Beyond Enlightenment
Talks given from 03/10/86 pm to 04/11/86 pm English Discourse series
32 Chapters
Year published: 1980 Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #1
Chapter title: Beyond Enlightenment is only beyondness 3 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610035
ShortTitle: ENLIGH01
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 123
mins
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT?
Maneesha, beyond enlightenment is only beyondness. Enlightenment is the last host.
Beyond it, all boundaries disappear, all experiences disappear. Experience comes to its utmost in enlightenment; it is the very peak of all that is beautiful, of all that is immortal, of all that is blissful -- but it is an experience. Beyond enlightenment there is no experience at all, because the experiencer has disappeared. Enlightenment is not only the peak of experience, it is also the finest definition of your being. Beyond it, there is only nothingness; you will not come again to a point which has to be transcended.
Experience, the experiencer, enlightenment -- all have been left behind. You are part of the tremendous nothingness that is infinite. This is the nothingness out of which the whole existence comes, the womb; and this is the nothingness in which all the existence disappears.
Science has something parallel; there is bound to be something parallel. The spiritual experience is of the interior world, and science is the exploration of the exterior. But both are wings of the same existence -- the inwardness and the outwardness -- they always have similar points.
Scientists have come to a strange conclusion in this century, that a few stars suddenly disappear... and stars are not small things; they are not so small as they look to you. They look small because they are so far away, millions of light years away, but they are huge.
Our sun is a star, but of a mediocre size, medium size. In comparison to the earth it is vast, but in comparison to other stars it is a small, medium-sized star. There are stars which are a thousand times bigger than the sun.
And in this century, for the first time we had the instruments of observation and we were very much puzzled: suddenly a star disappears, not even leaving a trace behind of where it has gone. Such a huge phenomenon, and not even footprints -
- in what direction has it gone? It has just moved simply into nothingness. This
was happening continually.
It took almost twenty years to figure out this new phenomenon: that in existence there are black holes. You cannot see them, but they have tremendous gravitation. Even the biggest star, if it comes within their radius of magnetism, will be pulled in. And once it is pulled into a black hole, it disappears. It is the ultimate death. We can only see the effect; we cannot see the black hole, we only see that one star is disappearing.
After the black hole was almost an established theory, scientists started thinking that there must be something like a white hole -- there has to be. If it is possible that in a certain gravitation, magnetic force, a big star simply disappears out of existence.… We have been aware that every day stars are born. From where are they coming? -- nobody has asked it before.
In fact, birth we always take for granted; nobody asks from where the babies are coming.
Death we never accept, because we are so much afraid of it.
There is not a single philosophy in the whole history of man which thinks about where the babies come from, but there are philosophies and philosophies thinking about what is dead, where people go on disappearing to, what happens after death.
In my whole life I have come across millions of people, and not a single person has asked what happens before birth -- and thousands have asked what happens after death. I have always been thinking, why is birth taken without any question? Why is death not taken in the same way?
We were aware for centuries, almost three centuries, that stars are being born every day --
big stars, huge stars -- and nobody raised the question, "From where are these stars coming?" But when we came to know about the black holes and we saw the stars disappearing, then the second question became almost an absolute necessity. If black holes can take stars into nothingness, then there must be something like white holes where things... stars come out of nothingness.
I am reminded.… Mulla Nasruddin had applied for a post on a ship. He was
interviewed.
The captain and the high officials of the ship were sitting in a room. Mulla entered. The captain asked, "If the seas are in a turmoil, winds are strong, waves are huge and mountainous, what are you going to do to save the ship? It is tossed from here to there "
Mulla Nasruddin said, "It is not much of a problem: I will just drop a huge anchor to keep the ship stable against the winds, against the waves. It is not much of a problem."
The captain again said, "Suppose another mountainous wave comes and the ship is going to be drowned; what are you going to do?"
He said, "Nothing -- another huge anchor."
The captain looked at him and asked a third time, "Suppose it is a great typhoon and it is impossible to save the ship. What are you going to do?"
He said, "Nothing, the same -- a huge anchor."
The captain said, "From where are you getting these huge anchors?"
He said, "From the same place. From where are you getting these great, mountainous waves, strong winds? -- from the same place. You go on getting them, I will go on getting bigger and bigger anchors."
If there are holes in existence where things simply disappear into non-existence, then there must be holes from where things appear from nothingness -- and just a little imagination is needed. Scientists have not worked on it yet.
My suggestion is that a black hole is like a door: from one side it is a black door, a black hole -- things go into it and disappear into nothingness. And from the other side of the tunnel -- it is the same door, just from the other side -- it is a white hole; things are born again, renewed. It is the same womb.
Beyond enlightenment you enter into nothingness. Experience disappears, experiencer disappears.
Just pure nothingness remains, utter silence.
Perhaps this is the destiny of every human being, sooner or later to be achieved. We don't know yet whether there is a white hole or not -- there must be.
Just as you enter beyond enlightenment into nothingness, there must be a possibility of coming out of nothingness back into form, back into existence -- renewed, refreshed, luminous -- on a totally different plane. Because nothing is destroyed, things can only go into a dormant state; things can go only into deep sleep. Then in the morning they wake up again. This is how the existence goes on.
In the West, this idea has never happened in the two thousand years' history of philosophy. They only think of this creation: "Who created this?" and they get into troubles because whatever the answer is, it is going to create more questions.
In the East we have a conception of circles of existence and non-existence, just like day and night. Creation is followed by de-creation, everything goes into nothingness, just as day is followed by night and everything goes into darkness. And the period is going to be the same: as long as the creation is, so is the resting period going to be; and again there will be a creation of a higher order.
And this will go on from eternity to eternity -- creation, de-creation, creation, again de-creation -- but each time the morning is more beautiful. Each dawn is more colorful, more alive; the birds are singing better, the flowers are bigger, with more fragrance.
And the East has a tremendous courage of accepting the idea that this will go on forever and forever. There has never been any beginning, and there will be no end.
After enlightenment, you have to disappear. The world is left behind, the body is left behind, the mind is left behind; just your consciousness, as individuality, is still there.
To go beyond enlightenment is to go beyond individuality and to become universal. This way, each individual will go on moving into nothingness. And one day, the whole existence moves into nothingness and a great peace, a great
night, a deep, dark womb, a great awaiting for the dawn.… And it has been happening always, and each time you are always born on a higher level of consciousness.
Enlightenment is the goal of human beings. But those who are enlightened cannot remain static; they will have to move, they will have to change. And now they have only one thing to lose -- themselves.
They have enjoyed everything. They have enjoyed the purity of individuality; now they have to enjoy the disappearing of individuality. They have seen the beauty of individuality; now they have to see the disappearance and its beauty, and the silence that follows, that abysmal serenity that follows.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
THE OTHER NIGHT WHEN YOU TALKED ABOUT THE EGO AND HOW, WITH
AWARENESS, ONE CAN SEE THAT IT DOES NOT EXIST, I REALIZED THAT I NEVER PUT MUCH EMPHASIS ON AWARENESS. FOR ME, BEING WITH YOU
ALWAYS MEANT LOVING YOU AS MUCH AS I CAN, LONGING FOR YOU AND
TRYING TO BE AS CLOSE TO YOU AS POSSIBLE.
BELOVED OSHO, CAN YOU PLEASE SHOW THE WAY FOR A FEMALE GERMAN LOVER TO BECOME MORE AWARE?
Latifa, love is enough unto itself.
If your love is not the ordinary, biological instinctive love, if it is not part of your ego, if it is not a power trip to dominate someone; if your love is just a pure joy, rejoicing in the being of the other for no reason at all, a sheer joy, awareness will follow this pure love just like a shadow. You need not worry about awareness.
There are only two ways: either you become aware, then love follows as a shadow; or you become so loving that awareness comes on its own accord. They are two sides of the same coin. You need not bother about the other side; just keep one side, the other side cannot escape. The other side is bound to come.
And the path of love is easier, rosier, innocent, simple. The path of awareness is a little arduous.
Those who cannot love, for them I suggest the path of awareness. There are people who cannot love -- their hearts have become stones. Their upbringing, their culture, their society has killed the very capacity to love -- because this whole world is not run by love, it is run by cunningness. To succeed in this world you don't need love, you need a hard heart and a sharp mind. In fact, you don't need the heart at all.
I have heard about one great politician who was in the hospital and who had some great complications with his heart. So they put him on a plastic heart and took out his real heart, because it was going to take hours to clean it. And certainly a politician's heart --
even if you can clean it in hours, it is too soon. The surgeons were working in the other room -- it was a disgusting job -- and the politician was lying down.
A man came into the room and shook the politician; he opened his eyes and the man said,
"What are you doing here? You have been chosen the prime minister of the country."
He jumped out of the bed. The doctors looked from the other room, "What is happening?" The politician was going out. They said, "Wait! Your heart, we are cleaning it."
The politician said, "Now, at least for five years I won't need it. You can clean it as much as you want. Take your time. What does a prime minister need a heart for? But keep it safe in case something goes wrong; then I will come back. But if things go well, I may perhaps never need it."
In this world the heart is not needed. The people of the heart are crushed,
exploited, oppressed. This world is run by the cunning, by the clever, by the heartless and the cruel.
So the whole society is managed in such a way that every child starts losing his heart, and his energy starts moving directly towards the head. The heart is ignored.
I have heard an ancient parable from Tibet, that in the beginning of time the heart used to be exactly in the middle part of the body. But because of continuously being pushed aside, out of the way, now it is no more in the middle of the body. The poor fellow waits by the side of the road: "If some day you need, I am here" -- but it gets no nourishment, no encouragement. It gets all kinds of condemnation.
If you do something and you say, "I did it because I felt like doing it," everybody is going to laugh: "Felt? Have you lost your head? Give your reason, logic. Feeling is no logic."
Even if you fall in love, you have to find reasons why you have fallen in love -- because the woman's nose is very beautiful, her eyes have such depth, her body is so proportionate. These are not the reasons. You have never calculated all these reasons on your calculator and then found that this woman seems to be worthy of falling in love with: "Fall in love with this woman -- exactly the right length of nose, the right kind of hair, the right color, the right proportion of the body. What more do you want?"
But this is not the way that anybody ever falls in love. You fall in love. Then just to satisfy the idiots around you that you are not a fool, you have calculated everything and only then you have taken the step. It is a reasonable, rational, logical step.
Nobody hears the heart.
And the mind is so chattering, so continuously chattering -- yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak --
that even if the heart sometimes says something, it never reaches to you. It cannot reach.
The bazaar in your head is buzzing so much that it is impossible, absolutely
impossible for the heart.
Slowly slowly, the heart stops saying anything. Not heard again and again, ignored again and again, it falls silent.
The head runs the show in the society; otherwise, we would have lived in a totally different world -- more loving, less hate, less war, no possibility of nuclear weapons. The heart will never give support for any destructive methods to be evolved. The heart will never be in the service of death. It is life -- it throbs for life, it beats for life.
Because of the whole conditioning of the society, the method of awareness has to be chosen, because awareness appears to be very logical, rational.
But if you can love, then there is no need to go on a long, arduous route unnecessarily.
Love is the most shortcut way, the most natural -- so easy that it is possible even for a small child. It needs no training. You are born with the quality of it, if it is not corrupted by others.
But love should be pure. It should not be impure.
You will be surprised to know that the English word `love' comes from a very ugly root in Sanskrit. It comes from lobh. Lobh means greed.
And as far as ordinary love is concerned, it is a kind of greed.
That's why there are people who love money, there are people who love houses, there are people who love this, who love that. Even if they love a woman or a man, it is simply their greed; they want to possess everything beautiful.
It is a power trip. Hence, you will find lovers continuously fighting, fighting about such trivia that they both feel ashamed, "About what things we go on fighting!" In their silent moments when they are alone, they feel, "Do I become possessed by some evil spirit? --
such trivia, so meaningless." But it is not a question of trivia; it is a question of who has power, who is more dominant, whose voice is heard.
Love cannot exist in such circumstances.
I have heard a story.… In the life of one of the great emperors of India, Akbar, there is a small story. He was very much interested in all kinds of talented people, and from all over India he had collected nine people, the most talented geniuses, who were known as the "nine jewels of Akbar's court."
One day, just gossiping with his vice-councillors, he said, "Last night I was discussing with my wife. She is very insistent that every husband is henpecked. I tried hard, but she says, Ì know many families, but I have never found any husband who is not henpecked.'
What do you think?" he asked the councillors.
One of the councillors, Birbal said, "Perhaps she is right, because you could not prove it.
You yourself are a henpecked husband; otherwise, you could have given her a good beating, then and there proving that, `Look, here is a husband!'"
He said, "That I cannot do, because I have to live with her. It is easy to advise somebody else to beat his wife. Can you beat your wife?"
Birbal said, "No, I cannot. I simply accept that I am a henpecked husband, and your wife is right."
But Akbar said, "It has to be found.… In the capital there must be at least one husband who is not henpecked. There is no rule in the world which has no exception, and this is not a rule at all."
So he said to Birbal, "You take my two beautiful Arabian horses" -- one was black, one was white -- "and go around the capital. And if you can find a man who is not henpecked, you can give him the choice: whichever horse he wants is a present from me." They were valuable. In those days horses were very valuable, and those were the most beautiful horses.
Birbal said, "It is useless, but if you say, I will go."
He went, and everybody was found to be henpecked. It was very ordinary: He would just call the person and call his wife, and ask, "Are you henpecked or
not?"
The man would look at the wife and say, "You should have asked when I was alone. This is not right. You will create unnecessary trouble. Just for a horse I am not going to destroy my life. You take your horses, I don't want any."
But one man was sitting in front of his house and two persons were massaging him. He was a wrestler, a champion wrestler, a very strong man. Birbal thought, "Perhaps this man... he can kill anybody without any weapons. If he can hold your neck, you are finished!" Birbal said, "Can I ask you a question?"
He said, "Question? What question?" Birbal said, "Are you henpecked?"
That man said, "First, let us greet each other, a handshake." And he crushed Birbal's hand and said, "Unless you start crying and tears start coming from your eyes, I will not leave your hand. Your hand is finished. You dared to ask me such a question?"
And Birbal was dying -- he was almost a man of steel -- and tears started coming, and he said, "Just leave me. You are not henpecked. I have just come to a wrong place. But where is your wife?"
He said, "Look, she is there, cooking my breakfast." A very small woman was cooking his breakfast.
The woman was so small and the man was so big that Birbal said, "There is a possibility that perhaps this man is not henpecked. He will kill this woman."
So he said, "Now there is no need to go further into investigation. You can choose either horse from these two, black and white, a reward from the king for the one who is not henpecked.
And at that time that small woman said, "Don't choose the black! Otherwise I will make your life a hell!"
The man said, "No, no, I will choose the white. You just keep quiet."
Birbal said, "You don't get either, neither white nor black. It is all finished, you
lost the game. You are a henpecked husband."
There is a continuous fight for domination. Love cannot blossom in such an atmosphere.
The man is fighting in the world for all kinds of ambitions. The woman is fighting the man because she is afraid: he is out of the house the whole day -- "Who knows? He may be having affairs with other women." She is jealous, suspicious; she wants to be sure that this man remains controlled. So in the house he is fighting with the wife, in the outside he is fighting with the world. Where do you think the flower of love can blossom?
Latifa, the flower of love can blossom only when there is no ego, when there is no effort to dominate, when one is humble, when one is trying not to be somebody but is ready to be nobody.
Naturally, in the ordinary world it cannot happen, but with a master it is a possibility. The love for the master is not biological. Biology has nothing to do with masters and disciples. The love for the master has nothing to do with domination.
The flower can blossom because love is pure of ego.
You are simply rejoicing in the presence, in the fulfillment of the master, in the contentment of the master. You are rejoicing as if it is your contentment, it is your fulfillment. In the radiation of the master you are feeling it is your radiation. You are part of the master; you have become so harmonious with him that his heart and your heart are no more two.
Awareness will come on its own accord, and this is the most beautiful way, the most innocent way -- a path full of flowers, a path that passes through beautiful lakes, rivers, groves, greenery.
The path of awareness is the path that passes through a desert. It is only for those who cannot manage to get back into their hearts.
If you can easily be heartful, forget all about awareness; it will come on its own accord.
Each step of love will bring its own awareness. This love will not be falling in
love; I call it rising in love. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO PARTS IN ME RELATED TO YOU. ONE PART OF
ME HAS THE DRIVE TO WORK, RUN AROUND, ORGANIZE, JUMP UP AND
DOWN, FIGHT, TALK TO PRESS AND POLITICIANS, JUST SHOUT FROM THE
ROOFTOPS. THE OTHER PART, WHICH HAS BECOME SO MUCH STRONGER
OVER THE LAST YEARS, JUST WANTS TO SIT AT YOUR SIDE AND ABSORB
EVERYTHING -- YOU, YOUR SILENCE AND YOUR WORDS.
WAS IT THAT I HAD TO BE SO ACTIVE JUST TO BE ABLE TO SIT SILENTLY
NOW?
OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR OUTER AND YOUR
INNER WORK?
There is no split in you.
If a part fights in the outer world for my message to be spread to all nooks and corners, and the other part simply wants to sit close to me, drinking my silence, my presence, my peace, rejoicing in my blissfulness, being ecstatic just without doing anything.…
Ordinarily it may seem that these two parts are against each other. They are not.
The more you shout from the housetops, the more you will be able to sit silently, close to me; and the more you can sit silently, close to me, the more you will have something to share with the world, something to fight for.
Man is both the inner and the outer, and it has been a fallacy, a very ancient fallacy, to condemn one in favor of the other.
In the East, people renounce the outer in favor of the inner. They escape from the world into the caves in the Himalayas so that they can devote their whole life and their whole time and their whole energy to the inner journey -- but they don't understand the dialectics of life.
In the West, just the opposite has been done. They have renounced the inner so that they can put their whole energy into the outer world and the conquest of the outer world.
Both have been wrong, and both have been right.
Both have been wrong because both remained halves; one part grew bigger and bigger, and the other part remained retarded. You can see it.
In the East there is so much poverty, so much disease, so much sickness, so much death.
Still, there is a certain contentment. With all this, there seems to be no revolutionary approach that "We should change the whole world. We cannot go on living in this poverty, and we have lived in this poverty for centuries, in slavery for centuries. And we have accepted everything -- poverty, slavery, disease, death -- without any resistance, because these are outer things. Our whole effort has been inner."
In the West they have destroyed poverty, they have destroyed much disease, they have made man's life longer. They have made man's body more beautiful, they have made man's existence more comfortable, but the man himself -- for whom all these comforts, all these conquests of science and technology have been done
-- is missing. They have completely forgotten for whom it was done. The inside is hollow. Everything is there, all around, and in the middle there is a retarded consciousness, almost non-existential.
So both have succeeded in what they were doing, and both have failed -- because
they have chosen only half of man's life.
My attitude is that of accepting man in his totality, in his wholeness.
And it has to be understood that once you accept the totality of man, you have to understand the law of dialectics.
For example, the whole day you work hard -- in the fields, in the garden -- you perspire.
In the night you will have a beautiful sleep. Don't think that because the whole day you have been working so hard, how can you sleep in the night? -- it is so against your whole day's work. It is not against. The whole day's hard work has prepared you to relax; the night will be deep relaxation.
Beggars sleep the best. Emperors cannot sleep because the emperor has forgotten the dialectics of life. You need two legs to walk, you need two hands, you need two hemispheres in your brain.
It has now become an accepted psychological truth that you can do hard mathematical work -- because it is done by one part of the mind -- and then you can do the same hard work on your musical instrument, and because it is done by another part of the mind, it is not continuous labor. In fact, when you are working hard on mathematics, the musical part of your mind is resting; and when you are working hard on the musical part, your mathematical mind is resting.
In the universities, in the colleges all over the world, we change the class period every forty minutes because it has been found that after each forty minutes, the part that you have been working with gets tired. Just change the subject; that part goes into rest.
Sitting with me, fill your cup with as much juice as possible. Feel silence to its uttermost depth, so that you can shout from the housetops.
And there is no contradiction: your shouting from the housetops is simply part of a dialectical process. Your silence and your shouting are just like two hands, your two legs, your day and night, your work and rest period. Don't divide them as antagonistic to each other; that's how the whole world has suffered.
The East has created great geniuses, but we are still living in the bullock cart age because our geniuses simply meditated. Their meditation never came into action. If they had meditated for a few hours and used their silence and peace and meditativeness for scientific research, this country would have been the richest in the world -- outer and inner, both.
The same is true about the West: they created great geniuses, but they were all involved with things, objects. They forgot themselves completely. Once in a while a genius remembered, but it was too late.
Albert Einstein, at the time of death, said his last words -- and remember, the last words are the most important a person has ever spoken in his life, because they are a conclusion, the essential experience. His last words were, "If there is another life, I would like to be a plumber. I don't want to be a physicist. I want to be something very simple -- a plumber."
A tired brain, a burned brain... and what was his achievement? -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This man was capable of becoming a Gautam Buddha. If he had looked inwards, he had such an insight that perhaps he would have gone deeper than any Gautam Buddha, because he looked towards the stars and went further than any astronomer has ever done.
It is the same power; it is only a question of direction.
But why get fixed? Why not keep yourself available to both dimensions? What is the need of getting fixed? -- "I can only see outwardly, I cannot see inwardly, or vice-versa."
One should only learn how to see deeply, and then use that insight in both dimensions.
Then he can give better science and better technology to the world and he can give better human beings, a better humanity, at the same time.
And remember, only in a better human being's hands is a better technology right; otherwise, it is dangerous.
The East is dying with poverty. The West is dying with power. Strange They
have created so much power that they can only kill. They don't know anything about life because they have never looked in.
The East knows everything about life, but without food you cannot meditate. When you are hungry and you close your eyes, you can see only chappattis just floating all around.
It has happened in the life of a poet, Heinrich Heine. He was lost in a jungle for three days, hungry, tired. Out of fear, he could not sleep; wild animals were staying in the tops of the trees in the night. And for three days continuously he did not come across a single human being to ask whether he was moving right or wrong, where he was going or if he was moving in a roundabout. Three days continuously... and then came the full moon night.
Hungry, tired, hanging onto a tree, he looked at the full moon. He was a great poet, and he was surprised, he could not believe it. He himself had written about the moon, he had read about the moon. So much is written about the moon -- so much poetry, so much painting, so much art is around the moon. But Heinrich Heine had a revelation: before, he used to see his beloved's face in the moon; today he saw only a bread floating in the sky.
He tried hard, but the beloved's face did not appear.
It is perfectly good to be dialectical. And always remember to try the opposites as complementaries. Use all the opposites as complementaries and your life will be fuller, your life will be whole.
To me, this is the only holy life: a whole life is the only holy life. Question 4
BELOVED OSHO,
TODAY I OBSERVED A TIGHTROPE WALKER AND HOW HE TRAINED A YOUNG GIRL PARTNER TO WALK ON THE ROPE. HE WAS SOMETIMES
HITTING HER, SOMETIMES PERSUADING HER, BUT IT SEEMED TO ME THAT
SHE WAS MAINLY ENCOURAGED TO TRY IT AGAIN AND AGAIN BECAUSE
SHE FELT HIS TRUST IN HER POTENTIAL TO BE ABLE TO WALK THE ROPE
ALONE.
CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE MASTER'S TRUST IN THE
DISCIPLE?
The very fact that the master accepts a disciple shows his trust in the potential of the disciple. Otherwise, he would not have been accepted.
Every man has the potential, but the right time, the right place, the right experience make all the difference. Otherwise, every human being is capable of being enlightened, will be enlightened, but when, at what time -- whether in this life or in another life -- depends on many things: how much your experience is, your experience of being frustrated in the world, how much you are in misery.
Are you still hoping that tomorrow things will be better, or have you lost all hope? Is your despair ultimate, or only momentary? Have you come to the master because you have fought with your wife today, but after fifteen minutes things will be different --
anger will be gone?
I used to live on a university campus. The first day, I entered into my bungalow. I was alone, and the attached bungalow was occupied by a Bengali professor. And the walls were so thin that even if you plugged your ears, still you would be able to hear what was going on on the other side of the wall.
Because the husband and wife were fighting so badly, I thought that there was going to be some blood. I could not sleep. It was one o'clock in the night and they were fighting and fighting and fighting. And I could not understand what they were saying either, but things must have been serious because finally the professor said, "I am going to commit suicide" -- that he said in English.
I said, "This is something good; at least I can understand this much." So I came out of my house to prevent him -- "Just wait. In the middle of the night, where will you go to commit suicide? In the morning it will be better" -- but by the time I was out he was gone, fast.
I asked his wife -- who had not come out even to say goodbye! I said, "What am I supposed to do? Should I go to the police station? Somebody has to be informed by phone? What has to be done?"
She said, "Nothing has to be done. Do you see his umbrella is here? Without his umbrella he cannot go anywhere. He will be coming soon -- the moment he remembers the umbrella. In anger, he has forgotten the umbrella. A Bengali without an umbrella?"
I said, "But suicide is such a serious matter, and an umbrella is not needed at all."
She said, "You just wait. You sit here. I will make coffee for you because you have been... I knew that you must be hearing all this."
And within fifteen minutes he was back. And I said, "What happened?"
He said, "What happened? I forgot my umbrella! And now it must be at least two o'clock in the morning."
I said, "That's the right thing to do. In the morning, take your umbrella and go out, find a right place." But who goes in the morning?
In the morning I reminded him, "You are still here? The sun has risen. You should go now and search for the right place."
He said, "I was thinking to go, but when I opened the umbrella it was not repaired because the rains have not come."
I said, "I see you with that umbrella every day, going to the university."
He said, "That is just habitual. Because there are no rains, nothing, so there is no question of opening it; one just carries it. Now I tried and opened it -- it is not
repaired. And I have been telling my wife that my umbrella should be kept repaired in case some emergency arises. Now I wanted to commit suicide and the umbrella is not ready."
I thought, "This is really great of you, and every person who commits suicide should learn something from you."
One day, it must have been afternoon, three o'clock or something, I again heard that he is going to commit suicide. But this time I was not so much excited, because I thought that this is the usual business. Still, I came out to say goodbye.
He looked at me with a very strange face. He said, "What do you mean by goodbye?"
I said, "You are going to commit suicide, and I don't think that we will be meeting again so I am saying goodbye. But what are you carrying?" He was carrying a tiffin.
I said, "Where are you taking the tiffin?"
He said, "You know these Indian railway trains -- sometimes they are ten hours late, twelve hours late. And I cannot tolerate hunger at all, so I will lie down by the line and wait for the train. If it comes, good; otherwise, I am taking my supper with me."
I said, "You are a clever and intelligent person -- anybody looking at you would think you are going on some picnic."
And when he was gone, his wife came. She said, "Has he gone?" I said, "He has gone."
She said, "He will be coming soon. This idiot," she said, "whenever he wants to go for a picnic.… But he is such a miser that he will not take even me with him, so he says that he is going to commit suicide. He must be eating just near the railway station; you can go and see right now."
The railway station was not very far away, so I went and I saw him. He was enjoying all Bengali sweets and things.
I said, "Chatterji, the train is standing on the platform. Leave your tiffin, run! Just lie down ahead of the train!"
He said, "It is too late. First I have to finish everything that I brought, and today I have missed. And the train comes to this station only once in twenty-four hours"
-- because it was not a big station, it was a small station, and the train used to stop only once for the university because the university was outside the city. So he said, "Today it is finished."
But I said, "You were first saying, Ì am going to wait.' And this is not suppertime; it is only three o'clock."
He said, "When you have such sweets in your hand, you cannot wait. And I am just coming back home with you."
There are people who would like to become sannyasins, who would like to become disciples. It may be just an emotional, sentimental, temporal thing, and within two minutes it has come and it is gone. They had the potential, but it was not the right time.
Even if they take sannyas, even if they become disciples -- because no master is so unkind as to say no to somebody who wants to become a disciple -- they are going to betray. They are going to leave sooner or later because it was not something very deep, coming from their very heart. It was something very superficial, something so superficial that if they had waited for a few minutes more, they would have changed their minds. It was a mind thing, and mind is never stable, it is continuously changing.
You cannot stay with one thought in the mind even for a few seconds. Sometimes, try: just one thought, and you try to stay with it, and you will be surprised that in not more than thirty seconds you have forgotten about it and your mind has moved somewhere else. And then suddenly you remember that you were trying to stay with one thought, and you could remain only thirty seconds.
Gurdjieff used to give this experiment to everyone who had come to become a disciple.
He would give him his own pocket watch and tell him, "Keep it in front of you, watch the second hand and choose any word -- your name. Keep just that name
in your mind, and just tell me how long you can keep it" -- fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, at the most, forty seconds, not even one whole minute.
Mind is in a flux.
So those who want to become disciples because of some mind thing are not going to stay.
There is no need to say no to them, they will be going themselves.
But the master knows perfectly well when somebody comes with an urge from the heart, with an urge that he can stake his whole life for but he will not turn back. Only these few people attain to the fulfillment.
Everybody has the potential, but everybody is not ripe at this moment -- perhaps at some other time, in some other life, with some other master.
But one day is going to come in everybody's life that becomes a turning point, a 180
degree turn, and then disciplehood is a beautiful growth.
Then the whole energy is moving in one direction, with one intention, with no diversions.
Then the distance from the goal is less.
The more intense is your urge, the smaller is the distance. If your intention is total, then there is no distance at all.
Then you need not go to the goal, the goal comes to you. Beyond Enlightenment
Chapter #2
Chapter title: Innocence is a light unto itself 4 October 1986 pm in
Archive
code:
8610045
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH02
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
125
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE QUESTIONS, BUT THEY ARE NEVER COMPLETE, AND I DON'T KNOW
HOW TO ASK.
No question is ever complete, because the completion of a question will mean it has its answer in itself.
A question by its very nature is incomplete. It is a desire, a longing, an inquiry, because something needs to be completed.
It is part of human consciousness that it demands completion. Leave anything incomplete and it becomes an obsession; complete it and you are free of it. Completion brings freedom.
Hence, it is not only your questions that are incomplete. You are more alert that you have seen the incompleteness of each question.
Secondly, you don't know what to ask. Nobody knows. All of our questions are out of our ignorance, out of our unconscious, out of our dark soul. Nobody knows exactly what his question is, what is essential to be asked -- because the moment you know what your question is, you will immediately find the answer within yourself.
To be absolutely confident about the question means the answer is not very far. It is very close, because confidence comes from the answer, not from the question.
But still, man has to ask.
Although all questions are incomplete and you do not know what to ask, still man has to ask because man cannot remain silent. It is possible not to ask -- that does not mean you don't have questions, that simply means you are not bringing them out. Perhaps you are afraid to be exposed, because each question will indicate towards your ignorance.
There are millions of people who never ask for the simple reason that to be silent at least appears to be wise. To ask the question is to show your wounds, is to show all the dark spots in your being. It needs courage.
Secondly, there are questions which are not out of your ignorance but out of your borrowed knowledge -- which are the worst questions possible.
A question that comes out of ignorance is innocent, has purity. It is unpolluted, uncorrupted; it shows your courage, your trust.
But there are questions which come out of your borrowed knowledge. You have heard much, you have read much, you have been informed from the parents, teachers, priests, politicians, all kinds of demogogues, all kinds of pretenders to knowledge -- and you have been collecting their whole garbage.
Purna has sent me a beautiful present: a very artistic, beautiful wastepaper basket with a note -- "Osho, if you feel my questions are just garbage, throw them in this wastepaper basket. You need not answer them."
Questions coming out of knowledge are garbage.
You don't know anything about God, the universe; you don't know anything about the soul, reincarnation, future lives, past lives. All that you know is simply hearsay. People have been chattering around you and you are collecting all kinds of information that seems to be important to you. Why does it seem important? -
- it seems important because it covers your ignorance. It helps you to feel as if you know. But remember, it is a very big às if.' You do not know, it is only as if.
All holy scriptures, all books on philosophy, theology should be categorized into one category: as if. They are talking about every possible impossible thing they know nothing of, but they are articulate, imaginative intellectuals who can create systems out of nothing.
That's why no philosopher agrees with any other philosopher. And every philosopher thinks that he has found the whole system that explains everything in the world -- and all other philosophers laugh at him; they find thousands of loopholes in his system. But as far as they themselves are concerned, they commit the same mistake: they claim that their system is complete and now there is no question of further inquiry.
And the strangest thing is that these are the people who are very insightful in seeing the loopholes of others, but they cannot see the loopholes of their own system. Perhaps they don't want to see. They are there, everybody else can see them; it is impossible that they themselves are not seeing them. They are ignoring them, hoping that nobody sees them.
Every philosophy has failed. Every religion has failed.
You are carrying the ruins of all the philosophies and all the religions in your mind, and out of those ruins, questions arise. Those questions are meaningless; you should not ask them. They really show your stupidity.
But questions arising out of your ignorance -- just like a child asking -- those questions are incomplete, not very great questions, but tremendously important.
One day a small child was walking with D.H. Lawrence in a garden, and was continuously asking questions of all kinds. And D.H. Lawrence was one of the most sincere men of this century, condemned by governments, by priests because of his sincerity, because he would say only the truth, because he was not
ready to be diplomatic, a hypocrite, because he would not compromise. Even before this small child he showed such authentic sincerity, which even your great saints have not shown.
The child asked, "Why are the trees green?" -- a very simple question, but very profound.
All the trees are green -- why? What is the matter with the trees? When there are so many colors, when the whole rainbow of colors is available -- some tree can be yellow, some tree can be red, some tree can be blue -- why have all the trees chosen to be green?
In D. H. Lawrence's place, any parent, any teacher, any priest, anybody -- x, y, z
-- would have told some lie, that "God made them green because green is very soothing to the eyes." But this would have been deceptive, a lie, because D.H. Lawrence does not know anything about God, does not know why the trees are green.
In fact, no scientist who has been working with the trees knows, although he can show that it is because of a certain element, chlorophyl, that trees are green. But that is not the answer for the child. He will simply ask, "Why have they chosen chlorophyl -- all the trees?" It is not a satisfactory answer.
D.H. Lawrence closed his eyes, waited for a moment in silence... what to say to this child? He did not want to be a deceiving person to an innocent child -- although the question is ordinary, any answer would do. But the question has come from innocence; hence it is very profound.
And D. H. Lawrence opened his eyes, looked at the trees and said to the child, "The trees are green because they are green."
The child said, "Right. I was also thinking that."
But D.H. Lawrence remembered it in his memoirs: "To me it was a great experience --
the love and the trust the child showed towards me because of sheer sincerity. My answer was not an answer; according to logicians, it was a tautology. `The trees are green because they are green' -- is this an answer?"
In fact, D.H. Lawrence is accepting that: My child, I am as much ignorant as you are. Just because there is a difference of age does not mean that I know and you do not know. The difference of age is not the difference between ignorance and knowledge.
Trees being green is part of the mystery of the whole existence. Things are what they are.
A woman is a woman, a man is a man. A rose is a rose; call it by any name, it still remains the rose.
That morning, in that small incident, something tremendously beautiful is hidden.
Ask questions -- not out of knowledge because all that knowledge is borrowed, unfounded, pure rubbish.
Ask out of your ignorance.
Remember, the ignorance is yours -- be proud of it.
The knowledge is not yours. How can you be proud of it?
And the question is not to cover the ignorance. The question is to bring some light, so that the ignorance, the darkness, disappears.
I cannot give you any better answer than D.H. Lawrence, but I can give you something else which Lawrence has no insight about.
I can give you a space, a silence in which you can realize the mystery on your own.
You ask the question, whatever the question is. Just remember: don't ask out of knowledge, ask out of your own authentic ignorance.
And my answers are not answers, in fact. My answers are killers -- they simply kill the question, they take away the question, they don't give you any answer to hold on to.
And that is the difference between a teacher and a master: the teacher gives you answers so that you can hold those answers and remain ignorant -- beautifully decorated on the surface, libraries full of answers, but underneath, below the surface, an abysmal ignorance.
The master simply kills your questions.
He does not give you an answer, he takes away the question.
If all your questions can be taken away... listen carefully to what I am saying: If all your questions can be taken away, your ignorance is bound to disappear, and what remains is innocence.
And innocence is a light unto itself.
In that innocence you don't know any question, any answer, because the whole realm of questions and answers is left behind. It has become irrelevant, you have transcended it.
You are pure of questions and pure of answers.
This state is enlightenment. And if you are courageous enough, you can go even beyond it.
This will give you all the beautiful experiences described by the mystics down the ages: Your heart will dance with ecstasy, your whole being will become a beautiful sunrise...
thousands of lotuses blossoming in you.
If you want, you can make your home here.
In the past, people have stopped here, because where can you find a better place? Gautam Buddha has called this place the "Lotus Paradise."
But if you are a born seeker.…
I will suggest: have a little rest, enjoy all the beauties of enlightenment but don't make it a full-stop.
Go beyond, because life, its journey, is unending and much more is going to happen which is absolutely indescribable.
The experience of enlightenment is also beyond description, but it has been described by all who have experienced it. They all say it is beyond description and still they describe it
-- that it is full of light, that it is full of joy, that it is the ultimate in blissfulness. If this is not description then what is description?
I am saying it for the first time: for thousands of years the people who have become enlightened have been saying that it cannot be described, and at the same time have been describing it, have been their whole lives singing it.
But beyond enlightenment you certainly enter into a world which is indescribable.
Because in enlightenment you still are; otherwise who is feeling the blissfulness, who is seeing the light? Kabir says, "... as if thousands of suns have risen." Who is seeing it?
Enlightenment is the ultimate experience -- but still it is experience, and the experiencer is there.
Going beyond it, there is no experiencer. You dissolve.
First you were trying to dissolve your problems; now you dissolve -- because existentially you are the problem. Your separation from existence is the only question which has to be solved.
You lose your boundaries, you are no more. Who is there to experience? You need tremendous courage to drop the ego to achieve enlightenment.
You will need a million times more courage to drop yourself to attain the beyond
-- and the beyond is the real. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
I AM FAMILIAR WITH THE MASTER-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP AFTER YEARS
OF BEING AROUND YOU.
COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THE DISCIPLE-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP?
There is no such thing.
Disciples in the past have created organizations. That was their relationship, that "we are Christians," that "we are Mohammedans," that "we belong to one religion, to one faith and because we belong to one faith, we are brothers and sisters. We will live for the faith and we will die for the faith."
All organizations have arisen out of the relationships between disciples. In fact, two disciples are not connected with each other at all.
Each disciple is connected with the master in his individual capacity.
A master can be connected with millions of disciples, but the connection is personal, not organizational.
Disciples don't have any relationship. Yes, they have a certain friendliness, a certain lovingness.
I am avoiding the word `relationship' because that is binding. I am not calling it friendship even, but `friendliness' -- because they are all fellow travelers walking on the same path, in love with the same master, but they are related to each other through the master.
They are not related to each other directly.
That has been the most unfortunate thing in the past: that disciples became organized, related amongst themselves, and they were all ignorant.
And ignorant people can only create more nuisance in the world than anything
else. All the religions have done exactly that.
My people are related to me individually. And because they are on the same path, certainly they become acquainted with each other. A friendliness arises, a loving atmosphere, but I don't want to call it any kind of relationship.
We have suffered too much because of disciples getting directly related to each other, creating religions, sects, cults, and then fighting. They cannot do anything else.
At least with me, remember it: you are not related to each other in any way at all.
Just a liquid friendliness, not a solid friendship, is enough -- and far more beautiful, and without any possibility of harming humanity in the future.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE, I HAVE BEEN TORN APART BETWEEN WANTING
TO ASK YOU A QUESTION -- WANTING TO EXPOSE MYSELF -- AND TRYING
EVERYTHING TO AVOID THAT. IT FEELS AS IF I HAVE BEEN STUCK IN THIS
POSITION FOR YEARS. WHAT IS THIS FEAR, OSHO?
There is only one basic fear.
All other small fears are byproducts of the one main fear that every human being carries with himself.
The fear is of losing yourself. It may be in death, it may be in love, but the fear is the same: You are afraid of losing yourself.
And the strangest thing is that only those people are afraid of losing themselves
who don't have themselves. Those who have themselves are not afraid. So it is really a question of exposure.
You don't have anything to lose; you just believe that you have something to lose.
I was traveling with Mulla Nasruddin... and the ticket checker came. I showed him my ticket, and Mulla started searching for his ticket. He opened one of his suitcases, then another suitcase, went through all his pockets -- coat, pants, shirt
-- but I saw that he was avoiding one pocket.
Watching him, even the ticket checker said, "Don't be worried. You are a well- known person. You can't travel without a ticket, it must be somewhere. You have so much luggage," he said, "I will be coming back in the second round. By that time you may have found it."
He went away, and Mulla was still perspiring and searching for the ticket.
I said, "Mulla, I can see only one thing -- that you are looking into everything but you are not looking into one pocket."
He said, "Just don't raise that question, because I am already in such trouble." But I said, "What has that pocket to do with trouble?"
He said, "It has everything to do with it. That is the only place I am hoping that the ticket may be, and I don't want to lose that hope. First let me look in everything else. That is my last resort; I also know that I am avoiding it. The ticket checker was looking at that pocket, you are also looking at that pocket. It is not that I am not aware. Fully consciously I am avoiding it, because if it is not there then the ticket is nowhere."
The fear of coming close is the fear of exposure.
Who knows? -- as you come close to the master, in his presence, in his light you may find that you don't exist. And that will be almost a death... bigger than death. So people keep at a certain distance.
Watching the wild animals in the jungles, in the mountains, scientists have come
to discover a certain idea: that they have a territorial imperative, that each animal has his own territory. If you don't enter his territory, he will not bother you, but if you enter his territory you are in danger, he can attack you. In fact, he feels the danger: you are in his territory, coming too close, and who knows if you are a friend or a foe?
And they have a very strange way of creating the demarcation line of their territory. You see the dogs pissing? -- they are creating their territory. Each dog has his own territory; he creates it not by visible walls and fences but by the smell. Other dogs immediately smell it: "This territory belongs to some dog -- be careful."
And the same is done even by lions; they will go pissing around a large territory. And their urine has a very strong smell; no animal is so insensitive that he will not sense it.
And once he senses the smell, he will avoid that place -- that is a prohibited area.
The scientists studying the whole thing came to a conclusion: Why are these animals so much interested in keeping a certain space of their own and not allowing anybody else to enter? -- they found that it is fear. The other animal can be death. It is better to warn him, and before he attacks the best way to defend yourself is to attack. So if anybody enters your territory, you attack him before he attacks you; and whoever attacks first has more chances to be victorious.
In zoos, where man has kept animals in small spaces...
Psychologists have been shocked to learn that in the wild, animals never go mad, never commit suicide, never become homosexuals, never attack their own species. But in a zoo they start doing strange things: they become homosexuals, they start attacking their own species. Otherwise, except man, no animal attacks his own species. It is a prerogative of humanity -- only a man kills another man. No lion kills another lion.
But in a zoo it happens that they lose all their natural instinctive intelligence; they start becoming crazy, mad. And strangely enough, they even start committing suicide, and the reason is that their territory has been taken away and they are living in constant fear. So many animals so close -- they cannot sleep, they cannot relax, the other animal may attack.
They have lost their freedom, they have lost their sleep, they have lost their sanity. And to live in such conditions, a point comes when it is better to commit suicide rather than live in such torture. You don't see the torture because you don't know that they are suffering from a special cause: they need space.
And as humanity has grown in population, murders have grown, crimes have grown, homosexuality has grown, lesbianism has grown. People are committing suicide like anything. War seems to be the only thing we are preparing for; it seems war is the only thing we are born for.
Perhaps it is the territorial imperative. Perhaps man has lost his feeling of space.
Just see what territorial imperative is possible in a local train. Look at what territorial imperative is possible on the road. Still, if you watch carefully, even in a local train people are standing in such a way that nobody touches them, still making their last effort to keep a certain distance. It may be just inches, but just a little distance will give them breathing space.
Psychologically, man is afraid to come close to anybody whose presence can become an exposure, whose eyes can be so penetrative, like x-rays, who can see you through and through.
And you are afraid that perhaps nothing will be found -- there is nobody, the house is empty.
The same is true about questions: you are afraid to ask authentic questions coming out of your ignorance because you will be allowing yourself to be exposed as an ignorant person.
Everybody is pretending to be knowledgeable.
In my village there was a certain man... a little loose in the head, so I was very much interested in him. I am always interested in people who are a little loose; they are special people.
His name was Sunderlal, but I used to call him Doctor Sunderlal. At first he could not believe it -- why am I calling him doctor? He asked me, "You said DOCTOR?"
I said, "You arèdoctor'. In this village, nobody is more knowledgeable than you
are."
He said, "That's true."
I said, "In this village, you are a D.Litt., a doctor." He said, "Are you joking?"
I said, "Why should I joke? A fact is a fact. If you want, I can bring a few people as witnesses."
He said, "No, no, there is no need. I trust in you; if you are saying it, then it must be so."
The next day I saw that he had hung a board on his house: Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt.
The whole town was agog... suddenly this crazy man... "Which university has given him a D.Litt.?"
I reached his home and I said, "You have done the right thing. It is not a question of any university -- what rights do they have to give you a D.Litt.? -- it is your declaration."
He said, "That's right. Because my father was saying, `You idiot, you are writing Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. -- the police will come! You will be caught in some trouble; don't listen to that man.'"
I said, "There is no question; it is your declaration that Ìn this village I am the most knowledgeable person. If anybody has any doubts... open challenge!'"
He said, "Should it be written underneath the board?" I said, "It should be written underneath the board."
So a certain board was made on which he wrote, "This is a declaration that in this village I am the most knowledgeable person. And if somebody has any doubts, that means an open challenge for a discussion."
Now, who wanted to discuss with that fellow? He was so crazy; nobody turned
up. And he was sitting in a chair just by the side of the board waiting for somebody to come.
I inquired two or three times, "Has anybody turned up?"
He said, "Nobody... people come, they read and they go again! Even my father said that there seems to be something in it, because nobody is making any objection. Even the police inspector came, read the whole thing and went away: Ìf it is a declaration '"
Just a few years ago the man died, and he died as "Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt." In the newspapers it was printed, "Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. has died." And nobody ever asked or bothered, because nobody was ready to accept the challenge. Everybody was afraid, because to discuss with that crazy fellow... he could say anything. He could raise questions that you could not answer, he could criticize anything.
And they all knew that I was supporting him. I had told him, "Don't be worried. If somebody accepts the challenge I will be there by your side to help you."
He said, "I am not worried. I have defeated my wife, my cousin, my brother. I have defeated my family completely, and I know that in this village they are the average people, so I have defeated the village. Should I try to make the territory a little bigger?"
I said, "No, you should keep the territory just as the village. It is enough -- because you have the D.Litt., you have declared it. Now, no need to make the territory bigger, because that may create trouble. In this village you are the only one whose head is loose. In other villages there may be somebody who has the same kind of loose head -- unnecessary trouble will arise. You just remain silent."
And people started calling him "Doctor Sunderlal." And by and by, people forgot all about... he was accepted as Doctor Sunderlal, D.Litt. That almost became his name.
Your knowledge... whether you have declared it or not, deep down you believe that you know so much. And all that you know is not yours.
Coming closer to a person in whose light your knowledge will start melting,
disappearing, evaporating, leaving you naked in your ignorance, you are afraid even to ask a question.
I have seen people, thousands of people in my life, asking me questions and saying that
"This is a question from one of my friends." And when I used to see people personally, I would tell them, "The best way will be that you send your friend. And he can say the same thing: `This is a question from one of my friends.'"
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "You have understood... this is your question. But you don't even have guts to say
`This is my question.' Knowledge, which you claim as yours, is all from others. And the question -- which you are saying is some friend's question -- is yours." I said, "Bring your friend. Tomorrow, come with your friend. I would like to see the friend, because the question is very important."
He said, "The question is important?"
I said, "It is a very important question, and I would like to see the person." He said, "Forgive me... really it is my question."
People are afraid to expose themselves.
But to be with a master, one of the basic rules is that you will drop your fears and you will stand naked in your ignorance, because from that ignorance your innocence can be achieved.
From your knowledge, no route goes to innocence.
Only from your ignorance is there a pathway to innocence.
Hence I repeat again: a vast knowledge which is borrowed is of no meaning. But a small ignorance that is yours is a treasure, because from that ignorance opens the door to your innocence.
And it is innocence that becomes the light, that becomes the incense and the fragrance.
Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,
ONCE YOU TOLD ME THAT THE SPRING HAD COME, BUT MY ANXIETY IS
THAT I HAVE LOST EVERYTHING, THAT THE GARBAGE HAS TAKEN OVER
COMPLETELY, AND THAT I CANNOT KEEP MYSELF OPEN TO YOU AS A DISCIPLE UNLESS I AM CONTINUALLY IN YOUR PRESENCE.
CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE SEED OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH
WHICH YOU PLANT IN US AND WHETHER IT CAN DIE?
Pankaja, the seed is immortal, it cannot die.
But it can remain dormant; it can remain dormant for lives.
If the right soil is not provided, if the right water is not provided, if the right exposure to the sunlight is not provided, it will remain dormant, a potentiality, a waiting -- but it cannot die. You may die many times, but the seed, once planted in you, will go on following your consciousness wherever you are.
Unless you give it your attention, nourishment, your care, your love, it cannot become a living sprout. Small, fresh green leaves cannot come out of it.
Only your love and your consciousness can create the miracle... and the day will not be far away when there will be flowers.
There are people here who have been carrying seeds from other masters. I do not need to sow new seeds in them; all that I need is to help their dormant seeds to open up.
You are not here for the first time. You have been here always -- perhaps with Zarathustra, perhaps with Pythagoras, perhaps with Heraclitus, perhaps with Gautam Buddha.
It is very rare that a person comes to me who needs a new seed -- because you are all ancient people. It is almost impossible not to have come in contact with one of the magicians of the soul; those people are magnets. So in some life, somewhere, you may have met al-Hillaj Mansoor, Jalaluddin Rumi, Kabir or Nanak.
Very rarely do I find a person who is not already pregnant -- but the seed has remained the seed, you have not been a gardener to it. Somebody, with great compassion, must have sown the seed, but you have not been kind enough to yourself.
The seed never dies.
And Pankaja, you understand perfectly well that your mind is full of garbage. This very understanding is enough to get rid of it.
But it seems the problem is that this garbage is paying you; it is in some way fulfilling your ego.
Pankaja is a novelist, is well known as a novelist.
I have worked with many kinds of celebrities; they are the most third-rate people to work with for the simple that their celebrity has become part of their ego. They cannot drop the ego, because if they drop the ego the celebrity disappears. And the celebrity, the famousness, their name, has become so important to them... it has become their identity in the world. Where millions of people are without any identity, they have an identity.
For them, to drop the ego is very difficult -- and understandably; it is arduous.
A person who is not a celebrity has a small ego. In fact, to have it or not to have it does not make much difference; he is already nobody. He can drop it, and by dropping it he can gain the whole beautiful existence and all its benediction. By becoming nobody, he can open the doors to the universe and its blessings.
But all the celebrities that have come to me from different fields, have all proved
to be failures. They take the most time, but they have a problem because their ego is involved with their name and fame. Even if they understand that it is garbage, the garbage is paying them so much that they want to cling to it a little more -- perhaps tomorrow or the day after tomorrow they will drop it. They have understood the point, but just to drop it right now seems too much.
I am reminded of a very great thinker, Voltaire. He was famous in his country, and it was a convention in the country that if you could get a small piece of cloth from a famous man like Voltaire, you could make a beautiful locket out of it. It was a great security, safety against dangers, disease, sickness, death.
When Voltaire used to go out of his house, he would come home almost naked, because crowds would follow him, tearing his clothes -- and not only his clothes, he would get scratched on the body. He had to ask for police protection if he wanted to go to the railway station or to go to some other place. Without police protection it was impossible, because to reach the railway station naked, scratched all over, blood all over, would not look right... although he deeply enjoyed it, because he was the only man in the whole country who was so much respected. This was a respect given by people.
But in the world, everything goes on changing. The name and the fame is just a soap bubble. It may become very big -- the bigger it becomes, the more dangerous, because it is going to burst soon.
And the day came when Voltaire was forgotten; somebody else had become the celebrity.
Now there was no need for police protection. People even forgot that he was alive. In his notebooks he has written, "I enjoyed those days. But at that time I used to think that it would be better not to be known at all, just to be a nobody, to live silently, because life had become a nightmare. But when I became nobody, then I started feeling great despair that I had lost my respect, my name, my fame."
And he does not say in his notes that this was what he wanted, to be nobody. He had become nobody now, but it was not a joy, it was a defeat.
He wrote, "I'm dying a defeated man." And the day he died, only four persons carried his body to the graveyard. Of the four persons, one was his dog and three were his neighbors
-- and those three had to carry the body because otherwise it would start rotting and the neighborhood would become a hell to live in. Somehow he had to be thrown into a grave.
So in fact the only person who lovingly followed was the dog.
And this was the man who was followed by thousands of people wherever he went.
Pankaja, your garbage is paying you. You can choose it, there is no problem. But choose consciously, that you choose garbage because it is paying you. Consciously chosen, it won't last long. Don't fight with it; fighting will not help.
Or if you are courageous enough, see a simple point: even if you write hundreds of novels and inside you remain just a wound which is hurting twenty-four hours a day, your whole life is wasted in misery just to fulfill a non-existential ego. Tomorrow you will die, and the day after tomorrow nobody will remember you. How many novelists have been in this world? And who cares about them today? And they all must have suffered in the same way, because what they were doing was garbage.
You may be a big garbage truck. It does not matter -- big or small -- if you can have a little courage and throw away all this garbage and clean yourself, perhaps something beautiful may come out of you which may be helpful to humanity, which may be remembered for centuries; not only remembered, but may have a certain transforming effect on people.
But the garbage that you are writing is just journalistic. Nobody bothers tomorrow about today's newspaper.
I used to live in a place where a retired man, who was a little eccentric Retired
people become eccentric, having nothing to do. And nobody wants to become useless -- it hurts.
Nobody wants to be just a burden.
And in the family, nobody cares about the old man. In fact, they want to get rid of these people because they are unnecessarily a nuisance. Young people have their own life, their own enjoyment, their own entertainment, and these old fellows are continually interrupting, condemning, making them feel guilty or
constantly irritable. And they have nothing to do; twenty-four hours a day they are sitting there. Naturally, they need some work; they become great critics about everything.
He used to come to me. I was in the university -- for just one or two hours I was teaching in the university and then I was back. He used to come to me, and I loved to listen to him.
He was very happy with me, because he said "You are the only man who has patience to listen; otherwise, nobody bothers. I am saying such significant things and nobody cares."
But how long could I tolerate him?
So I used to give him the newspapers, magazines, so he would read them and he would get into them and leave me alone. Sometimes it would happen that I would give him an old newspaper just by mistake. He would start reading it -- so deeply engrossed -- and then I would look at the date. I would say, "My God, I have given him an old newspaper." And I would tell him, "This is an old newspaper. I will give you the new, the fresh."
He said, "It doesn't matter -- almost ninety percent of it is the same news. Just for ten percent, who cares? To me, it is all the same. When you are not in the house I come and ask the gardener. He does not allow me into your study, but he brings newspapers and I sit in the garden. And sometimes he brings one-year-old newspapers! But I say it does not matter; the same things go on happening, so I read. Even your gardener says to me, `My God, this is one year old. You wait, my master will be coming soon; then I will bring the fresh newspapers.' And I say, `Don't be worried, I just enjoy reading.' And it is the same -
- somebody has been killed, somebody has been murdered, somebody has committed suicide, somebody has been assassinated, somewhere some government is changed. It does not matter to me who rules in Brazil -- what does it matter?"
My gardener told me, "That old fellow is a philosopher."
I said, "How have you discovered that he is a philosopher?"
He said, "He has a very philosophical attitude; he reads a year-old newspaper
and he reads it with such concentration. And when I ask, he says, `What does it matter? Time passes on. Just one year ago this was new, and what is new today will be old one year afterwards. And as far as I am concerned, it is only a question of passing time, so what I am reading does not matter.'"
Pankaja, I would like you first to be clean, innocent, silent. And then if out of that silence something is born, that will be a contribution to the universe. Otherwise, out of the garbage you can go on writing novels, and they will sell, because people need something to read and throw away. But they don't know that somebody has put his life, wasted his life in writing these novels. Somebody has missed his buddhahood.
It is up to you to choose.
It cannot be forced upon anybody.
I can just give you a hint -- that it is time.
And you are mature enough: you have written your novels, and you know all that is garbage.
It shows, because people love to read anything. Railway bookstalls need garbage, airport bookstalls need garbage; everywhere garbage is also needed because people need garbage. But why should you waste your life?
And you have the possibility to give birth to something really significant -- but a breakthrough is needed. You need a discontinuity.
You forget what you have been doing, forget the name and the fame and anything that it brings to you.
Just be a nobody, enjoy being nobody.
And I tell you that in being nobody there is a freedom.
And then one day you will find that the seed that is within you has started growing. And then if something out of your own experience comes to be written by you, it will be significant for you, it will be significant for others. Anything that can really make life a little more beautiful, a little more musical, a little more poetic, is going to help you too. It is possible only because of your growth.
You can collect all kinds of information -- read ten novels, and the eleventh is born -- that is one way that is being followed by all writers, poets, painters. But they are third-rate, and they will be forgotten.
Something meaningful only comes from your very innermost being.
But before that, you have to throw all the rubbish off; otherwise, the rubbish is so much and the seed is so small, it is lost in the rubbish.
I hope that you will be able to do what I am saying; otherwise, I would not have said it.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #3
Chapter title: No other path but life 5 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610055
ShortTitle: ENLIGH03
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 122
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HOW COME EVERYTHING IS GOING SO WELL?
Gandharaj, the question is not a laughing matter.
It touches something of tremendous value in human misery, in human anguish, in human reality. It creates laughter because it looks absurd to ask why things are going so well.
We have become accustomed to things never going so well.
We are well acquainted with the misery, the pain, the darkness, the meaninglessness, the whole tragedy of human existence. It has gone to our very bones, blood and marrow; we accept it as if it is our nature.
If things are going wrong, it seems natural.
If things are not going wrong, then something must be wrong -- how come things are going so well? We have forgotten the language of well-being, we have forgotten the taste of blissfulness.
We have forgotten our own nature.
The natural thing is that things should go well; for their going well, no reason is needed.
You are healthy -- you don't go to the doctor to ask him, "What is the matter with me? I am healthy." You go to the doctor when you are not healthy, when you are sick.
When people are young, they don't ask, "What is the meaning of life?" Their youth, their overflowing energy, is enough meaning, is enough significance. They are still capable of love. They are still capable of a dance, a song, a celebration. Death has not overshadowed their lives yet.
The moment a person starts asking, "What is the meaning of life?" it means he has become old -- it does not matter at what age. His question emphatically shows that he has lost touch with life, lost touch with love, lost touch with vitality, and wherever he looks it is all emptiness. The question has become significant to him -- why is he living? In fact, he has died; his life is posthumous.
The moment a person asks, "What is the meaning of life?" it is the question of a dead man -- who still breathes, whose heart still beats, but it is all like a robot. All poetry, all rainbows have disappeared ... no sunrises at all. It seems the night is eternal. It seems that he must have dreamt about the days when he had seen the light; they were not real.
Old age, when death is just standing close to you, creates the question, "What is the meaning of life?"
But when you are alive, when death is far away beyond the horizon of your vision, who cares about the meaning of life? -- you live it, you have it, you sing it, you dance it. It is in every breath, it is in every beat of your heart.
One thing has to be understood clearly: that the people who have asked so-called great questions about the meaning of life, about the meaning of the very existence, about the meaning of love, about the meaning of beauty, are thought to be great philosophers but they have one foot in the grave. Just before slipping into their graves, they are raising all these questions.
One of the great aestheticians, a great philosopher of aesthetics, Croce, devoted his whole life to a single question: What is beauty? In this century he stands alone as a high peak, incomparable to anybody else. His dedication to the question of beauty is total. He wrote about it, he talked about it, he taught about it, he dreamt about it; his whole life was woven around the question: What is beauty?
I have gone through his writings, and on each step I have felt that this man must have been blind -- only a blind person can ask, "What is beauty?"
And for almost one century, nobody has raised the question of whether Croce was blind or not. I say he was definitely blind. He may have had eyes, just as you have, but he had no perception, no sensitivity. He was asking the question what is beauty? and went on inquiring about it -- and the whole existence is full of beauty.
Even the smallest blade of grass is beautiful. All around there are flowers and stars, birds and trees and rivers and mountains, and beautiful human beings.
Why could a man of the intelligence of Croce not see a simple thing -- that beauty has to be felt, not thought about? You have to see it, you have to experience it. You are capable of creating it.
But it is such a mystery that it is beyond explanation. You cannot confine it in a definition.
But his whole lifelong effort shows only one thing: the poor man never experienced even a single moment of beauty; otherwise, his whole questioning would have changed. He would rather have devoted his life to creating beauty, to experiencing beauty, to rejoicing with the stars and with the moon and with the flowers and with the birds. But he wasted his whole life.
And to what conclusion did he come in the end? -- that beauty is indefinable. This could have been told to him by anybody in the very beginning. There was no need to waste a beautiful life, a precious gift of existence.
And one cannot be certain that it will be given to you again; you cannot even be certain why it has been given to you this time. Do you deserve it? Have you earned it? Does the existence owe it to you? It seems to be a sheer gift, a gift of an abundant existence, not bothering about whether you deserve it or not. Not asking for your qualifications, not inquiring about your character, your morality
... making no demands on you, just giving it without any conditions attached to it. Giving it not as a business, but without any expectations from you in return; giving it and allowing you total freedom to do whatever you want to do with it.
Gandharaj, everything should go beautifully, easily, with a well-being. It is natural.
If something is not going well that means something is sick, something is ill.
But all the great moralists of the world, all the theologians, all the prophets and messengers of God have really messed you up. They have made such demands on you.
They have taken away all your freedom. They have asked you to do impossible
things, and naturally you have failed in doing them. It has left wounds in you -- wounds of failure, inferiority, wounds of unworthiness -- and you are living with all those wounds.
Naturally, everything goes wrong.
It is not nature, it is your great benefactors -- the people who have been promising you that "We are the saviors." In fact, they are the people who have created a sick humanity, a diseased human mind, a psychology that is not sane.
Demanding anything unnatural is bound to create guilt. If you do not do it, you feel guilty that you are not really a human being, that you are behaving like subhuman beings, animals; that you are a sinner, that you are doing things against the prophets and the messengers who represent God.
And if you try to follow them, you get into a trap. If you follow them you have to go against nature, and nature is all that you are.
You cannot go against yourself, so on each step there is failure.
On each step you become more and more schizophrenic: a small part becomes the priest, condemning your whole nature.
Whatever you do is wrong. Life becomes a nightmare.
And that's how man has lived for thousands of years: a life which could have been a beautiful experience has been turned into an unbearable torture, a nightmare.
Even if you want to wake up you cannot. The nightmare is heavy and long -- it is not only yours, it is coming from your forefathers; generation after generation has cultivated it. It has roots as ancient as man; you cannot fight with it.
You are torn apart. You cannot fight with your nature, you cannot fight with your sick heritage.
And I say that on the whole earth every man is living under the burden of a sick heritage.
It does not matter whether he is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan -- those are different names for the same sickness.
If you follow your nature, you yourself condemn yourself. The whole society condemns you. The whole world is against you, and you are also against yourself.
But you have to live your nature.
Friedrich Nietzsche has a beautiful insight. He says that all the religions of the world have been against sex, but they have not been successful in destroying sex; otherwise, from where do these people go on coming? This whole population explosion ... if your priests had succeeded, churches would be empty. But there are seven hundred million Catholics -- certainly the Catholic priests have failed utterly.
Nietzsche is right. The religions have not succeeded in destroying sex. But they have succeeded in one thing: they have made sex poison, poisonous. It is no more a joy, it is no more a thing of beauty, it is no more sacred. They have been able to create a great guilt out of it. And what is right about sex is right about all your natural instincts, but everything has been poisoned.
So when things are not going right, you are perfectly at ease.
When things are going right, you start feeling uneasy: "What is the matter?"
If there are wars, it is perfectly right. If there are riots between Hindus and Mohammedans, if Mohammedans and Jews are killing each other, it is perfectly right.
But if suddenly Jews and Mohammedans start dancing and singing and rejoicing together, the whole world will be shocked: "What is going on? Have these people gone mad?"
We are suffering a wrong heritage, and unless we get ourselves free from the past we cannot live peacefully.
Gandharaj, the people who are gathered here with me and the people around the earth who are with me have dropped the past. They are no more Hindus, no more Christians, no more Buddhists; they are simply human beings. And they are
trying to live their nature fully, authentically, without any guilt and without any feeling of sin.
Things are going beautifully well. They are living in freedom.
The past is our slavery, and if the past is too much, then it is going to create our future.
We are crushed between past and future, and the future is nothing but a reproduction of the past.
And a small moment of present is almost powerless against two eternities pressing it from both sides.
Once you are free of past a tremendous realization happens: you are free of future also.
And your being free of future means that now you are free to make your future, it will not be made by the past. It will be made by your nature, by your intelligence, by your meditation, by your silence, by your love.
Gandharaj, around my sannyasins things are bound to go easy, because there is no sin, no guilt, no imposed morality.
I corrupt people so much that they become innocent.
People are living innocently. They don't have any moral codes, any ten commandments, any holy bibles. They have only their own insight and a freedom to create their future, to live according to their nature without any fear. Because there is no hell, and there is no God to decide whether you are right or wrong.
If you are right, your life will be a life of joy; if you are wrong, your life will be a life of misery.
There is no need for any God. Each act is decisive, intrinsically.
So you can feel your way: if you are moving rightly, your life will go on
growing more and more flowers, will go on growing bigger and bigger wings. Your reach towards the stars will become easier.
And if you are doing something wrong, your very nature will say it is wrong because you will be suffering the consequences of your wrong acts here and now. You will not have to wait for the last judgment day.
What a stupid kind of hypothesis, `the last judgment day' -- one day everybody will be awakened from his grave. Just visualize what will happen: all skeletons, and there is going to be such a crowd. At the place where you are sitting there are at least ten skeletons underneath you. When all the skeletons stand up there is not going to be elbow room, and there is going to be such shrieking, shouting, moaning. Even for poor God, it is going to be very difficult to recognize who is who -- because there will only be skeletons.
Then to judge who is going to heaven and who is going to hell ... and do you think in just one day? Each person has millions of acts, good and bad, which have to be balanced, and there is only one God -- and not very intelligent either.
George Bernard Shaw used to say, "Just the very crowd makes me feel that it will be difficult to make judgments. Moreover, half of the crowd will be women
... who will make it almost impossible!"
Perhaps that's why the last judgment day has not happened and is not going to happen.
Because Jesus used to say to his disciples, "Soon, in your life, you will see the last judgment day happen" -- in his disciples' lives. That means, at the most, seventy years.
Two thousand years have passed, and as the days go by the skeletons go on growing.
I think God has changed his mind. Judgment is not possible anymore.
As far as I am concerned each act brings its own judgment, and that is more scientific.
Why go on collecting acts for a certain day and then deciding? And why decide from outside when there is a possibility to decide from inside? Each act has its intrinsic consequence.
You can figure it out: if your life is miserable then you are doing something wrong; and if your life is a merry-go-round then you are doing everything else that should be done perfectly. So it is up to you whether you make your life a merry-go-round or a sorry-go-round; there is nobody to decide it. You are the act and you are the judge. And this seems to be more scientific, simple.
Gandharaj, if everything is going well, be happy. And remember why things are going well so they can continue to go more and more well, because wellness also has depth.
Just find out what it is that is making your life blissful, peaceful, silent, happy -- simple arithmetic -- and your life can become a holy life.
According to me, if you are living joyously, you are a holy man.
Only one thing you have to do: die to the past so that you can be reborn in a fresh present and a free future.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
IS THERE ANOTHER WAY WITHOUT DEATH AND INSECURITY?
There is no death in the first place. Death is an illusion.
It is always somebody else who dies; you never die. It means death has always been seen from the outside, it is the outsider's view.
Those who have seen their inner world are unanimous in saying that there is no death.
Because you don't know what constitutes your consciousness; it is not constituted of breathing, it is not constituted of heartbeats, it is not constituted of
blood circulation. So when the doctor says that a man is dead, it is an outsider's conclusion; all that he is saying is, "This man is no longer breathing, his pulse has stopped, his heart is not beating." Are these three things equivalent to death? They are not.
Consciousness is not your body, nor your mind, nor your heart.
So when a person dies, he dies for you, not for himself. For himself he simply changes the house, perhaps moves into a better apartment. But because the old apartment is left, and you are searching for him in the old apartment and you don't find him there, you think the poor guy is dead. All that you should say is, "The poor guy escaped. Now where he has gone, we don't know."
In fact, medical science is going beyond its limits when it says that some person is dead.
Medical science has no right yet, because it has no definition yet of what constitutes death. It can simply say that "This man is no longer breathing. His heart has stopped. His pulse is no longer functioning." To conclude that he is dead is going beyond what you are seeing. But because science does not have any idea of consciousness, the death of the body becomes the death of the being.
Those who have known the being ... and it is not necessary for it that you should die and then you know; you can just go inside. That's what I call meditation -- just go inside and find out what is your center, and at your center there is no breathing, there is no heartbeat, there is no thought, no mind, no heart, no body, and still you are.
Once a person has experienced himself -- that he is not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but pure awareness -- he knows there is no death for him, because he does not depend on the body.
Awareness has no dependence on blood circulation. It does not depend on whether the heart beats or not, it does not depend on whether the mind functions or not. It is a totally different world; it is not constituted of any material thing, it is immaterial.
So the first thing to understand is that there is no death -- it has never been found.
And if there is no death, what insecurity can there be?
For an immortal life there can be no insecurity. Your immortality is not dependent on your bank balance; the beggar is as immortal as the emperor.
As far as people's consciousnesses are concerned, that is the only world where true communism exists: they all have equal qualities, and they don't have anything that can be lost or taken away. They don't have anything that can be destroyed, burned.
There is no insecurity.
All insecurity is a shadow of death.
If you look deeply, then every insecure feeling is rooted in the fear of death. But I am saying to you that there is no death; hence there cannot be any insecurity. You are immortal beings, amritasya putrah.
That's what the seers in the ancient East have said: You are the sons of immortality.
And they were not misers like Jesus Christ, that "I am the only begotten son of God." A strange idea ... even to say it one should feel ashamed. "I am the only begotten son of God" ... what about others? Are they all bastards? Jesus is condemning the whole world!
He is the son of God, and whose sons and daughters are all these people? And it is strange -- why should God stop by giving birth to only one child? Is he spent just with one child? Or was he a believer in birth control?
I have been asking the pope and Mother Teresa, "Your God must be a believer in birth control, must be using things which you are prohibiting to people -- condoms and all; otherwise, how is it possible? Once he created a son, then at least one daughter -- that's a natural tendency."
And in the whole eternity ... having no fun.
The psychologists say that poor people create more children for the simple reason that they don't have any other fun. To go to the cinema you need money, to go to the circus you need money, to go to Chowpatty Beach you need money.
Wherever there is fun, you need money. So just go to bed -- that is the only fun without money, nobody asks for money.
What is God doing? -- neither can he go to Chowpatty nor can he go to a circus nor to a cinema hall. Sitting eternally bored.… Just created one son? It has many implications: perhaps he was so frustrated with this one son that he became a celibate -- "I am not going to create any more idiots."
Jesus was teaching on the earth for just three years. His age was only thirty- three, and he was crucified -- a great savior who could not save himself. God must have felt tremendously let down: "Be finished! No more sons, no more daughters."
But the reality is that there is a certain element of egoism in being the only one, with no competitors.
Krishna may be the incarnation of God but he is not the son -- just a photocopy. Mohammed may be a messenger -- just a postman.
But Jesus is special, he is the only begotten son of God. There is a certain egoism in it.
The ancient seers were not so egoistic. They called the whole humanity -- past, present, future -- amritasya putrah: You are all sons of immortality. They are not putting themselves higher than you, they are not pretending to be holier than you. They are making every human being, as far as consciousness is concerned, absolutely equal, eternal.
There is no insecurity.
There is no need for any other path -- and anyway, there is no other path. Life is the path which passes through the illusory gate of death.
You can pass the gate consciously. If you are meditative enough, then you can go through death knowing perfectly that you are changing the house; you can enter another womb knowing perfectly that you are entering the new apartment -- and it is always better, because life is always evolving. And if you can die consciously, then certainly your new life will be on a very high level, from the
very beginning.
And I don't see any insecurity.
You come into the world without anything, so one thing is certain: nothing belongs to you.
You come absolutely naked, but with illusions. That's why every child is born with closed hands, fists, believing that he is bringing treasures -- and those fists are just empty.
And everybody dies with open hands. Try to die with fists -- nobody has been successful up to now. Or try to be born with open hands -- nobody has been successful in that either.
The child is born with fists, with illusions that he is bringing treasures into the world, but there is nothing in the fist. Nothing belongs to you, so what insecurity? Nothing can be stolen, nothing can be taken away from you.
Everything that you are using belongs to the world. And one day, you have to leave everything here.
You will not be able to take anything with you.
I have heard about a rich man in a village who was such a miser that he had never given anything to any beggar. The whole community of beggars knew about it, so whenever they saw some beggar standing before his house they knew
-- "This man seems to be new, from some other village. Tell him, `You won't get anything from there.'"
The man's wife was dying, but he wouldn't call the doctor. He had one friend only, because to have many friends means unnecessary insecurity -- somebody may ask for money, somebody may ask for something. He had only one friend, and that one was also such a miser that there was no problem between them. They both understood each other's psychology -- no conflict, no asking, no question of creating any embarrassment.
The friend said, "But this is the time that the doctor should be called -- your wife is dying."
The man said, "It is all in the hands of God. What can a doctor do? If she is going to die, she is going to die. You will unnecessarily put me in trouble ... paying the fee to the doctor for the medicine, this and that. I am a religious man, and if she is not going to die she will recover without any doctor. The real doctor is God, nobody else. And I believe in God because he never asks for a fee or anything."
The wife died.
His friend said, "Look, just for a little money you didn't call a doctor."
He said, "Little money? Money is money; it is never a question of a little. And death comes to everybody."
The friend was a little angry. He said, "This is too much. I am also a miser, but if my wife is dying at least I will call a pharmacist -- but I will call somebody. But you are really hard. What are you going to do with all this money?"
He said, "I am going to take it with me."
The friend said, "Nobody has ever heard of it."
He said, "But nobody has ever tried." That too was true. He said, "Just see. I have my own plan -- I will take everything with me."
The friend said, "Just tell me your secret, because some day I will have to die also, and you are such a friend."
He said, "Friendship is one thing, but this secret I cannot tell. And the secret is such that you cannot use it when you are dying -- it has to be used before, because you have to carry all your money and all your gold and diamonds and everything to the river."
He said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Yes, and go into a small boat in the middle of the river and jump with all your money and be drowned -- so you have taken it. Try! Nobody has tried. If you don't succeed there is no harm, because everybody goes without it. If you succeed, then you will be the pioneer, the first one who reaches paradise with his whole bag of money. And all those saints will be looking with wide-open eyes --
`This man has done something!'"
But the friend said, "That means you have to die."
He said, "Naturally, and you have to be in good health. When you are dying, then it will be very difficult to carry that heavy load. I am going to do it soon, because my wife is gone, now nobody is there."
But even if you jump in the ocean with all your money, the money will remain in the ocean, your body will remain in the ocean.
You will have to go alone, alone just as consciousness.
Nothing belongs to you, because you bring nothing here and you can take nothing from here.
Life is the only way.
Death is the only illusion to be understood.
If you can live fully, totally, understanding death as an illusion -- not because I am saying it, but by your own experience in deep meditation -- then live life fully, as totally as possible, without any fear. There is no insecurity, because even death is illusory.
Only the living being in you is real.
Clean it, sharpen it, make it fully aware so that not even a small part of it is drowned in darkness, so that you are luminous all over, you become aflame.
This is the only way; there is no other alternative. And there is no need.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
TO BE OPEN AND TO BE WITNESSING ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. IS IT
SO, OR IS THIS A DUALITY CREATED BY MY MIND?
Mind always creates duality; otherwise, to be open or to be witnessing are not two things.
If you are open, you will be witnessing.
Without being a witness, you cannot be open; or if you are a witness, you will be open --
because being a witness and yet remaining closed is impossible. So those are only two words.
You can either start with witnessing -- then opening will come on its own accord; or you can start by opening your heart, all windows, all doors -- then witnessing will be found, coming on its own. But if you are simply thinking, without doing anything, then they look separate.
Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking. In silence, all dualities disappear.
Oneness is the experience of silence.
For example, day and night are very clear dualities, but they are not two. There are animals who see in the night. Their eyes are more sensitive, capable of seeing in darkness. For them, there is no darkness. Those animals cannot open their eyes in the day, because their eyes are so delicate that the sun hurts. So while it is day for you, for those animals it is night; the eyes are closed, all is darkness. When it is night for you, it is day for them. The whole day they sleep, the whole night they are awake.
And if you ask a scientist and a logician, you will see the difference. If you ask the logician, "What is day?" he will say, "That which is not night." And what is not night? It is a circular game. If you ask, "What is night?" the logician is going to say, "What is not day."
You need day to define night, you need night to define day. Strange duality, strange opposition.… If there is no day, can you think of night? If there is no night, can you think of day? It is impossible.
Ask the scientist, who is closer to reality than the logician. For the scientist darkness is less light, light is less darkness. Now it is one phenomenon, just like a thermometer.
Somebody has a temperature of 110 degrees, just ready to move out of the house.
Somebody has a temperature of 98 degrees, the normal temperature for human beings, but somebody falls below 96 degrees, again ready for a move.
Your existence is not very big, just between 96 and 110 degrees. Sixteen degrees
...
below is death, above is death; just a small slit in between, a small window of life.
If we could have a thermometer for light and darkness, the situation would be the same, just as it is between heat and cold -- the same thermometer will do for both. The cold is less hot and the hot is less cold, but it is one phenomenon; there is no duality.
It is the same with darkness and light.
And the same is true about all oppositions that mind creates. Openness, witnessing ... if you think intellectually, they look very different. They seem to be unrelated, how can they be one? But in experience they are one.
Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE BEEN YOUR DISCIPLE FOR TWO AND A HALF YEARS NOW, AND ALL
THE TIME I HAVE LONGED TO BE IN YOUR PRESENCE. NOW I HAVE MET
YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. I WANT TO
RUN AWAY FROM YOU. I AM TOTALLY CONFUSED. PLEASE COMMENT.
It is almost normal.
You fall in love with me. Just hearing my words, it appeals to your intellect. Your reason feels satisfied, and then a desire arises to be, at least for some time, with me.
And then a great shock ... because I am not a man of words. Although I have spoken more words than anybody else in the whole world, but still I say I am not a man of words.
My words are just like nets thrown to catch fish. My message is wordless.
When you come close to me, then you see the point: that I am not a reasonable, rational, logical person; that you have come to an irrational mystic.
You had come with a certain rational conviction, and here you find that reason has to be abandoned. You have to take a jump into the unknown, for which I cannot provide any logic, any evidence ... except my own presence.
Anybody who has come here, caught by my words, will feel like escaping. Because he had come for a different reason, and here he finds a totally different situation -- not only different, but diametrically opposite.
I am not a teacher. I am not a philosopher. I am not interested in creating systems and hypotheses.
My interest is in destroying you as you are, so that you can be reborn in your existential potential.
I am here to destroy your personality, to give birth to your individuality.
It is a natural reaction, it happens to everybody. But you cannot escape either. At the most, you may go up to Dardar Station and come back again. You can try, and exactly from Dardar you will come back; that is the radius.
Once you are caught up with me, you cannot escape.
But I will not prevent you; trying to escape will be helpful. If you try to escape and then you have to come back, the next time the desire will arise but it will not have any effect on you. You will simply drop it, because it does not work.
Now you have to go the whole way, whatever it means. It may mean the death of the ego, of the personality; then you have to take the risk.
If you had not come to me you would have continued to enjoy my words, because it was just borrowed knowledge for you. And here I want you to drop all borrowed knowledge, including that which you have gathered from me.
I want you to become a knower, a seer.
Certainly, you have to pass through fire. But the fire only looks like fire from afar. The closer you come, the cooler you will find it. And the moment you pass through the fire you will be surprised that fire can also be so cool, so refreshing.
There is a story in Moses' life that Jews have not been able to explain in four thousand years.
On Mount Sinai, Moses encountered a strange phenomenon that he thought was God.
Certainly, it was very mysterious: a bush was afire but it was not burning; it was as green as any bush. Its flowers were as juicy and young as any flowers, and yet there was fire in the bush. Naturally attracted, curious, he wanted to look from close quarters at what was happening. He had never thought that fire could be there, flames were rising above the bush -- and the bush was green!
He came close, and just as he was coming very close a voice shouted, "Leave your shoes behind, Moses! You are entering into the holy land, into a sacred place." Trembling, he left his shoes. He could not see anybody, but it was certainly a miraculous experience. He thought it was God's voice.
My own explanation of the story is that everybody who goes through a transformation comes to the same bush which is afire, but the fire is cool. It is nourishing the bush, not destroying it. It only looks like fire; it is cool flames of life. For life, Moses' word is `God'
-- that's the only difference. That is a difference of language, nothing much.
You have come here, you have seen the flames. And the first idea will be, "Escape as quickly as possible; otherwise you will be burned."
Don't be worried. If I am not burned, if all these people here are not burned, you also are not going to be burned.
The fire is cool; it transforms.
It takes away your mask and helps you to discover your original face. But still, freedom is available to you up to Dardar Station.
Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,
I HEARD YOU TALKING ABOUT THE SRI LANKAN MYSTIC ASKING HIS
FOLLOWERS TO STAND UP IF THEY WANTED TO GO THE SHORTCUT TOWARDS ENLIGHTENMENT.
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I'M WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO STAND UP
AS SOON AS I HEAR YOU ASKING -- KNOWING THAT MY LEGS WILL MOST
LIKELY BE TREMBLING, MY BODY PERSPIRING, AND MY HEART BEATING
LIKE MAD.
Deva Prem, it is necessary that I should repeat the story first: A mystic in Sri Lanka is dying. He has thousands of followers; they have all gathered.
Just before closing his eyes he says, "If anybody wants to come with me, I can take him with me -- and this is the most shortcut way. You will not have to do
anything. I don't have much time. Anybody wanting to go the most shortcut way
... otherwise, it takes so many lives to achieve enlightenment. I can take you with me from the back door. Just stand up!"
There was absolute silence, pin-drop silence. People looked at each other thinking, "This man has been listening to him for forty years, perhaps he may be ready." But he was looking at somebody else, because he had so many problems still to solve -- "Business is not good."
Everybody has problems: somebody has a girl to marry, somebody has a boy who is a troublemaker; somebody has a case in the court and this is not a time to become enlightened, first the court case has to be finished, and so on, so forth.
But one man raised one hand. He said, "I cannot stand up because I am not ready to go yet, but I cannot resist the temptation to know where the back door is -- because if sometime I am ready, I can follow the shortcut. Right now, I am not ready -- let it be completely clear to you that I am not coming with you -- but just tell us where the back door is."
The old man said, "The back door is such that you can enter only with your master, not alone. It is a very narrow gate; only one can enter at a time. If you are ready to dissolve yourself in the being of the master, then there is no problem
-- one or one thousand, they will all enter through the door as one being. Alone, you will not be able to find it."
Now, Deva Prem wants me to ask him some day to come along from the back door. And he thinks he is ready and he will stand up -- although even thinking, he perspires and his legs tremble and his heart beats faster.
My feeling is, Deva Prem, you are the man who had raised his hand!
And one day I will ask, and I know that this time also you will only raise your hand ... or perhaps you may not even raise your hand. Because I am a different type of man. That old man was very compassionate.
I would have taken even this man -- at least he has raised his hand. That is enough -- what is the need of making him stand up? Just raising the hand is enough.
So when I will ask, remember: I will ask you to simply raise the hand. This time
be alert, and get prepared -- because with trembling legs and perspiring it will be difficult to enter that back door.
That back door needs people who can disappear into nothingness dancing, singing, celebrating.
So learn to sing, learn to dance, learn to celebrate. Any day, I can ask.
And I hate perspiration. I am very allergic -- perspiration you will have to stop.
And trembling, that gate won't allow you in; it will immediately see that there are two persons. You have to be absolutely still and one with me ... no trembling.
And this time I will not ask you to stand up. The last time, it was my fault. Beyond Enlightenment
Chapter #4
Chapter title: In the end there is no word 6 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610065
ShortTitle: ENLIGH04
Audio: Yes Video:
Yes Length:
133
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
SITTING BEFORE YOU, FEELING YOUR WORDS FLOWING TOWARDS ME
FROM YOUR GREAT HEART, I FOUND MY OWN HEART BURSTING OPEN
AND RECEIVING THE SUN AND MOON OF YOUR BEING. SOON A GREAT
PEACE FELL OVER ME, FOLLOWED BY A NEVER-KNOWN CALMNESS SO
THAT I FEEL THAT I AM RESTING IN THE ARMS OF EXISTENCE ITSELF.
I BOW DOWN BEFORE YOU IN GRATEFULNESS TO KISS THE EARTH THAT
GAVE YOU LIFE. I LIFT MY ARMS TO THE STARS AND SING HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH. BELOVED MASTER, BECAUSE OF YOU I AM
ALIVE TO REALIZE THE BEAUTY, THE JOY, THE PURITY OF LOVE THAT IS
THE VERY EXPANSE OF EXISTENCE. THESE WORDS SEEM UNABLE TO
EXPRESS THE TRUEST FEELINGS THAT ARISE FROM THE DEPTH OF
MY
BEING. BUT I BOW DOWN BEFORE YOU NOW, AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND
AGAIN TO DANCE, TO SING, TO SHOUT: THANK YOU, BELOVED MASTER, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!
HALLELUJAH!
Jivan Mary, there is much more yet to happen. What has happened to you is immense.
What will happen to you will be greater, but remember one thing: it is never enough.
Existence is such an abundance -- we cannot exhaust it. It is inexhaustible in its beauty, in its blissfulness, in its benediction.
You are feeling difficulties to express what is happening to you. And this is only the beginning -- just think of the difficulties of those who have gone far ahead of you. There comes a moment when even to say that this cannot be said is not possible -- because to say that this cannot be said is still saying something about it. It is still defining it in a very negative way.
There comes a moment when only silence, utter silence, remains your expression.
That is your thankfulness, that is your gratitude, that is your hallelujah... a dance which is invisible, a song which is not heard, a beauty which cannot be painted, described.
And only when we have come to the point where words are to be left behind does what I call `religiousness' begin.
I do not say renounce the world, but I certainly say move towards the moment when you will have to renounce the word.
THE BIBLE says, "In the beginning was the word." Nobody knows about the beginning.
Nobody can know about the beginning, because nobody can be the witness about the beginning. If somebody had been witnessing the beginning then it would not have been the beginning, because somebody was already there.
THE BIBLE may be right, may be wrong about the beginning, but I say unto you: In the end there is no word, and that has been witnessed by thousands of mystics in thousands of years past.
And the moment you come to realize that words are slipping out of your hands, that the boundary line of language is crossed... a tremendous innocence, a new childhood. For the first time you can understand that which cannot be spoken. You can understand the message of the wind blowing through the pine trees, you can understand the poetry of the sound of running water.
To be freed from language is to be freed from all human limitations. Language is the greatest imprisonment.
I am happy that you are feeling a great difficulty to express something that you are experiencing. Slowly, it will become more and more clear that there is no word, no language, no concept to explain it, to express it.
Just silence is the only answer to all your questions, the only meeting with existence without any barrier, any wall.
As the language disappears, the mind is no more of any use. For the first time you contact existence directly, without the mediation of the mind -- and that experience is enlightenment. And nobody is far away from it, it is within everybody's reach.
But people are searching for their happiness where it does not exist. They are looking for living waters in deserts. And when frustration comes, failure comes, despair comes, they are angry at life, not angry at themselves.
What can life do? It is available, but somehow you manage to search in the wrong direction. Perhaps you are afraid, deep down, that life may be too much, love may be too much, existence may drown you.
And in a way, your fear is right: the closer you come to reality, the less you will be. The moment you encounter reality face to face, you will not be at all.
I have said many times that nobody has seen God -- neither Moses nor Jesus nor Krishna.
And naturally, people have misunderstood me. Whenever I have said that nobody has seen God, I was not saying there is no God; I was simply saying the moment you come close enough to God to see, you are no more. Who is going to see God? As long as you are -- to see, to feel, to say, to question, to inquire -- God is not.
And God is another name of reality. It is not a person, it is only a quality, a fragrance, a sweetness, a music.
Jivan Mary, one day will come when you will be in the state of hallelujah but you will not be able to say the word, because the word will fall short of the experience.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
IN THESE FIVE YEARS OF RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU, I HAVE NEVER FELT
THINGS GOING AS FAST AS NOW! WHEN I FINISH WRITING A LETTER OR A QUESTION TO YOU, I IMMEDIATELY KEEP IT, FEELING IT TO BE
RIDICULOUS.
SOMETIMES I ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE AND DELIVER IT, AND THEN I FEEL
AS IF I HAVE AN IDIOTIC FACE: WORRY, REPENTENCE, SHYNESS... I FEEL
THAT IT IS NOT WORTH COMING TO YOU BEING "DRESSED UP" WITH
INTELLIGENCE, HUMBLENESS, MEDITATIVENESS, OR WHATSOEVER I COULD DRESS IN TO SHOW TO YOU. IN SPITE OF ALL MY EFFORTS, I STILL
HAVE THE FEELING OF DRESSING UP, OF USING A KIND OF MASK.
PLEASE TELL ME, MASTER: HOW TO BE TOTALLY SINCERE TO YOU AND
"UNDRESSED"?
The problem is not only of one person -- everybody is dressed up. Everybody is showing his best side to the world.
The heart may be full of tears, but people are smiling.
This is how we have been brought up by a hypocritical society. We are children of a hypocritical society. Rather than teaching every child to be just himself -- sincere, honest, naked -- we are helping every child to be exactly the opposite.
Just two days ago, one of my old friends had come to see me. He has a son who is thought by everybody to be crazy, insane, except by me. So the first thing I inquired about was his son, and he said, "Leave that subject. It makes me so sad, because now he is eighteen years old and he still goes naked all over the town. He is such a shame to the family."
I said, "In what way is he hurting anybody? He is not violent. He simply enjoys being naked."
They force clothes on him, and he throws them away on the street and goes towards the market. And they are running after him -- "Please, at least take the underwear."
And he says, "No underwear... the breeze is so cool."
And the boy is very intelligent. Of course, he is in a crowd which cannot accept him. He never lies; he is always utterly honest. Whatever he does, he does with totality. He has never gone to school because he asks those who have gone what they have gained. His father is a post-graduate; he asks him, "What have you
gained? -- just a certificate." He says, "I want to live my life. I don't want to be dictated to by anybody, wrong or right. I simply want to be myself."
He is a hard worker. He will be working in the garden, and you can see how hard he works, but he works at only what he feels like working at. He plays beautiful flute, but the whole town thinks that he is mad.
And I have tried my best to find where his madness is. I have not been able to find his madness anywhere. He is just not willing to be part of the mob psychology. The crowd cannot accept that he is sane, because if he is sane, then what about the whole crowd?
Even his parents, my friend his father, cannot accept him. He said, "Except for you, nobody accepts that he is sane."
I said, "You are his father, you love him. Have you seen any madness in him?"
He said, "What more do you want? You want more madness? -- going naked in the streets. And he is now eighteen years old, and he will approach a woman and he will say
`You are so beautiful. Can I kiss you?'"
Naturally, the society cannot accept such a person -- although he is absolutely honest.
And he has honored the woman, he has praised her beauty, he has asked her permission.
Otherwise he is very strong -- living naked, doing hard work, never going to school; he is really strong -- he could have kissed any woman without any permission.
But a crowd gathers, and the woman starts shouting that he is being nasty to her, misbehaving with her.
Many times when I was there, I had to go inside the crowd and tell them, "You are making unnecessary fuss. The boy is alone, that's true, but he is not insane. He is a minority of one, and you are the majority of many -- but just because you are many, do you think you are right?"
Nobody has been ever able to point out to me that something is wrong with him. And he is being dragged to this doctor and to that doctor.
And he says, "What is wrong with me? I am not sick. The doctor cannot make any difference in me."
The truth is, the doctor is sick. The doctor is not honest.
The boy is very intelligent in seeing things. He has a strange clarity. He says, "I have been watching this doctor" -- because the doctor lives just in front of his house; his dispensary is there -- "and seeing that poor people get well quickly, and rich people linger on for months. And I am sitting there outside and enjoying the whole scene -- what kind of society is this? The poor man gets well because the doctor wants to get rid of him; you cannot get much money out of him. Instead the poor man starts asking, `Give me some money; I will return later on for the medicine. You are suggesting fruits and milk, but you will have to give me some money.'
"But the rich man, once he falls sick, is kept sick; he is sent to this expert for x- rays, to that expert for something else. It seems to be almost a conspiracy of experts exploiting the rich sick man."
I asked him how the boy is doing. He said, "Because of him, I feel so ashamed to go out of the house. And I always wanted you to help me, but you think he is right and we are wrong. You want me also to go naked, so I cannot raise the question, `What should be done with him?'"
I said, "He needs nothing to be done, he is no harm to anybody. Give him work; he is always ready to work, he enjoys working. But he is not ready to have a mask. He is not ready to be continuously an actor, dressed up."
But the whole society that we have created is almost a drama. Here, everybody is repeating dialogues from books, from films, from stories. Nobody is opening his own heart.
I can understand your problem: you are afraid to ask authentic questions because they will expose you.
People ask questions which make them feel very knowledgeable. They want to ask questions not to get the answer, but just to show their knowledge.
Whenever you ask a knowledgeable question, you will not feel guilty, you will feel great.
But I am a crazy person: I never answer those questions which come out of your knowledge. I simply throw them away.
I only answer questions which open up your wounds, because once your wounds are open there is a possibility of healing. Once you expose yourself, you are on the way of transformation.
Once you are sincere in asking a question, you will listen to the answer because it is your need, it is your food. Your question was your thirst, and the answer can quench it.
So always remember: this is not a philosophical association, not a theosophical society where everybody is trying to prove that he knows more than you know. This is a place of transformation, of going through a revolution. And unless you show your real face, it is impossible to make any changes in your life, any transformations in your consciousness.
At the most, I can paint your mask, but I cannot change your real face by painting the mask. The mask has to be put aside. Hence, a love and a trust is needed -- that you can be utterly nude, without any fear.
You are not going to be condemned here. You will be accepted as you are, and we will begin from that acceptance to reach for a higher stage, for growth.
But that growth is not a condemnation of your present state. That growth is based on your present state of being; it has to be accepted.
But the religions of the world have really poisoned people's minds. Nobody is ready to open up and show who he is, because for centuries things have been condemned, you have to hide them. Nobody wants to be condemned. And there are things which have been praised, so you have to show them -- whether you have them or not does not matter.
It is very human and very natural; you want to be loved and to be accepted.
And the society has made the rules of the game, that these are the things to be condemned, so if you have those things hide them, repress them so deeply that
even you become unaware of them. And if you don't have those things which society praises, honors, then pretend, and pretend so cleverly that it seems almost real.
Sometimes it is possible that the pretender may look more real than the real person, because the real person never goes through rehearsals. The pretender practices, disciplines himself.
I have always liked a beautiful incident in the life of Charlie Chaplin. It was his birthday, perhaps the fiftieth birthday, and all his fans and friends wanted to celebrate it in a special way. And they found a special way -- all over England, in every place, there would be competitions, and people would be invited to play the part of Charlie Chaplin. And in those competitions there would be selections, and then there would be other competitions from district to district. Then the semi-finals would be in London and there would be the final decision about who gets the first prize.
Just to give his friends a great surprise, Charlie Chaplin himself entered into the competition from a nearby district. He came to the semi-finals, but rather than surprising his friends he was surprised himself: he got second prize. Somebody played his act better than him; he had never thought about the possibility.
But it happened because the other person was practicing it, rehearsing it, and Charlie Chaplin simply appeared as he was. There was no need for him to rehearse -- he WAS
Charlie Chaplin. But getting the second prize.…
And when the people came to know that he had got the second prize, he was so ashamed of himself. He said, "I have been such an idiot to enter into it in the first place. I entered because I thought that I was going to be the first, without question."
So you have the possibility of pretenders posing qualities, values, characters, which are not real. Inside they are just the opposite kind of people. Criminals become saints -- it is easy: you just have to practice certain values, certain disciplines which are expected from a saint. Who cares that you are carrying a thousand and one criminal tendencies within you? People only see your face, nobody dives deep in you.
So the whole society has become a very strange phenomenon, almost weird, and everybody is suffering.
The person who is pretending to be a saint cannot enjoy it because his whole being is against it, his whole nature is against it. He is continuously fighting a battle with himself, and there is no greater misery than to be continuously in a fight with yourself. So those who are honored, respected citizens, you will never see them joyful, cheerful, rejoicing.
They are always sad, and to hide the fact of sadness they call it `seriousness' -- that they take life very seriously.
And the other part of humanity which has decided to go with its natural feelings is condemned; they become criminals. In the eyes of the religions they are sinners; they will fill the space in hell reserved for them. In life nobody will respect them, and after life also. Even their God is not capable of accepting his own creation.
If anybody is responsible, God is responsible.
Only one person is responsible for all the sinners. There is no need to send everybody into hell -- just throw God into hell and that will do, because he is the sole cause.
And these hypocrites, these phony people who are showing something but are not what they are showing, can they cheat existence also? Can they cheat God also? Here they will be respectable, but will they also be in paradise after life, enjoying all the pleasures?
We have put such tremendous pressure on poor human beings to destroy their integrity, to create a split in them.
My approach is totally different.
First, I want you to accept yourself as you are.
That's how existence wanted you to be. You have not created yourself; naturally the whole responsibility goes to existence. And there must be a need for a person like you; otherwise, you would not exist.
Existence needs you as you are.
The first principle of an authentic religious man is to accept himself as he is, without any judgment -- and only from there does your authentic pilgrimage begin.
Ask me questions without any fear, because I have never condemned anybody.
My whole love and respect is for the person who accepts himself totally, as he is. He has courage. He has courage to face the whole pressure of the society which is bent upon splitting him into divisions -- into good and bad, into saint and sinner. He is really a brave, courageous being who stands against the whole history of man, of morality, and declares to the skies his reality, whatever it is.
And at least with the master, the disciple has to be absolutely clean and clear so the master can start working with your reality, not with your phoniness. Because everything done with your phoniness is a sheer wastage.
Only the real you is capable of growing, of coming to a flowering. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
I ALWAYS WANT A TOTAL CHANGE IN MY LIFE BECAUSE I FEEL SO DISCONTENTED, SO LIMITED, SO FRUSTRATED.
WHEN I HEARD YOU SAYING, "COME CLOSER," IT TOUCHED MY HEART
DEEPLY. I SAW THAT I AM ALWAYS MANAGING MY LIFE REASONABLY
AND OUT OF MY MIND, THAT I LIVE A LIFE FULL OF LIES AND GO ON
POSTPONING BEING REALLY ALIVE.
I DECIDED TO STAY HERE WITH YOU LONGER THAN I INTENDED TO,
IN
SPITE OF ALL REASONS AND PROBLEMS THAT MAY COME. BUT I DON'T
FEEL AT EASE, AND I DON'T KNOW IF IT IS NOT AGAIN SOMETHING COMING FROM MY MIND.
WILL YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE MIRACLE OF TRANSFORMATION AND HOW TO LIVE MORE OUT OF THE HEART?
The first thing to remember is, never ask for the impossible. Begin slowly, bit by bit, step by step.
Just by walking step by step, you can cover ten thousand miles easily. But if you start thinking from the very beginning that "I want to cross ten thousand miles" your legs may start wavering, your heart may start feeling tremendously afraid.
Your mind will say, "You are asking too much; it is unreasonable. You are a small human being. Ten thousand miles... just walking one step each time -- because nobody can walk two steps at one time. Ten thousand miles looks too big."
Make small goals.
You are asking for total change. You don't see the impossibility of it at this point. At some other point it will not be impossible, but at this point it will be impossible to ask for a total change, because there will be so many implications in it.
Why not go a little slowly? Why not take one part of your being and clean it? Put your total energy into cleaning one part of your being, then move to the second part. And of course, finally you will be able to have a total change.
But mind is very cunning: whatever it wants to avoid, from the very beginning it creates such a situation -- it asks for the impossible. So you remain where you are, more frustrated, more in despair because the total change is not happening.
The mind has given you a goal and deceived you.
Total change certainly is the goal, but don't try to have it in a single step. Go in a more human way, changing small parts.
I used to live with a man for many years. He was a rich man, and he loved me very much.
I had a bungalow in the university but he wouldn't allow me to live there. He had a beautiful mansion in the city. He said, "If you want, you can have the whole mansion. I will move to another house." He had many houses.
I said, "No, there is no need. What will I do? I need only one room. You can live and take care of the whole mansion and the garden and my room, because I am a lazy man. This big mansion -- who is going to clean it?"
In my university days I used to keep my bed just near the door and all my books around my bed, so I had not to enter into the room -- because there was such thick dust gathering, for two years. I had never entered -- why unnecessarily disturb settled things? So from the door I would directly jump into my bed, and all my books were around my bed so I could find them. This was a perfect arrangement: neither did the dust disturb me nor did I disturb the dust.
So I told him, "I don't need the whole mansion. Just one room is enough for me." So he lived with me.
He was very rich but very miserly. Perhaps the word `miserly' is not enough to describe it.
He used to go for a walk in the morning with me, and anything he would find by the side of the road here and there, he would grab it. I said, "What will you do with it? -- just a handle of a bicycle; somebody had thrown it away.
He said, "You don't know. Just come with me, I will show you."
So I went into his house, in his part of the mansion, and he showed me. And I was really amazed! He said, "All these parts of the cycle I have found on the street. Just a few things are missing... and I hope I have enough life left; I have
not yet found a chain. Two wheels are there, the seat is there, the handlebars I have found today. Mud guards are not necessary, just a chain. And I am not asking for too much. What do you think I go walking with you for?"
I said, "I never thought that you were going in search of a chain!" He said, "A chain, or anything "
His house was full of strange things just one shoe. I said, "Where is the other?"
He said, "Some day I will find it, because the other one must be somewhere."
And he himself was so clever that he would go to the temple and he would put one shoe in one corner, the other shoe in another corner so nobody could steal them -- because who will steal one shoe? And in a crowd of shoes who is going to search for the other? Where is the other? -- because a thief is in a hurry.
He said, "I am the only progressive person who, when he is worshipping never looks back. Otherwise, everybody is looking back: What is happening to the shoes? Their worship is false! Are they bowing down to God or to their shoes? I am the only person who does not look back at all. I have figured it out -- that this way nobody can and nobody has ever been able.… And I go every day to the temple because I am looking for the other shoe. This shoe... the other must be somewhere."
And there were many things that he had found; people had thrown them and he would collect them.
But when I saw his bicycle, I was really amazed that he had managed... ALMOST
managed; just a chain was missing. That could even be purchased. But he was such a miser, he was not going to purchase it; he was waiting. He said, "Just as you say trust! -
- I trust that the chain will be found one day."
Jabalpur had the largest number of cycles in India. So he said, "This is the place where it is impossible to miss a chain. I will find it." And one day he found it.
In the middle of the night he woke me. I said, "What is the matter? Has something gone wrong?"
He said, "No, I have found the chain!"
"In the middle of the night? Where have you been?"
He said, "I was just not feeling sleepy, so I thought why not have a look for the chain around the park? And it is a miracle -- I found it. Perhaps that's why I was not feeling sleepy. Now I can sleep with ease. One tension was always there on my mind, that death might come before the chain comes."
And I saw him within three days sitting on the bicycle without mud guards, without any carrier, going to his shop. I said, "I have been telling people to trust -
- but it seems that trust works! You have proved me right."
And he said, "One thing more is good about this: there are no brakes on it. And it makes so much noise that you can hear it from almost half a mile away. So when I am coming home my wife knows that I am coming, so she starts preparing things for me. By the time I reach the house everything is ready; no need for wasting time in waiting. And nobody else can sit on my bicycle."
I said, "Why?"
He said, "Its seat is such -- it hurts so much. So there is no question of its ever being stolen. I leave it anywhere, and I go and do my work and I always find it in its place.
People have tried -- I have come to know that people have tried to steal it -- but they come back and put it in its place, because it is unnecessary trouble. First, it makes so much noise that everybody will know who has stolen it. Secondly, it hurts so much, and thirdly, it has no brakes, so any time, any accident "
I said, "But how do you manage?"
He said, "There is no problem. Just in front of my shop there is a big mango tree. I just go there; it needs a tree to stop."
And in the mansion where I was living with him there were very big trees, ancient trees all around, so there was no question, no need. He said, "There is no
need -- I go to my shop, there is a tree; I go to my home, there is a tree. Unless you have a very ancient tree, you cannot have my bicycle."
Just go slowly... part by part... and trust. Total change will also happen, but don't ask too much from the very beginning.
Always be alert that mind is cunning and gives you impossible goals, so you go on running after them.
Nothing is impossible if you go slowly, if you make many stopovers and you are not in a hurry. Whether the total change happens or not is not important. Even small changes in life are precious, because the total change will be simply the accumulated effect of all the small changes. Total change is not one whole; it is simply the effect of all the small changes, the accumulated revolution that happens in you.
So always remain human.
The past of man has been concentrated on giving you goals which are impossible. That is just to make you humiliated, because you cannot fulfill them
-- you feel too tiny, too small, too fragile, with so many weaknesses.
I don't want you to think about impossible things. I want you to go very slowly, changing small parts of your life -- which is not difficult.
One day, you will suddenly find that total change has happened. Question 4
BELOVED OSHO,
I USED TO BE SO SCARED OF BEING HIT OR EXPOSED. SINCE I HAVE BEEN
HERE WITH YOU AND MELTING INTO YOU, I'M LONGING FOR IT WITH AN
UNKNOWN IMPATIENCE. I LONG TO GET THE OBSTACLES OUT OF THE
WAY, TO BE OVER AND DONE WITH `THIS ONE' SO THAT I CAN MOVE ON
THE JOURNEY TO THE NEXT ROCK ON MY PATH. FEAR SEEMS TO BE JUST
A QUITE UNIMPORTANT, OLD HABIT.
I AM EXPERIENCING YOU AS A BOUNDLESS INVITATION. NO BARRIERS
ARE THERE WHICH I COULD USE TO RATIONALIZE A LACK OF COURAGE. I FEEL THANKFUL ABOUT THE LACK OF ORGANIZATION AROUND YOU; THERE IS NO MORE FEAR THAT GETTING A HIT FROM YOU MAY BE USED
BY PEOPLE WHO ARE IN POWER TO FEED THEIR OWN JUDGMENTS, TO PUT
ME DOWN OR TO MAKE ME FEEL GUILTY.
BELOVED OSHO, I AM SO TIRED OF ME AND ME AND ME. IS THIS A HEALTHY OR UNHEALTHY IMPATIENCE?
It is the case with most of the sannyasins: if they get a hit they feel bad about it, their ego feels hurt. Rather than understanding the hit, they become resentful, angry.
If they are not hit, then they start feeling that I am not taking care of them, that I am not paying attention to them, that while others are being hit, they are being left out. They feel as if they are not important enough.
This is how human mind creates misery out of every situation. If you get the hit, you are hurt; if you don't get the hit, you are hurt all the same.
But as far as I am concerned, I am not interested in hitting you or hurting you or ignoring anybody.
To me, all are equally important.
A same longing has brought them to me, a same thirst has brought them to me.
It will be very kind of you all to leave it to me that whenever a hit is necessary you will get it -- because a hit is medicinal, it is a kind of surgery.
But don't feel that because surgery is not being done on you, you are being ignored. If somebody else is hospitalized and nobody is taking care of you No,
whenever you need to be hospitalized you will be hospitalized, each according to his need.
Whenever a hit is necessary to help your growth, you will not miss it. And whenever it is not necessary, then unnecessarily hitting you will only make your skull thick. Then when the time comes to hit you, you will have already been so disciplined in getting hits.…
In my high school days, I was almost always late because I was interested in so many things on the way. I always started from home to reach the school at the right time, but I never reached because so much was going on along the way -- some magician was doing his tricks, and it was irresistible. Just to leave that magician and go to study... some stupid teacher talking about geography.…
So I was punished continually, but soon my teachers realized that it was useless to punish me. Their first punishment was to tell me to go around the high school building seven times. I would ask, "If I go eleven times will it do?"
They would say, "Are you mad? This is a punishment."
I said, "I know this is a punishment, but I have missed my morning exercise. So if I make it my morning exercise, you are not losing anything. Your punishment is covered, my morning exercise is complete; nobody is losing anything, both are gaining."
So they stopped that, because this wouldn't do. They would tell me to stand outside the class. I said, "That's good, because I love the open air. The class is dark and dirty, and outside it is so beautiful. And in fact, sitting inside I am always looking outside. Who cares what you are teaching? -- the birds are singing, the trees are blossoming it is so beautiful outside."
The headmaster would come on his round, and every day he would find me standing outside. And he would say, "What is the matter?"
I said, "Nothing is the matter. I love to stand outside; it is healthier, hygienic. And you can see how beautiful it is."
But he said, "I will see your teacher. How is it that he allows you to stand outside?"
I said, "I don't know, but he tells me himself, every day, `Stand outside.' So now I don't even ask him. It has become a routine, so I simply come and stand here."
He asked the teacher. The teacher said, "It must have been thirty days ago! I told him only once to stand outside -- since then he has not entered the class. I was thinking it was a punishment, and he is enjoying it. Not only that, he is spreading the rumor among the students that it is hygienic, it is healthy. And they are asking me, `Sir, can we also stand outside?' Then what am I to do here? Then I will also go and stand outside."
It is a question of how you take things.
So first, don't be worried. If you are not getting a hit, perhaps you don't need it, or perhaps it is not the right time. Or if you are getting the hit then don't feel hurt, because I am not hitting you, I am always hitting your ego -- something that is your disease, something that has to be dropped.
But leave it to me. I will not follow your expectations that because you want a hit -- the biggest hit, so you can show everybody, "Look, I have got the biggest hit" Then the ego has used the hit. Rather than destroying the ego, the ego has
taken the hit as a nourishment.
So leave it completely to me. It is none of your business.
Whenever I feel that you need a hit, you will get it -- and you will get it in the right quantity that you need. Don't brag about it, and don't feel sorry for it; just try to understand it.
It is a school of understanding. Question 5
BELOVED OSHO,
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS TO GET TO YOU, THREE YEARS TO HANG AROUND
YOU, FOUR YEARS TO RUN AWAY FROM YOU IN A ROLLER- COASTER
RELATIONSHIP. FOUR YEARS TO STAGGER BACK TOWARDS YOU, ELEVEN
YEARS TO GET A QUESTION THROUGH TO YOU -- AND YOU GIVE THE
ANSWER TO THIS GERMAN FELLOW, GUNAKAR AND WANT TO SEND ME
BACK TO HELL AND SOME DIFFICULT WOMAN. AND IN TWENTY- EIGHT
YEARS' TIME, MAYBE YOU HAVE ESCAPED WHEN I CRAWL BACK TO ASK
YOU, "WHAT'S NEXT?"
OSHO, DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME OR SOMETHING?
Gunateet, you are right.
The question was yours -- at least written by you -- but Gunakar needed the answer more.
There has not been any misunderstanding.
He was also surprised, because he had not asked the question. But it was his question.
And he could not believe how somebody else had written exactly the question that he was going to ask.
And it was not time for you, for that question. Perhaps you got the vibration of the German Gunakar, and wrote down the question; it was not your question.
And I can understand your difficulty: it took eleven years for you to ask the question and now you are worried that I am sending you back to your old life and the hard woman.
About that you are wrong. Once you get a woman, it is always hard. If you miss a woman, it is just ice cream. Once you get a woman, suddenly she is steel hard.
But without women there would have been no enlightenment in this world.
Just think... a world without women. Then you cannot find any Gautam Buddha, because there is nobody to run away from. If there is no woman, there is no problem. Women are the real incentive.
They say that behind every great man there is a woman; it may be true, it may not be true.
But behind every enlightened man there are many women -- one won't do.
Enlightenment is a little difficult subject. When many women go on making a football of you, then at last you become enlightened. You will say, "Enough! Stop the game, I am going home."
Women are a blessing in the world. Without them, there is nothing.
So just be thankful to your hard woman; perhaps you are here because of her.
And you are saying that next time you come it will be in twenty-eight years, and you will ask, "What next?"
I am reminded of two stories.
Mulla Nasruddin was on Chowpatty Beach with his wife, and suddenly he said, "Would you like bhelpuri once more?"
The wife said, "Once more? But we have not had any bhelpuri."
He said, "Beloved, it seems you are losing your memory. Just fifty years ago when we got married and we had come here for the first time, we had bhelpuri. That's why I am saying, `Would you like it once more?'"
Going back to your life, to your wife, to your work... but you will not be the same man.
You will be taking something of me with you. I may not have answered you, but you have felt me.
Answers and questions are superficial. You have tasted my love, my presence.
So if by chance, after twenty-eight years, we meet again I will ask, "Do you want it once more?"
Most probably, you will not need to ask me again because the seed is sown. You know exactly what has to be done -- you have to slip your energies from the mind towards the heart. Those energies falling towards the heart are just like rain falling, and the seed will start sprouting.
Perhaps after twenty-eight years, if existence allows it, it will not be you who asks what is next. I will ask you, "What is next?" You will have come to flowering. You will have come just to show your gratitude.
It is good that you are not German.
The German soil is a little hard. It has its negative points and its positive points, its pros and cons. It is hard, it is very difficult for the seed to settle in it -- but once a seed settles in it, then it is very hard not to grow.
Your question was a mind question, and Gunakar needed it.
You don't need it. You have a soft heart. And the seed is already in your heart, and you know it is growing.
It is almost like a pregnant woman: when the child starts growing she knows that the child is growing. An experienced mother of two or three children even knows whether the child is a boy or a girl -- because the boy starts kicking, and the girl remains very centered, calm and quiet.
Boys are, after all, boys. From the very beginning, they are trouble.
An experienced mother can say after the third or fourth month whether the child will be a boy or a girl because the boy is doing all kinds of gymnastics, and the girl is simply sitting silently, waiting for her own chance. Later on, she will do the gymnastics and the boy will sit and read the newspaper. Everybody has his own chance.
The second story I was going to tell you is about a very rich American, a billionaire. He becomes fed up with money, fed up with all kinds of luxuries, fed up with all pleasures.
And naturally he starts searching -- is there something more, or is this all? Because if this is all then there is no point anymore for him to live; he has had enough of it. It is a question of life and death.
And he moves, and goes from one master to another -- some Tibetan lamas, some Sufi mystic, some Zen master. And then he comes to India and meets many saints. They all say, "There is one very wise old man in the Himalayas; only he can help you."
So he travels to the Himalayas, then by foot carries his luggage. He has never carried luggage in his life. He has never walked uphill in the mountains. It is too cold, but somehow he manages. Tired, he falls at the feet of the old man, who looks very ancient, and he says, "I have found you after all! I want to know -- what is the meaning of life?"
The old man said, "First things first. Have you got a Havana cigar?"
The man said, "What kind of question... Havana cigar? Yes, I have got one. In fact, I am a chain smoker, and I have been keeping one in case you make me enlightened. Before enlightenment, the last Havana cigar... I would like just a few minutes more to enjoy it, and then make me enlightened and do whatsoever you want. After enlightenment, I was thinking Havana cigars would not be allowed, because I have not seen Buddha smoking, or "
He said, "Forget all about those old fellows. Bring the Havana cigar." And the old man started smoking.
The tired American watched, and said, "But what about my question?"
He said, "The time is not right. You go back. Come again after few years."
The man said, "This is strange. Any message?"
He said, "When you come, bring as many Havana cigars as you can because once you are enlightened we will both be smoking. On this hill there is nothing else to do. Just go fast and come back -- but bring them. I am sending you especially for Havana cigars.
Enlightenment is a very simple thing, but to get Havana cigars in the Himalayas is very difficult."
Don't be worried, I am not a smoker! You need not bring any Havana cigars; just come.
Don't wait for twenty-eight years. Whenever you feel the flower has opened its petals in you, come back.
I would just like to see you luminous, radiant, ecstatic.
And I say it is possible because you have a heart, Gunateet, that is ripe to grow any moment. No hard woman can prevent it; she can only help it.
So just go back, and whenever the spring comes and the flower is there, come back so I can see that the flower has lived to its potentiality and you have become fragrant.
And meanwhile, you can smoke as many Havana cigars as you want. Beyond Enlightenment
Chapter #5
Chapter title: Questions: Exposing your way from ignorance to innocence 7 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610075
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH05
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
121
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THE FIRST TIME I MET YOU, I SAID "NO" TO YOUR QUESTION AS TO
WHETHER I HAD A QUESTION, AND IN ALL THESE EIGHT YEARS I HAVE
NEVER ASKED ANY.
NOW MY MIND SEEMS TO BE EXPLODING WITH QUESTIONS, OUT OF WHICH IT IS HARD TO CHOOSE ANY SATISFYING TO A GERMAN
PERFECTIONIST; YET I FEEL ALMOST IN PANIC -- I DON'T WANT TO MISS
THAT CHANCE.
OSHO, WHY IS THERE THAT CONSTANT FEAR OF MISSING THE TRAIN?
There are people who really do not have questions.
They have a quest, but not questions. They have a thirst, a deep hunger for being and more being, but no desire for gathering and accumulating knowledge. Hence they don't have any questions.
They are the best kind of disciples.
There are other people who do not ask questions, but that does not mean that they don't have questions. They do not ask because asking a question goes against their ego.
And if the ego is German, then the problem becomes more difficult.
It is not coincidental that Germany has produced great philosophers, philosophers who are ready to give answers to every question. But Germany has not produced sincere inquirers, seekers, who are thirsty for the answer. It has not created disciples; it creates only masters, and these masters are only great intellectuals, not mystics.
Germany has contributed much as far as knowledge is concerned -- Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Karl Marx -- but it has not contributed a single mystic. In the whole of history, not a single Kabir, not a single Nanak, not a single Farid -- very strange, but it is not coincidental.
The German ego is ready to give the answer, whether it knows or not; but it is very reluctant to ask the question, whether it has the question or not.
The same is your situation. For eight years you have been repressing, perhaps unconsciously, and there is a limit to everything. You can repress only so much, and then a point comes when you are sitting on a volcano. Now your mind is exploding with questions. From where they have come? For eight years they were not there, and suddenly out of nowhere they are creating in you almost a state of insanity -- so many questions that you cannot even find which one is worthy to be asked.
You will have to look backwards: those eight years that you kept them repressed are your responsibility. If you had allowed them to come, in those eight years you might have been completely cleansed of all questions; you might have become a tabula rasa, an innocent child.
But because to ask is to show one's ignorance, you went on repressing. And there
is always a hope: somebody else here may ask it, so why expose yourself?
But remember, each person's question has a personality of its own. Even though the words may be the same, the language exactly the same, the phrasing of the question not a bit different, but because the questioner is different, it makes such a difference that it is almost unbridgeable. Each person has grown in a different way, has lived a different life, has passed through different ups and downs. You cannot find another person who has gone through the same experiences. Hence, the question may appear to be the same, but it cannot be the same.
So never wait, thinking that somebody is bound to ask the question and save you the trouble of exposing yourself as ignorant, so you can remain silent, looking wise.
Just not asking the question does not mean that you know. It only means that you are not courageous enough, it only means that you are afraid to show your darker side. But unless you show your disease, unless you say something about it, the physician cannot do anything.
I had a professor friend. He was a great scholar of ancient Sanskrit. Not only was he a scholar of ancient Sanskrit, his mind was also very old and rotten.
He was feeling sick, and as I was coming out of my classroom he told me, "I am feeling very weak and very sick. I don't know what the problem is, but you have to give me a lift and take me to the nearby doctor." So I took him to a friend who was one of the best doctors near the university campus.
Now, in the ancient Indian medicine the patient does not say anything to the physician; that is thought to be insulting. The physician takes the wrist of the patient, checks his pulse; that's all. And he decides what the disease is and he decides what the medicine is going to be.
And the Indian medicine ayurveda has been very proud about it.
So this ancient Sanskrit scholar would not say to the doctor what the problem was. He said, "You are a doctor, you have studied in England, you have got the best education --
you have to find out what my disease is."
The doctor said, "This is strange. I am not a doctor of animals, I am a doctor of human beings. Of course as far as animals are concerned they cannot say what the problem is, so the vet has to find out, to figure out what the donkey is suffering from "
And sometimes things go very wrong.
I remember one case. One of my neighbors in my village had a donkey, a very good donkey. And suddenly there was some epidemic among donkeys and many donkeys in the town died. The veterinary hospital and its doctors were at a loss what to do because the donkeys could not say what was happening. And they were unable to find out. The disease seemed to be something very new.
My friend was very much afraid for his donkey. He said, "Before anything happens, I want to take all the precautions."
So we both took his donkey -- because I used to sit on his donkey; he was the best in the town -- to the doctor. And the doctor said, "He is not sick at all."
We said, "We know -- and he knows too -- because he was not willing to come this way; we have brought him forcibly. But we want to take precautions. Other donkeys are dying, and this is such a beautiful fellow. So if you can just help; as a precaution give him some medicine so that he is not affected by the epidemic."
He gave us some solution, and also a small bamboo pipe, and he told the man whose donkey it was, "You have to put this medicine in your mouth."
The man said, "What are you saying? A donkey's medicine? -- should I put it in my mouth?"
The vet said, "This is the way it has to be given to the donkey, because the donkey will create a thousand and one troubles. Put the other end of the pipe in the donkey's mouth and blow the medicine into his mouth."
He said, "Strange way "
But the vet said, "You don't know how to deal with animals."
But an accident happened. When he was about to give the medicine, the donkey did such a great job.… He blew such a forceful breath from his mouth that the
man drank all the medicine! And he said, "Now what is going to happen? This was a freak accident, and this idiot... at the right time, just as I was going to give the medicine, he managed to force it into my body. Now let us go back to the doctor. It may have some bad effects on me --
it was a precaution for the donkey, not a precaution for me." I said, "Now I cannot go, you can go."
This Sanskrit scholar wanted to be told by the doctor what was wrong just by having his pulse checked.
The doctor said, "I know that in ayurveda this has been the ancient method, but at that time there were no other instruments. At that time people were not so intelligent and aware and sensitive to their own bodies, feelings. They were coming almost from the world of animals. When ayurveda was born, human beings were just emerging out of the animal kingdom; that's why feeling the pulse was the only way."
But the scholar was not satisfied. He said, "The reality is that you are not so proficient in the subtle vibrations of the pulse rate. You are not ready to acknowledge your ignorance."
I said to him, "You have not come here to discuss whether ayurveda is a better medical system than modern medicine. You have come here for your own sickness. Don't waste my time, and don't waste the time of the doctor -- he is not ignorant. No modern medical practitioner is going to tell you your disease, you have to tell him. And man has come of age."
You can sit here silently for eight years without asking a question, just hiding yourself behind silence -- which is not true silence, because inside the questions are boiling.
But the German mind is not ready to accept easily that it is ignorant.
It is good that now you are ready -- because your mind is exploring its questions
-- that you are not afraid you will be understood as ignorant. Nobody is going to understand you as ignorant.
Ignorance is our natural state, there is nothing wrong with it. Just as everybody is naked behind the clothes -- however thick your clothes are, however many layers of clothes you have, your nakedness is still there. There is nothing in it to be ashamed of.
Naked we are born, ignorant we are born.
And it will be helpful to recognize the fact of ignorance sooner, so that you will not die ignorant.
Ignorant we are born, but if we can die innocent, life has been a successful journey.
And the only way to be innocent is to get rid of all your questions.
Don't hide anything, because whatever you are hiding will come up sooner or later, will surface. It is better to bring it out yourself into the open, into the light.
And the function of a master is not to give you an answer, but to destroy your question.
Nobody can give you the answer.
The answer will arise in you, will grow in you. It will be your growth, your enlightenment. It cannot be given from outside.
But questions can be destroyed.
So it is good that you have started, even though you have wasted eight years unnecessarily. And that's why your mind is continuously worried and scared of only one thing: Am I going to miss the train this time? Eight years you have been missing, every day, every moment.
But there are a few people who are very expert in missing trains.
I have heard that three persons, all professors of a university, were standing on the platform. The train was getting ready to leave -- two had come to see one off
-- and they were involved in deep discussion.
Suddenly, the conductor shows the flag and the train starts, and they are so
absorbed that they don't notice. They notice only when the train has almost left the platform. So they all three run to catch it -- two succeed, and one fails. And the one who fails starts laughing.
A crowd gathers; they say, "What is the matter?"
But he is laughing so much, a belly laughter, that he cannot contain himself. He says, "Just wait a minute I have missed the train."
They say, "But missing a train does not mean that you have to laugh."
He said, "You don't know the whole story -- just wait: the two who have caught the train came to see me off! But in a hurry "
There are people who are always missing. Missing becomes their habit for their whole life.
Each moment -- you have to be alert not to miss it.
But you are not there, you are somewhere else. Naturally you go on missing.
You will think of this moment when it is gone. You will say, "My God, I missed that opportunity."
Henry Ford was asked by a journalist, "What is the secret of your success?" -- because he was a poor man, born poor, and became the richest man in the world.
Ford said, "My secret is simple, it is an open secret: I never miss an opportunity."
But the journalist said, "It still remains a mystery. Nobody wants to miss an opportunity, but people go on missing. So tell me just in a little detail how you manage -- because people become aware of an opportunity only when it is gone, but by that time it is too late."
Henry Ford said, "The way not to miss an opportunity is just to keep jumping. So whenever it comes, it doesn't matter, you will jump and ride on it. Don't stand and wait; otherwise you will get engaged in other thoughts and other things.
"I keep on jumping. Let the opportunity come whenever it comes -- I am not going to miss it."
In a London museum there is a beautiful painting titled "Opportunity." A very strange painting.… When for the first time, a century ago, it was acquired by the museum, the painter himself was alive and he was present there for the opening ceremony. The museum had asked him to be there to explain it to people -- because it is a beautiful painting but a little difficult, a little strange.
There is the face of a man, but you have never come across such a face: all the hairs are growing not on the head but on the forehead, and the head is clean- shaven. And the title is "Opportunity."
"What kind of man... where have you found this man?"
He said, "This is the opportunity. When it comes you cannot see it, because the face is covered with hair. When it is just passing by, you cannot see it because the face is covered and by the time you recognize it and say, `Jesus!'... your hand slips! -- because the head is clean-shaven. It has gone. And no moment comes back; once gone, it is gone forever."
You are afraid of missing the train.
Whether you are afraid or not, everybody is missing the train. It is good that you are afraid, because that may help you to understand why you are missing.
You are not in the moment. You are either in the past or in the future -- both are non-existent. Neither can you do anything with the past, nor can you do anything with the future. All that you can do is with the present, and the present is such a small, split second that if you are engaged somewhere else, it simply slips by and you have missed the train.
Learn to be in the present.
Withdraw your energy from the past. Don't waste your time in memories; what is gone is gone -- say goodbye to it and close the chapter.
What has not come yet has not come yet; don't unnecessarily waste your time and energy in imagination, because no imagination is ever fulfilled. It is because of this that the proverb exists in every language: "Man proposes, and God
disposes" -- because you imagine a certain thing in the future, and it is never so.
Withdrawing yourself from past and future, you will become a tremendously intense energy, focused in the present, concentrated in the present like an arrow. No train could manage to leave the platform without you.
Each moment being aware, alert, watchful, in the herenow, is the way not to miss the train. Every experience needs your presence here, this moment.
And this is a simple secret, but it opens the doors of existence, of all the mysteries, of all that is worth knowing, worth tasting, worth feeling, worth being.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
IT IS SUCH A JOY SEEKING OUT A QUESTION -- IT COMES WORD BY WORD
AND SURPRISES ME AS IT APPEARS ON THE PAPER.
BEING HERE WITH YOU HAS BEEN MORE MOMENT-TO-MOMENT AND LESS
PLAN-FILLED THAN ANY OTHER TIME IN MY LIFE.
THE QUESTION IS: WHERE DO THESE QUESTIONS COME FROM? HOW DOES
SEEKING THEM OUT EMPTY OUR MINDS AND CLEANSE OUR BEINGS?
I LOVE YOU BEYOND MY UNDERSTANDING. THANK YOU AGAIN AND
AGAIN.
We are born not knowing anything. Questions don't come from outside.
As you grow, as you face different situations, as you move into different moments, encountering different circumstances, your ignorance goes on and on becoming questions.
These are the right questions.
And if you insist on asking only the right questions, which come out of your ignorance in encountering existence, you will be able to get rid of them without any difficulty.
The problem arises because you have many questions which are not right questions, which have not arisen out of your ignorance but which have arisen out of your borrowed knowledge. You read something in a book and a question arises; if you had not read the book, the question would have never arisen, you may have lived from eternity to eternity.
For example, I have been around the world, but except for a follower of Jainism
-- who are not many, only three and a half million, and confined only to India -- nobody can ask a question that a Jaina can ask. Only a Jaina can ask it, because his scriptures give him the question. The question is not a right question; otherwise, if it was a natural question, it would arise in every human being.
For example, you may never have wondered what nigod is. Only a Jaina will ask what nigod is. And for Jainism it is a very important question; it is as important as God is to other religions -- in fact, it is a replacement for God, because Jainism does not believe in God. Then the question arises: from where does this universe come?
Jainism has a simple, scientific answer to it: the universe does not come from anywhere, it is always here. But one problem gets them into trouble, because the population goes on growing: From where do these people come if nobody is creating them?
In Mahavira's time, there were only two million people in India -- just in India. Now there are seven hundred million people in India. From where are these people coming?
Where have they been hiding all this time? Who is managing the whole circus? -
- when they should come and not come, why they should come at a particular time and not come at a particular time.
Jainism has to invent a hypothesis. The hypothesis is called nigod; nigod is a dormant state of human souls. Just as you go to sleep and in the morning you wake up, there are millions of souls who are sleeping for eternity; from those dormant souls a few wake up and start moving into existence.
But all such hypotheses are as dubitable as God.
I have asked Jaina monks how many souls are dormant -- because there will be one day when nigod is empty, all souls will have awakened. Then the population will remain static; there will be no need for any birth control. Whatever you do, you cannot produce a child. But they don't have any answer. They say, "We don't know. The scriptures say an infinite number of souls."
I said, "This is just befooling people. Who has counted them? Who has the right to say that they are infinite? This can be said only when they have been counted. If they have been counted, they are not infinite. Do you see a simple logic? If you say they have been counted, then they may be many but they cannot be infinite. And if you say they have not been counted, you cannot say they are infinite."
But nobody in the whole world is ever going to ask, "What is nigod?" This is a false question, it is a bookish question.
Now, Jainas never ask about God. All over the world, every other religion will ask about God because they have been told about God from their very childhood. And naturally, curiosity arises: What is God? How does he look?
Strangely enough, different religions have different ideas of God, and nobody bothers that God cannot have so many appearances unless he has many masks. He shows one face to the Christians, another face to the Jews, another face to the Hindus... but why should he take such trouble? And none of these fellows who are talking about God have seen him.
But centuries have passed, and people are discussing and inquiring and questioning, and all questions concerned with such things are absolutely futile.
"How many hands does God have?" Now, is this a question that really means anything to you? -- whether he has two hands or four hands or one thousand hands? What does it matter to you? But there are people who believe that God has one thousand hands, because to take care of this big world, two hands are not
enough. But who says to you that one thousand hands will be enough? The world is still big. If two hands are too few, one thousand hands are also too few.
And just think of a god who has one thousand hands.…
I think two hands can do things in a better way than a person who has one thousand hands. He is bound to get confused.
And to carry one thousand hands... the weight of one thousand hands will be too much.
There was one very famous Hindu monk, Swami Shivananda, who became world famous. Seeing him, I dropped the idea of one thousand hands -- because he was not able even to carry his two hands. His hands became so fat that he was not able to raise them.
Two persons used to raise his hands, then he would be able to move; otherwise those hands were so much of a weight.… And nobody even thinks -- because he was a medical doctor before he became a mahatma -- first, medically he is living a wrong life; otherwise how have these hands become so heavy? Secondly -- he is thought to be a great yogi --
according to yoga he is living a wrong life; otherwise how have these hands gone out of proportion? And still he is worshipped as a great saint.
When I saw him, I said to him, "One thing is settled in my mind, that God cannot have one thousand hands. Seeing you... you need two persons to carry you from one place to another place. If you had one thousand hands, it would really be a great trouble."
Perhaps trucks would have been needed; Suraj Prakash would have to be called -
- "Bring all your transport, Swami Shivananda is going to the bathroom" -- because how would he go? One hand in one truck... at least one thousand trucks would be needed. And for the transport company it would be a problem: how to manage one thousand trucks around him? There would be a parking problem.…
But just hypotheses... and there are thousands of things which have kept human beings engaged in creating questions.
And there are always so-called wise people who are ready to answer them. They
are the enemies of humanity. Rather than saying that your question is wrong because it has no relevance to your growth, it has no relevance to your own spirituality, that whether God exists or not does not matter, or how many heads he has.…
The Hindu god has three heads. No other god in the world has three heads; naturally he is superior. He can look in three dimensions; a three-dimensional god, in all dimensions he is looking. Other gods are one-dimensional.
You cannot cheat a Hindu god, but a Mohammedan god or a Christian god -- you can hit him from the back, he cannot see. The Hindu god you cannot hit. Three heads, one thousand hands... if you got caught in his hands, it would take eternity to get out of the jungle.
All useless, fictitious, meaningless things are in the air, and they have been there for centuries. They create many questions in you.
So you have to remember one very basic thing: that any question that is not concerned with your individual growth has no meaning, no substance for you. Only then can you sort out those few questions which can be of help.
And then ask them, then expose yourself. Then don't wait a single moment -- and don't hesitate, don't feel embarrassed. It is your right to ask the question. It is nature demanding that you ask the question, because once the question is solved
-- or better, DISsolved --
you will feel light, your heaviness will be gone.
The day you don't have any question will be a day of great celebration, because you will be as light as you can conceive.
And then existence becomes just a pure dance -- no more questions. Existence becomes a trust -- no more questions.
There are no more tensions in the mind -- life becomes a let-go, a tremendous relaxation.
You become part of the trees and the mountains and the ocean and the river and the stars; you are no longer separate -- your questions keep you separate.
Your unquestionable trust in existence allows you to merge into it. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
GOVIND SIDDHARTH'S ENLIGHTENMENT SHOWED ME THAT I AM NOT
CONNECTED WITH ENLIGHTENMENT AT ALL. I CANNOT IMAGINE HOW I WOULD FEEL BEING ENLIGHTENED. I REALIZED HOW FAR AWAY IT IS FOR
ME, AND THAT I AM NOT REALLY SEEKING IT.
CONCERNING MYSELF, I HAVE MOSTLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE STATE
CALLED ENLIGHTENMENT. I SEE THAT I AM ONLY LONGING FOR IT WHEN I AM IN A STATE OF PAIN, AND FEEL LOST, AND DON'T KNOW ANY MORE
WHAT TO DO. BUT IN MOMENTS OF HAPPINESS AND FULFILLMENT, ENLIGHTENMENT DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.
WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS?
Lokita, enlightenment is absolutely un-Germanic.
I have gone through all the great philosophers of Germany; nobody has any idea of enlightenment.
So you need not be worried. It simply shows you are a pure Nordic German, stuck with another German, Niskriya. One German is enough of a hindrance towards enlightenment, and two Germans together... it is impossible. You both will tug at each other's legs and will not allow anybody to become enlightened!
And the idea of enlightenment has arisen because of Govind Siddharth's enlightenment. It is not your longing or your search.
This is what I have been calling borrowed.
If it is not nature that is desiring something in you, a longing coming out of your very soul, out of your very roots, then don't waste time on it.
That's why when you are in pain, in misery, in anguish, you think of enlightenment and when you are happy and contented and enjoying yourself, you never think about it.
In fact, if you are contented, happy and pleasurable and I offer you enlightenment, you will refuse it. You will say, "Bhagwan, when I am in pain I will come myself. Don't disturb my happiness at this moment. It is so difficult to be happy with Niskriya, and now you have come with enlightenment "
Remember: anything that comes out of pain and anguish and anxiety is at the most an effort to escape from all these painful experiences.
Hearing again and again that enlightenment is blissful, you think that rather than suffering pain it is better to be enlightened. But when you are contented and feeling happy, joyful, no fight with Niskriya -- because I know perfectly well that two Germans in one room must be fighting twenty-three hours a day at least. For one hour, naturally, they need rest and contentment. At that time if somebody comes and says, "Come on --
and this is enlightenment," you will say, "No, not at this time; I have hardly got one hour of peace and you have come to disturb that peace also."
You have to understand one thing: that enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of pain, an understanding of your anguish, an understanding of your misery -- not a cover-up, not a substitute, but a deep insight: "Why am I miserable, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much anguish, what are the causes in me that are creating it?" And to see those causes clearly is to be free from them.
Just an insight into your misery brings a freedom from misery. And what remains is enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not something that comes to you. It is when pain and misery and anguish and anxiety have been understood perfectly well and they have evaporated because now they have no cause to exist in you -- that state is
enlightenment.
It will bring you, for the first time, real contentment, real blissfulness, authentic ecstasy.
And only then can you compare.
What you used to call `contentment' before was not contentment. What you used to call
`happiness' before was not happiness.
But right now you don't have anything to compare it with.
Once enlightenment gives you a taste of the real, you will see that all your pleasures, all your happinesses were simply the stuff dreams are made of; they were not real. And what has come now, has come forever.
That is the definition of the real: a contentment that comes and never leaves you again is real contentment. A contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment, it is simply a gap between two miseries.
Just as we call a gap between two wars `peace time' -- it is not a peaceful time, it is simply preparation for another war. If the war is a positive war, the time between two wars is a negative war, a cold war. It goes on underground, you are getting ready for a hot war.
Anything that comes and goes is a dream. Let that be the definition.
Anything that comes and never goes is reality.
Don't be bothered about the word ènlightenment.' What you call it does not matter; you can call it illumination, you can call it blissfulness, you can call it self-realization, you can call it actualization of all your potentials -- whatever you want to call it.
But remember one quality: that it knows only a beginning, it knows no end. Anything that comes and goes, beware -- that is simply illusory, it is only a gap,
because one gets tired.
Niskriya also gets tired, and when one is tired one thinks, "Just be loving, be peaceful."
So for an hour or two hours there is love, but it does not last long; just a small thing, anything, and the quarrel begins. And every other day you are ready to separate. Just look in one week how many times you decide to separate.
You don't know, I have been keeping you together. Niskriya is a very obedient follower. I tell him, "Niskriya, just let things be as they are. One woman is absolutely needed for your enlightenment; just remain "
And the same is true for you: he is needed for your enlightenment.
Separately -- because there will be no fight, no anxiety, no pain -- you may start thinking that life is perfectly peaceful, what is the need of enlightenment? And it will not be peace; it will be the peace of the graveyard.
I want the peace of the garden, not of the graveyard. The birds should be singing, because their songs deepen the peace. The flowers should be blossoming because their colors, their fragrance make the peace alive -- the foliage, the greenery, everything is overflowing with life.
In a graveyard also there is silence and there is peace, because everybody is dead. They are waiting for the last judgment day; then they will come out of their graves and you will see such a quarrel as you have never seen, not imagined. Because lying in their graveyards, they are repressing everything, and when they come out just skeletons hitting each other!
You will see the scene, the last judgment day: nobody will bother who is hitting whom, just hitting will be such a joy. So much is repressed -- because somebody has been in the grave for thousands of years. Just think of yourself in a grave for thousands of years: how much anger you must be gathering! -- it will explode in just one day, in twenty-four hours. More time is not given; perhaps God is afraid to give more time. Because if you give more time, that quarrel will never end; it will continue. So finish it in twenty-four hours.
And in twenty-four hours in that crowd you cannot find your enemy or where your wife is, where your neighbor is. So don't waste time -- whoever you meet,
hit him hard!
Somebody must be hitting your wife, so you hit somebody else's wife; it does not matter, the question is of hitting.
There is a peace in the graveyard. If people live separately.… And that's what religions have thought: renounce the world and go into the caves, and there will be peace. It will be the peace of the graveyard, your cave will be your grave. Because there is nobody to provoke you, nobody to insult you. Just being alone, what can you do except be silent?
But that is not the peace that passeth understanding, that is a deadness, a suicide.
Try to understand your misery. Live it, go to the very depth of it, find out the cause, why it is there.
Let understanding be your meditation.
And try to understand your contentment also, your happiness also, and you will see their superficiality.
Once you know that your happiness is superficial and your anguish is very deep
-- and it is in your hands -- you can change your whole style of consciousness.
Your contentment can become your whole being; not even a small space is left for discontentment.
Your love becomes your very life. And it remains. Time passes, but what you have achieved goes on deepening. More and more flowers, more and more songs are born out of it.
That's what we call enlightenment.
The word is Eastern, but the experience has nothing to do with East or West. Question 4
BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE A STORY TO TELL:
IT HAPPENED IN THE EARLY SECOND HALF OF THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1985, WHEN I WAS LIVING IN RAJNEESHPURAM.
ONE MORNING, SOON AFTER I WOKE, I TOOK A PEE IN THE BATHROOM, AND FELT A TIDAL WAVE OF RELAXATION DESCENDING ON ME AS IT
SOMETIMES HAPPENS IN THE LAST STAGE OF YOUR MEDITATION
TECHNIQUES. THE RELAXATION WAS ALL OVER ME, AND MY EYELIDS
CLOSED GENTLY AND INSTANTLY. I COULDN'T MOVE OR STOP THIS TIDAL
WAVE FEELING.
AS MY EYES CLOSED, YOU APPEARED IN ALL YOUR BEAUTY. YOUR
PHYSICAL PRESENCE WAS SO REAL AND INTOXICATING -- AS ONE SEES
AND FEELS YOU IN A DARSHAN, SITTING IN THE FIRST ROW. BUT IN A MOMENT YOU STARTED DISAPPEARING, BEGINNING FROM ALL SIDES OF
YOUR BODY, AND A DEEP BLACKNESS STARTED TAKING YOUR PLACE.
SOON ALL THAT WAS LEFT WAS A DEEP, DEEP BLACKNESS OF A KIND I HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE. IT GAVE A FEELING OF TERROR, AND LASTED
FOR A COUPLE OF MINUTES.
AS I CAME OUT OF THIS EXPERIENCE I WAS STUNNED, DAZED, ALMOST
DRAINED. I WAS FULL OF A DEEP INNER PAIN; I WAS VERY SHAKY AND
UPSET, AS THE MEANING THAT SOMEHOW HAD REVEALED ITSELF TO ME
WAS IN THE IMPACT OF THE EXPERIENCE. IT MEANT PHYSICAL DEATH TO
YOUR BODY, OR AT LEAST A DEATH-LIKE CALAMITY.
I TRIED TO FORCE MYSELF TO BE NORMAL, BUT COULDN'T TALK TO
PEOPLE. WHEN MY FRIEND NOTICED I WAS DISTURBED, AND ASKED ME
THE REASON, I TOLD HER OF THE INCIDENT. I CONTINUED TO FEEL THAT
SOMETHING GRAVE WAS PEEPING OVER THE HORIZON.
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON WHEN I WAS WORKING, SUDDENLY OUT OF
NOWHERE A DEEP TIDAL WAVE OF RELAXATION OVERPOWERED ME
AGAIN. MY EYES CLOSED AND A BRIGHT PURPLE COLOR APPEARED ALL
OVER IN FRONT OF ME, AMIDST WHICH YOU APPEARED AGAIN IN YOUR
FULLEST GLORY, BEAMING. BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS WERE POPPING OPEN
ALL AROUND YOU LIKE BUBBLES -- IT WAS PSYCHEDELIC! I FELT NOW
FULLY ASSURED THAT NO REAL HARM WAS GOING TO COME TO YOUR
BODY. WHATEVER CALAMITIES CAME WOULD PASS AWAY, AND A MORE-GLORIOUS-THAN-EVER PHASE FOR YOU AND YOUR PEOPLE
WOULD FOLLOW.
IN THE LATER MONTHS A GREAT CALAMITY DID COME TO YOUR BODY IN
THE FORM OF YOUR ILLEGAL ARREST BY THE POWER-BLINDED U.S.
GOVERNMENT -- WHICH WAS A PHYSICAL THREAT TO YOUR LIFE. NOW, IN
THE LIGHT OF THE FIRST PART OF MY STORY TURNING INTO A REALITY, IT
IS QUITE NATURAL FOR ME TO FEEL THAT THE SECOND PART OF THE
STORY HAS ALREADY STARTED TURNING INTO A REALITY, SLOWLY SLOWLY.
BELOVED MASTER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?
Pratap, you have related your story with absolutely the right interpretation. It needs no comment.
This is a good sign. Slowly slowly, to other sannyasins also, the same is going to happen.
They will come to feel an experience, and they will also be able to interpret it correctly.
I can only say you are blessed that your mind has not interfered, has not misled you, and your heart has been in complete control seeing the experience and interpreting it.
Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,
A GLIMPSE OF YOUR EYES, A FLASH OF TOTAL LOVE -- IT HAPPENS IN A SECOND BUT STAYS FOREVER.
OSHO, HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
It is a simple phenomenon.
A moment of love is a moment of eternity. The depth of it is so great that time cannot erase it.
Although the happening was in a single moment, it is like a woman becoming pregnant: the happening is in a single moment, but it gives birth to a child who may live seventy, eighty years, who may give birth to many more children. It may become a tree: many branches, and each branch bifurcating into new branches.
I am reminded.… If you go to Bodh Gaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the tree under which he was sitting is still there, although it is not the same tree but the continuity of the same tree, a child of the same tree.
When Ashoka was the emperor of India, he sent his daughter Sanghamitra, who had become a sannyasin, to Sri Lanka with a branch of the original tree. Sri Lanka was converted by Sanghamitra to the ideology of Gautam Buddha, and the branch was planted there and became a big tree.
Here, after Gautam Buddha, a strange tragedy happened: Buddhism disappeared from India, and Hindus burned the tree under which Gautam Buddha had become enlightened.
It was only when India became independent just forty years ago that a branch from Sri Lanka was brought back.
Now you see a beautiful tree again flourishing in Bodh Gaya -- although it is not the same tree, but it is the same tree.
A moment of deep love goes so deep in your being that time cannot erase it. It goes on and on giving birth to itself within you.
Hence I say that a moment of love is a moment of eternity.
Question 6 BELOVED OSHO,
MOST OF HUMANITY LIVES TO EAT AND SLEEP, WORK, ACCUMULATE
POWER AND MONEY, OR TO PROPOGATE ITSELF. BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU LIVE FOR?
Milarepa, I will tell you a real historical fact:
In Greece, there was a great philosopher, Xeno. He lived a long life -- in those days it was really very long, because the average life in those days was not more than twenty-five years. Xeno lived ninety years.
And he is a strange philosopher, unique in a sense, because his teaching is that life is meaningless; so meaningless that any man of intelligence would commit suicide, that is the only intelligent act you can do.
So many of his disciples committed suicide, went on committing suicide. Ninety years long, thousands of disciples -- and he was a very convincing man. What he was saying was so accurate, because ordinary life is certainly so meaningless -- unless you know to change it into a divine phenomenon, it is meaningless.
And he was a great logician; he argued and convinced people, and people committed suicide, young people committed suicide.
When he was dying, somebody asked, "Xeno, one thing has always disturbed us.
According to your philosophy, thousands of people have committed suicide. Why have you gone on living?"
He said, "It was just to teach people to commit suicide; otherwise who will do my job? I had to live."
Milarepa, people are living absolutely meaningless lives.
I also teach them a kind of suicide -- not exactly the same as Xeno. I teach them
a suicide in which they are reborn in a more luminous life, of a greater glory, of a divine ecstasy.
I have to live because it would be absolutely unkind, knowing the path of transformation and not telling it to the people who need it.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #6
Chapter title: Truth knows no fifty-fiftyChapter title: The only holy approachChapter title: Ten Non-comandmentsChapter title: The alchemy of enlightenment