Chapter title: You Are Ancient Pilgrims

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‌Chapter title: You Are Ancient Pilgrims‌

4 September 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive

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The first question Question 1

OSHO, I HAVE WORN THE MALA FOR LESS THAN A MONTH, BUT I UNDERSTAND HOW FEELING YOU IS IMPORTANT. BUT THESE FEELINGS

ARE MIXED UP. I RESPECT AND LOVE YOU, BUT I DON'T LOOK AT YOU AS

HIS HOLINESS. STRANGE, BUT I LOOK AT YOU AS A BUDDHA. ONLY THAT, WITHOUT ANYTHING ADDED OR TAKEN AWAY FROM YOUR BEING. AND

WHAT A BUDDHA IS I DON'T KNOW. HOW COME I LOVE YOU, RESPECT YOU

BECAUSE YOU ARE MY MASTER. BUT...LOVE? ALSO I SEE THAT I CAN PLAY

WITH YOU WITH JOY AND YOU ARE SO FAR AWAY. OR SO CLOSE? RESPECT, LOVE, JOY -- ARE THEY THE SAME?

Anand Mario,

IT IS GOOD THAT YOU CANNOT THINK OF ME AS HIS Holiness, because

I am neither His Holiness nor His Unholiness. It is good and beautiful that you think of me as a Buddha, because that's exactly what I am -- simply a Buddha.

A Buddha means one who is awake. It has nothing to do with holiness, nothing to do with unholiness. Holiness, unholiness, both are dreams; for dreams you have to be asleep. A Buddha is awake; all dreams have disappeared. A Buddha is not a saint, is not a sinner either. A Buddha is not God and is not a devil either. All dualities are irrelevant as far as Buddha is concerned. Buddha is simply a witness of all the mystery that surrounds you within and without.

Mario, it is absolutely right, you are moving in the right direction. If you start looking at me as a Buddha, that is a fundamental step to understanding me. If you think of me as a saint you have misunderstood me.

That's one of the fundamental problems with Indians who come here: they start thinking about me as a saint. Then a thousand and one problems arise because they have certain ideas about how a saint should be They have a thousand and one expectations: how I should live, what I should eat, how I should talk, what I should say and what I should not say.

I am not a saint, hence I cannot fulfill any of their expectations. Then they feel very frustrated and out of frustration they become enraged. It has nothing to do with me; it is their own minds, their own expectations. I am not here to fulfill

anybody's expectations; I am here to be myself, simply to be myself. I am not here to be somebody else's carbon copy.

A Jaina comes and thinks in terms of Mahavira and compares me with Mahavira

--

certainly I am not a Mahavira. The Christian comes with the idea of Christ and starts comparing me with Christ -- certainly I am not a Christ either. I am simply myself. You can understand me only ii you drop all comparisons, if you forget all the ideas that have been imposed on your mind. If you simply look at me without any prejudice things will be very clear.

Mario, it is good that a great clarity is coming to you. But still somewhere deep down in the unconscious there are hangovers, hence you are puzzled. You are puzzled because you cannot understand: "How come I love you?" Because saints are to be respected, not loved. They are so high, there in the heavens, and you are so low, how can you love them? Love means equality. Love means we are standing on the same plane. Saints are so holy and you are so unholy! Yes, respect is okay, but love? -- seems to be impossible.

These are hangovers.

But I would like to say to you: 'respect' is an ugly word; it has more letters than four, but actually it is a four-letter word. Respect is bound to be ugly in two ways: if you respect somebody you degrade yourself into inferiority; unless you start feeling inferior to somebody you cannot respect them. Hence all your saints go on condemning you; unless you are condemned they cannot be respected. The respect from your side is dependent on the condemnation from their side. They call you sinners, only then can you call them saints. They condemn everything that you do: your eating, your drinking, your living.…

Your whole life, in every minute detail, has to be condemned. All that is natural has to be condemned; then their unnatural lives become very respectable.

All the saints -- the so-called saints I mean -- have been condemning humanity down the ages. And, slowly slowly, hearing for centuries that you are sinners you have become sinners. They have conditioned you into such inferiority that it has almost become a reality. You have started fulfilling what they have been saying about you.

If you want a man to be a criminal, go on telling him that he is a criminal. Go on repeating it and he will slowly be hypnotized. And if everybody repeats that he is a criminal he will start believing that it must be so: "How can so many people be wrong?

And how can so many SAINTS be wrong? I must be a criminal." And once a person accepts that he is a criminal he becomes one. He starts behaving to PROVE that he is a criminal. How can he prove the saints wrong? The saints have to be proved right, and the only way to prove them right is to behave the way they say you are. Their saintliness depends on your being sinners. The greater you are in your sin, the higher is their saintliness. I am not a saint!

And because they have to condemn your natural instincts THEY become unnatural, pathological They start standing on their heads just to show that they are totally different from you. If you enjoy eating, they hate eating. If you love beauty, they condemn beauty.

If you are enchanted With the world, they call the world illusion, MAYA; they say it does not exist at all. If you love your body, they destroy their bodies. Whatsoever YOU do they have to do just the opposite, because that is the only way to prove their superiority.

Your so-called saints have created a very insane humanity. They have turned you insane and they have turned themselves insane. And because they have to be unnatural they are sitting on volcanoes. They have repressed all that is natural -- and nature wants to assert itself. They are in a constant civil war; they are fighting with themselves. And whatsoever they are fighting with is becoming stronger every day, because the more you fight with something the more you have to pay attention to it. Their minds become focused. If they repress sex, twenty-four hours of their day there is an undercurrent of sexuality. If they fast, they think only of food and nothing else.

These insane people, pathological people, have been very dominant in the past. It is because of these people that the earth has become a hell; they have transformed the whole of humanity into an ugly mess.

I am not a saint. I am simply a man just like you, with only one small difference

-- and that difference does not make me superior to you, remember it. It does not make you inferior to me, remember it. Never for a single moment forget that you

may be asleep and I may be awake, but one day 1 was asleep just like you and one day you can be awake just like me. Sleep and waking are as much YOUR potential as they are MY potential.

Sleep and waking are two sides of the same coin, and how can one side be superior to the other side? Both sides are of the same coin. You are asleep, I am awake, but this does not make me superior in any way.

In fact, Buddha has said that the day he became a Buddha, the day he became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened with him. What does he mean? He means the day he became enlightened he became aware that EVERYBODY can become enlightened. This is nothing special; it is an ordinary quality of every being. You may not use it -- that is YOUR choice; you may not actualize your potential -- that is YOUR

decision and you are free to decide that way. You may choose to remain asleep, but you are not committing any sin. You are not doomed just because you are asleep. Any moment you can decide to wake up.

It is your freedom to be a Buddha or not to be a Buddha -- and if you like sleep and the dreams it's perfectly okay with me. I respect your freedom.

You can love me. You cannot love your saints; they are too far away. I am standing just by your side! I am not sitting on a golden throne somewhere high in the heavens; I am walking on the earth with you, I am as earthly as you are. Just a little difference -- I say difference, not superiority -- and the difference is that I am no more asleep, no more dreaming.

And you can come out of your dreams THIS VERY MOMENT, because dreams cannot hold you; they cannot keep you imprisoned in themselves. You can burst forth from them. You are an imprisoned splendor, but you are imprisoned through your own choice.

You have gone into the prison through your own choice -- this is your decision.

There is a beautiful story of a Zen monk who used to steal small things. He was a great enlightened Master and he used to steal small things -- somebody's cigarette case or somebody's shoes -- and then he would be caught and he would be sent to prison. His disciples were very much puzzled; he had many disciples, and they asked him again and again, "Why do you DO such things? And we are

here ready -- how many cigarette boxes do you want, how many shoes do you want? We can bring as many as you want. Why do you steal?"

He would laugh and never say anything, but he continued in his own way. In the end when he was dying his disciples asked, "Now tell us: what was the secret? There must be something!"

He said, "There is nothing much in it; it is a simple phenomenon. I wanted to go to jail again and again to help the people who were inside to come out, and that was the only way -- stealing small things, then getting caught. I had to manage both: first stealing things and then getting caught. And then the magistrate would send me for six months to jail and for those six months I would try to help the people who were inside to come out.

And I am happy, tremendously happy, that I have helped many to come out of jail."

Now this man is going knowingly, consciously; it is his choice. Even in the jail he is a free man. He is not imprisoned by anybody else; he has imprisoned himself, for a certain purpose.

So is the case with you: you have imprisoned yourself. This simply proves your freedom.

Any day, if you want to get out of it, you can get out of it. I go on hammering only one thing on your head again and again: that there is another choice also, please don't forget.

You have chosen to be in sleep, you can choose to be awake. You have lived in sleep for many many lives, you have seen all that sleep makes possible, now please see what awakening can give to you.

I have seen both and I tell you that sleep cannot give you anything; it only promises but never delivers any goods. Sleep can give you only dreams, hallucinations; sleep cannot fulfill you. I have known both, you have known only one. Those who have known both, listen to what they are saying. And if you come close to them you are BOUND to fall in love with them.

It is not a question of respect; respect is a formality. You respect the Christian priest, you respect the Hindu mahatma, you respect the Jaina MUNI, YOU

respect the Catholic monk, you respect the Pope. You don't respect Christ or Buddha or Krishna -- you love them.

Respect is very ordinary; it brings no revolution in your life. It is a trick of the mind. The mind says, "Look how much I respect the holy people!" and there it is finished. Now what more can you do? You can respect them, sometimes you can go and touch their feet

-- it becomes a formality.

In India it is such a formality that it has lost its beauty, its tremendous power to transform people. People go on touching each and everybody's feet. Children are taught from the very beginning to touch everybody's feet.

In my childhood it was so. Any Tom, Harry, Dick who would come to my house, if he was aged my father would say, "Touch his feet." I was always puzzled: "Why? I don't see anything in the man, I have no feeling for him." But it is a formality, it is a social obligation. You have to do it.

So finally I made it a point -- why wait for my father to say it? Anybody who came, I would touch his feet before he ever said to. Then he started telling me, "You need not touch everybody's feet." I said, "Why make any distinction? And why give you the trouble of telling me again and again? Now I will touch everybody's feet, whosoever comes. It doesn't matter -- it is just a physical exercise! It is good for the body -- just bowing down and standing up again and again. And the whole day people are coming, all kinds of stupid people. And they feel happy, so it is good -- they enjoy it."

In India it is just a formality; it means nothing. Respect means nothing. And it is dangerous too, because when you respect somebody, deep down you start imitating because you would also like to be respected, the ego wants to be respected. So whomsoever you respect, sooner or later, unconsciously, you will start imitating him, because that is the only way to get respect from people. Respect creates in you a desire to imitate; you become carbon copies.

It is good, Mario, that you love me. Forget the word 'respect'; love is absolutely right.

And don't be puzzled.

You say: HOW COME I LOVE YOU? I RESPECT YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE MY

MASTER.

Yes, respect always has a 'because'; love has no 'because'. Love is simply there for no reason at all. Respect is logical; you can say why you respect a person: he eats only once a day; he has renounced the world, his wife, children, family, everything; he sleeps for only three hours or maybe he remains awake the whole night; he is continuously chanting the name of God...things like this. Or he serves the poor, or he goes to the ill people and serves them.

What will happen if poverty disappears? It will be a great loss to your saints! In fact, you will not believe it -- one of the very respected Hindu saints, Karpatri, has written a book AGAINST socialism, and the reasons that he has given against socialism are all so stupid.

The MOST stupid reason of all of them is that socialism will destroy poverty; it will create equal distribution of property and possessions. And if there are no more poor people, whom will you serve? And without service, how can you be a saint? Without service there will be no virtue.

This is a great argument! This means poverty is needed, very essentially needed

- needed for the existence of the saints. Ill people are needed, lepers and blind and lame and deaf people are needed, otherwise whom will the missionaries serve? And without serving you cannot reach heaven; service is the ladder. So let people be poor!

And when these people serve poor people, you respect them. In fact they are the causes of poverty in the world. The poverty can be removed any day; now science has made all the technology available that can remove poverty from the earth absolutely. But then how will Christian missionaries be able to convert poor people to Christianity?

In India, not even a single rich person has been converted to Christianity, only poor people, very poor people. And they are converted to Christianity not because they love Christ but because they love bread and butter. The Christian missionaries can supply them with a little food, clothes, shelter, a school, a hospital. Now Christian missionaries will not like it at all if poverty disappears from the world, neither will the Hindu saints like it.

Karpatri also argues the old Hindu argument that the poor people are poor because they are suffering from their past karmas. If you make them rich, if you distribute the property and the land to the poor, you will be interfering with their past karmas. And this is not good, this is a sin, to interfere with somebody's karma. Let them suffer -- they deserve suffering! Helping the poor to become rich is almost like breaking the walls of the prison and letting the prisoners escape -- you will be doing something very illegal. The poor people are suffering, and the rich people are rich because they were virtuous in their past lives. Any effort to take their money from them is going against the law of life, the law of karma. You are going against God!

Socialism is against religion according to Karpatri and the other so-called saints. This is a very strange world! But all these things go on because we are asleep.

If you become a little bit alert and start looking around you will be surprised: your saints need psychoanalysis, your saints need psychological treatment. They are utterly ill! And because they are repressing all their desires, sooner or later they start living a double life.

They start living two lives together: one on the surface, the saintly, and the real underground, from the back door. And you go on respecting the masks.

It is good, Mario. I don't expect your respect for me, no, not at all. Love is enough, love is right, because love gives you equality with me. And as far as I am concerned I see you as equals -- not only you, but the trees and the birds and the animals and the rocks. The whole existence is a brotherhood. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower; there is no hierarchy. It is only ONE God expressing itself in millions of forms. How can there be any hierarchy? There is no BRAHMIN and no SUDRA.

You say: I RESPECT YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE MY MASTER.

Forget the respect! Love me because I am your Master -- and not for any formal reason, because to be a disciple can never be formal; it can only be of the heart.

You say: ALSO I FEEL THAT I CAN PLAY WITH YOU WITH JOY AND YOU ARE

SO FAR AWAY. OR SO CLOSE?

Both are true; simultaneously I am far away and very close -- very close because the awakening is just the other side of the coin, and very far because awakening takes you into a totally different world from sleep. Sleep takes you into dreams, awakening into reality. To be awake is the door to God. Yes, I am far away and yet very close by.

You also ask: RESPECT, JOY, LOVE -- ARE THEY THE SAME?

No, they are not the same -- certainly respect and love are not the same. Respect is a poor substitute for love, a plastic substitute for the real rose. It may appear like the rose but it is not. It has no roots in the earth, no juices flow through it. It has no contact with the sun and the wind and the rain. It is disconnected from existence. It is simply a plastic flower, looks like a rose -- it is an imitation. Respect is a plastic flower, love is a real rose.

And joy never arises out of respect. In fact, out of respect a little sadness arises. If you have observed closely, whenever you respect somebody you feel humiliated. You may not look at your humiliation because it hurts, but whenever you respect somebody there is humiliation -- because if somebody is superior you ARE inferior, and the inferiority hurts. You can avoid it, you may not see it, you may keep it at the back, you may forget all about it, but it is there. If you search for it you will always find it lurking in the darkness of your unconscious.

Respect cannot give you joy, but love certainly gives you joy. Joy is a by-product of love, the aura of love. Wherever love is there is joy, there is silence, there is benediction.

Anybody can see it here. You are sitting in such silence! You may be the only commune on the whole of the earth sitting in such silence, in such love -- engulfed, encompassed, by something of the beyond.

Others who don't know about love, may misunderstand your love as respect because they know only respect. Those who have never seen any real rose may think that the plastic flower is the real rose.

I have heard about an old woman who went to see an exhibition of Picasso paintings. She was very much puzzled looking at a painting; the cost was millions of dollars. She said to her husband, "This is madness! This painting millions of dollars? And in fact it is a copy of a calendar that has been hanging in my bathroom for years!"

The calendar is a copy, but the woman has known the calendar for years. Now the real painting looks like a copy of the calendar -- "And millions of dollars? This man must be mad who is asking millions of dollars! I can give the calendar free to anybody. I am fed up with it, because for years I have been looking at it!"

Those who don't know real roses and have always known the plastic, if you bring them to a rosebush they will think that these are plastic flowers attached to the bush.

People who come from the outside, seeing you sitting with me in deep communion, in deep love, your hearts beating with my heartbeat, will think that you are in deep respect.

It is not respect at all! It is the real thing, not the synthetic flower. It is happening

-- it is a rare opportunity.

When there is somebody awake, many people who are groping in their sleep to be awake, longing in their sleep to be awake, start moving towards the source wherever awakening has happened. That's how you have arrived here from faraway countries. You may not even be aware of how you have reached here; you may think it is just accidental. It is not.

Many many lives of longing to find a Buddha, to find a Christ, have brought you here.

You are ancient pilgrims. Now you have found the opportunity.

Mario, you are fortunate to love, fortunate to feel the joy of love, fortunate because this love is going to become a door to the divine.

The second question Question 2

OSHO, WHAT IS PRAYER?

Deva Tatva,

PRAYER IS ONE OF THE INDEFINABLES, because prayer is the fragrance of love.

Even love is indefinable. Love is a flower, tangible, you can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can feel it. You can close your eyes and you can touch the texture of the flower, the softness of it, you can see the beauty of it; it is visible. But prayer is the fragrance released to the winds, offered to the sky. It becomes even more indefinable because you cannot see it, you cannot touch it.

You can only have a very subtle relationship with it, not one of words, not one of philosophy, not one of theology -- only the silence of your heart, the utter silence of your heart, can have a little glimpse of it, of what it is.

What goes on in the name of prayer is not prayer; it is desire disguised. You go to the temple or to the church and you pray to God; your God is part of your imagination. Your God is not true God; it is a Christian God, it is a Hindu God, it is a Mohammedan God.

And how can God be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan? It is a God that you have created, or your priests on behalf of you. It is a toy, it is not true.

Bowing down before a statue made by man, manufactured by man -- and you think you are in prayer? You are simply being stupid, you are simply showing utter ignorance. This statue has been purchased in the marketplace, and God is not a commodity and God cannot be made. It is God who has made us -- how can we make God? But we are worshipping, praying to man-made Gods.

And what are your prayers? They are also your desires. You want this, you want that; you are trying to use God as a means. You have been told certain prayers from your very childhood and you have crammed it all; you have been forced to cram it. It has become a habit, a mechanical routine; you go on repeating it but your heart is not in it. Your prayer is a corpse, it breathes no more.

Yes, when Jesus called God 'Abba' he meant it. When you call God 'Father' you don't mean anything. And between 'Abba' and 'Father' there is a great difference. 'Father' is an institution, legal, social; 'Abba' is a heart-to-heart relationship. Jesus looked at existence as the source of our life.

A disciple asks Jesus, "What is prayer?" Jesus falls on his knees and starts praying. The disciple says, "I am asking what prayer is, I am not asking you to pray!"

And Jesus says, "There is no other way. I can pray, you can participate. I

INVITE you to be a part of my prayer. I cannot say what prayer is, but I can go into prayer -- because prayer is a state of being, not something that you do."

Leo Tolstoy has written a beautiful story:

Three men became very famous saints in Russia.

The highest priest of the country was very much disturbed -- obviously, because people were not coming to him, people were going to those three saints, and he had not even heard their names. And how could they be saints? -- because in Christianity a saint is a saint only when the church recognizes him as a saint. The English word 'saint' comes from 'sanction'; when the church sanctions somebody as a saint, then he is a saint. What nonsense! that a saint has to be certified by the church, by the organized religion, by the priests -- as if it has nothing to do with inner growth but some outer recognition; as if it is a title given by a government, or a degree, an honorary degree, conferred by a university.

The high priest was certainly very angry. He took a boat because those three saints used to live on the far side of a lake. He went in the boat. Those three saints were sitting under a tree. They were very simple people, peasants, uneducated. They touched the feet of the highest priest, and the priest was very happy. He thought, "Now I will put them right --

these are not very dangerous people. I was thinking they would be rebels or something."

He asked them, "How did you become saints?"

They said, "We don't know! We don't know that we are saints either. People have started calling us saints and we go on trying to convince them that we are not, we are very simple people, but they don't listen. The more we argue that we are not, the more they worship us! And we are not very good at arguing either."

The priest was very happy. He said, "What is your prayer? Do you know how to pray?"

They looked at each other. The first said to the second, "You say." The second said to the third, "You say, please."

The priest said, "Say what your prayer is! Are you saying Our Lord's Prayer or

not?"

They said, "To be frank with you, we don't know any prayer. We have invented a prayer of our own and we are very embarrassed -- how to say it? But if you ask we have to say it. We have heard that God is a trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We are three and he is also three, so we have made a small prayer of our own: 'You are three, we are three: Have mercy on us!' "

The priest said, "What nonsense! Is this prayer? You fools, I will teach you the right prayer." And he recited The Lord's Prayer.

And those three poor people said, "Please repeat it once more, because we are uneducated, we may forget."

He repeated it and they asked, "Once more -- we are three, repeat it at least three times."

So he repeated it again, and then very happy, satisfied, he went back in his boat.

Just in the middle of the lake he was surprised, his boatman was surprised: those three poor people were coming running on the water! And they said, "Wait! Please one more time -- we have forgotten the prayer!"

Now it was the turn of the priest to touch their feet, and he said, "Forget what I have said to you. Your prayer has been heard, my prayer has not been heard yet. You continue as you are continuing. I was utterly wrong to say anything to you. Forgive me!"

Prayer is a state of simplicity. It is NOT of words but of silence.

Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, has said that prayer is an I/thou relationship.

It is not. He does not know anything about prayer. An I/thou relationship? In prayer there is no I and in prayer there is no thou. A prayer is not a dialogue between I and thou; a prayer is a merger. The I disappears into the thou, the thou disappears into the I. There is nobody to say anything and there is nobody to say anything to.

The river disappearing into the ocean is prayer. The dewdrop slipping from the

lotus leaf into the lake is prayer. Seeing the early morning sun and you are silent, and something starts rising in you too -- that is prayer. A bird on the wing, and YOU are on the wing; you forget that you are separate -- THAT is prayer. Wherever separation disappears, prayer appears. When you become one with the whole of existence, that is prayer.

Ego is a state of no-prayer: egolessness is a state of prayer. It is not a dialogue, it is not even a monologue. It has nothing to do with words; it is wordless silence. It is an open, silent sky; with no clouds, no thoughts. In prayer you are not Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan. In prayer you are not: in prayer God is.

The third question Question 3

OSHO, WHAT IS DIPLOMACY?

Sandeep,

DIPLOMACY IS A BEAUTIFUL NAME for all kinds of cunningness. It is a beautiful label for all that is ugly. It is an effort to cover human violence, human stupidity, human cunningness, behind a beautiful word. Diplomacy is simply an effort to dominate. It may be between persons, it may be between religions, it may be between countries -- it does not matter. Even husbands and wives are in a diplomatic relationship, parents and children are in a diplomatic relationship. It is not only in politics, it is in our whole life.

When you see somebody and you feel, "Now my whole day is wasted; seeing this bastard early in the morning is a perfect indication that something wrong is going to happen, some calamity is going to happen to me," but you say to the man, "Hello! How are you?

Glad to see you!" -- that is diplomacy.

Diplomacy has entered into our blood. When you don't love your wife and pretend that you love her, it is diplomacy. When without any love you hug your children, just because it has to be done, because Dale Carnegie says so: HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND

INFLUENCE PEOPLE.…

Dale Carnegie is the prophet of the modern age. Dale Carnegie's book, HOW TO WIN

FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, has sold next only to the Bible. It seems to be even more important than the Bible, because the Bible is being distributed free by the Christian missionaries and Dale Carnegie's book you have to purchase. And what he teaches is simply diplomacy.

He says that even if you don't mean it, at least a few times in the day remind your wife how much you love her. That's enough, because people don't bother about love; people live in words. If you say, "I love you," that's enough. If you go on repeating, "I love you,"

that becomes a proof that you really love. This is a very ugly state of affairs. Humanity has fallen so low that Dale Carnegie becomes the prophet.

Diplomacy is not only political, not any more -- it has entered into every arena of life.

And wherever it enters it brings pseudoness, falsity; it destroys authenticity, sincerity, honesty. It makes you say things which you don't mean, it makes you do things which you don't mean. It makes you many instead of one; you become a crowd. You go on carrying many masks with you because you never know which mask will be needed in a certain situation.

And not only has man become diplomatic -- even animals who live with man become diplomatic, dogs become diplomatic. Watch a dog.… A stranger comes to your house, knocks on the door. The dog starts two things: he starts barking and at the same time he wags his tail. This is diplomacy! because he is not certain whether the man who has knocked on the door is really a friend of the master or not -- it is better to keep your feet in both the boats, then whatsoever turns out to be right you can withdraw from the wrong one. Then you come out of the house and the dog sees that the stranger is a friend; the barking stops and the tail continues to wag.

Man contaminates everything; even innocent people like dogs are corrupted by human contact. You start teaching small children to be diplomatic. On the one hand you go on telling them, "Be true, be sincere be honest," and then one day a man comes to the door and you tell your son, "Go and say that daddy is out." Now the boy is puzzled. What to do?

My own way in my childhood was to go out and say to the man, "Daddy says he is out."

What else to do? One has to be true and one has to be obedient too. Now either I can be true or I can be obedient.…

Small children, we start corrupting their minds. We corrupt animals, and it is possible one day we will discover that we even corrupt trees, because they are also very sensitive.

Living with man they must be learning all kinds of things from humanity.

Alfie and Dan, two Cockney pub crawlers, were in their cups one afternoon when Alfie pointed to a woman sitting at the end of the bar. "Hey!" he said, That woman looks like Queen Elizabeth!"

"Nah," replied Dan. "What would the Queen be doing in a pub in hogtown?" "I am telling you it is her," insisted Alfie. "Can't you see the resemblance?" "Look, that ain't the Queen," said Dan. "And I am willing to bet five on it."

"You are on!" came the reply. "I will go ask her." He walked over to the woman sitting at the bar and said, "I beg your pardon, are you the Queen?"

"Get lost, you little runt," growled the woman, before I kick your ass across the room!"

He returned to his seat. "Well?" his friend asked.

"Well, she didn't say she was and she didn't say she wasn't." This is diplomacy!

A religious person has to drop all diplomacy. He has to be authentic, sincere; he has to be as he is: no pretensions, no false personalities, no facades; just being utterly nude as you are, utterly naked in your reality.

The moment you can gather that much courage you will be so filled with joy...you cannot believe right now, you cannot even conceive right now, because

it is our falsities which are like parasites on our being; they go on sucking our blood. The more falsities you create around yourself, the more miserable you become, the more you are in a hell.

To live in falsities is to live in hell: to live authentically is to be in heaven. The fourth question

Question 4

OSHO, TO ME IT SEEMS THAT THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPT OF THE SOUL IS

THE SAME AS WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE REAL I, THE ONE WHO IS THE

WATCHER. WHY DIDN'T JESUS SPEAK ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF REINCARNATION OF THE SOUL? THIS SEEMS TO BE A DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN RELIGIONS. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING

ABOUT IT?

Jaap-Willem,

JESUS KNEW PERFECTLY WELL about reincarnation.

There are indirect hints spread all over the gospels. Just the other day I was saying, quoting Jesus: "I am before Abraham ever was." And Jesus says, "I will be coming back."

And there are a thousand and one indirect references to reincarnation. He knew about it perfectly well, but there is some other reason why he did not talk about it, why he did not preach it.

Jesus had been to India and he had seen what had happened because of the theory of reincarnation. In India for almost five thousand years before Jesus the theory was taught.

And it is a truth, it is not only a theory; the theory is based in truth. Man has millions of lives. It was taught by Mahavira, by Buddha, by Krishna, by Rama; all the Indian religions agree upon it. You will be surprised to know: they don't agree on anything else except this theory.

Hindus believe in God and the soul. Jainas don't believe in God at all but only in the soul.

And Buddhists don't believe in the soul or God either. But about reincarnation all three agree -- even Buddhists agree, who don't believe in the soul. A very strange thing...then who reincarnates? Even THEY could not deny the phenomenon of reincarnation, although they could deny the existence of the soul; they say the soul does not exist but reincarnation exists. And it was very difficult for them to prove reincarnation without the soul; it seems almost impossible. But they found a way -- of course it is very subtle and very difficult to comprehend, but they seem to be closer, the closest to the truth.

It is easy to understand that there is a soul and when you die the body is left on the earth and the soul enters into another body, into another womb; it is a simple, logical, mathematical thing. But Buddha says there is no soul but only a continuum. It is like when you kindle a candle in the evening and in the morning when you are blowing it out a question can be asked of you: Are you blowing out the same light that you started in the evening? No, it is not the same light, and yet a continuity is there. In the night when you lit the candle... that flame is no more there, that flame is continuously disappearing; it is being replaced by another flame. The replacement is so quick that you can't see the gaps, but with sophisticated scientific instruments it is possible to see the gaps: one flame going out, another coming up, that going out, another coming up. There are bound to be small intervals, but you can't see them with bare eyes.

Buddha says that just as the candle flame is not the same -- it is changing constantly, although in another sense it is the same because it is the same continuum -- exactly like that, there is no soul entity in you like a thing but one like a flame. It is continuously changing, it is a river.

Buddha does not believe in nouns, he only believes in verbs, and I perfectly agree with him. He has come closest to the truth; at least in his expression he is the most profound.

But why did Jesus, Moses, Mohammed -- the sources of all the three religions that have been born outside India -- not talk about reincarnation directly? For a certain reason, and the reason is that Moses was aware... because Egypt and India have been in constant contact. It is suspected that once Africa was part of Asia and that the continent has slowly shifted away. India and Egypt were joined together, hence there are so many similarities.

And it is not strange that South India is black; it has partly Negro blood in its veins, it is negroid -- not totally, but if Africa was joined with Asia then certainly the mingling of the Aryans with the Negroes must have happened, and then South India became black.

Moses must have been perfectly aware of India. You will be surprised that Kashmir claims that both Moses and Jesus are buried there. The tombs are there, one tomb for Moses and one tomb for Jesus. They saw what happened to India through the theory of reincarnation.

Because of the theory of reincarnation India became very lethargic; there is no hurry.

India has no time sense, not even now. Even though everybody is wearing a wristwatch there is no time sense. If somebody says, "I will be coming at five o'clock in the evening to see you," it can mean anything. He may turn up at four, he may turn up at six, he may not turn up at all -- and it is not taken seriously! It is not that he is not fulfilling his promise -- there is no time sense! How can you have time sense when eternity is available? When there are so many many lives, why be in such a hurry? One can go on slowly; one is bound to reach some day or other.

The theory of reincarnation made India very lethargic, dull. It made India utterly time-unconscious. It helped people to postpone. And if you can postpone for tomorrow, then today you will remain the same as you have been and the tomorrow never comes. And India knows how to postpone not only to tomorrow but even to the next life.

Moses and Jesus both visited India, both were aware. Mohammed never visited India but was perfectly aware, because he was very close to India and there was constant traffic between India and Arabia. They decided that it was better to tell people, "There is only one life, this is the LAST chance -- the first and the last --

if you miss it, you miss forever." This is a device to create intense longing, to create such intensity in people that they can be transformed easily.

Then the question arises: Were Mahavira, Buddha and Krishna not aware? Were they not aware that this theory of reincarnation would create lethargy? They were trying a totally different device. And each device has its time; once it is used...it cannot be used forever.

People become accustomed to it. When Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna tried the device of reincarnation they were trying it from a totally different angle.

India was a very rich country in those days. It was thought to be the golden country of the world, the richest. And in a rich country the real problem, the greatest problem, is boredom. That is happening now in the West. Now America is in the same situation, and boredom has become the greatest problem. People are utterly bored, so bored that they would like to die.

Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha used this situation. They told people, "This is nothing, one life's boredom is nothing. You have lived for many lives, and remember, if you don't listen you are going to live many more lives; you will be bored again and again and again. It is the same wheel of life and death moving."

They painted boredom in such dark colors that people who were already bored with even one life became really very deeply involved with religion. One has to get rid of life and death; one has to get out of this wheel, this vicious circle of birth and death. Hence it was relevant in those days.

Then India became poor. Once the country became poor boredom disappeared. A poor man is never bored, remember; only a rich man can afford boredom, it is a rich man's privilege. It is impossible for a poor man to feel boredom; he has no time. The whole day he is working; when he comes home he is so tired he falls asleep. He need not have many many entertainments -- television and movies and music and art and museums -- he need not have all these things, he CANNOT have them. His only entertainment is sex: a natural thing, inbuilt. That's why poor countries go on reproducing more children than rich countries -- the only entertainment.

If you want to reduce the population of poor countries, give them more entertainment.

Give them television sets, give them radios, movies -- something that can keep them distracted from sex.

I have heard about American couples that they become so much obsessed with the television that even while making love they go on watching the television. Love becomes secondary, television becomes primary. They don't want to miss the program that is going on.

A poor country knows only one entertainment because it cannot afford any other; it can afford only the natural, inbuilt one. So a poor country goes on producing people; it becomes more and more crowded. And they are not fed up with life. What life do they have? First you have to have life to be fed up with it. You have to have money to be fed up with it. You have to have many women to be fed up with them. You have to have many experiences of the world to be finished with it.

The moment India became poor the theory of reincarnation became an escape, a hope --

rather than a boredom it became a hope, a possibility to postpone. "I am poor in this life.

Nothing to be worried about; there are many lives. Next life I am going to strive a little harder and I will be richer. This life I have got an ugly woman. Nothing to be worried about; it is only a question of one life. Next time I am not going to make the same mistake again. This time I am suffering from my past karmas. This life I will not commit any wrong things so that I can enjoy the coming life." It became postponement.

Jesus saw it, that the device was no longer working in the way it was meant to work. The situation had changed. Now Jesus had to create another device: there is only one life -- so if you want to be religious, if you want to meditate, if you want to become a sannyasin, BE ONE RIGHT NOW -- because the tomorrow is not reliable. There may be no tomorrow.

Hence the West has become too conscious of time; everybody is in a hurry. This hurry is because of Christianity. The device has again failed. No device can work forever.

My own experience is that a particular device works only while the Master is

alive, because he is the soul of it; he manages it in such a way that it works once the Master is gone, the device falls out of use or people start finding new interpretations for it.

Now in the West the device has failed utterly; now it has become a problem. People are in a constant hurry, tension, anxiety, because there is only one life. Jesus wanted them to remember: because there is one life, remember God. And what are they doing? Seeing that there is only one life they want to drink, eat and be merry, because there is no other life. So indulge as much as you can. Squeeze the whole juice of life right now! And who cares about what will happen on the Judgment Day? Who knows whether the Judgment Day is there or not?

The professor at a girls' college was a really dirty old man. He could not give a lecture without making some kind of obscene remark. Eventually the girls decided that the next time he did it they would all get up from their desks and leave the classroom.

The next morning the professor entered the room and started in right away: "Hey, girls, I heard that just yesterday a ship came into the harbor with thirty Negro sailors on deck.

Just imagine, girls, thirty huge Negro pricks "

At this point the whole class got up and started to go out of the room.

"Hey, girls," shouted the professor after them, "no need to hurry. They are gonna stay here for another two weeks."

A great hurry has arisen in the West about everything, because there is no other life.

Mary and John are both living in a big apartment-house in New York City. One day they meet and instantly fall in love with each other, but they don't make any contact. This goes on for six months until John just can't bear the tension any more and asks her to come to his apartment for a drink. Hesitatingly she says yes and as soon as they reach his flat they close the door behind them and rush into the bedroom and throw themselves on the bed.

After a few minutes John explains with a hoarse voice, "Listen, I am very sorry, but if I had known that you were a virgin I would have taken more time."

Mary replies, "Well, if I had known that you had more time, I would have taken my pants off!"

Such a hurry! Speed is the mania, faster and faster. Nobody is bothered where you are going, but you have to go fast; invent speedier vehicles.

And this whole thing has happened because of the device. It worked in Jesus' time. He was continuously telling his people, "Beware! The Day of Judgment is very close by.

You are going to see the end of the world in your very own life and there is no other life.

And if you miss you will be thrown into hell for eternity!" He was simply creating a psychological atmosphere. It worked when he was alive and it worked for a few more days when he was gone. It continued to work for a few days because of the closest disciples who had something of the climate of Jesus with them, some aura, but then it created just the opposite effect.

It has created the MOST worldly civilization the world has ever known. And the desire was that the idea of one life would make people so alert and aware that they would seek and search for God and they would drop ALL other desires and ALL other occupations.

Their whole life would become one-pointedly a search, an inquiry, for God. That was the idea behind the device. But the ultimate result is that people have become absolutely worldly, because there is no other life, only one life -- enjoy it the most you can! Enjoy it, don't postpone it for tomorrow.

The Indian device failed because people became lethargic. It worked with Buddha. He really created one of the greatest movements in the world. Thousands of people renounced their lives, became sannyasins. That means they devoted their whole energy to the search for truth, because he created such an atmosphere of boredom that you would be bored if you missed.

But what happened later on was just the opposite. It is always going to be so. The Masters are bound to be misunderstood. And people are so cunning, so diplomatic, they can always find ways to destroy the whole device.

Jesus knows perfectly that life is eternal, reincarnation is a fact. He mentions it

in indirect ways, maybe to his very close disciples he mentions it, but not to the masses -- for a simple reason: he has seen that it failed in India, something else has to be tried.

I am creating many devices because others have failed. I know perfectly well that my devices will function only while I am here; they are bound to fail as every other device has failed. I am not living in any fool's paradise thinking that my devices will remain as I create them forever. When I am not there, people are going to distort them. But that is natural, it has to be accepted; there is nothing to worry about.

Hence those who are here, please be alert and use these devices as deeply as possible.

While I am here these devices will function perfectly well. In my hands they can be great situations for inner transformation, but once my hands are no more visible these same devices will be in the hands of the pundits and the scholars, and then the same story will be repeated as it has been in the past.

Beware, be watchful. Don't waste time. Be Still and Know

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Watch This! Stranger than Fiction 5 September 1979 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 7909050

ShortTitle: BESTIL05

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

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mins

The first question Question 1

OSHO, YOU TALKED YESTERDAY OF CHILDREN ASSERTING THEIR EGOS

AND REBELLING AGAINST THEIR PARENTS, OF BEING ABLE TO SAY NO!

AND THUS CREATING A SPINE, AN INDIVIDUALITY, A FREEDOM.

OSHO, DO WE NOW COME TO YOU AND SAY YES! SO THAT WE CAN DROP

THAT EGO? BY DOING SO, WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OUR INDIVIDUALITY, FREEDOM AND SPINE?

Nitin Bharti,

IF THE EGO IS LIKE A LADDER: you have to use it but you cannot make your house on it. Or, the ego is like a boat: you can use it to go to the other shore but then you need not carry it on your head for your whole life. It has something essential to do, but it should not become a burden forever; when its purpose is fulfilled it has to be dropped.

Just as a child needs to say no, the mature person one day needs to say yes. If the child cannot say no to the parents, to the authorities, to the teachers, if the child is unable to disobey, he will not attain to any individuality; he will not have any

form, shape. He will be just part of the mob mind, the crowd. He will be impotent; he will not be able to stand on his own. He will not have any self- respect. He will remain hotchpotch, an ugly mess.

He will not really be born; he will remain in a psychological womb his whole life, ungrown-up. He has to learn how to disobey. And the wise parents will help him to disobey in such a way that disobeying does not distort him. They will give him opportunities to disobey, they will give him opportunities to say no.

That's exactly the meaning of the biblical parable. God said to Adam, "Don't eat the fruit of this tree, the tree of knowledge. If you eat the fruit of this tree you will be expelled from paradise." It is a great temptation! It is giving Adam an opportunity to disobey.

And also God said to Adam, "If you eat the fruit of this tree you will become a mortal; right now you are immortal. Secondly, if you eat the fruit of this tree you will become like gods, all-knowing." You see the temptation, the multi- dimensional temptation? First:

"You will be able to become like gods, all-knowing." Who would not like to become like gods, all-knowing? And the second, the danger, the risk: "If you eat from this tree you will become mortal; death will start happening to you." Now it is a challenge! Danger always attracts, and death is the greatest danger.

God did not leave any possibility for Adam to remain obedient. There must have been millions of trees in the Garden of Eden and only one tree of knowledge; if Adam had been left alone, on his own he might not have discovered it up to now. But God didn't leave it up to him; he pointed out the tree and created the temptation. You think the serpent did it? If the serpent did it, then he must have been in the service of God.

A small child was telling his mother...the mother had asked, "What have you been taught today in Sunday school?"

He said, "We have been told the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion.

Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, then the servant of God came and tempted them."

The mother said, "Servant? You must have misunderstood -- it is not servant, it is serpent!"

But my feeling is that the child is right: the serpent must have been in the service of God, must have been in the secret police department of God, the FBI or something like that.

And in all civilizations the serpent has always represented wisdom. Jesus says: "Be wise like serpents and innocent like doves." Wise like serpents? God must have used the most wise animal to convey the message, the temptation, to Adam and Eve.

The message was given to Eve, not to Adam; since then it has been always so. The salesman comes to the wife not to the husband. The moment the husband leaves for the office the salesman comes and knocks on the door, because the woman can be tempted more easily. The husband will argue, will be stubborn, will not listen, but the wife is easily tempted.

One advertising company was told by a big manufacturer of television sets, "Find out some new way to tempt people to purchase our product." The advertising company suggested, "Send letters to all the addresses given in the telephone directory. The letters should be in the husbands' names but on top of the letters there should be a note in red letters: 'Personal. Private. Not to be read by anybody else.' Then the wives are bound to read them; then you cannot miss." And once they read them, once THEY are impressed...all husbands are henpecked -- universally so, categorically so. To be a husband and to be henpecked are synonymous, and I cannot do anything about it. It has been so since Adam; that is the way things are.

Once Eve was convinced, tempted, Adam followed suit.

If parents are really wise they will create opportunities for the children to say no

-- and beautiful opportunities. Right now, unknowingly, they give ugly opportunities. For example, you say to the child, "Don't smoke cigarettes." This is an ugly opportunity because the child WILL smoke -- you have tempted the child to smoke cigarettes. You should have told him something better -- "Don't go out in the sun. Don't climb the tree."

But you say to the children, "Don't eat ice cream." You should say to them, "Don't eat fruit" -- that will be a wise temptation! "Eat as much ice cream as you

want, but don't eat fruit." Give them such a temptation as leads them to say no to you but does not harm their lives; otherwise they will remain deformed their whole lives.

Two old men -- one was seventy, the other was eighty -- were talking. They were talking about the most embarrassing moments in their lives. The seventy-year- old man said, "I have never told anybody, but you are my bosom friend and I know you will keep it a secret. The most embarrassing moment of my life was when I was caught looking through the keyhole of a bathroom when a young woman was taking a bath."

The other said, "Forget all about it -- each child does that. There is nothing to be so much embarrassed about."

And the old man said, "I know -- but it was yesterday."

Once wrong habits are formed they continue; they remain like hangovers and they become more and more ingrained, more and more deep they go into your unconscious.

Nitin, I am perfectly in favor of creating an ego in the child, because without an ego the child will remain a part of the parents; he will never be an individual on his own. But the no and the no-saying creates only a superficial individuality; because no is negative it cannot create REAL individuality.

The superficial individuality is called personality; the ego gives you a personality. But it is better than having nothing at all at least it gives you a sense of your being, it defines you. But don't remain in it forever; it is a passing phase, a stepping-stone. From the personality you have to reach individuality. From the superficial individuality you have to attain to a core individuality. That is possible only by saying yes. But yes is significant only when you have become able to say no. If you say yes from the very beginning, your yes carries no meaning at all; it is meaningless. If you are capable of saying no then your yes has meaning, as much meaning as your no has strength.

Hence the society teaches you a false, superficial personality. But when you come to a Buddha, to a Jesus, to a Krishna, to a Mahavira -- to a MASTER, to a real Master -- he will teach you how to say yes. He will take away your no, he will take away your personality.

The personality is like the shell of an egg -- the ego is the shell of the egg. It protects the life within for the time being only; beyond that it will be destructive. The egg has to be broken one day so the bird can come out. No only creates a shell around you. It is good, it is needed, it is protective, but one day you have to come out of it. That's the function of religion.

Hence religion is possible only in a civilized, cultured, sophisticated society. The more educated the society is, cultured, civilized, the higher the religion that is possible. The primitive people also have religion, but their religion is not yet religion; it is magic, it is ritual. Hence they have not produced Buddhas. They are good people, simple, beautiful, innocent.…

You can go around India; there are many tribes still, aboriginals, very beautiful people. I have been to them, I have lived with them, I have enjoyed their beauty and their innocence. But they have never created a Buddha in their whole history; at the most they create magicians. Their religion consists only of rituals, formalities; it never attains to the heights of prayer and meditation; it never reaches to the heights of a Patanjali or a Lao Tzu or a Mohammed. They have not produced any Koran, Upanishads, Bible; they cannot. They are people who have not yet said no, they are people who have not yet disobeyed. They have not eaten the fruit of knowledge, they are simply ignorant.

Eat the fruit of knowledge! Become knowledge-able, and one day renounce your knowledge. Then wisdom is born. Wisdom is not ignorance; wisdom is renunciation of knowledge -- but first the knowledge is required.

Before you can become a Christ you will have to become a disobedient Adam and Eve, otherwise Christ is not possible. Christ is the higher stage of Adam. Adam says no, creates a personality; Christ says yes, drops the old personality and attains to a new individuality which is eternal. By saying no Adam becomes a mortal; by saying yes Christ becomes an immortal. By saying no Adam becomes only apparently a god; by saying yes Christ REALLY becomes a god.

The process is paradoxical, hence the question. I can understand your question, Nitin: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OUR INDIVIDUALITY, FREEDOM AND SPINE?

The spine, the individuality, the freedom, that is created by no is only a transitory process. You have to go beyond it; it is a boat that has to be left behind. When

you have reached the roof you leave the ladder; it is a bridge to be crossed.

Now learn how to say yes. No you know perfectly well. In fact, Nitin has come from Africa to be here with me forever -- against his parents. This was your ultimate no! Those who come to me, they have to come against their parents, because parents are Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Buddhists, Jainas...I am nobody! Coming to me, a Christian will become a non-Christian and a Hindu will become a non-Hindu and a Mohammedan will become a non- Mohammedan.

I am not creating a new religion here, but a new man, a new consciousness. I am not creating a new philosophy or theology, but a new vision, a new humanity. You have to come out of your old, rotten ideologies. Hence parents are bound to be against you; they will not like you to be here. I can understand them -- they are worried about you, they care for you. Their worry is utterly wrong, but still it shows their care and their love.

They would like you to remain in the fold in which they and their forefathers have always lived. They are worried you may go astray -- they have not attained to anything by being in the fold, but still they would like you to be in the fold. It is safer, familiar, more secure.

Nitin has come with his wife against the desires of his parents; that was the ultimate no.

Now I will teach you how to say the ultimate yes. The function of the no is complete; if you go on saying no here too, then you are misunderstanding me completely. I am not your father, I am not your mother! I have to take this no away from you and create yes.

The work of the no is complete; now you need a higher flight, now you need a higher altitude of being. That is possible only through yes, because yes is positive.

No gives you a negative kind of individuality, yes gives you a positive individuality. A negative individuality is not real individuality, it is only personality, a mask -- good in its own time. But remember always that every means has to be transcended some day or other. If you want to reach the goal, one day you will have to leave the way.

Buddha used to say, "Once I saw five fools carrying a boat on their heads in the marketplace. I asked them, 'What is the matter with you? Why are you carrying this boat?'

"They said, 'This boat helped us to come from the other shore to this shore; this boat has helped our lives.

If this boat had not been available... on the other shore there were wild animals, and if we had had to remain there even only for one night we would be dead by now. We can never forget the great blessing that the boat has bestowed upon us. Out of sheer thankfulness we will carry the boat forever on our heads!'"

Buddha said, "This is the way of the stupid people. They carry scriptures, they carry ideologies, they carry philosophies, on their heads. Rather than becoming a help, the boat has become a hindrance. It would have been better if they had died on the other shore; at least they would have been saved carrying this weight their whole lives. Now this WEIGHT will kill them!"

No is good, but nobody can live in the no, nobody can make a home out of the no. No is suicidal -- use it, but go beyond it. Be alert and conscious that you don't become encaged in the no-saying. Attain to yes; use no as a stepping-stone.

By being part of this commune you have to learn how to say yes with totality. That is trust, that is surrender, that is faith. That's what will become a bridge, the final bridge between you and God. It will not destroy your freedom; it will simply make your freedom positive.

There are three kinds of freedom. One is 'freedom from'; that is a negative freedom: freedom from the father, freedom from the mother, freedom from the church, freedom from the society. That is a negative kind of freedom -- freedom from -- good in the beginning, but that can't be the goal. Once you are free from your parents, what are you going to do? Once you are free from your society then you will be at loss. You will lose all meaning and significance because your whole life had meaning in saying no. Now whom to say no to?

A young man came to me; he wanted to marry a girl. He was a brahmin, a very high-caste brahmin, very respected in the city, and he wanted to marry a Parsi girl. The parents were obviously against it, absolutely against it. They had told him that if he married that girl they would disown him -- and he was the only son. The more stubborn the parents became, the more the young man became

determined to marry the girl. He had come to ask my advice.

I said, "Just meditate for three days on one thing: are you really interested in the girl or are you simply interested in saying no to your parents?"

He said, "Why do you say this to me? I LOVE the girl, I am absolutely in love!"

I said, "If you say so, then get married. But I don't see any love in your eyes, I don't see any love in your heart. I don't see any fragrance of love. I only see some negative aura around you, a black aura around your face. It says you are determined to go against your parents -- the girl is only an excuse."

But he wouldn't listen. If he was not going to listen to his parents, how was he going to listen to me? He got married. After six months he came to see me, crying and weeping.

He fell at my feet and said, "You were right -- I don't love that woman, that love was false. You were right, your diagnosis was right. Now that I have got married to her and I have denied my parents' order, all love has disappeared."

This is 'freedom from'. This is not much of a freedom, but better than nothing.

The second kind of freedom is 'freedom for'; that is positive freedom. Your interest is not in denying something, rather you want to create something. For example, you want to be a poet, and just because you want to be a poet you have to say no to your parents. But your basic orientation is that you want to be a poet and your parents would like you to be a plumber. "Better be a plumber! That is far more paying, far more economical, far more respectable too. Poet?! People will think you are crazy! And how are you going to live?

And how are you going to support your wife and your children? Poetry can't pay!"

But if you are for poetry, ready to risk all, this is a higher freedom, better than the first. It is positive freedom -- 'freedom for'. Even if you have to live a life of poverty you will be happy, you will be cheerful. Even if you have to chop wood to remain a poet you will be utterly blissful, fulfilled, because you are doing what you wanted to do, you are doing your own thing. This is positive freedom.

And then there is a third freedom, the highest; in the East we have called it

MOKSHA --

the ultimate freedom, which goes beyond both the negative and the positive. First learn saying no, then learn saying yes, and then just forget both, just be. The third freedom is not freedom against something, not for something, but just freedom. One is simply free --

no question of going against, no question of going for. 'Freedom from' is political, hence all political revolutions fail -- when they succeed. If they don't succeed they can go on hoping, but the moment they succeed they fail, because then they don't know what to do.

That happened in the French Revolution, that happened in the Russian Revolution...that happens to every revolution. A political revolution is 'freedom from'. Once the Czar is gone, then you are at a loss: What to do now? Your whole life was devoted to fighting the Czar; you know only one thing, how to fight the Czar. Once the Czar is gone you are at a loss; your whole skill is useless. You will find yourself very empty. 'Freedom for' is artistic, creative, scientific. And 'just freedom' is religious.

Nitin, before I can teach you MOKSHA -- just freedom, neither for nor against, NETI NETI, neither this nor that, but pure freedom, just the fragrance of freedom -- before I can teach it to you, you will have to know the positive one: 'freedom for'.

Hence the commune. It is a creative commune; we are going to be creative in a thousand and one ways. In every possible way we are going to be creative, so that you can learn how to say yes to life.

When the yes has destroyed your no, both can be thrown away. That is the ultimate in joy, in freedom, in realization.

The second question Question 2

OSHO, IS LIFE NOT SOMETIMES FAR MORE SURPRISING THAN FICTIONS

THEMSELVES?

Praghosh,

NOT ONLY SOMETIMES BUT ALWAYS. Fictions are only reflections of life -

- how can they be more surprising? No fiction is so fictitious as life itself; life is made of the stuff called dreams. Hence the mystic says life is illusion, MAYA, a mirage. It is a mystery, unfathomable, infinite, beginningless, endless.

So I will not say that only sometimes it is surprising; each moment of it is a surprise, but you don't feel it. You feel it only once in a while when something really extraordinary happens and you are shocked into wakefulness. Only then do you understand that life is far more surprising -- because you are fast asleep. Unless something out of the way, very outlandish, far out, happens, and you are shaken and shocked into a little bit of awareness, only then do you see what a miracle life is, how much surprise it contains.

But to the Buddhas each moment of it is a surprise, because it is each moment new, renewing itself. Everything is extraordinary if you are alert, if you are sensitive enough, if you are open enough. Then the whole of life, from the mundane to the sacred, from the lowest to the highest, the whole of life is such a mystery that you are always in for a surprise. It depends on your sensitivity, it depends on your awareness, it depends how conscious you are.

A Zen Master was asked, "What did you use to do before you became enlightened?"

He said, "I used to chop wood and carry water from the well for my Master's house."

The inquirer asked, "And now that you have become enlightened, what do you do?"

He said, "I chop wood and carry water."

The inquirer was obviously puzzled. "Then what is the difference? You used to chop wood and carry water, you still chop wood and still carry water -- then what is the difference?"

The Master laughed. He said, "The difference is infinite! Before I simply used to chop wood not knowing the beauties that surrounded me. Now chopping wood is not the same because I am not the same. My eyes are not the same, my heart

beats in a different rhythm -- my heart beats with the heart of the whole. There is a synchronicity, there is harmony.

"Carrying water from the well is the same from the outside, but my interior has become totally different. I am a new man, I am born again! Now I can see in depth, I can see into the very core of things, and each pebble has become a diamond, and each song of a bird is nothing but a call from God, and whenever a flower blooms, God blooms for me.

Looking into people's eyes I am looking into God's eyes. Yes, on the surface I am carrying on the same activity, but because I am not the same the world is not the same."

Start becoming a little more alert and watch things, and you will be surprised. Life is mysterious, unexplainable -- life is absurd. You cannot prove anything for or against.

Tertullian says: I believe in God because God is absurd -- CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM.

WHY do I believe in God? -- because God is absurd! No logic can prove him, no logic can disprove him. It is a love affair. And life is very hilarious because it is very ridiculous too.

If you become a little alert you will find love, light, laughter, everywhere!

It is said that when Hotei attained enlightenment he started laughing. He lived at least thirty years afterwards; he continued laughing for thirty years. Even in sleep his disciples would hear him giggling. His whole message to the world was laughter; he would go from one town to another just laughing. He would stand in one marketplace, then in another, just laughing, and people would gather. His laughter had something of the beyond -- a Buddha's laughter. He is known in Japan as 'the laughing Buddha'.

His laughter was so contagious that whosoever heard it would start laughing. Soon the whole marketplace would be laughing; crowds would gather and laugh and they would ask him, "Just give us a few instructions."

He would say, "Nothing more, this is enough. If you can laugh, if you can laugh totally, it is meditation."

Laughter was his device. It is said many people became enlightened through Hotei's laughter. That was his only meditation: to laugh and help people laugh.

Just watch life, and you will be surprised.

A Scot, an Italian and a Jewish man were dining together in an expensive restaurant.

When the bill arrived, the Scotsman promptly declared that he would take it.

Now this is impossible! "The Scotsman promptly declared that he would take it." Can you believe it? Is it possible? It has never happened, it is not going to happen -- but that day it happened.

The next day the newspapers carried the headline: "JEWISH VENTRILOQUIST SHOT

IN RESTAURANT."

McLeod and his wife visited one of the circus airfields where they charge fifty dollars for a plane ride just around the town. Naturally he would not spend the money until the pilot approached him.

"I will take you and your wife up for nothing," he said. "It will be a rough ride -- but if you and your wife let out one single word, one sound, while we are up there, then it is double."

McLeod accepted the challenge and up they went. It really was a rough ride -- dives, loops, turnovers. Finally they landed.

"You win," said the pilot. "Not a word out of you."

"No," said the Scotsman. "But I almost did speak when my wife fell out."

Just look at people! And each person is a fiction, and each person carries so many stories in his heart. Love people, search in their souls, and you will not need to go to the movies and you will not need to read novels. EACH person contains many novels and many movies, but we don't listen to people. We don't see people face to face, we don't hold their hands, we don't allow them to open their hearts.

For the first time humanity has become very closed. Each person is living a windowless life, completely encapsulated. Open up! Throw your doors and windows open. Let wind and rain and sun come in Let people enter into you and you enter into people's lives. That is the only way to become aware of the tremendous mystery of life. And to be aware of the mystery of life is to be aware of God.

One day King Arthur decided to go in search of the Holy Grail, but he hesitated to leave his knight, Sir Lancelot, with his wife, Queen Guinevere, so he went to ask the wise Merlin for advice. Merlin told him to give him a few days to think it over.

A few days later King Arthur returned to see Merlin who proudly showed him his new invention -- a chastity belt. Puzzled, King Arthur looked at it and said, "But this is no good -- it has the hole in the wrong place! "

Merlin said, "No, no! You just watch this." And he picked up a pencil and put it in the hole. The pencil snapped in half.

King Arthur was absolutely delighted and departed with the belt. After putting it on his wife he set off in search of the Holy Grail, his mind at peace about Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.

Many weeks later he returned -- and immediately lined up all his knights in the castle courtyard and told them to pull down their trousers. Lo and behold, all the knights were castrated except the one at the end of the line, Sir Lancelot.

King Arthur, distraught at having mistrusted his gallant knight -- the only one to have upheld the honor of Queen Guinevere -- went up to him and said, "I give you my humble apologies. You are the knight that I mistrusted the most, but in fact you are the most loyal. I will grant you anything that you ask for. Say what it is that you desire."

And Sir Lancelot went, "Mm mm mm "

The third question Question 3

OSHO, IN A LECTURE YOU SPOKE ABOUT NON-IDENTIFICATION,

THAT ONE

SHOULD BECOME A WITNESS. BUT IN THE WEST MANY PEOPLE ARE ALIENATED, THEY CANNOT GET INVOLVED. THEY ARE SIMPLY

INDIFFERENT TO EVERYTHING. THAT IS ALSO MY EXPERIENCE. PLEASE

CAN YOU MAKE CLEAR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NON- IDENTIFICATION

AND ALIENATION?

Nicolaas,

THE DIFFERENCE IS VERY CLEARCUT, but subtle and delicate To be indifferent means to be dead; it does not mean that you are a witness, it simply means you are disconnected from life and all the sources that nourish you. You are only uprooted; that is alienation.

Uproot a tree and it will start dying. Its greenness will be gone, soon the foliage will wither away, flowers will not come any more. The spring will come and go but the tree will know nothing of it; it has become alienated from existence. It is no longer rooted in the earth, it is no longer related to the sun, it no longer has any bridge. It is surrounded by walls, all bridges are broken.

That's what has happened to the modern man: he is an uprooted tree. He has forgotten how to relate with existence, he has forgotten how to whisper with the clouds and the trees and the mountains. He has completely forgotten the language of silence... because it is the language of silence that becomes a bridge between you and the universe that surrounds you. The universe knows no other language. On the earth there are three thousand languages; existence knows no language except the language of silence.

An English general was talking to a German general after the Second World War. The German was very puzzled; he said, "We had the best equipped army in the world, the best war technology, the greatest leader that history has ever known, the best of generals, and such a devoted army. Why? -- why couldn't we win? It seems simply Impossible that we have been defeated! It is unbelievable --

although it has happened -- but we cannot believe it!"

The English general laughed and said, "There is one thing you have forgotten: before starting any battle we used to pray to God; that is the secret of our victory."

The German said, "But we also used to pray to God, every morning!"

The English general laughed and he said, "We know that you used to pray, but you pray in German and we pray in English -- and who told you that God knows German?"

Everybody thinks his language is the language of God. Hindus say Sanskrit is the holy language, the divine language -- DEVA VANI -- God understands only Sanskrit. And ask the Mohammedans -- then God understands only Arabic; otherwise, why should he have revealed the Koran in Arabic? And ask the Jews -

- then God understands only Hebrew.

God understands no language because God means this total existence. God understands only silence -- and we have forgotten silence.

Nicolaas, because we have forgotten silence, forgotten the art of meditation, we have become alienated. We have become small, dirty, muddy pools and we don't know how to go and be one with the ocean. We go on becoming dirtier every day, shallower every day, because the water goes on evaporating. We are just muddy, our life has no clarity. Our eyes cannot see and our hearts cannot feel.

This state is the state of indifference; it is a negative state. The mystics have called it 'the dark night of the soul'. It is not witnessing, it is just the opposite of witnessing.

When I say be a witness I am not saying become uprooted from life. I am saying live life in all its multi-dimensionality, and YET remain aware. Drink the juices of life, but remember that while you are drinking the juices of life there is a consciousness in you beyond all action, all doing. Drinking, eating, walking, sleeping, are all acts, and there is a consciousness in you which simply reflects, a mirrorlike phenomenon. It is not indifference. The mirror is not indifferent to you, otherwise why should it bother to reflect you at all? It is immensely interested in you, it reflects you, but it does not become attached. The moment you are gone, you are gone; the mirror does not remain remembering you; the

mirror now reflects that which is in front of it.

A witnessing consciousness lives in life but with tremendous non-attachment, with great non-possessiveness; it possesses nothing. It lives totally, it lives passionately, but still knowing that "I don't possess anything."

The witnessing consciousness is not an island separate from the ocean; it is ONE with the ocean. But still a miracle, a paradox: even being one with the ocean there is a part that remains above the ocean like the tip of the iceberg. That part is your witnessing soul. To create it is the greatest treasure in the world; one becomes a Buddha by creating it Falling into indifference you become simply unconscious, you go into a coma. You lose all joy in life; the celebration of life stops for you. Then you don't exist, you only vegetate. Then you are not a man but only a cabbage -- and that too uprooted. You become more and more rotten every day, you stink; no fragrance comes out of you. The same energy that could have become fragrance passing through a witnessing soul becomes a stinking phenomenon by becoming indifferent.

But I can understand your question, Nicolaas. From the outside sometimes indifference and witnessing may appear alike. This has been one of the greatest calamities -- because they APPEAR alike. Hence true sannyas was lost and a phony sannyas became predominant. I call sannyas phony if it lives in indifference.

The phony sannyas is escapist. It teaches you not to enjoy ,life, it teaches you not to love music, it teaches you not to cherish beauty. It teaches you to destroy all the sources that beautify your existence. It teaches you to escape to the caves, ugly caves, to turn your back towards the world that God has given as a gift to you.

The phony sannyas is not only against the world, it is against God too, because to be against the world is to be against the creator of the world. If you hate the painting you are bound to hate the painter. If you dislike the dance, how can you like the dancer? God is the painter, the world is his painting. God is the musician, the world is his music. God is the dancer, NATARAJ, and the world is his dance. If you renounce the world, indirectly you are renouncing God.

The phony sannyas is escapist; cheap it is, easy it is. It is very easy to escape from the world and live in a cave and feel holy -- because there is no opportunity

for you to be unholy, no challenge. Nobody insults you, nobody criticizes you. There is nobody present, so you can think that now there is no anger in you, you can feel that now there is no ego in you. Come back to the world!...

I know people who have lived for thirty years in the Himalayas, and when they come back to the world they are surprised to find that they are the same people, nothing has changed. Thirty years of Himalayas -- a sheer wastage! But while they were in the Himalayas they were thinking they had become very sacred, very holy, they had become great saints. And there were reasons for them to think so, because no anger, no ego, no greed... there is nothing to possess so you feel non-possessive, nobody to compete with so you feel non-competitive, nobody hurts your ego so you don't feel the ego at all.

Things are felt only when there is some hurt. For example, you feel your head only when there is a headache. When the headache disappears, the head also disappears from your consciousness; you cannot feel your head without a headache. You become headless when there is no headache.

Living in the Himalayan cave you have escaped from all the hurts of the world which make you aware again and again of the ego, of the anger, of the greed, of jealousy.…

Coming back into the world you will find everything is back again -- and back with a vengeance, because for thirty years it has been accumulating. You will bring a bigger ego than you had ever taken with you to the Himalayas.

The sannyas that teaches indifference is phony.

The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being OF the world, that is true renunciation.

That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference. Indifference will make you alienated, being alienated you will feel meaningless, joyless, accidental.

Feeling accidental, the desire to commit suicide will arise, is bound to arise. Why go on living a meaningless life? Why go on repeating the same rut, the same routine, every day? If there is no meaning, why not end it all, why not be

finished with it all?

Hence many many more people are committing suicide every day, many many people are going mad every day. The rate of suicide and madness is increasing. Psychoanalysis seems to be of no help. Psychoanalysts, in fact, commit suicide more, go mad more, than any other profession.

Nothing seems to help the modern man -- because the indifference is too heavy; it has created a dark cloud around him. He cannot see beyond his own nose; he is suffocating in his lonely world. The walls are so thick, thicker than the China Wall, that even when you love you are hidden behind your wall, your beloved is hidden behind her wall. There are two China Walls between you. You shout, but no communication seems to be possible.

You say one thing, something else is understood; she says something, you understand something else. Husbands and wives sooner or later come to one understanding: that it is better not to talk. It is better to keep silent, because the moment you utter a word misunderstanding is bound to follow.

All communication has disappeared from the world. Everybody is living a lonely life --

lonely in the crowd; the crowd is becoming bigger and bigger every day. The world population is exploding; there have never been so many human beings as there are today

-- and man has never been so lonely. Strange! Why are we so lonely amidst such a crowd? Communication has failed.

Gaffney staggered into a bar crying. "What happened?" asked Brady the bartender.

"I did a horrible thing," sniffed the drunk. "Just a few hours ago I sold my wife to someone for a bottle of Scotch."

"That's awful," said Brady. "Now she is gone and you want her back, right?" "Right," said Gaffney, still crying.

"You are sorry you sold her because you realized too late that you love her,

right?"

"Oh, no," said the Irishman, "I want her back because I am thirsty again!"

It is becoming more and more difficult to understand people, because such thick, dense indifference surrounds everybody that even if you shout you can't be heard, or they hear something which you have not said at all. They hear that which they want to hear or they hear that which they CAN hear. They hear not what is said but what their mind interprets.

Two black teenage girls wandered into a photographer's shop in Alabama to have their photos taken.

The photographer sat them down and then busied himself under the black cloth behind his camera.

"What's he doin'?" whispered one girl to her friend. "He's gonna focus," she whispered back.

"What, both of us?"

D'Angelo, the immigrant, had to travel by train from New York to Raleigh, North Carolina. When he was met by a cousin it was obvious that D'Angelo was in a very bad mood.

"What happened?" asked his relative.

"Ah, that goddamn-a conductor he tell-a me no do this and no do that!" exclaimed the Italian. "I take out-a my sand-a-wich and he say, 'No -- inna dining car.' I start-a drink-a some vino and he say, 'No -- inna cluba car.' So I go inna club-a car, meet-a girl, and she take-a me back to her empty compartment and then the goddamn conductor he come along ana yell, 'No'foka Virginia, no'foka Virginia!'"

You understand that which you can understand. Your mind is always there to interpret, and the interpretation is yours. It has nothing to do with what you have been told People are becoming more and more lonely, and out of desperation they are trying every possible way to communicate. Nothing seems to help. Nothing can help unless they start learning the art of silence. Unless a man and

woman know what silence is, unless they can sit together in deep silence, they cannot merge into each other's being. Their bodies may penetrate each other, but their souls will remain far apart. And when souls meet there is communion, there is understanding.

Indifference makes you dull, makes you mediocre, makes you unintelligent. If you are indifferent your sword will lose all sharpness. That's how it happens to the monks in the monasteries. Look at their faces, in their eyes, and you can see that something is dead.

They are like corpses walking, doing things robotlike because those things have to be done. They are not really involved; they have become utterly incapable of getting involved in anything.

This is a very sad situation, and if it continues, man has no future. If it continues, then the third world war is bound to happen -- so that we can commit a global suicide; so there is no need to commit suicide retail, we can commit it wholesale. In one single moment the whole earth can die.

Hence meditation has become something absolutely needed, the only hope for humanity to be saved, for the earth to still remain alive. Meditation simply means the capacity to get involved yet remain unattached. It looks paradoxical -- all great truths ARE

paradoxical. You have to experience the paradox; that is the only way to understand it.

You can do a thing joyously and yet just be a witness that you are doing it, that you are not the doer.

Try with small things, Nicolaas, and you will understand. Tomorrow when you go for a morning walk, enjoy the walk -- the birds in the trees and the sunrays and the clouds and the wind. Enjoy, and still remember that you are a mirror; you are reflecting the clouds and the trees and the birds and the people.

This self-remembering Buddha calls sammasati -- right mindfulness.

Krishnamurti calls it

'choiceless awareness', the Upanishads call it 'witnessing', Gurdjieff calls it 'self- remembering', but they all mean the same. But it does not mean that you have to

become indifferent; if you become indifferent you lose the opportunity to self- remember.

Go on a morning walk and still remember that you are not it You are not the walker but the watcher And slowly slowly you will have the taste of it -- it is a taste, it comes slowly. And it is the most delicate phenomenon in the world; you cannot get it in a hurry.

Patience is needed.

Eat, taste the food, and still remember that you are the watcher. In the beginning it will create a little trouble in you because you have not done these two things together. In the beginning, I know, if you start watching you will feel like stopping eating, or if you start eating you will forget watching.

Our consciousness is one-way -- right now, as it is -- it goes only towards the target. But it can become two-way: it can eat and yet watch. You can remain settled in your center and you can see the storm around you; you can become the center of the cyclone. And that is the greatest miracle that can happen to a human being, because that brings freedom, liberation, truth, God, bliss, benediction.

The last question Question 4

OSHO, CAN YOU ALSO MAKE MISTAKES?

Darshan,

NOT A FEW BUT MANY...PLENTY! because I don't take anything seriously. So many times my sannyasins write to me, "Osho..." Subhuti wrote just a few days ago; when I said that Napoleon was obsessed with food, he wrote to me, "Is it Napoleon or Nero?"

Who cares; Subhuti? Whichever you like! Sometimes I say Nero, sometimes I say Napoleon. I am not a very learned mm, and I am absolutely happy in being utterly unlearned.

The other day somebody wrote: "You said that the gospels were written a few

centuries after Jesus. This is not correct!" But I have not told you that this is correct! If it is incorrect it makes no difference to me. He has also written -- must be a learned man!...you have fallen in wrong company! -- he has also written: "You said that it was translated into Latin first." To me Latin and Greek are all the same! I don't understand Latin, I don't understand Greek, so all that I meant was that it was translated into something that I don't understand!

Teertha understands it perfectly well. He has written a story. He has written to me: Osho, I was walking down M.G. Road one day when I saw a very strange sight: there was this man, right in the middle of the road, moving his arms as though he was rowing a boat. (Demonstrate, but mind the microphone!)

I watched for a while, and eventually had to call out to him to find out what was going on.

"What are you doing?" I shouted. "Rowing a boat, of course!" he replied. "But you are not in a boat" I called back.

"I am not?!" he yelled, looking panic-stricken; and then started swimming as hard as he could. (Demonstrate, but mind the microphone.)

Now he knows that I can hit the microphone -- and he is much more concerned about the microphone!

I can commit mistakes a-plenty, but I am not deterred by them, I go on committing them -

- because if I start thinking that no mistake has to be committed then I cannot relate to you what I want to relate. Then I will have to be absolutely silent, because the truth that I have known can only be related if I am ready to commit many mistakes. Then too it is not related as it is.

A telephone operator in San Francisco says that the city's Chinatown receives fewer calls than any other area of similar size in the city. And with a straight face she explained the reason: "I guess there are so many people named Wing and Wong that people are afraid they will wing the wong number."

I am not afraid -- I go on winging the wong number! And it is not only that I can commit mistakes...the world is proof enough that God also commits mistakes. Otherwise, do you think you would have had any chance of being here in the world?

Mulla Nasruddin was speaking to Morarjibhai Desai. Seeing Mulla Nasruddin in orange, Morarjibhai Desai was obviously annoyed. He said to Nasruddin, "Mulla, what turned you on to Rajneesh?"

'The day I saw him walking out with his hands folded, I knew then that God exists,"

replied Mulla.

Morarji, looking at Mulla from the corner of his eye, asked, "Hmmm, and what do you feel when you see me?"

Mulla said, "That God can also make mistakes." Be Still and Know

Chapter #6

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