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Chapter title: Only Now
6 September 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
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7909060
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BESTIL06
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The first question Question 1
OSHO, CAN YOU CLEAR THIS CONFUSION IN ME? THE OTHER DAY AT
DISCOURSE YOU TALKED ABOUT THE DIFFERENT WAYS AND PATHS TO
GOD. THE CHRISTIAN FEELS HIS IS THE ONLY WAY, THE MOSLEM
FEELS
HIS IS THE ONLY WAY, AND SO ON. NOW ALL OF US HERE, YOUR ENTIRE
FOLLOWING -- DON'T WE TOO BELIEVE THAT YOURS IS THE MOST APPEALING AND THEREFORE THE ONLY WAY? THEN WHAT IS THE
DIFFERENCE? I CANNOT SEEM TO FIGURE IT OUT AND YET I AM SURE
THERE IS DIFFERENCE.
GOD IS NOT A GOAL, hence there can be no way to God. All ways are wrong. God is right now, this very moment. God is always in the present, now and here, and always now and here. There can be no way to God.
The very idea of the way is fallacious. The way means you have postponed; the way leads to tomorrow, and the tomorrow never comes. The way means you have projected into the future: God is somewhere else and you have to travel. Then religion becomes a journey. And religion is not a journey, it is already the case.
God has not to happen to you. God has happened because you are alive. What is life?
Who is breathing in you and who is conscious in you? God is not to be known, God is the knower. God is not the object that you have to see, God is the SEER in you. This is the most fundamental thing I would like you to remember.
What I am teaching here is not a way, it is a totally different phenomenon. Hence I am not creating a religion, I am not creating a sect -- I am simply waking you up to the reality of God. Even while you are asleep God is within and without; even in your sleep you are in God.
It is like if a man is asleep and it is spring and the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing and the trees are green, celebrating -- but the man is asleep. He is unaware of the spring, he is unaware of the flowers, of the birds' songs; he is unaware of everything that is happening. But that does not mean that it is not
happening. He may be unaware, he may be asleep, but the spring has come, it is there. Any moment the man can open his eyes; any situation may help him to be awake. And suddenly he will be surprised that there was no need to go anywhere
-- all was already here.
That s how it happens when a man really wakes up -- not that one has to travel somewhere. All traveling is dreaming, all pilgrimage is dreaming, desiring. And your so-called religions have made God a goal, and your mind is perfectly satisfied with that because mind can exist only if there is a goal. The mind needs a tension, the mind needs a way to remain tense. If there is a goal then mind can remain desiring -- unfulfilled, frustrated, hoping one day to get it.
This is how mind can nourish itself, and it can dream about the joys of finding God and the beauties and the blessings. It can create paradise in imagination -- and all these are simply dreams of the mind. The moment you think of the future, you have slipped out of reality and fallen into the ditch of dreaming. My effort here is to bring you out of your sleep and dreaming.
Zareen, I am not teaching a way, so you cannot claim that my way is the best way -- it is not a way at all. You cannot say that this is the only way, because I am saying there is no way at all. I am simply trying to make you alert to that which is already there. It is beating in your heart, it is God beating in your heart. It is pulsating in your being; every fiber of your body, of your being, is alive. That aliveness is God.
God is not a person but only the presence. Feel it now! If you can ever feel it you can only feel it now -- now or never. Hence I don't give any opportunity for your mind. You would like me to say something about how to find God, where to find God, where to go.
You will be perfectly happy if I give you ways, goals, faraway, distant goals; you will be tremendously happy. Why? Because the goal helps you to remain the same as you are, the goal helps you to remain asleep and dreaming. It becomes a new dream, a new desire, a new ambition: How to attain God? It becomes a new ego trip.
I am shattering your egos, because your egos are a kind of shell that surrounds you and keeps you oblivious of the reality. It keeps you encapsulated within yourself, does not allow you to open your eyes and see what is happening.
God is this total existence happening. Be silent and know. There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to achieve, no ambition has to be fulfilled. God has already decided to be inside you; that's why you are alive.
So, Zareen, don't get unnecessarily confused. I am not proposing a way in competition with the Mohammedan and the Christian and the Hindu and the Parsi. What I am saying has nothing to do with Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. What I am saying is simply a statement, a naked, bare statement of the fact that YOU ARE GOD! already, as you are.
Nothing has to be changed at all. Only one thing has to happen and that is not a change really but just the other side of you. One side is sleep, the other side is awakening. One side of you, one aspect of your coin, is sleep, darkness, the night part; the other side is the day part. Just wake up...and you will 'he surprised that there was no need to desire anything. God has already given it to you. He has given himself: he lives in you, he resides in you. If I can help you to remember this, that's all.
Zareen, that's why you feel the difference but you cannot figure it out. This is the difference. All religions are ways; all religions are new directions for the ego, new projections, new desires, and sometimes far more dangerous than the ordinary desire is. A man desiring money is not in such a mess as a man who desires God, because money can be FOUND by desiring; money can ONLY be found by desiring, and God can never be found by desiring. God can only be found by non-desiring.
So miserable is the man, most miserable is the man who desires God. The man who is greedy for money is not in such a great mess; he is far more sane -- because money can be found only if you desire and work hard for it, compete, struggle. If you desire political power, then be madly after it; that is the only way to attain it. It will not come if you go on sitting IN your room waiting for it; it will never knock on your door. You can wait for millions of lives -- nobody will come and knock on your door and say to you that you have been chosen to be the prime minister of the country or the president. You will have to fight for it, you will have to be very violent, aggressive; only then is it possible.
But if you go in search of God you will miss. The very search will be the cause of your missing. Where are you going? He is inside and you are going outside. All going is going outside. Go to Jerusalem or Kaaba or Kashi or Girnar or Bodh
Gaya: wherever you go, it is outside. All going is extrovert. Ingoing is not a going at all.
What is ingoing? When you don't go outside, you are in. It is not really a going at all; not even a single step has to be taken. There is no space inside where you can walk and go in.
When it is said, "Go in," it is said only metaphorically. What is actually meant is: Stop going out. Stop completely, a full point, no more going outside. Then suddenly you are in
-- where else can you be when you are not going outside? When you are not going to Kaaba and to Jerusalem and to Kashi, where will you be? You will simply be inside, you will find yourself inside. Your outgoing was preventing you from finding yourself.
Stop seeking: that is the only way to find God. Stop desiring: that is the only way to find God.
I am giving you an insight, not a religion. And you are not my followers, remember, Zareen. Nobody here is my follower -- -friends, of course, but nobody is a follower. The orange color creates the illusion that people are following me. Just to avoid that, I cannot wear orange myself. I love the color, but if I start wearing orange then it will become a logical proof that you are following me. Certainly, you are not following me; I am a white person, you are orange people -- what connection can there be?
You are not my followers but friends. And because I love orange, out of your love you have accepted it. It is not a uniform; it is not that by wearing orange you become part of a certain sect or church. There is no church, no sect. Because I love orange, just out of love for me you are wearing orange. That is just a gesture of love, nothing else.
Zareen, you are not my follower, nobody is. But certainly you have chosen to be with me.
That is your choice. You have fallen in love with a madman, and when you fall in love with a madman a little bit of madness is bound to enter in your heart. That's what is happening here. I am drunk, I am making you drunk. What else can I do? But this is not a religion. Hence you can love me and you can love
Jesus, and there is no conflict. In fact by loving me you are bound to love Jesus. By loving me you will find for the first time the real taste of Jesus. By being with me you can love Buddha. In fact for the first time you will have an insight of what Buddha is. By being with me, in communion with me, you will be in communion with Zarathustra, with Lao Tzu, with Mahavira, with Mohammed. But this is a totally different approach I become the door, and when you enter in me you find all the Buddhas -- because it is like the ocean: you can taste it from anywhere, it is salty. If you taste me, you have tasted all the Buddhas; it is the SAME
taste.
You cannot find Mohammed in the Koran, and you cannot find Jesus in the Bible. You cannot become really religious by becoming part of a church -- Catholic, Protestant -- it is impossible. These are the mischievous people who have been creating a very ugly humanity. You can be a Jew only if you hate Jesus. You can be with Moses only if you are not with Jesus; that is a condition. And if you are with Jesus then you cannot be with Buddha; that's a condition.
That's why they go on claiming, "This is the ONLY way" -- so even the idea that there are other possible ways drops from your mind. You are conditioned in such a way by every religion that "This is the only truth THE ONLY truth, THE truth," and the conditioning becomes so strong, steel-like, that it becomes impossible for you to think that there can be other ways, absolutely impossible. Unless you are very intelligent, alert, watchful, unless you look at your conditioning and become a witness, it is impossible.
I was born in a Jaina family and, naturally, just as everybody else is conditioned, the conditioning was imposed on me. But I was continuously watchful, continuously alert, hence I was not caught by the conditioning. And the conditioning is so subtle that once you are caught in it you become incapable of thinking, seeing; anything that goes against your conditioning, you become deaf to it.
For example, a Jaina cannot think that Jesus is enlightened -- impossible. His conditioning will not allow him. And his conditioning is very logical in his mind, and you cannot argue with him. He will say, "Jesus eats meat: how can an enlightened person eat meat?" And how are you going to convince him? He has some logic there.
Jesus drinks wine. He not only drinks wine but he also turns the whole sea into wine so the whole world can become drunk. It is a beautiful story, Jesus turning the whole sea into wine. Can an enlightened person do that? Not according to the Jainas. If there was a sea full of wine the Jaina TEERTHANKARA would come and do the miracle and turn it into water -- and pure water, mind you, filtered water. And that too you are allowed to drink only in the day, not in the night. If you are really a Jaina you won't drink it at night, not even water.
My grandmother would not even allow poor tomatoes in the house, because they look like meat -- just the appearance! Only when she died could tomatoes enter into the house.
You will be surprised Jainas don't eat potatoes. Now, what have these poor potatoes done? But their ideas: anything that grows under the earth has not to be eaten; only things that grow in the open, in the sun, because anything that grows in darkness creates darkness in you. Logic! It is TAMAS; it will create TAMASIC energy in you; it will create a certain energy that will pull you towards the earth, downwards. The potato is a secret agent of the earth -- beware! Eat things that grow upwards towards the sun; they will help you to be uplifted, your energy will be sattvic, pure. You will be under the law of levitation. The potato pulls you downwards, it is heavy.
And once you are conditioned from your very childhood, that's how it starts appearing.
Then eat a potato and you w ill feel very heavy and pulled downwards -- all these things will happen and then you will know that the teaching is right.
Up to my eighteenth year I had not eaten in the night. Then I went with a few friends to see a fort, far away in the jungles. They were all Hindus, and the fort was such a beauty that the whole day they were not interested in preparing food. I was the only Jaina, and I could not insist, because thirty people were not interested in cooking food in the day. So I kept quiet. In the night they cooked food. Now, the whole day's wandering in the forest, in the ruins of that old ancient castle -- I was tired, hungry; I had never known such hunger. But my eighteen years' conditioning: you cannot eat in the night.…
And then they started preparing beautiful food, and the smell of the food and so close by.… And they all started persuading me; they said. "Nobody is here, and
nobody will tell your family, your parents. Nobody will ever know." I resisted -- but the more I resisted, the more I was tempted. Finally I yielded, I ate. The food was delicious, but the whole night I suffered hell. I vomited at least seven times. That eighteen years' conditioning is not an easy thing to get rid of. I could not digest that food; my whole body revolted. Until all the food was thrown out I could not sleep. And then it was certainly a proof that whatsoever I had been told was right.
But those thirty people, they slept well. I had only one consolation -- that they would all suffer in hell. The whole night I was preparing for their hell, as bad a hell as possible. I was suffering my hell, and they were sound asleep and snoring. I was consoling myself,
"It's okay -- just a few days more, then I will be in paradise and you will be in hellfire.
Then you will know. The pleasures of this life are momentary," I was telling myself.
Your so-called religions only condition you against other religions. They make you antagonistic, they create conflict. They don't allow you to create a brotherhood, they don't allow you to create a humanity.
Godfarb was invited to a birthday party for the parish priest. Wanting to show his desire to be a good member of the community, he went to a jewelry store to get the good father a birthday present.
"What would you recommend?" asked Godfarb of the store clerk. "How about this lovely crucifix with Christ on it?"
"Do you think he would like that?" "Absolutely."
"How much is it?"
"One hundred and fifty dollars."
"One hundred and fifty dollars!" exclaimed Godfarb. "Have you got one without
the acrobat on it?"
Jesus looks like an acrobat -- if you are a Jew, that's how it is. To a Jaina. Mohammed is not even worthy of being counted among the saints -- what to say about the messengers of God? According to the Buddhists, even Mahavira, the TEERTHANKARA of the Jainas, is not worthy of being counted as a holy man, not even a moral man, because he moves naked -- this is utter immorality. Buddhists cannot forgive him. This is exhibitionism, this is neurosis; the man is pathological!
You have been given ideas in the name of religions. I am not giving you any idea; I am trying to take all ideas away from you.
Just the other day there was a question saying: "Osho, sometimes you give wrong information to US." SOMETIMES? My whole effort here is to destroy all the information that you have. All information is wrong. So I am not interested in giving you RIGHT information, because all information has to be taken out. You have to be left without information. When you are without information, without knowledge, not knowing what is what, in that state of not-knowing you bloom. God starts opening up within your being.
I am not teaching a way, I am not giving you a system of thought, a philosophy -
- just the contrary. I am against all knowledge, all philosophy, all systems of thought, all theologies, all religions. And by dropping all, you can be in communion with me. It is a communion, not a following.
A communion means I respect you, I love you as equals. You are NOT inferior, just asleep! Your sleep does not make you inferior at all, your sleep simply gives you dreams.
In fact, when Buddha became enlightened somebody asked him, "What have you gained?"
He said, "I have not gained anything, but I have lost many things. I have lost my desires, my dreams, my sleep, my anger, my greed, my ambition, my ego -- I have lost so many things. And I have gained nothing, nothing at all. But by losing all those things I have come home. I have become just myself -- a purity, a clarity, a cloudless sky."
I am not giving you anything; on the contrary I am taking things away from you.
In fact, if you think in terms of things, you are far superior to me, because you have many more things which I don't have. You have a big ego...I cannot compete with you. You have great greed, possessiveness, jealousy, anger. You have a thousand and one things. I am a poor man compared to you, very poor, nothing to claim -- or ONLY nothing to claim.
And if you are courageous enough, you are going to become a nothing yourself sooner or later.
Zareen, I am not teaching a way, I am not giving you a goal. I am taking all ways away, all goals away.
The second question Question 2
OSHO, WHY DON'T YOU GIVE YOUR DISCIPLES A CERTAIN MODE OF
CONDUCT? ISN'T A MORAL CHARACTER NECESSARY FOR A SPIRITUAL
LIFE?
Mahendra Singh,
MY WHOLE EFFORT is to give you a consciousness, not a character. Consciousness is the real thing, character the false entity. Character is needed by those who don't have consciousness. If you have eyes, you don't need a walking- stick to find your way, to grope your way. If you can see you don't ask others, "Where is the doer?" Character is needed because people are unconscious. Character is just a lubricant; it helps you to run your life in a smooth way.
George Gurdjieff used to say character is like a buffet. Buffers are used in railway trains; between two compartments there are buffers. If something happens, those two compartments cannot clash with each other; these buffers prevent them from clashing with each other. Or it is like springs: cars have springs so you can move smoothly -- even on an Indian road. Those springs go on absorbing the shocks; they are called shock absorbers.
That's what character is: it is a shock absorber. People are told to be humble. If
you learn how to be humble it is a shock absorber. By learning how to be humble you will be able to protect yourself against other people's egos. They will not hurt you so much; you are a humble man. If you are egoistic you are bound to be hurt again and again. The ego is very sensitive, so you cover up your ego with a blanket of humbleness. It helps, it gives you a kind of smoothness, but it does not transform you.
My work consists of transformation. This is an alchemical school: I want to transform you from unconsciousness into consciousness, from darkness into light. I cannot give you a character; I can only give you insight, awareness. I would like you to live moment-tomoment, not according to a set pattern given by me or given by the society, the church, the state. I would like you to live according to your own small light of awareness, according to your own consciousness. Be responsive to each moment.
Character means you have a certain ready-made answer for all the questions of life, so whenever a situation arises you respond according to the set pattern. Because you respond according to the ready-made answer it is not a true response, it is only a reaction.
The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness responds: he takes the situation in, he reflects the reality as it is, and out of that reflection he acts. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness acts. The man of character is mechanical; robotlike he functions. He has a computer in his mind, full of information; ask him anything and a ready-made answer rolls down from his computer.
A man of consciousness simply acts in the moment, not out of the past and out of the memory. His response has a beauty, a naturalness, and his response is true to the situation. The man of character always falls short, because life is continuously changing; it is never the same. And your answers are always the same, they never grow -- they can't grow, they are dead.
You have been told a certain thing in your childhood; it has remained there. You have grown, life has changed, but that answer that was given by your parents or by your teachers or by your priests is still there. And if something happens you will function according to that answer which was given to you fifty years before. And in fifty years so much water has gone down the Ganges; it is a totally different life.
Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice. And I say to you: You cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-flowing.
Character is stagnant; it is a dirty pool of water. Consciousness is a river.
Mahendra Singh, that's why I don't give my people ANY code of conduct. I give them eyes to see, a consciousness to reflect, a mirrorlike being to be able to respond to any situation that arises. I don't give them detailed information about what to do and what not to do; I don't give them ten commandments. And if you start giving them commandments then you cannot stop at ten, because life is far more complex.
In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. Thirty-three thousand rules! For every possible situation that may ever arise, they have given a ready-made answer. But how are you going to remember thirty-three thousand rules of conduct? And a man who is cunning enough to remember thirty-three thousand rules of conduct will be clever enough to find a way out always; if he does not want to do a certain thing he will find a way out. If he wants to do a certain thing he will find a way out.
I have heard about a Christian saint: somebody hit him on his face, because just that day in his morning discourse he had said, "Jesus says if somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other." And the man wanted to try it, so he hit him, really hit him hard on one cheek. And the saint was really true, true to his word: he gave him the other cheek.
But that man was also something: he hit even harder on the other cheek. Then he was surprised: the saint jumped on the man, started beating him so hard that the man said,
"What are you doing? You are a saint, and just this morning you were saying that if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other."
He said, "Yes -- but I don't have a third cheek. And Jesus stops there. Now I am free; now I will do what I want to do. Jesus has no more information about it."
It happened exactly like that in Jesus' life also. Once he told a disciple, "Forgive seven times." The disciple said, "Okay." The way he said, "Okay," Jesus became suspicious; he said, "Seventy-seven times I say."
The disciple was a little disturbed, but he said, "Okay -- because numbers don't end at seventy-seven. What about seventy-eight? Then I am free, then I can do what I want to do!"
How many rules can you make for people? It is stupid, meaningless. That's how people are religious, and still they are not religious: they always find a way to get out of those rules of conduct and commandments. They can always find a way through the back door.
And character can at the most give you only a skin-deep, pseudo mask -- not even skin-deep: just scratch your saints a little bit and you will find the animal hidden behind. On the surface they look beautiful, but only on the surface.
I don't want you to be superficial; I want you to REALLY change. But a real change happens through the center of your being, not through the circumference. Character is painting the circumference, consciousness is transformation of the center.
Once a carpenter was working in a church and he hit his thumb with a hammer. "Fuck's sake!" he yelled.
The Vicar happened to be passing and heard him. "You cannot use that kind of language here. This is a house of God," he admonished.
"Pardon, Vicar, but what's a man to say when he whacks his thumb with a hammer?"
"You can say, 'God preserve me,' or 'Jesus help me,'" suggested the Vicar.
Later, when the carpenter was sawing a piece of wood, he sawed right through his finger, which dropped to the floor. "God preserve me!" cried the carpenter, and the finger jumped back upon the hand and healed itself.
"Fuck's sake!" exclaimed the Vicar. The third question
Question 3
OSHO, ONCE SOMEONE ASKED ME THE MEANING OF THE
CHRISTIAN GOD, AND I ANSWERED SPONTANEOUSLY, "LOVE, TRUST, FEAR OF DEATH."
AT THAT TIME, AFTER YEARS OF A WELL-CONDITIONED OUTSIDE LIFE
AND A REPRESSED INNER WORLD, LOVE AND TRUST HAPPENED TO ME AS
AN INTENSE INNER OPENING AND AN OVERFLOWING OF ENERGY. IT
HAPPENED JUST WHEN I HEARD OF YOU AND STARTED DOING THE
MEDITATIONS. FROM THE OUTSIDE IT SEEMED LIKE MADNESS, BUT IN ALL
THE CRAZINESS I GOT A CLEAR, STRONG FEELING OF AN ENERGY WHICH
MOVES ME SOMEWHERE I HAVE SEARCHED FOR ALL THE TIME.
ON THE OTHER SIDE, GREAT FEAR CAME UP. FEAR OF DEATH, CONNECTED
WITH A CHILDHOOD PICTURE OF AN ANCIENT GOD WHO HAD THE POWER
TO PUNISH HUMAN BEINGS WITH DEATH AND ETERNAL DARKNESS. THIS
FEELING OF FEAR STILL CREATES A CERTAIN HEAVINESS IN MY MIND
AND STOPS THE NATURAL FLOW OF ENERGY. OSHO, CAN YOU SPEAK ABOUT FEAR AND DEATH.
Anand Marita,
THE ORDINARY GOD is nothing but a projection of your fear. It is not love, it
is not trust -- because love knows nothing of fear, and trust knows nothing of fear. Just as light has never seen darkness, love and trust have never met fear But in all the languages of the world there are expressions like 'godfearing'; the religious person is known as
'godfearing'. That is sheer nonsense. A religious person cannot be godfearing, he can only be godloving. If he is godfearing he is not religious yet. How can you fear God?
But your priests have made so much fuss about hell, punishment, karma; they have made so much fuss about a God who is a very angry God -- if you disobey him he will throw you into hellfire, and for eternity. It is the priest's work to create fear in you, because once fear is there you can be exploited. A fearful person will go to the church, to the mosque, to the temple, but he is not going to God, he is going to the priest really, and the priest exploits his fear.
A really religious person has a totally different approach towards life: it is not of fear, it is of tremendous love. His God comes out of his love, his God is nothing but another name for his total love. His God is another name for his total orgasmic joy with existence.
And that's what is happening to you, Marita. Here, being with me, a sannyasin, meditating, love is arising, trust is arising. But at the same time you are feeling fear. This fear is totally different; it is not the fear created by the priests, because I don't create any fear in you. And it is not the fear of death either, because you don't know anything about death -- how can you be afraid of something you don t know at all? To be afraid you have to be at least acquainted a little bit -- you cannot be afraid of the absolutely unknown, and death is absolutely unknown.
It is not fear of death either. It is something else which you have not yet been able-to figure out -- it is the fear of a dying ego which appears like death. It is a death in a way, because you are so much identified with the ego, with the idea of 'I', that when the 'I'
starts evaporating you feel as if you are dying -- obviously. Your identification is disappearing, you are passing through an identity crisis. Don't cling to the ego, let it go --
because the death of the ego is not your death. The death of the ego, on the contrary, is your real birth.
Marita, you are coming closer and closer to the birth, to the real birth. You will be reborn.
But you can be reborn only when death is gone, when ego is gone. With ego, death also disappears, remember -- because you have never died. How can you die? You are not born either. You are God! You are divine energy! You have been here forever, and you will be here forever. Birth and death are only of the body and the mind, and between the body and the mind exists the ego. It is a creation, a conspiracy of body/mind: When the ego disappears your death disappears too. Once the ego is gone, you will be surprised that you are eternal, that you have been here always and always, and you will be here always and always. You are part of the truth which cannot die.
Marita, you are coming close to something immensely valuable. But your mind is creating a problem; it is saying to you that it is fear of death. It is not fear of death, it is fear of ego disappearing. Allow it to go.
I say to you: This is how it has happened to me. This is how it is happening to many of my people. This is how it has always happened to all the Buddhas, down the ages: the ego dies -- but everybody hesitates before the ego dies. We are so much identified with it that the death of the ego appears as if WE are dying. We are not dying.
It is like when the child is getting ready to be born when nine months in the mother's womb are over. The child must be feeling a great fear -- because this was his life. This nine months' womb life, this is the only life he knows. And he is being thrown out of the womb: he must be feeling like he is being expelled from the Garden of Eden. He clings; he does not want to get out of the womb. He is afraid of the unknown.
But nature does not allow him to succeed. He can cling for a few hours and create pain for the mother -- because he clings to the womb and the womb is ready to expel the child because he is ready to go into the wider world. He is now mature enough; there is no need for him to be protected in a womb. And what kind of life can one have in a womb?
There is no life at all. Twenty-four hours the child is asleep; he is as if in a coma. But still this is the only life he knows, hence the clinging.
Marita, you know only one life, the life of the ego. It is not much of a life -- it is
only suffering, misery, sleep, dream -- but that's the only life you know. A moment comes when one becomes mature through meditation and you have to be expelled out of the ego.
That is the second birth. In India we call such a person DVIJ -- twice-born. A Buddha is a DVIJ. One birth is from the mother, the physical, the biological birth. Another birth is through the Master, the spiritual birth, the religious birth.
Marita, feel blessed. You are coming closer to a very vital point, a turning-point in your life. Don't cling to the ego -- relay, let go. Let the ego disappear; it is not you. And then for the first time you will know who you are. For the first time the mystery of your being will be revealed to you. And from there onwards you start living; before that you were just sleeping.
The fourth question Question 4
OSHO, WHY DO YOU SPEAK A STRANGE KIND OF ENGLISH? -- ALTHOUGH I LOVE IT.
Shivananda,
I DON'T KNOW ENGLISH AT ALL. In fact I don t know any language really. That's why I can go on speaking so easily, unafraid, unworried, undeterred by languages grammar, etcetera. I am not a great orator. I simply go on saying to you whatsoever happens in the moment.
That's why sometimes Napoleon turns into Nero, Nero turns into Napoleon; Greek becomes Latin, Latin becomes Greek. You are listening to a drunkard! It is a miracle that I can utter a few sensible words and you can make some sense out of it.
Sometimes I even laugh about what I have said to you. Just the other day...whenever I see Pradeepa bowing her head down, then I know that I must have told something wrong.
Just a few days ago I was saying 'cropping the reap' instead of 'reaping the crop'. Pradeepa is my criterion: then I just look at her and I know I have done it again.
But what more can you expect from someone who is utterly drunk?
An elderly gentleman with a walrus mustache, frock coat, and bowler hat jiggled the telephone receiver. "I say, operator," he said, "I want to talk to Sir Reginald Barrett in Grosvenor Square, London."
"I'm afraid I can't hear you, sir," said the operator.
"Sir Reginald Barrett, Grosvenor Square, London," said the party.
"I still can't hear you," said the operator. "I guess you are English, aren't you?"
"My dear madam," said the gentleman, "if I were any more English I could not talk at all."
Fortunately I don't know much English. Hence I can talk undeterred by any linguistic barriers. This is not English English, this is not American English, this is not even Indian English -- it is simply Rajneesh English. It HAS to be strange.
And what about my Italian!
Scene: Father visiting his son in jail.
Father: "You-a no-a good-a bumma, you! I raise you to be-a a good-a kid-a!" Son: "Please, Father, don't talk like that."
Father: "I'm-a ashame-a. You-a, you-a no good-a son!" Son: "Father, please, don't talk that way."
Father: "Why-a I no talk-a this-a way?" Son: "Because you are not Italian!"
I am neither Italian nor English nor Indian nor Chinese, and I have to talk all these languages. So I go on winging the wong number.
The fifth question Question 5
OSHO, WHO ARE YOU?
Samadhi,
I DON'T KNOW AT ALL. If some time you come to know, please tell me. The sixth question
Question 6
OSHO, THE DEVIL SEEMS TO BE AS POPULAR AS MAO TSE TUNG THESE
DAYS. WHY? WHY IS THE DEVIL SO ATTRACTIVE?
Bodhi,
THE DEVIL IS NOTHING BUT THE OTHER SIDE OF God. The religions
have been praising God and condemning the Devil, and the Devil is the other side of God. The word
'devil' is beautiful; it comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. 'Divine' and 'devil'
both come from the same root, DEV: in Sanskrit it becomes DEVADATA -- gods. The Devil and the Divine, both are the same -- but if you repress one part of God, one aspect of his being, sooner or later it is going to assert itself.
Now there are churches, in the West particularly, churches devoted to the Devil.
Disciples of the Devil are growing, mushrooming all over the world. The First Church of Satan is there in America, where people gather and worship Satan. Satan means 'devil', that is Arabic for 'devil'. All kinds of bizarre things are going on in the world, but the reason for them and the responsibility is that of the priests. For centuries they have been repressing God's aspects. You cannot repress anything forever; sooner or later it will assert itself.
In the East, particularly in India, there is no Devil worship at all. It cannot happen --
because we have accepted it, we have never rejected it. The Indian trinity, TRIMURTI, the three faces of God, have to be understood. Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh: these are the three faces of God. Brahma is the creator God, the aspect that creates, Vishnu, the aspect that maintains the world, the existence, keeps it running, and Mahesh, the destroyer who destroys the world.
Now, Christians cannot conceive of Mahesh as God. God has to be always the creator.
The Christian concept of God as creator makes it a very limited one. Then whose responsibility is it to destroy things? -- because there is destruction too, and no creation is possible without destruction. Creation is possible only through destruction. God gives life
-- and who gives death? Somebody has to be responsible for death too, but God cannot be responsible for death.
Christians are so afraid; their God is partial. The Indian idea of God is more total: with one hand he creates, with the other hand he destroys too. He is good and he is bad too; he is light and darkness both, life and death both. And if God is both, then only can God be transcendental. When you are both, you transcend both.
You ask me: THE DEVIL SEEMS TO BE AS POPULAR AS MAO TSE TUNG THESE
DAYS. WHY? WHY IS THE DEVIL SO ATTRACTIVE?
It is because of a long long repression through Christianity. The Devil aspect of God has been completely denied. Now after twenty centuries of repression it has become very strong, it has gathered too much energy -- it is exploding all over the place. It is certainly becoming more and more attractive. God seems to be poor compared to the Devil.
Christians, particularly the priests, have been talking so much about God that they have made the word almost sickening, nauseating. They have talked so much about God and their God is so sweet, only sweetness is allowed to God. Their God has no salt; it is pure white sugar, which is another name for poison. So the Christian God has created a kind of diabetes all over the world. It is false because it is partial, and the other part will take revenge.
God has to be accepted in its totality. This whole existence is divine: don't reject anything. Everything is good in its place. Salt is needed as much as sweetness. Even bitterness has its own place, its own joy, its own taste. The thorn on the rosebush has its own function; it is a bodyguard to the rose, it protects the rose. Don't deny it, don't prune all the thorns, otherwise the roses will die.
Life exists through polar opposites. And this has been a fallacious step, that we have chosen only one pole: God is only positive Then the negative has to be given to some entity, some fictitious entity, the Devil. The Devil does not exist. There is no hell, all is paradise. Yes, there are two situations: you can fall asleep in the paradise or you can be awake, but there is no hell.
I deny hell absolutely. And if there is misery in life, it is part of life. If there is death, it is a process of life, it is a renewal of life; it gives you a new body, a new model. The old rotten body is taken away and you are given a fresh new model. Death is not against life but in the service of life. Even what we know as bad is in the service of good. Yes, if you are wise enough you can transform poison into medicine. And if you are foolish even medicine can be dangerous, it can become poison.
The West will have to change its idea of God. And the Western idea is no longer Western
-- it has spread all over the world. Christian missionaries have done such mischief; they have drowned all other kinds of religion; almost half the earth they have changed into Christianity. They have destroyed all variety. They have given a very singular, one-dimensional idea of God to humanity. And their idea of God is very juvenile, it is not even mature. And their idea of God is anthropocentric, it is made in the image of man.
And they have been trying hard to make God a great saint. Their whole effort has created this situation: the denied part is ready now to explode. Denial is always dangerous; repression is dangerous. We have to pay tremendously for it.
Accept both the polarities. The negative and the positive are both needed for the electricity to happen; the good and bad are both needed for the world to go on; they are like the two wheels of a bullock cart. The sinner and the saint are both needed. That's my approach I love the sinner as much as the saint -- and if I have to choose, if I am forced to choose, I will choose the sinner rather than the saint,
because the sinner is at least authentic. You cannot find a pseudo-sinner -- have you ever heard the word 'pseudo-sinner'? Pseudo-saints are there; in fact ninety- nine point nine percent of saints are pseudo -- because there is rarely a Jesus or a Buddha. That phenomenon is very rare; WE
have made it rare. We have made it almost impossible for anybody to be a Jesus or a Buddha; we create all kinds of hurdles. And even if somebody becomes a Jesus, we don't tolerate him -- we kill the man the moment we become aware.…
Jesus lived only three years as Christ. For thirty years he was in preparation, in meditation, in search. After thirty years when he attained his satori, he went to the marketplace and started giving the message that he had attained. It took three years for it to become known to people that this man had attained. They killed him immediately.
When Mansoor attained godhood he declared, "Ana'l Haq! am God!" His Master, Junaid, said, "Keep quiet. I know, you know, that's enough. No need to tell it to anybody --
otherwise you will be in danger and you will create danger for me and for other disciples also. Yes, I accept," said Junaid, "I can see you have attained. But let it be a secret between me and you."
But Mansoor could not keep it a secret; it is very difficult to keep it a secret. Nobody has ever been able to keep it a secret. There would be moments when he was in deep ecstasy and he would start shouting again "I am God!" Soon the news spread. The priests went to the king and they said, "This is sacrilegious. This man has to be destroyed, this man has to be killed!"
First you don't allow anybody to become a Jesus or Mansoor, and if one somehow escapes from your bondage and becomes one you kill him. And you go on preaching something which is absurd, pseudo. You create a saint against the sinner; he is bound to be pseudo because he has not absorbed the sinner into himself. He has no foundation --
he is a house without any foundation, he is a house made on the sands. The sinner becomes the foundation. Unless the sinner is absorbed and transformed you will not find a true Buddha. Your saints are pseudo, bogus. only on the surface, pretenders.
If I am forced to choose I will choose the sinner, because the sinner has all the energies which can be transformed into a saint. But the saint has cut himself from all the sources of energies; he has become a plastic flower. He is almost hopeless; his case is hopeless.
This calamity has happened -- this Devil becoming too attractive -- because of the priests denying God all reality, making God an abstraction. God is not an abstraction, God is not a person; God is the total harmony of existence. And in that harmony, in that orchestra, all the instruments are involved -- the bad, the dark, the death, they also have to play their parts. They become the background, they become the context.
You don't see stars in the day -- why? Do you think all the stars disappear? They are there in the sky; they have not disappeared. It would be too much work every morning to disappear and every evening to come back; it would create unnecessary trouble. They are there! Just because of the sunlight, the background is missing in which you could see them. When the night comes and the darkness comes, the background becomes available.
In the dark night they shine forth. The darker the night, the more shining stars and the more stars you will be able to see.
God is both -- the darkest depth and the lightest height. Once this is accepted the Devil loses all attraction, the Devil dies. The Devil becomes a fertile land for God to grow; the Devil becomes a fertilizer. You can accumulate fertilizers in your house, you can accumulate manure in your house, and your house will stink. Spread the manure in the garden, and the same manure will sprout into beautiful flowers, the same manure will release great fragrance. Manure has not to be accumulated in the basement of your house, it has to be spread in the garden, in the open, in the sun.
We have been repressing anger, greed, sex -- everything that has been thought to be bad in some way we have been repressing in the basement of our being, in the unconscious.
And that's why every human being is stinking. Bring it into the light! Let it become manure, let it be a fertilizing phenomenon in your life, and you will have great flowers blossoming in you. You will attain to the one-thousand-petalled lotus.
The last question Question 7
OSHO, WHY ARE YOU AGAINST THE PUNDITS AND THE LEARNED PEOPLE?
AREN'T THEY THE EXPERTS THAT ARE RUNNING THE WORLD?
Madira,
HAVE A LOOK AT THE WORLD -- and certainly they are running the world! that's why the world is in a mess. The knowledgeable people are running the world and they are the most ignorant people -- knowledgeable about superficial things. And sometimes these knowledgeable people are so ridiculous.
Once I was talking on Mahavira. A great scholar, well-known all over the world, particularly on Mahavira, came to listen to me. After the discourse he stood up and he said, "I have one question to ask. My question is: Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries -- who was older and who was younger? I have spent thirty years of research on this project, but I have not been able to come to a clear-cut decision. A few scriptures say Buddha was older and a few scriptures say Mahavira was older, and there seems to be no way to decide. I am very much impressed," he said, "by what you said about Mahavira. Can you throw some light on my problem?"
I said, "You wasted thirty years of your life! How does it matter who was older and who was younger? What are you going to do if you come to a clear-cut conclusion? One thing is certain: whosoever was younger or older, you have wasted your life -- thirty years! In these thirty years you could have become a Buddha or a Mahavira. Mahavira became a Mahavira in twelve years' meditation, Buddha became a Buddha in six years' meditation."
I said to the man, "If you had worked on meditation you would have become Buddha five times! Thirty years wasted -- and Buddha became Buddha in six years. You would have been a Buddha five times over. And don't ask such foolish questions; it doesn't matter."
But that's how knowledgeable people are concerned. He was very angry at me, he became very antagonistic to me. He started writing articles against me. Now
he is dead. So first he was wasting his life in searching for who was older, Buddha or Mahavira, and then he wasted his life in writing articles against me. The poor man, I really feel sorry for him.
The learned people know only the superficial, which has no significance.
Carruthers was visiting a small English town to do business. As his first appointment was not until twelve noon he decided to play a round of golf early in the morning. The golf course was right on the edge of town, and he was first off.
He sliced his first ball, and it went over the hedge that ran parallel to the first fairway. He did not bother to go and look for it; he played another ball which went straight down the middle.
On returning to the club house at the end of the game the club professional approached him saying, "Excuse me, sir, were you by any chance the first off this morning?"
"Yes, I was," replied the businessman.
"And did you slice your first ball over the hedge to the right?" "Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, old man," replied the businessman.
"Well," said the professional, "that hedge runs parallel to a very busy street, and your ball landed on the head of a cyclist. The cyclist swerved into the middle of the road, and in order to miss the cyclist a car swerved in front of a bus; and in order to miss the car, shopfront of a jeweler's. The shop collapsed, and in the process a lot of very valuable jewelry has disappeared."
"Oh, my God!" cried the businessman, shaking at the knees. "What shall I do?"
"Oh, no problem, old man," said the professional. "Just make sure that you keep your right hand a little further round the handle, and everything will be fine."
That's how the professional, the expert, the knowledgeable person, works. He knows everything about the meaningless, the insignificant; he goes into insignificant details and he goes on missing the central thing.
I am not against the pundits and the learned people, I am simply compassionate towards them.
Semyonov, a local party secretary, stopped Kagonovich on the street. "Comrade," he asked, "why don't you come for ideological instruction every Tuesday and Thursday evening?"
"I don't need it," said Kagonovich.
"Who was Karl Marx?" asked Semyonov. "I don't know."
"Who was Vladimir Lenin?" "I don't know."
Semyonov went on and on. Finally Kagonovich interrupted, "You ask me who is this and who is that. Let me ask you! Who is Rudolf Ulyanov?"
"I don't know," replied the secretary.
"Ah!" said Kagonovich. "But I know that one. While you are at ideological instruction every Tuesday and Thursday night, Rudolf Ulyanov is screwing your wife!"
Be Still and Know Chapter #7
Chapter title: Thanks for the Compliment! 7 September 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code: 7909070
ShortTitle:
BESTIL07
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
0
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The first question Question 1
OSHO, I KNOW THAT YOU LOVE CONTRADICTIONS. A LOT OF IT I CAN
ACCEPT NOW AS TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN. BUT TODAY AFTER LECTURE
SOME QUESTIONS STILL AROSE.
ON THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THE GOOD AND THE BAD ARE TWO SIDES OF
THE SAME COIN AND BOTH HAVE TO BE AND THE ONE CAN'T BE WITHOUT
THE OTHER. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU WANT TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD WITH YOUR SANNYASINS.
ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO THINK IN TERMS OF THE FUTURE.
ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT THE COMING THIRD WORLD WAR.
ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO WISH ANYTHING. ON THE OTHER
SIDE IT SEEMS YOU WANT TO AVOID THE THIRD WORLD WAR.
ON THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THINGS ARE OKAY AS THEY ARE, THERE IS NO
GOAL, NOTHING TO ACHIEVE, TO CHANGE. ON THE OTHER SIDE: WHAT
ARE YOU DOING HERE? WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
I CAN FEEL THERE IS AN ANSWER, BUT I CAN'T POINT IT OUT. CAN YOU?
Anand Suresh,
IT IS NOT THAT I LOVE CONTRADICTIONS: life is contradictory. Existence itself is possible only through contradictions. It is the mind that has been trained in Aristotelian logic that becomes disturbed because of contradictions. The Aristotelian logic gives you a linear mind, a one-dimensional mind. It says: A can only be A and can never be B, and B
can only be B and can never be A, and for two thousand years our minds have been conditioned by this logic.
This logic never had any sway over the mystics, and now even scientists are escaping from the Aristotelian prison. If you want to be true to life you cannot be a follower of Aristotle; to be true to life you will have to say things as they are. If you want to be true to Aristotle then you will have to repress a few things of life, deny, at least avoid, not look at them, choose only what fits with your logic.
The whole world has existed up to now according to one-dimensional logic -- and existence is multi-dimensional, it is rooted in contradictions. In fact, to call it a contradiction is again to use a word from Aristotle.
The mystics use the word 'paradox', not 'contradiction'. In the very word 'contradiction'
there is condemnation: something is wrong, something has to be put right. But a paradox is a totally different phenomenon: nothing has to be put right. A paradox is a mystery, elusive, inexplicable.
Existence is a mystery. Mathematics is incapable of understanding it; mind is utterly impotent in understanding it, because mind knows only one way. The Aristotelian way is the mind's way. And anybody who knows life knows that Aristotle has been a calamity, the greatest that has ever existed in the world. And he is the father of modern philosophy, the father of modern science! But there are revolts against him. Mystics have always been revolting, now physicists are revolting.
According to Aristotle there is no mystery: everything is explainable in logical terms --
that is his fundamental tenet. And my fundamental tenet is: nothing is explainable in terms of logic. If you try to explain life in terms of logic you destroy life.
It is as if to explain the beauty of a rose you take the rose to the chemist to dissect it, to analyze it, and to find out where the beauty is. The chemist is capable of analyzing the rose, but he will find only chemicals, not beauty. Beauty will evaporate. Beauty was in the paradox of the rose. It should NOT be according to logic -- hence logic is very blind.
Your problem, Suresh, is that you suffer from Aristotelitis. It is one of the most deep-rooted diseases.
You say: I KNOW THAT YOU LOVE CONTRADICTIONS.
It is not so that I love contradictions. What can I do? Contradictions are there! If I have to be true to the totality of existence I have to love them, otherwise something will have to be denied. And the moment you deny something you miss something immensely valuable, and the denial will never allow you to know the whole. And only the whole is true; the parts are only parts. They have some meaning only in the context of the whole; in themselves they are meaningless.
That's why science has created great meaninglessness in the world. It was bound to happen; it is a by-product of scientific methodology. Science tries to explain everything cleanly, with no vagueness; it wants to reduce everything to clear-cut categories. And it has succeeded, but in its success man and his spirit has failed.
The success of science is rooted in Aristotle, but man's failure -- the failure of his joy, the failure of his love, the failure of his capacity to sing, dance and celebrate
-- is also rooted in Aristotle. But there are clear-cut signs of revolt, particularly within these last thirty, forty years -- many great scientists have revolted against Aristotle. The first one to revolt was Albert Einstein.
Aristotle is very absolutistic: A is absolutely A and never B, man is absolutely man and never a woman. He believes in the absolutes, and Einstein brought the idea of relativity.
He said absolutes don't exist; there are only relative things. A man is relatively more a man than a woman and a woman is relatively more a woman than a man, but the question is not one of absolute distinction -- they overlap. And you may be a man in the morning and you may not be a man by the evening; you may be a woman in the evening and you may not be a woman by the morning. You are not one-sided, you have many sides.
Have you not seen a woman in anger? Then she is more masculine than any male. And have you not seen a man when he is in love? -- his tenderness, his feminineness. He is MORE feminine than any woman can ever be. When a woman is in anger, enraged, her whole denied part starts functioning, and the denied part is very vital and alive because it has never been used.
I have heard a future story:
A man went into a hospital to purchase a brain; because his own was not functioning well he wanted to replace it. The surgeon took him around; there were many brains available.
He showed him the brain of a scientist, the price only a hundred rupees; the brain of a great, famous, well-known mathematician, and the price only two hundred rupees; and the brain of a great general, and the price only three hundred rupees -
- so on and so forth.
And then he came to the brain of a great political leader, and the price- was ten
thousand rupees!
The customer was a little puzzled. He said, "What do you mean? Do you mean that the politician has a greater brain than a great, Nobel prize-winning scientist?"
The surgeon said, "Please don't misunderstand us. It is not that the politician has a greater brain than the scientist or the general or the mathematician or the poet, but this is a brain which has never been used. It is brand new, hence the price!"
Whatsoever is not used and denied in you remains very vital. Hence a woman enraged is far more dangerous than a man; and if you have been in relationship with a woman you know it perfectly well -- she can drive you crazy! because that is the denied part, the unused part. When it is used it has vitality, newness. And when a man is tender, loving, he is more tender and loving than a woman. He can be more womanly because that is his denied part.
Carl Gustav Jung accepted that man is bi-sexual: no man is simply man and no woman is simply woman. Man has a woman part, a very intrinsic part, and woman has a man inside her, very intrinsic. Now this is a totally different world: old categories lose meaning, old absolutes disappear.
And then came the theory of uncertainty -- because up to now science was aware only of the superficial world of matter. It has not penetrated into the mysteries of matter as mystics have done in the inner world; they have penetrated into the mysteries of consciousness. And when they penetrated the mysteries of consciousness they became aware that it is not Aristotelian at all. Sometimes A is A and sometimes A is B; and not only that -- that sometimes A is B -- there are times when A is both A and not A simultaneously.
Mahavira said that; his philosophy is known as SAPTABHANGI -- sevenfold. He must have appeared a very strange man. You asked one question and he would always answer your one question with seven answers, because his philosophy was sevenfold. He said, "I have come to see the seven aspects of the inner world." You asked him, "Does God exist?" and he would say, "First: perhaps he exists. Second: perhaps he does not. Third: perhaps he exists and yet does not exist. And fourth: perhaps he neither exists nor does not exist." And so on and so forth. He would give you seven answers. You would leave him more confused than you had come. That's why he could not influence many people.
His religion remained one of the smallest although it had the potential of becoming one of the greatest religions of the world.
But now the days of Mahavira are coming: Albert Einstein has made the way for it. As the physicist entered deeper into the mysteries of matter he was very much puzzled --
Aristotle works no more, helps no more. On the contrary, if you remain hung up with Aristotle you have to deny a few things which you cannot deny -- they are there!
For example: matter does not exist at the deepest level of matter; matter is only apparent, it is MAYA. Shankara said it thousands of years ago: it is illusion. By 'illusion' he does not mean that it does not exist; by 'illusion' he simply means it APPEARS to exist --
something ELSE exists. Don't be deceived by the appearance. And the scientist found himself entering more into the world of Shankara than into the world of Aristotle. Matter disappears, there is only energy -- energy moving so fast that you cannot see its movement and it gives you the idea of solid matter.
Nothing is solid, everything is liquid. And when there is nothing solid, what meaning can the word 'liquid' have? Then a new problem arises: if there is nothing solid, what do you mean by 'liquid'? Liquidity had meaning only in reference to solidity; the moment solidity disappears, liquidity disappears...and you are dumb, in awe.
Only energy is, and the ways of energy are very paradoxical, very mystic. One particle of energy jumps from its place to another place; it is continuously lumping. It IS taking quantum leaps. The term 'quantum leap' comes from QUANTA. 'Quanta' means the ultimate particle of energy, and 'quantum leap' means a very different leap from what you understand by the word 'leap'.
When the ultimate particle of energy jumps from place A to B the phenomenon is very mysterious: it simply disappears from A and appears at B and you cannot find it anywhere in between. You come from your place to me; you will be found in between.
How can you just jump from your place to my place? Even if you jump, you will have to pass through. Even if you take the fastest plane, still you will be in
between. But the ultimate particle of matter simply disappears from one place and appears at another place and you cannot find it in between at all. Now what to make out of it? It should not be so, but it is so.
First scientists figured, "We must be missing it -- maybe we don't have sophisticated enough instruments. How can it be?" The old Aristotle was haunting them: "It MUST be somewhere in between." But now we have more sophisticated instruments -- it simply disappears. It becomes unmanifest in one place and becomes manifest again in another place. What happens in between nothing can be known about, because it becomes unmanifest; it simply disappears from existence. It moves into a totally different dimension which is not known at all and may never be known at all, because it is the unknowable.
And it was thought always, according to Aristotle and Euclid, that a point can never be a line. It was found by the physicists that the point can be both together: it can be a particle and a wave, it can be a point and a line. Euclidean geometry used to say -- you must have read it at school -- that two parallel lines never meet. Now there is something like non-Euclidean geometry which says they meet. What to make out of it? Euclidean geometry says you can draw a straight line: a straight line is the shortest distance between two points -- a well-known definition, every schoolboy knows about it. But non-Euclidean geometry has come with great force and is changing the whole course of scientific thinking.
Non-Euclidean geometry says you CANNOT draw a straight line at all; it is impossible to draw a straight line. Why? -- because you are sitting on an earth which is round. So whatsoever you draw, it appears straight because you don't know that you are sitting on a round globe. Go on drawing the line, go on drawing the line, and soon you will see that it becomes a circle, because it will cover the whole earth. And a straight line cannot be a part of a circle, obviously; if it is a part of a circle it is not straight. No straight line can create a circle, but every straight line that you know, if drawn to its ultimate, will become part of a circle. Then it is an are, not a straight line.
And the whole universe is circular. The whole universe, all the movement, is circular; everything is a circle. Straight lines are not possible; they are imaginary lines.
Mystics have always talked in paradoxes; now physicists are talking in paradoxes. And the reason is the same: mystics entered reality through their
being and came across the mystery; physicists are coming across the same reality from another door -- the outward door.
I am not in love with contradictions -- they can't be helped. Existence is a paradox.
You say: A LOT OF IT I CAN ACCEPT NOW AS TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN.
That is again a hangover from Aristotle. I have to say to you many times, just not to disturb you too much too early, that these are two aspects of the same coin. Then it becomes a little acceptable to you. You can accept that one coin can have two aspects and they must be facing in opposite directions. You can accept the negative and the positive, you can accept the dark night and the bright day, you can accept life and death, as two sides of one coin. But when I am using the simile of the coin I am not really being true to the reality; I am compromising -- compromising with your Aristotelian mind.
Sooner or later, when you become more accustomed, when you start seeing the paradoxicalness, I will not say to you that they are two aspects, two sides of one coin.
The negative is the positive and the positive is the negative. Life and death are not two sides of one coin -- life IS death. But that will be a little more difficult to accept, although the truth is so. The day you were born you started dying. The process may be completed in seventy years, that is another thing -- that it takes time -- but time matters not. The day you were born you started dying -- IMMEDIATELY. It is not the other side of the coin, it is the same side of the coin. Life is death, and day is night, and love is hate, and friendship is enmity. Then it becomes more difficult.
But if I look at your difficulty, then I cannot take you into the world of truth. I have to persuade you slowly slowly, so first I say, "These are two aspects of the same coin." The day I feel that now you are ready to accept the paradox without questioning I will say,
"Life is death." I will not say that God and the Devil are two aspects of one energy, I will say God IS the Devil -- two names of the SAME energy, not two aspects.
You say: A LOT OF IT I CAN ACCEPT NOW AS TWO SIDES OF ONE COIN.
That is not understanding, just acceptance. Listening to me again and again you start figuring out that it must be that each phenomenon has two sides. It is not a question of sides. And each phenomenon has many dimensions, not only two sides.
BUT TODAY, you say, AFTER LECTURE SOME QUESTIONS STILL AROSE. ON
THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THE GOOD AND THE BAD ARE TWO SIDES OF THE
SAME COIN AND BOTH HAVE TO BE AND THE ONE CAN'T BE WITHOUT THE
OTHER. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU WANT TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD
WITH YOUR SANNYASINS.
Certainly! A better world will be a world where good and bad are absolutely accepted and absorbed. I don't mean by using the word 'better' that it will be a good world against the bad. My concept of a better world is a world which will be multi-dimensional, a world which will accept the earth and the sky so totally that the sky is not higher and the earth is not lower; which will accept the body and the soul so wholly that there is no question of who should be the master.
I have said to you many times, "Let consciousness be the master of the body and mind."
That is just to persuade you towards a quantum leap. I know you cannot take that leap immediately; you will have to be seduced into it.
The better world will be where the duality of body and spirit is dissolved: the body becomes the manifest spirit and the spirit becomes the unmanifest body, they are both one. How can one of these two be the master? The very idea of twoness is wrong, so there cannot be anybody who is the master and anybody else who is the slave. You are one entity.
I talk to you in terms of 'from sex to super-consciousness' because you cannot understand right now unless some hierarchy is brought to you. 'From sex to superconsciousness' --
even that becomes very difficult for rotten, old minds, orthodox, conventional people to understand why I say 'from sex to superconsciousness'. But please don't tell others: sex is superconsciousness! Not 'from sex to superconsciousness', but sex is superconsciousness.
There is no higher, no lower, there is no 'from' and no 'to'; there is no journey, you are already there as you are.
But to assert such pregnant truths I have to prepare you.
My vision of a better world is not the vision of a good world, where people are virtuous, have good character, don't cheat each other, don't lie, are very compassionate towards each other, very loving, great servants of humanity. That is not my vision of a better world. That has been the vision for centuries, and it has not been fulfilled because it cannot be fulfilled in the very nature of things. It is not possible -- you have been denying the bad part.
For me, a real sannyasin will neither be good nor bad in the old sense of the words. He will simply be. And whatsoever he is in a certain moment, he will be totally in it. If he is angry his anger will be total; if he is loving his love will be total.
The old idea of a good man was that he would never be angry. That brought repression into the world -- and once you are repressed you go on and on living with your repressed part. The repressed part remains a burden because it has not been absorbed. Once absorbed it releases great energy in you. It makes you vital, it makes you passionate, it makes you throbbing with infinite life. Repressed you are divided in two, you are cut into two; you live, but your life is only so-so.
Sisters Maria Theresa and Mary Elizabeth were walking down a street when they were grabbed by two men, dragged into an alley and raped. Twenty minutes later the nuns continued their stroll.
"What is Father going to say," said Sister Maria Theresa, "when we tell him we have been raped twice?"
"What do you mean, twice ?" asked her companion. "Well, we are coming back this way, aren't we?"
Repress something and it will come by the back door. It will find its way: it will control you from the unconscious. You cannot get rid of it so easily, in fact there is no way to get rid of it. It is PART of you, such an organic part that you cannot be alive if you cut it off.
That's why your saints look so dead, and the deadlier they are, the more you respect them.
Just a few days ago a man came to me and he was talking about a saint, Devraha Baba, who is known in the North of India as the ageless saint, because at least this much is certain, that he is a hundred and fifty years old, maybe more. Now that is his only great quality, nothing else! The man was very much impressed. He said, "I am a disciple of Devraha Baba."
I asked him, "What is great in it, to live a hundred and fifty years? Many animals live that long, many trees live for thousands of years. There are trees four thousand years old.
There are animals who easily live a hundred years, a hundred and fifty, two hundred years."
And I told the man about an experiment. Scientists have discovered about rats.… First they work on rats because they have found one thing: that men and rats behave similarly.
They are the most ancient companions: wherever man is found, rats are found, and wherever rats are found, man is found. Their companionship seems to be eternal. Only two are man's eternal companions: rats and cockroaches! Wherever man is, these two things are always there. And rats behave very similarly.
Many experiments have been done on rats. If you give them half their normal food they live double. If you give them double their normal food they live only half the span of their life.
Now these people like Devraha Baba, Jaina monks, they are living on half their normal food. They eat only once, and that too in a very miserly way, yet they can
live double.
How does it happen? -- because when you don't get enough food your life flame burns low; instead of gaining intensity it starts gaining length. In colder countries people live longer than in the hotter countries, because in colder countries you cannot live so passionately so intensely; the cold prevents you. In hotter countries you are more passionate.
Hence it is not strange that the first book on sexology was written in India: the KAMA SUTRA of Vatsyayana, and it is not strange that the most strange sexual stories have been written in the very hot countries like Arabia. The reason is: when the sun is hot you also live in a hot way. When there is no sun and it is all cloudy, your life also burns low.
Food is fuel: if you eat less you will be thin, if you eat less you will have less sexual desire, if you eat less you will have less possibility of being angry, if you eat less you will live at a very minimum level of life. You can live long, but this is not life. Then why not get frozen in a deep freeze? Then you can live forever!
And that was one of the reasons why the escapist monks found it a great attraction to go to the Himalayan caves; it is a natural way of living a frozen life. And not only did they escape to the Himalayas, they also tried to live without clothes, naked or almost naked. If your body remains too cold your blood is nothing but frozen; then you can live long, but length has no value. time has no value, and length is in time. Depth has value, and depth is a totally different matter.
When I say 'a better world' I don't mean people will be living for two hundred years, three hundred years, because they will be great saints. I simply mean people WILL be living passionately, totally, wholly. Even if they live a very short life their life will be a fulfillment.
My idea of a better world is not your idea of a better world, Suresh. Listening to me always remember: my words have MY meaning, and become capable of separating your meaning from my meaning.
You say: ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO THINK IN TERMS OF THE
FUTURE. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT THE
COMING
THIRD WORLD WAR.
For me there is no future, no past; all is present. To you I say, "Don't think of the future,"
because if you think of the future you will miss the present. I am SO rooted in the present that it is only the present that extends into the past and into the future.
It is like you are hiding in your room and looking from the keyhole at what is happening outside. You see a man suddenly appearing from nowhere, because just a moment before he was not there because he was not in front of your keyhole -- he was in the future. Now suddenly he appears before the keyhole; you can see him for a moment and then he is gone again. Now he is in the past.
But I am outside the room. When for you he was in the future, for me he was in the present; when for you he has again become in the past, he is still for me in the present.
Once you have known how to live in the present then all is present. So if I sometimes talk about past or about future, don't misunderstand me. For me there is no past and no future but only the present. I live in the present.
For you the third world war is in the future; for me it is already there, it has arrived. It may take a little time to come before you can see it, before it comes in front of your keyhole, but then it will be too late, then nothing can be done about it.
And you say: ON THE ONE SIDE YOU TELL US NOT TO WISH FOR ANYTHING.
ON THE OTHER SIDE IT SEEMS YOU WANT TO AVOID THE THIRD WORLD
WAR.
I don't want to avoid anything, not even the third world war, but I want to become a help to you so that you can be aware of it. And the third world war can
be used as a device for your awareness. If you become alert that this earth is going to die, your life will be transformed.
Jesus used to say again and again: "Watch, beware! The Day of Judgment is very close by. In your life, this very life you will see it happening!" It has not happened up to now, but it was a device Jesus was creating a situation in which people could become aware that the time is very short and much has to be done, and we should not go on playing with stupid games -- money, power, prestige.
It happened in the life of a great mystic, Eknath: A man used to come to him for years, must have been a man of a very philosophic bent. He would ask Eknath again and again,
"I cannot believe that a man can be so innocent as you, so saintly, so holy. Sometimes great doubts arise in me -- maybe you are holy only on the surface; maybe deep inside your mind you still desire things that we desire, you are still ambitious. Maybe your ambition is very subtle and we cannot see it; maybe deep down in your dreams you still commit sin. Help me to get rid of this doubt, because this has become a barrier between me and you."
Eknath would laugh and would never answer.
One day early in the morning the man came and he said, "I could not sleep the whole night. Now it is too much -- it is becoming a nightmare! Seeing you I see such beauty, such grace, that I cannot believe it is possible in a human body. Seeing you I believe God is, but the moment I go home doubt starts sprouting, mushrooming: 'How can it be? After all he is also made of body and mind. Maybe there is still some sexual desire hidden in his unconscious.'"
That day Eknath did not laugh. On the contrary, he looked very serious and sad. He said,
"Friend, today I have to impart something very essential, urgent, to you. And before I discuss your question I would like to say what I have to give to you, because I may forget. If I go on discussing with you I may not remember."
The man said, "What is it? What is that which is so urgent?"
Eknath said, "Just the other day by chance I looked at your hand, and your life line is finished. Just a little fragment is left, seven days at the most. Today is
Sunday -- I don't think you will be able to survive next Sunday.
By next Sunday evening you will be gone. Now you can ask your question." The man stood up. He said, "What question? I will come again."
Eknath said, "Wait! Why is there so much hurry? It is enough time -- seven days."
The man said, "You say it is enough time? -- seven days? I can't waste it on stupid doubts! And what am I to do about you? Whether you suffer from sexuality or sin, that is your business. I am going home!"
Eknath tried to hold him but he escaped. He said, "I have no time for philosophical matters any more!"
Just a moment before when he had come he was so strong, so young -- and just a moment afterwards when he was going down the steps of the temple of Eknath he was shaking and trembling. He had to take the support of the wall.
He went home, he gathered his family, and he said, "Only seven days are left and I am going to die. Tell all my friends and all my enemies to come -- I would like to forgive and be forgiven. Only seven days are there, so what is the point of quarreling with people and fighting and competing? Finished, the game is finished!"
He laid himself on the bed. He became so weak that he could not get up from the bed. He was fed on the bed and continuously he was chanting, "Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama,"
remembering God for the first time in his life. And every day he was asking, "How many days are still left?" And as the seventh day started coming closer and closer he became more and more oblivious of the world. He started looking at people indifferently, he started forgetting people's names, their faces. He stopped recognizing people: he stopped recognizing his own wife and children, his own father and mother!
And the seventh day came and he was crying, and he was chanting the whole day and asking again and again, "How far is the sunset? -- because Eknath has said, 'The moment the sun sets, you are finished!' Exactly at sunset I am going to
die."
And the sun was coming down every moment, coming closer and closer to the western horizon. Just a few minutes more...and Eknath arrived. The whole family started crying and weeping. Eknath said, 'Wait! Let me see the person!"
Eknath went there, shook the man. It was very difficult for the man to recognize even Eknath -- and he used to call him his Master, and for at least twenty years he had been sitting in SATSANG with him, in communion with him. And he could not recognize him!
Eknath said, "Can't you recognize me? I am Eknath, your Master!"
Then a little recognition arose and he said, "Yes, vaguely. I am in a very cloudy state.
How far is the sun from the western horizon?"
Eknath said, "Forget all this nonsense! I have come to ask you one question: in these seven days what was going on inside you? Sex, greed, anger, jealousy? What was going on inside you? I have come to ask that question."
The man said, "I am dying and you are talking philosophy! Death was so close to me that I could only remember God. I don't remember even for a single moment that sex was there, greed was there, enmity was there, anger was there. No, they had all disappeared."
Eknath said, "You are not going to die -- get up! This was just an answer to your question. The day I became aware that death is, since that day my inner being has changed. How does it matter whether death is to come in seven days or seventy years?
Once you become aware that this life is going to slip out of your hands, it has already slipped! Then you have to prepare for the other shore, then you have to prepare for something beyond."
The third world war is coming closer, but I am not interested in avoiding it or bringing it.
Who cares? My whole interest is in you, and I want you to become aware that
this earth is not going to live for long. If this becomes an awareness in you it will be a transforming force. And if millions of people are transformed in this way, this earth may be saved --
but that will be just a payoff, a consequence.
I am not desiring that the world should be saved. It is such a stupid world, it is such a stupid humanity -- if it is gone it is good! I am not very much interested in saving this stupid lot -- they have lived here for millions of years and they have proved only a burden and a corruption, they have polluted everything.
But I am certainly interested in using this as a device, which is far more potential than Jesus' statement that the Day of Judgment is close, because that is an abstraction. But the third world war IS coming closer every day, because Russia is preparing, America is preparing; they go on piling up atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, death bombs, and they go on inventing new ways for killing humanity instantly. So it is a very very real danger.
Why not use it as a device? It can shake you up, it can wake you up. And if millions of people become meditators, there is a possibility the world war may not happen. But that is not my interest. My interest is to save people -- people who are worth saving.
And the last thing you ask: ON THE ONE SIDE YOU SAY THINGS ARE OKAY AS
THEY ARE, THERE IS NO GOAL, NOTHING TO ACHIEVE, TO CHANGE. ON
THE OTHER SIDE: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
Just explaining this to you: that there is no goal, that there is nothing to achieve, that everything is good as it is.
I will tell you a Sufi story:
There is a story told by Sufis about a man who read that certain dervishes, on the orders of their Master, never touched meat and did not smoke. Since this tends to fit in with certain well-established beliefs, especially in the West, this man made his way to the ZAWIA -- assembly place -- of the illuminated ones, to sit at their
feet. They were all over ninety years old.
Sure enough, there they were, not a spot of nicotine or shred of animal protein among them, and our hero gasped with delight as he sat drinking in the unpolluted air and tasting the bean-curd soup which they provided. He hoped that he would at least live to a hundred.
Suddenly one of them whispered, "Here comes the great Master!" And all stood up as the venerable sage came in. He smiled benignly and went into the house, heading for his quarters. He did not look a day over fifty.
"How old is he, and what does he eat?" asked the enraptured visitor.
"He is one hundred and fifty years old, and I don't suppose any of us will reach that venerable age and station," wheezed one of the ancients. "But, of course, he is allowed twenty cigars and three steaks a day, since he is now beyond being affected by frivolities and temptations!"
It is a beautiful story. There comes a moment when a man goes beyond all duality -- then he is allowed everything.
I can talk about the future because I live in the present -- it is allowed! And I can talk about saving the world from the third world war because I have no desires left -- it is allowed. I can go on teaching you day in, day out, year in, year out, saying continuously, hammering continuously: "There is no goal, no purpose, nothing to achieve." Still it is allowed to me to teach you.
Why is it allowed to me to teach you? -- because I am not a teacher any more. And I am not giving you a doctrine, and I am not giving you a character, and I am not giving you a discipline. I am simply imparting my joy that has happened to me. With me all is okay --
third world war or no world war. If the third world war happens I will be the same, if it doesn't happen I am the same.
If the third world war happens, if you are alive and I am alive, I will continue the morning discourse, the evening darshan...everything will continue. The third world war will go on destroying the earth and I will go on doing my own thing, not being bothered by it at all. It does not matter.
Suresh, drop the Aristotelian mind. Only then will you be able to understand me well, to understand me at all.
The second question Question 2
OSHO, I HAVE BEEN SO MUCH CONDITIONED AS A CATHOLIC THAT I SEE
NO HOPE FOR MYSELF: CAN YOU STILL HELP ME?
Maria,
CATHOLIC OR COMMUNIST, Mohammedan or Maoist, Jaina or Jew, it makes no difference, it is all the same. Of course, Catholics do it more systematically than Hindus, more scientifically. They have developed a great expertise for how to condition people.
But all the religions are doing it more or less, all the societies are doing it in their own way: everybody is conditioned.
The moment you are born, conditioning starts, from your very first breath; it cannot be avoided. The parents will condition you, the children you play with will condition you, the neighborhood will condition you, the school, the church, the state. And consciously not much conditioning is being done, but unconsciously the child goes on and on accumulating it. The child learns by imitating.
So don't be worried. This is the normal situation in the world: everybody is conditioned.
And everybody has to come out of the conditioning. It is difficult. It is not like undressing
-- it is like peeling your skin. It is hard, it is arduous, because we have become identified with our conditioning. We know ourselves only as Catholics, communists, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians. And the greatest fear of dropping the conditioning is the fear that you may fall into an identity crisis. Hence sannyas.
Sannyas is just a device to help you so that you don't start feeling that you are falling into an abyss, a bottomless abyss. I take away your conditionings -- you will feel very empty -
- I have to give you something to play with for the time being. Sannyas is that toy to play with for the time being. But sannyas is given to you in such a way that it never becomes a conditioning; it remains fun, it remains sport -- involved yet you remain a witness to it.
Maria, it is difficult to drop the conditioning, because that is your whole past, your mind, your ego, all that you are. But if you are ready, if you are courageous, if you have guts enough to come along with me it is possible, it is not impossible.
The local procurer in Mexico grabbed the distraught tourist stepping down the gangplank.
"I got a nice young girl for you -- twelve years old, a virgin."
When the tourist refused the procurer said, "Then I got a nice young boy for you, twelve years old, a virg -- "
"Look!" roared the tourist, "I don't want a young girl, I don't want a young boy... I just want the American consul!"
"Hmmm!" murmured the procurer, "A little difficult, but I try."
It is a little difficult, but I try. Maria, give me a chance to try! It has happened to so many people. I have so many Marias! Become part of this happening, don't remain a spectator.
Join the dance! My invitation is for all, my invitation is unconditional.
Whatever conditioning you have got can be dropped, because it has been forced on you from the outside -- and because it has been forced on you from the outside it can be taken away from you from the outside.
I cannot give you God, I cannot give you truth, I cannot give you your inner core, but I can take all the rubbish that has been heaped upon you. And once that rubbish is removed, God starts becoming alive in you. Once all the obstacles are
removed, the spring of your life starts flowing, the innocence is regained. Innocence regained is paradise regained; you enter again into the Garden of Eden.
And one thing is certain, Maria, that you are not contented with being a Catholic. How can anybody who has any intelligence be contented with being a Catholic or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist? All these sects are
dead! It was beautiful when Jesus walked on the earth; to have followed a few steps with him would have been a tremendous transformation. Those few people were fortunate who broke bread with him, drank wine with him -- must have laughed, danced, sung, celebrated. Those few people were real Christians.
How can you be a Christian if Christ is missing? And how can you be a Buddhist if Buddha is not present?
A Master is absolutely necessary for the disciple to go through the mutation. I am available, my heart is open for you. Please come in! And all the junk that you are carrying will be dropped. Difficult it is always, but not impossible. I can save at least the essential core and that is the real thing. If I can save your very center, then let the circumference remain Catholic, communist, Hindu or Mohammedan
-- it cannot affect you.
There was this King Edward potato who one night decided that he fancied a night out on the town. So he jumped in the tub and had a scrub, put on his best red jacket and went up West.
Sitting in a bar he spied this luscious young tomato, so he thought to himself, "I fancy that -- I will chat it up!"
In the corner of the pub was a bunch of punk carrots -- green hair, everything. One of them turns to the other and says, "Hey, yon potato is chatting up your tomato!"
The other says, "I am not having that. We will get him at chucking out time!"
So come closing time they get this potato outside. What a mess! They kick in his eyes, rip up his jacket -- totally mash him up!
When he wakes up in the hospital the surgeon says, "I have got good news and
bad news for you."
So the potato says, "Well, let me have the good first." The surgeon says, "We managed to save your eyes. "And what is the bad?"
"You will be a cabbage for the rest of your life!"
I can save your eyes, and that's what matters. Then you can be a cabbage or a Catholic, whatsoever you want. On the circumference you can be anything, but at the center become consciousness, become a witness. Your being a Catholic or Hindu or Mohammedan is a content of your consciousness. Don't get identified with the content; remember that you are the watcher. There is Catholic upbringing, there is Mohammedan conditioning, there is Hindu hypnosis -- watch! They are separate from you. You are a pure consciousness, a mirror, reflecting all that has been put upon you from the outside.
Once you know that you are separate you are free from all conditioning, and then you can use your conditioning. I am not saying to become unnecessarily a nuisance in your society; I am not saying to get into unnecessary trouble for yourself and others. You can go on acting being a Catholic -- it is beautiful! You can go to the church every Sunday and enjoy it, but remember that you are not a Catholic -- the Catholic upbringing is just on the circumference. You are only a witness.
Be a witness in the church, be a witness in the temple, be a witness while you are reading the Gita and be a witness while you are reading the Bible -- and this witnessing will become the foundation of your liberation.
The third question Sarjano, Question 3
OSHO, ONCE I THOUGHT ABOUT ENERGY AS IF ENERGY WAS MINE AND I LIKED TO THINK THAT I HAD A LOT OF ENERGY. NOW I HAVE REALIZED
THAT I AM ONLY A PASSAGE, A MEDIUM, A VEHICLE FOR THE
ENERGY OF
THE DIVINE. SO HOW COME THAT SOMETIMES I AM SO FULL OF ENERGY
AND OVERFLOWING FROM EACH PORE, FEELING THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
TO CONTAIN THAT MUCH AND I WILL EXPLODE -- AND AFTER A FEW
HOURS I AM EMPTY WITH NO ENERGY EVEN TO SAY THAT I WOULD LIKE
TO HAVE MORE ENERGY? IS THERE NO WAY TO KEEP THE FLOW OF
ENERGY CONSTANT? AND AGAIN, SOMETIMES I FEEL SUCH APPETITE FOR
LIFE THAT LITERALLY I AM GOING AROUND HUGGING EVERYBODY, AND I WOULD LIKE TO HUG TREES AND STARS AND FLOWERS, AND THEN AFTER
A FEW HOURS I FEEL THAT LIFE IS NO LONGER WORTH LIVING AND IT IS
ONLY OUT OF RESPECT FOR LIFE THAT I DON'T KILL MYSELF. BUT I START
ASKING GOD, "PLEASE, TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE -- IT IS TOO PAINFUL AND
BORING." IS THERE SOME RELATION BETWEEN THESE PHENOMENA?
WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK MORE ABOUT ENERGY?
YOU ARE COMING CLOSER TO THE POINT, to the target of understanding, but you have not come exactly to the point yet; you are missing only by inches.
You say: ONCE I THOUGHT ABOUT ENERGY AS IF ENERGY WAS MINE AND I LIKED TO THINK THAT I HAD A LOT OF ENERGY. NOW I HAVE REALIZED...
Still that 'I' continues; before it was identified with energy, now it is identified with realization.
NOW I HAVE REALIZED, you say, THAT I AM ONLY A PASSAGE, A MEDIUM, A VEHICLE FOR THE ENERGY OF THE DIVINE.
To be a passage means you are no more. You cannot realize that "I am only a passage,"
otherwise you are still there -- and if you are there you cannot be a passage. You have to disappear completely. Nobody remains there to realize that "I am a passage" -- then you are a passage.
That's why this problem is arising. Sometimes you are less and sometimes you are more: when you are less, more energy is flowing; when you are more, the flow stops. When you are a little more there as a realizer, as a spiritual being who has understood the flow of energy, when you are there identified with this new idea of being a passage and a medium, energy disappears because you obstruct it. Sometimes when you are not there --
not even as a realizer, not even as a medium, when simply you are not there -- the energy starts flowing.
You ask: SO HOW COME THAT SOMETIMES I AM SO FULL OF ENERGY...?
Whenever you are not, you are full of energy; whenever you are, energy disappears. God can exist only in your absence; you cannot coexist with God. But you are still there in a subtle way.
You ask: HOW COME THAT SOMETIMES I AM SO FULL OF ENERGY...?
Who is this 'I am'? You are enjoying this: "I am so full of energy." Energy comes when you are not, and immediately you jump in and you say, "I am so full of energy," and energy starts disappearing.
You say:...OVERFLOWING FROM EACH PORE, FEELING THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CONTAIN THAT MUCH...?
Who is there to contain? Who is there to count how much it is? Who is there to weigh? In a subtle way you are hiding by the side or looking from the corner of your eye.
A guest had come to Mulla Nasruddin's house. Mulla Nasruddin was giving him food.
The guest was saying, "Now it is enough -- I have taken five PURIS, now no more."
Nasruddin said, "Five? You have taken eleven, but who is counting?"
This is also counting! Who is there to contain? You jump in -- it always happens. Not only with you, Sarjano, it happens with everybody. Whenever those rare moments come when you are not, energy flows, suddenly the mind recoils, comes back, feels great: "So much energy, impossible to contain!" And immediately you fall to the opposite polarity.
You say:...AND AFTER A FEW HOURS I AM EMPTY, WITH NO ENERGY EVEN
TO SAY THAT I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE MORE ENERGY? IS THERE NO WAY
TO KEEP THE FLOW OF ENERGY CONSTANT?
Who wants to keep the flow of energy constant? Just see the point: it is you. The old habit goes on coming back in new ways.
Rosenfeld, a New York men's clothing manufacturer, was returning to America after a business trip to Israel. On the way back he decided to stop off in Rome and take in the sights.
Two weeks later he finally arrived home. "How was the trip?" asked his sales manager.
"Fantastic!" replied Rosenfeld. "In Israel I sold a thousand more suits than any of us expected. Then I stopped off in Rome and saw all the historical sights. I got in with a sightseeing group and we had an audience with the Pope."
"The Pope himself? You don't say!" exclaimed the sales manager. "What does he look like?"
"Oh," said Rosenfeld, "I would say about a forty-four short."
A tailor is a tailor, a businessman is a businessman. Even if he goes to see a Buddha he will come with this information -- a forty-four short.
They say that a shoemaker never looks at people's faces, he goes on looking at their shoes. In fact, that is his only way to judge about people. Seeing the shoe he knows whether you have money in your pocket or not. He knows how things are going in your life, whether you are happy or unhappy. In fact, a good shoemaker can predict everything about you just by looking at your shoes; the psychoanalysis of the shoe will show everything about you.
Old habits, Sarjano, and it is so with everybody.…The 'I' is the most ancient habit; for millions of lives we have carried it, so I comes again and again. You will have to be a little more watchful, a little more alert. Who wants to keep the flow of energy constant? --
Exactly the same entity that wants the flow to remain constant is the cause of it not being constant. Be a little more alert.
Mrs Hatton wanted to scare her husband out of his terrible drinking habit. One night she dressed up like the Devil and waited for him in an alley.
Soon the bar closed for the night and Hatton staggered towards home. Mrs. Hatton jumped out at him and yelled, "Yah! I am the Devil!"
Hatton held out his hand and said, "How da ya do? I married your sister!" This is awareness -- even drunk!
Learn a little more awareness, be aware. The 'I' will come in many forms, shapes, disguises. It can become spiritual, it can become holy, it can become saintly, godly. It can try every possible way to save itself.
When you are feeling full of energy you are not, hence great love arises. The ego poisons love; you start hugging people, trees. People have complained to me and trees too, because they may not be in the same energy space as you are, Sarjano. Be a little watchful!
But I know, when the energy flows one is constantly in a sharing state; one would like to share with everybody, even with trees and rocks. But when it disappears you will feel very very empty, so empty that you would like to commit suicide. This happens only when you reach a peak of energy, and then coming back to the valley is very disturbing.
People who live in the valley and never go to the peak never think of suicide.
That's why in poor countries suicide is rare, in primitive countries absolutely non-existent. Animals don't commit suicide -- they never go to the peak. Because they don't know anything about the peak they never feel the ugliness, the darkness of the valley.
Because they have never smelt the fragrance of the divine they can never smell the stinking existence that they are living.
So this is going to happen to every sannyasin: you will reach peaks of joy and then when you fall from the peaks the only desire will be to be finished with it all. But the fall is not happening on its own -- you are the cause of it, it can be stopped.
And the only way to stop it is: when you are on the peak, enjoy the peak, enjoy the sunlit peak, the pure air, the whispering of the clouds, the closeness of the stars, enjoy that; and when you fall into the valley, enjoy the darkness of the valley, the dangers of the valley --
and don't bring yourself in -- both are good. In fact, the valley will allow you a little rest so that you can again be ready to go to the peak. The valley is a kind of sleep; it is needed after a day's hard work. Tomorrow morning you will be again rejuvenated, you can again track your path towards the peak.
Enjoy both -- and you can enjoy both if the 'I' disappears. And if the 'I' disappears -- I would like to give you the real mystic statement about it -- if the 'I' disappears there is no peak, no valley; everything is the same. Wherever you are, God is flowing through you; wherever you are, you are in a state of
blessedness. Wherever you are, not only are YOU blessed, you bless the whole existence too.
The last question Question 4
OSHO, ARE ALL ENLIGHTENED MASTERS RASCALS LIKE YOU? TO ME, YOUR RASCALINESS IS EVEN MORE PREDOMINANT THAN YOUR JOKE-TELLING. ARE YOU TRYING TO TRICK US ALL INTO ENLIGHTENMENT.
Satya,
A thousand and one thanks for the compliment! Be Still and Know
Chapter #8
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