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t contain himself. He interrupted, “Enough is enough. Excuse me, this is none of my business, but now you have overdone it!”I must first tell you the story and the point where this man could not contain himself…Nasruddin was saying, “Once it happened, in my younger days I was traveling in the forests of Africa, the Dark Continent. One day a lion suddenly jumped out just fifteen feet away from me, and I was without any arms, without any protection, alone in the forest. That lion stared at me and started walking toward me.”The disciples became very excited. Nasruddin stopped for a moment and looked at their faces. Then one disciple said, “Now don’t make us wait, what happened?”Nasruddin said, “The lion came nearer and nearer, just five feet away.”Another disciple said, “No more waiting. Tell us what happened.”Nasruddin said, “It is so simple, it is so logical, you can conclude it yourself. The lion jumped, killed me and ate me!”At this point, the stranger couldn’t contain himself. He said, “Enough is enough. What are you saying? The lion killed you and ate you, and you are sitting here alive?”Nasruddin looked at the man, stared at him and said, “Ha ha, do you call this being alive?”Look at people’s faces and you will understand what he meant. Do you call this being alive? So bored to death, dragging…Once it happened…A man asked Nasruddin, “I am very poor. It is almost impossible, seems almost impossible to survive now. I have six children and a wife, my widowed sister and old father and mother, a big family and relatives. It is getting more and more difficult. Can you suggest something? Should we commit suicide?”Nasruddin said, “You can do two things and both will be helpful. One, start baking bread, because people have to live and they have to eat, you will always have business.”The man asked, “And the other?”Nasruddin said, “Start making shrouds for the dead, because when people are alive, they will die. And this business also will always continue. These two businesses are good – bread, and shrouds for the dead.”After a month the man came back. He looked even more in despair, very sad, and he said, “Nothing seems to help. I have put whatever I have into the business, as you suggested, but everything seems to be against me.”Nasruddin said, “How can that happen? People have to eat bread while they are alive, and when they die their relatives have to purchase shrouds.”The man said, “But you don’t understand. In this village no one is alive and no one ever dies. They are simply dragging along.”Everybody is just dragging himself, nobody is alive and nobody ever dies because to die one must first be alive. People are just dragging along. Look at their faces – there is no need to look at others’ faces, just look in the mirror and you will find out what dragging means – neither alive nor dead. Life is so beautiful, death is also beautiful – dragging is ugly.But why do you look so burdened? Because the constant chattering of the mind dissipates energy. Constant chattering of the mind is a constant leakage in your being. Energy is dissipated. You never have enough energy to make you feel alive, young, fresh, and if you are not young and fresh and alive your death is also going to be a very dull affair.One who lives intensely dies intensely, and when death is intense, it has a beauty of its own. One who lives totally, dies totally, and wherever there is totality there is beauty. Death is not ugly because of death but because you have never lived rightly. If you have never been alive, you have not earned a beautiful death. It has to be earned. One has to live in such a way, so totally and so whole, that one can die totally, not in fragments. You live in fragments, so you die in fragments. One part dies, then another, then another, and you take many years to die. The whole thing becomes ugly. Death would be beautiful if people were alive. This inner monkey doesn’t allow you to be alive, and this inner monkey will not allow you to die beautifully. This constant chattering has to be stopped.And what is the chattering, what is the subject matter? The subject matter is the three in the morning that goes on in the mind. What are you doing inside the mind? Continuously making arrangements: to do this, not to do that, to build this house, to destroy that house; to move from this business to another because there will be more profit; to change this wife, this husband. What are you doing? Just changing arrangements.Chuang Tzu says that finally, ultimately, if you can look at the total, the total is always the same. It is seven. Whether you are given three measures of chestnuts in the morning and four measures in the evening, or the other way around – four measures in the morning and three measures in the evening – the total is seven. This is one of the most secret of laws – the total is always the same.You may not be able to comprehend it, but when a beggar or an emperor dies, their total is the same. The beggar lived on the streets, the emperor lived in the palaces, but the total is the same. A rich man, a poor man, a successful man and a failure, the total is the same. If you can look at the total in life, then you will come to know what Chuang Tzu means by the three in the morning.What happens? Life is not impartial, life is not partial, life is absolutely indifferent to your arrangements – it doesn’t bother about the arrangements you make. Life is a gift. If you change the arrangement, the total is not changed.A rich man has found better food, but the hunger is lost; he cannot really feel the intensity of being hungry. The proportion is always the same. He has found a beautiful bed, but with the bed comes insomnia, he cannot sleep. He has better arrangements for sleeping. He should be falling asleep into sushupti – what Hindus call unconscious samadhi – but that is not happening. He cannot fall asleep. He has changed the arrangements.A beggar is asleep just outside there in the street. Traffic is passing and the beggar is asleep. He has no bed. The place where he is sleeping is uneven, hard and uncomfortable, but he is asleep. The beggar cannot get good food, it is impossible because he has to beg. But he has a good appetite. The total result is the same. The total result is seven.A successful man is not only successful, for with success come all sorts of calamities. A failure is not just a failure, for with failure come many sorts of blessings. The total is always the same, but the total has to be penetrated and looked at, a clear perspective is needed. Eyes are needed to look at the total because mind can look only at the fragment. If the mind looks at the morning, it cannot look at the evening; if the mind looks at the evening, the morning is forgotten. Mind cannot look at the total day, mind is fragmentary.Only a meditative consciousness can look at the whole, from birth to death – and then the total is always seven. That is why wise men never try to change the arrangements. That is why in the East no revolution has ever happened – because revolution means changing the arrangements.Look what happened in Soviet Russia. In 1917 the greatest revolution happened on earth. The arrangement was changed. But I think Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky had never heard about this story of three in the morning. They could have learned much from Chuang Tzu. But then there would have been no revolution. What happened? The capitalists disappeared, now nobody was rich, nobody was poor. The old classes were no more. But only names changed. New classes have come into being. Now it is the manager and the managed. Before, it was the rich man and the poor man, the capitalist and the proletariat – now the manager and the managed. But the distinction remains the same, the gap remains the same. Nothing has changed. Only now you call the capitalist the manager.Those who have studied the Russian revolution say that this is not a socialist revolution, it is a managerial revolution. The same gap, the same distance remains between the two classes, and a classless society has not come into being.Chuang Tzu would have laughed. He would have related this story. What have you done? The manager has become powerful, the managed have remained powerless.Hindus say there are people who will always be managers and there are people who will always be managed. There are sudras and kshatriyas; and these are not just labels, these are types of people. Hindus have divided society into four classes and they say that society can never be classless. It is not a question of social arrangement – four types exist. Unless you change the type, no revolution is of much help.They say there is a type, the sudra, who is a laborer, who will always be managed. If nobody manages him, he will be at a loss, he will not be happy. He needs somebody to order him, he needs somebody whom he can obey, he needs somebody who can take the whole responsibility. He is not ready to take the responsibility on his own. That is a type. If the manager is around only then will that type of person work. If the manager is not there, he will simply sit.The manager can be a subtle phenomenon, it may even be invisible. For example, in a capitalist society the profit motive manages. A sudra works, not because he loves working, not because work is his hobby, not because he is creative, but he only works because he has to feed himself and his family. If he does not work, who will feed him? It is the profit motive, hunger, body, the stomach that manages.In a communist country this motive is not the manager. There they have to put visible managers. It is said that in Stalin’s Russia there was one policeman for each citizen. Otherwise it is difficult to manage because the profit motive is no longer there. Then one has to force, one has to order, one has to be constantly nagging, only then will the sudra work.There is always a businessman type who enjoys money, wealth, accumulation. He will do that – it makes no difference how he does it. If money is available, he will collect money; if money is not available, then he will collect postage stamps. But he will do it, he will collect. If postage stamps are not available he will collect followers – but he will collect. He has to do something with numbers. When he says he has ten thousand, twenty thousand followers, one million followers – that is just the same as saying that he has one million rupees.Go to your sadhus – the greater the number of followers, the greater they are. So followers are just nothing but bank balances. If nobody follows you, you are nobody – then you are a poor guru. If many people follow you then you are a rich guru. Whatsoever happens, the businessman will collect. He will count. The matter is immaterial.There is the warrior who will fight – any excuse will do. He will fight, fighting is in his blood, in his bones. Because of this type the world cannot live in peace. It is impossible. Once every ten years there is bound to be a big war. And if you want to avoid big wars, then have many small wars, but the total will remain the same. Because of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, now a great war has become almost impossible. That is why there are so many small wars all over the world: in Vietnam, in Kashmir, in Bangladesh, in Israel, many small wars, but the total will be the same. In five thousand years man has fought fifteen thousand wars, three wars per year.This type exists who has to fight. You can change the type, but the change will be superficial. If this warrior is not allowed to fight in war, he will fight in other ways. He will fight an election, or he may become a sportsman – he may fight in cricket or football. But he will fight, he will compete, he needs somebody to challenge. Somewhere or other fighting has to be done to satisfy him. That is why, as civilization grows, people have to be supplied with more and more games. If games are not given to the warrior type, what will he do?Go and look when a cricket, or football, or hockey match is on – how people get mad, as if something very serious is going on, as if a real war is happening. And those who are fighting, those who are playing, they are serious, and the fans around them go mad. Fights break out, riots happen. It is dangerous, the playing field is always dangerous because the type that gathers there is the warrior type. Any moment anything can go wrong.There is a brahmin type, who always lives in words, in scriptures. In the West there is no such type as the brahmin; the name is not important, but the brahmin exists everywhere. Your scientists, your professors, the universities are filled with them. They go on working with words, symbols, creating theories, defending, arguing. They go on and on, sometimes in the name of science, sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes in the name of literature. The names change, but the brahmin goes on.These are the four types. You cannot create a classless society. These four will persist and the total arrangement will be the same. Fragments can change. In the morning you can do one thing, in the evening something else, but the total day will remain the same.I have heard about one scientist – his father was against his scientific research. The father always thought it useless: “Don’t waste your time. It is better to become a doctor, that will be more practical and helpful to people. Just theories, abstract theories of physics, are of no help.” Finally, he persuaded his son and he became a doctor.The first man who came to him was suffering from severe pneumonia. He looked in his books – because he was an abstract thinker, a brahmin. He looked into his books, he tried and tried. The patient became impatient; he said, “How long do I have to wait?”The scientist, who was now practicing as a doctor said, “I don’t think that there is any hope. You will have to die. There is no treatment; the illness has gone beyond cure.” The patient was a tailor, he went home.Two or three weeks later the doctor was passing and he saw the tailor working, and he was healthy and full of energy. So he said, “What, you are still alive? You should be dead. I looked in the books and this is impossible. How can you be alive?”The tailor said, “You told me that within a week I would have to die, so I thought: Then why not live? Just one week left… Potato pancakes are my weakness, so I left your office and went directly to a hotel and ate thirty-two potato pancakes. Immediately I felt a lot of energy coming over me. And now I am absolutely okay.”The doctor immediately noted down in his diary that thirty-two potato pancakes is a sure cure for serious cases of pneumonia.The next patient by chance also had pneumonia. He was a shoemaker. The doctor said, “Don’t worry. Now the cure has been discovered. Go immediately and eat thirty-two potato pancakes, not less than thirty-two, and you will be okay; otherwise, you are going to die within a week.”After a week, the doctor knocked at the shoemaker’s door. It was locked. The neighbor said, “He is dead. Your potato pancakes killed him.” Immediately he noted in his diary that thirty-two potato pancakes cure tailors, kill shoemakers.This is the abstract mind. He cannot be practical, the brahmin.You can change surfaces, you can paint faces, but the inner type remains the same. Hence the East has not troubled itself with revolutions. The East is waiting; and those in the East who are wise, they look at the West, and they know that you are playing with toys. All your revolutions are toys. Sooner or later you will come to realize the law of three in the morning.Now to the sutra. A disciple must have asked Chuang Tzu, “What is this three in the morning?” Because whenever somebody mentioned revolution or change, Chuang Tzu would laugh and say, “The law of the three in the morning.” So a disciple must have asked, “What is this three in the morning you are always talking about?”Said Chuang Tzu:It is about a monkey trainerwho went to his monkeys and told them:“As regards your chestnuts,you are going to have three measures in the morning,and four in the afternoon.”On hearing this all the monkeys became angry…Because in the past they had been getting four measures in the morning and three in the evening. Obviously they got angry: “What do you mean? We were always getting four measures of chestnuts in the morning and now you say three. We cannot tolerate this.”So the keeper said:“All right then,I will change itto four measures in the morning,and three in the afternoon.”The animals were satisfied with this arrangement.The total remained the same – but monkeys cannot look at the total. It was morning, so they could only see the morning. Every morning it was routine to get four measures and they were waiting for four measures, and now this man says, “Three measures in the morning.” He is cutting one measure. It cannot be tolerated. They became angry, they revolted.This monkey trainer must have been a wise man; otherwise it would be difficult to become a monkey trainer. I know it from my own experience. I am a monkey trainer.The monkey trainer said, “Okay, then don’t get disturbed. I will follow the old pattern. You will get four measures in the morning and three in the evening.” The monkeys were happy. Poor monkeys – they can be happy or unhappy without any reason for either. But this man had a bigger perspective. He could see, he could add four plus three. It was still the same – seven measures were to be given to them. How they took it, in what arrangement didn’t matter. The two arrangements were the same, the number of chestnuts didn’t change, but in one case the monkeys were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied.This is how your mind goes on working, you just keep changing the arrangement. With one arrangement you feel satisfied, with another you feel dissatisfied – and the total remains the same. But you never look at the total. The mind cannot see the total. Only meditation can see the total. Mind looks at the fragment, it is near-sighted, it is very near-sighted. That is why, whenever you feel any pleasure, you jump into the pleasure immediately; you never look at the evening. This has been your experience but you have not become aware of it – that whenever there is pleasure there is pain hidden in it. But the pain will come in the evening and pleasure is here in the morning.You never look into that which is hidden, into that which is invisible, into that which is latent. You just look at the surface, and you go mad. You do this all your life. A fragment catches you. Many people come to me and say, “In the beginning when I married this woman, everything was very beautiful. But within days everything was lost. Now it has all become ugly, now it is misery.”Once it happened…There was a car accident. The car turned upside down in a ditch by the side of the road. The man was lying on the ground completely crippled, almost unconscious. A policeman came and he started to fill in his diary. He asked the man, “Are you married?”The man said, “I am not married. This is the biggest mess I have ever been in.”It is said that those who know will never marry. But how can you know what happens in marriage without getting married? You look at a person, at the fragment, and in the end sometimes when you think about it the fragment will look very foolish.The color of the eyes – what foolishness! How can your life depend on the color of your eyes or somebody else’s eyes? How can your life become beautiful just because of the color of the eyes? – a small pigment, three or four pennies’ worth. But you get romantic: Oh, the eyes, the color of the eyes. Then you go mad and you think, “If I am not married to this woman life is lost, I will commit suicide.”But you don’t see what you are doing. One cannot live by the color of the eyes forever. Within two days you will become acquainted with those eyes and you will forget them. Then there is the whole life, the totality of it, and then misery starts. Before the honeymoon is finished, misery begins; the total person was never taken into account – the mind cannot see the total. It just looks at the surface, at the figure, the face, the hair, the color of the eyes, the way the woman walks, the way she talks, the sound of her voice. These are the parts, but where is the total person?The mind cannot see the total. The mind looks at fragments, and with fragments you get hooked. Once you are hooked, the total comes in – the total is not far away. Eyes don’t exist as separate phenomena, they are part of a whole. If you are hooked by the eyes, you are hooked with the whole person. And when this whole emerges, everything becomes ugly.Who is responsible? You should have taken account of the whole. But when it is morning the mind looks at the morning and forgets the evening completely. Remember well – in every morning the evening is hidden. The morning is constantly turning into evening and nothing can be done about it, you cannot stop it.Says Chuang Tzu:The two arrangements were the same –the number of chestnuts did not change,but in one case the monkeys were displeased,and in the other case they were satisfied.Monkeys are your minds; they cannot penetrate the whole. This is the misery. You always miss, you always miss because of the fragment. If you can see the whole and then act, your life will never be a hell. And then you will not be bothered about superficial arrangements, about morning and evening, because then you can count – it is always seven. Whether you get four in the morning or three makes no difference – the total is seven.I have heard…A small boy came home puzzled. His mother asked, “Why do you look so puzzled?”The boy said, “I am in a fix. My teacher seems to have gone crazy. Yesterday she said that four plus one make five and today she told me three plus two make five. She seems to have gone mad, because if four plus one is already five, how can three plus two be five?”The child cannot see that five can come out of many arrangements – there is not only one arrangement in which the total will be five. There can be millions of arrangements in which the total will be five.Howsoever you arrange your life the religious man will always look to the total and the worldly man will always look to the fragment. That is the difference. The worldly will look to whatever is near, but the far is hidden there. The far is not really far, it will come, it will become near. The distant is not very distant, it will happen soon. The evening is coming.Can you have a perspective in which the total life is seen? It is believed, and I think it is true also, that if a man is drowning, suddenly his whole life, the total, is remembered. But when you are dying, drowning in a river, no time is left, and suddenly in your mind’s eye your whole life is revealed from beginning to end. It is as if the whole film passes across the screen of the mind. But what use is it, now that you are dying?A religious man looks at the total every moment. The whole life is there, and then he acts out of that perspective of the whole. He will never repent, as you will always do. There is no possibility for you not to repent. Whatsoever you do you will repent.Once it happened…A king went to visit a madhouse. The superintendent of the madhouse escorted him to every cell. The king was very interested in the phenomenon of madness, he was studying it. Everybody should be interested because it is everybody’s problem. And you need not go to a madhouse – go anywhere and study people’s faces. You are studying in a madhouse!One man was weeping and crying, hitting his head against the bars. His anguish was so deep, his suffering was so penetrating, that the king asked, “Tell me the whole story, how this man became mad.”The superintendent said, “This man loved a woman and couldn’t get her, so he went mad.”Then they passed to another cell. There was another man with a picture of a woman, spitting on it. The king asked, “And what is the story of this man? He also seems to be involved with a woman.”The superintendent said, “It is the same woman. This man fell in love with her too, and he got her. That is why he went mad.”If you get what you want you go mad; if you don’t get what you want you go mad. The total remains the same. Whatsoever you do, you will repent. A fragment can never be fulfilling. The whole is so big and the fragment is so small that you cannot deduce the whole from the fragment. And if you depend on the fragment and decide your life accordingly, you will always miss. Your whole life will be wasted.So what should we do? What does Chuang Tzu want us to do? He wants us not to be fragmentary – he wants us to be total. But remember, you can look at the total only when you are total, because only the similar can know the similar. If you are fragmentary, you cannot know the total. How can you know the total if you are fragmented? If you are divided in parts the total cannot be reflected in you. When I speak of meditation I mean a mind which is no longer divided, in which all fragments have disappeared. The mind is one undivided whole.This one mind looks deeply to the very end. It looks from death to birth, it looks from birth to death. Both polarities are before it. And out of this look, out of this penetrating vision, the action is born. If you ask me what sin is, I will say: action out of the fragmentary mind is sin. If you ask me what virtue is, I will tell you: action out of the total mind is virtue. That is why a sinner always has to repent.Remember your own life, observe it. Whatsoever you do, whatsoever you choose, this or that, everything goes wrong. Whether you get the woman or lose her, in both cases you go mad. Whatsoever you choose, you choose misery. Hence Krishnamurti goes on insisting on choicelessness.Try to understand this. You are here listening to me. This is a choice, because you must have left some job undone, some work incomplete. You have to go to the office, to the shop, to the family, to the market and you are here listening to me. This morning you must have decided what to do – whether to go and listen to this man or go to your work, to the office, to the market. Then you decided, you chose to come here.You will repent – because even while here, you cannot be totally here. Half the mind is there, and you are simply waiting until I finish so you can go. But do you think that if you had chosen otherwise, gone to the shop or to the office, would you have been totally there? No, because that again was a choice. So then you will be there and your mind will be here. And you will repent: “Why am I wasting time, who knows what is happening there, what is being talked about? Who knows what key is to be transferred this morning?”So whatsoever you choose, whether you come or whether you decide not to come, if it is a choice it means half of the heart, or a little more, has chosen. It is a democratic decision, parliamentary. With the majority of the mind you have decided, but the minority is still there. And no minority is a fixed thing, no majority is a fixed thing. Nobody knows – members go on changing parties.When you came here you decided. Fifty-one percent of your mind wanted to come, forty-nine wanted to go to the office. But by the time you arrived, the arrangement had changed. With the very decision to go and listen there is a disturbance.The minority may have become the majority by the time you arrive here. If it has not yet become a majority, by the time you leave it will have become so because by then you will think, “Two hours lost – now, how will I make them up? It would have been better not to come – spiritual things can be postponed, but this world cannot be postponed. Life is long enough, we can meditate later on.”In India people say that meditation is only for old people, those who are on the verge of death. They can meditate; it is not for young people.Meditation is the last thing on the list, for when you have done everything else. But remember, this point when you have done everything never comes. Or when you cannot do anything because your whole energy has been wasted – then meditation.But when you cannot do anything, how can you meditate? Meditation needs energy, the purest, the most vital – meditation needs overflowing energy. A child can meditate but how can an old man meditate? A child is easily meditative, an old man – no, he is wasted. There is no movement of energy in him, his river cannot flow, he is frozen. Many parts of his life are already dead.If you choose to come to the temple, you suffer, you repent. If you go to the office or the market, you suffer, you repent.It happened once that a monk died. He was a very famous monk, he was known all over the country. Many people worshipped him, he was thought to be enlightened. On the same day a prostitute died. She also lived just in front of the monk’s house, the monk’s temple. She was also a very famous prostitute, as famous as the monk. They were two polarities living together and they died on the same day.The angel of death came and took the monk to heaven; other angels of death came and took the prostitute to hell. When the angels reached heaven the doors were closed and the man in charge said, “You are confused. This monk has to go to hell and the prostitute has to come to heaven.”But they said, “What do you mean? This man was a very famous ascetic, continuously meditating and praying. That is why we never inquired, we simply went and brought him. And the prostitute must have reached hell because the other group has taken her, and we never thought of asking why. It was so obvious.”The man who was in charge at the gate said: “You are confused because you have looked only at the surface. This monk was continuously thinking that he was meditating for others. For himself he was always thinking, ‘I am missing life. What a beautiful woman, and available. Any moment I can cross the street, and she is available. What nonsense I am doing, just praying, sitting in a buddha posture and attaining nothing.’ But because of his fame he didn’t dare.”Many people are virtuous because they are cowards. He was virtuous because he was a coward – he could not cross the street. So many people knew him, how could he go to the prostitute? What would people say?Cowards are always afraid of the opinion of others. So he remained an ascetic, fasting, but his mind was always with the prostitute. When there was singing and dancing, he would listen. He sat before the statue of Buddha, but Buddha was not there. He was not worshipping, he was listening to the sounds coming. He would dream and in his fantasy he would make love to the prostitute.And what was happening with the prostitute? She was always repenting, repenting and repenting. She knew she had wasted her life, she had wasted a golden opportunity. And for what? Just for money, selling her body and soul. And she would always look at the monk’s temple, so jealous of the silent life he was living. “What meditative phenomenon is happening there? When will God give me one chance to go inside the temple?” But she thought, “I am a prostitute, unholy, and I should not enter the temple.”She could not go there, so she would walk around the monk’s temple from the outside, she will just look from the street. What beauty, what silence, what blessing inside. And when there was kirtan and bhajan, singing and dancing, she would weep and cry, and scream about what she was missing.So the man in charge said, “Bring the prostitute to heaven and take this monk to hell. Their outer life was different, their inner life was different, but like everybody both are repenting.” The prostitute repents, the monk repents.We in India have invented a word which does not exist in any other language in the world. Heaven and hell are found everywhere; all languages have those words. We have different words, moksha or nirvana or kaivalya – the absolute freedom which is neither hell nor heaven.If your outer life is hell and you repent, you will reach heaven. If you are a prostitute, but constantly desiring the world of meditation and prayer, you will reach heaven. And if your outer life is heaven and your inner life is hell, like the monk who desired the prostitute, you will go to hell. But if you make no choice, have no regrets, if you are choiceless, then you will reach moksha.Choiceless awareness is moksha, absolute freedom. Hell is a bondage, heaven is also a bondage. Heaven may be a beautiful prison, hell may be an ugly prison – but both are prisons. Neither Christians nor Mohammedans can understand this point because to them, heaven is the ultimate. If you ask them where Jesus is, their answer is wrong. They say: “In heaven with God.” This is absolutely wrong. If Jesus is in heaven, then he is not enlightened. Heaven may be golden, but it is still a prison. It may be good, it may be pleasant, but it is still a choice, the choice against hell. The virtue which has been chosen against sin is a decision of the majority, but the minority is waiting for its own chance.Jesus is in moksha, that’s what I say. He is not in heaven, he is not in hell. He is totally free of all imprisonments: good/bad, sin/virtue, morality/immorality. He did not choose. He lived a choiceless life. And that is what I go on telling you: live a choiceless life.But how is a choiceless life possible? It is possible only if you can see the total, the seven; otherwise, you will choose. You will say this should happen in the morning, that in the evening, and you think that just by changing the arrangement you are changing the total. The total cannot be changed. The total remains the same – everybody’s total remains the same.Hence I say there is no beggar, and no emperor. In the morning you are an emperor, in the evening you will be a beggar; in the morning you are a beggar, in the evening you will be an emperor. And the total remains the same. Look at the total, be total, and then all choice drops.That monkey trainer simply looked at the total and said, “Okay, you foolish monkeys, if you are happy with it, let this arrangement be as it is.” But if he had also been a monkey, then there would have been a fight. Then he would have insisted, “This is going to be the arrangement. Who do you think is the leader, you or me? Who do you think is the master? Who do you think is to decide, you or me?”Ego always chooses, decides and forces. The monkeys were rebelling, and if this man had also been a monkey, he would have gone mad. He would have had to put them in their place, where they belonged. He would have insisted, “No more four in the morning. I decide.”It happened once…It was the sixtieth birthday of a man – after a long married life of almost thirty-five, forty years of quarrels and conflict. But he was surprised. When he came home his wife was waiting with two beautiful ties as a present. He never expected it from his wife. It was almost impossible that she would wait with two ties as a present. He felt so happy, he said, “Don’t cook the dinner, I will get ready in minutes and we will go to the most beautiful hotel.”He took a bath, got ready, put on one of the ties, and came out. His wife stared and said, “What? Do you mean you don’t like the other tie? Isn’t the other tie good enough?” A man can only wear one tie, but whichever tie he had chosen, the same would have happened: “So what do you mean? The other tie is no good?”It is the old habit of quarreling, fighting. It was said about the same woman that every day she would find something to fight about. And she would always find something because when you search, you will find. Remember this: whatsoever you are in search of you will find. The world is so vast, and existence is so rich, that if you are really keen to find something, you will find it.So one day she will find some hair on her husband’s coat, and then there will be a fight, that he has been with some woman. But once it happened that for seven days she could not find anything. She tried and tried but there was no excuse to fight. So on the seventh day, when her husband came home, she started screaming and beating her chest. He said, “Now what are you doing? What is the matter, what happened?”So she said, “You rascal, you have finished with other women and now you are going around with bald women!”The mind is always in search of trouble. And don’t laugh, because this is about your mind. By laughing you may be simply deceiving yourself. You may think it is about somebody else – it is about you. And whatsoever I say, it is always about you.Mind chooses and always chooses trouble, because with choice there is trouble. You cannot choose God. If you choose, there will be trouble. You cannot choose sannyas. If you choose, there will be trouble. You cannot choose freedom. If you choose, it will not be freedom.Then how does it happen? How does godliness happen, sannyas happen, freedom happen, moksha happen? It happens when you understand the foolishness of choice. It is not a new choice, it is simply the dropping of all choosing. Just looking at the whole thing you start laughing. There is nothing to choose. The total remains the same. In the end, by the evening, the total will be the same. Then you are not bothered whether in the morning you are an emperor or a beggar. You are happy, because by the evening everything comes to the same, everything is leveled.Death equalizes. In death nobody is an emperor and nobody is a beggar. Death brings out the total; it is always seven.The two arrangements were the same. Remember, the amount of chestnuts didn’t change. But in one case the monkeys were displeased and in the other case they were satisfied.The keeper was willingto change his personal arrangementin order to meet objective conditions.He lost nothing by it.A man of understanding always looks at objective conditions, never at his subjective feelings. When the monkeys said no, if you had been the monkey trainer you would have felt offended. These monkeys were trying to rebel, they were trying to be disobedient. This could not be tolerated; monkeys are animals, and very superior animals. You would have felt hurt inside.You get angry even at dead things. If you are trying to open the door and it resists, you get mad. If you are trying to write a letter and the pen is not functioning well, smoothly, you get angry. You feel hurt, as if the pen is doing it knowingly, as if there is somebody in the boat. Even in the pen’s boat you feel somebody is there and trying to disturb you.And this is not only the logic of small children, this is your logic also. If a child crashes into a table, he will beat the table, just to put it right. And he will always remain an enemy of that table. But you are the same – with dead things you also get angry, you get mad.This is subjective, and a wise man is never subjective. A wise man always looks at the objective conditions. He will look at the door, and if it is not open, then he will try to open it. But he cannot get angry – because his boat is empty. There is nobody there trying to shut the door, resisting your efforts.…In order to meet objective conditions, he changed his personal arrangement. He looked at the monkeys and their minds, he didn’t feel offended – he was a monkey trainer, not a monkey. He looked and he must have laughed within, because he knew the total. And he yielded. Only a wise man yields. A foolish man always resists. Foolish people say it is better to die than to bend, it is better to break than to bend.Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu always say: When there is a strong wind the foolish egoistic trees resist and die, and the wise grass bends. The storm goes by and again the grass stands straight, laughing and enjoying. The grass is objective, the big tree is subjective. The big tree thinks so much of himself: “I am somebody, who can bend me? Who can force me to yield?” The big tree will fight with a storm. It is foolish to fight with the storm, because the storm has not come for you. It is nothing special, the storm is simply passing and you are there, it is coincidental.The monkeys are not offending the monkey trainer. Monkeys are just monkeys; that is the way they are. They cannot look at the total, they cannot add up. They can look only at the near, they cannot look at the far – the far is too far. It is impossible for them to conceive of the evening, they only know about the morning.So monkeys are monkeys, storms are storms. Why get offended? They are not fighting you. They are only following their own routine ways, their own habits. So the monkey trainer was not offended. He was a wise man, he yielded, he was just like the grass. Remember this whenever you start feeling subjective. Somebody says something, and immediately you feel hurt, as if it has been said to you. You are too much in the boat; it may not have been said to you at all. The other may be expressing his or her subjectivity.When somebody says, “You have insulted me,” what is really meant is something else. If he had been a little more intelligent he would have said it the other way. He would be saying, “I feel insulted. You may not have insulted me, but whatsoever you have said, I feel insulted.” This is a subjective feeling.But nobody considers their subjectivity and everybody goes on projecting their subjectivity onto objective conditions. The other always says, “You have insulted me.” And when you hear it you are also subjective. Both boats are filled, much too crowded. There is bound to be a clash, enmity, violence.If you are wise, when the other says, “You have insulted me,” you will look at it objectively and you will think, “Why is the other feeling insulted?” You will try to understand the other’s feelings, and if you can put things right you will yield. Monkeys are monkeys. Why get angry, why feel offended?It is said of Mulla Nasruddin that when he was old he was made an honorary magistrate. The first case to come before him was a man who had been robbed, and he told him his story. Nasruddin heard his story and said, “Yes, you are in the right.” But he hadn’t yet heard the other’s story.The clerk of the court whispered in his ear, “You are new, Nasruddin. You don’t know what you are doing. You have to listen to the other before you give judgment.”So Nasruddin said, “Okay.”So the other man, the robber, told his story. Nasruddin listened and said, “You are right.”The clerk of the court felt confused: “This man is not only inexperienced, he looks absurd.” Again he whispered in his ear, “What are you doing? How can they both be right?”Nasruddin said, “Yes, you are right.”This is the wise man who looks at the objective conditions. He will yield. He is always yielding, he is always saying yes – because if you say no, then your boat is not empty. No always comes from the ego. So if a wise man has to say no, he will still use the terminology of yes. He will not say no outright, he will use the terminology of yes. If a foolish man wants to say yes, even then he feels it difficult to say yes. He will use the terminology of no, and even if he has to yield, he will yield grudgingly. He will yield offended, resisting.The monkey trainer yielded.The keeper was willing to change his personal arrangements in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by it. No wise man has ever lost anything by saying yes to foolish people. No wise man can ever lose anything by yielding. He gains everything. There is no ego, so there cannot be any loss. The loss is always felt by the ego: I am losing. Why do you feel you are losing? – because you never wanted to lose. Why do you feel you are a failure? – because you always wanted to be a success. Why do you feel you are a beggar? – because you always desired to be an emperor.A wise man simply takes whatsoever is. He accepts the total. He knows – beggar in the morning, emperor in the evening; emperor in the morning, beggar in the evening. Which is the better arrangement?If a wise man is forced to arrange he would prefer to be beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. A wise man never chooses, but if you insist, he will say it is better to be beggar in the morning and emperor in the evening. Why? – because to be emperor in the morning, then beggar in the evening, will be very difficult. But this is the choice.A wise man will choose pain in the beginning and pleasure in the end, because pain in the beginning will give you the taste, the background, and then the pleasure will be more pleasing than ever. Pleasure in the beginning will destroy you, and will give you such a background that the pain will be too much, unbearable.East and West have made different arrangements. In the East, for the first twenty-five years every child had to go through hardship. That was the principle followed for thousands of years until the West came and started dominating the East.That was the principle followed. A child had to go to the master’s house in the jungle, he had to live through every possible hardship. Like a beggar he would just lie on a mat on the floor – there would be no comforts. He would have to eat like a beggar; he would have to go to town and beg for the master, he would have to cut trees for wood, he would have to take the animals to the river to drink, to the forest to feed.For twenty-five years he would lead the most simple, austere life whether he was born a king or a beggar – there was no difference. Even the emperor’s son would have to follow the same routine, there was no distinction. And then life was so blissful.If the East was so content, this was the trick, the arrangement, because whatsoever life gives, it is always more than you know in the beginning. The child comes to live in a hut, and it looks like a palace. Before, he was just lying there on the ground, without any shelter, crowded. He has an ordinary bed and it is heavenly. Ordinary food – bread, butter, and salt is paradise enough because even butter was not available at the master’s house. So whatsoever life gives, he will be happy.Now, the Western pattern is quite the opposite. They have things. When you are a student every comfort is given to you. Hostels, beautiful universities, beautiful rooms, classrooms, teachers – every arrangement is made. Medical facilities, food, hygiene, everything is taken care of. And after twenty-five years you are thrown into the struggle of life. You have become a hot-house plant – you don’t know what struggle is. Then you become a clerk in an office, a master in a primary school and life is hell. Then your whole life you will be grunting, your whole life will be a long grump, just complaining, complaining, everything is wrong. It is going to be so.The monkey trainer said, “Three measures in the morning and four in the evening.”But the monkeys insisted: “Four in the morning and three in the evening.”Four in the morning and three in the evening – then the evening is going to be cloudy. You will compare it with the past, with the morning. Emperor in the morning and beggar in the evening – then the evening is going to be miserable. The evening should be a climax, not misery.The monkeys are not choosing a wise arrangement. In the first place a wise man never chooses, he lives choicelessly because he knows that the total is going to be the same. In the second place, if he has to choose because of objective conditions, he will choose three courses in the morning and four in the evening. But the monkeys said, “No. We will choose. We will have four in the morning.” That trainer, the keeper, was willing – in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by it. But what happened to the monkeys? They lost something.So whenever you are near a wise man let him arrange, don’t insist on your own arrangements. Because whatsoever you choose, in the first place choice is wrong, in the second place whatever choice you monkeys make, it will be wrong. The monkey mind will only look for immediate, instant happiness, right now. He is not worried about what happens later on. He doesn’t know. He has no perspective of the whole. So let the wise man choose.But the whole arrangement has changed. In the East the wise men decided. In the West there is democracy – the monkeys vote and choose. And now they have converted the whole East to democracy – democracy means that the monkeys vote and choose.Aristocracy means that the wise men will choose the arrangement and the monkeys will yield and follow. Nothing can work like aristocracy if it is run properly. Democracy is bound to be a chaos. But the monkeys feel very happy because they are choosing the arrangement. The world was happier when the choice was with wise men.Remember, kings would always go to ask the wise men for a final decision. The wise men were not kings because they would not like it, they couldn’t be bothered with it. They were beggars, they were living in their huts in the forest. But whenever there was a problem the king would not run to the constituency to ask the people, “What is to be done?” He would run to the forest to ask those who had renounced all – because they have a perspective of the whole, no attachment, no obsessions. Of their own choice they have nothing. They are choiceless; they can see the whole and decide.The truly wise man,considering both sides of the questionwithout partiality,sees them both in the light of Tao.This is called following two courses at once.To look at the total means to follow two courses at once. Then it is not a question of four in the morning, three in the evening. It is a question of seven in the whole life.Arrangement is immaterial. Things can be arranged according to objective conditions, but seven in all, two courses together. The wise man looks at the whole of everything. Sex gives you pleasure, but he looks also at the pain that comes out of it. Wealth gives you pleasure, but he looks at the nightmare that comes with it. Success makes you happy, but he knows the abyss that follows the peak, the failure that will become intense, unbearable pain.He looks at the whole. And when you look at the whole you have no choice. Then you are having two courses at the same time. Morning and evening are together now – four plus three are together now. Now nothing is in fragments, everything has become a whole. And to follow this whole is Tao. To follow this whole is to be religious. To follow this whole is Yoga.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When an archer is shooting for funhe has all his skill.If he shoots for a brass bucklehe is already nervous.If he shoots for a prize of goldhe goes blindor sees two targets –he is out of his mind.His skill has not changed,but the prize divides him.He cares.He thinks more of winningthan of shooting –and the need to windrains him of power.If the mind is filled with dreams you cannot see rightly. If the heart is filled with desires you cannot feel rightly. Desires, dreams and hopes – the future disturbs you, and whatsoever is, is in the present. When you are divided, desire leads you into the future, and life is here and now. Reality is here and now, and desire leads you into the future. Then you are not here. You see, but still you don’t see; you hear, but still you miss; you feel, but the feeling is dim, it cannot be deep, it cannot be penetrating. That is how truth is missed.People go on asking where to find the divine, where to find the truth. It is not a question of finding the divine or the truth. It is always here, it has never been anywhere else, it cannot be. It is there where you are, but you are not there, your mind is somewhere else. Your eyes are filled with dreams, your heart is filled with desires. You move into the future, and the future is illusion. Or, you move into the past, and the past is already dead.The past is no more and the future has yet to be. Between these two is the present moment. That moment is very short, as short as possible, it is atomic, you cannot divide it – it is indivisible. That moment passes in the flicker of an eye. If a desire enters, you have missed it; if a dream is there, you are missing it.The whole of religion consists of not leading you somewhere, but bringing you to the here and now, bringing you back to the whole, back where you have always been. But the head has gone away, very far away. This head has to be brought back. So God is not to be sought somewhere – that is why you are missing him, because you are searching somewhere. He has been here waiting for you.Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin came staggering home totally drunk. He knocked at his own door, knocked again and again. It was already half past midnight. The wife came and Nasruddin asked her, “Can you tell me, madam, where Mulla Nasruddin lives?”The wife said, “This is too much. You are Mulla Nasruddin.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “That’s okay, I know that, but that doesn’t answer my question. Where does he live?”This is the situation. Drunk with desires, staggering, you knock at your own door and ask where your home is. You are really asking who you are. This is home, and you have never left it, it is impossible to leave it. It is not something outside you which is going to leave and go away. It is your within, it is your very being.Asking where God is, is foolish, because you cannot lose God. It is your within, your innermost being, your very core. It is your existence: you breathe him, you live him, and it cannot be otherwise. The only thing that has happened is that you have become so drunk, that you cannot recognize your own face. And unless you come back and get sober you will go on searching and seeking and you will go on missing.Tao, Zen, Yoga, Sufism, Hasidism, these are all methods to bring you back, to make you sober again, to destroy your drunkenness. Why are you so drunk? What makes you so drunk? Why are your eyes so sleepy? Why aren’t you alert? What is the root cause of it all? The root cause is that you desire.Try to understand the nature of desire. Desire is alcoholic, desire is the greatest drug possible. Marijuana is nothing, LSD is nothing. Desire is the greatest LSD possible – the ultimate in drugs.What is the nature of desire? When you desire, what happens? When you desire, you are creating an illusion in the mind; when you desire, you have already moved from here. Now you are not here, you are absent because the mind is creating a dream. This absentness is your drunkenness.Be present. This very moment the doors of heaven are open. There is no need even to knock because you are not outside heaven, you are inside. Just be alert and look around without eyes filled with desire, and you will have a belly laugh. You will laugh at the whole joke, at what has been happening. It is just like a man dreaming at night.It happened once…A man was very disturbed – his nights were simply prolonged nightmares. His whole night was a struggle. It was so painful that he was always scared to go to sleep and he was always happy to get out of bed. The whole night was nightmarish – he was having very bad dreams, ferocious. The nature of the dreams was such, that the moment he fell asleep, he would start seeing millions of lions, dragons, tigers, reptiles, crocodiles, millions of them sitting underneath his small bed. So he couldn’t sleep because at any moment they would attack.Knowing they would all be coming back the whole night was just a long disturbance, a torture, a hell. He was treated medically, but nothing would help. Everything failed. He was analyzed by psychologists, psychiatrists, but nobody could succeed. Then one day he walked out of his house laughing.Nobody had seen him laughing for many years. His face had become hellish, always sad, afraid, scared. So the neighbors asked, “What is the matter? You are laughing? We have not seen you laughing for years. We have completely forgotten that you ever used to laugh. What happened to your nightmares?”The man said, “I told my brother-in-law, and he cured me.”The neighbors asked, “Is your brother-in-law a great psychoanalyst, psychologist, or something? How could he cure you?The man said, “He is a carpenter. He simply cut the legs off my bed. Now there’s no more space, so I slept for the first time!”You create a space – and desire is the way to create that space. The greater the desire, the more space is created. Because if a desire is to be fulfilled in one year, then you have one year’s space. You can move in it, but then you will have to encounter many reptiles, many dragons. This space which is created by desire, you call it time. If there is no desire, there is no need for time.A single moment exists – not even two moments, because the second is needed only by desire, it is not needed by your existence. Existence is completely fulfilled, totally, in one moment.Remember: if you think that time is something outside you, then you are deceiving yourself. Time is not something outside you.If man disappears from the earth will there be time? Trees will grow, rivers will flow, clouds will still float in the sky, but I ask, will there be time? There will not be any time. There will be moments, rather, there will be one moment – and when one moment disappears another comes into existence. Another disappears, another comes into existence. But there is no time as such. Only the atomic moment exists.Trees don’t desire anything, they don’t desire to flower, flowers will come automatically. It is part of the nature of the tree that flowers will come. But the tree is not dreaming, the tree is not moving, it is not thinking, it is not desiring.If man is not there, there will be no time, just eternal moments. You create time with desire. The greater the desire, the more time is needed.For materialistic desires much time is not needed. That is why in the West they say that there is only one life. In the East we have desired moksha. That is the greatest desire possible – no other desire can be greater than that. But how can you get moksha in one life? One life is not enough. You may get a palace, you may organize a kingdom, you may become very rich and powerful, a Hitler, a Ford. You may become something in this world, but moksha is such a great desire that one life is not enough.So in the East we believe in many lives, in rebirth, because more time is needed, many lives will be needed. Only then can you hope that the desire for moksha will be fulfilled. I’m not saying whether there are many lives or not. That is not the point. But in the East people believe in many lives because they desire moksha. If there is only one life how can you attain it?If there is only one life, then only material things can be attained. Then spiritual transformation is not possible. The desire is so big that millions of lifetimes are needed. That is why in the East people live so lazily. There is no hurry because there is no shortage of time. You will be born again and again and again. Why be in a hurry? You have infinite time.So if the East is lazy and looks so absolutely unaware of time, if things move with such a slow flow, it is because of the concept of many lives. If the West is so time-conscious, it is because there is only one life, and everything has to be attained in it. If you miss, you miss forever – no second opportunity is possible. Because of this shortage of time, the West has become so tense. So many things to do and so little time left – so many desires, and time is always short.Everyone is always in a hurry, running fast. Nobody is moving slowly, nobody is walking slowly. Everybody is running, and more speed is needed. So the West goes on inventing speedier vehicles and there is never any satisfaction. The West goes on lengthening human life just to give you a little more time to fulfill your desires.But why is time needed? Can’t you be here and now without time? Is this moment not enough, just sitting near me, no past, no future? – this moment in between, which is atomic, which is really as if nonexistential. It is so small that you cannot catch hold of it; if you catch it, it is already past. If you think, it is in the future. You can be in it, but you cannot catch hold of it. When you catch hold of it, it is gone; when you think about it, it is not there.When it is there, only one thing can be done – you can live it, that is all. It is so small that you can only live in it, but it is so vital that it gives life to you.Remember, it is just like the atom, so small it cannot be seen. Nobody has seen it yet, not even scientists have seen it yet. You can only see the consequences. They have been able to explode it – Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequences. We have seen Hiroshima burning, over one hundred thousand people dead – this is the consequence. But nobody has seen what happened in the atomic explosion. Nobody has seen the atom with their own eyes. There are no instruments yet which can see it.Time is atomic, this moment is also atomic. Nobody can see it, because when you see it, it has already gone. In the time that is taken in seeing, it has past – the river has flowed on, the arrow has moved. Nobody has ever seen time. You go on using the word time, but if someone insists on a definition you will be at a loss.Somebody asked Saint Augustine, “Define God. What do you mean when you use the word god?”Augustine said, “It is just like time. I can talk about it, but if you insist on the definition, I am at a loss.”You can go on asking people, “What is the time?” And they will look at their watches and reply. But if you really ask, “What is time?” If you ask for the definition, then watches won’t help.Can you define time? Nobody has seen it, there is no way to see it. If you look, it is gone; if you think, it is not there. When you don’t think, when you don’t look, when you simply are, it is there. You live it. And Saint Augustine is right: godliness can be lived, but cannot be seen. Time can be lived, but cannot be seen. Time is not a philosophical problem, it is existential. Godliness is also not philosophical, it is existential. People have lived it, but if you insist on a definition they will remain silent, they cannot answer. And if you can be in this moment, the doors to all the mysteries are open.So throw off all desires, remove all the dust from your eyes, be at ease within, not longing for something, not even for godliness. Every longing is the same, whether you long for a big car, or a god, or a big house, it makes no difference. Longing is the same. Don’t long – just be! Don’t even look – just be! Don’t think! Let this moment be there, and you in it, and suddenly you have everything – because life is there. Suddenly everything starts showering on you, and then this moment becomes eternal and then there is no time. It is always the now. It never ends, it never begins. But then you are in it, not an outsider. You have entered the whole, you have recognized who you are.Now try to understand Chuang Tzu’s sutra: the need to win. From where does this need arise – the need to win? Everybody is in search of victory, seeking to win, but why does this need to win arise?You are not in any way aware that you are already victorious, that life has happened to you. You are already a winner and nothing more is possible, all that could happen has happened to you. You are already an emperor, and there is no other kingdom to be won. But you have not recognized it, you have not known the beauty of the life that has already happened to you. You have not known the silence, the peace, the bliss that is already there.Because you are not aware of this inner kingdom, you always feel that something is needed, some victory, to prove that you are not a beggar.It happened:Alexander the Great was coming to India – to win, of course – because if you don’t need to win you will not go anywhere. Why bother? Athens was so beautiful, there was no need to bother to go on such a long journey.On the way he heard that one mystic, Diogenes, lived by the side of a river. He had heard many stories about him. In those days, in Athens particularly, only two names were spoken about – one was Alexander, the other was Diogenes. They were two opposites, two polarities. Alexander was an emperor, and was trying to create a kingdom which stretched from one end of the earth to the other: “The whole world should be in my possession.” He was a conqueror, a man in search of victory.And there was Diogenes, the exact opposite completely. He lived naked, not a single thing did he possess. In the beginning he possessed a begging bowl for drinking water or sometimes to beg for food. Then one day he saw a dog drinking water from the river and immediately he threw away his bowl. He said, “If dogs can do without, why not I? If dogs are so intelligent that they can do without a bowl, I must be stupid to carry this bowl with me, it is a burden.”He took that dog for his master, and invited the dog to be with him because he was so intelligent. He had not been aware that to carry the bowl was an unnecessary burden. Thereafter that dog remained with him. They used to sleep together, to take their food together. The dog was his only companion.Somebody asked Diogenes, “Why do you keep company with a dog?”He said, “He is more intelligent than so-called human beings. I was not so intelligent before. Looking at him, watching him, has made me more alert. He lives in the here and now, not bothered about anything, not possessing anything. And he is so happy – having nothing, he has everything. I am not yet so content, some uneasiness remains inside, within me. When I have also become just like him, then I will have reached the goal.”Alexander had heard about Diogenes, his ecstatic bliss, his silent, mirrorlike eyes, just like the blue sky without any clouds. And this man lived naked, even clothes were not needed. Somebody said, “He’s just by the river, and we are passing, he’s not very far away.” Alexander wanted to see him, so he went.It was morning, a winter morning, and Diogenes was taking his sunbath, lying on the sand naked, enjoying the morning, the sun showering on him, everything so beautiful, silent, the river flowing by…Alexander thought, “What should I say?” A man like Alexander cannot think except about things and possessions. So he looked at Diogenes, and said, “I am Alexander the Great. If you need something, tell me. I can be of much help and I would like to help you.”Diogenes laughed, and said, “I don’t need anything. Just stand aside a little because you are blocking the sun. That’s all you can do for me. And remember, don’t block anybody’s sun, that’s all one can do. Don’t stand in my way and nothing else is needed.Alexander looked at this man. He must have felt like a beggar before him: “He needs nothing, and I need the whole world, and even then I will not be satisfied, even this world is not enough.” Alexander said, “I’m happy to see you, I have never seen such a contented man.”Diogenes said, “There is no problem! If you want to be as contented as I, come and lie down by my side, have a sunbath. Forget the future, and drop the past. Nobody is hindering you.”Alexander laughed, a superficial laugh of course, and said, “You are right – but the time is not yet ripe. One day I would also like to relax like you.”Diogenes said, “That one day will never come. What do you need to relax? If I, a beggar, can relax, what else is needed? Why this struggle, this effort, these wars, this conquering, why this need to win?”Said Alexander, “When I have become victorious, when I have conquered the whole world, I would like to come and learn from you and sit by your side and lie down here on this bank.”Diogenes said, “But if I can lie down on this bank and relax right now, why wait for the future? And why go around the whole world creating misery for yourself and others – just to come to me at the end and relax here? I am already relaxing.”What is the need to win? You have to prove yourself. You feel so inferior within, you feel so vacant and empty, you feel such a nobodiness inside, that the need to prove arises. You have to prove that you are somebody, and unless you have proved it, how can you be at ease?There are two ways, and try to understand that these are the only ways. One way is to go out and prove that you are somebody. The other way is to go inside and realize that you are nobody. If you go out you will never be able to prove that you are somebody. The need will remain; rather, it may increase. The more you prove, the more you will feel as Alexander felt, like a beggar standing before Diogenes. You will feel it always. Because just by proving to others that you are somebody does not make you become somebody. Deep down the nobodiness remains. It goes on biting in the heart – that you are nobody.Kingdoms won’t help, because kingdoms will not go in and fill the gap. Nothing can go in. The without will remain without; the within will remain within. There is no meeting. You may have all the wealth in the world but how can you bring it in and fill the emptiness? No, even when you have all the wealth you will still feel empty, more even, because now the contrast will be there. That is why Buddha left his palace: seeing all the wealth yet feeling the inner emptiness, feeling that all is useless.Another way is to go within – not to try to get rid of this nobodiness, but to realize it. This is what Chuang Tzu is saying: Become an empty boat, just go in and realize that you are nobody. The moment you realize you are nobody you explode into a new dimension, because when somebody realizes he is nobody he is also realizing that he is all.You are not somebody, because you are all. How can the all be somebody? Somebody will always be a part. God cannot be somebody because he is all, he cannot possess anything because he is the whole. Only beggars possess, because possessions have limitations. Possessions cannot become unlimited. Somebodiness has a boundary, somebodiness cannot be without boundaries, it cannot be infinite. Nobodiness is infinite, just like allness.Really, both are the same. If you are moving without you will feel your inner being as nobody. If you are moving within you will feel the same nobodiness as all. That is why Buddha says that shunya, the absolute void, is brahman. To be nobody is to realize that you are all. To realize that you are somebody is to realize that you are not all. And nothing less will do.So the other way is to move within, not to fight with this nobodiness, not to try to fill this emptiness, but to realize it and become one with it. Be the empty boat and then all the seas are yours. Then you can move into the uncharted, then there is no hindrance for this boat, nobody can block its path. No maps are needed. This boat will move into the infinite. Now everywhere is the goal, but one has to move within.The need to win is to prove that you are somebody, and the only way we know how to prove is to prove in the eyes of others, because their eyes become reflections.Looking in others’ eyes Alexander could see that he was somebody; standing near Diogenes, he felt he was nobody. Diogenes would not recognize that it was Alexander. Rather, Alexander must have felt foolish. It is said that he told Diogenes that if God would grant him another birth he would like to be Diogenes rather than Alexander – next time!The mind always moves in the future. At this very time he could have become Diogenes, there was no barrier, nobody was preventing him. There would be millions of barriers to becoming Alexander the Great because everybody would try to prevent him. When you want to prove that you are somebody you hurt everybody’s ego, and they will all try to prove that you are nothing. Unless you kill them, unless you succeed in destroying them, they will go on saying that you are nothing. What are you thinking yourself to be? Who do you think you are? You have to prove it, and it is a very hard way, very violent, destructive.There was no barrier to being a Diogenes. Alexander felt the beauty, the grace of this man. He said, “If God gives me another opportunity to be born, I would like to be Diogenes – but next time.”Diogenes laughed and said, “If I am asked, only one thing is certain: I would not like ever to be Alexander the Great!”Alexander must have seen in the eyes of Diogenes that there was no recognition of his victories. Suddenly he must have felt the sinking sensation, the deathlike sensation that he was nobody. He must have escaped, run from Diogenes as soon as possible. Diogenes was a dangerous man.It is said that Diogenes haunted Alexander his whole life. Wherever he went, Diogenes was with him like a shadow. At night, in his dreams, Diogenes was there laughing. And it is said, it is a beautiful story, that they died on the same day.Diogenes must have waited for this man to follow. They died on the same day, and while crossing the river which divides this world from that, Alexander met Diogenes again, and the second meeting, the second encounter was more dangerous than before. Alexander was ahead because he had died a few minutes earlier – it had to be so because Diogenes had to follow, he must have waited. Hearing a noise, that somebody was behind on the river, he looked back, and saw Diogenes there laughing. He must have felt numb, because this time things were absolutely different. He was also naked like Diogenes, because you cannot take your clothes to the other world. This time he was again absolutely nobody, not an emperor.But Diogenes was the same. All that death can take away he had already renounced, so death couldn’t take anything from him. He was just the same as on that river bank, and here he was on this river, just the same. So to be nonchalant, to give himself courage and confidence, Alexander also laughed and said, “Great, wonderful! Again the meeting of the emperor and the beggar, the meeting of the greatest emperor and the greatest beggar.”Diogenes replied, “You are absolutely right, only you are a little confused about who is the emperor and who is the beggar. This is a meeting of the greatest emperor and the greatest beggar, but the emperor is behind and the beggar is ahead. And I tell you, Alexander, at the first meeting it was also the same. You were the beggar, but you thought I was. Now look at yourself. What have you gained by winning the whole world?”What is the need to win? What do you want to prove? In your own eyes you know that you are a nonentity, you are nothing, and this nothingness becomes a pain in the heart. You suffer because you are nothing – so you have to prove yourself in the eyes of others. You have to create some opinion in others’ minds that you are somebody, that you are not a nothing. And looking in their eyes you will gather opinions, public opinion, and through public opinion you will create an image. This image is the ego, it is not your real self. It is a reflected glory, it is not your own – it is collected from others’ eyes.This type will always be afraid of others because they can take back whatsoever they have given. A politician is always afraid of the public because they can take back whatsoever they have given. It is just borrowed, his self is a borrowed self. If you are afraid of others, you are a slave, you are not a master.A Diogenes is not afraid of others. You cannot take anything from him because he has not borrowed anything. He has the self, you only have the ego. This is the difference between the self and the ego – the ego is a borrowed self, it depends on others, on public opinion. Self is your authentic being, it is not borrowed, it is yours. Nobody can take it back.Look, Chuang Tzu has beautiful lines to say:When an archer is shooting for funhe has all his skill.For fun! When an archer is shooting for fun he has all his skill. When you are playing, you are not trying to prove that you are somebody. You are at ease, at home. While playing, just for fun, you are not worried what others think about you.Have you seen a father in a mock fight with his child? He will be defeated. He will lie down and the child will sit on his chest and laugh, and say, “I am the winner!” – and the father will be happy. It is just fun. In fun you can be defeated and be happy. Fun isn’t serious, it is not related to the ego. Ego is always serious.So remember, if you are serious, you will always be in turmoil, inner turmoil. A saint is always in play, as if shooting for fun. He is not interested in shooting at a particular target, he is just enjoying himself.One German philosopher, Eugene Herrigel, went to Japan to learn meditation. In Japan they use all types of excuses to teach meditation, including archery. Herrigel was a perfect archer, one hundred percent. He would never miss the target. So he went to a master to learn meditation through archery, because he was already skilled in it.After three years Herrigel started feeling that it was a waste of time, because the master went on insisting that he should not shoot. He told Herrigel, “Let the arrow leave by itself. You should not be there when you aim, let the arrow aim itself.”This was absurd. For a Western man particularly, it was absolutely absurd: “What do you mean, let the arrow shoot by itself? How can the arrow shoot by itself? I have to do something.” And he continued. And he would never miss the target.But the master said, “The target is not the target at all. You are the target. I am not looking at whether you are hitting the target or not. That is a mechanical skill. I am looking at you, to see whether you are there or not. Shoot for fun! Enjoy it, don’t try to prove that you never miss the target. Don’t try to prove the ego. It is already there, you are there, there is no need to prove it. Be at ease and allow the arrow to shoot itself.”Herrigel could not understand. He tried and tried and said again and again, “If my aim is a hundred percent correct, why don’t you give me the certificate?”The Western mind is always interested in the end result and the East is always interested in the beginning, not in the end – in the archer, not in the target. The end is useless. So the master would say, “No!”Then, completely disappointed, Herrigel asked to leave. He said, “Then I will have to go. Three years is too much and nothing has been gained and you go on saying no, and you go on saying that I am still the same.”The day he was to leave, he had just gone to say good-bye. The master was teaching other disciples. That morning Herrigel was not interested; he was leaving, he had dropped the whole project. So he was just waiting there until the master was not engaged. He would say his good-bye and leave.Sitting on a bench he looked at the master for the first time. For the first time in three years he looked at the master. Really, he was not doing anything; it was as if the arrow was shooting itself. The master was not serious, he was playing, he was in fun. There was nobody who was interested in a target.Ego is always target-oriented. Fun has no target to reach, fun is in the beginning when the arrow leaves the bow. If it shoots that is accidental, if it reaches the target that is not relevant; whether it reaches or misses is not the point. But when the arrow leaves the bow, the archer should be in fun, enjoying, not serious. When you are serious you are tense, when you are not serious you are relaxed, and when you are relaxed you are. When you are tense, the ego is; you are clouded.For the first time Herrigel looked – because now he was not interested. It was none of his business now, he had dropped the whole thing. He was leaving so there was no question of being serious. He had accepted his failure, nothing was to be proved. He looked, and for the first time his eyes were not obsessed with the target.He looked at the master and it was as if the arrow was shooting itself from the bow. The master was only giving it energy, he was not shooting. He was not doing anything, the whole thing was effortless. Herrigel looked, and for the first time he understood what it meant.As if enchanted he approached the master, took the bow in his hand and drew back the arrow. The master said, “You have reached. This is what I have been telling you to do for three years.” The arrow had not yet left the bow and the master said, “Finished: the target is attained.” Now he was having fun, he was not serious, he was not goal-oriented.This is the difference. Fun is not goal-oriented; it has no goal. Fun itself is the goal, the intrinsic value, nothing else. You enjoy it, that is all. There is no purpose to it; you played, that’s all.When an archer is shooting for fun he has all his skill. When you are shooting for fun, you are not in conflict. There are not two, there is no tension; your mind is not going anywhere. Your mind is not going at all – so you are whole. Then the skill is there.It is said of one Zen painter, a Zen master… He was making a drawing, a design, for a new pagoda, a new temple. It was his habit to have his chief disciple by his side. He would draw the design, look at the disciple and ask, “What do you think?”And the disciple would say, “Not worthy of you.” So he would throw it out.This happened ninety-nine times. Three months passed and the king was continually asking when the design would be completed, when the work could start. And one day it happened: the master was making the design, and the ink ran dry, so he told the disciple to go out and prepare more ink.The disciple went out, and when he came back in, he said, “What? You have done it! But why couldn’t you do it for three months?”The master said, “Because of you. You were sitting by my side and I was divided. You were looking at me and I was target-oriented, it was not fun. When you were not there, I relaxed. I felt that nobody is there, I became whole. I have not done this design, it has come by itself. For three months it would not come because I was the doer.”When an archer is shooting for fun he has all his skill…because his whole being is available. And when the whole being is available, you have a beauty, a grace, a totally different quality of being. When you are divided, serious, tense, you are ugly. You may succeed, but your success will be ugly. You may prove to somebody that you are somebody but you are not proving anything, you are simply creating a false image. But when you are total, relaxed, whole, nobody may know about you, but you are.And this wholeness is the benediction, the beatitude, the blessing, that happens to a meditative mind, that happens in meditation.Meditation means wholeness.So remember, meditation should be fun, it should not be work. You should not do it like a religious man, you should do it like a gambler. Play, for fun. You should be like a sportsman not a businessman. It should be fun, and then all the skill will be available, then it will flower by itself. You will not be needed. No effort is needed. Simply your whole being has to be available, your whole energy has to be available. Then the flower comes by itself.If he shoots for a brass bucklehe is already nervous.If he is in a competition just for a brass buckle, if something is to be achieved, some result is there, he is already nervous, afraid. Fear comes in: “Will I succeed or not?” He is divided. One part of the mind says, “Maybe you will succeed”; another part says, “Maybe you will fail.” Now his whole skill is not available, now he is half and half. And whenever you are divided your whole being becomes ugly and ill. You are diseased.If he shoots for a prize of goldhe goes blindor sees two targets –he is out of his mind.Go to the market and see people who are after gold. They are blind. Gold blinds men as nothing else does, gold covers the eyes completely. When you are too much for success, too much for the result, too ambitious, when you are too much after the gold medal, then you are blind and you start seeing two targets. You are so drunk you start seeing double.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin was teaching his son in a bar: “Always remember when to stop. Alcohol is good, but one needs to know when to stop. And I’m telling you through my experience. Look over at that corner – when those four people sitting at the table start looking like eight, stop.”The boy said, “But father, I see only two people sitting there.”When the mind is drunk, vision becomes double. And gold makes you so unconscious, drunk. Now there are two targets and you are in such a hurry to reach them that you are nervous, trembling inside.This is the state Chuang Tzu calls: …he is out of his mind. Everybody is out of his mind. It is not only mad people who are out of their minds, you are also out of your mind. The difference is only of degree, not of quality, a little more and any moment you can cross the boundary. It is as if you are at ninety-nine degrees. One hundred degrees and you boil, you have crossed the boundary. The difference between those who are in madhouses and those who are outside is only of quantity, not of quality. Everybody is out of his mind, because everyone is after results, goals, purposes. Something has to be achieved. Then comes nervousness, inner trembling, then you cannot be still within. And when you tremble inside, the target becomes two, or even four or eight – and then it is impossible to become an archer.A perfect archer is always the archer who is having fun.A perfect man lives life as fun, as play.Look at Krishna’s life. Had Chuang Tzu known about him, it would have been beautiful. Krishna’s life is fun. Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, somehow or other look a little serious, as if something has to be achieved – the moksha, the nirvana, the desirelessness. But Krishna is absolutely purposeless – the flute player just living for fun, dancing with girls, enjoying, singing. Nowhere to go, all is here, so why bother about the result. Everything is available right now, why not enjoy it?Krishna is the perfect man if fun is the sign of a perfect man. In India we never call his life Krishna charitra, his character, we never call it that. We call it Krishna leela, his play. It is not a character, it is not purposeful; it is absolutely purposeless.It is just like a small child. You cannot ask, “What are you doing?” You cannot ask, “What is the meaning?” He is enjoying himself just running after butterflies. What will he achieve just jumping in the sun? To what end will this effort lead him? Nowhere! He is not going anywhere. We call him childish and we think ourselves mature, but I tell you that when you are really mature, you will again become childlike. Then your life will again become fun. You will enjoy it, every bit of it, you will not be serious. A deep laughter will spread all over your life. It will be more like a dance and less like a business; it will be more like singing, humming in the bathroom, less like calculating in the office. It will not be mathematics, it will just be enjoyment.His skill has not changed,but the prize divides him.He cares.He thinks more of winningthan of shooting –and the need to windrains him of power.If you look so impotent, so powerless, helpless, it is because of you. Nobody else is draining you of your power. You have infinite sources of power, unending, but you look drained, as if any moment you are going to fall with no energy left.Where are all these energies going? You are creating a conflict within yourself – your skill is the same.His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares. I have heard…It happened in a village… A poor man, the son of a beggar, he was young, healthy – so young and so healthy that when the king’s elephant passed through the village, he would just catch hold of the elephant’s tail and it would not be able to move.Sometimes it became very embarrassing to the king because he would be sitting on the elephant and the whole market would gather and people would laugh. And all because of the son of a beggar.The king asked his prime minister, “Something has to be done. This is insulting. I have become afraid to pass through that village, and that boy sometimes visits other villages also. Anywhere he can catch hold of the elephant’s tail and it will not move. He is so powerful, do something to drain his energy.”The prime minister said, “I will have to go and consult a wise man because I don’t know how to drain his energy. There is nothing to drain his energy because he is a beggar. If he had a shop, the energy could be drained. If he was working as a clerk in an office, the energy would be drained. If he was a master in a primary school, his energy could be drained. But he has nothing to do. He lives for fun, and people love him and give him food and milk, so he is never short of food. He is happy, he eats and sleeps. So it is difficult, but I will go.”So he went to a wise old man. The wise old man said, “Do one thing. Go and tell the boy that you will give him one golden rupee every day if he will do a small job – and the job is very small. He has to go to the village temple and put the lamp on. He has just to light the lamp, that is all. And you will give him one golden rupee every day.”The prime minister said, “But how will this help? This may make him even more energetic. He will get one rupee and he will feel more energy. He will not even bother to beg.”The wise man said, “Don’t worry, simply do what I say.”This was done, and the next week, when the king passed, the boy tried but he failed, he couldn’t stop the elephant. He was dragged along by it.What happened? Care entered, anxiety entered. He had to remember, for twenty-four hours a day he had to remember that he had to go to the temple every evening and put the light on. That became an anxiety, that divided his whole being. Even in his sleep he started to dream that it was evening: “What are you doing? Go and put the light on and take your rupee.”Then he started to collect those golden rupees – now seven, now eight. Then he started to calculate that by such and such a time he would have one hundred golden rupees – and they would grow to two hundred. Mathematics came in, fun was lost. And he had just a small thing to do to, to put the light on. Just a single minute affair, not even a single minute, just a momentary thing – but it became a worry. It drained him of all his energy.If you are drained there is no wonder your life is not fun. You have so many temples and so many lamps to put on and off, so many calculations in your life, it cannot be a fun.His skill has not changed – the skill is the same, but the archer, when he is shooting for fun, has all his skill available. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares. Anxiety enters, nervousness comes in. He thinks more of winning, now he is not concerned with shooting. Now the question is how to win, not how to shoot. He has moved from the beginning to the end. Now the means is not important, the end is important, and whenever the end is important your energy is divided, because all that can be done is to be done with the means, not with the end. Ends are not in your hands.Says Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita: “Don’t be concerned with the end, with the result. Simply do whatsoever is to be done here and now and leave the result to me, to existence. Don’t ask what will happen, nobody knows. You simply leave it to existence, to faith. Whatever happens you simply do whatsoever is to be done. Be concerned with the means and don’t think of the end. Don’t be result-oriented.”This situation is beautiful and worth considering with Chuang Tzu’s sentences, because Arjuna was an archer, the greatest archer India has produced. He was the perfect archer.But the end entered his mind. He had never worried, it had never happened before. His archery was perfect, his skill was total, absolute, but looking at that vast siege of Kurukshetra, two armies confronting each other, he became worried. What was the worry? It was that he had friends on both sides. It was a family affair, a war between cousin-brothers, so everybody was interlinked. Those who were on the other side were also related to those on this side All these families and relatives were divided – it was a rare war, a family war.Krishna was fighting alongside Arjuna, but his army was fighting on the other side. Krishna had said, “You both love me so you will have to divide half and half. One side can have me, and the other side can have my armies.”Duryodhana, the leader of the other side, was foolish. He thought, “What will I do with Krishna alone – and his army is so big.” So he said, “I will choose your army.”So Krishna was with Arjuna and Arjuna was happy, because one Krishna is more than the whole world. What can armies do – unconscious, sleepy people? One awakened man is worth all.Krishna became the real help when Arjuna was confused and his mind divided. In the Gita it is said that looking at these two armies he became puzzled. And these are the words he spoke to Krishna: “My energy is drained. I feel nervous, I feel impotent, my power has left me” – and he was a man of perfect skill, a perfect archer.His bow is known as a gandiva. He said, “The gandiva seems to be too heavy for me. I have become so powerless, my body is numb, and I cannot think and cannot see. Everything has become confused, because these are all relatives and I will have to kill them. What will be the result? Murder, so many people killed, and what will I gain out of it? A worthless kingdom? I am not interested in fighting, it seems to be too costly. I would like to escape and become a sannyasin, to go to the forest and meditate. This is not for me. My energy is drained.”Krishna told him that, “Don’t think of the result. That is not in your hands. And don’t think that you are the doer, because if you are the doer, then the end is in your hands. The doer is always the divine, and you are just an instrument. Be concerned with the here and now, the means, and leave the end to me. I tell you, Arjuna, that these people are already dead, they are fated to die. You are not going to murder them. You are just the instrument to reveal to them the fact that they have been murdered, they are already murdered. As far as I can see, I see them dead. They have reached the point where death happens – you are just an instrument.”Sanskrit has a beautiful word, there is no equivalent to it in English: it is nimitta. Nimitta means you are not the doer, you are not the cause, not even one of the causes, you are just the nimitta. It means the cause is in the hands of the divine. The divine is the doer, you are just a vehicle of it. You are just like a postman – the postman is the nimitta. He comes and delivers a letter to you. If the letter insults you, you don’t get angry with him. You don’t say, “Why did you bring me this letter?” The postman is not concerned, he is the nimitta. He has not written the letter, he has not caused it, he is not concerned about it. He has just fulfilled his duty. You will not be angry with him. You will not say, “Why have you brought this letter to me?”Krishna said to Arjuna, “You are just like a postman, you have to deliver death to them. You are not the killer; the death is from the divine. They have earned it already, so don’t you worry. If you are not going to kill them, then somebody else will. If this postman will not do it then somebody else will deliver the letter. It is not a question of whether or not you are there, or you are on holiday or you are ill, then the letter will not be delivered. A substitute postman will do. But the letter has to be delivered. So don’t be bothered, don’t get worried unnecessarily; you are just a nimitta, neither the cause of it nor the doer of it, just an instrument. Be concerned with the means, don’t think about the ends, because once you think about the ends your skill is lost, you are divided.“That’s why you are feeling drained, Arjuna. Your energy has not gone anywhere. It has become a conscience – then you are divided. You are fighting with yourself. One part says go ahead; another part says this is not good. Your wholeness is lost. And whenever the wholeness is lost, one feels impotent.”Such a powerful man as Arjuna says, “I cannot carry this gandiva, this bow is too heavy for me. I have become nervous. I feel fear, deep fear, an anxiety arising in me. I cannot fight.”The skill is the same, nothing has changed, but the mind is divided. Whenever you are divided you are powerless; when you are undivided you are powerful. Desires divide you, meditation undivides you. Desires lead you to the future, meditation brings you to the present.Remember this as a conclusion: don’t move to the future. Whenever you feel your mind moving to the future jump back to the present immediately. Don’t try to complete it. Immediately, the moment you think, the moment you become alert that the mind has moved into the future, into the desire, jump back to the present. Be at home.You will lose it again and again. Again and again you will miss it because it has become a long habit; but sooner or later, more and more, you will be at home. Then life is fun, it is a play. And then you are so full of energy that you overflow – a flood of vitality. And that flood is bliss.Impotent, drained, you cannot be ecstatic. How can you dance? For dancing you will need infinite energy. Drained, how can you sing? Singing is always an overflowing. Dead as you are, how can you pray? Only when you are totally alive, a thankfulness arises from the heart, a gratitude. That gratitude is prayerfulness.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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There were three friends discussing life.One said:“Can men live together and know nothing of it,work together and produce nothing?Can they fly around in spaceand forget to exist, world without end?”The three friends looked at each otherand burst out laughing.They had no explanation,thus they were better friends than before.Then one friend died.Confucius sent a discipleto help the other two chant his obsequies.The disciple foundthat one friend had composed a songwhile the other played the lute.They sang:“Hey, Sung Hu, where’d you go?Hey, Sung Hu, where’d you go?You have gone where you really were,and we are here – damn it, we are here!”Then the disciple of Confuciusburst in on them and exclaimed:“May I inquire where you found thisin the rubrics for obsequies,this frivolous carolingin the presence of the departed?”The two friends looked at each otherand laughed:“Poor fellow,he doesn’t know the new liturgy!”The first thing about life is that it has no explanation. It is there in its absolute glory, but it has no explanation. It is there as a mystery and if you try to explain it you will miss it. It will not be explained, but you will become blind through your explanations.Philosophy is the enemy of life. The most inimical thing that can happen to a man is to get fixed and obsessed with philosophical explanations. The moment you think you have the explanation life has left you, you are already dead.This will look paradoxical. Death can be explained; life cannot be explained – because death is something finished, complete. Life is always an ongoing affair, life is always on the journey, death has arrived. When something has reached and is finished, you can explain it, you can define it. When something is still ongoing, it means that the unknown is still to be traveled.You can know the past but you cannot know the future. You can put the past into a theory; how can you put the future into a theory? The future is always an opening, an infinite opening, it goes on opening and opening. So when you explain, the explanation always indicates that which is dead.Philosophy has explanations so it cannot be very alive, and you cannot find people who are more dead than philosophers. Their life has ebbed away, their life has oozed out, they are shrunken heads, like dead stones. They make much noise but there is none of the music of life. They have many explanations, but they have completely forgotten that they have only explanations in their hands.Explanation is like a closed fist. Life is like an open hand. They are totally different. And when the fist is completely closed there is no sky in it, no air in it, no space to breathe. You cannot grab the sky in your closed fist; the fist will miss it. The sky is there, the hand is open, it is available. Explanation is grabbing, closing, defining – life oozes out.Even laughter is greater than any philosophy. When somebody laughs about life, he understands it. So all those who have really known have laughed. And their laughter can be heard even after centuries. Mahakashyapa laughed looking at Buddha – Buddha was holding a flower in his hand – and Mahakashyapa laughed. His laughter can be heard even now. Those who have ears to hear, they will hear his laughter, just like a river continuously flowing past, through the centuries.In Zen monasteries in Japan they still ask, disciples still ask the master, “Tell us, Master, why did Mahakashyapa laugh?” And those who are more alert they ask, “Tell us, Master, why is Mahakashyapa still laughing?” Those who are more alert use the present tense, not the past. And it is said that the master will reply only when he feels that you can hear the laughter of Mahakashyapa. If you cannot hear it, nothing can be said to you about it.Buddhas have always been laughing. You may not have heard them because your doors are closed. You may have looked at a buddha and you may have felt that he is serious, but this seriousness is projected. It is your own seriousness – you have used the buddha as a screen. Hence, Christians say Jesus never laughed. This seems to be absolutely foolish. Jesus must have laughed and he must have laughed so totally that his whole being must have become laughter – but the disciples couldn’t hear it, that is true. They must have remained closed, their own seriousness projected.They could see Jesus on the cross – because you all live in such suffering that you can only see suffering. Even if they had heard Jesus laughing, they must have omitted it. It was so contradictory to their life, it didn’t fit in. A Jesus laughing doesn’t fit in with you, he becomes a stranger.But in the East it has been different, and in Zen, in Tao, the laughter reached its peak. It became the polar opposite of philosophy.A philosopher is serious because he thinks life is a riddle and a solution can be found. He works on life with his mind, and he gets more and more serious. The more he misses life, the more serious and dead he becomes.Taoists, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, say that if you can laugh, if you can have a belly laughter that comes from the very core of your being, not just on the surface, not painted – if it comes from the deepest center of your being, spreads all over you, overflows to the universe – that laughter will give you the first glimpse of what life is. It is a mystery. For Chuang Tzu such laughter is prayerful, because now you accept life; you don’t hanker for the explanation. How can one find the explanation? We are part of it. How can the part find the explanation for the whole? How can the part look at the whole? How can the part dissect, divide the whole? How can the part go before the whole was there?Explanation means that you must transcend that which you are trying to explain – you must be there before it existed, you must be there when it has ceased to exist. You must move around it so you can define it, and you must dissect it so you can reach the heart of it. A surgeon can find an explanation for a dead body, but not for life. All medical definitions of life are foolish because the surgeon dissects, and when he comes to know that life is no longer there, it is only a corpse. All explanations are postmortems, life is not there.Now even scientists have become aware of the phenomenon that when you examine blood, if you take blood out of the body, and then examine it, it cannot be the same. Scientists say this now, because when it was moving in the veins of the body it was alive, it had a different quality; now when it is in the test tube, it is dead. It is not the same blood because the basic quality – life – is no longer in it. All explanations are of that type.A flower on the tree is different because life, the shape of life, is flowing in it. When you cut it from the tree, take it to the lab, examine it, it is a different flower. Don’t be deceived by the appearance. Now life is no longer flowing in it. You may come to know the chemical composition of the flower, but that is not the explanation.A poet has a different approach, not through dissection, but through love, not through uprooting the flower from the tree but rather by merging with the flower, remaining in deep love with it, in a participation mystique. He participates, then he comes to know something, and that is not an explanation. Poetry cannot be an explanation, but it has a glimpse of the truth. It is truer than any science.Watch: when you are in love with someone your heart beats differently. Your lover, your beloved, will listen to your heart – it beats differently. Your lover will take your hand – the warmth is different. The blood moves in a different dance, it pulsates differently.When the doctor takes your hand in his hand, the pulsation is not the same. He can hear the heart beating but this beat is different. When the heart was beating for a lover it had a song of its own, but only a lover can know the beat, only a lover can know the pulsation, the blood, the warmth of life. The doctor cannot know.What has changed? The doctor has become the observer and you are the observed – you are not one. The doctor treats you like an object. He looks at you as if he is looking at a thing – that makes the difference. A lover doesn’t look at you as an object – he becomes one with you, he merges and melts. He comes to know the deeper core of your being, but he has no explanation. He feels it, but feeling is different. He cannot think about it.Anything that can be thought will not be alive. Thought deals with death, it always deals with dead objects. That is why in science there is no place for feeling, because feeling gives a different dimension to existence, the dimension of the alive.This beautiful story has many things to say to you. Move step-by-step into it, and if you reach a conclusion, then understand that you have missed. If you reach laughter, then you have understood.There were three friends discussing life.Chuang Tzu is very telegraphic. As always, those who know will not utter a single word unnecessarily. They live with the essential.There were three friends discussing life. The first thing to be understood is that only friends can discuss life. Whenever a discussion becomes antagonistic, whenever a discussion becomes a debate, the dialogue is broken. Life cannot be discussed that way. Only friends can discuss, because then discussion is not a debate, it is a dialogue.What is the difference between a debate and a dialogue? In debate you are not ready to listen to the other; even if you are listening, your listening is false. You are not listening, you are simply preparing your argument. While the other is speaking you are getting ready to contradict. While the other is talking, you are simply waiting for your opportunity to argue. You have a prejudice already there in you, you have a theory. You are not in search, you are not ignorant, you are not innocent; you are already filled, your boat is not empty. You carry certain theories with you and you are trying to prove them true.A seeker of truth carries no theories with him. He is always open, vulnerable. He can listen. A Hindu cannot listen, a Mohammedan cannot listen. How can a Hindu listen? He already knows the truth, there is no need to listen. He will try to make you listen to him, but he cannot listen. You try to make him listen but he cannot; his mind is already so filled that nothing can penetrate. A Christian cannot listen, he already knows the truth. He has closed his doors for new breezes to reach him, he has closed his eyes for the new sun to rise; he has reached, he has arrived.All those who feel that they have arrived can debate, but they cannot move in a dialogue. They can clash, then conflict arises, they oppose each other. In such a discussion you may prove something, but nothing is proved. You may silence the other, but the other is never converted. You cannot convince, because this is a sort of war, a civilized war – you are not fighting with weapons, you are fighting with words.Chuang Tzu says: Three friends were discussing life – that is why they could reach laughter; otherwise there would have been a conclusion. One theory might have defeated other theories, one philosophy might have silenced other philosophies, then there would have been a conclusion – and conclusion is dead.Life has no conclusion. Life has no foolish thought to it. It goes on and on endlessly; it is always, eternally, an onward affair. How can you conclude anything about it? The moment you conclude you have stepped out of it. Life goes on and you have stepped out of the way. You may cling to your conclusion but life will not wait for you.Friends can discuss. Why? Because you can love a person, you cannot love a philosophy. Philosophers cannot be friends. You can be either their disciple or their enemy but you cannot be their friend. Either you are convinced by them or not convinced, either you follow them or don’t follow them, but you cannot be friends. A friendship is possible only between two empty boats. Then you are open to the other, inviting to the other, then you are constantly an invitation: “Come to me, enter me, be with me.”You can throw away theories and philosophies but you cannot throw away friendship. When you are in friendship a dialogue becomes possible. In dialogue you listen, and if you have to speak, you speak not to contradict the other, you speak just to seek, to inquire. You speak, not with a conclusion already reached, but with an inquiry, an ongoing inquiry. You are not trying to prove something; you speak from innocence, not from philosophy. Philosophy is never innocent, it is always cunning, it is a device of the mind.Three friends were discussing life – because between friends a dialogue is possible. So in the East it has been the tradition that unless you find friendship, love, reverence, trust, no inquiry is possible. If you go to a master and your boat is filled with your ideas, there can be no contact, there can be no dialogue. First you have to be empty so that friendship becomes possible, so that you can look without any ideas floating in your eyes, so that you can look without conclusions. And whenever you can look without conclusions, your perspective is vast, it is not confined.A Hindu can read the Bible, but he never understands it. Really, he never reads it, he cannot listen to it. A Christian can read the Gita, but he remains the outsider. He never penetrates its innermost being, he never reaches the inner realm, he moves round and round. He cannot really read the books, it is impossible because of the conclusions in the mind. He already knows that only Christ is true, he already knows that only through Christ comes salvation; he already knows that Christ is the only son of God. How can he listen to Krishna? Only Christ is truth. Then Krishna is bound to be untrue, at the most a beautiful untruth, but never true. Or if he concedes too much, then he will say it is approximately true.But what do you mean when you say approximately true? It is untrue. Truth is either there or not. Nothing can be approximately true. Truth is or truth is not. It is always total. You cannot divide it. You cannot say it is true to some degree. No, truth knows no degrees. Either it is or it is not.So when the mind concludes that Christ is the only truth, then it is impossible to listen to Krishna. Even if he crosses your path, you will not be able to listen to him. Even if you meet Buddha you will not meet him.The whole world is filled with conclusions. Someone is a Christian, someone is a Hindu, someone is a Jaina, someone is a Buddhist – that is why truth is missing. A religious person cannot be a Christian, a Hindu, or a Buddhist; a religious person can only be a sincere inquirer. He inquires and he remains open without any conclusions. His boat is empty.Three friends discussing life… Only friends can discuss because then it becomes a dialogue, then the relationship is of I and thou. When you are debating, the relationship is of I and it. The other is a thing to be converted, convinced, the other is not a thou; the other has no significance, the other is just a number.In friendship the other is significant, the other has intrinsic value, the other is an end in himself, you are not trying to convert him. How can you convert a person? What foolishness! The very effort to convert a person is foolish. A person is not a thing. A person is so big and so vast that no theory can be more important than a person. No Bible is more important than a person, no Gita is more important than a person. A person means the very glory of life. You can love a person but you can never convert a person. If you are trying to convert, you are trying to manipulate. Then the person has become a means and you are exploiting.Dialogue is possible when your I says thou, when the other is loved, when there is no ideology behind it. The other is simply loved, and whether he is a Christian or Hindu doesn’t matter. This is what friendship means – and friends can discuss life because dialogue is possible.One said:“Can men live together and know nothing of it,work together and produce nothing?Can they fly around in spaceand forget to exist, world without end?”He is not proposing a theory, he is simply raising a question. And remember, you can raise a question in two ways. Sometimes you raise a question only because you have to supply an answer and the answer is already there – you raise the question just to answer it. Then the question is not real, it is false. The answer is already there. The question is just a trick, rhetorical; it is not real, authentic.The question is authentic when there is no answer in you, when you question but you don’t question from an answer, when you question simply to look; the question leaves you empty, just open, inviting, inquiring.One said: “Can men live together and know nothing of it…?” We live together and we never know anything of what togetherness is. You can live together for years without knowing what togetherness is. Look all over the world – people are living together, nobody is living alone: husbands with wives, wives with husbands, children with parents, parents with children, teachers with students, friends with friends; everybody is living together. Life exists in togetherness, but do you know what togetherness is?Living with a wife for forty years, you may not have lived with her for a single moment. Even while making love to her you may have been thinking of other things. Then you were not there, the lovemaking was just mechanical.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin went to a film with his wife. They had been married for at least twenty years. The film was one of those torrid foreign films. When they were leaving the cinema hall, the wife said to Nasruddin, “Nasruddin, you never love me like those actors were doing in the film. Why?”Nasruddin said, “Are you crazy? Do you know how much they are paid for doing such things?”People go on living with each other without any love because you love only when it pays. And how can you love if you love only when it pays? Then love has also become a commodity in the market; then it is not a relationship, it is not a togetherness, it is not a celebration. You are not happy being with the other, at the most you just tolerate the other.Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was on her deathbed and the doctor said, “Nasruddin, I must be frank with you, because in such moments it is better to be truthful. Your wife cannot be saved. The disease has gone beyond us, and you must be ready. You should not allow yourself to suffer. Accept it as fate. Your wife is going to die.”Nasruddin said, “Don’t be worried about it. If I could suffer with her for so many years, I can suffer for a few hours more.”At the most we tolerate. And whenever you think in terms of toleration, you are suffering, your togetherness is suffering. That is why Jean-Paul Sartre says, “The other is hell,” because with the other you simply suffer, the other becomes the bondage, the other becomes the domination. The other starts creating trouble, your freedom is lost, your happiness is lost. Then it becomes tolerance, a routine. If you are tolerating the other how can you know the beauty of togetherness? Really, it has never happened.Marriage almost always never happens, because marriage means the celebration of togetherness. It is not a license. No registry office can give you marriage; no priest can give it to you as a gift. It is a tremendous revolution in the being, it is a great transformation in your very style of life, and it can happen only when you celebrate togetherness, when the other is no longer felt as the other, when you no longer feel yourself as I. When the two are not really two, but a bridge has happened, they have become one in a certain sense. They remain two bodies, but as far as the innermost being is concerned, they have become one. They may be two poles of one existence but they are not two. A bridge exists. That bridge gives you glimpses of togetherness.It is one of the rarest things to come across a marriage. People live together because they cannot live alone. Remember this: because they cannot live alone, that is why they live together. To live alone is uncomfortable, to live alone is uneconomical, to live alone is difficult, that is why they live together. The reasons are negative.A man was going to get married and somebody asked him, “You have always been against marriage, why have you suddenly changed your mind?”He said, “Winter is coming and they say that this winter is going to be very cold, and central heating is beyond me and a wife is cheaper.”This is the logic. You live with someone because it is comfortable, convenient, economical, cheaper. To live alone is really difficult. A wife is so many things, the housekeeper, the cook, the servant, the nurse, so many things – the cheapest labor in the world, doing so many things without being paid at all. It is exploitation.Marriage exists as an institution for exploitation, it is not togetherness. That is why no happiness comes out of it as a flowering. It cannot. How can ecstasy be born out of the roots of exploitation?Then there are your so-called saints who go on saying that you are miserable because you live in a family, because you live in the world. They say, “Leave everything, renounce!” And their logic appears to be right to you also, not because it is right, but because you have missed togetherness. Otherwise, all those saints would look absolutely wrong. One who has known togetherness has known the divine; one who is really married has known the divine, because love is the greatest door.But togetherness is not there and you live together without knowing what togetherness is; you live for seventy, eighty years without knowing what life is. You drift without any roots in life. You just move from one moment to another without tasting what life gives you. And this is not given by birth. It is not hereditary to know life.Life comes through birth but the wisdom, the experience, the ecstasy, has to be learnt – hence the meaning of meditation. You have to earn it, you have to grow toward it, you have to attain a certain maturity; only then will you be able to know it.Life can open to you only in a certain moment of maturity. But people live and die childishly. They never really grow, they never attain to maturity.What is maturity? Just becoming sexually mature? Then you are not mature. Ask the psychologists: they say that the mental age remains nearabout thirteen or fourteen. Your physical body goes on growing but your mind stops at about thirteen. That’s why it is no wonder you behave so foolishly, why your life becomes a continuous foolishness. A mind which has not grown up is bound to do something wrong every moment.And the immature mind always throws responsibility onto the other. You are unhappy because everybody else is creating hell for you: “The other is hell.” I say this assertion of Sartre is really immature. If you are mature, the other can also become heaven. The other is whatsoever you are because the other is just a mirror, he reflects you.When I say maturity, I mean an inner integrity. And this inner integrity comes only when you stop throwing responsibility onto others, when you stop saying that the other is creating your suffering, when you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering. This is the first step toward maturity: I am responsible. Whatsoever is happening, it is my doing.You feel sad. Is this your doing? You will feel very much disturbed, but if you can remain with this feeling, sooner or later you will be able to stop doing many things. This is what the theory of karma is all about. You are responsible. Don’t say society is responsible, don’t say that parents are responsible, don’t say the economic conditions are responsible. Don’t throw the responsibility onto anybody. You are responsible.Once you accept this burden… In the beginning it looks like a burden because now you cannot throw responsibility onto anybody else.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin was sitting, very sad. Somebody asked him, “Nasruddin, why do you look so sad?”He said, “My wife has insisted that I stop gambling, smoking, drinking, and playing cards. I have stopped all of them.”The man said, “So your wife must be very happy.”Nasruddin said, “That is the problem. Now she cannot find anything to complain about, so she is very unhappy. She starts talking, but she cannot find anything to talk about. Now she cannot make me responsible for anything and she is so unhappy, I have never seen her so unhappy. I also thought that when I stop all these things her unhappiness will stop. But she has become more unhappy than ever.”If you go on throwing responsibility onto others and they all do whatsoever you say they do, you will commit suicide. Because there will be nowhere left to throw your responsibilities.So it is good to have a few faults; it helps others to be happy. A wife will leave a really perfect husband, because how can you dominate a perfect man? So even if you don’t want to, go on doing something wrong so the wife can dominate you and feel happy.A perfect husband – there is bound to be divorce. You will all be against any perfect man because you cannot condemn him, you cannot say anything wrong about him. Our minds love to throw responsibility onto somebody else, they want to complain. It makes us feel good, because then we are not responsible, we are unburdened. But this unburdening is very costly. You are not really unburdened, you are getting more and more burdened. Only you are not alert.People live for seventy years. Really, they have lived for many, many lives without knowing what life is. They were not mature, they were not integrated, they were not centered. They lived on the periphery.When your periphery meets the other’s periphery a clash happens, and if you go on being concerned that the other is wrong, you remain on the periphery. Once you realize: “I am responsible for my being; whatsoever has happened, I am the cause, I have done it,” suddenly your consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. Now you become, for the first time, the center of your world.Now much can be done – because whatsoever you don’t like, you can drop; whatsoever you like, you can adopt; whatsoever you feel is true, you can follow, and whatsoever you feel is untrue, there is no need to follow because you are now centered and rooted in yourself.One friend asked:“Can men live together and know nothing of it,work together and produce nothing?Can they fly around in spaceand forget to exist, world without end?”The three friends looked at each other…Only friends look at each other. When there is someone to whom you feel antagonistic, you never look at him. You avoid the eyes. Even if you have to look, your look is vacant, you don’t allow your eyes to absorb him; he is something foreign, rejected.Eyes are doors. You look toward a person only when you want to absorb, to let him melt in you.The three friends looked at each other… One friend inquired, the other two were not in any hurry to answer. They waited, they were patient. If there had been any conclusion in their mind, they would have objected immediately. But they looked at each other. They felt the situation, the inquiry, the heart of the inquirer, the meaning of the question, the depth of the question. Remember, if you can feel the depth of a question, the answer is almost found. But nobody is that patient, nobody is ready to go into the question deeply. You ask, but you never go into the inquiry. You ask for the answer immediately.The three friends looked at each otherand burst out laughing.The fact, the question, the penetration of it, the depth, the reality, the fact of it – no answer was needed. Any answer would have been foolish, any answer would have been superficial.It is said about Buddha that millions of times people would ask questions and he would not answer. If the question was such that any answer would be superficial, he would not answer. If somebody asked, “Is there a God?” he remained silent. But people are foolish. They started thinking that either he was an atheist, and didn’t believe in God, or that he was ignorant, he didn’t know. Otherwise why should he not say yes or no.You don’t know. When you ask a question like this, whether there is a God, “Does God exist?” you don’t know what you are asking. Is this a question to be answered? Then you are stupid. Can such vital questions be answered? Then you don’t know the depth of it; this is curiosity, not inquiry.If the man who was asking Buddha was really an inquirer, an authentic seeker, then he would have remained with Buddha’s silence – because the silence was the answer. In that silence he would have felt the question, in that silence the question would have asserted itself. Against the background of the silence it would have become clearer. A clarity would have come to him.Whenever you ask a deep question, no answer is required. All that is required is to remain with the question. Don’t move here and there, remain with the question and wait. The very question will become the answer. If you really go deep into the question, it will lead to the very source from where the answer also flowers. It is in you.Buddha has not answered any real question – and remember that about me also. I go on answering your questions, but I also cannot answer your real questions – and you have not asked yet. Whenever you ask the real question, I am not going to answer, because no real question can be answered, it is not an intellectual thing. Only from heart to heart the transmission happens, not from head to head.The three friends looked at each other… What happened in that look? They were not heads in that look, they became hearts. They looked at each other, they felt, they tasted the question – it was so real that there was no answer to it.Yes, we live without knowing what life is. Yes, we live together without knowing what togetherness is. Yes, we live, forgetting completely that we exist. We have been flying round and round in the sky without knowing where we are going or why.The question was so real that if any answer had been given, that answer would be foolish. Only a fool would answer such a question. They looked at each other; they really looked into each other – and burst out laughing. Why burst out laughing? The whole situation is so absurd. Really, we live without knowing what life is; we exist without becoming aware of existence, we journey and journey without knowing from where or to what or why.Life is a mystery. Whenever you confront a mystery laughter will arise. How can you answer a mystery?What is the most mysterious thing in you? Laughter is the most mysterious thing in you. No animal can laugh, only man. It is the supreme-most glory of man. No animal laughs, no trees laugh – only man laughs. Laughter is the most mysterious element in man.Aristotle defined man as the rational being. It is not so because reason exists in other animals also. The difference is only of degree, and it is not much. Man can only be defined as the laughing and weeping animal, no other definition will do, because no other animal can weep, no other animal can laugh. This polarity exists only in humanity. This is something mysterious in man, most mysterious.Anger exists all over, it is nothing. Sex exists all over, it is nothing, it is not so mysterious. If you want to understand sex, you can understand animal sex, and all that is applicable to animal sex will be applicable to man. In that way man is nothing more.Anger, violence, aggression, possessiveness, jealousy, everything exists and exists more purely and more simply in animals than in you. Everything is confused in you. That is why psychologists have to study rats just to study man. They are simple, clear, less confused, and whatsoever they conclude about rats is true of you. All the psychology laboratories are filled with rats. The rat has become the most important animal for psychologists because it is so human-like. In many ways it is like the human.The rat is the only animal which follows humanity wherever it goes. It is universal. If you find a man in Siberia, there will be a rat there somewhere. Wherever he goes, the rat follows – I suspect that rats must have reached the moon. No other animal can exist everywhere like the rat. And its behavior is absolutely human. Understand the behavior of the rat and you have understood humanity.But the rat cannot laugh, the rat cannot weep. Laughter and weeping are two aspects of something which exists only in man. If you need to understand laughter and weeping you have to study humanity; nowhere else can it be studied. That’s why I call it the most distinctive quality of the human mind.Whenever you feel mystery, there are only two ways, either you weep or you laugh. It depends on your personality, your type. It is possible, if they had been of a different personality type, that the three friends would have wept. When such a mystery surrounds you, when you encounter such an unknowable mystery that no explanation is possible, what can you do? How can you respond?But laughter is better than weeping because weeping comes when the mystery of death surrounds you. Then you weep. And the question was about life so it was relevant to laugh. Whenever you encounter the mystery of death you weep, you feel the relevance of weeping whenever death is there.The question was about life, not about death. So it seems relevant that they looked into each other, into the life that was in each – the life pulsating, the life dancing all around and with no explanation, with no secret book to reveal the keys: life in its total mystery, in its total unknowability.What was there to do? They were not philosophers, they were true men, mystics. They laughed:They had no explanation.Thus they were better friends than before.This is beautiful. Whenever there is an explanation enmity arises, whenever you believe in something you are divided. Belief creates conflict. The whole world is divided because of belief. You are a Hindu and someone is a Mohammedan, and you are enemies. Why are you enemies? – because of your belief. Belief creates the conflict; foolish explanations, ideologies, create conflict, war.Look at this: if there is no explanation, who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? And how can you fight? For what? Men have always been fighting over philosophies, shedding blood, murdering each other, just for foolish beliefs. And if you look into beliefs, you can see the foolishness – not of your beliefs, but of others’ beliefs. Your belief is something sacred, but everybody else’s belief looks foolish.All beliefs are foolish. You cannot see your own because it is so near. Really, explanations are foolish, stupid.I have heard…A flock of birds was flying south for the winter. One bird at the rear asked another, “How come we always follow this idiot leader?”The other said, “In the first place, all leaders are idiots.” Otherwise, who would want to lead? Only the foolish are always ready to lead. A wise man hesitates. Life is so mysterious – it is not a ready-made path. How can you lead? A wise man hesitates and an idiot is always ready to lead.So the bird said, “In the first place, all leaders are idiots, because nobody is interested in leading except idiots, and in the second place, he has got the map, so every year we have to follow him.”Life has no map and there is no possibility of making a map. It is a pathless path. Without explanations how can you be divided? If there is no explanation, the world will be one. But there are millions of explanations, millions of fragments.Chuang Tzu says a really very penetrating thing: They had no explanation, thus they were better friends than before. Now there was nothing to be enemies for, nothing to fight about.They laughed, and the laughter made them one. They laughed, and the laughter led them into togetherness. Explain and you are divided, become philosophical and you are separated from others, become a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, then all others are enemies.Look at the mystery and laugh, and humanity is one. And then there is no need to say that Christians are brothers of Hindus, Hindus are brothers of Mohammedans. First, divide them by beliefs, make them ill, and then supply them with medicine – you are all brothers. Have you seen brothers? They fight more than enemies! So what is the use of making them brothers?Man fights for his explanations. All fights are foolish. Man fights for his flags, and look at the flags. What type of foolishness, what type of madness exists in the world? – for flags, for symbols, for beliefs, for ideologies?Says Chuang Tzu: They had no explanation – they laughed. In that mysterious moment they became one: …better friends than before.If you really want to be a friend, have no explanations and no conclusions, don’t believe in anything. And then you are not divided, then humanity is one, then there is no barrier.And love exists not through mind, it exists through feeling.They laughed. Laughter comes from the heart, laughter comes from the belly, laughter comes from the total being. When three people laugh, they become friends. When three people weep, they become friends. When three people debate, they become enemies.Then one friend died.Confucius sent a discipleto help the other two chant his obsequies.Confucius is the most perfect man of manners, par excellence. Nobody can transcend him. So he is always the butt of Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu. They bring Confucius into their stories just to laugh at his foolishness.What was his foolishness? He lived by a system, he lived by a formula, by theories and beliefs. He was the perfectly civilized man, the most perfect gentleman the world has ever known. He moves, and he moves according to the rule. He looks, and he looks according to the rule. He laughs, and he laughs according to the rule. He never moves beyond the boundary, he lives in a constant bondage of his own making. So he is the butt of their laughter, and Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu very much enjoyed bringing him into their stories.Then one friend died. Confucius sent a disciple to help the other two chant his obsequies. Neither life nor death is a mystery to him. It is according to a system. Some mannerism has to be followed. So he sent his disciple to see whether the dead man was disposed of according to the rules, the right prayer, the right chanting as given in the books. The dead had to be respected.This is the difference. A man who lives through manners is always thinking of respect, never of love. And what is respect in comparison to love? Love is something alive; respect is absolutely dead.The disciple foundthat one friend had composed a songwhile the other played the lute.This was unbelievable! This was disrespectful to a person who is dead. The dead body was lying there, and one friend had composed a song. They loved the other man, and when you love a man you want to give him the last farewell through your love, not through books, not through a ready-made song, borrowed, which so many have chanted, so many have used, already rotten, rubbish.They made up a song of their own, fresh, young. Of course, it was homemade, not produced in a factory, not mass-produced. Just homemade, not very polished of course, because they were not poets, they were friends, and they didn’t know how poetry was created. The meter may have been wrong and the grammar incorrect, but love doesn’t care about grammar, love doesn’t care about meter, love doesn’t care about rhythm, because love has such a vital rhythm of its own, it need not care. When there is no love, then everything has to be taken care about, because then you have to substitute.One was playing the lute – and I know that he was not a lute player. But how do you say good-bye to a friend? It must come from your heart, it must be spontaneous, it cannot be ready-made. That is the point.They sang:“Hey Sung Hu, where’d you go?”The mystery! They were not saying, “You are going to heaven.” They didn’t know. Otherwise, when anybody dies you say he has gone to heaven. Then who is going to hell? Nobody seems to go to hell.In India, they use the word swargiya for a dead person. It means one who has gone to heaven. Then who is going to hell?They didn’t know, so what was the point of uttering a falsehood? Who knows where this man had gone, this Sung Hu – to hell or heaven? Who knows whether hell and heaven exist? Nobody knows; it is a mystery, and one should not defile a mystery, one should not make it profane, one should not assert falsehoods. It is such a sacred thing, one should not say anything which is not known directly.“Hey, Sung Hu, where’d you go?”It was a question mark.“Hey, Sung Hu, where’d you go?You have gone where you really were,and we are here – damn it, we are here!”They say, “You have gone to the place from where you came.” This is a secret law: the ultimate can only be the beginning. The circle comes round and becomes perfect, complete. It reaches to the same point from where it started. The end cannot be anything else but the beginning, the death cannot be anything else but the birth. The final should be the source, the original. One is born out of nothingness and then one dies and moves into nothingness. The boat was empty when you were born and when you die the boat will be empty again. Just a flash of lightning – for a few moments you are in the body and then you disappear. Nobody knows from where you came, or where you go.Nobody knows, and they don’t claim any knowledge. They say, “This much we feel, Sung Hu: you have gone to the place from where you came, and damn it, we are still here.” So they are not sorry for Hu, they are sorry for themselves, “We are hanging in the middle, your circle is perfect.”Whenever somebody dies, have you felt this? Are you sorry for the person who is dead or sorry for yourself? Really, when someone dies, are you sad for him or her, or for yourself? Everybody is sorry for himself because every death brings the news that you are going to die. But a person who can laugh at the mystery of life knows what it is, because only knowledge, real wisdom, can laugh.Where you really were, you have gone…“And we are here – damn it, we are here!” And we are still in the middle. Our journey is incomplete; your circle has become perfect. So they are sorry for themselves, and if they weep, they are weeping for themselves. For the friend who has departed they have nothing but a song, nothing but a celebration of the heart. If they are sorry, they are sorry for themselves.This is something to be understood very deeply. If you understand life, if you can laugh at it, then death is the completion, then it is not the end. Remember, death is not the end of life, it is the completion, it is the climax, the crescendo, the peak from where the wave returns again to the original source.They are sorry for themselves, that their wave is hanging in the middle. They have not reached the crescendo, the peak, and their friend has reached where he was before. He has reached home. Those who understand life, only they can understand death, because life and death are not two. Death is the peak, the ultimate, the final flowering, the fragrance of life.Death looks ugly to you because you have never known life, and death creates fear in you because you are afraid of life. Remember, whatsoever your attitude toward life, the same will be your attitude toward death. If you are scared of death you are scared of life; if you love life, you will love death, because death is nothing but the highest peak, the completion. The song reaches its end, the river falls into the ocean. The river came from the ocean in the first place. Now the circle is complete, the river has reached the whole.Then the disciple of Confuciusburst in on them and exclaimed:“May I inquire where you found thisin the rubrics for obsequies,this frivolous carolingin the presence of the departed?”The disciple of Confucius cannot understand them. They look frivolous, disrespectful. What type of song, from where have you got this? It is not authorized, it is not from the Vedas. Then the disciple of Confucius burst in on them and exclaimed: “May I inquire where you found this?”Everything should be according to the books, according to the Bible, to the Vedas. But life cannot be according to the books – life always transcends books, it always goes beyond; life always throws books aside, moves ahead.“Where have you found this, this frivolous caroling in the presence of the departed? You should be respectful. Someone has departed, someone is dead and what are you doing? This is profane!”The two friends looked at each otherand laughed:“Poor fellow, he doesn’t know the new liturgy!”He doesn’t know the new scripture, he doesn’t know the new religion. That is what is happening here every day – the new liturgy.A man was here just a few days ago, a professor of history, and he asked me, “To what tradition do you belong?” I said, “To no tradition.”He had come here from America to make a film of the meditation techniques, of the camp, of what I say, of what is happening here. The moment he heard that I don’t belong to any tradition, he simply disappeared. Then I don’t belong to history, it is obvious.Poor fellow, he does not know the new liturgy!Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:“All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”Chuang Tzu replied:“If you have no appreciation for what has no useyou cannot begin to talk about what can be used.The earth, for example, is broad and vast,but of all this expanse a man uses only a few inchesupon which he happens to be standing at the time.“Now suppose you suddenly take awayall that he is not actually using,so that all around his feet a gulf yawns,and he stands in the voidwith nowhere solid except under each foot,how long will he be able to use what he is using?”Hui Tzu said:“It would cease to serve any purpose.”Chuang Tzu concluded:“This shows the absolute necessityof what is supposed to have no use.”Life is dialectical, that is why it is not logical. Logic means that the opposite is really opposite, and life always implies the opposite in itself. In life the opposite is not really the opposite, it is the complementary. Without it nothing is possible.For example, life exists because of death. If there is no death there cannot be any life. Death is not the end and death is not the enemy – rather, on the contrary, because of death life becomes possible. So death is not somewhere in the end, it is involved here and now. Each moment has its life and its death; otherwise existence is impossible.There is light, there is darkness. For logic they are opposites, and logic will say: If it is light, there cannot be any darkness, if it is dark, then there cannot be any light. But life says quite the contrary. Life says: If there is darkness it is because of light; if there is light it is because of darkness. We may not be able to see the other, but it is hidden just around the corner.There is silence because of sound. If there is no sound at all, can you be silent? How can you be silent? The opposite is needed as a background. Those who follow logic always go wrong because their life becomes lopsided. They think of light, then they start denying darkness; they think of life, then they start fighting death.That’s why there exists no tradition in the world where it is said that God is both light and darkness. There is one tradition which says that God is light, he is not darkness. No darkness exists in God for these people who believe God is light. There is another tradition that says that God is darkness – but for them there is no light. Both are wrong, because both are logical, they deny the opposite. And life is so vast, it carries the opposite in itself. It is not denied, it is embraced.Once somebody said to Walt Whitman, one of the greatest poets ever born, “Whitman, you go on contradicting yourself. One day you say one thing, another day you say just the opposite.”Walt Whitman laughed and said, “I am vast. I contain all the contradictions.”Only small minds are consistent; the narrower the mind, the more consistent. When the mind is vast, everything is involved – light is there, darkness is there, God is there and the Devil also, in his total glory.If you understand this mysterious process of life which moves through the opposites, which is dialectical, in which the opposite helps, gives balance, gives tone, makes the background, then only can you understand Chuang Tzu – because the whole Taoist vision is based on the complementariness of the opposites.They use two words, yin and yang. They are opposites, male and female. Just think of a world which is totally male or a world which is totally female. It will be dead. The moment it is born it will be dead. There cannot be any life. If it is a female world, only women, and women and women, and no men – they will commit suicide. The opposite is needed because the opposite is attractive. The opposite becomes the magnet, it pulls you; the opposite brings you out of yourself, the opposite breaks your prison, the opposite makes you vast. Whenever the opposite is denied there is going to be trouble. And that is what we have been doing, hence so much trouble in the world.Man has tried to create a society which is basically male, that’s why there is so much trouble – the woman has been denied, she has been thrown out. In past centuries the woman was never to be seen anywhere. She was just hidden in the back chambers of the house; she was not even allowed in the drawing rooms. You couldn’t meet her on the streets, you couldn’t see her in the shops. She was not part of life. The world went ugly, because how can you deny the opposite? It became lopsided, all balance was lost. The world went mad.The woman is still not allowed; she is really not yet a part, a vital part of life. Men move in men-oriented groups – the exclusively male club where boys meet, the market, politics, the scientific group. Everywhere it is lopsided. Man dominates, that is why there is so much misery. When one of the polar opposites dominates, there will be misery, because the other feels hurt and there is revenge.Every woman is taking revenge in the house. Of course, she cannot go out and move in the world and take revenge on humanity, on mankind. She takes revenge on the husband. There is constant conflict.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin was saying to his son, “It is none of your business, don’t ask such things. Who are you to ask me how I met your mother? But I will tell you one thing: she sure cured me of whistling.”Then he said, “And this is the moral of the story: if you don’t want to be unhappy like me, never whistle at a girl!”Why is the wife always in conflict? It is not the person, it is not a personal thing. It is the revenge of the woman, of the female, of the denied opposite. And this man in the house, this husband, is the representative of the whole male world, the male-oriented world. She is fighting.Family life is so miserable because we have not heard what Chuang Tzu says. There are so many wars because we have not listened – the opposite has to be merged. Negating it, you invite trouble, and on every path, on every level, in every dimension, it is the same thing.Chuang Tzu says that if you deny the useless, then there will be no use in the world. If you deny the useless, the playful, the fun, there cannot exist any work, any duty. This is very difficult, and the whole emphasis is on the useful.If you look at a door, you will see the walls. If somebody asks you what a house consists of, you will say, walls. But Chuang Tzu would say, just like his master Lao Tzu, that a house consists not of walls but of doors and windows. Their emphasis is on the other part. They say that walls are useful, but their use depends on the useless space behind.A room is space, not walls. Of course, space is free and walls have to be purchased. When you purchase a house, what do you purchase? – the walls, the material, the visible. But can you live in the material? Can you live in the walls? You have to live in the room, in the vacant space. You purchase the boat, but you have to live in the emptiness.So really, what is a house? Emptiness surrounded by walls. And what is a door? There is nothing. Door means there is nothing, no wall, emptiness. But you cannot enter the house if there is no door. If there is no window then no sun will enter, no breeze will blow. You will be dead, and your house will become a tomb.Chuang Tzu says: Remember that the house consists of two things: the walls, the material – from the market, the utilitarian – and the emptiness surrounded by the walls, the non-utilitarian which cannot be purchased, which cannot be sold, which has no economic value.How can you sell emptiness? But you have to live in the emptiness – if a man lives only in the walls he will go mad. It is impossible to do that – but we try to do the impossible. In life, we have chosen the utilitarian.For example, if a child is playing you say, “Stop! What are you doing? This is useless. Do something useful. Learn, read, at least do your homework, something useful. Don’t go around like a vagabond.” If you go on insisting like this to a child, by and by you will kill the useless. Then the child will become just useful, and when a person is simply useful, he is dead. You can use him, he is a mechanical thing now, a means, not an end unto himself.You are really yourself when you are doing something useless – painting, not to sell, just enjoying; gardening, just to enjoy; lying down on the beach, not doing anything, just to enjoy, useless fun; sitting silently by the side of a friend.Much could be done in these moments. You could go to the shop, to the market, you could earn something. You could change time into money. You could have a bigger bank balance because these moments will not come back. And foolish people say that time is money – because they know only one use of time – how to convert it into more money and more money and more money. In the end you die with a big bank balance but inside totally poor, because the inner richness arises only when you can enjoy the useless.What is meditation? People come to me and say, “What is the use of it? What will we gain out of it? What is the benefit of it?”Meditation…and you ask about the benefit? You cannot understand it because meditation is just useless. The moment I say useless, you feel uncomfortable because the whole mind has become so utilitarian, so commodity-oriented that you ask for a result. You cannot concede that something can be a pleasure unto itself.Useless means you enjoy it, but there is no benefit from it; you are deeply merged into it, it gives you bliss. But when you are deeply in it, you cannot accumulate that bliss, you cannot make a treasure out of it.In the world, two types of people have existed: the utilitarians – they become scientists, engineers, doctors. Then there is the other path, the complementary – the poets, the vagabonds, the sannyasins – useless, not doing anything useful. But they give the balance, they give grace to the world. Think of a world full of scientists and not a single poet – it would be absolutely ugly, not worth living in. Think of a world with everyone in the shops, in the offices, not a single vagabond. It would be hell. The vagabond gives beauty.Once two vagabonds were caught… The magistrates and police are the custodians of the utilitarians. They protect, because this useless part is dangerous – it can go on spreading. So nowhere are vagabonds, useless people, allowed. If you are just standing on the street and somebody asks, “What you are doing?” and you say, “Nothing,” the policeman will immediately take you to court – because nothing is not allowed. You must do something. “Why are you standing there?” If you say simply, “I am standing and enjoying,” you are a dangerous man, a hippy. You may be arrested.So two vagabonds were caught. The magistrate asked the first one, “Where do you live?”The man said, “The whole world is my home, the sky is my shelter; I move everywhere, there is no barrier. I am a free man.”Then he asked the other, “And where do you live?”He said, “Next door to him.”These people give beauty to the world, they are a perfume. A Buddha is a vagabond, a Mahavira is a vagabond. This man, this vagabond, answered that the sky was his only shelter. That is what is meant by the word digambar. Mahavira, the last tirthankara of the Jainas, is known as a digambar. Digambar means naked, only the sky for clothing, nothing else. The sky is the shelter, the home.Whenever the world becomes too utilitarian you create many things, you possess many things, you become obsessed with things – but the inner is lost, because the inner can flower only when there is no outer tension, when you are not going anywhere, just resting. Then the inner flowers.Religion is absolutely useless. What use is the temple? What use is the mosque? What use is the church? In Soviet Russia they have converted all the temples, mosques, and churches into hospitals and schools, something useful. Why is this temple standing without any use? Communists are utilitarians. That’s why they are against religion. They have to be, because religion gives way to the useless, to that which cannot be exploited in any way, to that which cannot be made a means to anything else. You can have it, you can be blissful in it, you can feel the highest ecstasy possible, but you cannot manipulate it. It is a happening. When you are not doing anything, it happens. And the greatest has always happened when you are not doing anything. Only the trivial happens when you are doing something.Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, has written something very penetrating. He said, “When I started praying, I would go to the church and I would talk to God.” That’s what Christians are doing all over the world – talking very loudly to God, as if God is deaf. They advise him what to do and what not to do, as if God is just a foolish entity. Or, as if God is just a foolish monarch – persuading him, bribing him to fulfill the desires that are inside them.But Kierkegaard said, “I started talking, then suddenly I realized that this was useless. How can you talk? One has to be silent before God. What is there to be said? And what can I say which will help God to know more? He is omnipotent, he is omniscient, he knows all, so what is the purpose of my telling him?“So at first I was talking to him for many years. Then suddenly I realized that this was foolish; so I stopped talking, I became silent. Then after many years I realized that even silence wouldn’t do. Then the third step was taken, and that was listening. First I was talking, then I was not talking, and then I was listening.”Listening is different from just being silent, because just being silent is a negative thing – listening is a positive thing. Just being silent is passive, listening is an alert passiveness, waiting for something, not saying anything, but waiting with the whole being. It has an intensity. And Kierkegaard said, “When this listening happened, then for the first time prayer happened.”But listening is absolutely useless, and listening to the unknown? – you don’t know where it is. Silence is useless, talking seems to be useful. Something can be done through talking, if you are doing many things in the world. And then you think if you are to become religious you will have to do something else, but you will have to do!Chuang Tzu says: Religion begins only when you have understood the futility of all doing, then you have moved to the polar opposite of non-doing, inactivity, of becoming passive, of becoming useless.Now we shall enter the sutra, The Useless.Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:“All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”This teaching doesn’t seem to be worth much, but Chuang Tzu and his master were always talking about the useless, they even praised men who were useless.Chuang Tzu talks about a man, a hunchback. All the young people of the town were forcibly entered into the military, into the army, because they were useful. Only one man, a hunchback, who was useless, was left behind. Chuang Tzu said: “Be like the hunchback, so useless that you are not slaughtered in the war.”They go on praising the useless because they say that the useful will always be in difficulty. The world will use you, everybody is ready to use you, to manipulate you, to control you. If you are useless nobody will look at you, people will forget you, they will leave you in silence, they will not bother about you. They will simply become unaware that you are.It happened to me. I am a useless man. In my childhood days I would be sitting and my mother would be standing just in front of me and she would look all around and say, “I cannot see anybody. I would like to send someone to fetch vegetables from the market.” I would be sitting there just in front of her. She would say, “I can’t see anyone here!” And I would laugh inside myself – she couldn’t send me to the market, I was so useless that she was not aware that I was there.Once, my aunt had come, and she was not aware of my uselessness. My mother was saying, “Nobody is in to go to the market. All the children have gone out and the servant is ill, so what to do? Someone has to be sent.”So my aunt said, “Why not send Rajneesh? He is sitting there, not doing anything.”So I was sent. I asked the vendor there, “Give me the best vegetables you have got, the best bananas, the best mangoes.” Looking at me and the way I was talking he must have thought, “He is a fool,” because nobody asks for the best. So he charged me double and gave me all the rotten things he had, and I came home very happy.My mother threw them out and said, “Look! This is why I say nobody is here.”Chuang Tzu insists very much: Be alert and don’t become very useful; otherwise people will exploit you. Then they will start managing you and then you will be in trouble. And if you can produce things, they will force you to produce all your life. If you can do a certain thing, if you are skillful, then you can’t be wasted.He says that uselessness has its own intrinsic utility. If you can be useful for others, then you have to live for others. Useless, nobody looks at you, nobody pays any attention to you, nobody is bothered by your being. You are left alone. In the marketplace you live as if you are living in the Himalayas. In that solitude you grow. Your whole energy moves inward.Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:“All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”Chuang Tzu replied:“If you have no appreciation for what has no useyou cannot begin to talk about what can be used.”He said that the useless is the other aspect of the useful. You can talk about the useful only because of the useless. It is a vital part. If you drop it completely, then nothing will be useful. Things are useful because there are things which are useless.But this has happened to the world. We have cut out all playful activities thinking that then the whole energy will be moving toward work. But now work has become a bore. One has to move to the opposite pole – only then one is rejuvenated.The whole day you are awake, at night you fall asleep – wasting time – and it is not a little time. If you live for ninety years, you will be asleep for thirty years, one-third, eight hours every day. What is the use of it?Scientists in Russia have been thinking that this is wastage of labor, of energy. This is very uneconomical. So something should be done. Some chemical changes or some hormonal changes are needed, or even if something has to be changed in the very genes, in the very cell, we have to do it. We have to make a man who is aware, alert, awake for twenty-four hours.Just think…if they succeed, they will kill! Then they will make you an automaton, just a mechanical device, which goes on working and working, no day, no night, no rest, no work. There is no opposite to move to and forget.And they have started many things. They have started sleep teaching for small children. Now, when the children are sleeping, thousands of children in Soviet Russia are sleeping with tape recorders plugged to their ears. While they are sleeping, the tape recorder is teaching them. The whole night the tape recorder is repeating something or other. They go on listening to it and it becomes part of their memory – sleep teaching, hypnopedia. And they say that sooner or later all that we do in schools can be done while the child is asleep, and then the day can be used in some other way.Even sleep has to be exploited. You cannot be allowed to be yourself even in your sleep. You cannot even be allowed the freedom to dream. Then what are you? Then you become a cog in the wheel. Then you are just an efficient part of the wheel, of the mechanism. If you are efficient it is okay; otherwise you can be discarded, thrown in the junkyard, and somebody else who is more efficient will replace you.What happens after the whole day’s work? You fall asleep. What happens? You move from the useful to the useless. And that’s why in the morning you feel so fresh, so alive, so unburdened. Your legs have a dancing quality, your mind can sing, your heart can again feel – all the dust of work is thrown off, the mirror is again clear. You have a clarity in the morning. How does it come? It comes through the useless.That is why meditation can give you the greatest glimpses, because it is the most useless thing in the world. You simply don’t do anything, you simply move into silence. It is greater than sleep because in sleep you are unconscious; so whatsoever happens, happens unconsciously. You may be moving in paradise, but you don’t know it.In meditation you move knowingly. Then you become aware of the path: how to move from the useful world of the without to the useless world within. And when you know the path, you can simply move inward any moment. Sitting in a bus you are not needed to do anything, you are simply sitting; traveling in a car or train or an airplane, you are not doing anything, everything is being done by others; you can close the eyes and move into the useless, the inner. And suddenly everything becomes silent, and suddenly everything is cool, and suddenly you are at the source of all life.But it has no value in the market. You cannot go and sell it, you cannot say, “I have great meditation. Is anybody ready to buy it?” Nobody will be ready to buy it. It is not a commodity, it is useless.Chuang Tzu replied:“If you have no appreciation for what has no useyou cannot begin to talk about what can be used.The earth, for example, is broad and vast,but of all this expanse a man uses only a few inchesupon which he happens to be standing at the time.“Now suppose you suddenly take awayall that he is not actually using,so that all around his feet a gulf yawns,and he stands in the voidwith nowhere solid except under each foot,how long will he be able to use what he is using?”This is a beautiful simile. He has got the point. You are sitting here, you are using only a small space, two by two. You are not using the whole earth, the whole earth is useless; you are using only a small portion, two by two. Says Chuang Tzu: Suppose the whole earth is taken away, only this two by two is left for you; you are standing with each foot using a few inches of earth. Suppose only that is left and the whole earth is taken away – how long will you be able to use this small part that you are using?A gulf, an infinite abyss, yawns around you – you will get dizzy immediately, you will fall into the abyss. The useless earth supports the useful, and the useless is vast, the useful is very small. And this is true on all levels of being: the useless is vast, the useful is very small. If you try to save the useful and forget the useless, sooner or later you will get dizzy. And this has happened, you are already dizzy and falling into the abyss.All over the world thinking people have a problem: that life has no meaning, life seems to be meaningless. Ask Sartre, Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger – they say life is meaningless. Why has life become so meaningless? It was never so before. Buddha never said it; Krishna could dance, sing, enjoy himself; Mohammed could pray and thank God for the blessing of life that he showered upon him. Chuang Tzu is happy, as happy as possible, as happy as a man can be. They never said that life is meaningless. What has happened to the modern mind? Why does life seem so meaningless?The whole earth has been taken away and you are left only on the part where you are sitting or standing. You are getting dizzy. All around you see the abyss and the danger; and you cannot use the earth on which you are standing now, because you could use it only when the useless was joined with it. The useless must be there. What does it mean? Your life has become only work and no play. The play is the useless, the vast; the work is the useful, the trivial, the small. You have made your life completely filled with work. Whenever you start doing something the first thing that comes to the mind is, what is the use? If there is some use, you do it.Sartre has a character in one of his stories: in the coming twenty-first century, a very rich man says, “Love is not for me, it is only for poor people. As far as I am concerned my servants can do it.”Of course, why should a Ford go and waste time loving a woman? A cheap servant can do that. Ford’s time is more valuable. He should put it to some greater use.It is possible! Looking at the human mind as it is, it is possible that in the future only servants will make love. When you can depute a servant, why bother yourself? When everything is thought of in terms of economics, when a Ford, a Rockefeller can make so much use of their time, why should they go and waste their time with a woman? They can send a servant, that will be less trouble.It looks absurd to us hearing this, but this has already happened in many dimensions of life. You never play, your servants are doing that. You are never an active participant in any fun, others are doing it for you. You go to see a football match: others are doing it and you are just watching – you are a passive spectator, not involved. You go to a movie to see a film, and others are making love, war, violence – everything – you are just a spectator in the seat. It is so useless you need not bother to do it. Anybody else can do it, you can just watch. Work you do, others are doing fun for you. Then why not love? – the same logic, somebody else will do it.Life seems meaningless because the meaning consists of a balance of the useful and the useless. You have denied the useless completely. You have closed the door. Now only the useful is there. The useful has become a burden, you are burdened too much by it.It is a sign of success that if by the age of forty you get ulcers, it shows that you are successful. If you have passed the age of forty or fifty and still the ulcers have not appeared, you are a failure. What have you been doing all your life? You must have been wasting time.By fifty you really must have had the first heart attack. Now scientists have calculated that by forty a successful man must have ulcers, by fifty the first heart attack. By sixty he is gone – and he never lived. There was no time to live. He had so many more important things to do, no time to live.Look all around, look at successful people; politicians, rich men, big industrialists – what is happening to them? Don’t look at the things they possess, look at them directly, because if you look at the things you will be deceived. Things don’t have ulcers, cars don’t have heart attacks, houses are not hospitalized. Don’t look at things, otherwise you will be deceived. Look at the person bereft of all his possessions, look directly at him and then you will feel the poverty. Then even a beggar may be a rich man. Then even a poor man may be richer as far as life is concerned.Success fails, and nothing fails like success, because the man who succeeds is losing his grip on life – on everything. The man who succeeds is really bargaining, throwing away the real for the unreal, throwing away inner diamonds for colored pebbles on the shore; collecting the pebbles, losing the diamonds.A rich man is a loser, a successful man is a failure. But because you look with the eyes of ambition you look at the possessions. You never look at the politician, you look at the post, the prime ministership. You look at the power. You never look at the person who is sitting there absolutely powerless, missing everything, not even a glimpse of what bliss is. He has purchased power, but in purchasing it he has lost himself. And it is all a bargain.I have heard…After a mass rally, a leader was screaming at his manager. The manager couldn’t understand it. The leader said, “I have been cheated!”The manager said, “I cannot understand, the rally was so successful. So many thousands of people came, and look at your garlands. They have covered you with flowers.”“Count them,” the leader said. “Only eleven and I paid for twelve.”In the end, every successful man will feel that he has been cheated. That has to happen, it is bound to happen, it is inevitable, because what are you giving, and what are you receiving? The inner self is being lost for futile possessions. You can deceive others, but how will you be able to deceive yourself? In the end you will look at your life and you will see that you have missed it because of the useful.The useless must be there. The useful is like a garden, neat, clean; the useless is like a vast forest, natural, it cannot be so neat and clean. Nature has its own beauty, when everything is neat and clean, it is already dead. A garden cannot be very alive, because you go on pruning it, cutting it, managing it. A vast forest has a vitality, a very powerful soul. Go into a forest and you will feel the impact; get lost in a forest and then you will see the power of it. In a garden you cannot feel the power; it is not there, it is man-made. You can look at it – it is cultivated, it is managed, manipulated.Really, a garden is a false thing – the real thing is the forest. The useless is like a vast forest and the useful is just like a garden you have created around your house. But don’t go on cutting the forest. It is okay, your garden is okay, but let it be a part of the vast forest that is not your garden, but God’s garden.And can you think of anything more useless than God? Can you use him in any way? That is the trouble; that’s why we cannot find any meaning in God. And those who are very meaning-oriented become atheists. They say there is no God, there cannot be. How can there be a God when God seems so useless? It is better to drop him, then the world is left for us to manage and control. Then we can make the whole world a market, we can change temples into hospitals, into primary schools. But the uselessness of God is the very basis of all the utility that goes on.If you can play, your work will become pleasure. If you can enjoy simple fun, if you can become like children playing, your work will not be a burden on you. But it is difficult. Your mind keeps thinking in terms of money.I have heard…Once Mulla Nasruddin came home and he found his best friend in bed with his wife. The friend was very embarrassed and became scared. He said, “Listen, I cannot do anything, I am in love with your wife and she is in love with me. And you being a rational man, we should come to some arrangement. It is no use fighting about it.”Nasruddin said, “What arrangement do you suggest?”The man said, “We should play a game of cards, and let the wife be the stake. If I win, you simply leave; if you win, I will never see your wife again.”Nasruddin said, “Right, it’s settled.” But then he said, “Place some money, one rupee for each point, because otherwise the whole thing is so useless. Just for a wife the whole thing is so useless. Don’t waste my time, place some money in the stake also.”Then the thing becomes useful. Money seems to be the only useful thing. All those who are utilitarians will be money-mad, because money can purchase. Money is the essence of all utility. So if Buddha and people like Buddha renounced, it was not because they were against money, it was because they were against utility, against the useful. So they said: “Keep all your money. I am moving into the forest. This garden is no longer for me. I will move in the vast, in the uncharted, where one can be lost. This neat, clean pebbled path, everything known, mapped out, is not for me.”When you move into the vastness of uselessness your soul becomes vast. When you go into the sea with no map you become like the ocean. Then the very challenge of the unknown creates your soul.When you are secure, when there is no problem, when everything is mathematically planned, settled, your soul shrinks. There is no challenge for it. The useless gives the challenge.“Now suppose you suddenly take awayall that he is not actually using,so that all around his feet a gulf yawns,and he stands in the voidwith nowhere solid except under each foot,how long will he be able to use what he is using?”Without God the world cannot continue anymore. Nietzsche declared just a hundred years ago that God is dead. That very day he was also declaring that we cannot live anymore. He never thought about that, he thought just the contrary. He said: “God is dead and man is now free to live.” But I say to you, if God is dead, man is dead already. The news may not have reached him yet, but he is dead – because God is that vast uselessness.Man’s world is the utilitarian world, the useful; without the useless the useful cannot exist. God is the play and man is the work; without God, work will become meaningless, a burden to be carried somehow. God is the fun, man is serious; without the fun the seriousness will be too much, it will be like a disease. Don’t destroy the temples, don’t destroy the mosques, don’t transform them into hospitals. You can make other hospitals, you can create other buildings for schools, but let the useless remain there at the very center of life. That’s why we have been placing the temple in the very marketplace, in the very center of the town, just to show that the useless must remain at the very center, otherwise all utility is lost. The opposite must be taken into account, and the opposite is greater.What is the purpose of life? People go on coming and asking me. There is no purpose, there cannot be any. It is purposeless, fun. You have to enjoy it, you can only enjoy it, you cannot do anything else about it. It is not marketable. And if you miss a moment, you have missed; you cannot go back.Religion is just a symbol. One man came to me and asked, “In India there are five hundred lakh sannyasins. This is very uneconomical. And what are these people doing? They live on others’ labor. They should not be allowed to exist.”In Russia they are not allowed to exist, not a single sannyasin. The whole land has become like a prison. You are not allowed to be useless. In China they are killing Buddhist monks and i, they have killed thousands, and they are destroying all the monasteries. They are turning the whole country into a factory, as if man is just the stomach, as if man can live by bread alone.But man also has a heart, and man has a being also which is not in any way purpose-oriented. Man wants to enjoy without cause and without reason. Man wants to be blissful, just for nothing.That man asked, “When are you going to stop these sannyasins in India?” And he was very much against me. He said, “You are increasing the number of them. Stop it. What use are these sannyasins?”And his question seems relevant. If he had gone somewhere else, if he had asked some other religious head, he would have been given the answer that they have a use. But he was very much disturbed when I said that they have no use.But life itself is without use. What is the purpose of it? Where are you going? What is the result? No purpose, no result, no goal – life is a constant ecstasy, moment to moment. You can enjoy it but if you start thinking of results you miss enjoying it, your roots are uprooted, you are no longer in it, you have become an outsider. And then you will ask for the meaning, for the purpose.Have you observed, whenever you are happy you never ask, “What is the purpose of happiness?” When you are in love, have you ever asked, “What is the purpose of all this?” When in the morning you see the sun rising and a flock of birds like an arrow in the sky, have you asked, “What is the purpose of it?” A flower blooming alone in the night, filling the whole night with its fragrance; have you asked, “What is the purpose of it?”There is no purpose. Purpose is part of the mind, and life exists mindlessly; hence the insistence on the useless. Because if you are too much for the useful, you cannot drop the mind. How can you drop the mind if you are looking for some use, some result? You can drop the mind only when you have come to realize that there is no purpose and mind is not needed. You can put it aside. It is an unnecessary thing. Of course, when you go to the market, take it with you. When you sit in the shop, use it; it is a mechanical device, just like a computer.Now scientists say that sooner or later we will supply each child with a computer which he can carry in his pocket. He need not carry much mathematics in his mind, he can just push the button and the computer will do it. Your mind is a natural computer. Why be burdened constantly by it? When it is not needed, put it aside. But you think it is needed because you have to do something useful. Who will tell you what is useful and what is useless? The mind is constantly sorting out: this is useful, do this; that is useless, don’t do it. Mind is your manager. The mind represents use. Meditation represents the useless.Move from the useful to the useless, and make this movement so spontaneous and natural that there is no struggle, no conflict. Make it as natural as moving in and out of your house. When the mind is needed, use it as a mechanical device; when it is not in use, when there is no use for it put it aside and forget it. Then be useless and do something useless and your life will be enriched, and your life will become a balance between use and no use. And that balance transcends both. That is transcendental – it is neither use nor non-use.“How long will he be able to use what he is using?”Hui Tzu said:“It would cease to serve any purpose.”Chuang Tzu concluded:“This shows the absolute necessityof what is supposed to have no use.”Even the useful cannot exist without the useless. The useless is the base. I say to you, your mind cannot exist without meditation, and if you try to do the impossible you will go mad. That is what is happening to many people. They go mad. What is madness? Madness is an effort to do without meditation, to live just with the mind, without any meditation. Meditation is the base, even the mind cannot exist without it. And if you try, then the mind goes mad, goes crazy. It is too much. It is unbearable. A madman is a man who is a perfect utilitarian. He has tried the impossible, he has tried to live without meditation, and that’s why he goes mad.Psychologists say that if you are not allowed to sleep for three weeks you will go mad. Why? Sleep is useless. Why will you go mad if you are not allowed to sleep for three weeks? A man can live without food for three months but a man cannot live without sleep for three weeks. And three weeks is the ultimate limit, it is not for you. You will go mad within three days if you are not allowed to sleep. If the useless is cut out you will go mad.Madness is growing every day because meditation is not thought to be valuable. Do you think that whatsoever can be priced, only that is valuable? Whatsoever can be purchased and sold, only that is valuable? Whatsoever is a market commodity, only that is valuable? Then you are wrong. That which has no price is also valuable. That which cannot be sold and purchased is far more valuable than all that can be purchased and sold.Love is the basis of sex. If you are deprived of love completely, sex becomes perverted. Meditation is the basis of mind. If you deny meditation, the mind goes mad. Fun, play, is the basis of work. If you deny fun and play, work becomes a burden, a dead weight.Look at the useless sky. Your house may be useful but it exists in this vast sky of uselessness. If you can feel both, and if you become able to move from one to the other without any trouble, then for the first time the perfect human being is born in you.The perfect human being does not know what is in and what is out – both are his. The perfect human being does not bother about what is useful and what is useless – both are his wings. The perfect human being uses no-use. The perfect human being flies in the sky with the wings of both mind and meditation, of matter and consciousness, of this world and that, of God, of no God. He is a higher harmony of the opposites.Chuang Tzu emphasized no-use so much, uselessness so much, because you have emphasized the useful too much. Otherwise that emphasis is not needed. It is just to give you balance. You have gone too much to the left, you have to be pulled to the right.Remember, because of this over-emphasis you can again move to the other extreme. And that happened to many followers of Chuang Tzu. They became addicted to the useless, they became mad with the useless. They moved too much toward the useless and that was not the point – they missed it.Chuang Tzu emphasized this only because you have become so extremely addicted to use. That is why he emphasized the useless. But I must remind you – because mind can move to the opposite and remain the same – that the real thing is transcendence. You have to come to a point where you can use the useful and the non-useful, the purposeful and the purposeless. Then you are beyond both, they both serve you.There are persons who cannot get rid of their mind and there are persons who cannot get rid of their meditation. And remember the disease is the same, you cannot get rid of something. First you were unable to get rid of the mind, somehow you managed. Now you cannot get rid of the meditation. Again you move from one prison to another.A real, a perfect man, a man of Tao, has no addictions. He can move easily from one extreme to another because he remains in the middle. He uses both wings.Chuang Tzu should not be misunderstood, that’s why I say this. He can be misunderstood. People like Chuang Tzu are dangerous, you can misunderstand them. And there is more possibility for misunderstanding than understanding. The mind says, “Okay, so enough of this shop, enough of this family; now I will become a vagabond.” That is misunderstanding. You will carry the same mind, you will become addicted to your vagabond-ness. Then you will not be able to come back to the shop, to the market, to the family. Then you will be afraid of it.So meditation, like medicine, can become a new disease if you get addicted to it. So the doctor has to see that you get rid of the disease but don’t become addicted to the medicine – otherwise he is not a good doctor. First you have to get rid of the disease, and then you have to get rid of the medicine, otherwise the medicine will take the place of the disease and you will always cling to it.Mulla Nasruddin was teaching his small seven-year-old son how to approach a girl, how to invite her to dance, what to say and what not to say, how to persuade her.After half an hour, the boy came in and said, “Now teach me how to get rid of her.”That has to be learned too, and that is the difficult part. To invite is very easy but to get rid of is very difficult. And you know well through your own experience: to invite a girl is always easy, to persuade a girl is always easy, but how to get rid of her? Then it becomes a problem. Then you cannot go anywhere, then you forget whistling completely.Remember, the useless has its own attraction. If you are too troubled by the useful, you may move to the other extreme too much. You may lose your balance.To me, a sannyasin is a deep balance, standing in the middle, free from all the opposites. He can use the useful and he can use the non-useful, he can use the purposeful and he can use the non-purposeful, and still remain beyond both. He is not used by them. He has become the master.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Chuang Tzu says:The purpose of a fish trapis to catch fish,and when the fish are caughtthe trap is forgotten.The purpose of wordsis to convey ideas.When the ideas are graspedthe words are forgotten.Where can I find a manwho has forgotten words?He is the oneI would like to talk to.It is difficult to forget words. They cling to the mind. It is difficult to throw away the net because not only are fish caught in it, the fisher is also caught. This is one of the greatest problems. Working with words is playing with fire, because words become so important that the meaning loses meaning. The symbol becomes so heavy that the content is completely lost; the surface hypnotizes you and you forget the center.This has happened all over the world. Christ is the content, Christianity is just a word; Buddha is the content, the Dhammapada is just a word; Krishna is the content, the Gita is nothing but a trap. But the Gita is remembered and Krishna is forgotten – or if you remember Krishna, you remember him only because of the Gita. If you talk about Christ it is because of the churches, the theology, the Bible, the words. People carry the net for many lives without realizing that it is just a net, a trap, as if one goes on carrying a ladder.Buddha used to say:A few men were crossing a river. The river was dangerous, it was in flood – it must have been the rainy season – and the boat saved their lives. Then they thought – they must have been very, very intelligent – they thought, “This boat saved us, how can we leave it now? This is our savior and it will be ungrateful to leave it!” So they carried the boat on their heads into the town.Somebody asked them, “What are you doing? We have never seen anybody carrying a boat.”They said, “Now we will have to carry this boat for our whole lives, because this boat saved us, and we cannot be ungrateful.”Those intelligent-looking people must have been stupid. Thank the boat but leave it there. Don’t carry it. You have been carrying many types of boats in your head – maybe not on your head, but in your head. Look within. Ladders, boats, paths, words – this is the content of your head, of your mind.The container becomes much too important, the vehicle becomes much too important, the body becomes much too important – and then you are blind. The vehicle was just to give you the message – receive the message and forget the vehicle. The messenger was just to give you the message – receive the message and forget the messenger. Thank him, but don’t carry him in your head.Mohammed insisted again and again, almost every day of his life, “I am just a messenger, a paigamber. Don’t worship me, I have just carried a message from the divine. Don’t look at me, look at the divine who has sent the message to you.” But Mohammedans have forgotten the source. Mohammed has become important, the vehicle.Says Chuang Tzu:Where can I find a manwho has forgotten words?He is the oneI would like to talk to.A man who has forgotten words, he is worth talking to, because he has the innermost reality, the center of being within him. He has the message. His silence is pregnant. Your talking is impotent. What are you doing when you are talking? You are not saying anything in particular. You have got no message, nothing is to be delivered. Your words are empty, they don’t contain anything, they don’t carry anything. They are just symbols. And when you are talking you are simply throwing out your rubbish. It may be a good catharsis for you, but for the other, it can be dangerous. How can you talk with a person who is filled with words? Impossible. The words don’t give space, the words don’t give any opening. The words are too much, you cannot penetrate.To talk with a man who is filled with words is almost impossible. He cannot listen, because for listening one should be silent, for listening one should be receptive. Words don’t allow that – words are aggressive, they are never receptive. You can talk but you cannot listen, and if you cannot listen, your talk is the talk of a madman. You are talking and not knowing why, you are talking and not knowing what. You go on talking because it gives you a sort of release.You feel good after having a good chitchat. You feel good because you are relieved; your talking is part of your tensions. It is not coming from you, it is just a disturbance; it is not a song, it has no beauty of its own. That’s why whenever you talk you simply bore the other. But why is he listening? He is not listening, he is just waiting to bore you, waiting for just the right moment when he can take the reins in his hands.I have heard…It happened once that a great leader, a great politician, was speaking, and he spoke and spoke and it was getting near midnight. By and by the audience left until only one person was left in the hall. The leader thanked him and said, “You seem to be the only authentic follower, the only lover. I feel grateful to you. Everybody has left, and you are still here.”The man said, “Don’t be deceived, I am the next speaker.”When you listen, you are listening because you are the next speaker. You can tolerate the man – this is a bargain. If you want to bore others you have to allow them to bore you. So, really, when you say that a certain person is a bore, it’s that person who will not give you any opportunity to be the next speaker. He goes on and on and you cannot find a gap from where to enter and start boring. That person looks like a bore, but every mind filled with words is a bore.When will you realize this? Why is one bored? – because there are only words, no fish in them, only traps – useless, meaningless, there is no content. It is like a rattling of something, a noise; no meaning is carried. Whenever there is meaning it is beautiful; whenever there is meaning you grow through it; whenever there is meaning, when you encounter a man who has meaning, it gives you a new upsurge of energy. It is not a wastage, it is a learning, it is an experience. Rare and difficult it is to find a man who is silent.If you can find a man who is silent and persuade him to talk to you, you will gain much – because when the mind is not filled with words, the heart speaks to the heart. When everything comes out of silence, when a word is born out of silence, it is beautiful, it is alive, it shares something with you. When a word comes only out of the crowd of words, it is mad, it can madden you.A small boy of five was asked by his teacher, “Has your younger sister learned to talk yet?”The boy said, “Yes, she has learned to talk – and now we are teaching her to be quiet.”This is the misery. You have to teach words, it is part of life, and then one has to learn how to be silent, how to be wordless. Universities, parents, teachers, they teach you words, and then you have to find a master who can teach you how to keep quiet.One German scholar came to Ramana Maharshi and said, “I have come from very far away to learn something from you.”Ramana laughed and said, “Then you have come to the wrong place. Go to some university, go to some scholar, some great pundit; there you will be able to learn. If you come to me then be aware that learning is not possible here, we teach only unlearning. I can teach you how to unlearn, how to throw words away, to create space within you. And that space is divine, that space is godliness.”Where are you seeking – in words, in scriptures? Then one day or other you will become an atheist. A pundit, a scholar, cannot remain a theist for long. Remember, howsoever he knows, whatsoever he knows about the Bible and the Gita and the Koran, a scholar is bound to become an atheist some day or other, because that is the logical consequence of gathering words. Sooner or later he will ask: “Where is God?” No Bible can reply, no Gita can supply the answer. Rather, when Bibles and Gitas and Korans are too much on your mind, you miss the divine – because the whole space in you is filled with too much furniture. God cannot move, he may not be able to make any contact with you if the mind is too wordy. Then it is impossible to listen, and if you cannot listen, how can you pray? It is impossible to wait, words are too impatient, they are knocking from within to get out.I have heard…At three o’clock one morning Mulla Nasruddin phoned the bartender and said, “What time is the bar going to open?”The bartender said, “This is no time to inquire such a thing. You are a regular customer, Nasruddin, and you know well that we do not open before nine in the morning. Go to sleep and wait until nine.”But after ten minutes he phoned again and he said, “This is urgent. Tell me when the bar is going to open.”Now the bartender felt annoyed. He said, “What are you doing? I told you, not a single minute before nine. And don’t go on phoning me again and again.”But after ten minutes he phoned again. The bartender said, “Now you really are something. Have you gone mad? You will have to wait until nine.”Nasruddin said, “You don’t understand. I am locked in the bar and I want to get out!”If your mind is too burdened with words, theories, scriptures, they will go on knocking: “Give way, we want to get out!” And when you want to get out, God cannot enter. When the mind wants to get out, it is not open for anything that is incoming. It is closed, it is one-way traffic – two-way traffic is not possible.When you are aggressive through words going out, nothing can penetrate you, neither love, nor meditation, nor existence. And all that is beautiful happens as an ingoing process. When you are silent, no words knocking within to get out, when you are waiting… In that moment of waiting beauty happens, love happens, prayerfulness happens, godliness happens. But if a man is too addicted to words, he will miss it all. In the end he will have a long collection of words and theories, logic, everything – but nothing is worthwhile because the content is missing.You have the net, the trap, but no fish are there. If you had really caught the fish you would have thrown away the net immediately. Who bothers? If you have really used the ladder, you forget it. Who thinks about it? You have transcended it, it has been used.So whenever a man really comes to know, knowledge is forgotten. That’s what we call wisdom. A wise man is one who has been able to unlearn the knowledge. He simply drops all that is nonessential.Says Chuang Tzu:Where can I find a manwho has forgotten words?He is the one I would like to talk to.He is worth talking to. It may not be so easy to persuade him to talk, but just to be near him, just to sit by his side will be a communion, will be a communication, the deepest that is possible. Two hearts will melt into each other.But why this addiction to words? – because the symbol appears to be the real. And if it is repeated again and again, through repetition you become autohypnotized. Repeat anything, and by and by you will forget that you don’t know. The repetition will give you the feeling that you know.If you go to the temple for the first time, you go in ignorance. It is hypothetical. You don’t know whether this temple really contains anything, whether God is there or not. But go every day, again and again, and go on repeating the ritual, the prayers; and whatsoever the priest says, go on doing it day after day, year after year. You will forget the hypothetical state of mind that was there in the beginning. With continuous repetitions the thing goes into the mind and you start feeling that this is the temple, God lives here, this is the abode of God. Now you have moved into the world of appearance.That’s why every religion insists on teaching children as soon as possible, because once you miss childhood it is very difficult to convert people to foolish things, very difficult. Psychologists say that everybody should be caught before the age of seven. He should be converted to be a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian or anything, a communist, theist or atheist, it doesn’t make any difference – but catch hold, grab the child before seven. Up to the age of seven the child learns almost fifty percent of all he is going to learn in his whole life. Only fifty percent is left.And this fifty percent is very meaningful because it becomes the base. He will learn many things, he will create a great structure of knowledge, but all that structure will be based on the knowledge that he received when he was a child. And at this time, before the age of seven, the child has no logic, no argumentativeness. He is trusting, exploring; he is believing. He cannot disbelieve, because he does not know what belief is, what disbelief is.When the child is born, he has no mind to argue. He does not know what argument is. Whatsoever you say is true, appears true, and if you repeat it the child is hypnotized. That’s how all the religions have exploited humanity. The child has to be forced to conform to a pattern, and once the pattern is deeply rooted, nothing can be done. Even if later on the child changes his religion, nothing much will change. Look at a Hindu who has become a Christian – nothing has changed. On the contrary, his Christianity will be just like Hinduism, because of the base.It happened…There once existed a tribe of cannibals near the Amazon. By and by, they had killed themselves off and all but disappeared, until now only two hundred or so remained. They had killed and eaten each other. One missionary went there to work. The chief of the tribe spoke to him in perfect English. The missionary was surprised and said, “What! You speak perfect English; not only perfect English but with a perfect Oxford accent. And you are still a cannibal?”The man said, “Yes, I have been to Oxford, and I have learned much. Yes, we are still cannibals, but now I use a knife and fork. I learned that at Oxford.”This much change happens – nothing much can happen. Convert a Hindu to Christianity and his Christianity will be just like Hinduism. Convert a Christian to Hinduism; he will remain a Christian deep down, because you cannot change the base. You cannot make him a child again, you cannot make him innocent. That moment is lost.If this earth is ever going to be really religious then we will not teach Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, or Buddhism. That is one of the greatest crimes committed. We will teach prayerfulness, we will teach meditation, but not sects. We will not teach words and beliefs, we will teach a way of life, we will teach happiness, we will teach ecstasy.We will teach how to look at the trees, how to dance with the trees, how to be more sensitive, how to be more alive and how to enjoy the blessings that existence has given – but not words, not beliefs, not philosophies, not theologies. No, we will not lead them to a church or to a temple or to a mosque, because these places are the sources of corruption. They have corrupted the mind. We will leave the children to nature; that is the temple, the real church.We will teach children to look at the floating clouds, at the rising sun, at the moon at night. We will teach them how to love, and we will teach them not to create barriers to love, meditation, and prayerfulness. We will teach them to be open and vulnerable, we will not close their minds. And we will of course teach words but simultaneously we will also teach silence, because once words get into the base, silence becomes difficult.You come to me, your problem is this: at the base there are words and now you are trying to meditate and be silent – and the base is always there. Whenever you are silent the base starts functioning. So you become aware of too much thinking when you meditate – even more than you feel ordinarily. Why? What is happening? When you are silent you go inward and you become more sensitive to the inner nonsense that goes on and on. When you are not in meditation you are outward-going, extrovert; you are involved with the world and you cannot listen to the inner noise that goes on. Your mind is not there.The noise is continuously there but you cannot hear it, you are occupied. But whenever you close your eyes and look within, the madhouse opens. You can see and feel and hear, and then you become afraid and scared. What is happening? And you were thinking that through meditation you would become more silent. And this is happening, just the opposite.In the beginning it is bound to happen because a wrong base has been given to you. The whole society, your parents, your teachers, your universities, your culture, have given you a wrong base. You have already been corrupted, your source is poisoned. That is the problem – how to detoxify you. It takes time, and one of the most difficult things is to get rid of all that you have known, to unlearn.Says Chuang Tzu: Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to. Only a sage is worth talking to. Only a sage is worth listening to. Only a sage is worth living with.What is a sage? An empty boat – no words inside, the empty sky without the clouds; no sound, no noise, nobody mad, no chaos within, a continuous harmony, equilibrium, balance. He lives as if he is not. He is as if he is absent. He moves, but nothing moves within him. He talks, but the inner silence is there. It is never disturbed; he uses words, but those words are only vehicles – through those words he is sending you something which is beyond words. And if you catch and grab the words, you will miss.When you listen to a sage, don’t listen to his words; they are secondary, they are superficial, they are only peripheral. Listen to him, don’t listen to his words. When the words reach you, just put them aside, as the traveler will do who has crossed the sea – he leaves the boat there and goes on. Leave the boat there and go on. If you carry the boat, you are mad. Then your whole life will become a burden, you will be burdened by the boat. A boat is not to be carried on the head. Feel grateful, that is okay, but carrying the boat on your head, this is too much.How many boats are you carrying on your head? Your whole life has become static because of the weight. You cannot fly, you cannot float, because you are carrying such a dead burden, not only from one life, this life, but from many lives. You go on collecting all that is useless, futile. Why does this happen? There must be some deep reason, otherwise everybody would not be doing it.Why does it happen? In the first place, you think the word is the reality – the word God is God, the word love is love – the word is the real. The word is not the real. You have to make a distinction, a clear-cut distinction, that the word is not the real. The word only symbolizes, indicates, but it is not the real. Once you get into this trap – believing that the word is the real – and somebody says “I love you,” then you feel that he loves you because he says he loves you. Then you will be frustrated.If you cannot see the wordless reality you will be frustrated in all your paths in life, everywhere you will be frustrated because you will take the word as the real.Many people come to me and say, “This girl loved me, she said it herself.” “This man loved me and now the love has disappeared.” They are both deceived by words.Dale Carnegie suggests that even if you have been married for twenty years, don’t forget to use the same words you used when you were courting your wife – continue. Every morning say the same as you were doing when you were courting. Don’t drop those words. Every day say, “Nobody exists like you. You are the most beautiful person, and I will die without you.” Dale Carnegie says that even if you don’t feel it, go on saying it, because words are realities. And the wife will be deceived and the husband will be deceived, because we live by words alone.You don’t know anything else, you don’t know anything real. How can you be in contact with reality? When someone says, “I love you” – finished! When someone says, “I hate you” – finished! Put aside the words and look at the person. When someone says, “I love you,” don’t get entangled with the words, put them aside. Look at the person, at his or her totality. Then nobody can deceive you. Love is such a fire you will be able to see it, you will be able to touch it, you will be able to know whether it is there or not.Love cannot be hidden. If it is really there, words are not needed. When somebody really loves you, he will not say, “I love you.” It is not needed. Love is enough unto itself, it needs no salesmanship. It doesn’t need anybody to persuade, to convince; it is enough, it is a fire. Nothing is more fiery than love, it is a flame. When there is a flame in the dark, you need not say anything, it is there. No advertisement is needed, no propaganda is needed.Try to separate words from reality. In your day-to-day life when someone says, “I hate you,” don’t believe in the words. This may be just a momentary thing, it may be just a phase. Don’t go for the word, otherwise you will make an enemy for life. As you have made friends because of words so you have made enemies because of words. Don’t go for the words, look into the person, look into the eyes, feel the whole – it may be just a momentary reaction. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will be just a momentary thing. He feels hurt by something, he reacts and says, “I hate you.” Wait, don’t decide, don’t say, “This is an enemy.” If you say that, you are not only deceived by others’ words, you are also deceived by your own. If you say, “This is an enemy,” now this word will cling. And even if he changes tomorrow, you will not be so ready or so willing to change, you will carry it within you. And then through your insistence you will create an enemy. Your enemies are false, your friends are false, because words are not reality.Words can do only one thing: if you go on repeating them they give you the appearance of reality. Says Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, Mein Kampf: “I know only one difference between the truth and the lie – a lie repeated many times becomes true.” And he knows by experience, he says that he did it – he continually repeated lies, and he went on repeating them.In the beginning they looked foolish. He started saying that it was because of the Jews that Germany had been defeated in the First World War. It was absolutely absurd, but he repeated it so many times that people became aware of the words, and became addicted to them.It is said that once he was speaking at a meeting and he asked, “Who is responsible for the defeat of Germany?”One man stood up and said, “The bicycle riders.”Hitler was surprised. He said, “What? Why?”The man said, “Then why the Jews?” He was a Jew. “Why Jews?”Even when Hitler was dying and again Germany had been defeated and completely destroyed, he didn’t believe that it was because of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. He didn’t believe that he had been defeated because his enemies were superior, more powerful than him. His last verdict was still the same: that it was a Jewish conspiracy, that they were working behind the scenes, and because of them he had been defeated. And the whole of Germany believed him – one of the most intelligent peoples on the earth.But intelligent people can be stupid because intelligent people always believe in words. That is the problem. The Germans, highly intelligent, scholarly people, have produced the greatest professors, philosophers; the whole country is intelligent. How could such a stupid man as Adolf Hitler persuade them?But this is nothing illogical, this is the logic. A land of professors, intelligentsia, so-called intellectuals, is always word-addicted. If you go on repeating a word again and again and again, hammering and hammering, people listening again and again, they start feeling that this is true. Truth is created out of lies if you go on repeating them. Repetition is the method to convert a lie into a truth. But can you convert a lie into a truth? Just in appearance you can. Try it. Go on repeating something and you will start believing it. It may be that you are not as miserable as you look. Because you have been repeating, “I am in misery, I am in misery, I am in misery,” and you have repeated it so often, now you look miserable.Just look into your misery. Are you really miserable, really in such hell as you show by your face? Have a second thought. Immediately you will not feel so miserable because nobody can be as miserable as you look. It is impossible. God doesn’t allow that. It is repetition, it is autohypnosis.One French psychologist, Emile Coué, used to treat people. His method was simply repetition, suggestion, autohypnosis. You could go to him and say, “I have a headache, a constant headache, and no medicine helps. I have tried all the ‘pathies,’ even naturopathy; nothing helps.”He would say that there was no need for treatment because there was no headache. You have simply believed in it. And in going to this doctor and that, all have helped you to believe that yes, a headache is there – because if they don’t believe in your headache they cannot live. So they cannot say that you don’t have any headache. When you go to a doctor, even if you have nothing wrong he will find something. A doctor exists on it.Talking with Coué would help you immediately, almost fifty percent of the headache would disappear just by talking to him – without any medicine. And he would feel the relaxation coming over your head and then he would know that talking would do the trick. Then he would give you a formula that you had to repeat continuously day and night, whenever you remembered – that there was no headache. Every morning when you got up you had to repeat: “I am getting better and better every day.” Within two or three weeks the headache would disappear.A real headache cannot disappear that way. In the first place the headache was created by words; in the first place, you hypnotized yourself that you had a headache, and then you dehypnotized yourself. A real illness cannot disappear. But your illnesses – ninety percent of them – are unreal. Through words you have created them. Coué helped thousands, Mesmer helped thousands, just by creating the feeling that you are not ill. That doesn’t show that autohypnosis cures illness; it only shows that you are such great autohypnotists already that you create illnesses. You believe in them.And doctors cannot say that your diseases are mental. You don’t feel good if someone says that your disease is mental, you feel very bad, and you immediately change your doctor. Whenever a doctor says that you have a very great disease, very serious, you feel very good – because a man like you, so great, a somebody, he must have a big disease. Small diseases are for small people, ordinary diseases for ordinary people. When you have cancer, TB, or something dangerous, you feel superior, you are somebody. At least as far as illness is concerned you are not ordinary.A man graduated from the college, became a doctor, and came home. His father was very tired of working and working – he was also a medical doctor – so he went on a holiday. He said, “I am going to the hills for at least three weeks rest, so now you start working.”After three weeks the father came back. The boy said “I have a surprise for you. The lady you have been treating for years and couldn’t cure, I have cured her in three days.”The father beat him on the head and said, “You fool, that lady was paying for your education and I was hoping that through her all my children would get through college. Her stomachache was not real. And I was worried while in the hills. I forgot to tell you not to touch that woman. She is rich and she needs a stomachache, and I have been helping her. For years she has been the source of our livelihood.”Ninety percent of all diseases are psychological. They can be cured by mantra, they can be cured by suggestion, they can be cured by Satya Sai Baba, because in the first place you have already done the real miracle in creating them. Now anybody can cure them.Continuously repeating a word creates the reality, but this reality is hallucinatory. It is illusion, and you cannot come to reality unless all words have disappeared from the mind. Even a single word may create illusion. Words are great forces. If even a single word is in the mind, your mind is not empty. Whatsoever you are seeing, feeling, is through the word, and that word will change the reality.You have to be completely wordless, thoughtless. You have to be just consciousness.When you are just consciousness then the boat is empty, reality is revealed to you. Because you are not repeating anything, nor are you imagining anything, you are not autohypnotizing yourself. Only then the real appears, is revealed.Chuang Tzu is right. He says: Where can I find the man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.The purpose of a fish trapis to catch fish…You have forgotten the purpose completely. You have gathered so many fish traps, you are so constantly worried about them – that somebody might steal them, that they might get broken, or go rotten – so constantly worried about the traps, and completely forgotten the fish!The purpose of a fish trapis to catch fish,and when the fish are caughtthe trap is forgotten.If you cannot forget the trap it means that the fish is not yet caught. Remember, if you are continuously obsessed with the trap, it shows that the fish are not yet caught. You have forgotten completely about them and become so entangled with the fish traps that you have fallen in love with them.Once I knew a neighbor, he was a professor, a man of words. He purchased a car. Every morning he would work on it, cleaning it. It always remained in showroom condition, and he never took it on the road. For years I watched him in front of me. Every morning he would take much trouble, cleaning it, polishing it, doing everything. But the car remained there.Once we were traveling in the same railway compartment, so I asked, “Is something wrong with the car? You never bring it out. It is always in your porch.”He said, “No, I have fallen in love with it. I love it so much that I am always afraid that if I take it out something may go wrong – some accident, some scratch, anything can go wrong. And it is unbearable even to think of it.”A car, a word, a trap, they are means not ends. You can fall in love with them and then you never use them.I used to stay in a house. The lady of the house had three hundred sarees but she always used two – she was preserving the rest for some special occasion. When will that special occasion come? As far as I know, and I have known her for fifteen years, that special occasion has not come yet. It is not going to come, because she is becoming older every day; sooner or later she will die and those three hundred sarees will live on.What happened? Fallen in love with sarees? You can fall in love with things. It is difficult to fall in love with persons, it is very easy to fall in love with things because things are dead, you can manipulate them. Sarees will never say, “Wear us! We would like to go out and have a look around.” The car will never say, “Drive me, I am getting bored.”With people it is difficult. They will demand, they will ask, they would like to go out, they have their own desires to be fulfilled. When you fall in love with a person there is always conflict, so those who are clever never fall in love with persons, they always fall in love with things: a house, a car, clothes. They are always easy, manageable, and you always remain the master and the other never creates trouble. Or, if you fall in love with a person, you immediately try to convert him into a thing, a dead thing. A wife is a dead thing, a husband is a dead thing, and they torture each other. Why do they torture each other? What is the point of it? Through torture they make the other dead so the other becomes a thing, manipulatable. Then they are not worried.Two matrons were looking at a bookshop display window. One said to the other, “Look, there is a book entitled How to Torture Your Husband.”But the other was not excited. She didn’t even look at the book – she said, “I don’t need it, I have a system of my own.”Everybody has his own system of torturing the other, because only through torture and destruction can a person be changed into a thing.It happened once that Mulla Nasruddin walked into the coffee house looking very angry, very aggressive and dangerous, and he said, “I hear that someone has called my wife an ugly old hag. Who is this guy?”One man stood up, a very tall, strong, giantlike man. He said, “I called your wife that, what about it?”Looking at the person, Nasruddin immediately calmed down. The man was dangerous. He came near and said, “Thank you, this is my feeling too, but I couldn’t gather the courage to say so. You have done it, you are a brave man.”What is happening in a relationship? Why does it always turn ugly? Why is it so impossible to love? Why does everything become poisoned? Because the mind is always happy to manipulate things, because things never rebel; they are always obedient, they never disobey. A person is alive, you cannot predict what he is going to do. And you cannot manipulate – the other’s freedom becomes the problem.Love is such a problem because you cannot allow the other the freedom to be. And remember this: if you really love, real love is possible only when you allow the other total freedom to be himself or herself. But then you cannot possess, then you cannot predict, then you cannot be secure, then everything has to move from moment to moment. And mind wants to plan, to be secure and safe.Mind wants life to run on a track because mind is the most dead thing inside you. It is as if you are a river and part of the river is floating frozen ice. Your mind is just like the ice – the frozen part of you – and the mind wants to make you completely frozen, so there is no fear. Because whenever the new is there, there is fear – with the old there is no fear. Mind is always happy with the old.That is why mind is always orthodox, never revolutionary. There has never been a mind which can be called revolutionary. Mind cannot be revolutionary. Buddha is revolutionary, Chuang Tzu is revolutionary – because they have no minds. Lenin is not revolutionary, Stalin absolutely not. They cannot be. With minds, how can you be revolutionary? Mind is always orthodox, mind is always conformist, because mind is the dead part in you. This has to be understood.There are many dead parts in you, and the body has to throw them out. Your hairs are dead, that’s why you can cut them easily and there is no pain. Your nails are dead, that is why you can cut them easily and there is no pain, no hurt. The body goes on throwing out. Consciousness also has to throw off many things, otherwise they will accumulate. Mind is the dead part like the hair. And this is symbolic: Buddha told his disciples to shave their heads just as a symbol. As you shave your hair completely, so shave the inner consciousness also, shave it completely of the mind.Both are dead, don’t carry them. It is beautiful. Don’t allow the dead part to accumulate. What is mind? – your past, your experiences, your learning, all that has been. Mind is never present – how can it be? Here and now, mind cannot be.If you simply look at me, where is the mind? If you simply sit here and listen to me, where is the mind? If you start arguing, the mind comes in; if you start judging, the mind comes in. But how do you judge? You bring the past to the present, the past becomes the judge of the present. How do you argue? You bring up the past as an argument, and when you bring up the past, the mind comes in.Mind is the dead part of you, it is the excreta. And just as there are constipated people who suffer very much, so there is mind constipation, accumulated excreta. You never throw it out. Your mind thinks: only take in, never throw out.Meditation is an unburdening, throwing the mind out. The excreta has not to be carried, otherwise you will become more and more dull. That’s why a child has a fresh mind – because it has no accumulation. So sometimes children can say things that your philosophers cannot say. Sometimes they look and penetrate into realities that your man of knowledge misses. Children are very, very penetrating. They have a clarity, their look is fresh, their eyes are not filled. A sage is again a child. He has emptied his boat, he has emptied himself of all the cargo. The excreta has been thrown out, he is not constipated. His consciousness is a flow, it has no frozen parts.The purpose of a fish trapis to catch fish,and when the fish are caughtthe trap is forgotten.The purpose of wordsis to convey ideas.When the ideas are graspedthe words are forgotten.If you really understand me, you will not be able to remember what I said. You will catch the fish but you will drop the trap. You will be what I said but you will not remember what I said. You will be transformed through it but you will not become a more learned man through it. You will be more empty through it, less filled; you will go away from me refreshed, not burdened.Don’t try to gather what I say because whatsoever you gather will be wrong. Gathering is wrong: don’t accumulate, don’t fill your treasure chest from my words. Words are excreta, they are of no worth. Throw them out, then the meaning will be there, and meaning has not to be remembered. It never becomes part of the memory, it becomes part of your wholeness. You have to remember a thing only when it is part of the memory, just of the intellect. You never need to remember a real thing that has happened to you. If it happens to you, it is there – what is the need to remember? Don’t repeat, because repetition will give you a false notion.Listen, but not to the words – just by the side of the words the wordless is being given to you. Don’t be too focused on the words, just look a little sideways, because the real thing is being given there. Don’t listen to what I say, listen to me! I am also here, not only the words. And once you listen to me, then all words will be forgotten.It happened…Buddha died, and the bhikkus, the disciples, were very disturbed because none of his sayings had been collected while he was alive. They had completely forgotten. They did not think that he would die so soon, so suddenly. Disciples never think of that – that the master may disappear suddenly.Suddenly one day Buddha said, “I am going.” There was no time, and he had been speaking for forty years. When he was dead, how could his words be collected? A treasure would be lost, but what was there to do?And it is beautiful that Mahakashyapa could not repeat anything. He said, “I heard him, but I don’t remember what he said. I was so much in it, it never became part of my memory, I don’t know.” And he had become enlightened.Sariputta, Moggalyan, all these who had become enlightened, shrugged their shoulders: “It is difficult, he has said so much, but we don’t remember.” And these were the disciples who had reached.Then Ananda was approached. He had not become enlightened while Buddha was alive; he became enlightened after Buddha died. He had remembered everything. He was with Buddha continuously for forty years, and he dictated everything word by word – a man who was not enlightened! It looks paradoxical. Those who had reached should have remembered, not this man who had not yet reached the other shore. But when the other shore is reached, this shore is forgotten, and when one has oneself become a buddha, who cares to remember what Buddha said?The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. The words of the Buddha were traps, Mahakashyapa caught the fish. Who bothers about the trap now? Who bothers where the boat has gone? He has crossed the stream. Mahakashyapa said, “I don’t know what this fellow said. And you cannot rely on me, because with me it is difficult to separate what he said and what I say.”Of course it will be so. When Mahakashyapa has become a buddha himself, how can they be separate? The two are not two. But Ananda said, “I will relate his words,” and he related very authentically. Humanity is in great debt to this fellow Ananda, who was still ignorant. He had not caught the fish so he remembered the trap. He was still thinking to catch the fish so he had to carry the trap.The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped the words are forgotten. Remember this as a basic law of life – that the useless, the meaningless, the peripheral, looks so significant because you are not aware of the center. This world looks so significant because you are not aware of God. When the God is known, the world is forgotten. And it is never otherwise.People have tried to forget the world so that they can know God – it has never happened and it will never happen. You can go on trying and trying to forget the world, but you cannot. Your every effort to forget will become a continuous remembering. Only when God is known is the world forgotten. You can go on struggling to drop thinking, but you cannot drop thinking unless consciousness is achieved. Thinking is a substitute – how can you drop the trap when the fish is not yet caught? The mind will say, “Don’t be foolish. Where is the fish?”How can you drop the words when you have not realized the meaning? Don’t try to fight with the words, try to reach the meaning. Don’t try to fight with thoughts. That’s why I insist again and again that if thoughts disturb you, don’t create any struggle with them, don’t wrestle with them. If they come, let them come. If they go, let them go. Don’t do anything, just be indifferent, just be a watcher, an onlooker, not concerned. That’s all that you can do right now – be unconcerned.Don’t say, “Don’t come.” Don’t invite, don’t reject, don’t condemn and don’t appreciate. Simply remain indifferent. Look at them, they come as clouds, and then they go, as clouds disappear. Let them come and go, don’t get in their way, don’t pay attention to them. Because if you are against them, you start paying attention to them, and then immediately you are disturbed: “My meditation is lost.” Nothing is lost. Meditation is your intrinsic nature. Nothing is lost. Is the sky lost when clouds come? Nothing is lost.Be indifferent, don’t be bothered by thoughts, this way or that. And sooner or later you will feel and you will realize that their coming and going has become slower. Sooner or later you will come to see that now they come, but not so much; sometimes the traffic stops, the road is vacant. One thought has passed, another has not come yet; there is an interval. In that interval you will know your inner sky in its absolute glory. But if a thought enters, let it enter; don’t get disturbed.If you can do this much, and only this much can be done; nothing else is possible. Be inattentive, indifferent, not caring. Just remain a witness, watching, not interfering, and the mind will go, because nothing can be retained inside if you are indifferent.Indifference is cutting the roots, the very roots. Don’t feel antagonistic because that is again feeding. If you have to remember friends, you have to remember enemies also, even more so. Friends you can forget, how can you forget enemies? You have to constantly remember them because you are afraid.People, ordinary people, are disturbed by thoughts. Religious people are disturbed more because they are constantly fighting. But through fighting you pay attention – and attention is food. Everything grows if you pay attention, grows fast, becomes more vital. You just be indifferent.Buddha used the word upeksha; it means absolute indifference, neither this nor that – just in the middle – neither friendly nor inimical, neither for nor against, just in the middle, looking as if you are not concerned, as if these thoughts don’t belong to you, as if they are part of the great world. Let them be there. Then one day suddenly, when the indifference is total, the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center.But it cannot be predicted and cannot be planned; one has to go on working and waiting. Whenever it happens, you can laugh. Those thoughts were there because you wanted them to be there, those thoughts were there because you were feeding them constantly, and those thoughts were there because the fish was not yet caught. How could you throw away the trap? You had to carry it.I remember:Once it happened in Mulla Nasruddin’s country that the king was in search of a wise man. His old wise man had died and had said as he was dying, “When you replace me, find the most humble man in the kingdom, because ego is anti-wisdom. Humbleness is wisdom, so find the most humble man.”Secret agents were sent all over the kingdom to spy and seek out the most humble man. They reached Nasruddin’s village. He had heard that the old man had died, so he thought about what he should suggest as an indication of a wise man. He had read, he knew the ancient lore that the humblest is the most wise. So he logically inferred, concluded, that the old man must have said to find the humblest man. So he became the humblest man.The king’s men came in search. Mulla Nasruddin was very rich, but when they saw him, the richest man in the town, he was carrying a fishing net, coming from the river, as if from the humblest job in the town. So they thought, “This man seems to be very humble,” and they asked Nasruddin, “Why do you carry this fishing net? You are so rich, you need not go on fishing.”Nasruddin said, “I became so rich through fishing. I started my life as a fisherman. I have become rich, but just to pay respect to the original profession that gave me so much, I always carry this fish net on my shoulder.” A really humble man…Otherwise if a poor man becomes rich he starts cleaning his whole past, so that nobody knows that he was ever a poor man. He will drop all contacts which show that once he was a poor man. He doesn’t want to see his relatives, he doesn’t want to be reminded of the past. He simply drops the past completely. He creates a new past as if he is a born aristocrat. But this man was humble. So they informed the king that Mulla Nasruddin was the humblest man they had ever seen and he was appointed as the wise man.The day he was appointed, he threw away the net. The men who had recommended him asked, “Nasruddin, where is your net now?”He said, “When the fish is caught, the net is thrown away.”But you cannot throw it away before – it is impossible, you have to carry it. But carry it indifferently. Don’t get attached, don’t fall in love with it, because one day it has to be thrown away. If you fall in love with it then you may never catch the fish, just afraid that if you catch the fish you will have to throw away the net.Don’t fall in love with the mind. It has to be used and it is there because you don’t know the no-mind yet, you don’t know the innermost core of your being. The periphery is there and you have to carry it, but carry it indifferently. Don’t become a victim of it.A story…A man used to go to the racecourse every year on his birthday. The whole year he accumulated the money just for one stake on his birthday. And he was losing and losing for many years, but hope always revived him, again and again. Every time he decided not to go again, but one year is so far away. For a few days he would remember and then again hope returned: “Who knows? This year I may become rich, and why not one effort more?”By the time his birthday came he was again ready to go to the racecourse. And it was his fiftieth birthday, so he thought, “I should try wholeheartedly.”So he sold all his possessions, gathered a small fortune, all that he had earned in his whole life, all that he had, and he said, “Now I have to decide this way or that. Either I am to become a beggar or an emperor; no more in the middle, enough!”He went there, to the window, he looked at the names of the horses: “There is a horse, Adolph Hitler. It will do well. Such a great man, such a victorious man, he threatened the whole world. This horse must be ferocious and strong.” So he staked all, and he lost – as all those who stake on Hitler will lose. Now he had nowhere to go, even his house was lost. So what to do? There was nothing to do but commit suicide.So he went to a cliff, just to jump and finish it. When he was just about to jump he suddenly heard a voice, he couldn’t recognize it, whether it came from the outside or from the inside. He heard, “Stop! Next time I will give you the name of the winning horse – one more try. Don’t kill yourself.”Hope revived, he came back. He worked hard that year, because it was going to be the victory for which he had been waiting his whole life. The dream had to be fulfilled. He worked hard day and night, he earned much. Then with a trembling heart he reached the window and waited. The voice said, “Okay, choose this horse, Churchill.” Without any argument, without thinking about it, without his mind coming in, he staked all and won. Churchill came first.He went back to the window, and waited. The voice said, “Now back Stalin.” He staked all. Stalin came in first. Now he had a big treasure.The third time he waited, and the voice said, “No more.”But he said, “Keep quiet, I am winning, my stars are high and nobody can defeat me now.” So he chose Nixon and Nixon came last.The whole treasure was lost, he was again a beggar. Standing there, he muttered to himself, “Now what to do?”Said the inner voice, “Now you can go to the cliff and jump!”In moments when you are going to die, the mind stops because there is nothing for it to work on. The mind is part of life, it is not part of death. When there is no life ahead, mind stops; there is no work, it is unemployed immediately. And when mind stops, the inner voice comes in. It is always there, but there is so much noise that a still small voice cannot be heard.The voice had not come from beyond, there is nobody beyond, everything is within. God is not in the skies, it is in you. He was going to die – the last decision taken by the mind. But then the mind retired, there was no more work, and suddenly he heard the voice. This voice came from his innermost core, and the voice that comes from the innermost core is always right.Then what happened? Twice the voice worked, but then the mind entered again and the mind said, “Don’t listen to such nonsense, the stars are high and we are winning.”Remember this: whenever you win, you win because of the inner voice. But the mind always comes in and takes charge. Whenever you feel happiness it is always from the inner. Then mind immediately jumps in and takes control and says, “It is because of me.” When you are in love, it is like death, you feel blissful. Immediately mind comes in and says, “Okay, this is me, this is because of me.”Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, “Be happy! Look, I have done it.” And immediately the contact is lost.Remember this: with mind you will always be a loser. Even if you are victorious, your victories will be just defeats. With mind there is no victory, with no-mind there is no defeat.You have to shift your whole consciousness from mind to no-mind. Once no-mind is there, everything is victorious. Once the no-mind is there, nothing goes wrong, nothing can go wrong. With no-mind everything is absolutely as it should be. One is content, not a single fragment of discontent remains, one is absolutely at home. You are an outsider because of the mind.This shift is possible only if you become indifferent; otherwise this shift will never be possible. Even if you have glimpses, those glimpses will be lost. You have had glimpses before – it is not only in prayer and meditation that glimpses happen. Glimpses happen in ordinary life too. Making love to a woman, the mind stops. That is why sex is so appealing; it is a natural ecstasy. For a single moment suddenly mind is not there, you feel blissful and content – but only for a single moment. Immediately the mind comes in and starts – how to get more, how to stay longer? Planning, control, manipulation comes in, and you have missed.Sometimes, without any reason or rhyme, you are walking down the street under the trees and suddenly a sun ray comes and falls on you, a breeze touches your face. Suddenly it is as if the whole world has changed, for a single moment you are ecstatic. What was happening? You were walking, unworried, not going somewhere, just having a walk, a morning or evening walk. In that relaxed moment, suddenly, without your knowing, consciousness shifted from mind to no-mind. Immediately there is beautitude. But the mind comes in and says, “I must get more and more moments like this.” Then you can stand there for years, for lives, but it will never happen again – because of the mind.In ordinary life, in day-to-day life, not only in temples, in shops and offices also, the moments come – the consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center. But the mind controls again immediately. Mind is the great controller. You may be the master but he is the manager, and the manager has absorbed so much control and power that the manager thinks he is the master. And the master is completely forgotten.Be indifferent to mind. Whenever moments come which are wordless, silent, if the mind comes in, don’t help and don’t cooperate with it. Just look. Let it say whatsoever it says, don’t pay much attention. It will withdraw.In meditation, it is happening to you every day. Many come to me and say, “It happened on the first day but since then it has not been happening.”Why did it happen on the first day? You are more prepared now, on the first day you were not so prepared. Why did it happen on the first day? It happened on the first day because the manager was unaware of what was going to happen. It couldn’t plan. The next day the manager knows well what is to be done: breathing fast, then crying and screaming, then Hoo, Hoo! Now the manager knows, and the manager does it. Then it will not happen, the manager has taken charge.Remember this: whenever a blissful moment happens, don’t ask for it again. Don’t ask for it to be repeated, because all repetition is of mind. Don’t ask for it again. If you ask, then the mind will say, “I know the trick. I will do it for you.”When it happens, feel happy and grateful and forget. The fish is caught, forget the trap. The meaning is caught, forget the word.And the last thing: whenever meditation is complete, you will forget meditation. And only then, when you forget meditation, has it come to fulfillment, the climax has been reached. Now you are meditative for twenty-four hours a day. It is nothing to be done; it is there, it is you, it is your being.If you can do this, then meditation becomes a continuous flow, not an effort on your part – because all effort is of the mind.If meditation becomes your natural life, your spontaneous life, your Tao, then I tell you, some day Chuang Tzu will catch hold of you. Because he asks:Where can I find a manwho has forgotten words?He is the oneI would like to talk to.He is searching. I have seen him here many times wandering around you, just waiting, waiting. If you forget the words he will talk to you. And not only Chuang Tzu – Krishna, Christ, Lao Tzu, Buddha, they are all in search of you; all the enlightened people are in search of the ignorant. But they cannot talk because they know a language which is of silence, and you know a language which is of madness. That cannot lead anywhere. They are in search. All the buddhas that have ever existed are in search. Whenever you are silent you will feel that they have always been all around you.It is said that whenever the disciple is ready the master appears. Whenever you are ready the truth will be delivered to you. There is not even a single moment’s gap. Whenever you are ready, it happens immediately. There is no time gap.Remember Chuang Tzu. Any moment he may start talking to you, but before he starts talking, your talking must go.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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How does the true man of Taowalk through walls without obstructionand stand in fire without being burned?Not because of cunning or daring,not because he has learned –but because he has unlearned.His nature sinks to its root in the one.His vitality, his power,hide in secret Tao.When he is all one,there is no flaw in himby which a wedge can enter.So a drunken man who falls out of a wagonis bruised, but not destroyed.His bones are like the bones of other men,but his fall is different.His spirit is entire.He is not aware of getting into a wagon,or falling out of one.Life and death are nothing to him.He knows no alarm,he meets obstacles without thought, without care,and takes them without knowing they are there.If there is such security in wine,how much more in Tao?The wise man is hidden in Tao,nothing can touch him.The first sutra:How does the true man of Taowalk through walls without obstructionand stand in fire without being burned?This is one of the most basic and secret teachings. Ordinarily we live through cunningness, cleverness and strategy; we don’t live like small children, innocent. We plan, we protect, we make all the safeguards possible – but what is the result? Ultimately, what happens? All the safeguards are broken, all cunningness proves foolishness – ultimately death takes us away.Tao says that your cunningness will not help you, because what is your cunningness but a fight against the whole? With whom are you cunning – with nature, with Tao, with existence? Whom do you think you are deceiving – the source from where you are born and the source to which you will finally go? The wave is trying to deceive the ocean, the leaf trying to deceive the tree, a cloud trying to deceive the sky? Whom do you think you are trying to deceive? With whom are you playing?Once it is understood, a man becomes innocent, drops his cunningness, all his strategies, and simply accepts. There is no other way than to accept nature as it is and flow with it. Then there is no resistance, then he is just like a child who is going with his father, in deep trust.It happened once…Mulla Nasruddin’s son came home and said he had given his toy to a boy to play with that he believed to be his friend. Now he was not returning it. “What should I do?” he asked.Mulla Nasruddin looked at him and said, “Go up this ladder.” The boy trusted his father so he did so. When he was ten feet high, Nasruddin said, “Now jump into my arms.”The boy hesitated a little, and said, “If I fall, I will get hurt.”Nasruddin said, “I am here, you need not worry. Take a jump.” The boy jumped, and Nasruddin stood aside. The boy fell down, and started crying and weeping.Then Nasruddin said, “Now you know. Never believe anybody, not even anything your father says, not even your father, don’t believe anybody. Otherwise you will be deceived all your life.”This is what every father, every parent, every school, every teacher, is teaching you. This is your learning. Don’t believe in anybody, don’t trust, otherwise you will be deceived. You become cunning. In the name of cleverness you become cunning, untrusting. And once a man is untrusting he has lost contact with the source.Then your whole life is wasted; you fight an impossible fight in which defeat is bound to happen. Trust is the only bridge and it is better to realize it sooner, because at the moment of death everybody realizes that it has been a defeat. But then nothing can be done.Real intelligence is not cunningness, it is totally different. Real intelligence is to look into things. And whenever you look into things deeply, you will come to know that you are just a wave, that this whole is the ocean and there is no need to worry. The whole has produced you, it will take care of you. You have come out of the whole, it is no enemy to you. You need not worry, you need not plan. And when you are not worried, not planning, for the first time life starts. For the first time you feel free of worries and life happens to you.This intelligence is religion. This intelligence gives you more trust, and finally, total trust. This intelligence leads you to the ultimate nature, acceptance – what Buddha called tathata. Buddha said: Whatsoever happens, happens. Nothing else can happen, nothing else is possible. Don’t ask for it to be otherwise; be in a let-go, and allow the whole to function. And when you allow the whole to function and you are not a barrier, a resistance, then you cannot be defeated.In Japan, through Buddha, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, they have developed a particular art they call zendo. Zendo means the Zen of the sword, the art of the warrior – and nobody knows it like they do. The way they have developed it is supreme. It takes years, even a whole lifetime, to learn zendo because the learning consists of acceptance. You cannot accept in ordinary life – how can you accept when a warrior is standing before you to kill you? How can you accept when the sword is raised against you and every moment, any moment, death is near?The art of zendo says that if you can accept the sword, the enemy, the one who is going to kill you, and there is no distrust; if even the enemy is the friend, and you are not afraid, you are not trembling, then you become a pillar of energy, unbreakable. The sword will break on you, but you cannot be broken. There will not even be any possibility that you could be destroyed.It happened…Once there was a great zendo master, he was eighty, and traditionally, the disciple who could defeat him would succeed him. So all the disciples hoped that someday he would accept their challenge, and now he was getting old.There was one disciple who was the cleverest, a strategist, very powerful, but not a master of zendo, just skilled in the art. He was a good warrior, knowing everything about swordsmanship, but he was not yet a pillar of energy. He was still afraid while fighting. The tathata had not yet happened to him.He went to the master again and again saying, “Now the time has come, and you are getting old. You may become too old to challenge, even dead. So I challenge you. Accept my challenge, Master, and give me a chance to show what I have learned from you.” The master laughed and avoided him.The disciple started thinking that the master had become so weak and old that he was afraid, just trying to evade the challenge. So one night he insisted and insisted and said, “I will not leave until you accept my challenge for tomorrow morning. You have to accept, I challenge you.” He became angry, “You are getting old and soon there will be no chance for me to show what I have learned from you. This has been the tradition always.”The master said, “If you insist, your very insistence shows that you are not ready or prepared. There’s too much excitement, your ego is challenging. You have not yet become capable; but if you insist, okay. Do one thing. Go to the nearby monastery; there is a monk there, he was my disciple ten years ago. He became so efficient in zendo that he threw away his sword and became a sannyasin. He was my rightful successor. He never challenged me, and he was the only one who could have challenged and even defeated me. So first go and challenge that monk. If you can defeat him, then come to me. If you cannot defeat him, then just drop the idea.”The disciple immediately started out for the monastery. By the morning he was there. He challenged the monk. He couldn’t believe that this monk could be a zendo master – lean and thin, continuously meditating, eating only once a day. The monk listened and laughed, and he said, “You have come to give me a challenge? Even your master cannot challenge me, even he’s afraid.”Listening to this, the disciple got completely mad! He said, “This is insulting, I will not listen! Stand up immediately! Here is a sword I have brought for you knowing well that you are a monk and you may not have one. Come out in the garden.”The monk looked absolutely undisturbed. He said, “You are just a child, you are not a warrior. You will be killed immediately. Why are you asking for death unnecessarily?”This made him still more angry, and then they both went out. The monk said, “I will not need the sword, because a real master never needs it. I am not going to attack you, I am only going to give you a chance to attack me so your sword is broken. You are no match for me. You are a child, and people will laugh at me if I take up the sword against you.”It was too much! The young man jumped up – but then he saw that the monk was standing. Up until now the monk had been sitting; now he stood up, closed his eyes, and started swaying from side to side, left to right – and suddenly the young man saw that the monk had disappeared. There was only a pillar of energy – the face was no longer there, just a solid pillar of energy, swaying. He became afraid and started retreating, and the pillar of energy started moving toward him, swaying. He threw away his sword and screamed, “Save me!”The monk sat down again and started laughing. His face came back, the energy disappeared, and he said, “I told you before: even your master is no match for me. Go and tell him.”Perspiring, trembling, nervous, the disciple went back to his master and said, “How grateful I am for your compassion toward me. I am no match for you. Even that monk destroyed me completely. But one thing I couldn’t tolerate, why I got involved in it. He said, ‘Even your master is no match for me.’”The master started laughing and said, “So that rascal played the trick on you too? You got angry? Then he could see through you, because anger is a hole in the being. And that has become his basic trick. Whenever I send somebody to him, he starts talking against me, and my disciples of course become angry. When they are angry, he finds out that they have loopholes, and when you have holes you cannot fight.”Whenever you are angry, your being has leakages. Whenever you desire, your being has holes in it. Whenever you are jealous, filled with hatred, sexuality, you are not a pillar of energy. Hence buddhas have been teaching us to be desireless, because whenever you are desireless energy does not move outward, energy moves within. It becomes an inner circle, it becomes an electric field, a bioelectric field. When that field is there, without any leakage, you are a pillar; you cannot be defeated. But you are not thinking of victory, remember, because if you are thinking of victory you cannot be a pillar of energy. Then that desire becomes a leakage.You are weak – not because others are strong – you are weak because you are filled with so many desires. You are defeated, not because others are more cunning and clever – you are defeated because you have so many leakages.Tathata – acceptance, total acceptance, means no desire. Desire arises out of non-acceptance. You cannot accept a certain situation, so desire arises. You live in a hut and you cannot accept it; this is too much for the ego, you want a palace. You are a poor man, but not because you live in a hut, no. Emperors have lived in huts. Buddha lived under a tree, and he was not a poor man. You could not find a richer man anywhere.No, your hut doesn’t make you poor. The moment you desire the palace you are a poor man. And you are not poor because others are living in palaces, you are poor because the desire to live in the palace creates a comparison with the hut. You become envious. You are poor.Whenever there is discontent, there is poverty; whenever there is no discontent, you are rich. And you have such riches that no thief can steal them; you have such riches, no government can take them by taxation; you have riches which cannot be taken away from you in any way. You have a fort of a being, unbreakable, impenetrable.Once a desire moves and your energy starts falling you become weak through desire, you become weak through longing. Whenever you are not longing and are content, whenever nothing is moving, when your whole being is still, then you are an impenetrable fort, says Chuang Tzu. Fire cannot burn you, death is impossible – that’s the meaning. Fire cannot burn you; death is impossible, you cannot die. You have the secret key to eternal life.And sometimes this happens in ordinary circumstances too. A house is on fire – everybody dies but a small child survives. There is an accident – the old people die and the small children survive. People say that this is a miracle, God’s grace. No, it is nothing of the sort, it is because the child accepted that situation too. Those who were cunning started running and trying to save themselves; they got themselves into trouble. The child rested. He was not even aware that something was happening, that he was going to die. The child is saved through his innocence.It happens every day. Go and watch near a bar, a wine shop at night, drunkards are falling down in the street, lying in the drain, absolutely happy. In the morning they will get up. They may be bruised a little but no harm has happened to their bodies. Their bones are intact. They have got no fractures.You try to fall like a drunkard on the street – immediately you will have fractures. And he falls like this every day, every night, many times, but nothing happens to him. What is the matter, what is the secret? When he is drunk there is no desire. He is absolutely at ease, here and now. When he is drunk he is not afraid, there is no fear, and when there is no fear, there is no cunningness.Cunningness comes out of fear. So the more fearful a person, the more cunningness you will find in him. A brave man is not cunning, he can depend on his bravery, but a man who is afraid, who is a coward, can depend only on cunningness. The more inferior a person, the more cunning – the more superior a person, the more innocent. Cunningness is a substitute. When one is drunk, absolutely drunk, future disappears and past disappears.I have heard…Mulla Nasruddin was walking with his wife, absolutely drunk. She had found him lying in the street and was bringing him home. Of course, she was arguing, and winning all the arguments, because she was alone. Mulla Nasruddin was not there; he was simply coming along with her.Then suddenly she saw a mad bull approaching. There was no time to alert Nasruddin, so she jumped into a bush. The bull came up and spun Nasruddin almost fifty feet in the air. He fell into a ditch, and as he crawled out of it he looked at his wife and said, “If you do this to me again, I shall really lose my temper. This is too much!”Ordinary wine gives so much power when one is drunk, what about Tao, the absolute drunkenness? What about Krishna or Buddha, the greatest drunkards – so drunk with the divine that not even a trace of the ego is left? You cannot hurt them because they are not there, you cannot insult them because there is no one who will resist the insult and create a wound. Your insult will pass through them, as if passing through an empty house. Their boats are empty. A breeze comes in and passes with no barrier. When the breeze has gone the house is not even aware that the breeze has been there.The appeal of wine is really because you are so egoistic. You are too burdened by it and sometimes you want to forget it. The world will have to follow alcohol or Tao – these are the alternatives. Only a religious man, a really religious man, can be beyond alcohol, marijuana, LSD – any type of drug. Only a religious man can be beyond them; otherwise how can you be beyond them? The ego is too much, the burden is so much, it is constantly on your head. You have to forget yourselves.But if wine can do so much, you cannot conceive of what the divine wine can do. What is the wine doing? For certain moments, through chemical changes in the brain, in the body, you forget yourself. But this is momentary. Deep down you are there, and after a few hours the chemical effect is gone, your body has thrown the wine out and the ego asserts itself again.But there is a wine, I tell you – God is that wine, Tao, or whatsoever name you like to call it. Once you taste it, the ego is gone forever. Nobody ever comes back from that drunkenness.That’s why Sufis always talk of wine, Sufis always talk of women. Their woman is not the woman you know – God is the woman. And their wine is not the wine that you know – God is the wine. Omar Khayyam has been misunderstood, tremendously misunderstood; because of Fitzgerald he has been misunderstood all over the world. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat appears to be written as if in praise of wine and women, not at all. Omar Khayyam is a Sufi, a mystic. He talks of the wine which comes through Tao; he talks of this wine in which you are lost forever and forever. This intoxicant, this divine intoxicant, is not temporary, it is non-temporal, it is not momentary – it is eternal.Sufis talk of God as the woman. Then the embrace is eternal, it is ultimate; then there is no separation. If you can understand this then you are intelligent, but not through your strategies, cunningness, arithmetic, your logic.If you can, look deep into existence. From where have you come? Where are you going? With whom are you fighting, and why? These same moments that you are losing in fighting can become ecstatic.Now look at the sutra on wholeness. You think of yourself as the individual. You are wrong. Only the whole exists. This is false, this appearance, that I think I am. This is the most false thing in the world. And because of this I am, fight arises. If I am, then this whole seems inimical; then everything seems to be against me.It is not that anything is against you – it cannot be! These trees have helped you, this sky has helped, this water has helped, this earth has created you. Then nature is your mother. How can the mother be against you? You have come out of her. But you think of I as an individual, and then the fight arises. It is one-sided. You start the fight, and nature goes on laughing, existence goes on enjoying. Even in a small child, the moment he starts feeling I, the fight arises.In a supermarket, a small child was insisting on a toy. The mother said positively, “No, I am not going to purchase it. You have got enough.”The child got angry and said, “Mum, I have never seen a meaner girl than you, you are the meanest.”The mother looked at the child, at his face, the anger, and she said, “Just wait, you will certainly meet a really mean girl. Just wait!”In one house, the mother was insisting that the child do his homework. He was not listening and went on playing with his toys, so she said, “Are you listening to me or not?”The child looked up and said, “Who do you think I am – Daddy?”Only a small child, and the fighting starts – the ego has arisen. He knows Daddy can be silenced, but not him. The moment the child feels he is separate the natural unity is broken, and then his whole life becomes a struggle and a fight.Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened. That is the difference between the Eastern attitude and the Western. Western psychology insists that the ego should be strengthened; the child must have a strong ego, he must fight, struggle; only then will he be mature.The child is in the mother’s womb, one with the mother, not even aware that he is – he is, but without any consciousness. In a deeper sense all consciousness is illness. Not that he is unconscious – he is aware. His being is there, but without any self-consciousness. The am is there, but the I has not been born yet. The child feels, lives, is fully alive, but never feels that he is separate. The mother and the child are one.Then the child is born. The first separation happens, and the first cry. Now he is moving, the wave is moving away from the ocean. Western psychologists say: we will train the child to be independent, to be individual. Jung’s psychology is known as the way of individuation. He must become an individual, absolutely separate. He must fight. That’s why, in the West, there is so much rebellion in the new generation. This rebellion was not created by the new, younger generation; this rebellion was created by Freud, Jung, Adler and company. They have provided the basis.Fight will give you a stronger ego. It will shape you. So fight the mother, fight the father, fight the teacher, fight the society. Life is a struggle. And Darwin started the whole trend when he said only the fittest survive; the survival of the fittest. The stronger you are in your ego, the more likely you will survive.The West lives through politics, the East has a totally different attitude – and Tao is the core, the very essence of the Eastern consciousness. It says: No individuality, no ego, no fight; become one with the mother; there is no enemy, the question is not of conquering.Even a man, a very knowledgeable man, a very penetrating, logical man like Bertrand Russell, thinks in terms of conquest – conquering nature, the conquest of nature. Science seems to be a struggle, a fight with nature: how to break the lock, how to open the secrets, how to grab the secrets from nature.Eastern consciousness is totally different. Eastern consciousness says: Ego is the problem, don’t make it stronger, don’t create any fight. And not the fittest but the humblest survive.That’s why I insist again and again that Jesus is from the East; that’s why he could not be understood in the West. The West has misunderstood him. The East could have understood him because the East knows Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus belongs to them. He says: “Those who are last will be the first in my kingdom of God.” The humblest, the meekest, will possess the kingdom of God. Poor in spirit is the goal. Who is poor in spirit? The empty boat, he who is not at all – no claim on anything, no possession of anything, no self. He lives as an absence.Nature gives her secrets. There is no need to grab, there is no need to kill, there is no need to break the lock. Love nature, and nature gives you her secrets. Love is the key. Conquering is absurd.So what has happened in the West? This conquering has destroyed the whole of nature. Now there is a cry for ecology, how to balance. We have destroyed nature completely, because we have broken all the locks and we have destroyed the whole balance. And now through that imbalance humanity will die sooner or later.Chuang Tzu can be understood now, because he says: Don’t fight with nature. Be in such deep love, become so one that through love, from heart to heart, the secret is given. And the secret is that you are not the individual, you are the whole. Why be satisfied with just being a part? Why not be the whole? Why not possess the whole universe? Why possess small things?Ramateertha used to say, “When I close my eyes I see stars moving within me, the sun rising within me, the moon rising within me. I see oceans and skies. I am the vast, I am the whole universe.”When he went to the West for the first time and started saying these things, people thought he had gone crazy. Somebody asked him, “Who created the world?”He said, “I, it is within me.”This I is not the ego, not the individual; this I is the universe, existence.He looks crazy. This claim looks too much. But look in his eyes: there is no ego. He is not asserting anything, he is simply stating a fact.You are the world. Why be a part, a tiny part, and why unnecessarily create trouble when you can be the whole?This sutra is concerned with wholeness. Don’t be the individual, be the whole. Don’t be the ego. When you can become the divine, why be satisfied with such a small, tiny, ugly thing?How does the true man of Taowalk through walls without obstructionand stand in fire without being burned?Somebody asked Chuang Tzu, “We have heard that a man of Tao can walk through walls without obstruction. Why?” If you don’t have any obstruction within you, no obstruction can obstruct you. This is the rule. If you have no resistance within you, in your heart, the whole world is open for you. There is no resistance. The world is just a reflection, it is a big mirror; if you have resistance, then the whole world has resistance.It happened once…A king built a palace, a palace made of millions of mirrors – all the walls were covered with mirrors. A dog entered the palace and he saw millions of dogs all around. So, being a very intelligent dog, he started barking to protect himself from the millions of dogs all around him. His life was in danger. He must have become tense, he started barking. And when he started barking, those millions of dogs started barking too.In the morning the dog was found dead. There he was, alone, there were only mirrors. Nobody was fighting with him, nobody was there to fight, but he looked at himself in the mirror and became afraid. And when he started fighting, the mirror reflection also started fighting. He was alone, with millions and millions of dogs around. Can you imagine the hell he lived through that night?You are living in that hell right now; millions and millions of dogs are barking around you. In every mirror, in every relationship, you see the enemy. A man of Tao can walk through walls because he has no wall in his heart. A man of Tao finds the enemy nowhere because he is not the enemy inside. A man of Tao finds all mirrors vacant, all boats empty, because his own boat is empty. He is mirrored, he has no face of his own, so how can you mirror, how can you reflect a man of Tao? All mirrors remain silent. A man of Tao passes – no footprints are left behind, no trace. All mirrors remain silent. Nothing reflects him, because he is not there, he is absent.When the ego disappears you are absent, and then you are whole. When the ego is there you are present, and you are just a tiny part, a very tiny part, and very ugly at that. The part will always be ugly. That’s why we have to try to make it beautiful in so many ways. But a man with ego cannot be beautiful. Beauty happens only to those who are without egos. Then the beauty has something of the unknown in it, something immeasurable.Remember this: ugliness can be measured. It has limits. Beauty, the so-called beauty, can be measured. It has limits. But the real beauty cannot be measured – it has no limits. It is mysterious – it goes on and on and on. You cannot be finished with a buddha. You can enter him, and you will never come out. Endless! His beauty is never finished.But the ego goes on trying to be beautiful. Somehow you remember the beauty of the whole; somehow you remember the silence of the womb; somehow deep down you know the bliss of being one, in unison, the unity with existence. Because of that, many desires arise. You know the beauty of being a god and you have to live like a beggar. So what do you do? You create faces, you paint yourself. But deep down the ugliness remains, because all paints are just paints.It happened once…A woman was walking on the seashore. She found a bottle, opened the bottle and a genie came out. And, just like all good genies the genie said, “You have broken my prison, you have set me free. So now you can ask anything, and I will fulfill your fondest desire or wish.”Genies are not found every day, on every shore, in every bottle. It rarely happens, and only in stories. But the woman didn’t think even for a single moment. She said, “I want to become a beautiful person – hair like Elizabeth Taylor, eyes like Brigitte Bardot, body like Sophia Loren.”The genie looked again, and said, “Honey, put me back in the bottle!”And this is what you are asking for – everybody is asking for this – that’s why genies have disappeared from the world. They are so afraid of you, you are asking the impossible. It cannot happen because the part can never be beautiful.Just think: my hand can be cut off – can that hand be beautiful? It will grow more and more ugly, it will deteriorate, it will start smelling. How can my hand be beautiful, separate from me? The separation brings death; unison brings life. In the whole you are alive; alone and separate, you are already dead or dying.Take my eyes out, then what are they? Even stones, colored stones, will be more beautiful than they because they are still with the whole. Pluck a flower; then it is not beautiful, the glory is gone. It was beautiful just a moment ago when it was joined with the roots, with the earth. Uprooted, you float like egos. You are ill, and you will remain ill, and nothing can be of any help. All your efforts, however clever, are going to fail.Only in the whole are you beautiful. Only in the whole are you lovely. Only in the whole is grace possible.It is not because of cunningness that the man of Tao walks through walls without obstruction, and stands in fire without being burned.Not because of cunning or daring,and not because he has learned –but because he has unlearned.Learning goes into the ego; learning strengthens the ego. That’s why pundits, brahmins, scholars, have the subtlest egos. Learning gives them scope, learning gives them space. They become tumors, egos. Their whole being is then exploited by the ego.The more learned a man, the more difficult he is to live with, the more difficult to relate to him, the more difficult for him to reach the temple. It is almost impossible for him to know God because he himself now lives like a tumor, and the tumor has its own life – now it is the ego tumor. And it exploits. The more you know, the less is the possibility for prayerfulness to happen.So Chuang Tzu says it is not because of cunning, he is not calculating, he is not cunning or daring, because daring, cunning, calculating, are all part of the ego. A man of Tao is neither a coward nor a brave man. He does not know what bravery is, what cowardice is. He lives. He is not self-conscious, not because he has learned but because he has unlearned. The whole of religion is a process of unlearning. Learning is the process of the ego, unlearning is the process of the non-ego. Learned, your boat is full, filled with yourself.It happened…Mulla Nasruddin used to have a ferryboat, and when times were not good he would carry passengers from one bank to the other.One day a great scholar, a grammarian, a pundit, was crossing to the other shore in his ferryboat. The pundit, the scholar, asked Nasruddin, “Do you know the Koran? Have you learned the scriptures?”Nasruddin said, “No, no time.”The scholar said, “Half your life has been wasted.”Then suddenly there arose a storm and the small boat was caught on the waves, any moment they could be drowned. Asked Nasruddin, “Schoolmaster, do you know how to swim?”The man was very afraid, perspiring. He said, “No.”Said Nasruddin, “Then your whole life has been wasted. I am going!”Now, this boat cannot go to the other shore. But people think learning can become a boat, or learning can become a substitute for swimming. No! Can scriptures become boats? No, they are too heavy. You can drown with them but you cannot cross the river. Unlearning will make you weightless; unlearning will make you innocent again.When you don’t know, in that not knowing what happens? The most beautiful phenomenon, the greatest ecstasy happens when you don’t know – there is a silence when you don’t know. Somebody asks a question and you don’t know. Life is a riddle, and you don’t know. Everywhere is mystery and you are standing there not knowing, wondering. When you don’t know there is wonder, and wonder is the most religious quality. The deepest religious quality is wonder. Only a child can wonder. A man who knows cannot wonder, and without wonder no one has ever reached the divine. It is the wondering heart to which everything is a mystery – a butterfly is a mystery, a seed sprouting is a mystery.And remember, nothing has been solved; all your science has done nothing. The seed sprouting is still a mystery and it is going to remain a mystery. Even if science can create the seed, the sprouting will remain a mystery. A child is born; it is a mystery that is born. Even if the child can be produced in a test tube, it makes no difference. The mystery remains the same.You are here. It is such a mystery. You have not earned it, you cannot say to the universe, “I am here because I have earned it.” It is a sheer gift, you are here for no reason at all. If you were not here, what difference would it make? If you were not here, to what court could you appeal?This sheer existence, this breathing that goes in and out, this moment that you are here, listening to me, to the breeze, to the birds, this moment that you are alive, is such a mystery. If you can face it without any knowledge you will enter into it. If you face it with knowledge and you say, “I know, I know the answer,” the doors are closed – not because of the mystery, the doors are closed because of your knowledge, your theories, your philosophy, your theology, your Christianity, your Hinduism – they close the door.A man who thinks he knows does not know. The Upanishads go on saying that a man who thinks that he does not know, knows. Says Socrates: When a man really knows, he knows only one thing, that he does not know. Chuang Tzu says it is because he has unlearned. Whatsoever the world taught him, whatsoever society taught him, whatsoever the parents and the utilitarians taught him, he has dropped. He has again become a child, a small child. His eyes are again filled with wonder. He looks all around and everywhere is mystery.Ego kills the mystery. Whether it is the ego of a scientist or whether it is the ego of a scholar or of a philosopher, makes no difference. The ego says, “I know,” and the ego says, “If I don’t know now, then sooner or later I will come to know.” The ego says that there is nothing unknowable.There are two aspects for the ego: the known and the unknown. The known is that part which the ego has already traveled, and the unknown is that part which the ego will travel. It is possible to travel, there is nothing unknowable.The ego leaves no mystery in the world. And when there is no mystery around you, there cannot be any mystery within. When mystery disappears, all songs disappear; when mystery disappears, poetry is dead; when mystery disappears, God is not in the temple, then there is only a dead statue. When mystery disappears there is no possibility for love, because only two mysteries fall in love with each other. If you know, then there is no possibility for love – knowledge is against love. And love is always for unlearning. But because he has unlearned:His nature sinks to its root in the one.His vitality, his power,hide in secret Tao.His nature sinks to its root… The ego exists in the head, remember, and you carry your head very high. The root is just at the other pole of your being.Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu used to say: Concentrate on the toe. Close your eyes and move into the toe and remain there. That will give you a balance. The head has given you much imbalance. The toe…? It looks like they are joking. They mean it, they are not joking. They are right. Move from the head, it is not the root, but we are in the head too much.His nature sinks to its root, to the very source. The wave goes deeper into the ocean, into the one. And remember, the source is one. The waves may be many millions, but the ocean is one. You are separate there, I am separate here, but just look a little deeper, to the roots, and we are one; we are like branches of the same tree. Look at the branches and they are separate, but deep down they are one.The deeper you go, you will find less and less multiplicity, more and more unity. At the deepest it is one. That’s why Hindus talk of the non-dual, the one, advaita.His vitality, his power, hide in secret Tao. And whatsoever vitality comes to the man of Tao is not manipulated, is not created by him, it is given by the roots. He is vital because he is rooted; he is vital because he has rejoined the ocean, the one. He is back at the source, he has come to the mother.When he is all one,there is no flaw in himby which a wedge can enter.And whenever one is rooted in the deepest core of one’s being, which is one, then there is no flaw. You cannot penetrate such a man. Swords cannot go into him, fire cannot burn him. How can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the momentary, how can you destroy the ultimate? You can destroy the wave, how can you destroy the ocean? You can destroy the individual, but you cannot destroy the soul. The form can be killed, but the formless…? How will you kill the formless? Where will you find the sword that can kill the formless?Krishna said in the Gita, “Nainam chhedanti sashtrani – no sword can kill it, no fire can burn it.” Not that if you go and kill Chuang Tzu you will not be able to kill him. You will be able to kill the form, but the form is not Chuang Tzu – and he will laugh.It happened…Alexander was coming back from India when suddenly he remembered Aristotle, his teacher, one of the greatest logicians.Aristotle is the original source of all Western stupidity, he is the father. He created the logical mind. He created analysis, he created the method of dissection, he created the ego and the individual, and he was the teacher of Alexander.He had told Alexander to bring a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin, when he came back, because polar opposites are always interesting. He must have been deeply interested – what is this Hindu mystic? What type of man lives beyond logic, who says there is only one not two, who joins all the contradictions and paradoxes, whose whole attitude is of synthesis, not of analysis? He never believes in the part, he always believes in the whole, what type of man can he be?So he told Alexander, “When you come back, bring with you a Hindu mystic, a sannyasin. I would like to see one. A man who lives beyond mind and says that there is something beyond mind, is a rare phenomenon.” Aristotle never believed that there could be anything beyond mind; for him mind was all.When Alexander was returning, he suddenly remembered. So he asked his soldiers to go and find a great Hindu mystic, a great sannyasin, a saint, a sage. They inquired in the town. They said, “Yes, just by the side of the river stands a naked man. For years he has been standing there, and we think he is a mystic. We cannot be certain because he never speaks much, and we cannot be certain because we don’t understand him much. Whatsoever he says seems to be very illogical. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not true.”Alexander said, “This is the right man. My master, who has created logic, would like to see this illogical man. Go and tell him that Alexander invites him.”The soldiers went and they told this naked man that Alexander the Great invites him; he would be a royal guest, every comfort and convenience would be given to him, so he shouldn’t worry.The man started laughing and said, “The man who calls himself the Great is a fool. Go and tell him I don’t keep company with fools. That’s why I have been standing here alone for many years. If I want to keep company with fools, do you think that India has less than his country? The town is full of them.”They were very disturbed, those soldiers, but they had to report. Alexander asked what the man had said – Dandami was the name of this man. Alexander has used the name Dandamas in his reports. Alexander felt annoyed, but this was the last village at the border, they would be moving out of India. So he said, “It is best that I go and see what type of man this is.”He may have remembered Diogenes – maybe he was the same type, standing naked near a river. The same thing happened with Diogenes. He also laughed and thought Alexander a fool.So he came with a naked sword and said, “Follow me, or I will cut your head off immediately. I don’t believe in discussion, I believe in orders.”The man laughed and said, “Cut it off – don’t wait! The head that you will be cutting off, I have cut it off long ago. This is nothing new, I am already headless. Cut it off, and I tell you, that when the head falls down onto the earth you will see it fall and I will also see it fall, because I am not the head.”The man of Tao can be burned, but still the man of Tao cannot be burned. The form is always on fire. It is burning already. But the formless is never touched by any fire. From where does this power come, from where does this vitality come? They …hide in secret Tao. Tao means the great nature, Tao means the great ocean, Tao means the great source.So a drunken man who falls out of a wagonis bruised, but not destroyed.His bones are like the bones of other men,but his fall is different.The ego is not there.His spirit is entire.He is not aware of getting into a wagon,or falling out of one.Life and death are nothing to him.He knows no alarm,he meets obstacles without thought, without careand takes them without knowing they are there.If there is such security in wine,how much more in Tao?The wise man is hidden in Tao,nothing can touch him.Watch a drunkard, because the man of Tao is in many ways similar to him. He walks, but there is no walker; that’s why he looks unbalanced, wobbling. He walks, but there is no direction, he is not going anywhere. He walks, but the boat is empty, only momentarily, but it is empty.Watch a drunkard. Follow him and see what is happening to him. If somebody hits him he is not annoyed. If he falls down he accepts the falling, he doesn’t resist, he falls down as if dead. If people laugh and joke about him he is not worried. He may even joke with them, he may start laughing with them, he may start laughing at himself. What has happened? Momentarily, through chemicals, his ego is not there.The ego is a construction; you can also drop it through chemicals. It is a construction; it is not a reality, it is not substantial in you. It is through society that you have learned it. Alcohol simply drops you out of society. That’s why society is always against alcohol, the government is always against alcohol, the university is always against alcohol, all the moralists are always against alcohol – because alcohol is dangerous, it gives you a glimpse of the outside of society. That is why there is so much propaganda against drugs in America and in Western countries.The governments, the politicians, the church, the pope, they have all become scared because the new generation is too much into drugs. They are very dangerous for society, because once you have glimpses beyond society you can never become a really adjusted part of it. You will always remain an outsider. Once you have a glimpse of the non-ego then society cannot dominate you very easily. And if one goes too much into drugs then it is possible that the ego may be shattered completely. Then you will just become mad.Once or twice a drug will give you a glimpse, just as if a window opens and closes. If you persist and you become addicted to it, the ego may suddenly drop. And this is the problem: the ego will drop, but the non-ego will not arise. You will go mad, schizophrenic, split.Religion works from the other corner, from the other end; it tries to bring up the non-ego first. And the more the non-ego comes up, the more the whole asserts, the more the ego will drop automatically, by and by. Before the ego drops, the whole has taken possession. You will not go mad, you will not become abnormal, you will simply be natural. You will fall outside society into nature.Through drugs you can also fall out of society, but into madness. That’s why the religions are also against drugs. Society has given you a working arrangement for the ego. Through it you manage somehow, you steer your life somehow. But if the whole takes possession then there is no problem – you become a man of Tao. Then there is no need for this ego, you can throw it to the dogs.But you can do otherwise also. You can simply destroy this ego through chemicals. This can be done. Then there will be problems, you will simply become abnormal. You will feel certain power, but that power will be false, because the whole has not taken possession of you.Many people, many cases have been reported. One girl in New York, under LSD, just jumped out of a window on the thirtieth floor because she thought she could fly. And when you are under a drug, if the thought comes that you can fly, there is no doubt. You believe in it totally, because the doubter, the ego, is not there. Who is there to doubt? You believe it. But the whole has not asserted itself.Chuang Tzu might have flown. Chuang Tzu might have gone out of the window like a bird on the wing, but under LSD you cannot. The ego is not there so you cannot doubt, but the whole has not taken possession so you are not powerful. The power is not there, only the illusion of power. That creates trouble.You can do certain things under alcohol. Once it happened in a circus: a cage was broken. The circus was traveling in a special train from one town to another; a cage was broken and a lion escaped. So the manager collected all his strong men and said, “Before you go into the night, into the jungle to find the lion, I will give you some wine. It will give you courage.”All twenty of them took big shots. The night was cold and dangerous and courage was needed – but Mulla Nasruddin refused. He said, “I will only take soda.”The manager said, “But you will need courage!”Nasruddin said, “In such moments I don’t need courage. These moments are dangerous – night time and the lion, and courage can be dangerous. I would rather be a coward and alert.”When you don’t have power and a drug can give you courage, it is dangerous. You can move madly on a certain path – this is the danger of drugs.But society is not afraid because of this; society is afraid that if you have a glimpse beyond society then you will never be adjusted to it. And society is such a madhouse – to be adjusted to it you must not be allowed any glimpse outside.Religions are also against drugs for a different reason. They say: Be a drunkard, a drunkard of the divine wine, because then you are rooted, centered. Then you are powerful.If there is such security in wine, how much more in Tao? The wise man is hidden in Tao, nothing can touch him. Absolutely nothing can touch him. Why? If you follow me rightly, only the ego can be touched. It is very touchy. If somebody just looks at you in a certain way, it is touched. He has not done anything. If somebody smiles a little, it is touched; if somebody just turns his head and does not look at you, it is touched. It is very touchy. It is like a wound, always green, fresh. You touch it and the pain arises. A single word, a single gesture – the other may not even be aware of what he has done to you, but he has touched it.And you always think the other is responsible, that he has wounded you. No, you carry a wound. With the ego your whole being is a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just on the brink, just waiting for anything.You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? – because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He’s healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal also comes from whole, and the word holy also. He is whole, healed, holy.Be aware of your wound. Don’t help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less in the head, the more the wound will heal – no head, no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four hours, try it – total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Somebody insults you, accept it, don’t react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. Somebody insults you: you feel weak, you feel disturbed, you start thinking of how to get your revenge. That man has hooked you, and now you will move round and round. For days, nights, months, even years you will not be able to sleep or dream. People can waste their whole life over a small thing, just because someone insulted them.Just look back into your past and you will remember a few things. You were a small child and the teacher in the class called you an idiot, and you still remember it and you feel resentment. Your father said something. They have forgotten, and even if you remind them, they will not be able to remember it. Your mother looked at you in a certain way and since then the wound has been there. And it is still fresh; if anybody touches it, you will explode. Don’t help this wound to grow. Don’t make this wound your soul. Go to the roots, be with the whole. Try it for twenty-four hours, just twenty-four hours, try not to react, not to reject, whatsoever happens.If someone pushes you and you fall to the ground – fall! Then get up and go home. Don’t do anything about it. If somebody hits you, bow down your head, accept it with gratitude. Go home, don’t do anything, just for twenty-four hours, and you will know a new upsurge of energy that you have never known before, a new vitality arising from the roots. And once you know it, once you have tasted it, your life will be different. Then you will laugh at all the foolish things you have been doing, at all the resentments, reactions, revenge, with which you have been destroying yourself.Nobody else can destroy you except you; nobody else can save you except you. You are the Judas and you are the Jesus.Enough for today.

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The Empty Boat 01-11Category: Tao

The Empty Boat 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When Chuang Tzu was about to die,his disciples began planning a grand funeral.But Chuang Tzu said:“I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin;the sun and moon will be jade symbolshanging by my side;planets and constellationswill shine as jewels all around me,and all beings will be presentas mourners at the wake.What more is needed?Everything is amply taken care of.”The disciples said:“We fear that the crows and kiteswill eat our master.”Chuang Tzu replied:“Well, above ground I shall be eatenby crows and kites,and below ground by ants and worms.In either case I shall be eaten –so why are you favoring the birds?”Mind makes everything a problem; otherwise life is simple, death is simple, there is no problem at all. But mind gives the deception that every moment is a problem and has to be solved. Once you take the first step of believing that everything is a problem, then nothing can be solved because the first step is absolutely wrong.Mind cannot give you any solution, it is the mechanism which gives you problems. Even if you think you have solved a problem, thousands of new problems will arise out of the solution. This is what philosophy has been continually doing. Philosophy is the business of the mind. The moment mind looks at anything it looks with a question mark, it looks with the eyes of doubt.Very simple is life, and very simple is death – but only if you can see without the mind. Once you bring the mind in, then everything is complex, then everything is a riddle, then everything is confusion. And mind tries to solve the confusion when really it is the source of all confusions, so more confusion is created. It is as if a small stream is flowing in the hills. Some carts have passed, and the stream is muddy, and you jump into the stream to clean it. You will only make it more muddy. It is better to wait on the bank. It is better to let the stream itself become tranquil again, to calm down until the dead leaves are gone, the mud has settled, and the stream is again crystal clear. Your help is not needed. You will only confuse it more.So if you feel that there is a problem, please don’t poke your nose in it. Sit by the side. Don’t allow the mind to get involved, tell the mind to wait. And it is very difficult for the mind to wait – it is impatience incarnate.If you tell the mind to wait, meditation happens. If you can persuade the mind to wait, you will be prayerful – because waiting means no thinking, it means just sitting on the bank not doing anything with the stream. What can you do? Whatsoever you do will make it more muddy; your very entering into the stream will create more problems. So wait.All meditation is waiting. All prayerfulness is infinite patience. The whole of religion consists of not allowing the mind to create more problems for you. Every simple thing which even animals enjoy, which even trees enjoy, man cannot enjoy – because immediately it becomes a problem and how can you enjoy a problem?You fall in love, and the mind immediately says: “What is love? Is this love or sex? Is this true or false? Where are you going? Can love be eternal or is it just momentary?” First decide everything, then take the step. But with the mind there is never any decision, it remains indecisive; indecision is its inherent nature. It says, “Don’t take the jump.” And when mind tells you these things, it seems very clever, it seems very intelligent, because you may go wrong. So don’t take the jump, don’t move, remain static.But life is movement and life is trust. Love happens – one has to move into it. Where it leads is not the point. The goal is not the point. The very movement of your consciousness in love is a revelation. The other is not the point; the beloved or the lover is not the point. The point is that you can love, that it could happen to you; that your being opens in trust, without any doubt, without any questioning. This very opening is a fulfillment.But the mind will say, “Wait, let me think and decide; one should not take any step in haste.” Then you can wait and wait. That’s how you have been missing life.Every moment life knocks at your door, but you are thinking. You say to life, “Wait, I will open the door, but let me first decide.” It never happens. Your whole life will come and go, and you will be simply dragging, neither alive nor dead, and both are good because death has a life of its own.So remember, the first thing: don’t allow the mind to interfere. Then you can be like trees, even greener. Then you can be like birds on the wing, and no bird can reach to heights which you can touch. Then you can be like fish which go to the very bottom of the sea – you can go to the very bottom of the ocean. Nothing is comparable to you. Human consciousness is the most evolved phenomenon, but you are missing. Even less-evolved states are enjoying more. A bird is a bird, a very much less-evolved being than you; a tree is almost not evolved at all, but enjoying more, flowering more. More fulfillment is happening all around it. Why are you missing?Your mind has become a burden. You have not been using it; rather, on the contrary, you are being used by it. Don’t allow the mind to interfere with your life, then there will be a flow. Then you are unobstructed, then you are transparent, then each moment is bliss because you are not worried about it.A man was advised by his psychoanalyst to go to the hills. He was always complaining and complaining about this and that, asking about this and that. He was never at ease with anything, never at home. He was advised to go for a rest.The next day a telegram arrived for the psychoanalyst. In it the man said, “I am feeling very happy here. Why?”You cannot even accept happiness without asking why. It is impossible for the mind to accept anything – the why is immediately there, and the why destroys everything. Hence so much insistence in all religions on faith. This is the meaning of faith – not allowing the mind to ask why.Faith is not belief, it is not about believing in a certain theory – faith is believing in life itself. Faith is not about believing in the Bible or the Koran or the Gita. Faith is not belief – faith is a trust, a non-doubting trust. And only those who are faithful, those who are capable of trust, will be able to know what life is and what death is.For us life is a problem, so death is bound to be a problem. We are constantly trying to solve it, and wasting time and energy in solving it. It is already solved. It has never been a problem. It is you who are creating the problem. Look at the stars, there is no problem; look at the trees, there is no problem. Look all around… If man were not there everything would be already solved. Where is the problem? The trees never ask who created the world – they simply enjoy it. What foolishness to ask who created the world. And what difference does it make who created the world: a, b, c or d, what difference does it make? And whether it was created or it is uncreated, what difference does it make? How will it affect you if a created the world, or b created the world, or nobody created the world? You will remain the same, life will remain the same. So why ask an unnecessary, irrelevant question and get entangled in it?The rivers go on flowing never asking where they are going. They reach the sea. If they start asking, they might not; their energy might be lost on the way. They might become so afraid – where they are going, where is the goal, what is the purpose? They may become so obsessed with the problem that they might go mad. But they go on flowing, unworried where they are going, and they always reach the sea.When trees and rivers can do this miracle, why can’t you do it? This is the whole of Chuang Tzu’s philosophy, his whole way of life: When everything is happening, why are you worried? Allow it to happen. If rivers can reach, man will reach. If trees reach, man will reach. When this whole existence is moving, you are part of it. Don’t become a whirlpool of thinking, otherwise you go round and round, round and round, and the flow is lost. Then there is no oceanic experience in the end.Life is a riddle to you because you look through the mind; if you look through the no-mind, life is a mystery. Life is already dead if you look through the mind; and life never dies if you look through the no-mind. Mind cannot feel the alive. Mind can only touch the dead, the material. Life is so subtle and mind is so crude – an instrument not as subtle as life. And when you touch with that instrument it cannot catch the throbs of life. It misses. The throbbing is very subtle – you are the throbbing.Chuang Tzu is on his deathbed, and when a man like Chuang Tzu is on his deathbed the disciples should be absolutely silent. This moment is not to be missed, because death is the peak. When Chuang Tzu dies, he dies at the peak. It happens rarely that consciousness reaches its absolute fulfillment. The disciples should be silent; they should watch what is happening; they should look deep into Chuang Tzu. They should not interfere with their minds, they should not start asking foolish questions. But the mind always starts asking. They are worried about the funeral and Chuang Tzu is still alive. But the mind is not alive, it is never alive; the mind is always thinking in terms of death. For the disciples the master is already dead. They are thinking about the funeral – what to do, what not to do. They are creating a problem which doesn’t exist at all because Chuang Tzu is still alive.I have heard…Three old men were sitting in a park, discussing the inevitable, death. One old man of seventy-three said, “When I die I would like to be buried with Abraham Lincoln, the greatest man, loved by all.”Another said, “I would like to be buried with Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist, humanitarian, philosopher, lover of peace.”Then they both looked at the third, who was ninety-three. He said, “I would like to be buried with Sophia Loren.”They both felt annoyed, angry and they said, “But she is still alive.”That old man said, “So am I!”This old man must have been something rare. Ninety-three, and he said, “So am I!” Why should life be worried about death? Why should life think about death? When you are alive, where is the problem? But the mind creates the problem. Then you get puzzled.Socrates was dying, and the same thing happened as happened with Chuang Tzu. The disciples were worried about the funeral. They asked him, “What should we do?”Socrates is reported to have said, “My enemies are giving poison to kill me and you are planning how to bury me – so who is my friend and who is my enemy? You are both concerned with my death, nobody seems to be concerned with my life.”Mind is somehow death-obsessed. The disciples of Chuang Tzu were thinking what to do – and the master was dying, a great phenomenon was happening right then.A buddha, Chuang Tzu, was reaching the ultimate peak there. It happens rarely, once or twice in millions of years. The flame was burning. His life had come to a point of absolute purity where it is divine, not human, where it is total, not partial, where the beginning and the end meet, where all the secrets are open and all the doors are open, where everything is unlocked. The whole mystery was there… And the disciples were thinking of the funeral – blind, absolutely blind, not seeing what was happening. Their eyes were closed.But why does it happen? These disciples, do you think that they knew Chuang Tzu? How could they? If they were missing Chuang Tzu in his supreme glory, how can we believe that they didn’t miss him when he was working with them, working on them, moving with them, digging a hole in the garden, planting a seed, talking to them, just being present with them?How can we think that they knew who this Chuang Tzu was? When his total glory was missed, it is impossible not to think that they had missed him always. They must have missed. When he was talking, then they must have been thinking: “What is he talking about? What does he mean?”When an enlightened person speaks, meaning is not to be discovered by you; it is there, you have simply to listen to it. It is not to be discovered, it is not hidden, it is nothing to be interpreted. He is not talking in theories, he is giving you simple facts. If your eyes are open, you will see them; if your ears can hear, you will hear them. Nothing more is needed.That’s why Jesus goes on saying again and again, “If you can hear, hear me.” If you can see, see. Nothing more is expected – just open eyes, open ears.Buddha, Chuang Tzu or Jesus are not philosophers like Hegel, or Kant. If you read Hegel the meaning has to be discovered. It is very arduous, as if Hegel is making every effort to make it more and more difficult, weaving words around words, making everything riddle-like. So when you first encounter Hegel he will look superb, a very high peak, but the more you penetrate and the more you understand, the less of a man he becomes. The day you understand him, he is just useless.The whole trick is that you cannot understand him, that’s why you feel he is so great. Because you cannot understand, your mind is baffled, because you cannot understand, your mind cannot comprehend, the thing seems to be very mysterious, incomprehensible. It is not, it is only verbal. He is trying to hide, he is not saying anything. Rather, he is saying many words without any substance.So persons like Hegel are immediately appreciated, but as time passes appreciation of them disappears. Persons like Buddha are not immediately appreciated, but as time passes you appreciate them more. They are always before their time. Centuries pass, and then their greatness starts emerging, then their greatness starts appearing, then you can feel it. Because their truth is so simple, there is no garbage, there is no rubbish around it. It is so factual you can miss it if you think about it.When you are listening to a Chuang Tzu, just listen. Nothing else but a passive receptivity, a welcome, is needed on your part. Everything is clear, but you can make it a mess, and then you can get confused by your own creation. These disciples must have missed Chuang Tzu – they are missing him again. They are worried about what is going to be done.And this point has to be understood: a man of wisdom is always concerned with the being, and a man of ignorance is always concerned with questions of doing, what is to be done. Being is not a question to him.Chuang Tzu is concerned with being; the disciples are concerned with doing. If death is coming then what is to be done? What should we do? The master is going to die, so what about the funeral? We must plan it.We are mad about planning. We plan life, we plan death, and through planning the spontaneity is destroyed, the beauty is destroyed, the whole ecstasy is destroyed.I have heard…An atheist was dying. As he was an atheist, he didn’t believe in heaven or hell but still he thought it best to get properly dressed before dying. He didn’t know where he was going because he didn’t believe in anything, but still he was going somewhere, so before going one must get properly dressed.He was a man of manners, etiquette, so he was dressed in the right dress for the evening, the tie, everything – and then he died. The rabbi was called to bless him. The rabbi said, “This man never believed, but look how he has planned! He did not believe, he had nowhere to go, but how beautifully dressed and ready!”Even if you feel that you are not going anywhere, you plan it, because the mind always wants to play with the future. It is very happy planning for the future, it is very unhappy living in the present. But planning for the future seems beautiful. Whenever you have time you start planning for the future, whether of this world or of that, but the future. And the mind enjoys planning. Planning is just fantasy, dreaming, daydreaming.Persons like Chuang Tzu are concerned with being, not becoming. They are not concerned with doing, they are not concerned with the future. No planning is needed. Existence takes care of itself.Jesus said to his disciples: “Look at these flowers, these lilies, so beautiful in their glory that even Solomon was not so beautiful.” And they don’t plan, and they don’t think for the future, and they are not worried about the next moment.Why are the lilies so beautiful? Of what does their beauty consist? Where is it hidden? The lilies exist here and now. Why is the human face so sad and ugly? Because it is never here and now, it is always in the future. It is a ghostlike thing. How can you be real if you are not here and now? You can only be a ghost, either visiting the past or moving into the future.Chuang Tzu was dying. At the moment of Chuang Tzu’s death the disciples should have been silent. That would have been the most respectful thing to do, the most loving thing to do. The master was dying. They never listened to his life, at least they could have listened to his death. They could not be silent while he was talking to them throughout his life; now he was going to give his last sermon through his death.One should be watchful when a wise man dies because he dies in a different way. An ignorant man cannot die that way. You have your life and you have your death. If you have been foolish in your life, how can you be wise in your death? Death is the outcome, the total outcome, the conclusion. In death your whole life is involved, in essence your whole life is there, so a foolish man dies in a foolish way.Life is unique, death is also unique. Nobody else can live your life and nobody else can die your death, only you. It is unique, it never happens again. Styles differ, not only in life but also in death. When Chuang Tzu dies, one has to be absolutely silent so that one does not miss it – because you can miss.Life is a long affair, seventy, eighty, a hundred years. Death is in one moment. It is an atomic phenomenon, concentrated. It is more vital than life because life is spread out. Life can never be as intense as death can be, and life can never be as beautiful as death can be, because it is spread out. It is always lukewarm.At the moment of death the whole of life has come to a boiling point. Everything evaporates from this world to the other, from the body to the bodiless. It is the greatest transformation that happens. One should be silent, one should be respectful, one should not be wavering, because it will happen in a single moment and you may miss it.And the foolish disciples were talking about the funeral and thinking of making a grand thing out of it. And the grandest thing was happening, the greatest thing was happening, but they were thinking of the show. The mind always thinks of the exhibition – it is exhibitionistic.Mulla Nasruddin died. Somebody informed his wife who was taking her afternoon tea – half the cup was finished. The man said, “Your husband is dead, he fell under a bus.” But Mulla Nasruddin’s wife continued sipping her tea.The man said, “What! You have not even stopped drinking. Do you hear me? Your husband is dead, and you have not even said a single thing!”The wife said, “Let me first finish my tea, and then – boy, will I give a scream! Just wait a little.”The mind is exhibitionistic. She will give a scream, just give her a little chance to arrange, to plan.I have heard about an actor whose wife died. He was crying his heart out, screaming, tears rolling down.One man said, “I never thought that you loved your wife so much.”The actor looked at the man and said, “This is nothing. You should have seen me when my first wife died.”Even when you show your anguish you are looking at others: what do they think about it? Why think of a grand funeral? Why grand? You make an exhibition out of death also. Is this really respectful? Or is death also something on the market, a commodity?Our master has died, so there is a competition, and we must prove that he received the greatest funeral – no other master ever received one like it and no other will ever receive one like it again.Even in death you are thinking of the ego. But disciples are like that, they follow. But they never really follow, because if they had followed Chuang Tzu then there would be no question about a grand funeral. They would have been humble in that moment. But the ego is assertive.Whenever you say that your master is very great, just look within. You are saying, “I am very great, that’s why I follow this great man, I am a great follower.” Every follower claims that his master is the greatest – but not because of the master. How can you be a great follower if the master is not great? And if somebody says that this is not so, you get annoyed, irritated, you start arguing and fighting. It is a question of the survival of the ego.Everywhere the ego asserts. It is cunning and very subtle. Even in death it will not leave you; even in death it will be there. The master is dying, and the disciples are thinking of the funeral. They have not followed the master at all – a master like Chuang Tzu whose whole teaching consists of being spontaneous.When Chuang Tzu was about to die,his disciples began planning a grand funeral.He is not yet dead and they have started planning – because the question is not Chuang Tzu, the question is the egos of the disciples. They must do something grand, and everybody must come to know that never, never before has such a thing happened.But you cannot deceive Chuang Tzu. Even when he is dying he will not leave you alone; even when he is dying he cannot be deceived; even when he is leaving, he will give you his heart, his wisdom; even at the last moment he will share whatsoever he has known and realized. Even his last moment is going to be a sharing.But Chuang Tzu said:“I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin;the sun and moon will be jade symbolshanging by my side;planets and constellationswill shine as jewels all around me,and all beings will be presentas mourners at the wake.”What more is needed? Everything is simple, amply taken care of. What more is needed? What more can you do? What more can you do for a Chuang Tzu, for a buddha? Whatsoever you do will be nothing, whatsoever you plan is going to be trivial. It cannot be grand because the whole universe is ready to receive him. What more can you do?Chuang Tzu said: “The sun and the moon and all the beings on earth and in heaven are ready to receive me. And all beings, the whole existence, will be the mourners. So you need not worry, you need not engage mourners.” You can engage mourners – now they are also available on the market. There are people – you pay them and they mourn. What type of humanity is coming into being? If a wife dies, a mother dies, and nobody is there to mourn, you have to engage professional mourners. They are available in Mumbai, Kolkata; in big cities they are available, and they do such a good job you cannot compete with them. Of course they are more efficient, they get daily practice, but what ugliness when you have to pay for it.The whole thing has become false. Life is false, death is false, happiness is false. Even mourning is false. And this has to be; it has a logical meaning to it. If you have never been really happy with a person, how can you be really mournful when he dies? It is impossible. If you have not been happy with your wife, if you have never known any blissful moment with her, when she dies how can authentic tears come to your eyes? Deep down you will be happy, deep down you feel a freedom: “Now I am independent, now I can move according to my desires.” The wife was like an imprisonment.I have heard…A man was dying and his wife was consoling him, saying, “Don’t worry, sooner or later I will join you.”The man said, “But don’t be unfaithful to me.” He must have been afraid. Why this fear at the last moment? This fear must have always been there.The wife promised, “I will never be unfaithful to you.”So the man said, “If you commit even a single act of unfaithfulness toward me I will turn in my grave. It will be very painful for me.”Then after ten years the wife died. At the gate, Saint Peter asked her, “Who would you like to see first?”She said, “My husband, of course.”Saint Peter asked, “What is his name?”So she said, “Abraham.”But Saint Peter said, “It is difficult because there are millions of Abrahams, so give me some clue.” The wife thought. She said, “At the last moment he said that if I commit any act of unfaithfulness toward him he would turn in his grave.”Saint Peter said, “No more is needed. You mean twirling Abraham, who is constantly twirling in his grave. For ten years he has not had a single moment of rest. And everybody knows about him. There is no problem, we will call him immediately.”No faith, no trust, no love, no happiness, has ever happened out of your relationships. When death comes, how can you mourn? Your mourning will be false. If your life is false, your death is going to be false. And don’t think that you are the only false one – all around, those who are related to you are false. And we live in such a false world, it is simply amazing how we can continue.One politician was out of work. He was an ex-minister. He was in search of work because politicians are always in difficulty when they are not in office. They cannot do anything other than politics, they don’t know anything else but politics. And they don’t have any qualifications either. Even for a puny job certain qualifications are needed – but for a minister none are needed. For a chief minister or a prime minister qualifications are not needed at all.So this minister was in trouble. He met the manager of a circus, because he thought, “Politics is a great circus, and I must have learned a little, enough to be of some use in the circus.” So he said, “Can you find me a job? I am out of work, and in much trouble.”The manager said, “You have come at the right moment. One of the bears has died, so we will give you a bear’s costume. You don’t have to do anything, just sit the whole day in the cage in the bear’s costume. Just sit and nobody is going to know the difference. You are not required to do anything, just sit from morning to evening so people know that the bear is there.”The job looked good, so the politician accepted. He entered the cage, put on his costume, and sat down. He was just sitting there, when fifteen minutes later another bear was shoved in. He panicked and ran to the bars, started shaking them and cried out, “Help, let me out of here!”Then suddenly he heard a voice. The other bear was speaking. He said, “Do you think you are the only politician out of work? I am an ex-minister too. Don’t be so afraid.”The whole of life has become false, root and all, and how you exist in it is a sheer miracle – talking with a false face, talking to a false face, false happiness, false misery. And then you hope to find the truth! With false faces the truth can never be found. One has to realize his own true face and drop all the false masks.Said Chuang Tzu: “I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin…” So why are you worried? And how can you manage a greater coffin than that? Let heaven and earth be my coffin – and they will be.“…the sun and moon will be jade symbols hanging by my side…” So you need not burn candles around me; they will be momentary, and sooner or later they will not be there. Let sun and moon be the symbols of life around me. And they are: “…planets and constellations will shine as jewels all around me, and all beings will be present…”This is something to be understood: …all beings will be present. It is also said of Buddha and Mahavira, but nobody believes it because it is impossible to believe. Even Jainas read it, but they don’t believe it. Buddhists read it, but suspicion enters their minds.It is said that when Mahavira died all the beings were present there. Not only human beings – animals, the souls of the trees, angels, deities, all the beings from all the dimensions of existence were present there. And this should be so because a Mahavira is not only revealed to you; the glory is such, the height is such that all the dimensions of existence become acquainted with him. It is said that when Mahavira would speak angels, deities, animals, ghosts, all types of beings were there to listen to him, not only human beings. It looks like a story, a parable, but I tell you that this is a truth – because the higher you reach, the higher your being grows, and other dimensions of existence become available to you.When one reaches the highest point – Jainas call it the point of arihanta, Buddhists call it the point of arhat, Chuang Tzu, the man of Tao calls it the point of the perfect Tao – then the whole existence listens.Says Chuang Tzu: “…and all beings will be present as mourners at the wake.”“What more is needed?”And what more can you do? What more can you add to it? You need not do anything, and you need not worry.“Everything is amply taken care of.”This is the feeling of one who becomes silent: “Everything is amply taken care of.” Life and death, everything, you need not do anything – everything is already happening without you. You come into it unnecessarily and you create confusion, you create chaos. Without you everything is perfect – as it is, it is perfect. This is the attitude of a religious man: everything is perfect as it is. Nothing more can be done to it.In the West, Leibnitz is reported to have said that this is the most-perfect world. He has been criticized because in the West you cannot assert such things. How is this world the most-perfect world? This seems to be the most imperfect, the most ugly, ill; there is inequality, suffering, poverty, illness, death, hatred, everything – and this Leibnitz says that this is the most perfect world.Leibnitz has been criticized severely, but Chuang Tzu would have understood what he means. I understand what he means. When Leibnitz said, “This is the most-perfect world possible,” he was not making any comment on the political or economic situation. He was not making any comment on equality, inequality, socialism, communism, wars. He was not making any comment on it. The comment is not objective, the comment is not concerned with the without; the comment is concerned with the inner feeling – it comes from the very being. That everything is perfect means there is no need to worry.“Everything is amply taken care of.” And you cannot make it better, you just cannot make it better. If you try you may make it worse, but you cannot make it better. It is very difficult for the scientific mind to understand that you cannot make it better, because the scientific mind depends on this idea – that things can get better. But what have you done?For two thousand years since Aristotle, we have been trying in the West to make the world a better place. Has it become better in any way? Is man even a little happier? Is man even a little more blissful? Not at all. Things have become worse. The more we have been treating the patient, the more he is falling to his death. Nothing has been helpful. Man is not happier at all.We may be having more things to be happy with, but the heart which can be happy is lost. You may have palaces, but the man who can be an emperor is here no longer, so palaces become graves. Your cities are more beautiful, richer, wealthier, but they are just like graveyards, no living person lives there. We have made a mistake in trying to make the world better. It is not better, it may be worse.Look back: man was totally different, poorer but richer. It looks paradoxical; he was poorer, there was not enough food, not enough clothing, not enough shelter, but life was richer. He could dance, he could sing.Your song is lost, your throat is choked by things; no song can come out of the heart. You cannot dance. At the most you can make some movements, but those movements are not dance, because dancing is not just a movement. When a movement becomes ecstatic then it is dance. When the movement is so total that there is no ego, then it is a dance.And you must know that dancing came into the world as a technique of meditation. The beginning of dancing was not for dance, it was to achieve an ecstasy where the dancer was lost, only the dance remained – no ego, nobody manipulating, the body flowing spontaneously.You can dance, but only in dead movements. You can manipulate the body; it may be good exercise, but it is not ecstasy. You still embrace each other, you still kiss, you still make all the movements of lovemaking, but love is not there, only the movements are there. You make them and you feel frustrated. You make them and you know nothing is happening. You do everything, and still a constant feeling of frustration follows you like a shadow.When Leibnitz says that this is the most-perfect world, what he is saying is what Chuang Tzu is saying: “Everything is amply taken care of.” You need not worry about life, you need not worry about death – the same source which takes care of life will take care of death. You need not think about a grand funeral. The same source which has given me birth will absorb me, and the same source is enough, we need not add anything to it.The disciples listened but couldn’t understand, otherwise there would have been no need to say anything anymore. But the disciples still said:“We fear that the crows and kiteswill eat our master.”If we don’t make any preparation, if we don’t plan, then crows and kites will eat our master.Chuang Tzu replied:“Well, above ground I shall be eatenby crows and kites,and below ground by ants and worms.In either case I shall be eaten –so why are you favoring the birds?”So why make any choice? I have to be eaten anyhow, so why make a choice? Chuang Tzu says: Live choicelessly and die choicelessly. Why make a choice?You try to manipulate life and then you try to manipulate death also. So people make wills and legal documents, so that when they are gone they will manipulate. Dead, but they will still manipulate. Manipulation seems to be so enchanting that even after death people go on manipulating. A father dies, and makes conditions in his will that the son will receive his inheritance only if he fulfills a condition, else the money will go to a charity fund. But these conditions have to be fulfilled – the dead man is dominating still.There is a university in London. The man who built it made a will. He was the president of the college trust. The will read: “When I die, my body is not to be destroyed. It has to be maintained, and I will continue to sit in the chairman’s seat. And he still sits there. Whenever the trust meets, his dead body is sitting in the chairman’s place. He is still sitting at the head of the table, still dominating.Your life is a manipulation of others, you would like your death to be a manipulation also. Chuang Tzu says there is no choice. If you leave my body on the ground, well, it will be eaten; if you bury it deep down it will be eaten. So why favor the birds or the worms? Let it be as it is going to happen. Let the source decide.Decision gives you ego: I will decide. So let the source decide, let the ultimate decide how it wants to dispose of this body. It was never asked of me how the source had to construct this body, why should I decide how it has to be disposed of? And why fear that it should be eaten? It is good.We are afraid of being eaten – why? This is something to be understood. Why are we so afraid of being eaten? All our lives we are eating, and we are destroying life through eating. Whatsoever you eat, you kill. You have to kill, because life can eat only life. There is no other way. So nobody can really be a vegetarian – nobody. Everybody is a non-vegetarian, because whatever you eat is life. You eat fruit, it is life; you eat vegetables, the vegetable has life; you eat wheat, rice, they are seeds for more life to sprout. Whatsoever you depend on has life.Everything is a food for somebody else, so why protect yourself, why try to protect yourself from being eaten? Simple foolishness! You have been eating your whole life, now give it a chance to eat you, allow life to eat you.That is why I say that the Parsis have the most scientific method of disposing of a dead body. Hindus burn it. This is bad, because you are burning food. If every tree burns its fruit, and every animal dies and other animals burn it, what will happen? They will all be Hindu but there will be nobody here. Why burn? You have been eating, now allow it, give life a chance to eat you. And be happy about it because food means you are being absorbed. There is nothing wrong. It means the existence has taken back, the river has fallen back into the ocean.And this is the best way to be absorbed – to be eaten, so that whatsoever is useful in you is alive somewhere in somebody. Some tree, some bird, some animal, will be alive through your life. Be happy, your life has been distributed. Why take it as something wrong?Mohammedans and Christians bury their dead in the ground in caskets, in coffins, to protect them. This is bad, this is just foolishness, because we cannot protect life, so how can we protect death? We cannot protect anything, nothing can be protected. Life is vulnerable, and you even try to make death invulnerable. You want to protect, to save.The Parsis have the best method – they simply leave the body on the walls, then vultures and other birds come and eat it. Everybody is against the Parsis, even Parsis, because the whole thing looks so ugly. It is not ugly. When you are eating, is it ugly? Then why is a vulture ugly when he is eating? When you eat, then it is a dinner, and when a vulture is eating you then it is also a dinner. You have been eating others, let others eat you; be absorbed.So Chuang Tzu says: “There is no choice, why favor this or that? Let life do whatsoever it chooses to do, I am not going to decide.” Really, Chuang Tzu lived a choiceless life so he was ready to die a choiceless death. And when you are choiceless, only then you are. When you have a choice, the mind is. The mind is the chooser; the being is always choiceless. The mind wants to do something; the being simply allows things to happen. Being is a let-go.How can you be miserable if you don’t choose? How can you be miserable if you don’t ask for a particular result? How can you be miserable if you are not moving toward a particular goal? Nothing can make you miserable. Your mind asks for goals, for choices, for decisions – then misery comes in.If you live choicelessly and allow life to happen, then you simply become a field. Life happens in you, but you are not the manager. You don’t manage it, you don’t control it. When you are not the controller all tensions dissolve; only then there is relaxation, then you are totally relaxed. That relaxation is the ultimate point, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.Whether it is life or it is death, you should not take any standpoint. That is the meaning. You should not take any standpoint. You should not say this is right and that is wrong. You should not divide. Let life be an undivided whole.Chuang Tzu said: If you divide, by even one inch’s division, heaven and hell are set apart, and then they cannot be bridged.It happened once…I knew a young man. He used to come to me and he was always worried about one thing. He wanted to get married, but whatsoever girl he will bring to the home, his mother would not approve. It had become almost impossible. So I told him, “Try to find a girl who is almost like your mother: face, figure, the way she walks, her clothes. Just find a mirror image, a reflection of your mother.”He searched and searched and finally found a girl. He came to me and said, “You were right, my mother instantly liked her. She is just like my mother; not only does she dress like my mother, she walks, talks, she even cooks like my mother.”So I asked him, “Then what happened?”He said, “Nothing, because my father hates her.”The polarity – if one part of your mind loves one thing, you can immediately find another part of the mind hating it. If you choose one thing, just look behind – the other part which hates is hiding there. Whenever you choose, it is not only the world that is divided, you are also divided through your choice. You are not whole. And when you are not whole, you cannot allow life to happen. And all benediction comes in life as grace, as a gift; it is not achieved through effort.So don’t choose religion against the world, don’t choose goodness against badness, don’t choose grace against sin, don’t try to be a good man against the bad man, don’t make any distinction between the Devil and God, this is what Chuang Tzu says. He says: Don’t choose between life and death. Don’t choose between this type of death and that type of death. Choose not, remain whole, and whenever you are whole, there is a meeting with the whole, because only like meets like.It has been continually said by mystics for centuries: As above, so below. I would like to add one thing more to it: As within, so without. If you are whole within, the whole without happens to you immediately. If you are divided within, the whole without is divided.It is you who is eternal, who becomes the whole universe, you become projected, it is you – and whenever you choose you will be divided. Choice means division, choice means conflict, for this, against that.Don’t choose. Remain a choiceless witness and then nothing is lacking. Then this existence is the most-perfect existence possible. Nothing can be more beautiful, nothing can be more blissful. It is there, all around you, waiting for you. Whenever you become aware it will be revealed to you. But if your mind goes on working inside, dividing, choosing, creating conflicts, it will never happen to you.You have been missing it for lives. Don’t miss it anymore.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Kolkata or Tibet;if you can’t find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will never be real!***I don’t know what sort of God we have been talking about.The caller calls in a loud voice to the holy one at dusk.Why? Surely the holy one is not deaf.He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead;wear your hair matted, long and ostentatious,but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?The fish in the sea is not thirsty – but man is. Man lives in God and is absolutely unaware of it. Man is born in God, breathes in God and one day will dissolve in God. Man is God, made of the stuff called “God,” and yet completely oblivious of the fact.The fish is not thirsty in the sea, but man is. God is the sea – he surrounds you, within and without. All that is, is divine. God is not a person; he is the presence that is overflowing everywhere in all directions. The radiance, the beauty of existence, the splendor, the majestic, the miraculous, the mysterious – the whole magic of life is God.God has not to be worshipped, God has to be lived. And to live God you need not go anywhere; you are already in it. To live God you need not cultivate any character. God is already the case. It is your consciousness.To live godliness you need not become a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian – you are already in it, it is already in you. It is not a question of the future. This very moment godliness is showering on you. But you are closed. It comes, but you don’t receive it. It knocks on your door, but you don’t listen to it. And it has been knocking for ages.The old biblical story is: when Adam disobeyed God, he was frightened, obviously. God came in search of him. Adam was afraid and went behind a bush, just to hide from God. He was not courageous enough to face him, to encounter him. The story says that God called out in the Garden of Eden, “Adam, where are you?”Adam heard it, yet did not respond. This is not just a story, this is not something that happened in the past; this is what is happening with each of you. God calls you; either you don’t hear, or even if sometimes you hear, you don’t respond. You are hiding! You are hiding from the truth of your own being, you are hiding from yourself. You don’t want to see your original face. Godliness is your original face and unless you see your original face, you will live in misery.Misery is nothing but remaining ignorant of one’s own being. To be alert, to be conscious ? of all that has been given to you, to be conscious of all that has been bestowed upon you, to be conscious of the treasures that are hidden in your being ? is to be blissful.Man is very strange, the strangest animal on the earth. No other animal lives in such anguish. Even trees are far more blissful, even rocks have more of the heart than man. They are in tune with existence or in tune with totality. Man has lost the connection. Man has broken the bridge.Why has it happened? It has to be understood. It has happened to almost all. Only once in a while does there happen a person who reconnects himself with God – Jesus, Buddha, Kabir – but only once in a while. These people are so few that they cannot be believed.People go on talking about Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed, but deep down they doubt their very existence. They have to doubt. Nothing like that has happened to you, you haven’t tasted any of the nectar that they talk about. Your life is just bitter, your life is nauseous, your life is sick – and they talk of wholeness and of health, of great bliss and of eternal peace. You know nothing of these things.Your only experience is that of a very poisoned life, a very poisoned spirit. Your experience is so opposed to what these few people say. How can you believe in them? And you are the majority. Millions and millions will support your experience that life is hell.Krishna sings celestial songs on his flute, songs of the beyond. Kabir sings songs that are unbelievable! You may listen out of courtesy, you may not say anything out of formality. Or maybe just the presence of Jesus, Kabir, Bayazid is so enchanting, so charming and has such a charisma that it overpowers you. You become dumb, you cannot say no. By not saying no, it doesn’t mean that you are saying yes. They are two totally different things.Not to say no is one thing; to say yes is a totally different phenomenon. Not to say no is not going to change you. The no will remain in you – silent, unspoken. The no will surround your being like a transparent capsule. You may not be able to see it, you may be able to see through it, but it will not allow you to meet and merge with existence – unless you are capable of saying yes. That single word yes contains all the religions; all the Vedas, Bibles, Korans are contained in the single word yes.That is the meaning of the word Christians, Jews, Mohammedans have been using to complete their prayers – amen. Amen means, “Yes, God, yes. I say a total yes to you.”You may not argue with Kabir – it is difficult to argue with a man like Kabir. His presence has such weight; his eyes, his fragrance are hypnotic. Even if you want to argue, you wouldn’t like to. But the argument remains. Once Kabir is gone, Jesus is gone, and the argument surfaces, the no comes to the surface and the formal silence is found to be impotent.People go to the churches, temples, mosques and it is all formality. It is nothing but Sunday religion. It is a social phenomenon; they are not individually committed, they are not involved. They’re not going to the church or the temple to be transformed. It has a social utility, it is a kind of club. You can call it a religious club, where people can meet and gossip and talk. It is a meeting place, but not a meeting place between you and the divine. That’s what it’s supposed to be, but it’s not.You go to the temple empty-handed, you come back from the temple empty-handed. Nothing has been happening there. It cannot happen this way. Godliness needs commitment, involvement; it asks for your totality, your surrender, your yes. When you say yes, with no strings attached, with no conditions ? when the yes is unconditional and has not been said out of coercion, but has welled up spontaneously within you ? it has a tremendous beauty and power to it. Its very fire transforms you from the base metal into gold, from an ordinary human being into an extraordinary divine existence.But remember, your yes should not come out of any sort of coercion, physical or psychological. Someone is a Christian because he has been coerced from his very childhood to be a Christian; someone is a Jew because he has been coerced from the very beginning to be a Jew. A great psychological conditioning is going on. Children are being exploited; they are being forced to be Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists. The parents are not even aware of what they are doing to their children; they are preventing their children from ever becoming religious. Yes, that’s what they are doing to their children. In the name of religion, they are poisoning their innocent souls. They think, they may even believe that they are helping their children toward godliness. The truth is just the contrary. They are creating great barriers.Once a man has said yes under coercion, once a man has yielded because he was forced to yield, you have destroyed his capacity to say yes spontaneously forever. He will say yes only when he is coerced.Children are helpless. They depend on you, they cannot survive without you. You can exploit their vulnerability, you can exploit their helplessness. That’s what has been done on the earth for centuries and centuries. Hence, so much talk of God and you cannot see God anywhere; so much talk of religion, so much of theology, but nothing of the existential.Everyone is religious in a way – someone is Hindu, someone is Mohammedan, someone is Christian – and no one is religious in reality. We have created a fiction of being religious. The fiction is so cheap, so easily available, who is going on the adventure to seek and search for God? That is arduous. One has to risk, one has to risk one’s ego; that is the most arduous thing in life. Unless one is ready to dissolve one’s ego, the fish is going to remain thirsty. Dissolve the ego and all thirst disappears because the moment you dissolve the ego, the wall between you and the ocean disappears ? and you are part of the ocean. How can you be thirsty then?Man is certainly thirsty, hungry, in deep anguish. Man lives a very phony life, inauthentic. He only pretends to live, he does not really live. He goes through all the empty gestures of living, but look at people, look at yourself, look at others – you will not see a dance. People are dragging; life seems to be a burden, a great burden, somehow to be tolerated. Life is not a celebration and that’s what it should be.Your steps don’t have the quality of dance. Your heart is not throbbing with ecstasy. You are not pulsating and vibrating with joy, with love. You are not overflowing with energy. What kind of life is this? Just going round and round in circles in dead, dull, stupid routines. Just hoping that tomorrow something will happen. And tomorrow never comes and nothing ever happens. Waiting for Godot and Godot never comes. You go on waiting and waiting and waiting. And all that ever comes is death.Life is so miserable that even death feels like a relief. Life is so empty that it is very rare to find a human being who has not contemplated, sometime or other, committing suicide. Life is so empty that we go on keeping ourselves occupied – with any rubbish – just to remain occupied so that we don’t see the emptiness, so we don’t see the inner vacuum, the inner darkness.Just watch and you will see that man is living in great anguish, anxiety. Man is already in hell. When someone asks me, “Osho, do you believe there is a hell?” I always say, “There is no question of believing. You are living in it.” Hell cannot be doubted; heaven can be doubted but not hell. Hell is such a day-to-day reality! But why? Why should it be so? Why did it happen in the first place? We will have to understand something special about human beings.Man is the only animal on earth, in fact, in the whole of existence, who is dual. Other animals are not dual; they are what they are, hence there is no problem. A tiger is a tiger, a peacock is a peacock, a dog is a dog. With man there is something special. That is the glory of man, if we understand it. If we don’t understand it, this becomes the agony.Man is not what he is; he can be more. Man is not finished; he is a growth. Man is the only growing being in existence, the only evolving being in existence. Man is a potential and much has to become actual in him. Unless you start transforming your potential into the actual, your life will remain empty. The seed is empty. If the seed remains a seed, it will remain in anguish. It will not feel the joy of fulfillment, the contentment that comes when the seed has become the tree and the tree has bloomed.Man is a seed – the seed of God. When man blooms, godliness becomes manifest. That’s why we have called Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, “Bhagwan.” It simply means that their seed is no longer a seed; it has disappeared in the soil of existence and they have come to their ultimate blossoming. Godliness has bloomed in them. The fragrance of divineness has been released. They are fulfilled, utterly fulfilled. They are joyous because they have come home. Now there is nowhere to go.Man is the only animal who is an unfinished product. Nature has brought man to a certain point and from that point he has been made responsible. Now you are responsible for your growth. Nature cannot do any more, and whatever was possible through nature has already happened – it has brought you to the threshold. You have to take the further journey now; you have to become a pilgrim.If you don’t become a pilgrim, if your life does not take the quality of adventure, search, inquiry, you will remain empty, thirsty, hungry. You will remain spiritually starved. Don’t take yourself for granted – that is the problem, exactly that is the very crux of the problem. We take ourselves for granted, we think as if we are what we are supposed to be.Man is a paradox. Man is not what he thinks he is, he is far more. Man’s capacities are immense. In fact, there are no limits to man’s growth. One can go on and on and on; it is an infinite journey. There is no goal. There is a beginning of the pilgrimage but no end.To know godliness is to know that life is an eternal pilgrimage. That is the meaning when we say that godliness is infinite. You can go on attaining, but you can never say that now the dead end has come. This is the beauty of existence. It goes on giving you more and more opportunities. When you have climbed one peak, another peak starts giving you challenges.The misery of man is that he thinks he is what he is supposed to be. He thinks that he is already that which he can be. Man remains satisfied with the superficial; then there will remain a deep discontent in his soul. That’s what Kabir is trying to say. Kabir is one of the greatest revolutionaries who has ever walked on the earth. His insight is of tremendous value. If you can fall en rapport with his vision, you will be enriched; you will be enriched beyond all your expectations.I laugh, says Kabir, when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.He is talking about you, not about the fish. You are the fish. Kabir says: I laugh… The buddhas have always been laughing.It is said of Hotei, a Japanese buddha – he is known as the laughing buddha – that the day he became enlightened he started laughing and never stopped. He lived many years. He would move from one town to another, laughing, from one marketplace to another, laughing. He would stand in the marketplace and his laughter was catching, infectious. People would gather and start laughing. The laughter would go on spreading and soon the whole village would be involved in it.People used to ask Hotei, “What is your message?”He would reply, “Laughter is my message.”People used to ask him, “Why do you laugh so much?”He said, “What else can I do? Man is so ridiculous, so absurd!”That’s exactly what Kabir is saying: I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. Life surrounds you with all its joys, with immense possibilities, opportunities. And you go on crying and weeping. Your anguish goes on deepening as you grow older. Children can laugh, but the older you become, the more laughter disappears. Whenever you laugh, it is phony; it is just painted laughter. It has no roots in your heart.Why have people become so serious? They know they are missing something. They know that life is slipping out of their hands. They know that this should not be so, but it is so. They are miserable. When someone attains, like Kabir, he is bound to laugh.If a fish comes to you and says, “I am thirsty,” what will you do? Will you feel any sympathy for the fish? Will you feel any kind of empathy for the fish? You will simply laugh and say, “If you are thirsty, then you are simply stupid. There is no need to be thirsty! You are in the sea already. Why should you be thirsty?”Man is in anguish, great anguish. We go on hiding it because what is the point of bringing it to others? No one can help. We go on carrying dark nights in our beings, great turmoil, great pain, great wounds. We go on hiding. It is pointless to tell anyone because no one can help. It is better not to talk about the wounds that you are carrying in your soul; it is better to forget about all those wounds.That’s why intoxicants have been so important down the ages. There has never been a time when something or other was not used by man to forget his inner wounds, to forget this whole nonsense that we have made out of life. People go on talking against alcohol, against drugs, but they don’t understand the psychology behind it. Just talking against them is not going to prevent people from using them. You can legalize, you can prohibit, but still intoxicants will be used.Unless man becomes blissful, they cannot be prevented. If man lives in misery, he will need something or other to forget the misery. Otherwise, it will be too much. In fact, my own insight is that if all the drugs and all the intoxicants were simply removed from the world, man would immediately go mad. The whole world would be a madhouse.People are somehow keeping themselves together. They drink alcohol and for a few hours they can forget the world and the misery that the world brings them; they can forget their own selves. They can be lost in oblivion. They know perfectly well that it is not going to change anything. But then nothing seems to change anything. At least for a few hours, one can forget all about it.Intoxicants will disappear from the world only when meditation has become a worldwide phenomenon, when each single individual has created some meditativeness in his being, when each single individual has become aware, “There is no need to be miserable. Misery is created by me. Life is not misery, its nature is bliss. It is my stupidity that I am creating misery out of it.”Misery needs great effort, bliss is natural.You cannot create bliss, you can only create misery. If you don’t create misery, bliss comes of its own accord. Bliss comes effortlessly; you cannot practice it. But for misery you have to make a great effort – and you are making a great effort to remain miserable. You have invested much in your misery.Kabir is right when he says: I laugh… It looks a little hard, cruel, that a man like Kabir should say: I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. It is not cruel, it is not hard. It’s simply how it should be. All the buddhas have been laughing; they may have said so, they may not have said so. Hotei laughed publicly; Gautam Buddha must have laughed privately, but laughter is bound to be there.I am saying it because this is my own experience too. When you come with all your miseries to me, I listen very sympathetically. I don’t laugh. But deep down there is laughter. I listen, very patiently and very attentively. I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to be impolite to you. But if you want to know the truth, then the reality is that you are simply showing how ridiculous you are, how stupid you are.Existence is not responsible for your stupidity. It is your own work. Existence creates every human being with great intelligence. You can see in children’s eyes that they are all intelligent. It is very difficult to find a stupid child. If you can find a stupid child, that simply means he is already old. Children are so overflowing with intelligence. Where does all this intelligence disappear to? What happens to this intelligence? Society is against intelligence, society doesn’t want intelligent people around. Intelligent people seem to be dangerous to society.Society wants stupid people because stupid people are easy to manage, to dominate, to manipulate, to order. Stupid people are obedient – even where obedience is sin, they are obedient. Stupid people can be forced to become machines, and society needs machines, not men. Society isn’t interested in you, it is interested in your efficiency. And machines certainly are more efficient than men. The machine is the model and man has to follow the model. Make man more and more stupid and he will come closer and closer to the machine. He will be a good clerk, a good station master, a good teacher in a school, a good collector – but unintelligent.If he is intelligent, he may not be a clerk at all; he may not waste his life in writing stupid documents, collecting garbage in files. He may be more respectful toward his own being. He may choose some other way to live. He will not be just a deputy collector. How can you ask an intelligent man to be just a policeman? Impossible! Where will you find the thousands and thousands for your armies? Intelligent people are not cattle, intelligent people cannot be told to do stupid things. They will say, “No!”Just think: the man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, if he had been intelligent he would have simply said “No!” Even at the risk of his own life he would have said no. He would have said, “If you want to kill me, kill me, but I am not going to kill one hundred thousand people. They have not committed any sin. They are innocent civilians – small children, old people – and have no responsibility for the war. They have not caused it. Why should I drop the atom bomb? It is better to die than to kill one hundred thousand people.”If the man had been intelligent, he would have immediately said no. But he must have been utterly stupid. He dropped the atom bomb and had a good night’s sleep. His sleep was not disturbed. In the morning when he was asked, “Could you sleep last night?” he said, “Certainly, I slept well! I did my duty, I finished my job and had a good night’s sleep. Whenever I do my duty perfectly well, I always sleep well.”One hundred thousand people burned within five seconds and this man didn’t even have a nightmare? Just think: we must have destroyed his intelligence totally, we must have reduced him to a machine. Machines don’t have any conscience, machines don’t have any consciousness, machines don’t have any heart. Society needs machines, more and more efficient machines. Hence universities go on reducing people to stupid people. If you are a BA, it means you have a certificate that shows you have lost much of your intelligence. If you are an MA, even more and if you are a PhD, finished! No hope for you.It is said that when Henry Thoreau came back from university, an old man of his village came to see him and was very surprised. Seeing the old man very puzzled and surprised, Thoreau asked him, “Why do you look so puzzled? Why are you so surprised?”He said, “I am surprised because you have really done a great job; you have saved your intelligence, although you have been to the university. You still look intelligent! This very rarely happens – to escape from university and still remain intelligent – because the whole machinery of education is to make you mechanical.”A new education is needed in the world, which will make you more conscious, not more knowledgeable; which will make you more loving, not more logical. Logic is good. If love remains the master, then logic is a good servant, but logic should not be the master and love should not be the servant. Knowledge is good if consciousness remains in control. But if knowledge is in control, if the head is in control, the heart is killed, destroyed.Society doesn’t need intelligent people, hence it has created conditionings – social, religious, political, educational. Great psychological strategies have been invented down the ages to reduce you to a thing, to reduce you to something pseudo, to reduce you so that you can become a commodity in the marketplace.You have to be aware because you exist in a society which is against your intelligence. My sannyasins are trying to revive what society has destroyed in them. What society has done, they are trying to undo. That’s the whole work of sannyas. And that has always been the work of a real true religion.I laugh, says Kabir, when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house… You have not been told. The secret has been hidden from you. No one has told you to go in, no one has given you any chance to be in. Parents are not telling their children, “Sometimes just be. Don’t do anything. Just sit silently under a tree, search inside yourself, ask ‘Who am I?’” No school, no college, no university is telling you to meditate. In fact, they think meditation has nothing to do with education.The government of India has written a letter. They don’t recognize this commune as educational. Why? “Because what does meditation have to do with education?” I say to them, “If meditation has nothing to do with education, then what else can become the foundation of a true education? What else?”But I know that some stupid fool in some office must have written that. He is not aware of what meditation is. Meditation simply means to be with yourself in your absolute aloneness, so that you can have a taste of your own being. To be with yourself is meditation.In my philosophy of life, only two things are valuable: one is meditation, the other is love. And both are complementary. Meditation means the joy of being alone; love means the joy of being together with someone. These are the two wings of a true education. Meditation means independence, freedom – freedom from all, even from the beloved because even the presence of the beloved encroaches on your space. It is good for the time being, it is good to overlap your space with someone. It is good to meet and merge, but ultimately and fundamentally, you are alone. You have to learn how to be alone, not only how to be alone, but joyously alone, ecstatically alone.Meditation means sitting silently, doing nothing, just being. The world is too full of doing. Society teaches you to do this, to do that. Why? ? because if you do this, you will have that and if you don’t do this, you will not have that. Doing is a way of having more and we are conditioned to have more and more and more. It’s as if by having more, we will really be satisfied, contented; as if by having more, we will really become rich.The truth is just the opposite. The more you have, the more you feel your inner poverty – in contrast. The richer you become in the outside world, the emptier you feel inside. No outer richness can fill the inner gap. Nothing from the outside can be taken in. You can have as much wealth as possible, but it will go on piling up outside you. The bigger the heap, the more you will see your inner emptiness, nothingness, hollowness, and the more miserable you will become.Hence, the richer a society gets, the more and more it becomes interested in religion. Poor societies cannot be religious, it is almost impossible. I am not saying a poor person cannot be religious – a poor person can be – but a poor society cannot be. A poor person may be an exception – Kabir was a poor man and attained the highest peak possible, became a buddha – but the poor society as such cannot be religious.The poor society remains interested in having more and more. And if you want to have more, you will have to do more. You will have to put your whole energy in doing – and meditation is just the opposite of doing. Meditation is a state of non-doing, it is a state of utter passiveness. It is a state of being: one simply is – and enjoying that simple isness. Then something starts happening inside, without any doing on your part.Sitting silently,doing nothing,the spring comes,and the grass grows by itself…Something starts growing in you. One thing, the most important thing in life, is meditation. No education can be called real education. Even the word education simply means to draw out that which is within you. This commune is educational because our effort is to draw out whatever is in you. Your so-called universities are not educational and they don’t fulfill the requirement of being educational. They stuff people from the outside; they don’t draw out, they force in. Even literally they are not educational.The whole effort in the so-called educational institutions is to stuff people with more and more knowledge because knowledge will help them to do more and do more efficiently. If they can do things more efficiently, they will have more things. This is what you call education? This is not real education.Real education will teach a person the most fundamental truth: “I am alone. I come alone, I will go alone. And between coming and going, I can deceive myself that I am not alone, but that is only a deception. Intrinsically I remain alone. Aloneness is my intrinsic nature, so I have to fall in tune with it, I have to dive deep into it. I have to know exactly what it is – what this aloneness is.”It is tremendously beautiful, it is incredibly beautiful, unbelievably beautiful. When you enter your aloneness, you start becoming aware of godliness, you start becoming aware of your treasures hidden within you. You start becoming aware of the “kingdom of God” that is within you.Kabir says: You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house… But no one teaches you. The whole teaching is: “Go out! Search for money, power, prestige” – and they are not found within. Peace is found within, silence is found within, stillness is found within, godliness is found within. But those are not the goals that you have been taught to fulfill; those are not your targets.It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid…One day, some people came to Sheik Bayazid’s door and knocked. He opened his upstairs window and looked out saying, “What do you want?”“Oh,” they said, “we are looking for Bayazid.”He replied, “Well, I’ve been looking for Bayazid for ten years now and I haven’t found him yet!” and closed the window.This is what meditation is all about: trying to find oneself. The other most important thing is love. Love means trying to find oneself reflected in the other. Love is a mirror. Meditation is a search without a mirror; love is nothing but seeing yourself in the eyes of the other you love, reflected in his being – a way of enjoying the togetherness.We are alone, but we are not alone in the sense that we exist alone. We are alone, but there are other people around us who are also alone. We exist with many people who are alone. Bridges have to be made. Love is the meeting of two alonenesses. One aloneness is immensely beautiful. What to say when two alonenesses meet and merge? A great flowering happens and life becomes more mysterious, more joyous.One learns the rhythm by sometimes being alone, enjoying yourself; sometimes being together, enjoying love, friendship. When tired of togetherness, escape into your innermost being; when tired of your aloneness, escape into the being of the other.It is like walking on a tightrope. Sometimes you lean toward the left and you know that if you lean anymore you will fall, so you start leaning toward the right. Again a point comes when you know that if you lean more toward the right, you will fall and you start leaning toward the left. That balance, the balance of the tightrope walker, is the balance that gives richness to man. Walk between love and meditation, balancing each other. Become rich with meditation and love.But remember, the first thing is meditation. If you don’t know who you are, you will not be able to love either. If you don’t know inner blissfulness, you will not be able to share it with anyone else either. People don’t go in. They are running hither and thither, they are running everywhere except inward. All this running is nothing but dreaming, desiring. Just watch your mind. What does your mind go on doing? ? in the night it dreams, in the day it dreams; it goes on running and running. It moves in circles, but those circles are all dreams.The truth is your consciousness, not your mind. Your mind is created by society; your consciousness comes from existence. Move to the consciousness; change the gestalt. Your emphasis has to be changed. That’s what it means to be religious. That’s what conversion is: changing your attention from the mind to consciousness.The mind is a social by-product – the Hindu, Christian, Communist, Catholic mind. These are social by-products. Society has put ideas in your head; that is your mind. Shift your consciousness, your attention, to that which is existence-created, otherwise you will live in dreams. And dreams cannot fulfill. Dreams are dreams – they are not really there.Two friends meet on the street after several years of not seeing each other. The usual salutation of “How are you?” provokes the answer from Saul that he feels awful and is suffering terribly from a strong dream. It seems that every night, the moment he goes to sleep, he dreams he is getting on the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa. The train reaches Haifa, but he does not get off. He returns to Tel Aviv and upon arriving he wakes up to find the new day and he is hot and tired from the trip.Morris exclaims that he too is in a similar shape for basically the same reason. It seems that every night he dreams that the door on the left side of his bedroom opens and in walks Sophia Loren. She strips stark naked, walks in the room and climbs onto his bed. At the moment he turns on his left side, the door on the right side of the bedroom opens and in comes Raquel Welch – equally as naked – she climbs onto the other side of the bed. He turns to be with Raquel and Sophia taps his shoulder. He turns to her and there is Raquel touching him. All night long he is turning from one side to the other. He is a wreck when he wakes up.Saul immediately says, “For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you phone me? That’s what friends are for. I would have gladly come over and help you any night.”Morris answers, “I did phone you several times, but each time I called I was told you had just caught the train for Haifa.”The mind goes on dreaming. The mind keeps you unaware of who you are, and with so many dreams that the truth is lost. In the rubbish of your dreams, the diamond of your being is covered.Kabir says: You don’t grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look! You can see – all faces look confused. It is very rare to find a face which does not look confused, which has a transparency to it, a clarity. Whenever a face has clarity, transparency, it has beauty. A beauty that is not only of the physical body, a beauty that is something from the beyond, a beauty that wells up from within.But look at people’s faces – just confused, split, schizophrenic. That’s what their being is; their faces are only reflecting their being. Faces are mirrors. One part of your being wants to go to the north, another part wants to go to the south; another part to the east and another still to the west, and you are torn apart. Your faces show that – a confused look.You don’t know who you are, where you are, why you are. Everything seems to be just accidental. You feel like driftwood with no direction, with no sense of direction even. Where are you going? Why are you? For what? The question mark is there on every face and the reason? Kabir is right. The reason is that you haven’t looked at the deepest core of your being, where there is a space, a center of the cyclone, a space which is indivisible. In fact, when that space is known, it makes you an individual. “Individual” means indivisible – one who is not falling into parts, one who is one piece.That center is there in everyone’s being, but you never go there. Even if sometimes the desire to search within arises, you again start searching outside. Someone goes to Kaaba, because a great desire has arisen in him to know who he is. Why are you going to Kaaba? Someone goes to Kashi, someone to Mathura, someone to Tibet – and people go on. But still the search remains somewhere outside.Even if the right question arises, you move in the wrong direction. If you really want to know who you are, you need not ask anyone else. No one can answer it. Even if someone answers, that answer will not become your answer. That will become at the most information, but not knowing. Information is futile because you will interpret it according to your own mind. You will read the Gita, you will read the Koran, you will listen to great teachers, but you will understand according to your own mind. You will translate everything according to yourself, according to your level of being; then all gets lost.Not only will the information be of no help to you, it will create more confusion in you. The more learned a person is, the more confused he is. If you read the Vedas, Koran, Bible, Dhammapada, you will become more and more confused because each buddha says in his own way the same truth, but it is said in millions of ways. But you will not be able to understand the truth because you don’t know what the truth is.The real process is first to know within and then go into the Vedas, Gita, Koran. They will all become witnesses to your experience, they will authenticate your experience. They will witness that you are right and you will witness that they are right. Otherwise, all reading, studying, is going to create more and more confusion because who is going to interpret it?“Listen,” the man said to his friend Albert, “I have got this female gorilla that I bought a while back. It cost me a lot of money. The problem is that I can’t find any male gorilla to mate with it. I was wondering if you would mate with my gorilla for a hundred dollars.”“Hmmm, let me think this over,” replied Albert.The next day Albert went over to his friend’s house and said, “I will do it, only under three conditions.”“What are the conditions?” asked the friend.“One, is that there is no hugging, kissing, foreplay. Two, is that all the children are to be raised Catholic. Three, is that you give me at least two weeks to come up with the hundred dollars.”Who is going to interpret? You cannot understand more than you know; you can understand only that which you know on your own. Hence, the real master does not impart information, he imparts being. He does not make you more knowledgeable. He makes you more meditative, he makes you more silent. He does not give you theories, hypotheses, philosophies. He throws you upon yourself again and again and again. He has to do it in spite of you, even against you because you want clear-cut answers, you want some philosophy to cling to, some idea to believe in. The real master will never give you any idea, any theology. In fact, he will take all ideas, all theologies away from you – Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan. Slowly, slowly he will leave you utterly naked, so that you can see yourself as you are – not according to some idea, but actually as you are. That is revelation. That can happen within you. You need not go anywhere.Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Kolkata or Tibet;if you can’t find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will never be real!If you live in dreams, your world will remain nothing but dreams and your world will remain unreal. In the East, the buddhas have always called the world maya – illusion, a magic show. There is nothing real, nothing substantial in it. They don’t mean that these trees around the Buddha Hall are unreal; they don’t mean that you can pass through the wall because the wall is unreal; they don’t mean that whether you eat stones or bread, it doesn’t matter because both are unreal.What they mean is totally different. They don’t mean that this world is unreal. They simply mean that unless you drop all your dreams you will be creating a world of your own, you will be projecting a world of your own. The real world will function only as a screen and you will project your dreams on it. You will never see the real world. The real world is godliness, but you will go on projecting your own dreams; you will live in maya, illusion.The mind is illusion, not the world. Let me emphasize it because it has become a great misunderstanding around the world that the East teaches that the world is illusory – that is a misunderstanding. The East teaches that the mind is illusory and the world created by the mind is bound to be illusory because only an illusion can come out of another illusion.The true world – that which is – is not illusory. But you have not known it yet; you have no inkling of it. You can know it only when you drop all dreaming.It is said that when Rabbi Kotzker drove out of town with Rabbi Hirsh of Tomashov, they came to a bridge where several women began to throw stones at them.“Have no fear,” said Kotzker. “They are not real women, nor are their stones real. They are mere phantoms.”Rabbi Hirsh was silent for a moment, then asked, “Might we not be phantoms too?”“No,” came Kotzker’s answer, “as long as we have at some time had a genuine urge to repent.”The word repent has to be understood; it has been misunderstood down the ages. “Repent” is repeated again and again by Jesus. He says again and again, “Repent! Repent! – because the end of the world is close by.” When Jesus’s statements were translated from Greek into English, a great misfortune happened – to many words. This word repent is one that has suffered the most. It is a translation of a Greek word metanoia. Metanoia means turning in; metanoia means meditation. Repent also means return – return to the source. It has nothing to do with the idea of repentance that you have been taught in your churches, that your priests have been telling you. “Repent” has nothing to do with repentance. “Repent” means: turn in, return back, come to the source of your being, come to the very core of your being.Rabbi Kotzker’s answer is immensely beautiful, of great value. He says, “No. As long as we have at some time had a genuine urge to repent.” If we have even a genuine urge to meditate, for metanoia, for turning back in, we are real. But we are real only in meditation, otherwise we are also unreal. In meditation dreaming stops – that’s what meditation is all about, stopping of the dreaming mind. No dreams, no thoughts – a total silence. Nothing stirs. Absolute stillness. Not even a ripple. No content. Pure consciousness. Just the mirror and in that mirroring, you are real and whatever you see is real. In fact, the seer and the seen are no longer two. In that tremendous moment, the observer is the observed, the seer is the seen, the knower is the known. The distinction between the subject and the object disappears. That’s what is called “God-realization.”Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Kolkata or Tibet; if you can’t find where your soul is hidden, for you the world will never be real! Go in. Turn in. Find out who you are, and you have started moving toward godliness. Moving toward one’s own being is moving toward godliness.I don’t know what sort of God we have been talking about.Kabir says: “People go on talking about God,” but: I don’t know what sort of a God we have been talking about. Because if you have not known yourself, all talk about God is just rot, meaningless. It is nonsense.The caller calls in a loud voice to the holy one at dusk.In the Mohammedan mosque:The caller calls in a loud voice to the holy one at dusk.Why? Surely the holy one is not deaf.We have created our own gods. Rather than looking at the reality, we have imagined our own gods, we have dreamed our own gods. And we have made our own rituals. Now, calling loudly to God simply means your God is deaf. In fact, no word is needed between you and your God – loud or not loud – no word is needed between you and your God because God understands only one language. It is not German, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Greek. God understands only one language: the language of silence.Why? Surely the holy one is not deaf.He hears the delicate anklets that ring on the feet of an insect as it walks.There is no need to shout. In fact, real prayer is not saying something to God, but on the contrary, listening, listening silently. “Does he have something to say to me?” All the prayers that you go on doing are pointless. Learn to listen whether God has something to say to you; learn to listen to the still small voice within you. Stop talking. Stop the inner talk, the inner chattering. In that silence, prayer arises on its own. Prayer is a silent heart full of gratitude.Go over and over your beads, paint weird designs on your forehead;wear your hair matted, long and ostentatious,but when deep inside you there is a loaded gun, how can you have God?You can go on doing rituals, but if your heart is full of violence, if you have a loaded gun in the heart ? and that’s what the case is. Mohammedans have been fighting with Hindus, Hindus have been fighting with Mohammedans, Christians have been killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans have been killing Christians. Religions have been a calamity to the world, not a blessing; a curse, not a benediction. More people have been killed, butchered, murdered, raped in the name of religion than in any other name. This is very strange. Prayer is on the lips and a loaded gun in the heart. Unless your inner violence disappears, you cannot be prayerful.Why is there inner violence? – because there is competition. Everyone is trying to outdo others; everyone is trying to get ahead of others. That’s what you have been taught: to be ambitious. Ambition is the root cause of all violence; all your education is that of ambition. “Be the first! Attain the gold medal!” Your whole life you are trying to be the first, to become the prime minister or the president.We teach people ambition, competition. When you are ambitious, how can you be prayerful? When you are ambitious, how can you turn in? Ambition has to be fulfilled there, outside – in New Delhi, Washington, Moscow – somewhere there. These are the new holy places.The ambitious person cannot turn in. It is impossible. The competitive person cannot turn in; he is always looking at the other, he is always at war. How can he be loving? How can he be meditative?Kabir is right. He says, “You go on talking about God, great theology is created, great philosophical argument continues – and in the heart a loaded gun?” The real question is a transformation in the heart. But up to now that has not happened.A very proper old lady bought a parakeet which was guaranteed to be able to speak, but all she could say was, “I’m a whore, I’m a whore!” very enthusiastically, while flapping her wings. The very proper woman complained to her minister, who told her of a couple in his congregation who owned two male parakeets who behaved very properly; maybe they could influence the woman’s parakeet.The minister borrowed the couple’s male parakeets and lent them to the woman. She put them in the cage and they settled together on a perch opposite that of the woman’s parakeet. Very soon they lowered their heads and engaged in a beautiful, low-voiced prayer. The female parakeet flapped her wings and sang, “I’m a whore, I’m a whore!”Whereupon one of the male parakeets nudged the other with his wing and said, “Our prayers have been heard!”Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Would you please speak a little on witnessing and the heart. Can they be experienced simultaneously?Witnessing and the heart are one and the same thing. Witnessing is not of the mind; the mind can never be a witness. When you start witnessing, the mind becomes the witnessed, not the witness. It is the observed, not the observer. You see your thoughts moving, your desires, your fantasies, your memories, your dreams – just as you see things moving on the screen of a film. But you are not identified with them.That nonidentification is what is meant by witnessing. Then who is the witness? The mind is being seen, so who is the seer? ? it is the heart. So the heart and witnessing are not two things. If you witness, you will be centered in the heart; or if you are centered in the heart, you will become a witness. These are two processes to reach the same goal. The lover, the devotee, never thinks of witnessing; he simply tries to reach the heart, the source of his being. Once he has reached the heart, witnessing comes of its own accord.The meditator never thinks of love and the heart; he starts by witnessing. But once witnessing is there, the heart opens because there is no other place from where to witness. The path of the meditator and the path of the devotee are different, but they culminate in one experience. At the ultimate point they reach the same peak.You can choose the path, but you cannot choose the goal – because there aren’t two goals, there is only one goal. Of course, if you have followed the path of a devotee, you will not talk of witnessing when you have arrived; you will talk of love. If you have followed the path of meditation, you will not talk of love when you have arrived, you will talk of witnessing. The difference is only of words, language, expression – but that which is expressed is one and the same reality.The second question:Osho,How to see what is?There is no how to see what is because if you are carrying a how you will distort it. “That which is” needs no method, no technique, to see it – just silence, a transparent stillness, with no thought in the mind, not even the thought of a certain method; with no strategy because all strategies are bound to distort.In fact, no-mind is needed to see that which is. The mind means thoughts. If there is a traffic of thoughts, you will never be able to see what is, you will see something else. You will see what your thoughts allow you to see. Your thoughts prevent much reaching you.You will be surprised to know what modern psychological researchers have come to know that ninety-eight percent of reality is not allowed to enter your being; the mind only allows two percent. So whatever you see is only two percent of reality. And because the mind allows only two percent of reality in, it gives you the feeling that this is the whole and you live in a false world. You think the part is the whole. You live accordingly and your whole life becomes a falsification.The mind is a judge and allows only that which suits it, which fits with it, which nourishes, strengthens it. It does not allow anything that goes against it. For example, you are listening to me. Your mind will allow only that which helps to strengthen your opinions, your ideologies. If you are a Christian, you will hear one thing, if you are a Buddhist, you will hear something totally different. If you have come here with a prejudice, for or against, you will hear different things. I am saying the same thing, but a Christian will interpret it in his own way, the Buddhist in his own way, the communist in his own way.One who has come with a determined idea that I am wrong will find all the arguments that help his prejudice. Each prejudice tries to get support for itself. So if you think any methodology is needed to see that which is, then from the very beginning, you are starting in a wrong way.That which is, is already there – be silent, without any prejudice, without any ideology, atheist, theist, without any concept, without any a priori. Simply remain available, open, like a child who knows nothing. Function from the state of not knowing and you will be able to see what is.Let me repeat: Function from the state of not knowing. If you know, you will distort – knowledge is the mind. The state of not knowing means that you have put the mind aside; now your eyes are without dust, your mirror is clean. It will reflect, it will reflect that which is.This is the way one comes to encounter reality – and the encounter is going to be shattering. It is not going to help your ideas about it. It will destroy all that you have always thought to be right. It is going to surprise you. It is going to show you that up to now you have lived in a dream, you have lived in your own projections, and have not allowed reality to penetrate you. On the contrary, you have created a world of your own ideas around yourself. You have lived in a capsule, without any windows. That’s how people are living.A Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan cannot know reality. Only a man who is courageous enough to drop all this garbage, who can simply be, who can simply be innocent… Jesus says to his disciples, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter in my Kingdom of God.” He is saying, “Function from the state of not knowing.”The Upanishads say: “Those who claim to know, beware. They know nothing. Those who say they know not, surrender to them – because there is a possibility of some transformation happening around them, with them, in communion with them.”Socrates at his ultimate peak of wisdom said, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.”Function from the state of not knowing; it will bring you immense, ecstatic experiences because the person who is without knowledge is capable of wondering. The person who is without knowledge is capable of awe. He can dance seeing a roseflower, he can sing because the sky is full of stars. He can be in tune with existence. Seeing a sunset, he can go into wild ecstasy – because he knows nothing. Life is a mystery to him. Knowledge demystifies life. And because he knows nothing, everything – the most ordinary too – becomes absolutely extraordinary, luminous, because everything is mysterious.Everything is mysterious. Your knowledge simply hides your ignorance and destroys your capacity to be mystified. Knowledge is destructive of mysticism. Hence, all the mystics of all the ages have been saying one single thing: “Drop knowledge – all knowledge is rubbish. Be in a state of not knowing and function from that state. Look at trees like a child, look at the moon like a poet, look at the sky like a madman.”Don’t ask how to see what is because that question “How?” simply means you want some methodology, some knowledge, some information, so that you can interpret reality. But reality is uninterpretable. You want something so that you can explain to yourself what it is all about – but reality is unexplainable. You would like to define reality – but it is indefinable.Be ready to be surprised. I have heard…Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was getting tired of lying on his back, and while rolling over noticed an Italian woman praying down in the chapel. The great artist decided to play a little prank.He sat at the edge of the scaffold and shouted, “I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ! Listen to me and I will perform miracles!”The Italian lady looked up, clasping her rosary and answered back, “Shut upa your mouth! I’ma talka to your mother!”Just think of Michelangelo… Life is like that. It brings surprises each moment. You go on missing; you go on missing because you can’t see those surprises. You are so full of expectations, you are so full of ready-made answers that you go on interpreting it according to your own mind. You pass through a miraculous world, dull, dead, dragging. This world is nothing but miracles and miracles; each moment they are happening. Existence is not miraculous in a miserly way; it is overflowing with miracles. But you have to be again a little child, you have to be again innocent.It is not a question of method, not a question of how. It is more a question of understanding the very process of how the mind functions. When you have understood how the mind functions, you will put it aside. Then there is no barrier between you and reality. When there is no barrier, there is no separation either because it is the barrier that separates. When there is no barrier, you are one with reality. In that oneness, reality reveals its secrets to you.The third question:Osho,Do I have to forget myself to lose my ego?It is not a question of forgetting yourself – on the contrary, it is a question of remembering yourself. What is the ego? ? the ego exists because you have forgotten yourself, because you don’t remember who you are. It is very difficult to live without some idea of who you are. Not knowing the reality of your being, you have to create a false substitute.What is the ego? ? the ego is the false substitute that you have created for the self. It is not your self, but it is very difficult to live without a self. It will be almost impossible to live without a self. Some kind of self is needed, is a must; otherwise, how will you keep yourself together? You will start falling apart.Even if the center is false, it helps you. Even a false center keeps you at least somehow together. You have forgotten yourself – hence you need the ego. If you remember yourself, there will be no need for the ego.Eva, you ask: “Do I have to forget myself to lose my ego?” The ego is not anything real that you have to lose or you can lose because you don’t have it in the first place. It is just an idea, a shadow; it is nonexistential. It is like your name. When you were born, you did not come with a name. Then someone – your mother, your father, your family – started calling you “Eva.” Some name is needed to call you by; it is utilitarian.Your name is the first name that was ever given. When Havva was created because man was alone – Adam was alone and was very depressed because of the loneliness… whole of existence, and Adam was lonely! He asked God to give him a companion and God created a woman. God asked Adam, “What are you going to call her? What name would you like to give her?” And he was so ecstatic that now at least there was someone with whom he could be friendly; someone with whom he could be loving, he could talk, communicate with; someone with whom there was a possibility of relating. He was no longer alone! He was so ecstatic he said he would call this creature “Eve, Eva, Havva.” “Why?” God asked. Adam replied, “Eve, Eva or Havva means life – she is my life. Without her I was almost dead.”When Eve was created, there was no name for her. A name was given to her because Adam would need it. Sometimes he would have to call her: “Where are you?” Sometimes the name would be needed – but a name is a false thing, it is just a label. We give names to people just to make it helpful to commune, to relate, to call, to address. But names are not real. You need not drop them and even if you drop them nothing will be dropped.You can drop this name “Eva” – and nothing will be dropped, simply an idea. You are no longer attached to it. In exactly the same way: the name is for others to call you by, but you need something to call yourself by too. That’s what the ego is: I.If you want to say something about yourself, you need some word. And that word is “I.” Names are for others to call you by. The ego is for you to call yourself by, to address yourself. It is also false, it does not exist. You needn’t lose it. All that is needed is to understand it. Why has this “I” become so important, why has it become so significant, so central, so substantial? A shadow has become so substantial. Why? ? because you don’t know your real self.When Jesus says “I,” he does not mean the same “I.” When he says, “I am the gate, I am the truth, I am the way.” His “I” doesn’t connote any ego. When Krishna says to Arjuna, “Come to my feet, surrender to me.” His “me” is not the same as your “me.”Buddha used to say to his disciples: “Be a light unto yourself.” A great King, Prasenjita, had come to see him. He saw many sannyasins coming and bowing to Buddha and saying: “Buddham sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the Buddha. Sangham sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the community of the buddhas. Dhammam sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the ultimate law, the ultimate law that supports existence, that runs like a thread and makes existence a garland.”Prasenjita was a man of logic, well-educated, sophisticated. He was a little puzzled. He asked Buddha, “Excuse me Sir, but you say to people, ‘Be a light unto yourself.’ They surrender to you and touch your feet – and you don’t prevent them. This is illogical, this is contradictory. If you say ‘Be a light unto yourself,’ then there is no need to surrender to anyone else. Why should they touch your feet?”Buddha laughed and said, “They are not my feet and they are not surrendering to me – because there is no one inside me as the ego who can claim. I am just an excuse – they are surrendering. It is not a surrender to me, it is simply a surrender. I am just an excuse. They are not yet capable of surrendering without any excuse. I allow them to use me as an excuse. But there is no one to whom they are surrendering.”That’s exactly the meaning of a buddha: one who is not. In the sense of an ego, one who is not. But as far as the supreme self is concerned, the ultimate self is concerned, he is and you are not. The ego is a false idea. It is needed because the real self is unknown.You need not forget yourself to lose the ego. In fact, that’s how you have gained it. You need to remember yourself, not to forget but to remember. You have to become more aware and alert, you have to wake up. You have to see who you are, not what has been told to you; that you are a woman, a man, a Hindu, a Christian, a white or a black – not what has been told to you.You will have to go inside your being to the very innermost core and see who you are. In that very seeing, in that very remembering, the ego disappears. When the light comes, darkness disappears and when the real self is remembered, the unreal is no longer needed. And it is not that you have to drop it; it is simply not found.We live in the ego. We go on finding new props for it in every possible way. In every act we go on nourishing it – even in those actions of which you are not the doer, you go on claiming that you are doing it. People say, “I am breathing.” Just look at the absurdity of it. If you are breathing then you will never die. Death will come and stand in front of you and you will go on breathing. You may not oblige death, you may say, “I am not going to stop breathing.”You are not breathing; breathing is not your activity, it is not your doing. It is happening. You cannot breathe. If it stops, it stops. If the next breath is not going to come back, you will not be able to do anything. Breathing is a happening, but man has made it, or at least believes it to be, a doing.You say, “I love.” Even the expression “love-making” is utter nonsense. You cannot love; you can’t not love. Love is a happening, not a doing. What can you do about love? Either it happens or it doesn’t happen. If you try, it will be something false and it will not be love at all – it will only be acting.If you are ordered to love a woman or a man, what are you going to do? You will go through empty gestures. You will hug and kiss and go through all the movements, with no love at all. The whole thing will be mechanical. That’s what is going on, it’s what goes on around the world. The wife has to love the husband, the husband has to love the wife. It is a kind of duty to be fulfilled. It becomes a performance, acting. It is not real, hence it is not satisfying. It brings no contentment, no fulfillment.The ego is very cunning in that way. It goes on finding supports, props, new pastures to feed itself on. If you fail, you blame circumstances. If you succeed, it is you who have succeeded. If you fail, it is fate, kismet; if you fail, it is society, the ugly society; if you fail, it is the cunning people, the cunning competitors. But if you succeed, you succeed.A great Sufi story…Mulla Nasruddin took his disciples to an exhibition. Many things were going on at the exhibition. At one place people were staking a lot of money and trying to shoot arrows at a certain target. Mulla gathered his disciples and said, “Come, and I will show you something.” – that is the Sufi way of teaching the disciples. He took the bow and arrow. A great crowd gathered. “A Sufi master with his disciples – something is going on!” People were very silently watching. With great show, Mulla shot the arrow. It fell very short, it never reached the target. The crowd started laughing. Mulla said, “Stop! Don’t be foolish.” He turned to his disciples and said, “Look, this is what happens when you live with an inferiority complex. This is how the person who suffers from an inferiority complex will act – he will never reach the target; he will fall short. His whole heart is not in it.”The crowd became silent. “Yes, there is a lesson in it.”The next arrow simply went far ahead, it left the target behind. That was also a failure; the crowd started laughing again. Mulla said, “Be silent! You don’t understand these secrets.” He turned to his disciples and said, “Look, this is how a man who thinks himself very superior behaves. He will never reach the target. He runs so fast that he bypasses the goal and he doesn’t stop at the goal. He is too confident. He is also unbalanced.”The crowd again became silent. “Yes, there is a lesson.”Mulla tried the third time and the arrow went directly in the target. Now the crowd was silent and waiting for what Mulla was going to teach his disciples.He went to the owner and demanded the money. The owner said, “Why?”He replied, “This is me! The first was the arrow of a man who suffers from an inferiority complex; the second the arrow of a man who suffers from a superiority complex – and this is Mulla Nasruddin’s arrow. Where is the money?”This is what we go on doing. In each situation, watch. When you fail, it is God, fate, society, circumstances… A thousand and one names. But the simple phenomenon is that you don’t want to take the responsibility because it hurts the ego. But when you succeed, it is always you. It is never God, never fate, never circumstances, never your cunning strategies, no. It is simply you, your talents, your genius, your intelligence. It is always you when you succeed.Watch the ego and don’t feed it. It dies if you don’t feed it. If you stop feeding it, it starves to death.Mrs. Cochrane was standing beside the coffin of her dead husband. Their son stood at her elbow. The mourners, one by one, passed in review.“He is feeling no pain now,” said Mrs. Croy.“What did he die of?”“Poor fella,” said Mrs. Cochrane. “He died of the gonorrhea.”Another woman gazed at the corpse. “He is well out of it now,” she said. “He has got a smile of serenity on his face. What did he die from?”“He died of the gonorrhea,” said the widow.Suddenly, the son pulled his mother aside. “Mom,” he said, “that’s a terrible thing to say about Pop. He didn’t die of gonorrhea – he died of diarrhea!”“I know that,” said Mrs. Cochrane, “but I would rather have them thinking he died like a sport – instead of the shit that he was!”The ego is constantly there, in every situation. It will not miss any situation to feed itself, to strengthen itself. Stop feeding the ego, that is the first thing to do. The second thing is to become more aware. Walking, walk with awareness; listening, listen with total awareness – not in a kind of sleep, not so-so, not lukewarm. Talking, talk with awareness. Whatever you are doing, let your whole life be colored by awareness. Slowly, slowly that awareness will bring you a vision of your real self.So this is a double attack on the ego. First, don’t feed it. Second, become more aware, so the ego disappears by starvation and the self appears by being aware. Once the clouds of the ego are no longer there, the self rises like a sun. And that self has nothing to do with your “I.” Still the word will be used. I use it, Jesus uses it, Buddha uses it. It has to be used, but now it has a totally different meaning. On the lips of Buddha, Krishna, Christ, it has a totally different connotation.When the being is transformed, everything is transformed – even the language that is uttered by a buddha has a totally different meaning. His words can’t have the same meaning. It is impossible because now a new light has happened and in that new light everything becomes new.You live in darkness, you stumble in darkness, you grope in darkness. The man of awareness lives in light. He never stumbles, he never gropes. He moves with grace, he has a totally different quality of being, life, love.Do two things. First, don’t feed the ego anymore – enough is enough – and second, become more aware. This is a double attack, from two sides. It always succeeds and has never failed.The fourth question:Osho,Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Thank you, Osho…It is something very deep to be understood, something of great significance. Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love. They are never separate.People think just the opposite. People think, “When you are in love, how can you be alone?” They don’t make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness. Hence the confusion.When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone – that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other; loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair; loneliness means you are frightened; loneliness means you are feeling left behind; loneliness means no one needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms – they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity.The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD – because he wants to forget himself. The loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it. The lonely person sits before his TV, glued to the chair for four, five, even six hours. The average American sits for six hours before the TV – just burning his eyes. But what else to do? Where to go? With whom to commune?Communication has stopped. People are not talking to each other; at the most they talk at the other, but not to the other. People have forgotten how to reach the other, people have become parallel lines, running very close but meeting nowhere. Even husbands and wives, even friends, even so-called lovers are parallel lines never meeting anywhere – running very close, hoping that tomorrow the meeting will happen. But that is just a hope, just an illusion. That keeps people somehow going on.It is like if you go to the rail-track and see the rails running parallel – far away in the distance they appear to be meeting, but they never meet. You can go to that place and you will not find them meeting. As you move closer, the meeting point will move farther away. The distance between you and the so-called meeting point will remain the same.The world is very lonely; hence people get into drugs or sex, or any kind of entertainment that keeps them, at least for the time being, forgetful of the loneliness. The wound is oozing with pus. We hide it in many ways – with great possessions, with a big palace, with much money, with new gadgets – but the wound continues and the gadgets won’t hide it. You can have the biggest house in the world and still you will be as lonely in it as you were in your small cottage. It is not going to make any difference – possessions cannot change your inner loneliness.People go on relating with others, but because they are both lonely, relationship is not possible. Relationship cannot grow out of need. Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of need. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity – very bitter, but sugar-coated. Sooner or later, the sugar wears out. By the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together – which hurts even more. Just watch a husband and wife sitting in a room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness. The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple and both lonely; the saddest thing in the world.Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart. Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.Yes, when you are in love you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no longer in need of the other – you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast; love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.It is good to understand it because sometimes it happens that lovers don’t allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don’t allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.That overflowing becomes love and you can share it with your friend, your woman, with anyone you love. You have enough to share now – in fact, too much. You have to share. It is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain. It is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it. When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance. It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions.When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life, delight, love, dance, celebration. Everything is possible if energy is there. It will become a song, a dance and it will become love. When there is too much energy there, only then can it become orgasmic.Many people make love, but have no idea of what an orgasm is because they are already dissipated. When they are making love, they are empty; when they are making love, there is no energy to be shared. When they are making love, they cannot overflow. Their orgasm is at the most genital. Their orgasm is a very small, mediocre thing; nothing of any spiritual value. It is like a sneeze. Yes, after a sneeze you feel a little better. Or like scratching your back – it feels good. You are relieved.An orgasm is not a relief, it is a celebration. An orgasm is a meeting of you, through the other, with the whole. An orgasm is always divine – the other becomes the door and you enter the divine. Orgasm is always spiritual, it is never sexual. Those who think that orgasm is sexual have not understood anything at all. They don’t know anything about sex and they don’t know anything about orgasmic experiences. Orgasm is always samadhi, ecstasy. But people don’t know because they meet out of need, not out of overflowing energies.So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone – only in love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. Real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. Soon, they will be full of energy and will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love. Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away – there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love, going away is just getting your aloneness again – the beauty and the joy of it. Whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. No one can contain joy – and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood. You cannot contain it. You have to seek and search for people to share it with.What happens in your love affairs happens on a higher plane to all the buddhas. When Buddha became enlightened, he became so full of energy, so full of joy, that he had to share it. For forty-two years he went from one village to another, constantly sharing his joy.That’s what I am doing with you. I am not a teacher. I have nothing to teach, no teaching to impart, no information… But I am here to share my being. I am too full, the cloud is too heavy. And if you can receive me, I will be grateful to you.It is out of too much that sharing arises. And enlightenment, buddhahood, christ consciousness, bridge you with existence. Infinite sources of energy become available to you. Inexhaustible sources are yours. You can go on sharing and the more you share, the more goes on coming to you.Aloneness has reached its ultimate peak. The master is the most alone person in the world; hence, the master is the greatest lover in the world. You cannot find a greater lover than Buddha or Christ. But now the love is so qualitatively different that it has the quality of friendship, compassion, empathy. The passion has disappeared.Passion is tiny, small; compassion is immense, huge, enormous, infinite. When passion becomes infinite, it is compassion.Your experience is beautiful and you have understood its beauty; hence, you have felt like thanking me. You say, “Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone.” Those are two aspects of the same coin.You say, “Thank you, Osho.” You have understood it. I am happy that you have been able to see the connection between love and aloneness. Enjoy both. Never choose one out of the two because if you choose one, both will die. Allow both to happen. When aloneness happens, move into it; when love happens, move into it. Aloneness means moving in, love means moving out.Aloneness is the breath going in, love is the breath going out. If you stop one, you will die. You cannot hold the breath in, you cannot hold the breath out. Breathing is a total process and in the total process the incoming breath is as essential as the outgoing breath. Love is the outgoing breath, aloneness is the incoming breath. That’s how your soul lives; that’s how you become soulful.Allow both. Never choose. Choicelessly allow both. Go with wherever the breath is going. Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeonholed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert – he will die immediately because he will have only the in breath. I have never come across a person who is just extrovert – he will die too. People are both. It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert and vice versa. That’s what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced.My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts – both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood because in the past monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called the otherworldly people, the people who renounce the world and move into the monasteries, the mountains, the deserts. They decided that only to be an introvert is the right way to connect with God – as if God is not without, but only within.And the other, the worldly person, has remained extrovert. He thinks he has nothing to do with introversion, meditation, prayer. His interest is in money, power, prestige, people, crowds – the world. He never looks in. This is a very schizophrenic arrangement.I would like my sannyasins not to be schizophrenic, but whole. To be in the world and yet be not of it. Move between the outside and the inside, letting the movement become as smooth as possible, as simple as possible – just as you come out of your house into the garden. It’s too cold inside, so you come out. It’s too sunny outside and soon you start feeling hot, you start perspiring and move in – into the house, into the coolness and the shade of the house. Just as you move inside the house and outside the house, just go on moving in and out – both are yours.The old sannyasins, the old monks, claimed only the inner and denied the outer. My message is that nothing has to be denied – the whole belongs to you. I give you the whole universe, the inner and the outer both. I wouldn’t like you to become introverts because those who are introverts – against extroversion – become ill, pathological, dormant, stagnant, closed, disconnected, uprooted. They start living a windowless existence. They start living in unnecessary misery. They never come to know what aloneness is because aloneness cannot be known without love. And they only know loneliness. Loneliness is not health; loneliness is illness.The people who live only in the outside world and never think of the inner, they are on the other extreme. They know something of love, but their love is never more than lust – because love cannot happen unless aloneness has also happened in you. Their love is a beautiful name for lust. They need the other, they exploit the other, they possess the other. And when you possess the other, the other possesses you. People become slaves and are reduced to things. People are no longer people.The person who lives only on the outside, without knowing his inside, is poor, very poor – unaware of his inner treasures. The person who lives only in the inside is also poor because he never becomes aware of the beauty of existence, of the stars, of the sands and the sun, of the trees and the birds.The inner and the outer are not two. The inner is the inner of the outer and the outer is the outer of the inner. My sannyasin has to be both together. I would like to create a new man whom Carl Gustav Jung cannot categorize, cannot call extrovert or introvert. He will have to find a new word because the new man will be whole, he will be both. He will be as much in his body as in his soul, he will be a materialist as much as a spiritualist. He will be of this world as much as of that. He will have no division in his mind and no choice.Something beautiful has happened to you – go on moving in the same direction. Don’t go astray because it is very easy to go astray. Our old habits, our old concepts, go on dragging us back to the old patterns. Your mind will say, “This is not aloneness, this is loneliness.” Your mind will try to destroy it by calling it loneliness. Beware. Beware of your own mind because there is no greater enemy than your own mind.And by “mind” I mean your past. Go on dying to the past and go on learning new things. You have stumbled upon something tremendously valuable, utterly new and fresh. Love brings aloneness; aloneness brings love. That too will happen.Now you have said, “Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone.” I would like each of my sannyasins to feel like Turiya – feel alone and feel love. Never create any conflict between the two. Create a symphony out of the two and you will have a richness which is very rare.The fifth question:Osho,If I ever get enlightened, am I going to be as crazy as you are?Crazy you will be, but you will be crazy in your own way. You cannot be crazy as I am. Your craziness will have an individuality of its own.Krishna is crazy in his own way, but it happened only once and was never repeated. Just think of Krishna playing on his flute – you cannot conceive Christ playing on the flute. He is crazy in his own way; he carries his cross. Now what connection can you find between the flute and the cross? Just put a flute by the side of the cross and it will look like a very absurd arrangement – a surrealist arrangement. Absurd, utterly absurd.Meera became enlightened and danced and danced. Her whole life she danced from one village to another, singing songs of God, of love. Buddha became enlightened and became utterly silent, quiet, still. It is not an accident that the first marble statues made were of Buddha – he looked like a marble statue, he sat like a marble statue. Now, it is impossible to make a marble statue of Meera. She is so volatile. She is more like a river than like a marble rock. You cannot make a statue of Meera – it will be a falsification because the statue will not be able to dance. And without dance, there is no Meera. Meera’s statues can only be made by fountains, not by marble rocks. Yes, in a fountain it is possible to make a statue of Meera, but it has to be dynamic, it has to be a dance.Meera is crazy in her own way. And these people are never repeated. All enlightened people are simply unique. Just the other day I was telling you about the laughing buddha of Japan – he laughed his whole life. Laughter became his message.Existence never repeats. It always comes in new forms, new expressions, new revelations. Never use the word if. You are going to become enlightened! Don’t be so afraid. Why “if”? This is not a question of “ifs” and “buts.” You are going to become enlightened – because enlightenment is not something like an achievement, it is your very nature. Any day, turn in and you are enlightened – any day. Monday will do, Tuesday will do, any day! There are only seven days…Any moment you turn in… Enlightenment is not something like a faraway goal. It is very close by, the closest. Even to say that it is close is not right – it is you. There is no distinction, no distance between you and enlightenment. Know yourself and you are enlightened – and you are already there. Nothing has to be added to your being. All that is needed is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn – and you will be crazy.Yes, it is better to call enlightened people crazy because the so-called sane in the world are really insane. If the so-called sane are sane, then Buddha is crazy, Christ is crazy, I am crazy. Sooner or later you are going to be crazy. I hope it will be sooner.But one thing is certain. You will not be like me – and you need not be. It is good that you cannot be like me, otherwise there will be imitations, otherwise there will be actors, otherwise there will be pseudo people. Many have tried; that’s how religions are born. Millions have tried to be like Christ; not a single one has become a Christ. Millions have tried and instead of becoming Christs, they have become Christians – and to be a Christian is ugly, is stupid, unintelligent.To be a Christ is really something, but when you want to be a Christ you cannot imitate Christ. Learn from him, imbibe his being, but remember: God will manifest in you in a totally different way. It is unpredictable; no prophecy can be made. I cannot say how he will manifest in you because God is the craziest person in the world – unpredictable, absolutely unpredictable. He will find a way, he will find something new. It is good that he always finds something new because through that new the world becomes more and more enriched. Just think: Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, are all like Christ. The world would look very sad, boring. Wherever you go, you meet Christ. You will get tired. It is good that once in a while the cross disappears and the flute appears. It is good that once in a while God comes dancing, it is good that once in a while he is silent, it is also good that once in a while he comes with a cross. All shades, all nuances, all dimensions…You are a unique person, as everyone else is. No two persons are alike. How can two buddhas be alike? Not even two persons are alike, not even two pebbles on the seashore are alike. Your fingerprints are your fingerprints – what to say about the prints of your inner being? They are going to be separate, unique, incomparable.The last question:Osho,My Christian parents used to talk about God's promise to man and that when Jesus left this earth he promised his disciples he would return to take them to the Kingdom of God. Are you this promise come true? Are you Jesus Christ?Why should I be Jesus Christ? One is enough. I am myself. I am just my being. I am neither Jesus Christ, nor Gautam Buddha, nor Vardhaman Mahavira. Why should I be? How can I be? I am not a carbon copy of anyone else; I have my original face.But such questions arise. You love Jesus Christ and now you have fallen in love with me – it is your problem. Now you would like to bridge your two loves somehow. There must be a conflict inside. What to do now? Now you are in love with me and you have loved Jesus Christ. Deep down the mind will say, “Are you betraying Jesus? Falling in love with this man?” You don’t want to betray Jesus – and now you cannot betray me either. So the conflict. You would like an assurance that I am Jesus Christ so your problem is solved.I am the same truth, but not the same expression. I am the same experience, but not the same expression. What Jesus knew, I know; what he experienced, I have experienced. But Jesus is Jesus, I am me, and that’s how it should be.A section of Manhattan called the Bowery, home to winos and derelicts, has become the most famous Skid Row in the world. Here’s one of the reasons why:At four o’clock in the morning a drunk staggered into a Bowery flophouse shouting, “I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ!”The sleeping men were all awakened. “I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ!” blurted the wino.“Ah, shut up!” howled the hotel inhabitants. “Be quiet!”“I am Jesus Christ!” slobbered the inebriate. “I am Jesus Christ!”“Will you let us get some sleep!”“If you don’t believe me, come on downstairs and I will prove it to you!”A few of the men got up and followed him outside where he walked up to a darkened saloon and began bellowing and banging on the door.The proprietor who lived upstairs heard the noise, came down and opened the front door. He looked at the drunk and shouted, “Jesus Christ, are you here again?”“You see, I told you!” said the drunk turning to his followers.Jesus is beautiful, but there is no need for him to come again – and I don’t think he will dare. Just think of what you did with him. He may have promised, “I will come again,” but I promise you he will never come – because what you did with him you will do again. It is only new people who become enlightened, not knowing what is going to happen to them…Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping?The night is over – do you want to lose the day the same way?Other women who managed to get up early have already found an elephant or a jewel…So much was lost already while you slept…and that was so unnecessary!The one who loves you understood, but you did not.You forgot to make a place in your bed next to you.Instead you spent your life playing.In your twenties you did not growbecause you did not know who your lord was.Wake up! Wake up! There’s no one in your bed –he left you during the long night.Kabir says: the only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute!***I played for ten years with the girls my own age, but now I am suddenly in fear.I am on the way up some stairs – they are high.Yet I have to give up my fears if I want to take part in this love.I have to let go the protective clothesand meet him with the whole length of my body.My eyes will have to be the love-candles this time.Kabir says: Men and women in love will understand this poem.If what you feel for the holy one is not desire,then what’s the use of dressing with such careand spending so much time making your eyelids dark?Friend, wake up! Wake up! This has been the call of all the buddhas down the centuries. They have been shouting from the housetops. Everyone hears it, but no one listens. Everyone knows it, but no one understands. Knowledge is futile – it is only understanding that liberates. And hearing is of no use – unless you listen.Anyone who is not deaf is capable of hearing, but listening is a totally different matter, qualitatively different. It has nothing to do with your ears; it has something to do with your heart. When your ears and heart are joined together, listening happens. If the heart is not in the ears, you hear, but hearing is not going to help. It will make you more knowledgeable. But to become more knowledgeable is to create more hindrances between you and the beloved.Knowledge can never become a bridge, it is always a wall. It divides you from the ultimate, the immediate, the whole. It cannot connect you – only love connects. But love is of the heart. It has nothing to do with the head. Knowledge gathers in the head and the memory accumulates it. The ego enjoys it.Love wells up in the heart. Love is another name for understanding. It is only the eyes of love which can see and the ears of love which can hear.God is not a problem that can be solved by the head. It is not a riddle to be figured out. It is a poem to be sung, it is a dance to be danced. It is a love affair. God is a mystery – with no solution because it is not a problem in the first place. It cannot be solved, it has to be lived.When the buddhas call, “Wake up! Wake up!” what do they mean? – they mean that your heart is asleep. Your head is very awake, but the awakening of the head is in reality a metaphysical sleep. Unless the heart wakes up, you are only dreaming – dreams and dreams, even dreams that you are awake, dreams of wakefulness, dreams of becoming religious, dreams of becoming saints, holy, but they are all dreams.People even think about God. It is such an absurdity. People even try to prove God through arguments. God cannot be proved because anything that can be proved can also be disproved. If God depends on logic, then logic is godliness, then logic is higher than godliness. No, it does not depend on logic. In fact, if you are too logical, you will not be able at all to sense the presence of godliness in existence. The loss is going to be yours because not to feel the presence of godliness in existence is to miss the whole point of life.Man lives in thoughts, arguments, theories, philosophies. The danger is that if you talk too much about God, if you read and discuss it too much, you may be able to deceive yourself. Millions have deceived themselves in this way.A seminarian, ordained during his last semester, contemplated himself in the mirror. He was dressed in his black suit, his gleaming white collar and his well-polished shoes. Pleased with what he saw, he decided to deprive the world of his services no longer and went forth to do God’s bidding on Ninth Avenue in New York City.As he stood on the curb, hands in pockets, wondering what to do, he was observed by a drunk who seemed unimpressed. Their eyes met and the drunk said, “Sonny, what the hell do you know about God?”The young man made no reply, went to his room, removed his clerical garb and wondered what the hell he did know about God.You can study, you can go to the universities, to theological colleges; you can have degrees in religious philosophy – and yet you will never know God. That is not the way; that is the barrier.God is known through the heart. Let it sink deep in your being. And godliness is only known through the heart. So when the buddhas say “Wake up!” they mean let your heart be awake. What is the meaning of the heart being awake? When the head is awake, it thinks, it spins, it weaves beautiful systems of thought. When the heart is awake, it sings songs of love. It celebrates – just the sheer joy of being is enough to celebrate. It loves – the love is unaddressed and is not flowing toward a particular object. When the heart is awake, it starts flowing in all directions. It loves the whole, it simply loves – it is love.That’s what Kabir is going to say to you today. His sutras are of immense beauty. Each single word has to be meditated upon. Remember I am not saying “think upon,” I am saying “meditate.” I am saying: “Be silent and still and let his song sink in your heart. Let it stir your heart, let it awaken your sleeping energies of love, joy, bliss.”Religion is a celebration. You cannot be indoctrinated in religion because religion is not a doctrine at all. It is a very mad love affair.Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping?Man is deep asleep. What does his sleep consist of? He is asleep because he has forgotten the route to his heart. He is alert as far as mathematics is concerned; he is fully alert as far as calculation is concerned; he is awake as far as the world and worldly matters are concerned – for money, for power, for prestige, respectability, he is fully awake. He is awake only for the mundane. He is awake only for the meaningless. He collects garbage with great alertness. But he is asleep for the precious, for the sacred. He sees the trees, but he cannot see the green life flowing in them. He sees the mountains, but he cannot feel the beauty and the virgin silence. He sees people, but they look like machines. He cannot feel their souls; he has not even felt his own soul, how can he feel anyone else’s soul? He has not even become aware of who he is.Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping? In this sleep, when the heart is in darkness and the whole light has become focused on the head, even if you are told the ultimate truths you will misunderstand them. Even if a buddha tries to wake you up, you will be angry at him. Naturally, obviously, because you will think he is disturbing you. He is disturbing your dreams, not you, but you have invested too much in your dreams. He will say one thing, you will understand another. Either you will go on listening according to your prejudices, choosing – choosing only those things which can support you – or you will become very angry. You will crucify, you will poison, you will destroy such a person who comes and unnecessarily disturbs your sleep.Your sleep is deep. It has been a long, long time there. You have become accustomed to it – so much so that the heart goes on sleeping and still you can manage your life. You are a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. There are people who walk in their sleep. They go to the fridge, eat something and come back to their beds – and they won’t even stumble. If you wake them up in the middle, they will be very surprised. They will not be able to figure out where they are and what they are doing. They will be shocked.They move with open eyes, remember; somnambulists move with open eyes. But those open eyes are not really open, they simply manage a few steps. They have become accustomed to those few steps, so they can be done mechanically; no consciousness is needed. Just watch your life. You are doing a thousand and one things, but all those things are mechanical. You go on doing them like a robot.And when you talk to robots, it is really very difficult to reach them. They misunderstand.It seems there were two brothers by the name of Jones. John Jones was married and Jim was the owner of an old dilapidated rowboat. It just so happened that John’s wife died on the same day that Jim’s boat filled with water and sank. A few days later, a kindly old lady saw Jim on the street and mistaking him for John said, “Oh, Mr. Jones. I heard about your terrible catastrophe. You must feel heartbroken.”Jim replied, “Why, I am not a bit sorry. She was a rotten old thing from the start. Her bottom was all chewed up and she smelled like old dead fish. She had a bad crack in her back and a pretty bad hole in the front. Every time I used her she started leaking all over the place. Oh, I could handle her all right, but when anyone else used her, she would go to pieces. Well, here is what finished her. Four guys came across town looking for a good time and asked me to rent her out. I warned them she was not so hot, but they said they wanted to take a crack anyway. Well, the damn fools, all four of them tried to get inside at once and she split right up the middle.”The old woman fainted before he could finish.That’s how it goes on. One thing is said, something else is understood. Communication is very, very difficult. Even ordinary communication is difficult. When a man like Kabir talks it becomes almost impossible – because he is talking from the sunlit Himalayan tops and you are listening from your dark holes in the valley. By the time it reaches you its color has changed, its flavor has changed, its meaning is no longer the same.Obviously, you interpret it according to your own conditionings, your own past. Hence, you hear but you don’t listen. You will have to learn how to listen. Listening means being utterly silent, not interpreting, not judging, not evaluating – neither for nor against – just being present.Listen to these words of Kabir, just as a silent presence. Don’t be in a hurry to decide whether he is right or wrong. The beauty of listening is that if he is right, you will simply know that he is right. If he is true, truth is self-evident. You will know it as sure as you know when you have a headache – no one needs to prove it to you.All the elephants in Greece were ordered to evacuate the country. Behind the last one was a small mouse. The elephant turned, “Why are you running, my friend?”“Haven’t you heard the decree?” replied the mouse.“Yes, but you are a mouse,” the elephant said.“Ah yes,” the mouse sighed, “but if they say I am an elephant, then how will I prove that I am not?”It is difficult to prove, but there are things which need not be proved – a mouse knows that he is a mouse. Proof may be difficult. When you listen to the truth, it may be difficult for you to prove that it is true, but you will know. It will be an inner feeling that it is true and that feeling is enough because that feeling simply transports you into another world. It is not a question of your deciding whether it is true or untrue. If you decide, you will miss the whole point because how are you going to decide? – you will decide by your past. And you don’t know what truth is. If you had known, there would have been no need to listen to the buddhas – you would be a buddha yourself. You don’t know, so your past has no idea of what truth is. How can your past decide what is what? Put the past aside. Just listen.I am not saying believe – just listening is not synonymous with believing. It has nothing to do with belief or disbelief – just listening is just listening. You are neither in favor nor disfavor; you are simply open. You allow it inside you.Let me repeat: the beauty of truth is that when it reaches you, your heart simply jumps in joy. It knows. Truth synchronizes with your heart. It has the same rhythm. Suddenly the heart starts dancing and that dance is the proof. If it is not true, the heart will not dance and you will know that it is not true. But it is not a question of logical decision, of logical evaluation.Listen to these words very meditatively:Friend, wake up!Kabir calls you “friend” – that’s how all the buddhas have always felt. The disciple thinks, “Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Kabir are all masters and we are disciples.” From the disciples’ side this is so, but how is it from the master’s side? The master knows there is no master and no disciple. The master knows that it is a company of friends. The master is not holier-than-thou, he has no superiority complex. The master is a nobody; the master is just ordinary, but his ordinariness is luminous. The whole of existence is either ordinary or extraordinary –the whole. It is not that a few things are ordinary and a few things are extraordinary. For the master, everything is unique. His reverence for life is infinite.When a disciple comes and bows down to the master, deep down the master is also bowing down to the disciple. His bowing down may not be visible because he is not visible. His gestures are invisible. The disciple slowly, slowly becomes capable of deciphering; slowly, slowly capable of decoding – slowly, slowly he understands that the master loves him and thinks of him as a friend, as a beloved.Friend, wake up! Why do you go on sleeping?The night is over – do you want to lose the day the same way?This is a very strange statement. To those who know, life is night and death is the day. In life people remain asleep and it is death that wakes them up. In ordinary thinking, life is life and death is the end of life. To the buddhas, to the awakened ones, death is far more valuable than life, far superior, far more precious, far more significant. Why? – because it is the crescendo of life, the ultimate flowering. If life is the night, death is the morn.Kabir says: The night is over… You are getting old, time is slipping by. Death is coming closer and closer every moment. The night is over – do you want to lose the day the same way? You have lost the night; you couldn’t wake up in the night. But it can be forgiven because it was night and you slept. But you cannot be forgiven when death is coming closer – now it is time to wake up. If even death cannot wake you up, then what is going to wake you up? If a person wakes up in death, then for him there is no longer any birth, no longer any death.But a person can wake up in death only if he has tried hard to wake up in life; if his whole life has been a consistent effort to find a center in his being, a persistent effort to know “Who am I?” Only then is it possible that when death comes… And death is a great shock. It shatters all that you have made. It takes away all that you have been clinging to; it dispossesses you of all your possessions. It simply leaves you utterly naked and alone. If death cannot wake you up, then you are not simply asleep – you are in a coma. That’s how people are.Every day millions of people die. They lived in darkness, they die in darkness. They lived dreaming, they die dreaming. They lived in a stupid way, they die in a stupid way. They miss all opportunities.There are three great opportunities in life. The first is birth. Only once in a while is a man so intelligent that he uses that opportunity, but only very rarely. Maybe a Lao Tzu – hence the story.It is said Lao Tzu lived in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years. Now this is nonsense, but it has some truth in it. It is not factual, but it has some truth in it. And that is the difference between the Western way of thinking and the Eastern. If you tell such a story to the Western mind, he simply says, “This cannot be. How can a person live for eighty-two years in the mother’s womb? What will happen to the mother? Eighty-two years? This is not believable, this cannot be historical.”The Western mind immediately asks about the facticity of the phenomenon – but it is a parable. It has nothing to do with facts; it certainly has something to do with truth. And truth can only be expressed through parables; there is no other way to express truth. Truth can only be expressed through metaphors, through poetry, not through history. It is poetry, pure poetry, and of tremendous power.It means that when Lao Tzu was born he was already so mature, so ripe, that he used his first opportunity to wake up. Ordinarily it takes eighty-two years for a person to wake up; even then, how many people wake up? People wake up at the time of death, but how many? That too is very rare.Lao Tzu must have been of immense intelligence, must have carried the intelligence from his past lives – maybe just a little bit was missing, just the last straw on the camel’s back. He used the opportunity. The first opportunity is birth. It is as important as death. It is a death in a way because the child in the mother’s womb lives in one way, one kind of life and then is simply thrown out, expelled. He wants to cling to his home where he has lived for nine months; so peacefully, so silently, without any worry, without any responsibility, in such warmth. He clings to the womb, he does not want to leave. He feels it as a death and it is natural – because what does he know about what is going to happen? One thing is certain, his home is being shattered and he is being thrown out of all his comfort and security. He knows he is dying. Hence the birth trauma – the birth enters the child’s consciousness as death. He dies and is reborn.Lao Tzu used his first opportunity. The same is the case with Zarathustra, another beautiful story.It is said that Zarathustra is the only child in the whole history of man who laughed when he was born. Children cry, they don’t laugh – and Zarathustra laughed! It must have shocked his mother and father too – a real belly-laughter. He must have used the first opportunity. These two names are known to have used the first opportunity. The first shock and they became awakened.The second opportunity in life is love. A few people have become awakened through love. The second opportunity is available to more people than the first or the third – because birth is almost unconscious and so is death, but love can bring a little consciousness to your heart.Hence my insistence on love. Kabir’s insistence is also on love because this is the opportunity that many, many people can use and become awake. If you love, you will have to drop your ego – and that will be the death, the death of the ego. If you love you will have to learn how to melt, merge, disappear. If you love you will have to know that there is much more to life than logic, calculation; there is much more to life than having money, more possessions, power.If you love, you will have a glimpse of the divine. If you go deep in love, you will start entering the temple of divine. That is the second opportunity. And society has destroyed it.The first opportunity is very rare, but the second opportunity could have been available to almost everyone, but it has been destroyed by society. Your love has been contaminated. You have been brought up in fear, not in love. You have been brought up to fight, not to love. You have been brought up as if the whole of existence is your enemy, not your friend. How can you love? Love has been made impossible by the society.The only possibility of people turning to religion, the only possibility of revolution in people’s lives has been destroyed by society. Society is so afraid of love that it is not afraid of anything else like it is of love. Love is the most potential and dangerous thing for your so-called society because love will wake people up, love will stir people’s hearts. They will start living through the heart and they won’t listen to the head. If they don’t listen to the head then society will be at a loss. It will be impossible to dominate people who live through the heart. Only the head can be dominated, only heads can be reduced to slaves. The heart is always the king, the master.The third opportunity is death – the last. If you have missed birth, if you have missed love, don’t miss death. At least the last chance should not be missed. Kabir says:The night is over – do you want to lose the day the same way?Other women who managed to get up early have already found an elephant or a jewel…So much was lost already while you slept…And that was so unnecessary!One thing of tremendous importance to be remembered, because Kabir will repeat it again and again, is that he calls the seeker “the woman” – and that has been my effort too. I go on telling my sannyasins, “Be feminine!” To be feminine means to be receptive, to be open, to be loving. To be feminine means to be nonaggressive – and you cannot conquer godliness. Aggression won’t help. You cannot attack the citadel of godliness. All that can be done is that you can be a feminine welcome. You can invite, you cannot attack. You can absorb; you cannot possess. You can allow godliness to enter you. You can be pregnant with godliness – that’s the only way.Kabir says: Other women… You will be surprised. Why is he talking about women? Other women who managed to get up early have already found an elephant or a jewel… He says: “The impossible has happened.” They have found something which makes life meaningful, something which gives life the color of a rainbow, the dance of a peacock, the song of a cuckoo. Other women who have managed to get up early… Gautam Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed. Mahavira – these are the other women. Don’t be offended by it.Friedrich Nietzsche condemned Buddha and Christ as feminine. His insight was right, but he was using it as a condemnation, as a criticism because his idea of beauty was that of masculine, muscular power. His idea of beauty was not that of feminine roundness, softness. His idea of the right person was that of a brave soldier, ready to attack.He said, “The most beautiful experience of my life was when I saw an army moving with the sun shining and the sound of their boots; the music, the melody of their boots and their guns shining in the sun. That was the most beautiful experience of my life.”He doesn’t talk about a sunrise or a sunset, a starry night, a roseflower, a beautiful woman – no. He talked of soldiers walking in step; the sound of their boots and their guns shining in the sun. Of course, he created the philosophic background for Adolf Hitler to follow. Just as Karl Marx created communism, Friedrich Nietzsche, knowingly or unknowingly, created fascism. He was the father of the fascist mind. Of course he was against Buddha, against Christ because Christ says, “Love is God.” He also says, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too.” And, “Love your enemies as yourself.” Buddha says continuously, “Be rooted in the heart, forget the head. Move to the center of your being. The head is just the periphery.” And if you see a statue of Buddha, it looks feminine, it has a feminine beauty.I tell each of my sannyasins – man or woman, it doesn’t matter – one has to be spiritually feminine, only then can godliness be received. You have to be a host, only then can the guest come to you. But the problem is that down the ages the crowd has been telling you just the opposite. It makes you aggressive, violent, competitive. It takes away all that is soft in you. And now the women’s liberation movement is there, which is even destroying the softness of women too. The women’s liberation movement is not really a liberation movement. It is in fact just the opposite. It is trying to imitate man, to become as hard as men are, to do whatever men are doing.Remember one thing: if women try to imitate men, they will always be carbon copies; they will not attain their fulfillment, they will not attain their full potential. They will always remain lagging behind. And they will become ugly too. The real liberation movement has not started yet. The real liberation movement will insist that the woman has to be more and more feminine, that she has to be rooted in her nature; that she is not to follow men in retaliation, in reaction, in rebellion – that is stupid. No reaction ever helps.The woman has to be herself. Not only that, the woman has to be herself and she has to help the man to become a little more feminine. Not only does the woman have to be liberated from men, the man has also to be liberated from men. There is a great need for a men’s liberation movement – not liberation from women, but liberation from all the nonsense that has been taught to him down the ages: Be hard! Be steel! Don’t bend! Break but don’t bend! Man has been taught to be hard like a rock. He has missed much. Now women are following in the same tracks. It is a dangerous situation. If the woman also follows the man, she will be a second-rate citizen, she will never be equal to man.Not only that. If she follows man and becomes hard, as liberated women are becoming – their faces are becoming hard, their bodies are losing roundness, softness, vulnerability, they are becoming more and more angry and less and less loving – the danger is that that will be the end of the whole of humanity, if it happens.The only hope for humanity is in the quality of feminineness – the only hope. The hope is not with Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini. The hope is with Buddha, Chaitanya, Meera – with a totally different kind of people. We have to turn both men and women into a kind of feminine lovingness.That’s what Kabir means, but you have been taught something else – and we have learned the lesson. And when it is told to you by everyone, the whole crowd goes on teaching you the same thing again and again, the whole crowd goes on singing a chorus… It has happened down the ages. You want to satisfy everyone – your father, your friends, your priests, your politicians – and you are trying to satisfy everyone, and in satisfying everyone, you are destroying your own soul.I have heard…Even in biblical times they knew that too much good advice can produce bad results. Remember the ancient story of the old, old man in the Holy Land trudging barefoot down a dusty, rocky path? The rocks were sharp and they made his feet bleed; by his side trudged a small boy with torn sandals and the sharp rocks cut into his feet too and made them bleed. Behind them ambled a strong, healthy donkey.They came to a group of travelers resting beside the road. “Look at that,” said the travelers, “that poor old man with his bleeding feet while that fat, indolent donkey carries no one on his back.”So the old man shrugged and climbed up on the donkey to continue his journey. After a mile or so, another group of travelers resting by the roadside looked up and said, “The shame of it; that grown man riding on the donkey while the poor little boy’s feet are cut and bleeding from the sharp stones of the road.”Once again, the old man shrugged, got off the donkey and put the young boy up in his place.A third group of travelers had still more advice to give. “Look at that fat healthy donkey with that small boy as his only burden. He should carry both the boy and the man.”Again the old man followed the advice and climbed on the donkey behind the boy. Within a few miles they came to a rickety bridge over a fast-flowing river and with both man and boy on the donkey’s tired back, they started over the bridge.In the very middle, the bridge gave way with the combined weight and man, boy, and donkey plunged into the raging current.Thanks to their ride, the man and the boy were rested and managed to swim to shore. But the tired, weary, overburdened donkey was drowned. And it only proves one thing: if you take advice from everyone – you will only end up losing your ass.If you object to any of the language in that story, don’t blame me – that is the way they talked in biblical times.You have been listening to good advice from every nook and corner. Everyone is giving you rotten traditional ideas. Everyone is conditioning you, hypnotizing you. And because the crowd is big and you are alone, unless you bring your energies together you will not be able to get rid of this prison – the prison of the crowd. Unless you sharpen your intelligence a little more, unless you start meditating a little more, you will not be able to break the chains that society goes on putting on you.They go on telling you that it is just for your welfare. They are destroying you, but they go on saying, “We are serving you.” The strangest thing is that you also think that they are well-wishers – they think they are well-wishers, you think they are well-wishers and just look at humanity. So dull, so dead, so ugly. Something has to be done urgently, something has to be done very urgently.The most important thing will be to bring a little more femininity, a softer heart to human beings – men and women both. A little more liquidity. You need not be like rocks; please be like water. Lao Tzu says that his path is that of the watercourse way – liquid, fragile, feminine, nonresisting, flowing, dynamic.Other women who managed to get up early have already found an elephant or a jewel…So much was lost already while you slept…And that was so unnecessary!The one who loves you understood, but you did not.Existence is always compassionate toward you – it is bound to be so. It has created you. The painter loves his painting, the poet loves his poetry – existence loves you. Existence goes on creating people. Unless there is great love in the very center of existence, life will disappear. Who will sustain you? Who goes on breathing in you? It is a mystery. Who goes on circulating in your blood? – it is a mystery. Who beats in your heart? – it is a mystery. Who is alert and aware in you? – it is a mystery.But one thing is certain, absolutely certain, call it God or call it existence – the whole loves you. The whole goes on showering you with grace and gifts and each moment it is pouring on you. If you remain a beggar, only you are responsible, no one else. Existence would like you to be an emperor.The one who loves you understood, but you did not. Existence understands you, but you don’t understand existence. And sometimes when you come to a man who has understood existence – that’s what enlightenment is all about – he also loves you, but you will not understand him either. You have lost the capacity to trust because trust comes only as a shadow of love. If love is missing, trust will be missed. You live in thoughts and thoughts create doubt. Thoughts are based in doubt. The greater the thinker, the more and more he has to enter doubt.Here, being with me, you are not to be great thinkers because the thinkers miss all. They only live in their thoughts and thoughts are castles in the air. Nothing about those thoughts is existential. They can spin and weave beautiful systems, but they are all useless – you cannot live in them. They dissipate your energy.Be lovers, not thinkers. If you truly want to be religious, be lovers not thinkers. The heart has its own reasons that reason knows not. Once you have started moving in the world of love, you will be surprised that a new phenomenon starts arising in you: the phenomenon of trust – shraddha. And that is the greatest experience in life: to trust – because the man who trusts transforms not himself, but transforms his whole world. He starts living in a totally different world. Doubt, and you are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Trust, and you are received back, welcomed back – you are home again.A man fell over a cliff and in the last moment was able to get hold of a branch that was sticking out of the wall. He heard voices above and shouted for help, “God, help me! Is there anyone up there?”The answer came, in a deep voice, “My son, relax, let go of the branch.”The man could hardly believe what he had heard and yelled, “Is there anyone else up there?”Even if existence responds to you, you will not understand. You cannot relax because you cannot trust. Modern man suffers from great anxiety. It has never been so – man has never suffered so much from anxiety. Why is there so much anxiety? Amidst so much scientific, technological growth, amidst so much affluence, why does man suffer? Why is man in so much anxiety? – one thing has disappeared from his heart. Trust is no longer there, only doubt – doubt and doubt. You are surrounded by doubts, a thousand and one doubts. They are like ghosts torturing you. Your life has become a nightmare.But remember again; no one is responsible except you. You can be surrounded by trust, by the milieu of trust, by a climate of trust. And when the climate of trust is there, the spring has come – you start blossoming and for the first time you start releasing your fragrance. Flowers burst forth, life becomes a celebration.The one who loves you understood, but you did not.You forgot to make a place in your bed next to you.Listen to the words of Kabir. He is talking the language of love. God has not to be worshipped but loved – prepare a place for it in your bed.You forgot to make a place in your bed next to you.Instead you spent your life playing.Playing with toys, money, power, prestige – all toys. All in vain because death will take everything away. You know it. And still you go on clinging because the idea in your head is that anything is better than nothing. You will have to change it – you will have to change it diametrically. You will have to learn that nothing is better than anything – because it is in nothing, in nothingness, in emptiness, in silence, that you become a womb so existence can descend in you.In your twenties you did not growbecause you did not know who your lord was.You have lost your youth, which was the most precious time. Birth is missed, but it can be forgiven; love missed cannot be forgiven. You wasted your youth on playthings. You did not really love. Your love never became prayer, your love never attained the glories that are contained in it – your love remained lust, your love remained a very mundane passion. Your love remained sexual, it never became spiritual. Love has two aspects: one is sexual, the other is spiritual. And unless love becomes spiritual, it keeps you in the mud and you cannot fly in the sky, you cannot have wings.Remember, sexual love does not contain spiritual love, but spiritual love can contain sexual love, but then it changes the quality of the sexual love too. This is one of the fundamental laws: the higher contains the lower, but the lower does not contain the higher. So don’t be worried and afraid that if you rise higher in your love, the joys of your sex will disappear – no. They will become more intense, more orgasmic. They will become deeper, more satisfying, more penetrating. They will have a quality which is not of this world. Your orgasms will not be simply sexual – they will have the quality of meditativeness in them. Time will disappear and the ego will disappear; for a few moments you will be in godliness. Your beloved will disappear, you will disappear. The twoness will disappear and there will be oneness. You will feel an orgasmic oneness with the whole.Kabir says: In your twenties you did not grow… Very few people grow up. People simply grow old, but they never grow up. And growing old is not growing up. …because you did not know who your lord was.When you fall in love with a woman, do you think you are falling in love with a woman? If you ask Kabir or if you ask me I will tell you, you are not falling in love with a woman. No one has ever fallen in love with a woman or with a man. You have had a glimpse of existence in the woman; you have fallen in love with that glimpse.One always falls in love with existence. When the roseflower opens its petals in the morning – fresh with the morning dew, dancing in the morning wind, just joyous with the sun – you fall in love. Do you think you are falling in love with the chemistry of the rose? – no – but with the soul. You don’t fall in love with the chemistry of a man or a woman, you don’t fall in love with the biology. You fall in love with something invisible, intangible. You may not know it – and that is your misery. If you knew it then each love would be prayer, each love would bring you closer and closer to existence; your gestalt would be different and your love would not be so much rooted in the earth. It would have wings, it would have the capacity to fly.Kabir says that you missed, you could not grow:…because you did not know who your lord was.Wake up! Wake up! There is no one in your bed –he left you during the long night.And this happens again and again. You fall in love with a man or a woman and soon everything disappears, the lord is gone – because you never paid any attention to the lord. You became too focused on the physical, hence the spiritual disappears. Almost always by the time the honeymoon is over, love is finished – by that time the lord is gone. Then only two physical bodies… And two physical bodies can have a few sexual contacts, but no sexual contact can ever be satisfying, fulfilling. It brings more and more frustration. All sexual experiences end in frustration and in the wake comes great frustration, a kind of hopelessness. The reason is that you paid attention to the wrong side, you became too interested in the physical and you did not pay enough respect to the spiritual.If you focus on the spiritual, by and by the physical becomes secondary. And then the honeymoon is the beginning of a great love affair. It doesn’t end with the honeymoon; in fact, it only starts after the honeymoon is over. It is a totally different phenomenon. Intimacy goes on growing and growing. Sexuality becomes less and less; intimacy becomes more and more, deeper and deeper.Soon, you find the beloved is not just the woman. The beloved is the ultimate beloved. And then there is great reverence for the other. Then love gives freedom and does not possess; then love has no violence in it. It is sacred, holy.Wake up! Wake up! There is no one in your bed – he left you during the long night. But you go on making love and the lover is gone. You are making love to a corpse when the love is gone. When the lord has disappeared, when you no longer see in the eyes of your woman or man the presence of godliness, you are making love to a corpse. How can it give you contentment? How can it help you to soar high.Yes, in some moments you imagine, in some moments the nostalgia of the past – those beautiful days which are just like dreams now. In fact, it is unbelievable that they ever happened. But people are living in imagination, not in reality. If you live in reality, godliness is everywhere. If you live in imagination, you are living in loneliness, there is no godliness – the world is empty, the world has no meaning, the world is just a nightmare.The priest, the parson and the rabbi were walking down the street together in New York when they came upon a grubby urchin sitting on the curb, playing with himself.The priest was outraged and went over to the kid and asked, “How can a child of decent Catholic parents behave in such an unspeakable fashion?”Without missing a stroke, the youngster retorted, “Push off. I am not a Catholic and anyway I am not doing what you think I am doing.”Speechless, the priest retreated to his companions. The parson took it upon himself to remonstrate with the boy. How can you behave so sinfully after everything you have been taught in chapel?”“Push off!” said the kid. “I am not a Protestant and anyway I am not doing what you think I am doing.” With his tail between his legs, the parson rejoined the other two clergymen.“This is outrageous,” said the rabbi. Striding over to the urchin, he thundered, “Little boy, little boy, you have been raised in accordance with the law of your forefathers and of their forefathers before them. How dare you behave in such an unspeakably vile manner?”“Aw, push off and leave me alone,” the boy responded. “I am not Jewish and anyway I am not doing what you think I am doing.”“In that case,” demanded the rabbi, “who do you think you are and what do you think you are doing?”“Well, if you must know,” said the child, “I am a Christian Scientist and I am making love with my girlfriend in Pune.”From New York… Christian Scientists can do such things because they think the whole world is nothing but thought. The world is not thought and if you live in thoughts you will miss the reality of the world. Come out of your thoughts – that’s what Kabir means when he says: Wake up! Wake up!Move from the head to the heart. A heart full of wakefulness is needed. Don’t live in imagination. Don’t live in thoughts. Live in silence – and only the heart knows how to be still because in the heart there are no thoughts. Thoughts cannot penetrate that innermost shrine. No noise ever penetrates there. It is absolute silence, it is virgin silence.Move into the heart and suddenly you will see yourself waking up in a totally different kind of waking that you have never known before. Your whole life will become full of light, full of life, full of love, full of energy. Wherever energy is there is delight. Overflowing energy is delight.Kabir says: The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute!Only in the heart, in the deepest recesses of your heart, will you hear the flute of Krishna. This is just a metaphor: you will hear the music, the celestial music of existence, what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping, what other mystics have called the soundless sound, what in India the Upanishadic seers have called omkar – the sound of aum. Kabir calls it “the flute” – the flute of Krishna. The only woman… Remember, again he uses the word woman.The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute! And unless you have heard the flute, don’t rest. Go on searching and seeking inward. A moment comes when you hear the flute, when suddenly a celestial music bursts forth in you. You will be bathed in a totally new experience – the experience of deathlessness, the experience of timelessness; not the experience that godliness is present, but the experience that “I am part of God, God is part of me. I am God – aham brahmasmi. I am truth – Ana’l haq.”Jesus says, “I am truth. I am the door, I am the way.” About whom is he talking? Is he talking about the son of Joseph the carpenter? No. He is talking about the innermost core of your being which is immortal – he is talking about the flute that he has heard, he is talking about the one hand clapping, creating sound. He is talking about the cosmic sound, the cosmic melody. The only woman awake is the woman who has heard the flute!Remember, until you have heard the flute you are asleep, until you have started feeling godliness everywhere you are asleep. The only criterion to judge whether you are awake or asleep is this: do you see the world as matter? – then you are asleep. Do you see the world as divine? I am not saying, “Do you believe?” I am saying, “Do you see, experience the world as divine?” – then you are awake.I played for ten years with the girls my own age, but now I am suddenly in fear.Kabir says: I have been playing with the same kind of seekers. I played for ten years with the girls my own age… Remember, again he uses the word girls. He was moving with seekers, searchers. He was sitting in satsang, singing songs of God, truth, dancing, meditating.I played for ten years with the girls my own age, but now I am suddenly in fear. But when you really start approaching closer to the heart, a great fear grips you. Hence, whenever a sannyasin comes to me and says, “I am very afraid of you,” I always say this is a good sign. It simply means the head is losing its grip on you and the heart is coming closer. The fear arises because the head says, “Now, you are falling in danger. Who will protect you? I was protecting you. Who will guard you? I was guarding you. Who will keep you on the right track? Now you are moving into the madness of the heart, you are going beyond me – I will not be of any help. And you have depended on me up to now. I have been your security, your safety.”Hence, the fear arises.I am on the way up some stairs…Kabir says: Now, some doors are opening. I can see some stairs going upward.…they are high.They are high – higher than me. I will have to surpass myself, hence the fear. I will have to transcend myself, I will have to drop the ego and go without it. I will have to drop the whole baggage of the mind and go unburdened – hence the fear.If I want to take part in this love, I have to give up my fears.One has to give up one’s fears if one wants to live in love because it is the same energy that becomes fear, that becomes love. If you live in fear, your energy will remain involved, occupied, vested in fear. Drop the fears. Risk… And suddenly the same energy that was contained in the fear is released and becomes a flower of love.Yet I have to give up my fears if I want to take part in this love.I have to let go the protective clothes……all the defense measures, all the armor that you are carrying around yourself. One has to be in utter trust. One has to be ready to die – even if existence kills, it is okay. Only then will you be able to drop your armor. And everyone is carrying a great armor around himself. We are carrying our prisons around ourselves. They are transparent prisons, but you know they are there.If you want to reach someone, suddenly there is a glass wall and you cannot reach. People come close, but not really close because those two walls won’t allow it. Only walls clash. Hence, all lovers are in conflict. It should not be so. Lovers should be in deep harmony, but they are in conflict because those walls don’t allow you to be in harmony. Each is living in his fear and pretending to be loving. That love is false, it is a mask.I have to let go the protective clothesand meet him with the whole length of my body.You have to face love utterly naked, absolutely vulnerable.My eyes will have to be the love-candles this time.Enough time is wasted, so many lives wasted. Let your eyes be love-candles this time.Kabir says: Men and women in love will understand this poem.This poem will not be understood by scholars, pundits and the so-called learned people. This poem can be understood only by a loving heart. This poem will be understood by you, my people because my basic message is love. Love and love and nothing else – because love is enough unto itself. Kabir says: Men and women in love will understand this poem. No one else will understand it.If what you feel for the holy one is not desirethen what is the use of dressing with such careand spending so much time making your eyelids dark?People go to the temples, mosques, churches, gurdwaras – for what? And you are not in love with God. It is so stupid. You need not waste your time in the temples and the churches if you are not in love. Then why go on: …dressing with such care and spending so much time making your eyelids dark?If you are not in love, why go on doing these empty rituals? Do something else. Do something else that you love. Don’t waste your time in the name of religion because religion is possible only if you are in love. In a deep, intense love, only then is your prayer true. And whatever you say has a sacred quality to it. You need not go to the temples – wherever you sit will be the temple. You need not do rituals; worshipping the divine with flowers and candles and this and that – whatever you do will be your prayer.Kabir says in another poem, “I don’t go to the temple because wherever I sit, I find him present all around me. He cannot be more in the temples – he is not more anywhere or less anywhere; he is exactly the same everywhere.”Kabir says, “I don’t go with special food to offer God – when I eat, that is my offering to God.” See the beauty of his statement. He says, “When I eat, that is my offering to him – because he is inside me. Why should I go to a stone statue which cannot eat at all. If I have more food, I invite friends. When they eat, I know he has accepted my offerings.”Religion is not ritual, religion has nothing to do with formalities – with Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. Religion is an individual love affair. Be in love with people, be in love with the world, be in love with trees, birds, animals, stars – be in love. Slowly, slowly your love will burn candles in your eyes and you will be able to see it.He is present, but you are blind. He is playing on his flute, but you are deaf. Friend, wake up!Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I am here only for a very short visit. I have come to try to understand what you have here that the rest of the world does not. Can you help me?I have nothing to offer to you – only nothing. But that is the greatest thing that can be given as a gift. My only advice to my people is to be nothing, to be nobodies, to be utterly nude of all the clothes that society has given to you – of thought, religion, philosophy – utterly empty of all the conditionings that have been forced on you by others; utterly devoid of all the inhibitions and taboos that time has gathered around you like dust. If you can be an empty mirror, then godliness is. In that empty mirror, godliness reflects – and there is no other way.I have nothing substantial to give to you because all that is substantial is mundane. I have something intangible to give you, non-substantial, something that you cannot grasp with your hand, something that cannot be measured or weighed. It is called nothing, it is called meditation, it is called a state of consciousness without content.But I can only point the way. I cannot give it to you. It is untransferable. It is not a thing, so how can it be transferred? You cannot purchase it, you cannot steal it – you can only allow it to happen. I am just a certain space, a certain context in which this immensely potential nothing can happen. But it all depends on you, not on me. It all depends on you. If you allow it to happen, it will open doors to the divine, it will reveal to you the mysteries of life. It is not going to answer your questions because life is not a question–answer thing; it is not a problem. It will dissolve your questions, certainly, although it will not solve them – but you will be transformed. It is not knowledge that you will gain, but knowing, eyes, insight.But you say: “I am only here on a very short visit…” In such a hurry it is not possible. In such a hurry, you will not be able to relax, to imbibe.An ancient Zen story says…A young man came to a Zen master to learn about meditation. The Zen master said, “Are you capable of waiting?”The young man, of course, asked, “How long?”The Zen master said, “That is enough for me to reject you. To ask ‘How long?’ means you are not ready to wait. If you can simply wait without asking ‘How long?’ then you are capable of waiting.”The young man understood the point. He bowed down and remained with the master.One year passed and not a single word was said to the disciple. Two years passed… Three years passed… “Now it is too much. Nothing has even been started, not a single lesson. How long can one wait?” Again the question became very prominent in his consciousness: “How long?”He went to the master and said, “I have waited three years.”The master said, “So you have been counting? That simply shows you don’t know how to wait. Counting? Counting days with the master?“In one sense, each moment is an eternity; in another sense, eternity is just a moment. You are unworthy! You will have to wait. You will have to learn how to wait. Be alert – from tomorrow the lessons will start.”And the lesson was very strange. The young man was sweeping the floor when the master came from behind and hit him hard with his staff on his back. Shocked, the young man said, “Is this the beginning of meditation after three years of waiting?”The master replied, “Yes – now be alert. I will hit you any moment, any time. Be watchful, be alert, be on your guard.” It continued for months. His whole body would ache in the night because it would happen many times in the day that the master would suddenly jump from anywhere… He was very old, but he was really a cat.But, slowly, slowly a strange awareness started arising in the young man. Just when the master would be on the verge of hitting him, he would dodge – even from the back. And although he was occupied in his work, a subtle awareness remained there. It was bound to be so; he was suffering so much.Pain is a must for growth, suffering is absolutely necessary for growth. Unless you suffer you cannot be aware. Suffering brings awareness and voluntary suffering brings tremendous awareness. Willingly he was suffering. He could have escaped, no one was preventing him. It was his own choice. He had chosen the master.Now he started to understand why: “This is his teaching. This is how he is teaching meditation.” Now it dawned in his consciousness. He was immensely grateful.The day came when the master came from behind and just before he was going to hit him, the young man jumped, dodged. The master’s stick fell on the ground and the young man was immensely happy. Something new had happened in his being. The master blessed him.But from that day, things became even more difficult. The master started hitting him while he was asleep. Now, this was too much. In the night, any time… And the master was very old; naturally, he didn’t sleep much, so whenever he woke, he would go and hit the young man. But the young man knew. “I may not understand the process of it, but the master’s hitting in the day has been of such immense benediction, has been such a transformation, that without any question, I accept this too.” He didn’t say, “This is absurd, this is ridiculous. It is okay that you hit me in the day – I can at least protect myself, run away, escape, dodge – but what can I do when I am asleep?” He didn’t say it.The master said, “This is a good sign. For the first time you are learning trust. You have not asked the question.”After two, three months of being hit in the night, his body would ache the whole day. In the day he was able to protect himself. But one night it happened. The master entered the room and he opened his eyes and said, “Wait! I am awake.”It happened more and more. It became impossible to hit him. Immediately the master entered the room, he would open his eyes – as if he was not asleep at all. That was not so. He was fast asleep, but a part of his being was released from the metaphysical sleep, the tip of the iceberg, just a small part. But it went on like a lit candle inside – watching, waiting.The master was very happy. The next morning, the master was sitting underneath a tree reading some old sutras, some old scripture. Suddenly – the young man was sweeping the garden and an idea arose in him. “This old man has been hitting me for almost one year, day in, day out. How will it be if I try once to hit him? It will be worth seeing how he reacts.”The master closed his sutras and said, “You stupid man! I am an old man. Don’t have such ideas.”Yes, the ultimate state of awareness where even the footprints, the step sounds of thoughts are heard. You are in such a hurry that you cannot relax. Meditation is not a hit-or-miss affair. It needs tremendous waiting; it needs love, trust. It needs a very unhurried approach. In fact, it needs a mind which is not goal-oriented at all. But if you are in a hurry, it will be impossible.You ask me, “I have come to try to understand…” Understanding is not something that you can try, it is not an effort. It is not something that you can concentrate, contemplate upon. Understanding is not of the mind; it is of the heart. You will have to fall in love.That’s what sannyas is all about: falling in love with a master, for no reason at all. Just for the sheer joy of falling in love with someone who has disappeared, who is no more, who has become a great nothing, who has become a silence. Of course, that silence is full of songs and that silence is music, celestial music. That silence is not negatively empty. It is empty of noise, but full of melodies. It is empty of thoughts, but full of awareness. It is empty of darkness and death, but full of light and life.Unless one falls in love, the process of understanding cannot be triggered. You can be here, you can listen to me, but only words will reach you. Those words will become part of your memory; they will make you more knowledgeable. But to be knowledgeable is utterly futile; it doesn’t help. To know about God is not to know God because the word God is not God. To know about love is not to know love because the word love is not love.You will have to move in an experiential space. For that, waiting is needed, a relaxed, non-goal-oriented attitude is needed; otherwise you will not understand a thing. You will only misunderstand. The head only knows how to misunderstand. It is only the heart which knows how to understand. Love is the only way to know. Logic is a pretend. It only pretends that it knows. It befools you, it deceives you. It is only love that opens the eyes of knowing.But see: the head goes on condemning love. The head says, “Love is blind.” Only love has eyes. Without love, everything is blind. But the head condemns the heart and the head is really very skillful in creating counterfeit phenomena. Instead of understanding, it spins and weaves knowledgeability. And knowledgeability is a false coin. It is not understanding. Understanding means you have tasted, lived, loved, been in a totally different space. You have visited the innermost core of your being.Knowledge simply means that you have heard someone talk about it. Knowledge only goes on adding to your memory, not to your being. Understanding helps your being to grow, to mature.If you are here to understand, forget about going so quickly. Just look; so many people here had come only for a few days. Then a few years have passed. I am happy about my people. They don’t even count and they don’t go on asking me “How long is it going to take?” They know that it is not a question of “How long?” It can happen any moment. It is only a question of your own openness, your own intensity, your own passionate desire to know, your own love.It is unpredictable. It is not a commodity. If it had been a thing, I would have given it to you very joyously. I am helpless – I cannot give it to you. I am creating the space in which it can happen, but it happens indirectly. Understanding is not direct, it is very indirect. If you approach understanding directly, it is very shy, it escapes. It is very elusive.When you start moving toward understanding you have to be very, very alert and watchful – in indirect ways. All that is great in life happens only indirectly. It may be understanding, or happiness, poetry, painting, sculpture; it may be art, it may even be a discovery of science. All that is great happens indirectly.Now it is a well-known fact that scientists go on struggling to understand something. They fail again and again and again. One day suddenly, when they are not struggling at all – maybe smoking a cigar, or just resting in their bathtub, or digging in the garden – it pops up. And they have been struggling so long and it was not coming.There is a certain secret to it. When you are too intent, too direct, too aggressive, life does not reveal its secrets. It reveals only to people who are nonaggressive. When you are too intent, too aggressive, too violent and are trying to conquer some secret of life, you become very narrow. Your consciousness closes and you are no longer wide open. And truth is so big that it cannot enter a narrow consciousness.When you are relaxed, the narrowness disappears; you are open from all sides – maybe just playing with soap bubbles in your bathtub… That’s exactly what Albert Einstein used to do. All his great discoveries happened while he was playing with soap bubbles in his bathtub. You will be surprised to know that for many hours, he would remain in his bathtub playing with soap bubbles. His wife was very embarrassed to tell people.One of my friends went to see him and he had to wait for six hours – because he wouldn’t come out of the bathroom. Finally his wife had to tell him the truth. “He can never be disturbed when he is in the bathroom. He can be disturbed when he is in his lab, but not when he is in his bathroom – because he becomes so utterly relaxed that all the great insights happen to him there. So nothing can be done. He may be playing with soap bubbles, but from playing with soap bubbles he has come to know about stars, faraway, faraway stars.” Playing with soap bubbles… Even stars which are so far away that their light has not reached since the earth came into existence – for millions of years the earth has been in existence; their light has not reached the earth yet. And light travels with terrific speed; a greater speed is inconceivable.Light travels 186,000 miles per second. Light has been traveling from those stars since the earth came into existence. And still it has not reached the earth. Einstein became aware of those stars playing with soap bubbles. He became aware of the greatest discovery of this age – the theory of relativity – in his bathtub.This is simply to say that life is ready to reveal itself when you are nonaggressive, when you are like a child playing with reality. All that is great happens in fun, in playfulness.You are too intent. You say: “I am only here on a very short visit. I have come to try to understand what you have here that the rest of the world does not.” What I have here is everywhere, but maybe you cannot see it somewhere else. You need a certain space in which you can relax – that space is nowhere else. Religion is very serious all over the world. Here with me religion is a nonserious phenomenon. Elsewhere, life is taken as a great problem, a theological problem. Here it is thought to be a beautiful joke. Prayer is thought to be very sacred in other places. Here, just to be celebrating, anything… The whole question is just to be celebrating. If you are eating your food with celebration, it is prayer; if you are taking your bath with celebration, it is prayer. If you have joy in the heart, it is prayer. Prayer is not a ritual here. You need not repeat certain words, you need not move through certain gestures. Prayer is a quality here, not an activity – a flavor, a subtle dance of your inner energy.Listening to the birds – and it is prayer. Seeing the trees, with all their green, red, gold – and it is prayer. A bird on the wing and you are simply watching with great joy, with a certain relatedness to the bird, a certain affinity, empathy, as if you are on the wing – it is prayer.Prayer is not something special here. It is the day-to-day ordinary life, with a new quality – the quality of joy added to it, the quality of surrender and offering added to it. Any act offered to existence is sacred. If you can offer all your acts to existence, everything is sacred.There are thousands of churches and temples in the world; there are thousands of teachers, great teachers, very learned teachers. I am not a learned man and I am not a teacher because I have no teaching to impart. I am just a silent stillness; I am just love in my heart, a playfulness. If you can be here, without any idea of when you are leaving, if you can just be here and imbibe the spirit of this buddhafield, this energy field, something is possible – something impossible is possible, which may not be possible anywhere else. And as far as I know, right now, there exists no buddhafield in the world except this.Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists – there are three hundred religious on the earth, but all are hangovers of the past. Their masters are long dead. They are traditions not religions, conventions not religions, conformities not revolutions.Here it is not a tradition that I am making available to you. It has nothing to do with the past. It is a new beginning. And it is very fortunate to be at the beginning of something, to be at the very source of something.The people who walked with Jesus were immensely fortunate – they were at the very source, at the purest source. The people who walked and lived with Buddha were immensely blessed, but now to be Buddhist is just meaningless. Twenty-five centuries have passed and in these twenty-five centuries Buddhism has been corrupted so much. Now it is almost impossible to sort out what Buddha said; what has been added, deleted from it. It is almost impossible to say what has come from Buddha and what these twenty-five centuries have gathered around it.It is like a snowball rolling. More and more snow goes on collecting around it; the original face is lost. You will even be surprised that the Buddhist statues have nothing to do with the real face of Buddha. The Buddhist statues have something more to do with the face of Alexander the Great – because with the arrival of Alexander the Great, for the first time Indians became aware of Greek beauty and particularly of Greek male beauty.Greeks were not interested in female beauty at all, remember, their whole idea was of male beauty. If you look at ancient statues that the Greek culture left, you will not find statues of women. You will find statues of men, statues of nude men. They were tremendously in love with male beauty, the male body. The female body was not thought to be beautiful in Greece.They created beautiful statues of nude male bodies. Those statues, and those Greeks who came to India with Alexander the Great, gave the idea of how the Buddha’s face should be made. Buddha’s statues do not correspond with his real face – they are Greek in origin. And everything like that has been changed.The day Buddha died, the monks started quarreling about each and everything. Thirty-six schools immediately arose, thirty-six sects. This one man they have all loved, this one man they all have heard – but they have heard according to their own minds. And when a man like Buddha is there, he releases great power. There are power-hungry people who immediately jump on it, exploit it. These power-hungry people are really politicians.St. Paul, who created Christianity, is a politician. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ, and Buddhism has nothing to do with Buddha. Buddhism was created by King Ashoka, the great emperor. He spread Buddhism all over Asia. It was he – and I don’t think that he was a man of any great understanding or enlightenment; politicians never are. It became a new power trip. Someone can spread his worldly riches more and more and more, someone can spread his empire of political domination, someone else can spread his religious empire – but it is all the same. The desire is to dominate more and more people. Politicians are not very intelligent people.Those thirty-six people who started quarreling must have been politicians. And this is something that is always going to happen. It is something in the nature of things; it cannot be avoided. Those who were really in tune with Buddha remained silent. The shock was such – Buddha’s leaving the body – that they were shattered, they were crying and weeping. They were missing their master; their hearts were no longer in their right place. They were not interested at all in creating schisms, sects, divisions, politics. But there were idiots and they are always around – seek one and you will find a thousand and one. They are always around. When one idiot goes, immediately another idiot takes his place.Just the other day I was reading that in Uganda, Idi Amin is gone. He was known as “Idiot Amin.” Now, do you know who has succeeded him? – a man called Lulu. One idiot goes, another lulu comes. It is a very strange world. You cannot get rid of idiots and lulus.Once the master is gone, the politicians are there immediately, ready to grab the power. And politics remains as long as the ego remains; politics is the shadow of the ego. So you can go to a Christian church or a Hindu temple; you go empty-handed and you will come back empty-handed. Unless you can find an alive buddhafield, pulsating, streaming with life – this is what is happening here…Something is possible. I cannot promise you that I can give it to you. I can only say that the space is here and the space is becoming richer and richer every day, more and more dimensional every day. If you are ready to dive deep into the world that we are creating here – it is an invisible world – something of great value is possible.You ask me: “Can you help me?” That’s what I am here for. That is not the real question. Can you take my help? That is the real question. Are you ready to take my help? Will you allow me to help you? Will you resist? Will you open your heart for me to come in? And my coming into your heart is great surgery. It is painful in the beginning with agony on the way, ecstasy only in the end.The second question:Osho,Why do all the buddhas say the same thing?Truth is one. Even if it is said differently, it is the same truth. Languages may differ, metaphors may differ, parables may differ, but if you really look a little deep, all parables, all languages, all metaphors, culminate in one truth. Truth is one – what can buddhas do? Although each buddha speaks in his own way, his expression has his signature on it. His expression is just his and no one else’s. But still those who can see will always find that it is the same diamond – maybe we have been shown only one aspect of it by Krishna, another aspect by Christ, still another by Mohammed, but those are aspects of the same diamond.The diamond is one, this universe is one. All the buddhas have been saying the same thing, in different languages, in different ways. Those differences come from their individualities, not from their experience. The moment of experience is wordless, the moment of experience is thoughtless. So when Buddha experienced it, it was the same purity of consciousness as when Jesus experienced it.Two purities cannot be different; two impurities can be different. Two healths cannot be different; two diseases can be different. Two silences cannot be different; two noises can be different. The truth is known in silence, but you cannot utter it in silence – you have to use words, language, noise. And immediately… When Buddha speaks, he speaks in Pali; that is the language that he knows, that is his mother tongue. Jesus speaks in Aramaic; that is his mother tongue. If Jesus and Buddha had met, they would not have understood each other’s language at all, but they would have looked into each other’s eyes and would have understood each other totally.A Sufi story…One evening, Mulla Nasruddin is sitting in the village square plucking the strings of a sitar. Little by little, an expectant circle of villagers gathers around him. He keeps on playing just one note. Finally, one villager inquires, “That’s a very nice note you are playing, Mulla, but most musicians use all the notes. Why don’t you?”“Those donkeys,” retorts the Mulla, “they are searching for the note, but I have found it!”Truth is one – when you have found it, you can go on repeating it, you can find different ways to repeat it, unique ways to express it. You can devise your own methods. Many methods have been devised, because of the compassion of the enlightened ones. Strange methods, very contradictory to each other.If you go to a Sufi saint, he will be very polite to you, he may even touch your feet – because the Sufis respect godliness in all forms. That is their device. When a Sufi master touches your feet, just think of that moment, contemplate over the moment – a Bahauddin, a Jalaluddin Rumi, a Farid; great masters, diamonds of the purest water. A Bahauddin touching your feet, it is a device. In that moment when Bahauddin touches your feet, you are bound to fall silent, however noisy your mind. When Bahauddin touches your feet, a great silence will descend on you. He is giving you a taste of his meditation in this way; this is his device.A Zen master is just the opposite. When you go to him, you have to bow down seven times. You ask some innocent question and he jumps on you, hits you on the head – so unexpectedly. A very different device, but just think: a Bodhidharma, a Rinzai, a Bokuju, jumping on you, hitting you on your head. For a moment all thinking stops – so unexpected. You had asked a simple question, “Is there a God?” and he became furious. You cannot figure it out – why? And he gives you no time to figure it out; he gives you no time to escape either.It happened once that when Bokuju met his master and asked something about Buddha, the master took him physically and threw him out of the window – and from a three-story building! The poor fellow fell onto a rock and smashed himself. The master was looking from the window and asked, “Do you understand now?” The whole ridiculousness of it; the silence of the garden, the silence of the accident – the shock. The master’s smiling face, those compassionate eyes and his asking, “Now do you understand?”In that moment, Bokuju became enlightened. He said, “Yes, yes, master. Can I come in and touch your feet in gratitude?”“You are welcome,” the master said, “to have a cup of tea with me.”And they are sipping tea together.Something immensely valuable has happened. In that moment, in that dangerous moment when you are falling, it is almost as if you are going to die – you are finished. How can you think? In dangerous moments thinking stops. When you come across a snake, suddenly thinking stops. You don’t decide to jump out of the way, remember – you jump first and then you decide; then you can think over it, then you can afford to think over it. But you jump first.Gurdjieff used to say that the mind is very slow in action. He is right. The body is far quicker. The mind is very lethargic. It goes round and round in circles. So whenever there is some urgency, your existence does not allow your mind to go round and round through logical processes to come to a conclusion because it will be too late. By the time you have decided… For example, if a snake is passing by and you give it to the mind, there is trouble. First the mind will say, “Ninety-seven percent of snakes are nonpoisonous, so there are only three chances out of a hundred that this snake is poisonous. Out of a hundred people who are bitten by snakes, they don’t all die. Only five percent die, ninety-five percent are saved. And those five persons who die, maybe they were going to die anyway. So what is the hurry? Why bother? One has to die one day.”Such great philosophical ideas about death and the immortality of the soul – and snakes don’t care about these things. They are absolutely nonphilosophical; they won’t give you that much time. The snake may strike you before you have come to any conclusion.Gurdjieff is right. He says that whenever there is any urgency, the body immediately takes over from the mind. It does not give the mind any chance to do – it does it on its own. The body has its own wisdom, it jumps out of the way. It is almost an inbuilt response, so no thinking is needed.That’s what Zen people have been doing with their disciples.A Zen master had this habit that whenever he would talk of God, of Buddha, of the higher dimensions of life, he would raise one of his fingers toward the sky. It became so characteristic of him that one of his small sannyasins, a young boy – must have been about the age of Siddhartha – became very interested in this one finger pointing upward. And he was always in attendance just to do something for the master – if he needs some tea, he would run and bring it, or just to be by his side and to help him get rid of the mosquitoes.He learned the trick and playfully, whenever the master was not looking at him, he would show one finger to the audience. The master knew. The people would laugh, or smile and he would know who was doing the trick.One day – and this can be done only by a Zen master – he simply caught hold of the child when he was making the gesture of one finger pointing to heaven and cut the finger off with a sharp knife. Now, just think of doing such a thing to poor Siddhartha… The child cried, screamed and the master said, “Stop! Put the finger up!” And his shout was such, it was such a thunder-like shout, that the child forgot all about his finger – that it had been cut off and blood was oozing out – and he showed the finger which was no longer there because the master had ordered it.In that moment when he was showing the finger which was no longer there, he became aware of the invisible. The master was not pointing to something visible, but something invisible. And the child started laughing and the master took him into his embrace and said, “You have understood.”It is said that the small child had his first satori. And later on became a famous enlightened master.Different approaches, but the truth is one. The truth is silence – a single note of silence. Be silent and know and you will also know the same thing that the buddhas have always known and will always know: truth is eternal. It has nothing to do with time, it never changes.The last question:Osho,Is it not good to teach children something of religion? Will it not benefit, help them, to know something about Jesus Christ?Religion cannot be taught to children or to grown-ups. It cannot even be taught to grown-ups, so how can it be taught to children? Religion as such cannot be taught. It can only be caught if you live a religious life. And by “religious life” I don’t mean the life of a Christian or a Hindu; by “religious life” I mean a life full of love, prayer, celebration, joy, cheerfulness, gratitude. If you live a religious life, children are bound to catch it. Teaching is needed because you don’t live a religious life, so you tell them theories. Those theories are not going to help at all. When a child is thirsty, don’t talk about H2O – give him water. He needs water. Don’t tell him, “H2O is the formula which contains water, which contains all the oceans – don’t worry. Just remember H2O is equivalent to water.”The child will say, “How can I drink H2O?” And then the ridiculous thing happens. The child will think if you repeat H2O, H2O, H2O, H2O, then maybe someday, by repeating it constantly – intensely, chanting it again and again, using it as a mantra – a miracle will happen.People are chanting “Rama, Rama, Rama,” “Ave Maria,” “Jesus,” “Allah” – a thousand and one formulas. You can go on chanting – they are all H2O, H2O, H2O. You are simply wasting your time and not only wasting your time, you are destroying your intelligence too.The man who gets in such a repetitive routine becomes stupid. He loses the sharpness of his intelligence. What are you going to teach the children? What is religion after all? Is there some way to teach it? Yes, you can teach Christianity because Christianity is a doctrine; you can teach Buddhism because Buddhism is a doctrine. A doctrine can be taught, but religion has nothing to do with doctrine. Religion is not a doctrine, it is an experience.You cannot teach it, but you can create the context. You can live in such a way that the child slowly, slowly imbibes the spirit. And children are very vulnerable, very flexible and very attentive too. They are always ready to learn. If something of immense beauty is felt by them, they learn it, they drink it, they digest it.But you teach them stupid doctrines. For example, you teach them that Christ was born of a virgin mother – now the child will laugh at you because now children know much more than you think.A small boy gave the following summary of his Sunday school lesson: “There were these Jews who had broken out of a prison camp in Egypt. They ran and ran until they came to a wide lake. The prison guards were closing in, so the Jews jumped into the water and swam out to some boats that were waiting for them. The guards got in submarines and tried to torpedo the boats, but the Jews set off depth charges and blew up all the submarines and made it safe to the other side. Everyone called the Admiral by his first name, Moses.”The boy’s father asked, “Son, are you certain that that is what your teacher told you?”“Dad,” responded the boy, “if you can’t believe my story, you would never believe the one the teacher told.”Now, telling children these stupid stories is not helping them to become religious; on the contrary, you are helping them to become anti-religious. When they grow up they will know that all those religious doctrines were fairy tales.Your God, your Jesus Christ, will turn into Santa Claus later on in the child’s mind – deceptions, fables, to keep children occupied. Once children know that what you have been telling them as absolute truth is just lies and nothing else, you have destroyed something very valuable in their being. They will never become interested in religion at all.My own observation is that the world is becoming more and more irreligious because of religious teaching. No child should be taught any religious doctrine.Yes, when you are praying, let the child be present there. When you are dancing, let the child be present there. The child will soon join you. How can the child resist joining a dance? Let the child know that life has grace in it; let the child know that life is not only suffering but ecstasy too. Let the child know that laughter is good, divine, that love is good, godly.And these things are not to be taught; they have to be imbibed by the child. You have to create the vibe. Sooner or later the child will start becoming aware of many more things which cannot be seen just by the physical eyes because you will have given him more sensitivity. Otherwise you can go on teaching him and no one even remembers. How much do you remember that was taught to you? No one even remembers; everything is thrown in the garbage.Three Italians were driving fast on the expressway when their car collided with a truck and they were instantly killed. Finding themselves at heaven’s door, they knocked and God answered. “What do you want?” God asked.“We want to come in,” they replied.God said, “Before you can enter you must answer a question.” He pointed to one Italian and said, “You, Vito, tell me, what is Easter about?”Vito paused, then with an Italian accent answered, “Thatsa when there are lotsa parades alla over America. Fireworks are shot at night and the people go ona picnics. Itsa celebrated in July.”“Sorry, Vito,” God said, “but you must go to hell.”Pointing at Pietro, God said, “You, Pietro, tell me what Easter is about?”Pietro smiled and replied, “I know, God, thatsa when some time ina November the family gathers together and eatsa turkey, pumpkin pie, potatoes…”“Sorry, Pietro,” God said, “you must go to hell.”Looking at Giuseppe, God said, “You, Giuseppe, you have been an altar boy for ten years. You go to church every Sunday. You tell me what Easter is about.”Giuseppe replied, “Thatsa when the people who did not like your poor son and what he said hung him upa on a cross. For three hours your son he hang there before he died. Thena his mother and friends, they take him down from the cross, wrap his body up and put the body in a cave and they roll a huge stone in front of the cave. For three days your son was in the cave and on the third day he wakes up from the dead, rolls back the stone, goes out of the cave. Hea no seea his shadow, so he goes back in for sixa more months.”You can go on teaching – no one is listening. Children are helpless; they have to go to Sunday school, so they go. They have to listen, so they listen – but they are not there. Later on they say and they know that it was all just nonsense. They may not say anything, but they know certainly that it was all nonsense.This is not the way to help the world become more religious. This is the way we have tried for centuries – and we have failed. Instead of the earth becoming more religious, it has become more and more irreligious every day. As the teaching has spread, as there have been more and more missionaries, more and more teachers, more and more people indoctrinating others, the world has turned more and more irreligious – not only irreligious but anti-religious too.It is time to understand that something is basically wrong. This is not the way to teach religion. Religion can only be caught and not taught. Yes, it happens with a Jesus because Jesus creates the space where it can happen.A disciple once asked Jesus, “What is prayer?”Do you know what he did? He simply fell on his knees and started praying; tears started rolling down his cheeks. This is creating a space. Now he is creating prayer itself. What is the need to say anything?Seeing it, the disciple fell on his knees. For the first time he felt the tremendous beauty of surrender and a great joy in feeling grateful to God. Tears started flowing down his cheeks too. They were both crying – in joy, in gratitude.Finally, Jesus asked him, “Now do you know what prayer is.”He nodded and said, “Yes, master. Now I know what prayer is.”This is the way to teach. Not giving theoretical answers, not giving absurd, outdated, metaphysical doctrines, which may have looked relevant one day, but now look simply stupid. Now, say to a child that God created the world just four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ and the child will smile at you. The child knows that “Either you are befooling me, or you are in utter ignorance.”The world has existed for millions of years. In fact, there has never been a beginning. God is not the creator in reality but the creativity. To say to a child that God finished the world in six days and then rested on the seventh because he was tired – now, that means that since then he has not bothered about us at all.A man went to his tailor and asked, “How long is it going to take for my suit to be ready? You have been promising it already for six weeks and you say again and again, ‘Come again, come again…’ And do you know that God created the world in only six days? In six weeks you have not been able to even create my suit.”Do you know what the tailor said? He said, “Yes, I know – and look at the world, then look at my suit and you will see the difference. The world is in a mess. This is what happens when you create something in six days.”“God” is still creating. In fact, to think of God as a separate person from existence is not experiential. Those who have experienced, they say “God” is the very creativity of existence – he is not a creator. Existence creates itself. It is a self-creating process. It is unending and eternal. And how are you going to describe God? – a very, very old man with a long white beard, sitting on a throne up in heaven. Do you know what ideas come to children’s minds? You will be surprised.Carl Gustav Jung in his memoirs writes… He was the son of a clergyman, so he used to listen to the sermons about God sitting on the throne and watching everyone from there. Jung says, “The idea that always came to my mind was that if he starts urinating, then what will happen? Sitting on top – and sometimes he must feel like pissing, then what?”Children are children. When you talk to children, be very alert. They have their own ideas. And he would start giggling at the whole idea because his father knew nothing about it.One day, his father asked him, “Why do you giggle whenever I talk about God sitting on the throne?” So he told the father. His father said, “Shut up! Never think such things!”Jung said, “This is nothing. I think even worse things.” And Jung relates that that idea persisted and persisted – even when he became older. Once in a while, whenever he would see a picture of God up there in a church, immediately the idea would come.Your teachings cannot be of any help – only your life. Live. If you really love your children, live in such a way that they start feeling that there are things which are not visible but still they are. You need not convince them. They don’t ask for proofs, they don’t understand proofs. They are not asking for arguments – they are asking for existential experiences.They are always ready to go on any adventure – more ready than you. You may be afraid for safety, security and a thousand and one things. Children are never afraid. Children are more fearless than you. They can have a more immediate contact with godliness than you can ever have.But we give them so many rotten theories. In the name of religion, too, we go on teaching them a kind of ambitiousness, competitiveness. “Be better than others! Be more religious than others. Be holier than others. Be purer than others, more virtuous, more righteous. Then God will reward you – and if you are not, you will be punished in hell.”This is psychological conditioning; making them afraid and making them greedy. And you call this religion? To make a person fearful is religion? Religion is when a person becomes fearless. To make a person greedy for rewards in the other life is religion? Religion is when there is no greed.And you make them competitive. “Compete with others! Be more virtuous, more saintly. Look at other boys, how well-behaved they are, how religious they are!” You are creating a subtle ego in their minds, a pious ego, so when the boy goes to the church he feels holier than everyone else. He looks around – he knows he is higher. He has risen on the ladder and soon paradise will be his.This is poisoning your children with competitiveness. This competitiveness is there in the marketplace, it is in the monastery too. In the marketplace it can be forgiven, but not in the monastery. When people are rushing for money, it’s okay, understandable, that they will be competitive. But for virtue too, the same rush?Once the goal becomes too important, the means loses all importance. When the end becomes all-important, then any means will do, fair or foul, but one has to attain the end.This is not creating religiousness. A religious mind is noncompetitive, utterly unambitious. He has nowhere to go – no hell to fear, no heaven to attain. He is in God right now, in this very moment. This moment is all and all. And he never compares himself with anyone else. Your saints go on comparing. Who is higher? Who is a bigger saint? All these so-called saints are just stupid children, still thinking in terms of what they have learned in their schools, still not out of their teens.I have heard…Once, a newly married deaf and dumb couple were on their honeymoon. They took off their clothes to have some fun when the wife signaled in sign language, “Did you bring the safes?”“Oh no,” replied the man in sign language, “I forgot.”Using her fingers, she said, “You will have to get dressed and get some because I am not going to do it without safes.”“But I am deaf and dumb,” cried the man. “How am I gonna get the man at the drugstore to understand what I want?”“Oh, that’s easy,” replied the wife. “You just go to the counter, lay down a ten dollar bill, take your prick out and lay it on the counter; the man will know what you want.” The man went out and came back a half an hour later looking very sheepish.“Well, did you get them, did you get the safes?” asked the expectant wife.The man just hung his head and said no.“Well, did you do what I said?” asked the now frustrated wife.“Yes,” he replied.“So, what happened?”“Well, I went to the counter and put down the ten dollars. Then I pulled out my prick and put it on the counter. Then the man behind the counter put ten dollars on the counter and pulled out his prick and put it on the counter.”“So, what happened?” asked the curious wife.“Well,” replied the husband, “his was bigger so he took all the money!”Competition, competition, competition – everywhere competition. And this story is not just a story. If you ask Sigmund Freud, he will say that this is exactly from where competition arises. Small boys become very worried about their genital organs. “Who has the bigger one?”All competition is rooted there, originates there. Then it spreads all over your life. It is basically sexual. It takes many forms, many masks and facades. Who has the biggest car? It is nothing but the same story. Whose prick is bigger? Who has the biggest house? It is the same story again. These are different symbols for the same sexual competition.Who is the greatest saint? – the story is not different.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,How can rebellion be receptive, feminine, yes-saying? It feels so much like a no to all these old things. Is it just awareness and love that is it?Revolution is no, rebellion is yes. Revolution is negative, rebellion is positive. Revolution says no to all that is wrong and should not be. Rebellion says yes to all that is beautiful, good. Revolution is past-oriented, rebellion is present-oriented. They are not synonymous.Revolution is destructive, rebellion is creative. Revolution can never be feminine, receptive, yes-saying. That is impossible. But rebellion is always feminine, always receptive, always yes-saying.I am talking about rebellion, I am not talking about revolution. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. Revolution is of the crowd, rebellion is individual. You can be a rebel and you don’t need anyone else to be with you – you alone can be a rebel. But you alone cannot be a revolutionary. You will need a great organization, you will need a great army behind you.The problem is one of the most significant things to be understood – that when you fight with someone, slowly, slowly you become like your enemy. It’s bound to be so; it follows a certain natural course. If you have to fight with someone, you have to be like him; otherwise you will not be able to fight with him. Choose your enemy very carefully. Friends can be chosen without much care – they don’t affect you so much – but enemies are very decisive.All revolutions fail because of the enemy. The enemy decides the whole thing. The czars of Russia decided the structure of the Communist Party; the czars decided how Joseph Stalin was going to be. And he proved a bigger czar than any other czar and proved even more terrible than Ivan the Terrible.Fighting with the czar, fighting with the imperialist structure of the czar, they learned the whole strategy, all the tactics. By the time they came into power, they were perfectly groomed by the czar, by the enemy. By the time they came into power, they started behaving in the same way against their enemies as the czar had been behaving with them.This you can see all over the world again and again. Right now this is happening in Iran. The emperor is gone and a far worse regime has taken his place. Khomeini is proving at least ten times more violent than the emperor himself. Khomeini has learned the whole strategy from the emperor; his whole life he has suffered, struggled. That has been his school. Now, with a vengeance, he is proving himself to be a bigger emperor than the emperor himself. Now, every day, hundreds of people are being executed, killed.This has always happened. Revolutions fail because they are reactions. Never be a revolutionary; be a rebel. A rebel is not against the past, the past is not even worth that. To be against it means to be focused on it, to be against it means you are paying too much attention to it. To be against it means you are hypnotized by it.A few are for it – they are hypnotized. A few are against it – they are hypnotized. The rebel is one who simply sees the whole futility of it and, without fighting, drops it. If you fight, it will cling to you; if you fight, you have to cling to it. It will become your definition. Don’t let the past define you. Simply slip out of it, just like a snake slips out of the old skin – and never even looks back. That is the way of the rebel.I teach the way of the rebel. That is the way of religion. Religion is rebellion, not revolution. And it gives immense respect to the individual. Everyone can be a rebel in his own way; just simply slip out of the past. There is no need to struggle with it – it is no longer there. If you go on fighting… You don’t have that long a life. The past has been very long – millions of years. How are you going to fight with it in a life that consists at the most seventy or eighty years? In this small life span, how are you going to fight with the past which is so huge, immense? The only wise way is to slip out of it. There is no need to fight with it. This has to be understood on many levels.Politically, people fight with the past – the Hindu, the Christian, the Mohammedan past – and they become like the past they are fighting with. Psychologically, since Sigmund Freud, people are fighting with their own individual pasts – the childhood traumas. That too is big. If you have to sort it out and fight with everything and put everything right, your whole present, your whole future will be wasted in it. The past is already wasted, the present will be wasted in psychoanalysis. You will be fighting the whole future and fighting with the past. To fight with the past is to fight with a shadow. And you can never win. How can you win against a shadow? It does not exist in the first place. You have only to see that it is a shadow and that is that.That is the basic difference between the psychological approach toward life and the religious approach. Religion simply says, “Be more meditative, be more aware. Be right now here.” In that very awareness, in that crystal-clear consciousness, you see that the past is an unnecessary burden. You need not carry it. No one can force you to carry it. You are carrying it on your own; it is your decision.Your parents are not there to enforce it – it is already gone. Just shadows are lingering. See that they are shadows and you are free. In that very seeing is freedom. In that very understanding is liberation. And then all your energies are available to be herenow. You can bloom, you can blossom. Your life can have some fulfillment, some joy, some celebration.Revolution is against the past and for the future – both are nonexistential. The past is no more and the future is not yet. And revolution consists only of the past and the future – against the past and for some future utopia. The word utopia is very beautiful. Literally it means “that which never comes.”Rebellion consists of the present and only the present. It has no concern with the past, it has no concern with the future. It loves, lives, dances, sings, but its space is here and its time is now. Then you can be feminine, receptive, yea-saying.The second question:Osho,I once read somewhere that when Buddha was asked by a disciple to describe life briefly, he replied, “Misery.” Is this true?It is true. But if a buddha had asked Buddha, “Describe briefly, what is life?” He would have said, “Bliss.” The answer has nothing to do with the question, the answer has something to do with the questioner. The answer depends on the questioner. A man like Gautam Buddha does not answer questions, he answers questioners. He is not saying anything about life, mind you – he is not saying anything about life. He is saying something about the life of the man who had asked the question.Buddha is not saying that his own life is a misery; certainly it is not. No one has seen such grandeur, such bliss. No one has walked on this earth with such grace, such utter celebration. Humanity remembers no one who has been more beautiful. How can Buddha say that life is misery? You should remember that he is not talking about life as such; he is talking about the life of the man who had asked the question.It becomes a problem because for forty-two years Buddha was continually answering people. Different people required different answers and sometimes contradictory answers. A buddha has to contradict himself almost every day.Once it happened…One morning a man asked Buddha, “Is there a God?”Buddha said, “No.”In the afternoon another person asked, “Is there a God?”Buddha said, “Yes.”In the evening a third person asked, “Is there a God?” Buddha kept quiet; he didn’t answer and remained silent.Ananda, who was Buddha’s chief disciple, was present on all three occasions. He was continuously behind Buddha like a shadow – serving him, taking care of his body, looking after his needs. He was very puzzled. “In a single day, Buddha has said there is no God, then he has said there is a God and then he has kept silent too; he has not answered this way or that. These are the only three possibilities – all the possibilities exhausted, in a single day? All the answers have been given.” He could not sleep; he tossed and turned.Buddha asked, “What is the matter with you tonight? Aren’t you tired or something?”He replied, “I don’t want to disturb you, but unless you answer me this question I don’t think I will be able to sleep. In the morning you said no, in the afternoon you said yes and by the evening you remained silent, you didn’t answer. And the question was exactly the same.”Buddha laughed and said, “The person who had come early in the morning and had asked ‘Is there a God?’ was a theist, was a believer. He wanted me to say yes so that his belief could become strengthened – and I don’t strengthen people’s beliefs because a believing mind is never a seeing mind. To believe is to remain in darkness. I wanted to shatter his belief. My answer had nothing to do with God; my answer had something to do with that man. He was there just to accumulate a little more evidence for his belief, so he could say to people, ‘Not only do I believe that there is a God; even Buddha says there is a God.’“He had not come to understand. He simply wanted me to be a witness to his belief. His belief is just out of fear, a conditioning taught by others. His belief is nothing but a cover-up for his ignorance. I cannot be in any way a help to it. I had to shatter it. I had to shout no, emphatically. And it helped. ‘Buddha says no?’ An inquiry started in his being. Now he cannot be at rest with his belief. He will have to come – you will see.”One day he came again and said to Buddha, “You did it; since that time my worship has become empty. Since that time I go to the temple, but the temple no longer has any deity in it. Since that time I know it is only a belief. If you say that God is not, who am I to say God is? You are so godly, you must be true. I have come to inquire. Now I come to you without any belief. Now I come to you open – to seek, to search. Now my question is not rooted in my knowledge.”Buddha said to Ananda, “The second person was an atheist. He believed that there is no God. He had come in the same way as the first one: to have my support.” His belief was as stupid as the first one’s because to believe without knowing is to be stupid. Believe only when you have known, but then it is not a belief at all; it is a totally different experience. It is trust. It is not based on someone else’s experience, it is your own experience. You are reborn in it. It is not Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. It is simply your experience. Even if the whole world says it is not so, you cannot deny it. Your trust cannot be shaken.“The other person,” Buddha said, “was an atheist, hence I had to say yes, and I had to say yes emphatically.”Ananda said, “And what about the third?”Buddha said, “He was neither a theist, nor an atheist, so neither was yes needed nor was no needed. He was really an innocent soul, a very pure heart. His question was not out of his a priori knowledge, his question was really innocent. His question was a quest, an inquiry. I had to remain silent – because that was my answer to him. And he understood it.“Weren’t you watching? When I remained silent and closed my eyes, he also closed his eyes and a great silence descended on him. Didn’t you observe? When he went his eyes were shining, his eyes were like lit candles. Didn’t you observe? When he left, he touched my feet, bowed down, thanked me, saying, ‘You answered rightly,’ although I had not answered him at all. That man tasted something of my silence, imbibed something of my being. That man was the true seeker.”A true seeker does not need a verbal answer. A true seeker needs something existential – a penetration of the heart into the heart, a penetration of the soul into the soul. The real seeker wants the master to overlap him. The real seeker wants the master to enter his innermost core and stir the sleeping soul.Your question is significant. You say, “I once read somewhere that when Buddha was asked by a disciple to describe life briefly, Buddha replied ‘Misery.’”It is true. Many times he said to people that life is misery; many times he said to people that life is bliss – sat-chit-anand: it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss.But people have gathered more from the answer that life is misery because it fits with their own experience. When Buddha says, “Life is joy,” it doesn’t fit with your experience. It falls on flat ears. You hear it, but you cannot understand it. It does not ring any bells in your heart.So the answers that he gave to those who had come to know something of bliss, something of joy, something of song, have not become so important. It was only rarely that he would say that because it is only a rare person who will require that answer. Millions and millions need to be told, “Your life is misery.” It is so.But why does Buddha say your life is misery, why? – he says it so that you can come out of it. You can have another kind of life – this is not the only kind. This is only one of the ways and the worst way possible. You have created a hell out of your life and if it can be a hell, it can also be a heaven; if it can be misery, it can be bliss. It is the same energy used wrongly that becomes misery, used rightly becomes bliss.What is misery? – misery is feeling separate from existence, feeling isolated from existence, feeling alienated from existence. That is misery. What is bliss? – bliss is feeling one with existence, orgasmically one with existence, organically one with existence. Having an ego is misery and becoming egolessness is bliss. Both alternatives are open. The choice is yours.Listening to Buddha’s answer that life is misery, don’t settle there. His answer is to unsettle you. His answer is to shock you. His answer is to wake you up to the fact that your life is misery. But people are really cunning, very cunning. They listen only to that which they want to listen to. People are so cunning that listening to the statement that life is misery, they say, “Then nothing can be done. If life is misery, I have to live a miserable life. This is all there is – so live it. Live it anyhow.”Rather than creating a desire to transform themselves, they completely drown themselves in their misery – as if Buddha has given them a certificate that this is what life is all about. People are so cunning, they simply listen to that which they want to listen to.“This is all a mistake, Your Honor,” said the first harlot. “I was walking along and this guy…”“Just a minute, young lady,” said the judge. “Now, you have been here a dozen times. One hundred dollars fine. Next!”“I am just a poor private secretary,” said the second girl, “and I was not doing anything…”“I recognize you too, miss,” said the magistrate. “Two hundred dollars or ten days in jail. Next case!”“Judge,” said the third girl, “I am a prostitute. I am not proud of it, but it is the only way I can support my three kids. I am guilty.”“Young woman,” said the judge, “I like your honesty and because of it I am going to give you a break. Your case is dismissed and sergeant, give this girl fifty dollars out of the policemen’s fund.”Now comes poor old Liebowitz, arrested for selling ties without a license. “Your Honor,” he pleaded. “I’m not gonna lie to you – I am a prostitute too…”Beware of your mind. It is always trying ways and means, strategies, tactics, to remain as it is. It can wear masks, it can become religious, it can go to church, it can read the Bible and the Vedas – and still find the ways and means to remain itself.Buddha’s statement has been taken by people as if he has said, “Life cannot be bliss; it is impossible. Life is misery and it is going to remain misery. To be miserable is life’s intrinsic quality.” People have taken it that way. That is not true. I know it is not true.I say to you, your life is misery, but it need not be so. It is misery because you have not tried to transform it, you have not worked on it. It is misery because you are still unborn. It is misery because the opportunity is being wasted and you are not being creative. It is misery because you are not behaving intelligently.Be intelligent. I don’t mean by “intelligence” be intellectual. Intellectuals are not necessarily intelligent people and intelligent people are not necessarily intellectuals. Almost always the case is that the intellectual is only a pretender, he is pseudo; by being intellectual he is trying to convince himself and others that he is intelligent.What is the criterion of being an intelligent person? – only one criterion. If you can create bliss in your life you are intelligent; otherwise there is no other way to prove it. If you can create a paradise around yourself, if you can remain in a constant cheerfulness, then cheerfulness becomes just your very milieu – and you are intelligent.Be intelligent and life is bliss; be stupid and life is misery. It all depends on you.The third question:Osho,And the mind goes bananas…“Surrender, do your own thing.”“Trust, live your life…”Slowly it seems to me that I don't know anything and sometimes it feels very good. But still I want to know.The mind never goes bananas – it is bananas. You say, “Surrender, do your own thing.” I will suggest that you put just two words between these two: “Surrender and then do your own thing.” Because once you have surrendered, you are not there, God is. Then doing your own thing is doing God’s thing: thy kingdom come, thy will be done.First dissolve yourself, then godliness is your you, then godliness is your self. You have just missed those two simple words “and then.”Surrender and then do your own thing. Trust and then live your own life. Surrender and trust are not two things; it is the same phenomenon. You can surrender only if you trust and you can trust only if you surrender. They go hand in hand. They are inseparable. If one happens, the other is bound to have already happened. Just those two words that are missing are creating trouble for you: and then.A man came to St. Augustine and asked, “I am illiterate, very old, not much life is left. I cannot go into great austerities; the energy is ebbing. I am just on the verge of death. I have walked many miles just to see you and ask you something very simple. I have not come to listen to great philosophy – just something very simple, a single word will do. Just simply tell me a single word that I can keep in my heart and can follow for whatever time is left of my life.”It is said St. Augustine closed his eyes. His disciples were very puzzled. It had never happened before. Great theologians had come, great philosophers had visited; they had asked very complicated, very difficult questions and Augustine was never known to meditate over those questions. His answers were immediate. “What is he doing? This old villager’s question – and he is meditating?”For half an hour he meditated and then he opened his eyes and said, “I can say only one thing: love. And then whatever you do is right.”Remember love. Love is the quintessence of the whole of religion, the very perfume of all the flowers that have bloomed in the name of religion – Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Mohammed, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Farid, Nanak, Meera. All the flowers in all the ages that have ever bloomed have the same fragrance and that fragrance is love.If you can love, then everything is allowed – because a loving man cannot do anything wrong. Love is the only commandment. If love is not there, even those ten commandments are not going to help at all. Ten commandments are not needed; they are needed only because you are not ready to fulfill the first and the only commandment. Those ten commandments are just poor substitutes for the single commandment: love. Remember, love and then whatever you do is good, is virtuous.That’s what I go on saying in different ways. “Surrender and then do your own thing.” Listening to me you can misunderstand because doing your own thing has become the very flavor of the new generation. I am not saying the same thing. When I say, “Do your own thing,” I am not repeating a hippie slogan. When I say, “Do your own thing,” there is a condition preceding it: surrender, trust, and then… Otherwise, what are you going to do? Without surrender whatever you do will come out of your ego, will come out of your unconsciousness, will come out of your past. It can’t come from existence and it can’t come from a conscious, alert being.Whatever comes from the unconscious is going to create more and more misery for you and for others. There is enough misery and there is no need for you to contribute more to it. There is more than enough. If you want to contribute something to it, please, first fulfill the basic requirement of surrender and trust.Just meditate for a moment. If the ego is not there, then who is doing? – God is doing through you and you are just a hollow bamboo. On his lips you become a flute. The song is his. You will not feel so puzzled.You say, “Slowly it seems to me that I don’t know anything and sometimes it feels very good.” You are going really mighty slow. You say, “Slowly it seems to me…” How can it seem slowly? Either you see it instantly, or you don’t see it. What do you mean by “slowly”? These things are not gradual. These things are breakthroughs, sudden, like lightning in the dark night.When I say something, if you are available in that moment, if you are in tune with me in that moment, there will be a lightning experience. A tremendous yes will arise in your heart; a flood of a new vision, of a new clarity, of a new transparency. You will see what is what. In that very seeing, that which is wrong drops out of your hands – and only the wrong has to be dropped. The right is always there. It cannot be dropped, it is only covered by the wrong. The wrong is a foreign element, the right is your natural being.You say, “Slowly it seems to me that I don’t know anything…” No, it cannot happen slowly. It never happens slowly. If you listen to me, you are bound to experience that you don’t know anything at all. What do you know? I am not talking about engineering, medicine, geography, history; I am not talking about all that nonsense – utilitarian nonsense. But what do you know of reality, of truth, godliness, love, meditation? What do you know about this mysterious existence that surrounds you? What do you know about yourself? – with whom you have lived from eternity and you are going to live for eternity. What do you know about the person who you are?A great mathematician, P. D. Ouspensky, went to see a very strange mystic, George Gurdjieff. Ouspensky was already world-famous and Gurdjieff was not known at all; no one had heard about him. Ouspensky had already written one of the greatest books in the world, Tertium Organum. It is said that there are only three great books in the world. The first was written by Aristotle, Organum, the second was written by Bacon, Novum Organum, the third was written by P. D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum. First principle, second principle, third principle – third canon of thought; that is the meaning of Tertium Organum.Ouspensky declared in the beginning of the book that the third existed even before the first ever existed. It is not just pride, it is not just ego – it is true. He had discovered something of immense value. He had contributed something really valuable to the world of mathematics, logic, metaphysics. He was known all over the world. The book was being translated into many languages.Gurdjieff was not known at all – just a small group of people knew about him. And it was not easy to approach him either as he was not available publicly. Ouspensky had great difficulties and had to wait three months to see him. He had to try many people because only those who belonged to the inner circle of Gurdjieff were allowed to bring some new guest.The day he was ushered into the presence of Gurdjieff, twelve people were sitting there. Gurdjieff was sat in the middle, with all the others surrounding him. There was absolute silence. And the man who had brought Ouspensky, also sat there and closed his eyes. Now, Ouspensky started feeling very restless; he was not even introduced. He started feeling a little embarrassed too. “What is he doing here? And what are these people doing here, just sitting silently?”Half an hour passed. And now almost an hour had passed. Ouspensky started thinking, “What am I sitting here for?” But he couldn’t leave because it looked so impolite to disturb the silence. The silence was so tangible, the silence was sitting there like a cloud.And then Gurdjieff looked at Ouspensky and said, “You are feeling very restless. It is natural. You come from a restless world, you don’t know the ways of silence. Why did you want to see me? Why have you been haunting me for three months?”Ouspensky said, “I wanted to ask you a few questions.” Gurdjieff gave him a blank sheet of paper and said to him, “Go in the other room and on one side write whatever you know and on the other side whatever you don’t know. Then come back – because I will answer only that which you don’t know. If you already know it, why bother about it?”It was a cold Moscow night, the snow was falling and Ouspensky remembers, “Going in the other room, I started perspiring. For the first time, with such emphasis, I was made aware that I know nothing. Just to save my prestige, I wanted to write something that I know, this or that. I thought it over, my mind went round and round, but basically I knew nothing. I thought to myself, ‘Do I know anything about love? I have heard much, I have read much – but any experience? That man is not going to let it pass easily.’ He will ask, ‘Any experience?’” And he had seen those eyes which can go to the very core of your being. “You cannot deceive that man. Do I know anything about meditation? Do I know anything about existence? Do I know anything of any real significance?”He waited and waited and couldn’t find anything. Finally he came out and gave the paper back – as blank as before – and said, “Excuse me, I don’t know anything. I know nothing. I have been a fool up to now. I had always believed that I knew this and I knew that. You have shattered me in a single blow.”Gurdjieff looked at Ouspensky and his eyes were those of benediction. He said, “You are accepted – because only those who know that they know not can be accepted in my circle; only they are capable of learning.”Know that you know nothing – and don’t go slowly. It is not a question of gradual discovery; it is a sudden lightning experience. Each morning I am trying to show it to you, shouting at you that you don’t know anything – anything that is of any relevance, anything that is of any value, anything that is really going to transform you, anything that you will be able to carry beyond death to the other shore.But Varidhi says, “Slowly it seems to me that I don’t know anything and sometimes it feels very good.”Even that – a little glimpse, a gradual thing, just a little… As if a window opens and closes, but a little breeze comes in, or a ray of the sun – still that feels good. If it feels good, go deeper into it, go deeper into ignorance, go deeper into not knowing, go deeper and deeper into a state where knowledgeability is just garbage. And great will be your experience – of great joy and freedom because knowledge is a bondage, borrowed knowledge is a bondage. One’s own experience is not knowledge; it is wisdom, it is freedom.Finally you say. “But still I want to know.” That’s good. Start from the state of not knowing and you will become capable of knowing. Start from a clean slate and let existence write something on it. Efface all that you distinguish. Before existence, just be nude, innocent, ignorant, a child. And you will know. We are here to know, but that knowing does not come through scriptures, that knowing comes through silence. The knowledgeable mind cannot be silent. It is so full of knowledge, so full of thoughts, it cannot empty itself.Empty yourself. Empty yourself of all knowledge, dreams, desires. Throw all this rotten furniture out of yourself. Create a pure space and in that pure space you become capable of attracting the ultimate toward you; you become a magnetic force. You become the host and godliness comes as a guest.The fourth question:Osho,Feeling a rapidly growing uneasiness about my state as a non-sannyasin, I would like to ask you. “What is your art?” How could you find the loopholes in my mind so easily and in what way did you bypass my well-developed ego? When I arrived ten days ago I felt rather balanced – grateful, yes, for what you had shown me already – but nevertheless full of courage to face and resist any untimely attempt that would “sannyasin” me. But look at me now: wandering around in the ashram off-balance, eyes full of awe, crying time and again at completely unpredictable moments and showing all the signs of one who is in love. Osho, I love you, so what can I do? And how did you manage it?I will tell you a story – that’s how I manage, that’s my art.Haggarty ran a red light and plowed headlong into a car driven by Father Cogan. The auto turned over three times and the priest thrown from the vehicle lay stunned beside the road.Haggarty rushed over and said, “I am terribly sorry, Father!”“Saints above!” said the shaken priest. “You almost killed me!”“Here,” said Haggarty, “I have got a little sacramental Jack Daniels. Take some and you will feel a lot better!”Father Cogan took a couple of large swigs and continued his tirade. “What were you thinking about, man? You nearly launched me into eternity!”“I am sorry, Father,” said Haggarty. “Take a few more sips, it will ease your nerves.”After the priest had almost finished the entire bottle, he said, “Why don’t you have a drink?”“No thanks, your reverence,” said Haggarty, “I will just sit here and wait for the police!”So I am just waiting till the day, which is coming closer and closer. It is the nineteenth of April that you are going to be assassinated.Something really beautiful is happening to you. All that ego that seems so strong is not so strong; it is just your belief that keeps it alive. Once you start understanding, it starts dying. It is all kinds of inhibitions that keep your tears repressed. You have been told again and again that you are not a woman, you are a man – be a boy, don’t be a girl. Crying and weeping is for girls, not for you.Nature hasn’t made any distinction. There are as many tear glands in male eyes as there are in female eyes. Tears are needed, they do miracles. But repressing the tears is a subtle strategy to repress emotions. Tears are deep down connected with the heart. Heads don’t cry, only hearts. Repressing the tears is a subtle trick to repress the heart.You have lived in the head, high and proud, thinking your ego very strong. Now you have fallen into wrong company – these are mad people here. Anyone can start crying any moment. Crying is thought to be sacred here because tears come directly from the heart. There is no other prayer which is more beautiful than tears.It is not that tears come only when you are in suffering, pain, and sadness. That too is a wrong idea that has been given to you – that tears come only when you are in pain. No. Tears come whenever anything is overflowing. It may be pain, it may be pleasure, it may be agony, it may be ecstasy; anything overflowing. Tears are symbols of something overflowing.And something wants to overflow, something wants to burst forth. You have repressed all that is beautiful for a long, long time. Now, being in my buddhafield, it is impossible to remain in your senses; it is impossible not to fall in love. You don’t have a heart of stone. You have a heart which is beating with existence, full of love – repressed, but ready to burst forth any moment; just waiting for its opportunity. That opportunity has come.Sannyas is a new way of life, a new style, a new philosophy – to live totally, with tears, with smiles, with love, with laughter, with anger, with hate, with compassion. To live in all the dimensions of the mind, the being, and to live totally. The miracle is that if you live totally, slowly, slowly all that is negative starts disappearing of its own accord. Finally, ultimately, only that which has always been called virtue remains. The evil evaporates.No repression is recommended, no suppression is supported. I teach you to be natural; that’s why you have fallen in love with me. It is really an indirect way of falling in love with your own nature. I am just an excuse. Just go on sipping a little more; only three days are left. Empty the bottle, so the day you take sannyas – or as you say, “I was full of courage to face and resist any untimely attempt that would ‘sannyasin’ me.”You can call it “sannyasinate,” and that will be far better because it is an assassination. Drink as much as you can so the death is not painful. Drink of me as much as you can before your sannyas happens, so that it really happens. It is going to really happen because you had not come to be a sannyasin. You had come with all kinds of resistances; you were afraid that it might happen untimely. You wanted to take it by your own decision, in your own time.Whenever one becomes a sannyasin by his own decision, in his own time, he misses the whole point. Let it be a happening, not a doing on your part. Surrender cannot be done. It can only be gratefully accepted. And that’s what is happening. You are fortunate, you are blessed.The fifth question:Osho,Why am I so afraid of hell?There is no need to be afraid of hell because there are many hells – and there is an Indian hell too. Everyone is asked at the gate, “Which hell do you want to choose?” Choose the Indian and you will be happy ever afterward.A fellow dies and is met by Saint Peter at the Gate. “Before you can get in you must spend six months in hell. You have a choice: either the regular hell or the Indian hell.”“What is the difference?” asked the fellow.“In the regular hell,” explained Saint Peter, “they tie you to a stake, pour gasoline over you, strike the match, and you burn for twelve hours and then you rest for twelve hours.”“And the Indian hell?”“They tie you to a stake, pour gasoline over you, set you on fire and you burn for twelve hours and then rest for twelve hours.”“But I don’t see the difference,” said the man.“If I were you,” advised Saint Peter, “I would take the Indian hell – someone usually forgets the matches or the gasoline…”So you need not be so afraid – wise people always choose the Indian hell. But I can understand why you are afraid. Fear is a natural instinct in man and it has been exploited by the priests down the ages. Fear and greed are two sides of the same coin and they have exploited both.It is out of fear that they have created hell, just to exploit your fear instinct. If you can be made really afraid then you will be in the hands of the priests. Or if you can be made really very greedy for heaven, then too you will be in the hands of the priests. The priests have been telling you, “We will protect you from hell and we will help you to enter heaven. All that you need is just to remain obedient to us.”And because of fear and greed, man has remained obedient to the priests. Parents have used… That’s how everyone is brought up, in fear and greed. If you do one thing, you are punished; if you do something else, you are rewarded. It is the same story. In the school, college, university, the same story repeated, again and again: punished for something, rewarded for something else. It is greed and fear which are being enforced again and again.By the time you leave the university, you have been conditioned, totally conditioned. Your whole life is going to remain the same if you don’t become alert, if you don’t become aware of the whole situation, if you don’t gather courage to get out of the prison that has been made by the society for you. That prison consists of greed and fear.There is no hell, regular or Indian. There is no heaven either. Hell and heaven are psychological states, not geographical situations. Forget all about that childish nonsense. You can be in hell right now, or in heaven right now. The only way to be in heaven is to be without the mind and the only way to be in hell is to be only the mind and nothing else.The constant traffic of thoughts is your misery. If this traffic disappears and you are left silent, alone, with no thought surrounding you, in that moment of peace, silence, stillness you are in heaven – you are heaven. That’s what meditation is all about.You needn’t be worried, you needn’t be afraid of any heaven or hell. Just meditate, become more and more silent, more and more detached from the mind, more and more disidentified from your thought process. Just be a witness. Go on witnessing whatever passes in the mind and the very process of witnessing has the whole secret in it. Slowly, slowly you will see that fewer and fewer thoughts are coming to you, because you are no longer welcoming them, because you don’t care, because you don’t cling, because you don’t choose this against that, and because you are no longer judgmental. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, all are alike. Great thoughts, small thoughts, all are alike. You remain aloof, distant, a watcher on the hill.Slowly, slowly less and less traffic. And one day suddenly intervals start happening. An interval for a few seconds and you will have a taste of the unknown. Once you have tasted something of no-mind, your real life begins. Then all is joy, all is benediction.But to be meditative, great intelligence is needed. You can’t go on being the way you are, you can’t go on being stupid. You have to be very alert.Toward the end of World War II, when the Italians were fighting the Germans, the Nazi soldiers came up with a scheme to kill many of Mussolini’s men. They simply yelled, “Hey, Luigi!” When an Italian infantryman stuck his head up and answered, “Si?” Boom! He was dead.That’s all the Krauts did: “Luigi?” “Si?” Boom!After thousands of Italians had been wiped out, they decided to retaliate. They figured that every German’s name was Hans. So an Italian captain shouted, “Hey, Hans!”Silence.“Hey, Hans!” he repeated.“Is that you, Luigi?”“Si!”Boom!The last question:Osho,Why is modern man feeling so lonely?Man has always felt lonely because man basically is alone. We are born alone, we die alone. In the middle we can only pretend to be together. Aloneness remains unaffected. It becomes an undercurrent, it goes underground.Man has always been alone, but modern man is feeling it more for a certain reason – for the first time modern man has time enough to think about his own self. In the past, the struggle for bread and butter was so much that it kept people occupied from the early morning to the late night. Even then they were not able to feed themselves and their children enough.And that’s exactly the case in the East today. Modern man in an Indian village is not feeling lonely. He has no time to feel anything at all. He feels hungry, not lonely. He needs a shelter, a house. These things – feelings of loneliness – he cannot afford. These feelings start surfacing only when a society becomes a little affluent.When people are well-fed, well-clothed, well-sheltered, well-employed – when the ordinary necessities of life are fulfilled – then the real problems of life arise. Suddenly, one becomes aware. “I am lonely, even in a crowd I am lonely.” This is a higher need. There is a hierarchy of needs.First, physical needs come. If physical needs are not fulfilled, you will not have psychological needs. Once physical needs are fulfilled, then psychological needs arise – those are higher. One thinks of music, poetry, painting; one thinks of art, aesthetics – those are higher needs. One thinks of Shakespeare, Milton, Kali Das, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran; one thinks of Wagner, Beethoven, Leonardo, Van Gogh, Picasso. These are higher needs.A hungry man cannot understand Beethoven. However great the music is, it cannot fill his stomach. And he is so hungry that he would like to kill the musician rather than listen to the music. He will not bother about great works of art; rather, he will be interested in Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto. Once physical needs are fulfilled, psychological needs arise.You will be surprised to know that I receive many letters from Soviet Russia. They cannot even write to me directly because those letters will never arrive. First the Russian government and then the Indian government… If there were only the Indian government there would be a chance. But the Russian government… And they are very methodical. So those letters are given to visitors, tourists, then to Switzerland and are dropped in London, Berlin, Paris, and then they come to me.Many people write that they would like to come here, but it is impossible. My books are being read, but in an underground way. They are circulating from one person to another. But officially you cannot carry my books in a communist country.Russia is coming closer and closer to that point where physical needs are fulfilled and psychological needs will arise. Spiritual needs are the highest in the hierarchy. Once psychological needs are fulfilled – you have heard great music, you have seen great paintings, you have read great poetry – then what? Sooner or later, those things also prove to be games, beautiful games, but games all the same.Then the ultimate starts knocking on your doors and when the ultimate knocks on your doors you feel really lonely; lonely in this whole universe. And that is the beginning of meditation. If you feel lonely and if your feeling of loneliness has some penetration, intensity, passion in it, you will start meditating.Meditation is a way to come to terms with one’s loneliness, to have an encounter with one’s own loneliness rather than escaping from it; just diving deep into it and seeing what exactly it is. You are in for a surprise. If you go into your loneliness, you will be surprised. At the very center of it, it is not lonely at all – there resides aloneness which is a totally different phenomenon.The circumference consists of loneliness and the center consists of aloneness. The circumference consists of solitariness and the center of solitude. Once you have known your beautiful aloneness, you will be a totally different person. You will never feel lonely. Even in the mountains or in the deserts where you will be absolutely alone, you will not feel lonely – because in your aloneness you will know existence is with you, in your aloneness you are so deeply rooted in existence that who cares whether there is someone else outside or not? You are so full inside, so rich inside…Right now, even in the crowd you are lonely. And I am saying: if you know your aloneness, even in your loneliness you will not be lonely.But modern man is suffering.Ira quit college, got himself a backpack and began hitchhiking around the United States. After he had been gone more than a year, he telephoned home. “Hello, Ma. How are you?”“Just fine, son. When are you coming home? I will fix you some chopped liver and chicken soup and a beautiful pot roast.”“I am still pretty far away.”“Oh, son,” cried the desperate woman, “just come home and I will fix your favorite oatmeal cookies.”“I don’t like oatmeal cookies!” said the boy.“You don’t?” asked the woman.“Say,” said Ira, “is this Century 57682?”“No!”“Then I must have the wrong number.”“Does that mean you are not coming?” asked the woman.People are really lonely. The woman asked, “Does that mean you are not coming?” Man has never been so lonely because man has never before been able to fulfill the lower desires, needs. For the first time in the West, man has been able to fulfill all lower desires; now the higher desires are asserting themselves. This is a good sign. It looks like a curse. It is not. It is a blessing in disguise.The days of the West turning to the East have come. The misery is that the East is turning to the West. Man seems to be so foolish. By the time the West turns East, you will find the East has become West. And this way the sorry-go-round continues.You can see it here. Why don’t you see so many Indians here? –this is not their need. What I am sharing here has nothing to do with them. The desire for it has not yet arisen. Even when sometimes they come, they don’t ask about meditation, they don’t ask about sannyas, they don’t ask about love – no, not at all.Just the other day I received a letter saying, “Why don’t you open a few hospitals, a few schools? Why don’t you teach your sannyasins to serve the poor?” The poor have been served down the ages and they are still poor. Poverty cannot be destroyed by serving the poor. That much is absolutely certain. Poverty can be destroyed only if a new vision of life is given to them. They are poor because their philosophy makes them poor, they are poor because their very attitude toward life keeps them poor. They are poor because of themselves. They don’t need compassion, they need education. They don’t need service, they need to be shaken into awareness. But no one wants to be shaken out of their own dreams and sleep. Hence they are angry at me.Hospitals are there, a few more can be added. Schools are there, a few more can be added. But that is not going to help. That is like throwing teaspoons of color in the ocean; it is not going to color the ocean.We have to change the whole fundamental. Why has India remained so poor for so many centuries? – the reason must be very deep, the reason is that the Indian mind is life-negative. The reason is that the Indian mind lives in a division: this world and that. The reason is that the Indian mind is against materialism. If you are against materialism, you will remain poor and that is your own decision. It is your own fate decided by you yourself.Real spirituality has to be based on scientific materialism. Matter and consciousness are not two things, just as the body and the consciousness are not two things. They are aspects of one phenomenon. This world has to be loved, then this world yields, gives its secrets to you.The West has committed one mistake – there is no spiritualism and only materialism is enough. Their basic needs are fulfilled, but the higher needs are torturing them, making them commit suicide or go mad. The East has committed the other mistake – that spiritualism can exist without materialism. The East has become like a ghost, a soul without a body. The West is a body without a soul, a corpse; the East is a ghost, a soul without a body.My effort here is to somehow bring East and West closer and closer, so everyone can have a body and everyone can have a soul. Materialism and spiritualism should be two aspects of one life vision. Then poverty will disappear. The earth is rich enough and man’s intelligence is there. We can make it even richer.But you don’t see Indians here, not many, very few. Those few are those who are intelligent enough to see that even if lower desires are fulfilled, nothing will be fulfilled. Those few are born in the East, but they are really contemporary, they are modern. They have seen what has happened in the West. Even if India becomes rich – and it is going to happen. The West is not happy; even if India becomes rich it is not going to be happy either. So happiness has to be searched for in some other dimension.That dimension is: entering your loneliness till you come upon aloneness. The first glimpse of aloneness is satori. The second glimpse, the second satori: you become established in your aloneness, rooted. And the third, the ultimate satori, what we call samadhi in India, is the state when you are no longer separate from your aloneness – you are your aloneness.One starts overflowing like a fountain. Out of that aloneness arises the fragrance of love, out of that aloneness arises creativity – because out of that aloneness existence starts flowing. You become a hollow bamboo… Existence starts singing. But the song is always that of existence.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Swan, I’d like you to tell me your whole story!Where you first appeared, and what dark sand you are going toward;where you sleep at night and what you are looking for….It’s morning, swan, wake up; climb in the air, follow me!I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control, nor constant depressionand those alive are not afraid to die.There wild flowers come up through the leafy floorand the fragrance of “I am he” floats on the wind.There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flowerand cares for no other thing.***Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.Inside your body there are flowers.One flower has a thousand petals.That will do for a place to sit.Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beautyinside the body and out of it;before gardens and after gardens.Man is awake and yet not awake. His wakefulness is very thin, his wakefulness is almost of no use. He is not asleep, that is true, but he is not awake either. He is in limbo, in the middle. He has awakened from the world of animals, but he is fast asleep to the world of gods.Man is a transitory period. He is not a being but a becoming – on the way. The past is left behind and the future is not attained yet. Hence the agony, the anguish; man is torn apart. The past pulls him back. It seems pleasant to be an animal again. It’s because it hasn’t the agony, the anguish, the anxiety of man.If you watch animals, you will feel jealous. Walt Whitman has written exactly that in his diaries: “Whenever I see animals, I feel jealous. We have missed something.”We have not missed really, but the peace, the calm, the collectedness of the animal is lost. The animal is happy because he is unaware – unaware of death, unaware of the problems of life. The animal is happy because there is no consciousness. Consciousness first brings pain because suddenly you become aware of a thousand and one problems facing you. You have to encounter them, you have to solve them or dissolve them. All peace disappears.But human consciousness is still worthwhile. I don’t agree with Walt Whitman, I agree with Socrates who says, “I would rather be a discontented Socrates than a contented pig.” This statement of Socrates is of immense value. It has to be understood by every seeker because the goal is ahead; there is no going back. The pig may look contented because he is not aware, not because he is really contented. But to know discontent, one needs consciousness.There is something ahead, something more has to happen. Something has happened, but only partially. Look back and you find the contented pig; look ahead and you see contented buddhas. You can become a buddha. A buddha means one who is conscious and contented. The pig is one who is unconscious and contented. Man is just between the two; a little bit conscious, just a little bit. Conscious enough to be aware of the pain of life and the misery and the suffering, but not conscious enough to be aware of the ecstasies that life makes available.Just a little consciousness is enough to be aware of pain. But much more awareness is needed, much more consciousness is needed, in order to be aware of the deeper realms of your inner kingdom.Man is in a kind of drunkenness. Awake and yet not awake. Man sees a little bit and yet everything seems to be dark. He just feels shadows moving in the dark. But nothing is absolutely clear. There is no clarity, transparency, light.This is the state of man. We cannot go back because there is no possibility of going back. Man tries hard to go back – through sex, through food, through alcohol, through drugs. Man tries somehow to drown this little bit of consciousness that has arisen in him. But it comes back again and again because whatever has been learned has been learned forever. It cannot be unlearned.It has happened in your being. Now there is no way to discard it. You have to live with it. The only possibility is to move ahead, to grow more in awareness. If it has brought pain, then go deep in the pain, but become more and more aware. Use the pain as an object of awareness, as an object of meditation.You are sad – be aware. Let sadness become your meditation. You are angry – be aware. You are in love – be aware. Use all possibilities, all opportunities to be more and more aware. Slowly, slowly the momentum gathers and one day something explodes in you. That explosion is known in the East as the flowering of the one-thousand-petalled lotus. Kabir will talk about this lotus in these sutras. Kabir is talking about you. First a few metaphors have to be understood.The swan is one of the metaphors most used by the Eastern mystics. The swan lives beyond the Himalayas; his home is beyond the Himalayas, in Lake Mansarovar. Lake Mansarovar is the purest lake in the world – very rarely does a human being reach there – uncontaminated, unpolluted, surrounded by the Himalayan beauty, virgin peaks.The swan is born there, lives there, but when it becomes too cold it has to come to this side of the Himalayas, to the plains. Sometimes it happens that a swan forgets the way back. Sometimes it happens that a swan simply forgets that he has a home somewhere and starts living by the side of dirty rivers, dirty ponds, muddy places.Hence, the swan became a tremendously potent metaphor for man. Man comes from existence, but has forgotten from where he comes, who he is. Man comes from existence, from the holiest of the holies and goes on living by the side of dirty rivers, muddy pools of water. Of course, he cannot be contented here, but he knows no other place to go. He is lost. This world seems to be the only world.The Eastern mystics use the metaphor of the swan for man. Kabir says: Hansa karo puratan bat. Swan, it would be good if we remember the primordial days, the days when you had not left the home yet. It would be good if we remember the home.Swan, I would like you to tell me your whole story!Tell me your whole story! But if someone asks you what story you have to tell, birth seems to be the beginning – which it is not; death seems to be the end – which it is not. Birth and death, both are episodes in your long life. And they have happened millions of times.The true story can begin only when you remember your real home, from where you come. The real story can never end because the real story is not only your story – it is the story of consciousness, of evolving consciousness, of evolution. It is not only your story. It is the story of existence. There is no beginning and there is no end.Once you become full of this nostalgia for the origins, you will be surprised that you have become aware of the goal too because the origin is the goal, the source is the goal. We have to go to the same space from where we come, then the circle is perfect. In that perfection is beauty, in that perfection is blessing, in that perfection is benediction.Swan, I’d like you to tell me your whole story! Only a buddha can tell his whole story, only one who has become totally awakened. You can talk about your dreams, but that is not your story. You are dreaming, desiring, thinking, but you know nothing. The less you know, the more you believe in your dreams because one has to keep oneself occupied. The less you know, the more you desire. Just to avoid your inner ignorance and emptiness, you rush in all directions. You go on rushing and don’t give yourself a little rest because the rest seems to be explosive, dangerous.Rest is meditation. Finding at least one or two hours out of the hustle and bustle of life, sitting silently doing nothing, you may start moving inward, you may start remembering something, the origins. And deep down the memory of where you come from is still there. You may have forgotten it, but it is there; maybe covered with rubbish, all kinds of rubbish, but that rubbish can be removed.That’s what meditation is all about. Removing the rubbish – of thoughts, memories, dreams, desires, imaginations. If you can remove all this rubbish that your head has gathered, your heart will start remembering. Once the source is remembered, the goal is known. Let me repeat, the source is the goal. We have to reach the same place from where we come. Swan, I would like you to tell me your whole story!The original has some beauty in it:Hansa karo puratan bat –Let us talk of the old days, swan.Let us remember the old days, the ancient days.Let us remember the beginnings.Let us talk again about the source.Kabir is talking to his disciples, remember. He is calling his disciples swans – hansa.Where you first appeared and what dark sandyou are going toward…“Where do you come from and where are you going? Let us be very particular about it.” That is the work of a master: to remind the disciple from where he comes and to where he is going. Otherwise, people go on moving with the crowd, wherever others are going. People remain imitators, people remain just followers; followers of the blind – the blind following the blind.Your parents were following their parents, you are following your parents, your children will follow you. And no one knows from where you come and where you are going. Everyone is trying… And not at all aware of what your need really is, what is going to fulfill you. More money? More houses? More power? Are these things going to help? Have they helped others? Just be a little more observant.There is an ancient story…The last initiation was going to be given to a disciple. The master said, “Your last initiation will be given in a very indirect way.” The disciple had passed all the hurdles that the master had put in his way; he had proved his mettle. Now the last initiation… And once he has passed the last initiation, he will be declared enlightened.The disciple touched the feet of the master and said, “I am ready. Just order me and I will do whatever needs to be done.”The master said, “You will have to go to the King. Go early in the morning and be his first visitor because the King has a habit that whoever comes to him first, whatever he asks, the King gives. But the country is so rich that it is very rare that anyone goes. Years pass and no one goes and asks for anything. But don’t take any chances. Be there very early. The King comes in the morning to his garden, as the sun rises he enters the garden. Be there. He will ask, ‘What do you want?’ Whatever you want, ask him.”The disciple couldn’t understand what kind of initiation this last one was. But the order had to be followed. He went. He didn’t take any chances; three o’clock, early in the morning, he was waiting for the King.As the sun was rising, the King entered. The young man bowed down to him and the King said, “Have you come to ask for something? You can ask for anything. Whatever you ask, I will give it to you.”A great desire possessed the young man. He was a poor man and had come from a very poor family, “And the King says whatever…?” To be certain, he asked again, “What do you mean by ‘whatever’?”The King said, “Exactly that, I mean – whatever. Even if you demand my kingdom, I will give it to you. You can ask for as much money as you want.”The poor young man couldn’t think of much. He thought, “Maybe ten thousand rupees will do.” But a desire came, “Why ten thousand? You may never get such a chance again. Why not one hundred thousand?” And then another desire and desires upon desires… Because the mind constantly asks for more. So whatever he decided, the mind was still asking for more.The King said, “It seems you are not yet ready to ask. I will go for my morning walk. Meanwhile you decide and when I return, whatever you ask will be given to you.”That half an hour was a torture. He went on and on, “I can ask for this and that, a golden chariot, so many millions of rupees, so much land. I will create a small kingdom of my own.”Desires and dreams… The King returned – that half hour had passed so fast. The King was standing there and said, “Young man, have you not decided yet?”Suddenly the young man thought, “Whatever I ask will be less than the King has, so why not ask for all? Be finished with the figures!”So he said, “Sir, if you are so willing to give, I ask for everything – all that you have. Your whole kingdom, all your riches, your palaces – everything. Simply get out of the palace! And you cannot go back in. You may take something. Simply get out – forget all about it. I can allow you only the clothes that you are wearing.”Even that he did reluctantly; even allowing that much, he would have less.The King fell on his knees, started praying to God, tears of great joy, ecstasy, rolling down from his eyes. He was thanking God saying, “I have been waiting for such a man. How long I waited. But finally you heard my prayer. Now he has come and I am free of all this nonsense. Thank you! You heard my prayer, although it has been so long and I had to wait so long, but still you heard it. I am grateful.”While he was saying these things to God, the young man was standing there and he started thinking, “What is the matter? If this man is feeling so happy renouncing the kingdom, what am I getting into? If this man has been praying for thirty years, as he is saying, ‘Send a man who can take my whole kingdom, who can ask for my whole kingdom.’ If for thirty years he has been praying, it is not worthwhile at all. I am getting into unnecessary trouble.”He also fell on his knees, touched the King’s feet and said, “Sir, I am a young man, a young fool. Please excuse me. I don’t want anything. Your prayer to God, your thankfulness to God has finished my whole mind. I am going back to the forest to my master.”The King tried to persuade him, “Don’t go. Just have a look. Come in the palace. I will not only give you my palace, my kingdom, my riches, but my beautiful daughter also. Come and just have a look.”The young man said, “I cannot stay here, not even a single moment because the mind can betray me. I have had an insight and I am thankful to you just as you are thankful to God. I am finished!”When the young man returned to his master and told the whole story, the master said, “Your last initiation is over. Now nothing will ever make a slave of you. Now you are alert, conscious, free. You have passed. I am happy. I was watching from here. When you asked for the whole kingdom, my heart was crying. I was thinking, ‘So, fifteen years’ work on this fool and all is finished.’ You can’t imagine my happiness that you are back, that you could see the point, that you were observant.”Be observant, just watch. People have money, people have great palaces, people have all that you can desire. Just watch, just see. Are they happy? Are they contented? They may be less happy than you are and more discontented than you are – then don’t follow them. They are blind. They have followed other blind people. Don’t follow them, don’t imitate the crowd.The really religious person is one who gets out of the entanglement of the mass psychology, of the mass hypnosis. The mass conditions you. Rebel against it; get out of this mass conditioning and become an individual. Only then can you remember from where you come because only then will you know who you are.Right now you know you are a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. You are not all these things. You are neither white nor black, you are neither man nor woman. You are just a pure consciousness with no adjectives attached to it. There is no frame to this consciousness; this consciousness is infinite. If you drop the mass conditionings, you will be coming closer to home.Hansa karo puratan bat – let us talk of those ancient times when we were at the source. Swan, I would like you to tell me your whole story! Where you first appeared and what dark sand you are going toward… You are coming from light, so wherever you are going you must be going toward darkness. And that’s what happens.A child has more light in his being; as he grows he becomes darker and darker and darker. By the time he is old, he is just a dark night of the soul and nothing else. A child is more luminous, intelligent, alert. As time passes and dust gathers on him, layers and layers of dust and all his intelligence disappears; he becomes mediocre. He starts behaving in stupid ways because he falls a victim to the stupid crowd that surrounds him. He is helpless. He has to listen to his parents, to his teachers, to the politicians. They are the great leaders, they are the great priests – they know. They all say, “We love you. Listen to us otherwise you will go astray. Obey us, otherwise you will go astray.”Obedience has been one of the greatest calamities that has befallen humanity. One should be capable of disobeying. I am not saying to make disobeying your religion. I am simply saying one should be capable of disobeying. In fact, the person who is capable of disobeying is also capable of obeying. The person who is only capable of obeying, his obedience carries no value. The person who cannot say no, his yes is always impotent. Only the person who can say no, his yes has power, meaning, significance. He says yes only when he means it.One should be alert enough to say no to all that takes you deeper and deeper into the mire of darkness, blindness, superstitiousness. One should be capable of saying yes to anything that takes you toward the light, toward love, toward life. It is up to you. If you say yes to darkness, you will be saying no to light. If you move toward darkness, you will have to keep your back toward the light. It is only a question of a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. A hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and you are in front of the light that you have been searching and seeking. But your ways, your methods, habits, patterns of thinking, are all taking you toward darker and darker realms of life.Where you first appeared and what dark sandyou are going toward;where you sleep at night…This is a night in which you are living and the life that you call life is nothing but a sleep – full of dreams. Sometimes you even dream that you are awake; that too is a dream.Just the other night I was reading a story…A man came to a lake and said to a fisherman there, “I am Jesus Christ!”The fisherman looked at him, laughed, and said, “Jesus has been dead for two thousand years. Are you mad or something?”The man replied, “But I am Jesus Christ. Haven’t you heard that after he was crucified, he was resurrected? And since then I have not died. Have you ever heard that Jesus died after the resurrection?”The fisherman thought, “Either he is very drunk or gone nuts.” He said, “You will have to prove it. Jesus did many miracles.”The man was very happy. He said, “Yes, what miracle do you want me to do?”The fisherman said, “Walk on the lake.”The madman walked… And drowned. The fisherman jumped in and somehow managed to pull him out. He asked him, “What happened?”He replied, “That time my shoes didn’t have any holes. Two thousand years of wandering on the earth and my shoes are full of holes – that’s what happened.”Mad people have their own logic. Blind people have their own logic. People who are fast asleep have their own logic – logic that supports their sleep.Once, a man suddenly became certain that he was dead. There was no way to prove that he was not, so he was taken to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist tried hard to convince him in every possible way, all kinds of arguments – but how can you prove to a man…? He said, “But I am dead – with whom are you talking? I am not, I am no more. This is not a dialogue, this is a monologue. You are talking with yourself, you have gone mad.”Suddenly an idea struck the psychiatrist. He said, “Okay, come close to the mirror.” He brought a needle and pushed it into the madman’s hand; just before pushing the needle in he asked, “Do you think dead men bleed?”He replied, “No. How can a dead man bleed?”He pushed the needle in, blood started oozing out. The psychiatrist was very happy and said, “Now look!”Do you know what the madman said? He said, “What is there to look at? That simply proves that dead men do bleed.”You can go on supporting your illusions – very logically. You can go on thinking you are awake and you can remain asleep. Kabir says:…and where you sleep at night and what you are looking for…Ask these questions deep down in your own heart. What are you looking for? Where are you? Where are you asleep? In what space are you asleep?Rothstein owed a hundred dollars to Weiner. The debt was past due and Rothstein was broke, so he borrowed the hundred dollars from Spivak and paid Weiner.A week later, Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Weiner and paid Spivak. Another week went by and Rothstein borrowed back the hundred dollars from Spivak to pay Weiner.He repeated this transaction several times, until finally he called them up and said, “Fellas, this is a lotta bother. Why don’t you two exchange the hundred dollars every week and keep me out of it!”This is what is happening here, everywhere in the world. You can learn how to keep yourself out of it – that is the secret of awareness. This transaction will continue; the world will remain a marketplace. It was so before, it will remain so afterward also. But you can be out of this transaction – you can be a witness to it. You can slip out of your identity. It is your identity where you are asleep. It is your ego where you are asleep.The ego means simply that the self is asleep. The moment the self awakes, the ego disappears and is not found anymore.Andrews, a white Georgia farmer, hired Monroe, a black, to chop some wood. Monroe took the ax and began hacking away. But in a little while the farmer noticed Monroe sitting in the shade, watching another Negro do the work.“Why you sittin’ there doing nothing when I am paying you to cut the wood?” asked Andrews. “How come you got someone else doing it?”“I hired him to do it for me,” said Monroe.“Is that a fact,” said the white man. “How much are you paying him?”“I am paying him a dollar and a quarter,” answered Monroe.“Why would you want to do that?” snorted the white man. “I am paying you only a dollar!”“I know,” said the black, “but it is worth a quarter to be boss for once.”The ego is constantly in search of being a boss – whatever the cost, at any cost. You are losing your whole opportunity of life just to fulfill a shadowy, non-substantial notion. The notion of ego: “I am somebody.” Nobody is nobody. We are all one, we are not separate.At the source we are one, at the goal we will be one again. Just in this dark night when we have fallen asleep, we are having private dreams. Remember, the real is universal, the unreal is private. You cannot even invite your girlfriend into your dream; hence it is false. It is so private you cannot share it. Anything that is so private is bound to be false. And there is nothing more private than the ego – that is the center of all your dreaming, sleeping mind.People go on wasting their whole lives, not even knowing what they are looking for. Do you know exactly what you are looking for? Do you have some idea? Do you have some sense of direction?Kabir says:It’s morning, swan, wake up, climb in the air,follow me!The original has something more:Ab hi hansa chet sabera – now is the morning, swan…Now has to be remembered. The translation has missed something: It is morning, swan, wake up… The original says: “It is always morning – now wake up because now is the morning. The present is always light, the present is always sunrise. Being in the past or being in the future, you go on missing the light: the door from where light penetrates you.”Ab hi hansa chet sabera – this is the door, now is the time – now or never. It is morning, swan, wake up, climb in the air, follow me! And one can wake up only if one starts climbing in the air. This is a metaphor, a mystic metaphor. It means, you start moving in the world of quality, not in the world of quantity. People live in the world of quantity: more money, more power, more prestige, more respectability. These are all quantities.You have so much – you can double, treble it, you can have it thousandfold, but it is all quantity. There is a different dimension: the dimension of quality. For example, you can have one sexual experience, you can have two, three, four; then it is quantity. But if your sexual experience starts becoming more of a love experience and your love experience starts becoming more of a prayer experience, then it is quality.Quantity is horizontal, quality is vertical. Once you start changing qualitatively, you start soaring high, you move in the vertical world. Matter is horizontal, spirit is vertical. That is basically the meaning of the symbol of the cross. The cross is not a Christian symbol. Remember, the cross is older than Christ. It is a very ancient symbol. The cross simply means that life has two dimensions. One horizontal, one vertical. If you live on the horizontal, you will live asleep – that’s why when you have to go to sleep you have to be in a horizontal position; lying down in bed, you become horizontal. When you wake up, you stand up, you become vertical.Now even scientists agree that all that has happened to man, all evolution, has happened because man some day in the past decided not to walk on four but to stand on two feet. Man became vertical. That was the moment when evolution started. Man was no longer animal. Animals are horizontal; man became vertical.Just the physical verticality and so much has happened to man. Think of spiritual verticality, think of the spiritual vertical dimension and you cannot even imagine what is possible, you cannot even dream about it. You have no idea at all. You need not be beggars. The whole kingdom, the whole universe, with all its beauty and joy, is yours.It’s morning, swan, wake up, climb in the air…I know of a country that spiritual flatnessdoes not control, nor constant depression,and those alive are not afraid to die.Kabir says: I know of a country… I know of a space – if you come with me, if you dare to come with me. It needs daring. If you are courageous enough to soar with me, if you are ready to leave the muddy pools where you have made your abodes, to go to the Himalayas, beyond the Himalayas, to the purest lake, Mansarovar… The word mansarovar is also beautiful. It means the lake of consciousness.I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control… Here, in the name of spirituality, something pseudo, something false is being sold. The temples, mosques, churches, gurdwaras, are all selling you something which has nothing to do with spirituality. Nanak had something to give, but Nanak is no more. Mohammed had something to give, but he is no more. Now there are only dead traditions. You will have to find an alive master who: …knows of a country where spiritual flatness does not control.In this world, very spiritually flat people are thought to be saints. In fact, the more spiritually flat you are, the more spiritually stupid you are. The more you oblige the masses by being according to their ideas of what a saint should be, the more you will be respected. Only mediocre, stupid people can follow the masses, can fulfill their expectations.A man who has any courage at all, a man who has any guts, is bound to be a rebel. He will not be worshipped as a saint in his life – he will be worshipped as a saint only when he is gone. People worship dead saints. Either you have to be dead while alive and they will worship you – or they will wait until you really die and nothing of you is left; the whole fragrance has evaporated, then they will worship you.They crucified Jesus and the crucified Jesus they worship. They killed Socrates, poisoned him and now for centuries they have honored him as one of the greatest human beings who has ever walked on the earth. They murdered Mansoor, butchered him and now Sufis go on claiming that he is one of the greatest Sufis. When he was being killed, even those Sufis were standing in the crowd, watching. No one protested – not even a very famous Sufi, Junnaid. He was present in the crowd and he knew perfectly well that Mansoor was innocent, that Mansoor’s declaration “I am God” was not against God.Mansoor’s declaration that “I am God” was not a sin. In fact, Mansoor was no longer there – God had declared himself through him. Junnaid knew it, but still was afraid of the crowd and kept quiet. When people were throwing stones and mud to humiliate and to insult the dying man, he threw a roseflower – for two reasons. His must have been a very diplomatic mind; just so people knew that he was throwing something and that he was not in favor of Mansoor. And Mansoor would know that he had not thrown a stone or mud – he had thrown a roseflower. But the story is tremendously beautiful…When Mansoor was being hit by stones and his whole body was oozing blood, he was laughing, he was in a state of celebration because he was being sacrificed in the name of God. It was a moment to celebrate. But when he was hit by the roseflower, he wept; the story says Mansoor wept.Someone standing nearby asked him, “What is the matter with you? Stones are being thrown at you; you have been wounded and blood is flowing from all over your body and you keep laughing and smiling. A roseflower hits you and you weep?”Mansoor replied, “Yes, because the man who has thrown the roseflower knows that I am innocent. Still he is not courageous enough to say so. The others who are throwing stones at me are ignorant. I am praying for them, I am praying to God, ‘Forgive them because they know not what they are doing.’ But I cannot pray for this man who has thrown the rose; that’s why I am crying and weeping. What should I do now? I cannot say to God, ‘Forgive this man because he knows not what he is doing’ – he knows perfectly well what he is doing, he knows perfectly well that I am absolutely innocent.”When he said these words, Junnaid disappeared into the crowd. He became very afraid – people might catch hold of him.Now Sufis go on claiming that Mansoor was one of the greatest enlightened people of the world, now they worship him.The ways of man are very strange. This world is really very flat as far as spirituality is concerned. The so-called spirituality is very boring too. The so-called spirituality is more or less rubbish. That rubbish has gathered down the ages: theories, thoughts, systems, but not a single iota of experience.Hence Kabir says: I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control… Come with me. I can take you to a space where all these fools are no longer pretending to be spiritual, where all these dull, stupid fellows are no longer thought to be saints.A priest dies. At the pearly gates he is given a warm welcome by Saint Peter, who presents him the keys of a small, old, rotten car and a small one-bedroom apartment. When he gets there, there is another pleasant surprise for him, for his next door neighbor turns out to be a parson who had been a good friend of his down below. They decide to stroll down to the pearly gates to check out the action. They are horrified when they spot a certain rabbi strolling through the pearly gates as though he owns the place. They knew this particular rabbi only too well. He had been the scandal of their community. Sodomy, usury – name any vice, he had committed it. The two reverends were even more horrified when Saint Peter bowed low to the rabbi, told him what an honor it was to have him in heaven and presented him with keys to a Rolls Royce, a town house and a country house.“This is outrageous!” the priest and parson storm at Saint Peter. “We lead pious, God-fearing lives and all we get are small cars and small apartments. But this schmuck of a rabbi, he does everything vile, yet you give him a Rolls Royce, a town house and a country house. How come?”“Well, I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Saint Peter apologizes, “but he is a relative of the management.”Kabir is not talking about a country like this. He is not talking about the heaven of your imagination. Your heaven will be an exact replica of this world; maybe a little bit decorated here and there, modified, a little better – a better standard of living, but not real life.Kabir is talking of an inner space: I know of a country that spiritual flatness does not control, nor constant depression… In this world you will find two types of people. One who is just boringly religious, flat; another who is just worldly, but depressed. The pseudo religious at least hopes that something great is going to happen after death, but the worldly man does not even have that hope. He is very depressed. You can see this…In India you will feel a difference from the West. India is a flat spiritual country, but people are in a way hopeful. Life is short and soon it will be gone. And then paradise and all the joys. The more you suffered in life, the more you will be rewarded. So carry on, be patient.In the West, people are not flatly spiritual and they have no hope, no future, no life after death. There is great depression and they are very heavy, as if they are carrying mountains of worries, anxieties. Both states are wrong.Kabir says: …and those alive are not afraid to die. I know of a country… where people know death is a lie, where people know that life is eternal. I know a space where you will also be able to see, feel, experience that life never begins, never ends – that death is only a change of garments.There wild flowers come up through the leafy floorand the fragrance of “I am he” floats on the wind.There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flowerand cares for no other thing.He is talking about the inner space, the inner silence, the contentless consciousness – samadhi. There wild flowers come up… Wild because they are spontaneous, wild because no gardener has tended to them, wild because they are so full of life – they are not civilized, cultured, pale – so full of blood and so full of juice. Wild because you have not seen them yet, not even in your imagination do they cast any shadows.There wild flowers come up through the leafy floor and the fragrance of “I am he” floats on the wind. Now this is something untranslatable. The Sanskrit word that Kabir uses is soham. Literally it means “I am he” – “I am that.” But that is not the point. Soham is not a word but a sound. If you become utterly silent, you will hear this sound arising from the deepest core of your being: soham. It is not a word, it is a sound, pure sound. It is a kind of inner music which is heard when all the noise of the mind has left you. It is heard only when the mind has left you, when there are no longer any thoughts to disturb, no interference; the whole world forgotten. You are in absolute aloneness and everything has stopped. Time has stopped, space has disappeared and there is only pure consciousness vibrating. That’s what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping: soham. This sound is heard only when you have reached the very center of your being; this sound, once heard, and you become absolutely certain – not convinced, not that you start believing, you become absolutely certain through knowing that “I am he.” Hence the sound has gathered a meaning around it, but basically it is a sound.The mystics say that the whole of existence is full of this sound, soham. Whenever you are silent, you will hear it. This is the voice of existence and this voice reveals to you who you are. …and the fragrance of “I am he” – soham – floats on the wind. There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flower…Who wants to go out then? The sound of soham showers on you as nectar. Who wants to go out then? For what? All that you have been desiring is suddenly fulfilled; all that you have asked is given. The door is open.There the bee of the heart stays deep inside the flowerand cares for no other thing.Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.Inside your body there are flowers.He is indicating toward the seven centers, the seven chakras. Those seven chakras are called seven flowers. We become aware only of the first and that too in a very dim and dismal way – a sound heard from far away, or just an echo. We become aware of the first center only, the sex center and that too only once in a while.All your sexual experiences don’t bring you to the awareness of the flower. Only when you have a deep orgasm – only when you have a total orgasm, when your whole body pulsates with joy, when each fiber of your body dances with joy, when each cell of your body goes mad, wild with joy – do you become aware of the first flower.Even that is very rare; not more than one percent of people become aware of it. Ninety-nine percent know sex only as a relief. They don’t know its orgasmic quality. Even if they think they are having an orgasm, it is not orgasm. It is just genital relief.Orgasm has nothing to do with the genitals as such. The genitals are involved in it, but the orgasm is total. From the head to the toes, it is all over you. Nothing is being held behind. A total involvement in the moment, a total merger – and you become aware of the first flower.There are six higher flowers. As you move higher, deeper orgasmic experiences are waiting for you. The seventh, the last, is called sahasrar – the one-thousand-petalled lotus. When the seventh, that is in the head, opens up, you have transcended humanity, you are no longer a human being. You may be in the human body, but you are a god.The Western mind finds it very difficult; they cannot understand why we call Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, a god. They don’t even call Jesus a god; they only call him “the son of God.” Their idea of God is the one who created the world.In the East, we have gone far deeper than that. No one has ever created the world. In the Christian sense there is no God at all. God is not a creator but the creativity, the energy that has become manifest in existence. Godliness is in the tree, the rock, the river, in you, in me. Why do we call Buddha a god, if godliness is everywhere? – Buddha has awakened to his godliness, others are fast asleep.By calling Buddha a god we don’t mean that he created the world, we don’t mean that he controls the world. We simply mean that he has attained the seventh orgasm, that he has come to the seventh flowering; that the ultimate has opened in him, that he is no longer an individual. He has become universal.Your head has an opening. Just try to understand. Your sex center has an opening; that opening joins you with nature, that opening takes you downward. Exactly like the sex center, on the opposite pole, is sahasrar – that opens upward. Just as sex takes you downward, sahasrar takes you upward.Sex is under the law of gravitation and sahasrar is beyond the law of gravitation. It functions under a totally different law. You can call it levitation, or you can call it grace. The law that pulls you down is gravitation and the law that pulls you up is grace.Science is not yet aware of the other law; that is unfortunate. But religion is basically the art of helping you enter the realm of the second law, the law of grace. Once your sahasrar, the one-thousand-petalled lotus, has opened, you disappear as an ego and godliness appears in you. Your form will remain human, but in the form of the human, the superhuman starts descending.Hindus call this state avatar. The word avatar means descendence: when a person is open toward the sky, the sky descends in him, he becomes an avatar.Kabir says: Don’t go outside your house… It contains all that you are searching and seeking for on the outside.Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.Inside your body there are flowers.One flower has a thousand petals.Six centers are lower. Up to the sixth you remain a human being; you become a very superior human being, but you remain a human being. Up to the sixth you remain a sage. Entering the seventh you become a god.One flower has a thousand petals.That will do for a place to sit.Once you have arrived at the seventh, you have come home. Now you can sit at rest, now you can relax. Now there is nowhere to go. Now all is completed, fulfilled.This was the search… And you ran in all directions. You were running in all the ten directions, hither and thither for thousands of lives and not even a glimpse was found. But once you have reached the seventh, all is fulfilled. Suddenly, now you can rest. Now there is nowhere to go, no goal to attain, no object for your desire – hence desirelessness happens naturally.Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty…This is what we call beauty in the East. Unless the seventh flower has opened in you, you know nothing of beauty. You only say that the rose is beautiful, the sky is beautiful, the river is beautiful. You are using the word beautiful, but you don’t know exactly what beauty is.If someone persists, insists, “Define what beauty is,” you will be at a loss. You will not be able to define it. In fact, you haven’t known, you have simply heard. Others say that the rose is beautiful, so you say that the rose is beautiful. You are simply repeating others’ opinions.Just fifty years ago, no one had heard that the cactus is beautiful. Now the cactus is on the throne, the rose is dethroned. Now to talk about the rose and its beauty seems very outdated; now people don’t have rose plants in their houses but cactuses. The more sophisticated a person is, the more he will appreciate the beauty of the cactus.The fashion has changed. Fashions change. The rose has lost its face. After a few days, the rose will come back because people get tired – cactus and cactus and cactus – and then one day they decide enough is enough. Again, suddenly, they have to change. Watch people’s clothes. Each year they go on changing and after ten, twelve years the old styles come back because from where are you going to get new ideas? Just the same ideas go on moving in a circle.You don’t know what beauty is. You use the word, certainly, but your word is empty. Beauty is known only by one who has known the inner beauty, one who has known the inner flower opening. Then whenever you see a flower, it reminds you of your inner beauty.Yes, Kabir will start dancing and singing when he sees a roseflower because the roseflower on the outside will simply trigger his inner experience of his own flower. Seeing the starry night, he will start singing or playing on his flute because suddenly the starry night will remind him of his own inner sky – which is far more beautiful.Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beautyinside the body and out of it,before gardens and after gardens.Once you have seen the inner beauty, you will be able to see the outer as beautiful. Once you have seen godliness within, you will be able to see it without too. The original is very beautiful:Bago na ja re na ja,teri kaya men guljar.Don’t go to the gardens! The garden is within you. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go to the gardens.Bago na ja re na ja,teri kaya men guljar.Within your own body is the garden of gardens.Sahas-kanval par baith ketu dekhe rup apar.Find out where this one-thousand-petalled lotus is within youand then sit upon it,then see the beauty of the formless,then see the beauty of the invisible,then see the beauty of the intangible,then see the beauty of the unknowable.Those who have only known the known, have known nothing. Those who have only seen the seeable have not seen anything. Unless you become capable of seeing the unseen and hearing the unheard, you have not yet come to your full potential.Existence gives you a great gift of potential. The only way to return the gift in gratitude and thankfulness is to make the potential actual. Be what your seed is carrying within you. Become it. Be it.This small body is not small; it contains a universe. This body is not just a body; it is the temple of existence. Love it, respect it, explore it. Don’t get stuck at the first center. You have to move from sex to samadhi. Unless your sexual energy is transformed into samadhi, you are not fulfilling your destiny, you are not fulfilling your nature. You are missing the great opportunity that life is.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You say that it is enough for us to just be, that we don't need to do anything to be in God. I have this gut-feeling that I need to do, to be worthy, to contribute, to give something. And you say that God is within me. I realize I am looking inside for some concept I got from the outside.It is like looking down a well at night. I see reflections and I think it is the bottom, but it is only the surface. Even when I know that I need only let it wait, rather than look for anything, I am still waiting for my own concepts of what should happen. Please comment.The first, most fundamental thing to be understood is that you are already in God. It is not a question of being in God; you are already there. Just as the fish is in the ocean, you are in God. God simply means existence, that which exists.In ancient Hebrew, the word God stands for that which is. G stands for that, O for which and D for is – that which is. The word God is tremendously significant. It does not indicate a person, it simply indicates a presence. And the presence is everywhere. Life is synonymous with God, the universe is synonymous with God. To be is to be in God – there is no other way. To breathe is to breathe in God – there is no other way. To sleep is to sleep in God and to wake up is to wake up in God – there is no other way. You can choose to sleep, still you are in God. You can choose to forget God, still you are in God. You can choose to deny God, still you are in God. Not to be in God is the only impossible thing. I say, the only impossible thing.So it is not a question of becoming worthy. But I am not saying don’t become worthy. I am not saying be lazy, lousy. I am not saying become an escapist. I am not saying don’t contribute to existence. But your contribution to existence should not be a means to reach the divine – that’s what I am saying. Your contribution to existence should be in gratefulness that you are in godliness. It should not be a means to reach because you are already there. It should be an overflowing of joy because you are already there. Be very clear about the distinction.Share your joy, love, ecstasy. Make life as beautiful as possible; just out of thankfulness that existence has chosen you to be, that you are allowed to be, that you are given life. What else can you do? If you can sing a song, sing it with your totality. If you can paint, paint and put your whole heart in it. If you can dance, dance to abandon so you disappear completely in the dance and there is no longer any dancer, but only the dance remains. Let me remind you that these are not means to reach godliness – these are just our poor thanks, our heartfelt gratitude.Prayer is true when it comes out of gratitude. Prayer is false when it is just a means to persuade, to seduce God, to ask for something from him. Even if you are asking God himself, your prayer is full of desire. When prayer is full of desire, it is too heavy, it can’t have wings. It can only grope in the darkness of the earth, it cannot soar high in the sunlit sky.When prayer is without desire it has wings. When prayer is without weight, when it is out of thankfulness, not desiring anything but just to show your gratitude for all that existence has already done for you – it can reach the ultimate.You say, “…that it is enough for us to just be? But my gut-feeling is that I need to do something to be worthy, to contribute, to give…”It is not a gut-feeling. It is just what has been conditioned in you by society. Society has been telling you continuously, persistently, day in, day out, from your very childhood – in school, in college, at university, in church. The priest, the politician, the parent, the professor have all joined together in one single conspiracy: to give you the idea that as you are you are unworthy. You have to do something, you have to prove yourself, only then will you be worthy.This is the strategy of society to exploit you; this is society’s ugly way to make slaves of you, not creators but slaves. In beautiful, sophisticated ways you have been conditioned. Beautiful words covering very ugly realities. The ugly reality is that society wants to use you as a slave, society wants to manipulate you, society wants to control you. It manages it in two ways.On the outside is the state, the policeman, the magistrate. They enforce laws, but laws can never be absolute and man can always find ways to defy laws. Then society creates another safeguard. It creates a conscience in you, it goes on hypnotizing you, saying again and again that you have to be worthy.The helpless child has no other way than to oblige, to surrender. His whole life is at stake and he cannot survive on his own. He has to depend on his parents. He has to watch continuously what they want, what they appreciate, what is rewarded by them. If he is rewarded by them, he is worthy, he feels good; if he is punished by them, he feels unworthy, he feels bad about himself.Slowly, slowly the idea settles that just to be is not enough, sinks deep in your heart, becomes almost your second nature. Trees are enough, animals are enough, birds are enough – only man has this stupid idea that just to be is not enough. It is a very cunning tactic to destroy the freedom of the individual, to destroy the self-respect of the individual, to create a deep guilt feeling in the individual. It has gone deep, certainly – so deep that you misunderstand it as a gut-feeling. It is not a gut-feeling at all.I am not against being creative, remember. I am all for it. I want my sannyasins to be creative, but for a totally different reason, with a totally different intention, with a totally new motive. I want you all to be creative. I don’t want you to escape to the monasteries. I want you to live in the world and live the whole spectrum of life fully. Bring your total potential to expression. Bloom in as many ways as possible because only then will you feel fulfilled.But this has not to be as a means to attain something. This has to be just an expression of your joy, of your celebration. Then the quality changes. When you use something as a means, you are not really interested in it.For example, if you are painting just to be appreciated, your focus is on appreciation, not on the painting; your heart is not there. You are already imagining, dreaming, how you will be appreciated. And because your constant worry is how to be appreciated, you will paint something which will not come out of you spontaneously, you will paint something which others are bound to like. You will paint it according to them. You will become a very poor painter. You will not allow your genius to come out because the genius is not easily appreciated, remember. The more talented you are, the more genuine your intelligence is and the less is the possibility of being easily appreciated. The greater possibility is that you will be condemned. Why? – because a genius brings something new to the world, so new that old criteria don’t fit with it. The old criteria are deep-rooted in the human mind and they cannot easily go away.The genius has to create not only his poetry, his painting, his dance, his music. He also has to create new criteria by which to judge them.Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters the world has ever known, was not appreciated in his time. He lived in utter poverty. His brother supported him, but wasn’t much in favor of his painting either because it was not paying – so what is the point of doing something which does not pay? On the contrary, because of his paintings people used to think that he was mad. He was painting in such a new way – as it had never been done before. He had his own vision. He was a genius. In his paintings, trees are so high that they reach to the stars; the stars are very small and the trees are very big. Now, who is going to appreciate this painting?Any schoolchild can say, “This is nonsense. Stars are not so small, and trees – who has seen such big trees? Reaching above the stars?” But Vincent van Gogh used to say, “Whenever I see a tree, this is my feeling: the earth is trying to reach the stars, to transcend the stars, through the trees. These are the hands of the earth reaching for the unknown, for the transcendental. I love my earth, hence my stars are small and my trees are big. I am part of this earth, I am also a hand of my earth. To me stars are small.”This is not a question of astronomy, physics, mathematics. It is a totally different vision. The trees are seen as ambitions of the earth, love affairs of the earth with the sky. But who is going to appreciate him? In one of his paintings the sun is painted black. Now who has ever seen a black sun? But he used to say that the sun that shines outside is black compared to the sun that is inside. It is a comparison. Kabir will agree. Kabir says, “When I saw the inner sun, I knew that the outer sun is just a black hole. When I saw my inner life, I knew that the outer life is nothing but another name for death.”The moment the inner is known, suddenly the outer starts fading away. Now, van Gogh is talking in a mystic way – he is a mystic – but who will understand? It will take years for people to understand. Van Gogh lived and died unappreciated, unknown. He remained absolutely unknown.You will be surprised to know that now each of his paintings is so valuable that no other painting can compete. Even Picasso’s paintings are not so valuable – millions of dollars for a single painting. In his day, in his whole life, he could not sell a single painting. He had to distribute his paintings to friends or to the man who used to give him a cup of tea in the morning, free of charge. Those same paintings now cost millions of dollars. People had discarded them, people accepted them out of politeness because as far as they were concerned it was all junk, so why collect it?Vincent van Gogh committed suicide when he was only thirty-three. It was impossible to live; he could not earn a single pai. His brother used to give him enough money, just enough to exist, to survive. But he needed money to paint. He needed it for the canvas and the colors and the brushes. So the arrangement was that he used to get money every Sunday for one week. Every week, for three days he would eat and for four days he would fast, so that money could be saved to purchase canvases, colors, and other things that he needed.To me, van Gogh’s fasting is far more significant than all the fasts that have been done by your so-called saints. This fasting has something beautiful in it, something spiritual in it. When your so-called saints go on a fast, it is a means. They are fasting so that they can reach heaven and enjoy all the heavenly joys. But van Gogh’s fasting has a totally different quality to it. That quality is his love to create.And why did he commit suicide? He committed suicide… That too has a tremendous significance. It is no ordinary suicide. In fact, a man like van Gogh cannot do anything in an ordinary way. He committed suicide because he said, “Whatever I wanted to paint, I have painted. Now, just to exist is pointless. I have given that which I came to give. Now I can go back to the original source. There is no need to live in the body any longer. I have contributed.”Years and years passed, and slowly, slowly he was appreciated. Now he is thought to be one of the greatest painters in the world. This has been so with all the geniuses. In their own time they are condemned – condemned by the masses, the crowd, the priests, the politicians. They are appreciated by only a very few people – sensitive, receptive, intelligent – who have the capacity to see something that is new, unknown, that has never happened before; only by very few people who can put their minds aside and look.I would like you to be creative, but don’t be bothered about appreciation, don’t be bothered about gaining fame, a name through it. Whenever the motive is to gain something out of creativity, you are no longer interested in it. You become a technician and are no longer an artist. You may do a painting and do it perfectly, technically perfectly, but it will not have the soul, it will not be alive because you will not be there. You will be looking all around for the appreciators to come. And you will always paint accordingly, so that they can appreciate.There are people who say only that which people want to hear. These people will be very famous, known, appreciated, respected, but they are mediocre people. The genius speaks that which arises in his heart; he does not care a bit whether anyone is going to like it or not. He says it straight, he says it direct and he never thinks of the results or the consequences.Be creative in that sense and your creativity will become an offering to existence. Existence has given you so many gifts that something has to be done just in deep thankfulness. But remember, with no motive, not as a means but as an end unto itself. Art for art’s sake, creation for creation’s sake, love for love’s sake, prayer for prayer’s sake.And that’s how one, slowly, slowly becomes religious. The religious person lives in the moment; he has no worry about the future, not even about the next moment. When it comes, it will come. He does not prepare for it. He lives this moment and out of this moment the next will be born. If this moment has been beautiful, if this moment has been a benediction, the next is going to be, of course, a deeper benediction, a greater blessing.You say: “I have this gut-feeling that I need to do, to be worthy…” The need to do can be a gut-feeling because we have so much energy and it wants to dance, to paint, to sing, to do something. But, “I need to do to be worthy…” can’t be a gut-feeling. That is a feeling that has been put inside you – like scientists putting electrodes in the brain, so a person can be manipulated.Society has been carrying on just like that down the ages. It creates a conscience in you: “Do this, this is right, approved, respected. Don’t do that; that is unworthy of you. You will be condemned if you do it.” A kind of division is created within you between right and wrong, between the “should” and the “should not.”The problem is that no “should” can ever be a fixed phenomenon; it changes with life. No right is always right and no wrong is always wrong, so to decide beforehand is dangerous. I don’t teach you conscience. Conscience means right and wrong are like things, decided. This is a rose and that is a lotus; this is a stone and that is a diamond – decided, decided forever. Right and wrong are not things. They change. Life is a river like phenomenon. What is right today may not be right tomorrow.A Zen master asked his disciple, “What is God?”The disciple bowed down, remained silent. The master blessed him and said, “This is good. I am happy.”Next day, again, the master asked the disciple, “What is God?”Of course, now he had learned, so he bowed down, an even deeper bow. He remained quiet, even closed his eyes and the master hit him hard on the head and said, “Stupid!”The disciple was puzzled. He said, “But what has happened? Yesterday you were so happy and the answer is the same. Even better than yesterday!”The master said, “That is where you went wrong; yesterday was yesterday, today is today. Now you are simply repeating a ready-made formula. Now you are not being true, not being spontaneous, not being responsible. Now you have learned a trick. How can the same answer be right today?” Twenty-four hours have passed, so much water has gone down the Ganges!Existence is dynamic, it is not static. It is not a stagnant pool. It is a constant continuum, flow. No answer can ever be fixed; that’s where society deceives you. It gives you fixed answers. With fixed answers one thing is good and that’s why we cling to them. They give you a sort of certainty, security, safety. You can remain certain that you are right.But life goes on changing. And your “right” remains fixed. Your whole life becomes a misery because your answers never fit the questions. Your whole life is an effort to put square plugs in round holes – and your whole life you go on trying. It is very frustrating. The reason is that you never see that life is changing.The really conscious person changes with life. The really conscious person cannot afford to be consistent. Consistency is part of a mediocre mind. I am not saying be deliberately inconsistent; I am simply stating a fact, that to be consistent means to be stupid, to be consistent means to remain with the past, blind to the present. If you look at the present, you have to change with life.Hence you will find a thousand and one contradictions in Jesus’ statements and so is the case with Gautam Buddha. That has always been the case with the enlightened people because they don’t have any ready-made answer. You hanker for the ready-made answer so you can jump upon it, you can hold it tight in your hand and be certain.You suffer from uncertainty – and uncertainty is the nature of life. Certainty it is part of death. Be certain and you will be dead. Remain flowing, remain uncertain, remain available to the changing circumstances and you will remain more and more alive.To be totally alive means to live in the moment with no past interfering at all. Then you respond to the moment and the response comes from your consciousness, not from your conscience. Conscience is a deception, conscience is a social trick. Society has created the conscience. The function of the master is to destroy your conscience so that your consciousness can be freed.Your gut-feeling is not a gut-feeling. You have been deceived. There is no need to do anything to be worthy. You are already worthy. If you were not worthy, you would not be here at all. Existence has given you birth, has created you, so must have seen some worth in you. If you are unworthy, then existence is not a very original creator, not much of a creator at all. How can it create an unworthy person?Society makes you unworthy because that is the only way to exploit you – to make you feel unworthy. You will try hard to become worthy because that is the only way to gain self-respect. And to become worthy you will follow the dictates of society. Society creates fear in you – fear of being unworthy, of being condemned, of being left alone, of being no one, of being anonymous. Then you are ready to yield, to bow down, to any kind of nonsense.Simon’s parents were in despair when he flunked out of school. They tried sending him to every school in the city – private, public, progressive, military academy – but he took no interest. Finally they tried a Catholic school. When Simon came home with his first report card, his parents were surprised to see a straight A report.“What happened?” they asked him.“Well,” he replied. “When I saw that poor guy nailed to the cross everywhere I looked, I knew they meant business!”Create fear, create as much fear as you can. That has been the policy of society. Hells have been created just to ensnare you; heavens have been created just to reward those who follow the dictates. All are imaginary. There is no hell, no heaven. But the rewards and punishments are subtle strategies. They have worked up to now and they have destroyed all human dignity.This is not a gut-feeling in you. Your gut-feeling and the conscience created by society have got mixed up. The gut-feeling is to do something – yes, that is a gut-feeling. When the energy is there, one wants to do something; that is natural. The energy wants to be expressed. But with the motive to be worthy, it is the conscience part which is getting mixed with your gut-feeling. Be clear about it.You have been messed around by society in every possible way. You have been confused so much that you have to depend on someone. Either you go to the priest – in the old days you used to go to the priest. In India they still go to the priest. In the West the new priest has arisen: the psychotherapist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist – go to him.The miracle is that the priest is just like you, maybe even more in a mess than you are, but still you go to him to find good advice. Yes, he repeats good advice like a parrot. Your psychotherapist, your psychiatrist, your psychoanalyst, may be in deeper anxiety, in more tensions than even you are.Just the other night one of my sannyasins was asking me, “Osho, you told me last time when I came here, ‘Look for the lighter side of life, count the roses, ignore the thorns. They are there, take note of them, but don’t pay too much attention to them.’ But my psychoanalyst has said, ‘This is dangerous, this is going to repress your emotions.’ So I am puzzled – what to do?”I said to him, “Just wait a few days, your psychoanalyst will be here…” But I was not aware that this sannyasin himself is a psychoanalyst. Later on Vivek told me that he is a psychoanalyst. Now, one psychoanalyst going to another psychoanalyst – for what? And that one may be going to someone else.The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was one of the most pathological persons you can imagine. He was very superstitious. You will laugh if you look in his biography; how such a man could become the founder of psychoanalysis, how such a man could be trusted and that what he was saying was true.One of his friends gave him the idea that just as each woman has a twenty-eight-day cycle when her menstruation comes, each man has a twenty-three-day cycle. There is some truth in it; not twenty-three days, but exactly twenty-eight days. Now much more research has been done on it.Those four, five days when a woman goes through her period are sad, depressive, dull, negative. In exactly the same way, the man goes into a negative state each month for four, five days. Of course, his period is not very visible, but it is there; it is a psychological fact. It should be there because men and women are not very different.So his friend’s idea was on the right track. Sigmund Freud suddenly got an idea – lying in his bed, he was thinking about twenty-eight and twenty-three and suddenly an idea flashed in his mind: twenty-eight plus twenty-three means fifty-one. He could not sleep the whole night. He became certain by the morning that he was going to live fifty-one years – a very great gut-feeling. He started talking about it; twenty-eight plus twenty-three – fifty-one years and he will die.His fifty-first year came and passed and he did not die. Something else had to be found. The day he was expecting to die, his phone number was changed and the end of the phone number was sixty-two. So he said, “Look, another indication. Now I am going to die at sixty-two.” But that day came and passed.But people like Sigmund Freud are not easy. They will find something or other. He was staying in a hotel and the number of the room was eighty-two, so he said, “Look, another indication from above. At eighty-two I am going to die; that is absolutely certain.”That day also passed. He died when he was eighty-three. Such superstitious people… He was so afraid of death, that’s why he was so concerned about it. He was so afraid of death that five times in his life he fainted publicly because someone started talking about death. He used to faint and fall flat on the ground – just the idea of death. And such a pathological, neurotic person became the founder of psychoanalysis.He used to project himself. Whatever was true for him he thought was true for every human being. That is the very limit of his nonsense. All that he has said about man is not about man. It is about Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud is a single individual; he does not represent man. No one represents man. No one can ever represent man.So maybe a few people are helped by psychoanalysis, a very few people. Rarely have I seen a person who has been helped by psychoanalysis – but those are the people who are of the same type as Sigmund Freud.Now much research has happened and it has been found that even those people who are helped are not helped by psychoanalysis but by something else. In one experiment, twenty-five people were given psychoanalysis for six months and twenty-five people were just kept waiting and told, “Soon your psychoanalysis will start.” They were all suffering from the same kind of illness. The result was very surprising.The twenty-five who were given psychoanalysis were helped a little bit, but the twenty-five who were kept waiting were helped far more. Just waiting helped them far more. In fact, this secret has been known in the East. It has been practiced for centuries. If you take someone who has a mental disorder and place him in a Zen monastery – he is then put in isolation for three weeks, where no one talks to him. This is just the opposite of psychoanalysis; no one talks to him, no one listens to him. He is just kept isolated, in absolute silence. Someone goes and puts food there for him and returns. He has to live with himself for three weeks. And miracles have been happening down the ages.Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly, slowly with no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation, he cools down. In fact, he was suffering too much from people – the stress of being in a crowd continuously.Psychoanalysis may not be the real cause of help, but the length of time the psychoanalysis continues – two, three, four years. It continues as long as you can afford it; it depends on you. If you have enough money, it can continue your whole life. In fact, psychoanalysis never comes to a termination. It cannot because the mind is very inventive. It goes on inventing more and more rubbish. It starts enjoying, slowly, slowly because the more rubbish it brings up, the more happy the psychotherapist feels. Seeing him happy, it obliges him more.Whatever the expectations of the psychotherapist are, the patient fulfills them. Patients are really patient people, very obliging, courteous. They are good people. That’s why they are suffering. They are not hard people – not hardware but software. Because they are soft they are suffering. The hard guys are not suffering. The hard guys make others suffer. The soft guys become victims. Three, four years lying down on the couch, talking nonsense, waiting, waiting, waiting – it helps one to unwind, one becomes a little more relaxed. And someone is listening to you very attentively, at least pretending that he is listening very attentively.My own observation is that the attention of the psychotherapist is of immense value. This is a world where no one gives you any attention. If the husband wants to talk to the wife she says, “There is so much work to be done in the kitchen. The dishes have to be washed and I have no time.” If the wife wants to talk to the husband, he is tired from the whole day at the office; the work, the traffic, and he wants to watch the TV.A survey says that in America the average husband–wife communication in is only thirty-three minutes per day. And that is the average. In that thirty-three minutes you can count fighting, nagging, pillow-throwing and every kind of thing. Out of twenty-four hours, only thirty-three minutes between husband and wife?A great need has arisen that someone should listen to you. Hence the psychotherapist helps. He is a professional listener. That is the only quality he has, the only qualification really. Anyone can start the business – no other qualification is needed. If you know only one thing: how to sit there by the side of the person being attentive and listening… Just listening attentively will help. The person starts feeling, “I have some worth. Someone…” And the more he has paid, the more it helps because the person who is listening is no ordinary psychotherapist, not run-of-the-mill. “He is someone special, very famous, world-known. And listening so attentively to me?” The very idea gives worth, “Then I must be saying something immensely beautiful.”He may be bringing up gibberish. That’s what in psycho-babble is called “free association” – bring up anything that comes to your mind. If such gibberish is being listened to so attentively, a great need is fulfilled. The person feels worthy, he feels important, he feels he is someone.Remember, this society has messed you up so much that man as such is almost on the verge of going insane. All love, communication, friendship has disappeared; all aesthetic sensitivity has disappeared. People have become like zombies. They talk to each other yet they don’t talk, they don’t meet.This society is an ill society. When I say “this society” I mean all the societies that exist in the world are more or less, in this way or that, ill. For centuries in the past, we have been creating a model of man which is wrong. We are giving people ideals and saying “Unless you fulfill these ideals you will never be worthy.” And those ideals are impossible. We are giving people ideas of being perfect. Once the idea of being perfect enters one’s being, it turns one into a neurotic.Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That’s what it means to be a human being. Accept yourself as you are – with joy, not in helplessness because existence accepts you. This is my basic teaching: existence accepts you; accept yourself, love yourself. Let there be a great upsurge of self-love. Out of that love, you will start becoming creative. A person who loves himself is bound to become creative. I am not saying he will become famous, I am not saying that he will be a Picasso or an Ezra Pound or a Pablo Neruda, no. He may be, he may not be. But that is irrelevant. The real thing is to enjoy creativity. Whatever you do, do it with joy, bring your total intelligence to it, be meditative in it.You say, “And you say that God is within me. I realize I am looking inside for some concept I got from the outside.” You will never find that kind of God within you. You will have to drop all the concepts that have been given to you from the outside because God is not a person. No picture of God exists, no statue is possible. Godliness is an experience. If you have the idea of a God which your parents and society have given you, you will go inside with that idea and it will be a hindrance. It will not allow you to see that which is. And godliness is that which is. It needs no concepts to see. Concepts blind you. Drop all concepts.If you really want to go in, go as an agnostic. This word is beautiful. You must have heard the word gnostic. Gnostic means one who knows – gnosis means knowledge. Agnostic means one who knows not; agnostic means one who knows only one thing, that he knows not. Be an agnostic – that is the beginning of real religion.Don’t believe, don’t disbelieve. Don’t be a Hindu, a Jaina, a Christian, otherwise you will go on groping in darkness forever and forever. Unless you drop all ideologies – all philosophies, all religions, all systems of thought and go inside empty, with nothing in your hand, with no idea – how can you have an idea of God? You have not known him. Just go – with a great desire to know, but with no idea of knowledge; just go with an intensity to know, with a passionate love to know what is there, but don’t carry any ideas given to you by others. Drop them outside. That is the greatest barrier for the seeker on the path of truth.God is there but you cannot see because your eyes are blinded by the concepts given to you. God is not a Jew, so if you have a Jewish idea of God, you will not find him.I have heard a beautiful story about a Sufi mystic, Farid…One night he dreamed that, by the grace of Allah, he had reached paradise. And the whole of paradise was decorated with millions of lights and flowers everywhere – some celebration was going on – with great music. He inquired, “What is going on?”They replied, “This is God’s birthday and we are celebrating it. You have come at the right time.”So he stands underneath a tree to see what is happening because a great procession had started moving on the road. A man was sitting on a horse. He inquired, “Who is that man?” and they replied, “Don’t you know him? He is Hazrat Mohammed.”Millions and millions of people were behind him and he asked, “Who are these people?”The reply was, “They are Mohammedans, followers of Mohammed.”Then came Jesus, with millions following him. Then came Krishna on his golden chariot and again millions were following him. And so on and so forth. The procession continued, continued, continued.Finally, in the end, an old man came on an old donkey, with no one behind him; he was just alone. Looking at this man, Farid started laughing. It was hilarious. No one was following him and why should he be riding on his donkey? He asked, “Who are you, sir? I have seen Mohammed, Christ, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha. Who are you? You look like a kind of joke. No one is following you.”The old man was very sad and replied, “Yes, I am God. This is my birthday. But some people have become Mohammedans, some have become Christians, some have become Jews, some have become Hindus – there is no one left to be with me.”Out of shock, Farid woke up. He said to his disciples the next day, “Now I am no longer a Mohammedan. The dream I had has been a great revelation. Now I am no longer part of any organized religion. I am simply myself. I would like to be with God, at least one person will follow him.”If you have a certain idea of God, you will not be able to see it. Your very idea will become a barrier. Drop all ideas that you have gathered from without; only then can you go within.You say: “It is like looking down a well at night. I see reflections and I think it is the bottom, but it is only the surface. Even when I know I need only let it wait, rather than look for anything…”True, stick with that insight. If you are looking for something you will not be able to see because the very idea of looking for something means that you have an idea of what you are looking for. To look for something is a kind of blindness.Seeing happens only when you are not looking for anything in particular; you are just there, open, available. So whatever is, is revealed. Don’t look for godliness if you want to see it. Just wait – let and wait. Godliness is a happening. If you are silent, open, loving, conscious toward your own being, it is going to happen. Any moment, when you are in the right tuning with existence, it will happen.Godliness is there, you are there; just right tuning. That’s what I am teaching you: right tuning. Dropping all ideologies helps you to be rightly tuned. Once you are in tune with existence – that is bliss. You have come home.The second question:Osho,Is it time that I should become a sannyasin?It is already late! You have already waited too long. I have known you for years, you have known me for years. What are you waiting for? The meeting should happen now. And still you are asking, “Is it time that I should become a sannyasin?”Are you dead? If you have any life in you, then this is the time. Now is the time. Remember Kabir – just the other day Kabir was saying: “Now, wake up.” Wake up in the now, wake up here! Don’t postpone.Branigan was driving down the road. By the way the car weaved in and out of traffic, you could tell that he was pickled to the gills.“Where do you think you’re going?” asked the motorcycle cop who finally stopped him.“I’m coming home – hic – from a New Year’s Eve party!”“Are you kidding?” asked the cop. “New Year’s was three weeks ago!”“I know,” said Branigan. “That’s why I figured I better be getting home now.”Isn’t it time to be getting home now? You have waited already too long, too many lives. Sannyas is nothing but a passionate jump into the inquiry for the truth, a passionate search from where we come, where we’re going and who we are. That’s what sannyas is all about.But you seem to be almost in a kind of sleep; that’s how everyone is. The worldly dreams still seem to be important to you, hence the question. The world still seems to intoxicate you; money, power, prestige, are still haunting you. You cannot be a sannyasin unless you are utterly frustrated with the world. Remember, I am not teaching escapism from the world. I teach transcendence, not escape. Be in the world, but don’t be of it.A sannyasin is a person who lives in the world, but lives meditatively – and meditation creates a distance. You can go on doing all kinds of things, but you don’t become intoxicated, you don’t become identified with them. To live in awareness, without any intoxication with money, power, prestige, is the way of the sannyasin.Hallihan and Flannigan were having a few at a new tavern in town. After an hour of heavy imbibing, Hallihan asked the bartender for the washroom.“Go to the door, left of the elevator,” said the barkeeper, “then walk down two steps and there you are.”Hallihan forgot to turn left. He opened the elevator door, took one step and fell down the shaft.Ten minutes later, Flannigan followed Hallihan and saw him lying at the bottom of the shaft.“Look out for the second step,” shouted up Hallihan. “It’s a son of a bitch!”You have taken many second steps, many, many times. You have fallen many, many times. Aren’t you frustrated yet? Aren’t you finished with the world yet? Are you still carrying some hope deep down in your heart? Are you still expecting that the world is going to deliver something to you? It has never happened – it hasn’t happened to anyone. And it is not going to happen to you.The world only promises, it never delivers the goods. That’s its illusoriness and that’s why in the East we call it maya. Maya does not mean that it is not there. It is very much there, but it only promises. It never gives anything.I have heard a story…A man worshipped for many, many years – he must have tortured God as much as possible. Every morning, afternoon, evening he cried and wept, prayed and prayed. Finally, God had to appear and said, “What do you want? Be finished! Just take it and forgive and forget all about me.”The man said, “I want something; a power, so that whatever I need is immediately fulfilled.”So God gave him a box, a golden box – exactly like the magic box that I give to you – and said to him, “Whenever you are in need you can ask. Whatever you ask, the box will immediately give it to you.”The man forgot all about God, he even forgot to thank him. God waited a little, but the man was no longer interested in him. He was looking at the box and started asking, “Give me ten thousand rupees!” Suddenly ten thousand rupees appeared and he was very happy.And it continued. Whatever he wanted came out of the box. One day, a sadhu – a wandering monk – stayed with the man. The sadhu, the wandering monk, also had a box – bigger than the man’s – exactly the same shape. The man became interested. He said, “What is this?”The sadhu said, “This is a magic box. You ask anything and it gives you double.”“Double?” The man asked, “If I ask ten thousand rupees,” he said, “it gives twenty thousand!”He fell at the feet of the monk and said, “You are a monk, you have renounced the world – can’t you exchange? I have a small box. It gives only whatever you ask.”So they changed the boxes. It was late at night, so the man thought, “In the morning I will try out this new box.” In the morning he tried; he asked for ten thousand rupees.The box said, “Why not twenty thousand?”The man replied, “Okay, twenty thousand.”The box said, “Why not forty thousand?”And the man said, “Okay, forty thousand.”And the box said, “Why not eighty thousand?”Then he became afraid because nothing was coming out. He rushed to see the monk, but he had left; he had disappeared in the night.In the East, we have called the world “maya,” illusory. It is like that box of the monk. You ask anything and it says, “Okay, you can have double.” But it never delivers any goods; it only promises. The world is almost like the politicians – they promise but they never fulfill.Aren’t you finished yet? Haven’t you seen it happening many times? Each time you are living an illusion, hoping, dreaming and sooner or later disillusion comes in, frustration comes in. But rather than seeing the reality of this world, you immediately jump on another illusion and immediately start dreaming again.Sannyas is seeing the reality of the world; that it never fulfills, that it cannot fulfill, that it is beyond its capacity to fulfill. One turns in. We have been beggars begging from this and that door. When one turns in, begging disappears and one becomes an emperor. Then all is yours.You needn’t even ask for it. It is simply yours. This whole existence is yours. Its whole beauty, its whole splendor, its starry nights, its sunsets and sunrises, its flowers and birds – all is yours. Not in the sense that you possess it, but in the sense that you can enjoy it.A sannyasin learns how to enjoy; the worldly man learns only how to possess. Remember these two things, they are basic. The worldly man only thinks of how to possess more. He never enjoys because he is concerned with possessing more and more and more. The sannyasin enjoys. Whatever he has he enjoys. And he enjoys the whole existence which need not be possessed.Do you think that first you have to possess the starry night in order to enjoy it? Do you think that first you have to possess all the birds in order to enjoy their songs? This existence need not be possessed. And you can still enjoy. It is yours if you want to enjoy, it is not yours if you want to possess. To possess it is aggressive; it is aggression on existence. To enjoy it is prayerful.The last question:Osho,Will you recognize me at the final judgment day?It all depends on you. Remember to be in orange and with the mala because it is going to be difficult to recognize you. Just think of all the men and women that have existed. They will all be there. There is going to be much difficulty in recognizing people, so just remember that thing.A timid, conservative, unmarried shopkeeper suddenly came into a small fortune. Overnight, this mild-mannered, mincing little man had all the money he could possibly use.Bravely he snapped his fingers, clicked his heels and decided to become a swinger. He bought expensive, mod clothes, had his hair styled, rented a lavish beach villa in Florida and got a dark, virile tan.Driving home from the Rolls Royce dealer in his new car, wearing his flashiest sports clothes and swingiest sunglasses, he was suddenly struck dead by a lightning bolt. Right there in the Florida sun – a fatal lightning bolt.Up at the pearly gates, the shopkeeper angrily faced Saint Peter. “Why would you pick on me like that? I have been a good man all my life. The Lord has always watched over me.”“He was trying to watch over you,” explained Saint Peter. “He just didn’t recognize you.”So please remember, don’t forget it. Be in orange and with the mala so that I can recognize you.But why are you worried about the Last Judgment Day? I teach you about the immediate and you ask about the Last Judgment Day. I teach you that the immediate is the ultimate and you ask about the Last Judgment Day. In reality there is no day which can be the last. The world never begins, never ends. It is a continuum.Secondly, the very word judgment is ugly. God is not a judge, God is a lover – and the lover cannot be a judge. Jesus said to his disciples, “Judge ye not.” Why? – the moment you judge you start destroying the other. Who are you to judge? The moment you judge you start comparing. And who are you to compare?Each individual is unique; each individual brings variety to existence. The world will not be better if there are only saints, saints, saints. It will be a very boring world if there are only saints, saints, saints. The sinners also contribute something. They make it a little salty, they bring a little taste to life.God is not a judge, he is a lover – and how can love judge? Be assured that in the eyes of God there is no sinner, no saint. In the eyes of God all are alike. When his sun rises, it rises for the sinners too, as much as for the saints. When his roses bloom, they give their fragrance to the saints as much as the sinners. No distinction is ever made. Just simple observation will show you that existence makes no distinctions. All right and wrong, all good and bad, are human creations, are man-made concepts and ideas.Each society has created its own ideas of good and bad – and they go on changing. They are utilitarian, remember. One thing can be a sin in one society and may not be a sin in another society. The same thing can be a great virtue in one society and may be thought just the opposite in another society.If a person beats his own body so that blood oozes out, what will you call him? Will you call him a saint or a sinner? It depends. There has been a Christian sect that believes in beating your body so that blood comes out and the more blood you can bring out of your body, the greater a saint you are.In Russia, before Communism, there was a sect, a great sect of Christians, who used to cut off their genital organs. Women used to cut off their breasts. And they were thought to be great saints. What do you think about them? – you will think them pathological, mentally ill, deranged.There are ideas and ideas, but all ideas are human. Don’t be worried. There are people who are worried about small things – they have been made to worry. Someone smokes and is afraid that he will be thrown in hell. If you have smoked too much, one thing is certain, that you will not be sent to hell because there is too much smoke there and you have already done it to yourself.Smoking may be bad for your health, but is not a sin. You cannot be thrown in hell for smoking. But there are people who think even drinking tea… In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, drinking tea was a sin. If you were caught drinking tea, there was a great fuss about it. Mahatma Gandhi might have gone for a three-day fast to purify his soul and his disciples’ souls because people are drinking tea.Down the ages Buddhist monks have been drinking tea. Tea is part of their meditation – and there seems to be something in it because tea has some chemicals which can keep you awake more easily. It can be a help in meditation. If you are trying to be alert, tea can be a help.In fact, tea was discovered by Buddhist monks. It is their discovery because it was discovered in a monastery in China called Ta. That’s why it is called tea. That “ta” can be pronounced also as “cha.” That’s why in Marathi it is called “cha” and in Hindi it is called “chai.” But it is from the monastery of Ta. The man who is reputed to have grown the first tea plants was no other than Bodhidharma, the great Bodhidharma. The story is beautiful…He was meditating – and such a meditator happens only once in a while. For nine years he sat facing the wall – just the wall. Nine years looking at the wall and doing nothing else. Naturally, sometimes he used to fall asleep. If you look at the wall that long, what else is there to do? He didn’t want to go to sleep, so he tore off his eyelids and eyelashes and threw them away – so now there was no way he could close his eyes. The story is that out of those eyelids, those pieces of skin and the eyelashes, the first tea plant grew.This is a beautiful story. It simply says one thing: that tea can keep you awake. It will not allow you and your eyes to close.Buddhists drink tea with religious ritual. In Japan, they have tea ceremonies. Tea is not an ordinary thing for them because it keeps you awake and gives you energy to remain more alert. They have made a very prayerful, graceful ritual out of it: the tea ceremony. In each Zen monastery there is a separate tea temple – the most beautiful place – maybe surrounded by a lake, rocks, sand, trees. When you enter the temple, you have to enter in a certain manner, you have to sit there in a certain posture, and it takes hours.The tea will be prepared, the samovar will start humming and everyone will sit in silence listening to the humming of the samovar. Slowly, the fragrance of the tea will reach your nostrils and you have to drink that too. The tea is served – with great grace, with great beauty, art. It is served in beautiful cups, handmade with great love and care. Everyone starts sipping the tea. It is done very prayerfully and everyone remains silent, no gossiping, no chattering – as if there is no one. They bow down to each other with great respect and disperse without saying a word.In one country, tea is so religious, so spiritual; in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram it was a sin. It depends. These are all human ideas. You shouldn’t be worried about these things.My message is simple. Live alert, spontaneously, totally. Forget all about the Last Judgment Day. I recognize you today and that’s enough. Today is enough unto itself.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I am a scientist working on the question of how life originated from nonliving matter. It seems to me that this study of how nonlife is transformed into living matter is vital to understanding the relationship of science to religion. The reason is that the study is a clue to how our emotions and spirituality developed in the first place. What do you think?Religion and science are diametrically opposite. And because they are diametrically opposite they are complementaries. Religion cannot support science, science cannot support religion. They are bound to oppose each other. In their very opposition is their complementariness. Hence, anything that science is going to discover is of no value to religion. In fact, each scientific discovery makes the existence of religion more and more difficult.Science tries to demystify existence, hence the question “How?” How did life arise out of matter? Religion is basically a different approach. It does not want to demystify existence; its whole approach is to reveal the mystery of it. It is not a search for the answer. It is diving deep into the question itself. It does not ask any questions; it takes life for granted. The question is not how life arose. The question is how life should be lived, the question is how life should be celebrated.The scientific question will be, “What is love? How does love arise? What is the causality?” The religious question will be how to drown yourself in love; how to be in love: how to be love itself?Science will come to certain clues; those clues look stupid in the eyes of a mystic. If you ask about love, science will answer with something which is nothing but chemistry: hormones, chemicals. The grandeur and the splendor of love are reduced – reduced to a very mundane world. What does love have to do with chemistry? Love certainly has something to do with alchemy, but nothing to do with chemistry. It is a transforming force, but it cannot be reduced to hormones.Life cannot be reduced to any answer. Once life is reduced to a certain answer it becomes meaningless, it is no longer worth living. It’s like coming across a lotus flower. The poet will enjoy the beauty of it, he will not be bothered where it comes from. He will simply enjoy the fragrance, the color, the sun shining over it, the dewdrops on the lotus petals. The mystic will dance around it because he is not seeing only the lotus flower, he is seeing something of the transcendental in it. Hidden behind the lotus – its beauty, its splendor, its majesty, its magic – are the hands of God. The mystic not only feels the roseflower or the lotus, he also feels the mysterious presence of the unknown force called “God” surrounding it, protecting it, caring for it, caressing it.The poet simply sees the lotus, the mystic goes beyond; he goes higher. He takes the roseflower or the lotus to the ultimate peak. And the scientist? – he thinks about where it comes from. It comes from the mud. The scientist will start moving deeper and deeper into the mud. He will start inquiring about the mud and the elements that are in the mud.Just look at these three approaches. The scientist goes lower than the lotus, the mystic goes higher than the lotus, the poet remains with the lotus. In the ultimate analysis, the scientist will think that the lotus is nothing but mud – a form of mud – and the mystic will think the lotus is nothing but a manifestation of God. And for the poet, a lotus is simply a lotus. Now, how can these three approaches meet?The mystic cannot agree with the scientist. In fact, the mystic will think that the scientist is destroying something tremendously important. By all his logical answers, objective answers, he is destroying the subjectivity of the lotus. The mystic may agree a little bit with the poet, but only a little bit, not the whole way. He will nod to the poet. He will say, “You are on the right track, you have taken the first step, but don’t get stuck there – go on. The lotus is not enough. You have to find the face of God in the lotus and if you cannot find the face of God in the lotus, where else are you going to find it?”Your question is important – but don’t remain in this confusion that if you can find some clue as to how matter becomes life, you will be bringing some understanding between religion and science. You will be talking about mud. The poet will not be convinced by you because he knows the lotus. What to say about the mystic? – he will simply feel pity for you.Everything can either be reduced to its beginnings – that’s what science goes on doing – or it can be raised to the ultimate peak; that’s what the work of religion is. Poetry is just the bridge between the two. The poetic approach is in a way closer to both science and religion. If you really want to understand religion, you have taken the wrong route.Religion doesn’t think that life needs any answers. Life needs to be lived in its totality, it needs to be celebrated. Life needs to be penetrated – that is the only way to know it. Not in the lab, not going deep into the life cells, not by analyzing the elements; those are constituents of life, but life is more than the sum total of its parts.Someone is playing beautiful music on a guitar. The scientist will become interested in the guitar, not in the music. He will think, “Where is the music coming from?” He may become interested in the fingers of the musician and in the instrument. He will analyze the instrument and will find some wood, some strings, this and that – but that is not music. If he analyses the fingers of the musician, he will find some blood, some bones, skin – but that is not music. Music is something more. The hands of the musician and the guitar are simply an opportunity for the beyond to descend to the earth.The poet will listen to the music. He will not be worried about the musician and the musical instrument. He will be drunk with the music. But the mystic will dance with abandon because in music he will hear the ultimate music. The poet will forget about the musician and the instrument; the mystic will even forget about the music because it reminds him of something deep in his own being. It reminds him of what Kabir calls the music of soham – I am that. He will forget all that is happening outside; it has triggered a process in his being. He is transported into another world.If you really have any interest in religion, you will have to meditate – analysis won’t help, scientific investigation won’t help. Remember, I am not against scientific investigation. If you are interested in it, do it. But know perfectly well that it is not going to bridge science and religion. They cannot be bridged. There is no need to bridge them either. They have different functions to fulfill. There is no need to create a synthesis between them because the synthesis will impoverish both, it will not enrich.Existence remains alive through the tension of the polar opposites: the negative and the positive, man and woman, birth and death, darkness and light, love and hate – religion and science. These are the polar opposites. Life needs them. Without them life will become a stagnant pool, it will not be a dialectical process anymore. Life is dialectics. It moves through the thesis and the antithesis, and again the synthesis becomes a thesis and creates antithesis. That’s how life goes on progressing.Religion and science don’t need to be synthesized. They need to be purified. Science should be pure science, utterly scientific; religion should be pure religion, utterly mystic.I would like to remind you of a great statement by a Christian mystic, Tertullian. Someone asked him, “Why do you believe in God?” He replied, “Credo quia absurdum – I believe in God because he is absurd.”Now, what kind of answer is this? This is the answer of a mystic, not the answer of a scientist. The scientist will try to prove, he will answer why he believes; he will argue. But Tertullian simply says, “Because God is absurd, hence I believe. I believe in the mysterious, in the miraculous, in the unanswerable, in the unknowable.”If you have any interest in religion… And you can be both. I am not saying that a man who is a scientist cannot be religious – a man who is a scientist can be religious, but he will have to create a dialectics in his own being. He will have to be very conscious. When he is working in the lab, he has to forget all about religion; religion should not interfere in his scientific work. When he leaves the lab and sits in his meditation chamber, he should forget all about analysis, experimentation, observation. There he should be a lover, in prayer, in meditation.A scientist can be both. My approach is that I would like many, many people to be both scientists and religious. If a person can be all three, that is my vision of a real, true sannyasin: a scientist, a poet, a mystic. In him humanity will have blossomed to its ultimate possibilities. His potential will have been transformed into actuality. He will have blossomed in all possible ways. He will be a multidimensional man.To be a scientist does not mean that you have to be a physicist, a chemist, this and that. To be a scientist means having a scientific approach. There are problems which can be tackled only by science. When someone comes to me with an illness, I tell him to go to Navanit, Darshan, Amrit, Hamid – go to the doctors. Your illness needs a scientific approach.In India, people who are ill go to the saints for their blessings and the East has remained ill, poor because of this nonsense. If you are poor, don’t go to the saints. Go to the technologists, go to the scientists, go to the economists. Inquire, “Why are we poor?” But you go to the saints and inquire, “Why are we poor?” You are foolish and so are your saints. They answer you, tell why you are poor. They have to because when you question them they cannot show their ignorance. They tell you that it is because you have committed so many sins in your past lives; that’s why you are suffering. If you ask a foolish question, you will get a foolish answer.Go to the scientist when it is a question about the material world. If you have fallen in love, don’t go to a scientist – avoid him. Even if he meets you on the way, escape because he will destroy your whole love. He will say, “It is all nonsense. It is just the attraction between female and male hormones. Don’t be befooled. Those hormones are deceiving you.” Don’t go to the scientist. Don’t go to the scientist if you want to kiss your woman. He will say, “This is dangerous. All kinds of infections are possible. Millions of germs are transferred in a single kiss.” He will make you so afraid that even if you kiss, you will not be totally there in it. You will start carrying Dettol and things like that with you – so kiss and wash immediately or before you kiss, wash. Don’t go to the scientist when you are in love. Go to the poet. He knows about love.And when you want to know the ultimate mystery, the poet cannot be of much help either; he remains on the surface. When you want to know the ultimate mystery, go to a mystic, become a disciple of a master because those secrets can only be imbibed in deep trust, surrender, love.The second question:Osho,Today you said that to be constant is to be stupid. The truth cannot change; it remains forever constant. Now what?I haven’t said that to be constant is to be stupid. I certainly said to be consistent is the way of the mediocre mind, the stupid mind. But don’t you see the difference between being constant and being consistent?Consistency is a logical phenomenon. When I say, “Don’t be consistent, I mean you need not remain confined to your past.” That’s what consistency is. You have done something today; tomorrow life will change and you have to repeat the same thing to be consistent. Tomorrow will not be today, today is not your yesterday. The answers that were adequate yesterday are no longer adequate today. Consistency means that it is always yesterday and that has to dominate, it is always the past that has to dominate the present. That’s what I mean by “consistency.” You will never grow because your youth has to be consistent with your childhood and your old age has to be consistent with your youth – that means you will remain childish your whole life.That’s how people are. The average mental age of human beings is only twelve years. This is what happens if you enforce consistency. In childhood, a few answers were given to you; they were good for the time being, but only for the time being. Any more than that you would not have understood. But as you grow, those answers become out of date, those answers become confinements, imprisonments; they become chains. You have to constantly throw them away, so that you can remain fresh, so that you can respond to reality as it is.But this is how it goes on happening. I say one thing, you understand something else. I say one thing, you hear something totally different. Your minds are so full of your own thoughts that I say, “Don’t be consistent,” and you hear, “Don’t be constant.”Pasquel was being examined for naturalization as a US citizen. “Who is the President of the United States?” The foreigner answered correctly.“And the Vice President?” Again he gave the right answer.“Could you be President?”“No, no!”“Why not?”“I am-a too busy. I work-a in the barbershop all-a day now.”Now, his own occupation… He says, “No, no! I am-a too busy. I work-a in the barbershop all-a day now.”You have heard something which I have not said. Your question has come out of your own idea. You know, at least you believe you know, that the truth cannot change. Who told you? And how do you know? Do you know truth? You have heard it being said to you that truth never changes; it remains forever constant. Is it your experience? Have you known anything in life which always remains constant? Have you known anything – I say – in life, which remains constant?If you look at life, everything is changing. If you watch life, then Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice because the river is constantly flowing, changing. Old Heraclitus says, “The only thing that never changes is change.” Only change is constant, otherwise everything is changing.In fact, life is not a noun but a verb. If one day we want to be really scientific about our language, we will have to drop all nouns. A really scientific language will consist only of verbs. You see these trees all around and you think, “Beautiful trees.” But to call a tree “a tree” is not true because a tree is not something static – it is a movement. By the time you utter the word tree it has changed. It is no longer the same tree about which you were talking. One dead leaf has fallen, a new leaf is just growing, a bud is opening. Each moment, the tree is growing higher. Otherwise how is it going to grow?To be exactly true, it is better to call it “treeing” rather than “a tree.” But we even call a river “a river” – a river is a rivering. It is a constant change. Life is not really life but only living – there is no life as such but only living. Our languages give us a very wrong notion of the world. There is nothing like love, but loving.Always remember, we have to use nouns because otherwise it will be very difficult to explain things to each other. For centuries we have used nouns. But whenever you use the word love, remember it is “loving.” It is a process. It is not a thing, constant.If you have loved, you will know that the morning has one color, the afternoon has another color; by the evening it is a totally different phenomenon. Sometimes the river is very deep and sometimes it is very shallow. Sometimes it makes much noise, sometimes it is very silent. So is love. Sometimes it is sad, sometimes it is a rejoicing. It changes its moods constantly. So the only constant thing is change. But you say, “The truth cannot change…”Who has ordained that truth cannot change? What do you mean by it? Have you known anything in life that never changes? The child becomes the young man, the young man becomes the old man and the old man is gone one day – dust unto dust. You go on seeing that everything is constant change, but there seems to be a fear deep down in the human heart. The fear is death. If change is there, death is bound to happen. Change brings death in.So we want to believe in something permanent, absolutely permanent. It may be truth, it may be godliness, it may be soul, but something is needed for the fearful heart to cling to, so that death can be defied. At least one can believe, “There is something permanent in which I can have a shelter, which can become my security.”Do you know truth? Do you know godliness? Do you know the soul? – no, you know only death; that which happens every moment, all around. But we go on defying death. We don’t want to look at it because it reminds us that we are going to die. We would like something that remains forever and forever. We would like to be part of it, so that we can also remain forever and forever.But what is permanent in you? Your body changes. You can ask medical science; your body changes constantly. Just ten years ago they used to think that the body changes totally every seven years. It becomes completely new, not even a single cell remains of the old. Further research has shown that the body changes totally in one year. The body is continuously renewing itself.That’s why when you cut your hair and your nails it does not hurt – why? The hair is part of your body, the nails too; you are cutting them and it doesn’t hurt? The reason is that your hair is not alive. These are the dead cells of the body that are being thrown out. The nails are just dead cells being thrown out of the body to make place for new ones to happen. That’s why it doesn’t hurt if you cut them. In a single year, your body is no longer the same.Buddha used to say, again and again, that life is like a flame. You burn a candle: you light it in the evening and it burns the whole night. In the morning you are just going to put it out – a question can be asked of you: “Is it the same flame you lit in the evening that you are putting out now?” In a sense it is the same flame because it continued burning the whole night. In truth it is not the same flame because the flame has been constantly changing, becoming smoke and a new flame is replacing it. The replacement is so quick that the old flame changing into smoke and the new coming into existence is so fast that there is no gap between the two – hence you cannot see it, hence you cannot see that it is not the same flame. Then Buddha had to invent a new idea.The scientists now call it “continuum,” “continuity.” It is neither the same nor not the same, it is a continuity, a continuum. Buddha calls it santati – the first flame gives birth to another and that gives birth to another, and so on and so forth. One flame goes on giving birth to another. The whole night the birth process continues. So it comes into the same line, but it is not the same. You cannot say that it is different, you cannot say it is the same. In a sense it is different, in a sense it is the same.Have you known anything in life which is really permanent? Anything? Your body changes, your mind changes continuously, your emotions go on changing. What truth are you talking about?Yes, there is one truth which never changes, but that has to be experienced. Don’t take it as a belief. That truth is not something outside of you, that truth is hidden in you – that truth is your capacity to witness. Only the witness never changes, everything else goes on changing. There is a consciousness inside you that goes on watching and watching all the changes – childhood comes and goes, youth comes and goes, old age comes and goes – and there is a witness inside who is simply watching.All meditation is nothing but an effort to know this witness. There is no God outside of you who is permanent, never changing; there is no truth outside of you which is forever. Yes, there is a certain reality inside you, at the deepest core of your being… But to find it you will have to go deep in meditation. When all thoughts disappear, all desires are gone. And when there is nothing to witness, you become aware of the witness. Then witnessing turns upon itself. Having nothing else to see, it starts seeing itself. If something remains there as an object, it remains focused on the object. Meditation is a process of taking all objects away from you; all contents of the mind are to be taken away. Slowly, slowly one day… The interval, the gap – sudden emptiness. When there is nothing to see, no content to focus on, the miracle happens. The witnessing energy, finding nothing else to obstruct it, turns in a circle back upon itself. This is what Jesus calls “metanoia,” which has been wrongly translated as repent. It should be translated as return, not repent. It should be translated as revolution, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn – and suddenly you see yourself. This witness has no name. It is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan, it is neither man nor woman. It is just pure consciousness.Yes, this pure consciousness is absolutely the same; except this, everything else changes. When I was talking to you about consistency, I wasn’t talking about the witness. I was talking about your ideologies, your knowledge, your experiences. They all have to be dropped every day. Die every day to the past, so you can remain fresh, so that you can respond to the reality as it is in the moment, not according to the past.Listening to me, be alert, be very alert about each single word; otherwise, I will say one thing and you will understand something else. You will go on thinking that I have said it.Some cats are having themselves a little jam session. They are really wailing. Pretty soon they hear a knock on the door. One of them opens up and the owner of the building is standing there. “I am sorry to burst in on you like this,” said the landlord, “but do you know there is a sick old lady moaning upstairs?“No,” said the cat, “but if you give us the first few bars we can pick up on it.”The third question:Osho,What is important?It depends on you. If you ask me, it is all the same. You can say that everything is important, or you can say nothing is important. Both mean the same.Everything is ordinary, or everything is extraordinary. Whatever you want to choose, whichever word appeals to you – everything is important, everything, not excluding anything at all; or nothing is important. Both mean the same because the moment everything is important, or everything is not important, the very word important loses meaning. The meaning remains only if there are some things which are important and some things which are not important. A few ordinary things and a few extraordinary things. Then the word carries meaning. But if everything is exactly important or unimportant, the word loses meaning. My own suggestion is that you can choose either because the ultimate result will be the same.If you have a negative mind, the Buddhist answer will be perfectly right. Buddha says, “Nothing is important.” There is nothing to make any fuss about. When hungry, eat; when thirsty, drink; when sleepy, sleep – nothing is important. This will give you a kind of relaxedness, a calmness. Nothing is important, so whether you succeed or fail, it is all the same. Whether you become famous or notorious, it is all the same; whether anyone knows you or no one knows you doesn’t matter. It will give you a very relaxed, still, tranquil state of being. That is the purpose.Or you can choose Shankara’s answer. He says, “Everything is important because all is God, even the dust is divine.” That too is perfectly right. You can choose that. Then too, when hungry, eat because it is important; when thirsty, drink because it is important; when sleepy, sleep because God is feeling sleepy – the God within you.These are the two answers, the basic answers: positive and negative. Just watch your own mind, whichever appeals to you. There are people who are basically attracted toward the positive, or toward the negative. Feel your own attraction, what attracts you more. Whichever attracts you more, that can become your path. No can become your path, yes can become your path.Kabir’s path is that of yes. Buddha’s path is that of no. But, really, yes and no are not significant. What is significant is totality. If you say yes with your total being, it is the totality that liberates. If you say no with totality, it is the totality that liberates. It all depends on you.There are not things labeled as important and other things labeled as unimportant. A roseflower may be important to a poet and may be utterly unimportant to someone who is only interested in money. For him, a note, a hundred-rupee note, is more important. He will ask, “What is the use of a roseflower?” In fact, he will be very worried why people go on singing songs about roseflowers. “Why don’t they sing songs about hundred-rupee notes?”When I was at university I had a colleague who was really a money maniac; his whole interest was money. Even with someone else’s hundred-rupee note, he would take it in his hand and would touch it with such love – that you may not have even touched your woman with that love – with such care, with such tender hands, as if the note was alive. His eyes would shine; candles would burn in his eyes when he saw a note. Even if it was someone else’s note. A note is a note. His whole thinking was money. How to have more money?And then there is the one about the shipwrecked Englishman… As he gets out of the water onto the beach of a remote island, he is greeted by another man standing in the shade of a palm tree. “Pleased to meet you,” says he, and then inquires, “Eton?”“Yes,” responds the new arrival.“Oxford?”“Yes.”“Guards?”“Yes.”“Homosexual?”“No.”“Pity!”It depends on you what is important. How can I say what is important? To me, nothing is and everything is.The fourth question:Osho,What to do with the feeling of helplessness at the frustration in finding that nothing is ultimately satisfying – all is not enough?If this is your own experience, the question won’t arise – then how can you ask the question? The question arises out of some lingering hope somewhere in the unconscious, “Maybe there is a way to make it still. Maybe I have not tried enough, maybe I have not put my energy totally in it. Hence it is not satisfying.” But if you yourself have felt that nothing is ultimately satisfying, if this is your experience, how can the question arise? It is so.In that very experiencing, in that very understanding, you will be relaxed. Why ask that anything should be ultimately satisfying? Why not be satisfied with whatever life gives you? Even if it is only for the moment. Why be greedy? You seem to be very greedy. You seem to be of that old, rotten type of spiritual person – greedy. He wants everything forever and ever. If he falls in love with a woman, he wants her to remain the same age forever and ever. He himself will be growing old – that is another thing. But the woman has to remain young.It is these greedy people who have created the ideas of paradise, firdaus. In their paradise, women never grow old. All women in paradise are stuck at the age of sixteen. Must be getting tired… For millions and millions of years stuck at sixteen. But it says nothing about the men. It may be because the scriptures are written by men. If women were writing scriptures, they would write something else and men will be stuck somewhere at eighteen.The same people who go on condemning all kinds of things here, go on promising the same things a thousandfold, for eternity, in paradise. What kind of logic is this? Alcohol is prohibited here by the Mohammedans, but in their firdaus, in their paradise, rivers of alcohol flow – rivers! You need not go to a pub; you need not only drink, you can swim, you can dive.This is strange – but not really. The greedy mind is there. The greedy mind is ready to sacrifice the momentary joy of being in a pub, of drinking a little bit, for the ultimate joy of drinking and drinking forever.These same religious people who go on condemning the feminine body – all the religions have committed that crime – simply show one thing: that the people who were writing those scriptures were deeply sexually repressed people. It shows nothing else. It says nothing about the women, it simply shows something about the scripture writers; that they were deeply repressed people. They were afraid of women.Here they are afraid and here they go on telling everyone, “Beware. The woman is the door to hell!” And the same people provide you with beautiful women in heaven – the most beautiful. Do you know that in paradise women don’t perspire, they don’t need deodorants? Their bodies have a perfume of flowers – a natural perfume, not created by some artificially manufactured perfume. Just naturally like flowers – roses. Their bodies are made of gold. What greed! What are you going to do with a woman whose body is made of gold? You will be stuck. But the greed, the greedy mind fantasizing…All these scriptures are pornographic. This is real spiritual pornography: women with bodies of gold, studded with diamonds, no perspiration, natural perfume; all beautiful and always young.A great saint died and by coincidence his greatest disciple also died a few hours later. The greatest disciple was very excited about seeing his master again. He was thinking on the way. “It’s a long journey from the earth to paradise. My master must have been received by angels playing on their harps and beautiful women dancing. He must have been given the most beautiful women because he was such a great saint, such an ascetic. When he was on the earth, he never touched any woman. What to say about touching? He had never allowed any woman to enter his house. He had never seen any woman face-to-face. If he had to talk to a woman, he would always look downward or would keep his eyes closed. What great austerities he went through. Now he must be being rewarded.”When he reached, he saw his master – and, really, he was rewarded. He was sitting under a tree, a beautiful golden tree, with emerald leaves and diamond flowers – and Marilyn Monroe, hugging him, utterly naked. The disciple fell at the feet of the master and said, “My great master, I was waiting for this. This was due. You have been rewarded well.”The master replied, “You stupid fool. Keep your big mouth shut. Haven’t you grown at all. You don’t understand anything. She is not my reward – I am her punishment!”But these greedy people… If you know from your own experience that all is ultimately frustrating and that everything only brings joy for the moment, then why not be happy with the moment? Why ask that it should be there forever?I teach you the joy of the moment. Live in the moment and whatever the moment makes available, enjoy it, celebrate it. While it lasts, dance. When it has gone, be grateful that it had come. Why ask, “…nothing is ultimately satisfying – all is not enough?” Nothing can be done about it. This is so. This is how reality is and reality is not going to change its ultimate law for you. No one can be an exception.But if this experience has not yet become your own, you will have to suffer a little more. You will have to hope a little more. When understanding arises, hope disappears. That does not mean that one becomes hopeless. That simply means that one accepts life as it is; whatever it gives, one accepts with gratitude and with no complaint.In order to get a job with the railroad, Angelo had to pass a test. “Suppose two trains were heading for each other at a hundred miles per hour on the same track,” asked the personnel manager, “what would you do?”“I take-a the red flag and wave-a them to e-stop,” Angelo answered.“But you don’t have a red flag,” pointed out the man.“Then I am-a take-a the switch iron and change-a the tracks.”“You don’t have a switch iron either.”“Well, in that case,” decided the Italian, “I’m gonna call up-a my wife, Maria.”“What has your wife got to do with two trains coming at each other at a hundred miles an hour?” exclaimed the man in charge of hiring.“I tell-a her to come down ‘cos she has-a gone see the biggest-a mess-a in the whole world!”You can do whatever you can do and when nothing can be done, it is better to call the wife and see – and enjoy it. Learn to enjoy not only the pleasures of life but the pains too, not only the ecstasies but the agonies too. The person who can enjoy the agonies is liberated.The fifth question:Osho,During the two months that I have been here, I often feel the threat of a new kind of totalitarianism. It is continually presented as the solution: be total in this and that, even in not being total. Being total, without any fragmentation, isn't that a final state; the last stage on the way? Isn't this adage creating a new ideal with all its frustrations and neurosis to follow? Anyway, for me, not being a superman, it is very rare that I am able to do, to exist, to feel myself total in anything. And I have no reason to hope that it will ever happen as a continuous state. Since it seems to be the condition for the things that are promised here, is there still any hope for me?Totality is simply a vision of seeing life in a different light. It is not a goal. It is not perfectionism. For example, you are angry. You can be halfheartedly angry, then the remaining part that has not been expressed will remain in you as a poison.If again and again this has been done, you will go on accumulating poison in yourself. A moment comes when you may not be particularly angry, but you are still angry for no reason at all. That’s how people are – they are just angry, illogically angry because right now there is no reason to be angry, but all the anger that they have repressed in the past has accumulated. It has gone deep into their bloodstream, has poisoned them, has become toxic. It has created a certain musculature, a wrong kind of musculature in their bodies. And that is going to destroy many, many beautiful things in their lives.If such a man sees a sunset, he will not see any beauty in it. He is in such a rage. If such a man listens to music, he will not be able to listen to it because to be able to listen to great music, you need a relaxed state. He cannot relax. He is carrying so many tensions, the whole of life’s accumulated tensions.When I say be total I simply mean… I am not giving you a superhuman ideal. I am simply giving you a very human vision that when you are angry, be angry. Don’t repress it. If it is too risky to be angry with someone, go in your room and be angry alone, but express it. Beat the pillow, shout at the walls, make a picture of your wife and beat it. But do something – do what you really wanted to do with your wife.It is really a good idea to have an effigy of your wife, or if you are a wife, an effigy of your husband, so whenever the need arises you can go and be as nasty as you feel like being; with no danger of retaliation. You will be surprised that after beating your wife in her absence – after shouting nasty things at her, after using four-letter words – when you see your wife again, you will feel compassion for her. You may even feel ready to apologize. You may be able to see her in a different way because you are no longer carrying that subtle layer of anger. It has been released. You may be able to see her face again after years.When I say be total I simply mean don’t repress things because the repressed things are bound to rebound on you. And those repressed things are going to take revenge, one day they are going to explode with a vengeance. Those repressed feelings are creating all kinds of neurotic, psychotic people in the world. To be total is not a goal. To be total is only a way of life.You say: “Being total, without any fragmentation, isn’t that a final state…?” Yes, it is a final state too – but the first step is the last step and the beginning is the end. It is a means and an end too. You have to begin. I know you cannot be total right now. Slowly, slowly you will be able to be total because society hasn’t allowed you to be total in anything; it has allowed you only so far. It has made you very lukewarm and has taken away all passionate energy from your being. Hence, you don’t really love madly, you don’t really go into anger madly, you don’t share totally, you cannot commune. Everything is just so-so. Hence, so much dust has gathered on your face.Totality has to be started; it is the beginning and the end too. In the beginning it is going to be difficult because you will be going against the current of society, but that’s what sannyas is: taking courage to be oneself. I don’t expect you to become total right now, but the decision will help. If you decide to be total, slowly, slowly, by degrees and degrees, you will be more and more total. One day by degrees, you will attain the hundred-degree point.The miracle is that when one can go into one’s emotions a hundred percent, all that is wrong starts disappearing. That is the miracle. And all that is right starts growing. A really total person will not be able to be angry. In the beginning when you start you will be more and more angry, but soon the point comes when you are totally angry and see the naked futility of anger, the utter absurdity of anger, the insanity of anger. When you have seen it – not because Buddha has said so or I have said so – it will drop. The seeing is enough. You need not drop it, it drops of its own accord.A total person will be able to love and unable to hate. A total person will be able to be compassionate and will be unable to be angry. That is the end. I am not telling you to be a buddha right now. But one has to begin somewhere. One has to start moving in the direction of being a buddha.You are right. It is the final state, the last stage on the way. But the way is also part of the last stage. The way and the goal are not separate. The goal is just the other end of the way. The beginning is this end and the goal is that end. The way joins both, it is the bridge.I am not teaching you any kind of perfectionism, I am not giving you any ideals. Totality is certainly not an ideal; it sounds as if it is. It is just a different style of life. Right now you are living a lifestyle which can be called partial – only parts of your being are allowed to surface, only the tip of the iceberg. You are living in fragments, you are living split. This is a kind of schizophrenic life.Misery is bound to be the outcome of it – misery and only misery. Bliss is the consequence of being one, integrated. That’s exactly the meaning of the word yoga: union, integration, oneness.You say, “I have no reason to hope that it will ever happen as a continuous state.” Who is telling you to make it a continuous state? Why do we always think of the future? Why do we make things unnecessarily difficult? – for a certain reason, there is a motive. First you make something very difficult, then you can say, “This is not possible. I cannot do it,” and it is finished. There is no need for it to be total, there is no need for it to be continuous.That’s why it looks contradictory, paradoxical, but I say to you that when sometimes you are not total, be total in it – then don’t be total. Then accept that “This is the moment when I am not total.” Don’t hide it, don’t fight it. If it is not possible, it is not possible. Don’t feel guilty about it; you are not committing a sin. It is your life. If you want to be total sometimes, good, if sometimes for a change you enjoy not being total, perfectly good.The sixth question:Osho,The Rajkot newspaper, Jai Hind, recently quoted the prime minister, Morarji Desai, as saying, when he was asked about Westerners coming to this ashram, that they were the rubbish of the West, those thrown out from their societies. And when he was asked about the establishment of Osho International University, he said that all such universities wherever they exist, should be closed down. He said he did not want any such university to come into being and that you only talked of sex throughout the day.He also expressed his great resentment of such obscene institutions. He said that he would like them closed down all over the world and that they were not at all necessary. Do you have any comment?It is just bullshit!The last question:Osho,Why do you use such direct language against the politicians? Can't you be a little indirect and diplomatic?I don’t expect the politicians to understand even direct language. If I am indirect, there is no hope that they will ever understand. They do not understand even my absolutely direct, frank, blunt language. I don’t mince words. I simply say it as it is. That too they cannot understand.In fact, only third-rate minds become interested in politics. Anyone who has some kind of intelligence will do something else. He may become a scientist, he may become a poet, a dancer, a musician. He may become a mystic. Why in the world would he like to become a politician? That is only for those who have no other possibility of expressing themselves, who have no other intelligence.The politician needs no other qualification, no talent. In fact, the more unintelligent he is, the greater is the possibility of his being successful.A tourist was visiting New Delhi. Walking on a side street late one evening, the visitor was held up by a bandit. “Give me your money!” he threatened, “or I will blow out your brains.”“Blow away…” said the tourist.In New Delhi you can live without brains, but not without money. I have to be direct. I am not a politician, so why should I be diplomatic? Truth is never diplomatic. It is straight.The politicians cannot understand what I am doing here and I don’t expect them to understand. It will be great if they simply ignore us. That’s enough. If they forget all about us, that is more than can be expected.A German philosopher pleaded with Adolf Hitler not to mistreat the Jews – if for no other reason, he said, than just because they are so smart.“What makes you think the Jews are so smart?” asked the dictator.“Come and I will show you.”He took the Nazi leader to Gutman’s Gift Shop and said, “Ask him for a left-handed teapot.”The Fuhrer did. Gutman went to the back of the store, picked up a teapot, turned it around and returned. “You are in luck,” said Gutman, handing the teapot to Hitler, “I just happen to have one left.”Back out on the street the philosopher said, “You see, that’s what I mean about the Jews being so smart.”“What is so smart about that?” exclaimed Hitler. “He just happened to have one left.”You can’t expect politicians to understand much. They are bound to misunderstand even my direct statements. If I start making indirect statements, they will create more complexities. Then there will be more chances of misunderstanding.Levi closed his shop on Friday night and headed for the temple service, not realizing his fly was unzipped. At the entrance he met Mrs. Weiss, the president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary. “I don’t like to say nothing,” she said shyly, “but your business is open.”“You are mistaken lady,” said Levi.“Believe me,” said Mrs. Weiss, blushing, “your business is open.”“You are crazy.” shouted Levi rushing inside. “I close the store every Friday to come here.”Later at home, Levi saw that his fly was open and realized that Mrs. Weiss had only been trying to tell him so in a delicate way. He telephoned her immediately. “I want to apologize.” he said, also trying to be tactful. “But tell me somethin’ – when my business was open, was my salesman in or out?”Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?Far inside the house,entangled music –what is the sense of leaving your house?Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,but inside there is no music,then what?Mohammed’s son pours over words and points out thisand that,but if his chest is not soaked dark with love,then what?The yogi comes along in his famous orange.But if inside he is colorless, then what?Kabir says: every instant that the sun is risen,if I stand in the temple, or on a balcony,in the hot fields, or in a walled garden,my own lord is making love with me.What is God? The moment the question is asked, the idea of a person arises in the mind – and God is not a person. Those who think of God as a person start, from the very beginning, moving in the wrong direction. They will never arrive. They will go round and round in circles, they will travel much, but they will never reach anywhere.If the first step is wrong, all else goes wrong. The first step has to be absolutely right because the first step is half the journey already. In fact, as far as you are concerned, the first step is the whole of the journey – because the other step is to be taken toward you by God.You take one step, he takes the other step. And the meeting. The distance between you and God is only two steps. The initiative has to be from your side.God is not a person, but that’s what you have been told down the ages. God is a presence. God is not substance but significance. Once God is understood as significance, your life starts changing. You don’t argue about God, whether he exists or not; you are no longer interested in theology. The whole of theology becomes rubbish. You start moving in a totally different way, in an altogether different dimension.If God is significance, you have to create a certain meaning in your life because only meaning can meet the meaning. You have to create significance in your life because only significance can meet the significance. You have to become more aware, more loving, more aesthetic, more sensitive.If God were a person, it would have been a totally different approach. God is not a person, but only a fragrance. You will need great sensitivity to comprehend that significance, that fragrance, that music.In these sutras today, Kabir is talking about something very fundamental. Listen to his words. Don’t only hear, listen. Don’t only listen, meditate with him, go with him. He is not a philosopher, he is not propounding a system of thought; he is a poet. He is singing his own experience. He is not concerned with concepts. He is pouring his heart into his songs, he is pouring himself into his words.You have to be very sensitive to understand this great poetic expression of mysticism, this great poetic expression of religion. Religion can only be expressed through poetry, music, dance. Any other way of expressing religion falls short, is inadequate. The mysterious has to be indicated only by something mysterious. God cannot be approached through the mind of calculation, mathematics. It is not possible to approach God through prose. The door opens only when you approach him through poetry.Poetry is more liquid, more vague, not so solid as prose. Prose says something clearly, poetry only hints. Prose shouts, poetry only whispers. Prose is for the mundane world, poetry is for the sacred.So whenever it happens that a person becomes a buddha, his expression, without any effort, becomes that of poetry. He may not compose poetry literally, but whatever he says, whatever he is, is poetry.Kabir was absolutely illiterate, never went to school, wasn’t able to read or write. Still, when it happened, he exploded in great poetry. When the experience arose in his being, when the doors opened and mysteries were revealed, he bloomed in thousands of flowers. No other poet can be compared with Kabir. There have been greater poets than Kabir, but they were mere poets – talented, with great art, but Kabir has a personal experience of the divine which is missing in other poets. They may be talking about God, but it is mere talk. With Kabir it is not just talking. It is his heartfelt experience – it is existential.Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?The original is:Sunta nahin dhun ki khabar,anakad ka baja bajta?Sunta nahin dhun ki khabar…Why aren’t you listening to the inner music which is constantly arising? You are made of it. It is not something foreign to you. It does not come from the outside. It is the music of your very existence, of your being. It is the music of your inner harmony, it is the music of your inner rhythm.Sunta nahin dhun ki khabar…Why don’t you listen to the inner rhythm of your being? Where do you go on rushing to? You are searching for this inner rhythm – sometimes in money, power, prestige – in so many kinds of relationships. You go on begging. You want to know something of the transcendental, you are thirsty for the transcendental.Once in a while, even in ordinary life, it happens. You know those few moments when suddenly one day you wake up in the morning and everything seems to fit perfectly. The birds are singing, the air is fragrant, the sun is rising and suddenly you feel that all is quiet. You are no longer separate for a moment and you feel a great joy arising in you for no reason at all. You suddenly feel vibrant, utterly rejuvenated, at home. Maybe the night’s deep sleep and rest, maybe the beautiful morning, the song of the birds, the fresh air, the dewdrops on the grass leaves shining in the early sun – all this created the context. Not by your effort, but just by accident, you fell in harmony with yourself and with existence. Remember, it happens always together. Whenever you fall in harmony with yourself, you fall in harmony with existence too.Harmony has two sides. The individual and the universal. If the individual is in harmony, there is no reason why he should not be in harmony with the whole. If inside you all conflict has disappeared – even for a single moment – in that moment you are part of the whole, you are no longer an island, you are no longer separate. All walls have suddenly disappeared and you are no longer imprisoned.In that moment you know the glory, the splendor, that life is. That splendor is God, that feeling is God. That experience of harmony is God. God is not a person, but the presence that is felt when you are in harmony and also in harmony with existence – that accord. That accord is called: dhun. Sunta nahin dhun ki khabar… Listen to that accord which is available every moment of your life. It happens only accidentally because you have not prepared yourself for it, to receive it consciously. So it happens only once in a while.Once Leo Tolstoy was asked, “How many experiences of divine ecstasy did you have in your life?”He started crying, great tears started rolling down from his eyes. He said, “Not more than seven in my life of seventy years, but I am grateful for those seven moments. I am miserable too because in those moments it was so self-evident that is could be the flavor of my whole life. In those moments, I was so certain that this could be my experience day in, day out, year in, year out; that this could spread over my whole life and become my flavor. But it didn’t happen. Those moments came on their own and they went on their own. But I am still grateful to God, that even once in a while without any conscious effort on my part, he has been knocking on my door.”This happens to everyone. It happens in spite of you. If you look back, you can remember a few moments… And those will be the moments when you were relaxed, those will be the moments when there was no particular desire in your mind, when you were not worried, when you were not tense, when somehow you simply were.Watch these sudden accidental moments minutely, because there is the secret key. That’s how the fundamentals of religion have been discovered. Watching these sudden moments which come and go. And one never knows why they come and why they go. Watching the context, the space in which they happen – people started trying to create that context.If it happens in a relaxed state, when you are very loose, nontense, then you can create the context. You can relax. If it happens to you while swimming, you can swim and create the context. If it happens to you while running – and it happens to different people in different ways. Many runners know that if you go on running, running, running, beyond a certain limit, suddenly it happens – because man’s energies have three layers.The first layer is only for day-to-day activities; it is a very thin layer. It is enough for your office, wife, children – the ordinary life. The second layer is for emergencies. Your house is on fire; you may have been feeling very tired after the whole day’s work and you were coming home and hoping to have a good rest. Suddenly when you reach home your house is on fire. Immediately, all fatigue disappears and you are no longer tired. You have forgotten all about rest and the whole night long you try to put the fire out. Even after the whole night’s work, you are not tired. It was not the ordinary level of energy that worked; that was exhausted. The emergency layer started working.The third layer is deeper than that. If you go on and on… For example, if for one, two, three days, you go on working, then the emergency level will also be finished – and you come in contact with the cosmic layer. That is the source of life; that is inexhaustible. Whenever you are in contact with it, tremendous joy starts overflowing in you.It happens to joggers, runners, swimmers sometimes. The first layer finished, then the second layer and if you go on running the second layer is also finished. The moment you are in contact with the third, a tremendous ecstasy happens for no reason at all.It may happen to you while making love, it may happen to you while listening to music; it may happen to you while simply lying in your bed doing nothing; it may happen to you while painting, absorbed, utterly absorbed in it. Or it may happen in a thousand and one ways. But watch. Whenever it happens – whenever that tremendous blissful moment comes to you, when existence knocks on your door – watch in what context it is happening. Be alert. Look around. In what space is it happening? Then you have the key. Whenever you create that context, that space, the moment will come again.You cannot make it happen, but you can make yourself available for it to happen. You cannot force it to happen, but you can create all that is necessary for it to happen. It is not a doing on your part, it is a happening. But, still, you can play a great role. That’s how all techniques of meditation have been developed. That’s how Yoga came into existence. Sunta nahin dhun ki khabar…That accord is present in you, because without it you cannot be alive. That music is already there, flowing underground in you because that music is your connection with the whole. Once it is cut you will be dead. You are alive – that is enough proof that the music is happening. The only thing is to go deep inside your own being and to find where it is happening. Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into? This is a music that is not created by fingers on any musical instrument. There is no musical instrument within you and there is no one playing on the instrument. It is pure music.Indian mystics use a special word for it: Anahad ka baja bajita. Anahad – it is boundless and it is uncreated. It is the sound of one hand clapping. But the Indian mystics go a little deeper. They say that there is not even one hand clapping – there is neither hand nor instrument, but pure music, just music.The experience of the mystics is that life consists of the stuff called music. Just as physics says that life consists of electrons, electricity, mystics say that life consists of music. In a way they are both right because music is nothing but a certain vibration of electricity. It may be true vice versa also – electricity may be nothing but a certain density of music, of sound. Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into? Kabir is talking to his disciples who have come to seek God. Someone must have asked him about God and he is talking about music. To talk about God is almost useless, but to talk about music is certainly of great significance. If you can hear your inner music, you will know God is.Far inside the house,entangled music –what is the sense of leaving your house?Kabir says, “Where are you going to find God?” People go to Kashi and to Kaaba, to Jerusalem and to Tibet; people go to all kinds of places in search of some significance. They feel that their life is meaningless, they feel that their life is empty, they feel that their life is nothing but a long, long tale told to them by an idiot. They know that their life is just noise, meaningless, gibberish. They know that deep down there is nothing but a kind of hollowness. And they search. There must be some source somewhere which can quench their thirst. There must be some place somewhere where they can encounter God, where they can attain some significance, where their life can have some meaning. But this search is futile. They will be frustrated again and again – because the truth they are searching for is already within their being. What they are seeking is in the seeker himself; the sought is in the seeker. You need not go anywhere. You simply have to learn how not to go anywhere.The greatest art is just to be, without going anywhere. Not going to the past, the future, in desires, in psychological spaces, in psychic travels – not to go anywhere, just to be. Right now, if you are just here, immediately something is felt; something which is intangible. You cannot show it to anyone else, you cannot share your experience with someone who has not known it. But your whole being starts feeling a kind of intoxicatedness, a drunkenness. You become full of juice, you become full of aliveness, and a very indirect, subtle, delicate experience of the presence of something bigger than you. That’s what godliness is all about.Far inside the house… The original is:Ras mand mandir bajtabahar sune to kya hua?Kabir says: “Music is already happening inside your own temple.” Kabir calls you “the temple.” And except for your body there is no other temple in the world. Your bodies are temples, sacred places because the holiest of the holy resides in you. Look at what the priests have been telling you, what your so-called saints have been telling you. They have been teaching you life-negative attitudes, body-negative attitudes. They have been telling you that the body is the culprit, that the body is the source of sin. They have been telling you to torture the body, to destroy the body. They have been teaching you that unless you destroy your body totally you will not be able to know godliness.The truth is just the contrary. Unless you love your body immensely, respect your body immensely, you will not be able to know godliness at all. The body is its outer expression. If the body is the temple, godliness is the deity inside it.Ras mand mandir bajta…Within the temple of your body, the music is already happening. Just go in. The word ras has to be understood. Ras literally means juice. You will be surprised to know that the mystics of this country have called God the ultimate juice: Rasao vai saha – it is the ultimate juice. But if you go to your so-called saints, you will find them very dry, with no juice at all. You will find them almost dead, with no life flowing in them. They have destroyed their bodies. They are living a kind of death, but this is thought to be very respectable. What has really happened? What has gone wrong? Why have these pathological, mentally deranged, psychologically ill people, become so dominant? Why have they possessed religion?Neurotic people have one quality in them: the quality of being fanatics. Only neurotics can be fanatics. It is very difficult to fight with fanatics. Wherever a fanatic is, sooner or later he is going to become a leader. He is so troublesome, he is such a troublemaker that you have to make him a leader, just to pacify him. He will only be at rest when he is at the top, when he is the boss.Neurotics have a tendency to become leaders. Adolf Hitler was a neurotic and became one of the greatest leaders of human history. He was a madman, but madmen have a few qualities in them which no sane man can ever have. They compete and they compete with their total energy, they compete madly. They are so mad that they don’t think, they act. While the sane person thinks, the mad person acts. The sane person goes on thinking and the mad person has already reached and acted and done. The sane person thinks of consequences, the mad person thinks nothing – he simply rushes in.Adolf Hitlers become leaders in politics and the same kind of people become leaders in religion too. The pathological people also have a tendency to become organized. The sane person wants to be left alone because he enjoys his aloneness. He wants his own space, he wants freedom – freedom from the crowd. The mad person wants the crowd. Left alone he becomes disturbed. In his aloneness he starts seeing his madness. He always goes in the crowd; he wants to live with the crowd twenty-four hours a day. He is a lover of the crowd.The sane person moves in solitude and the insane person searches for the crowd. Your religions are nothing but crowds. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism. All different crowds. When Mohammed became enlightened, he was alone, meditating in the mountains. When Buddha became enlightened, he was alone, under a tree, meditating by the side of the River Niranjana – alone. When Mahavira became enlightened he was absolutely alone in the forest, standing underneath a tree, naked in the sun.Enlightenment has happened to people when they were utterly alone. But leadership does not come that way. Leadership comes when you move in a crowd. Not only that, when you fulfill the expectations of the crowd – stupid expectations, superstitious expectations, but you have to fulfill them – you become the religious or political leader. Mad people have a great organizing capacity. They fulfill the expectations of the crowd. The crowd looks up to them, the crowd respects them and is afraid. Everyone is afraid. The crowd wants to be organized because in organization there seems to be power.An NAACP official telephoned the Library of Congress and told the chief librarian that the library had eighteen thousand books with the word nigger in them and all the books had to be removed in a week.“But,” protested the librarian, “we have fifty thousand volumes with the word bastard in them.”“I know,” said the official, “but those bastards are not organized.”In this world, organization is power and mad people have a great magnetic force to organize. They cannot be alone, they seek others who cannot be alone, who are also seeking. It becomes a mutual arrangement.Religions, at the source, are born out of a meditative aloneness, but the moment it becomes known that a buddha has happened, the mad people start organizing, the mad people start gathering a crowd. That crowd finally crystallizes into Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity. All their notions are based not in the enlightenment of their founders, real founders, no, but in the pseudo founders, the priests. And the priests have been telling you that life is irreligious, that the body has to be denied, that it is not a temple, that it is not a place to be worshipped in.Kabir is saying a totally different thing. And that’s what my emphasis is: the body is sacred – because all is sacred. Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into? Far inside the house; entangled music – what is the sense of leaving your house? Where are you going? You need not leave the body, you need not leave anything, you need not renounce anything. Remember, Kabir never renounced anything. He lived a very ordinary life just as everyone else lives – the life of a householder. He was a father, a husband, and his whole life he continued to work. He was a weaver and he continued to weave clothes, even when he had thousands of disciples. Many times his disciples would come to him and say, “You need not work at all. We are ready to provide everything for you and your needs are not many. Why do you go on working?”Kabir would laugh and say, “You don’t understand. I work for God, I weave clothes for God – because the customers who come to purchase clothes from me are divine. How can I stop my work?”This quality is true religiousness. This quality is possible only if you are in love with life. And to be in love with life creates ras – juice. Then you don’t become dry, you don’t become a desert, then you become an oasis.The so-called religious people of this country are against me because I am teaching you the way of ras – the way of life, love, juice, music. I am teaching you to become an oasis, not a desert. I would like you to be in a constant rejoicing because I am not teaching you renunciation but rejoicing. All the people who have been carrying this nonsense idea of renouncing the world are bound to be against me. That is natural. It is expected. This has been happening always and it seems, unfortunately, that down the ages, man hasn’t learned anything at all. It is exactly the same today as it was in the days of Buddha, as it was in the days of Jesus, as it was in the days of Kabir.Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,but inside there is no music,then what?Morality is not religion, although a religious person is always moral. But not vice versa – a moral person need not be religious. A religious person is necessarily moral because religion means the experience of the divine. How can one who has experienced the presence of godliness be immoral? In fact, he is the criterion, the decisive factor as to what is moral.Whatever an enlightened person does is moral; there is no other way to decide. It is not a question of him trying to do that which is moral. Whatever he does is moral. He cannot do any harm to anyone, he is a blessing to existence. When existence has blessed him, what else is left for him, except to be a blessing to existence? What existence has given him, he goes on giving to everyone else. His heart is full of bliss and the bliss starts overflowing. That overflowing bliss is real morality.Morality means compassion, morality means love, morality means creativity. Morality means making the world a little more beautiful than you found it, leaving it a little more beautiful and giving it a new plane, a new level, a new dimension of existence.The immoral person is destructive because he is miserable and can only share his misery with others. Remember, you can give to others only that which you have. If you are miserable, whatever you say is immaterial, you will make others miserable. If you are blissful, you need not say anything, you will make others blissful. Your very presence will trigger blissfulness in their being. Your very presence will create a synchronicity in others. Your music, your juice, will create ripples of joy. Whoever is close to you will become infected with your joy, your ecstasy, will become drunk – and that’s what morality is.Kabir says: Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? Then what is the use of it? Yes, that can be done, that is being done. There are people who go on cultivating character, who go on cultivating morality. They become great moralists, puritans, very righteous. They do only that which is right, but it is a forced doing; it is not spontaneous. It is not out of their being, it is just a forced phenomenon. It is a facade. They have created a beautiful curtain around themselves and behind it is the corpse, a stinking corpse, but on the surface they have decorated themselves with flowers. The crowd can be deceived by them, but deep down they are the same people. Even worse because all that they are showing on the surface is pseudo. They are just the opposite inside. They are hypocrites. They say one thing and are just the opposite of it. They do one thing, but their being has no correspondence with it. They are split, they are schizophrenic.We have put the whole of humanity in a state of schizophrenia because of this cultivated morality. Everyone is more or less made into a hypocrite. Society forces you to do it. If you don’t do it, you cannot live, you cannot survive. It has become almost a necessity that you don’t show your reality. You show only that which people want you to show and you keep everything else hidden inside. Your inner being goes on accumulating poisons and poisons and poisons; you live a hell within, decorated with beautiful flowers. Those flowers are also plastic because they cannot be true flowers. True flowers need roots in your being.A really religious person has no morality imposed upon himself. His morality arises out of his consciousness. He is not trying to do the right thing, he is not trying to avoid the wrong. He simply remains conscious and acts out of his consciousness. And whatever he does is right. In fact, it is impossible to do anything wrong consciously.A beautiful story is told about a great mystic, Nagarjuna…He was a naked fakir, but loved by all real seekers. A queen was also deeply in love with Nagarjuna. One day, she asked him to come to the palace, to be a guest there. Nagarjuna went. The queen asked him a favor.Nagarjuna said, “What do you want?”The queen said, “I want your begging bowl.”Nagarjuna gave it – that was the only thing he had, his begging bowl. And the queen brought a golden begging bowl, studded with diamonds and gave it to Nagarjuna. She said, “Now you keep this. I will worship the begging bowl that you have carried for years. It has some of your vibe. It will become my temple. A man like you should not carry an ordinary wooden begging bowl. Keep this golden one. I have had it made especially for you.”It was really precious. If Nagarjuna had been an ordinary mystic he would have said, “I cannot touch it. I have renounced the world.” But for him it was all the same, so he took the bowl.When he left the palace, a thief saw him. He could not believe his eyes: “A naked man with such a precious thing. How long can he protect it?” So the thief followed.Nagarjuna was staying outside the town in an ancient ruined temple with no doors, no windows. It was just a ruin. The thief was very happy. “Soon Nagarjuna will have to go to sleep and there will be no difficulty. I will get the bowl.”The thief was hiding behind a wall just outside the doorway and Nagarjuna threw the bowl just outside. The thief could not believe what had happened. Nagarjuna threw it because he had watched the thief coming behind him and knew perfectly well that he was not coming for him. He was coming for the bowl, “So why unnecessarily let him wait? Be finished with it so he can go and I can also rest.”Such a precious thing. And Nagarjuna has thrown it so easily. The thief could not go without thanking him. He knew perfectly well that it had been thrown for him. He peeked in and said, “Sir, accept my thanks. But you are a rare being. I cannot believe my eyes. A great desire has arisen in me. I am wasting my life by being a thief – and there are people like you too? Can I come in and touch your feet?”Nagarjuna laughed and said, “Yes, that’s why I threw the bowl outside – so that you could come inside.”The thief was trapped. The thief came in, touched the feet… And at that moment he was very open because he had seen that this man was no ordinary man. He was very vulnerable, open, receptive, grateful, mystified, stunned. When he touched the feet, for the first time in his life he felt the presence of the divine.He asked Nagarjuna, “How many lives will it take for me to become like you?”Nagarjuna replied, “How many lives? – it can happen today, it can happen now!”The thief said, “You must be kidding. How can it happen now? I am a thief, a well-known thief. The whole town knows me, although they have not yet been able to catch me. Even the king is afraid of me because thrice I have entered and stolen from the treasury. They know it, but they have no proof. I am a master thief. You may not know about me because you are a stranger in these parts. How can I be transformed right now?”Nagarjuna said, “If for centuries in an old house there has been darkness and you bring a candle, can the darkness say, ‘For centuries and centuries I have been here. I cannot leave just because you have brought a candle in. I have lived so long’? Can the darkness give resistance? Will it make any difference whether the darkness is one day old or millions of years old?”The thief could see the point that darkness cannot resist light; when light comes, darkness disappears. Nagarjuna said, “You may have been in darkness for millions of lives – that doesn’t matter – but I can give you a secret; you can light a candle in your being.”The thief said, “What about my profession? Have I to leave it?”Nagarjuna said, “That is for you to decide. I am not concerned with you and your profession. I can only give you the secret of how to kindle a light within your being. Then it is up to you.”The thief replied, “But whenever I have gone to any saints, they always say, ‘First stop stealing, only then can you be initiated.’”It is said that Nagarjuna laughed and said, “You must have gone to thieves, not to saints. They know nothing. Just watch your breath – the ancient method of Buddha. Just watch your breath coming in, going out. Whenever you remember, watch your breath. Even when you go to steal, when you enter someone’s house in the night, go on watching your breath. When you have opened the treasure and the diamonds are there, go on watching your breath and do whatever you want to do – but don’t forget to watch the breath.”The thief said, “This seems to be simple. No morality? No character needed? No other requirement?”Nagarjuna said, “Absolutely none. Just watch your breath.”After fifteen days the thief was back, but he was a totally different man. He fell at the feet of Nagarjuna and said, “You trapped me and you trapped me so beautifully that I never even suspected. I tried for these last fifteen days – it’s impossible. If I watch my breath, I cannot steal. If I steal, I cannot watch my breath. Watching the breath, I become so silent, so alert, so aware, so conscious, that even diamonds look like pebbles. You have created a difficulty for me, a dilemma. Now what am I supposed to do?”Nagarjuna replied, “Get lost – do whatever you want to do. If you want that silence, peace, bliss that arises in you when you watch your breath, then choose that. If you think all those diamonds, gold and silver are more valuable, then choose that. It is for you to choose. Who am I to interfere in your life?”The man said, “I cannot choose to be unconscious again. I have never known such moments. Accept me as one of your disciples, initiate me.”Nagarjuna replied, “I have initiated you already.”Religion is based not in morality, but in meditation. Religion is rooted not in character, but in consciousness. A really religious person has no character at all. He is characterless. But let me define what I mean by “characterless.” I don’t mean the ordinary meaning that you find in the dictionary because in the dictionary, the man of bad character is called characterless. That is wrong because he has a character. Maybe it is bad, but he is not characterless. Someone has good character, someone has bad character, but both have characters. The sinner and the saint, both have characters, but the really religious man is characterless. He is neither good nor bad. He is beyond. He has no character because he does not function out of his past. He acts moment to moment, he acts spontaneously; he has no ready-made formula, he has no routine. He does not act out of habits. That’s what character is: creating good habits is good character, creating bad habits is bad character. Creating consciousness, not habits, is religiousness.Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines, but inside there is no music, then what? You can go on scrubbing your ethical skin, you can go on polishing your morality and become a really polished man, but if inside there is no music, if meditation has not happened, if you have not heard the unheard, if you have not seen the unseen; if you have not penetrated into the unknowable, if that soundless sound is not heard, it is all futile. You are simply wasting your time.A Zen story…A disciple is meditating and has been meditating for at least twenty years. He has been doing all kinds of things, such as yoga postures, meditative techniques. One day the master appears and the disciple is sitting like a buddha, absolutely silent – at least on the outside – unmoving like a marble statue. The master starts rubbing a brick on a stone just in front of him. He creates so much noise by rubbing the brick on the stone that the disciple has to open his eyes a little bit and see who is creating the nuisance.Seeing that the master himself is doing this, he cannot believe it. A master is not supposed to disturb the disciple while he is meditating. What kind of master is he? But a master is a master, so you cannot be rude to him. He waits, but how long can you wait? The constant rubbing of the brick on the stone – setting his teeth on edge. Finally he says, “Stop it. What are you doing?”The master said, “And what have you been doing for twenty years? Scrubbing, scrubbing – trying to polish your mind? You call that meditation? Your postures, your techniques are all mind-based. I am trying to make a mirror out of this brick.”The disciple replied, “That is impossible. You can go on rubbing, but the brick will never become a mirror.”The master says, “That’s what I have come to say to you. Twenty years you have been rubbing, scrubbing, polishing and the mind has not become meditation, the mind has not become a mirror. Drop the mind. Don’t cultivate it.”By dropping the mind, it becomes a mirror. The mind itself never becomes a mirror. The mind is the barrier. Hidden behind the mind is your consciousness. Once you enter behind the mind, you hear the music. That music transforms you into a new being. It is a rebirth.Mohammed’s son pours over words and points out this and that,but if his chest is not soaked dark with love,then what?Kabir says that this is so with everyone – the Hindu pundit goes on speculating upon words, playing upon words. The Mohammedan scholar: Mohammed’s son pours over words… Words have become so important that we have forgotten that we have to enter a wordless state of consciousness. Go on repeating the Koran, the Bible, the Vedas and it is of no use at all because you will only be gathering more and more knowledge – all borrowed. A truth borrowed becomes a lie. A truth expressed in words immediately loses its truthfulness. Words are too small and cannot contain the great sky of the truth within themselves. They crush the truth, they destroy it. When words reach you, you will give a meaning to them which is yours.Krishna speaks, Jesus speaks, I am speaking to you… If there are two thousand people here, do you think everyone is hearing the same thing? There are two thousand meanings. The speaker is one, my meaning is one, but immediately I assert it, it becomes two thousand – two thousand meanings.A shaggy tale used by New Testament scholars to poke a little fun at their more skeptical associates begins when several archaeologists working near Jerusalem unearth some human skeletal remains. Upon examination they prove to be the bones of Jesus. Overwhelmed by the burden of such unsettling knowledge, the archaeologists decide to inform the Pope. The Pope, of course, is shocked. What does this mean for the future of the Christian faith?If those bones are really those of Jesus, that means he was never resurrected, that means the resurrection was false, that the whole story was invented. And with the resurrection disappearing, the whole ground underneath Christianity will disappear.Before releasing this information to the press and allowing it to be sensationally exposed to the stunned eyes of the faithful, the Holy Father determines to call a council of the world’s great theologians to see if they can help him understand and interpret this calamitous event. What is more, because the implications of the news obviously affect all Christians, it seems wise to make this an ecumenical council, one to which theologians of all denominations will be invited. Slowly and painfully, his Holiness works his way down the list of theologians, making telephone calls to each of them. All are heard to make the appropriate gasps of dismay, after which they promise to hasten to Rome for the conference.The last name on the Pope’s list is that of a German New Testament scholar with a reputation for being highly skeptical in respect to all manner of historical information about Jesus. The Holy Father debates with himself whether this gentleman should be informed. Finally, in the interests of ecumenism and because in this case such an already formed attitude of skepticism might actually be of some use, he makes the telephone call. The German critic, instead of being overwhelmed by the news that Jesus’ bones had not been resurrected, registers his surprise in a fashion which takes the Pope’s own breath away.“Ach so,” the scholar responds, “then he did live.”The same news. One is worried about resurrection, but the other’s response is totally different. His worry is, “Ach so, then he did live.” If the bones are genuine, then Jesus becomes a historical figure.Whenever you hear something, you hear it always from your background, it is your background that interprets it. The meaning is given by you.“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 Mooney with a sigh of relief. “Everyone else says it’s all my fault!”It is natural that words will be interpreted by each person according to his own past. That’s why I insist again and again: please listen to me without bringing in your past, listen to me without any background, listen to me not as Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans, otherwise you will miss it. Not only will you miss it, you will misunderstand it.Listen to me as you listen to music or the sound of running water or the wind passing through the pine trees. Then there is a possibility of some communion happening and a possibility that some meaning that I am trying to convey reaches you. But it is really difficult. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to be a disciple.To be a disciple means listening without any background, just listening without interpreting, just listening without for or against, without believing, without disbelieving – a pure kind of listening. The beauty of truth is that if you can listen silently with no judgment, if it is true, it will ring bells in your heart. But the bells will ring in the heart, not in the head. If it is untrue, no bells will ring in the heart. You will know whether it is true or untrue – not by thinking about it, but just by listening in total silence.Mohammed’s son pours over words and points out this and that, but if his chest is not soaked dark with love, then what? Unless your heart responds, the head cannot become a bridge to existence. Your heart needs to be soaked with love. But you don’t know anything about the heart. Society has not allowed you to go through the heart; it has tried in every way to bypass the heart. The whole effort of society is to pull you to the head directly, without moving through the heart – because the ways of the heart are mysterious, uncontrollable.The ways of the head are controllable, manipulatable. Hence society is interested in your head, not in your heart. Society wants you to understand that there is no heart but only the head. The heart is nothing but a blood-pumping system; that’s what society wants you to believe. This is one of the greatest untruths ever told.By “heart” is not meant the physical part. The physical part is simply a blood circulation system, but hidden behind the physical, just corresponding to it, very close to it, behind it, is the real heart. Just as hidden behind the brain is the mind, so hidden behind the lungs is the heart and hidden behind the body is the soul.Don’t be finished with the physical. Always remember, corresponding to each physical phenomenon in you, there is a spiritual phenomenon. Unless your heart starts functioning: …is soaked dark with love… And why dark? – because love has the depth of darkness, the density of darkness. Love grows in mysterious ways, but not in the light because light makes everything demystified. Love is more dark than anything else. It is a dark, dense, mysterious world.If you are afraid of the dark, you will be afraid of love too. If you are afraid of the night, you will be afraid of love too. If you are afraid of the dark, the night, death, love, then you are afraid of all that is mysterious. You will have to exist only on the surface and will never be able to penetrate to the center of being.The original is:Ik prem-ras chakha nahin,amli hua to kya hua?You haven’t tasted the juice of love – and you have become a great saint? You have great character and great morality – and you haven’t even tasted the juice of love? All your saintliness and all your morality is holy cow dung. You are carrying an unnecessary weight. The sooner you drop it the better.The yogi comes along in his famous orange.But if inside he is colorless, then what?The real question is of getting colored inside. The outer color is only symbolic. It is a gesture; it is not the end, it is the beginning. It is simply you saying, “I am ready.” But don’t think that if you are wearing orange, sannyas has happened. Your gesture has happened, you have moved on the way.There are two initiations. One is the formal. The day you become a sannyasin, you change to orange – that is formal. But without the formal, the informal is difficult. If you cannot even change your clothes, how will you change your being? But just changing your clothes is not synonymous with changing your being.Kabir says: The yogi comes along in his famous orange. But if inside he is colorless, then what?Vakif nahin us rang sekapare range se kya hua?You haven’t known the color of godliness, you haven’t known the color of love, you haven’t known the color of life. Orange is the color of blood, life; orange is the color of fire, love, the sunrise, the transformation – the declaration that the night has ended.But the being has to be colored. Your soul has to become red with love, with joy, with celebration. In India, orange is the color of spring – a springtime has to come in your inner being so that flowers that have waited and waited for centuries can bloom, so that buds can open.Kabir says: every instant that the sun is risen,if I stand in the temple, or on a balcony,in the hot fields, or in a walled garden,my own lord is making love with me.Meditate over this tremendously important statement: …my own lord is making love with me.The man of absolute consciousness remains in a constant orgasmic state. Just as two lovers reach an orgasmic climax only for a moment and it is gone, and a sadness comes in the wake; the man of total awareness, the buddha, the enlightened person, remains for twenty-four hours a day in an orgasmic state: …my own lord is making love with me. Kabir says, “Wherever I am, it makes no difference – in the temple or in the mosque or in the fields or in a walled garden – it doesn’t matter where I am. Wherever I am, my lord, my beloved, is making love with me.”Love is the quintessence of religion. And to be orgasmic is to be a sannyasin – to become so orgasmic that it continues day in, day out. Even when you are asleep, the meeting continues. You go on melting and merging into existence and existence goes on melting and merging into you.The wall between you and the whole has been removed, there is no separation. That state of non-separation, that state of unio mystica – the mystic union – is the ultimate expression of love. The lowest is the man–woman relationship and the ultimate, the highest, is the meeting of the meditator with the whole.Hence I say the journey is from sex to superconsciousness. Sex is the beginning of the journey. Don’t reject it. If you reject the beginning, you will never reach the end. But remember that it is only the beginning; don’t get stuck there. You have to go farther and farther ahead, you have to transcend it. As you go higher in meditation, the less and less sexual you are bound to become.This is happening every day to my sannyasins. The whole country thinks that nothing but sex is happening here, but the reality is just the opposite. This may be the only place where thousands of people are totally losing interest in sex – because going through it is going beyond it. To go beyond, one has to go through because without knowing it there is no way to transcend it.The sexual orgasm reveals two secrets to you. One is that in the climax, at the peak, the ego disappears; the second, time disappears. These are the two secrets of meditation. One day while meditating, you will come to know that sex is not needed at all because the ego and time can disappear without going into sex at all.Sex is a natural way of meditation; it is a gift of nature, to keep reminding you that this is possible. Mind, time, ego, can all disappear. If they can disappear for a single moment, why not forever? Sex is a natural window into godliness, but only a window. You need not remain confined behind it. You can jump out of the window and come into the open, in the sun, under the sky. But the window made it possible for you. And because sex helps you to know a few moments of egolessness, timelessness, mindlessness, it makes it possible that you can long for, desire a permanent state, an eternal state of orgasmic joy – sat-chit-anand.Kabir is absolutely right. No one else has said it so clearly: …my own lord is making love with me. It is happening every moment of the day, irrespective of where I am, of what I am doing. This has to become the experience of each of my sannyasins.This is my message to you. You have to actualize this potential in you. One day you have to be able to declare to the world: “The lord is making love with me twenty-four hours a day. I am in an orgasmic state. Not only am I in an orgasmic state, but I am the orgasmic state.”That’s what enlightenment is all about. Once it is achieved, no one can fall from it. Once it is achieved, all is achieved.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Please comment on the art of balanced living. My life is often an experience of extremes, with the middle road difficult to maintain for any length of time.Life consists of extremes; it is a tension between opposites. To be exactly in the middle forever means to be dead. The middle is only a theoretical possibility; only once in a while are you in the middle, as a passing phase. It is like walking on a tightrope. You can never be exactly in the middle for any length of time. If you try, you will fall.To be in the middle is not a static state, it is a dynamic phenomenon. Balance is not a noun, it is a verb; it is balancing. The tightrope walker continuously moves from the left to the right, from the right to the left. When he feels that now he has moved too far left and there is a fear of falling, he immediately balances himself by moving to the opposite, to the right. Passing from the left to the right, yes, there is a moment when he is in the middle. And again when he has moved too far right and there is a fear of falling, losing balance, he starts moving toward the left. Passing from the right to the left, again he moves through the middle for a moment.This is what I mean when I say that balance is not a noun but a verb. It is balancing, it is a dynamic process. You cannot be in the middle. You can go on moving from left to right and right to left; this is the only way to remain in the middle.Don’t avoid extremes and don’t choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities – that is the art, the secret of balancing. Yes, sometimes be utterly happy, sometimes be utterly sad. Both have their own beauties.The mind is a chooser; that’s why the problem arises. Remain choiceless. Whatever happens and wherever you are, right or left, in the middle or not in the middle, enjoy the moment in its totality. While happy, dance, sing, play music – be happy. When sadness comes – which is bound to come, which is coming, which has to come, which is inevitable, you cannot avoid it – if you try to avoid it, you will have to destroy the very possibility of happiness. The day cannot be without the night and the summer cannot be without the winter. Life cannot be without death.Let this polarity sink deep in your being. There is no way to avoid it. The only way is to become more and more dead. Only a dead person can be in a static middle. The alive person will be constantly moving – from anger to compassion, from compassion to anger. He accepts both and is not identified with either. He remains aloof and yet involved. He remains distant yet committed. He enjoys and yet remains like a lotus flower in water – in water, but the water cannot touch it.Your very effort to be in the middle, to be in the middle forever and always, is creating an unnecessary anxiety for you. In fact, to desire to be in the middle forever is another extreme, the worst kind of extreme because it is the impossible kind. It cannot be fulfilled.Just think of an old clock. If you hold the pendulum exactly in the middle, the clock will stop. The clock continues only because the pendulum goes on moving from the left to the right, from the right to the left. Yes, each time it passes through the middle and there is a moment of that middleness, but only a moment. It is beautiful. When you pass from happiness to sadness, from sadness to happiness, there is a moment of utter silence exactly in the middle – enjoy that too.Life has to be lived in all its dimensions, only then is it rich. The leftist is poor, the rightist is poor and the middle-ist is dead. The alive person is neither rightist nor leftist nor middle-ist. He is a constant movement, he is a flow.Why do we want to be in the middle in the first place? – we are afraid of the dark side of life and we don’t want to be sad, we don’t want to be in a state of agony. But that is possible only if you are also ready to drop the possibility of being in ecstasy. There are a few who have chosen it; that is the way of the monk. For centuries that has been the way of the monk. He is ready to sacrifice all possibilities of ecstasy, just to avoid agony. He is ready to destroy all rose flowers just to avoid the thorns. But then his life is just flat; a long, long boredom, stale, stagnant. He does not really live. He is afraid to live.Life contains both: it brings great pain, it also brings great pleasure. Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin. If you leave one, you have to leave the other too. This has been one of the most fundamental misunderstandings down the ages; that you can leave pain and save pleasure, that you can avoid hell and have heaven, that you can avoid the negative and can have only the positive. This is a great fallacy. It is not possible in the very nature of things. The positive and negative are together, inevitably together, indivisibly together. They are two aspects of the same energy.My sannyasins, or those who understand me, have to accept both. I am giving you a totally new insight: be all. When you are on the left, don’t miss anything – enjoy. Being on the left has its own beauty and you will not find it when you are on the right. It will be a different scene. Yes, to be in the middle has its own silence, peace, and you will not find it on any extreme. So enjoy all. Go on enriching your life.Can’t you see any beauty in sadness? Meditate over it. Next time you are sad don’t fight with it, don’t waste time in fighting. Accept it, welcome it. Let it be a welcome guest. Look deep into it, with love, care. Be a real host. You will be surprised – you will be surprised beyond your comprehension – that sadness has a few beauties which happiness can never have. Sadness has depth and happiness is always shallow. Sadness has tears and tears go deeper than any laughter can ever go. Sadness has a silence of its own, a melody, which happiness can never have. It will have its own song, more noisy, but not so silent.I am not saying choose sadness, I am just saying enjoy it too. When you are happy, enjoy happiness. Swim on the surface too and sometimes dive deep into the river. It is the same river. On the surface the play of ripples and waves, with the sunrays and the wind, has its own beauty. Diving deep into the water has its own quality, its own adventure, its own danger.Don’t become attached to anything. There are people who have become attached to sadness too – psychology knows about them. They are called masochists and they go on creating situations in which they can remain miserable forever. Misery is the only thing that they enjoy, they are afraid of happiness. In misery they are at home.Many masochists become religious because religion provides a great protection for the masochistic mind. Religion gives a beautiful rationalization for being a masochist. Just being a masochist without being religious, you will feel condemned, you will feel ill, ill at ease. You will know that you are abnormal and you will feel guilty about what you are doing to your life. You will hide the fact.But if a masochist becomes religious, he can exhibit his masochism with great pride because now it is no longer masochism. It is asceticism, austerity, tapascharya; it is self-discipline, not torture. Just the labels have been changed. Now no one can call him abnormal – he is a saint. No one can call him pathological – he is pious, holy.Masochists have always moved toward religion. Religion has a great attraction for masochists. In fact, so many masochists down the ages have moved toward religion. It was very natural, that movement, that religion became dominated by the masochists. That’s why religion goes on insisting on being life-negative, life-destructive. It is not for life, it is not for love, it is not for joy. It goes on insisting that life is misery. By calling life misery, it rationalizes its own clinging to misery.I have heard a beautiful story. I don’t know how far it is correct, I cannot vouch for it…One afternoon, in paradise, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting in the most famous cafe, talking sweet nothings. The bearer comes and brings three glasses of juice on a tray. Each glass is called “life” and the bearer offers them.Buddha immediately closes his eyes and says, “Life is misery.” Confucius closes his eyes half-way – the middle-ist, he used to preach the golden mean – and asks the bearer to give him the glass because he would like to have a sip; just a sip because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? He had a scientific mind. Confucius was not very mystic; he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical.It looks perfectly right. He says, “First I will have a sip and then I will say.”He takes a sip and says, “Buddha is right – life is misery.”Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and says, “Unless one drinks totally how can one say anything?”He drinks all three glasses and starts dancing. Buddha and Confucius ask him, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”He replies, “This is what I am saying – my dance, my song.”Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. When you taste totally you cannot say because what you know is so much that no word is adequate.Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle, Lao Tzu has drunk all three glasses. He has drunk the one that was brought for Buddha, he has drunk the one that was brought for Confucius, he has drunk the one that was brought for him – he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways. Don’t choose one thing against the other and don’t try to be in the middle. Don’t try to balance yourself – balance is not something that can be cultivated by you. Balance is something that comes out of the experience of all the dimensions of life. Balance is something that happens. It is not something that can be brought. If you bring it, it will be false, forced; if you bring it you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed because how can a man who is trying to remain balanced, in the middle, be relaxed? He will always be afraid. If he relaxes, he may start moving toward the left or toward the right and he is bound to remain uptight. To be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole God-given gift.Don’t be uptight. Don’t live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality. Yes, sometimes it tastes bitter. So what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. The man who doesn’t know how to cry will not know how to laugh. The man who cannot have a deep laughter, a belly-laughter, his tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.I don’t teach you the middle way. I teach you the total way. And then a balance comes of its own accord; that balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes you know it will pass, when happiness comes you know it will pass too. Nothing remains. Everything passes by.The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance.The second question:Osho,How can one develop a conscience – something within that will guide one in one's everyday life toward what is necessary for one's development? To do what is required for the unfolding of one's inner life? It seems as if I am always torn and yet there does exist something within at times which I hope could be helped to grow and become a light for me. Can one learn to intensify one's feelings and emotions in order to bring one closer to a place of real being?There is no need to develop a conscience at all. What is needed is consciousness, not conscience. Conscience is a pseudo thing. Conscience is created in you by society. It is a subtle method of slavery. Society teaches you what is right and what is wrong. It starts teaching the child before the child is aware, before the child can decide on his own what is right and what is wrong, before the child is even conscious of what is happening to him, before the child is even awake. In the beginning the child lives in a kind of sleep, in a kind of dream.The child sleeps for twenty-four hours in the mother’s womb. After birth he sleeps for twenty-three hours, twenty-two hours, twenty-one hours, twenty hours… Slowly, slowly. He remains in a kind of limbo, neither awake nor asleep. The child cannot make any distinction between what is real and what is unreal. We start teaching the child what is right, what is wrong; we are conditioning him. We are conditioning him according to our ideas. All these ideas – from the parents, priests, teachers, politicians, saints – are all jumbled up together inside him. They become his conscience.He will never be able to grow consciousness because of this conscience. And this conscience is a pseudo consciousness. If you are satisfied with the pseudo, you will never even think of the real. It is very deceptive; the way we have been bringing up children is very deceptive. It is ugly, it is violent and is against humanity.That’s why millions of people live without any consciousness. Before they could grow in consciousness, we gave them pseudo toys to play with. The whole of their lives, they think this is all that is needed to live a good life. The whole of their lives, they will be rewarded if they follow the conscience and be punished if they don’t follow the conscience.From the outside they will be punished and rewarded. And from the inside also. Whenever you do something that your conscience says is wrong, you feel guilty, you suffer and you feel inner pain. You are afraid, you tremble; it creates anxiety. The fear about heaven is that you may lose it; the fear of hell is that you may fall into it. Your saints have painted the joys of heaven and the miseries of hell with great inventiveness.This is conscience. Conscience is artificial, arbitrary. Conscience is needed because society doesn’t want you to be intelligent. Hence, rather than making you intelligent, it gives you fixed rules of behavior: do this, don’t do that.The day humanity drops this whole nonsense of conscience and starts helping children to grow their consciousness will be the greatest day, will be the real birth of humanity – a new human being and a new earth. We will help the child to become more intelligent, so whenever a problem arises the child has enough intelligence to encounter it, to face it, to respond to it. Why should one need any conscience? Intelligence is enough, consciousness is enough.Consciousness will make you capable of responding to the present immediately and your response will be true. Conscience is old and the situation is always new. Your conscience is always old. There is no meeting ground. You go on responding according to the conscience cultivated in you by society, forced into you by the society, conditioned in you by the society. And the situation is totally different.One of my friends went to Tibet. He is a very religious brahmin, very orthodox. He went there to study Buddhist scriptures, but he could not stay in Tibet. He had to come back as quickly as possible. The journey was simply a sheer wastage, an unnecessary trouble because to enter Tibet is not easy.The problem was that from his very childhood he had been taught to take a cold bath before the sun rises. Now, to take a cold bath in Tibet before the sun rises! He was telling me that it was impossible. If he didn’t take the cold bath before sunrise, the whole day he would feel guilty. He had been told that without taking a cold bath in the morning you cannot pray, your prayer is useless. And without prayer you cannot eat anything. So he was taking a cold bath in the morning and that was dangerous to life. In Tibetan scriptures it is said that once a year it is a must that one should take a bath.Once, a few Tibetan lamas came to stay with me. Those were the days when Maneesha and Radha were not there to smell these people –I suffered so much.For those few, seven, eight days that they stayed in my house, I was almost out of the house all the time. Any excuse and I would escape from the house. The whole house was stinking because they would not take a bath. And a hot summer in India… They would not take a bath. They were following their conscience.It has been such a difficult thing for me to talk to Jaina monks. They used to come to see me and it was so difficult to talk with them because they don’t cleanse their mouths, rinse their mouths and they don’t clean their teeth. That is not allowed. That is thought to be a part of beautifying the body – and how can a Jaina monk beautify his body? He is so dead set against it.Just to talk to them is so difficult because they have such bad breath. It is bound to be so. Jaina monks are not allowed to take a bath either because why should you be so careful about your body? – the anti-body attitude. Their bodies stink, their mouths stink.A Jaina nun became so very much impressed by me and became so interested in me that I said to her, “You can at least take a sponge bath – no one will know. Just a wet towel, you can… And no one will ever know that you have taken a bath.”The idea appealed to her. She took one sponge bath, felt very good and very bad too. She said to me, “It feels very good and I feel fresh, but it hurts inside that I have committed a sin.”Do you ever think when you take a bath that you have committed a sin? She hadn’t even taken a full bath – just a sponge bath, just a wet towel rubbed all over her body. But she felt so guilty that she had to fast for three days as repentance.This is conscience. Conscience goes on making you a fool. Situations change, but the conscience cannot change, it cannot grow; it remains static. You go on living with ideas that were given to you by your ignorant parents, teachers in your childhood. You will live according to them and suffer much. Your response will never be true because it will never fit with the situation. You will always be lagging behind.Responsibility simply means the capacity to respond to the reality as it is. It changes, the reality changes, but the conscience remains fixed. That’s the difference between conscience and consciousness.Consciousness is a mirror. Conscience is a photoplate. Once a photoplate is exposed, it is finished. It catches the picture and that picture remains forever, fixed. Remember, it cannot grow.A woman was showing her child the family album. They came across a picture of a beautiful man with black hair, very fresh and young. The child asked, “Who is this, Mom?”The mother replied, “Don’t you recognize him? He is your father!” The child said, “He is my father? Then who is that bald-headed man who lives with us?”In reality, things change. Beautiful black hair disappears and one becomes bald-headed. But in pictures things are fixed.Conscience is a photoplate and consciousness is a mirror. It also reflects, but it never clings to any reflection. It remains empty, hence it remains capable of reflecting new situations. If it is morning, it reflects the morning. If it is evening, it reflects the evening. The photoplate is fixed. If you exposed it in the morning, it will always remain morning in the photo; it will never become evening, night.There is no need to develop a conscience. The need is to drop the conscience and develop consciousness. Drop all that you have been taught by others and start living on your own, searching and seeking. Yes, in the beginning it will be difficult because you won’t have any map. The map is contained in the conscience. You will have to move without a map, you will have to move in the uncharted, with no guidelines. Cowards cannot move without guidelines, they cannot move without maps. When you move with maps and guidelines, you are not really entering new territory, new realms – you are going in circles. You go on moving in the known and never take a jump into the unknown. It is only courage that can drop conscience.Conscience means all the knowledge that you have. Consciousness means being empty, being utterly empty, and moving into life with that emptiness, seeing through that emptiness and acting out of that – then action has tremendous grace. Whatever you do is right. It is not a question of what is right and what is wrong because something that is right today may be wrong tomorrow. And borrowed knowledge never helps.Homer and Jethro were digging a ditch in the blazing Mississippi sun. Seeing the boss sitting coolly in the shade above them, Homer put down his shovel and said, “How come he is up there and we are down here?”“I dunno,” said Jethro.Homer went up to the boss and asked, “How come you boss up here and we works down there?”The boss answered, “Because I am smart.”“What is smart?” asked Homer.“Here,” said the boss putting his hand on a tree, “I will show you. Try to hit my hand.”Homer wound up a mighty swing and let fly. Just as he swung, the boss moved his hand away and Homer crashed into the tree.“Owwww!” he screamed.The boss said coolly, “Now you are smart too.”Homer went back to the ditch. Jethro asked what happened and Homer said, “Now I am smart.”Jethro said, “What is smart?”Homer said, “I will show you.”He looked around for a tree and not seeing one, he put his hand over his own face. “Here,” he said, “try to hit my hand…”That’s what goes on with your so-called knowledge, conscience – situations change, trees are no longer found… But you have a fixed routine and you cannot do anything else, so you go on repeating your routine. Life has no obligation to fit with your routine. You have to fit with life.A very strange, mysterious thing happened just twenty years ago in the world of modern physics. It destroyed the whole of Aristotelian logic, it destroyed all ancient certainties. Physicists came to know that electrons move in a very strange way: they behave simultaneously as if they are particles and also as if they are waves. This is impossible. Either something can be a particle or it can be a wave. In the language of geometry, either something can be a point, a dot, or a line. But one thing cannot be a point, a dot and a line together. That is impossible. But that’s what was happening.They observed and observed. Such was the behavior that the electrons were behaving in a very illogical way. They tried hard to figure it out, to somehow manage the old Aristotelian logic, that A is A and A is never not A. That was the two-thousand-year-old thought, deep-rooted, that A can never not be A. That’s what was happening; the particle was behaving like a wave – A was behaving not like A. Now what to do?It was difficult to discard Aristotle, very difficult – a two-thousand-year-long love affair. Electrons have no obligation, they don’t bother at all about Aristotle. They were saying “Get lost!” Finally the physicists had to agree with the electrons. When they were asked again and again “How is it possible?” they replied, “What can we do? It is not a question of possible or not possible. It is happening. It is so. We understand that it is illogical, that it should not be so, but what can we do? We are helpless. The electrons don’t believe in Aristotle.”Aristotle has been discarded – the two-thousand-year-old tradition of logic has become simply irrelevant.Another phenomenon happened after a few years. They came to know that when the electron moves from point A to B, in the middle it disappears. Moving from point A to B, you find it on the point A, then suddenly you find it on point B, but in the middle you don’t find it at all.Now this is even more impossible. Someone coming from Mumbai to Pune; you find him in Mumbai and then you find him in Pune. On the way he is found nowhere. This is strange, unbelievable, but what to do? That’s how it is. So another great ancient idea simply had to be dropped. The old idea was that nothing can come out of nothing. Now that is happening. In the middle it is nothing, in the beginning it is something, in the end it is again something. So out of something nothing comes and out of nothing something comes again.But this has always been the experience of the mystics. This is new for modern physics, but this is not new for metaphysics – this is very ancient. Mystics have never believed in Aristotle; they have always been anti-Aristotle. They have always been illogical because they don’t know the way of the electron, but they know their own inner consciousness. And there too they have observed these miracles; that the ego is something. It comes out of nothing and disappears into nothing again. The ego arises out of nothing, becomes very solid and one day in meditation you simply find it has evaporated again.This has been one of the most ancient experiences of the ego; that one moment it is there, another moment it is not there and again it is there. This has been the experience about time too; that when you are in deep meditation, time simply disappears and when you come out of meditation, time is again there.The mystics have known that life follows no logic, that life is basically supra-logical, that life follows no reason and that fundamentally it is irrational. Conscience is very arbitrary, artificial. It gives you a fixed pattern, a fixed gestalt, but life goes on changing and is very uncertain, is very zigzag. Unless you are conscious you will not be able to live your life truly. Your life will be only a pretension, a pseudo-phenomenon. You will always be missing the train.And always missing the train is what creates anguish in man. Just think of yourself always missing the train; rushing to the station and whenever you reach the train, it is leaving the platform. That’s what happens to the person who lives according to the conscience: he never catches the train. He cannot. He has a fixed gestalt and life is a fluid phenomenon. He has a rocklike thing inside him and life is more like water.Be conscious. Don’t ask how to grow, how to develop a conscience. Here we are trying to do just the opposite. We are destroying conscience – the Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina conscience. We are destroying all kinds of conscience and they come in all shapes and sizes.Consciousness is neither Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. It is simply consciousness. Conscience divides people, consciousness unites.Forget all about conscience. You ask, “How can one develop a conscience – something within that will guide one in one’s everyday life…?” What is the need of carrying a guide with you? Consciousness is enough. Whenever a certain need arises, your consciousness will respond. You have a mirror, you will reflect it. The answer will be spontaneous.When I was a student at university, my professors were very worried about me. They were worried – they loved me. They were worried because I never prepared for the examinations. They were even worried that I might answer in such a way that the examiner may not even be able to see the point.My old professor, Dr. S. K. Saxena, used to come early in the morning just to wake me up so that I could study a little bit. He would sit in my room saying, “Do a little preparation.” He would leave me in the examination hall and go home because he was even worried that I may not go.When it came to the final oral examination, he was very, very worried because I might say something that could offend the examiner. He was also present; he was the head of the department so he was present together with the examiner. He had said to me, warned me again and again, “Simply stick to the question. Whatever he asks, simply answer that. Don’t go into any depth about it – just a plain answer – the answer that is given in the books will do. I will be there and if I see that you are going astray, I will give you a nudge with my foot underneath the table – so come back again and just stick to the question.”The first question… And the problem arose. The professor who had come to examine asked, “What is the difference between Indian philosophy and Western philosophy?” My professor became afraid because he knew that the words Indian and Western were enough for me… And that was so. I replied, “What do you mean by Indian? Can philosophy be Indian and Western also? Then philosophy can be Bengali and Maharashtran. If science isn’t Indian and Western, why should philosophy be?”My professor started hitting me, so I said to him, “Don’t hit me. Just keep away. This is between me and him. You are not supposed to give me any hints.”Now the old examiner was at a loss – what to do? Whatever he asked, I answered him with another question. He was at a loss because he was just carrying ready-made answers. I said to him, “You look at a loss because you can’t respond. Now, it is such a simple thing that philosophy is philosophy. What has it to do with East and West? Say yes or no…”But the fixed gestalt. Indian philosophy – everything has to be Indian; Western philosophy – everything has to be Western. Everything has to be this and that. Adjectives and adjectives. We can’t think of this earth as one. We can’t think of humanity as one. Now, what is Indian about Buddha? What is Jewish about Jesus? – nothing at all. I have tasted both and the taste is the same. But borrowed knowledge always remains in you as a fixed thing and whenever you respond out of your fixed ideas, your response falls short. It is not a true answer to the reality.So, there is no need to develop a conscience to guide you; there is no need to have any guide. All that is needed is intelligence, awareness, consciousness, so that you can respond whatever the case is. Life brings challenges and you bring consciousness to those challenges. Meditation is a way of dropping conscience and moving into consciousness.The miracle is that if you can drop conscience, consciousness arises on its own because consciousness is a natural phenomenon. You are born with it; just the conscience has become a hard crust around it and is not allowing its flow. Conscience has become the rock and the small spring of consciousness is blocked by the rock. Remove the rock and the spring starts flowing. And with that spring your life starts moving in a totally different way, in a way that you have not even imagined before, you could not have even dreamed. Everything starts to fall in harmony with existence. To be in harmony with existence is to be right – not to be in harmony with existence is wrong.So conscience as such is the root cause of all wrong because it doesn’t allow you to fall in harmony with existence. And consciousness is always right just as conscience is always wrong.You ask, “Can one learn to intensify one’s feelings and emotions in order to bring one closer to a place of real being?” Neither thoughts nor feelings will help to bring you closer to your being – but feelings are better than thoughts, closer, but not yet the real thing. First one has to drop thoughts, then one has to drop feelings, so that the inner world becomes totally empty. In that emptiness your consciousness turns upon yourself and the reality is known.Truth is neither a thought, a feeling, or an emotion. Truth is the experience of consciousness of itself. Søren Kierkegaard is right when he says, “Truth is subjectivity.” Meditate and go on dropping; there are layers and layers and layers. Man is like an onion – go on peeling. Meditation is the art of peeling the onion. Of course, when you peel the onion, tears come to your eyes – that has to be accepted. It is painful. Go on peeling the onion till nothing is left in your hand. That nothing is reality.You can call it God, you can call it nirvana, enlightenment or whatever you want to call it. Names don’t matter. But the real thing happens only when nothing has happened.The third question:Osho,I always dream of sex and sex and sex – why?Are you a follower of Morarji Desai? Something is basically wrong with you. Your dreams simply show that you are living a repressed life. Your dreams reflect how you are living your life. Your dreams are not just dreams – they are reflections.In the waking time you must be repressing sex; naturally, it is bound to assert itself in your dreams. Dreams only indicate that you are doing something wrong with your life. When your life is really harmonious, lived consciously, dreams disappear – all kinds of dreams disappear. The whole of your sleep becomes dreamless. That is the indication that the transformation that happens to every meditator is happening. As meditation goes deeper, dreams start disappearing.But dreams show something about you. You have to rethink, you have to rearrange your life. If you are dreaming only of sex, that simply shows you are sex-obsessed. And who is sex-obsessed? – whoever represses is bound to be obsessed by it. Your dreams cannot just be rejected as dreams – as people do. They think they are just dreams, nothing to be worried about. Your dreams are symbolic. Your unconscious is trying to convey a certain message to you, that you are doing something wrong.Sex is part of life. You cannot deny it. You can transcend it, but you cannot deny it. If you deny it, you will create unnecessary complexities; it will become an obsession. It will create perversions in your life.Morarji Desai drinks his own urine – not for no reason. It is a perversion. It is rooted in sexual repression. Sexual repression can take many kinds of perverted forms.Trying to fall asleep, a Greek shepherd is counting sheep: “One, two, three, four, five, hello darling…”Antonio: “Last night I had a night-a mare.”Angelo: “What-a happened?”Antonio: “I dreamed-a I was eating a-spaghetti.”Angelo: “Why is that so bad?”Antonio: “I woke up and a-the string on a-my pajamas was a-gone.”Now, Italians go on and on with spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti. Dreams will reflect; dreams are reflections. If sex is reflected in your dreams, reconsider your life. Drop all the old nonsense. You must be a typical Indian. That’s what goes on in the Indian mind continuously. Even your saints are full of obsessive sex because all the ways to transcend sex have been denied them.You will be surprised to know that all kinds of sexual perversions were invented by monks and nuns. These are the people who condemn. But psychologists say that homosexuality was invented by monks and nuns – homosexuality is a religious phenomenon. And so are other things…If you repress something, nature is going to take revenge on you. Remember, you cannot fight with nature. You can win nature, not by fighting with it, but by being with it. You can persuade nature to be with you and help you. Nature is very compassionate. But once you start fighting, you are bound to lose. Nature is vast and you are very tiny. It is like a wave fighting with the ocean, a small leaf fighting with the whole tree. It is stupid. The wave can win, but not against the ocean – only with the ocean. And that’s my basic teaching.Sex can be transcended and should be transcended, but transcendence has not to be against nature but with nature, through nature. Accept your sexuality. It is part of you and a tremendously important part. You are born out of sex. Each cell of your body is a sex cell. Sex energy is your life energy. Respect it, it is a gift from existence. Understand it. Be more and more meditative about it. But drop all prejudices, drop all condemnations. You cannot understand something when you carry a condemnation. Drop all judgments. Sex is sex. It is a pure natural energy. Meditate over it with great acceptance, love, respect. Go deeper and deeper in it, to see what exactly it is. In that very seeing you will be going beyond it.The day one has known what sex energy really is, one has transcended. Sex disappears; it disappears not by denying it, but by understanding. The disappearance is not really the destruction of the energy but a transformation. In existence nothing is ever destroyed, things are only transformed.It is sex transformed, that becomes love. It is love transformed, that becomes prayer. It is prayer in its ultimate transformation that becomes godliness.The fourth question:Osho,I don't accept your criticism of Sigmund Freud. Do you accept a sannyasin who sometimes says no to what you say? I am not less neurotic than Freud, but I think that I can become creative only if I learn to accept the neurotic part of myself. What do you say to this?Who has criticized Sigmund Freud? I was simply stating a few facts. To state a fact is not a criticism. If I call a blind man a blind man, I may be rude, but I am not criticizing. I may be blunt, I may not be polite, but I am not criticizing.Freud was neurotic and there are a thousand and one facts supporting this. Just look in Freud’s biographies and you will come across those facts yourself. He was a homosexual. He wrote such stupid homosexual letters to a man that later on he asked the man again and again to destroy those letters – because when he became famous he was afraid that someday or other those letters would come to public notice.The major part of those letters was destroyed, but a few somehow survived. His whole life he was condemning homosexuality and he had deep homosexual tendencies.It happens almost always that whatever you condemn in others is really your inner problem. The other is just a scapegoat.You say, “I am not less neurotic than Freud, but I think that I can become creative only if I learn to accept the neurotic part of myself.” That is true. That’s what I teach here: to accept it. Freud never accepted his neurotic part. He not only never accepted it; he tried to deny it, he tried to cover it up.Once Freud and Jung were traveling in a train and they started talking about psychoanalysis. Suddenly Jung had a great idea and said, “You have psychoanalyzed so many people, but you yourself are not psychoanalyzed. It would be good if you also go through psychoanalysis. Someone whom you have psychoanalyzed and whose psychoanalysis is complete can psychoanalyze you.”Freud became so afraid – even just the idea – that he started trembling and he fainted. When he came back he said, “I cannot allow that. I cannot allow myself to be psychoanalyzed. That will expose me.”Jung replied, “Then you are already exposed.”Freud never accepted that he had any psychological problems. He tried to deny them because the fear was that if you have psychological problems, how can you be the founder of psychoanalysis? He tried to prove that he was superhuman. He was not a buddha, he was not an enlightened person. He suffered from the same jealousies, paranoia, as everyone; in fact, more than the ordinary, average person.By and by, all his old colleagues left him. The reason being that he was so jealous of anyone getting closer to him, becoming famous, known – he would feel so jealous, so afraid, that a competitor was born that he would start attacking him. He did that to Adler, to Jung and to many others, anyone, his own disciples. He was afraid that his own disciples would become competitors or they may prove themselves more important than he was. He could not conceive of anyone being more important in the world of psychoanalysis.This is a very poor kind of mind, a very ordinary, mediocre mind. He was so political that the whole movement of psychoanalysis was continuously in turmoil. Conspiracies were going on for and against – for this, against that. He was making his followers fight with each other because that is the only way. Divide and rule. He was putting one follower against another. He was running psychoanalysis as a political thing.I am not criticizing him. I have a great respect for the man – in spite of all his faults, he made a great breakthrough. In spite of all his human limitations, he started a new dimension in human consciousness. He is the founder of psychoanalysis. No one, Jung, Adler and others comes close to him. He was unnecessarily afraid. He was simply suffering from paranoia. No one comes close to him. He was a giant among pygmies. But the giant was afraid of the pygmies. He was not aware of his own strength. He was not aware at all; that is the problem. I am not against Freud.You ask me, “Do you accept a sannyasin who sometimes says no to what you say?” Yes, that’s what I teach. When your consciousness says no, say no. When your consciousness says yes, say yes. I don’t create a conscience in you. I am not creating followers here – no, not at all – but friends. Your no is as much respected as your yes. That’s the only way to show respect toward you. You may not respect yourself, you may have a self-condemnatory attitude, but for me you are all potential buddhas. How can I disrespect a buddha? – even though the buddha is potential, even though you are in the seed. But I can see the flower.In Kirlian photography, they have discovered one thing which is very significant. Pictures can be taken with very sensitive photoplates of a bud, but the picture will show not the bud but the flower that is going to happen – because before the bud opens, the energy field around the bud opens. Just a few hours before the bud really opens, its energy field opens. Kirlian photography takes the photograph of the energy field. The bud has not opened yet, the bud is still a bud, but Kirlian photography can give you a picture of the future. It is not future for the sensitive plate – for the sensitive plate it is already present.Through Kirlian photography, illnesses can be caught before they happen to you. To be precise, a few illnesses have been caught six months before they happened. There was no possibility to even suspect that after six months the man concerned was going to fall ill from a certain illness; there is no way to know it. Nothing had happened yet in the body, but something had happened in the energy field that surrounds the body. Kirlian photography can take a photograph of the energy field and can infer through the photograph that a man is going to have cancer in six months. Now, Kirlian photography is going to become a tremendously powerful instrument in the hands of future medicine. If we can know six months before, then much can be done and no one need fall ill. The illness can be prevented even before it has happened.And that’s how I see you. Before my eyes you are not buds but flowers, before my eyes you are not seeds but fully grown trees – great foliage, flowers, fruits. Before me you are buddhas. Hence I call you “friends.” Kabir calls his disciples friends: “Friends, wake up!”You are accepted, with all your no’s, with all your yes’s. You are accepted as you are. I don’t make any conditions. If you are ready to become a sannyasin, who am I to prevent you? The chance has to be given to you to grow, to be.The last question:Osho,Why is the new generation such a problem to their parents?The new generation is more intelligent and intelligence brings problems. It is natural that the new generation should be more intelligent. That’s how evolution happens. Each new generation is going to be more intelligent than the preceding one. Your children will be more intelligent than you and your children’s children will be more intelligent than your children.It is a momentum, a gathering momentum. You are standing on the shoulders of the buddhas – the whole past is yours. For example, in my being, Buddha is a part, Jesus is a part, Abraham is a part, Krishna is a part, Mohammed is a part; in that way Buddha was poorer than me, Jesus was poorer than me. Some future enlightened person will be richer than me because I will be part of his being, but he cannot be part of my being. Evolution goes on gathering momentum.Each child should be more intelligent than the parents, but that brings trouble because that is what offends parents. Parents would like to pretend that they are all-knowing. In the past it was easy to pretend because there was no other way to impart knowledge to children other than by the oral communication from the parents.For example, a carpenter’s son would learn all that he would ever learn through his father. The father would not only be the father but the teacher also. The son would always be in awe and respect him because the father knew so much. He knew everything about all kinds of trees and wood, and this and that, and the son knew nothing. He would have tremendous respect.Age used to be respected. The older a man was in the ancient days, the more wise, of course, because of his experiences. But now we have invented better means of communication. The father is no longer the teacher; now the teaching profession is a totally different profession. The child goes to school. The father had gone to the school thirty or forty years before. In the thirty or forty years, a knowledge explosion has happened. The child will learn something which the father is not aware of and when the child comes home, how can he feel any awe? He knows more than the father, he is more up to date than the father. The father seems to be outmoded.This is the problem and this is going to be so more and more because our expectations are old and we still want the child to respect the parents as he used to respect them in the past. The whole situation has changed. You will have to learn something new now. Start respecting the child. Now, the new has to be respected more than the old. Start learning from the child because he knows better than you. When your son returns from university, he certainly knows more than you.That has been my experience at university. One of my philosophy professors used to talk such nonsense and the reason was that he had been to university thirty years before. In those days, when he was a student, Hegel and Bradley were the most important figures in the world of philosophy. Now no one cares about Hegel and Bradley. Now Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore have taken their place.This professor had no idea of Wittgenstein, no idea of G. E. Moore. He was so outmoded that I had to say to him. “You are so old, so useless, that either you start reading what is happening now in philosophy or stop teaching.”Naturally, he was angry and I was expelled from the university. He wrote a letter to the vice chancellor and said, “Either I remain here teaching or this student remains in the university, but we cannot both remain – he is trouble.”He was not ready to read Wittgenstein. In fact, I can understand his problem. Even if he had read it he would not have understood. Wittgenstein is a totally different world from Hegel. He used to talk about Hume and Berkeley which are rotten names, no longer of any significance – just part of history, part of footnotes.This is the problem. You ask me, “Why is the new generation such a problem to their parents?” They are not really a problem. Your expectation that they should respect you – that they should respect you as children have always respected their parents – is impossible. Start respecting them. Start respecting the new. Now age in itself cannot be any reason for respect. Intelligence, consciousness, should be respected. If you respect your children, they will respect you. But only if you respect your children will they respect you. The old way was that you go on humiliating the children, go on insulting them in every possible way and they have to respect you. Now this cannot be so any longer.The preacher’s wife, while shopping, noticed a sign in the butcher’s shop: “Dam Ham on Sale.” Slightly taken aback by such a name, she confronted the butcher about the use of profanity, but was reassured when he explained that this was a new breed of hogs being raised up by the Hoover Dam, hence the name “Dam Ham.” She decided to take some home and fix it for her family that evening.When her husband arrived home, she was cooking and he asked, “What’s for dinner?”“Dam ham,” she replied.The minister, who had never heard such language in his house, began to reproach her, but after she explained he felt a little embarrassed for doubting his wife.That evening as they sat down to dinner with their six-year-old son, the minister said grace and asked, “Pass the Dam Ham, please.”The little kid looked up, his eyes got big and he said, “Now you’re talking, Dad. Pass the fucking potatoes too!”Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,How to sacrifice the ego?It is impossible. The ego cannot be sacrificed because the ego doesn’t exist. The ego is just an idea, it has no substance in it. It is not something, it is just pure nothing. You give it reality by believing in it. You can withdraw belief and the reality disappears, evaporates.The ego is a kind of absence. And because you don’t know yourself, hence the ego. The moment you know yourself, no ego is found. The ego is like darkness and darkness has no positive existence of its own; it is simply the absence of light. You cannot fight with darkness, or can you? You cannot throw darkness out of the room, you cannot take it out, you cannot take it in. You cannot do anything with darkness directly. If you want to do anything with darkness, you will have to do something with light. If you put the light on, there is no darkness; if you put the light off, there is darkness.Darkness is only the absence of light – and so is the ego; it is the absence of self-knowledge. You cannot sacrifice it.You have been told again and again. “Sacrifice your ego.” The statement is patently absurd because something that does not exist cannot be sacrificed. If you try to sacrifice it – something which is not there in the first place at all – you will be creating a new ego; the ego of the humble, the ego of the egoless, the ego of the person who thinks he has sacrificed his ego. It will be a new kind of darkness again.No, I don’t tell you to sacrifice the ego. On the contrary, I tell you to try and see where the ego is. Look deep into it and try to locate where it exists, whether it exists at all or not. Before one can sacrifice anything, one must be certain about its existence. But don’t be against it from the very beginning. If you are against it, you cannot look deep into it. There is no need to be against anything. The ego is your experience – maybe it is just apparent, but it is still your experience. Your whole life moves around the phenomenon of the ego. It may be a dream, but to you it is so true.There is no need to be against it. Dive deep into it, go into it. Going into it means bringing awareness in your house, bringing light into darkness. Be alert, watchful. Watch the ways of the ego, how it functions, how it manages at all. You will be surprised that the deeper you go into it, the less it is found. When you have penetrated to the very core of your being, you will find something totally different which is not the ego, which is egolessness. It is the self, the supreme self. It is godliness. You have disappeared as a separate entity and are no longer an island. Now you are part of the whole.In that experience of being one with the whole, the ego is sacrificed, but that is only a way of speaking, a metaphor. Don’t take it literally. Try to understand the ego. Analyze it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. Don’t be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks he has no ego.That is again the same story played on a more subtle level. That’s what the religious people have been doing down the ages – they have been pious egoists. They have made their ego even more decorated and it has taken the color of religion, holiness. Your ego is better than the ego of a saint, your ego is better, far better – because your ego is very gross and the gross ego can be understood and dropped more easily than the subtle. The subtle ego goes on playing such games that it is very difficult. One will need absolute awareness to watch it.The ego of the sinner is more easily dropped than the ego of the saint. The saint can always manage to pretend. His ego is so polished, so decorated, so holy, so sanctified by tradition, by convention, by the crowd, that he may almost forget about it.The real search is not to make your ego humble; that is the ego standing upside-down, the ego doing shirshasan – headstand. Avoid it. Rather, follow a totally different path and meditate on the phenomenon of the ego, inquire what it is. As the inquiry deepens, the ego disappears. Inquiring into the ego, you will come to the self.Remember, the self has nothing to do with the ego because the self has nothing to do with you at all. The self is always the supreme self: Aham brahmasmi – I am God. At that point you are not, only godliness is: Tattvamasi – thou art that. At that point, there is no distinction between thou and that. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean and has become the ocean itself. But no sacrifice. The non-substantial cannot be sacrificed, it can only be understood. In the very understanding is the disappearing. And this disappearance is beautiful because it does not leave any traces behind – no scars, no wounds.The second question:Osho,What is rationalization? I am asking this question because my husband is a professor of philosophy and whatever I say he almost always says that it is nothing but a rationalization.Rationalization is a trick of the mind to deceive not only others but yourself too. Your husband may be practicing rationalization himself. Whenever he says to you, “This is a rationalization,” it may be nothing but a rationalization on his part. He wants to avoid, he wants to escape; he does not want to answer directly. He condemns you.Of course he uses a big, very big word: rationalization. And naturally the wife is cowed down – there must be something wrong. The husband knows; he is a professor of philosophy, so he is bound to know. He is practicing rationalization himself.Rationalization is not true reasoning. It is a strategy, a pretension. It pretends to be rational but it is not.“Why do you drink?” asked Hogan.“Booze killed me mother,” answered Kehoe, “and booze killed me father – I am drinking for revenge!”This is a rationalization. If you want to drink, drink. But this is a very subtle way of deceiving yourself and others.From a diary of an Italian girl on a Caribbean cruise:Monday – was invited to dine at the Captain’s table.Tuesday – spent the day with the Captain.Wednesday – Captain made ungentlemanly proposals to me.Thursday – Captain said he would sink the ship if I did not agree to his proposals.Friday – saved five hundred lives.This is rationalization. Man is very cunning and his cunningness is unlimited. People go on doing things in the name of reason.Today Acharya Vinoba Bhave is going to start his fast unto death – because he wants a total ban on cow slaughter. He calls it his religious duty. How can this be a religious duty? This is blackmail, this is threatening the country. Where has he got the idea from? He says that his mother appeared in his dream and said to him, “This is the work that you have to do.”Now for his dream, and the mother in the dream, he is threatening the country. “I will commit suicide if you don’t listen to me.” But rather than saying it directly, “I will commit suicide,” he says he will fast unto death.These people are thought to be saintly, these people are thought to be great preachers of nonviolence. That’s exactly what his master, Mahatma Gandhi, did his whole life. Now he is perpetuating the rotten tradition. For these thirty years at least, India has suffered from these people. And there seems to be no end to it.This is called nonviolence. If I threaten someone saying, “I will kill you if you don’t listen to me,” I will be caught by the police. I will be a criminal in the eyes of the law. But if I threaten saying, “I will kill myself if you don’t listen to me,” this is thought to be some holy act.It is strange that no one says, “These people should immediately be caught and brought to the court because they are threatening suicide and it is a crime against the law.” Any attempt to commit suicide is a crime against the law. But Vinoba Bhave is a saint.Morarji Desai went to see him to try to persuade him not to do it because he himself has been doing it, the same thing. That’s how he has come into power, by threatening to commit suicide. These are subtle ways of coercion, violence. Who is one single person to decide for the whole country? Then someone can say, “I will fast unto death unless everyone stops smoking – because my mother appeared in the dream and said, ‘Son, you have to do this great work.’”Coercion becomes nonviolence. A threat to commit suicide becomes a beautiful thing when you call it a “fast unto death.” And rather than being caught by the police and brought before the court, the prime minister runs, the ministers run, and everyone is trying to persuade him saying, “Don’t go on your fast unto death.” No one is saying that this is a crime.These are rationalizations. One can do anything if one has a cunning and clever mind to rationalize it. Sometimes you may be rationalizing – watch it. But my own experience of women is that they are not great rationalizers. Men are bigger rationalizers because women live more intuitively, more instinctively, and man lives more through the head, through reason.Women don’t bother much about logic. Their behavior is more or less illogical – instinctive, spontaneous. They don’t try to masquerade it in a logical way, they simply jump from one point to another without bothering about the Aristotelian process of logic. They simply jump. Their leaps are quantum, from one point to another. You cannot see where the bridge is, how they manage to get from one point to another. Their ways are totally different from men’s.More is the possibility that your husband is rationalizing, that this is his way of putting you down. He uses philosophical jargon: rationalization. Of course, you become afraid. You think you have done something wrong. I don’t think you can do much about rationalization; women don’t indulge in it. But it is better to understand because to be with a husband who is a professor of philosophy, it is better to understand what rationalization is. Next time, whatever your husband says, simply say, “This is a rationalization,” and watch what happens.Just the other day I was reading about a psychiatrist who was mending his car. His son was playing with a little girl from the neighborhood on the balcony on the first story. He was down below tinkering with his car.Suddenly his son pushed the girl from the balcony and she fell down to the ground. Of course, the father was angry. He looked up and before he could say anything, the boy asked, “Dad, can you tell me why I did it? You are supposed to be the psychoanalyst, psychiatrist. Tell me why I did it.”Next time your husband says anything, don’t be worried. Just say, “This is a rationalization.” He is using a big word; a few people are obsessed with big words. But rationalization is a subtle process and people do indulge in it – men more. I have rarely come across a woman who indulges in rationalization; except the lib women, no one indulges in rationalization. They are following the footsteps of men all the way.But it is good to understand what it is. If you indulge in it, it is better not to. It is a camouflage. It is better to be authentic, true, rather than hiding yourself behind smoke screens.Now, it will be good if Vinoba Bhave simply says, “I want to impose my will on this country,” that will be simple. “I am ready to die if my will is not accepted.” But he will not say, “I want to impose my will on this country,” because then he will be exposed. “Who are you to impose your will? This is a democracy. You cannot impose your will. You have a single vote, a single vote equal to everyone else’s vote. No one’s vote is more valuable, so who are you?”But this is how this goes on… Morarji Desai wants to impose prohibition on the country. Who are you to impose such things? Where is freedom and where is democracy? Yes, if you are against alcohol, teach, express yourself, argue, persuade. That’s what democracy means. Persuade people. If you are against the slaughter of cows, go around and persuade people not to eat cow’s meat. But threatening that you will commit suicide is very totalitarian, dictatorial, undemocratic. It is a crime against the people, against the law, against democracy.You can hide the fact in religious terminology, you can go on doing something with a mask. People wear masks and rationalization is one of the ways of wearing masks. Be true. Be authentic. There is no need to be untrue because the more untrue you become, the farther and farther you will be from God.I am not worried about your husband. I am worried about your being farther and farther away from God. If you indulge in strategies like rationalization, you will never come close to your own inner self where God resides. Drop all false faces so that you can find your original face. And to find the original face is the greatest blessing and the greatest benediction in life.The third question:Osho,When the question, “Who am I” arises, I get very afraid. Is there something to be said about it?This question makes everyone afraid. It is nothing exceptional; it is absolutely the case with everyone. Whoever wants to go deep into the question, in the quest, of “Who am I?” is bound to feel fear at a certain point. Why? – because there comes a point where you cross the boundary of the ego and enter the world of egolessness. That point is the point of great fear – because it looks like death. In fact, it is a kind of death: the ego disappears.Up to now that has been your identity. Up to now that’s what you have been thinking you are. Suddenly it starts evaporating. A great fear grips your heart. “I am dying!” Your identity is dying. You are not really dying; in fact, you are being born. It is a rebirth, it is a true birth.It is like the seed dying in the soil. The seed must be feeling afraid, nervous, trembling. How can the seed trust that once he is gone there will be a great tree and a great flowering? The seed will not be there to witness it. No seed has ever witnessed it, so how can this seed believe and trust? The same happens with the ego. The ego cannot trust that there is anything more than itself. The ego is dying and it starts breathing its last. You become afraid. Many people turn back from that point and rush back out.This is going to happen to every meditator. Hence your question is significant, very significant. Every meditator has to encounter this situation, this challenge. Many times people come to the point from where they would have entered godliness, but they could not take the risk, they could not gather courage. They became afraid, scared; they rushed out.You have to take the risk. I tell you, from my own experience, it is not death. Yes, it is a death to the ego, but the death of the ego is the birth of the soul. You will die as a drop, but you will be born as the ocean. It is worth it. You will be dying only as a limited being, as a defined being and you will be born as undefined, undefinable.Yes, you will disappear, with all your neurosis, psychosis, with all your tensions, anxieties, anguishes. You will disappear with all your problems, worries; you will disappear as you have known yourself up to now. But your disappearance is only a change of garments and you will be getting closer to your reality, deeper into your reality. You will get more rooted in being. That’s the whole search.You ask me, “When this question, ‘Who am I?’ arises, I get very afraid.” It is natural. It is a good sign that you are coming closer to the boundary. You may be standing exactly on the boundary; that’s why whenever the question arises, immediately you become afraid. Feel blessed that you are so close to the boundary from where a totally new world and a totally new life can have a start. Just one single step… And you will be a new man, you will be an original man. Just a single step and all the garbage that society has dumped on you will have dropped. You will be just a pure consciousness. You will have wings. Now you are just crawling on the earth, and then you will be able to soar high toward the sun.To be with a master simply means to learn trust, to learn the art of risking, to learn the ways of adventuring in the unknown. Yes, the sea is uncharted. It is dangerous to leave the shore, but it is only the people who leave the shore who taste something of immortality. It is only the people who take the risk of going into danger who really live; others only pass through life, but they really don’t live. Others only vegetate and only move through empty gestures.So now this is a very decisive moment for you. You can go back, you can cling to your identity, or you can go ahead, not looking back at all. Be courageous. I can only say this much: the same has happened to me, the same fear. It is human. I had also gone back and forth. To cross this line is really difficult. But sooner or later, one decides – because going and coming back does not help. Once you have come so close to the line, you cannot be satisfied with your ordinary life any longer. So you can go out, but you will find everything has become meaningless. Now you will be in a dilemma.This is the work of a master: to create the dilemma. The without becomes meaningless and the within seems to be dangerous. To live the ordinary life again becomes impossible and to take the jump into the new also seems impossible. But sooner or later, one decides to take the jump – because what is the point of clinging to something that has become meaningless, which has lost all significance. How long can you cling to it?The master waits, the master remains patient. He allows you to go back and forth, he goes on watching that you are shunting in and out. But he knows one thing; that every day the outer will go on losing its significance more and more. One day it will be utterly useless, absurd, to be there. As the outer loses significance, the inner will become more and more magnetic. The process happens simultaneously.One day it becomes irresistible and one has to cross the line. That day is the greatest day in a human being’s life, when you drop your old identity and enter the unknown – you have encountered godliness, you have come home.The fourth question:Osho,I always believed that an American, a Chinese, an African, a Swede, an Indian, could be happy and content and communicate with one another despite their varying colors, habits, beliefs, etcetera; just as long as they were natural and honest with themselves and each other. Why is mankind making this impossible for mankind?It is impossible to have beliefs and still live in peace. The belief is the root cause of all conflict. Only a world of agnostic seekers can be one. Believers cannot allow the world to be one.For example, the Christian believes that it is only through Christ that salvation is possible. Now, how is a Mohammedan going to tolerate it? The very idea is a dangerous one for him. He believes that only through Mohammed is true salvation possible. How can this be tolerated by the Buddhist who thinks that except for Buddha there has never been another enlightened person? Buddha and Mahavira lived together, they were contemporaries, but Buddhists don’t think that Mahavira is enlightened. Jainas, the followers of Mahavira, don’t think that Buddha is enlightened. Now, how is a Jaina going to believe that Jesus is enlightened? – because he is not a vegetarian, he is a nonvegetarian. How can a nonvegetarian become enlightened? The Jaina believes that one who becomes enlightened is bound to be vegetarian. How can he kill? His belief is going to become a barrier.A Christian cannot believe in Mahavira because he never helped the poor. Just standing under a tree naked, meditating with closed eyes, looks very selfish to a Christian. Mahavira should have opened at least a few hospitals, schools; he never did anything. He did not do any miracles either – giving eyes to the blind, raising dead people back to life. What kind of enlightened person is he? No miracle, no service to humanity – only talks about nonviolence, but no compassion in his acts, deeds. A Christian cannot believe that Buddha is enlightened. What service has he done for humanity?Now, these differing beliefs divide people. Belief is the way of division. Humanity can be one only when people drop beliefs. That’s what I am trying to do here. Be an inquirer, don’t be a believer. Inquire into truth, but don’t start with a prejudice. Don’t start as a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Hindu.You say, “I always believed that an American, a Chinese, an African, a Swede, an Italian, could all be happy and content and communicate with one another despite their varying colors, habits, beliefs, etcetera; just as long as they were natural and honest with themselves and each other.”The American believes in the American way of life and the Indian believes in the Indian way of life – the conflict is there. The Indian believes that India is the only holy country in the world, the only religious country in the world. American – the very word smells of materialism. To the Indian mind, the word American means something absolutely irreligious, unholy. The American represents to him the man of indulgence.To the American, the Indian symbolizes snobbery, hypocrisy, egoism. How can these people meet? The American has to drop his being American and the Indian has to drop his being Indian. We have to start thinking in terms of the whole earth. Religious beliefs, political beliefs, beliefs of all kinds, divide people. Hence, all beliefs are dangerous, poisonous.Here, you can see people of all races, all countries, all religions, meeting – with no problem. And no one has ever been told, “Be tolerant of others.” The very idea of being tolerant carries intolerance in it. Why should someone be told, “Be tolerant of others”? It simply means that there is intolerance and one has to learn to tolerate.It is never said to anyone here that Hinduism, Christianity, Islam all mean the same thing; to say so means that you are suspicious. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that the Koran, the Gita, the Dhammapada all mean the same thing. And with great effort he used to try to find similarities. Why bother? The very effort shows that there is suspicion. The effort cannot succeed because they are not similar. The Koran has its own beauty, the Gita has its own beauty and they are not similar, not at all.Trying to impose similarity on such unique, original scriptures is really sickening. How can Mahavira and Krishna have the same message? It is not the same. Just think if Arjuna had said to Mahavira, “I want to renounce the world and the war and go to the forest.” Mahavira would have immediately initiated him in renunciation. He would have said, “That’s what you should have done. It is already late, but still, good. War is violence and it is good that an insight is born in you. Renounce the world and go to the forest.”But Krishna persuaded him not to go to the forest saying, “Fight the war because this is your duty. Your very being is such that you can only be a warrior; your type is such. Renunciation won’t suit you, it won’t fit you. You will be a misfit and even in the forest you will start hunting. You will not be able to meditate, you will hunt. I know you well, I know you from your very childhood. All this nonsense you are talking about is nothing but a rationalization. You are not against war.” And he was not. Krishna was right, his insight was deep – he was not against war. He was really against killing his own people.The war was a family war between brothers and on both the sides were relatives. The fight was between cousin-brothers, all the relatives had to divide. A few had gone to this side, a few to that side. One brother was on this side, another brother was on that side. Even Krishna himself had divided; his army was fighting on the other side and he himself was fighting with Arjuna because both were his friends and both had asked for his help. So he had said, “You can choose. One can take my army and one can take me.”Arjuna’s own teacher from whom he had learned all that he knew about war, who had made him a perfect warrior, Drona, was on the other side. His own master, from whom he had learned archery, was fighting on the other side. It was really a family war. Arjuna was not against war; he was against killing one’s own people. Seeing the whole war-field full of his own people – a few on this side, a few on that side – and both would be killed and many would be killed… He started thinking, “What is the point of it all? Killing my own family? It is better I should renounce.”He was not against violence. If his own people had not been involved, he would have enjoyed the war like anything. Krishna persuaded him to see the fact that he was rationalizing; all this nonsense talk about nonviolence, no war, peace, renunciation, was just a rationalization. He forced him to see the trick of his mind.Now, how can you say Mahavira and Krishna are saying the same thing? They are not saying the same thing. My own experience is this, that all those who have become enlightened in the world – Moses, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Kabir and many, many more – what they have experienced is the same. But still their personalities are so different, their individuality is so unique. Their expressions are utterly different. You cannot force it or make it appear by any strategy that they are saying the same thing – they are not.Their experience is the same, their ultimate experience is the same, but their choice of how life should be lived, how that ultimate experience should be approached, is totally different. Their paths are different, their goal may be the same – but the goal will be known only when you have arrived, not before that. Before the goal you will have to follow the path.Mahatma Gandhi was trying somehow to prove that the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the Jaina are all saying the same thing. It was a forgery because he was choosing only sentences from the Koran which are harmonious with the Gita and not choosing sentences which are disharmonious with the Gita. The Gita is his criterion. He calls the Gita his mother, but he does not call the Koran his father. The Gita is his mother and he remains a Hindu, basically a Hindu. He goes on looking and finding sentences according to the Gita. Wherever anything can be found which is similar, he chooses it, picks it up, and anything that is not similar to the Gita, he simply drops it, he forgets all about it.This is not the right approach. And still he could not convince anyone. In fact, the very effort was futile, an exercise in futility. He could not convince the Mohammedans and he could not convince the Hindus. The Mohammedans remained unconvinced. They continued demanding a separate country and they succeeded in having a separate country. He could not convince the Hindus. In fact, a Hindu murdered him, a fanatic Hindu murdered him. He could not convince anyone.I cannot believe that he convinced himself either. His whole life he was singing in his ashram: “Allah-ishwar teri nam – Allah and Ishwar, both are thy names.” But when he was shot dead, Allah didn’t come to his heart. When the bullet passed into his heart, he cried, “Ram” not Allah, but “Hey Ram.” That is very decisive. At that moment all philosophizing was forgotten, the real Hindu surfaced. He could not remember Allah at that moment, could not remember Buddha, could not remember Mahavira. The person he remembered was Ram – the Hindu ideal, the Hindu incarnation of God. That shows that he could not even convince himself. What to say of others?In this place, I am not trying to convince anyone and still things are happening. I am not trying to bring a synthesis of all religions because I know it is utterly futile. They are different, they are unique. I respect their uniqueness. In fact, the world is richer because there is a Koran, a Gita, a Dhammapada. The world is richer because Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Buddha all happened; the world is richer because there is Nanak, Kabir, Farid. With so many different flowers, the world is a beautiful garden.The rose is not the lotus and the lotus is not the rose – both are flowers, both have bloomed, that is true. Buddha has bloomed and Jesus has bloomed – both are flowers – but a rose is a rose and a lotus is a lotus. It is good that not all are roses, not all are lotuses.But something very mysterious is happening here. You can see all kinds of people here, from almost every country, from every religion and no one teaches them to be tolerant and no one teaches them to be respectful of the other’s religion. These things are simply not talked about and still no one is intolerant. In fact, no one thinks in terms that the other is other. This is a totally different vision.My approach is that you have to drop – not to imbibe tolerance, not to imbibe a certain synthesis, manipulated, man-made – this whole nonsense of the American way of life, the Indian way of life, the Chinese way of life. You have to drop this whole nonsense that “I am a Hindu, Mohammedan, Parsi, Sikh.” You are just a human being. Maybe your color is different – so what? It is good that there are people of different colors, different flowers. Your hair is different – good! It makes life more worth living, more interesting. The variety gives richness.Your idea that people can live in harmony even though they have different beliefs is wrong. Those different beliefs are the problem. In fact, to believe is to go wrong. Knowing is good, believing is wrong. Inquiring is good, gathering prejudice is wrong. Be a seeker and be an agnostic.By “agnostic” is meant: say clearly to others and to yourself, “I don’t know, so how can I cling to any belief? I was born in a Hindu family, so I have been taught the Hindu religion by my parents, but I don’t know what is right and what is wrong. It is just incidental. Had I been brought up by a Christian, I would have believed in the Christian religion in the same way. Or, if I had been born in Soviet Russia then I would have been a communist; I would not have believed in the trinity of God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Ghost. I would have believed in a totally different trinity. Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Kremlin would have been my Kaaba. Das Kapital would have been my Bhagavad Gita.”Just see – it is simple. No one is born a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. These things are imposed on you. This is ugly that these things are imposed on you. In a really free world no religion will be imposed on anyone. All religions will be available to everyone. One should be free to shop around. One can go to the temple, to the mosque, to the gurdwara, and move around, do a little religious shopping. One can look in the Koran, the Bible, the Vedas and decide on one’s own.Parents should not decide the religion of their children. It should be a crime against humanity to force any child into any religion. Yes, parents should teach the child to inquire and how to inquire. They should make available to him all alternatives, so if the child wants one day to become a Mohammedan – you may be a Hindu but if your child wants to become a Mohammedan – it is perfectly good. You should be happy your child has chosen a religion. It is good that he is becoming religious. Why does it matter where he prays, in the temple or in the mosque? The only thing that matters is that he prays.But now, right now, that is not the case. No one is interested in prayer. Everyone is interested – in what? No one is interested in making you really religious; everyone is interested in making you a Christian, Catholic, Protestant, this and that. This is an ugly situation and that divides people.We have to fight for a world where children will not be forced into any religion. Every child should be given all opportunities to choose. Who knows what is going to fit with him? My own observation is that if it happens that a man is born into a Jaina family, but he is not the type of Mahavira, then for his whole life he will be doing something for which he is not meant. He will follow Mahavira, but his heart will not be in it. His heart can go far more deeply with Meera, with Krishna – but that is not possible, he is a Jaina. And vice versa, a man may be born into a family which worships Krishna, but seeing Krishna no bells ring in his heart. Then what is he supposed to do? Pretend? Be a hypocrite? Go on believing because his parents are Hindus so he has to remain a Hindu? Seeing the statue of Mahavira naked, silent, his heart may be stirred, he may feel a new fluttering in his being, a new energy, a new flash of lightning. It may “click” – then that is his religion.Religion has to be found by your own heart. All religions are good. All religions are different. All religions are ways; they reach the same goal. No one can follow all the ways. If you follow all the ways, you will go crazy. You have to follow one way, knowing perfectly well that all the ways are leading to the same peak of the mountain. Still one has to follow one way.If the beginning is not a belief but inquiry, the world will be totally different. With beliefs it is not possible. Habits are okay and habits are going to be different.In the Indian atmosphere there will be different habits. But habits are not a big problem. You can understand that in a cold country there will be different habits than in a hot country. That is very natural. But beliefs have nothing to do with cold or hot, they have nothing to do with climate. Beliefs have nothing to do with nature. Beliefs are man-made. Beliefs are all basically political, tactics, strategy, to manipulate the crowds, to control the crowds.You ask, “Why is mankind making this impossible for mankind?”– because man is not yet born; mankind exists only in theory.Once, a man asked George Bernard Shaw. “What do you think of civilization?” He replied, “It is a good idea, but someone has to try it.” Mankind is also a good idea – but someone has to try it. It has not yet happened.Humanity has not yet arrived. Hindus are there, Mohammedans are there, Christians are there, Indians, Germans, Italians are there, but humanity has not yet arrived. It is a simple word, but empty, with no substance.If someone asks you, “Who are you?” it is almost impossible to conceive that you will say, “A human being.” You will say, “A Christian, a Hindu, a Parsi, a Mohammedan etcetera.” You may say, “A doctor, an engineer, a professor, a scientist etcetera.” So on and so forth, ad nauseam, but almost impossible to comprehend, even to imagine that you will say, “A human being.”If you say it, the other person who is asking will feel that you are a little crazy or something. “Yes, of course, you are a human being. But I am asking, who are you?”Humanity has yet to happen. We have to prepare the ground for humanity to happen. It can happen only by dropping all kinds of beliefs. It can happen only by creating a great upsurge of inquiry, creating an atmosphere, a space, in which belief simply means that you are ignorant – you don’t know, still you are trying to pretend that you know. Belief is not knowing, but a deception.A real man does not believe. Either he knows or he does not know. If someone asks you, “Does God exist?” if you are honest, sincere, you cannot say, “I believe in God, I believe that he exists.” You cannot say, “I don’t believe in God and I say that he does not exist.” No. If you are a sincere man, if you have any respect for truth, you will say, “I don’t know. I am searching, seeking. I am neither a believer nor a nonbeliever. I am a seeker, a searcher.”And the day you know, do you think you will believe then? There will be no need to believe. You don’t believe in the sun. You don’t see people fighting that the sun exists, that the sun doesn’t exist, that the sun rises in the east or the sun rises in the west, south, north. You don’t see people fighting about it. Everyone knows the sun rises in the east and everyone knows that the sun is. There is no question of belief.If you ask me, “Do you believe in God?” I will say, “No, because I know God is. I need not believe.” Knowing is the real thing and belief is just a camouflage, a cover-up.Help people to drop beliefs. Help people to become inquirers. Help people to start functioning from not knowing. That is the state of meditation: to function from a state of not knowing is to function meditatively. To function from a state of knowledge is to miss the whole point. Knowledge is always old and life is never old. Knowledge and life never meet.Hence, instead of the word knowledge, I am using the word knowing deliberately. Knowledge is a noun, knowing is a verb. Knowing is a flow, knowledge is static. Knowledge has a full point, knowing has no full point. It is simply an ongoing process. One never knows godliness in the sense of knowledge; one only knows godliness in the sense of knowing. Yes, there is a beginning, but there is no end. One goes on knowing more and more and more. The more one knows, the more one feels there is more to know.You say, “I always believed that just as long as they were natural and honest with themselves and each other, they could all be happy and content and communicate with each other despite their varying colors, habits, beliefs, etcetera.” How can people be natural and honest when they are carrying so many beliefs? To be natural means to be without any belief. Children are natural, but you are not natural. Animals are natural, but you are not natural. Trees are natural, but you are not natural. What has made you unnatural and artificial? – your belief system.But it is very difficult to drop the belief system. How can you be honest if you believe? It is a contradiction in terms: to be honest and to believe. If someone says, “I believe in God,” he is saying, “I don’t know – I have heard, I have been taught, I have been told. I believe in God; I don’t know myself.” How can he be honest? This is the beginning of dishonesty. Not knowing himself and still believing. What more dishonesty can there be?Parents teach their children, “Believe in God and be honest.” This is such a contradiction in terms: “Believe in God and be honest.” Only one is possible. Either you believe in God and cannot be honest, or you can be honest and say clearly and loudly, “I cannot believe in God because I don’t know.”But this is a double bind that is being created in every person. You are taught contradictory things, hence your schizophrenic state. You are taught such contradictory things that you remain split. You have been taught for so long that you don’t see the contradiction either. The so-called religious person – Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu – cannot be honest. If he is honest, he cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. How can you be honest and still believe that Christ was born of a virgin mother? Just tell me – how can you be honest and still believe it? How can you be honest? Deep down you know it is not possible. Children are not born of virgin mothers.How can you be honest and still believe that when a snake attacked Mahavira, instead of blood, milk flowed from his foot? How can you believe it – and still be honest? There is only one possibility, that in Mahavira’s body instead of blood, milk was circulating. But to keep milk circulating for so long – he must have been nearabout fifty when this snake attacked him – it would have turned into curd long before.And curd cannot flow. Mahavira would have been dead long before. How can you be honest and still believe in this? If you are honest, questions will arise. If you believe, you have to be dishonest and you have to repress your questions.Man can be natural and honest, but then beliefs have to be dropped. All kinds of beliefs have to be dropped. Dropping the beliefs, your energy is freed. That same energy becomes inquiry, that same energy can take you to the ultimate truth.People are so religious, so fanatically religious, that I have heard…“Is your grandfather a religious man?” asked the young coed of her date.“He is so Orthodox,” replied the boy, “when he plays chess, he doesn’t use bishops – he uses rabbis.”The last question:Osho,What do you think about the statement that life is stranger than fiction?It can’t be otherwise because fiction is only a reflection of life, only an echo, a faraway echo. How can fiction be more strange than life? It is just a shadow of life, the footprints of life. Life is really unbelievable, incredible. It should not be, and it is. It is utterly mysterious.You become aware of the strangeness of a fictitious story and never become aware of the strangeness of life because you take it for granted. You take it for granted as the fish takes the ocean for granted – it never becomes aware of it. How can the fish be aware of the ocean? It was born in the ocean, it has lived in the ocean. The ocean was there from the very beginning. Just as you are not aware of the air and the weight of it, you are not aware of the gravitation and the pull of the gravitation. In the same way, the fish is not aware of the ocean; in the same way you are not aware of the incredible life that surrounds you within and without. You take it for granted and that’s what makes you miserable.Stop taking life for granted and immediately you are constantly in awe. Each moment becomes a surprise, each moment becomes such a revelation of mystery that life takes a totally different color and flavor. You grow wings. You are no longer bored, you are no longer dull. Life is excitement, exhilaration, ecstasy.And that’s what true religion basically is: to make you aware of the life, to make you alert to all that is happening around you – the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the mountains, the people; this silence, this moment, your being here, my being here. What more mystery can there be than this communion? Your hearts beating with my heart, your life energy in rhythm with my life energy. This single moment, three thousand people in harmony, in such an utter silence, as if no one exists; this melting, this merging. What more mystery can there be? What more miracles?Just to be is a miracle. Just to be able to breathe is a miracle. Just to be able to see the light and the rainbow and the starry night. What more can you ask for? What more can you imagine?You ask me, “Osho, what do you think about the statement that life is stranger than fiction?” – I don’t think. It is. There is no need to think. I know. It is, it is so. Thinking is a lower activity, seeing is a higher activity. I see it is so. It is not a logical conclusion for me, it is my existential experience. I am constantly surprised – each moment, every breath is a surprise. This is not a statement, this is the truth. Just become a little more alert, a little more aware, a little more observant. Snap your fingers, slap your face and be awake. Look around. The silence, the beauty, and the benediction.It is said that Hotei became enlightened and started laughing – and never stopped laughing. For many years he lived, he laughed. He laughed all the way to God, all the way to death. He became famous in Japan as the laughing buddha. People would ask, “Hotei, why do you laugh?” He would reply, “I laugh because life is incredible, so ridiculous, so absurd.” It should not be, but it is. For no reason at all, flowers go on blooming, birds go on singing. Every morning the sun returns, for no reason and if it doesn’t turn up one day, what can we do? – for no reason at all!Everything exists in such harmony, accord, in such rhythm, that if you touch a grass leaf, you have touched the whole universe – because the small grass leaf contains the whole of the universe. It will not be there without the sun, it will not be there without the earth, it will not be there without the planets and the stars. It will not be there if this universe is not exactly the way it is. If that grass leaf is gone, the universe will be a little less, a little minus; it will miss it. Such an infinity and it goes on with such rhythmic flow, with such organic oneness, with such orgasmic joy.Just watch life… And you will be able to laugh. It is absurd, it is ridiculous, it is strange, it is miraculous. No dream can be more dreamlike than life, no poetry can be more poetic than life – and no joke can create more laughter than life.A couple of hillbillies from the backwoods country came into town to get married and brought their best man Zeke along. When they applied for a license, the clerk informed them that state law required blood tests before they could get a license. He told them there was a doctor around the corner who would make the tests.As the MD took blood samples from the prospective bride and groom, Zeke watched with great interest. “What are you doing, Doc?” he asked.“We check for venereal disease,” said the physician. “If we find any, the wedding can’t take place until it is cured.”“Well then,” said the best man, “ain’t you gonna test my blood?”“What for?” asked the doctor. “You aren’t getting married are you?”“Oh, no,” said Zeke, as he pointed to the couple, “but I am gonna board with them!”…You missed it! You will need another.Payne and Butler were washing their hands in a Pittsburgh men’s room when three burly blacks came in and headed for the urinals.“Wow,” whispered Payne, “those mothers are laa-arge!”“Yeah,” said Butler, “and look how they are built. They must have the longest dicks in the state of Pennsylvania. I gotta get closer and see their size.”He came back in a minute. “Wowee! They are built big,” said Payne, “not only that, the cat in the middle has one that is white!”“Oh, man, whoever heard of a black man with a white wang! I’m gonna go look myself.”He returned immediately. “Brother, those cats ain’t black!” exclaimed Butler. “They are Polish coal miners. And the guy in the middle is on his honeymoon!”Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world,I hold to and keep spinning out!I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.So I bought some burlap, but I stillthrow it elegantly over my left shoulder.I pulled back my sexual longingsand now I discover that I’m angry a lot.I gave up rage and now I noticethat I am greedy all day.I worked hard at dissolving the greedand now I am proud of myself.When the mind wants to break its link with the world,it still holds on to one thing.Kabir says: Listen my friend,there are very few that find the path!Man is a dilemma because man is a duality. Man is not one single being; he is the past and the future. The past means the animal and the future means the divine. Between the two is the present moment, between the two is man’s existence – divided, torn apart, pulled in diametrically opposite directions.If man looks backward, he is an animal. That’s why science cannot believe that man is anything more – just another animal – because science only searches in the past. Charles Darwin and others are right that man is born of the animals. It is true about the past, but it is not true about man’s totality.Religion looks into the possible: that which can happen and has not yet happened. Science dissects the seed and cannot find any flowers there. Religion is visionary, it dreams and is capable of seeing that which has not happened yet: the flower. Of course, it cannot be found, that flower cannot be found by dissecting the seed. It needs great insight, not the capacity to analyze, but some intuitive flight, some vision, some poetic approach. It needs a real dreamer who can see that which has not happened yet.Religion looks into the possible and finds man is not an animal, but divine. He is godliness. Both are true. The conflict is baseless. The conflict between science and religion is futile. Their directions, their methods of work, their fields, are totally different.Science always reduces everything to the source and religion always takes a flight to the goal. Man is both, hence man is a dilemma, a constant anxiety: to be or not to be, to be this or to be that?Man can find peace only in two ways. Either he becomes an animal again – then he will be one. There will be no division and again there will be peace, silence, harmony. And that’s why millions of people try to be animals in different ways.War gives a chance for man to become animal; hence war has great attraction. In three thousand years’ history, man has fought five thousand wars – continuously, somewhere or other, the war continues. Not even a single day passes when man is not killing other men. Why such tremendous joy in destruction, in killing? The reason is deep down in the psychology of man.The moment you kill, suddenly you are one and you become the animal again, the duality disappears. Hence, there is a tremendous magnetic force in murder, suicide. Man cannot be persuaded yet to be nonviolent. Violence erupts. Names change, slogans change, but the violence remains the same. It may be in the name of religion, in the name of political ideology, or any absurd thing – a football match is enough for people to get violent, a cricket match is enough.People are so interested in violence that if they cannot do it themselves – because it is risky and they think of the consequences – they find vicarious ways to be violent. In a movie, or on the TV, violence is a must. No one is going to watch a film if it doesn’t contain violence. Seeing violence and blood, suddenly you are reminded of your animal past; you forget your present, you completely forget your future and you become your past. You become identified. What is happening on the screen somehow becomes your own life. You are no longer a spectator and in those moments you become a participant, you fall en rapport. Violence has great attraction.Sexuality has a great attraction because it is only in sexual moments that you can become one; otherwise you remain two, divided, and the anxiety, the anguish persist. Violence, sex, drugs, all help you, at least for the time being, temporarily, to fall back, to become completely animal. But this cannot become a permanent state of affairs.One fundamental law has to be understood. Nothing can go backward. At the most you can pretend, at the most you can deceive, but nothing can go backward because time does not move backward. Time always goes ahead. You cannot reduce a young man to a child and you cannot reduce an old man to a young man – it is impossible. The tree cannot be reduced back to the original seed – it is impossible.Evolution goes on and on and there is no way to prevent it or to force it backward. Hence all the efforts of men to become animals and find peace are doomed to fail. You can be drunk with alcohol or with other drugs – marijuana, LSD – you can be completely drowned. And for the moment all worries disappear, for the moment you are no longer part of a problematic existence, for the moment you move in a totally different dimension – but for the moment only.Tomorrow morning you will be back and when you are back the world is going to be more ugly than it ever was before. Life is going to be more of a problem than it ever was before because while you were intoxicated, unconscious, asleep in the drug, the problems were growing. The problems were becoming more and more complicated. While you were thinking that you had gone beyond the problems, they were taking root more in your being, in your unconscious.Tomorrow you will be back in the same world. It will look more ugly compared to the peace that you had attained by reduction, by intoxication, by forgetfulness. Compared to that peace, the world will look even more dangerous, more complex, more scary. The only way is to go on increasing the doses of your drug. But that too does not help for long. And this is no way to get out of the dilemma. The dilemma remains, persists.The only way is forward, to grow toward the divine. The only way is to become that which is your potential. The only way is to transform the potential into the actual.Man is potential godliness and unless he becomes actual godliness there is no possibility of contentment. People have tried that too. How to become divine? And when becoming divine, what to do with the animal? The simplest solution that has appeared again and again down the ages is to repress the animal. It is the same solution; either repress the divine – through violence, sex, drugs and forget about the divine – that is one solution, which never succeeds, cannot succeed. In the very nature of things it is bound to fail. The second suggestion that comes to the mind is – repress the animal, forget the animal. Keep the animal at the back, don’t look at it. Throw it deep down in the basement of your unconscious, so you don’t come across it in your daily life, so you don’t see it.Man thinks almost in the same way as the ostrich. The ostrich thinks if he cannot see the enemy, the enemy does not exist. Hence, when the ostrich encounters the enemy he simply closes his eyes. By closing his eyes he thinks now there is no enemy because he cannot see him.That’s what has been done down the ages by ninety-nine percent of religious people. In that one percent, I omit Buddhas, Krishnas, Kabirs. Ninety-nine percent of religious people have just been doing nothing but an ostrich exercise – an exercise of utter futility. Repress the animal! But you cannot repress the animal because the animal has great energy. It has been your whole past and is millions and millions of years old. It has deep roots in you. You cannot so easily get rid of it, just by closing your eyes. You are simply being stupid.The animal is your base, it is your very foundation. You are born as an animal and are not different from any other animal. You can be different, but you are not. Just by being born you don’t become different. Yes, you have a different kind of body, but not so very different. You have a different kind of intelligence, but not very much different. The difference is only of quantity, not of quality.Now modern research in plants says that even plants are intelligent, sensitive, alert, aware. What to say about animals? A few researchers say that even metals have a kind of intelligence of their own. So the difference between man and the elephant, between man and the dolphin, between man and the monkeys, is not of quality, it is only of quantity, of degrees. We have a little bit more intelligence, that’s all.It is not much of a difference; at least not one that makes any difference. The qualitative change happens only when a man becomes fully awakened, when a man becomes a buddha. Then the real difference happens. He is no longer an animal. He is simply divine. But how to attain it?That ninety-nine percent of religious people have been doing something utterly wrong – just the same logic, the same logic that is being followed by the violent people, the sexual people, the alcoholics. The same kind of logic: forget the animal. Many techniques have been developed to forget the animal. You can chant mantras so that you can forget the animal; you become occupied in chanting and go on repeating, “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama.” You repeat it so fast that your whole mind becomes full of the vibe of this single word Rama. This is simply a way to avoid the animal – and the animal is there.You can go on chanting Rama for centuries. The animal is not going to be changed by such a simple trick. You cannot deceive the animal. It will remain only a very superficial religiousness. Scratch any religious man and you will find the animal inside; just scratch a little. It is not even skin-deep, the so-called religiousness. It only pretends, it is only a formality, a social ritual.You go to church and read the Bible, read the Gita, chant, pray, but it is all formal. Your heart is not in it. The animal inside goes on laughing at you, he ridicules you. He knows you perfectly well, who you are, where you are. He knows how to manipulate you. You can go on chanting for hours and then a beautiful woman passes by. Suddenly all chanting disappears and you have forgotten all about God. Just the smell from the bakery… And all is gone. Hare Krishna, Rama, all is gone.Just any small thing is enough. Someone insults you and there is anger; the animal is ready to take revenge, you are in a rage. In fact, religious people become more angry than anyone else – because others don’t repress. Religious people are more sexually perverted than anyone else because others don’t repress. The religious person’s dreams have to be watched because in the day he can go on repressing, but what about the night when he is asleep?Mahatma Gandhi wrote that even at the age of seventy he was having sexual dreams. Why sexual dreams at the age of seventy? He said, “In the day I have become disciplined. The whole day not even a single thought of sex comes to me. But in the night I am incapable, I am unconscious, so all the discipline and control disappears.”Sigmund Freud’s insight is very valuable; that to know about a man you have to know his dreams, not his waking life. His waking life is pseudo. His real life asserts itself in his dreams because his dreams are more natural – no repression, no discipline, no control. Hence, psychoanalysis does not bother about your waking life. Just see the point. Your waking life is so pseudo that psychoanalysis does not believe in it at all. It is worthless. Psychoanalysis penetrates your dreams because dreams are far truer than your so-called waking life.This is ironical that the waking life, which we think is real life, is not thought by psychoanalysis to be real; it is thought to be more unreal than your dreams. Your dreams are far more real because you are not there to distort, you are fast asleep. The conscious mind is asleep and the unconscious is free to have its say. The unconscious is your true mind because the conscious is only one tenth of your total mind. Nine-tenths is the unconscious – nine times more powerful, nine times bigger than your conscious mind.What will you do when you are fighting with your sexuality, anger, greed? – you will go on throwing them into the unconscious, into the darkness of the basement, thinking that by not seeing them you are getting rid of them. You are not getting rid of them. Not even a man like Mahatma Gandhi… What to say about small mahatmas like Morarji Desai etcetera.A man like Mahatma Gandhi continued to have sexual dreams. That simply shows that his whole effort in the waking life was futile and that whatever he was trying to do in the waking life was of no use. He recognized it. At the very end of his life he recognized the whole futility of his discipline. His whole life had been a wastage and he recognized it. In the end, just before he died, for two years he was experimenting with the science of Tantra. It is not talked about, not at least by the Gandhians. They are very afraid of those two years. He was advised by his followers, “Please, don’t do such experiments.”You will be surprised that even Morarji Desai had advised him, “Don’t do such experiments.” Why? – they were afraid about the prestige of the Mahatma. They were afraid about themselves too. But he was a man of courage; however wrong, he was a sincere man. He had the courage to accept that his effort of disciplining according to the traditional way had failed. In the last two years he was sleeping with naked women. For the first time not repressing but expressing, being loving, open; for the first time not on guard.My own understanding is that those two years of his life, which are not talked about, are the most important. Not only were they not talked about, the followers deny, hide those facts. Those two years are the most important in his life. In those two years, for the first time he became aware that sexual energy need not be repressed. It can be transformed.His life was cut short because a fanatic from this very city, Pune, killed him. Otherwise it would have been a totally different story. If he had lived ten more years, all these so-called Gandhians would have left him. Many had already left when he started experimenting with Tantra. If he had lived ten more years, it would have been a great boon to humanity because he would have been able to say, “My whole life’s effort of repression failed while Tantra succeeded.”Ninety-nine percent of religious people go on repressing and whenever you repress something it goes deeper in you, it becomes more a part of your being. It starts affecting you in such subtle ways that you may not even be aware of it. It takes very devious routes; it cannot come in direct ways because if it comes directly, you repress it. It comes in such subtle ways, such devious ways, such deceptive ways, with masks, that you cannot even recognize that it is sexuality.It can even use masks of prayer, love, religious ritual. But if you go deep down, if you allow yourself to be exposed to someone who can observe and who understands the inner functioning of your mind, you will be surprised that it is the same energy moving through different channels. It has to move through different channels because no energy can ever be repressed.Let it be understood once and for all. No energy can ever be repressed. Energy can be transformed, but never repressed. The real religion consists of alchemy, of transforming techniques, methods. The real religion consists not of repressing the animal but of purifying the animal, of raising the animal to the divine; using the animal, riding on the animal to go to the divine. It can become a tremendously powerful vehicle, because it is power.Sex can be used as a great energy – you can ride on it to the very door of godliness. But if you repress it, you will become more and more entangled. This is a very modern approach, but the sutras of Kabir will say to you that what Sigmund Freud discovered is not a discovery. It is only a discovery in the West. As far as the East is concerned, it is an ancient truth. The sages have always known about it.These sutras are very beautiful, very scientific. Meditate over each sutra:Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world,I hold to and keep spinning out!The original is:Avadhu, maya taji na jai.Avadhu literally means a friend, but it has a special meaning, not just a friend. In English there is no word to give the real meaning of avadhu, but it can be explained. Avadhu means a friend, a companion, a comrade, on the way toward the divine – a special kind of friendship. The friendship of two seekers, the friendship of those who are in search of the unknown and the unknowable, the friendship of those who are ready for the ultimate venture, who are ready to go in the uncharted sea. Avadhu means friends in the search for truth. It is risky and such a friendship needs guts. It is no ordinary friendship. It is utterly extraordinary, it is not of this world.This friendship means satsang: when many seekers gather together around a man who has known. Such a friendship is possible only around a man who has known, such a gathering is possible only around a buddha, around one who has awakened – because he will function as the center of the commune. Without the center, the commune will not have any significance; it will be an ordinary crowd.Without Christ, Christians are just a crowd, an ordinary crowd. With Christ, it is a communion, it is satsang. It is the ultimate friendship. Christ can call his disciples avadhu – friends, comrades, companions, soul mates – that’s exactly the meaning of avadhu. The friendship is not worldly, has no motive. The friendship is not that of dependence. The friendship has no relationship which can be explained in any worldly way – but two souls in a deep rhythm, two soul mates.It is difficult to search alone. The path is arduous, hazardous, dangerous and there is every possibility of getting lost. It is easier if people move with friends. It is like Gurdjieff used to say… When he was traveling in Sufi countries, a Sufi master gave him a technique. The technique was that twenty friends of Gurdjieff had to go deep into the desert, but at least one person had to remain awake. Including Gurdjieff, there were twenty-one people. Twenty people could go to sleep, but one had to be awake constantly, for twenty-four hours a day. When he was tired he had to wake someone else, then he could go to sleep and the other had to remain awake. But one had to be awake!If you are alone, you will have to fall asleep once in a while, but if you are moving with friends at least one can always be awake. In a desert, a forest, a jungle, it is needed that at least one should be awake.When you go on the journey, the ultimate pilgrimage to godliness, it is good to have a few friends with you because at least one can always be awake. The person who is awake will become your protection, will help you not to go astray, will keep you together and will become a kind of glue which will integrate your energies.But if you can find a man who is awake, twenty-four hours awake – that’s the meaning of being a buddha – then naturally a commune of friends gathers around him. His light, his understanding, slowly, slowly permeates their being too.Kabir is not talking to the public, he is talking to a few friends. Hence he says:Avadhu, friends, maya taji na jai.It is very difficult to drop this mind – it is very difficult to drop this mind because who is going to drop it? Even the idea of dropping is part of the mind. It is very difficult to drop the mind because even if you drop it, the one who drops it will remain – that will become your mind. It is a very vicious circle. How to come out of it?This mind is illusory, hence he calls it “maya” – all illusion. It is not really there; it has no substance, but still it continuously persists– day in, day out, your mind continues. Thoughts, dreams, desires, imagination, memory… The traffic goes on and on. All is nonsubstantial. If you wake up, suddenly you will find all the dreams, all the desires, all the thoughts have disappeared. But how can you drop this mind? Who is going to drop it? If you try to drop it, you are the mind.You can escape to the Himalayan caves, but the mind will go with you because really the mind will be going to the Himalayan caves – who else? You can renounce the family, but who will renounce? You can stand on your head, but it will be the same mind. You are simply being stupid. It has to be understood.Nothing has to be done on your part because anything done is always done by the mind. Doing is the very function of the mind. So nothing can be done with the mind to drop it. Avadhu, maya taji na jai.So Kabir says, “It is very difficult, friends, to drop this mind and its illusions.” In the first place they are so nonsubstantial – if they had been substantial it would have been easy. You can leave the house, you can renounce your wife, your children, you can go away from the world – it is very substantial. But how will you leave your mind? It will be with you.When Bayazid, a Sufi saint, went to see his master, he renounced his family, his friends and went to the master. The master used to live in the ruins of an old mosque. When Bayazid entered he said, “Now I have come, I have renounced all – please accept me.”The master looked at Bayazid and looked around and said, “Why have you brought this crowd with you?”Bayazid was surprised. He looked back – there was no one else. Has this man gone mad? He said, “What crowd are you talking about?”The master replied, “Don’t look back – look in. All those people that you have left behind are there.”Bayazid closed his eyes. The master was right, he was not crazy. His wife was still crying, the children were saying to him, “Daddy, don’t go.” His friends were holding his hands to the very last. When he said good-bye to them, they followed him as far as possible; he had to persuade them again and again, “Please go back. I have decided and my decision is absolute.” When he closed his eyes they were all there.The master said, “Bayazid, it is easy to renounce the world, but how are you going to renounce the mind because the mind is the real world? They are all there. You will sit meditating and will remember your wife. You may not have ever remembered her when you were with her; that’s how mind functions. That which is, it takes for granted; that which is not, it hankers for. Now you will be more and more involved with your wife, your children. More and more memories will come: ‘What is happening to my children? What is happening to my wife? Has she betrayed me? Has she gone with someone else? Can she do that?’ Jealousy, possessiveness and all kinds of things are bound to arise.”There is a beautiful story in Jaina scriptures…A great king, Bimbisara, went to see Mahavira, the last Jaina teerthankara – the last Jaina prophet. On the way, he met one of his old friends. They had studied in the same school and he was also a son of a king, but had renounced and become a Jaina monk. He was standing naked underneath a tree.Bimbisara was overwhelmed with tremendous respect for this man and started feeling a little guilty about himself, “I am still involved in the world – money, power, prestige, war. And look at my friend; he was also a king, he would also have been a king like me, but he has renounced – a man of courage.” He bowed down, touched the feet of his old friend and then went to see Mahavira.Just a few yards further away was Mahavira, sitting underneath a tree. Bimbisara asked him, “One question arose in my mind. When I saw my old friend Prasannachandra, who has become a monk, a disciple of yours, a question arose in my mind. If he dies right now, where will he be born?”Jainas say that there are seven hells and seven heavens. “In what heaven will he be born?” Bimbisara asked. “Of course, there is no question of his being born in hell as he has renounced such a great kingdom and all. So in what heaven?”Mahavira replied, “He would have gone to the seventh hell – if he had died at the time you touched his feet.”Bimbisara was shocked. He said, “In the seventh hell? Then what about me? There are no other hells below the seventh. My friend, who has renounced all and looks so pious, so silent, so serene, is going to be born into the seventh hell?”Mahavira said, “Don’t be worried. If he dies now, he will be born in the seventh heaven.” And just a few minutes had passed.Bimbisara said, “You puzzle me very much. Now you have confused me even more. What has happened within these few minutes that now he will be born in the seventh heaven?”Mahavira replied, “You don’t know the whole story. Just before you, your prime minister had passed. He had come to accompany you just to see that everything is safe. Your prime minister, your generals and your guards, passed just a few minutes before you. Your prime minister said, ‘Look at this fool, Prasannachandra. He would have been a great king if he hadn’t become hypnotized by this Mahavira. And now standing naked in this heat, wasting his life. He used to be a beautiful man. Now look at his body. He is an utter fool because he has trusted his prime minister and has given the whole kingdom to him till his children are grown up enough to take possession of it – and the prime minister is a cheat. By the time the children are grown up, there will be nothing left in the treasury.’“Hearing this, Prasannachandra forgot completely that he had become a monk – completely. He was so shocked, and became so angry, that he said inside his heart, ‘I am still alive.’ And his hand, just out of old habit went to his sword – which was not there. He pulled the sword out of the sheath and said, ‘I will go and kill this man immediately.’ And in his imagination he cut off the head of the prime minister.“When you touched his feet,” Mahavira said, “he had just killed the prime minister. Hence, I told you that in that moment if he had died he would have gone to the seventh hell. He was in a murderous attitude. Now, things have changed. When he put his sword back in the sheath, he recognized, ‘What am I doing? Where is the sword and where is the sheath? What have I done? Killed my prime minister in my imagination! It is as much a crime as actually killing a person.’Mahavira says, “Whether you think of killing or you kill, it makes no difference; it is the same, psychologically it is the same. ‘What have I done? When I have renounced, I have renounced! Who am I to interfere now? If he cheats that is his business; if he breaks the trust, he will suffer for it. But who am I to punish him? I am finished with all this. And who are my children and what is my kingdom?’“A great understanding came to him. He became quiet, silent, serene, detached. Right now if he dies, he is in such a beautiful space that he will be born in the seventh heaven.”The question is of the mind, not of the world. You can go to the Himalayan caves, but what are you going to think about? You will think of the world. That’s why Kabir says: “Avadhu maya taji na jai – it is very difficult to drop this mind.”Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world…the world of the mind…I hold to, and keep spinning out!I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.He says, “I renounced beautiful clothes and wore a robe, but then one day I saw that even this robe is well woven – my mind has played a trick. I am still as much concerned about my clothes as before. I still want to look beautiful, I still want to look special, I still want to look like somebody. The mind has played a trick with me. I am the same man. I have dropped those beautiful clothes and now I am wearing a single robe, but it doesn’t matter. The mind can project in the same way.”The screen makes no difference; the film continues the same. You can use the wall as the screen and you can project the same film. You need not have a perfect screen. The film is the same, even projected on the wall. The wall may be rough, may be a poor man’s house wall, but it makes no difference. The film is the same.Kabir says, “I recognized that the mind is still functioning in the same way. I still walk in such a way that people should recognize that I am no ordinary man. I used to walk in my beautiful clothes. Why do people use beautiful clothes? – so that they look special. Now I am wearing a robe, but still, deep down, the same desire persists.”The original is:Girah taj ke bastar band,bastar taj ke feri.I have left the house, I have moved to the cave, with only a small bag. One day, I recognize that the cave has become the home, the cave has become the house. The small possession that I brought with me can function perfectly well for my possessiveness. My possessiveness remains the same. Now if someone enters the cave, I am going to say, “Get out! This is my cave.”You can go and see this. Go to the Himalayas, enter some cave and some yogi will be sitting there. He will say, “Get out! What are you doing here? This is my cave. I have lived here for thirty years. If you want to live in a cave, find your own.”Now what is the difference? – “my house” or “my cave.” The question is of “my” and “mine.” So Kabir says, “I left the house with a small bag, went to the cave, but I found it was the same – because I am the same. So I left the cave and I left that small possession and became a wanderer, but nothing changes. Now I feel great that I am a wanderer, not an ordinary monk who lives in the shelter and safety of a cave. I live in insecurity – look. This is how one should live. I am a wanderer with no security, no safety. Now this wandering has become a prop to my ego.” Girah taj ke bastar bandha,bastar taj ke feri. Now I have become a vagabond, but great pride has arisen in me.So I bought some burlap, but I stillthrow it elegantly over my left shoulder.Seeing that the robe was well woven, I purchased coarse canvas and made a shawl out of it: …but still I throw it elegantly over my left shoulder. The same mind. You can stand naked in the sun – it doesn’t matter. It will be the same mind. How is one going to drop the mind? It comes from the backdoor and finds new ways to enter back into you.I pulled back my sexual longingsand now I discover that I’m angry a lot.This is of tremendous importance to understand. Kabir has looked deep in the human mind and its workings, its subtle cunning ways. He has found exactly the whole process of inner alchemy. If you repress, this is how things happen. I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy that was becoming sex will become anger. It is better to be sexual than to be angry. In sex at least there is something of love; in anger there is only pure violence and nothing else. If sex is repressed, the person becomes violent – either to others, or to himself. These are the two possibilities: either he will become a sadist and will torture others, or he will become a masochist and will torture himself. But torture he will.Do you know that down the ages, soldiers have not been allowed to have sexual relationships? Why? – because if soldiers are allowed to have sexual relationships, they don’t gather enough anger in them, enough violence in them. Their sex becomes a release, they become soft and a soft person cannot fight. Starve the soldier of sex and he is bound to fight better. In fact, his violence will be a substitute for his sexuality.Sigmund Freud is again right when he says that all our weapons are nothing but phallic symbols. The sword, the knife, the bayonet, are nothing but phallic symbols. The soldier hasn’t been allowed to enter someone’s body, some woman’s body. Now he is going crazy to enter; now he can do anything. A great perverted desire has entered his being now. Repressed sex – he would like to enter someone’s body through a bayonet, through a sword.Down the ages, the soldier was forced to repress his sexual desires.In this century we have seen one thing happening. American soldiers are the most well-equipped soldiers in the world – scientifically, technologically, they are the most well-equipped soldiers, but they proved weaker than any other soldier. For years on end in Vietnam, a poor country, they tried and had to accept defeat. Why? – for the first time in history, the American soldier is sexually satisfied. That is the problem.He is the first soldier in history who is sexually satisfied, who is not starved sexually. He cannot win. A poor country like Vietnam, a small country like Vietnam – it is a miracle. If you don’t understand the psychology, it is a miracle. With all the technology, with all the modern science, with all the power – and the American soldier couldn’t do anything.But this is not new; this is an ancient truth. The whole history of India proves it. India is a big country, one of the biggest, next only to China, it is the second biggest country in the world. But India was conquered many times by small countries. Turks, Mongols, Greeks – anyone came and this big country was immediately defeated, conquered. What was the reason? And those people who had come to conquer were poor people, starving.My own analysis of Indian history is that in the past India was not sexually repressed. Those were the days when temples like Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, were built – India was not sexually repressed. In spite of the few so-called mahatmas, the greater part of the country was sexually satisfied; there was a softness, a loving quality, a grace. It was difficult for India to fight. For what? Just think of yourself; if you want to fight, you will have to starve yourself sexually for a few days. You can ask Mohammed Ali and other boxers; before they fight they have to become celibate for a few days. That’s a must. You can ask the Olympic competitors; before they participate in Olympic competitions they have to starve themselves sexually for a few days. It gives a thrust, it gives great violence and it makes you capable of fighting. You run faster, you attack faster because the energy is boiling within. Hence the soldier has been repressed.Just allow all the armies of the world to be sexually satisfied and there will be peace. Just allow people sexual satisfaction and there will be less Hindu-Mohammedan riots, less Christian and Mohammedan crusades. All that nonsense will disappear. If love spreads, war will disappear – both cannot exist together.Kabir is exactly right. He says: I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot. He is a great observer, a very minute observer. This is what awareness is. He is watching. He represses his sexual desire and watches – “Now what is happening inside?” Soon he finds that he becomes more angry, for no reason at all; just angry, irritated, ready to fight with anyone, any excuse will do.Remember, sex can be transformed because it is a natural energy. Anger is not so natural, one step removed from nature. Now it will be difficult to change anger. First anger will have to be changed into sex, only then can anything be done. That’s what my work here is and that’s what I am being condemned for all over the world.I am trying to change your anger into sex – that has to be done first. That is the way of inner change. First, all your perversions have to disappear and you have to become a natural human being. You have to become a natural animal, to be exact. Only then can you become divine. The animal can be transformed into the divine, but your animal is also very perverted, your animal is not sane – your animal has become insane. First the insanity has to be transformed, changed. Change anger.That’s why I send people first to encounter groups and then to Tantra. First they have to go in some type of encounter group phenomenon, some process where their anger can be expressed, relaxed. Only then can they move in some process of Tantra, in some inner alchemy that can use sexual energy as a vehicle.But people who are angry will not understand it. Anger does not allow understanding. Now, if you want to become a politician, you have to repress your sex; otherwise you will not be able to compete, you will not be able to reach New Delhi – impossible. It is not an accident that Morarji Desai has reached there – fifty years of sexual repression is bound to help him become the prime minister of the country. So much rage. It is difficult to compete with such people. They go madly into competition. They don’t look sideways, they simply go ahead and don’t care what happens. By fair or foul means, but they have to reach the top.Politicians can succeed only if they are sexually repressed people. Adolf Hitler was sexually repressed, very repressed. Had he been in deep love with a single woman there would have been no Second World War. Had he loved a single human being deeply, the whole history of humanity would have been different. But he was very sexually suppressed.He was as big a mahatma as Morarji Desai – in fact, a little bigger. You will be surprised to know that he was a vegetarian. To find a vegetarian in Germany is difficult, but he was a vegetarian. He was not a smoker and was against drinking any kind of intoxicating beverages. He used to go early to bed and would get up early in the morning. He avoided all kinds of loving relationships. What to say about love? He had not even a single friend. There was not a single man who could call him friend. He never allowed that much closeness. He was afraid, continuously afraid of his sexuality.This man became the cause of the greatest war the world has known. My own feeling is that had he smoked a little bit, had he become drunk once in a while, had he fallen in love with a woman, the whole history of humanity would have been different. Then he would have been soft and would have been more human, more accepting of his own limitations; hence more accepting of others’ limitations. He would have been more humane.Says Kabir:I pulled back my sexual longingsand now I discover that I’m angry a lot.I gave up rage and now I noticethat I am greedy all day.So he repressed his anger – that’s what one will logically do. You repress sex, anger bubbles up; you repress anger. But he is a close observer, a very minute observer. He says, “The moment I repressed my anger I became greedy.”This too is proved. If you watch human history you will find a thousand and one proofs for it. For example, in India, Mahavira taught nonviolence and the result has been that all the followers of Mahavira became the most greedy people in the world. They are the Jews of India. The Jainas are the Jews of India. Why did they become so greedy?Mahavira taught them to be nonviolent. Obviously, they started repressing anger; that is the only way that seems possible to the stupid mind. Repress anger. Don’t be violent. They tried really hard, in every possible way they tried not to be violent. They even stopped agriculture because it is a kind of violence. You have to pull up the plants and cut the crop and that is violence because plants have life. So Jainas stopped agriculture completely.Now, they cannot go to the army, they cannot be kshatriyas – they cannot become warriors – because of their ideology of nonviolence and they cannot even be agriculturists, gardeners; that is impossible. They would not like to become sudras – the untouchables – who clean the roads, the sweepers and the cobblers because that is too humiliating. And brahmins won’t allow them to function as brahmins – brahmins are very jealous about that. They have been in power for centuries and they don’t allow anyone. No one can become a brahmin; one can only be a brahmin by birth. You may become a great learned man – that doesn’t matter – but you can’t be a brahmin. There is no way of becoming a brahmin. You have to be born one only. You have to be very careful when you choose your parents; that is the only opportunity to become a brahmin.So Jainas could not be brahmins, would not like to become sudras, were not able to become warriors. Then what was left for them? Only business. They became business people. All their repressed anger became their greed. They became great money maniacs. Their number is very small. In India their number is so small, not more than thirty lakhs. In a country of sixty crores, thirty lakhs is nothing. But they possess more money than anyone else. You will not find a Jaina beggar anywhere. They are all rich people.Mahavira wanted them to be nonviolent and what really happened was totally different. They became greedy. Repress your anger and you will be greedy.I gave up rage and now I noticethat I am greedy all day.I worked hard at dissolving the greedand now I am proud of myself.So he repressed his greed and the ultimate result is that he has become a great egoist, he finds himself being very proud. “Look! I have repressed sex, repressed anger, repressed greed. I have done this, I have done that. I have done impossible things.” Now a great “I” arises, the ego becomes strengthened.That’s why you will find the most crystallized egos in monks and nuns. You will not find such crystallized egos anywhere else. The more a person renounces, the more he represses, the more egoistic he becomes. Indians are very egoistic and the reason? – they have all tried in some way or other to be religious. The only way seems to be repression – and repression brings the ego.A nonrepressed person becomes a nonegoist; he cannot carry the ego. There is no prop to support it. He becomes humble, he becomes simple, he becomes ordinary, he has no claim. He knows he is nothing. This whole process that Kabir is describing is beautiful.Repression is not the way, transformation is the way. Don’t repress anything. If sexuality is there, don’t repress it otherwise you will create a new complexity – which will be more difficult to tackle. If you repress anger, greed is even more difficult. If you repress greed, ego, pride arises, which is the most difficult thing to drop.Move back: from pride to greed, from greed to anger, from anger to sex. If you can come to the natural, spontaneous sexuality, things will be very simple. Things will be so simple that you cannot imagine. Your energy is natural and natural energy creates no hindrance in transformation. Hence I say: from sex to superconsciousness. Not from anger, not from greed, not from ego, but from sex to superconsciousness.The transformation can happen only if first you accept your natural being. Whatever is natural is good. Yes, more is possible, but more will be possible only if you accept your nature with totality. If you welcome it, if you have no guilt about it. To be guilty, to feel guilty, is to be irreligious. In the past you have been told just the opposite. Feel guilty and you are religious. I say to you: feel guilty and you will never be religious. Drop all guilt.You are whatever the divine has made you. You are whatever existence has made you. Sex is not your creation; it is a gift of existence. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it – it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom, but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener. You will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses.Religion is the most delicate art.Kabir says:When the mind wants to break its link with the world,it still holds on to one thing.The ultimate problem is that you can leave one thing, but you cling to another. You leave that and you cling to another. You go on changing things, but the clinging remains. The clinging has to disappear. How can the clinging disappear? – only by understanding, awareness, meditation; not by doing anything about it. If you do, you will create a new clinging.An ancient story…A man was very afraid of ghosts and the problem was more troublesome because he had to pass through a cemetery every day while going to work and returning home. Sometimes, if he had to come at night – some overtime or something and he was delayed – it was really a problem to pass through the cemetery. It was only a three, four minute walk, but it was almost a death to him.He went to a fakir and said, “Do something. I have heard you do miracles. I don’t ask much, just a simple thing. Give me somehow some protection so that I can pass through the cemetery without fear.”The fakir replied, “This is so simple, there is no problem. Take this locket and keep it always with you. It will protect you from ghosts. No ghost will ever trouble you.”He tried and no ghost ever troubled him. In fact, there are no ghosts, it was only his fear. With the locket in hand, he went through the cemetery, from this side to that, from that side to this. He tried at different times, even in the middle of the night – and it worked. He said, “This locket is really powerful. This man is a miracle man.”The whole miracle was that there were no ghosts. There are no ghosts anywhere. But now this idea that he had a protection helped him.But a new problem arose. He started becoming afraid that someone might steal it, or someday he might forget it somewhere, or he might put it outside while taking a bath and ghosts might come there. So he had to carry it everywhere and it became an obsession. His wife would say, “It looks embarrassing. People ask me, ‘Why does your husband go on carrying this locket in his hand, this stupid locket? What is the matter with him? He never leaves it.’” Even at night when he went to sleep, he would keep it in his hand. Even once or twice in the night he would wake up to see whether the locket was in his hand or not because it might have fallen in his sleep and ghosts might jump on his chest, waiting to take revenge.Now one problem is solved, another problem has arisen and far more complicated because the ghosts used to torture him only once in a while when he was late or he had to pass through the cemetery. In twenty-four hours, just for one or two minutes the problem was there. Now the locket was a twenty-four hour problem. “If it is lost, if someone takes it away, if I forget it somewhere…” Even in his sleep it was difficult for him to sleep totally. He had to keep a little alert. He started becoming ill because his sleep was not good and he was so constantly afraid.He went to another fakir who said, “I will give you another thing. Keep this box. The locket is creating trouble and this box is far more powerful. You can even keep it six feet away from you and its power works.”He said, “This is far better. At least I can go in my bathroom and leave it outside.”Now a new problem arose. He always used to keep the locket in his hand. Now taking his bath inside and the box was outside. “If children, just for fun, take it away or something happens?” Now it was even more difficult; that distance of six feet.The story is significant. This is not the way to drop the ghosts. You will have to cling to something or other. Ghosts are not to be dropped; your eyes have to be opened so that you can see that there are no ghosts at all. The problem disappears. The problem is not solved, but dissolved. When the mind wants to break its link with the world, it still holds on to one thing.Unless you drop all clinging – all clinging. I say, unless you are ready to be nothing, empty, no one, with no protection, with no security, no safety; unless you are ready to be in that kind of space… Which will look like death in the beginning. It is a kind of death. The old dies, but then the new arises. The new can arise only when the old is gone. The old has to cease for the new to be. Only when all clinging disappears – you are not clinging even to the name of God, you are not clinging even to the master, you are not clinging to the scripture, you are simply in a state of nonclinging – then suddenly from your own inner source a great light wells up, a great bliss wells up. You are transformed.The mind is not dropped. It is a ghost. If you try methods to drop it, you will cling to the methods. Those methods will torture you. You will remain always in bondage.Kabir says: Listen my friend,there are very few that find the path!A few people remain indulgent, remain animals; a few people start repressing the animal, become obsessed with repressions, perversions. Only rarely does it happen that a person is neither indulgent, nor repressive. Only when a person is neither does he find the secret key to the door of the divine.The original is:Man bairagi maya tyagi,shabd men surat samai.Kabir says, “I have become a sannyasin, a renunciate, I have dropped the world, but that doesn’t matter. Now I cling to God, now God has become my world. Man bairagi maya tyagi, shabd men surat samai. Now the name of God – shabd – has become my treasure, now I cling to it. Now the idea of God has become the center of my clinging.”Kahain kabir suno bhai sadho,yah gam birle pai.There are very few people who have found the secret path. Out of a hundred, ninety remain indulgent in the animal and they never move beyond the animal. Out of the remaining ten, nine become repressive and pathological. Only one out of a hundred finds the true way. What is the true way? – the true way is that of understanding your mind, not of dropping it. The true way is: sitting silently and watching your mind – all its cunning ways, subtle ways, all its strategies – just watch, just be a witness to your mind. Slowly, slowly by witnessing it, you will understand what games it has been playing with you. You stop it from one door, it comes from another one. You stop it from that door, it makes a third door – and it goes on and on, ad nauseam.Watch. Don’t renounce the world and don’t try to drop the mind. Just become more alert. In that alertness, suddenly the mind disappears and with the mind, the whole world disappears. When there is no mind and no world, godliness is.Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I keep thinking of my life in terms of goal or destination, waiting to wake up some day and find myself enlightened. I worry that others will reach before me. Today is a tension. Why is eternity so difficult to feel and remember? You keep reminding me, but I keep forgetting and lose patience. Why am I such a fool? Then I think, “So what?” And then I want to scream “No more!” but go on.Man has been conditioned down the centuries for goals, destinations, purposes, meanings – that’s how man has lived hitherto, with the goal-oriented ideology. Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, communist, it doesn’t matter. All ideologies are goal-oriented. It is always tomorrow that you have to look to, or the next life. It is always somewhere else: the goal, the meaning, the bliss, the paradise. It is never now here.You cannot allow yourself to relax in the moment because of these ideologies. They go on goading you – you have to attain something, you have to achieve something. Your whole education system is a strategy of poisoning your consciousness. It is a strategy of driving you crazy after goals, it is a strategy of creating ambition in you. And ambition is neurosis. But this has been going on for so long that it has become part and parcel of the human mind.That’s why you go on thinking in terms of goal or destination. It is not you; it is society that goes on thinking in you, through you. It is your parents, priests, politicians, pedagogues, who go on thinking through you and you are identified with them. You don’t know that you are separate.The first thing that you will have to learn is to be a witness to all that goes on in the mind because the mind is a social phenomenon. It is not a God-given gift. It is social exploitation. And it is society that creates a mind in you and through that mind controls you, keeps you imprisoned, chained, reduces you to a slave. You are not the mind. You are the witness who can see the mind very easily. You can see the thoughts moving in your consciousness. Those thoughts are the content of the consciousness, but they are not consciousness itself.This is what meditation is all about: creating a distance between you and your mind. Once the distance is there, you will be surprised that the whole mind structure is your imprisonment – you are free from it because you are separate from it. Once you start enjoying the freedom from the mind, all goals disappear, all destinations disappear.The mind can only live in goals because the mind can only exist in the future. The mind cannot exist herenow. Try to be herenow and try letting the mind continue. You will find it impossible. Either the mind continues, then you are not herenow; or, you are herenow and the mind is no longer there. The mind has no present tense at all, it is either past or it is future. It is always in the nonexistential. Godliness is that which exists. Godliness is not a goal, nirvana is not a goal, enlightenment is not a goal. It is not an achievement – just the contrary. When you have forgotten all goals, when you have dropped the whole achieving mind, enlightenment is. Enlightenment is a state of no-mind.Enlightenment is nothing special. It is the most ordinary, natural phenomenon. It looks special because you make a goal out of it. Buddha is the most ordinary human being; ordinary in the sense that he has no mind, he exists in the sheer present. He has no ego, so how can he be special? He cannot compare himself with anyone else, he cannot be inferior or superior.In the present moment, he is not – but a totally different kind of presence happens, which does not belong to the person. It is only a presence, not a person at all. How can he be special? – because in the present moment he finds that there is no purpose in life. The whole purpose is mind-imposed.The trees are there for no purpose at all and the stars are there for no purpose at all. Purpose is a man-created concept. Rivers are not flowing for any purpose and the oceans are not there for any purpose. Except for man there is nothing like purpose anywhere else. Life simply is. Existence utterly is – it is not a means to some end. It is an end unto itself. That’s what I mean when I say that there is no purpose.I am not saying that it is purposeless because to use the word purposeless brings the purpose in. It is simply transcendental – neither purpose nor no purpose, neither meaning nor no meaning. It is not going anywhere. There is no goal to life and if you have a goal then you are going against life. You will suffer because you will be trying to go upstream. You will have to struggle and all struggle is the dissipation of energy; all struggle is stupid because all struggle is destructive. It simply destroys you. You cannot win against the whole. Relax. There is no goal to be achieved. Simply, there is no goal.I am not saying to you, don’t try to achieve goals. I am telling you that there is no goal whether you try or not. If you try, you will be simply wasting your time and energy. If you don’t try, you will start feeling ecstatic because the whole energy that is wasted in struggle becomes available to you. Energy is delight. Just to have it is enough to be full of joy. When there is energy, overflowing energy, you are a dance, you are a celebration.There is no meaning in life. Life is utterly beyond meaning. So don’t bother about the meaning. Don’t ask the question, “What is the meaning of a roseflower?” – there is none. “What is the meaning of the sunrise?” – there is none. There is beauty, but no meaning. There is immense beauty, but no meaning at all.Life is not a logical process. It is poetry, it is a love song – without any meaning, yet it is utterly beautiful. In fact, when something has a meaning, it can’t be beautiful. It is utilitarian. The rose is beautiful because it has no utility at all. Its sheer being is enough; it need not have any other significance. A hundred rupee note has no beauty; it has utility, it has meaning, it has purpose. It is a means to some end.Live a life which has no idea of purpose, which has no search for meaning. Live a life of sheer joy and ecstasy. That is the only way to live. Every other way is only to commit a slow suicide.That’s what happens when you are too interested in goals. Today goes by without being lived and tomorrow remains important –tomorrow never comes. Whenever it comes it is today. You learn a wrong habit of losing that which is and thinking of something which is not. Every day it will happen; each tomorrow will come as today and you will not be interested in it. You will be interested in tomorrow and tomorrow is never going to come.This is how people are simply wasting away. Their lives could have become great oases, but they remain deserts. And the basic reason for people’s dryness is goal-orientation.You say, “I keep thinking of my life in terms of a goal or destination, waiting to wake up some day and find myself enlightened.” Why “some day”? Why not now? Why postpone it? Isn’t it a trick of the mind to avoid it? Postponing is a way of avoiding. Don’t you want to be enlightened right now? If you look deep down, if you watch, you will see the point – that you don’t want to become enlightened right now.If I say to you that I can make you enlightened right now, you will say, “Just give me a little time to think. I will come tomorrow because I have to do many more things before I become enlightened. My girl may be waiting, my children, my shop has to be opened. So many investments. Let me finish things first! Yes, I want to be enlightened, but not right now.”In fact, you don’t want to become enlightened. It is a very diplomatic way of avoiding, so that you can go on deceiving yourself that you are interested in becoming enlightened, that you want to be enlightened, but not today. It is only a question of time; not that you are not interested in enlightenment – tomorrow, when all other things have been finished, completed, when nothing else is left.But do you think a day will come when all your investments and all your worries and all your acts are complete? Will there ever come a day when you are finished with the activities of your so-called life and you come and say, “Right now I am ready”? It will never come because life is such a complexity. It never begins, it never ends. You are always in the middle.It is like reading a novel from the middle. The beginning is missing and the end is missing and you know only the middle. That is the mystery of life. Try some time reading a novel from the middle and you will find that even an ordinary novel becomes very mysterious. You will be intrigued and many times you will be tempted to look back. “What is the beginning?” But resist the temptation, go on reading in the middle.That’s how it is. We are always in the middle of life. Life has been there before you ever entered the stream and life will be there when you are gone. You will know only a few glimpses in the middle. You suddenly walk in the cinema and see a few scenes on the screen. The film was going on before you entered; you will leave and the film will continue. You will never know the beginning and you will never know the end because there are none. There is no beginning, no end. Life is an eternal continuum. Hence you cannot ever complete things.But you want to avoid. You are afraid of enlightenment, just as everyone else is afraid. But no one wants to accept that “I am a coward.” No one wants to accept the fact, “I would like to sleep a little longer because I am seeing beautiful dreams, colorful dreams.” No one wants to accept, “I am so stupid that I don’t long for enlightenment.” So everyone goes on saying, “Yes, I would like to become enlightened – but tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in my old age.”How to postpone? – the best way is to become goal-oriented. That is the most beautiful deception that you can give yourself. Hence you say, “Some day I hope to find myself enlightened.” Why “some day”? The river is flowing now – you can drink.You are thirsty and say, “Some day I will drink.” If you are thirsty, drink right now. Nothing else is more important. And because there is no goal – all goals are private dreams – life will not support you in your goal-orientation. Life will try in every way to destroy all your goals.You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, not thinking anything, not planning for anything, not doing yoga exercises. You are not doing any technique, any method. You are simply existing, just existing. In that very moment – the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That’s what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is not an experience in which you will see great light, kundalini rising up and God standing in front of you saying, “You can have three wishes and I will fulfill them.” Don’t be foolish.Enlightenment is not an experience at all. It is not that you will be able to walk on water, that you will be able to raise the dead back to life, that you will be able to cure the blind, the deaf, the dumb – that you will be able to do miracles. Enlightenment has nothing to do with any such thing.Enlightenment is a simple realization that everything is as it should be. That is the definition of enlightenment: everything is as it should be, everything is utterly perfect as it is. That feeling… And suddenly you are at home. Nothing is being missed. You are part, an organic part of this tremendous, beautiful whole. You are relaxed in it, surrendered in it. You don’t exist separately. All separation has disappeared.A great rejoicing happens because with the ego disappearing there is no worry left, with the ego disappearing there is no anguish left, with the ego disappearing there is no longer any possibility of death. This is what enlightenment is. It is the understanding that all is good, that all is beautiful – and it is beautiful as it is. Everything is in tremendous harmony, in accord.The stars are in accord with the grass leaves, the earth is in accord with the sky, the rivers are in accord with the mountains. Everything is in such accord that existence is an orchestra. Everything is rhythmic, in tune. Existence is music. That experience is enlightenment. You are not separate from it like an observer, like a spectator. The observer and the observed are one, the seer and the seen are one – you are it.It is a great participation. You have fallen into the whole and the whole has fallen into you. The drop has dropped into the ocean and the ocean has dropped into the drop. It is impossible to say anything more about it. In fact, it is impossible to say anything about it. It can only be experienced.But, please, don’t go on postponing it because it is available now. Now or never, remember.I know you have been taught continuously – and this is a kind of hypnosis in which you are living, you have been hypnotized by society – to be goal-oriented, you have been forced to become ambitious, you have been taught to be competitive, so you are afraid. You are afraid, “I worry that others will reach before me.”You are not very concerned with your own enlightenment. You are much more concerned that no one else should reach before you. Now, in the world of enlightenment such a competitive mind cannot even enter and will remain thousands and thousands of miles away. It needs a noncompetitive spirit. It needs that you drop all comparisons because when you become enlightened you will be totally alone, no one else will be there – not even your beloved, not even your friend. No one can be there; you will be utterly alone.It is not a question of who attains “before,” because enlightenment has no before or after. Those are time phenomena. Enlightenment is always now. Why think of before and after? This very moment… Let it sink in you. All that is needed on your part is total receptivity. Fling all doors open, let the sun, wind, rain all come in.Enlightenment is not like money, is not like political power. It is not like anything that you know in life. It is absolutely unlike anything that you have known or will ever know. It is unique in the sense that nothing like it exists in existence. It is just itself and cannot be compared with anything. It is its own comparison.But the problem is, how to drop this hypnosis? How to drop this conditioning? – watch it. See how it is torturing you, how it is making you more and more miserable every day; how it is creating barriers between you and that which is. Just go on seeing it.No other positive method is needed – just an insight that your whole mind is a misery-creating factory, that it manufactures misery and nothing else. Once you have seen it through and through, that very seeing becomes a transformation. You simply turn in. You drop the mind, or it drops of its own accord because you have seen the futility of it. If even for a single moment the mind is not there, enlightenment is there.In the beginning, it will come only in moments, but those moments are of eternity. Slowly, slowly more and more moments will be coming because you will become more and more a host. One day the guest and the host disappear into each other. And it never leaves you. On the outside you remain just the same old person; doing your work, chopping wood and carrying water from the well. You remain just the same and yet nothing is the same any longer.I teach you this relaxation. I teach you the way of nonaction. I don’t teach you arduous effort because they are all ego-gratifying. No effort can help you to become enlightened. It will be a distraction. Only an effortless silence:Just sitting,doing nothing,and the spring comes,and the grass grows by itself.The second question:Osho,Please, I want to come home.You have come. I am your home. Yes, it takes time to recognize it. It takes years sometimes to recognize that you have come home. First, you don’t know what your home is. So how to recognize it? Second, it is so against your ingrained habits of the mind that the mind wants to ignore it rather than take note of it. The mind wants to ignore it because if it takes note of it, that taking note is very disturbing. It disturbs its whole edifice.To recognize that you have come home means now no more effort is needed, means now there is nowhere to go, means that your old kind of life and all its activities are finished. Suddenly you feel empty. Suddenly you will feel nobody, a nothingness – that frightens. Hence one goes on repeating, “Osho, I want to come home.”You have come. To be here with me is to be at home because my whole approach is not that of improving you, but just of shaking you, shocking you into awareness that you have never left home in the first place.The biblical story says that Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. I would like to tell you that they have never been expelled. You have heard a wrong rumor. They have only fallen asleep – they are in the Garden of Eden because there is no other place to be. The whole existence is God’s, the whole existence is his garden. To where can he expel anyone?Once a Christian missionary was talking to me and I asked him, “Where can he expel Adam and Eve to? Where?”He was at a loss to answer – because this whole kingdom is his. Yes, an ordinary king can expel his son because his kingdom has a limitation. There are other kingdoms too; the son can be thrown out of the kingdom, out of the boundaries. You can be expelled from India, from Germany, from Japan. And that is possible because there are other places available. But to where is God going to expel you? There is no other place. The Garden of Eden has no limits. The whole existence is his garden.The Christian missionary asked me, “Then what happened? How do you interpret the story?”I replied, “They have fallen asleep. By eating the fruit of knowledge they have fallen asleep, they have become minds – and when one becomes the mind, one falls asleep as far as consciousness is concerned. By eating the fruit of knowledge, by becoming knowledgeable, they have become minds. The story is so simple and so significant. God told them not to eat from the tree of knowledge and that was the only order that was given to Adam and Eve: not to become minds, to remain innocent, not to become knowledgeable. But they could not resist the temptation. They became knowledgeable.”Once you become knowledgeable, your consciousness goes through a shift. It moves from the heart to the head. The heart falls asleep and the head becomes awake. The head cannot know the mystery of godliness; the head is incapable of understanding that you are already in godliness, that you cannot be anywhere else.Just descend from the head, come back to the heart and you are back in the Garden of Eden. Hence my insistence on renouncing knowledge. Don’t renounce the world – the world is beautiful. Don’t renounce your wife – she is your life. That’s exactly the meaning of the name “Eve.”The story is…Adam was alone and felt very lonely, so God created Eve – out of his ribs. That too is beautiful, that man and woman are only separate from the outside; deep down they are one. God asked Adam, “What are you going to call this woman? This new creature?”Adam replied, “I will call her Havva, Eva, Eve”– these are all different names in different languages, but they all mean life.God asked, “Why?”Adam said “Why? – because she is my life. Without her I would be dead.”You needn’t renounce your wife, she is your life. You need not renounce your husband, you need not renounce your children. But one thing you need to renounce: knowedgeability. One thing you need to renounce: your mind. See the irony. People renounce the world, but they don’t renounce their minds.A Jaina renounces the world, becomes a naked monk, but still remains a Jaina. I have asked many Jaina monks, “This is ridiculous! You renounce society, but you have not renounced the knowledge that society has given you. How can you still call yourself a Jaina?”The Christian Catholic renounces the world, moves to the monastery, but remains a Christian Catholic. He carries society with him in his mind and all that society has put there. What kind of renunciation is this?I say to you: renounce being a Christian, renounce being a Hindu because this is renunciation of the mind. Don’t renounce the world – the world belongs to God. The world is beautiful and it is tremendously beautiful if you can see it without the mind interfering.You have come home, but you are still not able to wake up, you are still fast asleep. You are still in the mind. Descend into the heart. You don’t know how fortunate you are. You don’t know how blessed you are. It is rare to find a home because it is rare to be with an alive master.Yarkoni and Danberg, two Israeli soldiers, were bemoaning the years of hardship and fighting against the Egyptians.“What we should do,” suggested Yarkoni, “is declare war against the United States. They will beat us, like they always do with all the countries they defeat, but right away they will give us billions of dollars, plenty of food, houses, cars, and factories.”“That’s no good,” sighed Danberg. “With our luck, we would win!”You don’t know how lucky you are. You have already won – but it takes time to recognize the fact, it takes time for the news to reach from the heart to the head. The distance is vast. Physiologically it is not far, but spiritually the distance is immense. Maybe these two points are at the greatest distance in existence – the heart and the head. Spiritually, not physiologically. Physiologically just one foot, two feet, but spiritually the distance is almost infinite. It takes time for the news to travel.Your heart knows that it has happened, but your head has not heard about it yet. You live in the head. When I look in your heart, I can see that it has recognized.This is what my experience is every day when I touch you, when you come close to me, when you allow my energy to melt into your energy; this is my experience, that I see your heart has understood, but your head is still unaware. Your head is still resisting, your head is still fighting, your head is still persisting in its old routine and your heart has already been transformed. The flower has bloomed there.Start learning the language of feeling and forget the language of thinking. Start being more and more silent because the chattering mind will not allow you to know that you have come home. The inner talk has to stop. In those gaps, in those intervals, the still small voice of the heart will be heard.But from my side, I know. I know absolutely that you have come. Whether you know it or not does not matter; sooner or later you will know. It is only a question of time. And there are many people like you who have arrived and are not aware. You are not alone; they are still struggling in their heads – fighting, trying to escape, creating all kinds of barriers between me and themselves – because the head will try in every possible way. It is very cunning, the head is very cunning. It cannot allow you easily to enter the heart again. It cannot leave its domination over you.I have heard…A man and a little boy entered a barbershop together. After the man received the full treatment – shave, shampoo, manicure, haircut, etcetera – he placed the boy in the chair.“I am going to buy a green tie to wear for the parade,” he said. “I will be back in a few minutes.”When the boy’s haircut was completed and the man still had not returned, the barber said, “Looks like your daddy has forgotten all about you.”“That was not my daddy,” said the boy. “He just walked up, took me by the hand, and said, ‘Come on, son, we are gonna get a free haircut!’”The mind’s whole function is to be cunning. It is a strategy developed by you to compete with others, to deceive others, to be clever with others. By and by, you become so skillful in deceiving others that you start deceiving yourself too – and that’s what the mind goes on doing. It deceives others, it deceives you.Now, your mind is creating this problem. Your mind is saying, “Search for the home, seek God. Make every effort to become enlightened.” Now the mind is creating new goals for you. Once the goal grips you, you are in the hands of the mind. If you can say to the mind, “I have arrived – get lost! Now there is no further to go, nowhere to go. This is home. This is enlightenment.” First, the mind will look a little confused because this is not the way you have ever behaved with it. It will look a little shocked. But if you go on saying the same thing again and again – whenever the mind wants to create a desire to achieve something, you simply say, “Shut up!” – slowly, slowly it will understand that now you are beyond its power. Only then does it begin stopping. It will make all kinds of effort. You have to be alert not to be caught in those efforts.That’s the function of my being with you and the function of this buddhafield: to remind you continuously that you have arrived, that godliness is available right now to you, this very moment showering on you. Godliness is in the air, in the sun, in the flowers, in the song of the birds. Godliness is in this silence between me and you, in these words between me and you, in this communion. This silence, this presence, this love that goes on flowing between me and you, is godliness. This love is the home.But beware of the mind. In fact, in all the traditions, the mind has been given different names. One tradition calls it “the Devil,” another tradition calls it “Satan,” but it is in fact nothing but a metaphor for the mind.Jesus goes to the mountains, meditates, and encounters the Devil. Do you know who that Devil is? It is not someone outside you, with two horns popping out of his head and with a long tail and hooves. These are just stories written for children, for grown-up children of course, but all stories. You have to decode them.Who is this Devil who tempts Jesus in the mountains? – it is the mind. The Devil is an ancient metaphor for the mind. It goes on watching you, what you are doing. If you are nourishing to it, it is okay; if you are moving away from it, it starts creating trouble for you. If one strategy doesn’t work, it immediately changes its strategy. And it is really very clever.Just the other day you heard Kabir’s sutras. He said, “I repressed sex, it became anger; I repressed anger, it became greed; I repressed greed, it became pride.” It is the same mind. If you start fighting with it, it goes on changing its colors, just to deceive you. Yes, it deceives.When repressed sex becomes anger, you are at a loss to understand that this is sex and nothing else – now pretending to be anger. Anger looks so different from sex, in fact, it looks like the polar opposite. Sex is love; anger is hate. How can they be the same? The mind has taken just the polar opposite to hide itself. You will need great intelligence to decipher, otherwise you will be deceived and anger will torture you.If you repress anger, it becomes greed. Now who can ever think logically that anger can become greed? They don’t seem to be connected at all. Unless you are a real observer of your inner happenings, you will not be able to see the connection. The mind jumps to such new faces, takes such new masks. You repress greed and it becomes pride. You go on ad infinitum…Mrs. Fleishman and Mrs. Rutkin were rocking on the porch of their Catskill Mountain Hotel.“Oh, my God! exclaimed Mrs. Fleishman. “Look at that boy. Did you ever see such a big nose? Such a crooked mouth? And look – he is cockeyed too!”“That,” said Mrs. Rutkin, “happens to be my son.”“Well,” said Mrs. Fleishman, “on him, it is very becoming!”The mind is a diplomat, it is a politician. It is a devil. Unless you are really alert and watchful, it can go on deceiving you for lives. It has been doing that for lives, it can go on doing it for lives still. But a little intelligence, just a little intelligence, a little candle of light inside you watching, of silently watching and seeing what the mind is doing and slowly, slowly your intelligence will become stronger. The mind becomes impotent as intelligence grows.Intelligence is not intellect. Intellect is part of the mind, intelligence is part of the heart. Intelligence is always part of the heart, it is not intellectuality. I don’t mean by “intelligence” your so-called intelligentsia. It has nothing to do with intelligence. Your intelligentsia are knowledgeable. They may have big university degrees, much knowledge, but they know nothing. All their knowledge is borrowed, all their knowledge is parrotlike, it is mechanical. They go on talking about it, but it does not affect their life. It has no relationship with their own source of being; it does not well up within their own heart. When I talk about intelligence I always mean the heart – something happening in you, not coming from the outside. If it comes from the outside, it creates intellect; if it comes from within, it is intelligence. Help your intelligence to grow.I am creating this context, this opportunity, this space and I am giving you all kinds of challenges. As the commune grows, the challenges will grow. Those challenges are meant for a certain purpose, they are deliberate. They are meant to provoke your intelligence into activity, to bring your intelligence above your intellect. Only new situations which your intellect cannot cope with, only such spaces which your knowledge has not heard about, can help to bring your intelligence to the surface.All that is needed is intelligence, understanding, awareness – and you will know you have come home. Great gratitude will arise in your being and great thankfulness. That gratitude, that thankfulness, is prayer.The third question:Osho,Why have I always been in such a hurry? Today I saw so clearly that it was my way of keeping the divine at a distance and I felt incredibly sad. I saw the absurdity of this pattern.Man has been told again and again to be in a hurry because life is short and much has to be done, many desires have to be fulfilled, many pleasures have to be attained, many goals achieved. Life is certainly short and you have so many desires, so much to do. In fact there is not much time to do it.If you live sixty years, twenty years will be gone in sleep, one third; so only forty years are left. Another twenty years will be gone in earning your bread and butter; just the routine of going to the office, to the factory, rushing in the morning toward the factory or the office and rushing in the evening back home – twenty years will be gone in that.Only twenty years are left. In those twenty years, almost fifteen years will be lost in such stupid activities: watching the television, going to the movie, playing cards, gossiping with the neighbors – fifteen years! So only five years are left. In those five years, you have to manage many kinds of illnesses. You have to go to friends’ marriages and social functions, you have to talk to your wife and to your children – just out of a sense of duty – you have to quarrel with your wife and throw pillows. And a thousand and one things. You can just go on making the list.Those who have made such lists say that in the whole sixty years’ life, not more than a few months are left for you. And in those few months, all the desires, millions of desires, are to be fulfilled. Naturally, great haste arises. In the West more so because in the East we have a beautiful concept that there are many lives, so there is no hurry. If you die this time, nothing to be worried about. Next time you will be born again and again and again and again.In the West, all the three religions that are born outside of India – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – believe in one life. They have all come from the same root, Judaism. In fact, there are only two religions in the world: Judaism and Hinduism. A few religions are offshoots of Judaism and a few religions – Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism – are offshoots of Hinduism. Hinduism believes in many, many lives. Hence you find the Indian utterly lazy. His problem is no hurry, his problem is laziness. His problem is that he has no motive to do anything.That’s why India is poor because no one is willing to do anything, everyone goes on postponing. Tomorrow or the next life, why be worried? There is enough time, infinite time available. This idea of infinite time has helped in one way. It hasn’t created the Western hurry, it hasn’t created the Western speed, it hasn’t created the Western anxiety and tension, that constant state of remaining tense. It has created another problem, just the opposite: no one wants to do anything, everyone is lazy and lousy.The reason for your haste is that you come from the West, from the Judaic-Christian tradition with only one life and so many things to do. Naturally, one has to be in a hurry and always running. People are not even resting in their sleep. In their sleep they are also on the go, in their sleep they are also traveling, to faraway lands. Even in their sleep they are not in their rooms, they are not where they are. They are always somewhere else.You ask me, “Why have I always been in such a hurry?” You are brought up in the Judaic tradition. Do! Doing is respected very much. Be active! Do it quick and do it fast.The Devil had been away from Hades for a couple of months’ terrestrial duty. He had been in England and was looking forward to putting his feet up by the fire and having a nice drop of brimstone, followed by a variety of unmentionable after-dinner pursuits.At last he got home. You can imagine his surprise when he flung the Gates of Hell open to be confronted by a landscape dotted with cool mango groves and fields of nodding corn.“Those goddammed Jews and their irrigation schemes!” he howled.Wherever the Jews reach, they will bring their planning – even in hell they will not leave the Devil in rest. That is the Judaic tradition. One life, a short life and so much has to be done, everything has to be done.You have to drop that Judaic tradition, you have to come out of it. I’m not saying become an Indian either because that is moving from one wrong to another wrong. Just come out of all traditions. To Hindus I say, “Come out of your Hindu tradition of laziness and lousiness.” To Jews, Christians, Mohammedans I say, “Come out of your tradition of remaining in a constant hurry and tension.”Enjoy life. Act, but act in a relaxed way. The greatest art in life is to learn how to act in a relaxed way. Action is a must – you cannot live without action – but action can be almost inaction. That’s what Lao Tzu means when he uses the word wu-wei. That is very fundamental to Lao Tzu and that is very fundamental to me too. I would like you to learn wu-wei. Wu-wei means action without action – doing a thing in such a way that you are not tense in doing it, doing a thing in such a way that you are playful about it; doing a thing in such a way that you are not worried about it, doing it and yet remaining detached, doing it and yet remaining a witness.Lao Tzu seems to be the way out for the Jews and the Hindus. This is strange that no tradition arose out of Lao Tzu, no religion. The Jews have created three great religions, the Hindus have created three great religions – all the six great religions belong to these two peoples. Lao Tzu remained an individual. Yes, a few people followed him. Down the centuries, a few individuals have moved into the world of Lao Tzu, but only individuals. No religion came out of it because the whole Taoist approach is such that it cannot create fanatics. And unless you can create fanatics, you cannot create a religion. The whole of Lao Tzu’s philosophy is such that it gives you such balance, such tranquility, such serenity, that you cannot become a fanatic – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. It is impossible. These things happen only to neurotic people.The Hindus create one kind of neurosis and the Jews create another kind of neurosis; both have created great religions in the world. I absolutely agree with Sigmund Freud that these so-called religions are nothing but collective obsessions. Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra are not religious people in the sense that Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists are. They are very balanced, whole, tranquil and cannot become parts of the crowds. They cannot fall that low.People join together in churches just because when alone they feel so afraid of their inner neurosis. They would like to join with people of the same kind, so they can feel at ease, so that they are not alone in the difficulty. When there are many people just like you, you forget all about your neurosis.Humanity lives such a neurotic life that either it moves to one extreme and remains stuck there, or it moves to the other extreme and remains stuck there. The really healthy person is not stuck anywhere, he is not stagnant. He is dynamic. He can be in great action and yet he can remain inactive. He knows the way of wu-wei, he knows the way of action through inaction. You will have to learn that.Haste is something very symbolic of the Western mind. And because of the haste, the West has created faster and faster vehicles. The East has remained contented with the bullock cart. There have been great scientists in the East, but they never worked. They never worked hard enough to create better roads, better vehicles, airplanes, spaceships – they were not interested in haste. What is the point? Why rush?The West is continuously creating faster and faster vehicles. They have broken the sound barrier; now man is traveling faster than sound. The whole Western technology is bent upon breaking the light barrier. Man wants to travel faster than light. No one asks, “Where do you want to go? And even if you reach there, what are you going to do there?” You can reach the moon, you can reach some star some day, but what will you do there? – you will do the same thing that you are doing in California because you will be the same person. You will create the same kind of nonsense and nuisance there. You will pollute the poor star, you will destroy its rivers, you will destroy its oceans and pile up your junk everywhere. What are you going to do there? – you will create the same ideological wars, both cold and hot. You cannot remain peaceful there either. You will immediately create division; someone will become communist, someone will become democratic. And the fight starts. You will create atom bombs and hydrogen bombs, or you will carry them from here.The West is too interested in speed, too much in action. And the action is futile because it is simply the occupation of a neurotic mind. The East is not interested in action at all; that is again another kind of neurosis, the opposite kind – people are lazy. They philosophize very much about their laziness. They talk about renouncing the world. They say, “What is the point of earning, of working? One day one has to go, one day one has to die, so why bother? Rest as much as you can before you die.” But then what will you do when you die? You can rest when you die.Man needs a balance and that balance is possible only if you learn the art of being active and yet remaining inactive inside. That’s what we are trying to do here. In the bigger commune you will have more facilities to be active and inactive together.People who come to the ashram are a little puzzled. Many have written to me, “Everyone is working but no one seems to be tense.” So many people are working in the office, in the workshops, in the press office… So many people are working. Nearabout seven hundred people are constantly working, with no holiday – Sunday never comes. But no one is tense.Work is beautiful if it can be done without any tension, if it can be done playfully, if it can be done without any hurry and yet without relapsing into laziness. It is a very subtle and delicate art. You are neither Eastern nor Western. That’s what I call the new man. He will not be Eastern nor Western, or he will be both together. It has never happened before. My sannyasin has to prove it. Lao Tzu talked about it and a few people have tried it, but I am making an effort to create such a big space that millions of people can try it. It is such a blessing to know how to act without acting, that everyone should have a little taste of it.When you are working, remember it. If you have gone for a walk, remember – there is no need to be in a hurry. A walk has to be enjoyed. Go slow. There is no goal. Enjoy the trees surrounding the way, the birds, the sun, the sky, the clouds; the people that are passing and the smell of the earth. Enjoy everything. Be alert.A lazy person becomes unalert. The very speedy person is so much concerned about speed that he cannot be watchful of all that is happening around him. He is rushing with such force that he cannot see anywhere else; he is focused, obsessed with some goal. The lazy person is so lazy, so unalert, so unconscious, that he cannot see. Both are blind.You have to find a synthesis. Be alert as the active person is and be relaxed as the lazy person is. Once both these two are there together, you are balanced and your life will have a new flavor, of joy, of ecstasy, which knows no bounds.Silverstein, the inveterate joiner, came rushing home, proudly holding a membership card to his newest organization.“Look,” said Silverstein to his son, “I just joined the Prostitute Club!”“What?” said the boy. “Let me see that card.”After reading it, he announced, “Pa, that’s the Parachute Club!”“All I know is,” said Silverstein, “they guaranteed me three hundred and sixty-five jumps a year.”There are these people who are constantly joining this and that club, this and that organization. They are simply afraid of being themselves, simply afraid of being left alone. There are people who are constantly rushing. And don’t ask where, they themselves don’t know. But in the rush they are occupied and that occupation keeps them away from themselves, away from looking into their own inner hollowness.This constant haste is nothing but an escape from your inner self. And there is a truth of great significance in it. If you go on hurrying, if you go on speeding, if you go on running away from yourself, if you keep yourself occupied constantly, you will become more and more afraid of looking at yourself because not knowing what beauties emptiness contains, you will become more and more afraid. You wouldn’t like to come across your inner emptiness.In fact, the inner emptiness is the greatest experience of life – that is enlightenment. Knowing that there is no one, knowing that there is utter silence, not even a word, knowing that there is nothing at all, no person, no ego, no identity, is the greatest experience, the ultimate joy. But if you don’t look into it, you are simply suspicious of a certain hollowness, of a certain emptiness inside. And remaining suspicious, you go on occupying yourself. People keep themselves occupied the whole day. They fall asleep and become occupied in their dreams – for twenty-four hours a day it is a constant occupation.Meditation means giving a few minutes to nonoccupation. Start giving at least one hour to nonoccupation. Just sit doing nothing. In the beginning it will be very difficult – the most difficult thing in the world in the beginning, but in the end, the most easy. It is so easy, that’s why it is so difficult. If you tell someone to just sit and do nothing, he becomes fidgety; he starts feeling that ants are crawling on his leg or something is happening in the body. He becomes so restless because he has always remained occupied. He is like a car with the ignition on and the engine humming, although the car is not going anywhere, but the engine is humming and becoming hotter and hotter. You have forgotten how to switch the ignition off. That’s what meditation is: the art of switching the ignition off.For a few minutes, a few hours, as much time as is possible, just sit silently. In the beginning it is difficult. It will take at least three months to six months to be able to sit silently doing nothing – not even chanting is needed because that is again an occupation. People sit, then they start chanting “Rama, Rama, Rama.” That is again occupation, another kind of occupation, a religious kind of occupation. No, not even chanting, no mantra is needed.The word mind and mantra come from the same root. They both come from man. Man is Sanskrit for the mind. And that which keeps the mind running is called “mantra,” that which keeps nourishing the mind is called “mantra.” So someone’s mantra is money – he thinks of money, that is his mantra. Someone’s mantra is politics – he thinks of politics, that is his mantra. Someone simply repeats “Rama, Rama, Rama” – that is his mantra. But every mantra feeds the mind and the mind is the problem. We have to get out of the mind.Sit silently, for three to six months; then remind me again. If you have left by that time, if you are finished, so far, so good. If you really sit silently for one hour a day for six months, you will not remind me because you will have experienced something so tremendous, so beautiful; just your pure being, just the heart pulsating, the breath coming and going. And the music of your inner existence is exhilarating. It becomes overflowing. It is not only that you will be continuously radiant, bubbling with joy. Whoever comes in contact with you will also be infected by it, your joy will become contagious. There will be no hurry. There will be a grace, an elegance and a peace will surround you.When joy is inside the heart, when silence is inside, peace surrounds you, grace surrounds you, godliness surrounds you.The last question:Osho,Please, one day in this series can you finish the lecture on a serious note so that I can see you leave? Every day when you end with a joke, I laugh so much that tears fill my eyes and you become just a white blob drifting through a sea of greenery.It is very difficult for me because today I have chosen really a very juicy joke. But I will resist the temptation…Enough for today.

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The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 01-15Category: KABIR

The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I am afraid of death, yet at the same time it has an incredible attraction for me. What does it mean?Death is the greatest mystery of life. Life has many mysteries, but there is nothing comparable to death. Death is the climax, the crescendo. One is afraid of it because one will be lost, one will dissolve in it. One is afraid of it because of the ego and the ego cannot survive death. It will be left on this shore when you start moving toward the other; it cannot go with you.The ego is all that you know about yourself, hence the fear, great fear, “I will not exist in death.” But there is great attraction too. The ego will be lost, but not your reality. In fact, death will reveal to you your true identity; it will take away all your masks and will reveal your original face.Death will for the first time make it possible for you to encounter your innermost, interiormost subjectivity as it is, without any camouflage, without any pretense, without any pseudo personality.Hence, everyone is afraid of death and everyone is attracted. This attraction was misunderstood by Sigmund Freud and he thought that man has a death wish. He called it thanatos. He said, “Man has two basic, fundamental instincts. One is eros – a deep desire to live, to be alive forever, a desire for immortality. The other is thanatos – a deep desire to die, to be finished with it all.” He misunderstood the whole point because he was not a mystic. He knew only one face of death; that it ends life. He knew only one thing; that death is an end. He was not aware that death is also a beginning. Each end is always a beginning because nothing ever ends totally, nothing can ever end. Everything continues, only forms change.Your form will die, but you have something formless in you too. Your body will not be there, but you have something in you, within your body, which is not part of your body. Your earthly part will drop into the earth, dust unto dust, but you have something of the sky in you, something of the beyond, which will take a new journey, a new pilgrimage.Death creates fear if you think of the ego. Death appeals to you, attracts you, if you think of your true self. So vaguely one remains attracted toward death; if you become clearly aware of it, it can become a transforming understanding, it can become a mutant force.Try to understand both the fear and the attraction. Don’t think that they are opposites. They don’t overlap, they are not opposites either; they don’t interfere with each other. The fear is directed in one direction – the ego. The attraction is directed into a totally different dimension – the egoless self. The attraction is far more important than the fear.The meditator has to overcome the fear. The meditator has to fall in love with death, the meditator has to invite death – the meditator has not to wait for it, he has to call it because death is a friend to the meditator. The meditator dies before the death of the body. That is one of the most beautiful experiences of life: the body goes on living, on the outside you go on moving the same as you were before, but inside the ego is no more, the ego has died.Now you are alive and dead together. You have become a meeting point of life and death; now you contain the polar opposites and the richness is great when the polar opposites are contained. These are the greater polar opposites, death and life. If you can contain both, you will become capable of containing existence because existence is both. Its one face is life, its other face is death.This is something beautiful. Don’t make a problem out of it. Meditate over it, make it a meditation and you will be benefited immensely.The second question:Osho,Today in the samadhi tank, I could have sworn I felt your presence for a few moments. I became quite frightened. Other people have spoken of feeling your presence even as far away as England. What is this? Is it imagination, projection or something else?It can be a projection, it can be imagination, but it can also be something else. It depends on you. Only you can decide what it is. For example, were you thinking about me before it happened? Were you desiring that it should happen? Was your imagination functioning somewhere inside you? Were you fantasizing? Then it is imagination, then it is projection.But if it was out of nowhere. You were not thinking about me at all, you were taken by surprise, you were shocked, you could not believe it – then it is something else. That’s what has happened to you.You say, “I became quite frightened.” If it had been your own imagination, you would not have become frightened at all. You would have known that it was your imagination. If it was just a projection of your mind, you would have known. You became frightened only because it had nothing to do with your mind at all.You say, “…I could have sworn I felt your presence for a few moments.”Such experiences happen. And it can happen more easily in isolation. It happens to many people when they are alone in the mountains. It happens to many people when they are in a certain strange space, where they have never been before. The very strangeness of the space makes them aware of certain things to which they have remained always asleep.It happens to runners. If you run for a few miles, a moment comes when suddenly the runner disappears and only running remains. At that moment, you become aware of many things you have never been aware of. Subtle fragrances in the air – your senses are very alert, very alive – certain presences around you, even certain presences so tangible that you can touch or you can be touched by them.It happens to people in many situations, but those situations have to be something extraordinary – because we have become so accustomed to the ordinary situation that things go on happening around us and we remain unaware. The samadhi tank gives you a very special space where you are floating in water, darkness, isolation, with no sound. You are back in the mother’s womb; the samadhi tank is just a scientific way to have the experience of the mother’s womb again.The fetus in the mother’s womb floats in liquid. In the samadhi tank you float in the same kind of liquid, with the same chemicals. Hence, you cannot drown in it. The darkness of the womb is so out of the ordinary – no sound, no light – you are thrown into such a new space that your sensitivity, your awareness, your intuitiveness, all start functioning. You become as intuitive as the small child in the womb, you become as innocent as the small child in the womb. In that innocence something can happen which is not part of ordinary time and space.Space and time can both disappear. Yes it is possible you can feel my presence – in fact, I am surrounding each of my sannyasins. You may feel it, you may not feel it. In a certain moment of attunement you will feel it. Then it doesn’t matter whether you are in England or in Japan. It doesn’t matter; space, distance, make no difference.By giving you sannyas, I am making you entitled to feel me wherever you are. Now all depends on you. My presence will be with you, surrounding you. In life, in death, I will be with you just by your side. But you may see, you may not see. You may remain unconscious.Something beautiful has happened. Remain available to strange experiences in life and don’t try to deny the strange experience because that’s how many people go on denying tremendous opportunities.For example, one night you suddenly awake, alone in your room, all is silent and dark. You become aware of a certain presence… Maybe a dead friend, one of your ancestors, your dead mother. But you become so frightened and in that fear you lose that perceptivity, that perception. The presence remains there, but you are disconnected. You put the light on, you become occupied in doing something, you start reading a book, or you turn the radio on, just to disconnect yourself from the strange experience that was happening.Don’t be afraid. This existence is yours. This existence is very friendly and there are immense mysteries waiting for you – to be known, to be experienced.This was a beautiful moment for you. Now that it has happened, you can make it happen again and again. And there is no necessity to go in the samadhi tank. It can happen in your room in the night, when you are alone. It can happen anywhere, if you allow it to happen.One of the greatest calamities that has befallen the modern man is that he has become very, very mundane. He takes only that which is explainable, he accepts only that which is definable, he accepts and recognizes only that which can be scientifically and objectively proved. But then you remain on the lowest rung of existence because the higher the rung is, the more indefinable it becomes, the more unexplainable, the more and more elusive. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot have it in your closed hand and you cannot show it to someone else. It becomes more and more intimate, less and less public, more and more private.Many people experience such things, but they don’t tell others because others will think they are crazy. That’s my own observation. Many people have told me of their experiences and that they have never told anyone else because they have always been afraid that they may be thought crazy, or people may think they hallucinated, or think that something is wrong – their nuts and bolts are a little loose. And not only will others think this. They themselves think, “Something is wrong with me because this is not ordinarily experienced by others, then why me? Something is wrong with me – so just deny this experience, forget about it!”If you ask people sympathetically, lovingly, many people will reveal mysteries to you. The mystic experience is not as rare as people think and the mystic experience has nothing to do with religion as such. It happens in many spaces which are not thought to be religious at all.Many times, it happens to mountaineers because climbing in the mountains, alone, in a dangerous situation, suddenly the mountaineer becomes aware of a presence by his side – not only that but mountaineers have related how the presence has helped and said, “I am a friend, don’t be worried. I am protecting you. There is no danger. Go on climbing.”Sometimes a man lost in the jungle for one, two, three days with no food and no possibility of getting out of it, tired, exhausted – suddenly becomes aware of a presence, a very protective presence, which says, “Don’t be afraid! You are on the right track, you will get out. Don’t be worried.”But these people never relate these things to others. In sports many times mystic experiences happen; runners and joggers particularly have known many experiences. In the new commune there are going to be facilities for runners and joggers. I would like hundreds of sannyasins to run for miles every morning – just completely abandoned in running.After half an hour or one hour, even if you are tired, tiredness disappears. It is strange, very strange, very illogical. You wanted to go to sleep, you were so tired, but you went for a six-mile run. After the second or third mile, suddenly all tiredness has disappeared and you are so full of energy – as you have never been. You are so weightless, airborne. You start feeling that it is not you who is running now; some other energy has taken possession of you.The experience of unity with existence and the experience of a deep, warm, orgasmic energy surrounding you… It happens to surfers, it happens in many sports, even in wrestling. That’s why in Japan particularly, many martial arts were developed by meditators. It looks strange: Why do meditators develop martial arts – judo, aikido, karate and so many others? They were developed for a certain reason.If you really go deep into them, the ego disappears and you enter a new space – unknown to you, unexplored by you. Suddenly you are not functioning on your own but as if possessed by existence.One thing I would like to emphasize. Whenever such things happen, accept, don’t deny them; don’t start calling them imagination, projection, hallucination, deception. These are tricks of the mind. I am not saying that there are not hallucinations – there are. I am not saying there are not people who suffer from neurotic illusions – there are, but just because of them, just because there are false coins, don’t deny the real coins. In fact, false coins only prove that the real coins exist.Remain available to the dimension of the strange, the mysterious and that will help you tremendously. If you remain available, more and more experiences of this kind will start happening.A man went into a bar and ordered a beer. After he had been served, he reached into his breast pocket and lifted out a perfectly formed little figure four inches tall. Then he produced a thimble. “A beer here too, for my friend Paul, he requested, “and go easy on the head.”Is he for real?” asked the bartender.“He is,” said the man.“Can he talk?” persisted the barkeeper.“He can,” replied the man. “Paul,” he went on, “tell this guy about the time we were on that expedition and you called the witch doctor a black son-of-a-bitch.”Don’t think that life ends with arithmetic. There is magic too. By “magic” I simply mean that the strange also happens. Magic is now a condemned word because we have forgotten the magical dimension of life. The word magic comes from a very great mystic; his name was Magi. Before Christianity, Magi’s religion was the greatest religion spread all over Europe. That religion was called Magic. Christianity destroyed much that was valuable. One of the most valuable things that Christianity destroyed was the tradition of the Magicians – the tradition of Magic.I would like you to be magicians again.Arithmetic is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Logic is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. And there is much more to life than logic. Don’t be satisfied with Aristotle. The modern mind is too satisfied with Aristotle and because of it there is so much boredom. People look very dull because the sense of the mysterious is no longer there. The sense of the mysterious which goes on keeping you fresh, young, which goes on keeping you wondering.If a man is capable of wonder, he is capable of knowing existence. If a man is capable of awe, he is capable of knowing existence.The third question:Osho,I have tried to think of a question I could ask you that would show Prem Chinmaya that I understand more fully the love he shares here at the ashram.So what are you doing tonight after darshan?The question is from Chinmaya’s mother. For many, many years I have not done a single thing – before darshan or after darshan. For many years I have ceased to exist, I have died. I no longer function as a person. Things happen, certainly, but they are not doings. I am not a doer. Hence I am not even concerned about the consequences. Why should I be concerned about the consequences? I am not the doer in the first place. I am not concerned with the results. I am simply a vehicle, a hollow bamboo, offered to existence. Now it can sing any song it wants to sing. If it doesn’t want to sing any song, it is for it to decide. I am perfectly happy with song or without song. Sometimes it sings, sometimes it is silent and I don’t interfere. I am simply relaxed with existence as it is.And that’s my teaching here; that’s what I am teaching your son, Chinmaya. I am happy to tell you that he is progressing and progressing in a very different, more difficult situation than others. But he has evolved greatly.He is suffering from cancer. He knows death can come any day, but I am happy to say to you that it makes no difference anymore to him. Life or death – he will remain a witness. That much integrity has happened to him, that much centering has happened to him. In the beginning when he had come here, he was very afraid – very afraid of death. Naturally; anyone would be. It was expected. But, slowly, slowly being here with me, with my people in this buddhafield, he has learned one thing: that we are not doers. Sometimes life happens, sometimes death happens. We have to be witnesses of both. We have to be thankful for both.So I know now that whenever he leaves life, he will leave with tremendous gratefulness, with a prayer on his lips, with a deep thank-you in his heart. That is the right way to die and that is the right way to live too. In fact, because he has become so accepting of death he is alive, otherwise he would have been dead long before. Even the doctors are a little puzzled about him. They can’t see why and how he is still alive, and very much alive.The body has all the symptoms that he should no longer be here, that he should be dead by now. But something deep inside him has become so relaxed that that relaxation has gone deeper than the cancer itself; that’s what is keeping him alive. He may live long. One never knows. Miracles happen. If he remains relaxed, he may live long.Doctors are ready to give him a death certificate any day, but if he remains relaxed, meditative, happy, contented… And he is. It is difficult in his situation to be contented, but he is. Even breathing is difficult, but he has accepted everything.If your son lives, he will be growing – growing toward more spiritual maturity; if he dies, he will be growing in his death too. He has found the path and the path is of nonaction, or action through nonaction – wu-wei.The fourth question:Osho,Today, I overheard someone say that you had problems – do you?Not one but many. You are my problems, one hundred thousand problems! As more and more sannyasins will be coming, the problems will go on growing. Each sannyasin brings many problems. I am here; you can surrender your problems to me. I can take all of your problems because I have none of my own. And because I have none of my own, you can drop your problems into me and they disappear. They have no place to cling to. They simply disappear in the abyss that I have become.The fifth question:Osho,I come from California and I did not like the way you used the word California yesterday.I had simply said that even if you are on the moon or on some star, you will start doing all the things that you are doing in California. I have used the mildest term possible. Moksha has suggested a far more suitable word for it; his suggestion is: “Rather than saying, ‘You will be doing the things that you are doing in California,’ you should say, ‘Wherever you are you will californicate.’” What else will you do? This is the right word. California simply means where people are “californicating.”The sixth question:Osho,Something is happening that I cannot explain. It is not even something I know, only something I sense.That’s what I am here for – to help you to be aware of things which cannot be explained but yet experienced, which cannot be expressed but yet felt. No word is adequate to indicate them, but they can be sensed.Man can know much more than he can say, man can sense much more than he can know, man can be much more than he can sense. You have to be aware of all these layers.That which can be said is the most superficial; much more can be known. That which is known and cannot be said is deeper, but much more can be sensed. That which is sensed and cannot be known is even deeper, but one can be much more than one can sense. That is the deepest layer.The effort is to help you to go into your interiormost core so that the gestalt changes, from knowing to the knower, from the seen to the seer, from the object of consciousness to consciousness itself.Man can live a life either of doing or of having or of being. Doing is the most superficial; better than doing is having. The poor person lives in the world of doing, the rich person lives in the world of having. But the best is the world of being. The poor person can also reach the world of being without passing through having, but it will be very difficult. Very, very difficult because you can renounce only that which you have. If you don’t have it, it is very, very difficult to renounce it. Only a rare man like Kabir can do that miracle. He can renounce that which he does not have. He can understand even that which he does not possess.Great intelligence is needed to move from the world of doing to the world of being. If someone moves from poverty to spirituality, he has great intelligence. If someone remains in richness and still does not move toward spirituality, he is just stupid and nothing else. Being rich and not being aware of spirituality is stupidity. Being poor and not being aware of spirituality can be forgiven, but the rich person cannot be forgiven because he has – can’t he see that he has everything and yet he has nothing? Death will be coming and it will take all that he possesses.Doing is a means to having. When doing succeeds, you have. But when you have, everything starts failing, everything starts looking futile, everything starts looking childish. To know that everything in this world is futile is the beginning of turning in, of conversion. Something beautiful is very close by.You say, “Something is happening that I cannot explain.” You are fortunate. There are poor people who can explain whatever is happening to them and that means nothing special is happening to them. All that is happening is so superficial that language is adequate to express it. The deeper the happening, the more dumb you will feel.Lao Tzu says, “People can say whatever they want to say – except me. Compared to them I look a little muddle-headed. People are very clear, but I am vague.” People are clear because they don’t have any experience of the mysterious.Lao Tzu is joking. Lao Tzu is saying, “You are poor because you can say everything that you know and you are so clear about your life – how can you be so clear about the mysterious?” The mysterious remains in the mist. One only feels it, but one cannot grab it. It is very mercurial. If you try to grab it, you distort it; it falls into pieces, it disappears.You say, “Something is happening that I cannot explain.” There is no need and don’t try to explain it, otherwise it will stop happening because the explanation is done by the head and the happening happens in the heart. The head is very clever in interfering. Don’t allow the head to interfere. Accept the unexplained as unexplained. There is no need to explain it. Live it. Experience it. Taste it. Be drowned in it. There is no need to express it.You say, “It is not even something I know, only something I sense.” Yes, that’s exactly how it happens. Knowing means clarity and if you know, you can explain. Knowing means you have already explained it to yourself and if you can explain it to yourself, why not to others? Sensing means that you are not even able to explain it to yourself, it is just a feeling. If you try to grab it, it disappears.The greater truths have to be approached indirectly, you should not attack them directly. You should be very delicate, very indirect.Have you noticed in the night that if you look at the small stars directly, they disappear? Try tonight: if you look directly, if you focus on a small star, it disappears. It is not available to the direct gaze. What is the way to see the small star? Look sideways, look just around – not exactly on the spot. Look at other stars and suddenly the small star starts appearing. It is available only to an indirect gaze, not a direct gaze.So is the situation with inner experiences. Don’t look directly – the inner experiences are very shy. If you look directly they start hiding. There is no need to know, sensing is enough. Why this obsession with knowing? When you are obsessed with knowing, you will also be obsessed with explaining. You don’t owe explanations to anyone.Buddha used to declare wherever he would go… His disciples would precede him and they would declare to the town, “These eleven questions are not to be asked of the Buddha. You can ask everything else except these eleven questions.”The eleven questions were known as avyakhya – unexplainable. But if you observe the eleven questions minutely, you will be surprised that nothing is left out of them. All that is important is included in them, all that is of any significance. Why was Buddha so insistent on saying, “Don’t ask”? – because he cannot explain and your very asking puts you on the wrong track.If you can ask something, you start expecting an answer. Remember, just by formulating a question, there is no necessity that an answer will be coming from existence. Existence has no obligation to fulfill your questions.And absurd questions can be formulated; they look very good, very logical, very grammatical. Language-wise they are perfect, but in existence they are just absurd. For example, someone can ask, “What is the color of sound?” As a question it is perfect, no one can find any fault with it – linguistically. “What is the color of sound?” But sound and color are not related at all.Someone asks, “What is the taste of the color green?” The question is right as a question, but no answer will be possible. Such are your questions. When someone asks, “Who created the world?” it looks very significant, it looks very philosophical. It is simply absurd because the world was never created; so the whole question is nonsense. It has always been there.God is not the creator. God is the world. He has become the trees, he has become the rocks, he has become the river, he has become you and me. There is no other God except this existence. God is not separate from existence. He is not like a painter who paints on the canvas and then there is a picture and the painter. God is like a dancer who dances and the dancer and the dance are always the same – they cannot be separated. You cannot have the dance separate from the dancer and you cannot have the dancer separate from the dance because when he is not dancing, he is no longer a dancer.God is the dancer and the world is the dance – and you are part of the dancing gestures. But you can ask the question, “Who created the world?” And there are foolish people who will try to answer you.The question is absurd in the beginning, in the first place, but then there are foolish people who are ready to answer. Because the question is there, it has to be answered – so “God created the world.” Just ask them, “Who created God?” and you are falling into an infinite regress and there will be no end because the question will always remain the same. A created B, B created C, C created D… But the question remains the same, “Then who created D?” The question will never be answered.There are people, even great philosophers have asked, “Who is first – the egg or the hen?” The question looks perfectly right. One must be first. But can’t you think that things can be standing in a circle? If you think that everyone is standing in a queue, in a line, then someone is first and someone is last. But if people are standing in a circle – who is the first and who is the last?The mystics say that the world moves in circles and they really seem to be hinting at a deep truth. The stars, the earth, the sun, the seasons all move in a circle. Life moves in a circle – everything moves in a circular way. The straight line is man’s creation. In fact, Euclid’s whole geometry is wrong.Now, in the world of higher mathematics, Euclid is no longer valid. Something totally different has come into force: non-Euclidean geometry. Euclid believes in a straight line, but non-Euclidean geometry says you cannot draw a straight line. How can you draw a straight line? If you draw a straight line on the floor, it is not straight because the earth is round. It only looks straight because it is part of such a big circle. It is an arc, not a straight line. If the earth is round and you are sitting on the earth, drawing a straight line; just go on extending it from both ends… One day it will become a circle. So it was part of a circle.Everything is part of a circle. Who is first – the hen or the egg? Now the question is so patently foolish that only philosophers can ask it. They argue and there are people who say the hen is the first.I used to know an Indian philosopher, a Buddhist philosopher, Rahul Sankrityayana. He believed that the egg came first. He has written many articles to prove that the egg is the first. But how can the egg be the first? Some hen will be needed. And how can the hen be the first? Some egg will be needed. Those who know, say something else. They say the hen and the egg are not two things. The hen is the egg’s way of producing more eggs, or vice versa; the egg is the hen’s way of producing more hens. They are not two but one process. The egg becomes the hen – so how can one be first and the other second? The hen becomes the egg…But these questions have persisted down the ages and people think they are doing great work when they are thinking about such stupid questions. Buddha was right: “Don’t ask such questions. Be practical.”Each buddha is pragmatic. If you asked a question of Buddha, he would ask, “First answer a few things. If I say yes or no, is it going to change your life? You ask, ‘Who created the world?’ If I say, ‘God,’ how is it going to change your life? If I say, ‘No one,’ is it going to change your life?”In fact, if you look at the atheist and the theist you will not see any difference in their lives. Both go to the same movie, both see the same TV program, both eat the same food, both are members of the Rotary Club. You will not see any difference in the atheist or the theist. Can you say whether someone is an atheist or a theist, just by watching his behavior? You cannot see any difference. They remain the same person.So Buddha used to say, “If it is not going to make any real difference in your life, forget about the question. It is meaningless. Ask me something which will help you go deeper in meditation; ask me something which will bring enlightenment to you; ask me something which will make you free from all imprisonments. Ask me something which will take you beyond all misery and death; ask me something which will take you beyond all time and space and make you part of eternity.”There is no need to know what is happening. Let it happen, don’t interfere. There is no need to explain it – be quiet. Keep it inside you as a secret. Remember, great things need secrecy. Just as the seed goes in the earth and remains there, then the great tree is born; just as the child has to grow in the mother’s womb. These are great secrets. When they start happening to you, keep them deep down in your heart, let them grow there.Yes, one day when they have become a great tree, with great foliage, flowers and fruit, people will become aware of them and many people will be benefited. Many people will rest in your shadow and many people will quench their thirst, their hunger. Many people will be made aflame by your flowers and many people will start moving toward godliness – just by seeing you, just by feeling you, just by being close to you.But nothing has to be said, nothing has to be explained. Even if you try, it is not possible. In trying to explain and trying to know, you may disturb the whole process. And something that is going to happen may be stopped.The seventh question:Osho,Are the politicians really as stupid as you say they are?They are more stupid than I say. In fact, unless a person is stupid he cannot be a politician. It is not that the politicians are stupid – in fact, only stupid people are attracted toward politics.What is politics basically? – it is the desire to dominate others and that is the most stupid thing in life. The intelligent person tries to be a master of himself and the stupid person tries to be master of others. How can you be a master of others if you are not a master of yourself?If you are not a master of yourself, then trying to be a master of others is just a substitute to befool yourself, to deceive yourself. That is what the stupidity consists of.Two politicians were sitting on a park bench in New Delhi. “I will tell you the truth,” said one. “I am afraid to fly. Those airplanes ain’t too safe.”“Don’t be a baby,” said the other. “Didn’t you read last week there was a big train crash and three hundred people were killed?”“Three hundred killed on a train – what happened?”“An airplane fell on it!”Overheard in the market by Deeksha: “I am in favor of putting a statue of Morarji Desai in the middle of the square.”“For what?”“It will give us shade in the summertime, shelter in the wintertime and the birds a chance to speak for us all.”The eighth question:Osho,A few days ago in lecture, I realized that when I am relaxed, the body goes into a most comfortable posture of its own accord. It must be just the same with life. Is this the beginning of trust?Yes, this is the beginning of trust, the beginning of yea-saying, the beginning of a great understanding that all that is going to happen is going to happen and you are not to do it. You have to be alert and passive, you have to be watchful and receptive. This is the whole secret of life.Small things need to be done. If you want more money, it is not going to come on its own; you will have to run after it. If you want political power, it is not going to come to you on its own. You will have to fight for it, you will have to struggle for it. Small things are those which never happen, which never come from existence. Man has to struggle and do them. Great things are those which if you try to do them you will miss. Great things happen only when you are in a total relaxation.That’s what must be happening. This is happening to many people who are here. You are not here just to listen to me. You are here just to be with me. Talking and listening is just an excuse to be here. It will be difficult for you to sit still, silently, for one and a half hours if I am not talking to you. If I am talking to you, your mind remains engaged and your whole being becomes relaxed.This is a meditation. This is not a discourse. I am not preaching, I am not a preacher. I am not teaching, I am not a teacher either. I have no philosophy to impart, no knowledge to transfer. It is a device; talking to you is simply a device.This is another kind of meditation. I go on talking, your mind remains occupied with my words and your whole being relaxes with me – the real thing is that relaxation.You say, “A few days ago in lecture, I realized that when I am relaxed, the body goes into a most comfortable posture of its own accord.” The body has great wisdom – allow it. Allow it more and more to follow its own wisdom. Whenever you have time, just relax. Let the breathing go on, on its own, don’t interfere. Our habit to interfere has become so ingrained that, you cannot even breathe without interfering. If you watch your breathing, you will immediately see that you have started interfering. You start taking deep breaths, or you start exhaling more. There is no need to interfere at all. Just let the breath be as it is. The body knows exactly what it needs. If it needs more oxygen, it will breathe more; if it needs less oxygen, it will breathe less.Just leave it to the body. Become absolutely noninterfering. Wherever you feel any tension, relax that part. Slowly, slowly… First begin while you are sitting resting, and then while you are doing things. Cleaning the floor or working in the kitchen, the office – keep that relaxedness. Action need not be an interference in your relaxed state; then there is a beauty, a great beauty, to your activity. Your activity will have the flavor of meditativeness.Yes, it is exactly so with your whole life. This is the secret. But people go on making unnecessary effort. Sometimes their effort is their barrier; their effort is the problem that they are creating.There was a lot of confusion downtown during the big snowstorm. Mulla Nasruddin went over to help a fat lady get in a taxi cab. After rushing, shoving and slipping on the ice, he told her he did not think he could get her in.She said, “In? I am trying to get out!”Just watch. There are things where if you push, you will miss. Don’t push the river at all and don’t try to go upstream. The river is flowing toward the ocean of its own accord – just be part of it, be part of its journey. It will take you to the ultimate. Go relaxed, dancing, singing, to godliness.There is no need to make any effort. Why? – because godliness is our intrinsic nature. We are gods already. If we relax, we will know; if we don’t relax, we will not know. Relaxation becomes the door to that great knowing – enlightenment.The ninth question:Osho,Why do I continuously misunderstand you?That is natural. Understanding will be a surprise – misunderstanding is not a surprise. You are bound to misunderstand me because you are. You will understand me only when you are not. That “I” is the cause of all misunderstanding. It remains between me and you. It does not allow me to say what I am saying; it interprets, it colors it, it distorts, it chooses, it adds, it deletes. It does a thousand and one things and only then does it allow it to go in. By the time it reaches you, it is something totally different. It is not what was said to you. It is something that your mind has made out of it.You will have to disappear if you want to understand me. Less than that won’t do.Lorenzo was extolling the virtues of his newly adopted homeland. “This is-a great-a country.” he declared. “Look-a at Sinatra – where else could a piece of spaghetti wind up-a with a-so much-a gravy!Everyone is carrying his idea, his conditioning, his knowledge, his past with himself. That’s what your “I” consists of.The Ozark farmer’s wife had a baby each year for the past twelve years. He finally went to a doctor for some advice. “Here’s a gross of rubbers,” said the doctor. “Just read the instructions on the label.”A year later, the hillbilly brought his wife in, pregnant again. “Did you follow the instructions on the box?”“Yep, Doc! Sure I did! The only thing was I didn’t have no organ so I put them on the piano.”Your understanding is going to be your understanding. How can it be my understanding? If you disappear, if you put yourself aside, then there is no barrier, no censor between me and you. The communication is immediate. It is not even a question of words. It is a question of energy.If your mind is put aside, my vibe will start stirring your heart, my being will touch your being, will trigger something that is fast asleep in you – will awaken it.The more I see that my sannyasins are dropping their egos, the more and more my work will change. It will become less and less concerned with words and will become more and more concentrated on energy. That’s exactly what is slowly, slowly happening.I will be speaking less and less to you. If you are not there I can just enter your being, can just call you: “Friend, wake up!”One night Mrs. Mantoni got in a taxi. After riding a while, she realized she had forgotten her pocketbook and had no money to pay the fare. The meter now read $7.50.“Mista driver,” she cried. “You betta stop. I no canna pay you!”“Oh, that’s all right,” said the cabby. “I’ll just pull down a dark street, get in the back seat with you, take off your panties…”“Mista, you gonna get gypped,” said the Italian lady. “My panties only cost-a forty-nine cents!”Please disappear, don’t come in between me and you. Let the contact be immediate, direct, heart to heart, not mind to mind. Yes, it is good in the beginning. It is good in the beginning because there is no other way. I have to talk to your mind and seduce it, but once the mind is seduced, once you have become a sannyasin, the second step is to put the mind aside and let me have a direct contact with your heart.Finally, even the heart has to be put aside. You will not find any difference between me and you. My understanding will simply be your understanding, without any transfer, without any communication because we will meet at the center. Your center and my center are not different. Your body is different from my body; your mind is less different from my mind than my body and your body. Your heart is even less different than my heart. But your being and my being are the same. They are not different at all.If the disciple is ready to drop the mind, heart, everything, immediately he becomes the master, he has arrived. There is no more to learn, no more to know, no more to experience. Life continues as it was before, but now there is no one inside to suffer, to dream, to be anxious; no one there to live or to die. One exists in godliness and godliness exists in one.The last question:Osho,I know that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but then why do I go on repressing it?You have been taught to do it from the very beginning. It has become part of you, your conscience. Listening to me now you understand that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but this understanding is very new. “Sex is dirty” and “sex is sin,” is very old, it may be fifty years old. And this understanding is very new. The weight of the old is too much.So you understand intellectually that sex repression is the root cause of all neurosis, but deep down, even in your body, even in your chemistry, the idea has penetrated. From the very moment you were given milk, you have been poisoned about sex, that it is sin. It is such a long, long hypnosis that it will take time for you to awaken.It is a good beginning that an intellectual understanding is happening, but it is only intellectual. It has to become existential.Cynthia’s mother is explaining the facts of life to her, the day before her wedding.“Now, my dear,” she tells her, “I am afraid Bertie will often want to be beastly to you after you are married.”Cynthia, shocked, is quite unable to believe that her beloved Bertie would ever do such a thing.“Yes, it is so,” her mother insists, “and I want you to remember, whenever he wants to be beastly, grit your teeth, clench your fists and think of England!”These things have been given to everyone and everyone is carrying a big load of all kinds of nonsense. Sex is a natural phenomenon. It has to be accepted, lovingly; it has to be respected. It is life’s source. Not to respect it, is to disrespect life; not to respect it, is to condemn existence. Respect it, love it, be prayerful with it and one day you will transcend. But transcendence is not against sex, transcendence is through sex. Sex has to be used as a stepping-stone. When you have used it as a stepping-stone, be grateful to it.If you really want to understand me, or Kabir, this has to be the very foundation; that life has to be loved because it is divine, life has to be affirmed with your total being because God is hidden in it. God is another name for life, another name for love. Life is to become your God. Then whatever life implies becomes divine.But it will take time. Slowly, slowly chunks of your old conditioning have to be dropped. If you can remain here for a few months, the miracle is possible. It is happening to others. Thousands of my sannyasins have started accepting life – not accepting out of any helplessness, but out of great joy, with a rejoicing heart.I am all for rejoicing and I am all against, deadly against, renouncing. I am all for transformation and absolutely against repression. If you repress, remember Kabir: repress sex, it becomes anger; repress anger, it becomes greed; repress greed, it becomes pride… And so on and so forth. It goes on and on. The farther away you are from nature, the more complex is the journey, the more difficult it is to come back home.Come closer. Lose your pride, let it become greed; lose your greed, let it become anger; lose your anger, let it become sex. Sex is the original energy. From sex there is a possibility of transformation because sex gives you the first glimpses of samadhi. Sex lived totally, sex loved totally, will make you aware for the first time of the peak moments, of the climaxes.On those sunlit peaks, great silence prevails; the ego has been dropped far behind in the valleys and time has disappeared somewhere on the way. You are no longer separate, you are not a person but just a pulsation, a presence. Sex gives you moments of that experience where you are simply pulsating in rhythm with the whole. That pulsation is what orgasm is all about and orgasm is the window toward samadhi.What is happening intellectually, now allow it to happen existentially too. Only then the long, long tradition of centuries can be dropped. It is an arduous effort, it is difficult, but it is worth it.Once chunks of your conditioning start disappearing, you will feel such freedom, such buoyancy; you will feel so weightless, you will start feeling wings are growing in you. You will start feeling that you can do anything and you will start feeling that you are entitled to do miracles.And, yes, that’s how it is. Man is entitled to do miracles. But the beginning has to be a deep love for all that you are, a deep acceptance of what you are – no denying, no rejection, no repression. Transformation has to be the key.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Once a tyro asked a Zen master, “Master, what is the first principle?”Without hesitation the master replied, “If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle.”Yes, the first principle cannot be said. The most important thing cannot be said, and that which can be said will not be the first principle. The moment truth is uttered it becomes a lie; the very utterance is a falsification. So the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran, they contain the second principle, not the first principle. They contain lies, not the truth, because the truth cannot be contained by any word whatever. The truth can only be experienced, the truth can be lived, but there is no way to say it.The word is a far, faraway echo of the real experience. And it is so far away from the real that it is even worse than the unreal, because it can give you a false confidence. It can give you a false promise. You can believe it, and that is the problem. If you start believing in some dogma, you will go on missing the truth. Truth has to be known by experience. No belief can help you on the way; all beliefs are barriers. All religions are against religion – it has to be so by the very nature of things. All churches are against God. Churches exist because they fulfill a certain need. The need is: man does not want to make any effort, he wants easy shortcuts. Belief is an easy shortcut.The way to truth is hard, it is an uphill task. One has to go through total death. One has to destroy oneself utterly, only then is the new born. The resurrection is only after the crucifixion.To avoid the crucifixion we have created beliefs. Beliefs are very cheap. You can believe and you remain the same. You can go on believing and it doesn’t require any basic change in your life pattern. It does not require any change in your consciousness, and unless your consciousness changes, the belief is just a toy. You can play with it, you can deceive yourself with it, but it is not going to nourish you.Visualize a child playing in the garden of his house, playing with imaginary lions, and then suddenly he has to face a real lion who has escaped from the zoo. Now he does not know what to do. He is simply scared out of his wits. He is paralyzed, he cannot even run. He was perfectly at ease with the imaginary, but with the real he does not know what to do.That is the situation of all those people who go on playing with beliefs, concepts, philosophies, theologies. They ask questions just to ask questions. The answer is the last thing they are interested in. They don’t want the answer. They go on playing with questions, and each answer helps them to create more questions. Each answer is nothing but a jumping board for more questions.The truth is not a question. It is a quest. It is not intellectual, it is existential. The inquiry is a gamble, a gamble with your life. It needs tremendous courage. Belief needs no courage. Belief is the way of the coward. If you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan you are a coward. You are avoiding the real lion, you are escaping from the real lion. If you want to face the real, then there is no need to go to any church, there is no need to go to any priest, because the real surrounds you within and without. You can face it, it is already there.I have heard…A Zen master, Shou-shan, was asked by a disciple, “According to the scriptures, all beings possess the buddha nature; why is it that they do not know it?”Shou-shan replied, “They know!”This is a rare answer, very rare, a great answer. Shou-shan said, “They know! But they are avoiding it.” It is not a question of how to know the truth. The truth is here, you are part of it. The truth is now, there is no need to go anywhere. It has been there since the beginning, if there was any beginning, and it will be there until the end, if there is going to be any end. And you have been avoiding it. You find ways to avoid it. When somebody asks, “What is the way to truth?” in fact he is asking, “What is the way to avoid the truth?” He is asking, “How can I escape?”You may not have heard…Says that old rascal Bodhidharma: “All know the way, few walk it. And the ones who don’t walk, regularly cry, ‘Show me the way. Where is the way? Give me a map. Which way is it?’”Those who don’t walk, they go on regularly crying and shouting, “Where is the way?” And all know the way because life is the way, experience is the way. To be alive is the way, to be conscious is the way. You are alive, you are conscious. This is the first principle.But it cannot be said, and I am not saying it!And you are not hearing it.The truth, by its very nature is a dumb experience. All experiences are dumb because they happen only in deep silence. If you love a woman, the love happens in deep silence. If you create poetry, it descends in you in deep silence. If you paint a picture, you disappear. The painter is not when the painting is born, there is not even a witness to it. It happens in utter silence and utter aloneness. If you are there, then the painting cannot be of any value. If the poet is there, then the poetry will be nothing but a technical thing. It will have all the rules fulfilled, it will follow the grammar, the rules of melody, but there will be no poetry. It will be a dead corpse. It will not be a real woman, it will be a nun.I have heard…At an isolated part of the beach of Cannes, a beautiful French girl threw herself into the sea. A young man off at a distance noticed it and dashed into the water to save her, but it was too late. He dragged the seminude body ashore and left it on the sand while he went in search of some official. When he returned he was horrified to see a man making love to the corpse.“Monsieur!” he exclaimed, “that woman is dead!”“Sacre bleu!” muttered the man, jumping up. “I thought she was a nun.”To be a monk or to be a nun is to be dead. And there are millions of ways to die and not live.Truth surrounds you. It is in the air, it is in the fragrance of the flowers, it is in the flow of the river, it is in the green leaves, it is in the stars, it is in the dust, it is in you. Only truth is. But you go on avoiding it and you go on asking questions, “How to attain truth? Where is the map? Which way is it?” And even if the map is given to you, the map does not help you in any way. In the first place the map cannot be given because the truth goes on changing. It is not a stagnant phenomenon, it is continuously changing. It is alive, it is breathing. It is never the same: it is never the same for two consecutive moments.Says old Heraclitus, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” In fact, you cannot even step once; the river is flowing, the river is flowing so fast. And not only is the river flowing, you are flowing. You cannot step in the same river twice. The river changes. You cannot step in the same river twice because you change.Truth is dynamic. Truth is not something dead. That’s why it cannot be contained in words. The moment you utter it, it has passed. It has gone beyond; it is no longer the same. The moment you say it is so, it is no longer so. Words lag behind.To be with truth there is only one possibility: drop words. Language lags behind. Language is lame. Only silence can go with truth, hand in hand. Only silence can move with truth. Only silence can be so fast, because silence has no weight to carry. Words are loaded, they carry weight. So when you are carrying words, great theologies in your head, great abstractions, then you cannot walk with truth. To walk with truth one has to be weightless. Silence is weightless, it has nothing to carry. Silence has wings. So only in silence is the truth known, and only in silence is the truth transferred, transmitted.The tyro asked the master:“Master, what is the first principle?”He must have been a tyro, a beginner, otherwise the question is foolish, the question is stupid. Either a stupid person can ask it or a philosopher. The question is meaningless because “first” means the most fundamental. The mind cannot contain it because it contains the mind. The “first” means the basic; it was before the mind, so how can the mind comprehend it? The mind came out of it, the mind is a by-product of it. The child cannot know the father; the father can know the child. Reality can know you, but you cannot know reality. The part cannot know the whole; the whole can know the part. And the part cannot contain the whole. Now, the mind is a very tiny part, it cannot contain the vastness of reality. Yes, the person who asked must have been a beginner:“What is the first principle, master?”And the master said:“If I were to tell you, it would become the second principle.”Then it will be an echo, it will be a reflection, it will be a mirror image.Do you know who you are? You don’t know, but you know a mirror image. You know your name, you know your address, you know the name of your family, the country, the religion, the political party you belong to. You know your face reflected in the mirror. You don’t know your real face. You have not encountered your original face yet. The Zen masters continuously persist, they go on hammering on the heads of their disciples, “Look into your original face, the face that you had before even your father was born, the face that you will have when you are dead, the face that is yours, originally yours.” All that we know about our face is not really about our face. It is the mask of the body, the mask of the mind. We don’t know who lives in the body. We know truth as secondhand, borrowed.Whenever something is borrowed it becomes ugly. Only the firsthand experience is beautiful because it liberates. The secondhand thing is ugly because it becomes a bondage. If you become religious, you will be liberated. If you become a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, you will be in a bondage. Mohammed was liberated because for him Islam was a firsthand experience. So was Jesus liberated because for him his experience was his experience, authentically his. Buddha was liberated; he came upon the experience. It was not handed to him by somebody else. It was not borrowed, it was not thought out. It was not a logical syllogism, it was not an inference. It was an experience.Beware of inference. You have been taught inference to avoid experience. There are people who say, “God exists, because if God is not there, who will create the world? God must exist because the world exists.”Just the other day I was reading a story about a rabbi. Must have been utterly unenlightened. Rabbis are like that – priests…A man came to the rabbi. The man was an atheist, and he said, “I don’t believe in God, and you talk about God. What is the proof?”The rabbi said, “Come after seven days and come wearing a new suit.”The man said, “But what does that have to do with my question?”The rabbi said, “It has something to do with it. Just go to the tailor, prepare a new suit and come after seven days.”The man came reluctantly, because he could not see any relationship between his question and the answer that had been given. But he still came wearing a new suit.The rabbi said, “Who has made this suit?”And the man said, “Have you gone mad? What type of a question are you asking? Of course the tailor.”The rabbi said, “The suit is here, it proves that the tailor exists. Without the tailor the suit would not be here. And so is the case with the world. The world is here, there must be a tailor to it, a creator.”This is inference.Change the scene…In a small Indian village a mystic is sitting with his disciples. Silently they are sitting, there is tremendous silence. It is a satsang, the disciples are drinking the presence of the master. There comes an atheist, a scholar, a well-known logician and he says, “I have come to ask one question. What is the proof of God?”The mystic opens his eyes, and he says, “If you want the proof of God, look into the eyes of the devotees. There is no other proof.”God exists in the eyes of the devotees. God exists in the vision of the lovers. It is an experience of the deepest core of your being – the heart. There is no other proof. God is not a concept. God is a reality, an experience: a deep subjective experience, the deepest there is. All else is peripheral. God is the experience of your innermost center. When you are centered you know.But you have been taught to believe in the God of the philosophers. That is a way to avoid the real God. The real God is very wild. The real God is very crazy. The real God is very unknown and unknowable. And the real God cannot be controlled. The real God can possess you; you cannot possess the real. That is the fear: the mind is always afraid of anything that can possess it. The mind goes on playing games with words, ideas, philosophies. It can remain the master there. With the false, the mind is the master. With the real, the mind becomes a slave, and the mind does not want to become a slave. So the mind is completely contented with the secondhand.Your God is secondhand. Your love too is secondhand. Your poetry is secondhand. Your dance is secondhand. Your singing is secondhand. And of course all these secondhand things make you secondhand; then you lose all originality.Religion has nothing to do with logic. Religion has something to do with the first principle. Logic deals with the secondhand. Logic deals with the junkyard, the used – used by many people. Logic deals with inference. And remember, it is good as far as the human world of intellectual garbage is concerned. The moment you go beyond that boundary, logic fails utterly, it falls flat on the ground.I have heard a very beautiful anecdote…The safari had struck camp in dangerous territory, and to protect themselves from wild animals they built a high fence around the camp. To be really sure, they dug a deep ditch around the fence. One evening a member of the group, who was a professor of philosophy and a world known logician, carelessly went out for an evening stroll without his gun and got attacked by a lion. He ran back to the camp with the lion after him and fell down into the ditch. His friends inside heard a terrible yelling and screaming from outside, and when they ran out to look they saw the poor man – the poor philosopher – running round and round in the ditch closely followed by the lion. “Watch out, he is right behind you,” they yelled down to him.“That’s all right,” the philosopher yelled back. “I am one round ahead of him.”Logic is meaningless as far as life is concerned. Life is not logical at all. Life is illogical. Logic is man-made, manufactured by the human mind. Life is absurd.So if you go through inference, you will reach the secondhand. If you go through experience, you will reach the firsthand.And religion is radical. Churches are not radical. The word radical means “belonging to the roots.” Religion is radical, religion is rebellion. And churches are not rebellious, they are orthodox. Hence, I will repeat again, all churches are against religion. All so-called religious people are against religion. They deal in a false entity. They deal in pseudo coins, counterfeit coins. That’s why so many people look religious, and there is not even a trace of religion on the earth. So many people talk about God, but it remains an empty talk.Have you ever felt God? You have heard the word again and again and again. You are bored with the word. It has almost become a dirty word. From the very childhood, people have been conditioning you with the word. Have you ever had any glimpse of God?This is something very strange. How can we miss him? If he is the totality, if he is all over the place, how can we miss him? How did it ever become possible for us to miss him? We must have been doing great work to miss him. We must be doing much work to miss him. We must be really avoiding him. We must be creating many barriers and hindrances and obstacles so that he cannot reach us.And then these empty words: God, love, peace, prayer. All beautiful words have become empty. All ugly things are very real. War is very real; love is very unreal. Madness is very real; meditation is very unreal. Beauty is not there at all; ugliness, everywhere. You can come across the ugly any moment. And God is beauty, God is truth, God is love.So what has happened? We have been trained in empty words, and we have become contented with these empty words.Drop this contentment. If you really want to know what is, become discontented with all that you have been taught, become discontented with all that you have been educated for. Become discontented with your education, with your society, with the power structures around you, the churches, the priests. Become discontented. Become discontented with your own mind. Only in that discontent comes a moment when you become capable of dropping all this mind and all this nonsense with it, and suddenly God is there, the first principle is there.A naive young man who had lived a sheltered life finally decided he could not take any more. He arranged an appointment with his doctor and poured out the whole story.“It is this girl I have been going with,” he said. “I suspected she was fast, but I never dreamed she was a sex maniac. Every night now for weeks and weeks on end, I keep trying to break off the romance, but I haven’t got the willpower. What can I do? My health just can’t stand the pace.”“I see,” said the doctor grimly. “Tell me just what happens? You can trust me.”“Well, every night I take her driving in my car. We park in some secluded street. Then she asks me to put my arms around her. And then every night she reaches over and holds my hand.”“And then?”“What do you mean ‘and then’?” gasped the youth. “Is there more?”That’s what has happened to religion. The moment the word religion is uttered you remember the serious long faces in the churches, the very sad looking priests, the very serious theologians trying to split hairs, chopping abstract words, nobody knows why, for what. Religion is broke. The religion of the philosophers is bankrupt. The religion of the intellectuals is no longer relevant. It has lost all relevance.The old religion is dead. And it is good that it is dead. The old God is dead. And it is good that it is dead, because now the door opens and we can search for a new God, a God more real, not conceptual, more existential, not philosophical. A God who can be seen, loved, lived, a God who can transform your life, a God who is really life and nothing else.A totally different kind of religion is needed in the world, a gut-level religion, a religion which has blood, life, a religion whose heart still beats. The old religion is simply dead and people are worshipping the corpse. And people carrying the corpse, by and by, become just like the corpse they are carrying.The first principle means a gut-level religion, a religion that you can experience in your innermost core, in the interiority of your being. You are the shrine for the first principle. No Bible, no Koran, no Veda. You are the shrine for the first principle. So the only way to reach the real is to go within, is to go in. Turn in.That’s what meditation is all about. That’s why Zen is not interested in any dogmas. It is interested in helping you to contact your own being.When the fifth patriarch of Zen, Hung Jen, was asked why he had chosen Hui Neng as his successor out of the five hundred monks in his monastery, he replied, “Four hundred and ninety-nine of my disciples understood Buddhism very well, and only Hui Neng had no understanding of it whatever. He is not a man to be measured by any ordinary standard. Hence, the robe of authentic transmission was given to him.”Because he has “no understanding of it whatever.” An intellectual understanding is not an understanding. It is a deception, it is an illusion, it is a dream, it is a substitute. Because you are missing the real and because you are not courageous enough to accept the fact that you are missing the real, you substitute it. It is a plastic flower. You substitute it with a false thing and then you feel very good. You start thinking that you have it. And you don’t have it. Your hands are empty.Those four hundred and ninety-nine disciples of Hung Jen were all scholars. For years they had studied, they had studied all the scriptures. They had all the scriptures on their tongue. And he had chosen a man who has no understanding whatever. The man he had chosen, Hui Neng, was not known at all in the monastery. Nobody was even aware that he existed there.When Hui Neng had come to the master, the master had asked him one thing, “Do you really want to know? Do you? Do you want to know about truth, or do you want to know truth itself?” And Hui Neng said, “What will I do by knowing about the truth? Give me the real thing.” And the master said, “Then go to the kitchen and clean the rice for the mess, and never come again to me. Whenever the right moment has come, I will call you.”Twelve years passed and Hui Neng was simply working in the kitchen at the back. People did not even know about him. Nobody knew his name. Who bothers to think about a man who simply goes on working in the kitchen from the morning till late in the night? The monastery was not aware. There were great scholars, famous people; all over China their names were known – there were celebrities in the ashram. Who bothered about Hui Neng?Twelve years passed, and then one day the master declared, “My time has come and I will be leaving this world, so I have to choose a disciple as my successor. Anybody who thinks himself ready, capable of becoming my successor, should write four lines in front of my door to show his understanding. The greatest scholar went there in the night and wrote four lines, beautiful lines, really beautiful, the very essence of the second principle. You cannot reach higher through the mind than that. He wrote, “The mind is like a mirror. Dust gathers on it. Clean the dust and you know what is.” Perfectly true, absolutely okay. What more can there be?The whole monastery was agog. People were discussing, debating whether the master would choose this man as the successor or not. And everybody was trying to improve upon it, but nobody could find anything wrong in it. There was nothing wrong.That is one of the most difficult things about the intellect. What is wrong in a plastic flower? Nothing is wrong. In a way – in many ways – it may be better than a real flower. A real flower is born in the morning and by the evening it is gone. A plastic flower is more stable, more permanent, gives the idea of the eternal. The real flower is momentary. The real flower is born and dies, and the plastic flower knows no death. It is the closest that you come to the eternal. And what is wrong in it? It can have as much color as the real. It can have more color because it is in your hands to make it so. And you can make it perfumed too, there is no problem about it. But something basic is missing. It is dead.Nobody could find anything wrong. And people were trying to improve upon it, but they were all intellectuals. You cannot improve more than that; this is the last point the mind can reach. And it seems logical, “The mind is like a mirror. Dust gathers on the mirror and then it cannot reflect.” That’s what has happened to the mind.Then two, four monks were discussing it, and they passed Hui Neng, who was doing his work in the kitchen. He heard it – they were talking about these beautiful lines, the essential of all the scriptures – and he laughed. For twelve years nobody had even seen him laughing. He laughed. Those monks looked at him and they said, “What? Why are you laughing?” And he said, “It is all nonsense. It is not true.” They could not believe their ears. This man, the rice cleaner, for twelve years just cleaning rice… Nobody had ever seen him even meditating.How can you see Deeksha meditating? Impossible.And one never knows. This man, has he become enlightened or something? But they could not believe it. And they were scholars, so they laughed at the absurdity of it, they said, “All the great scholars are there, and you, a rice cleaner for twelve years, nobody has seen you reading scripture, studying. Nobody has ever seen you sitting by the side of the master inquiring about anything, can you improve upon it?” He said, “I can, but there is one problem. I cannot write. I knew twelve years ago. I used to write a little bit, but I have forgotten.”This happens, this unlearning happens. Unlearning is the process of becoming enlightened. Because you have learned wrong ways, and those wrong ways are the barriers, they have to be unlearned. You are born enlightened and then you are forced into unenlightenment. Then you are conditioned for an insane society. Then you are forced to adjust to an insane society. If you remain miserable there is no wonder in it. You will remain miserable because this is not your real nature. This is not the flowering of your being.So he said, “I cannot write. I have completely forgotten. If you can write, I can say something; you go and write it.” And he didn’t go there, he simply said, “The mind is not a mirror at all. Where can the dust gather? One who knows it knows it.”The mind is not a mirror. Where can the dust gather? One who comes to know this, has known, has become enlightened, has looked into the deepest core of his being.And when these words were written on the door of the master, the master became very angry. Listen carefully. The master became very angry. He said, “Bring this Hui Neng immediately and I am going to beat him.” The scholars were very happy, they said, “That’s how it should be. Bring that fellow.”The guy was brought, and the master took him inside and told him, “So you have got it. Now escape from this monastery. This is my robe, you are my successor. But if I tell it to people, they will kill you. It will be too much against their egos to accept a rice cleaner as the head of the monastery. Simply escape. That’s why I was angry, excuse me. I had to be. Simply escape from this monastery as far away as possible. You are my successor, but these people will kill you.”Scholars are very, very ambitious and political. You can go to any university and you can see. You can go to any academy and you can see. You will never see men anywhere else backbiting as much as in a university. Each professor against all, and each trying to pull everybody else down, and each thinks he is the only one capable of being the vice-chancellor or the chancellor. All are fools.This Hui Neng escaped. Within two, three days people got the idea that something had happened. Hui Neng is missing and the master’s robe is missing. They started searching for him. The greatest scholar who had written the first lines went in search. Hui Neng was caught in a forest, and when caught said, “You can take this robe. I am not interested in this robe at all, this is absolutely unnecessary. I was happy cleaning rice. Now I am trying to escape and hide for no reason. Take this robe.”He dropped the robe on the ground and the scholar tried to pick it up, but it was too heavy. He could not pick it up. He fell on the ground perspiring and he said to Hui Neng, “Excuse me. I had come for the robe, but even the robe is not ready to go with me. I am incapable. And I know that I am incapable because all that I know are words and words and words. Excuse me. Teach me something.”Hui Neng said, “Teaching is your problem. You have taught yourself too much. Now unteach, unlearn. Now drop all that you know. Knowledge is your barrier in knowing.”That’s why the master says “…and only Hui Neng had no understanding of it whatever.” When you don’t have any intellectual understanding, there arises a great understanding which is not of the mind, but is of your total being. That understanding gives you the first principle, the first taste of Tao.I have heard…A wealthy horse owner died and left a large fortune to a university. A provision in the will however, was that the school must confer a degree of Doctor of Divinity upon his favorite horse. Since the university was anxious to receive the money – it was a really big sum – the Dean set a date for the animal to receive a degree of DD.This unusual occasion was attended by the press and one of the reporters asked the Dean, “What is your reaction to this strange arrangement?”“Well,” replied the Dean, “in my experience I have awarded many degrees. However, I must admit that this is the first time I have awarded a degree to a whole horse.”All others were donkeys, not whole horses.The mind cannot have any contact with reality. To live in the mind is to live like an idiot. To live with the mind, in the mind, as the mind, is to live a stupid life. The moment you become a little loosened from the mind: celebration. The moment you become a little loosened from the mind: joy. You become a little loosened from the mind: God. And suddenly the doors are open. They have never been closed, only your mind was blocking the way.The mind can give you the second principle. The first principle is possible only through no-mind. Meditation means a state of no-mind. Meditation does not mean “to think about.” Meditation means not to think at all. It does not mean, of course, to fall asleep. It means to fall awake. It means thoughts should disappear and only pure consciousness should be there, a presence, a luminous presence. You see; there is clarity, transparency.Thoughts don’t allow you to see. Or even if they allow, they distort. Or they interpret. They never allow the reality to come to you raw. They decorate it, they change it, they color it. They make it digestible to you. They make it according to you. And you are false, you are a mask. So when reality is cut according to you, it becomes unreal.That’s why the master said: “If I tell you the first principle, it will become the second principle.” You are asking the question from the head. The disciple was asking the question from the head. It was an intellectual question: “What is the first principle?” If the master answers it, the head will take the answer, and the head will spin philosophy around it, and it will become the second principle.The real, the true cannot be conveyed through words. It can be conveyed – yes, it can be conveyed – but the way to convey it is totally different. It is like measles, you catch them. Nobody can give them to you, but you can catch them. Truth cannot be taught, but can be caught.Look at me. I have the measles. Now, if you don’t resist, you will catch it, so increase your resistance. If you resist, you may not catch it. If you are really stubborn and hard, and you close your being utterly, totally, if you are not vulnerable at all, you will not catch it. But I cannot give it to you. You can catch it, or you cannot catch it, but I cannot give it to you.It cannot be given, but it can be taken, and that is the whole art of being with a master, to learn how to take. Because he will not give. He cannot give. He makes it available. A master is a catalytic agent, he is a presence. Something is possible around him. You have to be vulnerable, you have to be in an attitude of surrender, you have to be in an attitude of receptivity. You have to be feminine.Hui Ko, another Zen master, made his way northward to H’sin-yeh, where he began teaching, and among those who came to hear him was Tao-ho, a noted teacher, a very well-known author, a famous scholar on Buddhist philosophy.But Hui Ko’s teaching was not like that of any other Buddhist school, and Tao-ho was very much disturbed.The teaching was absurd, almost sacrilegious, because Hui Ko used to say, “Kill your parents.” A beautiful saying, but don’t take it literally. The parents are within you. You can ask the T.A. people – Transactional Analysis people. The parents are within you. The mother, the father… Their conditioning is within you. They go on controlling you from within. So when Hui Ko said, “Kill your parents; only then come to me,” he was uttering a great insight.That’s what Jesus says. Christians have not yet been able to explain it. He says, “Unless you hate your mother, unless you hate your father, you cannot come to me.” Hate? And the utterance is coming from the man who says, “God is love”?And Hui Ko used to say, “If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” Because when you start meditating you will meet your parents, you will meet all the people who have been related to you. You will have to kill them, you will have to disassociate yourself from them. You will have to learn aloneness. Finally you will meet the Buddha, your master, and you have to kill the master too.But these are dangerous things to say. And the way he used to say them… This scholar Tao-ho became very angry. He said, “This man will destroy all religion.” That’s what people say about me.He determined to destroy this unholy doctrine, and to that end dispatched several of his best students to dispute with Hui Ko.Hui Ko is the successor of Bodhidharma, and of course he was a worthy successor of a great master. He was a great disciple. Hui Ko was attacked by this man Tao-ho in many ways, and Tao-ho used to send his disciples to dispute with and to defeat this man.Tao-ho awaited their return with high expectations of hearing that they had won a notable victory over the hated interloper, but they did not come back.Not a single person ever came back. Whoever went to Hui Ko simply disappeared. These people are dangerous people. One should avoid them if one really wants to avoid them. Sometimes you may go as an antagonist and you may fall in love with them. And these people are like dragons: once you are close to them they will suck you in.He sent out other emissaries, and still others, but none came back to report the expected victory. It was only after some time had passed that he met some of his messengers and said to them, “I had opened your eyes to the Tao, why were you such faithless emissaries?”One of them spoke up for the rest, “The original eye is perfect in itself, but your teaching has rendered us half blind.”“The original eye is perfect in itself…” Each child is born with that original eye – it is perfect, that innocent eye. It is perfect. It needs no improvement. And the whole effort of all the masters down through the ages has been one; whatever the society has done, they have to undo. Whatever the society has put into your mind, they have to take it away. They have to dehypnotize you, they have to uncondition you. They have to make your childhood again available to you.But remember, religion is not a teaching, is not a learning. You can catch it. Yes, it is like measles. And you have to be in a mood to catch it. That mood is what is meant by being a disciple. A disciple simply shows a gesture, a great gesture, a mahamudra, that “I am ready, master,” that “I am open,” that “I will not resist. If you are going to kill me, I am ready. Whatever you are going to do to me, I am available, my availability is total.” That’s all a disciple has to do. And the master has to do nothing, he has just to be there.The master there – the one who has become enlightened, the one who has come to know his real nature – his presence and the availability of the disciple, something catches fire, something simply happens. And that is the first principle. It cannot be asked, it cannot be answered. That which can be asked and that which can be answered will be the second principle, it will be a carbon copy, an echo.Of course the priests won’t like such a rebellious meaning to be given to religion. They will not like people to become awake. Neither will the politicians like it. The politician and the priest is the very, very ancient conspiracy against the innocence of man. They corrupt. Their whole business depends on this: that man remains unconscious, that man does not become aware. Because the moment a man is aware, he is freedom. Freedom from all politics and freedom from all religions. He is religious, but free from all religions. You cannot say that he is a Mohammedan, you cannot say that he is a Hindu.To call Zen people Buddhist is wrong. It is as wrong as to call Sufis Mohammedans. It is as wrong as to call Hasids Jews. The real people are simply real people. Zen, Sufi, or Hasid, there is neither Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Jew.But the priest will not like it. It will be destroying his whole business. It will be dismantling his whole shop, his whole market.Two waiters were standing at a table over which a loaded customer had fallen asleep. Said one, “I have already awakened him twice. Now I am going to awaken him for the third time.”“Why don’t you chuck him out?” asked the other waiter.“The devil I will,” said the first waiter. “I got a good thing going for me. Every time I wake him up he pays his bill.”If humanity remains asleep, if humanity remains unconscious and hypnotized, then the politician can remain in power and the priest can go on exploiting you. If humanity becomes awake, then there will be no need for these priests and politicians. There will not be any need for any country, state. And there will not be any need for any church, any Vatican, any pope. The need will disappear. There will be a totally different quality to human consciousness.That quality needs to be born. We have come to that point in the evolution of human consciousness where this new consciousness is tremendously needed, desperately needed – this new consciousness which makes man free from politics and free from religion.And let me remind you again and again, that will be the only religious world: free from religions, but not free from religion. Free from churches, dogmas, but not free from the first principle; free from all the second principles.A girl told her friend she had just become engaged to a traveling salesman.“Is he good looking?” asked the friend.“Look, he would never stand out in a crowd.”“Does he have money?” continued the friend.“If he does, he won’t spend it.”“What about his bad habits. Does he have any?”“Well, he drinks an awful lot,” said the future bride.“I don’t understand you,” said the friend. “If you can’t say anything nice about him, then why are you marrying him?”“He is on the road all the time,” she replied, “and I will never see him.”That’s the only good thing about it. And that is the good thing about the God of the priests, you will never see him. That’s why you go on following the priest. To avoid God you follow the priest. To avoid God you read the Bible. To avoid God you chant Vedas. To avoid God you become scholars, thinkers. To avoid God you are doing everything that is possible.But why do you want to avoid God? Why in the first place do you want to avoid God? There are reasons. The very idea of God creates tremendous fear because God will mean death to your ego. You will not exist if God is there.The great Indian mystic Kabir has said, “Look at the irony of it. When I was, God was not; now God is, I am not. Anyway the meeting has not happened.” Because for the meeting, two are needed. “When I was, God was not; now God is, I am not.”The fear is that you will have to lose yourself. You are afraid of death, that’s why you are afraid of God. And that’s why you are afraid of love, and that’s why you are afraid of all that is great.You are too attached to this false ego which never gives anything but misery, but pain, but at least gives you a feeling that you are. Just watch. Meditate over it.If you want to be, then you will always fall into the trap of the priest. In fact you are not. The whole idea is a false notion. How can you be? The waves exist, but not separate from the ocean. So exist we, not separate from the ocean of consciousness. That’s what God is. The leaves exist, but not separate from the tree. Everything exists, but nothing exists separately. No man is an island, and no part can exist independently. We exist in deep interdependence. We are members of one another, of each other. We penetrate each other. This whole existence is a great penetration. Trees penetrate you, you penetrate the trees. Stars penetrate you, you penetrate the stars. You penetrate the earth, the earth penetrates you. Everything is penetrated.God is this totality. You cannot exist separately. If you want to exist separately, then you are a politician. All politics is nothing but the shadow of the ego. Then you will live in misery and in madness.But if you look, if you watch deeply, you will be surprised. You are not. Not that you have to dissolve. Simply you are not. It is just a false notion that you have been carrying, the notion that you are. Any moment of silence and you will suddenly see there is emptiness within you, nothingness within you. Buddha has called this nothingness anatta, nonbeing, shunya, nothingness. If you look within, you will not find yourself. That’s why people don’t look within, they are afraid.Once it happened I was traveling with Mulla Nasruddin in a train. The ticket collector came and Nasruddin became very hectic. He looked in his suitcase, he turned over all the things, he looked in the bed, turned over everything, he looked in his many pockets, he started perspiring, and he could not find the ticket.I saw that he had not looked in one pocket, so I told him, “Nasruddin, you have not looked in that pocket.”He said, “Don’t mention that.”I said, “But why? The ticket may be there.”He said, “Don’t mention it at all. If I look in it and the ticket is not found, I will fall dead. I will drop dead. I cannot look in that pocket. If the ticket is not there, then finished. There is a hope that it may be there.”That’s why people don’t look inside: a hope one may be there. The day you look in, you are not. The day you look in, suddenly there is vast emptiness, and it is tremendously blissful, beautiful, peaceful. You are not there; then there is no noise.That’s what Hui Neng means when he says, “There is no mirror of the mind. Where can the dust gather? To know this is to know all.”Look within. People think “We are bad,” but you are not, so how can badness gather? People think “We are good,” but how is it possible? You are not there, how can you be good? People think “We are moral and immoral and this and that,” but everything hangs on the idea of “I.” To be good, the “I” is needed first. To be virtuous, the “I” is needed first. To be a sinner or to be a saint, the “I” is needed first. Without the “I” you will not have anything to hang anything upon. Where will you hang your goodness, your sin, or your saintliness?That’s why Zen goes on insisting there is nobody who is a sinner and there is nobody who is a saint, nothing is good and nothing is bad. All distinctions are ego created. Distinctions are created so that the ego can exist through the distinctions. When you look within, there is neither saint nor sinner, neither good nor bad, neither life nor death. All distinctions disappear.In that nothingness, one becomes one with God. One is one with God. One has been from the very beginning.So the fear is that if you want to know God, you will have to disappear; so you don’t look into your own being. The fear is that if you look within yourself, you may become happy.People go on saying that they want to become happy, but I rarely come across a person who really wants to be happy. People cling to their misery. Again the same game. With the misery you have something to do. With the misery, some occupation. With the misery you can avoid yourself, you are engaged. With joy there is nothing with which to be engaged, there is nowhere to go. In joy you again disperse and disappear. In misery you are there, you are very much there. Misery gives you a very solid experience that you are. When you are happy, you start disappearing. When you are really happy, you are not, again you are not. In a state of bliss, again you disappear.You talk about heaven, but you go on creating hell because only in hell can you exist. You cannot exist in heaven. George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, “If I am not going to be the first in heaven, then I would not like to go to heaven. I would like to be in hell, but I would like to be first, I don’t want to be second.” Hell is okay, but the ego says, “Be first, be a leader.” Hell is okay if the ego remains. Heaven is not okay if the ego has to be dropped.You would like to be in heaven with your ego. You are asking the impossible. That cannot happen.The religion that exists on the earth is false, it is a make-believe, it is just for the name’s sake, but it fulfills your demand. It fulfills a certain demand: that you want to pretend that you are religious. You don’t want to become religious, but you want to pretend. And you want to pretend in such a way that not even you yourself can catch yourself pretending. You want to pretend in such a way that you don’t ever come across your pretensions, so a great structure is created. And that great structure is the church. Avoid that structure if you really want to become religious. And unless you are religious, you are not.Now let me tell you this paradox. You are only when you are not, because you are only when the ego has disappeared and you are God. That is the first principle. I am not telling it to you, and you are not hearing it from me.It happened…The car suddenly broke down in the middle of nowhere. He crawled underneath to see what the trouble was. She crawled underneath to hold the torch for him. It was quite cozy under there and after a while they forgot about car repairs. Suddenly a voice said, “And just what do you two think you are doing?”Looking up they saw the local village constable.“Why we are…er…repairing the back axle,” the young man stammered.“Well, while you are down there, you had better look at the brakes as well,” replied the law. “Your car has been at the bottom of the hill for the past half hour.”That’s what has happened to the churches. Jesus is not there, Buddha is not there. People are doing something else in the name of Jesus, in the name of Buddha, and they are thinking Buddha is there. The church is the last place where you can meet Jesus, and the temple, the Buddhist temple, is the last place where you can meet a Buddha. But you go to the church, you go to the temple and you think you are going to Buddha and to Jesus.You are great pretenders. You want to pretend. You want to be respectable. You want to show to everybody, “We are religious people.” So we have created a Sunday religion, every Sunday you go. Six days for the world. One day – not the whole day – one or two hours for God. Just in case something goes wrong, or maybe God really is, or maybe one survives death. These are all “perhaps.” And a perhaps never changes anybody’s life, only a certainty changes somebody’s life.Hence my insistence, if you cannot find an alive master, go on searching and searching. There are always alive masters somewhere or other, the earth is never empty of them. But never go to the places where conventionally you expect them. There they are not. Jesus was not in the synagogue. Buddha was not in any Hindu temple; he was born a Hindu, but he was not in any Hindu temple. Jesus was a Jew, but he was not in the synagogue. And so has been the case always. Don’t go on worshipping ideas. Find a living reality.And the moment you find a living reality, become vulnerable, become open. And you will have the first principle, which cannot be said, but you can get it.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is God really dead?If not dead, then seriously ill, on his deathbed. Which is far worse.I have heard…There was a small synagogue somewhere in some obscure village in central Poland. One night when making his rounds, the rabbi entered and saw God sitting in a dark corner. He fell upon his face and cried out, “Lord God, what art thou doing here?”God answered him with a small voice, “I am tired Rabbi. I am tired to death.”God is tired of man’s inhumanity to man. God is tired of man’s immense stupidity. God is tired of man’s unawareness. Only man seems somehow to be a misfit. The whole existence goes on harmoniously. The whole existence is a dance. Man is out of step. And the reason is that only man is free to be out of step. The glory of man is that he is free, totally free. Nobody else has that freedom. Because of the freedom, man can choose. He can choose either to be with God or he can choose to be against. And man has chosen to be against. There is a reason for it.Each child has to choose to be against his parents. That is the only way for the child to attain his ego. If the child goes on saying yes to the father, yes to the mother, and always says yes and never says no, then the child will not have any backbone. Then the child will not have any soul. Then the child will be just an extension of the parent. That hurts, that humiliates. And it is not just accidental that we have called God, the father. It is the same drama played on a more cosmic scale.Man is still childish. To be, he still needs to say no. A man is mature when he can be and can say yes too. Try to understand it. A child has to say no to the parents, a thousand and one times he has to say no because that is the only way he can feel “I am.” Sometimes he has to say no against his own welfare. Sometimes he has to say no in spite of himself. Sometimes he wants to say yes, but he cannot say it because to say yes means not to be. And each moment the struggle: to be or not to be. The moment he says yes, he is not; the parents are. The moment he says no, he is. So the child has to say no. He has to rebel, he has to go against, he has to go astray to be.But one need not be a child forever. Adam was a child; Jesus was a mature man. Adam went out of paradise. In fact, he was not expelled, he expelled himself. That was the only way to have individuality. That is the childish way to have individuality. Now, Jesus was so certain about his integrity, he could say yes and yet remain himself.Do you follow it? When you can say yes and yet remain individual, you are mature. Then there is no necessity to say no. Because if you say no and then you become individual, your individuality has a negative taste to it. It is not real individuality; it is not yet positive. It is just a no deep down, a wound, a hole. And through the no, you can become an individual, but your individuality will never be satisfying. There will be no contentment in it, there will be no bliss because bliss flows only out of yes. When you can say yes to existence, you start flowing blissfully. No cripples, paralyzes. No makes you an enemy of existence. No gives resistance. Yes makes you nonresistant, yes makes you vulnerable.God is dead or dying because man has not yet grown up. There have been millions of Adams and Eves, and only very rarely Christs – a Buddha here, a Christ there, a Lao Tzu – only few and far between. The people who have really said yes, they give life to God. By saying no, you give life to yourself. By saying yes, you give life to the total, to the whole, you pour your life into the whole. So if you really want God to be alive, you have to say yes.Man has killed God – almost killed him – by saying no, continuously saying no.I love this story. The rabbi asked, “Lord God, what art thou doing here?” God answered him with a small voice, “I am tired Rabbi. I am tired to death.” Yes. God is tired. In fact, God cannot die. God can die in your life. There are millions of people in whose lives God is dead, in whose lives God has disappeared. That is the meaning when I say God is dead. Look into people’s eyes and you will not find God alive there. And where else can God be alive? Millions and millions of hearts are completely empty of God. That’s what I mean when I say God is dead.God lives in a Jesus, in a Buddha, in a Krishna. Is God living in you? The question is not basically about God, whether God is dead or alive. The question is whether God is alive in you. If he is not alive in you, then what difference does it make if he is alive somewhere in heaven? It does not make any difference. For you it is practically the same: God is dead.Nietzsche is right about modern humanity when he says God is dead. Not that God is dead. How can God be dead? God means the eternal element, the first principle. God cannot be dead. But you can be so against God, you can be so empty of God, that for you he is dead.You have to pour your life into him, you have to make God alive in you, so he can beat through your heart, he can pulsate in you, he can love through you, he can be through you. That’s what sannyas is all about: an effort to allow God to live in you, an effort to become a shrine of the divine.Look into your own being and search there. You will be fortunate if you can find in a dark corner of your being somewhere, God sitting, tired, tired to death. You will have to revive him. You will have to breathe for him, live for him. You will have to surrender your life for the whole. A religious person is one in whom God has come alive again.The second question:Osho,How can I be nothing and unique?You can be unique only when you are nothing. If you are something, you are comparable. If you are somebody you can be compared with others, and that which can be compared cannot be unique. Unique means incomparable. Unique means you are alone, there is nobody like you. So if you are somebody… If you are a man, there are millions of men; you are comparable. If you are a woman, there are millions of women; you are comparable. If you are rich, then there are millions of rich people; you are comparable. If you are good, you are comparable. If you are bad, you are comparable. If you are a painter, you are comparable. If you are a singer, you are comparable. If you are somebody, you are comparable, and by being comparable you cease to be unique.The moment you attain a nothingness, when the “I” disappears… The “I” is comparable; the “no-I” is incomparable. That’s why I say if you become nothing, you become unique. If you become nothing, you become incorruptible. The nothing cannot be corrupted.You have heard Lord Acton’s saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Why does power corrupt? Because power makes you somebody. It gives you a definition. It says who you are – you are a prime minister of a country or a president of a country. Power gives you a definition, it demarks who you are. If you have money, it demarks you. If you don’t have money, it demarks you. If you are a musician or a poet or a singer, it shows who you are. The moment you know who you are, you are limited, you are finite, and you are comparable.But if you are nobody, just a pure nothingness, pure sky with not even a particle of dust, then how can you be compared?God is unique because God is nothing. You cannot find God anywhere. Either you can find him everywhere or nowhere, but you cannot find him somewhere. Either he is the whole or he is nothing.When you are nothing, you also become the whole. When you are nothing, you also become divine. By being somebody you remain human. By being nobody you attain divinity, you become divine. Hence I have said that the moment nothingness arises in you, you have become unique.Buddha is unique, not because he is the great saint because there are millions of saints. Jesus is unique not because he is the most virtuous man. That’s all nonsense. He is unique because he is nothing. He is unique because he is ready to crucify his ego. And the moment his ego is crucified, he resurrects, he resurrects as the whole. He dies as the part and resurrects as the whole. He dies in time, and is resurrected in eternity.The third question:Osho,I belong to the intelligentsia. I believe in intellect and reason. Is there a way out for me?It is going to be difficult. The intellect has no way out, the intellect is a cul-de-sac. The intellect moves in a vicious circle. It creates its own world of concepts, words, theories, and lives there. There is no way out from the head. The way out is from the heart because the heart opens, so a way out is possible. Intellect lives in a closed way. Intellect has no doors to go out from; it is a closed existence, encapsulated.It is very difficult to communicate with an intellectual, almost impossible. You say something, he hears something else. You show something, he sees something else. His intellect is a constant interference. It is very difficult to communicate, there is no bridge. Communication is possible only between two hearts, not between two heads. Two heads simply collide with each other: conflict, confusion, but no meeting, no communion. Only hearts meet.But the intellect has been praised down the centuries because the intellect is very useful. The intellect is capable of exploitation. The intellect is capable of domination. The intellect is capable of cheating nature, of oppression. The intellect is very, very useful as far as the world of things is concerned. So man has cultivated his intellect and has denied his heart because the heart is dangerous. You cannot exploit if you are a heart man. You cannot use somebody’s life as a means if you are heart oriented. The other becomes an end unto himself. You cannot become a politician and you cannot become a scientist. The politician exploits other human beings, and the scientist exploits nature. Both are destructive. The politician has destroyed humanity, and the scientist has destroyed nature.Now the whole of existence on this earth is collapsing because of the politician and the scientist. And they both are together. The atom bomb became possible because Albert Einstein and Roosevelt joined together. It would not have been possible if Roosevelt had wanted it alone. It would not have been possible if Albert Einstein had wanted it alone. It becomes possible only when politics and science meet. Then there is a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki, and then there is destruction. The politician and the scientist have been in cooperation down the ages. They have been helping each other.The heart-oriented man can become a poet, but of what use is a poet? Of what use is poetry? A heart-oriented man can become a musician, but of what use is music? A heart-oriented person can become a lover, but the world does not need lovers. It needs soldiers, it needs people to kill and to be killed. It needs butchers. It needs mad people. It does not need sane people, who love, who live – who live peacefully and who help others to live peacefully. The world does not believe in roseflowers. It believes in swords, in rifles, in atom bombs.The intellect has been very destructive. I am not saying that the intellect has to be dropped completely. That will be foolish. Intellect has to be used, not as a master, but as a slave. The mind is very beautiful as a slave, but it is a very lousy master. Never make the intellect your master. Use it. It is a beautiful instrument, a biocomputer. No computer yet made by man is as delicate, as evolved as the human mind. The human mind is such a beautiful, delicate mechanism. It can be of much use, but it should be in the service of love.The head should be in the service of the heart, then you are really intelligent. Remember the difference. I don’t call an intellectual an intelligent person. An intelligent person is one whose intellect is in the service of the heart, whose logic is in the service of love, whose reason is in the service of life, which is more than reason. Otherwise your so-called intellectuals are just stupid people.One story…Five men are on a military plane crossing the North Atlantic, President Jimmy Carter, former President Ford, Kissinger, a Catholic priest, and a hippie.Maybe the hippie was my sannyasin.The plane is suddenly buffeted by a thunderstorm, and the pilot rushes into the passenger section. “We have just been hit by a lightning bolt. The co-pilot is dead. Our power is gone. Here are four parachutes. Decide among yourselves who will use them.”There are five persons and four parachutes.With that, the pilot bails out.President Carter speaks first, “I have the burden of the whole free world on my shoulder. I am sure you will agree I must carry on.” He dons a parachute and bails out.Ford speaks up, “I have never done any harm to anyone. Besides, I have a golf date.” And he bails out.Henry Kissinger declares, “I am sure you will agree that I am the smartest man in the world. Obviously I must be spared.” And he jumps.The priest turns to the hippie, “I have led a full life. I am not afraid to meet my maker. Go ahead, my son, and take the last parachute.”“But Father,” says the hippie, “there are two parachutes left. The smartest man in the world just bailed out wearing my knapsack.”Please don’t be the smartest man in the world. Intellectuals are not very intelligent people.The fourth question:Osho,Why do I find it difficult to enforce rules? Part of me gets angry and insists that sannyasins follow simple rules like no smoking or eating in the gardens. Teertha has called me “the commandant of the garden,” but deep down I hate the whole authority trip, it is the only part of my work that is not enjoyable. How can one be a nobody when put in a position of having to enforce rules?Could Chuang Tzu lay down his fishing pole and come to Pune to play Laxmi's role?The question is asked by Nirgun.Who do you think is playing Laxmi’s role? It is Chuang Tzu.A few things to be understood about the question. It’s certainly difficult to play an authoritative role, but the difficulty arises not because of the role, but because of the unconscious desire to dominate. You can repress the desire, you can avoid any authoritative role, the desire will remain there. Whenever an authoritative role is given to you, the desire hidden in the unconscious – the repressed desire – becomes alive and jumps on the role.It is beautiful to watch it and get rid of it. Rather than getting rid of the role, rather than trying to avoid the role itself, it is better to get rid of the desire to be authoritative. So it is good that you are placed in a role where again and again you will have to say to people, “Don’t do this.”But this can be said in a very nonauthoritative way. There is no need to be authoritative about it. Don’t make it a trip. And then the situation will be a great opportunity to grow. I have put many people in authoritative roles. That is the only way to get rid of any repressed desire. When the situation is there and the opportunity is there, the desire comes up, surfaces.And Nirgun has that desire deep down, hence the fear. She would like to escape from the situation. She would like some work where there is no need to say to anybody, “Don’t do this.” But how will you get rid of the desire? It is easy to avoid children, but it is very difficult to get rid of the parent role. It is very easy never to be in a position where you have to say to people, “Do this. Don’t do this.” Very easy. But how will you get rid of the subtle aggressive energy in you?I would like you to use these situations. And this ashram has to be a constantly ongoing group. Every situation has to be used in such a way that it helps your spiritual growth.She refers to Chuang Tzu, the famous story that Chuang Tzu was asked by the emperor to come to the palace and to become his prime minister; I have commented on the story. I love Chuang Tzu.Two messengers came from the emperor. Chuang Tzu was fishing, and they came and they said, “The emperor wants you to become the prime minister of the country.”Chuang Tzu said, “Do you see that turtle there, wagging its tail in the mud?”They said, “Yes, we see.”“And do you see how happy he is?”They said, “Certainly. He looks tremendously happy.”And then Chuang Tzu said, “I have heard that in the king’s palace there is a turtle, three thousand years old, dead, encaged in gold, decorated with diamonds, and he is worshipped. If you ask this turtle who is wagging his tail in the mud to change his role, to become that turtle in the palace – dead, but encaged in gold, decorated with diamonds, and worshipped by the emperor himself – will this turtle be ready to accept that?”The messengers said, “Certainly not. This turtle will not be ready.”So Chuang Tzu said, “Why should I be ready? Then be gone. I am happy in my mud, wagging my tail, and I don’t want to come to the emperor’s palace.”Now, this is a beautiful story, but if I meet Chuang Tzu I will say that he is still afraid, he still has a certain fear. If I had been in Chuang Tzu’s place, I would have gone to the palace. You can wag your tail in the palace too, and it will be fun. But Chuang Tzu must have been a little afraid, a little fear that maybe he will become imprisoned there: maybe he will have to lose his freedom, life, aliveness, maybe he will start going on a power trip, ego trip. But that fear simply shows that something in the unconscious is still lingering on.A man should be so free that if the situation demands him to be in a power role, he can be in a power role without being powerful. If the situation demands it of him, he can easily accommodate himself to the new situation without any trouble. A man should not have a fixed role in life. He should be fluid. And the question is not of roles, the question is of consciousness.So be more conscious, be more loving. Don’t allow that urge to dominate, to become an unconscious trip, that’s all. Become conscious of it. Through consciousness, it will be dropped.Because of this fear, millions of people down the ages became monks and nuns. What was their fear? Why were they afraid of the world? They were afraid not of the world, they were afraid of their unconscious desires. They knew well that if an opportunity is given to them they will fall from their pedestals. But what type of awareness is this? If you can be happy only in the forest, and cannot be happy in the marketplace, your happiness is not worth much. If you can be celibate only when there is no woman available, your celibacy is not of any worth, not worth much. If you can be nonpossessive when there is nothing to possess, then what is the point of your being nonpossessive? When you have the whole world to possess, and you remain nonpossessive, this is attainment, this I call siddha, this I call real achievement.So my sannyasins are not to become escapists. They have to live in the world and they have to live above the world. In the world and yet above it, in and yet not in it. My sannyasin has to face more than Mahavira’s sannyasin or Buddha’s sannyasin. My sannyasin has to remain liquid, flowing, and yet uncontaminated.The fifth question:Osho,I am no politician, no diplomat, and I feel like a clown. I want to dance on the desk and sing on the phone, “Hello-lujah, rather than Hello.” May I sign up for the ashram fool?The question is from Vani.It is too early. To be really a fool one needs to be very wise. To be a fool one needs to be truly wise. That’s why all wise people have something of foolishness in them. Jesus was known as a fool, so was Buddha, so was Francis of Assisi. They were known as fools.There is a certain quality of foolishness in a real wise man. Why? Because a real wise man contains the opposite. He is both together. He is more comprehensive. A wise man who has no foolishness in him will be dry, dead. His juice will not be flowing. He will not be green. He will not be able to laugh, he will be serious, he will have a long face. A wise man who is just wise, and in whose being the fool has not been integrated, will be very heavy. It will be difficult to live with such a wise man. He will be very boring. He will be boring to you and he will be boring to himself. He will not have any fun, his life will not know any joy. He will be completely unacquainted with laughter. And when laughter is missed, much is missed.And one can never know godlinesss without laughter. One can never know godliness without joy. One can never know reality just by being wise.The fool has something to contribute too: the laughter, the joy, the nonseriousness, the quality of fun, delight. The fool can dance, and the fool can dance for any reason whatever, any excuse will do. The fool can laugh. And the fool can laugh not only at others, he can laugh at himself.When the wise man and the fool meet together in a consciousness, then something of tremendous value happens. There are foolish people and there are wise people. The fool is shallow, the wise man is serious. The fool does not know what truth is, and the wise man does not know what joy is. And a truth without joy is worse than a lie. And a joy without truth is not reliable. A joy without truth is momentary, cannot be of the eternal.My approach is that of great balance. You have to be very, very balanced. Delicate is the balance, difficult to achieve, but once achieved you will know that there is a quality of consciousness which can absorb wisdom and foolishness together, and there is no contradiction. They both become two aspects of your energy.Then you are sincere, but not serious. Then you are truthful, but not joyless. Then you have joy, but the joy is not of the momentary, it is of the eternal. It is not within time, it is beyond time.So it is too early. To really become the ashram fool, you will have to become almost enlightened. Don’t think that it is easy to become a fool.I am not talking about the common variety of fools. Gurdjieff used to talk about eighteen varieties of idiots: they come in all sizes and all shapes. But I am talking about the ultimate. Gurdjieff used to say God is the ultimate idiot. Looks very profane. The ultimate idiot, God? And Gurdjieff used to say if he was not an idiot, why should he have created you all? Some idiocy, some trait of foolishness must exist in him, otherwise why man? And not only you. Men like Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Nadir Shah, men like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong… Why in the first place? God must have some trait of foolishness. He must be fooling around, he must be trying trial and error. Yes, sometimes he turns up with a Buddha too, that’s okay – but rarely, very rarely.God must be a fool. Otherwise there cannot be so much joy in existence. Just think: a mahatma ruling the world. All joy will be simply prohibited. Can you laugh in a Christian heaven? Have you asked this question to your ministers, priests? “Can you laugh in a Christian heaven? Can you have a belly laugh, standing in front of God?” No, that doesn’t seem proper.But I tell you, you can have. And if you don’t have, God will have, looking at your seriousness.Look at the trees, the birds, the animals, the stars. There seems to be tremendous joy. Life is not serious. Life is very, very playful.So when I say become a fool and wise together, I mean don’t think of life as a duty, but as play. Always remember, if your prayer is without laughter, you are missing something. If your laughter is without prayer, you are again missing something. A prayer without laughter is dead, and a laughter without prayer has no depth. Can you pray and laugh together? Can you be prayerful and dance too? Can you meditate and love together?That is the synthesis I am trying. That is the highest possibility a man can arrive at, the greatest symphony, when you can love and meditate together. There have been meditators, but they were against love, and there have been lovers who were against meditation. There have been people who say eat, drink, be merry, but they are against God. The Charvakas, the Epicureans, they say eat, drink, be merry, there is no God. They help you to be joyful, but that joy cannot be very deep. Without God your joy cannot go very deep.Your joy – on your own – cannot be real joy. It will be very shallow and superficial. It will not have the quality of the ultimate in it. It will not throb with eternity. And you will get fed up with it sooner or later.That’s what is happening in the West. The West has followed the Epicurean tradition – eat, drink, be merry. Now people are fed up, really fed up, nothing seems to satisfy. The superficial cannot satisfy long. One day or other it is exposed, you come to know that it is not much, and it is a repetition. The West is fed up with the Epicurean ideology, the ideology that says, “Just enjoy. There is no need to seek and search.”And the East is fed up with the opposite ideology, the other polarity that says, “Don’t enjoy,” that says, “‘Eat, drink, be merry’ is the ideology of the sinners. Wear long faces, be ascetics, mahatmas. Do yoga. Fast. Destroy the body and the senses. And be seriously after God. The only thing that is worth achieving is God-realization, everything else has to be sacrificed.”The East is fed up, tired. The West is fed up and tired. It is natural because both have chosen one aspect. God is all the aspects together. God means totality.My approach toward God is Epicurus plus Buddha. Be as Epicurean as possible, and be a meditator, a seeker, as authentic as possible. And I don’t see that there is any conflict. There is no conflict in meditation and love. In fact, the more you meditate, the more you become capable of love. The more you love, the more you become capable of meditation.And there is no conflict between being a fool and being wise. If you can have both, that is the best. And don’t settle for one, otherwise one day you will repent. The missing one will take its revenge, and with vengeance.But to Vani I would like to say it is too early. Get a little ready.I have heard…Once there was a fellow who was too forward. He would meet a girl and within two seconds say, “Honey, let us make love.” His buddy took him aside and explained that he should act suave, and carry on a friendly conversation for a while before he suggested such things.On his next date he remembered the words of wisdom. He started the conversation by saying, “Honey, have you ever been to Africa?” just to create a conversation.She said, “No.” So he said, “Well, let us make love.”Vani, it is too early. Wait a little more. The hello has to become hello-lujah, but wait a little more.The sixth question:Osho,One beautiful day when love was humming in the air, even Winnie the Pooh forgot his constant fruitless search for a pot of honey, and just sat down. When his eyes opened he was bowled over to see all around him huge pots overflowing with more honey than he could ever eat.When he rolled into Eeyore's later that night, all sticky and content, and full of his discovery, Eeyore looked wise and said, “Honey is always there, but you can only find it when you are not looking.”Pooh Bear thought he understood, but for days after when he made sudden surreptitious glances out of the corner of his eye – no honey! He even tried sitting down again, and saying very loudly, “I am not looking for honey.” But when he opened his eyes, the honey still was not there.Dear Eeyore, how can I drop my greed and my expectations, and just be?Yes, it is one of the most fundamental questions. When you are not looking, the honey is everywhere. When you start looking for it, suddenly it disappears. This is a great truth. The moment you start looking for it, you become tense. The moment you start looking for it, you become very, very concentrated, you become closed and narrow. And the honey is possible only when you are open, not closed, not narrow. The honey overflows all around you when you are also overflowing, in every direction.To look means to be directed in one direction. Not to look, not to seek, then you are available to all directions, you are available to every direction possible, you are available to the whole existence.But the difficulty is that if I tell you not to look, you say, “Okay, we will not try,” but an unconscious effort goes on. You even try not to look, but that too becomes just an effort to look.The question is very fundamental. Buddha says, “If you are desireless, all desires will be fulfilled.” Now, a monk asked one day, “Since you have said that all desires will be fulfilled if you become desireless, I have got only one desire: to be desireless. Now, what to do about it?” But the desire to be desireless is still a desire, it is on the same plane. Whether you desire money or you desire power, prestige, or you desire desirelessness, it makes no difference at all. Only the object of desire changes, the desire remains the same. And the desire is the problem, not the object.If you desire money, people will call you very worldly, materialistic. If you desire God, people will call you spiritual, other worldly, religious. But those who know, for them, there is no difference at all, you are still worldly. It is not that a few desires are worldly and a few desires are otherworldly. Desire, as such, is worldly. There can be no otherworldly desire.So God cannot be desired. If you desire, you miss. If you seek, you will not find. The more you seek, the more miserable you will become. Don’t seek and find. Just be in an attitude of non-seeking. Not that deep down you still go on thinking, “Now he must be coming because I am not seeking,” but then you are in the same trap again.The question is what should be done, “…how can I drop my greed…?” But why do you want to drop your greed? Why in the first place do you want to drop your greed? There must be some greed behind it – to attain God, nirvana, enlightenment, this and that, all sorts of rubbish things, all nonsense.Enlightenment happens. You cannot desire it. When one day suddenly you find all desires have disappeared, enlightenment is there. It has always been there. Just because of desires you could not see it. The desire becomes a curtain on your eyes. You lose clarity, you cannot see what is. How can you see what is when you want something to be there? When you expect something, the expectation does not allow you to see that which is. With the expectation you have already moved into the future.You want a beautiful woman, and you have a fantasy. Because of that fantasy you will miss your woman who is just in front of you, but because of the fantasy you cannot see her. The fantasy goes on driving you away.You ask, “…how can I drop my greed…?” I would like to ask why in the first place you want to drop greed. And suddenly you will find some greed hidden behind. Greed behind greed behind greed. This is not going to help.So I will not tell you how to drop it. I will tell you how to understand it. In understanding, it drops on its own accord. Not that you drop it. You cannot. You are greed, how can you drop greed? You are desire, how can you drop desire? You are the search, how can you drop seeking and searching? This you is the center of all your madnesses. You ask how to drop greed. Who is asking? The “I.” Now, the “I” wants even God to be possessed. The “I” wants enlightenment to be possessed. The “I” does not only want the world, it wants the other world too. The “I” is getting more insane.Just understand: there is no need to drop anything. Man cannot drop anything. Just try to understand. Try to understand the ways of greed. Try to understand how greed functions. Try to understand how greed brings more and more misery, more and more frustration. How greed goes on creating new hells for you, ahead of you; goes on creating new hells so when you are there, they are ready. Just look into the very phenomenon of greed, with no idea of dropping it, because if you want to drop it, a part of greed will remain unobserved. The part that wants to drop greed will remain unobserved, will remain in the dark.There is no need to think in these terms. Simply try to understand. That is what Socrates means when he says, “Know thyself.” It does not mean that you sit silently and repeat “I am the soul, I am God.” It doesn’t mean that. “Know thyself” means, whatever is the case, go into it deeply, layer by layer. Expose it to your understanding. Go to the very bottom of it, to the very root of it. Look through and through.And the day you have looked through all the layers… The layers are just like an onion. You go on peeling an onion. So peel your being like an onion, go on peeling. Fresher layers you will find. Go on peeling, go on peeling. One day suddenly you have peeled through and through, and nothing but emptiness is left in your hand. In that emptiness greed has disappeared, and in that emptiness enlightenment has happened. In that emptiness God is. That emptiness is God.So rather than asking how to drop greed, ask how to understand greed. The whole thing hangs on one thing: understanding. When the understanding of anything is perfect, it liberates. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Truth liberates.” When you know the truth of greed you are liberated. When you know the truth of sexuality you are liberated. When you know the truth of anything whatever, you are liberated from it. To know is to be free, not to know is to be in bondage.So don’t ask how to drop. There is no hurry. In fact, go deep into it, watch it deeply before it drops, otherwise you will always miss that understanding. If it drops before understanding, something will remain missing. That’s why it never drops, it clings to you. It clings up to the last moment, when you understand it, when you have looked into it so deeply that nothing is unrevealed, you have seen the ways of greed, the subtle ways of greed.Now, this question is a subtle way of greed: How to drop it? That was the problem of Pooh. He thought he understood: “…but for days after when he made sudden surreptitious glances out of the corner of his eye – no honey!” You will also make surreptitious glances from the corner, unless you understand greed totally.“He even tried sitting down again, and saying very loudly, ‘I am not looking for honey.’” And you will say the same too. You have said it already many times, “I am not looking for God and I am not looking for enlightenment. Osho says nirvana is the last nightmare. I am not looking for it.” And then surreptitiously from the corner of the eye you are looking for it. You are waiting, and you say, “What is the matter? Osho has said, ‘When you drop all desire it happens,’ and it has not happened yet.” You have not dropped the desire yet.But you cannot drop the desire. I insist on it. My emphasis is absolute on it. There have been other teachers who say, “Drop it.” I don’t say drop it because I know you cannot drop it. Nobody has ever dropped it. Not even a Buddha was able to drop it. It dropped on its own accord one day, when Buddha understood it.If you drop something, the ego now feels very enhanced: “I have dropped it.” And the ego is the root cause. It will create a new greed, it will find new ways. It is very inventive. Because of this inventive ego you cannot discover that which is. Because of too much inventiveness, reality is being missed. It will find some other way. From the back door it will come back. So don’t ask how to drop it. I am not here to help you to drop it. I am here to help you to understand it. If it is still there, it simply shows one thing: that you have not understood it. You have not done your homework yet. Do the homework. Don’t be in a hurry to drop it. Just look, watch.Watch in small things of life. You are walking on the road, a car passes by. Just look into yourself, some greed has arisen. The moment you say the car is beautiful, a subtle greed has arisen to possess it. A beautiful woman passes by, or a man, and suddenly a desire to possess.I have heard…A woman sat in her doctor’s waiting room alongside of a mother and her child of five. The child sat very quietly while the woman and his mother exchanged pleasantries. The woman was very much impressed by the child’s good behavior.He was really graceful, sitting silently like a small Buddha.“I wish,” she said, “I had a little boy like you.”“Well,” countered the child – the little Buddha – “why don’t you get pregnant?”The moment you see something – a beautiful child – a deep desire arises: you should have a child like this. And the child is saying, “Why don’t you get pregnant?” And he is right. In fact, if you look deeply in your desire, you will find that the desire to become pregnant has arisen in you. On the deepest layer it is there. On the surface you simply say, “How beautiful a child. I wish I had a little boy like this.” On the surface it is very simple, as if you have simply complimented the child, but deep down many things have happened.In small things of life… You are eating, you know your appetite is gone and you continue to eat. Watch. Greed is there. Now you are not eating out of hunger, you are eating out of greed. One day in meditation something beautiful happens – a breeze comes into your being, suddenly there is light, suddenly there is fragrance, and you sway with that fragrance – and then it is gone. Now you want every day in every meditation that that has to happen. Now you are frustrated and the more you are frustrated the less is the possibility. Now that window will never open again. And when it doesn’t open, you hanker for it so much, then you become very miserable. “Why is it not happening?”I have been observing so many meditators, thousands. When for the first time meditation really goes deep, immediately – for months – that glimpse disappears. And then they come to me saying, “What is happening? I had seen something and it was tremendously beautiful. Why has it disappeared? What have I done wrong?” You have not done anything wrong, you became greedy. When it happened for the first time you were not greedy, because you had not ever known it – how could you have been greedy about it? It was unknown, it came from out of the blue. It simply came, you were caught unaware. Now watch. It came when you were not asking for it. You had not known it, so you could not have asked for it. It came on its own. Now you are asking for it. Now you are asking for something which had come without your asking. You are creating the whole trouble, the greed has entered.Sometimes it has happened that a man has come very close to satori, very close, and then he went astray because of the greed.So watch. Eating, watch. In the morning, you know that the sleep is over, but you still want to turn over and have a little nap. Now it is greed. If your body is fresh and you are feeling good, and the tiredness is gone, then watch. It is everywhere. Eating, sleeping, meditating, it is everywhere.One day you make love to your woman or to your man, and it is ecstatic. Now you hanker, now you start repeating, but that ecstasy never happens again. You are miserable. You don’t know what has happened, what has gone wrong? Why am I not attaining that peak? You will never attain it again because you are looking for it. The first time it happened you were not looking for it.This is a fundamental law. Things happen and they happen on their own accord, you cannot manage them to happen. Great things cannot be managed by you, they are beyond you. You can, at the most, allow them to happen. At the most, you can keep your doors open so that they can happen, but you cannot force them to happen.If you force, then nothing happens. Then you can go on making love to the woman, and nothing will happen. In fact, you will start feeling nauseous about the whole thing. You will start hating the woman, you will start hating the man. You will think that the other is cheating on you. And you will start looking for another woman, for another man, somewhere else to go: “It is not happening here anymore.” And you will become suspicious as to whether it had ever happened or you had imagined. How can it happen with this woman? It is not happening now. So you will become doubtful even about the experience that had happened.People come to me and they say, “Now, for months nothing is happening in the meditation,” and they say they have become doubtful. Had they imagined the first time? They had not imagined, it had happened. Now they want it to happen and they are imagining, and they are creating an idea around themselves.So what is to be done? You have to watch all the ways of the mind. Greed, desire, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination, you have to watch everything. And they are all interconnected, remember. If greed disappears, then anger will disappear. If anger disappears, jealousy will disappear. If jealousy disappears, violence will disappear. If violence disappears, possessiveness will disappear. They are all intertwined. In fact, they are spokes of the same wheel, and the hub that supports them all is the ego. So watch the ways of the ego.Watching, watching, watching… One day suddenly it is not there. Only the watcher is left. That moment of pure watching is the moment of transformation.The seventh question:Osho,My parents deceived me with Father Christmas. Are you real, or will I be disillusioned again?The question is from Anand Nitya. Why she has asked has to be understood. Since she has been here in this ashram, she has not been able to become part of the family. She has been resisting in many ways. I tolerate these things for a time, but I cannot tolerate them forever, otherwise I will not be able to help you at all. A day is bound to come when I will start hammering. The day I start hammering, you start feeling negative, you start feeling against me. If I go according to you, then everything is beautiful, then Osho is beautiful. The moment I start going in some other direction, when it is not easy for you to go with me, then negativity arises.And I have to go against all of you because I love you. I have to go against all of you, otherwise I will not be of any help to you. If I simply go on consoling you and simply go on patting your heads and simply go on saying, “You are good, everything is good…”I say that for a time. In the beginning I say that. If you are not yet a sannyasin, I will continue saying, “Very good.” The moment you are a sannyasin things change. Then I have to be more truthful to you, even if it hurts. It hurts, truth hurts because you have become so untrue.So the day I started hammering on Nitya, she must have started thinking, “Where have I come to? Is this man really a ‘blessed one’ or not?”Hence the question: “My parents deceived me with Father Christmas. Are you real, or will I be disillusioned again?” First thing: Father Christmas is far more real than I. I am absolutely unreal because I don’t exist as an ego. I am not solid at all. If you go through me, you can pass through me without coming across anybody. I am empty.The second thing: because of this emptiness, I can function as a screen for any sort of projection. You can project anything on me. There are people who think I am a saint and there are people who think I am a rascal. There are people who think I am the greatest sinner there is, and there are people who think I am the greatest master there is. And both are right and both are wrong, because I am neither. You project. There are some people who come and they say, “Osho, you have such beautiful eyes.” And just the other day I was reading an article by Rahul Singh in The Illustrated Weekly of India, and he says, “This man has hypnotic and sinister eyes.” Good.It is difficult for you not to project, that I know. But I have to help to destroy all your projections. Once your projections are destroyed, you will be freed.Father Christmas is far more real. If you look into him, you will find a real person there. If you look into me, there is no person. In the East we call God the impersonal. There is no personality. I am just a window, you can look through me. There is not even glass, there is nothing. But you can project. So it is very easy for you to project, because whatever you project there is nobody to deny it. There is nobody to say, “No, your projection is wrong.” You are playing the game alone.You will know my reality only when you have stopped all projections, when you have become empty, when you have attained meditative energy. The meditative energy is a non-projective energy. It does not project anything, it simply looks at things as they are.If a meditator comes across a flower, he will not even say it is a roseflower, because the word rose becomes a projection. With the word rose, all the roses that you have known before come between you and this rose. With the word rose, all that you have heard about roses, all the poetry that you have read about roses – all that arises between you and the reality. A real meditator will simply look at the rose without even saying the word rose inside his being. There will be no language. There will be no idea what it is. He will simply see that which is, the nameless. And that is the only way to see the real rose.If you want to see me, my reality – I am not a person, but if you want to see my nothingness – you will have to come to me without any ideas. And that’s how, if you come closer and closer, more and more projections will fall.“Are you real, or will I be disillusioned again?” You will be disillusioned, and this time disillusioned forever. That’s my hope. If you cooperate with me, you will be disillusioned forever. Then you will never project again. And that’s all a master can do: help you not to project again.I have heard…Two Martians were walking along Piccadilly. One of them nudged the other, and pointing to a traffic light said, “How would you like her for a girlfriend?”A traffic light. But you can think about Martians, they can project.“Wow” said his friend. “What a beauty! I think I will go over and chat her up.”After about ten minutes he rejoined his companion, who asked, “Well, how did you get on?”“Not bad,” replied the second Martian. “She did not actually say anything, but she keeps winking at me.”A traffic light, but you can project.All your projections are yours and they have to disappear. You have to be disillusioned. Only in that moment of disillusionment does reality explode.The last question:Osho,The Zen masters say, “Kill your parents,” and even, “If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” Is it not shocking? Is it not irreverent?It is shocking, but precisely that is the purpose. A master has to shock you to awake you. A master is not a lullaby. A master is not a tranquilizer. A master has to be like a sharp knife in your heart. To be with a master is painful. And the master has to destroy all possibility of projection.First the child learns to project on the mother and the father. Then for the whole life one goes on projecting. Have you watched it in your own being? Whenever you are attracted to a woman, you may be again looking for your mother. Whenever you are attracted to a man, just watch. Are you again looking for your father? Because the first man the child has known was the father and the first woman was the mother. The child is imprinted with the first form of the woman and the first form of the man. That imprint is very deep.You all know that suddenly one day you see a woman and something clicks. What clicks? The mother in you. When you see a woman and something reminds you deeply of your mother… It may not be conscious, you may not be aware of it, you may not be able to figure out what it is, you may not be able to put your finger on it. But if you go deep into your unconscious, you will find that the way the woman walks, the long nose of the woman, or the black eyes of the woman, or the style of her hair, or her voice, or something, suddenly has clicked your unconscious. And the unconscious knows, “This is the woman.” People fall in love so suddenly, without knowing the woman, who she is – love at first sight. How is it possible? What psychological mechanism is functioning there? Your mother. And so is true about the father.When Zen masters say, “Kill your parents,” they are saying, “Destroy the imprint of your mother and father from your unconscious.” Once that imprint is destroyed you will be free.Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Hinduism are not as perfect religions as Zen, because they still talk of the Father God or the Mother Goddess. The imprint continues. Not only in this world. It goes on being projected in the sky too; God the Father or Kali the Mother. You are still looking for your parents. Now even in the ultimate reality you are looking for your parents. When will you become adult? When will you become mature? Zen is a process of maturity: so kill the parents.There is a saying among Zen people that a man becomes really mature when his father and mother are dead. Have you not watched? If your father and mother have died, you are shocked. You have never thought that they would ever die, although many times you have wished that they should die – an unconscious wish – because they are heavy on you, because their very presence is a restriction.Have you watched, whenever you go to talk to your father you start stuttering, perspiring, you become nervous? Because he reminds you again that you are helpless, a small child, and he is a powerful man. Have you watched, when you go to your mother it is so difficult to communicate? It is so difficult to say anything. It becomes so difficult to talk to a mother, to sit and chitchat is almost impossible. What to say? She is puzzled and you are also puzzled. Both are embarrassed.So deep down sometimes you have thought, “They should die, so I should be free of them.” And when the father and mother die, suddenly you feel you are a child no longer.But when Zen people say it, they mean something else. They are not talking about the father and mother on the outside. They are talking about the inside. When the father and mother in the inside die, you become mature, you become free.And remember, if you are free from your father and mother in the unconscious, you will be capable of communing with your father and mother for the first time, because then there will be no barrier. In fact, you will be able to love them for the first time. You will be able to forgive them for the first time. You will be able to feel compassion for them, how much they have done for you. When you are mature, when you are free of them, when their presence is no longer a heavy weight on your heart, you can feel them for the first time. You can be with them in a loving space.So, one thing: it is shocking, but it is not irreverent.The second thing: they say, “…if you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” And these people who have said these things, they were worshipping Buddha every day in the temple. They may have said it sitting at the feet of the statue of Buddha.The man who said this was a priest in a temple. He lived in the temple, worshipped in the morning, evening, would bring flowers and incense, and he said one day to his disciples, “If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him immediately!” One disciple asked, naturally, “What do you mean? You have been worshipping Buddha.” And the man said, “Yes, I have been worshipping him because he has helped me. Even to kill him he has been helpful. It is he who has helped me to kill him. It is he who has helped me to be free of him.” The ultimate work of the master is to make you free of himself.Zarathustra is leaving his disciples and they ask him, “What is your last message?” And he says, “Beware of Zarathustra.” Without any comment he escaped into the forest. “Beware of Zarathustra,” the last message. Beautiful. Tremendously Zen. “Beware of me, otherwise you may become a slave to me.” That’s what he means.The same I say to you. Forget about Buddha because you can kill Buddha very easily. Kill me. That will be far more difficult. With Buddha you have no relationship at all, so you can take it, “Okay, if he comes on the way, we can kill him.” But I say to you, kill me when I come on your way. And I will come.At the last moment, when everything has been cut off, the master remains because that is the deepest relationship. You can cut your relationship even with your mother because that is only biological, physical. You can cut your relationship even with your beloved because that is psychological. But to cut your relationship with the master is the most difficult thing. You will need a really sharp sword, a really, really sharp sword. And you will need great courage because the disciple–master relationship is a spiritual relationship. It goes deepest in your being. You will start trembling.When I stand in your way, that is going to be the last barrier. The master is the passage to godliness and the last barrier too. You will have to leave the master also. And these things are of the inward journey, remember again and again. At the last moment when you are disappearing into emptiness, the last hand that you will have to leave will be the master’s hand.So it is not irreverent. It is with great respect that it has been said.One more thing. The Zen people are totally different from Christians. You cannot think of a Christian saying to another Christian, “Kill Jesus when he comes on your way. Kill him immediately.” That will look very sacrilegious because Christians have not yet been able to be nonserious about their religion. Their religion is very serious. Hence it misses much. Zen has the quality of laughter – it can laugh. Zen has the quality of rebelliousness, nonauthoritativeness. And Zen goes on keeping a balance: surrender to the master and yet remain independent. Very difficult, almost impossible. But when you do the impossible, only then does the ultimate happen to you. Surrender to the master and yet remain independent. Be sincere in your search, but don’t lose your laughter. Become wise, but let foolishness also flower. And Zen people are very, very absurd in that way. They can say things which will shock you.A Zen master is weighing flax. A man comes, a seeker, and he asks, “What is Buddha? What is buddhahood? What is buddha-nature?”The master is weighing the flax and he says, “Three pounds of flax. That is what Buddha is.”“Three pounds of flax!” And he is talking about Buddha? Looks very sacrilegious.A Zen master on a cold night burned a Buddha statue, a wooden statue because he was feeling cold. No Christian can do that. No Hindu can do that. No Mohammedan can do that. Hence they lag behind. In the night he burned the Buddha statue because it was so cold, and in the morning he was worshipping again.This playfulness, this nonseriousness, is of tremendous value. With me also, remember that, you have to surrender and yet you have to remain independent. In fact, your surrender is needed so that I can make you independent. Paradoxical of course, but this is how one grows.I have heard one beautiful story, very shocking, but tremendously beautiful. The story is from Sheldon Kopp…One Sunday afternoon after church, God and St. Peter went to play golf. God teed up on the first hole, swung his driver mightily and sliced the ball off into the rough beside the fairway. Just as the ball hit the ground a rabbit came running out from beneath a bush, picked up God’s golf ball in his mouth and ran with it out onto the fairway. Down from the sky swooped a hawk and pounced on the rabbit. The hawk picked up the rabbit in its claws and flew with it over the green. A hunter spotted the hawk, took aim with his rifle and shot the bird in mid-flight. The hawk dropped the rabbit onto the green. The golf ball fell from the rabbit’s mouth and rolled into the cup for a hole in one.St. Peter turned to God with exasperation, saying, “Come on now! Do you want to play golf, or do you want to fuck around?”This is perfect Zen.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends, promised one another to observe seven days of silence.On the first day all were silent, but when the night came and the oil lamps were growing dim, one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant, “Fix those lamps.“The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to say a word,” he remarked.“You two are stupid. Why did you talk?” asked the third.“I am the only one who has not talked,” concluded the fourth.In the search for the first principle, silence is the door, the only door. And except that, there is no way to approach the first principle. The first principle can be known only when you move to the primordial state of your being. Thinking is secondary. Existence precedes thinking: existence comes first. First you are and then you start thinking. Thinking is secondary. Thinking is a shadow activity, it follows you. It cannot exist without you, but you can exist without it. Through thinking you can know secondary things, not the primary things. The most fundamental is not available to thinking. The most fundamental is available to silence.Silence means a state of consciousness where no thought interferes.The first principle is not far away, it is not distant. Never think for a single moment that you are missing it because it is very far away. No, not at all. It is the closest thing to you. It is the obvious thing. It surrounds you. It surrounds you just like the ocean surrounds a fish. You are in it. You are born in it and born out of it. You live in it, you breathe in it, and one day you disappear in it. It is not far away, not that you have to travel to it. It is there. It is already there around you, within and without. It is your very existence, that first principle.Zen people call it the first principle, other religions call it God. There is no difference. The Zen approach is far better because with the word God, trouble starts. The first principle becomes personified, then you can create an image. You cannot make an image of the first principle, but that’s what all the religions do. They say, “God is the first cause, the uncaused cause, the most fundamental, the substantial, the substratum.” Zen people call it the first principle. It is beautiful to call it the first principle because nothing preceded it. Everything has followed it.So if you want to have a communion with the first principle, you will have to seek and search for a reality within yourself which is original, which has not been preceded by anything else.Silence is primordial. Sound exists in silence. Sound comes and goes, silence remains. Sound is like light and silence is like darkness. Darkness remains. Light comes and goes. Light needs some cause to be. Darkness needs no cause. No fuel is needed for darkness, it simply exists without any fuel. It exists as primordial existence. Darkness is eternal, light is momentary. In the morning the sun rises and there is light. By the evening the sun is gone, the light is gone. Don’t think that the darkness comes. Darkness never comes, it is always there. Light comes and goes. You burn a lamp and there is light. You blow out the lamp and the light is gone. Not that darkness comes, darkness is there. Light is accidental, darkness is existential.Silence is there. You can create sound, you cannot create silence. The moment sound is no longer created there is silence. Thinking is sound, meditation is silence. So all the religions of the world have been searching for and seeking, in one way or another, that silence which has not been preceded by anything else, which is the first.Now a few things before we analyze this state of silence.First thing: man is missing this first principle not because he is not a skilled thinker, but because he is; not because he is not a trained logician, but because he is. Thinking creates a screen around you, a screen of smoke, and because of that smoke the obvious is lost. To see the obvious you need clarity, not thinking, not logic. You simply need clarity, you need transparency. Your eyes should be completely empty, naked. Naked of all clothes, naked of all concepts; empty, empty of all thoughts. When the eyes are just empty, you can see the first principle. And not only can you see it as an object outside you, you see it as your own interiority, as your own subjectivity.In fact, it is thinking that creates the distinction between the subject and the object. It is thinking that creates division. It is thinking that creates a split. It is thinking that makes things separate. Once thinking is dropped, existence is one. It is one unity, it is one orgasmic experience where duality is totally lost. All boundaries lose themselves into each other, merge into each other. Everything is joined to everything else. The smallest leaf of grass is joined to the greatest star. And then there is nothing high, nothing low, nothing good, nothing bad because all is joined together. The greatest saint is joined to the greatest sinner, they are not separate.Nothing is separate. With the disappearance of thinking, schizophrenia disappears, this existential schizophrenia of dividing everything: this is man, this is woman; this is good, this is bad; this is beautiful, this is ugly; this is mine, this is thine. All distinctions create neuroses. Man is mad because he thinks too much and he goes on missing the obvious. God is very obvious.I have heard about a great philosopher…He married a beautiful girl many years his junior. After a while he began to be torn by doubts as to her faithfulness.Natural for a philosopher to be torn by doubts. A philosopher lives in doubts, doubt is his trade. He doubts and he goes on doubting. Through doubt he creates questions and then answers, and through doubt he makes more questions out of the answers. His whole life is a procession of doubts. Naturally, “…he began to be torn by doubts as to her faithfulness.”So he hired a private detective to watch her while he left on a trip. On his return he called the detective.“Out with it, out with it” shouted the philosopher. “I can take it. It is the element of doubt that is driving me crazy.”“It looks bad,” said the detective. “As soon as you left the house a handsome fellow called for your wife. I followed them to a night club. They had four or five drinks and then danced, and very close. Then they went back to their table and held hands. Finally they took a cab back to your house. The lights were on and I saw them walk into the bedroom and embrace. Then the light went out and I could not see any more.”“What did I tell you?” shouted the philosopher. “That damned element of doubt.”Now, even the obvious – “That damned element of doubt.” Even the obvious is not obvious to a philosopher. The greater the philosopher the more doubts he has. He has doubts about everything. He doubts even his own existence, which in fact cannot be doubted. How can you doubt your own existence? Even to doubt, you are needed to be there. The doubt cannot exist in the air. The doubt cannot exist without you. The doubt can exist only if you are there, but philosophers have been doubting even their own existence: “Who knows whether we are or we are not?”Doubt is the only outcome of thinking. Nonthinking gives you trust, nonthinking gives you faith, nonthinking brings you closer to reality, face-to-face with reality. So the first thing to be understood: thinking is not a way to the first principle. Not through philosophizing will you arrive at the first principle, because philosophy is secondary. You can know secondary things through the secondary. To know the primary, you will have to achieve the primary within yourself. You can know only that which you are.If you live in thinking, you will be able to know only secondary things. You will be able to know the shadow world, what Hindus call the world of maya. Through the mind you can know only the world of maya, the shadow world, the world of illusions. You will be surprised. In Sanskrit we have two terms. One is vidya. Vidya means knowledge. Another is avidya. Avidya means non-knowledge. And you will be surprised: in Sanskrit, science is called avidya – “non-knowledge.” Science is called avidya. Why? Science knows more than anything else, but in Sanskrit they call science avidya. Why? Because science knows only the shadow world, knows the secondary, the nonessential. Knows the object, misses the subject. Knows the body, misses the soul. Knows the world, misses God. Knows the secondary.To know the primary you will have to become primary. You will have to fall into that wavelength where the primary pulsates: that silence. That is the state of no-mind. No-mind preceded your mind.A child is born. He comes without any mind whatever, he simply exists. His existence is pure, unhampered by any thought, unhindered by any cloud. Look into the eyes of a child. They are so innocent; they are so transparent, so crystal clear. From where does this clarity come? This clarity comes from no thought. The child still has not learned how to think, how to accumulate thoughts. He looks, but he cannot classify. If he looks at the trees, he cannot say they are trees, he cannot say they are green, he cannot say they are beautiful. He sees the trees, but no classification, no category. He has no language yet to be clouded with. He simply sees. Color is there, but he cannot say it is color. Green is there, but he cannot say it is green. Everything is purely clear, but he cannot label it. Hence the innocence of the eyes.A man of understanding again attains the same eyes. He again becomes a child, as far as the clarity is concerned. Jesus is right when he says, “Become like small children, only then will you be able to enter my Kingdom of God.” He is not saying become foolish like children, he is not saying become childish, he is not saying learn to have a tantrum again. He is not saying that a child is the last stage. No, he is saying simply one thing. He is not saying become a child, he is saying become like a child. How can you become a child again? But you can become like a child, if you can drop thinking. If this cloak of thinking is dropped and you become nude again, you will have the same clarity.It happens sometimes through drugs. Not a very good way to attain it, very dangerous, very costly, and illusory, but it happens. Hence the appeal of drugs down the ages. Drugs are not new in the world, even in the Vedas they talk about soma. Soma seems to be one of the most powerful drugs ever discovered by man. It must be something like LSD. Aldous Huxley has said that in the future, when the ultimate drug will be known, we will call it soma. From the Vedas, the ancientmost book in the world, to Timothy Leary, man has always been attracted by drugs – alcohol, marijuana, opium. Why this attraction? All the moralists have been against it and all the puritans have been against it and all the governments have tried to curb and control, but it seems beyond any government to control it. What has been the cause of it? It gives something. It gives a glimpse into the innocent mind of the child again.Through chemical impact, the mind becomes loosened for a few moments or a few hours. Under the impact of the drug your thinking slips. You start looking into reality without thinking; again the world is as colorful as it is for the child, again in a small pebble you can see the greatest diamond. Ordinary grass looks so extraordinary, an ordinary flower looks so tremendously beautiful, an ordinary human face looks so divine. Not that anything has changed. The whole world is the same. Something has changed in you, and that too only temporarily. Through the forceful drug your mind has slipped down. You don’t have the mask, you can see into things with clarity. That is the appeal of the drugs down the ages.And unless meditation becomes available to millions of people, drugs cannot be prevented. Drugs are dangerous because they can destroy your body’s equilibrium, they can destroy your nature, they can destroy your inner chemistry. You have a very delicate chemistry. Those strong drugs can destroy your rhythm. More and more drugs will be needed and you will become addicted, and less and less will be the experience. By and by, the mind will learn how to cope with the drugs, and then even under the drug you will not attain the state of innocence. Then you will need even stronger drugs. So this is not a way.The mind can be put aside very easily. There is no need to depend on anything chemical, on anything artificial. There is a natural possibility to get out of the mind because we were born without minds. Deep down we are still no-minds. The mind is only on the periphery. That’s why I say it is just a cloak, a dress that you are wearing. You can slip out of it.And one moment of slipping out of it will reveal to you a totally different world, the world of the first principle.So the real fight in the future is going to be between meditation and drugs. In fact, that has always been the case. The real fight is between drugs and meditation, either drugs or meditation.So it is not coincidental that when you start meditating, by and by the pull of drugs becomes less and less. If it is not becoming less and less, then know well you are not meditating yet, because when you know the higher, the lower is dropped automatically.But one thing has to be understood. Drugs do something. They undo something in you. They help you to get out of the mind. They give you courage to look into reality without thinking. For a moment the curtain slips, and suddenly you are aware that the world has a splendor it had never had it before. You had passed through the same street and you had looked through the same trees and at the same stars and the same people, and today now everything suddenly is so luminous and everybody is so beautiful and everybody is afire with life, with love. A saint – one who has attained – lives in that state continuously without any effort.You were born as a no-mind. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible because through that, a door opens. If you were born as a no-mind, then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural, it is cultivated. It has been put together on top of you. Deep down you are still free, you can get out of it. One can never get out of nature, but one can get out of the artificial any moment one decides to.Existence precedes thinking. So existence is not a state of mind, it is a state beyond. To be is the way to know the fundamental, not to think. Science means thinking, philosophy means thinking, theology means thinking. Religion does not mean thinking. The religious approach is a nonthinking approach. It is more intimate, it brings you closer to reality. It drops all that hinders, it unblocks you; you start flowing into life. You don’t think that you are separate, looking. You don’t think that you are a watcher, aloof, distant. You meet, mingle, and merge into reality.And there is a different kind of knowing. It cannot be called knowledge. It is more like love, less like knowledge. It is so intimate that the word knowledge is not sufficient to express it. The word love is more adequate, more expressive.In the history of human consciousness, the first thing that evolved was magic. Magic was a combination of science and religion. Magic had something of the mind and something of no-mind. Then out of magic grew philosophy. Then out of philosophy grew science. Magic was both no-mind and mind, philosophy was only mind. And then mind plus experimentation became science. Religion is a state of no-mind.Religion and science are the two approaches to reality. Science approaches through the secondary, religion goes direct. Science is an indirect approach, religion is an immediate approach. Science goes round and round. Religion simply penetrates to the heart of reality.A few more things. Thinking can only think about the known, it can chew the already chewed. Thinking can never be original. How can you think about the unknown? Whatever you can manage to think will belong to the known. You can think only because you know. At the most, thinking can create new combinations. You can think about a horse who flies in the sky, who is made of gold, but nothing is new. You know birds who fly in the sky, you know gold, you know horses; you combine the three together. At the most, thinking can imagine new things, but it cannot know the unknown. The unknown remains beyond it. So thinking goes in a circle, goes on knowing the known again and again and again. It goes on chewing the chewed one. Thinking is never original.And the first principle means to come upon reality originally, radically. To come upon reality without any mediator. To come upon reality as if you are the first person to exist and you come upon reality. That is liberating. That very newness of it liberates.And when you come to know reality directly, it is never reduced to the known. The mystery remains. In fact, it becomes a deeper mystery than ever. The more you know, the more you feel that you don’t know. The more you know, the less you feel you know. The more you know, the vaster is the mystery of it. Religion is mysticism, religion is magic because religion is a no-mind approach.Thinking can think only about the known, it is repetitive. Philosophy is repetitive. You can go into the philosophy books, into the history of philosophy, and you will see the same thing being repeated again and again – new phraseology, new words, new terms, new definitions, but nothing fundamentally different. From Thales to Bertrand Russell you can go on, but you will find the same thing being repeated again and again. The wheel moving, the same spokes come to the top again and again.Science can experiment only with the objective; experimentation is possible only with the objective. You cannot experiment with the experimenter himself, there is no way. The subjective reality remains outside science. Einstein may know much about matter, but he does not know anything about himself. Newton may know much about gravitation, but he does not know who he is. One goes on accumulating knowledge about the objective world, and one remains in deep darkness within one’s own self. One’s own light is not yet there, and one goes on groping, experimenting.Science can experiment only with the objective, philosophy can think only about the known. And reality is beyond both. Reality is unknown – not only unknown, but unknowable – and reality contains the subjective element. So the very methodology of philosophy and science prohibits coming to the fundamental, to the first principle. To come to the fundamental you will have to find another door, a door other than science and philosophy. That door is religion.Religion can be reduced to one word, and that word is meditation, or call it silence. To be in such a silence that you are almost not, there is no noise within you, the stillness is absolute. Only in that stillness does something stir, only in that stillness do you start hearing the still, small voice of the first principle, call it God or call it soul. Only then does life call forth life. Only then does the source call forth the source. Only then are you close to reality, hand in hand with the fundamental. And that is the search, that is what we are seeking. And without knowing it, without realizing it, there is going to be no fulfillment.The last thing, then we enter this small parable. When thinking disappears you are left with the first principle. It has always been there; you were not there just because of your thinking. Now you are also there, two presences meet. Ordinarily you are absent, you are somewhere else. You are lost in your thoughts. When there is no thought you are herenow, then there is no way to go from herenow. Thought functions as a bridge to go away from yourself. The moment a thought has come in, you are already far away from yourself. When there is no thought, where can you go, how can you go? When there is no thought you have to be in the present. Thought can take you to the past, thought can take you to the future. No-thought brings you to the present. And only the present is. This moment is all there is.When you are herenow, absolutely herenow, how can you miss the real, how can you miss existence? When thinking disappears you are left with the first principle.But when I say “when thinking disappears,” I am not saying “when you fall asleep,” because in deep sleep, thinking disappears. In the East we have divided human consciousness into four phases. The first phase we call waking, jagrat. Waking means “consciousness plus thinking”; you are conscious, but your mind is crowded with thoughts. The second state we have called dreaming, swapna. The second state means “unconsciousness plus thinking”; you fall asleep, but the thinking continues, so there is dreaming. Dreaming is a way of thinking in sleep and thinking is a way of dreaming while awake. Thinking and dreaming are not two separate things. Dreaming is only thinking in a very primitive language, the language of images. Then the third state we call sushupti: sleep, deep sleep, dreamless deep sleep. The third state is “unconsciousness minus thinking.” You are unconscious. You don’t know where you are, who you are, all consciousness has disappeared, you are at rest. And with the consciousness, thinking has disappeared, dreaming too.These three are ordinary states, waking, dreaming, sleeping. We all know these three. The fourth is the state of meditation. The fourth is called samadhi, turiya. It means “consciousness minus thinking.”So four stages: consciousness plus thinking is waking, consciousness minus thinking is samadhi, unconsciousness plus thinking is dreaming, unconsciousness minus thinking is sleep.So samadhi has something similar to waking and something similar to sleep, hence Patanjali has defined samadhi as “waking sleep,” sleep and yet not sleep. Sleep in the sense that there are no thoughts now, no dreams. And not sleep in the sense that you are perfectly aware, that the light of your awareness is there. That you are conscious, that you know that there is no knowledge now, that you are aware that all thinking has disappeared. That you are aware that now there is no dream lurking in your field of consciousness. That you are absolutely zero, shunyata.This is the state that the East has been trying to achieve. The West has been too involved with science, hence it has missed religion. The East’s involvement is with samadhi, hence it has missed science.These four states can be thought of in some other ways also. Consciousness plus thinking means waking. Science is a waking activity, so is philosophy, so is theology. Second, dreaming: unconsciousness plus thinking. That is what art is, poetry, painting, music. It is a dream activity, so it is not just accidental that we call the poets dreamers, that we call the artists dreamers, that we don’t trust them much; they are not reliable, they cannot be guides to reality. We enjoy them, it is fun, but we cannot accept them as guides to reality – they are not. They live in fantasy. They dream while awake. Their eyes are full of dreams. So waking is science, philosophy, theology, logic. And art, all kinds of art, is dream activity.Unconsciousness minus thinking means sleep. Of course all activity ceases in sleep, so nothing is born out of sleep, no science, no art.Consciousness minus thinking is samadhi. Samadhi gives birth to religion. When Jesus attained samadhi, Christianity was born. When Nanak attained samadhi, Sikhism was born. When Buddha attained samadhi, Buddhism was born. Religion is born out of samadhi, the fourth state. What is samadhi? If you can stop your thinking and yet remain alert and don’t fall asleep… Difficult, arduous, one of the most difficult things, almost impossible. It is easy to be awake and thinking, it is easy not to think and fall asleep, but to remain awake and not think is the most difficult thing because it is not part of evolution. It is a revolution. It is not given by nature automatically. You have to attain it.That is the task man has to solve. That is the challenge given to man, and very few have accepted that challenge. And only those who have accepted it, only they are man. Others are man only for the name’s sake. We exist as potential man, not as actual man. It is our potentiality. We can become a buddha or a christ, but it has not happened yet. We are just seeds. That’s our misery because a seed can never be satisfied unless it becomes a tree and blooms. A seed will remain miserable because there is a feeling deep down, “I am not yet that which I am meant to be, my destiny is not fulfilled.”Have you not observed this in you? If you had not observed it, you would not be here. You are here only because you feel something is missing. You are here only because you continuously feel that something has to happen and it is not happening, that something is just there by the corner and yet you cannot grasp it – seems to be not very far away, yet seems to be beyond reach. The tree is not very far away from the seed. If the seed finds the right soil, falls into the soil, relaxes, surrenders to the soil, dissolves into the soil, dies into the soil, then the tree is not very far away. In the right season the seed will sprout, a tender plant will be born and the seed will be able to see the light.Only when the seed has become a plant will it be able to feel the wind and the ecstasy that the wind is. Be able to feel the sunrays and the ecstasy that the sun brings. Be able to live and be able to accept the challenges and start growing. Come storm, come wind, come rains, and the small, tender plant will become stronger and stronger. Every challenge will give it strength and integration. And one day there will be a great tree whispering to the skies, it will bloom and the fragrance will be released to the winds in all directions. Then there will be jubilation.When Jesus says again and again to his children, to his disciples, “Rejoice,” what he is saying is true because he has become a tree and he has bloomed. But his disciples must have looked here and there, they must have thought, “What does he mean? Why does he go on saying again and again, ‘Rejoice’?” They are seeds, how can they rejoice?When I say to you “Celebrate,” you start thinking, “For what? Why? What have we got to celebrate?” You cannot celebrate because celebration is possible only when you bloom. I know it. But I go on saying, “Celebrate.” And Jesus knows it and he goes on saying, “Rejoice.” In fact, he wants to create such a thirst in you to know what this rejoicing is, that out of that thirst you start seeking and searching for the right soil.To find a right master is to find the right soil because only through the master will you be able to dissolve, only through the master will you be able to surrender. A seed needs to surrender. A seed has to die, only then is there a new life born out of it. Death makes it possible. Death is tremendously beautiful. It makes it possible that a man can be new, a man can be reborn.Samadhi is celebration, samadhi is rejoicing. Samadhi is your gratitude toward God, your thanksgiving.How can you thank God right now? You have nothing to thank him for. You can complain, you cannot thank him. So your prayers are more of complaints, less of thanks. You cannot say, “Thank you.” How can you? For what? In fact, you are very angry with God. Why has he given birth to you? Why has he created so much misery? Why has he put you in such anguish and turmoil? Why in the first place? What wrong have you done? If suddenly you come across God you will jump upon him. That’s why he goes on hiding. You will kill him. You will say, “What have you been doing? For what are we suffering? What wrong have we done? Why did you make us in the first place? Not to be would have been better, no anxiety, no anguish. Not to be would have been more peaceful. Why did you create us?”The whole of existence seems to be mischievous. It seems as if somebody, a sadistic God, is sitting there, torturing people, creating a thousand and one ways to torture them.Right now you cannot thank him because right now you are not. When you are, you will be able to thank him. And the way to be goes through death, through surrender. And the way goes through silence. But it is not easy to be silent; it is the most arduous thing to be silent.Now this small story:The pupils of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them, who were intimate friends, promised one another to observe seven days of silence.On the first day all were silent, but when the night came and the oil lamps were growing dim, one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant, “Fix those lamps.”The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to say a word,” he remarked.“You two are stupid. Why did you talk?” asked the third.“I am the only one who has not talked – thank God!” concluded the fourth.What happened? The Tendai school is a school of meditation. Before Zen entered Japan, Tendai was very much prevalent. But that too was a school of meditation. In fact, because of Tendai and its roots in Japan, Zen could enter Japan. These things don’t happen suddenly, you need a climate. A country does not become suddenly interested in meditation. It needs a climate. The climate is born out of a long tradition.In the Tendai school, a seven-day silence was ordinarily prescribed to every disciple. Why a seven-day silence? It is very symbolic, the number is symbolic. Man has seven centers and each center has to attain silence. You may not have looked at it in that way. When the sex center becomes silence it is brahmacharya, it is celibacy. When the heart center becomes silence it is compassion. If the heart center is in turmoil there is anger. If the sex center is in turmoil, shouting, there is sexuality. All the seven centers of man have to become silent. When all of them are chained in silence, then this whole being of man falls silent. In that silence one knows the first principle. One is the first principle.So these disciples must have been told by some master to be silent for seven days. But man functions in a mechanical way. If you sit silently, that doesn’t mean you will become silent. In fact, just the reverse will happen. If you sit silently, you will find a rush of thoughts coming to you. You will be more crowded by thoughts than ever. All sorts of thoughts, relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless, they will all jumble together. It will be rush-hour traffic. And they will all claim your attention. Your attention will become fragmentary, you will almost feel like going mad. You will be torn apart. You will feel you are being pulled and pushed in so many directions. You will start feeling crazy.Just to sit does not help. One has to be very aware. These four disciples were not aware at all. So when the one said: “Fix those lamps” to a servant who was passing by, he must have done it in a very unconscious way, otherwise he was to keep silent. It was none of his business whether the lamps were getting dim or not. He had to remember that he was in silence, but he forgot.The story is not humorous, it is tragic. That’s how things are with you, with everybody.It happened after twenty-four hours. Try it. Just take your wristwatch today and sit silently, put your wristwatch in front of you, look at the second hand. The second hand moves one complete circle in one minute. Just watch the second hand and remember, “I am to remember the second hand moving, I am not to forget it.” And it will be difficult for you even to remember for fifteen seconds, you will forget. After two, three seconds you will start thinking something else, then again you will remember, then again you will forget. In one minute you will forget at least four, five times. You will not be able to remember for one continuous minute that you are to remember the second hand moving, that you are not to go anywhere else.So please don’t laugh at this story. The first reaction is laughter, but it is very tragic. It is how we are.For twenty-four hours they are sitting silently. Then suddenly one servant is passing and one of the pupils says: “Fix those lamps.” Not that he is interested in the lamps. Anything would have provoked him, anything would have become an excuse. He wanted to say something. He must have been going crazy. That’s why the second cannot tolerate it. He says: “What? We are not supposed to say a word.” And the third says: “You two are stupid. Why did you talk?” And the fourth says: “I am the only one, thank God, who has not talked yet.” They all wanted to say something, to release, to get a little relief. It must have been getting too heavy on them.So one thing: when you sit silently, all doors for your thoughts to be released through are closed, so they hammer within you, they start gathering within you. They become a mob. Their presence becomes heavy, then you will find any excuse and you will say something.In many traditions a mantra is given, chanting is given. The master gives you a mantra. That is just to help you so you don’t go mad, nothing else. It is just a help for the beginners. A mantra is given: “Go on repeating, ‘Ram, Ram, Ram.’” That will help; it will remain a release. Other thoughts will not bother you too much; at least one passage is open so something can flow. You can go on repeating, “Ram, Ram, Ram” and this will help you in the beginning, but this is not real meditation. It is just a preparation for meditation. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls Transcendental Meditation, is neither meditation nor transcendental. It is just a cleaning; a beginner prepares himself for meditation.Meditation starts with silence, not with a mantra, but a mantra can be helpful if you are very alert. Otherwise even the mantra can become dangerous, you may get too addicted to it. Then you remain outside the temple. The mantra is a help if you know that it is just to make you ready, by and by, to become silent.So many thoughts are there, then one thought is allowed to you, “Ram, Ram, Ram.” Ninety-nine thoughts are not allowed, one is allowed. If you can attain this, then one day that one has to be dropped too. But if this one becomes very strong, and there is every possibility it will become strong because your whole attachment that was divided in a hundred thoughts will now fall on one thought. It will become a very deep attachment. It will become your very soul. If somebody will say, “Drop it,” you will be angry. “This is my mantra,” you will say. “How can I drop it?” Even a man like Ramakrishna found it very difficult to drop his Mother Kali at the last moment.Difficult. You have cultivated it so much, you have put so much into it. All your desires, all your projections, all your thoughts, you have poured into it. It becomes one of the strongest thoughts in your being. It will be very difficult. So unless you are alert from the very beginning, a mantra can poison you rather than help you.In the Tendai school there is no mantra, so these four disciples must have been getting very volcanic. They must have been sitting on a volcano, they must have been ready to explode. The passing of the servant and the oil lamps growing dim was just an excuse.The mind is so habituated to thinking. So habituated to expressing itself that it is almost impossible to get out of it, unless you put your total energy in getting out of it, unless you make it a life and death problem. If you are just trying so-so, it will not help. If you are just making a lukewarm effort, it will not help. Unless it really becomes a life and death problem it is not going to help.A man came to Sheik Farid and said, “I would like to know God. Can you give me some method?”Farid said, “I am going to the river to take my bath, come with me. And if I get a chance, I will give you the method.” They went to the river. The man was very curious as to what he was going to give him at the river. At the river Farid said, “Now you also undress and get down into the river with me. Let us first take a bath.”So the man got down into the river and when he came close to Farid, Farid jumped on top of him, pushed him down into the river. Farid was a very strong man. The seeker could not understand what was happening. He had come to ask how to attain God and this man was trying to kill him.But when it is a question of life and death, even the seeker, who was not a very strong man, also tried hard. He threw Farid away and when he came out of the water he said, “What nonsense. I had always thought that you are a pious man. You have fame as a mystic, and what were you doing? Are you a murderer? I have not done anything to you. I have just asked a question how to attain God.”Farid said, “That’s what I was doing, giving you a method. Just now, tell me one thing first in case you forget. What happened when I was pushing you down into the river? How many thoughts were there in your mind?”He said, “Thoughts? There was only one thought, how to get rid of you. And by the end even that disappeared. Then there was only an effort, not a thought, no thought. My whole life was at stake. It was just an effort to get out of the river somehow. And I had put all my energies – known, unknown, conscious, unconscious, whatever – because this seemed to be the last moment.”Farid said, “That is the method. When God becomes a life and death problem. Not a question, not a curiosity, but a life and death problem. When your life and death hang on the very question, on the very quest, only then will you be able to know.”Now these four seekers are sitting there. Lukewarm they must be. They don’t know what they are doing. Somebody has told them to sit silently; they are sitting. The mind functions mechanically. To get out of it you will have to use all your energy. The possibility is there, you can get out of it.Gurdjieff used to say that man is a machine. Then somebody asked, “Then what is the difference between a real machine and man?” And Gurdjieff said, “The difference is, if man wants, he can go beyond the machine too. The machine cannot.” Otherwise there is no difference. As man exists he is a machine. The only difference is in the future, in the possibility, potentiality. If man wants to get out of the mechanical world he can, but great effort will be needed.A city fellow bought a place in the country recently and was going to raise livestock, but when he arrived at his farm, all he found was a large, ancient sow. “Hell of a note,” he muttered and stamped off to the general store. The storekeeper was sympathetic and volunteered that he should breed his sow with Farmer Jones’ boar, and soon he would be in the livestock business. “Great idea,” said the slicker.So he loaded his sow in a wheelbarrow and took her to Farmer Jones. The next morning he rushed out of bed and looked into the pigpen, but no piglets. Disgusted, he went back to the store and the storekeeper tolerantly recommended Farmer Smith’s boar now.Once again the sow was loaded in the wheelbarrow and taken down the road, and once again the next morning the slicker found no piglets. This routine went on for a week, and finally on the eighth day, the slicker refused to get out of his warm bed in the early morning. Rolling over to his wife he said, “Look out the window and see if there are any piglets in the pen.”His wife looked. “There aren’t any piglets in the pen,” she said, “but the sow is back in the wheelbarrow.”That’s how the mind functions – mechanically. It goes on doing things which it has been doing. It goes on repeating.If you really want to become a man, get out of your repetitions. There are no bad habits and no good habits because all habits are bad. To live through habits is to live a mechanical life. Get beyond, become aware.Now, all these four men just said things out of habit, not knowing what they were saying.And it is very easy for you to see others committing mistakes, errors, because you can look at others objectively. It is very difficult to look at yourself. The moment you start looking at yourself you are becoming nonmechanical. To become aware of your habits is the beginning of a nonmechanical life, is the beginning of life itself. To exist as a machine is not to exist at all.Three small stories of how man is. Because of mechanical habits he lives unconsciously. You do a thousand and one things, but you simply go on doing them because you have been doing them.First scene…One of the two drunks standing beside a lamp post asked his companion, “Say, you gotta match?”“I think so,” said his companion. “Let me see.” He reached in his pocket, withdrew a stick match and rubbed the unsulphured end on the lamp post several times. “No good,” he said finally, and threw it away. He pulled out another and tried again to strike the unsulphured end. “No good,” he said again, and threw it away. He reached into his pocket, found another match and fortunately tried to light the proper end. It blazed up, but immediately he blew it out and thrust it into his pocket. “Ah,” he beamed. “That’s a good one. Gotta save it.”The second scene…A cop approached three drunks on a park bench. The one in the middle was snoring peacefully, apparently passed out, but the two on either side were going through the motions of fishing, casting out their lines, jerking them, and reeling them in swiftly. The cop watched for a while and then shook the middle man awake.“Are these nuts friends of yours, buddy?”The drunk nodded.“Well, get them out of here and make it snappy.”The drunk agreed, saluted, and began rowing vigorously.The third scene…Mort and Leo wandered into one of those newfangled bars and sat down in a booth. The sign on the wall of their booth said, “Push button to call the waiter.” Mort pushed the button, and sure enough the waiter appeared. “Two beers,” ordered Mort and the waiter brought them their beers.This kept up for a good four hours and it was hard to say which pleased them more, drinking beer or pushing the button for the waiter. Finally, full of fun and good cheer the two parted and went home. The next morning Leo’s wife had him on the carpet. “What the hell did you think you were doing last night?” she demanded.Leo was puzzled. “I don’t know. What was I supposed to have done?”“All night long,” remonstrated his wife, “you kept poking your finger into my navel and calling for two beers.”A mechanical mind is an unconscious mind. You go on doing things, but not knowing what you are doing and why you are doing them. And while doing them there is no awareness. Walking, you walk, but there is no awareness. Eating, you eat, but there is no awareness. Talking, you talk, but there is no awareness.The story is significant. It says the first did it unconsciously, and the second could see the error, but the second did something unconsciously himself. The third could see the error of them both, but he committed the same error. And the fourth could see the error of all three and thanked God: “I am the only one who has not yet broken silence.” It is very easy to see the error of somebody else because that is not your mechanical thing. You can be aware of it. When it comes to your own mechanical things you become completely unaware.Can’t you see? Somebody is eating too much and you can say very easily, “Don’t eat too much.” Somebody is angry and you can say, “What are you doing? Going mad?” Somebody is in love and doing foolish things and you can say, “Are you going mad? What are you doing?” But the question is, “Can the man who has fallen in love see it?”Just the other night, one beautiful sannyasin told me that she has fallen in love with a man and things are going really fantastically, the relationship is beautiful. I told her, “Every beginning of a relationship is beautiful. That is not something to brag about. The question is, ‘Can the beautiful relationship remain beautiful?’” All relationships start in beauty, in sweetness, in harmony. All relationships start as they should be, but sooner or later things start falling. Sooner or later the negative asserts, sooner or later the ugly comes up – then is the question. But the woman said, “It will not come.” All that she said, summarized, would mean that she was an exception; it was not going to happen. And that is the foolishness of all lovers. That’s how all lovers think, that it is not going to happen to them.And when it has happened, then it is too late. Then you cannot put things right again. When things start going wrong, there is no way to put them right again. Even if you put them right, they will never be the same. It is as if a cup has broken. You can put it right, you can glue it together. But it will never be the same again. It is better to handle it carefully from the beginning. And the first thing to know is that every relationship starts good and every relationship ends bad. Yours included, mind you. It is very easy to see that others are just unaware. “But we two who have fallen in love, we are different,” that is everybody’s idea.Now, the woman was very confident, and in that very confidence is the problem. In that very confidence she will miss because when you are so confident you don’t take any precautions. When you are so confident you don’t try to be aware of what is happening. Then you move unaware and all that is in you, by and by, will come up, is bound to come up.In the beginning when two lovers meet they show their beautiful faces. Their gracefulness is infinite. Their care about each other is absolute. It has to be so because both are showing their beautiful parts. But when they are together for twenty-four hours, then it will be impossible. It will be too heavy to keep the ugly parts always hidden. By and by the ugly parts will take revenge. They will start coming up.When you fall in love, why do we call it a “fall”? It is called a “fall” because it helps you to be unconscious. It is a fall. You become unconscious. We say somebody has “fallen” asleep, somebody has “fallen” in love. “Fall” means now you are no longer conscious, you are behaving very mechanically. Love in itself is mechanical. Then, when the hate starts coming, you will be a victim of that too.If you really want to change your life, start immediately. If you have fallen in love, make it an awareness. Do things with full awareness. See that you are showing the positive aspects of you and you are hiding the negative. See well that this cannot last long, so something has to be done. If the relationship has to become really intimate, if it is to go long, then something has to be done. And that something has to be done in you, not in the other. Otherwise the woman thinks the husband has betrayed, the husband thinks the woman has betrayed. That’s what these four people thought: the other is doing wrong.Whenever you throw the responsibility on the other, you are avoiding awareness. Let this be a very fundamental law. Whenever you throw responsibility on the other, you are saying, “I am doing perfectly well, the other is doing wrong.” A man who is trying to be aware will always see, “I am responsible, I am doing something wrong.” It is not a question of whether the other is doing wrong or not. That is his problem. That is not your problem. Your problem is whether you are doing something unconsciously. If you are doing something unconsciously, then things cannot go on being beautiful forever. Then all that is there is going to be temporary, it cannot have the quality of the eternal, it cannot have the timeless beauty and divinity in it.So always remember, when you see somebody doing something wrong, somebody committing an error, rather than jumping on him, look into yourself, at what you are doing. If you can watch everybody’s error and everybody’s error becomes a remembrance of your own errors, your life will be transformed. Then everybody will become a teacher to you. Then the whole of life becomes your master. Everywhere you will find arrows pointing to you. The whole of life will be arrowed toward you, saying, “This is unconscious, this is irresponsible.”We have found a very easy trick. We turn the arrows toward others. Others go on throwing the arrows toward us, we go on throwing the arrows toward others. In this game, life is lost. Don’t continue playing this game.Your world is created by your consciousness or your unconsciousness. It has nothing to do with your wife, your husband, your children, your friends, your society. Your world is you. Bring light to your world. Bring more awareness to your world. And start existing less like a machine, more like a man. Otherwise one has been going from one life to another, repeating the same.You have repeated enough. Are you not yet bored? Are you not yet fed up with it? Start changing a few fundamental things. One, stop looking at others’ errors, and each time you see somebody else committing an error, a mistake, start finding out immediately somewhere some mistake in yourself. In fact, to look at the mistake of the other is a way of avoiding your own mistake. One feels very good: “Somebody else is committing a mistake and I am perfectly okay.” Start analyzing, observing. Become more critical about your habits, about your ways, about your style of life.I have heard about one man who married eight times. Each time he thought, “I have found the wrong woman.” And he was not wrong. After each marriage there was misery. He divorced the first woman, tried to find another, and again after a few months the same misery. And he was surprised at how he managed to find the same type of woman again and again. Eight times he married, and each time he married the same type of woman. And each time he was trying to be more alert not to fall in the trap again, but he fell because when you choose a woman the chooser is the same. How can you change the woman?If the chooser is the same, the choice is going to be the same. Again the same thing will appeal to you. Maybe the face is a little different, the hairstyle is a little different, the color of the hair is a little different, but that is not the point. These are irrelevant things. A marriage does not depend on the color of the hair, a marriage does not depend on the color of the eyes, and a marriage does not depend on the length of the nose. These are superficial things. After two days, who looks at the size of the nose? Or who bothers about the color of the hair? In fact, if your wife suddenly goes and changes the color of her hair, the husband will be the last one to note it. Who bothers?But more essential is why you choose a certain woman, why you choose a certain man. Why? What fits with your mind? Again you will choose the same type of woman, for the same reasons. Those reasons are unconscious. So you can go on changing women and you will not find the woman you are searching for. You can go on changing your job and you will not find the job you are searching for. And you can go on searching among the masters. From one to another you can go on moving and you will not find the master you are searching for, unless you become more alert about your mechanical habits.Once you become aware of your mechanical habits, things start changing. Then the first ray of light has entered. Then you will choose a different kind of woman because you have become different. Then you will choose a different kind of master because you have become different. Then you will choose everything in a different way because you are different. And if a person chooses out of awareness, he chooses rightly.People come to me and they ask, “What is right and what is wrong?” I say, “Awareness is right, unawareness is wrong.” I don’t label actions as wrong and right. I don’t say violence is wrong. Sometimes violence can be right. I don’t say love is right. Sometimes love can be wrong. Love can be for a wrong person, love can be for a wrong purpose. Somebody loves his country; now, this is wrong because nationalism is a curse. Somebody loves his religion; he can kill, he can murder, he can burn others’ temples. Neither is love always right nor is anger always wrong.Then what is right and what is wrong? To me, awareness is right. If you are angry with full awareness, even anger is right. And if you are loving with unawareness, even love is not right.So let the quality of awareness be there in every act that you do, in every thought that you think, in every dream that you dream. Let the quality of awareness enter your being more and more. Become suffused with the quality of awareness. Then whatever you do is virtue. Then whatever you do is good. Then whatever you do is a blessing to you and to the world in which you live.Ponder over this small story. It is a story of four unconscious people who are trying to be silent. But they have not understood the laws of thought, they have not understood the law of being unconscious. They don’t know that man is a machine. They don’t know that to look at the other is a way of avoiding oneself. They are not yet conscious of what they are doing. Even though they are sitting in meditation and trying to be silent, they are not aware of the science of silence, of the Yoga of meditation. Hence this foolish anecdote became possible.You will be repeating the same thing. All, the whole of humanity, are repeating. Don’t think that you are an exception. Don’t think that if you were one of these four people you would not have committed this. Know well you would have committed it. This story is about you. It has nothing to do with the Tendai school. These four can be Osho sannyasins.Watch each step that you take, in action or in thought. The only goal is awareness, and then your whole life is transformed. Then your whole life attains a new quality, a new dimension. And that dimension leads to the first principle.You are the first principle.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,It seems to me that I don't understand anything.That’s far out, Vidya. If it is really true, then it is great. If you don’t understand anything, then the door is open, then there is nothing to hinder your way, to hinder your vision. It is knowledge that is obstructing. Ignorance is an opening. Ignorance is very blissful. It is knowledge that creates noise. It is knowledge that does not allow you to see. If your eyes are completely rid of knowledge, then what is there to hinder you from seeing the truth? The truth is obvious. You just need a clarity to see it. Ignorance gives that clarity.To be consciously ignorant is to be in satori. A child is ignorant, but not conscious of his ignorance. A saint is ignorant, but is conscious of his ignorance. He knows that he knows not. That’s the only difference. The child also knows not, but he does not know it. The saint knows that he knows not. His whole knowledge consists of one single thing: that there is nothing to be known and there is no possibility to know, that the whole effort toward knowledge is futile, that existence is such a mystery that it can never be reduced to knowledge.All that we know is superficial, arbitrary. All that we know has nothing to do with reality. Reality remains untouched by our knowledge. Reality remains mysterious.If it is really true that you have become aware of your ignorance, then there is nothing else to be sought, nothing else to attain. Relax in this ignorance. Accept this ignorance and feel blissful.But it may not be true. That’s why I say if it is true. It may again be just a hankering to know. Then you have not understood, then you are not at ease with your non-knowing. The question seems to be because you are worried, otherwise why a question? You are worried. Something is gnawing at your heart. You are worried, “I don’t understand anything and I have to understand.” In fact, when Vidya had come, she must have thought that she knows. Now, by and by, I have been hammering on her and her knowledge has disappeared. Now she is worried.When you come to me you come full of knowledge. You come with much luggage, and that luggage has to be destroyed, burned utterly, so that you cannot find it again. When you lose your luggage you start feeling as if you are missing something. Naturally so. You have been carrying the load so long, now suddenly it is gone and you feel you are missing something. The question has arisen because of your feeling that something is being missed, “I don’t know anything?” The knowledge has disappeared and ignorance has not yet been accepted.If you don’t accept ignorance, sooner or later you will attain knowledge again, you will start gathering and hoarding. And this time you will hoard in a more subtle way, so that it cannot be easily taken away from you.Beware. These are the moments when you need a master to say to you, “Accept and relax into this ignorance.” I am not here to impart knowledge to you. I am here to take it away from you.In one of the most ancient books in India, Shivasutra, there is a tremendously significant sutra, “Gyanam bandham – knowledge is bondage.” When there is no knowledge, a man is free. It is such a radical statement. All knowledge is bondage. The moment you know that you don’t know, the bondage falls, but if you have lived in the bondage for long, you start accepting it as part of you.If a man has lived in prison for many years with chains on his hands and on his feet, and then you suddenly take away the chains, he will not even be able to sleep in the night. He has become accustomed to them, he needs that weight, that noise. When he used to turn in the night, those chains used to make a noise, now suddenly the noise will not be there. He will become awake again and again in the night. Something is missing. Walking, he will feel as if he is naked, something is missing. He has become accustomed to that weight, and that’s how everybody has become accustomed to the weight of knowledge. Knowledge is a bondage.The question arises only because the acceptance has not arisen yet. You can miss this great opportunity of being ignorant.Relax, love it, embrace it, feel one with it, and there will arise a new sort of innocence. You were innocent when you were a child. This will be a new birth and a new sort of innocence. Again you will become a child, and yet your childlike quality will not be childish, it will have a maturity in it.Sometimes reading, sometimes listening – and particularly listening to Zen – you may start feeling, “I don’t know anything.” Because the Zen people are very much against knowledge, you may start clinging to the idea of not knowing. But that idea is not going to help. That idea is again part of knowledge. Listening to the Zen masters you may start getting attached to the very idea of not knowing. Then this idea of not knowing becomes your knowledge.To be really in deep ignorance means you don’t even have the idea of non-knowledge. You are simply innocent. The knowledge has disappeared and nothing has appeared in its place.Let me tell you this famous anecdote…Traditionally, Zen monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show proof of having solved a koan.And you can solve a koan only when you have fallen into deep ignorance, not before it because a koan is not a puzzle. Or if it is a puzzle, then it is not an ordinary puzzle. An ordinary puzzle can be solved by the mind. If you put your mind to it, you can find a way to solve it, it has a solution. A koan is such a puzzle that it has no mind solution possible, you cannot solve it. It is not a question of what you do, it is insoluble. The mind cannot give any answer to it.For example, Zen masters say, “Listen to the sound of one hand clapping.” Now, one hand cannot clap, and unless it claps there will not be any sound, so to what are you going to listen? The mind will work out many solutions and all will be meaningless, and the master will send you back again and again. Again listen. Meditate. The solution will happen one day when the mind disappears. When you work hard with the mind and the mind finds no way to reach any solution, out of sheer tiredness the mind falls flat on the ground. Suddenly you are in a state of no-mind and you hear the sound of one hand clapping.The mind hears only the sound of two hands clapping because the mind lives in duality. The mind can hear only a created sound. When the mind disappears you hear the soundless sound, what the Hindus call anahat nad. The word anahat means exactly the same as what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping. If you clash two things there is a sound that is called ahat nad, a sound that comes out of conflict. And there is a sound permeating existence itself, which is not created; uncreated. When you become so silent that the mind has disappeared, disappeared with all its noise, suddenly that soundless sound is heard, that omkar, that anahat nad is heard. But that happens only when the mind has gone.Traditionally, Zen monasteries will only admit wandering Zen monks if they can show proof of having solved a koan.It seems that a monk once knocked on a monastery gate. The monk who opened the gate did not say “Hello” or “Good morning” but, “Show me your original face, the face you had before your father and mother were born.”This is a koan. And the host is asking the guest to show some sign that he can solve a koan. Otherwise he is not worthy of being allowed to stay in the monastery. Then he will have to go away.The monk who wanted a room for the night smiled, pulled a sandal off his foot, and hit his questioner in the face with it. The other monk stepped back, bowed respectfully and bade the visitor welcome. After dinner, host and guest started a conversation, and the host complimented his guest on his splendid answer.“Do you yourself know the answer to the koan you gave me?” the guest asked.“No,” answered the host, “but I knew that your answer was right. You did not hesitate for a moment. It came out quite spontaneously. It agreed exactly with everything I have heard or read about Zen.”The guest did not say anything, and sipped his tea. Suddenly the host became suspicious. There was something in the face of his guest which he did not like.“You do know the answer don’t you?” he asked.The guest began to laugh and finally rolled over the mat with mirth.“No, reverend brother,” he said, “but I too have read a lot and heard a lot about Zen.”Hearing me, there are many things you will start imagining, many things you will start believing. Beware, because those things won’t help. Hearing Zen, reading Zen is not going to give you Zen. Zen is a quality that you have to attain. It is a new vision of life and reality. It is a new penetration into the mystery of existence. It is not intellectual. It is existential. You have to throb with it, your heart has to beat with it, you have to breathe it in and out. It is not going to be just an intellectual understanding.Listening to me, the understanding will come to you intellectually very easily, because whatever I am saying is simple. There is nothing difficult about it. It is not very complex. I am not spinning any philosophical theories here. I am simply stating simple facts.Now, this fact is simple that a child has an innocent clarity. And one day if you also consciously attain that childhood – what Jesus calls, “When you are reborn,” that is rebirth – then you will be able to see what is. But listening to me you may start thinking, “Yes that’s right. I also don’t know anything.” But is it your understanding, or just a reflection of my understanding? Is it your experience, or just an imitation?It happens, in the presence of every master it happens, because man is naturally imitative. Darwin is right. Man comes from the monkeys and is very imitative. He can imitate anything.I have heard there was a great master…The master would sit for hours alone in his cave meditating, his only companion being a favorite cat which he tied to a post in his cave during his periods of meditation. As years went by his fame spread, and he soon had a number of pupils who came to learn from him and who made him their guru or their master. He instructed his pupils to meditate as he did. Soon each pupil could be observed meditating with a cat tied to a post by his side.The master died, so what did the pupils do? They had known always of a cat being tied to a post by the side of the master. Naturally they thought the cat must have something to do with meditation. And cats are very esoteric people. The cat must have something to do with meditative energy. Somehow the cat must have been a help, otherwise why? The master used to do it continuously. For years they had seen it. Whenever he was meditating the cat was there tied to the post.He had to tie the cat, otherwise the cat would disturb his meditation. The cat may jump into his lap, might like to play with him. Cats don’t bother whether you are meditating or not, so the cat has to be tied to the post. But what about the disciples? They watched. And you can see only the outward, the inner remains invisible. Naturally they also tried to imitate it.It happens. Beware of that too. Don’t be imitative. Just because I am saying something, you need not repeat it. If you repeat it, it will not be helpful for your own growing understanding. Don’t repeat it. Let it sink into your being. Experience it.If I say something, there is no need to believe in it. There is no need to disbelieve either. Remain open. If I say something, then try it. Then look at the trees without any ideas whatever. Look at the birds and the sky with no knowledge. Drop language and see whether what I am saying gives you clarity. If you can drop the word rose and then see the roseflower, what happens? You will immediately feel a new kind of relationship arising between you and the flower. Don’t even call it a flower, there is no need. Your language is not needed to support it, it exists without language. Why bring language in? Put language aside. Put aside your continuous gibberish that goes on inside the mind. Just look.In the beginning it is difficult, the language will come up again and again, just out of old habit, but sooner or later it comes easily. You can remain at least for a few moments without language. Listening to the song of the birds, or the murmur of the wind passing through the trees, or the river, you can remain without language for a few seconds. And in those seconds will be the proof of what I have been saying to you. Suddenly you will see as if a great darkness has disappeared and everywhere is light. You can see as if the doors of perception have been cleansed.Ordinarily we are looking through dark curtains. The glass we are looking through is too dusty. Only fragments of reality appear, not the totality.Experience what I am saying, don’t imitate, and then this is going to happen to you. One day you will suddenly see you don’t know anything. But this will be a vision, a realization. Then it is great. If it is truly happening, it is great.The second question:Osho,Meher Baba has talked about God descending in man – avatar, Rasool, Christ. And man rising to be God – the perfect master, satguru, qutub, tirthankara. Would you please talk to us about the same?God is. He neither ascends nor descends. Where can he ascend to and where can he descend to? God is all. There is nothing into which God can ascend or descend. There is nobody other than God. All that is, is divine. So, the first thing: there is no ascending, no descending.But when Meher Baba says it, there must be some meaning in it. The meaning is something quite different. Let me explain it to you.God is, remember. God is a pure isness, pure existence, and there is nowhere for God to go or come. The whole is full of him. He fills his existence, one thing. Second thing, but Meher Baba must be true. Then there must be some other meaning to it, not God descending and ascending. What can be the meaning? The meaning is, there are two ways of man approaching God.What do I mean by “man” when God is the only reality? Man is the god who has forgotten that he is God. Man is a god who has forgotten himself.Man can remember his godliness in two ways. One way is that of surrender, devotion, love, prayer. Another way is that of will, effort, meditation, yoga. If a man tries to work his way through will, then he will feel he is ascending toward God, or he is reaching toward God through his will. Hence, Jainas call the man who attains godliness a tirthankara. Tirthankara means consciousness has reached the peak. Man has arrived by ascending, as if there has been a ladder, the ladder of the will, the ladder of effort and yoga. So is the concept of the buddhas, that too is the path of will. Avatar means God descending. That is another approach, when a man surrenders. He cannot ascend. He simply opens his heart and waits, prays and waits, and suddenly he starts feeling a stirring in his heart. Certainly he will see “God has descended in me.” Avatar means descending. God coming down.Mahavira went up. For Meera, God came down.But God never comes down, never goes up. God is where he is. But your experience will be different. If you try hard to achieve God, you will go higher and higher and higher. Naturally you will feel the God hidden inside you is arising, rising up, reaching to the zenith. But if you surrender, nothing is arising in you. You are where you are, you simply wait in deep prayer, in deep love, in deep trust, and one day you find God is descending in you, coming from above. These are the experiences of two types of seekers. It has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the seeker and his way. Will or surrender, effort or prayer, yoga or bhakti.So the religions which believe in bhakti, in devotion… Christianity says Christ comes from God. That is the meaning of saying that he is God’s son, he comes from above, he has been sent. And that is the meaning of Mohammed, he is a prophet, a messenger, a paigambara. Paigambara means a messenger who comes from above, brings the message. He does not belong to this world, he comes like a ray of light into the darkness. And so is the concept of the Hindus’ avatar – Krishna, Ram – they come, they come into the world.The Buddhist, the Jaina concept is just the reverse. They say there is no God to come, and God is not a father and he cannot have a son. These are all very childish concepts for them. And if you look through their eyes they are. These concepts are childish, very anthropomorphic, man centered. You create God in your own image, as if God also has a family. He has a family, the Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost must be a woman, otherwise the family will not be exactly as it should be.But why don’t Christians call the Holy Ghost a woman? Male chauvinism. They cannot make a woman also part of the Trinity, it is difficult for them, very difficult for them. So to what have they reduced their God? It seems to be a homosexual family. All men, not a single woman there. It looks ugly. But my feeling is that the Holy Ghost must be a woman.We create God in our own image.Jainas and Buddhists say that there is no God and there is no God’s family, and nobody comes from there. Then what has one to do? One has to arise. God is in you like a seed, as a tree arises from the earth and goes higher and higher. God is not like rain falling, but a tree arising. Man has the seed. Man is potentially God. So when you work hard, you start growing.These are the two concepts. That’s why Meher Baba says, “…God descending in man – avatar, Rasool, Christ. And man rising to be God – the perfect master, satguru, qutub, tirthankara.” But it has nothing to do with God.The third question:Osho,When I was a child I was inoculated against the measles. Can I still catch them now?Yes, every child has been inoculated. Every child has been destroyed. Every child has been conditioned in such a way that he cannot get the measles I am talking about.You have been brought up as a Christian or a Hindu. That very upbringing closes your doors. Even if Christ comes to you, you will not be able to see him. The idea of Christ that Christianity has given to you is so false, it is so foolish. It is so inhuman, that if Christ comes to you, you will not be able to recognize him. You will not be able to get the measles even from Christ. And Buddhists have created the idea of Buddha so abstractly. They have so conditioned their children with that abstract idea, with that inoculation, that even if Buddha comes across you, you will not be able to recognize him. So it is not only that a Christian will not be able to recognize Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali, he will not even be able to recognize Christ.There is a beautiful story in one of Dostoevsky’s novels, The Brothers Karamazov.After eighteen hundred years Christ thinks, “Now almost half the world is Christian. If I go again I will be welcomed.” The last time they had treated him very badly, and it was natural because there was not a single Christian, there were only Jews. They tortured Jesus badly and they killed him. He must have still been thinking about the torture that he had met, but now he thinks, “Half of the world is Christian. Half of the world belongs to me, if I go now then people will simply fall at my feet. They will recognize that Christ has come back and he has fulfilled his promise.”So he comes, he comes to the small town of Bethlehem. Must be some old attachment with the town, some nostalgia of those days, where he had played and worked and had been a carpenter, must have loved women, played with friends. And he was a man who knew how to celebrate. He was a man who knew how to give parties, how to dance and sing and how to love people. And he was a man who knew how to drink. He had loved the small joys of life. He was a real human being. He used to call himself a son of man more than he used to call himself the son of God.So he comes to Bethlehem. Naturally he descends in front of the church. He stands there under a tree. Naturally he has chosen Sunday. All the Christians are together, and it will be easier for them to recognize him because Christians believe in a Sunday religion. Six days they don’t bother at all. Six days who will look at him? But Sunday they will be free and they will be able to look at him, so he stands under a tree. People come out of the church. They see a young man, looks like a hippie, long hair. They come around, seems to be a stranger in the town. The closer they come, the more they are surprised. Looks like Jesus Christ, pretending well. Seems to be an actor. And they laugh and they say, “You did well, but escape before the priest comes out. Otherwise you are bound to get into trouble.”But Jesus says, “What do you mean, did well? I am Jesus Christ.”And they laugh and they say, “It is okay, but you just escape. You seem to be crazy. Jesus Christ, and you? Yes he has promised to come, but he will come sitting on the clouds, angels dancing and singing around. Where are the angels and where is the cloud? And what proof have you got?” Proof, a passport, a visa. “Have you got any certificate from your father?”Jesus had not thought about these practical things. He looks a little uneasy and nervous. And before he can escape, the high priest comes. People very, very respectfully give way to the high priest. The high priest comes, looks at this young man, and tells him to come down. He was standing under the tree on a platform. “Come down, you fool. What are you doing here?”Jesus says, “Even you cannot recognize me.”The priest says, “I recognize you very well.” And he tells a few people, church attendants, “Take this man into the church. Seems to be dangerous, this man. Pretending that he is a Jesus Christ. This is sacrilege. This cannot be tolerated. This man has to be punished. You cannot take Jesus so nonseriously.”Jesus cannot believe it. He says, “But I am the real one.”The priest says, “Keep quiet.”Jesus is chained, put into a dark cell in the church. He starts thinking and brooding: “There seems to be no difference at all. This is the same way the Jews had acted. But they could have been forgiven because they did not know me. But my people, Christians, they sing to me every day, they think of me every day, they wait for me every day, and I have come and they can’t even recognize me. They think I am a pretender.”Now he feels even sorrier than he had felt on the cross, because those were alien people. If they had killed him it was understandable, but are these people going to kill him again?In the middle of the night he cannot sleep. In the middle of the night comes the priest with a candle, opens the door, locks it again, comes close to Jesus; falls at the feet of Jesus. And Jesus feels relieved, “So, nothing to be worried about. A little late, but he has recognized me.”The priest says, “I know who you are, but I cannot recognize you in the marketplace. And mind you, you are not needed at all. We are doing perfectly well. And you are the old disturber. If you come you will destroy everything that we have done in eighteen hundred years. It has been a long struggle to establish Christianity, and you have always been against establishment. You are not establishment. We will pray to you, we will sing your name, we will praise you like anything, but please don’t come. And if you insist on being recognized in the marketplace, then be ready. Tomorrow morning you will be crucified. We cannot tolerate such things.”Now Jesus is even more puzzled. This man recognizes him. He says, “I know that you are the true one, but I cannot recognize you.”The old priest says, “Listen to me. I am old, older than you, I am more experienced. I know how people live, I know how people behave. Don’t try to be foolish again. Simply escape before the morning, and never come back again.”This is a beautiful parable.Yes, I know you are inoculated. That’s why it is so difficult to catch the measles I am carrying here. It is so difficult to drop your resistance. You find a thousand and one rationalizations how not to surrender. Surrender does not mean anything else. It simply means a state of no resistance, a state of vulnerability, a state of opening. And let me repeat: God cannot be taught, it can only be caught. God is like measles.You say, “When I was a child I was inoculated against the measles.” Everybody has been inoculated. The society takes every care to make you closed. That’s why the work of a master is so hard. To attain God is not hard, but because of this inoculation… First the inoculation has to be undone, and that is the really hard thing. The poison that has been put into you in the name of inoculation has to be driven out of your system. That’s why so many techniques are needed, meditations are needed, so that the poison oozes out of your system. The day your system is free of inoculation, suddenly you find the measles have started happening. And blessed are those who can get these measles.The fourth question:Osho,I would like to be a world teacher, the second tirthankara of the “Tradition of the moon.” Is it possible to expose this desire to the public?First, if you really want to be a teacher, become a disciple. Unless you are a really deep disciple, you will not be able to become a teacher. If your disciplehood is perfect, one day suddenly you will find the perfect master has arisen in you. It comes only out of disciplehood. But disciplehood is difficult because the ego has to be dropped. Everybody would like to become a world teacher. It seems so beautiful, it seems such a beautiful ego trip. Who will not enjoy being in such a position where he can teach, where he can guide?But to where are you going to guide people? You are in the ditch. Resist the temptation. Otherwise it happens that the blind people start leading the blind people, and they all fall into the dark ditch.Yes, people are in need of guidance, so if you start exposing your desire to the public, you are bound to find disciples. There is no lack of disciples. If you expose yourself, that you are the world teacher, you will find suddenly that disciples have started to come. And their coming will help you to feel that maybe it seems you are really the world’s teacher. Otherwise, why are people coming? How can people be so foolish? By and by, looking into their eyes, feeling their confidence in you, you will start feeling confident about yourself.I have heard about a man, of course a Jew, who opened the first bank in the world, and he became very rich and the business was beautiful. When he became very old somebody asked him, “How in the first place did you start a bank? Nobody had ever heard about it before.” He said, “I just tried an idea, I wrote the name ‘Bank’ and put the sign on my door. I had no trust in it that it would work, but I had nothing to do. I was unemployed, so I thought why not try. And within a few hours a man came and deposited his money. I was surprised. I looked at the man, I thought this seems to be the greatest fool in the town. I may escape with his money. Then came another and another, and by the evening I had deposits of a lot of money. And looking into these people’s eyes, I became so confident that I deposited my own money in the bank.”That’s how it works. If you just declare that you are a world teacher, you are bound to find disciples. And when the disciples come, certainly you have to truly be a world teacher.And sometimes it will happen that not only will disciples come, but something will start happening to the disciples. Then you will be really surprised. Somebody’s kundalini arising. Somebody seeing visions. Just by touching your feet, somebody feeling great silence.It happened. Ramakrishna loved this story very much…There was a master, his name was Tapobana, and Tapobana had a disciple who served him with irreproachable diligence. It was solely because of this diligence and the services he rendered that Tapobana kept him, for he found the disciple rather stupid.One day the rumor spread throughout the whole region that Tapobana’s disciple had walked on water. That he had been seen crossing the river as one crosses the street.Tapobana called his disciple and questioned him, “Is what people are saying about you possible? Is it really true that you crossed the river walking on the water?”“What could be more natural?” answered his follower. “It is thanks to you, blessed one, that I walked on water. At every step I repeated your saintly name, and that is what upheld me.”And Tapobana thought to himself, “If the disciple can walk on water, what can the master not do? If it is in my name that the miracle takes place, I must possess power I did not suspect, and holiness of which I have not been sufficiently aware. After all I have never tried to cross the river as if I were crossing the street.”And without more ado, he ran to the river bank. Without hesitation he set his foot on the water, and with unshakable faith repeated, “Me, me, me.” And sank.So you are carrying a very dangerous desire.I know you. The first thing that you have to do is to learn the secrets of disciplehood, then one day the master will be born. It is on the way, but don’t be in a hurry, otherwise you will miss being a master. If you try to become a master, you will miss being a master. The mastership arises only when you learn slowly, slowly to dissolve into existence. The day you are not, you will be a master, not before it. If you are, then still some work has to be done. You cannot be a master. Only when you are absent does the master become present in you.Right now it will be good if you take a bath. To explain this to you let me tell you this anecdote…A sweet old lady visited a doctor, and surprised him by saying, “Doctor, I think I am pregnant and want you to verify it.”It was obvious to the doctor, because of her advanced age, that she was imagining things. But he spoke to her kindly, “What makes you think you are pregnant?”“I know. I know it because I feel life,” she said as she patted her stomach.To humor her along, the doctor asked her to disrobe. After a brief examination, he advised her to go home and take a bath and forget about the pregnancy.“But doctor,” she insisted, “I tell you I feel life, and you tell me to go home and take a bath? I am feeling life!” And she again patted her stomach.“Yes, yes,” said the doctor gently, “you have got a bug in your navel.”So go and take a bath.The fifth question:Osho,Why am I the way I am? I feel like a lotus who wants to be a rose.So what is the trouble? So you are a lotus who wants to be a rose. Be it.Whatever you are, you are. And it is to be accepted in absolute humility. Even if you are feeling that you are a lotus and you want to be a rose, so you are a lotus who wants to be a rose. What is is, and what ain’t, ain’t. Relax into it, accept it, welcome it, and suddenly you will see a great peace surrounding you and a great silence arising in you and a great joy overflowing in you. We are missing joy because we are always trying to be something else.Now, I can understand your question. I have been telling you, “Don’t try to be something else,” and I had told you, “A lotus is a lotus and a rose is a rose, and the lotus should not try to be a rose and the rose should not try to be a lotus, otherwise they will go neurotic.” That’s why you have asked the question.You say, “I feel like a lotus who wants to be a rose.” So you are thinking you have asked a very relevant question, and I can understand why you feel that way, but listen to my answer. So you are a lotus who wants to be a rose. So be it. That’s what I mean, don’t try to be anything else. If this is you, then this is you. Now, you would like to try to remain the lotus, and not to be the rose. But if that is coming naturally to you, you will create a tension in yourself. Whatever comes naturally is good, whatever comes of its own accord is good.The question is from Shanti Sagar, and I can see the possibility of his deep acceptance of the fact. Accept it. If this is the way God wants you to be, then be this way. Then this is your destiny.Once you start accepting things, tensions disappear, anxieties fall, anguish is felt no more. And to be in a state of no anguish, no anxiety, no tension is to be religious.The sixth question:Osho,No effort is required to be born. No effort is required to die. No effort is required to fall in love. Why is such effort required to know God through meditation when this seems to be the most natural thing?Is God trying to test us in some way?First thing: no effort is required in meditation either. Meditation also comes on its own accord. Through effort it never comes. To whom has meditation happened through effort? It will be almost like making an effort to love somebody. How can you make any effort to love somebody? The more effort you make, the more the love will be false, pseudo, just a pretension. Love has to arise naturally. So arises meditation.But all meditators are not spontaneously in it, and neither are all lovers spontaneously in it. In fact, psychologists say… A tremendous discovery, that if love is not talked about, ninety-nine percent of people will never know anything about it. If love is not talked about, if poets don’t go on praising it and if traditional literature is not available about love, ninety-nine percent of people will never be aware that anything like love exists. They will know about sex, but not about love. But because of the poets and because of the novelists and because of the films and the TV, love is talked about so much that everybody starts thinking that he is in love. That love is also false.And the same is the case with meditation. Ninety-nine percent of people start meditating because meditation is talked about. There are times when it becomes fashionable. America is passing through such a phase. Meditation is talked about, everybody is doing meditation. If you are not doing it you must be missing something; you don’t feel any need for it, it has not arisen in your being, you have not come to that point of evolution where meditation happens on its own accord. But everybody is doing it and everybody is going to the masters and everybody is sitting silently. Somebody is doing zazen and somebody is doing TM and somebody is doing Dynamic. You must be missing something. So greed arises. Out of greed you start making effort.That effort is not for meditation. That effort is to gain something which you think will be gained out of meditation.These phases come and go. These cults arise and disappear. These are just like fashions. The real meditator has not come to meditate because others are meditating, but a deep need has arisen in him, has become a knocking in his heart, a continuous knocking. The whole world seems to be meaningless, he wants to go in. He wants to know who he is. Not because others have known. If there is nobody propagating meditation, and no books are available, and all books are destroyed and all masters go and hide in the caves in the Himalayas, then too there will be a few people who will meditate, who will find out how to meditate on their own accord. Those will be the real meditators. And for them meditation will be just as easy as anything. It will be just like breathing.When such a man comes, then any technique functions for him. I observe it every day. If somebody whose time has come to meditate…It is just like sexual maturity. A boy of three years has no idea about sex, and even if the boy of three years comes to see a man making love to a woman, he will not understand what is happening. At the most, he will think the man is trying to kill the woman, they are fighting or something. He will not have any idea what is happening. By the age of fourteen, suddenly something explodes in his biology. He is not aware of what it is, but something is happening. He is no longer the same.And then follows a time, a period of very much embarrassment because the boy does not know what exactly is happening. But something is happening. Something very much unknown, something which is creating trouble, something which is hovering around, and he does not know what it is and how to tackle it and how to figure it out. It is a natural phenomenon. Now sex has become mature, the sex gland is secreting.If life goes naturally, beautifully, if there are no life-negative teachers, if there are no politicians and priests to distract you, then near about the age of forty-two, exactly as sex maturity comes, meditation maturity comes. Near about the age of forty-two, one starts feeling to fall withinward. Near the age of fourteen, one starts falling toward the other, becomes extrovert. Love is extroversion, relationship is to think of the other. Meditation is introversion. Meditation is to think of one’s own self, of one’s own center.Between the age of fourteen and the age of forty-two there comes a change. By and by, one lives life, knows what love is, knows its fulfillment and its frustration, knows its joy and its sadness, knows its beauty and its ugliness, knows that there are moments of great ecstasy and then great valleys of darkness. Then one starts, by and by, moving toward his own self because to depend on the other can never be really ecstatic. If your joy depends on the other, that joy can never have the quality of freedom in it. And a joy which does not have the quality of freedom is not much joy. If you are dependent on the other, then there is a limitation.And the joy that comes through love is momentary. You can meet with the other only for moments, then again you are separate and you fall apart. Just in the middle of it you fall apart. Just for a moment you become joined together. Then one starts thinking, “Is there a way to become one with existence and never to fall apart again?” That’s what meditation is. Love is joining with existence through another person for only moments. Meditation is getting joined together with existence eternally. Yoga means “to join together.”This has to happen somewhere in the deepest core. And then there is joy and then there is freedom. Then there is bliss and there is no dark valley following it. Then happiness is eternal, then celebration is eternal. But that moment comes. That too comes, remember.So you say, “No effort is required to be born. No effort is required to die. No effort is required to fall in love.” I would like to tell you, “No effort is required to fall into meditation either.”But if there are hindrances… For example, in a primitive community, when the child is born there is no effort, neither on the side of the child nor on the side of the mother. But that is not the case in a civilized society: effort is needed, the doctor’s help is needed. Much effort is needed to help the child to be born, and the mother feels so much pain. And you don’t know how much pain the child feels. If you want to know, you can ask the primal therapists how much trauma he passes through. That small tube, the small passage, from the mother’s womb to the world is very painful. And the child wants to get out of it and he thrusts hard to get out of it. The mother feels pain because the passage is small and the child is big. She wants to hold back unconsciously. She cannot hold back, in the nature of things the child has to come out, but there is a struggle. The mother and the child; conflict has started. The child wants to get out and the mother is afraid and she is holding, she is controlling.This is true about the civilized person, not true about the uncivilized. The uncivilized mother simply goes with it. And the uncivilized person has no need for primal therapy because he never passes through any trauma; the mother is helpful. The child simply floats and comes out. In fact, you will be surprised to know that primitive women know such pleasure and ecstasy in childbirth, that the ecstasy that comes through sexual orgasm is nothing compared to it.What is the ecstasy in sexual orgasm? A man is thrusting into the woman and her sexual energies start becoming vibrated, start becoming stirred. That is her sexual orgasm. That pulsation spreads all over the body. But it cannot be compared with the child thrusting and starting to come out. It is the same passage. And the child is far bigger than any male organ. Naturally the whole being pulsates and the body goes through a great orgasm.But only a primitive woman knows that it is great ecstasy to give birth to a child, it is not painful at all, it is joy. But when it is natural, then it is joy.You say, “No effort is required to be born.” Not for the civilized. The civilized person needs much effort to be born. Maybe the mother has been given tranquilizers, sedatives. She has been put into unconsciousness so she does not pass through great pain, or even the birth may be a caesarean, the mother may have to be operated on. The doctor is needed, the nurse is needed, the midwife is needed. Why? To undo the wrong that the society has done.You say, “No effort is required to die.” You are wrong again. You can go and look in the American hospitals. Many old people are ready to die and they want to die; they are not allowed to die. The question of euthanasia has become one of the most important questions for the future because medical science has really evolved, and it can help a person to live for two hundred years or even more. He may not have much of a life, but he can hang on. He can hang on in a hospital. He will not be able to move or to talk or to love, but he can be just there vegetating. It will be tremendous misery and hell.Now, if he wants to die, no society allows him to die. They say, “It is illegal, you cannot commit suicide.” A person who has become one hundred and thirty, or one hundred and forty years of age wants to die because his existence is simply torture. The society seems to be very sadistic. They say, “You are not allowed to die, you will have to live.” And the doctors will continue to help you to live because they have much compassion for you. Because of the compassion, you will have to live. Now, his wife is dead, his children are dead, his relations are dead, his friends are gone and he is hanging on for no purpose. He does not know what is going to happen tomorrow. Just hanging on and hanging on and hanging on. Can you think of the misery that he will feel? Then there will be the need to commit suicide. He will have to find ways and means. Maybe he will have to bribe the doctor to cut the connection from the oxygen tank, or not to give him any more medicines. He may have to bribe someone. Effort will be needed.Natural death is natural, but man is not natural anymore. So nothing is natural, not even death. If you die naturally, that will be a totally different thing. But you don’t live naturally, how can you die naturally? Death has to be the culmination of whatever you have done in your life. If you have lived unnaturally, you will die unnaturally. A natural death is possible only if the life has been natural.So the questioner says, “No effort is required to die.” You are true. In a very primitive society no effort is required, but because of the compassion of the missionaries, primitives have disappeared. They have all become educated people now. Now effort is needed to die.Why do so many people commit suicide? And the suicide rate goes on growing every year. Why? Isn’t natural death enough? Suicide means death with effort.The suicide rate will go higher and higher if the governments are too adamant to relax. And they don’t allow people to die, and they force them into nursing homes and into hospitals and force them to live against their wishes. Then more and more suicides will be there. Man has disturbed all that is natural.And you say, “No effort is required to fall in love.” That too is not true. That too is not true. Looking at the TV continuously, looking at and watching films, reading poetry and novels, they all help you to fall in love. They give you the idea, they nourish your so-called love. It is not natural.The natural has disappeared. All that is nature has disappeared, everything is false and plastic. Hence meditation also has to be false and plastic. But real meditation never happens through effort.Then what does one have to do? You have to do some effort in the beginning, otherwise you will never come close to any meditation technique, close to any meditation school. You will have to go through effort because you have become unnatural beings. Making an effort will help you to understand what meditation is. It will not lead you into meditation, it will simply help you to understand what meditation is. It will help you to understand whether you can fall into that space called meditation easily or not.If you feel that it comes very easily to you, that you can fall in that space and you can reach that space, the effort will disappear by itself. There will be no need. You can simply sit with closed eyes, and it is there. It is so natural. But only once it happens, then it is very natural. And unless it has happened, you will not be able to know whether you are a natural meditator or not, so an effort will be needed.Man has been made so artificial that everything will have to be made through effort. But by making an effort, you will come to feel and see whether you can easily float into it or not.And you ask, “Why is such effort required to know God, when this seems to be the most natural thing?” If it is the most natural thing, then it must have happened to the questioner. It has not happened, otherwise you would not be here. What is a God-realized man doing here? There is no point. Your seeking has stopped if you have known. Yes, once you know, it is very simple and easy, but until you know it effort will be needed.And remember, effort is not needed for meditation. Effort is needed to undo what the society has done to you. A dehypnosis is needed. The society has hypnotized you, the society has conditioned you; an unconditioning is needed. The society has made you dirty, a cleansing is needed. A good shower, that’s what your effort is. Once you have started feeling that meditation is your innermost quality, you can go into it anytime – it is so easy, just as breathing – hence all effort disappears.And you ask, “Is God trying to test us in some way?” No. There is no God in the first place to test you. And even if there is a God, he is not in any way interested in testing and examining you. What is the point? He is not a sadist to torture you.Teachers are sadists, examiners are sadists. You can ask the psychologists. They say people who want to torture others become teachers. Some tendency to torture. And you cannot find more beautiful opportunities than small children. Torture them, test them, examine them, and for their own good! And nobody can prevent you because you are doing it for their own good.God is not in any way interested in testing you. The problem is not arising because of God. The problem is arising because of your society, your politics, your priesthood. They have made you in such a way that you cannot meditate. They have made such simple things impossible.It is just like in the ancient days in China. They used to put small shoes, iron shoes, on women’s feet because that was the sign… A smaller foot was the sign that the woman comes from a royal family. If the woman cannot walk rightly, she is royal. So no rich women were able to walk, they had small feet. And if you encage the feet in iron shoes, what are you doing? Great pain was suffered just to have small feet. Those feet cannot be beautiful. Those feet are ugly because the growth has not happened. How can something retarded be beautiful? But that was thought for thousands of years as beautiful, and women suffered it, and they enjoyed that they had small feet.Now that has disappeared. Now, if a royal woman, a rich woman in ancient China was to learn running, jogging, it would have been very difficult. Much effort would have been needed because she did not have the feet for it. Not that God is testing her; just because the society is foolish, and the society has conditioned her feet in such a way that she cannot run.And the same is true about a thousand and one things. Your society conditions you in a certain way, then you cannot do certain things. When you want to do them, much effort is needed to undo what the society has done.The society has taught you to think, and to think continuously, and to think skillfully and cleverly. It has not allowed you to know that there are spaces of no thought because the society is afraid. Those spaces of no thought are very dangerous. Those spaces of no thought are very crazy. Those spaces of no thought will give you great joy, but will make you so rebellious. Those great spaces will make you very, very happy, but a happy person becomes free. He cannot be easily forced to do foolish things.You cannot send him to the army. He will say, “Nonsense. I am so happy, why should I go and kill others and be killed?” You cannot send him to the military, he will simply say no. You cannot force him to do foolish things for his whole life like a machine. He will say, “Why? I will do things that I like and that I love.” An ecstatic person is a rebellion in the world. You cannot tell him to just be a clerk in an office and go on filing things, putting files upon files his whole life. He will say, “I will go and become a farmer because I love trees. If I am not going to be rich, it is okay. My richness will be of the inner. I am going to become a fisherman. I will be on the open sea. I don’t want to become a clerk.”But then things will be difficult for the society. Society needs clerks, society needs soldiers. Society needs very repressed people whose energies are boiling inside and have no way to go anywhere, so that they can be put into any work. Society arranges things in such a way that you can become slaves.The society is not here to make you free people. Because with freedom, politics will disappear, states will disappear. In a free world there will be no nation, and there will be no need for nations and there will be no need for armies. Millions of people just wasting their life, doing parade. Left turn. Right turn. Turn about. Millions of people doing it very happily and thinking they are doing great things, great service to humanity.Who would like it? Free people would like to become singers or dancers. Good if you dance. But, turn about, left turn, right turn? Have you ever seen any bird doing right turn, left turn? Have you seen any animal? They dance, yes, they dance, but dance is a totally different thing. People will dance and people will sing and people will go into the forest and chop wood. They will go to the sea and fish and they will go to the mountains, they will do farming, gardening, they will be carpenters, weavers, spinners. But people will do something that they like to do.Right now you are doing something that the government wants you to do. And subtle is the trick. The university, the school, the college – subtle is the trick to force you into something which you never wanted to do. Then of course if you remain miserable, it is just understandable. How can you be happy?It is very rare that you come across a celebrating being because it is very difficult to escape from the prisons the society has created around you. In a natural world things will be just the reverse. It will be very difficult to find a miserable man. Why? There seems to be no need to be miserable. Buddhas will be just common. Rarely will you find a man who is not a buddha, if things go naturally. But things are not natural.That’s why you even have to learn how to meditate and you have to learn how to love and you have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn how to know godliness.The last question:Osho,Why are all the religions against sex? And why are you not against sex?All the religions are against sex because that is the only way to make you miserable. That is the only way to make you feel guilty. That is the only way to reduce you to being sinners.Sex is one of the most fundamental truths of life, so fundamental that if somebody says it is wrong, he is putting you in trouble. You cannot get rid of it. Unless you become really enlightened you cannot get rid of it. And to become enlightened there is no need to get rid of it. In fact, if you go deeper into it, enlightenment will be easier because a man who has gone deep in love will be capable of going deep in meditation. Because in the deepest moments of love there are a few glimpses of meditation.That’s how meditation has been discovered. That’s how samadhi, satori have been discovered. Because in a deep love affair, sometimes, suddenly your mind disappears. There are no thoughts, no time, no space. You become one with the whole. People have carried those glimpses in their memories, and they want to attain those glimpses more naturally, more in their aloneness. Because to depend on the other is not very good, and then it happens only for a moment. How to attain that glimpse permanently, so it remains there, it becomes your nature?Religions are against sex because down the centuries they have come to know that sex is the most enjoyable thing for man. So poison his joy. Once you poison his joy and you put this idea in his mind that something is wrong in sex – it is sin – then he will never be able to enjoy it. And if he cannot enjoy it, then his energies will start moving in other directions. He will become more ambitious.A really sexual person will not be ambitious. Why? He will not hanker to become the prime minister or the president. Why? The energy that becomes ambition is repressed sex. A sexually free person will not try to become anybody. Whatever he is, he is beautifully happy. Why should he bother to hoard money? When you cannot love, you hoard money; money is a substitute. You will never find a money hoarder a loving person, and you will never find a loving person a money hoarder. It is very difficult. Money is a substitute, it is a pseudo love affair. You are afraid to make love to a woman or a man, so you make love to dollars, rupees, pounds.Have you not seen when a miser comes across money? Have you seen the light that comes to his eyes and how the face becomes luminous, as if he is looking at a beautiful woman or a beautiful man? Just give him a hundred-dollar note, a greenback, and see how he touches it, how he feels it. Saliva starts flowing. It is a love affair. Just look when he opens his money box and looks into it. He is facing God. Money is his god, his beloved.And when an ambitious person is trying to become the prime minister or the president… Ambition is sex energy diverted, and the society diverts you. You ask, “Why are all the religions against sex?” They are against sex because that is the only way to make you unhappy, guilty, afraid. Once you are afraid, you can be manipulated. Remember this fundamental rule: make a person afraid if you want to dominate him. First make him afraid. If he is afraid, you can dominate him. If he is not afraid, why and how can you dominate him? How will he allow you to be the dominator? He will say, “Be gone. Who are you to dominate me?” First make him afraid.And there are two things which make people very much afraid. One is death, so religions have exploited it: that you are going to die, that you are going to die, that you are going to die. They persist, so they create a trembling. So you say, “What, what am I to do now? How should I behave? How should I live?” And then they say there is hell and there is heaven. Greed and profit, punishment and reward.So, one is death. But death is not yet, so you can postpone it. It is not much of a problem. You say, “Okay, when we will die, we will see. And I am not going to die right now. I am going to live fifty more years, at least, so why bother?” And man does not have a very distant-seeing vision, he does not have radar. He cannot see fifty years ahead. Yes, if you say to him, “Tomorrow you are going to die,” he may become afraid, but fifty years? He will say, “Wait, there is no hurry. Let me do my things first.” He may even start doing them faster because “Only fifty years are left? So let me do whatever I want to do. Eat, drink, be merry.”So the second thing, which is more fear creating, is sex. Sex is already the problem. Death will be the problem, it is in the future. Sex has the problem in the present, it is already there. Religions contaminate your sex energy. They start making you afraid that it is wrong: it is ugly, it is sin, it will drag you to hell. They want to dominate you, that’s why they are against sex.I have no idea to dominate you, I am here to make you absolutely free. And there are only two things needed to make you free. One is that sex is not a sin. It is a God-given gift, it is a grace. And second, there is no death. You will be forever because whatever is remains. Nothing ever disappears. Forms change, names change, but reality continues.So I take away all fear. I don’t want to make you in any way feel guilty, afraid. I want to take all fears from you so that you can live naturally without any domination, so that you can live according to your own spontaneity. And that spontaneity will bring enlightenment. Then sex disappears and then death disappears.It has disappeared for me, so I know it will disappear for you also. So why be worried? And it disappears more easily if you have known it rightly. Knowledge of anything takes you beyond; you are finished with it. If you have not lived rightly, you will be as other religious people who have not lived rightly. They hanker, they desire, they dream, but they repress. So they remain clinging to their repressions, they are never free of sex.A beautiful story. Meditate over it…The time is the not too distant future. We have finally destroyed ourselves by means of a nuclear holocaust. Everyone is waiting restlessly in a seemingly endless line leading up to the gates of heaven. At the head of the line, Peter is deciding which souls shall enter and which shall be turned away.Some distance from the gates, an American stands in line wringing his hands in apprehension. Suddenly he hears a murmur beginning at the front of the line and growing into a joyful rush of sound as it builds in volume, moving down the line toward his place. He can make out sounds of celebration in many languages. He hears shouts of “Bravo,” “Bravissimo,” “Bis,” “Encore,” and “Hip, hip, hooray.”“What is it? What is it all about?” he implores of those up ahead of him in the line. At last someone closer to the gates shouts back to him, “Peter just told us, ‘Screwing don’t count!’”Get it? Sex has nothing to do with your enlightenment. Love has nothing to do with your enlightenment. It is in fact going to help you because it will make you more natural. Be natural and don’t cultivate any abnormalities and you will be closer to existence.Hence I am not against sex, I am not against anything. I am only against unnatural attitudes, perverted attitudes. Be natural and normal and allow existence to flow through you. It will take you. The river is already moving toward the sea. Don’t try to swim upstream, don’t try to push the river. Go with the river. That’s what surrender is and that’s what sannyas is.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Hakuju served as a distinguished lecturer at the Tendai-sect College. As he was lecturing with his customary zeal on the Chinese classics one hot summer’s afternoon, he noticed that a few of the students were dozing off. He stopped his lecturing in midsentence and said, “It is a hot afternoon isn’t it? Can’t blame you for going to sleep. Mind if I join you?”With this, Hakuju shut his textbook and leaning well back in his chair, fell asleep.The class was dumbfounded and those who had been dozing were awakened by his snores. All sat up in their seats and waited for the master to awaken.The first principle, the principle that cannot be said – but we can still try. The first principle is that samsara is nirvana, that the ordinary is the extraordinary, that this world is the other world, that matter is mind, that there is no distinction between the holy and the unholy, that the profane is the sacred. This is the first principle. Yes, it cannot be said and I am not saying it, but it can be indicated.The indivisible is the first principle. The moment we divide reality, it becomes the second principle. The second is a shadow, the first is the original.This is one of the greatest contributions of Zen to the world. Zen says the world is God, there is no other God. The creation is the creator, there is no other creator. The very creativity is divine. It is not like a painter who is different from his painting. It is like a dancer who is one with his dance. God is one with his existence. God is his existence. In fact, to say “God is” is tautological, it is a repetition because “God” means the same thing “is” means. God is isness. All that is, is divine.It is very difficult for the so-called religious man to understand it because his whole trip depends on the distinction: this is good, this is bad, this has to be done and this has to be avoided. The marketplace has to be condemned and one has to move to the Himalayas or into the monasteries.The ordinary religious mind depends on condemnation, it is an ego trip, so when you become ordinarily religious you start having the feeling of “holier than thou.” Because you live in a certain way – you eat certain things and you don’t eat certain things and you have a certain style to your life – you start feeling you are holier than others. A Catholic monk or a Jaina monk thinks he is very holy because he is doing certain things and he is avoiding certain things. His holiness consists of doing.The insistence of Zen is that doing is not important at all, what is important is being. You are not what you do. You are what you are. And by doing you never change, but if your being changes, certainly your doing changes. It becomes totally different, it becomes suffused with a new light. A new quality, a new dimension opens to it. You can do the same thing, without your being having gone through any transformation, and then it will be second, secondhand, then it will not be real.For example, Mahavira became naked. His nudeness comes out of the first principle, it is a flow from his innermost core. It is an innocence that has come to his life. You can become nude; there are thousands of Jaina monks down the centuries who have become nude, but it is an action. For Mahavira it was not an action, basically it was a change in his being. He became so childlike that there was no need for any clothes. There was nothing to hide. He became so open, so simple. From the interior-most flowed this nudeness. Then it had a different quality, the quality of innocence, of childlike simplicity. But those who followed him and became naked as followers were cunning people, clever people. It was a mathematical conclusion, a logical conclusion. They pondered over it. They thought Mahavira became Mahavira by becoming nude, “If we become nude, we will become Mahavira.” Action is first for them.Mahavira became nonviolent. He became so careful about every kind of life, even the life of the trees. He would not walk on grass, it may hurt the grass. He became so loving, so compassionate because his being changed. Then his followers have been trying the same from the other extreme, from the other end. They have been trying it as a cultivated behavior. They try not to kill, they try to avoid any violence, but it is just an action.Action cannot change your being. The periphery cannot change your center. Only when the center changes does the periphery change. Let this be one of the most fundamental rules.The Zen people say this samsara, this world, is the other world too. There is no other world, so don’t look for the hereafter, there is none. This moment is all. If you start looking for some other world, you have divided existence in two. And existence is indivisible. It is not that there comes a boundary to the world, and then comes the boundary of God. God is not a neighbor. God is in the world. He is not transcendental, he is immanent. He is one with existence. So don’t divide. The moment you divide, you are falling into the shadowy world of the secondhand.If you can look with an undivided eye you come across the first principle.You must have heard about the third eye. You have two eyes, two eyes means duality. And all those who have looked inward, they say there comes a moment when the third eye opens. The third eye is one, single. There is no third eye physiologically in your body, it is a metaphor. When two eyes disappear and become one, when you don’t look into existence with a dividing mind – you look into existence with absolute, undivided consciousness – then you are one.Jesus says to his disciples, “If you become of one eye, then you will know my Kingdom of God. If you attain one eye, then all bliss will be yours and all benediction.” He is talking about the third eye, and the third eye gives you the glimpse into the first principle.The first principle is that samsara is nirvana, that the ordinary is the extraordinary. So please don’t think that something is spiritual and something is non-spiritual. You can do everything in a spiritual way and you can do everything in an unspiritual way. If you divide, you are unspiritual. If a man says this is good and that is bad, he is unspiritual. If a man says, “This has to be desired and this has not to be desired,” he is no longer spiritual.Spirituality has no shoulds, no should nots. Spirituality has a deep acceptance of whatever is: that which is. Buddhists call it tathata, suchness, such is the case. Whatever is the case, is the case; one has to accept and relax into it. In that relaxation is the dimension of the spiritual. If you can do ordinary actions in a relaxed way, with no tension in the mind, with no hankering in the mind to be successful or to be a winner, then you are doing a spiritual thing. Then it can be anything.Zen people sip tea and they call it a tea ceremony. Sipping tea can become spiritual. How does it become spiritual? To those people who have not looked into reality in any way it looks simply absurd. Sipping tea? How can it become religious? Yes, if you are chanting God’s name, maybe it is religious. If you are praying, fasting, maybe it is spiritual, but sipping tea? How can it be religious or spiritual? The Zen people say if you can sip tea with an absolutely undivided mind, so that the tea and the sipper of the tea are no longer divided, it becomes one energy. There is so much silence, one is relaxed. And if you cannot be relaxed while sipping tea, where else can you be relaxed? A cup of tea can become a cup of prayer.Then anything can become spiritual. Digging in the garden, looking after the trees can become spiritual. Anything whatever can have a spiritual quality because the whole of existence is God. You just have to become aware of it. A relaxed awareness makes everything spiritual.So this dictum that samsara is nirvana is one of the greatest dictums ever uttered by any man on this earth. The founder of Zen, Bodhidharma uttered it. It is a thunderbolt. It is one of the most revolutionary sayings. It destroys all distinction. And it brings to light that all other so-called religions are just philosophies, not really religions because they go on dividing. The Devil and God, hell and heaven, and they go on dividing. Division is their work and division is of the mind.The mind functions like a prism. A ray of light enters a prism and is divided into seven colors. Entering, it was of one color, it was pure white, it was undivided. Leaving the prism, it is no longer one, it is seven, seven colors, the whole rainbow. The world is divided because of the prism of the mind. That which enters in the mind is one, that which comes out of the mind is seven.If you want to know the first principle, you will have to get beyond the prism. You will have to come to that point where the ray is one.Now, there are two ways to seek the truth. One is the goal-oriented way and the second is the source-oriented way. The first is wrong and the second is right. When I say the first is wrong, I am not condemning it. I am not saying it is bad. What I am saying by “wrong” is not a condemnation. It is just an indication that it leads nowhere, that it leads into a cul-de-sac, that you can go into it, but you will never arrive. You can go on going and going, but you will never arrive. It is a false way. It appears like a way, but it is not a way. It has the appearance, but only the appearance.Let us first understand the false way because if you can understand the false as false, half the journey is over. Then it is very simple to understand the true as the true. To know the false as false, you have already come to an understanding of what is or what can be the true. So always start by understanding the false first. The false eliminated, the true remains. So, first the false way.Everybody is prone to getting into the trap of the false because it is very alluring, it functions almost like a magnet. The mind feels very much attracted to it. The mind has a tendency to be attracted to the false. Why? Because the mind itself is the false. It feeds on the false. So wherever your mind feels attracted to, beware: something false, something illusory, something of the world of dreams is attracting you. The mind lives in dreams, it is made of dream stuff. In the day you call those dreams thoughts, in the night you call those thoughts dreams, but it is all the same, the same flow, the same energy. The mind goes on spinning dreams, sometimes verbally, sometimes through images, but the whole production of the mind is dreams.The mind feels very much attracted to the goal-oriented way because the mind is always attracted to the future. The mind is afraid of the present, it does not want to be in the present.Have you ever observed a very, very significant fact that the mind cannot be in the present? Cannot be in the present at all? When you are in the present, the mind is not. The present is so small that there is no space for thoughts to move. It is so small that thoughts cannot exist. They need a little space to play around, to jog around. The present moment cannot contain any thoughts, so the mind cannot exist in the present, it exists in the future or in the past. It is an expert about the past and an expert about the future. And both are not, the past is no longer, and the future has not yet happened. So the mind lives in the false, either that which is no longer or that which is not yet. Both are false, both are unreal. So the mind either runs backward or forward, but the mind is never now, never here.And the whole art of meditation is to be herenow. To be herenow means you have slipped out of the mind. And even to slip out for a single moment is of tremendous beauty and tremendous significance because then you see what reality is. Then you see that which is. Then you see godliness, or truth. Then you see existence in its authentic color, quality, sound.The moment mind starts working, the future has entered, or the past. Either you are imagining or you are remembering. So the mind feels very happy with the goal-oriented way. It gives enough space for the mind to fool around, to go on thinking thoughts, dreaming dreams. There is enough space. The future is an opening for the mind.But the moment the mind starts working, you are closed to the present, and the present is all that is true. The present means the eternal. The future and past are part of time. The present is part of eternity. Through the present you slip into godliness. You slip out of the mind and into godliness. You slip out of the ego and into your innermost core, which is also the innermost core of the whole existence.Your center is not your center alone. It is my center too. It is the center of the trees too. It is the center of the stars too. We are different on the periphery; we are one at the center. On the periphery you are separate from me. At the center there is no I, there is no you, there is only we. And the “we” includes trees and rocks and stars and everything. It includes all. The “I” is a mind product. The “we” is a totally different direction, totally different dimension.The goal-oriented seeker thinks, “What is the ultimate end of existence? To what meaning is existence moving? Where are we going?” The goal-oriented seeker thinks, “What are we going to become? What have we to become?” He never looks into being, he looks into becoming. “What am I to become? A saint? What am I going to become? What is my destiny in the future? What is the goal my life is striving to attain?” He looks into the future. The future is not. It is very dark there, very silent there, so you can easily imagine whatever you like. And the future cannot say you are wrong because the future is not, so whatever you imagine never struggles, collides with reality. There is no reality, it is simply your projection. You can go on imagining and there is nobody who will say you are wrong. You are always right in the future.In the present the reality is too much, and the reality will destroy the dream, but in the future there is no reality. You are alone. The world of the future gives you a freedom, gives you a freedom from reality: a bondage to dreams and freedom from reality.The goal-oriented person starts thinking. “How should I be, so that the goal can be attained?” He starts changing his behavior, his character, his style, his actions. He becomes a perfectionist. The goal-oriented person is always a perfectionist. He has some idea of perfection, how man should be, and he starts managing his own being according to that idea. Christians have one idea, Hindus have another, Jainas have another, but all have ideas how man should be. Christians may think man should be like Jesus; then that is the idea, and everybody has to fit with the idea. If you don’t fit you are wrong. If you fit you are right.Now the misery is: if you fit, you are false. If you don’t fit, you are wrong, you may be real. So reality starts becoming wrong and unreality becomes right. Let me explain it to you.Nobody else can fit with Jesus exactly because God never creates anybody the same way again. God does not have an assembly line, he is not making men as cars are manufactured. You can have as many cars similar to each other as you want. There is a mold and the car is produced according to the mold, so you can have one Ford, another Ford, another Ford, millions of Fords exactly similar. But God has no mold. God has no factory. He does not create according to molds. God is creativity, he never repeats. He is very innovative. Never again is the same person repeated; each is unique, so there is only one Jesus – never again a Jesus. So the problem is, if you try to fit with the idea of Jesus… You should be how Jesus is because that is the goal of the Christian. Or the goal of the Buddhist – Buddha – one should fit with Buddha. Or the goal of the Jaina, one should fit with Mahavira. Now, these are all false ways to approach reality.If you fit with Jesus, you will be false because you have not been made to fit with Jesus. You can be only yourself, nobody else, never anybody else. The only real way for you is to be yourself, whatever you are. And you cannot find any similar being in the past, and you cannot find any similar being in the present or in the future. You are alone and this aloneness is beautiful. This is the way God respects you, by making you absolutely anew, unique and alone.If you fit with Jesus, you are false, but Christians will say you are right. Now, see how false becomes right. If you don’t fit with Jesus, you may be right, but then you are wrong. If you don’t fit with Jesus, you may be real, authentically yourself, but then you don’t fit, so no Christian will appreciate you. You are wrong. Real becomes wrong, the false becomes right.Whenever you have any idea, fixed idea, fixed ideology, you are creating neurosis in man. And there is great anxiety, naturally. If you cannot fit with the idea, and you have been brought up as a Christian or a Hindu, you cannot fit with the idea, great anxiety arises: you are going wrong. Your life is a life of sin. You start feeling guilty. You feel nervous, you lose confidence, you lose courage, you become very much afraid. You become a coward because whatever you do seems to be wrong. It is not fitting with Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna, so you must be wrong. How can Buddha be wrong? And when you start feeling, “I am wrong,” naturally you tremble with fear.Søren Kierkegaard has said that man is a trembling, but I would like to say man is not a trembling, man has been forced to become a trembling. Forced by the so-called religions who give you ideologies, “How you should be.” Once you start thinking in that way, you are bound to be trapped in some trouble, misery, neurosis.The first thing: to become authentically yours, authentically yourself, is to get rid of any idea whatever that you are carrying.Zen has no idea how you should be. That’s why Zen people say if you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately. That is just a way of saying don’t allow any idea to settle in your consciousness. Kill that idea immediately. Don’t be an ideologist. Don’t have any ideals, and don’t be a perfectionist.A perfectionist is a person who goes on trying to make himself according to an idea. One day you can succeed. That possibility is there, that dangerous possibility is there, you can succeed, but then you become pseudo. That’s what hypocrisy is all about. You become a hypocrite. If you really become the idea that you have been carrying, you become a hypocrite. Go and look into your mahatmas, into your saints and you will find them hypocrites, untrue to themselves. True to some idea, but untrue to themselves. And if you are untrue to yourself, you are untrue to existence.Then, the perfectionist has so many shoulds and should nots. The whole life is without joy. He cannot enjoy, he cannot celebrate, he cannot be happy, he cannot delight. He cannot lose himself in any moment, he cannot abandon himself in any moment because those shoulds and should nots are continuously haunting him. “You should not do this, you should do this. You should not be like that, you should be like that.” He cannot relax. How can he relax?Now, people come to me and they want to relax and they say, “We cannot relax.” How can you relax by being a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan? It is impossible to relax, they won’t allow you to relax. They want you to be tense, they create your tensions.Relaxation means you don’t have any shoulds. You are simply living moment to moment, not according to some future idea of yourself, but according to your reality that is herenow. To live with the reality, moment to moment, is to be sane. To live with the idea is to be insane. The whole earth has become almost a madhouse because of these perfectionists. Perfectionism is a sort of madness. Only mad people try to be perfectionists. Sane people never try to be perfectionists.Sane people are humble people. They know their limitations, they don’t try the impossible, so they enjoy the possible. If you try the impossible, you cannot enjoy the possible, and in trying the impossible you miss the possible too. And from the other end, sane people enjoy the possible and they don’t hanker for the impossible, and enjoying the possible, one day suddenly they stumble upon the impossible too.Their joy becomes so much by and by, moment to moment, they go on being blissful. In ordinary things they are blissful. They don’t ask for great things, they don’t ask for paradise, to be blissful. They don’t ask for God, they don’t ask for nirvana. Small things. Playing with your own child, loving your wife, eating your food, taking a shower, or going for a morning walk, is more than enough. Just running on the beach is more than enough. What more do you want to be happy? The touch of the cool sand and the warm rays of the sun showering on you, and the wild roar of the sea playing around you, what more do you need to be happy? Playing with a child, the laughter of the child, what more do you need to be happy?But there are neurotic people. They will say, “What is there? Unless we achieve God we cannot be happy.” And let me tell you, these people will not be happy even if they can achieve God. They cannot be. They will find faults, they are fault finders. Even God will not be able to fit in their idea of perfection. They will find faults with God. They will not be able to see any limitations, they will not allow any frailty. These are impossible people. And these impossible people destroy their own lives and destroy many others. These people are the very source of madness on this earth.The goal-oriented way is an ego trip. The ego always wants to be perfect. And the search cannot be fulfilled because it is almost a blind man’s search. A blind man groping in the dark. A blind man groping in the dark night with no light, for a black cat which is not there.The future is not yet. There is no goal in existence. Let this sink into your heart. There is no goal in existence, existence is not moving toward any purpose. There is no purpose, it is sheer joy. It is not business, it is play. Of course I understand you cannot even play without the business mind.Just a few days ago, a young man came to me and he was very tense, and I asked him… Because I could see from his face so much goal orientation. I asked him one thing, “Do you play anything?” He said, “Yes, I am interested in games. I play many games. I play chess.” And I asked him, “What happens when you don’t win?” He said, “I feel very much frustrated, I cannot sleep. I feel good only when I am the winner.” Even in play, you know it is a game, just a make-believe… Even in play, if you are not the winner, you become tense. You have to be the winner, even in play.Such a type of person, if you tell him, “I went to the cricket match,” he will ask, “Who was the winner?” He will not ask whether the players enjoyed, whether it was a beautiful game, no. He will ask, “Who was the winner?” This is a wrong person. If you meet a person who really knows how to enjoy, he will ask, “Did the players enjoy it?”If you are playing chess, and you enjoy it, it does not matter who wins and who is defeated because that is secondary, that is not the purpose of the game. The purpose is to enjoy. The goal is not the purpose, the purpose is the way. If you can enjoy the way, the trees and the birds singing on the way, who bothers about the goal? In fact, existence has no goal. It is just a way.That is the beauty of the Chinese word Tao, it means the “way.” They don’t talk about God because the moment you talk about God, it appears as if God is the goal. They say, “There is no God. There is Tao, the way.”You must have heard about one Japanese religion Shinto. The original was not Shinto, the original was Shintao. That is very beautiful, it means “the way of the gods.” Shin means gods and tao means the way. Shintao, the way of the gods. Everything is a god and existence is the way. Gods moving on the way. You are not going to become gods. You are.The goal-oriented idea is driving you mad. Drop that idea and suddenly you will see sanity explodes into your being. You start laughing again, you start dancing again, you start singing again, you start playing again. And you have become religious. That is the idea of real religion, that you start dancing again, that you start loving again. Your life energy starts flowing, your juice is no longer stuck, is not stale, again flows. You start sharing.We are not going anywhere. We are here. And we have been here for the whole of eternity and we are going to be here for the whole of eternity. Now it is up to you to enjoy or not to enjoy. We are here and we are going to be here. There is no way to escape. Now, it is for you to choose whether to enjoy or just to cry and weep for the goal.The goal is not, there is no goal. The world is not moving toward some goal so that once achieved it is finished. Then what will you do? Have you ever thought about it? Once the goal is achieved, what will you do? You will have to commit suicide. What will you do? If the whole of existence achieves the goal – then? Then there is nowhere to go, nowhere to move. The goal has been achieved. Then the whole of existence will dry up, will become dead, the juice will no longer flow. The love will not be there and the laughter will not be there, trees will not bloom and birds will not sing and rivers will not flow. All has stopped. No, the world has no goal.If the world has any goal, it would have achieved it by now. How long has it existed? The very fact that it has not achieved it yet, is proof enough that it has no goal to achieve. It simply goes on, it is an ongoing affair. It is not a film that comes to an end, it is not a novel that comes to an end. We are always in the middle, never in the beginning and never at the end. We are always in the middle. And that is the way things are.So the goal-oriented person misses all that is beautiful in life. The goal he cannot achieve because there is no goal, and on the way he misses all things. Have you watched? Sometimes you are rushing toward the market, to your shop or to your office, you pass through the same street where you go for a morning walk, or sometimes in the moonlit night you go for a stroll – the same road, the same trees – but when you are going to the office you have a goal in mind. Then you don’t see the greenery and then you don’t listen to the birds. You are not interested in the way, you are interested in the goal. You want to finish it any way. The faster you can go the better. You will not like to walk to the office. You go in a car or in a bus.And if someday science manages to materialize and dematerialize man, you will simply stand in a machine in your house, and dematerialize there and materialize in the office, so no need for the way. One day it is going to happen. There is no need to go. Immediately, from one place to another place you can have a quantum leap – a quantum jump. In the middle you will not be – speed. Because you are not interested in the way.But the same way in the morning when you go for a walk has a totally different quality. You enjoy it. Each breeze passing through the trees and each bird flying around. You enjoy it because you are not going anywhere in particular. You are just going for a morning walk. It is playful. You can turn back from any point. There is no goal in your mind. You are non-tense, you are relaxed. There is joy, there is poetry. You start singing a song.You can treat yourself on the way of life in these two ways. If you are goal oriented – God, heaven, moksha, nirvana, whatever you call it, then you cannot enjoy, you cannot celebrate on the way. Zen says the way is the goal. That is the meaning when they say samsara is nirvana. The way is the goal, so don’t miss anything. Enjoy. Each moment has to be tasted, each moment is delicious. Each moment brings something to you, a blessing, a benediction. Don’t miss it.This is the first way, the false way that is very attractive to the mind.On this false way masochists feel very good, masochists become mahatmas. A masochist is a person who likes to torture himself. The greater the self-torture, the greater the mahatma. If somebody fasts for months, the crowd of worshippers will become bigger and bigger. And who are these worshippers? These are sadists. They enjoy. This foolish man torturing himself and they enjoy, they bring flowers in respect. What are they saying? They are saying, “We would like to torture you, but we cannot do so because of the law and a thousand and one things. You are so kind that you save us the trouble and you are doing it on your own, and we are really happy.” Masochists become mahatmas and sadists become followers, worshippers. They say, “Look at our mahatma. For three months he has not eaten anything,” or “For years he has lived only on fruit juice,” or “For years he has not slept,” or “He is sleeping on a bed of thorns. Look at our mahatma. He has lived a life of celibacy, he has never enjoyed any relationship with anybody. He has never loved a woman. He has never tasted love, he has denied himself all the beauty that love can give.”These deniers, these life-negative people, are worshipped tremendously. Who are these worshippers? And why should they worship these people?I went to one town: a few people came to me and they said, “In our town there is a great mahatma. For ten years he has been standing and people come from faraway places for his darshan.”So I said, “But what else has he done?”They said, “What else? He is just standing.”I insisted, “But something more?”They were puzzled, they said, “Why do you insist? He has done such a great thing. What else is needed? He is just standing for ten years.”I went to see the man because I wanted to see… That man must be mad. And he was mad. He was standing; his feet, his legs had become so thick. All the blood of his body had gone into the legs. Ten years of just standing, he had become just legs. The whole body had shrunk. He had elephant legs. Now, even if he wanted to sit, he could not. The flexibility of the body is no longer there, the elasticity is lost. And I looked into his eyes, I have never seen such an idiotic person. Such dull eyes. And bound to be, doing such an idiotic thing, just standing. He was holding himself on crutches, he was holding ropes with his hands, and the whole night disciples would do kirtan and singing, so he kept awake. Or if sometimes he would fall asleep standing, then a few people would support him so he didn’t fall. These are sadists. They should have helped him to go to sleep, but they were helping him not to fall. Now, these people have killed this man’s whole life.And why is he standing? He is enjoying in a way. Thousands of people come to see him. He has nothing. His ego is feeling very much fulfilled, he thinks he is a great mahatma. Money is being poured at his feet. Flowers and respect.But nothing of the creative. He has not written a poem. If you respect a man who has written a beautiful poem, it seems meaningful. He has made the world a little more beautiful. If somebody has painted a picture or somebody has danced a beautiful dance, he has made the world a little more beautiful. He has to be appreciated. But nobody will appreciate him.A man standing just doing nothing – dying. It is a long, slow suicide. And the man must be really interested in self torture. This is great torture, but people call it tapashcharya, they call it austerity, asceticism. Asceticism is part of the goal-oriented mind.And the world is divided between masochists and sadists. Masochists become leaders, mahatmas. And sadists become followers. They say, “We cannot do it, we want to do these things to people, but we cannot do them.” But there are a few people who are doing it on their own, so they appreciate.Avoid this false way. Know it is false. And on this false way many illusions exist. Now, a man standing for ten years will become hallucinatory. He will have hallucinations. Whenever he will close his eyes, he will have dreams. And those dreams will become very, very real because he has deprived himself of sleep. You just try it for a few days. Don’t eat, don’t sleep. Within three weeks your hallucination will be perfect. You may start talking to God, you may start seeing God. Deprive yourself of your ordinary necessities, and the mind starts becoming hallucinatory. The mind goes berserk and you can start seeing things which are not.I have heard, a real story…Fred P. Shields, 73, spotted a nest of copperheads one day in the eighty-foot well on his farm in Cheshire, Ohio. So he enlisted his forty-two-year-old son Fred D. and his eighteen-year-old grandson James to help kill them.Now the son and the grandson didn’t bother about whether those snakes were there or not.They attached a hose to the exhaust pipe of their pickup truck, stuck the hose into the well, and filled it with carbon monoxide. After a while, Shields lowered himself into the well to see if the snakes were really dead. When he failed to come out again, his son went in after him. When the second man failed to come out, the grandson went in. Rescuers from the sheriff’s office retrieved the three men, all dead, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning, but they found no sign of any snakes in the well.You can see things which are not. Always remember that the mind is capable of seeing things which are not. And by seeing things which are not, you will miss seeing things which are. So the hallucinatory effort has to be avoided. Don’t deprive. Don’t deprive your body either of food or of sleep or of rest. Don’t deprive your body of anything. Let your body function as healthily as possible, as normally as possible. Don’t torture the body because your mind is part of the body. If you torture the body, the mind goes berserk and starts seeing things.And once you start seeing things you are trapped. Then you want to avoid them or kill them, or, if they are beautiful things, you want to attain more of them.That which is, needs no deprivation. You need not lie down on a thorn bed and you need not go on a fast and you need not torture your body by not sleeping. In fact, the more healthy and normal you are, the more is the possibility for the truth to be seen.The people who are goal oriented, they don’t look into life. They look in books because they can find the goal only in books. In life there is no goal. If you look around there is no goal. Life is there, every part of existence is full of joy, celebrating. The children are turning and dancing and the birds are dancing and the peacocks are dancing and the stars are turning and dancing. The whole existence is turning in a dance. If you look into life there is dance, but there is no God. Where to find God? Where to find perfection? You have to look in the books. It exists only in the books, in the imaginations of those people who have written books.I have heard…A Japanese academic who wished to understand Zen more fully went to a monastery to submit himself to the koans. He was asked, “What is mu?” To define, that is a word which has no meaning in Japanese.It is just like hoo. Hoo is a Sufi word, it means nothing, it is just a sound. Exactly is the word mu, it means nothing, it is just a sound. In English there is one word coined by a new logician, and that word is po. Yes means yes, no means no. Po is just between the two, it neither means yes nor means no. Learn this word, it is a very significant word. If somebody asks, “Is there a God?” say “Po,” because if you say yes, it is wrong, you don’t know. If you say no, it is wrong because you don’t know. So, “Po.” Po does not make you committed to any ideology. It makes no sense, it is simply a nonsense sound. So is mu. If you ask a Zen master, “Has a dog buddha nature?” he will say, “Mu.” It means neither no nor yes. If you ask, “Do buddhas exist after they have left the body?” he will say, “Mu.” Or my disciples can use the word hoo. This word mu has no meaning.As a good scholar, he proceeded to look up the syllable in Japanese and other Oriental dictionaries, to determine a potential root meaning and habitual usage.When the master gave him mu to meditate on, he went to the dictionary. Naturally, a scholar goes that way. He must have gone to the library. The master has said, “Meditate on mu.” The master has said, “Meditate on something nonsensical so that you can get out of your mind.” The mind can manage the sensible, the mind can manage the rational, but the mind cannot manage the nonsensical. The nonsensical takes you out of the mind.So if you meditate on mu, what will happen? Nothing can happen because mu means nothing. If I say, “Meditate on dog” much will happen. You may start thinking about a dog you had in your childhood, you may start thinking about dogs that you were always afraid of, the neighbors’ dogs. Or you may start thinking of a dog your girlfriend had and then about the girlfriend and then all the girlfriends that you had, and so on and so forth. You can move from dog and the mind can function: the law of association. And infinite are the possibilities. You may think about dog, you may read it in the reverse order; it becomes god and you may start thinking about theologies and religions.The word mu means nothing, you cannot go anywhere with it. You have to remain stuck: mu. Now where to go? It does not remind you of anything; it makes no sense, so there is no association with it. If you go on meditating on mu, there will come a point of frustration, boredom. Exhausted, your mind will start rebelling. Your mind will say, “Drop this. Enough of it. I cannot think anything about it.” The mind is ready to think, but what to think about mu? There is no door opening anywhere, it leads nowhere. So a time comes, one moment comes when the mind simply fed up with the whole thing, drops itself, disappears. And in that moment there is a vision of reality.That is the way of a koan. A koan is a nonsensical thing, you cannot figure it out. But the scholar went to the library.He proceeded to look up the syllable in Japanese and other Oriental dictionaries to determine a potential root meaning and habitual usage. He presented his findings to the master, who repulsed him and immediately sent him away. Our scholar next thought the question to be more subtle, and tried to analyze the tonal component of the syllable in every language of the Chinese group. He again presented his findings and research to the master, who now thought it was time to convince this poor scholar of the seriousness of his situation, that it was not a question of another academic excursion. “I will give you one more chance,” he said, “And if you do not solve the riddle, I will cut off your leg.”Now, even in the most extreme arguments or thesis examinations of the academic world, things usually don’t become this tough and this rough.The scholar could not believe what type of master he is. “He will cut off my leg! At the most you can fail, you can say, ‘You have failed,’ but cutting off the leg? This is too much, this is too rude.”But the threat did frighten the scholar out of his wits, so to speak. He completely concentrated upon the syllable itself now. Because it was dangerous. This man could do something and he looked dangerous. Zen masters look dangerous.I have heard about a Zen seeker who was working and working upon his koan and was not able to solve it, and was becoming very much afraid to go to his master because the master would beat him, throw him, jump upon him and would do anything, whatever happened in that moment. So he was becoming so afraid, so much afraid that he was avoiding going to him. And that night he received a message, “Tomorrow morning you have to come,” so he was very much afraid. He tried hard on his koan so that some answer would come that would appeal to him, to this madman. “Otherwise he will beat me again.” He could not sleep. He meditated, meditated and he was feeling very tired and exhausted.So, sitting in meditation, just for a moment he fell asleep, and in sleep it is said he saw Bodhidharma in a dream: the archpriest, the patriarch, the original patriarch, the master of all Zen masters. And Bodhidharma is really dangerous looking, his eyes are so big. And Bodhidharma looked into the face of this young seeker. He became so afraid of Bodhidharma’s eyes that, the story says, he awoke out of fear, and not only out of the ordinary sleep, but from the sleep of lives together. He awoke. Out of fear he became enlightened. The face of Bodhidharma and his eyes…So this scholar was very much frightened; out of his wits he was.He completely concentrated upon the syllable itself, trying to puzzle out the meaning, and in the process of concentration itself achieved the result. The question had a nonanalytic effect and a nonverbal result as well.Those who are not privy to the extreme concentration brought about by the Zen master’s exercise, or the scholar’s reply, might not realize that many of the most important and compelling questions that face us cannot be looked up in an encyclopedia or dictionary. There is no place where the meaning of one’s life is written up.There is no book, no scripture, no Bible which has the answer for your life. There is nobody who can give you the answer. In fact, there is no answer, there is only an understanding. By understanding, the question disappears. There is no answer.And the goal-oriented man seeks the answer, so he will come upon many answers and will hang around one answer for a few days, a few months, a few years, sometimes a few lives, and then will get fed up and will move to another answer. But that is a long procession, one can go on ad infinitum, from one answer to another answer.The real path is not of finding an answer, but of finding an understanding. In the light of understanding the question disappears. And suddenly you are the answer. Suddenly life itself is the answer. The way is the goal, samsara is nirvana.I have heard a very beautiful anecdote. You may have heard it. It has many versions, but this version I don’t think you will have heard before…Six blind medical students sat by the gate of a great city as an elephant was led slowly past. Inspired by scientific curiosity of the highest degree, the six blind students rushed forward to palpate the great beast and to determine the nature of his being. The first man’s hands fell upon the elephant’s tusks. “Ah,” said he, “this creature is a thing of bones, they even protrude through his skin.” Later on, years having past, this man became an orthopedist.At the same time, the second blind medical student seized the elephant’s trunk and identified its function. “What a nose!” he exclaimed. “Surely this is the most important part of the animal.” Accordingly, he became a rhinologist.The third man chanced upon the elephant’s great flapping ear and came to a similar conclusion. For him the ear was everything, so he in time became an otologist.The fourth rested his hands on the huge chest and abdomen of the elephant. “The contents of this barrel must be enormous,” he thought, “and the pathological derangements infinite in number and variety.” Nothing would do but that he would become an internist.One of the blind men caught hold of the elephant’s tail. “This,” he said, “would appear to be a useless appendage. It might even be a source of trouble. Better take it off.” The blind man became a surgeon.But the last of the six did not depend upon the sense of touch. Instead he only listened. He had heard the elephant approaching, the rattle of the chains and the shouts of the keepers. It may be that he heard the elephant heaving a great sigh as he trudged along. “Where is the creature going?” he asked. No one answered. “Where did he come from?” he asked. No one knew. Then this man fell into a deep reverie. What was in the elephant’s mind he wondered, in having left wherever he was and having come to this great city? Why does he submit to the indignities of our curiosity and the slavery of chains? And while he was wondering how to find out the answers to these questions the elephant was gone.This man became a psychiatrist.The other students were disgusted at this impracticality. They turned their backs upon their visionary companion. “What difference does it make,” said they, “what the elephant’s purpose may be? And his chains – they constitute a legal not a medical problem. The important thing is to recognize the animal’s structure.”Then they fell to quarreling among themselves as to whether the elephant’s structure was primarily that of a nose or that of an ear or that of a tail. And although they all differed flatly from one another on these points, they all agreed that the psychiatrist was a fool.People look into books, find fragments, make philosophies out of fragments. That’s how all the religions have evolved and all the theologies and all the philosophies. They are all fragmentary.The whole vision cannot be contained in any book and the whole vision cannot be contained in any creed. Then where to find the whole vision? The whole vision can be found only when you drop the mind and look into the reality of things without thinking about them. It is not a question of contemplation, not a question of thinking, not a question of logical thinking. It is not a question of any syllogism. You have to just look silently, innocently, into that which is already herenow. That is revelation.And it is not that you come upon a truth. Suddenly you find the seeker is the sought and the observer is the observed, that the objective and the subjective are not two. They were looking like two because the mind was standing in between and was making a boundary. Now the mind has disappeared, the boundary has disappeared. There is only oneness, one whole.Now the second way. The second way is the way I call source oriented. The source is already here, the goal is not. The source is within you, the goal is without. The goal will be somewhere in the future, the source is already nourishing you. It is hidden in you, otherwise you would not be alive. It is flowing in you. The source is present, the goal is absent. To look for the absent is to look in a wrong way. To look into the present and for the present is to look in the right way.The source-oriented person is never a perfectionist, cannot be. The source-oriented person is a holist, a totalist. He has no idea of perfection. He simply lives moment to moment in its totality. He lives a very unpredictable life. He lives a life of wonder and surprise. You cannot predict him. Even he himself cannot predict what he is going to do the next moment. Who knows? The next moment will come and we will see. The next moment will bring its own reality, and the next moment will create its own response. He lives responsively, responding. He is always alert to respond to every situation whatever, but he has no prefixed idea how to react, how to respond, what to do. He is alert. The situation arises; he responds. He responds out of his alertness, but he never responds out of any answers that he has gathered in the past. His each moment is total.Remember, I am not saying “perfect.” His each moment is total. What is the difference? A perfect man, maybe, will never be angry. That is the idea of a perfect man: he will never be angry. But a total man can be angry. You can only be promised one thing, that he will be totally angry. It cannot be said he will not be angry. Only one thing can be said, that he will be totally angry. If ever he is angry, he will be totally angry.It happened…A scholar came to Raman Maharshi and he was arguing and arguing and arguing, and nobody had seen Raman Maharshi ever being angry. Raman was saying again and again, “I am not a philosopher and I don’t believe in proofs and arguments, and I don’t know any logic. I say, ‘God is’ because I have experienced it so.”But the scholar wouldn’t listen. Then suddenly the disciples saw something they could not believe. Raman Maharshi jumped with his staff in his hand and rushed after that scholar. And the scholar ran away, he also could not believe that this man would do such a thing. Raman Maharshi chased him out, came back laughing, sat on his couch and forgot all about it.Now, this is a whole man. He is not perfect according to your idea of perfection, but he is whole. Yes, sometimes anger may be needed, that may be the right response. So, one never knows. Even he himself would have been surprised by it. When he came back after chasing the man out, he must have been laughing at himself too. “So this is possible,” he must have laughed. He must have enjoyed the whole thing, he must have chuckled.A whole man lives moment to moment, not knowing what is going to happen. His life has no script. His life is not a drama; he has no script. Nothing is decided beforehand. Each moment opens a door and he responds accordingly. He responds with the totality of his being. I can see Raman totally angry in that moment. And that is the beauty of it, that is the innocence of it.The whole man is spontaneous, natural. He is not a hypocrite, he is not pretending anything. He is open, vulnerable, available. He is childlike, simple, and tremendously beautiful.This is the way of Zen. It is the most unique phenomenon in the whole world of religions. Zen is the highest peak that religion has attained yet. It is the sanest religion.Now this beautiful anecdote. It is simple, but now you will be able to understand:Hakuju served as a distinguished lecturer at the Tendai-sect College.Hakuju was a great Zen master, but a Zen master continues to live his ordinary life. Somebody once asked Bokuju, another great Zen master, “What did you use to do before you became enlightened?” He said, “I used to cut wood for my master and carry water from the well.” Now he himself had become the master. And the inquirer asked, “And now? Now what do you do?” He said, “I chop wood and carry water for myself.” And the man asked, “Then what is the difference? Before also you used to chop wood and carry water, and now also you do the same, so what is the difference?” Bokuju said, “Before, I used to do it unconsciously. Now I do it consciously.” The quality of being has changed; the action remains the same.Hakuju served as a distinguished lecturer at the Tendai-sect College. And remember that Bokuju was in a simple situation. To chop wood is easy, even after enlightenment it is easy, but to lecture in a college is more difficult. It is more difficult than chopping wood, but Hakuju continued. He became enlightened, but he continued the way he was doing. He became famous all over the country, but he continued, he remained a lecturer.Zen believes that the ordinary life has not to be renounced. The ordinary life has to be transformed by your inner understanding.Another great Zen saying. Another great Zen master has said, “Before I came to my master, rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains. Then my master confused me utterly. Then rivers were no longer rivers and mountains were no longer mountains. Then living in the presence of my master, by and by the confusion disappeared, the smoke disappeared, and one day again rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains.”Now, what is the difference, because rivers were rivers before and mountains were mountains before? Now they are mountains and they are rivers again, so what is the difference? The difference is not on the outside. The difference is on the inside. Before, they were just ordinary mountains, rivers; now they have an extraordinary quality. That quality you give to them, you pour into them. Your luminosity makes your whole existence luminous.A man is not what he does, a man is what he is. So the emphasis of Zen is never to change your actions, just transform your understanding, transform your consciousness. Bring a new consciousness into existence.As he was lecturing with his customary zeal on the Chinese classics one hot summer’s afternoon, he noticed that a few of the students were dozing off. He stopped lecturing in midsentence and said, “It is a hot afternoon isn’t it? Can’t blame you for going to sleep. Mind if I join you?”Now, a perfectionist will not be able to do it at all. How can a perfectionist fall asleep before his students, howsoever hot the summer is? And he may be feeling sleepy because the body is the body. Whether it belongs to an enlightened person or to an unenlightened person doesn’t make any difference. The body follows its own laws. He must have been feeling sleepy, it was really hot. But a perfectionist will try to pretend. A holist, a totalist will not pretend. The moment he felt sleep was coming to him he stopped in midsentence. He would not complete even the sentence; he lives moment to moment. Even to wait to complete the sentence is false. Why wait? He stopped in midsentence and asked the students: “It is a hot afternoon isn’t it? Can’t blame you for going to sleep.”And see the point. A perfectionist will always be blaming everybody, “You are wrong.” “You are not doing this.” “This should be done this way.” A perfectionist is continuously condemning everybody. That is his joy. He is trying to put everything right in the world.It is said a man – must have been a perfectionist – came to a Zen master, Rinzai. And the man who was a Christian said to Rinzai, “In our scripture it is written that God created the world in six days, and then on the seventh day he rested. But what sort of world? I have been asking my Christian missionaries, but they can’t answer, so I have come to you, master. What sort of world? Such an ugly world, so full of pain and misery. Full of imperfections. What a world God created. And he took six days.” Rinzai looked at the man and he said, “Do you think you can improve upon it?” The man was a little puzzled, but still he said, “Yes, I think I can.” So Rinzai shouted, “Then what are you doing here? Why are you waiting and wasting time? Improve it! How many days will you take?”The perfectionist will find fault even with God. “Why did he create this world? Why did he create tuberculosis and cancer? And why did he create poverty and richness, and why did he create this and that? Why?” A perfectionist continuously condemns, that is his joy.If this master Hakuju was a perfectionist, he would have shouted at the students, “What are you doing? For what have you come here? You are falling asleep? This is not the way of a seeker, not the way of a disciple, not the way of a student.” But rather than saying this, he says: “It is a hot afternoon isn’t it? Can’t blame you for going to sleep.” He understands. The total man understands. He understands his limitations, he understands everybody else’s limitations. He never asks the impossible.“Mind if I join you?” Really beautiful. Just superb, a master stroke: “Mind if I join you?” He is asking their permission because a few of them may be perfectionists. And they were.With this, Hakuju shut his textbook and leaning well back in his chair, fell asleep.And not only that, when a really total man falls asleep, he snores too.The class was dumbfounded and those who had been dozing were awakened by his snores.Must have been a man of childlike qualities. It is very difficult to fall asleep so easily and to snore. And to snore before one’s own students? Must have been a very egoless person.The class was dumbfounded… They could not believe it, because the man was known as an enlightened master all over the country. Even the emperor used to come to see him. And this enlightened man has fallen asleep, cannot keep himself awake, is as ordinary as any ordinary person? They were dumbfounded.And when they heard him snoring, it was unbelievable. Who has ever heard of a buddha snoring? But a real buddha will not be worried. If he wants to snore, he will snore. If he feels like snoring, he will snore. He will not bother what you say about him.…and those who had been dozing were awakened by his snores. All sat up in their seats…Now their sleep disappeared.…and waited for the master to awaken.This you can find only in the Zen literature, this possibility of being so human, of being so imperfect and yet unworried about it. A tremendous acceptance of all that is, of sleep, of snoring. No effort to hide yourself behind any facade.Once there was a famous Buddhist layman named Busol. He was a deeply enlightened man, his wife too was enlightened, and so were his son and daughter. A man came up to Busol one day and asked, “Is Zen difficult or not?”Busol said, “Oh, it is very difficult. It is like taking a stick and trying to hit the moon.”The man was puzzled and began to think. “If Zen is so difficult, how did Busol’s wife attain enlightenment?” So he went and asked her the same question.She said, “It is the easiest thing in the world. It is just like touching your nose when you wash your face in the morning.”By now the man was thoroughly confused. “I don’t understand. Is Zen easy? Is it difficult? Who is right?” So he asked their son.The son said, “Zen is not difficult and not easy. On the tips of a hundred blades of grass is the buddha’s meaning.”“Not difficult? Not easy? What is it then?” So the man went to the daughter and asked her. “Your father, your mother, and your brother all gave me different answers. Who is right?”She said, “If you make it difficult, it is difficult. If you make it easy, it is easy. But if you don’t think, the truth is just as it is.”“If you make it difficult, it is difficult. If you make it easy, it is easy. But if you don’t think, the truth is just as it is.” The truth is just as it is. This suchness, this total acceptance, this total surrender to truth – no pretensions, no hypocrisies, no effort to hide yourself behind screens, no effort to show yourself as more than the life-size – this authenticity is Zen. And this authenticity is the door to the first principle.Be spontaneous, be natural and you have already arrived.I was reading a few lines…The centipede was happy quite,Until a toad in fun,Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”This worked his mind to such a pitch,He lay distracted in a ditch,Considering how to run.If you ask a centipede… A centipede has a hundred legs.The centipede was happy quite,Until a toad in fun,Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”This worked his mind to such a pitch,He lay distracted in a ditch,Considering how to run.Now it becomes impossible. The moment you think, things become impossible. If you don’t think, the truth is as it is.The last parable…Buddha sprang from the right side of his mother and took seven steps in each of the four directions. He then looked once each way, pointed one finger to the sky and touched the ground with his other hand. He said, “In the sky above and the sky below, only I am holy.”This is a very beautiful story. When Buddha was born, the mother was standing under a tree. He was born while the mother was standing, and he was born in a very miraculous way. He suddenly sprang from his mother’s side, stood on the ground, walked seven feet, put one hand toward the sky and touched the earth with the other hand, and said, “In the sky above and the sky below, only I am holy.”Zen people have laughed about this story very much. If they were Christian they would have tried to prove it, that it has to be real, historical. But they don’t take things seriously.One Zen master, Ummun, said…Somebody asked Ummun, “What do you say about this nonsense story?”He said, “On the Buddha’s birthday I was there, present.”“Ummun present?” The inquirer was surprised.Ummun said, “As he sprang from the side of his mother, I hit him and killed him and fed him to a hungry dog. The whole world was at peace.”The inquirer was very much puzzled, so he went to another master, saying, “What do you say? The story is nonsense and Ummun’s answer is even more nonsense. He says, ‘I was present. Not only present, I killed Buddha then and there and fed him to a hungry dog, and the whole world has been at peace since then.’”Otherwise Buddha would have created trouble for people. Zen masters say, “Buddha, why were you born? You created so much trouble for people because everybody is trying to meditate since you came. Had you not come, the world would have been at peace. Nobody would have been meditating, nobody would have been into this trip of nirvana. Why did you come?” That is the meaning of Ummun when he says, “I killed him and fed him to a hungry dog, and since then the world has been at peace.”The inquirer went to another master, Lin Chi…“What the Buddha said on his birthday is wrong,” said Lin Chi, “so I will hit him thirty times. And what Zen master Ummun said is also wrong, so I will hit him thirty times. And what I just said is wrong, so I will hit myself thirty times.”In fact, the moment you say something about the first principle, you go wrong. Nothing can be said about the first principle. Yes, it can be experienced. Drop the mind, and experience it.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Dr. Abraham Kovoor has attacked you in an article published by the Weekly Current. What do you have to say about it?I enjoyed it. It was sheer delight. It was delicious. It was simply far out. I enjoyed it because nobody else has complimented me as highly as he has done. I could not believe that somebody would praise me so highly. Listen to his compliments.First compliment: he says “Osho is crazy.” True, sir. I agree absolutely. In fact, there is no way to God unless you are utterly crazy. Only those who are courageous enough to go beyond the boundaries of so-called sanity, attain. Only those who are ready to put their minds aside, only those who are ready to cut their heads off completely, they attain. I am crazy. So was Buddha, so was Jesus.There are books written against Jesus in which people have tried to prove that he was mad. And of course, when Mahavira was walking on the streets, naked, ecstatic, people must have thought him mad. He was driven out of towns, cities; he was not given shelter. Down the centuries, the man of God has always been thought of as mad. The reason is simple. If he is sane, then you are all insane, then the majority is insane. The majority cannot accept the fact. It is easier, more comfortable to call him insane.But remember something George Bernard Shaw once said. Somebody was saying, “Millions of people believe this. How can they be wrong?” And George Bernard Shaw said, “If millions of people believe it, how can they be right?” Millions of people, and being in the right? Impossible. The greater the crowd, the less is the possibility of truth.Truth has been available to only a few individuals. Why? Because only a few dare to enter that madness. Only a few dare to put their reasoning, cunningness, argument aside. Life is not logic, it goes beyond it.And not only the mystics say so, now even the physicists – who are not mystics at all. What they are saying is incredible. Let me quote a few things. The physicists are now saying the same old nonsense as the mystics used to in the ancient days. The so-called rationalists have always called those mystics mad. Certainly whatever they say does not follow ordinary reason, it is something beyond. Now listen to what physicists are saying: “They speak of a universe which is finite but unconfined. They say the universe is expanding, but expanding into nothing. They also tell us that electrons are capable of passing through space without taking any time to do it. The physicists are now even proposing to use the term quark to describe a particle of which the essential property is that when three of them combine, their collective weight is less than that of any one of them by itself, although nothing has been lost by their conjunction.”It is absurd. It cannot be so according to ordinary logic. But if you ask the physicist, he says, “What can we do? We are helpless. It is so. We cannot change the reality. We cannot change the reality just to adjust to your logic.” And the reality does not believe in your Aristotles. It does not suffer from Aristotle-itis. It does not bother about what your logic says, it goes on its own way. So the physicists say, “What can we do? Change your logic. If it looks mad, maybe the universe is mad.”It looks mad, but the mystics have always said so. In the Upanishads it is said, “Take the whole out of the whole, and the whole remains behind.” Now, Dr. Abraham Kovoor will call this man mad. If you take the whole out of the whole, nothing remains behind. This is ordinary mathematics and logic. But the Upanishads say, “Take the whole out of the whole, and the whole still remains behind. Go on taking as many wholes as you want, and still the whole remains behind.” The mystics have also stumbled upon the illogicalness of reality.Now, what do you say about this “quark”? It fits absolutely with the Upanishadic idea. It does not fit with Aristotle. Bad for poor Aristotle, and bad for poor Dr. Abraham Kovoor.I am crazy. I have seen the reality which does not fit with the mind. In fact, the mind is the only barrier to reality. It does not allow you to see the reality. The more you are confined in the mind, the less is the possibility of knowing. And if you insist that you will know only through the mind, then you will never know.The mind is very ordinary. It is good for day-to-day use, but to penetrate the infinite, to penetrate the eternal, to penetrate that which is the ultimate mystery, the mind is just as futile as if you are trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. It is just irrelevant.Reality is irrational, reality is nonsensical, reality is absurd.Now, Abraham Kovoor can be against the mystics, but what will he do against the physicist? And why have they both come to the same conclusion? Science has penetrated reality from a different door, but the reality is the same. So have the mystics done. They have entered from a different door, but they have entered the same space.Now scientists say the universe is expanding. Into what? Because when we say “the universe,” we include everything that is. When we say “universe” we mean the whole, the total. Now you say the universe is expanding. Into what? There cannot be anything outside the universe. We have included, by the very definition of the word universe, that all is in it. So nothing is outside it. Into what is the universe expanding? Even if you say “into nothingness,” then the nothingness is outside the universe. Then the nothingness into which the universe can expand is very real. Then the nothingness is not just nothingness. Then you have not decided rightly what the universe is.This concept of an expanding universe is crazy, but that is what mystics have been saying down the ages. Hindus have chosen the word brahman. Brahman means “that which goes on expanding.”Now, Abraham Kovoor says that he believes only in something which is proved objectively. God is not proved objectively. What is proved objectively? The electron is proved? The neutron is proved? The proton is proved? What is proved objectively? Nobody has yet seen electrons, nobody has yet seen neutrons, nobody has yet seen protons, but the scientists say they are. If nobody has seen them, nobody has looked at them, nobody has observed them as objects, then why do you say they are? Scientists say, “Because we can see the effect. We cannot see them, but we can see their effect.” The same say the mystics, “God is not observed objectively, but we can see the effect.”Can’t you see the universe running so intelligently? Can’t you see tremendous intelligence permeating the whole? And it is not only the mystics who say the universe is full of intelligence. Just the other day I was reading, and I came across one of Albert Einstein’s quotes. He says, “The scientist’s religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of the natural law which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”“…intelligence of such superiority…” And this is not Jakob Bohme, Ramakrishna or Osho. This is Albert Einstein saying so. “…intelligence of such superiority that human intelligence is reduced to utterly insignificant status.” The world is running in such a deep harmony. That harmony shows that there is a unity in it, that it is not a dead universe, that it is not a stupid universe, that it is intelligent.Physics has become metaphysics again. Physicists even talk about atoms having free will. Albert Einstein has said that no event can be postulated without the presence of a witnessing observer. And Eddington says, “Religion first became possible for a reasonable scientific man about the year 1927.” But Dr. Kovoor seems to have not lived since then. Eddington also says, “We begin to suspect that the stuff of the world is mind stuff. The universe looks more like a thought, than like a thing.”And that is what I mean when I say that there is intelligence, great intelligence in existence, or God. Recently a new branch of science, molecular biology, has conclusively proved that the “matter” of organic life, our very flesh, really is mind stuff. Eddington, Jeans, Einstein, Schrodinger all agree in this. But the problem with the learned Dr. Kovoor is that he goes on fighting against out-of-date religion, with the aid of his out-of-date so-called science.You can ask, what is the purpose of this intelligent universe? The scientist David Foster says, “To become more intelligent.” I love this answer. This is what the mystics have always been propounding. From unawareness to awareness, from unintelligence to intelligence, there is the way and there is the goal. The Upanishads say, “Tamsoma jyotirgamay – O master of the Universe, take me from darkness to light.”What do we mean when we say “God is”? We only mean that the world is intelligent, nothing else.Now, Dr. Kovoor has a very childish idea of God and he goes on demolishing that idea, and without ever bothering about the fact that that is not my idea. It seems he has not read anything of what I have been saying. Through his article I could not gather that he has read anything. What type of rationalist is he? He is ready to condemn me and criticize me, without ever having read anything. At the most, it seems that he has read a few reports of journalists in the newspapers, and that too it seems was many years ago, because for years I have not been conducting meditation sessions, and he says I conduct meditation sessions and I hypnotize people. He is not aware of what I am doing here. This is not a rationalistic approach.And he says he believes only that which is proved objectively. In the article, he mentions that fifty years ago his wife conceived a son from him, and now that son is still alive and still healthy and “still growing and proliferating independently as Dr. Aries Kovoor.” Now, he says he believes only in the objective truth. The mother knows. The father only believes. The son is never an objective fact for the father. Dr. Kovoor’s wife may know to whom the son belongs, but not Dr. Kovoor. Dr. Kovoor, you may be misguided by your wife. And women are very strange creatures. What objective proof have you that this is your son? There is no possibility of any objective proof. You trust, you believe.God cannot be proved objectively, that’s true. Nobody is trying to prove him objectively. In fact, if God is proved objectively, he will no longer be God. Then he will become a thing. Then you can dissect God in your lab, you can dissect God in the scientist’s laboratory, you can analyze. Then it will not be God at all.We are not saying that God exists as a person – at least I have never said so.Now, he goes on saying, “Osho holds the foolish view that through meditation, man can ‘feel the very core of existence.’” If this is the foolish view, then Buddha is a fool and so is Krishna and so is Christ, so is Lao Tzu, so is Chuang Tzu, so is Zarathustra and so is Mohammed, because they all hold the view that through meditation, you can come to the very core of existence. Because through meditation you come to your innermost core of intelligence. Through meditation you become so silent that your own intelligence is revealed to you. In that very revelation, God is revealed.If I am intelligent in my innermost core, then existence cannot be unintelligent because I am born out of this existence. I am a by-product of this existence. If I am intelligent, then the universe has to be intelligent, otherwise from where will my intelligence come? Dr. Kovoor is an intelligent man. And that is enough proof that there is God. Otherwise from where does this intelligence come?He goes on saying that life is nothing but chemicals. Life is “sustained by the oxidatory chemical action Keep quiet oxidization. This chemical action is maintained by my breathing and blood circulation. It is not in any way different from the production of heat and light energies during the combustion of the hydrocarbon in a burning candle.” But a burning candle has no intelligence. He says there is no difference in any way between a man’s life and a burning candle. The burning candle is not intelligent.I tried, because I thought maybe… So last night I criticized a burning candle. But I could not provoke her. I succeeded with Dr. Kovoor. I pushed his button; he is very angry. Can you push the button of a burning candle, and will the burning candle criticize you? There seems to be a little difference, Dr. Kovoor. It can’t be just a burning candle. You got hurt, you jumped to defend yourself. You have been arguing against me, you have been calling me names, all the names that can be called. He says, “Osho is an ignoramus,” “Osho is a fool,” “Osho is crazy,” “Osho is mad,” “Osho is absurd,” “Osho…” So on, so forth. He has exhausted the whole vocabulary.Now, I tried hard with a burning candle. Nothing happened. The burning candle continued to burn. There is a difference and the difference is that of intelligence.And if you say that life is born out of chemicals, then too you will have to accept that somehow the chemicals are carrying a latent intelligence. Otherwise from where will this intelligence come in? Out of the blue? From where?He says life is nothing but oxidization, breath – breathing in, breathing out. But can’t you become a witness to your breath? Can’t you sit silently? The Buddhists have been doing so down the ages. Can’t you see the breath coming in, going out? You breathe in, you can watch. You breathe out, you can watch. Between the two there is a gap, you can watch that gap too. Certainly somebody else is there hidden behind the breathing process. A witnessing intelligence.That’s what meditation is all about. To know the witness, to know the sakshin, to know the observer.Even if life comes out of chemicals, out of oxidization, even if life is prolonged by oxidization, one thing is certain: life is far superior to these things. There is intelligence, there is awareness. This awareness cannot be objectively proved because I cannot put this awareness on the table for your examination. This awareness is subjectivity. When a scientist is trying to analyze something, there are two things. The thing that he is analyzing, and the person who is hidden behind and analyzing it. The analyzed is not the analyzer, and the analyzer is not the analyzed. The observer, the subjectivity, is there standing behind.The object confronts you. That’s why we call it the object – that which confronts you. How can I confront myself? I will always remain the subjective. Things can confront me. I will always be the one who confronts things. I cannot be a thing. Man cannot be reduced to being an object.And if man’s consciousness cannot be reduced to being an object, what to say about the total consciousness of existence? That’s what God is.He says, “I am an atheist because I do not believe in gods, and I do not believe in gods because it is not rational to believe something for which there is no objective evidence.” There is no objective evidence for the subjectivity. That’s why we call it “subjectivity.” By the very nature of it there is no objective evidence, but inference is possible. A candle is a candle. A candle is not Kovoor. And there is a difference. And it is not a slight difference. The difference is great because the difference is that of subjectivity. The candle has no subjectivity, it has no interiority. The candle has no intention. It is there burning, it has no innermost core. If Kovoor is standing there, he has an intention, an interiority. That interiority, that intention, that subjectivity, cannot be objectified – and if we cannot objectify a single man’s consciousness, how can we objectify the consciousness of the total? But the total is full of intelligence.Watch the trees, the birds, the life growing, evolving. Watch the stars moving in such absolute harmony, with such rhythm. It cannot be just accidental.There are only two possibilities. Either existence is just accidental or it has something running in it which joins it together. We call that thread God which runs into everything and joins and keeps the whole of existence together. God is not a person, is not a thing. God is just the intelligence of the existence.He says, “Unlike Osho, I am not a fool to believe in a creator of the cosmos that was not created. Universe is matter and energy in space and time. Matter, energy, space, and time have neither beginning nor end.” Now, I have never said that God created the universe. That’s why I say he has never read anything I have said. He goes on projecting his own ideas and arguing against them. I have never said that God has created the universe. I have again and again said that the creation is the creator, that the world is God, that there is no separation, that it is not like a painter and the painting – that it is like a dancer and the dance. God is existence. There is no separation. Not that God has created it; God has become it. You cannot find God anywhere other than in his existence, and you cannot separate them.Can you find the dance when the dancer has gone? Or can you call a person a dancer when he is not dancing? They are always together. The dance and the dancer are together. They are two aspects of one energy. Creation and creator are together.In fact, my own choice is that I don’t like calling God a “creator.” I call God “creativity.” It is an ongoing process. Not that one day God created the world. The creation continues. It is moment to moment, moving, it is a process, it is dynamic, it is riverlike. And God is not separate.But then he will say, “Then why bring God in? Why can we not simply say that existence is enough?” There is a reason. If you don’t like the word God, there is no problem with me. You can drop the word God. I bring the word God in only to indicate that existence is not just material, it has intelligence. That existence is not just the outer periphery, it has an interiority; that there is a great intention moving, that it is not without a soul.If you want some other word, you can use one, Dr. Kovoor. I am not a fanatic about words, any word will do. You can call it “X energy.” If you are so obsessed with the idea of being anti-God, drop that word, that doesn’t matter. Buddha never used it, Mahavira never used it. There is no need, it can be dropped. If you accept that existence is intelligent, drop the word God. We are not worried about it. But if you accept intelligence in existence, you have accepted God. That’s all we mean by God. It is a way of saying that things have not just happened accidentally.What do I mean when I say there is intention? If I give you a wristwatch and you open it, you will immediately say, “Somebody has done a beautiful job.” If I say to you, “Nobody has done this. It is just out of existence, out of millions of years of existence, just accidents. Things got together and somehow it turned out to be a watch,” you will laugh at me. You have already laughed. You will not even believe a small wristwatch can turn out without anybody making it, without any intelligence functioning behind it. That would be a great miracle. You cannot believe even a small wristwatch can come out of accidents, and you can believe that the whole of existence – so delicate, so subtle, so complex that we have not yet been able to know its mystery – has come just out of accidents?It is as if you give a typewriter to a monkey and he goes on typing at random, and one day suddenly a great book like the Bible happens. Out of accidents. The monkey goes on typing, goes on typing. Something will happen. And you see the Sermon on the Mount is being typed. Just accidentally? It is not probable. It is impossible. No possibility of it ever happening.That’s what I mean when I say intelligence, intention. Existence is functioning so together, so beautifully, and evolution is moving to higher peaks. All this shows that existence is full of intelligence.To remain confined to your intelligence is to remain confined in an imprisonment. To get out of this limitation and to look into the intelligence of the universal, of the universal intelligence, to have a feel for it, that’s what religion is. But one needs to go crazy over it.Dr. Kovoor says, “Life must have originated on different planets at different times by chemical evolution first, and then by biological evolution.” But it makes no difference. If it started on some other planet, how did it start? Whether it started here on the earth or on some other planet, how did it start? The atheist, the materialist has to agree with one thing: that it started suddenly for no reason at all. It was not there and it started. It was not hidden, it was not latent, it was not in a seed form. If you say it was hidden, it was latent, it was in a seed form, that’s what religions say. They say, “God is hidden and is becoming more and more expressed.”Man is yet the highest expression of that intelligence. The tree is a lower expression, the rock a still lower expression. But all are expressions of the same intelligence. Man, as far as we know on this earth, is the highest expression of that intelligence. There are higher possibilities because man is not the end. And the highest possibility that we have seen is what we call enlightenment. A man comes to such a peak that all thoughts disappear and only pure awareness remains, no clouds, only pure sky of being. No smoke of thoughts, only the flame burning bright, of pure life and awareness, of pure energy.We have seen in Buddha the ultimate expression of that intelligence. That’s why we call Buddha “Bhagwan,” because he comes closest to the ultimate intelligence. Maybe there are higher possibilities. One can never be closed to the possibility; maybe there are higher possibilities. It is impossible to conceive of, but maybe. It is impossible to conceive of it because when all thoughts have been dropped, there is no longer anything contaminating consciousness, so what more can be possible? That’s why we have called Buddha “Bhagwan.” “Bhagwan” simply means that he has become the vehicle of the intelligence, and now the vehicle does not interfere at all.When I say “God is” I do not mean God is the creator. I mean God is the hidden energy of existence. Matter is visible God, and the soul is invisible God.He does not believe in God, but he believes in four gods instead. Those four gods are matter, energy, space, and time. Now, he seems to be completely unaware. Since he left school… He is eighty, so he must have left school somewhere sixty years back. It seems since he left school he has not been in touch with what has been happening in science, in the world of science. Dr. Kovoor, much water has flowed down the Ganges. Now matter exists not. And you talk about matter. Friedrich Nietzsche declared, “God is dead,” and God is not dead. He is still alive and kicking. But matter, on the contrary, is dead. Matter has been found not to exist.When the physicists went deeper into the constituents of matter, they found there is no matter at all, there is only energy. Then what is the “matter” we see in a rock? It is just condensed energy. Matter is an appearance. It only appears. There is no solidity. Solidity is just an appearance. Hindus have the right word for it, they call it maya. Maya means that which only appears and is not. Matter has been proved to be maya! And that’s what Shankara has been saying in India and Buddha has been saying and Nagarjuna has been saying: that matter is illusory. Science has absolutely proved that matter is illusory.When you go deeper into matter, and when you come to the electrons, matter is not. Those are nonmaterial energy phenomena. But the energy moves so fast that it creates the illusion of stability, solidity. It is as if you run an electric fan very fast, so fast that you cannot see the blades separately, and you cannot see the gaps between two blades. Now scientists say, if the fan runs with the same speed as electrons run, you can sit on the fan, and you will not feel the blades moving. They will be moving so fast. Sunrays move, in one second, 186,000 miles – in one second – and that is the speed of electric energy. That is the speed of electrons. Now, in a small space the electron is moving with such great speed that you cannot see the gaps. That’s why the wall seems to be solid and you cannot pass through it. In fact, it is not solid. In fact, the wall can be reduced to such a small size that it will become invisible; it has much space in it.The scientists say the whole earth can be reduced to the size of one orange. It is very porous. The whole of existence, all the matter that exists in the whole of existence, can be reduced to such a small size that you can carry it in your suitcase. All is porous, much space exists.And those small elements that go on running are not material either. They are just electrons – electrical energy. Now, Kovoor goes on talking about matter. Matter exists not, Doctor. You’d better start looking into modern science again.And the second thing: he goes on talking about space and time, and Albert Einstein has proved that they are not two. Time does not exist separately from space, it is a dimension of space. So Einstein uses spaciotime, he never says “space and time.”Now, matter has disappeared. Time has disappeared as a separate entity, it has become a dimension of space. So there are two things: energy and space.Now Albert Einstein also says to keep this energy and space together, intelligence is needed. Great intelligence is needed, otherwise they will fall apart. Who will keep them together? How will they be kept together? That intelligence is God.So, three things: space, intelligence, energy. Three things.That is the Christian trinity, the very idea of the three: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And that is the idea of the Hindu trimurti: Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. Three faces of one reality. These are metaphors because the mystics are not talking about mathematics. The mystics are talking in poetry. The same truth is being expressed in poetry. This is the whole idea of the three gunas of the Sankhyas: sattva, rajas, tamas, Three gunas, three attributes are there, but they are faces of one reality. That reality is God.You can call it xyz, whatever name you like. It doesn’t matter. A rose is a rose is a rose. By what name you call it makes no difference.But he goes on talking as if matter, energy, space, and time are four things. He is not aware of modern science.David Foster, the cybernetic scientist says, “Nothing whatever is known about the following rather basic phenomena: mass, electricity, magnetism, spaciotime, etcetera, etcetera. Existence remains a mystery, it is not available to knowledge, essentially it is unknowable.” I call this unknowable element God.What is matter? Physics says there is no matter as such. What we know as matter is made of waves or quanta. The quantum is a mysterious phenomenon. It is a point and a line simultaneously. Absurd. Illogical. Bizarre. And if you ask what sort of waves are these, the answer is, “waves of probability.” Not even waves of “anything.” The modern understanding of science is mystery and magic.If we think deeply into anything, we are bound to stumble upon God because God is the depth of existence. If you go deep into the rock, you will come upon God. If you go deep into yourself, you will come upon God. God is the depth. If we think hard enough in any single direction, we always arrive at the unthinkable. If we ask enough questions along a given line of inquiry, we come in the end to an unanswerable question. That unanswerable question is “Who am I?” That unanswerable question is the koan of the Zen people. That unanswerable question is what meditation is all about.Second compliment. He says “Osho is an ignoramus.” Perfectly true, sir. I don’t claim any knowledge. I only claim ignorance, utter ignorance. But that’s what the Upanishads have been saying. Those who say that they know, know not. That’s what Socrates has been saying, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” These are all ignoramuses and I am happy with this company – the Upanishads, the Taoists, the Zen people, the Sufis. I am tremendously happy with this company.In fact, to know reality, to know yourself, you have to unlearn. Knowledge is good, but good only for the practical world, good only for the objective world. It is not good for knowing yourself. You need not know anything to know yourself. What you need is to go within. You can enter your being. There is no need to know anything beforehand. Knowledge has to be dropped.A German philosopher came to Raman Maharshi and said to him, “Master, I have come to learn from you, and I have traveled long and I have been desiring and desiring to come, and now I am happy that I have come.”And Raman said, “Please, the first principle is that you will have to unlearn. I am not here to help you to learn. You already know too much. If you want more learning, go somewhere else. Here, the whole work is of unlearning, unconditioning. I am ignorant and I help people to become ignorant again, so that they can become innocent, childlike.”And yes, Jesus is right. Only those who are childlike will be able to enter the Kingdom of God. That quality of innocence has to be attained.Third compliment: “Osho is a fool.” Good. True. If I was not a fool, why should I be seeking and searching for God? Only fools do that. Clever people seek money, power, prestige. Cunning people seek something of the world. Only fools try to seek the ultimate.In Hindi we have the same word for a fool as for an enlightened one. We call a fool buddhu, it is derived from Buddha. People must have thought Buddha a fool. He looks foolish. He had everything that one can desire, the palace, the beautiful women, the kingdom, all the comforts, and suddenly he renounced. The masses must have called him buddhu, a fool: “These are the things one desires and he is renouncing them. And what is he going to seek and search for? What more is there than this?” St. Francis was thought to be a fool.Dr. Kovoor has put me in the great company of the greatest people who have walked on the earth. I am thankful.Fourth compliment: “Osho is dangerous.” I am. Those who come to me are going to be destroyed by me, because that is the only way to give them rebirth. If you come to me, I am going to destroy you, because only through that destruction is resurrection. A master has to be a death to the disciple. You will never be the same again. The danger is there. I will take all that you have away. All the illusions have to be taken away. I will leave you naked and nude, empty. But in that emptiness, that which is real happens, that which is eternal happens. I am dangerous.And the fifth compliment: “Osho is a voyeur.” Beautiful. Psychologists say that there are two types of people, voyeurs and exhibitionists. Man is a voyeur, woman is an exhibitionist. And out of the voyeurism of man, all that has happened has happened. It is voyeurism to inquire into truth. It is voyeurism to penetrate reality, the mystery of reality. It is voyeurism to go to Everest and to see what is there. It is voyeurism to go to the moon. Women have not been very creative in that way because they are not voyeurs, they are exhibitionists. They are satisfied to exhibit themselves. Finished. Their work is finished. Man is a voyeur.And the mystics are the voyeurs par excellence. They penetrate the very mystery of God.You can ask Sigmund Freud. He says that the male energy starts seeking the female energy. That is natural. That’s why the woman waits and the man takes the initiative. Even small children will play the game of doctor. And the woman will be the patient and the boy will be the doctor, the voyeur. He wants to see how this girl clicks, what makes her click, what is inside her. Now the scientist is born and the mystic too.Out of this sexual curiosity, all curiosity is born. All curiosity basically is sexual. But nothing is wrong. I love to see a beautiful woman as much as I love to see a beautiful rose. I love to see a beautiful face as much as I like to see a beautiful sunrise. I love to see a beautiful body as much as I love to see a beautiful bird on the wing. I love beauty. I am a voyeur. And I love beauty so much that I want to find out how this whole existence clicks. In that very search, one stumbles upon godliness.And I want to know how I click, what is this intelligence in me. And only because of that search does one come to one’s own being.Nothing is wrong in being a voyeur. And I would have thought that Dr. Kovoor was a voyeur. His name fits with the sound of voyeur – “Kovoor.” It must be accidental, because he believes in accidents. But it rhymes well. But according to himself it seems that he is an exhibitionist. That’s not very good. You are in bad shape, Dr. Voyeur. I had always thought you were a man. Now you have created suspicion in me.The quality of voyeurism is the quality of inquiry. Nothing is wrong in it. Everybody should be a voyeur. And I would like even women to become voyeurs. Only then will they be able to become more creative, only then will they be able to penetrate the mysteries of life. We should try to know what it is. The very curiosity helps you to grow toward higher peaks of intelligence.The sixth compliment: “Osho is a sexual pervert.” That is wonderful. To go beyond sex is certainly a perversion. It is not natural, so it is a perversion. It is not part of unconscious evolution. It is conscious revolution. It happens only through transforming the unconscious into the conscious. When not even a trace of unconsciousness remains, one is free from all desire. This is real brahmacharya. But to have eyes in the valley of the blind is certainly a perversion. Dr. Kovoor, who is not a voyeur, simply shows his obsession with sex. Just a nice old dirty man.And the last compliment: “Osho is absurd.” I am really at a loss how to thank Dr. Voyeur. These are the words I love. I am the genius of the absurd and that is the highest that one can attain. Tertullian, a mystic, a Christian mystic, is reported to have said, “I believe in God because God is absurd.” I also believe in God because God is absurd. I believe in existence because this existence is really absurd. It is incredible. It is so beautiful. It is so wonderful. It is so fantastic. It is so psychedelic. And it comprehends all contradictions. It is so tremendously in harmony that even contradictions don’t contradict. Night and day, summer and winter, and life and death, what more contradictions can you find, and what more absurdities? But somehow everything fits together. The absurdity makes life more fun.If God was just an Aristotelian, life would have been without fun. It would have been too serious and dull and boring. God is not dull, not boring. Life is full of joy and delight. There is love and there is song and there is celebration.I am absurd.You will think that Dr. Kovoor uses all these terms in a very condemnatory sense. That is his business, that is his problem. I am a religious man. If I can find a roseflower, I don’t bother about the thorns. If I can see that a black cloud has a white, silver lining, I dance for the silver lining, and I feel thankful for the black cloud also because without it the silver lining cannot exist. I look through religious eyes. Even the negative turns positive. So maybe he has tried to condemn me, but that is his problem. Why should I take it as a condemnation? I take it as praise, he has complimented me. And these are the words that I like, that I enjoy.Now, a few things that I am sorry to say that I cannot agree on with Dr. Kovoor.The first thing: he says that man has no soul. That means man has no interiority, no intention. That means man has no meaning.He goes on throwing theories upon me which I have never propounded, and then he condemns them. He is fighting with ghosts, and he himself has created them. I have never said that man has an individual soul. We have individual bodies, but our soul is universal. On the periphery we are different, at the center we are one.Now, he goes on condemning and criticizing: “How is it possible? When the body dies, where can the soul go? Nobody has ever seen the soul going.” I have never said that the soul goes anywhere. There is nowhere to go. In fact, the body is nothing but the visible aspect of the soul, and the soul is nothing but the invisible aspect of the body. Man is an ensouled body, and an embodied soul. These are two aspects of some energy, X or God. One aspect is the body, another aspect is the soul. When a man dies, it is not that the soul goes somewhere. When the man dies, the soul moves into the unmanifested.Now, he says one man, a certain Peter, has been revived seven times. He dies of a heart attack and through artificial techniques he is revived again. Again after a few days or a few hours he dies, again he is revived. In all, seven times. So Dr. Kovoor asks what I say about it. Does the soul go and come back again, go and come back again? No. There is nowhere to go. The soul becomes unmanifest when the situations to manifest it are no longer there. When the situations are there again, it becomes manifest.It is just like a seed. Where has the tree gone? You cannot find it in the seed. It has disappeared into the seed. It has become unmanifest in the seed. Put the seed in the soil and again the tree is there. And again the tree will die one day, and will leave many seeds.The manifest becomes the unmanifest, the unmanifest becomes the manifest. These are the two wings of reality. Nobody goes anywhere. There is nobody to go and nowhere to go.I don’t believe in individual souls. I believe in the universal ocean of consciousness. A wave arises, then the wave disappears. Where has it gone? It has gone to the same source from where it had arisen in the first place. It had risen out of the ocean, now it has gone back to the ocean.There is a beautiful story about Junnaid, a Sufi mystic…He was passing through a small village. It was evening, and a small boy was carrying a small candle. He was going to the mosque to put the candle there. The mosque was dark and it was a dark night, and the night was descending. Junnaid just laughingly, jokingly asked the small child, “Have you yourself lighted this candle?”And the boy said, “Yes, sir.”And Junnaid said, “Then tell me one thing. From where has this flame come? From where? And you say you yourself have lighted the candle, so you must have seen from where this flame has come.”The boy must have been a genius. He laughed and blew the candle out and he said, “Right now it has gone. Where? You have seen it. Where has it gone?”The coming and going is not from somewhere to somewhere. We arise out of the cosmic consciousness, we fall back into the cosmic consciousness. We arise again, we fall back again.My concept of the soul is exactly the same as that of Gautama the Buddha. There is no individual soul, there is no ego. That’s why I insist so much to drop the ego. Then you will start living a life, a cosmic life, a divine life. Then you will live like God, because God will live through you. You will not be there.Second thing: he calls me a fraud. I would have loved it if I could have agreed with him. I could not. I am sorry. He calls me a fraud because he says I claim miraculous powers. I was simply amazed. I have never claimed any. With whom is he fighting? With Satya Sai Baba? I have never claimed any miraculous powers, and he says I claim miraculous powers. That’s why I am a fraud, because there are no miraculous powers. My whole emphasis is that the whole of existence is miraculous. There are no miraculous powers, but the whole of life is miraculous. And I don’t claim any power. I am the most ordinary man. I don’t claim anything. I have no claim.When I say that I am the most ordinary, I mean it exactly. I am not special; I am not “holier than thou.” Then what am I doing here with people? I am just helping them to come back to their reality, to their ordinariness, to their first principle. If you start living and enjoying your ordinariness, you are divine because the ordinary is the divine.He projects something, then he demolishes it, and he thinks he has demolished me.And the third thing: because I say that without God there will be no meaning, and I had asked Dr. Kovoor, “What meaning will your life have if there is no God?” he has answered that his life has an aim, and that aim is to impart whatever he has learned to other human beings. But that seems to be very irrelevant. One candle imparting to other candles. What is the meaning of it? There is no difference. And why do you say “human beings”? And what is the point? Even if you make a candle very much informed, you talk and talk and talk, what is the point? A candle is a candle, there is no difference sir. And this is your whole aim of life: whatever you have learned in life you have to teach others. This does not seem to be much of an aim. It seems more like a duty and a mechanical one at that.And why help these candles, these chemical, oxidization processes, why help? If they remain ignorant, if the candles are ignorant, what is lost? And he says, “My aim in life is to help people, so that they become aware and nobody can exploit them.” But what is the point if one candle exploits another candle? A little wax goes from here to there, what is the point? It does not seem very meaningful.And then finally he says, “Except for creating mental derangements and hallucinations, there is absolutely no beneficial value in meditation. Meditation is a technique of inducing self-hypnosis.” Now, he says meditation only creates “mental derangement,” “hallucination,” and only “religious maniacs” do meditation, and people who are “mentally sick.” That means all the Vedas were written by mentally sick people. And the Bible and the Koran and the Dhammapada and the Tao Te Ching and the Zend-Avestaall were written by mentally ill people. Then all that has been of any value on this earth was illness. Then Buddha has no health, then Buddha has no well-being. Then who else can have well-being? Then Nagarjuna and Shankara and Vasubandhu and Bodhidharma and Bokuju and Lin Chi, are all “religious maniacs.” Then Jalaluddin and Bahauddin and Junnaid and Mansoor are all mentally ill people.If these are ill people, then who is healthy? Adolf Hitler? Mao Zedong? Genghis Khan? Tamerlane? Nadir Shah? Who is healthy?He says meditation only creates derangement. He does not know even the abcd of meditation. He has not even read about it. Experience is not the question at all, he has not even read about it. Or whatever he has read must have come from some people who are just like him. Maybe he has been reading Karl Marx on meditation. Or Bertrand Russell on meditation.If you want to know about meditation, ask the meditators. If you want to know about meditation, the real, rational way is to go into meditation and see what happens, because the proof of the pudding is in its tasting.He has no idea what meditation is. He calls it a technique of hypnosis. It is just the opposite, let me tell you. Hypnosis means sleep, induced sleep. The word hypnos means “sleep.” Hypnosis means “suggesting to you to fall asleep.” Meditation means “awareness.” Meditation means helping you to become more aware. Meditation is not hypnosis. Meditation is a process of dehypnosis, it is a dehypnotization. You are hypnotized already by the society, by the schools, by the priests and the politicians. Meditation is a way to dehypnotize you, to uncondition you, so that you can attain your childhood innocence again. And the difference is so vital and so clear and so distinct, that unless one is absolutely closed to understanding, there is no way to miss it.Hypnosis is sleep. When you hypnotize a person he falls asleep, he loses consciousness. When a person meditates he becomes conscious, he attains consciousness. He becomes more conscious. In fact, a meditator by and by starts feeling that he needs less sleep than before, and with less sleep he feels more vital. If he was sleeping for eight or ten hours before, now he feels five or six or even four or three hours are enough; that gives him enough rest. And a meditator, by and by, comes to know that even in sleep something remains aware in him.But these are experiences, Dr. Kovoor. I cannot invite you into my sleep. I am helpless. Otherwise I would have invited you into my sleep to see what is happening. The only way to know is to meditate.And I am not saying something for the first time. Down the ages, thousands of mystics have said the same thing. Krishna says in the Gita, “When everybody is fast asleep, the yogi is awake.” Buddha’s disciple Ananda asked Buddha, “I have a feeling that in your sleep you remain alert.” Buddha said, “You are right. The body goes to sleep, the mind goes to sleep, I remain aware.” In fact, modern psychology says that a layer of your consciousness is there which is always alert, always awake. Meditation is to connect yourself with that layer which is always awake.Have you not watched? A mother is sleeping. There are thundering clouds in the sky, or airplanes are passing by, and her sleep will not be disturbed. But her small child… Just a small movement or the child starts crying, and she is fully awake. What happened? She was not disturbed by the airplane passing, she was not disturbed by the thundering in the clouds. What happened? Just a small noise from the child and she is fully alert. A part of her being is aware and keeps caring for the child. She closes herself against the thundering clouds, but she cannot close her awareness from the child. She is alert.If you fall asleep here and I come and I suddenly call a name, “Is Ram here?” nobody will listen, but the man whose name is Ram will say, “Who is disturbing my sleep? Yes, I am here what do you want?” Everybody heard it, but nobody responded, only Ram responded. A part of his mind, even in sleep, knows this is the name; somebody has called him.Even in sleep you go on chasing mosquitoes. If an insect crawls on you, you throw it away and sleep is not disturbed. Something keeps alert, surrounds you.This is in ordinary life. When you become a meditator, this awareness becomes deeper, more crystallized. A point comes when you can sleep and yet remain awake.I would like to invite Kovoor into my sleep, but my sleep is subjective. I know it, but I cannot put it in front of you Dr. Kovoor so that you can examine it objectively.But there is a way. You can learn meditation. You can meditate, and you can see what the difference between hypnosis and meditation is. They are poles apart. They are diametrically opposite.And he says, “There is absolutely no beneficial value in meditation.” Now, this is going too far. So many universities are experimenting, and there is now solid proof from medical colleges, medical research, psychiatric research, that meditation is of tremendous benefit. He seems to be completely unaware of what is happening in the world.I invite you, Dr. Kovoor. You should come here. We have thousands of books here, the latest ones. It seems you have not seen books for sixty years.And whatever he says in his article is just elementary biology, high-school biology. When I was reading I thought, “My God, what knowledge.”Now there is absolute proof that a meditator is less prone to ulcers, less prone to heart attacks, less prone to high blood pressure. A meditator is less prone to many illnesses that happen ordinarily to everybody. A meditator is less prone to madness, to insanity, to neurosis, psychosis. And a meditator is certainly more quiet, calm, and collected. A meditator is more responsible. A meditator is more loving. And there is definite proof that a meditator lives longer than a non-meditator. A meditator has a higher IQ, more intelligence than a non-meditator, more vitality, more creativity.Meditation is therapeutic. In fact, meditation and medicine come from the same root. Meditation is a healing force because it relaxes you and allows nature to heal you. But that is not the primary benefit of meditation. It is just a side effect. The basic benefit is the entry into the divine. Self-realization. God-realization. Oh, the ecstasy of it, the blessing and the benediction!And these are not assertions of the mystics. Now scientific labs are producing papers, research work, theses, dissertations. Through scientific equipment, measurement, ways and means, now it is almost a certain fact that the mind can exist in many wavelengths, and meditation changes the wavelength. Meditation creates more alpha waves. And alpha waves release joy, happiness, bliss, benediction. Forget what the mystics say, but you can listen to the scientists.In the end, I pray for the old man. Please, you also pray for him. His days cannot be many and I would not like him to die believing that he is nothing but a chemical process and oxidization. Poor thing.And finally Dr. Kovoor requests the government to prevent my work. This is great. What type of argument is this? This is nerve failure, Dr. Kovoor. Can you not argue yourself, so now you need the support of the state?He thinks he is a rational man and he has a scientific outlook. I don’t see rationality or a scientific outlook. I simply see a dogmatic, closed attitude, as if he has decided once and for all what is truth and is adamant not to listen to anything which can disturb his dogmatic ideas, ideologies.Now, a few non serious questions.The second question:Osho,Life is beautiful, but I am unhappy. You are giving much love, but I cannot take it. What you say is true, but I cannot follow it. I want to be transformed, but what is preventing me?I will just tell you an anecdote…After passing a group of women talking near his church, the minister decided to preach a sermon on gossip.“Members of the congregation,” he began, “as I entered the church the other day prior to one of your Ladies’ Aid meetings, in one group someone was saying, ‘Mrs. Wilson is a wonderful woman, but…’ At another group I heard, ‘Miss Brown is really a nice woman, but…’ At still another group someone was saying, ‘The Arnolds seem to be a lovely couple, but…’ And I am telling you right now, that if you are not careful, you are going to slide right into hell on your buts!”The third question:Osho,I am always afraid of wasting time. Time is valuable and I want to use it rightly. Can you guide me as to what I should do so that no mistake is committed?First, time is not valuable. There have been people who have been saying “time is money.” They are neurotic people. They have created much neurosis in the world. Time is not valuable because eternity is available. There is no end to time and there is no beginning to time. So don’t be worried about it. The more you worry, the more you waste. Only an unworried person knows how to live joyously, moment to moment. Time consciousness is a great disease, and the whole of the West is suffering from it. And the disease is spreading to the East too. It has even spread to the animals.I was reading an anecdote…An old lady kept a parrot which was always swearing. Every Sunday she kept a lid over the cage, removing it on Monday morning, thus preventing the bird from swearing on the Sabbath.On a Monday she saw the minister coming toward the house, so she again placed the cover on the cage. As the priest was about to step into the parlor the parrot remarked, “This has been a damned short week!”You have enough time. And don’t be so afraid of committing mistakes. That is the only mistake one has to avoid. The only mistake, I say, that a man can commit in life, and that is: becoming afraid of committing mistakes. Then you never grow, then you never go anywhere, then you never do anything. Then by and by you will slip into dullness and deadness. You will become stuck, stagnant. Commit mistakes. What is wrong in committing mistakes?Just remember one thing. Don’t commit the same mistake again. Commit new mistakes every day. Be inventive. Innovate. A man only learns when he commits many, many mistakes. Go astray as far as you can go. Existence is everywhere. Where can you go? And the further astray you go, the deeper is your understanding of coming home. And when you come home, you understand what you were missing.Nothing is wrong. You are too afraid and too cowardly. Drop this fear and drop this cowardliness.The last question:Osho,Please help me.I cannot do that. I am not your enemy. I am not a do-gooder. I don’t “help,” because the help, the very desire to be helped, is a desire to continue as you are. You want some props, some supports. You want consolation, comfort. No, I am the last person to give you any consolation. I am going to withdraw all props so you fall flat on the ground. From there starts a new life, a new beginning.Henry Thoreau once observed that if he knew for certain that a man was on his way to see him, with the single purpose of trying to help him, he would run for his life.That should be the attitude toward helpers. If somebody is coming to help you, escape. Your life is in danger. Avoid the do-gooders, the so-called saints and mahatmas.I am not here to console you, to comfort you, to make you secure. I am here to destroy you utterly because only then is the new born, the new man, the new consciousness. If I help, the old will continue. All help goes to help the old. All help keeps the old surviving, it nourishes it. No, I am not going to help in any way.I know you want help. You don’t want resurrection. You want help. You don’t want death, you don’t want a new life. But if you are around me long enough, by and by, I will withdraw all your supports. I will even take the earth beneath your feet away, so you fall into the bottomless abyss of existence. You disappear into that abyss and in that very disappearance, God appears to you. When you are utterly helpless, God’s help becomes available.I am not going to help you. I am going to make you utterly helpless, so that in your helplessness a prayer arises, so that in your helplessness, surrender becomes possible, and then comes God’s help. Only God can help. And all other help is a barrier to God’s help.One beautiful story that I always love…Krishna has just sat down to take his lunch, and in the middle of the lunch he rushes toward the door, His wife, Rukmini asks, “Where are you going?” But he is in such a hurry that he doesn’t answer.At the door he suddenly stops, then comes back slowly, a little sad, sits back, starts eating. Rukmini asks, “What is the matter? What happened? Where were you going so suddenly, as if there was some emergency? And now suddenly you turn back from the door and you are sad. What happened?”Krishna says, “One of my lovers, one of my devotees is passing through a capital, and people are throwing stones at him, and blood is flowing from his head and he has wounds, but he remains utterly helpless, not a condemnatory word on his lips, not even in his mind. His surrender is total. I had to rush to help him. He was so helpless.”Then Rukmini is even more surprised. “Then why did you come back?”Krishna says, “By the time I reached the door, he had taken a stone in his own hand. Now he is ready to answer himself. Now I am not needed. Now he is no longer helpless.”Remember, all human help becomes a barrier to divine help. My purpose here is to make you really helpless, utterly helpless, so godliness rushes toward you and fills your emptiness. That will be the day of real rejoicing, ecstasy.Don’t ask for my help. Ask that I destroy all that you have arranged around yourself as help, comfort, consolation. Ask that I kill you. Ask that I behead you. The moment your head has rolled down on the earth, you will grow a new head, and that head will be the divine. That will be God’s head.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A puzzled monk once said to Fuketsu, “You say truth can be expressed without speaking and without keeping silent. How can this be?”Fuketsu answered, “In southern China, in the spring when I was only a lad, Ah! How the birds sang among the blossoms.”Godliness is. Truth is. Love is. There is no way to say it and there is no way to hide it. There is no word which can express it, and there is no methodology of how to keep it unexpressed. That is the dilemma of the mystic. He has to say it and it cannot be said. He cannot keep quiet about it, he cannot keep silent. It overfloods him, it starts overflowing; it is beyond him to keep silent. He has to say it, and nobody has ever been able to say it.God is not a word, neither is truth a word, nor is love a word. And they are not just silences either, because their isness is a singing isness. They are songs. It is not just dull and dead there. It is full of joy, it is overflowing joy. It is celebration, it is ecstasy. It is orgasm because it is a meeting of the opposites, because it is a meeting of the polarities, because it is a marriage. A marriage of yin and yang, day and night, summer and winter, life and death, sound and silence.So when it happens, you cannot say it, but you have to sing it. And that is the beauty of the song. It has something of the word and something of silence in it. That is the beauty of poetry, the beauty of dance. Something is visible, something is invisible. The manifest and the unmanifest meet there, embrace each other, are fulfilled in each other.If you simply say and use words, and there is no silence in those words, your words will be like dead stones. They can hit somebody’s head, you can argue with them, but you cannot convert. They don’t have that quality of silence which becomes conversion. When a word has silence at its innermost core, when a word is luminous with silence, it brings conversion. Then it is a gospel, then it is good news. Then somebody who is saying something with silence in it is not throwing a dead rock at you, but is throwing a flower. It will hit you, but it will also caress you, and it will go deeper because you can be vulnerable to it, and it will reach your very heart. Because how can you protect yourself against it? You will be nondefensive.So remember, all the mystics have been singing and dancing, celebrating. They go on saying, “We cannot say it,” and they go on saying it all the same.There is a difference in saying and saying. When you say without knowing it, without realizing it, it is just gibberish, just words and words and words without any soul in them. It is a corpse, there is no aliveness in it. Those words stink, they stink of death. There is no heartbeat of life. When you know, when you have experienced, when you have fallen into that abyss called godliness, when you are transformed by that surrender, when you are totally immersed in it, when every cell is bathed in it, then you say, but your words are not mere words. They carry silence. They are vehicles of silence, they are gestures of silence. We have a special name for it in the East: mahamudra, the great gesture.Look at my hand. If it is empty, if there is nobody behind it who has experienced, then it is an ordinary gesture. But if there is somebody behind it who has known, who has lived, who has experienced, then raising this hand is a great gesture, mahamudra. Then the ordinary hand becomes extraordinary. Then ordinary words are no longer ordinary words. You cannot go to the dictionary to find their meaning. When a word is full of silence, you will have to go within yourself to find its meaning, not to a dictionary, not to a library. You will have to go within yourself. The meaning will be found in your experience.The word of a man who knows is loaded, loaded with great fragrance. You will have to decode it in your innermost core of being, in the innermost shrine of your being.Truth is a transcendence, transcendence of all duality. So those who say truth cannot be said, only say a half-truth, and those who say that truth can be said only in silence, they also say a half-truth.Zen brings the whole truth to the world. Zen is a great blessing to the world, it brings the whole truth.The whole truth is: truth cannot be said and yet can be said. If not said, then showed, indicated. The ordinary duality is transcended. We are always moving from one pole of the duality to the other. Sometimes we say, “Yes, it can be said,” this is one pole. Then we become aware, “How can it be said?” The other pole. Then we keep silent, but then again we become aware that there is something left. “Yes, it can be said.” This way it goes on moving, it swings.Zen says truth is a transcendence, transcendence of all duality. The duality between the word and the silence is also to be transcended.The Bible says in the beginning there was the word. The Vedas say in the beginning there was silence, eternal silence, and the silence brooded over the sea and it was dark. And the Bible says there was the word – the first thing that happened in existence was the word. God said, let there be light and there was light. Both are half-truths.If you ask the Zen people… They have not written any Bible or any Veda yet, and they will never try because they don’t believe in scriptures. They say it is beyond the scriptures, it is a transmission beyond the scriptures. But if they ever write a Bible – or if they are forced to, as Lao Tzu was once forced to write the Tao Te Ching, because the king wouldn’t allow him to leave the country unless he wrote his experiences…Lao Tzu wanted to go to the Himalayas to die there. Certainly there cannot be any more beautiful a place to die. Those eternal peaks, those snow covered virgin peaks, where can you find a better place to disappear into existence? What better moment? He wanted to go, he was very old, and he wanted to go to the Himalayas to rest and disappear there, nobody ever knowing about him. He wanted to disappear absolutely alone. He wanted his death to be private.And death is a private thing. Nobody else can be with you when you die, it is absolutely internal. So he wanted to escape and go away from the crowds. He was afraid too many people would surround him and his death would become a public affair.But the king insisted, “First write whatever you have known.” And he ordered the guards on the boundary saying, “This man is not to be allowed to go out.” So he was caught at a guard post, and for three days he sat in the guards’ room and wrote down the Tao Te Ching.If somebody, someday, forces a Zen master to write down a Bible, a Veda, then they will say there was song in the beginning. Neither word nor silence, but song. There was song in the beginning, and God sang and danced. Not, “Let there be light.” God sang and danced. And that dance became the beginning of creation.That dance continues. That dance is what existence is.The song has a mystery about it because it is a meeting, a marriage of opposites. In the song there is sound and silence. The song says something, but says it in such a way that you cannot grasp it. Not that it doesn’t say anything. It makes much available, but you cannot grasp it, you cannot just possess it. If you try to possess, you will kill it. You cannot have a song in your fist, otherwise the song will be killed. It is too delicate, you cannot be that rough with it. A song has to be preserved in the heart, not in the fist. With a song you have to be receptive, not aggressive. You can keep an argument in the fist, it is hard, rocklike, it will not die. You can keep and possess an argument, you can become the possessor of an argument. That’s why the ego enjoys very much to have arguments, proofs, logic, philosophies. The ego feels very fulfilled: “I know so much.”The song cannot be possessed that way, the ego cannot be its possessor. The song can penetrate your being, but the ego has to give way. If the ego comes in between, the song will be shattered. You may get fragments of it and you may start interpreting those fragments, but you will miss the unity of it. And it was in the unity.A song has not to be thought about. If you start thinking about a song, you are already missing it. When you listen to music, how do you listen? Do you bring your mind in? If you bring your mind in, where is the music? Music and the mind cannot both exist together. That is the mystery of music. You have to put your mind aside. You cannot argue with music, you cannot nod your head in agreement or disagreement. You cannot say, “Yes, I agree,” or “No, I don’t agree.” There is no question of agreement or no agreement. With music you simply become one. If you want to feel it, you have to put your head aside. The heart has to open toward it. It goes directly to the heart, it showers on the heart. It helps the flower of the heart to open and bloom. It is a nourishment for the inner lotus.The Zen people will say, “There was song in the beginning, and then God sang and God danced, and that’s what he has been doing since then.” Each moment it is a dance. Look around. Can’t you hear these birds? These are not birds, don’t be deceived by them. These are not birds. It is God singing, the God of the beginnings, because it is always a beginning. Each moment is a beginning. Never think that the beginning was somewhere in the past. This is the beginning and it is always the beginning and there is no end. It is God singing.Can’t you hear the silence of the trees? It is God, silent.In the birds he is singing, in the trees he is silent. Birds cannot exist without the trees, and let me tell you, the trees cannot exist without the birds either. The birds sing for the trees and the trees are silent for the birds, and there is a marriage. They are tied together. If trees disappear, birds will disappear. Kill all the birds of the world and one day you will see the trees are disappearing. Everything is intertwined, everything is interlinked. This is what we mean by the word ecology. Everything is together.It is God singing, it is God silent. Once you understand that God is both, then this highest possibility opens for you. This is the first principle: that you need not divide, all division is false. You need not create any duality because existence is nondual. Because existence is one.All our misery is because we are divided. Why do you feel so thrilled when you are in love? What happens? Is the thrill just chemical, hormonal? No, it is not. The thrill is existential. When you are in love, at least with one person you feel to be one, at least with one person you have dropped duality, at least with one person you are no longer separate, at least with one person the boundaries are not there; you have removed the boundaries. Two spaces have come so close they overlap. You feel so thrilled with love, so blissful with love because it is an experience of godliness – a very limited experience of course.And if it is so beautiful to be one with one person, how much more beautiful will it be to be one with the whole, to be one with all persons, men and women, trees and birds and animals and the clouds and the mountains and the stars? How will it be? How much more beautiful? The beauty cannot be imagined, because the difference will not be only of quantity, it will be of quality. It will be utterly different.Love can at the most be only a glimpse of a ray: not the ray itself, but only a glimpse in the lake. A ray of the sun playing on the lake, and you see the glimpse. That glimpse is love. When you find the real ray, it becomes prayer. When you start moving through that ray upward, you start climbing on that ray, and you start reaching toward the source of all light, then you are growing in spirituality. One day you are dissolved into that light. You yourself have become that light. That is the orgasm I talk about. That’s ecstasy.And Zen people say that when you know, you have to say it, knowing well that it cannot be said. You have to sing it.Zen masters have been very creative. Either they were singers, dancers, or painters, or in some sort of art, calligraphy, pottery. Whatever they could do, they did. That became the gesture of their expression. They were not inactive people. Deep down they were not doers, and on the surface they were not inactive at all. Deep down they were just instrumental to the divine. No doer, no idea of doing anything, just being, but on the surface very creative. The world would have been far richer if every religion had developed such a school as Zen.For example, Hindu monks have lived a very uncreative life. Jaina monks have lived a very uncreative life. Except Zen, even Buddhists have lived a very uncreative life. So has been the case with the Catholics.Zen brings creativity. And remember, if you want to be one with the creator, you will have to learn some ways of creativity. The only way to be one with the creator is to be in some moment of creativity, when you are lost. The potter is lost in making his pottery; the potter is lost while working on the wheel. The painter is lost while painting. The dancer is lost; there is no dancer, only the dance remains. Those are the peak moments, where you touch God, where God touches you.Now, the scholar, the so-called scholar, becomes wordy. He goes on learning more words, more words, more information, more scriptures. He has no silence. That is a very lopsided phenomenon. Then against the scholar there are a few saints who keep quiet, they don’t even say a single word. That too is moving to the other extreme. They become uncreative. Of course, they are silent, better than the scholar, at least they will not throw their rubbish into other people’s heads, at least they are not committing any crime. But in a higher sense they are also criminals because they are not benefiting existence. They are parasites. They are not making existence richer by their being here. They are not helping God in his dance, in his song.Zen brings the highest synthesis. Don’t be afraid of speaking, but don’t go on speaking if you don’t know. Don’t be silent. Just being silent will not help.It has to be understood because many times this comes to your mind too: Why go on speaking? Why not keep quiet? But your silence will be your silence. The words will go on moving, revolving inside you. You will become a madhouse inside. You may look silent from the outside; you will not be silent inside. How can you simply drop those words, those old habits of many lives? The mind will go on chattering, the mind will go on saying things, repeating things. The mind is like an automaton. Even if you don’t want to talk, the mind goes on. If you don’t talk to others it goes on talking to itself. It creates both the parties. It talks from one side and answers from another side, it goes on playing the game. From the outside one can be easily silent, but from the inside?And if you are silent from the inside, you will be surprised that your silence becomes so loaded with ecstasy that you have to sing. There is no other way. You have to dance, you have to share. When you have, you have to share. If you have it at all, you will have to share. If you don’t have it, you can keep quiet, but what is the point of keeping quiet if you don’t have it?There are two types of people. One who goes on talking without having it, and one who goes on keeping silent without having it. Both are in the same boat.There is a third type of person who has come to know it, who has really become silent, and in the silence he has heard the soundless sound, in the silence God has delivered his message to him. God has spoken to him. He has had a dialogue with God himself. The silence has filled his heart with so much juice, with so much life, with life abundant, that he is bursting. He has to say it. There is no way to get rid of it.And his saying will have a totally different significance because the words will not be mere words. If such a person sits silently, even his silence will be a sharing. If such a person keeps completely silent, you will see his silence is singing all around him. You will feel the vibe. His silence is saying something. He is indicating from his silence too. If he speaks, he speaks. If he is silent, then too he speaks.If you don’t sing it, remember, you don’t have it. If it does not overflow in a thousand and one gestures, then it is not there. You cannot hold it, if it is there. And you cannot possess it, if it is there; it is not your property. You cannot become the owner of it. You cannot hoard it, you cannot be miserly about it. If it is there at all, it drowns you utterly. It possesses you. You cannot possess it, it possesses you. And then it leads you into a thousand and one gestures. In a thousand and one streams you start flowing, and whatever you do becomes an expression.I have heard a very beautiful legend. The legend is…There was a great master in India, the twenty-seventh successor of Gautama the Buddha. His name was Hanyatara. A king in south India requested him to come to his court. The king himself went, bowed down to Hanyatara, touched his feet and said, “Please, come to my court to bless us. And this has been my desire: to listen to some sutras of Gautama the Buddha, by a man who is a buddha himself. So I have been avoiding scholars, pundits, professors. I have been avoiding, I have been waiting, because those sutras that Buddha uttered are so pregnant that only a man who has attained that consciousness will be able to give expression to them.”Hanyatara came to the court with an attendant. The king was thrilled. It was a dream for his whole life, one day to have a buddha in his court, in his palace. The whole palace was decorated, the whole town was decorated, the whole capital was celebrating. It was a great day of celebration. But the king was puzzled, a little bewildered. Hanyatara sat silently, not saying a single word, and the attendant recited the sutra. Now, this was not the purpose at all. The king could have found better people to recite the sutra than the attendant. He was just an attendant who looked after Hanyatara, just used to do small errands, a very ordinary man, not even a great scholar. His grammar was faulty, his pronunciation was not exactly as it should be. He was an ordinary man.Just out of respect, the king kept silent. When the sutra was finished, he touched the feet of Hanyatara and said, “Sir, enlighten me about this, otherwise I will remain puzzled. Why did you not recite the sutra?”And Hanyatara said, “What, I did not recite the sutra? Then what else was I doing the whole time here? You fool.”The king was even more puzzled because Hanyatara had kept quiet, he had not said a single word. The king said, “Please explain it to me. I don’t understand. I am an ordinary, ignorant person. I may not know the ways of the buddhas.”And Hanyatara said, “I sat silently, breathing in, breathing out. That was my sutra. What else is there in life? Breathe in, breathe out. Be alert, aware. When I breathed in, I was aware; when I breathed out, I was aware. It was all awareness. What else is a sutra? Awareness. If you had listened to the rhythm of my breathing, you would have understood I had recited it. Words are one way to recite it. Breathing silently, but with full awareness, is another way to recite it, and a far better way. I have been very expressive today, as I have never been before. Thinking that you have been waiting for so long, I thought, ‘Why not give the real thing?’”The king was thrilled, seeing the compassion. Now he felt there was a certain rhythm in his silence. Now he became aware, retrospectively of course, that this man was not silent in the ordinary way. He had seen silent people. Sometimes he himself had sat in silence. This was a different silence. There was a song, certainly there was a song. There was a fragrance around this man. There was a vibe of a different quality. He was vibrating. It was strange, but now he remembered, yes, it was there. And the way he was breathing was no ordinary way. Not that he was doing anything special in the breathing. His breathing was pure, natural, like a small baby.When you breathe, your breathing is never natural. If you are a little angry, your anger changes your breathing. If you are full of passion, lust, your lust changes your breathing. If you are greedy, your greed is reflected in your breathing. Your mind mood continuously infiltrates the breathing and changes it. You can watch it. When you are angry, try not to disturb the breathing, and you will be completely unable to be angry. Just try not to change the breathing. Let the breathing remain as it was before you became angry, and then try to be angry. It will be impossible. The breathing has to change first. Through the breathing the body changes; the mind first affects the breathing. When you are in a moment of lust, watch, keep the breathing natural and you will suddenly find the lust has disappeared, the moment came and passed.By and by, you will be able to see each mood is reflected in your breathing. So your breathing is never natural, because there is some mood or other. The natural breathing means there is no mood. That means there is no mind, neither anger nor greed nor lust nor jealousy nor love nor hate. No mood means no-mind. In that state of no-mind the breathing is natural. Then there is a song to it, then there is a totally different quality to it. Then it is pure life. Then the flame is without smoke.Yes, the king remembered, there was something strange, something was happening. He had missed it. He started crying. He said, “I have missed it. Why didn’t you tell me before? Now I know there was something and I had even felt it, but my consciousness is not so developed, so I could not understand what was happening.“And I was too concerned about that foolish sutra. I was continuously thinking about why you were not reciting the sutra, and why this attendant was reciting the sutra. I was so much concerned about the sutra that I missed.“But I am grateful that you showed such compassion, that you showed your being so naked, so true, so authentic.”He presented a great diamond, the most valuable he had, to Hanyatara, and then he said to Hanyatara, “I have three sons. Sir, be kind enough. I will call them. Bless them.”Thinking that young people are young people, and the youngest was only seven, they may disturb the sutra reciting, he had not called them to participate before.The three young princes came in. Rather than blessing them, Hanyatara showed the diamond that the king had presented to him to the first prince, the eldest. He must have been somewhere near fifteen. The prince looked at the diamond and said, “A great diamond, of the finest water, purest water. Where could you get it? It is rare. It is no ordinary diamond.”Yes, his understanding about the diamond was perfectly true. It was a rare diamond, of the most perfect water. Even Hanyatara had never seen such a thing.Then he called the second prince, who must have been near about ten, and the second prince looked at the diamond and said, “Not only the finest, not only the best, it is certain that it belongs to my father because in this kingdom nobody can have such a diamond. It is rare. Sir, it does not belong to you, it cannot. To protect this diamond you will need a great army, otherwise you cannot have it. Just this attendant won’t do.” Yes, his understanding was also very correct.And then the third son was called. He was only seven. He looked at the diamond, looked at Hanyatara and laughed and said, “What? Do you want to befool me?” He was only seven, and he said, “Do you want to befool me? You cannot! Because the real diamonds are never of the outside. And what are you trying to show me? You have the real diamond within you. I can see it. This is just a stone that you have in your hand. Throw it, sir.”And it is said that Hanyatara hugged this small boy.This boy’s name was Bodhitara, and Hanyatara changed his name to Bodhidharma. He became the twenty-eighth successor of Buddha. He was the first patriarch of Zen in China, this small boy Bodhitara, whose name Hanyatara changed to Bodhidharma.Hanyatara said, “This boy has looked into the deepest reality anybody can look into. Dharma means ‘the ultimate reality’. He has penetrated the ultimate reality.” He said to the king, “Even you could not see who I am. That’s why you missed my sermon, my silent sermon. That’s why you missed my silent song. I was singing here but you missed. But this boy, yes, I cannot befool him. This boy is going to be my successor.”And then he said to the king, “Sir, forgive me. I have not come for you and I have not come because you requested me to. I had to come because of this boy. I have been in search of this boy. This has been a promise from a past life, and this has been a decided gesture. In the past life I told this boy, ‘I will seek you and find you and I will show you a diamond, and that will be the moment of your examination. If you can see my inner diamond, and you are not befooled, you will be my successor.’”The legend is of tremendous value. First, the silent sermon. Yes, sometimes a mystic can be silent, but he is not silent. His silence is a very telling silence. He may not do anything, he may not even move his eyes, he may not move any of his limbs, but still his presence goes on doing a thousand and one things. Just to be in his presence, just to breathe with him in the same rhythm, and something is transferred: his song, his silence, his dance. You will never be the same again.Truth is not hidden from the very beginning. Truth is unhidden, only your eyes are closed. Truth is being preached from every tree and from every bird and from every rock and from every star, just your eyes, your ears, your sensitivity is not there. You are deaf. Truth is not dumb, you are deaf. And truth is not hiding anywhere.A man came to a Zen master and asked, “Sir, where should I go to find the truth?”And the Zen master said, “Just keep looking in front of your nose and go on, and you will find it.”It is just in front of your nose! Truth is just in front of you. In fact, wherever you look it is truth, you just need to know how to look for it. But you are looking for other things. That’s why you go on missing.That great king missed Hanyatara’s sermon. It was a Zen sermon, the same as Buddha preached to the first Zen master, Mahakashyap, sitting silently holding a flower in his hand. This second sermon of Hanyatara to the king was even more subtle. He was not even holding a flower in his hand. He was just breathing in and out, a natural breathing, an ordinary breathing, unaffected by the mind. And truth was there, and the sutras were recited there through his breathing, but the king missed.You may have come across a buddha in your life, or you may have come across many buddhas in your past lives, but you have missed because you were not sensitive enough to feel that vibe. That vibe is subtle. You were not aware enough to move to that height, to feel the presence.Be a little more alert. The sermon is preached constantly. From everywhere God is speaking to you. Even when everything is silent he is speaking through silence. His song is eternal.Zen says, “Truth is not hidden, from the very beginning, so you are not to uncover truth, you are only to uncover your eyes.” You just have a curtain on your eyes. Just pull your earplugs out; your ears are plugged, hence you cannot hear.How to unplug the ears? How to open the eyes? How to drop barriers that don’t allow you to become sensitive enough? What is the way? The way is immediacy. Be immediate, be in the moment.Otherwise buddhas can go on shouting from the housetops and you will not hear. Or you will hear something which has not been said at all.A few scenes. First scene…Warden: “Can’t you see the sign ‘No fishing here’?”Angler: “Yes, and I don’t agree. There is good fishing here. Just look at this lot I have landed today. Whoever put that sign up must be crazy.”The second scene…The Dean of Women was lecturing to a class on the subject of sex morality. “In moments of temptation ask yourself just one question. Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?”One of the girls raised her hand naively and asked, “How do you make it last one hour?”The third scene…Ethel was shapely but shy, and visited a doctor for the first time. He ushered her into his private office and said, “Now, my dear, please get completely undressed.”Ethel blushed and replied, “Okay Doctor, but you first.”Fourth scene…The following ad appeared in the personal column of a London paper. “My husband and I have four sons. Has anyone any suggestions as to how we may have a daughter?”Letters poured in from all over the world. An American wrote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again.” A Buddhist from Thailand suggested that they should seek the help of Buddha. A South African recommended a special diet. An Indian proposed yoga.A Frenchman merely wrote, “May I be of service?”And the last and the fifth scene…A lion tamer had quit without notice, and the circus manager needed someone to replace him for the next night’s show. He put an ad in the local paper, and the next morning two applicants showed up outside his office. One was a rather ordinary looking young man and the other a ravishing redheaded beauty. Neither one of them looked very much like a lion trainer, but the manager was desperate. “All right,” he said. “Here is a whip, a chair, and a gun. Let us see what you can do with the big Leo over there. We will let you have the first try miss, but be careful. He is a mean one.”The ravishing redhead strode past the whip, the chair, and the gun, and empty-handed, fearlessly entered the cage. Big Leo rose, snarling, then came charging across the cage toward her with a ferocious roar. When the lion was almost upon her, the girl threw open her coat. Underneath she was stark naked. Leo skidded to a stop and crawled the rest of the way on his belly. He nuzzled the girl’s feet with his nose, purred, and licked her trim ankles.The astonished circus manager grinned happily and turned to the pop-eyed young man. “Well, young fella,” he asked, “Think you can top that?”“Yeah,” panted the applicant. “Just get that stupid lion out of there.”Truth is all around, but your interpretations are your interpretations. God is speaking all the time, but you hear not, or even if you hear, you hear something else. You hear according to you, your mind comes in and hence you go on missing.Unless the mind is dropped you will not be able to know what truth is. Truth cannot be discovered by the mind. The mind is the barrier. It is because of the mind that you have not been able to discover it. It is not a question of how to train the mind to know the truth. The more the mind is trained and becomes capable, the less is the possibility to know the truth. The more skilled the mind, the farther away you are from the truth.Mind is the barrier. No-mind is the door.How to attain no-mind? The only way – the only way – is to be in the present. The only way is not to think of the past, not to think of the future. And you cannot think of the present. That is the whole secret. You cannot think of the present; there is not space enough for thought to move. Thought needs room to move. Can you think anything right now? If you think it, either it will be of the past, or of the future.This moment of silence. If you think, “Yes, this is a moment of silence,” it is already past. Or you say, “How beautiful.” It is already past. Utter the word beautiful, and it is already past. You cannot think. Thinking stops when you are in the present. So that is the only key and it is a master key. It unlocks all the doors of being. Immediacy, that is the whole insistence of Zen.If you go to a Zen master and you ask something, it is unpredictable what he will do to you. He may hit you. Or he may not hit you. He may hit himself. Or he may say something absurd, totally irrelevant to what you have asked. Somebody asks, “How to attain buddhahood?” And the master says, “The cypress tree in the courtyard.” Now what? How are they related? They are not, but the master is indicating, “Please, drop all this nonsense. Look at this, this cypress tree in the courtyard. What nonsense are you talking about? Buddha and how to become a buddha… You are talking about the past and the future. You have heard about Buddha in the past, so you have a greed, a desire. Now you want to become a buddha in the future, so you have come to me. All nonsense.” He simply gives something immediate. He says, “Look! The cypress tree in the courtyard.” It is not relevant if you think in terms of the mind. If you think in terms of no-mind, it is the only thing relevant.A man comes to a Zen master and asks, “What is the way?”And the master says, “Listen.” Everything becomes silent, and just by the side of the master’s hut flows a fountain, and the water is making the sound, the murmur: the sound of the water, the sound of the running water.For a moment everything is silent; the seeker, the questioner is also. The master says, “Listen. Hear. This is the way.” The sound of the running water? That’s all he has heard. And the master says, “Hear. This is the way to become a buddha, to attain enlightenment.” He is bringing the mind to an immediacy, to a state of immediacy.What is he saying? He is not saying anything about the sound of the running water. In that moment, when suddenly the master shocked the inquirer… Because he was asking about the way to attain nirvana, and the master says, “Listen.” It is so out of context. It is so unrelated to his question, that for a moment, out of the shock of it, the sheer shock of it, everything becomes silent. And when the master says, “Hear. This is the way,” he is not saying anything about the running water or its sound. He is indicating to the silent moment that has penetrated the consciousness of the inquirer. He says, “Hear. This is the way.”If you become immediate you attain. If you live moment to moment you attain.Once, a Western psychiatrist went to see a Zen master in Japan. “How do you deal with neurotics?” he asked.The master replied simply, “I trap them.”Trap them? The psychiatrist could not understand what he means by trapping them. How can you trap a neurotic? The neurotic will trap you!“But how?” pressed the psychiatrist.The master replied, “I get them to where they cannot ask any more questions.”Then they are trapped, if they cannot ask any more questions.If the mind is allowed to ask questions, the mind goes on and on, so the Zen master brings you down to the immediate facticity of life. Sometimes he may hit you. By hitting, suddenly you are herenow. It is great compassion.You ask, “Has God created the world?” And the master hits you, sharply. For a moment you are puzzled, shocked. For a moment all thinking stops. The very shock of it, the unpredictability of it. For a moment, certainly, certainly for a moment everything stops. And the master says, “This, this is how God created the world.” This is how God goes on creating the world. This moment of pure silence, this moment of no-mind, is the door to all solutions, to salvation, to liberation.This is unique. Sometimes a master will do something which you had not expected at all. And the master can do that only if he is not following certain rules. He is not following any. If he simply repeats from old masters, then disciples become acquainted with it. No, sometimes he will do something you cannot believe.There was a Zen master who used to talk about God or Buddha, but whenever he would talk about God or Buddha or the ultimate reality he would raise his hand, one finger pointing toward the sky. This became a joke among his disciples. Whenever they would talk about such great things they would raise their fingers and point to God. A young small boy was the master’s attendant; he used to bring his tea and things like that. The boy became a perfect master in showing his finger. He was always there, and the master was always doing it to everybody, so he became very perfect. He could imitate it perfectly.The master was aware of it. Sometimes the boy would be standing by the side at the back and the master would raise his finger, and he would also raise his finger and everybody would laugh. The master was aware of what was happening.One day the boy did that and the master called him in front of him, took a sharp knife and cut off his finger. The boy’s finger was cut off. The pain was sharp, the boy shrieked. And the master said, “Stop! Now do it. Now do it! Whatever you have been doing for so long, now do it without the finger.”And when the master shouted, “Stop!” all pain disappeared in that moment. There was silence. And the young small boy showed the finger which was not there anymore, blood was flowing. But it is said in that moment he became enlightened.Now, it is possible. That very sharpness of it.Another story…In a Zen master’s ashram there were five hundred monks, and there were two wings. Just in the middle was the master’s hut. On one side was one wing, on the other side the other wing. There was a beautiful cat, and there was a great debate between the two sides as to whom it belonged. It almost became a quarrel. And things went to such a state that both the wings were ready to kill each other for the cat. To whom does it belong? The left wing was saying, “It belongs to us.” And the right wing was saying, “It belongs to us.” It was a really beautiful cat.The master heard. He called the whole ashram and the cat was brought, and he said, “Now, give me a true answer any one of you, and the cat will belong to him. Stand up and show your understanding of reality, any one of you. And if you don’t show within seconds, I will cut the cat in two, and one part will go to the left side and one part will go to the right side.”They were shocked. They could not find how to respond to the master’s demand. What to do so that the cat can be saved? What to do? They started thinking. In their very thinking they missed the moment because when you think, you cannot be immediate and you cannot show your understanding of reality. You cannot show an understanding of immediacy. Not a single monk out of those five hundred could show it.For seconds the master waited, then took a sword, cut the cat in two. Half the cat was given to each wing, and he disposed of them: he said, “Now go.” They were all sorry.By the evening, one monk who had gone outside came back. When he came in to see the master, he was just taking his shoes off, and the master said, “Where have you been? Were you not there when I cut the cat in two? I had told the other monks that if they could show some understanding of reality, the cat could be saved. Where have you been?”The young man, who had taken off one shoe and was going to take off the other shoe, took that shoe, put it on his head, walked backward.And the master called him, “Come, my son. Had you been here the cat would be still alive. The cat could have been saved if you were here.”That immediacy. Not that this is the answer, but the immediacy. That was the moment. He allowed it to happen. It was not done with the mind, with thinking. It was done without any thinking, it was done without any mind. He simply said that to cut the cat is as foolish as me having my shoe on my head. It is as foolish. But it was not an answer from the mind. It was an immediate response. And the master said, “My boy, if you had been here, the cat would have been alive. But those fools could not show any understanding.”Now this small, beautiful anecdote…A puzzled monk once said to Fuketsu, “You say truth can be expressed without speaking and without keeping silent. How can this be?”Fuketsu answered, “In southern China, in the spring when I was only a lad, Ah! How the birds sang among the blossoms.”A very simple anecdote, but with great significance. Meditate over it.A puzzled monk once said to Fuketsu… From where do you become puzzled? From the mind. The mind is always dividing things and then cannot figure it out. Once you divide, there is conflict and confusion. How can it be? Once you divide into this is good, this is bad, then the question arises, “Why has God created a world where so much evil exists?” You divide, that this is good and this is bad, and once you divide, then the problem arises: “Why has God created such a world where so much evil exists, so much bad?”Now, you call God, God because you think he is good. God is both and neither. The division is yours. It is your problem, it is not God’s problem. You say, “Why do so many people die? Why has God created a world where death happens?” You don’t understand at all. First you divide life in two parts, life and death. It is undivided. For God, death is as beautiful as birth. They are both parts of the same phenomenon. For the whole, there is no distinction between birth and death. Birth is a death, and death is a birth. They are both the same. Two polarities, two which can exist only in togetherness. Life cannot exist without death, and neither can death exist without life.Have you ever observed the fact? All that you love in life is possible only because of death. You love a woman because today she is beautiful, tomorrow she may not be. Old age. Today she is here, tomorrow she may not be there. Death is possible. You love the woman. If you knew that the beauty is eternal, that always and always the woman will be beautiful and that nobody is going to die, will there be joy in life? It will be sheer boredom. And if it was impossible even to commit suicide, you cannot conceive of a more miserable life. Just people living and living and doing the same thing again and again and again, and nothing ever changes: everything is eternal, nobody ever dies. Just think, if all the people that have lived on the earth were living now, there will not be any space even to stand; everybody was eternal. Life will lose all beauty. The beauty is in its momentariness.That’s why I go on insisting, celebrate the temporal. By celebrating it you will know that this is the way the eternal functions. The temporal is a function of the eternal.Celebrate the temporal. Celebrate the momentary. In the momentary is the eternal, hiding. Don’t throw it away. If you throw away the momentary, you are throwing the baby with the bath water. The eternal is hidden there. The eternal comes in the momentary, penetrates the moment.A puzzled monk once said to Fuketsu… What was his bewilderment? What was his confusion? Why was he so puzzled? The puzzle was there because he says the master has said: “You say truth can be expressed without speaking, and without keeping silent.”Now, this is impossible, this is very contradictory. If you say, “Truth can be expressed by words,” okay. If you say, “Truth cannot be expressed by words,” then it naturally means, “Truth can be expressed by silence.” But the master says, “Truth cannot be expressed by words, and truth cannot be expressed by silence.” And the master says, “Truth can be expressed by words too, and it can be expressed by silence too.” Now, it is confusing. Now, it is illogical, it is absurd.How can this be, that truth can be expressed without speaking and without keeping silent? One can do only one; either one can speak it or one can keep silent. You deny both? Then what is the possibility?Fuketsu answered, “In southern China, in the spring when I was only a lad, Ah! How the birds sang among the blossoms.” Now, this is very irrelevant. What the disciple is asking and what the master is saying is not related at all, but it is related in a non-mind way. Meditate over it, how it is related in a non-mind way.Fuketsu has said many things. First, he says: …in the spring… First, he says, “When the spring came: …how the birds sang among the blossoms.” They were expressing truth, but they were silent when the spring was not there, and when the spring came they sang, they burst forth into celebration. So the first thing is “When the spring is there.” What does he mean? He means when you have the spring in your heart, when the light has dawned upon you, when the right maturity has happened, when the right climate has happened, when your fruit is ripe. When the spring has come… That is what satori is, the spring of the inner heart. When the samadhi has come, then you need not bother. The birds don’t go to schools to learn how to sing. The spring has come. They don’t seek teachers. They don’t go to anybody, they don’t ask the elders, “How to sing? The spring has come.” When the spring comes, the spring starts singing in them.What the master means is that when samadhi is there you will know. How to say it without saying it and without keeping silent – you will know. It is not a question.Many people go on asking foolish questions. The question was foolish. People come to me, they say, “If we become enlightened, what will happen to our family?” Please first become enlightened. “If we become enlightened, what will become of our business?” First become enlightened. Right now you are asking it as if it will create some problem. It has never created any problem. Whenever somebody becomes enlightened, he knows what to do. If an enlightened person does not know what to do, then who will know?If you come to me and you ask me, “When truth has happened, how are we going to express it?”… When it happens, when the spring comes, the birds know how to sing. In fact, there is no “how” to it. The very presence of the spring, and the birds are thrilled. Something goes berserk in their hearts. Something simply starts pulsating their being, something simply starts singing in their being. It is not that they sing. It is spring that sings in them. It is satori, it is samadhi that is expressed by you. It is not a question of you expressing it.That’s why the master says, “It cannot be expressed through words, and it cannot be expressed through silence.” The very question that can be expressed through words is foolish, the very question that can be expressed through silence is foolish, because nobody knows. When the spring comes, the cuckoo will sing in its own way and the parrots will fly in their own way and there will be a thousand and one songs, different, unique.The cuckoo cannot screech the way parrots do and the parrots cannot imitate the cuckoos. And there is no need. The cuckoo is beautiful, so is the parrot.When satori has happened, nobody knows… Meera dances. Buddha never danced. The cuckoo and the parrot.Listen… Chaitanya sang, took his drum and danced all over Bengal. Mahavira remained in silence, never spoke a single word. Now, you will be puzzled. Then how do the Jaina sutras exist? How? It is a beautiful story.Jainas say Mahavira never spoke, but those who were able to hear him, they heard and they have collected the sayings. Listen again, you may have missed. Jainas say Mahavira never spoke, but those who could hear, they heard. In his silent presence they heard what he was saying and they collected the sayings. The Jaina sutras start always, “We have heard…” They don’t start, “Mahavira said…” no. The disciples say, “We have heard… That’s true, on our part, we have heard. We don’t know whether he has said it or not, but in a certain moment we heard it. A voiceless voice, a soundless sound.”Yes, a cuckoo is a cuckoo, a parrot is a parrot, and both are needed. If the world is only for cuckoos it will be ugly. Too many cuckoos, it will not be good. Existence needs variety, and existence is rich because of variety. Yes, it is good sometimes a Mahavira keeps silent, and it is good sometimes a Meera goes mad, dancing. It is good to have a Christ and a Krishna. It is good to have a Zarathustra and a Mohammed and a Lao Tzu. All are so different and so unique and yet the message is the same.Those who have eyes to see, they will see the same truth being expressed in millions of forms. And those who have ears to hear, they will hear the same song sung in so many different languages.It is the same rose. Whether you call it a rose or a gulab does not make any difference. In India we call it a gulab, in the West you call it a rose. Sometimes we can even quarrel and argue “What is it, gulab or rose?”Zen masters say, “Don’t quarrel, please. Bring a gulab or a rose, whatever you call it. Bring it here, immediately. And then look.” And then the quarrel ceases because when somebody brings a rose you will see – and he calls it a gulab – you will understand. You will say, “Okay, that’s okay. Call it whatever you want to call it. It is the same thing, I have been calling it a rose and you call it a gulab, and we have been quarreling.”Scholars quarrel, argue. Masters look at the thing called a rose or a gulab, or there can be a thousand names, there are so many languages, each language has a different name for it.Each person who attains samadhi gives expression in his own way. But the question is: Has the spring come?So the master says: “In southern China, in the spring when I was only a lad, Ah! How the birds sang among the blossoms.” The second thing he says, “When I was only a boy, when my eyes were innocent, when I was young and fresh and virgin, when I was not corrupted by the society – when I was uncorrupted, when my freshness had not gathered any dust of knowledge, experience, then…”“…in the spring, when I was only a lad, Ah! How the birds sang among the blossoms.” There were a great many flowers and a great many birds, and singing the same song, the same spring, the same youth, the same life juice. What he is saying is, “Please, let the spring come first and don’t be worried about how it can be said, neither in words nor in silence.”It can be said both in words and in silence. In fact, whenever it is said, there is word and silence together. But the word is not a mere word. That’s why they say it cannot be said through words. And the silence is not a dead silence, it is not the silence of the cemetery. That’s why the master says it cannot be said through silence either. The word is not of the pundit, and the silence is not of the dead man, but there is a great marriage between word and silence. The word speaks through silence; the silence speaks through the word. And when silence and word meet, there is song. Then there is celebration.When the spring has come there is celebration. When the samadhi has happened there is celebration. In that celebration it is expressed and it is expressed abundantly. In that celebration, in that blossoming it is expressed. But it is expressed only for those who can understand, who can see, who can feel, who can love.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,My experience of me is the most profound experience of my life. It is also the most trivial. Please clarify.The question is from Dhruva, and the question is really significant. The question has arisen out of an insight, almost a mini-satori.That’s how life is, profound and trivial at the same time, simultaneously. There is no contradiction in the profundity of life and its trivialness. You have been taught that the sacred is far away and it is never the profane. You have been taught a distinction between the profane and the sacred, between the profound and the trivial. In fact, there is no distinction. The trivial is the profound, the ordinary is the extraordinary, and the temporal is the eternal.So this is a great insight. Don’t lose sight of it. It is more possible that you will lose it because it will go against the grain. Your whole training has been such that you are always dividing into good and bad, into pure and impure, perfect and imperfect, into virtue and sin, holy and unholy. You have always been making these distinctions, and because of distinctions you have missed the reality of that which is.This cuckoo singing there and Christ speaking to you are not different. A leaf falling from the tree and a word falling from the lips of Buddha are not different. The very dust is divine. The distinction is man-made, it is a mind trick.And because of these distinctions, these categories, we are never together, we cannot be together. How can you be together if you make such an unbridgeable gap between the profound and the trivial? Then you will find your whole life is trivial. Eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, going to the office or to the farm, all is trivia.Then where will you find the profound? In the church, in the temple, sometimes praying and meditating, sometimes listening to me? Then the profound will not be much in your life, and the profound will be, in a way, false. It will not permeate your whole life. It will not be there always with you. It will not surround you like a climate. Sometimes you will have to make an effort to have that quality of profundity, and again and again you will lose it. And you will become divided, schizophrenic. You will become two, split, and you will start condemning yourself.Whenever you will see something trivial you will condemn yourself, “I am just trivial, ordinary.” And whenever you will see something profound, you will start feeling holier than thou. You will start feeling very egoistic. Both are dangerous.To feel that you are trivial is a condemnation. It creates an inferiority complex. It pulls you down into sadness. It forces you to remain depressed. And naturally you cannot love yourself. You are so trivial, you are so ordinary, how can you love yourself? You fall too short from the ideal of perfection. So a great condemnation arises in your being, and the moment you condemn yourself you are in hell. Then nobody can take you out of it. Even if somebody comes and says you are beautiful, you will not trust him. You will think he is trying to cheat you, bribe you. He is trying to exploit you. How can you be beautiful? You know yourself better than he knows you. You are not beautiful, you are ugly. You are the ugliest person in the world.Because of this condemnation, love will not happen. How can you love anybody if you are feeling so condemned in yourself? And how can you allow somebody to love you if you are feeling so condemned? Love is impossible. When you live in self condemnation you live in hell. Hell is not somewhere else, it is in your attitude. It is a condemning attitude.When you accept yourself and you enjoy yourself, you are in heaven. Heaven is also an attitude. You can move from heaven and hell any moment you decide. And you go on moving, you swing between heaven and hell. Just understand that it is your creation.So if you feel condemned because of your trivia, you will be in hell. And then sometimes you will start feeling very holy because you have done something great. You have saved a life – somebody was drowning in the ocean and you saved him, and a child was caught in a house on fire and you jumped in and you risked your life. You have done something great – then you will feel very egoistic. The ego is again hell.To feel superior is to be in hell, to feel inferior is to be in hell. To drop all superiority, inferiority and just to be, is to be in heaven.The idea of condemnation is also ego oriented. People have impossible ideals. Just the other night Vishnu came. He writes again and again, “I am not perfect. What should I do? I am imperfect, whatever I do is imperfect.” He is torturing himself because he is imperfect. But who is not imperfect? The very idea, “I should be perfect,” is very egoistic. The very effort is egoistic. Nobody is perfect.In fact, perfection cannot exist by its very nature. To be perfect means to be dead. There will be no evolution when you are perfect. Then how can you survive? For what? If God is perfect, then God is dead. If God is imperfect, only then is he alive and can be alive.I preach the imperfect God and I preach the imperfect existence, and I preach the beauty of imperfection and the life of imperfection. The very idea, “I have to be perfect,” that “No flaw should be there in my life” is egoistic. And certainly you will find a thousand and one flaws.So on one hand you are on an ego trip which creates trouble, makes you miserable because you are not perfect. And on the other hand the same trip creates condemnation. You want to be superior and you know that you are inferior. Both are aspects of the same coin. You remain in hell.Enjoy your imperfection. Enjoy the way you are.And drop all distinctions between the holy and the unholy, sin and virtue, good and bad, God and Devil. Destroy all those distinctions. Those are the traps you are caught in. Those are the traps which don’t allow you to live, don’t allow you freedom. You cannot dance. One foot is encaged in inferiority, another foot is encaged in superiority. You are chained. How can you dance? Drop all these chains.That’s what Zen people say: “A hair’s distinction, and heaven and hell are set apart.” That’s what Tilopa says. A little distinction, a hair’s distinction, and hell and heaven are set apart and you are caught in the duality. No distinction, and you are free. No distinction is freedom.The profundity of the trivial and the trivialness of the profound, that’s what I teach.Eating is trivial if you look from the outside. If you look from the inside, it is profound. It is a miracle that you can eat bread and the bread is turned into blood, that it becomes your flesh, that it becomes your bones, that it even becomes your marrow. You eat bread, and the bread becomes your thoughts, dreams. It is a miracle. It is the profoundest thing that is happening. When you are eating, it is no ordinary thing. Existence is at work. It is creative. While chewing bread you are creating life, unknowingly, unconsciously. You are making a thousand and one things possible. Tomorrow you may paint, and that bread that you had eaten has become painting. Tomorrow you may sing, or right now you may do something which would not be possible if the bread was not there.The Christian prayer is beautiful. It says, “God, give us our daily bread.” Looks very trivial. What does Jesus mean when he says, “Pray every day, ‘Give us our daily bread’”? Couldn’t he think of anything more profound? Bread? Just change the word bread and say every day in your prayer, “Lord, give us our daily tea,” and you will see how foolish it looks. But the bread or tea or coffee or Coca-Cola… Yes, Coca-Cola too is divine.Everything is divine, because how can it be otherwise?The prayer says, “Give us our daily bread.” It is raising the trivial to the profound. It is a great statement. The Hindus have always been saying, “Annam brahman – food is God.” Raising the trivial to the profound. Looking into the trivial so deeply that it changes into the profound.You are taking a shower. It is trivia, everyday business, but it can become profound. Just look deep into it. Just standing under the shower and the water goes on flowing, and the body feels fresh and young and alive, and the water is a blessing. Because we are made out of water: a man is almost eighty percent water, and the first glimpse of life happened in the sea. The first thing that existed was the fish, and even now, in the mother’s womb the child floats in seawater with almost the same ingredients, the same saltiness. That’s why when a woman is pregnant she starts eating more salt. She needs more salt because the child needs seawater around him. The child is still a fish in the beginning primary stage. Water is life, and when you are taking a shower, life is showering on you. Eighty percent of life is showering on you, the most necessary element for life. No life is possible without water. These trees will not be there if the water is not, and these birds won’t sing, and these animals won’t be there, and these men will not be there. All life will disappear if water disappears.There is a profound experience when you are touched by water. You can make it so profound. It depends on you, how you go into it. It can become a meditation, a prayer. You can feel grateful, that God is great, that water is still available.To breathe is so trivial, who bothers about it? But breath is your life. All languages have words for life which really mean breath. Sanskrit has prana for life, it means breath. The word soul means breath. The word psyche means breath.And the Bible says God made man and breathed life into him. Life started by breathing into man. Otherwise man was just dust. Adam means dust, earth. God made Adam out of mud. Adam is the Hebrew word for earth. Then God breathed life into him. And that’s how life happens always. A child is born and the first thing we wait expectantly for is that he should cry. Why? Because only through crying will he start breathing. For two, three seconds even the doctor cannot breathe, the nurse cannot breathe. Whether the child is going to breathe or not, who knows? He may not breathe. If he is not going to breathe, then there will be no life. If he breathes, there will be life. Still the same happens as it happens with Adam. God breathes in the child, in each child.God is the invisible force, the life energy that surrounds you. It enters through breath in you, and the day you die, you will die through exhalation. You start life with inhalation, you stop life with exhalation. Then you will not breathe anymore. Again Adam is Adam, again dust is dust, dust unto dust.Breath is life, but have you looked into it? Standing under the sun in the morning, breathe. It is God you breathe in. And then it becomes profound. It is your attitude.The trivial and the profound are not two separate things. They are one, they are together, they are two aspects of one energy. Your life is trivia if you don’t look deep. If you start looking deep, your life is profound.So it is a great insight. You say, “My experience of me is the most profound experience of my life. It is also the most trivial. Please clarify.” Don’t get confused. There is nothing to clarify. It is how life is, the trivial is the profound.The question has arisen because Dhruva must have been thinking these are contradictions, the trivial and the profound. No, they are not contradictory, they are complementary. The trivial hides the profound. The trivial functions like a cover, like a crust, it protects the profound. It is almost like a seed. The seed is protecting the possibility of the tree. That possibility is very soft, the seed is hard. The hard seed, the hard crust of the seed, is protecting the softest possibility of flowers, of a big tree. And the seed will protect it till the seed finds the right soil. Then the seed disappears, then the sheath disappears, then the hard crust dissolves into the earth, and the soft life arises.The profound is hidden in the trivial, so look deep. Wherever there is the trivial there is the profound. Don’t escape from the trivial, otherwise you will be escaping from the profound. And don’t seek the profound against the trivial, otherwise you will never find it.The second question:Osho,A play question: If you were to come here now to this ashram as a young unenlightened man, how would you respond? Would you become part of the ashram? What work would you do? Where would you sit?A beautiful question.First, he asks, “If you were to come here now to this ashram as a young unenlightened man, how would you respond?” Even if I was unenlightened I would not be so unenlightened to come to this ashram. That much is certain.Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was dying and of course he was consoling her in every way, and the wife opened her eyes and said, “It seems almost certain that this night will be my last. I will not be able to see the sunrise again. Mulla, how will you react to my death?”The Mulla said, “How will I react to your death? I will go mad.”Even in that serious moment the wife started laughing. She said, “You cunning fellow. You will not go mad. I know within a week you will be remarried.”And Mulla said, “No. I will go mad, but I will not go that mad.”So even if I was unenlightened, I would not be that unenlightened.Second thing, you say, “Would you become part of the ashram?” Even now I am not part of the ashram. I cannot be part of any institution or any organization, even my own. And if I had come as an unenlightened man, naturally, the ashram will not be mine, will be somebody else’s. I cannot be a part even of my own organization, so how can I be a part of anybody else’s organization? Impossible.And then you ask, “What work would you do?” I have never done any work. I am the laziest man in the world you can find.And the last, you ask, “Where would you sit?” I would escape immediately. I would see an organization, an ashram, and I would run. You are asking, “Where will you sit?” I will not sit at all.The third question:Osho,Usually I am “this way” or “that way,” but for some time I have experienced all kinds of contradictions, simultaneously. I see women as objects of worship, and at the same time I lust after them. I am content to let life flow, and I am afraid of the future. I crave to be alone, and I crave to be always with people. I feel bizarre because these contradictions all seem equally real and true. Is there anything to be understood or done about this?Whenever you come across a contradiction, watch very carefully. There is bound to be something of great significance. Never avoid contradictions because life is contradictory. Life exists through the tension of contradiction. So whenever you come across a contradiction you are very close to the source of life. Let that be always remembered.The ordinary reaction is, whenever you come across a contradiction you start trying to solve it, start finding explanations for it, or start dropping it into the unconscious so you need not worry about it. You start doing something about it immediately the moment you feel some contradiction, because you have been taught to live noncontradictorily. You have been taught a very dangerous thing. Nobody can live noncontradictorily. If you want to live, you have to live through contradiction, as contradiction.You have been taught to be consistent. That’s why you have become false. This is the whole trick. How does such great hypocrisy exist in the world? Why? Why has the whole world turned out to be hypocritical? There is a trick to it, a great trick, a great technology is behind it. The technology is: teach people to be consistent and they will become hypocrites. Because life exists through contradiction.Life is inconsistent. One moment this, another moment that, life is that way. One moment you are feeling loving, another moment you hate the same person, life is like that. Now, you have been taught if you love, then love always. What happens? You cannot love always, so only one thing is possible: when hate comes you hide the hate, you repress the hate and you go on pretending love. This is what hypocrisy is. When you don’t love you pretend.You are full of hate for your wife, but you come home and you hug her and you kiss her and you inquire, “How are you, honey?” and all that. And deep down you hate her and you want to kill her. In fact, the whole day you have been fantasizing how to kill this woman. But you have been taught to be consistent. So, once you had fallen in love, and you have said things in those love moments and you have promised, “I will love you forever and ever” – now you have to be consistent.What will you do with your hate that is bound to arise? Each love object is bound to be a hate object too. If you want not to hate, then you will have to stop loving. If you really want not to hate anybody, then you will have to stop loving. You cannot love consistently. The inconsistency will come up again and again.It is as if somebody has told you, “If you see the day, don’t see the night. That is inconsistent.” So what will you do? In the day you keep your eyes open, in the night you keep your eyes closed and believe that it is day. But the night comes; it doesn’t follow your ideas. It has to come. The night follows the day, the day follows the night.You have been taught, “Be consistent.” Your so-called character is nothing but an effort to be consistent. A real man cannot have any character. A real man is bound to be characterless, because to have a character means to have consistency. To be characterless means to be free.I said something yesterday. Now, if I have a character, I will try to be consistent with my past. Whatever I said yesterday, I have to say the same thing today. But then I have to repeat my past. I cannot live in the moment and I cannot live in the present.In fact, a consistent man is one who goes on changing his past into his future, who goes on putting his past as the future ahead of himself. That is the man of character, the consistent man. An inconsistent man is one who never allows the past to become his future, who remains free for the future, who has no promises to keep, who has no commitment with the past. Whenever it was, he lived it totally; gone, it is gone.A real man will love you and will hate you too. And sometimes he will say, “I will love you always” and sometimes he will say, “I cannot love you again. Impossible.” Sometimes he will be in a deep honeymoon with you and sometimes in a deep divorce, and both things will go like day and night. A real marriage is a continuous honeymoon and divorce, and honeymoon and divorce. Mini honeymoons, mini divorces, big honeymoons, big divorces. It continues like day and night.So whenever you come across a contradiction, be watchful, be very alert. You are very close to life. And when you are consistent, you are just false, a plastic thing, you are not real.I don’t teach consistency. I teach the freedom of being inconsistent. I teach the freedom of being contradictory. That’s my whole approach toward life.Of course you are afraid of being contradictory because then you will not know who you are. With character there is something, something very secure, you know who you are. You have a label, a good man, a bad man, a saint, a sinner. You can believe in your identity when you are consistent – that you are a good husband, a good Christian, a churchgoer, and this and that. With the inconsistency your identity disappears, you don’t know who you are. You become an opening, you are no longer closed, you have an open future. You don’t know what you are going to do the next moment. Only the next moment will tell. To live in that insecurity needs courage.Sannyas is what I propose. Sannyas means to remain in insecurity. Sannyas means not to allow your past to influence your future, not to allow your past to project itself into the future. Let the dead bury the dead. The past is gone, gone. Don’t cling to it, and don’t help it to cling to you.The moment something has passed it has passed. Be completely clean of it, and be free and fresh again. Then you will be real, authentically real, and there will be joy and there will be celebration and song. I am not saying you will never be sad, no. You will be sad. The false man is never sad because he is never happy. The false man just remains in the middle, never happy, never sad. He is simply so-so, lukewarm; he is never too cold and never too hot. He is just okay. He somehow manages. He has a comfortable life, but no real life.I am not saying that the real man will always be happy. I am saying the real man will always be real. When he is sad he will be really sad. He will sing a song of sadness. He will accept his sadness as part of life, as part of growth. He will not reject it. If he feels like crying he will cry. He will not say, “What am I doing? This is not good. Only women cry and I am a man.” He will not say that. He will say, “If my eyes want to cry and the tears are rolling down, good. I have to be real. I am only whatever I am.” He will cry. His tears will be true.Your smiles are false, your tears are false. You manage to smile, and you manage to cry too. So you live an empty life. The real man’s life will be full, sometimes full of joy and sometimes full of sadness.And the real man one day becomes enlightened. The unreal man never becomes enlightened. When the real man becomes enlightened, then there is no joy and no sadness. Then his being is just a witness. Joy comes, he watches it. Sadness comes, he watches it.Now, these are the three stages. The false man: his joy is just a show, a mask, his sadness too he pretends. The real man, the second stage: he is natural, spontaneous, his joy is true, his sadness is true. You can trust him. When he is crying, his whole heart is crying and when he smiles, his whole heart is smiling. And the second stage is a must to attain the third, the enlightened man. The enlightened man is neither sad nor happy. He has attained the witnessing soul, he simply watches. He knows the sadness has come, the happiness has come, but these are like climates that come and go and change, and he remains centered.The false man cannot jump to the enlightened state. Hence, I teach the real man, but the real man is not the goal.That’s why my work goes beyond the Encounter ideology, Gestalt ideology. The Gestalt ideology or the Encounter ideology stops at the real man. Good, better than the unreal. But not enough. Something has yet to happen. I use Encounter groups, Gestalt groups and all the therapies that have become available in the West. They are perfectly beautiful. They bring you from the first false state, to the authentic real state. But my work goes beyond them. But I can go beyond only if you have gone through the second stage. From the first there is no way, from the false there is no way to enlightenment. Only from the real is there a way.You will have to go through the ecstasy of the real and the agony of the real. When you have lived deeply, all the realities of life, the witness will arise. It arises naturally out of being real.So you say, “Usually I am ‘this way’ or ‘that way’…” That is not a good way. You get fixed with one thing, this way or that. Become more fluid, remain more fluid because life is not solid, it is fluid, it is flow. And that’s what is happening and is confusing you.“…but for some time I have experienced all kinds of contradictions, simultaneously.” Good. You are blessed. This confusion is the beginning of a great journey, a great pilgrimage. If you become afraid, you will go back to the false.The false is secure. Let me remind you again and again, the false is comfortable. The false is a good way to die, but not a good way to live. Even your death will be false, because how can the death be real? When you have not lived really, how can you die really?So many people die, but rarely does a real death happen. When Buddha dies it is a real death, or when Lin Chi dies it is a real death. There are very few deaths which are real, because there are very few lives which are real. You only pretend to live, and then one day you pretend to die.I have heard…A man met an old friend on the road, and the old friend was a very, very fanatical Christian Scientist. The old friend asked this man, “How is your father now?” and the man said, “He is very ill.”The Christian Scientist, of course to be consistent with his philosophy, said, “He is not ill. He only thinks he is ill.”That is the Christian Scientists’ ideology, that you only think that you are ill, that’s why you are ill. You are not really ill. He said, “He only thinks he is ill. He is not really ill.”After eight days these two men met again, and the Christian Scientist asked again, “How is your father now?”And the young man hesitated a little and then he said, “Now he thinks he is dead” – to be consistent with this old man’s ideology.The father has died, but this is a reality.You go on living in a fantasy world. Your life is nothing but your thinking, a pseudo thing, and so is your death. Your illness, your health, your happiness, your sadness are also bogus, so how can you die a real death? A real death has to be earned. One has to become worthy of a real death. And one becomes worthy only by living truly.Now you are very close to a great source of light. That’s why you are feeling all sorts of contradictions, simultaneously. That means your solidity is melting. Your hate and love are not categorized as two anymore. They are not put into boxes separately anymore, they are merging with each other. The profound and the trivial are coming together, and you are confused because now you cannot label what is what.“…I have experienced all kinds of contradictions, simultaneously. I see women as objects of worship, and at the same time I lust after them.” That’s what has happened down the ages. There are two things man has done with woman. Either he has worshipped woman as a goddess, or he has condemned woman as a witch. Either he has exploited the woman for his lust, or he has touched her feet and said, “You are divine. Divine mother.” Either the woman has been a prostitute or a divine mother. Man has not accepted woman just as human.And woman is human, as human as you are. She is neither a divine mother nor is she a prostitute, but that’s how the mind goes on. The mind makes things different, separate, puts them in categories. You have killed the real woman because the real woman is both, the prostitute and the divine mother, together, simultaneously. If you fall in love with a prostitute you will find a divine mother. Even a prostitute will turn into a divine mother; if you are in love with her, you will not find the prostitute. And fall in love with a divine mother and you will find the prostitute too.What I am saying is that life is not so small as to be put into boxes, that this is a prostitute and this is a divine mother. Life is vast, so big. It contains contradictions. And that is the beauty of life, and that is the richness of life.Man has been changing between these polarities. Sometimes he calls the woman the divine mother. That too is inhuman, because then you put the woman on a pedestal and you don’t allow her to be human. Watch. When you force a woman to be a divine mother, what are you doing? You are not allowing her to be human. And she will pretend that she is a divine mother, so if you want to make love to her she will be reluctantly ready. She will say no, and she will mean yes. She has to say no, she is the divine mother.A good woman has to be a dead woman. Even while you are making love, she will lie down there like a corpse. A slight movement and you will become afraid: are you wrong; is she not so good, not so virtuous? If she starts enjoying your lovemaking, you will think that she is a bad woman. Only bad women enjoy lovemaking, not good women. Good women? They don’t think of sex at all.Look at the trick. You put the woman so high, then you don’t allow her to be human. You have made her superhuman. That is a way to make her inhuman. Or you force her to be a prostitute. That is again a way to put her below the human, to make her again inhuman. Then you go to the prostitute, you give her money, you make love to her with no responsibility, with no love. It is simple, pure lust, but you know that she is a bad woman. How can you love her? You feel good, there is no problem. You can lust after this woman and you can use her as a thing. She is just a prostitute, not a human being, you don’t relate to her. You just go and do things to her, pay the price and you are finished. Next day in the marketplace you will not even recognize her.In both these ways you have turned the woman into inhuman beings. Both are ugly. The woman is both, the divine mother and the prostitute. Just as you are both, God and animal.Let me repeat. The profane is the sacred, the samsara is the nirvana.Through these categories… The reality is so complex and so deep it cannot be categorized, it cannot be demarked into definitions. No woman is just a prostitute, and no woman is just a divine mother. And that is true about man, the same way. Once you see this, you are freed from categories, logical boxes, pigeonholes, and you can see reality as it is.A woman is a human being, as you are a human being. Yes sometimes she is a witch, just as sometimes you are mean, ugly, horrible, she is too. And sometimes she is ecstasy, pure ecstasy. Sometimes she is the most beautiful phenomenon on the earth, just as you are.In India we have the right representation, the symbol of Kali. You must have seen the pictures of Kali or the statues of Kali. That is really a great understanding about women. Kali is painted black, as black as the Devil – kali means black – and yet she is the divine mother. And she is most beautiful. She is black, as black as the Devil, but her form is that of the divine. She has a beautiful face, a beautiful body, absolutely in proportion, but she is black. And then, she is dancing on the chest of her husband, almost killing him. Shiva is her husband, and she is dancing on his chest and almost killing him. And she loves him too. She loves and kills together. All the contradictions put together.The mother gives you birth, the woman gives you birth, and by and by the woman kills you too. She brings your death closer, hence the attraction and the fear. You are attracted to the divine and you are afraid of the devilish.So you say, “I see women as objects of worship, and at the same time I lust after them.” They are complementaries. Accept them. That’s how reality is. The woman is both, and you are both. And if you accept this contradictory reality, one day you will go beyond it, you will transcend it.There is a transcendental element too, but that transcendental element can be understood only when you pass through contradictions. If you avoid contradictions, you will never attain the transcendental. Go through the contradictory, and by and by you will become just a witness to them both.How does it work? It works in a simple way. If you think you are good, you are identified with good. If you think you are bad, you are identified with the bad. But if you allow both good and bad together, you cannot get identified with either. You remain unidentified, and that is the fundamental, the radical change. You remain unidentified. You cannot figure out who you are, good or bad, day or night, life or death, beautiful or ugly. You cannot identify with anything, so you remain unidentified.Good comes and passes, and you know you cannot be good because the bad is coming. And the bad comes and passes, and you know you cannot be the bad either because the good is coming. So you cannot be good and you cannot be bad. Then who are you? You are a witness. A witness who watches everything come and go, a watcher on the hills.“I am content to let life flow, and I am afraid of the future.” The same. The same contradiction on so many levels. “I crave to be alone, and I crave to be always with people.” The same.“I feel bizarre because these contradictions all seem equally real and true.” They are. And when for the first time you recognize that they are true and real, one feels bizarre. That’s what the Zen people say. First the rivers are rivers and the mountain are mountains, then the rivers are no longer rivers and the mountains are no longer mountains – bizarre, confusion, clouds, everything topsy-turvy, all disturbed – and then one day the mountains are again mountains and the rivers are again rivers: everything settled again, on a higher plane of course, on the transcendental plane of course.You will have to go through this bizarreness. To be sane, one has to pass through many insanities.“Is there anything to be understood or done about this?” Just understood, nothing to be done about it. I don’t teach doing. Nothing has to be done. You just watch. Watch more and more carefully, watch in detail. Watch the subtlest nuance of any change in you. Watch all with no prejudice, with no judgement. And that watching will integrate you, will make you more and more aware.And that is the whole purpose of life, to create more intelligence, to create more awareness.The fourth question:Osho,Is there anything I can give you back?Nothing, because that is what I give to you. I give you nothing, and only nothing can you give me back.In fact, don’t start thinking of giving me anything back, because I am not giving you anything. I am simply making you aware of things that you already have. You don’t owe anything to me, not even a thank-you. If you thank me, that is simply generous of you, you are just being polite and gentlemanly, otherwise there is nothing. You don’t owe anything to me. I have not given anything to you and I am not going to give anything to you. Nothing can be given in the very nature of things.In fact, if you are not angry at me, I will be happy enough. Because I take away many things. I don’t give anything to you. I take away your ego, and I don’t give anything instead. I take away a thousand and one things. And when those thousand and one things have been taken away, suddenly you become aware of that which has always been there from the very beginning.So let me say it in this way: I give you that which you already have and I take away things which you don’t have, but you think you have. I take away that which is not there, but you believe is there. I take away your illusions.But I cannot give reality. Reality is that which cannot be given, it is already there. I eliminate the illusion, and the reality is there. I simply give you back to yourself.There is no need to be worried, “Is there anything I can give you back?” Just if you are not angry, that will be enough. If you can forgive me, that will be enough. I know it is very difficult to forgive me. That is the greatest danger a master takes on his shoulders. It is very difficult for the disciples to forgive him, and they are always watching from the corner of their eyes to find some fault. They are always waiting to find some loophole so they can jump upon it, and they can say, “So I have found the reality. This man is nothing,” and they can go and condemn. It is a very dangerous game.The disciples are continuously watchful. They are like spies, spying on the master, to see if they can find something.Just the other question–answer day, when I talked about Dr. Kovoor, two, three persons got almost mad with me. They have written letters, “Why did you do this? It is cheap.” And I go on telling you the cheap is the costly. And the trivial is the profound. And the world, samsara, is nirvana. Do you hear me or not? And they have demanded, almost it is a demand, “You have to answer why you attacked him.” I have not attacked him, I have attacked these three people who have written to me. What have I to do with Kovoor? He is not going to come here, I am not going to go there. We are not going to meet anyway. I have attacked these three persons, and I have got them, trapped them – they are trapped. I have attacked their idea of me.One has written, “It is inconceivable that a man of your height should come so low.” But who in the first place has told you that I am a man of height? You yourself project, and if your projections are destroyed, you are angry at me.I go on repeating, just to be safe, that I am a very ordinary man. Otherwise you will hang me in the sky. You will say, “You are so high.”If you find me eating, or if you find me taking a bath… Do you know, in heaven there is no provision for God’s bathroom? No provision. I have gone through all the scriptures.Can you believe God farts? Impossible. So high, and farting? Belching? These things are good for human beings, not for gods.Who has told you I am so high? But you project. And I am not so foolish as to accept your projections. If you want to project such things, you will have to find some other people. You are not allowed to project anything on me. I will go on throwing it. I am not here to fulfill any of your expectations. That is the very trouble you have to tolerate with me. You would like me to be dead and sitting on a golden throne, and then you can worship me easily. But I am alive.And I go on doing things that I like. I don’t care what you think. If you are disturbed, it is your problem, it is none of my business. Then you have to look into yourself and find ways not to be disturbed. These things come again and again in your mind, and you don’t see that they are your problems.Somebody else has asked, “Why do we have to pay money here? I have no money,” he says, “and I want to be here.” But then who is going to pay for you? You will need money, you will need food, you will need a shelter, you will need clothes, sometimes you will be ill, you will need the hospital. Who is going to pay for you? Now, he thinks that this ashram is money obsessed. If people who don’t have money are allowed, then Laxmi will have to become even more money obsessed, because she will have to arrange for them also. Just to avoid money obsession, money has to be arranged. There are many people who would like to be here, but then who is going to arrange for them? And if somebody else arranges for them, he will demand something in return.The person says, “Even Christians don’t ask for money, even they are not that bold.” I know they are not that bold. They need not be, they have enough money. The Vatican has enough money; that is the richest party in the world. But then you have to pay, not in money – money is there. You have to pay with other things, you have to pay with your freedom.Here I want you to be free. I don’t want to hinder your freedom.If you want to stay here without money, then I will have to ask some people who have money to give money to the ashram. But then they have their conditions. Then their conditions have to be fulfilled. Otherwise why should they give their money? They give money in return for something. Then you will not be free here. And I will not be free here. I will not be able to say what I want to say. Then they will dictate to me that this has to be said and this has not to be said.Nobody is money obsessed. But the questioner is money obsessed. He has no money and he wants to be here. But what is money? Money is just that you have to pay for everything. You eat, you have to pay for it. You live, you have to pay for it. You need clothes, you have to pay for them.And why should you not pay? Then somebody else will have to pay for you. Why exploit somebody else? If you don’t have money, then go and earn money and come back. You are money obsessed. But you think, “Osho is demanding money.” It is your problem.Somebody has said, “I can’t see the point why I have to pay when I come to the lecture. When I have to pay ten rupees for the lecture, then I cannot think of you as God.” So the price of thinking of me as God is ten rupees. If he does not have to pay, he will think of me as God. What do you think? You are trying to bribe me? Pay twenty rupees and think of me as the Devil, perfectly okay. Why should you not pay? Why should you like to exploit?And this is my understanding, that you hear only when you pay, otherwise you don’t hear. When you have nothing to pay, there is no need to hear. The more you pay, the more alert you are, because those ten rupees are gone. If you don’t listen it is your business, you remain a little alert. I know you are money minded, those ten rupees will keep you awake.And my godhood is not in danger, because I don’t care what you think about me. That is not the point at all. It is not that you have made me a god. This is my declaration, it is not your recognition. If nobody believes in me, then too I am a god. If only I believe in me, that’s enough. I don’t need a single witness. This is my understanding.Then again, the moment you think, “This man is a Bhagwan, then he should behave in such and such a way… Then he should be on a high pedestal. He should not behave like a human being.”Then you don’t understand my concept of Bhagwan. My concept of Bhagwan is not that a Bhagwan is a special being, that a Bhagwan is a perfect being, that a Bhagwan is not of this world. My concept of Bhagwan is that God is a normal quality of existence. Just by being, you are God.You are not a painter by just being. For painting you will have to learn some skill, you will have to go to an art school. And then too your being a painter will depend on so many recognitions. People will recognize, may not recognize. The critics will appreciate, may not appreciate, a thousand and one things. If you want to be a musician, just by being, you are not a musician. You will have to learn; this is something which has to be learned.When I say God, I mean you are God, just by being. It is not a specialization.Then what is the difference between me and you? The only difference is that I recognize my godhood, and you don’t recognize yours. Otherwise there is no distinction. I am as imperfect as you are. Then what is the difference between me and you? The difference is that I enjoy my imperfection and you don’t enjoy yours. That I am perfectly happy with all my imperfections and you are not happy with yours. You have a notion of perfection and I have none. I am perfect in my imperfections. I have accepted them totally, in toto. I am not trying to improve myself, I am simply the way I am. And I am happy the way I am.The day you are also happy the way you are, the day you are also happy with all your imperfections, you are God. You are still God, whether you recognize it or you don’t recognize it. But you have your ideas about God, and then you project those ideas. And if sometimes, they are shattered… And they will be shattered again and again, because I cannot keep to your expectations.I am a free man. I live the way I live. And see the whole point: I am not expecting anything from you; still you go on expecting things from me. My whole effort here is to help you to be yourself. And your whole effort here is to make me something that you want me to be. Drop all this nonsense.That’s why I say, even if you can forgive me, that will be enough. You need not even say a thank-you.It is very difficult to be safe amongst disciples, hence I need bodyguards. Because a disciple has “surrendered,” now he will take revenge. And of course, if he surrenders to me, he will take revenge on me. Where else will he go to take revenge? Watch all these tendencies in you.It was not Kovoor, it was not my criticism of Kovoor that has hurt you. It is your idea of me, it is your expectation of me that is feeling hurt. So drop the expectations, otherwise you will feel hurt again and again; I will find other Kovoors. Sometimes, even if they are not there I can invent them. But I am going to destroy all your expectations of me, because if you cannot drop expectations about me, how can you drop expectations about yourself? It will be impossible.And my whole work consists in a simple thing. To live a life without expectations, without hope, to live a life moment to moment with no ideals.Two men were chatting when the name of a mutual friend was mentioned. “Are you a friend of Harry’s?” the first asked.“Are we friends?” the man said. “Twenty years we are friends. There is nothing I would not do for Harry, and there is nothing he would not do for me. In fact, for twenty years we have gone through life together, doing absolutely nothing for each other.”I am doing nothing to you. Please, do nothing to me. Even if this can happen, there will arise a great friendship. You need not feel obliged. You don’t owe anything to me.The fifth question:Osho,Meher Baba remained silent for the last forty-five years of his life. Please comment on its implications.There is nothing much in it. He just got fed up with the questions of his disciples.And sometimes the idea arises in me too. So watch.The sixth question:Osho,There are a few words you always pronounce wrongly. Why?So that you can say to people that at least in one thing Osho is consistent.My English is not that of the Englishman. My English is not that of the American, it is not even of the Indian. My English is just mine. So you have to tolerate it. And I am very reluctant to improve about anything.And my English has been of a great help to me. I used to live in Jabalpur for many years. The first day I was driving to the university, a woman who lived next to me, an American woman, wanted a lift. Now, this was going to be dangerous. This was the first day. And every day then, I will have to carry her and tolerate her chattering for almost half an hour, going to the university and coming back.I had heard the American expression “Can I drop you off somewhere?” But I managed it into my English and I asked her, “Can I throw you down someplace?” And finished. She never asked again.Once, another, an Englishwoman got interested in me. I don’t know what she saw in me, but she was almost in a fantasy. She was a lecturer in the same university in the English department. She was after me. I was simply surprised as to what she saw in me, because I don’t see anything in myself, it is just emptiness there. But my English helped.You know the expression… I had read somewhere in a novel, that a young man gazes into the eyes of his woman and says to her, “Your face, your beauty, your joy, your presence, make time stand still.” So I did the same to this woman.I told her, “You have such a face that it would stop a clock.” And finished. My English helped me.Sometimes you will find it difficult too, because my structure of the sentences is mine, and sometimes the meaning I put into words is mine, the pronunciations are mine. Sometimes you can’t even get what I am saying. That helps you to keep awake. You have to listen attentively; you can miss. You cannot take me for granted.One man was discussing with me about a politician, and I told the man, “That politician is a spherical S.O.B.”The man was puzzled. He said, “I have come across many S.O.B.’s in my life. But what do you mean by ‘spherical’?”“I mean,” I said to him, “he is an S.O.B. any way you look at him.”“Spherical,” that is my own word.And my English has a certain reputation and I am not going to destroy it.A little lady from Fresno, visiting San Francisco, got quite a thrill out of attending a daring party in the Bohemia known as Telegraph Hill.A friend who was showing her the sights pointed out a familiar looking young couple, and whispered, “Don’t look now, but those two artists there, are living in sin.”“Sin, my foot” exclaimed the Fresno lady. “I know them. It is just Lois and Maurice, and they were married in the Fresno Baptist Church five years ago.”The young couple overheard and quickly drew the Fresno lady aside. “For God’s sake don’t tell anybody we are married,” said the young man in a tense undertone. “It would ruin our artistic reputation.”I have a certain reputation of my English, and I am not going to change it in any way.The last question:Osho,What is pornography, and why does it have so much appeal?Pornography is a by-product of religious repression. The whole credit goes to the priests. Pornography has nothing to do with pornographers. The pornography is created, managed, by the Church, by the religious people.In a primitive, natural state, man is not pornographic. When human beings are naked and nude, and man knows the woman’s body and woman knows the man’s body, you cannot sell Playboy. It is impossible. Who will purchase Playboy? And who will look into all that crap?But religions have created the great profession of pornography. The whole credit goes to them. They have repressed so much that man’s mind is boiling. Man wants to see the woman’s body. Nothing wrong in it, a simple desire, a human desire. And the woman wants to know the man’s body. A simple desire, nothing wrong about it.Just think of a world where trees are covered with clothes. There are people… I have heard about some English ladies who cover their dogs and cats with clothes. Just think, cows and horses and dogs dressed. Then you will find new pornography arising. Somebody will publish a nude picture of a tree, and you will hide it in a Bible and look at it. This whole foolishness is out of religious repression.Make man free, allow people to be nude. I am not saying they should continuously be nude, but nudity should be accepted. On the beach, at the swimming pool, in the home, nudity should be accepted. The children should take a bath with the mother, with the father, in the bathroom. There is no need for the father to lock the bathroom when he goes in. The children can come and have a talk and chitchat and go out. Pornography will disappear.Each child wants to know. “How does my daddy look?” Each child wants to know, “How does my mother look?” This is simply intelligence, curiosity. And the child cannot know what the mother looks like, and the child cannot know what the father looks like; now you are creating illness in the child’s mind. It is you, you are ill, and the illness will be reflected in the child’s mind.I am not saying sit nude in the office or in the factory. If it is hot it is okay, but there is no need to be naked, it should not be an obsession. But this continuous obsession of hiding your body is just ugly.And one thing more. Because of the clothes, bodies have become ugly because then you don’t care. You care only about the face. If your belly goes on becoming bigger and bigger, who bothers? You can hide it. Your body has become ugly because it is not exposed. Otherwise you will think a little: the belly is getting too big. Just let one hundred people stand nude, and they will all be ashamed, and they will squirm and they will start hiding themselves. Something is wrong. Why is it so? They know only about their face. The face they take care of, the whole body is neglected.This is bad. This is not good. It is not in favor of the body either.Any country where people are allowed a little freedom to be nude becomes more beautiful: people have more beautiful bodies. If American women are getting more beautiful and have more beautiful bodies, there is no wonder in it. Indian woman will have to wait long, they can hide their ugly bodies in the saris very carefully. The sari is a great help.Nudity should be natural, should be as natural as animals, as trees, as everything else is nude. Then pornography will disappear.Pornography is there as a sort of mental masturbation. It is mind masturbation. You are not allowed to love women, you are not allowed to love men, you are not allowed to make as many contacts as possible. The mind is boiling, and starts a sort of inner masturbation. Pornography helps you, it gives you visions of beautiful women and beautiful men to dream about, and it gives you a thrill.Your alive wife does not give you any thrill. With your alive wife you suddenly go dead. There are people, even while making love to their wife, they are imagining some other woman, they are imagining some Playboy picture. They can make love to their woman only when in their imagination there is some other woman, some fantasy. Then they get thrilled. They are not making love to their woman and the woman is not making love to them. She may be thinking of some actor or some hero or somebody. There are four people in each bed. Of course it is too crowded, and you never contact the real person. Those imaginary ones are standing in between.You should know that masturbation, mental or physical, is a perversion. It does not exist in nature. Homosexuality does not exist in nature, but in zoos it comes into existence. In zoos, animals start masturbating. In zoos, animals even start becoming homosexually interested. Wherever the situation is unnatural, unnatural perversions enter. In the military, in the army, people become homosexual because it is an all-boys club, no woman available. Their pent-up energies start making them insane. They think they will go mad if they don’t allow some outlet. In the boys’ hostels, in the girls’ hostels – where no boy can come, no girl can come; the other sex is not allowed – naturally pornography will be greatly enjoyed. It will help masturbation.But these things have not been talked of directly. Now many will be offended. Why am I talking about these things? I am here to make everything clear to you, so that you can become more and more natural. The appeal for pornography simply says that your mind is in an abnormal state. It is perfectly good to be interested in a beautiful woman, nothing wrong, but to have a picture of a nude woman and to get excited about it is just stupid. That’s what people are doing with pornography.I have heard a beautiful joke. Listen attentively, don’t miss it.A husband was suspicious of his wife, so he hired a private detective to find out whether she had a lover or not. The detective, a Chinese immigrant, came back to report after only two days. His arm and nose were broken and his head was tied up in bandages.“What happened?” the husband inquired eagerly. “Any proof yet?”“Well,” the detective answered, “I hid outside your house when you left in the morning. After half an hour a man came and let himself in with a key. I climbed a tree to see into the bedroom, and there was he holding she and she kissing he. So he play with she and she play with he. I play with me and I fall down from the tree.”That’s what pornography is.Beware of all sorts of perversions. To love is good, to dream about it is ugly. Why? When the real is available, why go for the unreal? Even the real never satisfies. So how can the unreal satisfy? Even the real in the final analysis proves to be illusory, so what to say about the illusory?Let me repeat: even the real, one day proves to be just unreal, so what to say about the unreal?Go into real love, and you will become so aware one day that even the real love, the so-called real love, will disappear. And when a man is completely beyond sexuality… Not that I am saying “try to go beyond,” no, not at all, God forbid. What I mean when I say when a man “goes beyond,” is that when a man has gone deeper into sex, into love, and has known and has found that there is nothing, that very finding takes him above. He starts floating above the earth, he grows wings. That transcendence is brahmacharya, that transcendence is celibacy. It has nothing to do with your effort. It has nothing to do with repression.A repressed person can never attain brahmacharya, he will become pornographic. And there are a thousand and one ways of being pornographic. In the old Indian scriptures there are descriptions of great rishis sitting in meditation, and beautiful women trying to seduce them, dancing around them naked. And the stories say they are sent by the God of heaven to corrupt them, because the God in heaven is afraid if they attain their samadhi, they will become competitors. The God of heaven is afraid of their competition, so when they are attaining closer and closer, coming closer to samadhi, he sends beautiful women to seduce them.Now, there is no God and no beautiful women come from heaven. This is mind pornography. These rishis, these so-called seers, have repressed sex so much that at the last moment, when they are really getting closer to their innermost center, that repressed sex bursts forth, explodes. And in that explosion their own images, mind images… It is a mind panorama, it is very colorful. And it is so colorful and looks so real that even they are deceived, they really think women are there.Just go in a cave for three months and be celibate, and force celibacy. After three months you will be a great seer and you will start seeing things. That is what a great seer is. You will start seeing damsels and beautiful apsaras from heaven coming and dancing around you, seducing you. They are just your mind picture. When you are deprived of reality, your dreams start almost looking like reality. That’s what we call hallucination.In those old days, Playboy magazine was not available, so the Jaina monks had to depend on their own. Now you can have some support from the outside.But beware, even the real is proved finally to be unreal. So don’t move into the realms of the unreal. Go into the real, let it be a great experience. I am not against it, I am all for it. Go into it because only by going into it, one day, brahmacharya – one day you simply get out of it.Not that love will disappear. In fact, for the first time love will appear, but a totally different kind of love. Buddha calls it compassion – a cool love, with no sexual heat in it. Your being will become a benediction. Your very presence will make people feel your love. Your love will fall and shower on them. In your very presence people will start moving into the unknown.Yes, great compassion will arise in you. It is the same sexual energy, released from sexual objects. Not repressed: released. Not forcibly repressed, but understandably released. The same sexual energy becomes love, compassion.And when love, compassion, arises, you are fulfilled. Buddha has said two things are the goals: awareness and compassion. And both come out of sex energy; both are born out of it. Those two are the flowers, ultimate flowers of sex energy.That lotus is waiting in you to flower. Don’t waste your energies. Use your energies to understand them, go into them deeply, meditatively, so that one day that lotus opens.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The official, Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.“If a man puts a gosling into a bottle,” said Riko, “and feeds him until he is full grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, “Riko!”“Yes, master,” said the official with a start.“See,” said Nansen, “the goose is out!”“I do not seek, I find,” says Pablo Picasso. And I say to you that you need not seek, because if you seek, you will never find it. And you need not find it also, because if you find it, it will not have been found at all.Seeking means the truth is not, and you have to seek it. Seeking means the truth is hidden, and you have to seek it. Seeking means the truth is far away, distant, and you have to journey to it. And truth is herenow. No pilgrimage is needed; one has not to go anywhere. Truth is not there and truth is not then. Truth is here and now, so all seeking is going astray.Seek, and you will not find, because in the very seeking you have missed the point; you have missed the first principle. In the very effort, you have gone away from the truth.Seeking is a desire. With the desire, the mind comes in. The mind is nothing but desire. Seeking is in the future, and the future is not. Truth is always present, always present. Truth is always now; there is no other way for truth to be. You cannot say about truth, “Truth was,” and you cannot say about truth, “Truth will be.” That will be absolutely wrong. Truth is, and it is always so, and it will be always so, and it has always been so. Truth is.How can you seek that which is? One seeks that which is not yet. Seeking is in the future. Seeking assumes that it is not here. You seek money, you seek power, you seek prestige, you seek heaven. But how can you seek truth? That’s why, let me repeat: seeking, you go astray. Seeking, you become a victim of desire. Seeking, the mind becomes predominant. Seeking, the secondary becomes primary, and the primary is lost track of.And I say: if you find it, you have not found it at all. Because if you remain to find it, then it cannot be truth. Truth is found only when you are not. When truth is, you are not. You cannot both be present together. You are the greatest lie there is. If you are still there, then you will go on missing the truth. The very presence of you functions as a barrier. “I” cannot find. When the “I” is not there, it is found.That’s why I say Picasso’s statement is a half-truth. Half of it is true: “I do not seek.” But the half is untrue when he says, “I find.” It looks almost Zen like, but it is not. A half-truth is more dangerous than a plain lie, because you can see the lie as the lie sooner or later, but the half-truth can go on pretending to be the whole truth. At least it appears like the truth. Many have been deceived by Picasso’s statement. It is almost Zen, “I do not seek, I find.”If he had said, “I do not seek, and it is found,” it would have been Zen. If the “I” remains, then truth will remain clouded. The “I” functions as a cloud, and the sun goes behind. The “I” functions as darkness, as a vale of darkness. The “I” is very noisy, and the voice of truth is very small, still. If the “I” is there beating its drums, then it is almost impossible to hear the whispering of truth.Yes, truth is a whisper. You feel it only when you are absolutely not. In your absence it is present.So this is the whole thing. If you are present, truth is absent; if you are absent, truth is present. To be absent is all that meditation is. To be absent is all that is involved in meditation.How to become absent? How not to be? Yes, “To be or not to be” is the question. And ordinarily we decide to be. The moment we decide to be, samsara. The moment we decide not to be, nirvana. Yes, that is the basic question that encounters every human being, “To be or not to be.” A buddha decides not to be.And the paradox is that those who decide not to be become true, and those who decide to be become a lie. The lie can persist, you can go on feeding it.Truth is, just is, only is. Seeking, you miss it. Seeking, you have started looking somewhere else. Seeking, you don’t look here. Seeking, your eyes are turned upward toward the sky. That’s why whenever we think of God, we look upward toward the sky. It is very significant. God is far away, sitting in the seventh heaven, up. It is a long journey; only very rare people can do it, saints, mahatmas, ascetics. All nonsense.God is where you are right now. Not in the seventh heaven, but within you. But about those seven heavens, the metaphor of seven is beautiful. God is not in the seventh heaven somewhere, but is hidden behind seven layers of lies. There is a very strange incident in Bodhidharma’s life, the founder of Zen. It is said that Bodhidharma collapsed seven times and arose eight times, when he realized enlightenment. Collapsed seven times and arose eight times. Very significant. Those are the seven layers of the ego, the seven layers of the “I.” Each “I” will help you to collapse. And if you cannot rise eight times, that means, if you cannot rise at least one time without the ego, you will not attain.So the whole question is not that the truth is very far. It is very close, very, very close. It is in you, it is you, it is your intrinsic nature, it is your dharma. That is the first principle, but somehow, seeking you have missed it.You have been seeking for many lives. A seeker you have been. Non-seeking will reveal it.That’s why I say that seeking, you go astray. Seeking, you go into dreams. How can you seek God? You have not known. How can you seek the unknown? You have never seen. How can you seek the unseen? Even if God comes across you, you will not be able to recognize him, because recognition is possible only if you have experienced him before. And you have not experienced him. He may have come across you many times in your life, and you will go on missing, because how will you recognize him?It is impossible to seek the unknown. Then what do you do? First you create a dream about the unknown, and you start seeking the dream. The Hindu has one dream of God, the Mohammedan has another dream, the Christian has still another, but those are all dreams. The Christian will attain his dream. That is the misery, because if you persist too much, your dream will start becoming almost a reality. If you pour your energy into your dream too much, then your dream will start becoming a reality. You will convert it into a reality. But it is not reality, it is still a dream.The fight between Hindus, Mohammedans, and Christians is not the fight about reality. The fight is about their different dreams. Hindus have a certain idea of God, so have others, and they fight. They say, “Our dream is true.” When a Christian meditates deeply, he comes to see Jesus. A Jaina never comes to see Jesus, never. A Buddhist never comes to see Jesus; Jesus never crosses his path. For a Buddhist, Buddha comes on the path. For a Jaina, Mahavira crosses his path. They are their dreams. They are dreams and projections and desires. And if you persist too much, the mind has the faculty to impart reality to the dream.You do it every day, so it is not something very strange. Every night when you fall asleep you dream, and in the dream you never recognize the fact that it is a dream. In the dream it looks true. In the dream it looks real, howsoever absurd. In the dream you see a dog is walking and suddenly the dog becomes a cat, and you don’t even doubt that it is possible. In the dream you accept even that. Your acceptance, your capacity to believe, is tremendous.Even the people who think they are skeptical, people who think they are great doubters, logicians, rationalists, even in their dreams all their rationalism is gone and all their doubt disappears. In their dreams they believe absurd things. In the morning when they are awake, they will be amazed, but then it is too late.Just think of a person who is in a coma. Once, a woman was brought to me who had been in a coma for nine months. Now think, if she is dreaming for nine months, she must be thinking they are realities. A man can be in a coma for nine years, or ninety years, or for nine lives. Then? The dream will look real. In fact, if this woman is awakened out of her coma for one minute and she looks around and falls into her dream again, which will be more real, her dream that has lasted for nine months, or the reality that she saw for one single minute? What will be her conclusion, if she can conclude? She will conclude that she had fallen for one minute into sleep, and she saw a dream and again the dream is gone, so she is awake and her reality continues.The greatest possibility of the mind and the greatest capacity of the mind is imagination. It lives through imagination. The moment you start seeking truth you are moving in the direction of imagination. What are you seeking?Zen says there is nothing to seek, because you don’t know what is there. So if you seek, you will miss. Now, this is a very much higher standpoint. Jesus says, “Seek, and you will find.” A very much lower statement, nothing to be compared with Zen. Meaningful, meaningful for those who are starting on the journey, but if you follow Jesus, one day or other, you will understand that by seeking you cannot reach. Jesus was talking to people who were not highly evolved, people who had not even started seeking. He had to teach them. “Seek and you will find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given to you.” If you go to a Zen master he will smile, he will say, “Start,” because his statement is a higher statement. When you have sought and you have not found, when you have struggled hard and nothing comes into your hands except dreams, then the Zen master’s approach will become possible, you will be able to understand it. Then he will say, “Seek, and you will not find. Now, please drop seeking. Drop seeking and find it herenow.”But I am not saying that Jesus is wrong. I am saying it is a beginners’ class. And unless you follow Jesus for a time you will not understand Zen. So Jesus will prepare you, Jesus will help you.Jesus was talking to the Jews who have been one of the most earthy races in the world. To talk Zen would have been impossible; they would have killed him even earlier. They didn’t allow him much life, only three years of ministry. At the age of thirty he started his work, by thirty-three he was gone. They could not tolerate even a very primary statement about religion. It was not very rebellious, it was not very absurd. It was in tune with the Jewish thinking, but still they could not tolerate it. It was “otherworldly.” He was talking about the world that he calls the Kingdom of God. Jews have been very worldly, that is their success. They are very down to earth, and this man was distracting them. They were seeking money and they were seeking power and prestige, and this man was talking about God. Jesus was trying to change their seeking toward religion. It is religion of the kindergarten class.Zen people are talking about the highest statement. India’s highest consciousness was transplanted into China, and China’s highest consciousness, Taoism, met with Buddhism. These are two of the greatest flowerings of human consciousness. Never again has humanity reached such a peak as Buddhism, as it reached in Buddha. And never again has it reached anything like Lao Tzu. And just think: Zen is a crossbreeding of Taoism and Buddhism. It is a meeting of Buddha and Lao Tzu. It is a meeting of two of the highest peaks. Naturally Zen goes still higher. Zen goes higher than Buddhism and higher than Taoism, because it contains all that was beautiful in these two cultures: the ancientmost cultures, the longest seekers in the world, who have staked all that they had for their seeking. Zen is the purest flower.In fact, Zen is not a flower. It is essence, it is fragrance. Even a flower has something gross in it, something of the earth. So remember: when Zen is saying something, it is to be understood at the highest level. Otherwise there will be no understanding about it; you will misunderstand it.Seeking, you go astray. Seeking, you go into dreams. Seeking, you go somewhere else, and truth is here. Seeking, you go then, and truth is now. Seeking, you are, and seeking, you are too much. The more you seek, the more you feel you are. The harder and more arduous the seeking becomes, the stronger the ego becomes.Seeking, you are, and seeking, you are too much, and there is no space for the truth to be. You fill the whole space of your being. Seeking, you are closed.Have you not seen this happening in ordinary life too? A man is suddenly told that his house is on fire. He rushes toward his house from the office or from his shop; he cannot see what is happening in the market, on the road. Somebody says, “Hello,” he cannot hear. Somebody comes and collides with him, but he cannot see who he is, and he will not remember that somebody collided. His whole mind is narrow now. His house is on fire, his mind is concentrated.Seeking means concentration, and truth is never achieved by concentration. Truth is achieved by meditation. And the difference is vital and the difference is great. You have to understand the difference because ordinarily people who don’t know anything about meditation go on writing books, in which they write that meditation is concentration. Meditation is not concentration. Meditation is just the opposite state of concentration.When you concentrate, your mind is narrowed down. When you meditate, your mind is widened. When you concentrate, there is an object on which you concentrate. When you meditate, there is no object.People come to me and they ask, “On what to meditate?” Then they are not asking about meditation, they are asking about concentration. When they come and they say to me, “I cannot concentrate. Osho, can you help me?”… Concentration means you want your mind to cling to something, you want your mind to remain with something. Concentration is a sort of attachment, so whenever your attachment is there you are concentrated.Your wife is dying and if you are attached to her, you will forget the whole world. Now nothing exists except your dying wife. You will be sitting by her side and you will be concentrated. Your mind will not go here and there.Or if you are driving a car, and suddenly you see an imminent accident is going to happen – some madman is coming, driving his car madly, and on the turn you see now it is too late, it is going to happen – suddenly you will be concentrated because you are too attached to life. There will be no thoughts any more. Just a moment before, you were thinking to see your girlfriend, a moment before you were thinking to go to the movie tonight, or do this or that. Suddenly all has disappeared, there is no thought in the mind, no object. You are too attached to life. Because of this attachment, all other objects have disappeared. You are concentrated now only on your life, only one thing has remained: your life.Dostoevsky has written a memoir. He was young and he was a revolutionary, and he was caught by the tzar with twenty other people and they all were sentenced to death. The day came, ditches were dug and they were standing in front of the ditches and a man was getting ready with the machine gun. Everything was ready.Just close by there is a clock on a church tower, and each moment is passing fast and the life is disappearing. At exactly six o’clock, they will be shot dead. It is ten minutes to six.You can imagine how concentrated they must have become. Dostoevsky writes, “Never again have I been so concentrated in my life. All else disappeared. I could hear my heart throbbing, I could see my breathing for the first time, I felt my body for the first time. I had never felt my body, never heard my heartbeat, never seen my breath. Everything became simply concentrated, and we could hear the clock moving.Five minutes, four minutes, three minutes, and the concentration is becoming more and more and more. One minute, and everything else has disappeared.When life is at stake, only life is in the mind.And then comes a horseman running, and the tzar has pardoned them. Their death sentence has been converted into a life sentence.One man, at exactly six o’clock, fell in the ditch. Died without being shot. Must have become so concentrated with the idea of death, he died. Nobody could believe it. The officers ran. He was taken out of the ditch, but he was dead. He believed it; he must have become hypnotized with the idea of death. Death is coming, death is coming, fifteen minutes, death is coming. It was coming for two, three months, now it was closer and closer and closer, and the mind became concentrated. The man fell and died.Another man shouted, “I am dead.” He became mad. For his whole life he remained shouting, “I am dead. I have died, don’t you know?” He will meet people and say, “Don’t you know? I died on that day. Six o’clock they killed me. I am a ghost.”Dostoevsky himself could not believe it, because it was unimaginable that the tzar was going to forgive them. But he writes in his memoirs, “Never again was I concentrated, that was the peak of concentration.”It is not meditation. If it was meditation, then Dostoevsky would have become enlightened. That peak of concentration?It happens to you when you are studying for an examination. As the examinations come closer, you become more and more concentrated. Just the night before, your mind functions so concentratedly. Once the examination is gone, the mind relaxes again.Concentration is a mind thing. Meditation is a no-mind thing. Concentration means pouring your whole energy onto one object. Meditation means not pouring your energy onto any object, but just overflowing in all directions.For example, if you are listening to me you can listen in two ways. You can listen in the wrong way. The wrong way is the way of concentration: you can just remain tense, strained. Or you can listen in a relaxed, let-go way: you can remain relaxed. If you listen in a tense way – that is the meaning of the word attention: with tension, concentration – then you will not listen to the birds singing in the trees. Then you will listen only to me, and everything else will be blocked out, bracketed out. That means only this small voice that is here is in your concentration and the whole existence has been blocked out.Meditation is just the opposite. Nothing is blocked out, you are open in all directions. You are listening to me, you are listening to the birds also. If the wind blows in the trees and the trees start a murmur, you will listen to that too. And there will be no distraction, remember. You are so open, you listen to me and the bird and the wind, and they all become one. And when you can listen in that way, you have listened to God.When you listen meditatively, you listen to God. Whatever you listen to, it is God, it is God’s message. He has reached you through the tree, through the wind, through the bird, through me. He is coming from everywhere because he is everywhere. He surrounds you. So when you are open to everything that is happening, to all that is happening, you are herenow; you are in meditation. And this state is a state of non-seeking.Concentration is part of seeking. When you seek something you become concentrated. When you don’t seek anything you become relaxed. When you seek something and you are concentrated, you are going away from yourself. Your object will be the goal, you forget yourself. Your arrow of consciousness goes only to the object. When you are not going anywhere, where will you be? When you are not going anywhere, you will be where you are, you will be whoever you are. You will be simply relaxing and resting into yourself.Ashtavakra says, “Rest in yourself, and you will attain all.” Because resting in yourself you will know who you are.So it is not a question of seeking. Seeking, you are too much. Seeking, you are so arrowed toward something that you don’t see anything else. Your eyes don’t allow all to enter your being, and then there is no space for the truth to be. Seeking, you become a cloud and the sun goes behind. Hence, seeking, there is night and darkness and death.When you are not seeking there is life, eternal life, and light, and God, or you can choose any name which you prefer. Buddha calls it nirvana. Non-seeking, you have arrived. In fact, you had never gone anywhere else, you were only imagining.“Tell us, master…” a monk asked Daito.Daito was a great Zen master.“Tell us, master, when Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star, what did he see?”In Zen this is the legend, that Buddha was seeking and seeking for six years, then he got tired and fed up with seeking, and one day he dropped seeking too. As one day he had dropped his kingdom, his family, his this world, one day he dropped his other world too. As one day he had become disinterested in the material, a day came when he became disinterested in the spiritual too. And that was the night when he rested in himself because there was nothing to seek. So he slept under a tree, the bodhi tree. That became the most famous tree in the world. He rested under the bodhi tree, slept well. There was no seeking, so there was no dreaming either. The whole night was just a peaceful rhythm, not even a thought, because the material world was gone, the spiritual world was gone. It was an absolute rest into oneself.By the morning, the Zen legend says, his eyes opened. Not that he opened his eyes, because there was nothing to do now: he will not even open his eyes. The Zen legend says the eyes opened because the rest was complete. See the difference. You can open your eyes, then there is strain. You can close your eyes, then there is strain. When the eyes are closed by themselves there is rest. When the eyes open by themselves, then there is rest.When a life is not a life of doing, but happening, then there is rest.The eyes opened and he saw the last morning star setting. It was just disappearing, the last glimpse of it. In a moment it was gone, and he became enlightened. The last trace disappeared with the disappearing morning star, and he was utterly empty. He was utterly nobody. He became a nothingness, a pure nothingness, a content-less consciousness.What is the significance of this last star disappearing? When the eyes opened and he saw the last star, there was a little concentration, a slight concentration – must be the old habit, thousands of lives of old habit. He must have become a little strained, a little concentration must have arisen. Looking at the last star, he must have become focused; his consciousness must have become narrow, just out of old habit. There was nothing to look at now. But then the star disappeared – it was the last star, and the sun was going to rise soon: so the star disappeared. The star disappeared, and the last object of concentration disappeared.Suddenly he was released from all concentration, suddenly there was freedom; there was no content. The last star disappearing took away the last trace of concentration. He was there, and he was not there. He was there for the first time authentically, and he was not there for the first time as an “I,” as an ego.A seeker asked master Daito:“Tell us, master, when Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star, what did he see?”Why did he become enlightened by seeing the last star?Many people have copied it. People are foolish, people are monkeys. Many Buddhists sit, they even go to Bodhgaya. They come from China, from Korea, from Japan, from Ceylon, they go to Bodhgaya, they sit under the bodhi tree. They try to rest the whole night, and they watch. Many times it must be, in the night they must be looking whether the last star is there or gone. And they must be closing their eyes again, it is still night and there are so many stars, and they must be afraid and tense. Will they be able to see the last star, or will they miss? And they have to see the last star disappearing.Once a Japanese man came and stayed with me.I said, “Why have you come from Japan?”He said, “To see the last star disappearing.”I told him, “Can’t you see a last star disappearing in Japan? Don’t the stars behave the same way there? Don’t they disappear in the morning? For what have you come here?”And he said, “I have come to sit under the bodhi tree.”But any tree will do. Buddha was not sitting under that tree specifically. It was just a coincidence, it was accidental. He had not searched for that tree. That tree was in no way special, it was as ordinary a tree as any tree.You can sit under any tree and under any sky and in any country, but the question is not of the country, not of the sky, not of the stars, not of the tree. The question is, “Has your attachment to things, and attachment to other-worldly things disappeared, or is it still there?”Now, in fact, you have come to sit under the bodhi tree because you want to become enlightened. The desire. The seeking. You have come as a seeker, and Buddha attained because he was not a seeker that night.This is how things go on and man goes on imitating and becoming foolish.“Tell us, master, when Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star, what did he see?”“Clean blank nothing,” Daito replied at once. And then added, “But if a person has only so much as just one speck of dust in his eyes, he may look at a blank and see all sorts of imaginary things.”Just a speck of dust will do, just a small speck of desire will do, and then you will start seeing imaginary things. If you really want to see that which is, then the eyes have to be utterly clean, blank. With those blank eyes you are a buddha – with those empty eyes.Seeking, one never finds. Let it be a fundamental remembrance. So Pablo Picasso is true, but only half true.And half-truths are really dangerous. They can pretend, they can masquerade as truths, as whole truths. That’s what happens. Whenever a man like Buddha moves, walks on the earth, that’s what happens. His truths become half-truths in our minds. A half-truth is a reflection of truth. A half-truth is a shadow of truth. In our monkey minds, in our imitative minds, we start imitating half-truths. And there is something which has to be understood. A half-truth deceives better.But Pablo Picasso could not have done better, because art itself cannot go beyond the half-truth. That’s the difference between art and religion. Art is the world of shadows, the world of reflections, the world of imagination, the world of dreams, the world of desires, the world of projections. Art cannot give you the whole truth, but the best art is always giving you half of it – that too the best art. I am not talking about the third-rate art. A third-rate art is simply a lie, a fantasy, a fiction. But Pablo Picasso is one of the greatest artists the world has ever produced. The best art always gives you half, more is not possible through art.The artist has glimpses of truth, reflected into the world of his dreams, in the world of his imagination. The artist is a pool of imagination, a lake of imagination. In that lake the full moon is reflected. And sometimes the moon in the lake looks far more beautiful than the real moon. On the glossy, silent surface of the lake, on the placid, silent surface of the lake, the moon looks even more innocent. But that is not a real moon, although the reflection belongs to the real.That is the difference between the mystic and the artist. The best artist comes closer to the mystic than anybody else, but the artist is not a mystic. He is a shadow, a shadow mystic. William Blake or Pablo Picasso or Emerson or Rabindranath, they give beautiful reflections of the truth. And even the reflection is so enchanting, what to say about the original?But if you jump into the lake to find the moon, even the reflection will disappear. You are not supposed to jump into the lake. And where the reflection is, you are not to go in that direction. You have to move exactly in the opposite direction, then you will find the real.The artist has some quality of the mystic. He is on the way to becoming a mystic in some life. The mystic has all the qualities of the artist, plus.Sometimes mystics have been artists, particularly Zen mystics. They have painted. They have written poems, haiku. They have carved wood, they have sculpted. They were great artists. In fact, all Zen masters have been creative people.That should also be remembered. When you have attained a state of consciousness, your consciousness has to create something, something visible. You have to materialize something of your consciousness into the world, so that this world also becomes beautiful. And people who cannot understand religion at least can understand art. You may not be able to understand the meaning of the Upanishads, but the very poetry of it appeals, and if the poetry appeals, then the truth is making a way toward your heart. You may not be able to meditate, but if somebody is dancing with deep meditation, that dance may appeal, and through the dance, lingering by the side, something of meditation will enter your being.Gurdjieff had prepared a group of dancers, and he took the dancers to many great cities of the world. It was a rare opportunity made available. When in New York those meditators danced, people were suddenly amazed. They could not believe what was happening. The dancers created such meditative energy, such a great wave of energy, that those who had come just to see the dance suddenly forgot the dance completely. Something else was there by the side, a door opened through it.And Gurdjieff used to do the “Stop” exercise. The dancers are dancing, a group of twenty, thirty dancers, and they are going wild in their dance, and suddenly he will shout by the side, “Stop!” And they will all become just marble statues, as they were. If the hand was raised, it will remain raised. If one leg was up, it will remain up.In one moment when he said, “Stop” they were in such a position that they all fell, fell from the stage, in front of the audience in the hall. But not a single person moved, they fell as if dead. And one man who was watching, something inside him also fell. The very shocking incident, these people fallen as if dead, and something changed in his mind. He became one of the great followers of Gurdjieff and attained greater heights of consciousness.Looking at a Zen painting you will be surprised because the painting brings to you something of the man who has painted it. If you look at modern painting, that too brings something to you. If you look at a modern painting long enough, you will start feeling a little crazy. If you put too many modern paintings in your bedroom, beware, you will have nightmares. Those paintings will start entering your dreams. You cannot look at a modern painting for long, you have to move. You start feeling weird, something is wrong, something is bizarre.The modern painter is insane. He is painting out of his insanity. If you look at a Zen painting, a silence oozes out of it, suddenly something beautiful surrounds you. You are transported to another consciousness. The painting carries something of the touch of the master. The painting has been done in deep meditation. The painting has been done by one who has arrived.Gurdjieff used to call such art “objective art.” When somebody who has attained consciousness does something, that something becomes objective art. Looking at that thing, you will have some glimpse of the master. The master may have been dead for three thousand years, that doesn’t matter. The painting, the statue, the carving will represent him, and through it you can again become connected to him. If you know how to meditate with a painting, it will be easier.Within these twenty years a rare thing has come to light because of too much use of drugs. The underground world of drugs has stumbled upon a very significant fact, they call it “contact high.” It is exactly the meaning of satsang. Let me explain it to you.A “contact high” is a state. Somebody has taken LSD and is turned on, and you love the man, you really love the man, or the woman, you really relate to him – the man or the woman is somebody who turns you on by her presence or his presence. The person has taken LSD. You simply sit by the side, and you love the person, and the person’s presence turns you on, and by and by you will start feeling that the LSD is affecting you too, that somehow his consciousness is infiltrating your consciousness, that your space is being overpowered. And you will start feeling high. This is contact high.This is the meaning of satsang too, on a different plane. If somebody has attained, just being with him in deep love, in deep gratitude, in deep relatedness, you will start feeling that something through him reaches your heart, stirs your being. And you are put on a totally different plane, where you cannot go by yourself. You are transported, carried to it. Yes, it too is a contact high.That’s why in the East we have praised satsang so much, to be in the presence of a master, to attain contact high. And once you have started attaining through somebody, by and by, you can find your own way.This contact high is possible even after thousands of years, through objective art. Read some haiku of Basho, a small haiku. Read a haiku, repeat it, sing it, chew it, swallow it deeply, and then sit silently waiting for the meaning to be revealed. Don’t think about it. Thinking, you will go astray. Don’t analyze it. Analyzing, you will go far away. Meditate, just be with it. Let it be with you, and suddenly you will find something is changing in your consciousness. You are moving upward, or you are moving deeper.That very small haiku can turn you on. It can almost become an LSD trip, because the haiku carries Basho’s consciousness condensed. It is no ordinary poetry. It is not written by a poet, not by an artist. It is done by a master.And the master has put it almost like a mantra. If you simply allow it to spread its meaning on your being, its fragrance on your being, you will be in the state of contact high.That’s why I say Picasso’s statement is a half-truth. “I do not seek” is a half-truth, and “I find” is a half-untruth, because it is never the “I” that finds it. “I” is the barrier, the cloud, the hindrance, the obstacle. Truth is found, but not by “I.” Truth is found only when there is no “I,” when there is nobody to find it. Truth is found only when there is nobody to seek it and nobody to find it.Now, the “I” has seven layers, those seven times when Bodhidharma fell and again rose. You will also fall seven times before you can attain enlightenment. The first layer consists of the past, “I” is memory. Go with me into it as deeply as possible because this will lead you to the first principle. The first principle cannot be said, but it can be shown how you can attain it.The first layer of “I” consists of memory, the past. If you want to get rid of the “I” you will have to get rid of the past. Many people come to me and they say, “We would like to drop this ego.” But they think that the ego is a noncomplex thing, a simple thing. It is not. It is very complex, the most complex. In fact, the one who wants to drop it may be the ego itself. It is so subtle, it is so tricky. Layer upon layer. The first layer is the memory.If you really want to drop the ego – and that is the only way to find the truth; all religion consists only of dropping these seven layers – don’t live in the memory. By and by, the moment you catch hold of yourself, that you are moving into the memory, immediately slip out of it. Immediately. Don’t waste a single moment. I am not saying repent about it, I am not saying feel guilty about it, no, because that too will be the past. I am simply saying, the moment you find you were moving into a dream about the past, a nostalgia, the moment you find it so, just slip out of it. There is no need to fight with it. If you fight, you will be defeated. There is no need to feel angry about it. If you feel angry, you will be defeated. You need not value it in any way, good or bad. Simply do one thing: the moment you find out, slip out of it.And the one who finds it red-handed is your awareness. Eckhart says the one who finds, is God, God within you.Just try. Whenever you find your memory is hovering around you too much, the one who finds this sudden recognition, “Yes, I am again in the memory,” that one, that awareness, is God within you. Slip out of the memory.And I say slip out of it because there is no need to fight. Fighting, you will cling to it. Fighting, you will have to be there. If you have to fight with somebody you have to be there. Don’t fight.And you are capable of slipping out, just as a snake slips out of the old skin. Go on slipping out of the memory. Memory is an old skin. In fact, you have already slipped out of it; it is just in the mind, it is nowhere else.The second layer consists of unawareness. We live almost in a drunken state. We live with the minimum of consciousness. You go on doing things, you go on moving, this and that, but you are not conscious. Have you ever had any moments of consciousness so that you can see, you can compare?For example… Just now! See what is there. Gather yourself together. Just be herenow and see what is there, and you will find your consciousness is more; you have come out of a fog. Soon you will again disappear into the fog. This fog surrounds you. Sometimes you come out of it. Sometimes something penetrates your fog, brings you out. But ordinarily, life is so monotonous that there is no surprise, nothing brings you out.Whenever you are a little more aware, many things happen. If you watch, you will understand. A beautiful woman passes by, suddenly you become more aware. A bird on the wing, you were watching an empty sky and a bird passes by.Ramakrishna attained his first samadhi, his first satori, by seeing a row of cranes against the black clouds. He was very young, must have been thirteen. He was sitting by the lake in his town. It was cloudy, dark clouds were gathering, the beginning of the rain, and suddenly a row…many white cranes against the black clouds. Almost like lightning they were there and they were gone, and he attained his first samadhi. For days he was drunk with the unknown, he danced, sang. His town’s people, his family thought he had gone mad. But he was so happy.That sudden experience. Something penetrated like a sword. Something was cut.Sometimes it happens to you too. You don’t take account of these moments because you are afraid. You try to forget them. And they are so extraordinary and they are so exceptional and so rare that even to talk about them – nobody will believe it. So you don’t take account of them. You think, “Must be a fantasy, an imagination.” But one morning, suddenly the world is beautiful, for no reason at all. A reason is there. The reason is that you are more aware. Maybe you rested well in the night, it was a good sleep, the dreams were not too many, your stomach was not too full of food or hungry. Things somehow went well, and in the morning you felt on the top of the world. It is nothing but awareness.With a friend you have not seen for many years, suddenly you become more aware. Anything that makes you more aware, watch it, take account of it, remember it, so that you can go more and more into it. Don’t put it aside. Don’t neglect it. It has to be fed and watered, taken care of.The third layer of “I” is ambition, comparison with the others, where I am, higher or lower, inferior or superior, ahead or lagging behind – who I am. Watch it, never compare. You are you. And there is nobody like you, so comparison is not possible. And everybody is so unique and so different, how can you compare? Drop comparison. Whenever you find yourself caught in comparison, immediately drop it then and there. It is not good to carry these things in the mind longer, otherwise they leave traces, they make grooves in the mind. Never compare. Somebody is more intelligent, somebody is more beautiful, somebody is more healthy, don’t compare. You are you.And this is the way existence wanted you to be. Feel fulfilled the way you are and accept yourself. Don’t condemn yourself.The fourth layer of “I” consists of the future, always thinking ahead, what to do tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Or people are so mad, they are thinking of what to do in the next life, where to go, to hell or heaven?People come to me and they ask, “Osho, what do you say about life after death?” I say, “You are not alive even now, and you are talking about life after death? I don’t even see life before death.”Man is not. Man only thinks that he is. Man has not happened yet. Rarely it happens. Once in a while, in a Buddha or a Bodhidharma a man is there, otherwise you are just a belief. And you are thinking about life after death? Think of life after birth. Think of life before death. Think of life now. Don’t go into the future so much.I am not saying that if you want to go to Mumbai don’t book a ticket, I am not saying that. Otherwise there are fools of that type too. One day I said in the morning, “Don’t think of the future,” and by the evening I received a letter. A friend threw his passport into the river. “Why bother? ‘Don’t think of the future,’ Osho has said.” I am not saying that. There is a practical world, but that is not a problem at all. To carry a passport is not a problem.To carry fantasies about the future is a problem. A passport is not such a burden. To think about tomorrow and to go and book a ticket is not a problem. These are factual things, ordinary, practical things. But to think that tomorrow you will be happy, not today, that tomorrow you will love, not today, that tomorrow you will sing, not today, is dangerous. Because tomorrow never comes. Again when it comes, it will be today, and your old habit will say, “Tomorrow I will be happy.” Tomorrow again and again, you will be happy, and you will never be happy.What I am saying is psychological future has to be dropped. The ordinary future is okay, it is not a problem at all.The fifth layer consists of conditionings. You have been conditioned – Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist, English, German, Indian – these layers are there. Start dropping them.Again, please don’t throw away your passport.These ideas from the mind, that I am a German or a Japanese or a Chinese, are just foolish. You were born just as pure consciousness and you will die as pure consciousness, and all these are just clothes, formalities, forms, what Hindus call nam-rup, name and form. But you are not confined to them, you are not contained in them. You are beyond them.The sixth layer consists of arrogance, of non-humbleness. One has to learn humbleness because that is the reality. We are interdependent, so how can we be arrogant? You cannot live without the air, you cannot live without fire, you cannot live without the sun, you cannot live without the trees, you cannot live without the woman, the woman without the man. You cannot live at all independently. So all arrogance is just ignorance. We are interdependent, we interpenetrate each other, and everything is required.If the sun sets tonight and never rises again, we will die. Within ten minutes we will die. If all the forests disappear and the trees disappear, we will die, we will not be able to live. We breathe through the trees, they are continuously working for us and we are working for them. Don’t think that they are slaves and we are masters. Nobody is a slave here and nobody is a master. Everybody is a master here and everybody is a slave here. This is humility. They go on releasing oxygen for you, they serve you. And you go on releasing carbon dioxide for them; they live on carbon dioxide, so you serve them. They serve you, you serve them.We are servants of each other or masters of each other, but we are all in the same boat. The animals, the trees, the birds, the rocks, we are all in the same boat. We exist in togetherness. That’s the meaning of humbleness.I am not saying become humble and start being arrogant about your humbleness, and start saying, “I am the most humble man in the world.” That will be arrogance again. Humbleness is an understanding, not a cultivation.And the last layer of “I” consists of imitations. We learn to imitate, that’s what I mean when I say we are monkeys. Somebody is doing something, we start doing that. Somebody is making something, we start making that. We learn through imitation. Good for the children, because otherwise children will never learn. But when will you become mature, when will you start not imitating and being true to yourself?If these seven layers are dropped, you will simply become aware of who you are. You are God, as everybody else is God.These seven layers are the “bottle.”Now let me tell you this beautiful anecdote. It is one of the most beautiful anecdotes in Zen literature, and Zen has many beautiful anecdotes. This is one of the topmost. Listen to it.The official, Riko, once asked Nansen…Nansen was a great master. You must have heard another story, I must have told you sometime…A great professor comes to see Nansen. The professor was the head of the department of philosophy in a university. He comes and immediately he asks, “Do you believe in God? Is there any life after death? Has man a soul?”Nansen says, “Wait. Let me prepare tea for you. You are tired and you are perspiring. And there is no hurry, these problems can wait a little. Let me prepare tea for you.” And he prepares the tea. This is the humbleness of a Zen master.He brings the tea. He goes on pouring the tea into the cup. The cup is full and the tea starts overflowing into the saucer, and then the saucer is full, and the professor shouts, “What are you doing? Are you mad? Now there is no space, not even for a single drop, and you go on pouring and you go on pouring. It will start dropping on your floor.”And Nansen laughs and he says, “So you understand. Now, do you have any questions still?”The professor says, “Why, what do you mean? How does this explain my questions?”And Nansen says, “Have you any space in your head? I can give you the answer, but there is no space. I don’t see any space in your head. And you are alert, very alert; you can see that when the cup is full, no more tea should be poured in. Go please, and clean your skull. Empty your skull and come back. Because these questions are such that they can only be answered to an empty skull.”Nansen is a rare man.The official, Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.The problem is very ancient. It is a koan. It is given to a disciple; he has to meditate on it. It is absurd, you cannot solve it. A koan is something which cannot be solved. Remember, it is not a puzzle. A puzzle has a clue, a koan has no clue. A koan is a puzzle without any clue. Not that more intelligence will solve it. No, no intelligence will ever solve it. Even if it is given to God, it will not be solved. It is made in such a way that it cannot be solved. This is a koan.“If a man puts a gosling into a bottle,” said Riko, “and feeds him until he is full grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?”Don’t break the bottle – and the goose has to be taken out – and don’t kill the goose. Now, these are the two conditions to be fulfilled. The koan becomes impossible. The bottle has a small neck, the goose cannot come out through it. Either you have to break the bottle or you have to kill the goose. You can kill the goose, and piece by piece you can take the goose out. Or you can break the bottle, and the goose can come out alive, whole. But the condition is, the bottle has not to be broken and the goose has not to be killed. The goose has to come out whole and the bottle has to remain whole. Nothing has to be destroyed, no destruction allowed.Now, how are you going to solve it? But meditating on it… Meditating on it, one day it happens that you see the point. Not that you solve the problem, suddenly the problem is no longer there.Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted,“Riko!”“Yes, master,” said the official with a start.“See,” said Nansen, “the goose is out!”Now, it is tremendously beautiful. What he is saying is that the goose has never been in; the goose has always been out. What is he saying, the moment he said: “Riko!”? What happened? Those seven layers of ego disappeared and Riko became aware. The shout was so sudden, the sound was so unexpected. He was expecting a philosophical answer.That’s why sometimes the Zen master will hit you on your head or throw you out of the window or jump upon you or threaten that he will kill you. He will do something so that those seven layers of ego are immediately transcended, and your awareness which is the center of all, is alert. You are made alert.Now, shouting: “Riko!” so suddenly, for no reason at all… And he has brought a small puzzle to be solved and this master suddenly shouts: “Riko!” He cannot see the connection. And that is the whole clue to it. He cannot see the connection, the shout startles him, and he says: “Yes, master.”“See,” said Nansen, “the goose is out!” Those seven layers of the bottle are crossed. “Yes, master.” In that moment Riko was pure consciousness, without any layers. In that moment, Riko was not the body. In that moment, Riko was not the mind. In that moment, Riko was just awareness. In that moment, Riko was not the memory of the past. In that moment, Riko was not the future, the desire. In that moment, he was not in any comparison with anybody. In that moment, he was not a Buddhist or a Mohammedan or a Hindu. In that moment, he was not a Japanese or an Indian.In that moment, when the master shouted: “Riko!” he was simply awareness, without any content, without any conditioning. In that moment, he was not young, old. In that moment, he was not beautiful, ugly. In that moment, he was not stupid, intelligent. All layers disappeared. In that moment, he was just a flame of awareness.That is the meaning when the master says, “See, the goose is out, and I have not broken the bottle, I have not even touched the bottle.” The bottle means the ego, those seven layers. “I have not broken the bottle. It is there, and I have not killed the goose. And the goose is out.”Now, there are three types of religions in the world. One which will destroy the bottle. Then you become very vulnerable, then you become very insecure, then great trembling arises in you, and then there is every possibility you may go mad. That sort of thing happens many times in India. There are methods which can destroy the bottle, easier methods. They destroy the bottle and the goose is out, but then the goose has no house to abide in, no shelter. Then there is every possibility the man may go mad. And many people in India, seeking, searching, working toward the unknown, become mad. When the unknown comes into them, they have no protection.Remember, you need protection even against God because God can be too much too suddenly. Those protections have not to be destroyed. Practically, they have to remain there. Just think of a person who has no ego. Now, the house is on fire; he will not run out. For what? “I am not. The fire cannot burn me, because I am not.” Just think of a man who has no ego and he is standing in the middle of the road, and there comes a bus and the driver honks and honks, and he does not bother. He is the immortal soul, he is not the ego. This state can be dangerous. It happens if you destroy the bottle.Zen says don’t destroy the bottle. Use it when it is needed. Whenever you feel to have protection, the goose simply goes inside the bottle. Sometimes one needs rest, and sometimes the bottle is also useful. It can be put to a thousand and one uses. The ego can be used if you know that you are not the ego. Then the ego cannot use you, you can use it.And there are methods which will save the bottle and kill the goose. Self-destructive methods are there, so one becomes more and more unaware. That is what I mean when I say kill the goose: one becomes more and more unaware. Drugs can do that. Drugs have been used in India for thousands of years. They can kill the goose. The bottle remains protected, but the goose is killed. If you take some foreign chemicals inside your being, and your nature is not ready to absorb them, by and by you will kill the goose, your consciousness will be gone, you may fall into a coma.The first possibility, if the bottle is broken, you may go mad. The second possibility, if the goose is killed, or almost killed, you will become so unconscious that you will become a zombie. You can find zombies. In many monasteries there are zombies, whose goose is killed, or at least drugged. And there are mad people, maniacs.Zen says avoid both. The bottle has to remain and the goose has to come out. This is a great synthesis.“Yes, master,” said the official with a start. “See, “said Nansen, “the goose is out!” It must have been a moment of great discovery to Riko. He must have seen it, “Yes, it is out.” He was fully aware. The trick worked, the device worked, the shouting and clapping worked. In fact, Riko must have been almost on the verge, otherwise shouting would not do. You can go on shouting… Clapping won’t do. But the man must have been just on the verge. Just a small push and he has jumped the barrier.Meditate over it. This is the way to attain the first principle. To know that the goose can be out without destroying the bottle, that you can be God without destroying your humanity, that you can be God without destroying your ordinariness.A disciple of His Divine Grace Prabhupad came to see me. Prabhupad is the founder of the Krishna Consciousness movement. Naturally, to be respectful to me, he also called me “His Divine Grace.” I said, “Don’t call me that, just call me ‘His Divine Ordinariness.’”The ordinary is the extraordinary. The ordinary has not to be destroyed. Once the ordinary is in the service of the extraordinary it is beautiful, it is tremendously beautiful.Let me repeat. The trivial is the profound, samsara is nirvana. Whatever you are, there is nothing wrong with it. Just something is missing. Nothing wrong with it. Something is simply missing. Just that missing link has to be provided, that plus, and everything that you have becomes divine.Love has not to be destroyed, only awareness has to be added to it. Relationship has not to be destroyed, only meditation has to be added to it. You need not go from the marketplace, you need not go to any cave in the Himalayas. Only God has to be called there in the marketplace.The bottle is beautiful, nothing is wrong in it. You just have to learn that you can come out of it whenever you want, and you can go into it whenever you want, that it is your pleasure. It is almost like the house. When you feel too cool or cold in the house, freezing cold, you go out under the sky, under the sun, to warm yourself. Then it becomes too warm and you start perspiring, you go into the house. You are free. The same door takes you out, the same door takes you in, and the house is not the enemy.But if you cannot get out of the house, then something is wrong. There is no need to leave the house, there is no need to drop being a householder. There is only one thing needed. In the house become a sannyasin, in the world remain in such a way that the world is not in you.See, the goose is out. In fact, the goose has always been out, just a recognition is needed.Enough for today.

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The First Principle 01-10Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

The First Principle 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,There are moments when I feel no hope, without feeling desperate, when there is recognition that the “I” has fought enough and cannot help anymore. Yet, under these momentary covers lingers the one and only longing: to become my real nature, to experience truth and to live it in the world. My mind pleases itself to call this longing an authentic, genuine thirst. However, the suspicion is there that it is just a way to hide my plain greed.Yes Gunakar, it is a way to hide the greed. And not only that, it is a way to avoid the real. It is not a thirst for the real, it is a way to escape from the real. All greed, all desire, is an escape from the real. The desire is for that which is not. That which is, is already there; you need not be greedy about it, you need not desire it. Whether you desire or not does not make any difference. It is there. By desiring you will miss because you will create a cloud around yourself.This is how the mind goes on playing games. It can play the game in the name of reality too, in the name of God, in the name of enlightenment, nirvana.One thing has to be remembered always, that you are not to become real, you are real. That which you are is the reality. Gunakar has said, only one longing lingers: “…to become my real nature…” But then who are you? You are your real nature. What else can you be? How else can you be? There is no way to go away from your reality. There is no way to go against it. There is no way to be anything other than it.But you can forget about it. You can start looking in some other direction. All that is possible is to be forgetful. You cannot lose contact with reality, you can only forget it. You can start looking in some other direction. You can put it at the back. You can avoid your eyes. You can pretend that you are not the real.The first thing: you are the real. Whatever you are is your reality. It has not to be attained, it is already there. It has happened. Nirvana is not somewhere in the future. Either it is now or never. To seek it is to miss it. If you want to find it, don’t seek it. Just be herenow. And when I say just be herenow, don’t make a desire out of it. Don’t start asking how to be here and now. Don’t start planning, “I have to work hard to be here and now.” You have moved away, that “how” takes you away.You are your real nature. This is the great declaration of Zen. Other religions say you have to find God. Zen says you are. Other religions say long is the journey. Zen says there is no question of any journey whatever. You are already there. Maybe fast asleep, snoring, but you are there. The goal is where you are. You are the goal, you are the target.You want “…to experience truth and to live it in the world.” That’s what you are already doing. Drinking tea you are living the truth. Talking to a friend you are living the truth. Going for a morning walk you are living the truth. Even being angry you are living the truth. How can it be otherwise?The ordinary is the extraordinary, and the trivial is the profound. Samsara is nirvana. It is just a question of remembering.“…to become my real nature, to experience truth and to live it in the world.” That’s what you are doing. Just the mind goes on playing a game. The mind says things can be better. The mind says life can be improved upon. The mind says there must be something more, you must be missing something, seek, search, do something. This is greed, and the greed is so subtle that it can hide in millions of ways. It can even start trying not to be greedy. Now, listening to me, your mind will say, “Right. Now I am not to be greedy at all because it is greed that is destroying my life. So I have to get rid of greed.” Again the greed has come from the back door.“It was deep in the woods back yonder,” began old Herman, the guide. “I was plodding along minding my own business when suddenly a huge bear sneaked up behind me. He pinned my arms to my sides and started to squeeze the breath out of me. My gun fell out of my hands. First thing you know, the bear had stooped down, picked up the gun, and was pressing it against my back.”“What did you do?” gasped the tenderfoot.Old Herman sighed. “What could I do? I married his daughter.”But the bear or the daughter, it makes no difference. It is the same.Just be aware of the ways of greed. Don’t try to get rid of it. Don’t try to do anything. Just be aware of how greed takes a thousand and one forms. Watch it. There is no hurry.And you are not losing anything. You are living the truth, you cannot lose. In the very nature of things, we are all winners. Here nobody can be a loser. Existence has managed the world in such a way. That’s why the mystics say this is the most perfect world. Existence has managed it in such a way that everybody is a winner, nobody is a loser. Everybody is a victor, nobody is ever defeated. Even in your defeat there is victory, and even when you think you are lost, you are not lost. It is all a dream. The day you become awake you will find you have never been outside your home, you have always been there.The only thing is to become more and more alert. Just watch. You see greed arising in one way, watch it. Don’t try to stop it, otherwise it will arise in another way. It may choose just the opposite so it can deceive you. Don’t do anything to it, otherwise it will find another way. No need to fight with it. Just watch it, let it be there. Watch it. See it naked, through and through.Awareness functions like an X ray. It sees things through and through, and in that very seeing there is freedom. If you have seen greed totally, in that very seeing greed disappears. Not that you make it disappear. It disappears. In that vision it is not found. In that light, that darkness is no longer there. Suddenly you are free of greed.And when you are free of greed, you know you have never left the home, you have always been there. You have never left God. Adam has never been expelled from the Garden of Eden. He still lives there, he just dreams that he has been expelled. This is the Zen interpretation of the biblical story.I must have given you a thousand interpretations about the story. The story is so beautiful. Zen says Adam is still living in the Garden of Eden. The snake has not tricked him into sin. The snake has only tricked him into a dream. And God has not expelled him. How can God expel you? And to where can he expel you? It is all his garden. Where will you be? Wherever you will be, it will be his garden, so to where can he expel you? And how can God expel? Expelling Adam, God will be expelling himself, a part of himself. He will fall into parts. No, it is not possible.Then what has happened? Adam has fallen asleep. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, Adam has fallen asleep and is dreaming that God is very angry. It is his dream. It is his idea. It is his guilt. It is his mind, “I have broken the rule,” “I had promised and I have broken my promise.” Now he is trembling and feeling guilty, and in the sleep, the guilt is creating a dream that God is very angry. He is projecting his guilt on God. His guilt is becoming God’s anger, in his mind. Naturally God must be very angry and he is expelling him, and he has expelled him. The gates are closed and Adam is thrown into the world.But it is just a dream. The moment Adam becomes awake he will laugh. He will have an uproarious laugh. He will roll down on the ground. His belly will start bursting with the laughter because he will see the whole absurdity of it. He had never been out.Have you not dreamed dreams like this? In a dream you are being killed, and in that moment when you are being murdered, can you doubt it? It is so real. You shriek, you scream, and because of the shriek and the scream you become alert, you become aware. The dream is broken. Even after the dream your heart is beating louder, your breath is not in rhythm, your hands are shaking. You know now it was a dream, a nightmare, you are sitting in your bed and there is nobody, just your poor wife sleeping by your side, no murderer. The doors are closed, everything is silent, there has been nobody in the room, nobody was murdering you, but still you are trembling. The fear has been so deeply there, the idea of murder has penetrated so deeply in you, that even when you are awake, a little smoke of it continues to be there. But now you know you have never been out of the room, and nobody is trying to murder you; there is nobody.This is what I say to you. You are still in the Garden of Eden. God has not expelled you. You have fallen asleep.And the work of the master is to bring you back. Back, not from anywhere, but only from sleep. Back to awareness.The second question:Osho,Why do you talk only to your disciples? Why not to the masses?There is a beautiful Zen saying. Let that be the answer.“I sing my songs to him who understands them. I drink my wine with the friend who knows me well.”The third question:Osho,It all sounds so great, as perfect as can be articulated. But what the hell do you do in the meantime?You have missed. You have not understood what has been said to you. You have not heard. Again the greed has become a barrier. Listening to me, you are listening through the greed.When you listen to me, if I am talking about enlightenment and the joy of it, you become greedy. You start thinking, “When am I going to become enlightened?” So you say it is great. “It all sounds great, as perfect as can be articulated.” Now, this greed creates a problem. You make whatever I am saying a goal. Of course, the goal is far away. There is a distance between you and the goal, and the distance has to be traveled, so the second question arises. “…what the hell do you do in the meantime?”But there is no meantime. I am not talking about the goal, I am talking about the way. And I am not saying anything about the future or afterlife. I am saying something about this moment, this very moment. This is it! You think in terms of tomorrow. I am talking about today.Jesus says to his disciples, “Look in the field. Look at the beautiful lilies. They don’t think of the morrow, they toil not, they labor not. Look at these beautiful flowers. They are just herenow. Even Solomon attired in all his costly clothes was not so beautiful. Look at these lilies in the field.”I am talking about this moment. What do you mean by “meantime”? There is no meantime. This is it! These birds, this cuckoo, these trees, you and me. This moment. This is the moment of nirvana.But you start thinking in terms of desire. You say, “It sounds great…” In fact, a thing that could have released your celebration becomes a desire, and through desire you start feeling sad because the goal is far away.The cuckoo is singing right now. And the trees have flowered right now. It is all beautiful this moment. It will never be more beautiful. It has never been less beautiful. Each moment is perfect. But you start thinking about tomorrow. Then the whole glory is there, somewhere away from you, and here you are a miserable creature, crying and weeping for the goal.You create the meantime. I am not talking about the meantime. I am not talking about time at all, so what to say about meantime? I am talking about the eternal moment, about eternity. You bring time in. The mind always brings time in. Time is a mind faculty.The mind cannot be herenow. The mind says, “Right. Hoard this. Whatever Osho is saying, hoard it. Someday we are going to practice it, and one day we are going to attain this buddhahood. It sounds great.” Then the misery, then the sadness… Then you will remain miserable your whole life. This buddhahood will never happen, because you missed it in the first place.You have become so miserable that you cannot trust me that the celebration is possible right now. You say, “First one has to prepare. First one has to become this and that. First one has to meditate. First one has to become a great saint. First one has to become virtuous.” This is something which from the very childhood has been deeply conditioned on your mind.The parents, the teachers, the schools, the universities, the priest, the politicians, they all have been teaching you, “Get ready. Get ready. Something is going to happen.” And then you go on getting ready, and one day you simply die, just getting ready. It never happens. When you were a child they were saying, “Wait, grow up, first be educated. Go to the university, come back home.” Thrilled, you go to the university and you suffer all sorts of tortures there, in the hope that it is not going to last forever, in the hope that now you are getting ready. You don’t know what for, what you are getting ready for.To listen to this cuckoo singing? To watch a bird on the wing? To see a full moon in the night? To hold a friend’s hand? To love? For what? Because all this is available right now.You go to the university, you go through a thousand and one imprisonments, and by the time you come back home you are destroyed. It is very rare; very fortunate people come back from the university without being destroyed by the education system.Then they come home. Then the father says, “Now find a job, and get ready. Get married, and get ready. Then everything is going to be beautiful.” And you read the novels and you go to the movie and you see the film, and once the marriage happens, the story says, “Ever afterward they lived in happiness.” Have you ever seen anybody living after marriage, and happy? But these stories circulate, they condition the mind: get ready.So one day you find a job. Another humiliation. One day you get married. Another distraction from the moment. And so on, so forth. Then you go on missing. It is not happening, so somebody says, “How can you have it unless you have a child?” Right. So get ready, have a child. And so on, so forth.Finally you recognize the fact that the whole life has been a wastage.I am not saying don’t go to the university, and I am not saying don’t get married, I am not saying don’t get a job. Please, don’t misunderstand me. What I am saying is: don’t get ready for happiness, it is already here. Go to the university. Enjoy. Have a job, but enjoy it. It is not going to lead to happiness. Each moment is an end unto itself, it is not to be converted into a means toward something else. Love, and enjoy love. Don’t think that you will be happy when you are married. Get married, and be happy. Don’t think that when you have a child, and you become a mother or a father, then you will be happy. Have you not seen your mother and your father? So what are you hoping for? Don’t wait and don’t go on postponing.The greatest calamity that has happened to humanity is postponement – always postponing. There are people who are always looking at the timetable and thinking about where to go on the holidays, what trains to catch and what planes to go by, this place or that, to the Himalayas or to the Alps, to Kashmir or to Switzerland. And they are always preparing and preparing, and they never go. What will you say about these people? You will think they are mad. They have all the guidebooks and all the maps of the world and all the literature that government information services go on publishing. They have a whole library, and they go on looking into it and they go on preparing, but they always prepare and they never go. What will you think about them? Will you not call them neurotic?This is what the situation is with everybody. You always talk about God, you always talk about moksha, nirvana, heaven, paradise, you always talk about it, but it is always tomorrow. So you have to prepare. “Meantime” you prepare.I am saying there is no meantime. God is available right now, just for the asking.Start enjoying. Don’t ask how to dance. Start dancing. Can’t you move your body? It may not be very graceful. So who bothers? It may not be a trained, disciplined thing. So who bothers? Start dancing. Don’t go on consulting manuals about love. Start loving. Don’t go on and on in the mind. Start moving into existence, be existential. That is the message of Zen.The fourth question:Osho,Are you really crazy?How can I be crazy? I have no mind out of which to go.The fifth question:Osho,As sin can be defined as “missing the mark,” could one define Zen as “hitting the mark”?No. Sin means missing the mark. Zen means there is no mark to miss. There is nothing, no target. There is no destiny. It is all beautiful purposelessness. It is all beautiful meaninglessness. It is a song. It has no meaning. It has a rhythm, but no meaning. It has tremendous beauty in it, but no logic. And it is not a syllogism, there is no conclusion. It is an unconcluded existence, and it remains always unconcluded.We are always in the middle. There has been no source, and there is no goal.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Please speak on the difference between mediocrity and ordinariness.Mediocrity is the general state of humanity as it is. It is a retardedness of intelligence. Nobody wants you to be intelligent, because the more intelligent you are, the more it is difficult to exploit you, to enslave you.Every vested interest wants you to be mediocre. A mediocre person is just like a tree whose roots have been continuously cut so it cannot grow. The mediocre person never comes to know fruition, flowering, fragrance. He lives just like a vegetable. But this is the common state. And to keep the mediocre, mediocre, a strange thing has to be put in his mind: that he is extraordinary.George Gurdjieff used to tell a story….There was a shepherd who was a magician, and he had many sheep. To take care of them, not to let them wander into the forest and be eaten by wild animals, he managed a strategy. He hypnotized all the sheep and told them, “You are not sheep, you are lions.” Since that day, the sheep started behaving like lions.The mediocre person will rebel against mediocrity because it is ugly to be mediocre. But the society in many ways gives him the feeling of being extraordinary. Hence, it is very difficult to find a man who does not, deep down, believe that he is special – the only begotten son of God.He may not say so, because he knows what happens if you say that you are the only begotten son of God. Then crucifixion is certain, and resurrection…nobody knows whether it happened or not. So he keeps it inside. This helps him to remain mediocre.If he understands he is mediocre, that very understanding will destroy his mediocrity. To understand you are mediocre is a great jump into intelligence.The ordinary person I talk about is the natural person. Nature does not produce special people. It produces unique people, but not special. Everybody is unique in his own way.The big pine tree and the small rosebush – who is higher? Neither the pine tree ever boasts that she is higher, nor the rosebush ever boasts that “You may be higher, but where are the roses? The real height is in the roses and the fragrance, in the flowering. Height itself is not enough to be higher.”But the rosebush and the pine remain together without any quarrel, competition, for the simple reason that both understand they are part of the same nature.When I say ordinariness, I am saying drop the idea of being extraordinary, which is keeping you mediocre.To be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. Just watch yourself. It hurts very much, it is painful to accept that you are not extraordinary. Watch when you accept the idea that you are ordinary. A great burden is relieved. Suddenly you are in the open space, natural, just the way you are.The ordinary person has a uniqueness and a simplicity, humbleness. Out of his simplicity, humbleness, uniqueness, he has really become extraordinary, but he has no idea of it.So it is a paradox: the people who think they are extraordinary are simply retarded, mediocre. And the people who are humble and just accept that they are ordinary people like everybody else – you will see a light in their eyes. You will see a grace in their actions. You will not see them competing, you will not see them cheating. You will not see them betraying. They will not have double minds. They will not be hypocrites.What is the need for an ordinary person to be a hypocrite? He can show his heart openly to anybody, because he is not pretending anything.You become secretive when you start pretending. You start feeling very great. You may say it or not, but by hypocrisy, masks, your head goes on becoming more and more swollen. It is a state of sickness.And who is the person who believes himself extraordinary? The person who suffers immensely from an inferiority complex. To cover it up, he projects just the opposite idea. But he is only deceiving himself, nobody else is deceived by him.The ordinary person has no need to be a hypocrite, no need to be a pretender. He is just open; he need not be secretive. And there is beauty in openness, simpleness.So it is a rare paradox that the person who feels himself ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the person who goes on feeling himself extraordinary, remains very retarded, a mediocrity.Everybody has to look within himself. But people are such deceivers that, deceiving others, slowly slowly they start deceiving themselves. They become so articulate about deceiving. It is dangerous to be a hypocrite, because sooner or later you will start thinking this is your real face.In my thirty-five years’ work with people I have come across thousands of people, intimately, and I was puzzled that these people have deceived themselves. To deceive others can be understood, but they have deceived themselves.And you cannot take them out of that deception, because that is their only treasure. They know behind it there is just darkness, hollowness, an inferiority complex. So they cling to it.Even in this commune – which hurts me, because at least here people should not be like that. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing here?I just saw Venu at the gate…. Sheela had asked which people were coming with her, and Venu had said that her place is with Sheela. I was surprised. What is she doing here standing at the gate? Her place is not here! She should go with Sheela. Not a single moment she should be here. People should be honest!Sheela asked me again and again during these four years, “Osho, help me, so that I never deceive you, never betray you.”I told her, “Sheela, asking it again and again means there is a tendency, of which you are aware, that you can betray, you can deceive. Otherwise, what is the point of asking it?”And finally she did. And the reason why she did is worth understanding for everybody.When I was silent for three and a half years, she was the spokesman. I knew that this is going to be a difficult task the day I start speaking directly, because then she will see she is no more a celebrity; no interviews on the television, radio, newspapers, magazines.But I had to speak. Just for one person I cannot hold back from one million sannyasins, and for the sannyasins who will be coming later on, my heartfelt feelings, truths, experiences. And there is too much to say.As you get prepared only then I can say it. Those three and a half years prepared you, and now you can see the difference between the way I am speaking now and the way I was speaking three and a half years before. As you mature, as you graduate, I can tell you more naked truths, trusting that you will be able to understand them.So the problem was, I knew that if I start speaking, then Sheela’s swollen head will start shrinking, and that will be difficult. I was perfectly aware the day I started speaking, she started becoming sad; and slowly slowly she started being away from Rajneeshpuram, finding excuses that she is needed in Australia, she is needed in Europe. She was never needed before.And this time when she came, she wrote a letter to me, “Osho, I do not feel the same excitement here. I feel happier in Europe, in Australia, anywhere else.” But she did not look why.I sent a message to her that, “See the point. Where has the excitement gone? The excitement was not being with me, with the commune, creating a new way of life, hoping for a new man to arrive. That was not your real excitement. Your real excitement was becoming a celebrity – on the television, on the radio, in the magazines, in the newspapers. You enjoyed your name, your photograph; now this will not be possible. I am speaking myself. I am speaking to the whole world press. And certainly you cannot represent me.”I had to teach her everything for three and a half years, two hours every day – what she has to say, what she has not to say. And she was repeating like a parrot, because it is not her experience. But she did well; as a parrot she was perfect.But now, when I started speaking, she started feeling sad, gloomy. I sent the message, “You should look at the cause of it. The cause is your ego.“Three and a half years is a long enough time to get a swollen head, and I am now bringing it back to its real position. It is sick. This swelling is more dangerous than any cancer, because the cancer can kill the body, but this swelling kills the mind and the very soul of man.“And why are you feeling happy in Europe? If you want to check it, I can come to Europe, and immediately you will know it is not because you are in Europe that you are feeling happy. You will feel even more unhappy than here.”But man is so stupid…. She did not even respond to my message. On the contrary, she collected the bunch of people that she has placed in important places. Now the sadness was turning into revengefulness. The idea was that all these people will go with her, and the commune will be in a chaos.Now, the commune is always in a chaos! Nobody can disturb it. What more chaos can be there?And it is a simple law that people who are in power…and I had given her all the powers, simply because I was not interested in getting involved in small things. It was impossible to be silent and get involved in small things.She removed all the people who were in some way more intelligent, stronger, and a danger to her position; any day they can be the competitors. So she removed those people, and she chose people who were even more mediocre than her. They will never be a challenge.Now, this Venu was saying, “My place is with Sheela.” Certainly her place is with Sheela, because she is more mediocre than Sheela. But I was surprised to see her standing here. What is she doing here? She should have left with Sheela.It is a good change. Be happy about it. It was bound to happen. Now you can have a better and stronger group of people to run the commune – because I am not afraid of anybody being more ordinary than me. You cannot find on the whole earth a competitor for me. So this gives me immense freedom.That’s why Arup can ask the question. While Sheela was here, Arup was pushed back in every way. And I was watching, sadly. She is far more intelligent, far stronger.Now all the people who had been thrown out of the commune by Sheela can come back. So inform all your friends who have left that Sheela is gone and gone forever. And not alone – with the whole bunch, the whole gang. So inform the people who have left just because of her, because those people were intelligent, and she could not tolerate any intelligent person.This is a problem with all mediocre people. They cannot tolerate anybody who is better than them because that destroys their illusion of being extraordinary. But nobody can take your ordinariness. It is something which is not a projection, but a reality.The rosebush is ordinary, the pine is ordinary, the deer is ordinary. Why should any man try to be extraordinary?Only man seems to be sick. The whole existence lives in absolute ordinariness and is so joyful, such a blessing; but man is sick. His sickness is that he cannot accept himself as he is. He wants to be somebody great: Alexander the Great. Less than that won’t do.But he forgets what Alexander gained. He lived only thirty-three years, spent his whole life fighting, invading, killing. He had no chance to live, no time to live.He had met a great philosopher, sage, wise man, Diogenes, before he was going to invade India. He asked Diogenes if he had any message for him.Diogenes said, “Only one: rather than wasting time, live it. You are not living yourself, and you are not allowing others to live. You are committing immense crimes against life – for what? Just to be called Alexander the Great?“Everybody thinks like that. Just inside, you can call yourself Alexander the Great; nobody is preventing you. If you want, you can even put a signboard on your chest: ‘Alexander the Great’ – but live! You will look like a buffoon, but that is far better than to be a buffoon; at least you will have time to live, love, sing, dance.”Alexander understood the message. He said, “I can see the point. When I come back, I will try to follow it.”Diogenes said, “Remember, nobody comes back from such an ego trip, because this ego trip never ends, it goes on and on. You will end, not your ego trip.”And that’s what happened: he never came back home. On the way, he died. And when he was dying, he remembered Diogenes’ statement that nobody comes back. Ego drives you, and there is no end for the ego. It creates more goals, new goals, higher goals.In deep respect for Diogenes, he told the people who were going to carry his body to the grave, “Let my hands hang out of the casket.”His prime minister asked, “But this is not the tradition. Hands have to be inside the casket. Hanging them out will look really odd.”But he said, “I want them to hang out, because I want people to know that empty-handed I had come into the world, empty-handed I lived in the world, and empty-handed I am going from the world.”These empty hands of Alexander the Great represent almost everybody’s hands.If you want to live authentically and sincerely, then just be ordinary. Then nobody can compete with you. You are out of the race of competition, which is destructive.Suddenly you are free to live. You have time to live. You have time to do what you want to do. You can laugh, you can sing, you can dance. You are an ordinary man. Even if the whole world laughs at it, so what? I am an ordinary man. They are all extraordinary people. They have the right to laugh; I have the right to dance. Their laughter is phony; your dance is real.Sheela could not tolerate it. I even sent her the message, “If it gives you pleasure that I should not speak, I can go into silence again. Of course, millions of sannyasins today and tomorrow and in the future will be at a loss, because there is much which I have yet to say. But to make you happy, I can do that.“But remember, if my silence makes you happy, then my absence may make you happier. Perhaps, deep down, my death will be the right thing for you. Then you can become the head. Nobody will be there to prevent you.”If you try to look into things deeper, you will be surprised what revealing factors come up.Now, Sheela was very much concerned about my death – almost paranoid. She had arranged so many guards and security. But she will never understand why this paranoia.Something deep inside herself was longing for my death. And to avoid seeing it, she was projecting that somebody is going to assassinate me.Mind is very complex. It projects things which are inside onto others.And she was promising me continuously, “I am yours forever.”I said, “Sheela, don’t say such things, because forever is a long time. Just today is enough. Tomorrow, nobody knows.”But she said, “I love you so much that I can say that I will always love you.”I said, “If you want to say these things, you can go on saying, but you don’t see that I am a mirror. I can see all the layers within you. Why this insistence that ‘I will never betray you. Even if you tell me to resign from the presidentship of the commune, foundation, or any post that I am holding, I will do it immediately’?”I said to her, “Just wait.”Now she has resigned on her own, and she has taken those idiots she has put in powerful positions.Vidya is gone with her. She was one of the thickest heads here.And they all have written letters to me, “Beloved Osho….” Still they don’t see the point, that now it is better to address them “Mr. Osho.” Why “Beloved Osho”?“We love you, and we will always love you, but we are leaving.” No reason why they are leaving. And still no sensibility that words like “Beloved Osho” do not suit in the context they are, perhaps unconsciously, using them.And none of them – neither Sheela nor Vidya – has given any reason why, because they know if they give the reason why…. They cannot give the real reason, which will be very humiliating. And they cannot give any wrong reason, because I can see what is right and what is wrong. So they decided not to give any reason.But to see the words “Beloved Osho” from these people makes me sick. What they are doing is just the opposite.These are the mediocre people. Remaining here with me for years, they have not understood what it means to be ordinary, simple human beings. They wanted a hierarchy, they wanted to be on the top, they wanted to have power. It was their political game.I told Sheela again and again, that the people who have come to the commune have not come just to work; they have come here to meditate, to grow, to come to a realization of their self. But she was not interested in that at all. Her interest was only one: that she should remain on the top.But it is good that on her own she has taken all the stupid people. A few are still here who have promised her they will leave. I hope they leave soon, because I have better people here, I have better people around the world who can be called.And the commune does not become just a factory where people are only working, no time for them even to love. This was heavy on my heart for all these years. I cannot see my people just working, and tired and going to sleep.You are not for the work. Work is for you.We will work, we will do things, but that does not mean that you don’t have any time to dance and sing and compose music and love your woman – or somebody else’s woman.If you don’t have much time left for yourself, you can at the most love your own woman. To love somebody else’s woman takes a longer time – to persuade her, talk all kinds of nonsense. But it is perfectly good just for a change – good for you, good for the other man’s woman. Good for the other man, because he will also be having a chance with somebody else….Because I was silent I had to keep this heavy load on my heart.You will not believe it, that many nights I had tears in my eyes for the simple reason that I don’t want to reduce my people to living in a slave camp – at least while I am alive.I want my people to rejoice in life. Work is part of it, but not the whole of it. We will make houses, and we will make roads, and we will make everything, but for what? Just for the sake of making them?So necessarily, I had to start speaking. And you will be surprised that all the people who were in power – Sheela, Vidya, Savita, Krishna Deva, your mayor – they are all leaving with Sheela. Thank God! – who does not exist, but in such moments you can use the name.Now we can put more intelligent, more loving, stronger people, who will be more human and who will understand the needs of the sannyasins.A commune has to be a place of love, song, dance. Yes, work is needed, because you need food, you need shelter. And to reach the other man’s woman you need roads, so we will make them!But that is not all. You need sometimes to just sit silently in the hills, by the side of the lake.So I am immensely happy that Sheela has gone with her gang. Now I can give you better people who will take care of more essential things than the nonessentials.But mediocre people function in that way. They were not ordinary. If they had accepted the ordinariness that I have been continuously talking about, they would not have been in such a trouble. And I know, wherever they are they will be in trouble.They may be thinking that in Europe they will not be in trouble. They are wrong. I just have to send a message to all the communes that these people should not be listened to anymore.If they cannot be happy here, then they cannot be happy in any other commune. And those who have left with them will repent.The remaining ones…for example, Krishna Deva, I think, is still here.And sometimes I wonder…. Krishna Deva has been guarding me with a gun. Sometimes I think these people who can leave because Sheela is leaving, they were not here for me. Their hands and their guns were dangerous. They may not have known it, but now they can understand that they were not for me. And it is more possible for a guard to shoot me than for anybody else.But the mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is absolutely retarded. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years of mental age, or even below it. He may be forty, he may be fifty, seventy – that does not matter, that is his physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should keep the distinction. Growing old, every animal does it. Growing up, only a few human beings manage.And the first step is just to accept your simpleness, humbleness. And how can you be an egoist in such a beautiful, immense, vast, infinite universe? What ego can you have?Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.You can play with them while you are in your bathtub. You can go on bursting those soap bubbles, telling yourself, “This is my ego that I myself am destroying.” So when you come out of your bathtub, you are an ordinary man, fresh, humble, clean.The desire to rule over others, the will to power, is one of the greatest crimes that man has committed. My sannyasins have to be aware of it. Hence, my insistence for being just ordinary. And it is so beautiful, because I am saying it out of my experience.No egoist in the whole history of humanity has said that ego is beautiful, that it has given him great ecstasies. All the egoists have died in frustration, despair, because the ego knows no limits. So you are always frustrated.I can tell you from my experience of being just an ordinary human being that it is the ultimate ecstasy. It merges you with existence. There is no barrier. It merges you with the stars, and with the sky, and with the earth. You are no more separate.Ego separates you.And the feeling of oneness with this exquisite existence is religion to me.Osho,Can you say something about single-pointedness, being total, spacing out, work, and worship?There has always been a confusion in people’s minds about single-mindedness – in other words, concentration – and meditation. They think both are the same.The reality is just the opposite. When you are single-minded, you are one dimensional. Your mind becomes narrower and narrower and narrower, and remains focused on one point. This is concentration.If you are learning shooting, the art of archery, and things like that, it will be helpful.There is a story in ancient Indian scriptures.The great master archer, Dronacharya, asked his disciples to shoot their arrows at a bird sitting on a tree. They were all ready with their bows and arrows, and he said, “Before you shoot, I want to ask a question, and each one has to answer.”He asked the first one. The question was, “What are you seeing?”He said, “I am seeing everything: the tree, the sky, other trees, the birds flying.”He went on asking the same question to the other disciples. One disciple said, “I can see only the tree on which the bird is sitting.”He was far better, but the other one was even closer. He said, “I can only see the bird.”The master has said that you have to make the target the bird’s right eye.The other said, “I can see both the bird’s eyes.”Arjuna was the only one who said, “I don’t see anything except the right eye.”This is one-pointedness.Arjuna became his master’s most important disciple, a great archer.So one-pointedness is needed in many things, but it is not meditation. It is putting your mind together in one narrow dimension – linear, just in a line.In science it is useful, but it is not meditation.Meditation is a state of no-mind.Meditation means the mind has stopped. Just you are, pure consciousness, simple awareness; all the dimensions are available to you. So it is just the opposite of concentration.You are asking what it means to space out. You all know it.When you are doing something and you are not there, that is spacing out. It is against concentration. It is against meditation. It is just a wandering mind.If you are chopping wood and thinking of a film star, you are spaced out. And it is dangerous: you may chop one of your legs. You are not where you are supposed to be.Even in such sacred moments when you are making love to your beloved, you are not there. The woman is there, but her mind is also far away. So two bodies are going through a gymnastics. Of course it is not productive of any contentment. You both come out of it frustrated, cheated. Something went wrong.The man immediately turns to the other side, pulls over the blanket, and goes to sleep. The woman cries, weeps, because such a moment…and nothing comes out of it. The whole day she has been waiting, that her lover will be coming; but when he was making love, she was thinking of Muhammad Ali the Great.So whenever two persons are making love, there is at least a crowd. The man is thinking of Marilyn Monroe, the woman is thinking of Muhammad Ali, and these pictures in the mind go on changing. And on the margin they are trying to make love.Why unnecessarily harass each other? If this is the situation in love, what will be the situation in other things?Spacing out is unhealthy. If you want to think of Muhammad Ali, you can sit silently and think of Muhammad Ali. At least it will be one-pointedness. But people are doing many things at a time, and they think that this is some achievement.Just in front of my house in India, was one woman I used to see every day. She had a small child. So the child was put in a rocking chair, and she would be sitting in front of the child, and she would go on pushing the rocking chair with her leg, because the child cannot manage that. So the chair would go on rocking, and the child would remain silent.And she was continuously making something for the child, because the winter was coming: a sweater, socks, a hat. So with her hands she was engaged with the sweater, and with her eyes she was always reading the newspaper. A multipurpose woman!And I don’t think this was all; this was outside so you could see. What was going on in her head nobody knows, because when she can manage three things simultaneously outside, in the mind she can manage three hundred things.These people go on missing the moment – its purity, its life, its joy – because they are not there. And they will never be anywhere if this becomes their habit – which has become the habit of the whole humanity.And you ask me what is work and worship.Work is when you space out. You do the work, but you are not totally there. If you are totally there, it is worship.Then the work is not only work; then the work takes a new flavor: of silence, of meditativeness, of joy – just the wind passing by, the sun-rays falling on you, you chopping wood, and the perspiration coming to your forehead. And all is in utter silence; you are simply chopping wood. You are not going anywhere; you are here.One of the emperors of Japan had gone to see a great Zen master, Nan Yin. He asked Nan Yin, “What have you learned that makes you a great master, known all over the country?”Nan Yin said, “Very simple: when I chop wood, I simply chop wood; and when I carry the water from the well, I simply carry the water from the well.”The emperor said, “I had come to listen to something spiritual. What nonsense are you talking? Chopping wood, you simply chop wood? Everybody does it; what is special in it? Carrying water from the well, you carry the water from the well? I have come a long distance, and I am your country’s emperor. You should at least give me some spiritual advice.”Nan Yin said, “That was my spiritual advice, and I want to make it clear to you that everybody is not doing that. It took me years to chop wood without any thoughts: to just be there, chopping.“And it is tremendously beautiful: the sound in the valley, the chips of the wood flying all over, the wind blowing through the trees, their song, their music. And I am utterly silent, just chopping wood. Carrying water from the well is the same.“My whole day is the same. I have given you, in short, my basic approach of life. Be where you are. Don’t let mind go away.”Work immediately becomes worship – if you have understood Nan Yin’s statement.Things are not complex, things are very simple. You just have to be a little alert and watch what is happening within you: whether it is single-mindedness, whether it is spacing out, whether it is work, whether it is worship. Just watch.And your goal should be that everything becomes worship: walking, or sitting, or even doing nothing. If you are there, absolutely there – nothing is moving in your mind, all movement has stopped – then your whole life is worship.Then your whole life is meditation.Christians go to the church on Sunday. Their religion is Sunday religion. One hour there, listening to the same boring sermon – but they have to listen to it, because they are afraid of falling in hell. This boring sermon is okay; for a few years you listen to it, and you will go to heaven.But they don’t know that in heaven you will have all the saints for eternity giving you the same sermon. They will bore you so much, because the time is so long. And Sunday is not Sunday there; it is every day, the whole day, and for eternity.And suicide is not possible in paradise – at least I have not come across any incident that any saint has been able to commit suicide – although everybody who is there must be thinking of it. But it does not happen in heaven. They will be wanting to come back to the earth. It is not allowed.They may be thinking that it would have been better to be in hell, because in hell there are all the colorful people: all poets, painters, singers, dancers, actors, actresses. All the colorful people, juicy people, are in hell.And people who are just dry bones are in heaven. They are not allowed to visit hell even for the long weekend. Once you enter heaven there is no exit.Other religions are in the morning – ten minutes, twenty minutes – chanting mantras, and thinking that this is all.I have consideredly given you red clothes, a mala with a locket of a madman, to remind you – even in sleep – that your whole life has to become religious; it is not a question of a few minutes, a few hours.And for me, there is no other paradise. You have to create it here and now. You have to learn how to create paradise.Meditation is the technology.Changing work into worship is the secret.So wherever you are, it doesn’t matter. If after death there is heaven and hell, then of course you will all be in hell with me, because hell needs my people immensely.And there are so many intelligent people; in fact, all intelligent people are there. We can create a really big commune.And the people who are in hell have been misfits in the world. But we are a commune of misfits, so nobody can be a misfit with us. We are all misfits, and nobody takes note of it. In fact, we respect the misfit person because he has some individuality. The person who simply fits like a cog in the wheel is not worth…. Let him go to heaven. Perhaps he may serve as a cog in some wheel.If there is any heaven and hell, if we end up by chance in heaven – accidents happen – we are going to do the same. We are going to initiate those poor saints into sannyas, and teach them Dynamic Meditation. And they will rejoice immensely, because for centuries they have been sitting there, simply playing on the harp, “Alleluia, alleluia!”I have heard about a porter in Munich, a German guy, addicted to beer. By mistake – that’s why I say accidents happen – by mistake, somebody else was to die but the angels of death took the poor porter, because he was lying in the other man’s house who was going to die, completely drunk. It was just a mistake. In such a state he could not find his house, so wherever it happened, he fell down there. The man of the house was not at home, so the angels took that man.When he opened his eyes he could not believe where he was. He was handed a harp.He said, “What are you doing? I am a porter, I don’t play the harp.”They said, “Here you will have to play the harp for eternity and sing, ‘Alleluia!’ You sit on one of the clouds. Just look at what the other saints are doing.”But the man said, “I am not a saint! I am just a porter in the Munich station. And what about my beer?”The angels said, “Don’t mention such things here. These things are not available. All that you have to do is rejoice and play.”For a few minutes he tried. He said, “What nonsense! I was living such a beautiful life in Munich, earning well as a porter in the station. And then every evening going to the pub, meeting the friends, drinking – it was such a joy. And where have I landed? I am not a saint at all; I never even went to the church.”He was very angry after a few hours. “This is too much. Just in a few hours I am getting so angry, and it is a question of eternity. Something has to be done!”He became angry. And a porter is, after all a porter, he is not a professor. His language is not of the cultured, high society. So he would sing, “Alleluia, alleluia,” and in between he would say, “Fuck you all!” – and start again, “Alleluia, alleluia.”The other saints saw that this man was doing really badly. Between “Alleluia, alleluia,” he says something which is not mentionable.They went to God and said, “This man is saying things which have never been said.”God said, “I know. The trouble is you have brought a wrong man. He is not the saint I have sent you to bring. He is a porter in Munich, and naturally he is getting angry. And when he gets angry he will say things like that. You take him back and leave him in Munich so that he can enjoy his life. He is not meant for heaven.”The man was brought down. He was immensely happy. Immediately he went to the pub and he said, “Alleluia! Now bring as much beer as you can.” He said, “My God! I had entered into such a bad space. Perhaps I was too drunk and dreamt….“Only one thing helped me. And everybody condemned me – ‘Don’t use that word’ – but only that word helped me. Alleluia did not do anything! Playing on the harp I got tired, but the moment I said to the saints, ‘Fuck you all!’ they all disappeared from their clouds.”So if by chance we end up in heaven, remember the word. Don’t forget it! And when so many people on the harps sing that beautiful word…we are going to change heaven into real heaven.You just have to know the secret – and I have told you the secret.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I'm amazed to see how much fear and how many wounds from my heart evaporated, listening to you talking about Sheela and her gang leaving the commune. Now nobody will throw me out, away from you.Osho, I'm so happy that I'm laughing and crying together.Please, just tell me one thing: why did this Sheela-Vidya gang hate your Indian sannyasins so much?I can see you all are immensely happy. I came to know just a little late that you were dancing in the streets; otherwise, I would have joined you. I myself am feeling for the first time at home.First the question, then a few more things.I feel sad and sorry for Sheela and her gang. She has a certain hatred for Indians. The reason is she was raped when she was fifteen or sixteen years old by a man who was a friend of her father, and she had always thought of him as her uncle. Then she became pregnant.And in India, in those days, pregnancy was a great problem. Abortion was not legal, so illegally, somehow, some physician managed the abortion.That pain, that distrust, that ugly experience, and the trauma has remained as a wound in her. That is the root cause of her hatred for Indians.Perhaps I am the only person from India whom she did not hate. The reason is clear, that I may have been born in India, but I am not an Indian. I don’t belong to any tradition, any religion, any race, any color. The moment she saw me, heard me, she felt tremendous joy, that at least in the whole of India, of eight hundred million people, she can love one Indian.The same phenomenon has caused in her mind a deep hatred for men too. Because of that old man she has been taking revenge on all men.You may have observed that around her there were only homosexuals. Homosexuals are not men, homosexuals are not women. You cannot categorize them as men or women.First I was thinking, why does she continue to be surrounded by homosexuals? Then I saw the point, that instead of men she would like homosexuals to be around her. They have dropped out of manhood. They are no longer polar opposites to the woman.In India, she was consistently, for nine years, persuading me to come to America. I would have never come to America, but my physical health was bad. And her persuasion was right, that perhaps in the clean air, in a dry and cool place, my health will recover.But in her own mind, the basic reason for me to leave India was the rape that had happened there. She hated the whole country. Her excuse to bring me out of India was perfectly right, but behind the excuse was her psychology. She did not want to live in India herself. She did not want me to live in India. She did not want my people to live in India.She still carried the same antagonism, and she found excuses to throw away Indians. Many Indians had come to the commune, and had gone back to India with tears in their eyes.India is a poor country. To make arrangements to come to America, and then to be refused by the commune, is simply inhuman. These people had come by selling their houses, their lands, all their belongings – and they were not accepted.But because I was in silence, I never came to know what was going on. She had sent away many Indian sannyasins in a very ugly way.Now everybody can come, because nobody has raped me, nor have I raped anybody. I don’t have any antagonism for anybody in the whole world. In fact, it was because of Sheela that Oregon became so hostile to the commune. I was silent. For five years I did not read any newspapers, did not listen to the radio, did not read any books.It is all finished. I am keeping my eyes open only for you, just to see you and let you see in my eyes is enough. Whatever I had to achieve, I have achieved. I have loved enormously. I have been loved by millions of men and women. There is not any experience which was worth having that I have not passed through.If death comes in this moment I will be going rejoicing, because it is not taking anything away from me. My life has been a complete contentment and fulfillment.If I am still breathing, I am breathing for you, because before I leave I would like you to be in the same space in which I have lived.So now nobody will be thrown out of the commune, and anybody who knocks on our doors has to be accepted.Now there is no need for Oregonians to be hostile to us. Our hands will be always waiting for their hands, and our hearts will be always waiting for their hearts.Sheela created this ugly situation because her life has been misery, anger, hatred. She created an unnecessary hostility.But now I am speaking again. That hostility will disappear just like a dewdrop on a lotus leaf disappears in the early morning sun.We are Oregonians. Now it is for Oregonians to become red! Why should those poor people choose to be dead rather than be red? We will change the whole situation. The whole world is ours – Oregon included. They are simple human beings reacting in simple human ways. There was no need to create what Sheela did.It is past history and we have to erase it.Just the other day I came to know that Sheela, and the whole gang that has escaped from here, were trying to kill three people who are very close to me: Devaraj, my physician; Devageet, who was my dentist in India; and Vivek, who has taken care of me for all these fifteen years as lovingly as no other woman is capable of. Twenty-four hours a day she has been just like a shadow to me, thinking of such small things – about my dress, about my bath, about my food.You will not have seen any kitchen where a doctor is sitting and weighing calories of everything. They are very miserly; they don’t allow me more than three thousand calories per day. And I have to speak five hours, just on three thousand calories!But they love me, and they don’t want me to leave my body before my people are ready.I may have died without Vivek, Devaraj, Devageet, anytime. They have taken every care to keep me alive as long as possible.Now Sheela is gone and the whole gang is gone. Things were repressed out of fear. People who knew could not say, because saying meant they would be thrown out of the commune, and they did not want to leave me. Just to be with me they had to carry wounds in their hearts.One sannyasin came immensely happy and told Vivek that there was a meeting a few months before…. Vivek, Devaraj and Devageet – all three should be killed by slow poisoning. And she could not understand, so she left the meeting. So she does not know what decision they came to.But they must have decided to, because Vivek got one dose of slow poison and her heartbeat went absolutely berserk. It took three hours for doctors, medicine, to bring her heartbeat back to normal. This has never happened before. She had taken only one cup of tea at Jesus Grove, and immediately this happened.In the meeting here, in the last ceremony, Devaraj was injected with poison. He is a doctor, has the highest qualifications from Britain. He immediately understood what had been done. He felt the prick. It happened when Shanti B. was by the side of him, telling him something, one hand on his shoulder, another hand near his body on the floor.He immediately started saying that he had been poisoned, he had been injected. Nobody could believe it, but his situation was…he became pale as if he was dying. He had to be sent to Bend Hospital.Hasya was there to take care of him. The doctors who were looking after him told Hasya that there seemed to be no reason for his sudden sickness, except that some poisoning had been done. They also said that the same case had happened with the attorney of Jefferson County last year, and they suspect it was exactly the same case of poisoning.Now this gang was making it instead of a meditation camp, a concentration camp. And why did these three people have to be removed, to be killed? Just because they were close to me.Sheela never wanted anybody to be close to me, for a simple reason: so I am never able to know what she is doing outside, what she is saying outside, in my name.And you will be surprised and shocked, that even my room, my sitting room, my bedroom – they were all bugged. On the surface they were all saying that they love me and they are ready to die for me. What could be the reason to bug my room? And Vivek suspected it, because her room was also bugged. Hasya’s house was bugged, and every telephone call was taped. Now, my people are not talking politics on telephones – perhaps with a friend, with a lover.And when I suspected this, I asked her. She said, “No. We are simply tapping the phones of people whom we suspect are planted by the government.”I said, “In four years, how much information have you got? You show me.”They had not a single piece of information. So I said, “What is the point? For four years those thirty people were not phoning at all?”And this is simply an excuse to listen to other people’s conversations. And it is ugly, inhuman, undemocratic. It is a crime. It is interference in people’s privacy.I was not aware that they were even bugging my room. It will be difficult for you to believe – yesterday we discovered and disconnected a bugging device.She was continuously insisting that my room should have a buzzer, an emergency buzzer, so that the guards know immediately if anything is wrong.I said, “From inside what can be wrong? Guards are outside. If anything wrong is going to happen to me, it will come from outside. They should have a buzzer to inform me. I am living isolated. Nobody can even see me from the outside, and I cannot see anybody outside. The buzzer is pointless.”What she insisted was: in some emergency it may be needed. I said, “Okay, if you are so intent, it does me no harm.” But the point was – just yesterday we came to know – when the buzzer was removed, there was a microphone. It was a bugging device.I was seeing a few people once in a while. She never wanted for me to see anybody. But I said, “This is not possible. I have a certain message for somebody, certain instruction for somebody. And I don’t think you are capable of doing it. So the person has to be called.”So that was the reason for bugging my room – what am I saying to people whom I have called?She had created almost a fascist state. It was ugly. It was criminal. And the whole bunch has escaped. Knowing that once Sheela and the main people are gone, the others will be in trouble because soon these things will be discovered….But we are not going to leave these criminals in the world. They will destroy other communes, other people. I am going to inform the government; I am going to inform the international police force; I am going to inform all the communes; I am going to inform the press media. These people should be treated as criminals.One of our old sannyasins, Shunyo, has donated three hundred thousand dollars, after an attack on my life was made, to purchase a bulletproof car. Those three hundred thousand dollars were simply swallowed up by Sheela and her brother, Bipin. They went on saying, “The money will be returned, it will be returned within a month.” Now almost eight years have passed, and not a single dollar has been returned to the commune. And I heard yesterday that, although Sheela and her whole gang has left, Bipin is still in Jesus house.Geeta has proved a jewel. She was the secretary of Sheela. Sheela wanted her also to go with them; Geeta refused. She has seen the working of Sheela closely, and she did not want to be part of that criminal gang. She informed me that this Bipin is in the house. I told her, “Tell him to leave immediately – he has nothing to do here – because he may do more mischief.”These people could do all this harm, and much more about which we are not aware. But rumors are coming and soon people will start finding what else they have done.It is just a rumor that they tried to poison the whole of The Dalles city by poisoning their water system. It is just a rumor right now. They did not succeed, but they made the attempt.I am trying to make you absolutely apolitical, with no desire for power; and these people were using you and your strength for their own ambitions.I have heard that some government office in The Dalles was burned, and it was the work of this group. These people could have done anything.They could have killed me. Perhaps, after killing those three people who are taking care of my health, they would have started slowly poisoning me, so they become absolute dictators in the commune.So it really feels fresh. The air seems to be totally different, and we are fortunate that they left by themselves. Perhaps they suspected that the time has come when they may be exposed.Perhaps they have taken away money from the commune…because they have left the commune with a fifty-five-million-dollar debt. And strangely enough, three days before they left I asked Savita – because she was looking after the finances – “How much debt do you have?”She said, “Nearabout two and a half million.”Just three days before, two and a half million. They became experts in lying. The night she was leaving, I asked her, “You tell me exactly how much debt, because anybody who is going to run the commune will have to take care of the debt.”She said, “It must be thirty to thirty-five million.”I said, “Strange. Just within two days, from two and a half million, to thirty to thirty-five million? What happened in these two days?”She said, “I was not aware of the whole thing. Because you asked me, I looked into it.”I said, “But I have heard that you are leaving a fifty-five-million-dollar debt. And you are still saying thirty-five. Be true!”Hearing the figure fifty-five million dollars, she said, “Perhaps it is fifty-five million dollars.” Suddenly from thirty-five it becomes fifty-five – just there within two minutes. These people were lying to me. These people were lying to you.Your letters were not reaching exactly – only those letters they wanted were coming. My answers were not reaching to you exactly as I had dictated them. They were edited. They managed the answers according to their ideas.One thing has to be remembered, that such a thing should never happen again in this commune. For that reason, I am not going to be in silence again. Even if I die, just because of old habit I will go on speaking. Habits die hard; man dies very easily. But I am not going into silence. I have to keep completely acquainted with what is happening, so never again such a fascist thing happens to my people.I love you so much. I could not conceive that anybody would do such criminal acts against you. And you have shown a great quality of trust, even in that group which was not trustworthy. I appreciate your trust. I condemn their acts, but I appreciate your trust.But it is not going to happen again. And you all have to be aware that it should not happen again. And if you see anything like it happen – even the beginning of it – now I will be available to you directly.Osho,Since you started speaking again last year, I heard you several times quoting the story of Adam and Eve longing for the tree of knowledge, always in the sense that they did a great job for mankind. But, according to the Bible, it was not just the tree of knowledge, but the tree of determination of good and bad. Wasn't it this desire of the mind for judgment and splitting into dualities that caused man's loss of innocence and paradise that is described in this symbolic story?For the moment, just for argument’s sake, I will accept what you are saying – the story is about the tree of knowledge – but if you call it the tree of the determination of good and bad, it comes to mean the same thing.What is it that determines, discriminates the good from the bad? It is awareness. It is your consciousness. So what name you give to the tree will not make much difference.And don’t try to befool yourself by saying that when man fell into a state of sin, he lost his innocence.Let me ask you a question: Does your God know what is good and what is bad? If your God does not know what is good and what is bad, then he must be a buffalo. And if God knows what is good and bad, then to know good and bad is a divine quality.Do you mean to say – you must have a very fanatic Christian upbringing – do you want to say that your God has fallen into sin, because he knows what is good and what is bad?Both the ways are open to you. Either you have to accept that he is just a buffalo chewing grass, not knowing what is good, what is bad…. That, of course, you cannot accept, because on the day of judgment how will he discriminate who is good and who is bad? How will he send his saints to heaven and the sinners to hell? He must have the discriminating power. He must be able to see what is white and what is black.And if God is not committing sin, then what is the fear – why prevent Adam and Eve from knowing good from bad, discriminating? Because that is the only way to follow the good.And what you call innocence…think twice. You are calling ignorance innocence. Ignorance looks like innocence; it is not innocence.For example, it is said that the man who is awakened again becomes just like a child – innocent. Mind the words, just like a child – not a child, because the child is not innocent, he is simply ignorant.That’s why the child can be exploited by you, by your society, by your priests, by your politicians, by everybody. He is ignorant. He knows nothing of what is right and what is wrong. So in every society, every religion, he is given ideas.For example, Christians don’t think alcohol is wrong. In fact, on their holy days they drink alcohol – and from the same glass. Just think of AIDS. AIDS has disturbed all your Christian ceremonies.Mohammedans eat off one plate; that is a sign of friendship, love. But what about AIDS? Now it is not friendship to eat from the same plate. Nothing can be more inimical.What is good and what is bad?In ignorant children you can enforce any idea that “This is good.” For example, in Jainism, the Jaina monk cannot use a simple thing like a razor blade, because that is using technology – high technology. He has to pull out his hair. And every year thousands of people come to see the monk pull out his hair. It is painful, stupid, but those people…you should see the crowd; they are crying with respect: “Now this man is doing something great. This is what a saint should be.” They have conditioned their children that this is what it means to be a saint.Unfortunately, I was born in this religion – Jainism. But it was going to be “unfortunately” anywhere I was to be born, because to be a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu or a Mohammedan does not matter.In this matter, a child cannot yet find parents who will not condition him. A child cannot say, “I am born, fortunately, to parents who have not conditioned me, who have given me freedom, who have given me as sharp an intellect as possible, who have taught me how to doubt, how to be skeptical, how to be an agnostic, how to inquire and never believe unless I come to know myself.”In my childhood I have seen many Jaina monks pulling out their hair, and I used to say to my father, “I don’t see anything good in it. It is not doing any good to humanity, it is not something creative. It is not making life more beautiful. In fact, that man is a masochist.”And my father would say, “You keep quiet. If you cannot keep quiet, go home, but don’t say such things. A masochist?”I said, “I cannot be quiet, and I cannot go away from here. I have to see the whole show of this masochism.”It is a known fact that mad people in madhouses pluck their hair. And you may know women – because they cannot do any other harm to the man they love, they start pulling out their own hair.So this Jaina monk is doing something feminine too; he is not really a male. Pulling out your hair…I don’t see any beauty, any grace in it. Look at his face: it is distorted with pain. But he is doing it because thousands of people are applauding. His ego is fulfilled. For his ego he is ready to suffer. In Jainism it is thought to be great, a good quality. What do you think? Is it great, a good quality?This is what you have done to ignorant children. Their ignorance looks like innocence, but remember, ignorance is negative. It simply means they don’t know. Innocence is positive. It has known everything and dropped it – it was not worth knowing.You cannot corrupt an innocent person. Innocence is the highest peak of growth. The child cannot be innocent, that’s why it is said “just like a child.” The saint does not become a child – just like a child. It is only an example, to make you understand.God wanted Adam and Eve to remain always ignorant? not to know what is good and what is bad? And when you don’t know what is good and what is bad, there is every possibility you may be bad, a fifty-fifty chance. And you may not feel that you are doing anything bad. You may murder somebody and you will not feel that you are doing anything bad.No, whatever you call the tree, this God will not change me. You can call the tree anything.It is just an idiotic story, because there is no forbidden fruit. It is supposed to be the apple – it was an apple tree. And just because it was an apple tree, I used to eat as many apples in the day as possible so that I would not remain ignorant. But I found that apples have no quality, no chemicals to make you more alert, more aware. What fruit can make you more aware, more discriminating, more knowing what is good and what is bad?So you can play and change the name of the tree, but whatever name you put on it, I will hit on it without any difficulty. It does not matter. To me, what really matters is that God has not punished man for eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge, or from the tree of determining what is good and bad. He punished them because they disobeyed. Disobedience is sin.Not always. If all the Germans had disobeyed Adolf Hitler, would you call it sin? Ten million people would not have died if Germans had eaten from the tree of discrimination of what is good and what is bad. It seems in Germany the tree does not grow. They obeyed a madman. And according to this obedience they followed whatever was said to them.Do you think obedience is always a virtue and disobedience always a sin? No, there are moments when disobedience is a virtue, and obedience is a sin. In fact, in the sick society in which you are living, you will find more occasions for disobedience – if you want to be pure, innocent – than you will find moments for obedience.And you seem to be offended because I am saying that it was something great, a great blessing for humanity. I repeat it again: it was the greatest blessing for humanity that Adam and Eve disobeyed your phony God. Otherwise, remember, you would have still been in the Garden of Eden chewing grass, not knowing what is right and what is wrong.God wanted you to remain animals.It is by the great revolutionary serpent – he is the first revolutionary in the world; whoever he was, he was the beginning of humanity – animals were transformed into human beings.But you go on falling back into obedience, so I have to do the work of the serpent: to teach you doubt, to teach you disobedience, to teach you inquiry and to never be satisfied unless you know. And eat as many fruits from the apple tree – they are good.It is said, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Such a good fruit that keeps the doctor away – just one fruit.The story is symbolic. All stories are symbolic, they are not historical facts, but they indicate something tremendously beautiful: the God who imposed obedience was just a fascist. He wanted them to be always just animals under his rule. But if man became aware of what is good and what is bad, what was the problem for God? Was man wrong?The devil, they say, came in the form of the serpent. Strange. One who is bad would like people not to be able to discriminate between good and bad. One who is good would like people to discriminate between good and bad, so they can always do good.If you look at the story without your Christian eyes, you will be surprised. The devil seems to be good and God seems to be bad, because the devil is for awareness, knowledge, discrimination, and God is not for freedom or disobedience. This God must be a fascist.Humanity owes much to the serpent. Whatever we have attained, whatever has been our civilization, culture, art, literature, music, our creativity, science…you have to be in immense debt which cannot be paid – to the serpent, or to the devil.If there was no devil, there would have been no humanity, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Michelangelo, no Albert Einstein, no Moses, no Jesus, no Buddha. There would have been nothing, just animals moving around looking for grass or water.Have you thought of the alternative?Every credit goes to the devil. If you want to worship somebody, worship the devil. He is your real creator.God has made you just out of mud, that’s why you are called human. The word human comes from humus. Humus means mud.Not a very good job, not very respectful to human beings. God could have made you with something better – with gold, with diamonds, with emeralds, with rubies – nothing is impossible for God. Why make you out of humus?And I always think that the humus was taken from the Big Muddy Ranch; otherwise, how could you create such a Big Muddy Ranch?You were not really created, man and woman, by God. He created only animals. The transformation came through the devil. And you have to know that the word devil is not bad. It comes from the same Sanskrit root as divine. Devil means divine. Nobody knows what God means.I was reading the book, Waiting For Godot, and I thought “Godot” looks like “God” – but in what language is God called Godot? So I inquired of Haridas, because I suspected it must be German. And Haridas said, “No. In German we call God, ‘Gott!’”Strange, nobody has got him, and Germans call him Gott! He has never been found anywhere. But Germans are strange people. They may have “gott” him. That’s why nobody else can get him. And if ever they got him, they must have put him with the Jews in the gas chamber, because God is a Jew! The biblical God is bound to be a Jew.So now I know. He is no more there, just holy smoke.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I looked around me today at the people in this community I saw only innocence and loveliness. But if the ugliness you spoke of flourished in the heart of this community, then what strength is there in innocence and lovingness?It is one of the most significant questions about life. The roseflower is beautiful, full of fragrance. The rock is almost just the opposite, but the rock can kill the roseflower very easily.So one thing has to be understood: the higher you go into silence, love, beauty, the more delicate you become, more fragile. The lower you go – violent, murderous, criminal – the harder you become.Your heart has both the possibilities: to become the rock or to become a roseflower.The second thing to be understood is: the rock has a certain kind of strength, but that strength is of death. It is not in the service of life; it is in the service of destruction and death. The roseflower also has a certain strength, but it is in the service of life, love and beauty. These are different kinds of strength.Certainly, you cannot make bullets from rose flowers. That does not mean bullets become more important. You cannot kill somebody with a roseflower. That does not mean the arrow – a poisonous arrow – is more powerful than a rose. But it appears so.The arrow is dead; hence you cannot kill it anymore. Do you think that is strength? Then all the people who are in the grave are stronger than you; they will never die again. You will be dying.Would you like to change places with the people in the graves? They are, in a way, stronger than you, because death cannot happen to them. But they are dead. What is the point of their strength?Life is fragile. The higher you go, the more fragile. The tree is not so fragile as the flower. The fragrance is even more fragile than the flower – just a small breeze can take it away.This is true, that you see innocence and lovingness all over the place in this commune. Naturally, the question has arisen in your mind that why did something like a fascist calamity happen to you?Innocence can be taken advantage of. Lovingness can be exploited.But no harm has been done to you! Fragrance may be fragile; it may exist only for a moment, but that moment is eternity. The rock may exist for eternity, but that eternity is not even equal to a single moment of fragrance.The people who tried to exploit your innocence and love, your trust, have not destroyed you; they have destroyed themselves.This is the beauty of the power of love, the power of trust, the power of innocence.What harm has been done to you? No harm can be done to you. Even if you are killed, your loving being and your trusting being and your inner innocence are eternal. And you have seen the whole drama, that the people who were powerful but in the service of destructiveness had to escape finally.Love is victorious.And wherever they will go, a deep feeling of guilt, of inhumanity, of having taken advantage of trusting people, will follow them. They will not have a single night of peaceful sleep.This is a fundamental law of life: your every action is followed by its result automatically.The flower releases fragrance. These people have released poison, but the poison has not affected you at all. It has poisoned their own beings, their own growth. They have missed a great opportunity, and perhaps they will have to wait for lives to find it again.I hope they come to understand what they have done. They have done such ugly things that you cannot believe.Just this morning, more information came from a sannyasin. When the Share-a-Home people had come here, a certain drug was purchased in a big quantity by this fascist gang of Sheela’s. They were injecting that drug into the Share-a-Home people so they remained calm and quiet. Otherwise, they were street people; they have lived in a totally different way – rowdy, ever ready to fight and kill.But they overdosed one man and he died. I have been informed that they took the man and threw him out of Rancho Rajneesh.To treat a man like that is disgusting. It simply proves only one thing: that this group of Sheela’s had no heart at all. I would not have believed it, but seeing all the other information that is coming…and people are ready to witness for it in the courts.The pharmacist of the commune was puzzled. He was very much against bringing in that much poison. “What is the reason?” They managed to bring the poison in, in some other roundabout way.First to invite people here to share your home, and then you share death? If you cannot be loving to people, why have you called them here?I was in silence. I was told it was “because there is more money from the festival than we need, and this will be good, humanitarian work.” I said, “If it is something humanitarian you must do it.” But it was not humanitarian. Now people are reporting to me that they were certainly brought here for voting.For my whole life I have been teaching my sannyasins to be apolitical. Politics is for inferior minds. It is for those who are suffering from an inferiority complex. It is the inferiority complex that forces them to prove to themselves that they are not inferior – they are governors, they are prime ministers, they are presidents.But even if you are a president it does not change your inferiority, it does not make you superior. That’s why people like Nixon, becoming president, behave like criminals. In fact, your whole history is full of people who came to power and behaved like great criminals.Your history is the history of criminology. It is worth burning completely, so your children never hear the names Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini. It will be better if your children never hear these names. These names are contaminated. Don’t poison poor children.All these people were not violent before they came into power. Neither were Sheela and her group. They were simply as human as you are, as beautiful as you are, as loving as you are. Then what happens when people come into power? Power certainly makes a great change. Whatever these people have been carrying in their unconscious, now they have the opportunity to materialize it.So from this experience, you have to learn one thing: somewhere deep down you may be also carrying Sheela, Puja, Vidya, and the whole gang. Your lovingness, your friendliness, may be just superficial. The only way to know whether it is really there, is to give you power. And that’s what I am going to do now.I have chosen Hasya. She is the beginning of my experiment. So be aware.Everybody has to go through the power-trip. We have to make power just like a rotary club. For a few months somebody is the president, then somebody else, then somebody else – give everybody a chance to look into his unconscious.Power is of immense importance. It is a revolution. Something hidden and dormant becomes active, and something that was active goes to sleep. And each of you has to remember that power is not going to corrupt you.Lord Acton’s famous quotation I have used many times: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But I don’t agree with him. It is not the power that corrupts. Corruption is in you. Power simply gives you an opportunity to show your real face. So power is not your enemy; it is a mirror.You don’t know. You may be carrying a Genghis Khan within you, a Tamerlane within you, a Nadirshah within you. Power gives you the insight to become aware of it all.I am not against power. All that is needed is that you should remain aware, more aware than before. Powerless you can afford to be unaware, but when you have power you cannot afford to be unaware. And then power can be of immense help – to help you to destroy the Nadirshah within you, the Adolf Hitler within you. And if you can come out of power unscratched, then you will have an abundance of love, compassion, beauty, truth.They have their own strength, but it is of a totally different dimension.So I am not disappointed. Whatever happened, we are going to turn it into a golden opportunity. That’s what I teach to you – to turn everything into a golden opportunity.Sheela and her gang have done a great service to you. They have destroyed themselves, but they have given you an insight. Now keep awake. Don’t fall asleep.Osho,You have often referred to the quote, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” How can this be prevented from happening again? Is the horizontal hierarchy really possible? Alleluia for this new day! Alleluia!But I have answered your question before you have asked it.Osho,I don't know what magic happens during darshan, but falling into the deep, deep silence that your presence creates, I find it hard to imagine how it is possible to recreate this beautiful space in your absence. And strangely, a part of me does not want to believe it is possible.Why is this?First, it is such a big event, such a great ecstasy, that you cannot believe it is really happening. You have been brought up by parents, teachers, society, schools, colleges, universities, religions. On one single point they all agree, that you are unworthy, and you have to deserve to be worthy. You have to prove that you are worthy.And how do you have to prove it? By becoming someone else.A Christian is trying to become Christ. A Buddhist is trying to become a Buddha.Now there is a great problem: nature never repeats itself – that’s its beauty and its creativity. Human beings are not produced on an assembly line like Ford cars, where every minute one car comes out just the same. The predecessor was the same, the successor is going to be the same. Machines can be the same; man cannot be.My opposition to communism is based on the fact that equality of human beings is a psychological impossibility. It is just like if somebody is tall and somebody is short, and you start creating people of equal size. So somebody’s head is cut off, and somebody is put on a traction machine to pull his legs. What you will create will be a crippled world, not equal. I am against communism because it is psychologically absurd.Every man is unique, and there is no way for anybody to become Christ again. Two thousand years are enough proof. Hundreds of popes but not a single Christ. Thousands of monks but not a single Christ. Twenty-five centuries are proof enough: millions of Buddhist monks all over Asia and not a single Gautam Buddha is born.But a calamity happened instead. The person who tries to become Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ, cannot become Jesus Christ and cannot become Gautam Buddha. The natural law does not allow any carbon copies. It believes in the original.So they could not become Buddhas and Christs, but by trying to become Buddha and Christ they also missed what they could have become. And this is the frustration of the whole humanity.You never ask, Who was Jesus trying to become? Who was Gautam Buddha trying to become? If you are really understanding, one thing is clear: Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus Christ, or Moses, or Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu – they were not trying to become anybody else. That is the basic reason why they could become what was their own potential.If you have to learn something from their lives, this is the most fundamental thing: never try to become somebody else. But from your very childhood you are being conditioned that you are unworthy as you are; prove yourself by becoming somebody else.In my childhood I was never an obedient child, and I have remained the same. Just now nobody is giving me orders, so my disobedience has no way to express itself.Once in a while my mother comes while I am taking my lunch, and she forgets, and she starts saying, “Mix this with that. With this vegetable, curd would have been good.”And I say, “You have known me for my whole life. If you say so, I am not going to do it. Still you go on doing the same thing.”She even tries to corrupt the minds of my kitchen people. I have told them, “Listen to her respectfully, but don’t follow what she says.”I want to eat my food my way. Nobody is going to instruct me. Tastes differ, likes differ, individualities differ.In my childhood there was a boy living just by the side of my house, my neighbor’s son, and my father used to say, “Look at that boy.” He was not my class fellow, he was two years ahead of me. “He always comes first. Why don’t you try?”I said, “Until you stop telling me, I am not going to try. In a way, I am also first – from backwards. If there are thirty boys, I am the thirtieth. It is only a question from where you start counting. I can be first also, but I am not going to follow that idiot.”My father said, “He always comes first, and you call him an idiot.”I said, “Yes, I call him an idiot. He comes first because all the people in his class are just third-rate. Once in a while I have talked with him. He is just stupid. He can’t answer a single question; he can’t argue. The moment he sees me he tries to escape, afraid that I will catch hold of him and put him in a confusion.”Finally my father stopped saying these things. The year he stopped, I came first in the class.He said, “You are something! What have you been doing to come thirtieth in the class?”I said, “I have been giving wrong answers knowingly. If you had said to me, ‘You have to pass,’ I would have failed. It was good of you that you were only trying to bring me first. Remember, I am not going to be anybody’s copy, and nobody is a model. I am just going to be myself; first or last does not matter.”And since that time I went on being first every year, in every class, until my master’s degree. I topped the whole university.My father could not believe it. “You are simply crazy. You yourself were writing wrong answers.”I said, “I had to, to stop you trying to model me according to somebody else. This much is certain: I am going to be myself, so don’t impose any ideas on me. Leave me alone, so that I can find my own self-nature.”You feel doubt because here there are five thousand people sitting by my side, so silently, so peacefully, as if there is no one. You feel immense peace, silence, joy, but you cannot believe it because you are a miserable person. Suffering is your fate. You are a sinner, born in sin – a Christian. You have committed so many sins in millions of lives – a Hindu. How can this be possible for you?It may be possible for anybody else, but not for you. Your parents have never respected you, your teachers have never respected you. Everybody was advising, everybody was telling you to change. You were always wrong; they were always right. Naturally, you have accepted their ideas. You have been very obedient. And to be obedient is self-destructive.I am not saying be disobedient to everything. Try to use your intelligence. If it is worth obeying, if it is according to your intelligence, your feelings, your heart, then you are not obeying anybody else; you are doing your thing.If it is against your reason, your intelligence, your being, then whatever the cost, disobey it.Obeying others, you have started thinking of yourself as just a miserable creature. You are not a Jesus Christ, you are not a Gautam Buddha, you are not a Chuang Tzu. What are you? Just nothing?When I entered the university, first I went to see the vice-chancellor. I knocked on the door, asked him, “May I come in?” He said, “Yes.” I went in, I remained standing.He said, “Why don’t you sit?”I said, “It is better to stand in a place where even the vice-chancellor does not know how to respect a human being. Unless you stand up and receive me, I am going to stand here. And remember, unless you respect me, don’t expect any respect from me. It is a mutual thing.”The man looked at me. He was simply shocked. He could not believe that a student would do that.I said, “You can take your time and you can think.”A few moments passed in silence, and then he decided to stand up.I said, “Now, this looks more human. Now if you come into my room in the hostel, I will stand up and receive you with love and respect. And it is not only for me that I am saying so. Do it with everybody. Continuously in your speeches you are saying that students are not respectful to the teachers – and this is the reason why students are not respectful to the teachers. They should not be!”Teachers or students makes no difference. Both have a human soul, unique, and they should be respectful. If the teachers are respectful to the students, I don’t think any student can be disrespectful to the teachers. But you go on receiving their humiliation, and slowly slowly you get accustomed to being humiliated.That’s why you find it unbelievable even though it is happening; you experience it. What a tragedy! You experience it every day, and later on you start suspecting: perhaps you were imagining or dreaming, or perhaps it was some kind of hypnosis. “What happened? I was feeling so ecstatic and so silent and so peaceful and so loving.”A window just opens, and the moment you leave me, the window closes. You close it, because it goes against your whole past, which is heavy.Secondly, I have nothing to do with what is happening here.You love me. It is your doing.You trust me. It is your doing.Whenever you love, whenever you trust, you will feel doors opening into the unknown, new dimensions opening. You are afraid, perhaps in my absence it will not happen. Don’t be afraid. I am already absent. I died the day I became enlightened. There is only silence and peace, there is no “I.” I have to use that ugly word, for the simple reason that in language you have to follow the language and its grammar – howsoever absurd.One of the Hindus’ masters, Swami Ramateertha, who had come to America, tried to change this language. He never used the word I; instead he used his name. He would say, “Rama is feeling thirsty,” not, “I am feeling thirsty.” It looked very odd, “Rama is feeling thirsty,” “Rama wants to go for a walk.”In India his followers used to understand it, but in America people started asking, “What kind of language are you using? Why use ‘Rama’ again and again when you can simply say ‘I want to go for a walk’?”He said, “There is no ‘I’ in me, so I am using Rama just the way you use a name; it’s arbitrary.”But it will make language ugly, and there is no point because Ramateertha’s own life proved it. He was highly respected in America and Europe, so coming back to India, naturally he thought that first he should go to Varanasi, the holy city of the Hindus – perhaps the most ancient city in the world. And if he has been honored so much around the world, certainly Varanasi and its council of Hindu scholars will receive him.He was invited by the council, but before the proceedings began, one Hindu priest stood up and said, “I want to ask a few things. First, do you know Sanskrit?”Ramateertha was born in Punjab, so he was educated in Persian and Urdu. He had read Hindu scriptures in Persian and Urdu, not in Sanskrit. Naturally, he had to say, “I don’t know Sanskrit, but I have read Sanskrit scriptures in Persian and Urdu.”The whole council of scholars laughed. They said, “If you don’t know Sanskrit, you know nothing. First start to learn Sanskrit. Even your orange clothes do not suit you. A man who does not know Sanskrit, the holy language of the Hindus, has no right to pretend to be a Hindu saint.”And you will be surprised: Ramateertha went to the Himalayas, changed his clothes and started learning Sanskrit.Now, who is being hurt?If I was in his place, I would have laughed. I would have said, “Who bothers to be a Hindu saint? To know oneself, one does not need to know Sanskrit or Urdu or Persian. Knowing oneself needs silence, meditation.”And no language is holy, because Mohammedans say Arabic is holy, Jews say Hebrew is holy, Buddhists say Pali is holy, Jainas say Prakrit is holy – and there is no criterion to decide who is right. There are three hundred languages in the world, and to the people who speak them they are holy.I would have simply told that conference of Hindu scholars, “You are idiots and nothing else. You don’t know that to know oneself you need no language. In fact, you need to drop all language, all words, the whole mind itself.”So that was only a gimmick, using Rama instead of “I.” The “I” was there, very much there.His disciple, Sardar Purnasingh, has written in his autobiography that one day Ramateertha’s wife came to see him, poor woman, because he left her, renounced, became a Hindu monk, and the poor woman was somehow managing, working, cleaning, just to get food, shelter, clothes.Knowing that Ramateertha has come back, she came just to see him, just to touch his feet – he was a holy saint. There was no idea in her mind that he is her husband. But when Ramateertha looked from the window and saw his wife coming, he told Purna Singh, “Close the doors and tell that woman that I don’t want to see her.”Purna Singh was a very sensitive man, a man of poetic and aesthetic abilities. He has produced tremendously beautiful literature. He could not believe it. He said, “You have been seeing women all over the world. Why particularly are you refusing this woman?”Ramateertha said, “You don’t know. She is my wife.”Purna Singh said, “Still? After renouncing that woman for twenty years, leaving her in utter poverty, you are still afraid of her? You still think of her as your wife? You have not renounced anything, and all your saintliness is just hocus-pocus. If you don’t see her, I am going to leave you.”Just by changing language, nothing changes. By changing clothes, nothing changes.Remember, that whatever is happening here to you, I am just a catalytic agent. You love me, you trust me, that’s why you become silent.Just try it, sitting by the side of a tree with the same love for the tree, with the same trust for the tree, with the same joy with the tree. And you will be surprised: the same serenity, the same silence will come over you.Looking at a sunset, feel it. It is our existence; we are part of it. Watching a sunset or sunrise, or listening to the sound of a waterfall with the same attitude as you have towards me – you will find it anywhere.Just a bird on the wing, and the whole sky and the freedom – watch it. Feel the joy of the bird. Feel the freedom of its wings, and you will find the same ecstasy there.And once you start finding it in different situations, then there is no need for situations at all. Just close your eyes and be loving, be trusting to the whole existence. And you will find that there is only breathing, and everything else has stopped. The mind is no more functioning.This is what ecstasy is.I don’t want you to be dependent on me. That will be a crime. I don’t want to commit any crime. All the religious prophets and messiahs have committed that crime.Jesus says to you, “I am your savior.” I do not say so. You are your own savior.I can show you the way I saved myself. You need not follow it in detail, but just the idea that a human being just like you, with all the frailties, with all the weaknesses that human beings are prone to….I am not a messiah, I am not a prophet, I am not an incarnation of God. All that nonsense is just to make you dependent. I feel really sick when Jesus says, “I am the shepherd and you are my sheep.” I cannot believe that people did not object to it. This is humiliating.No, I am not anybody’s shepherd, and nobody is a sheep.You have to learn to be utterly independent, and that will be my joy and my reward. If I can make you utterly free, independent – a savior unto yourself – then my blessings will know no bounds.You can make me immensely rejoicing and dancing. Any human being becoming independent from conditionings, from religions, scriptures, prophets, messiahs, has arrived home. He has found the treasure which was hidden in his own being.So this is just to give you a glimpse. Now you have to experiment on your own in different situations whether the glimpse happens or not. It happens! If it can happen to me, why not to you?I am not special.All these people were trying to prove they are special. Jesus is special; he is the only begotten son of God, and who are you? Everybody is a bastard. The only begotten son of God is Jesus Christ. And very strange…God did not do anything when the only begotten son of God was being crucified.It is said about Buddha that he was born when his mother was standing. Now, this is really unique. He was born standing – and not only that, he walked seven steps and declared that “I am the suprememost awakened person in the whole universe.” And there have been idiots who have been believing it.Jesus’ virgin birth – and there are idiots who are believing it.It was impossible, because the Pill was not invented yet. And what about poor Joseph? Nobody thinks about the father of Jesus, that this is such an insult to poor Joseph. Nobody bothers about the man. On the contrary, the Holy Ghost made Mary pregnant and he is still the Holy Ghost. This was a rape. At least now he should be called Unholy Ghost. But something special….Jainas say that Mahavira never perspired. Impossible, unless instead of skin he was covered with plastic. And plastic was not discovered at that time.And perspiration is a very natural and useful process for the body. Every pore of your body breathes, and behind every pore there is a small gland which contains water, for a special reason: to keep your body temperature constant. You may go under the hot sun and it will start perspiring. The perspiration is the strategy of the body to befool the sun. The sun and its heat become involved with the perspiration and evaporate it. The heat does not enter within you and raise your temperature.If you don’t perspire, then…. Your life range is not very big – from ninety-eight degrees to only one hundred and ten degrees, a twelve degrees’ span. If you don’t perspire you will burst with heat.And Mahavira used to live naked. I think he must have perspired more than anybody else in the whole world.This much I can say, that I don’t perspire because I never go under the sun. I don’t like heat. From one air-conditioned place to another air-conditioned place, in an air-conditioned limousine. Just for seconds I am not in an air-conditioned space. That much does not make any difference. I don’t perspire.But Mahavira? I cannot believe it. And you will be surprised: to make him special they say he does not urinate, because that looks bad. For a prophet to urinate – a pissing prophet, mm? – does not look right.He does not defecate. But where does the food and water that he takes disappear? Neither does he perspire, nor does he urinate, nor does he defecate. Then where do the food and the water that he drinks disappear to? And he was one of the healthiest men.If all the food goes on accumulating inside him, I don’t see what will happen to him. He lived for eighty-two years. Just a little arithmetic and you will say that he will be almost as big as our commune’s whole property – one hundred and twenty-six square miles!But they were trying to make these people special, so that you can be humiliated, made dependent, converted to Hinduism, to Jainism, to Buddhism, to Christianity.I am not converting you. Or perhaps, if you understand the basic meaning of the word convert, I am really converting you – not to Christianity, not to Mohammedanism, not to Hinduism, but to yourself. And that is true conversion.These meetings with me are simply small glimpses, that a human being exactly like you, with no specialty, with no claim, is capable of reaching, so why can’t you reach?My being here is a challenge to you. So whatsoever is happening to you in silent moments with me, allow it. It will happen when I am not there.First, move slowly. A beautiful tree…just sit touching the tree, feeling the tree. It is alive and full of juice – and it is not Christian, and it is not Hindu. It is just a beautiful tree with no denomination. Feel its beauty, its life, its greenery, its flowers. Just be there as if there is nothing else to do in the world, and suddenly you will see the same things happening.Use anything, and then stop using things. Just close your eyes and in your total aloneness experience the same things. That will be a day of great joy for you. It is your inheritance; something you had forgotten is remembered.Osho,Is maturation an ongoing process?How is maturation related to awareness?Please explain.Yes. Maturation is an ongoing process. There is no full stop, not even a semicolon anywhere…it goes on and on. The universe is infinite. So is the possibility of your maturing.You can become so huge…. Your consciousness is not confined to your body. It can spread all over existence and all the stars can be within you. And there is no place where you will find a plate that says, “Here ends the universe.” It is just not possible. It never begins; it never ends.And you are part of it. You have been here always and you will be here always. Only forms change, and forms don’t matter. What matters is the content. So remember that particularly in America, containers matter more than the content. Who cares about the content? The container has to be beautiful.Remember, the container is not you. You are the content. Forms change, your being remains the same. And it goes on growing, maturing, goes on becoming more enriched.And you ask, “What is the relationship between awareness and maturity?”Awareness is the method; maturation is the result. Become more aware and you will have more maturity; hence, I teach you awareness and don’t talk about maturity. It is going to happen if you are aware.There are three steps of awareness.First, become aware of your body – walking, chopping wood or carrying water from the well. Be watchful, be alert, aware, conscious. Don’t go on doing things like a zombie, like a somnambulist, a sleepwalker.When you have become aware of your body and its actions, then move deeper – to your mind and its activity, thoughts, imagination, projections. When you have become deeply aware of the mind, you will be surprised.When you become aware of your bodily processes, you will be surprised there too. I can move my hand mechanically, I can move it with full awareness. When I move it with full awareness, there is grace, there is beauty.I can speak without awareness. There are orators, speakers…. I don’t know any oratory; I have never learned the art of speaking, because to me it looks foolish. If I have something to say, that is enough. But I am speaking to you with full awareness, each word, each pause…I am not an orator, not a speaker.But when you are aware of speaking, it starts becoming art. It takes on the nuances of poetry and music.One man, a Western journalist, wrote a book, The New Mystics. His name is Aubrey Menen. He introduced me to the West. He has covered other mystics, but I was on his front cover. And the things he said, I could not believe myself.He said that he has listened to Adolf Hitler, who was a tremendous orator. He has listened to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, who could hold millions of people while he was speaking. He mentioned Kennedy – President Kennedy, who was a great speaker.But I was surprised: he said that listening to me, he felt a tremendous difference. “Certainly this man is not trained in oratory or speaking, but whatever he is saying is reaching directly to people’s hearts. It was not the case with Adolf Hitler, Jawaharlal Nehru or President Kennedy; they were just repeating words like parrots.”This is bound to happen if you speak with awareness. Then every gesture, every word has a beauty of its own. There is grace.When you become aware of the mind, you are in for a greater surprise. The more you become aware, the less thoughts move on the track. If you have one hundred percent thoughts, there is no awareness. If you have one percent awareness, there are only ninety-nine percent thoughts – in exact proportion. When you have ninety-nine percent awareness, there is only one percent thought, because it is the same energy.As you become more aware there is no energy available for thoughts; they die out. When you are one hundred percent aware, the mind becomes absolutely silent. That is the time to move still deeper.The third step: to become aware of feelings, moods, emotions. In other words, first the body – its action; second, the mind – its activity; third, the heart and its functions.When you move to the heart and bring your awareness there, again a new surprise. All that is good grows, and all that is bad starts disappearing. Love grows, hate disappears. Compassion grows, anger disappears. Sharing grows, greed disappears.When your awareness of the heart is complete, the last surprise, and the greatest surprise: you don’t have to take any step. A quantum leap happens on its own accord. From the heart, you suddenly find yourself in your being, at the very center.There you are aware only of awareness, conscious only of consciousness. There is nothing else to be aware of, or to be conscious of. And this is the ultimate purity. This is what I call enlightenment.And this is your birthright! If you miss, only you are responsible. You cannot dump the responsibility on anybody else.And it is so simple and natural, that you just have to begin.Only the first step is difficult. The whole journey is simple. There is a saying that the first step is almost the whole journey.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,For the first few days after Sheela and her gang escaped, everyone felt greatly relieved. Now, as the horror stories unfold, people are reacting by not coming to work/worship, or working without being there.There is suspicion, anger, resentment, and mistrust of those who were associated with Sheela and who have remained.Where do we go from here?Nowhere! We are going to be here. It is a significant question. It represents many sannyasins’ minds.Basically, this is how mind functions. When you get rid of something which was binding you, enslaving you, which was a fascist thing, you feel relieved, ecstatic. The moment you heard that Sheela and her gang had left, you danced throughout the city’s streets.But I knew that the second part would be coming soon – because for three and a half years Sheela and her gang were taking every responsibility, were taking every care, and you were, in a way, unburdened.Now that you are free, a question of responsibility arises, and that shakes you. You have been dependent, and now you are independent. It will take a little time for you to change yourself from dependence to independence. You will have to pass through this trauma.This is simply a trauma.You are worried because many of the people who were part of Sheela’s group are still here. You should not be worried. They are here because they have revolted against Sheela and her group. They have done more than you have done. You should be respectful to them.Sheela had asked all of them to go with her. They refused. They wanted to be here with me and with you and the commune. They had not come here for Sheela; they had come here for me. One of the sannyasins, Ava, even went with Sheela, but came back – not even reaching the goal – the Black Forest in Germany, where they are hiding like criminals.They are no more wearing sannyasin dress, so they cannot be recognized. And they are hiding in a small village, afraid – because they are going to be caught. Whatever they have done, they have to be rewarded for it.Ava returned from the middle of the journey because, even being with them a few hours, she started feeling sick. The whole group was pathetic. She phoned here, and I told her it is her home, she can come back. These people were corrupted, led into things by Sheela, Puja, Shanti Bhadra, and they were as innocent as you are. They did whatever was told to them. Won’t you give them a chance to change? Don’t you have any love for your own people?Even if Sheela, Puja, Savita, Shanti Bhadra – who have all committed crimes of the first degree – if they ask to come back, I will welcome them, because their very asking to come back means they have understood, and they won’t be the same again. And whatever they did, good or bad, their intention was never bad. They were doing it for you. Their end was never bad, their means may have been.And a commune of loving people should be forgiving too. Love knows no resentment. Love only knows how to give opportunities for transformation.So please drop any ideas of the people who belonged to the group and have remained here. To be suspicious of them, or to keep away from them, is ugly on your part. They need more love to regain their dignity. They need more love to be transformed.And always remember one thing very fundamental to my way of life: anything a person does is just a mere act. It does not qualify and color his whole being. Being is vast.I will not punish even a murderer, because the murder happened in the past. Nobody has the right to destroy this man’s future, because in the future he may turn into a poet, a painter, a scientist, a musician, a dancer. One thing is certain: he has energy. He misused it. All that you have to do is treat him psychologically, to make it clear to him that something is wrong in his mind, to make him aware of how to drop it and how to change the direction of his energies. What is destructive can become creative.I am against all punishment, particularly the death sentence. It is inhuman, resentful, revengeful, and without any consideration of the person – in his situation even you would have done the same. And past is past. Why distort the future of a person? Any individual is worthy of respect. Your respect will help him to change. Your trust will help him to change.So the people who have remained here need more love, more respect, need to be more sheltered, protected, so they can drop their fear. And now we have a totally new regime. They will be working under it, and they can be of immense help, because they have worked for four years. We need a few experienced people. So anybody who is here, and anybody who wants to come back, is welcome.This is not an ordinary society. You have to prove that it is extraordinary, that you are capable of trusting even those people who deceived you. That will make them feel ashamed, and that is the only way for their transformation.And, whatever they did, once you accept them we will not need to find out and discover and investigate – they themselves will reveal all.Trust creates such a space, and love gives such courage.If a person can see, can say to the court, yes, he has murdered, and he is sorry for it, and he wants to be changed…. He does not know why he murdered. There must be something in his psychology which is wrong, which is destructive. But in the ordinary world outside he will be sentenced to death, or to remain in jail for his whole life, which is worse.Naturally, the murderer cannot be changed by your courts, by your laws. And for thousands of years your laws have gone on growing, your courts go on becoming bigger, and you have more judges. But do you know, your murders are not less. They are increasing far more rapidly than your judges. Strange – there is something basically wrong.Anything that is done should not be taken in the spirit of revenge, punishment; but the outside society lives only with greed and fear. Give respectability to a person who is obedient to the rotten society, and give punishment to anybody who does anything against the society. This society is not for transformation.But my people should behave differently. You are to prepare the ground for the new man and for a new human existence. And these are the chances, opportunities.Sheela has given you a great opportunity to learn the power of love and forgiveness, and to see that there is no alchemy which can transform a man other than love.So if these people come back – and also those who have remained here – they should be specially treated, with love and great joy and dance and rejoicing that they have come home. And I promise you, your love will change them. There is no other way to change a person.So don’t unnecessarily get worried, seeing the same people still holding power posts. I know about it, but I know that they have revolted in favor of you, against Sheela – and now you are misbehaving with them. They should be rewarded. And they are the people who will bring out everything that has been done; they are the authentic witnesses.But if you are behaving badly with them, you will not be able to win their hearts. And five thousand people, trusting, loving, cannot win the hearts of a dozen people? Then love is useless; trust is useless.You are just functioning with your old, conditioned mind that you have carried from the outside world.And you are feeling another thing which you have to be reminded of, because if you are not reminded, you will create another fascist regime.Freedom does not mean license.In Magdalena restaurant, people are not ready to prepare food. They are free. They want to meditate. Then what is going to happen to five thousand people?People are not working the way they were working under Sheela. That means you need Sheela. You should be working more – to prove that Sheela’s fascism was unnecessary. People are not coming to their work, and even if they come they don’t work. Do you see the implication of it?Five thousand people have to live self-sufficiently. You have to produce your food, your houses, your vegetables, your milk products – everything. And if you are not working, because you think that’s what freedom means, then you are behaving stupidly.You should do just the opposite. You should work more, not as a slave, but out of your freedom and love for the whole commune, and you will prove that Sheela was wrong. And that will be the guarantee that nobody ever again takes any fascist steps. But if you act this way, then perhaps another Sheela will be needed; otherwise you cannot survive. It is simple arithmetic.In Soviet Russia, when the country became independent from the czarist rule in 1917, in the Moscow main street a woman was found walking in the middle of the road. And when she was told by the policeman, “Walking in the middle of the road is not allowed”….There are two possibilities: if the country decides, then keep to the left or keep to the right. But no country in the whole world has the idea to keep in the middle. Traffic will become impossible. Accidents will increase a thousandfold. Just think, traffic in the middle! from both sides cars and buses and people walking! It will be a tragedy.But the woman said, “Then what is the meaning of freedom, if I still have to keep the old rule?”Don’t be so idiotic, like that woman. Nobody should impose any rule over you. If you are responsible, intelligent, you will create a life of discipline on your own.So remember, you can choose. If you want Sheela back, I can call her and her whole gang, and give the commune to her. If you don’t want anybody to be dictatorial to you, then take responsibility. Then work, and work more sincerely, honestly. The need simply disappears.And you are a group of very intelligent people, but this is the trouble with intelligent people. They always try to misuse freedom.I would like to remind you that Germany is one of the most intellectual countries in the world. It has given to the world people like Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger – great philosophers, great psychologists. And still a third-class crackpot, Adolf Hitler, managed to get all the intelligentsia of the country to follow him.And I don’t think humanity has learned anything out of it. If you don’t learn, then history repeats. If you learn, then you can stop history repeating again.Martin Heidegger was perhaps one of the most significant philosophers of the century, and he was a contemporary of Adolf Hitler. He supported Adolf Hitler – inconceivable! The whole youth, which is the cream of the society, its intelligence, all the universities’ vice-chancellors, professors – they all supported Adolf Hitler, a man who was uneducated, a man who was refused from the school of art, who was refused from the school of architecture, because he had no intelligence.This man became the leader of the most intelligent country in the world, and he created the greatest fascist regime. He killed almost ten million people, and still people were supporting him. It has to be psychoanalyzed.What was the reason? The reason was, Germany was defeated in the first world war. And the intellectuals tend to fight among themselves. They argue, rationalize, philosophize; they are not physically active people. And they are egoists. They think they have found the secret of life, every one of them.After its defeat in the first world war, Germany was in a chaos. The chaos created Adolf Hitler, because he promised, and he fulfilled the promise, “I can make this country again united, again strong, so strong that it can rule over the whole world.”It was something that was immensely needed. People were not working, people were not being creative. Somebody was needed to make the country again creative, disciplined. And Adolf Hitler filled the gap. Within ten years Germany was again a world power.Strange – if you give people freedom, they become lazy, they don’t want to work. But if you give them a fascist order, they work to their very potential; they create, they are united, they become strong.Germany went on winning for five years. That proved that the people of Germany had chosen the right person – the whole world on one side, and he alone was enough.He gave the intelligentsia their ego as nobody had given them before. He said to them that the Nordic German race is the purest Aryan race, and it is its destiny to rule over the world, because all others are subhuman. It was tremendously gratifying. The intellectual ego was very much fulfilled, and even a man like Martin Heidegger fell into the trap.Only after Hitler was defeated and Germany was almost destroyed, then people started looking back at what they had done, what kind of man they were supporting: a monster, a murderer who has killed millions of people – perhaps the greatest murderer in the whole history.So remember one thing: freedom is not license. Freedom is responsibility. And if you cannot take your responsibility yourself, then somebody is going to take the responsibility on your behalf. And then you are enslaved.People have been asking me how it happened that five thousand people, almost all university graduates, having the best qualifications from the best universities of the world, could not see for four years.The reason is, Sheela was not only doing something ugly and fascist, she was also creating the commune. She was also making the desert into an oasis. She was making the commune comfortable in every way. Every coin has two sides.So you looked at the light side. And you were surrounded – which Sheela and her group created – with hostility in Oregon. That is a simple political strategy.Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography My Struggle, says that if you want a nation to be strong, create enemies all around it; otherwise, people relax. Keep them continuously in paranoia, fearing that there is danger all around.And Sheela created that. She created the hostility of the Oregon government. She created the hostility of Americans in general. That made you come close to each other, become strong: “Be ready so that nobody can harm you.”So if you don’t take the responsibility, something like that is bound to happen again. History certainly repeats, because man does not learn.Now I want no hostility with anybody. We have been here for four years. Others may have been for four generations – that makes no difference. If in four years you cannot be Americans, you cannot be Americans in four hundred years either. Years don’t count.We love this land, and we are pouring our perspiration into this desert to make it an oasis. We have fallen in love with this desert.And to me, America is perhaps the only hope for humanity, because the American Constitution is the only constitution which is authentically democratic. That is creating a trouble for American politicians, because those politicians are not democratic. So they go on continuously against their own Constitution.We will fight for the Constitution of America against those Americans who are prostituting it. But there is no question of hostility. We are part of this country, and we are going to be part of this country forever.And we are withdrawing everything that Sheela and her group created – fear, paranoia. I would like the City of Rajneesh to change its name back to Antelope. There was no need to change the name – Antelope is so beautiful a name – and why hurt people?And I would like that the people of Antelope who have sold their properties to us should take them back. We have improved on their properties, we have renovated their dilapidated houses, and anyway, prices in four years have gone high. But I don’t want – because it is not a question of profit…. I would give them back at the same price as we had purchased them. And if they can take all the properties back…. We have such a big land here, why should our people live anywhere else?We have three times more land than New York. We can create three New Yorks here. We have one hundred and twenty-six square miles. But we are not going to make those ugly structures, skyscrapers, against nature, against aesthetics. We will make small cottages which mix with nature, and we will make this place lush green. We need greenery, because the red becomes very great when there is greenery all around. Even trees understand it. Green trees and red flowers…. These are two basic colors.And we want the government of Oregon to understand that we are Oregonians.Governor Atiyeh has come from Lebanon. His father may have come, that does not matter. If he can be an Oregonian, why cannot you be an Oregonian? In fact, everybody in America is a foreigner except the Red Indians. Others have invaded the country. They have entered the country without any visa. They have exploited the poor people of the country. Their forefathers had no green cards.We have not invaded. We have given more money for this land than anybody else was ready to give. This land was for sale for fifty years, and nobody came to purchase it. The greatest offer was three and a half million. We have given six million dollars for the land.You should compare it. The forefathers of Americans who had come here purchased New York for thirty dollars. Just a little arithmetic: thirty dollars for the whole of New York? – then we should pay only ninety dollars for this whole land. Why six million dollars? But we want to be just and fair.These people who have come, without a visa, with no green card, no American passport, are asking us…. They should feel a little ashamed.We have come into the country legally, and I have chosen the place because I am in tremendous love with the American Constitution. It is far more holy than the Holy Bible, because it gives you all the democratic values of life: individuality, individual property, freedom of speech, freedom of information. It gives you everything that individual growth needs.We are for the Constitution, but the politicians are just corrupting it, in every way. You will be surprised to know that half of Oregon is owned by the federal government. This is not right; this is not according to the Constitution.Government should not nationalize anything. This is underground communism. The property should belong to individuals – what does the government have to do with it?And they had ideas to own the whole of Oregon. That’s why they are against us – because now they know they can never have the whole of Oregon. Rajneeshpuram is here and cannot be purchased. So they have been doing everything illegal, persecuting. But there is no fear. We have the Constitution in our favor, and we will win in every court, so there is no question of fear.And as far as the general masses of Oregon and America are concerned, we love them for one reason: that this is the only place which does not have a very loaded past.For example, India has at least ten thousand years of conditioning. To change the Indian mind is an Himalayan task. But to change the American mind, to transform the American is simple. America does not have any past – three hundred years only. Compared to countries like India or Europe, it has no past; it has only future. Its past is so small, it can be deprogrammed very easily.My whole religion consists in deprogramming.I don’t have any program to give to you; and I don’t want to give any program to you, because that is against humanity. I simply want to deprogram you – clean, fresh, unburdened, just a bird on the wing in the sky. And you have to find yourself out of your freedom.But freedom brings great responsibility. And I am trying to make you free, not only from fascist types of structures. I am trying to free you from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, all religions. They are all fascist, because their basic idea is belief.They destroy your reason, they destroy your inquiry, they destroy your intelligence. They give you borrowed, centuries-old rubbish and call it knowledge. You call the Bible holy and every day you worship it, with great respect, without knowing that this is the most pornographic book in the whole world. If the Supreme Court of America is really fair, the Bible should be X-rated. But the same is the situation of other religious scriptures. All are pornography.I want you to be free from any ideology so that you can be yourself and you can search and you can go into the unknown. That inquiry into the unknown is such an ecstasy, such a great excitement – the only pilgrimage. There is no need to go to Israel, no need to go to the Kremlin, no need to go to Varanasi. These are not real pilgrimages.The only pilgrimage is the move from the known into the unknown, and from the unknown into the unknowable.I am not even giving you a God, because the whole idea of God is again fascist. God created you, so what are you? – just puppets. And he could not find anything better, he created you with mud. Humus means mud; that’s why you are called human beings – from the Big Muddy Ranch.And he was even more unfair to women, as if all the mud was exhausted in creating one Adam. But just to create inferiority – this God is a male chauvinist – he created the woman out of a rib of man.He was not a qualified surgeon, still he did surgery – a criminal act. And I have heard a story that because he created Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, each night when Adam goes to sleep, Eve will count his ribs. She has been counting since then.But to accept a God is to accept a bigger Adolf Hitler, supreme-most, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. He can do anything. You are just puppets in his hands. He created you; he can de-create you any moment.And the guy seems to be whimsical. According to Christianity he created you four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, and I am always puzzled, what has he been doing for the whole eternity? Six thousand years old, and what was the fellow doing all along? He has a company: a holy ghost, a son. The company is gay – and AIDS is the result.At least one woman would not have been bad. There would have been a little excitement, a little gossiping, love affairs, fights – some story. But these three queens, what were they doing for the whole eternity? I have asked Christian theologians, “You have to answer me: What were they doing?”I have rejected this unholy trinity completely. Existence has always been here. Nobody has created it.And Friedrich Nietzsche is right at least on this point: that God is dead and man is free. Those two things together – God is dead and man is free – are very significant.If God is alive, man cannot be free. He is always there, and he is everywhere.I have heard about a nun who would not take her clothes off even while taking a bath in a closed bathroom. Other nuns said, “This seems to be a little crazy. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”She said, “How can I? God is everywhere. And he is all powerful and he can do anything, any stupid thing – he can send the Holy Ghost to rape a virgin girl, Mary.”No, with God, man’s freedom is not possible. God is a dictatorial idea. Communists may accept it…. Although they don’t accept it, it would fit perfectly with them, with their ideology. But any democratic mind cannot accept God.So my whole work here is to deprogram you – from God, from hell and heaven, from all religions, from all political ideologies, which are nothing but exploitations of you.Why has man been so much interested in heaven and hell? Poor man needs a promise; otherwise living will be impossible. Hope is his opium. He knows here there is nothing possible, only after death. That’s why all the religions go on giving hope to the poor – after death you will be rewarded. “Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.”I don’t see any point in poverty, any virtue in poverty – that they should inherit the kingdom of God. If being poor is virtue, then where is your pope, who is the richest man in the whole world, going to end up? All your popes will be found in hell. They are not poor people.But it is a consolation, and it is also preventive of any revolution against the rich. The Bible says that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but the rich man cannot enter into the gates of heaven. At least rich people should throw out this Bible; this is not for them. But they go on worshipping, they go on making more churches, more cathedrals.They go on donating, making trusts, because they know that this is simply a consolation for the poor. They are going to inherit the kingdom of God. They are already enjoying something of paradise – and experience counts. The poor man will not be able to enjoy paradise. He will be so unacquainted with any comfort, with any luxury. He is accustomed to poverty. Hell will suit him better.The rich man knows perfectly well that he is going to be in paradise. For the rich man the paradise is his greed: more and more and more. For the poor man it is a consolation: to live with less and less and less.I want you to be freed completely from heaven and hell.Hell is your fear projected.Heaven is your greed projected.And when we can create paradise here, why bother with something which nobody knows exists or not, because nobody has ever come after death to inform us.Strange – the story is that Lazarus died. He was a poor man, so he must have got into paradise. Jesus revived him, but in the Bible there is no reference at all – because he has been for four days in paradise – Lazarus does not give any information. The only man who has come back does not give any information about paradise.The reality is he was a friend of Jesus, and this whole thing was fake. Many people must have died in Jesus’ time. If the man was capable of reviving people then why only Lazarus? This seems unkind. Other people are dying. You can revive them just by touching them or by calling them, “Come back.” Such a small effort on your part and you give them life back. He never did that.My own understanding is that Lazarus played the part; it was a trick. He was not dead. He was placed in a cave, and his two sisters, who were also followers of Jesus, waited for him. Messengers were sent. He came and he simply called from outside the cave, “Lazarus, get up!” And he got up. He was not even asleep. And he says nothing about paradise, or anything about what happened in those four days.I want you to be freed from all this nonsense. Try to live here, now, as totally as possible.And the paradise is now here. If there is a paradise after death, certainly you will inherit it, because you will have already practiced for it.And don’t be worried even if you are thrown into hell – because you have been with me. I will be with you there, and we can create a great commune in hell.And in hell there are all the colorful people. In heaven there are only sad, long faces, saints, dry bones, no juice, nothing. In paradise there is not even a single newspaper, no movie, no film actors, no poets, no painters. All the geniuses are in hell. So if we end up in hell, we are going to have a great time.If we end up in paradise, we are still going to have a great time, teasing those idiotic saints, teaching them how to dance, how to sing…. Because for eternity, what are you going to do? Teach them how to make love, because all those monks must have been homosexuals.All the monasteries are full of homosexuals. All the nunneries are full of lesbians. That’s why I call aids a religious disease. It is the greatest contribution of all your religions to humanity.It is death and nothing else. It is not a disease, because it has no cure. There is only one thing that has no cure, and that is death.We are trying to live a different kind of life than in the outside world. So there are only two ways: either the way of Sheela or my way. I had chosen Sheela to be my secretary to give you a little taste of what fascism means. Now, live my way. Be responsible, so that there is no need for anybody to dictate to you.Every individual should contribute to the commune. It is not an ordinary society. There are no families, it is an organic whole. Contribute…because I have been hearing that since Sheela has left, many people are saying, “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do that,” and they were doing it for four years.You can change your job if you feel like changing, you can do something else. But just because nobody is going to force you, don’t let the commune become crippled. It has to become more healthy. It has to prove the truth of independence.Osho,You have said that some of Sheela's security measures came out of paranoia. I feel very uncomfortable about the guns we have in Rajneesh Mandir right now, and elsewhere on the ranch.Osho, these guns freeze my heart. Please, can we get rid of the guns? Do we need them?We will get rid of the guns, but you are a mouse, not a man.How did you get initiated into sannyas? Those guns have done no harm to anybody, and those guns are not to do harm to anybody. Those guns are here so that no harm is done to you.The whole world is full of guns, nuclear weapons, atomic bombs. It is perfectly right to have your own defense system.It has nothing to do with Sheela’s paranoia.Just a simple understanding…. If you don’t have guns, and tomorrow the fanatic religious groups which are there, they come on their motorbikes and start destroying your things, what are you going to do?I am a nonviolent man, but that does not mean that I will allow anybody to practice violence on me. We will never do any harm to anybody, but those guns are perfectly right.Even big countries like America cannot drown their nuclear weapons in the ocean, for the simple reason that if they stop creating more nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union invades, they will be helpless. The same is the situation in the Soviet Union. They cannot stop.But one thing is certain, and tremendously good, good news: America and the Soviet Union are so full of nuclear weapons that a third world war is impossible. Both the countries have enough nuclear energy to destroy humanity seven hundred times, and there is no Jesus Christ around to make the dead alive seven hundred times.Jesus had promised to come, but one time was enough. The way you treated him, that ugly cross, and he was thirsty and he was asking for water…. A man of miracles could not manage a small cloud to shower on him. He was asking for water; he died thirsty. That experience was enough. He had promised his disciples he would be coming soon, but to stretch “soon” for two thousand years is too much. Even I cannot do that.Both the countries are aware that now a third world war is not going to happen, for the simple reason that both have so much power that they will destroy the whole planet, all living things on the planet. So what is the point? War has meaning if you can be victorious, if you can defeat somebody. But there will be no victory, no one victorious, no one defeated, simply all dead.So it is good that nuclear weapons have come to a point where war is impossible. It is not impossible because of the politicians; it is impossible because of the nuclear weapons.A few security guards are here. There is no question of any paranoia; I have been poisoned twice. Many attempts have been made on my life. The last one was made before I came here, and it is something that has to be understood – in what a dirty political world we are living.Ten thousand sannyasins were listening to a morning discourse, as you are listening. Suddenly twenty police officers, topmost police officers, came running in and informed me that they have been anonymously phoned by somebody saying that “A fanatic Hindu group – the same group that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi – wants to assassinate you this morning.”So we told them to sit and listen to the discourse, and certainly one man stood up and threw a knife, trying to kill me. The most amazing part of the story is that with ten thousand eye witnesses – it is very rare to find ten thousand witnesses for any attempted murder – twenty topmost police officers, the knife, and the man caught red-handed, still he was released as if he had not done anything.We did not bother. I told my people, “It is a police case; let them try it – because the police were present, they have caught the person, they have taken the knife; now let them try the case. It is a police case. If they want our witnesses, then ten thousand sannyasins are here.”They did not accept their own police officers, they did not accept any witnesses. Simply the case was dismissed, as if the knife was never thrown at me, as if the man was innocent.Do you want such a thing to happen here? And it is more possible in America than anywhere else, because in India to carry a weapon is not easy; in America you can purchase any weapon.If you are willing to see me assassinated, it will be a great experience. Those guards can be removed.I would like you to raise your hands. Do you want the guards to be here? Then raise both of your hands.And where is the mouse?

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You said before that meditative people cannot be corrupted by power, but how come Sheela and her gang were corrupted by power?Please say something about the organization of the meditative people.Meditative people cannot be corrupted – ever. If somebody is corrupted, that only means he was not meditative. And about Sheela, I can tell you certainly: she had no interest in meditation, in my way of life, my philosophy. Her interests were totally different.She had come first to me because her husband was suffering from cancer, and the doctors in America had said that he cannot live more than two years. She was desperately in search of someone who could help.Her husband, Chinmaya, was a beautiful man. He remained with me, and it almost always happens, when you are facing death meditation is easy. You cannot postpone it, because tomorrow you may not be here to meditate.So Chinmaya tried hard to meditate, and that helped him to live. All the medical experts were agreed. They could not believe what had happened to him, because two years was the maximum limit for his disease.But he lived almost ten years, and lived happily in spite of cancer, and died happily. Just a few years more and he would have been enlightened. But he reached to the point that in the next life the remaining small part can be done. His next life will be the last life.Sheela had to remain with him, so it was just accidental, her coming to me, her remaining with me. And when Chinmaya started going beyond the two-year limit, she started behaving in an ugly way towards him.Naturally, he was sick, had cancer…he was not so much interested in sexuality. All that he needed was womanly warmth.So Sheela started having lovers. That was a great wound in Chinmaya. And my feeling is, he would have lived a little longer, but these wounds were becoming more and more. And Sheela was constantly fighting with him.Before he died, Sheela had divided the room in two parts, and she was living with her new boyfriend and Chinmaya was left alone.Cancer…. And he had passed eight years beyond medical speculation. When he came to be examined by the doctors they could not believe it. They said, “This is nothing but a miracle.”I do not do any miracles, and I do not believe in any miracles. But he meditated. There was nothing left for him – only cancer and death.But this wound, that at these last moments of his life Sheela would divide the room – and he could hear her laughter, joy with her new boyfriend – perhaps that was too much. Perhaps the will to live disappeared.In a way, he was killed by Sheela.Sheela never meditated. Not only that, you must have observed, she never even listened. While I was speaking she was sleeping. All the years in India, the time of my discourse was the time for her to sleep. Perhaps she was saving that time for the night with the boyfriend.As far as I am concerned, I accept all types of people. I don’t make conditions. Whoever comes to me, he is welcome.Even if Sheela comes back – as a person, as an individual – she will have my trust and love just the same. I will not support her actions, her illegal and criminal actions. For that she will have to go to the court, go to the police.And my suggestion will be that it will be better to come and confess everything before the court, and say to the court, “These are my acts and I am ready for the consequences. And don’t be soft towards me. Be as hard as I have been with these poor people.” That will give her dignity, respect. You will start feeling proud of her.Rather than hiding in the Black Forest like a criminal – and how long can she hide? My sannyasins are all over the world. They have already reached the place where she is hiding. They have informed us that the people who are with her are almost in a sick state – guilty. They have committed a crime against those who had loved them.Their guilt will kill them. At least, it will keep them unhealthy psychologically. They may go mad.My suggestion is they should come back. Our love is unconditional.And I would like to make one point clear: that a person can act in a wrong way; that does not mean that the person becomes wrong. Action is a small thing. A person is a tremendous reality. And the action is already past, and the person has a pure future in front of him.If he hides the action he destroys his own future, because that action will go on and on in his mind as guilt. If he confesses it and is willing to take whatever punishment is needed for it, he will clean himself completely. His future will become pure.Confessing to the court, she will get the most lenient punishment. And I would like to tell to the court that no criminal needs punishment; all criminals need treatment.For centuries criminals have been punished and you have not been able to change anything. Criminals go on growing; then you grow more courts, more advocates. It is an unnecessary burden.And the criminals – even if you imprison them, you are doing an absolutely irrational act, because living five years or ten years in jail means living in the university of criminology, where all the real masters of crime are. You will learn more, and you will learn one thing from all great criminals: that to commit a crime is not illegal, but to be caught is illegal.So all that you have to do is not to be caught; you have to be more clever, more cunning. Crime is not the problem. The problem is being caught.So anybody who is sent to a prison comes out a bigger criminal. When he went into the prison, perhaps he was just an amateur – that’s why he was so easily caught. When he comes out, he comes out as a professional, expert. Now it will be difficult to catch him.So my suggestion to the courts of the whole world is that up to now what you have been doing with the criminals is not right. A criminal has something wrong in his psychology. He needs psychiatric treatment.Instead of making prisons, make places where he can be given psychiatric treatment, where he can meditate, study, become more intelligent. And give him all the respect that is due to a human being. His acts do not count; what counts is his being.I had chosen Sheela to be my secretary, not because she was meditative, not because she understood my approach towards problems. My reason for choosing her was totally different.She had a very practical mind, very pragmatic. She was intelligent. And thirdly, because she had no idea of my total vision; just necessary instructions she could repeat like a parrot. And I needed a parrot.I was in silence. I had no need of a very articulate man, because the articulate man will hear me but his mind will constantly be changing it, making it more sophisticated, more polished. He will edit, he will add. It will not be pure. I needed a parrot who knows nothing of philosophy, knows nothing of religion, knows nothing of the ultimate problems of life. Sheela was perfect. She could only repeat what I was saying to her.These were the basic reasons in the beginning that I had chosen my secretary.Another point to be understood, which is significant…. Many questions have come that, “You are an enlightened being. How could you choose wrong people?”Those questions are out of a misunderstanding. An enlightened person can see you in the moment in your totality, but your future is unpredictable. And there are only two possibilities: if your future is freedom, it has to be unpredictable. If your future is not freedom, then it can be predicted.Almost all the religions have chosen a predictable future, but the implication is that man becomes a machine. Only machines are predictable.If Mahavira, Buddha and others can see the whole future of humanity, that means everything is already determined. So what you are doing is simply being a robot. The idea of freedom becomes an illusion.But to me, freedom is the highest value. To save freedom, I am ready to kill God. If God is there, no freedom is possible, because God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, he knows all, he is present everywhere, and he is all powerful.Under such a despot – Adolf Hitler millions of times magnified is your God – how can small human beings have the taste of freedom? It is impossible.I would like to repeat the sentence of Friedrich Nietzsche, who once in a while used to have tremendous insights. He said, “God is dead and man is now free.”Putting these two together is a tremendous insight. God is dead – that has been said by many atheists in different ways, that is not new. What is new is the other part: and from now on man is free.God’s death becomes the freedom of man. God’s life becomes the death of man. The choice is very clear. If you choose God, then you have chosen to be a robot, a machine who is destined to do something and there is no way to change.The murderer will be a murderer.The thief will be a thief.The sinner will be a sinner.The saint will be a saint.And I am amazed that all over the world, our magistrates, judges, all the courts – from the smallest court to the Supreme Court of any nation – are filled with religious people. They all believe in God, and still they punish the sinners. Can you see the contradiction?If God determines everybody’s life – before you are born your life is written already, what you are going to be, what is going to be your whole flavor of character – if this is true, then no sinner should be punished. That is against religion. He was simply fulfilling a destiny that God has given him.If you want to punish, punish God!Then no saint should be praised, because whatever he is doing, he is in the same boat as the sinner. There is no difference. He is not holier than the sinner. Both are mechanical robots. One is manufactured to be a saint, another is manufactured to be a sinner. Neither the sinner is to be condemned, nor the saint is to be praised.But strange things go on happening. People go on believing in God, and yet they go on insisting that whatever you do, you are responsible for it.But responsibility needs freedom. Without freedom it is not possible for me to be responsible for my acts.A puppet is not responsible for the dance, because the strings are in the hands of the puppeteer who is hiding behind the curtain. He is responsible. He can make the puppet dance, he can make the puppet fight, he can make the puppet sit cross-legged in meditation. But the puppet is not responsible for good or bad. If there is God, then there is no good, no bad.These are simple implications.God creates man, and God creates his destiny.Nietzsche is a madman, but once in a while mad people have tremendous insights. Your sane people have no insight at all. This is something of supreme value when he says God is dead and, from now on, man is free. But freedom means responsibility.So don’t unnecessarily waste your time writing letters to me. I can see your present moment.You can stand before a mirror. The mirror can see you the way you are in the present moment. The mirror cannot see that tomorrow you will be a murderer.The tomorrow is open. All the dimensions are open. You can choose anything, and there are instances where murderers have changed and become great saints. This proves the freedom of man.So when I had chosen Sheela to be my secretary, my reasons were: the secretary has to be pragmatic, practical in worldly affairs, because she will be taking care of the commune. And she will have to manage the commune amidst a world…she has to be alert and aware about worldly ways.She was not very educated, she had no university degree – she has been a waitress in a hotel in America – but I did not want a very intellectual person to be my secretary, because the intellectual person will destroy my messages by his intellect. And I wanted just a parrot – and she was good at doing it.But the future is open.I went into silence. The direct communication between me and you stopped; she became the only communication. She saw the opportunity, the great opportunity that you love me so much and you trust me so much that whatever message she brings from me you believe it.That gave her a clue that you can be exploited, that she can bring any message to you which I have not given. She can change the message and you will trust totally and do it accordingly. That’s why for three and a half years you simply remained unaware of what she was doing. And power has a strange quality. It brings all your hidden desires to the surface. That’s why power corrupts.It is not power that really corrupts, it only brings all the corrupted ideas in you to the surface, because power gives you an opportunity to give those ideas a reality. Those dreams can be transformed and materialized.And everybody is full of so many unconscious desires, of which he himself is not aware. Only power will show. And it has been happening all through history.When Indira Gandhi came to power in India she was innocent, intelligent, not political at all. She had not come from the lowest political levels, fighting, struggling and reaching to the top. That way one becomes very cunning, clever, experienced. She had just got the power because she was the daughter of the first prime minister of India. So she never moved through the power struggle. She had never dreamed about it, she had never thought about it. Her father had never mentioned it.But the committee, who was to decide, was in a very difficult position. There was Morarji Desai – who was strong, adamant, stubborn and a perfect idiot. Once he gets into power, he is not going even to listen to the committee who appoints him. And he will do all kinds of stupidities, and there will be no way to prevent him.And there were others, but they were all provincial leaders. Only Morarji’s and Indira’s names were national names – Indira’s because she was the daughter of Jawaharlal, and had followed Jawaharlal his whole life, taken care of her father because her mother died very early. And she sacrificed everything for the father. She sacrificed her own husband, abandoned her own husband, because she could not serve these two masters.So it was thought that Indira will be good. She is innocent, not political, has never shown any political lust, has never tried to take advantage of her father’s position. It will be good to put her against Morarji Desai, because her father had so much respect and love that certainly she will be chosen.And she was chosen. But once she got into power, things started changing. She became almost a dictator at one point.She imposed an emergency on the whole country. She forced all the political people into jail. She did whatever she wanted. She dissolved the parliament. She went on postponing the elections. And this was the natural result of all her dictatorial methods – that she has been assassinated by her bodyguards.But nobody had any idea that a woman could turn into an Adolf Hitler.The same happened in this small commune. You were engaged in creating an oasis in the desert, I was living in isolation and silence – and she had the gap between the two. You were engaged in the work so much, and I was out of contact with you.I have never been in any power position in my whole life, and I will never be, because I know something bigger than power. I know something more powerful than power.I know love.I know trust.And I love unconditionally, and I trust unconditionally. And I love and trust even those who are strangers, even those who have done things against me.Just the other day Deeksha phoned. Knowing that now Sheela is gone, she wants to come back. And I told her that she is welcome. She has been giving to the INS and their agents all kinds of false stories. She has been giving them absolute lies about me. But that does not matter. Perhaps she was angry, and in anger a person can do anything.But my doors can never be closed. So I have informed her, “You can come.”Hundreds of people are informing that they want to come; they were rejected by Sheela.A few of them were intimate friends of Sheela in India, and they were rejected for the simple fact that here she never wanted anybody to be so close as to be a friend.Politicians don’t want friends. They keep a gap. For example, no man was able to put his hand on the shoulders of Adolf Hitler in a friendly way, or hug him.You don’t hug gods. You don’t put your hand on the shoulder of God. The people who are thinking they have become great powers will not allow you that much intimacy and friendship, because you become dangerous. Being so close, you can do anything.Champa was one of Sheela’s close friends in India, but she never came here. A great intelligent step, knowing that here Sheela will not like to treat her in the same way, the same friendly way – gossiping, sitting playing cards. Here she will be the fascist leader and you have to be just the followers.Just a few days before Sheela left – I have heard the story yesterday from a person who was present in the meeting – she told a few people who were in some way part of her criminal strategies, “You have to surrender to me totally. Whatever I say you have to do.”Two persons, Siddha, the vice-chancellor of the meditation university here, and Prabodhi, one of the close workers in Sheela’s group, simply disappeared.We have been searching for them, they both were useful. Siddha was certainly one of the best psychiatrists you can find, had all the highest qualifications, has been for twelve years the head of an army psychiatric hospital. Prabodhi was very accurate in her work.Both simply disappeared. And I inquired of Sheela what happened to them, Why? If they had to go, nobody is prevented, they could go – but why so suddenly and without giving any reason, and without giving any address? And now we have been phoning their families. They have not heard anything about them.These two persons remained silent when Sheela said, “You have to give your total surrender to me. Whatever I say you have to say yes. The word no does not exist anymore for you.”Amitabh, the chancellor of the meditation university, did not come back here. He had gone for three days just to relax in Hawaii, and from there he informed that “I am not coming back.” Now, he has been associated with me for a long time, and he was the only certified psychoanalyst, perfectly insured, and he had the qualifications for being a chancellor of the university.He had been coming to India every year for six, nine months; only in hot summer he could not tolerate it there, so he had to come back.But without any reason – just so that they should not come back – it seems Sheela had created fear in these people, that coming back can be dangerous. And they were in powerful positions, they must be knowing many secrets. If they were not totally surrendered to Sheela, then they could be dangerous.Power has the capacity to bring out the worst in you. It has never been known in the whole history that power has brought out the best in you.Your question is significant, that meditation cannot be corrupted.Yes, it cannot be corrupted. On the contrary, if a person is meditative, loving, power can bring the best out of him. And I would like that experiment to happen here.The worst has always come out of power. But meditation can change the whole situation, the whole alchemy. And now I am suggesting people for power who are meditative, intelligent, loving. And I hope that we will be able to manage something new.Use power to bring the best out of man.And anyway, nothing like Sheela is going to happen, because now I am not going to stop speaking and being in direct contact with you.I don’t have any power, but I have love, which is far more powerful than any power. I cannot dictate to you – but I need not dictate. Just a gesture of love is enough. Just my fingers pointing to the moon, and your eyes will turn towards the moon without any order, commandment.So don’t feel afraid at all, but remember your responsibility, which has become bigger, because Sheela was forcing you to do the work. Now you will have to do it out of your own spontaneous joy.Your responsibility has become far greater. For example, last night it happened that the journalists who were here for a press conference also wanted to go to the funeral of the beautiful sannyasin Lazarus.They were feeling hungry, and Isabel became very disturbed because all the restaurants were closed by eighty thirty, and all the people from the restaurants, disco, everywhere, had gone to the funeral procession.Now, this is not being responsible. It had never happened in Sheela’s time. So do you need a Sheela to keep you on the right track?The journalists were hungry and they wanted to attend the funeral, but before attending the funeral they wanted to eat something. Somehow Anuradha arranged some food for them.But this is not right. When nobody is dictating to you, that does not mean that you become lazy. Your output should be better than it was in Sheela’s time. That will prove that the fascism that she was imposing on you was absolutely meaningless. But if your output falls down, then you know you are supporting Sheela. Then you are saying that without Sheela you cannot work, you need a whip.I don’t want anybody to whip you. There is no need. You can see the point that a skeleton crew should have been there in every place. That has always been the case; any gathering of the whole commune, there was always a skeleton crew available for essential things. Now, by closing restaurants completely you showed your love towards Lazarus, but you did not show responsibility. And you forgot that these are the things which help fascists to revive, because that seems to be the only way that works, otherwise things start falling apart.I am giving you total responsibility and an opportunity. You have to prove that you don’t need any dictatorial regime to run the commune. You will remain alert, and you will remain aware of your responsibility.Freedom and responsibility go together. More freedom, more responsibility. Total freedom, total responsibility. I hope nothing like this will happen again.Osho,What are the responsibilities and limits of a leader? And what are the responsibilities and duties of those who are ruled?You must be crazy. I am not a leader. A lover can never be a leader. All the leaders are loveless; their whole being is directed to one goal – to be on the top, and whatever means are needed they will use to reach the end. They don’t care about good means, they only care about their end.A leader is a political phenomenon, and all politicians – without any exception – suffer from an inferiority complex. And the people who suffer from an inferiority complex are bound to get into politics, into leadership, so that they can prove to themselves and to the world that they are not inferior, they are superior.But whatever power you can attain, it cannot destroy your inferiority. It has nothing to do with your inferiority; it is a projection to cover it up.Inferiority disappears only in deep meditative silence. Then you know such a uniqueness that you don’t want to be anybody else other than who you are. Just to be yourself is such a bliss. Who wants to be a leader?You are asking, “What are the responsibilities of a leader?”Ask the leaders. I am not a leader, so of course I don’t have any experience of the responsibilities of a leader.I know love, and I know the response of love.And you are not the ruled. Here in this commune nobody is a ruler and nobody is ruled. That’s the whole point of creating this commune and other communes around the world, where people can live as individuals without being divided into classes of the rulers and the ruled.This is not the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union they were trying to create a classless society, but they were not aware of a simple fact, that to force the society to become classless, they will have to create new classes – the ruler and the ruled.Yes, the capitalist and the poor have disappeared, but the ruler and the ruled have appeared. And a strange thing came about.When I say the capitalists and the poor have disappeared, I mean the capitalists have disappeared and poverty has been distributed equally, so now nobody feels poorer than anybody else. The Soviet Union is still a poor country – even the middle class people in America are far richer – just the names have changed. The bourgeois and the proletariat are no more there.But an even more dangerous thing has happened, because a capitalist can go bankrupt and become poor. A poor man – if he is intelligent – can become the richest man. There is mobility, movement in a capitalist society. People are continuously changing: from middle class to super-rich, from super-rich to middle class, from middle class to lower class, from lower class to middle class – everywhere the change goes on.But in Russia this is not possible; there is no mobility. The rulers are rulers and the ruled are ruled. For sixty years the same gang has been ruling, and the whole country is in the same position of being ruled, dictated.Remember, here there is no leader, no led, no ruler, no ruled.Even the people who are presidents of the foundation, commune, investment corporation and other corporate bodies, are not different from you. They don’t have any more special powers than you have.And they are not rulers. They are servants of the commune. They have put themselves in a humbler position – because they have the capacity, generosity, love for the commune – that they are ready to be servants of the commune.To rule is ugly, and I want my people to be the most beautiful people about everything.Beauty has many dimensions. I want my people to be beautiful in all dimensions: graceful, humble, humane, loving, trusting, responsible individuals, intelligent, meditative. But not rulers and ruled.So I don’t know, because I have never been a ruler and I have never been one who is ruled.I have never accepted anybody above me – not even God – and I have never accepted anybody below me, not even the devil.To me, both are friends.Osho,What if you are not the real master? Would it still be good for me to be with you?You are asking about a real master. I am not even a master, so the question of being real or unreal does not arise. This is the same game in different ways – the rulers, the ruled, the exploiters, the exploited; and in the spiritual world, the masters and the disciples, the saints and the sinners. But the division goes on and on.Can’t you live without division? Is there any necessity to divide? I am not a master, and I have never been a disciple either.I have matured and centered and meditated, searched and found myself on my own accord. I have never followed anybody, and I don’t want you to follow anybody – me included.I am just a man who has awakened, and you are still asleep. The difference is not much. You can be shocked, shaken and awakened – just a little cold water on your eyes and you will be awakened.I don’t do such drastic things, because I don’t want to interfere in your beautiful dreams. Even to interfere in anybody’s dreams, to me, is violence. You can be pulled out of the bed and given a good slap on the face and you will be awake.But I don’t want to do such drastic things. It is transgressing, trespassing in your individual world. If you want to decide to sleep a little more, what is the harm? I have never heard that anybody has done any harm while he is asleep.In fact, there is a story about Nadirshah, one of the most ugly monsters who has happened on this earth. He was really and absolutely inhuman.Once, while he was invading India, a very beautiful prostitute was brought in the night to give him some entertainment, and while she was going back, she said she was afraid: “It is dark, and I have to go seven miles.”Nadirshah said, “You don’t understand that you have been a guest of Nadirshah. You will not go in the darkness; you will go in light.”The woman said, “But how can I go in light? It is the middle of the night.”Nadirshah told his soldiers, “Put fire to all the villages on the way, all the forests on the way, so the prostitute can go in light to her place.”Many villages were put on fire, the forests were put on fire. The prostitute could not believe that this can be a way to go in light.This man, Nadirshah, heard about a great wise man in India, and he asked him to come. The wise man said, “To come to you will be enough proof that I am not wise, so the thing will be useless. You will have to come to the well.”Nadirshah felt intrigued and excited too. He had never seen anybody disobey him. This man must have some guts. He went to the man and he felt some strange aura and energy around him.He said, “I have come. I want to ask you: it is said in the scriptures that to sleep too much is bad, but I love to sleep. In fact, I drink too much, and then to get up becomes difficult. The hangover…and then it is better to have more to drink and go to sleep again. What is your suggestion? Should I stop it?”The old man said, “No. Whatever the scriptures say means nothing. They were not written for you. They had no idea that a man like you will take instructions from the books. I would suggest you should sleep twenty-four hours, you should sleep forever. There is no need to wake up.”Nadirshah said, “This is strange advice. Twenty-four hours? Forever?”The old man said, “Yes. Although it is against all the scriptures, but I say on my own authority that people like you need twenty-four hours of sleep, because whenever you are awake you will do some mischief. Asleep, much violence, much war, much trouble to the world will be stopped.”So there is not much wrong. And I never trespass, I just persuade from the outside of your bedroom. I don’t even get in your bedroom, because to get in your bedroom without your permission is not right. And how to ask a sleeping man, “May I come in, sir?” So my whole work takes place outside your bedroom.I create devices outside your bedroom. For example, I may scream suddenly that the house is on fire. I have not done anything to you. And hearing that the house is on fire – even in sleep people hear that.It is strange. They will not hear great advice in sleep, but if you say, “The house is on fire!” they will immediately hear it, and they will run out of the house.That is up to you. It is not my responsibility. One thing I know: when you come out and you see the sunrise and the birds singing and the beautiful sky so colorful, and the flowers, you will be grateful to me – although the house is not on fire.But I can lie. I don’t think this lie harms anybody.And all enlightened people have to lie, because truth cannot be said to you. You won’t understand it; you are fast asleep, snoring. Secondly, truth cannot be said in language. The moment you put the experience of truth in language, it becomes untrue.So, rather than distorting the truth and making it untrue, it is far better to create a device – which is a lie. But it works!I have brought many people out of their bedroom, asking “Where is the fire?”And I say, “I don’t know. Just once in a while I get this urge to call ‘The house is on fire!’”I don’t know the responsibility of the leader; I don’t know the responsibility of the led.I know the responsibility of love. I know the responsibility of the beloved. When love calls you, listen to it. That’s the only responsibility. When love says something to you, let it enter into the deepest core of your being.When love knocks on your door, open the door.The real beloved, in fact, does not close the door at all, but waits at the door for the lover to come, so that he need not even knock.Sannyas is a love affair. It has nothing to do with ruled and the rulers, leaders and the led. It has certainly to do with love and lovers.And the beauty of love is: it does not create hierarchy.I may be enlightened, you may not be enlightened, but because I love you, I am not holier than you. Because I love you, I declare that you have every capacity, ability, potentiality to be enlightened. It is just a question of your decision.But I cannot impose the decision on you. At the most, love persuades. And love has many ways to persuade. It is only hate that imposes.Just looking into your eyes is a persuasion, is a message.Just the gesture of my hand is to touch your heart.The silence that I love – and I speak only to give you these few small pauses of silence. Just look at this silence, and we all have become one. All divisions are lost and there is an immense peace, a tremendous feeling of joy arising in you.I want to give you the taste of enlightenment in as many ways as possible, so one day finally you say, “Okay. I am going to wake up now.”Osho,Is it true that power-oriented people were needed to create this commune? Is it also true that meditative and loving people cannot create such beautiful and rich communes?Please comment.Power-oriented people can create much, but their creation is basically criminal. And sooner or later, it is going to fall apart.Meditative people, loving people, can create higher things, better things. And whatever they create is never in the service of death and destruction. Whatever they create is basically godliness. Whatever they create remains forever; it is eternal.Adolf Hitler used to say that the regime that he is creating is going to last for one thousand years.I want you to know, what we are creating is going to last forever.Love is immortal. Love knows no death. Meditation leads you within yourself to eternity.So don’t think that I had put Sheela and her group to create the commune. They turned out to be power-oriented. Perhaps any one of you would have turned out to be the same. You all carry the same desire to be somebody special.What has happened was bound to happen. It is a tremendously good experience that it happened so soon, just in four years. And now we have learned a lesson and we will not allow it to happen again.The whole fault was mine, that I was silent. I had my reasons to be silent. I wanted to be silent forever, because words don’t convey…it is not real communion that happens through words. I wanted to communicate through silence.So my reason was there to be silent, but I cannot say that it was not my fault. I knew that something like that is possible, but I also knew that I can start speaking any moment when I see that things have come to a peak and they have to be stopped.And no harm has happened to you. In fact, you have become more mature through the experience. It will make you more responsible, less dependent on authorities, more responsible on your own towards the whole commune.We will turn this fascist nightmare we have passed through, into something beautiful. It is always in our hands to change things.I have started changing the same nightmare into a beautiful experience that will help you along the way, and you will not fall in the same hole again.Sheela has done a great service to you, and you should feel gratitude to her and her gang.Osho,How can trust and doubt go together?There is no difficulty.Just trust in doubt.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How did we who love you let this ugliness happen to your vision and to ourselves? I saw things I thought were ugly. I'd tell myself, “The master must want it this way. I don't see the whole picture. I don't want to be negative.”What is the blindness in us?First, you should all forgive me for being twenty minutes late. This has happened because of you. You do not understand the meaning of the word responsibility.And if you do not understand the meaning of that word, you are going to create another Sheela, another fascist regime again. And this time I will not be against it.People are not turning up to their worship. They are not doing their work as well as they were doing before. They leave their work earlier – as if they needed some dictatorship to do the necessary work.Responsibility means that you do your best, so that there is no need for anybody to dictate to you.Everybody wants to decide what should be done and what should not be done. If five thousand people decide that way, do you think anything can be done?Poor Hasya is continuously pestered by many of you, that the work should be done this way, or it should be done that way. To whom is she going to listen?People are approaching her, that about everything votes should be taken. Do you want the whole time – day in, day out – for each and every thing, voting? Is it a voting club?Don’t be stupid, otherwise…. You created Sheela before, and you will create Sheela again.Last time I interfered and destroyed the whole fascist structure. Next time, perhaps I will not do that. What is the point, if you are going to create it again and again? Then the old is gold – more efficient.You have not looked at this side. Sheela was only one side of the coin; you are the other side. Without you, she could not have been, and done ugly, criminal things.And now you are starting to be the tower of Babel. Everybody is arguing, discussing, giving his opinion, and that opinion should be followed. Now there are five thousand people – and what opinion can you give? You are blind, you are in darkness, you live in unconsciousness. If I had not told you what Sheela was doing, you would have completely lived under Sheela without any problem.You have to recognize it, that your opinion carries no value. Unless you are enlightened, your vote is just stupidity.It is your votes that make Adolf Hitlers, Joseph Stalins, Benito Mussolinis. It is your votes that create Nixon. Your votes don’t mean anything.And your opinions? What opinions do you have? Are you here to express your opinions? Or to come to a point of silence, meditativeness, where all opinions disappear – just a clarity, a vision to see. Opinion belongs to the blind. It is mere opinion; it has no solidity in it. The man of clarity has no opinions. He has the truth. And in my commune only truth has the right to decide. If you want to be decisive, become enlightened first; otherwise, you will simply create a suicide for the commune.From the morning till twelve o’clock in the night, I am engaged in unnecessary things. That’s why I am twenty minutes late. You are responsible for it. I have never been twenty minutes late, ever.But if you don’t allow me to sleep, you don’t give me a chance to rest, then it is going to happen. So before I start answering the question, the question of questions is: From today, can you start working on your own, as fully, as totally, as intensively as possible?You have to prove to Sheela and all those who think in fascist terms, that a loving commune can be more creative, can be more productive, can be a more joyous phenomenon.If you cannot prove that, then Sheela is right. Perhaps you drove her into being a dictator.Samya was there last night, tired. I have never seen her so tired before – she is always laughing, joyous – because the whole day you have been torturing her. One sannyasin will not leave her office, because he wants to see all the books – what has happened, what is going to happen. He wants to give his opinion on every matter.Do you think this man is behaving in any other way than dictatorial? He has been persuaded three times to leave, and he will come back again – he will not leave unless all his answers are being accepted, and all his questions are being answered.Is this the way of love? Is this the way that you can prove dictatorship is not the right way? This is proving that dictatorship is the right way. This man never tortured Sheela. Where has he been for these four years, with all his opinions? For four years he was a mouse, and now suddenly he has become a lion.And five thousand lions cannot live together.Then the only way is to reduce the lions back to mice, and they will be happy. Only I will be unhappy that my people are not capable enough to be lions.So from today, everybody has to do better than he was doing before. Everybody has to reach to his worship. These excuses won’t do – that “I did not feel like it; I wanted to sleep a little longer.” But what about the last four years? – four years you always did feel to go, and now suddenly a great transformation has happened to you. If Sheela wanted you to work fourteen hours a day, you worked.Samya and Hasya are trying in every possible way to reduce your work hours, but not the quality of the work, not the outcome of the work.You were listening to me only on alternate days, and you were happy. Hasya immediately changed that, and you are listening to me every day. You have not thanked her.Your complaint has been that your letters were not reaching to me – that’s true – that you were not certain whether my answers were my answers or Sheela’s own inventions. That is also true.She has done every criminal act. You will be surprised: even in my videotapes – in the originals she has changed everything that will go against her. There was no way for me to know what they were doing. The editors would get the edited version of my lecture. The videotapes around the world were reaching, not as I had delivered them; they have taken out sentences, passages. And you were perfectly happy with Sheela.Now I have made an arrangement that all the heads of the corporations, whenever they want, can come to me when Hasya comes to see me. So it is not only Hasya who listens to what I say, other people will also be present there. They will be witnesses to whether Hasya has brought all your letters or not.But remember, your letters are ninety-nine percent bullshit, and I don’t want to be drowned in bullshit. So write only that which you feel is absolutely meaningful, essential, and write it in as small a way as possible, because I don’t want to hear your opinions for five hours a day, every day. I am already crazy; what do you want? So you have to be careful. Your letters will reach, your response will be given to you; but you also have to learn something.I receive files of letters which are not possible for me to go through. Don’t make it impossible. Then naturally I have to leave it to Hasya to look through those letters, and mark only the important passages, and bring only the important letters.So just your writing is not enough that it should reach to me. You have to make it significant enough, carrying some meaning, for it to reach to me.But everything will reach, so you need not be afraid and worried. And whatever people are now in place of the old fascist regime, they have been chosen by different councils on my advice. They will take care that no democratic value is destroyed. Finally they are just servants of the commune.And you have to learn to behave in a democratic way too. Democracy cannot exist only because a few people are in power who are democratic. If you are accustomed to being dictated to, ordered, then the whole commune will fall apart.You have to learn that if they advise you to do something, do it. Do it to your best. And now I am available, and I am going to speak to my very last breath. But don’t become a burden. You have to make the people who are managing unburdened, light, joyous, so they can feel happy with you. Don’t torture them.There have been sannyasins at my house, and they were forcing their way against the guards. Now, if five thousand people come to see me every day, I will have to escape from this place. I am accustomed to living in isolation and silence. I don’t want you to disturb me. Everything that is a problem to you should come through the proper people. I don’t hold any post. I cannot do anything right away, immediately. I have no power.Even if you reach me with a demand, the demand has to go to Hasya, Anuradha, John – the people who will be running the commune. So why bother me? Why should you not take your demand directly to them? And your demand has to be rational, legitimate.I had said that the people who are suffering from AIDS – we have isolated them – should be given whatever we can give to them: respect, love. They should not be treated as criminals or condemned people. They are victims. And you listened and you followed it.But they started becoming dictators. They started asking for Havana cigars, Mexican cigars, champagne. They thought that I have allowed them – as if by bringing AIDS here, they have brought a great contribution to the commune. I was trying to respect their humanity, but they were not only AIDS patients, they were idiots too.By the way, Sheela and her group’s crimes go on growing every day more and more. Two of those people who were found with AIDS have been checked again; their results were negative, they were forced there. But Puja was culturing all kinds of viruses, and she managed to make their results come out positive. This is so ugly – and from a woman! And what was the reason for all this?Those people had refused to participate in certain crimes that the group wanted. This was a punishment. Neither of them is an AIDS patient. But what a punishment! Man can be so inhuman to other men that it is almost inconceivable. This was one reason.The second reason was that they wanted – they had already created a housing complex in the City of Rajneesh for five hundred people, with separate attached bathrooms – they wanted to make an AIDS home. They never said that to me.To me they said they wanted to make it for people who are recovering, people who are old and their families don’t want them, people who are suffering from diseases and need treatment, and our medical corporation can take charge of those people. I said, “That’s perfectly good.”But finally, when they wanted to open the AIDS home, at the last moment they wanted me to be in the press conference to declare it. I said, “But this was never told to me.”I immediately canceled the press conference, because to bring AIDS people, five hundred people, is endangering not only our commune; it is endangering all the people around the City of Rajneesh, in fact, endangering the whole of Oregon.That was their way to take revenge on the Oregonians – clever, but ugly, inhuman, disgusting. They have spent almost two million dollars on the housing complex, and now it is lying empty.No sannyasin wants to go and live there. In fact, the people they had forced to live in Antelope don’t want to go there. Remember it: for four years you were going there without any complaint. Just a little longer, on your own responsibility…because the harm that you have done to Antelope, the wounds that you have given to the people of Antelope, you have to heal them.So just for a few days more continue to live there. Before you leave Antelope completely – because we don’t need it, we have enough land, enough houses – before you leave Antelope, first change its name from City of Rajneesh back to Antelope. We have our city; why force a name on people who will detest it? Don’t you understand simple psychology? You want my name to be unnecessarily condemned?So before you leave Antelope you have to change the name. Before you leave Antelope we have to sell all the properties of Antelope. If the people of Antelope want their city back, they have to take their houses back, they have to purchase them.We have given them enough money for it. We will not ask for payment for all the developments that we have done in their dilapidated houses. In four years prices have gone much higher. We will ask only the same amount that we have paid to them, and we are giving them renovated, better houses.They have to take all those houses, and then you can move. But it will take a few days – and I have heard that you have been saying that you don’t want to go there at all.If you had this much courage, then why for four years were you going there, living there? Now, out of sheer responsibility for the commune, because the commune has invested money there, which has to be taken out…. The people of Antelope will be very happy that you simply leave their houses, and they move in their houses free, without giving any money for them. That will be harming the commune.Sheela has left the commune fifty-five million dollars in debt. We will make it; there is not much problem. But if you start behaving this way, you will be creating more debt.So first change the name back to Antelope. And the Oregonians who are so much in sympathy with Antelope, they should help them. The government of Oregon should help them, give them loans, purchase the properties. Right now we have almost two-thirds of the properties of Antelope.So whatever you have been doing under dictatorship, now you have to do on your own responsibility. You have to understand the implications of everything.Sheela and her group have created a hostility between the commune and Oregonians. We have to destroy that hostility.The first step will be for Antelope to be given back to the people who have lived there for hundreds of years. We don’t have any political aspirations.The second step will be, anybody who has committed crimes against the law, we will help the state to find the person, to hold him responsible for the crime.Now a totally new situation has arisen. The state government of Oregon and the commune here have a common enemy: the fascist group that Sheela was leading. The enemy of the enemy is a friend. This can become a great bridge, and we should make as much use of it as possible.Except the poor Red Indians, everybody in America is a foreigner. It does not matter whether you came a hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago. And we came only four years ago: the other foreigners should not treat us as if they are native Americans. That’s what they are doing.And what they have done, we are not doing to America. They have invaded the country. We have not come here invading the country.Most of the sannyasins here are Americans. There may be a few Italians, a few Germans, a few Dutch, but these same people have come before as invaders. They are now the owners of the whole continent, and there is no possibility that the Red Indians will again be able to have their land back. For the Red Indians there seems to be no possibility to attain freedom.America has the most beautiful Constitution. If it really follows its own Constitution, America should be ruled by the Red Indians, not by Ronald Reagan.But Red Indians are put in reservation camps, in forests, in isolated places. “Reservation” is simply the American translation for the German word concentration camp – without wires around it, because America is more sophisticated.They don’t put barbed wire around the camps; they have found a better method. They give pensions to all the Red Indians so they need not work. When somebody gets money and has no work, what is he going to do? Drink alcohol, gamble, go to prostitutes – he has to do something; he has money and no work – and remain continuously drugged.The Red Indians never think of freedom, cannot think, they are so drugged. The barbed wire around the concentration camps in Germany was nothing. The American politicians have placed barbed wire inside the human psychology of the Red Indians. They have almost lost everything.These people, who have the best Constitution in the world, behave most unconstitutionally, for the simple reason that the Constitution is so full of great ideals that the third-rate dirty politicians cannot rise to that height. There is such a gap that they have to do things against the Constitution. They are doing things against the Constitution to us.The Constitution wants human dignity, respect for individuality, all other democratic values, but the Constitution does not seem to apply to us.We have done no harm. We have really contributed something, created an oasis out of a desert, and if the government was helpful, fair, we would have changed this whole land into a luscious, green land full of many lakes, the best holiday resort in the whole country.And we could have created great economic help to Oregon – which needs it, because it is millions of dollars in debt to the federal government. We could have created a place for the tourists from all over the world. Already, thousands of sannyasins are coming. If it becomes a beautiful resort place, non-sannyasins will also be coming.We can help the economy of Oregon. What are the Oregon politicians doing? Half of the land of Oregon they have given to the federal government. They still have to pay perhaps two hundred million dollars in debt. All that they can do is give the rest of Oregon also to the federal government. This is really underground communism.The basic principle of freedom is that property should belong to the individuals, that the state should not own anything. Nationalization is against democracy, but that is going on underground everywhere.Why are they so much against us? They know now that these one hundred and twenty-six square miles can never become the property of the government. And why have they wanted the whole of Oregon to become federal property? This is a good desert to experiment with nuclear weapons. Now we are in the middle of it. Our presence is dangerous for them. We are going to be here, and we will not allow this beautiful land to become a factory for death.That’s why I said it is a strange situation. We have nothing against anybody, and I have tremendous respect for the American Constitution. That is the only Constitution in the whole world which has some possibility for the future of humanity. It should be saved at any cost.And I want it to be known all over America that we will fight for the American Constitution against the Americans who are trying to prostitute it. They have to be told it is a Constitution, it is not prostitution.Now your question: “Osho, How did we who love you, let this ugliness happen to your vision and to ourselves? I saw things I thought were ugly. I’d tell myself, ‘The master must want it this way. I don’t see the whole picture. I don’t want to be negative.’ What is the blindness in us?”The blindness is in every person who has been brought up to be dependent on a father figure – God is doing everything. You are not responsible for anything. If you are poor, God must be wanting it this way. If you are sick, God must be wanting it this way.The whole of humanity has been reduced to a helpless child, dependent on a father figure who does not exist anywhere.So you go on changing your father figures. Nothing changes by that. The Christian becomes Hindu; he changes his gods, but his psychology is the same. The Hindu becomes Christian; he changes his God, but the psychology is the same. There are three hundred religions in the world, but the psychology of all the religions is exactly the same. And the psychology is: keep man dependent, irresponsible, always hoping, praying to someone who does not exist. This has created the whole tragedy.Whatever was done here, your reason was saying to you, “This is not right.” But you thought, “The master must be wanting it this way.”When have I told you to think on these lines? I have been teaching reasoning, doubt, skepticism, inquiry, independence, and you are doing just the opposite. That’s why Sheela never wanted me to speak again. That’s why they have tampered with my tapes – the original tapes. Now there is no way to find out what they have changed.But they don’t know…. I am still alive, and what I had said ten years ago – I will say something more outrageous today, because ten years’ experience will be added to it.They never wanted me to speak to you. Sheela was persuading me that my health will suffer if I start speaking. I said, “But what will I do with my health? Just remaining healthy and waiting for death?” I started speaking against her will.Just the other day I have been informed that my milk was poisoned, slow poisoning, so that I become sick – if not dead, at least not able to talk to you, so she remains the representative.Or perhaps the poison was just to make my tongue dead so I cannot speak. They have been experimenting with it. I have come to know about one doctor who took a cup of tea and she found that for the whole day she could not speak. Her tongue was almost paralyzed.Sheela was telling you that total surrender was needed.I am telling you total responsibility is needed.And you have to prove that what total surrender can do, total responsibility can do a hundred times better!I was teaching you doubt; she was teaching you to believe. Because I insisted on speaking, her gang and their activities became exposed. If I had remained silent you would have continued to think, “Perhaps the master wants it this way.”It means you have never listened to me. You have not tried to understand me at all. I never want you to do anything against your reason, against your own dignity.I want to give you back your pride of being the highest expression of evolution.So from now on, remember, even if I go on speaking for my whole life, one day I will have to leave the body. Somebody cunning, clever, political, can again make you into a fascist group. Don’t let this happen.But that does not mean that you become a nuisance in the commune. You have to learn a balance. You know only two things: either you will be a slave or a nuisance. Can’t you find a middle course? – where you are sensible, not nuisance, just sense, and where you are not a slave but pure freedom.Act out of your sensitivity, your freedom, your love – and I don’t think there is any problem: you can manage it.I love you so much, I trust you so much. I have such high evaluation of your intelligence, that I can say you can make the impossible possible.Osho,Yesterday I was sad when you said, “I take the blame for everything that has happened.”Why should you be blamed? Every moment you are trying to make us loving, meditative and celebrative. If there is any blame, we are all responsible. We are not loving, meditative and alert, and that is why Sheela and her gang could dare to do such evil actions.Please tell us how to become more meditative, loving and responsible.That’s why I have said that I am responsible for whatever happened – because you are fast asleep. You are not alert, aware; you live like a somnambulist, walking in your sleep. How can you say that you are responsible for it all?Neither can I say Sheela and her group are responsible. They belong to the same category as you. They just had power and in their sleep they did whatever sleep allows you to do. You had no power, you followed them, because what can a sleeper do?So the whole responsibility is basically mine. I should not have gone into silence and isolation.But it has been a great experiment, and a great experience that a man like me should not leave you alone in the hands of people who are just like you.The law, perhaps, may not allow it, but this is my deepest longing: that Sheela and her group should be forgiven, and if any punishment is needed they should give it to me.Only I am responsible, because I went into silence. I had never thought that silence can lead to such calamity.Osho,Now the time of the “moms and kids” is gone. The worship is happening with far more responsibility. I can see that we all feel free to express our thoughts, ideas and feelings. But it hurts to see that this includes people's negativity and need to act out their own feelings – especially if they have never had an opportunity before.How does the coordinator get involved in this? How do we all take care of this?What is the responsibility of a coordinator?One thing you all have to understand. For four years you have repressed your ideas, your opinions, so you must be carrying a great load and you all would like to throw that load on poor Hasya.You should at least be this much alert: that Hasya has not forced you, repressed you. The people who had repressed you have gone.But you can go into the mountains and express yourself as loudly as you can – just to unburden. It helps, it helps immensely. It is a psychological treatment, so just try. Go in the mountains, find a good place, and say everything that you always wanted to say. But don’t bring your opinions and expressions into the commune, because that will just create a wastage of energy.The coordinator is just to look after so many people: that their work does not conflict with each other, that the people are not doing the same work – unnecessarily duplicating. The coordinator is just to watch that everybody is in his position, not sleepy, and not doing unnecessary work.And he is a link between you and the president of your corporation, so any problems that you have, he can take them to the corporation. He is responsible to you that no harm happens to you, that in no way are you placed where you don’t want to be, that you are not mistreated. The coordinator has to be aware of all these things.He is not under the service of the federation, corporation, foundation, or any other body. He is in the service of the people of whom he is the coordinator. His responsibility is that his people should remain healthy, happy, rejoicing, and they should not suffer on any account through bureaucracy.Your responsibility to the coordinator is to listen to him, to do what is needed by the commune. The coordinator is a link. His work is double. He takes your needs to the president and he brings the president’s messages of what is needed to be done, what the commune needs right now. He is just a messenger.I have heard that many people are very much disturbed with a few coordinators who have been in with Sheela and her gang. Certainly you feel resentful, but that is not right. These people have not left. They revolted against Sheela and the criminal group – you should think of it – and you resent them.Sheela and the people with her will hate them, and you resent them. They don’t have any shelter anywhere. They understand that they belonged to a wrong group, but they were as innocent as you are. They also thought, “This is what the master wants us to do.”And the proof is that they revolted. Even the secretary of Sheela revolted against her, which was really courageous. She proved to be a real jewel. Sheela was very much afraid of her because she knew everything; she was Sheela’s secretary, so every paper had passed through her. She knows all that they have done. Sheela wanted to take her with her. She even tried to poison the poor girl. If she cannot take her, then it is better to kill her. It seems killing people became to them just a very simple thing.But Geeta has remained, and she will be of immense help. She is, because most of the stories that have come to exposure are because of Geeta, because she knows the right person who will tell the story. If you feel resentful towards Geeta that will not be in any way nice. That will not show your love, your heart. That will simply show a very stupid reaction.Hasya was asking me, “Should we remove all these people? – Geeta, Padma, Ava, and others?”I said, “No. They have revolted against Sheela. They should be rewarded, not punished. And they will be of immense help to you, because this thing is going to become a bigger Watergate than Nixon could manage.”Don’t feel resentful. I can understand your mind. Seeing the same faces in the same places, you feel angry. But you should be a little more understanding. I want them to be in the same places, because in the same places they can be of help to you.The case is going to be one of a serious kind. It is going to be international news. Already what has happened is being talked about around the earth.Now Sheela is in London and the whole group has disappeared – perhaps separately into different places. They are hiding like criminals, but they all will be caught. The earth is small, and my sannyasins are all the way around the earth. They may deceive Interpol, but they cannot deceive my sannyasins. And all of my sannyasins have suffered – not only you. Sannyasins in other communes have also suffered.They cannot deceive this army of one million sannyasins. We will get hold of them. And Ava, Padma, Patipada, Geeta – these will be the people, key people who will be of immense help.For example, Geeta just informed me that before Sheela left, she has taken twenty-five letterheads of each corporation. That means she is still thinking of doing more crime. We have to report it to the police, that she has taken blank forms from each corporation. Now she can write anything on those blank forms, make the whole corporation responsible, and in that way disrupt the whole commune.So please, just do me a favor. These people are not your enemies; they were as much deceived as you were deceived. And I cannot tolerate it that they should be punished in any way, removed from their places.Yes, I would like them to change their behavior and attitude. For four years they have been trained in a wrong discipline. They should drop that completely and start from the very scratch. And they have to deliver everything that they know, whatever the cost, to help the commune.So you drop any antagonism. Your antagonism will keep them closed. They will not be able to expose everything that they know. You don’t know what more must have been happening.Sheela has asked…. This is information from Geeta. Geeta was typing so she knows that this is absolutely correct; otherwise it would be difficult for me to get this information. Now we can find the person and verify it. The person is here, one of our great scientists. She asked him, “Can a machine be made with death rays?”That is being experimented with by the American government, by the Russian government. All over the world scientists are thinking of death rays. And you will be surprised, our sannyasin is capable of making it.The moment he became aware that this was going to be used, he asked, “I can make it. There are certain sounds – you will not hear those sounds, but the machine will create those sounds, and they will kill you. I am capable of making it, but if it is going to kill humans I will not.”Now, without Geeta it would have been impossible to know about this. Now we can ask the scientist and the scientist can give his testimony to the court that he was asked for this and he had refused.Be kind to these people – a little more kind than you are to others. And kindness costs nothing. Be loving to these people, so they can feel at home, so they can feel that they are not suspected, that they are not doubted, that everybody is not watching them as enemies. Otherwise, it will be difficult for them to open their mouths, and they may be carrying immensely important information.So I will not change them from their positions. I would rather like you to change your attitude. Your attitude is wrong. If you are antagonistic to them, you are forcing them to go with Sheela’s group. If these four people, five people who are here…. Ava had gone with Sheela, but returned from Seattle, feeling that she was going with a criminal group. Now you should appreciate her courage.These four, five people will be able to encourage others who are hiding as criminals that there is no need to be afraid in the commune. “Even if we have done something wrong, the commune has a large heart that can forgive and forget, and allow us to live a new way of life.” These people will be the proof for others that they can also come and they will be welcomed.I know that there was Sheela, Puja, Shanti Bhadra – the most criminal out of the whole group, they were the main criminals. Others simply followed, perhaps in the same way as you followed. If all those people return to the commune, you will be strengthened in the court, before the law, in every way. You will have actual witnesses, and that is what is needed.So these people should receive your respect and love. Even go out of the way to show your respect and love to them, and tell them, “You have come home. The past is past and the future is free. You can change, and you can help the commune.”Osho,All this is really reminding me why I'm here. Our circus/camp/commune is the perfect opportunity to find out who we are. Witnessing through actions the truth comes out and our hearts can sing with joy and love.That is not a question.Osho,Out of this mud, the lotus paradise.That’s certainly true.Lotuses grow only out of mud, and Sheela and her group have done the basic work: they have created mud. Now you do the second part!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Last month I was faced with a recognition that where there is light there is also a shadow side of darkness. Yet until the last few days I still clung to the illusion of some separation between them, in particular that here on the ranch with you there was light, and outside there was darkness.Now I'm experiencing the inseparability of light and darkness, both within myself and within the commune. Are light and darkness also inseparable within you? Is this a reality we have to face to let our love grow deeper?The existence consists not of contradictions, but of complementaries. Light and darkness are neither separable nor inseparable; they are one.Darkness simply means less light.Light means less darkness.The difference is only of degrees.There are animals, birds, who see only in darkness. Your day is their night. Their night is your day. And what you see is a very small fraction of the immense phenomenon of light-darkness. I am using it as a single word, not even with a hyphen between the two.You don’t see X-rays. Your vision has a limited capacity. Below it there is infinity, above it there is infinity. So you have to drop the Aristotelian logic from your mind.Aristotle has dominated the human mind, particularly the Western mind, for almost two thousand years. But now it is possible to get rid of the old man.Aristotle’s basic strategy was to divide things into contradictions: right and wrong, good and bad, life and death, man and woman. Within these past fifty years, all have proved to be only complementaries, not contradictions at all. Nobody has proved so wrong as Aristotle. I myself call him not Aristotle, but Aristotilitis, a very dangerous disease, undetected for two thousand years. It has crippled your thinking, your comprehension of the wholeness of life.And he himself did not have a scientific mind in any sense. He says in his books that women have less teeth than men. Obviously man is superior, and the woman is inferior in every way; how can she have the same number of teeth?But very strange…. Aristotle had two wives; he could have counted their teeth before he wrote his book – this is simple, very simple scientific methodology – and he would have found the truth, that man or woman, it does not matter, they all have the same number of teeth.And you will be surprised: before Aristotle it was believed; Aristotle believed in it, and after Aristotle for almost fifteen hundred years it was believed. Doctors believed it. No dentist had the courage to say, “This is all rubbish,” because to speak against Aristotle was not possible. He was the father of Western logic. You’ve got a very funny father for Western logic!Your mind is still dominated by Aristotle. For you, it seems, Albert Einstein has not happened yet. The greatest contribution of Albert Einstein is that in existence everything is relative, and the differences are only of degrees. There are no absolute contradictions.You are, perhaps, not even aware of Carl Gustav Jung’s contribution, because he discovered – it will be better to say rediscovered, because in the East it has been known for five thousand years – that man is half man and half woman, and that woman is half woman and half man.It seems to be very simple. Because a child is born by the meeting of man and woman, both contribute to the child’s life. Naturally, the child will have something of man and something of woman. It is only two sides of one coin. On one side is the figure of a woman, on the other side the figure of a man. If somebody is man, that means his side which has the figure of man is in his conscious, and his woman is in his unconscious.You get surprised when you hear that some man wants to become a woman. Now, through plastic surgery, it is possible.We have here one of the best plastic surgeons who changes sexes, Leeladhar. He hates the work, but I told him, “It is immensely beneficial. You should not hate it. If a man can have both the experiences in life – for thirty years he remains a man, and then becomes a woman – he will be more enriched in his experience.”At least he will not say, like the poets have been saying for centuries, that the woman is a mystery. He will know nothing is a mystery, it is only a question of hormones, and a very simple difference.The woman’s genitalia are like your pockets. If you have to search for something, you have to put your hand inside. And the function of the surgeon is to pull the pocket out so the pocket hangs out. That is man’s genitalia. You don’t have to search anything, it is already hanging out like Jesus Christ on the cross.That’s why even an old woman can keep her charm, beauty, attraction. In fact, after her menopause she becomes more interested in sex than she has ever been. That is nearabout the age forty-eight, and that is the time when man becomes tired, finished, spent. That is a good time for a sex change.And Leeladhar is doing a great service to humanity. In the future, I don’t think there will be anybody who has not experienced both the sides. And then you will not say that men and women are opposites. They are not; they are one – just complementaries.The same is true about darkness and light, and about every contradiction that you can conceive of. There are no contradictions anywhere in the world.Just the other night one very intelligent journalist from Germany was asking me, “Can you tell me which of these two statements is from Sheela?”One statement was: “I love Osho totally.”The second statement was: “Osho is the most corrupted man.”The journalist was thinking that these are contradictory, so I will have to choose one. I could see his face and his eyes in a shock and daze when I said both the statements are from Sheela. I don’t know where she made those statements, but one thing is certain: I can be absolutely certain both came from Sheela – because your love is always carrying behind it, hate. Your hate is always carrying behind it, love.Unless you become enlightened and you know the oneness of love and hate, you transcend to a new vision of existence where things are one, your ordinary love disappears, your ordinary hate disappears…. Gautam Buddha has called that state compassion.And his second question was for me: “I ask you, do you still love Sheela?”I said, “There is no problem. My love is not of the category of love and hate, my love is of the category of compassion.”Compassion does not depend on the person, the object. Compassion is unconditional. Love is not. Love is so conditional that it is bound to turn into hate sooner or later, because nobody can fulfill anybody else’s conditions. That is an impossibility.Each individual is so unique…. How can you fulfill all the conditions that your husband is imposing on you, or your wife is imposing on you? Soon the honeymoon is over, and you are standing like enemies – of course, intimate enemies living together in a kind of coexistence; once in a while making love, once in a while throwing pillows and things at each other…. And this game of love and hate goes on all around the earth, twenty-four hours. Millions of couples go on doing it.Have you observed it? Whenever you fight with your wife and she screams and throws pillows, and you scream and the whole drama…strangely enough, it ends in making love. There must be a deep relationship between both. They are not separate things.My compassion does not depend on you. That’s why I don’t impose anything on you.I don’t convert anybody. The word missionary to me is a four-letter word. It is something disgusting. It is interfering into the other person’s being.The sannyasins who have come to me, have come out of their own freedom, and their freedom has not been tampered with in any way by me. And they are free at any moment to love. They are free to fall in love; they are free to fall in hate. My compassion remains in its place. Whether you love me or you hate me does not make any difference.He asked me, “If Sheela and her gang come back would you accept them?”I said, “Certainly, I will welcome them.”He was puzzled. A German mind is easily puzzled. A German mind is not flexible, it is made more of steel than of human fibers.He said, “You will welcome her?”I said, “Certainly.”He said, “But she has committed crimes! What are you going to do with her crimes?”I said, “I will send her to my therapists. And we have all kinds of therapies possible. So she will have to move through all those therapies, which will cleanse her mind, make it clearer, more perceptive, so that she recognizes that what she did was something in the unconscious of her own mind. And once you recognize something as your own unconscious – this is a law of nature – it loses control over you.”Not only to Sheela, this is my approach to all crime. For five thousand years we have been punishing criminals, and the whole story is simply hilarious.A man tries to commit suicide but is caught red-handed, so he could not commit it. Now, the court in many countries gives him death as punishment.Strange world. Strange laws made by great men.You support the man. He was committing suicide – that was a crime. You caught him, and now you kill him and that is punishment. In fact, you are fulfilling his desire which he has not been able to fulfill.Somebody commits a murder – certainly the greatest crime. But the question is: the murder is committed in the past, the man has a long future ahead; who gives you the authority to hang this man and destroy his future? For one thing, killing him will not bring life to the man who is murdered.Killing him is not justice but only revenge. You are doing the same that the man had done. But he is a criminal because he is powerless, alone, and you have the power of the government, the power of the law, the power of the army, so naturally you can justify your crime as law. But murder in any way is unlawful.Can any court give life to any man? If the courts cannot give life to any man, then no court has the authority to destroy any man’s life. And, in fact, it is not needed at all. That the man committed murder simply means something is wrong with his psychology. It is not a crime; it is a disease. It has to be treated, not punished.And for a single act you condemn the whole man. That too, is not justified. You can condemn the act, but you cannot condemn the individual. The individual has to be respected, just as he was respected before. All that can be done is, he should be sent respectfully into a psychiatric nursing home, treated, helped, so the wound in his psychology which created the crime disappears.Your jails are nothing but universities for criminology. A man goes into your jail for two years’ confinement. He was just an amateur, obviously; otherwise it would not have been so easy to catch hold of him. But in the jail he finds great thieves, master thieves, experts of crime who have come many times to the jail and treat the jail as their home. They are called jailbirds.Outside, they don’t like it very much. You leave them and soon they will commit a crime and will be back again. And all the criminals in the jail know one thing: that they have been punished not because they committed the crime; they have been punished because they were caught…because they know people who have committed the same crime on a far greater scale and are respectable citizens, are receiving Nobel Prizes. They have not been caught.So the real crime is to be caught. Crime itself is not crime. And once this enters into the mind of a person, you have spoiled his psychology forever.This is the history of five thousand years. Courts go on growing, criminals go on growing on a greater scale, bigger scale. Your courts, your laws, your jails have not prevented the criminals. After five thousand years it is time to have a look: What is the achievement?So not only with Sheela…. She has committed crimes of all sorts.Just the other day we received information from California, from one of the sannyasins who used to be Sheela’s secretary in India. She informs us that Sheela had a bank account in Switzerland. The bank account is in the name of Sheela and Savita – and the account is not small, it is forty-three million dollars. They have been siphoning money from the European communes into this bank account.The information came once before also, when I was silent. Sheela simply mentioned that some woman had informed the government that “Savita and I have a bank balance, but we are having that bank balance for you. In case you have to leave America we will need it to create a commune in Switzerland.”I said, “The bank account is for me and I am not aware of it? You never told me. At least let me know how much money is in the account.”They never told me. She said, “I will find out.”I asked Savita just two days before she left. She said, “I will find out.”You don’t forget forty-three million dollars!And now the account will be used by all this criminal gang. The money belongs to European communes; it was meant to come here for the construction of the commune.I said in the press conference that we are left by Sheela and her gang with a fifty-five million dollar debt. About forty-three million of the mystery is solved. Now it is only a question of a twelve million dollar debt, and that too will be solved! It will just take time to figure out their books – here, and all over the world.Perhaps this forty-three million was from the time this sannyasin was Sheela’s secretary. But that was four years ago. In these four years she may have accumulated more money. And the excuse she must have been giving to people is that it is needed for the master.I was not even aware that I am so rich.I am the poorest man on the earth – nothing belongs to me. From my shoes up to my hat, everything belongs to the commune. If I have to leave the commune, I have to leave naked! There is no other way. And I wonder how I am going to get a ticket back to India. I don’t have a single dollar. For twenty years I have not seen money. My people have loved me so much, they have taken care of me. There was no need for me…. I have not yet seen, in four years, what the dollar bill looks like. And anyway I will not touch it; it may be carrying aids!Now, if the government is sensitive and has any feeling for people’s lives, all dollars which move from hand to hand should be stopped. People should be given credit cards. And this is now possible with computers. In the commune it is possible. We don’t have any currency, we don’t use any dollars; we use only a credit card which remains your personal possession, it does not move in other people’s hands.Sheela has committed every kind of crime conceivable. Every day information is coming from different sources, from the sannyasins who have been afraid to tell it while she was here.One sannyasin has informed us that they were looking at the possibility of putting poison on postal stamps, because people have the habit when they put the postal stamps on the envelope, to use their tongue and their saliva. And if the postal stamp is already poisoned, it can kill them and nobody can be caught.They were inquiring about these things from people – “Is this possible? Is that possible?” They had all kinds of literature on poison – how to poison; how big a dose is needed if you want to kill the person immediately, or if you want to kill the person slowly within six months, eight months, so you are not caught.The two persons they had forced to live in Desiderata, telling them that they have been found with AIDS, have been checked again. Neither of them has AIDS. The two persons are back in the commune.Sheela’s accomplice in all the medical crimes was Puja, who was culturing all kinds of viruses. They had made a clandestine lab in their house, where they had all kinds of poisons, viruses. Perhaps they mixed AIDS virus in the samples of the blood of these two persons, so the results came positive.Now, this is so ugly, inconceivable. But there must be some reason why these two persons were forced to live there. Perhaps they had refused to do some crime. Perhaps Sheela and Puja wanted them to kill somebody, or destroy a Wasco County building, and they refused and this was the punishment.And if they had not gone, they may have injected them with the virus, just as they polluted their blood samples which went out for examination, for testing. They may have injected those people under any excuse and killed them.Still I say I will accept them, because everybody in his deep unconscious carries the criminal. The difference is only that they got the opportunity for their criminal to surface. And they have given you a good insight – that when power is in your hands, be very mindful that your unconscious will try to exploit and take advantage of the situation. Beware of yourself, because you are so unconscious and so asleep.Your question is that you have been thinking up to now that in the commune there is all light, and outside the commune there is all darkness. This is not something new. This is as ancient as humanity.In Adolf Hitler’s time, Germans thought only Germany has the light and the whole world is full of darkness.In England, mothers used to create fear in their children, “Don’t go out! Adolf Hitler is coming!” And that was enough, not only to frighten the children, it was enough to frighten anybody. He was the devil. England, America, and their allies, were divine powers.But you don’t see the situation. America was a divine power because it was fighting against the darkness and the devil. And the same America destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima without any reason or excuse.The war was going to end anyway. Germany had already accepted defeat. Japan could not go on fighting on its own strength. The forces against Japan were moving deeper into Japan and destroying their whole strength. In at the most one or two weeks Japan would have been on its knees just with ordinary weapons. The atom bombs were not needed at all.But the president of America, whose name you have to change…. His name was Harry Truman, and he is nothing but Harry unTruman. I will use the new name, not the old. Harry unTruman, president of America, killed innocent civilians in two cities in Japan, who had done nothing wrong against anybody – for the simple reason that they wanted to experiment whether the atom bomb is really reliable or not.In Hiroshima, one hundred and twenty thousand people died – just for an experiment, just to be convinced that their scientists have succeeded.But history will never call Harry unTruman a criminal. He has become a hero. Your whole history is full of criminals whom you have been told and taught are heroes.In India, the ancient story of the Hindu religion is that Rama, their incarnation of God, was fighting against Ravana, who ruled over Sri Lanka, Ceylon, and was nothing but the devil incarnate. And this is absolutely false. He was one of the most learned men the world has known. And if he was against Rama, he had valid reasons for it.In India, it was a custom, when a princess was going to be married, then all the kings who wanted to marry her would be invited, and they would be given some task to do. The princess would accept the one who could do the task and garland him as her husband.One beautiful princess, Sita, was going to be married. All the kings were invited; Rama was invited, Ravana was invited, and it was absolutely certain that the task was such that perhaps only Ravana would be able to fulfill it.There was a very big bow of Shiva, so heavy that you could not move it even, and the task was to take it up and break it into two pieces just with your bare hands. It was as solid as steel.Many kings tried; they could not even lift it up. The question of breaking it would not arise. There were a few who could not even move it on the ground.Ravana was a very mighty king – physically a King Kong – so there was every fear…and Rama was just a boy. So the only way was somehow to take Ravana out of the competition.So a conspiracy was done by Rama. A messenger, a false messenger, was sent who informed Ravana, just as he was standing up, “Lord, your capital in Sri Lanka is on fire.” And he had made his capital perhaps the most beautiful capital of those days. It is said his capital was made completely out of gold.Naturally, he rushed. And you will be surprised, because from Ayodhya, India, Ceylon is thousands of miles away. But Indian scriptures have every description, detailed descriptions of airplanes – he went in his airplane immediately, but found that it was a false report. And in the meantime, Rama broke the bow, married Sita, and this was the reason why finally Ravana stole Sita from Ram’s hands. So Hindus think that Ravana was a devil, and the kingdom of Ceylon was the kingdom of devils.It is always easy to keep yourself divine, full of light, and to describe anybody who is hostile to you as devils, as darkness. But even the idea, to describe others as devils, darkness, and think of yourself as light, is ugly.And you are asking me, “What is the case with you?”I am neither light nor darkness. I have transcended the duality in all the dimensions. I look at life as an organic whole. So either you can say I am both light and darkness, or you can say I am neither.But you have to understand the fact that both are possible as plausible descriptions of me, because I am only a witness.Light comes: I see. Darkness comes: I see.A saint comes: I see. A sinner comes: I see.I am just a mirror, so whatever is in front of me is reflected. But the mirror is not a film plate; the moment you have moved, the mirror is empty again.In my room I am sitting empty. Most of my day is just a mirror, mirroring nothing. Only when I come to you, or to some interview, to the press, the media, then my mirror reflects. Whatever I say is not prepared. I don’t know myself what my mirror is going to reflect, because it depends on you, your question.I am transcendental, and that’s what I want you to be. Meditation takes you beyond the opposites, the contradictions, and makes you a pure witness. And to be a pure witness is the ultimate goal of consciousness. There is nothing beyond it, because whatever will be happening, you will remain the witness. Even if God comes in front of you, you will be only a witness.Witnessing is the highest point of the evolution of consciousness. That’s why I have dropped God, paradise, hell, heaven. What is the point of all this paraphernalia?Stick to the basic essential, and that is: be a witness.Right now, you are!Are you not witnessing this silence?Try to keep this flavor as long as you can. Slowly slowly it becomes your very existence. It is – you just have to discover it.Osho,In the story you tell of Bodhidharma handing over his key to a disciple, this disciple cuts off his hand as a way of demonstrating his surrender, his readiness to do whatsoever the master wishes him to do.Is there a difference between this availability to a master and being the perfect parrot as you have recently described Sheela?You are also a parrot. You have not understood the story that I have told. You have not even heard it. In your sleep you have managed to convince yourself that you have heard the story, that you have understood the story.First, let me repeat the story.It was not a question of surrender.Bodhidharma is one of the greatest enlightened men who has ever existed, and one of the most unique amongst all the enlightened men. In many ways he surpasses his own master, Gautam Buddha.Gautam Buddha was a man of manners, son of a king, well educated in etiquette, in language, literature, music, archery – in whatsoever was available there in those days, he was educated.Bodhidharma was an uneducated person. So there are bound to be differences. But he was a very straightforward man, no sophistication, no way of being nice. He was just a sword, really sharp to cut off any head.He went to China. His fame had reached before him. The emperor of China, Wu, who ruled over all China – which is one-fourth of the world – was one of the greatest emperors. He came to receive Bodhidharma, because he had heard so many strange stories about him. And he had already become converted to Buddhism by other Buddhist monks who had reached before Bodhidharma.Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma, “I have made thousands of statues of Buddha, thousands of temples in China. I am financially supporting hundreds of monasteries where thousands of Buddhist monks are living. What is going to be my reward? I am doing everything which is virtuous.”That’s what the other monks were telling him. That’s what the other priests of other religions have been telling rich people: donate to the church, donate to the religion, and you will be rewarded immensely in paradise.I also say to you, Donate if you want to go to hell with me, because I don’t like heaven at all. All those idiotic saints who do not even drink tea, who have never sung a song, who have never danced, who have never loved a woman – just dry bones. Heaven must be a graveyard, a long graveyard filled with skeletons moving all around, carrying their harps and playing on the harp, “Alleluia.” I cannot tolerate that kind of nonsense. Once in a while it is okay, but for eternity?And you are not going to meet any beautiful people in heaven, people with juice, people with color – poets, painters, dancers, film actors and actresses, philosophers, atheists, scientists – all the people who had genius of some kind, talented people.You will not find Michelangelo there, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Kant, or Socrates. No, that is impossible. All these people are in hell, and I would love to take you all to hell, because hell must be a tremendously beautiful place where all these geniuses have gathered. And once we reach there, we are going to make it a really great oasis. It is not Oregon. You will not have to face idiotic hostility. You will be received with great joy.But all other religions have been telling you, “Donate; that is the greatest virtue.” The money goes to the priest. The money goes to the bishop, to the cardinal, and finally it reaches to the Vatican.Now, my suggestion is that the Vatican should be turned into an AIDS home, because they are responsible for homosexuality. They should be forced to accept their criminal act. To teach people celibacy, to teach that monks cannot have any love relationship with a woman, and nuns cannot have any contact with men, you are preparing the ground for homosexuality. And aids is the ultimate outcome of this homosexuality. That’s why I call aids a very virtuous disease, immensely religious.There used to be a saying that “All roads lead to Rome.” I would like to say to you: all roads still lead to Rome, but not for everybody – only for people who are suffering from AIDS. People suffering from AIDS from all over the world should start moving towards the Vatican.The pope is the richest man in the world. He controls more riches than any Rockefeller, he has more power than any king or queen. In fact, there is only one queen in the whole world, and that is in England. Four other queens are in playing cards, but all five have the same power.The pope has the grip over six hundred million Catholics, and money goes on pouring into the Vatican.So the Emperor Wu asks the first question to Bodhidharma, “I have donated so much. What is going to be my reward?”He was not aware that Bodhidharma was a very straightforward man. He said, “Nothing. Instead, you should be punished.”The emperor could not believe it. He said, “But all the monks have been telling me, ‘Donate. Make temples. Make caravanserais. Make hospitals, schools. Give in charity to the monasteries.’ And you are making just the opposite statement.”Bodhidharma said, “In the first place, from where did you get all this money? For that you will be punished. Secondly, these people have been exploiting you, and you are a just an idiot. No virtue in it, only stupidity.”To talk to the emperor of such a big empire in this way you need real guts. And Bodhidharma is the strongest man in the whole of history. The emperor wanted to change the subject. Bodhidharma said, “Nothing doing. I am not entering your capital. I am not interested in being your guest. I am going to the hills in the Himalayas. I have found a cave while I was coming here. It is really beautiful.” There the story happened that you are mentioning.Bodhidharma sat in that cave facing the wall. That too, only Bodhidharma can do. A few people came – impressed because he has put the emperor into his right place. That man was exploiting the whole country. The whole country was suffering in poverty because of him, and nobody had the courage to say it. And this man did it in a single sentence, and refused to be a guest of a criminal.So a few people came there, but he would not turn towards them. He said, “I will turn only when I see that somebody who has guts has come; otherwise, whether to face towards the wall or towards your faces makes no difference.”Finally this young man came, who said to Bodhidharma, “You have to turn now! I, for whom you have been waiting, have come. Do you want some proof?”And before Bodhidharma could say anything, with his sword the man cut off his hand and placed it at Bodhidharma’s feet. And he said, “If you want me to cut off my head, I can do that too; otherwise, turn towards me!”It was not a question of surrender. How have you managed to hear surrender? This man has not cut off the hand to show his surrender. He has really shown his unique individuality, not surrender. Just the opposite!He is not surrendering to Bodhidharma; he is forcing Bodhidharma, “Now you cannot go against your promise; otherwise, I am going to cut off my head too.”And Bodhidharma turned immediately. He had to. He said, “This is too much. There was no need to cut off the hand.”The man said, “The hand does not matter, neither does the head. I have lived with this hand and with this head for fifty years, and there is no ecstasy, no blissfulness. The whole life has been just a long story of misery, suffering, pain. It has been just a tragedy. Seeing you, a man of steel, I thought perhaps here is the man who knows the secret.“So if I have to live, I have to live with you. And you have to teach me; otherwise, there is no point in living.”It was not a question of surrender. In fact, he forced Bodhidharma to accept him as his disciple, and he proved worthy.Such people have disappeared from the world.And you think you surrendered to Sheela? Don’t hide your cowardliness – because I have not been teaching you to surrender. I have been teaching you to be individual, and to take responsibility, to do everything that you can do for yourself and the commune. But do it out of love, not out of fear. Surrender is fear.Love is not surrender. Love does not ask you to surrender. Love does not ask for anything. Love simply gives. And the miracle is, that when you give out of love the whole existence returns it a thousandfold, as if, from all over around you, roses start showering on you. You cannot imagine, cannot conceive of it, unless you experience it. But give it a try. You will not be losing anything.Love is not something like a commodity, that if you give it you will have less of it. It is not money, that you had ten dollars and five you have given; now you have only five dollars left.Love is not a commodity. It is not a quantity; it is a quality.Give it, and you will be surprised that from unknown sources, from everywhere, love is flowing towards you.Give it unconditionally, and once you have known the taste and the joy of giving unconditionally, you will also know that the existence is very generous.But it gives only to the givers, and you are always begging. That’s why I am against prayer, because all prayer is begging. “Give me this. Lord, give me today’s bread.” What nonsense! You cannot even create today’s bread?And Jesus is thought to do miracles – turning stones into bread, walking on water, making dead people alive. And he also goes on asking, “Lord, give us our bread for today.”What about small, simple human beings, who cannot walk on water, and cannot make bread out of stones, and cannot revive dead people? Naturally, they will be simply beggars.All the religions of the world have turned humanity into beggars, and they have all praised poverty to make you really beggars.I am against poverty, and I am against begging. You have intelligence, you have physical strength; you can create. And if you cannot even create enough bread for yourself, then what is the point of going on living, dragging?I believe in creativity, and I want every human being to be a creator. And we can create as much wealth as is needed. There is no need to be like the Soviet Union – to distribute poverty. We can create so much wealth that nobody needs to hoard it. There is no need, because it is available, and you are capable of creating it.Love will give you the secret key, the golden key, the master key.Love unconditionally, and flowers will be showering on you from all the directions. And once you have known the generosity of existence you will never feel miserable.You are part of such an opulent, luxurious abundance. Can’t you see existence is luxurious?To create one child, the male releases millions of sperms. This I call luxury! Existence is not miserly. Only one out of millions will become a child, and that too, once in a while.And that too, only if you are still listening to the idiots – Ayatollah Khomeiniac, Pope the Polack, Shankaracharya the Idiot – if you are listening to these people, only then. Otherwise, the Pill will prevent even that invading army, one million people – just a small pill.This is a real miracle, not making one dead man alive. This is a miracle: a small pill preventing millions of people.But as far as existence is concerned, it is really opulent in every way. It goes on flowering. How many flowers? And how many species of flowers? How many animals? And how many species of animals? How many birds? And how many species of birds?In everything, existence creates luxuriously. It is not miserly.Giving love unconditionally you will understand, and that understanding will be a transformation of you. It will make you a new man.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is Christianity the only religion that has caused sex perversion?What do you say about Hinduism?Christianity is certainly one of the most perverted of all religions, but it is nothing compared with Hinduism. Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world, and it has caused in its own way many perversions. All those perversions that Christianity has created, Hinduism has been doing long before Christianity was born. In fact, there are many Hindu scholars who believe that Christ never existed; he is only another name for Krishna, the Hindu perfect incarnation of God.Krishna in Bengali is called Christo. Then you can see it is not very difficult that the name Krishna can become Christ. If it can become Christo, then Christ is not very far. And whatever teachings are there in the name of Christ are all borrowed from Hinduism. Perhaps that is the reason why Jews never accepted Christianity: it was a foreign teaching.For example, Jews have never believed in celibacy. Even their rabbis are married. Jesus advocated celibacy – which is basically a Hindu concept. And from Hinduism it has reached to Jainism, to Buddhism, and perhaps to Christianity too.The Hindu monk, for ten thousand years at least, has been insistently trying to prove that celibacy is spiritual power, that it connects you with divine power, with God. This is simply absurd.Celibacy has nothing to do with holiness.And celibacy gives no power; on the contrary, it creates a conflict within you because you are trying to fight with your own energy. It weakens you. Your own power becomes divided; and a house divided against itself cannot be powerful. And it was because of celibacy that Tantra was born in India – which is just a revolution, a rebellion against Hinduism.Hinduism says celibacy is spiritual, and Tantra made sex spiritual – and Tantra is closer to biology, physiology, science, humanity. Tantra has never created any perversion; but Tantra never became a religion, it remained an independent philosophical approach. Anybody can follow it. There is no question that you have to believe in God, that you have to believe in heaven and hell or anything.Tantra is a tremendous meditation because sexual orgasm is your natural potentiality to feel, just for a moment, something of the beyond. Tantra uses orgasm and joins it with meditation, and what is only for a single moment can become your twenty-four hour state. And it makes it a scientific thing; that orgasm has nothing to do with the other person.While you are making love you come to a peak of tension, and because that tension relaxes, you feel a tremendous silence descending on you, a great relaxation – for a few moments no thought, no time. Everything has disappeared; there is only pure isness.Tantra says this is your natural gift, and it has been given to you so that you can find the way that it is possible for you to be without thoughts, relaxed, and the same orgasmic experience will follow. It has nothing to do with the other. And once you know how to relax, how to drop the thoughts, how to stop time, how to stop mind, you discover your pure isness.To me Tantra seems to be the only contribution that seekers after truth have given to the world. It has no perversion of any kind. It uses nature to experience something which is very simple, and then makes you aware that this simple experience can be experienced in your aloneness. And that very moment you transcend the dependence on the other, because certainly the other is always a trouble, a pain in the neck.Jean-Paul Sartre says, “The other is hell.” It does not matter whether the other is man or woman – “The other is hell” because you have to depend for your only meaningful experience in life on the other.Tantra gives you tremendous freedom from the other, and a great gratitude for the other; it is because of the other that you have become able to attain freedom from all dependence.Tantra arose in India as a rebellion against Hinduism – because Hinduism was doing the same, on a greater scale, with more sophistication and philosophy, as Christianity did later on in a very crude and primitive way. Hinduism was teaching celibacy, and celibacy is bound to lead to perversions, particularly homosexuality. And homosexuality has brought the ultimate flowering in AIDS.But one thing should be remembered: just like the Christian trinity, Hindus also have a trinity – Brahma, the creator god; Vishnu, the god who maintains the world; and Shiva, who will destroy the world. This is a cycle. Then Brahma creates the world again, and for millions of years Vishnu maintains it; then one day Shiva destroys it. So you will be surprised to know that in the whole of India there is only one temple devoted to Brahma. Who cares for him? His work is finished – he created the world.All the temples are of Vishnu, or incarnations of Vishnu. All the incarnations of Hindu gods – Rama, Krishna, they are all incarnations of Vishnu. Naturally, it is simple business that Vishnu maintains the world and he is in power.And there are temples of Shiva too, but not so many as the temples of Krishna and Rama and other manifestations of Vishnu.Shiva is worshipped out of fear because he is going to destroy the world. If you worship him he can be a little favorable to you. He may destroy you in some sophisticated way – an electric chair, not a crude, ugly cross like the one on which Jesus was crucified; or giving you a disease, aids, which is far cruder a cross than the one Jesus was carrying and dying on.Vishnu has a wife; he is not celibate. Shiva has a wife; he is not celibate. But gods have to be given some privilege which is not allowed to the Hindu monk. Gods are a different category. But it is very strange that nobody in ten thousand years has asked that when Vishnu and Shiva can have wives, then what is the reason that the Hindu monk should renounce the wife, the children, leave them in poverty, misery, disease, and gain spiritual power by it?In fact, he is committing a crime. And he will turn into a homosexual. I know hundreds of Hindu monks who are homosexual, because women will not be allowed in with them, alone; otherwise their whole purity, spirituality, will be immediately condemned. But men can remain with them. As far as I have known no Hindu monk is celibate, and there is no wonder in it because celibacy is an impossibility; and particularly for a Hindu monk.It may be possible for a Jaina monk to be celibate because he eats only one time a day. He eats in his hands, making a cup of his hands, and whatever his two hands can have at one time, that’s all that he has to eat. It cannot be much. He lives starving, hungry. There is no possibility for two things: one, he will not have any intelligence, because intelligence comes to you only when you have an overflow of physical energy. Intelligence is a luxury. All the animals are living without it; it is a human luxury. But luxury can exist only when you have more energy than is needed for your physical survival.And secondly, he can be celibate because he has not enough energy to create male sperms. If you see a Jaina monk you will feel pity: he is just bones. His eyes don’t show any intelligence. Whatever he says seems to be simply ordinary. But his celibacy is killing him – he is on a suicidal path. He may not be perverted in the ordinary sense of being a homosexual or a sodomist, but I call this too a perversion. He is destroying himself every day, he is dying! No Jaina monk needs aids: he creates it himself.But Hindus and their monks are a different matter. You will find the Hindu monk eating very nourishing food, and eating too much; all the Hindu monks you will find overweight.One of the great Hindu monks, Nityananda, the master of Swami Muktananda – Muktananda was very well known in America. Nityananda had only one unique quality: his belly. I don’t think in the whole history of man anybody had such a big belly! When he lies down you can see a strange shape.When I saw him I told him, “You don’t have a belly, your belly has a head and legs, because that is your major part!” But he is worshipped, he is thought to be enlightened. And his belly is proof enough. And now this man cannot be celibate: he is eating so much that he will create sexual energy. What is he going to do with that energy? Anything that he will do will be a perversion; and the easiest way is always homosexuality, because if he is found with a woman, all his respectability and great sainthood will disappear. He has to be with a man, and then nobody suspects.And these people have never asked about their god Vishnu, who has a beautiful lady, Laxmi, with him. Their god Shiva has an even more beautiful woman, Parvati. Let me drift a little….Shiva was so infatuated with Parvati that, when she died, he would not let her body be burned, as is the Hindu custom; on the contrary, he took the dead body of Parvati on his shoulder, and moved all over the country: perhaps somewhere, some physician might revive her again. He could not live without Parvati.It took twelve years for him to go around the country, to visit all the great physicians. And he was so deadly blind in his infatuation that he did not even notice that in twelve years the legs of the woman fell, the hands of the woman fell, the head of the woman fell – and he is still seeking a physician!There are twelve most holy places in India where Parvati’s limbs had fallen. But strange, this man is mad! And to make those places holy, and on the other hand to insist that celibacy is needed for man…. For gods there are different rules, for man there are different rules.I talked only about two gods. One more incident will show you what kind of gods Hindus have. In fact all religions have pornography in their literature, but nobody can surpass Hindus.It is said, one day Brahma and Vishnu argued about something and could not come to a settlement, so they said, “We should go to Shiva; perhaps he can help us come to a conclusion.”Shiva’s son was sitting at the door, watching. He was told that nobody was to be allowed, but he had never thought that Vishnu, Brahma, were included, and he was at a loss: how to prevent these gods? That will be insulting. So he allowed them. Shiva was making love to Parvati. These two gentlemen came and stood there for six hours, and the love went on, and Shiva and Parvati did not take any note of the two gentlemen standing there.Frustrated and angry they left and cursed Shiva, “You have insulted us badly, and we curse you that you will be remembered by your sex organs.” That’s why Shiva’s statue is just a phallic symbol resting in Parvati’s vagina. And all over India that statue is worshipped, and nobody bothers what they are worshipping! And they are great spiritual people worshipping genitalia, and that too, in a state of making love!It is ugly. But religious people are blind, everywhere. No Hindu ever thinks, “What is this shivalinga?” Even the name, shivalinga, means the genitalia of Shiva. They go on calling it shivalinga without understanding even the meaning of the word. There are no statues of Shiva, only these phallic symbols – because of the curse.Only Brahma is without a wife – obviously, because he is the creator god. From where will he find a wife? But what he did is even worse. He created a woman and became so infatuated that he started running after the woman to catch hold of her and rape her! His own daughter! But gods are allowed every crime. And the woman, afraid that he would rape her, became a cow.Brahma became a bull; you cannot deceive Brahma, the god, the creator – and that’s how the whole creation has come into being. That’s why there are so many species of animals, man, insects. The reason is: the woman goes on changing and Brahma goes on following, changing himself into the male. It is still continuing.It is not just a short affair like the Christian God, who made the whole world in six days, and was so tired on the seventh that he rested; and since then he has been resting. Nothing has been heard about him. Monday never came again; he has never been back on the job. Just in six days he got spent, finished!Brahma is still continuing, chasing the woman. He has not yet caught her because she goes on changing her form, he has to change his form; by the time he reaches closer she changes her form. And the creation goes on and on in different species. This idea looks closer to evolution; otherwise, why so many species? What is the need? So many mosquitoes – what is the need? So many bedbugs – what is the need?The Christian God cannot answer that he created bedbugs to suck the blood of Christians; and created mosquitoes, created snakes and scorpions – for poor Christians! But what can Brahma do? The woman is certainly a mystery: she goes on becoming things which even Brahma may think is not right, but what can he do? – he is infatuated.She becomes a scorpion so he has to become a scorpion. She becomes a bedbug; feeling that now Brahma will stop. But he is not going to stop – he becomes a bigger bedbug. And the story continues; the creation is continuous. But the reason for this continuity is that the father is trying to rape his own daughter.What do you call it? – perversion or spirituality?Hinduism has all the perversion that Christianity has, and much more.One of the incarnations of God is Krishna. Hindus believe that there are going to be twenty-four incarnations of God. Twenty-three have happened; for the twenty-fourth they are waiting.That, too, is a subtle psychology in every religion: some hope has to be left. Jesus Christ is coming back; the twenty-fourth incarnation of God is going to happen…. And they have been thinking this for thousands of years. It never happens, and it is not going to happen ever. It is just a hope, an opium, to keep people thinking of the future so they can forget their misery in the present. The twenty-fourth God will come and release you from your bondage, suffering, misery, pain – everything. He will open the door of paradise for you.Krishna had sixteen thousand wives. These were not married to him; he had married only one woman, Rukmani – one out of sixteen thousand. These were other people’s wives whom he had taken forcibly. Their children, their husbands were deprived. And what are you going to do with sixteen thousand wives?Even one wife is enough to finish you. Sixteen thousand wives! Perhaps the strategy is that sixteen thousand wives will quarrel among themselves, and Krishna will be saved; nobody will bother about him. He may not even know their names, he may not know their faces; he may not have made love to many of those women.He has done a great crime! Those women belong to somebody else – what is that man going to do? What are the children of those women going to do? They have lost their mother unnecessarily. But no Hindu objects that such a thing is simply the worst crime you can commit. And of course Rukmini behaved just like any woman will behave: became very jealous that this man goes on bringing women.I had a meditation camp in Gujarat, in India, in a very beautiful place, Tulsishyam. In the valley – it was a mountainous place – in the valley there is a temple of Krishna with one of his beloveds, Tulsi, who is not his wife. And on top of the hill there is a temple of Rukmini, but made in such a way that Krishna cannot see the temple, but Rukmini can go on watching from there what is happening there in Krishna’s temple with Tulsi. I loved the idea! – the whole human psychology.Rukmini is alone and angry. You can see her face: the despair, anger, hate, jealousy. And the temple is facing towards the valley. I have been in the temple and stood by the side of Rumania’s statue. You can see Krishna and Tulsi. They are nothing more than statues, but you can see from there both the fellows. Standing in Krishna’s temple you cannot see Rukmini, nor her temple. It is hidden in bushes, high in the mountain. But whoever was the architect has made it plain that Rukmini must have been very jealous – just like any woman.And Krishna was nothing but a playboy, and that too, not a nice one. I have no objection: if some woman loves him and he loves her, to me there is no problem, that is perfectly good. But he has forced those sixteen thousand women from their homes, and imprisoned them in his own palace. This is not love! This is not even human. But he is considered to be the perfect incarnation of God. The other twenty-three will be partial incarnations of God. What a perfection!You ask me about Hinduism and its sexual perversion…. All the religions have their sexual perversion. They have created sex maniacs, they have created rapists, they have created homosexuals, they have created lesbians; and now the ultimate outcome of it all is aids. Aids is the great contribution of all the religions together.And idiotic politicians are making homosexuality illegal. They should make all these religions illegal, because they are the cause of all sexual perversions, and unless they are removed from the psychology of man, man can never be really natural. And that is one of the fundamentals for his growth.You can only grow by being natural.And nature has provided you everything, even a glimpse of meditation which will lead you to the ultimate goal of enlightenment.But making homosexuality illegal is making the symptom illegal, not the cause. And nobody is taking care what is the cause, who are the people who have forced man to be sexually perverted? Your saints, your founders of religions are the greatest criminals humanity has known. They have perverted you in every possible way. Their whole teaching is against nature.Mohammedanism allows every Mohammedan four wives. Nature produces equal numbers of men and women. Now, if a man marries four wives then what are the other three men going to do? You are forcing them into some perversion. Either they will become homosexuals, or they will follow the path of sodomy and make love to animals.And if homosexuality has brought AIDS, no one knows what will happen if sodomy spreads, because if you make homosexuality illegal, a crime, you are driving people towards sodomy. Sodomy is not a crime, so people will start making love to dogs, to cows, to deer. And if a man making love to another man has created this disease, you can conceive something even worse will happen out of sodomy.The simple thing is: make celibacy a crime, anybody who remains celibate will be sent into jail for five years. Make all the monks marry the nuns. Of course the Polack pope will be in difficulty: no nun will like to be married to the Polack. Then Mother Teresa will be good.But something has to be done to uproot the cause, the very cause; otherwise humanity cannot be saved.Osho,Why are there so many German sannyasins who come here year by year for a couple of months and totally refuse to go into one of the European communes?Why is the atmosphere in Germany so hostile that we are not allowed to go into the streets alone, even in daytime?How can we live with this hostility?Here I have the possibility of being alone.I love the space here, and nature surrounding me. Germany is tight and the communes are in the cities.Please comment.Germany is still being followed by the shadow of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler has contaminated the German mind to such depths that even the new generation, which has not known Adolf Hitler and what he did in Germany, in some way carries the impact.Adolf Hitler has the unique distinction in the whole history of man of killing ten million people. There have been Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah – but they have all proved pygmies in comparison to this madman, Adolf Hitler.Adolf Hitler is in the air. The German mind is still the by-product of this man, so when German sannyasins come here, they find a totally different atmosphere. They feel respected, loved; they feel their dignity, and they start deep down relaxing. So when the question comes of them going back, they don’t want to. They have tasted something better than Germany.Just the other night one very beautiful and intelligent German journalist was asking me if I ever leave America where will I go. I said, “In the first place I am not going to leave America until I get my green card. Alive, I cannot leave America without the green card. I will fight up to the Supreme Court.”They have only six categories for obtaining the green card, and I have applied on five categories. And if they want me to apply on the sixth I can do that too. The sixth is marriage, and I can marry as many women as they want, because the more women you marry, the more you become capable of obtaining the green card. I can defeat Krishna very easily. I can break all the records!And on each category I am going to fight separately. Each category will take twenty years to be decided by the Supreme Court, by the time it reaches to the Supreme Court. If I get the green card, good; if I don’t get, I will start the case in the second category. Five categories means one hundred years! All the Supreme Court judges will be dead, at least twenty presidents will be dead; all the INS officers and their two, three generations will be dead. I will be dead – but the fight will continue!My people will be here, my grave will be here, and my grave will ask for the green card. And this is strange: living you won’t allow me to be here, but if I die, you will allow my grave to be here. What kind of logic is there? Just be dead, and you get the green card. Is America a worshipper of death?And for four years they have not been able to find a single argument against my applications. A whole department is continuously working, but I will tell them, “You will never find anything against me.” Who can prove that I am not a religious man? And if I am not a religious man, then on what grounds are Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, religious people? Who can prove that I am not a religious leader?You all can stand as a witness. How many people do they want to witness? I have one million sannyasins around the world.Jainism is a religion which has only three hundred thousand people, and you accept it, and you have accepted Jainas and given them green cards. In fact, you will have to tell me which number makes a man a religious leader? And what is the criterion? Even five people accepting me as their leader are enough. Even a single person accepting me as his leader…. You cannot destroy a single individual’s right.For four years they have been working. So I told the German journalist that if they give me the green card tomorrow, I will immediately move to Germany. He was shocked. He said, “Why Germany?”I said, “Because Germany needs me. After Adolf Hitler somebody is needed to destroy the conditioning that he has left behind. And I would love to have a little taste of German politicians too. I have seen the American politicians and their stupidity; I would like to see the German politicians, how they behave with me.”But I can understand the sannyasins who come here and don’t want to go. They should find a way not to go. There are always ways. If you don’t want to go – this whole earth belongs to us. All political boundaries are false. And nobody ever asks, “When Columbus landed in America, did he have any visa, any green card?I am going to fight the case, and anybody who does not want to go is welcome. Fight! – because we want to destroy all these visas and green cards and passports. There is no need; the whole earth is ours, and movement is man’s birthright.If you want to live in Germany or in India, why should you be stopped? And every day foreigners are getting to your country and you don’t think about it. When a child is born he is a foreigner, coming from outer space, and he is okay. And Germany is not that far away. And you don’t ask the child, “Where is the visa?” and “Apply for the green card!”And he is absolutely a foreigner. He is not coming from anywhere on the earth. He is coming from somewhere, from some other planet, and who knows…? He should show his passport. America should decide that each child born should bring his green card with him. Just make a law; otherwise the child is illegal.This whole thing is so idiotically nonsensical.Man is simply man – neither American nor German nor Indian nor African.And each man should be respected just as a human being. His color does not matter, where he was born does not matter.He was born on this earth, and the earth has no lines on it dividing it into nations.The first man who walked on the moon, when he came back and was asked what was his first idea when he walked on the moon and looked at the earth, he said, “My first idea was, ‘My beautiful earth!’ It looked so beautiful from there, because from there it is as lighted as the moon.” But the way he said, “My beautiful earth!”…The Soviet Union was not excluded.The earth is one whole, and sooner or later humanity has to accept it as one whole.As my communes around the world become more consolidated, stronger, then Rajneeshpuram is going to be the capital of the whole world. And we are going to give you international visas, international passports. You need not have an American passport or Indian passport. It is so humiliating, insulting. You will have an international passport. We are going to issue international passports, and we will tell the whole world that those passports should be respected; otherwise our communes around the world will revolt. They will burn all their passports, and all their visas, and all their green cards.And we would like to see one million people imprisoned for the single reason that they have committed the crime that they wanted the whole earth to be one. If you are imprisoned for such a cause it is something sacred.Osho,In the past few days you have repeatedly discussed the need to support the former “moms.” You keep on reminding the rest of us that we are responsible for Sheela, we allowed her to do what she did.These moms are the same ones who threatened me for three years to either do what they told me to – surrender to you, they told me – or leave.I, and many of us, without knowing all the facts, stayed on to be with you and help create what we were told was your vision.Now you condemn us for staying here, that we must keep these very same people in their power positions. I do not understand why we cannot love these moms and still they could not become more assimilated and live with the rest of us; and new, fresh people do what these moms had been doing.Please explain.First, the days of the moms are over. Nobody is a mom anymore. I was not even aware that there were moms! It must have been Sheela’s idea. She was married to a Jew: mom is a Jewish word, and Jewish moms are the most dangerous in the world. For your own sake they will kill you!But I am keeping the same people in their positions for the simple reason that they should not feel that remaining behind, revolting against Sheela’s group, they have been punished. They should be rewarded, not punished. They are the people who are going to expose the whole series of crimes of Sheela and her group. To remove them from their positions is insulting to them. They will certainly take it as a punishment.You should love them and respect them more than ever, because before you were respecting them out of fear; now respect them out of love because they decided to remain with you and not to go with Sheela, who was threatening them in every possible way. And they knew perfectly well that she has been trying to kill people; she has already killed one person. She was trying to poison my milk!So these people of course are no longer moms, of course they don’t have any fascist authority, so why unnecessarily be disrespectful to those who have remained with you? They have chosen you rather than Sheela.And as far as those persons are concerned, I would like to say to them, “Forget that fascist nightmare, and behave with everybody just as a sannyasin.” There is no hierarchy. While I am here there is no possibility of any hierarchy.Hasya is just a sannyasin, no more than you. You may be working in the kitchen, she is working in the office. You may be a doctor, she is the president of the foundation. These are functions, so while she is in the office she is president; when she is out of the office she is just the same as you are.The plumber and the professor are not different when they are dancing in the disco. You cannot say to anybody, “You are a plumber – I cannot dance with you, I am the vice-chancellor of the university.”There is no hierarchy, but functions have to be different. Everybody is needed. Sometimes we can do without the professor, but we cannot do without the plumber. Sometimes we can do without the president, but we cannot do without the kitchen people.All functions which are needed by the commune to survive, and not only to survive but live abundantly, are equal; functions are equal. But when somebody is doing his function, you should behave with the person according to his function.For example, if you go to the president…. I have given the prefix to all women sannyasins, “ma” – “Ma Prem Hasya.” The men have been given names with “swami.” So when somebody is functioning in an office, you have to be respectful, even though he may be your friend. You should address Hasya as “Ma,” not “mom.” You should address John as “Swami.” But when they are out of their office you can address them as Hasya, as John; they are your friends.Just a little alertness, awareness on everybody’s part, and there is no difficulty in it. If we can leave our position, power, work, in the office, it will help you to be more human, more loving, more loved, more respected. And while I am here there is no problem.This nightmare happened only because I was silent for three and a half years. When I said this to a journalist, he immediately responded, “That means you are responsible for it.”I said, “Certainly. I am responsible for Adolf Hitler, because why was I not born in Germany at that time? I am responsible for every criminal in the world because why was I not there to prevent him? I was not silent to give an opportunity to Sheela to create a fascist regime. My reason to be silent was my own. But certainly it gave her an opportunity, and she forgot completely that she was only there to represent me.”She must have been thinking that I am going to be silent forever. The moment I started feeling that something was going wrong, I came back.But this experience was immensely good. In my whole life I have never felt that anything bad happens. You have just to use it in a right way. And we will use it in a right way, we are using it in a right way. The commune is more clean, unburdened, fresh, more joyous, more aware.And these three and a half years’ silence were needed for me to get disconnected with all that I have said before. Now I am speaking on my own authority, on my own experience. That discontinuity was absolutely needed. And you will see the difference.I have spoken on Jesus before; I am speaking on Jesus now too, but now I am saying exactly what I see, feel, experience. Then I was choosing from Jesus’ sayings because I was trying to find my own people.When you open a new shop you need customers! When I opened my shop I saw all my customers were accustomed to going to other shops. They were all divided: somebody was Hindu, somebody was Mohammedan, somebody was Christian. There was not a single person who was freely available to me. Then naturally I started speaking on Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha, Sufis, Zen mystics – Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Milarepa, Marpa…. I covered the whole range, and got hold of many customers from other shops.It was necessary. Now I have got my own customers, and I can say to you the truth. And you are able to hear it and to understand it. Before you would not have been able to understand it.So it has been a good experience in every way and we will make much use of it. It was a great cleansing. And you are far stronger, because all those people had committed crimes: if they had remained here, the whole commune would have been condemned sooner or later as criminal.You don’t see the point: their leaving makes them criminals; otherwise, why have they left so suddenly? And the situation has changed completely. Now we will be supporting law, the courts, the government, against the criminals. Your whole commune is saved; otherwise your whole commune was going to be against the government because of those people.It is really something to rejoice in that our commune has nothing to do with crime, the criminals have left; and we will support the government and the law against those criminals in every way.This will bridge the gap that they had created between you and Oregon, between you and America. By their going away, the gap has disappeared. Now we are Oregonians, authentic Oregonians, the latest Oregonians – fresh and new. Now we are Americans, and we will try in every way to save the Constitution of America against any crime that destroys the democratic values.It has been tremendously important, beautiful. You will understand it only later on, looking backwards: they have done a great service to you, unknowing.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am so angry right now, and I don't know what to do about it.In spite of what you said about responsibility the other day, I can't even go to worship.Please comment.This is something basic to be understood. Your love is not love. It is full of hate, anger, jealousy, everything that goes against the qualities of love.It is very dangerous to allow you to love me, because I am allowing you all other things also. Your love can turn into hate any moment. It is so superficial. It is just a mind game.You don’t know what love is. Please don’t call me “Beloved Osho.” Those words on your lips become poisonous.What anger are you feeling against me? I have given you my vision, my insight, my compassion, my friendship, everything that I have. And the reward is your anger.You should be angry towards yourself, but it is very easy to project ugly things upon others.Whatever happened in these three and a half years while I was silent – almost absent – you cannot make me responsible for it. You are responsible. You behaved like idiots.Five thousand intelligent people could not see that they were being ordered to do things which were inhuman. They were being ordered to kill people, to poison people; and you could not even think – can I be behind it?I love life, love, laughter. How many times have I said to you that these three L’s are my basic philosophy?When you were given orders by a fascist group who was dominating you to poison the water system of a whole city, to kill my physician, my caretaker, my dentist….And just the other night we have discovered suddenly five hundred beautiful fish died in Patanjali Lake. That means that before leaving, that group has dumped poison into Patanjali Lake. It is fortunate that we are not taking Patanjali Lake’s water for your use. It is being used for irrigation; otherwise you would be, many of you, with those dead fish.And you are angry at me.You must be retarded. Can’t you see a simple point? A man who has never been life-negative, who has been changing your lifelong habits of non-vegetarian food into vegetarian food, who is not willing even to kill any animal…. Don’t you have even a small, logical understanding? A man who is teaching you to be a vegetarian will help you to destroy a whole innocent city, The Dalles, by poisoning its water system? The thing was so stupid!And you were doing everything. And if I had not started speaking, you would have been doing all those things even now. Now you don’t feel like worshipping. What has happened to your courage? For three and a half years why were you worshipping? – for the simple reason that you need somebody on top of you to force you, to enslave you, to order you and command you; then you are ready to do anything. Then even killing people becomes worship.But you cannot go to worship on your own accord. Should you be angry at me or at yourself – at your stupidity, retardedness? You need a fascist type of structure. And you were all perfectly fine doing everything that was illegal!And I am telling you, “Be responsible, never do anything against the law, never do anything against human values, against the ideals of democracy, freedom.”Now you don’t even feel to go to worship. You need somebody with a gun behind you; then only can you worship.Hasya has removed the bodyguards, and she was thinking slowly to remove the guns from the commune. They don’t fit with our approach to life. We don’t want to harm anybody. We want to create a loving atmosphere.But just one day after she had removed the bodyguards, one idiot immediately jumped up. Now she has to put the bodyguards back again. And now the security will be more strict.And if you are feeling angry with me, what the hell are you doing here? Get lost!This is not a place for anger and not a place for people who cannot take responsibility, because these are the people who create fascist structures. We don’t want these people at all. So simply pack your luggage and go to hell. The county road goes directly to hell.I have been loving to you, and I started speaking only because of you, because I was being informed that things are going wrong. I was available to my physician, to my dentist, to my caretaker, and when they all felt that now things are going beyond the limits…. Even my room was bugged. Even my milk was being poisoned. That was too much for them, and they said, “Now something has to be done. These people have taken too much advantage.”That’s why I started speaking; otherwise I was going to remain silent for my whole life. I have spoken for thirty years – nearabout four hundred books, each book containing at least five hundred pages. I don’t think there is anybody else in the whole history who has four hundred books of that size and that penetration.There was no need for me…. I have spoken enough. Just for you I am speaking, so that this fascist order can be dissolved and you can live freely as human beings in a democratic way. But it seems you are not capable of living in a democratic way. You always need Adolf Hitlers, Joseph Stalins, Benito Mussolinis. Without your need, these people cannot come to power.Yesterday I had told you, when anybody is in the office, on a post – for example, the president of the commune or the president of the foundation or the presidents of other corporations – you have to address them either as Ma or as Swami. I withdraw it. You can address people just by their name, anywhere.I wanted to make it the simplest possible society, where there is no hierarchy. But perhaps you are angry because you cannot function in a democratic world. But this commune is going to become one of the best democracies in the world – a direct democracy. So it is better, those who cannot feel good in a democratic atmosphere, they should leave. They can go to the Soviet Union. This is not their place.Osho,Why have you allowed all this to happen to us?I feel that you have known all along what was happening in the commune, and I'm angry at you.Was it a lesson we had to learn?I have told you a thousand and one times that I am not a god. I am not a messiah, or a prophet. God is omniscient. He knows everything, what is happening anywhere – past, present, future.The people who have made God omniscient were all fascists, and they created a fascist God – because if God knows about the future, that means the future is determined. Then where is the possibility of freedom? Freedom can exist only if the future is open. But about an open future there is no possibility of prediction. The man who was so beautiful may commit a murder tomorrow. Tomorrow is open.The saint can become a murderer.The murderer can become a saint.The idea in all the religions of an omniscient God is a fascist idea. It means everything is determined. Whether you are taking coffee or tea tomorrow morning, is already determined for millennia. And you cannot choose; you will have to take what is your destiny.Even the religions like Buddhism, Jainism, which do not accept a God, could not resist the temptation of making their religious leaders omniscient. God is not there, but Mahavira is omniscient, Buddha is omniscient; so what is the difference? As far as humanity is concerned, life remains mechanical, robot-like. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen; you cannot do anything about it.I am not a god, and I am not a prophet, and I am not a messiah. I am a simple human being.When I had chosen Sheela she was a beautiful woman, immensely capable of doing things, very practical, courageous. I had given the commune into the hands of Sheela, Vidya, Savita, who had never shown any fascist tendency.And they worked hard. They created this commune. They changed this desert into an oasis under tremendous pressure by the politicians, by the attorney general. And these people were all illegally trying to destroy the commune – they were fighting with them, they were protecting the commune.Naturally, if you start fighting with politicians you start learning politics; otherwise you cannot fight. If you start opposing dirty cunning minds, by and by, unknowingly, unconsciously, you fall in the same trap. You have to follow the same rules. In fact, if you are opposed to a dirty politician, you have to be dirtier; otherwise, you cannot win.This gave them the taste of power.I was in silence and this was my instruction: I don’t want to know what is happening in the world. For 5 years I have not read any newspaper, not listened to the radio, or seen television. Sheela, my physician, my dentist, my caretaker, they were all told that nothing has to be brought to my notice unless it is absolutely necessary. I wanted to live in isolation. This is my birthright. Who are you to be angry about it?And these people, when I had given them the opportunity, were totally different. Perhaps anybody of you, in such circumstances, would have turned out the same, because everybody, deep in the unconscious, carries a lust for power. But it remains unconscious because there is no opportunity for it to become a reality. These people saw that unconscious will to power surfacing because the opportunity was there. There was nobody to prevent them, and they were able to use my name in everything.And I am not omniscient.I never knew what they were saying to you. I never knew when they bugged my room. So you can see that I am not omniscient. At least I would have known that my room was being bugged, under the excuse that they were putting a switch so that I could alarm the guards if there was any emergency.I had never touched that switch, because there was never any emergency. Inside the switch they had put a microphone. And if I cannot see just by the side of my chair that there is a microphone, what do you expect of me?I am just like you. I don’t have any pretensions to be holier than you, higher than you. Just a little difference – that I am awake and you are asleep. But I was also asleep….In fact, because you are asleep, it makes it clear that any moment you can be awake. Sleep is possible only for a person who can be awake. Rocks don’t sleep. Only living beings sleep. They can be awakened. But I don’t see that by being awakened you become omniscient, or omnipresent, or omnipotent. These are just egoistic, megalomaniac ideas.I don’t have any ego or any megalomania, I am simply awake. That means I know who I am. That does not include the bugging device. So I was not aware at all what was happening, and whatever Sheela was bringing to me was always the good news, that things are going perfectly well.But you can see the opportunity. First she had to fight with the dirty politicians, so she had to learn the same tactics, the same strategy. She had to fight in courts against illegal charges, so she had to understand law. And she was continuously creating a commune here, so she had in her hands the immense power of money.We have put more than two hundred million dollars in the commune. From all over the world, sannyasins have poured whatsoever they could. Just an opportunity…. Who does not want to be rich? There is nothing wrong in being rich, but one should not try to be rich through wrong means. Create wealth, and be rich! This was simply theft. The money was coming for the commune, and she was slowly taking a few parts and accumulating it.And this woman who has informed was her secretary five years before. They were intimate friends, so whatever she says seems to be meaningful. She is dying of cancer, and it always happens when you are dying, you want to unburden yourself of any lie that you have been hiding. That’s why she has written the letter saying that “I am dying, but I want to relate that Sheela has stolen forty-three million dollars and she has it in a bank account in Switzerland.”So money – it is everybody’s desire, and there is no harm in it, but be creative. Stealing, and that too stealing from a commune who loves you, is criminal. She has no money of her own. She was just a waitress in a hotel before she came to me. Waitresses in hotels don’t have forty-three million dollars in accounts.She had the opportunity – that you love me, you trust me. For thirty years thousands of sannyasins have loved me, trusted me, and nobody has been cheated, nobody has been exploited, no fascism has come out of it. But I was in silence, and I was completely in isolation: not talking to anybody, not meeting anybody. This gave her another opportunity: that, in my name, she can manipulate you.She started slowly, but things have a way of growing. Everything grows. The more she became powerful, the more the lust for power to control. She dropped all those sannyasins who were intelligent enough to see the difference between what she was saying and what I have been teaching – not only different, but just the contrary.I have been teaching to you: Don’t believe – inquire, doubt, search. Unless you know, it is better to remain ignorant. At least you are honest. Belief is self-deception. You don’t know, but the belief covers your ignorance.Ask anybody outside the commune, “Is there a God?” and he will say “Yes,” as if he knows. He does not know himself, and he knows God! And just try to argue with him, and soon you will come to know that it is his belief, that from the very beginning he has been conditioned that there is a God.It will look very strange to you that all the religions have prevented people from discovering the truth of life – because before you discover, inquire, question, they fill your mind with all kinds of beliefs. Those beliefs give you a deceptive feeling as if you know.But there is much difference in “as if” to know, and “to know.” Knowing transforms you. “As if” to know, you remain the same.You go to the church, you go to the synagogue, you go to the temple, you read holy scriptures, but no transformation happens.I have been teaching to you not belief but doubt. Doubt is clean, fresh, young.Every child is born with doubt, not with a belief. Every child asks thousands of questions. Those questions show that he has doubts, that he is skeptical. He is continuously asking, “Why?”If you go to the Soviet Union and you ask a child is there a God, he will say no. That, too, is a belief. He has not inquired. Just in the Soviet Union he has been conditioned that there is no God. What is the difference between a theist and an atheist? between a Catholic and a communist? Both are doing the same thing: destroying your quest, giving you ready-made answers.Ready-made answers don’t help. Unless you discover the answer yourself, unless the truth is your own experience, you are not going to have a transformation.Information is not transformation. You can become very knowledgeable through information, but your ignorance remains the same. The greatest knowledgeable person is ignorant, is just like any ignorant person who knows nothing.Perhaps the ignorant person is in a better position than the so-called knowledgeable scholar, professor, theologian, because the ignorant person at least is honest. He says, “I do not know.” From that honest beginning he can start a journey of knowing, because nobody can remain satisfied with ignorance.So either he will become knowledgeable – which is cheap. All the schools, colleges, universities, churches – they are doing that cheap thing. They give you knowledgeability and you forget that you are ignorant. It is opium. All knowledgeability is a kind of drug so that you can forget your original ignorance. But it remains there.My teaching is radically different. I want you to drop all knowledgeability.I am reminded about P.D. Ouspensky. He was one of the greatest mathematicians of this century, and he has written one of the greatest books, Tertium Organum.I have never come across any other book which has such crystal-clear statements. It can deceive anybody. It seems as if the man knows!In the beginning of the book he writes, “Aristotle wrote one book, Organum. Organum means the first principle of knowledge. Bacon wrote Novum Organum, New Principle of Knowledge. Both are very significant steps in the world of knowledge.”And Ouspensky says, “Now I am revealing to the world Tertium Organum, the Third Canon of Knowledge. And I want to say that the third existed even before the first – I am simply revealing it. Otherwise, it is the ancient-most: even before the first, it was in existence.”And reading – I have read all the three – certainly he surpasses Aristotle and Bacon both. They look like pygmies; he is a giant. And the way of his writing is certainly unique. He does not write in paragraphs, because each sentence is so important that he writes only maxims, very logical.He was world-famous before the Russian revolution. But he was also a very sincere and honest man. He knew that whatever he has written, it is just knowledgeability. He knows nothing. He has not experienced anything.He wanted to meet someone who has experienced, who has been face to face with reality. And then he heard the name of Gurdjieff.He went around the world in search of somebody who really knows. He was in India for a long time, searching for some wise man, but could not find. Frustrated, after years when he came back to Moscow…. It is very symbolic that he met George Gurdjieff in the same restaurant where he always used to go. He had seen Gurdjieff before, too, because they were both visitors to the same restaurant. But he had never thought much of it. Gurdjieff did not look like a wise man.Gurdjieff was a totally different kind of person than you understand a wise man should be – nice, polite, beautiful like Gautam Buddha. He was a Caucasian, very strong. He could kill any man just with his hands.And Ouspensky could not believe, when he was told by one of his friends, that “This is the man you have been searching for. He knows, but it is difficult to approach him. I will manage, I belong to his inner circle. And very rarely he accepts anybody, but perhaps you may be accepted.”So one night he took Ouspensky to Gurdjieff’s place. A dozen people were sitting there around Gurdjieff. These two also sat down. Half an hour passed, nobody spoke. Ouspensky was getting troubled. What is happening? Even the friend who had come was sitting with closed eyes. He nudged him and said, “Do something. This way I will never be introduced.”So the friend told Gurdjieff, “I have brought a new person. He wants to become part of our circle. It is up to you to accept him or not.”Gurdjieff called Ouspensky to come close so he could see into his eyes. And Ouspensky said, “I have never seen such eyes, and I have never felt so nervous – almost on the point of breakdown. And that man’s eyes were penetrating to the very deepest core of my being, like swords.”A few minutes passed. It was a cold night; snow was falling, and Ouspensky was perspiring.Gurdjieff pulled out a piece of paper, gave it to Ouspensky, and he said, “I know about you. I have seen your book, Tertium Organum. You know nothing, but still you have written a very great book. But you cannot deceive anybody who knows.“You go into the other room and, on this paper, on one side you write what you know, and on the other side you write what you don’t know – because whatever you know, we are never going to discuss it. That is finished; you know it. Whatever you don’t know, I will teach you.”Ouspensky, for the first time, was faced with the question, “What do you know?” A writer of many books, world-famous, and he could not write a single thing that he knows.He came back, gave the blank paper back, and he said, “I don’t know anything. Forgive me, perhaps I am not qualified to be part of your inner circle.”Gurdjieff laughed. He said, “This is not disqualification; this is qualification. You are honest, you are sincere. Being so famous, writing so many books, still you are capable of accepting the truth that you don’t know anything. You are accepted in the group. Your training begins from this point: I do not know. Now there is a clean inquiry possible.”This has been my teaching to you. You are not to surrender. You are not to believe.But that’s what you did. And you are feeling angry at me.If I had taught you to believe and surrender the way Jesus has done, the way Mohammed has done, the way Moses has done, the way Krishna has done, then of course your anger was right.If you want to be angry, be angry against Jesus Christ. Be angry against all the founders of religions.They all say, “Believe and you will be saved.”And I say to you, “Believe and you are drowned.”I say to you, “Doubt, because that is something that you have come with. Nature has provided you a method for inquiry. Doubt is a method of inquiry.”In ten thousand years of religious history, religions have not contributed anything – except AIDS, homosexuality, lesbianism, sadism, masochism, wars, discrimination – all kinds of crimes: killing millions of people, burning living people.They are all based on belief.Science – which is based on doubt – has contributed within three hundred years everything from the smallest safety pin to the rocket that reaches to the moon.If you count the blessings that science has showered on you, you will be surprised. Your clothes, your glasses, your watches, your health, your medicine, your food – everything science has improved. Science has only been unsuccessful in improving you, because all the religions are sitting on your neck.I want you to get rid of all the religions and become a scientific seeker.How can you feel anger against me?I had no idea what was happening. The moment I came to know what was happening, I immediately stopped it. It did not take much time for me to stop it. What Sheela and her gang had managed in three and a half years, I finished within three days. And they were not even able to face me; they all escaped like criminals, cowards.Criminals cannot be brave.At least I had expected that Sheela would have to come to say good-bye to me. But no. In fact, she deceived. She informed me that she had a cold, so in two or three days, when her cold was gone, she would see me. But she did not stay here for two or three days, the next day she was gone.I am getting information every day about where they are, what they are doing. And they are in a tremendous fear, because they have committed every kind of crime. They should be brought back. They will have to face the courts, and they will have to reap the crop that they have sown. It is poison.But you are feeling angry at me because I must have known all this all the time. You impose your ideas on me, and you want me to behave accordingly.I am not a person to accept anybody’s projection, even though it is very ego-fulfilling. I don’t have any ego, so there is no question. I can say to you I had no knowledge, I was absolutely ignorant of what was happening.So drop this stupid anger. Go into the hills, shout, scream, beat yourself till you become calm and quiet. Then take a good bath and be purified and new. And now start living in the commune with your own responsibility.I am not responsible for you.You are not responsible for me.Everybody has to be responsible for himself. That’s the only way to be an individual, the only way to have freedom, integrity.Osho,A few people are feeling not to wear their malas or red clothes, but they consider themselves Rajneeshees and want to live here.How does this fit your vision?There are no Rajneeshees, and there is no Rajneeshism. That was also part of this fascist regime.You cannot be Rajneeshees because there exists nothing like that. Even I am not a Rajneeshee, so how can you be? So, first thing, forget that you are a Rajneeshee.Second thing, the mala and red clothes are symbolic of the commune. If you don’t want to wear the mala and red clothes, then pack your luggage and get lost. This is not your place, and we don’t want you to be here.This only shows how the mind moves to extremes. Either you will be a slave or you will be licentious, but you cannot be a free individual.Your red clothes are your identification that you have dropped all old conditionings, that you are the sunrise of the new man and of the new humanity.The mala has one hundred and eight beads. It represents the one hundred and eight methods of meditation. Any method will do. It is just to remind you continuously that one hundred and eight doors are open to bring you into light, and you are unnecessarily groping in darkness. Choose any method. I have spoken extensively on all the methods of meditation.Dropping the mala simply means forgetting the symbolic meaning of the mala. Dropping the mala means that you don’t want to meditate. If you don’t want to meditate, then what the hell are you doing here? It is a meditation commune.And why were you not walking around without the mala and without red clothes before? Cowards!When everything was being done against humanity and against you and against the law, that was the time to revolt. That time you were just docile. And now, because nobody is forcing you, you are walking around without the mala and without red clothes. You can walk, but that means walk out. And we don’t want anything to do with such people, because these are the people who will again force the same structure.My picture, and the locket in the mala, is simply symbolic. It is not something sacred. It is symbolic of your freedom from all religions the way I am free! It is symbolic that you are my fellow travelers. It is symbolic of your love.It is difficult, of course, for me to hang around my neck one million lockets to show my love. It is easier for you.On the one hand you address me, “Osho” – and you cannot have the mala and the locket. I know the reason. In the outside world, everywhere you will go you will be condemned, you will not be accepted. You will be misfits. And I want you to face the world, rather than get lost into the crowd. My picture is enough. You will not be accepted anywhere. So you can decide. If you don’t have the courage to be rejected everywhere – in your family, in your friends, in your society – you are free. Nobody has told you to become sannyasins. You have become sannyasins on your own accord.Naturally, if you don’t want to remain sannyasins, you are perfectly welcome. But not on the streets of Rajneeshpuram.Osho,The other day you said all masters have had to lie. I don't see the necessity for lies. Isn't it rather that the truth, no matter what the consequences, is the only means of liberating ourselves?Besides, what do we have to lose?First, you seem to be understanding more than I understand. In fact, you should be here and I should be sitting there. Come on! I am ready to vacate this place and I will be sitting there, and you do the job. Stand up! Now, don’t chicken out!All kinds of idiots have entered. Do you understand that there is no way to express truth in words?Not a single enlightened person in the whole history has said that truth can be said. So whatever can be said will be a lie.Lao Tzu, one of the greatest masters, never wrote any book. He continuously avoided his disciples persuading him, asking him, “Soon you will be gone; you are too old, and you have not given us anything written that we can remember, understand.” And one day Lao Tzu left.Even the emperor of China was a disciple of Lao Tzu. When he heard that Lao Tzu had left towards the Himalayas – that was his long, long dream, to die in the peace, the eternal peace of the Himalayas – he immediately sent messengers to all check-posts on the roads which lead to the Himalayas to say that, wherever Lao Tzu is found, he should be prevented from leaving. Unless he writes his experience he cannot leave China.And he was caught at one of the posts on the border. The man on the post also happened to be a lover of Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu was a man worth loving.He said, “It is difficult for me to prevent you, but these are orders from the emperor. And my own feeling also is that you should write the essential experience of your truth – just a small treatise and you will be allowed to go. So rest in my cottage and start writing, because otherwise you cannot go to the Himalayas.”Under such circumstances, Lao Tzu wrote his only book, Tao Te Ching. The first sentence he wrote is, “The truth cannot be said, cannot be written. Please remember it while you are reading this book.“This is a reminder that everything that I am going to say is bound to be untrue, for the simple reason that truth is experienced in a state of your mind where no thoughts, no language exists, when there is only space and utter silence.”Now, how to bring that experience of wordlessness into words? The moment you try to bring it into words, something changes.It is exactly like when you have a staff that is perfectly straight. But put it in water, just halfway, and you will be surprised. It is no longer straight. Pull it out, it is straight. Put it back in water, it is no more straight.Is water doing something to the straightness of your staff? No. It is still straight, but sun rays reflect differently from water, and that creates the illusion of crookedness.I am saying the truth, I will be saying the truth, but words have their own associations, their own meanings, their own history.So, first, when I put my experience into words, something becomes different. Second, then you hear it, and you can hear only according to your conditionings. Then, things become farther away from my experience.Gautam Buddha was asked one day, “Why do all enlightened people insist that truth cannot be said? If it can be experienced, then what is the trouble? Why can it not be explained?”And you all know – you can experience love, but can you explain it, what it is?You all experience beauty – but can you explain what beauty is?And these are nothing compared to truth, which is the deepest experience. If even beauty cannot be explained, love cannot be explained – and everybody is experiencing it – truth is absolutely unexplainable. Once in a while a person experiences truth, and nobody who is hearing about it has any idea what is being talked about.Buddha said, “When I became enlightened, for seven days I did not speak a single word. I had decided not to speak my whole life because I did not want to destroy the truth of my experience. I was being persuaded, and one thing made me start speaking.“The people who were persuading me, they said, ‘You are right. There are people who will not understand; there are people who will misunderstand. But there is a third category also – it may be a very small minority, one in a million – who are just on the borderline. A little push, a little encouragement, and he will enter into the world of light, life, eternity. Won’t you speak for that one man?’”And Buddha agreed. He said, “There is no harm. Those who cannot understand me do not matter. Anyway they don’t understand anything. Those who are going to misunderstand me will misunderstand everything in their life.“I will speak for the one person in one million. Perhaps I can help one person; that is a great reward.” And he spoke for forty-two years.But whatever he spoke is not truth.Truth basically cannot be expressed. It is approximately true, but there are no approximately true experiences: either it is true, or it is false. Howsoever close it is to truth, it remains a lie.So remember, please, when I said enlightened people – all enlightened people – have lied, they have lied for your sake, for that one man in one million.And that’s what I am doing.If you want to change places, I am ready. You can think it over.Osho,Our present situation was caused not only by Sheela's succumbing to the temptation of power, but also by the exploitation of our willingness to say yes to whatever was asked, as a gesture of love and surrender to you.It seems we must first free ourselves from the exploitative dependence of master and disciple by making this commune our commune, not yours. So that you are our dearest friend with whom we are sharing our home, rather than us sharing your vision.Please comment.Why my vision? Share your vision! It is your commune. What has it to do with my vision? I am not a member of your commune. I live outside the commune and any day, if you want, I can leave this place.Share your vision and do whatsoever you want to do. How ego works! How it finds ways!Behind the curtain of this fascist order, you would like to dissolve the relationship between master and disciple. But I have always been saying I am not your master. So you are responsible if you think you are my disciple. I have already dropped the idea of being anybody’s master. I am fed up with such people!And now you are wanting that this commune should not be called my commune, but your commune. Agreed. It is your commune. Just one correction…. Why should your commune share my vision? What right do you have to share my vision? And if you share my vision, it becomes my commune. So you can choose. Either you share your vision – and you are all blind, there is no vision, so the blind can lead the blind. And you will fall into some ditch, some creek.But if you are sharing my vision, then this is my commune.Osho,People are asking to build log cabins in the mountains and do their own thing. They feel if they are willing to pay their own expenses, then it is only bullshit bureaucracy which stands in their way. Can this approach work?Nobody is standing in your way, but you will be breaking the law. You will have to ask the state government. You have to ask LCDC, LUBA, and if they allow you, you can make cabins anywhere you like. This city cannot give you any permission, because this city is illegal.And we don’t have any bureaucracy here. For bureaucracy you have to go to the capital, Salem. Or, if you want even bigger bureaucracy, you have to go to Washington – the White House, where every black thing is happening. But we cannot give you permission.The land is ours, it is constitutionally our property, but the government is not functioning according to the Constitution. A strange fate – that we have to fight for the Constitution against Americans! It is their Constitution, and they are prostituting it.You cannot make cabins; otherwise you will be arrested. So just wait a little. We have no objection. In fact, we want all these hills to be turned lush green, with beautiful cabins in tune and harmony with nature, so this place can become one of the best resort places.But you will be surprised, they have declared the city illegal. The city was legal for two years; they had incorporated the city. For two years it was getting support from the state and the federal government, as every city gets. Now a sudden pressure – perhaps from Christians – and they change their mind. A legal city, legally incorporated by themselves, becomes illegal.In a way, it is good that we are a unique city in the whole world. There is no other illegal city in the world. Either there is a city, or there is no city. An illegal city is a new phenomenon.We are fighting, but the state government – particularly the attorney general – does not want the case to be decided by federal courts. This is strange. This means the attorney general and the state of Oregon do not believe in the American Constitution and the nation’s higher courts. They think those higher courts will not be fair to them. They want it to be decided by a state court, which is simply illogical to anybody.If the state itself is involved in the case, is a party – one party is the illegal city of Rajneeshpuram, the other party is the state…. Now to decide the case in a state court means the state can pressure those judges. They are their servants. Their promotion depends on them.This is so simple. And we are saying that because the state itself is involved, then a federal court should decide it. And we are not afraid about it, because whatever is, we are absolutely legal, constitutional. They are afraid that in the federal court they are going to lose the case. But they are in contempt of the federal courts.They have to remember that we are not going to leave this thing. It will go up to the Supreme Court. And fortunately the Supreme Court of America is still the most fair court in the whole world. And we are absolutely certain to win. There is no reason why five thousand people living two years, remaining legal…then without any reason suddenly they are declared illegal.In fact, the attorney general should be responsible. If this city is illegal, then why did you incorporate it in the first place? You should have explored, inquired. You did not do your homework. Secondly, the attorney general seems to be retarded. It took him two years to find out that the city is illegal.We are going to fight, because we are absolutely certain that the Constitution of America values truth, values freedom, values the individual, respects individual property.So we are ready to go to the federal court, but they are trying to fight hard that the case should be decided by a state court. A state court is under the state, under the attorney general. That will be something illegal. If it happens, we are not going to participate in the case. We will boycott it. It is illegal. A party in the case is also the judge in the case. This is simply absurd.But we cannot help you to make cabins. You will have to wait. Let the city be legal, then the city can give you the permission to make cabins. There is no problem.We will be making them ourselves, so you don’t have to put in your expenses. We have enough money.Osho,I have no more questions with me.That’s great!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Judas sold Jesus for thirty silver coins, and after two thousand years we sannyasins are still behaving the same way with you. Is this the last effort of the political mind on its deathbed?Man has not evolved as far as consciousness is concerned. Thousands of years have passed; man’s stupidity remains the same.Jesus has promised to come back, but I assure you he will not come. One experience with you was enough. Who wants to be tortured and crucified again? Who wants to be sold by the same people he loved? – the same people for whom he was working his whole life, and he sacrificed himself. And that, too, for thirty pieces of silver.There is some flaw in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. I am not a supporter of it. He thinks apes became men in a long process of evolution. But we have known apes for ten thousand years – not a single one has tried to become man again. And if apes can become men, then men certainly can become supermen, but there seems to be no sign at all. On the contrary, man is continuously degrading himself.America is one of the most cultured, and the latest country in the world, with a small history of three hundred years. But in three hundred years, twenty percent of America’s presidents have been assassinated. Just that fact shows that America is barbarous. And strange to say that the twenty percent who have been assassinated include the best presidents America had – Abraham Lincoln and Kennedy. They do not assassinate phony characters like Jimmy Carter, and they will not assassinate Ronald Reagan. They fit with them. They are as much retarded as the common masses are. Abraham Lincoln does not fit. He is far above the retarded people.The average mental age of humanity is only thirteen years. This you call evolution? A man is ninety years old, and he has the mind of a thirteen year old. It is because of this retardedness that he believes all kinds of idiotic beliefs, dogmas, religions. He never questions, never inquires, never explores. He does not have consciousness enough to go on a quest for truth.And of course the politicians don’t want him to evolve. The priests don’t want him to evolve, because man’s evolution is their death. An evolved man, a conscious man, has no need of political leaders to tell him what is right and what is wrong. He does not require any pope, any Mother Teresa, any Ayatollah Khomeini, any Shankaracharya. In fact, these people will seem to him retarded.So all the religions and all the political parties of the world are conspiring against humanity. To keep man enslaved, the best way is that he remains a helpless child, always in search of a father figure.In politics he finds father figures.In religion he finds father figures.It is not a coincidence that Christian priests are called fathers.I have heard: two small boys were playing, a Christian and a Jew. The Jewish boy asked – because a Christian minister had passed and the Christian boy had saluted and asked the blessings of the father…. The Jewish boy said, “It is very strange, your religion; your father has no wife, has no children. How does he become a father?”How do women, nuns, become mother superiors? They are not married; they don’t have children. The reason is psychological: people need father figures.Even Jesus behaves in a retarded way when he calls God the father. Many things are implied in it. Calling God the father means he cannot remain independent, on his own. He needs a great omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient father.Jesus died on the cross in immense frustration, because all his hopes were crushed. He shouted at the sky, “Father, have you forsaken me?” But nobody bothers to think that the father has never promised anything. It was all your imagination. You create a father, far above in the sky, then you start praying to the father. And naturally your prayers are mostly not fulfilled. You know – because you are a sinner – your prayer is not authentic. Deep down you doubt, you are skeptical, and prayer is fulfilled only when there is total surrender. And that is impossible.Doubt is something essential, something you are born with. You can repress it, but you cannot eliminate it. It is repressed, but it is within you and will not allow your surrender and belief to be total. And naturally all the religions are telling you that you are born in sin, and you are committing sin in everything – by getting married, by having children, by eating this, by drinking that.If you follow exactly what religions want you to do, suicide is the only virtue. You cannot live, you cannot laugh, you cannot love. Naturally, you know your prayers are not heard, not answered, because you are not worthy.But you never look at the problem: is there anyone to listen to your prayers, or is it only your projection? Out of helplessness and fear, you create the father. And then out of misery and suffering, you pray.Once in a while a prayer is fulfilled. That is simply coincidence. That does not prove the reality of God or the reality of prayer.It happened, once a man used to meet me when I used to go for a morning walk. He was the only other man up that early in the morning. We became sort of friends. He told me, “I am a great believer in the monkey god Hanuman.”Indians have strange gods. It is good that Darwin never came to India; otherwise he would have used this monkey god as one of the proofs that man has come from the monkeys. Man is still worshipping his forefathers – and it looks logical.But Indians worship trees; Indians worship rivers. Indians worship phallic symbols – absolutely pornographic. India is really a museum of all the bizarre and berserk. It is one of the oldest countries; it has collected really antique stupidities, and continues.The man said to me, “I am a worshipper of Hanuman, the monkey god. Hanuman is a true god.”I said, “You are the first man…. Just tell me a little more. How did you manage to find out that he is a true god?”He said, “My son was out of service, without employment. I prayed to Hanuman and gave him an ultimatum, ‘If within a month my son does not get employment, I will stop worshipping you.’ And my son got the employment within the month. I have absolute proof that Hanuman is a real god.”I said, “You keep your proof and remain happy, but never try it again. Coincidences do not happen every day.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Your wife is sick, suffering from cancer. Give it a try again. Threaten your monkey god, ‘If within one month the cancer does not disappear, I am going to stop worshipping you.’”He said, “That is a good idea, because I never thought about it.” But rather than the cancer disappearing, his wife died. He was very angry at Hanuman.I said, “It is all you. There is no monkey god; it is your projection. Sometimes as a coincidence your prayer is fulfilled. Sometimes, most of the times, it is not fulfilled.”But he said, “This is too much. I had asked him to remove the cancer, and he has removed my wife!” Still he is thinking that the monkey god exists.People need some protection from above, particularly retarded people. They have created God. They have created mediators – the Popes, Shankaracharyas, Khomeinis. There are millions of these mediators around the world. They are parasites, and their whole business depends on one thing: that God should continue to exist. And I say to you, there is no God.You are here. If you want to live a life enriched with love, music, poetry – if you want your life not to be something like a burden that you carry from the cradle to the grave, but a dance – then you have to evolve your intelligence, your awareness, your consciousness. Nobody is going to help you, and nobody is going to save you. All saviors are false – exploiters. All prophets are taking advantage of your stupidity.The new man will not have any messiahs, prophets, saviors, god-men. There is no need. These are the needs of those who have remained stuck in their mental growth.I want to emphasize the point that if a man can have ninety years of physical age and thirteen years of mental age, the vice versa is also possible, and should be made possible.A thirteen-year-old boy can have the mind and mental age of a ninety-year-old man. And that will be the day of rejoicing, when your mental age is ahead of your physical age. That is the beginning of a superman, the beginning of the new man, a new humanity.Then no cowboy film actors can become your presidents. Then millions of idiots cannot gather to see a football match. Then there will be a totally different perceptivity about things.A California university has been surveying for one year and has come to the conclusion that every time there is a boxing match, violence in California increases immediately – thirteen percent more than the normal. The people who enjoy seeing boxing are really satisfying their own violence, getting excited.Why does the violence rate all over the state increase? And they have been studying only violence. They should study rape and other crimes too, and they will find an increase in every crime. Knowing this, why is boxing not made a crime?It is a crime – a thirteen percent increase in the rate of violence for the following whole week. How many murders will happen? And who is responsible for it? And what do your politicians go on doing?It is a simple understanding, that boxing should be banned. Can’t you find something, some entertainment that helps to make you more human, rather than making you more animal?Boxing is dragging you backwards; but Muhammad Ali, and people like that, are your heroes. If Muhammad Ali and people like him remain your heroes, you are going to crucify Jesus. It does not matter whether two thousand years have passed or not.Evolution needs a certain structure. It needs a certain education. It needs a certain sensitivity.Entertainments should be a raising of your consciousness.Mikhail Naimy’s book, The Book Of Mirdad, should be filmed, should be shown to people. Just seeing that film you will feel a great upliftment. The book should be made available to every library, to every university, but most of the people have not even heard the name of Mikhail Naimy. His book – one of the greatest masterpieces of art, beauty, meditation, consciousness – remains unknown to the major part of humanity.What do the universities go on doing? They are not doing what they are supposed to be doing. They are not creating the universal consciousness in man.Even universities go on teaching you, “You are American, you are Russian, you are Indian.” At least universities should stop this nonsense. Universities should teach you that you are human. Color makes no difference, and there are no boundaries on the earth. The whole earth is ours.If all the universities of the world start teaching you to be human – not Christian, not Mohammedan, not Hindu, not Buddhist – there will be a possibility of evolution. But, on the contrary, there are Catholic universities. How is it possible? It is a contradiction in terms. A university has to be universal; it cannot be Catholic. There are Hindu universities, there are Mohammedan universities. Even education is contaminated, polluted.Ronald Reagan was proposing that, in every educational institution, prayer should become compulsory. In the first place, prayer can never be compulsory. Anything compulsory is hated. Secondly, which prayer are you going to make – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu? Who is going to decide?The proposal was absolutely absurd. And it is good that the Supreme Court of America refused it. It is a pressuring of educational systems by the government.But I would like the Supreme Court to consider again – not prayer, but meditation.Meditation does not belong to any religion. In fact, meditation makes you capable of dropping your Christianity, your Judaism, your Hinduism, because now you know the real truth of your being, which is not in your holy scriptures, which cannot be in anything given to you from outside. It has to be discovered by yourself. It is your freedom to discover it or not.Meditation is not religious. Meditation is a scientific method. Atheists can practice this; no God is needed. Prayer needs a God. For meditation no belief is needed, no requisite. Meditation is simply a method to enter into your innermost being and to become more conscious.Right now, man’s consciousness is very superficial. One-tenth of your being is conscious. Your unconscious is nine times more than your consciousness. It is as if just on your porch you have a little candle, and the whole house which has many rooms is in utter darkness. Your whole house has to be lighted. In that light is transformation.If a man becomes fully conscious there is no corner of darkness in his being which is unconscious. He cannot commit a crime. He cannot do anything wrong – not because you have told him, not because the Bible says so, not because the ten commandments are there, no. Now he has his own insight.Now he can see himself what is right and what is wrong. And seeing, nobody falls in a well. In darkness it is possible to fall in a well. Seeing, nobody can do anything wrong. But seeing is possible only when there is no darkness within you.A fully conscious human being is the new man. We are struggling for the new man.That’s why I go on destroying your conditionings. My whole effort is to deprogram you and make you clean – as clean, as pure, as innocent as you were when you were born.You were not born a Christian, you were not born Jewish; you were born just an innocent potentiality of growth which has been stopped by the vested interests. And those vested interests are still in power. They are doing their best to destroy any possibility for human evolution.My people have to fight for their own sake and for the sake of humanity. First, become enlightened, and then spread your light to anybody who is interested.Everybody is interested. Who would not like to become more conscious, more alive, more loving, more compassionate? Just models are needed. People are needed who can create a tremendous urge in others that they can also have the same joy, the same dance, the same song and the same fragrance.The politicians and the priests are still not on their deathbed. We will have to put them on their deathbed. They will resist, but what to do? Either they have to become part of an evolutionary process or they have to disappear from the earth.No more crucifixion can be allowed. We have done enough crime against the potential growth of humanity. It is time that it should be stopped. But the only way to stop is: begin with yourself. You should become an example – that you are neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, that you don’t believe in God, heaven and hell; that you don’t believe that you are American, Russian, Indian, that you claim the whole earth to be yours, that you claim the universe to be yours.It is our home. There is no need to divide it. Division brings war, bloodshed. Politicians want it to remain divided.In an undivided humanity, politicians will be out of employment. An undivided humanity – then what does the Polack pope have to do? Go to Poland and become really what he is, just a Polack.Humanity is the greatest flowering of existence. And existence has given you a responsibility; it has trusted you that now you will carry evolution further. But for ten thousand years or more there has not been any change at all.It is very shameful. It is ugly, disgusting.My people have to free themselves from all conditions. Meditate deeply. Move beyond your thoughts, emotions, and search for the center of the cyclone. There is a center in each of you – the very source of your life. It has to be found.It should be the goal of your life to find it. Once you are there, everything will go through a revolution.All the revolutions that have happened before – French revolution, Russian revolution, Chinese revolution – are not revolutions, just changes of power gangs, changes from one mafia to another mafia.The real revolution is only one, and that happens within you, within each individual. And it has to be done really fast, because the idiotic politicians of the world are preparing for a global suicide by nuclear weapons.Now there are two dangers for the destruction of humanity. One comes from politicians – the nuclear weapons. The other comes from religions – the disease called AIDS.Religions have contributed nothing except this great thing, AIDS. AIDS is born out of homosexuality. Religions – all the religions of the world – have been teaching celibacy, which is unnatural, unscientific. And I am amazed, not a single scientist, not a single medical expert will say the truth: that celibacy is impossible.It is programmed in your biology. Just as a woman has to go through her monthly period – she cannot do anything about it, it is part of her biology – in the same way, man, by his food, by his exercise, by his work, goes on creating male sperms.And he has only a small space for them. When the space is full, they want to get out. And it seems to be logical, because they are alive and they want to get out into the world and grow and become beings. If you don’t give them a natural outlet, then they will find some unnatural outlet.If monasteries keep only men, and nunneries keep only women, then naturally men will become homosexuals. Homosexuality is a by-product of the religious stupidity of insisting on celibacy. Unless you prevent celibacy being preached from all the platforms in churches, in temples, in mosques, you cannot get rid of homosexuality. And homosexuality has come to a climax in the disease AIDS, which has no cure. AIDS is simply slow suicide.So politicians have created death for you, and your religious leaders have created death for you. And it is time to revolt against both. But you can revolt against both only if you go through an inner revolution which will give you strength, stamina, courage, guts and insight.Osho,Is maturation an ongoing process? How is maturation related to awareness? Please explain.Yes, maturation is an ongoing process. There is no limit to it – not even the sky is the limit. Your consciousness is far bigger than the whole universe. It is infinitely infinite. You cannot come to a point where you can say, “Enough.” There is always more and more. There is always a possibility to go on growing. And growing, maturing is such a beautiful experience, that who wants to stop it?We are stopped in every way. Even a great scientist like Albert Einstein has used only fifteen percent of his intelligence. What to say about ordinary people? – they never use more than five percent.Just think, if Einstein was capable of using one hundred percent of his intelligence he would have given the world unimaginable richness.And if everybody is using his consciousness one hundred percent, then who would like to go to heaven and live with those dead saints, dodos, masochists, whose only qualification was self-torture? – which is simply a psychological disease.If everybody uses one hundred percent intelligence, we can create paradise here. There is no need to go anywhere. We can give man as long a life as he wants, as healthy a life as he wants. We can create so much wealth that it becomes just like air – nobody needs to hoard it.Using your intelligence totally, means the beginning of maturity.Awareness is only a methodology. First, become aware of how much intelligence you are using, or are you using it at all? Belief, faith, are not intelligent. It is taking a decision against your intelligence. Awareness is a methodology to watch how much intelligence you are using. And just in that watching you will see that you are not using much. There are many ways awareness will make you alert. You can use it.Awareness will bring you to your one hundred percent intelligence, will make you almost divine. And awareness does not stop there. Awareness helps you to use your intelligence fully.Intelligence is your outgoing road, connecting you to the world, to the objects. Intelligence will give you more science, more technology. In fact, there is no need for man to work anymore, if we can use our intelligence. Machines can do almost everything. And you need not go on carrying, according to Jesus, the cross on your shoulders. That is stupid.Machines can do everything, and you are freed for the first time from slavery; otherwise, it is only in name that you feel you are free. But you have to earn the bread, you have to earn some money to make a shelter, a house, money for medicine, money for other things.So it seems you are independent, but you are not. The old slavery is no more there; now you are not chained, but there are invisible chains – your children, your old parents, your sick wife, your job.Man is not yet free. He is working eight hours, and still carrying files home. Working late in the night at home, working on Sundays. Still the files go on growing on his table, and there seems to be no end to it. Enter any office and you will see these people, see these people’s tables. Can you call them free? Just think about yourself: are you really free?There is only one possibility: super-technology, which can do all the work and man will be completely free to be creative. You can play your guitar, sing your song. You can paint, you can make sculptures. You can do thousands of things to beautify this earth. You can make beautiful gardens, ponds.There is so much to be done to make this earth beautiful. Even if there is a God he may start feeling jealous, thinking that it was wrong to drive Adam and Eve out of heaven; those people are doing far better. And there will be no surprise – if there is a God, one day he will knock on your doors and will say, “May I come in?”Awareness will release your intelligence, will make you mature. And then maturity goes on growing.Ordinarily you simply grow old, you don’t grow up. Growing old is one thing, growing up is totally different. All animals grow old: no animal, except man, can grow up. Growing old simply means you are coming closer to your death – not much of an achievement. Growing up means you are coming to realize the deathless, the eternal which has no beginning and no end. All fear disappears. All paranoia disappears. You are not mortals.Growing old, you are mortals. Growing up, you become immortals. You know you will be changing many houses. You will be changing many forms, but each form will be better than the past one, because you are growing, you are maturing. You deserve better forms, better bodies. And, finally, there comes a moment when you don’t need any body. You can remain just pure consciousness spread all over existence. It is not a loss, it is a gain.A dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean…. You can think the poor drop is lost, has lost its identity. But just look from a different dimension: the drop has become the ocean. He has not lost anything, he has become vast. He has become oceanic.Awareness is the method to first wake up your intelligence, then to wake up your being, then to help you become mature, give you the realization of immortality, and ultimately to make you one with the whole.Osho,You have often referred to the quote, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” How can this be prevented from happening again?Is a horizontal hierarchy really possible?Alleluia for this new day.That sentence is not mine. I have quoted Lord Acton, so a few things have to be clarified.I agree with him to a certain extent, but basically I disagree with him. His quotation is, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”This is a factual experience of the whole history of man. Whoever comes to power, goes through a great change. A man you have never thought would do such criminal acts starts doing them on a large scale.When Adolf Hitler was chosen by Germany to be the chancellor – and remember, Germany is one of the most intelligent countries in the world, seriously intelligent. They are so serious that they cannot understand any jokes. But there are no two opinions about their intellectuality. They have given to the world the best philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Freud, Marx, Albert Einstein. In every field they have contributed. In music, in poetry, in literature. Just one problem with them: they don’t have a sense of humor.I have heard that if you tell a joke to an Englishman he laughs two times: first, just to be polite to you – it is expected, you are telling a joke; not to laugh is ungentlemanly. He does not understand what is the matter, but just to look nice he follows etiquette. He is a gentleman, he laughs. And the second time, he laughs in the middle of the night when he gets the joke.The German laughs only once – that too, when he sees that others are laughing, so there must be something in it. Next time never comes.But if you tell a joke to a Jew he does not laugh at all. On the contrary, he says, “Stop all this nonsense. The joke is very old, stale. Secondly, you are telling it all wrong!”Such a serious country, and they fell into the hands of an idiot. Even Charlie Chaplin would have been better. If they wanted the same type of mustache, Charlie Chaplin was capable of doing it.What happened? Adolf Hitler was not a bad man in the beginning. In fact, the whole country felt that he was capable of bringing the chaos in the country to an end, he could make the country strong.And he did that, but once he was in power then his own personality started going into a change. Now it was not a question of making Germany strong, financially rich. Now it became a question of conquering the whole world. What happened? – and this has been happening always.So, factually, Lord Acton is right, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But Lord Acton himself was a politician. He cannot go very deep into the psychology of the matter.Power does not corrupt; it simply gives you an opportunity to bring all your unconscious into the conscious. You always wanted to do these things, but there was no opportunity. So you had repressed all those desires, because they were making you miserable. But any desire repressed remains alive and, whenever there is an opportunity, the desire rises to the conscious mind.Power does not corrupt you; you are already corrupted. Power gives you an opportunity to realize whatever your desires are. In fact, the people who have been in power are themselves amazed. They had never consciously thought about it. It was all in the dark corners of their minds, hiding. But now there is opportunity; there is no need to keep those desires repressed. They start surfacing.So to me, basically, psychologically, power simply gives you an opportunity to show your real face; otherwise, you are wearing a mask, a nice, smiling Jimmy Carter smile.Power gives you the chance not to wear the mask. You can show your real intentions and nobody can prevent you. And if it is absolute power, then certainly you are going to do every animal act that is part of your collective unconscious.I have to remind you there are three layers of your consciousness: the conscious – the first, very thin layer. You can scratch just a little bit and the unconscious will erupt. Then there is this unconscious – nine times bigger than your conscious.And the latest, and the greatest contribution of Carl Gustav Jung, is that beyond the unconscious there is still a tremendous darkness which is the collective unconscious. You have been carrying all that you have been for millions of years. You have changed your forms, but your unconscious goes on carrying all those memories.Scientists say man was born in the ocean, so the first form must have been a fish. And the child in the mother’s womb in nine months passes through the whole evolution of man. And it is strange: if you take a picture every day for nine months you will discover the whole long history of each human being.First the child is a fish, and at the last, before he becomes a human child, he is a monkey – even with a tail! And before he completes the circle in nine months and becomes a human child, the tail drops. But the place where the tail was connected to you, the bones which were holding the tail, remain with you all your life.That was the greatest argument of Charles Darwin, that man has come from monkeys. He has just lost his tail and has stood on two feet. And because he has stood on two feet, he has grown a certain intelligence.And he is right about it, because all animals are horizontal to the earth, so the blood circulates to the head, to the tail, in the same proportion. Their heads cannot grow the very subtle nervous system which is needed for intelligence.In your small skull you have millions of small nerves. They are so thin you cannot see them with your eyes. They are so thin that if you put one nerve cell on top of another, then one hundred nerve cells will be as thick as your hair. They are really delicate. Because man stood on two feet, blood could not reach to the head in the same proportion – it was against gravitation. Small quantities reach. That allowed the whole structure of the mind to develop.You may not have observed that you feel so relaxed after sleep; all worries, all tensions are gone. In the morning you feel so fresh. The reason is you fall down from humanity into a horizontal position; you become an animal. And an animal has no tensions, no worries. The blood circulation becomes equal to your mind and feet: that’s why in the morning you feel so fresh.Seeing this freshness, this morning aliveness, yoga got into a trap. They thought that if horizontal blood flow can give you so much mental relaxation, then standing on your head will be really great, because all the blood will be flowing like a flood, because now it will be in tune with the gravitation. Your feet will not be getting enough blood, and your head will be flooded. But their logic was not right. That much of a flood destroys your mind tissues; they are too delicate for that much blood.In India, I have never seen a single intelligent Hindu sannyasin who has been practicing the headstand. They are just super-idiots, for the simple reason that they have destroyed….Yes, you will see them very calm and quiet – just like buffaloes munching grass, so calm and quiet. Have you seen any buffalo bored? any buffalo worried? in anxiety? in tension? asking about the meaning of life? thinking, “What is anguish?”No, for a buffalo all these problems don’t exist. She does not have that delicacy. And the people who have been standing on their head for hours become buffaloes. Yes, you will see them very calm and quiet, but don’t be deceived by their calmness and quietness. They have paid for it; they have lost their intelligence.The human child passes through all the stages humanity has passed, and your collective unconscious has all the memories. You may have been a lion, you may have been a tiger, you may have been a fox. In your past lives you may have taken all these forms. That means, if you get absolute power, all these forms will start arising.If you have power – not absolute power – then only your unconsciousness will affect your actions. But if you have absolute power, then your collective unconscious will start affecting your actions.So it is not power that corrupts; it is that power simply reveals your reality.You are asking me, what can be done to prevent it? The only way to prevent it is that you should enter as a witness, first of your conscious mind, thoughts, imaginations, etcetera – just be a witness to them without any judgment.And you will be surprised. As your witnessing becomes more and more crystallized, thoughts start disappearing. When you are one hundred percent crystallized, all thoughts disappear. Consciousness becomes just a pure silence.Now you can move deeper. Now you can turn your witness and enter into the darkness of the unconscious, where you will find all that you have been told to repress.Telling to a fourteen or fifteen-year-young boy that celibacy is a virtue, that he has to remain celibate until he has come from the university and he gets married, you are simply asking the impossible.At the age of eighteen man has the most sexual power. After eighteen he starts declining. It is at the age of eighteen that he comes to the peak of his sexual energy, and he can have tremendously significant orgasms. And he is capable of having three, four, five orgasms in one night. When he was able to have orgasms, he was told to remain celibate. He repressed his energy, or he became a pervert. He became a homosexual or he started masturbating.But in all the countries even doctors go on telling people that masturbation will make you crazy, will make you mad. This is sheer nonsense. In fact, to get rid of sexual energy which is too much, masturbation is the most hygienic method. And at the age of eighteen, if you can be taught masturbation with meditation, your whole life will be a totally different life. Not a life of misery, suffering, sadness, frustration, but a life of sheer dance and song.That’s what I will teach people. When they are at the peak of their sexual energy, that is the moment when they can have orgasm very easily. And now the Pill is available, so there is no problem. Boys and girls should be living in the same hostels. They should be making love. The fear of getting pregnant is no more there. Now love is, for the first time, pure fun. And joined with meditation it becomes sacred fun.No prayer, no church-going can help you to understand what I am saying. No Holy Bible can give you the insight.But if the girl is not available, then help people with masturbation. Teach them how you have to be meditative. And when you come to a peak and you explode into an orgasmic joy, watch. Be alert. This is absolutely medical, scientific, and to me, spiritual. But this is not being done. They are being told lies: that you will go crazy if you masturbate. Then you are driving them towards homosexuality.Girls you keep in separate hostels. Boys you keep in separate hostels. Masturbation will lead them to madness – nobody wants to be mad. So what alternative have you left for them? All these imbeciles who have been teaching these things drive people towards homosexuality. And a man becoming homosexual is in a great danger. Now we know that he can have AIDS, which will not have any cure.Between the age of fourteen and twenty-five, while he will be in the university, he is in every way repressed. In the unconscious he will find all these repressions. But if he remains just a witness, those repressions will surface to the conscious and disappear. That is the miracle of witnessing.When the whole unconscious is empty, then ordinary power cannot corrupt you.The third step has to be taken now: to enter into the collective unconscious. And you are capable of it. The same method: witness. You may witness yourself as a tiger, as a fox, as a dog, as a wolf – all are the possibilities. Different people will come to realize different forms, because different people have come from different sources.Just witness. Those forms will start surfacing; they will move into the conscious and disappear.Anything that you can bring to the consciousness with witnessing, disappears. And if you can clean, give a spring-cleaning to your whole consciousness, to the very bottom, then no power can corrupt you – not even absolute power can corrupt you. In fact, on the contrary, power will make you more humble, more creative. Absolute power will make you a great servant of humanity, a great blessing to existence.This is the only way. You cannot prevent others, but you can transform yourself.And the new humanity will choose such people to be the presidents, to be the prime ministers, to be vice-chancellors, chancellors – people who have a completely pure consciousness.I call it enlightenment. All darkness has disappeared and everything has become light.The enlightened person will have power, but his power will be used for sharing love, for creating more opportunities for love. His absolute power will make him absolutely humble.Sannyasins have to cleanse themselves. We have one million sannyasins around the world at least. If we can cleanse just a few thousand sannyasins, then those will be the people who will be holding power in the coming days. And they will transform the whole humanity and its course.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the difference between Judas, the only intelligent disciple of Jesus, betraying him, and Siddha, the vice-chancellor of our meditation university, and other influential leaders and powerful people of the commune, like Prabodhi, Deeksha, Shiva, Makima, Somendra, Sushila, Divya, etcetera going against you?There is a great difference. Judas betrayed Jesus, nobody can betray me – because Jesus asked for faith, and I don’t ask for any faith from you.Jesus asked people to believe in him; he is the savior. I do not ask you to believe in me but to believe in yourself, because nobody can save you except yourself. There is no other savior than yourself.How can you betray me?You can only betray yourself.That’s what Sheela and her gang have done. They have betrayed their own spiritual growth.And the remaining people – you mentioned Siddha, Deeksha, Makima – these people were forced to leave by Sheela. They still love me, as they have always loved me.Just the other day Richard came back from Santa Fe, the city of the camels, and he was surprised that they are all immensely happy that Sheela has left, and they all want to come back. Hundreds of others who have left will be coming back. This time they will find a totally different climate, fresh air. Now one can breathe; otherwise, people were getting suffocated.They tried hard to live under Sheela and her gang, but there is a limit to human patience. Finally they decided it is better to leave. How much can you tolerate humiliation, and humiliation by someone who was nobody. Sheela was just a waitress in a hotel in America before she came to me. And I made her a queen of a whole kingdom of sannyasins all over the world.It was great for Makima to have tolerated her for almost three years. Makima comes from one of the most super-rich families, and Sheela was forcing her to drive trucks. She had always been chauffeured, and now she was driving big trucks; but she accepted it out of love for me, because she wanted to remain here. Amrit, her boyfriend, was a doctor.But Sheela’s assistant, and the mastermind in this whole gang of fascists, was Puja, who has been harassing all the doctors, all the nurses, everybody, in every possible way. She would write prescriptions and force the doctors to sign them. It is illegal. Patience is one thing, but to be forced to do illegal things is not right.Puja herself was capable of prescribing medicines – she was a perfectly educated nurse, had a license to prescribe medicines just like any doctor, but she was absolutely cunning.The doctors were not willing, because the things that were prescribed were not relevant to the sickness, to the person at all. But those prescriptions were not for the sickness, they were punishments. Amrit did not become part of all the crimes that they were doing; he left with tears in his eyes. And I know Makima: whatever happens, her love for me cannot change.These people have not betrayed me. These people have been forced to go away from here. Sheela was afraid of all those people who were more intelligent than her – and almost everybody is more intelligent than her. She is not educated; I had to teach her each and every thing. From a hotel waitress, I made her a celebrity all over the world. And this is the reward and gratitude that she has shown me.Naturally, anybody who is in power and feels that there are people who are far more intelligent remains in a kind of phobia, wanting somehow to get rid of these people.The chancellor of the university, Amitabh, left. The vice-chancellor of the university, Siddha, left. Both were unique individuals, but both will be back soon.Shiva, who had been a guard for many years – she forced him to leave. And the way to force him was through humiliation, giving him jobs which the man had never done. The day he left…. I used to go driving outside the commune. Just near Krishnamurti Lake, at the end, he was kneeling down on his knees, tears in his eyes, to say good-bye to me. He has not betrayed.And they are all informing me that they want to come back, because the reason that they had to leave has disappeared.So remember, these people were not Judases – except Sheela, who proved really poisonous. But I can understand her problem. She had come to power, she had never seen so much money in her life passing through her hands. She had a bank balance in Switzerland. She slowly slowly siphoned money coming here from European communes – forty-three million dollars.It is in the name of Sheela and Savita – it was said in front of Hasya and Savita promised that before she left she would give all the details to Hasya. She has not given any details, she simply escaped.The only person who has betrayed is Sheela.I have always respected women. Sheela has betrayed that respect.The whole commune I had given into the hands of women. It will not be so anymore. Now men will have an equal share of power in everything.It is a crime against womankind. I was trying to give some compensation to women because they have suffered so long, for thousands of years. But I am having second thoughts: perhaps they needed that suffering.One of India’s great poets, Tulsidas, writes in one of his poems, “Animals, untouchables, and women, once in a while need a good beating.” I have always condemned that man, but Sheela and her group have proved Tulsidas was not wrong. I was not right; perhaps Tulsidas is right. I have been always a supporter of women’s liberation, but Sheela and her gang have proved that if women are in power, Hitlers will be forgotten.Even one FBI person was overheard to say here that when he saw all the bugging devices he was amazed, he could not believe it. He said that whoever has done this has surpassed Nixon and Watergate, because the way it was done was far more sophisticated.And how many houses have they bugged? The whole hotel – all the rooms were bugged. Anybody staying in the hotel was staying in an imprisonment. Even bathrooms were bugged. You could not be allowed to have your thoughts or just sing a song of your own without it being known to Sheela immediately.She had bugged my room. She was continually insisting for many days that a switch for a buzzer was needed – a buzzer for the guards who are on the roof of my house – so “if you see any emergency you can inform them.”I said, “I live in the room. The curtains are drawn almost the whole day, except only for one hour – half an hour when I take my lunch, half an hour when I take my supper. And anyway, if somebody is coming towards the house the guards on the roof will see him first. Their visibility is bigger. And I mostly sit with closed eyes. It is absolutely useless; but if you want to put it in, just for your satisfaction you can.”But it was not a switch for the buzzer only. Yes, on the surface it was a switch for the buzzer to the guards, but inside the switch was a microphone. Now the guards have come crying to inform me, “We were seeing it every day: Julian continually coming to change the tape” – the tape was in the bathroom of the guards. “We could not open our mouths because Sheela convinced us that it was for the master’s safety: ‘If anybody enters the room – he sits with closed eyes – if something happens in the room, you will immediately know.’”Since that buzzer was fixed I was puzzled only about one thing, that whenever she wanted to talk about something that she thought was very secretive – she used to sit at least four, five feet away from me – then she would come close.I could not understand, because even if it was secret, there was nobody in the room: what was the need to come so close? But she was not coming close to me, she was coming close to the microphone so that everything she said would be picked up exactly, and whatever reply I gave her would also be picked up. She proved a real snake.And now she is giving interviews to magazines, to television. And she is repeating two things: first, that she had to leave the commune because there was a power struggle. We had never heard about that power struggle. Who was struggling for power?And the second thing was, “I have so much information with me, almost as much as the ocean, but I will not reveal it.” That is a message to the attorney general of Oregon, to the FBI – that she is willing to reveal it if they give her immunity. Then she can save all those twenty criminals who have escaped from here, and she can point to any people and say that these are the people who did all the wrong deeds.And remember it, it is a simple principle of dirty politics that the government, FBI, and the state police do not seem to be interested in the crimes. We have given them solid proofs, and they have not taken a single step; otherwise, they could inform Interpol to arrest these twenty people and bring them here.They could inform the Swiss government, they could inform the German government that these people are criminals and they should not be given shelter, before they escape into a country where the American government will have no power at all. For example, if they enter East Germany, then you will not be able to catch hold of them. And they are giving them time. The simple reason is, perhaps their agents are meeting them and finding a way that the whole thing can be forced on innocent sannyasins.It has been overheard from FBI people that they would like at least five hundred sannyasins imprisoned. Strange – we give you the people who have done the crime, the people themselves have proved that they are criminals by escaping, and you want to imprison five hundred sannyasins. For what reason? To destroy the commune.They will choose people who are absolutely necessary for the commune’s existence: doctors, legal experts, people who prepare your food, people who drive your buses – anybody who is in any way essential for the commune’s existence. With five hundred, they can destroy the whole commune. Their interest is not the crime that has been committed. They want to commit a bigger crime: their interest is in destroying the commune.And now Sheela is trying her last strategy: if immunity is given to her she is ready to reveal all the names of the people who have committed the crimes.Just the other day, Stern magazine wanted somebody from here to go to Germany for a discussion on the television with Sheela. I sent the message, “Why should anybody go there? Sheela can come here; I will face her myself, and I will see how much guts she has.” I am ready for an open discussion on television, and I am ready to expose everything she has done. Nobody else can do it. Nobody else knows her and her mind the way I know her.She is telling lies to the press, unbelievable lies. I don’t possess a single thing. Everything that I use belongs to the commune, has been donated by sannyasins from all over the world. It was their gift to me. But I told her that I do not want to have any gifts, so make trusts; all those gifts should go to the trust. I want to remain exactly as I was born, without anything and that’s the way I want to go from the world – without anything. But if people love me around the world, and go on sending gifts, then make separate trusts for everything.There are now ninety Rolls Royces. And she is saying in an interview with Stern that for one Rolls Royce I threatened that if she did not bring one Rolls Royce more I would commit suicide. It is simply so absurd. And it is against the law of economics. Everybody knows the law of diminishing returns: If you have one Rolls Royce, you may have great joy – but with ninety Rolls Royces, each Rolls Royce becomes less valuable.In the whole world there is nobody else who has ninety Rolls Royces. So whether I have ninety or ninety-one does not make any difference: I am already on the top! And now, after ninety Rolls Royces, one more Rolls Royce – what value can it have to me? And for that one Rolls Royce I will commit suicide? She is going almost insane. She looks on the television completely drugged. If she has any courage, she should come here – no harm will be done to her. She should just face me, and let it be known to the whole world.Before me, she becomes just a mouse, starts crying and weeping – the same ancient female technology. It has happened so many times – crying and weeping and sobbing, so that just to get rid of her, I would say, “Okay, do whatever you want to do.”Just last night it happened – one interviewer went on and on, on and on. There seemed to be no end to his questions; he had almost a whole book of questions. Just to stop him somewhere…. It was getting to be ten at night, and he asked, “Do you agree with Socrates and his dictum, ‘Know thyself’?”I said, “I absolutely agree.” And I had to stand up and tell him that I had to agree, otherwise this interview would never end! Otherwise, who is going to agree with that old Socrates, who was a homosexual?But to bring up all that would mean the interview would continue: Is homosexuality the way to know thyself? Socrates is the most prominent homosexual the world has known. And now that we know about AIDS, he will have to take the responsibility for it. Knowing thyself turned into a very dangerous disease, AIDS. But to finish the interview…. It had become almost a torture; for three hours….And that was the situation with Sheela. How can she manage to face me? And if she was courageous enough to face me, at least she would have come to say good-bye to me. She did not even come to say good-bye to me. She escaped like a thief, a murderer. She has degraded, in my eyes, the status of womanhood.She could do anything. She married an American and, without divorcing him, or even telling him that she was divorcing him, she then married a Swiss sannyasin, so that when she escaped from here she had a home in Switzerland. This is bigamy – a big crime.When she became aware there that she had committed a crime, she rushed to Nepal – a small Himalayan kingdom in India, very poor, with perhaps the poorest people in the world, where you can give a small bribe to any magistrate and you can get a back-dated divorce.So now she has a Nepalese back-dated divorce. Strange – why should one go to Nepal for a back-dated divorce? It was necessary. You cannot get, in any cultured country, a back-dated divorce so easily. And when you are married to an American husband, you should divorce him in America. There are possibilities – there are states where you can go and get a divorce. But she could not come back to America. The American husband perhaps still does not know that he is divorced. The poor fellow still believes that he is her husband!So the only person who has proved a Judas is Sheela. But even Judas was better than Sheela, far better and far superior, because when he realized the crime that he had done he committed suicide – just within twenty-four hours. Handing over Jesus for thirty silver pieces to the enemies…. He must have been a man of conscience; he hanged himself from a tree.Christians don’t talk of him, his crucifixion is not at all discussed in churches. He crucified himself. It was a great understanding that what he had done was wrong – a great repentance.Sheela does not have even that conscience. And with a man like me…if she had come to me, even if she comes to me now, with her whole gang, and confesses that they had committed these things and they feel guilty, I will take all their crimes on myself – because to me, to live tomorrow does not mean anything. I have attained whatever life is capable of attaining. I have experienced the ultimate peak of life, love, light.There is no problem, I can take the whole load of crimes, but at least I should know what the load is; otherwise, how can I take it on myself?Those twenty people have not yet known anything, so rather than sending them to prison, I would prefer myself to be hanged. And they have committed enough crimes, enough for a death sentence for one single man. That will help the commune. That will help those people.But instead of doing that, Sheela is lying to the press – which is not going to help. Lying has never helped anybody. It is truth that liberates.And my love for all those criminals remains the same, because I have never loved anybody while asking them to be according to me, to my ideas. I have never put any condition on my love. My love is unconditional.They can come and see what unconditional love can do. I will take all their burden on me, because to me it does not matter. But all those twenty people have still to realize themselves; they have not even found the blessed state in which I am – now no death can destroy it.So I am the right person to be hanged for all their crimes. I would like them to confess, and I would like you to forgive them, because love knows infinite forgiveness.Osho,How is it that although I feel so serene and in harmony when I am witnessing, I still spend most of my time in a daze? I don't understand why I continue to sleep, when the rare moments that surface are so exquisite.Just old habit. Old habits die hard, but they do die. Don’t be worried!Osho,You said at a press conference that if the authorities don't act, we will take matters into our own hands, and bring them back here. This will presumably involve kidnapping, false arrest, and other crimes every bit as serious as those of Sheela and her gang. If you order this, how is your brand of fascism and anarchy different from Sheela's?I have just answered that my way of bringing them here will not be fascist. It will be my love, my forgiveness, that will bring them here.But whosoever is asking the question is an authentic camel.Osho,It feels as if the lesson that has come out of our recent experience is what you have been teaching us all along – that all hope is false, and that in order to survive we must learn to live without dreams and illusions. Would you please comment?Is there any need to comment?Osho,We are feeling a tremendous gratitude and even deeper love for you. Sheela has gone of her own choice, and seeing the scope of her criminal activities, I can't help feeling that she only left because she couldn't control you, no matter how she tried. The rock was shattered by the flower. Osho, can we ever thank you?That’s something to be remembered: The rock can be shattered by a roseflower. And that is our power.In the last press conference you heard a question from a journalist, and I said, “If any harm is done to my innocent people, then no American embassy anywhere in the world will be allowed to function. And my people can hijack any American planes.” But that was just a joke! We do not need to do such things.Our power is of love, of innocence.And whosoever will clash with our love and innocence will be shattered.Even nuclear weapons are not more powerful than love, because death can never be more powerful than life. Guns can never be more powerful than laughter.So if they want to destroy us they need not take unnecessary trouble and go in circles, give immunity to the criminals and force the innocent to be punished – there is no need. You can have a beautiful Hiroshima here, you can just drop a hydrogen bomb. And that will be something, because you don’t have what Japan has: a Nagasaki, a Hiroshima – America is missing. You can also brag then, that you also have a Hiroshima.But this Hiroshima will be totally different. People will be dancing, laughing, loving, and they will welcome death. There will be no despair, no anguish, no fear. Try it. That will become a precedent for the whole world. Our laughter, our dance, our song, our music, will remain haunting the politicians for their whole life.Why take such long routes? It is so strange…. The KGB in Soviet Russia is persecuting my sannyasins there, and they are continuously hammering in their minds that I am a CIA agent. And the CIA and the FBI are trying to destroy this commune. Perhaps they think I belong to the KGB.I am certainly a unique person! No other person has that distinction. Either you belong to the KGB or you belong to the CIA – and I am riding on both! And I am enjoying the ride, and seeing how stupid human beings can be.I have no interest in politics, neither in the CIA nor in the KGB. My interest is in humanity, in values that can make man flower. I am certainly in love with the American Constitution, because it is the only hope for humanity. But American politicians are corrupting it as much as possible. So it seems that we will have to fight to save the American Constitution and its values against the Americans!From all the courts of America the Bible should be thrown out. It is nothing but pornography. And when you have a beautiful document like the American Constitution, why go to third-rate pornography, and keep it in courts for people to take the oath on? And still you go on thinking that you are not mixing religion with the government! You are mixing religion with government.And politicians are in a difficulty – I can understand. The American Constitution was made by real, authentic lovers of humanity. But the reward for such people is assassination.Abraham Lincoln was assassinated – the only politician in the whole world of whom it can be said that he was not political. His only fault was that he was not political.Twenty percent of the American presidents have been assassinated; and the American president has the most sophisticated security arrangements. And in these twenty percent were the best American presidents. The third-grade eighty percent nobody bothers about. Who bothers to assassinate Ronald Reagan? Why waste a bullet? Nobody bothered about Jimmy Carter.Do you know where Jimmy Carter is, and where his smile is? Both have disappeared. In the last pictures of him I have seen there is no smile. And what happened to Jimmy Carter? You will know only one day when he dies. Then there will be in newspapers a small news item, that “Jimmy Carter, ex-president of America, died.”Who wants to kill people who don’t have any high ideals? To have high ideals in your life is dangerous, because the world is full of retarded people; they cannot tolerate you, your presence. Your very existence makes them feel that they are retarded.Abraham Lincoln had to be assassinated. The Kennedys, both the brothers, had to be assassinated. Something beautiful could have come out of those two Kennedys. The first Kennedy was a beautiful man – young, fresh, available for new ideas. And the second Kennedy was even more intelligent than the first.It is a very strange world. You destroy your best flowers, and you preserve plants which never flower, never come to fruition.I am not a politician, I am not a religious leader. But Sheela, while I was in isolation, had created a few things which have to be withdrawn.First, the book of Rajneeshism is not my writing, nor my discourses; it was Sheela and her group’s creation, so it should not be printed again. There is no thing like Rajneeshism – because then it becomes again another Christianity, another communism, another Hinduism. I have been fighting my whole life against all “isms,” and these people made an “ism” out of me!They created the word Rajneeshee. You have to drop that word; otherwise, what is the difference between a Christian, a Jew and a Rajneeshee? I want you to be yourself, not a Rajneeshee.You love me – that does not mean that you have to become a Rajneeshee. You can love me without becoming a Rajneeshee. And what these Rajneeshees have done, this gang of twenty Rajneeshees, is enough to condemn the word.So now, there are no longer any Rajneeshees. You are individuals, totally free individuals. Out of your freedom and love you are here. There is no bondage, there is no contract. There is no surrender, there is no faith.And today I would like to declare something immensely important, because I feel perhaps this helped Sheela and her people to exploit you. I don’t know whether tomorrow I will be here or not, so it is better to do it while I am here and make you free from any other possibility of such a fascist regime.That is, from today, you are free to use any color of clothes. If you feel like using red clothes, that is up to you. And this message has to be sent all over the world to all the communes. It will be more beautiful to have all the colors. I had always dreamed of seeing you in all the colors of the rainbow.Today we claim the rainbow to be our colors.The second thing: you return your malas – unless you wish otherwise. That is your choice, but it is not a necessity anymore. You return your malas to President Hasya. But if you want to keep it, it is up to you.The third thing: from now onwards, anybody who wants initiation into sannyas will not be given a mala and will not be told to change to red clothes – so we can take over the world more easily!Osho,Thank you.For the first time I feel like meditating. I don't want to believe in anything. I don't understand anything. There is nothing to hold onto. I just want to experience your silence.Is this the point?Exactly!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You have brought Zorba the Buddha to life, love and laughter, with luminous silence. You have also spoken on the distinction between rebellion and revolution. If Zorba the Buddha were in this commune, how could he have responded to the growing menace of Sheela and her gang?Would he, as one rebel among the community of rebels, have acted not only individually, but together with others? Could there be some shared awareness or action which might have freed us from the enemies within?Please comment on Zorba the Buddha's responsibility as a social or communal being.Zorba the Buddha is certainly amongst you. And he has acted the way he is supposed to act – individually, rebelliously. Revolution is for crowds, mobs; hence, revolution changes things but never betters them.Rebellion is individual.It has a superiority, a consciousness which only an individual can have.The moment Zorba the Buddha saw what was happening, not a single moment was lost; action was immediate. And Zorba the Buddha acts in such a way – so silently, without any destructiveness – that you become aware only when the act is almost complete.How do you think, how do you explain that Sheela and her fascist gang simply fled away? I had not even uttered a single word, I had not told them to leave, but they could see, feel that I had become aware of their misdeeds.They were not even courageous enough to come and say good-bye to me. I have never seen such a cowardly group – a group who have been here, who have been working in the commune in my name, representing me, and yet who could not gather courage to come and say, “Good-bye, we are leaving.”The functioning of Zorba the Buddha is so silent and so serene, so nonviolent, and so loving….Sheela has given an interview to Stern. I have just heard that my picture is on the cover of Stern, and just in the corner is a small picture of Sheela. It is her interview, twenty-five pages long, with a beautiful heading: “To Hell With Osho.”That’s really the place I would like to go! What am I going to do in heaven with all kinds of dodos, saints? – who are all torturers of themselves – masochistic. Heaven must be the most psychologically sick place, because all psychologically sick people are there. Sheela at least understands my taste. I loved the title.Hell is full of colorful people. All the scientists will be in hell, all the artists, painters, sculptors, poets – people who have contributed to the happiness of man – will be in hell, because they never bothered about the priests and their stupid theologies.You cannot conceive of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Wagner, in heaven. Impossible! Picasso, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Epicurus, Socrates, Gautam Buddha – such a great company! The best, the cream of the whole history is in hell. And wherever people like Socrates, Buddha, Epicurus, Diogenes, Dionysius are, do you think the place will remain the same?Hell will be contemporary, perhaps ahead of us. So many geniuses! Heaven must be absolutely outdated, with a God who is perhaps dead – because since he created this mess called the universe nothing has been heard about him. Perhaps he committed suicide, seeing what he has done.And I know the saints: ugly, in every way. They have not contributed anything to beautify existence, to make man’s life more pleasurable. On the contrary, they have destroyed man’s joy in life, they have destroyed naturalness in man, they have made man a perverted being.I don’t think that laughter is heard in heaven. But in hell it must be a great party, a real Italian party, ongoing – spaghetti and all. Hell is the place to go right now.I feel sorry for Sheela and her fascist gang; they will miss this great opportunity. I am certainly going to hell, and my people are going to be with me. Now, let Sheela be in heaven with all those people who have created homosexuality. In a way, she likes homosexuals – she was always surrounded by homosexuals. Strangely enough, amongst all the sannyasins, she had only homosexuals around her. She will rejoice greatly in heaven, because everybody there is a homosexual.Just one thing I am worried about. She was raped when she was sixteen, became pregnant, had to go through an illegal abortion. In heaven there is every possibility of the gang being raped, because rarely have women entered there. In fact, they are not allowed – just to save the saints.But she has closed the doors for hell, because I am going to be there with one million sannyasins. She cannot go to hell, she has to go to heaven. And she is going to be raped by so-called saints. The Holy Ghost is not going to leave her alone. Virgin or no virgin, for the Holy Ghost it matters not. Just think, for two thousand years the poor fellow has been celibate; it is time for breakfast!I do not know German – fortunately, because it is such a language…if you want to fight, it sounds perfect. But if you are a loving, gentle person, German is absolutely useless. I have always wondered how German lovers talk, because the language is such – as if you are throwing stones at each other. So, I can talk only about the heading on the cover. Soon they will be translating it, then point by point I will discuss it.Zorba the Buddha is something totally new in the world. There have been Zorbas, there have been Buddhas, but they have remained always opposed to each other.Zorba represents materialism, Zorba represents the West. Buddha represents spirituality, Buddha represents the East.The English poet, Rudyard Kipling, says that West is West and East is East, and the twain shall never meet. I don’t write poetry, I don’t believe in words and playing with words. I trust existence. If Rudyard Kipling has any guts – come out of your grave and see, the East and West have met! Here!Zorba is not separate from Buddha. The West is not separate from the East. In fact, any materialism that has no values of spirituality is going to be very mundane, profane, ugly. It will not have any flights into the open sky towards the stars. It will not flower and release its fragrance; it will be just a rock.Spiritualism without materialism may have beautiful values but it is without foundations. It may create great palaces reaching to the stars, but without foundations these palaces can only be hallucinations, they cannot be real.This reminds me….One journalist was asking, “If Sheela was so crude, so violent, so hostile to people, so full of hatred, why did you choose her as the president of the foundation?”When you make a beautiful building, for the foundation you choose all kinds of ugly stones. When the foundation is finished, then you start working with marble, not before that.With human beings this is a difficulty: they don’t know when their time is over, they cling. They think they have been chosen forever. I have told Sheela many times, “Nobody is chosen forever. You fulfill a need. You do your best, then vacate the place for those whose work is now to make something better, higher.”Zorba can only be the foundation; Buddha is the temple. Neither can exist without the other. It has been tried for thousands of years that they should exist separately – and the ultimate result is this insane humanity you see.Either somebody is just a gambler, a drunkard, visiting prostitutes, and knows nothing of anything better…higher values remain absolutely unknown to him. Sheela is that type – a prostitute. Even prostitutes won’t do that.Now the second husband is still living, and she has married a third husband. The second husband knows nothing about it, that he is divorced. Before she went to Nepal, she sent the second husband to Australia to function in the commune there. Now the third husband should be alert. And these are husbands – I am not counting boyfriends.Sheela has something exactly primitive, like an uncut stone, which can be used only in the foundation, because once the building is over nobody is going to see the foundation. I have accepted her because better people are not for foundations. Hasya will not do for a foundation. Kaveesha will not do for a foundation.Zorba has to be only the foundation, to support the buddha – which is the goal of existence.My whole effort is to bring East and West to a deep merger. The West has science, technology – they are all for the foundations. They can create better machines, but they cannot create better men. The East is poor, has no idea of how to create better machines, better houses, better roads, but it can create better men.Even the poor people in the East have some quality which is missing in the West. The poorest will still be immensely patient – not tense, not worried; trusting in existence that something good will come out of it, hoping. Even in the darkest cloud he will be able to see the silver lining.The Western mind, even in the brightest silver lining, will see the dark cloud surrounding it. They both are there; it is a question of your choice.And I would like you to see the whole – not to choose, because the darkest cloud is absolutely necessary for the brightest lining. The bright cannot exist without the dark cloud. Neither has the dark cloud any meaning unless it flowers into bright linings. There is no contradiction.Roots are bound to be ugly. Their function is such, they have to be ugly. They have to go deep into the earth in search of water. They remain hidden – but without them the roses will not flower. All the juice that roses have comes from those ugly roots.And it is not a one-way traffic either, because in response flowers are sending to the roots sun rays, air. They are connected. In fact, there are no divisions anywhere; it is one phenomenon. From the root to the flower, from the West to the East, from Zorba to Buddha, it is one phenomenon. All the religions have denied it. That’s why all the religions have been against humanity.Communism is the by-product of all these religions. Now more than half of humanity is communist, atheist, irreligious, does not have any inquiry into its own interiority. A very strange thing has happened; it has never been such a big movement. There have been atheists, but there have not been so many atheists – more than half.Who has created them? It is the failure of the religions. They talked about flowers, but they could not produce. They failed utterly in their promises; they could not deliver what they were talking about. And the reason was, they were denying the roots. Naturally, a revolution was going to happen, and it has happened.Russia was one of the most religious countries. You will be surprised to know, Karl Marx had never thought that communism would happen first in Russia, then in China. It would have been inconceivable to him; he was thinking communism would happen first in America. But he was not a philosopher, he was not a psychologist; he had no knowledge about man’s growth. He was only an economist.And when people are very linear, moving in one line, forgetting all other dimensions of life, such problems are bound to arise. His only idea was that communism would happen in a country where rich and poor were divided; where the poor would go on becoming poorer, and the rich would go on becoming richer. Naturally, the division would create revolution, the class struggle. But he failed completely in his analysis. It is difficult to find a greater failure than Karl Marx.Communism happened in Russia, which was the most religious country, not rich. There was no class struggle in fact. Why did it happen in Russia?My analysis is: any religious country denying the roots of human growth is sooner or later bound to move to the other extreme. Flowers are not coming. Theism failing, religion failing, priests proving nothing but phony: perhaps atheism is right. They have tried theism for thousands of years; “Now let us try atheism.” In Russia, communism came as atheism, not as an economic theory. That was just part of it, but the basic thing was religion.The same happened in China, one of the most ancient lands. It has always been religious. Most of China was Buddhist. Zorba was missing, and Buddha alone cannot be a fulfillment. The temple was never made. Finally, they had to move, and the movement was going to be psychologically to the other extreme: become atheist, become communist, destroy religion completely.If we want a whole man – and to me a whole man is the only holy man – then Zorba has to be absorbed into Buddha. They have to be accepted totally as one. And I don’t see where the trouble is. In fact, Zorba plus Buddha will be a tremendous enrichment.Buddha cannot laugh, cannot dance, cannot sing, cannot love. Now what kind of life will it be? Hollow!Zorba can sing, dance, enjoy food, drink, love. He will have a life, but he will not know who he is. He will not know the meaning of existence. He will never come to experience the deathlessness of life, the eternity of his existence – that he has been here always, and will be always; only forms change. He will never enter into his own center. He will always remain in the cyclone, very busy, concerned with everything except himself.And the center of the cyclone is the most ecstatic experience, the ultimate experience of human consciousness. Beyond that there is nothing; you have arrived home. But I don’t see that there is any problem, there is no contradiction. You can arrive home, you can be at your center – what prevents you from laughing? In fact, you should be the only one who can really laugh, can become laughter; who can really love, can become love itself – where the lover disappears and only love remains; one who can dance and dance to such abandon that the dancer is completely gone, there is only dance.This is my effort:To bring Zorba the Buddha into the world.That will create a unity in you; your body and soul will have a unity. You will not have to fight against your nature, you can use it as a stepping stone. There is no need to fight, there is no need to repress.All psychological diseases are out of repression. All psychopathological people are just incurable unless they accept their nature totally, without any grudge. You have to use your natural energies to grow. It will bring man into a totality.All religions have made you schizophrenic, split. They have created guilt in you by creating a split; it is their whole business. Only a guilty man will go to church, will go to the synagogue, will go to the temple; otherwise there is no need.If you are one, you would like to dance in the open air under the sun. That will be your real prayer. Nothing is said, nothing is asked, but you are showing your gratitude to existence.Zorba the Buddha will not only destroy the split in man, it will destroy the split in society.The poor and the rich depend on each other; the rich cannot exist without the poor. It is a simple humanitarian gesture…we have enough technology now to produce so much wealth that there is no need for anybody to be poor and starving. But what we go on doing is just the opposite.Thirty million people in the richest country of the world, in America, are undernourished. And you will be surprised: thirty million people in America are over-nourished. They are dieting, and they are trying hard somehow to lose weight. America has the most ugly, fattest men in the whole world. It is a simple arithmetic: these thirty million fat people are eating the food of thirty million who are undernourished.We can produce enough, more than needed, so the necessity to hoard disappears. You don’t hoard air. Of course, on the moon you will. You will have a container hanging on your shoulder with oxygen, because there is no oxygen on the moon.In a desert you will hoard water. People fight in the desert for a small oasis, kill each other. The fight is for water. Here you don’t fight for water; there is more than enough available.I have a different view of society than communism and capitalism. Society needs a super-capitalistic system, and it will become communistic automatically. There will be no need for any revolution. What is needed is evolution, not revolution. Revolution never betters things. It is evolution – growth – which betters things.If many people are poor and a few people are rich, that simply means there is not enough wealth. All effort should be made to create enough wealth, and it can be created; there is no reason why not. And when wealth is there – more than needed – then who bothers to hoard it?A few things will disappear of their own accord which you have not been able to dispel from the society. The poor will disappear, the thief will disappear. The policeman perhaps may not be needed, the magistrate can be put to better use. Thousands of legal advocates are just wasting their time and people’s money; they are not needed.We don’t see things; we simply remove the symptoms, and they come back again.Look at the very causes.In America there is so much crime. Why? There must be temptations for crime. Those temptations can be dropped very easily.Just look at my watch. Are you tempted or not? You will be tempted because you don’t know that it is just of stones, not diamonds. It has no value. When stones can do the work of diamonds, then only fools will be after diamonds. Can you see any difference?In diamonds, the watch is a quarter-million dollars – the same watch exactly. My sannyasins have made it just with stones. It is functioning as accurately as any watch – just one second’s difference in one year – because now it is a very simple phenomenon: whether you purchase a one-million-dollar watch or just a ten-dollar watch, they both use the same kind of electronic battery. The electronic battery has changed the whole idea of watches.But if stones – real, authentic stones – can do the work of diamonds, then why unnecessarily create temptations? Create more watches with beautiful stones, and the temptation for diamonds will disappear. And the prices of the diamonds will come down. In fact, diamonds are stones. We create temptations for crime, and then the criminal is punished, not the person who has created the temptation. Both should be punished!But only symptoms are being removed. The cause will create other symptoms. This is so unscientific. Instead of creating more wealth, every nation is creating more weapons – atomic, hydrogen bombs, nuclear bombs – and piling them up. For what? Do you want to commit a global suicide? Then why so much wastage? If humanity has decided to commit suicide, simple methods are available.Seventy-five percent of man’s energy around the earth is being poured into war efforts. Are we servants of death, destruction? And this seventy-five percent of man’s energy can be poured into life, into the service of life; and there will be laughter, and there will be more health, and there will be more wealth, more food, and there will be no poverty. There is no need for poverty to exist at all.Zorba the Buddha has to first bridge the gap within himself – that will be the basic thing – then start bridging gaps in society.What is the difference between a Christian and a Jew? If there is any difference, then Jesus was not a Christian. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he died as a Jew. He never heard the word Christian. If there is a difference between the Jew and the Christian, Christians should deny Jesus completely. He was a Jew, and all the apostles were Jews. What is the difference between a Jew and a Christian?In my commune there are people from all religions. I cannot see any difference. I have been trying hard – I look in their faces, I look in their eyes, but I cannot figure out whether the man is a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan.What are the differences? Maybe there is a little bit. For example, somebody is white, somebody is black – not a big difference, not more than a half-dollar’s difference. The black man has more than the white man, he is richer by a half-dollar’s worth of pigment, which makes him black. And he needs to be black because he comes from Africa. That pigment prevents him from being burned by the sun. It is a geographical thing.If people are white, it is not something to brag about. You are white because you live in a cold climate. And hankering to get a tan, making so much effort…. Whole beaches are full of people lying down under the sun. Why don’t you go to Africa and have a real tan?The best way will be through crossbreeding: Africans making marriages to white people, making marriages to yellow people, making marriages to brown people. Then your children will have a real variety, something new. They will not be white, they will not be black, they will not be brown, they will not be yellow. Mix all four colors!It is a well-established fact that crossbreeding in trees, in animals, in men, always brings better generations. It is simply stupid that Christians should only marry Christians, Jews should only marry Jews, Hindus should only marry Hindus. This is simply unscientific, absurd.Why doesn’t any culture of the world allow brothers and sisters to marry? That will be the best thing, because they have grown up together, they know each other; there will be less nagging, less fighting. But why has every culture decided not to do that? – because the children born out of a marriage between a brother and sister will be weak, retarded, crippled, will not be so intelligent, because there is no tension.Remember, life is a tension. Death is relaxation. Do you think people in graves are tense? They are completely relaxed. A brother and a sister are so close that the tension is almost nil; hence the child will be without any tension, he will be dull.If this is the case, then let marriages happen between people who are as far apart as possible: the greater the distance, the better the generation. The tension is big; it brings the best out of both persons. And within three or four generations you will find a totally robust, intelligent, long-living humanity.The East should get married to the West. The South should get married to the North. It will help immensely in many ways. I would like to see the whole world as one. And if people are marrying so far away, slowly slowly differences in languages will disappear; there will be only one language. Right now there are thousands – that keeps people apart.The world needs to be one.The world needs one language.The world needs only one kind of man: Zorba the Buddha.The world is fed up with all your religions and all your nations. It is fed up with your priests and your politicians.And Zorba the Buddha can do it very silently – just by his presence, just by his loving, compassionate approach to everything.Now, would it not be good if Americans and Russians start getting married? Let the idiot politicians pile up nuclear weapons, but young people from both the countries should start getting married. Soon the unnecessary hostility will disappear; it will become difficult for an American to be against the Russians – his wife is a Russian. It will be difficult for the Russians to be against the Americans – somebody’s wife is American, somebody’s husband is American.We have to destroy all the boundaries which have been placed between people. There is no need at all for any boundaries; all boundaries are criminal. The earth is one, and whosoever tries to divide it is committing a great and serious crime.You are asking me what Zorba the Buddha would have done when Sheela and her fascist group created an ugly situation. Zorba the Buddha did it, at the right point. Unfortunately, right now there is only one Zorba the Buddha. But one Zorba the Buddha is more than thousands of split people. His unsplit energy was enough: those twenty criminals simply escaped.I would like them to come back and face me on each point. But I don’t think they have the courage. And they are still wanting to commit crime…. Sheela had informed me that she would return my authorizations for her to be my attorney, my secretary, her appointment by me as the president. But she never returned them to me.And then taking papers from every corporation, that means they have still in mind to do something criminal; otherwise, what was the need to take the stationery of different corporations? Perhaps they have bank accounts in the name of different corporations, and they would like to draw the money from them. Or they will exploit sannyasins, still pretending that Sheela is my secretary.And it is strange that people can lie so easily. In one of her interviews she says she was my lover. I don’t love prostitutes. I had made her the secretary, not because she was my lover, but because I saw that she can be a foundation stone; and she was.But stones are stones. When you put them in the foundation, they start telling you that they would like to remain and become the whole temple. When I refused, that was the point at which they escaped.Saying to the press that she has been my lover…. I have no aversion to love, I have loved many people – perhaps more than any man on the earth living today – but Sheela being my lover…? However I stretch my memory, however compassionate I try to be, it does not work.She is looking, in her interviews, pathetic. And she will suffer her whole life. She has betrayed the whole commune, all the sannyasins around the world. She has betrayed a great trust, a great love that the sannyasins had shown to her.But Zorba the Buddha has done his work. You need not be worried: nothing like this is going to happen again. It was a good experience, and it was good to have the experience in the beginning. So now you will be more alert, more aware, and you won’t allow anything like that to happen again.She has done much harm, and I am trying in every way to heal the wounds that she has created. For example, Antelope.They are worried about our police being there. This is strange! In all these years our police have not done any harm to anybody. The people of Antelope want the police to be removed. I will remove the police if the state of Oregon takes the responsibility to see that no sannyasin will be harmed, that no property will be harmed, burned, damaged – because all the sannyasins are here the whole day working, and in the night they go to Antelope.The police are there simply to look after the property; we have two-thirds of the properties of Antelope. I am willing to remove the police force immediately; just purchase all the lands and all the properties and then it is up to you to do whatever you want.They say that we have increased the taxes…. It is very strange: only a dozen old Antelope people are there, and one hundred sannyasins are there – so who is paying the taxes? And those taxes are going into improving the city, its streets and everything that is needed.Just purchase all the properties, and we will declare Antelope tax free. Then do whatsoever you want. It is your city – we have no concern with your city. We will declare it tax free. Let your roads be rotten, your water system finished, your fire brigade dismantled. Do whatsoever you want! We will leave the city tax free. And right now we are paying the taxes, not anybody else.But one condition they have to remember: they have to purchase their properties back at a reasonable price, at the market price right now. I had offered that we would sell them at the same price as we purchased them, but the ex-mayor of Antelope gave an interview to the press and said, “I don’t trust.”That is enough for me. Now the properties will be sold only at the market price, not at the price for which we had purchased them. And we have improved on the properties, renovated the properties, so their prices will be almost twice or thrice more.And it can happen in one day. They can just ask their friends – who were ready to die for Antelope. Now they can help, this is the point of action. Ask the governor, ask the state – take all the properties back and we will vacate. And before vacating we will make it tax free.As far as the name is concerned, we are going to change it immediately. There is no need to wait for it; it costs nothing. But we don’t want any kind of hostility. From our side the people who had created hostility have fled. So now these innocent sannyasins have nothing to do with it.And I have told my sannyasins that you can use any color clothes you want so that you can mix with people more easily, so you cannot be discriminated against. You need not use your mala. You can return it or you can keep it as a memory.But if you want to remain in orange, red, you can. But, particularly when you go out, certainly don’t use red, because it seems Oregonians in the past have been bulls. Why unnecessarily disturb the bulls? Let them rest. Red creates something in their psychology, and we don’t want to disturb anybody in any way.Sheela has created a book, Rajneeshism. That is not my book; I have not read it, I don’t know what is written in it. She has collected material from my other books. Whatever she has added to it, I don’t know; what she has deleted from it, I don’t know.On Monday we are going to have a big world press conference, and we are going to have a bonfire – with dancing and rejoicing – to burn that book…because I am always against the word ism. Humanity has suffered enough.Sheela has created the word Rajneeshee. That is an ugly word. Then what is the difference between a Rajneeshee and a Christian and a Hindu and a Mohammedan?I have withdrawn it. Now nobody is a Rajneeshee. I give you back your individuality, your integrity. To me, you are all individuals, living together because your search is one – not that your dogma is one, not that your system of belief is one. You are rebellious people, and I would like you to remain rebellious. That is the only point that joins you all.You are not to surrender to anybody. You are not to worship anybody. We don’t have a God. God is the projection of the retarded mind. We don’t have a religion in the same way as Christianity, Judaism. We don’t have a holy book. We have only human beings, and we have only books.I have called a big press conference. So get ready with all the rainbow colors. The press should see that something tremendously new has happened to you as individuals.You love me, that’s enough. There is no need for adoration.Just last night, a press reporter was asking, “Then it is going to be very difficult. What are we going to call your people?”I said, “Just call them my people, they are my people. They are not Rajneeshees. So call them friends of Osho – but more than that is not needed.”And then, outside the temple, we will be having a bonfire to burn all the books on Rajneeshism, all the stationery that belongs to the Academy of Rajneeshism.That “ism” is an ugly and dirty word, and I don’t want it to be associated with me. Now it will be called Rajneesh Academy; in short, RA. RA is an ancient Egyptian word which means “the highest experience of consciousness.”We are going to change the plaque before the Mandir, because here also they have put “Academy of Rajneeshism.” That will be changed before Monday. We have to clean up all the rubbish that they have done here.The air is already fresh, people are already breathing happily.I can feel your joy, your freedom.You have again come back to life!Osho,You have said that any religion or way is closed. Is your religiousness the only one that can give birth to new human beings all over the world?It is not a religion; hence naturally it is open. It is a kind of religiousness; an experience, not a theology; a meditation, not a catechism. Yes, it is the only possibility for humanity which is absolutely open.Now there are no problems for anybody who wants to become a sannyasin. He does not have to change his clothes, he does not have to wear the mala. Those were problems for people. They have jobs, they have families…thousands of people wanted to be sannyasins but could not. They had their problems. I have solved all their problems!Osho,Isn't it strange that the negative in us is so vocal, and its opposite – like love and gratitude to you – hesitates to speak but simply is, overflowing but helpless in its own wordlessness?It is not strange. It is how it has to be. The negative is very vocal. It has to be vocal because the negative cannot speak through silence. The negative has to shout. The positive need not say anything. Just your experiencing it…and the fragrance reaches to me.Yes, it is a kind of silent is-ness.That’s why many times the people who are functioning in the offices become confused, because two or three people out of five thousand people will come and make much fuss, say negative things, behave in an ugly, inhuman way. And, naturally, the people in the office think that this must be widespread, these people are representative of others too.That is wrong. The negative person is nobody’s representative. And never bother about the negative people. Just send them to some therapy, they need a good therapeutic bath. And there is no problem – their no can be changed into yes. But they don’t represent the commune. The commune is full of love and silence and joy.And there is no need…for example, when you really love someone, it is very difficult to say, “I love you.” The words fall short of what you feel. What you feel is so big, and the words “I love you” are so small, they cannot contain it.Real lovers may sit silently holding each other’s hand, not saying a word. But when love dies, as it happens in almost all marriages…. Marriage is the death of love. Then people start saying to each other three, four times a day at least, “I love you, darling.” They have to say it, because now love is not there. The silence will not speak it; they have to be vocal about it. They have to be American about it.One of the all-time bestsellers, second only to the Bible, is Dale Carnegie’s book How To Win Friends And Influence People. It suggests that every couple, at least three, four times in a day, should find some way to say, “I love you.” Always bring a roseflower or ice cream or something for the wife, to show your love.That’s why I said, “the American way.” Dale Carnegie is just a phony man; he knows nothing about love. Perhaps that’s what he must have been practicing himself.Love needs no words: eyes say it, gestures say it, actions say it.Just sitting silently, and it is overflowing and reaches.So don’t be worried about it: I know it.Osho,What exactly is the difference between vision and illusion? Can only an enlightened person have a vision?Yes.Osho,Jokes aside, please tell me, who am I?Satyananda!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You always said that women are better than men as far as ruling and governing people is concerned. You said that they are better than men because their starting point is from the heart.Considering recent facts, do you still have this opinion? Do you still trust in women?Certainly. The proof is Hasya, Anuradha. Just one Sheela does not make any difference to me. Does it make any difference that man has produced during history people like Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Nadirshah, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin? Does that mean that all men are condemned?One Sheela is just a dewdrop; it will evaporate in the morning sun. It has not made even a dent in my respect for womanhood. That’s why I have replaced her with another woman – far better, far more intelligent, far more loving. Sheela was sick. She needs to be forgiven. Whatever she did was out of a deranged mind. She has done many crimes, but still she deserves your compassion.As far as I am concerned, one person cannot represent the whole womankind. Two billion women are on the earth. Are you going to decide about two billion women because of Sheela?Just look at Anuradha, who has been with me longer than Sheela. She has never hankered for any power, carries no inferiority complex in her, is absolutely fulfilled as she is. All that she wants is to be here in my presence, whatsoever the cost.Look at Vivek, who has been with me longest – for fifteen years. When she first came, she was only twenty; now she is thirty-five. Almost half of her life she has been with me. And she has served me with an immense devotion, love, care, such that you can only find in ancient stories about women, not in reality. From the morning when I wake up, till at night when I go to sleep, she is running all around. She has no time of her own, every moment she is devoted. Just to serve me is her joy.Sheela is not representative. And there are thousands of women who love me more than Sheela ever did. I don’t think she is capable of love. Perhaps that early rape and pregnancy and the condemnation – particularly in India – have destroyed some part in her heart. She has become more violent, aggressive, hostile to the whole world.Your asking the question is absurd. I have known many more women than any man has known, ever. I have been loved by so many women – without any demands, without any jealousy. My respect for womanhood remains the same. Just one sick woman cannot destroy it. And she is certainly sick.I had made her the president of the foundation for the simple reason that in a strange land you will be opposed, you will be continuously harassed. The whole of Oregon was hostile to you, which is simply man’s animal nature: anything that is strange makes them afraid. And who can find more strange people than you? You are the strangest lot on the earth!I have collected all the unfits, rebels, individuals who have refused to become just a cog in the wheel of the social mechanism, who have refused to believe in religious lies, in political cunningness, hypocrisy.My people are not a society; it is a commune. And the difference between a society and a commune is tremendous. A society functions according to certain rules, regulations, morality, religion, politics. And anybody who does not fit becomes an outcast. A commune is a totally different phenomenon. It has nothing to impose upon you – no ideology, no discipline, no religion, no culture. A commune simply helps you to be yourself.So this is a group where individuals exist. And because they have allowed everybody else to be themselves, everybody else loves them as they are. There are no demands on them. You need not fulfill any conditions to be respectable; you are born respectable. Existence has respected you enough; otherwise, you would not have been here. Existence needed you; without you something would have been missing.So the commune is nothing but a communion, a meeting of individuals who are able to meet, to love, and yet remain individuals. There is no need, no effort to dominate, to destroy the other.All the people around the world in different societies, cultures, civilizations, are doing one thing. They may call themselves lovers, wives, husbands, parents, teachers, students – but everybody is trying to destroy the other. There seems to be some fear, paranoia, that if you don’t destroy the other, then the other is going to destroy you, so it’s better to be first. And they have, down the ages, developed strategies. Those strategies have become part of their upbringing.When the parents are trying to destroy their children – they don’t think they are destroying them; they think they are making them human; they are teaching them to be cultured; they are teaching them manners, etiquette, behavior. Whatever they are doing, they think they are doing for the children’s sake. This was done to them by their parents, and for millennia every generation has been doing it to the coming generation.Only in this last phase of the century has a generation gap arisen. It has never been in the world before, for the simple reason that people were not going to the colleges, to the university, and being away from their parents for such a long period – ten years or more.Those years they have been in the university is the gap. The parents could not condition them according to their ideology, and when they come back from the university – twenty-five years old, twenty-six years old – they are grown-ups. They have their own intelligence, their own thinking. Now it is not easy to force them to believe in things for which you cannot give any rational proofs.You cannot tell them to believe in a God, you cannot tell them to believe in heaven and hell, for the simple reason that now they can think on their own, and your ideas look just stupid. This is the generation gap. It is growing wider.You are the product of the generation gap; you could not fit in the society. You are fortunate. Others who have preceded you had to fit with the society from the very beginning. They never got a chance for their own individuality to grow. So the old type of human beings are bound to be very much against you.Just the other day, from a very reliable source I have been informed that the governor has put the National Guard on alert against us. It seems so absurd; one of the greatest powers in the world is afraid of five thousand unfits? And you are not doing any harm to anybody – you don’t have any time to!Living is so much, loving is so much, dancing is so much, singing is so much, rejoicing is so much – who has time for anything else? From the early morning to late in the night you are engaged in an ecstatic journey.In the outside world people work. Naturally, they are tired. You worship; you are not tired. You can dance after the whole day’s work. You can still love after the whole day’s work. Your girlfriend does not have to pretend that she has a headache. I don’t see that headaches are happening here at all. There may be other aches, but no headache. Heads we have put aside!To put the National Guard on alert against us is simply to show the impotence of the politicians, of the government. And if the Russians come to know about it – and they must come to know about it – what will they think?This is a nuclear power; you can destroy my people. Just dropping one hydrogen bomb will make a beautiful Hiroshima in America. You miss it! It will be a good tourist spot. You are poorer than Japan. Japan has two tourist spots: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You have nothing. I am offering you a chance. And you will see how people can dance and sing and rejoice and love and hug – even while they are being destroyed.My people are not afraid of death or destruction, for the simple reason that they have tasted life, love. The person who is afraid of death is the person who knows nothing of life. The more you know about life, the more deeply you live it, the more intensely you get absorbed in it, overwhelmed by it, the more you become aware that there is something in you which is deathless. No nuclear weapons can destroy it.But for every reason we are strangers to these people. I had put Sheela in charge, knowingly. She was needed, she did much good to the commune. But there is always a risk, and she started doing harm too. The moment I became aware that she was doing harm also, and I saw that the commune was now established and Oregon has accepted that we are going to be here – America or no America, we are going to be here – Sheela was no longer needed. And that was hurting her ego very much.Now we need a softer quality of people who can destroy all the hostility that Sheela has created, had to create. We need superior people who don’t have any inferiority. We need more creative people, more healthy, more juicy.You will have observed that I have put Americans in most of the power positions. In Sheela’s group, most were non-Americans. The reason was, those non-Americans would be more able to fight for you against the Americans. That phase is over. Now we want friendship. We are now part of America. We are Americans, fresh Americans.I have put more Americans in power, but they are still women. Man has his own qualities; they are different from woman’s.And I want to prove to the world that just as the woman is capable of managing a house beautifully – a clean house, good food, good clothes, everything in place; can beautify the house, just by her presence can make it something of an art – women can do the same to the commune. It is a bigger home.Of course, they cannot be soldiers, and they should not be. They cannot be great scientists, and there is no need. But they can be good painters, poets; they can create great literature. And greatest of all, they can create an atmosphere of love, hospitality. This has to be proved existentially; otherwise the woman will remain always a slave.For centuries she has been a slave, and now there are a few idiotic women who call themselves the women’s liberation movement. And whatever they are doing is not liberation, but simply reaction. They are teaching women to be lesbians, against men. They are spreading hatred. But a woman who cannot love a man loses something.That was the case with Sheela; she cannot love a man. She has been trying hard; she has changed many husbands, many boyfriends, hoping that perhaps somebody she can love. But she cannot love unless her deep-rooted hatred for men is dissolved. She needs psychotherapy. She needs to open her wounds so they can be healed.The liberation movement is not really in favor of woman’s future, it is against it. It is a reactionary movement. They are asking for equality with men. Why equality? Woman is woman, man is man; they are unique beings. They are not equal, they are not unequal either; they are simply different. They are opposite polarities.Asking for equality, they are doing all kinds of idiotic things. Because man smokes, liberation women are smoking. Do you think this is intelligence? Man is doing something foolish, but to be equal, you have to do that foolish thing. Soon the women’s liberation will tell women to piss standing! Equality? This is sheer nonsense.I don’t see that there is any problem. Women should behave like women, according to their nature. A woman smoking looks as if something has gone wrong. And please, at least don’t start pissing standing. Equality does not mean that you have to do everything that man is doing.Psychologically there is no equality; there is only uniqueness. The woman has to assert her uniqueness, and she has a different way of expressing herself.It is not only when you make a painting that you are a creator; when you make delicious food, you are an even greater creator, because nobody can eat the painting. It does not help in any way.You just have to make certain that whatever you are doing is done as a worship, as love, as creativity. Your creativity as woman is far more nourishing than man’s creativity. What does he do? He paints, he makes sculpture, he writes poetry, novels. This is good, but it is only entertainment; it is not life.Woman has to contribute more to life.Why not make life more poetic? And just a small touch and life becomes poetic. Why not make life a little more musical? Why not make life more colorful? – which will be the woman’s way of painting. Why not grow beautiful gardens around your house? Why not bring thousands of flowers around your house? A flower is far more valuable than any sculpture. The sculpture is dead; the flower is alive, is full of dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun.The woman should not try to imitate man; otherwise she will be only a second-grade man. She will never become equal, she will be only a carbon copy.Be original. And that’s what I have been trying in my commune: giving women every opportunity to express their potentiality.Sheela was not really a woman. She had lost her heart long ago, she was crippled. But I had chosen her for the simple reason that she is so full of hate, so hostile that she will be able to fight, and allow you meanwhile to become established.She did her work. But when you give some work to a sick man or sick woman, you know it is risky. A madman may be useful; but a madman is, after all, a madman. When she got the taste of power, then rather than defending the society, the commune, the people that gathered here, she started becoming a criminal. She wanted to take revenge.That was the time that I had to stop her. I had to wait for the moment when you were established. To remove her was not a problem. I had not even told her to get lost. I just started speaking, and she understood that now her power was gone. Her power was as my representative. Now, there is no need for any representative – I am speaking myself.Now I have given you another group. You need now a higher and better group which can create friendship. Even idiots can create enmity; not much intelligence is needed. But to create friendship, to make bridges, intelligence is needed, love is needed, grace is needed.I have given you the group now. Support the group, help the group, for the simple reason that now we are no longer foreigners.Right now we are the only people who are bringing in almost thirty thousand people per year, around the year. Nobody can claim that the thirty thousand tourists are coming because of them. Of course, these people spend money – that goes to Oregon. If we are supported, we can bring thousands and thousands of people here. They should simply look at it.And there are many experiments going on simultaneously….I am trying to give woman her place.I am trying to make the family disappear, so that people are not fixated on a very small, tiny group – three, four, five people. Their loyalty should be wider and bigger. This small loyalty is dangerous.We are trying to make the whole world know that five thousand people can live for four years without producing a single child. So why can’t you do it? The world population has to be made less; otherwise, death is the alternative.We have proved it perfectly, that people of all races, all religions, all nations, can live together without any difficulty. In fact, nobody even bothers, nobody even inquires of you, “Are you a Brazilian, or from Puerto Rico, or from Constantinople?” Nonessentials – who cares about it? Are you a Catholic or a Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, or a Mohammedan? Nobody bothers about it.These five thousand people living together here, and similarly in other communes around the world, have proved that man by nature is not antagonistic to color, to religion, to race, to nation. These things are cultivated by the priest, by the politicians.Here, nobody looks inferior, nobody feels superior. If Sigmund Freud had to come into this commune he would be in real difficulty, because he thought every person has to carry either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex. In this commune, he would have not found any example for his theory.There is no need to feel inferior or superior. Everybody is just himself, there is no question of comparison. You are alone. There is nobody like you, so how can you be compared? It is comparison that brings inferiority, superiority, and then the complexes and the psychological problems, and the whole lot of it.Simultaneously, many experiments are going on. And I can say to you with great joy that we are successful, and we will become a model for the whole humanity. What we can do can be done around the world without any difficulty.Most of you have been brought up in nonvegetarian families. You have never thought or even bothered that you are eating something nauseating. Howsoever tasty it is, you have killed living beings.Cannibals say that human meat is the most delicious. And you have to believe them, because they know the taste; they are not just proposing a theory about it. They have eaten all kinds of meat, but they say the best is of the human baby; nothing can be compared to its delicacy.But I don’t see any difference between cannibals and nonvegetarians. Maybe a difference of degree, but not of quality. If you can eat monkeys, who are your forefathers – which is really ugly, to eat your own forefathers – what is the difference? Cannibals are eating human beings, which seems to be more right; at least they are eating contemporaries, not forefathers.But here, most of you are trying vegetarian food. In the future, that should be the food for all humanity. Life is not to be eaten. And when there is so much possibility for vegetarian food…. It has never been explored; otherwise there is so much possibility that there is no need for anybody to go hungry.And life should be respected, whether the life is in you, or in a lion, or in a deer. The man who kills a deer has fallen from his humanity. He has destroyed a beautiful living being. Have you seen the deer jumping and running? So alive!Have you watched one thing? From all the ranches around the deer have moved to this place. They seem to be more intelligent than the attorney general of Oregon. They saw that these people are harmless. Otherwise, for ten days every year Oregonians are free to kill deer, and for ten days they are all roaming around with their guns and killing the poor deer. All the deer slowly slowly have moved, because in this place we will not allow anybody to kill.I have told President Hasya that I would like to make a deer park just near the Gurdjieff Dam where there is a waterfall. We are not using it, but any time we can use the waterfall. So the waterfall will become a small river, and the whole area should be made into a deer park. And they don’t need anything much.They eat a certain grass, alfa-alfa, so just…. They don’t even ask about omega-omega, just alfa-alfa. Such simple people – they have stopped at the first letter of the alphabet. So grow much grass for them, and they will be coming. And people can visit them in the daytime, in the night. And at least two, three thousand deer – a whole commune of deer….And once you are finished with deer, you have to make another place for my peacocks: a peacock park. Already in my garden there are three hundred peacocks. So I am willing – you can take two hundred peacocks from there. And given good facilities, they grow fast. Soon, thousands of peacocks!My idea of life in the commune is thousands of peacocks dancing, deer running, people loving, enjoying – that seems to be human. And the peacocks and the deer, all have understood that there is nobody here who is going to harm them. They move freely without any fear. It gives me great joy that these innocent people – peacocks, deer…. We have swans; I want to have more swans also. A place which has swans, thousands in the lake…. You can play with them and swim with them.We have to be in tune with nature. We can make this place full of flowers, full of trees, full of animals, full of beautiful, unconditioned people. And this should be the model for the whole humanity.Support the new people who are in power. They will be new to you, their methods will be new to you, so just be a little conscious of the change; it is for the better.I don’t believe in violent revolutions. I believe in a nonviolent evolution. And you can see it happen here. The old regime – we have not even shot a single bullet – has fled on its own. And we have changed the whole regime. This is evolution; this is not revolution. Nobody is killed, nobody is hit, nobody is harmed. But new people, a new group is now taking care of you – a new phase, a new development. Support it, enjoy the change.And now I am going to be available to you every day, so nothing can go wrong. Just my presence is enough so that nothing goes wrong.My respect for women remains the same.Every man should be respectful to women: they are your mothers, they are your beloveds.Every woman should be respectful towards men: they are your children, they are your lovers.There is no question of any conflict between man and woman: they are two sides of the same coin.Osho,Through the last events there has been tremendous joy and pain. The joy is to see how you are the only reality that matters. And the pain is that my connection is so superficial that I didn't listen to you. And suddenly I came to realize that my love for you, however burning and intense, is meaningless, cheap and worthless. I never felt such a wound. Is there any way to be close to you? As I can't refrain from loving you, please tell me it doesn't matter for you.It matters to me – not that I am in any need of somebody to love me but because you are in need of expanding your love, of giving your love as high a dimension as possible.It is good that you understand that your love is not as much, not as pure as it should be. This very awareness is a good sign. It means you can make it deeper, higher, more unconditional.I am just an excuse.Let me repeat: I am just an excuse.I want your love to expand, to grow, so that you are overwhelmed with loving energy. Then it will not be only directed towards me, then it will be just like breathing. Wherever you go, you will be breathing; wherever you go, you will be loving.Loving will become your simple state of being. Then only is it not cheap. Love as a relationship is always superficial and cheap.Love as a state of being is invaluable.But one has to begin with the first. You are already in the first stage. And because you are aware that it is cheap, there is every possibility you can transform the love energy. Use me as an excuse.It matters to me because I love you.It matters to me, because I know when love flowers, how much ecstasy it brings. It is my experience, and I want it to be your experience also.I have discarded God. Now only love remains.Your lovingness is your religion.But remember the difference: to love a person is only to have a relationship. It is as if, when you are with a certain person, you breathe, and then when you leave the person you stop breathing, because how can you breathe without the person for whom you live? But that means the next time you don’t find the person again, you will be dead.And that’s what has happened about love. Everybody is insisting, “Love me” – and is very suspicious of you, that you may be loving other people too. This jealousy, this suspicion has killed love. The wife wants the husband to love only her.While I was a professor in the university, a woman professor fell in love with me. I have never fallen in love with anybody. I only rise in love, I don’t fall. So she was harassing me. It became difficult for me to sit in my university’s common room because she was always waiting there. And she was a real woman: yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak…. And she asked me hundreds of times, “Do you love me?”I said, “I have told you before – yes!”“But do you love me, only me?”I said, “I have told you I love only you – but this I tell to many women. Every woman wants to hear it – what to do?” Since that day she disappeared.The very question, “Love only me”…. Then what are you going to do when you are out in the world meeting other people, on your job? You have to be alert not to show any love to anybody.What to say of persons? Even if you are a very great lover of books, that’s enough for your wife to create trouble for you, that when she is present you are still reading! When she is present you cannot read. When she is present, your reading means you love the book more than her. Women are known to take away books, throw them away. This type of behavior on the part of men and women has killed love.In fact, if you really want to love your woman or your man, you have to be loving towards everybody you meet. You have to keep the flame burning. You have to keep breathing love. You have to keep radiating love; otherwise, when you meet your beloved, you only have just words to say: “I love you.”You know it is false, she knows it is false. You know she knows it is false; she knows you know it is false. Both know the reality, and both are trying not to see it. But what has happened? Why has the love disappeared? Because you made love a relationship.Love cannot be made a relationship, love is a state of being. You are just a loving person. You love your friends, you love your books, you love paintings, you love the sunrise. You love many things. In all those things your love grows, expands; and the woman is benefited because now she has a man who is so full of love. The man is benefited if the woman also is in a state of love.In my commune you have to learn loving – not love relationships, but love as a state of your being, love as breathing. Just what breathing does to the body, love does to your soul.Love is the breathing of your soul. The more you love, the more soul you have.So don’t be jealous. Don’t prevent anybody, and don’t try to monopolize love. There are a few things which cannot be monopolized.You see a bird on the wing in the air, so beautiful – the freedom, the joy. You can catch the bird, you can put it in a beautiful golden cage. Do you think it is the same bird? Apparently it is the same bird, but in reality it is not the same bird.Where is the freedom? Where are those beautiful wings, balancing in the air? Where is that vast sky, the unlimited freedom? You have taken everything from the poor bird, and you think you have given him a great, precious cage, made of twenty-four karat gold! You have killed him.That has been happening to love. The bird on the wing, free in the sky, is a beauty. The bird in a cage is dead, his spirit is dead. He still breathes; but he must be dreaming of the freedom of those beautiful moments rising higher and higher into the sky…of those beautiful mornings…the sunrise, the sunset. You have taken everything from the bird.Love is a bird. Keep it free, don’t try to monopolize it. It dies when you monopolize it. And that’s why in the whole world everybody is saying, “I love you,” and there seems to be no love at all anywhere.The basic reason is, we have not allowed love freedom. We have tried to keep it in bondage – and it is not possible. Then you can have only a hypocritical kind of love. It says, “I love you,” because it has to be said; otherwise there is trouble. To avoid the trouble, the husband says, “I love you,” the wife says, “I love you.” But you can’t see the shine, the gleam in their eyes, the aura on their faces. You cannot hear their hearts beating faster, you cannot smell the aroma of love around them. Everything is dead.Love is the breathing of your soul.Never allow your love to be dead, at any cost: you are killing your own spirit. And never do this harm to anybody else either.Love gives freedom. And the more freedom love gives, the more loving the person becomes. This has to be the approach in my commune.Osho,Yesterday in discourse, looking around Rajneesh Mandir, I thought the reporters and the state police looked so tense, they could not sit still for one minute. How can we be open and loving to these people? Is it possible?In the first place, what the hell were you doing looking at them? I have never seen any police, any state officers. Why were you looking at them? Are you here to listen to me, or to look at police officers?Secondly, if somebody is tense, fidgety, cannot even sit in one posture for one minute, he needs more compassion and more love. He is sick. He is not relaxed; something in him is not clean. He needs compassion and help, and you are asking, “How can we love them?”I don’t see any problem. The other person is tense, you are not tense. If you were tense, then the question would be meaningful: “I am tense, how can I love?” You are not tense; the other person is tense. This is like a doctor asking me, “Somebody is sick. How can I treat him?” The doctor is not sick, and the doctor’s function is to treat the sick. No, when you saw them tense, you also became tense. When you saw them unrelaxed, you also became unrelaxed. Perhaps you became afraid, that’s why the question: how can we love them? Otherwise, loving is no problem.If you know love, you can love anybody. And particularly people who are tense are more in need. Your love will relax them. You should be more understanding.Police officers, state officers, FBI officers, are bound to be tense here. They are almost on a different planet. They know how to behave with criminals; they don’t know how to behave with lovers. They know how to behave with murderers; they don’t know how to behave with meditators. It is understandable, their tension is understandable. They may have been hearing me for the first time. They may have been getting so many shocks from what I am saying….Be compassionate to those poor people. They are not bad. At least they had the courage to come to the meeting, to sit with you, to listen to me, to try to understand what is happening here. But it is so new for them, so utterly unknown, that it is natural that they will get tense: what kind of people are these?And one thing you should remember: the people in the police department, the FBI, the CIA, KGB, these people, and the people who are in the jails serving long sentences – for ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, great criminals – they are of the same quality.A criminal employed becomes a police officer. A police officer unemployed becomes a criminal. It is only a question of employment. The police officer does crimes in the service of the government – for which he is paid. The criminal is doing crimes independently. He is like a private detective, no government support. He is more courageous. But the quality of these people is not different.If you are not a criminal, you will not be interested in becoming a police officer – because you have to deal with criminals continuously. And your having to deal with the criminals means your having to learn their language, having to learn their strategies. You have to be a little better criminal than them; then only can you catch hold of them.In a better world, there will not be criminals and there will not be any FBI, CIA, KGB.It is a very strange conspiracy against humanity. Just think: if there are no criminals, what will the magistrates do? They will be out of a job. What will thousands of advocates do? They will be on the streets, beggars. The police, the magistrates, the advocates, all need criminals. It is a question of life and death. They all live on criminals. It is a very strange society…a great establishment of justice, thousands of people employed in it – but they should all be grateful to the criminals. Those are their real masters.Now these police officers you saw sitting here, the FBI people you saw sitting here, they had never come before. It is Sheela and her criminal group that have brought them here. It is Sheela who has provided their daily bread and butter. Naturally, they feel a certain sympathy with criminals. The innocent people they hate, because they don’t give them anything.And that is one of my insights, that the attorney general of Oregon is trying somehow to defend Sheela and her criminal group, to give them immunity so that they can point to innocent people and say that these are the people who have committed all the crimes. In this way they can destroy the whole commune.We are not going to let them do any such thing. But that is their strategy. It is very apparent, because I should have been the first person for them to interview. They did not ask for my interview. I told them, “You have to take my interview first, because I have the overall, bird’s-eye view of my commune.”Four times they gave appointments, and just before the appointment they canceled it. And the cancellation was from higher up. A phone call would come from the capitol, “Cancel it.” They wanted to take time. They are delaying the whole process so that they can make some deal with Sheela and her group.That’s why I say criminals and the police and the politicians belong to the same category. They are not concerned what crimes Sheela and her people have done. Their interest is how to use this opportunity to destroy the whole commune. Do you see the cunningness of politicians and their criminal minds? We have been supporting them, we have been giving them every evidence of the crimes. They are not taking much interest in it; their interest is in how to destroy the commune.But they cannot destroy the commune. I have my own ways. If any of my people are sent into jail, go joyously, and convert the people in jail to sannyas. So five hundred will go in, and at least five thousand sannyasins will be left behind.Teach meditations in the jail. Take the books, take the tapes with you. We don’t fight in a primitive way, we are intelligent enough to fight just intellectually. So it will be perfectly good. They cannot make you a criminal. They can keep you for a few days in jail, and that’s a good opportunity to change all the people in the jail – there may be thousands of criminals. Help them to meditate – in the morning, start with Dynamic Meditation. There is no law against meditation. Nobody can prevent you, because it is our religious practice, and the government cannot interfere in any religious practice. So when you come out of the jail in ten or twelve days, you will have changed the whole atmosphere in the jail.They will repent later on that they did a foolish thing. You have not committed any crime, and I will fight for you up to the Supreme Court, for every single sannyasin who has no crime on his hands.There is no problem at all. It is a good opportunity to expose American politicians, that these are all third-class criminals. They are not worthy of being governors, of being attorney generals. And they are not according to the beautiful Constitution of America.A strange fate…we are the latest Americans, but we have to fight for the American Constitution against the rotten old Americans. But we will fight for it, because the American Constitution is the only one in the whole world which has some hope for humanity.Osho,Recently, you said that you would be betrayed by someone very close to you. I thought this could not happen here, yet it seems that anytime love happens, then hate also follows. The greater the love, the greater the hate, and hence, finally, betrayal.This capacity must be inherent in all of us. How is it possible to be with a master, knowing that the deeper the love, the closer I am to destroying it? Is this where we let go even of the master? I feel like a man looking over the abyss, trying to decide which direction to jump.You need not decide at all, because I have decided already. I am not your master, and nobody is my disciple. You are all my friends.

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

From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I seem to be balanced on the tightrope of po. I never believe nor disbelieve what you say in that outer political world of facts and figures, that merry-go-round of different views, that shifting mirage of truths, half-truths, contradictions, and paradoxes that slip through my mind like an autumn breeze. It's all po now.Would I hijack a plane, stone an embassy, or frustrate a police investigation? Po, po, po – I don't know. Yet I do know that my heart still dances with you, your silence still penetrates me with a delicate, exquisite awe. And my laughter is becoming more and more rootless, like a mad child, giggling at nothing in particular. Am I missing Osho?It seems you come from Poland: Po, Po, Po! Get to Poland as soon as possible. You may be the next pope chosen. You are showing all the qualities that are needed to be a pope.I am surprised. Are there so many idiot-generals in Oregon with no sense of humor? Do you think a lazy man like me will hijack a plane? – a man who has never hijacked even a bicycle? Stone embassies? Just sometime come and touch my hand; it has never taken up a stone. You can feel the softness of it.One of my friends came to see me from Russia. Shaking hands with me, he said, “I suggest you should never come to Russia.”I said, “Why?”He said, “Your hands will create trouble. Anybody shaking hands with you will immediately take his hand back: your hand is bourgeois.” It is true. I have never done anything with my hands.I was joking with the journalists, but idiots can’t understand any sense of humor. The attorney general of Oregon has immediately put the National Guard on alert. It is good. To be alert is always good. That’s my whole teaching! Keep the National Guard, your armies, twenty-four hours alert. That’s what I want. And I can go on making statements so that you have to keep them alert.But just for you – privately, don’t tell it to anybody – we are nonviolent people, vegetarians: we don’t do such things.There is no need to do it. Our joy, our laughter, our love, our silence, our meditation, are a far bigger force than nuclear weapons. They can try, they can kill our bodies; they cannot kill our spirit. And the moment they kill our bodies they are really getting into greater danger, because then our spirits are free to go around the world, with no visa, no passport, no green card. I am preparing you for that.Hijacking planes or throwing stones at embassies is for retarded politicians.We have nothing to do with politics.We are the only group of people in the whole world which is apolitical.So you have to understand; you get confused. I am always speaking the truth – sometimes in a way that looks like a joke, sometimes in a way that looks like a contradiction, sometimes in a way that looks like a lie; but I am always saying the truth, and truth alone.Those who understand me have no difficulty, no conflict, no confusion. So meditate a little more; otherwise I will send you to Poland. Po stands for Poland, where everybody is confused. Nobody knows what is right, what is wrong. Nobody knows when to say yes, when to say no.Here, you have to attain to clarity, to insight into everything, and I am giving you all the opportunities to see. And I will be giving you bigger and bigger opportunities to see yourself, understand yourself. Right now, you have missed the point. Try to see that it does not happen again. Next time, get it.And it is my everyday business to create a situation in which you can miss or get it.Just the other day I said that I am not anybody’s master, and nobody is my disciple. One sannyasin, immensely happy, wrote a letter to me, “This is what I always wanted to be: your friend.”I have no objection. I want you all to be my friends – but you will have to travel a long way to be my friends.You are living in the dark valley of your unconscious. You are fast asleep.If you want to be my friends, then awake.She has also asked, and that shows the mind of the sannyasin, “Now that we are your friends, is meditation needed anymore?”Now meditation is needed even more.A master-disciple relationship means the disciple can depend on the master, and the master has a certain responsibility. I dropped that responsibility yesterday. Now I am no longer responsible for anybody. You have to be responsible for yourself. You cannot depend on me. I am not your savior, I am not your leader. Now you have to become your own savior.She got the idea of being a friend, but she missed the whole point.Be as independent as I am.Be as free of mind as I am.Be as centered as I am.Experience the same ecstasy, the same vast experience of ultimate blissfulness.Then only can you be my friends.Now you are to be more mature. A disciple can remain retarded, but a friend cannot be forgiven if he remains retarded. So every day I will be giving you chances. It is an effort to sharpen your intelligence, to give you integrity, individuality, to give you freedom from everything, to give you the beauty of your aloneness.Osho,I love you. Please tell me if we have let you down. I feel hurt when I hear questions in discourse that don't appreciate you and the love that you so generously pour on me. I hope that our love is also enough to help heal us, and you never feel we take you, our beloved, for granted.Please comment on whether our not loving enough has anything to do with what you said about not wearing malas and only red colors. Also, Osho, please say if there is anything we as a commune can do to help the healing so we can really celebrate you and your love for us, and let this candle of our love burn completely at every end.I am grateful for your understanding. But it is not that your love is not enough for me. You love me more than anybody has ever been loved. You cannot let me down.Telling you that it is up to you to wear malas or not, it is up to you to be in red clothes or not, is not out of any hurt feeling in me. Nobody can hurt me – that is impossible, because in the first place I never expect anything from anybody. So disappointment is impossible.I have said these things because I love you, and I want you to be responsible and to take decisions on your own so that no fascist kind of regime again fetters you and destroys you. I cannot be with you always. One day I will have to leave my body, and then there will be every possibility of people exploiting you, becoming your leaders.That was the great hope of Sheela that I shattered. She wanted to be the high priestess of the latest religion. When I said nobody is going to succeed me, and nobody is going to represent me, that was the day she started thinking of leaving, because her whole desire was to become the high priestess.I am not going to create Popes, Shankaracharyas, Ayatollah Khomeiniacs; each and every sannyasin who loves me individually inherits all the treasures of my being, experience, love, blissfulness. Nobody is going to be the priest. Then you create another Vatican.We are tortured by these Popes, Shankaracharyas, Imams, Rabbis. It is time that man is freed from all these fetters. It is out of my love that I want you to be free, totally free, no dependence, no father figure, nobody between you and your truth, no mediator. That’s why I will destroy everything that can create the old mistake all religions have fallen into.Tomorrow I am going to have a world press conference in which the book Rajneeshism will be put to fire and burned. I don’t want you to be Rajneeshees; one Rajneesh is enough. You have to be yourself.You loved me, I am grateful for it, but I don’t want you to imitate me. Imitators are phony. Imitators are bound to be unnatural, because they are going against their potential.Nature produces each individual as unique. In twenty-five centuries, how many Buddhist monks have been trying to become Gautam Buddha? Not a single one has succeeded. For two thousand years, how many Christian monks have been trying to become Jesus Christ? None of them has succeeded. And the same is the story around the earth in all the religions.Still we are blind; we can’t see a simple fact, that Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed – or anybody, known or unknown – is unique, unrepeatable.Nature does not like carbon copies. Nature loves original faces.My effort is to take away all the barriers so that you can discover your original face; to remove all the masks so that you can discover who, in reality, you are. And the moment you realize yourself, that will be the moment of your gratitude towards me, because then you will understand why I was destroying everything that you thought was a connection. It was not a connection, it was a dependence.I hate the word “ism.” I hate collectivities. I respect the individual. Collectivities are mobs, and the mob psychology has to follow the lowest denominator. Only individual peaks can become Everests. Collectivities become only flat ground. Do you want to be just a flat ground? Wouldn’t you like to be an Everest, reaching higher and higher towards the stars?Whatever I am doing is out of my love.I cannot see you dependent. I cannot see you being harassed, tortured, ordered, made to obey – no. Hence, I say to you: My way of life is not a religion. It is certainly a kind of religiousness. To be religious without being attached to any religion is the most beautiful experience of life. Then religiousness is a quality, not a faith.Slowly slowly, I am taking away all excuses for your faith. I have taken away God, I have taken away paradise. I have taken away the fear of hell, taken away the greed for heaven. And I don’t want anybody after me to undo what I have done.It all depends on you.My guards, be on alert!Osho,You are a total stranger to me, yet a friend and lover. How can this be?This is the only way it can be. We are all strangers to each other. The closer we come in friendship and love, the more we see the strangeness of the other, the uniqueness of the other, the unpredictability of the other.When we are not friends and lovers, then just acquaintance is enough. You know the name of the person, you know his profession, you know his address. Do you think this is knowing the individual? You may know that he is a doctor, or a shoemaker, but those are functions; they don’t have anything to do with the reality of the being. The doctor can become a carpenter, can become a gardener. And one day, he will be retired from the hospital.You may not know why retired people become so irritable, so angry; any excuse is enough for them to explode. Why are old and retired people in such agony, anguish? The reason is, they have lost their identity.When they were doctors, professors, they had a certain identity. Others believed them to be doctors – to be professors, to be engineers, to be scientists – and they also believed they were doctors. Now that mask has slipped. Now they don’t know who they are.It is a chaos in their mind, they cannot figure it out. And they are angry against the whole world which kept them in darkness about themselves for their whole life. And still there is no way made available by the society so they can find their real original face.When you are acquainted with a person there is no need to bother about his anxieties, his future, his past. Your acquaintance is professional. You may meet him in the marketplace: he is a teacher, you are a student; things are quite defined. You are a patient, he is a doctor; things are quite defined. But behind the patient there is a human being, behind the doctor there is a human being – they remain unknown to each other.But when you love somebody the difficulty arises. When you are really a friend to somebody, a great question haunts you, because now your friendship, your love, cannot be satisfied by knowing that he is a doctor or a professor. You know those are his professional functions, but he is not exhausted by them: Who is he?The closer you come, the more you become strangers to each other, because all false labels, identity cards, passports, nationalities, religions, start disappearing. You are facing a naked human being, and you are also a naked human being – just the way you were born. Even the name is just a label given by others.Love reveals the stranger in the other.This is one of the most significant questions in the human relationship, because you are afraid of the stranger – and the stranger is in your bed! And you don’t know this man, you don’t know this woman; it is risky. If you don’t know this man, this woman, you cannot predict what he is going to do in the night. Perhaps he may steal everything and escape, or may kill you. So people start finding new, phony labels – husband and wife. Again you are going away from each other. You were not capable of remaining strangers and yet lovers.I would like my people to know that it is a tremendous joy to discover the stranger in your friend, because this is the only reality. Don’t camouflage it, don’t cover it up. Don’t go to a church to get married. Let him remain unpredictable; this is his independence and his birthright. And the same is true for you; this is your independence and your birthright.In fact, nature does not allow anybody to enter into the privacy of any individual. Nature is immensely compassionate: you cannot trespass.I can know myself, nobody else can know me. You can know yourself, nobody else can know you. This is a blessing.Only machines can be known by others. This is man and his privilege, that his privacy is absolutely guaranteed. Only he can enter into his center – experience, feel, understand, see. This is possible only if friends and lovers allow each other to remain strangers.All your efforts to cover up the strangeness of the other are the causes of all the conflicts in every home. Husband and wife, mother and children, father and children, children and parents – they are all trying desperately to reduce you to a thing. They are trying to mold you in such a way that you become predictable, so that there is no fear about you.But all these strategies create conflict. Instead of two persons, there are four persons in a bed. Two are the real – which are strangers, which have to hide behind a mask. Two are the masks, which are making love, kissing each other. Masks are kissing each other, promising each other that they will remain in love forever. But masks…?And the stranger behind it already knows that this is false, what you are saying is untrue. You are simply saying it to make things convenient. You are creating a situation of consolation. But nobody wants to be encaged in a mask. He hates the person who has forced him to be someone he is not.Every husband hates his wife, every wife hates her husband. Children hate their parents, parents hate their children. The whole world is full of hate, and the reason is that we have been denying reality.Drop all the masks, and declare that you are a stranger. Say the truth, that “I cannot promise you that I will be loving you tomorrow too. Only tomorrow knows.” Be truthful and authentic and sincere. It may look a little harsh in the beginning, but soon you will see its beauty, its glory, its joy.Yes, your question I can understand. You say, “I love you, you are my friend. But the more I love you the more I feel you are a stranger.”I am. You are too. Everybody is a stranger.And it is good, tremendously good that everybody is a stranger, so that you can explore, inquire, and always remain excited. What is the woman going to turn into tomorrow? What is the man going to do tomorrow? No expectations – with strangers, you don’t have expectations – no disappointments. Whatever happens has to be accepted without any complaint.Of course, a stranger is a stranger, and he will behave in his strange way. But life becomes really an excitement, every moment an ecstasy. And when you know that perhaps tomorrow the woman may not be in your hands, then only today is yours. In fact, only this moment is yours.Squeeze the whole juice out of this moment. The next moment is uncertain.If we accept the truth of the strangeness of everybody, people will start living in the present. Right now, people are only miserable in the present, they don’t live in the present. They live in their hopes: tomorrow everything will be good. And that tomorrow never comes. What comes is more misery, more trouble, more problems. And life becomes just a tragedy.I would like your life to remain a beautiful comedy, an ongoing carnival.And if your wife and you are strangers – and there is no way to change this situation, this is existential – if your children and you are strangers, how much joy there will be, because each time you meet your wife, you meet a new woman…a new husband…each time a new child, a new parent.Otherwise, in ordinary life – people have lived for thirty years together, and ask the husband, “Just close your eyes and remember the face of your wife,” and he cannot. Thirty years living together and he cannot remember the face of his wife! But he can remember the neighbor’s wife’s face perfectly well because she was a stranger, and his wife was just taken for granted.Who loves one’s own wife, one’s own husband? If you can find somebody, he must be a crackpot. But who can avoid being attracted to beautiful women in the neighborhood, to beautiful men in the neighborhood?Have you observed a simple fact, that you never dream about your husband, you never dream about your wife? You dream about women, but they are never your wife – somebody else’s wife. You dream of Cleopatra, of some Italian film actress…Lolita…. Who is going to waste his sleep dreaming about his own wife – who is sleeping by his side dreaming about Muhammad Ali!The reason is simple. You reduce the other person, as if you know him or her. Your knowledge is false.Let your wife become a stranger – which she has always been. Let your children be strangers. They have come from the beyond. They may have come through you, they have used you as a passage, but they don’t belong to you.You can love them, but you cannot make them Christians, Jews, Hindus, Americans, Russians, Indians. These are the strategies: labeling them from every side so the real stranger is hidden and remains hidden his whole life.And the stranger cannot live, because that is not expected. The stranger has to be repressed, and the false goes on living, because the false is the one accepted by the culture, by the religion, by the society, by everybody. Everybody is living a phony, plastic, American life.You can come out of it very easily, just the way a skin is dropped by a snake. Every year he slips out of it, leaving it behind. He does not even look backwards. Drop all your falsities which give you identity and just be yourself, which will make you a stranger, but which will also make your life a constant song, a dance, a rejoicing – at least with me.I am just myself, I don’t have any mask; so naturally if you love me and you come closer to me, you will find me more and more a stranger. Don’t freak out! Come even closer. I will help you also to become a stranger.If the whole humanity becomes real, everybody will be a stranger, and all hate, all repression, all dreaming, all psychoanalysis will disappear of its own accord.I don’t dream, for the simple reason that whatsoever I am, I am – the whole day. I don’t repress anything, so there is no content in me which can become a dream. If I see a beautiful woman, I don’t take my eyes away because this is not good.Psychologists have found that to look at any woman more than three seconds is not mannerly; she will be offended. That is her problem. But if I like a woman, I will look at her to my heart’s content. If I can look at a beautiful roseflower more than three seconds, and I can look at a bird on the wing, and I can look at the stars…. Of course, human beauty is closer to me. I am sensitive to beauty. And once I am satisfied, that woman cannot disturb my sleep.There was one Egyptian king – a little bit of a crazy type – he declared to his kingdom, “A few people go on coming into my dreams, and that I don’t like! So if anybody comes into my dream, he will be beheaded. So be aware!” Now, people were very much afraid. Nobody was coming into his dreams, they were his dreams; but many people were beheaded. It was his repression; but other people suffered.I don’t have any repression about anything. My sleep is simple and silent.The more you come close to me, the more you will find a vast opening into a strange world. And this will happen to you with anybody; just the masks have to be dropped. And if you love through the mask, it is ugly. Then why not love through the servants?I can send my servant to my girlfriend and tell him, “Give her a good kiss, make love to her on my behalf; but remember, you are only a servant.”Perhaps in the future, when people are very rich and they don’t want to take the trouble of making love, they will hire people, because it is such a gymnastics; and fear of AIDS…. It is good that servants do it all. But the servants will be doing it on their own behalf, so they will enjoy it.But this is actually happening! Your mask is kissing your woman – and not really the woman, but the mask of the woman. Two masks kissing each other, and two fools standing behind! The beds are made for two people, not for four, but in every bed there are four people. Hence, every bed is a bed of thorns, not of roses.Remember one basic truth, that there is no way possible that you can know your friend. You can know only yourself. Socrates says, “Know thyself.” Knowing yourself, you will have a glimpse of others too, but there is no way to know the other. Allow him to know himself or herself.Wisdom comes in freedom. And love allows the space in which wisdom can descend.This commune is a love commune. I have taken away the false God; now I have to point out to you the real God. It is love. Love is the greatest transformation you can have, but be ready for a great pilgrimage in an unknown territory.Don’t be afraid, there is nothing to fear. The territory may be unknown, but it is full of treasures. On each step you will find new treasures opening their doors. Don’t stop until you have found yourself, because that is the treasure of all treasures. Nothing is beyond it.Sabar upar manus satya, tahar upar nahin.One of the mystics, Chandidas, says, “The truth of man is the highest truth, and there is nothing beyond it.”And you are that truth.Osho,You are the most precious joy ever to have come into my life upon this earth. Is it possible that I could really feel this way about my own being?Read it again.Osho,You are the most precious joy ever to have come into my life upon this earth. Is it possible that I could really feel this way about my own being?If you have not felt it about your own being – the preciousness, the ecstasy, the joy – how can you feel it about me? It is not possible. You are projecting, you are imagining. And this is the trouble.Now think of your words – that’s why I said, “Read it again.” It was not for me, it was for you.You say you have come upon the most precious experience upon the whole earth. What do you know of the whole earth? There are four billion people on the earth. Have you experienced all four billion people? Don’t make exaggerated statements.You may not even have experienced the five thousand sannyasins who are here in Rajneeshpuram. You have not even experienced yourself. When you write a question, be very alert what you are writing. People are always getting misled by beautiful words.This is your projection. But just think, tomorrow you come to my room and you find me smoking, or just drinking champagne. What will happen to your question? You will say, “My God!” All your great ideas will disappear; on the contrary, you will move to the other extreme. Again that will be a projection. It is unnecessary to make an opinion about me. What is the use? Why waste time? – because I don’t know what you have projected on me.My mother was saying to me, “This is too much: you have been shocking people all your life from your childhood, and now you are dancing with girls on the stage!”Now, she is an old-fashioned, simple Indian woman, with a mind conditioned by centuries. She cannot conceive of Buddha dancing with girls, naturally. You cannot conceive of it either. Can you conceive of Jesus dancing with girls? But you can conceive of Jesus drinking wine, because that’s what he was doing. So you are conditioned for that. But nobody in India can conceive of Buddha drinking wine.Opinions are yours, and I am a stranger, unpredictable; I can do anything which can go against your expectations. Then you will feel frustration, then you will move to the very opposite extreme.Sheela, in her statements to the press in Germany, has repeatedly said, “Osho is the most corrupted man on the earth.” One journalist was asking me what is my comment. I said, “It is a compliment! To be the most corrupted man on the earth – it is a unique thing.”And poor Sheela does not understand. She was accustomed to calling me “the most enlightened man upon the earth”: it is the same sentence, just she has moved to the polar opposite. “The most enlightened man upon the earth” has become “the most corrupted man upon the earth.” And I had been telling her, “Drop this idea of the most enlightened man, because I am afraid this may change any day into its opposite.”And now she is saying such lies, you cannot conceive. She is saying, “Osho is not enlightened.” She has been with me for almost ten years. In ten years she could not realize that “Osho is not an enlightened man”? A sudden revelation! But that is nothing; that I knew could happen any day. Whenever her power would go, she would turn sour, bitter, angry. What does she know about enlightenment? She knows nothing.She is saying, in her statement, “Instead of an enlightened master and disciples, Osho’s relationship with his disciples is that of a pimp with prostitutes.” I don’t get angry at anything. I can understand…. But the problem is: she was the only prostitute coming to me! I never go out of my room. If I am the pimp, then who is the prostitute?And the job of a pimp is a difficult job – particularly for a man like me who never leaves his room, never goes to the disco, never goes to the hotel, to the restaurant. Where will I find customers for the prostitutes? And if I am the pimp, then she was the only prostitute. She was coming to me, and she was carrying my messages. Perhaps all those twenty persons who have escaped with her are all prostitutes. There are a few male prostitutes also involved!Can you conceive of Sheela saying that? I can. This is the problem with people who project ideas. I was the most enlightened person, the most beautiful person, the greatest master who has lived in the world. But finally, it turns out that I am only a pimp.I have no objection. The problem is, she has taken all my prostitutes, so how am I to earn my livelihood? A pimp without prostitutes is really in bad shape. And certainly, out of the five thousand sannyasins here, nobody can stand up and say that she is the prostitute and I am the pimp. Sheela should come here and face me directly! Is there anybody for whom I have worked like a pimp? Stand up.I have no objection to being called anything, because this is people’s minds. But if there is no prostitute here, then the only possibility is that Sheela was the head prostitute, and the other twenty – the whole gang of prostitutes – have left the poor pimp alone.Don’t project, because your projection can change any day. I don’t care about your projections, because they show your mind; they don’t show anything about me. You use me just like a screen, and you project your mind. When your mind changes, you project something else. And the screen is always empty. Withdraw your projections and the screen is absolute silence and purity. There is nothing on it.You are asking me, can you also be the same type of person as I am? Not exactly. But essentially, you can know yourself just the way I have known myself. You can explore your being the same way that I have done. And I am teaching you all the techniques, how to explore.And please stop projecting anything on me; otherwise, I will have to suffer all these types of projections that Sheela is doing. Learn a lesson from it: leave me alone.My prayer to you is: please don’t project anything upon me. That will be a great favor to me. Just leave me alone the way I leave you alone. I never project anything on you. Please do the same to me.Osho,You are the center of the cyclone. When I am near you I feel fine. But when I am a little away from you I am again in the strong whorls of the cyclone – the great movement of emotions and feelings. How can I get to the center of my own cyclone?Just be a witness of all those emotions, thoughts, which you call the cyclone. Just be a witness, and that point of witnessing is the center of the cyclone.This is the simplest method to realize oneself.Osho,The other day you called the Bible a pornographic book. Please explain what you meant by this remark.There is nothing to explain, just read the Bible. Nearly five hundred pages, spread all over the Bible, are pornographic. If you find it difficult to read the whole Bible, then just read in the Old Testament, the “Song of Solomon,” and you will be completely satisfied as to what I am talking about. It is the worst pornographic literature ever. You will find all kinds of perversions – homosexuality, bisexuality, sodomy, making love to animals.Perhaps, just reading, you are not conscious of it. So I am telling my people to prepare, from all those five hundred pages of pornography in the Bible, a pictorial, glossy book, so that you can see what sodomy means. Seeing a picture is easier….If Playboy had no pictures in it, just reading, I don’t think anybody would bother about it. Nobody bothers about the written content, people are interested in the pictures.So I am going to produce a Bible with really beautiful pictures, real living models doing all kinds of perverted sexual acts, with the quotations of the Bible to support them.You will just have to wait a little!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When non-sannyasins that I know are not drawn to sannyas and do not fall in love with you, I find myself feeling very angry, hurt, and frustrated about it. Can you please explain this reaction of mine?This has been the tragedy of the whole human history. People want to convert other people to their idea, their ideology, without realizing that this is against the freedom of the individual. All kinds of conversion are fanatic. All the missionaries are simply businessmen – just selling invisible things to gullible people. They are the greatest parasites that have existed ever.You have to understand one thing very clearly. This is not a religion, it is only a religiousness. You can open your heart to anybody you love, respect, but to make any effort to convert him is a trespass. You are entering into that man’s territory, you are an invader. And the reason why people do this is very strange.Psychologically, all the people like Witnesses of Jehovah and other idiots, who are forcing their ideas on other people…their means may differ, but their end is the same. A Mohammedan comes with a Koran in one hand and a sword in the other. You can choose. The Christian missionary comes with The Holy Bible in one hand and bread and butter in the other. You can choose. But both are doing the same thing. They are trying to enslave you, to destroy your freedom of thinking, freedom of inquiry. They want you to believe, they want you to become part of their politics of numbers.What is the power of the Polack pope? Six hundred million Catholics are his power; otherwise he is a simpleton. Take those six hundred million Catholics away, and he will have to go back to Poland and be just a Polack. His popedom depends on how many people are Catholics. More people are needed, so the kingdom becomes bigger.Every religion has tried to convert the whole world. What is the psychological reason for it? What kind of mind becomes a missionary? You have not yet experienced the truth for which you are canvassing. If you can convert somebody to your ideology, that will give you a sense that certainly what you have is true. More people are converted to your ideology, and your conviction that whatever you are saying is true grows stronger. When somebody refuses, anger arises in you.It is his birthright to refuse. He wants to go on his own way. Why should you be angry? He is not your slave. But the anger arises because he has not helped you to become stronger in your own belief. Your truth is not your experience. It is simply a belief, and all beliefs are lies. They need support from outside.Truth needs to convert nobody.Even if the whole world is against me it will not make me angry. It will certainly make me feel sorry, but not angry…sorry for them, because I had brought a golden treasure for them to share. And I was not trying to convert them. They could have enjoyed my experience and gone on their way with all my blessings. Perhaps my experience somewhere on their way might have helped them. But I cannot be angry. It is their choice.I have never followed anybody. I have never been part of any religion, any political ideology, and it seems everybody around the world is angry with me. Christians are angry because I will not accept all that they say about Jesus Christ – I know it is not possible. I will not accept all that they say about God, because none of them has experienced it. I will not accept their spirituality – it is all bogus. Basically, they are all materialists.Just the other day I received two letters – one letter from a minister of a Methodist church…very respectful, very loving. The reason was that he had heard on the television that I am going to distribute all the Rolls Royces to my sannyasins. He wants one for his Methodist church. These are the people who were against my Rolls Royces, but when it comes to getting one, they are ready to be beggars.Another one I have received from The Dalles. The bishop tells me, “It will be a good gesture of friendship and love from your side towards Oregonians if you withdraw the case against the community church in the City of Rajneesh.”In the first place it was not a Christian church; it was a community church, it belonged to the whole community. And if sannyasins are living there, they have every right to use it, they are part of the community. But before the old council had to resign they donated the church – which is absolutely illegal – to The Dalles, to the head office of their fellow Christian worshippers. Now, what has The Dalles to do with it?In the first place it was illegal; a community church cannot be donated to a Christian hierarchy. A community church remains a community church, it will belong to whoever constitutes the community. But we don’t need it. It is so old, and so dirty, and so dilapidated – no sense of beauty. So I said, “It is okay, we will withdraw the case. You can have it, although it is illegal.”But the council, before dissolving itself, also gave up the fire station with the community church. Now I cannot conceive that fire stations have also begun to be Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans. He does not mention it.I have said to him, “I will ask my people – because I don’t hold any power – I will advise them to give the church to the Christians, because we don’t use such dirty and dilapidated places. It is good for people who are sad and miserable and suffering, with Jesus Christ on the cross – it is good for them. It is not good for my people who are dancing and laughing and enjoying. They need a different kind of place, where laughter is not sin, where love is not condemned, where the cross – which is a symbol of death – is not praised. But what about the fire station? That should be returned to the city.”These are religious people. First, he is asking for a community church, as if it is a Christian church. Second, he does not mention that the fire brigade has nothing to do with Christianity.I have received a third letter too, from the old mayor, ex-mayor, and other dignitaries, saying to me, “It will be a peaceful gesture from your side if you advise your people to dissolve the City of Rajneesh as a city.”I am surprised: not a single letter has come which shows any gesture of love and peace towards us. They want every gesture of love and peace to come from us. Love and peace cannot exist from one side – and that too for material gain.The Methodist church wants a Rolls Royce. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” How can I give a Rolls Royce? – because cursed are the rich. A Methodist church having a Rolls Royce – they all will go to hell. Then who will be responsible?Poverty has been praised by Christianity as spiritual. What are poor people going to do with a Rolls Royce? They don’t even have any shame – begging for a Rolls Royce. I could have given not one, but all ninety Rolls Royces to the Christians, but they have to understand they will have to lose their heaven and their Jesus Christ.If you want heaven, you have to carry your cross on your shoulder. And remember, Jesus says even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven. No, I cannot do that much injustice to these idiots. Let them pass with the camel through the eye of the needle. If camels are going into heaven, I am not going into heaven, my people are not going into heaven. We have chosen hell. At least it will be better than Oregon.All the letters want us to make gestures of peace. A small minority – just five thousand sannyasins in this desert – and the whole of America, the greatest destructive power in the world today, is begging for gestures of peace from us. They should show some peace. It should come from the majority of the people. We will welcome it – our hands are ready to shake hands, but their hands want Rolls Royces, churches, fire stations.All the religions of the world are phony. They say one thing, they do something else, just the opposite. They are all hypocrites.We do what we say. If in paradise everything is luxurious, then we are practicing luxury, to be ready. Unprepared, what will you do in heaven, in paradise? The saints will be looking silly, because their whole life they practiced celibacy – and in heaven, beautiful young girls are available free of any charge. Those dead bones, those dry people who have practiced torturing themselves, how are they going to adjust in paradise? Impossible.My people will create, even in hell, a paradise. If they can create an oasis in this desert, which has been lying deserted for fifty years…. Nobody purchased it – what will you do with a desert? We accepted the challenge of the desert. We have changed it into a beautiful oasis.And in hell you will find all the colorful people of the whole history, juicy people – poets, painters, dancers, actors, actresses, sculptors – all creative. You will not find a single dodo saint – dull, dead, with a long face. In hell you will find people who laugh, who dance. There will be music, because all great musicians will be there. Because for thousands of years all the cream of humanity has been going to hell, you will find that those people have changed hell into paradise already. All the scientists, the most modern technology, delicious food – everything that you enjoy; no guilt, no sin, no church.But all religions have been converting people on the basis of fear and greed. They are creating paranoia – that in hell you will suffer for eternity. And in heaven you will rejoice for eternity – all that you have to do is just to believe in their dogma. Don’t ask any question, don’t be skeptical; simply be retarded. Have faith in Jesus Christ, have faith in Moses, have faith in Krishna, in Mohammed. And for such a simple thing – just having faith – the whole eternity of luxuries!These people are simply exploiting your fear and your greed. But why are they so interested in exploiting you? They themselves are not certain; looking into the certainty in your eyes, they feel at ease.One journalist – he was a rare case because journalists don’t go to heaven, cannot go to heaven – by some accident reached heaven. But on the door he was stopped by the gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper said, “All vacancies for journalists in heaven are full. In fact, we have ten journalists and they don’t have any work. In heaven there is no newspaper, no television, no radio, because there is no news; here, nothing happens. Just angels go on playing on their harps, ‘Alleluia, alleluia.’ How much news can you make out of that? You go to hell! There is tremendous news…so many papers, so many networks of television, radio.”But the man said, “I have come here: at least give me twenty-four hours, just a chance to visit the place. And have mercy on me – if I can convince one of the journalists inside heaven to go to hell, then there will be a place vacant, and you can give that place to me.”It looked logical. The gatekeeper allowed him, but said, “Remember, only twenty-four hours!”After twenty-four hours the journalist came to the gate. The gatekeeper said, “You cannot go out.”The journalist said, “Why?”The gatekeeper said, “All the ten journalists have left. You created such a rumor – that a new newspaper is going to start in hell. It needs a chief editor, a Sunday editor, and all kinds of journalists, and it is going to be the biggest newspaper – so they all have left. You were lying. There is no newspaper like that which is going to happen.”The man certainly had been lying to the journalists; but when ten left, he said to the gatekeeper, “Please let me go. Perhaps there is some truth in it.”The gatekeeper said, “But you know already that you were lying!”He said, “I know. But if ten people can believe in it, there must be some truth in it. I cannot remain in heaven anymore.”This is the psychology of conversion. People convert others to Catholicism, to Hinduism, to Mohammedanism, for the simple reason that they don’t have any authentic experience of their own. They are shaky inside; they know that they know not. They want to be certain. This is the easiest way: to convince people. In convincing people, they are convincing themselves. And the more people are converted to their path, the more certain they become that they are on the right path.That’s why you are feeling angry; otherwise there is no need to feel angry. So remember, your anger shows your emptiness. It shows that you are not certain. Rather than convincing others, it will be better to experience the truth that is available to you.Go deeper into meditation.That’s the only way to attain to certainty.Then the whole world can be against you, but there will be no anger, only compassion.Osho,Can a true rebel be a disciple of a master, or must he be simply a friend of the master?A rebel needs no master. If he needs a master, he is not a rebel. A rebel is a master unto himself. Rebellion is his religion, and there is no other religion for him.To follow a master, and at the same to think yourself a rebel, is a contradiction in terms.A rebel can only be a friend. A rebel can learn from all the sources available, but a rebel cannot be a follower. He cannot be a believer. A rebel cannot afford a master. He has chosen his individuality, his freedom, and he is not going to be enslaved by any master.That’s why I go on insisting to you that I am not your master, because I don’t want anybody to be enslaved. It is a psychological slavery: whatever I say you believe, whatever I do you believe – and still you think you are a rebel?To be a rebel needs guts.Yes, you can be my friends – and I am available to you: whatever I know, whatever I have experienced, is always available to you. And I don’t ask anything for it – your trust, your surrender, your faith, no! I cannot be inhuman to any human being.In the past, your so-called masters have all been inhuman to you. What does it mean when Jesus says, “I am the savior”? What does it mean when he says, “I am the shepherd and you are the sheep”? What more humiliation do you want? And still there are millions of Christians who think that they are sheep, and their shepherd is hanging on the cross.I am not your shepherd, you are not my sheep.A rebel is a beautiful human being. A sheep? – you have fallen far below being human. Have you seen sheep? They always move in a crowd – so close to each other, rubbing their bodies against each other. They cannot move alone. No sheep is a rebel – they feel comfortable and cozy only in a mob.Only lions move alone. Lions don’t move in a crowd – they are rebels. I would like you to be lions, not sheep.I am not your master, you are not my disciples. You love me – that’s enough. I love you and respect you, and respect your freedom. In this freedom and love, if something can transpire and transform you, that will be beautiful. But nobody was the master and nobody was the slave.This is not a religion, this is a love affair; and in love, nobody is a master. This is the highest that can be possible. And I would like you to live at the highest peak of human growth.There is not much difference between me and you, a very little difference: you are asleep, I am awake. But that is not much of a difference. You can be awake any moment. I was also asleep one day. If I can be awake, why can’t you be? The capacity to sleep proves the capacity to be awake. You can sleep only if you can be awake. Stones don’t sleep, because they cannot be awake.All that is needed is just a little shaking, a little cold water thrown into your eyes. That’s what I am doing every day, day in, day out. Once in a while you open your eyes too, but old habits die hard; then you close them again. Once in a while you hear me too, but then you pull the blanket over yourself again. Just human – just a little bit more rest, just a little bit more of a beautiful golden dream.And naturally, sometimes you get angry at me because I am disturbing your dream. But I am not angry. Even if you pull up your blanket again, turn to the other side, start snoring again, I am not going to leave you. I know that you are not dead – you can pull up the blanket, you can move to the other side. So it is very close; just a little more effort and you will be awake.I am not your savior, just a friend who knows both the states: the state of sleep and the state of being awake. And I feel that you are missing such a great joy, of opening your eyes and seeing the sunrise, and the birds singing, and the fresh morning air. And I feel compassion for you, that you are unnecessarily wasting your time in dreaming, while real life is waiting for you.So remember it: there is no question of anybody being your master. These masters have exploited you enough! It is time to stop this exploitation. An authentic human being cannot reduce you to a sheep. If there is any sin, Jesus has committed it, and that was making you sheep, and posing as your savior.And when he was being caught, just a few minutes before, his disciples asked, “What about us?” He said, “I will be coming soon to deliver everybody who has faith in me from all suffering and misery. And I will take you to the house of my father in paradise.”Two thousand years have passed, and that guy has not been seen since then. How long can you stretch the word “soon”?And I can say, with categorical certainty, that he is not going to come back again. He could not save himself! – how can he save the whole humanity?He died in tremendous doubt. At the last moment he shouted, looking at the sky, “God, my father, have you forsaken me?” He was expecting a miracle – naturally. He was believing himself to be the only begotten son of God. The only begotten son is being crucified, and God – sitting on a white cloud with angels playing on their harps – does not come to save him? Jesus died shaken. His faith was only that of a crackpot, it was not authentic experience.I do not expect anything; nobody can disappoint me. I don’t have any God – I am happy just being myself.Remember one thing: if there is a God, then you are all slaves, and freedom is impossible. The first principle of rebellion is that there is no God, no savior, no prophet, no messenger; you are alone, and you have to learn to depend only on yourself. That brings independence. And independence is such a joy, is such a beauty, is such a maturity, is such a flowering, that nothing more is needed. You feel so contented, so fulfilled, and the whole existence becomes your paradise.It is not a question of going into paradise. It is a question of going within yourself, reaching to your very center of being, which changes your perspective. This very existence becomes paradise. They are the same trees, the same birds, the same people, and yet they are no longer the same because you are no longer the same. Now you are not dreaming; now you are awake.For the awakened one, this existence is paradise. Every moment it is paradise. And when I say this, I am not saying it according to any holy scripture. There are no holy scriptures, there are only books. I am saying it out of my own experience, out of my own authority. I am ready to share with you. And it is not something that can be sold or purchased. Only in deep friendship, in love, does the transfer, the transformation happen.You are all rebels.Only rebels can have a contact with me.And I would like you to be a rebel always.I respect your rebellion. It would be so ugly for me to have five thousand sheep around me. Even if I become the shepherd, what would be the joy from it?I want five thousand rebellious spirits, five thousand burning torches, lights unto themselves – and then to be amongst you is a joy.Osho,I have read your words about the possibility of creating a new way to conceive babies, and they opened my heart. Why then, have you never had a son in this way? Please excuse me for asking such a personal question.There is no need to ask for any forgiveness. You can ask every question possible – personal, impersonal, it does not matter. I want to open myself completely to you. I want to be an open book, I don’t want to keep any secrets from you. So it is perfectly right to ask the question.The reason why I have not given birth to a child is very simple. First, look at the world – the whole mess of it. Look at the population, which is already four times more than this planet can support comfortably. Thousands of people are dying in Ethiopia every day out of hunger. Fifty percent of the people in India – that means four hundred million people – are undernourished, can barely manage one meal a day. Soon India will be a far bigger Ethiopia. And the same is the situation of many poor countries of the Third World.And it is not great, even in Great Britain. It is not great, even in the greatest world power, America. Millions of people are on the streets; they don’t have a decent shelter, they are beggars.And you want me to give birth to a child?What will I give him as his inheritance? This world – this madhouse which is piling up nuclear weapons to commit suicide, global suicide? Do you want me, and my child also, to be burned, tortured, killed by nuclear weapons? The nuclear weapons have come to a point where the whole of life on the earth can be destroyed seven hundred times! There is no need, because one time is enough.What will I say to my child – “This is the world I have brought you into.” Only sleepy people can bring children into the world, because they don’t know what they are doing. Their children are accidental. My child cannot be accidental.This world is no longer the place to give birth to more children. For at least twenty to thirty years there should be total birth control so that the population of the world comes to one-fourth. Right now it is four billion; by the end of this century it will be five billion. When it becomes five billion, you will see everywhere starvation, hunger, people dying – and no way to help them.No, I cannot give this world to my child.On the other hand, do you see what religions have done? This is what politics has done; politics has ended in nuclear weapons, prepared for a global suicide. And what have religions done? They have created the disease AIDS, which is going to kill two-thirds of the whole of humanity. Politicians and priests have always been in conspiracy against humanity. This time it is absolutely clear.AIDS is a religious disease, and all the founders of religions are responsible for it. They are the greatest criminals. Small criminals are being punished in the courts, and the real and great criminals are worshipped in churches, in mosques, in synagogues, in temples. It is really an insane state of affairs.All the religions teach that celibacy is spiritual, and nobody – not a single human being – has asked the question, “Is celibacy possible?”It is absolutely impossible. In a healthy body, the male sperm will be created. And what are you going to do with those male sperm? – because their biological function is to make life continue, they are in a hurry to reach the female egg. When you feel horny, what does it mean? Your small bag of male sperm is overcrowded; they want to get out of there, they want to explore the world.Do you see the absurdity of all these religions? You may be a Christian, you may be a Hindu; you may take the vow of celibacy, you may become a monk, you may be worshipped as a saint – but your physiology knows nothing about your Christianity, about your Hinduism. Your physiology has its own program, which is not under your mind’s control. It goes on functioning according to its own program.You may have this idea in your head, that celibacy is spiritual, but it will never reach to your blood cells, to your bones, to your stomach. There is no communication. There is no line of communication between you and your physiology. It functions on its own, it is autonomous.So because all the religions insisted on celibacy, they created homosexuality, masturbation, sodomy, lesbianism. For all sexual repressions and for all sexual perversions they are responsible. And humanity has suffered under their idiotic idea.In your monasteries the monks are all homosexuals. If they are not homosexuals, then they will be masturbating. Religions don’t allow the monks and nuns to meet and have a little love affair, at least once in a while – every weekend. One day in a week can be given as a holiday from your saintliness. But there is no holiday.So these people created homosexuality, these people created sexual abuse of children. And now homosexuality has come to such a peak that it has exploded into the disease AIDS. Even to call it a disease is not right. It is death itself, because AIDS has no cure. Every disease has a cure – if not today, then tomorrow it will have a cure. But all the scientists who are studying AIDS are unanimous that there is no possibility of any cure for it. What does that mean? There is only one thing in life which has no cure, and that is death.AIDS is nothing but slow death; it is not a disease. It may take six months to two years, but the person is going to die in a very ugly, inhuman, condemned, guilty way. What has he done to himself? It would have been better to die suddenly. But for two years continuously contemplating all that he has done, and this death that is coming…. Nobody can invent a better torture.Do you want my child to be born in this idiotic world full of AIDS? Do you know that a few children are born with AIDS? What will be their whole life? – within two years they will be gone. They will not have any life.And AIDS is spreading like wildfire, for the simple reason that no nation wants to give exact information as to how many people are suffering from AIDS, because no nation wants to be condemned in the world as homosexual, as perverted, as sexually sick. So governments are repressing information. The doctors don’t want anybody who has AIDS to be admitted to their clinics, hospitals, nursing homes.The best way is to convince the man that “You don’t have it,” so they can get rid of him; otherwise he is dangerous. If they keep him in the hospital, the doctor is in danger, the nurses are in danger, other people are in danger. But to tell that man that he does not have AIDS is making the whole society available to him, forcing the whole society into danger.And AIDS does not spread only by sexual contact. You can kiss somebody who has AIDS, and the saliva is enough to transfer the disease to you. Now kissing should be prohibited completely, it should be made illegal. Somebody is crying and weeping and tears are rolling down his cheeks, and out of compassion and love you wipe those tears with your hands. Be alert: tears carry the virus of AIDS. It should be prohibited. Nobody should show such compassion, it is too dangerous.Such a dangerous phenomenon, and doctors are not accepting it. State governments are trying to make it such that in tests of a hundred people who have AIDS, at least ninety will come out clear, so that the state is not condemned, so it is not burdened with so many AIDS people. Nobody exactly knows what to do with these people. But you are taking a great risk. You have saved your name, your state’s name, your government’s name, but those people who have been left in the society will create more and more problems.Do you want me to bring a child into this world? I love too much. I cannot give this world to my child. I love your children too much. In the four years this commune has existed, not a single child has been born here. This is intelligence. This is not a time to bring children, this is a time to reduce the population of the earth.This is the time to be very alert about AIDS. Perhaps this is the only place in the whole world where every precaution has been taken against it. All six thousand sannyasins have gone through tests. No other place has guts enough to put the whole city through tests. They are afraid that they may find people who have AIDS. And the people who feel perhaps they may have it are not going through the test – for the simple reason that if they go through the test and they are found positive, then even their wives, their children, their parents, will refuse them. They will have no place in their own home. They will not be allowed in any restaurant. Their own friends will become their enemies.So they don’t want to be tested; the government does not want it, the hospitals do not want it. And the fire is spreading; nobody wants to recognize it, to see it. This is not intelligence. Just closing your eyes does not mean that the enemy has disappeared.We have found a few people with AIDS – two persons. We have made a beautiful isolation place for them; the best that we could afford has been given to them. They have all our respect and love, because they are victims.If anybody has to be punished, it is pope the Polack, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Hindu Shankaracharya. These people are still going on preaching celibacy. These people should be immediately imprisoned. There is no question; no two opinions about it are possible. Anybody who teaches celibacy is teaching homosexuality, is teaching sexual perversion. And these people go on teaching no birth control, no Pill, no abortion. Do they want to see the whole world starve and die in agony?Their interest is totally different. If people use birth control methods, then from where is Mother Teresa going to find orphans? Her whole business will be finished. And these orphans are being converted into Catholics, so the pope is in absolute support.You give Nobel Prizes to these people who need to be sentenced to prison for their whole life! They are the cause of poverty in the world, they are the cause of the orphans in the world. And they are still free, preaching the same old nonsense. They go on saying God gives children. On what authority do they know it? Have they got any proof, any evidence that God gives children to people? And if God gives children to people, then their God must be absolutely insane. Seeing this earth overpopulated, thousands of people dying, he goes on giving children?There is no God.It is the greatest lie invented by the religions to exploit humanity.And I am surprised…. Mother Teresa has been in correspondence with me. Because I condemned her so much in India, she finally had to write a letter to me in which she said, “It is out of my compassion that I am serving the orphans.”I replied to her, “Your compassion is costing too much. You can be compassionate to something else, but please stop this compassion to orphans, and stop talking this nonsense that God gives children.”And I wrote to her, “God is omnipotent, all powerful. If he really wants to give children, then he can do anything. What about the Pill? Can’t God remove the Pill? God could part the ocean for Moses to move with all his followers; can’t he make a passage in the condom? He can part the ocean, he cannot part the condom? So leave it to him. If he wants – he is all-powerful, all-knowing, present everywhere – he will do whatsoever he wants to do. Why are you bothering and teaching people against birth control methods?”Her next letter came without any answer to what I had written. She simply wrote, “I will pray to God to forgive you.”I had to write to her again: “I have not given you the authority to pray on my behalf. I can sue you in the court. Who are you to pray on my behalf to a God who does not exist? You are interfering with my freedom. Stop praying, at least for me! I do not want anybody’s prayer, anybody’s forgiveness; I am not committing any sin. Pray for yourself.”And that was the end of the correspondence.No, I cannot conceive that in this ugly situation anybody who has some love will bring children into the world. This is impossible for a loving heart.Use all birth control methods, and let us see God’s omnipotence. I tell you he is absolutely impotent. He does not exist.Osho,Almost daily we hear you vilify homosexuals. Are you withdrawing your love from the thousands of us who are homosexual and also happen to be in love with you? I feel like a second-class member of the community. Do you have any guidance for us?As a homosexual you are not even a human being, what to say about a second-class citizen? You have fallen from dignity. I have great love for you, but that does not mean that I will support your perversion.You love me, but your love is meaningless if you cannot understand what I am saying. Be heterosexual. Homosexuality is just a habit that you have got, an ugly habit. Drop it. It is simply a question of dropping it, because it is not natural. Wild animals in the jungle are never homosexual; but in zoos, where females are not available, they turn into homosexuals. All your monasteries are zoos! Why are you becoming part of a zoo? Gather courage: Why are you afraid of a woman?My love is for you. That’s why I am condemning homosexuality continually – because I want you to become natural again.But homosexuals used to think, before AIDS, that they are very progressive people, avant-garde, more intelligent than heterosexuals. Heterosexuals are just backward, primitive, just doing the old thing; and they are doing new experiments, new explorations. But AIDS has proved you were wrong. You were perverted. No heterosexual in this commune has suffered from AIDS.Do you want me to support AIDS? Supporting homosexuality exactly means that – supporting AIDS.It is a small commune. We had only two persons for whom we were caring; one of them has died. Nine, from other communes around the world, have arrived. And many others who are not sannyasins are ready to become sannyasins, just so that they can have a place, respect, dignity. But how many AIDS people can we support? And why should we support them?If AIDS people have any guts left in them – and now they have nothing to lose, they have lost everything – they should all move to the Vatican. The Vatican has to become the AIDS camp! They created homosexuality, now they have to take the consequences of it.There was a time when Rome was at its highest peak of culture, and there was a proverb: “Every road leads to Rome.” Now it is not heard anymore, because that Rome has fallen, disappeared. But I say to you, now create a new proverb: “Every road leads to the Vatican, particularly for those who are suffering from AIDS. Go to the pope and tell him, ‘This is the result of your teachings of celibacy. Now take care of us!’”This is a small commune…. And I have never advocated celibacy, I am against it. I have always taught love and how to transform your love more and more into the higher qualities which are inherent in it. Celibacy is not my number.So I think the commune should tell the AIDS people, “We will pay for your tickets; you go to the Vatican. That’s all that we can do for you.”It has to be made clear in the whole world…. The Vatican is big enough, has enough marble palaces, and enough money. The Vatican is the richest city in the whole world. Talking about poverty – and the pope is the head of the richest empire! They should make arrangements for AIDS people.Osho,Please speak about the significance of the gachchhamis now that we have dropped Rajneeshism.Gachchhamis have nothing to do with religion. Gachchhamis have something to do with your determination. These are the gachchhamis. It is not a prayer….“I go to the feet of the awakened one, to his commune, to his truth.”This is simply a declaration on your part. The awakened one does not indicate any individual; it simply means all the awakened ones of the past, of the present, of the future. It simply means the quality of being awakened. And you are making yourself remember, “I am dedicated to only one thing: I have to become awakened.”“To his commune…to his truth.”No particular name is mentioned. All the communes of all the awakened ones are implied in it. Of course the truth is the same; whoever has awakened has found the same truth.The gachchhamis are simply a remembrance of your own decision. They are going to remain. And the gachchhamis are individual, they have nothing to do with any collectivity. And they are profoundly beautiful.They serve another purpose also. “I go to the feet of the awakened one,” means you are at least for a moment putting your ego aside, for the commune, for the truth. The only way to reach awakening, and the truth it reveals – all that is needed is to drop the ego completely. But even to put it aside for a moment will give you a tremendous experience, a glimpse. Just a small breeze of awakening will move through your being. It has nothing to do with religion.Osho,I am celebrating the sudden and beautiful death of Rajneeshism, and the idea of a bonfire wholly of the book of Rajneeshism. But how can we burn the fire to destroy Rajneeshism within? Please explain.That’s a very simple matter, because I have never taught you any religion, I have never taught you any belief system. If you have created something inside you, it is your doing. Undo it.Today, we will be burning the book of Rajneeshism, symbolizing that we are not a religion but a way of life, a way of religiousness. There are no Rajneeshees, only friends of Osho.Inside you, if you have created any idea of a religion – if you can create it, you can uncreate it. It is a very simple matter, just give it a try. It is your own imagination, it does not exist; how long can you carry it within you? It will not be supported from the outside. All the props will be taken away from you, and your inner idea will fall flat on the earth.If you cannot manage, I will manage. But first I will give a chance to you, because I want you to do it. And I know you are capable of doing it. But if I see you cannot do it, then I will start hammering from every side. Then don’t feel hurt.Osho,I heard a rumor that the attorney general of Oregon is in a great panic. He has alerted the National Guard again. What is his fear? Please comment.Politicians are always cowards. Politicians suffer from an inferiority complex. The attorney general of Oregon has not enough courage to come here and see what is happening. But I think he cannot sleep; he must be dreaming about us, continuously thinking of us.The governor wants to declare a state of emergency, to impose on Rajneeshpuram something absolutely absurd – because there is no violence happening, nobody is fighting, no- body is killing, nobody is doing any harm to anybody.The state police are here, the county police are here, the city police are here, the FBI people are here – nobody is hindering their work. Whatsoever they want to do, they are doing. They cannot find any tension anywhere. And still the governor wants to declare a state of emergency, and the attorney general has put the National Guard on alert.My suggestion is, they should also have hydrogen bombs, missiles aimed at Rajneeshpuram. America misses not having a Hiroshima – this opportunity they should not lose.It is simply idiotic what he is doing. I feel like calling him the Idiot General of Oregon, not attorney general of Oregon.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,It is a rumor in the air that you are being arrested today or tomorrow. What is your comment?Aha! That’s really groovy. That’s the only experience I have missed in my life. And knowing that this is my last life, I would certainly want to be arrested. Make sure that I am handcuffed, because whenever I do anything, I do it totally.Arresting me, an absolutely innocent person who has done no wrong, is the beginning of the end of American hypocrisy about democracy. It will be a great help to the whole world to understand that America is not what it pretends to be. It is not following its Constitution. It has the best Constitution in the world, but the worst politicians also.The politicians of America are prostituting the Constitution. They should stop calling it “Constitution,” they should start calling it “prostitution.”I have been for three and a half years in isolation, in silence, just remaining in my room, no contact with sannyasins, and still I am a criminal. If I am a criminal, then nobody on this earth is innocent.It is perfectly good; if they have guts they should arrest me and show their real faces to the world, show that democracy is just fake. America and the Soviet Union do not differ in any way. Perhaps the Soviet Union is more straightforward; it says what it does, it is not phony.The Soviet Union may be doing all kinds of wrong things – it is – but it calls itself the dictatorship of the proletariat. America calls itself a democracy – a government by the people, of the people, for the people. Arresting me, they will destroy their own image in the whole world.I am perfectly happy. I don’t want to miss this opportunity. But why tomorrow? – because tomorrow never comes. It is better today. Arrest me today. And arrest me as a criminal, handcuffed, so the whole world can see that this government is not for the people, of the people, by the people. That this government is, behind a mask of democracy, as dictatorial, as fascist as it can be.But they should remember…. I inquired of a few of my sannyasins: they are all wanting to be voluntarily arrested, they want to be with me. So they should come with five thousand handcuffs. It is not going to be an easy thing. And we know how to make history. We don’t read history, we make history. Five thousand sannyasins will offer themselves voluntarily to be arrested. And that will make what I say is the beginning of the end of American hypocrisy.We are for the American Constitution, but not for American dirty politicians. We will fight for the Constitution against the politicians. I have tremendous respect and love for the Constitution. It has all the great values that humanity needs. But these politicians are not Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln must be tossing and turning in his grave. The best in America will feel it, and will be with you.Not only here – if five thousand people are arrested here, then the same is going to happen in every country. Sannyasins will offer their governments, “Either disconnect all connections with America, throw out the American embassies, or arrest us.” In every country thousands of sannyasins are going to do the same, because they feel the same as you feel. It is going to be a world-wide phenomenon.To arrest me is not so simple. These politicians are just simpletons. But I welcome their idea. As far as I am concerned, I will really enjoy it.In India I have been speaking against the politicians for thirty years, but they never tried to do any harm to me knowing perfectly well that doing any harm to me, means thousands of sannyasins around the country will be hurt.We are nonviolent people. We cannot hurt anybody, but we can offer ourselves.For thirty years they have not even tried any inquiry, any investigation. Even in the times of emergency rule in India it was more democratic than in America without emergency rule. All the ashrams were raided except my commune, for the simple reason that they understand me, and understood that it is better not to take such a risk. But these American politicians are not aware of me. It is a good chance to make them aware.So only a few sannyasins will remain to take care of the commune; otherwise every sannyasin has to offer himself for voluntary arrest.Osho,Is it just a coincidence that you started the neo-sannyas movement on September 26 and stopped it on the same day after fifteen years?I have not stopped the sannyas movement; I have stopped it becoming a religion. A movement is a flux; that’s the meaning of movement – it is moving, it is growing. But a religion is dead – it has stopped moving, it has stopped growing. It is dead. The only place for it is in the crematorium. That’s where we had to take it. And we have celebrated the death of the religion – a religion which was not my idea.I trust in sannyasins remaining individuals, I trust in their growth and movement; but I don’t like the idea of them becoming like Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists. That’s what was done while I was in isolation. In my absence, Sheela gathered around herself a fascist group and managed to cripple the sannyas movement, to make it dead, to make it a religion.We have burned the religion – that does not mean we have burned our religiousness. That is a totally different thing.Religiousness is like love – invisible, yet so tangible. You cannot explain it, but you can experience it.Religiousness has been freed from a dead structure, a bondage that Sheela and her criminal group have put around it. Now you are not Rajneeshees. And I would like the press, the media to be kind enough not to refer to my people as Rajneeshees. They need some kind of reference – they can call them friends of Osho, and that will be absolutely right and appropriate.Sheela wanted a dead religion. Every priest or priestess wants a dead religion, because it is predictable. Everything is just a catechism. There is no opinion, no evolution, no growth. Just look at Christianity: two thousand years have passed – have they gone even an inch farther than Jesus Christ? Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha – have Buddhists gone a single step ahead? This is destroying growth, destroying evolution.Now I want my people to remain open, alive, growing, always fresh and new. It remains a new kind of phenomenon, religiousness: no label attached to it, because every label is a full stop. And I don’t like full stops, I don’t like even semi-colons: Life is always ongoing….One journalist was very much worried; he said, “You have destroyed Rajneeshism, the religion. Now you will be in great trouble on two counts: first, Rajneesh Foundation International will lose its tax-exempt status.”I told the man, “Don’t you worry about it. We have burned religion but not religiousness; and we will fight so that a man can have a growing experience of religiousness without being part of a mob psychology, without being a member of a collectivity. That is perfectly good for the sheep, but not for lions. And I want my sannyasins to be lions, not sheep.“Nobody can take away the tax-exempt status. We are more religious than any Christian, any Hindu, any Mohammedan. We have just buried the dead structure and freed the soul of religion. That freedom is religiousness.”He was also worried that it would be difficult now for me in reference to my immigration, on the same grounds. It is not going to be difficult for me at all. If you don’t have a category for religiousness, that is your fault. Make a category for religiousness.Even in my interview with the INS, I had made it clear that this is no ordinary religion; it is simply a way of life, a quality of religiousness.The INS officer said, “But it is difficult, because we don’t have any category for that. We have a category for religion.”“Then,” I said, “you can write that it is a religionless religion.” And that is on record.What does “religionless religion” mean?It simply means a religiousness.And I love fights. It is so exciting. I am all for fighting – of course, nonviolent fighting, not with guns. Guns are used only by retarded people. I have enough intelligence to fight, to argue. And I will argue my case up to the Supreme Court.I would like the Supreme Court to give me special permission to fight my case myself. An advocate can be an assistant to me, but I do not want to be lost in legal jargon. I am a straightforward, simple man. And what is the need for truth to have any advocate to defend it? Truth is not defensive; its presence is enough, and its victory is absolutely certain.So there is no question. The movement of sannyas has been freed, it has not been stopped. It was being stopped.I used to have another corporation just like Rajneesh Foundation International: Neo-Sannyas International. Sheela dropped it. I came to know only when I came out of silence, that now Neo-Sannyas International does not exist – and that has been my whole life’s work!I am going to revive Neo-Sannyas International. That is a movement; anybody can join it, and I have made it wider, I have given it a wide base. There are millions of people who love me, who love my insights, but cannot become sannyasins because they have to change their clothes – that creates trouble in their family, in their job, with their friends, in the society. I have withdrawn it.I have withdrawn the mala. It has significance in India, because in India the red clothes and mala have been used for thousands of years by all the religions as symbolic of a sannyasin. I wanted to destroy that traditional idea of sannyas, because the sannyasin has to be celibate, the sannyasin has not to touch a woman, not to talk to a woman. The sannyasin cannot stay in a household, he has to stay in a temple. He has to eat only once a day, he has to fast continuously again and again. He has to torture himself. This is sick.I wanted to destroy this image, that’s why I had chosen the red color. And I had almost three hundred thousand sannyasins in India. My sannyasins created tremendous trouble amongst the traditional sannyasins, because there was no way to know who is who. My sannyasins would be walking on the road and people would touch their feet, not knowing that these are not celibates; they have their girlfriends. They eat two times a day, they eat everything that is the best – whether it is Italian or Chinese or Japanese, it does not matter. These people belong to the twenty-first century, and old sannyasins were very angry because I have destroyed their image.With our coming to the West, now red clothes and the mala are no longer needed, because in the West they have never been symbolic of religion. They have done their work in India. They have made their point, that a sannyasin can be with a wife, with children; that he need not be a parasite on the society, he can work, he can create, he can earn; that he need not be worshipped.But in the West there is no need. I was going to withdraw the mala and the color anyway, but Sheela made it more urgent; you have to be grateful to her. All her crimes made it absolutely necessary that now sannyasins should be absolutely normal human beings, so you can live in the society without creating any kind of hostility or embarrassment for yourself, for your family, or difficulties in your job.And, more specifically, you are now completely devoid of all outer symbols. All that is left is the essential core of religiousness, the inward journey, which only you can do. I cannot do it for you, nobody can do it for you.So now there is left only the essential quality, the most fundamental quality of religiousness.That is meditation.I have been teaching you all the methods of meditation. You can choose any method that suits you. There are only one hundred and twelve methods; there is no possibility of adding more. It is exhaustive. All the methods possible have been explored. The simplest is witnessing.So now that you no longer have any outer symbols, it is good, if you want to be a sannyasin, for you to remember only one thing: how to go into the discipline of witnessing; otherwise there is a possibility that wearing red clothes and the mala you are completely satisfied that you are a sannyasin. You are not. Clothes don’t make anybody change, neither does the mala make anybody go through a transformation. But you can deceive yourself.Now I am taking all that away from you, and leaving only one simple thing. You cannot deceive: either you do it or you don’t do it. Without doing it, you are not a sannyasin. So the movement has come to its purest state, the most essential stage; it has not been dropped.But it is a good coincidence that on the same date I had started the sannyas movement, and on the same date I have made it absolutely purified of all unnecessary, nonessential things. But it is purely a coincidence, because I am not good about dates, days, years. Forgive me for that.I live in a timeless space. I don’t know what day it is, I don’t know what date it is. I use the watch only for you – in the morning discourse, in the evening interviews for the press – otherwise, the whole day I don’t use it. I don’t have any need to know what the time is. What am I going to do with the time?Just for your sake…because I am such a crazy man that I may go on speaking and speaking – three hours, four hours, five hours – the watch prevents me. It is simply for your sake, a compassionate gesture.Osho,Please share with us your vision of the benefits of the arts for our process of growing towards ourselves, in therapy, meditation, worship.The arts can be immensely helpful in therapy, in spiritual growth, in your meditations. But it is taking a hard and long way unnecessarily. The shortcut is: first, meditation, and then out of meditation comes creativity of its own accord. Otherwise, it is a long journey; even one life may not be enough.For example, the paintings of Picasso are nothing but his nightmares, as if somebody is not painting but vomiting. It has helped him to relieve himself of his tensions, schizophrenia, paranoia and all kinds of mental repressions. But it is not of much use to you. In fact, if you go on looking at a Picasso painting for a long time, you will feel sick, because it is vomiting. You will start feeling nauseous. This is not real art.The people who created the Taj Mahal – that is real art. They were Sufi mystics who knew what meditation is. And they created the Taj Mahal in such a way that if on every full-moon night, exactly at nine o’clock in the evening, you just sit looking at the most beautiful architecture in the whole world, you will find suddenly you are becoming silent, peaceful, serene. Something is transpiring between you and the Taj Mahal.Gurdjieff used to call the Taj Mahal, objective art. It means: created by people who are fully aware, able to create something which can help people to grow. He would not call Picasso an objective artist. Picasso is a subjective artist, he is just throwing up whatsoever is in his mind. It is not going to help anybody. Picasso feels relieved, but for how long? Soon he will gather tensions again. Soon he will be again in a state of insanity, and then he will paint. Painting is a release for him.The people who built the Taj Mahal – it is not a release for them; it is their experience. And they are trying somehow to make something which can also give you the same experience – at least a glimpse of it.In India there are many places of objective art, and it is obvious why they are in India – because for ten thousand years the country has been involved with meditative techniques. The caves of Ajanta and Ellora…there are many caves; the whole mountain has been carved. Great caves have been made into the mountain. A line of caves – perhaps thirty or thirty-five, and each cave has its own beauty; not just beauty, but its own meditative fragrance from a different angle.In the last cave, Buddha is lying down just before he died. It is a long statue – perhaps thirty feet long. Just sitting by the side, alone in the cave, you can again feel something that must have been felt by people who saw Buddha dying – the release of his light, the release of his soul becoming universal. Somehow the statue gives you an insight into it.Tourists miss it. It is not something that you simply go in and have a look and then rush into another cave. That is simply idiotic. And most of the tourists are idiots. Most of them are old women having nothing to do. Perhaps they have finished their husbands – now there is nobody even to nag. India is full of old women from all over the world.Tourists cannot understand it. You have to sit down. You have to be quiet and silent. The cave is very cool – remains cool even in the hottest summer – and outside is the lush green valley. If you can sit for an hour or more, then perhaps some glimpses of objective art will be felt.There is one cave in Ajanta which has been made of special stones which are musical. You can just hit them with your hand, with your finger, and you will be surprised that they resound just like a guitar. If you are really a good musician, you can create any music on those pillars in the cave, on the walls of the cave.But if you are not a musician, no problem: you simply sit there. Once in a while a breeze comes in, and with the breeze there is a murmuring music in the cave. And it is so soothing. I have never known anything that can be so soothing to your mind, to your heart, to your body – so relaxing. This is objective art.But your question is, “Can art help somehow in being more healthy spiritually? Can it become a therapy?” Yes, it can; vomiting is a therapy. And when you are feeling nauseous, it is good to vomit, have a good vomit, and you will feel clean. The nausea is gone. But this is not something of great help. Please go vice versa: first meditation, then out of meditation there is a spontaneity of creativity.Right now you don’t know even what areas of creativity can bring out your potential for spiritual growth. To paint? – everybody is not a painter. To write poetry? – everybody is not a poet. To play music? – everybody is not a musician. How are you going to choose in your confusion? But if you are silent through meditation, utterly silent, suddenly you feel a tremendous urge to create something, to become a musician…. It comes spontaneously!I know one of the great musicians in India – it is inconceivable, the way he created music. You know the name of Ravi Shankar – Ravi Shankar married that great musician’s daughter; Ravi Shankar is his disciple. He was capable of creating music with anything. He would start hitting just two pieces of steel, and you will be surprised how many and how beautiful were the sounds he could create out of it. He was a born musician.A meditator finds his potential and starts moving towards it. Then poetry or dance or sculpture – whatever happens spontaneously – is objective art. It is your contribution.It will help you to grow spiritually. It will be your real therapy, because growth is therapy. It will give you authentic spiritual health. And, by the way, it will help many other people who can for a few moments sit silently, listen to your music, or watch your dance, or see your painting. They will be immensely benefited because your art will give them a certain direction towards meditation.So my suggestion is, everything starts with meditation. And if you try other things, you will be going on a sorry-go-round for many lives, round and round – I cannot call it a merry-go-round – but you will never reach to your center.The first and the foremost act of a sannyasin is to reach to his center, and then leave everything to that experience to explode in its own way. Then you are natural. Then whatever you do is helpful to you and helpful to others. This is the only love, compassion that you can share with humanity.Osho,Just the other day, Suman and I went off to Los Angeles via Portland to buy rainbow clothes. A funny thing happened. We thought we were incognito, wearing rainbow clothes and no mala. And somehow people in the shops and in the airport recognized us, commenting immediately: “Are you excited about the changes? Are you disillusioned? How is Sunshine?” Each time we laughed and looked at each other in disbelief, because we had thought we were in disguise. Osho, would you care to say something about this?I know it is going to happen. It is not by the clothes that a person is recognized, it is the energy aura around him which makes him separate and unique from others.My sannyasins will have a different flavor. It does not matter what clothes they wear. You cannot disguise yourself, you will be found out. Your very vibe will make you a stranger.But without the clothes and the mala, your being a stranger is not going to be offensive to anybody. On the contrary, they will become interested: What has happened to this man, to this woman, which is special? What kind of fragrance surrounds this man? Your gestures will show it, your eyes will show it. The way you walk, the way you talk – everything will show it. There is no way to hide a fire which is burning within you. There is no way to hide a light.You can easily recognize a house which is in darkness and there is no light in it. And you can recognize from the outside of a house if there is light inside: every window, every door shows the light. It is impossible for meditators to become just like other people who are not meditators.And it is good that they recognize you. That gives you a chance to open your heart to them – that clothes and mala have been dropped, not because of any disillusionment, but because their purpose is served. Now we can be recognized without them. We have come of age.Many more people are going to become sannyasins, because we have withdrawn all barriers for them. The only change will be that they will have a spiritual name that is not their legal name. In the world they can continue to have their legal name. Their spiritual name will remind them in their day-to-day work that they should not forget they have made a commitment to grow spiritually. And their spiritual name will be a connection with a world-wide community.Except that, meditation remains your whole work.Osho,Do you want to know the real story? Sheela left because she got raped. Vidya and Puja left because they didn't.Perhaps you are right.There is a group of psychologists who think that the women who are raped are really inviting it. To be raped means to create so much excitement in the man that he forgets that he is committing a crime. It is a tribute to the beauty of the woman. She has proved to be almost like a drug, and the man has proved to be completely in her power. He is ready to commit a crime for which in different countries he will have different kinds of punishments. For example, in the Middle East, death will be the punishment. He has even forgotten that death will be the punishment. Perhaps those psychologists have a certain insight into the matter.I was a professor in the university. One day I was just sitting with the vice-chancellor – once in a while he used to call me, just to chitchat. When I was with him, a young, beautiful girl came crying.She said to the vice-chancellor, “Now it is becoming too much….” One student was continuously harassing her. He was throwing pebbles at her in the class, sending letters to her, writing loving words on her desk. “You have to do something to prevent all this.”The vice-chancellor was sympathetic. He said, “I will call him and put a stop to it.”I said, “Wait a minute. Let me deal with the case.” I turned to the girl and asked her, “Be sincere and true: are you not enjoying it?”There was a great silence for a few seconds. And then the girl said, “But how did you know that I am enjoying it?”I said, “Just think of the opposite. If nobody writes letters to you, and nobody throws pebbles at you, nobody takes air out of your bicycle tires, nobody writes beautiful words on your desk – nobody at all, you are simply ignored, as if you do not exist – will that make you happy?”Again there was a silence. The girl said, “But how are you able to know all this?”I said, “Leave that aside. You just first figure it out – because the vice-chancellor is going to stop the boy. But if it is giving you enjoyment…. In fact, informing the vice-chancellor has also given you joy. You have made your point even to the vice-chancellor, that you are a beautiful girl. You certainly are. And I think it is perfectly right for people to do these small things to you; otherwise, you will be miserable. You go back and think about it again. If you want to stop that boy, then you can come back again to the vice-chancellor tomorrow.” She never came back.The vice-chancellor was very much surprised. He said, “You solved the problem so easily; the other party was not even called.”I said to him, “You are now very old” – he must have been sixty-five; he was a retired chief justice of a high court. “Do you remember the times when you were a student in the university? Have you not written letters to girls, thrown pebbles at the girls, made attempts somehow to touch them? Have you never taken air out of their bicycle tires?”He said, “You are really strange. How do you know?”I said, “Again, the same question the girl was asking. I don’t know anything either about the girl or about you, but I know everything about the human mind, and you cannot be an exception. Has not youth come to you? Haven’t you seen the spring?”He said, “Perhaps you are right. Yes, I remember doing all these things.”“And,” I said, “still you were going to stop that poor boy. In fact, you should encourage all kinds of these activities so no girl is left miserable, so that no boy misses his youth, his springtime. What is natural should be accepted.”I told him, “In my class it never happens, for the simple reason that my class is the only class in the whole of India where girls and boys cannot sit separately. It is mandatory that they should sit mixed; then there is no need to throw pebbles. You can nudge the girl – which is far more human, more loving. You can feel the warmth of the girl. The girl can feel your lovingness towards her.”I said, “One day you should come to my class. This is the most silent class, without any trouble, for the simple reason that I am not creating monks and nuns. I am helping them to be human beings, and I am allowing them to be together.“I have made it clear to them: ‘Anybody who wants to leave the class can leave the class without asking me. Anybody who wants to come in the class at anytime can come in without asking me. Just don’t disturb the class; come slowly and sit silently.’“Nobody leaves, nobody comes late. When you don’t make people obey you, when you don’t become dictatorial, of course there is no question of disobedience, there is no question of resistance.”Life would be so simple if people accepted its naturalness.In fact, nobody can rape a woman unless deep down she is willing. It is impossible. She will scream, she will throw tantrums, she will hit you, she will bite you. And in all that atmosphere, can you make love to her? You will lose your erection! She can give a really good hit to your balls, and you will forget forever raping anybody! That is such a simple thing. And man is most vulnerable at that point – just a good hit, the way you kick a football, and he is finished. If a woman is raped, there is some deep willingness for it.So perhaps you are right that Sheela left because she was raped in her youth, and she could not forgive men or the society. And when she got the power in her hands she started torturing everybody. And the others left because they have not been raped. They have been available to you, and you did nothing. I know about Vidya; I don’t think there is any man who is going to rape her. That is one of the problems she has come to me for, that “I feel nobody loves me.”But I said, “What can I do about it? You can console yourself: at least I love you. I love all kinds of creatures, don’t be worried.”And as for Puja, she can rape any man! If she can murder a man, can make attempts to murder a whole city, to murder sannyasins, rape is a very small thing. But I don’t think any man would like to be raped by her. The man will do everything – he will start doing Dynamic Meditation to avoid the rape. Dynamic Meditation is immensely helpful in many situations.Osho,What is the role of the commune as it is now, regarding therapy and meditation as offered in the university; and vice versa? And what is your vision of both their growth processes?The function of the commune is to create an atmosphere of encouragement – that you are not alone. The path that you have to travel, you have to travel alone; but if you know that so many people are traveling alone on the path, it gives tremendous encouragement. There is no fear: “If these people can manage, I can manage also.”The commune is not a religion, following collectively on a super-highway. The commune belongs to individuals who have joined hands with each other because they are going on an inner journey where they will be alone. But with so many people going on that inner journey alone the fear of being alone is dropped.You can share your experiences with each other; perhaps sharing your experiences with each other will help immensely. That’s why therapies exist where people can open their heart and share their experiences.But the commune experience is a therapeutic experience – day in, day out.My vision of a commune is of absolutely individual meditators living together, helping each other: “Don’t be afraid, it is tremendously exciting to go in. Although you are going alone, you are not the only one who is going alone. One million sannyasins are going alone.”It is a very strange phenomenon: living together, yet exploring the truth in absolute aloneness. And whatever you find, you can share. It will be respected, it will be accepted. And everybody is to have different kinds of experiences on the way, until the person reaches to the ultimate omega point. That omega point is exactly the same for everyone. But on the way there are so many beauties, so much splendor.You just need a little courage, and the commune provides you the courage. And I am here to encourage you to take the jump. You have nothing to lose, and you have the whole universe to gain.Osho,I heard you say that the psychologist is slowly taking the role of the priest. Group leaders tend to become arrogant and often hallow themselves as authorities, well-disguised in humbleness. They thus give juice to their participants' dependency on authority, even though that is what they came to therapy to grow out of. Isn't this exploitation of trust even more dangerous than any other exploitation?It is happening around the world. The therapist, the psychoanalyst, the psychiatrist – they are the new priests. The old priests are out of date with the new generation.The gap between the old people and the new generation is widening every day. The gap is widening, but your conditioning is done by the older generation: your parents, your teachers, your priests. So now you are in a situation where you have to find new priests, new father figures, and that is being fulfilled by the psychologists of different schools.One of the functions here in our university is to destroy this role. The therapists have to be aware not to become authoritative. But they can become nonauthoritative only if you are ready to drop the idea of authority.So it depends on both the therapist and the people who are participating in the therapy. The persons who are participating should drop the father figure, they should drop the idea of any authority. They will help the therapist. But if they are all demanding that he become an authority, a father figure, then it will be difficult for him to drop it. So both have to become aware of it.At least in my communes, therapies are not going to replace priesthoods. My therapists are simply experts who can help you to sort out problems, problems which you cannot sort out yourself, problems which are too heavy on you. An outsider who knows the expertise of analyzing your dreams, of analyzing your behavior, of analyzing your mind, can be of immense help.But the danger is, you both are human: you want a father figure, and the other person wants to become an authority. You have to be conscious about it. The therapist is just doing his job as the plumber is doing his job, as the electrician is doing his job, as the mechanic is doing his job. They are experts in different fields. He is expert in the field of the machine called mind. He is a mechanic, he can help you.But both have to be aware – and this will happen, because I am creating every possibility for it. If I can become your friend, that is an indication for all therapists to be just friends. And to be a friend has a beauty of its own. This exploitation will disappear, I will take care that it disappears. At least in my communes nobody can be exploited and nothing of the old can be perpetuated again with new labels. Old wine in new bottles will not be allowed while I am here.It is good that you brought it to my notice. Anything that you feel, bring it to my notice, so whatsoever is needed can be done.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,We have dropped the word “work” because of its ugly connotations. Please say something about the word “worship” and its connotations.Work is something that you have to do. It is imposed on you by your social circumstances, financial status, political structure. But worship is that which you love to do. It is creativity, another name for creativity. We could have called it “creativity,” but I prefer the word worship for two reasons.There is no God for me except this existence, which is so utterly beautiful that work with love is bound to become your worship. In worship the worker is lost completely, only the worship remains. Digging a ditch in your garden, making food for those you love, or anything else, if you are lost in it so utterly that there is no ego or even its shadow left – you have become your work, the worker is no more there – it becomes worship.Religions have used the word worship. Their use of “worship” is phony. Christians go every Sunday to church – that is their worship – for one hour or two hours. And what do they do in the remaining time, the whole week?Hindus worship in the morning every day, but then what do they do the whole day? It must be something which is not worship; otherwise there is no need to have a separate time, a separate place, a temple, a mosque, a synagogue, a church for worshipping.I want worship to become your twenty-four-hour-a-day thing – just like breathing. It has to become existential. Then you don’t need to go to any church, to any synagogue. Then wherever you are becomes your temple, you are always on holy ground.I am reminded of Moses when, according to the story, he met God in the form of a flame arising out of a bush; and the bush was still green. As he came closer, a voice thundered, “Take off your shoes, Moses. You are on holy ground!”To me the green bush and the flame have no meaning except as a fiction. What has meaning is that Moses is told, “Take off your shoes. You are on holy ground.” But is ground divided into two, holy and unholy? Where is the line?To me the whole earth is holy, the whole existence is holy, and there is no need to take off your shoes either, because they are also holy. What wrong have those poor people done, that they should not be holy?Make every action of your life holy. Choose every action of your life as if it were a love affair. Perhaps you may not become very rich; there is no need. Richness will come to you in a totally different form: the richness of being blissful, contented, ecstatic.Choose your work, not according to others – let it arise out of your own heart. In any act, if your heart joins you, it becomes worship. If only the head is doing it, then it remains simply work. And when you are totally immersed in it, it brings so many blessings, blessings that no religion has been able to give to man. On the contrary, every religion has prevented man from gaining those blessings which are available to him. They have been distracting people, they have been telling silly things to people: “Repeat a mantra – in Sanskrit, in Hebrew, in Greek – and you are doing something religious.” You are just being a parrot!All the religions have insisted that their books should not be translated into the languages which people understand. Why? because the priests know perfectly that in those so-called holy books, nothing is holy. Ninety-nine percent in those books is absolutely unholy. How that one percent has remained in them is a miracle, it must have been accidental.So it is good to let the Bible remain in Hebrew, let the Vedas remain in Sanskrit, let Buddhist scriptures remain in Pali – which are dead languages. Nobody speaks them and nobody understands them, and people will remain ignorant of what they are chanting about. Sometimes people are chanting very stupid things, and thinking they are doing prayer, worship.For example, in the Vedas there are passages – and not a few, but the major part of the Vedas, which are the most ancient scriptures in the world…the major part is so ugly, stupid, primitive, crude, that if you understand it, you will not chant it.There are sutras which say, “God, let your clouds only shower on my fields. Particularly avoid the fields of my enemies.” Do you think anything is religious in it? There are sutras which say, “God, give more milk to my cows, and let the cows of my neighbors become completely dry, so that no milk comes out of them.” And these sutras you are chanting as worship, praying!First, religions insisted that their books should not be translated into the common, layman’s language. Then, when printing was invented, they insisted that their religious scriptures should not be printed – because to print them meant they would become available to everybody, and the priests knew what is there in those so-called holy scriptures!In The Holy Bible there is so much pornography that anybody who looks into it will call it the Unholy Bible, not the Holy Bible.And when you are chanting something – Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria – what actually are you doing? It is a simple process of autohypnosis. It can be done in many ways. Concentrate on anything. Just standing before a mirror, concentrate on your own reflection in the mirror. No Ave Maria is needed: you will start feeling sleepy, you will start feeling calm and quiet. Just after ten or twenty minutes of concentration you are bound to fall into an autohypnotic state.It does no harm. On the contrary, it will give you a good rest, it will give you better health, it will give you good sleep. But that is not the purpose of worship. That can be attained by anything.The purpose of worship is to reveal to you your own being. It is not a state of sleep. It is a state of absolute awakening – just the opposite of what the religions have been teaching you. They all have been teaching you methods of concentration, and all concentration methods are against meditation, because they bring hypnosis. Hypnosis simply means created, deliberate sleep.Meditation means an awakening: every fiber of your being is vibrant, alert, aware. And only in that awareness do you for the first time know that there is no ego in you. The ego disappears from you, the very idea of “I” is no longer existent, and the barrier between you and existence has fallen away.Then you are one with the whole.And the whole is vast.To become one with it is worship.And it can be approached from any dimension: chopping wood, carrying water from a well, cooking food or cleaning the floor, washing the clothes, taking a bath. All activities of your life should be done so totally, so intensely, that the ego disappears. And suddenly you find yourself expanding. That expanding consciousness reaches to the trees, to the flowers, to the animals, to the human beings, to the stars.Vincent van Gogh has painted pictures of trees which go above the stars. People thought he was mad, because no tree goes above the stars. But when he was asked why he paints this way – where has he seen any tree going above the stars? – he said, “I have seen the aspiration of the tree, the longing of the tree, the very spirit of the tree. It is on the way; it is going to reach to the stars, it is going to reach beyond them.”When you feel expansion of your consciousness, that is the most ecstatic experience possible, because suddenly you are the whole universe.Stars are within you.The sun rises within you and sets within you.The earth moves within you.The flowers blossom within you.This mystic experience is the outcome of worship.And you are always on holy ground. The God of Moses was wrong to tell him, “Now take off your shoes.” Even God is trying to divide the ground like a politician, that this is America, this is Soviet Russia, this is England; this is holy land, and everything else is unholy.No. I say absolutely no to such a God who divides existence. Existence is one organic unity. And the moment you worship, you fall into that organic unity. And once you know the secret, then anything is worship. Walking, going for a morning walk, is worship. You are not doing anything. But just the wind, the sun, the beach, the ocean – what more do you want? Can’t you see you cannot make a better church? – with the sun, with the wind, with the sand, with the ocean – unbounded.Even sleeping becomes worship. If all your activities start becoming worship, then sleep is also an activity. You fall into sleep so silently, so serene, so joyful. The whole day has given you so much that your whole sleep becomes a silent rest in the very bosom of existence.So there is a tremendous difference between work and worship.Worship will transform you.Worship will give you a real, authentic experience of life.Work, at the most, can give you a livelihood.But there is no need to do anything that you don’t want to do. One has to be a little more rebellious, a little more individualistic, a little more alert and aware so that the society, religion, politics, do not exploit you. It does not matter even if you remain a beggar; you will be more blissful than Alexander the Great. He died in utter misery, because he could see he had conquered almost the whole known world, but what had he gained? He had simply wasted his life. He died when he was only thirty-three. He had not lived – there was no time to live, there was no time to love. There was no time to sing, there was no time to play on a flute, there was no time to dance. For thirty-three years he was simply murdering, continuously, innocent people for an insane ambition: he wanted to be the conqueror of the world.But what are you going to do? Even if you become the conqueror of the world, you will be empty and hollow. And if your whole life has gone into murdering people, killing people, burning people, you will become incapable of loving. You will become incapable of enjoying beautiful music, a beautiful painting, a beautiful dance.You are bound to become incapable, because a person who has been continuously killing people his whole life has also killed his own heart, has also killed his own sensitivity, has also killed his own aesthetic sense.I know about a very famous surgeon…he was a friend of mine. He was retiring, and all his friends and students – he was also a professor in the medical college – had gathered to celebrate, to give him a beautiful farewell party. They were dancing and singing, but I looked at him – he was sad.I approached him and asked, “What is the matter? You should be rejoicing. These people have gathered here to give you a beautiful, joyful farewell.”He said, “I am sad because I never wanted to be a surgeon. I wanted to be a musician. My parents forced me, and I was not strong enough to rebel, and they destroyed my whole life.”I said to him, “But you became one of the best surgeons in the country.”He said, “Who cares! Even if I was the worst musician in the country, I would have loved it. It was my own choice, my own individuality, my own expression, my own signature. This has been slavery. And because I am retiring I feel sad. My whole life is wasted, and it does not seem that now I can begin as a musician.”I said, “It is never too late. You have still a few years to live. Forget the past; start what you wanted to be. Now your parents are dead; forgive them, they never intended anything bad for you. All that they wanted to show you was that if you become a musician, what are you going to get? Now you are one of the richest persons. As a musician you would have remained a poor person.“So just remember that their intention was good, although they did not care about your individuality, your freedom, your choice. They had taken it for granted that you are their possession. Forgive them, they are dead. Don’t be angry and don’t be sad. Start.”He said, “You really mean that I can start?”I said, “I really mean it. And I know a musician, I will introduce you.”He lived fifteen years more and died a very contented man, although he never became a famous musician. Nobody ever heard that he is a celebrity as far as music is concerned. His music remained not very developed, because Indian music particularly needs tremendous effort: eight to ten hours’ practice every day, a lifelong discipline; only then can you create those subtle nuances. It is not jazz; that, any idiot can do.It is said that if the Indian musician does not practice for one day, he immediately recognizes the difference. If he does not practice for two days, then the people who understand the depths and the heights of music start feeling there is something different. If he does not practice for three days, then even people who are only acquainted with music start feeling the difference.It is a devotion, it is a worship – and he had loved it. If he had gone into music from the very beginning, he might have become one of the most authentic, creative musicians of the world. But even though he was old now, he died happy. I was by his side when he died, and he said to me, “There are no words of gratitude for you. You encouraged me – I had lost all hope. I am dying fulfilled, I am happy. At least for fifteen years I have been myself. At least for fifteen years there have been moments when I got lost completely into music. And those have been the greatest moments of my life.”Worship means you have to be very alert not to be manipulated by anyone, and you have to go and find your own way. It is risky, but it pays immensely.In fact, only very few live.Only those who can take risks are alive.Others simply vegetate.Osho,You say you respect America for its democracy and freedom. I feel that we are contradicting that spirit by submitting all visitors, who want to come to see you and our commune, to customs inspections at Portland and at Mirdad, by having them sign papers and wear wristbands.This does not happen anywhere else in the USA. Was this part of the fascist mentality? Do we still need these things?I respect democracy, but I don’t respect the so-called politicians who are only hypocrites and not democrats. I hate fascism, and I don’t want anything in this commune which gives any indication of a fascist structure.And it is true, as you say, in no other city of America are visitors searched. But you are not aware of the whole situation. You are not yet accepted by America as one of its cities. They are trying hard to destroy you, and their ways of destroying you are very simple. They can bring drugs inside the commune. Then who will be responsible for those drugs? Do you want me to be responsible for those drugs? Those people can come with all sorts of germs, viruses, and they can spread them among you. And if you are all sick, who is going to take care of you?So we are in a position where every precaution has to be taken. It is not fascist; it is simply self-defense. We don’t want any drugs here. We don’t want any people coming here with AIDS and spreading it amongst the commune. So how are we going to protect ourselves against it?It is absolutely democratic to defend yourself. We are not hurting those people, we are simply checking. And we will stop checking them the moment the hostility against the commune in Oregon is dropped. The hostility is so much – which is natural, the animal nature of man is always afraid of strangers, and who can be more of a stranger than you?You are all rebels – it is a commune of rebels. The only thing that connects you is not any ideology, is not any religion, is not any politics. The only thing that connects you is that you are all rebellious spirits. And the rebellious spirit is the very salt of the earth.You are not aware…the attorney general of Oregon had an interview with me the other day, and I told him that I have always been against organizations and organized religions. And before I went into silence there had never been anything like Rajneeshism, there had never been the word Rajneeshee.The attorney general has declared Rajneeshpuram an illegal city, because religion and state are mixed, which is unconstitutional. So I told him, “Now you withdraw your case. There is no religion here, so the question of mixing religion with state does not arise. Your case has gone down the drain.” I insisted, “Answer me directly,” and he went on saying that time and the court would decide.I said, “Time and the court will decide, but what do you say? If there is no religion, then if you have any grace, withdraw your case. It is absolutely absurd.”The attorney general has been trying – and he has done it. The National Guard is on the alert against a peaceful group of people who have done no harm to anybody.Now, it is a well-known strategy of all these dirty politicians around the world: somebody can enter here and put a time-bomb, and you will be responsible for it. And because the bomb explodes, kills a few people, they can plant people here who can start shooting somebody. And that will be an excuse for the National Guard to come in.The governor is thinking of putting martial law on the city. It seems the third world war is happening between Rajneeshpuram and America. What is the need of martial law? – because we are not committing any crime. They cannot find any society anywhere which is so peaceful and silent, which just wants to be left alone to do its own thing.Now, these are the people who are forcing us to check people before they enter the commune, it is not our desire. It is their intention to destroy us. And we are nonviolent people, vegetarians; we don’t want any violence here – but that is their desire. Otherwise, what is the point of collecting National Guard troops in Madras and keeping them on alert any moment, so that you can be destroyed?The governor and the attorney general are in conspiracy to destroy the commune. I am not going to let them do it in any way. If they have any sense at all they should keep off, they should not interfere at all illegally.They are getting into unnecessary trouble. But they are welcome. We have nothing to lose, and they have everything to lose. They will be condemned all over the world.I have been talking to the world media for almost one-and-a-half months every night, just to create the atmosphere around the world of what the real situation is. And everybody is aware of it. The governor and the attorney general should know it, that it is going to be very tough. America will lose all the respect of the world, because they have no grounds to arrest me or to arrest one hundred sannyasins.We are cooperating – and you want to arrest people who are cooperating? And these are not the people who have done any harm. It seems they want to protect the criminals and destroy the community. They have got a good chance to, but they should not remain in any illusion. Up to now they have been fighting with politicians of their own kind. We are not politicians, and they don’t know how to fight with mystics.So please, remember that those small measures are just to protect you. If you want to withdraw them, they can be withdrawn right now. Please just raise your hands…. If you are ready for self-defense, for the defense of innocent people, and you are not going to allow these third-grade politicians to destroy you, then we will have to take measures so that they cannot blame us and bring their army and bring their National Guards to bulldoze your houses and destroy this beautiful place where you have worked hard – twelve hours, fourteen hours a day for four years – and have changed this desert into an oasis.So please raise both of your hands….Osho,J. Krishnamurti does not want an organization – still his secretary, Raj Gopal, betrayed him and took possession of his finances and his archives. You approve of institutions and at times permit organization where necessary. In spite of due care, a similar situation to Krishnamurti's with Raj Gopal has happened with you and Sheela.Does this mean that in the very nature of human beings such a situation cannot be avoided? Please explain.A similar situation has not happened. Sheela has done much good, ninety-nine percent good. The whole credit of keeping all the commune together, of creating houses for five thousand people with all the modern facilities, with central air-conditioning – I don’t think any city is totally air-conditioned as you are – of giving you the best food possible…. She has done immense good to you, and you should be grateful for it. The credit goes to her. Only one percent she missed, and that seems to be natural to human nature, particularly for people like Sheela.Sheela had no spiritual aspirations. Seeing that she has no potential, at least in this life…. And this was my impression on the very first day she entered my room in 1970 – that she was utterly materialistic, but very practical, very pragmatic, strong-willed, could be used in the beginning days of the commune…because the people who are spiritually-oriented are stargazers.I am reminded of an astrologer in Greece who was the best astrologer, and he used to go out of Athens in the night to watch the stars. One night he fell into a well because he was looking at the stars, so he could not see the well. Hearing the sound, a woman who lived nearby threw a rope and somehow managed to pull him out.The astrologer was very grateful, and he said, “You have done so much for me – you have saved my life. Perhaps you don’t know that I am the greatest astrologer in the whole country, and perhaps in the whole world. Kings come to see me, and they have to wait because my appointments are already fixed for weeks ahead. My fee is very high, but I will see you and predict your future without any fee. Tomorrow you can come, and I will cancel the appointment: tomorrow one of the kings is coming to see me, but you are more valuable to me.”The old woman laughed. She said, “You just go! If you cannot see a well, how can you see the stars, and how can you see my future? Just forget all about it!”Sheela was not a stargazer. The reason I had appointed her my secretary was basically this: she was not interested in meditation, she was interested in making roads, houses – which meditators would need. And she did her job well. Just one percent she took advantage of the opportunity, because I was not available to you.Five thousand people she could manipulate in my name, by saying, “This is what Osho wants.” Now I have come to know things from sannyasins that I had no knowledge of. But each thing that she wanted, she said was wanted in my name. For example, if you were told to make a ditch for electric wires, you made it. You have nothing to do with the crime, although the ditch was made to bug the houses. But how can you know the difference, if you are not an electrician or an electronics engineer – that the wires are not for electricity but for bugging? You saw the wires, you have made the ditch; still you are innocent.Only the group of twenty people who have fled with her knew perfectly well what was happening. They had made the whole system of bugging. This is just the fear of any person who becomes ambitious for power. He is always afraid.Out of fear she drove away all the people who could have been rebellious, who could have doubted – because they have lived with me longer than Sheela, they knew my ideology. They could not believe that I was creating a religion, that she was the high priestess of the religion. She threw them out, harassed them in such a way that they had to leave.Only the group of twenty people that she had chosen – they were all new, they had not known me before. They were not aware of my ideology, my approach, my respect for everybody. They were simply gullible. And because Sheela made them heads of corporations, naturally they were happy. They were not expecting – new people getting all the power…. And she made them commit crimes – all of them. This is a simple strategy. If all those people have committed crimes, then nobody is going to open his mouth, because he will be caught too.She tried to kill three of the people who were intimate to me, for the simple reason that she was afraid these three people had the opportunity to approach me without her permission: my physician, my dentist, and my caretaker. They were living with me in the same house, but they were not aware of anything until she started poisoning them.First, my caretaker was poisoned in Sheela’s room, with a cup of tea. But nobody ordinarily comes immediately to the conclusion that you are poisoned. She felt sick, the doctors examined her, but there was nothing, no disease. They said, “Simply rest will do.”Then my physician was poisoned with a cup of coffee in the same place – in Sheela’s room. Because he is a physician, and of great talent – has the highest degrees from England, was the youngest member ever of the Royal Society of Physicians. Such young people are never accepted by the Royal Society, but his genius is there – he immediately suspected there was poison, but there was no way to detect it.He said that there are poisons which cannot be detected through blood, or through any other way. He even named one poison that is undetectable. And when Sheela left, in her room we found all this literature on poisons, how to murder people. And in the literature on poisons, the same poison that my physician was suspicious of is underlined. That is the only poison which is underlined, and it says it is undetectable.When I heard that these things were happening I started to speak. Sheela was insistent, “Your health is good, it has improved; you have recovered. If you start speaking again, it may be affected.”I said, “What am I going to do with the health?” If my people are being poisoned – for whom I am living, to whom my health is dedicated, to whom my whole life is dedicated….And the day I started speaking, everybody was excited, ecstatic – because they were thinking I was not going to speak for the rest of my whole life – except Sheela. She was sad, and her gang, because now it was clear that sooner or later I would find out things from people.Now I can see why she was asking me again and again, “Will you ever change me as a secretary?”I said, “Why do you ask me that question? I have told you I am not going to change you.” But she went on asking the same question dozens of times. It was enough indication to me that she was doing something which made her suspicious that, if I found out, I was going to change her. And she did not even come to say good-bye to me. She simply escaped like a criminal, a thief, with all those twenty people.Just one woman amongst twenty, Ava, proved to be really a courageous woman. From Seattle she turned back. She told them that she could not remain her whole life with this burden and guilt, she was going to the commune. And she is giving her testimony today. She knows all the crimes, because she was part of the gang.Now the whole burden goes on Sheela. And if the FBI does not take any action when they have an eyewitness, that means they are protecting the criminals. Then I will have to take other measures. Certainly, I cannot be violent with them – but they have committed crimes that they can be imprisoned for by the Swiss police, who will be cleaner than the American police. Sheela has committed bigamy, and her Swiss husband, Dipo, has also committed bigamy. His American wife is here.She cannot go to India, because she committed many crimes after I left India, without my knowledge. After I left Sheela’s gang committed many crimes there, so she will be immediately caught if she goes back to India.So I am waiting for the FBI and the American government to take action. Now we have given them every solid proof, and now there is a witness to all the crimes they have committed. If they don’t do anything, then we are going to approach the Swiss government, and we are going to approach the German government….The whole world, its intelligentsia, and the whole world media is with you. And if America wants to fall in the eyes of all the intelligent people of the world, then it is up to them. But we will give them a real fight, one they have not seen in the three hundred years of their history. It is not going to be easy.But this is a totally different confrontation. We are nonpolitical people. And I am advising my people to undo everything that Sheela has done politically. We don’t want to take over anything. We are not interested at all in any political thing. But the politicians are simply trembling. I don’t see the point: why are they so afraid of us? Perhaps we are the people who can expose them – that they are against their own Constitution.And I don’t think that Columbus had any visa or any green card, or any Americans who came in the beginning had any green card or any visa. But the people who have succeeded them have been holding back my green card for four years. If you want to say no, do you need four years? They are afraid to say no because they don’t have any grounds to say no. And once they say no, we move to the courts. Then it goes beyond their hands. Yes they cannot say, because of the pressure of the politicians.It does not matter to me. The green card is of no value to me. I can live here without a green card – I have lived without it for four years, I can live without it twenty years more. They can keep their green card. But they have to know that they are going against the Constitution in every way. Either they have to say yes, or they have to say no.The whole department has been working on my green card for four years. Great intelligence! They have never confronted a group of people like us. So it is very exciting to us, but to them it is a nightmare. So have a good nightmare! What can we do? We are ready to withdraw the nightmare if they just do the right thing – that which the Constitution allows.But you have to be ready and alert.Whatever happens will be a good experience.In fact, as far as I am concerned, I am really excited.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is there a meeting place called Rajneesh Mandir? Why not give it another name when there is no Rajneeshism anymore?It is true. There is no Rajneeshism anymore – but Osho is still here. And this question must be from somebody who is from the outside, who does not know the commune of the sannyasins and their heart. I have not put that name there. I have come into the world without a name – I don’t know about you – and I will go from this world without a name. Between these two nameless states, any name is just arbitrary. You can change the name; there is no problem. If somebody feels hurt by the name…I do not want anybody to be hurt.But if the commune wants the name…. It is the only direct democracy in the whole world. All the democracies are indirect, and the moment democracy becomes indirect it is no longer democracy. It is just a Rotary Club, changing from one party to another – but you remain the slaves. Whether you choose the Republicans or the Democrats, it makes no difference. Once you have chosen, then for four years in one country, five years in another country, you have given up your democracy. Then the persons you have chosen function in every fascist way.This is a direct democracy. If you want to change the name of Rajneesh Mandir to another name, I will be more than happy. But if you don’t want to change it, then I am helpless. I am here just as your guest. I cannot go on changing things in your commune.So let me ask you: Do you want the name Rajneesh Mandir? Then raise both of your hands and say yes three times!(Everyone raises their hands and calls, Yes! Yes! Yes!)And who is the person who has asked the question? Please stand up. I would just like to see your beautiful face.(There is no response.)Don’t you have any guts?You don’t know how this commune functions. Remember, the name can be changed, but with it many other things will be changed too. You will have to do the discourses here; I will not be coming. You will have to guide my people on their spiritual path; I will simply vacate the place for you.Whoever has asked this must be feeling deep down that if it was his name, that would have been really nice. It can be. I can persuade my people – although they are against changing it. But they love me, and if I say to them to change it they will do it. But where are you? – because from tomorrow the chair will be empty.So don’t ask such silly questions. Before you ask anything, think twice. This is not a political assembly, senate, parliament, where you can go on asking all kinds of idiotic questions and waste the time of the whole country for months together. This is not a bureaucracy where files move so slowly….I have known one old man – ninety years old – who has been fighting a case for sixty years. When he was thirty he wrote a book, History Of India. But because it was not in accordance with the British government…. He has simply stated the real facts, not bothering whether they go against the British or favor the British. He was a very impartial man.The man was sued by the government of India, his book was banned. The publisher, the printer, the editor and he – four persons were sued. Three of them died; the case continued. Many judges came and died; the case continued. Even the British government disappeared from India; the case continued.I told the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, “The case on Pandit Sunderlal should be removed. This is ridiculous.”He said, “You don’t understand the ways of laws. It is a very complex case, and has become more and more complex as time has gone on.”I asked Pandit Sunderlal, “When is this case going to end?”He said, “Not before I am dead, because I am the only remaining person. All the advocates who have been involved, all the judges, all the people who were sued by the government are gone, the government itself is finished, but the case continues. This is bureaucracy. Things simply don’t move, or move with such a slow pace that it is inconceivable.”A whole department has been deciding about me for four years. They have been given a whole department and an office, and dozens of people to figure out whether my green card can be issued or not. In four years they have not come to any conclusion. Great intelligence!If they have any dignity and if they have any respect for their Constitution; if the Supreme Court of America is really fair, it will order all the Americans to vacate America. Give it back to the Red Indians to whom it belongs, and you all apply for green cards: you are not native to this place.This is the only country in the whole world where slavery is not going to be destroyed. In India it was possible to destroy the British kingdom for the simple reason that the British never made it their home. They remained there to rule and exploit, but it was not their home. From all over the world slavery is disappearing, but in America the question is not even asked.I am going to fight it in the Supreme Court, and challenge the Supreme Court: “If you have any fairness, then all the Americans either should leave the country, or should apply for visas. It has been long enough they have been touring here. Tourists are tourists: what right have they to claim other people’s land?”And the Supreme Court should dissolve the American parliament and dismiss the American president, and invite the Red Indians to make their government. That will be a real tribute to the American Constitution, to justice. And as a by-product it will destroy the possibility of a third world war, because Red Indians are not going to make nuclear weapons. They are so happy dancing, singing, gambling, drinking. Who bothers about fighting and a nuclear war?With me, it is not going to be an easy case.It is me versus America.And I want them to come to a decision – any decision, yes or no. Whatever their decision is, I am going to move to the court – even if they say yes, because I don’t recognize that they have any authority to say yes. They are foreign tourists, invaders. Who has given them the authority to give me a green card? So they should not think that by giving me a yes, the thing is finished.But my commune is a direct democracy. Anything can be asked directly to five thousand people. And if they want to change it, it is perfectly right. If they don’t want to change it, it is perfectly right. It is their commune.But those who ask such questions should have a little guts and come up front and face the people.Osho,We are no longer a religious commune; then what are we? And what do you say about the tax-exempt status of Rajneesh Foundation, and also about your immigration? Is it not jeopardized?Nothing is jeopardized. My immigration is going to expose America, its hypocrisy, to the whole world. Their democracy, their mask of democracy is jeopardized.We have declared Rajneeshism, as a religion, dead. That does not mean that you have lost something. You have gained. Now it is a commune of mystics, people who are seekers of the mysteries of their own being. It is no longer an organized religion like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism; it is no longer a religion, but it has a flavor of religiousness. The flower is no longer there, but the fragrance has taken wings into the air. You are freed from confinement.Each individual now is his own religion, his own spirituality, his own seeking, search, inquiry. Nobody is going to dominate him. He has not to follow a church, a pope, a high priestess. He has simply to follow his own natural simplicity, potentiality.Who can take away the tax-exempt status of Rajneesh Foundation International? It has risen higher in spirituality by dissolving the organized religion. In fact, all organized religions should lose their tax-exempt status because they are not religious.The moment truth is organized, it becomes a lie, it becomes politics. Organization is a political thing. Religion is an individual search.So we are opening many new dimensions to fight with all kinds of stupidities which are prevalent in the world. We are the only people who should be given tax-exempt status, because we have dropped that bullock cart organizational religion and burned it completely; we have freed individuals to be spiritual on their own.Do you think a person cannot have the qualities of religiousness without being part of an organization? Do you think by becoming a part of an organization a person automatically gets religious qualities? Then look at history. The religion based on the name of Jesus Christ has killed millions of people in these twenty centuries, burned people alive. It is based on Jesus’ truth, and Jesus was teaching, “If somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other cheek.” Do you see any relationship between all the crusades, killings, wars, burning towns, burning living people – and Jesus’ statement? This is what happens when truth is organized. It dies.Truth is something which blossoms only in individual freedom, in the total freedom of your being.Look at the Hindus. They are still following ancient scriptures, five thousand years old, which are full of ugliness, which cannot be even called human. But because Hinduism is organized, it is a religion. One-fourth of the Hindus have lived, for ten thousand years at least, in a very inhuman way; they have been forced to live in an inhuman way. They are called untouchables. This is religiousness? One-fourth of Hindus cannot take water from the well from which everybody else takes water. They cannot live in the city, they have to live outside the city.You will be surprised to know that even today there are places which are very orthodox. The untouchables move with a bell in their hand, continuously making people aware that an untouchable is passing: “Please move away. Close your doors.” And they have been forced to have a broom attached to their back so that, when they move, the broom goes on cleaning the road, because they are touching it and it is becoming unholy. They cannot move in all the parts of the city where higher classes live. These people are religious? – and they all have tax-exempt status.Mohammedans have killed thousands of people, burned thousands of cities, raped thousands of women, forced people to become Mohammedans at the point of the sword. In the fourteen hundred years they have been on the earth they have been just a curse! But they are a religion.I don’t want any organization. I don’t want you to be political in the name of religion. I want you to be aware that all these religions don’t have any religious quality. The religious quality comes through meditation, and meditation has nothing to do with organization. It is something…you have to go inwards; organization is something outside you.You need not go to a church to be religious, or to a synagogue to be religious. You have to go inside yourself. That makes one a mystic, a scientist of one’s own interiority. And only the few people who are doing this inner search are truly religious.Nobody can take away the tax-exempt status from Rajneesh Foundation International. If they even raise the question, I am going to prove to them that all the religions should be stopped from being given tax-exempt status. They have done only murders, rapes; they are criminals.It is only a meditative person who becomes silent, serene, centered, reaches to his innermost core. From there arises the fragrance of truth, love, compassion. He will not be a Christian, he will not be a Jew, he will not be a Rajneeshee. He will be only a mystic, one who has known his own mystery.So, by declaring Rajneeshism dead, I have made you alive. I have given you the real dimension of flowering and blossoming and growing into true religiousness. I call my way, the way of religiousness – but it is not an organization, it is an individual inquiry.You are worried about my immigration status. Don’t be worried about me, I can fight with all kinds of idiots without any trouble. I don’t need any legal support.A way of religiousness certainly…. I am not the leader of a religion, because the leader – the very word leader is ugly. It is political. I am a friend, a guide, a philosopher. And if you don’t have any category for a friend, a guide and a philosopher, then create a category.Laws are for man; man is not for laws.You have never encountered a man like me; naturally you don’t have any category. But now I am here, create a category for me. I don’t belong to any other category, I have my own category. But nobody can say that I am not religious, that I am not loving, that I am not a guide to millions of people.So don’t be worried about anything. Let them worry; they are already worried, and now they will be worried even more. They have been trying, but they cannot prove that I am not religious, they cannot prove that I am not meditative; they don’t have any criterion for it.I can prove that Jesus is not religious, is not meditative – and the whole of Christianity goes down the drain. I can prove that Mohammed is not meditative, is not a religious person – and the whole of Mohammedanism is nothing but a political strategy, a lust for power.I am open and ready to challenge all these people. Pope the Polack – he is welcome. He can come here and be our guest, and have a little discussion about meditation, what he knows about it. These are the people who have created all the poverty in the world. These are the people who are still teaching against birth control. That means more poor people, and more clients for them to convert to Catholicism, to Christianity. Their interest is not in the sufferings of the poor, in the sufferings of the orphans. Their interest is in more orphans, more Catholics.Now there are six hundred million Catholics in the world; naturally, the pope becomes one of the greatest powers. Otherwise, he is just a Polack; nothing less, nothing more. It is a politics of numbers. That’s why I am saying you should not ever get interested in organizations. The moment you become organized, you become interested in numbers.I have allowed you complete freedom from any outer symbols – now it is up to you. You are free, and all the colors of the rainbow are yours. You are free to use the mala or not. Only one thing remains: it is your journey inwards, which is the essence of religiousness.So just don’t be worried about anything. I alone am enough to fight all the politicians of America and all their agencies, and the government and the Supreme Court. And this is not out of any ego, it is simply out of a humble experience of truth.And truth is going to be victorious.There is no other possibility.Osho,The religion is dead. Then is there any need of meditation?My God! It seems it is the same idiot who is asking all these questions.Because the religion is dead, now only meditation is left. I had to destroy everything nonessential, so you don’t get lost in nonessentials as all other people in the world have. They have got lost in nonessentials, and completely forgotten the essential.The essential is very simple; the nonessentials you can go on increasing. Buddhism has thirty-three thousand rules for the Buddhist monk. Now, I don’t think any Buddhist monk can even remember them. I don’t think even Gautam Buddha can repeat them again. Thirty-three thousand rules! And if people start following these rules, who is going to meditate? There is no time left. Strange kinds of rules all the religions have!I have not given you a single rule – just to keep you focused on the essential, the only thing that can transform you. And you are asking me, “Now that the religion is dead, is there any need of meditation?”Then what the hell are you doing here? The religion is dead, meditation is no longer needed, so what the hell are you doing? Get lost! Go to the county road which goes directly to hell! You will have some taste on the county road of what it means to go towards hell. The county road has been made such a great thing, to give an experience to people of how the road to hell goes.Can’t you see a simple thing?I used to live in a place, and in front of my house there lived a man…. Followers of Jainism have this idea that women are impure. I don’t know what they mean, because they have the same blood, the same bones. And, in fact, man is born from the woman’s womb. From the father he has got only a small injection of a male sperm, so minute that you cannot see it with bare eyes. That is his father’s contribution. The father’s contribution is almost nil, any syringe can do it far better. There is no need for so many gymnastics to do it.But everything else comes from the mother – your blood, your bones, your flesh, everything comes from the woman. And Jainism has the idea that women are impure. I cannot see the logic. Then what happens to men? Men must be more impure; nine months living in a woman’s womb, growing with her blood – everything that you have has come from your mother, except one sperm from your father. But nobody asks about men.This man who lived in front of my house was a very orthodox Jaina. And he was in real trouble. The trouble was that he was a poor man, he had no running water inside his house. So he would go outside on the street, to the public water place where everybody was getting water, as early as possible. But if he saw a woman pass by, then that water that he had in his pot had become impure. He would throw away the water, wash his pot again. Sometimes it would be ten times, sometimes twenty times, sometimes it would be almost the whole morning that he was doing that.And who can prevent them? Half of the people are women, half are men, and it is a road. I told him, “You waste so much time, you are bound to be poor; you are responsible for your poverty. If you washed people’s pots and carried so much water to people’s houses, you would have enough money for yourself. And what nonsense you go on doing!”One day it was too much, because I told one woman, “Whatsoever happens – I am going to give you five rupees – you continue walking down the street the whole day. And I have to see this man and his religion.”The whole day he was throwing away water and washing his pots, and getting angrier and angrier. And finally, by the time the sun was setting…he had been doing that since sunrise, now it was too much. He was hungry, he had not eaten; he had not gone to work – he hit the woman with his pot!I reached there at that moment, and I told him, “This is absolutely wrong. The pot has become impure for its whole life. Now you cannot wash it clean, it has touched a woman. And what happened to your nonviolence, your compassion?”He said, “This woman is very bitchy. I want to kill her!”I said, “That is not allowed in your religion. You have forgotten completely, just cleaning your pot, that murder is not allowed by your religion. But suicide is allowed by Jainism, so if you are fed up, you can commit suicide.”He said, “You are strange! You always give me strange ideas. And I am puzzled why this woman goes on walking up and down the road.”I said, “I have arranged it with her. And from tomorrow she is going to walk up and down, because I am going to pay her five rupees per day until you stop this nonsense.”It is easy to see other religions and their stupidities. It is very difficult to see your own conditioning, the religion in which you have been brought up. But if you are a little aloof – and that’s what meditation is: being aloof, detached, watching your mind – you will be surprised what kinds of things you have been thinking are religious.No Christian thinks that drinking alcohol is irreligious. In fact, on every holy occasion alcohol is an absolute essential. Now, Jainas or Buddhists cannot think of a religious person drinking alcohol. To them, all Christians are irreligious, antireligious.Mohammedans, Christians, Jews – all are meat-eaters. It does not occur to you that killing living animals just for your taste…and what taste? Just a few taste buds on your tongue can be removed by any plastic surgeon very easily, and you will not taste anything. Just for your taste buds you are killing living beings – and still you think you are religious? And if Charles Darwin is right, then you are killing your forefathers. This is not good, it is not even nice – what to say about it being Christian? Mohammedans think that God has created all the animals for man to eat. Their religious scripture says it, so there is no question about it: animals have been specifically created for man to eat. They don’t see the implication of it. It means God is also a cannibal, life-destructive; he is not a creator, he is a destroyer.A meditator – who is neither a Christian, nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Jaina, nor a Buddhist, but simply an inquirer into his subjectivity: “Who am I? What is this life?” – the moment he comes to know this life, he also comes to know all life, because it is the same. Then he sees life not only in other human beings, he sees life in animals, he sees life in trees, he sees life all around. The whole existence is alive; we are not living in a dead existence. Out of a dead existence, life cannot arise.And when you come to your center, you also know the ultimate peak of consciousness, the very Everest of consciousness. From that height you can see that there are people who have the same potential, but are not aware of it, are too much engaged in the outside world. Even if they become religious, then too they are engaged in outside rules, regulations, disciplines. But they have the same Everest of consciousness.Not only man, animals have the same possibility. The trees have the same possibility. They have tremendous sensitivity. Even in plucking a flower, you are hurting the tree. A man of meditation cannot do it – not because it is prohibited in his scripture: he cannot do many things simply because now his consciousness gives him the clarity to see what is right, what is good, what is wrong, what is bad. And to attain to this clarity is enough.The moment you know of your own accord what is right and what is wrong, you cannot do the wrong. It is impossible. When you know what is good and what is bad, you cannot do the bad. The evil, the bad, the ugly is possible only in sleep.The real religiousness is essentially very simple. I call it meditation. You can give it another name, awareness; or another name, consciousness. But whatever you call it, it has nothing to do with any organization, any holy scripture, any leader. Yes, a friend who has seen that luminous, that ecstatic world, who has touched the farthest star in his being, can help you as a guide.I am not your leader – leaders happen in politics. I am not your priest – because I cannot do anything on your behalf. I am simply a friend whose own experience has made him so full of love that he wants to share it with anybody who is willing to share. And to a guide you don’t owe anything. Just a thank-you perhaps will be more than enough. So you don’t owe anything to me.But the death of religion makes meditation absolutely important. Now you don’t have anything left with which to deceive yourself. I have taken everything away that could have distracted you, and left you alone with meditation.And you are asking me, “Should we stop meditating too?”Why don’t you ask, “Should we stop living too? Because religion is dead, should we be also dead?”No, meditation you want to stop – and what are you going to do then? Eat, drink and be merry, because the religion is dead? I am not against “Eat, drink and be merry,” but a meditator really eats. He knows really the taste. While you are eating, you are doing a thousand and one things in your head; you are not there.A meditator just drinking a cup of tea enjoys each sip as if he has found a treasure. He tastes everything – the beauty of a rose, or a bird on the wing, a white floating cloud in the sky, a night full of stars. Existence is so full of splendor that a meditator – because he is silent, available, present to the moment – enjoys everything to its fullest.I am not against your eating, drinking and merrying. I would like it to happen more deeply, more profoundly. But to give it that intensity, that totality, that profundity, that depth…except meditation, there is no other way.Life without meditation is simply vegetating. You can be different vegetables. Somebody is a cabbage, somebody is a cauliflower…. A cauliflower is only a cabbage with college degrees, not much difference.But to live truly, you have to know yourself.“Know thyself,” says Socrates, but his statement is incomplete. I would like to say to you, “Know thyself so that you can be yourself.”And in being yourself, you are fulfilled. You have come home, the wandering is finished. Now there is nowhere to go, you have arrived. You have known the eternal life, its beauty, its bliss. All that you can do now is share it – which comes automatically. When you see people stumbling in the dark, you start helping them, trying to move them in the right direction. It is a joy. When the gardener sees his rosebush full of flowers one morning, his heart also blossoms with the flowers.And that’s what happens to a man who has known himself, who has become himself. He starts sharing his joy, his bliss, his love, in different ways with different people – whoever is available. And whenever he sees somebody moving in the right direction, he is immensely gratified, satisfied. Existence has given him so much, and he has nothing else to give to existence to show his gratitude. This is his gratitude. And when he sees others also reaching home, he feels that he has not been ungrateful – and that is a tremendous experience.When I see you moving, growing, this is my gratitude towards existence. It has given me so much, there is no way to pay anything back; there is no word even to express gratitude. The only way is that my every breath should be used in helping people to reach to the same Everest of consciousness.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am one of the stargazers, idealists, naive. I learned from you about trusting existence totally. But I understood total trust to mean just that – total trust, trust unto death. So I had great difficulty understanding when my own master supported protecting ourselves with guns and searching visitors, or even just buying insurance. I became split: one part of me could see perfectly well that existence contains wars and famines and Hitlers, and even just thieves who will take your belongings if you don't watch them.Another part of me threw out love and trust to existence, and was rewarded with great joy and what seemed like a constant and continuous shower of miracles.The events and the discourses of the last few weeks have greatly shaken my trust and intensified the split in me.Please comment.It was not total trust. Don’t deceive yourself. A trust that is total cannot be shaken by anything. It is unconditional. You have just been hallucinating about total trust. Neither do you know what totality means, nor do you know what trust means.If you trust existence, guns are part of existence too, just as rose flowers. And if you want rose flowers, you will need guns to protect them. But many people think life just a bed of roses. What are you going to do with the thorns? Those guns are the thorns. And it is such a simple thing to understand, even an idiot can understand it.We have not harmed anybody, we are not going to harm anybody. But we are not going to allow anybody to harm you either. To harm is ugly. To allow somebody to harm you is the same, it is ugly. Life in both the cases is harmed.And what can these three dozen guns – which are not even automatic – do in a world which is full of nuclear weapons? America has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world. Why should they be afraid of three dozen guns which have not been used at all in four years? And there is no possibility of using them….But if you want, I can just withdraw them today. But then don’t object if Hell’s Angels come and harass you, if fanatic Christians come and harass you, if all kinds of criminals come and destroy your commune. Do you think that will be a more beautiful scene than these three dozen guns, which are not doing any harm to anybody? These guns were not there in the very beginning, but fanatic Christians started coming and harassing people, Hell’s Angels started coming and being a nuisance.You cannot remain naive about the facts of life. It is a struggle. In this struggle you have to remember only one thing, that you are not on the destructive side, that you are not attacking anybody, that you are not harassing anybody.Since we have had three dozen guns and a security force, those fanatic Christians and Hell’s Angels and Witnesses of Jehovah have not come again. It seems the gun is far more powerful than Jehovah, more powerful than Jesus Christ. And these are toy guns; in a nuclear world, these guns don’t matter.The attorney general has alerted the army. I have never seen such cowards in my life – to alert the army so that within three hours, any time, they can reach to Rajneeshpuram. People who are living silently, peacefully, meditating, rejoicing, dancing, doing no harm to anybody – for them the army is alerted. The army is not alerted against all the criminals in New York, in San Francisco and LAEvery moment there is a crime committed in New York – that is okay, that is the accepted American way of life. We are strangers; we are not committing any crime every moment. One person is dying of AIDS in LA every day. That means there must be thousands of homosexuals in LA Do you want to compete with New York and LA and San Francisco? Do you want to follow the American way of life, which is nothing but crime?If you want, we can withdraw those three dozen guns; they don’t matter. But you are being simply stupid. Those three dozen guns are keeping all the cowards away from you. And in Oregon I don’t see anybody other than cowards.We have been inviting the governor, the attorney general, to come and see: “Be our guest. Stay here for a day or two, go around the commune and see; these people are not criminals.” They have never accepted the invitation. These cowards are afraid of toy guns, so why not keep them afraid?And you are asking me, “People are searched….” It can be stopped, but then I cannot stay here with you, because the government is making every effort to destroy you. Then drugs will be brought in, planted here, and you will be arrested. That is their idea: one thousand sannyasins behind bars.Right now they have no reason, but drugs just have to be brought and put in your houses. While you are working in the fields, making the roads, listening to me, your houses can become dangerous. Then who is going to be responsible for those drugs? It is perfectly right; anybody who enters here should be totally searched. We don’t want any kind of interference with our people’s lives.But if you are happy, you have nothing to lose – you will only lose me. Then I cannot stay here a single moment, because I cannot see you imprisoned, harassed, beaten; your houses bulldozed – which you have created with tremendous creativity, love.And you go on asking these stupid questions. Just last night, one woman sannyasin wrote a letter, that in the press conference when I asked people if they were with me to raise their hands – ten thousand hands were raised, and she says she wanted to stand against me. And still she writes to me, “Osho, I love you too much.” Is she blind – she cannot see ten thousand hands? To me it does not matter, she could have stood up. But why, in the first place, should you be in this commune?A commune has to be an organic unity – not a union but an organic unity, just like the body is. The left hand cannot go against the right hand. The legs cannot go against the head. The heart cannot go against the head. This is not a union, it is an organic unity. A commune has to be organic, one.Whoever wrote that letter – either she should change her attitude, or she should leave. There is no reason – why be here? Why live in antagonism with five thousand people? She seems to be somebody planted by the FBI, by the attorney general, or by some other agency. She is not a true sannyasin.And she is also a coward. What is the point of writing the letter to me? You should have stood up and seen what happened then. While I was here, nothing would have happened. But when I would have left, five thousand people – they are not cannibals; otherwise they would have made a good breakfast of you. But they can play football; that is not against spirituality.So remember: if you don’t feel at ease with the whole, just leave the place. And don’t ask stupid questions. Before you ask a question, think over what you are asking. Those security people are for you, so that you can meditate without disturbance, you can work without disturbance, you can live without disturbance.And strange, that just three dozen security people can keep you in peace for four years. You should be grateful to these people, because they are bored with the guns, just standing with the guns for four years, no chance to use them. And if sometime they have to use them, by that time they may have forgotten how to use them. They are for your security, and you seem to be against them. You are nuts or something!If the government takes the responsibility that no nuisance will be done in this commune, we can withdraw the security forces – and what security forces against the greatest world power!In these four years, I have seen that Adolf Hitler did only one thing wrong: rather than attacking Russia, he should have attacked America! These cowards, who are afraid of three dozen ordinary guns – not even automatic…. The American seems to be the most cowardly, spineless…!You made the Constitution, and you have put the people to whom this land belongs into reservations. The reservation is nothing but the American name for concentration camps – yes, without barbed wire. You have a more sophisticated way: you give those Red Indians pensions. Now, people who have nothing to do, and get enough money, what do you expect them to do? They will gamble, they will drink, they will fight. They are all drunkards, gamblers – rowdy. These people cannot think of independence, they cannot think of freedom. You have not put barbed wire around them, you have put barbed wire around their very soul!If Americans have any integrity and dignity, the first thing they will do is: give the government to the Red Indians. They will decide who is going to stay here and who is not going to stay here. Let them decide about Ronald Reagan’s green card, because his forefathers entered this country without any visa, they had no green cards. They committed crimes.And it is a very simple thing to understand: If Adam and Eve disobeyed God and every Christian is still born in sin because of Adam and Eve, then what about Americans? Your forefathers committed all the crimes, and it was only three hundred years ago. Suddenly you have become president, you have become governors, you have become attorney generals, you have become judges, Supreme Court judges, and you have started deciding. This is not your country.This thing has to be brought to their notice, and to the whole world’s notice. You talk against the Soviet Union, you talk against slavery – and that’s what you are practicing here.Those three dozen security people keep all the idiots away. And I perfectly approve of it. If just by having guns, without even using them…. And I have told them not to use them unless it becomes necessary; and I will not let it become necessary.Tomorrow, before the American embassy in India, ten thousand sannyasins are protesting – this is the beginning – that we are being mistreated. Every American embassy around the world will have to face the sannyasins. If anything is done to my people here, I have my people around the world: no American embassy can function. I have enough people in every country to force their government to disconnect their relationship with America.This country is not a democracy; this country is simply hypocrisy! But till the whole world is awakened against this country’s criminal politicians, we have every right to defend our small minority. They are trying to destroy it in every way.They go on moving so slowly, and the reason is, they want to make some deal with the criminals who are hiding in Germany, in the Black Forest. They want to give them immunity, so that they can point to innocent sannyasins and accuse them of all the crimes that they have committed. That’s why they are delaying.Out of the twenty criminals only one young woman, Ava, came back from Seattle. She is trying to give her testimony, and they have been postponing. I don’t understand it. She has been in the group who committed all the crimes; she is an eyewitness, she can expose the whole group. Not taking my interview, not taking Ava’s interview, simply indicates one thing: they want to make some deal with Sheela and her gang, so the criminals are protected and the commune can be destroyed.But I am not going to let it happen. And if it happens, America will repent for it, because our fight will not end here in Oregon. It will go on into every nook and corner of the world.They have never faced nonpolitical mystics.This will be a new experience for the idiots.I am really excited.Osho,I have heard you emphasizing the importance of creativity in music and spiritual growth, for the last eleven years. Yet the ashram, the commune, is the only place I have lived in where it has been impossible to live totally as an artist or musician.There are artists and musicians here, including myself, who have been yearning for the space to pursue their art in a climate of meditation, but have had to put it aside to be with you.In the past, we were told repeatedly that it is not the right time. Isn't now the right time?It is always the right time. You just have to remember: who is going to prepare food for you? You can play music, you can be creative; but don’t ask for food, don’t ask for houses, don’t ask for clothes – because others also want to be creative. Everybody has his own guitar. Do you want that you play the guitar, and the others make the roads and the houses for you? And they should prepare food for you?Do the necessary work that keeps you alive, and in the remaining time you are free. Who is preventing you? Play music in the night when you are free. But then you have your girlfriend, your boyfriend…. Sacrifice something. Either sacrifice food, clothes, houses, or sacrifice girlfriends and boyfriends. Every creativity needs sacrifice, because who is going to do all the other necessary things for you?I have been getting reports every day that people are not turning up in time in a few places. For example in the dairy, people are not coming on time; then the milk cannot be delivered to the commune in time. The cows are waiting for you, but you are missing.You have got freedom, but you don’t understand that freedom brings more responsibility than slavery. Slavery has no responsibility. It seems most of the people in the world are happier with slavery than with freedom, because in slavery they have to do something. Somebody is goading them continuously to do it!In freedom, nobody is there to force them. But if people who prepare food are not reaching there in time, then you will not get your lunch in time, or you may not get your lunch at all.I will see. One week more, and I warn you: if you cannot take responsibility and work as a responsible member of a commune, then you are asking for a strict discipline, order – good names for slavery.Seven days more…otherwise, I will advise all the presidents of the corporations, all coordinators, to enforce the hours – because in four years it has never happened; you were always on time in every place. People are leaving early, coming late, coming whenever they want, not coming whenever they do not want. You are behaving in a very unintelligent way. You are asking for a fascist rule! It seems you have become addicted to the relationship of master and slave.I am reminded that in the French revolution there was one central jail, which was only for people with lifelong imprisonment. Their chains had no keys, because the locks were never to be opened. When they died, then their hands would be broken and the chains taken off.The revolutionaries thought that all those people, almost two thousand, who had been living in the jail for their whole life – somebody had lived there for fifty years, somebody for forty years, somebody for thirty years – should be released. But do you know what those prisoners said? “We don’t want to be released.”The man who had been there for fifty years – he was caught when he was twenty – said, “I have completely forgotten the outside world, and here life is more comfortable. Food is given at the right time every day, we don’t have to bother about it. And my eyes have become accustomed to this dark cell in which I have lived for fifty years. And these heavy chains on my hands and on my feet have become almost part of my body. Without them I will feel something is missing. I don’t think I can even sleep without them.”But revolutionaries are revolutionaries – they forced them. They cut their chains and forced them to get out of the prison. But by the evening almost everybody was coming back. They said, “Outside, our eyes hurt; that much sun we cannot tolerate. Who is going to give us food? For fifty years, getting food without any trouble – now we don’t know any skill to earn our livelihood. Who is going to give us clothes? And the greatest problem is, we cannot sleep without the chains. Please give us our chains back! And we want to sleep in our dark cells.” The revolutionaries could not believe it.But this is a reality of all human beings. For four years there was no complaint, and you were perfectly happy. Now I am receiving letters of complaint, that this is wrong and that is wrong, and guns should not be here. Everybody should be allowed to do whatever he wants – play music, do painting, write poetry, or just lie down by the side of the lake and have a good sunbath.I am not saying that you should not do this, but first comes the commune’s survival. You should do everything that the commune’s survival needs. Then play music, paint, sculpt, or do whatever you want: dance, sing. But the commune’s necessary work should not suffer.If within seven days it does not change, then you will be back under a strict disciplined order. And those who cannot fit will have to leave the place. Why should anybody else take your responsibility? You have to be responsible for yourself. Outside in the world, do you think you can go on playing music and somebody will come with all kinds of dishes, Chinese food, and spaghetti, because you are such a great musician? Spaghetti comes first. Your music is your private affair.So make it clearly understood that only seven days…and you have to learn responsibility; otherwise you lose your freedom. I cannot help it. Your president, Hasya, is continuously coming to me, “What to do? People don’t come to work. They have a strange idea of freedom.”I respect your freedom.I want you to remain totally free.But that is possible only if you accept your responsibility.And your freedom will be only in proportion to your responsibility – neither less nor more.Osho,On our farm, the work that needs to be done is obvious. The cows need to be milked on time, the vegetables have to be picked for each meal. Rejecting the old ways of organization and authority has created a gap. Less is getting done and people are confused. It's very exciting, and a spontaneous kind of organization seems to be arising, but it is still very chaotic.How can we get the worship done? How do we balance what we want to do and the needs of the commune?Don’t be worried. I have given seven days’ time: either you do it, or it will be done the way it has been done for four years. It is your choice.Osho,Is there such a thing as personal power which is different from power over others? What is the relationship between power and responsibility?They are two totally different things: personal power and power over others. Not only are they different, they are diametrically opposite.The person who knows himself, understands his own being, understands the meaning of his life, suddenly has an explosion of power. But it is more like love, like compassion. It is more like moonlight than like sunlight – cool, calm, beautiful. Such a man has no inferiority complex at all. He is so full, so contented, so utterly blissful, there is no reason for him to feel any ambition to have power over others.I call it the power of the mystic.Power over others is political, and the people who are interested in power over others are people who feel a deep inferiority complex. They are continuously comparing themselves with others, and feeling themselves inferior. They want to prove to the world and to themselves that it is not so – they are superior beings. All politicians suffer from an inferiority complex. All politicians need to be treated psychologically.These are the sick people, and because of these sick people the whole world has been in immense suffering. Five thousand wars in three thousand years!And there is no end for the seeker of power over others, because there are always people left out of his power. That makes him still feel his inferiority. Otherwise, what is the need for anybody to become Alexander the Great? – just sheer stupidity. The man died when he was only thirty-three. He could not live for a single moment, he could not love for a single moment. His life of thirty-three years was, in the beginning, preparing to become a world conqueror, and the remaining part was fighting, killing, burning. The only idea in his mind was to become the world conqueror.When he was going to India, on the way, passing the boundaries of Greece, he met one of the rarest men in the history of man, Diogenes. He used to live naked. He was so beautiful, it was perfectly suitable for him to live naked.Clothes serve many purposes, of climate, of culture, but the basic purpose…. All the animals can manage to live without clothes in every climate all around the world. What is wrong with man? Is he the most vulnerable and weak animal in the whole world? No. Clothes were first invented because all people don’t have beautiful bodies. You know people by their faces. In fact, even you yourself, if you see a picture of your body naked, without the head, you will not be able to recognize that this is your body.Diogenes was an immensely beautiful man; he needed no clothes. He lived by the side of a river. It was early morning and he was taking a sunbath. He had only one companion, a dog, and only one possession, an old type of lamp.Alexander heard that Diogenes was very close when they were passing the boundary of Greece. He said, “I have heard so much about the man. He seems to be a little strange, but I would like to see him.” Alexander went to see Diogenes – Diogenes was resting. His dog was sitting by his side. Alexander said to him, “Diogenes, Alexander the Great has come to see you. It is a great favor, it is unique; I have never gone to see anybody.”Diogenes did not even sit up. He remained lying on the sand, laughed, looked at his dog and said to the dog, “Have you heard? A man calling himself great – what do you think about it? He must be suffering from great inferiority. This is a projection to hide some wound.” It was a truth. Even Alexander could not deny it.Alexander said, “I don’t have much time; otherwise I would have sat here and listened to some wisdom from you.”Diogenes said, “What is the hurry? Where are you going – to conquer the world? But have you ever thought, if by chance you succeed in conquering the world, what will you do then? – because there is no other world, there is only one world. Right now, fighting, invading, you can go on forgetting your inferiority; but when you have succeeded, your inferiority will come back, will surface again.”Alexander said, “Returning, I will come and stay for a few days here and try to understand. Whatsoever you are saying hurts, but it is true. In fact, just the idea that there is no other world makes me sad. Yes, if I conquer the whole world, then what am I going to do? Then I will be just useless, and all that is hidden in me is bound to surface.”But Diogenes said, “You will never return, because this kind of ambition is unending. Nobody comes back.” And strangely, Alexander never came back. He died while he was coming back, before reaching Greece. And a beautiful story has been told since then, because the same day Diogenes also died. It is just a story, but very significant.There is a river, according to Greek mythology, which you have to pass before you enter paradise. Diogenes was just a few feet ahead, Alexander just behind him. Seeing Diogenes, the same beautiful man, naked – and now Alexander was also naked, but not with that beauty – just to cover up, Alexander said, “This is a strange coincidence, the meeting of a world conqueror with a beggar!”Diogenes laughed and he said, “You are right. Only on one point are you wrong – you don’t know who is the conqueror and who is the beggar. Just look at me and look at yourself. I never conquered anybody, yet I am a conqueror – a conqueror of myself. You tried to conquer the whole world, and what have you got? Just a sheer wasting of your whole life. You are just a beggar!”The personal power belongs to the mystic – one who has had his flower of consciousness blossom, who has released his fragrance, his love, his compassion, far and wide. It is a very subtle power. Nothing can prevent it; it simply reaches to your heart. It simply makes you fall in tune with the mystic – into a kind of synchronicity, a harmony. You don’t become a slave, you become a lover. A great friendliness, a great gratitude arises in you.Just the presence of the mystic creates an immense aura. In that aura, whoever is open, available, receptive, immediately starts feeling like bursting into a song or into a dance.Political power is ugly. Power over others is ugly. It is inhuman, because to have power over somebody means to reduce that person to a thing. He becomes your possession.For example, in China, for centuries the husband had the power over his wife even to kill her. The law allowed it, because the wife was nothing but a possession – like you possess a chair, and if you want to destroy it, it is not a crime; it was your chair. And if you kill your wife, it was your wife…. For centuries no man in China had been punished for having killed his wife – up to this century.Power over anybody reduces the other person’s individuality, reduces his spirituality, and he becomes just a commodity, a thing. For centuries men and women have been sold in the markets like any other commodity. Once you have purchased a slave, you have all power over the slave. This may fulfill some insane and sick psychology, but it is not healthy. No politician is healthy – I mean spiritually.When Nixon was caught bugging and tapping other people’s phones, and he had finally to resign as the president, Mao Zedong’s remark is remarkable. He said, “Every politician does it. There is nothing special in it. Why are they making so much fuss about it? Poor Nixon has just been caught doing it.”And even after Nixon’s resignation as president, Mao sent a special plane, his own plane, to take Nixon to China – to console him, to say that this is just stupidity. “Whatever you were doing is being done all over the world. All the politicians are doing it. What was wrong was being caught. You were an amateur.”What politicians are doing all over the world, all through history, is simply inhuman, ugly. But the reason, the basic reason is that they have a deep feeling of inferiority, and they want to prove to themselves that it is not so. “Look, you have so much power, so many people in your hand you can make or mar, so many nuclear weapons in your hand. Just push a button and you can destroy the whole planet.”Power over others is destructive – always destructive. In a better world anybody who is ambitious, who wants to be more important than others, ahead of others, should be treated psychologically. Only humbleness, simplicity, naturalness – no comparison with anybody…. Because everybody is unique, comparison is impossible.How can you compare a roseflower with a marigold? How can you say who is superior and who is inferior? Both have their beauty, and both have blossomed, danced in the sun, in the wind, in the rain…lived their life totally.Every human being is unique. There is no question of anybody superior or anybody inferior. Yes, people are different. Let me remind you of one thing; otherwise you will misunderstand me. I am not saying that everybody is equal, as communists think. I am absolutely against communism, for the simple reason that the whole philosophy of communism is against psychology and against all psychological research.Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I. I have to contribute my potential to life; you have to contribute your potential to life. I have to discover my own being; you have to discover your own being.It is perfectly good to be powerful as a mystic.It is ugly, disgusting, stinking to have even a slight desire for having power over others.Osho,In the past, you've always said that our love is what keeps you in your body. Is all this negativity and everything that's been happening recently affecting you? Will we lose you?There is every possibility.Osho,Human nature is tricky. It will create a simple institution to begin with and then turn it into an establishment so as to control it and the people it is there to serve. In such a situation, can an enlightened master create an institution or a flexible, fluid relating, where the emergence of an authoritarian organization is not possible?And what do you think I am doing here!Osho,That's all – there are no more questions.That’s great!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/from-bondage-to-freedom-21/

Osho,How come people do not see this as a mystery school, a place of healing, a “religio” to oneself and to the world all around, the most powerful religion there is…A place to find yourself, and to find yourself loved by yourself and all those around you?It is just because of that, that people cannot see it. It is a mystery school. It is not a commonplace phenomenon, an ordinary theological college, but a mystery school. The very word mystery answers your question. The ordinary human mind cannot comprehend: what mystery is there? For it, there is no mystery. For the idiot, everything is already known.Socrates says that when he was young he thought he knew everything. When he became mature, a little older, he could see that he did not know everything: a few things he knew, but much more was there which was unknown and a mystery. And the day he died he said to his disciples, “This should be my last statement: I do not know anything.” Strange…from knowledgeability he is growing into a strange kind of ignorance. But when he died he was so blissful, so peaceful, so at home that even his impending death did not create a ripple in his consciousness.Later on his disciple, Plato, made two categories. One, the first category: knowledge which is ignorance, mere knowledgeability. You have heard it, you have read it, but you are not an eyewitness to it. It is mere hearsay, knowledge which is ignorance. Unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of humanity belongs to that category.The second: ignorance which knows. You have become a child, innocent; all knowledgeability has been dropped, existence has again become mysterious – just as it was when you were born. When you opened your eyes for the first time, everything was a mystery.Ignorance that knows…you have become ignorant in the sense that you do not carry the burden of scriptures, doctrines, theologies, philosophies. But you have a clarity which only innocence can give to you. In that clarity you can see, but what you see is beyond words; hence you cannot say, “I know.” In fact, in that clarity, in that seeing, the seer disappears. There is only seeing. There is experiencing, but the experiencer has disappeared.This is the state of the mystic, and this is the search of a mystery school.Do not expect that people will understand you. Their misunderstanding is a recognition that you are a mystery school. Their misunderstanding is a qualification for you. If they start understanding you, then you are no longer a mystery school.That’s why I said, “Religion in this commune is dead” – because religion they understand, but they do not understand the mystery, the origin, the root from which the word religion is derived. It is religio. It means putting yourself together: no longer split, no longer divided into body, mind, soul; no longer divided into God the creator, and existence the created. Everything that divides is against religio.The mystic disappears in his experience, because to remain an experiencer is a division. The knower and the known – there is still a division. There is a certain experiencing: the experience and the experiencer have become one. That is religio.In the East, philosophy is called darshan. Philosophy is not the right word to translate it. It is, in fact, the most wrong word to translate it. Darshan means seeing, experiencing; the duality of the seer and the seen has dissolved. It cannot be translated as philosophy.Philosophy means love of knowledge, and darshan means dissolution of knowledge and the knower. It is a totally different approach. And the professors of philosophy in India and outside India can never be forgiven for translating darshan as philosophy, and translating philosophy as darshan.The East has no philosophy, the West has no darshan. They are two different categories. The West has philosophy – love of knowledge. That makes you more and more knowledgeable. Your universities, your libraries, they all help you to become knowledgeable.In the East, it is a mystic experience – neither the university is needed, nor the library is needed. All that is needed is the courage within you to go as deep in your being as possible. At the very center of your being – the explosion. There is nothing known, and there is nobody to know; there is only knowing. You cannot claim, “I know,” because you were not there when it happened. You cannot claim, “I know,” because what happened cannot be made knowledge.Knowledge is something dead.Knowing is something alive.Knowing is something like a roseflower dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. Knowledge is a roseflower you find in an old book – crushed, dead, no fragrance. Can you believe these two roses are the same? In a way both are roses; but one is only a corpse, the other is life itself. The moment you try to bring your experiencing into words, the dancing rose dies. Then you get only a rose crushed within the pages of an old book, with no fragrance, with no dance, with no life.Yes, it is a mystery school.Religion we have buried, burned.Religio we are going to live.Religion becomes an organization. Religio remains always an individual inquiry. Religion sooner or later becomes a hierarchy. Religio never becomes a hierarchy – the question does not arise.This is a mystery school for people who are in search of themselves. That is the only common ground, that they are all seekers. Other than that there is no belief which joins them, no ideology to which they are connected, no faith to which they are surrendered.Just the other day, I told President Hasya that gachchhamis should be stopped, because they give a certain idea of religion. So many people doing gachchhamis looks like Mohammedans doing namaz, Christians doing prayer.No, religio is individual; it has no collectivity. You are related to each other with a very thin thread; because the other is seeking himself, you are also seeking yourself. This seeking has brought you together. It can be of immense help, because seeking oneself means going into aloneness. One fears, one always wants to be in the crowd with someone; that way you can avoid your aloneness.I traveled in India for thirty years continuously, and sometimes it took forty-eight hours to reach a place. The fastest train would also take that long. There were places that you could reach only in seven days. But that was the only time for me to rest, because when I reached the destination, then there was continuous work to be done from morning to night: to talk to people, to destroy their conditioning, to deprogram them.It happened many times that traveling in an air-conditioned compartment I was with only one other passenger – because only two passengers could travel in a compartment – and the other passenger was very eager to know about me. So before he even opened his mouth, I would say, “Wait! This is my name…this is my father’s name…this is my father’s father’s name…. This is their business…this is the number of my brothers and sisters” – how many are married and how many are not married, how many have a college education, who are still in the university: somebody is becoming an engineer, somebody is becoming a doctor….The man would look shocked. He would say, “But I have not asked!”I said, “You were going to; now what is the point? Unnecessarily you will ask one question after another. I have given the whole thing! Do you have any more questions?”And just thinking, “That man seems to be mad!” he said, “No, I don’t.”Then I said, “Remember, for the coming twenty-four hours no questions, no yakkety-yak. This is my period of rest. If you want to talk, you can talk to yourself.”But that was also difficult – to talk to himself in front of me. So what would the man do? He would open his suitcase, bring out something, put it back, close the suitcase; go to the bathroom, come back out – unnecessarily. He could not tolerate it, twenty-four hours just being alone. And finally he would go to the conductor and say, “Whenever you have a seat in another compartment, please change me.”But the conductor said, “That man is innocent! He travels continuously. I know him, he has never harmed anybody.”He said, “It would have been better if he had harmed me! But it is very strange to live in that room. He does not speak, he just goes on looking at me, and I feel very tense, fidgety. I turn to this side and that, and he simply goes on looking at me. And just because of him I am doing stupid things, and I know that he is enjoying it! I cannot even smoke, because the moment I take a cigarette out, he simply indicates with his finger the sign, ‘Smoking Not Allowed.’ So what am I supposed to do? Just go on opening my suitcase? And I know what is there in the suitcase!“I am unnecessarily going to the bathroom and there is no need; I am ordering the waiter to bring water or tea which I don’t need! And he goes on staring. It is even difficult to sleep because of that man! I am sleeping, but just to see what he is doing I look at him and he is still looking at me. I say, ‘My God! There is no possibility that he will let me sleep.’ You just change me.”What was the trouble? Just to be alone is the most arduous thing. That’s why people join religions. They become Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians. They join political parties – communist, socialist, fascist, republicans, democrats. Even that does not satisfy their hunger for the crowd. They form the Lions’ Club, Rotary Club – all kinds of associations. They go to the church – not for the church, but for the crowd. They go to meetings – political, religious…. They feel at ease when they see so many people are there: they are not alone.What is the fear of being alone? The fear is that in your aloneness is hidden the mystic roseflower…but you will have to go deep. And the deeper you go, the more alone you will be, because the world will be left far behind. Nobody can accompany you there.A mystery school simply helps you, because somebody is ahead of you, somebody is behind you, somebody has already reached. The atmosphere of the commune, the milieu, gives you courage: “Don’t be afraid. If others are moving inwards, why not you? If they are not losing anything, then aloneness is not dangerous. In fact, they are becoming more and more radiant, more and more loving, more and more compassionate.”Seeing so many people helps you. It creates a certain energy field which becomes your support. Of course, you have to go alone, but those who have reached can say with authority: Your inside is not empty; it is the only fullness in the whole existence. You are not hollow; you will find the greatest treasure of joy and bliss, peace and serenity, grace and gratitude, within yourself. You will find that you have always been here and you will always be here; death does not exist, life is eternal.But your question is relevant. You are asking me, “Why don’t people understand that this is a mystery school?”They have never understood. And down the centuries such schools have existed, but behind a facade. For example, you know about alchemists. And in the chemistry books it is said – which is absolutely nonsense – that chemistry was born out of alchemical experiments, that alchemy was the predecessor of chemistry. They don’t know what alchemy was.Yes, there was a screen: alchemists pretended that they were trying to make gold out of base metals. This people can understand; gold they understand immediately. And if these people are trying to make gold out of baser metals, they are ready to support, to do anything for these people.Never was any gold made out of base metals. It was just a pretense. They had tubes and bottles and lamps and the whole paraphernalia – it looked as if it was a scientific lab, but that was just in the front of the school. Behind that facade the real alchemy was going on.Those were mystery schools, and certainly they were not cheating anybody. They were trying to transform the base metal in you into gold – but that was metaphorical language. And they had to do that; otherwise, Christianity was there to kill all these people, because religion was Christianity’s monopoly.How do you dare! All that you are expected to do is to believe in Jesus Christ. What is the need of a mystery school and a search inwards? Jesus has given you all that is needed. You simply believe in him. He is the savior, and on the last day, the judgment day, he will choose his sheep and save them. So all that is needed is simple faith, belief. Why go through all this arduous journey, when a shortcut is available?Alchemists knew that nobody can save you. There is no savior, and there has never been any savior, and there will never be any savior. You can save yourself or not – it is absolutely an individual freedom and responsibility. But for that a certain school is needed.My only fault is that I thought, “This is the twentieth century and man has become more cultured, more civilized; we are not living in the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages” – and I created this mystery school without any facade.But somebody has to bring it into the open, because there are millions of people who want to be seekers, who don’t want to be believers. They need to know that they are not alone, that there are millions of other people around the world who are working on the same lines, that there are people who have arrived, reached, found the ultimate source of life.But the mob will never understand you. There is no need to bother about the mob. Don’t waste your time about others understanding you. You put your whole energy into understanding yourself. The mob has remained always in the Dark Ages, and it seems it is determined to remain always in the Dark Ages. It is their freedom and their choice. Let them remain whatever, wherever, they want to be. Don’t be bothered whether they understand you or not.You put your total energy – because your own inner work needs your totality, and life is short, and nobody knows about tomorrow. So not even a single moment has to be lost in unnecessary worries.Osho,Anarchy simply means absence of authority – which is beautiful. But in common language it has the meaning of absence of discipline. Why that confusion? Could you speak about discipline, especially its relation to rebellion?Anarchy is one of the most beautiful words in the human language. Yes, it means absence of authority. It means you are accepted as an independent individual; you are no longer a slave.Your question is: Why, in people’s minds, has anarchy taken on the connotation of absence of discipline? It is a very simple psychological phenomenon. All discipline that you have known was imposed upon you by the authority. The authority of the parents disciplined you – what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat, when to go to sleep and when to get up. What to do and what not to do was never left to your own decision. The parents were your first authority – just like God the father was the first authority for Adam and Eve. He was the father, they were the children. And he was telling them not to eat from the tree of knowledge, not to eat from the tree of eternal life. Authority disciplines.Then there are teachers in the school, the priest in the church, in the temple, the rabbi in the synagogue. And they are all authoritarian figures. You have to do what they say; otherwise you will have some kind of punishment either here or after death. Naturally authority and discipline become associated with each other. So whenever authority is removed, you think now there is no need of discipline.The reality is, when authority is removed then there is a real need of discipline. Now there is nobody to impose any order on you, it is your responsibility to live a life of order, discipline. Why? – because a man who lives without order starts falling into pieces, falling apart. His life starts losing harmony. A man who does not know discipline lives a life which cannot be called really human. He falls back into the world of the animal kingdom.Discipline makes you integrated, gives you a certain crystallization. And without that crystallization you cannot be more conscious. Authority is slavery for you. Discipline is living an organic, harmonious life.Just see how authority has destroyed humanity down the ages. Start from the very beginning…. It was God’s authoritarian order that Adam and Eve should not eat from these two trees of knowledge and eternal life. What was the result? The result was disobedience. Any obedience forced upon you creates in you – if you have any guts – disobedience. You want to do just the opposite.When I first read the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion, I went to my father and showed him the story. He said, “But why are you showing it to me?”I said, “I am showing it to you so that you understand: no shoulds, no should-nots; otherwise I am going to disobey. Even God could not manage; you will not be able to manage it. The story is clear.”He said, “You draw strange conclusions! The story is told so that people don’t disobey, and you are drawing the conclusion that the story says people should not be authoritarian.”I said, “It is absolutely clear – because in the Garden of Eden there were millions of trees; if God had not been so stupid, then I don’t think even by now Adam and Eve would have found the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. He is responsible for their disobedience, and if anybody has to be punished, God has to be punished.“So I am just telling you that if you tell me to do anything, I am going to do its very opposite, whatever the consequences. It may harm me, it may harm you, it may harm anybody, but one thing is certain: obedience is not going to be my way of life. You can certainly advise me, but the choice is always mine – to do or not to do.” My whole family remained in trouble continuously. And it was natural….In my city there was a very beautiful river. But it was a mountain river, so suddenly in the rains it would become too big and huge, and in summer it would shrink and become small. In the rains the current was so great that to cross the river by swimming was almost to invite death. But I told my father, “This river is a constant challenge to me. So I am ready – even if death happens, I am going to cross this river when it is in full flood.”It becomes almost one mile broad, and it takes nearabout three hours, four hours to cross it. And the current is so powerful that you cannot cross it directly. The current goes on pushing you downwards, so when you reach – if you survive – you reach almost five, six miles down on the other shore. Then you have to walk twelve miles up – then only can you come back to the spot from where you had started. It was going to take the whole day.My father said, “Don’t do that.”I said, “You are not advising me, you are ordering me. I am going to do it.”My whole family was in a turmoil: “You are so small, and this is dangerous. Nobody has even tried it; the best swimmers in the city have not dared.”I said, “That makes it more challenging.”I went against the whole family. They even threatened me that they wouldn’t allow me to come into the house if I survived. I said, “That’s okay. I will sit just outside the house.”It was difficult. There were moments when I thought, “Perhaps it is not possible to reach the other shore.” It was arduous, tiring, but I managed it. And then twelve miles I had to go upstream.By the evening I was back. I didn’t enter the house, I sat just on the steps. They were all amazed to see me, that I had come back alive. My mother said, “Why don’t you come in?”I said, “You made the condition that even if I survive, you are not going to let me in. So I am sitting on the steps. If you have any objection, I can sit on the street.”My father came and took me in. He said, “We are sorry. We never expected that you would be able to manage. You do not know in what agony we remained the whole day.”I said, “But the ecstasy that I have felt – in comparison to it your agony means nothing. My suggestion is, next time you also come with me. All my uncles are invited to come with me. It is a tremendous job, but once it is done, something in you crystallizes. I feel stronger than ever!”In the school it was continuously a problem, because I did not believe in any authority.I have loved hats from my very childhood, but in the school I had to drop hats because it was compulsory; you could not come to the school without a hat. My family said, “But you love hats!”I said, “I love hats, but I love freedom more…even more than my head! If I have to lose my head, I will lose it willingly, but I cannot lose my freedom. Tomorrow, I have been called by the principal of the school, so I am very excited about the encounter.”The principal was thinking that he would just threaten me and things would be settled. I entered his room and I told him, “Before you start threatening me – and I know you have been using corporal punishment – if you do any harm to me, I am going directly to the police station. Corporal punishment has been banished, it is illegal; you will be unnecessarily in trouble. I don’t want you to be in trouble.“So first, drop whatever you have been thinking. Man to man, let us discuss the whole problem. If you can convince me…. I love hats, but if you simply order me, then there is no way that I will use hats.” I asked him, “What relationship has a hat with education? Does it increase a man’s intelligence?”He said, “These questions I have never thought about.”Then I said, “You think, and you inquire; you consult higher authorities. You have to prove that the hat has some relevance. I have come to the school to be educated. If the hat helps intelligence, I am perfectly willing to wear it. But you will have to prove it.”The reality is that in India, Punjabis are the only people…. They use turbans; that is part of their religion. The Sikh has to use it, otherwise he is not a Sikh. And they are the most unintelligent people in the whole country. The Bengalis are the people who don’t use any hats, any caps, and they are the most intelligent people in the country. Not a single Punjabi has risen to world eminence for his intelligence. They have not achieved Nobel Prizes. But Bengalis have become world famous. They have achieved the Nobel Prize for science, the Nobel Prize for literature, and all other kinds of awards.I told the principal, “What this proves is that the turbans are preventing the intelligence of the poor Sikhs. The Bengalis, without any caps, any turbans, any hats, seem to have fresher minds, are more intelligent. They have created the best literature in the whole of India, the best poetry, the best art, and their language is a beauty. Even if two Bengalis are fighting, you cannot think that they are fighting, their language is so sweet.”The principal said, “I will call you when I have figured it out, but you seem to be a difficult case.”I said, “That’s true. But call me only when you have enough proof.”And I remained all my school life without a cap. Naturally, many other students stopped using caps. One day the principal called me and said, “This is too much! You are not using caps, and you are spreading a kind of rebellion, disobedience. Others are not using caps.”I said, “I have not said anything to anybody; to use or not use is their freedom. One thing is certain, you have not come with any argument to prove it helps intelligence. To you I can say that you should not use the cap! It is not dignified of you. For no reason, why are you destroying your intelligence?”In the college, I used to have a long robe, with a wraparound lungi as it is used in India, and with no buttons on the robe, so the chest is open. And I was very healthy and robust, one hundred and ninety pounds.The principal told me, “Coming to the college without buttons is not according to the etiquette.”I said, “Then change the etiquette, because my chest needs fresh air. And I decide according to my needs, not according to anybody’s idea of etiquette.”In my first year in the college, I won the all-India university competition for debate, and the professor in charge – he is dead now, Indra Bahadur Khare – was a very properly dressed man. Everything about him was proper. He took me to a photo studio near the college, because they wanted my picture to be released to the newspapers, to the magazines, and particularly for the college magazine: I had won the all-India competition and I was just a first-year student.But he was very tense all the way to the studio. And when we entered the studio, he said, “Excuse me, but without the buttons, how will your photograph look?”I said, “It will look just like me! You have not won the debate, I have won the debate. And when I was debating there were no buttons, so what is the problem now? If I can win the debate without buttons, then my photograph has to be without buttons!”He said, “You do one thing” – he was a very small man. He said, “You can take my coat, it will fit you. You just put it on top of your robe and it will look beautiful.”I said, “Then better you stand here and let it be perfectly proper. Let that picture go.”He said, “That cannot be done. That will be simply objectionable. The principal will say, ‘This is your photograph, and….’”So I said, “You should remember, my photograph has to be like me. I cannot use your coat. Either the photograph will go without buttons, or I am not interested in the photograph at all. So you decide.”He had to decide for something very improper. He said, “I have never done anything improper, and I never allow anybody to do anything improper. But you seem to be strange.”I said, “This is not improper.”Every child is born naked – that is proper. Every animal is naked, and that is proper. But there are people addicted to properness….I have heard, in the times of Victoria in England, ladies were putting clothes on their dogs, because to keep a naked dog with them was not ladylike – and the dog does not know any etiquette. If the dog meets a lady of his own kind, he may have an erection. That is very improper in public. He may even try to make love – in public! No, he has to be covered completely. He cannot have any erection in public, he cannot make love in public because of the clothing. And you will be surprised: even the legs of the chairs were covered with clothes – because they are legs, and a lady’s leg should not show. Stupidity can go to any length.I have fought against authority my whole life. But I have never forgotten the difference – on the contrary, the more I have fought against anybody imposing his authority, the more I have tried on my own to be disciplined. Because now I am alone, nobody can discipline me, I have to discipline myself; otherwise I will start falling apart, I will not be able to have an integrated individuality.I believe in discipline.The word discipline is very beautiful. It comes from a root which means learning: a man of discipline is a man who is always learning, a man who is always ready to learn. He is a man who is always open to learn – with no prejudice, with no preconceived conclusions.A bigot cannot learn. A Christian cannot learn, a Hindu cannot learn, a Buddhist cannot learn. They have already accepted conclusions without any experience. They are closed people.Discipline means you remain open. It comes from the same root as disciple. A disciple means one who is ready to learn. A disciple means one who is not bigoted, who is not prejudiced, who has no unexperienced beliefs, who knows what he knows and who knows what he does not know. He is very clear about it. And when there is no authority over you, then you are the authority – a tremendous responsibility, a great freedom.I have been telling you that Sheela and her fascist gang are gone – and it has been a tremendous relief to the commune, but it has created many problems. It has given you freedom, and you are not capable of being free. You are accustomed to being slaves. In four years I had never received any letter from you saying that you would like to come to work when you feel like coming, you will leave the work when you feel like it. I have heard of no problem.Now I have received a letter just last night – somebody wants just to meditate in the hills the whole day long. You can meditate, but then don’t ask for food, don’t ask for clothes, don’t ask for shelter – because the people who prepare food also would like to meditate in the hills. Why should they prepare food for you? Why should they bother about you?It is your meditation, it is your joy. They should have their joy, and do whatever they want to do. Then you will not find the dentist in the dentist’s office; he will be meditating somewhere. You will not find the doctor. One day the whole department of the medical center did not turn up for work; they just felt to relax. That’s a great idea – but what about the patients? Who is going to look after them?I am not preventing you from meditation, but you have to understand your responsibility. It is a commune, and now that a fascist regime has been removed, if you behave in this way you cannot exist; it will be impossible.But if you miss this opportunity, perhaps you will miss forever – at least for this life. And this is a tremendous loss – a mystery school, a religio, has not the guts to be independent and yet create order out of independence and love?Work for love, not because somebody is forcing you to work. Your work should be your joy! You are doing it for the people you love.Osho,When I heard about the possibility that you could be arrested, and they could hurt or kill you then, unprotected as you are, my first reaction was of turning into a wounded lion, of spending the rest of my life burning embassies and living as a fascist anarchist, as a reaction to this incredible pain.What can my meditative response be to these dirty actions of politicians?No need to be worried. They cannot dare to arrest me, for the simple reason that arresting me means America loses its mask of democracy, and its real face of hypocrisy comes before the world.I have not committed any crime. To be silent is not a crime. To be in isolation is not a crime. I was silent, in isolation – that is my birthright. If somebody takes advantage of it, I am not responsible for it.For example, if you are asleep and somebody steals from your house, it can be said you are responsible for the stealing. Why were you asleep? You gave the opportunity to the person; he took advantage of it and stole. Does that mean nobody can sleep? Do you mean to say that nobody can go into silence, into isolation, because advantage can be taken of it? This is sheer nonsense, this is not logic.They cannot arrest me, don’t be worried. And I have one million sannyasins around the earth, and more than two million sympathizers. There is no need for anybody to become terrorists, burn American embassies, or do any violent activity. All that is needed is, in front of every American embassy, go there and sit down and meditate. Let the whole world see that these people are simply meditators. Even in protest they are only meditating, not doing any harm to anybody, but just being silent; if you have some heart, it will respond.All the sannyasins and the sympathizers meditating before American embassies will be far more effective than throwing bombs. This will humiliate them more than burning embassies. And this will bring pressure on the American government: “You are not dealing with terrorists, you are dealing with a mystic commune. And you should behave more humanly.”This will be a beautiful opportunity to show the power of silent, meditative compassion: no destruction, no violence, no ordinary political kind of protest. Just see what meditation can do. It can destroy a whole empire.Love is more powerful than any power.You see a waterfall: the water is so humble, so weak against the rocks on which it is falling. But soon the rocks will be gone, the water is going to be victorious. The rocks were hard, very strong, but not before water. The power of meditation is the power of water. The power of politics, violence, is the power of the rocks.Don’t be worried at all. Whatever happens – this is my experience of the whole of life: whatever happens brings something good to me and to my people. So whatever happens will be a benefit, a blessing.Let them arrest me. I have informed them, if they want to arrest me they should come with handcuffs, because I want the whole world to see my hands with their handcuffs, to see that this is America – and this America is going to protect democracy in the world. It is destroying democracy itself, it is against its own Constitution. Just my hands raised with the handcuffs will have enough power. Don’t be worried. All their nuclear weapons are nothing. If they are going to take this risk, they will repent forever. They will see America and its prestige going down the drain.And how long can they keep me arrested? Two hours? I have not committed any crime, but within those two hours they will have destroyed their credibility.So it is up to them. It is for the attorney general to decide. If he has any intelligence, then it is better to leave us alone. But if he is as idiotic as I think he is, then he is bound to do something stupid which will destroy him – not me, not you, not the commune.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Do I betray my real self, and only myself, by not letting go?In this commune, you cannot betray anybody except yourself. In the outside world the situation is different. You can betray Christianity, you can betray Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammed. You can betray communism, Karl Marx. You can betray a thousand and one things, for the simple reason that they are all asking for your faith. Betrayal comes as the other side of faith.I am not asking for your belief, I am not asking for your faith. There is no way to betray me or anybody else here. This is a commune of individuals, totally independent, living out of their freedom and responsibility.There is nobody above you. You are alone here! So if you betray, you can betray only yourself. Let this sink as deep as possible in you, because every faith creates rebels, and every belief creates disbelief. The very seed of betrayal is sown in the idea of obedience.God thought that Adam and Eve had betrayed him. In fact, he had created the whole situation himself. The Christian-Judaic God is a fascist. He orders his own children not to be wise, not to have eternal life. He is provoking them to betray. If they have any guts, they will do just what he is telling them not to do. And then he dumps on them that they have betrayed, they have not followed, they have not been faithful, reliable, trustworthy. They have committed a sin, they should be punished for it. And not only are Adam and Eve punished; generation after generation, each human child is being punished because thousands of years ago Adam and Eve had betrayed God.You cannot betray me. You cannot betray anybody else in this commune. You are here out of your freedom, you can leave out of your freedom. You are welcome to come in; you are welcome to go out. Our respect for your individuality, for your freedom, for your decision, is absolute.So remember: either you can fulfill yourself or you can betray yourself. If you fulfill yourself, your freedom will become a fragrance. If you fulfill yourself, your individuality will reach to its ultimate potential.If you betray yourself, you will remain retarded. But nobody is punishing you. It is your action and its consequence.Osho,If all the world's religions have been doing things now in the hope of reward later – in the hereafter for the Christians – how can we avoid falling into the same trap, because of habit, of meditating now towards enlightenment later, and in that waiting for it to happen, missing now?That is this enlightenment all about? What do you understand by enlightenment?The first thing: it can never be in the future. You cannot make a goal of it; it can never be tomorrow. Either it is here and now, or never. Remember those words: now or never!You have misunderstood the idea of enlightenment. The idea of enlightenment is to remain in the present moment. I call it meditation – not to go into the past, which is no more, not to go into the future, which is not yet – because if you go into past and future, you are going to miss the present moment, which is the only reality.Just be here, now. And if you are here and now, enlightenment comes of its own accord. It is not a goal that you have to reach. It is not somewhere far away, so that you have to travel a path to it. It comes to you, you never go to it. It is not your doing, it is a happening.All that you have to understand is: be authentically in the present, because there is no other reality anywhere. This small moment, this silence – and suddenly you will feel something arising from the very depths of your being. It has always been there; you never gave it a chance. You have been wandering everywhere, but you have not allowed your innermost core just a little space, a little time.All the other religions teach you that God is there far away; you need a savior, a messiah, a prophet, a holy book, a religion, to help you to reach there. They teach you that heaven is far away, and you have to accumulate virtue to deserve it. They are keeping your eyes focused on a faraway future.This is a very cunning strategy so that life goes on slipping out of your hands. From the cradle to the grave, you are just hoping and hoping and hoping. And what comes is neither God nor heaven, but death. And you missed the tremendous opportunity of being alive! You simply vegetated, because you were not interested in life itself. Even great thinkers, theologians….One Christian theologian, a great intellectual, respected all over the world, was Stanley Jones. He was traveling all around the world, preaching the gospel of Christ.I met him in one of his discourses. After the discourse I asked him, “Your discourse was beautiful, but do you understand what you are doing? You are harming all these simple people. You are proving exactly what Karl Marx used to say, that religions are nothing but opium to the people. I don’t agree with Karl Marx on anything else, but on this statement I cannot disagree. You are giving them dreams of the future, of an eternal life beyond death. Have you been beyond death?“Being a Christian, certainly you cannot say that you have been beyond death. A Hindu may be able to say yes, because he believes in many lives; he has been many times through the process of death. But you cannot say that. Christians, Jews, Mohammedans believe only in one life, so there is going to be only one death. Have you been beyond death? Have you come experiencing what you are saying?“Be sincere. And I hope that you will be honest. And if you don’t know what is beyond death, then why destroy these people’s lives? Focusing their mind on the future, which is unknown, is really murderous. In my eyes, you are not a theologian but a murderer! The law may not catch you as a murderer, but you cannot deny that you have murdered many people; you have taken them away from the present – and that is the only life there is. Live this moment in its totality.”Other religions have goals. This is not a religion, this is a mystery school. This is a religio – the root from where the word religion has come. Religio means putting you together. Nothing else – no God, no heaven, no hell, just putting you together, a crystallization. And that can happen only in the present.I don’t sell opium, I am not a dope dealer. For that you will have to go to Christian bishops and cardinals and the pope – they are dope dealers. The dope is so subtle that the law cannot catch them; it is invisible. But it is far more dangerous than the ordinary dope. Once you get accustomed to focusing your life, your longing, your hope, in the future, you are finished. You have committed suicide, you will not be able to live.I teach you life.I teach you love.I teach you meditation.They all mean the same thing: to be in the present. And see the beauty of being in the present – the silence that descends, the serenity that surrounds you, a tremendous contentment that arises for no reason at all.And as you become more and more attuned to the present, as your depth within yourself grows, suddenly one fine morning you really wake up! Not the everyday waking – you really wake up, because you are at your very center, and you see the whole life in a new light. The whole existence becomes luminous. Everything becomes a glory unto itself. Small things start having tremendous meaning. And what God had forbidden…. You have eaten the fruit of wisdom and the fruit of eternal life; now you know those trees are not outside you, they are your very being.The Garden of Eden is not somewhere outside, it is within you. And once it is felt, what a relief, what a blessing! This I call enlightenment. Then moment to moment you go on growing more and more into light, into life, into love. There is no end to it. Even the sky is not the end. You are far bigger than the whole universe. You are carrying within yourself all the millions of stars, all the flowers, all the music of the world. There is nothing that you are missing.This experience I call enlightenment. But please, don’t make it a goal; otherwise you will miss it. Make it a goal and you have missed it. You simply learn how to be in the present, and enlightenment comes to you. You don’t have to go anywhere.Osho,A friend is going to visit Russia in a couple of weeks. Do you have a message for your sannyasins over there?Yes, a few things….Tell my sannyasins in the Soviet Union: one, that not only are they underground, now my whole sannyas movement is underground. I have taken away everything outside and left you with only meditation. No government, no fanatic religion is capable of finding the treasure of meditation that you are carrying. And outer things don’t matter.Russian sannyasins have always felt sad because even though they live in a red country, they cannot use red clothes. Now there is no problem: we have claimed the whole rainbow. Now all colors are our sannyas colors, so they should not feel sad anymore. And now it is possible in the Soviet Union to spread meditation more easily; hence the Soviet Union is one of the most potential countries.It needs meditation, because Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin – the communist trinity – had no idea of meditation at all. They have never been to their inner being. They have never touched their own self and felt its benediction. They were poor people.And in Russia, after the revolution, everything that is in any way related to religion has become a crime. But what I am giving, even the Soviet Union cannot deny, because we don’t have any God, we don’t have any heaven and hell, we don’t have any priesthood, we don’t have any prayer, we don’t have any kind of ritual.We have declared that we are no longer a religion. We don’t have any theology. We are seekers of our own interiority – that has nothing to do with religion. And who can prevent you from going inwards? You can be prevented from going to some place outwards, but you cannot be prevented by any force, atomic, nuclear – no force can prevent you from going inwards.And there is no principle in the whole literature of Marxism which says that going into your own being is against communism. It has nothing to do with communism. Communism is just a political phenomenon. To go inside is just like sleep; what has sleep to do with communism? Going inside is absolutely unconnected with any kind of politics.So tell the sannyasins in the Soviet Union that they need not be afraid. The KGB is persecuting them – make it clear to them that we are not a religion, and we don’t have any politics. What we are doing is an “insearch.” And, according to the Soviet constitution, insearch is not a crime. So don’t be afraid. Be straightforward and up front.Meditation is not a prayer. Prayer needs a God: meditation needs no God. Meditation needs only you, ready to explore what is inside you: What is this life? What is this consciousness?And Russia has more potential, because for sixty, seventy years the Russian people have been deprived of any inner journey. It is just like a land which has remained unused for seventy years. No crops have been grown. The land is ready to burst forth – just the seeds are needed. That’s why I say Russia is one of the most potential countries. And meditation is the seed.Meditation can become a wildfire in Russia, because everything else is difficult. The government is continuously after you; even walls have ears. Everybody is a detective – but nobody can detect your meditation. Spread it! Many people need it.The second thing: tell the Russian sannyasins not to feel in any way sad that in other countries sannyasins are free. It is not true. Our experience in America proves it – that all democracy is simply talk. The American Constitution is beautiful, but the politicians are just as ugly as anywhere else. The Constitution is a dead book. The power is in the hands of the politicians, and they are doing everything that they can do to destroy sannyasins. That is the reason that I am telling my sannyasins to go underground. And it is so easy for my sannyasins to go underground: no red clothes, no mala – you are underground.I am not a sadist. I don’t want you to be unnecessarily persecuted, tortured, harassed. There is no need when you can go underground so easily. The politicians will prove absolutely impotent; they cannot do anything to you.In Mohammedan countries we have sannyasins. They were also feeling bad that they cannot be like every other sannyasin, and the movement cannot grow. Now it can grow everywhere; now there are no barriers.It is the same thing – the politicians may talk of democracy, they may talk of dictatorship, it doesn’t matter. Politicians are simply politicians. Their minds function in the same way, their cunningness is the same. Yes, their masks may be different. In these four years we have seen that the American politician has only the mask of a democrat. Behind democracy is hypocrisy and nothing else.This whole world is tortured by politicians in different names, exploited in different names. The only way to get out of this exploitation is to spread meditation to as many people as possible – because the meditator is no longer gullible. He has a maturity and an intelligence; words cannot deceive him.And if the major part of the world becomes meditative, it will release such a great energy of peace, love, compassion…. That, to me, is the only possibility of preventing the third world war, because meditators will refuse to fight, meditators will refuse to be violent. It does not matter whether they are American or Russian or Indian, the quality of meditation is the same. It makes you so sensitive that you cannot be destructive.And if the whole world simply refuses to fight, then if these politicians are so interested in fighting they can have wrestling matches, boxing matches, and meditators will enjoy it tremendously. But the world is not going to be destroyed by these idiots.I am not a pacifist. I will not tell you to go on a protest march to Moscow or to the White House or to anywhere. Those protest marches have been going on – they don’t make any difference. I want you to be peaceful – not pacifist, but just a deep pool of peace. That is the only possibility of saving humanity.And if we can avoid the third world war, then many doors open. There is no need of nations…what is the need of nations? I don’t see the point. It is because of the wars that nations are needed. It is a vicious circle; because of the nations, war is needed. If there is no need of any war, then there is no need of any boundaries.Then why America? Why Soviet Russia? Why India? Why China? This whole earth belongs to us. And if the whole earth becomes one organic whole, poverty can be destroyed very easily. Seventy-five percent of the whole world’s energy, income, is going into the service of death, making more and more sophisticated nuclear weapons. If the world is one, all this energy can become creative; all these scientists can change the whole direction of their work, and this seventy-five percent energy and income will become available to people.There is no need for any Ethiopia – one thousand people dying every day; there is no need. There is no need for India to remain undernourished. Fifty percent of the people – and that is a big number, four hundred million people – are eating only one time a day. Soon, within months, India will be another Ethiopia.But if the world is one, if war is no longer needed, the whole energy devoted to war can be devoted to getting rid of poverty, can be released for people’s comfort, luxury.Meditation can bring the only revolution there is. All other revolutions have failed.Osho,Gurdjieff's last words to his disciples were, “Bravo, America.”I have heard you appreciated his insight about America, but right now the way American bureaucracy and politicians are behaving with you and with the commune, it seems the words of Gurdjieff are no longer relevant.No, they are still relevant. A man like George Gurdjieff never becomes irrelevant. People of that category are eternally relevant. Politicians may be behaving in an ugly way – the only way they know – but America is not just the American politicians.Gurdjieff’s last words before he died were “Bravo, America.” His disciples were at a loss to figure it out. Their whole life they had been in trouble with this man, and now at the last…. Nobody could have expected that his dying words would be, “Bravo, America.” And he was dying in France! And now he is dead so you cannot even ask, “What do you mean?” But what he said was more significant, meaningful, than ordinary intellect can understand.America is the youngest country in the whole world, its history is only three hundred years. It is nothing compared to the histories of China, India. In India, three hundred years mean nothing. The Indian astrologers prove – and nobody has been able to contradict them yet – that Indian civilization is at least ninety thousand years old.In the Rig Veda, the most ancient book in the whole world, a certain constellation of stars is described in detail, in every particular, precisely. That constellation happened ninety thousand years ago, according to the scientists. Since then that kind of constellation has not happened again.There is no way for the people who were writing the Rig Veda to describe the stars and their constellations in such precise and exact detail unless they had observed it. Now the proof is such that no argument can defeat it. A country which is ninety thousand years old – what does three hundred years mean to it? China perhaps is even older.Gurdjieff’s statement means first that America has no burden of past conditioning – one thing. It is a very thin layer of conditioning, three hundred years, in comparison to ninety thousand years. To change the Hindu mind is almost impossible. It is so old, so thick; so deep have gone the roots. But the American mind is only very superficially conditioned – one thing which makes it possible that America can be deprogrammed, and Americans can become the first citizens of a new world. Perhaps Gurdjieff was remembering the words, “brave new world,” when he said, “Bravo, America.”Secondly, America is the only country where all kinds of people – Spanish, Italian, English, German, Swedish, Belgian, Swiss – all kinds of people have mixed. It is not a race; it is more cosmopolitan than any other country.The man of the future has to be cosmopolitan. He cannot be an Italian, a German, an Indian, an African. No, he can only be a human being. There is more possibility in America for it to happen. All other countries are racial; America is a nonracial country. It is a tremendous opportunity to create a new world without any racial mind.Thirdly, America is more receptive to new ideas, new technologies, new scientific research, than any other country, for the simple psychological reason that a child has no past, he has only a future. That’s why he is always ready to learn – in fact, asking too many questions because he wants to know what this life is all about. He harasses his parents by asking questions which the parents themselves don’t know how to answer. They don’t know the answers either, and they are not courageous enough to say, “We don’t know.”An old man has no future, only past. The old man looks backwards, not forwards. In the future there is only darkness and death, in the past are all his golden memories; he lives in the past. The same is true about countries. A country like India or China has such a long past – they live in the past. India thinks it has seen its golden age.You will not believe that in India the theory of evolution is not acceptable. India has another theory: the theory of involution. Things are not going, growing, towards better states, evolving – no. Things are falling down – involution.India has the idea that the best age was thousands of years ago; they call it the “age of truth.” Then the second stage came, the fall started. They call it simply “the age of three legs.” The reason is that the first age they compare to a table with four legs – completely balanced, with no possibility of falling. The second stage has lost one leg, so it is a tripod with three legs, treta – still not too bad, because even with three legs a tripod has a certain balance. The third stage they call dwapar – the age of two legs. Now things are becoming dangerous. A table with two legs – it is not a bicycle, it is bound to fall. The bicycle will also fall unless you go on riding it so that it has no chance to fall. Slow down and it starts wavering; stop and it falls. But a table is not a bicycle, so it is bound to fall. The fall is inevitable. The fourth stage has only one leg. They call it “the age of darkness” – kaliyuga. We are living in the age of darkness.Now, a country which thinks in such terms cannot accept evolution. It has happened – now there is no future. The golden age has come and gone; now there is only darkness and death.America is just like a child. Three hundred years compared to ninety thousand years – it is just a small child. It has its eyes open, ready to evolve, to grow. It has no past to be bothered about. Gurdjieff is still relevant, and will remain relevant always. People like him never become irrelevant. In spite of the third-rate politicians, America is going to evolve, evolve into the new man, evolve into a new humanity.I have chosen to be here, I have called you to be here, because I don’t want Gurdjieff to become irrelevant. His prophecy has to be fulfilled.Osho,Today we got rid of gachchhamis. Thank you very much. I want to suggest we drop also the words “temple” and “worship.” They are apparently an invention of our high priestess, Sheela.Done!Osho,The commune in Sweden has now closed as all the other small communes have already done. There are now only a few big ones left in three countries. Is it time to start new, fresh communes now? Or shall the centralization to the big communes continue? Please comment.It is time to start fresh communes. I am absolutely against centralization.Osho,Is there any reason that you tell us the same things day after day?You are the reason!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,God is dead, religion is dead. Then what remains?It is an old story.First, let me tell you the latest death. Last week in the Vatican a Minorite monk, aged fifty-five, constructed a machine for masturbation. His name was Guardiano Alfredo Germonari. Testing the machine, a short circuit happened, and the poor monk died from an electric shock. He was doing a great humanitarian work, particularly for monks – to save them from the disease AIDS. But it seems God is more favorable to homosexuality and AIDS than to a mechanical device which is more clinical, less harmful – unless a short circuit happens, which is very rare.Now, your question….Reading the name, Guardiano Alfredo Germonari, I thought perhaps God died because…pronouncing all these Italian names, it is better to die. Their names are so clumsy, just like their spaghetti. At least one thing is certain: God does not like spaghetti, because there is no mention in any scripture; otherwise every kind of detail is given.You are asking me, “God is dead….” He has never been there. This is just another way of saying that God was our own projection, our own desire for a father figure. As man matures, evolves, becomes more intelligent, the projection is bound to disappear.God has never existed, and his death is tremendously significant. His death means man is not a machine. It means that man is not a creature, created by someone; that man has an independence. He is not created, he has evolved over millions of years. He is existential, he is not mechanical. The death of God is tremendously significant. It is the declaration of man’s freedom.If God can create you, he can any moment uncreate you. You are just a puppet. If God creates you, then whatever you are, you are not responsible for it. That’s why the whole humanity behaves irresponsibly. Every responsibility is God’s. If good happens, it is because of God, if bad happens, it is because of God: man is simply a victim.God is a fascist dictator, and very whimsical. He created the world, according to Judaic and Christian tradition, only six thousand years ago. Then what had he been doing before that – for eternity? He has a gay company with him, a very strange company – and people are known by the company they keep. The Holy Ghost – now what kind of company is this? A son, but there is no mother. This is the trinity.How this son is born, no Christian theologian, no Jewish rabbi has been able to answer. Has the Holy Ghost given birth to Jesus Christ? Is the Holy Ghost a woman? Then he should be called the Holy Witch. Is he bisexual? As far as names are concerned, all the three are male. This is sheer male chauvinistic ideology, really macho.The death of God declares freedom for man and equality for women. With God in the heavens, the woman can never be equal with man. Man was created in a special way, out of mud, humus – that’s why he is called “human.” Why couldn’t he create a woman out of the same material? There is so much mud, even in this small commune – it is called the Big Muddy Ranch – and God owns the whole universe!There is so much mud, but he could not find mud enough to create a woman. No, just a macho – the woman cannot be created exactly the way man is created. He took out one of the ribs of man and created the woman out of the rib. The woman is nothing but a bone. Now, a bone cannot be equal to man. A bone is just a bone.God alive, the woman will remain in bondage. God dead, the woman is liberated, liberated from a male chauvinistic idea. Man himself is liberated – because to be created by someone is very humiliating. Then you are like a painting, or a sculpture, dependent completely on the artist. You don’t have your own being.A small child was saying to his friend, another small child, “My father is such a great painter that he makes a painting and you can see the face in the painting smiling. And just by a single stroke of his brush the smile disappears, and you see a sad man.”The other boy laughed. He said, “That’s nothing. You must see my mother. I come home smiling, there is no need even for a single stroke of a brush: just seeing her and I become sad, just a look is enough…. I was coming dancing, running, happy, but she is such a ‘mum’ that to face her you cannot be smiling. She is a great artist! What is your father compared to my mother?”If man is created by God, then you are not responsible for your sexuality, you are not responsible if you commit a murder, you are not responsible if you commit suicide – because all these potentials were created by God in you…these ideas, these possibilities which will one day become actual.All courts are really against God – but they are punishing victims instead of punishing the real criminal. All religions are really against God, but they are telling you how to behave rather than telling God, “Why don’t you change your way of creating man? If celibacy is spiritual, create celibate people.”And nothing is impossible for God. If he can create the whole existence, can’t he manage to create a celibate man? Can’t he create a man or a woman who is a born monk, a born nun? He just has to do a little work in your biology, in your chemistry, in your hormones.It is strange – God creates men, women, full of sex, and the priests of God are against sex. God creates you the way you are, but you are not accepted by the society the way you are. You have to mold yourself according to the ideas of the society. God is secondary; the social norm is primary. And, strangely, nobody sees this contradiction. All these societies, all these religions, all these courts of law go on paying tribute to God.Once I was in a court because I had inaugurated a church which was lying closed for ten years, because the people who used to worship there had left when the British empire in India disappeared. It was a special church for English people, and it was locked; it was owned by the archbishop of England.I told a few of my Christian friends, “This is strange – such a beautiful church is simply becoming a ruin, such a beautiful garden is simply not taken care of. Why don’t you start worshipping here? You have a church which is very ordinary, and this church was made for the people who ruled India” – it was all marble. “So why do you continue to worship in a third-class church, when this church is empty and Christ has been imprisoned for ten years? Give him a little fresh air – open the doors!”It appealed to them. A few young Christians agreed, but they said, “You will have to inaugurate it.”I said, “That I will certainly do.”So they broke the lock and I inaugurated the church. They started worshipping in the church; they cleaned it, they tried to make the garden better. But the archbishop of England informed the archbishop of India to put a case against these people. And because I had inaugurated their church, I was also involved in the case, so I had to go to the court. In fact, I had provoked them to do whatsoever they had done. And the church was looking so beautiful. The garden was coming back, and it was looking alive.I was brought to the court, and the judge asked me, “In the name of God, take the oath that you will speak only truth and nothing else.”I said, “In the name of God I cannot take the oath. Have you seen God? Has anybody in this court seen God? I have not seen him, and I don’t think he exists at all! Why should I take the oath in the name of God? I can say on my own responsibility that whatever I say will be the truth. But I cannot start it with an ultimate lie. God is the ultimate lie!”The death of God is the victory of truth. It is freedom for man. Now you need not pray, now you need not ask a favor. Now you need not believe in a messiah, in a savior, in a messenger – they all died with the death of God. Without God there is no savior, no prophet, no messiah. There is no pope, no Ayatollah Khomeini, no shankaracharya. They are all living and exploiting humanity in the name of God – who does not exist at all.The death of God is an immense freedom, multidimensional. It is not to be mourned; it has to be celebrated. Yes, I have declared that religion too is dead. If God is dead, how can religion survive? One lie leads you to another lie, and God is the fundamental lie. Then you can make a whole palace of playing cards – just a small breeze of understanding, of intelligence, and the whole palace collapses.Religion is dead. It has really lived too long, it should have been dead long ago. It has not done any good to humanity, it has done immense harm. It has divided humanity. It has given different groups of people the idea that “You are the real people of God,” that “You are special; other human beings are second class.” It has fulfilled the egos of Jews, of Christians, of Hindus, of Mohammedans – of everybody. It has created so many wars. It has killed millions of people, burned thousands of people alive, and all in the name of God. For your own sake you are being burned alive!Religion is one of the most criminal phenomena that have existed in the world. It is time that we declare it dead.But remember, every death is a beginning of something new; every death is not an end. On the one side it looks as if something has ended, but on the other side something fresh starts growing. The death of religion becomes the beginning of religio.The word religion comes from religio. Religio has a beauty of its own, which is lost in religion. Religio means an existential, an experiential phenomenon. The very word means coming to a point where you are one – one with yourself, one with existence. The religion which comes from the same root does not have that meaning. It, on the contrary, makes you split. Making you one is not its work; its work is to make you schizophrenic, to put you into a split state, to put you against your own body, to put you against your own sex, to put you against yourself; to divide you into parts, fragments, and create an inner conflict in you.All religious people are continuously fighting with themselves, because their biology says to do something, and their holy scripture says to do just the opposite. Their own being wants to grow in one way, but the priests direct them into some other way.Every religion has been trying to make you somebody else. No religion has allowed you to be just yourself. They are all afraid of your being just yourself; then their function is lost. Their function is to create conflict in you, to make you miserable, suffering, in anguish. Then naturally you have to seek help.They create the disease, and then they start praying for you to be forgiven. They are the criminals, and they are asking for you to be forgiven. And whom are they asking? There is nobody.So it is really a great exploitation by the priesthood of all the religions. They have destroyed every individual. They have made you Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, but they have not allowed you to become just an individual, a human being. You were born not as a Christian, you were born not as a Buddhist; you were born just as a human being. They have destroyed your innocence, they have misdirected your life. They have molded you into something which you cannot become; it is not your potential.This is not religio. Religio is accepting you in your totality, making you whole, healthy. And that opens the door to become one with existence. You are part of it; every moment you are part of it. You are breathing existence in and out every moment – you are eating it, you are living it in every possible way. No man is an island, we are all part of an infinite continent; that’s what I am calling existence.Religio will relax you. Religio will give you, for the first time, the dignity of being a human being, and the vastness of being part of the whole existence.Religion is dead, religio is born.Religion is something like marriage: unnatural, arbitrary, artificial, created by social convenience.Religio is like love: natural, simple. No law is involved in it; no society, no culture dominates it.Love is a law unto itself, and love gives you something that is immensely precious. You start feeling needed. You are not superficial, you are not just accidental; you are needed, you are fulfilling some essential need. Love gives you the first glimpse that existence wants you the way you are. There is no need to become Jesus Christ or Gautam Buddha. Nature does not like carbon copies. Existence likes originals. You, in your originality, are acceptable.But a Christian is a carbon copy; he is trying to become Jesus Christ, and in two thousand years not a single Christian has succeeded. In twenty-five centuries not a single Buddhist has succeeded in becoming Gautam Buddha. Is it not proof enough? You can go even further backwards. In five thousand years, no Hindu has succeeded in becoming a Krishna. It is simply impossible. Nature never repeats.They say history repeats itself – because history is not nature. History belongs to carbon copies, retarded people; naturally it repeats itself. They don’t know what else to do, so they go on doing the same thing again.Nature is very inventive. It does not create even two persons equal, even similar. There are four billion people on the earth today, but you cannot find two persons who are exactly alike. Even twins are not exactly alike. They may appear to be, but their mother knows who is who; their wives know who is who. There are differences – very subtle. Outsiders may be puzzled, but those who know them closely can see the differences in their individuality – in their gestures, in their way of speaking, in their way of thinking, in their way of walking – in small things. But the differences are bound to be there.Religion has tried a very futile experiment, and almost destroyed humanity for thousands of years. The death of religion releases you from becoming somebody else. Now you can enjoy being yourself.We can call our commune, religio – a mystery school, a way of searching for one’s own spiritual being, a way of discovering one’s original face. Nobody has to become anybody else.And you are asking me, “God is dead, religion is dead, then what is left now?”In fact, those were the hindrances, which are removed, and everything that is essential is available now. Now you can be yourself without any guilt. Now you can be simply a human being without belonging to any organized religion. The moment truth becomes organized, it becomes untrue.I am reminded of a beautiful ancient story. A newly-recruited devil came running to the master devil, huffing and puffing, and said, “Something has to be done immediately! One man on the earth has just found the truth! And if he spreads it, what are we going to do? Our whole business is finished! He has to be prevented.”The old man laughed. He said, “You are a new recruit; you don’t know – my people are already there.”The young devil said, “Your people?”He said, “Yes, my people. The priests are already around the man, and they are organizing whatever he has found. That is my way of destroying truth, and it has never failed; for centuries I have been doing that. The priests – all the priests – are in my service! They don’t know it, but the moment truth is organized, it dies.”Why does truth die when it is organized? It dies because it is an individual experience. Can you organize love? Nobody has ever thought about it; otherwise it would have died. You cannot organize love. Love is something that transpires between two individuals. It does not need any priest, it does not need any book of instructions.When I was studying in the university I used to have a roommate – he was a little bit of an idiot, just the same as people are all over the world.He asked me, “Everybody talks about the fact that he has fallen in love, and some girl has fallen in love with him. It seems we are the only two persons in this whole university…. About you there is no problem, because you don’t want anything to do with any love, any woman, because you think they will be a distraction in your search. I don’t know what you are searching for, but I am at a loss: I want to fall in love. But how to fall in love? I have been to the university library looking for a book, How To Fall In Love; there is not a single book on the subject. And I cannot ask anybody else, because they will simply laugh. If everybody knows how to fall, then why don’t I?”I said, “You don’t be worried, I will teach you. You just choose the girl that you would like to fall in love with.”He said, “I chose her two years ago, but how to start? The moment she enters, I become so nervous in the classroom, I forget all about love. I forget even what the teacher is saying.”I said, “Don’t be worried. I will write a love letter for you. You simply post it to the girl and wait for the answer.”I knew the girl; she was one of the most beautiful girls in the university. She had been interested in me, but I had told her, “Right now, I am involved too much in my own work, in my meditations, and I don’t think you have patience enough to wait. But if you can wait, then I can promise you one thing: the day I become enlightened I will be ready. But not before that.”She said, “Enlightened? My God! How long will I have to wait?”I said, “Nobody knows. I may become enlightened in this life, I may become enlightened in another life. Nothing can be said, it is unpredictable. So the best is, for the time being you choose somebody else.”But she was persistent. So I approached her and said, “Just do me a favor.”She said, “Have you become enlightened?”I said, “No, not yet. But one of my friends is in a difficulty. He wants to fall in love, but he does not know how to fall in love. So you will receive a letter from him. Don’t discourage him – write him a beautiful letter.”She said, “This is tricky. Then I will be stuck with that boy – and I know your roommate, I don’t want anything to do with him.”I said, “You need not be worried.”And she said, “How can I write a very loving letter to that idiot? I cannot!”I said, “Then I will write it.” So I was writing letters from both the sides. And the boy was so ecstatic! He could not believe that just with his writing a letter, love began.But then the girl fell in love with somebody else. She told me that she could not wait, her parents were forcing her: either she had to choose someone, or they would. “You are my choice, but your enlightenment is a strange thing,” she said. “I have never heard of anybody making such a condition, that when they become enlightened, then they will think about other matters. I have to choose; otherwise they will choose. So I have chosen, unwillingly. I will remember you, but I am getting married.”I said, “You get married happily, and don’t feel that you are doing it unwillingly. I am responsible for making you sad, and for making you decide in favor of someone else. I like you, but as far as love is concerned, that involvement is possible only after my enlightenment, not before that!”She said, “Then what about your friend that you have been unnecessarily forcing upon me? He goes on writing every day. And you have made it such a mess that you go on writing in my name, and I have to post those letters. I read them and I say, ‘My God! That idiot!’ And you are praising him and telling him, ‘I will die without you, and I cannot live without you. You are my heart.’ What am I to say to that man?”I said, “You have simply to say that your parents are forcing you to get married.” And in India it is common, an arranged marriage. A love marriage is still not acceptable.So she told the idiot, “What can I do? I love you so much, but my parents have arranged my marriage. So now I will not be seeing you anymore, and you stop writing the letters.”He almost came to a nervous breakdown, crying, in tears. I asked, “What is the matter?” – I knew what was the matter!He said, “My love affair was going so smoothly. Every day a letter – I was writing, she was replying; everything was going so smoothly. And her father has disturbed everything. I will shoot that man!”I said, “That won’t help. You find another girl – there is no problem – and start writing letters again.”He said, “But I don’t know what to write.”So I said, “You do one thing. You go to the girl and ask for all the letters you have written to her.”He said, “What!”“You just tell her, ‘I need those letters, because I have not been writing them.’ And return her letters to her.”So he went to the girl and asked for his letters. But she said, “What will you do with those letters?”He said, “What will I do? Have I to live or not? You are getting married – I will have to write letters to somebody else. Now what is the point of writing the same letters again? I can use these letters. And here are your letters that you had written to me; perhaps you may need them sometime, because who loves one’s own husband? Who loves one’s own wife? You may need them.”The girl said, “You can have both the sets, because both are written by the same man.”He was very angry with me, but I said to him, “That is the function of a priest. I have not done anything unique; that is what the priests have been doing all through man’s history. They pray for you to God. They even bring answers from God to you – answers to your prayers. They make your prayer, they make the answers for your prayer. I have been just functioning like a priest – only the area was different; it was love, it was not God.”The priests have no function if there is no God. Then there is no prayer, then there is no holy book, then there is no ritual. The priest has nothing left. He wants an organized religion. He turns religio into its opposite and calls it religion.Religio is a freedom. Religion is a slavery. Dropping God, dropping religion, I have restored your freedom. Now you can be yourself without any fear. You can grow without copying anybody. You can just grow into your own unknown potential.You are asking, “What is left?” Everything becomes available; only blocks have been removed, hindrances have been removed. Now you can meditate. You cannot pray; prayer needs a God. Meditation needs no God. Prayer has divided humanity, because Christian prayer is different from Hindu prayer. Mohammedan prayer is different from Christian prayer. But meditation is the same.Here, this very moment…if you are all silent, it is the same silence.Silence cannot have any name, any label.And meditation is the ultimate growth of silence.Now you can be silent, you can grow deeper and deeper within yourself, searching for the center from where your life arises. The moment you discover that center, there is an explosion which is far more significant than any atomic explosion, far more luminous. The atomic explosion is destructive. The explosion that happens at your center gives you a tremendous energy to be creative.And it does not make you part of any organized cult, creed, dogma – no. It simply makes you a dignified individual, immensely blissful because you have found the greatest treasure in the world. There is nothing more to be found. In finding your center, you have found the very center of existence.You have found eternity.Now there is no death.And out of this experience arises lovingness, compassion, creativity. Even sitting silently, doing nothing, there will be a certain aura of bliss around you, a certain fragrance around you.You have come home.Osho,Situations are changing very fast, and you are stirring my heart. There are chains of actions, reactions and interactions. I am continuously imagining the future. I don't find a way out or a way in.Please guide.There is no need to find a way out; there is no need to find a way in. Just remain where you are. One has not to go anywhere.Religio is not a going somewhere, but the dropping of all journeys and just being wherever you are, whatever you are.Religio is not a way in or out. It is a stoppage, a total stoppage of all movement. And suddenly you are where you always wanted to be.Osho,I have heard, “We create our own reality,” and I have heard, “Flow with existence.” At times it appears like one or the other or po. How much am I responsible for what I experience? What kind of dance is going on?You are responsible for everything, for every dance that is going on. When you relax and let go, that too is your responsibility. When you don’t relax and don’t allow the state of let-go, that too is your responsibility. So there are not two different things. There is only one thing, and that is, your responsibility.Only one thing has to be remembered: whatever gives you a more loving heart, whatever gives you a more clear intelligence, whatever gives you a more integrated individuality, do it. Whatever goes against it, goes against your own ultimate growth.These are symbolic. Lovingness, friendliness, compassion, intelligence, clarity of vision – these are symbols that you are in the right dimension.But whatever you do is your responsibility. You cannot dump your responsibility on anybody else. There is nobody else. With God, the devil has also died; they were two sides of the same coin.Now you are left alone with your freedom. Make whatever you can make of it. I can only explain to you that these are symbols that you are in the right dimension. If you are going in a wrong dimension your lovingness will disappear, your compassion will disappear, your creativity will disappear, your sharpness of intelligence will disappear. So you only have to be alert and always watching that these symbols go on growing, not diminishing. Then whatever you do is right.Osho,Could you please say something about the fear of freedom? There is such a longing to be free, yet especially in the last two weeks I see so much fear coming up at the same time. Is it nothing else but avoiding aloneness and responsibility?It is natural, because from the very beginning of your childhood you have been told to depend on others, their advice, their guidelines. You have grown older, but you have not grown up. All animals grow older. It is only man who has two possibilities: either he can grow old like every other animal, or he can grow up. Growing up means getting rid of all dependence. Naturally, in the beginning it will create fear.You were surrounded by your own projections, and thinking that you were protected. For example, you have been told from the very beginning that God is protecting you. Even small children are told in the night, “Don’t be afraid. Go to sleep. God is protecting you.”That child is still within you – and I say, “There is no God. You can sleep in darkness in safety. Nobody is protecting you.” But that means you cannot sleep; you are afraid, somebody is needed to protect you. That God was hocus-pocus, but it helped. It was like homeopathic medicine – just sugar pills.But if your disease is just an idea – and there are so many people around who get ideas; just a slight thing and they will exaggerate it, almost unconsciously. No real medicine is needed for their imaginary diseases, all that they need is an imaginary medicine.In the first place, darkness is beautiful. It has tremendous depth, silence, infinity. Light comes and goes; darkness always remains, it is more eternal than light. For light you need some fuel, for darkness no fuel is needed – it is simply there. And for relaxing, light is not the right thing. Light creates tensions, keeps you awake. Darkness allows you to relax, to let go.There is no fear in darkness, so the whole idea of fear in darkness is a projection. Then you need a God – another projection – who will protect you in darkness. One lie needs another lie, and then there is no end; you have to go on lying.Certainly freedom will make you afraid of many things. Be alert. Look deeply into anything that makes you afraid. And you will be surprised that if you look deeply into anything that makes you afraid, it will disappear. There is nothing to fear in the world. Then you can rejoice in freedom and the responsibility it brings.Responsibility makes you grow up. You become more and more responsible for every action, for every thought, for every feeling. It makes you crystallized. It takes away all the chains that have been binding you and your psychology.I was staying with a friend; we were going to a meeting which I was to address, and the man was driving me. He was honking the horn for his wife to come down, because we were getting late. And I don’t like to be late, because so many people are waiting, and you come late? It is disrespectful, ungraceful.Finally his wife looked out of the window and said, “A thousand times I have told you I am coming in a minute!”I said, “My God! How can she say it a thousand times – and still she is coming in a minute?” But she is not conscious of what she is saying.You have exaggerated your fears. Just look at them, and just by your looking at them they will start becoming smaller. You have never looked at them, you have been escaping from them. You have been creating protections against them, rather than looking directly into the eyes of your fear.There is nothing to fear at all; all that is needed is a little more awareness. So whatever your fear is, catch hold of it, look at it minutely, the way a scientist looks at a thing. And you will be surprised, it starts melting like an ice flake. By the time you have looked into its totality, it is gone.And when freedom is there without any fear, it brings such benediction that there are no words to express it.Osho,Are you against temporary, workable organization?No. A temporary workable organization is an absolute necessity; otherwise there would be simply chaos.But remember that it is a temporary workable organization. It has no power, it is just functional – just like the post office. Certainly we need a certain kind of organization; otherwise the post office cannot work. But nobody knows who the head of the whole organization is in America, who the head postmaster general is. There is no need to know; it is a functional organization.But why should you know about President Ronald Reagan? That should also be another postal organization, not more than that. There are railways functioning, airplanes functioning. They have their functional organizations; nobody bothers about who is the president. Then what special status has the government got?And these people go on saying that democracy is for the people, of the people, by the people – but nobody knows those people. People come to know only the presidents, the governors, the attorney generals. There is no need.The press and other media should be more intelligent, and should start talking about creative people: musicians who have contributed to music, painters, poets. Politicians should belong to the very last category. They have not contributed anything to existence. It is good – they have a functional organization, but they should be put into their place.I am not against temporary workable organizations. I am against organizations which become more important than the people they are supposed to serve. People should always remain more important. Nobody is more important than the people. The government is only a servant to the people.And what is there to brag about, that you are the president of servants? Enjoy it, but keep quiet. And, in fact, it would be very protective of these people’s lives. If Ronald Reagan is just the head of the servants of the people, who is going to assassinate him? For what? Nobody assassinates servants.Organizations are for the people, and they should be liquid, flexible. If something has to change it is the organization, not the people.For example, a decade ago they made in Oregon some land-use laws. The people who had made those laws I don’t think were farmers. They may have been legal experts, but what have legal experts to do with land?We have changed this desert into an oasis. We have made it sufficiently cultivable so that we are growing our own food for five thousand people, we are growing our own vegetables in greenhouses. And the attorney general is saying that whatever we are doing is against land-use laws!For fifty years nothing was done on this land. For fifty years nobody was ready to purchase it. Who will purchase a desert? For what? Then it was according to the land-use laws. For fifty years there was no question; nothing was cultivated, the land was simply lying dead – it was according to the land-use laws. We have put two hundred million dollars into the land, we have changed its character – and we have committed something illegal! It goes against their land-use laws.I have invited them, said that they should come here, and they can see in what way we have used the land. And then change your laws, because if a commune can transform a desert into an oasis, it has proved its point. No argument is needed; we have existentially proved our point. You come and see, and then change your laws, because laws are for men, and men are not for laws.This is the difference between a functional organization and the organizations that exist in the world today. All organizations should be only temporary and functional. And man should be the criterion, not the laws. Why are those laws made? – to serve man.But these servants become great leaders, and their laws become something…as if they are ultimate laws and they cannot be changed, like gravitation. Your laws are made by people – and by people who know nothing about land use. The attorney general of Oregon – what does he know about land use? And finally he got defeated in the court. We have been victorious in the case.Now he has another case in the court: he says the city is illegal because state and religion are mixed here. Again, I would like to know how much religion he knows, how much he has meditated. To what stage of meditation has he reached? I give him an open challenge. I want to discuss openly with him what religion should mean.Now we have buried the religion, burned it completely. Now there is no religion here. Nobody can say that religion is being mixed with the state: religion does not exist here anymore. But he has not even the guts to withdraw his case.But he will be defeated again, because we have withdrawn the whole functional temporary organization of religion.That does not mean that you become enemies of religion. That does not mean that you become irreligious. It simply means we have left religion far behind. Now we declare ourselves religio, a school of mystics, a commune of meditators. And there is no law against religio, meditation, spirituality. Now we have to see him in the court.We are not a religion like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism. We have left them all behind, far behind.We are individuals, seekers living together because our search is one. Our paths are individual.I am not against temporary organizations, workable – they will be needed. Whenever there is more than one person, some kind of organization is needed. Even with just two persons – wife and husband – some kind of organization is needed. Who is going to wake up first and bring a cup of tea? Naturally, it is the husband! But some functional organization is needed.Osho,The stories and accusations being put out by you lately against Sheela and her group are getting so outrageous that I do have a hard time believing them anymore. And I always thought the mafia was bad.What happened to the formerly “only crime-free city” of the world?It is again free of crime!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Over the past ten years I am again and again reminded of the words of Kahlil Gibran: “Man cannot reap love until after sad and revealing separation and bitter patience and desperate hardship.”Please comment.It is true about Kahlil Gibran, but not true about love. Kahlil Gibran suffered much despair, anguish. He was not what you find him in his immensely important books, The Prophet, The Garden Of The Prophet, and Jesus, The Son Of Man. Kahlil Gibran was just the opposite.And that is true about almost all the so-called great artists, painters, poets, sculptors, musicians, dancers. They are trying to fulfill their unfulfilled life in writing poetry, literature. That literature simply signifies their dream, not their reality.Never meet any man like Kahlil Gibran. Read his book, The Prophet – it is immensely beautiful – but avoid Kahlil Gibran himself, because you will be very much disappointed, for the simple reason that you cannot believe that this man has produced one of the classics of the whole of history. His book stands like an Everest, but he himself lies deep down in the dark valley of despair, existential meaninglessness: angry about life, angry with life, angry about everything. And the reason is simple. It is a psychological truth that whatever you miss in your life, you fulfill in your dreams. Your dreams show what you are missing in your life.You can try small experiments and you will be able to see it. Just fast one day, and in the night you can be certain of having a great feast in your dreams – all delicious foods, perhaps an invitation from the king, or the president in the White House. Your dream shows that during the day you have been hungry. These creative people are able to put their dreams into their writings – but they are their dreams.So what Kahlil Gibran says about love is the experience of a man who wanted to love but could not love. He could not love because of his ego. The first need of love is that you should put aside your ego; and artists, poets, painters, musicians, are very egoistic people.Kahlil Gibran could not put his ego aside. It was not love that became his despair, it was his ego that would not allow him freedom to move into the world of love. He was chained. The longing for love and being chained to the ego created the whole tension, the anguish of his life. He has to be pitied. He is certainly one of the greatest geniuses of this century, but that does not make him a great lover. The very fact that he was a great genius helped him to go on nourishing his ego. He never could become innocent like a child – of which he talks again and again in his writings. That is his dream.So remember, while you are reading books written by unenlightened people, looking at paintings, sculpture, architecture made by unenlightened people, beware. These people were not blissful people themselves. They were capable of projecting their dreams, but they were not able to transform their dreams into a living reality within their own being. They were utter failures as far as their own being is concerned.Love does not need you to go into depression, despair, no – just the opposite. Love needs you to go into silence, into peace, into meditativeness, into a tremendous rejoicing – rejoicing just in the fact that you are alive. And out of this rejoicing, this dance, love radiates.According to Kahlil Gibran’s statement, before you reach love you have to pass through hell. Strange training…a great school to teach love! And a man who has been in despair, depression, anguish, anxiety, will become farther and farther away from love.No, if you want to experience love you have to pass through your inner paradise. You have to become centered, you have to become so peaceful that small things of life make you dance. Just a roseflower dancing in the wind, in the rain, in the sun – and something in you starts dancing with it. You are ready. You have graduated from the school of paradise; now love is your reward.So I contradict Kahlil Gibran absolutely and categorically, because it goes against my existential experience. I have been through my own paradise, and after that only the fragrance of love remains. You are so blissful that you would like to bless the whole world.Kahlil Gibran is absolutely wrong. But what he is saying is his own experience, and he never graduated from hell. He never could manage to be a loving human being. He was always sad, always a long face, always angry – as if he was against existence itself, as if he wanted to ask existence, “Why have you chosen me to be born and suffer?”If you want to write poetry about love, follow Kahlil Gibran.If you want to experience love, then listen carefully to what I am saying to you.Osho,I feel hurt seeing sannyasins with such ugly weapons in their hands during discourse. Please comment.I also feel the same way. But the questioner is ignorant; I am not. The questioner is a visitor, a mother of two children. I would like to ask her, “Would you like your two children to be bulldozed? Would that be beautiful?”Before these guns appeared here, fanatic Christians were harassing sannyasins. It became absolutely necessary for sannyasins to have some kind of protection. Hell’s Angels were coming to the commune: we had no guns, no weapons. The people of the commune are not interested in guns and weapons – this is not an army – but to prevent these people from harassing your children we have to accept something ugly, because those people will not understand the meaning of rose flowers.I would like that guards carry rose flowers rather than guns. But who is going to take care of your children? I can tell the security force to give all those guns to the government, if the government of Oregon is ready to protect the commune.You feel they are ugly. You don’t feel that all over America the police carrying guns is ugly. You don’t feel that your having nuclear weapons is ugly. You know that you are the people who destroyed innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom bombs – that was not ugly?And these toy guns? For five thousand sannyasins only three dozen toy guns! They have not been used, and I have been insistent that they should avoid using them as far as possible, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. If some hooligans come and start raping a woman, will that be beautiful? Rose flowers won’t be able to stop the rape; these guns will be able to stop the rape.And since we have made a security force, all those fanatic Christians, Witnesses of Jehovah, Hell’s Angels – they have stopped coming, knowing that it is dangerous to create a nuisance here. So these guns have been of immense help. They have not harmed anybody, but they have prevented people harming the commune.You are a mother: what do you want to be done with your children? Should they be protected or not? If you say no, they should not be protected, stand up – and all the guns will disappear tomorrow. Have courage! Then I will not be responsible at all for whatever happens to the commune; you will be responsible.Before asking a question, please think what you are asking, all its implications.You have been clapping because I have dropped red clothes, malas. And when you clap, you don’t know how it hurts me. That means you have been a hypocrite! Why have you been wearing red clothes if dropping them brings you so much joy? Why have you been wearing the mala? The moment I say, “Drop!” you rejoice. And people rushed to the boutique to change their clothes, they have dropped their malas. But you don’t know how much you have wounded me by your clapping and by your changing.Now I have to say one thing more, and I would like to see whether you have the guts to clap or not: that is, now there is no buddhafield. So if you want enlightenment, you have to work for it individually. The buddhafield exists no more. You cannot depend on the energy of the buddhafield to become enlightened.Now clap as loudly as you can. Clap!…Now you are completely free: even for enlightenment only you are responsible. And I am completely free from you. You have been behaving like idiots! And this has given a good chance to see how many people are really intimate with me. If you can drop your malas so easily…. Even in my own house there is one sannyasin who immediately changed to blue clothes, with great joy. What does it show? It shows that those red clothes were a burden. She was somehow managing to be in red clothes against her will.But I don’t want you to do anything against your will. Now I don’t want even to help you towards your enlightenment against your will. You are absolutely free and responsible for yourself.Osho,What is the difference between a Christian, a communist and a commune member?Judaism has given birth to very strange children. The first is Christianity. Jesus was a Jew – born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew. He never knew that he was a Christian. In fact, Christians should take note of it, that Jesus was not a Christian. They are following a Jew. Even the word Christian was unheard of by Jesus because it is Greek, and he knew only Aramaic, his mother tongue.In Aramaic, which is a popular version of Hebrew, he was calling himself “the messiah,” not “Christ.” It was three hundred years afterwards, when the New Testament was translated into Greek, that “messiah” became “Christ” and the followers of the messiah became “Christians.”It is one of the most primitive religions. It has not the heights of Buddhism, Taoism, Hassidism, Zen – nothing of that sort, it is very primitive. And that is the reason why Christianity has become the biggest religion in the world – because it appeals to the retarded mind.No intelligence is needed to understand Christianity. There is nothing to understand; you have simply to believe. You have to have faith, and the faith in Jesus Christ will save you – so simple, any idiot can do it. It is not a transformation. Those who do not believe will fall into the darkness of hell.I am reminded of one English philosopher, Edmund Burke. He used to go to listen to one of his friends who was a bishop, every Sunday, because the bishop was very articulate and a great orator.Edmund Burke asked him, “I have only one question. If faith is the only thing that saves, then what happens to all those people who do not have faith but are good, virtuous, moral? For example, what happens to Socrates? What happens to Gautam Buddha? What happens to Confucius? They all fall into hell? And connected with the same question is the second question: that there have been people – murderers, rapists – who have done all kinds of crimes; but they believed, they had faith, and they will be saved? You have to answer me.”The bishop was in a difficulty. He could not say that men like Socrates, Gautam Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, will go into hell. No intelligent man can say that. Certainly they were not believers; they were very much seekers, searchers. They doubted everything, they were skeptical. Unless they came to some indubitable truth, they were not going to have faith of any kind. And when you realize some truth, the question of faith does not arise: you know it! Faith is only for the ignorant. You don’t believe in the sun, you don’t believe in the moon. You don’t believe in yourself – you know you are. You cannot deny that you are, because even your denial will only prove that you are; otherwise, who is denying?Faith is a cover-up for ignorance.The bishop was learned enough; he was a friend of Edmund Burke’s, and to say anything stupid to that man would create a great controversy. He said, “I would like seven days’ time to think it over. Nobody has asked this question. The question is significant.“Virtuous people, good people who have never done any harm to anybody, will go to hell just because they don’t have faith in Jesus Christ. Then goodness, virtue, morality, are all meaningless. Then crime, rape, murder, theft, are perfectly good: just have faith in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”In seven days he could not figure it out. He could not sleep well; the question was continuously torturing him. The question was such that if he says that good people will enter paradise, then what about faith? Faith is not a necessity. If he says that evildoers will fall into hell even though they have faith, then faith is impotent, it cannot help, it cannot save. So what is the need of faith? Those who are good will go to paradise; those who are bad will go to hell. Faith becomes simply irrelevant.The bishop was going crazy. And the next Sunday came – he went to church a little early, because he was not yet ready to answer Burke. He thought perhaps by praying to Jesus Christ, God the Father and the Holy Ghost, he may be able to answer the question.It was dark when he reached the church. He prayed. But he had not slept for seven days; rather than praying, he fell into sleep, and he saw a dream. The dream was: he is at a railway station purchasing a ticket for paradise. The train is just about to leave. He rushes into the train, because he wants to see who the people are who have entered paradise – the faithful or the virtuous?He was surprised when the train reached paradise. It looked so dull and so dusty and so dead, he could not believe it. He inquired of other passengers, “It looks like hell! This cannot be heaven.” But they all said, “This is heaven.”He went into the streets, looked at people – no joy, no laughter, all serious faces. Saints are not supposed to laugh. He could not even find a restaurant…because he was wanting a cup of tea, but saints are not supposed to have such delicacies. No restaurant…and people were looking almost dead. He could not see anybody – Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, great painters, great artists, great musicians. Nobody was there, only retarded saints who had become even more retarded – sitting there the whole day, playing on the harp, “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” That was the whole work they were doing.He rushed to the station to inquire whether any train goes to hell, because he would like to see hell also. And he was surprised: as the train entered the area of hell…fresh air, a new atmosphere. Something beautiful…beautiful gardens, lawns…. He said, “This looks like heaven! Strange, but the sign at the station says ‘Hell’.”There was everywhere laughter, joy; people were dancing, playing on their guitars. There were painters he recognized, musicians he recognized. He met Socrates, and it was such an ecstasy to see the man! He met Buddha; he could not believe that a man like Buddha should be in hell.He said to Buddha, “I cannot believe my eyes. I have just been to heaven, and it looked like hell! And this place is so lush, green, so many flowers, so much fragrance, so much singing and dancing! All great poets, all dancers, all great philosophers, all geniuses – the very cream of humanity is available here. I am puzzled.”Gautam Buddha said, “Don’t be puzzled. These people are creative people. When we had come, it was far worse than the heaven that you have just seen. But with all these beautiful people, we transformed it. Even the devil is meditating, learning to paint, composing music. He has forgotten his old business.”And at that point the bishop woke up, because people had started coming into the church. The dream had given him the answer. He was a sincere man certainly; he said to Edmund Burke, “Please forgive me. It is not a question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. We have to look at the whole question from a different angle. Wherever people like Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu are, they create heaven. And wherever dull, retarded, idiotic saints are, they create hell. So it is not a question of you going to hell, it is a question of what you can create. You bring your heaven and hell with you.”And that’s my whole teaching.Don’t bother about heaven and hell. Rather, learn to live in hell, in heaven – whichever you choose. You are totally free right now. Discipline yourself. If you want to be in paradise, then be in paradise, and start living in paradise from this moment! Then wherever you will be, it does not matter, you will be in paradise.Learn the art of living.When we came here it was just a desert. When I came here, I was surprised – I could not find a single bird; the possibility of finding a man was out of the question. Even a bird was not there, only poor juniper trees here and there. Juniper trees are camels, very stubborn; they defy even the desert. But they were all without any juice – not green, not with an abundance of leaves; very poor, somehow struggling to survive.Within four years we have made it an oasis. Now birds have started coming. Deer have moved here from all the other ranches, because anywhere else their life is in danger; they can be killed. They are being hunted. For ten days every year, Oregon state gives hunters freedom to kill deer. Only on these one hundred and twenty-six square miles nobody can kill any deer. The hunters are very angry, the ranchers are very angry, because all their deer have disappeared, and the deer are here in abundance.I have asked my people to make many small pools of water in the coming winter, and grow as much grass as possible that deer like, so the whole city becomes a deer park. And it is so beautiful to live in harmony….And have you watched? – the junipers are no longer just surviving; they have grown, they are greener. We will make this desert a lush green place, one of the places Oregon can be proud of – a beautiful holiday resort. We can create as many lakes as we want. We can bring all kinds of animals, birds. Now we have three hundred peacocks, thousands of deer, dozens of swans. And we are going to plant, this year, twenty thousand evergreen trees.The question is simply to be creative, to be in harmony with nature – and you are in paradise.Paradise is within your hands.It has nothing to do with any faith, any belief. Paradise is simply creativity, sensitivity, humanity.Osho,Quantum physicists are using the term “consciousness.” Are they using this word in the same sense that you do? If not, what is the difference between the consciousness they are talking about, and the consciousness you are talking about?There is a great difference. The physicists are talking about a consciousness which they have not experienced within themselves; it is only a hypothesis. It is their objective observation that consciousness exists: people are conscious – you cannot deny it. Because it is an objective observation, they are bound to be defining it in a wrong way, because basically consciousness is your subjectivity. It is irreducible into an object. You cannot study it from outside.From outside you can study only behavior, you cannot study consciousness; hence, there is a school of psychology called behaviorism. People are behaving as if they are conscious. The physicist’s consciousness is “as if” – a hypothesis, because people are not behaving consciously.So the first, basic mistake is, they are simply taking an objective view of something which can never become an object, which is always the subject. There is no way to make it an object. And because they are studying it as an object, they are falling into many pitfalls. One is that consciousness is a by-product of biology, physiology, chemistry – of all that man is made of. It is simply a by-product, it is not an independent entity in itself.It is just like a clock: the hands move, but that movement does not show that inside there is life that is moving them. It is mechanical; you can separate the parts and the movement will stop. You can put them back together again and the movement will start. You cannot do that to man. Take his physiology, chemistry, biology apart, and then try to put them together again – you will have just a corpse, no consciousness. Consciousness is not a by-product.Consciousness experienced subjectively needs some inward journey. No scientist is doing that. He wants to study consciousness in white mice, in guinea pigs. This is very strange. The scientist has the consciousness in himself, what is the need to go to a white mouse? Go inwards!And that’s what I call the science of interiority, religio, meditation. You move deeper, leaving your body, your mind, your heartbeat far behind – and, still, you are. And you are more than you have ever been, because you had known yourself filtered through the heart, through the mind, through the body – thick layers. So you had felt your consciousness in a very slight way.But when you have reached to your own center – which is neither chemical nor physical nor biological – you experience a totally new reality. Immediately you become aware that it is not a by-product, that it has its own existence. The body may die, but this consciousness is so separate from the body that there is no possibility of its dying with the body. The heart may stop, but you are so far away from the heart, you are no longer identified with the heart. You are part of an eternal life.So when I talk about consciousness, I am talking about my own experience of diving deep into my being. And when the physicists talk about consciousness, they are talking not about experience but about experiments that they are doing with white mice, guinea pigs. Strange people! You have consciousness, the white mouse is in a very backward state of life; why not find it within yourself? Man is the highest expression of consciousness.Science can never know the real being, the real soul, the real consciousness, for the simple reason that it is object-oriented. Hence, a totally different approach is needed, a science which is subject-oriented.You cannot put consciousness in a test-tube. Consciousness is not something material; it is not something like a commodity. It is not something that you can dissect and find out what elements it is made of. It is a single, indivisible life. And the only way to know it is to go within yourself. That is the purpose of the commune. It is not a religion; it is the science of subjectivity.So there is a total difference. What they are talking about is absolutely irrelevant. What I am talking about is the real thing. And you need not go anywhere, because it is within you. No lab is needed, no instruments are needed. All that is needed is that you learn how to relax, how to be silent, how to be just a witness. And slowly slowly your mind stops its unnecessary chattering, your heart stops its moods, feelings.And suddenly you are your reality, your consciousness.And it reveals all the mysteries. It is the golden key, the master key, because it makes you aware not only of your consciousness, it makes you aware that your consciousness is not separate from other consciousnesses.Consciousness is almost like an ocean. We are all in it, we are all sharing the same consciousness. The trees, the animals, the birds – they are all sharing the same consciousness in different stages of growth.You are fortunate to be a human being, because this gives you an opportunity to turn in.Osho,To most of us, it is more important to be near you than anything else, most important to be part of the commune, whatever it takes. Please comment.It is certainly the most important thing – to be near any enlightened person – for the simple reason that you are a seed, and he has grown, become a tree…has come to fruition, has flowered. He is your future. To be near him is the greatest encouragement that you are not being born just to remain a seed, that you have to grow, that you have to die as a seed and become a living, growing tree.If one seed has managed to come to flower, the other seed can also take the jump. It is a great jump, because the seed will die. You need some proof that after the seed dies, the real life begins.The enlightened man is your ultimate flowering. The person who is enlightened is the only proof that you can also become the same, that you have the same potential – just a little courage is needed to die as a seed, as an ego.And the more you die as an ego, the closer you are to me. The only distance between me and you is not that of space: the only distance is that of your ego. Drop the ego. Be innocent like small children, and growth will start happening of its own accord. Seeing anybody coming out of the seed, becoming a sprout, is a tremendous joy. The journey has started.And I created these communes for the simple purpose of protecting those fragile sprouts. There is every danger you will never reach to the flowering state; you may be destroyed in the middle.The commune is not an organization; it is simply a communion of friends who are searching for the same treasure, and helping each other. Somebody is ahead of you, somebody is behind you. Somebody is still more ahead, somebody has blossomed. All that helps you to drop all fear, and you start growing fearlessly.To be close to me is very easy. Just put your ego aside, and then there is no difference, no distance. But I have been seeing…you want to be close to me, but whatever you do takes you farther away, it does not bring you close to me.Just a few days before, in a press conference, I had asked you, “Are you with me? Raise your hands.” And ten thousand hands were raised. One woman wrote a letter to me, “I did not want to raise my hands.”There is no problem – but then what the hell are you doing here? If you are not with me, then go somewhere else where you can be with someone with your totality.And I had not asked you to jump into a well, I had just asked you to raise both your hands. Even that she could not do. Now, this woman is part of the commune. In what way can she be part of the commune? I don’t want to tell you her name because then I will have immediately to go and wash my mouth.Such ugly attitudes! Then I wonder how you can grow, how you can come close to me. Then it is perfectly right – pack your luggage and go down the county road, which goes directly to hell. It is made in such a way that you will feel much of hell on the road itself.Osho,What is life?It is not a question.A rose is a rose is a rose. What is a rose? You are alive, and you ask me what is life? Are you alive or dead?If I was in a graveyard and people started coming out of their graves and asking, “What is life?” the question would be relevant. But you are still out of the grave. You are alive, but you have never looked into the source of your life, from where comes your aliveness.Just go in.Forget everything – the whole world. Even for a few moments, as if you are alone, just go in. Right now, in this very silence, you will know what life is.You will never be able to say to anybody what life is. It is a mystery to be experienced, but it cannot be explained. That’s why I said “A rose is a rose is a rose.” It says nothing, there is no explanation, but you can experience it.And the rose is something outside you, but life is all that you are. But for thousands of years you have been conditioned not to live, just to survive. You have been told by religions to renounce everything that can give you a taste of life.My effort is just the opposite of all the religions. That’s why I have refused to call my people a religion. I don’t want to belong to that category of life-negative people. I am utterly in love with life.My approach is life-affirmative. You dance, you sing, you love, you meditate. And, in different ways, try to feel your aliveness. Whatever you are doing, do it so intensely and so totally that your full life starts functioning, that you start throbbing.You will know, but you will never be able to say what it is. But there is no need; anybody who asks you, you can show him the way. You cannot explain to him what life is, but you can show him the way, how you have arrived, how you have been able to experience it.It is a taste on the tongue – very sweet.I am reminded of a story…. In a cafeteria in paradise, Gautam Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu are all sitting around a table talking about great things of life. A naked, beautiful woman comes with a jar in her hands, and she says, “This jar contains the very juice of life. Would any of you like to taste it?”Buddha immediately closes his eyes. He is for renouncing life, he is for not seeing a woman – and that too, so beautiful, and naked.Confucius tries to follow Buddha, because he does not want to be thought less than Buddha. But just out of the corner of his eye – the woman is so beautiful, the temptation is so great – he looks at her. And the woman says, “Perhaps you would like…?”He says, “First I will have just a sip to taste what it is.” He takes a sip and says, “It is bitter!”Lao Tzu is sitting with wide open eyes, enjoying the beauty of the woman. He takes the whole jar, and drinks it completely.The woman says, “What are you doing?”He says, “Keep quiet! I never do anything halfway. Either I do it, then I do it totally; or I do not do it, but then I do not do it totally. And Confucius is right: in the beginning it is bitter – one has to learn the taste – in the end it is really great, just groovy!”My approach is, drink the whole juice of life. Squeeze every moment to its fullest, and you will know what life is.I cannot answer. It is not a question. It is a quest, and you have to do it. Nobody else can do it on your behalf.I have tasted it, and it is really groovy.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Please could you tell me the difference between innocence and stupidity?Innocence is the ultimate flowering of your consciousness. Even a child is not innocent; he is simply ignorant. He does not know, but he is not aware that he knows not. The child most probably will become stupid, because the society needs stupid people, the religions need stupid people, the politicians need stupid people. All vested interests need the masses to remain stupid. Their stupidity is the opportunity for all vested interests to exploit them.It is very rare that somebody rebels against religions, politics, social structure, and tries to retain his individuality; chooses ignorance rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance at least is natural. In being knowledgeable you have gone far away from your nature.The person who rebels against all these vested interests and discovers that he knows nothing, that he only knows one thing, that he knows nothing – he is the innocent man.When Bodhidharma was asked by Emperor Wu of China, “Who are you?,” Bodhidharma said, “I do not know.” It was not ignorance. Bodhidharma is one of those few people who have come to innocence.Socrates’ last statement is, “I know only that I know nothing.”Stupidity is common. It comes in all sizes, all shapes: Christian stupidity, Hindu stupidity, Mohammedan stupidity, Buddhist stupidity, communist stupidity. One thing about stupidity: it never looks inwards. It can see outside – for example, a Hindu can see that Jesus cannot be enlightened, for the simple reason that he drinks wine and moves with prostitutes. It is impossible for Hindu stupidity to recognize Jesus as enlightened. The Christian cannot see Krishna as enlightened. He had sixteen thousand wives, all forcibly taken from their husbands, from their children – and the man is the perfect incarnation of God! It is difficult for the Christian to see how Krishna can be the incarnation of God. He forces Arjuna to go to war, convinces him – against his will – to go into a war which is known in India as the Great War, which destroyed India forever. It broke India’s spine; since then India has never been able to reach any heights. It was available to all kinds of invaders, easily available to become enslaved. The whole responsibility goes to Krishna.Now, a Christian who believes, “Love your enemy, love even your neighbor”…I am always wondering why Jesus has not said, “Love your wife too, love your husband too” – because the enemy is far away, to love the enemy is easy. To love the neighbor is more difficult, and to love the wife or the husband is almost impossible.The Christian teaching seems to be of peace, and Krishna’s teaching seems to be of war, violence. No, it is not possible for Christians to accept Krishna. They can see the stupidity of Indians who believe in Krishna.The Christian cannot accept even Gautam Buddha, for the simple reason that he never healed sick people, he never gave eyes to the blind, he never raised the dead back to life. Then what kind of a savior is he? He never served anybody, and service is religion to the Christian mind.Just look from the other side. If you ask the Buddhist, “Do you think Jesus Christ is a savior?” he will simply laugh. He will say, “Saviors are not crucified. Jesus could not save himself; he is a pretender, a hypocrite, claiming that he can save the whole humanity.”And the Hindus, the Jainas, the Buddhists, all the Indian religions, believe that if a certain person is crucified, that means in his past life he must have committed really grave crimes, perhaps murders. Otherwise crucifixion is impossible; it has to be related to his life.Jainas say that when Mahavira, their savior, walks on the road, even thorns move away. Because Mahavira has not committed any crime in his past life, he cannot suffer even a thorn. Hindus say, if Meera is given poison, the poison turns into nectar, because she has not committed any sin in her past life. So Jesus’ crucifixion, which is very significant to the Christian, is simply a proof for Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, that this man was simply a pretender.Stupidity has this trait: it can see in others, but it cannot look withinwards. No Christian can see anything wrong in Jesus Christ, no Hindu can see anything wrong in Krishna, no Buddhist can see anything wrong in Gautam Buddha. Suddenly their intelligence disappears; they become immediately retarded, they fall back. This is one of the characteristics of stupid people.Stupid people can become very knowledgeable. They can become great scholars, popes, shankaracharyas, Ayatollah Khomeiniacs, great rabbis full of knowledge, but no knowing of their own. All knowledge is borrowed. In themselves they are just empty; they are covering that emptiness with borrowed knowledge. It is not their own intelligence that has become sharpened, it is only their intellectuality that has become too full of information.Remember, a computer has no intelligence, but it has memory. It can have as much information as you feed to it. The stupid person can become a great scholar, a world-famous scholar, but he is just a computer. All knowledge is information; it is his memory, not his experience. In his experience he proves very stupid. I will give you two instances of two very great scholars.One is a great Greek scholar, thought to be one of the greatest mathematicians; he discovered many things in mathematics. He discovered the principle of averages – that is his greatest contribution to the world. Before him nobody had ever thought about the principle of averages.One Sunday morning he took his family for a picnic. They had to cross a small river. The wife said, “Take the children on your shoulders” – they had four children. “Two I will take, two you take.”He said, “Wait. I am a mathematician, and no ordinary mathematician. Let me first see the average height of the children and the average depth of the river.”Naturally, the river somewhere was very shallow, somewhere very deep. The bigger children were taller, the smaller children were shorter. But the average…he figured it out on the sand with his finger and found that the average height of the children was enough that the average depth of the river could not drown them.The wife insisted, “You keep your average: I don’t understand mathematics, I can only see that there is danger.”He said, “Don’t be afraid. You just follow me.” And then the children started drowning, because the average is just a pure mathematical concept. It does not exist, it is not found in reality.And when the wife shouted, “The children are drowning!” do you know what he did? He did not go to save the children, he rushed back to the bank. He said, “Then there must have been some mistake in my calculations; otherwise, how is it possible? Their average height is greater than the average depth of the river.” This is stupidity. The man is a great mathematician, but if you put his mathematics aside, he is simply retarded.The second example I give you is about Karl Marx. He was a chain-smoker, and one day he found a cheaper brand of cigarette. He was an economist, and certainly one of the great economists of the world. And if you think of his influence, he is the greatest economist because he has influenced more than half the world. Communism is his philosophy, his economic theory.Seeing the cheaper brand, he purchased as many boxes as he could carry home. When the wife saw him carrying so many boxes of cigarettes, she said, “What are you doing? Doctors are saying to you, ‘Stop smoking!’ Your friends are saying to you, ‘Stop smoking!’”And Karl Marx with a big smile said, “You don’t know – I have found a way. Now there is no need to be worried about earning money. If I smoke one cigarette, so much money is saved in comparison to the older brand; the more I smoke, the more money is saved. So now I am not going to do anything except smoke, because you have always been asking me for money, money, money. Now have as much money as you want!”The wife could not understand how the money could be saved by smoking. But this is an economic theory, it does not correspond to reality. She had to inform his closest friend, Friedrich Engels, “He has gone mad. In his room he is sitting and smoking continuously – to save money!”Engels came, and he asked, “What is the matter?”Marx said, “Now I can explain to you, you are an intelligent man. My wife cannot understand higher economics. I was smoking up to now a brand which was costly. Now this is a cheaper brand; with each cigarette so much money is saved. The natural consequence is: the more you smoke, the more money is saved.”This is sheer stupidity. He may have been a great economist, but that is only scholarship, computer scholarship. As far as his own experience is concerned, he is behaving stupidly. So stupidity can become very knowledgeable. That does not mean that it has disappeared; you have simply covered it up.Innocence is not knowledgeable. Innocence simply means a clean clarity, insight with no preconceived ideas, knowledge. Innocence simply means just to be a mirror, which is empty but able to reflect anything that comes before it. Innocence is the greatest achievement. Only a very few people have been able to become innocent.It is said, when a person becomes so innocent, he is just like a child. Remember the words “like a child.” He is not a child. There is a certain similarity. The child is ignorant, without knowledge, a clean slate, a tabula rasa – but he will soon gather knowledge, because he is ignorant and it hurts to remain ignorant.The innocent man is also a tabula rasa, but he will never again accumulate knowledge. It has already been too hard to drop it. It has been too hard to get rid of the mind and its accumulations.The child is bound to get lost in the world of knowledge. Socrates or Bodhidharma are not corruptible; nobody can corrupt them. They have passed through all the dark stages of corruption, and they have survived. Now their state is of pure silence. They know nothing as far as knowledgeability is concerned.Socrates makes a beautiful distinction; it is worth remembering. He says, “There is knowledge which is ignorant, and there is ignorance which knows.” It looks contradictory, what he is saying: knowledge which is ignorant, and ignorance which knows. He is talking about innocence.Innocence has no claim to knowledgeability, but it is open, available, capable of responding spontaneously, just like a mirror reflecting. It is tremendous freedom, and tremendous individuation.Now you can commune with the flowers, with the mountains, with the clouds. You are so innocent that there is even a possibility of communion with existence.Knowledge is a barrier.I used to have a very famous man once in a while as my guest, Mahatma Bhagwandin. He was the only one, other than Mahatma Gandhi, who was known as “mahatma”; only two persons in India were known as “mahatma.” Mahatma means the great soul, the great saint.Whenever he was my guest, I used to take him for a morning walk. And he was so full of knowledge about everything – he was an old man – he knew the name of every flower, its uses, what diseases it can help cure; he knew all the different trees and their uses.He would continuously talk, and I had to tell him, “You please shut up! – because I have come for a morning walk. I want to enjoy the flowers, I don’t want to become knowledgeable about them. I don’t want even to know their Latin names. And your knowledge is a barrier – you can’t see the rose. Your whole knowledge stands between you and the rose – its Latin name, its properties, its uses in different diseases. The roseflower is lost, far away; you start moving into your knowledge.”I said, “If you want to come with me, then please keep your mouth shut. You can do whatever you want in your mind – that is your business – but I don’t want to know the names of the trees and the plants and the flowers and the leaves and the trunk and the bark. You destroy my whole morning! I want to remain completely available to this beautiful sunrise, the flowers dancing, the beautiful breeze blowing. I don’t want to be hindered by knowledge. My experience of their beauty is enough.”He would remain silent for a few minutes – but you cannot say to computers, “Shut up!” After a few minutes he would forget again. Seeing something new, he would say, “Look at that plant. This is very good for people who are suffering from migraine.”I said, “You are giving me migraine! Please give me a few leaves of that plant too. You are my migraine. I come every day, I never suffer from migraine.” I asked him, “Can’t you enjoy at all the beauty, the radiant morning, the freshness of it all? Have you to bring your knowledge in?”The last time I saw him, he was almost dying. I asked him, “What about your knowledge? You know about all the kinds of plants which can cure everything. Now why are you bothering about allopathy? And I can see that allopathy is not helping.”He was continuously coughing; he had become just bones. And I said, “What happened to your knowledge? You missed your whole life, you never lived it. Your knowledge became a bondage to you, and now you are dying and that knowledge is of no use. Perhaps if you had lived totally, intensely, that experience might have transformed the experience of death too.”To those who do not live, death seems to be an end. To those who live totally, death is not an end but a new beginning: an old house is abandoned, and a new form, a new world opens up. But that depends on whether you have lived or you have just been hung up in your head.I saw tears in his eyes. He said, “Perhaps you are right. I never lived, I was always accumulating knowledge – and it has not helped me. My whole life has been just a desert without any oasis. But now it is too late.”I call this stupidity. The man was known as a great sage, but to me he was a great idiot. And he confirmed before dying, with his tears, that he had missed.Innocence comes as you become more conscious, more alert, and you start dropping unnecessary luggage. Have you ever thought how much unnecessary luggage you are carrying within yourself? A conscious man slowly starts dropping everything, because the most precious treasure in you is to be absolutely unburdened, clean, pure, innocent.The innocent man is the only wise man. The knowledgeable man is the only stupid man. All your universities and colleges and schools create stupid people.My effort here is to undo what your universities and colleges and schools have done to you – to deprogram you. And I don’t have any other program to replace theirs. I deprogram you and simply leave you deprogrammed.That is innocence, and it is tremendous intelligence. It is such a great insight that there is no need of knowledgeability.Osho,When you wiped out temples and worship and gachchhamis, I got a sinking feeling that maybe you had given up on us. The most shocking revelation of the past month has been the gross stupidity we have shown with our petty grievances and demands. We have been like a bunch of Bolshevik mice, acting like we want a revolution all by ourselves. We are not the mature, responsible people you are encouraging us to be, and I fear we are destroying the commune ourselves with our tin pot fantasies of freedom.Please provide some guidance about the order or discipline we need to keep the commune together. And please, don't give up on us.Even without your asking, even if I want to give up, I cannot. My love does not allow it. Order and discipline you have to find. I would not like you to depend on anybody to give you order and discipline. Just make a little effort – and it is not difficult.If you go on depending on something, somebody, then any day there will be disorder. One day I may not be in my body. Then you will find yourself completely helpless. You don’t have even a father figure in God to pray to. I have taken all those props from you. I want you to be responsible of your own accord.I had said yesterday that I will withdraw the buddhafield. I cannot do it. Whatever you are, I have loved you unconditionally, and I will love you to the very end, without expecting anything from your side.The buddhafield remains. It was just to give you a shock, so that you can wake up a little and see that freedom does not mean disorder, freedom does not mean no discipline. Freedom means more order, more discipline, because now you are the master of yourself; nobody is dictating to you.I have destroyed all dependence. Dependence keeps you helpless, and I want you to be independent, absolutely independent.So just a little awareness – and whenever I find that you are missing that awareness, I am going to give you bigger shocks. I will not hesitate even to give you an electric shock.I am determined to wake you up.But it will be a joy if you wake up yourself.So don’t be worried about that. I know there are stupid people – it is not their fault; they have been brought up in a stupid society, educated by stupid teachers, professors, priests, churches. They are victims. They need all the compassion possible.I know you can start taking advantage of freedom. But while I am here, it is not possible to take advantage. I will hit you directly on the head. That you will remember even after your enlightenment!Osho,Why does my sadness feel more real than my happiness? I want so much to be real and authentic, not to wear any masks. But this seems to mean so much rejection by others. Is it possible to be so alone?It is important to understand. It is the case with most of the people. Your sadness is certainly more real because it is yours, it is authentic. Your happiness is shallow; it is not yours, it depends on something, somebody. And anything that makes you dependent – however happy you can feel for a few moments, soon the honeymoon is over, sooner than you had ever expected.You are happy because of your girlfriend, your boyfriend. But they are individual beings; they may not agree on all points with you. In fact, mostly what happens is that whatever the husband likes, the wife dislikes; whatever the wife likes, the husband dislikes. Strange…because it is almost universal. There is some reason in it. Deep down they hate each other, for the simple reason that they are dependent on each other for gaining happiness – and nobody likes dependence. Slavery is not the intrinsic desire of human beings. If a woman or a man gives you joy, and you become dependent, you are at the same time creating a deep hate – because of dependence. You cannot leave the woman because she makes you happy. And you cannot leave your hatred of the woman, because she makes you dependent.So all so-called love relationships are very strange, complicated phenomena. They are love-hate relationships. The hate needs to be expressed some way or other. That’s why whatever your wife likes, you don’t like; whatever your husband likes, you don’t like. On every small thing husbands and wives are fighting. Which movie to go to? – and there is an immense fight. Which restaurant to go to? – and immediately there is a fight. This is the hatred which is moving underneath the facade of happiness. Happiness remains shallow, very thin; just scratch it a little bit and you will find its opposite.But sadness is more authentic, because you are not dependent on anybody. It is yours, absolutely yours. This should give you a great insight, that your sadness can help you more than your happiness. You have never looked at sadness closely. You try to avoid seeing it – in many ways. If you feel sad, you go to a movie. If you feel sad, you start the television. If you feel sad, you go and play with your friends, you go to a club. You start doing something so that you do not have to see the sadness. This is not the right approach.When you are sad, it is a momentous phenomenon, very sacred, something of your own. Get acquainted with it, go deeper into it, and you will be surprised. Sit silently, and be sad. Sadness has its own beauties.Sadness is silent, it is yours. It is coming because you are alone. It is giving you a chance to go deeper into your aloneness. Rather than jumping from one shallow happiness to another shallow happiness and wasting your life, it is better to use sadness as a means for meditation. Witness it. It is a friend! It opens the door of your eternal aloneness.There is no way not to be alone. You can delude yourself, but you cannot succeed. And we are deluding ourselves in every way – in relationship, in ambition, in becoming famous, in doing this, in doing that. We are trying to convince ourselves that we are not alone, that we are not sad. But, sooner or later, your mask wears out – it is false, it cannot remain forever – then you have to wear another mask. In one small life, how many masks do you wear? And how many have melted away, changed? But you go on continuing the old habit.If you want to be an authentic individual, use sadness; don’t escape from it. It is a great blessing. Sit silently with it, rejoice in it. There is nothing wrong in being sad. And the more you become acquainted with it and its subtle nuances, you will be surprised – it is a great relaxation, a great rest, and you come out of it rejuvenated, refreshed, younger, livelier. And once you have tasted it, you will seek those beautiful moments of sadness again and again. You will wait for them, you will welcome them, and they will open new doors of your aloneness….Alone you are born, alone you will die. Between these two alonenesses you can deceive yourself that you are not alone, that you have a wife, a husband, children, money, power. But between these two alonenesses you are alone. Everything is just to keep yourself engaged in something or other, so that you don’t become aware of it.From my very childhood I have never been associating with people. My whole family was very much concerned: I was not playing with children, and I have never played with them.My teachers were concerned: “What do you go on doing when all the children are playing? You sit under the tree just by yourself.” They thought something was wrong with me.And I told them, “You need not be worried. The reality is that something is wrong with you, and wrong with all your children. I am perfectly happy to be alone.”Slowly slowly they accepted that that’s how I am; nothing can be done about it. They tried in every way to help me to mix with other children of my age. But I enjoyed being alone so much that it looked almost neurotic to play football.And I told my teacher, “I don’t see any point in it. Why unnecessarily hit the football from here to there? There is no point. And even if you make the goal, so what? What is achieved out of it? And if these people love making goals so much, then rather than having one football, have eighteen footballs. Give everybody one, and he makes as many goals as he wants, nobody prevents him. Let them have goals to their heart’s content! This way it is too difficult – why make it unnecessarily difficult?”And my teacher said, “You don’t understand at all that that will not be a game, if eighteen footballs are given to the children, and everybody is making goals as many times as he wants. That will not help.”I said, “I don’t understand, that creating hindrances, preventing people…. They fall and they have fractures and all kinds of nonsense. And not only that: when there are matches, thousands of people gather to see them. It seems these people don’t know that life is so short – and they are watching a football match! And they are so excited – jumping, shouting. To me, it is absolutely neurotic. I would rather sit under my tree.”I had my tree, a very beautiful tree, behind my school building. It became known that it was my tree, so nobody would go there. I used to sit there whenever there was time for play, or time for any kind of neurotic activity – “extra-curricular” activities.And I found so much under that tree that whenever I used to go back to my town, I never went to the principal whose office was just close to the tree – just behind his office was the tree – but I used to go to the tree just to thank it, to show my gratitude.The principal would come out, and he would say, “This is strange. You come to the town – you never come to me, you never come to the school, but you always come to this tree.”I said, “I have experienced much more under that tree than under your guidance and that of all kinds of mad teachers that you have. They have not given anything to me – in fact, whatever they gave to me I had to get rid of. But what this tree has given to me is still with me.”And you will be surprised – it happened twice, so it cannot be just coincidence…. In 1970 I stopped going to the town, because I gave a promise to my grandmother: “I will come only while you are alive. When you are gone, I have nothing to come here for.”I was informed that when I stopped going to the town, the tree died. I thought it must have been an accident, just a coincidence; it could not be connected with me. But it happened twice….When I became a professor in the university, there was a line of beautiful trees. I used to park my car under one tree. And it had always been my privilege – I don’t know why – that wherever I sat in the common room for the professors, nobody would sit on the chair I used, nobody would sit even by the side of the chair. They thought me a little dangerous.A man who has no friends, a man who has strange thoughts, a man who is against all religions, against all traditions, a man who can oppose single-handedly people like Mahatma Gandhi, who is worshipped by the whole country – they thought, “It is better to keep away from this man. He can put some idea in your mind, and you may be in some difficulty.”I used to park my car under that one tree. Nobody else parked their cars in that place; even if I was not coming, the place remained empty. All the other trees died, only my tree – it had become known as my tree – remained gorgeous.After I resigned from the university, the vice-chancellor said to me, one year later, “It is strange: that tree has died. Since you stopped coming to the university something has happened.”I understand that there is some synchronicity. If you silently sit with a tree…the tree is silent, you are silent…and two silences cannot remain separate, there is no way to divide them.You are here. If you are all thinking thoughts, you are separate. But if you are all silent, then suddenly there is something like a collective soul.Perhaps those two trees missed me. Nobody came close to them again, nobody with whom they could communicate. They died because they could not get any warmth from anybody. I had tremendous love and respect for those trees.Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness.The sadness will start changing its form; it will become a silent joy, uncaused by anybody outside you. That will not be shallow happiness, which can be taken away very easily.And getting deeper into your aloneness, one day you will find not only joy – joy is only midway. Happiness is very superficial, depends on others; joy is in the middle, does not depend on anyone. But going deeper you will come to the state of bliss – that’s what I call enlightenment.Use anything and you will come to enlightenment. But use something authentic, which is yours. And then you have a bliss which is yours twenty-four hours a day. It is simply radiating from you. You can share it now, you can give it to whomsoever you love. But it is an unconditional gift. And nobody can make you miserable.In this commune, this is my effort: to make you independently blissful. That does not mean that you have to renounce the world. That does not mean that you have to leave your wife, your girlfriend, your love for food – even for ice cream; it has nothing to do with that.Your blissfulness is with you whatever you are doing. It will enhance every activity, it will enrich every act that you do. Your love will have a totally different flavor. Now there will not be any hate hiding behind it; it will be simply love. There will not be even the expectation that something should be returned to you. You don’t need anything. Giving is such a benediction, there is no need. You are so rich inside that nothing can make you richer.And you can go on sharing bliss.The more you share it, the more you have it, so nothing can make you poorer.This is the only miracle that I know of.Osho,I feel I missed, this morning in discourse, when you were talking about wearing red and the mala and no more buddhafield. When you said, “Clap!” part of me wanted me to clap, not because of what you had been talking about – which made me want to cry – but just because of the way you shouted “Clap!” that one word was like a command, a challenge to take the jump and clap and see what would happen next.Later I remembered the story of Rinzai and his great shout and clap, “The goose is out!” Did we miss yet again?Yes. You go on missing again and again. But no need to be worried. I will not allow you to miss forever. One day you are bound to catch the train!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 26 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have spent three blissful weeks here, and next week I return to Germany. I am not a sannyasin, but I have again been deeply impressed by the genuine spirit of this commune and by your discourses. It was the first time I have heard you speak, and your words have gone to my heart as well as to my brain.In Germany I will be confronted with discussions from many different sides, mostly influenced by the press, who are known for their exaggerations and an ugly play with sensational news.I will do my best to destroy any misunderstanding and misbelief, and I am going to fight against any lack of goodwill. But I earnestly doubt whether I will succeed. What do you think I could do?There are so many questions in your one question. Let me go into it step by step.First, truth needs no defense; only lies need defense. Truth needs no argument, it is self-evident. So the problem with truth is always how to convey it to the other person.Lies can be argued about. The other can be convinced about them; logic can be used to convince the other. Hence, I hate the word “missionary,” because the missionary can only spread lies. He convinces, argues, quotes scriptures.But truth needs nothing. Truth is enough unto itself. So, if you have felt something of truth here, just please don’t try to convince anybody. You cannot succeed. Only make your experience available – naked, with no logic, with no argument. Truth has its own way. It will come through the shine of your eyes, through the aura of your being, through your very presence, that you have been in a garden – you are still fragrant.A man who is standing with closed eyes – you cannot convince him that there is light. But you can describe the beauties of light. As the sun rises, flowers start blossoming, birds start singing, the whole existence comes out of sleep refreshed, alive, younger. You can tell this to the man who is standing with closed eyes. This is not giving an argument for the existence of light; it is simply creating an urge in the man to open his eyes. And that urge exists in everyone.There is not a single human being in the world who does not want to know beauty, to know love, to know truth. But the problem has been created by the missionaries, theologians, the so-called religious people. They try to convince him of something which needs to be experienced.Be loving to your friends. If in Germany they can feel that something German has disappeared from you, you have given evidence. Be loving. Be rejoicing. Sing, dance with them. Let them feel your energy; in your singing, dancing, let them feel the difference. You cannot say it, but you can show it in every gesture, in every word, in every silence. Show the difference that has happened to you. Allow yourself to be available to your friends. Open all the doors and all the windows of your being so they can see that some ray of light has entered in you.And if they inquire, tell them the only way is to come here, to be here. Man can go to the moon, which is a silly project, because what are you going to do on the moon? – just stand there looking stupid! There is nothing to see, not even a juniper tree. Just create the urge in them sometimes to have a few days in this oasis. This is the first thing to remember.The second thing: you say you are not a sannyasin. That is wrong – you are. There are sannyasins who are not sannyasins; there are non-sannyasins who are sannyasins. Sannyas is not something outward, it is something inner. If you could enjoy these three weeks, you are already initiated. These three weeks are going to change your whole life.So drop that idea that you are a non-sannyasin. Anybody who is so open, so available, so unprejudiced that, just being a visitor here, he fell in tune with the commune, its sincerity, its love – the initiation has happened. The outer initiation may follow in its own time, there is no hurry. And even if it doesn’t follow, it doesn’t matter. What matters has happened!Third: you say that my words have reached your heart and your brain. Just let them reach your heart. The brain is dangerous; it is German. The heart is human. And the brain is continuously distorting everything. So don’t go via the brain, because the brain is conditioned by millions of years, by many lives, by many different stages, and anything moving through it cannot retain its purity. But it can be bypassed; there is no necessity to go through it.We are being educated that everything should go through the brain. That is one of the strategies of the vested interests all over the world, because truth, love, beauty – any great value going through the brain will not be the same by the time it reaches to the heart. In fact, it may have turned upside down. The brain distorts everything. It pollutes all that is innocent.Learn to put the brain aside – that’s what I call meditation. Put the brain aside. Let me talk to you heart to heart. It is a totally different experience. Your heart starts beating in the same rhythm, a great synchronicity happens, and with it comes understanding, experience, vision, insight.The brain cannot give anything to you; the brain is only a mechanism. Don’t put things like love, truth, beauty, through any mechanism. They will be distorted, crippled, crushed; and by the time they reach to the heart they will be dead, they will not be breathing.But this has been taught to us, that everything has to go through reason, through the brain, rationality. These are standing at the door of your heart; they guard your heart. They don’t allow anybody in unless they are satisfied. And it is not possible for real values to satisfy them.Yes, a theology can satisfy them, it can give all the arguments they want. But what argument can beauty give? What argument can you give that the sunset is beautiful? If some idiot starts asking, “Please give me a rational explanation of your statement. Why do you call the sunset beautiful?” you will be absolutely incapable of doing it.This is what your brain is continuously doing. It won’t allow beauty, truth, love, without their being searched, asked all kinds of questions – inquiries to which they cannot provide answers; it is not in their nature.So put the brain aside. Let the heart function in its own right, and you will start growing into new dimensions of being which were not available to you before. And then you will know that the brain is good as a servant, but not good as a master. A machine should always remain a servant, it should never become the master. Once a machine becomes a master, it destroys everything that has any intrinsic value. Those values are very delicate, very fragile.Try to have a direct connection, from heart to heart, and see the tremendous revolution that comes to you. And then you can say the same thing to your friends back home: “What I have brought is something not of the mind, for the mind, from the mind; it is something of the beyond.”So if you can, put your friends’ brains aside – and if they are your friends this small thing can be done. If you cannot do it for a friend, then for whom are you going to do it? A friend wants to connect directly with your heart. There is no harm, no loss. So just tell them, “Don’t argue about it. Just for a few moments let me hold your hand, let me hug you, and put the mind aside. Feel my warmth, my love, and let our hearts synchronize.” You may be able…something may transpire. This is not missionary work. This is the work of pure love.You say that you are afraid you may not succeed. If you try through the mind, it is certain you will not succeed. On the contrary, those people may succeed in destroying something that was growing in you. They will make you suspicious of your own experience. They may convince you: “Perhaps you were hypnotized. Perhaps seeing five thousand sannyasins, living amongst them, you became too gullible.” And you may start thinking: Who knows? Was it true, or just my imagination? Was it true, or just my projection? Was it true, or did I have a dream? You cannot succeed in convincing them, but they can succeed.Intellectually, destruction is very easy. Intellectually, to lead people to a creative experience is impossible. You are aware that all those people back home are full of negative attitudes, gossips, the sensational news that journalism thrives on. Journalism has not yet been able to become an art; it is still third-rate. It is unfortunate, because journalism has a tremendous power over people’s thinking, being. Journalism simply lives on sensationalism. The more sensational news is, the more you can sell it to the masses.There is an old saying: No news is good news. I feel it is not complete. I want to complete it: Good news is no news, because good news does not create sensationalism. Murder is needed, suicide is needed, rape is needed; all kinds of crimes are needed. But to go on feeding people on all this kind of news – do you think you are serving humanity? Do you know the psychological effect of all this? A person who reads every morning about murders, suicides, rapes – all kinds of crimes – by and by becomes immune, it does not make him feel bad about it. It is the way life is; it is happening all over the world.If war is the only reality that covers the front pages of all the newspapers, televisions, radios; if cunning politicians are the only people whose statements are always on the first page…. Have you seen, ever, on the first page, a musician’s statement, a sculptor’s statement, his photo, a poet’s statement, his photo? No, they are not news. They are too good to be news.Journalism is corrupting humanity. It is making people feel that crime is the way of life. If you are not committing crime, you are just a fool. Everybody is doing it and getting away with it. Criminals become presidents, prime ministers. You have never heard that a great scientific genius has become a president of a country, or a great guitarist has become a prime minister of a country. These people are struggling just to survive somehow. Perhaps they will live anonymously and die anonymously.Do you know, in the times of Alexander the Great, how many poets there were? how many musicians there were? how many great creative artists there were? Not even in the footnotes of history are their names available. They lived anonymously. They made this life more beautiful, they made human experience more rich. They brought something from the beyond – but they remained unknown and they will remain unknown. And what has Alexander the Great done, other than murdering thousands of people, burning cities, trying to conquer the whole world? This murderer becomes “the Great” Alexander.This has to be changed. All politicians’ names should disappear from the front pages of the newspapers, from magazines, television shows, radios. What do they have to give to the world? Why should people go on seeing the face of Ronald Reagan? – just a third-rate cowboy film actor. What contribution has he made?Is there no one in America who has contributed to life immensely? There are poets, musicians, there are people who have created great literature. The front pages of all the newspapers and magazines should be concerned with those who beautify life, who give something to existence, who don’t destroy. Politicians should be pushed to the last page!There is no need to continuously insist on murders, suicides. You may not think so, but it is absolutely certain that your insistence on these stories makes people, by and by, murderers, suicidal, criminals. Who is responsible for that? And now the world is so small that anything happening anywhere, immediately reaches within hours, through modern media, to every nook and corner of the earth.Journalism should understand its responsibility: it is great. Up to now, it has been irresponsible. Its only interest is how to sell more, how to earn more. Whatever happens to human beings is not its concern. Journalism needs a total change.A California University has been surveying and studying in California, for one year, what happens when there are boxing matches. By thirteen percent, crime immediately rises, and for one week steadily that thirteen percent increase remains. Then slowly it tapers off. Knowing this, still the government of California has not done anything. Boxing matches should be made a criminal offense! If they create a thirteen-percent rise in crime…. Those criminals will be punished – and the real crime is coming from the boxing matches! It looks like such an insane world.Stop such nonsense as boxing matches. But no, Muhammad Ali becomes a great hero – and what has he done? What has he contributed? He may have broken a few people’s ribs, a few people’s noses, a few people’s eyes, and he may have created a wave of crimes – that is his contribution. And journalism will give great credit to him.Journalists have to learn that it is time to become more mature, more responsible: they should understand that just selling stories, whether true or untrue, just for the sake of earning money – without any concern what they are going to do to human beings…. It is poison that is being spread!So I can understand your concern that journalism has been spreading all kinds of lies about me, and people believe them. People have a certain psychology: they believe anything which is printed. It becomes something very significant that it is printed: it must be true.Just the other day – I do not understand German, fortunately – Sheela, in one of her interviews given to the German sensationalist magazine Stern, a twenty-five-page interview full of lies, not a single word true in it…. I just looked at the translation quickly, because what is the point of going through all those lies? And you see how journalism works…. After that, the Stern representative was here interviewing me, but he never mentioned Sheela’s interview, neither did he bring any question: “Sheela has brought such-and-such allegations against you and the commune” – not a single point.Do you see the cunningness? He knew perfectly well that I would contradict it and say the truth – then it would be difficult. And they have been living on lies. He asked many questions, but not a single question related to Sheela’s interview.One of the things Sheela said in the interview has something to do with you – that’s why I would like to mention it. Sheela says that my relationship with my disciples is that of a pimp with prostitutes. Now people who are reading it…and there is no contradiction from me because he has taken my interview, but he has not mentioned this to me.When I read it, I had a really good belly laugh. I said, “This is great! So Sheela and the twenty people that have escaped from here have been prostitutes for ten years?” Because if that is my relationship with my disciples – they were my disciples for ten years – she has condemned herself and all the others who have escaped.I would like to ask you – is there any sannyasin who feels that my relationship with you is that of a pimp to a prostitute? If it is so, then you can raise your hands and say three times “Yes.” If it is not so, then raise your hands and say “No.”Okay.(Laughter)(“No, no, no” three times. Laughter.)So now the poor pimp is without prostitutes. All the prostitutes have gone with the chief prostitute, Sheela.A man who has been in silence, in isolation for three and a half years, who does not move in the commune, does not go out of his room – I cannot conceive how he can manage the business of being a pimp. It is no ordinary business. The only person I have been seeing in all these silent years was Sheela. She was my secretary, a pimp’s secretary. And certainly she must have been doing all the work that is supposed to be done by a pimp because I was never moving out of my room and nobody was allowed to enter my room – so there was no contact with people.Such a simple fact and she has completely forgotten that for ten years she has been my disciple. Her own fact makes her a prostitute.But the Stern journalist did not ask me about this, knowing perfectly well that it is an absolute lie, so it is better not to raise the question. And I had never thought Sheela so idiotic that she will declare herself the chief prostitute.And now – twenty prostitutes and no pimp: they will simply starve to death. They need a pimp. What else are they going to do? Unconscious minds, not knowing what they are saying, not knowing what the implications of what they are saying are….So certainly, back in Germany, you will be faced, encountered by people who are just full of such nonsense, garbage. Don’t argue with them. Just tell them, “The best way to know is to go there. It is an experience. I had also the same ideas you have, because I have also read all these magazines and watched the television shows, and naturally I had believed.”Humanity is raised in such a way as to believe that anything that is brought on the television screen, on the radio, in the newspapers, has a validity. Nobody bothers to inquire about the truth. I had never thought Sheela…I had always thought her to be a little intelligent – not very much – but that she will prove so idiotic that she will forget: making me a pimp she is making herself a prostitute and each of her gang also becomes a prostitute.And anybody can come here and inquire of my people, “What kind of nonsense is this?” There is no pimp, there is no prostitute. This is the only place in the whole world where there is no prostitution, for the simple reason that we don’t believe that married partners should monopolize each other.My basic approach is that the more you love, the more freedom you give to the other. Even the freedom that, if your woman wants to go with a man just for two days on a holiday, you will be immensely happy that she will be happy. You are not her owner, she is not a thing. You love her and you want her to be happy; if this is her happiness, then she can go. There is no need to hide it, there is no need to pretend. Things are frank here in the commune. And for two days she is free, for two days you are also free. You may have been attracted to another woman – because there is no natural law that you can only be attracted to your wife. In fact, it is very difficult to be attracted to your wife. That is the last woman in the world you can be attracted to.Two days’ freedom for you…and after two days, when you meet again, it is as if a fresh relationship begins. Those two days have given a break – a love break, just like a tea break, a coffee break. I don’t know the English language exactly, but I don’t care either. If I can manage to make you understand, that’s enough: love break! And in two days’ time she realizes that all men are alike. In two days’ time you realize all women are alike: just put the light off and there is no difference. A great reunion, again a small honeymoon….There is no need for prostitutes in this commune. Prostitutes exist in the society where marriage is a monopoly, where marriage is ownership; there is no way to have just a little holiday. Female prostitutes have existed always – it is called the oldest profession – but now there are male prostitutes also. That is the latest profession.But in this commune there is neither a female prostitute nor a male prostitute – and there is no need for a pimp. What will he do? He will simply die, seeing that he is not needed at all. People are making their arrangements themselves. He was needed very much in the outside society, as a mediator. The man cannot directly manage to find a prostitute, he has to save his respectability. The prostitute cannot manage to find a man, because it is absolutely unfeminine to go to a man and to say, “I want to sell myself to you for one night.” The pimp was a necessary link. It helped the prostitute to remain feminine. It helped the man to protect his reputation, his children, his parents, his wife, his family, his society. Everybody believes that he is really a proper husband, this is an ideal couple. The pimp functions, does a very necessary work. But in the commune there is no need for a pimp…and Sheela is making such an accusation – she must be getting insane.Tell those people that if they have any questions which third-rate journalism has created in them…. And I emphasize it! – all journalism is third rate. There is only yellow journalism, there is nothing else. It has not yet become an art. It has to become an art.So tell those people, “I had also believed in all these lies. They simply disappeared the way dewdrops disappear in the morning sun. You just go and experience – there is no other way.”Osho,Can you explain the fine line between our trust in you and the saying, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”There is no fine line. Unless you trust, you don’t have a Buddha, you don’t have a master.Buddha has made the statement: “If you meet me on the way, kill me.” It is not said to those who don’t trust him, who don’t love him, who have not merged their identity with his being. Once you are in deep trust with a master, there is a danger that you may become so blissful with the merger of your identity with the master that you may not like to become enlightened on your own; hence, the statement.The statement is saying that you are feeling so blissful, just being in tune with an awakened being, you don’t know how much more bliss is possible if you yourself become awakened. But to become awakened you will have to drop this identity. You will have to forget even the master.It is something about the inner journey. When a person is moving in meditation on the inner journey, the last thing is the master. It is easy to drop other ideas, other feelings; it is easy to drop greed, anger. But finally you come to a point when you have to drop the master too. That is the last barrier. It is just in your mind. You have loved the man so much, your love has made it so difficult, that you would prefer to remain unenlightened than to drop the master. And a real master will say, “Drop me, so that you can also become a master in your own right.”It happened in Ramakrishna’s life – and Ramakrishna was alive just in the last part of the preceding century, so he is not very far away, he is very close to us. He was a great devotee of the mother goddess, Kali. And it was not a formality, it was not just like going every Sunday to the church. He was the priest of the temple of Kali, but his behavior was strange. Sometimes he would worship, sometimes he would not open the doors of the temple at all. Sometimes he would worship the whole day, from morning to evening, till he fell down unconscious from dancing.Rani Rasmani had made the temple near the Ganges in Calcutta – a beautiful temple and a very scenic place. But Rani Rasmani, although she was a queen of a small kingdom, belonged to the fourth caste of the Hindus, the untouchables. So no brahmin was ready to become a priest in the temple of an untouchable. For years there was no priest. Rasmani was very much in trouble. She looked all over Bengal; she was ready to give any salary the priest wanted, but no brahmin was ready to worship in a temple of a sudra, an untouchable.But when Ramakrishna was approached, he said, “I will come.” Even Rasmani was a little puzzled: the man seems to be a little mad, because no brahmin was ready to come. Ramakrishna said, “Whether the temple is made by an untouchable or by a brahmin, the highest caste, the mother Kali is the same; it doesn’t matter. I am coming, and whatever salary you feel is right, must be right. I don’t know much about money – you are a queen, your decision will be far better.”When she heard that sometimes he dances, sings songs the whole day, and sometimes he does not even open the door, Rani Rasmani called him and said, “This is not right.”He said, “Nobody can say to me what is right and what is wrong: it is a love affair. Only I know and my mother Kali knows. Sometimes I get angry at her when she does not behave. I have been for three days dancing, and she has not even given a little vision to me? Now let her be punished! I am not going to open the doors, and I am not going to offer the food.”Rasmani said, “You are strange! You are supposed to be a priest – you have to do the ritual.”He said, “I am not a priest, and I am not supposed to do any ritual. I love! I love the Kali in my village. I will continue; if you are worried you can stop my salary…because when I prepare food for Kali first I taste it, then I offer it to her. So that’s enough, I don’t need much – I can just taste a little more!”This was unimaginable. In India you cannot taste anything and then offer it to God, or to a goddess. Rasmani said, “This is too much!”He said, “No. My mother used to do the same. She would taste everything before she gave it to me. Was it worth giving or not? Has the taste come out right or not? I cannot offer anything to my mother without tasting it.”This man, Ramakrishna, was really in love with that statue. Nobody was there, but his love was real. The goddess was unreal, but his love was not unreal.One wandering mystic came to the temple and said to Ramakrishna, “You have not yet attained to the ultimate consciousness, and I can see you are capable of it. You are very close to it. Only one thing is blocking the way: this mother goddess, Kali. You love her too much. She does not exist, but your love certainly exists. And you have created a great image of her. You have dropped everything else from your mind, you are ready to reach to ultimate samadhi, ultimate ecstasy, but you will have to cut off the head of Kali.”Ramakrishna said, “That is a little hard. Killing one’s own mother? – what are you saying? I would rather remain unenlightened. And anyway, the moment I close my eyes I see her; she is so beautiful and so alive, I cannot do this.”But the mystic insisted. He said, “I have never come across a man who is so close – just one step!”Ramakrishna was a simple man. He said, “Then you will have to help me, because when I close my eyes I will not remember you. And Kali is standing before me, so gorgeous, so beautiful! And it is such an immense bliss to see her, I completely forget.”Many times he tried. He would close his eyes, and soon he was swaying, as if from an inner dance. And the mystic would say, “Wake up! Don’t forget what I have said.”Ramakrishna would open his eyes and say, “But this seems to be impossible.”Then the mystic found a way. He brought a piece of glass, really sharp, like a knife, and he said, “I will do one thing: I will just cut your forehead with this piece of glass. It will be painful, but it will remind you. The same way, you cut the mother Kali.”Ramakrishna said, “Let us try.”The mystic cut Ramakrishna’s forehead and the mark remained all his life. Blood started flowing, the pain was intense, and he remembered: with great courage, he cut the image of Kali in two parts – it was just in his imagination – and Kali fell in two parts. And he went into transcendental ecstasy. It took six days to wake him up, he was so deep in ecstasy. And the mystic said, “Don’t disturb him.”After six days he was awakened, and his first words were, “The last barrier has fallen! I am grateful to you,” he said to the mystic. “If you had not insisted, I would have remained happy, but now I know what bliss is. It is a millionfold more.”That is the meaning of Gautam Buddha’s saying. It is not for all, because you don’t have that love. When you go inside you will not find Gautam Buddha. You may find all kinds of idiots there: the attorney general of Oregon, Governor Atiyeh, Ronald Reagan – anybody.The statement is not for you. The statement is for those who had loved Buddha so much that Buddha knew that they could drop everything else, but they could not drop him. So he had to say, “When you meet me on the way” – that way is the inner way – “just chop my head off, so that you can become an enlightened person on your own.” And that is the joy of a master, to see his disciple also becoming a master.This is the meaning when I say that this commune is a mystery school. The effort is to have everyone become a master; just disciplehood won’t do. I want you all to be masters. The world needs masters. Only a great energy of masters around the world can prevent the catastrophe of a third world war, which is looming on the horizon.So it is not only a question of your enlightenment. It is also a question of the life or death of this whole planet.Osho,What is the difference between RIMU – Rajneesh International Meditation University – and Rajneesh Academy?The Rajneesh International Meditation University is an educational institution. It teaches you everything about meditation. It makes you knowledgeable about the art of meditation, but it is not existential or experiential. It is educational – just the way all other universities are.There are universities of different kinds in the world. They give you knowledge about the subject. And the meditation university gives you degrees according to your knowledge, your acquaintance with all the literature about meditation.Let me emphasize: it is about meditation, but it is not meditation. Rajneesh Academy is an existential, experiential institute. It does not give you knowledge about meditation; it gives you the experience of meditation. From the university we can create teachers of meditation, writers, PhDs, scholars, DLitts. But as far as they themselves are concerned, they have not tasted anything of meditation.There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation; they were discovered ten thousand years ago. I have made a few new methods for the modern man, because those methods were created for a totally different kind of humanity, for very simple people. The contemporary man is not simple, he is very complex. Those methods were for people who were not repressed, who were natural. In these ten thousand years religions have made everybody repressed; sexually, and in other ways, they have driven humanity against its own nature.So I have created new methods which are cathartic, so that you can throw out all repressions, all garbage out of your being, and can become clean, a tabula rasa. Then those one hundred and twelve methods – any one method that appeals to you will be enough to transform your being.The Academy also gives titles, because the meditators – although they experience the same space of blissfulness, of eternal life, they come from different paths, and after their experience their expressions are different. For example, siddha is one of the titles that the Academy gives. He knows the meditation, he knows the ultimate experience, he knows the deathlessness – but he cannot express it, he cannot say anything about it. In fact, the experience is inexpressible, and the siddha remains silent.In India, we know only of eighty-four siddhas in the whole of history. There may have been thousands, but even to know a siddha is difficult. He keeps it to himself, he is not articulate.The second category is the arihanta. He is very articulate, but the way he expresses himself is rarely understood because he tries to remain close to his experience, rather than thinking of the audience. He does not come down into the valley; he remains on top of the hill, and from there he speaks. So you can hear a few sounds, but you cannot make any sense of it.The arihanta is more articulate than the siddha. The siddha is absolutely silent. He will be helpful only to those few people who can understand silence, who can communicate through silence. The arihanta helps more people, but not many. His statements are maxims: you will have to figure out what he means, and most probably you will figure out something which is not the right thing. Your mind cannot understand that experience; but he is closer to his own experience and is not much concerned whether you understand him or not.The third category is the acharya. He is the most articulate of all the three categories. His effort is to come closer to you, to bring the truth in such a way that it can become of some use to you. He does not speak in mysterious language, he speaks in ordinary language. He creates devices so that he can lead you towards the way. He helps the biggest number of people.These three categories are of equal value. It is not that some category is higher than the other, because their experience is the same. But their expression is different.The siddha simply denies expression. The arihanta tries, but tries in such a way that in no way is the truth polluted by language and words. His expression goes above your heads. The acharya is more humane; he tries to reach you in your language, in your ways. He comes down from the hill into the valley to pick you up and lead you up towards the peak. Their experiences are exactly the same; hence, nobody is lower or higher.Rajneesh Academy is an experiential university; the Meditation University is informative. It creates teachers, the Academy creates masters – and there is a great difference. The teacher is only saying what he has learned from his teachers, from the books, but he cannot support it by his own experience. The master does not care about the books, about the teachers. He is his own authority, he is his own scripture.Hence, I have made two different institutions. The University will prepare you to be acquainted with meditation, so that you become interested in having the real taste of it. It will lead you towards the Academy. The Academy has a far higher status than the University.Osho,When I hear people say that they have dropped sannyas, I wonder if this is possible. I feel that once you have started on this path of sannyas, there is no return.Please comment.You are right. Once you are a sannyasin, you are a sannyasin forever. You can drop the clothes, you can drop the mala, but sannyas is something that has entered into your being.You cannot drop it, unless you drop your heart. And I don’t think anybody is going to drop his heart.Sannyas is initiation of the heart: the individual heart moving towards the universal heart. There is no way to drop it.So before you enter, think twice!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I work in Europe as a journalist, and everybody is asking me about Sheela, “Is it true that she betrayed her master?” The only answer I can give is, “I don't know.” When they ask me what I feel about the recent events, I say that I feel tremendously grateful to Sheela, whatever she has done.At this point, everybody thinks I'm crazy. My question is, do you? Please comment.Certainly you are crazy – for two reasons. First, nobody can betray me. You can betray Jesus Christ because he asks faith from you. You can betray Gautam Buddha because he requires total surrender from you. How can you betray me? Faith can be betrayed; but I ask you to doubt, to be skeptical, to be rational, to be intelligent. How can you betray me?Sheela has not betrayed me, she has betrayed herself. She has fallen in her own eyes, and she will live with all the crimes heavy on her heart for her whole life. As far as I am concerned there was no expectation. I have never demanded any commitment to me. I have never said that you have to be loyal to me: how can you betray me? This is the first point which proves you are crazy, when you say to people that you do not know. That means you do not know me and you do not know my work.Secondly, you are telling people that Sheela has done great work and the commune should be grateful to her. She has certainly done great work, and the commune is grateful for all the good that she has done. But side by side she has been committing crimes. The commune cannot be grateful for those crimes – crimes ranging from killing people, attempts on people’s lives, to bugging houses – and taping phone calls, which cannot be forgiven, because that is trespassing on individual privacy. And she was planning bigger crimes.People are accustomed to see things as black or as white. In life it is very rare to find somebody who is absolutely black, or somebody who is absolutely white. People are different in degrees between these two polarities. But one thing has to be remembered, that you may be doing ninety-nine percent good work, but a single crime will destroy your credibility completely. Your good work cannot save you.You are saying that the commune should feel grateful because Sheela burned the planning office of Wasco County? that she tried to poison one of the judges of Wasco County and one of the attorneys of Jefferson County? that she tried to kill Doctor Devaraj and Vivek, here in the commune? You are going to be grateful to her that she was lying to me continuously?She bugged my room. She bugged almost the whole commune. Nobody was left their independence, their freedom of privacy. One hundred and forty-five rooms in the hotel were bugged. Nixon looks like a pygmy before her!I have heard that she placed guards, thirty-two guards at my house, pretending that they had to be protection for me. But she ordered the guards not to speak to anybody who lives with me in the house – my physician, my kitchen people, my cleaners, my seamstresses, people who do everyday work for me.The guards were ordered not to recognize that the people in my house even existed. They were not to smile at them, they were not to wave at them, they were not to talk with them; they were not to create any kind of contact with them.One guard must have asked “Why? If we are there to protect the Master, then what is the point of this precaution?”She said, “The precaution is absolutely necessary. One day you may have to shoot all those people who live there.”Yes, you should be grateful to her. She has made roads, she has made houses – but she has also stolen forty-three million dollars. Even before I came to America she had stolen three hundred thousand dollars, and managed in the court to show that that money had gone to Rajneesh Foundation. Now the court has decided one point four million dollars is to be returned to the person. And the money had never come to the Foundation. All those papers were bogus.Yes, we have to be grateful to her – she was doing great work. She created this fascist group. She threw out every person who was capable, far more capable than herself, of making the commune better, more comfortable, less tedious. She harassed those people – the vice-chancellor of the university, the chancellor of the university, many psychotherapists, doctors. People who were competent like Sushila, Makima – they had to leave. Not that they were leaving me, because they are all coming back. They had to leave simply because there is a limit to suffering humiliation, harassment.And why should a person like Sushila be thrown out?…Because Sushila could have managed this commune far better than Sheela. But you are not aware of it, that when we came here we had not a single dollar, and Sushila managed to collect thirty-three million dollars to start the commune with. Now, she was a dangerous woman in the eyes of Sheela, because she had done such a great job to get the commune started. This was the reward for her – to be thrown out from here!In Australia Sushila was managing, with another sannyasin, a company which was capable of producing millions of dollars. And her idea was that that money would come to the commune. I prevented Sheela…I told her, “Don’t interfere. They are working well.” But seeing millions of dollars and the possibilities, she unnecessarily went there and forced Sushila from there too – in my name. She told her, “The master says you should leave. I am going to take charge of the company.”That was a pure lie; I had told her just the opposite. When Sushila was in charge there, there was no problem. I have known Sushila for many more years than I have known Sheela. I know her love towards me, and I have great respect for her capacities. But when Sheela used my name, finally Sushila left. And the moment she left, the whole company fell into pieces. Those millions of dollars disappeared; the company is in a mess, under litigation. Yes, you are right, we should be grateful to her.What has she done? – forced you to work twelve, fourteen hours a day, made you slaves. I told her, “I see people don’t have good clothes; in winter they don’t have enough clothes. So go and purchase clothes.” Because I had said to, she purchased clothes, but they were never given to you; they were locked in a warehouse. Now they have been found.So what you see is not always the whole truth; there is much more behind it.She destroyed hundreds of centers around the world which I had created. People were running them with love, joy, and new sannyasins were coming through those centers. She destroyed those centers and concentrated sannyasins into six communes in Germany.Everybody who has an ambition for power wants centralization. Those centers were independent, they were not under anybody’s rule. They were spreading my love, my message to people on their own; there was no need to destroy them. But they were not under her.In England Punem had a beautiful commune – four hundred sannyasins were in the commune – and a beautiful place, lush green, with all the facilities. Sheela called Punem here and took power over the commune, then sent all the sannyasins to European communes. And she was going to sell the commune property. She was destroying all the centers of England – she had almost succeeded. So you know only one side of the story, you don’t know the other side.And I understand your mind…. The question is from an Italian sannyasin, Sarjano. Italy has lived under the authoritative rule of the popes, which ended finally in the fascism of Benito Mussolini. Somewhere deep in his mind there is no place for democracy and democratic values.Yes, she did some good work – as a facade! But behind the facade, she was doing every kind of criminal activity. Two persons she placed in Desiderata declaring that they had positive AIDS tests, for the simple reason that they were not willing to do something that she wanted them to do. This was a punishment – you cannot find a better punishment. Their blood was either mixed with the AIDS virus, or changed, so the test came back from outside as positive. And after she left, their blood was checked again – they have no AIDS.Do you see the criminality of the mind? Putting two people who don’t have AIDS with eight other people who have AIDS is putting them in great danger. And they cannot say anything, because the report is coming from outside. But the blood that was sent must have been taken from the people who have AIDS.Sheela’s intimate, her assistant in crime, was Puja, who was trying to create the AIDS virus. I don’t understand what is the need of creating the AIDS virus, of culturing the AIDS virus. Perhaps that would have been their next step: anybody who does not listen to them goes to Desiderata. Without killing him, they have killed him.If you look at things…for example, Adolf Hitler: you will find many good things that he did. The superhighway that he has created across Germany is the only superhighway in the whole world of its kind. It is straight – few curves, few turnings; hence, you can go at any speed, there is no problem. He changed the old pattern of crossroads; there are no crossroads because that delays the speed. Roads meet, but first they run by the side of the road and slowly slowly merge with the road. So there are no crossroads. You can go very easily one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifty miles an hour.You can say he has done a great work – but the same man killed ten million people in the world. A person who wants to see the wholeness of any situation has to look from all sides, from all angles.Sheela has done a few good things. She has made houses – but anybody could have done that, and in a far better way, not making you slave workers. She has made roads, which cannot be said to be very great, nothing to be compared with Adolf Hitler’s superhighway. She was managing sufficient food for you – but she was also poisoning three thousand street people for twenty-one days continuously through their food, to keep them drugged so that they could vote for her. She wanted to take over the county.I have been insistent that sannyasins should not be in any way involved with politics. I am absolutely against politics. I want the world to be freed from politics – it is a cancer of the society. But because I was silent and in isolation and I had no information except whatever information she used to bring…. She had told me that it is a humanitarian job: to bring three thousand street people, to give them a feeling of being human beings, homes respect, food, clothes…. I said if you have surplus money, you can do it.But as I came out of my silence, the reality was totally different. Those people were brought from all over America just to take over the county. What business is it of ours to take over the county? We are not here for any political end. We are here to enter into the mystery of life. Politics is for third-rate, retarded people. It is not for geniuses, not for intelligent people, not for creative people but for egoists – the people who want power over others.So I would like to say to you, first look at the whole picture, all the sides of it, before you say anything.That’s why I say you are certainly crazy.Osho,I am so touched and overwhelmed by your total love towards us, and I feel hurt and ashamed when I see how we go on asking stupid questions, making complaints, and throwing responsibility on you.I don't have enough words to express how much I love you, how much I feel thankful to you. I am afraid you're going to leave us because we're not ripe enough. But please, Osho, forgive us and stay with us longer. It is not everybody who doesn't take responsibility. Not everybody dropped the mala, not everybody stopped working. I trust you more than ever, and I want to be with you, whatever happens.I know. There are only a very few idiots, but idiots have a quality of pulling people downwards to their own state.Man is not an island. If an enlightened person can pull you upwards, an idiot can pull you downwards. And, of course, the journey downwards is easier. Going uphill is difficult; going downhill no intelligence is needed, no effort is needed.Even a rock, rolled, will go downhill. Have you seen any rock going uphill? That will be against gravitation, that is not possible. Idiots function like gravitation; so there may be only a few people, but they create a certain atmosphere which pulls you downward. And it is easier to go downward.I know you love me. And I am not going to leave you, even though there are moments when anybody else in my place would leave. But I am not that type of person. Every difficulty to me is a challenge. Until I change those idiots, I am going to be here. It is a question of great importance: a struggle between enlightenment and retardedness. I am not going to be defeated by retarded people. Either they will have to change, or they will have to leave. So don’t be worried about me.The same I have told the INS: “If you give me the green card, perhaps I may leave America. If you don’t give me the green card, then there is no way I am going to leave America. America can leave – I am going to be here!”I have to fight with any challenge; that’s my nature. I have never turned my back on any challenge. I am not a hippie. Do you know the meaning of “hippie”? One who shows his hips and escapes. Sheela and her gang are hippies. People have forgotten the meaning of the word. The meaning of the word is, a coward who runs away from the challenge.Just as you love me, you know that I love you…even more. Even those who go on doing stupid things, I love them in the same way. I want them to change, because they are living a life which is not life – at the most vegetation. I have every compassion for them.This commune is a place of love. And if love cannot transform you, then what else can transform you? Love is the alchemy. And when so many people are radiating love, there is no fear of a few idiots. Our love will bring them up, will make them understand, will make them new human beings.So be absolutely satisfied…don’t be worried about me leaving you. You are free to leave me; I am not free to leave you. If Sheela can leave with twenty people – and I gave all those people all my love, but my love never takes away anybody’s freedom. But I cannot leave you, for the simple reason that I am not imprisoned here. It is my own will to be here, because I see the possibility in this commune for the future of the whole humanity.These are small episodes – Sheela and her gang, somebody doing a stupid thing…these are small episodes. My caravan is so big that a small percentage of idiots can be accepted with love and compassion. And the percentage is so small that it is bound to be changed.And this is my whole life’s stand: I have never turned from any fight. I cannot leave this place. I have to fight for the American Constitution against the Americans. I have to fight for all the beautiful values in the American Constitution. That is the only Constitution in the whole world which has some hope.But the politicians are the same around the world. Just third-rate street dogs! And in America they are in more difficulty because they have to keep up with high ideals, which is beyond their capacity. We have given all the proofs, all the evidences, testimonies, eyewitnesses, for so many crimes of Sheela and her group, but the attorney general of Oregon is silent, as if nothing has happened. He is not taking any step against the criminals. And he was so quick to take steps against us because we simply made him look foolish.We had made tents of a special kind – winterized, so even in winter, in snow, they can be used. They can be heated, they can even have air-conditioning. But they were tents, they were not permanent structures.Thinking that if heating is possible, air-conditioning is possible – without coming here or sending somebody to see – he immediately declared a one point four million dollar fine, because we had not taken out a permit, and these are permanent structures. For permanent structures you need permission; for tents you don’t. Then he was so quick…. In the whole history of Oregon nobody has been fined one and a half million dollars.I told my people that in the court there is no argument needed, no question of law. You just take a tent there, unfold it, put up the tent within ten minutes – it takes ten minutes to put it up. Tell the judge to go into the tent and have a look. Then fold it; within ten minutes it is packed up again. And ask him, “Is this a permanent structure? Can you do that with the White House?”And even the judge felt ashamed. He simply dismissed the whole case. But the attorney general has no feeling of shame. That time he was so quick. And he was so quick to declare Rajneeshpuram illegal because, according to him, religion and state are mixed.To make things clear I declared the religion dead. We have burned the religion completely. Now there is no religion here. But now he is not so quick to take his case back. If there is no religion, how can you mix religion with the state? We don’t have any clergy, we don’t have any church, we don’t have any theology, we don’t have any system of beliefs, we don’t have any holy scripture. We don’t have anything that defines a religion.This is a commune of mystics, seekers. It is not an organization. It is just an organic unity of friends who are searching for the truth on their own. The search is individual; hence, there is no question of any religion.If he had any intelligence, the attorney general should have withdrawn the case. But it is good that he is not withdrawing it, because that gives us another chance to be victorious in the court.But about the crimes – she has committed every crime possible; otherwise, there was no need to escape like a thief. Even these people have my love, still intact. I know whatever they have done is out of unconsciousness, blindness. There was no need to escape from here. They could have simply come and told me whatever they had done. That would have been more dignified, more like a sannyasin. And they should have faced the law with all our love and support. And even if they got a few years’ imprisonment, that would have been a blessing to them, because after that they would have come out clean, and I would have sent you all to receive them.But now they will go on carrying all that they have done – and done to innocent people, and done to me, who has always loved them, still loves them. They will carry a burden in their hearts, and they will remain criminals hiding here and there.Don’t be worried; I am not going to leave you. Of course you are always free to go, but wherever you go, you will find me there just within you. Whenever you close your eyes, you will find me. Whenever you are silent, you will hear my voice.Love is not a child’s play; it goes deep into the heart, and there is no way to get rid of it.So be cheerful.Osho,Once you said Jesus was fully enlightened. Recently, I heard you say Jesus was not enlightened. You tell us that you always say the truth. How can truth change so fast?Truth never changes, but statements about truth can change. When we start teaching a child, his book is full of big pictures and very little written matter. If he is learning the alphabet, then every letter stands for something. M stands for mango. The child can understand the mango, not the M, and he can see the mango – a colorful, beautiful picture. But slowly slowly the mango will be dropped. Now when you read, have you to repeat every time, “M stands for mango”? You have completely forgotten what stands for what. Now you can read the alphabet directly.Yes, I had said to you, “Jesus is enlightened.” It was “M stands for mango,” because you were not in a state to understand that Jesus is not enlightened. To say to you something which you cannot comprehend is meaningless. For centuries you have become accustomed to believe that Jesus is the only begotten son of God: he is light, he is love, he is life, he is the savior – twenty centuries of conditioning.Now you can understand my problem. I have to start with conditioned people, programmed people. Their conditioning is thick; I have to go with them so that they can go with me!So I had been going with all kinds of people: Hindus – and I have spoken twelve volumes on Krishna; Jainas – and I have spoken many volumes on Mahavira; Buddhists – and I have spoken more on Buddha than anybody else; Christians…. And even bishops and cardinals have written letters to me, “It is surprising – you are not a Christian, and in two thousand years nobody has shown such insight into the meanings of the statements of Jesus Christ.”And I had a belly laugh. Those statements are third-rate – not only third rate, but wrong too; the meaning that I had given to them was mine. But that was the only way that a Christian could become available to me, a Buddhist could become available to me.Now I have found my people, I need not say, “M stands for mango.” Now I can say to you exactly what is in my heart, and I know you will be able to understand. I have walked so long with you, can’t you walk a few steps with me? I have suffered so much, managing your conditionings, giving them meaning. Now I want you to listen to the naked truth.Jesus was not enlightened.Truth never changes, but statements have to change because the statement depends on the audience. I am not talking to the walls; if I were there would be no need to change the statement. I am talking to people who are conditioned and programmed. It is a very skillful work to decondition them, to deprogram them, to create a trust, a friendship, a love stronger than your conditioning – so that if a moment comes that you have to choose between your conditioning and the love, you will choose love.Now I have people who are ready to listen to the truth without any Jesus, any Krishna, any Buddha. I can now talk directly to you. These three and a half years of silence were simply a device to give a gap so that you could forget all that I have said before, and I could start afresh.Jesus is not enlightened. In fact, in the Western world enlightenment has been very rare. People have not worked for enlightenment, people have remained part of organized religion. And enlightenment needs a rebellious spirit so that you come out of all organized religions; you drop everything that has been taught to you, and you start looking within yourself for the truth of your being.Jesus is not a meditator – how can he become enlightened? He has not even taken the first step. He prays – and there is a tremendous difference between prayer and meditation.Prayer is directed towards a mythological God, a fiction. Prayer is always directed outward. Meditation is an inward journey, not to some fiction but to your own reality. Enlightenment happens to those who come to realize their being.Jesus is still praying to a God, thinking still that he is the only begotten son of God – that proves him just to be a crackpot – thinking that after crucifixion God will raise him again, more luminous, glorious. But on the cross nothing happens. He is thirsty and he asks for water, and God cannot even give him a bottle of Coke. Frustrated, he shouts towards the sky, “Father, have you forsaken me?” The very word “father” shows that he is still a helpless child, he is not a mature person. He still needs a father figure, and is afraid perhaps the father has forsaken him. But now it is too late – he is crucified.Jesus thinks that he is the savior. No enlightened person has ever said that he can save anybody; he can only share his experience. Then to save yourself or not is your business. See the subtlety of the point: if somebody can save you, then even your being saved is not your freedom, it is dependent. What kind of saving is it?Not a single enlightened man – Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu, Basho, Nagarjuna – has ever said that he is a savior. All that he can say is, “I am saved, and I have an experience which you don’t have. If you are ready to share it with me, I can open my whole heart to you.” And then it is your decision to be saved or not saved.I was sitting in Allahabad on the bank of the Ganges, alone. A man jumped into the river – and the Ganges at Allahabad is very deep, vast. I thought that he was just taking a bath, but after jumping he started shouting, “Save me!” He was going down and up, and whenever he came up, he would shout, “Save me!”Seeing no other way – and there was nobody else – I jumped into the water and pulled the man out. He was a heavier man, it was difficult to get him out. And he was very angry when he got out. He said to me, “Why did you save me?”I said, “My God! You were calling, and I am alone here. I have unnecessarily destroyed my clothes; now with wet clothes I have to go three miles to the place where I am staying. And if you didn’t want to be saved, why were you calling?”He said, “I want to commit suicide.”I said, “That’s perfectly okay. If you want to commit suicide, who am I to prevent you? Then why were you calling ‘Save me’?”He said, “Just natural instinct – when I started drowning, I forgot all about suicide.”I pushed the man back into the river.He said, “What are you doing!”I said, “I am simply undoing what I have done. Now I will not be deceived by what you say.” And he was drowning and again shouting, “Save me!”I said, “Nothing doing.”Nobody can save someone who does not want to be saved. And if somebody wants to be saved, he has to find the way himself.The enlightened person is just like a bird: he flies into the sky but leaves no footprints. You cannot follow him; you can simply see the joy, the freedom – that the whole sky is available to him.Perhaps that may awaken in you a desire also. Perhaps for the first time you will find that you also have wings. And if that bird can fly, why can’t you fly? The function of the enlightened person is just to create the milieu in which you become aware of your wings, you become aware of your potentialities.Jesus is not doing that. He is the shepherd and you are the sheep. No man has insulted humanity in such a way as Jesus has done. Enlightened people don’t humiliate; in fact, they respect you because they can see your potential – if not today, then tomorrow you will be flying. If not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow.Time does not matter, because we are part of eternity. On both ends it is eternity. Time does not matter. When you start flying has no significance; flying has significance.But to tell you, “I am the shepherd and you are the sheep,” is to destroy your individuality, is to destroy your freedom, is to destroy your integrity; is to destroy everything that is valuable, is to reduce you from human beings to animals. An enlightened person raises you, helps you to rise to super-human beings. He does not make you sheep.No, Jesus was not enlightened. In fact, in the Judaic and Christian tradition the orthodox have never been enlightened. Amongst Jews, there have been a few enlightened people, but they are not accepted by the orthodox Jews. Those are the Hassids – rare and really genuine people. But the orthodox will not accept them…and they are the only beauty that Judaism has created. The very flowering of Judaism is Hassidism, but it is rejected.The enlightened person is bound to be rejected by every tradition. In Greek tradition you will hear about Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, and so many other philosophers; but you will rarely see Heraclitus mentioned as an enlightened man, or Pythagoras, or even Socrates. But these are the people…. But the very word “enlightenment” does not exist in the Greek traditions.The same is true in Mohammedanism. Mohammed is not enlightened, and the orthodox tradition of Mohammedans rejects Sufi mystics who are enlightened: Jalaluddin Rumi, al-Hillaj Mansoor, Sarmad, Rabiya al-Adabiya. These people are not part of the traditional religion. They are rejected, condemned. The same has been true all over the world.But now it is time – I can tell you things directly. Rejoice that you are accepted as capable of hearing the truth.Osho,Is God really dead?Sure!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 28 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When and how do power and force become one? Master and disciple do not come from this space at all. Please comment.Power and force never become one. Power is something that radiates from you. The source is within. Force is violent. Force is interference, a trespass on the freedom of others. But, ordinarily, people don’t make the distinction between the two words. They use them almost synonymously.Love is power, but not force.A president has force, but not power.Power never hurts anybody; it is always healing energy. It showers on you like flowers showering on you. It is a fragrance that reaches to you very silently, not even making any noise. It is for you to receive it or not to receive it. It does not force you to receive it.Power keeps your dignity intact – in fact, it enhances it. It makes you more individual, it allows you more freedom. It makes no conditions on you. Force is totally the opposite of power. Force is violence against the other. But these words became synonymous; there must be some reason why. It is because in life we experience power changing into force.For example, you love someone; that is power. But then you get married, you are a husband and she is a wife; it is a social contract, it is business. Now power disappears, force enters in. You will still use the same words, but they don’t mean the same. You will still say, “I love you,” but you know that these are only empty words. Yes, once they were alive, once they had immense content. Once there was juice in them – now everything is just dry.You have to say, “I love you.” It is not coming from your heart, it is coming from your head. The space has changed. You will still kiss your wife, but it will be just an exercise of the lips; behind the lips there is nobody. You may be far away, thinking of your secretary. Your wife may be far away, thinking of her boss. Now power, which was a radiance, a field of energy, has disappeared. Instead there is force. Love is gone; law has entered into life. Because of these changes of power into force, the words have become synonymous – even to the linguists, who should know better. The difference is very subtle.Force is always that of the sword. The sword may grow into nuclear weapons. Power is always of love. It can grow only into deep mysteries, unknown spaces. Ultimately, it can become a source of religio. It can open doors, to both the lovers, of something transcendental. It can help them to merge with the universe.In the moments of love when their powers meet, they are two bodies but not two souls. In those moments they start feeling a deep synchronicity with existence itself – with the grass, with the trees, with the birds, with the clouds, with the stars – something which only heart is capable of. It is not a question of reasoning, but of experiencing.So remember, power has some spirituality in it. Force is animal. Muhammad Ali may have force; I do not have. What connects me to you? It is not power of the same kind as that with which Muhammad Ali is connected to his fans. It is so different. You are not my fans. You are me, as if I am extended in you.In Ramakrishna’s life – and Ramakrishna is one of the very significant persons of the last century – he became sick, he had cancer of the throat. He could not eat anything. And he had always loved delicious food, so much so that even his disciples had advised him, “This is not right for an enlightened man; this makes us feel embarrassed before others.”He would be talking about great things, and then in the middle he would say, “Wait, I will be coming back. I smell something. Sharda is cooking something really great” – Sharda was his wife. And he would go to the kitchen, leaving the disciples wondering what kind of enlightened man he is. And now he could not eat.Sharda was also a rare woman. They had never had a wife-and-husband relationship from the very first day, when Ramakrishna was only fourteen years old, and he had gone to see Sharda, with his parents and relatives, to see whether he liked her or not.His mother had put one rupee in his pocket in case he needed it – he was going to the nearby city. One rupee was more than enough in those days; one could live the whole month comfortably on one rupee.When Sharda came – and this is the traditional way, that the girl will come with the food, with the plates, and place the plates before all the guests, and that is the time when the boy can see her, his parents can see her. When she came to put the plate of food before Ramakrishna, his eyes were full of tears. He took out his one rupee, put it at her feet, touched her feet.His parents thought, What is he doing! He destroyed the whole thing. Husbands don’t touch the feet of their wives, although wives can touch their husband’s feet. And putting this one rupee at her feet, and touching her feet; what does he think – is she a goddess, or what?And they asked Ramakrishna, “Do you like the girl?”He said, “Immensely.”They got married. The girl’s family was also a little bit shaky about whether to let this marriage happen or not, because the boy seemed to be a little crazy. Nobody had ever heard of this kind of thing. But he was such a lovely, healthy, silent, beautiful young man, they could not refuse. And Sharda insisted that if she married anyone, then she would marry Ramakrishna. They said, “Are you mad? – because what he has done is simply a proof that he can do anything.”But Sharda said, “Something in his tears, something in his touching my feet, has touched my very heart. Now I cannot be anyone else’s wife – that would be cheating. I have already accepted him as my lord.”They got married. On the first night, the first thing Ramakrishna did was, he placed her high on a stool and worshipped her. She was a young girl – just maybe thirteen years of age. She asked what he was doing, and Ramakrishna said, “From today you will be my mother, I will be your son. Don’t tell anybody; otherwise they will think we are mad. So to the outside world I will be your husband, you will be my wife; but as far as we are concerned, you will be my mother and I will be your son.” And that’s how they remained: mother and son.So when he became sick with cancer of the throat, Sharda asked him, “This is unbearable – you loved food so much, and preparing food for you was my only worship. Why don’t you ask God to remove this cancer? If you ask, it is going to happen!”Ramakrishna said, “If you say, I will ask.” He closed his eyes, then opened them and said to Sharda, “I am sorry. I asked, but he says, ‘You have eaten from this throat your whole life. Now why can’t you eat through the throat of Sharda, of your disciples? All those throats are yours!’“And he is right, so I will be eating…. So don’t be sad. There is a possibility of such an organic unity that your throat can become my throat, that your hands can become my hands. And if it does not happen, then there is no love.”Love is the greatest miracle in existence.Naturally, there is no power higher than love.But love is not a force. The very word force – the very sound of the word “force” indicates that you are interfering in somebody’s being. You are destroying somebody, reducing somebody to a thing.So remember, power never becomes force. Power becomes bigger and bigger; it can become universal, but it still remains power. It is a benediction, a blessing. Force is ugly. Force is inhuman. Don’t be misled by the fact that in the dictionaries they mean the same. Dictionaries are not written by enlightened people; otherwise, words would have different meanings, different connotations, and language would have a purity. But unconscious people go on writing dictionaries, books on linguistics. They have never known anything like power; they have known only force. Naturally, to them the words are synonymous. But to me they are contraries.Keep them separate; never become attracted towards force. Be full of power – which is yours; expand it, let others share it. And it can become so vast that you can spread yourself over the whole existence.That’s what enlightenment is: when even the farthest stars move within you, when there is nothing outside you, when everything becomes your interior kingdom. But it has not been conquered, it has not been invaded. It is through the sheer magnetism of love that the whole universe has become your own, and you have become part of the whole universe.Osho,Is meditation enough to be whole and healthy? Please explain.The word “meditation” and the word “medicine” come from the same root. Medicine means that which heals the physical, and meditation means that which heals the spiritual. Both are healing powers.Another thing to be remembered: the word “healing” and the word “whole” also come from the same root. To be healed simply means to be whole, not missing anything. Another connotation of the word – the word “holy” – also comes from the same root. Healing, whole, holy, are not different in their root.Meditation heals, makes you whole; and to be whole is to be holy. Holiness has nothing to do with belonging to any religion, belonging to any church. It simply means that inside you, you are entire, complete; nothing is missing, you are fulfilled. You are what existence wanted you to be. You have realized your potential.In the West, meditation has not grown roots, because all three religions in the West – Judaism, and the two offshoots of Judaism – Christianity and Islam – are all prayer-oriented.Prayer and meditation are absolute contraries: prayer moves outwards. Prayer is addressed to a God you know nothing of – just a belief given to you by your parents, society, church, synagogue. You pray, but there is nobody who is listening to your prayer. There is nobody who is going to answer your prayer.Yes, people who pray may feel good; that does not mean that their prayer has been heard. Just praying, they become silent. Just praying, a certain kind of attitude arises in them; they put aside their ego, they put aside everything else. They become pointedly concentrated on the idea of God. It is their idea, their projection, but it will give them a feeling of well-being. And that well-being is very deceptive; it makes you feel that your prayer is significant. And there must be a God; otherwise, after prayer, why do you feel so quiet, so calm?Prayer functions almost like autohypnosis. There is no need for a God, you can concentrate on anything. In India there are people who worship trees, and they get the same feeling. There are people who worship statues – just stones – and they get the same feeling. There are people who worship the sun, or the river, and they get the same feeling. The question is not what you worship; the question is that if you become concentrated you fall into a hypnotic trance. And a hypnotic trance is very relaxing, it gives you well-being.So if you are doing the prayer just to feel well-being, there is no harm, it is perfectly good. But it has nothing to do with the search for truth. It has nothing to do with the inquiry into your own being.Meditation moves inwards; prayer directs you outwards. That’s why I say their dimensions are polar opposites. Prayer needs a God, an object. And you can have any kind of object. Hindus have thirty-three million gods. Why have just one, when you are going to imagine? Why be so miserly? Hindus have gods in abundance. You can choose, according to your liking, any kind of god.To outsiders it looks very strange, but they don’t understand the psychology of prayer. It does not matter what you are praying, to whom your prayer is addressed. All that matters is that you should be concentrated.You can do the same just lying down looking at the light bulb without blinking your eyes, praying – at least the light bulb is not your imagination, it is there – and soon you will fall into a hypnotic trance. And when you wake up you will feel very refreshed, rejuvenated, livelier than ever, younger.So nothing is wrong as far as all these things are concerned. The problem is, if you think this is religio, this is spiritual growth, then you are falling into a very dangerous fallacy.Religion is a journey inwards, and meditation is the way. What meditation actually does is, it takes you, your consciousness, as deep as possible. Even your own body becomes something outside. Even your own mind becomes something outside. Even your own heart – which is very close to the center of your being – becomes outside. When your body, mind and heart, all three, are seen as outside, you have come to the very center of your existence.This coming to the center is a tremendous explosion which transforms everything. You will never be the same man again, because now you know the body is only the outer shell; the mind is a little bit inner, but not really your inner core; the heart is a little bit more inner, but still not the innermost center. You are disidentified with all the three.It is because of this that George Gurdjieff used to call his way “the fourth way” – because if you can transcend these three, you reach the fourth, beyond which there is no way to go. You have come to the very end.But this gives you many experiences. You start feeling, for the first time, crystallized, not that old wishy-washy person you had always been. For the first time you start feeling a tremendous energy, inexhaustible energy that you were not aware of. For the first time you know that death will happen only to the body, to the mind, to the heart, but not to you.You are eternal. You have always been here, and you will always be here – in different forms, and ultimately in a state of formlessness. But you cannot be destroyed, you are indestructible. That takes all fear from you. And the disappearance of fear is the appearance of freedom. The disappearance of fear is the appearance of love.Now you can share. You can give as much as you want, because you are now at the inexhaustible source of living waters. Many who are thirsty will be coming to you. They will find you, there is no need for you to call them; their very thirst will bring you in contact with them. They will come closer to you, because as they come closer they will find their thirst disappearing and a great contentment arising in them. The same as you are, they are becoming.Meditation makes you whole, makes you holy, and makes you an inexhaustible source for all those who are hungry, thirsty, seeking, searching, groping in the dark. You become a light, and many can share your light. And you can see it: one candle which is lighted can help many candles to be lighted. That does not diminish its own light.One enlightened being can share his enlightenment and many can become lighted. But his enlightenment is not diminished; on the contrary, it increases. The more he gives, the more he is. A moment comes when he gives himself totally. And that is the moment when he becomes a master. Then those who are ready to take, who are open, available, can take as much as they want.The master is only a light. He is not a teacher, but something transpires between him and the disciple. And the moment the disciple also becomes lighted, there is no difference between the master and the disciple. And that is the greatest joy for the master – when all his disciples are also masters.That has been my whole idea in creating communes around the world. These communes are not ordinary organized religions, these communes are not communes of believers. These communes are alchemical labs for transformation and for creating more and more masters. With less than masters I will not be satisfied.Meditation is the way to the mastery of your own being. No God is needed, no catechism is needed, no holy book is needed. Nobody is needed to become a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu – all that is sheer nonsense. All that is needed is to find your center, and meditation is the simplest way to find it. It will make you whole, healthy spiritually, and it will make you so rich that you can destroy all the spiritual poverty of the world. And that is the real poverty.The poverty of physical bodies for food, for clothes, for shelter, can be easily helped by science and technology. But science and technology cannot help to give you blissfulness – that is beyond their scope. And you may have everything that the world can offer, but if you don’t have peace, serenity, silence, ecstasy, you will still remain poor. In fact, you will feel your poverty more than ever, because the contrast will be there. You are living in a golden palace, and you know you are a beggar. The golden palace will become a contrast: now you can see inside there is nothing, you are just empty.That’s why, as humanity becomes more intelligent, more mature, more and more people start feeling meaninglessness, more and more people start feeling life is accidental, that it is just futile to go on living.The latest developments in philosophy in the West all indicate one thing, that perhaps suicide is the only solution. And of course, if you don’t know your inner world, and you have everything available that the outside world can give to you, suicide will appear to be the only solution.Meditation can make you inwardly rich. Then suicide is out of the question; even if you want to destroy yourself, there is no way. Your being is indestructible. And to know this immortality is a great freedom – from death, from disease, from old age. All those things will come and go, but you remain untouched, unscratched. Your inner health is beyond any sickness. And it is there, just to be discovered.Osho,Could religio be termed as neo-education?Please comment.No, because education is something very ordinary. Religio will remain religio. It cannot be replaced by another word, for the simple reason that it has multidimensional meanings which no other word can have.The first meaning of religio is: to make you one. All the societies and cultures and religions have made you schizophrenic, split. They have divided you in many parts – the good part, the bad part, the light part, the dark part, the higher and the lower. They have been teaching humanity for centuries that you are not acceptable as you are; you have to drop many of your essential parts. Then only will you be acceptable; otherwise you will remain a sinner. To become a saint, you have to go on destroying many parts of your being, your nature.Religio means, nothing has to be destroyed, nothing has to be cut from you. Everything that you have has to be used in an organic unity. In fact, what you call bad, what you call black, dark, devil – they all can enhance what you call divine, white, good.Just look at a painter. He uses all the colors; he uses black, he uses white too. He uses all the colors to create something immensely beautiful; everything just has to be in the right place. Go to any school and you will see a blackboard, because to write with white chalk, a blackboard is needed. It gives the white letters more whiteness, it creates the contrast. The same words can be written on a white board and they will be lost, you will not be able to see them.Life is a great orchestra, all the instruments have to be used. But if you don’t know how to play all the instruments, then instead of an orchestra there will be just noise, a nuisance – neurotic, unbearable. A master musician will put the same instruments in the right places, to be used in the right times to create the symphony.Man comes with all the ingredients to become an enlightened person, but very few people manage to become – for the simple reason that you start fighting with yourself, rather than trying to understand all your ingredients and finding ways they can be used to create a beautiful symphony.Religio simply means to put all your separate parts together in oneness, to make a cosmos out of your chaos. It also means that it is an individual process, that there is no need for crowds, no need to become part of organized religions – because the organized religions have not produced a single enlightened person. Have you thought about it? All the enlightened persons had to rebel against the organized religions; only then could they become enlightened. It seems organized religions are the greatest barrier to enlightenment.Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Baal Shem Tov – all these people had to go out of the organized religion for the simple reason that the organized religions exist for the mob, and the mob has no desire to become free of their slavery. In fact, they find themselves very cozy and comfortable in their slavery.Freedom freaks them out! Freedom creates fear in them. Freedom means responsibility. In slavery you are not responsible; you have just to follow the order, just to do what the priest says. You have not to find your own truth, you have to just become parrots and repeat The Holy Bible, The Holy Koran, The Holy Gita. You don’t have to journey inwards; you have to become only more informed, more learned, more accustomed to the rituals – howsoever meaningless.Anybody who wants to become enlightened will have many doubts about all these rituals, about all these scriptures, about all that is being taught in the churches and synagogues by the bishops, by the rabbis, by the shankaracharyas. There are bound to be a thousand and one doubts.Religio is individual, religion is organized. And the most challenging thing in the world is to be individual. But the greater the challenge, the more is the gain, the more you become steel, the more of your potential becomes actual.But in organized religion there is no challenge: there are only consolations. Those consolations function as opium. They help the crowd not to revolt against all kinds of exploitation, against all kinds of superstition, against all kinds of stupidities.In the whole of history, not a single organized religion has been able to produce a single enlightened man. Those who became enlightened became against the organized religion. They had to become individuals, rebels. They were tortured, they were harassed, they were condemned, because all the forces for torturing people, condemning, harassing them, were in the hands of the organized religions.And the state has been always in conspiracy with organized religions. They support each other, their aim is the same. The state, the politicians want people to be enslaved physically, and the priest wants people to be enslaved spiritually. And enlightenment is freedom, freedom in all its dimensions.So please, don’t bother looking for another word, there is no need. Religio has all the meanings that are needed. Religio has no scripture, no doctrine except a challenge: “You are alive – seek the source of your life.”It only provokes the dormant desire to know oneself: it does not give a belief, an idea who you are. It simply provokes the desire to know thyself. And it allows you to be thyself – against the whole world. It is the only revolution there is.Osho,The other day you spoke about siddhas, arihantas and acharyas. Could you speak about bodhisattvas. Is there any relevance in these sansads now?Please comment.The Rajneesh Academy has many dimensions to fulfill. One I talked to you about was to appoint acharyas, siddhas, arihantas. These are not clergymen, not bishops and cardinals and popes. They don’t have any function to perform – marriage, birth of a child, circumcision, death, no. Any friend, any sannyasin can do all these things.So there is no question of clergymen. In fact, it is a question of friends. Somebody dies…then those who were close to him, they should perform the death ceremony. The clergyman may not have even known the person; he will simply repeat a certain ritual. It is better that friends perform the ceremony.If there is a marriage, there is no need for any clergyman. Moreover, it is very strange that most of the religions’ clergymen are celibate – and they are performing marriages! – just doing something which is a sin. Friends should do it, those who know the lovers should perform the ceremony – not in the name of God, not in the name of any holy book, but in the name of love.If a child is born, then friends should be present there, helping the child, helping the mother, making the atmosphere as natural as possible. No clergyman is needed, not even a doctor is needed – just people who love, a small group of people who love. Their presence will help the woman to go through the pains more easily. Their presence and their understanding will help the child to enter into the world more lovingly. Now, a clergyman doing circumcision…. It is not a very great welcome to the world. It is really hurting the child.What the doctors have been doing has not been very friendly. Yes, it has been professional, but their profession is based on wrong knowledge. As the child is born, the first thing the doctor will do is to hang the child upside down, and to hit the child on his bottom – that is the traditional way – so that the child starts crying. But this is not a great welcome to the world – coming crying into the world! And immediately he cuts the cord that joins the child with the mother. That too is not right.But he is in a hurry, every professional is in a hurry. He has to do many other things; there are other mothers waiting. The whole hospital is full of pregnant women; he cannot waste unnecessary time. The room is full of glaring light. And nobody thinks that the child has been for nine months in utter darkness; his eyes are very delicate. This blinding light perhaps may be the cause of all the glasses that you see in the world. Eyes are damaged from the very beginning.Friends should think of the child, his future, because the first step is almost the most important step.Only candlelight should be there, not glaring electric lights – there is no need! Incense should be burning there; the child should be received with flowers, roses. And the child has been in his mother’s womb at a certain temperature, floating in a liquid which is exactly the same as sea water. As the child is born, immediately he should be put into a tub with the same temperature he is accustomed to, with the same kind of water, the same salts, which are very relaxing. And don’t be in a hurry to cut the cord. Let the child first start breathing. And once the child starts breathing, then cut the cord.Right now what happens is that doctors cut the cord – and then they have to hang the child upside down, to hit him on the bottom, so out of shock he starts breathing. But this is treating the child like an old Ford – you have to push from the back for half a mile, then it starts. This is stupid. Yes, it is done quickly. It is in favor of the doctor, but not in favor of the child, because he has not started breathing on his own and you have cut the cord. You have created such a great fear of death that it will follow the child his whole life.First wait – and it is not more than three minutes – until the child starts breathing on his own. When he starts breathing, then cut the cord, because then he does not need it and it won’t hurt him. And he will never be so fearful as you see people are fearful now. Then take the child and put him on his mother’s belly. He has been inside the belly – don’t take him away so far, so quickly. Put the child on the belly, because he knows only one contact, only one warmth, and that is his mother’s body. He is acquainted only with his mother’s body, so let him rest. After a good bath, let him rest on his mother’s belly. You can play the guitar. You can sing a beautiful song – nothing like jazz!…something soft, something more Eastern and more classical, which is soothing and which will make the child comfortable in his new world.I have told you about these three titles – siddha, arihanta, acharya – which are experiential. I have also created three groups which will be active only when I leave the body. So you will have to wait a little for them to become active. While I am here there is no need for these three groups to be active. But these three groups belong to Rajneesh Academy.The first group is the mahasattvas. These are the people who will become enlightened before my death. The second group is the sambuddhas, who are already enlightened, but because I am here, they will remain anonymous just out of their gratitude. The third group is the bodhisattvas, who will become enlightened before their death.So I have chosen names for these groups, and I have directed the groups about their numbers – that these numbers should remain constant, and if one person dies, how he has to be replaced. I have given them all the instructions. But that is not of any use to you.When I am not here, then the people who will be running the commune will need elders for guidance. These three groups will provide all kinds of guidance. They will not have any power; they will not be holding any post, but they will be available to all the people who are running the communes here and around the world, for any guidance.When I say they will not be holding any post, that does not mean that anybody who is holding a post cannot be a member of any of the groups. As a group member, he will not be holding the post, but as an individual he can hold the post. But while he is on the post, he cannot function as a member of the group.I want these groups completely free from any politics, so they can have a very nonpolitical vision. And if they need to, all three groups can meet and take decisions, and their decisions will be absolute. All their decisions have to be unanimous. Unless they come to a unanimous decision, it is not of any worth. So it is not a political thing, that majority decision will win. They have to argue, discuss, persuade, and come to a unanimous decision. Then only can they advise the people who are in power to follow it.Rajneesh Academy will become your source of religio.Osho,Your hand rises and embraces the universe. A wisp of your beard moves as you walk away. And I fall in love again and again and again. Osho,, what is the magic?Baby, I don’t know!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 29 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,God is dead, religion is dead; then what is left?God has never been in the first place. It is the greatest lie that has been told to humanity. When I say God is dead, it simply means the lie is dead, the fiction is dead. And when a lie dies, no corpse is left behind.So remember it, don’t misunderstand the statement that God is dead. It does not mean that he was alive. It does not mean that he was sick, it does not mean that he was on his deathbed, it does not mean that you have to go to the crematorium again. He has never been there. Existence knows nothing of God. It is only the crafty priests who had invented the fiction. With the death of the fiction, the profession of the priests becomes irrelevant.When I say religion is dead, there is something very significant to be understood. Religion is alive only when it is unorganized, when it is an individual search out of your own freedom; not based on any belief system, but simply based on a deep inquiry – which is man’s privilege. That makes a man a man, when he starts looking into what life is all about, who he is. When he turns in to find out the very center and the source of life, of love, of consciousness, religion is alive.Religion is dead the moment it becomes something collective, organized. When it becomes Christianity it is dead. When it becomes Hinduism it is dead. When it becomes Buddhism it is dead. When it becomes Rajneeshism it is dead.If you are here as an individual seeker, then there is a beauty. There is no hierarchy, there is no dogma, no creed. You have to find your way yourself. In fact, the very effort of finding the way crystallizes you. To be closer to the truth – the very fact of inquiring into the truth means you have completed almost half the journey.When religion becomes organized it becomes a catechism. You are handed over a belief system. You have only to believe, there is no need for you to inquire. You have to believe in Jesus Christ – that’s enough. You have to believe in Gautam the Buddha, and that’s enough.Belief is the most dangerous thing against truth, because it prevents you inquiring. It makes you knowledgeable, but it does not make you wise. It can make you a great scholar, a theologian, but deep inside you are full of darkness; you don’t know who you are.Organized religions have been deceiving humanity for thousands of years. But they could do it because you allowed it to be done. Belief is cheap; you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to go into the unknown, the mysterious. You have just to cling to your belief system and Jesus will save you, Buddha will save you.Nobody can save anybody else. That will be against human dignity. If I save you, I am not your friend. I have taken away your birthright – the most important, the most significant glory of your being. I have not allowed you to discover the truth yourself, and I have destroyed you, not saved you.Truth can be known only as an individual experience. It is just like love. You don’t have organizations of love. Just think of organizations of love! – and they say to you, “You have just to believe, you have not to do anything else. The savior will do everything; he will make love on your behalf.” But truth is an even higher quality.And people have been telling you, “We will do it on your behalf – you just have faith in us.” That’s why religions are called faiths. And every religion is fake, because whatsoever you do, your doubt will remain within. You can repress it as deeply as possible, but the deeper you repress it, the more dangerous it becomes. The result is fanaticism.All believers who find that there is still some doubt, somewhere, become fanatic. It is a simple psychology. By becoming fanatic they are trying to repress their doubt below their consciousness. But even if you drive it beyond your consciousness into the unconscious, you are not free of it. In fact, you are more full of it.All the religions are afraid of reading other religions’ books, listening to other religions’ teachers, for the simple reason that they all differ in their belief systems – they may create doubt in you. They are so afraid of doubt – but it is within you, and the only way to get rid of it is to know the truth of your own accord.My truth cannot dispel your darkness. You can believe in me – it is cheap. You can believe and console yourself, and waste your whole life in believing. But you will die as ignorant as you were born.So when I say religion is dead, I mean religiousness is always alive – that is something individual – but religion is always dead. Religion is an organization; religiousness is a search. I want my people to understand the difference very clearly. Howsoever difficult it may be, the only way to find the truth is individual. There are no superhighways, only small footpaths, and they too are not ready-made, available. You create them as you walk.You cannot walk in somebody else’s footsteps. That is suicidal, because you have a unique individuality, the person you are following has his own unique individuality. His path can never be your path. He can be an inspiration for you, but he cannot be a leader for you. Leaders exist only in politics. The moment leaders start existing in religion, religion is no longer religion. It has become another name for politics.The most basic thing to recognize is that it is your privilege to find the truth yourself. Only that finding can save you, can release you from all bondage; can make you aware of eternal life, can take you beyond death, can take you into the benediction that existence is.So when I said the religion is dead, I mean that I don’t want you to become a religion. I want you to remain simply seekers, searchers. And it is a great excitement to seek, to search, to find on your own. Small things make you so ecstatic when you are the finder.For example, what happened to Archimedes? He had not found something great, but he had found something which was not known before. The king of his country had received a beautiful golden crown. He wanted to know whether the crown was solid gold or if there were other metals mixed in it. And the crown was so beautiful he did not want it destroyed to find out. He said to Archimedes, “You are the greatest scientist. You have to find out, without destroying the crown, whether it is solid gold or not.”It was an almost impossible task. But one morning, when he entered his bathroom…his bath was full of water, he entered the bath – and strangely, he found what he was seeking. As he entered the bath, naturally, to make space for him, a lot of water spilled out. He became very intrigued with the phenomenon. He came out, weighed himself, weighed the water, the quantity of water that had gone out – and he figured out the solution. If gold is put in water, if it is pure gold, then a certain quantity of water will come out to make space for it. But if it is not pure gold, then a greater quantity of water will come out, because every metal will bring a different quantity of water out of the tub.It was such a great excitement – he was naked in his bathroom, but the excitement was such that he forgot. He just rushed out, ran on the streets towards the palace shouting, “Eureka! Eureka! I have found it! I have found it!”When he reached the palace, a great crowd was following him. “What has happened to the man? He has gone insane!” He was involved in such experiments that they were always afraid that some day he would go crazy. Now that had happened.Even the king was suspicious when he looked out of his window – a big crowd, and Archimedes naked, shouting, “Eureka!” Naturally, he thought Archimedes had gone insane, but he called him in and asked, “What have you found? What is the matter? What is so much excitement about?”Archimedes said, “I have found out something which nobody has known before! Now I can say whether your crown is solid gold or mixed with other metals. I will just have to dip it into water.” Not a big discovery….But when you find the truth of your being, it is the greatest discovery there is. And beliefs prevent you. They say you need not bother; you simply believe, you worship, you pray. Jesus Christ has already found, why should you bother? Gautam Buddha has already found, you can just follow him. But this is fallacious. For twenty-five centuries millions of people have followed Gautam Buddha, in his footprints; none of them has become another Gautam Buddha. For two thousand years, how many people have been following Jesus Christ? And how many have become a Jesus Christ?To be a Christian is ugly. To be a Buddhist is ugly. It simply says you are blind; you don’t know anything, and you are following somebody because you believe that he knows. In fact, in existence, no individual is repeated again. Existence is very inventive.It happened that one of Picasso’s paintings was purchased by an American for one million dollars. Naturally, he wanted to know whether it was an authentic Picasso or not. He approached Picasso himself – because that was the only way to find out – and he asked Picasso, “Is this painting authentically yours, or has somebody made a copy of your painting?”Picasso looked at the painting, and he said, “It is not authentic.”Picasso’s girlfriend was amazed by the answer, because Picasso had painted that painting in front of her. She said to Picasso, “This is an inhuman joke! That man has spent one million dollars! He has come from America to France to ask you – and you are lying, because I am an eyewitness. You have painted this painting; this is absolutely authentic!”Picasso said, “You are not wrong. I have painted it, but still I say it is not authentic.”Now the man who had purchased the painting was absolutely in confusion. The girlfriend was also puzzled. What does Picasso mean? If he says he has painted the painting, and still insists it is not an authentic Picasso, this is a contradiction.The man said, “This is even more confusing. It was good that it was not authentic; at least things were settled. But now you are saying you have painted it, and still it is not authentic. What do you mean then?”Picasso said, “It is very simple, there is no contradiction. I have copied it from one of my old paintings. It is not authentic, it is just a copy. I have painted it, but it is not original. Somebody was insisting that he wants a painting, and I was not getting any ideas, so I simply used an old painting of mine and painted – it is a copy. Now it does not matter who copies, Picasso or somebody else: a copy is a copy, it cannot be authentic.”I am telling you this incident to remind you that existence never produces copies. It only produces authentic individuals – never again the same person, never before. You are unique: you have never been in the whole eternity that has passed before you, and you will never be in the coming whole eternity. This uniqueness is something to be proud of.Your truth has to be discovered only by you.Yes, the person who has discovered his truth can be a guide, but he can only say how he has discovered his truth. And he can make you alert that “You are not to follow my path.” But he can give you tremendous encouragement, that a fellow human being, someone just like you, is capable of finding the truth. Maybe you have to find your path, but his presence is a guarantee, is an encouragement that truth can be found, that it is not something utopian; it is something realistic.I call this state of affairs religio, the root from where the word religion comes. Religio is individual; religion is organized. And the moment you organize the truth, it dies. There are things, values, which cannot be organized at all. They are so delicate that organization is impossible.And you are asking me: “God is dead, religion is dead; then what is left?”In fact, because God is not there – which was a fiction covering your eyes; and organized religion is dead – which was sheer stupidity, ignorance – therefore nothing is lost, everything is gained. You have simply lost layers of fictions from your eyes. Now you can see the real existence as it is. Everything that is becomes available to you – it was not available to you before because of your lies and fictions and beliefs. So nothing is lost and everything is gained. The whole existence, all its beauty, its tremendous benediction, its infinite bliss – all is available. You had just put thick layers on your eyes which were making you blind.You have lost your blindness and you have gained your insight: this is a good bargain!Osho,We dropped red clothes, malas, temples, gachchhamis, worship. Did we forget something – like dropping our egos?Just look how easily you can drop red clothes, how easily you can drop your malas, how easily you can drop gachchhamis, because you were never authentically and sincerely in love with them. You pretended, you were hypocrites.You had pretended you loved your mala, but the moment you found the chance to drop it, you dropped it immediately. And you must be thinking you dropped it because I have said so. But I have been telling you for years continuously to drop the ego – that you don’t drop.Strange…I said only one day, “Drop the malas,” and you were so happy and so clapping, rejoicing. But when I say, “Drop the ego,” you don’t clap. You know that you are not going to drop it. Ego seems to you to be very precious, and ego is nothing but poison. The mala cannot harm you, red clothes cannot harm you. But the ego is constantly harming you.The ego means your ambition to be superior to others, to be higher than others, to be bigger than you really are; in every field to be more important, to be somebody who has power over people either through politics or through money. All these are different dimensions of your ego. And if you go on fulfilling these desires you can never come to a state of contentment, fulfillment, because the ego is just like the horizon. It looks so close – as if you just have to walk a little more and you will reach it. But by the time you have reached there, the horizon has also moved away.The distance between you and the horizon remains always exactly the same, because the horizon does not exist in reality; it only appears to. It is an appearance, because the earth nowhere meets the sky. But because it is round, the fallacy is created: you feel that somewhere, just close by, it is meeting the sky.The ego is your psychological horizon. You can go on, but you will never come to a point when you can say, “My ego is satisfied.” That is not in the nature of the ego, to be satisfied. To remain in discontent is its very nature. I have not seen a single person who can say that his ego is satisfied – and I have known all kinds of people.In Indore, India, I used to be a guest of one of the richest men of the world – perhaps the richest man of the world – Sir Seth Hukumchand. He has beautiful palaces made all of Italian marble. His own private temple is a unique piece of art. It is made only of glass crystals – a huge temple made just of glass crystals. You stand in the temple and you see yourself reflected in millions of mirrors. You are surrounded by a crowd of your selves.He was the only man in the whole world who had a Rolls Royce made in solid gold – even the engine! Nothing else but solid gold was used. But I have never seen a more frustrated person in my life. He had everything, but whenever I used to stay with him he was always talking about his frustrations, anxieties, and that he was becoming old and his desires were not fulfilled.Desires are millions, and your life is so small. He had perhaps become the richest man – but that was not certain, because the Nizam of Hyderabad had so many diamonds, emeralds and rubies that every year, when they were brought out of the treasury, seven terraces of his palaces were filled by them. They were not counted; they were weighed. Counting was impossible, because in his small kingdom of Hyderabad was the best diamond mine, from which all the great diamonds of the world have come. The Kohinoor, which is in the crown of the queen of England, has come from the Nizam’s collection. His collection is immense. Nobody has been able to evaluate it.Sir Seth Hukumchand used to say to me, “Who knows, perhaps he is richer than me! Perhaps I am not the richest man, the Nizam of Hyderabad may be the richest man.”I said, “Strange – why should you be worried? You have everything that you want, you can have everything that you want.” But this is how the ego functions.Working his whole life, earning – he had thousands of businesses, industries, around the country – naturally, he had destroyed his health. Now that was a problem for the ego: even his servants were more healthy than he was. He had the healthiest horses in India – because he was a lover of horse races, and he had unique horses. I have never seen that kind of horse anywhere else. Those horses were living in marble palaces, the stable was a marble palace. And they were as healthy as any horse can be.But his ego was suffering because even his servants, even his horses were healthier than him. And he was not a man you could call beautiful. He had beautiful palaces and beautiful collections of all kinds of things. He had his own private museum. From all over the world everything that he wanted was purchased for his museum. But he was just an ordinary, homely man – not beautiful, not handsome – and that was hurting his ego. He was not very tall – that was hurting his ego.I said, “You are just unnecessarily creating problems for yourself. A six-foot man, or a five-foot man – it doesn’t matter, because the five-foot man also reaches the earth, his feet are on the earth. So you may be six feet, seven feet, it doesn’t matter; your feet are on the earth. And as far as the sky is concerned, nobody’s head touches the sky. So what is the problem? You are not hanging one foot above the earth because you are only five feet tall. That would have been a real problem. But I don’t see the problem – your feet reach the earth perfectly well!”But the ego is impossible. And because you are trying to fulfill the ego, you forget your real task. Who is going to discover your real self, which is not the ego? Ego is something made up, a facade. It is a palace made of playing cards: a small breeze, and the palace disappears. And that’s what happened.Sir Seth Hukumchand was known as the silver king of India because he was the dominant figure as far as silver was concerned. It was in his hands to control the price of silver; to bring it down or to bring it up was within his hands. But before he died he was almost bankrupt. Somebody else had become the silver king.Before his death I had gone to see him, and I told him, “Now you can relax. All that stupidity is gone; you are bankrupt. You could not enjoy all those riches, now enjoy bankruptcy.” And in his old age – he was almost eighty – he started crying. I said, “You have not lost anything, because when those things were there you were not happy, you were not rejoicing – so what is the loss?”He said, “I am not crying for all that. I am crying that death is coming near and I have not looked even for a moment into myself. And you have been telling me again and again that the ego will not help, you will have to find the self; ego is a false substitute.”But when I say to you, “Drop the ego,” you all become deaf. “Drop the mala,” and you are immediately ready. But all have not dropped the mala. Those who had loved it, those who had accepted it as symbolic of a relationship with me – they have not dropped it. Neither have they dropped their red clothes, because red clothes have become their remembrance of being a sannyasin, that they are initiated into a mystery school. Those red clothes twenty-four hours a day remind you that your work is to find yourself. They have not dropped them.A few immediately dropped…and it was simply a great experiment to see who is really an initiate, and who is here just by accident. Those who did not drop the mala and did not drop the red clothes may perhaps be able to drop their egos first. Then those who dropped the mala and the red clothes and rushed to the boutique to find new clothes, they will be the last to drop the ego.And I am not Jesus, who said, “Blessed are the last” – no. Blessed are the first! Cursed are the last!Osho,In the Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde says, “For all men kill the things they love. Yet not everyone has to die.” It feels like this insight does not only apply to Sheela, it seems to refer to each of us.Please forgive our deafness, Osho, and from your compassion, go on encouraging our souls to grow and not fall back and die.Oscar Wilde is not an enlightened person, but a very keen observer of life, and he has many great insights. This is one of his great insights: People kill those things they love.Why does it happen?…because your love is not pure love, it has many other things. Just hiding behind it there is jealousy, there is a power trip, there is fear of losing the loved one.So lovers try to make each other prisoners – afraid that if they don’t make them prisoners, then their freedom may take them away from them. They cut their wings so that they cannot fly. They are so jealous and suspicious that they destroy each other’s joy in life. They want the other to be loving, and the other wants the same, so it becomes almost a dead ritual. You can see a husband kissing a wife: he is just doing a dead ritual because it has to be done; otherwise there will be trouble.The American philosopher, Dale Carnegie, whose books have sold next to the Bible – and he could be a philosopher only in America, because whatever he is talking is such nonsense and rubbish – he suggests that you remember to say two or three times in the day to your wife, “I love you.” The same “I love you” the wife has to say two, three times a day to the husband.But it is not coming out on its own, you are following the book of Dale Carnegie and just repeating like a parrot “I love you.” And both know that the love has disappeared long ago, only words have remained. They have killed the love, they have tried to possess each other; and when you try to possess someone you reduce his humanity to a commodity. A wife is not human, she is a thing. A husband is not human, he is a thing.In China, for thousands of years, until the communist revolution three decades ago, to kill one’s wife was not a crime because the wife was your possession. If you destroyed your table or your chair, nobody could say that it was a crime. It was your chair and if you wanted to burn it, it was nobody’s business to interfere. The wife was a possession; hence, the husband was allowed to murder a human being and it was not counted as a crime.In China, the small girl babies had their feet bound so that their feet didn’t grow big; that was thought to be one of the most beautiful things in a woman. Only the poor could afford, in China, to have natural feet. In higher society the women were almost crippled; they could not walk, their feet were so small. The body had grown and the feet had remained encaged, so they had not grown. To have the smallest feet was one of the most beautiful things. This is inhuman, but you can do it if it is only a question of possession. Then you can make the possession as beautiful as possible.And the woman is bound to take revenge in her own way. All the women around the earth have turned bitchy, for the simple reason that they have been tortured in every way. They are boiling with anger. That anger comes up in nagging, in fighting, in continuously quarreling, in beating the children, making the life of the husband as impossible as possible.In India, for thousands of years, the woman had to jump alive into the funeral pyre of her husband, because now she had no right to live. The husband possessed her while he was alive; he cannot drop the possession, even though he is dead. He wants to keep the domination and possession even after he is dead. He wants to make sure that his wife will not fall in love with somebody else, so the best way is that she dies with him.So women were forced to die – because it is not an easy thing: you can just try putting your hand in a small candle flame, and that will give you the idea. A living woman has to be forced into the burning funeral pyre. She will rush out to save herself, so they had made arrangements….Much purified butter would be poured into the funeral pyre. It creates so much smoke that what is happening there, people cannot see. And around the funeral pyre are standing the priests with long torches in their hands, so if the woman tries to get out of the funeral pyre, with their burning torches they push her back. And you cannot see it because so much smoke is there. And in the second line, behind the priests, there are musicians playing so loudly that whatever she screams cannot be heard. And the crowd is standing behind them. This continued for thousands of years. Even today, once in a while – although it is against the law – it happens in small villages.This is not love. Oscar Wilde’s insight is true as far as your so-called love is concerned: you kill the person you love. He may remain alive, but you destroy his freedom, you destroy his humanity; you reduce him to a thing. If this is love, then what is hate?Jesus says, “Love your enemies just like yourself.” He should have said rather, “Love your husbands just like yourself, love your wives just like yourself.” These are the real enemies – intimate enemies. But to attain to that love, just preaching is not enough. You have to go through a total transformation. You have to move from mind to a state of no-mind. That’s what I call meditation – the process of moving from mind to no-mind, from thought to a state of thoughtlessness, silence.Once you start experiencing the space of no-mind, everything in your life goes through a transformation. The ego dies, your love becomes absolutely clean and pure. Then it does not follow what Oscar Wilde is saying. Oscar Wilde himself became so much disturbed with his love relationships that he became a homosexual.It is not strange that homosexuals are known as gay people; they are gay. Heterosexuals – you cannot say that they are gay. They are so sad, so serious, so burdened; just waiting for death to free them from all this nonsense that they have created themselves – the wife, the children…. They have messed up their whole life, and their house has become a madhouse.But homosexuality is not a way out; it is just a slight change, because homosexuals start becoming as jealous, as possessive, and destroy the other as much as heterosexuals. And it is good that Oscar Wilde is not alive today; otherwise, he would be suffering from AIDS. So all his wisdom would have led him to the disease AIDS.Love has certainly to be purified, and just by changing objects of love nothing is changed. Change your subjectivity.You ask me not to take note of your deafness, of your blindness. I never take any note. I may talk about it, I may hit you as hard as I can, but I don’t take any note of it. What can you do? This is enough, that you are here. You have taken a great step, even in your blindness, to come close to someone who is not blind.So don’t be afraid. My love is not the love Oscar Wilde is talking about. He has no idea of the love that I have for you. It does not destroy; it helps you to become free of all bondages, it helps you to become yourself. My only joy is if you become absolutely free individuals, finding in yourself the source of eternal light.And there is no need to worry. My compassion for you and for all the sannyasins around the world will keep me in the body long enough, until you open your eyes and wake up. So if you really want me to remain in the body forever, then keep your eyes closed and remain deaf. But that is not good on your part. You should wake up as quickly as possible, because my work as far as I am concerned is finished. I am just hanging around for you.Even though you go on doing stupid things, it does not change my love for you. I know that what else can you do in your state? Whatever you are doing is expected. But don’t continue it: bring it to an end, to a full stop.I want you to become free of all bondage. Help me, so that I can become free of my body too. That will be your response to my love – because to me my body is a bondage.This is my last life. Once I get out of this body I am not going to be born again. Then I will be part of this vast universe, that tremendous freedom….How long are you going to force me to wait?Osho,After two years here, I had heard Bodhidharma's laughter. I never heard him again. Is he still around?He has always been around. Who do you think is sitting in this chair? But if you do not hear the laughter, that simply means you are not hearing, you are not listening; otherwise, the laughter is happening every moment.In fact, in the whole history of humanity there has never been such a commune, with so much laughter. And a commune that is in search of truth, a commune that is in search of religiousness, a commune that wants to attain to the ultimate heights of ecstasy – no, this type of people have never before been laughing. They thought laughter was something below them.My understanding is totally different. Laughter is one of the greatest religious qualities. The sense of humor has not been indicated by any religion as an essential quality for their followers. But here there are no followers, only individuals. They are together here because their search is the same. They are together here because their love is the same. They are together here because they have fallen in love with the same guide.But the guide is nobody other than Bodhidharma; hence, laughter is our most essential quality. And a sense of humor, playfulness, fun, is something sacred – nothing profane in it. Just listen to it.I don’t laugh, for the simple reason that if I laugh, you will stop laughing immediately. To allow you to laugh, I have to contain myself. I laugh in my room when I am alone!Osho,How many idiots are here?It is a very simple question. There are only two types of people in the world: either you are enlightened, or….

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 30 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Does the ceremony of oath in the courts around the world have any significance?It is sheer nonsense. It is carrying out an ancient superstition. It is ugly to see that even in the twentieth century’s courts we have not been able to get rid of it. In the past people believed in God; they feared hell, they were greedy for heaven. Naturally, it was easy to manipulate them with the ceremony of the oath. If a Christian has to take the oath, putting his hand on The Holy Bible, he cannot speak any lie – just out of fear, because God is the witness, and this is God’s book. And to touch it and take the oath, that “I am going to tell the truth, and only the truth,” had a certain meaning in those dark ages, because the man was so afraid that if he lied he would fall into hell.Now it is not a question of the court; it is a question of his religious conditioning. His conditioning has been challenged; the court is exploiting the conditioning. And if he speaks the truth, then there is bound to be a reward – perhaps after death, but God will know that he has been true to his word.But today, in a scientific age, when people are no longer burdened with past superstitions, the ceremony of the oath is simply stupid. Who cares about hell and heaven? Who is worried about God? The whole conditioning has disappeared. Now putting your hand on the Bible means nothing, you can still lie – of course with less embarrassment, because you have taken the oath. The oath used to serve the truth in the past because of your superstition. Now it serves the lie: because of your oath, your lie is accepted as truth. It is absolutely irrelevant – and particularly for a man of evolved consciousness. It is against his being to take the oath, because it simply means that without an oath you are not capable of saying the truth. And if a man is capable of lying, what prevents him? – he can lie even if he takes the oath. And the book on which he is taking the oath is full of lies, utter lies!And it is not only The Holy Bible; all religious books are third-rate fictions – not even first-rate. There is no holy book in the world; there are only well-written books and not-so-well-written books. And your so-called holy scriptures belong to the second category. As literature they have no value.A man should be accepted on his own authority, on his own individuality. He should be respected – that he will speak truth.And now there are scientific devices – this old rotten device is of no use. There are lie detectors. Where you are standing in the court, a lie detector can be just underneath the platform you are standing on: it can immediately show whether you are lying or whether you are saying the truth. It is so easy, because whenever you lie your heartbeat changes: when you know the truth and you go against your own knowledge – you are saying something you know is not true – your heart is no longer rhythmic. When you are saying the truth, the heart has a rhythm; it can be picked up.Just underneath the witness platform there can be a light – which the witness will not see, but the magistrate can see – which can signal when the person is lying and when the person is saying the truth. It is so easy. There can be a graph like a cardiogram. Whenever you lie, your cardiogram will go berserk. And when you are saying the truth there will be a harmony in the cardiogram. It can be in front of the magistrate: he can go on seeing the cardiogram – when you are lying and when you are saying the truth. When he feels you are lying, he can inquire more. He can question from different dimensions until you speak the truth, until the cardiogram says, “Okay, go ahead.”When we have devices which can detect lies, this device of the oath is simply out of date, simply meaningless. A man who can commit a murder, do you think he will bother much about your holy book? And he has committed murder already: he knows he is going to hell, what more can you do? If he lies, he will go to hell – the same hell which he was going to already. What more tortures can you give him? At least by lying he can protect himself while he is alive from the tortures of the prison.And who knows about after death? And God is compassionate, God is kind, God is love: just a little murder…. If one murder sends a person to hell, what will happen to Adolf Hitler? – ten million murders! Even God cannot find enough punishment for the man; hell will not be enough.You have committed a small theft – just a little bit of lying can save you from unnecessary harassment, punishment. And as far as after death is concerned, nobody has come back; nobody is an eye-witness that bad people go to hell and good people go to heaven. Nobody knows what kind of logic functions after death. Perhaps good people are sent to hell, because “you have enjoyed goodness enough. Now have some taste of hell too.” And bad people have suffered their whole life with anxiety and anguish; they need a little rest, a little holiday, a long weekend. Send them to heaven! This seems to be logical.And nobody knows whether you are going to survive after death. There have been great philosophers – in India, a whole school of philosophers called Charvakas – who believe that with the death of the body everything dies. So it does not matter what you do – just do it skillfully so that you are not caught. And don’t be worried about what happens after death; after death you will not be there. Death means the end of you.In Greece there was Epicurus, a very great logician, who said there is no life beyond death; and he had a great school and hundreds of followers. And today, for the first time, half of the world – more than half of the world – is communist. Karl Marx, the founder of communism, does not believe in any God, any hell, any heaven. He says, “Consciousness is just a by-product. When the body disintegrates the by-product disappears.”There has never been such a large number of people believing that death is the end. That’s why it was easy for Joseph Stalin to kill millions of people without a prick of conscience, because after death nothing survives.In this world, continuing a very ancient superstition in the courts – in the high courts, in the Supreme Courts of the world – just shows that even our judges are not contemporaries.Use scientific methods to find the truth, and respect the individual. And reward the truth – that is something to be remembered. On the one hand you ask the person to be true, not to lie. And on the other hand, if he is true he is punished, and if he lies he is rewarded. What do you think – people are so dumb?If a person says the truth, then reward him! And you will see people are saying the truth without any trouble, because truth is rewarded. Nobody will be saying lies, because lies are punished. Who wants punishment?In my childhood, I made a contract with my father. When he said to me, “Always say the truth,” I said, “There has to be a contract about it.”He said, “What contract?”I said, “Whenever I say a truth, I have to be rewarded. Then you need not be worried – I will always be saying the truth. And whenever you find I am lying, I have to be punished.”He said, “This is a strange contract. That means you can do all kinds of mischief and you can say the truth. You do the mischief and you get rewarded!”I said, “It is up to you. Mischief I will continue; the question is whether you want me to be truthful or not. You can think it over. Otherwise, I am going to lie, because nobody wants to be punished. And you will have to find out the truth – which is very difficult, because whatever mischief I do, I take all precautions. Then it is your work, you find it out – but I am not going to admit it.” And he knew perfectly well that whatever I used to do was such that it was almost impossible to catch me red-handed.For example, one of my relatives, one of my father’s brothers-in-law, often used to come and stay for months. He was immensely interested in eating. He was too fat and ugly – and I would help him eat too much. Now, nobody could say that I was committing any mischief; I was simply serving a guest.Then he would fall sick and he would tell my father, “This is your son! I thought when he was bringing more sweets and more things, ‘Why is he so interested in me?’ I know now.”I said to my father, “Do you think serving a guest is not right? And if he was feeling that he is going to be sick, he should not have eaten. The fault is not mine. If you want to punish anybody, punish your brother-in-law.”Finally, he made the contract with me. It was very difficult for him, because then I started admitting everything that I had done – and after admitting it, I asked for reward. He would say, “This is a strange contract that I have fallen into. I have made many contracts in my life, but this is a strange contract. That you took away one of my neighbor’s….”In India, in the summertime, people sleep outside the house; it is too hot. This man was such a deep sleeper and he snored so much that almost nobody else on the street could sleep. Everybody was against him, but what to do?I said, “You don’t be worried. You just help me. I will manage.”They said, “What do we have to do?”I said, “You come with me.”I took three people; we took his bed, carried his bed…. Just in front of his house there was a water well, a very small one: I put his bed on the well. Those people said, “What are you doing? If he wakes up and finds himself where he is, he may fall into the well!”I said, “Don’t be worried. The well is not that deep. I have been jumping in the well.”They said, “My God! And we have been drinking the water!”I said, “That is my usual practice. Every morning, early, the first thing I do is to jump in the well. It is not deep; the man will not be killed, and he knows swimming.”And that’s what happened. When he woke up, he could not believe it. Where was his house? Where had he come to? And just getting out of the bed, he fell into the well. He screamed, he shouted, he gathered the whole neighborhood. He was taken out of the well, and he said, “Who has done this?”People said, “Nobody knows who has done this, but you should sleep a little more alert.”“This is too much! How can I sleep a little more alert?”They said, “Then you should stop snoring. If you snore, this is going to happen again and again.”My father immediately caught hold of me. He said, “What is the matter?”I explained to him the whole thing: “That man has been a nuisance – and not for one day, for years he has not allowed the neighbors to sleep. He needed it! And if he snores, I am going to put him on the well again. And yes, I have done it. Now, my reward.”My father said, “I want to withdraw from the contract. You may kill somebody – and still you will want a reward!”I said, “I can kill somebody even without asking for a reward. But the reward will make you aware of the truth. You are so much interested in truth – for truth you have to pay.”Truth is not repaid in the world – it is punished. If a man in the courts says absolutely what he has done, is the court going to release him with honor because he has been truthful? If the court is not going to release him with honor, then the court is forcing the man to lie – and everybody has the right to protect himself. Then your oaths don’t mean anything.It is so simple to make the whole world full of truth. Just reward truth, and lies will disappear. Your oaths and your courts and your punishments have not destroyed criminals; on the contrary, criminals go on increasing. And you must be blind that you don’t see that your jails, your courts create criminals. They don’t destroy crime. Your jails are universities for criminology where amateur criminals learn from master criminals and come out of the jail after two, three years, more mature.All your laws and all your courts have created only one idea in the mind of criminals: that to commit a crime is not unlawful, but to be caught is unlawful. So the only thing is not to be caught. You have to be more intelligent and more skillful, more sophisticated.This whole system of jurisprudence has failed. We need a totally new kind of jurisprudence where truth is rewarded; certainly, if the man has done something wrong he should be rewarded for telling the truth. And he should be sent not to the jail, but to a psychiatric, psychoanalytical caretaker, to a university where he can learn that what he has done was wrong, and that a society which rewarded truth…. He will feel embarrassed to do anything that goes against human life, human culture.And anybody who is committing a crime…it simply means he is psychologically sick; he needs treatment, not punishment. Truth should be rewarded, and the person should be given to people who can treat him. And this is not condemnation. The individual is respected; just some sickness is there in his psychology for which he receives treatment. And within a few years, all crimes can evaporate from the earth.But with the crimes evaporating, what will happen to the judges, to the advocates, to so many people who have vested interests; to the jails and the jailers? Millions of people are engaged in this stupid business. The criminals are providing employment for millions of people. If crime disappears, this employment also disappears. That’s why the judges are going to continue the old way; it is their bread and butter, it is their respectability.Jailers are going to do the same thing they have been doing for centuries – creating more and more criminals, stronger and stronger criminals, because those are the people who are giving them employment. Without them, they will be nowhere. We have to see this whole situation.I am reminded of a story by Kahlil Gibran. A few friends go to a pub and drink too much, enjoy, sing and dance and fight, and do everything that drunkards are bound to do. The pub owner is very happy because business has never been so good.When they were leaving, he asked the man who paid the bill, “When will you be coming again?”The man said, “Just pray to God…if my business goes well, we will be coming every day.”The pub owner said, “We will pray every day for your business. But what is your business?”He said, “It is better if you don’t ask.”But the pub owner said, “That makes me even more curious. I am going to pray for your business, my wife will pray, because if you come every day we are going to become rich very soon.”He said, “I am a gravedigger. If people go on dying every day in big numbers, I will be coming every day with all my friends. That is my business.”The gravedigger, naturally, wants somebody to die. The doctor, naturally, wants somebody to be sick. Things have to be changed: this is not a sane structure of the society.In China, Confucius made a very significant change. Every person had to pay the doctor if he remained healthy. If he becomes sick, he stops payment; then the doctor has to pay for his medicine, and has to take care of him. Now that seems to be a sane arrangement. Every person pays the doctor for remaining healthy. Now the doctor cannot pray that people should be sick; he will pray that people should be healthy. He cannot afford for people to be sick. He cannot afford epidemics; he will go bankrupt.But in our society, the situation is just the opposite. The more epidemics there are, the more the doctor’s bank balance becomes bigger and bigger. If everybody is healthy, then the doctor becomes poorer and poorer. If everybody remains healthy, then the doctor will be the only person who will be sick!A sane society will arrange things in such a way that the profession – any profession – does not go against the society. The judge should be paid because there has been no criminal case. The police should be paid and rewarded because there is nothing for them to do. The doctors should be respected and paid because nobody is sick. Right now we are doing something which is very suicidal.Truth should be respected – rewarded, not punished – and there is no need for any oath.Osho,Why is humanity so willing to walk the path towards global suicide?The reason is clear. People have become clear that their life has no meaning, that except misery, nothing happens; except anxiety, anguish, life has nothing to offer.Individuals have always committed suicide. And you will be surprised: the people who have committed suicide have always been a little more intelligent than the normal people. Psychologists commit suicide twice as much as any other profession. Painters, poets, philosophers either go mad or commit suicide. Idiots have never been known to commit suicide, nor do they go mad.Just two or three days ago I was looking at a news tape. Somebody is talking to the attorney general of Oregon, Frohnmayer, about me, saying that I have said that Frohnmayer is trying to protect the criminals so that he can destroy the commune. And if he cannot protect the criminals, then the second step will be to kill them. Then he is free to put in jail anybody from the commune, someone who is absolutely innocent, for any crime.His comment was, “This is lunacy.”And I laughed, because perhaps he does not know the meaning of the word lunacy. It comes from the word lunar, the moon. In the beginning, the word lunatic was used for poets – moon-gazers – who would stand for hours looking at the moon. This kind of situation was called lunacy, and slowly slowly it became equivalent to madness.I would like Frohnmayer to know that he is fortunate he can never become a lunatic. Idiots cannot do that; they never go mad. To go mad, first you need to have some intelligence. Have you seen a buffalo going mad? And as far as I am concerned, my very name, Rajneesh, means lunatic. It means “the moon-gazer.” And certainly I would rather belong to the category of the mad than to the category of the idiots.The idiots have never committed suicide because they cannot even think about meaning, significance, purpose. They don’t think at all; they simply live, they vegetate. The higher the intelligence, the more dangerous, because it makes you aware that the life that you are living is just hollow, utterly empty. There is nothing to hold onto. You know tomorrow will be a repetition of today, so what is the point of continuing?Individuals have committed suicide because only individuals have come to a certain stage of intelligence, of understanding whether life has any meaning or not. Now, for the first time, millions of people around the earth have reached to that maturity where they feel life is meaningless. That’s why humanity is moving towards a global suicide. There seems to be no reason to continue – for what? You have lived your life, and you have found nothing. Now your children will live and they will find nothing: generation after generation, only emptiness in your hands – no fulfillment, no contentment.But to me, this gives man a tremendous opportunity. Only very highly intelligent people have committed suicide or have become mad, because they could not live with this insane world. They could not adapt themselves to all kinds of insanities that are going around. They felt themselves fallen apart – that was their madness. But only the same kind of people have also become enlightened.So these are the three possibilities for intelligence. Either the intelligent person goes mad because he cannot figure out what is happening, why it is happening, why he is supposed to do this or that. Or, seeing the situation, that it is driving him mad, he commits suicide, he puts an end to life. This has been mostly the case in the West.In the East the same kind of people have tried something else – not madness, but meditation. The West is poor in that way. It does not know the richness of meditation. It does not know that meditation can transform your whole vision of life; it can give you tremendous meaningfulness, beauty, benediction. Then life is something sacred, you cannot destroy it.You must look at it, that in the East the rate of suicide is very low compared to the West, the rate of people going mad is very low compared to the West. And one thing more: in the East, the people who go mad are really not very intelligent people. They are psychologically sick. It is not their intelligence that has led them to madness, it is something missing in their minds. Perhaps their food is not right, it is not enough to help their mind become mature. Their vegetarianism is lacking certain proteins which are absolutely needed for intelligence to grow.So the madness in the West and in the East is totally different. The madness in the East is something psychological: they are missing certain things, their growth is retarded, their minds cannot grow the way they would have grown.That’s why in my commune I have allowed vegetarian eggs. All the vegetarians of the world should allow vegetarian eggs, because they supply the necessary proteins for intelligence; otherwise, just vegetarian food is not enough. They will be against me, because just the word “egg” is enough for them to be against me. But these eggs are simply pure vegetable, because they don’t have the male sperm. They are not going to give birth to anything. They are not alive, so you are not killing anybody. For all vegetarians of the world, unfertilized eggs should become an essential part of the menu.The people who commit suicide in the East are also different than the people who commit suicide in the West. In the East people commit suicide because of hunger, because of starvation, because they cannot manage to live – and life becomes such a torture. So there is a qualitative difference.But the intelligent people in the East have always turned towards meditation. Whenever they have felt that life has no meaning, they have tried to find the meaning within themselves; that’s the way of meditation. They have tried to find out the very source of life, love, and they have found it. Anybody who looks inwards is bound to find it. It is not far away, it is just within you. You are carrying it all the time!The Western intelligentsia is looking for meaning outside, and there is no meaning outside. They are looking for blissfulness outside. Remember, the beauty is in the eyes of the onlooker; it is not there outside. And the same is true about meaningfulness, blissfulness, benediction. It is within your vision, it is within you. When you have it, you can project it over the whole existence. But first you have to find it within yourself.If Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, people like these, had been born in the East, they would all have become enlightened beings. But, in the West, they all became tremendously burdened with anguish, anxiety. They found that it is all accidental and meaningless, that there is no purpose in life, and joy is just a dream, just a hope; it does not exist in reality.The West needs meditation. The East needs medicine; it is sick in the body. The West is sick in the soul. Once we understand the problem clearly…. Now it is not the East which is a danger to the world; at the most they can starve and die as they are dying in Ethiopia. But it is not a danger to the world. In fact, in a way the starving East is helping the world by dying. It is reducing the population of the world. It is making everybody richer, without your knowing. One thousand Ethiopians dying every day – you may not see that somehow they are helping your comforts, but they are, because if the population of the world is reduced, people can live more comfortably, more easily, more joyously.The problem is not coming from the East; the problem is coming from the West. The problem is the Western intelligentsia is fed up with life, so there is no real resistance from the intelligentsia against nuclear weapons, against a third world war. In fact, it seems deep down the Western mind is somehow hoping that it happens soon, because life is meaningless.Rather than taking the risk of committing suicide yourself, if politicians can manage to destroy the whole world, that will be far easier. You will not be in the dilemma of to be or not to be. You will not have to think whether to destroy yourself or not, to wonder if perhaps tomorrow things may be different.It is an individual responsibility to commit suicide, but a global war, a nuclear war – all your personal responsibility disappears. It is not your doing, it is just happening.Why is the Western intelligentsia not really fighting against nuclear weapons? Why are the scientists – who are part of the intelligentsia – still serving governments? The simplest way will be that all the scientists who are creating nuclear weapons should resign. They should say, “Enough is enough. We cannot create these weapons which are going to destroy life on the earth.” And the poets, the philosophers, the painters – they don’t seem to protest. They have just become spectators. There is a reason behind it. Western humanity has been turned by and by into spectators – about everything.You don’t play football, but twenty-two persons who are professionals, this is their business, to play football. And millions of people are just spectators, and they are so excited…jumping in their seats, screaming, shouting. If they are not in the stadium, then they are sitting in their homes before the television screen and they are doing the same gestures there. Somebody else is playing; you are just a spectator.The average American is looking at the television five to six hours a day: six hours of just being a spectator, not a participant. Then there are movies where you are spectators, and there are boxing matches where you are spectators. It seems you have lost contact with life. You simply see others living; your life is just to watch. Somebody is in a competition for a world championship in chess, and you are watching. Can’t you play chess yourself? Can’t you play football yourself?It is not far away, it is already happening…you will not be making love to your wife, to your girlfriend – somebody else will be doing it and you will be watching, jumping: “Aha! Great! Go on!”You have left the whole of life for others to live on your behalf, and then you ask where the meaning has gone, why you don’t feel alive, why there is not some significance in your life. Spectators cannot have significance – only participants, totally involved, intensely involved in every action.So perhaps the Western intelligentsia is just in the situation of spectators, watching when it is announced on the television that the third world war has begun. Listening to the radio, reading the newspaper…. But are you going to do something or not? It is doing that keeps your juices running. If you are simply watching, your own juices dry up. You become just a skeleton.I am surprised that the West has a great, educated, intelligent majority in the world, but they do nothing, they don’t take any action. AIDS is spreading – you are simply watching. The Soviet Union and America are both piling up nuclear weapons, preparing your funeral pyre – and you are just watching.You have to be taken out of this hypnotic state of being a mere spectator. There are not many people who are making nuclear weapons. There are only twenty scientists in America who know – just twenty scientists. Can’t they simply say, “No, we are not going to be servants of death!”And the same will be the situation in the Soviet Union. There cannot be more people than that who can create nuclear weapons. If it happens in America, I am certain it will happen in the Soviet Union too. The question is just that somebody has to begin.And all the poets and all the painters and all the great Nobel Prize-winners, novelists, actors, musicians, dancers – what are they doing? There should be a great protest – that all the nuclear weapons should be drowned in the Pacific. Whoever named it the Pacific must have had great insight into the future. Now let that name become a reality.But the trouble is, unless you start feeling some meaning in life, some joy arising in you, some fragrance surrounding you, you cannot fight for life. And life needs, for the first time in the history of man, to be fought for.Meditation will create the necessary atmosphere. It will bring you back to action, back to love, back to meaning. And then, naturally, you will see that it is time something has to be done. This beautiful earth should not die.This is a unique planet, very small. In this immense universe, which knows no limits, this small earth is unique – unique because birds sing here, flowers blossom here, life has reached a new level: consciousness. And in a few people consciousness has touched its omega point: enlightenment.Compared to this earth, the whole universe is dead. It is big, vast, but even a roseflower is far more valuable than the biggest stars. Anybody who wants to destroy this earth wants to destroy something unique that is evolving. And it has taken millennia to come to this state of consciousness. Even if only a few people have attained to ultimate bliss and ecstasy, that is enough to make this earth the greatest treasure.It is very small – the sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth. And this sun is a very mediocre one; there are very big suns that you see as stars. There are millions of solar systems, but no solar system can claim a Gautam Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Bodhidharma, a Kabir. This earth has done something immensely great, it has made the whole universe rich. It cannot be destroyed.War should be stopped – and it is within our hands to do so. Don’t be only a spectator. Rather than just remaining in your misery, start finding sources of life and mystery within yourself.This is the function of this mystery school: to make you acquainted with simple methods so that you can attain to the very center of your being. That is the only possibility for saving the whole world. If only two hundred people are enlightened, then there is no way the world can be destroyed. And two hundred people is not a big number. Just in this commune we can manage two hundred enlightened people!Osho,Could America survive the destruction of Rajneeshpuram? Can the world?No, America cannot survive the destruction of Rajneeshpuram, nor can the world, for the simple reason that we are creating the energy that can stop the destruction that is looming larger and larger and closer and closer on the horizon.This is the only commune in the whole world where people are not just being spectators, where people are searching for the antidote to nuclear weapons, where people are trying to find out the sources of life so that death loses all meaning.It will be the most idiotic act on America’s part to destroy this commune, because it will mean destroying innocent people who are trying to reach to their own center of being. And that is the only possibility of saving the whole world.Either meditate, become enlightened – or the whole world is going to become a graveyard…Christian, of course.Osho,How did “Jesus Christ!” become a swear word?Jesus! – that’s great.There is a psychology behind it. Jesus has been claiming himself as the savior of the world, as the only begotten son of God. He is placing himself at the highest point. He is the shepherd and you are the sheep. This egoistic attitude is bound to create its reactions. This is one of the reactions, that the very name of Jesus became a swear word. I don’t want to become a swear word. That’s why I have been trying to come closer and closer to you.Now Rajneesh Foundation International is going to be changed into Rajneesh Friends International. I would really like to sit with you there, amongst you. The only problem is, the chair cannot speak. But don’t blame me for the chair’s incapacity. Whenever somebody has done that, tried to position himself above you, some way or other you take revenge. In India, the same has happened with Gautam Buddha. In Hindustani, “Buddha” has become just its opposite: the idiot in Hindustani is called buddhu, and buddhu comes from the same root as “buddha.”But strange – why should buddha become buddhu? The reason is the same. It is said, after the birth – and of course it has to be special kind of birth…. Buddha’s mother is standing and Buddha is born – no woman stands when a child is born! And Buddha is born standing; not only that, he walks seven steps and then declares, “I am the most supreme enlightened being. In comparison to me there has never been anyone, and there will never be anyone.”Now, this type of person is bound to create reactions!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 31 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why does everybody want to prove and to assert? What is the psychology behind proving and asserting oneself?Please explain.The psychology behind assertiveness, behind proving oneself, is very simple. Every child, from his very beginning, is told that he is not what he should be. Disciplines are given, commandments are given; he has to fulfill them. If he cannot, he starts feeling inferior. It seems that others are fulfilling them, only he is not capable. And the inferiority complex is the basic mind disease out of which many diseases arise.No child is born with an inferiority complex. It is the parents, the teachers, the priests, the society, the culture, which are responsible for creating the inferiority complex in the child. And the only way for the child to get rid of it seems to be to prove himself worthy according to the expectations of others. It creates a very miserable situation. He is not growing towards his own potential, he is following guidelines given by others. He will become somebody else that he was not by his nature supposed to be. He will never be happy; misery is going to be his lot. He may be able to assert himself; he may not be able to prove he is worthy, or he may be able to prove he is – whatever the case, misery is going to be the end result.If he proves worthy in the eyes of others and becomes respectable, he will smile – but in his being there will be no flowers blossoming. He will show that he is dignified, but deep down he knows he has betrayed himself. He has committed the greatest crime possible: he has betrayed his own nature. He has gone against existence and listened to all kinds of idiots.If he succeeds, then he is miserable. If he does not succeed, of course he is going to be miserable; he has failed. Others were right, that he is basically inferior, that he does not belong to the higher class, that he belongs to the lowest. It hurts – because no individual is higher and no individual is lower.I do not mean by that that everybody is equal. I am not a communist. Communism, to me, is out of date. It is as dead as Christianity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism. My approach is totally different.In the past these were the only two alternatives: either man is equal – equality of all human beings – or people are unequal. I have a third alternative: people are unique, incomparable. They cannot be compared, so how can you say who is inferior and who is superior? Is the flower of the marigold inferior to the rose? But how can you decide? They are unique in their individualities. The whole existence produces only unique people; it does not believe in carbon copies. So the question of equality or inequality does not arise; I cut it from the very roots.There is a Greek story.One crazy king had a very beautiful house made only for guests, and he had made a golden bed. When the guest entered the house he could not believe it – those guests were also kings – that he would be receiving such a warm welcome, so much respect and honor: “And people think that this man is crazy! He is not.” But soon they were to find that he was.His craziness was that the guest had to fit with the length of the bed. If he was longer, then he had to be made shorter – a little part of his legs would be chopped off. If he was shorter – I think that man was the inventor of traction – the king had very big wrestlers who would pull the guest from both ends to make him fit the size of the bed. Whether he died or lived, that was not important; the size of the bed was important! Mostly the man would die.This idea of making everybody equal, cutting them to the same size – economically, educationally, in other ways – is absurd, because inequality will show in other dimensions. People are not equally beautiful – then tomorrow plastic surgery has to make them equally beautiful. Their color is not the same – then some day they have to be injected with pigments to make their color the same.Everything is unique; you cannot find two persons equal – and communism has the idea that the whole humanity has to be equal! Intellectually you cannot make them equal. The genius of a musician and the genius of a mathematician are totally different worlds. If you want them to be equal, then you will have to destroy the heights, the peaks of genius, and reduce them to the lowest denominator. Then communism will be the greatest massacre that has happened to humanity in the whole of history.I stand for man’s uniqueness.Yes, every person should be given equal opportunity to be his or her self. In other words, every person should be given equal opportunity to be unequal, to be unique. The opportunities can be given, but the mathematician should become a mathematician, and the musician should become a musician. But no society up to now has allowed the individual his freedom.You think that you are free. You are simply living in an illusion. Humanity will only be free the day there is no inferiority complex produced in children; otherwise, freedom is just hypocrisy. Others are trying to make you a puppet. My whole life I had the problem….The intentions of the parents are not bad, the intentions of the teachers are not bad. I never suspect their intentions – but I suspect their intelligence. I suspect their understanding of human nature, its growth, its possibilities.When I was going to the university, my whole family was in a turmoil. Somebody wanted me to be a doctor, somebody wanted me to be a scientist, somebody wanted me to be an engineer. I listened to everybody, and then I said, “Nobody wants me to be myself. And you think you are all well-wishers! Not a single person in the whole family” – and in India, the family is a joint phenomenon; my family consisted of fifty, sixty people – “none of you has said, ‘We want you to be just yourself.’ Why do you want to impose your ideas on me? What right have you got? If you are so interested in medicine, go and become a doctor! But why should I fulfill your desire? You are making me a puppet, an instrument. And I simply say no to everyone in the family. I will do what I want to do. I am going to study philosophy.”They all laughed. They said, “Study philosophy? Then you will remain a pauper all your life.”I said, “At least I will have the satisfaction that this is my own choice, that I am independent in whatever I have done, nobody has manipulated me. Becoming a doctor and rich, a scientist and rich, will not be a contentment to my heart. I will always remember that this is somebody else’s trip – I have been forced to do it! Even your Nobel Prize will not give me the contentment, the joy which comes out of freedom.”I knew what they would do, so I said, “I know what is in your mind. You will say, ‘Then you go on your way, but we are not going to support you financially.’” I said, “That is clear. I don’t resent it. I don’t follow your advice – I have no right to take your financial support. Even if you give it to me, I will not take it.”For two years I was earning – working in the night, studying in the day. My father was very sad and very sorry. Many times he came and said, “Forget all that. You are destroying your health; you don’t have time to rest, you don’t have a disciplined life.”Finally he came and wept and said, “Unless you accept money from me every month, I am going to sit here and fast and I am not going to move.”I said, “That makes sense. You have finally accepted and respected my desire. These two years have not gone in vain.” It was troublesome, it was not comfortable: running twenty-four hours a day – only once in a while, whenever I could get time, sleeping, eating.He said, “We are sorry. We had not thought that you would go so far.”I said, “Remember it. Whenever I do something I do it the whole way.”When I came back from the university, everybody except my father asked, “Now what are you going to do?”I said, “You need not be worried. I have already an appointment as a teacher of philosophy in a university.” Because for six years I proved my love for philosophy, my insight into philosophy, my ingenuity in seeing into its complexities, every teacher of my university and the vice-chancellor wanted me, immediately after I passed my master’s degree, to become a teacher in the university.I said, “It does not matter…. If you want to do something totally, you can change deserts into oases. You can change the life of a beggar into the life of an emperor. The whole question is, inside you there should be no inferiority complex. And you have not been able to create that in me.”I have never proved myself superior to anybody. I have never been assertive in that sense, of dominating. But I started speaking very early in my life, when I was in high school, and the principal was amazed. He could not believe that a student could speak in such a way.Then I was speaking continuously throughout my whole university career. I had won so many shields, cups, inter-university competitions around India, that my mother started asking me, “Where are we going to keep all these things you go on bringing again and again?” But I have never learned speaking in a school, or oratory. I have never read a single book on how to speak, simply because I want to be just myself. Why should I read somebody else’s book? I can speak in my own way.And what is the problem? Everybody speaks, and everybody speaks beautifully. But something happens; if you are brought to the podium before the microphone, something strange happens. You forget speaking – which you have been doing since your very childhood. Standing before an audience of thousands of people, so many thousands of eyes on you, you become afraid whether you will be able to perform according to their expectations or not. It is, somewhere, your inferiority complex that gives you trouble. Otherwise, it is just the same whether you are talking to one person or you are talking to one million people.If you are clean inside, having no wounds of inferiority, then who cares what people expect of you? You have never fulfilled anybody’s expectations. You have been simply living your life according to your own insight, intuition, intelligence. And that’s the way it should be. A healthy human being will not have an inferiority complex.And the other side of the story is: if you don’t have an inferiority complex, you will never try to be superior. There is no need to be superior to somebody, dominating somebody, having the upper hand over somebody, controlling somebody – you will never become a politician.Only people who are basically suffering from an inferiority complex are attracted to politics. The very attraction towards politics guarantees it, what their problem is. Anybody who is attracted towards politics should be immediately treated psychologically. All politicians are sick, without any exception. Unless they are sick, they will not be in politics.A person who has no desire to have power over others, to prove himself…because there is no need! He is alive, he is breathing, he is doing his thing; that is enough proof. He has made his signature. Certainly it is his signature, not somebody else’s.And remember, if even your thumbprint is unique in the whole world, what about your being? If nature does not create two thumbs alike…. How much care! Not even by mistake do two thumbs have the same lines – and there are five billion people on the earth!Being is so significant that it is irreplaceable.You are just yourself.Do something that comes out of you – not to assert, but to express! Sing your song, dance your dance, rejoice in being whatever nature has chosen you to be.If we can destroy the inferiority complex…which is very simple: the teachers and the parents just have to be aware not to impose themselves on the helpless children. And just within two decades the new generation will be free of the inferiority complex. And with it will go all politics, all presidents and all prime ministers. And their going will be such a great relief!People will express their creativity. There will be musicians, there will be dancers, there will be painters, carpenters. There will be all sorts of creativity around the world. But nobody is competing with anybody else; he is simply doing his best. It is his joy. The joy is not in competing, the joy is not in coming first; the joy is in doing it. It is not outside the act, it is intrinsic to the act.That’s my image of the new man. He works, but his work is his life, his very soul. Whatever he does, it does not matter.I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln. When he became the president of America, his father was a shoemaker. And, naturally, egoistic people were very much offended that a shoemaker’s son should become the president. They were aristocrats, super-rich, who thought that it was their birthright to be in the highest post. A shoemaker’s son?On the first day, as Abraham Lincoln entered to give his presidential inaugural address, just in the middle one man stood up. He was a very rich aristocrat. He said, “Mr. Lincoln, you should not forget that your father used to make shoes for my family.” And the whole senate laughed; they thought that they had made a fool of Abraham Lincoln.But Lincoln – and that type of person – is made of a totally different mettle. Lincoln looked at the man and said, “Sir, I know that my father used to make shoes in your house for your family, and there will be many others here…because the way he made shoes, nobody else can. He was a creator. His shoes were not just shoes, he poured his whole soul in it. I want to ask you, have you any complaint? – because I know how to make shoes myself; if you have any complaint I can make another pair of shoes. But I know that nobody has ever complained about my father’s shoes. He was a genius, a great creator, and I am proud of my father!”The whole senate was struck dumb. They could not understand what kind of man Abraham Lincoln was. He had made shoemaking an art, a creativity. And he was proud because his father did the job so well that not even a single complaint had ever been heard. And even though he was the president of America, he was ready to make another pair if there was any complaint.The man looked silly. Lincoln insisted, “You have to speak! Why have you become dumb? You wanted to make me a fool, and now, look all around: you have made a fool of yourself.”It does not matter what you do. What matters is how you do it – of your own accord, with your own vision, with your own love. Then whatever you touch becomes gold.Osho,In what way do you envisage democracy playing a part in your communes?The question is a little complex. Democracy is not the highest goal. It is better than dictatorial regimes, it is better than monarchies, but it is not the end of the journey – because democracy basically means government by the people, of the people, for the people, but the people are retarded. So let us say: government by the retarded, for the retarded, of the retarded.Democracy cannot be the highest possibility man can attain. It is good in comparison to other forms of government that have preceded it, but not something that can succeed it. I call that meritocracy.I want a government by the people of merit.And merit is a very rare quality.As the situation is, all the geniuses of the world are outside governments. It is hilarious: those geniuses are needed in the government because they can give the best world to humanity, but they are servants of the retarded politicians. Now the scientists who are making nuclear weapons are in the service of people like Ronald Reagan. What merit has he got? What intelligence has he got? What is his contribution to the world? – those third-grade Hollywood cowboy films? But he will make the decision, and the geniuses will never be known; they will work almost anonymously.The same is the situation in Soviet Russia, and everywhere else in the world. The Russian government does not allow its scientists, poets, or other geniuses to receive the Nobel Prize, for the simple reason that by receiving the Nobel Prize they become world famous. And a genius has no business becoming world famous; he should do his work.The greatest physicist today is in imprisonment in Soviet Russia. The greatest physicist perhaps of all the ages, who has gone deeper than Albert Einstein – Sakharov – is serving a life sentence in Siberia. His only crime was that he refused to obey the Soviet government, and accepted the Nobel Prize.Now, the people who are ruling the Soviet Union are just third rate. None of them has shown any genius – Sakharov alone has as much as the whole stupid lot – but they have power. And the best physicist, who can contribute to the world immensely, is simply rotting in Siberia.The situation may be a little bit different in different countries, but the basic thing is the same: the people of merit are not the people who rule. The people who rule are always mediocre. Democracy, rightly translated, is mediocracy. I cannot support mediocracy. I would like people of merit, geniuses, to manage the world – and things would be totally different.For example, instead…. Anybody who is born in America, after a certain age becomes adult, is able to vote. Why this limitation of a certain age? What is so great about it? And if you can make a limitation that at twenty-one years – any age limit – you are able to vote, why can’t you make it a point that unless you have a master’s degree, a first-class master’s degree in any subject, you cannot vote for the federal government?You can make it a point that you have to have a first class bachelor’s degree if you want to vote in the state government. You have to have a doctorate if you want to stand for any position in the federal government – a PhD is absolutely necessary. If you want to become the president of the country, then you must have at least a DLitt or DSc. Without having these qualifications you cannot stand, you cannot run for the post.So we should require merits for each post – the highest merits. And we should make grades of voters: for the federal government, the highest degree; for the state government, a lower degree; for the county, a little lower degree.But meritocracy has to take the place of democracy. Then perhaps you will see Sakharov not suffering in Siberia, but being the prime minister of the Soviet Union. Then you will see Yehudi Menuhin perhaps being the president of America. And there are thousands of geniuses around the world….And remember, geniuses are never destructive; they are always creative. With a genius president in America, and a genius president in the Soviet Union, a third world war becomes impossible. In fact, with geniuses ruling all over the world, the day will not be far off when they will decide that it is better to make one world rather than divide it into nations, because that solves problems more easily.There are thirty million Americans who are dieting because of too much eating. Now, these people should be transported to Nigeria, Ethiopia, India – there is no need for any dieting, just being in Ethiopia will bring them to their senses! Just leave them in Ethiopia. They will not die – they have at least enough fat to last for ninety days. And for ninety days, bring thirty million Ethiopians to America. Those people will really enjoy your fridges!It is simple…a world government can look at the whole world as one humanity. Problems are not so much as they appear. At one time, in Soviet Russia, they had a bumper crop of wheat. Rather than giving it to the countries who were dying without food, they started burning wheat in their railway trains instead of coal. Now, those poor countries where people were dying have enough coal: if the world is one, the coal can be given to Soviet Russia, the wheat can move to the poor country.And if there is one world, then there is no need for seventy-five percent of every nation’s wealth to be wasted on nuclear weapons, on armies, on other kinds of war materials. Seventy-five percent! Humanity is living only on twenty-five percent. If there are no longer any nations, the question of war does not arise. A hundred percent of all energy, money, income becomes available to the whole world.There are countries – for example, I know India – where labor is so cheap…. In America, things are almost ten times more costly, for the simple reason that labor is so costly. It is simply stupid. Why not make industries in India, produce any item in India, ship it to any country where it is needed? It will be cheaper, it will be available to more people.The Soviet Union has one-sixth of the land of the whole earth, and the population is only two hundred million. India’s population today is eight hundred million, and by the end of the century it will be one billion. For the first time in history, India will be going ahead of China. Up to now China has been ahead. China will be number two, India will be number one. But it is not a great joy to be number one. India can manage very easily four hundred million people; more than that is impossible. The land is not there, the soil has been exploited too much for centuries. One billion people – simply the idea…! India will become a thousandfold bigger Ethiopia.In Ethiopia one thousand people have been dying every day. In India millions of people will die every day. But there is no need. Just by the side is the Soviet Union, with vast lands spreading from one corner of Europe to the other corner of Asia, covering two continents. It is such a simple matter: over-populated areas should be shifted, people should be shifted to under-populated areas.In Switzerland they have dropped birth control policies. They are encouraging people to produce children, because for the last two years their population has been going down. We are living in an insane world. There are countries where it is so hard to teach people to use birth control methods so that their population does not rise, and there are countries where the government is giving every encouragement and rewards for people to produce children; otherwise the country will disappear. But what is the need to produce children when so many children are there, dying? Just shift them to Switzerland. Adopt them; that will be more humane.And the same is the situation about everything. All this can be changed by people of genius coming to the top. And the simple way is, make categories so universities become your centers of power, not governments; universities create your governors, your presidents, your vice-presidents, your senators. And that should be the right thing to do.Now, as things are, the profession of the politician is the only profession which needs no qualification. Even if you want to be a plumber, some kind of qualification will be needed, some training in plumbing, some certificate. But if you want to be the president of America, no certificate is needed. It seems strange: plumbing is more important than the presidency of America! If you want to be a senator, no qualification is needed. If you want to be a teacher in a kindergarten school, qualifications are needed.Democracy is not succeeding; it has failed. It was better than its predecessors, but now we have to find a new alternative, because democracy has failed. It has not been of any help.I call it meritocracy.The future belongs to meritocracy.Osho,Have not religions done any good to humanity?Corpses cannot do any good to anybody, unless you like stinking things. It is a question of preference. Religion means something dead.A roseflower alive, dancing in the sun, in the wind, surrounded by its aura of perfume, is one thing. You can find a roseflower, dry and dead, in The Holy Bible too; people keep them. The color has faded, the fragrance is gone, there is no life in it. It only reminds you of a flower, it is no longer a flower. There is no longer any juice in it, it is dead, dry. Even to call it a roseflower is not right – it is only a corpse. Religions are corpses.Religious experience is the living rose. Religious experience is individual. Religion is an organization, and the moment truth is organized it dies. Truth can have a beating heart only in the individual, because organization has no heart. Organization does not breathe, organization is just a graveyard.All religions are graveyards. Yes, underneath the graves there are people who have once been alive, who had once loved, sang songs, danced, laughed. But now it is only a graveyard. Those people may be there only just as skeletons.Religion is always dead. Religious experience is always alive. Religious experience has given tremendous riches to humanity. Religion has simply harmed. Religious experience needs no priests, no churches, no ritual, no God, no heaven, no hell. It needs only an inward journey, because there is the real shrine. There is the source of your life, of your love, of your joy, of your celebration.Moving inwards, you will find living sources, living waters which are eternal. And the man who finds it can help others. He cannot give to you his experience, but he can explain it to you – in a very rudimentary way, because words are not capable of expressing the wordless. But he can try. He can at least create an urge in you – which is dormant in every human being – to enter into your own being.And once you know yourself, you know there is no death. Once you know yourself, you know there is no inferiority. Once you know yourself, a tremendous rejoicing arises in you which wants to create. It wants to sing, it wants to dance, it wants to compose music. To different individuals it will happen in different ways.Religious experience has been a benediction, a tremendous blessing – but to very few people, because most of the people don’t bother about individual experience. They simply become Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews. They become part of an organization which promises, “Just believe in The Holy Bible, in the Torah. Believe in the Gita, in the Koran. Just belief is needed on your part and you will reach to the ultimate state of bliss, to paradise.”Organized religions are cheap. They have not helped anybody; they have harmed millions. They have created thousands of wars, burned living human beings – they have called them crusades, jihads, wars of religion, wars for God. Every kind of nuisance has been committed in the name of religion.It is time – we should get rid of religions and start searching for religious experience, which has never harmed anybody.Osho,Why are you so against celibacy?I am not. Nature is – and I am all in favor of nature. To me, there is no other way to find truth, to find peace, to find meaningfulness, than being natural.Celibacy is one of the most unnatural things. It has destroyed so many human beings – millions – Catholic monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Jaina monks, nuns. For centuries they have been teaching celibacy; and the most amazing thing is, even in the twentieth century, not a single medical expert, physiologist, has stood up and said that celibacy is impossible, that in the very nature of things, it cannot happen.To impose celibacy means to pervert the sexual energy of man. It is celibacy that has created homosexuality. It is celibacy that has created sodomy. Perhaps you don’t understand the word sodomy; it is making love to animals. And, finally, it is celibacy which has brought humanity to experience the great joy of AIDS. I call AIDS a religious disease. It has been created by all the religions.Nobody ever has been celibate, whatever the pretensions; you can only be a hypocrite. But your sexual energy will find ways to move – it is natural.Celibacy is as natural as somebody taking a vow that he will not allow his hair to grow. What are you going to do? Is it within your hands? The body does not listen to you and your orders: the hair will continue to grow. You will be surprised: even in his grave, when a man is dead, hair and nails go on growing. What to say about in his life?I have heard…two small children, six and seven years old, were standing by the side of a Catholic monastery. A few monks were passing by.The little child asked the older one, “I wonder, what is the difference between a man and a monk?”The older one said, “I know the difference, but I don’t understand the meaning. I have asked older boys. They said that the difference is that the monks use their ding-dong only for pissing.”The younger boy said, “I don’t understand…. That means we are also monks, because we also use our ding-dong only for pissing! What else to do with it?”But remember, ding-dong is two words. Ding is pissing – and dong you have understood!You cannot escape from dong, and there is no need; it is perfectly natural, human. Enjoy both: ding, and dong too!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 32 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A priest sets himself up as a mediator between man and God. The lawyer's job is to mediate between man and justice. Aren't these professions essentially the same? Why do we need lawyers?We do not need them. The priest is not needed. You are part of existence, you are already in it; there is no question of any mediation. Any mediator between you and existence will be a barrier, will not be a bridge. The bridge is already there. You cannot exist without the bridge. Your breath, your heartbeat, your very being is continuously nourished by existence in every possible way.The priest is absolutely not only unnecessary, but harmful, poisonous. He creates the division between you and the whole, and then he exploits you. His strategy is simple. He exploits, because he knows how he can help you to be bridged with existence, with the cosmos. You do not know, and he knows; naturally, you become spiritually enslaved to him.The priests are serving the devil, and all the churches and all the synagogues, all the mosques, all the temples are not for God. They are creations of the priest, and they are barriers, to be demolished completely, erased from the earth. There is no need for any priest.When you see the sunrise, do you need a mediator to connect you with the beauty of the sunrise? When you see a beautiful flower, do you need a philosopher to explain to you what beauty is? Then his explanations will become a wall. His philosophy will not help you to understand and to experience the beauty of the rose. On the contrary, instead of understanding the rose you will have some dead words about beauty. When beauty is present, there is no need to think about beauty. Why not drink it directly, immediately, without mediation?The same is the situation with the legal expert. He is not there in the service of justice, he is there to protect the criminal; otherwise, there is no need. A case that goes on for years can be settled within three days.And that’s what happened in Mao Zedong’s China. He made it clear that lawyers are not needed, the whole profession is finished. The man of justice is there; he can see clearly, can listen to both the parties. But the legal experts camouflage the whole thing in legal jargon. They create such a smoke around the thing that even the judge cannot see what is true and what is untrue. It is better – let the common man stand before the judge.The judge should be educated about justice, fairness, respect for the individual. Even though he has committed a crime, you may condemn the act but you cannot condemn the individual. An action is a small thing in the whole life of an individual, just a small episode. That episode is not the whole life. Condemn the act, but don’t destroy the dignity of the individual. Justice will be easier, far easier. The more experts are there, the more they try to find ways to go roundabout. And logic is a prostitute; it can prove anything, it can disprove anything.It happened in one of the universities of India, Nagpur University, that I was a participant in an inter-university debating competition. My partner fell suddenly sick; he was not able to participate. I was speaking for the subject, he was speaking against the subject. I spoke for the subject, and I asked the judge – who was the chief justice of the Supreme Court – that permission be given to me to speak on behalf of my partner too, because he was sick.But he said, “How is that possible? You have just now spoken for the subject.”I said, “Logic is a prostitute. You just give me a chance and I will show you.”He was interested. He said, “There is no harm. Try!”I spoke against the subject. I won two prizes: first prize, against the subject, second prize, for the subject. Naturally, I spoke more emphatically for the sick man. And I told the chief justice, “Now do you see? Logic can prove anything, can disprove anything.” And law is only an application of logic in a particular direction.So legal experts go on arguing, confusing the judge, confusing the juries. It takes years, and even then most of the criminals are released, most of the murderers are released. So much expense, so much wastage of time, so many people involved – finally the murderer is released. In fact, the man who can save the criminal is thought to be a greater expert in law than the man who cannot save the criminal. But by saving the criminal you are harming the innocent person.It would be far simpler if there were no mediators. Two simple, common men cannot create so much smoke. The judge should be perfectly educated. The situation in America is just the opposite. The judges are elected, elected by the common masses, by political parties. They don’t know even the ABC of law. They are utterly ignorant about jurisprudence – and they are to decide! And confronting them are experts of law who can confuse anybody.Justice has become more and more impossible. The whole legal profession is illegal, there is no need of it. And judges cannot be elected – that is not democracy, that is sheer stupidity.The judge should be absolutely knowledgeable about the human mind, human psychology, the laws of the land, the values of the constitution. He cannot be elected; he has to be appointed according to his merit. And then it is so simple: two common men cannot deceive him; within three days the case will be over and the criminal will be caught. But it is strange – judges know nothing of justice, and they have to face experts of law. And behind them are hiding all kinds of criminals. Even such a simple thing people cannot understand – that justice is an expertise.And there are means which can be used – science has provided so many means so that the courtroom’s whole structure will be different. The man who is testifying should be standing on a lie detector – not knowing it is there. There is no need for any oath. The days of the oath are over; nobody cares about the oath.I know professional witnesses…. I used to live in a city where the high court of the state was. I had a friend, and I was surprised that he was always moving around the courts; I thought perhaps he was employed there.I used to go to the university by way of the court. One day I stopped the car and called him and asked, “What kind of job have you got? – because mostly I see you outside the court.”He said, “I don’t have any job. I am a professional witness.”I said, “What is that?”He said, “You don’t know what a professional witness is? I witness for anybody. So outside I find a client, a customer who wants a witness. He has done something wrong; I can witness and prove that he has not done it.”I said, “But you must be taking the oath….”He laughed, he said, “I have taken the oath so many times it does not matter anymore. And even the judges know me, the advocates know me, the criminals know me. When the advocates find that it is very difficult to save a criminal, they seek my help. I am an eyewitness for anything. And I have become so expert in all these ten years that I earn more than the advocates.”There is no point in the oath. Who cares about a book when there are scientific instruments available which are absolutely certain? And more sophisticated mechanisms can be invented. The man can be hypnotized, and in hypnosis he cannot lie; he will have to say the truth. There is no way to lie, because in hypnosis he is unconscious. You can record everything that he says. And when he wakes up after hypnosis, let him listen to the record. He will be simply surprised: he has told everything that he wanted to hide.Hypnotists are needed in the courts, hypnotic devices are needed in the court. Lie detectors are needed in the court. A very fair mind, not bigoted, having no conditions – that should be the training of a judge. He is no longer a Christian, no longer a Hindu, no longer a Mohammedan, no longer a communist; his only function is to decide what is true and what is untrue. Beyond that, he has no ideology to impose, he has no mind to interfere with the truth.The whole education of the judges should be of deconditioning. Silently he should listen to both sides, watch the lie detectors, listen to their hypnotic states, and decide. Within three days even the greatest case can be finished, and absolutely only the criminal will be punished. Neither advocates are needed, nor are witnesses needed. These are unnecessary parasites.But everywhere mediators have been exploiting human blood. Man has to be made conscious about it. Every institution that civilization has created needs total change, a new orientation.Osho,Can a person become enlightened by accident?This is something very significant to understand. Enlightenment is always accidental. That does not mean that you have not to try for it, but your trying is not going to bring it. Your effort is not going to achieve it. But making the effort, searching in all directions in every possible way, some day it happens – not because of your efforts but because of your intense urge, a tremendous intensity like a flame within you. But it is always accidental; you cannot say, “It happened because I did that.” Otherwise, things would have been very simple.For example, Buddha was sitting under a bodhi tree, and enlightenment happened. Now, thousands of Buddhist monks…. In every Buddhist monastery there are bo trees, and they are sitting, waiting for enlightenment to happen – as if the bo tree has something to do with it.Buddha had eaten that evening a sweet made of milk and rice. Buddhist monks think that has something to do with it, so for them it has become very spiritual food. Before sitting for meditation, they will eat kheer – that is the name of the sweet. But enlightenment has nothing to do with kheer.Buddha was sitting in a certain posture, the lotus posture. So every Buddhist monk sits in the same posture – perhaps the posture has something to do with it. The posture has nothing to do with it, but millions, throughout history, have been sitting in that posture, torturing their legs. And now Westerners have started learning yoga postures, in which the lotus posture is the most important because Buddha became enlightened in that posture. For a Westerner, who has been sitting in a chair his whole life – in a cold country you don’t sit on the ground – his legs are in tremendous torture, but he tries hard. It takes almost three months for him to attain to the lotus posture, but only to the lotus posture; and then he waits his whole life for enlightenment. It doesn’t happen.So it is not a certain sequence of causes that brings enlightenment. Your search, your intense longing, your readiness to do anything – altogether perhaps they create a certain aroma around you in which that great accident becomes possible.But you cannot manage it. Every seeker has to begin from the beginning; you cannot learn by watching somebody. That’s what all the religions have been doing: a certain prayer, a certain posture, a certain ritual, a certain way of breathing. Nothing helps.I have always loved a small story…. The archbishop of Russia became very much annoyed because on a small island three men had become known to the population as saints. Now, this is against Christianity. Christianity is the most foolish religion of all the religions. A saint has to be certified by the church – as if to be a saint is a degree, a title. The English word saint comes from sanction. When the church gives the sanction, one becomes a saint.The archbishop was very angry that without his sanction, these three people had become known as saints. And thousands of people were going to touch their feet, to get their blessings. Naturally, this was making him very angry.One day he finally decided to go and see what kind of saints these were. He went in a motorboat, reached the island – it was a very small island, only those three people lived there. It was early morning, and those three were sitting under a tree. They looked simple, uneducated, illiterate people.The archbishop on the way was very nervous about facing three saints who have influenced thousands of people. But now he saw there was no problem – these were idiots! He went there and they all touched his feet. He was well satisfied. He said, “Do you think you are saints?”They said, “We are uneducated, illiterate, poor people. How can we think such high things? They are not for us. But what can we do? People go on coming. We try to prevent them, we tell them they should go to you, but they don’t listen.”The archbishop said with an authoritative tone, “What is your prayer?”The three looked at each other, they nudged each other. One said, “You say it.” The others said, “You say it.”The archbishop said, “Anybody can say it, there is no harm. But start!”They said, “We feel very embarrassed, because it is not really a prayer; we have made it up.”The archbishop was really angry: “You have invented the prayer? What is the prayer?”One of them said, “You insist, so we have to say; but we are feeling very embarrassed, because the prayer is not very great, it is very simple. Our prayer is: ‘You are three, we are three; have mercy on us.’“Even the archbishop in his anger had to laugh. He said, “Great! This is your prayer?”Those poor people said, “We are ready to learn. If you teach us the right prayer, the proper prayer, we will try it. But it should not be long, because we may forget it, or we may make mistakes, get confused. Our prayer is so simple we cannot forget it, we cannot make any mistake.”The archbishop read the whole prayer of the orthodox church of Russia. It was too long. Those three poor people said, “This is too long. Please read it again.” The third time, they said, “Just one time more, so we can remember.”The archbishop was happy that these idiots…”Now there is no problem: I can convince people that they know nothing – not even the prayer of the church!”They touched the archbishop’s feet, thanked him and told him that there was no need for him to come, he should have just sent a message and they would have come to him. Why should he take such trouble? Anytime he wanted, he should just send a message and they would come to the church itself.Very happy and contented, the archbishop left. When he was just in the middle of the lake, he saw those three running on the water, coming towards him, saying, “Stop! We have forgotten the prayer! Just once more!”The archbishop looked at them – they were standing on the water, running on the water. He must have been a man of some intelligence. He said, “Forgive me. Your prayer is right; you continue your prayer. Your prayer has reached; my prayer has not reached. You are really saints; it does not matter whether the church has sanctioned you or not. Sanctions are needed by those who are not really saints; your very existence proves it. Just forgive me, that I interfered in your life.”This is a story by Leo Tolstoy. It is possible. With purity of heart, with serenity of the mind, with calmness, even this becomes a prayer: “You are three, we are three; have mercy on us.” And the great accident happens.But you cannot copy it – that is the problem. You can go to an island and sit under a tree, and say, “You are three, we are three; have mercy on us,” and nothing will be happening. Within an hour or two you will get bored, and you will say that this does not work. It is not a question of methodology.Existence has allowed enlightenment in so many different ways to people, all that we can say is that certain qualities – not very particular methods, but certain qualities – when they come to meet within you, function not as a cause, but something happens because of their presence. This is what in science is called a catalytic agent. They function as a catalytic agent.For example, you know that water is made with hydrogen and oxygen. But you can go on mixing oxygen and hydrogen and water will not be made. If you divide water, you will find only hydrogen and oxygen. Then what is missing? Why, even when mixing them in the proper proportion, H2O, is the water still not happening? For that, the presence of electricity is needed. It does not cause it – it is a totally different phenomenon than causality – but its presence is a catalytic agent. Without its presence, oxygen and hydrogen can remain together for eternity, but water will not happen.So when you see silver lines in black clouds, it is not just for painters and people who understand beauty and are sensitive to esthetic values. That silver line is nothing but the presence of electricity that transforms hydrogen and oxygen into water. But scientists were surprised in the beginning, because it does not take any part – just its presence is needed. But without its presence nothing happens.So I can say to you that enlightenment is always an accident, not an effect produced by a certain cause; otherwise, things would have been very easy. Everybody could have produced the cause, all the necessary ingredients, and would have become enlightened.If the lotus posture is needed, he will do it. If standing on the head is needed, he will do it. If sitting under a bo tree is needed, he will do it – anything. If other men have been able to do it, you can. But the problem is that it is not a cause-and-effect phenomenon. So I can describe only a certain presence which functions as a catalytic agent.Meditation creates the catalytic agent: a totally silent mind with no thoughts, a totally relaxed body with no tensions, a totally empty heart with no moods, no feelings, no sentiments, no emotions. And then, simply wait.In this silence, serenity, just wait….And out of nowhere something explodes in you.Yes, it is an explosion – of light, of love, of tremendous bliss, which remains with you forever. You cannot lose it even if you want to. Nobody can become unenlightened again, that is not possible.In an ancient sutra it is said, “You can make curd out of milk, but you cannot make milk out of curd.” The process is not reversible. You can make butter out of curd – in India people make purified butter they call ghee, but you cannot make ghee again butter or curd or milk. You have come to the end of the process. You cannot go back and there is no possibility of going beyond.In India, ghee became a very spiritual, symbolic thing, for a simple reason; otherwise, there is nothing spiritual in it. The symbolic reason was that it gives you the whole process of enlightenment. You can attain it, but you cannot step down the stairs. Those stairs are gone; any step that you have passed no longer exists.Nobody has said what I am saying to you: that enlightenment is accidental. There are only two possibilities – either a thing can be causal or a thing can be accidental. The causal thing cannot bring you to eternal freedom because it is based on a chain of cause and effect. Only the accidental can bring you to freedom, to total newness, freshness, a new birth. Because of this phenomenon all religions have failed, because they were trying just to imitate somebody’s enlightenment.The Taoists are still trying to imitate Lao Tzu – after twenty-five centuries doing the same things, eating the same things, living the same way, thinking that they will become Lao Tzu. But in twenty-five centuries not a single man has been able to attain the goal.Jainas are doing it, Buddhists are doing it, all religions are doing a single thing: they have seen somebody whose eyes had a different light, whose gestures had a different grace, whose words had a different authority. He spoke from his very innermost core, he was not a scholar. He was not saying anything within quotes; he was simply expressing his own vision. He was singing his own song, dancing his own dance. He was utterly individual and immensely blissful. People seeing him started imitating – what he was doing, they should do. And they have been doing, for thousands of years, all kinds of imitations.Thomas a Kempis has even written a book which is thought by Christians to be next only to The Holy Bible in importance. The name of the book is The Imitation Of Christ. You can understand from the very name what the book contains. But even Thomas a Kempis could not become what he thinks by imitating Jesus Christ one can become. His book is read by monks, and they try to imitate. They become carbon copies.And one thing is certain: this existence is absolutely against carbon copies. This existence knows only original faces. It will recognize you only when you come with your original face – not Christian, not Buddhist, not Hindu, but just you in your utter nudity.So I can suggest only that you can create the catalytic situation, and then wait. And have patience; you cannot force enlightenment to happen. You can manage the catalytic atmosphere, that’s all that is within your hands – then wait. Be patient.Existence is impartial. Whenever the time is ripe, you will suddenly be aflame. All the old will be burned and something new, absolutely new, that you could not have even thought about, dreamed about, will have happened.It is possible, but nobody can guarantee it.It is going to happen if you can manage the catalytic atmosphere and wait. One never knows: it may happen today, it may take the whole life – but it will happen. Just wait. Wait with deep trust in existence.But whenever it happens, it will come as a great surprise to you, because it is accidental.Osho,Do all ordinary people think that others have something more or better than they do?That’s the definition of ordinary people. They are continuously comparing themselves with others. Comparison is their whole life’s work.Certainly people have…somebody has a better house, somebody has a better nose, somebody has a better body, somebody has a better mind. There are thousands of things. You can find in every person something better than you.Even a beggar may have something better than you. Just the way he walks may have a grandeur, a carelessness. He has no worries, he has nothing to worry about. He sleeps in the street better than you sleep on the best mattress in the best house. The better the mattress, the worse the sleep. It is very strange but that’s how it is, because for sleep what is needed is at least eight hours of hard work. That’s the way your physiology is built. It has a built-in program. If you don’t work eight hours at least, you can’t have eight hours of deep, beautiful sleep.You will feel jealous, and people are burning with jealousy, because it is not one thing with one person; everybody around you has something better than you: fair color, beautiful hair…. How many things are there? Can you find a person who has nothing better than you? And if you are looking only for “Who has something better than me?” then this whole world has things better than you. So many people, and you are burning with jealousy!This is the ordinary state of humanity. And what creates it? Comparison. You have been told from your very childhood to compare. That is poison. You should have been told never to compare. You are unique, so is the other, and there is no question of comparison. Comparison is possible only if two persons are similar, but there are not two persons similar on the whole earth. Comparison is not possible.The moment comparison drops from your mind, all jealousy disappears. Suddenly you find yourself strangely peaceful, contented, strangely respectful towards yourself, grateful to existence for whatever it has given to you. And it has given you so much, and without charging you anything. It has given you life – which you cannot purchase. No money can purchase it.Alexander the Great was simply impotent when it came to the question of purchasing life. He was dying, and he wanted to live only twenty-four hours more, because he had promised his mother that he would come back home and put the whole world at her feet.Athens was only a twenty-four hours’ journey, but he was so sick that the doctor said, “You cannot survive more than two, three hours, and it is better to stop here.”Alexander offered to give them anything they wanted, but the doctors said, “What can we do? Even if you give us your whole empire” – and he was a world conqueror – “life is not something that we can give to you.”But you have not been grateful to existence at all. It has given you more than life, which even Alexander the Great could not purchase. It has given you love, it has given you the sensitivity to see beauty, it has given you the capacity to understand great music. It has given you all that is priceless, and still you are ungrateful.To me, to be grateful to existence is the first step of being a religio, a man of religiousness. It has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with gratitude. Just look how much you have. And look – there is much more which you have not even explored. But your whole energy is wasted in comparing, which leads you nowhere, except to burning in jealousy, anger, frustration.You are unique. And if existence accepts you as you are, don’t reject yourself. That’s what you have been told by your priests, your parents – that you are worthless, that you have to prove yourself, that you are good for nothing.That’s what my father used to say to me in my childhood, “You are good for nothing.” And I said to him, “Thank you!”He said, “For what are you giving me thanks?”I said, “At least you used the word good for me. Good for nothing, but good, certainly. And I don’t think that nothing is a bad quality. In fact, Gautam Buddha says nothingness is the highest experience. Buddha’s word for enlightenment is nothingness, nirvana. So,” I said, “You are telling me, ‘You are good for enlightenment.’ Thank you. Whatever your meaning is, I don’t care. Whatever I understand, for that I am giving you my thanks.”And he said, “It is so difficult to talk with you. You make words mean whatever you want them to mean. Now, everybody knows what ‘good for nothing’ means.”I said, “I have no obligation to be convinced by their meaning. I give it a better meaning. And I will prove in my life exactly what you have said, you have predicted: I am good for nothing.”And when he became a sannyasin, I reminded him. I told him, “Look. Now you are going to be a disciple of somebody who is good for nothing. And all that I can do for you is to make you also good for nothing.”And he died with tremendous gratitude. The last day when I went to see him in the hospital, he reminded me, “Perhaps I have come to the point which you call ‘good for nothing.’ I was wrong, you were right, and I feel proud that even at that young age you had the guts to assert whatever you felt. You never rejected yourself, you never condemned yourself, you never compared yourself. You never asked for anything somebody else had. You were so contented with yourself – as if you owned the whole world.”I said, “Really that’s the case. Why bother about small things? You own the sun, you own the moon, you own all the stars. Why bother about small things?”I have heard that two hobos – that is another word for good for nothing, a shorter form – on a full-moon night, are sitting by the side of the ocean. And it is immensely beautiful – the ocean, the beach, the full moon driving the ocean mad.One hobo said to the other, “I could give everything” – and he had nothing – “I could give everything to purchase this moon.”The other said, “Forget all about it! I am not going to sell it.”Why bother about purchasing and selling? You already own it! This whole universe is yours. And small things – somebody has a little longer nose – and you are worried, and you don’t think about the whole sky full of stars.People are all on fire continuously, but it is their own doing. Get out of the funeral pyre! In the end you will be there, but while you are alive, why go on sitting on a funeral pyre?Accept, respect, and be grateful to existence. And suddenly you will feel a tremendous release and relaxation.Osho,Rabindranath Tagore has written, “I know that a community of god-seekers is a great shelter for man, but directly this grows into an institution, it is apt to give ready access to the devil by its backdoor.”Please comment.It is easy to feel loving towards me. That is not something great on your part. It is easy to feel trust, easy to feel surrender, but these are not going to help you.In the commune, when you come across people just like you and you have to trust them, you have to love them, and you have to be in a surrendering attitude – not in a fighting mood, not competitive, but ready to merge with them – it is difficult. But you will have to take that challenge. Unless you take that challenge, you cannot come close to me.These people are devices; the commune is a device. These people are just as frail as you are, as weak, as angry, as jealous, as immediately annoyed, irritated about anything. It becomes difficult for you to be loving towards them. But that is the test. In spite of them, you have to grow your strength of love.You can love me because I don’t give you any trouble. But that does not show that your love is growing within you. Your love has to become stronger, your trust has to become stronger – even of those who are not trustworthy. It does not matter: they are not the consideration, you are. In spite of all their hindrances, obstacles, still remain loving. Unless you pass all these tests in the commune, you will never be able to love me. These are the steps which come to my temple.It has always been easy for people to love and dedicate themselves to dead saints, sages, because they don’t create any trouble for you. They are so far away – Jesus, Krishna, Buddha; they are so far away they will not create any trouble for you. They will not snatch your girlfriend away from you! It is very easy to go and put a few rose flowers at the feet of Gautam Buddha’s statue. But the real test is the people who are just like you, who are also passing through the same hindrances. You are a hindrance to them, they are a hindrance to you. The commune is a great device: everybody is a hindrance to everybody else. So five thousand obstacles – naturally, you feel it is difficult.Somebody snatches your girlfriend, then some woman catches hold of you. Being a gentleman you cannot say no. Being a man you cannot say, “I have a headache.” Your girlfriend is gone, and this woman is sitting on top of you.A strange commune: everybody is an obstacle for everybody else. And they are perfectly trained; they are doing their job just great! So to pass this ocean of five thousand people and still remain loving, trusting…. But that is the only way to come close to me. Without this fire you will never become real gold.Osho,What are you cooking?Whatever it is, we are eager to eat it.Unfortunately, I am not a cook. I have never made even a cup of tea in my life. I am really good for nothing. But something is cooking….I am not allowed in the kitchen by my kitchen people, but I can smell something is cooking. And not only are you eager, I am also eager!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 33 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is empathy the current that brings about the awareness of our each and every relatedness, and vice versa?The experience of empathy is very rare. You know what sympathy means, you also know what apathy means; but empathy you do not know.Sympathy and apathy are opposed to each other. Empathy is beyond both. To help you understand it, let me tell you an incident in Ramakrishna’s life.He was in a boat, going to the other shore of the Ganges near Calcutta. And just out of nowhere – he was surrounded by his disciples – he started screaming, “Don’t beat me!” Tears started flowing from his eyes, and one could see that his body was getting distorted as if somebody was beating him badly. The disciples could see nobody there, but he was in immense torture.When they reached to the other shore, they found a fisherman with a big crowd surrounding him. He had been beaten by a few people. And the strangest thing was that the same bruises and scratches that had come up on his back, had come up on Ramakrishna’s back too – exactly the same.It was a very mysterious phenomenon. They asked Ramakrishna what it was. He said, “This is empathy. You feel so one with the other that your separate identities lose their boundaries. The other’s thirst becomes your thirst, the other’s hunger becomes your hunger, the other’s joy becomes your joy. The other is no longer other: some secret passage has opened between two beings, a deep connectedness.”Man has forgotten about empathy completely, but he knows about sympathy. Sympathy is not something great. When somebody is in misery you sympathize; but if you look inside you will find you are feeling great because you are not in misery, somebody else is. At least in this situation you are superior. You can sympathize – you can afford it.Apathy is your everyday experience. You pass people as if they don’t exist. The servant comes in your room – you don’t wave at him, you don’t smile at him. You don’t even take any note that somebody has come in the room. You remain exactly the same as you were before – no recognition of the other’s existence. This is your everyday experience.Sympathy once in a while – when somebody goes bankrupt, when somebody’s house is burned, the whole neighborhood is sympathetic. And these are the same people who were jealous of his beautiful house. How can it be? The same people who were jealous of his beautiful house suddenly have become so sympathetic because his house is burned. It is a mask; underneath they are feeling great joy, this was the day they were waiting for. His beautiful house was continuously a torture for their heart. Now, sympathizing with the man, they are in a higher position. They are really feeling good.So remember perfectly well, whenever you sympathize with somebody – watch the inner workings of your mind; it is not friendly. It is not out of your goodness, out of your compassion, but just the opposite. It is your hate, your jealousy, your violence – but now there is no need to show it, the man is finished on his own. Now you can have this beautiful experience and a good night’s sleep by sympathizing with him, by being a real Catholic. Sympathy is not a great quality. It is phony.Apathy is inhuman. And remember, when you are apathetic towards anybody, your heart is becoming harder. You are not doing any harm to the person, you are simply being self-destructive. The more apathetic you are, the more your heart will lose its great qualities. It will become just a pumping mechanism for breathing, but not a bridge for feeling.Empathy has almost disappeared from human beings. It is certainly the only quality that joins you with the life current within other human beings, animals, trees – with the whole existence. It is pure religiousness. But no religion teaches empathy. All religions teach is sympathy, and sympathy is not the real thing.But in animals and in trees, empathy is still pure, alive. There have been experiments on animals…. A child of some animal is taken deep into the ocean. The mother is on the shore, miles away; but when they start torturing the child, the mother starts feeling the same – the way Ramakrishna did. When they stop torturing the child, the mother stops being tortured. There is some connection between the mother and the child, which, even miles away, remains – some invisible connection.The child has been in the mother’s womb for nine months. He is nothing but an extension of the mother. Whatever he has is the gift of his mother; his blood, his bones, his flesh, his very life is ninety-nine percent from the mother, only one percent from the father.The father does not feel empathy, but the mother feels it. The experiments have been done thousands of miles away, and still it has affected the mother. The father remains unaffected. The father is really not a relative; he has performed just an arbitrary function. Any syringe could have done it – but syringes don’t feel empathy. The father is an unnatural institution.The mother’s situation is totally different. The child is her own extension. Every small thing that has happened in the nine months when the child was in the mother’s womb has affected the child, even the dreams of the mother. If she was sad, the child was sad, because he was just part of her. If she was happy, the child was happy.If you see this whole world so sad, so unhappy, so miserable, one of the reasons is that mothers are not aware when they are pregnant that they are carrying a tremendous responsibility: they are going to create a new being. Now it is not only a question of themselves, somebody else is growing within them; and they should be alert not to get into fights, into anger, into hatred, into jealousies. They should listen to great music, they should read great poetry. They should see nature and its beauty.At least for nine months they should be as silent and meditative as possible. This will change two lives! The child will come in the world with a rejoicing heart; and nine months of silence and meditativeness, music and poetry, is certainly going to change the mother too. It is going to be mutual. She will be grateful to the child her whole life, the child will be grateful to her – and this link continues, there is no way to cut it.But this is a natural phenomenon. In animals it has not been disturbed, but in man it has been utterly disturbed. Even in trees it exists. It has been found…now there are scientific experiments available: there are certain mechanisms like cardiograms which can be attached to a tree, and the cardiograms start making the graph of how the tree is feeling right now. An early morning sun, a beautiful breeze, the whole night’s rest, birds singing – it is paradise; and there is a tremendous harmony in the cardiogram, the graph is harmonious.Then you tell the gardener to come with an ax to cut one of the branches of the tree. The gardener comes with the ax – and he is far away, but the graph starts going berserk, it loses its harmony. The branch has not been cut yet; cutting it is only in the mind of the gardener, but even with the mind of the gardener the tree has a certain relatedness.The scientist runs to the gardener and says, “There is no need to cut the tree, but still come with the ax.”Now the mind of the gardener is changed; he is not to cut the branch, just to bring the ax. Everything on the outside is the same, but the graph immediately comes back to its harmony.And the most surprising thing is – this is quite mysterious – this sensitivity of the tree is far more than that of human beings. Even thoughts are affecting it. It is so receptive that even small waves of thoughts passing by it are caught in its net of sensitivity.But even more surprising is, when they have attached the instruments to another tree, they were surprised to know that when the gardener was instructed to go and cut a branch of the first tree, even a second tree, which was not going to be cut, lost its harmony. That means it is not only sensitive to the gardener’s mind, it is also sensitive to the neighboring tree. Its neighboring tree is going to be cut – that hurts it. And when the gardener was stopped, the chaotic pattern of the graph disappeared from both trees. They were in tune and in harmony.Man thinks he has evolved. In certain ways, yes, but in certain other ways he has lost much. His evolution is only of reason, intellect, but he has lost, on the way, his heart. And the heart is the most significant thing. A thousand and one rationalities cannot give you that which a single heart full of sensitivity can give you.Empathy is relating to people through the heart. But this is possible only if the mind is silent, if there are no thoughts in the mind and it gives way, opens the door to the heart. But ordinarily you are so full of thoughts there is no way to be sensitive.Even when you love someone, you say, “I think I have fallen in love.” That too, is a thought: you think. Your love is also dependent on your thinking. You cannot do anything directly from the heart. Your mind has been trained, educated, conditioned in every possible way and your heart has been ignored in every possible way. By and by, you have forgotten that the heart is far more valuable than the mind. Your mind has become everything.The heart is not a Christian, is not a Hindu, is not a Mohammedan, is not a communist – but the mind is. Different ideologies make the mind different. The mind is American, the mind is Russian, the mind is Indian, the mind is Chinese. But the heart? Have you ever thought about the heart? Is the heart also American, Indian, Russian? The heart knows no boundaries, but it has been put into a state of nonfunctioning.Your whole energy has been diverted by the educational system, by religious teaching, by political ideologies. It has been forced to go directly to the head and bypass the heart. Slowly slowly you start living without the heart. And to live without the heart is not to live at all.The head is only a mechanism, a biocomputer. And soon there will be better computers than the greatest genius’ head. It is already not of much use. A mathematical problem that Albert Einstein could solve in three or four days’ arduous work can be solved by the computer in a single second. Soon you will see that the head is being replaced by the computer.That’s how things change in the world. Machines replace human beings because they function better. They don’t go on strike, they don’t make unions, they don’t demand more wages. They simply go on working day in, day out; they don’t even need rest. And they produce a thousand times more than man can. Naturally, man is being replaced everywhere by machines, technology.The day is not very far away when you will be paid if you are ready to remain unemployed. If you insist on employment you will not be paid. You can’t have both the things together, employment and pay. If you remain unemployed you can be paid.Naturally, people cannot live only with employment, they need the necessities of life; they will choose to remain unemployed and receive the pay. But the implications are very great. When millions of people are unemployed, have nothing to do, there is bound to be more crime, more rapes, more divorces, more thefts, more murders, more suicides.Man cannot just sit – unless he happens to be a sannyasin. Either people will have to learn to sit silently, doing nothing, and let the grass grow by itself, or they will be a constant nuisance to each other.Mind is already finished. Man has to evolve a new system of education which directs his energies towards the heart. Machines cannot have hearts, the computers cannot have hearts. The computers cannot fall in love with each other, nor can they elope with somebody’s wife.The heart knows something which the mind is not aware of. It knows the way of empathy. The heart can connect itself to the whole existence. And that will bring it great ecstasies, immense joy – as if constantly flowers go on showering on you from nowhere.Your question is significant, but I don’t think you understand what you have asked; empathy is not your experience. Once in a while lovers, great lovers, have felt it. Once in a while great disciples and masters have felt it.Gautam Buddha had a disciple, Ananda, who remained with him till his very last breath – almost forty-two years without a single break, day in, day out, twenty-four hours a day. His relationship with Gautam Buddha was not of the mind. The relationship between the master and the disciple has not to be of the mind. If it is of the mind, then it is the relationship between teacher and student. If it is of the heart, then it is the relationship of master and disciple.Slowly slowly their hearts came closer, became almost one. It is said that before Buddha asked for water, Ananda was ready. Before Buddha said that he was feeling cold, Ananda was already bringing the blanket. A very underground way had opened – no need to say anything.Many times Buddha would say, “Ananda, why have you brought this water? I had not asked you.”Ananda said, “It does not matter whether you ask or not, I felt the thirst, that my master is thirsty; I felt my master is cold. I don’t know how, because it is not a question of my mind. Just the feeling – and so strong a feeling that I cannot go against it. If you are not thirsty, don’t drink.”Buddha laughed and he said, “No. I was just inquiring how you managed to know it. I was feeling thirsty, I was just going to say. I was feeling cold, and I was just going to say – but you don’t allow me even to say a thing!” Even in the night – if Gautam Buddha was not able to sleep because there were mosquitoes, Ananda could not sleep either. The moment Buddha awoke in the morning – exactly, simultaneously, immediately, Ananda awoke.With lovers it has happened that before your beloved says something you know it. It is already heard by you, although it has not been said.So only in very rare cases is empathy still alive. But it has been a great loss to humanity. It is because of the loss of empathy that we have become unspiritual beings. It has to be regained. Getting it back will give you a totally new, luminous existence. And then you will not feel as an island apart from everybody else, but just part of an infinite continent. And just to feel it is so relaxing, to feel that you are one with the trees, and one with the rivers, and one with the stars. Then for the first time you will know what beauty is, what bliss is, what life is. All that you have to do is to behead yourself.Meditation is nothing but a subtle way of beheading! Your head remains in its place, but loses all its content, becomes hollow. When the head is empty, the heart is full. When the head is full, the heart is empty, because you have only that much energy. You can’t have both. Up to now, humanity has chosen the head. And you can see the consequence: the whole earth has become a madhouse.My sannyasins have to change the whole direction of their life force towards the heart. And then you will see a new intensity, a new totality – something that was so close and yet of which you were unaware.Empathy is an experience of the heart. Yes, it is the life current, it is life itself.Osho,For centuries the British bobby, with no gun, only a small truncheon, has been a symbol of the respect for law and order in a civilized country. Now rioters are attacking the police with shotguns and gas bombs. In the latest riot two hundred policemen were wounded and one killed with a hatchet. A senior officer said, “This is not England, this is madness. They are using my men for target practice.”What is causing this surge of violence against law and order? Could it happen in America?It is going to happen everywhere. But before we discuss it, a few of your misconceptions have to be completely dropped.You say England was a very cultured society…. England has been the greatest empire in the world, it has exploited millions of people as barbarously as possible. And you call England a cultured, a civilized country? It looked civilized, because all its barbariousness was being expressed all around the earth in the British empire. All ugly people were sent – in the armies, in the civil services, as governors, as governor-generals – outside England. And the empire was vast. It was said the sun never sets on the British empire and it was true. Somewhere or other the sun was still there in the British empire.So it had a very simple way of sending the barbarous elements to the empire, to torture people, to kill people, and to bring all the riches from the whole world to England. Naturally, when all the riches were available to England, there was no need for riots, no need to fight. England had the best universities – Oxford, Cambridge and others.England has done so many ugly acts that you will not be able to believe it. India – which was the biggest part of England’s empire – was one of the ancientmost countries on the earth. It had its own developed craftsmen, arts. For example, they used to make such thin cloth in Dacca, in Bengal, that you could cover a whole elephant with the cloth and still you could pass the whole cloth through a small finger ring, it was so thin. Thousands of years of craftsmanship…. Even if you had seven layers of it on your body, you would still be seen as naked. Millions of people were involved in creating that kind of cloth. The Britishers were in a difficulty. They cut the hands of millions of craftsmen so that they could sell Manchester cloth in India – and you call England a civilized, cultured country?In one place in Punjab, there is a public park, Jalianwala Bagh. It has only one entrance. They were having a peaceful meeting – almost one hundred thousand men, women and children inside the park, which has eight-foot-tall walls all around, and just a single small gate. A British general fixed a machine gun on the gate and ordered the people to vacate the park within ten minutes. Now, that was impossible; it was a walled garden, people could not get out of it, and the gate was already closed, with the machine gun fixed. The name of the general was Dyer. And after ten minutes he started shooting absolutely innocent people, who had not done anything. Within minutes there were only corpses of children, women, men – one hundred thousand. It was such a blatant, cruel act. What punishment did General Dyer get? Only one punishment: he was sent back to England. You kill one hundred thousand people for no reason, and this is a cultured and civilized country?People in England were rich, not because they had produced the riches, but because they had exploited the whole empire. They squeezed the last drop of blood from countries like India. Of course, England was happy – at the cost of millions of people dying in poverty. You have taken all their gold, silver, their diamonds, their mines. You have taken everything from them.And England is a small country, not big enough even to be compared to a state in India. India consists of thirty states now – British India was even bigger, because now Pakistan is separate, Bangladesh is separate. But even now India is thirty times bigger than England.England was a parasite. Of course, the British behaved well, they were very cultured; they were ladies and they were gentlemen. And what were they doing around the world? They never considered other human beings equal to them. All other human beings, whom they were exploiting and on whose blood they were living, were treated like animals.All these riches pouring in from all over the world made England really beautiful, rich, educated, cultured. But now the empire has disappeared. Now England is going down the drain. And now all those people whom England has trained to kill and murder are turning upon their own people. Every action has its reaction. You cannot escape from the basic laws of life. England will have to suffer.You are asking me: “Why is it that there were no riots in England before, and now hundreds of people are being killed, policemen are being killed?”There will be more riots, because England has become accustomed to all the riches which are no longer coming. It has become accustomed to having all the luxuries without producing them. Now from where can it get all those riches? Now it is the darkest and the most dismal country on the earth. But that’s how existence functions. If you do something wrong, you are bound to suffer. If you do something right, existence is very rewarding.England has done so much wrong in the past three hundred years that it seems difficult for it even to survive. All that glory and glamour was borrowed, stolen; forcibly, violently taken away from others. Now that glory is gone; those beautiful days have become dreams. People are unemployed. England is becoming every day poorer and poorer. And the people have become accustomed to being violent, violent with others, in the past; now they will be violent with themselves, with their own. It is absolutely natural, and absolutely justified.It is going to happen to all those countries which have been living on exploitation, whose culture depends on somebody else’s blood. It is bound to happen. It is simply the law of life. You cannot go on against the law for long. Sooner or later it takes you over.Now England is just a pauper country. And there is no way to create the empire again, those days are gone. England will suffer much violence in the future from its own people. It has done that violence to other people; the ghosts of all those people will follow it.England has no future. Darkness and more darkness…. And all that old nonsense of being cultured and civilized is already disappearing; the barbarous reality is showing its face. This is going to happen almost everywhere, for different reasons.For example, in India only ten families have half the income and money of the whole country. Ten families have money equal to that of eight hundred million people! How long can you manage such a state? Eight hundred million people are going, sooner or later, to destroy these families. The money belongs to them, they have produced it – and they are dying, their children don’t have milk, their parents don’t have medicine. It is going to happen everywhere. Reasons may be different, but everywhere violence is going to erupt like volcanoes.You are asking me: “Can this happen in America too?” If it cannot, it should. It is a strange country. The people to whom the land belongs have been forced to live in reservations – the Red Indians – and the people who are ruling the country and have become the owners of the country are all foreigners.This is the only country where the people of the land don’t bother at all about freedom, don’t think at all that they have been enslaved, that their beautiful country has been taken away by foreigners. And the foreigners have some nerve!We have been here for four years. I came with a legal visa, I am here legally. It is up to them to decide, and they are such chickens they cannot decide either yes or no. They don’t want to say yes. They are afraid – and rightly afraid, because I can prove very dangerous! They cannot say no, because the moment they say no, the whole file moves from their hands, and I go to the court.And it is not only a question of my green card; I will make it a question of freedom for the native Americans. I will ask the Supreme Court, “If you have any sense of justice, if you have any respect for your Constitution, then no foreigner can be in the government. Red Indians should form the government. And all the foreigners should apply for citizenship. If their forefathers committed a sin, forget all about it; they are gone and there is no way to punish them. But they have left generations behind which are answerable. And if the Red Indians want you to be here, you can be here; otherwise, just get back to your own countries.”And if Red Indians are in the government, the possibility of a third world war simply disappears, because Red Indians will not be at all interested, or even ready for a third world war. They will not pile up nuclear weapons – they cannot create them.And all the foreigners who call themselves Americans have taken it for granted that this is their country. Sheer bullshit! They can ask for refuge, they can ask the Red Indians to be allowed to live here – but they cannot live here as masters. Enough is enough.There is an old prophecy of the Red Indians – they have informed me, and I said perhaps it is right – that somebody from the East will come and deliver them from their slavery. Perhaps I have come!Osho,What is the ego? It seems a complementary question to “who am I?” and as much a koan.The ego is just the opposite of your real self. The ego is not you. The ego is the deception created by the society so that you can continue playing with the toy and never ask about the real thing. That’s why my insistence that unless you drop the ego, you will never come to know yourself.When you were born you had your authentic self. Then they started creating a false self: you are Christian, you are Catholic, you are white, you are German and you are the chosen race of God, you are supposed to rule over the world, and so on and so forth. They create a false idea who you are. They give you a name and around the name they create ambitions, conditionings.And by and by – because it takes almost one-third of your life – they work on your ego through the school, through the church, college, university…. By the time you come back home from the university you have forgotten completely your innocent being. You are now a very big ego with a gold medal, first class, topping the university. Now you are ready to go into the world.This ego has all the desires, ambitions, wants to be always on the top of everything. You are exploited by this ego. And this never allows you even a glimpse of your real authentic self, and your life is there, in your authenticity. Hence, this ego only produces misery, suffering, fighting, frustration, madness, suicide, murder – all kinds of crime.A seeker of truth has to begin from this very point: that whatever you have been told by the society you are, discard it. Certainly you are not it, because nobody can know who you are except yourself – neither your parents, nor your teachers, nor your priests. Except yourself, nobody can enter into the privacy of your being. So nobody knows about you; whatever they have said about you is all wrong.Put it aside. Dismantle the whole ego! In destroying the ego, you will discover your being. And that discovery is the greatest discovery possible, because it starts a totally new pilgrimage towards ultimate bliss, towards eternal life.You can choose: either frustration, suffering, misery – then go on holding the ego, nourishing it. Or peace, silence, bliss – but then you have to recover your innocence.Osho,Is synchronicity the very law of life?It is exactly the same as empathy. It is a scientific name for empathy – synchronicity. There is no difference between the two.Osho,Can you sort out the big peas, the small peas, and the middle peas?It is a difficult problem. First I have to tell you the story from which the question has arisen.In the second world war, one of the German professors of philosophy was recruited into the army. He was not willing, but you know, Germany is Germany: willing or not willing…. From higher up orders were that everybody had to be recruited, the whole of Germany had to become a military camp; only then can you conquer the world.The poor philosopher said many times, “I am of no use,” but nobody listened to him. The first day, early in the morning, he was to learn marching, and the colonel ordered, “Left turn,” but he remained standing still. Everybody else turned left.The colonel knew that he was a philosopher, was bound to be a crank. He could not even turn left. But the colonel thought, “I will see him later on.” Then he went on saying, “Turn right…backward…forward…” and the philosopher just remained standing in his place, as he was. Finally, the line came back to its old position. The colonel asked the professor, “Why didn’t you follow the orders?”The professor said, “What is the point? If all these people, after all these left turns and right turns and backwards and forwards, have to come to the same place where I am already standing, I don’t see the point. And as far as I am concerned, I cannot do anything unless I have a reason to do it. You simply said, ‘Left turn.’ I thought it over. I could not find any reason why – why should I turn left? In the whole world there is no reason for me to turn left, or right, or go back, or come forward. This is all stupid!”The colonel reported to the higher authorities, and they said, “What to do with this man?…because he cannot be trained if he asks about everything, ‘Why?’“ In the army you are not supposed to ask why.The general knew about the professor; he was a famous man. He said, “Don’t torture that poor man. Put him in the mess and give him some small work.”So he was put in the mess, and given some small work. He was given a pile of peas and told, “You have to sort it out: small peas on one side, big peas on the other side.”After one and a half hours, the officer came back. The professor was sitting exactly as he left him, and the peas were also sitting exactly as he had left them. The officer asked, “What is the matter? Can’t you do even that?”The professor said, “It is such a philosophical matter. I have been pondering over it for one and a half hours. It is good – big peas on this side, small peas on this side. But what about the middle ones? And unless I am clear about everything, I don’t take a single step!”And you are asking me how much time it will take for me to sort out big peas from small peas. I don’t think I can manage it, for the simple reason that I have to go to pee right now!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 34 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Are you answering all the questions that are being asked?No. I must have answered more than twelve thousand questions, but they are not all the questions that are being asked.There are questions which are merely of the head. Your head is already full of too much garbage. I don’t want to be unkind to you, I don’t want to burden your mind more. I want to unburden it, so I choose the question which helps your mind to unburden itself.There are questions which are concerned with your conditionings, beliefs. I am against all beliefs as such. I cannot support any belief, for the simple reason that it is a belief. I want my people not to believe, but to know. And the way to know means you have to drop your beliefs.There are questions which are only out of curiosity. They don’t deserve to be answered. This is a mystery school; people are deeply interested in a quest – they are not just curious. I cannot waste my people’s time for a single person’s curiosity. Curiosity is something like an itching in the head. You can scratch your head yourself, I need not bother about it.In fact, you yourself are not sincere. You have asked just by the way. You are not thirsty; your question is not out of a longing. It does not show any appetite, it shows only childishness – the way children ask questions, about each and every thing. If you can just be patient, within a minute they forget all about it, they start asking other questions.I have seen people who ask out of curiosity, and if you answer them, by the time you answer them there are other curiosities coming in their mind. They don’t listen even to your answer. You are not even finished with the answer, and a totally new question, which has no relevance to the first, is put before you – as if they are not in search of anything. But just seeing things, the monkey mind becomes curious.My people here are not to waste time. Time is very precious for those who are on the quest; each moment may prove of tremendous importance.There are questions which are not even questions; they are, on the contrary, answers. Now, I don’t know how to answer an answer. Those people are full of knowledge. They know the answer already; all that they want is support from me for their answer.If you know, you know. No support is needed. If you do not know, then accept it; then you can be helped. But I cannot play this stupid game in which you go on bragging that you know, and still you are asking. What is the point of asking, if you know?I never asked anybody any question after I arrived at my very being. Since then I only have answers; all questions have disappeared. I have not even asked for anybody’s support. Authentic experience needs no evidence, no support, no argument, no witnesses. It is borrowed knowledge – from the scriptures, from the priests – that you are carrying, thinking that you know. You want me to support it so that it becomes more certain.But remember one thing: knowing is absolutely certain, there is no greater certainty than that. And not knowing – you may gather the whole world’s affidavit for it, but it will still remain not knowing. It will not help that the whole world supports it, you will know that you are ignorant.There are questions which are so stupid that I don’t want to expose the stupidity of somebody who is present here. I respect you, I have immense love for you – and when I see a stupid question, I simply feel it is better not to talk about it, because I will have to hammer your stupidity.Just a few days ago, one man asked, “Next time you ask the sannyasins to raise their hands for something to show their trust, their love, I am going to stand against you.”Now, what the hell are you doing here? If this is your mind, that you want to stand against me – not even knowing about what, but you are certain that you will be against it, and you will stand against it – then certainly you are in a wrong place. You should not be here.Should I answer such questions? Are they questions? They don’t show even intelligence. In the first place, what will be the situation in the future in which I will ask your support? He is not concerned about the subject on which the support will be asked; he is more interested in standing against me. So why don’t you stand, without me asking? Just stand up! Where is that idiot? You don’t need any subject, you simply want to stand against me. So just stand up, and remain standing the whole discourse, to your heart’s content.But I wonder what you are doing here if you are so much against me. Don’t you know the county road? Just pack your luggage and be on the county road; it goes directly to hell. I don’t want such people to be here, part of the commune. I am trying to create a synchronicity, a great energy of love that surrounds the whole commune. But this type of person will be a hindrance. And he has no courage either!So many questions of this kind – do you want me to answer them? They just go where they belong – down the drain.There are questions which are esoteric. Esoteric means bullshit. Now, I am not interested in bulls, and I don’t answer that kind of question. I am a very realistic person; I don’t want to give you any illusions, hallucinations of spirituality. But there are people who cannot live without hallucinations. They need some illusions; reality is difficult for them.Illusions create a kind of buffer between them and the real. The reality will shatter their egos; these buffers save their egos, their ideologies, theologies. And it feels great that you are in contact with mediums who are directly connected to God. Soon you will become a medium; it is just a question of apprenticeship.So people ask me about mediums – whether they are true or not. There is no God, so how can mediums be true? They are just exploiting gullible people. But you are fifty percent responsible for the whole thing. If they are exploiting, you are willing to be exploited. In fact, if nobody is ready to exploit you, you start feeling uneasy. You need some parasites.So there are mediums, there are people who have direct relationship with spirits. There are people in whom spirits descend, and they answer your questions. And all this goes on around the earth, and this has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality is a very real science. These people are preventing many from reaching to the real, because they are giving substitutes for the real.I have heard of a small boy who was going with his grandmother to a spiritual session where a few old women used to sit in darkness, and then the spirit would descend on one of them. The boy was very interested, because he wanted his grandfather’s spirit to descend. So he asked beforehand, “Please let there be no misunderstanding: everybody should ask for my grandfather who has been dead for two years; ask that his spirit should descend.”Lights were put off. Those old ladies were sitting in silence…. One old lady, who was the leader of the group, started swaying, and the grandmother of the child nudged the child and said, “Your grandfather has come – you can ask any question.”He asked, “Grandpa, are you there?” and a voice came, “Yes.”The boy laughed, he said, “So, after all, you are not dead yet? And we all have been thinking that you have been dead for two years. But I will not be convinced unless you tell me something which only I and you know.”Now, this was a difficult question for the old lady. She had no idea what this boy and his grandfather knew and nobody else knew. Suddenly, the swaying stopped, and she said, “The spirit has gone.”The boy said, “But this is strange. We have so many secrets between us – he loved me so much, I loved him so much. He could have mentioned anything that only I and he knew. I cannot believe that this was my grandfather. You can deceive my grandmother but you cannot deceive me; just swaying does not mean anything.”Even a small child, if he is intelligent, can see this is all a hocus-pocus game that goes on in the names of mediums, messengers. There are so many questions concerning such esoteric matters…. Spirituality has nothing to do with any esotericism. Spirituality is very pragmatic, very realistic – and that is my whole effort here.All the religions have created a split between the real and the spiritual – this world and that world, body and soul, matter and spirit. Nobody has yet recognized that this division in existence is the basis of all schizophrenia in humanity.Every person is split, he is not one. To be split is to be sick, and to be one and whole is to be healthy and holy. I am against the split. I want you to know that your body is your visible spirit, and your spirit is your invisible body. The universe that you can see is the visible body of existence, and the universe that you can only feel – the beauty of a flower, the blissfulness of silence, the ecstasy of one’s own being – that is the invisible part of the universe. They are one, there is no dividing line anywhere. Certainly they are not opposed to each other.It is so simple to understand that your body and your soul are not opposed to each other; otherwise, how can they live together? How can they live in such harmony?But religions had to make the split; their whole business was dependent on the split: God is separate from existence, the soul is separate from the body. That opens the doors to all kinds of exploitation in the name of religion, because then they can say, “Your body is dragging you towards hell, and unless you fight with your body, its nature, its instincts, its hunger, its sensuality, its sexuality – everything that makes up your body – unless you conquer it, you will not enter into the kingdom of God. Only pure souls who have transcended their bodies enter there.”Naturally, millions of people have been torturing their bodies to attain spirituality. All that they attain is stupidity. The more they torture their body, the more unintelligent they become, because the body gives everything needed for their intelligence. And if they start fighting the body, those resources stop flowing towards their intelligence.I have never come across a single so-called saint in my life – and I have seen thousands – who had any gleam of intelligence in his eyes, who had any aura of beauty around him; who had any magnetism that made you feel pulled towards him. On the contrary: in India, there are Jaina saints….Because they are against the body, perhaps their religion is the most anti-life religion. They don’t take a bath, they don’t wash their teeth, because that is all serving the devil, decorating the devil. They stink, because they have not taken a bath for years. Their perspiration has gathered on their body in layers – dust and perspiration. And they live naked, so the whole body is available to the dust. They don’t wash their mouth. You cannot talk to them sitting closely, because every word that they speak comes as a shock: their breath is unbearable.But they are respected immensely because they have been torturing their body. They have lost the balance of their body completely. Because they eat only one time a day, naturally they eat too much – to make up for the two other times. So their bellies become too big, and the rest of the body becomes thin. Rather than becoming beautiful, they become ugly. And this is thought to be a great attainment.A really spiritual person will live life as an art, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest art there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes him organic; the wound of division is healed.So people who go on asking questions about how to control the body, how to control sex, how to control this, how to control that, don’t understand me at all.I am not for control, I am all for understanding. Understanding brings its own balance; it is not control, you live in sheer balance. Nobody is controlling – neither is the body controlling the soul, nor is the soul controlling the body. They have merged, and a new entity, the organic unity, has arisen in you.I have called that unity Zorba the Buddha, for the simple reason that Zorba lived according to the body, forgetting the spiritual needs; Buddha lived according to the spiritual needs, forgetting the body. Both are incomplete – they have to be bridged. In each man, in each woman, they have to be bridged. There has not to be any conflict, but a deep musical unity.And when I say this, I say it from my own experience. There is no question of any conflict. I have lived in a tremendous togetherness, and I have not found any problem. On the contrary, I have found every solution.The people who are splitting you are your enemies. But they have to do it, because without splitting you, they cannot make you miserable. And unless you are miserable you cannot become customers of churches, of synagogues, of temples, of mosques.If you are blissful on your own, why should you go to a church? Are you mad? If you are really in a dance within yourself, why should you bother about any priest, any mediator? You are directly connected with existence. No agent, no mediator is needed at all.For religions to exist, man has to live in misery, has to be in continuous anguish, suffering, guilt. These are the necessities that make him a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Hindu; otherwise, you will be simply a human being who is utterly fulfilled. You will not become part of any organized ideology. You will know your own truth, you will not live on borrowed knowledge.So forgive me, I do not answer all the questions. I answer only questions which are going to help you in your individual growth towards freedom and ultimate truth. Everything else is meaningless. You have to be careful in asking, because I have unnecessarily to go through your questions. That’s why sometimes I am late, because after my bath I just go through the questions. Coming here in the car, I go through the questions.Don’t ask foolish things; they simply make me come late, and I hate to come late! To make so many people wait, hurts me. I am not a politician.It is a ground rule for politicians never to arrive in time, because if you arrive in time that means you are not very much engaged, occupied, overburdened. So even if the politician has nothing to do, he will make people wait. That proves his importance.I am not a politician. I don’t have to prove my importance to anybody. I am not important at all. I enjoy being just my own simple self.So please, don’t bother me by asking questions which have no relevance to me, to this gathering of mystics. Be careful.Osho,What is true repentance?The religions have made much fuss about repentance. Jesus goes on repeating again and again to his people, “Repent, repent, because the kingdom of God is close! Repent, because the day of judgment is coming close!”First, religions make you feel guilty; otherwise, repentance would not have any relevance. You looked at a beautiful woman passing by, and there was a longing in you, your heart started beating faster. But you are married and the father of half a dozen children; moreover, you are a Christian. It does not suit you. You start feeling guilty; you have not done anything, but you start feeling guilty. Now, how to get rid of this guilt? You are feeling guilty towards your wife, so you will have to bring ice cream – that is repentance. And the wife also understands it, that you must have done something wrong; otherwise, why ice cream? You have to bring toys to the children – that is repentance.But this is not enough. You have to go to the priest to confess that a beautiful woman was passing, and you had a sexual desire arise in you: “It is not right. Ask God’s forgiveness on my behalf.” Now you will be at ease. But you have not done anything, and you are unnecessarily wasting money on ice cream, toys, going to the priest – and becoming a victim of the priest, because now you will be always under his power.The Catholic religion has more power over its people than any other religion, for the simple reason that everybody has to confess their sins. Naturally, the priest knows so much about everyone…you cannot leave the fold – he can expose you.Confession is being used to keep you in bondage; you cannot leave the fold. The idea given to you is that this is how you repent, but the reality is that in most of the cases you are not committing any sin. To look at a beautiful woman and feel your heart beating faster is absolutely right, it is according to nature. It is respectful to the woman. In a better, more human society where all these dead religions are finished, you would rather go to the woman and thank her for her beauty, to be grateful that she is.You don’t feel guilty when you see a beautiful roseflower, you don’t feel guilty when you see a beautiful sunset. Then why should you feel guilty when you see a beautiful woman or a man? Beauty is not sin. It should be respected. And in a more intelligent, understanding, human world, the woman will accept your compliment with gratitude. You are not doing any harm.Most of your sins are not sins at all. A few perhaps are mistakes, but not sins.In my way of life, the word “sin” does not exist. You will be surprised to know that the original root from where the word sin comes, means forgetfulness. That’s great, that’s what it should mean. You were not aware, you forgot, you committed a mistake.The idea of sin is invented by the priests to suppress you, subjugate you, humiliate you, destroy your dignity. But forgetfulness is understandable. You can do something without being aware of what you are doing; later on you become alert that you have done something wrong. Then the best way is not to go to the priest, but to go to the person to whom you have done the wrong. What business has the priest in it? And what business has God in it? The person whom you have harmed in any way – you should go to him, to ask his forgiveness. That will be beautiful, and that will bring people together.You will be surprised that in Thailand there is a small tribe of very primitive people who, even if in their dreams they harm somebody…. For example, if they beat somebody in their dreams, the first thing in the morning they have to go to that person and ask his forgiveness because, even though it was a dream, there must have been some desire somewhere which created the dream.They tell him, “I have not hurt you, and I am not going to ever hurt you. I have never been even aware that there is a desire to hurt you, but there must have been because dreams are part of reality. They just don’t come from nowhere.”And you will be surprised to know that that small tribe is the most peaceful tribe in the whole world: no fight, no rape, no murder, no suicide. And for thousands of years they have been following the same way. Slowly slowly they have stopped dreaming too. They have become so innocent that even in the unconscious there are no longer any desires to be violent, to be a rapist, to torture somebody, to kill somebody.In thousands of years, continually going to the man and asking for his forgiveness – and he is amazed, because he knows of nothing that you have done to him. But it brings you closer to him – he hugs you, he says, “There is nothing to be worried about, it was only a dream.”But you insist, “It does not matter that it was only a dream, it was my dream. I am involved in it, and unless you forgive me I will suffer.”If a man like Sigmund Freud had gone to Thailand to these people, he would have been amazed that his psychoanalysis is of no use. They don’t have any dreams, you cannot psychoanalyze them. Once in a while somebody may have a dream, but they have found a way to get rid of even a slight unconscious desire.There is no question of sin in your life. You can, at the most, commit a mistake; you can do something which you never wanted to do, and then there is heaviness on your heart. Then do something to undo what you have committed. Going to the priest is simply idiotic. Whatever you have done, undo it – that is the only real repentance – and not for any motive.“Repent, because the day of judgment is very close by.” If it was not very close by, then…? Then there is no hurry; go on committing sin. When it comes close by, you can repent. And it is not close by, because two thousand years have passed, and Jesus was simply telling a lie when he said, “The day of judgment is very close by, so repent.” He was creating fear in people, that “if you don’t repent, then on the day of judgment you will be punished. It is better that, before that, you repent. Go to the priest, confess, get rid of it.”But if you can get rid of your so-called sins so easily, by every Sunday going to the priest, do you understand the implications of it? It means for the next week you are again free to commit sins and do anything you want, because all that you have to do is to go again to the priest.Hindus have an even simpler method. Every year go to the Ganges, have a good bath, and all your sins are washed away. Why make such small installments – one week? Why not one year? And if you cannot manage once a year, then every twelve years there is a special fair in Allahabad – perhaps the biggest gathering of people in the whole world, millions of people. Whatever you have done in twelve years, by taking a bath in the Ganges on that day you are clean, free to do the same things again; at least for another twelve years there is no problem.I am reminded of an incident in Ramakrishna’s life. He was very simple, uneducated, but a man of tremendous insight. A man came to him and said, “I am going to the Ganges – it is the twelfth year – and I want your blessings. And is it true that all sins that you have done are washed away?”Ramakrishna was not my type. He said, “Yes, it is true. All sins are washed out while you take a dip in the Ganges.”The man gave a great sigh of relief. He said, “Then it is good. If you say so, then it is perfect.”Ramakrishna said, “But I have not finished, I have to say something more. Have you seen those big trees on the bank of the Ganges?”He said, “Yes.”Ramakrishna said, “That is the trouble: when you take the dip in the Ganges your sins jump out and sit on the trees, and they wait for you. How long can you remain in the water? The Ganges is really great and it does purify, but how long…? Finally, you will have to come out, and the moment you come out – those sins are sitting on the trees, they jump on you. And sometimes it happens that somebody else’s sins also jump on you – just for a change they enjoy it. Those trees are full of sins. So you can go, but beware of the trees.”The man said, “This is very difficult. How long can I remain in the water? Finally I have to come out, and I have to pass under those trees.”Ramakrishna said, “I can’t help you with that. That’s why I don’t go – what is the point?”All religions have found strategies, first to make you feel guilty, then to give you a simple method so that you can be free of guilt.I am not teaching you a religion. I simply want to tell you the truth. If you have done something wrong, go to the person. Be humble, ask his forgiveness. Only he can forgive you, nobody else – neither the Ganges nor God.And remember, that is the meaning of the word sin: forgetfulness. So now, don’t forget again and do the same; otherwise, your asking forgiveness becomes meaningless. Now be careful, be alert, be conscious; and don’t do the same thing again. That is true repentance. Once you made the mistake – it was just a mistake. To err is human, there is nothing to be worried about.And to forgive is divine, so if somebody comes to you and says that he has committed a mistake against you, don’t miss the opportunity of tasting something of the divine. Or, when you have committed some mistake and you go to somebody else to be forgiven, you are giving him a great chance to have some taste of the divine. It is good for both of you. By forgiving, he tastes something which is impossible to explain; it can only be called divine, godliness. And you also will feel something tremendously beautiful: humbleness, egolessness.But remember not to commit the mistake again. It should become a decision in you; then you are really repentant. It has nothing to do with God, it has nothing to do with any priest; it has something to do with your own psychology.Osho,I have heard that the truth cannot be spoken, but one thing you say tickles my inside so much. Aren't you singing the sound of truth when you say, “Aha!”?Aha!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 35 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,This is my fifth visit to Rajneeshpuram. I came to see members of my family who live here. I can see how happy my former wife is, living so close to you. I feel very happy and am doing groups at the university. But I have a big fear: what is going to happen here when you decide to leave your body? I'm afraid the community could become fanatic and dangerous. Is it possible that something like this could happen?I never think of the future – not even of tomorrow, not even of the next moment that is just going to come. This way of thinking of the future keeps man tense, worried, never allows him to be relaxed and enjoy the moment that is available.You feel good here, you feel your former wife is immensely happy. Why is she happy and why are you not? She is living in the moment. That is my fundamental approach to life: if you want to live, live here and now; if you want to worry, then tomorrow is the time. Then you can have a thousand and one things….I cannot say what is going to happen when I am not here. One thing I know: the people who have learned the art of living moment to moment will continue to live the same way of life wherever they are, because no other way can give them so much joy, so much juice.And who cares what is going to happen when I leave my body? How many millions of people have left their body? The place you are sitting must have been the grave of at least ten persons – that many people have died on the earth. Life goes on, people come and go.I am not important, but what I am imparting to you is important; that should not leave your body. And that is up to you. If you want to fall back into misery, anguish, suffering, then it is your choice, you are free.You say you have been coming here again and again. Why do you go away? Five times in four years you have been here – and you must have seen the difference: when you are away you are in a darkness; when you are here you are surrounded with light, with love, with immense life around you.You cannot find this laughter anywhere in the whole world. The world is too serious, and seriousness is the cancer of the soul. The world is too much concerned about the future, and goes on losing the real present, unlived. You are losing something which is in your hand for something which is not in your hand. This is simply stupid, but this is how the whole world has been living for millions of years – a stupid way of life.Existence knows only one tense – the present. It neither knows the past, because it is no more, nor does it know the future, because it is not yet. But the mind is always concerned either with the past or with the future, never with the present. Do you see?Existence is only in the present. Mind is never in the present. In fact, the moment you are in the present, there is no mind in you, there is great silence. The whole sky of your inner being is without thoughts, without clouds. I call this the state of no-mind.Only in this state of no-mind do you meet existence. And that meeting is the ultimate ecstasy. Once you have tasted it, you will never bother about the future. You know how to live in the present, so in the future also – it will be coming as the present, it will not come as the future – you will know the art.And it is not that my presence is making people happy here; it is their own presence. Certainly they have learned the art of being in the present, but now they are absolutely independent of me. They are not my followers, I am nobody’s leader – I hate such words!To me, the most beautiful word in the human language is “friend.” And the most beautiful experience in life is that of being friendly with someone who is authentically herenow. Because to be friendly with him, you will have to be here and now; otherwise, you cannot shake hands with the man, you cannot converse with the man, you cannot be with the man. The distance between you and him will be unbridgeable.But once you have tasted the beauty, the benediction of the present moment, its eternity, its deathlessness, you simply forget all about the past, all about the future. You have the master key. Whatever door comes before you, you will be able to unlock it.But I feel sorry for you; you can see your wife is happy, you can see the people are happy, you yourself feel happy being here – then what is there out in the world? Perhaps a good job, more money, more power, respectability. But are they worth it if they destroy your happiness, if they destroy you? if they destroy your life, if they kill you before your death comes?Millions of people in the world are dead – although they go on breathing, working. And perhaps it will take years for them to be recognized as dead, but they are dead. There is no smile on their face, nothing flowers in their being; no song arises, no dance, no laughter. Every moment they are missing life – which is so precious that you cannot purchase it. Even if you give everything you have, not even a single moment can be purchased; it is not a commodity, it is a gift unconditionally given by nature. And you have taken it for granted. You have not been even thankful to existence, you have not shown any gratitude.To me, unless you feel full of joy, bursting with happiness, you will not be able to have that great quality of gratitude towards existence.That quality is authentic religiousness.So rather than thinking about the future, about what will happen to this commune, think about your present. This time, just be here and don’t go anywhere. Enjoy risking – it is great excitement – risking all for nothing, because we have nothing to offer to you except what you already have.I take away from people what they don’t have, and I give to people what they already have. My work is very simple.Osho,Why have the old religions failed in transforming humanity?The old religions failed because they were all against this world. And this is the only world there is. They were all for renouncing it. And when you are renouncing the world, the question of transforming does not arise – the world has to be condemned. All the religions have been condemning the world.It is a very strange thing – nobody has even raised the question in five thousand years, that “You say God created the world, and the priest says to renounce the world.” Anybody with just a little intelligence – not much – can see that the priest is against God. God creates the world, and the priest says renounce the world.I am the first man who is saying to you, “Rejoice in the world.” There is no question of renunciation, there is nothing to be renounced; everything has to be enjoyed to its fullest. Because the old religions were saying, “Renounce the world,” they created a humanity which was sick.You are part of the world – how can you renounce it? You cannot live even a few moments without breathing the world. You cannot live for a few days without drinking the world. You cannot live a few months without eating the world. You are an intrinsic part of the world, and you are connected every moment with the sun, with the moon, with the ocean, with the trees, with the air, with the earth.And these people have been teaching for thousands of years, “Renounce the world,” without even taking note that the man who really renounces the world cannot be allowed to breathe, cannot be allowed to drink water, cannot be allowed to eat food, cannot be allowed in any way to be connected with the world. And we are connected in millions of ways, known and unknown.If the sun suddenly goes dark, gets exhausted, do you think you will be living in darkness? You will be simply dead, not living in darkness, because it is the sun that is giving you warmth every moment. The trees will die, the flowers will not blossom anymore, the birds will not sing – everything will be dead. In some unknown way the sun is your very life, it is your warmth.Renouncing the world made the human mind very sick. If you try to renounce it, you find it impossible. If you don’t renounce it, you find yourself guilty and a sinner.The old religions have not been able to transform humanity. They have only been able to make the whole humanity a madhouse. And because we have been listening to them century after century, from the very childhood, even things which are absolutely idiotic have become our conditionings. For example, all the religions teach that celibacy is something spiritual. And I am puzzled: the world is full of scientists, physiologists, chemists, biologists, medical people, and none of them has raised a voice to say that celibacy is an impossibility.To ask people to be celibate is to drive them to perversions, to make them homosexuals, lesbians, to drive them towards sodomy and all kinds of unnatural expressions of their sexual energy. And the pervert can never feel at ease with himself. He knows deep down he is doing something which is not right. What is right, the religion does not allow. What is not right makes him feel guilty. He is being crushed between two rocks.Religions have been killing human beings – their naturalness, their consciousness, their innocence. All the religions praise fasting. Your body is hungry, your body gives you indications that it is hungry. Your stomach shouts loudly to you, “I am hungry!” But your religion says fasting is spiritual.This is making people schizophrenic, divided against themselves, and a house that is divided against itself cannot stand long; it is going to be in ruins soon. And that’s what has happened to humanity: all human beings are not what they would have been, they are just ruins. In a very subtle and psychological way they have been deprived of their own nature. That’s why old religions have not been able to transform humanity. On the contrary, they have been the hindrance for any transformation.I am telling you to be natural. When you are hungry you should eat, and when you are not hungry you should not eat. One extreme creates another extreme. Hungry people go on remaining hungry and torturing their bodies – this is one extreme. Then the other extreme is thirty million Americans are dying of over-eating; everybody is dieting. Either you are fasting or you are dieting? It seems a crazy world! Why can’t you simply be balanced? When your body says, “I am hungry,” you are fasting. When your body says, “It is enough,” you go on swallowing because it is so tasty – how to stop?The body always gives you the right indication in the right moment. If you just listen to the wisdom of the body, all your wise men will look fools. Your body has its own wisdom. Rather than looking in The Holy Bible, or in the holy Koran, or in the holy Gita, you should listen to your own body. When it is thirsty, it says; when it needs rest, it says. When it is rested, it wants some exercise, it wants to run, to play, to swim, to go for a long walk.But you are not listening to the body because your religions have said that the body is your enemy. Once you accept the idea that the body is your enemy, naturally you are not going to listen to the enemy. And who is the friend? – the priest, the prophet, the savior, the messenger, who are all somehow crackpots. If you look into their lives without any prejudice you can see the cracks in the pot.Mohammed declares himself to be the last messenger of God. Why the last? The world continues – has God lost interest in the world? No, he has sent the final message. Mohammed is uneducated; he cannot write, he cannot sign his name. So whatever he says is just as a villager. But he declares that he is the last messenger; now there will not be any other messenger of God coming – and if anybody tries to be a pretender, he has to be punished. And Mohammedans have killed many people in fourteen centuries who have claimed that they were messengers of God….I have looked into Mohammed’s words, and into the words of al-Hillaj Mansoor, who was killed because he was declaring not only that he was a messenger of God, but was also saying, “I myself am God.” Al-Hillaj Mansoor has a beauty as far as his words are concerned, a tremendous poetry, far superior to the Koran. The man is again a crackpot, but the pot is far more polished. Mohammedans killed him; and they have been killing many other people.If you look into the psychology of Mohammed: he married a woman sixteen years older than himself. He was only twenty-four, and he married a woman who was forty. Now, this is something strange. A man who is forty may marry a woman who is twenty-four, but there is no parallel to Mohammed: a man who is twenty-four marrying a woman who is forty. It seems he is not marrying a wife, he is marrying his mother. The reason why he married this woman was that she was immensely rich. And nobody else was ready to marry that old woman, even though she was rich. This marriage was not out of love; the motivation was the money the woman had.These are the people who are telling others, “Renounce the world!” Mohammed married nine wives. And these are the people who are saying, “Renounce the world” – renouncing the world remains spiritual. Marrying nine women – the whole battalion – and nobody asks how it can fit in with the renunciation of the world.Mohammed has given the name “Islam” to his religion. The word islam means peace – and Mohammed was carrying a sword; no other prophet has cut off so many heads as Mohammed has done. But on his sword the sentence was written: “Peace is my message.” Islam has been one of the most murderous religions – and peace is the message.If you look at all these people who have claimed themselves to be incarnations of God, saviors of humanity, prophets, you will be surprised that this whole lot seems to be eccentric. They say one thing and they do just the opposite.Jesus says, “Love even your enemy as yourself.” A beautiful sentence…but one day he is hungry, his disciples are hungry, and the village they have passed refused to give them food. They come to a fig tree, hoping that there may be fruits on the tree. But there are no fruits on the tree. And now you can see what I mean by a crackpot: Jesus curses the tree!It was not even the season for the tree to give fruits, but he curses the tree because she has not welcomed him and his disciples with fruits. Now, the poor fig tree – what can she do? it is not the season. And this man seems to be utterly blind; he cannot see that it is not the season, and trees are not supposed to welcome people with fruits. Cursing a tree, and teaching, “Love your enemy as yourself” – can you see the contradiction? The tree is not even the enemy. She has done no harm, it was not her fault that the season wouldn’t allow fruits.Jesus talks about love; he even says, “God is love.” But he throws out the moneychangers from the temple of Jerusalem, single-handed, with great anger and rage. Lashing them, beating them, he overturned their tables and threw them out of the temple, and said, “I will not allow such dirty business in the house of my father.” This behavior does not show love, it does not show compassion; it shows only anger, hatred.Without any authority, he was claiming himself to be the only begotten son of God. And he could not convince anybody; not a single rabbi was his follower – and Judea was full of learned rabbis, scholars, professors. Judea had its own university and not a single professor, scholar, rabbi, was influenced by his teachings. The people who were influenced were twelve uneducated, poor fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, who don’t know anything about religion. But they got interested in Jesus because he was saying that if they have faith in him, they will enter into paradise, and on the judgment day he will choose who his people are.These poor people, who have suffered starvation, suffered humiliation, are suddenly given a great hope – and very cheap. You just have to have faith in this man and paradise is yours. It is just a lottery; having faith costs nothing and you are getting a ticket for entry into paradise.Is it not something very significant that not a single man of intelligence, scholarship, culture, was impressed by Jesus? They all really laughed at him. He looked like a clown, for the simple reason that he was claiming things he had no way to prove. How do you prove you are the only begotten son of God? Anybody else can say “You are not, I am!” There is no way to decide either.It happened in Baghdad, in the times of Caliph Omar. A man was brought to his court who was declaring himself to be the messenger of God – which is against Islam.Caliph Omar said, “Take him to the jail. Bind him to a pillar, naked, and keep him hungry for seven days. Give him a good beating every day; and after seven days I will come and see whether he has changed his mind or not.”After seven days he came; the man was almost dying. Seven days without food, and continuous beating – his whole body was oozing blood, he had lost much blood. Omar asked him, “Have you considered your idea again?”The man laughed. He said, “When I was leaving God he had told me, ‘They will torture you very much.’ This proves that I am certainly the messenger – your torture is a proof!”And at that very time, another man who was tied to another pole shouted, “Omar! Don’t listen to that idiot, because I have never sent any messenger after Mohammed.” He had been caught a few days before; he proclaimed himself to be God. So he said, “This man is completely lying; I have never sent him, I have never seen him before. After Mohammed, no messenger – that’s why I had to come!”You can find strange rationalizations. Because the need is there, and messengers cannot come – that dimension is closed with Mohammed – God himself has come.These people are psychologically sick, not healthy. They may say some beautiful things – even mad people say some beautiful things – that does not mean that they are not mad. Mad people may paint a few beautiful paintings, that does not mean that they are not mad.The very desire to put yourself at the highest place – nobody can go above you – arises from a deep inferiority complex. It is the projection that leads you to the most superior position in existence. You become God, God’s son, God’s messenger: you raise yourself above humanity.These people have been managing the human mind for centuries. They were themselves sick; they have made the whole humanity sick. It is time to get rid of all this nonsense. Man has to understand one thing: that religiousness is not something propounded by a prophet or a messenger, it is an experience of your own being.Religiousness is not a philosophy or a theology. It is just like love…the highest, most refined quality of love. You love one person – religiousness is falling in love with the whole existence. And that happens when you enter within yourself and you find the lifeline running within you, joining you with all lifelines around you, from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star. It is one life in different manifestations, a great play of abundant energy: you have fallen in love with existence.This is religiousness. You don’t become a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu; you simply become yourself. And you don’t find any God, any prophets, any saviors; you simply find the whole existence is yours. You are part of it, an intrinsic part of it, an organic part of it. Without you something will be missing. That gives you, for the first time, a real sense of being proud.It is not ego, because it is not putting yourself above others. Now you know even the smallest blade of grass is as essential as you are. And to feel this pride, that existence accepts you as you are – which no religion has ever done…. When existence accepts you as you are, you start growing without any split. The transformation happens of its own accord.We need a humanity without religions. We need a humanity with religious people, but not churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, no…no mediators, no priests.Every man is capable of entering into his own shrine, and from there can get the perspective that delivers him from all misery, suffering, tension, fear, death. And then his each moment becomes a moment of ecstasy and this whole existence is his kingdom.The whole existence consists only of kings and queens; there are no slaves, no servants. Existence is really the only communism there is. All are equally accepted, respected, nourished. And a dance comes to your life.This dance is the transforming force.Osho,Is it possible that where the old religions failed, our commune can succeed?It is not only possible, it is absolutely certain, because our commune is not a religion. Our commune is a very liquid religiousness. It is not an organization; it is just a meeting place of people who have dropped all conditions, all religions, all ideologies, and who are ready to become seekers on their own, individuals on their own, who are no longer searching for a prophet and a savior, who have decided that all the saviors have failed – now the only way is to save yourself.And because the search is the same, there is a loving atmosphere, a togetherness – not of any ideology, not of any belief system, but only of a friendship of fellow travelers.The commune is a totally different phenomenon from religion. Religions are dead; the commune is a living phenomenon. And each individual has absolute freedom to be himself. There are no ten commandments, no discipline imposed on you. You have to simply follow your own hunch. Yes, that is the right word: your own hunch. That is something that comes from your innermost being. Without any reason, without any rationalization, you follow it. It has never led anybody into a ditch.And the commune is helpful in many ways. A certain energy field is created – so many seekers…. You just think: one roseflower creates a certain fragrance around it, but then five thousand rosebushes and thousands of rose flowers will create a tremendous fragrance, a field full of rose energy.If you even pass through that field without doing anything, your clothes may catch the fragrance, your hair may catch the fragrance. When you have passed through the field, you will be surprised that you are full of rose fragrance, it is all around you.Exactly the same is the situation of the flower of meditation. It is subtler, but more powerful. Five thousand people functioning meditatively create a certain energy field. I call it the buddhafield, the field of awakening.Anybody who comes just as a spectator is bound to be affected by the energy, by the love, by the laughter, by people’s faces. Something has happened to these people.I have told my sannyasins that now if they want to use any color of clothes, they can. I received one letter two days ago, saying that a few sannyasins in London went shopping – not in red clothes, and without malas. But the shopkeeper said, “You look a little different from other people; something is strange about you.”So they have written to me, “Osho, it is useless: by changing the clothes and dropping the mala, we cannot go underground. People can see from the face, from the eyes, from the gestures, from the way we speak, the way we walk, that something is different.” It is bound to be so.Here, we are doing the greatest experiment which has ever been done. Religions have existed, but they were all destructive. They could not create the new human being. We are not a religion, but we are certainly religious – which is a far higher quality. And we are making the effort to create individuals.We are not interested in stupid miracles. And if you look at those miracles, you can see that they are fictions, nothing else. For example, in the Old Testament Moses leads his people out of Egypt. The enemy is following behind; they come to the ocean, and there is no way ahead, they cannot go back. The sound of the enemy is coming closer and closer, and then suddenly the miracle happens: God helps. The ocean parts, gives way; Moses and his followers pass through the ocean. As soon as they have passed, the ocean is again back to its old state; the way that was created for Moses is no longer there. Their enemies are now on the other side of the ocean. It is a great miracle.But I cannot say that it happened, ever, for the simple reason that the God who is so much interested in helping Moses and his people that he goes against the laws of nature and parts the ocean, makes a way for them…. This God does not help Moses and his people when for forty years they go on wandering in the desert to find Israel, the promised land.Forty years! Almost three-quarters of the original followers have died: a new generation has grown up, which has no respect for Moses. On the contrary, it is full of anger because this man has been driving them mad! In the desert, hot sun, no food, no water – they have become beggars, and where is the promised land? And they are continuously asking him, “How long will it take? Why didn’t you say before that it would take so long?”Just this fact is enough to prove that the ocean didn’t give way, because a God so compassionate as to make it give way, to change the laws of nature, must have helped these poor dying people. Three-quarters of them died. And finally, it is not that they found the promised land, it is simply that the old, tired Moses says, “This is the promised land” – because Israel is nothing that can be called God’s promised land!The first miracle is just a fiction; the second story is a reality. Moses got so tired – and nobody had any idea how the promised land looked, so they settled in Israel. And Moses found an excuse just to get rid of those people, because one of the tribes somewhere on the way was lost….It was not lost, it had reached the promised land! They simply dropped following Moses – it was enough. For twenty years they had tortured themselves in the desert, and there was no hope. And the desert seemed to be infinite; you go on and on and there is no end to it. So they moved in exactly the opposite direction from Moses, and they reached Kashmir. And Kashmir is certainly a place that can be called God’s promised land. They settled in Kashmir. They were later on converted by force to Islam, but they are basically Jews.Moses said, “I will have to go to find the lost tribe.” He also reached Kashmir, and you will be surprised – Moses died in Kashmir. His grave is in Kashmir, in India, in the promised land of God – not in Israel.If you look at Jesus, his miracles, things can be very easily understood. He walks on water, he heals the sick, gives eyes to the blind, makes the crippled walk, makes Lazarus come back to life out of his grave. He does everything that you can conceive – makes water into wine….Such a man was not recognized by his contemporaries as a savior? Such a man would be recognized even in the twentieth century, with all the miracles of science, to be the savior – what more do you want? No Jewish scripture even mentions the name of Jesus. That is impossible. If such a man appears, then all the television sets and all the radios and all the newspapers will be full of him. As long as he lives, he will be the “Man of the Year” every year. You cannot ignore such a man.But not even a mention in any of the Jewish books! And Jesus was a Jew: born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew – he had never heard of the word “Christianity.” Jews would have been immensely happy with him; on the contrary, they crucified him.All those miracles are fictions. If they were real, Jesus would not have been crucified. And if they were real, who would be able to crucify him? The man who can walk on water can also walk on air. The man who can make dead people come back to life – you cannot crucify him. And a man with such power falls three times on the way, because the cross is very heavy and he has to carry it on his own shoulders. He is young, only thirty-three, and he is a carpenter’s son; he must have been accustomed to carrying logs….If I was carrying the cross and had fallen three times, it would have been understandable. I have never carried even a glass of water. Carrying a cross on my shoulder? Impossible. Just somehow I manage to carry myself! But Jesus falling three times shows his humanity, shows that after all he is the son of man, not the only begotten son of God.Those three incidents on the way are very significant to me. They prove that all the miracles are just invented.These religions have been trying to reduce human beings to sinners, and to raise their prophets, messengers, into saints; and creating such a distance that it becomes almost impossible even to conceive that you can become a saint – transformation is impossible.But this commune is going to do it! It is already happening. And when I say “this commune” I mean all the communes around the world – it is one commune. I want to create a circle of energy around the world of meditative people, so that anybody who wants to have some taste of meditation can have it. And it is very addictive!Osho,I do not know the question, but would you please still answer it?I will answer it, and I will answer it three times: Yes! Yes! Yes!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 36 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I love the different meanings of the word “therapy.” Its Greek root, therapeuein, shows the Socratic approach to educating a human being. Therapeuein means: accompanying the other, taking him seriously, listening to him patiently, helping him to understand, and above all, bowing down in reverence to the other person's godliness. How come all Western psychotherapy and education seem oblivious to their cultural roots? Instead, they keep circling in the thin air of deductive analysis and proven symptoms.Please speak about your vision of spiritual therapy as a means of showing people the beauty of their independence and aloneness, the lovingness of their very being.It is one of the misfortunes that Socrates has not really been the source of Western thinking and philosophy. Socrates was not in any way Western. Spiritually he belongs to the East, and that was the trouble, the reason that the Greek people could not tolerate him. He was poisoned, killed. His poisoning not only killed him physically, it also cut him away from the Western development of thinking.The Western attitude developed, not out of Socrates, but out of Aristotle. Aristotle, in a way – apparently – is the disciple of Plato, and Plato was the disciple of Socrates. But intellectually Aristotle is just the contrary of Socrates.Socrates is a mystic – not believing in God, not believing in any belief, not teaching an organized religion; but on the contrary giving absolute importance to the individual, and helping the individual to find his own life source. That is the true therapy. “To know thyself” is the condensed meaning of therapy. The function of the therapist is not to teach you who you are, but to create situations in which you start discovering yourself.The first condition is creating self-respect in you – which all the religions are against. They all condemn you. They create a sense of guilt, and that is a wound that goes on growing within you. Whatever you do, something is wrong in it. You can never fulfill the expectations of others for the simple reason that you have a unique individuality. And that was the basic approach of Socrates – the uniqueness of the individual; each one has to discover his own truth.The function of the teacher, of the master, of the therapist, of the educationist, is to create just the right atmosphere so that you gain self-respect, and to give you an acquaintance with the methods for going inwards.All educational systems take you outwards. Listening to the person – it will look strange, because the teacher’s function is to make you listen to him. The Socratic method is listening to the person respectfully, patiently, so that he can open up. He need not repress anything, he need not inhibit anything; he can be utterly naked and yet remain dignified.If a therapist can do that – help a man to be utterly nude, open, with no secret, hiding nothing – the therapist has succeeded, because in this nudity one realizes one’s innocence. One is born again. This nudity is symbolic. Just as a child is born nude, you are born again – now spiritually nude.Socrates was punished because he was teaching the truth. He had a school – that was his commune – where the whole function was to be respectful to everyone who comes to the school and help him decondtion himself, deprogram himself so he becomes again an innocent child.Socrates has nothing to teach. He simply cleans you and leaves you to yourself, to grow according to your own potential. He does not give you even any guideline, because nobody knows what is hidden in your seed, what kind of flower is going to blossom in you. All guidelines are dangerous – they may distract you from becoming yourself.This was his crime, and he was dragged to the court. The crime was: “You are spoiling the youth of Athens.” Certainly, in the minds of the mob, he was spoiling them. The mob wanted the people just to follow the well-trodden path of their forefathers. And Socrates was teaching them to be themselves and to find out the path on their own, with no scripture, no holy book, no God, no guide. Socrates was taking all these things away from you, unburdening you, making you a tabula rasa; nothing is written on you, and you are free now to be whatsoever your nature intends to be. He leaves your future open.Naturally, the masses were against him. Their youth were being destroyed; they were being taken away from the religion, the philosophy, the ideology which had been followed for centuries. “They should carry it, it is their inheritance” – and Socrates was insisting that you are a totally new being, with no inheritance.Yes, a great potentiality is within you – and it does not come from the past. It is present in you, and it is going to blossom, and only then will you know what you were supposed to be. Before it blossoms there is no way to know it.This was the crime: corrupting the youth. Socrates was punished with the death penalty – and by punishing Socrates, the West committed suicide. It was not the death of Socrates, it was the death of the most important insight into human beings. The West moved farther and farther away from man’s inner being; it became more and more head-oriented.And because Socrates was punished by death, Plato changed the strategy. He wrote down everything that Socrates had said – and humanity will remain always grateful to Plato – but he changed the whole methodology. He was not so great a man as his master. He opened another school he called “The Academy,” where he was teaching the old ways, the traditional ways, the conventional ways, and people were happy. Nobody was against Plato. Aristotle was Plato’s disciple – he went still farther away.The death of Socrates created a stoppage to the inner growth of man in the West. Aristotle is the father of Western logic, philosophy, analysis. He has been respected for two thousand years. Socrates is also given respect, but nobody makes any effort to revive his school.The meaning of therapy is certainly of great importance, but it is only significant in its Greek origins if you go to Socrates. But the therapy that is prevalent in the world today has nothing to do with Socrates. You will not find even the name of Socrates mentioned in any book on psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychiatry. All these have evolved since Sigmund Freud.Sigmund Freud is Aristotelian. He believes in analysis, he believes in dividing things into black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, life and death – clear-cut divisions. According to Aristotle, A is A, B is B. A cannot be B, B cannot be A – a clear-cut division.It is not so with the mystics. In the East, analysis has never developed. And if Socrates had not been destroyed and his school had not been destroyed, there would have been in the West also, instead of psychoanalysis, far more important therapeutic methods.In the East, black and white are not two, darkness and light are not two. The darkness is simply less light – the difference is of degrees, not of polarities – the light is less darkness. And it is very existential. There are birds, animals who see in the night. When it is night for you, it is day for them; when it is day for you, it is night for them. Their eyes are attuned in a different way: they can see in darkness. That means darkness is not darkness, just for you it is darkness; it is below the range of your eyesight.Too much light you also cannot see; then it is dazzling. Look at the sun sometime – you cannot see. The sun is light, but you start feeling darkness; what has happened? You can even go blind; it is too much, it is far above your small range of vision. Below is darkness, above is again darkness; light is only in a small range. But there are other animals whose range of seeing is different. And it is understandable….Take something easier: hot and cold. Are they opposites? They are not. Hot simply means less cold; cold simply means less hot. That’s why, with one thermometer, you can know both. How many degrees is the hot water and how many degrees is the cold water – one thermometer can show you both. That means the difference is only of degrees – the same thermometer shows you different degrees. Life and death are also not polar opposites.In the East Aristotle is laughed at, because the East thinks in a totally different way: no opposites, everything is complementary. Hence the question of analysis does not arise. What is significant is synthesis, not analysis, and the East has done tremendous work in synthesis. That’s what Socrates was trying to do. He was bringing the East to the West.On my dining table I have a small statue somebody has sent to me. It is an ancient statue, it has existed in the East almost for seven thousand years. It is a statue which is half-man, half-woman.Only in this century one man, Carl Gustav Jung, who had traveled widely in the East…he was really disturbed because he could see where the West had gone wrong. Aristotle is the point from which the West separates from the East and takes a route of analysis. Seeing this statue, he managed to work upon his patients and figure out that every man is both man and woman. And so is the case with woman, she is both woman and man.Man and woman are two sides of one coin. One side is showing, the other side is hidden. If you are a man, your feminine side is hidden – but it is there, and it affects your life. It is better to recognize it, understand it. It is better to come to a synthesis between man and woman. Drop the Aristotelian idea that man is man, woman is woman, A is A, B is B; no, A is both, B is both. All contradictions have to be brought into a synthetic, organic unity.But because Aristotle has remained a tremendous influence on Western thinking, Sigmund Freud created psychoanalysis; man’s mind has to be analyzed. There are millions of psychotherapists around the earth today, and this is the most highly-paid profession. And there is not even a single person in the whole world who is fully psychoanalyzed, the very effort is impossible.You go on analyzing, and the mind goes on creating new thoughts, new dreams, new projections, new illusions. There is no end to it; there are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years and they have reached nowhere. Yes, they have given a large amount of money to the psychoanalyst, thinking that when analysis is complete they will be again healthy and whole. But the psychoanalysis can never be complete. The very effort is directed into a wrong dimension.Psychosynthesis can be complete. And psychosynthesis should work differently. There is one Italian psychologist, Assagioli, who has created a philosophy of psychosynthesis against Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. But the unfortunate part is that it is still within the framework of Aristotelian logic.Psychoanalysis is one polarity, psychosynthesis is the opposite of it – the same game, just the names are different. Assagioli is using a better name, but it is not of any help.Socrates has to be revived again, Aristotle has to be removed. And that’s what I am doing here: bringing Socrates back to life – because Socrates is essentially the East, where analysis has never existed – nobody has ever thought about it – where organic unity has always been the goal to be achieved.So if a man is sick, that simply means that religions, cultures, civilizations have made him split, they have divided him. They have told him the body is separate, the soul is separate; matter is separate, the spirit is separate; this world is separate, that world is separate; materialism and spiritualism are enemies.I call the new man Zorba the Buddha, for the simple reason that to me materialism and spiritualism are not separate, they are inseparable. The moment you make them separate, you make humanity sick. And all analysis is separation, division.There is no need – you are already existing in unity, your body and your soul are existing together in tremendous harmony. But if you are being told to be against the body, fight the body, control the body, inhibit the desires of the body, then naturally you are going to become schizophrenic. And the whole of humanity is in that situation.Everybody who belongs to any organized religion is schizophrenic, he is not whole. And unless you are whole, you can never be holy. None of your saints are holy, because they have missed the basic thing – they are not whole. They have chosen a part, and they have destroyed other parts of their being. They are partial.And man is not a machine. You can function only in your wholeness; that is health. You cannot function if you are against your own body, your own sensuality, sexuality, your own taste, desire for comfort, for luxury. If you are against all these things, then you can live only a very partial life. And that partial life cannot be of joy, cannot be of laughter. It will be so crippled you cannot dance, and it will be so dead you cannot sing.You can see your religious people, you can see your so-called saints – they have lost all that is significant and beautiful. And the reason is, they are dividing themselves against themselves. They are creating a hell; they are miserable, they are suffering. But there is a motivation behind it: that the suffering is only for a few years. After death they will enjoy; everything that they have not enjoyed in life, they will be enjoying in paradise.You just look at the ideas of paradise in different religions and you can know what those religions are depriving their people of. You need not know what they are depriving them of; just look at their idea of paradise. For example, the Mohammedan paradise has rivers of wine. You can, without any hesitation, conclude that Mohammedanism must be depriving people of wine; otherwise, there is no need for rivers of wine – bottles are enough. But they are not enough for saints. Saints have been depriving themselves for their whole life, and if they get just bottles in reward, then what is the point of being deprived of bottles on the earth? They were available here. You have to give a bigger reward.You will be surprised: in the Mohammedan paradise there are beautiful women whose age is always sixteen. How long they have been sixteen nobody knows. On the earth also, women have a little habit of getting stuck, but not such a habit – for eternity stuck at sixteen! But you have to think of the poor saints, you have to provide them with the most beautiful women. If saints reach there and find women who are eternally old, that will not be a reward, that will be a punishment! The logic is simple.In Mohammedan countries, homosexuality is punished with death. Not a small punishment – three years in jail, five years in jail, ten years in jail – no, just death. But in the Mohammedan paradise, young and beautiful boys are available for the saints.These are your religions. Homosexuality is available: here it is punished with death, and there saints are rewarded with young, beautiful boys who will remain always young and always beautiful. This is the outcome of dividing man against his own body, against his own nature.Therapy is not psychoanalysis – I mean, my therapy is not psychoanalysis. My therapy is psychosynthesis, but not that of Assagioli. Assagioli’s psychosynthesis is very poor; it is just a reaction against Sigmund Freud. It has no true and authentic vision of synthesis itself. He is just fighting an argument against analysis; it is argumentative, it is still Aristotelian.My synthesis is not against Sigmund Freud’s analysis; on the contrary, it includes it, it is inclusive of Sigmund Freud’s analysis. Then it is true synthesis. Do you see the difference? Assagioli is against Sigmund Freud – again the division. Sigmund Freud has to be wrong, Assagioli has to be right.My psychosynthesis is big enough: it includes Sigmund Freud, he is not to be left out. Then it is non-Aristotelian, then it is organic. We accept his contribution. We don’t stop at that, we go far ahead of him, but whatever he has done can be accepted in the right context and it melts into the organic unity of therapy.Yes, therapy is hearing the patient, respecting the patient, accepting whatever he is, giving him encouragement to be himself, destroying the idea of becoming somebody else, helping him to stand on his own feet, helping him to drop all divisions between materialism and spiritualism, making him an organic unity, an orchestra. Then life is a benediction. Out of this orchestra will arise what I call religiousness – the fragrance, the song, the music – but it will be total. It will have all the ingredients that constitute you, it will have all the instruments that nature has given to you.It will not be just a harp, angels playing on it, “Alleluia, alleluia.” That is boring. And just think of those poor angels – for eternity they have been playing on those harps, the same “Alleluia.” Perhaps they have completely forgotten what it means. Perhaps it has become just a robot-like habit. They cannot stop, they have become mechanical; doing something for eternity, it is bound to happen. And they are going to do it in the future also for eternity. Can you think of a worse punishment? And these poor angels have done no harm to anybody.No, just a harp is poor when man can become the whole orchestra – all the instruments possible. Life is the art of arranging all the instruments of your being into an orchestra. Of course, each individual will have his own song and his own music, but that makes life rich, that makes this earth immensely valuable. Everybody is contributing something to its beauty and its blessings.Therapy is not only for people who are insane. Therapy is for everybody, because humanity’s past has driven almost everybody to a certain degree of insanity. If they are normally mad people then there is no problem, nobody takes note of them. If they are abnormally mad people, then you start taking note of them. And all your psychologists are doing only one work: making the abnormally mad people, normally mad. They are not restoring health.In India, I was in a university for nine years. Hundreds of professors…it was the hottest place, exactly in the middle of India, and still those idiots were using ties. I asked them, “Are you mad or something? These ties are for cold countries, so no air enters. But here, you need some air.”This is just normal insanity: in a hot country in summer they are using shirts, coats, ties, socks, boots – and dying within them, boiling, and they were worried about my sanity, because I used to wear a wraparound lungi in the university and just a very thin shawl around my shoulders, half the body open.When I first entered the university with such a dress, the vice-chancellor said to me, “Are you going to come every day with this dress?”I said, “If the sun is going to remain the same, I can come even without a dress. It is just out of consideration for you idiots that I am wearing this thin cloth; otherwise, my body is saying ‘Throw it away! It is so hot!’”The vice-chancellor said, “Wait…don’t…! It is perfectly good, you can come in this dress, but don’t do anything more!”I said, “Then never ask about my dress. You are all insane! I know you have been educated in Oxford, but I don’t consider you literate. The dress that you are using was perfectly good in Oxford, but not here. And if you don’t have that much intelligence to choose the right dress, then I don’t consider you have intelligence at all.”Every professor who met me would look first at my dress, and I would say, “Yes? Start asking – but remember that what I am doing is exactly the right thing in this climate. And what you are doing is just insane. Do you want to commit suicide, or what? You are perspiring, your whole body is perspiring; you are stinking of perspiration. I am the only person whose body is getting air, is not perspiring. And I am able to throw off this dress any moment, and have a shower right here in the university.”Soon they became silent. They would look at my dress but avoid talking about it. These are normally mad people. Just one step more and they will become abnormal; then the function of the psychologist is to bring them to their normal state.This is not the function of my therapies. My therapies want you to be a whole, organic being – intelligent, undivided, and living your life with intensity and totality; with no fear of any hell, no greed for any paradise; respecting yourself, not condemning, accepting yourself as you are.If existence accepts you, what more certificates do you need? The sun does not reject you. The moon does not reject you. The stars are perfectly happy with you; the flowers perfectly enjoy you as you are. The whole existence accepts you.Just be a little kind to yourself, and there will be no need of any psychologists. There will be no need of anybody to bring you back to your innocence, to your real being. You have been born with it, it is your birthright to live it.Osho,You were talking about one world and one world government. Recently President Reagan refused to accept the authority of the world court on political issues. Can politicians ever become contemporary?No. Politicians can never become contemporary; politics itself is out of date. Politicians no longer have any function; they are unnecessarily bothering the whole humanity. It is time for them to disappear as politicians. They are acceptable as plumbers, as electricians, as pilots, as truck drivers. But as politicians they are no longer needed.And if President Reagan refuses to accept the World Court’s decisions about political matters, he is showing his real face. His mask has slipped. The World Court has the right to decide about every issue that concerns humanity. Politics cannot be above law. His refusal to accept it simply means that he is not ready to create, on this planet, a beautiful global village.Nations are no longer needed; they are absolutely unnecessary and harmful. But the politicians will lose all their egos if nations disappear. Then what is President Reagan going to do? Go back to Hollywood? And he was not a great actor either, just a third-class cowboy actor – he can become one again.He had a chimpanzee as his friend…. One is known by the company he keeps!Osho,Is there a difference between watching and witnessing?There is a difference. You watch television, you don’t witness it. But, while watching television, if you start witnessing yourself watching television, then there are two processes going on: you are watching television, and something within you is witnessing the process of watching television. Witnessing is deeper, far deeper. It is not equivalent to watching. Watching is superficial.So remember that meditation is witnessing.Otherwise, there are the “One Thousand Friends of Oregon,” who call themselves “watchdogs” – they will all become enlightened! And I don’t think you have heard the word “witnessdogs.” Nothing like that exists. Watchdogs are possible, watching can be done even by dogs. Witnessing is a very deep and higher quality only man is capable of.Osho,It is hilarious when you tell the story of Moses leading his people through the desert for forty years, and you say, “And Moses got so-o-o tired….”Osho, don't you ever get so-o-o tired of traveling with us camels through the desert of our thoughts and greeds and fears, blinded with the sand of our opinions and prejudices?I have something in common with poor Moses. He ended finally in a desert, and I have also landed finally in a desert. And I am really so tired…!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 37 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is rebellion? And what is the difference between reaction and the action of the rebellious man?The first thing to be understood is the difference between rebellion and revolution.Revolution is an organized effort to change the society forcibly, violently. But the trouble is, you cannot change the society through violence, because it is violence that is the very life current of the society. That’s why all the revolutions have failed. And there is no possibility of any revolution succeeding, ever.Rebellion is individual, nonviolent, peaceful. It is out of love. Rebellion is not against something, but for something. Revolution is against something, but not for something. Revolution is so much engaged in being against, it forgets for what all this fuss is being made. It is anger. But anger cannot create a better society. Rebellion is not oriented against the society, but is oriented towards a new man, a new humanity.Revolution is fighting with the past.Rebellion is meditating for the future.I said rebellion is out of love, silence, understanding, compassion – all the qualities that make man divine. Revolution is based on all the qualities that make man again an animal. Because rebellion is individual, there is no need of any struggle, of any fight. The society will not even be bothered by one individual being different than others. But even single individuals meditating, loving, hoping for a new sunrise, can create the possibility of a new society. Their very presence will be enough to transform others. Their love cannot fail – love never fails. Their understanding, their intelligence, their compassion are bound to succeed.But rebellion has not been tried. Revolution seems to be easier, because against such a big society you need a big organization. But the moment you become organized you become the same type of society. You become just a reflection of what you are opposing. You stand before a mirror: the reflection in the mirror is your reflection, although it is opposed to you.So just being opposed does not mean that you are really different; the methods are the same. The old society depends on violence; the revolutionaries depend on violence. The old society depends on enslaving people; the revolutionaries depend on the same. The old society depends on beliefs; revolutionaries also depend on belief. It makes no difference whether your belief is in The Holy Bible or in Das Kapital.And one thing very significant to remember: if the revolutionaries are going to win they have to be more violent than the old society, more cunning, more clever, more political, more cruel; otherwise they cannot win. So, in fact, in the name of revolution more violence is becoming victorious, more cruelty is becoming victorious; more slavery, more submissiveness is demanded by the revolutionary party. You can see it happen in all the revolutions.The Russian revolution has been the greatest revolution. The czars who ruled Russia were cruel, were violent – the very idea of ruling over somebody is violent. The communists dethroned the czar, but they could manage to do it only because they proved more violent. Nineteen members of the czar’s family were simply butchered, and one of the members, the youngest, was only a six-month-old child. He had not done any crime against anybody – for what was he being punished? Just because he belonged to the royal family? Was that his responsibility? They wanted to destroy the whole family so there would be no possibility of any royal blood of the czars in the future. But the people who did it certainly showed a heartlessness.Joseph Stalin became the leader of the revolutionaries. Stalin was not his real name, “Stalin” was given to him by the people. It means “man of steel.” And certainly he proved to be a man of steel, with no heart. He killed almost one million people after the revolution. Just suspicion was enough; there was no need for any trial, for any investigation. The communist party suspects that somebody is against the revolution – there is no proof, but the man has to be immediately destroyed.The Russian revolution has proved one thing absolutely: that czars were never so violent; they had never killed one million people. And the society was not so deeply enslaved – that’s why the communist revolution was possible.Now in Russia no revolution is possible, people are completely enslaved. Even to think against the status quo today is betraying the religion of communism. People are even afraid if they dream anything against the government. They don’t tell the dream to their wives, to their children, because nobody knows…. The system that came into force after the revolution is such that husbands are spying on their wives, wives are spying on their husbands, children are spying on their parents. Almost everybody is spying on everybody else. And these people are rewarded. If a child comes to the communist party office and informs that his parents have been saying something against the government, he is rewarded. He is sent to a better school, given a better scholarship. Of course, his parents disappear.Now there is no possibility to revolt against the communist regime in Soviet Russia. No freedom of expression, no freedom of getting together, no freedom of thinking – is this revolution? It is going backwards.Rebellion is a spiritual phenomenon.It is not against the society as such; it is simply the intelligence that shows that this society is dead, that this society is incapable of giving birth to a new human being, that it is spent, that it is almost on the verge of global suicide. It needs compassion; it does not need anger.The rebel can do only one thing…. He is not going to organize, because the moment you organize you have to follow the same patterns as the society you are going to oppose; and you have to follow the same language, the same patterns, structures, that the society has practiced for so long.There is an ancient Chinese saying: “To have a bad friend is not as bad as to have a bad enemy.” Looks strange, but it has great meaning in it – because if you have an enemy, then sooner or later you will have to follow his tactics and strategies to fight with him; there is no other way. If you want to be victorious you have to be far ahead of him in his own methods. Hence, I always say, friends you can choose without much consideration, but enemies have to be chosen with great consideration, because they are going to change your character.The rebel has no enemy. He simply has a vision that the old is finished. It need not be fought against, it is dying itself. Fighting with it is to give it life. Just ignore it. It is already on the deathbed; it will die of its own accord. Don’t give it energy by fighting.The rebel can do only one thing: he can transform himself into the new man, he can become his own vision. That is the only proof that his vision is not a dream. The rebel starts transforming his vision into a reality.I want you all to be rebellious.That’s why I don’t believe in organization. I don’t want you to be another religion, another ideology, because that will be simply a repetition of the old patterns. You can be together without any conditions, without any bondage, just out of sheer friendship; no ideology dominating you, but just pure love – because you are on the same path, discovering yourself, finding out whether the vision of a new man can become a reality or not. You can help each other, you can support each other, you can encourage each other.There are moments when encouragement is needed, because to change – and to change totally – is not an easy job. Many times the mind wants to fall back into its old patterns, old habits; therefore, the commune.The commune is not an alternative society. It is not another organization: it is something totally new. It is a loving togetherness of fellow travelers who are all working on themselves. But five thousand people all working on themselves creates an atmosphere of great encouragement – you are not alone. And if five thousand people are trying, there is hope. You can see people ahead of you, you can see people behind you – on all the rungs of the ladder. That makes it clear that human beings just like you are carving the way, changing themselves. It becomes an individual challenge for you not to be a coward and fall back into old habits. You cannot fall back into old habits, because five thousand people are watching you and they are very optimistic about you. They have great hopes for you, they see that the sunrise is not far away.Yes, it is very dark right now, but to find the light you need not go back. To find light you have to go forward. The darker the night, the closer is the morning; and a few have reached the morning. You can see the sunlight in their eyes, you can see the flowers of their being blossoming. You can feel the fragrance that is released. So it is only a question of a little more patience, a little more courage.But rebellion remains individual. Rebels can live together; they can create an atmosphere, a milieu, a buddhafield where awakening becomes easier. But they are not organized, they are not bound to any belief. They are free individuals; out of their free choice they have joined these seekers of the sunrise.You ask me, “What is the difference between reaction and action as far as the rebellious person is concerned?”The rebellious person has no reaction; he has only action. The revolutionary has only reaction; he does not have any action. The difference is significant.Just a few days ago I received a letter from an old woman who is the president of the Atheists’ Association of America. She must be the oldest atheist in the whole world, because I used to know in India one man, Gora, who was her follower, and he was old himself. She has opened, in many countries, associations for atheists.On some television she must have listened to my words – that there is no God – and she was immensely happy. She wrote the letter to say, “You are certainly a man of great courage. Although I am very old, I would like to come and see you, meet you, talk to you.”I told Hasya to write to her that she is welcome, but she must understand that I am not an atheist: “If she is coming here thinking that I am an atheist because I have declared there is no God, then she will be disillusioned. It is better to make it clear.”To me, atheism is reaction, reaction against theism. There are people who believe in God, millions of people; a few people react to it, and they start disbelieving in God. This is a reaction.You can check it very easily by a simple method. If all the theists disappear, if there is no theism at all in the world, can atheists exist? They were secondary, they were simply a reaction. When there are no religions and nobody is saying there is God, what is the point of disbelieving in God? You will look a little silly. With the death of theism, atheism will die automatically. That means it was only a shadow, it was not a reality in itself. A reaction is a shadow.When I say there is no God, I am not saying that I disbelieve in God; even for disbelief, God has to be. Whether you believe or disbelieve, that is your approach, but for both God is needed. For the theist he is needed, for the atheist he is needed. I am simply saying there is no God, has never been. All theists and all atheists are wrong. Those who believe are wrong, and those who disbelieve are wrong.I don’t think that old woman will come. I would love her to come, because in her whole life she may not have met a man who is neither theist nor atheist. Because there is no God, there is no point in being either one.I think it is simply stupid: if there is no God, then a person wasting his whole life establishing atheist associations all over the world – this is sheer wastage of one’s life. If there is no God, then why bother? But no, this has become her whole life. But just denying, just disbelief cannot make anybody blissful.And my statement that there is no God is an action, not a reaction. I am not speaking against anybody; I am simply giving expression to my own experience. I have searched for him within myself, and I have not found him.I have found, instead, godliness.I have found eternal consciousness.I have found immortality.I have found eternal light – but no God.I don’t think this woman has ever thought of looking inwards. She is simply fighting with the theists. Those theists are idiots; in fighting with them you are bound to become an idiot. Reaction cannot take you farther than those you are reacting against.The revolutionary is reactionary. He is against the society; he is against its economic structure, he is against its political way. He is against so many things – his whole life is negative. It depends on being against this, against that, against thousands of things – there are so many no’s in his life. But you cannot live a life of benediction, bliss, out of thousands of no’s.A single yes is far more powerful than a thousand no’s. The no is empty. It shows your anger, it shows your violence, it shows your destructiveness, but it does not show that you have anything creative that you are going to contribute to life and existence.Action means, something not related to anything but coming out of your own silence, out of your own spontaneity.The rebel knows no reaction, he knows action. Action means yes.The rebel creates; he gives birth to himself. He becomes a new man, he heralds a new age. He opens himself to all possibilities, he allows himself unknown dimensions. Not against anybody – it is simply a growth, just like a rosebush is growing. Do you think it is growing against the rocks? Do you think it is growing against anybody? It is growing, not as a reaction; it is growing because growth is its nature. It is growing to blossom, to bring its potential to actuality. It is a process of actualization.Action means the process of actualization. Reaction is simply hate, anger, jealousy, violence, destructiveness. Those are not the qualities to be valued. So, in my vision, the revolutionary has no value, only the rebel. And you can see….Socrates is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Gautam Buddha is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Heraclitus is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. And these are the greatest heights humanity has reached.Revolutionaries are on the same ground as those whom they are opposing. They have to be on the same ground to fight with them. The rebel is not fighting against anybody. The rebel is making himself free so that he can grow, grow to his own destiny. The rebel has a beauty; the revolutionary is a political, social criminal. The rebel is the only holy man, he is sacred.But the moment you start organizing rebellion you change its character, it becomes revolution. It is no longer the same thing. That’s why I had to insist again and again…. The tendency to organize is very deep rooted, because it is millions of years old. And to be alone needs guts.To be alone…but you can be together with people who are also trying to be alone. Your togetherness is just a friendship of two fellow travelers. There are no conditions. It does not make you a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. You remain yourself, the other remains himself.And this is the only respect expected of sannyasins: do not destroy the dignity of the other person. He is as valuable in existence as you are. There is no need to impose your ideas on anybody. Who are you? What authority have you got to impose your ideas on others? You can share, you can tell, you can expose your heart. And if the other feels that something falls in tune with him, and chooses it, it is his decision, not your imposition.Revolutionaries are trying to impose their ideas on others. They are doing the same thing as the old religions have been doing. That’s why I categorize communism as one of the religions; there is no difference. It does not matter that communism does not believe in God, because there are older religions which do not believe in God: Buddhism does not believe in God, Jainism does not believe in God. So that is not a problem. A religion is something that you try to impose on others. It is an effort to convert people, it is always missionary.A rebel is never a missionary, he is always a friend. He can invite you to his innermost being and, if you see something that suits you, that is helpful to you, that is going to nourish you, make your search easier, you can choose it. But it is out of your freedom – nobody is converting you.That’s how it should be in the commune. Whatever I say to you, you need not believe it. You have just to be available to it, so that you can decide. The decision has to be yours. And if it suits you, suddenly if it rings a bell in your heart, then I am no longer responsible for it: the bell is ringing in your heart. But if it doesn’t suit you, my love for you remains the same, because it is not based on converting you.And, in fact, each individual has to be unique. That is the prerogative of human beings – to be unique. And all the religions, all the political ideologies, they have all tried to destroy that privilege.I want to encourage your privilege. On no account should your individuality be interfered with. Your freedom is absolute, and the highest value.Osho,Why are you so optimistic about the new man?I can’t help it, because I see the sunrise so close. But people’s eyes are focused on the past. In fact, nature should have given them eyes at the back of their head, so they can go on looking backwards – or at least given them rearview mirrors. But nature has given you eyes only to look ahead, not even rearview mirrors.Existence does not want you to look at the past. The past is gone forever. It is dead, it is finished. And if you go on looking backwards and walking forwards, you are going to fall in a ditch sooner or later. That’s why you find so many people in different ditches – the Catholic ditch, the Protestant ditch, the Hindu ditch. They are all waiting for you. But you are responsible for it. They are making their ditches bigger and bigger, because many customers are coming – looking backwards, walking forwards. It is a very strange situation!I am optimistic because I can see the sunrise is very close. It has already come on the horizon, the horizon is already red. Any moment…. The birds I can hear singing, I can smell the flowers opening. And you ask me, “Why are you optimistic?”Optimism is natural; pessimism is unnatural. But the whole world is full of pessimistic people because their life is misery, suffering, anguish, and they can’t conceive of how to get out of this mess. They go on round and round in circles: the same misery, the same anguish, the same suffering – and they know sooner or later is the end. They have not been able to live, they have not been able to love, they have not been able to laugh – and death knocks on their doors.Most of the people realize only when death comes: “My God! So I was alive!” – because there was nothing alive in them; they were just breathing, vegetating. Life is much more. They have not known the grandeur that existence goes on bestowing on them.But you are not available, because you are so down in your misery, suffering – and you are the creator of all those miseries and sufferings. And by and by you become so addicted that without misery you cannot live. You cannot conceive of yourself living without anxiety.Just the other night one journalist was here, and he asked me, “At the ultimate experience of enlightenment, it must be very boring.” According to him, all the excitements of life – the miseries, the anxieties, the sufferings – will not be there. One is eternally just blissful.And I asked him, “What do you want?”He said, “For example, the joy of bicycling, or going in a helicopter….”I said, “You don’t understand anything about enlightenment, or you would not have asked such a stupid question. Going in a helicopter – there is no problem; the enlightened man can go in a helicopter, but that does not make his bliss more or less.” Perhaps it may give him nausea…. I don’t see any joy in the helicopter. Helicopters should all be sent to heaven, so saints can have a little fun, some noise.They were thinking of bringing a helicopter for me. I said, “First, it has to be absolutely soundproof; otherwise, I am not going in it.” Why should I unnecessarily bother? And cycling? Then why not ride on a camel? That would be more fun.There are people who are addicted. The way they are living seems to them the only way they can live; hence, it is difficult to bring them out of their habitual hell. Otherwise, it is so simple to come out of your miseries: simply don’t create them.Miseries are exactly like bicycling. You go on pedaling and the cycle goes on. You stop pedaling and you will fall, the bicycle will stop. If you go on remaining miserable, that means you are pedaling – because who is interested in your misery? Everybody has his own misery.I am reminded of an ancient parable…. A Sufi mystic was constantly praying to God, “Why have you made me so miserable? I am such a devotee, I do five prayers prescribed by the holy Koran every day without fail. I have been to Mecca – I have done everything that is prescribed for being truly religious. But why do I remain miserable? Can’t you do me only one favor? If you cannot take my miseries away, you can at least give me a chance of changing my miseries with somebody else.”That night he had a dream, and he was very much surprised: his prayer had been heard. A great voice from the sky declared that everybody should put all his miseries, sufferings, anguishes into a bag and take it to the mosque. He was enchanted – “So the time has come!”He gathered all his miseries and anguishes and anxieties – everything – packed them well, and rushed towards the mosque. And there were crowds of people carrying their bags. He said, “My God!” – their bags were so much bigger than his small parcel, he became afraid. With whom is he going to change? “But now let us see, many people have already reached, many will be coming.”When he reached the mosque, the voice was heard again: “Put all your bags by the side near the walls, and wait for the next order.”Everybody had always wanted to believe that “others are living so happily, only I am suffering.” But now they were puzzled, looking at the bags…and they were all afraid now to change. So they were standing just by the side of their bag. If somebody else takes their bag, then they will have to take somebody else’s. It is better to be with your own miseries. At least you are acquainted with them, and you have a certain feeling – they are yours! You have lived together for so long, and this parting makes you feel sad.Even the Sufi was standing just close to his small packet. His neighbors asked, “Why are you standing so close to your packet?”He said, “My packet is the smallest, and I don’t want to change with anybody else. I had no idea about other people’s miseries.”Then the voice ordered, “You can take any bag you like” – and everybody rushed to his own bag. And the Sufi came home with his parcel, so happy.This is the situation: you don’t see other people’s troubles, problems; you see only your own. And constantly seeing your own miseries creates a film on your eyes, and life becomes dark.Pessimism is nothing but getting addicted to a miserable way of living – and you are the creator of it. You are miserable because you are jealous. Now, a jealous person cannot hope to be optimistic. You are miserable because you are constantly angry, angry against the whole world, angry that existence has not been fair to you. Such a person cannot be optimistic.And you all believe in religions which are pessimistic. Do you think worshipping a cross is optimistic? It is worshipping death. And people are carrying crosses around their necks. Even if you make the crosses of gold, it does not matter – a cross is a cross.Listen to your holy scriptures. They condemn you continuously, they say that you are sinners, that you are still burdened with the disobedience of Adam and Eve. They condemn everything that is natural in you – that creates guilt. You cannot go against nature, and your mind says, “But you are going against your religion.” That creates guilt.A guilty person, a sinner, cannot be optimistic. Pessimism is going to be his whole way of life – just darkness and more darkness, and no hope for a sunrise.I am not a sinner. What Adam and Eve did was perfectly right. They should be appreciated; they were the first rebels. The whole humanity owes so much to Adam and Eve – everything. If they had not disobeyed a dictatorial God, there would not have been any humanity: no Gautam Buddha, no Socrates, no Baal Shem Tov, no Chuang Tzu. You would be still naked, chewing grass in the Garden of Eden. The whole credit goes to Adam and Eve, that they disobeyed.Disobedience shows intelligence.And it was worth it, eating the fruit of knowledge. They could not reach the other tree; otherwise, they would have eaten the fruit of eternal life too. Why should you feel guilty? You should rejoice! If anybody has to feel guilty, it is the God who prohibited his own son and daughter from being wise, from being alive forever. The sin has been committed by God, he should feel guilty.But the same is the situation about other religions: they all make you feel miserable. It seems the whole business of religion depends on your misery.I don’t have any guilt. I have never committed any sin. I have lived absolutely naturally; I have never listened to any religious commandment. I have listened to the wisdom of my body. I have decided of my own accord. I have loved my freedom, and my eyes are without any dark film. Hence, I am helpless: I cannot be pessimistic. Even in this world which is almost insane, I am optimistic, because I cannot conceive that the forces of life can be defeated by the forces of death. I cannot conceive that truth can be conquered by lies.It is such a deep certainty in me that I know the birth of the new man is very close by.Osho,Do those of us who are not acharyas, siddhas, arihantas, bodhisattvas, mahasattvas, or sambuddhas have any chance of becoming enlightened in this life?More chances! If you are nobody you have more chance of becoming enlightened. The moment you become somebody, the doors close.Osho,Is doubt really okay?Doubt is the very foundation of all human growth. Belief is the poison – doubt is the nectar. Doubt does not mean disbelief, because disbelief is again negative belief; it is not doubt.So don’t get confused between doubt and disbelief.Doubt is simply the open mind, inquiring. Doubt means only a question mark. Doubt means, “I do not know, and I want to know, and I am ready to travel to the very end. But I will not accept any borrowed knowledge – I want to know on my own.”Yes, doubt is absolutely okay.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 38 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is beyond psychotherapy?Please explain.Beyond psychotherapy is your real being. Psychotherapy is confined to the mind – and you are not the mind. The West has always divided man into body and mind. The East, which knows more, knows that there is something beyond this duality of body-mind.Psychotherapy can help a little bit for those who are mentally sick, but not much, because psychotherapists are the most mentally sick people on the earth. More psychotherapists commit suicide than any other profession. More psychotherapists go mad than any other profession. More psychotherapists are sexually perverted than any other profession. And these people are trying to help mentally sick people!They have the expertise, they can help you a little bit; they can bring you back to your normal state of insanity. But that which is beyond psychotherapy brings you to real health, wholeness.Man consists of three layers: the body – the most visible; the being – the most invisible; and the mind – in between.The mind is a good mechanism, but not a good master. It can serve you if you are the master and the mind is the servant. But if the servant becomes the master and starts ruling over you, that is the state of insanity. That’s why I say the whole humanity is “normally insane.”What is mind? It is all borrowed, and borrowed from different sources – from the parents, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests, from the libraries. Its hunger is insatiable; it goes on swallowing all kinds of information. That information may be contradictory, that information may create tensions, may create a split – or many splits.For example, if you are born a Christian…. The Bible says the earth is flat. From your very childhood you have believed in the Bible because your parents believed in it. But in school you learn that the earth is not flat, it is a globe. Both these pieces of information are collected by the mind. Their conflict becomes your anxiety, and this anxiety takes thousands of shapes. And it is impossible for you to decide which way to go; you are pulled apart in all directions.If you somehow can maintain your balance, this is normal insanity. Insanity is there, but it is just the same as everybody else’s. Unless you come in close proximity to a saner person, you will not be able to think yourself insane.The function of the psychotherapist is, whenever somebody goes beyond the boundary of the normal humanity, to bring him back. It is not an easy job. It takes years, and only the very rich can afford it. Then, too, success is not certain, because the person who is treating him is himself repressing his own insanity.I have heard about one psychotherapist…. He was treating a patient who had this insane idea that thousands of flies, which nobody could see, were sitting all over his body – on his face, on his hands – and he was continuously brushing them off. Everybody said that there are no flies, but he said, “Should I believe my own eyes or your eyes? Should I believe my own hands which are feeling the flies, or your hands? I can see flies are not on you; they are simply attracted to me.”Finally, it became impossible for him to do anything. His family brought him to the psychotherapist. The psychotherapist tried, explained, analyzed his dreams.After two years they were sitting in the garden chitchatting – they had become friendly in the two years – and the man started brushing off flies. The psychotherapist stood up, and he said, “Not on me! I have tolerated it for two years, but there is a limit to everything.”In these two years the madman with the flies has convinced the psychoanalyst that flies exist, they are – rather than the psychoanalyst convincing him that the flies are just his imagination. It is a dangerous game. That’s why so many psychotherapists go mad; to be with mad people is not an easy job.In one madhouse, the old doctor had retired and the new doctor had come in, and all the mad people were very happy. They rejoiced and danced. The doctor said, “Why are you so happy?”They said, “Because you are just like us! That man, although he stayed with us for ten years, remained a foreigner. But you really understand.” At that moment the doctor saw that he himself was dancing with them, rejoicing. Even the mad people recognized that he was also mad. They said, “This is the greatest thing that has happened in this madhouse. Now there is no problem – we are all one.”This unity between the patient and the doctor…. The psychotherapist has to create some kind of bridge to communicate, but inside him is the same kind of mind which can go berserk any moment. And to convince a madman, a fanatic – and all madmen are fanatic, and all fanatics are mad – is very difficult.One man, who thought he was dead, was brought to a psychoanalyst. That was too much. The whole society was puzzled as to how to convince him that he was not dead. His family, wife, children, parents, were all in deep sadness. But how to convince a man that he is not dead? The psychoanalyst thought of a method. He asked the madman, “Do you know that a dead man never bleeds?”The madman said, “That’s true, I know. How can a dead man bleed? Blood disappears as life disappears.”The psychoanalyst took him close to the mirror, pushed a needle into his hand, and blood came out. The psychotherapist asked him, “Now what do you say?”He said, “This means the proverb is wrong – dead men do bleed! This is a proof; nobody ever experimented before. Are you convinced, or not?”Naturally, psychotherapists become more and more filled with these mad people’s ideas; they become their nightmare, they follow them like a shadow. So it is understandable why they go mad more than any other profession.And why do they commit suicide? Perhaps the tension becomes so much that living becomes impossible. Why do they become perverted? – because they are surrounded by perverted people. And your mind is continuously taking information from outside, accumulating it; it is a computer.Psychotherapy has not done much good to humanity. It cannot.In the East, nothing like psychotherapy has happened. You will be surprised that in the East, for ten thousand years, no enlightened person has even paid any attention to the mind. If they have ever talked about the mind, they have talked in reference to meditation. And what they have talked about is how to make the mind silent, empty, a total nothingness, a no-mind.The state of no-mind is unknown to the West, and it is only in the state of no-mind that one becomes aware of that which is beyond mind…. Because when all the chattering of the mind stops and there is no more noise, the still small voice of the being is heard. For the first time one becomes aware, “I am here. I was not there in that crowded place, I was always out of it.”And a single moment of knowing yourself to be above the mind has given you a master key. Now the mind can never become your master. And if the mind can never become your master it can never drive you mad. Now the mind cannot go on accumulating whatever it wants. Once the being asserts itself, the mind becomes very submissive – immediately.It is just like in a small school…children are chitchatting, making noise, running around in the class – and the master appears. Immediately, every child is in his seat, with open book, trying to look very busy; and there is complete silence. The master has not done anything, he has not even uttered a single world, but his presence is enough.Exactly something like that happens. The presence of being – and the mind stops all its nuisance. The thoughts disappear and the mind becomes just a pure space.The being can see through the mind with great clarity, perception. Before the being’s arrival it was always a question of either/or – to do this or to do that, what is right, what is wrong – and the mind was never able to decide. And, whatever it decided, it was always half-hearted; hence, repentance was always bound to happen. You were thinking to marry this woman or that woman…finally the mind has to decide. Wavering, it comes to a decision. By marrying one woman you come to know the woman in her totality, and a great repentance settles in: you have chosen the wrong woman.Nobody in the whole world has chosen the right woman, neither has any woman chosen the right man. It is very strange…. How do you manage, out of millions of people, always to find the wrong woman, the wrong man?The fault is not of the man, not of the woman. The mind has no clarity. It is clouded by so many thoughts; it is incapable of decision because it is incapable of clarity.Once mind is silent, once there is a state of no-mind, being is very sharp and clear. There is no question of either/or, there is no question of choosing; whatever the being does is choiceless. It simply does that which the clarity allows it to do. It is always right. Just as mind is always wrong, being is always right.But the West has not recognized being. Hence, in the muddy waters of the mind, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and their progeny – they are all just making the water more muddy. They have themselves not known that there is something in their innermost core which cannot go mad, which is sanity itself. Existence speaks through it – it is the voice of life itself.But the psychotherapists are afraid even to discover being. There were chances…. Jung traveled long in India, visiting the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora – all beautiful places. And he was told by every person he came across, “Rather than wasting time in visiting these places, you should not miss meeting a man, Raman Maharshi, who lives in South India on the hill Arunachal – it is not far away – because he can give you a glimpse. Perhaps in his presence, just sitting by his side or talking to him, you may have some idea of why the East has never paid any attention to mind, and yet has produced the greatest enlightened people, the sanest people possible, with crystal-clear vision.”Raman Maharshi was one of those people, but Jung never went to him. He was afraid; the very idea that there is something beyond mind was very scary. That means the whole of psychoanalysis is meaningless, and he was not ready to take the risk of meeting such a man. He came back from India without visiting Raman.Jung’s fear is the fear of all psychoanalysts – something beyond the mind makes their whole profession utterly meaningless. And if there is a direct method to reach the being by bypassing the mind, and if the moment you reach the being the mind itself cools down, there is no need of any psychoanalysis. There is no need to convince the insane person that he is wrong. There is no need to go into deep details about his dreams, diaries, and all kinds of nonsense.Meditation is a direct route to being.It simply bypasses the mind.And once you are centered in your being, the mind, which was jumping up and down pretending to be your master, suddenly becomes submissive; it immediately falls silent, drops all its noise. And a man of being can use the mind just the way you can use any mechanism. But if the mechanism starts using you, that is an ugly state.Man should remember that he is the master of his body and of his mind. Certainly the master must be beyond both. And I say it on my own authority: it is so. You can play with psychotherapy and other therapies – they are just games. If you like those games, no harm. They are better than football, but they are no more than games. And they are not going to give you a new life, they are not going to give you an authentic intelligence, a clarity which can see into every problem without any question of either/or.The enlightened man is nothing but the man who functions from his being.People tell me, “We have to decide what is right and what is wrong.” Yes, you will have to decide if you live under the impact of the mind – and none of your decisions is going to prove right. Whatever you choose you will suffer, and you will always look back: “Perhaps the other alternative was better?”The enlightened man never chooses, he lives in a choiceless awareness. In the light of his awareness he knows what is right; it is not a question of decision. And the moment you know what is right, with your total being, you never repent.For three decades continuously I have never looked back. I have never for a single moment thought that perhaps if I had chosen something else, it would have been better. The question does not arise.Hence, the enlightened man carries no burden of the past, and remains clear – because the burden of the past is like dust gathering on your awareness, on the mirror of your being. When the mirror is clear it simply reflects what is the case.So it is not a question of deciding what is right and wrong. That’s why I have never talked to my people about morality, immorality, virtue, sin, good, bad; it is useless. I have insisted only on one point, that you become centered in your being. And then whatever you do is right, is virtue. Yes, there is your real being – beyond psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is only children’s play. And it is strange, still today the psychoanalyst is not willing even to consider the position of enlightenment. I can understand why he cannot even consider it: psychotherapy has become his bread and butter. It is one of the most highly paid professions.The psychotherapist is the latest version of the priest. He is a parasite, he is sucking blood in the name of curing insane people. And I have never come across a single man who has been cured by psychoanalysis. Even the psychoanalyst is not cured. The founders of psychoanalysis were not the people who can be said to be whole and absolutely healthy in their consciousness.Jung was very much afraid of death. Now, that is not a sign of a meditator. He was so afraid of death…. But it is a strange phenomenon: whatever you are afraid of, you are also in some way obsessed by. He was obsessed with the desire to see the mummies in Egypt. At least half a dozen times he booked his ticket to go to Egypt, and each time he would find some excuse to cancel it. The sixth time he gathered courage and reached the airport, but at the airport he lost his nerve again.He turned back, and he wrote in his diary, “I cannot go to Egypt. I cannot see those dead bodies, hundreds of years old, because every dead body reminds me of my own death.”A man of meditation knows there is no death. And if this kind of fear exists in the founder of a school called analytical psychology, what can you expect from his disciples?Jung himself was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. And the reason they had to part was a very funny one. Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of ghosts. Even the word “ghost” was enough to make him go into a fit, and he would start foaming at the mouth. So every disciple knew that the word “ghost” was never to be mentioned before him. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis! These people are sick themselves. Because Jung continued to use the word “ghost,” and three times made Freud go into a fit, that was too much. The third time, when he came out of the fit, Freud told Jung, “You just get lost! I don’t want to hear anything that makes me sick.”But what is the fear in ghosts? Why is he so afraid – such trembling, such fear? And Freud was psychoanalyzing hundreds of people’s dreams, but he never allowed any of his disciples to psychoanalyze his dreams. He himself was not psychoanalyzed. Strange…the founder should be available for his own method.The reason is clear. Freud knew what his dreams were, and how he had been interpreting others’ dreams – making everything symbolic of sexuality. If somebody sees a rocket in the dream, that is a phallic symbol. Anything! He was very clever at making symbols, interpreting them as your repressed sex. And that was the fear: because these disciples have become experts, now they will interpret his dreams as repressed sexuality – which he never wanted the world to know. But this is not the way of the seeker, the way of truth.Psychotherapy’s days are numbered. As meditation spreads, psychotherapy will start shrinking. If we can spread meditation around the earth, psychotherapy will simply disappear. There is no use for it, and it has not helped in any way.And you should not get into the mud of psychotherapy – because to get into it is very easy but to get out of it is very difficult. You go on digging, and you go on finding more and more mud; there is no end to it. Mind has an infinite store of dreams, thoughts, desires, repressions, perversions.There are people who have been psychoanalyzed for fifteen years continuously, but their psychoanalysis is not complete. There is not even a single man in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete. He is exactly at the same stage where he had started fifteen years ago – although his bank balance has disappeared.Meditation takes you to being.It is a direct route to the beyond.And once the master is there, mind immediately surrenders. In that surrender is health, because the master is in his place and the servant is in his place; the harmony is restored. And to be harmonious is all that health means.Osho,Is it true that analysis and synthesis are both mind processes, and in the end neither can help very much?Please comment.Yes, both are mind processes, analysis and synthesis both. What can help is witnessing – witnessing the mind and its activities. And witnessing is the real miracle. The more you witness, the less thoughts are there in the mind – in exact proportion. If your witnessing is only ten percent, then there are ninety percent thoughts. If your witnessing is ninety percent, there are only ten percent thoughts. If your witnessing is one hundred percent, then there is no mind, there are no thoughts at all.So Sigmund Freud, who talks about psychoanalysis, and Assagioli, who talks about psychosynthesis, are in the same boat. They are both talking about mind; neither of them is talking of going beyond mind.Witnessing simply takes you beyond mind. And to be beyond mind is the whole of religion, the true religion. I call it pure religiousness.Osho,Somewhere in those far-off Pune days this quotation hit me – the author and exact words now forgotten, but it seems to say everything there is to say. “The greatest good fortune that can befall a man is to be born in the age of a buddha. Even greater is the good fortune of he who comes to hear of the existence of the buddha. And even greater still is the good fortune of he who is drawn into the family of the buddha.”So my question is: how can any sannyasin be such a pea-brain as to not be here with you come hell or high water, poison or prison, bullets or boredom, anguish or AIDS?It is true that it is a great fortune to be born in the age of an enlightened one. It is greater fortune to have heard about him. It is an even greater fortune to be part of his family.But there are people who are blind; they have eyes but they cannot see. They are deaf; they have ears but they cannot hear. Even sometimes by accident they may get into the family of the enlightened one, but they still remain an outsider, they never merge with it. And it has been always so.In Gautam Buddha’s time, how many people were in his family, how many of those people became enlightened? How many people dropped out of his family – how many people even became enemies of Gautam Buddha? How many attempts were made to kill him by his own ex-followers? Buddha’s own cousin-brother tried to kill him many times. He could not succeed, but he made those efforts.So the statement is true, but not for all. It is true only for those who have a sensitivity to feel the presence of the enlightened one, to be soaked in his silence, to be filled with his fragrance, to let their heart beat in the same rhythm, to become part of his song, his dance. How many people have eyes to see?The birth of a buddha is very rare – that’s why the statement that it is very fortunate to be born in the times of an enlightened one. It is more fortunate to hear about him, because millions will not even know that he had existed, that he was here, that the river was just flowing by their side and they remained thirsty. Millions will see the body of the enlightened one, but will not be able to see his spiritual aura, his energy field.Millions will hear about him, but will not believe. Millions will hear him, but will not listen. And there will be many who, on trivial excuses, will leave the enlightened one’s family, not knowing what they are leaving, not knowing that their excuses are just meaningless.And many will try even to destroy the man, because somehow his presence is against their egos. His presence makes them feel to melt with him, to become one with him, and there are egoistic people – hard, they don’t have hearts – who cannot melt. For them it is better to destroy this person, because he is a constant reminder of their dead heart.But there will always be a few who will remain with the enlightened one in every situation. Nothing matters more than to be with him. But one needs a little sensitivity, and then all stupid things become meaningless. It is certainly a great blessing.I am reminded of one of my vice-chancellors. He was a world-famous historian. He had been a professor of history in Oxford for almost twenty years, and after his retirement from Oxford, he came back to India. He had a world-famous name, and he was elected to be the vice-chancellor of the university I was studying in. He was a nice man, a beautiful personality, with immense knowledgeability, scholarship, recognition – so many books to his credit.By chance, the day he took charge as vice-chancellor was Gautam Buddha’s birthday. And Gautam Buddha’s birthday is more important than anybody else’s birthday, because Gautam Buddha’s birthday is also his day of enlightenment, and also his day of leaving the body. The same day he was born, the same day he became enlightened, the same day he died.The whole university gathered to hear him speak on Gautam Buddha. And he was a great historian, he had written about Gautam Buddha; and he spoke with great emotion. Tears in his eyes, he said, “I have always felt that if I had been born in Gautam Buddha’s time, I would have never left his feet.”According to my habit I stood up, and I said, “You please take your words back.”He said, “But why?”I said, “Because they are false. You have been alive in Ramana Maharishi’s time. He was the same kind of man, his was the same enlightenment – and I know that you have not even visited him. So whom are you trying to befool? You would not have visited Gautam Buddha either. Wipe your tears, they are crocodile tears. You are simply a scholar and you don’t know anything about enlightenment or people like Gautam Buddha.”There was a great silence in the auditorium. My professors were afraid that I might be expelled; they were always afraid, that any time…. And I had told them, “You don’t be worried about me. I have been expelled from many colleges, universities – it has become almost my way of life, being expelled.”But now they were very much afraid. They loved me, and they wanted me…. But to create such a situation, such an awkward situation…and nobody knew what to do, how to break the ice. In those few seconds it looked as if hours had passed. The vice-chancellor was standing there – but he was certainly a man of some superior quality. He wiped his tears and asked that he should be forgiven – perhaps he was wrong. And he invited me to his house so that we could discuss it in more detail.But he said, before the whole university, “You are right. I would not have gone to Gautam Buddha, I know it. I was not aware when I said it; it was just emotional, I was carried away. Yes, I have never been to Raman Maharshi when he was alive. And I had been very close to his place many times – I used to deliver lectures in Madras University, from where it is only a few hours’ journey to Arunachal. I have been told by many friends, ‘You should go and see this man’ – and I always went on postponing till the man died.”The whole university could not believe it, my professors could not believe it. But his humbleness touched everybody. Respect for him grew tremendously; and we became friends. He was very old – he was almost sixty-eight – and I was only twenty-four, but we became friends. And he never for a moment allowed me to feel that he was a great scholar, that he was the vice-chancellor, that he was my grandfather’s age.On the contrary, he said to me, “I don’t know what happened that day; I am not so humble a man. Being a professor in Oxford for twenty years, being a visiting professor to almost all the universities of the world, I have become very egoistic. But you destroyed everything in a single stroke. And I will remain grateful to you for my whole life: if you had not stood up, I might have remained believing that I would have done this. But now I would like it…if you can find someone, then I would like to sit by his feet and listen to him.”And you will not believe it that when I said, “Then sit down and listen….” he said, “What!”I said, “Just look at me. Don’t be bothered by my age, sit down and listen to me.” And you will not believe it – that old man sat down and listened to me, to whatever I wanted to say to him. But rare are people who have so much courage and so much openness.After that day he used to come to the hostel to visit me. Everybody was puzzled: what had happened? – and I had created for him such an embarrassing situation! He used to take me to his house, and we would sit together and he would ask me, “Say anything – I want to listen. My whole life I have been talking; I have forgotten listening. And I have been saying things which I don’t know.” And he listened the way a disciple listens to a master.My professors were very much puzzled. They said, “Have you done some magic on that old man? or has he gone senile? or what is the matter? To see him, we have to make an appointment, and we have to wait on a long list. When our time comes, only then can we meet him. And he comes to see you – not only that, he listens to you. What has happened?”I said, “The same can happen to you too, but you are not that intelligent, not that sensitive, not that understanding. That old man is really rare.”And you will not believe it: one year after I left the university I came back to the same town to deliver a lecture in a conference. The vice-chancellor came to listen to me and said, “You will have to talk to the students of your university also.” So I went to the university to talk to the students.And this is the most unbelievable part: when I reached the podium, he touched my feet. I said to him, “What are you doing?”He said, “I should have done it before, but I cannot miss this chance. Perhaps we may meet again, we may not meet again.” And we did not meet again, because after just two days, he died. But before the whole university he touched my feet – the feet of one of his students.Such sensitivity is unique – and such humbleness. But the love and the compassion and the benediction and the blessings of the enlightened one shower only on such people.Osho,Being with you, what does growth mean?It is enough just being with me. Growth will come of its own accord, there is no need to be bothered about growth. Just being with me you will become more and more silent, more and more loving, more and more soft, more and more humble, more and more melted into the universal flow of life.The moment you have melted like a snowflake, the growth has come. When you are not, the growth has happened. You are the barrier, you are preventing it.And I am giving you the simplest method: Just being with me – alert, aware, receptive, open – all that is possible to human beings will become possible to you. Neither I have to do anything, nor have you to do anything.This is called by the ancient mystics of China, action without action.Osho,What is the point of calling your juicy discourses, the Bible?(These discourses were first given under the title, The Rajneesh Bible – Ed.)The point is clear. The Bible of the Christians is not juicy. They have destroyed a beautiful word, “bible.” It has become dead. I want to make it alive. I love the word, and I want to give it all the juice that is possible.The point is very simple: so people can see the dead Bible and the living Bible – the Bible which is just dry bones and the Bible which has juice. Now the choice is theirs.

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 39 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is the origin of dance, love and meditation in synchronicity? Why has dance been throughout the ages the highest art?Please comment.Everything that is of authentic value in life has arisen out of meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is the mother of art, music, poetry, dance, sculpture. All that is creative, all that is life-affirmative, is born out of meditation. All that is life-negative – hate, anger, jealousy, violence, war – is born out of the mind. Man has two possibilities: mind and meditation.Meditation can be translated as no-mind; then things will be simple. Either something comes out of the mind, or something comes out of no-mind. Mind is noise, it is craziness, insanity. No-mind is silence, health, wholeness. Mind cannot create anything which is not poisonous. And out of no-mind there is no possibility of anything arising which will serve death.You ask about love. Your love is not out of meditation; you don’t know meditation, you are acquainted only with the mind. Just look at your mind. For ten minutes sit silently and write down whatever comes into your mind, without editing, without adding anything – exactly whatever is arising in the mind. Howsoever irrelevant, stupid it may be, just write for ten minutes, and then read it. And you will be surprised: this is your mind? And if this is mind, then what is madness? And this mind is continuously running – in every action, feeling. If you love, this mind is bound to pollute that love with hate.Psychotherapists, who do not know anything about no-mind, have finally decided that love and hate are not two things, and they have started using one word, love-hate. Because love can change into hate any moment, hate can change into love any moment.And this is not a new insight. One of the most cunning and clever men, Machiavelli, writes in his book, The Prince – it is advice to kings – “Never say a thing to a friend that you would not like to be said to an enemy.” Three hundred years before psychotherapy, he was giving its whole insight – because the friend can become tomorrow the enemy. So never say to the friend what you would not like to say to any enemy.And his second statement is, “Never say about the enemy anything that you would not say about a friend” – because tomorrow the enemy can turn into a friend, and then it will be very embarrassing, that you said such an ugly thing about him.Machiavelli was certainly a genius of cunningness. He was the tutor of almost all the princes of Europe. When they started becoming kings, he wanted to become somebody’s prime minister, but his own disciples refused – without exception. He was puzzled, he could not figure it out: what was the matter? – they loved him so much…. He asked, “If you love me so much, you respect me so much, then why can’t you allow me to be your prime minister? Where can you find a man equal to me?”And those princes said, “You are too clever, too cunning. We know your genius. To make you the prime minister means within just a few months or a year or two you will be the king, and we will be nowhere! We respect you and we love you, but we cannot give you that much power. You will destroy us, and we will not be capable of fighting with you.”This man is not considered a great philosopher, but he should be. Even though he was a philosopher in favor of evil, his insight is deep. Love can become hate, hate can become love. Your love, which can within a moment change into hate, is not love. It has come from the mind, and mind always lives in contradictions. If there is love, then just behind love there is hate. If there is compassion, just behind compassion there is anger.Mind is a duality, so everything is balanced by its opposite; that is the way of the mind. No-mind means you become a witness of all the processes of the mind. You detach yourself. Your consciousness is not part of the mind; it can watch the mind. Just the way you can watch a movie on the screen, your consciousness can watch on the screen of the mind all its craziness. This witnessing will lead you into a new space within yourself.The arithmetic is very simple. When there is no witnessing in you, you are one hundred percent mind. One percent witnessing, and you are ninety-nine percent mind. And as witnessing grows, your mind starts disappearing. They cannot exist together; there is no coexistence between no-mind and mind, between meditation and mind – it is either/or.When your witnessing is ninety percent, your mind is reduced to ten percent. And when your witnessing is one hundred percent – total, absolute – the screen is empty, the film has disappeared. This is the state of meditation: when there are no thoughts, no feelings – nothing moves, everything stops. There is tremendous serenity. Out of this serenity, silence, peace, a new kind of experience arises, new flowers blossom.If love happens now, it will not have with it jealousy, hate, anger, and all those poisons which kill love. Now it will be pure love, unconditional. It will not ask anything in return, it will rejoice only in giving. It will be grateful that you accepted whatever was given to you; it will not burden you by making you feel obliged. It will not destroy your freedom. If you love somebody else and you are happy with somebody else, the meditator will feel very happy because you are happy – it does not matter with whom. He loves you, and he wants you to be happy.Love out of meditation gives total freedom, accepts you the way you are, never tries to mold you into a certain pattern – that is ugly, that is violent. It respects your dignity. It has no suspicion….There is, in India, one of the most ancient stories of a king, Rama, whose wife, Sita, had been stolen by another king. It took three years of fighting to get the wife back. Naturally, Rama was suspicious; three years in the enemy camp – who knows whether she has been able to remain pure? He proposes a fire test – she has to pass through fire. If she is not burned, then her love is pure, she has not loved anyone else.When I was reading it in my early childhood…because every child in India reads about Rama and his wife, Sita. Rama is thought to be one of the incarnations of God. But when I read about his suspicion, I told my father, who was teaching me the story, “If Rama suspects her, then his love is not very great. And in my opinion, Sita is far higher than Rama, because she does not suspect him. Three years he was also away from her; in these three years he may have loved some woman, desired someone. She does not ask Rama, ‘You also come with me, we both should go through the fire test.’ She proves that her love is authentic.”And the story is beautiful: she comes out of the fire without being burned. That is simply a symbolic way of saying that even fire cannot burn true love. Nothing can destroy it.But what about Rama? I said, “As far as I am concerned, he has fallen in my eyes. Sita is far superior. But in India, he is worshipped as the reincarnation of God, not Sita.” I told my father, “This is inconceivable.”My father said, “I have read this story myself many times, but this point was never apparent to me. Perhaps you are right.”The man with suspicion cannot have the purity of love. And the woman without any hesitation, without questioning, goes through the fire. I know fire will not change its rules whether your love is true or not, but the story is symbolic. It says even fire will not hurt and change authentic love.But Rama fell in my eyes from that very day. And I have tried many times – because all over India people were asking me to speak on Rama, and I said, “I cannot do that, because you will not be able to hear what I want to say. And I cannot say what you want to hear. It is better not to bring Rama between us.” I have spoken on all prophets, saviors, messengers, except Rama – and Rama is the most worshipped in India – for the simple reason that from the very beginning that man shows a very mean mind.Your love comes from the mind, which is basically mean. Love coming out of no-mind has a splendor of its own, a grandeur, something of the divine in it. Anything that comes out of meditation comes with the aura of eternity: painting, sculpture, poetry, music.Look at modern music: it is simply insanity, it is not music. Just making noise is not music. It may help you to have some catharsis – that’s what music like jazz does, it is cathartic. You feel afterwards a kind of well-being, relaxed; but it is not music.Music will make you silent, will make you disappear, will make you almost absent. Only the music will be there, not the musician – because in meditation the musician cannot exist. And if you are listening, soon you will find yourself melting, disappearing. It will create a new space within you. It has come out of meditation, and anyone who listens to it will feel something of meditation.Old mystics have used music to convey their experience – for example, Kabir, Meera, Nanak. They will not discuss, they will not talk with you. They will simply play some instrument, sing a song – which has nothing to do with God, heaven and hell; which has nothing to do with theology, with any creed or cult.But Kabir playing on his ektara – the simplest musical instrument…. Ektara means only one string. It has only one string, not the complexity of a sitar. But with his ektara he would create an atmosphere where many would be transported to another world.Meera used to sing – and I don’t think in the whole world any woman has sung such beautiful songs. People would be listening and they would forget themselves. It happened that when she was wandering around India, she came to a place, Vrindavan, where Krishna had lived. In Vrindavan there is the main temple of Krishna. There are hundreds of temples, but in the main temple, the most ancient, his priest has to be absolutely celibate – so much so that no woman can enter the temple. And the priest never goes out, so he never comes to see a woman.When Meera reached Vrindavan, she went singing, dancing, to the great temple. The watchman was so overwhelmed that he forgot his work – his work was to prevent women from going in – and Meera entered. The priest was worshipping. He could not believe that a woman had come into the temple – for thousands of years no woman had entered the temple. But he waited till Meera stopped singing; he himself was overwhelmed. The song was so beautiful, so touching – reaching to your very innermost being, because it was coming from the innermost core of Meera. It was not something composed by the mind. It was the overflowing love of no-mind. It was meditation flowing in song, in dance.Afterwards, as he woke up – it was as if he had fallen asleep – he said to Meera, “This is not good; what you have done is unforgivable. This was to the credit of the temple, that for thousands of years no woman had entered.”And do you know what Meera said to the priest? She laughed, and she said, “I have always thought that Krishna is the only man; all others are women, beloveds of the lord. Do you consider yourself also a man? Then you have been wasting your whole life! Have you not yet become so loving towards Krishna that you can forget this macho attitude?” And since that day the temple has not prevented any woman. Meera opened the door.The priest could not answer. She was saying something out of her innermost being – that existence is our beloved, we are all loving the same existence; and the more you love, the more feminine you become, feminine in the sense that you become more graceful, more beautiful, more rounded.Man has so many corners. If you see the statue of Buddha, you will see everything is rounded, all the corners have been dropped – he even has no beard, no mustache. Not that he was missing some hormones, no; it is symbolic. It is simply saying that the more he became loving, the more he became feminine, graceful.Love out of meditation is not a relationship: it is a state of your being. You love because you cannot do otherwise; you have to love. You have only love to give – and this love will be expressed in many ways. Different people, different talents – somebody will paint, somebody will compose music, somebody will dance; but the basic quality is the same.While painting, the meditator disappears; there is only painting going on, there is no painter. The dancer disappears; there is only dance, there is no dancer. The poet disappears; there is only poetry. And the same is true about all the dimensions in which your creativity can have its expression. You create because you are so overflowing with energy you cannot contain it. So whatever your talent, whatever your genius, your energy will take that dimension.Any act arising out of meditation has no goal, it has no motivation; its value is intrinsic. While dancing, you are getting all the reward; there is no need for any other reward afterwards. There is no ambition, that you want to become famous, the greatest painter, the greatest poet – all that nonsense is part of the mind, which is egocentric.Meditation is your egolessness. Just a little taste of it and you will be drawn into the very center of your being. And you will find the paradise that people have been thinking is somewhere in the clouds, far away in the stars.Paradise is within you, in your state of no-mind. And hell is also within you, in your very mind. The choice is yours. You can move from the mind to no-mind; the bridge is witnessing.Osho,How do I come to know when I am really witnessing my body, feelings and thoughts, or when it is only my mind pretending to be a witness?The question is only intellectual; you have not even tried to pretend. When you are witnessing and you start feeling that it may be just the pretense of the mind, then it is certainly a pretense of the mind…because who is thinking about it as pretense of the mind? – something behind the pretense.You can never get confused about witnessing, because behind witnessing there is nothing. You cannot witness witnessing. Anything that you can witness is part of the mind. So if you witness that it is a pretense, it is a pretense. Witness the pretense, don’t get identified with it.Witnessing has a beauty: it cannot be reduced to an object, you cannot witness it. It is irreducible, it always slips back; it remains only witnessing. So whatever you feel, that means you are getting identified with the mind. You have not tried it – the question is simply intellectual. If you had tried it the question would not have arisen.I witness my hand: that means I am not the hand. I witness the mind: that means I am not the mind. You go on witnessing anything that comes to you – feelings, moods – you are not it. Finally, there is nothing to witness: this is it!Only the witness is there, but nothing to witness, just nothingness all around. You have come to the witness. Nobody has ever been deceived about it.But never make intellectual questions; they won’t solve existential problems. This is something existential – you have to do it. It is like swimming. You cannot be taught swimming on a comfortable mattress in your room. You can be told how to throw your hands and your legs about, and you can do much exercise, but that is not swimming. You have to go in the water.There was one famous logician in India. Because he was a logician, he said, “I cannot enter the water until I have learned swimming, that is absolutely clear. Without knowing swimming, how can I enter the water?”His swimming teacher told him, “It is not a question of logic. If you want to learn swimming, you will have to enter water without knowing swimming, because entering the water is the beginning. And that’s the only way to learn it. If you decide that you will enter the water only when you have learned swimming – which is very logical thinking – then it is impossible, you will never enter the water. So either be logical, or be existential.”And whatever I am telling you has nothing to do with logic. Try witnessing. And whatever you find, it is not the witness. The witness is always standing behind; otherwise, who is finding these things? – the pretense, the mind, anything.When you cannot find anything, when all is silent, then there is only the witness. It is a very strange situation. When there is nothing to witness, you come to experience the witness in its purity. When there is something to witness, the witness is involved with some object.It is like the mirror. If you want to know the purity of the mirror, then the mirror should be empty; nobody should be standing in front of the mirror. If somebody is standing in front of the mirror, then the mirror is polluted by the reflection.Your witness is the ultimate mirror.Anything that passes pollutes your witness. But if you go on struggling, remembering that whatever you see is not you – just a simple exam: “the object of my knowing is not me” – soon the objects will disappear, because you have broken the identity. And any moment, suddenly out of nowhere, you find yourself absolutely alone without any object. The seer is there, but there is nothing to be seen. Awareness is there, at its very peak, but there is nothing to be aware of. The witness is there, but there is nothing to be a witness of.So this should be the criterion of whether your witness is a reality or just a projection, just imagination or an authentic reality.And it is a very simple process, just like swimming. Once you know swimming, you will be surprised that there was nothing to learn. Before knowing swimming, it seems dangerous, difficult – you cannot believe how people are swimming. But have you seen a dead body? The dead body automatically comes up and starts swimming – not even swimming, it simply floats. The dead body knows something which you don’t know. If the dead body can float, why can’t you float? It is so simple that even dead bodies are doing it.One Japanese scientist has been trying with small children, because his hypothesis is that the child in the mother’s womb remains in liquid, in water for nine months, so swimming must be something very natural. It need not be learned.The hypothesis seems to be correct. If the child manages in the mother’s womb…. In the mother’s womb there is exactly the same kind of water as in the ocean, with the same constituents. That’s why, when a woman is pregnant, she starts eating salty things, because the water needs more and more salt. The child is already swimming from the very first day. And in the very beginning the child is just like a fish. Scientists think that man began life as a fish in the ocean. Now, to teach a fish how to swim would be just utter stupidity.This Japanese scientist started working on six-month-old babies. He would leave them in water in tubs, and he was surprised that they were not afraid – not only that, but they started floating. Then he went down to three-month-old babies. They were even more expert. Then he did his experiment with the newly-born baby: he was the perfect master as far as swimming is concerned – nine months’ training!That’s why, once you know swimming, you cannot forget it. Everything that you learn you can forget, but something in swimming is so natural, that once you know it you cannot forget it. The same is true about witnessing.Every child is born a witness.As he opens his eyes, his first act is witnessing. He cannot think. He sees you, he sees your red clothes, but he cannot think that these are red clothes. He does not know the names of colors, he does not know what color means. He simply reflects like a mirror. He is just a pure witness with no knowledge, with no thought forming in him.That’s why I say, once you learn witnessing it is so easy, and you cannot forget it. You had already known it – it is a rediscovery.Osho,What exactly do you mean by “symbolic gesture”? I realize that you look at your watch often. And why have you only now said that we can wear other colored clothes?Please explain.I have to look at the watch, because I live in a timelessness. I use the watch only for you, when I come to the morning discourse or to the evening interview; only for four hours do I use the watch. The whole day I have no business with time.I don’t know what day today is, I don’t know what date today is. To me, it is always the now.And when I said every gesture means something, my looking at the watch again and again simply means compassion, because without the watch….One day it happened that the watch stopped. I looked at it again and again, and I thought it was perfectly right. I realized only later on that I had spoken for three hours. I would have spoken longer – I had to stop after three hours because my bladder was full!I have no concern with time. I live moment to moment. That’s why I go on looking at the watch – so that I don’t harass you too much.And you are asking why only now have I told you that you can wear any color clothes.…Because only now do I feel that there are a few amongst you who will still wear red clothes even though I say you can use any other clothes. And those are the real “chosen ones.”Osho,In such a beautiful way, without telling them to go, with what great art you managed to have Sheela's criminal gang leave the commune without doing much harm to us. Are you a magician? Or is this haiku true about you? “Sitting silently, doing nothing, winter comes and the weeds die by themselves.”I am not a magician, but the whole existence is magical. Perhaps the haiku is true.“Sitting silently, doing nothing, the winter comes and the weeds die by themselves.”Osho,The chimpanzee who made Reagan famous as an actor was called Bonzo. Reagan was his sidekick. There is a rumor that it is actually Bonzo who is in the white house, and Reagan is skulking up a tree in Beverly Hills. Osho, do you know the inside scoop on this story?I know it. It is not a story, it is the truth! I have met Ronald Reagan in our own hills, so certainly Bonzo is in the White House. And except people like Bonzo, who would like to live in White Houses?All politicians are chimpanzees – without exception. They look like men, but they behave like chimpanzees. You should not go by the looks, you should watch their actions – and all their actions are idiotic. And it is not only today; it has been so for the whole history of man.Unless we get rid of politicians and create a humanity where politicians are not needed – and, in fact, there is no need for them – we will not be able to survive long.The politicians are seeing clearly that they cannot exist anymore. Their futility is becoming clear, so they are planning to destroy the whole planet. Rather than being thrown out of their jobs, their great presidentships, prime ministerships, they would destroy all life on this planet. It is in the hands of the intelligentsia of the world not to let them do this suicidal act.All scientists of the world should stop creating any war material. They should make it clear to their governments that they are ready to work, but they will work only for life, not for death. The same nuclear energy can make this earth again young, can destroy all poverty, can make humanity live for the first time in real comfort, luxury, can allow people to develop their talents, their potentials to the highest peak possible.And it is a very simple thing: all the scientists who are serving the governments and creating more and more death weapons, should just stop, and start creating more and more life-enhancing energies. The same energy, nuclear energy, which can make this earth a dead planet, can make this earth the most glorious and the richest planet in the whole universe.Politicians want war. That is their vested interest. Without war, what are they going to do? You can see it in a simple fact: all your great politicians are born in times of war. If any politician wants to be a great leader, a great hero, then war is a necessity. Just look: from Genghis Khan to Tamerlane to Nadirshah to Alexander the Great to Ivan the Terrible to Napoleon Bonaparte to Adolf Hitler to Benito Mussolini to Joseph Stalin to Churchill to Roosevelt – what makes these people great heroes? It is war. If there had been no wars there would not have been great heroes.Politicians live on war. And now the game has come to its ultimate peak. The old wars, those bullock-cart wars, were okay. A few people died, somebody became victorious, somebody was defeated. But now war has lost all meaning. Nobody can be defeated and nobody can be victorious. With war losing all meaning, politicians have lost their greatest vested interest.And if politicians disappear, there is no need for nations. I cannot conceive why nations should exist. Science has turned the whole world into a small global village. Yes, there can be a functional world government. But there is no need of armies – millions of people just sitting stupidly polishing their guns for years, doing “left turn, right turn,” and then creating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For all that is ugly, the whole credit goes to the politicians.Just a general raising of consciousness is needed, and the politicians will melt like snowflakes. And with them will go nations, national boundaries, stupid ideas of some nations being special, just born to rule over the world. And all the energies which are being wasted in creating war materials – and that is not a small amount: seventy-five percent of the energy of the whole of humanity is being diverted into war. We are living on only twenty-five percent of our energy.Just think: if one hundred percent of our energy is available, there is no need for any Ethiopia to happen. There is no need for anybody to remain uneducated, poor. We can make this world a paradise – the politicians just have to go on a long, long weekend.Osho,My lord, my beloved master, we love you so-o-o much!I love you…so-o-o much, too!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 40 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is the meeting of Zorba and the Buddha really possible? If it is so, then why have other religious leaders never thought about it?The first thing to be understood: I am not a religious leader. A religious leader cannot think, cannot see the way I can – for the simple reason that he has immense investment in religion; I have none.Religions are necessarily splitting man, creating a duality in the human mind; that is their way of exploiting you. If you are whole, you are beyond their control. If you are cut in fragments, all your strength is destroyed, all your power, your dignity abolished. Then you can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan.If you are left just the way you are born – natural, without any interference from the so-called religious leaders, you will be a man of freedom, independence, integrity. You cannot be enslaved. And all your old religions are doing nothing but enslaving you. To enslave you, they have to create a conflict within you so you start fighting with yourself. And when you are fighting with yourself, two things are bound to happen. First, you will be miserable, because no part of you can ever be victorious, you will be always defeated. Second, a guilt is produced in you that you are not worthy enough to be called a real, authentic human individual.This is what the religious leaders want. A deep feeling of unworthiness within you makes them leaders of men. You cannot depend on yourself because you know you cannot do anything. You cannot do what your nature wants, because your religions prevent it. You cannot do what your religions want, because your nature is against it. You find yourself in a situation where you cannot do anything; somebody else is needed to take your responsibility. Your physical age goes on growing – your mental age remains retarded, just nearabout thirteen. These retarded people are in great need of somebody to guide them, somebody to lead them to the goal of life, to the meaning of life. They themselves are incapable.Religious leaders could not have thought of the meeting of Zorba and Buddha, because that would have been the end of their leadership and the end of their so-called religions. Zorba the Buddha is the end of all religions. It is the beginning of a new kind of religiousness which needs no labels – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism. One is simply enjoying oneself, enjoying this immense universe, dancing with the trees, playing on the sea beach with the waves, collecting seashells for no other purpose – just for the sheer joy of it. The salty air, the cool sand, the sun rising, a good jog – what more do you want?To me, this is religion – enjoying the air, enjoying the sea, enjoying the sand, enjoying the sun – because there is no other God than existence itself.Zorba the Buddha, on the one hand, is the end of the old man – his religions, his politics, his nations, his racial discriminations, and all kinds of stupidities. On the other hand, Zorba the Buddha is the beginning of a new man – a man totally free to be himself, allowing his nature to blossom. There is no conflict between Zorba and Buddha. The conflict has been created by the so-called religions.Is there any conflict between your body and your soul? Is there any conflict between your life and your consciousness? Is there any conflict between your right hand and your left hand? They are all one in an organic unity.Your body is not something to be condemned but something to be grateful for, because it is the greatest thing in existence, the most miraculous; its workings are just unbelievable. All the parts of your body are functioning like an orchestra. Your eyes, your hands, your legs are in some inner communion. It is not that your eyes want to go towards the East and your legs are going towards the West, that you are hungry but your mouth refuses to eat: hunger is in your stomach, what has it to do with the mouth? – the mouth is on strike. No, your body has no conflict. It moves in some inner synchronicity, always together.And your soul is not something opposed to your body. If your body is the house, the soul is your guest. And there is no need for the guest and the host to continuously fight. But religions could not exist without you fighting with yourself.My insistence on your organic unity, so that your materialism is no longer opposed to spiritualism, is basically to demolish all religions from the earth. Once your body and soul start moving hand in hand, dancing together, you have become Zorba the Buddha. Then you can enjoy everything of this life, everything that is outside you, and you can also enjoy everything that is within you.In fact, within and without are totally different dimensions; they never come in conflict. But thousands of years of conditioning, that if you want the inner you have to renounce the outer, has taken deep roots in you. Otherwise, it is such an absurd idea…. You are to enjoy the inner – what is the problem in enjoying the outer? The enjoyment is the same; that is the joining link between the inner and the outer.Listening to beautiful music, or looking at a great painting, or seeing a dancer like Nijinsky – it is outside you, but it is in no way a hindrance for your inner rejoicing. On the contrary, it is a great help. The dance of Nijinsky may bring out the dormant quality of your soul so that it can also dance. The music of a Ravi Shankar may start playing on the strings of your heart. The outer and inner are not divided. It is one energy, two ends of one existence.Zorba can become Buddha more easily than can Pope the Polack. There is no possibility for Pope the Polack, no possibility for your so-called saints to become really spiritual. They don’t know even the joys of the body. How can you think they will be able to know the very subtle joys of the spirit?The body is the school where you learn, in shallow water, to swim. And once you have learned swimming, then it does not matter how deep the water is. Then you can go to the deepest part of the lake; it is all the same to you. And when I say this, I am not simply propagating a philosophy. I am making a statement of my own experience; hence, you can feel the authority in my words.I am not an authoritarian person – you should remember the difference. The authoritarian person imposes his authority on you, he is a power seeker. But when words come out of experience, they have an authority of their own. They are not trying to impose anything on anybody; they are, on the contrary, simply exposing one’s own heart to those who are ready to see the great possibility that materialism and spiritualism are not opposite goals, that Zorba and Buddha are not moving in different directions, that only a Zorba has the guts to become a Buddha. It is possible he may not become, he may get stuck in being a Zorba….But you must be reminded about Buddha’s life. Up to his twenty-ninth year, he was a pure Zorba. He had the best young girls available in his kingdom, by the dozen. His whole palace was full of music and dance. He had the best food, best clothes, beautiful palaces to live in, great gardens. He lived more deeply than poor Zorba the Greek.Zorba had only one Bubulina – an old, faded woman, a prostitute who had lost all her customers. She had false teeth, false hair – and Zorba was her customer only because he could not afford to pay. You call him Zorba? – and you forget completely the twenty-nine years of Buddha’s life which were far richer. Day in, day out, he was simply living in luxury, surrounded by everything that he could imagine. He was living in a dreamland. It was this experience that turned him into a buddha. It has not been analyzed this way. Nobody bothers about the first part of his life – which is the very base.He became fed up. He tasted every joy of the outside; now he wanted something more, something deeper, which was not available in the outside world. For the deeper you have to jump in. At the age of twenty-nine he left the palace in the night in search of the inner. It is Zorba going in search of the buddha.Zorba the Greek never became a buddha for the simple reason that his zorbahood is incomplete. He is a beautiful man, full of zest, but a poor man. He wants to live life in its intensity, but he has no opportunity to live it. He dances, he sings, but he does not know the higher nuances of music. He does not know the dance where the dancer disappears.The Zorba in Buddha knew the highest and the deepest parts of the outside world. Knowing it all, now he was ready to go on an inner search. The world is good, but not good enough; something more is needed. It gives momentary glimpses; the Buddha wants something eternal. And all these joys will be finished by death. He wants to know something which cannot be finished by death.If I have to write Gautam Buddha’s life, I will start it from Zorba. And when he is completely acquainted with the outer and whatever the outside can give, and still finds the meaning missing, he goes in search – because that is the only direction that he has not looked in. He never looks back – there is no reason to look back, he has lived it all! And he is not just a religious seeker who has not known the outer at all. He is a Zorba – he goes towards the inner with the same zest, with the same strength, the same power. And, obviously, he finds in his innermost being the contentment, the fulfillment, the meaning, the benediction that he has been seeking.It is possible you can be a Zorba and stop there. It is possible you may not be a Zorba and start looking for the buddha – you will not find him. Only Zorba can find the buddha; otherwise, you don’t have the strength: you have not lived in the outside world, you have avoided it. You are an escapist.To me, to be a Zorba is the beginning of the journey, and to become a buddha is reaching the goal. And it can happen in the same individual – it can only happen in the same individual. That’s why I am insisting continuously: don’t create any split in your life, don’t condemn anything of the body. Live it – not unwillingly – live it totally, intensely. That very living will make you capable of another search.That’s why I don’t say my sannyasins have to be ascetics, that my sannyasins have to leave their wives, their husbands, their children. All that nonsense has been taught for centuries, and how many people – out of millions of monks and nuns – how many people have blossomed? Not even a single one. I want you to live life undivided. And first comes the body, first comes your outer world.The moment the child is born he opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is the whole panorama of existence around him. He sees everything except himself – that is for more experienced people. That is for those who have seen everything of the outside, lived it, and are freed from it.Freedom from the outside does not come by escaping. Freedom from the outside comes by living it totally, and then there is nowhere to go. Only one dimension remains, and it is natural that you would like to search in that remaining dimension. And there is your buddha, your enlightenment.You are saying, “Is it possible that Zorba and Buddha can meet?” That is the only possibility. Without Zorba there is no Buddha. Zorba, of course, is not a full stop. He is the preparation for the Buddha. He is the roots; Buddha is the flowering.Don’t destroy the roots; otherwise there is not going to be any flowering. Those roots continuously supply the juice to the flowers. All the color in the flowers comes from the roots, and all the fragrance in the flower comes from the roots. All the dance of the flowers in the wind comes from the roots.Do not divide. Roots and flowers are two ends of one phenomenon.Osho,I have been here for three years now, and still cannot sit closer to you than the fifth row. I feel so hurt that I am not worthy enough to be closer. Is it because I am a farmer now and stink too much?You are not unworthy, you are just unaware of a simple thing: that I only see the fifth row! The people who are sitting in the four rows ahead, I don’t see them. So be a farmer, and stink as much as you want!But the fifth row is not unfortunate. From this place my eyes are focused on the fifth row.Osho,Is life really meaningless?Meaning can be understood in two ways. There is meaning that is somewhere far away, you have to reach to it. It is extrinsic.Life is not meaningful in this first sense. And it is good that life is not meaningful in that sense, because then life becomes only a means to reach to the faraway goal, the faraway star. Then life loses its autonomous beauty. It is just a way; the real thing is tomorrow.Meaning has another category too: intrinsic. Life is tremendously meaningful in the second sense. Then meaning is not separate, somewhere else; then meaning is in the very living itself.You don’t ask, has love any meaning? You know love is itself meaningful, it is not a means to some end. You do not ask if the beauty of a rose is meaningful. The beauty itself is enough; it does not lead anywhere, it contains its meaning within itself.In existence everything that is really valuable is always intrinsically meaningful. And life is equivalent to existence. Life has meaning. If you just change the word “life” into “living,” you will be able to understand more easily. Living has meaning – each moment – because living is not something dead like “life.” The word life is dead – all nouns are dead. But the language is created by dead people.Some day the new man is going to create a language which consists only of verbs, because that will be authentic to existence. In existence there is no noun. Have you seen “life”? Have you met “life” anywhere? All that you meet, experience, is living.Sipping a cup of tea, going for a morning walk, doing your work – all these small activities make up your living. And each part, each moment of living, is meaningful. You just have to be there; otherwise, who is going to experience the meaning?People go on drinking tea, but they never are there; their minds are wandering all over the world. People are making love, but they are not there. It is a very strange world that we have created. In one bedroom there are at least four people. Already the bedrooms are so small, too difficult for two people; and in the bed there are four people, or even more. These two people who are making love are not there: the man is thinking of some Hollywood actress, the woman is thinking of Muhammad Ali. So there are four people. Who is making love to whom? These two people are simply going through the gestures of love – they are not present – mechanical gestures of love. And then they ask, “Is there any meaning in life?” You go on losing every moment by your absence.When I was a student, my principal in the high school was continuously troubled by my absence from the school. My family was troubled. I would start going to school, but never reach there. Life was so much, and so many things were happening on the way…and the school was almost one mile away from the house.The principal called me one day and said, “You are almost always absent.”I said, “That’s where you are wrong.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I am always present wherever I am. To be absent is not my style of life. And what can I do? – this one mile between the school and my house…. A magician was doing his tricks on the street, and I became present there. It was far more interesting than your teachers, and I learned more than I could have learned here – because whatever your teacher is saying I can read in the book, but I will never meet that magician again. And he did such beautiful tricks that when he was finished I followed him to his tent outside the city.He asked me, “Son, why are you following me?” I said, “You are getting old. Don’t you want your tricks to live on even when you are gone?” He said, “That seems to be meaningful! – you can come in. Many people have asked me to teach them the tricks, but not in this way.” So I have been with the magician.“Life is a bigger school than your school. And I am, each moment, present wherever I am. To be absent is not my style of life, so you please take your words back.”He said, “In that case I will have to see your father.”I said, “You can see anybody you like, but remember that my father knows me perfectly well. Just let me be informed when you are coming so I can also be present there. You both will be absent – because my father is continuously busy with his business, and you are busy with who is absent, who is present. At least let somebody into that meeting who is present!” I told him, “Be honest and sincere and tell me: Are you present right now?”He said, “My God, perhaps you are right. I was thinking of my buffalo – she has not returned for two days.”I said, “You need not be worried, I know where she is. That’s the beauty of being present everywhere! I have seen her just by the side of the tent of the magician. Now what do you say: Was it more worthwhile my coming to the class, or finding your lost buffalo? You can go and catch hold of her.”People are not there where they seem to be. This is why they go on missing the meaning of life. Just remain present to any small act you are doing. It does not matter – you don’t have to do great acts, become a world conqueror, go to the moon, or stand on top of Everest; it does not matter what you do. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing – or not doing – be present, and the meaning of life will start unfolding. It is tremendously blissful.But don’t seek it somewhere else – in a church, in a temple, in a holy book. You will not find it. Even if you come across God – who, by the way, does not exist – but even if you come across God, you will not be present. You may be thinking of your buffalo. It is good that God is not there; otherwise, he would be so embarrassed by all these saints of all the religions, because none of them is present to the moment. They are living a life somewhere else in the tomorrows – and today goes on slipping by, and the tomorrow never comes. Finally comes death, not tomorrow.Life is today! Tomorrow is death. So when you come across death, it is a great shock that life has gone by and you have not been able to find any meaning in it. And now there is no tomorrow left, and you are accustomed to search for meaning in the tomorrows. But you have been told about, taught about, prepared for, tomorrows.If you understand me…I want you always to be present wherever you are. It does not matter where you are; just be totally present, and every small act, by your presence, will become lighted up, and you will know that your whole life becomes just a caravan of lights. That’s the meaning. Death comes and goes, but the caravan continues.Osho,Why do you say that you are not a savior?All the saviors, all the prophets, all the messengers of God have failed you, have deceived you. I don’t think their intentions were bad; I never suspect anybody’s intention. But the point is not the intention; the point is the result. These saviors, messiahs, prophets, may have been thinking they are doing good to you, but they have done immense harm to humanity. First, they made you dependent. They took away your responsibility with their own hands.If somebody takes away your money, nothing is taken; money you can earn again. But if somebody takes your responsibility, you are destroyed, you are almost instantly killed. To be responsible for yourself is the very life of your being. And these saviors were saying, “You have just to be faithful, and to save you is our responsibility.”I don’t take anybody’s responsibility, because I don’t want to destroy you. Your responsibility is your dignity, your very pride in being human beings.Secondly, I am not a savior because I don’t want to be crucified. I don’t like that idea at all. I am a very contemporary man, I prefer an electric chair; crucifixion is too primitive and crude. And to be a savior, to be crucified seems to be something essential; otherwise, nobody is going to believe that you are a savior.Do you know how many followers Jesus had before crucifixion? You could have counted them on your fingers. And how many followers does he have after his crucifixion? Christianity is the greatest religion in the world, has the largest number of people. Is it not strange?Jesus alive – not a single learned man was impressed by him, not a single rabbi was his follower. And Judea, his country, was full of learned scholars; rabbis were not a rare commodity. Whom could he influence? – twelve illiterate, uneducated people! But after his crucifixion a great change came over the world. Crucifixion did a miracle.This is the human mind. If you are living in a beautiful house, nobody comes to say to you, “Your house is really beautiful, and to pass on the street and see the house makes one feel so joyous.” Nobody will come.But if the house is on fire, then the whole neighborhood will gather together to sympathize with you. And these are the same people who were jealous. Perhaps these were the same people who had thought, “If something happens to this house, if it is burned, destroyed, it will be good: it was an eyesore.” The same people are sympathizing. What has happened?Now they are feeling themselves to be better than you. Your house is burned, their houses are not burned: God is more favorable to them. He has destroyed your house because it has become too much of an ego trip to you. But this is the moment to sympathize, because in sympathy the sympathizer has the upper hand.When Jesus was crucified, a wave of sympathy…and many who had never thought about the man at all became Christians. In fact, he was crucified under the orders of the Roman emperor, by his governor-general, Pontius Pilate, on the request of the chief rabbi of the Jews. But after his crucifixion Rome became the capital of Christianity and it still remains so; the Vatican is just by the side of Rome. The whole of Italy is Christian. Strange, the way human mind functions.I am not interested in creating a religion. I want everybody to be responsible for himself; I don’t want to be anybody’s savior. Nobody has ever been, they were all pretending. And I don’t want to be counted with those pretenders. And, of course, I don’t want to be crucified, because that crucifixion will create great sympathy for me, and that sympathy will become a religion.I do just the opposite. I live in absolute luxury. You can see my collection of Rolls Royces, you can see my collection of diamond watches. Nobody is going to sympathize with such a man.Do you get the point?

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 41 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Please explain the psychology of the buddhas.Man can be understood as a seven-story building: three storeys are underground, three storeys are above ground. One story, the middle one, is half underground and half above ground. This fourth story is where we are. Sigmund Freud calls it conscious mind.When Freud started working with sick people, he became aware that there is something underneath the conscious mind. He called it the unconscious mind. He stopped there. He thought he had discovered something new – and in a way he was right, because he was not aware of the Eastern psychology that has existed for thousands of years which has taken note of all the states of the mind. So it was a re-discovery.Sigmund Freud’s closest colleague, and the most talented psychologist, was Carl Gustav Jung. He worked even harder, went deeper into the psyche of man, and found another story underneath the unconscious. He called it the collective unconscious mind. He stopped there. It is enough for one man to discover even one story, because it is such a vast phenomenon. And, after Jung, nobody has gone deeper than that.But in the East, below the collective unconscious mind, we have discovered the last story – the cosmic unconscious mind. In the East these minds are simply mentioned, no details are given. The reason is clear…because the search in the East and in the West differed fundamentally. The Western psychologists were concerned with sick people, insane people; naturally, they have to go below the conscious mind to the unconscious. But if there was somebody who was even more insane, they had to go to the collective unconscious. But it is very rare to find a man who is so mad that he has reached the cosmic unconscious mind. If somebody goes that mad, he will be almost a rock. That’s why they have not been able to discover the cosmic unconscious mind.But, in the East, the search was totally different. They started looking into the minds of meditators, not madmen. As they worked, they found that above the conscious mind there is a super-conscious mind. And many religions have stopped there, thinking they have arrived – it is so beautiful, so peaceful.But a few seekers continued to fly higher and higher, and found another story on top of the super-conscious mind: the collective super-conscious mind. Most of the seekers stopped there; the joy is too much, uncontainable. It is unbelievable that there can be anything more. But only a few have gone to the very end, to the highest peak – and they have found the cosmic conscious mind. The cosmic conscious mind is what I call the state of enlightenment, the state of buddhahood.The West has not even started working upwards. It has not even finished the downward journey. And it is not just accidental that more psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists go mad than any other profession. It looks strange: these people should be the sanest people – but you don’t see the complexity.With their patients they are going deeper into darkness – and going with the patients, they are becoming vulnerable themselves. Seeing the patient has fallen from his conscious mind into the unconscious, they become aware of their own unconscious. Seeing the patient who has fallen into the collective unconscious, they become aware of their own collective unconscious. And it is like standing on the verge of an abysmal depth. Just a single wrong step and you will be drowned in darkness.More psychologists commit suicide than any other profession: the proportion is almost double. More psychologists are sexually perverted than in any other profession. One should have thought just the opposite – that the people who know psychology, the workings of the mind, would be more natural, healthier, saner. But that is not the case, and the reason is that Western psychology has never looked upwards. It has never worked with meditators. It has never raised its eyes towards the sky; it is focused towards deeper and deeper, darker and darker spaces. They have not been studying healthy people.In fact, why should somebody who is healthy go to a psychoanalyst? – and particularly somebody who has attained to super-consciousness. He will have a far vaster vision than any psychologist. He has nothing to learn from them; he can teach them many things of which they are absolutely unaware. The man who has reached to the collective super-consciousness has become almost superhuman.But in the West, in the first place it was difficult to find such people. Secondly, where such people existed, the Western psychologists were afraid to go; their very existence disturbed their petty theories. They want to be very systematic – and then suddenly they come across a man who has a super-conscious mind. He disturbs their whole system. His functioning is different, his behavior is different, his actions are different.He looks at the same things with a different eye. He listens to the same words, but with a deeper and profounder meaning. He lives the same ordinary life, but with such a joy, with such a radiance, that it is unbelievable. He has nothing to be so blissful about, but it cannot be denied that he is blissful.The man of the higher stage – the collective super-conscious – will be a giant. Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Assagioli, will look like pygmies before him. And nobody wants to look like a pygmy. It is said, in the East, that camels don’t like mountains. Without the mountains around they are greatly content with their height, but by the side of a mountain the camel simply finds that he is nothing.Western psychology has been avoiding facing the reality of the higher states of mind. I call these people cowards. They are trying to look busy in mental asylums, or sitting by the side of the couch and listening to the dreams of some stupid guy – mostly Americans, because you have to tell your dream and you have to pay too; otherwise, who is going to listen to your stupid dream?The psychologist is paid – it is the most highly paid profession today – for a strange thing: that he listens. Whether he listens or not you don’t know. He just sits behind the couch so you cannot even see him, whether he is dozing, thinking, “When is this guy going to finish?”I have heard that one psychologist was very famous; each single minute you had to pay for. And a rich man, a very rich man, became his patient; of course, poor people cannot afford psychology – thank God!The rich man was able to pay whatever the psychologist wanted, but he had a condition: he was not to be interrupted. When he started telling his dreams then you had to listen, whatsoever the charge; money did not matter. And he went on and on. He was driving the psychologist nuts!Finally, the psychologist said, “It takes too much time, and I have to see other patients also. So I will do one thing: I will put on my tape recorder so whatever you say will be recorded. And in the night, when I have time, I can listen to it.”The rich man said, “That’s a perfectly good arrangement.”Next day, when the psychologist was coming in the office, he saw the rich man leaving the office – and the office had just opened. He said, “So soon? Are you finished with the story?”He said, “No, but I thought, if you are saving your time, why should I waste mine? So in the night when I had time I recorded it. So my tape recorder is telling the story, your tape recorder is listening to it. Your time is saved, my time is saved.”Western psychology is in very bad shape. And the reason is, to study higher states of consciousness nobody is going to pay you; on the contrary, they may ask you to pay! The lower states, where a person becomes insane, are paying – and when something like psychology becomes a business, it is dangerous. There should be a few things which should not be business. Now, it is the business aspect of psychology that is preventing it from studying higher states.At the level of super-conscious mind, all thoughts, all feelings disappear; you start living in an absolute silence. But this silence is a little bit empty. It is beautiful; just to be silent, utterly silent, has a beauty of its own. But when you reach to the collective super-conscious you become aware that silence can remain and yet it can become full; it need not be empty. It can become full of joy, it can become full of love, it can become full of creativity.But there is still one higher stage: the cosmic super-consciousness, where your individuality disappears like a dewdrop falling into the ocean. Suddenly you become the whole ocean. At the stage of cosmic super-consciousness you start experiencing the ultimate truth of life, the meaning of existence, your unity with the whole.Things are no longer outside you, you are no longer outside of things: all divisions have disappeared. In some strange way the sunrise is within you, and the stars are within you, and the flowers are within you. You have become spread over the whole cosmos.There is tremendous liveliness. Birds are singing, peacocks dancing. The whole existence is your home. Only one thing you cannot find: your tiny ego. That is lost somewhere on the way. You are, and you are for the first time, but you are not an ego, you are just pure isness.The psychology of the awakened ones covers the whole range – all the seven storeys. The lower three storeys are not bothered about. Years of psychoanalysis is sheer wastage. In the psychology of the awakened ones, anybody who has fallen below the conscious is simply taught a simple method of meditation, which brings him back to normal consciousness without any analysis, without going through years of all kinds of torture.And the same method – once you know it has brought you from the unconscious to the conscious, you have a master key in your hands, because the method to pass from one story into another is the same. The same method of witnessing takes you away from conscious mind to super-conscious mind. Don’t stop. There will be great temptation to stop, because you have not seen such serenity, such tranquillity – you may think perhaps the end has come. No. Until you feel oneness with the whole existence, go on. The same method will take you step by step to the final and ultimate stage of being.Western psychology is only for sick people. Eastern psychology is for healthy people. My effort is to bring them together – because healthy or sick, they are the same people. And if a method is available which can take you from one stage to another higher than it, then why stop anywhere? Just being normal is nothing. There are higher treasures waiting for you, greater experiences ready to be yours. The ultimate home has no doors: you can simply enter it.Western psychology has no method through which the patient himself can become independent from the psychologist. He becomes dependent. In fact, it becomes something of prestige; people ask each other, “Who is your psychoanalyst?” If you cannot say some great name, that means you are missing something.And the psychoanalyst, after years of analysis, reaches nowhere, helps you to reach nowhere. You can change the psychoanalyst – and that’s what people go on doing. It becomes an addiction. Two sessions per week – if they don’t have them, then they start feeling uneasy. It is a kind of catharsis. Just speaking your mind without any inhibition, without any taboos, helps you to unburden.But within two to three days you accumulate again the same burden, because the psychoanalysis, as it is practiced, is not destroying your inhibitions, it is simply giving you temporary relief. At the most you may become a normal human being. That means you may reach to the fourth stage, in which the whole of humanity is living. That is not much of a gain.And you have not been given any insight into how to go on growing. You have not even been told that there is anything above the normal conscious mind. In fact, even the psychoanalysts don’t know that there is something above it – and they are not interested, for the simple reason that the person who goes above is not a patient. He has no dreams to analyze, he is not sick anymore. He is for the first time healthy, and getting more and more healthy. At the seventh stage he will be whole.To me, that’s what “holy” should mean – not being a saint according to a certain doctrine, not being an ascetic, not following Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism.The real holiness is the fragrance of becoming whole, becoming one with the whole.But because psychoanalysis has become a business in the West…and it was meant to become a business. It was created by a Jew, and it is mostly dominated by the Jews; it is a Jewish profession. And whatever the Jews do will become a business. Christianity became a business – that was the working of a Jewish carpenter, Jesus Christ. It is big business. Sigmund Freud has created another big business.What I am saying and doing is to destroy it as a business. It is something more valuable. It is something that should not be categorized as a profession, as a business: it is human growth, and we should look for higher states.Perhaps the people who have fallen lower than the normal, if they had known that there were higher stages, may have fallen higher. Why choose the lower when you know…?There is a story, a Sufi story. It must be a story, it cannot be true, but it has some truth in it.A Sufi mystic, who was known to be a little bit eccentric, a little crazy, was staying in a disciple’s house. And they thought, “This man is known to do things which create unnecessary nuisance, and he enjoys it. So let him sleep in the basement, and we will lock the door so in the night at least he cannot do anything.”Suddenly in the middle of the night they heard great laughter coming from the roof. They rushed up, and they saw the saint rolling on the roof and laughing a belly laughter. He could not stop even to tell them what had happened.The host asked, “What has happened?”He said, “Strange things happen to me – I started falling upwards! You put me in the basement, and in the night I started falling upwards – I am here on the roof! That’s why I am laughing, because this is not the normal way of falling, and you will think that I am being a nuisance.”The story may be a story, but such stories are told to say something which cannot be said otherwise.The people who have fallen below the normal mind, if they had known that there is a door upwards, may have chosen to fall upwards. For example, all great artists, painters, poets, dancers, musicians, sculptors – most of them have been, sometime or other, inmates in a mad asylum. And these were the most intelligent people you can find on the earth.I can clearly see that a person like Vincent van Gogh, if he had known…. (There is the loud roar of a military jet passing overhead.) Don’t be worried: somebody has fallen down, has lost his normal consciousness. Otherwise, the whole sky is available, there was no need to come so low – but it happened at the right moment!Vincent van Gogh, if he had known that there is some door upwards – I cannot conceive that he would have fallen downwards. (The jet returns.) He is back again! But still don’t be afraid. He is falling, but he will not fall too much, because there are only three stories down and he seems to be on the third already. (The jet returns again.) He is giving proof!My work here is to bring the Eastern discoveries of higher consciousness to the West and create the psychology of the buddhas, so that there is no need for anyone to fall down. Just make the passage going upwards available to every person.Most of the great painters and other artists have committed suicide because they could not prevent themselves from falling again and again back into madness, and it seemed that only death could become their deliverance. This is shameful, this is ugly! In the East, in the whole of history, not a single artist has been mad, not a single artist has committed suicide. And they have created far greater art, far deeper music, far more magical dances. The West cannot compare.But what happened? Why did these people not become mad, not commit suicide? The reason was, the higher realms were available. And they had the intelligence: they were not satisfied with the normal consciousness, they had to move away from the normal consciousness. If there is no way to go up, they were ready to go down, but they wanted to move away from normal consciousness.But once they are made aware that higher possibilities exist, I don’t think anybody is going to choose lower realms.It is something of tremendous importance to understand that Western history is not more than two thousand years old. The East is at least ten thousand years old. And yet in ten thousand years not a single case of madness or suicide amongst such intelligent creators who made the Taj Mahal, who made the temples of Khajuraho, who made the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, the temples of Konarak – there exists nothing comparable to them anywhere in the world.In China, there is a temple known as the Temple of Ten Thousand buddhas, because the temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha. It is almost the whole mountain, carved. It must have taken centuries, and thousands of sculptors, craftsmen, designers to create a temple out of the mountain – and with ten thousand beautiful statues of Buddha. Just sitting inside it you will feel that you are uplifted. The whole atmosphere is vibrant. Not a single artist has fallen into the depths and darkness, as has been happening in the West to almost every artist.This situation can be changed. But the psychology should be transformed. It should not be oriented to the insane people; its orientation should come from the awakened ones.Meditation is simply a method to go beyond your normal mind. And anyone who meditates cannot fall below the normal mind. That is an impossibility. And anyone who meditates is sooner or later going to reach his real home – which is not only his, which is our home.Osho,Shakespeare said, “There was never a philosopher who could endure the toothache.” What is the mystic's attitude towards physical pain?Shakespeare is right. There has never been a philosopher who could bear a toothache, because philosophy has nothing to do with toothache, headache, stomachache. Philosophy is just intellectual gymnastics, it has nothing to do with reality. It talks, argues, creates magnificent systems of thought, but it does not change the man who is creating all this. He remains the same man.For example, I remember that Immanuel Kant, one of the great philosophers of Germany, became very sick. The doctors were at a loss, because there was no reason for his sickness. They could not find anything wrong with his body.Then one of the friends who had been out of town came back. He looked around and he said, “Don’t be worried, I know what is the cause.”The doctors said, “We have been searching for the cause and we don’t know it. You are not a doctor – how do you know the cause?”He said, “I know Immanuel Kant. The window in the room is the place where he used to stand every morning to see the sunrise. The neighboring house has been sold to a new owner and they have planted tall trees just close to the window. And Immanuel Kant is a man who functions just like clockwork – moment to moment, things have to be exactly the same. These trees are the cause of his sickness.”The friend went to the neighbor and told him. He said, “If this is the cause, anybody could have come and told me. Immanuel Kant is so precious a man – we will cut down the trees immediately.”The trees were removed, and the next day Immanuel Kant was perfectly healthy – not even a toothache. But because he cannot see the sunrise from his window…. He could have seen it from somewhere else, but that was not his way. He had very fixed habits.At ten o’clock in the night he would go to bed. Everybody knew about it. Once in a while somebody who was not aware of the fact would be simply shocked, because Immanuel Kant, seeing the clock striking the hour of ten, would simply jump into his bed and cover himself with his blanket. He would not even say good night, and the man was sitting there!His servant would come and say, “The master has gone to sleep. He goes exactly according to the clock, so he cannot waste a single moment even in saying good night. Now you have to go – you can come tomorrow, or whenever you like. But don’t feel offended, he does not mean any offense to anybody.”He was habituated to getting up early in the morning, at five o’clock. He loved the early morning fresh air, the crispness of it, and the silence of the road. But to get up at five was a difficulty. The servant was told that he had to wake him at five, whatsoever happens. Kant would fight, he might hit the servant. The servant was allowed to hit him, drag him out of the bed, push him into the bathroom. You could do everything, but if you allowed him to sleep, your service was finished.And this was a daily ritual: the servant beating the master, the master beating the servant. He was hiding under the blanket, and the servant was pulling him out and forcing him into the bathroom; he was coming out again and again, and trying to get into the bed.Immanuel Kant would say at that time, “What are you doing? You are my servant, and I am saying that I want to sleep!”But he had warned him, “I will say such things! You are not to listen to anything. I may say that I am feeling sick, I don’t want to get up. Don’t listen to any argument, any excuse: your work is to put me in the bathroom, so that at exactly five I am on the road.”He was a man of tremendous intelligence and he created a great philosophical system; but as far as his attitude, his approach towards life is concerned, he behaved very childishly – not even in a mature way. It seems his philosophical intelligence had become overgrown, and everything else had remained retarded.You ask me, “What will be the mystic’s attitude?”I will tell you an incident – it happened in this century…. In 1920, the maharaja of Varanasi in India had to go through an operation for appendicitis, but he refused to take any anesthesia, any chloroform, anything that could make him unconscious.He said, “I have been working my whole life to expand my consciousness. Just for this small operation I am not going to take anything that goes against my consciousness; I don’t want to fall into unconsciousness.”He told his doctors, “Don’t be worried” – and the doctors had been called from England, the best surgeons. But they were concerned because it was a major operation, and to do it without giving any anesthesia was unheard of.But there was no way. The maharaja was adamant, and he said, “I tell you that there is no problem. I will simply close my eyes and go into my meditation. Then what happens to my body, I am simply a witness of it.”It was not understandable for the surgeons, but to wait was also dangerous; the operation had to be done as quickly as possible. So finally they had to agree.The maharaja closed his eyes, relaxed his body, and the operation was done. It took two hours. The doctors could not believe their own eyes, that the man was there, fully conscious, yet there was no sign of pain on his face.When the operation was over he opened his eyes, and he said, “I loved it. It was a great experience to witness my body being operated on, and just to stand there aloof, far away – as if something is happening to somebody else.”That’s the mystic’s attitude. Anything that happens to his body is not happening to him; he is simply a witness. Even if death comes, he is simply a witness.Socrates was dying – he had been given poison. He was a great mystic. His disciples were surrounding him, and he went on saying to them, “My legs have become numb.” And he laughed, he said, “But I am just the same! My legs are gone, but I am not reduced. My hands have become numb, but I am the same. My consciousness is not reduced; on the contrary, it is more clear than it has ever been. Soon my heart may stop. Soon I may not be able to talk to you, but remember, only the body is dying, I am not.”This is the mystic’s attitude, and this is the only healthy attitude. Every human being should attain to it.Osho,What is the difference between spirituality and religiousness? Please explain.Spirituality is something which accepts the duality between matter and spirit. It is against materialism, it is a word that creates schizophrenic people.Religiousness is something far more beautiful. The word religiousness comes from religio. It means putting things together. Spirituality means splitting things into matter and spirit, Zorba and Buddha, body and soul. That has been the way of all the religions up to now. But it is basically wrong, because existence is not dual; it is oneness, it is one organic whole.The word religiousness simply means that you are feeling a togetherness with body, with mind, with soul; there is no division. In this unity blossoms religiousness. Religiousness is far higher than spirituality. Spirituality can take you into the lower states of consciousness. Religiousness can take you into the higher states of consciousness.Do not divide. All divisions are false. And anything that divides, drop it. Anything that unites, cherish it, nourish it, rejoice in it.Osho,Are you ever bored with us?Sure – but only when you ask such stupid questions!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 42 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,If you are not our leader, why do we get clear messages from the master to do this or that?I am certainly not your leader, and I never was before. The very word “leader” stinks of politics. In the world of religiousness there are no leaders, no followers, because to be led by someone is to remain blind. He knows – you do not know. You have simply to be his shadow, following his footprints wherever he goes.Religious experience is totally different. The function of the guide is acceptable. The guide has not to be followed, but understood. The guide can tell you about his experience, the path that leads to the peak of existence. But he also knows that every individual is unique; hence, you cannot follow the footprints of another person. You will have to find your own path. There are not ready-made paths already available – and that’s the beauty, the beauty of total freedom. As you walk you create the path. By your very search you create the truth.The guide is a friend; he is not a leader. A leader is ugly. He reduces you, insults you, humiliates you, makes you puppets. He decides for you – you are not allowed to decide for yourself. For example, Jesus says to his followers, “I am your shepherd, you are my sheep.” And I am amazed that not a single disciple stood up and said, “This is humiliating. You are degrading us, putting us below human beings.” Just to become a shepherd thousands of people have to be reduced to sheep – to fulfill one man’s mad ego. How many million people have been reduced to subhuman levels?The leader becomes bigger as he manages to make the follower smaller. The leader can never be your friend. And if he can never be your friend, then who is he? He is your enemy! I repeat it: he is your enemy. He has kept you retarded, blind, unevolved. He has really made you into sheep just to fulfill his desire of being a shepherd, of being a savior. And for twenty centuries not a single Christian has raised the question that this statement of Jesus does not show compassion, love. The statement is fascist!I am certainly not your leader. I do not want anybody to remain retarded, to remain blind, to become dependent on me. I don’t want to become your father figure.Have you ever thought why you call your priests, bishops, cardinals, “father”? They don’t have any children, they are unmarried people – a very strange kind of father! You are their children, and to remain your father they have to keep you confined to your childhood consciousness. You should not be allowed to grow.Why do all the religions call God, the father? Why not God, the uncle? – which seems more human, more soft, more intimate. But God has to be the father for a certain reason. He helps you to remain a child, dependent, always praying for help, always hoping for reward. But that never allows you to stand on your own feet.For thousands of years humanity has remained stuck. If Charles Darwin is true, that one day, thousands of years ago, even monkeys managed to become men, then what has man been doing for thousands of years? Is evolution finished? Has man come to a full stop? It does not seem so. Looking at your misery, your suffering, your anguish, you cannot be accepted as the end of evolution.Then what has gone wrong? Monkeys could become man because there was no priest amongst them – they were free. Man could not evolve higher consciousness, for the simple reason that your higher consciousness will take away the leadership of your priests, politicians, popes.The word pope also means the father. Why so much desire for a father? You must be feeling immensely helpless, must be feeling that you need somebody to protect you, somebody who is all-knowing, all-powerful. But the very dependence is your slavery.Each leader – political, religious, or of any other brand – is against the evolution of man.I am not your leader. And I hate the very word from my guts, because I can see the implications of it. To be a leader means to be a criminal! Of course, the crime is so subtle that you don’t see somebody being murdered. But the whole humanity is being crushed, murdered under the weight of it.You have been told for centuries just to follow: it is not your business to think, to contemplate, to meditate, to decide for your own life. Somebody else has to decide it. Somebody else has to give you ideals, values. Your function is only to be faithful.Faith is poison, and to be faithful means you have committed suicide. But the leader needs faithful people, committed people, surrendered people. These are good words for making people enslaved.But the guide is a friend, he is not your leader. He has found something which you can also find. His function is to make you aware of your potentiality. His function is not to create a certain personality according to his ideas but to give you freedom, to help you come out of all kinds of conditionings so that you can become an individual.Personality is borrowed. It is what others have made of you. Individuality is your nature. It is what you have brought from your very birth with you.The guide helps you to destroy the personality. The moment the personality falls apart, suddenly you discover your original face. And your original face is always a tremendous transformation. You have got hold of your natural being, of your spontaneity, of your freedom. And these are the basic elements which will help you on the way.Now you can move on your own, without any leader, without any father figure, without any pope, without any God. You feel a strange contentment with yourself. You feel whole unto yourself.So remember, whenever I say something or I give a message to you, it is simply to destroy your bondage, your chains, your imprisonment. I am not shaping your being, I am simply deprogramming you. Your being is already there, covered under so many programs – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, communist.You are almost like an onion, layers upon layers. My message is: start peeling those layers. And when you come to the very center of the onion there will be just nothingness in your hands, silence. From that silence, from that nothingness, everything becomes possible – and you need not do anything.Just as the seed, finding the right soil, starts changing into a sprout…. The seed dies – its death is absolutely necessary for the birth of the plant. And soon there will be a lush green bush full of flowers and fragrance.But your seed has been covered with so many layers of culture, etiquette, education, religion, country, that you have completely forgotten that you are here to grow, that you have to become a lush green bush full of flowers, fragrance, dancing in the wind and in the rain and in the sun. To me, that is religiousness.The guide is only a friend, to help you discover yourself. I am certainly not your leader. At the most, a friend, and that too, not against your will. I have not come to you – you have come to me. I am not going anywhere. The thirsty have to come to the well. There is a saying of Mohammed, that if the thirsty cannot come to the well, then Mohammed is going to the thirsty. That is the language of the leader.The well simply remains available. You have thirst – the well has water. You are always welcome, but the well is not going to force you, tell you, “You have to drink.” It is your freedom to drink or not to drink.I have made myself available to the whole world. Now, those who feel some kind of synchronicity with me, those in whose hearts bells start ringing…I am not responsible for it. And if they start coming to me, I cannot refuse them.My message is to discover yourself.I am not your ideal; you are not to become like me. You are not to have faith in me – that will not help. You will have to do hard work for transformation, and each will have to do it according to his need. I can help in many ways.All my messages are letters from a friend. Accept them or not – that is up to you. There is no enforcement.Osho,You are the greatest. You are like the music of Mozart, Vivaldi and Bach and more.You make me laugh, and always at a time when I need it most.You tell us that you felt hurt at the enthusiasm with which people dropped the mala, etcetera. The Rajneesh Times called it a stunning statement. That made me laugh even more.I have not been with a Zen master – at least in this life. But I recognize one when I see one, and you are absolutely the top – hitting people when they need it, and in the manner most appropriate. Of course, I'm waiting for my comeuppance – it's bound to happen. And that too makes me laugh. Is joy also an absurdity?Everything beautiful is absurd. Joy is one of those experiences which are not utilitarian. Love, peace, enlightenment – all are absurd, absurd in the sense that there is no meaning beyond themselves. Their meaning is intrinsic.I am reminded of Picasso. He was painting…. For almost two hours a man was standing behind him, watching; he could not figure out what the painting was, what the meaning was. Finally, he could not resist the temptation of asking Picasso.Picasso looked at him and said, “This is something! I was really going to ask you, because you have been watching for two hours: perhaps you may have found the meaning. I was so much engaged in painting, so much into it – I was not there, only painting was happening. So I was hoping that perhaps you might be able to say to me what is the meaning of it all. As far as I am concerned, just painting it has been such a joyous experience – now no other reward is needed.”And one thing more he said. “You ask me what is the meaning of this painting, but you never ask these flowers what is their meaning. You never ask the sun, you never ask the moon, you never ask the whole sky full of stars what is the meaning. Why do you torture a poor painter? If the whole existence can remain without explaining what its meaning is, can’t my small painting also remain without meaning? One thing I can say, it is tremendously beautiful.”The man said, “That’s right, it is attractive, it is beautiful; but a thing without meaning is absurd.”Picasso said, “Exactly. It is not a commodity. In the marketplace everything has a meaning. It is a commodity, it is for some utilitarian purpose. But life is not just the marketplace, and it is good that it is not so. In life there are a few things which are utterly meaningless, yet absolutely fulfilling.“This painting is absurd. It is so absurd that I cannot figure out how I am going to hang it in my house – which way is going to be up, which way is going to be down. I cannot figure it out. If you can help – because you have been observing for two hours…how should I hang it?”The man said, “You are mad! You are painting it, and you don’t know how to hang it?”Picasso said, “I am mad, you are not – that’s why I am asking you.”The man tried in all possible ways – there are only four possible ways to hang it. It was beautiful each way. The man said to Picasso, “You and your painting will drive me crazy! It was stupid of me to stand here and waste time. And this is as crazy as you are, because you can hang it any way and it looks right.”Picasso said, “That’s the beauty of it!”But beauty is absurd. Joy is absurd. Laughter is absurd. Collect as many absurdities in your life as possible. People collect strange things – postal stamps…. Collect absurdities; and the more absurdities you have, the richer you are. The world may think you are a little off the track, but that is their problem; you are enjoying it.In my postgraduate studies in the university, I used to go on a small street which ended, just after two miles, in front of a deep valley; that was the dead end. Only a few professors who loved silence had their bungalows on that street; there was no traffic, because in those two miles what traffic can exist?I used to go there only when it would rain – I loved to go into the rain. The last house on the street belonged to the head of the department of physics – one of the very well-known scientists. He had been in America before I came to the university, teaching physics.His family, it became a routine thing – whenever it would rain I would appear drenched, without any umbrella, without any raincoat, enjoying the natural shower…. The whole family would come onto their verandah – the wife, the children – and they would all watch, thinking that I must be mad.The professor was at the university. He heard one of my talks and he was very interested. We became friends – he was an old man – and one day he said, “Why don’t you come for supper today? It happens to be my birthday.”I said, “I will come, certainly.”He had talked to his family about me many times, and the family was very much excited: “Who is the guest?” They were all waiting outside in the garden when I went in, and they all started laughing, looking at me. The professor could not understand what the matter was, because I also started laughing. The professor said, “I don’t understand, but it seems you understand why they are laughing, and they understand you. And I was thinking I am going to introduce you to my family!”I said, “I know your family, they know me. We are well acquainted, although we have never spoken. I come here whenever it rains – this street is so silent. Your house is the last house before the road ends, and your family rushes out to see me. I know they think I am crazy, but they don’t know that I think they are crazy! – because what is the point of rushing out again and again to see a crazy man? They wait for me. Whenever it rains, they stop all other work; they are simply waiting for me! Sometimes I have to come just for them. I may have some other work, but I think of these poor fellows – that they will be waiting, and they will be unnecessarily frustrated if I don’t come. They think I am mad, I think they are mad.”The professor said, “This is strange! You never told me about it.”I said, “You would not have understood the relationship that was growing between me and your family. We have become very close, very intimate – without speaking a single word.”The professor said to me, “Next time it rains, I am going to be with you if it is so joyful. I have never done anything like that.”The next time he joined me, and he was really ecstatic. Just ordinary rain on an empty street – and we both laughed. He said, “But I have missed my whole life! And how am I going to convince my family now? – they are watching both of us.”And now I was also acquainted, so we both went into the house. The wife said, “This is the strangest thing that I have seen in my husband, that he should do such a thing.”But the husband said, “You can think me crazy, there is no harm in it. But at least once, you should join us. Now we both are going every time the rain comes; you should, at least once, join us.”She said, “But what is the meaning of it?”The professor said, “That is the difficulty. There is no meaning in it, but there is great joy.”In small things you can find joy. But if you are looking for meaning, then even in the greatest experiences you will not find meaning. Meaning is a mind interpretation. And all that is beautiful, loving, ecstatic, is something of the heart.And the head can never understand the heart: there is no communication line between the two. It is the head that asks the meaning. It is the heart that asks for joyful experiences, for ecstatic experiences, but it never asks about their meaning.Put your head aside and try to look at life from the heart. You will find it so glorious, so infinitely luminous that you will not be able to conceive how you have been missing, how much you have been missing. And that will explain why you are miserable, why you are in anxiety, why you are always sad.It is as if somebody is trying to listen to music through the eyes – he will not hear anything. He will say, “I want to see the music.” But you cannot see the music, you can only hear it. It is better if you close your eyes and open your ears.Meaning is of the head, and if you go on searching through the head you will come to the same conclusions as Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers. They say, “Life is meaningless. The only thing worth doing is committing suicide, because why go on living a meaningless life?”Life is certainly meaningless, but tremendously joyful, hilarious…a dance, a song, a beauty. But you will have to change your gears from the head to the heart.Look at small children – how excited they are in your bored world! You are sitting there completely bored, and your child is so excited. And you think you are right and the child is a fool. He does not know anything about life, that’s why he is so excited about any absurd thing – butterflies, flowers, colored stones, seashells, anything! And you can’t see any meaning in them. But the child is right, you are wrong.The criterion is boredom: who is bored? Whoever is bored is wrong. Whoever is dancing, singing, having a good belly laughter is right! But one has to change. It is not a very big change – your heart and your head are not very far away, maybe a few inches. And the heart is closer to you, closer to your being; the head is the farthest from your being. But the whole programming going on is to avoid the heart and join your being directly with the head. That’s what your schools, colleges, universities, are doing.The heart has no function in your education – naturally, your life is a misery. A true education will be basically the education of the heart. It will make you more innocent, more childlike, more excited and ecstatic about small things. Then each moment becomes luminous.And what are you going to do with meaning? Even if there is meaning in something, what are you going to do with meaning? The real thing is experiencing.So it is perfectly good to accept joy, laughter, without any reason – the way you accept your health. Are you ever worried when you are healthy, wondering: Why am I healthy? Do you go to the doctor, tremendously concerned and worried, and say, “Doctor, for seven days I have been healthy; something seems to be wrong”? No, health is natural; it need not be diagnosed, analyzed, it has to be lived.But when you are sick, you go to the doctor. You want to know the cause of it, because sickness is not natural. When somebody is sad, he is sick; he needs to find out why he is sick, why he is sad. But when somebody is laughing, just dancing, it is natural. In a healthy society it should be accepted without any questions.But because the whole society is sick, and suddenly one person starts laughing, naturally the whole society points to the person, that he is going crackers. There is no reason why he is laughing. Nobody has told a joke, nobody has slipped on a banana peel. Without any reason, he goes on laughing. But if somebody is sad, nobody says, “Without any reason this man is sad – this cannot be accepted.” This is a strange state.We have to change it completely. We have to make laughter, rejoicing, dancing, singing, part of a healthy being – just overflowing well-being. And anybody who is miserable, sad, long faced, has to be taken to the psychologist. Something is wrong with the man. He is not overflowing with energy; his energy has shrunk.Osho,Have you ever regretted anything in life? – because I have never heard you saying, “I'm sorry.” Please say something on this.I am sorry! – but I have never regretted in my life, for the simple reason that whatever I do, I do it wholeheartedly.You regret because you never do things wholeheartedly, you are always divided. Some part of you wants to do it, some part of you is against doing it. If you do it, the part that was against is going to make you regret. If you do not do it, the part that was for it is going to make you regret. Anyway, you are in a fix.A divided mind cannot avoid regret. He always looks backward, and he always thinks perhaps the other alternative was better. But nothing can be done about it now, except regretting.I have never regretted in my life, because in the first place, I never do much. To regret, first you have to do something. So, basically, I am a good for nothing: why should I regret?Secondly, if circumstances, situations, are such that I have to do something, then I do it totally. And I never look back because there is nothing to look back for. Whatever I did, I did totally; there is no part of me which can say, “I was telling you, don’t do it.” So who is going to regret? And whatever has been done cannot be undone. So what is the point of crying and weeping over spilled milk?So I can say to you I am really sorry – but I am helpless: this is the way I am. And I have enjoyed not doing; I have also enjoyed doing anything totally. There is no reason to regret anything.You regret only because you think that things could have been better. To me, they have always been better. Whatever it was, to me it was the best. I enjoyed it fully.I am reminded…. I was traveling in a bus. I was going to a place where no buses, no trains were going, so for eight miles I had to go by bullock cart.But some misunderstanding happened. I had to get down at a place eight miles from my destination. I asked the passenger sitting by my side, “Is this the right place, the nearest?”He said, “No. If you stop at the next stop, it will be easier. It will be closer and you will be able to get a bullock cart. Here, you will not get a bullock cart.”Thinking that he knew that area, I went to the next stop. When I got down there, the bus left, and I inquired. People said, “You have missed. It was the last place from where you could have got some vehicle to the place you want to go. From here it will be very difficult, and it is long. And the bus comes only once in twenty-four hours, so if you want to go back to that place you will have to wait. The same bus will come tomorrow.”Seeing me in difficulty, a man offered me his hut, saying, “You can stay here for the time being.”I have never been in such a poor place in my whole life. Not only poor, but utterly dirty, stinking. The man used to sell kerosene oil, so it was really awful. He offered me a bed for the night – the bed was smelling of kerosene oil and nothing else.I could not turn over, because to keep my nose as far away from the bed as possible, the only position was just to lie down straight and look up. But I enjoyed it really – remaining in the same position, looking at the roof, the stink of the kerosene oil all around, bedbugs, mosquitoes…everything that you could conceive to make a man suffer. I laughed.The man was on the verandah. He said, “What is the matter? Why are you laughing?”I said, “I am laughing because of this little experience of hell. I have always been intending to go to hell; this is a good training! And I promise you that once in a while, whenever I pass through here, I will be your guest.”He said, “I was afraid, because although I do this business, the stink is so much that even after doing it for years I have not become accustomed to it. The mosquitoes are so big, the bedbugs are there; and I can see you are not even lying on your side. I know the reason,” he said, “but I am sorry. I don’t have anything else to offer to you.”I said, “Don’t be sorry. I am rejoicing in the whole experience. It is so new to me, and everything that is new is a great adventure and excitement.”Next day, when I was leaving, he asked me, “Are you really thinking of coming back again?”I said, “Certainly.” And I went to his hut at least four times. Whenever I passed through there, I always stopped at the wrong stop, reached the hut. And the man could not believe it: “Either you are crazy, or something…because now you know where to get down. The first time it was a mistake, but why are you doing it again and again?”I said, “I am not making any mistake – I enjoyed that night so much. I could not sleep at all, and I had had no experience of bedbugs, mosquitoes. It is always good to be acquainted with new people. One never knows where one will end up…. New acquaintance is always good. And your kerosene oil makes me feel I am in hell. I don’t know whether there is any hell or not, but I don’t want to miss any experience. Perhaps there is no hell after life; then I will have had this experience. And I am immensely grateful to you.”Whatever happens, you can always look into it and find something really precious. Now, once in a while sleeping on my back, looking up, I remember and I laugh. That experience has made all my life’s nights far more beautiful. Now the comparison exists. Before it there was no comparison, it was stale: no bedbugs, no mosquitoes, no kerosene.I don’t regret, I don’t feel that it should have been otherwise. No, whatever has been should have been exactly the same as it has been. And I am perfectly happy with every act and with every consequence, because everything has been a tremendous teaching. It is just that you have to change your outlook, and the whole of life becomes a terrific drama.And you are not victims, you are just actors in it. You can keep your witness untouched by whatever happens. And the witness knows no regret, the witness cannot say, “I am sorry.”Osho,Can I doubt you?Yes, absolutely yes – including this statement!

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From Bondage to Freedom 01-43Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Bondage to Freedom 43 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You said buddha is a state of no-mind. Then how can there be any psychology of the buddhas?Please explain.There can only be a psychology of the buddhas. The man who is in the mind cannot be objective about it. It is as if a madman were doing research on madness. Apparently – it looks logical – because he is mad he can do research on madness. But it is not so in reality. Only one who is sane can look at all the dimensions of insanity objectively. The madman is not in a position to see anything, to understand anything.The same is the situation about the mind. One is in the mind and is trying to create a psychology: it is an impossible task. He can create only a fictitious psychology. That’s why there are so many psychologies; otherwise there can only be one psychology – just as there can be only one physics, one chemistry. There cannot be schools of psychology contradicting each other, refuting each other, arguing against each other, trying to prove themselves the real psychology.Sigmund Freud has never known anything beyond the mind that can give him the right to study the mind. He is immersed in it, he is it. Who is going to understand it? The understanding is always from the beyond – some distance is needed. So whatever he creates is a beautiful fiction. His own disciples start creating their own fictions. Alfred Adler created another fiction. Carl Gustav Jung created still another fiction. They are all irrelevant. Nobody can prove who is right, because they are all wrong – wrong for the simple reason that living in the mind you cannot look at it from a detached space, which is the basic scientific method.If you are studying tomatoes, one thing is absolutely necessary: that you should not be a tomato. You can be anything else. The state of the awakened person is a state beyond mind. He can see from the top of the hill into the dark valleys of the mind. The hilltop is full of sunlight. His vision is clear, he has no prejudices, he has no preconceived ideologies. He has left them far behind in the valley where everybody is a bigot, everybody is conditioned, everybody is either a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, or a communist.Everybody has become identified with a certain ideology. He has lost the clarity of vision, he is clouded. And he looks through those clouds, and everything becomes perverted.Sigmund Freud turns everything into sex. It is not true; everything is not sex. Sex is one of the most significant parts of life, but everything is not sex. But the way of seeing…he has colored glasses on his eyes. Whatever he sees, immediately his mind translates it into some sex symbol.If he sees these pillars here, they are phallic. You have been sitting by these pillars. You have never thought that these are phallic symbols, that they represent the man’s longing to have a long genitalia. But this long genitalia, the man will have to carry it on a truck ! And what will happen about women? He cannot chase women, he is stuck with his truck.Anything! Fountain pens, pencils – everything is phallic. He has a cloud over his vision. He himself is over-sexual, too much repressed. His repression is creating a certain smoke, and it is coming out into his writings. They are hilarious! You give him anything, and within minutes it is turned into something sexual. You could not have conceived that this thing can be turned into sexuality. Every hole becomes feminine sexuality. This is not psychology, this is psychopathy.And one of his disciples, who said that “There are things which are connected with man’s sexuality, but I cannot agree that everything is sexual” – he found another fiction: will to power. For Alfred Adler, psychology simply became synonymous with will to power. Whatever you are doing, it is nothing but will to power. You say, “I have fallen in love” – all wrong. According to him this is a strategy to be powerful over the woman. And that’s why she is trying to escape from you. She knows the real purpose.But she also cannot escape too far, because she has also the same psychology: she wants power over you. So every husband and wife are continuously in a power struggle. Children and parents are in a power struggle. Students and teachers are in a power struggle. Everywhere the whole business of life is reduced into a power struggle – will to power.According to Adler, sex becomes nothing but will to power. He was not aware of Eastern literature on sexology, which goes far back – five thousand years old. Vatsyayana’s maxims on sex describe eighty-four postures of lovemaking. But Adler knew only one posture – the missionary posture.It is called the missionary posture in the East, the man on top. The East became aware for the first time of this brutality when Christian missionaries went there to spread the word of God. People simply laughed. How can a man who is loving, lie on a woman who is delicate, smaller, fragile ? The brute is on top of the beauty – and he does not allow her to move, because to move is not ladylike. That is the meaning of the word lady – a good lay. But a good lay means a dead lay. The woman has to lie down completely dead, and the brute goes on doing exercises, gymnastics, pushups, and this he calls love.In the East it has been accepted that the woman should be on top. And it seems to be more natural. Man is stronger, more muscular, taller. And it is sexologically also significant that the woman should be moving, because if the man moves and woman remains unmoving, the man comes to his orgasm within seconds, and the woman has not even started yet. He is finished; gets down and goes to sleep. The woman cries, because she is simply being used, and to be used hurts more than anything else. This is not love. You have not taken any care about the woman, what happens to her.Vatsyayana makes it clear that the man should remain less moving so his orgasm is delayed, and the woman should be moving so they both come to orgasm almost simultaneously.But Adler saw in the West man on top, and immediately he had another instance, evidence for his psychology, that this lovemaking is nothing but will to power – being on top. The woman is not physically so strong, but she takes her revenge in being bitchy. You can be on top of her for a few seconds, but for twenty-four hours she is bitchy, a pain in the neck.Love becomes a strange thing in the hands of Adler. It has to fit his idea of psychology. The same is true of Jung, of Assagioli, and so many others. Now there are dozens of schools, and every school pretends that they have found the real science of psychology. None of them is capable of finding real psychology because they don’t fulfill the basic requirement.The basic requirement is to go beyond mind, because only then you can see the functions of the mind, the subtle activities of the mind, the darkest corners of the mind. From the hilltop of no-mind the whole valley is available to you, you are simply a witness, an objective witness.Hence, I repeat it again: only buddhas can create authentic psychology. Otherwise, there will be only different schools of psychopathologies.I can understand your question. Your question is: A man who has reached to the state of no-mind, what can he say about the mind?You are just putting this no-mind and mind in opposition. No-mind is not opposite to mind. No-mind is beyond mind. It is a clarity, a silence, that can give you the deepest insight into mind. You can look into all the layers of mind, but this is possible only from the highest point.And because now you are no more in the mess of the mind, you are no more confined by your mind. You have gone beyond boundaries; you cannot only see your mind, you can see mind as such. And unless mind as such is known, psychology will remain just a fictitious game.From the sunlit peaks you can see all the layers of mind. You are at the highest point. I have called it the cosmic mind, the mind of the whole existence. You are one with it. Just below you is the collective super-conscious mind. Below that is the individual super-conscious mind. Below that is the normal conscious mind. Below that is the unconscious mind. Below that is the collective unconscious mind. And at the very bottom is the cosmic unconscious mind. This is the whole rainbow of mind energy – all the seven colors. The cosmic super-conscious mind and the cosmic unconscious mind are the two ends of the rainbow. And then there are five divisions in between.We are at the fourth, exactly in the middle. Three are below us, three are above us. If a man goes mad, that means he slips down from the fourth to the third, sometimes even to the second; very rarely, to the first.A meditator travels upwards: first to the super-conscious mind, then the collective super-conscious mind, and then cosmic super-conscious mind.This whole rainbow is not available to your so-called psychologists. So whatever they are doing is very fragmentary. And remember one thing: a fragmentary truth is far more dangerous then a lie. A half-truth is worse than a lie, because the lie cannot go on pretending to be true for long; sooner or later you are going to discover it. But the half-truth is dangerous: you can go on believing that this is the whole truth forever. You can be deceived by it.And the second thing to remember: truth cannot be divided. So the half-truth is again a very beautifully systematized lie.Just as you cannot have a half-circle – or can you? Verbally there is no problem, but if you look at it closely, a circle can only be complete. The half-circle is not a circle, it is only an arc. Unless it is full, it cannot be called a circle. There are no other kinds of circles, there is only one kind: the full circle.The same is the case with truth. You cannot have half-truths; they become far more dangerous, poisonous than straightforward lies. And whatever the psychologists are doing is nothing but stretching small fragments to absurdity in order to make them look like the full truth, the whole truth.I say to you again, only the awakened one, the buddha, can give you a total vision of psychology.Osho,Western psychologists say that meditation is a subjective phenomenon and therefore much psychological research is not possible. Do you agree?I do not agree, because no research is possible. You are saying, “Much psychological research is not possible.” That’s why I do not agree.Man’s interiority, his subjectivity, cannot be trespassed. There is no way to make it an object of study. Research is absolutely impossible – even search has not been done, and you are thinking of research.Man can experience his subjectivity on his own, but he cannot invite a researcher to go into him and to find out who he is. This is, by nature, impossible. And it is very fortunate that it is impossible – that your subjectivity, at least, is always private, always your freedom. No trespass is possible.Yes, one can study one’s own interiority, and one can make an effort to explain in words what he has found within himself. Perhaps that may give you some idea of your own subjectivity – not exactly the same, but some glimpse, or at least the possibility that there is some inner essence in you which needs to be discovered; an encouragement that if somebody else can do it, why cannot you do it? Perhaps his methods of his own inner journey may help you to find methods suitable for yourself. Maybe a little bit modified, changed, but the same methods may be applicable.But one hundred and twelve methods of going inwards are available, have been for ten thousand years. Not a single method more can be added. The science of inner search is complete. You can just look at those one hundred and twelve methods, and it is my experience and many of my sannyasins’ experience that when you come to the method that will be suitable for you, something immediately rejoices in you – as if something in your heart has been touched, some bell starts ringing within you.So just going through those one hundred and twelve methods – and each method is described in two lines – you just go slowly and see which method synchronizes with you. Then give it a try. Most probably that will be the method. If by chance you don’t succeed in it, then look again. Some other method may be even more striking. But for the whole of humanity all the methods are there. Symptoms can be told to you: when you come to the method that is going to be your journey, something immediately is lit up in your being. Your mind falls silent, you know – not from any outside authority, but by your own heartbeats – that “This is the method for me.”And as you start working on the method you will see how relaxing it is, and how simple, smooth. And on each step you will feel yourself more grounded, more rooted – no more phony, no more American, no more plastic. For the first time you will feel you are real, authentic. And as you go deeper with the method, the sense of joy, sensitivity, goes on increasing.Love, for no reason at all, unaddressed to anybody – just a lovingness surrounds you. And when you reach to the very center of your being there is an explosion of immense light, and a fragrance that you have never known.Those who are a little receptive may even become aware that something great has happened to you, because your face will take on a certain quality which you can find in the statues of Gautam Buddha. Your eyes, for the first time, will have a magnetism; your gestures will have a grace. Your whole being will be a beauty and a benediction to you and to all. As this experience ripens, you become a blessing to the whole existence.It is true that no objective research can be done on it, but that does not mean that this subjective world does not exist. That will be a stupid conclusion. It will be like a blind man who cannot see the light; hence he concludes that the light does not exist.There are things which are objectively available to be studied, but they are always things – not life, not love, not consciousness. All that is great is subjective. And it is one of the greatest misfortunes of humanity that scientists go on insisting that unless you can study something objectively, it does not exist. That means that in the lab of Albert Einstein, everything exists except Albert Einstein. Then who is doing all these experiments? Who is watching and researching, and who is finding electrons and protons and neurons? They all exist because they are objective. Albert Einstein does not exist, because his consciousness is not available to objective study. This is sheer stupidity.Your eyes cannot hear music; that does not mean that music does not exist. Your ears cannot see light, that does not mean light does not exist. It simply means you are using wrong means – ears to see, eyes to hear.The method of objective study is for things, matter. And the inward journey – because it is not a research into matter but into consciousness – needs different methods. Those are the methods I am calling meditations.For the objective world, observation, experiments – these are methods. For the subjective world, witnessing, experiencing – these are the methods.And one of the fundamental rules of science is that everything exists with its polar opposite. The polar opposite is not contradictory, it is complementary. If love exists, hate exists; if beauty exists, ugliness exists. And if objective reality exists, you cannot deny subjective reality; otherwise, you will be going against the fundamental rule of science itself. Objective reality needs, as a polar opposite to it, a subjective reality. And certainly the same methods cannot be applied to both. Different methods are needed.Meditation will not help you to find atomic energy, nuclear weapons; otherwise, the East would have discovered all this nonsense long ago. And objective methods will not allow you to discover man’s real being. And without knowing man’s real being you can have all the riches of the world, but deep inside you will remain a pauper, miserable. East and West – the objective approach and the subjective approach – both are half. My own effort is that they should become one. There is no need to divide.Rudyard Kipling has stated, “West is West and East is East, and ne’er the twain shall meet.” He is dead, but sometimes I think to drag him out of his grave and ask him, “Where is the line which divides East from West? They are meeting everywhere.” You are, in comparison to some place, East, in comparison to another place, West. And what nonsense is this, that “ne’er the twain shall meet”? The twain are always meeting on each point, because the same point can be called West and the same point can be called East. Calcutta is East of Bombay, Bombay is West of Calcutta. But Calcutta itself is West of Rangoon, and Rangoon is East of Calcutta.Rudyard Kipling was the poet laureate of the British empire. To me, he is simply an idiot. East and West are meeting everywhere, except in man. Things become easier; it is only a question of man’s mind. In reality there is no division; the division is only mental.And in my sannyasins that division has dropped. My sannyasins don’t belong to East or to West. They claim the whole earth as their own.They claim the objective reality as their own. They claim the subjective world as their own.To represent this, I have called the new man Zorba the Buddha. Zorba represents the materialist, objective approach. Buddha represents the subjective, spiritual approach.Divided, both are poor. Neither of them is a full circle. Joined, they become immensely rich. Joined together, they experience the greatest ecstasy that is available to humanity.Osho,What is it in a person that draws them to you and to what you represent? On the one hand, it seems that anyone with any intelligence and openness should be here. On the other hand, I can't claim to have found you through being either particularly intelligent or open. It seems I came to you in spite of myself, rather than because of myself.That’s the right thing to do – coming to me in spite of yourself. Yes, there are people who come because of their openness, receptivity. There are people who come with their intelligence, with their rationality. But these are not going to be closest to me.You are fortunate that you are here in spite of yourself. That means neither a conviction of the head has brought you here, nor an openness of the heart has brought you here, but something which can only be called a magnetic pull between two beings.That’s why you are puzzled: it is unexplainable. It is one of the greatest mysteries. Two beings can find each other – pulled against their minds, against their logic, against everything – nothing can prevent them. Something far more powerful than openness, than intelligence has made them aflame.Yes, there are a few people who are here just in the same way. They will be enriched more than anybody else. They are the blessed ones.Osho,Would you talk about Sheela and her gang?My God! Such an old story. And you must be real lazy and late to ask such a question. I can talk about Adam and Eve – that is far more fresh. But I do not want to waste my time and your time about Sheela and her gang. It is finished.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How can we save humanity from falling even more?It is one of the trade secrets of all the religions to propose propaganda that humanity has to be saved.It is a very strange idea, but it is so old that nobody seems to look into the implications. Nobody asks why you are worried about saving humanity. And you have been saving humanity for thousands of years, but nothing seems to be saved.In the first place, does humanity need any saving?To answer this question all the religions have created an absolutely fictitious idea of the original fall, because unless there is a fall the question of saving does not arise. And the religious conception of the original fall is just rubbish.Man has been evolving – not falling – in every possible way. The only way the original fall can be supported is by the idea of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin; but religions cannot use that – they are very much offended. Charles Darwin’s idea certainly can be put in such a way – at least by the monkeys if not by man – that it was an original fall. Certainly if man has evolved out of monkeys he must have fallen from the trees, and the monkeys who did not fall must have laughed at these idiots who had fallen. And there is a possibility that these were the weaker monkeys who could not survive in the trees.In monkeys there exists a hierarchy. Perhaps the same mind and the same hierarchy are carried by man too; it is the same mind. If you see monkeys sitting in a tree you can know who’s the chief: he will be at the top of the tree. Then there will be a big group of ladies, his harem – the most beautiful, young. After that will be a third group.I was thinking about this third group for many days but I had no word for it. In India we call that group the chamchas. Chamcha means a spoon, and these people are suckers. Just the way you take, with a spoon, things out of a bottle, they go on taking things – power, money – from those who have. Of course, they have to buttress these people, they have to praise these people.But Devaraj has sent by coincidence today the right word – because chamcha cannot be exactly translated; “spoon” loses all meaning. He has sent me a word which is Californian: the brownnose. And he sent me the Webster’s dictionary also because I might not understand what a brownnose is; and certainly I would not have understood what a brownnose is.He sent a note also, thinking perhaps that even the dictionary may not be helpful because Webster writes it in such a way that it does not look in any way obscene, dirty. So he sent me a note also: “In Europe we call these people ‘arse-kissers’.” That’s exactly the meaning of chamchas.The chief on the top, then the harem of the ladies whom he controls, then the brownnoses! And then you come down to lower categories of the hierarchy. On the lowest branches are the poorest monkeys, without girlfriends, boyfriends – servants. But perhaps from this very group humanity has grown.Even in this group there may have been a few people who were so weak that they could not even manage to stay on the lowest branches. They were pushed, pulled, thrown, and somehow they found themselves fallen onto the earth. That is the original fall.Monkeys still go on laughing at man. Certainly if you think from the monkey’s side, a monkey walking on two legs…if you are a monkey and you think from its side, seeing a monkey walking on two legs, you will think, “Has he joined a circus or something? And what happened to the poor guy? He just lives on the ground; he never comes to the trees, the wild freedom of the trees, the higher status of the trees. This is really the fallen one, the downtrodden.”Except for this, religions don’t have any logical support for the idea of the original fall. Stories they have, but stories are not arguments, stories are not proofs. And stories can have just the opposite meaning to that which you wanted to give to them. For example, the original fall in Christianity makes God the real culprit, and if anybody needs saving it is the Christian God.A father preventing his children from being wise, from living forever, is certainly insane. Even the worst father would like his children to be wise, intelligent. Even the cruelest father would like his children to live forever.But God prevents man from eating of two trees – the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life. This seems to be a strange kind of God; it is not in any way possible to conceive Him as fatherly. He seems to be the enemy of man. Who needs saving? Your God is jealous: that’s what was the argument of the devil who came in the form of a serpent and seduced the mind of Eve.To me, there are many significant things to be understood. Why did he choose Eve and not Adam? He could have chosen Adam directly, but men by nature are less sensitive, less vulnerable, more arrogant, egoistic. Adam may not even have liked to have a conversation with a serpent, may have thought it was below his dignity. And to be persuaded by a serpent’s argument would have been impossible for man. He would have argued against him; he would have struggled, fought – because to agree with someone seems to the ego as if you are defeated.The ego knows only disagreement, struggle, victory or defeat – as if there is no other way, as if there are only two ways: victory and defeat. For the ego certainly there are only two ways.But for a sensitive soul there is only one way – to understand whatever is true. It is not a question of me and you, it is not a question of somebody being defeated or victorious. The question is: What is the truth?The woman was not interested in arguing. She listened and she found that it was perfectly right. Wisdom was prohibited because, the serpent said, “God does not want man to become godlike, and if you are wise you will be godlike. And once you are wise it will not be very difficult for you to find the tree of eternal life.”It is really the other side of wisdom – eternity. And if you are wise and you have eternal life, then who bothers about God? What has He got that you have not got? Just to keep you a slave, eternally dependent – never allowing you to become a knowing being, never allowing you to taste something of the eternal – in this vast garden of Eden He has prohibited only two trees. The argument was simply a statement of the fact.Now, the person who brings the truth to humanity is condemned as the devil; and the person who was preventing humanity from knowing the truth, from knowing life, is praised as God. But the priests can live only with this kind of God; the devil will destroy them completely.If God himself becomes useless, futile, by man becoming wise and having eternal life, what about the priests? What about all the religions, the churches, the temples, the synagogues? What about these millions of people who are just parasites sucking humanity’s blood in every possible way? They can exist only with that kind of God. Naturally the person who should be condemned as the devil is praised as God, and the person who should be praised as God is condemned as the devil.Just try to see the story without any prejudice; just try to understand it from many aspects. This is only one of the aspects but it is of tremendous importance – because if God becomes the devil, the devil becomes God: then there is no original fall. If Adam and Eve had declined the devil’s wise advice, that would have been the fall, and then there would have been a need to save man. But they did not decline. And the serpent was certainly wise, certainly wiser than your God.Just see. Anybody knows, even a very mediocre person knows, that if you say to children, “Don’t eat that fruit: you can eat anything that is available in the house but don’t eat that fruit” – the children will become absolutely disinterested in all kinds of foods; their only interest will be in that fruit which has been prohibited.Prohibition is invitation.The God of this story seems to be absolutely a fool. The garden was huge, with millions of trees. If He had not said anything about these two trees I don’t think even by now man would have been able to find those two trees. But He started His religious sermons with this sermon. This is the first sermon: “Don’t eat from these two trees.” He pointed out the trees: “These are the two trees that you have to avoid.” This is provocation.Who says that the devil seduced Adam and Eve? It was God! Even without the devil, I say to you Adam and Eve would have eaten those fruits. The devil is not needed; God has done the work Himself. Sooner or later it would have been impossible to resist the temptation. Why should God prevent them?All efforts to make people obedient simply lead them into disobedience. All efforts to enslave people make them more and more strong to rebel, to be free.Even Sigmund Freud knows more psychology than your God, and Sigmund Freud is a Jew, just in the same tradition of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are his forefathers’ forefathers’ forefathers, but somewhere the same bloodstream is flowing. Sigmund Freud is more intelligent; and in fact there is no need for much intelligence to see a simple fact.In my childhood, in my neighborhood, lived the richest man of the city. He had the only palatial building – all marble. Around his house there was a beautiful garden, lawn. One day I was standing just outside his fence, and he was telling something to his gardener. I told him, “Dada” – he was known as dada; dada means big brother. The whole town called him Dada, even people who were older than him, because he was rich.I said to him, “You should remember one thing. Put a few posters around the garden that nobody should urinate here, because I have seen a few people urinating around your house.” And it was a good place to urinate because a big garden, trees…you could go behind them.He said, “That’s right!” The next day he painted a few instructions around the garden: “No Pissing Allowed” – and since that day the whole town has been pissing around his house! He came to see my father. He said, “Where is your boy? – he has made my house hell. And who has said to him that he has to advise me?”My father said, “But what advice has he given to you? If you had asked me I would have told you never to listen to him; it always leads into some trouble. What happened?”He said, “Nothing. I was just talking to the gardeners. He said, ‘Dada, I have seen a few people urinating.’ I have never seen them myself, my gardeners said, ‘We have never seen anybody,’ but the idea struck me that it is true: huge trees, bushes…people may be urinating in my garden or around my garden. This is not to be allowed anymore. So he suggested to me to make a few posters around the house: ‘No Pissing Allowed.’ So I did that, and since that day the whole town is pissing around my garden. Where is your boy?”My father said, “It is very difficult to know where he is. Whenever he comes, he comes; whenever he goes, he goes. He is not under our control. But if he has started giving advice to you, he will come to give more advice – don’t be worried. If his one piece of advice has worked, he will come; you just wait. And if he comes and I find him, I will bring him to you.”My father caught hold of me in the evening and he said, “You come. Why did you give this advice?”I said, “My advice was to prohibit people. Nobody can say that my advice is wrong – I have seen it written in many places. And yes, it is true I have seen people pissing there; that’s how I got the idea. And I have inquired why people have started pissing.“They say, ‘When we read the board suddenly the urge…we remember that the bladder is full; otherwise we were engaged in other kinds of things and other thoughts were there. Who thinks of the bladder? When it becomes absolutely necessary, then only one thinks of it.“‘But when we look at these boards suddenly the bladder becomes the most important thing, and one feels the place is good, that’s why the board has been put there – people must be pissing here. And we see that there are many marks, many people have pissed already, so we feel it is perfectly right.’“It is a simple thing: If you prohibit anything, you provoke, you give a challenge.In India it is not any legal problem to urinate anywhere, wherever you can manage: there is freedom of urination. When I was nearabout ten or eleven years old my father became very sick so we had to take him to a very good hospital, far away in Indore.The hospital in Indore was famous all over the country. We had to live there for six months. Just at the entrance of the hospital was a board: “No Urination Permitted. Anybody Disobeying Will Be Prosecuted.” And there used to stand a policeman. To me that was even more provocative. The board was enough but a policeman with a gun standing there!The very first day my father entered hospital and we were given quarters in the hospital to live in, I could not resist; it was impossible. The board alone was enough but to put a policeman there with a gun – this was too much. I went directly.The policeman was standing there; he looked at me. He could not believe it because it had never happened: I pissed!He said, “What are you doing? Can’t you read?”I said, “I can read – better than you.”And he said, “Can’t you see me with this gun?”I said, “I can see that too. It is because of your gun and this board – otherwise I had no need. My house is just a two-minute walk from here, and I have just come from the bathroom. It is really difficult to piss because my bladder is empty. But I cannot avoid the temptation.”He said, “You will have to come with me to the chief administrator of the hospital” – it was a big hospital.So I said, “Okay, I will come.” I went there. The administrator was very angry.He said, “You have just entered – the first day, and you do such a thing?”I said, “But what can I do? This policeman was pissing there!”He said, “What!”I said, “Yes, he was pissing there, and when I saw that a policeman was pissing there I thought perhaps it is absolutely legal, this board is nonsense.”The policeman said, “Who says I was pissing? This is absolutely wrong!”The administrator said, “This is strange. Let us see.”What I had done, I had pissed in two places and I showed him those two. The administrator said, “Two places!” He said to the policeman, “Your services are finished! And that innocent boy – he is not wrong. If you are pissing here…you are supposed to prevent people.”I said, “I saw him, with his gun, pissing here, so I said, ‘Perhaps this is perfectly okay.’ And I am new anyway, I don’t know much.” And the policeman could not deny it; there was no way to deny.I said, “If you were not pissing you can deny it, but that simply means that you were not here, you were not on duty; somebody else has pissed. Either way you are finished.”He was thrown out of his job. When we came out he said, “Just listen, how did you manage that second place? You know that I was not pissing.”I said, “I know, you know, but that does not help. The question is the administrator: he does not know. And you were in every way caught: Either you were not on duty – somebody else has pissed there – or if you were on duty then you had pissed.”He said, “How did it happen? Perhaps when we were inside somebody else did it.”I said, “To be true to you now that you are finished – you are no longer a policeman and I feel pity for you – I had to do both the things before we left. You were not observant enough to see that I moved two feet.”He said, “Yes, I remember. You moved, and I was thinking, Why have you moved? Now I know. But that administrator won’t let me even inside the house; he is a very strict man.”I said, “He may be a strict man, but he has become a friend to me” – and he remained a friend to me for six months. I did every kind of thing in that hospital, but whenever I was brought to him, he said, “This boy is innocent. From the very first day I have known this boy is innocent and unnecessarily people are harassing him; for all kinds of things people are harassing him.“Somebody else does something and he is being caught. And I know the reason: he is innocent, simple, from a small village. He knows nothing about the city and the cunningness of the city and all kinds of ruffians so you go and get hold of him: he has become the target.” And I would stand before him very peacefully.He remained a friend to me all those six months, just because of that one case in which the policeman was thrown out. But to me it was a simple case of provocation.God could not see a simple thing? – that to these innocent Adam and Eve He is giving a challenge? In the uncorrupted souls, utterly innocent, He is putting the seed of corruption. But to save Him the priests have managed to bring the serpent in, and thrown the whole responsibility on the serpent – that he is the sole cause of man’s original fall. But I don’t see him as the original cause. If anything he is the original incentive to man’s growth.The devil is the original rebel. And what he said to Adam and Eve is the beginning of a true religion, not what God said – that is the beginning of suicide, not religion.In the East the serpent is worshipped as the wisest animal in the world; and I think that is far better. If the serpent really did this then he is certainly the wisest animal in the world. He saved man from eternal slavery, ignorance, stupidity.This is not the original fall, this is the original rise.You are asking me how to save humanity from falling even further.Humanity has never been falling.What has been happening is that all the religious dogmas sooner or later become small and cannot contain man.Man goes on growing:Dogmas don’t grow, doctrines don’t grow.The doctrines remain the same and man outgrows them.The priest clings to the doctrine. That is his heritage, his power, tradition, ancient wisdom. He clings to it. Now what to say about the man who goes on outgrowing all those doctrines? Certainly to the priest this is a continuous fall; man is falling.Just take a few examples and you will understand how doctrines are bound to be rigid, static, dead. Man is alive. You cannot hold him in something which does not grow with him. He will break all those prisons, he will shatter all those chains.For example, in Jainism the Jaina monk is not supposed to use shoes, for the simple reason that in ancient days shoes were made only of leather, and leather comes from animals; animals are killed. It is a symbol of violence, and Mahavira wanted his followers not to be in any way – directly or indirectly – involved in violence.He prevented everybody from wearing shoes. He was not aware that one day shoes of rubber would be available, which involves no violence. Shoes of synthetic leather would be available, which involves no violence. Shoes of cloth would be available, which involves no violence. He was not aware. So it indicates two things. The claim of the Jainas that Mahavira is omniscient is nonsense; he knew nothing of synthetic leather – he cannot be omniscient.Secondly, now twenty-five centuries have passed: Jaina monks and nuns are still walking bare-footed on the dusty roads in hot weather in a country like India. You should see their feet; tears will come to your eyes. The skin of their feet is all broken, as broken as when for two or three years rains don’t come and the earth breaks; and blood is oozing out of those wounds. Still they have to go on walking; they cannot use a vehicle, because in those days again a vehicle meant horse-driven, bullock-driven – and that was violence.And I can understand that it is violence. Who are you to force poor animals to pull your vehicles and to pull you? But Mahavira was not aware that there would be cars which would not be pulled by horses but would have horsepower without horses, that there would be trains, electrical vehicles. He was not aware of that, that there would be airplanes with the least possibility of violence.Even walking you will do more violence because it is not only when you kill an elephant that it is violence. According to Jainism the soul has the same status in the ant, the smallest ant, and the biggest elephant. Only the bodies are different – the souls are the same. So when you are walking on the road you may be killing many insects; not only insects, even when you are breathing you are killing very small living cells in the air. Just by the hot air coming out of your nose, your mouth, they are being killed.Perhaps for the Jaina monk and nun the airplane is the most non-violent vehicle. When I suggested it to Jaina monks they said, “What are you saying? If somebody hears it we will be thrown out, expelled!”I could convince just one Jaina monk, and certainly he was expelled. He was a little stupid. We both were staying in one temple, and I told him, “You unnecessarily walk ten miles every day from this place to the city, while a car comes for me; you can go with me.”He said, “But if anybody sees?”I said, “We can always manage.” He used to have a bamboo mat, so I said, “You put the bamboo mat on the sofa in the car, and sit on the bamboo mat.”He said, “What will that do?”I said, “You can simply say, ‘I am sitting on my bamboo mat; I am not concerned with the car or anything.’“He said, “This is perfectly right, because if I am sitting on the bamboo mat and somebody pulls my bamboo mat, what can I do?”I said, “That’s right – you just sit on the bamboo mat.” I took him in the car, and we reached the place where there was a meeting in which I and he were both going to speak. When they saw him sitting…. And I asked somebody to come and pull the bamboo mat out, with him sitting on top of it.They said, “What is all this?”I said, “You first pull him out, because he has nothing to do with the car – he is simply sitting on his bamboo mat. I have pushed his bamboo mat into the car; now we have to take him out.” And I had told him, “You simply sit with your eyes closed.” I said to them, “He is a very meditative person, and don’t disturb him, just pull his mat.”They pulled, but they were angry that this….”We never heard of it: a Jaina monk sitting in a car! And we know perfectly well this is not a meditative monk; this is the first time we have seen him sitting with closed eyes. He is not very erudite either, not scholarly or anything.”He knew only three speeches, and he used to ask me which one would be right, so I used to make the sign one, two, or three; that would do. So whichever finger I raised first he would do that speech. And I always managed to let him deliver the wrong speech, one which was not supposed to be for that audience, but he depended on my finger; he was a little stupid.Finally they expelled him just because he sat in the car. While I was there they could not, because I argued for him, “He has nothing to do with it. You could expel me – but you cannot because I am not your monk, I don’t belong to anybody; nobody in the whole world can expel me. But you can expel me; if you can enjoy expelling, you can expel me. But he is absolutely innocent.”So in front of me they could not do anything, but the moment I left, the next day, they expelled him. They took away all his symbols of a Jaina monk. Only after five, seven years passed I met him in Lucknow, and what a great coincidence! – he was driving a taxi, he had become a taxi-driver. That’s how I met him – at the railway station, because I had to get down there and go to a hotel and wait at least eight hours; then my next train would come which would take me to the place where I was going.So in Lucknow I had no work and I had not informed anybody, so I could just rest eight hours. By chance I called the taxi and he came. I said, “What! You are driving a taxi.”He said, “It is all your doing.”I said, “But I think it is perfectly logical: from car to car, and from the back seat to the front seat. This is what evolution is! And at that time you were even afraid to sit down; now you are driving. You keep going: soon you will be a pilot and someday I will meet you in the air.”He said, “Don’t joke with me. I have been so angry with you, but seeing you all my anger has gone – you are such a nice person. But why did you do that to me?”I said, “I took you out of that bondage; now you can go to the cinema, you can smoke cigarettes. You can do everything that you want.”“I am. Yes, that is true,” he said, “that you have made me free. I was a slave of those people; I could not even move without their permission. Now I don’t care a bit about anybody; I earn my living and I live the way I want to live. If you could help all the other Jaina monks also….”I said, “I try my best but the followers are always surrounding them, protecting them, insisting that they should not talk with me. They say ‘Even talk is dangerous because this man may put some idea in your mind.’“All the religions are afraid of thinking, afraid of raising questions, afraid of doubt, afraid of disobedience, and stuck centuries back – for the simple reason that these things were not available then. Those people who were making those rules had no idea what the future was going to be.Hence all the religions are agreed that man is continuously falling because he is not following the scriptures, not following the doctrines, not following the messiahs, the prophets. But I don’t see that man is falling. In fact man’s sensitivity has grown.His intelligence has grown, his life span has grown. He is more capable now of getting rid of slavery and patterns of slavery.Man is courageous enough to doubt, question, inquire. This is not a fall.This is the beginning of a true religion spreading. Soon it can become a wildfire.But to the priests certainly it is a fall. Everything is a fall because it is not according to their scriptures.Do you know, in India, just a hundred years ago nobody was allowed to go to foreign countries, for the simple reason that in foreign countries you would be mixing with people who cannot be accepted as human beings; they are below human beings.In India they have the worst class of human beings whom they call untouchables. They cannot be touched. If you touch them you have to take a shower and cleanse yourself. In foreign countries people are even farther down than the untouchables. For them they had a special word, mlechchhas. It is very difficult to translate that word. It means something so ugly, so obscene, so dirty that it creates nausea in you. That will be the full meaning of the word, mlechchha: people whose contact will create nausea in you, a sickness in you.Even when Gandhi went to England to study, his mother had taken three oaths from him. One was that he would not look at any woman with lustful eyes – a very difficult thing, because by the time you become aware that you have been looking with lustful eyes, you have already looked! I don’t think Gandhi followed that; he could not, it is impossible to follow, although he tried his best.Secondly, he should not eat meat. And he was in such a trouble because – now in London you can find vegetarian restaurants, health food is now in fashion, but when Gandhi had gone to study, there was no vegetarian food available. He had to live just on fruits, bread, butter, milk. He was almost starving. He would not mix with people because those people were all mlechchhas. And of course he was so much afraid of women: Who knows? – just like a breeze lust comes to the eyes.Lust is not something that knocks on your door and says, “I am coming.” You see a beautiful woman and suddenly you feel, “She is beautiful” – and that’s enough. Just to say, “She is beautiful,” means you have already looked with lustful eyes; otherwise what business is it for you to judge whether she is beautiful or ugly?In fact if you go deep down in your judgments you will see, at the moment you say that someone is beautiful, deep down you want to possess. When you say someone is ugly, deep down you don’t want to have anything to do with that person. Your “ugly,” your “beauty,” are really your desires for or against.So Gandhi was continuously afraid of women. He had to remain confined to his room, because in Europe there were women all over; how could you avoid them?And the third oath was that he should not change his religion.The first trouble arose in Alexandria. Their ship was to wait there for three days for loading, unloading cargo. And all the people who were on the ship who had become friendly toward Gandhi – they were all Indians – said to him simply, “What is the point, sitting here for three days? The nights in Alexandria are beautiful!”But he didn’t understand the meaning, that “nights in Alexandria are beautiful.” In that way he was a simpleton. He had never heard the name of the famous book Arabian Nights; otherwise he would have understood. Alexandria is very close to Arabia, and those are Arabian nights!So Gandhi said, “Okay, if the nights are beautiful I am coming.” But he was not aware where he was going. They took him into a beautiful house, and he said, “But where are we going?”“To beautiful nights,” those friends said – and it was a prostitute’s house. Gandhi was so shocked that he lost his voice. He could not say, “I don’t want to go in”; he could not say, “I want to go back to the ship” – for two reasons. One was: “These people will think that I am impotent or something.” Secondly, he was not able to speak; for the first time he found that his throat was choked.Those people just dragged him. They said, “He is new – nothing to be worried about,” and he went with them. They pushed him into a prostitute’s room and closed the door. The prostitute was also a little puzzled seeing this man trembling, perspiring. She completely forgot that he was a customer. She just made him sit; he wouldn’t sit on her bed but she forced him. She said, “You are not in a position to stand, you will fall down, you are shaking so much. You just sit.”He could not say that he could not sit on a prostitute’s bed; What will my mother say? I have not looked yet – he was talking to his mother inside – I have not yet looked with lustful eyes. This is just an accident; those idiots have forced me here. The woman understood that it seemed he had been forced. She said, “Don’t be worried, I’m also a human being. What do you want? Simply tell me and I will do it.” But he could not say anything.The woman said, “It is very difficult now, how…. You don’t speak?”He said, “I…just….”So she said, “You please write.”He had to write on paper, “I have been unnecessarily forced here – I simply want to go. And I look on you as my sister.”She said, “That’s perfectly okay, don’t be worried.” She opened the door and she said, “Do you have money enough to go to the ship or should I come with you to lead you? – because Alexandria in the middle of the night is dangerous.”He said, “No” – now he was able to speak for the first time, seeing that a prostitute is not some dangerous animal. She behaved more humanly than any woman had ever behaved with him. She offered him food. He said, “No, I cannot eat; I am okay.” She offered water; he wouldn’t drink water from a prostitute’s house…as if water also becomes dirty because it is in a prostitute’s house.In India that happens. In Indian stations you will find people shouting, “Hindu water!” “Mohammedan water!” Water Hindu? Mohammedan? And Jainas of course don’t drink either the Hindu water or the Mohammedan water; they carry their own water, Jaina water, because they are such a minority that in stations you won’t find Jaina water, so they have to carry their own water.But Gandhi thanked the woman, and in his autobiography he wrote about that woman and about the whole incident: “How cowardly I was! I could not even speak, could not even say no.”Now these three things kept him a slave in England where he could have been free. He could have looked into many aspects of life which were not available in India, but it was impossible because those three oaths were so binding. He did not make friends, he did not go to any meetings, sermons. He simply kept himself with his books and prayed to God, “Somehow finish my course so I can be back in India.”Now, such a person cannot become a great legal expert. His examination was good, he passed. But when he came to India, in his first case, when he went to the court again the same thing happened as had happened in the prostitute’s house. He simply said, “My lord…” and that was all! People waited a few minutes, then again he said, “My lord….” And he was trembling so that the justice said, “You take him and let him relax.”That was Gandhi’s first and last case in India, in an Indian court. Then he never dared to take any case because just after “My lord,” he might stop, and that would not make sense. And the reason was simply that he had no experience of meeting people, talking with people, conversing with people. He had become almost like an isolated monk who had lived in a faraway monastery, alone, and then had been brought again to Bombay where he was not at all at ease.And this man became one of the greatest leaders of the world. In this world things work very strangely. Because Gandhi could not go to the court, he accepted an offer from a friendly Mohammedan family; they had business in South Africa and they needed a legal adviser. He was not to go to the court, he had just to advise the advocate there, to assist him to understand the whole situation of the business in India and in Africa.So he was just an assistant to the advocate; he was not going to court directly. For this purpose he went to Africa, but on the way two accidents happened which changed not only his life but the whole Indian history, and perhaps made an impact on the whole world.One was that a friend who had come to see him off at the ship presented him a book, Unto This Last, by John Ruskin – a book which transformed his whole life. It is a simple book and a small book. It professes – “Unto this last” means the poorest one – we should consider the poorest one first. And that became his whole philosophy of life: the poorest should be considered first.In South Africa, while Gandhi was traveling in a first-class compartment, one Englishman entered and said, “You get out, because no Indian can travel in first class.”Gandhi said, “But I have a first-class ticket. The question is not whether I am Indian or European; the question is whether I have a first-class ticket or not. Nowhere is it written who can travel; whoever has a first-class ticket can travel.”But that Englishman was not going to listen. He pulled the emergency chain and threw Gandhi’s things out. And Gandhi was a thin and weak man; the Englishman threw him out also on the platform and told him, “now you travel first class.”The whole night Gandhi remained on that small station’s platform. The stationmaster told him, “You unnecessarily got into trouble; you should have got down. You seem to be new here. Indians cannot travel first-class. It is not a law but this is how things are.” But the whole night Gandhi spent in a turmoil. It became the very seed of his revolt against the British Empire. That night he decided that this empire has to end.Gandhi lived many years in Africa and there he learned the whole art of fighting non-violently. And when he came to India in the 1920’s he was a perfectly trained leader of non-violent revolution, and he immediately took over the whole country, for the simple reason that he was conventional, traditional, religious. Nobody could say that he was not a sage, because he was following rules of five thousand years before, laid down five thousand years before.In fact he was preaching that we should turn the clock backward and we should move to the days of Manu – five thousand years back. To him the greatest and the latest invention was the spinning wheel. After that, no science…science’s work finished with the spinning wheel. Of course he became the leader of those people who are not contemporary.You are asking me how to save humanity. From whom? I will say from Mahatma Gandhi and people like him.Yes, save humanity:Save it from the popes, shankaracharyas, imams. Save it from Jesus Christ, Mahavira, Gautam Buddha. Save it.But I know your question is not about saving it from Jesus Christ. You are asking just the opposite: you are asking me how to save it for Jesus Christ, not from Jesus Christ. But why? And have you tried to think – are you saved? Can you say that you have come to the point beyond which there is no growth? Can you say that you are utterly contented, that you don’t need even a single moment more to live because there is nothing left for you?Are you saved from all anxiety, anguish, misery, suffering, anger, jealousy?Are you saved from your own ego?If you are not saved from all this rubbish hanging around, all this poison in your being, you have some nerve to ask how to save humanity.And who are we to save humanity?On what authority?I can never conceive myself as a savior, as a messiah, because these are all ego trips. Who am I to save you? If I can save myself, that is more than enough.But it is a strange world. People are drowning themselves in shit and crying loudly, “Save humanity!”From whom? From you?It is psychologically understandable. You start all these ideas of redeeming, saving, helping, serving, just to do one thing: to escape from yourself.You don’t want to face yourself.You don’t want to see where you are, what you are. The best way is, start saving humanity so you will be so much involved, engaged, occupied, worried about great problems that your own problems will look negligible. Perhaps you may forget all about them. This is a very psychological device, but very poisonous. You want somehow to be as far away from yourself as possible so you need not see the wounds which are hurting. The best way is: serve.I used to go to speak in Rotary Clubs, and on their desk they have their motto: We serve. And that was enough to trigger me. “What nonsense is this? Whom do you serve and why should you serve? Who are you to serve?” But Rotarians all over the world believe in service; just believe…. And once in a while they do little things, very clever.The Rotarians collect all the medicines which are left in your house, unused because the sick person is no longer sick. Half the bottle is left – what are you going to do with it? Have some bank account in the other world; give it to the Rotary Club!You are not losing anything, you were going to throw it anyway. What were you going to do with that medicine, those tablets, injections or any other things that are left? You just give it to the Rotary Club. The Rotary Club collects all kinds of medicines from everybody and has all the top people of the city. It is a prestigious thing to be a member of a Rotary Club, to be a Rotarian, because only the top man in a certain profession…. Only one professor will be a Rotarian, only one doctor will be a Rotarian, only one engineer will be a Rotarian – only one from every profession, vocation.So the doctor who is the Rotarian will distribute those medicines to poor people. Great service! The doctor takes his fee and finds out from this junk that they have collected what medicine may be in some way useful. He is doing great service because at least he is giving this much time in finding the medicine from out of the junk: “We serve.” And then he feels great inside that he is doing something of immense value.One man has been opening schools in India for aboriginal children his whole life. He is a follower of Gandhi. Just by chance he met me, because I had gone into that aboriginal tribe. I was studying those aboriginals from every view, because they are living examples of days when man was not so much burdened with all kinds of morality, religion, civilization, culture, etiquette, manners. They are simple, innocent, still wild, fresh.This man was going and collecting money from cities, and opening schools and bringing teachers. Just by the way he met me there. I said, “What are you doing? You think you are doing great service to these people?”He said, “Of course!”So arrogantly he said, “Of course!” I said, “You are not aware of what you are doing. Schools exist in the cities, better than these: what help have they provided for human beings? And if those schools cannot provide, and colleges and universities cannot provide any help to humanity, what do you think? – your small schools are going to help these poor aboriginals?“All that you will do is, you will destroy their originality. All that you will do is, you will destroy their primitive wildness. They are still free: your schools will create nothing but trouble for them.”The man was shocked, but he waited for a few seconds and then said, “Perhaps you are right, because once in a while I have been thinking that these schools and colleges and universities exist on a far wider scale all over the world. What can my small schools do? But then I thought it was Gandhi’s order to me to go to aboriginals and open schools, so I am following my master’s order.”I said, “If your master was an idiot, that does not mean that you have to continue following the order. Now, stop – I order you! And I tell you why you have been doing all this – just to escape from your own suffering, your own misery. You are a miserable man; anybody can see it from your face. You have never loved anybody, you have never been loved by anybody.”He said, “How did you manage to infer that? – because it is true. I was an orphan, nobody loved me, and I have been brought up in Gandhi’s ashram where love was only talked about in prayer; otherwise, love was not a thing to be practiced. There was strict discipline, a kind of regimentation. So nobody has ever loved me, that’s true; and you are right, I have never loved anybody because in Gandhi’s ashram it was impossible to fall in love. That was the greatest crime.“I was one of those whom Gandhi praised because I never fell in his eyes. Even his own sons betrayed him. Devadas, his son, fell in love with Rajgopalchary’s daughter, and then he was expelled from the ashram; they got married. Gandhi’s own personal secretary, Pyarelal, fell in love with a woman and kept the love affair secret for years. When it was exposed it was a scandal, a great scandal.”I said, “What nonsense! But Gandhi’s personal secretary…that means, what about others?” And this man was praised because he never came in contact with any woman! Gandhi sent him to the aboriginal tribes and he had been doing what the master had said.But he said to me, “You have disturbed me. Perhaps it is true: I am just trying to escape from myself, from my wounds, from my own anguish.”So all these people who become interested in saving humanity, in the first place are very egoistic. They are thinking of themselves as saviors. In the second place, they are very sick. They are trying to forget their sickness. And in the third place, whatever they do is going to help man become worse than he is, because they are sick and blind and they are trying to lead people. And when blind people lead then you can be certain sooner or later the whole lot is going to fall into a well.No, I am not interested in saving anybody. In fact, nobody needs saving. Everybody is perfectly okay as he is. Everybody is what he has chosen to be. Now who am I to disturb him? All that I can do is, I can say about myself what has happened to me. I can tell my story. Perhaps from that story someone may get an insight, a direction. Perhaps from that a door opens up. But I am not doing anything, I am simply sharing my own experience.It is not service, I am enjoying it, so it is not service. Remember it. A servant has to be very long-faced and very serious – he is doing such a great work. He is carrying the Himalayas on his shoulders, the whole burden of the world.I am not carrying anything:No burden of the world, no burden of anybody.And I am not doing any serious job.I am just enjoying telling you about my experience. To share it is a joy in itself.If something reaches to you, thank God!He does not exist.Don’t thank me – because I exist!

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How did you manage to stay with your own clarity as a child and not let yourself become intimidated by the grown-ups around you? Where did you get that courage from?Innocence is courage and clarity both.There is no need to have courage if you are innocent. There is no need, either, for any clarity because nothing can be more clear, crystal clear, than innocence. So the whole question is how to protect one’s own innocence.Innocence is not something to be achieved.It is not something to be learned.It is not something like a talent: painting, music, poetry, sculpture. It is not like those things. It is more like breathing, something you are born with.Innocence is everybody’s nature.Nobody is born other than innocent.How can one be born other than innocent? Birth means you have entered the world as a tabula rasa, nothing is written on you. You have only future, no past. That is the meaning of innocence. So first try to understand all the meanings of innocence.The first is: no past, only future.The past corrupts because it gives you memories, experiences, expectations. All those combined together make you clever but not clear. They make you cunning but not intelligent. They may help you to succeed in the world but in your innermost being you will be a failure. And all the success of the world means nothing compared to the failure that finally you are going to face, because ultimately only your inner self remains with you. All is lost: your glory, your power, your name, your fame – all start disappearing like shadows.At the end only that remains which you had brought in the very beginning. You can take from this world only that which you have brought in.In India it is common wisdom that the world is like a waiting room in a railway station; it is not your house. You are not going to remain in the waiting room forever. Nothing in the waiting room belongs to you – the furniture, the paintings on the wall…. You use them – you see the painting, you sit on the chair, you rest on the bed – but nothing belongs to you. You are just here for a few minutes, or for a few hours at the most, then you will be gone.Yes, what you have brought in with you, into the waiting room, you will take away with you; that’s yours. What have you brought into the world? And the world certainly is a waiting room. The waiting may not be in seconds, minutes, hours, days, it may be in years; but what does it matter whether you wait seven hours, or seventy years?You may forget, in seventy years, that you are just in a waiting room. You may start thinking perhaps you are the owner, perhaps this is the house you have built. You may start putting your nameplate on the waiting room.There are people – I have seen it, because I was traveling so much: people have written their names in the bathrooms of the waiting room. People have engraved their names on the furniture of the waiting room. It looks stupid, but it is very similar to what people do in the world. There is a very significant story in ancient Jaina scriptures….In India it is believed that if somebody can become the emperor of the whole world he is called a chakravartin. The word chakravartin simply means…chakra means the wheel. In ancient India it was a way to avoid unnecessary fighting and violence: a chariot, a golden chariot, very valuable, with beautiful and strong horses, would move from one kingdom to another kingdom. If the other kingdom did not resist and let the chariot pass, that meant that kingdom had accepted the owner of the chariot as its superior. Then there was no need to fight.This way the chariot would move, and wherever people obstructed the chariot, then there would be war. If the chariot was not obstructed anywhere, then without any war, the superiority of the king was proved: he become a chakravartin – one whose wheel has moved around and whom nobody has been able to obstruct. This has been the desire of all the kings, to become a chakravartin.Certainly it needs more power than Alexander the Great had. Just to send your chariot…it needs tremendous power to support it. It needs the absolute certainty that if the chariot is obstructed there is going to be a mass slaughter. It means the man is recognized already, that if he wants to conquer anybody there is no way to prevent him conquering you.But it is a very symbolic way, more civilized than…. There is no need to attack, there is no need to start killing; just send a symbolic message. So with the flag of the king, the chariot will go, and if the other king feels that there is no point in resisting – fighting simply means defeat and unnecessary violence, destruction – he welcomes the chariot, and in his capital, flowers are thrown over the chariot.This seems to be a far more civilized way than what the Soviet Union and America are going to do. Just send a beautiful chariot – but that means your strength should be something absolutely certain to you; and not only to you, it should be certain to everybody else. Only then can such a symbol be of any help. So every king had the desire to become a chakravartin someday.The story is that one man became a chakravartin – and it happens only once in thousands of years that a man becomes a chakravartin. Even Alexander the Great was not a world conqueror; there was yet much left unconquered. And he died very young, he was only thirty-three: there was not even time enough to conquer the world. What to say of conquering, the whole world was not even known. Half of the world was unknown, and the half that was known, even that was not conquered. This man, of whom I am going to tell you the story, became the chakravartin.It is said that when a chakravartin dies – because a chakravartin happens only in thousands of years, he is a rare being – when he dies he is received in heaven with great rejoicings and he is taken to a special place.In Jaina mythology, in heaven there is a parallel mountain to the Himalayas. The Himalayas are just made of rocks and earth and ice. The parallel Himalayas in heaven is called Sumeru. Sumeru means the ultimate mountain: nothing can be higher than that, nothing can be better than that. It is solid gold; instead of rocks there are diamonds and rubies and emeralds.When a chakravartin dies he is led to Sumeru mountain to engrave his name on it. That is a rare opportunity; that happens only once in thousands of years. Of course this man was immensely excited that he was going to write his name on Sumeru. That is the ultimate catalogue of all the great ones that have been, and will also be the catalogue of all the great ones who are going to be. This emperor was becoming party to a lineage of supermen.The gatekeeper gave him the instruments to engrave his name. He wanted a few of his men who had committed suicide just because their emperor was dying – they could not think of living without him. His wife, his prime minister, his commander-in-chief – all the great people who were around him, they all had committed suicide, so they had come with him.The emperor wanted the gatekeeper to let them all come to see him engrave his name, because what is the joy if you go alone and engrave your name and nobody is there even to see? – because the real joy is that the whole world should see.The gatekeeper said, “You listen to my advice, because this is my inherited profession. My father was a gatekeeper, his father was a gatekeeper; for centuries we have been gatekeepers to Sumeru mountain. Listen to my advice: Don’t take them with you; otherwise you will repent.”The emperor could not understand, but he could not even go against his advice – because what interest could that man have in preventing him?The gatekeeper said, “If you still want them to see, first go engrave your name; then come back and take them with you if you want. I have no objection even now if you want to take them, but just in case you decide not to, then there will be no place, no chance…they will be with you. You go alone.” This was perfectly sane advice.The emperor said, “That’s good. I will go alone, engrave my name, come back, and call you all.”The gatekeeper said, “I am perfectly agreeable to that.”The emperor went and he saw the Sumeru shining under thousands of suns – because in heaven you cannot be so poor as to have just one sun – thousands of suns, and a golden mountain far bigger than the Himalayas – and the Himalayas are almost two thousands miles long! He could not open his eyes for a moment, it was so glaring there. And then he started looking for a space, the right space, but he was very much puzzled: there was no space; the whole mountain was engraved with names.He could not believe his eyes. For the first time he became aware what he was. Up to now he was thinking he was a superman who happens once in thousands of years. But time has been from eternity; even thousands of years didn’t make any difference, so many chakravartins had happened already. There was no space on that biggest mountain in the whole universe where he could write his small name.He came back, and now he understood that the gatekeeper was right not to take his wife and his commander-in-chief and his prime minister and other intimate friends. It was good that they had not seen the situation. They would still believe that their emperor was a rare being.He took the gatekeeper inside and he said, “But there is no space!”The gatekeeper said, “That’s what I was telling you. What you have to do is to erase a few names and write down your name. That’s what has been done; my whole life I have been seeing this done, my father used to say this has been done. My father’s father – none of my family have seen Sumeru empty, or any space ever.“Whenever a chakravartin has come he had to erase a few names and write his own name. So this is not the whole history of the chakravartins. Many times it has been erased, many times it has been engraved. You just do your work, and then if you want to show your friends you can bring them in.”The emperor said, “No, I don’t want to show them and I don’t want to even write my name. What is the point? – someday somebody will come and erase it.“My whole life has become utterly meaningless. This was my only hope, that Sumeru, the golden mountain in heaven was going to have my name. For this I have lived, for this I have staked my life; for this I was ready to kill the whole world. And anybody else can erase my name and write his. What is the point of writing it? I will not write it.” The gatekeeper laughed.The emperor said, “Why are you laughing?”The gatekeeper said, “This is strange, because this too I have been hearing from my grandfathers – that chakravartins come, and seeing the whole story, just turn back; they don’t write their names. You are not new: anybody having a little intelligence would do the same.”In this whole world what can you gain?What can you take away with you?Your name, your prestige, your respectability? Your money, your power – what? Your scholarship?You cannot take anything.Everything will have to be dropped here.And in that moment you will understand that all that you possessed was not yours; the very idea of possession was wrong. And because of that possession you were corrupted.To increase that possession – to have more money, to have more power, to conquer more lands – you were doing things which even you cannot say were right. You were lying, you were dishonest. You were having hundreds of faces. You were not true even for a single moment to anybody or to yourself; you could not be.You had to be false, phony, pretending, because these are things that help you to succeed in the world. Authenticity is not going to help you. Honesty is not going to help you. Truthfulness is not going to help you.Without possessions, success, fame; who are you?You don’t know.You are your name, you are your fame, you are your prestige, your power. But other than these, who are you?So this whole possessiveness becomes your identity. It gives you a false sense of being.That’s the ego.Ego is not something mysterious, it is a very simple phenomenon. You don’t know who you are, and to live without knowing who you are is impossible. If I don’t know who I am, then what am I doing here? Then whatsoever I am doing becomes meaningless. The first and the foremost thing is to know who I am. Perhaps then I can do something that fulfills my nature, makes me contented, brings me home.But if I don’t know who I am, and I go on doing things, how can I manage to reach where my nature was supposed to reach, to lead? I have been running hither and thither but there is not going to be any point that I can say, “Now I have arrived, this was the place I was searching for.”You don’t know who you are, so some false identity is needed as a substitute. Your possessions give you that false identity.When Alexander the Great was coming back from India he remembered that his master, Aristotle, had asked him to bring a sannyasin from India. Aristotle had heard about sannyasins. Rumors from business people, travelers, adventurers, were reaching him that a strange kind of man exists in India: the sannyasin. It was absolutely unbelievable because a sannyasin is possible only when a certain civilization reaches its very peak, not before that. A primitive society cannot have sannyasins.Only a very superior culture, rich, can become fed up with richness, fed up with culture, fed up with civilization. You cannot be fed up with something which you don’t have. To be fed up with something, you need to have it so much that it loses all meaning.There is a continuous loss in meaning. For example: if you have one million dollars, do you think when you have ten million dollars the dollar will have the same value for you? It will be ten times less. But if you have one hundred thousand million dollars, then in the same proportion the dollar will go on losing its value for you. You can think of a situation where the dollar loses all meaning, it becomes just dust unto dust. But that is possible only when you have so much.A country poor, hungry, starving cannot have real sannyasins. Yes, India still has sannyasins but that is just the dead corpse of sannyas carried on by tradition. Otherwise sannyasins disappeared at least two thousand years ago in India – they don’t exist.My effort was the first after two thousand years to bring the sannyasin back in his true color. That became a conflict because the old sannyasin is dead, but he holds the power of tradition, of the past; my sannyasin is alive, but he has no power of the past, no power of tradition, no authority from the scriptures. There was going to be conflict. And the old were afraid: although they knew they had all the authority, one thing was certain – that they were not alive. They may have all the authority but they are a corpse.My sannyasin may not have any authority, but he is alive, and life is the only authority there is; hence, the fear in all different traditions of sannyas in India against my sannyasins.We were not doing any harm to anybody; we were not even concerned. We were simply trying to live our way, not interfering with anybody, not even trespassing on anybody’s path. But strangely, the whole of traditional India – and the whole country is traditional – wanted to destroy my people.The reason is clear: they became aware that if we succeed in surviving then their death has come. Then they cannot remain any more, they will have to disappear. In fact they are living posthumously; they should have disappeared two thousand years before. Exactly at the time when Alexander left India, they should have disappeared.Alexander inquired in every place he visited, “I want to see a sannyasin. My master has requested me…. I asked him, ‘Would you like anything from India?’“ – because in those days India was the golden bird. Everything valuable was coming from India – in fact Europe was almost in a barbarous state. But Aristotle had asked not for something that Alexander could have thought of, imagined. He asked a very strange thing: “Bring a sannyasin.”Alexander inquired in every place he visited, and everybody said, “You come a little late.” It was five hundred years after Buddha that Alexander reached India. They said, “You should have come five hundred years before, or at least two hundred years before.“If you had come five hundred years before you would have been greeted by sannyasins everywhere; they were all over the place. They were a strange tribe of people. Even if you had come two hundred years before you would have found one here, one there. That great era of the sannyasins had passed but a few remnants were still available. Now it is very difficult, but you go on trying; perhaps somewhere you may be able to find one.”Alexander was very puzzled: he would not even be able to present to his master the simple gift he had asked for; but finally at the border he found a man. People said, “You have come to the right place. This is the man.” Alexander reports in his memoirs that the man’s name was Dandamis; that seems to be a Greek transliteration of some Indian word.I have been thinking what exactly it could be, because Dandamis is not an Indian word. But there has been a certain group of sannyasins who are called Danda Swami. Danda means a staff – they carry a staff – and swami means a master of oneself. So it seems “Danda swami” somehow has got mixed and become Dandamis.Alexander sent his people – obviously. Alexander was a great conqueror, emperor: he would not go to the sannyasin. The sannyasin was just a beggar, and Alexander heard from people that he was naked and just lived by the side of the river under a tree.Alexander sent four soldiers with naked swords and told them, “Invite the swami. Tell him, ‘Alexander the Great wants you to be his guest. He wants to take you to his country with great respect and honor, and you will remain there as a royal guest. This is something very special, because Alexander has never invited anybody the way he is inviting you.’“They went, and they told Dandamis. The naked man simply laughed. He said, “A man who calls himself Alexander the Great cannot be really great. That is a sign of a very mean mind, to think of oneself as ‘the Great’.”The soldiers were shocked. They said, “What are you saying? Can’t you see our naked swords?”Dandamis said, “I am not blind like you, and like your Alexander the Great. If you who are blind can see, can’t I, who am not blind, see? Just go and tell Alexander that a sannyasin moves according to his will. Thanks for your invitation, and in return I invite you to be here with me, my guest under my tree, to have some taste of what sannyas is.”Alexander was very angry when he heard that this had been the response. He himself went and he said, “I am a dangerous man.”Again the naked man laughed, and he said, “You cannot be more dangerous than I am. If you are so dangerous, why are you carrying this sword and having so many people around you with naked swords? Look at me, standing naked – and you think you are dangerous? Have you come to accept my invitation and be with me, or have you come to repeat your invitation?”Alexander said, “I have come to take you forcibly. Now it is no longer an invitation: either you come with us, or this sword will cut your head off and finish you right now.”Dandamis laughed a third time, and he said, “That’s great! You do it, right now. I am not moving from here. Nobody can move me against my will. Yes, you can cut off my head because that does not belong to me, but you cannot shake me; that is my citadel where I am absolutely the emperor.“You can cut off my head, you can cut off my hands, you can cut off my legs, you can cut my whole body into pieces, but remember one thing: when you are cutting my body, my head, my hands, I will be watching in the same way as you will be watching. Your sword cannot cut me, my watcher cannot be penetrated by a sword. So start!” he said.But it is so difficult to kill such a man, who is inviting you to kill him. Alexander said, “I am sorry that I disturbed you, but now I know why my master asked me to bring a sannyasin. And now I also know why I could not find a sannyasin in so many places I have been visiting. Now I understand also why people were saying, ‘You have come five hundred years late. The whole country was full of sannyasins; now they are certainly a rare phenomenon.’“I don’t know what this watcher is, but seeing you, looking at you – your integrity, your strength – makes me feel that I have wasted my life. Perhaps rather than conquering the whole world, if I had also found this watcher that would have been better.”You come with an innocent watcher into the world. Everybody comes in the same way, with the same quality of consciousness.The question is, how did I manage so that nobody could corrupt my innocence, clarity; from where did I get this courage? How could I manage not to be humiliated by grown-ups and their world?I have not done anything, so there is no question of how. It simply happened, so I cannot take the credit for it.Perhaps it happens to everybody but you become interested in other things. You start bargaining with the grown-up world. They have many things to give to you; you have only one thing to give, and that is your integrity, your self-respect. You don’t have much, a single thing – you can call it anything: innocence, intelligence, authenticity. You have only one thing.And the child is naturally very much interested in everything he sees around. He is continuously wanting to have this, to have that; that is part of human nature. If you look at the small child, even a just-born baby, you can see he has started groping for something; his hands are trying to find out something. He has started the journey.In the journey he will lose himself, because you can’t get anything in this world without paying for it. And the poor child cannot understand that what he is giving is so valuable that if the whole world is on one side, and his integrity on the other side, then too his integrity will be more weighty, more valuable. The child has no way to know about it. This is the problem, because what he has got he has simply got. He takes it for granted.Let me tell you one story which will make it clear. One rich man, very rich, became in the end very frustrated – which is a natural outcome of all success. Nothing fails like success. Success is significant only if you are a failure. Once you succeed then you know that you have been cheated by the world, by the people, by the society. The man had all the riches but no peace of mind. He started looking for peace of mind.That’s what is happening in America. In America more people are looking for peace of mind than anywhere else. In India I have never come across a person who is looking for peace of mind. Peace of the stomach has to be taken care of first – peace of mind is too far away. From the stomach the mind is almost millions of miles away.But in America everybody is looking for peace of mind, and of course when you are looking for it, then people will be there ready to give it to you. This is a simple law of economics: wherever there is demand there is supply. It does not matter whether what you are asking for you really need. Nor does anybody bother about what the supply is going to give you – whether it is just bogus advertisement, propaganda, or whether there is something substantial.Knowing this simple principle, that wherever there is demand there is supply, the cunning and clever people have gone one step ahead. Now they say, “There is no need to wait for demand to happen, you create the demand.” And that is the whole art of advertisement: it is creating demand.Before you read the advertisement you had no such demand, you had never felt that this was your need. But reading the advertisement, suddenly you feel, “My God, I have been missing it. And I am such a fool that I never knew that this thing exists.”Before somebody starts manufacturing something, producing something, even years ahead – three, four years ahead – he starts advertising. The thing is not there yet in the market because first the demand has to reach the minds of people. And once the demand is there, by that time the supply will be ready.Bernard Shaw has said that when he was new and he published his first book, of course there was no demand – nobody had ever heard about George Bernard Shaw. How can you demand, “I want George Bernard Shaw’s book, his drama?” So what he used to do the whole day…. He published the book – he himself was the publisher, he put together the money himself – and then he went from one bookstore to another bookstore asking, “Have you got George Bernard Shaw’s book?”They said, “George Bernard Shaw? We never heard the name.”He said, “Strange, such a great man and you have never heard of him and you run a bookstore? Are you out-of-date or something? The first thing you should do is get George Bernard Shaw’s book.” He had published only one book but he started advertising for several books, because when you are going around, why just publicize one book? And one book does not make a man a great writer.He would go in different clothes – sometimes with a hat, sometimes with glasses. And people started calling at George Bernard Shaw’s house. And he had to do all this – the advertising, supplying; that’s how he sold his first book. He was asking people on the street, “Have you heard…because I am hearing so much about a certain book written by some George Bernard Shaw. People say it is just great, fantastic. Have you heard?”They would say, “No, we have never even heard the name.”He said, “This is strange. I used to think London was a cultured society.” And he went to libraries and clubs and every place where there was a possibility to create a demand, and he created the demand. He sold the book, and finally – that’s what he was continuously doing – finally he became one of the greatest writers of this age. He had created the demand.But if you succeed, there is no need for anybody to create the demand for peace of mind. If you succeed, you lose peace of mind on the way. That is a natural course. Success takes all peace from your mind. It simply sucks everything that is significant in life: peace, silence, joy, love. It goes on taking everything away from you. Finally your hands are full of junk, and all that was valuable is lost. And suddenly you realize peace of mind is needed.Immediately there are suppliers, who don’t know anything about mind, who don’t know anything about peace. I have read one book entitled Peace Of Mind by a Jewish rabbi, Joshua Liebman. I have gone through the whole book; the man knows neither about peace nor does he know about the mind. But he is a businessman, he is a Jew: He has done a good job without knowing anything about peace of mind.His book is one of the best sellers in the world because whoever wants peace of mind is bound to sooner or later find Joshua Liebman’s book. And he has written it beautifully. He is a good writer, very articulate, impressive; you will be influenced by it. But peace of mind will remain as far away as it was before, or it may even have gone farther away by your reading this book.In fact, if man knows what peace is, and what mind is, he cannot write a book entitled Peace Of Mind, because mind is the cause of all unpeace, all restlessness. Peace is when there is no mind. So peace of mind – no commodity like this exists. If mind is there, then peace is not. If peace is there then mind is not. But to write a book “Peace of No Mind”…nobody is going to purchase it. I have been thinking…but I thought, nobody is going to purchase “Peace of No Mind”. It just will not make sense to them, but that’s exactly the truth.The child is unaware of what he has brought with him. This rich man was in the same position. He had all the riches in the world, and now he was searching for peace of mind. He went from one sage to another and they all gave great advice, but advice helps nobody.In fact only fools give advice, and only fools take advice. Wise people are very reluctant to give you advice because a wise man certainly knows that the only thing in the world which is given freely is advice, and that which is never taken by anybody is advice, so why should he bother?A wise man first prepares you so that you can take the advice. He does not simply give you advice; you need to be prepared. It may take years to prepare you, to prepare the ground, and only then can you sow the seeds. It will be a fool who simply goes on throwing seeds on rocks and stones without even bothering that he is wasting seeds.All these sages gave him advice but nothing clicked. Finally a man whom he had not asked, who was not in any way a famous man – on the contrary he was thought to be the village idiot – that man stopped him on the road one day and said, “You are unnecessarily wasting your time: none of these are sages. I know them perfectly, but because I am an idiot nobody believes me. Perhaps you will also not believe me, but I know a sage.”“Just seeing you so tortured continuously for peace of mind, I thought it would be better if I showed you the right person. Otherwise I am an idiot; nobody asks me for advice and I never give any advice to anybody. But it was too much: seeing you so sad and so miserable, I broke my silence. You go to this man in the next village.”The rich man immediately went, with a big bag full of precious diamonds, on his beautiful horse. He reached there, he saw that man – this man was known to the Sufis as Mulla Nasruddin.He asked the Mulla, “Can you help me to attain peace of mind?”Mulla said, “Help? I can give it to you.”The rich man thought, “This is strange. First that idiot suggested…and just out of desperation I thought there is no harm, so I came here. This seems to be even a greater idiot: he is saying, ‘I can give it to you.’“The rich man said, “You can give it to me? I have been to all kinds of sages; they all give advice – do this, do that, discipline yourself, do charity, help the poor, open hospitals, this and that. They say all these things, and in fact I have done all those things; nothing helps. In fact more and more trouble arises. And you say you can give it to me?”The Mulla said, “It is so simple. You get down from the horse.” So the rich man got down from the horse. He was holding his bag, and Mulla asked, “What are you holding in your bag so closely to your heart?”He said, “These are precious diamonds. If you can give me peace, I will give you this bag.” But before he could even figure out what was happening, Mulla took the bag and ran away!The rich man, for a moment, was in shock; he could not even understand what to do. And then he had to follow him. But it was Mullah’s own town – he knew every street and shortcut, and he was running. The rich man had never run in his whole life and he was so fat…. He was crying and huffing and puffing, and tears were rolling down. He said, “I have been completely cheated! This man has taken away all my life’s hard work, my earnings; everything he has taken away.”So a crowd followed, and all were laughing. He said, “Are you all idiots? Is this town full of idiots? I have been completely ruined, and rather than catching hold of the thief you are all laughing.”They said, “He is not a thief, he is a very sage man.”The rich man said, “That idiot from my village got me into this trouble!” But somehow, running, perspiring, he followed Mulla. Mulla arrived back under the same tree where the horse was still standing. He sat down under the tree with the bag, and the rich man came crying and weeping. Mulla said, “You take this bag.” The rich man took the bag and put it close to his heart. Mulla said, “How does it feel? Can you feel some peace of mind?”The rich man said, “Yes it feels very peaceful. You are a strange man, and you have strange methods.”Mulla said, “No strange methods – simple mathematics. Whatever you have, you start taking it for granted. You just have to be given an opportunity to lose it; then immediately you will become aware of what you have lost. You have not gained anything new; it is the same bag that you have been carrying with no peace of mind. Now the same bag you are holding close to your heart and anybody can see how peaceful you are looking, a perfect sage! Just go home, and don’t bother people.”This is the problem for the child, because he comes with innocence and he is ready to buy anything, and give his innocence. He is ready to buy any rubbish and give his courage. He is ready to buy just toys – and what else is there in this world except toys? – and lose his clarity. He will understand only when all these toys are there in his possession and he can’t feel any joy from them, can’t see any achievement, any fulfillment. Then he becomes aware of what he has lost – and he himself has lost it.You are asking me how I managed not to lose my innocence and clarity. I have not done anything; just simply, from the very beginning…. I was a lonely child because I was brought up by my maternal grandfather and grandmother; I was not with my father and mother. Those two old people were alone and they wanted a child who would be the joy of their last days. So my father and mother agreed: I was their eldest child, the first-born; they sent me.I don’t remember any relationship with my father’s family in the early years of my childhood. With these two old men – my grandfather and his old servant, who was really a beautiful man – and my old grandmother…these three people. And the gap was so big…I was absolutely alone. It was not a company, it could not be a company. They tried their hardest to be as friendly to me as possible but it was just not possible.I was left to myself. I could not say things to them. I had nobody else, because in that small village my family were the richest; and it was such a small village – not more than two hundred people in all – and so poor that my grandparents would not allow me to mix with the village children. They were dirty, and of course they were almost beggars. So there was no way to have friends. That caused a great impact. In my whole life I have never been a friend, I have never known anybody to be a friend. Yes, acquaintances I had.In those first, early years I was so lonely that I started enjoying it; and it is really a joy. So it was not a curse to me, it proved a blessing. I started enjoying it, and I started feeling self-sufficient; I was not dependent on anybody.I have never been interested in games for the simple reason that from my very childhood there was no way to play, there was nobody to play with. I can still see myself in those earliest years, just sitting.We had a beautiful spot where our house was, just in front of a lake. Far away for miles, the lake…and it was so beautiful and so silent. Only once in while would you see a line of white cranes flying, or making love calls, and the peace would be disturbed; otherwise, it was almost the right place for meditation. And when they would disturb the peace – a love call from a bird…after his call the peace would deepen, it would become deeper.The lake was full of lotus flowers, and I would sit for hours so self-content, as if the world did not matter: the lotuses, the white cranes, the silence….And my grandparents were very aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness. They had continuously been seeing that I had no desire to go to the village to meet anybody, or to talk with anybody. Even if they wanted to talk my answers were yes, or no; I was not interested in talking either. So they became aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness, and it was their sacred duty not to disturb me.So for seven years continuously nobody tried to corrupt my innocence; there was nobody. Those three old people who lived in the house, the servant and my grandparents, were all protective in every possible way that nobody should disturb me. In fact I started feeling, as I grew up, a little embarrassed that because of me they could not talk, they could not be normal as everybody is. It was just the opposite situation….It happens with children that you tell them, “Be silent because your father is thinking, your grandfather is resting. Be quiet, sit silently.” In my childhood it happened the opposite way. Now I cannot answer why and how; it simply happened. That’s why I said it simply happened – the credit does not go to me.All those three old people were continuously making signs to each other: “Don’t disturb him – he is enjoying so much.” And they started loving my silence.Silence has its vibe; it is infectious, particularly a child’s silence which is not forced, which is not because you are saying, “I will beat you if you create any nuisance or noise.” No, that is not silence. That will not create the joyous vibration that I am talking about, when a child is silent on his own, enjoying for no reason; his happiness is uncaused. That creates great ripples all around.In a better world, every family will learn from children. You are in such a hurry to teach them. Nobody seems to learn from them, and they have much to teach you. And you have nothing to teach them.Just because you are older and powerful you start making them just like you without ever thinking about what you are, where you have reached, what your status is in the inner world. You are a pauper; and you want the same for your child also?But nobody thinks; otherwise people would learn from small children. Children bring so much from the other world because they are such fresh arrivals. They still carry the silence of the womb, the silence of the very existence.So it was just a coincidence that for seven years I remained undisturbed – no Miss Judith Martin to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy. My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible – particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes – these small things affect all your life patterns – she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood.She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: “We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close.” She insisted, “Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we…? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself.”My grandfather – I heard them discussing in the night, thinking that I was asleep – used to say to her, “You are telling me to do this, and I am doing it; but he is somebody else’s son, and sooner or later he will have to go to his parents. What will they say? – ‘You have not taught him any manners, any etiquette, he is absolutely wild.’“She said, “Don’t be worried about that. In this whole world everybody is civilized, has manners, etiquette, but what is the gain? You are very civilized – what have you got out of it? At the most his parents will be angry at us. So what? – let them be angry. They can’t harm us, and by that time the child will be strong enough that they cannot change his life course.”I am tremendously grateful to that old woman. My grandfather was again and again worried that sooner or later he was going to be responsible: “They will say, ‘We left our child with you and you have not taught him anything.’“My grandmother did not even allow…because there was one man in the village who could at least teach me the beginnings of language, mathematics, a little geography. He was educated to the fourth grade – the lowest four; that is what was called primary education in India. But he was the most educated man in the town.My grandfather tried hard: “He can come and he can teach him. At least he will know the alphabet, some mathematics, so when he goes to his parents they will not say that we just wasted seven years completely.”But my grandmother said, “Let them do whatsoever they want to do after seven years. For seven years he has to be just his natural self, and we are not going to interfere.” And her argument was always, “You know the alphabet, so what? You know mathematics, so what? You have earned a little money; do you want him also to earn a little money and live just like you?”That was enough to keep that old man silent. What to do? He was in a difficulty because he could not argue, and he knew that he would be held responsible, not she, because my father would ask him, “What have you done?” And actually that would have been the case, but fortunately he died before my father could ask.But my father continuously was saying, “That old man is responsible, he has spoiled the child.” But now I was strong enough, and I made it clear to him: “Before me, never say a single word against my maternal grandfather. He has saved me from being spoiled by you – that is your real anger. But you have other children – spoil them. And at the final stage you will say who is spoiled.”He had other children, and more and more children went on coming. I used to tease him, “You please bring one child more, make it a dozen. Eleven children? People ask, “How many children?” Eleven does not look right; one dozen is more impressive.”And in later years I used to tell him, “You go on spoiling all your children; I am wild, and I will remain wild.”What you see as innocence is nothing but wildness. What you see as clarity is nothing but wildness. Somehow I remained out of the grip of civilization.And once I was strong enough…. And that’s why these people – Miss Judith Martin, and their kind – insist, “Take hold of the child as quickly as possible, don’t waste time because the earlier you take hold of the child, the easier it is. Once the child becomes strong enough, then to bend him according to your desires will be difficult.”And life has seven-year circles. By the seventh year the child is perfectly strong; now you cannot do anything. Now he knows where to go, what to do. He is capable of arguing. He is capable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. And his clarity will be at the climax when he is seven. If you don’t disturb his earlier years, then at the seventh he is so crystal clear about everything that his whole life will be lived without any repentance.I have lived without any repentance. I have tried to find: Have I done anything wrong, ever? Not that people have been thinking that all that I have done is right, that is not the point: I have never thought anything that I have done was wrong. The whole world may think it was wrong, but to me there is absolute certainty that it was right; it was the right thing to do.So there is no question of repenting about the past. And when you don’t have to repent about the past you are free from it. The past keeps you entangled like an octopus because you go on feeling, “That thing I should not have done,” or, “That thing which I was supposed to do and did not do….” All those things go on pulling you backward.I don’t see anything behind me, no past.If I say something about my past, it is simply factual memory, it has no psychological involvement. I am telling you as if I am telling you about somebody else. It is just factual; it has nothing to do with my personal involvement. It might have occurred to somebody else, it might have happened to somebody else.So remember, a factual memory is not enslaving. Psychological memory is, and psychological memory is made up of things that you think, or you have been conditioned to think, were wrong and you did them. Then there is a wound, a psychological wound. Things that were “right” and you have not done are another wound.If you count your wounds you will be surprised how many things there are which you have done against the conscience that has been created in you by the society, and how many things you have not done – again which the conscience wanted you to do. And you are in a fix; between these two things you are caught. Your clarity is lost because of this psychological smoke which goes on deepening, thickening. Your clarity is lost; you become almost a blind man.That’s why I say my kind of work is a very strange work; it is just like selling glasses in a city of blind people. First it is very difficult to convince them to purchase glasses. In the second place if they somehow – just to get rid of you – purchase glasses then they start torturing you because they say they cannot see through the glasses. They are blind, glasses won’t help them.But what else can be said to you? If it is so difficult to convince you to wear glasses, you can understand how difficult it will be to make you agree to eye surgery – because in the first place you are not ready to believe that you are blind. Who says you are blind? But except surgery nothing can help. You have gone too far into blindness. You have lost your innocence and clarity too far back. To regain it, except for surgical methods nothing else can be of any help.My sannyas is surgical. It cuts your very roots, which are making you blind. It cuts your relationship with tradition, convention, orthodoxy, society, civilization, culture. It makes you wild again. It brings you to the point from where your parents and your society and your culture started diverting you. My work just consists in taking away all that which has been given to you by others – with all the good intentions in the world but they were all blind people; their good intentions don’t make any sense. They were blind; with their good intentions they have made you blind.All that has to be taken away. It will look almost like a death, because right now you think you are nothing but the combination of all that has been given to you: the education, the culture, the civilization, the religion. All that has to be completely cut off. And then you will find your small, still voice within you: the child will again speak.To become a child again is to be a sannyasin – and then to start living. Now nobody can disturb you; you are a strong enough. If you can find your child, you can protect the child. That child is yourself. That’s what you had brought from existence. And once you have recovered it, reclaimed it, you are the blessed one. There is nothing more valuable than that.With that rediscovery you start living a new life. I call that the life of the rebel but basically it is life – very innocent, clear, individual, independent. You will not become world famous, you will not become great conquerors, but you will become exactly what you need to become: your own being. This is religion to me; everything else is pseudo. Destroy all pseudo-ness in you.It is risky. That’s why I say the life of a sannyasin is the most dangerous life in the world, but the most exciting too. And anything that does not lead ultimately to ecstasy is not worth calling exciting.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the right way to help a child grow without interfering in his natural potential?Every way of helping a child is wrong. The very idea of helping is not right.The child needs your love, not your help. The child needs nourishment, support, but not your help.The natural potential of the child is unknown, so there is no way of correctly helping him to attain to his natural potential. You cannot help when the goal is unknown; all that you can do is not to interfere. In fact, everybody is interfering with everybody else in the name of help; and because the name is beautiful, nobody objects. Of course, the child is so small, so dependent on you, that he cannot object.The people all around are just like you: they have also been helped by their parents, the way you have been. Neither they have attained to their natural potential, nor have you. The whole world is missing out in spite of all the help from the parents, from the family, from the relatives, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests. In fact, everybody is so burdened with help that under its weight… What to say of attaining one’s natural potential – one cannot even attain unnatural potential! One cannot move; the weight on everybody’s shoulders is Himalayan.And not interfering is one of the most difficult things. It is not the nature of the mind. Mind is basically continuously, persistently, tempted to interfere. It lives on interference. The more you can interfere, the more powerful you are.How do you measure power? It is not something material, you cannot weigh it – but it is measured, weighed. The way to measure it is by how much you can interfere in how many people’s lives. Adolph Hitler is powerful because he can interfere in millions of people’s lives. You are not Adolph Hitler, but still you can interfere in a few people’s lives…a little, miniature Adolph Hitler.At least the husband can interfere in the wife’s life; the wife can interfere in the husband’s life. It is a mutual game; in this way, both become powerful. The husband goes on interfering in his own way, the wife goes on interfering in her own way, without being aware why they are interfering. They were supposed to be together to enhance each other’s life but…The husband will come home late every day – not that it is essential to come home late, but it is a question of power, ego: if he comes home on time that means he has surrendered. I know husbands who go on sitting in their office doing nothing, gossiping, knowing perfectly well that their wives will be boiling. They could reach home in time, but that’s what she wants. Just because she wants it, it is impossible for the man, against his manliness, to be on time; he will come late. And the same scene is repeated every day.Nor is the wife ready to drop asking him why he is late, knowing perfectly well that whatsoever he says is a lie. She knows it is a lie, he knows that she knows that it is a lie – and it is a lie, but it is a good beginning to a fight, a good start, a good excuse. And then the wife goes on doing the same…I was sitting with a husband in his car, and he was honking his horn because he was worried; he had to take me to a particular meeting and I had to be there on time. I don’t like wasting people’s time; I am not a political leader. A political leader is supposed to come late. Again, the same power – you have to wait. He is not just a nobody; he is so occupied, so busy, that he is bound to be late.I have known political leaders who were just sitting and gossiping, and I have said to them, “We have to go to your meeting.”They said, “You don’t understand. A politician should not arrive on time. That means he is just a small fry, not a big shot.”I am not a politician. I am neither a big shot, nor a small fry. I am just a human being, neither anything more nor anything less. I have been particular about arriving in time.So the husband was worried. His wife leant out of the window and said, “Stop honking your horn! I have told you one thousand times that I am coming in one minute.”I looked at the husband and said, “This is something, ‘one thousand times’ and ‘I am coming in one minute’! Where did she get the time to say it one thousand times in one minute?”But it is a power trip. The wife wants it to be known who the boss is. You can go on honking the horn, but without the boss coming down, the car cannot move.I have a certain rapport with women, so whomsoever I was staying with, soon I became very close to their mothers, to their wives, sisters. And I asked, “What is the matter? Every day it happens; the poor man goes on honking.”They would say, “Nothing is the matter. We are not busy, but he goes on coming home late every day and pays no attention to what we are saying. So whenever we have the chance… It is simple give and take.”All the people around you have been helped, greatly helped, to be what they are. You have been helped; now you want to help your children too.All that you can do is be loving, be nourishing, be warm, be accepting. The child brings an unknown potential and there is no way to figure out what he is going to be. So no procedure can be suggested: “This way you should help the child.” Each child is unique so there cannot be a general discipline for every child.People like Miss Judith Martin are suggesting measures for every child, as if children are produced on an assembly line in a factory. No two children are the same. How can you suggest, how can you even have the nerve to suggest a generalized program that should be followed?But Miss Judith Martin…. I don’t know how many times she has become “Miss.” I think certainly at least a dozen times because no husband could survive her; he will either escape or commit suicide, but he will have to do something to make her a Miss again. And she must now be very old.Perhaps when she finally became famous and the most well-known authority on child rearing, nobody dared to marry her again, because do you think such a woman, who has no compassion on children, will have any compassion on husbands? She will train them exactly the way animals are trained in a circus. She will make them dance to her tune; and her being a world-famous authority, what can the poor husband do except dance?This kind of person has existed down the ages around the world, everywhere. They have prescriptions, recipes, disciplines for everybody, not only for their contemporaries but for all future generations, as to what is right. They are so idiotic – although they are known as great sages who have given you religions, disciplines, moralities, ethics, codes of conduct: great lawgivers. But I say to you again, these people are idiots. Only an idiot can think in a generalized way when human beings are concerned.There is no average human being; you will never come across the average man. And all these authorities are concerned with the average man, who does not exist! The average man is just like God – omnipresent, yet you cannot find him anywhere. God is so omnipresent that…I have heard about a nun…The whole nunnery became concerned about the nun: “Is she sick or something?” She was taking her bath with her clothes on! The bathroom door was closed…And when they asked, “What is the matter? Why don’t you undress when the doors are closed and nobody is there?” she said, “Nobody? God is omnipresent. Yes, none of you, but God is there, and to undress before God does not look right.”They must all have thought her a crackpot, but she really, literally had accepted the idea of the omnipresence of God.The average man is exactly like the omnipresent God: he exists nowhere and is supposed to exist everywhere. All principles are addressed to the average man.You ask me how to help the child in the right way. The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage, then please don’t help the child.Love him, nourish him. Let him do what he wants to do. Let him go where he wants to go. Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: “If you don’t interfere, there may be danger; he may fall into the well if you don’t stop him.” But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into a well than to help him and destroy him.It is very rare that a child falls into a well – and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don’t help the child and don’t interfere with the child. The well can be removed, but don’t interfere with the child. Your real concern should be to remove all dangers, but don’t interfere with the child; let him go his own way.You will have to understand some significant growth patterns. Life has seven-year cycles, it moves in seven-year cycles, just as the earth makes one rotation on its center in twenty-four hours. Now, nobody knows why it is not twenty-five, why it is not twenty-three. There is no way to answer it; it is simply a fact.The earth takes three hundred and sixty-five days to make one round of the sun. Why three hundred and sixty-five? Nobody knows, nobody needs to know. And it does not make any difference. If it were taking four hundred days, what difference would it have made to you? Or three hundred days…? The question would have remained the same: Why?So remember one thing: any question is absurd if, with every answer, the question still remains the same. In twenty-four hours the earth makes one turn on its center. Why? Make it twenty-five, make it twenty-six, make it thirty, sixty – as much as you want – the question still stands the same: Why? Hence I call the question absurd; it will always remain the same.So don’t ask me why life moves in seven-year cycles. I don’t know. This much I know: it moves in seven-year cycles. And if you understand those seven-year cycles, you will understand a great deal about human growth.The first seven years are the most important because the foundation of life is being laid. That’s why all the religions are very much concerned about grabbing children as quickly as possible.The Jews will circumcise the child. What nonsense! But they are stamping the child as a Jew; it is a primitive way of stamping. You still do it on the cattle around here; I have seen the brands. Every owner brands his cattle, otherwise they can get mixed up. It is a cruel thing. Red-hot steel has to be used to brand the cattle’s leather, skin; it burns. But then it becomes your possession; it cannot be lost, it cannot be stolen.What is circumcision? It is branding cattle. But those cattle are Jews. Hindus have their own ways. All religions have their own ways. But it should be known whose you are, who your shepherd is – Jesus? Moses? Mohammed? You are not your own master.Those first seven years are the years when you are conditioned, stuffed with all kinds of ideas which will go on haunting you your whole life, which will go on distracting you from your potentiality, which will corrupt you, which will never allow you to see clearly. They will always come like clouds before your eyes, they will confuse everything.Things are clear, very clear – existence is absolutely clear – but your eyes have layers upon layers of dust. And all that dust has been arranged in the first seven years of your life, when you were so innocent, so trusting, that whatsoever you were told, you accepted as truth. Later on, it will be very difficult for you to find whatsoever has gone into your foundation: it has become almost part of your blood, bones, your very marrow. You will ask a thousand other questions, but you will never ask about the basic foundations of your belief.The first expression of love toward the child is to leave his first seven years absolutely innocent, unconditioned, to leave him completely wild for seven years, a pagan.He should not be converted to Hinduism, to Mohammedanism, to Christianity. Anybody who is trying to convert the child is not compassionate, he is cruel: he is contaminating the very soul of a new, fresh arrival. Before the child has even asked questions, he has been answered with ready-made philosophies, dogmas, ideologies. This is a very strange situation. The child has not asked about God, and you go on teaching him about God. Why so much impatience? Wait!If the child someday shows interest in God and starts asking about God, then try to tell him not only your idea of God – because nobody has any monopoly. Put before him all the ideas of God that have been presented to different people by different ages, by different religions, cultures, civilizations.Put before him all the ideas about God and tell him, “You can choose between these, whichever appeals to you. Or if nothing suits, you can invent your own. If everything seems to be flawed, and you think you can have a better idea, then invent your own. Or if you find that there is no way to invent an idea without loopholes, then drop the whole thing; there is no need. A man can live without God; there is no intrinsic necessity: Millions of people have lived without God. God is nothing that is inevitably needed by you. Yes, I have my idea; that too is in the combination of all these ideals in this collection. You can choose that, but I am not saying that my idea is the right idea. It appeals to me; it may not appeal to you.”There is no inner necessity that a son should agree with his father. In fact, it seems far better that he should not. That’s how evolution happens. If every child agrees with his father, then there will be no evolution because the father will agree with his father… Everybody will be where God left Adam and Eve – naked, outside the gate of the Garden of Eden. Everybody will be there.Because sons have disagreed with their fathers, forefathers, with their whole tradition, man has evolved. This whole evolution is a tremendous disagreement with the past. The more intelligent you are, the more you are going to disagree. But parents appreciate the child who agrees; they condemn the child who disagrees…It was the practice in my family to produce me in front of anybody who came, to condemn me. Any visitor, any guest of the family and I would be called. I knew for what, but I enjoyed it. I was called to be condemned: “This boy is in disagreement with everything.” In Hindi there is a phrase for it: ulti chopri – it means upside-down skull. So that was the phrase used for me.I said, “It is true, but the reality is, I look upside down to all these people because they are standing on their heads. They are doing yoga asanas, shirshasana – the headstand posture. I am simply standing on my feet. I am the only one here who does not believe in any kind of nonsense. They are right because to them it must appear that I am standing upside down. And they are in the majority – perhaps you also belong to them.“But this is the usual procedure: they don’t answer my questions, they only condemn my disagreement. Now this is inhuman. If you answer my question, and I still disagree, then certainly I am stubborn. But have you answered a single question of mine? Have you satisfied me? Have you any right to condemn me because I disagree?”In India, at the end of the monsoon there is a festival of lights, Diwali, when the whole country becomes very festive and every house has thousands of small earthen lamps decorating the walls, the balconies. The whole town becomes a fairyland; the whole country turns into a fairyland, with firecrackers and great rejoicing. On that day they worship money.The goddess of money is Laxmi. Laxmi is the wife of the Hindu god, Narayana, and of course a god’s wife should be the goddess of wealth. In fact, one of the Indian words for god, ishwar, means “one who has all the wealth of the world.” Narayana’s wife is the goddess of wealth. And on the night of the festival of lights, they worship money.Before paper currency came into being, they used to make a pile of silver rupees and worship them. Now they place paper money there and worship it. Before silver rupees, there were golden rupees. The word rupee simply means gold; it comes from Sanskrit. It is an Indian word… In the beginning, the coin was gold, pure gold, so the word rupia, which became in English, rupee, was meaningful.They used to worship gold, then came silver, then came paper currency. And they continued: the question was of worshipping money. I never participated in their worship. I simply hated the whole idea and told them, “This is one of the ugliest things you can do. Money is something to be used, not worshipped. On the one hand, your religions teach that money is nothing but dust. On the one hand it is dust and on the other hand it becomes a goddess. Can’t you see your split mind?“On the one hand, you praise a man as a sage if he renounces money; then he becomes synonymous with God because he has renounced money and everything. And on the other hand, you worship money. Can you in some way help me to understand? Is this not a clear-cut contradiction?“If money is God’s wife, then in the first place the person who renounces God’s wife is a criminal. In the first place, why did he possess God’s wife? That seems to be absolutely illegal. He should be caught and imprisoned. In the first place, was he pretending to be God’s wife’s husband?”My father would say, “Just keep quiet; at least let us finish our worship.”I would say, “No, first I want my answer.”I had a big stool in the house – they used it as a ladder for taking things up or down – so in the main hall of the house, or wherever they were worshipping, I would sit on that stool. And they would say, “Please at least come down from that stool.”I said, “No, I want my answer. I see so much stupidity in this because I have seen you touching people’s feet who have renounced money. You tell me that the man is great, a sage: he has kicked all that is thought to be valuable and that needs courage and guts. But what are you doing? If that man is right to renounce money, then at least stop worshipping it. And you have to answer me; otherwise my disagreement continues.”My mother would say to me, “You should be out of the house on such festival days because you don’t know… If the goddess Laxmi becomes angry, we will all starve, be hungry and die poor.”I said, “I have been sitting on my stool year after year. I don’t see that your goddess can do anything. If she can, I challenge her – let her come because at least that will give me an answer.” When they were finished with their worship, I would go and kick their rupees, spit on the rupees and say, “Now this is what I wanted to do; now let us see who is rewarded.” They could not prevent me, although they tried hard.I said, “You cannot prevent me. I will do what I want to do, unless you prove me wrong. You call me in front of everybody, saying that I am in disagreement about everything. I have to be in disagreement about everything, for the simple reason that you go on doing things that any intelligent person would see the contradiction in.”For example, in India, if somebody has smallpox it is not thought to be a physical disease. Smallpox is called in India, mata; mata means “mother goddess.” And in every town there is a temple for the mother goddess: “The mother goddess is angry, that’s why poor little children are suffering from smallpox.”People like Mahatma Gandhi were against vaccination because it was unnatural. Smallpox is natural… It destroys so many beautiful children’s faces, their eyes, and it kills many. The prophet of nonviolence was against vaccination because he was against anything scientific – and moreover it was thought the disease is not a physiological disease, that it is spiritual anger.One of my sisters died of smallpox, and I was very angry because I loved that sister more than any of my other brothers or my sisters. I told them, “You have killed her. I told you that she needed vaccination.“I have suffered from smallpox, but at that time I could not say anything to you. I don’t even remember it, it happened in my first year. And every child suffers. When this girl was born, I insisted that she should be vaccinated. But you are all followers of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘Vaccination is against nature and to prevent… The anger of the mother goddess will be dangerous. It will come in some other form.’”When the girl became sick with smallpox, they were doing both things: they were taking medicine from the doctor and they were continuously going to worship the mother goddess.I said, “Please do just one thing at least; either take the medicine, or go and worship your mother. But you are being cunning; you are even deceiving the mother goddess. I am honest, I spit on your mother goddess every day” – I used to go to the river and the temple was just on the way, so there was no difficulty: coming and going I would spit.And I said, “Whatsoever you do… It is strange: I am spitting, so I should suffer. Why should she suffer? And I cannot understand that the mother goddess becomes angry and small children suffer. They have not committed any crime; they have just arrived, have not had time enough to do anything, nor are they capable of doing anything. Others should suffer, but are not.“And you call her ‘mother goddess’! You should call her a witch because what kind of mother makes small children suffer? And you are being cunning. You are also not certain; otherwise don’t use the medicine. Throw away all the medicines; depend completely on your mother goddess. There too you are afraid. You are trying to ride on two horses. This is sheer stupidity. Either depend on the mother and let the girl die, or depend on the medicine and forget about that mother.”They would say, “We can understand that there is a contradiction, but please don’t bring it to our notice because it hurts.”I said, “Do you think it hurts only you, and it does not hurt me seeing my parents being stupid, silly? It does not hurt me? It hurts me more. There is still time, you can change; but instead, you are trying to change me and you call it help. You think that I am going to be lost without your help. Please let me be lost. At least I will have the satisfaction that nobody else is responsible for my being lost. It is my own doing. I will be proud of it.”If a child can be left innocent, uncorrupted by the ideas of others up to seven years old, then to distract him from his potential growth becomes impossible. The child’s first seven years are the most vulnerable and they are in the hands of the parents, teachers, and priests.How to save the children from the parents, priests, teachers, is a question of such enormous proportion that it seems almost impossible to find an answer. It is not a question of helping the child. It is a question of protecting him.If you have a child, protect the child from yourself. Protect the child from others who can influence him; protect him at least up to the age of seven. The child is just like a small plant, weak, soft: just a strong wind can destroy the plant, any animal can eat it. Put a protective fence around it, that is not imprisoning, you are simply protecting. When the plant is bigger, the fence will be removed.Protect the child from every kind of influence, so that he can remain himself – and it is only a question of seven years because then the first cycle will be complete. By seven years of age he will be well-grounded, centered, and strong enough.You don’t know how strong a seven-year-old child can be because you have not seen uncorrupted children; you have seen only corrupted ones. They carry the fears, the cowardliness, of their fathers, mothers, their families. They are not themselves.You would be surprised to meet a child who has remained uncorrupted for seven years. He would be as sharp as a sword. His eyes would be clear, his insight would be clear. And you would see a tremendous strength in him which you cannot find even in a seventy-year-old adult because the foundations are shaky. In fact, as the building goes on becoming higher and higher, the shakier and shakier it becomes. So you will see that the older a person becomes, the more afraid he is. When he is young, he may be an atheist; when he becomes old, he starts believing in God. Why is that?When he is below thirty he is a hippie. He has the courage to go against society, to behave in his own way: to have long hair, to have a beard, to roam around the world, to take all kinds of risks. But by the time he is forty, all that has disappeared. You will see him in an office in a gray suit, clean shaven, well groomed. You will not even be able to recognize that he is an ex-hippie.Where have all the hippies disappeared to? You had seen them with a great force; then, just like used bullet cases, empty cartridges, impotent, defeated, depressed – trying to make something out of their lives, feeling that all those years of hippiedom were a wastage… Others have gone far ahead in life: somebody has become the president, somebody has become the governor, “We were stupid; we were just playing the guitar and the whole world passed us by.” They repent.It is really difficult to find an old hippie. I have found just one: Bapuji, Sheela’s father. He will die a hippie. At his age – he must be near about seventy – he was living with hippies in northern New York State. Some photographer took a photograph of him; he was sitting naked on a hill with snow and ice all around. Somebody took a photo of him sitting there naked and the photos have come to me. People think Bapuji is me!It is printed now… He looks really beautiful – naked, sitting on the top of the hill. The sun is rising, and all around there is snow; he looks really beautiful. Many people who have seen that photo – it is a postcard now – send it to me saying, “Osho, it was a surprise to find you sitting there.”I told Sheela, “Tell Bapuji, ‘Don’t do such things because nobody knows you...’” But he will die a hippie.He brought all his children to me, which no father has done except him. It was he who brought Sheela to me – forcibly because she was not interested. But he is not a man to listen to anybody. He said, “You have to go once; I will not ask you to go twice, then it is your business. But I have to force you to go once because you don’t know what you are refusing. Forgive me for forcing you, but I have to do it once.”By and by, he brought all his children and almost all are now sannyasins. Once Sheela came, she never left me. He asked Sheela, teased her, “Now what about going back to America?” She had come from America.She said, “I am not going anywhere.”“But,” Bapuji said, “I had brought you just to meet him, not to stay.”Sheela said, “But I have to be at the place I have been searching for.”He said, “I am happy I have brought you to the right place: now I am freed of my responsibility. Now whatsoever becomes of you will be right.”If you are a parent, you will need enough courage not to interfere. Open doors of unknown directions to the child, so he can explore. He does not know what he has in him, nobody knows. He has to grope in the dark. Don’t make him afraid of darkness, don’t make him afraid of failure, don’t make him afraid of the unknown. Give him support. When he is going on an unknown journey, send him on with all your support, with all your love, with all your blessings.Don’t let him be affected by your fears. You may have fears, but keep them to yourself. Don’t unload those fears on the child because that will be interfering.After seven years, the next cycle of seven years, from seven to fourteen, is a new addition to life: the child’s first stirring of sexual energies. But they are only a kind of rehearsal.To be a parent is a difficult job, so unless you are ready to take that difficult job, don’t become a parent. People simply go on becoming fathers and mothers, not knowing what they are doing. You are bringing a life into existence; all the care in the world will be needed.Now, when the child starts playing his sexual rehearsals is the time when parents interfere the most. It is because they have been interfered with. All that they know is what has been done to them, so they simply go on doing that to their children.Societies don’t allow any sexual rehearsal, at least have not allowed it up to this century – only within the last two, three decades, and that too only in very advanced countries. Now children are having co-education. But in a country like India, even now co-education starts only at the university level.The seven-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl cannot stay in the same place. And this is the time for them – without any risk, without the girl getting pregnant, without any problems arising for their families – this is the time when they should be allowed playfulness.Yes, it will have a sexual color to it, but it is a rehearsal; it is not the real drama. If you don’t even allow them a rehearsal and then suddenly one day the curtain opens, and the real drama starts… Those people don’t know what is going on; even a prompter is not there to tell them what to do. You have messed up their life completely.Those seven years, the second cycle in life, is significant as a rehearsal. They will meet, mix, play, become acquainted. And that will help humanity to drop almost ninety percent of perversions. If the children are allowed to be together from seven to fourteen; to swim together – to be naked before each other – ninety percent of perversions and ninety percent of pornography will simply disappear. Who will bother about it?When a boy has known so many girls naked, what interest can a magazine like Playboy have for him? When a girl has seen so many boys naked, I don’t see that there is any possibility of curiosity about the other; it will simply disappear. They will grow together naturally, not as two different species of animals. Right now they grow as two different species of animals. They don’t belong to one mankind; they are kept separate. A thousand and one barriers are created between them, so they cannot have any rehearsal of the sexual life which is going to come.Because the rehearsal is missing, foreplay is missing in the actual sex; and foreplay is so important – far more important than actual sexual contact. Actual sexual contact lasts only for seconds; it is not nourishment. It simply leaves you in limbo. You were hoping for so much, and nothing comes out of it.In Hindi we have a proverb: “Kheela pahad nikli chuhia. You dug out the whole mountain and you found one rat.’ After all the effort – going to the movies and going to the disco and going to the restaurant, and talking all kinds of nonsense which neither you want nor the other wants to do, but both are talking – digging the mountain, and in the end, just a rat! Nothing is as frustrating as sex.Just the other day, Vivek brought me an advertisement about a new car, the Lagonda; in the advertisement they had a beautiful sentence that I liked. It is: “It is better than sex.” I don’t care about the car – the advertisement is beautiful. Certainly if you look around you, you will find a thousand and one things better than sex. Sex is just a rat! And that too after so much huffing and puffing, so much perspiration… In the end, both feel cheated.The reason is that you don’t know the art of sex; you know only the middle point. It is as if you see just a few seconds in the middle of a film. Naturally you can’t make any sense of it; the beginning is missing, the end is missing. Perhaps you simply saw the interval, where there was nothing!Man feels ashamed after sex; he turns over and goes to sleep. He simply cannot face the woman. He turns on his side and goes to sleep because he feels ashamed. The woman weeps and cries because this was not what she was hoping for: “This is all? Then what is this whole drama all about?” But the reason is that the rehearsal part of your life has been canceled by society. You don’t know what foreplay is.Foreplay is really the most satisfying part in sex. Foreplay is more loving. Sex is simply a biological climax, but the climax of what? You have missed everything that could have made it a climax. Do you think you suddenly reach the climax, missing all the rungs of the ladder? You have to move up the ladder, rung by rung, only then can you reach a climax. Everybody wants just the climax.Now the foolish psychoanalysts and their kind have put the idea of orgasm in people’s minds. Orgasm is an even higher stage than climax; it needs much more than climax. People are missing the climax – their sexual life is nothing but a kind of relief. Yes, for a moment you feel relieved of a burden, just like a good sneeze. How good it feels afterward! But for how long? How long can you feel good after a sneeze? For how many seconds, how many minutes, can you brag: “I had such a sneeze, it was great.” As the sneeze is gone, with it goes all the joy too.It was simply something bothering you. You are finished with the botheration and there is a little relaxation. That’s the sexual life of most people in the world. Some energy was bothering you, bothering you, making you heavy; it was turning into a headache. Sex gives you relief.But the way children are brought up almost butchers their whole life. Those seven years of sexual rehearsal are absolutely essential. Girls and boys should be together in schools, in hostels, in swimming pools, and in beds. They should rehearse for the life which is going to come; they have to get ready for it. There is no danger, no problem, if a child is given total freedom about his growing sexual energy and is not condemned, repressed – which is being done…You are living in a very strange world. You are born of sex, you will live for sex, your children will be born out of sex – and sex is the most condemned thing, the greatest sin. All the religions go on putting this crap in your mind: they have made you almost into brown bags.Only in New Jersey did I come to know what brown bags are. Strange… I don’t know whether it happens all over America, or only in New Jersey, because I have not seen anywhere else, only New Jersey. When I used to go to drive in the morning in New Jersey, everybody was coming out with a brown bag full of crap, putting it by the side of the road.I inquired, “What is the matter? Couldn’t they have found any other color? A brown bag?” But then I thought perhaps that’s exactly right. Most of the people are simply brown bags. Never open anybody.In my childhood, India became independent…. When India was under British rule, the British government had left some Indian states. India was in two separate sections; only one was under British rule. There were small pockets of Indian states all over India, which were still ruled by Indian kings. They were under the British government – their foreign policy was ruled by the British government – but otherwise in their internal policy they were completely free.When the British left India, they left it in a mess, in a real mess. First, they divided it into India and Pakistan; second, they left the Indian states absolutely in a limbo, without making any decisions about them. The idea was to create a chaos – and they had already created a chaos because there were so many Indian states. Now the question was, were they independent nations? Were they part of India and would their foreign policy be ruled by India, or were they part of Pakistan and their foreign policy ruled by Pakistan?Nothing was decided, the whole question was undecided. Those Indian states constituted almost half of India. The trouble was more complicated because in some Indian states, the major population was Hindu and the king was Mohammedan; in other Indian states, the major population was Mohammedan and the king was Hindu. Kashmir was ninety percent Mohammedan, but the king was Hindu. Hyderabad was ninety percent Hindu, but the king was Mohammedan.Just close to my town, beyond the river, was a small state, Bhopal. The king was Mohammedan, the population was Hindu, so there were riots everywhere because the population wanted the state to merge with India, and the king wanted to merge it with Pakistan because he was Mohammedan. But it was in the middle of India so it was not easy to merge with Pakistan. There was a great fight between the king’s forces and the population, and we were just on the other side of the river. From that side we could see people being killed on the other side.We caught hold of four corpses, people who had been killed by the forces of the king; they must have somehow fallen in the river and, as they came over to our side, we caught hold of them. Naturally, I had to persuade people, “This is not good. They have been fighting for the freedom of the country; they wanted the country to merge into India – you should not leave them like that.”They wanted to throw them back into the river and be finished: who could be bothered with them? But somehow I gathered a few young people and then a few old people felt ashamed, so they came.But first, before we could do anything, they had to have postmortems, so we took them to the hospital. The place was almost two furlongs away, behind the hospital, in the jungle. One can understand: they were cutting up bodies, the smell and everything… So they had made the place far away outside the city. We had to carry those corpses.That was the first time I saw a brown bag open. The doctor was the father of one of my friends so he allowed me in. He said, “You can see how man looks inside,” and he opened the bodies. It was really shocking to see how a man looks inside. And this was only the body: later on I saw the postmortem of the mind also. Compared to that, the poor body is nothing. Your mind is so rich in crap…That day something happened that I have to tell you about, although it is not concerned with what I was going to tell you – but it must be concerned in some way, otherwise why should I remember it?When we were carrying the bodies out after they had the postmortem… They had put them together again and covered them. One of the leaders of my town, Shri Nath Batt, had always felt as if I was his enemy, for the simple reason that I was a friend of his son and he thought I was corrupting him – in a way he was right. By chance it happened that we were carrying a corpse together; I was ahead, holding the poles at the front of the stretcher and Shri Nath Batt was behind me holding the other end of the poles.The head of the dead man was at my end and the legs at his end. I had just read somewhere that when a man dies, of course he loses all control – control over the bladder too, so if you put his head upward and his legs downward… I thought “This is a good chance to see whether that idea is right or wrong,” so I just raised the poles. And you should have seen what happened – the corpse pissed and Shri Nath Batt ran away!We could not persuade him to come back. He said, “I cannot. Have you ever heard of a dead man pissing? It is a ghost!”I told him, “You are a leader.”He said, “To hell with the leader! I don’t want to be the leader if this is the kind of work I have to do. And I’ve always known you – from the very beginning. Why did you raise the poles?”I said, “I don’t know, it must have been the ghost. I suddenly felt like somebody was lifting up my hands; I am not at all responsible.” I had to drag that body alone, for two furlongs.Shri Nath Batt was in the town telling everybody, “This boy is going to kill somebody someday. Today I was saved just by God’s grace. That ghost just pissed over me, on my clothes. And he persuaded me: ‘You have to come because you are the leader; otherwise what will people think? A leader missing in times of need? Then remember, at voting time I will not be of any help.’ So I went, but I never thought that he would do such a thing to me.”People all around the world are really brown bags, full of everything rotten that you can conceive, for the simple reason that they have not been allowed to behave in a natural way. They have not been allowed to accept themselves. They have all become ghosts. They are not authentically real people, they are just shadows of someone they could have been; they are just shadows.The second cycle of seven years is immensely important because it will prepare you for the coming seven years. If you have done the homework rightly, if you have played with your sexual energy just in the spirit of a sportsman – and at that time, that is the only spirit you will have – you will not become a pervert, a homosexual.All kinds of strange things will not come to your mind because you are moving naturally with the other sex, the other sex is moving with you; there is no hindrance and you are not doing anything wrong against anybody. Your conscience is clear because nobody has put into your conscience ideas of what is right and what is wrong: you are simply being whatever you are.Then from fourteen to twenty-one your sex matures. And this is significant to understand: if the rehearsal has gone well, in the seven years when your sex matures, a very strange thing happens that you may never have thought of because you have not been given the chance. I said to you that the second seven years, from seven to fourteen, give you a glimpse of foreplay. The third seven years give you a glimpse of afterplay. You are still together with girls or boys, but now a new phase starts in your being: you start falling in love.It is still not a biological interest. You are not interested in producing children; you are not interested in becoming husbands and wives, no. These are the years of romantic play. You are more interested in beauty, in love, in poetry, in sculpture – which are all different phases of romanticism. And unless a man has some romantic quality, he will never know what afterplay is. Sex is just in the middle.The longer the foreplay, the better is the possibility of reaching a climax; the better the possibility of reaching the climax, the better the opening for afterplay. And unless a couple knows afterplay, they will never know sex in its completion.Now there are sexologists who are teaching foreplay. A taught foreplay is not the real thing, but they are teaching it – at least they have recognized the fact that without foreplay sex cannot reach to a climax. But they are at a loss how to teach afterplay because when a person has reached a climax he is no longer interested: he is finished, the job is done. For that it needs a romantic mind, a poetic mind, a mind that knows how to be thankful, how to be grateful.The person, the woman or the man who has brought you to such a climax, needs some gratitude – afterplay is your gratitude. And unless there is afterplay, it simply means your sex is incomplete; and incomplete sex is the cause of all the troubles that man goes through.Sex can become orgasmic only when afterplay and foreplay are completely balanced. The climax turns into an orgasm just in their balance. The word orgasm has to be understood. It means that your whole being – body, mind, soul, everything – becomes involved, organically involved.Then it becomes a moment of meditation.To me, if your sex does not become finally a moment of meditation, you have not known what sex is. You have only heard about it, you have read about it; and the people who have been writing about it know nothing about it. I have read hundreds of books on sexology by people who are thought to be great experts, and they are experts, but they know nothing about the innermost shrine where meditation blossoms.Just as children are born by ordinary sex, meditation is born by extraordinary sex.Animals can produce children; there is nothing special about it. It is only man who can produce the experience of meditation as the center of his orgasmic feeling. This is possible only if from fourteen to twenty-one young people are allowed to have romantic freedom.From twenty-one to twenty-eight is the time that they can settle. They can choose a partner. And then they are capable of choosing one; through all the experience of the past two cycles, they can choose the right partner. There is nobody else who can do it for you. It is something that is more like a hunch – not arithmetic, not astrology, not palmistry, not I-Ching; nothing else is going to do.It is a hunch: coming into contact with many, many people, suddenly something clicks which had never clicked with anybody else. And it clicks with such certainty and so absolutely that you cannot even doubt it. Even if you try to doubt it, you cannot; the certainty is so tremendous. With this click, you settle.Somewhere between twenty-one and twenty-eight, if everything goes smoothly the way I am saying, without interference from others, then you settle. And the most pleasant period of life comes from twenty-eight to thirty-five – the most joyous, the most peaceful and harmonious because two people start melting and merging into each other.From thirty-five to forty-two, a new step, a new door opens. If up to thirty-five you have felt deep harmony, an orgasmic feeling, and you have discovered meditation through it, then from thirty-five to forty-two you will help each other go more and more into that meditation without sex, because sex at this point starts looking childish, juvenile.Forty-two is the right time for a person to be able to know exactly who he is. From forty-two to forty-nine he goes deeper and deeper into meditation, more and more into himself, and helps the partner in the same way. They become friends. There is no more husband and there is no more wife; that time has passed. It has given its richness to your life; now there is something higher, higher than love.That is friendliness, a compassionate relationship to help the other to go deeper into himself, to become more independent, to become more alone – just like two tall trees standing separate but still close to each other, or two pillars in a temple supporting the same roof – standing so close, but so separate and so independent and so alone.From forty-nine to fifty-six this aloneness becomes your focus of being. Everything in the world loses meaning. The only thing meaningful that remains is this aloneness.From fifty-six to sixty-three you become absolutely what you are going to become: the potential blossoms.From sixty-three to seventy you start getting ready to drop the body. Now you know you are not the body, you know you are not the mind either. The body was known as separate from you somewhere when you were thirty-five. That the mind is separate from you was known somewhere when you were forty-nine. Now, everything else drops except the witnessing self. Just the pure awareness, the flame of awareness remains with you, and this is the preparation for death.Seventy is the natural life span for man. And if things move in this natural course, then he dies with tremendous joy, with great ecstasy, feeling immensely blessed that his life has not been meaningless, that at least he has found his home. And because of this richness, this fulfillment, he is capable of blessing the whole existence.Just to be near such a person when he is dying is a great opportunity. You will feel, as he leaves his body, some invisible flowers falling upon you. Although you cannot see them, you can feel them.It has always been a great moment in the lives of disciples when the master leaves the body. And it is possible because the master can know when he is going to leave the body – he can collect all those who have been his fellow travelers, searching, moving in the same way. Now that he is leaving, he would like to give you his last gift. As the master opens his wings toward the other world, you will feel the breeze which is incomparable. There is nothing in life to which it can be compared.It is sheer joy, so pure that even to have a little taste of it is enough to transform your whole life.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Would you please comment on the death penalty?The death penalty is a degrading proof of man’s inhumanity to man. It shows that man is still living in the barbarous age. Civilization still remains an idea – it has not become a reality.The death penalty is so idiotic that you will have to look from all the aspects to understand why such an idiotic thing has continued in all the civilizations, cultures, nations. Even in a few countries where it was dropped it has been adopted again. In a few other countries where it has been dropped, it has been replaced by life imprisonment – which is worse than the death penalty itself. It is better to die in a single moment than to go on dying slowly for fifty years, sixty years.Changing from the death penalty to a life sentence is going not toward civilization, it is going still deeper into barbarous, inhuman darkness, unconsciousness.The first thing to remember is that the death penalty is not really a punishment. If you cannot give life as a reward, you cannot give death as a penalty. This is a simple logic, there cannot be two opinions about it. If you cannot give life to people, what right have you to take their life?I am reminded of a true story. It happened that two criminals were in search of a treasure that was hidden in a castle. Many people had tried but had not found the way; somehow these criminals stumbled upon the treasure. The treasure was so vast that one of the two was not willing to divide it. The only way was to kill the other, but in killing the other he might get caught. There was danger, and now he could not take any risk because the whole treasure was in his hands.He managed a very cunning way. He disappeared and spread the rumor that he had been murdered, and he left all the evidence that would prove that his friend was the murderer. The friend was caught with all the proofs: his revolver was there; two bullets were missing, and his fingerprints were on the revolver. His handkerchief with his name embroidered on it had fallen…. And only he knew the place where the friend was hiding in the jungles against the police, because they had done other crimes also, and there was a price on both of them to be caught alive or dead.He could not prove his innocence; there was no way – everything went against him. He was given the death penalty. He knew he had not murdered his friend; he knew that this whole thing was a plot. His friend was not dead; it was just to keep the whole treasure, that the friend had removed him in a legal way, out of the way.But he escaped from the prison before he was executed. After twelve years he came into the court, dragging the dead body of a very famous politician, a rich man of the city, and he told the court – it was the same judge – “I have murdered this man, and I dare you to punish me. But first let me tell you the whole story. I am the man who twelve years ago you had sentenced to death. I escaped from the prison because I was absolutely innocent, but I had no proof.”In fact innocence has never any proof. Proofs are for the crime or against the crime, but innocence has no proof.He said, “Now I have murdered the man you charged me twelve years ago for having murdered – this is the man. If your first judgment was right then you cannot punish me again for the same murder because that man was murdered twelve years ago. And if your first judgment was not right, how can you be sure that your second judgment is going to be right?”Can you punish a man for murdering the same man twice?It is really very difficult to decide.He said, “The only crime I have committed is escaping from the jail, but can you call it a crime? When you punish an innocent man with death, who is the criminal – you or me?“And this man plotted the whole thing; he managed all those proofs because he had my revolver, he had my handkerchief. He managed all those proofs, escaped from there with the treasure that we had both found, became a rich man, famous. He changed his name, his personality, shaved off his beard, changed his hair-do, and became respectable; he opened a hospital, a school, made a temple. And this is the man who managed the plot to show he had been murdered.“In that way he was saved from the punishment for other crimes for which the police were searching for him; now he has been murdered – so that file is closed. He killed two birds by one stone: he killed me, not directly, but through a legal procedure. He used all you idiots to kill me, so that he would become the whole owner of the treasure – and he did. By the same strategy he removed all crimes against him. The file was closed, the man was dead – of course, his body was not found. The murderer had been very clever, because he was a known criminal.”The story has many implications. The man asked, “If I was sentenced to death and I had not escaped and was executed, what would have been the case now? If it had come to be known that the man thought to be murdered is alive, would you be able to give me my life back? If you cannot give my life back, what right have you to take it away?”It is said the judge resigned, apologized to the man and said, “Perhaps I have done many crimes in my life.”A strange thing all over the world is that unless you are proved innocent, you are guilty. This goes against all humanitarian ideals, democracy, freedom, respect for individuality; it goes against all. The rule should be: unless you are proved guilty you are innocent. Yes, it is said in words, but in reality the case is just the opposite.For example, this city, Rajneeshpuram, is, in the opinion of the attorney general of Oregon, illegal. It is just an opinion. He is not a judge; he has to go before the court to prove it. Unless he proves that the city is guilty of being illegal, the city is legal, we are innocent. Until guilt is proved, innocence needs no proof. But this is not the case.Although America goes on claiming to be the greatest democracy in the world, it is sheer bullshit. The Supreme Court of America goes on declaring that unless a person is proved guilty, he is innocent. Innocence needs no proof; otherwise it would be impossible for anybody to live. If everybody has to prove his innocence; otherwise he is a guilty man and he should be thrown into jail because he cannot prove his innocence….How do you prove your innocence? Innocence is not an act, it leaves no traces behind, no evidence. So the Supreme Court says, “This is our standpoint: Unless a man is proved guilty, he is innocent.” But this is only said, because our city is already being regarded by the state government, by the federal government, as illegal – without it having been proved before a court.The case is still in the court. The court is theirs, but they cannot wait even for the court to decide. The federal government has stopped giving the money that was due to the city; not only that, the federal government has asked that the money that they have given for the past two years should be returned. For two years the city was legal. And what support have they given? – two hundred and sixty-five dollars!I would like the mayor of your city to return the money with interest. Such a poor government, giving such a great support to the city, certainly needs at least bank-rate interest on the great sum of two hundred and sixty-five dollars.These nuts think they are democratic.The state government has stopped giving their share. The attorney general has been forcing the police authorities to declare our city’s police also illegal. This is strange. You have not proved us guilty, you cannot prove us guilty; in fact your own court has incorporated the city with all legalities fulfilled. For two years your governments – state and federal both – have been accepting the city, training the police, having its police department in the city. You arrange the elections for the mayor, for the council.Everything proves that the city is legal. Just one man who wants to rise in political power, who wants to become the next governor, is in need of us. Without our support in Oregon nobody can become the governor. But our support is a strange kind of support: anybody who wants to win an election has to be against us. Just being against us is enough to gain the support of all the bigots, of all the Christians, of all the orthodox, conventional people, of all those who think that Oregon is their property. Just to be against us….Without proving in a court – and even if you prove in one court that does not mean that you have proved it. We can appeal. The case will not be decided for at least twenty to thirty years – not before that. It will have to go up to the Supreme Court of the United States.We are not going to be humiliated in any way. And when the law is in our favor, the whole democratic concept is behind us, all the values that democracy cherishes are in our support, there is no reason at all…. But they have started accepting us as illegal.This is how man goes on saying one thing and goes on doing just its opposite. He talks about being civilized, cultured – he is not civilized, not cultured. The death penalty is a proof enough.This is the rule of a barbarous society: An eye for an eye, and a head for a head. If somebody cuts off one of your hands, then in a barbarous society, this is a simple law: one of his hands should be cut off.The same has been carried down the ages. The death penalty is exactly the same law: An eye for an eye. If a man is thought to have murdered somebody, then he should be murdered. But it is strange: if killing somebody is a crime, then how can you remove crime from society by committing the same crime again? There was one man murdered; now there are two men murdered. And it is not certain that this man murdered that man, because to prove a murder is not an easy thing.If murder is wrong, then whether it is committed by the man or by the society and its court, makes no difference.Killing certainly is a crime.The death penalty is a crime committed by the society against a single individual, who is helpless.I cannot call it a penalty, it is a crime.And you can understand why it is committed: it is a revenge. Society is taking revenge because the man did not follow the rules of the society; the society is ready to kill him. But nobody bothers that when somebody murders, it shows that man is psychologically sick. Rather than sending him to imprisonment or to be executed, he should be sent into a nursing home where he can be taken care of – physically, psychologically, spiritually. He is sick. He needs all the compassion of the society; there is no question of penalty, punishment.Yes, it is true, one man is murdered; but we cannot do anything about it. By murdering this man do you think the other will come back to life? If that were possible, I would be all in support of this man being removed – he is not worth being part of the society – and the other should be revived.But that does not happen. The other is gone forever; there is no way to revive him. Yes, you can do one thing, you can kill this man too. You are trying to wash blood with blood, mud with mud. You are not aware of what has happened in history in many cases.Three hundred years ago, in many cultures the madman was thought to be pretending. In many other cultures he was thought to be possessed by ghosts. In other cultures he was thought to be mad, but treatable by punishment. And these were the three ways mad people were taken care of.They were treated by beatings – strange treatment! – and by taking their blood out. Now you give blood transfusions; they used to do just the opposite – they used to take the blood out of the man. It was thought that he had too much energy. Naturally when his blood was taken out he became weak; he started showing signs of weakness because so much blood was taken out, and it was thought they had cured him of his madness.By beating a man, naturally once in a while it used to happen that the man came to his senses. It is almost as if a man is asleep and you start beating him and he wakes up. A madman has fallen out of his conscious mind. If you beat him too hard, once in a while it may happen that he wakes up into his consciousness again. That became a proof that beating is the right treatment. But is used to happen only once in a while; ninety-nine percent of the cases were unnecessarily beaten. But that one exception was the rule.It was thought that he was possessed by spirits, ghosts; then too beat him, because if he is possessed by ghosts the beating will reach the ghost, not him. You are not beating him, you are really beating the ghosts who are possessing him, and because of the beating they will escape. And once in a while, but just once in a while, that is one percent, no more than that….I have been in one place – it was very famous for mad people. Hundreds of mad people were brought to that place. It was on the bank of a river, a temple, and the priest must have been a butcher for at least a few hundred lives. He looked like a butcher and he gave a good beating. The mad people were chained, given a good beating, no food, and very strong laxatives. And I have seen that once in a while a person came to his senses.Strong laxatives for a few days with no food cleaned his inner system. Beatings brought him back a little consciousness. No food, hunger – a hungry man cannot afford to be mad because his body is in such torture. To be mad you need a little bit of comfort in your life situation.You can see it: the more comfortable a society, the more luxurious, affluent a culture, the more people go mad. The more poor a society – starving, hungry – the less people go mad. Madness needs, in the first place, a mind. But a hungry person has no nourishment for the mind. He is undernourished: his mind is not in a situation to go nuts. For that the mind needs more energy than ordinarily is involved in life.Madness is a rich man’s disease. The poor man cannot afford it.So when you keep a person hungry and give him laxatives, it cleanses his inner system, makes him so hungry that he becomes bodily-oriented. He forgets the mind, the question is the body. He is no longer interested in mind and mind games.Madness is a mind game.So once in a while I have seen people being cured there, but that one percent cured would spread the rumor all around, and hundreds of people were coming there. The temple became very rich. I had gone there many times to see it but only once did I meet a man who had been cured; others went back to their homes just beaten, hungry, starved, more sick, more weak. Many died through that priest’s treatment.But in India if the treatment is being given in a temple, a sacred place, by the priest, it is not a crime if you die; in fact you are fortunate that you are dying in a sacred place. You will be born on a higher level of consciousness; so it is not a crime.But I spoke against the man wherever I went and I said, “This is absolutely criminal. What authority has he or what medical qualifications has he? Is he a psychiatrist, physiologist? – he is only a priest.” But priests have been treating mad people for centuries, in the same way, all over the world.Now we know that a mad person cannot be treated this way. Mad people were put into prison, in isolated cells. Still that is happening around the world because we don’t know what to do. Just to hide our ignorance we put the mad person into jail, so we can forget about him; at least we can go on ignoring that he exists.In my town one of my friends’ uncles was mad. They were rich people. I used to go in their house often, but even I became aware only after years that one of his uncles was kept in an underground basement, chained.I said, “Why?”They said, “He is mad. There were only two ways: either we keep him in our own house, chained…. And of course we cannot keep him chained in the house; otherwise people will be coming and everybody will feel worried and concerned. And his children, his wife, watching their father, their husband…. And it is against our family’s reputation to send him to prison, so we found this way: we have imprisoned him underground. His food is being taken to him by a servant; otherwise nobody goes to see him, nobody goes to meet him.”I persuaded my friend, “I would like to meet your uncle.”He said, “But I cannot come with you – he is a dangerous man, he is mad! Although he is chained he can do anything.”I said, “He can at the most kill me. You just remain behind me so if I am killed you escape, but I would like to go.”Because I insisted, he managed to get the key from the servant who used to take the food. In thirty years I was the first person from the outside world, other than the servant, who had met him; and that man may have been mad – I cannot say – but now he was not mad. But nobody was ready to listen to him because all mad people say, “We are not mad.”So when he said this to the servant, “Tell my family that I am not mad,” the servant simply laughed. He even told the family but nobody took any note of it.When I saw the man, I sat with him, I talked with him. He was as sane as anybody else in the world – perhaps a little more, because he said one thing to me: “Being here for thirty years has been a tremendous experience. In fact I feel fortunate that I am out of your mad world. They think I am mad – let them think that, there is no harm – but in fact I am fortunate that I am out of your mad world. What do you think?” he said to me.I said, “You are absolutely right. The world outside is far madder than when you left it thirty years before. In thirty years there has been great evolution in everything – in madness too. You stop saying to people that you are not mad; otherwise they will take you out. You are living a perfectly beautiful life. You have enough space to walk….”He said, “That’s the only exercise I can do here – walking.”And I started to teach him Vipassana. I said, “You are in such perfect conditions to become a buddha: no worries, no botherations, no disturbances. You are really blessed.”And he started practicing Vipassana. I told him, “You can practice it sitting, you can practice it walking” – and he was my first disciple as far as Vipassana is concerned. And you will be surprised that he died a sannyasin – died in the basement.But the last time I had gone to my village, I went to see him. He said, “I’m ready; now you initiate me. My days are numbered, and I would like to die as your sannyasin. I’m your disciple; for twenty years you have been my master and whatever you had promised is fulfilled.”And you could see from his face, from his eyes, that he was not the same person – a total transformation, a mutation….Mad people need methods of meditation so that they can come out of their madness.The criminals need psychological help, spiritual support.They are really deep-down sick, and you are punishing sick people. It is not their fault. If somebody murders, that means he has carried a tendency to murder in him for a long time. It is not that somewhere, out of nowhere, suddenly you murder somebody.In one of the existential novels there is a story: a man is caught – in fact it is not right to say “caught” because he never tried to escape. He killed a stranger who was sitting on the beach. He came from behind and killed him with a dagger; the man died on the spot. The man was absolutely a stranger; the murderer had never seen his face even, because he killed him from the back. Even after the murder he had not seen his face; he had no idea whom he had murdered.It was a very strange case – existentialism has been of great help in bringing strange cases to light. The court asked the man, “We cannot understand why you murdered the man.”He said, “It is not a question of ‘why’ – I simply wanted to. There are people who try to find excuses to do something that they want to do. I am a simple person: why bother about an excuse? – just do it if you want to do it.”Now he is saying a truth of tremendous importance. People try to find an excuse: for example, they are angry with you – they think they are angry with you; that is not true.They were carrying that anger – it was boiling within them, they were sitting on a volcano. They were just waiting for somebody to give them an excuse: you gave the excuse, and they exploded. It seems you are responsible for the explosion. No, you are only an accidental excuse, you are not responsible. Somebody else would have done if you had not. It is just coincidence that you happened to pass by; otherwise, somebody else….This murderer says to the court, “I am a simple man; I don’t bother about rationalizations and excuses – I simply wanted to kill. And it was really an exciting experience. When I forced the dagger into the back of that man whom I don’t know, who has not done any wrong to me, when the blood dashed out from his back I had the greatest, the most exciting experience in my life.“I am perfectly happy: you can give me any punishment that you want. I am not going to say that I have not done it, I have done it. I wanted to do it for a long time, and it is good that I did it.”Now, what do you want to do with this man? Is he a murderer, or a psychiatric case who has been prevented from having any excitement in his life? Perhaps he has never known love, because if you ask Sigmund Freud, he will say that the dagger is nothing but a symbol of the male’s sexual organ, and dashing it into the back of the man is just an effort – perverted, but an effort – to have some entry into another body. That’s what people are doing all over the world. Making love is entering another’s body.This man is certainly not in the right shape, things are upside down, but what he is doing is simply a sexual act; it has nothing to do with murder. The murder happened; that is just a by-product.And why does a man want to enter the body of a woman? – because every implication has its own implications. It is because the man is born out of woman’s body. He has come out of the woman’s body, and he has never been so comfortable again, and he wants to be back in the womb of the mother.Every man is searching for his mother’s womb. These murderers are also searching for the mother’s womb – of course in a wrong way, unnatural, but they are not responsible for it: your society is responsible for it. If a murder happens then the society should be punished, then the whole society should have to pay the penalty.Why did it happen in this society? What have you done with the man that he had to commit a murder? Why did he become destructive? – because nature gives everybody energy which is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed. Whenever energy goes toward the natural it is prevented by society, it is crippled; it is directed into some other direction.Soon the man is in a confusion. He does not know what is what. He does not know what he is doing, why he is doing it. The original reasons are left far behind. He has taken so many turns that he has become a jigsaw puzzle.Nobody needs the death penalty, nobody deserves it. In fact, not only the death penalty, no other kind of punishment is right, because punishment never cures the person.Every day the number of criminals goes on growing; every day you build more prisons. This is strange. It should not be so. Just the opposite should be the case, because with so many courts and so many punishments and so many prisons, crimes should be less, criminals should be less, slowly, slowly prisons should be less, courts should be less. But that is not happening.I am reminded that in Great Britain, just one hundred years ago, corporal punishment for stealing was the common thing. And the punishment had to be given in a public square so people could see what happens when you steal – just to teach them. It would be a lesson to them, that if you steal this happens: a public humiliation. The person had to be naked and lashed till blood started oozing from his body.But what happened – just one hundred years ago – was that the punishment had to be dropped because it was found that when the crowd was there…and thousands gathered to see – it was not a good sign. When thousands of people come to see such an ugly scene it shows something in them is wrong. Perhaps they also want to beat someone naked, but they don’t have the guts; at least they can see it being done.That’s what you are doing everywhere. You love football: you don’t play – there are professional players – you watch. You become identified with a certain team of football players and you are so excited, as if you are participants. Just look at the crowd in a stadium: thousands of people so excited, as if their life and death is in question – shouting, screaming, throwing their caps, their hats, fighting with each other because the person by their side is giving encouragement to the party they oppose.The football players are playing their games, and the thousands of spectators – what are they doing? They are also, in a psychological way, participants – perhaps more excited than the real players. The real players are professionals, that is their business, and these idiots are unnecessarily becoming so hot.And this is not the whole crowd; the real crowd is sitting by their television sets, millions of them – listening to commentaries on their radios.I had a friend in the university; he was a professor, but a fan of hockey matches – in India, football is not so hot. One day I was sitting in his room and he was listening to the commentary on his small transistor that he used to carry continuously, keeping it close to his ear so he did not miss anything.I was sitting there and I told him, “I have come to say something to you.”He just told me, “Keep quiet!” and went back to his commentary. And then something happened: he threw the transistor and it broke into pieces.I said, “What happened?”He said, “My team, they failed me! I had so much hope for them.”“But,” I said, “if your team failed, why did you destroy the transistor?”He said, “You won’t understand. I was in such anger that you should feel fortunate that I did not hit you with the transistor.”“But this would have been too much! First you destroyed the transistor, and I am just sitting waiting here for you to get finished with your transistor, and you wanted to hit me with it,” I said.“Yes, I was so angry,” he said, “I could have hit you. For a moment I was just going to and then I changed my mind.”I said, “This is good – next time I will never be around anyone listening to the commentary on hockey matches. This is dangerous, even to be around.”Now this man is so much involved…. The whole world has become a world of spectators.What are you seeing in a movie? I don’t think you are seeing a movie, you become part of it, you become identified with some character in it. When he falls in love, you fall in love; when he kisses his girlfriend, you are kissing his girlfriend. This is sheer nonsense, but you cannot expect anything more from the humanity that you have got around.So those spectators in Great Britain, what were they doing? They were so involved in watching that there were pickpockets all around, cutting their pockets. It was brought to the notice of the parliament: “What kind of lesson are you teaching, because exactly there, where the crowd has gathered to learn the lesson, there are people who are cutting others’ pockets.” And it is easy because those people are so involved they have completely forgotten themselves and their pockets. And that man is being beaten almost to death, and those pickpockets….Your whole reasoning is wrong. You cannot teach by punishment.That’s what your jurists, legal experts, politicians, have been saying down the ages: “If we don’t punish people, then how are we going to teach them? Then everybody will start committing crime, so we have to go on punishing so people remain afraid.”They think that fear is the only way to teach – and fear is not the way to teach them at all. What punishment teaches is, it makes people acquainted with fear, so the original shock is no longer there. They know what can happen: “At the most you can beat me. And if one person can take it, I can also take it. And out of a hundred thieves you can catch only one or two persons.”Now, if you are not ready even to take that much risk – ninety-eight percent success, two percent failure – then what kind of man are you?Nobody learns from any punishment. The very person who is being punished, he also does not learn what you want him to learn. Yes, he learns something else: he learns how to become a thick-skin.Once a person goes into prison, prison becomes his home, because there he finds people of a like mind. There he finds his real society. Outside he was a foreigner; there he is in his own world. They all understand the same language, and there are experts. You may be just an amateur, an apprentice; it may be your first term.I have heard: one man enters a prison; in the dark cell he sees an old man, resting. The old man asks him, “For how long are you going to be here?”He says, “For ten years.”The old man says, “Then you can stay close to the door. Just ten years! You seem to be new. I am going to be here for fifty years. You just remain close to the door. Soon the years will be gone and you will be out.”But when you are with experts for ten years, of course you learn all their techniques, strategies, methods, their experience. You will find your jail almost a certain kind of university where crime is taught at government expense. You will find professors of crime, deans of the crime faculty, vice-chancellors, chancellors – all kinds of people who have done every kind of crime that you can imagine; certainly the newcomer starts learning. And one thing is in the air of every prison…. I have been to many prisons.It happened that in Madhya Pradesh when I was a professor there, one old man, Mangaldas Pakvasa, was governor of Madhya Pradesh. He was very much interested in me, so much so that although I went on telling him, “Kaka” – he was known to everybody as kaka, uncle – “I don’t believe in God,” he said, “Whether you believe it or not, just when you reach, tell God something for this Mangaldas Pakvasa, because I am an old sinner. Being in politics, you know, I have done everything that I should not have done. Now I am getting old.”“But,” I said, “you will be dying first, Kaka. Can’t you see a simple thing: you will be reaching first. So if you want, you can help me, but I cannot help you; I am not going that early!”“But,” he said, “I suspect that I will never be going to heaven. Governors and prime ministers and presidents – I don’t think any of them are going there. This whole company is going to hell!”He was a very simple and good man. Because he was governor, I had immense dimensions open for me. I asked him, “You give me a general permission: if I want to visit any jail I should be allowed.”He said, “That is no problem.” And the biggest jail was in Jabalpur itself; it was the central jail of the whole state – three thousand diehard criminals. So I used to go almost every Sunday; while he remained governor I continued to go there. And what I saw – this was the climate, and in other jails also. I went in smaller jails also but the climate was essentially the same.The climate was that it is not crime that brings you to jail, it is being caught, so if you know right ways to do wrong things…. It is not a question of doing right things; the question is doing wrong things in a right way. And every prisoner learns the right way of doing wrong things in jail. In fact I have talked with prisoners and they said, “We are eager to get out.”I said, “For what?”They said, “You are a friend, and we don’t hide anything from you: we want to get out as soon as possible because we have learned so much, we want to practice. Just the practicals were missing, it was all theoretical knowledge. For practicals you need the society.”Once a person becomes a jailbird, then nowhere will he find himself at ease; sooner or later he will be coming back to jail. And slowly, slowly jail becomes his alternative society.It is more comfortable, he feels more at home; nobody looks down on him, nobody thinks that he is superior and you are inferior. Everybody is a criminal. Nobody is a priest and nobody is a sage and nobody is a holy man: all are poor human beings with all the weaknesses and frailties.Outside he finds that he is rejected, abandoned.In my town there was a permanent jail-goer. He was a very beautiful man; his name was Barkat Mian. He was a Mohammedan. Mian is a Mohammedan respectful word exactly like sir or the Indian, Hindu, ji. If you simply say, “Gandhi” it will not look respectful; you have to say “Gandhiji.” For Mohammedans mian is simply equivalent to ji or sir.It was strange that Barkat Mian was a permanent jail-goer, almost nine months in jail, three months outside; and in those three months also, every week he had to go to report to the police station to show that everything was okay and he was here.But I had a great friendship with that man. My family was very angry; they said, “Why do you keep company with Barkat?” My family used to say to me, “A man is known by his company.”I said, “I understand you: that means Barkat will be known by me, and to give a man a little respectability is not anything bad.”They said, “When will you see things in the right way?”I said, “I am seeing it exactly the right way. Rather than Barkat degrading me, I am upgrading Barkat. You think his evil is more powerful than my goodness? You don’t trust my integrity; you trust Barkat’s integrity.” I said, “Whatever your opinion, I trust myself. Barkat cannot do any harm to me. If any harm is going to be done it will be done to Barkat by me.”He was really a beautiful man, nice, and he used to tell me, “You should not be around me. If you want to meet me and talk to me, we can manage to meet somewhere outside the town, by the riverbank.”He himself lived near the Mohammedan cemetery where nobody goes unless one dies: one goes only once. He was not allowed to live in the town. In the town nobody was ready to give him a house to rent. Whatsoever rent he was ready to pay, nobody was ready to take it, nobody was going to take him in.There on the Mohammedan cemetery was a house – nothing but a shelter for the rainy season, summer. People die in all kinds of climates, not bothering about anybody – that it is raining and they could wait a little, there is no hurry. But people are people: if they can harass you, they will harass you. They will die when it is raining dogs and cats, or is it cats and dogs? But it makes no difference; when it is raining who is first and who is second does not matter.So that shelter was just for certain times; people could sit there. But in a small place people don’t die every day, only once in a while; so Barkat used to live in that shelter. He said, “You always are welcome in my house” – that shelter he used to call his house. And of course there was no fear because nobody could steal anything from Barkat. Nobody could even dare to go in the night near Barkat Mian because he was a dangerous man.Just by the side of my father’s store was a big shop, a kind of general store, having all kinds of things. He stole from that. One night he told me, “Tonight I am coming to Mody’s shop” – that was the name of the shop. And he came and he did a good job: he took out all the ornaments and everything, and managed to escape but finally was caught. Not that day – after two months, in another robbery he was caught, and there it was found that one watch he was wearing was from Mody’s store.So it was worked out and he was forced to confess from where the watch had come to him. And he confessed that it was from Mody’s store because that was the only store in the town that had watches to sell. From where else could it come? Everybody’s watch came from Mody’s store!But other things were also found in his home, in that shelter where he used to keep his suitcase and things; and a few things he had sold – so he was sentenced to six months. After six months – this I call a real gentleman – after six months, when he was released from the jail…. The jail was in a district which was nearabout sixty miles away. He came in a taxi, stopped the taxi before Mody’s store and went in.Mody stood up, afraid that now there was going to be trouble; this man has been released. Barkat said, “Pay the taxi – I don’t have any money. And you know for six months you have kept me unemployed, so, some money for my pocket.”I was just present there because Mody’s store was just next to my father’s shop. Mody had to pay the taxi and give Barkat a few rupees. He told Barkat, “Don’t come every day,” and Barkat said, “Till I manage something I will have to come, because six months you kept me unemployed. You are responsible.”He continued to come every day, and I said to Mody, “Modyji, you go on giving money to Barkat.”He said, “What to do? He can cut my throat – he is a dangerous man! You don’t see: when he comes inside the shop, he shows me a knife. Nobody sees it from the outside because of so many things in the shop. With one hand he asks for the money, with the other hand he shows me a knife, so everybody thinks I am giving the money happily. You think I am giving it happily?”I said, “No, I know about the knife because Barkat Mian is my friend and he tells me everything.”I asked Barkat, “How did you become a thief?”He said, “The first time I was jailed I was absolutely innocent, but I was poor, I could not hire an advocate; and the people who wanted me to be forced into jail had some vested interest.“My father and mother died when I was very young, fourteen or fifteen, and my other relatives wanted to capture the whole family’s possessions – house, land – and they wanted to remove me out of their way. They simply managed it. They put something into my bag in my house. And there was no way to get out of it: the thing was found in my bag, and I was sent to jail.“When I came back, my land was gone, my house was sold, my relatives had managed to disperse everything and distribute everything. I was just on the streets.“So, first, I was innocent when I went in, but when I came out I was not innocent, because I had come with a certain graduation. I told everybody in jail what had happened to me – I was only seventeen. They said ‘Don’t be worried, these nine months will be soon finished, but in nine months we will also give you the finishing touches. And you will be able to take revenge on everybody.’“And I started to take revenge on all the relatives – this was simply tit for tat. They had forced me to become a thief, and I proved that, okay, now I am a thief. I destroyed this whole gang of my relatives; I stole everything that they had. But by and by I became more and more involved.“You can have ten cases in which you are saved but in the eleventh you are caught. As you grow older and more efficient, you are caught less. But now there is no problem; in fact imprisonment proves a relaxing place, a holiday from work and worry and all kinds of things.“A few months in jail are good for health – a disciplined life: an exact time to get up, to go to work, an exact time to go to sleep. Just enough food to keep you alive; more than that makes you sick.”He said, “I am never sick in jail, unless I pretend and want to be in hospital to escape; otherwise I am never sick. Outside I fall sick, but never inside. And outside is a foreign world and everybody is superior and I am inferior. Only in jail I feel a freedom.”Strange! When he said that, I said, “You say in jail you feel freedom?”He said, “Yes, only in jail I feel freedom.”What kind of society is this, in which people in jail feel freedom, and outside they feel imprisoned?And this is almost the story of every criminal. A small thing in the beginning – maybe he was hungry, maybe he was cold, needed a blanket and just stole a blanket – small necessities which should be fulfilled: otherwise the society should not produce these people. Nobody asks it to produce them.On the one hand you go on producing people more and more and more, and there are not enough things for them, neither food nor clothes nor shelter. Then what do you want? You are putting people in a situation where they are bound to become criminals.The world population has to be cut to one third – if you want crime to disappear.But nobody wants crime to disappear because the disappearance of crime means the disappearance of your judges, of your advocates, of your law experts, of your parliaments, of your policemen, of your jailers. It will create a big unemployment problem; nobody wants anything to change for the better.Everybody says things should change for the better, but everybody goes on making things worse, because the worse things are, the more people are employed. The worse things are, the more chances you have to feel good. Criminals are needed for you to feel that you are such a moral, respectable person.Sinners are needed for saints to feel that they are saints. Without sinners, who will be the saint? If the whole society consisted of good people, do you think you will remember Jesus Christ for two thousand years? For what? It is the criminal society that remembers Jesus Christ for two thousand years.It is a simple thing to understand. Why do you remember Gautam Buddha? If there were millions of buddhas, awakened people in the world…what specialty did Gautam Buddha have? He would have been lost in the crowd. But twenty-five centuries have passed and he stands like a pillar, a mountain peak far above you and your heads.In fact Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Mahavira, are not giants – you are pygmies.And every giant has an investment in your remaining a pygmy; otherwise he won’t be a giant.This is a great conspiracy.I am against this whole conspiracy. I am neither a giant nor a pygmy; I have no vested interest at all.I am just myself.I don’t compare myself with anybody, so nobody is lower than me and nobody is higher than me. Because of this simple fact I can see directly; there is no vested interest creating diversions to my vision. And this is my immediate response to the question: the death penalty is simply a proof that man still needs to be civilized, needs to be cultured, needs to know human values.In this world nobody is a criminal, never has been. Yes, there are people…they need compassion, not imprisonment, not punishment. All prisons should be transformed into psychological nursing homes.There is no need to bother to prove somebody guilty or not guilty – and years of argument – there is no need, because this whole thing is needed so that the innocent person is not punished. But I tell you, still the innocent person is punished more than the real guilty one, because the real guilty one becomes an expert by and by. The innocent person knows nothing, he can be caught very easily.In a civilized society, if somebody is suspected of doing something there is no need to take them to court, there is no need to force him into a police torture. All that is needed is to take him to loving people who can take care of him. Whether he is innocent or guilty does not matter, because even if an innocent man gets treated there is no harm.Love them, be compassionate to them; let them be dignified, respected. This man, Barkat Mian, used to tell me that “If I am respected I can stop stealing, but they cannot respect me. If they cannot respect me, then this is my way of taking revenge. I will go on doing everything that harms the society.”And I said, “Your logic is right.” This society is exactly the wrong society, that’s why it is so rare that a right person is born in this society. Otherwise, all are criminals – few are known, the majority are not known. Few are caught, the majority are not caught. But the whole society is sick.So my response is, that no punishment is needed, because no disease requires punishment, no sickness needs penalties; these people need respect, love, treatment, understanding. These people need meditation.You will be surprised, Barkat Mian started meditating with me – because I found his graveyard was a beautiful place to meditate. Almost nobody came around, because people are afraid of coming to the graveyard. They come only finally, when there is nothing left to be afraid of. And they don’t come by themselves, they have to be brought by four people. Then they come, otherwise nobody comes.Even in the daytime people are afraid of graveyards, particularly Mohammedan graveyards – because in Christian graves bodies and ghosts are also inside but they are cemented, marbled. Mohammedan graves are very dangerous, just mud; ghosts can come out very easily. In the night they slip out without any trouble. No cement, no stones, nothing is used, just the body is put in and mud covers the body, that’s all. So people are very much afraid. Barkat used to live alone and I used to sit with him late in the night, and by and by, just the way he has learned crime with criminals, he started learning meditation with a meditator.My experience is, that if you have something really valuable in you, then it starts flowing toward the other person – the other person is almost like a slope. Just as the water flows from up, downward, if you have something valuable it starts flowing down. And one day it happened that Barkat changed. I brought him to my father and I said, “Look at Barkat Mian, for almost two years he has not done anything wrong. Still your society is disrespectful toward him. Look at this man, I have brought him to show you that I have not become a criminal, he has became a meditator.”Barkat Mian is still alive, is very old. The last I saw him was in 1970. He had come to give me a send off at the station. I said, “Barkat, you never come to give me a send off. I come and go so much.”He said, “But this is special, I strongly feel that I can say I know we will never meet again. But you have given me so much, you have given me a rebirth. I was a criminal, and you had made me in the true sense a human being.”I said, “I have not done anything, this meditation is just like an infectious disease, don’t be grateful to me. It is just infection.He said, “Don’t try to stop me from being grateful to you. I know you don’t like anybody to be grateful to you, but I will never be seeing you again. So let me express my gratefulness,” and he touched my feet – which is very difficult for a Mohammedan, because Mohammedanism teaches not to worship any human being. Except God, never to bow down to anybody.I said, “Barkat Mian, you are a Mohammedan, you are not supposed to touch the feet of a human being.”He said, “Forget all about that Mohammedanism, I am just a human being and I am absolutely free to show my love, my gratitude, my thankfulness in anyway I decide. Who is Prophet Mohammed to decide for me.”I have seen it happen again and again. I saw it happen with a madman, I saw it happen with a criminal – I have seen it happen from every nook and corner of life. For this thirty years, thousands of people have come into contact with me and I have seen it happen that if you have something authentic, they are going to catch it. It is unavoidable. You are not in anyway converting them, but the conversion happens. And when conversion happens on its own it has a beauty, a grace.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How come you speak about political leaders and religious leaders in the same tone – is there no difference between them?Fundamentally there is no difference at all. Superficially of course there are differences.The basic desire to be a leader arises in people who are suffering from an inferiority complex. It does not matter whether they move into the political world or into the religious world; the will-to-power is an absolute indication that the man feels himself inferior to others and he wants to prove to the world that it is not so.It is not only a question of proving to the world; through the world he wants to prove it to himself too, that he is not inferior to anybody. The only way mind can manage it is to make everybody inferior to you.Mind is not your intelligence.It may sound strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher – just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own.The intellect is absolutely bankrupt.It has nothing of its own, all is borrowed.And that’s the difference between intelligence and intellect.Intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems.Intelligence is your born quality.It cannot be learned, it cannot be nurtured. Everybody is born with intelligence, but the society is in favor of intellect, because the intellectual person is not a real individual, he is phony. He has nothing of his own; he is a beggar, and beggars are not supposed to be emperors, are not supposed to be masters. They are destined to remain slaves.So your so-called greatest scholars are continuously proving their slavery to the establishment. None of them is a rebel. They are hankering for the prizes and awards the establishment can bestow upon them: respectability, honor. They are all desiring to be Nobel laureates, but to get the Nobel prize you have to sell your soul. You have to accept a thousand and one things that no intelligent person can accept.You have to support the status quo, the people who are in power, who have the money. You are just a puppet to them. Yes, it is a very mutual conspiracy: they give you the Nobel prize, they give you honorary doctorates, they make you world famous; in return you support their exploitation, their oppression, and whatever nonsense they are doing. You have to become a protecting wall.And of course the world is going to listen to you because you are a Nobel prize winner, honored by Oxford, by Cambridge, by Harvard. The ordinary people, the common masses are bound to listen to you.If you are supporting the society then naturally there is nothing wrong with the society; there is no need to change it. The problems are not created by the society but by the “anti-social” elements. And who are the anti-social elements? All the rebels are anti-social elements. It is these people who provoke the masses, steal their souls, make them aware that they also are human beings, not cattle. These are anti-social elements; they have to be destroyed.Either they have to be purchased in some way…give them a Nobel prize, and purchase them; give them honorary doctorates and purchase them. If they refuse to be purchased then society has all the ways to condemn them.Their books will not be published by the great publishers, because those great publications are owned by the vested interests. Their names will disappear from the newspapers, from the magazines, from the media. They will live almost as if they are not, as if they don’t exist.This is a far superior way to destroy somebody than crucifying. At least when you crucify a person you give him immense publicity. Two thousand years have passed: Jesus is still hanging on the cross. He has become almost an eternal advertisement. Wherever you go you will see the cross – on the graveyard, on the churches, on the vehicles of the Red Cross Society.Now this is free publicity for two thousand years! Isabel, you should learn something! Not a single cent has been wasted. Jesus was certainly a Jew, not only by birth but by his very spirit. He managed his own crucifixion, and created publicity which goes on increasing.It is a very essential thing to understand, that the establishment first tries to persuade you, to bribe you. When it fails in purchasing and bribing you, then it comes into its true color: then it starts destroying you. And it has learned through the centuries that poisoning a Socrates is not good. You killed the man, but you made him immortal; you imprinted his message on the very soul of humanity. You proved foolish – it was not the right way.Crucifying Jesus was not the way to destroy him. You have saved him.Now the modern status quo, establishment, vested interests, are far more clever. If Jesus comes back he should not be afraid that he is going to be crucified again. No, this time it is going to be worse: he will be ignored. To be crucified does not take your dignity, but to be ignored…. Nobody bothers about you, nobody pays any attention, nobody is for or against you. This is real humiliation that is being done.But intellectuals are not capable of resisting; they don’t have the guts, they can’t have, because all that they have is borrowed. They are easily purchasable, cheap. But they become a very significant protective wall around the establishment. People look toward them with respect. People think that if a Nobel prize winner is saying something it must be right – as if by winning the Nobel prize one attains to enlightenment, nirvana!It is a political game. It is all politics.Once in a while they go on giving a Nobel prize to a Russian scientist, to some scientist whom they would like to get out of Russia; his being in Russia is dangerous for them. He is close to finding something – or he has found it already – in which they are far behind.Now you see the ways of the politicians? Give the man a Nobel prize – now you create trouble. The scientist is not capable of resisting the temptation of accepting the Nobel prize, because that is the world’s greatest honor. It does not happen to everybody; it happens once in a while to one individual in millions.Now, a poor scientist, howsoever great a scientist he may be – as a man he is a poor man with all the desires to be famous, to be well known. Now, the politicians have put him into a dilemma: if he accepts the Nobel prize he goes against the Russian establishment because the Russian establishment knows perfectly well – politicians know each other well; nobody knows them as well as they know each other. They speak the same language, they work the same strategies.The Russian politicians know why the Nobel prize has been given to this man. By giving the Nobel prize a rift has been created between the man and the Soviet government. The Soviet pressure will be: “Reject the Nobel prize. It comes from the capitalist world; it is not an honor, in fact it is an insult. Reject it, and if you don’t reject it then you will be in trouble.”And it has happened with many people: either they have been imprisoned…that’s what the politicians of the other side wanted, that they should be imprisoned so their work is spoiled. They may have been coming close to something which may have made Russia the most powerful nation in the world. They have disrupted it; they have sabotaged it in a very clever way – without interfering, without saying a single world.Or if the man has a world-wide reputation already – which scientists generally don’t have…perhaps a literary person, a poet, a novelist may have. If the person has a world-wide reputation, then from all capitalist countries all the intellectuals, their institutions, academies and societies will start a great campaign and movement against the Russian government.Now, the Russian government has only two choices: either to release that man and stop this campaign…. But they cannot keep this man any longer in the country; he has become an enemy. And now he is in the hands of the enemies, he can become an informer. He is dangerous – he has to be expelled. That too is good for the capitalist world. Once the man is expelled he is received with great honor all over the capitalist world; he is made a hero.If you look into the ways the politicians go on doing things you will be surprised. But they succeed only with intellectuals, because intellectuals are really not intelligent people. If they were intelligent then nobody could manipulate them, neither the communist nor the capitalist; nobody would be capable of manipulating them. It would be impossible; they would see things clearly.Intelligence is of the soul.Intellect is of the mind.Mind is just garbage. Mind is that which has been given to you by others. The whole collection, the whole junkyard all kinds of people have been throwing in you – that is your mind. That mind continuously suffers from an inferiority complex, is bound to suffer: it has nothing of its own, it has no ground underneath its feet.The mind wants power, prestige.It can have power through politics, which is the criminal’s way. If your mind has a criminal tendency then you will follow the path of politics. Politicians and criminals are not basically different people.Politicians are successful criminals.Criminals are unsuccessful politicians.Criminals are poor, pitiable. They had tried but they failed. Politicians are of the same tribe, with only one difference: they have succeeded.And in this world success makes everything right. What you have done, how you have arrived, what method and means you have used – who bothers about it? When you are successful it is enough proof that you are a man of tremendous capacity. Your success is the proof.And when you have failed, your failure is also a proof that you were hankering for the moon; you were just foolish. Try to walk on the earth, don’t try to fly toward the moon; otherwise you will fall and get multiple fractures. That’s what poor criminals have got – multiple fractures.But the mind of the politician and the criminal is the same. Those who are not courageous enough will go in a way which can lead either to the world of criminals or to the world of politicians. Of course, of the hundred people who will walk on the path, ninety-nine will go to the world of criminals; ninety-nine will be in the jails. One percent will also be in jail, but of a different kind: it is called the White House.All kinds of black deeds – naturally you have to call the house the “White House” to hide them.I have heard: a black man, very old, hair all white, was following a woman, a young girl – must have been of the age of his grandchildren – with such lustful eyes that another old man, his friend, stopped him and said, “This does not suit you. It was okay at one time, but all your hair has become white, and you are following that girl with such dirty eyes – everybody is shocked.”Do you know what the man said? He said, “You will never understand anything. My hair is white, but that doesn’t mean that my heart has become white: it is still black and it is going to remain black. Even if I were dead and this girl passed by my side, I would have opened my eyes and looked with the same lustful eyes. What has hair to do with it? What kind of argument are you giving to me, that ‘your hair is white’? Let my hair be white – I am not!” But white hair helps you to hide black deeds.I have always wondered why they call this topmost criminal place in the world the White House. Perhaps unknowingly the idea came from their unconscious that everything inside is going to be black, but from the outside you have to keep a white face, everything clean.One person reaches to the White House, ninety-nine to the black houses.So there are people who are not courageous enough to take this risk – ninety-nine percent possibility of failing, and only one percent possibility of succeeding. They want far surer ground. Religion provides that ground: there is no failure in it.You become religious, you become a great religious leader. If you succeed you become a great saint; if you don’t succeed, still you are a small saint, you don’t fail. The smallest saint is still a saint – the lowliest priest is still in the same line as the pope. In religion there is no failure. So, cowardly people – who are as much interested in gaining power, who are suffering as much from an inferiority complex, who are on a power trip but don’t have the guts to follow the criminal path – find the path of righteousness, asceticism, morality, prayer.By becoming a saint they will also attain to power. Of course, this power cannot be very effective. They cannot become Alexander the Great, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin; they cannot have millions of lives in their hands – and now such politicians have the whole of humanity’s life in their hands. Of course these saints can’t have that much, but in a certain way, from a different aspect, they are more powerful because the politicians will come to touch their feet, the presidents will come to bow down in respect to them.The politician does everything according to a particular strategy. If just before the elections President Reagan goes to the Vatican to pay respects to the Catholic pope, it is not accidental, it is preplanned. When Reagan goes to the Vatican and gives his respects to the Catholic pope, all the Catholics of America are, without much effort, converted to giving him votes: this is the right man.All the bishops, all the cardinals in America will now tell their congregations that Reagan is our man. Now, to persuade so many Catholics in America…if he had to go from home to home it would have taken eternity. And how many stupid things politicians have to do! They have to go on kissing all kinds of children – their noses are running and they are kissing them…. The politician has to do it.This is easier, to go to the pope – just kiss his hand and millions of Catholics are on your side. And the pope blesses you: that way he feels far superior to the presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens. Of course his power is only airy-fairy, but you enjoy it. It has nothing substantial in it, it is hollow inside. But it does not matter, because when the presidents and the prime ministers come, the whole media is there, all the newspapers, all the television stations of the world, all the radio stations are talking about the pope – you can feel a certain gratification. But the gratification is of the same desire – the will-to-power.That’s why I go on talking about the political leaders and the religious leaders without making any distinction – because there is no distinction at all, only a superficial distinction. Their psyches are functioning in the same way.Neither the religious leader nor the politician is interested in the people whom they pretend to lead.They are interested in being leaders – and of course the leader cannot be without the led, so it is a necessity to go on promising the people things. Politicians promise them things of this world; religious leaders promise them things of the other world. But do you see any difference in what they are doing? Both are promising so that you go on following them, afraid to get lost somewhere else, because if you lose the path then you will miss the promise.The promise keeps you with the crowd – and promises don’t cost anything. You can promise anything. Promises are always for tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. And you are not going to live here forever.Just look at past history. All politicians have been promising people things which have not materialized in thousands of years. Thousands of political leaders have been promising the same things. How blind humanity must be!The promises have not changed – that means certainly nothing has been achieved. The same promises are being given to you and you go on following, hoping.Hope is the greatest drug that man has invented.Strange, that religious people are against drugs; politicians are also against drugs. Politicians make laws against drugs, religious people create hell and punishment against drugs.Why are they so afraid of drugs?It needs a deep search, investigation. They are afraid of drugs because drugs are competitors to them. LSD can give you hallucinations of heaven. That’s the trouble. No religion can afford to allow people to use LSD. LSD is not dangerous; taken in the right proportions, under medical care, it can be tremendously helpful in religious growth.But religions are not ready to allow it for the simple reason that if LSD can give you a beautiful experience – hallucinatory, but still it is an experience and tremendously satisfying, fulfilling – then just promises will look like dry bones without any juice in them. Only idiots perhaps may continue to chew the dry bones.Dogs do that. They chew dry bones and enjoy very much, not knowing what is happening. When they chew dry bones those dry bones hurt their mouths and their mouths start bleeding. The more they chew, the more bleeding happens. And blood goes through their throat and they think – logically enough – that the blood is coming from the bone. Now, how to explain to a dog that, “it is your own blood; the bone is absolutely dry.”So perhaps a few idiots may still continue to go to the churches, but intelligent people will stop. Rather, when they feel the urge to have a beautiful hallucination, whenever they want to live in another world, they will not wait for death to come: they will go to a medical clinic and have a two, three-day session with LSD, and enjoy everything that their religious leaders have been telling them that they will get after death.Drugs are dangerous to religions for the simple reason that they are their greatest competitors. And even better drugs can be invented, but religions continuously cripple the research.Politicians are against drugs, because if people start taking drugs then who cares about your five-year plans? Who cares about the classless society that will come in the future to your grandchildren? Who cares about the revolution, democracy, freedom of speech?You don’t have even the freedom to hallucinate!This is absolutely innocent because only you are doing it, nobody else is involved. No, you don’t have the freedom to hallucinate. Reduced to the basics, that’s what drug prohibition means, that you don’t have the freedom to hallucinate. The government is in control of your dreams. Drugs can give you dreams, and properly used, can help you to see many things in yourself which in psychoanalysis will take three years, four years; then too it is not certain that you will be able to see.It is a well-known fact that scientists have discovered something like truth serum, but it is prevented from being used, because if something like truth serum is possible…. You take an injection of truth serum and then suddenly you can see all your falsities, your hypocrisies, your bogus personality…and certainly if anything can make you aware of truth, it is bound to make you aware of all that is false: that is going to happen simultaneously. The moment you see the truth you see the false too.Now, the whole of politics depends on falsities.Communism goes on talking about equality of people – an utter untruth.People are not equal, people are unique.Once you see the truth, that people are unique, how can they be equal? That does not mean that somebody is inferior to you and somebody is superior to you. You are not equal, you are not unequal either. You are simply different.You don’t compare things that are different. You don’t say that the house and the tree are equal. If you say that, you will be thought insane, because a house is a house and a tree is a tree; they have different functions. Their individualities are different. You don’t compare them. You cannot say that the house is superior to the tree, or the tree is superior to the house. In fact, the category of comparison is inapplicable.Each individual is so unique. When you know the truth of it you cannot be a communist.Communism will never allow anything that makes you aware of the truth.In the non-communist countries, there are different lies, different falsities. For example, freedom of expression: it exists nowhere; it is only written in constitutions.Once I was in a court in Ahmedabad in India, for absolutely ungrounded complaints against me – I was talking to a big rally of at least twenty thousand people who had gathered to listen to me – for the simple reason that Morarji Desai was the chief minister of Gujarat at that time, and he wanted me to be prohibited from entering Gujarat.He could not convince his own assembly and cabinet that by preventing a person…they said, “You will be creating trouble for yourself and for the cabinet. What reasons have you got? What has he done against Gujarat? What crime has he committed that you can prevent him from coming to Gujarat? And it goes against the constitution, because the Indian constitution declares it as one of the basic rights that in India, every citizen of India has the right of movement. Now, you are preventing him from moving into Gujarat: you have to give some solid reasons; otherwise you will be in trouble.”And the moment I heard I said, “Let their parliament decide – I will be there already in Gujarat.” So I was addressing the people, and while addressing them I mentioned a small story.In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram they used to read the story of Rama, the Hindu incarnation of God, every day. Each evening Acharya Vinoba Bhave would read the story of Rama, and Gandhi and all the followers – and there were not many, just twenty, thirty people – would listen to the story.There comes a moment when Rama’s wife, Sita, is stolen by his enemy, Ramana. She is in difficulty: How to make Rama know by what path Ramana has taken her? She must have been an intelligent woman; she tried one strategy – she started dropping her ornaments. And Indian women, and particularly a queen, have so many ornaments; they weigh much more than she herself does.She started dropping her ornaments one by one on the path so Rama would know exactly where shehad been taken. And Rama found them but he could not recognize whether they were Sita’s ornaments or somebody else’s.His brother, Lakshmana, was with him. Lakshmana said, “You seem to be puzzled. What is the matter?”He said, “I cannot recognize them because I loved her so much that whenever she was with me I looked at her, I never looked at her ornaments. I cannot recognize them – perhaps you can. Just look at the ornaments: if they are hers then we are on the right path.”Lakshmana said, “Forgive me, because I can only recognize the ornaments that she used to wear on her feet.” Indian women wear ornaments on their feet, even on their toes. He recognized them. He said, “These are her ornaments.”At this point of the story Mahatma Gandhi said, “This is strange! I can understand Rama loved the woman so much he did not recognize her ornaments. But what about Lakshmana? – he was living with them for years. Ahead was Rama – because they had been expelled from their kingdom for fourteen years to live in the forest…. so ahead was Rama, in the middle was Sita, behind was Lakshmana, just to guard. It is strange that he could not recognize any other ornament.”Vinoba, who was a celibate for his whole life – now he is dead – gave an explanation which appealed to Gandhi very much, so much so that just before this explanation, Vinoba was known only as Vinoba Bhave; but because of this explanation Gandhi gave him the title of acharya, a master.The explanation was that Lakshmana never looked at any other part of Sita’s body. He was a celibate and to look at anybody’s wife is not right for a celibate. But because he used to touch her feet every morning, he had to see the ornaments on her feet, just out of necessity. What could he do? – he had to touch her feet every morning. The elder brother’s wife is just like a mother. She has to be respected, and the first thing in the morning was to touch her feet; so that’s why he could recognize the ornaments of the feet only.This is an outlandish explanation, nowhere ever given before. The story is five thousand years old, and there have been so many commentaries on it, but nobody had even asked the question and nobody had answered it. Gandhi was immensely impressed, and said, “Vinoba is an acharya – just this simple explanation shows his insight into human psychology.”Talking to the masses in the rally I said, “This explanation does not show anything about Lakshmana, it shows something about Vinoba Bhave. It is not Lakshmana’s explanation; obviously, it is Vinoba Bhave’s explanation, and it shows his mind. He is afraid to look at women’s faces, or the other parts of their bodies. It is his fear that he is projecting on Lakshmana.“And if his explanation is true then Lakshmana falls in my eyes completely. If Sita was just like a mother to him, still was he afraid to look at her face? One has to be afraid of looking at one’s own mother? That means he must have been dreaming sexual dreams about Sita, fantasizing about her.“This explanation is insulting to Lakshmana, and I reject it as an explanation. My feeling is that Sita was so beautiful – if she was so beautiful for her husband, what to say about others? If the husband himself was so hypnotized by her beauty that he never saw her ornaments, what to say of poor Lakshmana? He must have been hypnotized even more!“A husband sooner or later gets fed up. In fact a husband stops looking at his wife’s face, her body: he looks at everything in the room except his wife. If you inquire into couples you can be convinced of what I am saying. Just ask any husband, ‘How long has it been since you looked directly into your wife’s eyes, her face?’ – and he will start scratching his head. ‘It is difficult; perhaps since the honeymoon I have not looked at her.’“But Lakshmana…. And it is just one side, that your elder brother’s wife is equal to your mother. The other side is that the younger brother of a woman’s husband is known in Hindi as devar. Devar means her second husband. In case the husband dies he has the first right to marry her. Var means husband; devar means second husband.“Just as there are presidents and vice-presidents – in case the president dies the vice-president becomes the acting president – devar is simply a ready-made husband in case of emergency.”A case was put against me, that I had hurt the religious feelings of the Hindus. In the court there were many problems. The first was that I was asked to take the oath in the name of God, or in the name of the constitution of India, that I would speak only the truth.I said, “Before I take the oath I would like to ask you: What about freedom of speech? The oath goes against freedom of speech. You are binding me. You are telling me I can speak only the truth; then why in the constitution do you talk about freedom of speech? You should have said, ‘You are free to speak only the truth.’ Freedom of speech has no boundaries to it.“How can I go against the constitution? I can take the oath that I will follow the constitution, use freedom of speech, but I cannot say truth or untruth, because that divides freedom of speech in two parts.”The magistrate said, “This is a little difficult. I have been a magistrate for twenty years, I have been studying the constitution in every possible way, all its aspects, but that this oath is against freedom of speech never occurred to me.”I said, “You don’t know what freedom of speech is. But,” I said, “I don’t want to change the subject, so just to continue I will take the oath. But remember, you can believe in my oath, but you cannot believe in my other statements. On what grounds do you make the distinction? If I am a person who lies, I can lie when I am taking the oath. Who prevents me?“You know perfectly well that everybody takes the oath here and everybody is not speaking the truth. Both the parties fighting in a case take the oath; certainly both the parties are not speaking the truth. At least one party certainly is not speaking the truth; perhaps both are not speaking the truth. But both speaking the truth is not possible; otherwise how are you going to make the judgment?“You accept my oath – on what grounds? Do you know me, that I speak the truth? That I will take the oath and will follow it? What gives you that guarantee? I will remain the same person as I was afterward, so it makes no difference to me. I can take the oath just so that we can proceed, because there are so many problems.”The judge said, “Problems? For you or for me?”I said, “You have summoned me to the court” – and there were thousands of people who had come; they were in the court and outside the court. And that man who had put the case against me – a Hindu political leader, a Hindu chauvinist – became afraid seeing so many people sympathetic toward me.I said to the judge, “Look: first, I was simply quoting a statement of Mahatma Gandhi, and an explanation of Vinoba Bhave. If anybody has hurt the feelings of Hindus, they should put cases against Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave. I was just quoting them, without inverted commas.“It was not my explanation. In fact I was offended by the explanation that Vinoba has given. Vinoba’s explanation means that he thinks that Lakshmana has some sexual interest in Sita. That is purely his explanation. Said in plain words, he is afraid to look at Sita’s face. Why? If he is not sexually interested he should not be afraid. Vinoba is trying to make an explanation which is insulting.“I am saying that Sita was so beautiful – anybody would have been interested. I would have been interested. You would have been interested. Beauty is not something that one should not be interested in. It is one of the gifts of nature; it has to be adored. And my feeling is he was touching her feet every day because Sita was so beautiful; he was adoring her.“And you know the meaning of devar – that he was the second husband. Now, if somebody is hurt, then he should put a case against the whole Hindu tradition, that this tradition is in a mess. On the one hand you say treat your brother’s wife as your mother – okay, treat her as your mother. But when the brother dies, then? – treat your mother as your wife!“And this man who has complained against me and forced me to come from Calcutta to here, unnecessarily wasting my time – is he the only Hindu in Ahmedabad? These thousands of people are here – these are all Hindus. You ask those whose feelings are hurt to raise their hands. And if you don’t ask then I am going to ask.”So the magistrate had to ask. Not a single hand was raised. I said, “Now you can see: nobody’s feelings are hurt. This man is a Hindu chauvinist.”At that time the man became afraid and he told the magistrate, “I want police protection, because after the court this crowd can kill me.”I asked the magistrate, “Do you want any more argument that nobody’s feelings are hurt? This man is afraid of Hindus, that they will kill him. They should kill me – I should ask for the protection of the court because I have hurt the feelings of Hindus, he hasn’t. Why should he be afraid?“And why should I have been called to the court? Why is Vinoba Bhave not being called? Of course, Gandhi is dead – you cannot summon him, but he is not needed anyway. Vinoba is alive – why has he not been called to the court? Just because he belongs to the party who rules the country? Because he is a guru to all the politicians of the country, you didn’t have the guts to summon him?“He was needed to answer whether I am quoting right or wrong. If he says that I am quoting wrong, then certainly I have to be answerable for it. And my advocate had asked you to summon Vinoba because it is most important and essential, what he says. Still you did not summon Vinoba. And still you go on saying that the courts are impartial?“Just look at the fact: I was simply quoting him. It was the court’s duty to ask the man whether I am quoting him rightly or wrongly. You should have called him here; we could have argued in front of you and made it clear to Vinoba that he is sexually obsessed and he is projecting his sexual obsession on poor Lakshmana.“I was protecting Lakshmana. Vinoba should put a case against me. And this man is simply an idiot: he does not understand even what I was saying. He does not know what it means. But Vinoba is not called. And,” I said, “I will not appear again in the court unless Vinoba is called.”The judge had no guts – because the prime minister goes to Vinoba, the cabinet ministers go to Vinoba, the president goes to Vinoba. To call Vinoba to the court would incur anger from all sides. The judge dismissed the case. He could not do anything else – he simply dismissed the case.Politics has power. Vinoba was a religious leader, but through the politicians he has power. Although that power is not very substantial, still the power is there.The religious leader or the political leader – both are in the same boat, helping each other. The politician protects the religious leader, the religious leader protects the politician. He protects him through people’s religious feelings, and the politician protects the religious leader by his power. It is a mutual understanding. Hence I don’t make any difference between the two. To me, the political leader is more criminal-minded; hence is ready to take the risk.The religious leader is a coward, but cunning; through cunningness he manages to rise even higher than the political leader; at least in the abstract sense he is higher than the political leader.But the desire of both is the same: to rule, to have control over millions of people.To me, a man who does not suffer from an inferiority complex has no need even to lead a single man, to be powerful over even a single man. Such a man, if he is a husband, will not have any power over his wife. He will be just a friend, not a husband.The word husband is ugly. It comes from husbandry: just as the farmer sows seeds in the ground, the husband does husbandry with the wife, he sows seeds. The woman is just like the earth and the husband is the possessor of the earth, the owner. The word husband is ugly, it should be changed. The whole idea is very primitive, crude.The wife is not taken as a human being but as earth which you can sell. And it has been the case in the past: in many cultures wives were sold, purchased. In China you could have killed your wife – it was not a crime because she was your possession. If you destroy your chair it is nobody’s business; the chair was your possession – so was your wife.Just because I mentioned Vinoba Bhave I remember…I had met him many times. One time he was giving his daily discourse in his ashram – and what ashrams these people had! Twelve widows, that was his ashram. And those widows were listening to his great discourse.I just happened to pass from Wardha to Nagpur and his ashram was just outside the Wardha city, by the side of a river, Pavnar; hence the name of his ashram, Paramdham Pavnar. The friend who was driving me said, “This is the time Vinoba’s discourse starts. Would you like…?”I said, “There is no harm,” so we went and sat. He had already started and he was telling an upanishadic story. The story was about a very famous upanishadic seer. His name was Raikva, Maharishi Raikva, but he was better known as Gadiwan Raikva because he always traveled in a bullock cart. Gadiwan means one who drives the bullock cart.But in those days to have a beautiful bullock cart was something very special, it was not ordinary. Even today in Indian villages to have a beautiful bullock cart is to have a great possession. Gadiwan Raikva went to a market where girls were being sold. It was a market to purchase slaves – men, women.Now, in the first place what is a maharishi doing in a market where slaves are being sold? Vinoba did not bother about that. There was one very beautiful girl, and when the auction began on the girl, Maharishi Raikva started raising the price. But it was difficult because the king of the country was also present and he was also interested in the girl, and he was doubling the price. Now, Gadiwan Raikva was a rich maharishi, but not to be compared with the king. Finally the king purchased the girl at a very high price. Raikva was very angry.After ten years…. this is the whole story that I am telling. Vinoba did not tell this part of the story, of the slave market, Raikva’s competition with the king, his defeat, the girl being purchased by the king. All this part was left out.Vinoba began praising Raikva, his wisdom, and started the story ten years after this incident: The king was becoming old and wanted somebody to guide him in the spiritual life, so he went to Gadiwan Raikva with many chariots full of gold, money, valuable clothes. He offered everything to Raikva, touched his feet, and Raikva said – he used the word sudra for him.Sudra is the worst you can say to a man. It is difficult to translate in English, so I will say, “You son-of-a-bitch! You think that by all this money you can purchase spiritual guidance? I spit on all your money – take it back!”This was the main emphasis in Vinoba’s story, and he said, “These were the people who could throw all those valuable presents and say directly – even to the king – ‘You are a sudra, the worst kind of human being: untouchable. The very idea in your mind, that by money you can purchase spiritual guidance, makes you untouchable. Just take all this rubbish from here and don’t come back to me.’“So Vinoba talked much about it, that this was the courage of the seers of India, that they could even insult a great king without being afraid. I was very puzzled, because those twelve widows were listening in great silence as if some great thing was being said.I said, “Vinoba, you have not told the whole story. You have left out two portions, first in the middle of the story – which is very important in order to understand in what context this man Raikva was speaking – and you have left out the end part also…. Because the king went home and he asked his prime minister what to do: Raikva has refused, and he was very angry.The prime minister said, “I knew it was going to happen. You must have forgotten: ten years before you had, in an auction, defeated Raikva; now if you want him to guide you, you take that woman rather than money. Offer the woman to the man. Touch his feet, ask his forgiveness, and he will guide you….”He took the woman, and Raikva received him with great joy, accepted him as a disciple and guided him into spirituality.I said, “These two parts you have dropped from the story. You are cheating these twelve widows. Now, what authority have you got to change the story? Who are you? On what grounds did you drop those two parts? – because without those two parts the story takes a totally different color. It seems as if Raikva is so high that money does not matter to him, but the reality is that it is not a question of money. The woman that was taken from his hands matters too much to him.“And this man who carries for ten years a revengeful attitude, and for ten years is still lusting for the woman – what spiritual guidance can he give?” I asked him, “You tell me what spiritual guidance this man can give – and why you dropped these two parts from the story.”And since that time Vinoba remained angry with me. He said, “The time is over, so if you want to discuss you will have to come to my…”I said, “I don’t want to discuss, because there is nothing to discuss; I simply wanted to make the story complete – and I have made it complete and all the widows have understood. You have understood. What argument? I have nothing to do with all these kinds of rogues, this Gadiwan Raikva. What do I have to do with this man? I wanted simply to make the story complete, just out of a sense of appropriateness; otherwise I am not interested.”But this kind of thing is not expected of a man of integrity. This is simply cheating.These are “religious” people. Indira used to go for spiritual guidance to Vinoba Bhave. I told Indira Gandhi – I had told her this story – “This is spiritual guidance? You are also a widow; when you are no longer a prime minister go into his ashram.”But Vinoba died before Indira, and then she died, so the chance never came; otherwise she would have ended up in Vinoba Bhave’s ashram of widows.And I asked her: “What do you say? Is this a man who has some sense of being truthful? And if Raikva could not give guidance, I say to you this Vinoba also cannot give you any guidance.” Misguidance perhaps….We have never heard what happened to the king, what spiritual growth he obtained; the Indian spiritual history remembers nothing of the king. But it is natural, because whatever advice this idiot must have given could not be called spiritual – this man was not spiritual.But this is how religious leaders and political leaders…. They are all made of the same stuff, the same holy cow-dung. I don’t see any difference, except superficial differences about which there is no need to talk.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How do we, the commune, ensure that our children maintain their original face?The original face of every child is the face of God. Of course my God is not a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew. My God is not even a person but only a presence.It is less like a flower and more like fragrance. You can feel it but you cannot catch hold of it. You can be overwhelmed by it but you cannot possess it.My God is not something objective, there.My God is your very subjectivity, here.My God can never be indicated by the word that.He can only be indicated by the word this.The God of my vision and experience is not to be searched for in the synagogues, temples, mosques, churches, in the Himalayas, in the monasteries. He is not there because He is always here. And you go on looking for Him there.When I say every child’s original face is the face of God, I am saying that God is synonymous with life, existence. Whatsoever is, is divine, sacred. And there is nothing else than God.God is not to be understood as quantity, but as quality. You cannot measure it. You cannot make a statue of it, you cannot draw a picture of it. In that sense it is absolutely impersonal. And if you look at the faces of children when they arrive, fresh from the very source of life, you will see a certain presence which cannot be named – unnamable, indefinable.The child is alive. You cannot define its aliveness, but it is there, you can feel it. It is so much there that howsoever blind you are you cannot miss it. It is fresh. You can smell the freshness around a child. That fragrance slowly, slowly disappears. And if unfortunately the child becomes successful, a celebrity – a president, a prime minister, a pope – then the same child stinks.He had come with a tremendous fragrance, immeasurable, indefinable, unnamable. You look into the eyes of a child – you cannot find anything deeper. The eyes of a child are abysmal, there is no bottom to them. Unfortunately, the way society will destroy him, soon his eyes will be only superficial; because of layers and layers of conditioning, that depth, that immense depth will have disappeared long before. And that was his original face.The child has no thoughts. About what can he think? Thinking needs a past, thinking needs problems. He has no past, he has only future. He has no problems yet, he is without problems. There is no possibility of thinking for him. What can he think?The child is conscious but without thoughts.This is the original face of the child.Once this was your face too, and although you have forgotten it, it is still there within you, waiting someday to be rediscovered. I am saying rediscovered because you have discovered it many times in your previous lives, and again and again you go on forgetting it.Perhaps even in this life there have been moments when you have come very close to knowing it, to feeling it, to being it. But the world is too much with us. Its pull is great – and there are a thousand and one directions the world is pulling you. It is pulling you in so many directions that you are falling apart. It is a miracle how people go on managing to keep themselves together. Otherwise their one hand will be going to the north, another hand to the south, their head must be going toward heaven; all their parts will be flying all over the place.It is certainly a miracle how you go on keeping yourself together. Perhaps the pressure from all sides is too much so that your hands and legs and heads cannot fly. You are pressed from everywhere.Whenever I see…and I don’t know why people go on sending me beautiful paperweights – I don’t have any papers. What am I going to do with paperweights? Perhaps they think there are hundreds of books in my name so there must be so much paperwork around me, all over my room papers and papers. There is not a single paper.Yes, paperweights go on coming, and whenever a paperweight comes I am immediately reminded of you. You would have been flying like papers in the strong wind, but there are so many paperweights to keep you pressed and give you an idea that you are one individual. You are not – you are many, and in the crowd of this many-ness of your existence, your original face is lost.Even if by chance you happen to meet your original face, you will not be able to recognize it, it will be such a stranger. Perhaps you come across it once in a while, just by accident, but you don’t even say Hi! It is a stranger and perhaps deep down, a certain fear – that is always there with every stranger.That’s why people try to become acquainted, introduced to strangers, the sooner the better. They don’t want to be left in that state of fear, that somebody is absolutely unknown to them. They don’t know what he can do, what he intends to do, what kind of person he is. Maybe he is a murderer, a thief.I played around this theme so many times because I was continuously traveling in India, and I was always traveling in an air-conditioned coupe. So at the most two persons – that too very rarely because in India very few people can afford to travel in the air-conditioned coupe, except people like me who have nothing to lose. Just poor people like me can travel like that because we cannot be more poor than we are.But once in a while a minister, a governor, a rich industrialist, a scientist, a vice-chancellor – people like that were my fellow travelers. And I always tried to see what happened to them if I continued to remain a stranger. And I enjoyed – it does things to people.I was not doing anything, I was just trying be a stranger, which really I am. They would ask me, “Where are you going?” – just anything to begin with.I would say, “Anywhere will do.”They would say, “Anywhere will do?” – and I could see the fear arising: “Is the man mad? But no, he does not look mad.” They would then say, “Are you joking?”Once I said, “Why should I joke with you?”In India, it is a convention that you joke only with certain relatives. Joking is very confined, to a certain relationship. You joke only with your wife’s brother, otherwise you don’t joke; only that’s acceptable to the society. I said, “But you are not my wife’s brother, why should I joke? Or are you my wife’s brother? Perhaps you are. But I don’t remember ever seeing you before.”The man became really more shaky and I could see the trembling arising – and he had to travel with me for at least ten hours, twelve hours, or even twenty-four hours. But still he tried: “What is your name?”I said, “The moment you asked me, it was just on the tip of my tongue. Now I am trying hard to remember. I have a name, I certainly remember…I know it is there but you will have to give me a little time. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come what can I do? What can you do? But it doesn’t matter anyway, you can call me any name. Anyway every child is born without a name and we give him one. All names are arbitrary, so it does not matter whether you call me Ram, Rahim, Ibrahim, Moses, Jesus, Christ; anything will do.”And I said, “You please sit down, there is no need to continue to stand. Sit down, be at ease, and I will go and close the door.”He said, “Why are you closing the door?”I said, “The door has to be closed. Passengers are passing by, what will they think? You are trembling, perspiring, in an air-conditioned room? No, I don’t want you to look so silly and embarrassed.” I virtually forced the person to sit down. I was forcing him to sit down, and he wanted to stand up.He said, “Can’t I stand?”I said, “You just first relax. Do you want to go to the bathroom or have you already done it? Anyway there is no need to worry – you just sit down.”That man looked at me and looked all around. It was just a small cabin for two persons and he was thinking, “this type of man, he can do anything.” But he tried somehow to figure me out; anyway he wanted to be acquainted. And he said “By your face you look religious.”I said, “Yes, when I look in the mirror I also feel that this man looks religious. But I am not religious. Never go by the appearance, appearances are not always real.”“No,” he said, “you are still trying to befool me. You are a religious man.” Now he was trying somehow to categorize me.I said, “If you say, and if it consoles you, helps you in some way, okay, I am a religious man.”The man was a brahmin – I had seen his name on the door. In the air-conditioned compartment they have the passengers’ names on the door, so I had seen that he was a Bengali, a high-caste brahmin, a chattopadhyaya. So he said, “What religion?”I said, “Religion is just religion – there is no adjective to it.”He said, “That I cannot believe. You must be a religious Hindu sage.”I said, “If it helps you, I am.”And he fell at my feet, and he said, “I knew from the very beginning that you are not mad, that you are a sage. And sages and mad people look alike, behave alike. Everything that you said now makes sense.”But I said, “One thing I have just said to console you – really I am not a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan.” And now you cannot believe what a terrible mess he fell into. He had touched the feet of a Mohammedan! A Hindu brahmin, a high-caste brahmin, is afraid even of touching the shadow of a Mohammedan. If he touches even the shadow of a Mohammedan he will have to take a bath to cleanse himself. And he had touched actual feet!Now the situation had become much worse. The chattopadhyaya said, “But why did you lie to me?”I said, “I was just trying to console you. I never thought that you would fall at my feet. Before I could prevent you, you had already done it. But don’t be worried, I am really a brahmin. I was just checking what happens: if some Mohammedan looks like a brahmin sage and you touch his feet, what will happen to you? I was just trying to see.”He said, “That’s right.” And a great smile…and he relaxed in his seat and he said, “I knew from the very beginning – such a nice person could not be a Mohammedan. Those Mohammedans are all butchers.”I said, “You are right, because I was born a Mohammedan so I know perfectly well they are all butchers.”This way I have seen many well-educated people trying to figure out…and I told them, “Why are you bothering to figure out about me? If you take that much trouble to figure out about yourself you will become enlightened! You need not worry about me. You do your work, whatever you want to do; you simply accept me as absent, I am not here. Behave as if I am not here and do whatsoever you want to do.“If you want me to close my eyes, I can close my eyes. If you want me to go to sleep, I will go to sleep. But please be at ease; just forget about me. But don’t try to become familiar with me – that I don’t allow. We are going to remain strangers for ten hours.”In fact we are all strangers.Even if we live our whole life together it makes no difference, we remain strangers; we just settle for consolations, and we start taking the other for granted. It is a make-believe that you know the other – your wife, your mother, your father, your brother, your friend – it is just a make-believe that you know them. You know nothing about the other because that is impossible – for the simple reason that you don’t know anything about yourself yet. Without knowing oneself it is impossible to know anybody else.The trouble is you can be introduced to somebody else, but how can you be introduced to yourself? Who is going to do that?You can be introduced to somebody else because that introduction is just arbitrary. The name, the caste, the country, the religion, the profession – these are all arbitrary and accidental.It happened…really a great coincidence, almost inconceivable, but it happened so whether it is conceivable or not makes no difference. When I was standing at the window after my matriculation, to obtain entry into a college, there were many people who were filling in forms and I was waiting to get my form. When I was filling in my form a boy just of my age came to me, and he said, “What subjects are you taking?”So I showed him my form and said, “These are my subjects.”He said, “Oh, okay, I will fill in these subjects also.”I said, “But this is strange. You have come to the college – don’t you have any idea what you want to study?”He said, “It is all the same to me. My father wants me to study so I have come to the college. I don’t have any interest in anything, I have just come to enjoy. My father is rich. He wants me to be in college so okay, I will be in college and have fun and enjoy. Any subjects will do.”But I said, “These subjects perhaps may be difficult for you: philosophy, logic….”He said, “I don’t care even what they mean. I don’t know, I have never heard this word logic before.”“Then,” I said, “It is perfectly okay.”And he asked me, “Will you please give me your fountain pen?”I said, “This is too much – you don’t have your own fountain pen?”He said, “I am not a man who is interested in these things.”He showed me a packet of cigarettes. He said, “I am interested in cigarettes, not in fountain pens; and I am not going to attend any class or anything. My father is going to send me the money and I am going to enjoy, and I am going to ask him for more and more. He has enough, and I am the only son so I am not wasting anybody else’s money. It is my own, I am going to inherit it anyway.”I gave him my fountain pen and he filled in the form. He even had to look at my form for the spelling of the words that he was filling in. But this way we became friends. I liked the boy, he was sincere, and not a hypocrite in any way. We became friends. He needed me and I needed him, because I needed so much money for books and he had so much money that I said, “This is good.” And he was not interested in books at all.But I was his first friend in the college. And he had everything: a car, a driver, a bungalow – I needed all these things so I said, “That’s perfectly good – you came at the right time. And whatever your need is, I will manage, you don’t be worried.” So I had to do examinations for both of us. In three hours time, half was mine and half was his. In one and a half hours I finished my paper and then I would start his paper.But he said, “This is a great bargain.” He said, “If I can pass, my father is going to be mad with happiness. He cannot believe that I can pass, because in matric he had to give such a large bribe to push me through. And now he knows that in college it is going to be difficult.”I said, “You don’t be worried, you will pass first class.” And he passed first class with a BA After the BA I left Jabalpur because one of the professors in Sagar University, S.S. Roy, was persistently asking me, writing me, phoning me to say, “After your BA you join this university for your post-graduation.”From Jabalpur University to Sagar University there is not much distance – one hundred miles. But Sagar University was in many ways unique. It was a small university compared to Benares University or Aligarh University, which had ten thousand students, twelve thousand students. They are just like Oxford or Cambridge – big universities, big names. Sagar University had only one thousand students and almost three hundred professors, so for every three students, one professor. It was a rare place; perhaps nowhere in the world can you find another university where there is one professor for three students.And the man who had founded the university was acquainted with all the best professors around the world. Sagar was his birthplace; Doctor Harisingh Gaud was his name. He was a world-famous authority on law, and earned so much money – and never gave a single pai to any beggar, to any institution, to any charity. He was known as the most miserly person in the whole of India.And then he founded the university and gave his whole life’s earning. That was millions of dollars. He said to me, “That’s why I was a miser; otherwise there was no way – I was a poor man, I was born a poor man. If I were doing charity and giving to this hospital and to this beggar and to that orphan, this university would not have existed.” For this university…he had carried his whole life only one idea, that his birthplace should have one of the best universities in the world. And certainly he created one of the best universities in the world.While he was alive he managed to bring professors from all over the world. He gave them double salaries, triple salaries, whatsoever they wanted – and no work, because there were only one thousand students, which even a small college has in India; one thousand students is not a large number. And he opened all the departments which only a university like Oxford can afford. Oxford has nearabout three hundred and fifty departments.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How do you intend to raise the consciousness of the entire planet? Do we have enough time? Do we have a chance?I can only answer for myself. I cannot use the word we.That word is used by political leaders and religious priests. I am neither of them. I do not represent anybody in the world except myself.The politician represents a certain crowd; hence his use of the word we has some meaning. He is no more than the total sum of the crowd. Withdraw the crowd and the politician disappears into a vacuum, into nothingness.The same is true about a pope, a shankaracharya, or any other religious leader. The pope is simply the sum total of all the Catholics of the world. But remember, he is not a man but only a sum total – a number in arithmetic, but not an individual.The individual can never use the word we, he can only use the word I – and that too with a very specific condition. His I is not equivalent to the ego. His I is not to be written in capital letters, his I should be written in lower case letters. It is not something extraordinary: he is simple, an ordinary human being. I am using the word I in the same way. We is impossible for me because I don’t belong to any crowd, any mob.My commune is not a crowd.It is a communion of individuals.Yes, one can misunderstand it as a crowd. From far away you see a forest, but as you come close there are only trees, no forest. Exactly that is the case with my commune. Those who never come close to it will think of it as a cult, a creed, a certain society. But those who come close will find only trees, no forest – each individual so absolutely unique, alone. The question of “we” does not arise at all.So when I am saying that I cannot use we, I am also trying to help you understand that you cannot use we either. You will have to be very alert.And the I that you have to be has not to be the I of the egoist. The egoist uses I in the sense that he is superior to you, that you are nothing compared to him. His I is big, and his whole effort in his whole life in only one: how to make the I bigger and bigger, higher and higher, so that it becomes an Everest; no other peak can ever come even close to it.This is the way Muhammad Ali uses I – Muhammad Ali, the Greatest. This is the way Alexander used his I – Alexander the Great. Just Alexander won’t do, “the Great” is needed to make him stand separate from thousands of other Alexanders.I am suggesting to you to use I just in a utilitarian way – not to impose yourself on others, not to project yourself as bigger than others, but as an absolutely human necessity. You have to use some word. There have been people who have tried not to use the word I for the simple reason that it may be misunderstood as being used in the same way as everybody uses the I. Or perhaps they were deep down afraid themselves that if they used the word I the ego would come following it; it would be standing just behind it. Perhaps that is the case.I recall one person, one very important Hindu sage of this century, Swami Ramateertha. He has been to America; and he was an influence wherever he went; he was a man of charismatic personality. He never used the word I. But that makes no difference at all – he had to use something else. If he was feeling thirsty, instead of saying, “I am thirsty,” he would say, “Ramateertha is thirsty”…, “Ramateertha wants to go to sleep.”New people who had no idea what he was talking about could not understand it. They looked here and there and they asked, “Were is Ramateertha who is thirsty?” And then he would have to point to himself: “This is Ramateertha who is feeling thirsty.” But this seems to be such a stupid procedure. Rather than catching your ear directly, you go around the head and make such weird gestures, and finally you catch the ear – nothing special.I am a lazy man, I cannot do that. If I have to catch hold of my ear I will catch it directly, rather than moving my hand around my head and then catching hold of my ear – that looks ludicrous. But Ramateertha made a great impression by this. People are foolish; if you try to see what things people get impressed with you will be surprised. That will show you what kind of humanity exists on the earth. They were very much impressed by Ramateertha: “Here is a man who is egoless.”He was not egoless. There is enough proof in his life to show that he was not egoless. When for the first time in India I said that, there was great anger among Hindus because they always believed that Ramateertha was one of the greatest souls born in this century. He was respected around the world, and nobody has said anything against him. But the problem was that the Ramateertha League – it is an international organization, its headquarters are in Lucknow, India – invited me to speak on Ramateertha.Now, it was not my fault. I even inquired of them, “Are you sure you want me to speak on Ramateertha?” And they were not aware…because nobody had spoken about him. He was a nice man, but to be nice is not enough. I went to speak at their annual conference, a world conference, and I said, “To me Ramateertha befooled himself and nobody else” – and I gave the instances from his own biography published by the league…authoritative, approved by Ramateertha himself. I said, “I will simply be quoting, there is no need even to interpret. If you are just a little bit intelligent, you will see the point.”Ramateertha toured all over the world and then he came back to India. Everywhere, he was received with great honor as a sage from the Himalayas. First he went to Varanasi, the center of Hinduism for thousands of years. He was shocked because, naturally, deep down he must have been expecting…. The biography says he was shocked because there was no overwhelming reception. The same way, just a few days ago the pope was shocked in a Catholic country because there was no overwhelming reception.But unless you are expecting something, I don’t see the possibility of being shocked. Ramateertha must have been expecting an overwhelming reception, a welcome – the welcome that is given to a man who has conquered the whole world. He comes back to the citadel of Hinduism, and he has been talking about Hinduism around the world, praising Hinduism around the world, making Hinduism appear the highest religion in the world. Naturally, it is human – he must have been expecting….But out of eight shankaracharyas, the heads of Hinduism, not a single one was present to receive him. Forget about shankaracharyas, because they are the heads, and Ramateertha was still a monk, not a head of Hinduism; but there were no other monks either to receive him. A few people had come who looked more curious than receptive or welcoming.And instead of Ramateertha having a red-carpet welcome, a letter was handed to him from the highest Hindu committee of pundits, scholars. The letter said, “Before you speak anywhere else, first you have to face the committee, the supreme committee of the scholars of Hinduism, because the way you have been talking about Hinduism is not orthodox, it is not traditional.” More shocking!He was almost court-marshaled. In front of the scholars he had to answer why he said this, why he said that. This he had never thought was going to be, but this is how it happened. He had to appear before the scholars – and there is the point that I wanted to make to the conference in Lucknow.As he was just going to speak, one old Hindu scholar stood up and said, “First tell me, do you know Sanskrit?” Unfortunately Ramateertha did not know Sanskrit at all, for the simple reason that he was born near Lahore, which is now in Pakistan. In that part even Hindi was not spoken; Urdu, a Mohammedan language, was the spoken language. And those who wanted to become great scholars of course had to read Persian and Arabic. They had to go to the roots of Urdu; that is, Persian and Arabic. Sanskrit has nothing to do with Urdu.Mohammedans or Hindus was not the question: the area where Ramateertha was born was Urdu-dominated; in schools, in colleges, in universities, Persian and Arabic were the exalted languages. So he was a scholar of Persian, Arabic and Urdu, but he had never thought that religion had anything to do with language.You can be a Hindu without knowing Sanskrit, you can be a great Hindu sage without knowing Sanskrit; Sanskrit is not something absolutely necessary. And that was one of the questions those scholars were asking him: “While speaking around the world you were not quoting the upanishads, the vedas, the shankaracharyas. You were quoting Sufi mystics – Jalaluddin Rumi, Farid, Sarmad. You can befool in the West because people don’t know what you are quoting, but these are not Hindus, these are not our people.”The truth is Ramateertha had quoted exactly rightly. It does not matter whom he was quoting, what matters is the meaning. He had no knowledge of Sanskrit but he understood. He had read the upanishads in Urdu, he had read the vedas in Urdu, and naturally he had the understanding of the essential message. And that message was so clearly expressed by Sufi mystics – Rumi, Al-Hillaj-Mansoor, Junnaid, Rabiya Al Adabiya; they have expressed the same thing. Of course their language was different. But here he found that he was being treated as a criminal.Another scholar stood up and said, “Before you speak in front of us, first go and learn Sanskrit.” And he was completely shattered. Now, only an ego can be shattered.If I was in his place, in the first place I would not have expected any overwhelming reception. If they were not throwing stones at me, that would have been enough – a great reception. If they allowed me to enter Varanasi that would have been more than one could hope. And then I would not have gone to their scholars to be examined, interrogated. I should have torn up that letter then and there, and thrown it on the platform and said to them, “Tell all of them to go to hell! What business have I got to do with your scholars? If they want to do anything, they have to come to me.“And I have not come here to be certified that I am really a Hindu sage. I myself say that I am not a Hindu, neither am I a sage. So what is the problem? How can you shatter me? – I don’t have any claim. Can’t you even accept me as a human being? If even that is difficult for you, then that is your problem, don’t accept. But that is not going to shatter me either.”You are shattered only when you are living in a glass house. Then anybody can throw a stone and that’s enough. But I am not living in a glass house. The ego is a glass house: it is continuously afraid of being shattered. Somebody does not say “Hello” to you on the road, and that’s enough. He has not done anything, he has not even said “Hello” – but this man used to say “Hello” every day. It pinches, it hurts: “What happened? Have I fallen in his eyes, or what?” He will disturb your sleep because he has not said “Hello” to you.Expectations always lead to frustrations.Expectations are the seeds, and frustration is the crop that sooner or later you will have to reap. It is your own doing.So I asked the followers of Ramateertha, “What was shattered? If there was no ego there was nothing to be shattered. If you throw a stone into empty space, nothing will be shattered, only the stone will look silly – falling with a thud, no obstruction, no joy of destroying something, no excitement of shattering something; just falling with a thud on the ground like a fool.“A man without an ego is like an empty house. You can throw stones from this side to that side, they will go across him without finding any obstruction. Nothing can be shattered.”So I said, “Note this point, but this is not the whole story. Ramateertha left Varanasi and went to the Himalayas. He had a follower and a friend who was a king of Garhwal in the Himalayas, a small state. He went there and told his friend, the king of Garhwal, ‘I would like to learn Sanskrit, so please arrange for a scholar to teach me Sanskrit.’“Now, is this the way of a sage? Who could not say to these fools in Varanasi, “Enlightenment does not come through a language. It comes when all languages are left behind. It comes when even thinking exists no more. There is no Arabic, no Hebrew, no Greek, no Sanskrit, no Latin. Only then that light shines within yourself.”Yes, when you start communicating of course you will have to use some language. And you will use the language which you know best. In Ramateertha’s place I would have said, “I will continue to use Urdu, Persian, Arabic because those are the languages I know best, and I am not going to follow your dictation that I should start learning Sanskrit. For what? to get your recognition? to be certified by you that I am really a saint? Does sainthood need anybody’s recognition?”Who recognized Gautam Buddha, that he is enlightened? Who has recognized anybody in the whole world, in the whole of history? In fact it is impossible. The unenlightened people cannot recognize or certify an enlightened one; he has to declare himself, there is no other way. Whether you believe it or not, that does not matter, and that does not shatter him.Nobody may believe it, not even a single human being. Do you think that makes any difference to the status of a man of enlightenment? He remains still the same, his enlightenment not even a little bit less because you have not recognized him.Why did Ramateertha agree to learn Sanskrit?And the story is really strange. He started learning Sanskrit – not only that, he dropped his orange robe and started using white clothes. Asked why, he said, “Because if Hindu scholars do not recognize me then I am not yet capable of using the traditional robe of a Hindu sannyasin.”When I decided to give my sannyasins the same robe, it was for one reason – to destroy this whole idea that anybody has a monopoly.In India there is an organization of Hindu monks. It has been founded by one of the politicians who has been twice prime minister of India, for a few days only. His name is Guljarilal Nanda. Whenever a prime minister dies this man is put as acting prime minister. Before the second one comes, for a few days, a few weeks, he remains a prime minister. He has no support but he is a person who can be relied on not to create any trouble. And he is not even courageous enough to create any trouble – he is a weakling.Sometimes your weakness proves of great help. When Jawaharlal died, Morarji was hoping to become immediately the acting prime minister, but he was not chosen because he is, although very mediocre, also very stubborn. If once he becomes acting prime minister then it will be difficult to recall him, to tell him to get down. He will not get down so easily once he gets up.Some weakling has to be chosen for the interim period so you put him up like a puppet; and when you want him down, he comes down. The same man did it twice: when Jawaharlal died he became the prime minister, and when Lal Bahadur Shastri died he became the prime minister. Both times Morarji was hoping, and both times he was denied, because everybody was afraid that once he got up, he would not come down.But this man was cowardly, weak; hence, naturally, he could not manage to be a great political force. Guljarilal Nanda turned toward religion. Many weaklings turn toward religion, many cowardly people turn toward religion, because here you don’t need much guts. He founded an organization of Hindu monks; he was the president of the organization.When I started initiating people into sannyas, he told me, “You are creating trouble.”I said, “What trouble?”He said, “You are giving them the same robe. Now it is going to be a very confusing thing: who is who?”I said, “That is what I want to do. And I am going to fill your whole organization with my sannyasins, you cannot prevent it. And soon you will see, my sannyasins will be the president, the secretaries, in your organization.”They became freaked out so much! I was just joking – I was not interested; who bothers about these idiots and their organizations? They became so freaked out they immediately made a resolution that anybody wearing my mala should not be allowed in the organization as a member – “He is not really a Hindu sannyasin.”I said, “That’s true, he is not. He is neither a Hindu sannyasin nor a Mohammedan sannyasin, nor a Christian sannyasin. He is just himself. The orange robe I have chosen is just to destroy this monopolistic idea.”But Ramateertha was subdued so much by those mere intellectuals that he dropped his orange robe. These are all ways of the ego. Now he would learn Sanskrit; he would prove to himself that he was a scholar in Sanskrit too – and with grace and honor he would receive the robe from them.These are the ways of the ego. Who are they? On what authority…? Just because they are crammed with rotten knowledge? So I said to his followers, “To me his saying that ‘Ramateertha is hungry’ rather than saying, ‘I am hungry’ does not change his ego; it simply makes it more complicated. And the greatest problem is, he may be deceived by it. If others are deceived, that is not much of a trouble; he himself may be deceived. He may himself start thinking that he has dropped the ego because now he never uses the word I.”So the question is not of using the word. The question is of understanding how you are using it. Use it as a utility, don’t make it a psychological trip.Now you are asking me – how are we going to raise the consciousness of the world? Why should we raise the consciousness of the world? Are you nuts or something? Can’t you let the world alone? You just raise your consciousness.No, but this is how the world is. Nobody is interested in raising his own consciousness. Everybody is interested in raising the world’s consciousness – that seems to be easier, more fun. To raise one’s own consciousness is arduous. To raise the consciousness of the world is just fun, no problem to you. Whether it is raised or not, you are not losing anything.Yes, by trying to raise it suddenly you become a great sage, you become a great religious leader, you become world famous. You are raising the consciousness of the world – as if consciousness is just lying down there asleep and you just have to wake it up. Just pour cold water over it and consciousness rises up and says, “What is the matter? Who is troubling me?”It is not so easy. Consciousness is not there in any collective sense, there is no world consciousness. There are only trees, no forest. Forest is only a word – convenient, useful, but non-existential. If you go in search of a forest you will never find it. Standing in the middle of it still you will not find it. What you will find always is an individual tree, and of course an individual tree is not the forest.This consciousness of the world, consciousness of humanity, is just a word. Don’t fall into linguistic games.Remember one thing:Consciousness is always individual.There is no way for consciousness to become collective. It is always “I,” it is never “we.”Why this concern? And this is not only your concern – millions of people around the world are concerned with raising the consciousness of the world. And not only now; as far back as you can find any records they have been concerned with raising human consciousness, humanity, making the world divine, sacred. And the same problems….In Mesopotamia – where one of the oldest civilizations existed once and is no longer in existence, but ruins are there – a pillar has been found which is six thousand years old at least. That is the minimum, it cannot be more recent than that; it can be twelve thousand years old, but six thousand is the bottom line. With all the scientific observations they have concluded that it is at least six thousand years old, more perhaps.What does it say? The pillar says: “Man has fallen to such a rotten state that we have to teach humanity again to become human. Sons are no longer listening to their fathers” – there is a generation gap – “wives are no longer faithful to their husbands. Husbands are doing all kinds of things, which make them disrespected and fathers are not fulfilling their duties.” The whole pillar seems as if it is in some newspaper, just today’s editorial.In India the Rig Veda is the oldest book. According to the Hindu scholar Lokmanya Tilak, a great scholar, it is ninety thousand years old. He has immense proof and evidence, and as yet he has not been challenged. It is almost sixty years or more since he proved that it is ninety thousand years old. In these sixty years nobody has been able to disprove his evidence; it is now either forgotten or accepted.Whatsoever the case, the Rig Veda is certainly the most ancient book in existence – but it raises the same problems that you face today, the same questions: Is it possible to change man’s nature? Is there time enough? Ninety thousand years before, they were worried: Is there time enough? And the time has not proved enough, that’s certainly true, because the problems are still the same – perhaps worse.You are asking me the same questions but I am a different kind of man, a little bit eccentric…otherwise, if you had asked the question to any mahatma, any great religious personality, he would have answered, “Yes, we can raise humanity’s consciousness. Of course time is very short but my methods are very quick too.”That’s what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes on telling people. Time is short, according to all the prophecies, all the astrologers; as this century closes there is every possibility that the earth will be finished. Time is really short. It is 1985 – only fifteen years more. Ninety thousand years have not proved enough. Fifteen years! But Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes around the earth with jet speed. Of course he has to use the jet speed – time is short!But he says his method is quick: just ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes in the evening you do transcendental meditation. And what is transcendental meditation? You repeat one word that is given to you. Of course you have to pay a fee for it, two hundred and fifty dollars. And what does he give? He asks you, “Are you a Christian?” You say, “Yes.”He says, “Catholic? Protestant?” – just to figure out who you are so he can give you a mantra suitable to your religion.If you say, “I am a Catholic,” he will say, “That’s very good. You start the mantra, ‘Ave Maria.’ Repeat continuously: Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria, anywhere, in any posture, just for ten minutes. Between two Ave Marias don’t leave any gap, go as fast as you can.” One Ave Maria almost entering another Ave Maria, just as when sometimes there is an accident of a railway train, and compartments go over other compartments, and inside other compartments. All the buffers are broken and the train is for the first time in a real unity.This is a very traditional method in India. It is nothing new, and it is used by everybody; in every village you can get it, very cheap…. If you are very rich then the price is eleven rupees, which is less than one dollar. If you are poor it can be reduced; for the very poor, a coconut.And, in India, there are two types of coconuts – coconuts which people eat, and coconuts which people use religiously. They offer it to gods, to temples, to gurus. Those coconuts for centuries have the same price, their price has not changed. For one rupee you can get three – because they are the same coconuts! For centuries….In my village, just in front of my house there was a temple of Krishna, and by the side of the temple, a coconut shop. A coconut shop is always very close. If you find a temple, you can believe without any trouble that within a five-minute radius there must be a coconut shop; mostly it is just by the side of the temple.You go on offering to the god, and the same coconuts go on getting back to the side shop. So the price remains the same because…and they are all rotten. The coconut shell is so hard that what is inside nobody knows. These are religious coconuts. Nobody will purchase coconuts from a religious coconut shop for eating, or for anything, because inside you will find nothing. Their function is just to move from the shop to the temple, and from the back door again to the shop. In the morning they are again for sale – and this round goes on and on.And the coconut is a strange fruit. You can work with it for centuries. Its consciousness remains the same, no change. In India it is so cheap – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi may not have been able to raise the consciousness of the people but he has raised the price of transcendental meditation from one coconut to two hundred and fifty dollars. I don’t know how many coconuts that will be…because for one rupee you can get three coconuts – religious coconuts, don’t forget that. For one rupee, three religious coconuts; for one dollar you can have at least sixty religious coconuts; for two hundred and fifty dollars…now you can work it out.And now he is not only trying to raise the consciousness of people. He has been doing that for almost thirty years, and now people are fed up because nothing is raised. Simply their pocket becomes lighter, and nothing is raised. They are getting fed up. And how long can you cheat people?So now these people have to go on inventing something new. His new thing is even more idiotic: now he is trying to levitate people. First he was trying to levitate their consciousness, now he is trying to levitate people. The fees have also gone higher – of course, because he is raising your body too. Now he says he has found the secret. Joined with transcendental meditation your body will rise, float in the air; your head will touch the roof. And there are fools in the world who are ready to pay for this kind of nonsense.Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been asked again and again, “Give a public demonstration, at least one person.” That he is not doing, because it is such a secret thing that you cannot do it in public. It can be done only in private. But strangely, if it is done only in privacy, how are the photographs appearing in his magazines? At least the photographers must be there. It is public; the person is not isolated.The whole thing is, it is a simple photographic trick. It is not much of a thing; any person who understands a little photography can manage it. He just has to mix two negatives; in one negative you are sitting on the floor, and in the other negative it has to be managed that you are touching the roof. You can be put on a tall stool, with the same mattress on which you were sitting on the floor, in the same room. And there is no problem – you just have to arrange these two photographs together to show that this man’s body has levitated.Time is short, and people are trying to levitate bodies. For what purpose? Even if, for argument’s sake, we accept that people can learn to levitate their bodies, and their heads start touching their roofs, how is it going to make humanity better?If just touching the roof with your head is the thing, then simpler methods can be used. Just make a tall stool – ask Asheesh; he can make you a beautiful tall stool so your head touches the roof. A stool can be adjustable, so if you are short or tall the stool can be adjusted. You can adjust it yourself, so your head touches the roof. If that makes you a superman, then why bother about meditation and such long procedures? Time is very short.But I am not interested either in raising people’s consciousness, or in raising their bodies. In fact for decades I have not been interested in doing anything for the world, for humanity, because to me these are bogus words. I am interested only in a few chosen people.The whole mass of humanity – whether it lives or disappears makes no difference.I may look hard to you, but I am simply being factual. Just look at the past. Millions of people have lived and died – what does it matter? Where does it lead? Millions of people are living today – in what way are they enriching life? Just breathing, just vegetating; is that enough?Just today I have received a news item: in Miami, a man’s situation has become really terrible. He had a brain cancer, and to remove that cancer they had to use, for the first time, some poison without which it was not removable. That poison entered into his brain by mistake. The cancer was removed but the poison entered into his brain and killed his brain. Now the man is alive, the brain is dead. He can live for years, there is no problem; you just have to take care of him. His brain is completely dead, so everything that his brain was doing, you will have to do. And it was your mistake.But the doctor can also not be condemned. That poison was used for the first time, so there is no way to say that he used it wrongly because there is no precedent. He tried his best – just an unlucky man.Now, between this man, I thought as I was reading the news, and the millions of masses, is there any difference? That was the question that came to me. Their brains are not dead, but their souls are dead – which is far worse. And nobody else is responsible – they themselves are responsible.They are living, but do you call it life?What is the point of their living?What have they found out about it, what have they experienced?Where have they arrived?If they were not born, would you have missed them?If they were not here, would existence be poorer because of that?All these considerations have to be looked into before you start raising the consciousness of the world.The greater masses of the world are not interested in consciousness.They are more interested in unconsciousness.You will be surprised because you may not have heard them saying that they are interested in unconsciousness, but you can see them drinking alcohol – all kinds of narcotics are being used, all kinds of drugs are being used. And there are other kinds of unconsciousnesses which are not produced by chemical drugs.For example, in a movie, for three hours, for what are you searching? You are searching for three hours of unconsciousness. For three hours you become so involved in any idiotic story. And they have been almost the same for centuries: just two men, one woman; two women, one man. There are only two stories. I tried to find a third story – I have not succeeded. If any of you succeeds, please inform me, help me, because I have found only two stories. And there is not much difference in those stories: two women, one man; or two men, one woman. It is really one story. Only three persons are needed; put them in all kinds of situations, create all different details, but the story remains the same.But it is helpful – you get involved in it. Millions of people seeing sports, millions of people participating in political rallies, shouting slogans, screaming….I used to know one man in Jabalpur. I liked that man, I was really impressed by him: he was something unique…. For one year I was living in a bungalow which was facing six roads, so all kinds of processions were passing by there. And it was near the high court, the collector’s office, the commissioner’s office. They were all just within a half-mile radius.So every kind of procession – protests, either going to the chief justice, or going to the commissioner, or going to the collector…. I used to enjoy seeing them. The most exciting thing for me was one who was always in every protest, whether it was the communist party, socialist party, congress party, president’s party – any party. And in India there are all kinds of parties.Whether it was a religious protest – Christians protesting that something was being done against their religion, or Mohammedans, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists – he was always, inevitably there. I could not believe it. That man was something! One day I caught hold of him and I said, “You have to come inside with me.”He said, “Right now I cannot come, I am going in the protest.”I said, “You can go later on – I will send you, I will drive you. But for five minutes you just come in – because now it is too much, I cannot bear it any more.”He said, “But what is the problem? What have I done to you?”I said, “You have not done anything to me; I just want to know to which party you belong.”He laughed. He said, “As far as parties are concerned, I am a member of all the parties.”I said, “But…?”He said, “You will not understand, nobody understands. I enjoy shouting, screaming. Now, who is screaming against whom, that is not material. I simply enjoy – I shout, jump, have a flag. I don’t care whose flag, I don’t have any flag of my own. And I am not interested in what they are demanding, whether they get it or not, but I enjoy it.”Now this man has no political interest, no religious interest. What his interest is, is in finding unconsciousness in shouting, screaming, getting involved in something in which he has no ideological interest. But he has psychological involvement, he forgets himself. For the two, three hours that the protest continues, he forgets himself. Now, how can he miss if some other party is protesting? His psychological interest is the same.He said, “It is not very costly.” In India you can become a member for one fourth of a rupee; that is a one-year membership. And that too you don’t have to pay, somebody will pay for you, you have just to vote for him.So I asked him, “So many parties, so many religions and you must be paying so much money….”He said, “No, they pay it. And those idiots don’t even ask, ‘Are you a member of any other party?’ I have not yet been asked, so I have not yet been forced to lie. Nobody asks me. I say, ‘I want to become a member of your party.’ They say, ‘Very good, you just become a member of the party, fill in the form.’ I have filled in all the forms of all the parties. I go to all religious prayers, religious meetings. I believe in the unity of all.”I said, “That’s very good.”But he was really getting juice. You try protesting, shouting, and soon you get involved in it. Your thinking disappears, your past, your present, disappear. You are suddenly herenow – but not in a conscious way – through an unconscious trick. You can do it by alcohol, you can do it by politics, you can do it by religion. You can do it in a church, you can do it in a movie house. You can do it in a thousand and one ways, and people are using all kinds of ways.People are not interested in consciousness.Consciousness is painful, because you will have to drop so much which you have carried your whole life thinking it very valuable.You will have to uncover your wounds which you have covered and completely forgotten.You will have to revive all worries and anguishes that somehow you have repressed.You will have to face again your original face which you have lost far back. You have become somebody else. You have been somebody else so long, that now to face your original face is going to shatter you completely.To be conscious is not a game.To be conscious is to go through a deep surgery.And the problem is, you are the surgeon, and you are the patient.Just think of some surgeon doing surgery on himself. I had one surgeon friend – and it was not much of a problem…. A certain disease, a very strange disease, started happening to me every year. First, one of my fingers started being painful in the first joint – immense pain. Sleep was not possible; no sleeping medicine would help, the pain was so shooting sharp. It continued for twenty-one days.I asked my surgeon friend about it. He said, “This is a troublesome thing, but for one year there is no problem. Next year the second finger will be affected, and for twenty-one days at the utmost. But for ten years you will have to suffer; each year one finger will be affected.”I said, “I don’t want that kind of business for ten years. Who knows? – if I die tomorrow then my nine fingers…. No, I cannot leave them just like that. You have to do something.”He said, “There is no medicine for it – only surgery can be done. I will have to cut the bone – which has grown a little – on the joint. That’s how this whole thing is happening.”So I said, “There is no problem, you can cut it. But I can’t wait for ten years.”He prepared everything, but I was so close to him that at the final time he had a nervous breakdown. He said, “I cannot do it; on you I cannot do it – I cannot cut your finger. I will call another surgeon. I have kept him ready in case, because I knew it from the very beginning – last night I could not sleep, just the idea of cutting your finger….”I said, “What nonsense. My finger, anybody’s finger – you should be able to cut your own finger too if the time comes. If there is no surgeon available, you should be able to cut your own finger.”He said, “I can cut my own finger, but I cannot cut your finger, because then I will repent my whole life that I did that nasty thing to you. No, I will not do it.”He simply freaked out; the other surgeon did it. That day I understood how difficult it must be to be the patient on the table and also the surgeon by the side – the same person cutting his own deepest layers of being.Consciousness is self-surgery.And don’t ask me how can we raise…? Nobody can do it for somebody else; you can only do it for yourself.This is the fundamental of spiritual surgery: you can only be successful on yourself.Howsoever painful it is…but there is no other way. Yes, it pays tremendously if you can pass through the test.If you can pass through the pain, if you can pass through all the misery, the suffering that you have repressed will rise again. It is like entering a house which nobody has entered for years. You will raise so much dust – and that dust is not simple dust, it covers your wounds. It has helped you to forget yourself. It has made you unconscious of yourself. It is not like taking off your clothes, it is more like peeling off your skin.But once you succeed, then all the pain seems to be just nothing, because the bliss that descends on you is incomparable; the pain that you suffered looks so tiny and so meaningless. But that is in the end.Gautam the Buddha used to say, “My path in the beginning is tremendous pain; in the end, tremendous blissfulness. But patience is needed.”I told you, in this surgery you are the patient and you are the surgeon both. Remember the English word patient comes from patience. It is significant. Why is the sick person called a patient? He has to be patient, he has to wait. But when you are the patient yourself and also the surgeon, the difficulty is multiplied. But still it is nothing compared to the bliss.All that you can do is to pass through this suffering, to pass through this dark night of the soul.Reach to the dawn of your being.Blossom. Let your blissfulness explode.Perhaps somebody’s sleeping soul may be triggered. Somebody’s sleeping consciousness may have a shock and wake up.But these are only “perhaps.” One cannot be certain in these matters. The matters are so subtle you cannot be certain.Hope for the best.And wait for the worst.And time certainly is short.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is agony and what is ecstasy?The same. They are not opposites as they are understood to be. They are complementaries, intrinsic parts of one organic whole. Neither can exist without the other.It will be a little difficult to understand because they have always been thought to be polar opposites. They are polar opposites, seen from the outside. But all polar opposites are joined together from the inside. The negative or positive poles of electricity, the body and soul – from the outside they are not only different but antagonistic. From the inside they are two aspects of one phenomenon.Let us first try to understand their meaning.What is agony?It is not ordinary suffering, misery, pain.All these are very superficial things, just like ripples on the surface of a pond. They don’t have any depth. You have known many pains, many miseries, many moments of suffering, and you know perfectly well they come and go. They don’t even leave a trace behind them, they don’t leave scars behind.Yes, while they are there you feel that you are engulfed completely in pain. But when it is gone you know perfectly well that that was only a momentary emotional, sentimental, non-intelligent understanding of the thing. When you were in the cloud, yes, you were engulfed. But the cloud is gone with the wind and you are out of it, and now you know exactly that even in the cloud you were out of it, you were not it.Note this difference, because that is the fundamental difference.Agony is not separate from you, it is you.Pain, suffering, misery, they are all separate from you; hence, momentarily they come and go. They have causes; when the causes are removed they disappear. Mostly they are your creations.You hope for something, and then it does not materialize: great frustration comes in. You feel pain, hopelessness, as if you have been rejected by existence. Nothing of the sort has happened – it is all due to your expectation. The bigger the expectation, the bigger is going to be the frustration.It is within your hands to be frustrated in life or not. Just your expectations should become smaller, smaller, smaller, and in the same proportion the frustration will become smaller. A day will come when there will be no expectation; then you will never come across any frustration.You think, you imagine, some moments of pleasure – and they don’t materialize, because existence has no obligation to materialize your imaginations. It has never given you any promise that whatever you think is going to happen. You have taken it for granted without any inquiry, as if the whole existence owes you something.You owe everything to existence.Existence owes you nothing.So if you are running to catch shadows, you cannot catch them – it is not in the nature of things. Then there is pain, because you were so much absorbed in running after the shadows that you were feeling a kind of fulfillment. A goal was there; although not in your hands but far away, still it was there. And it was only a question of time, a little more effort. Be a little more American: try and try and try again – and sooner or later existence is going to yield.Existence does not care who you are, American or Russian. It never yields to anybody – it simply goes in its own way. By making an effort to fulfill your desires, to force nature, existence, to come behind you, you are creating causes of pain, suffering.The moment you understand, you drop these causes.And the dropping of the causes is the disappearance of all your misery.It was your projection.There is a Sufi story about a very cunning fox…. All foxes are cunning, but there are politician foxes too. This happened to be a politician fox, very cunning. One day she woke up, and finding herself very hungry, came out of her cave in search of some breakfast. The sun was rising, and she saw her shadow so long she could not believe it. She said, “My God! I am that big? Now where am I going to get my breakfast? I will need at least one camel; less than that won’t do. My shadow is so big, naturally I must be as big.” It is logical, perfectly Aristotelian. You cannot say she is wrong.You also know yourself only in the mirror – there is no other way. Have you known yourself in any other way except through a shadow?So don’t laugh at the poor fox. How can she conceive that a small thing can make such a big shadow? It is very natural to conclude that if the shadow is so big, you must be as big.And when it comes to feeling oneself big, who wants to argue against it? When anything gives you the sense of bigness, you don’t want to go into details to find whether it is true or wrong, whether it is logically right, scientifically provable. No, your whole being is so enchanted….The fox really felt that big. You could see – her walk changed. But where can she find a camel for her breakfast? And even if she can find a camel, it is going to be absolutely pointless; she cannot make a breakfast out of a camel. She searches, she finds many small animals which would have been enough any other day, but today is different. She does not bother about all those small creatures. They will be lost just in her teeth. She needs a camel, an elephant or something big.But she finds nothing big. The sun goes on rising higher and higher, and she goes on becoming hungrier and hungrier. When the sun is just exactly above her head she looks again at her shadow: it has shrunken so small it is just underneath her. She says, “My God! Hunger does things to people. Just one morning I have missed breakfast and look what has happened to my poor self! In the morning I was so big; only half a day has passed and this is my situation. Now even if I can get any small creature, that may be too much, I may not be able to digest it.”This Sufi story is significant. It is our story.This is our agony:We are trying to become something which is not in the nature of things. We are not allowing nature to take its course; that is our agony.When I was leaving my parents to go to the hostel in the university, they were persistently asking, “What do you want to become?” And I was telling them, “That question is utter nonsense. How do I know what I am going to become? Only time will show.”They could not understand me. They said, “Look at all your friends: somebody is going to become a doctor, somebody is going to become an engineer, somebody is going to be become this, somebody is going to become that. You are the only person who is going to the university without any idea of what you want to become.”I said, “Becoming is not my number. I want to let things take their course. I would love to find what nature makes of me, but I don’t have any program of my own. To have a program of my own means suffering. That means I am trying to impose something on nature and it is going to fail.”Man has been failing for thousands of years for the simple reason that he wants to conquer nature.Even a man like Bertrand Russell wrote about “the conquest of nature.” Nature cannot be conquered. Just look at the foolishness of the idea. You are part of nature, such a small, tiny part of such an infinite nature. And the part is trying to conquer the whole – as if your little finger is trying to conquer you.How can you conquer nature?Nature is your very soul.Who is going to conquer whom?Where is the separation?I told my parents, “Please let me go. I am not going to project anything for my future. I want to keep it open so if nature desires anything of me, I am available. If nothing is desired of me that too is perfectly good. Who am I to expect that something should be desired of me? One day I was not, one day I will not be. Just a few days in between – why make much fuss about it? Can’t you pass silently across this little interval between birth and death without making noise, raising flags, and shouting slogans? Can’t you simply pass?”But they said, “This is not the way. Everybody has to have an ideal; otherwise he will be lost.”I said, “I would love to be lost but remain true to nature, to existence, rather than achieve a great ideal against nature, against existence. In the first place, in which you say I will be lost, I will be blissfully lost. In the second place, in which you think I would have achieved something, I will be nothing but pain, suffering, and finally agony.”Agony is the deepest in you.And it happens only to man.All other animals are free of agony – but they are also free of ecstasy. Agony and ecstasy happen together; otherwise they don’t happen at all.Have you seen any animal in ecstasy or in agony? a buffalo in agony? Just to think of it seems to be absurd. A buffalo in agony? For what reason should the buffalo be in agony? The buffalo never tried to become the queen of England – why should it be in agony? It simply allowed nature to make her whatsoever was the will of existence. Yes, it will never know ecstasy either because both happen at the same depth.Agony happens if you go on missing your self.Ecstasy happens if you happen to find yourself.Missing yourself or finding yourself:Both happen at the same depth of your being.Missing yourself means that you have been trying to become something, somebody. You have an idea, and you are trying to fulfill that idea in your life.All idealists live in agony.It is not only the existentialist philosophers who are in agony. Of course they have brought the word to great prominence for the simple reason that this century has come as far away from nature and existence as possible: one step more and humanity disappears. This was the longest distance possible – we have traveled it.We have come as far away from ourselves as possible.That’s why in this century a philosophy like existentialism became possible.I showed one of the histories of existentialism to one of my old professors who must have studied thirty, forty, years before. At that time the word existentialism was not even coined. Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, were yet to be. He looked at the content and he could not believe it.He said, “Is this a book on philosophy? No chapter on God, no chapter on the proofs for God, no chapter on religion, no chapter on the soul of man, no chapter on beyond death, heaven, hell. A strange history – chapters on agony, meaninglessness, anguish, anxiety. These are philosophical subjects?”I said, “You have missed forty years. You have completely forgotten that forty years have passed since you were in the university studying philosophy, and after that you have never bothered about what has been happening to philosophy. You are still remembering Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Bradley. You are still remembering these people who have really faded out; they are simply no longer in. And any philosopher worth the name today is not interested in God – he is interested in man. And to be interested in man brings all these problems, agony….”He said, “But what is agony?”I had to use his language, something from the past history of philosophy so that he could have a little insight into agony. In the past there has been a great philosophical question down the ages. The question was: between animals, trees, rocks, and man, what is the difference? Certainly they all exist; as far as existence is concerned there is no difference. Certainly they all live – even rocks grow.The Himalayas are growing every year, one foot higher. The place where I was born was by the side of a mountain range called Vindhyachal. It is thought to be the ancientmost mountain in the world. It is almost a proved fact that Vindhyachal and the land around it came out of the sea first, because on Vindhyachal corpses of sea animals have been found which are the most ancient. On the Himalayas also they have been found but they are not so ancient. The Himalayas are the youngest mountains in the world, and Vindhyachal is the oldest mountain in the world.Just by the way, I am reminded of the story about Vindhyachal in the Upanishads. One great seer, Agastya, went to south India, and had to cross Vindhyachal.Vindhyachal was so high it was difficult for the seer, so he prayed to Vindhyachal, “Be kind enough to just bend down a little and let me pass. And remain bending till I come back, because I will have to pass again.” Agastya died in the south and never came back, but Vindhyachal is still bending. If you see the mountain you can see, it is as if an old man is bending.The story is beautiful, but it shows that Vindhyachal is really old, an old man who cannot even stand straight. Mountains grow old or young; they are as alive as you are. Trees, animals, birds – as far as life is concerned we may have different kinds of life but we all have a certain quality called living, aliveness, which is similar.So in ancient philosophy this has been a problem: Then what is the difference? Is there no difference? There have been two schools. One said there is no difference; we are all alike, we are part of one single whole – different dimensions, different branches, but we are all rooted in one existence. These are the spiritualists who say that we are all one.The other school is that of the materialists, who say that we are all separate, there is no organic unity anywhere; existence is not one. According to the materialists, the word universe should not be used. The word universe was invented by the spiritualists because it means uni, one. According to the materialists the right word should be multiverse – many, not one. Everything is separate, and there is no unity anywhere.And how does this whole go on? – and in a such a tremendous harmony? This is where you will see how logic can be fallacious.The spiritualist says there is harmony because it is ruled by one God, or one universal consciousness. One absolute being, one center, controls everything. That’s why nothing goes wrong. Everything moves in an absolute harmony. And the universe is vast, it is immense, immeasurable; still, everything goes on without any disturbance, without any discrepancy. The logic seems to be solid, but it is not so.The same logic the materialist uses. He says it goes on in such a harmonious way because there is nobody who is controlling it. Whenever there is somebody who is controlling everything, there is a possibility of failure, mistakes, errors. Nobody is infallible.If there were one God controlling everything for millions of years sometimes He might fall asleep, sometimes just for a change He might go for a morning walk. If it is being controlled by one being then there is every possibility of a mistake. And during such a long period can you think that a person will not commit any mistake? Just by mistake he may commit a mistake. And there are so many things to be arranged and looked after – just look….Just the other day Vivek was saying to me – seeing a peacock with its feathers open, so colorful, she said, “God must be taking so much care to paint them.”If God were really to paint all the peacocks of the world then you can be certain there would bound to be a thousand and one mistakes. Howsoever infallible God is He cannot manage to go on painting year by year millions and millions of peacocks. And not only peacocks, there are other birds, and every detail has to be looked into.The materialists say that the world goes on perfectly because there is no manager, so who can commit a mistake? It is mechanical.The same logic: the spiritualist tries to prove God, the materialist tries to prove, using the same logic – this harmony, this continuity – that there is no manager, that it is all mechanical. Only machines are not able to commit mistakes – either they work, or they fail. While the machine is working, it will be working the way it has been working forever, reproducing again and again, again and again, the same kinds of peacock feathers. It is not a work of consciousness.A conscious mind would try to improve, would like to change a little bit – once in a while to put a little more red, a little more green, a little more blue…a little different blue, because there are so many kinds of blues and so many kinds of greens. Once in a while he would put the head of one bird on another bird. One gets bored, putting on the same kind of head again and again, the same red nose again and again; just for a change, one would change to yellow, green, blue. But nothing like that happens.The materialist says it is mechanical, it is a vast mechanism that goes on reproducing without any mind. While it produces, it will be producing the same. Yes, one day every machine fails, but you will not be there to know it. Once the machine fails, you fail too, so there will be nobody as a witness of the failure.I told the old professor – his name was Professor Dasgupta – “Through this argument I can help you to have some insight into agony. The existentialist says there is a difference between animals and man. For the first time a certain group of thinkers has pointed to a difference which really makes a difference. They say, two sentences will have to be understood. One is: Existence precedes essence. And the other is: Essence precedes existence.“In animals essence precedes existence. Essence means whatsoever they are going to be; the whole program comes first, before their birth. Before they exist the blueprint is there; they bring their blueprint with themselves, it is ahead of them. Their existence follows the essence.”Essence means the program, the blueprint of what they are going to be, how many lives they are going to live, how many children they will have, what colors they will change to according to seasons – everything. So much so that there are birds who come flying from the North Pole, three thousand miles down, because it becomes too cold there, and to exist is impossible.They have to…they start exactly on the same date every year. They don’t have any calendar, they don’t know that the season is going to change, but on the exact date, day, time, millions of birds immediately start moving toward the south. They will stop only when they have passed the three-thousand-mile radius, because within three thousand miles they will not be able to survive, they need a little warmer place.But the strangest thing that has puzzled the scientists is that while they are away from their arctic home, the season for reproduction comes. So they mate, they make love, they find boyfriends, girlfriends. It takes time for the girls to become pregnant and then lay the eggs. By the time they lay the eggs, the warm season is finished. Now the arctic is ready to receive them back. So they leave the eggs and fly back to the arctic exactly on the same date as their forefathers and their forefathers have always done.Those eggs hatch in their time, and the birds come out and start flying toward the arctic; three thousand miles in the exact direction they fly back to their world. Strange, absolutely miraculous, because nobody is there to tell them where…. “Your parents have gone. You don’t have a map, and the arctic is far away – three thousand miles – and you are a little bird just out of the egg.” Such a long journey with no preparation…but they manage, they reach. And this happens year after year.This is the meaning of essence coming first, existence following. They don’t know what they are doing. It is some inner impulse, some urge that takes those birds far away. Flying three thousand miles without fail they reach their parents who had left them in the eggs without even telling them, “We are going, so when you get out, please come back home. Don’t forget us, we will be waiting there,” or giving them any indication of direction, nothing – no message has been left. At least they could have left one old guy and said, “When all these kids come out you take them home.” Nobody is left, no message is left, no contact exists between them – but they reach.There are fishes from the arctic that move in a certain season, and near England at a certain place they lay their eggs. Before the eggs are ripe, their journey back starts. And when the eggs give birth, the new fish start swimming against the current! The natural course would be to go with the current, but their program is fixed. Against the current they start moving toward the arctic, and they find their way back to their parents.They will not recognize their parents. There is no need either because these fellows, if they can manage a three-thousand-mile journey against the current, don’t need any parents, any teachers, any schools, college, universities. They are self-sufficient. This is the meaning of essence preceding existence. They are born with their whole life pattern complete and they will simply go on unfolding it. They are not going to learn anything.Learning is not for them. They need no learning. They have already got all that they need for their life, every detail about everything – what to eat, what not to eat. You just look at a buffalo eating grass and you will be surprised: she goes on leaving certain grass and goes on eating certain other grass. Strange, but if you look closely, you will find she eats only a certain grass, other grass she does not eat.You see here so many deer. They prefer a grass called alfalfa, and just now because we have brought water and planted trees and lawns and made it a green place, and certainly because of the deer, I have told my secretary, “Take care that so much good alfalfa is grown around that the deer will come automatically, and this will become a deer park.”And I love that word, because Gautam Buddha lived in a deer park. Where his thousands of disciples lived, hundreds of deer also lived in the same place. And our deer are growing, but a danger has started happening: they are eating too much alfalfa, getting too fat, and for deer that is dangerous because once they get too fat then they cannot run. Then they are easy prey to any animal, to any hunter. Not only that – when they become too fat…because two or three deer have died.I inquired why they died. The reason was they became so fat they could not walk. They fell over their feet and broke their legs, the weight was too much. Their feet are thin, those feet are not meant for that big a load. So I told my secretary then to either bring more deer so the alfalfa is not too much, or start cutting down the alfalfa, because this will kill the poor deer. They don’t have a built-in program where to stop. Nature takes care. In nature, nothing goes off balance.If there is too much alfalfa then deer will start coming more and more from all over the place; if there is less alfalfa, deer will disperse. But our deer are in a difficulty: they cannot go anywhere because they cannot find a place where human beings will not be killing them. This much in three years they have understood perfectly well.They are far more intelligent than your attorney general; they know that these are the right people to live with. They stand on the road, they don’t bother…you may go on honking the horn – they move with their ease and grace and beauty. They don’t bother; they understand that “These are our people,” so they are not going to leave. And they don’t have a built-in program where to stop, so they go on eating.I told that professor, “Essence is a built-in program – and that’s where man is different. Man comes as existence, and essence follows. You are not given a built-in program. You come open-ended, with no directions, with no clear-cut idea of what you are going to be. You exist first – and this is a great difference, the greatest possible difference.”You exist first, and then you have to find who you are. The animals, the trees, the rocks, know first who they are, then they exist; hence there is no spiritual inquiry. No animal bothers asking the questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? He knows it already; there is no question, there is no doubt, no inquiry.Man is a continuous inquiry, a continuous question. To the very last breath he goes on growing. To the very last breath he can change his whole life pattern.He can take a quantum jump.There is no necessity for him to just go on following the path that he has followed. At the very last moment he simply can step aside. There is nobody to prevent him, it is his freedom. Man is the only animal in existence who has freedom – and out of the freedom is agony.”Agony means: I don’t know who I am.I don’t know where I am going and why I am going. I don’t know whether whatever I am doing I am supposed to do or not. The question continuously remains; not even for a single moment does the question leave. Whatever you do, the question is there: Are you sure? Is it the thing for you to do? Is this the place for you to be?The question leaves not even for a single moment. And this is as deep as anything can be in you, at the very core of your being. This is the agony – that the meaning is not known, that the purpose is not known, that the goal is not known. It seems as if we are accidental, that by some accident we are born.No other animal, no tree, no bird is accidental; they are planned. Existence has a whole program for them. Man seems to be totally different.Existence has left man utterly free.Once you become aware of this situation then agony arises. And it is fortunate to feel it. That’s why I say it is not ordinary pain, suffering, misery. It is very extraordinary, and it is of tremendous value to your whole life, its growth, that you should feel agony, that each fiber of your being should feel the questioning, that you should become simply a question. And naturally it is frightening. You are left in a chaos. But out of this very chaos the stars are born.If you don’t start stuffing out of fear, if you don’t start escaping from your agony…. Everybody is trying to escape, finding ways: falling in love, doing this, doing that – somehow, somewhere engaged. One thing is not finished, and you start doing another thing because you are afraid. If there is a gap between the two and the question raises its head, and you start feeling agony, then it is better to continue, to go on running; don’t stop. People start running from their birth till they die. They don’t stop, they don’t sit by the side of the road under a tree.To me the statues of Buddha and Mahavira in the East, sitting in a lotus posture under a tree, do not mean anything historical. They mean something far more significant.These are the people who have stopped running. These are the people who have stepped out of the road on which the whole procession of humanity is going.They are real dropouts, not the Californian type which within a few years drops in again. No, these are real dropouts who never drop in again.Sitting under a tree is just representative. You will be surprised to know that after Buddha’s death, for five hundred years his statue was not made. Instead of a statue only a tree was made. For five hundred years, in the temples that were made and dedicated to Buddha, there was only a tree carved on the stone or marble, nothing else.It was enough to remind one to step out of the road, because this has been for thousands of years the tradition, to plant trees on both the sides of Indian roads – huge trees with big branches almost meeting over the middle of the road so the road is completely covered with shadow. Even in the hottest summer you can go on the road in coolness, in the shadow.So the tree became the symbol of dropping out of “the road.” The road is the world, where everybody is going somewhere, trying to find something, and in fact basically trying to forget himself because it hurts. To remember oneself hurts, and the only thing that everybody is doing is to get engaged, concentrated – after money, after power, after this, after that. Become a painter, become a poet, become a musician, become someone and go on becoming. Don’t stop, because if you stop you become aware of your hurt; the wound starts opening up. So don’t give it a chance. This is the road.For five hundred years they managed simply to have the tree. It was a beautiful symbol of stepping aside. But as time passed, people started forgetting the symbol. The simple tree – they could not understand what is supposed…. They started worshipping trees. It was at that time when Alexander the Great visited India, five hundred years after Buddha. He had seen those temples with trees, and he had asked people, but nobody knew what they meant, just tree worship. And all over India, even today, trees are worshipped; it has remained.Then the Buddhist monks who could understand started making statues of Buddha. But five hundred years had passed; there was no photography possible in those days, so they had not even any idea of how Buddha looked.At that time Alexander visited India. Alexander looked beautiful, he was a beautiful man, so the statues of Buddha are really Alexander’s statues. That face is not Indian, that face is Greek. That’s why when you see the Buddha’s face, you cannot think that it is an Indian face. It is a Greek face, and not an ordinary Greek face – the face of one of the most beautiful Greek men. It is Alexander’s face. They got the idea from Alexander’s face. It was very fitting. It fits better with Buddha than with Alexander, so I don’t have any objection.I see it as perfectly right. Even if while Buddha was alive their heads were changed, it would have been perfectly good. What Alexander was…what he was doing he could have done even with Buddha’s face, there was no trouble. But Buddha certainly needs a beautiful face, very symmetrical, very harmonious with his inner self. The beauty that is shown on the face, in the proportion of his body, is the beauty of his soul.Agony is the experience that you have come into the world a clean slate, a tabula rasa; nothing is written on it. This is your original face.Now, you can do two things. One is, being afraid of this vacuum, you can start running after something or other – earning money, power, learning, asceticism, becoming a sage, scholar, politician – somehow to give you a feeling of identity, somehow to hide your own inner chaos.But whatever you do the chaos is there and is going to remain there. It is an intrinsic part of you. So those who understand don’t try in any way to escape from it. On the contrary, they try to enter into it.These are the two ways: either run away from it as everybody else is doing, or run into it. Reach to its very center howsoever painful, fearful – but reach to the center, because that is you. And it is good at least one time to be at the very exact center of your being.The moment you reach that center then the second word becomes significant: ecstasy.Ecstasy is the flower of agony.Agony is not against ecstasy.Agony is the way to ecstasy.You just have to accept it – what else can one do? It is there. You can close your eyes – that does not mean that the sun has disappeared; it is still there. And everybody is trying to close his eyes; the sun is too glaring. Close your eyes, completely close your eyes. Forget about it, don’t look at it…as if it is not there. Believe it is not there.These pseudo-religions are trying to teach you exactly that:Try to reach to God, try to reach heaven, follow Jesus Christ.But none of them says don’t follow anybody and don’t look for any paradise or heaven because this is all trying to deceive yourself.Encounter yourself, face yourself.Have a one hundred and eighty-degree turn.Look into the chaos that is there, into the agony that is there. And if it is your nature, then howsoever painful it is, we have to become acquainted with it. And the miracle is, it is painful to pass through it but it is just the greatest bliss when you have passed and reached the center of your being.Agony is all around the center, and the ecstasy is just in the center. Perhaps agony is just a protective shell – ecstasy is so valuable it needs protection. And nature has created such a protective wall, what to say of others? – even you start running away from it. Who is going to enter into your agony if you yourself are running away?The moment you think of it, agony seems to be a tremendous gift of nature. It changes its whole color, its fragrance, its meaning. It is a protective wall, so protective that even you start running away from it.Don’t run away from yourself whatever the case may be. A man’s mettle is judged by his entering into his own inner chaos. You are worthy to call yourself human beings when you have reached to the center, and you can see from the center, around yourself. You are blissful – not only are you blissful, from the center the whole existence is blissful too.Agony and ecstasy are two sides of your being. They both make you one organic unity, one whole.So I am not telling you how to get rid of agony.That’s what pseudo-religions have been telling you for centuries.I am telling you how to befriend agony, how to be in love with the chaos.Once you are in love with the chaos, the freedom that chaos brings, the unbounded space that chaos brings, enter into it till you reach the center.To find oneself is to find all.Then there is nothing missing, then there is no question left. Then for the first time you have the answer. Although you cannot convey the answer to anybody else, you can convey the way you found it.That’s what the function of a master is.He does not give you the answer.He does not make you more knowledgeable.He simply shows you the method, how he found himself. He encourages you to take a jump into your chaos, into your agony.The master is simply a proof that you don’t need to be afraid. If this man can find his center, passing through all the agony, there is no reason why you cannot do it too. And once you know the taste of ecstasy, your whole life, for the first time, has something that can be called godliness. A new quality arises in you, a new flare, a new flame. But that is our nature, everybody’s nature.I have never tried in my life to become anybody. I have simply allowed life to take me wherever it wanted. One thing I can say to you, I have not been a loser; it was a great joy to be taken over by nature. I have not at all interfered. I have not even been swimming, because in swimming you are at least throwing your hands about. I have been just going with the stream, floating with wherever the stream is going.Fortunately all streams reach finally to the ocean. The small, the big, somehow or other they all find their way to the oceanic. And the oceanic feeling I call the religious feeling.When your small drop drops into the ocean….In one sense you are no more.In one sense you are for the first time.On one hand there is death, and on the other hand there is rebirth.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why is it so difficult to get rid of pain, misery, suffering or anguish, while knowing perfectly well that one has just to understand and drop them?It is difficult to get rid of pain, misery, and suffering for the simple reason that they have been your companions for your whole life. Except them, you don’t have any friends in the world.It is easier to be in pain, misery, suffering, than to be utterly lonely, because there are ways you can have pain-killers, you can have drugs, as an escape from misery. You can get engaged in all kinds of stupidities to forget your suffering. But there is no way – no painkiller is going to help you out of your loneliness, no drug, no stupidity.Loneliness is so deep that all these superficial methods cannot reach to it, cannot touch it. That’s why it is so difficult to get rid of these few friends that you have got. This is your world, your family.In my professorial days in the university, I had lived for a few months in the university campus. My neighbor was a newly-married man, a professor of physics, Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya – a very sharp, intelligent teacher, with a great future ahead, because he had such a grip on physics that even older professors of physics used to come and ask him things about new physics.He had been married not more than two or three months, but the marriage was finished. They were constantly fighting, quarreling. The wife was also educated, a postgraduate, and in a beautiful subject, in music. The walls that separated me from this couple were not very thick – so thin that it was impossible not to hear what was going on.It was almost thirty years ago. I was only their neighbor for a few months; since then I have not seen them, but they have given me one thing to which I have become addicted: earplugs. Even today when I don’t have any neighbors for miles…and even those who live miles away don’t consider me their neighbor. In the whole of America I don’t have a neighbor. And anyway, tourists are not supposed to have neighbors.But I cannot get rid of those earplugs. I cannot go to sleep without earplugs. I have tried. The moment I think of dropping them I start thinking of Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya. From morning till midnight they were quarreling, on every point, on every single thing. There was no agreement on anything. And almost every night it ended with them throwing things – a pillow fight. I even heard them slapping each other.Once or twice I interfered. I just knocked on their door in the middle of the night, and they opened the door. I looked at the scene – things all over the floor – and I said, “Don’t be embarrassed, because I have been hearing the whole thing since the morning. I know every detail of it, so you do not have to be hypocrites before me.“This is perfectly good – it is supposed to happen between every husband and wife sooner or later. You are intelligent people: it is happening sooner. But one thing I cannot understand: once in a while you both say to each other, ‘I love you, darling, I love you.’ That, I cannot understand. Everything else is understandable to me.“I had to interfere in the middle of the night because just now, after a big pillow fight, you said, ‘I love you, I love you, my darling.’ It simply disturbs my whole sleep. Everything else I accept, but how, out of this pillow fight, and throwing things and shouting and screaming, does the conclusion come, ‘I love you, darling’?”They looked at each other. They had no answer because…. Then the professor said, “I have never thought about it but certainly you are right. After all this, this should not be the conclusion. I can understand – you are a man of logic. I cannot understand too much logic but physics is also based on logic; I can see the contradiction.”The wife said, “I have never thought about it, but it is true that…. Can you help us to understand why?”I said, “That’s why I have come. This happens with husband and wife: they hate each other, and then they hate themselves for hating each other. And then to cover up the whole thing – that ‘I hate you,’ that, ‘I hate myself for hating you’ – this is the cover: ‘I love you, darling.’“This manages both things. You are no longer hating yourself, because you love your wife. But this is only a cover, a very thin cover which cannot stand the strong winds of life. Tomorrow morning again you have forgotten. The same story begins, comes to the same conclusion. Why don’t you just separate?”And they both were angry at my suggestion. They said, “This is not nice of you to suggest that we separate.”I said, “Yes, I suggest it. Get a divorce.” And they were both ready to fight with me.I said, “You need not fight with me because I don’t hate you, I don’t love you, darling; I am simply not part of it. Exclude me out, I am going back. I just dropped in the suggestion – you can think about it. Only three months have passed. After thirty years you will be still in the same situation, but then it will be too late, even divorce will not be of any help. You will have become addicted to the quarreling, to the fighting, to everything that you hate. You will become addicted to it, you will miss it.”They were very angry; they closed the door in my face. I said, “Thank you.”After two months the wife went to see her mother for a week – her mother was sick – and in just one week Professor Nityanand Mukhopadhyaya started coming to me and continuously saying, “I miss my wife so much. I cannot sleep – the bed seems so empty.”I said, “And the room also seems so empty, things are not all over the place. Why don’t you throw things yourself? Shout a little, scream a little – and she is not here so you can say anything you want. Throw things, beat on the clothes, and then come to the climax: I love you, darling. And you will have a good sleep.”He said, “You must be joking.”I said, “Why should I be joking? You try it – what is the harm?”And you will not believe it: not that day, but after two days, he tried it – because I heard it. He was doing really a great job, greater than he had done ever before, a greater performance. And he climaxed it: “I love you, darling.” And soon I heard him snoring.In the morning I went to see his room; things were all over the place. The servant opened the bedroom; the professor was still asleep. I woke him up; I said, “You did such a good performance.”He said, “Really, it works. I was just trying, knowing perfectly well that it was not going to work. How could it work? – she is not here. But it worked; slowly, slowly I got hotter and hotter. She was almost here: when I was beating the pillows I was beating her. And I have never given her such a good beating – it was such a deep contentment to the heart. I have never slept so deeply. You were right.”But this is the situation of almost everybody. You become addicted to your pain, to your misery, to your suffering. You really don’t want to get rid of it.You go on asking how to get rid of it, but that is also a strategy of the mind; to go on inquiring how to get rid of it.Have you ever asked sincerely, do you want to get rid of it? Are you ready to live without all the miseries and the pains and the sufferings that you have been carrying all along? Will you be ready to be left alone without all these long-standing companions who have been with you in thick and thin, who have never left you?When everybody was leaving you, they were still with you. They have followed you like a shadow; they have been in a certain way a consolation. This will be very shocking to you when I say they have been in a certain way a consolation to you. When I say that, I have many things implied in it.Your suffering makes you somebody special. Without all your suffering, you are nobody. Who are you? You will not even have something to talk about with anybody. You will be at a loss – what are you going to talk about?In England, people talk about the weather just to avoid real conversation. It is a very sophisticated way, to talk about weather. But it looks a little idiotic because you are seeing the weather, I am seeing the weather, it makes no sense to say, “What a beautiful day, how sunny!” you are seeing it, you are also in the same day. You are not tomorrow, you are not yesterday, you are here with me. And you say, “Yes, so beautiful!”This is because of the English character; it is one of the most phony characters in the world. It does not want to raise any controversial conversation. Politics is dangerous, there is controversy; religion is dangerous, there is controversy; literature is dangerous, there is controversy. Except the weather there seems to be nothing non-controversial – something on which both can agree without any problem.It is said that two Englishmen were traveling in a compartment for almost three hours. Then the ticket checker came in, looked at them…they were looking very sad and depressed. He asked…. One said, “Three hours sitting, not even somebody to talk to.”He said, “Just in front of you another Englishman is sitting – you could have talked.”The man said, “But how? – because nobody introduced us. Without an introduction it is a kind of trespass.”I have heard another story too, that a man went to meet his wife – a four or five-hour journey. The wife had come to the station to receive him, and he was looking very tired, utterly tired. She asked, “What is the matter? Why are you looking so tired?”He said, “It always happens when I have to sit in a position where my back is against the direction of the train. If I am sitting against the direction of the train – the train is going this way, and I am sitting facing that way – then my whole body gets very tired.”The wife said, “But there was no problem. You could have asked the gentleman in the front seat, ‘This is my trouble; would you be kind enough to change?’“He said, “I wanted to but there was no gentleman, the seat was empty. Whom to ask?”These are very sophisticated people.Just now I was reading that the most prestigious directory of the royal family’s noble blood has dropped many names out of it in the new edition because they were all AIDS victims. Now, you can see even noble people have ways which are not noble at all: noble people with ignoble lifestyles. But that is all underground. On the surface everything seems to be the way it should be. More or less it is the same all over the world; nobody wants really to drop their suffering.You have to ask this question very sincerely:Are you ready to be lonely?At least your suffering, your pain, your misery, makes you somebody special. It gives you a certain character, it gives you a certain identity. Moreover it is your misery, nobody else’s. It is your possession, your prestige. If it is just taken away from you, you will be a beggar.You ask me, why is misery so difficult to get rid of?It is difficult because you don’t want to get rid of it.It is also difficult because you have many misunderstandings.You say, “pain, misery, suffering or anguish.” That shows you don’t understand. You can get rid of pain, misery, suffering, which are your own creations; you can withdraw. They cannot stand without your support, they need constant nourishment from you. They suck you, they are parasites – but you can throw them away.Anguish you cannot get rid of.So don’t say “suffering or anguish.”Anguish is a totally different plane.Anguish is something spiritual.Anguish you are not to get rid of; anguish you have to become more acquainted with.If you are standing with your back toward anguish, it appears like suffering.If you turn your face toward anguish, it becomes blissfulness.You are not to get rid of it. And it is nothing to do with you, so you cannot get rid of it. Even if you want to get rid of this blessing, then too it is not in your power. It is something intrinsic to your nature. If you are not facing yourself, you will feel anguish; if you turn toward yourself, the same anguish becomes the greatest blessing in the world.So don’t say suffering or anguish. That shows your utter ignorance of your own inner world.Suffering, misery, pain, are all outside.Anguish is within.Anguish you are born with.Suffering, misery, pain, are your creations.That is also one of the causes why you cannot get rid of them. You have created them, they are your children.You just look at people when they are talking about their suffering; watch their faces, watch their eyes – and you will be surprised. Are they talking about their suffering or are they bragging about it? – because their face seems to be radiant when they talk about their suffering. And remember, you know! – because you are doing the same. You always exaggerate your pain, your suffering, your misery; you make it as big as possible. Why? If it is something to get rid of, why are you magnifying it? You are enjoying it.One of my friends is a Catholic priest. I asked him once, “You hear people’s confessions. Have you ever wondered whether they may be exaggerating?”He said, “What! Exaggerating? They are confessing their sins, why should they exaggerate?”I said, “People exaggerate everything. If sinners are standing in a queue, you would like to stand first, you would like to be the greatest sinner. You would not like to be just third-class, standing at the end of the queue. And if somebody asks what kind of sin you committed – you have stolen a hen!When there are Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, and Nadirshah, and Alexander the Great, and Ivan the Terrible – your whole life you only stole a hen? You must be an idiot! Such a long life – seventy years – you could not do anything else? And you have some nerve to stand in the line with such great people: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin. Get lost! Don’t count yourself a sinner!No, you will have to magnify it as much as possible.A small boy came running into his home and, huffing and perspiring, told his mother, “A lion has been following me! But I was not afraid.”The mother said, “Lion? In the middle of the city? I have told you a thousand times: Don’t exaggerate. Where is the lion?”He said, “He is standing outside the door.”The mother went to the door; a small dog was standing there.The boy said, “Yes, this is the lion.”The mother said, “You know perfectly this is a dog.”He said, “I know, but when you are telling a story, and you say a small dog was following you, and you were not afraid – that does not fit. A lion is needed. And as far as exaggeration is concerned, you are telling me that you have told me one thousand times not to exaggerate. You are exaggerating yourself.”Everybody is making himself look, in every possible way, like somebody special.You are talking about your suffering and somebody says, “It is nothing.” You will be hurt, you will not like this response. You were telling such a great story; you were opening your wounds and that man said, “This is nothing. You should know my suffering.”Suffering also becomes a support to your ego. A man without suffering, without pain, without any misery – how can he manage his ego? He won’t have any props for the ego.I used to stay with one of the presidents of the Indian National Congress – which has been the ruling party since independence. His name was Uchchhangrai Dhebar, and he loved me very much. He was the only politician of that status who used to come to the camps to meditate, to participate. He was really a nice person. It is very difficult to find in politicians that quality of niceness.He was talking about the great problems that he was facing. I listened, and I told him, “You can talk about these things to other people – don’t waste my time. If you can do something about those things then do it; otherwise what is the point of unnecessarily talking? I am not the person interested in that kind of thing.”Just then the phone rang and he took it. The prime minister was calling, and Uchchhangrai Dhebar said, “I am very much engaged right now.” And he was not engaged at all – we were just gossiping! He said, “I am very much engaged right now; today it is not possible for me to meet you. Perhaps tomorrow I can manage. I will have to inquire from my secretary.”As their conversation was finished I said, “I don’t see that you are engaged.”He said, “That is not the point. When a prime minister phones – and I am the president of the party as far as organization is concerned, he is just a member of the organization…. He may be the prime minister, but when a prime minister calls me, I am always engaged. When the president of the country calls me, I am always engaged. These people understand only that language.“If I just go and run to his house and say, ‘Yes, sir, I am here, what do you want?’ then what is the point of being the president of the party? So much struggle, so much trouble, so much conflict, quarreling, and then in the end I have been able to become the president. And you want me to say to the prime minister that I am gossiping, I am free, I have nothing to do? Now I am engaged in great problems.”I said, “Perhaps the same is true when you are talking about your great problems to me. At least with me be sincere. I am not the prime minister or the president.”He looked into my eyes for a moment and he said, “You are right. I was just bragging about how much puzzled I am, how much trouble my life is. To be the president of the ruling party of such a vast country is to be lying on a bed of thorns.”He was sleeping on a Dunlop mattress. I said, “What are you talking about? I see you sleep on a Dunlop mattress!”I cannot sleep on one of those because it is so soft that the moment you move, it moves with you. It keeps me awake; I am waking continuously the whole night.Once Teertha brought for me a waterbed. That night I will never forget. That waterbed must be supplied in hell, because you turn and the whole water inside moves just underneath you. That much water movement – how can you sleep? I can sleep on a hard floor; it may hurt a little bit, but sooner or later you will fall asleep. But on a waterbed…and that was the latest “in thing” so Teertha brought it for me. I had to suffer many latest in things.You cannot get rid of your miseries for the simple reason that you don’t have anything else to cling to. You will be empty – and nobody wants to be empty. People befool themselves in every possible way.I have visited areas where people were so hungry – starving; they had no food. I inquired, “You don’t have any food, how do you manage to sleep?” – because without food you cannot sleep. In fact sleep is needed for one of the most basic reasons: to digest food. So all other activity is dropped and your whole energy goes into digestion. But when you don’t have any food in the stomach, sleep becomes difficult.I have been fasting, so I know. Before the fasting day, the whole night you go on tossing and turning, thinking of the next day and the delicious foods. And when you are hungry anything looks delicious. But you cannot sleep. I asked, “How do you manage to sleep?”They said, “We drink a lot of water to fill the belly, to deceive the body, and then sleep comes.” They know perfectly well they are deceiving; water is not nourishment. The body is asking for food, and they are giving water because only water is available. But at least something is in the stomach, it is not empty.This is the situation as far as your psychological emptiness is concerned: anything will do. Nothing is not acceptable to you. And unless nothing is acceptable to you, you are not ready to get rid of your pain, misery, and suffering.You say, “Knowing perfectly well….” You don’t know at all, and you are saying, “Knowing perfectly well.” You know nothing. “Knowing perfectly well” means that if you understand, all these sufferings and miseries will drop of their own accord.Knowing perfectly well and still continuing to suffer, to be miserable – no, it is not possible. Either you don’t know or you cannot suffer. You cannot be allowed both together: knowing perfectly well and still suffering. And your last sentence makes it clear that that knowledge is not knowing. It may be knowledge.You say, “Knowing perfectly well that one just has to understand and drop them.” It is a little delicate affair – to understand and drop them…as if after understanding you will have to drop them. That’s not how it happens.In understanding is the very dropping. There is no “and to drop them.”There is no action after understanding.Understanding is the action itself.It is not that you bring the light inside the room, then you throw the darkness out. You don’t say, “I will bring the lamp in and then throw the darkness out.” If you say that, anybody will know that you are blind. You don’t know what you are saying. When you bring light in you will not find darkness at all. What are you going to throw out?Understanding is light.The moment you understand, there is no suffering to be thrown out, to be dropped, to be got rid of.Understanding simply cleanses you.You may have a laugh after it, but there is no action. You may have a good laugh because you will see how stupid you have been. You have been trying to get rid of things which only need to be understood, and that very understanding becomes freedom from them.No doing other than understanding is needed.But perhaps you don’t have a clear-cut idea of knowing and knowledge. It is knowledge: you have heard, you have listened, you have read.Yes, you are knowledgeable, but knowledge helps nobody.Sigmund Freud, a man of great knowledge, was afraid of ghosts – although he said continually, “There are no ghosts, there is no evidence, no proof.” He was so much afraid of ghosts that a simple incident became the breaking point between his chief disciple, Carl Gustav Jung, and himself.Carl Gustav Jung was going to be his successor. Freud had already declared, “Jung is going to be my successor.” And Jung was the most intelligent, scholarly, impressive, charismatic personality among all Freud’s disciples, but there were a few things which were troublesome. One was that Jung was interested in ghosts; that was a constant trouble.One day Sigmund Freud was sitting in his office with Jung in front of him; they were talking and somehow the topic of ghosts came up. Jung said, “Whatever you say, I still suspect that something like ghosts exists.” Sigmund Freud became red with anger – and at that very time, in the cupboard behind, there was a sound almost like an explosion. Sigmund Freud fell from his seat.Jung opened the cupboard: there was nothing. He closed it again, put the seat right, placed Freud there and said, “There is nothing. I don’t know what happened, what caused this explosion.” They started talking again, and again the ghost thing came up. Sigmund Freud said, “I don’t believe in it and you stop talking about it” – and the explosion!This was too much: Sigmund Freud fell into unconsciousness. And that was the breaking point. He simply informed Jung, “Either you drop me, or you drop your ghosts.”So knowledgeable, so much a pioneer, a great scientific mind…. But if you really know that there are no ghosts then there will be a different response. You will not fall unconscious, you will not fall from your seat. It is just knowledge, belief. Freud wants to believe that there are no ghosts, but deep down he is just an ordinary human being like anybody else, with all the fears.Jung was not different either. He was interested in ghosts, but he was very much afraid of death. Now look at this strange thing. You are interested in ghosts; if you are really interested in ghosts, you should be interested in death too, because without death ghosts can’t exist. A ghost is nothing but a man who was once in the body and is no more in the body. If you are interested in ghosts, you should be logically interested in death, in the very process of death.But Jung was so afraid, more afraid than Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud at least had some excuse in the explosion to fall unconscious. Jung was so afraid that even the word death was enough. Thrice in his life he became unconscious just because the word death came into the conversation.He was very much interested in seeing in Egypt the mummies of ancient Egyptian pharaohs, queens, kings – which were very recently discovered, excavated, and were now available for the public to see. He booked at least a dozen times to go to Egypt but at the very last moment he would find some excuse not to go.One time Jung even reached the airport in Zurich; finding no excuse not to go, he was very much in trouble. He was trying to find some excuse not to go but there was no excuse. People had even come to give him a good send-off and say, “Have a good journey.” And finally he said, “I am not going.”“But,” they said, “why?”He said, “I have tried to find an excuse not to go – there is none. But if I don’t want to go, who are you to force me to go? You have come with flowers, and I am dying with fear. I cannot look at a corpse.”It is the strange mind of man. You are obsessed with things of which you are afraid. Perhaps you are obsessed only because you are afraid. Your fear and your obsession are almost always pointed to the same thing. Jung never managed in his life to reach Egypt, and this was one of his cherished desires. He was very knowledgeable, but as far as knowing was concerned – just nil.Knowing transforms you.Knowledge only gives you a false idea that you are wise.It is better to be sincerely ignorant – because there is a chance of change – than to be a hypocrite insincerely believing that you know.Ignorance has done no harm to anybody.Knowledge has done immense harm.The knowledgeable person goes on living with this false idea that he knows. And because he knows, there is no need to inquire any more. The ignorant man is continuously on the verge of inquiry; always a question mark is there. And this is one of the traits of human nature, that you cannot live with a question mark. Either you have to cover it with false knowledge – which becomes your answer – or you have to find the real answer so that the question disappears.Knowledge is not the answer but only a pretension of an answer.You say, “Knowing perfectly well”…. Drop this idea of knowledge. Please just accept your ignorance. Be courageous and capable of saying, of many things, “I do not know.”If somebody asks you about God, do you have the courage simply to say, “I do not know”?The atheist has no courage; he says, “I know there is no God.”The theist has no courage; he says, “I know there is God.”Only the agnostic is a little courageous; he says, “I do not know yet.” He leaves the question without any definite answer. He is inquiring, he is searching.From my very childhood I have been continuously questioning knowledgeable people. My house was a guest house of many Jaina saints, Hindu monks, Sufi mystics, because my grandfather was interested in all of these people. But he was not a follower of anybody. He, rather, enjoyed me bothering these saints.Once I asked him, “Are you really interested in these people? You invite them to stay in the house and then you tell me to harass them. In what are you really interested?”He said, “To tell you the truth I enjoy their being harassed, because these guys go on pretending that they know – and they know nothing. But anywhere else it would be difficult to harass them because people would stop you. People would tell me, ‘Your grandson is a nuisance here – take him away.’ So I invite them, and then in our own house you can do whatever you want. And you have all my support: you can ask any questions you want.”And I inquired of these people, just simple questions: “Be true and just simply tell me, do you know God? Is it your own experience or have you just heard? You are learned, you can quote scriptures, but I am not asking about scriptures: I am asking about you. Can you quote yourself, your experience?”And I was surprised that not a single man had any experience of God, or of himself. And these were great saints in India, worshiped by thousands of people. They were deceiving themselves and they were deceiving thousands of others. That’s why I say that knowledge has done much harm. Ignorance has done no harm.Ignorance is innocent. Knowledge is cunning.Knowing is far beyond both.Knowing has the innocence of ignorance and the knowing of knowledge, both together. It is innocent knowing.And knowing is authentically yours.Unless any knowledge is yours, it is better not to have such ideas of having perfect knowledge.Do you understand, when you use words like perfect? Is there anything in life perfect?The moment anything is perfect, it is dead.Life is continuous imperfection.Yes, it is moving toward perfection – but always moving and never arriving. That’s the whole stance of evolution, that it goes on evolving higher and higher but there is no point where it can say, “Now the journey is finished.” The book of life has no beginning and no end. It is a continuum; infinite continuity.Never use words like perfect. Everything is imperfect here, has to be – except idiots like pope the Polack. These are perfect people, infallible. Only idiots can claim infallibility. The wise ones will say, “Perhaps it is so. I do not know absolutely. Yes, I have glimpses. There are moments of clarity; there are times it seems, ‘Yes! This is it!’ but there is no full stop anywhere.”If you ask me how many times I have said, “This is it!” and the next day, something bigger…. And I think, “My God! So this is it!” But slowly, slowly when it was happening more and more, more and more, bigger and bigger, I dropped the idea of saying, “This is it!”This is always becoming it, but there is no full stop. It is never perfect.Knowing is a process.Knowledge is a dead thing, with a full stop.You don’t know, and it will be of immense help to you to know that you don’t know, because from there a true journey can start. Your question gives enough evidence of ignorance because you say, “By understanding and then dropping it.” Alas, after understanding there is nothing to drop. You will be at a loss.Before understanding there is so much to drop, but you cannot drop it.After understanding, when you can drop it, there is nothing to drop.These are the mysteries of life, real mysteries of life – tremendously enjoyable.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is not spiritual guidance an absolute necessity for human growth?There are no absolutes in real life – including this statement too. Life is full of exceptions; that’s one of its most beautiful things. Exceptions mean freedom. Exceptions mean you are not in a concentration camp. The absolute is nothing but complete bondage and slavery.In the beginning days of scientific research scientists were thinking that in science there are no exceptions. That was one of the great prides of science, because that makes it absolutely certain. If there are exceptions you cannot be certain about the rules – and science needs certainty to be the base.For the last three hundred years science went on proving that there were no exceptions, finding absolute rules. But Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity destroyed the whole three-hundred-year-long efforts of hundreds of scientists in a single blow. The theory of relativity means that nothing is absolute, everything is relative, and there are exceptions everywhere.It is one thing that you may not be able to find the exception; that shows your limitation. Your instruments may not be yet refined enough to catch the exception. It does not prove anything about the absoluteness of any rule – only the limitations of human mind. The finer your instruments become, the finer your approach to reality, the more you are simply mystified: there are exceptions, and exceptions to everything. Nothing is absolute. After Albert Einstein nothing is absolute.This is something to rejoice in, because science was creating a world of dead rules, mechanical. The whole concept of pre-Einsteinian science was that the world is a vast mechanism – that it is not an organism, but a mechanism.A mechanism functions perfectly without any exceptions. It has no mind, how can it create exceptions? It simply goes on moving in the same rut. It never gets bored. It never feels to do something just for a change, something other than it has been doing always. There is no mind in it; hence, the machine can be absolute.But an organism, a living being, cannot be absolute. It is a free agent. If it follows a certain rule, that is its decision. It can drop out, it can just go in the opposite direction. Hence, science never said that the world is an organism, but a vast mechanism.But the theory of relativity disturbed the whole setup, and it has disturbed it forever. Never again will science be able to have the old certainty, because it has been found through the theory of relativity that as we go deeper into the inner world of the atom, a strange phenomenon is experienced.When we go inside the atom there are three divisions: the electron, the neutron, and the positron. It was thought that they must be following a set discipline, just as we find in every material thing. But strangely enough, they are very individualistic. Sometimes they behave in one way, sometimes they don’t behave in the same way.And one thing that is of tremendous importance for you to remember is – it is just like when you are taking a bath, with the door closed, nude, enjoying the freedom of being alone, making faces before the mirror knowing that nobody is seeing you. But then suddenly you become aware of a noise near the door and you see two eyes looking through the keyhole. Suddenly you are no longer the same, you have changed. Now you cannot make faces before the mirror.What has happened? An observer changed your behavior. We can understand this because you are a conscious human being and you were behaving in a certain way with the knowledge that nobody was watching. Once you see that somebody is watching, you start behaving the way you are supposed to behave.Making faces before the mirror is very childish. There is nothing wrong about it; it is not a sin. It is your mirror, it is your face, you are not doing any harm to anybody. But certainly the observer instantly changes you. You start doing other things just to look busy, as if you are doing meaningful things. Just a moment before you were doing meaningless things, now you are doing meaningful things.The same was discovered in the innermost core of the atom: the electrons behave differently when there is no observer. And the moment the scientist and his instruments make them aware that somebody is observing, they change their rules; a sudden transformation takes place.This was very shocking to the scientists because electrons are supposed to be particles of electricity: that’s the meaning of electron. They are supposed to be material, but they are behaving with such great consciousness. And as the work progressed, many more things became noticeable.You go from point A to point B – certainly you exist between point A and point B when you go from point A to point B. You must exist between the two; otherwise how can you reach point B? It was found that in the inner world of the atom this is not applicable. The electron moves from point A to point B but between the two he disappears; he is no more, he is non-existential. This is very absurd, illogical; it does not suit a good electron to do such a mischievous thing – that moving from point A to point B, in the middle you simply disappear, and no trace is found.Because of this, science fiction became very prominent. In many languages that kind of fiction was written. And it seems possible – if electrons can disappear, why not you, because you are nothing but millions and millions of electrons, you are a crowd. And if a single electron can do such a thing, perhaps one day it will be possible…. And that is the only way that man can hope to reach some faraway star. Traveling by traditional bullock cart means won’t do, you cannot reach.Even to reach the nearest star will take you four years traveling at the speed of light, and that too only if we can manage to create a vehicle which can move with the speed of light – which is impossible because anything moving with the speed of light becomes light. At that speed the heat is so much, the friction at that speed is such that everything becomes fire. No kind of metal exists which can resist that speed and remain itself.The speed is very tremendous. In one second, one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles – in one second! Multiply it by sixty, that is in one minute; multiply it again by sixty, that is in one hour. This way go on multiplying to find the distance traveled in one year: that is one light year. The nearest star is four light years away! With such a speed…. First, there is a barrier: such a speed is not possible. Your vehicle, you, and everything would become light. By the time you reached that star you would be just rays of light and nothing else.Scientists, and particularly scientific novelists, became very enchanted with the idea that the electron can disappear in the middle, between two points. That gave them a beautiful myth for the future: that we can make a machine in which the man enters and disappears – just like the electrons. We have just to find out how they manage to disappear. What is their mode of disappearance?Once we have found their methods of disappearing from one point and then appearing again at another point, then there is no problem. Then man can disappear from the earth and can appear on the moon, on Mars, or anywhere in the whole universe. Then time is no problem. Here you disappear, and there you appear. In the middle there is nowhere that you can be found.This looks very fictitious. Yes, as far as man is concerned, right now it looks fictitious, but the electrons have been doing it all along. They are still doing it. Their behavior destroys the whole certainty of science. It destroyed the whole Aristotelian logic and Euclidian geometry, it destroyed Bacon’s rules – it destroyed everything.It opened a new dimension of utter freedom. And if even matter is so free, what about consciousness? Then consciousness is pure freedom.So the first thing about your question I want to tell you is, there is nothing absolute. Everything is relative.Absolute is a weighty word. It gives you a certain confidence. Politicians use such words to create confidence, certainty. But I cannot use such words, I am not a politician. I would prefer to use a more humble word: relative. It does not give you the feel of certainty. But certainty is needed only by people who are uncertain, certainty is the need of weaklings. People who are at ease have no need for certainty. They can very well understand the word relative and its implications.There is a story: one day a man came to Gautam Buddha just in the morning, and asked him, “Does God exist?” Buddha looked at the man for a moment, and then said, “Yes.” The man could not believe it because he had heard that Buddha does not believe in God. Now, what to make of his yes?Even his disciples, the closest disciples…Ananda was with him, he was shocked. Buddha had never said so certainly, without any ifs and buts, a simple yes – to God! He had, his whole life been fighting against the idea of God. But there was a settlement between Buddha and Ananda…. Ananda was Buddha’s elder cousin-brother. When he was taking sannyas, Ananda had asked beforehand, “You have to promise me a few things. Right now I am your elder brother. After taking sannyas I will be your disciple: then whatsoever you say I will have to do, but right now I can demand something and you will have to do it.”Buddha said, “I know you. You cannot ask anything which will put your younger brother in any difficulty. You can ask.”Ananda said, “They are not big things, just simple things. One is that every night before going to sleep, if I want to ask something, you will have to answer, you can’t say, ‘I am tired, and the whole day’s journey, and so many people and so many meetings….’ You will have to answer. Yes, I will never ask in the day, I will not disturb you the whole day, but I am a human being and I am not enlightened: certain questions may arise.”Buddha said, “That is accepted.”In the same way Ananda asked two more things: “One is that you will never tell me to go anywhere else; I will always be with you, to serve you till my last breath. You will not tell me, ‘Now you go and spread my message,’ just the way you send others. You cannot send me.”Buddha said, “Okay, that’s not a problem.”And third, Ananda said, “If I ask you to give some time to somebody, at any hour – it may be a very odd hour, in the middle of the night – you will have to meet the person. That much privilege you have to give me.”Buddha said, “That too is okay because I know you.”Ananda was very much puzzled by Buddha’s answer that yes, God exists, but he could not ask in the day, he had to wait for the night. In the afternoon, another man came and asked the same question: “Is there a God?” And Buddha said, “No, not at all.”Now, things became more complicated – Ananda was almost in a state of falling apart. But this was nothing. By the evening, a third man came; and he sat by the side and he asked Buddha, “Will you say something about God?”Buddha looked at him, closed his eyes and remained silent. The man also closed his eyes. They sat in silence for half an hour; then the man touched Buddha’s feet and said, “Thank you for your answer,” and went away.Now, it was too much. Everybody gone – the time was passing so slowly and Ananda was boiling; and when everybody was gone, he simply jumped up. He said, “This is too much! You should take care, at least, of us poor people too. Those three persons don’t know all the three answers, they only know one answer. But we are with you, we have heard all the three answers. You should think of us too, we have been going crazy. If this is going to go on, what will happen to us?”Buddha said, “You should remember one thing. First, those questions were not your questions, those answers were not given to you. Why should you jump into it? It is none of your business. It was something between me and those three people.”Ananda said, “That I can understand. It is not my question, and you have not answered me. But I have ears and I can hear; I heard the question, I heard the answer. And all the three answers are contradiction upon contradiction. First you say yes, then you say no; and then you remain silent, you don’t say anything. And that great guy touched your feet and said, ‘Thank you for your answer.’ And we are sitting there and there has been no answer at all!”Buddha said, “You think about life in terms of absolutes, that’s your trouble. Life is relative. To that man, the answer was yes; it was relative to him, related to the implications of his questions, his being, his life. That man to whom I said yes was an atheist; he does not believe in God, and I do not want to support his stupid atheism. He goes on proclaiming there is no God. Even if a small space is left unexplored…perhaps in that space God exists. You can say with absoluteness there is no God when you have explored all existence. That is possible only in ultimate samadhi.“And that man was simply believing that there was no God – he had no existential experience of there being no God. I had to shatter him, I had to bring him down to earth. I had to hit him hard on the head. My yes was relative to that person, to his whole personality. His question was not just words. The same question from somebody else may have received another answer.And that’s what happened when I said to the other person, no. The question was the same, the words were the same – but the man behind those words was different. So the relationship between the words and the implications had changed. It is relative. The second man was as much an idiot as was the first, but on the opposite pole: he believed there is God. And he had come to get my support for his belief. I don’t support anybody’s belief because belief as such is the barrier. It does not matter what belief it is, true or false. No belief is true, no belief is false; all beliefs are simply idiotic. I had to say to that man, no.“And the third man had come with no belief. He had not asked me, ‘Is there a God?’ No, he had come with an open heart, with no mind, no belief, no ideology. He was really a sane man, intelligent. He asked me, ‘Would you say something about God?’ He was not in search of somebody’s support for his belief system, he was not in search of a faith, he was not asking with a prejudiced mind. And he was asking about my experience: ‘Would you say something about God?’“I could see that this man has no belief, this way or that; he is innocent. With such an innocent person, language is meaningless. I cannot say yes, I cannot say no; only silence is the answer. So I closed my eyes and remained silent.“And my feeling about the man proved to be true. He closed his eyes – seeing me close my eyes, he closed his eyes. He understood my answer: Be silent, go in. He remained in silence for half an hour with me and he received the answer – that God is not a theory, a belief, that you have to be for or against.“That’s why he thanked me for the answer, and you are puzzled for what answer he thanked me. He received the answer that silence is divine, and to be silent is to be godly; there is no other god than silence. And he went tremendously fulfilled, contented. He has found the answer.“I have not given him the answer, he has found the answer. I have simply allowed him to have a taste of my presence.”I am telling this story for two reasons; one, to illustrate that nothing is absolute. You are asking me, is it absolutely necessary to have spiritual guidance? It all depends, nothing is absolute.For the first man, there was no need for any guidance. He had not come for any guidance. So was the case with the second man; although he was opposite to the first, he had not come for any guidance. He wanted a ready-made answer. Those two were not seekers. They wanted somebody else to take their responsibility. They were parasites, suckers. They wanted to throw their burdens onto somebody else’s shoulders.“But the third man was a seeker. He had not asked for guidance, but he received it. I had not given it to him.”It is not necessarily so, that you can receive only that which is given to you. There are so many ways to receive it. You can steal it, you can borrow it, you can simply find it on the street – it may have fallen from somebody’s pocket.Gurdjieff actually used to say to his disciples that unless you are ready to steal the truth from the master he is not going to give it to you. He will only give it to you when he sees that now you have come to the limit of your tolerance; now if he is not going to give it to you, you are going to kill him. Only then will he give it; only then are you capable of receiving it.But Buddha is saying a different, totally different thing. He is saying, “I have not given it to him but he has received it. I was simply present, available – just like a river flows, and if you are thirsty you drink. The river does not give the water to you, does not invite you. You have to bend down and make a cup with your hands to take the water. The river is available. If you are an idiot you can go on standing on the bank of the river for your whole life – thirsty, cursing the river, “It goes on flowing with so much water, and I am thirsty and standing here, and nobody takes care of me!”You will have to allow the presence of the master to flow into you. You will have to be open, vulnerable. That man in his silence was vulnerable. He left all his windows and doors open to let the breeze blow. And when you are so close to a master like Gautam Buddha, you will be filled by his presence, his waves will go on shattering on your shores. Nothing is being given, but much has been taken in.You ask me: Is it not absolutely necessary to have spiritual guidance? It raises so many questions. Let us try to understand the implication of different words in it. Spiritual guidance…what spiritual guidance? stand on your head? fast every alternate day? go on changing a mantra?…What is spiritual guidance?Guidance is possible, guides exist. When you go to visit an historical place, ruins, then there are guides who tell you what used to be a palace and is now a ruin. I used to go to many places, just traveling around India, talking to people, finding my people. On the way there were so many ruins – India is such an old and ancient country, there are so many places.Sarnath is near Varanasi, where Buddha gave his first sermon. I was staying with a doctor friend who was very insistent that I should go. “Sarnath is so close, just a half-hour ride.” He was willing to take me, and he knew the best guide, so he would make every arrangement. And he could take me around the ruins of the temples – the places where Buddha lived, where he sat, where he spoke for the first time.And now many new temples have arisen because of Buddha. All the countries of the East have made their temples and their guest houses, because people from Japan, people from China, people from Tibet, people from Burma, people from Ceylon, from all over Asia, continuously go on coming on a pilgrimage – and Sarnath is one of the places where they are bound to come. All these countries have made big places, big temples, so Sarnath is not just ruins. On one hand it is the ruins of twenty-five centuries, and in these twenty-five centuries, many Buddhist kings have made temples and they have gone into ruins. Now new countries go on making temples.So I said, “If you insist I will go.”The best guide happened to be one of the Buddhist monks, Jagdish Kashyap. He is a learned man, and finally became the head of the Buddhist research institute. But at that time he was the guide for the kings from Buddhist countries, queens, ambassadors, big shots. He took me around, and he started saying things that he must have been saying every day to people who were coming. He said, “This is the place where Buddha sat and gave his first sermon.”I asked him, “Do you have any inner certainty about it?”He said, “Inner certainty? It is an historical fact.”I said, “I am not concerned about history. I am asking you, do you have any inner certainty? Have you sat in this place and felt that a man like Buddha may have sat in this place? Have you felt any vibe?”He said, “My God, these…I am a guide!”But I said, “Otherwise, what historical proof can you give? For centuries it has been said King Ashoka has made a pillar and written that this is the place. But he himself lived five hundred years after Buddha. Gossips change with five minutes…five hundred years! This pillar is not an historical fact; it was made five hundred years after. You give me something solid.”He said, “You are a difficult person. Come with me to my house and have a cup of tea.”I said, “That seems far better than your historical proofs.”Sitting in his house was such a difficulty. Just to drink one cup of tea was difficult – so many mosquitoes, and so big I have never seen. In India there are great places where there are really giant mosquitoes, but nothing compared to Sarnath. Just drinking tea, I told him, “You say Buddha gave his first sermon here.”He said, “Yes.”And I said, “You told me on the way that in another city in Vasali, he gave forty sermons.”I said, “Why didn’t he come to Sarnath again?”He said, “How can I answer why he…that was up to him, whether he wanted to come back or not. You ask strange questions.”I said, “No, because I have the answer.”He said, “You have the answer…why he didn’t come twice?”I said, “Because of the mosquitoes. I am also not going to come twice. Finished! And I call this proof; there is no need for any historical proof. These mosquitoes are enough to prove that any intelligent person would not come here again. And you must be an idiot that you go on living here.”Guides are good in ruins, historical places; but you are not an historical place, you are not a ruin. You are a living being. You are not a ruin. You are a living being. You are here, now, present. You don’t need guidance – you need presence. And try to understand the difference.In guidance you are given certain rules: Do this, don’t do that – ten commandments. But you can follow those rules, you can follow those commandments; you will be just an imitator and nothing else. You may become very disciplined but inside you will remain as hollow as ever.I had a friend who was a homeopathic doctor. Now homeopathic doctors are almost starving, nobody goes to them. Or sometimes people go to them when they have tried everywhere else and are just on the last hope, ready to die, knowing perfectly well…. This homeopathic doctor used to live next door to me, and whenever I saw a patient coming to him, I said, “This man is dying. If he is not, why is he going to the homeopathic doctor?”I used to keep a record, and I found that anybody who came to him died within a few weeks. And I showed him the record. I said, “I have been keeping a record for you. You are some great doctor! Anybody who comes to you, you don’t let him live more than four weeks. That is the longest span you give.”He said, “You mean I killed him?”I said, “No, I don’t mean that, I mean they come here only when they are dying. Before that nobody thinks of homeopathy as a pathy or any scientific treatment. People just laugh at it. The moment I introduce you to somebody and say, ‘He is a homeopathic doctor,’ they start smiling.”He was a poor man – because if patients are not coming, and those who come, die, it becomes notorious all around: “Don’t go to that doctor. Once a man goes to that doctor, then his fate is sealed.” And he said, “The trouble is that not only do they die, they don’t give me the fees! Before giving me the fees they are gone.”He showed me one day, his post office account: one hundred and thirty-six rupees. He said, “Once these one hundred and thirty-six rupees are finished, what do you think I should do?”I said, “Why wait for your one hundred and thirty-six rupees to be finished? Take them out, enjoy, and become a sannyasin.”First he thought that I was joking, but then he said, “The idea is right. Why should I wait? At least once in my life I can enjoy for two, three days whatever I want and then become a sannyasin. This is a good idea.” So he became a sannyasin.After ten or twelve years passed…I had no news about him, what had happened to him, where he went – just one day, when I was passing near Gwalior somebody told me that one sannyasin lives in the nearby forest. I asked the name, and I said, “Are you certain?”He said, “I am absolutely certain – I go there. He is a very nice man, and he is a great homeopathic doctor. I am almost a disciple to him.”I said, “I must go and see” – so I went. He was living in a small house. The window was open because he was in the forest, and he was naked, walking inside the room. I saw him from the outside, walking inside the room. I saw him from the outside, walking naked. I knocked on the door. He came with a towel wrapped around. I said, “Why did you do this?”He said, “Did you see me walking naked, from outside?”I said, “I have seen you, you can put aside your towel. There is no need.”“No,” he said, “not now – slowly slowly.”I said, “What do you mean?”He said, “I am disciplining myself. That is my goal, to become a nude monk.” That is the highest goal, to become a nude monk; and he was practicing for it by walking nude, then going into the city with just the towel on. Then one day, just by chance, the towel slips…slowly, slowly.I said, “I can understand. You are following a right methodology – but this will not make you a real sannyasin, this will make you only a practiced circus man.”What can you practice? Can you practice love? Yes, you can do all the actions of love; you can hug somebody, but it does not mean that it is love. It may be just a wolf’s hug. Yes, in love, people hug, but that does not apply vice-versa, that when you hug you are in love. Yes, when people love they have certain expressions for each other. That does not mean that by repeating those expressions you are in love.This is something very essential to understand: when a person like Mahavira became nude, it was not practice; he had not practiced it. He was a king. He distributed all his property, land, money; whatsoever he had, he distributed it all to the masses, to the people. With just a shawl around he left town. But when he was just leaving the town, he met a beggar who was crippled, who was trying to come to the town because he had heard that Mahavira was distributing things. But he was crippled, so he was just dragging himself, without legs. And he was late, so he met Mahavira when Mahavira was getting out of the city.He said, “I was coming, but I am without legs so I could not reach in time. You are leaving, and the poorest man of your kingdom has not received anything.”Now Mahavira said, “I have not got anything else except this shawl, but it is very precious studded with diamonds.” So he tore half and gave half to the beggar. He said, “This will be enough for your whole life and I will manage with the other half.” So now it remained just like a towel wrapped around him.As Mahavira was entering the forest, a rosebush caught hold of the half that was his shawl. He suddenly found himself naked. He thought to take the shawl back from the rosebush, but then he thought, “What is the point? Sooner or later I am going to lose this shawl. It is so precious that even while I am asleep I will have to take care of it. It is better the rosebush has taken its share and freed me completely. Now I have nothing to fear – nothing can be stolen. And I am left exactly as I was born.”This is not practice, this is simpleunderstanding.Now this man was practicing for twelve years, slowly, slowly reducing his clothes: four, three, two one. Now he had come to a towel; and in the house he was naked, outside the house, he wore the towel. And the villagers all around knew him as naked. He was really making them see, that’s why he kept the windows open. This was his practice.He would become a nude sannyasin one day and would be very famous and people would worship him because he had renounced everything.And it happened that I was in Patiala, in Punjab, eight years after meeting him in the towel, in the forest. He had become very famous, thousands of people used to gather to listen to him. The king of Patiala, who was my host, told me that a great saint had come. I said, “I know the saint, and I know that he is great.”The king said, “No, it is…I am not talking non-seriously, he is really a great saint. He has renounced everything.”I said, “I know how much he has renounced: one hundred and thirty-six rupees.”He said, “How do you know the exact amount?”I said, “You can ask him: one hundred and thirty-six rupees was in his post office account.”He invited the great saint. I was in another room, and I said, “First you ask him; if he refuses to say then I will come in.”So first the king asked, “How much did you renounce?”And the man, in a saintly way, said, “Who cares? Who remembers how much it was? But I renounced it all. It is all useless, it is just a burden. I will suggest that you too, renounce this kingdom, this Patiala kingdom. It is so peaceful and so silent when you renounce the worldly things.”Then I came in, and he…it was worth seeing! he suddenly stood up, and he said, “From where have you come?”I said, “I was here and was listening to your great spiritual things. What about one hundred and thirty-six rupees? Have your forgotten? Could you not be true and say to the king, ‘I have renounced one hundred and thirty-six rupees’?”The king said to the man, “You are known as a great saint.”I said, “He is a great homeopathic doctor too. And he had to renounce the world, it is not that he wanted to renounce it. And he renounced it on my advice. He had to renounce because every patient coming to him was dying. He had become so notorious, there was no other way. The world had rejected him. I suggested to him that it is better to renounce the world than to be rejected by the world; why miss such an opportunity?”There were tears in the man’s eyes and he said, “I am very sorry that I was not telling the truth, but the truth is that I am also living a complete lie: I am not a saint at all – it is all practiced.”And I told him, “I have told you that practice will not make you a saint. Saintliness comes out of understanding, not out of practice. It is the flowering of your intelligence, not a certain discipline.”So what kind of guidance can you get? No real master gives guidance. Those who give guidance simply show that they are not masters at all. And there are millions around the world who are guiding people. In every religion, rabbis, priests, monks, are guiding people, helping people to grow spiritually. Nobody even bothers to ask himself: Has any real master ever given guidance?Bayazid, a Sufi mystic, remained with his master, Junnaid, for twelve years. When he came, Junnaid told him to sit down. Every day he would come and Junnaid would say, “Sit down.” Many would come and talk, and this and that, but Junnaid never asked anything about him. In the evening, when Junnaid withdrew into his silent room, Bayazid would get up and leave. It continued for twelve years. Every day Bayazid would come and immediately Junnaid would say, “Sit down.”After twelve years Junnaid looked at him and said, “Those fools have been wasting their time and my time. What about you?”Bayazid said, “I am immensely happy just with your saying, ‘Sit down.’ And slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly everything in me has settled. It is not only me just physically sitting. Spiritually inside me everything has settled. There is no turmoil, no question. You have given me so much. I cannot, in any way, repay it.”But Junnaid said, “I have not done anything – I was simply saying, ‘Sit down.’ Do you think that is something for which you have to be grateful to me? Anybody in your place would have killed me! Twelve years! and nothing but, ‘Sit down’ every day! The whole day sitting there, and again the next day, the same story.”But Bayazid said, “That is not the question. I am not saying anything about your giving, or not giving. Just sitting by your side I was getting it. I don’t know whether you were giving it or not, but just sitting by your side I was getting it. It was simply flowing in me.”Spiritual guidance is nonsense.Spiritual presence is the way of a real master. And it does not need you to sit down for twelve years. That happened in the case of Bayazid – all cases are different. It may happen just by a look into your eyes. It may happen just by a touch on your head. So there is no fixed pattern of guidance with a real master. And I am talking about pseudo-teachers.With a real master anything can become a transfer of energy.All that is needed is your availability.All that is needed is your indefensibility.Ordinarily everybody is defending himself. That’s how you have been brought up in the world: be defensive, be alert, because the whole world is your enemy. And if you are not defensive, you will be crushed. In fact, people like Machiavelli say that the best way to defend is to attack. If you really want to defend yourself, before anybody attacks you, you attack. That’s the best way of defense. And certainly it is.If you are in search of defense then don’t wait for somebody to attack you; it is better you attack. Make the other person defensive and you will be one step ahead. That is better for your defense. Machiavelli is the real teacher of all your spiritual guides. They are not helping you to drop your defenses.Now this Junnaid saying to Bayazid, “Sit down” – and then not even looking at him for the whole day…. It must have been difficult in the beginning, almost unbearable. When Bayazid was leaving after twelve years, paying his tributes, gratitudes, touching his master’s feet, who has never said anything other than “Sit down,” he asked Junnaid, “Will you tell me something about your master, just as a parting message?”Junnaid said, “It was not much different from what has happened between me and you. It was a little more difficult. For six years he would not allow me in his room; I had to stand outside. Anybody…. What do you say? – Harry, Tom, Dick? or Dick, Tom, Harry? These three names are so difficult. I can never manage to remember who is first, who is second, who is third. Tom…Dick and Harry…Okay, I will try to remember that Harry is last: Tom, Dick, Harry. So all Toms, all Dicks, and all Harrys were allowed in. Just Junnaid was not; for six years he remained outside.“After six years the master himself came outside, took my hand in his own hand, and said, ‘Please come in.’ Then for six years again, there was silence. I was allowed in, and I used to come and sit, and wait for any guidance. After six years he looked at me and smiled; and then for six years again he forgot about me completely.“It took eighteen years. After eighteen years, he called me close, and hugged me, and kissed me on my forehead; and that very moment something happened. I don’t know how and what it was, but something in me died, and I was completely renewed – a renewal. I looked all around; I had the same eyes, but everything looked new, fresh, alive – the whole existence became a beauty. And just the way you are feeling grateful to me, although I have not done anything, I also had felt grateful to him. He said, ‘I have not done anything. Your patience for six years standing outside earned my coming out and taking you in. You deserved it, you were ready for it, to come in.“‘For six years I did not pay any attention to you,’ he said, ‘but I never felt a single moment of depression in you, hopelessness in you, anger in you, or hostility toward me, that a man who was keeping you sitting for twelve years, wasting your life…. That’s why I smiled. I smiled to give you a sign that you were coming closer, just to give you a little encouragement.’“Six years of standing outside, and he calls it a little encouragement! Six years of sitting and he calls it a little encouragement – a smile. But with a true master these small things are not small. Remember, everything is relative. Its meaning, its depth, changes with the person.When a master smiles it is not just an ordinary smile.And it was understood. Then another six years passed, and Junnaid’s master said, “I have not called you on my own, I had to call you close to me. It was something irresistible. You have managed such an openness, such a great trust that I am grateful to you. You need not be grateful to me; I had to call you. In fact I have been too hard on you and I simply kissed you so that you could forgive me all those eighteen years of hardship.”A true master looks at things in a totally different way. But that kiss transformed Junnaid….In the human being’s growth, the presence of the master is needed, but not any spiritual guidance.All guidance is bogus. It is exploitation.The real thing never comes through practice, through discipline.The real thing only happens between two living flames.All that is needed is that those two living flames should come closer.Now, coming closer is not a discipline.It is a love affair, it is not a practice.That’s why I say that religion is a love affair, a love affair with existence itself.Be silent, be available, trust – because you have nothing to lose.And then one day – of course it is unpredictable when, one never knows because things are so relative. It may happen in this moment, it may take years, but it doesn’t matter.Once you have detected a real master, once you have had a little glimpse of an authentic man, then it does not matter when it happens. It does not matter even whether it happens or not.In finding the master it has happened already.Now it is only a question of when you realize it, when you recognize it. You may take a little time, you may take a long time – but it is immaterial.I repeat: In finding the master it has happened.Now take your time, and whenever you want to recognize – recognize this life, next life…time is immaterial.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Isn't a synthesis between science and religion needed?The very idea of synthesis already accepts that they are not only two but opposed to each other. Unless there is an antithesis there is no question of synthesis at all.For me, science and religion are two sides of the same coin. Science is looking outward, religion is looking inward, but both are the same kind of looking, the same kind of search. They may have different names – that does not matter at all.Science calls it observation, religion calls it awareness.Science calls it experiment, religion calls it experience.The difference of words simply signifies that their dimensions are different.Science is focused on the object; and remember the meaning of the word object – that which hinders, objects, prevents.Religion is focused on the subject. Without the subject there can be no object; without the object there can be no subject.The subjectivity of man’s consciousness and the objectivity of existence are totally interdependent. But this idiotic idea of synthesis between religion and science has a long history, just as long as foolishness and stupidity. It is part of the same parcel.Just now, one British marine scientist, eighty-nine-year-old Sir Alister Hardy, has won the most prestigious British award, the Templeton award. The award has been established to give to people who are trying to create a synthesis between religion and science. So all kinds of idiots are going to get it – Mother Teresa has got it.Now this other fool, Sir Alister Hardy, has got it. He must be really senile…. The things for which he has got the award and the things which he has been saying are worth close analysis. He says that he is a follower of Charles Darwin; he strongly believes in the theory of evolution – and he also believes in religion. His whole life he has been trying to create a synthesis between religion and science, to bring them closer together.He says he does not believe in the ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven. That’s why I call him an idiot. Why can’t you believe in the ascension of Jesus Christ? If you can believe God created the whole world then the ascension to heaven is a very small thing. If God can do all this mess, can create you, Sir Alister Hardy, then what is the problem in the ascension of Jesus Christ?Just see the stupid mind: the whole world is created by God, and still he believes in the theory of evolution. That is a miracle far bigger than the ascension of Jesus Christ. Creation and evolution are absolute opposites to each other. You can’t believe in both. Creation simply denies any possibility of evolution. That’s the meaning of creation: God created man as man.According to Charles Darwin, God created man never. He created monkeys; man evolved. Man does not owe his creation to God. God must have had some other idea in His mind when He created the monkey; otherwise He would have created man Himself. Why go so indirectly – first create all kinds of monkeys, and then a few monkeys evolve into man?Charles Darwin’s theory is only a hypothesis. And Alister Hardy certainly is eighty-nine years old: I think for at least fifty years he has not looked into all the research that has completely destroyed the theory of evolution. Now no prominent scientist believes in the theory of evolution, there is so much evidence against it.Just look at the simple fact: why did only a few monkeys evolve? There are millions of monkeys still waiting to evolve. For thousands of years we have seen man as man, and in these thousands of years no other monkey jumped out of the trees and said, “Here I am, no longer a monkey – I am a man!” For these thousands of years not a single monkey has evolved into man. The whole idea seems to be fictitious.And why did only monkeys evolve into man? Elephants are there, they have not evolved; crocodiles are there, they have not evolved; tigers are there, they have not evolved – far more intelligent people than monkeys. The elephant is very wise…. And now we know that there are sea animals which perhaps have a better mind than man, far more sensitive, far more fine. They have not evolved.If you look around the world there are millions of species of animals, birds, insects; nobody has evolved. Elephants are just elephants, as they have always been. Camels are just camels, as they have always been. It just happened to a few monkeys – becoming man? If evolution is a truth then the whole of creation must be evolving: elephants should be evolving into a better being, tigers should be evolving into a better being, perhaps non-vegetarians turning into vegetarians, camels becoming Christians.Evolution – why only to a few monkeys? If evolution is a fact, a reality, then it should be happening all around. Trees should come out of the ground and start walking, talking. They have been standing there for millions of years – no evolution, no sign of evolution, just the same circle goes on moving. The Hindus call it the wheel of life and death. The same spokes come up, go down, come up, go down. The elephant creates, reproduces, more elephants; just the way he was produced, he produces. His children will produce elephants.Charles Darwin’s theory has remained only a hypothesis.In the first place, to give the prize to Alister Hardy is absolutely wrong because in the last fifty years the theory has been losing ground every day. There are more and more anti-Darwinians – more than Darwinians – because facts and realities don’t support Darwin. Secondly, he does not understand at all that creation means once and for all. That’s what Christians believe: in six days God completed the creation.Darwin is trying to say He did not complete it. There were possibilities of evolution open that God only began but He never ended. He left it open-ended. But this is nowhere mentioned – not in the Christian Bible nor in any other holy book of the world. Wherever God is believed to be the creator, He creates completely, entirely. And He is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent: whatever is the best He knows and He has done it.Evolution means that you can improve upon God – that His creation is just a primitive thing, and you have evolved out of it.I call these people idiots for a specific reason – because they can’t see simple contradictions.Creation and evolution cannot go together.However hard Mr. Hardy tries he cannot succeed in putting them together. They are simply antagonistic to each other.Evolution means nothing is complete, nothing will ever be complete; everything is in a process. Existence is an ongoing phenomenon. It is not that on Monday God started, and on Saturday evening He looked at what He had created and said, “Good” – just the way I say it; even where it is not needed I say it. And at least at that time, when God said it, it was not needed because there was nobody to hear it.Monkeys cannot understand it, elephants cannot understand it, tigers cannot understand it. And man was yet to come, if Charles Darwin is correct. In fact, even if man was there…. All religions believe that God created man, man is not an evolved animal; God created him – not only did He create him, He created him in His own image.Now, do you think the monkey is the image of God? That He created the monkey in His own image?Charles Darwin was also a very orthodox Christian. But he never thought about it, whether God created the monkey and then said, “I create you in my own image,” and thanked Himself and said, “Good”; was rejoiced seeing the monkey: “I have succeeded in creating myself.” Neither Charles Darwin bothered about that, nor does his follower Alister Hardy bother at all. They continue to remain Christians and they continue to believe in the theory of evolution. You cannot be a Christian and a believer in the theory of evolution.Whatever God created must have been something totally different. In all these millions of years everything must have changed, if evolution is true. But they don’t see the simple contradiction.Evolution denies God.Let me make it absolutely clear:Evolution denies God because evolution denies creation.And if there is no creation there is no need of a creator.These are simple implications. God is a hypothesis to support another hypothesis – the creation. If there is no creation there is no God, because the whole base of His existence is demolished. If evolution is the thing then one wonders whether God is evolving or not. If monkeys have become men, what has happened to God?Sometimes such questions harass me very much; why don’t these idiots ask, “What happened to God?” Charles Darwin never asked this. If even monkeys evolved, at least God should have evolved. Nothing has been heard of that guy since that last Saturday. Sunday of course was a holiday, He rested. Then comes Monday again – but He had finished His creation already. He had put “The End” on His film on Saturday.Now, for God, Monday cannot come. Or if it comes it will be so empty – nothing to do. The calendar will go on moving, Monday, Tuesday, for eternity. What happens to God? Religions created the idea of God and forgot all about the fact that someday somebody is going to ask what happened to Him, whether He died, got lost somewhere…. Religions have no answer to what happened to God.At least evolution has not happened to God, because no religion can accept the idea of God evolving; God means perfection, absolute perfection. He is the last word – the first and the last, both alpha and omega. There is no way beyond the omega point.And if evolution is not happening to God there will be a great discrepancy. What He has created is evolving, and God is stuck at that Saturday, four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. It must have been the first of January, Monday, I assume – unless it was April Fool’s Day; that is another matter. Creation goes on evolving and God is stuck where He was; He remains aboriginal, primitive.You have gone far, far away from Him. And you can see it in Jewish scriptures; in the Talmud God says, “I am a very angry God, I am a very jealous God. I am not nice. I am not even your uncle” – speaking exactly in the Jewish style: “I am not your uncle.” This God is very primitive – anger?Buddha seems to be far more evolved even though he is not a God, he is only a human being. But he seems to be far more evolved because he has no anger; he is far more evolved because he has no jealousy. And certainly he is nice. Of course, he is far better than any uncle.God is stuck – His creation goes on evolving. Charles Darwin never bothered about that.This man, Alister Hardy, gets the Templeton award – but all these award are political! It is a big award, one hundred and sixty thousand pounds; one hundred and sixty thousand pounds is big money. Why is it being given to a man who has no experience of religion at all? – this award is meant for those who will bring religion and science closer.He has no religious experience, and as far as science is concerned he is fifty years behind; he is no longer worthy to be called a scientist. Perhaps half a century before he was, but within these fifty years he became stuck, just like his God.The theory of evolution has almost gone down the drain. No scientist worth the name is in support of it, for the simple reason that existence seems to be certainly changing, moving, but not evolving; otherwise, in thousands of years a few men must have evolved into supermen.The idea of supermen arose because of this theory of evolution: if monkeys can become men, then certainly a few men are going to become supermen. Who are the supermen? Adolf Hitler? Benito Mussolini? Joseph Stalin? Who is the superman?As far as I can see, existence remains exactly the same.Consciousness evolves, not bodies.Consciousness moves to higher peaks, bodies simply go on doing their routine job. But consciousness is not in any way bound by the body and its program. Consciousness is something in you which is utterly free. So to me there is no contradiction. Existence is as it has always been, as far as the physical aspect is concerned – but consciousness has evolved immensely. But Darwin is not concerned with consciousness, neither is Alister Hardy interested in consciousness.Consciousness is a totally different dimension. I said to you, it is subjectivity. The objects will remain the same but the subject, the seer in you, the watcher in you, the witness in you, can have immense levels of height; it can go on rising higher and higher.Even when a buddha is there his body is not different from yours. His body follows the same routine biological program as your body. All religions have been trying to prove that the bodies of their prophets, messiahs, incarnations of God, don’t follow the ordinary routine biology. That is just an effort to prove that their bodies have evolved. That’s why Christians talk of the “ascension of Jesus Christ.” He does not die like you, or like me. He simply ascends toward heaven, fully in his body.His body is not left behind, he takes it with him. Mohammed did even better: he ascended to heaven with his horse too! Now, sitting on that horse – naturally the horse must have evolved. So why is Alister Hardy so much disturbed about Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ is not doing very great; even Mohammed’s horse did it, it is not something very special. But he never says anything about Jesus’ virgin birth.These people who are trying to synthesize science and religion are very afraid of bringing things in which may create conflict. It will be difficult scientifically to prove the virgin birth, the Holy Ghost. He does not talk about it. But without it you cannot be a Christian. These are the fundamental beliefs of a Christian; these are the test of whether you are a man of faith or a doubter.If you doubt the virgin birth of Jesus Christ you are not a religious person. And I know this man Hardy: if he cannot believe in the ascension of Jesus’ body, how can he believe in the descension of the Holy Ghost and his raping a poor girl?It is a simple case of rape – and still you go on calling him the Holy Ghost. Rape seems to be something holy? At least after the rape he should have been called the unholy ghost. Before that he may have been the Holy Ghost but this was enough proof that this man is not holy. But Hardy does not ask, because he must be afraid: if he asks these questions, then how to bring religion and science together?Anybody who tries to bring them together is going to be in great difficulty.In India Mahatma Gandhi was trying hard to bring all the religions together. Of course it was politically motivated but he tried his whole life – a tremendous dedication – to bring all the religions together. But how was he doing it?I was too small; I saw him when I was very small, met him, talked with him, but it was not time for me to discuss. I was not even aware of what he was doing. But I discussed with his son, Ramdas, I discussed with his chief religious follower, Vinoba Bhave, and I have discussed with many of his disciples who had lived with him very closely. None of them has any answer…. And they are not ordinary people.Acharya J. B. Kripalani, who must be ninety-five years old, was a professor before he became committed to Mahatma Gandhi’s programs – a learned man. I asked him, “Can’t you see that Gandhi chooses from the Koran only those sentences which are almost exactly the same as the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy scripture? He leaves out everything that can create problems. He chooses from The Bible – again the criterion is the Gita. The Gita is the ultimate truth. He will not say it but his action shows it, that the Gita is the criterion.Anything that is in the Gita, wherever it exists, is true. So he picks up fragments from the Koran, from the Bible, from the Dhammapada, from the Tao Te Ching, from all religious books of the world. But what actually is he saying? He is saying that the Gita is the only truth. Yes, other holy books have also a few fragments here and there, reflecting the truth. The Gita is true as a whole; the Koran, only in fragments; the Bible, only in fragments. And those fragments are to coincide with the Gita; that is the only criterion.And he does the same with Jesus Christ, Hazrat Mohammed, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna – the same. He has the Hindu ideal of the perfect man, the man of God; then he goes on choosing. But a Christian cannot choose from Jesus Christ’s life: either he accepts it whole, or he rejects it whole.What about Jesus Christ drinking alcohol? Now, Mahatma Gandhi is in trouble. In his ashram even tea was not allowed, what to say about alcohol?I asked his son, “Your father continued his whole life talking about Jesus Christ, even sometimes he expressed the desire to become a Christian. But what about Jesus Christ eating meat, drinking alcohol, mixing with prostitutes? Can Gandhi accept this man as a man of God? No, he ignores all these facts.The same is being done by all the people who try to synthesize. Now there are hundreds of facts in religion – the so-called religions – which go against science. How are you going to reconcile them. Either you have to deny them or you have to deny science.The Bible believes in a flat earth. And you cannot edit The Bible, you cannot change anything in The Bible; it is God’s book. You are just a human being. This will be outrageous, to change it. Now what are you going to do?It is an accepted fact now that the earth is round, it is a globe, it is not flat. Either The Bible is wrong or science is wrong. Hardy has not the courage to say that The Bible is wrong, nor has he the courage to say that science is wrong.So these people go on playing games with words: “We want to create a synthesis” – but how can you create a synthesis? And when they talk about religion they forget completely that there are three hundred religions in the world. First, create the synthesis among three hundred religions so that you can have something called religion.That is absolutely impossible in the first place because there are religions that believe in God; there are religions that believe in an eternal soul, there are religions that don’t believe in an eternal soul. There are religions that believe in one consciousness; in all of us only one consciousness exists. And there are religions that believe that each consciousness is individual and remains for ever individual; there are millions of souls.Jainism is that religion which believes that there are infinitely infinite souls in existence. Not only one infinite soul in existence. Not only one infinite, they use double – not only in one direction, not only horizontally infinite, vertically too; so there are infinitely infinite souls in existence. And there is Hinduism which believes there is only one consciousness, the brahma, and all consciousnesses simply are part of it. It is one light shining in so many people; but it is the same source.How are you going to…? And these religions have existed for thousands of years quarreling with each other, arguing with each other. They have not come to any single conclusion.In Jainism it is almost a sin to breath because when you breathe, hot air comes from your nostrils and kills small living cells in the air. And it is true. You know that a doctor doing surgery keeps his nose covered. For what reason? He is afraid of infection – infecting the patient, or getting infected himself. So there is a continuity of infectious cells living bodies, through the air.Just the other day I read the news that AIDS can be caught even by sneezing! Now, it is beyond the board, now you can simply forget all about it; you cannot save yourself. You can prevent people kissing, you can prevent people making love. You can prevent people doing this, doing that – but how can you prevent people sneezing? And a sneeze never comes knocking on your door saying, “Get ready, have your gloves on!” It simply comes.But a sneeze certainly throws out many infections. They say now it can infect you with AIDS, so it seems that you are a goner. You should rather accept it simply, that you have AIDS, rather than going through any test or anything. There is no point.So Jainas are not wrong. Their monks, just like surgeons, keep their mouth and nose covered. it is so difficult to talk to them because you cannot hear what they are saying. They are simply mumbling.When I used to see them I used to tell them, “You please write. Or, I am going to close the door – you remove all this nonsense because….” So those who were intelligent would allow me to close the door and would remove their paraphernalia. And I would say, “Just be like a human being; otherwise it looks like you are from somewhere else. And when you talk it is difficult to figure out what you are saying – and I have to answer it.”But then I became worried about another thing – because they stink. Their breath stinks because Jaina monks are not allowed to do mouth-washing, use toothpaste, teeth cleaning, no – because you may be killing so many germs – and each germ is as valuable as a human being. There is no question of any categories; all souls are equal.Jainism is perhaps the only communist religion, truly communist. Even the germs which will give you AIDS are equal to your soul. They are living beings.Now how are you going to reconcile Mohammedanism with Jainism, because the Koran says, “God created animals, birds, for man to eat” – a simple statement without any philosophical hogwash. You cannot manage…. The Koran is simple in that way because Mohammed was uneducated. He could not write complicated philosophical treatises. He could not write, he could only talk. And the Koran was not written in one sitting, it was written over many years. In Mohammed’s whole life, once in a while he would manage to say some sentences, and they were written down.And those sentences are simple: “God created everything for man.” So there is no violence – in fact this is the whole purpose of all the animals, birds, trees. And if you don’t kill them you are going against God; you have to eat them. Now how are you going to reconcile these two religions? And there are three hundred versions. On each single point you will find them different. So what religion do you want to be synthesized with science?Only what I call religiousness can be an intrinsic part of science. But that is not a synthesis because there is not antithesis.To me religion is really one aspect of science.Science has two hands. Now nobody tries to synthesize my right and left hand. They are synthesized, they are continuously synthesized without anybody synthesizing them; they are always in tune. While you are walking do you synthesize your left and right leg, keeping alert so that you do not commit some mistake?I have heard that in an army regiment a captain was training the new recruits and he was saying, “Left turn, right turn, march.” And then he said, “All of you raise your left leg.” Everybody raised his left leg. Only one man by mistake raised his right leg, so his right leg and the left leg of the person by his side, both were raised close together. And the captain said, “Who is that fool who is raising both his legs?” You cannot do that; even by mistake you cannot do that. Your whole body continues in an organic harmony.Science and religion to me are just like my two hands, dancing in tune, in synchronicity. There is no question of synthesis, there can never be a synthesis. There can only be oneness. And remember, oneness and synthesis are not the same.Synthesis is a very poor thing: somehow managing, trying hard, making the corners less corny, giving them a little rounder shape…. I am not saying horny, I am saying corny. Or do both the words mean the same? There is no possibility of any synthesis and there is no need either.In the first place, why can’t we accept different dimensions having their own uniqueness? Today you are synthesizing science with religion, tomorrow you will synthesize science and religion and music, and then art, and dance – but why? And you will create a hodgepodge.Now, synthesizing music with mathematics you will destroy both. The mathematician will be dancing, and the dancers will be doing arithmetic. But what is the need? They are perfectly okay as they are, doing their work in their own dimension. Just one thing has to be understood – that life is multidimensional.A painter has no need to synthesize himself with science or with religion or with music. All that he has to be is a committed, involved artist, a true painter, so that while he is painting the painter disappears and only painting remains.Let me repeat: when a true painter is there, painting, there is no painter at all; there is only the process of painting, there is nobody doing it. It is happening. Yes, from the outside you can see a man with his brush and paints and canvas, working. That is an outsider’s outlook. But as far as the inside of the painter is concerned there is nobody. There is only a vision of the painting, and that vision is translating itself onto the canvas. All that is needed of the painter is not to interfere, not to come in the way of this transference.When a dancer is dancing, there is no dancer, only dance.All these different dimensions meet at one point, which I call religiousness.There is no need to mix up all these dimensions with each other. Then they have to make an effort to be friendly and to be adjusting, and not to hurt anybody’s feeling: the mathematician has to look whether the musician is happy with his mathematics or not, the chemist has to be worried about the physicist. You will make a madhouse – there is no need.All that is needed is that the physicist disappears when he is doing his work, the musician disappears when he is doing his work.This disappearance is religiousness.I cannot give it that third-class name, synthesis.It is oneness.It is just like the rose opening in many petals – all the petals are separate but joined at the center, getting juice from the same source. Every scientist, every artist, every mystic – they are all petals of the same rose, getting juice from the same roots, but totally unique in themselves, totally separate from the others.Don’t try to synthesize. And you cannot succeed anyway.Alister Hardy, just try to be a little religious, and in your being religious you will understand that there is no need for any dimension of life to have an outer combination, synthesis, cooperation; no, they are already joined at the center.I declare that they are already one.But for thousands of years the effort has continued. In India there was a great philosopher, Doctor Bhagwandas. His whole life he wrote volumes upon volumes; synthesis was his theme, the synthesis of all religions. He was very old when I went to see him.I said, “I don’t feel like harassing you in your old age but all that you have written is just nonsense. You talk of synthesis and you are still a Hindu! If you were really interested in synthesis at least you should have declared, ‘I belong to all religions, and all religions are mine.’ But no, you are still a Hindu. I can see the mark of Hinduism on your forehead.“So what nonsense have you been talking about? I have read your books, and this is simply befooling people, trying to say that Krishna and Mahavira are giving the same message to the world. It is so easy because Krishna has spoken so much. You can find one sentence in which he says, ahimsa paramo dharma non-violence is the greatest religion.’ You pick it out, that’s enough. Mahavira’s whole message is: Non-violence is the greatest religion. Synthesis is accomplished.”I asked him, “And what happened about the Mahabharat war in which millions of people were killed, butchered? And Krishna is responsible for it.” Arjuna, his disciple, wanted to renounce the kingdom and to renounce the war because the war for the kingdom was being fought between cousin-brothers.Seeing that so much bloodshed was going to be there, Arjuna said to Krishna, who was functioning as his charioteer, “Move me toward the Himalayas – I simply want to drop out of this bloodshed.“Even if we win, which is not certain because the forces are almost balanced, but suppose…even if we win, it will be by killing so many people of the other side, who are also related to us because the other side are our cousin-brothers. Their friends are our friends, their relatives are our relatives; our relatives are their relatives, our friends are their friends. We have grown up together in one house, in one family.“We have studied under one guru, one teacher. Now both sides are friends, brothers. And it has been such a hard time for everybody, how to decide with whom to be? Everybody has been invited by both the parties and they had to decide with whom to fight, for whom to fight.”Dronacharya, the teacher who had taught them archery, who had made Arjuna the master archer of India, was fighting on the other side. Now, the master is on the other side, and the disciple is on this side…. It was a difficult thing for Dronacharya also to decide with whom to be. Finally he decided, because on that side there were a hundred brothers, and on this side only five brothers.But those hundred brothers were the sons of a blind father. So Dronacharya just felt compassionate; “The father is blind, it is better I should be with these people” – whom he had never liked, who were all rascals. His love was for Arjuna and those five brothers who were really great warriors, but when the blind father asked him, “Because I am blind I cannot come; you be there, you be their father.”Their grandfather was grandfather to both, and their grandfather was one of the most famous men of Indian history, Bhishma. He was a rare man. It was difficult for him also because he loved these five brothers. They were sons of one of his sons, but the other son was blind, and he had those hundred rascals who were really cunning politicians. He had never liked any of them, he wanted them to be defeated. But that blind son was also his son, and now to be against the blind son’s sons would not look right. So he was also there.Arjuna said, “It looks so weird to fight against my own grandfather, who wants me to win yet has to fight against me. It is just inconceivable to fight against my own master who has made me a world-famous archer. It is better you take me away. Even if we win, all our people, from both sides, will be gone. I will be sitting on the golden throne on top of millions of corpses – for whom? There will be nobody to rejoice, to celebrate even. It is better that I become a sannyasin and let my brothers rule the kingdom.”If Arjuna had been listened to by Krishna there would have been no war. And Krishna says, “Non-violence is the greatest religion.” He is a politician. In some other reference, maybe defining religion and talking to religious people, he may have said that. But here, what he says to Arjuna is, “You are a warrior, and the religion of a warrior is to fight. Escaping from the fight is cowardice.”But Arjuna goes on arguing, “Let me be a coward. The world will call me a coward, okay – what does it matter? But I don’t want to color my hands with millions of people’s blood.”But Krishna goes on insisting to Arjuna “It is not you, it is God’s will.”God is very handy. When you cannot manage anything, bring God in: “It is God’s will. Those rascals have to be eradicated. God wants you to destroy the immoral people and establish the rule of the righteous.” Now, when you bring God in, man becomes silent. What can he say now? And Krishna says, “If God wants, then you should simply surrender, surrender to His will.”Finally he convinces Arjuna, and takes him into the war – and millions of people are killed. This happened nearabout five thousand years ago; it is called the Mahabharat war – the great Indian war. After that, India never became the same again. It lost its nerve, it lost its spine. The war was so destructive that it destroyed India for five thousand years.“Now, how are you going,” I asked Doctor Bhagwandas, “to synthesize Mahavira and Krishna? Just by hanging the pictures of Krishna and Mahavira in your room you think synthesis is going to happen? This man is responsible for one of the greatest wars in history; and not only that, he supported the war in the name of God. He made it a religious war, a holy war. I know that Arjuna, somehow in his unconscious, must have been ready. He was a warrior, he was a fighter; so deep down, although he was arguing to leave…. If I were in his place I don’t see Krishna convincing me.“All Krishna’s arguments are so stupid. If he said to me, ‘It is God’s will; you should surrender,’ I would say, ‘Okay, I surrender: God is telling me to go to the Himalayas. That’s why I am going to the Himalayas – I am surrendering. He does not want me to fight.’“It was so simple, no other argument was needed. But somehow, deep down, Arjuna was ready for war. They had gathered to fight. They were standing in front of each other just waiting for the signal to happen, then they would rush into each other and kill millions of people.“Up to now Arjuna had never even bothered what war means. And he had fought many other small wars and battles, and killed many people, without ever thinking of non-violence and other things, so unconsciously he was ready. Only consciously he became a little troubled, and that trouble was also not about violence.“That trouble was about his master, his grandfather, his brothers, his blind uncle, all his friends. It was really attachment, not the question of violence or non-violence. Deep down it was an attachment to all these people. Relationships, that was troubling him: How to kill our own people?“If they had been somebody else he would have killed them without thinking even a single moment. So unconsciously he must have been ready. But for convincing him, for bringing his unconscious over his conscious, the responsibility goes to Krishna.“One of Krishna’s cousin-brothers, Neminath, was a Jaina tirthankara. Neminath is the twenty-second Jaina tirthankara. The twenty-third is Parshvanatha, the twenty-fourth is Mahavira. Mahavira came after Krishna, nearabout five or seven hundred years afterward. But in Krishna’s time, Krishna’s own cousin-brother, Neminath, was one of the Jaina masters.“Krishna never even went to listen to Neminath because Neminath had become a follower of a different tradition, the Jaina tradition: he was no longer a Hindu. Although Neminath was a cousin-brother, elder brother, and so much respected by the Jainas that he was declared to be their ultimate master, Krishna would not go. Even though many times he passed by the side of the town where Neminath was delivering his talks, he would not go to see him. Jaina sources say that Krishna always considered Neminath to be a man who had betrayed Hindus.You are trying to synthesize these people who think in terms of betrayal? If Neminath feels it right to be a Jaina, it is his birthright to be a Jaina. Who can prevent him? It is not a betrayal. He had not come into the world as a Hindu, you forced Hinduism on him. Now, when he becomes mature, thinks over things, finds that this is not the right religion for me, moves into another religion…. He has the right. To say that he has betrayed is ugly.And you are trying to synthesize these people? No, you cannot synthesize three hundred religions. It is impossible. On each single point you will find them differing. And then the question arises of synthesizing religion with science.“Each religious scripture if full of unscientific facts. Either you will have to drop those unscientific superstitions – the religious people will not allow that – or you will have to compromise and you will have to say the earth is both flat and global. To synthesize, what else to do but say that sometimes it is flat, sometimes it is global? Or when a religious person looks at it, it is flat, when a scientific person looks at it, it is global? Some kind of compromise you will have to find. I don’t think it is possible, and I don’t see the need either.”Let religion grow in its own way. Let science grow in its own way. And whenever religion will be authentic…. The past religions have rarely been authentic; once in a while there is an authentic individual – but not communities. Whenever there is an authentic religious person you will not find him in any conflict with science, art, music, dance. You will not find him in any conflict for the simple reason that he will have such wide perceptivity, such tremendous sensitivity, such a great insight, that in his perceptivity all different dimensions will merge.He will be able to see the original source of all different dimensions of human research. And it is good that they remain different; it is good they remain true to themselves. And it is difficult to find a man…. This whole Templeton award should be dissolved, this is useless!It is difficult to find a person who knows even all the sciences. You cannot find a physicist who knows how much evolution has happened in chemistry, in biology, in other sciences; you cannot find one person. The world has moved far away from Aristotle. Aristotle wrote one book about all the sciences, all the religions, all the philosophies. In those days it was possible.In fact he devoted one chapter to each and that was enough. Philosophy was called metaphysics for two thousand years for the simple reason that the chapter on philosophy comes after physics. In Greek, metaphysics means “after physics”. The chapter had no name so it became metaphysics – the chapter coming after the chapter “physics”.It was possible then. But now, when every science has taken such a flight and has divided itself into so many divisions, which themselves have become independent sciences…. For example, chemistry has developed into organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry; now they are two different sciences. Organic chemistry has a division, bio-chemistry, which is a totally different world – so vast that it is not possible for a single person to know everything that is happening in bio-chemistry, what to say about organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry? It is not possible.All the sciences have gone so far away from each other that there is not a single person who can manage to know all these sciences. So even to use the word science is as wrong as to use the word religion. There are three hundred religions; perhaps there are going to be more sciences than that. If there are not now, there will be. The whole effort will be meaningless. What is significant is very simple: science is the search into the outside world, and religion is the search in the inside world. Both are searchers, inquiries about the same truth, because it is the same truth that exists outside and that exists within. Within and without are not different, so from wherever you arrive to the truth you arrive to the same truth.There is no need to go on comparing small details. You may have followed a different route, and on your route there may have been no trees; you may have come through a desert, and I may be coming through a jungle where there are hug, ancient trees, but if we reach to the same point…. Then I go on arguing that a person only reaches here who comes through huge, ancient trees, and you go on arguing that it is impossible to reach here unless one passes through a desert. But we both have reached, that’s enough proof.So what I suggest is that a simple meditativeness should become a part of all sciences, religions, arts, all departments of human research – a simple meditativeness of becoming silent, thoughtlessly silent.In that silence is the experience of oneness.It is not going to be done by Mother Teresa, who knows nothing of religion. It is not going to be done by Sir Alister Hardy; he knows only Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, which is no longer valid.One thing you should remember: it almost always happens that scientists have a very uncommon intelligence – but they lose common sense, they don’t have common sense. Perhaps they can’t have; if they have too much common sense then they cannot be scientific. To be scientific many things have to be sacrificed; common sense is one of them. If you listen to common sense then you will cling to the tradition, the old, the conventional.When the Wright brothers were trying to make the first airplane, it was absolutely absurd to any man with common sense. Their father was an owner of a bicycle shop. In their basement he used to collect all kinds of junk – old bicycles, their parts – and that basement was the science lab of the Wright brothers, these two young boys; one was nineteen, the other was twenty-one. And with rejected cycle parts they were trying to make a flying machine. Of course it was not called an airplane at the time, it was called a flying machine.They had to work in the night when the whole family was asleep because everybody thought they were crazy. Who had even heard of a flying machine? And out of cycle parts! But they managed. They must have been very uncommon, they did not listen to anybody. Their teachers were laughing, their friends, their family was saying, “You will go crazy. You stop this nonsense!”But they continued, and one day they managed it. But they were afraid. They wanted to test it alone because if it falls flat on the ground then everybody will say, “We have been telling you, but you will not listen. You wasted you lives, so many years.”First they tried in a lonely faraway place. And for sixty seconds, just for sixty seconds, their plane remained in the air – but that was enough. Next day they declared that the whole village should come. Nobody was willing; they said, “It is all nonsense, why waste our time? These are idiots. They have gone completely mad now. Up to now they were saying, ‘We are making it’; now they say they have made it. The have gone crazy.”But the brothers said, “Think us mad but just be kind enough to come there for a single minute because our flying machine will remain in the air only for one minute. We will not take much of your time.”So people came, just getting bored by these brothers they were harassing their teachers and the principal and their family. So all the people came, and they could not believe their eyes. The second day, the whole world knew about the Wright brothers, that they had made the first airplane. Only sixty seconds it used to stay in the air, but that was enough for a beginning.One needs uncommon sense, but one loses common sense. These people like Alister Hardy have lost common sense completely. That’s why they are saying that he is trying to bring together religion and science: the theory of creation and the theory of evolution.I am just a common-sense man. I am not a scientist I am not a religious prophet. I am just a common-sense man, but I have tried to sharpen my common sense to its utmost.I have only one capacity, to see clearly; not in the sense of my eye doctor – he is sitting here. he is trying to force glasses on me. I am talking about his eyes. About my eyes I will listen to him.I am very much a man of common sense. When it comes to my physical eyes, I listen to my eye doctor. When it comes to my body, I listen to Devaraj. When it comes to anything concerning the ordinary details of life, I listen to Vivek. Then I don’t go into details about these things. If these people are doing the work, and if they are doing their homework properly, then it is perfectly okay.When I say that I have only one capacity and that is of seeing clearly, I mean some insight.And in my insight, religion and science are two names of one phenomenon.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The European people have been worried about Eastern religions, worried that their vitality can destroy the nations. Is there this danger/blessing with your religion too?Religion is not geography. It is neither Eastern nor Western. It cannot be divided in such a stupid manner; otherwise there will be a Southern religion, a Northern religion, and there will be no end to these divisions. The Middle East is not the East, and the Far East is also not the East.Just a few days ago one South African politician said, “Now the conflict between East and West is over; now the real fight is going to be between South and North.” Up to now nobody has been thinking in terms of a conflict between South and North, but basically, there is. Southern countries are all poor; northern countries are all rich. Southern countries are mostly black; northern countries are mostly white.This seems to be a far wider gap than that between East and West. In fact to divide East and West is very difficult. In Europe, Russia is thought to be an eastern country, although half of Europe, the upper half, is Russian. Russia is spread from one end of Europe to the other end of Asia. In fact, Asia and Europe are nowhere divided; it is one continent, one continuity.Politicians need division – without divisions politicians have no function. Priests also need divisions, because they are a spiritual kind of politician. Without divisions the priest also disappears.So there are people who are tremendously interested in keeping divisions, and they go on dividing everything – even to the extent of stupidity. Now, dividing religion into Eastern and Western is just inconceivable. A little intelligence is enough to understand that love cannot be Eastern or Western – or do you think it can be? Can silence be Eastern and Western? Can meditativeness be divided according to geographical divisions?A man meditating in Tibet or a man meditating in Europe or America will have the same quality of consciousness; there will be no difference at all, because the man in Tibet, when in meditation, disappears. He is no longer Tibetan, he is no longer even man; he is just pure silence, awareness. The same is true for anybody meditating anywhere.Meditation is universal, just as love is, compassion is, intelligence is.These are qualities – and religion is the ultimate quality of consciousness. At least don’t be so idiotic as to divide it.I am reminded, when I was graduating from the university…. In India – I don’t know how it is in other countries – to pass the post-graduation class you have to pass two kinds of examinations. One is written and the other is oral. In the oral examination one professor from some other university is invited. The vice-chancellor is present, the head of the department is present, and each individual student is called in for an interview.The vice-chancellor just jokingly had mentioned to me…. We used to meet almost every morning because we were the only two persons going for a morning walk. Slowly, slowly I was no longer a student, he was no longer a vice-chancellor; we were simply two persons going for a morning walk. And just as it happens to all morning walkers – they become friendly, they start gossiping…. And two years is a long time – slowly, slowly the partitions, divisions, dropped, and as the examination was coming closer, my vice-chancellor asked me, “I will be present in your viva, in your oral examination; whom would you prefer to be called from another university?”I said, “Find the toughest guy!” He said, “I knew you would say that, and I have also been thinking about finding the toughest guy, because I would love to see how you manage it.”And they found him. In Aligarh University there was a Mohammedan professor who was known all over India as the toughest professor of philosophy. For years he had not passed anybody, and in his whole life he had never given the first class to anybody. Third class was the highest that he had given to anybody.One of my professors had been his student and he used to say, “I am one of the persons who passed from Aligarh University. I am only a third class, but a third class from Aligarh University is far better than a first class from Oxford, because that man in his whole life has been continuously failing people. Nobody comes up to his standard.”So the vice-chancellor said, “I am thinking of calling this professor from Aligarh.”I said, “That’s the right thing!”That professor was invited. He was rarely invited; he was very happy! The head of my department, S.K. Saxena, told me, “Be cautious, because that man is absolutely destructive.”I said, “You don’t be worried; he cannot be more destructive than me.”But he said, “You cannot do any harm to him, you are not the examiner; he can do harm to you, he can fail you. And he is well-known for failing; he simply puts zero.”I said, “You don’t be worried. If he gives me zero then I have achieved my goal, because that’s what I have been working for – to attain to the state of zero-ness.”He said, “You are incurable! I am not talking about that zero.”I said, “You just wait.” He said, “Remember, I will be sitting by your side, and if you go off the track I will nudge you with my feet, or I will pull your kurta. That is an indication – ‘Come back, come right to the point.’ And that means just be within the limits of the textbook.”I said, “You need not be worried.”But they were afraid. Even the vice-chancellor that morning said to me, “Although I have invited him, now I feel concerned. That man is really hard, he has no compassion.”But I said, “I don’t need anybody’s compassion; he will need my compassion.”He said, “We will have to see what happens. Of course it is my fault, I should not have invited him. I carried the joke too far and risked your career. You may pass in all your written papers but if he fails you, your two years are wasted, and I will never be able to forgive myself.”I said, “Don’t be worried at all. This is the first time he is encountering a real philosophy student. He will remember it his whole life.”The examination began; I was called in. I came in…. Of course it is not expected that the professor, the vice-chancellor and the invited guest will stand up, but I came in and I remained standing.My vice-chancellor asked, “You may sit down. Why are you standing?”I said, “I am just looking at three gentlemen who don’t know any courtesy. If you cannot pay respect to a human being, you should not expect any respect in return.”That visiting professor was shocked – hearing this from me, and hearing me talk this way to the vice-chancellor of the university. But the vice-chancellor knew me: he stood up; he said, “I am sorry.” My professor stood up; he said, “I am sorry.” When those two stood up, the invited guest thought, “It looks odd if I don’t stand up,” so he stood up and he said, “I am sorry.”I said, “You are all forgiven. Now the real business can be started. But you must have understood what kind of man I am. I have heard much about you – that you are a hard guy – so please prove it, because I don’t see that you are a hard guy. You stood up for a student and apologized! You are almost feminine, you are not a man.”My Professor Saxena started kicking me, saying,“From the very beginning you are going off.”I said, “Professor Saxena, this is not good, that underneath the table you are kicking my leg. This is an examination – you are not supposed to support me, help me, or in any way give me indications. You keep yourself in control.”And I said to the vice-chancellor, “It is up to you to watch, because he loves me too much and he is kicking me so that I don’t go off the path. You keep an eye on him so that he does not disturb me, because I am determined to get the zero. This is my life’s goal.”Before the examination began I told them everything: “This is my life’s goal – to attain to the state of zero. And Professor Saxena is trying hard that I should not get zero today, but I trust in the invited guest, that he will remain hard and he will do his best – that means he should do his worst.”So I told my vice-chancellor, “You look at my professor and watch that he does not disturb me, and I will take care of the invited guest.” And I asked him, “Now you start. Why are you sitting silent? I am not here to examine you; only I am speaking – you start!”He was almost having a nervous breakdown. He must have come prepared – what to ask, what not to ask – but he completely forgot. He simply asked me, “How can you explain the distinction between Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy?”I said, “I do not need to explain it – because there is no distinction. Who has told you that there is any distinction between Eastern philosophy and Western philosophy? Have you lost your nerve? You cool down, collect yourself; remember what you wanted to ask me.“Is this a question? Can philosophy be divided into Eastern and Western? Philosophy is literally…the word means love of wisdom. Now, love of wisdom can exist anywhere; it will be the same love of wisdom. It is an inquiry into truth. Do you think truth is different in the West? Do you think truth changes itself according to the climate, nation, geography?“I am not here to explain the distinction; first you have to explain to me on what grounds you have asked the question. You tell me how philosophy can be Eastern or Western. It is such a simple thing.”There was silence for a moment, and I said, “Do you have another question or are you finished? Then give me zero, but remember, that zero is given to you by yourself. You have utterly failed as an examiner, and these two gentlemen are witnesses of it.”That man somehow managed to come out of the shock and he said, “You are right. I had never thought that philosophy cannot be divided, because traditionally it has been divided.“Bertrand Russell has written the history of Western philosophy; Radhakrishnan has written the history of Indian philosophy; Suzuki has written the history of Eastern – so I simply believed these fellows.”I said, “But a philosopher is not supposed to believe. This is so obvious, such apparent nonsense. Bertrand Russell, Radhakrishnan, Suzuki, all are committing the same mistake: they are dividing something which is indivisible. And everybody goes on accepting it, just because great authorities have written…. Bertrand Russell got his Nobel prize for this book, The History Of Western Philosophy, which is a third-rate book, for the simple reason that from the very title it goes wrong.“And then to write the history of philosophy is a tremendous job, it cannot be completed in one volume. It will need all the volumes of The Encyclopedia Britannica; then too it will be only a very, very abridged history of philosophy.“To write one book and to give two pages to Socrates – what can you write about a man like Socrates in two pages? Two pages to Heraclitus, two pages to Pythagoras? – this is simply unforgivable, this is insulting. The whole book will not suffice even for a single philosopher: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plotinus – just a single philosopher will be enough. This is very idiotic, daring. And I have looked into the book – it is Russell’s poorest book, for the simple reason that you cannot put Socrates in two pages.”I am not Socrates, but can you put me in two pages? I will be almost out of it. Yes, you can write the name of my father and the birthplace and the birth date and how many books I have written and a little bit of my life and how the life ends – but this is not philosophy.This has nothing to do with Socrates – where he was born, when he was born. What about his vision, which provoked the whole of Greek orthodox, traditional, conventional people to such a point…and they were the most cultured in the world.Jesus’ crucifixion can be forgiven because they were not the most cultured people of the world. Judea was an almost non-existential part of the world. Who cared about Judea? Who knew about Judea? And it was a slave country. But Athens was at the peak of its culture, sophistication, intelligence; perhaps nowhere else, in no other time, has any city reached to such a peak of wisdom as Athens reached in the time of Socrates. And I don’t think it will be possible again; Athens will remain unique.Still that sophisticated, cultured, intelligent city decided to poison Socrates. His philosophy must have been a tremendously rebellious vision of life. In those two pages you won’t find that rebel anywhere, nor that rebelliousness anywhere.Bertrand Russell got the Nobel prize for this book, for the simple reason that all the books written by him – all the other books – are in some way or other controversial. He himself was a man of great insight, and he was unorthodox, untraditional, unconventional.He could write a book like Why I Am Not A Christian. He could write a book, Unpopular Essays, because every topic was against the mind of the society; it was unpopular. He could write Skeptical Essays which show his logical sharpness.The Nobel prize awarding committee was in a difficulty. Russell was at the peak of his popularity. Not to give him the Nobel prize would be too apparently prejudiced. Fortunately he wrote this History Of Western Philosophy which, just being a history, has nothing controversial about it. What controversy could there be?He is simply writing the history, and that too so condensed – and it has to be condensed. It is a one-thousand-page book, but two thousand years of philosophy, thousands of philosophers, many of whom are not even mentioned…. This was the most uncontroversial thing, and the Nobel prize-awarding committee thought it was a good chance to get rid of Bertrand Russell; give him the Nobel prize for this book – because he himself was a trouble-creating man.He belonged to a very noble family. He was a lord, but he dropped using the word lord before his name “because,” he said, “this looks ugly.” He was participating in a protest against the government just in front of the House of Lords, where they meet. The police were beating the protesters, and they started beating Bertrand Russell. He fell on the ground – and at that time somebody said, “What are you doing! He is a lord!”The policeman simply started trembling and said, “Please forgive me – I had no idea that you were a lord.”He said, “No, you have done perfectly well – I am not a lord. I am protesting against these lords.”Now, this man could get the Nobel prize for a third-class, third-rate book…. Because of the Nobel prize that book became the most prominent of all his books, which are really valuable.I told that professor, “You also got deceived by the Nobel prize? And you talk to me about Radhakrishnan? Radhakrishnan later on became president of India and his whole fame depended on a book – two volumes of Indian philosophy. And you will be surprised to know that these two volumes were stolen; they were not written by Radhakrishnan.It was a thesis of a student. Radhakrishnan was a professor in Calcutta University and the thesis came to him to be examined. He went on prolonging the period for two years. But he was a very prominent figure; nobody could think what was going on underneath.Within these two years he published his book, Indian Philosophy, in England – it is nothing but the thesis of that poor boy. You can go on reading pages and pages exactly the same; not even a comma is different. And when his book was published, then the boy was given his doctorate – just to make it appear Radhakrishnan’s book was published first, so nobody could say that he had stolen it; if anyone had stolen anything then that student had.But that student went to the court, the High Court; the case was in the High Court. “…Because,” the student said, “I produced my book two years earlier in the university. The university is a witness. Other professors – because three examiners are needed for the thesis – two other examiners are witnesses. This is my thesis and this is his book. There is no need to judge – just read.Pages upon pages, even chapters completely as they are in the student’s thesis, are in Radhakrishnan’s book; Radhakrishnan must have been in a hurry. It is a big, two-volume book – must be two thousand pages. He must have been in a hurry; he could not manage…. Otherwise he would have been able to manage to change a few words here and there.The case was so clear – but the student withdrew the case from the court before the decision of the court, because he was bribed. Ten thousand rupees were given by Radhakrishnan to the student to withdraw the case. He was so poor that ten thousand rupees in those days was enough.Everybody was puzzled why the case was withdrawn because the case was clear: the boy was going to win. But the boy must have thought, “Even if I win the case I am not going to get anything. Perhaps Radhakrishnan may get punished by the court, but what am I going to get out of it?“Right now I am getting ten thousand….” And the boy who had written the book was so intelligent, he could not care: he could write ten other books like that.I told the professor, “You trust Radhakrishnan? You must have known about the case.” He said, “Yes, I know about the case. I know about the High Court, and I know that it is certain theft.” “And,” I said, “still you think of these people as authorities. You withdraw your question.“There is no division of Indian philosophy, Eastern philosophy, Western philosophy: philosophy is simply philosophy. If you agree with me you can ask another question.”He said, “I agree with you completely. There is no need for another question.”My professor and vice-chancellor…now it was their turn to be shocked. They could not believe it because this man gave me a first class, and he said, “This is the only first class I have given in my whole life, and I don’t think I will give one again, because I don’t think anybody is going to hit me so hard.”He hugged me. He invited me and my vice-chancellor and the professor to come to the cafeteria. He said, “I enjoyed it because for the first time I felt I was really encountering someone; otherwise, students come so afraid, and they go on repeating only what is written in the books. That’s why I have never given anybody more than third class. Most of them fail for the simple reason that they are only robot-like, repeating. And here is a student who knows perfectly well that I can fail him, I can harm him, but is not afraid of it at all. That should be the philosophical approach.“A man of philosophy should be unafraid, and I am giving him first class because of his unafraidness, because I have not asked anything else. One question I have asked which he has dismantled. He has not answered, he has thrown it back on me: I have to answer it.”He was very happy, and later on whenever I used to go to Aligarh, he forced me to stay with him. I said, “You don’t understand: the trouble is I am being invited by the Jainas, and if I stay in the Mohammedan’s house that creates trouble.”He said, “You can face trouble perfectly well – that I know – but you have to be my guest.” While he was alive, I was always his guest, and the people who were inviting me were very much concerned because they even started asking me, “Have you dropped vegetarianism too? – because staying with that Mohammedan, you must be eating with him.”I said, “Yes, I eat with him, but I eat my food. And you will not believe it – he calls in a brahmin cook to prepare food for me. And the food is far better than you will be able to manage because he takes every care that in a non-vegetarian house I should not feel in any way inconvenienced. He takes so much care that I start feeling a little uncomfortable – because of his care. I tell him, ‘You need not worry about me, I can manage things myself,’ but he won’t listen.”You are saying that in Europe there is a fear that Eastern religions can be very destructive. It is strange to remind you that this idea was given currency by one of the best minds of Europe – Karl Gustav Jung. He was the first who started saying that Eastern religions are dangerous, particularly for the Western man.His argument is worth understanding although it is absolutely wrong. His argument was that Western man has developed in a different way; his traditions, his past, his roots are different. And Eastern man has also developed in a different way.They have grown in such divergent manners that it is just like bringing a mango tree from India and planting it in Europe. It will die, it cannot survive, for the simple reason that the mango tree has millions of years’ tradition of a certain climate, a certain temperature, certain rains. It cannot simply change itself, it cannot adjust itself to a new environment.Many animals in the past have died because climates changed and they could not adjust to the new climate. Many trees have disappeared from the world for the simple reason that the climate changed and those trees could not go anywhere else; they were rooted in the earth.Only two beings are capable of adjusting to any climate: One is man, the other is the cockroach. And wherever you find man you will find cockroaches; wherever you find cockroaches you will find man – they are always together. If man goes to the moon, cockroaches will go. They are inseparable companions, and both are capable of adjusting to any situation. Perhaps cockroaches are more capable of adjusting, because man has many scientific, technical ways to adjust himself.If it is too cold he can have warmer clothes; if it is too hot he can have air conditioning. Poor cockroaches don’t have any technical, any scientific methods with them, but they manage. Certainly they are more capable. Man without all these technical supports would not be able to adjust. If he goes to the Arctic naked, he will die, but the cockroach has to go naked.Karl Gustav Jung said that religion is such a strong power that if it is not supported by your heritage, by your past, by your tradition, it will simply destroy you, it will uproot you.It looks logical, and if you think of pseudo-religions, Jung is right. For example, compared with Eastern religions, Christianity, Judaism, or Mohammedanism cannot survive, for the simple reason that they are very immature, very primitive, while the religions coming from the East have reached to the highest possibility of sophistication.Eastern religions’ logic is not primitive, and they have lived longer – Jainism, for example, for at least ten thousand years. For ten thousand years they have been polishing, and the way they have been polishing…Christianity has not been polished in two thousand years. Jainism has been continuously arguing against Buddhism, against Hinduism; Hinduism has been arguing against Jainism…. Thousands of treatises of tremendously beautiful argumentation are there.Great minds like Nagarjuna, Shankara, Ramanuja, Vallabha, went around the country demolishing everything that was not according to their vision. Teachers were roaming all over the country with a challenge to anybody to argue, to discuss. The whole country was in a philosophical turmoil for ten thousand years.Naturally, out of that turmoil and argumentation and continuous confrontation they sharpened their arguments, they became very subtle. Mohammedanism is only fourteen hundred years old, which is also nothing.India reached its peak at the time of Buddha and Mahavira; that was five hundred years before Jesus Christ. If you compare Jesus Christ with Gautam Buddha you can see: Jesus looks simply like an illiterate villager who has heard a few things about philosophy and religion, but has no argument to prove them. He is simply repeating the conclusions, while Buddha will never repeat the conclusion.Buddha will start from the argument, the very premise. Then he will go through the whole procedure, and in the procedure he will also talk about all other possibilities, and will go on demolishing them, proving that they are wrong. He will not leave chances for anybody. He will take account of all other viewpoints and will demolish them before he reaches his conclusion.In Indian philosophy it is a basic tenet that when you say something, always say simultaneously, immediately, that which is its opposite. First destroy the opposite; then only declare your conclusion. If you cannot destroy the opposite, then forget all about your conclusion, because anybody can raise the opposite and your conclusion will be lost. It is better that you do it yourself.So to read a book of Indian philosophy is totally different than reading Kant, Hegel…. They are simply proposing their idea. Hegel is proposing his idea, not at all bothered that this is only one aspect and there are thousands of others. Hence Indian treatises are very complicated. Before you can get to the conclusion of the man you will be puzzled about what is happening, because if he believes in God’s existence, he will first demolish all arguments against God; he will not leave a single loophole.When he has demolished all the opposite viewpoints, all alternative possibilities, only then will he come to his conclusion. It has a solidity. It will be very difficult for you to find something which he has not already criticized. You need a very outlandish attitude like me; otherwise you cannot manage Indian traditions, their treatises, their philosophies.What do I mean by outlandish? It happened that I was invited to one of the international Vedanta conferences in Amritsar. The name of Amritsar has just now become world famous because for Sikhs, that is their sacred city, and they have the beautiful golden temple there.Just now, because they have been trying to become an independent nation, separate from India, thousands of Sikhs have been killed, thousands of Hindus have been killed, and Indira Gandhi has been assassinated. And it continues still: people are being killed. And it will continue, it is not going to stop easily. Amritsar is the stronghold of the Sikh religion, and Sikhs are very fanatic people, but very sincere, very honest.In India if you need to trust anybody, find a Sikh; you can trust him. All others are cunning: they will promise you but the goods will never be delivered. But when a Sikh promises you, he means it. He will do it even at the cost of his life. They are sincere, they are honest, they are nice people – but they are very fanatic about their religion. That corner of their mind is completely blocked.This Vedanta conference was being held in Amritsar. It was a Hindu conference; from all over the world Hindu representatives were there, shankaracharyas, all the great monks were there. In Punjab at that time there was one very famous Hindu saint, Harigiri Maharaj. He inaugurated the conference.He told a beautiful story that I myself have told many times; it is so beautiful and so indicative. Inaugurating the conference, he said that ten blind men were passing a stream in the rainy season – the stream was flooded. They held the hands of each other. It was not very deep, but the current was very strong; so holding each other’s hands they reached the other side.And then one of them said, “Let us count whether we all have come, because we are all blind, nobody can see; if somebody has been taken by the current we will never know.”So they started counting, and of course the number always came to nine because the person who was counting never counted himself. He started with the others and ended with the last man. A very simple fallacy – the scientists are doing it all over the world. All blind! The scientist counts the whole world; believes, trusts, accepts its existence, except the scientist’s own self – that is left unaccounted for.He is ready to accept anything believable, unbelievable. In physics, in chemistry, in other branches of science – even if it goes against logic he accepts it, because experimentally, objectively it is there, proved. But if you ask him, “What about your consciousness, your awareness?” he simply tries to explain it away.He says, “It cannot be proved; hence, I cannot accept it. It cannot be made an object: I cannot put it in a test-tube, I cannot put it on the table, dissect it, figure out what it is, what it is made of, what its constituents are. Unless I can do that I cannot accept it.”Now this is what those ten blind people were doing. Condemning scientists, I had used that story many times, because it so clearly shows that the scientist is leaving himself out of the account: he counts everything but then he leaves out the most important and the most significant thing.Harigiri Maharaj told the story, and he said when they counted and found there were nine, they started crying and weeping: “One of our friends is lost.”A man was watching, sitting by the side of the river, and he laughed at the whole thing: “These fools are all there and are crying for someone who is lost. Nobody is lost” – because he had been watching all these ten coming from the other side to this side. He came close to them and asked, “What is the matter? Why are you crying?”They said, “We have lost one of our companions in the current.”He looked at them; he said, “How many were you?”They said, “We were ten and now we are nine.”He said, “You all stand in a line and I will count and teach you how to count. I will slap the first person; he has to say, ‘One,’ then I will slap twice the second person; he has to say, ‘Two,’ then thrice, the third person; he has to say, ‘Three.’ This way I will go on hitting. And when I hit ten times you know you are ten; nobody is lost.” And this way he counted. He enjoyed hitting them, and they were very happy being hit because the lost companion was found.This is Vedanta’s attitude, that in the world we go on collecting everything, possessing money, power, prestige, just forgetting ourselves – but that is the most precious thing.I was the second person to speak. You know I am crazy, so I said, “This story is just absurd.” The whole conference was shocked: This is an ancient Vedanta story and nobody had ever called it absurd, not even those who are against Vedanta, because they all use it. Jainas use the story, Buddhists use the story. The story is so beautiful, so indicative, that everybody has used it; nobody has condemned it.And I said, “This is absolutely absurd, for the simple reason: how did these ten blind people come to know that they are ten? Before they entered the stream, did they count? Now I want Harigiri Maharaj to answer me. Did they count before they entered the stream?“If they counted, then they know how to count. Just by passing the stream they forgot how to count? First they counted themselves – and just by passing the stream they stopped, all the ten, counting themselves? This story is absolutely foolish; it makes no sense.“All that I can understand is that somebody else must have told them, ‘You are ten’; they never counted. Somebody must have told them, ‘You are ten,’ and they believed that somebody else. This is where belief leads. They believed, but they knew not. So when there was nobody and they themselves tried to count, they were in great anguish: one companion was lost.“This story only proves that beliefs should be completely dissolved from all religious climates. Nobody should believe anybody because in a real situation you will be in trouble. Either know, or know that you don’t know.“If these ten people were not aware that they were ten, there would have been no trouble. If they had not believed somebody else they would have been perfectly happy being nine; there was no trouble. On both the sides they would have counted in the same way. The trouble arose because on one side was the belief, on the other side was knowledge. And belief falls flat when you encounter knowledge.“So,” I said, “once and for all, this story should be removed from all Vedanta literature.”Harigiri became so troubled, red with anger…. Of course there was no answer, and I said, “If you have any answer, come to the mike and give the answer” – and there were at least fifty-thousand people gathered for the conference. But what answer could he give? – he had never thought about it, nobody had ever thought about it. It was so outlandish, out of the way.Instead of coming to the mike he left the stage, and I said, “This is cowardly, Harigiri – and you have been known as ‘the lion of Punjab’! And the way you are escaping from here – your tail under your legs – you are proving to be a cowardly dog.”Of course he had thousands of followers there; I had none except myself. There was nobody, and I was for the first time speaking in Amritsar. Still, people were silent, shocked, because what I had said was absolutely logical. Only two persons who must have been very, very close to Harigiri shouted, “Shame! Shame!”They were shouting at me, but – you know, I said I am crazy – I said, “Stop! Even if he is a coward, don’t do that.” They were standing; I said, “Sit down! Although he is a coward, that does not mean that you should start calling, ‘Shame! Shame!’ This is not a moment to humiliate and insult him; he has insulted himself enough already.” And those two cowards could not say that they were shouting “Shame!” at me.I have been moving around India, and in many situations the same was the case. I had to find some very eccentric way to find a loophole. Of course there are always loopholes because whatever man makes – howsoever foolproof – you can always find a loophole. No man-made thing can be perfect; even the God-made universe is not perfect, what about man?But if you compare…. And that’s why Jung was afraid. Jung was studying Eastern religions his whole life, and as he became more and more acquainted with them, a great fear arose in him; and the fear was that one day, sooner or later, the East is going to take over the West completely: “Religiously we cannot argue with such sharp, ten-thousand-year-old, very intricate, complicated systems. Our systems in the West are very poor.”There is not a single commentary on Jesus’ gospels. In two thousand years Christians have not even written one commentary, for the simple reason that there is nothing to comment on. Jesus was saying things so simple that I became the first commentator on Jesus, because I can make simple statements into complex philosophies.It is not difficult. It works both ways: you can make very complex philosophy into simple statements; you can do vice versa – simple statements you can make into a great philosophy.When I spoke first on Jesus in The Mustard Seed, it was accepted all over the Christian world as something unique, because in two thousand years nobody had bothered; nobody had even thought that there is any philosophy in it.Philosophy is not something that is ready-made, present anywhere; you have to create it. It does not exist. It is not that you simply open the door and philosophy is sitting there. No need to open the door – you can simply create the hallucination of philosophy.Philosophy is just a linguistic game. It is a gimmick. you have only to learn to play with words – and just being born in India is enough to know the game. It is in the very air. Everybody is talking great philosophy, it is not something rare. Even villagers are talking great philosophy, reading great philosophical treatises.So when I spoke on Jesus it had nothing to do with Jesus, it had nothing to do with anybody else; I enjoyed playing with words. But it is a very dangerous game. I can play for, I can play against. So when I was playing for, even Christian publishers published my books.Sheldon Press in London is a Christian publishing house. They published The Mustard Seed and eight other books and, when in one of my talks I said that there are sources which say that Jesus was ugly, that he was four foot five inches high and that he was a hunchback, they freaked out! Their board of directors decided to withdraw all my books immediately.They withdrew all the books. Our sannyasins told them, “We are ready to purchase all the books at cost price.” No, they wouldn’t sell them even at cost price, because they would again be back in the market. They sold the books to some shopkeeper who sells old newspapers, old magazines, old books, which are not used for reading, mostly for recycling.But Punem, our sannyasin, was behind them, following them; she found the place. She got all those books – even cheaper because that man was very happy, they were going to be recycled; so all the books are back in the market, and those Sheldon board people are at a loss – what happened? How did these books, which were recycled…? This is resurrection! At least Christians should not be worried about such things: things like this happen.Jung was afraid, and his fear was right, that if Eastern religion comes as a strong wind it will demolish all Western religions and their systems. And it will demolish Western man because Western man is rooted in a different soil, in a different climate, in a different way of thinking. It was Jung who created the fear in the West, then others followed.But to me, if Eastern religions and their winds can destroy Western religions then they are worth being destroyed, they deserve to be destroyed. No special protection should be given to them. Either they should stand on their own – they should become more sophisticated….Not a single meditation method exists in Western religions – only prayer. And prayer is not meditation: prayer is a very primitive method. These religions, if they can be destroyed, that’s perfectly good; let them be destroyed.Jung says that Eastern religions will destroy Western religions but he never says Western science will destroy Eastern science. No, that is not his concern. I am happy in both ways: Western science should destroy Eastern science, because Eastern science is not scientific enough; that’s why Western science can destroy it.If you believe in stupid things…for example in India you can see it often happening. On a hot summer day…when it is too hot a poor man may have sunstroke, may fall on the ground, go unconscious; and a crowd will gather around. Indians are very efficient in gathering quickly. Where not a single soul was, within seconds you will find a crowd.Nobody is bothered about their work, where they were going, what they were doing: everything stops. And do you know what they do when somebody falls with sunstroke? They put a shoe on his nose to bring him back to consciousness. Now, this is Eastern science!Jung is a coward. If Western science comes and destroys Eastern science of this type, it should be welcomed. Western science has evolved, Eastern science has not evolved. And whosoever is on a higher pedestal should be victorious.It is not a question of East and West.Western science should take over the whole world as far as science is concerned.Eastern religiousness should take over the whole world as far as religion is concerned.And that’s what I mean when I say science and religion are two aspects of one thing.The West has worked on the objective truth.The East has worked on the subjective truth.The East has poured its whole energy into that dimension, just as the West has poured its energy into the objective direction. Now, both have found great treasures. It is good that they should share their treasures. In that sharing the world will become one; and of course in that sharing much will be destroyed – in the East and in the West. But it needs to be destroyed. It has no right to exist. If it cannot face the truth then why go on clinging to it because it is Eastern or because it is Western?Yes, it is true that if religious consciousness spreads it is going to destroy pseudo-religions. It is going to destroy nations.There is no need for nations.The whole world can be governed by one single government – and that government will be only functional.Let me make it clear to you what I mean by functional. Right now a president of a country is not only functional, he has a status, power. But the postmaster general – what power has he and what status? He is functional. Of course he is the head of all the post offices of the country. In one world he will be the head of all the post offices of the world – so what? It is just functional, he is the head clerk.In the same way, all departments should be functional; and when the world is one, many departments will not be needed – for example, defense. This takes almost seventy-five percent of the countries’ income. Seventy-five percent of the income of the whole world will be simply saved, because there is no need for a defense department. Who is going to attack? – unless some other planet starts a war against the earth. But I don’t see any possibility of that.We have not yet been found by anybody, nor have we been able to find anybody. Signals have been continuously sent for fifty years; from the earth, for fifty years continuously, a few scientific departments have been sending signals to the planets, to the stars, in different ways. But as yet there is no sign that any signal has been received or that anybody has answered. So there is no question of any other planet creating a war against us.There will be no defense department – which is the most destructive department, killing millions of people unnecessarily, because all of the money goes on pouring into more and more death material. Who is interested in life?Perhaps, except this small commune, in this whole world nobody is interested in life.Politicians are interested in the other world – which means after death. Nothing special is going to happen before death, don’t waste your time unnecessarily. Simply die, because then the real show begins. What are you doing here? Simply wasting your time. It is not even a rehearsal. Everything begins after death – heaven, God, eternal life, bliss: everything after death.Religions are interested in death.Politicians are interested in death.Perhaps this is the only commune which is interested in life. Perhaps I am the first religious man who is interested in life here and now.All other religious leaders, founders, prophets, messiahs, were interested in the other world: “This world is just a punishment, this world is an imprisonment, this world is nothing but humiliation. You have been thrown out of the garden of Eden. To be alive is disgraceful. Pray to God, ask Him, ‘Please let us be back in the Garden of Eden.’ That means you will have to pass through death.”All these nations, religions – what is their need? If they are interested in death, let them die.What happened in Jonestown was absolutely Christian, but not even a single person in the world has talked about the fact that it was a Christian phenomenon, that Christianity was its background, that Jim Jones was a reverend, that he was a Christian priest, and the people who followed him simply followed according to the Christian ideology.Of course, they went to the very logical end. Jesus says to his people: “After death there will be judgment day, and I will be there to pick my people. And only those who are with me will be saved; all others will be thrown into the eternal darkness of hell.”Reverend Jim Jones was continually teaching the Bible, Christianity, and of course he was teaching that real life begins after death. And if he convinced those fools, one thousand fools, it is nothing to be surprised at: they were all Christians. The gospel was Christian, and if he convinced them to die with him…why wait for the judgment day?And on the judgment day there is going to be so much of a crowd – poor Jim Jones, how is he going to find his one thousand followers? It will be really difficult. The best way is: Jim Jones dies and with him his followers die. And they will reach the gates of heaven with God and Jesus Christ and all the apostles shouting, “Alleluia!” This is far better, quicker.Other Christians have waited for two thousand years but the judgment day has not come yet. And if you read Jesus, his disciples asking again and again, “When will the judgment day come?” and he says, “Soon.” The whole indication is that it is going to happen within your life. Now, twenty centuries have passed; it has not happened. Nobody asks the pope, “What about the judgment day? Jesus was saying, ‘Soon.’ What do you mean by ‘soon’?” At least it should be explained how many centuries, how many generations…. “Soon” cannot be extended that much.But Christian bishops and cardinals and priests are comparing me with Jim Jones. In churches, sermons are delivered and it is said that Rajneeshpuram is going to become a second Jonestown. Now, who is going to say to these fools that this is the only place which cannot become Jonestown? The whole rest of the world can become – because we are not interested in the afterlife, we are only interested in life here, now.But strange are the ways of the world! A man like me is compared with Reverend Jim Jones…. I am absolutely for life, so much so that I am ready to drop God, paradise, heaven – everything! Life is so precious; everything can be dropped for it.So if a real religiousness spreads and nations disappear – so far, so good. If religions disappear – so far, so good.The Western man as Western, dies – so far, so good, because his death as Western will also mean the death of the Eastern man as Eastern. Those terms are related only to each other: the East cannot exist without West. The death of the Western man will be the death of the Eastern man – and that’s perfectly good.Then only man remains – neither Eastern nor Western, belonging neither to this nation nor to that nation. A single humanity rejoicing herenow in this very life, in this, the very lotus paradise….

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why should religion and state remain separate?Religion as such does not exist yet; hence, whatever is known as religion should remain separate from the state for the simple reason that it is not religion – it is pseudo, fake.You cannot ask the same question in reference to science. Can you ask that science and state should remain separate? Nobody even thinks about science’s separation for the simple reason that science exists, has come of age, has contributed immensely to human growth, welfare, health, longevity.In every possible way science has been a blessing.Hence, nobody will think of science remaining separate from the state.Religion has not been a blessing yet.It has been a curse.But remember, it is not religion.It is pseudo-religion.Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Mohammedanism – these are all cults. These are all exploiting humanity in the name of religion. They are not religions at all. They are superstitions.Of course superstitions should remain separate from the state. What kind of superstition it is does not matter: Hindu, Christian, Jewish. Superstition of all shapes and sizes should be kept as far away from the state as possible because the state is power, and if superstitions become joined with power they can do immense harm. They are doing immense harm even without the state. They have managed to create power of their own, they have their own generators. That’s what is meant by “organized religion”.A religious person has no power.He is humble. Not that he has practiced humbleness, he simple enjoys being humble. He has simply understood the stupidity and suffering of the ego, and by that sheer understanding, all that nonsense has disappeared. Suddenly he finds himself humble, egoless; he is harmless.But organized religion is nothing but politics in the name of religion. And the people who organize it are not religious, cannot be. The popes, the shankaracharyas, the imams, the rabbis – these people are not religious at all for the simple reason that they are full of knowledgeability, while a religious man knows he knows nothing. He knows that existence is so mysterious, there is no way to reduce it into knowledge. He is mystified by existence.A truly religious person is a mystic.He is a poet – not writing poetry, but living poetry.He is a painter – not painting on the canvas but painting on his own consciousness continuously.He is a musician; he may have never touched any instrument but he is continuously playing on his own inner being a music which cannot be translated in any way, cannot be brought from those higher realms of being to the lower, darker valleys of our life.He is a dancer; he may not move from one posture but his being is in a continual dance.A religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. To be religious is to be so vast you cannot confine it in such small prisons – churches, sects, creeds, dogmas.A religious man has no catechism.He knows love, he knows truth, he knows beauty, he knows authenticity. But he also knows that these values are impossible to express. You can live them, you can be them – that is the only way of expressing them. But you cannot say. You can show, but you cannot say.Christians in India asked me again and again, “Why don’t you make a small book containing your religious vision, just as we have the Christian catechism?”I said, “You can, because you are not religious. I cannot, because I am religious. My experience is so vast that no words are capable of containing it.”Religion has not ever existed up to now. Only once in a while has there been a religious person. And whenever there has been a religious person, soon the pseudo-religious people, politicians with religious masks, gathered around. It is not Jesus who created Christianity. It is not Buddha who created Buddhism. It is not Mahavira who created Jainism.Very strange, almost unbelievable…. Jesus was crucified by the Romans because Judea was a slave country under the Roman empire and what a strange fate, that Rome became the citadel of Christianity! It still remains the citadel of Christianity.Mahavira fought against Hindus and particularly brahmins, the priestly class among Hindus – and his religion was founded by eleven brahmins, all brahmin scholars. He fought his whole life against brahminism, and finally the people who made his religion were no one but the brahmins. And they were perfectly efficient in creating a religion, they had all the experience of ages. They have been, for centuries, the priests…because in India it is decided by your birth what your profession is going to be.Your profession is going to be just the same as your father’s; if he was a shoemaker, you will be a shoemaker, and your children will be shoemakers. This has been going on for ten thousand years. It is very ugly in a way, that there is no freedom of movement, in life you cannot move and change; but in a way, very economical, very efficient economically. Humanly it is ugly, but economically nothing could be better than that….A child is born in a brahmin’s house: from his very first day he lives in the climate of being a priest. From his very childhood he is being respected by the whole society. He need not be taught, he simply catches it from his climate. By the time he is a young man he knows all the ins and outs of priesthood; when he is initiated into priesthood he is all ready. Economically this is a very perfect arrangement.So the eleven brahmins who consolidated Mahavira’s teachings when he died turned the whole clock backward. Whatever Mahavira had done they managed to undo – and in such a sophisticated, intelligent way that not even now, after twenty-five centuries, have Jainas recognized that they have been ruled by the brahmins against whom Mahavira’s whole life was dedicated. He fought these same people who have since then been ruling.The same happened with Buddha. He was not a brahmin, he was a kshatriya, the warrior caste, lower than the brahmin. Brahmin is the highest caste, the warrior is number two in status. And Buddha rebelled against it. He said, “Nobody comes by birth as a brahmin or a warrior or a business man; these things one has to learn. One becomes what one does.”Brahmins were very much against Buddha because the warriors are not supposed to be priests; their duty is to fight. And when Buddha started preaching, this was against the whole tradition – he was trying to be a brahmin, and he was born a kshatriya. This is pure and simple rebellion. But Buddha was of great charismatic personality. He managed to influence millions of people, and when the brahmins saw that this man could not be destroyed by easy and ordinary means they started organizing Buddha’s teachings. They started organizing Buddhism. And when Buddha died the people who wrote his scriptures were all brahmins.You will be surprised that in India, the priest of the temple where Buddha became enlightened is still a brahmin. For twenty-five centuries the same family has provided the priest of the temple. The temple stands as a memorial of Buddha’s enlightenment. But the brahmins who were his contemporaries simply denied that he was enlightened – to them, except for a brahmin, nobody can be enlightened. Before your enlightenment you will be born as a brahmin. So in your other lives all that you can earn is a life as a brahmin.From all your good deeds, your morality, your character, this will be your earning – that you will be born as a brahmin. Then the doors open for you, you can become enlightened – but nobody can jump the class barrier. And Buddha did exactly that: he just bypassed the brahmins and entered the world of nirvana. This is impossible, unforgivable! His contemporaries could not accept Buddha as enlightened or a wise man; they thought him just a nuisance, a disturbance. But when he died he left such a tremendous impact on millions of people that brahmins were clever enough to see this was not an opportunity to be missed.They were not like the Jews, who missed the whole opportunity of Jesus. If the Jews had been as clever as the brahmins, the moment they had crucified Jesus, the second thing would have been to create a religion around Jesus. In both ways they would have profited – I am using their term.Nobody would have ever condemned them for crucifying Jesus because they would have been the popes, they would have been the representatives of Jesus. And they could have managed to interpolate all his teachings with Judaism. There was no difficulty; Jesus was a Jew, he was speaking in the Jewish language, he was speaking within the Jewish religion. The interpolation would not have been very difficult.It was very difficult with Buddha. It was difficult with Mahavira because Mahavira was speaking a totally different language. But the brahmins were clever enough to change the whole climate around Mahavira, around Buddha; they created bogus pseudo-religions – but organized. And they have been exploiting since then.Organized religion is one of the ugliest things that has happened in history. And the state should remain separate from organized religion, because organized religion is nothing but all kinds of superstitions – beliefs – beliefs without any evidence, doctrines, creeds, which go against every scientific discovery and invention. The state should not support any pseudo-religion, any organized religion. That is supporting charlatans, cheats, deceivers, exploiters, parasites.Let me summarize what I am saying. I am saying: religions should not be mixed with the state because there is no religion yet. And whatever exists in the name of religion is not religion. That brings me to a totally different understanding.Religion is in the process of birth.Just as it took three hundred years for science to come of age, if humanity survives, then religion will also come of age. That day it will be sheer stupidity to say that state and religion should remain separate, because it will mean that all which is valuable in life and all that is great in existence should remain separate from the state – that the state should not be benefited by the enlightened ones, that the state should continue to exist in its dark world of politics, dirty in every possible way, that it should never see the light.Yes, today I agree that the state should remain separate from religions. Remember, I am saying it should remain separate from religions – I am using the word in the plural.But when religion comes of age – religion in the singular, just as science is singular – then it will be simply stupid to keep state and religion separate.Then you have to translate religion into what it actually is: then it is love, then it is understanding, then it is silence, peace. Then it is wisdom, meditativeness; then it is intelligence, pure intelligence.All these qualities, values, enrich life; they will enrich the state. By the sheer presence of an authentic religion the politicians will start dropping their dirty ways, their cunning policies. They will start feeling ashamed. Religion will function like a mirror, and politicians seeing their own faces – which they have never seen, because to see your face your need a mirror….I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin found a mirror on the street. He looked into it and said, “My God! I never thought that my father had gone to a photographer; that old man, I never thought he was so fashionable. But it is good that although he is dead, at least I have got his photograph.” He came home, fearing that his wife….Just the way wives are, husbands are; the husband hates not only the wife but all the relatives of the wife. Strange, those relatives have done nothing – or perhaps they have, because if the father and the mother had not been there in the world, at least this wife would not have been produced. And the wives hate all the relatives of their husbands. Their hatred is so much that only to focus it on the husband is not sufficient; it spills all over.Afraid that if his wife found the photograph she would burn it immediately, Nasruddin went upstairs in the attic and somewhere managed to hide the photograph – which was not a photograph at all, just a mirror. But you cannot hide anything from your wife. That has not been possible since there have been husbands and wives. You cannot hide. His wife was doing her work, but seeing from the corner of her eye that he has brought something, is hiding it in the attic – “I will take a look at it. Let him first do his thing.”Nasruddin came down. As he came down he passed his wife; she was going up. He said, “Where are you going?”She said, “The same place from where you are coming.”The wife went up and found the mirror. She looked into it and said, “My God! So this is the woman he is after. In his old age, the father of two dozen children – but I will teach him a lesson. And he is hiding her photograph in my house.Without a mirror you can’t see your face.The politician has remained dirty, ugly, for the simple reason that he has no mirror. And the mirror is possible only from a higher consciousness. It has to be a mirror of consciousness, no ordinary mirror will do. It is not his physical face which he will see – it is his corrupted soul.When the true religion comes of age, religion, without any effort on anybody’s part, will become the light of everybody: of the teacher in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities; of the state, of hospitals. A true religion is bound to overwhelm all values of life.My effort here is to create an unorganized religion.Hence, I call it religionless religion to emphasize the fact that it is not an organized religion; that I am not your leader, your messiah, your prophet; that I do not bring to you the word of God; that I am not in any way special.These are the ways of the old pseudo-religions.Everyone tries to prove that the founder of his religion is the only true messenger of God. God Himself is a fiction, and from that fiction they go on deriving more and more fictions – the true messenger of God, another fiction. Then the true message from the messenger – another fiction. It becomes so complicated that unless you deny God Himself you cannot deny anything; then you have to follow every detail of the whole superstitious structure. And all these religions prove that their book is written by God….I am not claiming anything; hence you cannot organize a religion around me.I am making every effort to create barriers, hindrances, for those who will try to make a religion organized around my teachings.In the first place it is impossible to find out what my teachings are. Anybody is going to go nuts finding out what my teachings are, because I have not been teaching at all. These are not gospels that I am giving to you, they are simply gossips. Now, have you ever heard of any religion being created around gossips?I am not giving you a message from God.I simply enjoy talking, I love it!In India, my dentist used to tell me, “At least when I am working on your teeth you should stop talking.” Just five minutes work takes two hours! – because the poor fellow had to stop. Of course he is my disciple so he could not tell me to stop, to shut up. I say that many times to him while he is doing dentistry – it is, of course, difficult to do dentistry on me – I tell him many times, “Shut up!” If his gas is not running well I tell him, “Hit the cylinder!” And he has to hit it, because I insist, “You hit the cylinder.” And he was surprised that by hitting it, it works.My dental nurse was also there. I always have a woman there in case I need some support – then I cannot rely on a man. So I go on telling her, “Keep an eye on the doctor. Don’t listen to him, listen to me because I am your Master. He is not your master.” So the poor nurse has to listen to me!They could not talk loudly because I would hear, and they had to talk while I was talking, to discuss what to do – the work had to be done. So they started whispering. I said, “No whispering at all! At least in front of me, no affairs, no whispering. Speak clearly so that I can hear what is going on.”So my dentist was saying, “With you talking it takes two hours, three hours.” He said, “You say all kinds of things.”There was a time when he started taking notes – what else to do? “If he insists on talking and won’t allow me to work, it is better to take notes of what he is saying – they may be useful later on.” He has compiled a whole book – it will be coming soon. It must be a unique book in the whole history of mankind: a man talking under dentistry, in the dentist’s chair. People want to escape from the dentist’s chair – I enjoy it.I simply love talking.It does not matter what I am talking about. What matters is, that I am talking and you are listening. The essential religion happens there, in my talking and your listening.In that meeting, the essential religion happens.So you cannot find out any teaching. You cannot reduce it to ten commandments – do this, don’t do that. That kind of thing you cannot find because one day I will say, “Do this,” and another day I will say, “Don’t do this.” It is impossible to manage all my contradictions.It is easy with Jesus, because what contradictions can there be in just those four gospels – which are not even four – just one gospel written by four persons, each a little different version of the same thing. What contradictions? And he is not a man of logic who will think in contradictions or talk in contradictions. He is not attuned to the very deep esoteric traditions of religion, which talk in paradoxes. His teaching is simple, so you can make a catechism, you can organize a church.With me it is going to be tremendously difficult, impossible. I want it to be impossible because I want you to remain individual religious persons. If you are together here, that is just a friendly togetherness, not a commitment; not in any way are you sacrificing your freedom, your independence, your individuality.How can you organize a religion around a man who teaches you disobedience, rebellion?All these teachers are responsible; although others organized the religion, these teachers are responsible. If I meet Mahavira and Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed, I am not going to forgive them so easily. They cannot just use the excuse: “When we died others organized the religion.” I will tell them, “But you left the message in such a way that it could be organized. Who is responsible for that? You should have made arrangements to make it impossible to be organized.”If there had been no organized religion on the earth we would have seen a totally different flowering of humanity. A different fragrance would have been there on this earth, not this stink that you can see everywhere, in every church, in every temple, in every mosque, in every synagogue. It is through organization.Organization immediately becomes power.Now, six hundred million Catholics organized under one leader – it is power. Otherwise the pope is just an ordinary Polack. But the crowd that follows him…and the crowd is following Jesus Christ – and not even Jesus Christ; the crowd is following God…. It is a very strange game. They can’t see God’s back, whom they are following. They can’t even see Jesus’ back, whom they are following. They can see only this Polack pope. But he consoles them by telling them, “I am directly connected to Jesus, to God.” These people have direct phone lines.I don’t have any phone, not even a phone line from here to Jesus Grove, what to say about Jesus and what to say about God? I have no phone lines, for the simple reason that I don’t want to be disturbed by these people. But all these religious leaders in some way implied that they have a direct connection with the ultimate source of life and existence.I don’t have any direct connection with any ultimate source of life.I have only a connection with the immediate life – not the ultimate, the immediate.My whole emphasis is herenow.This very moment is all to me.You cannot create a religion around me.You can dance around me, you can sing around me, you can paint around me. You can do a thousand things around me, but you cannot do politics around me. And if you do then you are an idiot. Then you are simply wasting your time, you are in the wrong place. If you want to play politics, be somewhere else. Here, finally you will realize that you wasted your time, this was not the place for politics.My religion is only a quality, a religiousness.This is the problem for politicians to understand. They think that here in our city, state and religion are mixing. They are absolutely wrong. There, state and religiousness are one, not mixing; there is no question of mixing. What do you mean by mixing? In Washington they are mixing, in Salem they are mixing. Here, they cannot mix – here, they are one, because here religion is not Christianity, is not Hinduism.Here, religion is only a silence of the heart.Now, won’t you allow a teacher to teach silently, peacefully, joyously? Won’t you allow a teacher to have these religious qualities? Won’t you allow the school to have the climate of love? Of truth? Of sincerity? Of so much authenticity that work becomes worship? Won’t you allow a school to be religious in this sense?Then you don’t understand education, you don’t understand religion, you don’t understand anything at all. You don’t even understand the basic meaning of the word education. The attorney general of Oregon needs to look in the dictionary for the basic meaning of education. To me he seems to be absolutely uneducated, illiterate.The word education means drawing out whatsoever is the potential of the person. Educating means “drawing out,” just the way you draw water from a well. The water is there, already there; you have to draw it out, then you can quench your thirst. The word education means drawing out. And drawing out truth from a man – which is there, just laying, it has to be awakened; drawing out love – which is there, it has to be mined; drawing out authenticity, compassion – which are all there; somebody just has to knock at the right door.This is religion:Knocking at the right doors of human potentiality.My teachers will be religious, my students here will be religious, because to me religion is not something that is only on Sunday; for one hour, you become religious in the church.Just today Vivek gave me a cream – she felt that some rough skin had come on my face. I looked at the cream and I really enjoyed what was written on it. Cream apart, what was written on it was, “Seventh Day Scrub.” Great! It is the name of the cream – “seventh day scrub cream.” Six days you work, seventh day you scrub.I said, “This cream is religious. And if the attorney general of Oregon comes to know about this cream mixing with people’s faces…but that’s what God must have done: used the seventh day scrub. Six days creating the world, naturally he must have collected all kinds of dirt, and needed a good scrub. My religion is not seventh-day scrub cream.To me religion is not something separate from life – or separable.You are religious or you are not. It is not that for one hour per week you become religious, that is impossible. That is almost like saying that every Sunday for one hour you breathe, and then for six days no more breathing, because you have to do other kinds of work. Breathing continues seven days, day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the breathing continues.My sannyasin is religious even when he is asleep. Even when he is dying he is religious because religion is a new way of the heart beating in tune with existence. When your heart starts beating in harmony with existence, you feel an at-one-ment with the trees, with the rocks, with people, with animals. You start feeling a relatedness. You are part of an organic mystery, and you are so filled with this mystery that whether you are a mayor or governor or a president does not make any difference.If the president is allowed to breathe, if the president is allowed to live, if he is allowed to have his pulse continue and his heart continue to beat, won’t you allow his innermost core, his being to be in tune with existence, to pulsate with existence? In fact that should be the most basic requirement for anybody to be the president of a country.In my city everything is religious, but religious in my sense. I am changing the whole meaning of religion. No religion is being taught in the school – nobody is taught that there is a God, that Jesus Christ is His prophet. Nothing is taught but we live religiously, we walk religiously, we eat religiously. You cannot stop it.A state has no value compared to such religiousness. We can sacrifice everything for it, but we cannot sacrifice this religiousness. This is our very life. And it is a question of twenty-four hours a day. There is no possibility of dividing, so that from eleven to five you are mayor, so you are not religious – at eleven you put your religion in the suitcase and lock it so that it is not stolen, then go to the office. This is sheer nonsense, and the people who go on talking this way are continually doing the same stupid thing – which is not happening here.This attorney general is going to take the oath on The Bible. I would like my commune to fight this man to the Supreme Court. Drag him, ask him, “Why The Bible? The case is secondary, first the oath has to be considered. Why The Bible? Why in the name of God? If this is not mixing religion with state then what will be? First prove God; otherwise it is a superstition.”We don’t mix. Even if God comes here to Rajneeshpuram I don’t think any of my sannyasins are going to mix with Him. He will be just an outcast. Just the idea that He thinks He is God will be enough for my people to laugh and tell Him, “You get lost.”Take an oath on The Bible? – why? The Bible is full of lies, and you are taking an oath to remain truthful, on a book which is full of lies! You can ask any scientist; the book is full of lies. The earth is flat in The Bible – and you are taking an oath on flat earth! In the very oath you are lying; the earth is not flat.Or you take the oath in the name of God, whom you have never seen. The judge has no idea who this guy God is. Why can’t you be simply human? If you really want to say truth, say it! If you don’t want to say truth, don’t say it. That is the business of the whole court, to find out that it is a lie. The oath makes no sense. For what does the court exist? The juries, the judges, the advocates of the other party, they will all find out whether it is true or not.Asking you to take oath…. In India once I was in a court. I refused to take the oath; I said, “I cannot take an oath in the name of God. I don’t know this fellow. First you have to produce Him, I must see Him. Who is this fellow on whose name I am taking an oath? And why should I take an oath on the name of somebody to whom I have not even been introduced?The judge said, “Okay, then on the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita?I said, “The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita? – which is full of lies and statements of a man, Krishna, whom you cannot trust, who has broken his own promises, who was not a man of his word.” He said he would not fight in the Mahabharat war, he would only be a charioteer. That was his promise given to the other party – because both parties had approached him and asked him, “Fight for our side.” But he was a very clever and cunning man.He was having an afternoon nap when Arjuna and Duryodhana, the heads of both the parties, reached there. Duryodhana was a very haughty and egoistic type of man. He sat near the head of Krishna. Arjuna was humble; he sat near the feet of Krishna, so naturally Krishna’s eyes first saw Arjuna. And he said, “Why have you come?”Arjuna said, “Not only I – my brother Duryodhana is also there, sitting behind your head. We both have come – I have come to ask you to participate in the war from my side, and he has come to request you to participate from his side.”Krishna was very clever, he was a politician par excellence. He said, “Because I saw you first, you have the choice. I give you this choice: Both of you are my relatives, both are my friends; from one side I will fight, from another side my army will fight. You can choose.”Duryodhana was very much afraid; he was just a stupid type of man, he could not understand subtler things. He thought, “Now Arjuna will choose the army.” Krishna had the biggest army, the most sophisticated, technically-equipped army. “He will choose the army, what will I do with Krishna? It is already finished.” But Arjuna chose Krishna.Arjuna said, “This is my good fortune that you gave me the chance to choose – I was afraid…. I choose you; Duryodhana can have your army.”Now Duryodhana became a little alert – there seems to be something fishy! Arjuna is so happy choosing Krishna alone, leaving the whole army, the biggest in the world at that time, to Duryodhana. Duryodhana said, “This is not fair because you alone are more important” – this was all lies. “You alone are more important than your whole army. We will miss you. Without your guidance what are we going to do with your army? I want one promise more: you will not fight.”It was known, it was the myth, that Krishna had a divine wheel, a chakra, which was invisible ordinarily. But whenever he wanted, he could materialize it. That chakra moved around his finger, and he could throw it at anyone; wherever that person was, the chakra would cut off his head. It did not matter – miles apart, maybe in a crowd, it did not matter; that was his divine power.Duryodhana said, “We know that your chakra alone is enough, it can cut off anybody’s head. So I want a promise. The army you have given to me – what about your arms, because that chakra is with you.” Krishna promised that he would not use it, but he did use it.“Now, you ask me to take an oath on this man’s book, who could not keep his own word? I cannot.”The judge said, “Then the only way is the constitution of India.”I said, “That is absolute nonsense. Those politicians – most of them I know – are the ugliest, the greatest hypocrites. Nobody can lie more efficiently than they can. And this constitution goes on being amended every day. You want me to take an oath on a constitution made by politicians, which needs amendments every day? Just be a little more respectful about truth. Can’t you simply trust me? – you can trust my oath. This seems to be stupid: you can trust my oath – as if an oath has some miraculous power – and you cannot trust me! Just trust me.And what is your business here? So many jurors, twelve jurors, three judges, and the opposite party’s advocates – what are you all doing here? If I simply say the truth then what is your business here? What are you trying to find out?This is going to happen, because there is a case…. My secretary asked to argue against the attorney general herself, and the court has permitted it. Now there is great agitation. If they are afraid of her – and these people think themselves bigshots, they are nothing but used cartridges! There is nothing inside, they are hollow. Yes, she will be enough to put them right.In every school Christianity is being taught. In every possible way it is stuffed down the throat of every child directly, indirectly. The government, even the parliament, begins with prayer to God. I wonder how do you find so many fools to fill the parliament? And nobody asks, “Why this prayer to God?”Democracy is for the people, of the people, by the people.From where comes this God? – he is not people. This despotic God, a dictatorial God, who believes in dictating, believes in giving commandments – you are praying to Him in a democracy, and still you think you are keeping religion and state apart!Only in this place does your kind of religion not exist, so there is no question of mixing them. Here exists a totally different quality of religiousness which is one with all that we do. We eat religiously, we drink religiously; what can we do about it? We do everything religiously – we even breathe religiously.And that is my whole effort, that each of your actions should have the quality, the fragrance, of godliness.Our religion is an inquiry into truth, and it is an eternal inquiry. In life, in death, in everything, the inquiry is to continue. So if our people are in a state they can’t stop their inquiry. And their inquiry is going to enhance the state and its status. Their inquiry is not against Christians or Hindus or Mohammedans or anybody, nor is their inquiry for anybody. Their inquiry is for truth.And the greatest thing about truth is that when you find it, you are simply amazed that it was hidden in the inquirer himself.Just two days ago, two things happened. I was looking for a toothpaste that is not available here but was available in India, and a few other things. Suman, who is in charge of our boutique, phoned almost all over the world, because they have stopped producing that toothpaste in India; but the same company exists all over the world – it is a Swiss company. So she was phoning all over the world.As a few other things were needed, so she was looking for some oil, and other things – and Rafia, who is sitting here, found the toothpaste in the boutique! It was not found anywhere in the whole world. I said, “That’s really great!”Then the second day it happened that Vivek was looking for a blanket for me, and she said it was needed within two days. So they phoned the manufacturer, and he said, “Two days will be too soon, it will take at least seven days.” So Suman asked, “You must have an agent in Oregon; you can give us the address and we can find it from there.” They gave her the address – and it was the address of our boutique, Rajneeshpuram. We are the only agent of that company in the whole of Oregon!Now Suman could not say to him, “I am phoning you from the same boutique.” She simply said, “Okay we will try your agent.”The inquiry into truth is almost like that. You look all around the world and finally you find it in your own boutique. And it is not something that is in any way against democracy. Inquiry for truth or inquiry for great consciousness or inquiry for greater love – in what way are these things against the state? And if these things are against the state then you should teach in every school hatred, unconsciousness, lying, deceiving, cheating; that will be true education.Then every politician should declare that he is a cheat, hypocrite, deceiver, mean, because these are qualifications for being a good politician, and these are qualifications for being in power. A man of love, a man of truth, a man of sincerity is disqualified.If this commune becomes illegal, that means truth is disqualified, honesty is disqualified, love is disqualified. Then everything of value is illegal, and all that should be criminal becomes legal, political, approved by the state.This case is going to be of decisive importance. That man, the attorney general, does not know it, but unknowingly he has put his head into a nest of bees. He will repent his whole life because we are not going to leave things so easily. We have the right to define religion in our own way; nobody can prevent us. If Christians can define their religion in their way, and the Hindus can define their religion in their way, and every other religion is allowed to define things, why are we not allowed to define things in our own way?For us, there is not God. But there is godliness – just a quality, a presence.For us there is not heaven or hell. But there are heavenly moments, hellish moments – and they depend on you. They are not geographical. It is not that you enter hell or heaven; it is that you create hell or heaven for yourself. And it is up to you at anytime to change.For us, religion has nothing to do with any creed or cult, with any holy book.Vivek was just asking me, “Why are your discourses called ‘The Rajneesh Bible’?”They are called “The Bible” just to make it clear to the whole world the “bible” simply means the book, it does not mean the holy book. That’s why you say “bibliography”. Is there anything holy in a bibliography? A bibliography simply means a list of books. It is really just “the book”, and I want it to be clear to the whole world that a bible has nothing to do with holiness.I am not a holy man because to me the word holy seems so phony, so bogus that I would prefer just to be a human being. Just to be a human being is so grand, so great; there is nothing greater than that. But strangely, man has been trying to become God. Rather than trying to become man he had been trying to become God. God he cannot become because there is no God, and nothing like God is possible.But in making the effort to become God and trying hard to rise higher, he falls, is bound to fall. And when he falls, he falls below the human being. That’s where all your religious people have fallen, your so-called holy men and saints and sages. Trying to become God they have fallen even from being human beings, they have become subhuman.Our effort is just to be alive human beings.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the best government?No government.The very idea of somebody governing somebody else is inhuman.Government is a game, the ugliest and the dirtiest game in the world.But there are people in the lowest state of consciousness who enjoy it: these are the politicians. The only joy of a politician is to govern, to be in power, to enslave peopleThe greatest desire of all those who have reached to the peaks of consciousness has been the dream that one day we can get rid of all governments. That day will be the greatest in the whole history – past, present, future – of man, because getting rid of all governments will mean destroying the ugliest game, the game the politicians have been playing for centuries.They have made man just a chess piece, and they have created so much fear, fear that without government there will be anarchy, disorder, chaos…everything will be destroyed. And the strangest thing is that we go on believing this nonsense.Just look at the past five thousand years. Can you conceive that if there was no government at all in the world things would have been worse? In what way? In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought. Do you think more would have been possible without government – that more chaos was possible, more crime was possible?What have these governments done? They have not done anything for the people except exploit them, exploit their fear, and set them against each other. A continuity of war somewhere or other on the earth is almost an absolute necessity for politicians to exist.Adolf Hitler, in his autobiography, has many insights; and he is a man worth understanding because he is the purest politician – I mean, the dirtiest. He says that war is an absolute necessity if you want to remain in power. If you cannot create war people start thinking of you as nobody. Only in wartime are heroes born.He is right. Just think of all your heroes – what would they be without wars? Who would Alexander the Great be? Who would Napoleon Bonaparte be? Who would Winston Churchill be? Who would Benito Mussolini be? Joseph Stalin? Adolf Hitler himself?These people have become heroes of great importance. The bigger the war the bigger the heroes it creates.Hitler says that if you cannot create war then at least continue to propagate the idea that war is coming. Never leave people in peace, because when they are in peace, you are nobody. They don’t need you; your very purpose is not there. They need you when there is danger. Create danger. If there is not real danger, at least create the climate of a false danger.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The other day I gave a talk at a college where a middle-aged man in the audience, visibly upset, said, “By speaking against God, against Christianity, against all religions, you are corrupting the minds of these young people.” Would you like to comment?I have never spoken against God for the simple reason that God does not exist. How can you speak against someone who does not exist in the first place? I have never spoken against Christianity either, because there is no such thing in the world as Christianity.What exists in the name of Christianity I have always called Crossianity. It is the worship of the cross, not of Christ. It is fear of death, not love of life. Just take a few things out of the life of Jesus and Christianity disappears. If he is not crucified can there be a Christianity? Jesus is not important; what is important is crucifixion. Even more important is the fiction of resurrection, but that is possible only if first Jesus is crucified. It is a corollary.These so-called Christians worship Jesus because of resurrection. That is a great consolation against death. That’s why I say they are worshipping the cross, the crucifixion, the resurrection – not for any love for Jesus and his teachings but because of a deep fear of death. This fear of death makes them believe in things which they know are impossible. But when you are in a psychological turmoil of fear you can believe anything, just as a temporary consolation.They believe Jesus walks on water, turns stones into bread, makes wine out of water, raises the dead back to life. Just remove these things which don’t have anything to do with Jesus’ teachings – or do you think these things are necessary for there to be a religion? Then there cannot be any Buddhism, there cannot be any Jainism, there cannot be any religion other than Christianity. But all these religions are there.Buddha never made wine out of water. In fact if he had come to know that, “Jesus is going to make wine out of water when I’m gone” – because Jesus came five hundred years afterward – he would have condemned this man as a sinner. This is criminal – making wine out of water? This is against the law of every country. Just try to make marijuana and you will know whether you are worshipped or imprisoned.A very intelligent man, Timothy Leary, served seven years in jail because he was teaching that LSD can make man in every way superior to what he is now: his consciousness can be wider, his love can be deeper, his sensitivity can touch unknown peaks which have never been touched before. In every dimension LSD can be a tremendous boost for human growth. Just because of teaching these things he was put in jail.He was a professor, perfectly acquainted with the chemistry of LSD and the chemistry of the mind. He was not an illiterate person; what he was saying was based on scientific discoveries. But still, because he was teaching a philosophy supporting drugs, he was imprisoned for seven years. He is not a man of great guts; professors rarely are. He may have never thought that just by teaching a philosophical attitude you can get into so much trouble.Since he has been out of jail he has forgotten all about his philosophy. Now he is teaching something else – he has to teach, he has become a world-famous man. He can’t remain silent, he can’t keep quiet. The old thing he cannot teach again; otherwise he will be back in jail. Now he is teaching something absolutely absurd. Now is the time that he should be in a madhouse.Those seven years in jail were absolutely unjustified. On the one side these politicians go on talking about the freedom of speech, and on the other hand a man cannot say something which he feels is a scientific fact. It may not be – then prove it!A cultured society need not throw a man like Timothy Leary in jail. You have so many scientists, let them prove what he is saying is wrong. There is no need for any court, for any law to come into it. And if he is right then he should be accepted, then he should be received as a messiah because he is bringing a new way of transformation. If he is right, welcome him. If he is wrong, prove him wrong; that’s enough.This is very primitive, ugly, to throw him into jail because he is saying something which goes against the law. But who told you that the law is anything ultimate? You have made the law. Science goes on progressing. You will have to change your laws if they go against science; science is not to be prevented.I am not saying that Timothy Leary is right, no, don’t misunderstand me. What I am saying is, he has been mistreated without any justification. I also say he is wrong, but he is not a criminal. To be philosophically wrong does not make a person criminal.But when I say he is wrong, I also say that there is some truth, maybe just a little bit, in what he is saying. His idea of changing men’s mind chemically has a truth about it because mind is chemistry. And there has never been any method which was not chemical which has ever been used to change mind.Just look – yoga is the ancientmost methodology of changing mind. What do they do? Body postures are physical, but in certain postures your body chemistry changes. So simple: if you stand on your head the whole normal functioning of your body, its mechanism, is turned upside down. More blood is going into your head, less blood is going into your feet. More blood in the head is going to change the chemistry of your mind, more oxygen is going to change the chemistry of the mind.Yoga has been teaching you breathing exercises. Breath is chemistry. With more oxygen in your lungs you are a certain man; more carbon dioxide, and you are a different man. If your lungs are full of carbon dioxide you are dead; if they are full of oxygen…. There are millions of small, very small rooms; with your breathing, only one third of those small sacs receive oxygen, two thirds remain filled with carbon dioxide. This is your normal state.With yoga-breathing those sacs, those small rooms, start removing their carbon dioxide, throwing it out and filling themselves with oxygen. When all the sacs are full of oxygen your vitality is different, is bound to be different – normally you are only one-third alive. And that much oxygen in your body is going to change everything – but it is all chemistry.So I say there is a certain truth in what Timothy Leary was saying, yet I am against his supporting drugs to transform man. That is dangerous.In fact, politicians are idiots; otherwise they would have used this man; he would have proved of immense help to them. He would have shown them how to enslave people forever. Drugs can be created – and people can be made addicted to those drugs – which will cancel all revolutions, all rebellions. Anything that goes against the status quo, the drug will prevent it.I am against him for other reasons too – because drugs can only change mind, and man is not only mind. He is something more. The real transformation has to happen in that something more – in consciousness. And no drug can even touch consciousness. It can change the mechanism of the mind, the chemistry of the mind. It can give you hallucinations of samadhi, of nirvana, enlightenment; but those are only hallucinations, they are not true.One day you miss your injection and they are gone and you are back in the dumps. And when somebody falls from nirvana, he is going to have multiple fractures – everything destroyed. If you are going to fall, it is better never to try climbing so high. It is better to crawl on the earth if you are going to fall; at least you won’t have any fractures. Drugs can take you very high but you will have to come back down; it was the drug, not you.Meditation changes not your mind, but you, your consciousness.And the change comes by your own awareness.Nobody can fall from awareness. The greater the awareness, the less is the possibility of falling. When awareness is complete, entire, then there is no way you can fall.You have arrived.This feeling of arriving can be given by drugs; hence the influence of alcohol, marijuana, LSD, opium – and there have been hundreds of other drugs around the world. They have always been used. And Timothy Leary is not saying anything new: for thousands of years there have been people who have not only been talking about them, but have been using them and thinking that they are reaching closer and closer to paradise.In India you can find thousands of Hindu sannyasins taking all kinds of drugs, to such a point that they become so accustomed to drugs that drugs don’t affect them. Then they start keeping dangerous snakes, cobras and other kinds, with them, because only a cobra bite on their tongue will give them a little bit of hallucination. A cobra bite will kill you; to them it is just a drug – for a few hours they are flying high. In fact there are monks in India – if they bite you, you will die, their whole body, their whole chemistry has become so poisoned.Timothy Leary was wrong but he should have been encountered on philosophical, psychological, scientific grounds. Sending him to jail simply shows that the country, even a country like America, which is the most sophisticated and cultured in the world, is still barbarous. It does not know how to handle questions, problems. This is not a way of handling a philosophical ideology. It simply shows a very primitive society.And Timothy Leary did not prove to have guts. When he came out he started talking about taking a trip to the moon; he started recruiting people, because he wants a few hundred people to go with him to the moon. And there are fools who are getting recruited. Nobody is asking “What are you going to do on the moon? Why don’t you do it here?”On the moon they are going to expand their consciousnesses. But why on the moon? This man has to do something. He has lost his job, the university won’t take him back. He cannot go back to his old philosophy because that means jail again. Out of all this mess has arisen a great idea: go to the moon because this earth is going to be finished soon!So many fools become interested. They don’t even know that on the moon you cannot exist. The oxygen is not enough, water is not there, nothing grows on the moon. You cannot live on the moon. The idea of expanding consciousness…you will not be there at all to expand anything. But he is getting money, support.Now the government is not taking any action against him. This is the time that action should be taken against him: “What nonsense are you teaching?” But this goes against no law because there is no law that says that going to the moon is criminal, or arranging a trip to the moon is criminal.If Buddha had known that Jesus was going to change water into wine, he would have called him a sinner. But Christians will drop Jesus Christ immediately if all these miracles are removed. They don’t believe in Jesus Christ: they believe in the cross, in the death, in the resurrection, in the raising of the dead, in his changing stones into bread, in changing water into wine.Why do they believe in these things? Something inside them seems to be consoled…something – fear of death. Now they can say, “There is no need to be afraid of death, there is resurrection; one man has proved it. There is no need to be afraid, you are a follower of Jesus Christ. He can raise even dead people back to life. You need not be afraid of hunger, starvation, you are a follower of Jesus Christ; he can turn stones into bread.”These miracles – which are all invented, none of them is a historical fact – are invented to fulfill your psychological needs. That’s why I say there is no Christianity; nobody trusts Christ, so how can you be a Christian? And all the miracles are bogus, because if these miracles had happened the whole community of Jews would have disappeared from the world. They would have all become Christians.If the resurrection actually happened it made no impact on the contemporaries of Jesus. Can you believe this? A man who has been crucified, rises again in immense glory, with a halo of light around him, walking, meeting people, talking to people – do you think Jews would not have been tempted to follow this man? Do you think Jews are made of stone? They are as human as you are, with all the fears that you have. Their seeing in their own lifetime, with their own eyes, a man coming back from death would have transformed the whole Judaic system into following Jesus Christ. But not a single Jew was converted.When Jesus raised Lazarus from his grave back to life, what do you say about the people who were witnesses to it? They were all Jews; and it is not a small thing – if it is not news then what is news? Lazarus was a Jew, all the people around were Jews; still they did not accept Jesus as a messiah. Certainly all these stories are false, they never happened; otherwise they would have left a tremendous impact on his contemporaries. That is the true criterion.How many people followed Jesus? What kind of people followed Jesus? Not a single rabbi, and yet Jews had one of the most ancient traditions of scholarship. Nobody was impressed by this man. If contemporaries are not impressed do you think the Polack pope, after two thousands years, is a Christian? On what grounds? There is no Christianity, because Christ could not influence anybody. He has not left any impact on the world. What exists in his name is something else.So it is absolutely wrong to say that I have been speaking against Christianity: there is no Christianity to speak against. I would have loved to speak against it, but where is it?Friedrich Nietzsche I quote again and again. He said, “The first and the last Christian died two thousand years ago on the cross” – underline the words, “the first and the last Christian.” So what Christianity are you talking about? There is not a single Christian in the whole world.I cannot speak against Christianity. Yes, I have been speaking against something which is pretending to be Christianity and is not. I have been speaking not against religion, but against religions. Yes, that is true, because the very fact that there are so many religions makes it so clear that they all cannot be true. They all can be false, but they all cannot be true.I have looked into all those religions and I don’t see that any of them is true, because they are based on premises which they cannot prove.They ask you to believe.The moment somebody asks you to believe in something, that means he has no reason, logic, no existential support for what he is saying.A man of truth never asks you to believe.He asks you to experiment, to experience.He says, “I have come to a point, you can also come to the same point. But you will have to travel, my reaching is not enough for you to believe. You will have to know it yourself, I can only show you the way.”The man of truth always shows the way but never asks you to believe.He inspires you to walk on the path but he never says that before you have experienced, your faith, your belief is needed. This is something to be understood.If you believe in something then there is no need to explore. If you believe, if you have faith, then what is the need for exploration? Then it is just pointless, all inquiry is pointless. Having faith and inquiring simply means your faith is not real, you are still trying to find out whether it is true or not. Your faith is not faith if you inquire.And without inquiry, how are you going to manage to have faith? I say to you, “There are seven gods; believe it.” But you will say, “How to believe it? There is no support for believing it – and why seven? Why not six, why not eight?” No, the people who require you to believe also require you not to doubt, not to question, not to ask why.What kind of people can become believers? – utterly cowardly, boneless, spineless, just hollow, nothing inside, no spirit. If you are a man you should have some courage to doubt, to question, to inquire. Yes, you can take the belief as a hypothesis, and you can say, “Now we will inquire whether it is true or not. If it is true we will be always grateful to you. If it is not true then we will inform your that you had better change your mind.”All those religions, without exception, ask you for faith.I am speaking against all kinds of beliefs because I want you to know the reality. I want you to experience the truth – and the only way to do that is for all your beliefs to be demolished completely, eradicated from your being totally, uprooted, root and all, so that you are free to inquire, so that you are free to move in any direction, any dimension that you choose.All religions are giving you blindfolds.My dentist puts a blindfold on me. Have you ever heard that in dentistry a blindfold has to be put on the poor man whose teeth you are going to drill? He has to put the blindfold on me, but he is not successful. He puts on the blindfold so that he can make signs to his nurse because he cannot speak. If he says anything that goes against my idea…he has to convey messages to his assistant, his nurse, because she has all the mechanism, all the knobs on her side. And I keep the dentist on this side, and say, “Don’t you be close to the knobs and the mechanism, let the nurse manage. You just be on this side and you do your work.”So he has to make signs because he cannot whisper, because if he whispers, I stop. If he says something that is difficult…so he found a blindfold. That poor man…because of the strong light I can even see the shadow of his hands, and I stop him and say, “No indications!”And I say, “This is not right, because you can drill on the wrong tooth and I cannot even say anything. I cannot even see what is going on. These are my teeth; at least I have the right to say, ‘Don’t drill on the wrong one.’“ But I can understand his trouble; if he starts arguing with me, then the dentistry is never going to happen.And I don’t start anything on belief, I start with doubt. I start by being skeptical because that is the only right way to inquire. Only then one day can you come to know something; otherwise your whole life you will be a believer with nothing solid as your experience.The man who was very much upset and agitated and said that I am corrupting the minds of youth – it is true. That’s exactly what I am doing: corrupting the minds of youth. But this is not something new. Socrates was poisoned for the same crime that I am committing. The crime was, corrupting the mind of the youth.Now nobody can say Socrates was corrupting the mind of the youth. Socrates is known as one of the wisest men who has walked on the earth, but he had accepted, the way I accept, “Yes, I corrupt, because there is no other way to make them innocent again. You have corrupted them, you have poisoned them, you have distorted them. Now if I remove your distortions, your poisons, your corruptions, naturally to you it looks as if I am corrupting. But you have spoiled them; I am putting things right.”But it is natural; a person who believes in God, hearing that I say there is no God, will think I am corrupting the minds of youth.I am simply purifying, cleaning, just removing all the dust that has gathered on their mirrorlike mind. But if they think that dust is the mirror then of course they will think I am corrupting the mirror; I am simply cleaning it. But one thing is important: Socrates was blamed for corrupting the minds of the youth, and this man also is saying I am corrupting the minds of the youth. What can we do?Young children are not available to us. They are being corrupted in your churches, in your synagogues, in your temples; they are not available to us. In your schools they are being corrupted, we cannot prevent it. Old people are gone almost beyond the border; now there is only dust, no mirror. And to waste my time on old people whose one foot is in the grave and the other is going to follow soon – do you want me to corrupt them?I am reminded: three great Russian novelists, Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Gorky were great friends. They were sitting in Leo Tolstoy’s garden discussing. And when men gather together you know what they discuss: women. When women gather together you know what they discuss: men. That’s why if a woman comes into a man’s group, it feels as if she has disturbed the whole thing, because now they cannot discuss women. So boys’ clubs are separate.Even in parties, after dinner the boys will move into a separate room to have some drinks and cigars. But the basic thing is not the drink, because they can drink there, they can smoke there – the basic thing is they need a place where they can discuss women. That is the real topic. And the women also want them to move because then they can discuss men. That is the only juicy topic in the whole world.So all the three old men were discussing women. Gorky said something: he said, “The woman is the most deceptive animal in the world. Howsoever loving a woman may be, you can never believe her. She can deceive you.”Chekhov said, “You are perfectly right. She can not only deceive you, she can kill you. She really kills you slowly, slowly, slowly. Every day it goes on and on; finally you are killed.”And they both asked Leo Tolstoy who was sitting there with a very long face, “What is your idea?”He said, “Don’t ask me. If my wife hears it…. And I don’t trust either of you. I don’t trust anybody, man or woman. If my wife hears my idea about women there is going to be great trouble. I am not going to say anything.”Those two persons said, “You are such a great, world-famous writer. You should leave some opinion about women because it carries weight. And you have written so much and so beautifully, and you have characterized women in such a manner that we don’t think anybody can even come close to you.”And that is true. Tolstoy created novels like Anna Karenina – no novel comes close to it: Anna Karenina is such a character.They said, “You should say something about real women.”Tolstoy said, “Don’t tempt me. I will say something but I will say it only when one of my legs is in the grave; I will say it and jump into the grave and be killed. Before that I am not going to say anything.”So much fear, even in a man like Tolstoy. And he was a very fanatical Christian. But all religions make you a fanatic, for the simple reason that unless you are a fanatic you cannot forget that your belief is superficial. By becoming a fanatic you become so involved and committed that you forget completely that it is only a belief.I have been speaking against faiths, beliefs. Of course I do not corrupt old people unless old people themselves come to me to be corrupted. That is their business, that simply means they are not yet old; their spirits are still young and rebellious. Their bodies may be old but they are not old.I don’t go after anybody to corrupt him.People come from all over the world to be corrupted by me.What can I do?They are in such a search, they travel thousands of miles just to be corrupted. There must be something in this corruption! That old, agitated, upset man should come here and have a little taste of corruption. It is really delicious, there is nothing that tastes so good as corruption; otherwise I don’t see why people should come here. And I have been escaping from people – you can just see – from one city to another city to another city, in such a small life!I have been escaping from people, and I came to Oregon thinking that nobody would come here. But once you have tasted corruption, it does not matter where I go – even if I go to hell, the young people are going to come there to be corrupted because only the young mind can understand that this is not corruption, this is purification.They come here already corrupted, and for the first time they see that one can live without any corruption, without any belief, without any faith, without any God, without any religion. One can live with tremendous joy, with a song in one’s heart, a dance in one’s whole being.There are a few children, there are a few old people, there are many young people, but as far as I am concerned consciousness is always young. There are children who have a consciousness which is not related to their physical age. There are old people who have a youthful consciousness which is not related to their age either.In fact, consciousness has no age.It is always youth, always spring.It is always rebellious.I simply help you to uncover your rebelliousness, because to me to be a rebel is to be religious.Yes, I corrupt people. And I am going to corrupt people. And my people are going to spread all over the world the same corruption.I am not going to be poisoned as easily as Socrates. In these twenty-five centuries people like me have learned much. I am not going to be crucified as easily as Jesus. They told him to carry his cross, and the poor man carried it. My cross will go on my Rolls Royce. And one hundred Rolls Royces will follow it!In twenty-five centuries we have learned something. And I have my style, my way. I cannot carry the cross. No court can order me to be poisoned and killed. I am not so simple as Socrates. They had given Socrates the alternative, “You can leave Athens or you can stop teaching your truth and we will not sentence you to death.”For me both alternatives were perfectly good. I would have left Athens, I have left Athens so many times. But just outside Athens I would have created my campus. And the same youth…in fact, they would have been more interested in coming than they ever were when Socrates was in Athens. It was simply ordinary arithmetic.In London you can find thousands of people who have never gone to see the Tower of London for the simple reason that “any day we can go and see it, the tower is always there.” But do you know what happened in the second world war? The rumor came that Hitler was going to bomb the Tower of London. Thousands of people who had lived their whole life in London, had passed by the tower millions of times, but there was no hurry, the tower was there…. But “Adolf Hitler is going to destroy the tower” – and thousands of people were rushing to see the tower because tomorrow it might not be there.I would have taken it, it was a perfectly beautiful chance. I would have left Athens, and just outside the boundary of Athens – Athens was only a city – I would have started my school, and the people who had never come to my school in Athens would have come because then perhaps I might leave completely, go far away.Do you know, hundreds of letters come from India now, saying, “We never could manage to meet you here. We are ready to come to Oregon to meet you.” I was in their city, I lived in their city for twenty years; now they are willing to come to Oregon just to see me. Every day there are letters saying, “We missed you in India. Please allow us to meet you just for a few minutes.”There I was available. Naturally they thought, “Anytime.” In Bombay I lived in a skyscraper, a beautiful building, “Woodlands.” One family lived just above me, just above my head. For three years I lived there. I was being talked about all around the world, but they could not gather courage to come down just a few steps to see me or to meet me. When I left Bombay then they became aware. And, can you believe it, don’t you think it unbelievable? – they left Bombay and came to Pune; left their family, left their business, became sannyasins: the husband, the wife, and their girl, the whole family.And I asked them, “What was happening to you for three years?”They said, “We always thought, you are there every day. We were hearing about you so much, reading about you so much. We thought we could manage any day. But when you left, suddenly we became aware one day you may even leave life, and this chance has not to be lost.”My mathematics is different. I do not agree with Socrates being unnecessarily a martyr. There must have been some suicidal instinct in these people – Jesus, Mansoor, Socrates; somewhere they wanted to die, they were tired of living. And this was a good opportunity, so that the whole responsibility goes on others.Or, if I had chosen not to go out, I would have become silent in Athens; silence makes no difference. For three years I have been silent here, still corrupting the youth and their mind – in silence. If you know how to corrupt, you can corrupt even in silence. It is a skill. You know perfectly well that for three years I was silent. What were you doing here? – being corrupted! And nobody could even say to me, “You are corrupting them,” because I was silent.I would have remained in Athens, but in silence, and still the corruption would have continued, because my corruption is not confined only to words. It is existential. It is infectious. You can infect anybody with your disease, even in silence. Corruption is just like a disease. In fact in silence it works even better because words are a longer route. I say something to you, you hear something else. Then you start interpreting it, what it means.Words out of my mouth are just like arrows out of your bow; they cannot come back. And what happens to them in your mind is beyond me. Your mind is such a mess that it is impossible to put anything in it. Even if you drop the purest diamond in the Big Muddy Ranch it will be lost. You will soon lose track of where it is.Silence is a short cut.It goes directly, heart to heart.They cannot crucify me. They know perfectly well that by crucifying Jesus they committed a mistake, they created this whole nonsense of Christianity. By poisoning Socrates they made him an immortal. They cannot be so kind to me. They will have to allow me to corrupt as long as I want to corrupt, and as long as people want to be corrupted by me.But make it clear to these people, say, “To you it looks like corruption; to us it is a purification of the soul. It is a bath, we are rejuvenated by it. And if you have any doubts, come to our place; don’t be afraid.”They are so afraid of even listening to the truth, what to say of experiencing it. Even listening to the truth their whole personality starts falling apart because they are somehow keeping it together. It is just glued, it is not an organic whole. They are afraid that just a single shock of truth is enough and they will fall apart. Hence my books are on the black list of pope the Polack – they should not be read. It is a sin to read them.In Jabalpur, where I lived for twenty years, there is a big theological college where they train Christian missionaries for Asian countries; it is the biggest in Asia. I used to go there. I had a few friends there, but the principal informed those friends that I should not be entertained inside the campus “because you are making that man known to the students and to other professors. Now small meetings have started happening in your houses and he will corrupt you.”My friend told me, “This is what the principal has said, and he wants you not to be entertained anymore in the campus. And we are poor professors, we cannot antagonize him.”I said, “You don’t be worried. I will go and see him myself.” I went to Principal Mackwan, who was the chief of Leonard Theological College, and I told him, “You prepare missionaries for the whole of Asia – and you are afraid of me, a single person, coming into the campus of all those missionaries who are going to convert Asians to Christianity! You don’t trust your professors, you don’t trust your Christianity, you don’t trust your missionaries. You don’t trust your students who are going to be missionaries. Your whole campus – there are ten thousand people on the campus – I can corrupt them, and those ten thousand people cannot corrupt me? And you are included in those ten thousand people.“I am here and I am going to come every day – not in the campus anymore, to your office, just to be corrupted by you.”He looked shocked. He said, “To be corrupted by me?”I said, “Yes, you corrupt me, or I will corrupt you. It is an open challenge. You are the head of this institute. Ten thousand people follow you, they think you are some great sage. Corrupt me, make me a Christian; I am ready to be converted. But if you fail, then be ready to be converted to my way, which has no name.”He said, “I don’t want to create any conflict, any controversy.”I said, “There is no controversy, no conflict. I will simply sit here silently; you corrupt me. Or, you sit silently, I will corrupt you. Nobody will ever even hear what is going on.”He said, “Let me think about it.”The next day I was there again. I said, “Principal Mackwan, have you thought about it? Have you asked your wife?”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “That’s what thinking means. When a husband says, ‘I will think about it,’ it means he will consult his wife.”He said, “You are something because actually – that’s what I did.”And I said, “That shows that you are not even man enough – how can you be a Christian?” Just behind him was Jesus, a wooden sculpture on a cross. I said, “Give that cross and Jesus to me because it does not belong in your office. You are not man enough; you asked your wife. Do you think Jesus asked anybody, ‘What do you think – is it okay to be crucified, or escape?’“That man became a friend – and of course became corrupted slowly, slowly. His house became my meeting place. He said, “You are irresistible. You say things which are certainly against our scriptures, our tradition, but not against our reason.”And when I left Jabalpur, among the people who had come to give me a send-off was this old Principal Mackwan, with tears in his eyes. He said, “I will miss you. You became a reality in my life, far more real than Jesus Christ has ever been. Jesus Christ has been just a belief. I am not courageous enough to drop that, but you know it has dropped. I cannot say to the world, ‘I am no longer a Christian,’ but I have come to say it to you because perhaps we may not meet again. I am old, and I know you – once you leave a place you never look back.”And I have never gone back to Jabalpur. Perhaps he is dead now. But on the station he confessed to me that he is no longer a Christian; he has started inquiring, although it is too late. But he is happy; even though it is late, and the evening of his life has come, “Perhaps there is not time enough to inquire, but I am immensely satisfied only with this, that at least I am not dying with false beliefs, insincere, inauthentic, not my own. I don’t have any truth yet, but at least I can die with this contentment, that I have started the journey. And if there is a beginning perhaps one day there will be an end to it too.”Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.Now all those Christians and Jews are having meetings. Just two or three days ago I received a printed invitation card which must have been distributed in some big church somewhere in Oregon: they are going to have my discourses every Sunday.Why, when I am here? And these discourses will be discussed by the priest, by the bishop, argued against; it will be said that these are all anti-religious ideas, that this man is a heretic.Why not come here? If you want to call me a heretic, come here and call me a heretic. In fact I love the word. I enjoy being called a heretic because only very rare human beings have been called heretics. To be orthodox is nothing; to be a heretic needs guts. Come here and say, “You are corrupting people.” That will give me a chance to corrupt you too.In fact in my whole life I have not met a single man whom I have not corrupted; whether he knows it or not, that is a different matter. I know if perfectly, that he is corrupted; he will never be the same again. Even those who have left me for this reason or that reason, do you know their situation? They cannot mix in society. I have corrupted them so much they cannot mix in the society.They cannot come back here because they have been telling lies against me, now how to face me? So a rare thing is happening: in Santa Fe all those fools are gathering together. They have left me. What kind of departure is this? – they are still together! They are my people; they cannot mix anywhere. Now they are gathering together in one place, and they are continually talking about me, against me. That does not matter.Whether you talk for me or against me, you have to talk about me. They cannot forget me. And when you are talking about me, even if you are talking against me, you have not left me yet. I am still very much alive in you. In fact you are talking against me just to get rid of me but you cannot get rid of me. The more you talk against me, the deeper I will be going in you.It is impossible to come in contact with a man who has experienced truth and to go away without being touched this way or that, for or against.When I will be leaving this world I can promise you one thing – I will leave this world divided into people who are for me and people who are against me, but there will not be a third kind. And these both are corrupted by me.Those who are in favor of me have used the opportunity for growth.Those who are against me missed the train.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the goal of life? Why is there a desire to continue to live forever?There is no goal of life, for the simple reason that life is its own goal. The goal is intrinsic, not something outside; not there, far away, but herenow, in this very moment.The very idea of goal is future-oriented.The moment you start living for a goal you stop living in the present, in the immediate. The goal becomes more important. Tomorrow becomes more important, and you have to sacrifice today for tomorrow; and the trouble is, tomorrow never comes, has never come, is not going to come ever.But you go on sacrificing your today – which is your only treasure, which is all that you have got.You risk that which you have for that which is only a mind desire.But the society, culture, civilization, religions – they have all conditioned the mind of human beings to live for ideals, goals, to go on sacrificing the real for some imaginary paradise, future life, eternity, God. All these names mean only one thing: Don’t live now.All the cultures and all the civilizations and all the religions are against the “now” – and now is the only reality.Wherever you are, whenever you are, it is always now. Except “now” there is nothing existential.The word goal is very dangerous. It is suicidal to have a goal. Without your awareness you are being sacrificed for something which is never going to happen.Life in itself is enough – it needs no goals.That’s why there is this urge, this desire, this tremendous lust to live and to live forever. It has nothing to do with you; it is your very life. This is not being taught to you; you are born with this desire. This desire is your gift from existence itself.If you listen to this desire and if you stop listening to all kinds of religious nonsense, you will be a new man, really alive. Yes, life has a tremendous power, and it wants to expand. It wants to live as intensely and totally as possible.And this is not going to happen some other day. If it is going to happen it can happen only now:Now or never.But it is not happening now because your minds are tethered to some future goal: you have to achieve heaven and you have to achieve the realization of God. All bogus words, meaningless jargon, but because they have been repeated so often for thousand of years it sounds as if those words have some content in them.You cannot find a more hollow word than God – with no content in it at all, with no meaning in it at all.When I was reading the book, Waiting For Godot, I thought perhaps Godot is a German word for God. I asked Haridas; Haridas said, “No, Godot is not German for god; the German is Gott.”I said, “My God! that is even worse. Godot is far better!”But Godot or God or Gott, one thing is certain, you are never going to get it. And these Germans are thinking they have gott! Nobody has ever found God.People have been lying, and in the name of God lying becomes easier because the name of God becomes a protective umbrella.In the court you have to take the oath in the name of God – this world is certainly insane – in the name of the greatest lie. The oath is being taken all over the world, in all the courts: “I am going to speak truth.”When I was in a court I simply refused; I said, “I can take the oath in anybody’s name – in the name of the furniture, in the name of electricity – but I cannot take the oath in the name of God because God is the greatest lie. And you are making me tell a lie at the very beginning.”But people are conditioned to live for hypothetical things. It is a strategy of all those people who want to exploit you.The priest cannot exploit you if God is not the goal of life.The politician cannot exploit you if the classless society is not the goal of life.If democracy, freedom, if these are not the goals of life then how is the politician going to manipulate you? You simply say, “My goal is to live, and to live joyously, and to live today – because tomorrow is uncertain. It may come, it may not come; and I am not a gambler. And life is so valuable that I cannot postpone it.”If the whole of humanity decides to live herenow then the second thing will disappear: the desire to live forever.Let me explain it to you, why there is this second thing, to live forever. It is because you are missing life, you are not living it. You are thirsty for it, you are hungry for it, you are starved. Naturally, in this starving, hungry and thirsty state, life starts thinking of living forever – because for what is not happening today you have to create a tomorrow.And you see that it is not happening. Even tomorrows come and go; tomorrows go on becoming yesterdays and it is not happening, not happening. Childhood becomes youth, youth becomes old age – and it has not happened.When I was a small child, one of my father’s friends was very loving toward me. He was a very well-known scholar, and I used to ask him all kinds of questions because my father used to refer me to him: “You ask Pandit Dada.” Pandit means a great scholar, dada means big brother. He was older than my father so he used to call him dada; he was known all over the area as Pandit Dada.So I would ask him all kinds of questions, and essentially his answer was always the same: “When you become a little older then you will know; you are too young.”I said, “Remember, because one day I am going to become older. How long can you deceive me? I know that you don’t have the answer. If you have the answer, please give me the answer. Whether I understand or not, that is my problem, not your problem. Your problem is to give me the answer. Even if it takes years for me to understand it, I will wait, but please give me the answer.”He would say, “You will not understand – you just wait. First you have to be at least mature.”I said, “Okay.”Every year I went on asking the same question. I went from the school to the college, but whenever I would come in the holidays to my home, I would repeat the questions; and now he started becoming shaky. I said, “Now how long do I have to wait?”I graduated from the university; I won the gold medal for the whole state. I came to him and said, “Now what do you want? I have come first class – first in the whole state – in my postgraduation. Is the time right?”He said to me, “Please forgive me, I was lying all the time. But you are stubborn! I have done this to many people; they forget. They become so much involved in so many things – who bothers about childhood questions? “You are strange – the same questions you go on persisting in year after year, and I have been hoping that you will forget, but it doesn’t seem to happen.”I said, “Now you tell me the truth: Do you have any answers? – because now you are almost beyond eighty; death is not far away. Do you have the answers?”He said, “I don’t have any answers. I have been deceiving myself by deceiving others. People believed in me, and because so many people believed in me I started believing in myself.”It is a reciprocal thing. When so many people believe in you, it results in a very strange conclusion: you start believing in yourself, for the simple reason that if you are not right, then how can so many people believe in you?Each leader needs thousands of people in order to be convinced that he is a capable leader. Just take the followers away and you will see the leader disappearing; you will see just an ordinary person – perhaps below average or retarded. But when thousands of people are behind you, believing that you have eyes – they are all blind – you start believing that you have eyes because so many people believe in you.You forget completely that you don’t know. And these people go on conditioning other people. Parents go on giving their diseases as an inheritance to their children, teachers to their students, professors to their scholars.I was continually insisting to my teachers, to my professors, to my vice-chancellors, “I don’t want a bookish answer. That I can find in the library, I don’t need you for that. I want your personal experience. Have you experienced anything that you can go on teaching?”And I have seen their embarrassed faces, their empty eyes, their empty souls. Yes, they are full of rubbish, all kinds of doctrines, creeds, cults. If you want them to give you a sermon then they can give you a sermon, a beautiful sermon, on the ultimate goal of life.And the truth is, life is only immediate; there is nothing ultimate.But the vested interests cannot live without the ultimate.They have to convince you to sacrifice your life for some imaginary idea.The idea can be democracy, the idea can be communism, the idea can be fascism, the idea can be Christianity, the idea can be Hinduism; it does not matter. But something far away…. All along the way you have to go on sacrificing that which is real for something unreal; and in the end comes death, no goal.Because of this situation – that you have been told to sacrifice your life – there is a hunger for eternal life. Otherwise each single moment is so blissful – who cares to live forever? For what?If this moment is fulfilled, if you are contented, you don’t need even a next moment. If it comes, good; if it does not come, even better – because you have lived, you have tasted the nectar of life. Now what more can the next moment give to you?You have squeezed the juice of life so totally, you have not left anything for the moment that is going to follow. Yes, you will live it too; you will squeeze again, you will have another drink, but the desire for life to continue forever will disappear absolutely.Only poor people think of riches. A rich man never thinks of riches, a rich man is really bored with riches. It is the hungry person who thinks of food, dreams of food. When you are well fed, nourished, can you have a dream about food? That’s impossible, it is not even psychologically probable.People are dreaming of sex because their sex is being repressed by the priests, by all the religions. Naturally the repressed sex becomes their dream. They start a vicarious kind of satisfaction. What they cannot have in real life at least they can dream about in their sleep.Sigmund Freud discovered one of the very fundamental things about the human mind: that you cannot believe a human being when he is awake, but you can believe him when he is asleep. Strange! You can believe in his dream but you cannot believe what he says, because what he says is only parrot-like. He has been told what to say. All the preachers are telling him what to say. He knows all the beautiful words. But in his dreams his truth comes up; his conscious mind goes to sleep and his unconscious starts asserting itself. That is more real.Hence the psychologist, the psychoanalyst, has to look into your dreams. You are not reliable. You are so deeply conditioned to become a hypocrite, you may be saying things without ever thinking that you are lying. You may be thinking you are telling the truth, but that does not matter, your belief is not the question; your dream has to support it.You will be surprised to know, there are aboriginals in the world still – I have lived with a few aboriginal tribes in India – and they don’t dream. Sigmund Freud missed a tremendous thing. He should have visited these aboriginals who are not conditioned by civilization, education, culture, religion, who are still living a primitive life.They don’t dream. I have asked so many people, and they say no. Yes, once in a while a person dreams, but then that person becomes a prophet. His dream always proves to be true. His dream is a vision, not a dream.Now, my secretary has just informed me from Australia, the day she reached Australia the chief of the Australian aboriginals came to see her. She asked, “But how did you come to know that…? I have not informed anybody, I have come on a personal visit.”He said, “I have not come to meet you, I had a vision that Osho or somebody very close to him is coming to Australia. I don’t know who the person is, but this vision was so strong that I had to come and inquire if Osho comes, where he will be. That’s why I have come to the commune of the sannyasins. And if you have come, then my vision was right.”And when he was told that she is Osho’s secretary, he said, “That’s perfectly good, because my vision was of Osho or someone very intimate with him coming. And I have come from the aboriginals to welcome you.”He said, “I have been trying to read Osho’s books. I’m not very educated but it seems language does not matter: I understand what he is saying. He wants people to become again aboriginals – innocent, childlike, again reclaiming what you have been forced in every way to lose.”You have been forced to lose your life.Life has been condemned in every possible way by all the religions; and when everybody is condemning life – the whole world is full of condemners – what can a small child do? He becomes impressed by all this condemnation.Just look at the story of the beginning of the world. God said to Adam and Eve, “Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge, and don’t eat from the tree of life.”He had prohibited two trees. Both are the most significant things in life: wisdom and life – and God denies both. Then you can go on eating all kinds of grass and whatsoever you want. He does not say, “Don’t eat marijuana, don’t drink alcohol.” No, He is not interested in that. Adam and Eve can smoke grass, that is allowed; can make wine from grapes, that is allowed.Only two things are not allowed: they should not become knowers, they should remain ignorant; and they should not live, they should go on postponing life. And because they disobeyed and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge…they could not manage to eat the second tree’s fruit, they were caught. After eating the fruit of knowledge they were speeding fast toward the tree of life but they were prevented immediately.It is natural: anyone who has awareness, consciousness – which are the qualities of wisdom – his first thing will be to go deeper into life, to taste it as much as possible, to connect himself with its center, to be drowned in the mystery of life.The story does not say it, but the story is not complete. I say to you, they were rushing immediately, because it is absolutely logical: after eating the fruit of knowledge they were rushing toward the tree of life. And that’s why it was so easy for God to catch hold of them; otherwise, in the Garden of Eden there were so many millions of trees, where would He have found them? It would have taken eternity to search: rather than man searching for God, God would have been still searching for man, for where he is.But I know how things would have happened – they are not told in the story. God, coming to know that they have eaten the fruit of knowledge, must have rushed immediately to the tree of life and waited there knowing that they must be coming. It is such simple logic, no Aristotle is needed.And certainly they were caught there. Both were rushing, naked, rejoicing, because for the first time their eyes were open. For the first time they were human beings; before this they were only animals among other animals…and God threw them out of the Garden of Eden. Since then, man has been longing for life, more life.But the priests who represent the God that has driven you out of the Garden of Eden – the popes, the imams, the shankaracharyas, the rabbis, they all represent the same guy.Strangely enough, nobody says that that guy was your first enemy. On the contrary, they say it was the poor serpent who convinced Eve, “You are being foolish by not eating from the tree of knowledge. God is jealous; He is afraid that if you eat from the tree of knowledge you will become knowledge. And He is afraid that if you eat from the tree of life you will be just like God. Then who is going to worship Him? He is jealous, afraid – that’s why He has prevented you.”This serpent was humanity’s first friend – but he is condemned. The friend is called the devil, and the enemy is called God. Strange are the ways of the human mind! You should thank the serpent! It is just because of the serpent that you have become what you have become. It is because of disobedience to God that you have attained a certain dignity, a pride of being human, a certain integrity, a certain individuality.So instead of thanking God, change the phrase. Rather than saying, “Thank God!” say, “Thank the serpent!” It is just due to his courtesy; otherwise why should he have bothered about you? He must have been a very compassionate fellow.Disobedience is the foundation of a real religious man – disobedience to all priests, to all politicians, to all vested interests.Only then can you throw the conditioning away. And the moment you are no longer conditioned, you will not ask what the goal of life is. Your whole question will go through a revolution. You will ask, How can I live more totally? How can I drown myself utterly in life? – because life is the goal of everything; hence there can be no goal for life. But you are starved, and except for death there seems to be nothing; life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment. You cannot dodge death.I am reminded of a story, a very famous Sufi story. A king dreamed that a black shadow appeared – even in his dream he freaked out! He said, “Who are you and what is the purpose of being in my dream?”The shadow said, “I am your death, and tomorrow at sunset we have to meet. I just came to inform you, because you are a busy man. Ordinarily I don’t go to inform people, but you are a king, you are very special, a V.V.I.P. I am afraid perhaps you may not meet me at the right place, you may be engaged somewhere else; then what am I to do? You have to meet me at the right place, right time, remember!”And before the king could ask, “Where is the right place?”, out of fear his sleep was broken; the shadow disappeared. The time was known, the right time – sunset tomorrow – but where was the place? He tried many times to close his eyes and find the shadow to ask, “Where is the place where I am supposed to meet you?” Not that he wanted to meet death; he wanted to know the place so he could avoid it. But in this whole world, where was that place?But you cannot continue a dream – this is the difficulty. Once it is broken, however hard you close your eyes, you cannot continue the same dream again.The king became so afraid that in the middle of the night he called all his wise men, his astrologers, his priests, palmists, prophets, and he said, “You decide where the right place is so I can avoid it.” And they all started looking into their ancient scriptures. Morning came and the sun started rising; and once the sun started rising, the king became more and more afraid, because sunset is the end of sunrise. Sunrise is the beginning of sunset. When there is sunrise, sunset is not far away.The sun had started moving toward sunset already and those people had not reached any conclusion; on the contrary, they were quarreling so much, arguing about each word of the scriptures. The king said, “I am not interested in your scriptures; you simply tell me where that place is exactly so I can avoid it.”They said, “Wait. This is not a simple question and we have to consult ancient scriptures. We have to find some precedent, and we have to come to an agreement. The astrologer is saying something, the priest is saying something else. If we give you fifteen answers, what help are they going to be? So let us come to one conclusion.”The king’s old servant was standing by his side. He whispered in his ear, “I am an old man, and I am not supposed to interfere in this great conference of big shots; I am just a poor servant. But I am old, I am just the same age as your father, and I have brought you up from your very childhood. Just listen to me: these people will never come to any conclusion.“These people have been arguing for centuries and they have never come to any conclusion. Two philosophers never agree, two prophets never agree, two astrologers never agree. Disagreement is their business, they live on disagreement. So don’t wait. Time is very short. If you listen to me, just take your best horse – and you have such beautiful horses – take the best and run away from this place. At least one thing is certain: you should not be here in this palace, in this city, in this kingdom of yours. You escape anywhere.”The idea was striking. The king said, “You are right, because these people are not going to settle it before sunset.” He escaped. He took his best horse, and by the evening, when the sun was just going to set, he had crossed the borders of his kingdom and entered another kingdom. He was so happy that he had escaped. Now it was not going to be possible for death to find him.To rest for the night he went into a garden. He was thanking his horse, because the horse had done really a miraculous job. The whole day he had been running so fast – even the king had never seen him run so fast. He didn’t wait to drink water, he didn’t wait even for a single moment’s rest…as if he understood the urgency.The king was thanking him, saying, “You saved me. I thank you and I love you and I will reward you. Tomorrow when we go back to the kingdom you will be received with just the same honor as me.”At that very moment the sun set, and a hand…the king felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked back: it was the old dark shadow he had seen in the night.The shadow laughed and said, “You should not thank the horse; I should thank the horse. This is the place where I was waiting, and I was wondering whether your horse was going to make it or not. But he did make it. You have really the rarest horse in the world! You have come to the right point at the right time.”Whatever you are doing you will reach at the right time in the right place to meet death.Your life is not life because you are not living. So why do you call it life? At least be clear about the meaning of words. Why do you call it life? You are not living, you are simply dying – you have been dying since you were born. Since that moment you have not been doing anything but dying…coming closer and closer to the right place, to the right moment, to meet your death.Your life is nothing but a slow death.And who has done this to you? – all your benefactors, the do-gooders, your prophets, your messiahs, your incarnations of God. These are the people who have changed your life into a slow death, and they have been very clever in doing it. A very simple strategy has been used: they say your life is a punishment.Christians say you are born in original sin. Now, how can you have life? – you are just a sinner. Hence the only way to get to real life is to stop this life which is nothing but sin. Who are your saints? The people who are living at the minimum, they are your saints; the less they are living, the greater they are.That’s why you never worship a contemporary saint. No, for you, only a dead saint is a real saint. A contemporary saint? – suspicious! You can’t believe in him unless he is not living at all. He may be living in his dreams; he may be living a double life, showing one thing, being something else. You know perfectly well that you are living in the same split way.Now, just the other day I was reading a news story that one Christian sect has decided that anybody who declares himself a homosexual should not be initiated as a priest. Now what does it mean? It simply means that you have not to declare yourself homosexual and you can be ordained as a priest. No other problem in it!And in fact homosexuality is a by-product of the monasteries; it is a religious phenomenon. It is truly very religious because in monasteries you have gathered men in one place; no woman can enter there. Women you have gathered in another place; no man can enter there. You have created the situation for homosexuality.Now these men are not idiots. They will find some way for their biological urge to be fulfilled. That is simple intelligence: if you can’t have one thing to eat you will have to eat something else, you will have to find something. If you can’t have a woman, then what are you supposed to do? You will have a man. If you are a woman and you can’t have a man, then you will have a woman.Monks in these monasteries were the first homosexuals in the world. Women in these nunneries were the first lesbians in the world. And these people are worried about ordaining…that if a homosexual is ordained…. And why suddenly? – because ten years ago the same sect had declared that everybody is equally acceptable. Anybody who wanted to be ordained as a priest had the right to be ordained as a priest; they forgot to exclude homosexuals. But now after ten years they recognized that some amendment is needed.Repress anything and it will come up from some other side.Life is condemned, sex is condemned, having a desire to live comfortably is condemned. To enjoy anything – food, clothes – is condemned. This is cutting your life. Piece by piece life is taken away from you.In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram every day at lunch and supper, a certain sauce was served. It was made of a tree called neem, which is the bitterest tree in the whole world: just eat one leaf of it and for hours you will not think of anything else. It is just the bitterest thing. But according to Indian medicine it has more medicinal properties than any other herb, any other tree, any other leaf. Nothing is close to it, it has the most significant medicinal properties.So Gandhi had five principles for his disciples. One of the principles was tastelessness. Of course he found neem perfectly good. And neem is grown all over India in every town, every city, every village; in fact every house is supposed to have a neem tree, because in Indian medicine the idea is that having a neem tree in the house purifies the air.I don’t know…because I don’t believe in any kind of nonsense. I have seen people living surrounded by neem trees suffering from all kinds of diseases, so how can I believe that it has medicinal properties? You can have neem anywhere.Gandhi was the first in the whole history of humanity to make a chutney, a sauce, out of neem leaves, to destroy the taste of food. It was served; and he was not a man like me….I don’t know where you eat, what you eat; I have never been to your restaurant, to your canteen – and I never will be. But Gandhi was just the opposite type of man. He would sit with all his disciples so he could keep an eye on what they were eating. He was almost like a detective, following and seeing if everybody was taking the neem sauce or not, because people were tricky. They might try to hide or….One American writer, Louis Fisher, was writing a biography of Gandhi. He went to see him, to live with him for three weeks, to see his ashram with his own eyes. Of course he was a guest, so Gandhi took him with him for lunch, and Fisher was honored to sit by the side of Gandhi. And then came a cup of neem sauce.He said, “What is this green thing?”Gandhi said, “This is the best thing in the whole world: the more of it you eat, the healthier and longer you live. I am going to live for one hundred and twenty-five years because of this sauce.”Fisher was impressed. He tasted it and he said, “My God! If I have to eat this then I don’t want to live one hundred and twenty-five years, because who is going to suffer it for one hundred and twenty-five years? Then I would like to die – the sooner the better.”But Gandhi was very insistent. He said, “One gets accustomed. If people get accustomed to smoking cigarettes, cigars…. Certainly for the first time when you smoke it is not a pleasant experience. People start drinking all kinds of things – coffee for the first time is not something fantastic. So don’t be worried: in three weeks I will train you – you just go on.”Louis Fisher could not deny this old sage, by whom he was already impressed; that’s why he had come to write the biography of this man. He could not be disobeyed, but to destroy all of the food…. He thought it better to drink it in one gulp and then enjoy the food, rather than eating them together…. Because an Indian chutney, the sauce, has to be eaten with food; you mix it with bread, with vegetables. You have to eat it, but that destroys the whole thing.He was more scientific; he said, “It is better in one gulp, and then enjoy the food.” But he never knew that Gandhi was a businessman, he was a Jew. In India the baniya, the businessman, is called the Jew; he is equally cunning, clever. Gandhi was a baniya by his very birth, and he never changed. He remained a baniya, a Jew, his whole life.When Fisher drank, Gandhi asked the cook, “Bring another cup. Look how much he liked it! – and first he was saying that it is so bitter!”Now Fisher said, “This won’t work.” One cup he had swallowed somehow; it was all poison. Now the second cup was available. He said, “I will take it only in the end – first let me finish the food; otherwise the third cup will come.” This is the principle of tastelessness. You destroy the taste; otherwise you are enjoying the food.I was a guest in Gandhi’s ashram. There were so many mosquitoes in the ashram, more mosquitoes than Gandhians. Gandhians were only twenty, mosquitoes must have been twenty million, and just for twenty Gandhians, twenty million mosquitoes…! It is asceticism. And the mosquito net was not allowed in the ashram, it was prohibited; nobody could bring a mosquito net.Gandhi had his own inventions – I don’t know who gave him the idea that he was a scientist. He continued his whole life inventing all kinds of silly things. He invented the idea that if you paint your face and hands with kerosene oil then mosquitoes won’t bite you – of course, because even mosquitoes are more intelligent. They will not come to the stinking face of a man – because when you paint your face and your hands with kerosene oil….I told his son, Ramdas, who was my friend, I asked him, “Ramdas, I cannot survive here, I am going; I cannot remain here in the night.”He said, “Why?”I said, “This kerosene! If mosquitoes can’t come, how can I sleep? – the smell will be coming to me too. And if even mosquitoes are not so idiotic…. Just forgive me.”Those twenty poor people were sleeping there with kerosene painted on their face. Sleep was difficult. I inquired…next morning I came back and inquired. They said, “It is difficult, but sooner or later in spite of all the smell, sleep has to come. One day you may go on tossing and turning, next day you may go on tossing and turning…. In the day, sleep is prohibited because that is luxury.”I said, “If that is luxury, then in the day also I cannot be here. I have to sleep two hours in the day.”Ramdas said, “This is difficult, because if you sleep here in the day and my father comes to know, of course you won’t be in trouble but I will be in trouble.”I said, “No need of anybody to be troubled, I simply will go. This is not the place for me. In the day you cannot sleep; in the night those mosquitoes and the kerosene oil will not allow you to sleep.”This is religious discipline – and this is nothing. If you look in the history of Christian monasteries, Jaina monasteries, Buddhist monasteries, Hindu monasteries you will be simply surprised: it is unbelievable that human beings have been treated in such an inhuman way – in the name of religion. All kinds of stupidities….A Jaina monk eats only one time a day. He cannot use any kind of utensil – a cup or a plate, no – he has to use only his hands. So whatsoever can come into his two hands, cupped, that’s his whole meal for twenty-four hours. And how much can you hold in your two hands? And he has to eat like an animal because he cannot use his hands; they are holding the food.The less you live, the more you cut your life, the greater saint you are. The real sages sleep only three hours; sleeping six hours, seven hours, is luxury. It is simply nature, it is not luxury.It is good that these idiots cannot sermonize to the children in their mothers’ wombs – because they sleep twenty-four hours; they are the greatest sinners in the world. Then out of the womb the child sleeps for twenty-two hours, twenty hours, eighteen hours. That is his biological necessity. In his sleep he grows; his body functions perfectly for growth. And as you become mature, sleep comes to a point…the average is seven hours, but each individual has a different personality, different needs.Somebody may need eight hours, somebody may need six hours; seven hours is average. And there is no average man on the earth, remember. Average is only in arithmetic, it does not exist in reality. So a person who sleeps eight hours is thought to be a sinner.Once a young man was brought to me. He was a disciple of a very world-famous sage of India, Swami Shivananda of Rishikesh. Many American fools were interested in Shivananda. In fact, unless you are a fool you cannot be interested in Swami Shivananda. He was a rare being. This young man was brought to me by his father and mother because he was going nuts. Shivananda had told him that three hours’ sleep is enough, more than three hours is a sin: sleep only three hours. So he was sleeping three hours.Now, a young man needs at least seven hours, average. He may need eight, he may need nine, it depends. But three hours? – impossible. Now, three hours he was sleeping, so the whole day he was feeling sleepy. That is a proof that you are a very dark soul. The word in Indian spirituality is tamasik. Your whole soul is full of darkness, that’s why you are feeling sleepy the whole day; otherwise the day is to be awake.Now, first you tell a person to sleep three hours in the night; then in the day of course he will feel sleepy. Then his soul is tamasik, full of darkness. Naturally he is going to ask, “What am I to do?” It was suggested that he should change his food; his food must be tamasik. Out of his food, darkness is being produced. He should only live on milk and stop all other food. So he started living only on milk.Now, it is a simple understanding that except for man no animal in the whole world, after a certain age, drinks milk. All mammals in the beginning live on milk – but only in the beginning. Once they are able to eat solid food, milk is dropped. Milk is for children, it is not for mature beings. It is only man who goes on using milk. That keeps him retarded.So that boy started drinking milk. Now, it was not enough: he started feeling weak, sick. He inquired again. Shivananda said, “These are all symptoms of your past lives in which you have been committing so many sins, and you have to repent for everything. Now, you start a japa, transcendental meditation. You continue chanting inside, ‘Ram…Ram…Ram…’“ – the name of the Hindu god – “while walking, eating. Whatever you are doing, even talking with somebody, inside you continue, ‘Ram…Ram…Ram….’“You are not to say it loudly; inside there is to be a continuity. And it becomes possible. If you continue then slowly, slowly you can do other work and you can continue. It is a robot-like, mechanical thing: “Ram…Ram…Ram”; it goes on inside. That is thought to be a great achievement. In fact that is simply making the person schizophrenic, splitting him in two. He is doing one thing, and inside he is doing, “Ram…Ram…Ram….” He is in two.This boy’s father told me, “Something has to be done because he walks on the street – the truckdriver is honking his horn and he does not listen, he goes on walking ahead of the truck. Someday he will be killed!”I asked the boy, “What is the matter?”He said, “Because I am continuously concentrating inside with ‘Ram,’ slowly, slowly that sound, ‘Ram,’ has become so loud in me that I don’t hear anything else. Perhaps a truckdriver was honking the horn but I didn’t hear.” If you are so full inside of your own noise…. You also know many times when you are in a very brooding mood, you may not hear a thing that is going on.Now this man was continuously in such a state, and his father and mother said, “We are in such trouble. At three o’clock in the night he gets up and starts chanting, ‘Ram…Ram….’ We cannot sleep. He is going nuts – he is driving us also nuts!”And the boy said, “That is not three o’clock in the night; that is brahmamuhurt.” In India three o’clock in the night is known as the hour of God. All sagely people wake up at three o’clock. “And I am not disturbing anybody, I am simply practicing something sacred; and these people are disturbing me, they are committing sin. Just the way I have committed sin in my past life and I am suffering now, they will suffer in their future life.”It was so difficult to convince him. I had to keep him with me in my house for four weeks. I told the parents, “Leave him with me, because it will take time. He has been badly damaged, he needs great repair – you leave him with me. And don’t be worried about me, I will not go nuts – I am already! You just forget about it. After four weeks I will bring your child back to you.”It took four weeks continually hammering him to bring him back to earth. And when he came back to earth, it was almost as if he had been dead and come alive again. He said, “Now I can see what was happening. It was a nightmare!”But he might have lived in that nightmare and would have become a great sage. All your sages are living in nightmares, and they are preaching to you also to follow them.Their whole effort is to cut your life as much as possible.It helps the politician if you are less alive, because then you are less rebellious, more obedient, more conventional, more traditional – you are not a danger.It helps the priest if you are less alive – for the same reasons.If you are really alive then you are a danger to everybody, everybody who tries to exploit you, everybody who is a parasite on you. You are going to fight tooth and nail. You would rather die than live like a slave, because even death for a fully alive person is not death; it is the culmination of life. Even dying he goes on living intensely and totally. He is not afraid of death, he is not afraid of anything.That is what makes all the vested interests afraid of the living person. They have found a very subtle strategy, and the strategy is to give you a goal for your life, that you have to become somebody.You are already that which existence wanted you to be.You are not to become anybody.But they go on saying you have to become Jesus Christ. Why? If Jesus Christ was not to become me, why should I become Jesus Christ? Jesus Christ should be Jesus Christ, I should be myself. But what are all the Christians doing? – trying to imitate Jesus Christ, trying in some way to become Jesus Christ. Hindus are trying to become Krishna; Buddhists are trying to become Buddha. Strange! Nobody is worrying about himself; everybody is trying to become somebody else. That cuts your life completely. Hence I say,Life has no goal because life is its own goal.Drop all goals.Drop the very idea of future.Forget completely that there is going to be a tomorrow. Collect yourself from every dimension and direction. Be concentrated herenow, and in that single moment you will be able to know life in its eternity. Then the hunger for living, and living forever, will not be there.Tasting life in a single moment makes you aware that life is eternal. There is no need to desire it, it is already eternal. Death is only an episode which happens many times – perhaps millions of times – but life continues. Death is only a changeover from one house to another house.Right now there is a case in India in a court, a very beautiful case. A young man – must be nearabout twenty-two or twenty-four – killed an old man of about eighty. The old man was a door-to-door salesman. And there was no enmity between the two; what to say of enmity – they were not even introduced to each other, they were not acquainted with each other, and the young man killed the eighty-year-old man.In the court the young man said, “In my past life I was the dog of this old man, and he tortured me very much, so much so that finally through his torture I was killed. This was simple revenge. I don’t deny that I have killed him.”He said, “I can produce evidence” – and he produced two eyewitnesses who said that exactly twenty-four years earlier that old man had a dog; he tortured the dog and the dog was killed through his torture. That coincides with the age of the young man. And they said that it is simple: without any enmity with the old man, without any reason…. They were asked if there was any reason, if there was any conflict, any quarrel: no quarrel, no reason, nothing – suddenly he killed that man. That made it even more solid a case; perhaps it had something to do with his past life.The judge is puzzled what to do with this man, because if he has just been killed himself, now to punish him, to kill him again, would be too much. In fact the criminal was the old man who was dead, who could be punished. To leave this man unpunished is also dangerous, because then every murderer will start saying, “In my past life…” and might even produce evidence, because evidence is not difficult to find, particularly in India. You bribe anybody and anybody will give evidence.Perhaps these two witnesses were just paid. Perhaps there was no dog. If these two persons lived in the neighborhood of the man and they knew the old man their whole life, they could say, “We are eyewitnesses: he tortured the dog, he killed the dog.” The age coincides, and the young man had had no problem with the old man. And from the old man’s side nobody has come to say there was any conflict, any antagonism; no proof has been found of any antagonism. Certainly the judge is in a difficulty.Vivek was asking me, “What would you have done?”I have not told her what I would have done because I cannot say many things just for the reason that the whole world is full of bigots about everything. Otherwise it is very simple. It has nothing to do with the judge; the man should be given to a hypnotist. The young man should be deeply hypnotized so that he goes below his conscious mind and comes to the unconscious – and then he should be asked. And the truth will be out, because the unconscious mind cannot lie.That is one great thing about the unconscious mind: it cannot lie. And if the hypnotist is really skillful, he can take the person even deeper than the unconscious, to the collective unconscious. Then everything is crystal-clear, pure truth. It is not a question to be decided in a court; the judge has nothing to do with it.Whatever he decides will be wrong. I can say it before he decides: whatever he decides will be wrong unless he decides to give that young man to a great hypnotist. And things can be very easily found – the unconscious carries all your past lives and their memories. If there has been such a thing, the unconscious will reveal it, will tell it to you clearly.Perhaps the man may start barking when he is unconscious. He may make the bark of a dog who is being tortured, and that will be enough proof. Dogs cannot talk, but they can bark, which will be a better proof than talking. If that man in deep hypnosis starts barking, and starts showing all indications of being tortured, of being killed, that will be enough proof of the innocence of the man. He has done nothing. He should be released with honor. But perhaps this will not happen, because people all around the world are so much against hypnotism – which is a very accurate science.They are so afraid of hypnotism; they think it is something magical, something dangerous, something evil. It is neither evil nor dangerous; it is a simple, deliberate way of putting a man’s conscious mind to sleep and allowing the unconscious to speak. It is going to be, in the future, one of the greatest sciences ever.But if you are not living now, you will hanker for eternal life.The last thing I would like to say about it is: you will be born again and again for the simple reason that you are not living. Your desire, which Buddha calls trishna, lust for life, will continue till you live life totally, fully, feel blessed to be alive. Once you are satisfied to your heart’s content, then there is no more getting into another body again.This is what we call nirvana.This is what we call moksha.This is what we call ultimate freedom from all imprisonment.The body is an imprisonment. Consciousness can be without the body, but because of the desire to live, the consciousness is dragged again and again into a body.Once you have lived…. And that’s my effort here in my commune, that you should live totally, unafraid. There is no sin, there is no hell, there is no evil: there are only politicians and priests who have to be avoided.Live totally!Of course that does not mean to interfere in other people’s lives. A man who knows how to live also feels a tremendous responsibility for other people to live. And when you are living with people, the more nobody is interfered with, the more space there will be for everybody to live. So, remember one thing: don’t interfere in anybody’s life and don’t let anybody interfere in your life either.This is what makes you my sannyasin.Live, and let others live – fully.Help, share, and the desire to live forever will disappear. Then this death will be your last episode, then there will be no more coming back to the body. Then you are free of all imprisonment – and that freedom is life in its utter purity, at its highest peak.Life itself is its own goal – the goal is intrinsic.But just listening to me or repeating my words is of no help.If you understand me then forget my words:Remember the spirit.And be totally dedicated to that spirit.And you will be surprised that even a single moment can give you so much that all the paradises of all the religions become pale compared to it.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have heard you say that scientists are only now discovering things that people in the East knew five thousand years ago. How did we come to go backward?Science as such has no intrinsic value like life, like love, like blissfulness. These are ends in themselves. Science is only a means. This is the most essential thing to be understood.Science is concerned with providing you the means to make life richer, profounder, more comfortable, more healthy. But science can do just the opposite too; it can be destructive, it can move in directions which are anti-life. Hence, science cannot be left only in the hands of the scientists. Something higher, something which is an end in itself must be the decisive factor in determining in what direction science should move, in what direction it should not move.The concern of science is things, objects; it is not concerned at all with being. The word being is just nonexistential for the scientific mind. This is very idiotic because the scientist is a being himself. He is not a thing among other things.Have you ever seen a chair doing scientific research? or a table? The scientist has something which things do not have: consciousness, life, being. But the problem for the scientist is that his methodology limits him. He has a limitation, he can only work on something which he can dissect, which he can set to work upon, which he can put in a test-tube.Now, you cannot put your own consciousness in front of yourself. You cannot divide your being the way you have divided matter – into molecules, then into atoms, then into electrons. And they go on dividing.Being is indivisible. There is no sword which can cut it in two. There is no method by which we can experiment upon consciousness; hence, science completely denies the existence of consciousness – because to accept the existence of consciousness is to accept your impotence too. You cannot do anything about it. Then science becomes a very small thing, concerned only with things. And things are utilitarian, their whole purpose is to be used…by whom?Are things using things? clothes wearing clothes? food eating food? houses living in houses? The scientist is in a real dilemma. If he accepts consciousness, being, life, then he is accepting something higher than his reach, something which is beyond his methodology. And of course a scientist, as a scientist, cannot accept anything which is not proved in his lab – not only by himself but by thousands of other scientists around the world.When the same conclusion is reached through millions of experiments, always the same, without any exception, then it becomes a scientific truth. Only then can the scientist accept it – that too only temporarily because tomorrow new facts may be found and things will have to be changed.It was not so in the beginning. Just a hundred years ago scientists were very adamant, stubborn, absolute about their findings, because whatsoever they were finding was without exception. But within these hundred years all that absoluteness has disappeared. Every day, new facts are being discovered which go on dismantling the old theories.Now a new standpoint has arisen; that is, that science can only be temporarily, hypothetically accepted. Nobody can say of anything that the same will happen tomorrow. We can only say that, up to now, whatever we know, this is the conclusion out of it. Anything new being added to it is going to change the whole conclusion.The dilemma is that science cannot accept being, life. You can cut a man in thousands of parts, you will not find life anywhere. In fact, you cannot put him back together again. Even if you glue him together again, life will not come back.What is life? How can science accept it? It is beyond the scientist’s grasp. So if he accepts it he accepts a limitation of science – and he accepts something higher than science. Then science cannot be the decisive factor in human life. This is against the ego of the scientist.He can deny, as he has been doing up to now, or ignore, which is far better; but some standpoint has to be taken. Even ignoring it is a standpoint – you have accepted it; otherwise, what are you ignoring? Either reject or ignore: in each case the acceptance is there. If you reject it, if you simply say it does not exist, that it is a by-product…. Try to understand the word byproduct.You mix a few things and out of the mixture a new thing arises; it was not there before. But if you take those things which you have mixed…for example, water: hydrogen and oxygen are mixed. Water is formed in a particular ratio, H2O: two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and water arises. The water is a by-product. If you take oxygen out, or you take hydrogen out, the water disappears.But the scientist cannot say even that, because when you put the hydrogen back, the water appears again; yes, it is a by-product. I accept that. But life is not a by-product, because when you put the parts together it does not appear again. You cut off the head, and then you fix it back – you can call Leeladhar, you can do perfect plastic surgery – but still life will not appear. Hence the scientist cannot even say that life is a by-product, that consciousness is a by-product. He will still have to prove both.Karl Marx said that life and consciousness are both by-products. But he is not being logical, he is being simply a fanatic materialist. It is so clear. A by-product is something which arises out of a certain mixture; it will always arise whenever the mixture is made, it will always disappear whenever the mixture is taken away. That is not the case about life.The second problem in the dilemma is that the scientist has to deny himself. The moment he denies being and says the world consists only of matter – that is, only of things – then who is he? He is a thing.This is very strange: a few “things” are researching, finding great truths – dangerous, fatal, decisive – and other things are doing nothing. If we are all things, then perhaps while you are sleeping, your chair is trying to experiment upon you, looking into you, trying to find out what kind of thing this is. And the chairs must be publishing periodicals, research papers, getting PhDs, DScs…. But it is strange that only men, not even animals, are scientists. Animals have life but they are not consciously alive; hence they simply go on living a biological program.Man is the only living organism on the earth who has a totally new quality – consciousness. The walls in this room are not conscious of you. They are not conscious of themselves either. They don’t know they exist, they don’t know that anybody else exists. Man is very special; he knows others exist, he knows he exists.The scientist has to deny the greatest prerogative of man. He has to say that he is also a thing among things. Strange! Scientists also when they are not scientists – because nobody can be a scientist twenty-four hours a day. It is not like religion. A person cannot be religious for a few hours in a day, or a few hours in a week. Either he is religious or he is not.Religiousness is overwhelming, reaches to every pore of your being; it is not a profession like being a doctor, an engineer, a scientist.I used to stay in Calcutta in the house of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Bengal. His wife told me, “I cannot tell anybody, but you have become so close to us that I am daring to say it to you. And my husband only listens to you. Otherwise he is twenty-four hours a day chief justice of the Supreme Court of Bengal; nobody is above him, he never listens to anybody. So it was pointless to tell anybody anyway, but I want to tell you that you have to tell him that to be a chief justice is a profession. He need not be chief justice twenty-four hours a day.”I said, “What do you mean ‘twenty-four hours a day’?”She said, “I mean even in bed he is the chief justice and I am the criminal. He is ordering! He can’t speak in any other way. The jargon of his court has gone into his very marrow. To the children he speaks in the same way. When he is out of the house we are all so happy. And when he comes home everybody becomes serious because the chief justice is coming: not the father, not the brother, not the husband – no, no relationship exists with the chief justice. The chief justice is even required not to be friendly to anybody because that may affect his fairness. He is nobody’s relation.”I talked to him. I said, “This is simply stupid. You are a chief justice between eleven to five in the court. It is a profession, it is not your religion. You need not be a chief justice in bed with your wife. That is ugly. And if you are doing that then you are the criminal. You start behaving rightly and forget all your legal jargon. Your children want you to be their father. What do they have to do with the chief justice? Do you know the moment you enter the house the whole house becomes sad, afraid? Do you consider it something great about you?”He said, “Perhaps you are right. I have made it my religion.”Religion can only be for twenty-four hours a day, it cannot be otherwise, remember. You cannot say, “For half an hour I am not going to be religious” – or can you? Then a Jaina for half an hour can eat meat because for half an hour he was not religious. Then a Christian, for half an hour, can kick the statue of Jesus from this corner to that corner in the room – for half an hour he is not religious! After half an hour it will be put back on the pedestal with great honor and respect and he will kneel down and pray to it. But for half an hour….And everybody needs a little holiday once in a while. But in religion there is no holiday. Religion is twenty-four hours, day in, day out, year in, year out, because it is just like your breathing. But science is not a religion.So when I have talked to a scientist when he is not a scientist – and nobody can be a scientist twenty-four hours a day, remember, it will kill him. He cannot love his wife because love does not exist according to science; there is nothing like love. It is a very unscientific idea – poetic, but not scientific. Love has not been analyzed, it has not been found what constitutes it, how it can be produced on a mass scale, what taste it has, what color it has, what smell it has, whether it is tangible or not.Nothing has been found out about love scientifically. In any scientific book you cannot find love mentioned.When I was in my matriculation year there used to be ninety-two elements, now there are one hundred and eight; that is why I say things go on changing. Ninety-two elements constituted the whole existence. I asked my teacher, “But in this whole list many things are missing.”He said, “What do you mean?”“For example,” I said, “there is no mention of love.”He said, “Are you crazy? In a science class you inquire about love? All that kind of nonsense is okay when you are reading poetry, but in a science class…?”I said, “Science or not, I know that you are in love.”He was very much embarrassed because I really knew – and he knew that I knew. I had really caught him kissing a woman. And I said, “You confess; otherwise I will tell the whole class and the whole school who the woman is” – because the woman was also a teacher in the school, and this whole thing was happening behind the scientific lab.“In these ninety-two elements where is it mentioned? If it is not mentioned, on what grounds were you kissing that woman? So unscientific, silly. You should start teaching in a poetry class – poetry, literature – and behind the poetry class you can go on kissing anybody you want. But behind the science lab….”He said, “I am sorry, but….”I said, “This won’t do. Say that there are ninety-three elements in life.”He said, “That I cannot say because love is not proved scientifically.”I said, “That’s true, but all scientists love. Not only that, they produce children. Not only that, they get married, they even get divorced – and everything is unscientific! In the first place, falling in love….”Even a man like Albert Einstein could not resist falling in love, knowing perfectly well that love does not exist. He fell in love with a woman, who later became Frau Einstein. She was an outstanding poet but it was very difficult to converse because Einstein was so stuffed with his science, and she was so stuffed with poetry. Now, with two heads stuffed with poetry and science together there is bound to be trouble.In the beginning she used to show him poems that she was writing, and Einstein would listen, because he had to listen. But once in a while he would raise a question which would be scientific. For example she would be comparing the face of a woman with the full moon, and he would say, “Wait. This is going too far. A woman’s face, and you are comparing it to the moon? A woman’s body cannot carry it, it is impossible. Secondly, what beauty do you see in the moon? No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no hair – nothing! What do you see there that you are comparing?“And do you know that even this light that shines from the moon is not its own, it is just a reflection. It is sun rays reflected from the moon.” The moon is just as dusty as this Big Muddy Ranch. There is no light that you see; from the moon the earth also shines in the same way as the moon and looks so beautiful.I asked Yuri Gagarin…. After he first orbited around the moon – the first man to come so close to the moon – he was invited for a tour, a welcome tour to India. I asked him, “What was your first idea, seeing the earth from that far away; for the first time, the first man, looking at the earth from that distance, what was your impression?”He said, “I was simply mystified. I am a communist, I don’t believe in mysticism, but I was mystified – what can I do? The earth looked so beautiful, so glorious, with such an aura of light. And for the first time I could not think of myself as Russian, American, Indian, Chinese. For the first time, I thought only of myself as belonging to the earth: this is my earth. That was my first feeling: this is my earth. America was included.”I used to tell my friends in the university who were great scholars – physicists, chemists, biologists, zoologists: “You all love. You all want to live. You all want to have silence, peace. You all want, deep down, to know who you are. Still, as scientists, you go on denying these things. Have you considered that you are denying yourself, that you are turning yourself into a thing?”Science cannot go beyond things. And there is nothing wrong about it; all that is needed is that science should understand its limitations. Everything has limitations, and one should not try to prove that that which does not exist within those limitations does not exist at all. My eyes cannot hear music – that does not mean music does not exist. My ears cannot see the light – is that enough to prove there is no light? It simply proves the limitations of the ear.I dropped the word limitation because it is humiliating. I used to say to my scientist friends in the university, “It is specialization, forget the word limitation. The eyes are specialized organs to see; ears, specialized organs to hear. And you will be surprised that it is the same body, consisting of the same chemicals.“It is the same skin, the same bones, which become your ears, which become your eyes, which become your nose, which become your tongue. It is one organic unity. Ears are nothing but bones specialized for a certain purpose; your eyes are nothing but your skin specialized for a certain purpose. It is a specialization – but a specialization certainly means you will have to leave many things outside.”Specialization means knowing more and more about less and less. You go on becoming narrower and narrower and narrower and narrower. The greatest specialist is certainly bound to be knowing much about almost nothing. The ultimate logical conclusion is knowing all about nothing. That will be the greatest specialist, one who knows all about nothing.I have heard a story about the twenty-first century. A man enters an eye specialist’s office, sits down and says, “I am feeling very much troubled.”The eye specialist says, “Before we begin – because once we begin you will be charged – I would like to ask which eye you are having trouble with?”The man said, “The left eye.”The specialist said, “Then you go to the other specialist, because I specialize only in the right eye.”In fact the right eye is in itself a world so vast that sooner or later you will find that somebody specializes only on the eastern side of the right eye, somebody else on the western side of the right eye. That’s how specialization goes on.In India you go to a physician, an Indian physician; he is not a Western doctor. You need not bother about specialization because he is still practicing something which was invented five thousand years ago when there was no specialization. And the strangest thing is that he will not ask you, “What is your trouble?” – because in India particularly, the Indian physicians think it an insult to ask the patient, “What is your trouble?” Then what kind of expert is he?They will take your pulse with their hand, close their eyes and they will say what your trouble is. And it is almost always true. They will look at your tongue, they will see your stomach. And they are almost always right, because they have been watching the pulse for five thousand years or more – the slight changes in vibration according to each disease. Just looking at your tongue…not at the Western tongue because from the Western tongue I don’t think even an Indian physician can find out what kind of disease you are suffering from.He will find all kinds of diseases, because in the West, for some reason, you clean everything except your tongue. It has not occurred to anyone that the tongue has to be cleaned. It is only in the East that the tongue is cleaned.Just as toothbrushes exist, tongue cleaners exist, and only the Eastern tongue is capable of showing to the physician what the disease is. The color of the tongue, the layers of whiteness, blackness, brownness that have gathered even in spite of our cleaning show what kind of disease it is, because your tongue is connected with your stomach. It is an indicator, it goes on showing you what difficulty is there in the stomach. But if you don’t clean it then of course it is a mess, you cannot figure it out.The eastern physician…the greater the physician, the less he will ask you. He will simply check you and will start writing the prescription. You will be puzzled that he has not even asked what disease – he need not. Specialization for thousands of years has made him know everything about very small things: the pulse rate, its very fine differences; the tongue, its color, the stuff that gathers on the tongue. But don’t call it a limitation, call it a specialization.Science is a specialization. You cannot be a scientist twenty-four hours a day.Religion is not a specialization.It is a way of life.It is a way of breathing, it is a way of walking, it is a way of sitting, it is a way of sleeping.Religion overwhelms all your life.A religious man sits in a different way than a non-religious man.A religious man talks in a different way than a non-religious man.A religious man is always at ease, at home, relaxed.A religious man knows no tensions, no anxieties.Naturally all his functioning has a tremendous grace, a beauty. And because it is not a specialization it can spread all over his life – it has to spread.Once Gautam Buddha’s chief disciple, Ananda, asked him, “Bhante, many times I have awakened at different hours in the night just to see, are you in any need? You were always asleep, you were never in any need. But a problem has arisen for me that when you go to sleep you continue the whole night to sleep in exactly the same posture: the same hand underneath your head functioning as a pillow, one leg upon the other leg, resting – always on one side, never changing sides. This is strange.”Buddha said, “This is not strange. There is no need to move. When I was unconscious I also used to toss and turn – that was the mental turmoil affecting the body. Now if I want to change my posture I can, but there is no inner necessity. And I don’t want to, I love this posture.”People have been asking me how I go on sitting with my left leg upon my right leg for hours. I can change but I don’t see any need. For years I have been sitting that way and now it has become so comfortable that if I change it that will be a discomfort. In this posture I completely forget my legs; there is no need for me to remember about them. But if I want to change I can change, there is no problem in it.Once you live consciously, every act starts taking on a different quality: the quality of relaxedness, restfulness. A religious man can be religious twenty-four hours a day. Yes, even in bed, even while making love to his wife he will be religious. His lovemaking will be of the same category as his prayer, his worship, his meditation.Perhaps I am one of the most misunderstood men on the earth today. In my name there are more than three hundred and fifty books on all kinds of subjects; perhaps I have not left any corner of life untouched. But one book became world-famous, or world-notorious.It is just a series of lectures on the subject From Sex To Superconsciousness. It is very strange, because anybody who reads the book will be surprised…but people believe in gossips; who wants to actually read the book? People believe the journalists. Who wants to go into anything to find out the truth?The book is not for sex; it is the only book in the whole existence against sex, but strange…. The book says that there is a way to go beyond sex, you can transcend sex – that’s the meaning of “from sex to superconsciousness.” You are at the stage of sex while you should be at the stage of superconsciousness. And the route is simple: sex just has to be part of your religious life, it has to be something sacred.Sex has to be something not obscene, not pornographic, not condemned, not repressed but immensely respected, because we are born out of it.It is our very life source.And to condemn the life source is to condemn everything.Sex has to be raised higher and higher to its ultimate peak. And that ultimate peak is samadhi, superconsciousness.But I was condemned all over the world by all the religions for preaching sex. I was amazed. I chuckled. I said to myself, “I am born in a great world, in a great time! I had never thought that the world consisted of so many idiots.”Books have been written against my book; articles in almost every language, in every newspaper, in every magazine have appeared against my book. But the fundamental of their understanding remains the same: that I am teaching sex.I am teaching transformation of sex.It is so clear. But no, these people were not interested in transformation of sex, they were interested in condemning sex. It was a good excuse. And who is going to read the book? Who is going to find out what I have really said in it?It is so strange and unbelievable that Hindus have worshipped one great sexologist, the first in the world, Maharishi Vatsyayana, who has written a book Kamasutras, which means “Aphorisms on sex.” It is the first obscene and pornographic book, with ugly drawings – it is pictorial; photography was not in existence; otherwise it would have been like Playboy. Sketches…and he propounds eighty-four postures for intercourse.Now many idiots must have been trying them and wasting their whole life – eighty-four postures! And a few are such that it is better if you join the gym and do some gymnastics rather than doing those postures. You will break your neck or your wife’s neck. You will not believe that there is a posture – the woman is standing on her head and the man is making love to her. And this man, Vatsyayana, is respected in India as a Maharishi, as a great seer. Because he was supporting Hindu ideology, Hindus – it was a mutual understanding – respected him.Because I am not supporting anybody’s ideology there is no question of respecting me for anything.And out of three hundred and fifty books, that is the only one in which I talk about sex and its transformation. What about the three hundred and forty-nine books in which I have talked about every possible problem of human growth? Nobody bothers about all those books because nobody is concerned with human growth. Everybody is concerned that man should remain retarded.The more retarded humanity is, the more it is in the hands of the politicians, in the hands of the priests, in the hands of all kinds of vested interests. Who is interested in transforming man? They want you to be completely blind and deaf. They want you to be just a robot: efficient, not creating any trouble – no strike, no protest, no revolution, no rebellion – just a robot who is always ready to say “Yes, sir.”The question is significant: why has it happened that there was a time, five thousand years ago in the East, when science reached to its highest peaks – then what happened? Why in the East was that whole project dropped?When, in the East, science was at its peak the West was just barbarous. Even today Ashoka’s pillar which was made to honor Gautam Buddha…. It was made two thousand years ago, and scientists have not been able to find how it was made, because to make that high a pillar of solid metal…. It has been standing in the rain – for two thousand years – in the summer, in the winter – and has not gathered any trace of the years: it is without any stain. Stainless steel is a modern phenomenon; it was not possible then – but the pillar is there.In Egypt, the pyramids have such huge stones on the top that we don’t have cranes even today to take all those huge stones to that height. And they were put there three thousand years ago. Something must have existed, something better than our cranes.Five thousand years ago, in India, there happened a war which must have been something like the third world war, if it happens. Millions of people died and the weapons that were used – their description is clear-cut in the scriptures – seem to be nuclear. They were not ordinary weapons.What happened to this science? Why has it simply disappeared?In Mexico there are triangles made on the earth so big, so vast, that you cannot see them. Wherever you are standing you will see only one line. If you are standing at the corner you will see two lines meeting, but you cannot see the whole triangle. The only way to see the whole triangle is from an airplane, there is no other way. Every way has been tried to see them but the only way is from an airplane. You cannot see it unless you are flying over it, it is so huge. It is geometrically accurate – and it is almost four thousand years old!Why did the people create that? For what purpose? It cannot be of any use to “primitive” people – a triangle so vast and so accurate – unless it was a signal to flying machines, just the way you have lights and signals for airplanes in our airport. And just by the side of these triangles…. These triangles have been found in many places, not in just one; one may have been accidental, may have been natural, but in many places…. Just by the side of the triangle there is the runway. A runway for what purpose?Those people had no use of a runway; unless an airplane was descending or taking off, those runways are useless. And those runways have been measured and it has been found that that length is absolutely necessary only if a flying machine is being used.But what happened to all these scientific developments? It is significant to understand that it was a conscious decision to drop all scientific development because it was going against life. It was going against consciousness, it was going against humanity, it was going against nature.It was a conscious decision after the Mahabharat war in India, five thousand years ago, that these arenas of science should be closed – because science is not a value in itself. Unless it serves life, unless it makes you more enriched, there is no need for so many human beings and so many geniuses to be involved in it.It was a conscious decision. But who can make this conscious decision? That’s why I have been telling you again and again that humanity can be saved only if there are enough conscious people in the world, people who are not Christians, not Hindus, not Americans, not Russians, who are simply conscious, and can create a climate of consciousness around the earth and an awareness that science should be subservient to human values.Man is not the servant of science, but the master.And human values should decide whether a certain scientific project is worth going into or not.For example, when Albert Einstein wrote the letter to President Roosevelt about making the atom bomb, if President Roosevelt had any consciousness of human values he would have refused, knowing that this plaything, this atom bomb, could become the ultimate danger to humanity that it has become. Neither Roosevelt nor Albert Einstein had that consciousness.Albert Einstein certainly repented later on when Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were burned through atomic explosions. Within seconds hundreds of thousands of people simply evaporated. It was a shock to Albert Einstein because it was his letter that triggered the whole process; he was responsible. Roosevelt was no longer the president, the president was Truman, and you cannot find…strange, you cannot find a more untrue man, but names are strange – just the opposite.When Truman was asked the next morning, “Could you sleep? – because Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been burning. One hundred thousand people in Nagasaki, one hundred and twenty thousand people in Hiroshima have died. Could you sleep? – because it was your decision to drop the bomb.”He said, “I slept the best I have ever slept, because so many worries had been there, but in my dropping that bomb, all the worries finished. I slept beautifully.” Can you say this man has any awareness of what he is saying, what he is doing?The man who dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the pilot, was asked the next day, “What is your reaction?”He said, “What reaction? I simply followed the orders; I had nothing to do with it. I was ordered to drop the bombs, I dropped the bombs. That’s my profession, I am paid for it. Those who have given the order should have some responsibility or not – that is their business – but I don’t have anything to do with it.” Now, can you say this man is even a human being? Could he not say that, “I am not going to follow this order. Two hundred and twenty thousand people are going to be killed! It is better you shoot me; I am not going to follow this order”?This is what I call religious disobedience. And this man would have become, in my eyes at least, the beginning of a new humanity.But the idiot said, “I simply followed the order.”I am not saying don’t follow orders. I am saying, before following orders at least think twice about what the order is.Science is not the ultimate value, it is a means.The scientist is an expert – specialized, limited:He goes on knowing more and more about less and less.The religious person is just the opposite:He goes on knowing less and less about more and more. A day comes when he knows nothing about everything. I am in that position.I know nothing about everything.That is why I can speak about everything without bothering whether it is so or not. I am an ignorant man so there is no need to be worried.Religion has values.I have told you science is concerned with objects, things.Religion is concerned with beings, consciousness, awareness.Unless religion has the upper hand, science is going to destroy everything, for the simple reason that the scientist has no bird’s-eye view of the whole. Of course the bird’s-eye view cannot be called the expert’s-eye view.The bird flying high in the sky can see everything, but you cannot say that the man who is a biologist working on the earth, finding more and more about biology, sees more than the bird. The bird knows nothing, but the bird sees everything that is there. The bird’s vision is vast. The scientist’s vision is very narrow; naturally he cannot see beyond it.Now, there is one scientist, Delgado, who has invented electrodes which can be planted in your head. You will not know – once the electrode is inside your skull you will never know that there is anything there, because inside your skull there is no sensitivity. Even a stone can be put there, you will never know about it. That electrode in your head can be controlled from anywhere, from distant control systems, remote control.You may be going to your home and from a thousand miles away Delgado can dictate to you, “Don’t go, come back!” And you will immediately turn about and start moving back. Of course you will find some excuse why you are doing it, not knowing that you are not doing it, you have been forced to do it. But man is such an egoist, he cannot accept such a thing. He will find some excuse, something or other. He will remember something that he has forgotten that has to be done first, he has to run back.Now, Delgado is proposing – again, like Albert Einstein, to all the politicians of the world – “If you want humanity to behave rightly then put electrodes in their heads.”For example, he says there is no need for a criminal to be kept for thirty or fifty years in a jail. Fix an electrode – it is just a five-minute operation. Put him under anesthesia, and within five minutes the electrode will be inside his skull and he will never know about it. And you have the remote control; you can always tell him what to do, what not to do.If he is a murderer you can program him not to murder again. If he is a thief, you can program him not to steal again. What is the point of putting these people in jail for fifty years when just a simple electrode can do the work? Sensible…the suggestion is perfectly sensible, but Delgado is a scientist: he knows more and more about only the electrode; he has no conception of any of its other implications.In Russia, what will they do? An electrode will be put in every child’s mind the moment he is born. In Russia, no child is allowed to be born in a house, the child has to be born in the hospital. And that is the best time; the skull is not hard, the operation is very simple. You just push the electrode in and the child will never know for his whole life. He cannot disobey the communist party, he cannot disobey the state, he cannot disobey Das Kapital. He cannot do anything that you don’t want him to do, he will do only whatever you want.You can have in the Kremlin a central remote-control system for two hundred million people. You just push one button and they will all be ready to fight, to give their life – for any purpose.And this is not going to happen only in Russia – because this is the problem: if it happens in Russia it is bound to happen in America on a wider scale, a bigger scale, because America cannot be number two. If Russians orbit around the moon, then Americans have to step on the moon. If they put in an electrode, America is going to put in two electrodes – in case one fails. Why take chances? But Delgado is not aware of all these implications.In the East, science came to a point where it was clear that it would destroy ecology, it would destroy man’s dignity, it might destroy the whole planet; it was better to shut it down. That is why in the East almost everything that you know of has been invented but stopped because there were superior beings available, enlightened people available who could be asked whether this line would be right.If Delgado asks me, I will say, “You are wasting your genius and you are wasting it in such a dangerous project, one which can destroy the whole of humanity, one which is worse than nuclear weapons.” It is better to kill the whole of humanity than to put electrodes in human minds and make them slaves.Only through deep meditation, silence, compassion, love, intelligence, will you be able to direct science.In the West, science right now is going wild. It is time, there is still time – not much of course, but still time to put a stop, a full stop, and move scientific research into helping human growth: to make man more loving, more caring, more alive; to give him something to sing and dance about; to make him celebrate, so that this whole earth becomes a rejoicing.

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From Darkness to Light 01-30Category: TALKS IN AMERICA

From Darkness to Light 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Modern science has discovered a number of laws such as the law of gravity, which describe the behavior of the material world. Does the science of the inner soul also have laws which apply to consciousness and being?It is one of the most fundamental differences between the outer and the inner.The outer is ruled by laws:The inner is just freedom.Consciousness knows no laws. It is matter that needs laws. Without laws, the material existence is impossible. And in the same way, with laws, the world of consciousness is impossible.Consciousness can exist only in absolute freedom, with no limits, with no conditions, with no laws.Matter will immediately fall apart without laws, for the simple reason that it has no individuality. It has no center of being which can hold it together if there are no laws. Matter is without a center, or in other words, without a self. Just because there is no center in it, it cannot remain together unless it is surrounded by all kinds of laws, conditions, rules.Science goes on discovering laws because it deals only with dead matter. It has not yet come to encounter consciousness. Perhaps the very existence of consciousness is beyond its scope. It can discover laws, it cannot discover freedom.Laws create a certain slavery. Matter exists in slavery. Hydrogen and oxygen meeting in a certain proportion make water; H2O is their formula, no freedom, it cannot be H3O. Hydrogen cannot say, “I am bored always being H2; just for a change, today I am going to be H3.The material existence is absolutely mechanical. There is no freedom, there cannot be, because there is no one to be free. Freedom needs consciousness; its first requirement is consciousness. There is no consciousness in hydrogen, no consciousness in oxygen; they simply follow a routine eternally. That routine we call a law because we cannot find any exception to it.What is a law? – a certain way of behavior without any exception. The moment you find the exception, the law has to be dropped; it is not a law, you have to find out more, you have to go deeper. The exception is not allowed in the objective world. And in the subjective world there are only exceptions. Each individual is an exception.You cannot find laws, in the inner world, like gravitation. You throw a stone up; it goes to a certain height which is determined by how much force you have put into throwing it. When that force is exhausted that stone starts falling according to the force of gravitation. The stone has no decisiveness of its own. It cannot say, “Today I am not going to fall downward,” or, “Today is a holiday.” There is no holiday – the stone has to fall downward.I am reminded of a very beautiful Sufi story. A Sufi mystic who was very much loved by people yet very much feared too…. That was a strange combination: they loved him for his unique beauty, compassion – everything in that man had a grace – but they feared him also, because he was unpredictable. He might do anything unexpectedly, things which are not supposed to be done by a mystic saint. He was a little crazy.As far as I am concerned it is impossible to be a saint and not be crazy. I am saying it is impossible to be a saint and sane in the eyes of the world. If the world thinks you are sane, that is simply a proof that you are still part of this world. You still follow the same arithmetic, the same logic, the same reason – that’s why people think you sane. But a saint has fallen out of the mob. He is no longer part of any society, any culture, any religion.He is spontaneous; that is his danger. For example, a Christian saint is supposed, when you slap him on one cheek, to give you the other cheek. Anybody doing that is certainly not a saint. He is simply following a rule. He is a follower, a blind follower – but he is a Christian saint.When you slap a real saint then it is absolutely unpredictable what is going to happen. He may slap you twice. He may slap you on both the cheeks together. Or he may simply have a good laugh and go on his way without turning the other cheek. He is not following any creed, any dogma, any principle. He is acting in the moment, so whatever happens spontaneously is his way.About spontaneity you cannot be predictable.And this is the most fearful thing in the world. People want you to be predictable. That’s why you are so much afraid of strangers. You don’t know them, they may do something that you don’t want to be done.This Sufi mystic was loved; he was lovable, he deserved it . But he was feared also because he was well known for his strange behavior.He was staying in a disciple’s house, and knowing his craziness they made arrangements for him to sleep in the basement – because in the night he may start doing something, may create a nuisance for the neighbors, for them. The basement was good: even if he started doing something nobody would even come to know of it, it was an underground basement. And they locked it so he could not come out in the night. But in the middle of the night they suddenly heard great laughter coming from the roof! They rushed up and saw the mystic lying on the roof laughing. They said, “How did you manage to get up here?”He said, “I simply started falling upward. I don’t know how…that’s why I am laughing, because you poor guys had made so many arrangements, you had even put on a big lock. And it was perfectly okay – but then I started falling upward! I am laughing at this whole thing.”This may be just a story but it has something significant to say to you; a saint can fall upward.Don’t think in terms of objective facts. The story does not belong to objective reality. It is saying something about the freedom of consciousness, where gravitation does not work. It is simply saying that there is a world in you which is beyond this world in which you are living, a world within this world: a world of freedom in the midst of a world full of laws without exceptions.The spiritual man is bound to be a free man.He lives in freedom, he dies in freedom.You cannot take his freedom away, there is no way. You can kill his body, but you cannot even touch his soul.Science cannot accept this for the simple reason that science means laws. And if you accept an exception then the whole law loses meaning. According to the scientific attitude, everything in existence is bound by laws. And if you want to do something in the world, all that you have to do is to find out the law. Once you have got the law then you can do everything with matter. Just follow the law; matter cannot go against the law.For this simple reason science has always denied, for these three hundred years, that there is any soul in man. To accept the soul is to accept that something is there which transcends all laws. That is very destructive to the scientific attitude. The whole palace of science collapses.A single religious man is enough to destroy the whole scientific edifice. Hence, either the religious person has to be destroyed before his presence becomes dangerous to science itself, or he has to be ignored – so much so that it is as if he does not exist at all. But whatever you do it is an existential reality that consciousness exists, and exists without any laws.Meditation is only a door to take you from the world of slavery to the world of freedom.The languages of both the worlds are going to be contradictory to each other, but as far as I am concerned there is no need for any conflict. All that is needed is a little wider mind, just wide enough to accept that there are many dimensions in existence. The dimension in which you are working is not the only one. There are many other dimensions in which things exist in a different way. It does not destroy your dimension, it simply shows the richness of existence.Everybody here is trying to make existence poor. The scientists are trying to make it poor by saying that it is only matter and nothing else. The religious people are trying to do the same by saying it is only God, nothing else; only the soul, nothing else. These people who are trying to prove that existence is only one-dimensional are wrong. Why make existence so poor? It is multi-dimensional. One thing may be true in one dimension, and may not be at all applicable in another dimension. One thing may be right in one dimension, may become wrong in another dimension.But science is too much ruled by one mind: Aristotle. This one man for two thousand years has been dictating everything in the world of science: the laws, the logic that he wrote two thousand years ago continue to be applied. Anything against Aristotle is simply unacceptable. No man in the whole history of humanity has dominated so much. A single man – and he created the whole system of logic, and science goes on following his logic.He himself is not very logical. Looking into his books you can find so many flaws, even according to his logic; it is not a scientific mind who is writing it. And in his personal life he was absolutely illogical.He writes in one of his treatises, “Women have fewer teeth than men.” He had two wives, not only one. It is not a scientific mind who is writing it. He could have said to Mrs. Aristotle One, or Mrs. Aristotle Two, “Please just open your mouth.” And it is not such a big thing just to count the teeth. In fact there is no need even to tell women to open their mouth; you always have to say, “Shut up!” You can always count their teeth without saying anything! Just a little alertness is needed.Or, if he was so afraid and henpecked, in the night he could have managed it; when one of the Mrs.’s was snoring he could have counted. But my feeling is that he never tried. He simply accepted the view prevalent among the masses for thousands of years, that the woman has to have everything less than the man, naturally. It is a logical corollary that if the man has thirty-two teeth then the woman must have no more than thirty-one. She can’t be allowed to have thirty-two.This is not logic, this is superstition. And this man has been dominating the whole world of science for two thousand years. Only just now, within these fifty years, have a few scientists started feeling a little uneasy with Aristotle because they have come very close to a few things in existence which don’t follow Aristotle’s law.For the first time when it was found that nature goes on its own way – it has its own laws, it has no obligation to follow Aristotle – it was such a shock that even though people had discovered things which went against Aristotle, they were not courageous enough to publish them. People kept those discoveries for years without telling anybody, because how could anything go against Aristotle? He had put logic so tightly together….For example, A can only be A. It cannot be B. Now this is a simple logical formulation: A is A and can never be B. But in the East twenty-five centuries ago we also had discovered many systems of logic, not just one; that is significant. The West knows only one system of logic, that of Aristotle. The East knows many logical systems developed by different people, very contradictory to each other but in themselves very logical. According to their own logic they are absolutely logical. According to somebody else’s logic of course they are not.The fact that in the East there are many systems of logic symbolizes one thing: whatever man creates is going to be a very small fraction of reality. It may represent a fraction of reality, but it cannot represent the whole reality.Hence Buddha…if Aristotle and Buddha had met, it would have been really something just fantastic, because Aristotle says A is always A and can never be B. But Buddha has a fourfold logic: he says A is A, A sometimes is B, A and B sometimes are both together – so much so that it is difficult to decide which is A and which is B; and sometimes A and B both are absent – still, their absence is their absence. He calls it fourfold logic. And if you look at existence you will find Buddha a better logician than Aristotle.In those fifty years science has come closer to fourfold logic than Aristotle’s onefold logic. Now there is non-Aristotelian logic, which is absolutely contradictory to Aristotle; still, it works. Just as Aristotle’s logic works in a certain fragmentary reality, the non-Aristotelian logic also works in the same way in some other part of reality.Euclid’s geometry works for one fraction of reality, non-Euclidean geometry works for another fraction of reality. But there are still more parts or reality to be discovered. Buddha had a fourfold logic, Mahavira goes a little further; he has a sevenfold logic. And it is almost impossible to think that there can be more dimensions than seven. He has managed every possibility in that sevenfold logic.If you ask Mahavira about God his answer will be sevenfold. Of course you will not get any answer. You wanted an Aristotelian answer, yes or no. Mahavira says yes, God is. Then, he says, wait; don’t run away with that statement, it is only the beginning. The second statement is: God is not. But don’t be in a hurry. The third statement is: God is both – is and is not; and the fourth statement is: God neither is nor is not. The fifth statement is: God is indescribable. And the sixth is: God is, and is indescribable. And the seventh is: God is not, and is indescribable.You cannot get anything out of it, you will think this man is crazy. If you had come confused, you will return worse. At least you were only puzzled abut two things: whether God is or God is not. Now there are seven openings. But modern science is coming very close to such openings. Physicists, digging deeper, have reached into matter they have found very strange…. They had never expected that they would find something in the deepest core of matter which would defy all their logic, all their laws. First they tried somehow to manipulate matter according to their logic – but you cannot manipulate reality.Finally, Albert Einstein had to say that whatever reality is, whether it goes against our laws and logic does not matter. We will have to say good-bye to our laws and logic and listen to reality. We cannot force reality to follow our laws and logic. But reality has logic and laws of its own. It is not freedom.Aristotle’s logic helped, at least on the surface; as far as the waves on the surface were concerned, he was perfectly right. But as you start diving deeper into reality, more and more new facts start emerging. Aristotle is already abandoned, and Euclid is no longer part of modern science. But that does not mean that science has come to feel that matter is free; it simply means that matter has its own laws.Up to now what we were doing was, we were trying to put our laws over matter. On the surface it appeared okay, because our instruments were not fine enough to detect the differences between reality and out laws, so we were able to enforce laws over matter.For example, the question raises something about the law of gravitation. It used to be a law; it is no longer. It used to be a law according to Newtonian logic. Because things fall downward, naturally it was assumed that there must be a force, a magnetism in the earth, which pulls those things downward.They say it is not the earth that pulls them downward, it is the universe that forces them downward. These are the two sides: either they are pulled downward, or they are pushed. It is almost as if you enter an office door; on one side is written “pull” and on the other is written “push.” If it is written “push” and you go on pulling, the door is not going to open. It is the same door, but it has two sides. Gravitation is only one side of the story. The other side of the story has now got a name, the law of levitation. Things can be pulled up, just as they can be pushed down.Your rockets have gone to the moon. Now we know that the law of gravitation functions up to two hundred miles. After the rocket passes the two-hundred-mile boundary, the law of gravitation simply disappears. Then something else starts working, perhaps the law of levitation – the rocket is being pulled, not pushed down.All these years this has been the only problem: how to cross the boundary of the gravitational field? Those two hundred miles are the only problem. You have to go so fast, faster than the law of gravitation can pull you down, so that before it catches you, you are out of the field of gravitation. Once you are out, the earth is absolutely impotent, it cannot do anything to you. And once you are out of the gravitational field, even in your rocket gravitation no longer functions.So you cannot sit in a rocket without a belt; the moment you open the belt you start floating up. In a rocket you can fly, inside, from one corner to another corner. You can go out of the rocket – people have gone out of the rocket; there is no danger because there is nothing to pull them. They just have to keep a certain mechanism with them because the rocket itself has no gravitation to pull them toward the rocket. So they have a certain mechanism that helps them to move back toward the rocket; otherwise they would be lost into the eternal universe.They become weightless, because weight is nothing but gravitation. If you are on the moon, it is as if your weight is one eighth of what it is here. If you are eight hundred pounds, on the moon it will be like only a hundred pounds. If here you can jump ten feet, on the moon you can jump eighty feet.If someday people start living on the moon, it is going to be really difficult. People can simply jump into your house; you may be living on the third story of a building, but from the road they can jump directly, inside your house – there is no need for a lift. Games like football and volleyball become impossible, because the same hit will take the ball eight times higher or longer. You will need eight times bigger stadiums, eight times bigger playing grounds, because the moon is very small compared to the earth, it has very little force.Because of the moon this has become something important to think about: there may be planets which don’t have any gravitation. You cannot land on those planets unless you have certain mechanical devices to land. The planet itself won’t support you in any way. Even walking on the moon is very difficult. You need very heavy boots so that you can keep yourself on the ground; otherwise you will go eight times higher each time you take your step. You will be flying in the air.As science goes deeper into different specializations, new facts go on emerging, old laws go on changing. Only one thing remains certain: the old law has to be dropped because a new law has to be adopted. But one thing you cannot drop, and that is, you cannot accept any exceptions: that is true in the new law also – no exceptions.However subtle physics has become, its laws are still without exceptions. And I don’t see any possibility that science can come across anything which will be freedom. There will always be laws without any exception: new laws, different laws: more complex, more difficult to understand, more difficult to figure out. But one thing remains constant – that there is no exception anywhere.It is true about the inner world, too, that one thing remains certain – there, everything is exceptional. Religious people have not been able to understand this.In India…religion has gone deeper in that country than anywhere else. Just as for science you have to look toward the West, for religion you have to look toward the East. And the East means simply India and nothing more, because all other Eastern countries have only borrowed from India; the originals are in India.I was speaking in all kinds of religious communities in India, and I discovered one thing: that they don’t have any idea that the inner world is the world of freedom. They used to ask me, “You speak about Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Mahavira, Jesus, in the same way? They are not similar; they all cannot be right.” Why can’t they all be right?For the Jaina, Mahavira is right, that is their criterion; anybody who is not like Mahavira has certainly not reached to the same state of consciousness. To the Buddhist, Buddha is the criterion. To the Christian, Jesus is the criterion. They are all living in the same fallacy – that in the religious world there are criteria, laws, certain patterns; and that when you reach to a certain stage of consciousness you start manifesting the same things. Neither time matters, nor space.Now the Jaina cannot accept the idea that Jesus can drink alcohol; that is impossible for the Jaina. At the stage of consciousness of a Mahavira, how can one drink alcohol, or eat meat? They cannot accept that in that state one can do anything. In fact, only in that state can one do anything because it is a state of freedom. To you it is alcohol, to you it is a drug and it makes you unconscious. But in that state of consciousness it is just water, it does not make you unconscious. So what you choose in that consciousness is totally free.Jesus chooses to drink, feels no problem about it…perhaps thinks it is good because it keeps you closer to people. Mahavira becomes too distant – so far away, sitting on the top of Everest; and you are there, deep down in the dark valley. The distance is so much, communication is not possible. But that is his decision. He enjoys that sunlit peak – he does not bother to communicate. If you want to communicate you have to climb the whole mountain and come to him. The well is not going to the thirsty, the thirsty has to come to the well; that’s his freedom.Jesus decides differently. He is not afraid of drinking alcohol. Why should he be afraid? – because it makes no difference to him whether he drinks water or he drinks alcohol. It is all the same – his consciousness remains beyond, just a witness. But it helps him to come close to those people who will be left far behind if he stops drinking, if he stops eating meat.It makes no difference to Jesus because he knows that the soul is immortal, you cannot kill it – so where is the question of violence or non-violence? The question of violence or non-violence arises only if the soul of man can be killed. But the soul cannot be killed. There is no question of violence and non-violence for Jesus. He simply wants to live a common human life with human beings, just like them – not become a faraway saint. That’s his decision.Mahavira decides differently, and I don’t think there is anything wrong in it. Mahavira said to his disciples, “When you reach the ultimate state of samadhi remember to keep a distance from the ordinary masses” – Why? – “because if you don’t keep a distance you will never be able to influence them, impress them. You will never be able to give them a thirst for something that they know nothing of but can see in your eyes. Don’t mix with them: remain distant like a star shining far above showing the way.”He must have been aware that people in that state of consciousness can choose to mix.In Japan there was great saint, Hotei. He is known as the laughing saint. He lived a very strange life, not like a saint at all. He used to carry a big bag on his shoulder full of things – sweets, toys – for children. He would pass through the village and children would gather and Hotei would distribute whatever he had in his bag. Then he would beg from the shopkeepers, “Fill my bag again because in the next village children will be waiting for me.”His whole life he was doing only that. When he was dying he was asked, “Hotei, you have achieved…. You could have communicated to people.”He said, “I have been – but I decided to communicate with the uncorrupted, the children. Why bother about the corrupted? Somebody else who is better than me will take care of them. I am a simple man, I can deal only with children. I cannot argue. I can distribute sweets, I can distribute toys. I cannot give doctrines and dogmas and theologies. That is not my business. And I have done my work, I am perfectly satisfied. I have sown the seeds; they will grow in their own time.”And it is said that each village through which Hotei had passed – after his death, in all those villages saints started springing up. Those small children were now becoming mature, young people. Hotei had not said anything to them, but he must have infected them in some way. He was contagious, and children are most impressionable. But it all depends, in that state; nobody can tell you to become a Hotei, and if you try to, it won’t be the real thing.It has been asked of me again and again, “Neither Mahavira, nor Buddha, nor Krishna, served the poor, opened hospitals, schools. Christian saints serve the poor, the sick, the orphans, the old. Who is religious?” The ordinary mind will think certainly the person who is serving the poor, the old, the sick, is religious. It is not so easy to decide: Jesus cures the sick; Mahavira never cured anybody.There is a story about Gautam Buddha: a woman’s only son died – her husband had died already, she was a widow. And in India, to be a widow is to be really in hell. In the West the widow again becomes Miss. In India it is not possible; once you have missed, you have missed, you cannot become Miss again.So that child was her only hope, she was living for him; and the child died. She went mad: she was carrying the dead child all over the town asking, “Help me! Somehow bring my child back to life!”A man on the way suggested, “We are ordinary people, we cannot do such miracles. But Buddha is in the town, why don’t you go there?” The suggestion was perfectly right.The woman rushed. She placed the dead child at Buddha’s feet, and she said, “I am a widow and this child was my only hope. You are a great saint. Your blessing will be enough to bring him to life.”Buddha said, “I will do it, but only on one condition.” Jesus never asked such a thing – condition…? “I will do it only on one condition.” The woman said, “I am ready to accept any condition. You do it.”He said, “First fulfill the condition. It is not a very big condition. Go around the town and bring from some house a few mustard seeds.” The woman said, “That is not a problem at all. I have mustard seeds in my house, I can bring them right now.”Buddha said, “You have not heard the whole thing. You have to bring them from a house where nobody has ever died. Only then am I going to bring your child back to life.”The woman in despair rushed from one home to another asking for a few mustard seeds. They said, “A few mustard seeds? – we can bring bullock carts full, but they won’t be of any use because the condition is impossible to fulfill. So many people have died in our family…and you are not going to find a house where nobody has ever died. This is just impossible. Wherever life is, death has happened – they go together.”By the evening the woman came back. She was no longer in despair, the tears had disappeared from her eyes. She was no longer concerned about the child. She fell at Buddha’s feet and asked him to initiate her on his path.Buddha said, “What about the child?”She said, “Everybody dies sooner or later, it doesn’t matter. Now I want to know something of that which never dies.”Now this is a totally different way of working than that of Jesus. Jesus cures; the stories are that he raises the dead back to life. Perhaps that is his way, that’s his uniqueness. In that way he wants people to understand that life is not just eat, drink and be merry. “There is something more to it, more mysteries. Don’t waste it in just mundane things. I can show you the way of eternal life.” That is his way.But who can decide that Buddha’s way is wrong? Perhaps it is more sophisticated, perhaps for more cultured people. Jesus’ way may be for the uneducated, illiterate, who will believe in a miracle first; only then can they be interested in the mysterious. Buddha’s audience seems to be different.The woman seems to be of immense intelligence. The whole day, going from one house to another…in her inner being there was a revolution happening. She was becoming aware that everybody dies, that death is the law of the outside world. “My husband has died, my child has died, tomorrow I am going to die. Every house is full of tears.” And she understands why Buddha has made such an impossible condition – in order to turn her consciousness one hundred and eighty degrees.She does not look at the child anymore. Just that morning she had come with the child, holding the dead body, with great hope. Buddha said, “But what about the child?”The woman said, “I am no longer concerned with anything. You have made it clear to me that death is a natural phenomenon. Now I want to know, is there something more, something deeper, greater? Something that never dies, something that is eternal? My whole concern with the child and my husband and myself has disappeared. This day has been a day of great revolution.”Now who can say who is doing right?I don’t think Lazarus, after being raised from the dead, became an enlightened person. Have you heard anything about Lazarus, what he did after he was raised? He must have done the same things that he was doing before – the same stupidities, the same foolishnesses, the same anger, the same greed, the same lust. Nothing is mentioned about him, about what revolution he went through…. And this was such a great revolution: he had died, he had been raised back to life. What more do you want for a revolution to happen?But I don’t think anything happened. He just came back as one wakes up every day in the morning. Do you think any revolution happens every morning when you wake up? Just the same person wakes up who had gone to sleep. You slept for eight hours, Lazarus slept for four days; nothing much in it. After four days he wakes up, he looks all around and says, “What is the matter? Why are people gathered here?” But to him, nothing happens.Buddha never did any miracle, but this woman was transformed without his doing anything. But that is the exceptional quality of every religious person, the uniqueness; hence they are incomparable. Nobody is a criterion for anybody else.But it has been continually argued for centuries: what is the criterion to decide who is enlightened and who is not? It has not been decided yet, and will never be decided ever, for the simple reason that every enlightened person is nothing but freedom, spontaneity. He is beyond any predictions.You cannot decide according to a formula that, yes, this man is enlightened because he has fulfilled the formula. There is no formula.The enlightened person is known only by those who happen to fall in love with him, who somehow come close to him, become intimate with him; so intimate that something of his freedom, something of his spontaneity, something of his light starts filtering into them. Only disciples know, outsiders cannot know. That’s one of the biggest troubles.Those who came close to Buddha knew, but there were millions who never came close to him, who went on condemning him, saying he was corrupting the minds of the people. Those who came close to Mahavira knew.But to come close to these people needs courage, it needs guts, because to come to these people, to be close to them, is almost a death.Of course there is a resurrection but who knows…? When you are facing death you don’t know there is going to be a resurrection. You will know only when you are ready to die; not only ready to die, when you really die – and suddenly you see a fresh new being arising in you.It is you and still it is not you. The old you is no longer there, and a new you is there. There has been a discontinuity. You are not even continuous with your past.This is the moment you understand that you are in close contact with someone who is enlightened.There is no other criterion.The reason is because the inner world follows no laws. The outer world follows laws.Matter is slavery.Consciousness is absolute freedom.