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Chapter title: Truth knows no fifty-fifty
8 October 1986 pm in
Archive code:
8610085
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH06
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
118
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I AM REQUESTING YOUR GUIDANCE ON MY ANSWER TO SOMETHING I HEARD YOU SAY TO ME -- WHICH YOU NEVER ACTUALLY SAID.
DURING MY SANNYAS DARSHAN YOU SPOKE TO ME AT LENGTH ABOUT
WHAT HAPPENED TO BUDDHA'S TEACHINGS AFTER BUDDHA LEFT HIS
BODY. I HEARD YOU SAY THAT BUDDHA'S DISCIPLES COMPROMISED
BUDDHA'S TEACHING. THEY CREATED SAFE RELIGIONS, AND THUS COMPROMISED. YOU TOLD ME, "DO NOT COMPROMISE."
WHILE YOU WERE SPEAKING THESE WORDS TO ME, I HEARD ANOTHER
COMMUNICATION. THE REQUEST THAT I SILENTLY HEARD SPOKEN WAS,
"DO NOT LET IT HAPPEN TO ME."
SINCE THAT DAY I HAVE CONTINUALLY LOOKED FOR WHAT I MIGHT BE
ABLE TO DO TO FULFILL THIS REQUEST. MUCH TO MY WONDER, I KNOW
WHAT TO DO, I KNOW HOW TO FULFILL THE UNSPOKEN REQUEST -- BUT I WANT YOUR GUIDANCE.
WILL YOU PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR SPECIFIC GUIDANCE?
What happened to Gautam Buddha and his teachings is almost the rule, not the exception.
The moment the master leaves his body, the disciples start compromising with the surrounding world to survive, to continue to exist.
And truth is something that cannot be compromised.
Just Gautam Buddha's teachings... five hundred years afterwards, there was not a single Buddhist in the whole of India. The greatest man who has ever walked on the earth, and the most refined teaching and the most clear perception of truth
simply disappeared like a dream.
One wonders -- it has not happened to Christianity, it has not happened to Mohammedanism, it has not happened to Jainism. So the complexity of the phenomenon has to be understood.
The people who had followed Gautam Buddha refused to compromise. That was the cause of the disappearance of Buddhism from India. The Buddhists were either killed, burned alive or forcibly converted into Hinduism, or the fortunate ones escaped to the neighboring countries.
In a way, it was a blessing in disguise because the Buddhists who escaped India spread all over Asia and converted the whole continent to the teachings of Gautam Buddha.
But the problem was, they had learned something that a disciple should never learn: they had learned in India that if you insist for truth, crucifixion is the result. If you want to survive, you have to compromise with all kinds of lies which are prevalent.
What they did not do in India they did in China, they did in Japan, they did in Korea, they did in Ceylon. All over Asia they compromised with the local population, its superstitions, its ancient ideologies unfounded on truth, just created out of fear. But because they compromised with them, they survived. And it was not only that they survived, they became very respectable. Buddhism became the religion of the whole of Asia except India.
It is a very strange phenomenon, because Buddha was born here; all his great disciples were born here. Hundreds of people became enlightened under his guidance. The consciousness of this country reached the highest point in the presence of Gautam Buddha. And yet the moment Buddha was gone, the tremendous experience disappeared, evaporated -- because the people who remained behind were still not ready to betray their master. They were ready to die, but not to betray; they were not going to compromise.
And Hinduism took revenge with great vengeance -- because in the presence of Gautam Buddha Hinduism did not have the guts to encounter this man. Efforts
were made.
Hindu pundits, scholars had gone to argue, but they were mere parrots. In the
presence of Gautam Buddha, their borrowed knowledge proved completely inadequate for human growth.
The very presence of Gautam Buddha was enough to convince them that this man had experienced something that they had not experienced. What they were saying was simply repetition of old scriptures. What he was saying was a valid individual experience -- his own. And when the experience is your own, it has an authority.
Hinduism had to wait for Buddha's death. In his presence, it was impossible to argue in favor of superstitions. They had to wait for five hundred years; because after Buddha, his immediate disciples -- Sariputta, Moggalayan, Mahakashyap, Ananda -- and hundreds of others were filled with the same light, with the same silence. They created more living enlightened people. This continued for five hundred years.
Slowly slowly, it died out. Instead of the enlightened man, slowly slowly the scholar, the pundit became more important.
That was the time when Hinduism came with vengeance -- and certainly Hinduism is a far older religion. It had great scholars. The Buddhist scholars were amateurs, they could not withstand Hindu scholarship; they were defeated very easily.
Now, it was not their own experience.
These were the people who have written Buddhist scriptures. You will be surprised to know that every Buddhist scripture begins with the words Ì have heard.' These people had not seen, these people had not experienced. These people had simply heard from others about the innermost reality, but it was only hearsay.
Hindus were more proficient scholars, almost ten thousand years old; very refined logicians, rationalists.
The poor Buddhist scholars could not manage to prove anything. They were defeated so utterly that they had to move back into the Hindu fold.
The Buddhist monks who had escaped from India learned a lesson: "If you don't have your own experience, then it is better to compromise to survive." They had
burned their fingers in arguing for somebody else's experience.
They dropped argument. They started talking of the synthesis of all religions; they started spreading the idea that all religions are right. Nobody is wrong, the question of discussion does not arise.
And they were the first in the world to bring this idea that all religions are right. Naturally all religions respected these people -- they were not quarrelsome. Up to now every religion had been quarrelsome, arguing, proving that "We have got the truth; we are right and you are wrong."
And these were the first people who were saying, "Everybody is right. There are millions of paths, but the goal is one. There is no need for any argument. We may be moving on different paths, but we are moving towards the same goal."
The same has happened with Jainism in India, which was a contemporary religion to Buddha. Jainas are still in existence in India.
It is also a strange fact that Mahavira, their greatest teacher, and Buddha were contemporaries. In the presence of Gautam Buddha, Mahavira could not make any impact on the country. Yes, he had a small following, but Buddha loomed so large, he was such a huge tree that for three hundred years British scholars, historians, philosophers, thought that Mahavira was not separate from Gautam Buddha, that Mahavira was another name of Gautam Buddha. Because it is a title, just as `buddha' is a title. `Buddha' means the awakened one; `Mahavira' means one who has conquered. And they both had the same title of `Jaina' --
`Jaina' also means one who has conquered. Because the same title belonged to both, it was thought that Mahavira was not somebody separate.
It was just recently that scholars started feeling that this was not right, that these were two different people.
Buddha created so much impact, he overshadowed everybody -- but within five hundred years he disappeared.
Mahavira's followers are still in existence because Mahavira's followers compromised with the Hindus. They were not burned, they were not killed. They compromised so much that you cannot find much difference.
And they had to compromise because they are dependent on the Hindus for
everything.
They are not a whole culture. If they need shoes -- they cannot make shoes and certainly they need shoes -- they will have to depend on the Hindus. They need their toilets to be cleaned; they cannot do that, they have to depend on Hindus.
It is a strange phenomenon that Jainism and Buddhism both arose as a revolt against Hinduism. Mahavira is very strongly against Hinduism, but Jainas compromised on every point -- because from where are you going to get your clothes? The weavers are either Hindu or Mohammedan. Who is going to make your houses? Who is going to cultivate food for you? -- because Jainas cannot even cultivate. It is against their religion, because plants have life, and if you cultivate you will have to cut plants and you will be doing violence.
So all the violence has to be done by Hindus; then naturally you have to be dependent on them, and you cannot argue, and you cannot insist that you have the truth. You have to say that everybody has the truth; just the languages are different, paths are different, ways are different, but the basic experience is the same.
Jainism survived.
The same is true about Mohammedanism, Christianity -- they have all compromised with the existing people.
Just a few months ago, the present pope visited India.
The Indian Christians are the low caste Hindus, converted to Christianity because of poverty. There is no other reason for their conversion -- they are poor, uneducated, and Christianity promises them.…
But the pope was faced with great difficulties because the Hindus who have become converted cannot simply drop their habits of thousands of years. In the church they bring incense before Jesus Christ. And it was reported to him by the bishops and the cardinals..."What should be done? We try to prevent them but they don't listen. They bring flowers, they bring incense... not only that, in the church they repeat the mantra omkar."
And the pope agreed that they should be allowed; otherwise, they will desert.
This is something so deep in them... they cannot think that OM, the sound of OM can be anything other than the most spiritual thing. They are Christians, and OM has nothing to do with Christianity -- but basically they are Hindus. And the pope's concession is a compromise, it is cunning.
Tomorrow these people will start painting Jesus Christ in the color red, and you will have to accept it because without the red color no stone can become God. It has never happened in India.
When for the first time the British government made roads and milestones, they had no idea what they were doing. They painted the milestones red, because red shows from far away, it stands out against the greenery, is more clear. So they painted them red, and they were surprised that every milestone was being worshipped! The villagers came with flowers, incense... every milestone had become the monkey god Hanuman.
Their engineers tried to explain, that "These are not gods, these are milestones."
They said, "You don't know. We have been doing this for thousands of years. Any stone painted red becomes divine." They were very happy -- not happy because of the roads, they were happy because of the milestones.
Christianity has been compromising from the very beginning in every country. That has been its way of survival.
You will be surprised to know that Indian Christianity is older than the Vatican. Indian Christianity is the oldest in the world, because one of Jesus' closest disciples, Thomas, came to India.
It was difficult to convert Indians to any other religion. They have seen so much, they have heard so much about religion, they have so many beliefs... Thomas was at a loss in the beginning, but finally he managed to compromise.
He started dressing like a Hindu. If you see the pictures of Thomas, you will be surprised that he shaved his head just like a Hindu shankaracharya. And he started using the thread that Hindus use, and he also used the wooden sandals that Hindu monks were using to avoid leather. And he would wear just a small dhoti with no shirt on top, just like the old brahmins. He learned Sanskrit.
And seeing him, that he was just like a brahmin, so whatever he was saying must
be right, many people started following. They were the first Christians.
But this is more businesslike, it is salesmanship. It is not real conversion; it is tricky, it is exploiting innocent people.
In every country Christianity has compromised with the local population. Whatever its religion was, Christianity has compromised with it, taken its principles, its behavior. It is because of this compromising attitude that Christianity has become the biggest religion in the world -- almost half of the world is Christian.
Truth cannot be so cheap. And truth cannot be so appealing to such a big mob.
The crowd psychology is, that whatever it believes should be accepted as true; then there is a possibility of fifty-fifty: "You believe something from us, we will take something from you."
But truth knows no fifty-fifty.
It has to be a hundred percent pure; otherwise it is worse than a lie.
So when I said to you, "Don't compromise" I was saying many things in that.
First, to compromise means that convenience and survival are more important to you than truth.
Secondly, it means that truth is not a revolution but a business, that it is not a transformation of your being but a social conformity.
Thirdly, it means that you will never find yourself on the path. Once you have learned to compromise, you have started going astray.
Not to compromise is one of the basic, essential principles to follow if you want to find truth in its purity and full glory.
And when I said this to you, certainly you heard rightly something more which was not said: "Please don't do it to me."
My whole effort is to make you individuals, courageous enough even to stand against the whole world. If you feel that you are right and you are experiencing
the truth in your innermost core, then the whole world may be against you -- it does not matter. Then even crucifixion is nothing but a seal of validity.
A man who can go to his crucifixion laughing has proved beyond doubt that he knows something more than the mortal body.
Jesus seems to be wayward. At the crucifixion, on the cross, he was not joyous, he was not smiling, laughing. On the contrary, he was complaining. He was shouting at God,
"Have you forsaken me?" Because his expectation was not crucifixion; his expectation was crowning. He is the only begotten son of God, how can God allow him to be crucified? A miracle is bound to happen.
But the miracle did not happen, because miracles don't come from outside. The miracle would have happened if he had smiled and laughed because he knew, that "You can only crucify a dead body, you cannot crucify my consciousness."
It has happened in the case of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He was laughing -- and his crucifixion was more cruel than Jesus' because Mohammedans are more violent, more fanatic than any Jew. They cut him piece by piece, it was not a single stroke. First they cut his legs, then they cut his hands, then they made him blind, then they made him deaf. They killed him piece by piece and still, to the very last, he was smiling.
And somebody asked, "Before they cut your tongue, we want to know -- why are you smiling?"
He said, "I am smiling because they are punishing somebody else. The body that they are punishing is not me."
This is the miracle.
It does not depend on God, it does not depend on anybody else. It depends on your experience.
al-Hillaj proves himself to be far closer to truth, just by his simple action. He is not grumbling, he is not saying to God that "This is not right that they are behaving in this primitive way with me and you are simply silent." He is not talking about God at all.
He is simply enjoying the whole thing and laughing at the stupidity of people. "You are punishing somebody else. And I have always been telling you that you cannot punish me, you cannot even touch me. Punishment is not the question at all."
When you heard, although I did not say it to you, "Don't do it to me" you heard rightly. I was just going to say it, but seeing that you heard it, I did not say it.
All these years it has haunted you that you heard it and I have not said it -- was it your imagination or was I really saying something without saying it?
No, it was not your imagination. I was saying it without saying it.
I say many things to you without saying them. I simply create the atmosphere by saying many other things in which you can hear the unsaid.
Because there are a few things which can only be whispered, not shouted. And there are a few things which cannot even be whispered but only indicated indirectly, only then are they beautiful.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
RECENTLY IT HAS STARTED HAPPENING THAT AS I BEGIN TO OPEN MY
EYES FIRST THING IN THE MORNING I CAN SEE A VISION, LIKE A SCENE
FROM A MOVIE -- AND THAT SCENE HAPPENS DAYS AFTER IN REALITY, JUST LIKE A REPETITION.
BEFORE I ARRIVED HERE IN BOMBAY, I HAD A VISION OF THE GOLDEN
MANOR HOTEL -- THE SETTING, THE GARDEN, THE PEOPLE -- AND WHEN I ARRIVED HERE, IT WAS EXACTLY THE SAME AS MY VISION. I WROTE YOU
A LETTER ABOUT THIS EARLIER, BUT DID NOT HAVE THE COURAGE TO
DELIVER IT. NOW IT HAS BEEN HAPPENING OFTEN, AND I DON'T KNOW IF
IT IS GOOD OR BAD.
ALSO, WHEN YOU WERE IN URUQUAY AND I WAS IN BRAZIL, I HAD THE
SUDDEN COMPULSION TO GO TO MY ROOM, TO SIT ON THE FLOOR AND
CLOSE MY EYES. I DID SO, AND LIKE A FLASH, I SAW YOU SITTING AT A TABLE, LAUGHING JOYOUSLY. I COULD ONLY SEE THE BACK OF ANOTHER
MAN WHO SEEMED A LITTLE BIT SERIOUS OR SAD. THEN YOU SAW ME
AND INVITED ME IN, AND THE MAN TURNED HIS FACE TO SEE ME. HE WAS
BEAUTIFUL, VERY BEAUTIFUL... THE SCENE WAS SO FULL OF LIGHT! I'M
SURE HE WAS NOT JESUS -- THE BEARD WAS DIFFERENT AND THE EYES
WERE MORE DEEP AND DIRECT. HOURS LATER, THE RADIO GAVE THE
NEWS THAT KRISHNAMURTI HAD DIED HOURS BEFORE.
OSHO, FROM THAT DAY ON, I WAS TOTALLY SURE THAT YOU LIVE ON
TWO LEVELS SIMULTANEOUSLY, AND I DON'T KNOW ON WHICH LEVEL
YOU ARE FOR MOST OF THE TIME DURING YOUR DAILY LIFE.
YOU ANSWERED TURIYA THAT YOU DON'T COME INTO OUR DREAMS.
BUT ISN'T IT TRUE THAT YOU ARE SO CLOSE TO THE DISCIPLE THAT WE
ARE ONE WITH YOU ALL THE TIME, NOT ONLY IN OUR DREAMS?
One very fundamental thing has to be understood: a dream and a vision look alike, but they are two totally different phenomena.
A dream is a mind projection. It has no validity of its own. It is only a thought in picture form.
Small children cannot think in thoughts, but they can understand pictures; hence, in their books you will see big pictures, beautiful colors, and very little writing. Slowly slowly, as the child grows up, the pictures go on becoming smaller and the writing in his books increases. Finally, when he is in the university, pictures disappear and only writing remains. You may not have inquired why this is so.…
If you give a child in a kindergarten school a book which has no pictures, he will not be interested at all, because he has not yet learned to think in words. But he can dream more perfectly than you can dream; he dreams so perfectly that once in a while you will find a child waking up in the morning and crying -- "Just now I had my bicycle. Where has it gone?" He was dreaming of riding on his bicycle, and as he opens his eyes he is in his bed and the bicycle is gone. And his dream is so clear that it is very difficult for him to make a distinction between the real bicycle and a dream bicycle; they look almost alike.
We are grown up, but our unconscious never grows, it remains a child.
So in sleep, when your conscious mind -- which has learned language, concepts, words --
is fast asleep, your unconscious starts dreaming. It is a child, so every thought form has to be translated by the unconscious mind into a picture form.
This is one of the great discoveries of Sigmund Freud, listening to your dreams.
And he does the opposite process, translates your dream back from picture form into language, into concepts, into words. It needs a tremendous expertise. Still, nobody can be certain about it.
If you go to Sigmund Freud, each dream will end up as something sexual -- because that is his idea, that all sex is repressed.
It is true that much sexuality is repressed, but there are many other things also which are repressed. It is not only sex.
But it is a problem with inventors and pioneers particularly; they become so obsessed with their findings that they don't take note of other possibilities.
Freud's own disciple, Adler, went away from him just because Adler said that sex can be a part of repression, but that is not all. His own idea was that ambition, will to power, is far more important, and that a major part of your dreams concerns will to power.
For example, you dream that you have become a bird and you are flying. To Sigmund Freud it will symbolize only that you want the same sexual freedom as the birds and the animals, nothing else. But to Adler it will mean that flying upwards means you are ambitious, you want to become the prime minister.
But this is all guesswork.
Another disciple, Carl Gustav Jung, also went away from Freud because he was more interested in the ancient mythologies, and he thought that our dreams are part of our previous lives. So if you are a bird flying, he will interpret it that in some of your past lives you have been a bird.
Now what to do with these people, and how to decide?
The language of pictures cannot be precise. It is almost like a painting: many people can see and can decide its meaning in different ways.
Just as the child has a picture language, your unconscious has a picture language.
I am not interested in interpreting your dreams because it is such a rubbish job. You can go on interpreting for years and years, and the dreams will not come to an end -- every day, six hours every night you have to dream. And you have
inexhaustible sources of dreaming.
And it is very quick -- the dream time is not the same as your ordinary time. Just reading your newspaper, you may fall asleep for a minute and you may see a dream which spreads for years; and when you wake up you look at your watch and just one minute has passed. You say, "My God, in one minute I saw a dream which is spread for a whole year, or even for years."
Dream time is totally different.
Up to now there has been no way to invent dream wristwatches, and perhaps there never will be a possibility, because there are lazy people and there are speedy people; some people are running fast, some people are simply sitting. In dreams also, the same differences exist: lazy people dream in a lazy way, speedy people dream in a speedy way; your dream reflects you. So I don't think there is any possibility of making a watch which can function for everybody. It is not possible, because everybody's dream speed is different.
Vision also appears to be just like dream, but it is not dream.
A vision is an objective phenomenon, it is not projected by your mind. You are seeing something, you are not projecting. In a certain clarity, your mind is capable of seeing things.
For example, I was traveling with one of my friends. He is a poet. We were in an air-conditioned bus, and it must have been nearabout ten o'clock in the night. And he suddenly heard, "Munna, Munna." Nobody else heard. I was sitting by his side, and he asked me, "Have you heard? Somebody is calling `Munna, Munna.'"
I said, "I have not heard anything. You must be dreaming."
He said, "No, I am awake. I was smoking, I was not dreaming. And only my father calls mèMunna'. Nobody else calls me Munna, that is my childhood name. My mother, who used to call me Munna, has died. My father is the only person alive who calls me Munna; and nobody else even knows. And the voice was exactly like my father's."
I said, "Let us reach the destination and we can phone your house from there, to see what is the matter."
We reached Nagpur nearabout twelve o'clock, and we phoned and we found that the father had died at exactly ten o'clock. Perhaps at the time of death he remembered his only son, and remembered the name that he always used.
Now, this is not a dream. He had not seen anything, but he had heard; it is objective. And the father was almost sixty miles away, and a dying man cannot shout to reach sixty miles. And if he had shouted that loudly, then everybody in the bus would have heard it.
But only he heard it. Even I was not aware that his father called him `Munna'. This is a vision... not visual, this is audio vision -- not video, Niskriya!
I may not come into your dreams -- and if I come it is your projection, I am not responsible for it. If I do anything, I am not responsible for it!
But I can come into a vision, and then the whole responsibility is mine. The difference is very delicate.
The dream always happens when you are asleep. The vision always happens when you are not asleep.
This is the first distinction: you are fully awake. And the vision always appears to be coming from outside, reaching to you. And sooner or later, you will find its validity, its reality.
The reality of dream you will never find. It is simple garbage, it is really the unwinding of the mind. The whole day the mind has to work, and it gets wound up, and needs unwinding to be fresh for tomorrow. So it is unwinding. Inconsistent things go on coming: you had been talking to somebody, you wanted to say something but you did not say it. Now that is hanging, it needs to be released -- in the dream it will be released.
The dream is a great help, a cleaning. It is not against you, it keeps you sane; otherwise, everybody will go insane. For six hours your mind goes on cleaning itself of every impression that has remained incomplete in the mind -- throws it off, prepares itself for tomorrow's work. But dreaming has no other significance.
Vision is a reality.
The dream is of the mind.
And the vision has a connection with the heart.
These things you will have to feel, because the differences are very very fine.
Whenever you are feeling something coming as a vision to you, be in a meditative mood, silent. Allow it to happen, be receptive; don't interfere, don't interpret. Just first let it be complete so that you can see it from the very beginning to the very end.
Most probably there will be no need of interpretation. Just seeing it in its completion will be enough; you will have the understanding. And then, soon some events will follow which will validate your vision.
Your dreams will never be validated by existence. So whatever you have seen was a vision -- you were awake.
And if you are silent, you can see things happening thousands of miles away. Space makes no difference. And you can see things which do not happen on the material level but happen on the level of consciousness. That's what you are mentioning, two levels.
Yes, it is true. I have to work on two levels: one is the level where you live, where you are, and one is the level where I am and I want you also to be.
From the top of a hill I have to come into the valley where you are; otherwise you won't listen, you won't believe the sunlit top. I have to take your hand in my hand and persuade you -- and on the way, tell stories which are not true! But they keep you engaged, and you don't create any trouble in walking; you go on, engaged with the story. And when you have reached the hilltop, you will know why I was telling long stories, and you will feel grateful that I told those stories; otherwise you would not have been able to travel that long, that far uphill.
It is something to be remembered: all the masters of the world have been telling stories, parables -- why? The truth can be simply said, there is no need to give you so many stories. But the night is long, and you have to be kept awake; without stories you are going to fall asleep.
Till the morning comes there is an absolute necessity to keep you engaged, and the stories the masters have been telling are the most intriguing things possible.
The truth cannot be said, but you can be led to the point from where you can see it. Now, the question is how to lead you to the point from where you can see it.
There is a story in Sarmad's life. He was teaching his students, his disciples, and suddenly he said, "Come on out of the class, something is happening." So they all came out.
A man was dragging a bull, but the bull was very powerful. The man was also powerful, but a bull is a bull. So although the man was dragging the bull... the man was being dragged!
Sarmad showed his disciples, "Look, this is the situation." They said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "This is the situation between me and you, but I am not so stupid as this man."
And he said, "Listen! Are you taking the bull for the first time?"
The man said, "I am a new servant, and I come from the city and I don't know what to do... because I drag him one foot and he drags me four feet! It has been going on for hours, and I don't think that it is going to end."
Sarmad said, "You drop it! You don't understand the ways of the village, and particularly the language of bulls."
And he took a little grass, green and beautiful, and just walked ahead of the bull, without even touching the bull -- and the bull followed him. And Sarmad started walking faster, and the bull walked faster.
The man said, "This is great! He is not even dragging him, the bull is going on its own."
And Sarmad said, "You take this grass. Don't let him eat; otherwise, you will be in trouble. If he creates trouble, start running -- he will run with you, but you will reach home."
And he said to his disciples, "This is what I have been doing with you. All the parables, all the stories are nothing but green grass."
Visions should not be made an object of thinking. You should just wait, and life will provide you the right validity. Then accept it with gratitude.
Whatever you have seen was a vision, and it has been validated by life itself. Now there is no need to think about it.
If you start thinking, you will create a mess. And if you don't think, you will allow more visions to happen to you.
And a man of visions starts moving from the lower plane, from the valley, to the higher plane, towards the top, without much effort.
It is a good indication that you are ready. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
THE LONGER I AM YOUR DISCIPLE, THE LESS I KNOW AND UNDERSTAND.
A MAGIC PULL BROUGHT ME TO BOMBAY, AND SITTING IN YOUR
PRESENCE HAS BEEN LIKE COMING HOME AGAIN -- GLIMPSES OF TWO
HEARTS BEATING TOGETHER, MOMENTS OF LOVE AND WONDER, DAYS OF
JOY AND PLAYFULNESS.
BEING BACK IN HOLLAND THERE IS ONLY THIS BIG LONGING LEFT INSIDE
MY HEART: TO SIT AT YOUR FEET AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. BELOVED MASTER, MY MIND IS LOSING CONTROL, AND MY HEART
STARTS SINGING. WHAT IS HAPPENING?
The mind is a habit.
Even if there are moments when the heart is singing and the whole being is full of joy, the mind cannot leave its old habits. It will certainly ask what is happening.
Can't you allow things to happen without asking why? what? Do you understand why we ask such questions?
The mind asks these questions because it wants to control your lifestyle, it wants to know everything that is going on. Nothing should happen which is beyond it; everything should be in its control. The mind is a great controller. And if everything remains in its control, it will be a tragedy because nothing great can happen to you.
Everything that is great, magnificent, is beyond mind. And mind can never get the answer why, what, how.
You have to learn one thing: that it is not necessary to satisfy the mind about every experience.
Experiences of the heart, experiences of the being, experiences of the transcendental should not be made a point of inquiry. You should not ask why, you should enjoy them.
You should not ask what is happening, because if you insist on these questions the happening will stop. These questions are not your friends. Let the mind ask questions only when something is going wrong. You are sick, you have a headache, your stomach has cramps -- let the mind ask; that is the right realm for the mind.
But your heart is dancing -- what has the mind to do with it?
Just tell the mind, "Keep quiet, this is not your world. You look at your affairs. You should not go on poking your nose everywhere."
The heart is a higher reality.
The being is still higher, and there are realities higher than the being. Mind cannot ask questions about them, and no answer is possible.
You will have to learn some new ways, and you will have to drop some old habits.
So just make it a point, simple: if there is something wrong, you are miserable... misery is perfectly the right terrain where mind is needed. Without mind, you cannot create misery; it is the world of mind -- then ask why.
But it is strange: nobody comes to ask, "Why am I miserable?" But when the heart is dancing, people ask, "Why? What is happening?"
The reason is because your heart has not danced for centuries, so the experience is so new that you get scared. You start feeling perhaps you are a little bit crazy, getting old, senile.
What is happening? -- because the experience is new.
But remember, the mind's area of concern is only with anything going wrong. The mind has the right to ask and to find the right cause and to put things right.
But celebration, rejoicing, ecstasy -- mind has nothing to do with them. Just tell the mind,
"You rest. Everything is going fine, you need not worry."
If you can teach the mind to ask the right questions and not to interfere in realms which are beyond it, you will have disciplined yourself for more and more, greater and higher experiences.
Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,
IT SEEMS THAT MY PROBLEMS ARE GETTING MORE AND MORE SINCE I HAVE BECOME YOUR SANNYASIN. IS THAT YOUR WORK?
It is my work.
My work is to make you more and more aware, and when you become more aware you become aware of more problems.
Those problems were there before.
I don't create your problems, it is just that you were unconscious, you were not taking any note. Those problems were there.
It is just like a house which is in darkness, and many spiders are weaving their nests and scorpions are living and snakes are enjoying, and suddenly you bring light there. The light does not create the spiders or the scorpions or the snakes, but it makes you aware of them.
And it is good to be aware, because then the house can be cleaned; then you can avoid the snakes.
You have many problems which you are not seeing -- which in fact, you do not want to see. You go on postponing. You are so afraid of seeing those problems, because then you will have to solve them. But by postponing they are not solved; it is not so easy.
Problems are not letters written to George Bernard Shaw.
George Bernard Shaw used to collect letters; he would not open them. He would open them on the first of every month, so for thirty days he would collect thousands of letters from all over the world. His date was fixed: on the first of every month he would open them. And he would go on throwing them, because most of them had already been answered. It was rarely that some letter was left that had not answered itself.
Somebody asked him, "This is a strange way "
He said, "It is not strange, it is the simplest way. When somebody does not get an answer for two weeks, three weeks, he gets the answer that `This man is not going to answer.' He drops the hope.
"And most of those letters are useless anyway. I am not going to waste my whole month.
I have given them just one day -- and any really authentic letter that needs my attention, I answer. This way, I save my time, I save their time; otherwise they would have to read...
and this is such a difficult world that they would not only read they would reply also...
again you have to read it.
"It is better to finish it from the very beginning. It is a chain phenomenon, it can go on endlessly. And the more you allow it and then stop, the more it hurts. The first letter and it is finished -- it does not hurt. The man just understands that this man is not the type who answers letters."
But problems are not letters, and life is not George Bernard Shaw. You cannot postpone.
But people are postponing. They go on pushing them this way and that way, everywhere hiding them, thinking that some miracle... and things will settle down and problems will be solved. This is not going to happen. On the contrary, those problems will create their children. They will start finding boyfriends, girlfriends -- two problems meeting together and a third problem is produced, and you will be in more difficulty.
It is better to go on facing each problem as it comes by.
It is not sannyas that has created your problems. Sannyas has simply given you a little more awareness.
Your problems have always been there.
Sannyas has given you the opportunity to solve them.
And one should enjoy solving one's problems. It sharpens your intelligence. Each problem is a challenge. Each problem makes you more intelligent.
And the day you will not have any problems, your mind will come to its utmost clarity --
because no dust, no problem. Your mind becomes a mirror, so pure that it
reflects reality. Yes, it is my work.
But don't think that I am creating your problems.
I am just giving you insight, awareness, silence, so that you can see your problems and solve them.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #7
Chapter title: Zorba and Buddha: Their split is your social disease 9 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610095
ShortTitle: ENLIGH07
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 122
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN I CAME TO GREECE TO SEE YOU, EVERYTHING REFLECTED MORE
AND MORE OF THE ZORBA.
NOW, BEING HERE IN INDIA, EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IS REFLECTING
MORE OF THE BUDDHA.
OSHO, DOES THIS DEPEND ON BEING IN GREECE OR INDIA?
Human history has been a tragedy.
And the reason for it being a tragedy is not very complex. You have not to go very far to find it out, it is in everybody.
The whole past of man has created a split in man; there is a constant civil war in every human being.
If you do not feel at ease, the reason is not personal. Your disease is social.
The strategy that has been used is to divide you into two enemy camps: the zorba and the buddha, the materialist and the spiritualist.
You are not divided in reality. In reality you are a harmonious whole. But in your mind the conditioning is that you are not one whole, one piece: you have to fight against your body. If you want to be a spiritual being, the body has to be conquered, defeated, destroyed, tortured in every possible way.
This has been the accepted ideology all over the world. In different cultures, different religions, the formulations may be different, but the basic rule is the same: divide man, create a conflict in him so one part starts feeling higher, becomes holy, starts condemning the other part as the sinner.
And the trouble is that you are one, there is no way to divide you.
Every division is going to create misery in you, every division will mean that
half of your being is fighting with the other half. And if you are fighting within yourself, how can you be at ease?
The whole humanity up to now has lived in a schizophrenic way. Everyone has been cut into pieces, fragments. Your religions, your philosophies, your ideologies have not been healing processes, they have been root causes of inner conflict and war. You have been wounding yourself. Your right hand wounds the left hand, your left hand wounds the right hand; both your hands become wounded.
The West finally chose to go with the zorba. There was no other way to remain sane --
one part had to be completely destroyed, ignored, forgotten. The West denied the inner reality of man, his consciousness: man is only body -- there is no soul -- and eat, drink and be merry is the only religion. This was simply a way to find some peace of mind, to get out of the conflict, to come to a decision and a conclusion -- because this is accepting that you are one: just matter, just body.
The East has chosen the other way, but the basic problem is the same: the East has chosen that you are the soul and the body is an illusion.
Matter does not exist, the world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, so don't be bothered about it. Renounce it, forget all about it -- it is not worth taking note of.
On the surface it seems that East and West are doing different things, but essentially they are not doing different things. Essentially they are trying to find a rational way to be one.
Because to be two means a constant dis-ease, a conflict -- it is better to drop the idea of the other.
The East says that the body is illusory, it is only an appearance, a shadow, it has no reality.
The West says that consciousness is a byproduct -- it does not exist in itself, it is an appearance. When the body dies nothing remains, the body is all, and the consciousness that you feel is just the combination of all the elements of the body.
For example, if you take all the parts of your car separately, or all the parts of your watch separately, do you think something like a soul will be released out of the watch? Who was running the watch? It was just because of the combination of the parts in a certain way that the watch was running, the car was running, that all machines are working; it is a byproduct. Put all the parts together again and the watch will start ticking -- the soul has not gone anywhere, there has been no soul in the first place.
As far as I am concerned, I see that the fundamental reason is to somehow choose one and decide that the other is illusory, so that you can be at peace, so that there is no need to fight, torture, and be in constant fear of being defeated.
Why have the East and the West chosen differently? That also has to be understood.
The Eastern mind, in search of a unitary being, tried to find out: what exactly is this inner consciousness that the Eastern mystics, saints and sages have been talking about, and calling the body illusory? To us the body seems to be real, and consciousness is just a word. But because all the saints in the East were insisting that this word `consciousness'
is your reality, the East has tried to find out what this reality is before deciding in favor of the body.
The natural tendency will be to decide in favor of the body, because the body is there, already appearing real -- consciousness you have to search for, you have to go into an inner pilgrimage.
The East, because of people like Gautam Buddha and Mahavira, could not deny that these people were sincere. Their sincerity was so clear, their presence was so impressive, their words were so authoritative... it was impossible to deny. No argument was enough, because these people were their own argument, their own validity.
And they were so peaceful and so joyful, so relaxed, so fearless. They had everything that every human being desires... and in a way they had nothing. Certainly they had found a source within themselves, a treasure. And you cannot just deny it without giving enough time to the search. Unless you find that there is no consciousness, you cannot deny it.
We had people so fragrant... we could not see their roses, but the fragrance was so much that the East tried to look inside, and found that the soul is far more real. The body is just an appearance.
And just by the way, it will be significant to remind you that modern science has come to the conclusion that matter is illusory, that matter does not exist, it only appears. They have come to the conclusion from a very different route. By searching deeply into matter, they have found that, as they reach deeper into matter, it is less and less substantial. And at a point after the atom, there is no matter at all: there are only electrons, which are particles of electricity -- which is not matter but energy.
Just a hundred years ago, Nietzsche declared "God is dead" not knowing at all that within a hundred years the whole of science would agree that perhaps God may be alive, but matter is dead.
The East has moved inwards and found that the body, matter, is relatively non- substantial. The ultimate reality belongs to consciousness.
In the West, development happened in a different way. And there are reasons why it happened in that way.
The East is ancient. At least ten thousand years of a constant, consistent search of the inner reality of man -- and all the genius of the East has been devoted to it.
When the UPANISHADS were being written in the East, nearabout five thousand years ago, the West did not exist as a human society at all.
In India we have Mohenjo daro, Harrapur -- cities that existed seven thousand years ago, with such refined development... they have streets as wide as those in Bombay. They have bedrooms with attached bathrooms.
And you will be surprised at why I am saying this: because just a hundred years ago in America, there was a court case against bathrooms which went up to the Supreme Court.
The first man who made a bathroom attached to his bedroom... Christianity was against it because this is dirty -- making your bathroom attached to your bedroom. This is un-Christian; cleanliness is next to God. And here is the bathroom next to the bedroom! Just a hundred years ago... and the Supreme
Court had to decide that there is nothing unclean in it, and if somebody wants to have a bathroom attached to his bedroom it is nobody else's business to interfere and it has nothing to do with your religion.
But the church was fighting.
In Harapur, seven thousand years ago, they had bathrooms attached to their bedrooms, they had bathtubs, and they had a very special arrangement for circulation of water in the city. The hot and cold water in your bathroom is not a new thing; it was available in Harapur, in Mohenjo daro. They had swimming pools. It must have been a very highly cultured society.
At the time of Gautam Buddha, just twenty-five centuries ago, even then the West was not very evolved. And you can see it. We did not crucify Gautam Buddha, and the West crucified Jesus Christ five hundred years after Gautam Buddha.
And what Jesus was saying was nothing compared to Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha was saying that there is no God; still, nobody thought of crucifying him. Jesus Christ was not saying anything against Judaism; on the contrary, he was simply saying that he was their lost prophet. And he was repeating everything written in the Old Testament -- he was not saying anything that was contradicting the old religion. And Gautam Buddha was contradicting everything in Hinduism: he said that the VEDAS are idiotic, he said that there is no God, he said that all priests are the most cunning people in the world. And priests in India, the brahmins, are the highest caste. But nobody thought of crucifying him.
People challenged him for discussions, people discussed, and because they could not defeat him in argument They could not defeat him.
When they came in front of him, they were sincere enough to realize and recognize that he knew better, that their knowledge was only bookish, and his knowledge was authentic experience.
Western development is childish compared to Eastern development. It begins in Greece.
But even a man like Socrates, who was neither denying God nor affirming God, who was simply saying that, "I have not come to experience, hence, I cannot be untruthful -- I cannot say whether God exists or not. And I would like everybody
to be sincere about it.
Unless you encounter, don't say yes, don't say no; remain agnostic, keep your conclusions suspended."
A very reasonable man, but he was also poisoned. He has not denied your tradition, he has not denied your past, he has not denied anything -- he simply argued for a more rational approach, a more logical approach. It is not a crime. And this is the reward that he gets: he is poisoned, society decides that he is a dangerous man.
Those people who could have changed Western society towards inner reality are being crucified or poisoned.
Naturally, the talented people became afraid even of talking about inner things, mysteries. They started talking only about objective things, matter, because matter cannot be denied. And there is no problem with going into a deep search into matter.
The crucifixion of Jesus and the death of Socrates closed the door for Western genius to move inwards. Anybody who had any intelligence became aware that it is simply inviting your death; it is better to use your talents and genius in such a way that the society cannot condemn it.
So the whole genius of Western humanity became a servant for creating more comforts for the body, more technology, more machines, more knowledge about matter -- and everybody was happy.
Even in these matters, if there was something that went against religion, immediately the church was there to stop it.
For example, when Galileo wrote that the sun does not go around the earth as it appears, but that in actuality the earth goes around the sun, as it does not appear, he was called by the pope to his court and asked -- and he was old, seventy-five years old, sick and almost on his deathbed -- "You have to change your book because it goes against the BIBLE. In the BIBLE the statement is that the sun goes around the earth, and we are not ready to listen to any argument. You simply change it; otherwise, death will be your punishment."
Such an idiotic church, which is not even ready to listen to any argument, which
only knows to dictate: Do it or be ready to die!
Galileo must have had a great sense of humor. He said, "There is no need for you to take so much trouble to kill me. I am going to die anyway. As far as the book is concerned, I will change it, but I want you to remember that by my changing the book, neither is the earth going to change nor is the sun going to change. The earth will still go around the sun, because they don't read my book and they don't care what I write."
So he cancelled the statement in his book. And in the footnote he wrote, "I am canceling the statement, knowing perfectly well that it makes no difference. The reality remains the same."
When Copernicus found that the earth is not flat as it is said in the BIBLE, but round, he was immediately in trouble.
Now, these matters have nothing to do with religion. What has religion to do with whether the earth is round or flat? It can have any geometrical shape -- religion does not have anything to do with it.
But Christianity, Mohammedanism, are very primitive religions. They don't have the cultured, sophisticated attitude of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism. They don't know how to argue, they only know how to fight. Their only argument is the sword; at the point of the sword is to be decided who is right.
It is the church -- you will be surprised to know -- that has prevented the West from going in the direction of inwardness. It forced Western humanity to go towards matter.
The inner was absolutely the church's monopoly, and they decided everything about it: there was no need to search, there was no need to discover, there was no need to meditate. You were only supposed to believe in God. But if you could do something as far as matter is concerned, there would be no problem; as long as it did not come in conflict with the BIBLE.
Copernicus said to the pope, "It is just a small thing, and I have every proof that the earth is round. It is my lifelong work, and it does not affect your religiousness."
The pope said, "You don't understand. The question is not whether it affects our
religiousness or not; the question is that the BIBLE is God's book, the holy book. If one statement in the BIBLE is proved wrong, that has great implications: first, that God can be wrong. We cannot accept that."
They cannot even accept that the pope can be wrong, what to say about God? The pope is a faraway representative. Jesus represents God, and the pope represents Jesus -- not directly, but through hundreds of popes who have died before him. He is connected through them to Jesus, and Jesus has a direct telephone line to God.
Just one statement against the BIBLE, if it is proved valid, makes God fallible. And it cannot be accepted -- that's one thing.
Secondly, if one statement is proved wrong, what is the guarantee about other statements? It creates suspicion. It destroys the very foundation of belief and faith -- "So we cannot accept anything in the BIBLE as wrong. You can do everything that does not go against the BIBLE."
Naturally only matter was left. You can do research in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in zoology, in geology. You can do all these things, you are free.
The church has been a great China Wall, preventing people from going inwards.
It looks strange, but it is a fact: the Christian church has proved the greatest enemy of religion on the earth. Other religions have also proved enemies, but not that great.
Genius was left to work only with matter.
In the East, the genius had first preference for the inner journey.
Only second-class, mediocre people would work for the outer, material things; real intelligence would always move into meditativeness.
Slowly slowly, the distance became bigger. The West became materialist -- and the whole responsibility goes to the Christian church -- and the Eastern humanity became more and more spiritualist. The division, the split that was created in each man, became a split on a wider scale: as East and West.
One great poet has written, "East is East and West is West, and never the twain
shall meet." And this man, Lord Kipling, was very much interested in the East. He lived in India for years, he was in the government service. But seeing the difference... that the whole Eastern consciousness moves inwards and the Western consciousness moves outwards -- how could they meet?
My whole work is just to prove Lord Kipling wrong.
I would like to say -- neither West is West nor East is East, and the twain have already met.
What do you mean by Èast'? In Bombay, Calcutta is east; in Calcutta, Bombay is west.
This is nonsense, these words are relative words. You cannot say that a certain place is east and a certain place is west; they are all relative. For the people of Calcutta, Tokyo is east -- and that's what the Japanese think. They call their land "the land of sunrise" and they call their king "the only begotten son of the sun god." The sun god is the real god, and Hirohito, the king of Japan, is his only son.
In fact, in the second world war when the Japanese were defeated, they could not believe it. Thousands of soldiers committed suicide just out of shame -- "How can it happen that God's son should be defeated? Now there is no point in living, everything has gone wrong."
They believe that they are the real East. Nobody is East and nobody is West.
But the attitudes can be understood, and they are very prominent. And my whole approach is to bring a bridge into each individual, so that you are one whole.
Don't be against your body; it is your home.
Don't be against your consciousness, because without consciousness your house may be very decorated but it won't have any master, it will be empty. Together they create a beauty, a fuller life.
Symbolically, I have chosen Zorba for the body and Buddha for the soul.
Your question is that when I was in Greece I was talking more about Zorba, and here in India the atmosphere seems to be closer to Buddha. Your observation is true.
In Greece I was talking about Zorba. Still they deported me.
If I had been talking about Buddha, you would not have seen me again!
I was talking about Zorba because that is the foundation. But I was making it clear that Zorba alone is only the foundation of the house, it is not the house itself.
In India I am talking about Buddha, but I have not forgotten Zorba.
Each statement that I make -- whether it is about Zorba or about Buddha -- implies the other automatically, because to me they are inseparable. It is only a question of emphasis.
To make the Greek mind understand, I emphasized Zorba.
The ambassador of Sri Lanka to America wrote me a letter saying that "Your followers around the world are making restaurants, discos, and calling them ZORBA THE
BUDDHA. It is very insulting to Buddha. And if you do such thing in a country like Sri Lanka, there can be violence. I advise you to drop this name."
I told my secretary to write to him, that "In the first place, nobody has the monopoly on Zorba or on Buddha. Secondly, we are not concerned with Gautam the Buddha; `buddha'
is not a personal name, it is a quality. It means the awakened one. Anyone who is awakened can be called the buddha. Gautam Buddha is only one of the millions of buddhas who have happened and who will happen. And you cannot prevent Zorba becoming a buddha. In fact, you should help me to make zorbas into buddhas, because that is the only real revolution -- that a materialist, a zorba, who knows nothing of higher consciousness, becomes a buddha."
He never replied.
Zorba has his own beauty. And the island in Greece where I was staying is the place where Kazantzakis, the novelist who created the novel ZORBA THE GREEK Zorba is a fictitious name, he is not a historical person. But the island
where I was staying was the island where Kazantzakis was born.
And Kazantzakis is one of the best novelists of this century, and he suffered tremendously at the hands of the church. Finally, when he wrote ZORBA THE GREEK
he was expelled from the church. By writing ZORBA he was forced: "You withdraw your book ZORBA; otherwise you will be expelled." Because he did not withdraw the book, he was expelled from Christianity and condemned to hell.
Zorba is really Kazantzakis' own individuality, which Christianity had repressed, which he could not live, which he wanted to live. He expressed that whole unlived part of his life in the name of Zorba.
Zorba is a beautiful man -- no fear of hell, no greed for heaven, living moment to moment, enjoying small things... food, drink, women. After the whole day's work, he will take his musical instrument and will dance on the beach for hours.
And the other part of Kazantzakis which he lived in ZORBA THE GREEK... Zorba is the servant. The other part is the master who employed Zorba as his servant. He is always sad and sitting in his office, doing his files, never laughing, never enjoying, never going out and always feeling deep down jealous of Zorba because he earns a little, not much, but he lives like an emperor, not thinking of tomorrow, of what will happen. He eats well, he drinks well, he sings well, he dances well. And his master, who is very rich, is just sitting there sad, tense, in anguish, in misery, suffering.
One day Zorba says to his master -- which is Kazantzakis himself -- "Master, there is only one thing wrong with you: you think too much. You come with me." It was a full-moon night.
Kazantzakis tried -- "No, no. What are you doing?"
But Zorba pulled him out to the beach and he started dancing, playing his instrument.
And he told Kazantzakis, "Try. Jump! If you cannot dance, do SOMETHING." And with Zorba's energy and his vibe, Kazantzakis also started dancing. For the first time in his life he felt that he was alive.
Zorba is the unlived part of every so-called religious person.
And why was the church so much against it when ZORBA was published? It was just a novel; there was nothing for the church to be worried about. But it was so clear that it is the unlived Christian in every Christian, this book could be a dangerous book. And it is a dangerous book.
But Zorba is tremendously beautiful. Kazantzakis sends him to purchase some things from the city, and he forgets all. He drinks and goes to the prostitutes and enjoys, and once in a while he remembers that it seems many days have passed but still, the money is with him. Unless all the money is finished, how can he return? The master will be very angry, but nothing can be done about it -- it is his problem.
And after three weeks he comes back -- and he had gone only for three days -- and he does not bring anything that he was sent for. And he comes with all the stories -- "What a great journey it was, you should have been there. I met such beautiful bubalinas... and such good wine."
And the master said, "But what about the things? For three weeks I have been sitting here boiling."
He said, "When there are so many beautiful things available, who bothers about such small things? You can cut my salary every week, by and by, slowly, and take your money back. I am sorry I could not come earlier. And you should be happy that I have come --
because the money was finished I had to come. But next time when I go, I will bring all the things."
He said, "You will never go again. I will send somebody else."
Zorba's whole life is a life of simple, physical enjoyment, but without any anxiety, without any guilt, without any botheration about sin and virtue and.…
I would like this man Zorba to be alive in everybody, because it is your natural
inheritance. But you should not stop at Zorba.
Zorba is only the beginning. Sooner or later, if you allow your Zorba full expression, you are bound to think of something better, higher, greater. It will not come out of thinking; it will come out of your experiences -- because those small experiences will become boring.
Buddha himself had come to be Buddha because he had lived the life of a zorba. That thing has not been noticed by the East -- that for twenty-nine years Buddha lived as no Zorba could ever live. Zorba was so poor.
Gautam Buddha's father had arranged for all the beautiful girls to be picked from the whole kingdom for Buddha's enjoyment. He made three beautiful palaces in three different places for different seasons. He had beautiful gardens and lakes. Buddha's whole life was just luxury, pure luxury. But he got bored.
One of the most significant experiences that he comes across was when one night beautiful girls were dancing... he was drinking, they were drinking, and then everybody fell asleep drunk. In the middle of the night he woke up and looked around, and he was shocked; and that shock was one of the turning points in his life. Some girl was snoring --
she was a beautiful girl, but her mouth open and snoring... she looked so ugly, the saliva was coming out... somebody's nose was flowing. And he said, "My God, this is what beauty is!" He was finished. Those girls were dispersed the next morning. "I don't want any girls in my palaces. Enough is enough."
In fact, it was too much. In twenty-nine years he lived almost the equivalent to four or five lives of an ordinary man. With all that luxury, soon he found himself tired and bored, and a question became very prominent in his mind: Is this all? Then what am I going to live tomorrow for? Life must mean something more; otherwise, it is meaningless.
It was out of the zorba that the search, for Buddha, started.
Not everybody becomes a buddha; and the basic reason is that the zorba remains unlived.
Do you see my argument? My argument is: live Zorba fully, and you will naturally enter into the life of a buddha.
Kazantzakis has written ZORBA THE GREEK. He's dead. If he had been allowed to live more.… He was sick, he was very tense, he remained very miserable because he was always afraid of sin. And then when he was expelled from the Christian church -- that means condemned to hell; only Christians can go to paradise -- that was such a shock that he could not survive. He was really killed by the Christian church expelling him.
If he were alive, I would have told him: "Your book is half. You need to write another book, ZORBA THE BUDDHA. Then it will be a complete phenomenon. But you can write the other book only if you live your zorba. You have not even lived zorba; how can you live the buddha?"
Enjoy your body, enjoy your physical existence. There is no sin in it. Hidden behind it is your spiritual growing, is your spiritual blissfulness. When you are tired of physical pleasures, only then will you ask, "Is there something more?" And this question cannot be only intellectual, it has to be existential: "Is there something more?"
And when the question is existential, you will find within yourself something more.
There is something much more. Zorba is only the beginning.
Once the buddha, the awakened soul, takes possession of you, then you will know that pleasure was not even a shadow. There is so much bliss That bliss is
not against pleasure. In fact, it is pleasure which has brought you to bliss.
There is no fight between Zorba and Buddha. Zorba is the arrow -- if you follow it rightly, you will reach the Buddha.
Certainly in Greece there is an atmosphere different from India. The Greek personality has remained materialistic.
In India, the basic and the essential atmosphere is that of the awakened soul.
Whether you go on sleeping, it doesn't matter, but the atmosphere around you is that of the sunrise. The birds are singing, the flowers are blossoming, and from everywhere the indication is for you to wake up.
I will go to Greece again because I have been enjoying all these deportations.
And next time I have to talk about Buddha -- because I have talked only about Zorba, and I never leave anything incomplete.
And already, the minister of interior in Greece has invited me: "We will make arrangements, you come."
I said, "I will come, but at least for three weeks don't deport me" -- because no country seems to be able to have me for more than three weeks. A few countries are so stupid that they cannot even have me for thirty-six hours.
England proved to be the worst. They would not allow me six hours to sleep at the airport
-- not even entering England, but just the airport lounge. They wouldn't allow me to sleep there for six hours.
I said, "What reasons have you got?"
And the airport officer said, "We have no reasons. This is the file, the information from the prime minister is that `This man is dangerous and should not be allowed.'"
But I said, "I am not entering England, and from the lounge there is no way to enter into England. And you have checked me well -- I am not carrying any bombs or anything.
And sleeping six hours in the airport, what danger can I do? You just think "
He said, "Don't put me into trouble, because tomorrow it is going to be in parliament and then I will be answerable -- `Why did you allow him?'"
So I had to go to jail for six hours. They said, "The only place we can allow you to remain is in jail."
And the next day in parliament the question was there, and I am always surprised that the question is asked and the same answer is given, that "The man is very dangerous," but nobody in the parliament has the intelligence to ask, "What danger could he have been just sleeping in the lounge at the airport? He may be dangerous, but what danger could he have been?" Nobody in the parliament asked.
So I have informed the minister in Greece that I will go. I have to go.
I was really thinking to stay longer, and I had fifteen more days on the visa to stay, but the archbishop of Greece threatened the government that if they didn't deport me immediately then they were going to burn my house where I was staying, burn me alive and all the people who were staying with me, dynamite the house. And the government became threatened, and they thought that "Some problem may arise, it is better to send this man away immediately."
I was asleep when I was arrested. You don't arrest people when they are asleep.
And they had no reason, because I had not gone out of the house for fifteen days. I said,
"You have to show some reason why you are deporting me."
They said, "We don't have any reason, just orders from above." And all the orders were based on the threat of the archbishop.
It is the same archbishop that expelled Kazantzakis.
And these people are living almost out of date, out of time. They are not contemporaries.
Because the day they deported me from the island, the people of the island, who had no idea about me, just rumors But seeing the threat of the archbishop they
all felt ashamed. And they asked me, "What we can do? We are poor people."
I said, "You all go to the airport to show the archbishop how many people are with him and how many people are with me -- although I have been here for only fifteen days and they have been here for two thousand years." And there were only six old women with the archbishop in the church, and three thousand people, the whole island, at the airport.
Still they don't understand that they are no longer needed, that their time is finished. And they talk about loving your enemy and loving your neighbor, and God is love -- and they threaten a man who has not done anything that they will burn him alive, with all his friends. At least twenty-five people were staying in that big mansion.
This shows that somehow the Western mind has not grown towards inwardness, towards love, towards non-violence. Their whole approach is materialistic.
Two thousand years after Jesus is crucified, and this man is threatening me -- Jesus Christ's representative in Greece is threatening me -- that he will burn me alive. Does he represent Jesus Christ or was he also one of the rabbis who crucified Jesus Christ?
The mind of the priest in the West has been a hindrance to Western growth towards meditation. But a strange time of revolution has come -- at least for the new generation, because the new generation is not with these old priests and these old churches.
And the new generation in the West is looking towards the East. That's a great hope.
That is Zorba searching for Gautam Buddha. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
THOUGHTS OF DEATH HAVE BEEN A FREQUENT VISITOR DURING MY
DISCIPLEHOOD. HOW CAN A DISCIPLE DIE IN A MASTER'S PRESENCE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THE MASTER IS PHYSICALLY DISTANT?
OSHO, IS MAHAKASHYAP THE ONLY ANSWER?
The question is not whether or not you are in the presence of the master, but whether or not you are filled with love and trust for the master.
Physical closeness means nothing. Only spiritual closeness is significant.
Your love, your trust is enough. You can be on the moon and the master will be by your side -- really, the master will be inside you -- because as your love deepens, something of the master, his energies, start melting and merging with you.
The fear of physical distance is the fear of lack of love and trust.
Mahakashyap alone is not the answer. Everybody has to be an answer unto himself.
Mahakashyap remained with Buddha, and after Buddha's death he died; he could not survive separately.
But that is Mahakashyap's uniqueness. It is not the only answer.
I will tell you a few other stories around Buddha so you can understand.
Ananda lived with Buddha for forty-two years. Nobody else lived with Buddha so long, nobody was allowed to live with him so long. But there was a problem. Ananda was Buddha's cousin-brother, and older than him, and just the Eastern tradition.… Before taking initiation -- Ananda was the elder brother -- and he said to Gautam Buddha,
"Siddharth" -- Siddharth was his family name -- "Listen: after initiation, whatever you say I will have to do. I will be your disciple, you will be my master. Right now I am your elder brother, you are my younger brother; whatever I say you have to do. Three things you have to remember -- don't forget them when I become a disciple." It is a beautiful story.
Buddha said, "What are the three things?"
Ananda said, "First, I will always live with you; you cannot send me anywhere else to spread the message. Second, if I want anybody to meet you -- even in the middle of the night -- you cannot say no; that is my personal privilege. And thirdly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. Even in sleep, you cannot make me stay in a different place."
Buddha promised, and these three conditions were followed for forty-two years.
But Ananda did not become enlightened. You can understand his pain and his anguish --
people who had come long after him became enlightened, and he remained in his ignorance just the same as before. The day Buddha died he said, "What will happen to me? I could not become enlightened even though I was with you for
forty-two years, day in, day out, twenty-four hours a day. Without you, I don't see any hope."
Buddha said, "You don't understand the dynamics of life. Perhaps you will become enlightened only when I am gone; I am the barrier. You take me for granted. The day you had asked those three conditions, I had thought that those conditions were going to be a barrier for you. You cannot forget that you are my elder brother, even now. You cannot forget that you have certain privilege over others. You cannot forget that I have agreed on three conditions only for you, for nobody else. Perhaps my death will help."
Buddha died. And after twenty-four hours, there was a great meeting of all the enlightened disciples to write down whatever Buddha had said in these forty-two years.
But the problem was that nobody had been with him continuously for forty-two years except Ananda -- but he could not be allowed in the meeting because he was not enlightened. An ignorant man, unenlightened -- you cannot rely on what he is saying, whether he heard it or imagined it, whether he has forgotten something, whether he has put his own interpretation in it. It is difficult.
And the scene is really tragic. The conference is inside a hall and Ananda is sitting outside on the steps crying, because he lived with Buddha for forty-two years; he knows more than anybody else. Each single moment he remembers, but he is unenlightened.
Crying, sitting there outside the hall, something transpired. He had not cried his whole life. With those tears, his ego disappeared; he became like a child.
They opened the door to see whether Ananda was still sitting outside -- because they had told him, "You sit outside. If we need some confirmation from you, we will ask you, but you cannot enter the conference."
They saw a transformed being. The old Ananda, the old egoist was gone. An innocent being with tears of joy... and they all could see the light surrounding him.
They invited him -- "You come in. Now there is no need for us to be worried. But it is strange... you could not become enlightened for forty-two years, and just after twenty-four hours you have attained that state" -- and this was
continuously emphasized by Gautam Buddha.
Ananda said, "It was my fault. His death became the death of my ego too." All the scriptures that are in existence are related by Ananda.
There were other enlightened disciples who did not die with Gautam Buddha. It was asked -- when Mahakashyap died, it became a very significant question -- it was asked to other enlightened disciples, "If Mahakashyap has died, how are you living?"
One of the disciples, Moggalayan, said, "I have to live now for my master's message. I am not living anymore -- I died with him; now he is living in me. That was one way, the way of Mahakashyap -- to dissolve in Gautam Buddha. This is another way. I have also dissolved, but dying is not going to help anybody. And there are so many blind people in the world who need eyes, there are so many people in darkness who need light. I will live. I will live as long as it is possible; I will live for Buddha."
So it is not a question of one person being decisive. Each person has to be unique in his own way. Somebody dies for the master, somebody lives for the master, and you cannot say who is greater -- perhaps no comparison is right. Both are themselves.
Just remember one thing -- your love. Then wherever you are, space and the distance in space does not matter. And at a certain depth, even time does not matter.
And when time and space both are immaterial, then you have really touched the feet of the master.
Then whatsoever transpires in you -- to live for the message or to die, whatever comes naturally and spontaneously -- let it happen.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #8
Chapter title: Indifference to the mind is meditation
10 October 1986 pm in Archive
code:
8610105
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH08
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
108
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I OFTEN WANTED TO ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS, BUT AFTER WAITING
FOR A WHILE, I ALWAYS FOUND MY QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY YOU. AND
AT THE SAME TIME I FOUND OUT THAT ALL THOSE QUESTIONS WERE JUST
SILLY QUESTIONS, COMING FROM MY MIND WITHOUT ANY CONNECTION
TO MY HEART. MY HEART ONLY WANTS TO CRY, AND MY MIND ONLY
WANTS TO KNOW, DESPITE ANY ANSWER.
COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON HOW TO DEAL WITH A CONTINUOUS
QUESTIONING MIND THAT IS NOT INTERESTED IN ANY ANSWER ANYWAY?
OR AM I JUST A GREEK DONKEY?
The disciple who can wait will find all his questions answered at the right moment.
But waiting is a great quality: it is deep patience, it is great trust.
The mind cannot wait, it is always in a hurry. It knows nothing about patience; hence it goes on piling questions upon questions without getting the answer.
It is something very delicate to understand: that it is not the answer that is significant but the right timing, your readiness to receive it; otherwise it will just go above your head.
The impatient mind is too much occupied in questioning. It forgets that questioning in itself is a meaningless activity -- the real thing is the answer, but for the answer you need a certain silence, peace, openness, receptivity. The mind is incapable of these qualities; hence, for thousands of years the mind has been asking and asking but it finds no answer.
In the world of the mind there are only questions.
And in the world of the heart there is only the answer, because the heart knows how not to ask, how to wait: let the spring come by itself; wait like a thirsty earth... the rainclouds will come; they have always been coming. There is no need to distrust, because there is not even a single exception where trust has failed, where waiting is not fulfilled, where patience is not immensely rewarded.
The functioning of the heart and the mind are totally different; not only different,
but diametrically opposite. The mind creates philosophies, theologies, ideologies
-- they are all questions that don't have any answer. The heart simply waits. At the right moment, the answer blossoms by itself.
The heart has no question, yet it receives the answer.
The mind has a thousand and one questions, yet it has never received any answer because it does not know how to receive.
Your mind is full of questions yet you have been observing that by and by, they are being answered. This should create in you a new insight, a new trust. A new dimension is opening: that you have just to wait, alert and awake, and if it is needed the answer will come to you.
You are also seeing that most of the questions that the mind is filled with are silly.
They are -- not most of them, all of them are silly for the simple reason that mind does not go through the discipline of asking receptively. It is more concerned with questions.
Even while the answer is being given, it has moved on to another question. Perhaps, listening to the answer, it has created ten more questions out of the answer itself.
Questions arise out of the mind just like leaves grow on the trees. And slowly slowly, they become more and more silly -- because it is very difficult to find many significant questions, and the mind is not satisfied with a small quantity of questions. It is greedy. It wants to ask everything; it wants to know everything without being ready to understand anything.
There are few significant questions.
And there is only one really fundamental question.
But that small quantity does not satisfy the greed of the mind.
You will be amazed to know that the English word `greed' comes from a very strange word in Sanskrit -- and if you want to see those people from where this word has come, Bombay has most of them. In Sanskrit the vulture is called
giddha, and from `giddha'
comes greed. And Bombay has the greatest number of vultures in the whole world, because Bombay has the greatest number of Parsees. There is a certain relationship between Parsees and vultures.
Parsees have a very strange way of disposing of their dead: they don't burn them like the Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas; they don't bury them like the Christians and the Mohammedans and the Jews. They have a unique way of their own, and they have a certain rationale for it. In their cemetery... and Bombay has the biggest, because Bombay has the biggest population of Parsees.
In their cemetery they have a big well. There are steel rods on top of the well. The dead body is put on those steel rods, and between the steel rods there are gaps. All around, there are big, ancient trees and thousands of vultures are sitting there, waiting for some poor Parsee to die -- the vultures need food every day; Parsees supply the food. The dead body of the Parsee is put on those rods on top of the well and the vultures eat whatever is edible. And whatever is not edible -- bones, et cetera -- goes on falling through the gaps between the rods into the well.
On the surface it looks very strange -- "What are you doing?" -- but the Parsees have their rationale. In this world everybody has some reasonable grounds for every superstition.
They say, "Because we have been eating everything, now it is our duty to be eaten." A beautiful logic: you have been eating for your whole life. If you are a meat-eater you have been eating animals. If you are a vegetarian, then you have been eating vegetables; that too is life. For your whole life you have been eating, and it is natural to be part of the same circle by being eaten. According to the Parsees, this is the most natural thing.
And I think people who believe in nature will support their idea -- because to burn a body is to destroy food, is to unnecessarily kill a few vultures, or to keep them hungry.
In a Hindu village, vultures don't exist. What will they do there? At the most, once in a while a cow dies, or a buffalo, and they can eat that.
Now there is a widespread movement amongst intellectuals around the earth that
we should not break natural cycles anywhere. For our whole lives we have been eating --
now it is time that we should be eaten. And anyway you are dead; why unnecessarily destroy good food for the vultures?
Just go here in Bombay, you will see a beautiful scene -- you will not see it anywhere else in the whole world -- so many vultures together just waiting for poor Parsees to die, praying to God, "Finish someone today." And God seems to listen to the vultures; some Parsee is bound to come.
The English word `greed' comes from the same root as `giddha', the vulture. The vulture is one of the ugliest birds you can conceive of.
And greed is certainly one of the ugliest things in man that you can think of.
But the mind is a vulture. It is never satisfied with anything. You go on giving to it, it goes on taking, and it goes on asking for more. It never feels grateful; it is always complaining that it is not enough. Nothing is enough to the mind.
Question after question -- meaningful, meaningless, relevant, irrelevant -- and not even a small space for any answer to enter into your mind. It is so crowded with questions.
The heart knows no questions.
And this is one of the mysteries of life: that the mind questions the whole life long and never receives any answer, and the heart never asks but receives the answer.
But there is one thing to be remembered: the mind is noisy, there is maddening noise. The heart may be receiving the answer, but because of the noise of the mind you may not come to feel that the answer has been received, that you are carrying it with you, that you are pregnant with it.
Not only does the mind disturb your peace, your silence; it disturbs it to such an extent that the heart -- which is capable of listening to silence, waiting, receptive
-- is denied all connection with your being. The mind monopolizes your being; it simply puts the heart aside. And because the heart is silent, and a gentleman, it
does not quarrel; it simply goes down the street, waits by the side of the road. Mind wants to occupy the whole space.
The disciple has to understand this whole situation -- that the dictatorship of the mind has to be destroyed, that the mind is only a servant, not a master. The master is the heart, because all that is beautiful grows in the heart; all that is valuable comes out of the heart -
- your love, your compassion, your meditation.
Anything that is valuable grows in the garden of the heart.
Mind is a desert, nothing grows there -- only sand and sand and barren land. It has never given any fruit, any flower. You have to understand it: mind should not be supported as much as you have been supporting it up to now. Mind has to be put in its right place.
The throne belongs to the heart.
And this is the revolution through which the disciple becomes a devotee: when the heart becomes the master, and the mind becomes a servant.
This has to be remembered: that as a servant, the mind is perfect. As a master... it is the worst master possible; as a servant, it is the best.
And the heart -- wherever it is, either on the throne or on the street -- is your only hope, the only possibility for you to be bridged with your being, to be bridged with existence. It is the only possibility for songs to arise in you, stars to descend in you, for your life to become a rejoicing, a dance.
You are asking me how to stop this mind, its constant questioning, its silly crowd of questions.
That is where everybody takes the wrong step. If you try to stop it, you will never be able to stop it. Ignore it. Be indifferent to it. Let it chatter.
Be aloof, unconcerned -- as if it does not matter whether it chatters or not, whether there are questions or not. Only this aloofness, this ignoring -- Buddha has given it the right name, upeksha -- this indifference slowly, slowly makes the
miracle happen.
What you want to achieve by fighting is not possible, because when you fight with someone you are giving energy to the enemy. You are giving attention, and attention is food; you are getting entangled with the mind, and mind enjoys a good fight. It has never happened that anybody has been able to stop the mind by fighting with it. That is the most important thing to understand: don't take any step towards fighting.
Just ignore, just be aloof, just let the mind do whatever it wants to do. When the mind feels unwelcomed, when the mind sees that you are no more interested in it, that it is pointless to go on shouting; you are not even hearing it, that you are not even curious about what is going on in the mind -- it stops.
It happened... and I have remembered it because the boy is here today. He is my sister's son.
He was very young, six years old. We had gone to see the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and his father was driving. His father went to make inquiries, to say that I had come, and ask whether the chief minister was in the house or not.
At that very moment -- the boy must have been feeling sleepy in the jeep; we had come a long distance -- he fell asleep and hit his head on the dashboard in front of him. He looked at me. I didn't pay any attention, I looked outside the jeep. He was going to cry and create trouble -- he looked again and again I looked outside.
Then his father came out. I went in for a half-hour meeting. Then we went home. It was almost two hours later, as we arrived home, that he started crying. As soon as he saw his mother he immediately started crying. I said, "What happened?"
He said, "I hit my head on the jeep."
I said, "That happened two hours ago!"
He said, "I know, but there was no point in crying because twice I looked at you and you looked outside the window. What is the point in crying with such a man? You did not even ask what had happened... you had seen that I had hit my head. Now my mother is here; now I can cry."
Even that small child could understand that when there is indifference, it is pointless to make any fuss; it is as if there is nobody in the jeep.
When you are indifferent, the mind starts feeling as if there is nobody -- what is the point of all the questions? Because you are interested, curious, you get involved, you are giving juice to the mind.
Indifference to the mind is meditation.
And all those questions will disappear, because they are absolutely meaningless. And when the chattering of the mind has disappeared, there is a silence, a peace, so that you can hear the still, small voice of your heart.
Only the heart knows the answer... it already knows it.
And if you are with a master, the heart simply says yes to the master, because the heart knows the answer already. Perhaps the master is putting it in a better way, more articulate, but the heart is in complete agreement. And that agreement dissolves all distances between the master and the disciple.
Then silence is not only silence, it is also communion.
Then things are not said but heard; then things are not said but shown.
And when the heart is totally willing, life is such a simple, uncomplicated phenomenon that you cannot conceive of anything more simple.
It is the mind which creates complications, goes on creating complications and questions.
Mind's whole expertise is to create complications.
If you want to live a simple, a beautiful, a silent, a joyful, a blissful life, let the mind be ignored and let the heart be restored to its status as master. This is the whole work of a religious seeker; nothing more is needed.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE NEVER BEEN GOOD AT REMEMBERING MY DREAMS. THEY SEEM
TO BE THERE ONLY IN TIMES OF EMOTIONAL CRISIS. ONCE OR TWICE A YEAR I HAVE ÀBIG' DREAM WHICH IS MORE LIKE A VISION
-- AND THAT'S IT.
DURING THE LAST YEARS IT HAS BECOME WORSE, AND NOW IT'S DOWN
TO ZERO. CONSIDERING DREAMS AS IMPORTANT FOR MY WORK AS A THERAPIST, I TRIED HARD WITH ALL KINDS OF METHODS BUT HAD NO
SUCCESS.
RECENTLY I MADE PEACE WITH IT. AS LOTS OF FLASHES AND INTUITIONS
COME UP IN THE DAYTIME, OR BEFORE I'M FALLING ASLEEP, I THOUGHT
THIS MIGHT BE FINE TOO. AFTER YESTERDAY'S DISCOURSE WHERE YOU
SAID THAT TO UNBURDEN THE SUBCONSCIOUS IS THE WAY TO THE
SUPERCONSCIOUS, I STARTED WORRYING AND WONDERING AGAIN. AM I SO REPRESSIVE? WHAT AM I SCARED OF THAT MAKES ME INCAPABLE OF
REMEMBERING MY DREAMS?
Purna, the process of dreaming and the process of remembering the dream are two things.
Very few people remember dreams; that does not mean that they don't have dreams.
Everybody has dreams -- but remembering a dream is a totally different thing. Even the people who remember dreams remember only the last dreams, the dreams of the early morning when you are just waking up, because the mechanism of memory is part of the conscious mind. Dreams happen in the unconscious; the unconscious doesn't have any memory mechanism. Only the conscious mind has the memory mechanism.
So if a dream is happening in the unconscious mind but very close to the conscious mind, then it remembers it faintly, vaguely.
In the morning when you are waking up you are coming closer to the conscious mind --
from the unconscious, back to the conscious mind. The last dream, the tail end, will be remembered, because it will be very close to when you wake up. So even people who remember, remember only the last dreams. They have been dreaming for almost six hours through the whole night; if they are sleeping for eight hours, they are dreaming for six hours. You can catch hold of just a faint reflection of the last dream, but if you don't catch hold of it for a few seconds, it will be gone. As you become more awake, you are farther away from the unconscious.
So to different people, different things will be happening.
There are people who wake up very slowly; they don't wake up quickly, in a jump.
The people who wake up quickly, in a jump, will have a different kind of memory from the people who wake up very slowly. They will have another kind of memory.
It also depends on what kind of dreams you are having.
Because you are a therapist -- and not only a therapist but my therapist -- your repression cannot be superficial. Because my whole teaching is: Don't repress; live out every instinct, every feeling, every emotion. If you are living out your emotions, your feelings, then you will not have superficial dreams; your dreams will be very deep. They will be less in the unconscious and more in the collective unconscious -- so deep that you will not be able to remember them. Unless a special effort is made, they cannot be remembered. And the only effort
that is possible is hypnosis.
If you are hypnotized and led by your hypnotist deep into your unconscious and asked,
"What is happening there? What kind of dream is going on?" only then will you be able to express it to him. When you wake up, you will not be able to remember what you have said either. It will take a long training between you and the hypnotist: after each hypnosis he has to suggest to you that you will remember it when you wake up. He has to emphasize it every time so much that it becomes a deep-rooted impression. Then you may be able to remember your dreams.
But there is no need. Unless you are especially working on dreams, for some specific purpose, there is no need.
I am emphasizing that you should ignore the mind. Now the unconscious, collective unconscious, cosmic unconscious -- these are all parts of the mind, and you are trying to remember them. Just the conscious mind is enough to torture you -- why do you need to remember the unconscious mind?
In the East we have been aware that the conscious mind is not the only mind. Below it, there is the unconscious mind; then below that is the collective unconscious mind; then below that is the cosmic unconscious mind. Above it, there is the superconscious mind; above that there is the collective superconscious mind; above that there is the cosmic superconscious mind. And when I say `mind' I mean this whole range -- they are one entity, one rainbow.
Ignore them all. There is no need to remember.
Many people are in madhouses because by some accident their collective unconscious has broken up and released its memories. Now their conscious mind is not capable of holding those memories, the weight is too much; that's what is driving them mad.
For example, in your collective unconscious mind, the woman who is your wife now may have been your mother in your past life. If this memory comes to your mind then you are going to be in trouble. Then how are you going to behave with your wife, as your mother or as your wife? Just being your wife was enough; just being your mother was enough too
-- now she is both. And you will be crushed, because you cannot have a sexual relationship with a woman who is your mother... the whole inhibition of thousands of years. And how will you manage your wife? Because she has no remembrance; she is going to say, "You are crazy, just forget all about it" -- but you cannot forget about it.
Nature has a beautiful arrangement: with each death, a thick layer of forgetfulness comes over your memories. You are carrying all the memories of all your lives. But a small human being finds it so difficult to live with a small conscious mind of one life -- if so many lives burst upon him, he is bound to be insane. It is a natural protection.
It happened.…
I was in Jabalpur and a girl was brought to me. She must have been, at that time, nine years of age. She remembered her past life completely -- so realistically that it was not a memory for her, it was a continuity. It was just some accidental error in nature that there was no barrier between the past life and this life.
There is a place just eighty miles away from Jabalpur, Katni. She was born in Katni and she remembered that she had her family in Jabulpur. She remembered the names, she remembered her husband, she remembered her sons, the house -- she remembered everything. One of my friends brought them to me.
I said, "This is strange, because the people she is remembering are living just three or four blocks away from my house." They had a petrol pump, so I used to go for petrol at their petrol pump every day. But I said, "You wait. You wait in my house and I will call them -- the Pathak brothers -- I will call them and we will see whether this girl remembers them or not."
So they came with their servants and a few other neighbors. There were twelve, thirteen people in the crowd, so that they could see whether she could find out.… She immediately jumped, and said, "Brother, have you recognized me or not?" She caught hold of both brothers, among thirteen people, and she inquired about the mother and the children... and father had died, and she was crying. It was not a memory, it was a continuity. They took her to their home and then it was a problem: the girl was torn apart about whether to go to this family's house in Jabalpur and live there, or to go back to Katni to the new family where she had been born.
Of course, in this family she had lived for seventy years, so the pull was more towards the past-life family. And in the new family she had been born only nine years before; there was no pull -- but that was her family, her real family. This other family was only a memory, but to her, it was such a heart-rending problem.
And both the families were disturbed about what to do: if she remained in Jabalpur, she would remember the other family continuously, worry about what was happening to them and feel, "I want to go there." If she was there, she would be thinking that she wanted to be in Jabalpur.
Finally I suggested that the only way -- it was a freak case, there was nothing spiritual in it -- was that she needed a deep hypnosis for a few days, so the barrier could be created.
She had to be hypnotized to forget the old and the past. Unless she could forget the past, her whole life was going to be a misery.
Both families were ready to accept that something had to be done. She was hypnotized continually for at least ten days, to forget. It took ten sessions to create a small barrier so that the old life's memories didn't float into the new life.
I have been inquiring about her. She is now perfectly okay -- married, has children, has forgotten completely. Even when those people come to see her, she does not recognize them. But her barrier is very thin and artificial. Any accident, and the barrier could be broken, or any hypnotist could break it very easily within ten sessions; or some great shock, and the barrier could be broken.
There is no need for you to remember. It is perfectly good. We have to get free from the mind.
The East has known all the layers of the mind, but the East has emphasized a totally different aspect than the West: ignore it -- you are the pure consciousness behind all these layers.
Western psychology is just childish, just born at the end of the last century. It is not even a hundred years old. They have taken up the desire to enter into dreams and to find out, to dig deeper into what is there in the mind.
There is nothing. You will find more and more memories, more and more
dreams, and you will destroy the person because you will make him vulnerable to an unnecessary burden which has to be erased.
One has to go beyond mind, not within the mind.
And you don't have any memory as far as the state of beyond mind is concerned.
Just drop the idea of the mind. Don't meddle with it; it is getting into an unnecessary trouble and nightmare. You have to surpass the mind, you have to transcend the mind.
Your whole effort should be one-pointed, and that is how to be a no-mind: no dreams, no memories, no experiences.
Then you are at the very center of your being.
Only then do you taste something of immortality. Only then, for the first time, do you know what intelligence is.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
ONLY JUST NOW I DISCOVERED THAT A MASTER-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP
IS REALLY A TWO-WAY AFFAIR, IN WHICH THE DISCIPLE NEEDS TO
RESPOND OPENLY TO THE MASTER IN ORDER FOR THE MASTER TO BE
ABLE TO DO HIS WORK.
I MYSELF, ON THE CONTRARY, HAVE ALWAYS WATCHED PASSIVELY, KEPT A DISTANCE AND DRAWN MY OWN CONCLUSIONS.
PLEASE COMMENT.
The master never does anything.
And if you are remaining aloof, nothing will ever happen to you.
Your receptivity and openness is not needed for the master to do something; your openness and receptivity are needed so that the very presence of the master can provoke something to happen in you -- and these are two different things. Doing something is a very positive effort, and just allowing your presence for something to happen in you is a totally different thing. There is no positive effort. The effort is on the side of the disciple.
So what you have discovered, you have discovered wrongly: it is not a two-way affair, not a two-way road; it is a one-way street. It is up to you to be open, ready, available.
The presence of the master is there, just like the light -- you open your eyes and the light is there.
The light does not travel to your eyes in particular. You can keep your eyes closed and the light will not knock on your eyelids: "Please open your eyes." You can keep your eyes closed; the light is very democratic, it will not interfere. But if you open your eyes you will see the light; not only the light, but in the light you will see many other things too -- the flowers, the people, the whole world. Still, you cannot say that light has been doing something to you. Something is transpiring in you. It will not transpire without the light, so certainly the presence of the light is needed -- but just the presence is needed, not the action.
Action is needed on your part, not just presence, because you can be present here and closed -- nothing will evolve out of it.
The disciple has to do everything.
And this is the beauty of the whole phenomenon. Otherwise, you will become a puppet in the hands of the master. Then he will do things that he wants to do; then he will make you the way he wants to make you -- the ideal, the mold. He will destroy your individuality, he will destroy your freedom. No master worth the name can do that.
The master can give his whole being to you, can make it available -- but only as a presence, not as an action.
The doing is on the part of the disciple. You have to be receptive, you have to be silent, you have to be meditative, you have to be trusting everything, because it
is your life and you should be responsible for it. You are not a painting that the master painter can change in whatever way he wants.
I have heard that in a small school, a beautiful painting was shown that had been made by the drawing teacher of the school. He was showing the students the art and the craft of painting. And he said, "It is such a delicate phenomenon. You look at the painting."
And they said, "Yes, we can see a man with a sad face."
The painter went to the painting and just gave one or two touches with his brush and the whole painting changed -- the face was smiling. And because the face was smiling, the whole complex of trees and flowers and stars now had a different effect. Everybody was impressed: the teachers were impressed... parents had come; they were very much impressed. Just one small boy was not interested.
The painter asked, "Are you not interested?"
He said, "I am interested. But this is not something great; my mother does it every day."
He said, "What do you mean? Is she a painter?"
He said, "She is not a painter. But I go home smiling, and with one slap the whole world changes into tears and tears and crying. And if you want me to show you, I can show you here, because I have also become an expert. Every day it is happening."
He simply went and hit a small girl sitting there, and the girl started crying. And she had been smiling and enjoying, but suddenly the hit, and tears came to her eyes and she started crying. And because of her crying and this boy's craftsmanship, the whole crowd fell silent.
And even the drawing teacher said, "This is right. I was thinking that I had some great art. Your mother knows better. Without brush, without color, just a hit and everything changes; the whole world changes."
The master can change you, but that change is very costly. He can do many things, but you are becoming more and more of a slave. You had come to be
liberated, and it is going the wrong way.
No authentic master has ever done anything. He has made himself available in many ways. He has taught you how to be available, how to be open, how to be receptive -- and then, whatever your potential is will start growing. In the blissful showering of the presence of the master your potential will grow, but it will grow according to its own intrinsic qualities. Nothing is imposed from outside.
So please note it down: your observation is not right, it is not two-way traffic. From the master's side there is no traffic at all.
You have to do something. Certainly the master is present and available, his love is available. In his shadow, in his loving radiation, you will start growing. But he will not touch you; he will let you be whatever you can be. Whatsoever is your destiny, you should not be carried away from it.
He is just a silent help: without touching you, he transforms you. That is the miracle of the master.
Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,
SITTING IN YOUR PRESENCE, MEDITATION IS REALLY AT ITS BEST. IF ASKED WHY, I WOULD SAY THAT IT IS BECAUSE YOUR BLISSFUL
PRESENCE IS CONTAGIOUS AND SOMEHOW MOTIVATES ME TO BE AS
TOTAL AS POSSIBLE.
BELOVED OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN AGAIN HOW IT IS
POSSIBLE TO BE IN SUCH A NICE MEDITATION WHEN NOT BEING IN YOUR
PRESENCE?
My presence has to be only a lesson.
Once you have learned the art of opening, the art of being silent, it does not matter whether I am present or not. If you have really learned it, it will happen anywhere. It may be a little difficult in the beginning, but soon you will get the knack of it.
It is almost like swimming. The teacher who teaches swimming just gives you courage and trust, and is there so that nothing goes wrong. Just in three or four days' time, one hour each day, you start swimming. And the moment you start swimming you are surprised -- why didn't you start it from the very beginning? There is nothing to it. It's just that in the beginning you were not moving your arms artfully, it was haphazard. Just in three or four days you have learned to move your arms more smoothly, more harmoniously; now the teacher is not needed. Now you can go anywhere, for any distance, because the depth of the bottom does not matter; you are swimming on the surface. The depth can be one thousand feet, ten thousand feet, five miles deep; it does not matter, because you are always swimming on the surface.
And once you have learned... it has not been heard of in the whole history of humanity that anybody who has learned swimming has forgotten it. You may not swim for fifty years, and when again somebody pushes you into the swimming pool, you start swimming. You cannot say, "For fifty years I have not practiced"
-- it is not a question of practice at all. It is a knack: once you have known it, you have known it; there is no way not to know it anymore.
Meditation is also a knack.
You are not to become attached to the presence of the master, because that will be learning something wrong. You have to learn how you are opening. Forget about the master; that is his business, to be present or not to be present. Your business is to see how you are opening, what happens in your opening, and then try on your own, when you are alone to see whether it can happen or not. It is bound to happen.
Maybe in the beginning you will feel that it is a little difficult; a certain attachment grows, unconsciously. But you cannot say that the teacher has to follow you everywhere, wherever you go swimming. That will not do. Then each swimmer will need one teacher; it will be too much. Each meditator will
need one master with him; it will be too costly, and there is no need at all. You just have to see what is happening in you, and let the same happen when the master is not present.
Or, you can visualize. He will be present somewhere, a few miles away. Here, it is a few feet away. It is only a question of visualizing -- just visualize that your master is a few feet away.…
Space makes no difference, but you have to learn what happens in you so that you can repeat it in the absence of the master. Otherwise, one can become attached to things which were to help you... but now they will hinder you. The presence of the master was to help you; now it has become a hindrance -- because the master is not there, so you cannot meditate.
Remember: no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality. And whatever is happening here can happen anywhere; it just needs a little understanding of how it happens here.
Just try. Even if you fail a few times, don't be worried. It is a knack which will come to you.
And once it happens without any support from outside -- even the smallest support, such as the presence of the master -- you will feel a great joy, because a great freedom has happened.
Now there are no barriers for you. Wherever you are you can be in meditation, you can be in silence, you can be peaceful. Now you can carry your paradise within you.
And unless that happens, a disciple has not matured. Beyond Enlightenment
Chapter #9
Chapter title: The Master is a mirror 11 October 1986 pm in
Archive code:
8610115
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH09
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
129
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS IT THAT REDUCES ME TO A HYSTERICAL, INCOHERENT CHILD IN
YOUR PRESENCE OR EVEN AT THE THOUGHT OF BEING IN YOUR PRESENCE?
IS IT SOMETHING INHERENT IN THE MASTER-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP, OR
MY PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMATURITY, OR BOTH?
Pankaja, humanity is not yet mature. We have the faces of human beings, but our
minds are lagging far behind.
In the ordinary world, it is easy to manage your mask, your pretension, your hypocrisy.
But when you come to a master... the very urge to come to a master shows a tremendous desire in you to know your original face, to know yourself.
The face that you are carrying now is not your original face, it is not you. I am saying you are not you, and you know it.
The master is only a mirror. You cannot deceive the mirror, it simply reflects your reality.
There is an ancient parable of a very ugly woman who was very antagonistic towards mirrors because she thought, just as you all think, that it was the mirror that created the ugliness in her -- because when the mirror was not there, she was no longer ugly. She was so madly against mirrors that whenever she would see a mirror, she would immediately break it.
The parable is signficant. That's what we are all doing in our lives in many ways.
Whatsoever reflects our reality we want to escape from because it is not gratifying.
Pankaja, here in my presence, or even when you think of me, if you feel yourself as immature, a retarded child, don't try to explain it away in any way. This is the truth. And this is not only your truth; this is the truth of the whole of humanity. You are just fortunate that you have become aware of it.
You have come across a mirror. Breaking the mirror is not going to help.
Poisoning Socrates has not helped the Greeks -- he was a mirror. Crucifying Jesus has not helped the Jews -- he was a mirror.
Killing al-Hillaj Mansoor has not helped the Mohammedans -- he was a mirror.
On the contrary, they have remained retarded, childish, because there is no one to show them where they are, who they are. They are in a crowd of similar kinds of retarded children.
After the first world war, for the first time in Germany they tried to figure out the average mental age of a soldier. Thousands of soldiers went through the process, through many experiments, and the result was shocking and shattering to the whole of human pride. The result was that the average mental age of the soldiers was only fourteen years.
And the average age of those who are not soldiers cannot be much more. A man may be seventy years old -- his body has aged, but his mind has remained at the age of fourteen.
And once in a while you can see it in yourself; you can see it in others in certain situations.
Every woman knows moments when she starts throwing tantrums; they cannot be coming out of maturity.
Every man knows that whenever he feels nervous, he starts smoking. Now, smoking cannot help in any way, but it diverts your mind from nervousness.
Only nervous people smoke. And you can watch... some days you smoke more, some days you smoke less. The days you smoke more are the days when you are very tense, worried, very much in anguish. The world is too much. You are feeling so nervous that you want to divert your mind to something, something uncomplicated, something not involving anybody else -- because that could bring more complications.
The cigarette is very innocent -- and very soothing, because it has the same chemical as tea has, as coffee has, which gives a certain soothing effect for the moment.
And more specifically, smoking has a resemblance to... a deep-rooted remembrance of drinking milk at your mother's breast. The breast has almost the same warmth, the milk is warm just as the smoke from your cigarette or cigar is warm. The cigarette or cigar have the same feel on your lips as the nipples of your mother, and the smoke is flowing inside you just like the milk through the nipple. You have fallen back into childhood -- those golden days when there
were no anxieties, no problems, no worries. So whenever you feel nervous, you start looking for your cigarette.
When you are not nervous -- when you are feeling happy and blissful and joyous
-- you completely forget all about cigarettes.
All smokers are retarded people, so the retarded people are in the majority in the world.
And there are other substitutes. You may not be smoking and you may think, "I'm not retarded because I use chewing gum." And it is worse than cigarettes -- chewing gum!
You are not only retarded, you are stupid, engaged in an activity which is absolutely useless, uncreative, unnecessarily tiring your mouth and your teeth. But it proves Charles Darwin was right.
Although scientists have tried in many ways to disprove the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin, the theory has such psychological significance that even if it is proved wrong, its significance cannot be destroyed.
Just watch a monkey. He cannot sit in one posture, he cannot sit on one branch. He is continuously chewing this or that, eating this or that -- the whole day. From the time he wakes up in the morning till he goes back to sleep, he is chewing something.
Perhaps man is not yet completely free from his animal heritage -- although he walks on two legs, that does not make much difference.
As far as I know, monkeys don't think that you have evolved, developed, gone forward more than them. They laugh at the very idea.
They think you have fallen from the trees. And they have substantial reasoning behind it.
You are no longer as strong as a monkey; you cannot live in trees, you cannot go on jumping from one tree to another tree for miles. You have lost the beauty of the body that the monkey has. Just because you started walking on two legs.…
Monkeys think, "Poor fellows... those few monkeys can't make it living in the
trees" --
because it is a very challenging life, risky, full of danger -- "those cowards have got down onto the earth and started walking on two legs! Not only that, to hide their cowardice, they are proposing a theory of evolution!"
No monkey agrees with the theory of evolution.
Pankaja, if in my presence you feel a childishness in yourself, a mind which has not become mature, this awareness has to be welcomed.
Once you become aware that you are retarded somewhere, that something is blocking your consciousness, then those blocks can be removed. In fact, to be aware that there are some blocks... the very awareness removes them.
There are things which one has just to be aware of. The very awareness brings the transformation; it is not that after being aware you have to do something to make the change.
Seeing your mind as childish, you can also see that you are not the mind -- otherwise, who is seeing the mind as childish? There is something beyond the mind -- the watcher on the hills.
You are only looking at the mind.
You have completely forgotten who is looking at it.
Watch the mind, but don't forget the watcher -- because your reality is centered in the watcher, not in the mind. And the watcher is always a fully grown-up, mature, centered consciousness. It needs no growth.
And once you become aware that the mind is only an instrument in the hands of your witnessing soul, then there is no problem; the mind can be used in the right way. Now the master is awake, and the servant can be ordered to do whatever is needed.
Ordinarily the master is asleep. We have forgotten the watcher, and the servant has become the master. And the servant is a servant -- it is certainly not very intelligent.
You have to be reminded of a basic fact: intelligence belongs to the watching consciousness; memory belongs to the mind.
Memory is one thing -- memory is not intelligence. But the whole of humanity has been deceived for centuries and told indirectly that the memory is intelligence. Your schools, your colleges, your universities are not trying to find your intelligence; they are trying to find out who is capable of memorizing more.
And now we know perfectly well that memory is a mechanical thing. A computer can have memory, but a computer cannot have intelligence.
And a computer can have a better memory than you have. The day is not far off when people will be carrying small computers in their pockets rather than unnecessarily going through years of studying history and geography and chemistry and physics. All that can be contained in a small computer which you can carry in your pocket, and whatever information you want, the computer can supply it immediately -- and it is going to be absolutely correct.
Man's memory is not so reliable. It can forget, it can get mixed up, it can get blocked.
Sometimes you say that "I remember it, it is just on the tip of my tongue." Strange, it is on the tip of your tongue, then why don't you speak?
But you say it is not coming, "It is on the tip of my tongue... I know that I know, and it is not very far -- it is very close." But still some block, some very thin block -- it may be just a curtain -- is not allowing it to surface.
And the more you try, the more tense you become, the less is the possibility of remembering it. Finally, you forget all about it, you start doing something else --
preparing a cup of tea or digging a hole in the garden -- and suddenly it is there because you were relaxed, you had forgotten all about it, there was no tension. It surfaced.
A tense mind becomes narrow. A relaxed mind becomes wide -- many more memories can pass through it. A tense mind becomes so narrow that only very few memories can pass through it.
But for thousands of years a misunderstanding has continued, and it continues
still, as if memory is intelligence. It is not.
You will find people who have a great memory but no intelligence, and you can also find people who have great intelligence and no memory at all.
It is said about Thomas Alva Edison... perhaps he is the only man who is credited with at least one thousand inventions, but his memory was nil.
In the first world war he was standing in a queue to receive his ration card. Ration cards had come into existence for the first time. By and by the queue became smaller and smaller, and finally he came to the front and the clerk shouted, "Thomas Alva Edison!" --
he looked here and there, because he had forgotten his name. Because it was long, long ago... when his father and mother were alive, they used to call him by name. Now he was so well known, such a great scientist, a great professor -- nobody used his name, people called him `Professor'. He himself had forgotten.
Fortunately, one man in the queue behind him recognized that this fellow looked like Thomas Alva Edison, who was standing in front and looking here and there.
And the man said, "What is your name?"
Edison said, "My God, I will have to go home and ask my wife." The man said, "As far as I know, you are Thomas Alva Edison."
Edison said, "It seems I have heard this name somewhere before. Perhaps I am. If nobody else claims it, then that card is mine."
He was such a great intelligence. You cannot find many more people of that intelligence.
But, going for a lecture tour, before getting into the car, he said goodbye to his wife and kissed her and waved at her maidservant. And the wife said, "You are absolutely wrong; I am your maidservant and she is your wife!"
He said, "The whole day I am so engaged in the experiments -- I only come home at night. It is a long time since I have seen my wife in the sunlight, so please forgive me --
whichever is my wife, I kiss her, and whichever is my maidservant, I wave to her. But let me go, because the train is standing at the platform."
Absolutely no memory.
His wife used to keep notes of his thoughts... because sometimes he would come to a thought, but it was incomplete. And before he forgot it, he would tell somebody, whoever was close by, "Please write it down and keep it for me. Whenever I need it, just remind me -- because half is missing. It will come, but my fear is that when the other half comes, this half may be lost."
Somebody suggested, "You are behaving strangely. Why don't you keep a notebook?"
He said, "That is the trouble. I have been keeping notebooks, but then I go on forgetting where I have put them. Then the notebook becomes the problem! This is far better. At least somebody is responsible for the half thought and he will remind me: `This is half your thought. If the other half has come to your mind, take this and relieve me of the burden.'"
In India -- as in Arabia, China, Greece, Rome, in all old countries -- all the old languages depend on memory, not on intelligence. You can become a great Sanskrit scholar without a bit of intelligence -- no need for intelligence, just your memory has to be perfect. Just like a parrot... the parrot does not understand what he is saying, but he can say it absolutely correctly, with the right pronunciation. You can teach him whatever you want.
All old languages depend on memory.
And the whole educational system of the world depends on memory. In the examinations, they don't ask the student something that will show his intelligence but something that will show his memory, how much he remembers from textbooks. This is one of the reasons for your retarded mind. You have used the memory as if it were your intelligence
-- a tremendously grave misunderstanding. Because you know and remember and you can quote scriptures, you start thinking that you are grown up, you are mature, that you are knowledgeable, you are wise.
This is the problem, Pankaja, that you are feeling.
I am not a man of memory. And my effort here is to provoke a challenge in you so that you start moving towards your intelligence.
It is of no use how much you remember.
What is significant is how much you have experienced yourself.
And for experiencing the inner world, you need great intelligence -- memory is of no help. Yes, if you want to be a scholar, a professor, a pundit, you can memorize scriptures and you can have a great pride that you know so much. And other people will also think that you know so much, and deep down your memory is nothing but ignorance.
In front of me, you cannot hide your ignorance.
In every possible way, I try to bring your ignorance in front of you because the sooner you get hold of your ignorance, the sooner you can get rid of it. And to know is such a beautiful experience that the borrowed knowledge, in comparison, is just idiotic.
I have heard about the archbishop of Japan. He wanted to convert a Zen master to Christianity. Not knowing, not understanding anything of the inner world, he went to the master. He was received with great love and respect.
He opened the BIBLE he carried with him and started reading the Sermon on the Mount.
He wanted to impress upon the Zen master that..."We follow this man. What do you think about these words, about this man?"
He had read only two sentences and the Zen master said, "That will do. You are following a good man, but he was following other good men. Neither you know nor does he know. Just go home."
He was very much shocked. He said, "You should at least let me finish the whole thing."
He said, "No nonsense here. If you know something, you say it. Close the book!
--
because we are not believers in books. You are carrying the very truth in your being, and you are searching in dead books. Go home and look within. If you have found something inside, then come. If you think these lines that you have repeated to me are from Jesus Christ, you are wrong."
Jesus Christ was simply repeating the Old Testament. He was trying his whole life to convince people that "I am the last prophet of the Jews." He had never heard the word
`Christian', he had never heard the word `Christ'. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. And his whole effort was to convince the Jews that "I am the awaited prophet, the savior which Moses has promised. I have come."
The Jews could have forgiven him... Jews are not bad people. And Jews are not violent people either. Nobody who is as intelligent as the Jews are can be violent. Forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews; it is simply out of all proportion to their population. Almost half the Nobel prizes go to Jews, and the other half to the rest of the world.
Such intelligent people would not have crucified Jesus if he was saying something which was of his own experience. But he was saying things which were not his experience -- all borrowed. And yet he was pretending that they were his. Jews could not forgive that, that dishonesty.
Otherwise, Jesus was not creating any trouble for anybody. He was a little bit of a nuisance. Just like the Witnesses of Jehovah or the Hare Krishna people; they are a little bit of a nuisance. If they catch hold of you they will not listen to you at all and they will go on giving you all kinds of wisdom, advice -- and you are not interested; you are going for some other work, you want to be left alone. But they are determined to save you.
Whether you want to be saved or not does not matter -- you have to be saved.
It happened that I was sitting near the Ganges in Allahabad, and it was just as the sun was setting. A man started shouting from the water, "Save me! Save me!"
I am not interested in saving anybody. So I looked all around... if somebody is interested in saving him, let him have the first chance. But there was nobody, so finally I had to jump.
And with difficulty... he was a heavy man, fat. The fattest men in India you will find in Allahabad and Varanasi -- the brahmins, the Hindu priests, who do nothing except eat.
Somehow I pulled him out. And he started being angry -- "Why did you pull me out?"
I said, "This is something! You were asking for help, you were shouting, `Save me!'"
He said, "It was because I was becoming afraid of death. But in fact I was committing suicide."
I said, "I am sorry, I had no idea that you were committing suicide." I pushed the man back! And he started shouting again, "Help!"
I said, "Now wait for somebody else to come. I will sit here and watch you commit suicide."
He said, "What kind of man are you? I am dying!" I said, "Die! That is your business!"
But there are people who are bent upon saving you.
The Zen master said to the archbishop, "Jesus was repeating old prophets. You are repeating Jesus. Repetition is not going to help anybody. You need your own experience -
- that is the only deliverance, the only liberation."
Pankaja, it is good that you are understanding that your mind starts behaving like a child, immature. Remember also who is watching the child, the immature mind, and be with the watcher. Pull out all your attachments from the mind -- because the mind is only a mechanism -- and the mind will start functioning perfectly well. Once your watcher is alert, your intelligence starts growing for the first time.
Mind's work is memory, which the mind can do very well. But the mind has
been burdened by the society with intelligence, which is not its work. It has crippled its memory. It has not made you more intelligent, it has simply made your memory erroneous, fallible.
Always remember: your eyes are for seeing, don't try to listen with the eyes. Your ears are for listening, don't try to see with the ears. Otherwise, you will get into an insane state. While your eyes are perfectly alright, your ears are perfectly alright, you are trying to do something with a mechanism that is not meant to do it.
If your watcher is clear, then the body does its own functions, the mind does its own functions, the heart does its own functions. Nobody interferes in each others' work.
And life becomes a harmony, an orchestra. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
WHY DO I ALWAYS FEEL SO MISERABLE? HAVE I EVER REALLY LET YOU
IN? THE MOMENT I SIT IN FRONT OF YOU, ALL IS GONE. WHAT IS HAPPENING? CAN'T YOU TAKE IT ALL AWAY?
The answer is in your question. You don't want to take responsibility for your own being, somebody else should do it.
And that's the sole cause of misery.
There is no way that anybody else can take away your misery. There is no way that anybody else can make you blissful. But if you become aware that you are responsible for whether you are miserable or blissful.… Nobody else can do anything. Your misery is your doing; your bliss will also be your doing.
But it is hard to accept -- misery is my doing?
Everybody feels that others are responsible for his misery. The husband thinks
the wife is responsible for his misery, the wife thinks the husband is responsible for her misery, the children think the parents are responsible for their misery, the parents think the children are responsible for their misery. It has become such a complexity. And whenever somebody else is responsible for your misery, you are not aware that by giving the responsibility you are losing your freedom.
Responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin.
And because you think others are responsible for your misery That's why there
are charlatans, so-called saviors, messengers of God, prophets who go on telling you, "You have not to do anything, just follow me. Believe in me and I will save you. I am your shepherd, you are my sheep."
Strange, that not a single person stood up against people like Jesus Christ and said, "This is utterly insulting to say that you are the shepherd and we are sheep, and you are the savior and we are just dependent on your compassion, that our whole religion is just to believe in you." But because we have been throwing the responsibility for our misery on others, we have accepted the corollary that bliss will also come from others.
Naturally, if misery comes from others, then bliss has to come from others. But then what are you doing? You are neither responsible for misery nor are you responsible for bliss --
then what is your function? What is your purpose? -- just to be a target for a few people to make you miserable and for others to help you and save you and make you blissful?
Are you just a puppet?
All the strings are in the hands of others. You are not respectful of your humanity; you do not respect yourself. You don't have any love for your own being, for your own freedom.
If you are respectful of your life, you will refuse all the saviors. You will say to all the saviors, "Get lost! Just save yourself, that's enough. It is our life and we have to live it. If we do something wrong, we will suffer the misery; we will accept the consequences of our wrong action without any complaint."
Perhaps that is the way one learns: by falling, one gets up again; by going astray,
one comes back again. You commit a mistake. But each mistake makes you more intelligent; you will not commit the same mistake again. If you commit the same mistake again, that means you are not learning. You are not using your intelligence, you are behaving like a robot.
My whole effort is to give back to every human being the self-respect that belongs to him
-- which he has given to just anybody.
And the whole stupidity starts because you are not ready to accept that, for your misery, you are responsible.
Just think: you cannot find a single misery for which you are not responsible. It may be jealousy, it may be anger, it may be greed -- but something in you must be the reason that is creating the misery.
And have you seen anybody in the world ever making anybody else blissful? That too depends on you, on your silence, your love, your peace, your trust. And the miracle happens -- nobody does it.
In Tibet, there is a beautiful story about Marpa. It may not be factual, but it is tremendously significant.
I don't care much about facts. My emphasis is on the significance and the truth, which is a totally different thing.
Marpa heard about a master. He was searching and he went to the master, he surrendered to the master, he trusted totally. And he asked the master, "What am I supposed to do now?"
The master said, "Once you have surrendered to me, you are not supposed to do anything.
Just believe in me. My name is the only secret mantra for you. Whenever you are in difficulty, just remember my name and everything will be all right."
Marpa touched his feet. And he tried it immediately -- he was such a simple man. He walked on the river. Other disciples who had been with the master for years could not believe it -- he was walking on the water!
They reported to the master that, "That man, you have not understood him. He is no ordinary man, he is walking on water!"
The master said, "What?"
They all ran towards the river and Marpa was walking on the water, singing songs, dancing. When he came to the shore, the master asked, "What is the secret?"
He said, "What is the secret? It is the same secret that you have given to me -- your name.
I remembered you. I said, `Master, allow me to walk on water' and it happened."
The master could not believe that his name.… He himself could not walk on water. But perhaps... he had never tried.
But it would be better to check a few more things before he tries. So he said to Marpa,
"Can you jump from that hill?"
Marpa said, "Whatever you say." He went up on the hill and jumped, and they were all standing in the valley waiting -- just pieces of Marpa will be there! Even if they can find pieces of him, that will be enough -- the hill was very high.
But Marpa came down smiling, sitting in a lotus posture. He came just under a tree in the valley, and sat down. They all surrounded him. They looked at him -- not even a scratch.
The master said, "This is something. You used my name?" He said, "It was your name."
The master said, "This is enough, now I am going to try," and the first step in the water, he sank.
Marpa could not believe it when he sank. His disciples jumped in and somehow pulled him out. He was half dead. The water was taken out of his lungs... somehow he survived.
And Marpa said, "What is the matter?"
The master said, "You just forgive me. I am no master, I am just a pretender." But Marpa said, "If you are a pretender, then how did your name work?"
The pretender said, "My name has not worked. It is your trust. It does not matter who you trust -- it is the trust, the love, the totality of it. I don't trust myself. I don't trust anybody. I cheat everybody -- how can I trust? And I am always afraid to be cheated by others, because I am cheating others. Trust is impossible for me. You are an innocent man, you trusted me. It is because of your trust that the miracles have happened."
Whether the story is true or not does not matter.
One thing is certain, that your misery is caused by your mistakes and your bliss is caused by your trust, by your love.
Your bondage is your creation and your freedom is your declaration. You are asking me, "Why am I miserable?"
You are miserable because you have not accepted the responsibility for it. Just see what your misery is, find out the cause -- and you will find the cause within yourself. Remove the cause, and the misery will disappear.
But people don't want to remove the cause, they want to remove the misery. That is impossible, that is absolutely unscientific.
And then you ask me to save you, to help you.
There is no need for you to become a beggar. My people are not to become beggars. My people are not sheep, my people are emperors.
Accept your responsibility for misery, and you will find that just hidden inside you are all the causes of bliss, freedom, joy, enlightenment, immortality.
No savior is needed. And there has never been any savior; all saviors are pseudo. They have been worshipped because you always wanted somebody to save you. They have always appeared because they were always in demand, and wherever there is a demand, there is a supply.
Once you depend on others, you are losing your soul.
You are forgetting that you have a consciousness as universal as anybody else's, that you have a consciousness as great as any Gautam Buddha's -- you are just not aware of it, you have not looked for it. And you have not looked because you are looking at others --
somebody else to save you, somebody else to help you. So you go on begging without recognizing that this whole kingdom is yours.
This has to be understood as one of the most basic principles of sannyas -- a declaration of self-respect and freedom and responsibility.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE SADHANA BASED ON HOLDING AS
MUCH AS POSSIBLE TO THE "I" THOUGHT OR THE SENSE "I AM" AND ON
ASKING ONESELF THE QUESTIONS, "WHO AM I?" OR "FROM WHERE DOES
THIS Ì' ARISE?" IN WHAT WAY DOES THIS APPROACH TO
MEDITATION
DIFFER FROM THAT OF WATCHING THE GAPS BETWEEN ONE'S IN- BREATH
AND OUT-BREATH? DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE WHETHER ONE
WITNESSES THE BREATH FOCUSING ON THE HEART CENTER OR ON THE
LOWER BELLY CENTER?
It is an ancient method of meditation, but full of dangers.
Unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal.
The method is simple -- concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, "Who am I?"
The greatest problem is that when you ask "Who am I"... who is going to answer you?
Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning.
You have heard that "I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am the soul, I am the ultimate, brahma, I am God" -- all these kinds of thoughts you have heard before.
You will ask a few times, "Who am I? Who am I?" -- and then you will say, "I am ultimate, BRAHMA." And this is not a discovery, this is simply stupid.
If you want to go rightly into the method, then the question has not to be verbally asked.
"Who am I?" has not to be repeated verbally. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head.
You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like
a thirst.
Not that "I am thirsty," -- can you see the difference? When you are thirsty, you feel the thirst.
And if you are in a desert, you feel the thirst in every fiber of your body. You don't say, "I am thirsty, I am thirsty." It is no longer a linguistic question, it is existential.
If "Who am I?" is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. Then it is none of the mind's business.
The mind will not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.
All your scriptures are in the mind, all your knowledge is gathered there.
Now you are entering an innocent space. You will not get the answer. You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell.
As you go deeper, you will be filled more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence... a tremendous benediction.
But there is no answer like, "I am this, I am that." All that is from the scriptures. This feeling is from you, and this feeling has a truth about it.
It is a perfectly valid method.
One of the great masters of this century, Raman Maharshi, used only this method for his disciples: "Who am I?" But I have come across hundreds of his disciples -
- they are nowhere near the ultimate experience. And the reason is because they know the answer already.
I have asked them, "Do you know the answer?" They said, "We know the answer."
I said, "If you know the answer, then why are you asking? And your asking cannot go on very long -- do it two or three times and the answer comes. The
answer was already there, before the question."
So it is just a mind game. If you want to play it, you can play it. But if you really want to go into it as it was meant by Raman Maharshi, and by all the ancient seers, it is a non-verbal thirst.
Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound. Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless. You may know everything, only you do not know yourself -- and that would be the first thing to know.
So if you can avoid the danger of falling into a verbal question, it is perfectly good, you can go ahead.
You have also asked about witnessing, watching the breath and where one should watch.
Anywhere -- because the question is not where you are watching, the question is that you are watching.
The emphasis is on watching, watchfulness. All those points are just excuses. You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns -- you can watch it anywhere. You can watch thoughts moving inside. The whole point is not to get lost in what you are watching, as if that is important. That is not important.…
The important thing is that you are watchful, that you have not forgotten to watch, that you are watching... watching... watching.
And slowly slowly, as the watcher becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear.
For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed.
You have come home. Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE NOT EXPECTED ANYTHING FROM YOU, YET YOU HAVE TRICKED
ME AND GIVEN ME SOME BEAUTIFUL THINGS. IS THERE ANYTHING A SANNYASIN HAS TO ASK, OR DOES EVERYTHING HAPPEN ON ITS OWN?
Everything happens on its own, but a sannyasin has to be alert not to miss the train.
The train comes on its own, but you have to be alert. All around you so much is happening; in twenty-four hours... awake, asleep... you have to be watchful of what is happening. And the more you are alert, you will be surprised... the same things are happening that were happening before, but the meaning has changed, the significance is different.
The roseflower is the same, but now it is radiant, surrounded by some new energy that you were not aware of before -- a new beauty. It seems you used to see only the outer side of the rose; now you are able to see its inner world. You used to watch the palace from the outside; now you have entered into its innermost chambers. You have seen the moon hundreds of times, but when you see it silently, peacefully, meditatively, you become aware of a beauty that you were not aware of before, a beauty that is not ordinarily available, for which you need to grow some insight.
And in silence, in peace, that insight grows.
It happened... a very significiant incident. One of the Indian poets, Rabindranath Tagore, translated one of his small books of poems, GITANJALI, "Offering of Songs." He was awarded the Nobel prize for that small book.
In India it was available for at least fifteen years. But unless a book meets the international standards of language and gains international appreciation, it is difficult for it to get a Nobel prize.
Rabindranath himself was a little worried, because he translated it and to translate poetry is always a very difficult affair. To translate prose is simple; to translate poetry is immensely difficult, because prose is of the marketplace and poetry is something of the world of love, of the world of beauty, of the world of moon and stars. It is a delicate affair.
And every language has its own nuances which are almost untranslatable. Although the poet himself translated his own poetry, he was doubtful about the translation. So he showed it to one of the Christian missionaries, a very famous man of those days, C.F.
Andrews -- a very literate, cultured, sophisticated man.
Andrews suggested four changes. He said, "Everything else is right, but in four places it is not grammatically right."
So Rabindranath simply accepted his advice, and changed those four places.
In London, his friend, the Irish poet Yeats, called a meeting of English poets to hear the translation of Rabindranath. Everybody appreciated it. The beauty of it was something absolutely new to the Western world.
But Yeats, who was the most prominent poet of England in those days, said, "Everything else is right, but in four places it seems that somebody who is not a poet has made some changes."
Rabindranath could not believe it. He said, "Where are those four places?" Yeats pointed out the four places exactly.
Rabindranath said, "What is wrong?"
He said, "There is nothing wrong, they are grammatically correct. But poetically...
whoever suggested them is a man who knows his grammar but does not know poetry. He is a man of the mind but not a man of the heart. The flow is obstructed, as if a river had come across a rock."
Rabindranath told him, "I asked C.F. Andrews; these are his words. I will tell you the words that I put there before."
And when he put his words in, Yeats said, "They are perfectly right although grammatically wrong. But grammar is not important. When it is a question of poetry, grammar is not important. You change it back, use your own words."
I have always been thinking that there are ways of the mind, there are ways of the heart; they need not be supportive of each other. And if it happens that the mind is not in agreement with the heart, then the mind is wrong. Its agreement or disagreement does not matter. What matters is that your heart feels at ease, peaceful, silent, harmonious, at home.
We are trained for the mind, so our mind is very articulate. And nobody takes any care of the heart. In fact, it is pushed aside by everybody because it is of no use in the marketplace, it is no use in the world of ambitions, no use in politics, no use in business.
But with me, the situation is just the opposite -- the mind is of no use. The heart.…
Everything happens, just your heart has to be ready to receive it.
Everything comes, but if your heart is closed.… The secret laws of life are such that the doors of your heart will not even be knocked on.
Existence knows how to wait; it can wait for eternity. It all depends on you.
Everything is ready to happen any moment. Just open all your doors, all your windows, so that existence can pour into you from every side. There is no other god than existence, and there is no other paradise than your very being.
When existence pours into your being, paradise has entered into you -- or you have entered into paradise, just different ways of saying the same thing.
But remember: nothing is expected of you.
All the religions have been telling you for centuries that you have to do this, you have to do that. That you have to be a torturer of yourself, you have to renounce pleasures, you have to fight with your body, you have to renounce the world.
The Buddhist scriptures have thirty-three thousand principles that a sannyasin should follow. It is almost impossible to remember them -- following them is out of the question.
I don't have a single principle for you to follow; just a simple understanding that it is your life -- enjoy it, allow it to sing a song in you, allow it to become a dance in you. You have nothing else to do but simply to be available.
And flowers are going to shower on you. Beyond Enlightenment
Chapter #10
Chapter title: I answer your questions just to kill them 12 October 1986 pm in Archive
code:
8610125
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH10
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
116
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OBEYING THE MASTER AND
FOLLOWING HIS GUIDANCE?
The question is complex.
In the first place, the master does not expect to be obeyed but to be understood. He does not give you guidelines either.
In his presence, your loving heart finds them.
It means that those who order and expect that their orders should be followed, complied with, are not authentic masters.
The master is not a commander. He does not issue things likèTen Commandments.'
Certainly, he explains to you his experience, his realization, and then it is up to your intelligence to do whatever is right. It is not a direct order, it is an appeal to your intelligence.
An order never cares about your intelligence, an order never wants you to understand anything. The basic purpose of all ordering of people is to reduce them into robots.
All over the world, in every army, they are turning millions of people into machines -- of course, in such a way that you don't understand what is going on. Their methodology is very indirect.
What does it mean that thousands of people every morning are marching, following orders -- "Right turn, left turn, move forward, move backward" -- for what is all this circus going on? And for years it goes on. This is to destroy your intelligence.
The strategy is that if for years continuously you go on following any kind of stupid thing, meaningless, every day in the morning, every day in the evening... And you are not supposed to ask why. You just have to do it, to do it as perfectly as possible; there is no need for you to understand why. And when a person goes through such a training for years, the natural effect is that he stops asking why. And why? -- because the questioning attitude is the very base of all intelligence.
The moment you stop asking why, you have stopped growing as far as intelligence is concerned.
It happened in the second world war.…
A retired army man... he had fought in the first world war, and he was honored well; he was a brave man. And now almost twenty-five years had passed. He had a small farm and lived silently.
He was going from the farm to his house with a bucket full of eggs, and a few people in a restaurant, just jokingly, played a trick on the poor old army man. One of the men in the restaurant shouted, "Attention!" and the man dropped the bucket and stood in the position of attention.
It had been twenty-five years since he had gone through the training. But the training had gone into the bones, into the blood, into the marrow; it had become part of the unconscious. He completely forgot what he was doing -- it happened almost autonomously, mechanically.
He was very angry. But those people said, "Your anger is not right, because we can call out any word we want. Who is telling you to follow it?"
He said, "It is too late for me to decide whether to follow it or not to follow it. My whole mind functions like a machine. Those twenty-five years simply disappeared. Àttention'
only means àttention'. You destroyed my eggs. I am a poor man."
But this is being done all over the world. And not only today; from the very beginning armies have been trained not to use intelligence, but to follow orders.
You have to understand one thing very clearly: that to follow an order and to understand a thing are two diametrically opposite things. If, by understanding, your intelligence feels satisfied and you do something out of that, you are not following an order from the outside; you are following your own intelligence.
And an authentic master is not your commander. He loves you, and he wants you to be more understanding, more intelligent, more capable of finding your way, more insightful, more intuitive. This cannot be done by orders.
I am reminded of another incident in the first world war. In Berlin, one German professor of logic was recruited into the army. There was a shortage of soldiers, and everybody who was physically able was asked to volunteer. Otherwise, they were forcing people to go to the army.…
Because all the societies, all the nations, all the cultures, have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them, not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Individuality is the very flowering of existence -- nothing is higher than it. But no culture, no society, no civilization is ready to accept a simple truth.
The professor was forced. He said, "I am not a man who can fight. I can argue, I am a logician. If you need somebody to argue with the enemies, I am ready, but fighting is not my business. It is barbarous to fight."
But nobody listened, and finally he was brought to the parade grounds. The parade started, and the commander said, "Left turn." Everybody turned left, but the professor remained standing as he was standing.
The commander was a little worried: "What is the matter? Perhaps the man is deaf." So he shouted loudly, "Now turn to the left again!" All the people turned to the left again, but that man remained standing as if he had not heard anything.
Forward, backward... all the orders were given and everybody followed. That man remained just standing in his place.
He was a well-known professor; even the commander knew him. He could not be treated just like any other soldier, he had a certain respect. Finally, when the parade ended and everybody came back to the same line from where they had started, the commander went to the professor and asked, "Is there some problem with your ears? Can't you hear?"
He said, "I can hear."
"But then," the commander said, "why did you remain standing? Why did you not follow the orders?"
He said, "What is the point? When everybody finally has to come back to the same state, after all this movement going forward and backward, left and right, what have they gained?"
The commander said, "It is not a question of gaining, it is a training!"
But he said, "I don't need any training. This kind of stupid thing... You come to the same place after doing all kinds of stupid things, which I don't see any point in. Can you explain to me why I should turn left and not right?"
The commander said, "Strange, no soldier asks such questions."
The professor said, "I am not a soldier, I am a professor. I have been forced to be here, but you cannot force me to do things against my intelligence."
The commander went to the higher authorities and said, "What to do with this man? He may spoil other people -- because everybody is laughing at me, and everybody is saying,
`Professor, you did great!' I cannot tackle that man. He asks... each thing has to be explained: Ùnless I understand it, unless my intelligence supports it, I am not going to do it.'"
The commander in chief said, "I know the man. He is a great logician. His whole life's training is in questioning everything. I will take care of him, you don't be worried."
He called the professor to his office and said, "I am sorry, but we cannot do anything.
You have been recruited; the country needs soldiers. But I will give you some work which will not create any difficulty for you and will not create any difficulty for others.
You come with me to the army mess."
He took the professor there, and showed him a big pile of green peas. He told the professor, "You do one thing: sit down here. You have to sort out the big peas on one side, the small peas on the other side. And after one hour I will come to see how things are progressing."
After one hour he came back. The professor was sitting there and the peas were also sitting there, in the same place. He said, "What is the matter? You have not even started."
He said, "For the first and for the last time, I want you all to understand that unless you explain to me... Why should I sort out the peas? My intelligence feels insulted by you.
Am I an idiot, to sort the peas? What is the need? Moreover, there are other problems.
Sitting here, I thought that perhaps there is some need, but there are questions which have to be decided: there are peas which are big and there are peas which are small, but there are peas of many other sizes. Where are they going to go? You have not given me any criterion."
A mystery school, a spiritual path, is not the path of a soldier. Here, orders are prohibited.
Here, only intelligence is appealed to. The decision is always on your part.
It is only the phony masters who give you orders, because they cannot satisfy your intelligence. An authentic master is perfectly capable to satisfy your intelligence, and then leave it up to you. It is your life, and the final decision has to be made not by anyone else other than you. You have to take the responsibility on your own shoulders. So there are no orders as far as true masters are concerned.
You have also asked about guidelines.
People have been told such nonsense for centuries -- as if spirituality is a kind of geography, so that maps are given to you, guidelines are provided to you: Follow the right guidelines and you will reach the goal.
Alas, things are not so cheap.
There are no maps in existence; no solid guidelines either, because each individual is so unique that what may be a guideline for one may prove a distraction for another; what may be medicine to one may prove poison to
another.
Individuals are so different.
And if a master cannot understand the difference of individuals, their unique qualities, talents, geniuses, then who is going to understand?
No general guidelines can be provided.
The master simply goes on dropping all kinds of hints. Remember my word
`hints' -- not guidelines. And you have to choose whatever suits you, and you have to experiment to see whether it is workable for you or not. If it works, go on deeper into it; if it does not work, don't feel guilty. You have not committed any sin, you have simply failed in an experiment.
With a master, life becomes a scientific experiment. It is no more a question of heaven and hell, punishment and reward. It is a question of exploration.
And each individual has to explore in his own way.
There are no golden rules: this is the only golden rule there is.
There is no superhighway with milestones telling you how far you are from the goal. In the spiritual exploration, you have to walk and create your path by your walking; there is no ready-made path so that you have simply to walk on it.
And my feeling is that this is tremendously blissful and ecstatic. You are not like railway trains. Running on rails, you cannot run into the jungles, into the mountains, anywhere you like. The railway train is a prisoner.
But a river is not a prisoner. It also travels long. It may be coming thousands of miles, from the Himalayas, and it reaches finally to the ocean -- with no map, with no guidelines, with no guides, and nobody on the way to whom the river can inquire,
"Which way am I to go now?"... because each step is a crossroad.
But strangely enough, every river reaches to the ocean with great freedom, finding its own path.
The master can only give you certain hints about how to find your path. He can give you certain indications whether you have found it or not, can give you certain criteria to judge whether you are moving towards the goal or away from the goal. But he does not give you guidelines. In the very nature of things, it is not possible.
The moment you have found a master, you have found the path.
And who is the master? -- not one who fulfills your mind expectations. A Christian mind has Christian expectations, a Hindu mind has Hindu expectations, a Buddhist mind has Buddhist expectations.
A master is one who fulfills the longing of your heart. It has nothing to do with the mind. It is a love affair.
You simply find that you are in love. You simply find that your heart feels at home, at ease, that your heart has found a treasure, feels a tremendous benediction. And as you come closer to the master -- in your love, in your trust -- your peace deepens; your silence becomes not something dead, the silence of a graveyard, but something singing and dancing, alive.
The more you are moving towards your life's fulfillment, the more your life becomes a rejoicing, a deep joy for no reason at all, a blissfulness so deep and so abundant that you can start sharing it with others. In fact, you have to share it with others because it is overflowing, you cannot contain it.
For the first time, you are small and your bliss is infinite. These are the indications that you are moving towards home. Your ecstasies go on growing deeper and higher.
And if you are moving away, you will become more miserable, more sad, more saintly, more Christian, more Hindu, more Jaina -- all kinds of diseases. More knowledgeable...
but inside, more and more empty; a beggar living by a thin thread of hope that somewhere in the other life, somewhere in the other world, you will be rewarded for all your sadness, your long British faces.
Saints don't laugh. They have fallen below humanity, because only human beings laugh.
Buffaloes don't laugh, donkeys don't laugh -- they all belong to the categories of the saints and sages. Perhaps these fellows -- donkeys and buffaloes -- may have been great sages in their past lives and now they are getting their reward. Don't misbehave with them. Be respectful. One never knows.
But as far as I am concerned, your sense of humor, your laughter will become deeper as you grow in consciousness. You will become more playful in life.
So there are neither orders nor guidelines, but only vague hints, indications, and a constant effort to sharpen your intelligence so that you can find your way. And when you have found, you have the courage to burst into songs, into dances, into rejoicings.
That's the function of the master: to make you more intelligent and more courageous, more loving, more understanding. But there are no orders, no disciplines, no guidelines.
Orders, disciplines, guidelines -- these have been used by people who wanted to dominate you, by people who wanted to dictate their terms, to enforce their ideas on other people's lives. I call all such people great criminals. To impose your idea on somebody, to give some ideal, some mold, is violence, sheer violence. You are being destructive, and a master cannot do that.
A master is always creative. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
I AM HAVING QUESTIONS COMING TO ME. I WRITE THEM DOWN AND READ
THEM OVER. MEDITATING AGAIN, I OFTEN GET THE ANSWER, AND
COINCIDENTALLY, MANY TIMES THE SAME QUESTION IS READ OUT TO
YOU IN THE DISCOURSE OR AT THE VIDEO THAT NIGHT. EVEN IF IT IS
FROM SOMEONE ELSE, I FEEL THAT IT IS MY QUESTION, AND I FEEL AS IF I AM BEING ANSWERED.
BELOVED MASTER, CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?
It is a fallacy that any question is yours.
It is just an old habit of possessiveness -- the house is mine, the wife is mine, the child is mine, even the question is mine.
All human beings are potentially capable of all the questions that any one of you can ask, because all questions come out of your insane mind and you are all equally insane.
There are only a few things in which you are equal -- insanity is one of them. Only once in a while somebody is more insane than others; then he is caught.
And the whole function of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists is not to destroy insanity -- they cannot; they don't have any understanding about what sanity is. All that they can do is that when somebody has gone a little ahead of the average insane humanity, they can pull him back: "Just be normal." "Just be normal" means "Just be normally insane; don't try to be abnormal."
Abnormally insane people are thought to be mad.
Normally insane people -- because they are the only kind of people there are -- raise no questions, no problems, although they are full of the same problems as the mad people.
But the difference is of quantity.
Just sit down in your room, close all the doors and lock them from inside and write down on your pad anything that goes on in your mind. Don't do any kind of editing work; simply go on writing whatever comes into your mind. And you will be surprised -- after ten minutes, read it, and you will be shocked -- is it written by you or by some insane person? What kind of nonsense, what rubbish goes on and on in your mind?
It is said that God made the world. There are many people who prove that there are so many mistakes in the world... it cannot be made by God. A perfect God cannot make such an imperfect world.
But on one point I have a soft spot for him: he has not made small windows in your head through which others can look inside at what is going on. Otherwise, it would have been such a perfect world -- just little windows, so at least your friends can just have a look at what is going on. And they will be surprised that on the face nothing shows, and inside this man is carrying such garbage. And it goes on, round and round, twenty-four hours a day.
In my meditation camps I used to have a special meditation: the meditation was that for one hour, everybody was to sit relaxed and say whatsoever came to his mind -- just to become a spokesman of his own mind, just a loudspeaker -- and to do whatever he felt like doing, no inhibition, for one hour. And it was such a joy, and people were doing such great things! Such good people... you would have never imagined.
One man... I would never have thought that he would do this: he was continuously phoning, just sitting in front of me. And he was a man of the age of nearabout sixty, a rich man, continuously phoning -- "Hello, hello!" Later on I discovered that that's what he did; his whole business was the share market.
And he used to sit just in front of me, so once in a while he would look at me and smile because he would see that what he was doing was not right, what he was talking was nonsense. But what to do? -- this was the meditation one had to do!
Jayantibhai is sitting here. One of his friends -- they are old friends, they are still friends, and very deeply related -- simply stood up and started pushing his car down the hill. It was the car in which I used to come to the camp, and he was going to push Jayantibhai's car down the hill -- it would be finished! And he was his great friend. I had to tell a few people, "Stop your meditation. Just catch hold of that man; otherwise that car is finished.
And he knows it is his friend's car, and he knows that I will need it, that I have to go..."
Somehow he was taken away from the car, but he was so angry that in his anger he climbed up the tree that was just in the middle where all the meditators were
sitting, and he started throwing his clothes from there, became naked. He is such a serious, silent person -- you cannot imagine that he can do such things. And it was such a difficulty to bring him down: "The meditation is finished, you come down," but he wouldn't listen, it was too difficult for him to come out of the meditation.
These things go on in the mind, but you don't do them.
Finally I had to stop that meditation, because it was dangerous. It was very beautiful to throw out your garbage, it was very cleansing, but it was dangerous -
- people may start hitting each other.
It happened in one place. People were meditating, and one sardarji started hitting... not that anybody was his enemy or anything. He made such long jumps to hit people that the whole of the grounds were empty; all the meditators were standing around the edge of the grounds, and the sardarji was alone inside.
I said, "Sardarji, now sit down. Everybody is gone."
He said, "What came over me? -- because I am not a violent man." And the people of his town also reported, that "He is a very good man. What came to his mind?"
I said, "It must have been coming to his mind every day; it is just that the chance was not there. Today he got a chance. He alone finished all the meditators!" and there were at least five hundred people.
I asked him later on, "Did you not realize what you were doing?"
He said, "I realized that what I was doing was not right, and that these people have done no harm to me. Most of them are unknown to me. But from my very childhood, I have had dreams of beating people, cutting their heads. Even in the day, when I close my eyes I have always had this: that I alone am enough for hundreds of people. You have seen it yourself -- five hundred people, great meditators, all forgot their meditation."
I said, "And do you think you are sane?"
He said, "That's what I have been asking after your meditation! This thing is in my mind... any day, something goes wrong, goes beyond my control and I will
be insane.
Insanity is there, it is just repressed."
There are only two kinds of people in the world: normally insane people and abnormally insane people.
One man became mad... and mad people are very inventive because they don't have any fear of anybody; no question of respectability, no question of what others will think about them. They become very fearless, and they start doing their thing, what they had always wanted to do but were suppressing.
This man had this idea that some strange, slimy creature was rolling all over him, and the whole day he was throwing it off of himself. His family said, "What are you doing? --
because we don't see any slimy creature or anything."
He said, "You cannot see it. I was also in your situation before; I had suspicions about it but I had never seen it. Now it seems my third eye has opened. I can see it!" and he would go on throwing it off.
They said, "You are just... are you going to the business, to the office, or not?"
He said, "How can I go? And it is so disgusting -- it crawls on my face, it goes on into my hair... I cannot go anywhere."
So finally they took him to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said, "Don't be worried, I have seen such cases. You come here and sit."
He sat there, and he was continuously throwing off the creature. The psychiatrist said,
"There is nothing; you just have an idea, you have become obsessed with an idea."
He says, "Obsessed? I will show you."
He took his chair close to the psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said, "What are you doing?"
And the man started throwing his creatures onto him, and the psychiatrist said, "Stop!
Don't throw those creatures on me! What kind of fellow are you? Have you come here for treatment or have you come here to make me sick also? What a disgusting fellow!"
He said, "Now you see, it is not an idea."
He said, "I do understand, it is not an idea. I can see them; it seems my third eye is also opening! You just don't come again. You can try another psychiatrist; he lives just opposite me. He is my enemy, and when I find cases like you, I send them to him. But you forgive me -- this is your fee, you take it back. But don't drop your creatures here!
Take them to the other psychiatrist -- that is the office -- every day. And if you want something, I will pay your fee. Whatever fee you have to give to the psychiatrist, I will give to you. But open his third eye just the way you have opened mine. You are great --
there are yogis who are trying hard to open their third eyes and nothing opens, and within minutes you have opened my third eye."
And as the man was going out, he looked back. The psychiatrist was throwing off those creatures.
Everybody is in the same boat. Just a few are sitting in the middle, a few are sitting at the very edge, can fall into the river easily.
It is not your question. No question is yours.
Remember, all questions come out of your normal insanity.
So when you hear that somebody else has asked your question, don't be puzzled.
These are the same slimy creatures -- it is not your monopoly. They also have their own.
If you remain silent, you will find that every question that has ever bothered you is being asked by somebody else, by someone else -- because we are not islands;
we are all connected, we are one continent. And we are continuously broadcasting our ideas, even without saying anything to anybody sitting by our side. Neither are you trying to say something to him, nor is he trying to listen to you, but those ideas are radiating.
It is something to be understood: that most of your ideas are just uninvited guests which you pick up just from anywhere. They are in the air, and once they get into your head you think, "It is my idea."
And if you listen carefully, every answer is for you. Even if the question was not yours, even if you were not able to recognize any resemblance of the question to any question in your mind, the answer is certainly for you -- as it is for everybody else.
Because my work is not what you call retail; it is wholesale.
Now, if I go on doing retail work, it will be too big a job in too small a life; I cannot help many people.
I do a wholesale job. My answer is for you, whether you have asked or not. Perhaps you may ask tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; just wait -- but remember the answer. The question will come. The question may be coming, already arising from your unconscious layers; it has just not reached in time. So you keep the answer; the question is bound to come.
I am answering your questions just to kill them, just to destroy them, so that I can help you to go beyond questions and beyond answers into a state of silence where there is no question and no answer.
That space is the space of all miracles, of all mysteries. That magical space I call true religion.
To enter into it is to be a religious person. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN SITTING HERE WITH YOU, I TRY TO WATCH AND TO BE AS
AWARE
AS POSSIBLE. MY MIND RUNS ON, WONDERING IF THIS SPACE IS RIGHT, WHETHER I SHOULD BE THE WATCHER OR BE LOST INTO YOU. AT THE
SAME TIME, I TRY TO RELAX AND IGNORE ALL THIS.
SOMEHOW, DESPITE ALL THESE GYMNASTICS, A MOMENT COMES WHEN
MELTING HAPPENS, AND I BECOME SO SOFT AND RECEPTIVE, SO VERY
SIMPLE AND FLOWING.
BELOVED MASTER, HOW CAN I GET OUT OF MY OWN WAY SO THAT I DON'T WASTE SO MUCH OF THIS PRECIOUS TIME WITH YOU?
There are things which are really simple, but become very complicated because of you.
Now sitting here, you can simply relax and enjoy -- but no, you make a problem out of it: whether to relax or to merge or to watch. And in all this, you are missing the train.
There is no need to do anything here.
Just relax and listen, and out of that listening a few insights will come to you. Use those insights in your life.
When somebody insults you, watch it -- as if you are just the watcher, he is insulting somebody else. That's truly the case.
Or you are sitting by the side of the ocean -- merge with the beauty of the sunrise, don't bring the watcher in, because beauty is something which has to be enjoyed.
And anger is something which has to be dropped.
So different methods have to be used in different situations.
Lying on your bed, you have nothing to do -- just relax. The whole day you have been active, you have been doing a thousand and one things. Now is the time to forget it all and just let your whole energy relax and be refreshed.
Relaxation, merging, watching -- all are different techniques for different situations. And if you are trying all the techniques in a single situation, you will simply miss the whole point and you will not be able to do either this or that.
Still, you are fortunate that doing such a stupid thing you finally find relaxation. Perhaps you get tired, because enough is enough -- merging, watching, relaxing You get tired, so relaxation comes on its own; you feel soft.
It is good.
In India we have a proverb that if a person gets lost in the morning and comes home by the evening, he should not be called `lost'. At least he has come back -- for the whole day he has been wandering and doing all kinds of stupid things.
But when you see that relaxation comes and you are soft and things become beautiful, why not do it from the very beginning? Or is that introduction a necessity?
If you have seen George Bernard Shaw's dramas, his introductions are very long, longer than the drama. The drama is very small, and the introduction is three times bigger. Every friend, well-wisher, told him, "This is unnecessarily tiring. If we miss the introduction and just read the drama, then it feels that perhaps we are missing something: the man has written such a big introduction, there must be something in it. And if we read your introduction, it is so tiring that by the time we come to the drama we feel like throwing the book away -- you have tortured us so much."
There is no need of long introductions, just a preface.
So it is okay if for a minute or two you do merging, relaxation, watching; finish it quickly so you feel satisfied that the introduction part is done. Then come to the real drama --
relax and enjoy.
Things are simple. But somehow the mind wants to make them unnecessarily complicated, because unless they are complicated, the mind is not of any use.
The mind is useful only when something is complicated -- then the mind is needed. When the thing is simple, the mind is not needed at all.
And life is so simple that if one is courageous enough to live it, mind can be abandoned completely. And to abandon the mind and to live life spontaneously is what I call sannyas.
Moment to moment, we will see. Why go on doing rehearsals?
When the moment comes, your consciousness will face it and respond to it.
But people are preparing so much that almost their whole lives are used up in preparations.
I have heard about a German professor. He wanted to have the biggest collection of philosophical, religious, spiritual literature. And he was a very rich man too, so he wandered around the earth collecting all kinds of scriptures. There are three hundred religions in the world, and there are hundreds of philosophies, and each philosophy has hundreds of books in different languages. And he had translators translating them all into German. This was all preparation for when he would start reading.
But by the time he was ninety, he was still collecting books.
Somebody told him, "Now it is time that you should start reading. The preparation has gone on too long, and you have thousands and thousands of books -- we don't think you will be able to read all of them. Your life is just at the very end, maybe a year or two more."
But the man said, "But my collection is not complete yet."
So he started collecting more forcibly, put more men into collection, into translation.
Finally he fell sick, and the doctor said, "He is not going to survive more than
seven days."
He called all the scholars who were translating his books: "Now stop translating. You just try to find small summaries from every scripture, because I have got only seven days and I want to know what is written in all the scriptures. So just prepare small summaries of all the scriptures."
But the scholars said, "You have collected so many scriptures, even summaries will not be possible. We will try, but in seven days all the summaries will not be ready."
The last day came. He inquired again, "What has happened?" They said, "We are trying."
He said, "Forget all about it. You do one thing: just make one small note summarizing all the scriptures. Because there is no more time; I feel that I am going. So be fast and be quick."
They said, "How can we be fast and quick? We have to look into scriptures to find the very gist, the very essential center of all of them. It will take a little time."
The whole day passed, and by the evening when they had come to a conclusion, a small summary of a few pages They reached; the man was almost drowning.
He said, "That many pages won't do. You just make it half a page, just a small summary that can be printed on a postcard. I don't have time for all these pages."
So they rushed back, again they summarized. Now it meant nothing, because all those scriptures, summaries and summaries... and by the time they came back, the man was dead.
His wife said, "It is a very sad thing. You can at least shout loudly in his ear; perhaps he may be able to hear. He is just going down."
The doctor said, "Now it is useless. But you can try, there is no harm in it." So one scholar shouted the summary of all the scriptures. But the man was dead already, and the doctors were saying, "Now he cannot hear."
His whole life went into preparation.
And this is not the story of one strange, weird man. This is the story of all normal people: preparation, preparation, preparation. They forget completely, that... preparation for what?
We are not certain even of the next moment. Preparation for what?
Either live or prepare.
If you want to live, live now.
Or prepare for tomorrow -- and remember, tomorrow never comes. What comes in place of tomorrow is death. An intelligent person lives his life. He does not bother about preparations, disciplines.
You are here with me. Live this moment to its totality, to its very intensity. Perhaps out of that totality and intensity, you may get the taste that will go on lingering with you into the next moment. And once you have known that a moment can be lived with totality and intensity, you know the secret, the very secret of life.
You are always given a single moment; you are not given two moments together.
If you know the secret of living one moment, you know the whole secret of life. Because you will always get one moment -- and you know how to live it, how to be totally in it.
Your question reminds me about one of my old friends, a centipede. A centipede has one hundred legs; hence, the namècentipede'. The name comes from ancient Sanskrit, shattpadee.
Just one morning, early in the morning as the sun was rising, the centipede was going for a morning walk. A philosophical rabbit, watching the legs, could not believe -- he said,
"My God, this centipede is going to be in trouble soon. How is he going to remember which foot first, which foot second... one hundred legs! He is bound to be in trouble."
The rabbit came close and said to the centipede, "Uncle, I am a philosophical rabbit --
just a student, an inquirer about truth."
The centipede said, "That is all right, but what is the problem?" He said, "The problem is: how do you manage one hundred legs?"
So the centipede said, "I never thought about it. And no centipede has ever thought about it; there is no mention of it in our scriptures. We have been managing perfectly well. But your question is valid. Just sit. I will try," and he could not go even two feet. Puzzled, he fell down.
And he was very angry at the rabbit. He said, "You rascal, never again ask any centipede your philosophical question, because now I am in trouble. And the question has got into my head; now I cannot walk without thinking about how it is happening -- which one?
And one hundred legs... my life is finished. But be kind enough not to ask such questions to anybody else. I will try to forget this question. I don't know.… If I can forget it I can live; if I cannot forget it, I am finished."
Now you are trying to be in my presence, relaxing, merging, watching... you will get into trouble.
Forget all nonsense, forget all philosophical questions. Here, just be.
Simply be, and out of that being grows an understanding that will give you the insight into where to merge, where to watch, where to relax.
Here, you are to just get a taste of being -- of being fully alive, silent, joyous -- and everything else will come out of it.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #11
Chapter title: Harmony... The birthplace of love 13 October 1986 pm in
Archive code:
8610135
ShortTitle:
ENLIGH11
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
136
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THE FRUIT FALLS ON THE GROUND WHEN IT IS RIPE. ONE DAY, YOU WILL
LEAVE US, AND IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE ANOTHER MASTER IN
YOUR PLACE.
HOW CAN ANYBODY ELSE BE THE SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MASTER
OF MASTERS?
OSHO, WHEN YOU LEAVE THE PHYSICAL BODY, WILL YOUR MEDITATION
TECHNIQUES HELP OUR INNER GROWTH AS THEY DO NOW?
My approach to your growth is basically to make you independent of me.
Any kind of dependence is a slavery, and the spiritual dependence is the worst slavery of all.
I have been making every effort to make you aware of your individuality, your freedom, your absolute capacity to grow without any help from anybody. Your growth is something intrinsic to your being. It does not come from outside; it is not an imposition, it is an unfolding.
All the meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me -
- my presence or absence will not make any difference -- they are dependent on you. It is not my presence, but your presence that is needed for them to work.
It is not my being here but your being here, your being in the present, your being alert and aware that is going to help.
I can understand your question and its relevance. It is not irrelevant.
The whole past of man is, in different ways, a history of exploitation. And even the so-called spiritual people could not resist the temptation to exploit. Out of a hundred masters, ninety-nine percent were trying to impose the idea that, "Without me you cannot grow, no progress is possible. Give me your whole responsibility."
But the moment you give your whole responsibility to somebody, unknowingly you are also giving your whole freedom.
And naturally, all those masters had to die one day, but they have left long lines of slaves: Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans. What are these people? Why should somebody be a Christian? If you can be someone, be a Christ, never
be a Christian. Are you absolutely blind to the humiliation when you call yourself a Christian, a follower of someone who died two thousand years ago?
The whole of humanity is following the dead. Is it not weird that the living should follow the dead, that the living should be dominated by the dead, that the living should depend on the dead and their promises that `We will be coming to save you.'?
None of them has come to save you. In fact, nobody can save anybody else; it goes against the foundational truth of freedom and individuality.
As far as I am concerned, I am simply making every effort to make you free from everybody -- including me -- and to just be alone on the path of searching.
This existence respects a person who dares to be alone in the seeking of truth. Slaves are not respected by existence at all. They do not deserve any respect; they don't respect themselves, how can they expect existence to be respectful towards them?
So remember, when I am gone, you are not going to lose anything. Perhaps you may gain something of which you are absolutely unaware.
Right now I am available to you only embodied, imprisoned in a certain shape and form.
When I am gone, where can I go? I will be here in the winds, in the ocean; and if you have loved me, if you have trusted me, you will feel me in a thousand and one ways. In your silent moments you will suddenly feel my presence.
Once I am unembodied, my consciousness is universal. Right now you have to come to me.
Then, you will not need to seek and search for me. Wherever you are... your thirst, your love... and you will find me in your very heart, in your very heartbeat.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
BEING ON MY OWN IN THE MARKETPLACE, I FELT MYSELF BECOMING
VERY MECHANICAL AND UNAWARE IN MY ACTIVITIES. NOW, BEING IN
YOUR PRESENCE AND GOING INSIDE, MY BODY-MIND SPEED IS SLOWING
DOWN, AND SELF CONSCIOUSNESS IS ARISING. THIS STATE OF SELF
COSNCIOUSNESS GIVES A LIGHTNESS, AND ONE WANTS TO STAY IN IT
MORE AND MORE. WHEN I LOOK AT YOU, I SEE A GRACE THAT IS POINTING FAR BEYOND.
OSHO, CAN YOU SPEAK ON THE SELF CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DISCIPLE, AND THE GRACE OF THE MASTER?
It is good that you are becoming aware of a very essential phenomenon: that in the marketplace you had become mechanical, robot-like.
Coming here, you are more relaxed.
The speed of the mind is slowly, slowly getting less. And as your awareness is becoming clear, your mechanicalness is disappearing. You have to see that awareness and mechanicalness cannot exist together; there is no coexistence possible between those two factors.
In the marketplace you are not expected to be aware -- you are expected to be efficient.
Efficiency is a quality of machines; machines are more efficient than human beings.
Because efficiency is required, you become more mechanical, and as you become more mechanical your awareness disappears.
And your awareness is your real being. By efficiency and mechanicalness, you may succeed in earning more money, more power, more prestige, more respectability, but you will lose yourself. And you are losing yourself very cheaply; what you are gaining in return is worthless.
Do you know how many people have lived before you on this earth? Do you realize the fact that millions of them were successful people? Millions of them were famous in their time, and now people don't even remember their names. They have disappeared like dreams, without leaving any trace behind.
We are also going to disappear in the same way. The only few people who have died and yet continue to live on in people's love, in people's trust, are not the very successful -- the emperors, the world conquerors, the richest. These few people who, in spite of their deaths, still beat in the hearts of man belong to a totally different category: they were the people of awareness, people with soul. Their impact has been so deep that it will remain unto the last man.
Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Christ, al-Hillaj Mansoor -- these people cannot be forgotten. They will go on living in the deepest parts of your being for the simple reason that they never compromised their awareness for the expectations of the marketplace.
So the first thing -- you have become aware. Make your awareness more sharp, and next time when you go to the marketplace there is no need to become robot- like. Perhaps you will not be as efficient as robots -- so what? Perhaps you will not be as successful as the mechanical ones -- so what? Let them have their day, and then they will disappear like soap bubbles. Don't feel jealous of them. Be compassionate towards them, and remain contented with your awareness.
Risk everything for awareness, but never risk awareness for anything. This is the commitment of a sannyasin: that he is ready to lose his life but not his awareness; he has found a value which is higher than life.
There is no other value which is higher than awareness. Awareness is the seed of godliness in you.
When it comes to its full growth, you have come to the fulfillment of your destiny.
As your awareness goes deeper, your actions may not be efficient but they will have a new quality -- the quality of grace -- which is far more valuable. No machine can have the quality of grace. Your actions, your words will have a beauty of their own.
The way a man of awareness lives, each moment is filled with tremendous grace and beauty. It is reflected in his actions, even in the smallest actions -- just in the gesture of his hand or just the way he looks; in the depth of his eyes or the authority of his words or the music of his silence. His very presence is a celebration.
In comparison to such a man, emperors are beggars; they have everything of the world, but inside they are empty. The temple may be made of gold, but inside the master of the temple is missing.
The disciple becomes every day more and more graceful, more and more alert -- and with all these qualities, a deep gratefulness towards the master is a necessary outcome.
It is not that you have to do it. If you do it, it is phony. If it comes on its own accord, then it has authenticity.
And as your gratefulness grows, you become more available, more open. The master can pour his whole being into you, all his blessings, his whole benediction.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
I SENSE SOMETHING WONDERFUL, SOMETHING INCREDIBLE HAPPENING
TO YOU OVER THERE IN YOUR CHAIR. AND MORE AND MORE OVER THE
YEARS, I SENSE SOMETHING REALLY WONDERFUL HAPPENING WITHIN ME
OVER HERE. FOR ME, IT IS NOT ENLIGHTENMENT -- I KNOW THAT. BUT IT
IS LIKE A HARMONY WITH YOU.
OSHO, CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HOW I CAN REACH THROUGH
THE SMOKE OF THE MIND TO BRING THIS WONDROUSNESS, THIS
BEAUTIFUL FEELING OF GIFTEDNESS OUT INTO THE OPEN SO THAT IT CAN
GROW?
The phenomenon of harmony is one of the most mysterious experiences possible.
It means that two bodies are still two bodies, but the two souls within them are no more two.
One soul within two bodies:
That's exactly the meaning of harmony. It is the most exquisite experience.
Ordinarily we are living in conflict, in disharmony. The husband is living in disharmony with the wife -- they call it living together. But unless this oneness arises, their togetherness is nothing but an underground conflict, erupting at any moment for any meaningless, silly reason. Both are sitting on volcanoes.
Parents are feeling a generation gap between themselves and their own children. There seems to be no common ground of understanding; harmony is a faraway goal. They don't even understand each other's language -- not that they speak different languages, but their visions are different, their attitudes are different, their approach towards life is different --
and there seems to be no way to come to any conclusion. Parents and children are no more on speaking terms because each time they speak it turns out to be a
fight.
The same thing happens with husbands and wives. When they are newly wed, things are hot -- they fight, the wives throw things, break plates, cups and glasses, throw pillows.
The husbands behave in the same way -- they beat the same woman they used to think they could not live without. They not only beat her, they even imagine many times killing her; otherwise, the wife is going to kill him. It is only a question of who takes the initiative; it is a cold war.
Slowly slowly, things get cooler: no more pillow fights, no more breaking of cups and glasses and saucers. But that does not mean that they have come to a harmony. That simply means they have understood the stupidity of it all; it is better to be silent. The husband simply goes on reading the same newspaper. On Sunday it is a little difficult; they avoid each other, they don't want to be left alone together.
One of my friends -- a very rich man -- asked me when he became fifty, "I have enough money. I had only two girls, who are married. And it is very difficult... because only my wife and I are left in the house."
But I said, "You should be happy. I thought this was a love marriage."
He said, "Now I don't use that word `love' at all; it is that word that destroyed my life. So just because of the wife, I continue with the business and the industries -- just to avoid her, because otherwise there would be no need."
I said, "Then find a beautiful hill station, and move there and live peacefully."
He said, "But... alone with this woman on a hill station? You are suggesting a murder!"
I said, "What are you talking about? Who is going to murder whom?"
He said, "That depends on who takes the initiative first. With this woman alone?
-- no! If you are willing to stay with us, I could be safe, I could go to any hill station. Without a friend, we don't even go to see a movie. The friend has to sit between the two of us; otherwise, something... and anything is enough to begin a quarrel."
I said, "I never see you fighting."
He said, "That's true; for years, everything has gone underground. But we are fighting.
Inside myself, I am beating her; inside herself she is beating me -- but not to make a show. What will people think, what will the servants think?"
They were not sleeping in the same room. I asked the wife why. She said, "No, there is not much of a problem... it is because he snores."
I said, "I have slept in the same room with him many times. I have never heard him snoring."
I asked my friend, "What is the matter? Your wife says you snore."
He said, "Yes, I snore -- just to keep her in the other room. I never snore in my sleep!
That's why you have not heard it. I have to make an effort to snore -- it is a very difficult art, one has to learn it -- just to give her an excuse. She wanted to sleep in the other room, but some excuse was needed. And it is perfectly peaceful to be here. She is there, and I lock the door from inside, because she may come in the middle of the night; some idea may come to her and a quarrel will start."
People are not living in harmony.
Harmony is an empty word, and for most of the people, unfortunately, it remains empty.
They know only fight, anger.
Harmony means you are dropping your ego, you are saying, "I would like to be with you, so deeply one, that this very idea of Ì' is no more needed."
A few people have lived in harmony; and particularly the master and the disciple cannot have any kind of relationship without harmony. The master is without ego; the disciple just has to drop his ego, and two consciousnesses become one, and a great music vibrates
-- in both persons, one music.
It has happened in other relationships too, but very rarely. I am reminded of a strange book in Sanskrit. It's name is bhamiti. It is a strange name because it is a commentary on one of the most philosophical treatises ever written, the BRAHMASUTRAS of Badarayan.
Badarayan is perhaps the greatest philosopher the world has produced, and he has written these small maxims, BRAHMASUTRAS, maxims about the ultimate.
There is no other book in the whole world on which so many commentaries have been written -- thousands and thousands of commentaries, because the maxims are so small, so condensed that unless somebody opens them, explains them, interprets them, you will not be able to find their meaning.
BRAHMASUTRA is a strange book. No other book has the same fate as Badarayan's BRAHMASUTRA. Commentaries were written, but the commentaries were also very difficult to understand, so commentaries upon commentaries were written. But still these were not so simple either, so commentaries on those commentaries.… This is the only book in which you will find a series of commentaries; the original is lost. And for thousands of years in India, people have been writing commentaries on the commentaries to bring its meaning to the masses.
One of the commentaries, one of the best commentaries on the BRAHMASUTRAS, is bhamiti, and it is strange, because bhamiti is a weird name for a commentary. `Bhamiti' is the name of a certain woman, and to give that name to the commentary.…
The commentary was written by a great philosopher, Vachaspati, whose wife's name was Bhamiti. It took him twelve years to write the commentary, and he decided that the day the commentary was complete, he would renounce the world and go to the Himalayas.
One day, in the middle of the night, the commentary was completed. He took the candle, in whose light he had been writing the commentary, to go to his room. And on the way there, he found a woman and he asked, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
She said, "My lord, you were so much immersed in writing the commentary, you forgot completely that you had married me. I am your wife."
Vachaspati said, "I remember. And I also remember that every day... just show me your hand, because I can recognize your hand. You were the one who was putting the candle by my side every day as the sun was setting. I know this hand. But it is too late; I have decided that the day the commentary is complete I will leave the house. You should have reminded me."
Bhamiti said, "It would have been very unloving to disturb you; I was waiting. And don't be worried -- if you have decided to leave, you leave without any worry. I will not come as a hindrance to your decision. It is enough that I can see that you are worried for me.
This will be enough for my whole life, that you had a certain love."
Vachaspati said, "You are a great woman. It is very rare to find such a woman. It is easy to find many commentators of my quality, but to find a woman of your quality -- such love, such trust, such waiting, such patience. And such greatness of heart -- just your concern that it is getting late is enough for you -- as if there is no expectation. I will call my commentary Bhamiti, so that whoever reads this commentary is bound to be surprised by the name" -- because it has no relevance; the commentary is on the BRAHMASUTRAS And, Bhamiti?
"But without you, and without your love, and without your patience, and without your silent waiting.… You never came in front of me, and you are so beautiful that it is certain: if you had come in front of me, it would have been a disturbance. I may have forgotten about the commentary; I may have delayed in completing it just to remain with you."
But Bhamiti said, "I have received more than I deserve. You should not wait in the house any longer. Let me have the pride of having a husband who followed his decision even though now I can see you are hesitating. Don't hesitate. I will
not allow you to remain in the house; you have to go to the Himalayas -- because if you remain in the house, I will not be able to give you the same respect."
This is a tremendous, unbelievable story.
Vachaspati left for the Himalayas, but he could not forget Bhamiti... such a quality, such grace and such beauty... something beyond human qualities. Only
such people have given proof that there is something more than human qualities, something which can only be called divine.
Vachaspati remains a great scholar, but Bhamiti proves to be a far more divine personality.
So once in a while there have been, in other relationships, people who have felt harmony with each other, but that is extremely rare -- accidental and exceptional.
But as far as the master and disciple relationship is concerned, it is a basic necessity; without it, there is no relationship.
A musical oneness... such a deep love that it consumes your ego. There are not two persons in relationship but only a harmonious whole, an energy field.
And once you have experienced it with a master, you can experience it in your other relationships too, because the principle is the same. And if you can experience it in all your relationships, many harmonies around you, your life becomes truly a divine gift, an orchestra. Then the master-discipleship was just the learning of a certain knack: you can use it with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your parents, with your friends. You can spread it all over the world. You can feel it with the trees, with the stars; it is only a question of knowing the knack.
The secret is: how not to be, how to disappear as an ego.
Then whatever you touch creates music, whatever you touch becomes gold. Question 4
BELOVED OSHO,
AFTER LEAVING RAJNEESHPURAM IN NOVEMBER LAST YEAR, I
EXPERIENCED THAT IT BECAME NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO FIND
OUT WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO. IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS A BIT FRIGHTENING, BUT VERY SOON I SAW MORE AND MORE THAT JUST
WAITING WAS ENOUGH, AND MANY BEAUTIFUL THINGS STARTED HAPPENING TO ME, WITHOUT MY GOING FOR IT.
IS THIS HOW BEING WITH YOU WORKS?
It is not only the way things happen around me. It is the way of the whole existence.
You just wait, and everything happens at its right moment.
Wait and watch. Don't fall asleep -- because in waiting that is very natural, to fall asleep.
Nothing to do, one falls asleep. Then things will be happening but you will not know. So wait and watch.
Life has been disturbed by the so-called do-gooders, who are continuously preaching around the world, "Do this, do that, do service to the poor." Doing has been raised so high that we have completely forgotten the art of waiting.
And, certainly, there are things which can happen only if you do them. For example, you cannot simply wait and grow rich.
There are people who even teach that. One American thinker, Napoleon Hill, has written beautiful books, a master writer. I have always liked one of his books, THINK AND
GROW RICH, although it is absolute nonsense. But he writes well. And there are people who believe that all that you have to do is simply wait; sow the seeds of thinking that a Cadillac car should come into your garage, and just wait. And one day, suddenly a Cadillac car comes, delivered to you. There are people who believe this -- that thinking has so much power.
In America there is still a Christian sect... half a century ago it was very important because a large majority believed in it. The sect calls itself `Christian Science'. And the science is that you need not do anything, you have just to think. God is the doer. You think, pray, wait; just give time to God. And what do
you think, that a Cadillac is a bigger thing than the whole universe? God can create the whole universe and he cannot create a Cadillac car?
I have heard a story that a young man was going to college and was met by an old woman. She asked, "What happened to your father? He is not coming to our Sunday meetings." They were Christian Scientists.
The boy said, "He is sick."
The old woman laughed. She said, "Nonsense, he must be thinking he is sick. It is thinking that matters. Just tell that old man, that `For your whole life you have been a member of Christian Science and still you have not understood a simple thing. Stop thinking that you are sick, and you will not be sick.'"
The boy said, "I will deliver the message."
After a week, again the old woman met the boy and said, "What happened? -- because he has not come even this week to the weekly meeting of the Christian Scientists."
The boy said, "Madam, now he thinks he is dead. And not only does he think he is dead, the whole neighborhood thinks he is dead, so they have put him in the grave. I tried to persuade them, `Wait. He may be thinking... but they think that I am mad."
There are things which will go on happening without your doing; you have just to wait --
and there are things which you have to do; only then will they happen. And slowly slowly, the things that happen by doing became more important: they are your material possessions, your money, your power, your prestige, your palaces, your empires. They won't happen just by waiting. By waiting, you will not become Alexander the Great. So because things which happen only by doing became important, humanity has completely forgotten the whole area of things which happen.
Love happens, you cannot do it -- although all over the world people have been trying to do that. And it is so strange that the world has not yet recognized the utter failure.…
Parents, for centuries, have been arranging marriages for their children. Astrologers are asked, palmists are asked, everything else is inquired about -- the family, the wealth, the character of the people -- but nobody asks the boy and the girl whether they love each other. Love is not a subject of inquiry at all. It is taken for granted that once they are married, they will love.
For thousands of years humanity has been doing that, and certainly when a small boy and girl are married, they start being like brothers and sisters also -- fighting, playing with each other, quarreling. They never come to know what love is; they think this is love.
They produce children, they buy ornaments for their wives, the wives try to make the life of the husband as difficult as possible -- in every way, they help each other.
It is only just in this century that people started saying, "Unless we are in love, we will not marry" -- and that, too, only in a few advanced countries.
But love is a question about which you cannot do anything. Either it happens or it does not happen. It is not within your control.
`Love marriage' came into existence but is not going to survive, for the simple reason that love comes, happens, and one day suddenly goes. It was not in your hands to bring it; neither is it in your hands to keep it.
The old marriage failed because the insistence was that you should love your wife, you should love your husband. It was àshould'. And you could not even conceive how you could love; at the most you could pretend, you could act.
But love is not a pretension, is not an acting. You cannot do anything. You are absolutely powerless as far as love is concerned.
The old marriage failed.
The new marriage is failing because the new marriage is simply a reaction to the old marriage. It is not out of understanding, but only out of reaction, revolt --
`love marriage.'
You don't know what love is. You simply see some beautiful face, you see some beautiful body and you think, "My God, I am in love!" This love is not going to
last, because after two days, seeing the same face for twenty-four hours a day, you will get bored. The same body... you have explored the whole topography; now there is nothing to explore.
Exploring the same geography again and again, you feel like an idiot. What is the point?
This love affair, this love marriage is failing, it has already failed. The reason is that you don't know how to wait so that love can happen.
You have to learn a meditative state of waiting. Then love is not a passion, it is not a desire. Then love is not sexual; then love is a feeling of two hearts beating in the same rhythm. It is not a question of beautiful faces or beautiful bodies. It is something very deep, a question of harmony.
If love arises out of harmony, then only will we know a successful life, a life of fulfillment in which love goes on deepening because it does not depend on anything outer; it depends on something inner. It does not depend on the nose and the length of the nose; it depends on an inner feeling of two hearts beating in the same rhythm. That rhythm can go on growing, can have new depths, newer spaces. Sex can be a part of it, but it is not sexual. Sex may come into it, may disappear in it. It is far greater than sex.
So whether the person you love is young or old does not matter. Every woman has thought once in a while... many women have been asking their lovers, "Will you also love me when I become old?"
I know about one of my friends -- he asked me, that's why I know -- that the girl he loves is continually asking him, "Will you love me when I am old?" He asked me, "What should I say?"
I said, "Why are you bringing me unnecessarily into this trouble? This is your business.
You say anything. What do you feel?"
He said, "If she becomes like her mother, I cannot love her. And most probably she will become like her, so that is the only fear."
So I said, "Say it clearly, that `Your old age is not the question; but if you
become like your mother then just forgive me, I will not be able to love you.'"
He said, "But then everything will be finished, because then her mother will be angry, and the whole thing depends on her. I am persuading her mother. The father is dead; she is the only one to decide about the marriage. Secondly, the girl will also get angry, because she also knows that she will become like her mother. All the symptoms are there."
I said, "Then keep quiet. Then when the difficult times come, see me again." He said, "But that girl is so insistent. She wants to know before marriage."
I said, "It is simple. You start asking her, `When I become old, will you love me?'"
He said, "That's good, because I am going to become old just like my father, and she hates my father just like I hate her mother. That's absolutely right."
And he told her, and she said, "Never! If you become like your own father, I am not going to love you. I will divorce you immediately."
The boy said, "Then when the difficult times come, we will see what to do. But why bring in these questions from the very beginning?"
But all your love is dependent on such small things -- the size of the nose, the eyes, the color of the hair, the proportions of the body. These things have nothing to do with love.
Love is a feeling of harmony with an individual, of accordance.
So it is not only with the relationship of the master and the disciple; in all your relationships, if you wait and watch for a harmonious moment with existence, you will find that things are happening that you could never have been able to do.
Many flowers are possible, many poems and songs are possible. Many stars are born out of harmony, waiting, and being alert.
Things are happening, but you have to be conscious. Many times things are
happening but you are not conscious. You miss what was your very right, just by being sleepy.
My teaching is basically of let-go. Things that happen only by doing are mundane. I am not against them, but they are not the essential part of your life. If you want to have a beautiful house, you will have to build it, it is not going to happen. Whether you are a Christian Scientist or you believe in THINK AND GROW RICH, nothing is going to help. But these are non-essential things.
Essential things... love, joy, cheerfulness, a sense of humor, peace that passeth understanding, an inward journey to find yourself... these are the essential things which you cannot do, which you have to learn to allow to happen.
So keep a clear-cut idea: what has to be done should be done, and what has to be allowed to happen should be allowed to happen; never interfere with it.
And also remember: the essential is that which happens on its own, and the non- essential is that which you do.
Your doing cannot be anything sacred.
That's why I say that all the temples and all the churches, all the statues of God made by man are mundane. Whatever is made by man cannot be higher than man.
It is a simple arithmetic: What is higher than man always happens, it is beyond your doing. You are always at the receiving end. You have to be just open, receptive, grateful to existence.
Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,
BEING WITH YOU IN DISCOURSE, I FEEL SO NOURISHED, AND HAVE FINALLY FOUND THE REST I HAD LONGED FOR.
BEING IN THE WEST, I DIDN'T EVEN FEEL HOW MUCH I WAS MISSING BEING IN YOUR PRESENCE. HOW COULD I FORGET THE BEAUTY OF
BEING WITH YOU?
PLEASE COMMENT.
Man's memory is not very great. He forgets easily. Just a few examples will help you.
You all have been children. How much do you remember the innocence that you had? In fact, a strange fact is discovered by the psychologists: that if you go backwards trying to remember, you reach only to the age of four, at the most to the age of three. But those three or four years in the very beginning were the best
-- no responsibility, no worry, no tension. Life was simply a romance, a sheer joy, but people don't remember it.
And it is very strange that everybody's memory stops nearabout the age of three or four.
It seems the best in us is not recorded. Perhaps it is a biological strategy that you should forget it; if you remember it, then for your whole life you will feel you are missing. You are missing because you have seen the most beautiful moments, and now everything will be dull, pale, dead. It will not have that luster, that joy, that liveliness. Perhaps it is a strategy of biology not to record those beautiful moments.
Even in later life.… You will be surprised to know that the mind functions in a very strange way: it records everything that is miserable very quickly. Somebody has insulted you -- you will never forget it for your whole life. So many people have respected you, you have forgotten. One person has insulted you and you cannot forget.
It seems that the ugly, the dark, the humiliating, the tragic have a priority as far as remembrance is concerned. All that is good, all that is beautiful is simply forgotten; they leave no marks on your memory.
Politicians have been using it, priests have been using it in exploiting humanity from the very beginning.
They say that in a democracy two parties are needed. Democracy has nothing to do with two parties. Two parties are needed for a totally different reason, which is psychological.
One party is in power for five years; in those five years everybody goes against that party
-- because it has promised paradise and you are living in hell, and it has forgotten all those promises.
The opposition party goes on provoking you: "What happened to the promises of these people? We could have fulfilled your promises." In the next election, those who were in power lose power and the other party that was powerless comes into power. In five years'
time, they are finished. But in five years, people have forgotten the first party, and the first party is again promising a paradise, and they are listening to them and believing them.
It has been found that the masses have a memory of five years at the most. That's why elections have to be decided every five years; there is no other reason. So in five years'
time the masses forget the first party's crimes, the first party's stupidities, the first party's lies; they all become saints again.
That's why two parties are needed. One party will be in difficulty, because if they are continuously in power you cannot forgive them. People will start revolting, killing those who are in power. So this is a very psychological way of keeping people satisfied: "Don't be worried, it is only a question of two years more. Then these people will be gone and the good people will be coming" -- and they all belong to the same category.
I have never voted in my life for the simple reason that I could not see any difference between two idiots, who is a lesser idiot. I could not find a way, so I thought it was better not to get involved in it. At least nobody can blame me -- "You have chosen this idiot." I have never chosen anybody. Choose anyone and you have chosen the wrong person.
Just look forty years back in India: whoever you choose, you always choose the
wrong person, and whoever you choose again you will choose the wrong person
-- because they are the same people. It is just like a football match: two parties, two groups are playing football, and you are the football. You are going to get kicks from everywhere. Wherever you go, you will get a good kick.
You are asking me why we tend to forget the beautiful moments. It is natural, because the mind is not interested in taking note of the flowers, it is interested in taking note of the thorns. Anything that hurts, it immediately takes note of.
Who cares about a flower? You remember your enemies better than your friends. Just watch your mind and you will be surprised that you remember your enemy more than you remember your friends. You can forget your friends, but you cannot forget your enemies.
This is your insane mind.
A saner mind will look at things from just the opposite direction: it will count the blessings, it will count all that is beautiful, it will keep note of all it has to be grateful for.
And then, naturally the life of such a person will become a life of blessings, surrounded by all beautiful experiences.
It is only a question of changing a small structure in your mind. I have always loved a story.
It happened in a synagogue. The synagogue was also a monastery for the Jews, and the chief rabbi was a very strict person. Two young Jews were walking in the garden of the monastery. They used to get one hour in the morning, and one hour in the evening to go into the garden. Other times, they had to study the scriptures and do other disciplines.
They both were thinking, "Should we ask the chief if we can smoke while we are in the garden?" Both were chain smokers, but in the monastery, inside the synagogue, smoking was impossible. It was a crime. They were suffering, so both decided that although it was putting your hand in a lion's mouth, one effort should be made: "That chief rabbi is a dangerous man; how he will react, only God knows!"
The next day, one of the two was coming out of the synagogue with tears in his eyes, both angry and sad. And then he saw the other fellow, who was sitting by the side of a beautiful rose bush -- smoking! He said, "My God, have you started without asking?"
The other man said, "No, I have asked."
He said, "What kind of man is this? I asked him also, and he shouted at me so loudly --
`You rascal! What do you think, this is a synagogue or hell? If you want to smoke cigarettes, go to hell!' So how is it that he allowed you?'"
The other man smiled and he said, "What was your way of asking?" He said, "What has that to do with it?"
The other man said, "Just tell me, how did you ask?"
He said, "I simply asked..." because these two hours were called `hours of prayer.' They were allowed to go into the garden for twòhours of prayer'.
So he answered, "I simply asked, `Can I smoke while praying?' And he shouted so loudly and it seemed he was going to hit me!"
The other man said, "Calm down. You asked in the wrong way. I asked him also; I asked him, `Sir, can I pray while smoking?' and he said, `That's perfectly good, there is no harm in that.'"
Just a slight change, but it makes lot of difference.
Start collecting all that is happening to you that is beautiful. And it is happening to everybody. And anything that is not beautiful is not worth remembering, not worth collecting. Why make yourself burdened with rubbish when you can be full of flowers and fragrance?
You have to make a little change in your natural biological mind. Meditation can do it very easily.
One of the essential parts of meditation is to look at the good side of things, to look at the good side of people, to look at the good side of incidents, so that you are surrounded with everything good.
Surrounded with all beautiful things, your growth is easier.
But people are strange.… You may do one thousand favors for a person and just do one unfavorable thing -- he will forget one thousand favors and he will remember that one unfavorable thing that you did. That he will carry for his whole life. This is how people are living: in revenge, in anger, in despair, feeling rejected by life, feeling like outcasts of existence.
But the whole thing is that you are collecting the wrong things.
Life is full of both. You can see that one day is sandwiched between two nights, and you can also see two beautiful days sandwiching one small night. Choose how you want to feel -- to be in heaven or hell. It is your choice.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #12
Chapter title: The three initiations: Student, disciple, devotee 14 October 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8610145
ShortTitle: ENLIGH12
Audio: Yes Video:
Yes Length:
142
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
IS IT TRUE THAT TO BE IN COMMUNION WITH THE MASTER IS THE INITIATION?
The word ìnitiation' is very significant and profound.
There are three initiations: first, when a student becomes a disciple; second, when a disciple becomes a devotee; and third, when the devotee disappears in the master.
To understand the whole process, all three steps have to be understood.
Everyone begins as a student, as an inquirer into what this life is all about, with a curiosity to know the mysteries that surround us. But the desire is for knowledge; hence, superficial. Because the desire is for knowledge, it is of the mind. And mind is the periphery of our being, the most superficial part of our individuality.
The student has questions, but he has no quest. His questions are easily answerable, he is easily satisfied -- just borrowed knowledge is enough for him. He does not yet need a master; he only needs a teacher. He accumulates answers, becomes an intellectual, but does not become intelligent. The accumulation of answers happens in the memory part of the mind, and the part that functions in accumulation is mechanical, it has nothing to do with intelligence.
It is possible to find very educated, cultured, sophisticated intellectuals behaving in life in a very unintelligent way. They are very efficient whenever some question is asked for which they are already prepared. But if life raises a new
question for which they are not prepared, they are completely at a loss, they are as ignorant as one can be. And the problem is, life goes on posing new questions, new challenges.
Memory is good in the marketplace; memory is not good as a lifestyle. And all your universities only teach you how to memorize.
It has been found that the people of very great memory are generally unintelligent people.
In the life of one of the British viceroys, Curzon, there is mention of a very significant incident -- and it is a historical fact.
Curzon had heard that there was a man in Rajputana whose memory was just unbelievable. The man knew only his local dialect, Rajasthani, a dialect of Hindi; he did not know any other language. But that did not prevent him from memorizing any statement in any language, and in such a way that it seemed almost superhuman.
He was called to the court of the Viceroy Curzon; a special meeting was arranged. Thirty scholars, knowing thirty languages, were to examine the man and his memory. Among those thirty scholars, there was not a single one who understood the man's mother tongue, and all those thirty languages were foreign languages for him.
And the arrangement was so strange -- it had never been made before and I don't think it will be ever made again.
The arrangement was such that each of those thirty scholars was to deliver one sentence in his own language to the poor villager from Rajasthan. But the sentence was not to be delivered to him in one piece. The villager would go to one person who would give him the first word of his sentence. Then a bell would be rung. Then the villager would move to the next person, who would give him his first word. In this way he would go round and round. After thirty persons, he would come again to the first person to get the second word of his sentence... and after each word a big bell would ring to confuse him.
The scholars were not certain that they would be able to remember their whole sentence for the whole time, because it was going to take so much time. They all
had their sentences written in front of them, and they were marking off each word they had given.
And this man went on and on, round and round, taking their words, and accumulating in his memory system the sentences which were given to him in pieces.
After all the scholars had given their sentences, he repeated thirty statements in thirty languages, of which he knew nothing. He knew nothing about what they meant. He was so correct that all the intellectuals were puzzled. They could not remember their own sentences, they had had to write them down. They could not remember whether they had given the fifth word or the sixth -- they had had to mark it. And this man was uneducated
-- he could not even write.
Curzon was amazed. He praised the man, and rewarded him.
But it was found by talking with his fellow villagers that he was an idiot. Just as far as his memory was concerned, he was simply great -- but any simple question in life, any simple situation in life, and he was not able to solve it, he was not able to answer it. They said, "He is known in our village as `the great intellectual idiot'."
It is a well-known fact that a student is interested in collecting knowledge. His questions are easily satisfied. His mind functions like a computer.
But once in a while, a student falls into the trap of a master. He is not in search of a master, he does not know any difference in the words `master' and `teacher'. In the dictionaries both words mean the same.
But in actual life, a teacher simply transfers knowledge from one generation to another generation -- it is not his own experience. The master does not transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation; what he gives out is his own realization.
But if the student is caught in the trap of a master, then it is very difficult to get out of it because soon it becomes clear that knowledge and knowing are two different things.
Questions and quest are two different things. Questions are simply curiosities.
Quest is a risk, is a pilgrimage, is a search.
A question is easily satisfied by any logical, rational answer. The quest is not satisfied by logical or rational answers; the quest is like thirst.
You can go on repeating that scientifically, H2O means water, but that is not going to quench the thirst. It is an answer, and a perfectly right answer. If somebody is asking what water is, as a question, it is very simple to answer it. But if somebody is asking about water because he is thirsty, then H2O is not going to help. Then, only real water will do.
Quest means thirst, hunger. No borrowed knowledge can satisfy it.
And the master slowly makes the student aware that if you are really a man, then just to be curious is childish. Maturity demands that you should go on a quest, that you should not ask only for knowledge, you should ask for ways and means and methods so that you can know -- not knowledge that has come from generation to generation. No one knows whether somebody invented it, whether it is fiction, whether somebody realized it or not, how much is lost in transferring it, how much is added, how much is edited out. Knowing means "I want a personal experience."
A genuine seeker has no questions, but a tremendous thirst.
This is the first initiation -- when the master changes the student's focus from knowledge towards knowing, from memory towards intelligence.
And it is not an ordinary phenomenon, it happens to only a very few fortunate ones.
Millions of people simply remain curious, childish, immature for their whole life.
Once the emphasis has moved from knowledge to knowing, your concern is no more with the past, your concern is with the present. Your concern is no more with the great philosophers, wise people; your concern is about your own
consciousness. For the first time you become interested not in objects but in your subjectivity, not about other things but about the one who wants to know: Who is this who wants to know?
This is the first initiation: the student dies, and the disciple is born.
The second initiation is when the disciple also disappears, into a devotee.
A disciple is still interested in gaining methods, disciplines, ways to know himself. The master has to be used; hence, he is grateful. But he is the end, and the master is the means; he is using the master for his own ends.
As he comes closer to the master, the master takes him into the second initiation. And the second initiation is that unless you drop this obsession with yourself you will never know yourself.
It appears contradictory; it is not. Your very obsession is preventing you; it is egoistic.
You drop the ego, surrender the ego; you forget yourself, and in the very moment you forget yourself you will find yourself.
From knowledge to knowing, the student was never interested in himself. He was interested in things, objects, the whole world. The first initiation brought him into a new world of interest about himself.
The second initiation takes away the ego.
The second initiation teaches him love. Because knowing oneself is a byproduct
-- if you can love, you will know yourself without any difficulty. Only in loving light does the darkness within you disappear.
Love is light, and the flame of love has to be taught.
The master loves, his presence is love. His very presence is magnetic. Without saying a word... just to be close to him, you will feel a certain pull, a certain love, a trust.
And you don't know the man, you don't know whether he is trustworthy or not.
But you are ready to risk. The presence of the master is so convincing that there is no need of any argument to prove it.
I have been a teacher in the university, and each year on Teacher's Day the university professors used to have an intimate meeting to discuss problems that they were facing.
And every year the basic and the most troublesome problem was that the students don't respect them. When I joined their meeting for the first time, it was my first year in the university. They were all condemning the students, they were condemning modern society, the Western world, because they have taken away all respect. One of the professors -- an old man, a very respected professor, he was the dean of the faculty of arts
-- said, "It is so shameful, particularly in a country where there have been students like Ekalavya."
I will have to tell you the story so you can understand. It is an ancient Indian story.
There was a great master archer, Dronacharya. Princes, rich people, high caste Hindus, warriors used to come to him from faraway places to learn archery.
The Hindu society is divided into four classes. It is the ugliest division that exists in the whole world, and it has existed for five thousand years. One fourth of the Hindu society are not treated like human beings; they are called sudras, untouchables. They are not even worthy to be touched. If by accident you touch a sudra, you have to immediately take a shower to clean yourself. Not only the sudra, even the shadow of the sudra is untouchable. If a sudra passes by and his shadow touches you, you have to take a bath.
This young man, Ekalavya, was born a sudra. But he wanted to become an archer, and he started learning archery on his own. He knew perfectly well -- his elders told him, "No teacher is going to accept you."
He said, "Before I go to any teacher, I will learn so much that it will be almost impossible for him to reject me." And he disciplined himself, and when he thought that now he knew enough, he went to the greatest archer of those days, Dronacharya.
Dronacharya was amazed, seeing that the young man had learned on his own tremendously well. But still, Dronacharya was a brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and it was impossible to accept Ekalavya as a disciple. He rejected him.
But Ekalavya was made of a different kind of mettle than ordinary human beings are made of. He went into the forest and made a statue of Dronacharya. And just in front of the statue, he continued learning on his own. Soon the word started spreading all over the country that Ekalavya had become a master archer, just by the side of the statue of Dronacharya.
Dronacharya had an ambition, and that ambition was that one prince who was his disciple, Arjuna -- and he was a great archer -- should become the greatest archer in the history of man.
But this Ekalavya was disturbing everything, he was becoming more famous. Dronacharya went into the forest.…
And this is the point to be noted -- that's why the dean of the faculty of arts had quoted the name of Ekalavya.
He had been rejected by Dronacharya. Any ordinary human being would have felt insulted, humiliated. But on the contrary, he made a statue of Dronacharya -- because he has chosen him as his master. It does not matter whether Dronacharya accepts him as his disciple or not -- he will have to accept him. What matters is how deep his acceptance is of Dronacharya as his master.
And when Dronacharya came, he fell at his feet. And Dronacharya saw what he had learned. Certainly he was far ahead of Arjuna, and Arjuna was not going to be the greatest archer, which was the deep ambition of Dronacharya. This man had rejected Ekalavya, and now he said to him, "You have been learning here in front of my statue.
You have accepted me as your master."
Ekalavya said, "I have always thought of you as my master, even when you rejected me. I have not taken any note of your rejection."
Dronacharya said, "I accept you as my disciple, but then you will have to pay the fee.
Every disciple has to pay the fee to the master -- and you have not given even the entrance fee, and you have already become such a great archer."
Poor Ekalavya said, "Whatever you ask, if I have it I will give it to you. I can give my life. You are my master, you just say it. But I am a poor man, so just ask for that which I have."
Dronacharya said, "Yes, I will ask only that which you have. I want your right- hand thumb. You cut it, and give it to me."
This is an ugly story. The strategy is that once his right-hand thumb is cut, his archery would be finished, he would no longer be a competitor to Arjuna. Dronacharya accepted him as his disciple just to get his thumb.
And Ekalavya, without saying a word, simply took his sword and cut his thumb. He gave it to the master and said, "If you want anything more, you just tell me."
This story, you have to remember in the background.
The dean was saying: "This country, which has produced students like Ekalavya
-- who respected a master like Dronacharya who rejected him, insulted him -- has fallen so low that students are not respecting teachers at all. Something has to be done."
I was very new. It was my first meeting with all the professors from all the departments. I had to stand up, and I said to the old man, "You have raised a few questions. One: this is certainly the country of students like Ekalavya, but this is also the country of teachers like Dronacharya -- ugly, cunning, inhuman. This man has behaved in the most inhuman way possible. Why do you go on forgetting about him?
"First, you are rejecting a poor young man because he is condemned by you as an untouchable. Secondly, when he achieves on his own, you are willing to accept him as your disciple -- in the forest, where nobody knows what is happening. And that too for a certain reason, so that you can cripple his right hand to destroy his archery, so that your ambition of making Arjuna the greatest archer in the world can be fulfilled."
I said, "You should not forget that it is because of teachers like Dronacharya that teachers in India have lost their respect. You represent Dronacharya -- on what
grounds do you want students to respect you? And you are not even conscious of the fact you are mentioning Ekalavya. As far as I am concerned, I don't see... I also have students, and I am a new professor. I have not seen a single student being disrespectful towards me. I love them, I respect them. Love resonates love in the other, respect creates respect in the other -- these are resonances. If I had been in the place of Ekalavya, I would have cut off the head of Dronacharya! That's exactly what he deserved."
The old man was in such a shock and so shattered, he was almost trembling.
I said, "You sit down because you are trembling, and if some heart attack or something happens I will be responsible for it. Please sit down. I am not going to cut your head --
although you also need to be treated in the same way. You want students to be Ekalavya's
-- what about the teachers?"
The master is not a teacher. He loves; it will be better to say he is love. He respects; it will be better to say he is respectfulness.
Naturally he creates a gravitational field of love, respect, gratitude. In this gravitational field, the second initiation happens.
The disciple is no longer interested in knowing about himself. His only interest is in how to be dissolved into the master, how to be in harmony with the master. And the day the harmony comes to its peak, the disciple disappears; the devotee is born.
The devotee is miles away from the student. The whole journey has taken such revolutionary changes. The devotee is on the verge... the life of the devotee is not long.
The longest life is that of the student. In the middle is the disciple. And the life span of the devotee is very small.
It is something like a dewdrop on a lotus petal in the early morning sun, slipping slowly, slowly towards the sun into the ocean. The dewdrop is just that small
fragment of time that it takes to slip from the lotus leaf into the ocean.
The devotee's life is not long, it is very short -- because once you have tasted the harmony, you cannot wait to taste oneness. It is impossible to wait. The dewdrop runs fast, drops into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean.
There are two ways to say it.
Kabir, one of the great mystics of India, is the only one who has used both ways.
When for the first time he slipped into the ocean, he wrote a small statement in which he said, "I had been searching for myself, but, my friend, instead of finding myself, I have disappeared into the ocean. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean."
After almost twenty years, when he was on his deathbed, he asked his son, Kamal, "Bring the notes you have been taking of my statements. Before I die, I have to correct one thing." He said, "I have said at one place that the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.
Change it. Write down, `The ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.'"
His own words are tremendously beautiful. The first words are, HERAT HERAT HEY
SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAYI; BUNDA SAMANI SAMUNDA MEN SO KAT
HERI JAYI. And the second: HERAT HERAT HEY SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAYI; SAMUNDA SAMANA BUNDA MEN SO KAT HERI JAYI. In the
first, the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. In the second, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.
Perhaps two sides of the same coin.…
This is the third initiation, and only after the third initiation is there communion -
-
because there is union, there is no more separation, there is at-oneness.
The path of a mystic begins as a student, ends as a master... begins as a dewdrop, ends as an ocean.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
THE CLOSER I AM TO YOU PHYSICALLY, THE MORE I GET LOST IN YOUR
PRESENCE AND FORGET ABOUT THE PERSON THAT I THINK I AM. IT FEELS
AS IF MAGNETIC ENERGY IS COMING FROM YOU THAT PULLS ME STRONGLY TOWARDS YOU.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
That which should be happening is happening.
You are coming closer to my presence. You cannot keep your person intact.
You cannot have both my presence and your person. If you want your person, you will have to lose my presence; if you want my presence, you will have to lose your person --
they cannot coexist.
But what is your person? Have you ever thought about it? It consists of all your miseries, anxieties, despairs, nightmares; it is your hell.
Have you ever given thought to a simple phenomenon? Since the very beginnings of man, why have human beings been so much interested in intoxicating drugs?
In RIG VEDA, the oldest book in the world... even the so-called seers of the VEDAS are interested in a certain drug called somras.
One of the most intelligent persons of this century, Aldous Huxley -- who was very well acquainted with the East, particularly Eastern mystics -- finally ended
up experimenting with LSD. He wrote that in the coming century, the finest form of LSD will be called
`soma' in remembrance of the RIG VEDAS' somras.
He was absolutely convinced that LSD has come very close to somras. And perhaps he is right, because the rishis, the seers of the VEDAS, after drinking somrasa, the juice of a plant called som, have described their experiences and what happens to them... how much peace, how much serenity, how much joy. All their experiences are exactly the same as those Aldous Huxley described when he came out of his first LSD trip.
All the cultures, all the religions have been condemning alcohol, opium, hashish, marijuana -- but their condemnation seems to have no effect. Humanity goes on taking drugs, and nobody bothers to ask, if so many wise people are against it, why are people taking these drugs? And the strange thing is that so many of these wise people who are against it are taking drugs themselves -- perhaps in different ways.
In one country, marijuana may be illegal, hashish may be illegal, LSD may be illegal, but alcohol is not. And alcohol is more dangerous than any of the other three. Why isn't alcohol illegal? -- because Jesus used to drink it. Christianity cannot make it illegal; otherwise Jesus would be proved a criminal -- and not an ordinary criminal, because he was even making water into alcohol.
And the countries who have tried For example, India, which is not a Christian
country, has tried hard to prohibit alcohol, but has failed. Prohibition makes things even worse.
People start making alcohol on their own, in their own homes. And thousands of people have died from poisoning because they don't know what they are drinking. It is being sold underground, and they don't know how it is being prepared. And finally those prohibitions have to be withdrawn.
One thing that I want to make clear to you is that all the people who have been against the laws and governments and religions and who are still going for drugs have a certain argument. And that is that they want their personality to be forgotten. Their person is so painful, so ugly, that they are ready to commit any illegal act, just to forget it for a few hours.
The influence of intoxicating drugs proves only one thing: man, in his ordinary personality, is living in despair. He wants for a few hours at least to forget all about the worries and the problems and the anxieties, and there seems to be no other way.
What do you want to protect your person for? Your person is your problem.
And if you are intelligent enough, and you can find some presence where your person starts melting and disappearing -- without any intoxication, without any drugs -- then can you conceive of a greater blessing? Let the person disappear; it is simply a burden, a torture, a pain in the neck for which there is no medicine.
What do you think, Amrito -- is there any medicine for a pain in the neck? I have never heard of it. I am asking my physician -- and he is a knowledgeable physician; he is a member of the Royal Society of England.
Let the person disappear, evaporate.
The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away; your individuality, your individual arises.
To have a personality is hypocrisy. To be an individual is your birthright.
And the function of the master is to take away everything that is not you, and leave only that which is essentially yours, given by existence itself.
I can understand, there arises a fear. You have lived with the person for so long, you have become identified with it. When it starts disappearing, a fear arises: "What is happening?
Am I going to disappear?"
Now, what is true is not going to disappear, and what is untrue needs to disappear. So be courageous.
And when your personality leaves you, say goodbye to it forever...
"Don't come back. Find somebody else; there are so many people all around." Because there are people who are not so poor as to have only one personality. They are rich people, they have many personalities -- when they are with their wife they have one personality, when they are with their girlfriend they have another personality -- the same personality won't do. They go on changing constantly. It becomes almost an autonomous process.
George Gurdjieff, one of the great masters of this age, used a few techniques. One of the techniques was to make you aware of your personalities. He himself was such an expert that you could be sitting on his left side and your friend could be sitting on his right side, and to one he would show an angry face and to the other his face would appear really blissful, peaceful, very loving.
And when you meet, one will say, "What a man! I was so afraid; he was so angry the whole time." And the other will say, "What are you saying? He was so loving, and smiling." And only later on would you discover that he has been playing a game. He learned the art of changing personalities to such an extent that he could use two personalities at the same time. Gurdjieff could show half of the personality to the wife, and half to the girlfriend! But a long training.…
There is no need. Whether you have one personality or many, they are all junk. Just leave them, just be simply yourself. In the beginning it may feel a little awkward, as if you are naked -- in a certain way it is a kind of nakedness. But soon you will understand the beauty and innocence of simply being yourself.
My grandfather died. We were great friends; in my whole family we were the only friends. No one was at ease with me, and no one was at ease with him. He was very old, but a troublemaker. But with me he was perfectly happy.
We used to go together to the river, to the temple, to public meetings, and he would tell me, "Create trouble. Ask some question just to make that leader feel embarrassed."
He was a nice, beautiful man. He died. So the whole family was sad, people were crying.
I went to a nearby sweet shop, and I asked the owner, "You give me all the beautiful sweets that you have prepared today -- the whole lot."
He said, "Are you mad? Your grandfather has died. Haven't you heard?"
I said, "That's why! In death -- celebration! We were great friends, you know?"
He said, "I know, but your father, your uncle and the others will kill me. They will say,
`HE is a rascal, but YOU... why did you give him sweets? Is this a time for celebration?'"
I said, "Are you going to give them to me, or should I create some trouble?"
He said, "No, I don't want any trouble. You can take them, but it is your responsibility."
I said, "I always do everything on my own responsibility."
By that time a few people had gathered. I said, "All these people are witnesses; I am taking these sweets on my responsibility. This man is absolutely innocent. In fact, he has been trying to prevent me because he does not understand at all that my grandfather has gone to heaven and this is the time to celebrate."
And I sat in front of my house distributing sweets. My whole family gathered and they said, "What are you doing?"
I said, "Simply celebrating."
They said, "Is this a time for celebration?"
I said, "To be sincere, you are all feeling good that that old fellow is dead. Except me, nobody is sad. But you are all hypocrites."
My father said to them, "Don't talk so loudly, you will gather a crowd; and if you gather a crowd, he is always the winner." He told me, "You do whatsoever you want to do. He was your grandfather, and if you want to celebrate, celebrate."
But whoever I gave the sweets to would say, "But this is not the time."
I said, "This is the time, because my whole family is celebrating except me -- and they are all sitting sad, with crocodile tears. That is all nonsense. I know them, and because they have to hold on to their hypocrisy they cannot celebrate. So I have to do this job --
although I am the only person who is sad, because he was my friend. And everybody is saying that he has gone to heaven -- then why not make it a celebration? If he had gone to hell, then it would be perfectly okay. Sit with long faces and tears, and don't eat for two or three days, and make as much fuss as you can. But if he has gone to heaven, then why are you feeling jealous? Just celebrate, enjoy."
Late in the night my father told me, "The whole day I have been thinking that perhaps you are right. We were not sincere. We all were feeling relieved because he was always a trouble -- in everything he created trouble."
In the shop they avoided him. He would come into the shop, and they would send him somewhere else because he will tell the customers, "He is cheating you" -- his own son --
"He is cheating you. That cloth is not worth twelve rupees, it is just worth eight rupees. If you wait a little, I will give it to you for eight rupees. Otherwise, it is... if you have too much money to throw away, throw it."
So in the shop, all my uncles, my father, everybody tried to get rid of him -- "Customers are coming, send him away -- anywhere, whatever he wants to do. But if he stands here, he will tell the truth."
And if I was there, I would tell the customers, "Just wait a little, my grandfather is coming. Then you will get the same thing for four or five rupees less."
So not only were they getting rid of him, as I would enter the shop they would tell me,
"Just go to the post office."
I said, "You harass me unnecessarily. Collect all your post in the evening and I will go every day. But I cannot do this the whole day long. Whenever I come:
`Go to the post office, just one postcard... drop it at the post office.' And this is just a trick, nothing else. I will go only when my grandfather is in the shop. At least one of us has to be here; otherwise the customers are going to be cheated, exploited."
So my father said, "You were right. We were all feeling relieved, and all our tears were false. But you made it too open a secret, distributing sweets to the
whole town and telling people that `My whole family is celebrating.'"
I said, "If I was right, then you should drop these masks. Even at the death of your own father, you cannot drop your false faces. When are you going to be true?"
All your personalities are absolute cover-ups, hiding your individuality.
So it is perfectly good if it is happening that you are coming closer and you feel a magnetic pull. Don't resist; help it. Let those personalities die. Their death is going to become your new life, a life which will be a joy, an innocence, a luminosity, a constant dance of the heart. Just a little courage.…
Don't ask what is happening. Let it happen, and see. What I am saying is nothing; what will happen will be a thousandfold more.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, AND STILL -- HOW CAN IT BE THAT SO MANY
QUESTIONS WHICH COME TO MY MIND ARE REFLECTING THE DARK SIDE
OF ME? I AM AFRAID TO BORE YOU, BUT SOMEHOW THESE QUESTIONS
OFTEN FEEL AS IF THEY ARE THE MOST HONEST AND AUTHENTIC TO ME.
PLEASE COMMENT.
Latifa, one thing to be constantly remembered is not to judge what is dark and what is light, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil -- because the moment you judge, you start repressing. You don't want to show anything that you judge as dark, as evil, as bad. Then you have chosen only half of yourself; it is as if you have chosen only the day and you have denied the night.
But the night has its own beauties. Its darkness is also a beauty -- it has a depth, a silence, a serenity, the stars. If the day has its beauty, the night has its own beauty; they are both unique -- and they are complementary.
What you have been doing is to ask questions which look good -- and you repress those questions which you feel and judge to be bad. Naturally, your so- called good side is exhausted by and by, and only the side which, according to you is bad, remains inside.
Then you are boiling with all that is black. Days are finished; only nights remain, and now you feel very much afraid to open yourself because anybody will see simply darkness and nothing else. And at the same time, you feel that it is absolutely sincere, it is part of you.
It is not something insincere, but the whole problem begins in your judgment. Judgment is one of the crimes.
We go on judging other people, and we do the same with ourselves. We go on judging our thoughts, our actions, what is good, what is bad, what should have been done, what should not have been done; and we are constantly creating conflict and duality.
Here with me you have to create a oneness, a beautiful harmony between day and night, between life and death. Between any things that seem to be polar opposites you have to create a wholeness. And then you will not feel, bringing out anything, that it will expose you; it will simply show your wholeness.
Just think of a rosebush. If the rosebush starts worrying about the thorns and starts suppressing them, the whole energy of the rosebush will be involved in suppressing the thorns. It may not be able to bring roses -- or even if it does they may not be worth bringing; they may be crippled, almost dying from the very beginning.
But once you accept that thorns are part of the rosebush, as roses are...
From my very childhood I have seen thorns in the rosebushes as the bodyguards of the roses. And they are bodyguards -- they protect them. They are coming from the same roots; they are part of the same bush, they live on the same juice. They are brothers and sisters; they live in deep harmony, there is no conflict.
Have you seen the thorns and roses fighting with each other? Have you seen any rosebush being embarrassed that it has thorns?
Thorns have their own beauty.
The mind that continuously goes on judging creates anguish in you. But we are taught to judge.
Even those with whom we have no concern, we go on judging: this man is good, that man is bad. What business is this, what concern is it of yours? And if you knew the whole story of the man, perhaps you would have said that this act you had thought was bad was absolutely inevitable. Without this act there would have remained something incomplete in the whole story.
You know only parts -- as if you take out a page from a novel, and you judge the whole novel from the page. It is sheer stupidity. First, go through the whole novel.
And as far as human life is concerned, nobody can go through the whole of a single human life. It is so vast, compressed in such a small time... seventy or eighty years, with so many complexities, complications that if you could see it as a whole you would not say that something was bad; it fits perfectly in the whole pattern of the person's life.
And anyway, who are we? Who has made us judges?
Once the mind learns the trick of judging, it goes on. Then you are continuously judging inside: This is good, this is bad. Then show the good side always, and keep the bad side to yourself. Slowly slowly, the good side is shown so much, everybody is bored with it.
You are bored with it. And you cannot show the bad side, because it is bad. Show your wholeness.
Just your good side is bound to be boring, too flat.
With your black parts, it becomes juicy, it becomes more interesting.
It is said that "a good man has no life" -- and I agree with this statement, whoever made it. What can a good man have? A bad man has a life!
If you are whole, you will have more alive expressions... not flat, not boring, but always full of surprises. Not only surprising others but even surprising yourself -
- "My God, I was able to do this too?"
Life should be lived with as much wholeness as possible.
That's the only way to live, to love, and to have a good laugh in the end. And don't be worried about what is right and what is wrong.
Just for example, God created the world. Of course, if there was no devil, there would have been nothing at all in the world. Although the whole credit goes to God, it should go to the devil who persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He is the first revolutionary, the first rebel, the first man to bring some aliveness into the world; otherwise, Adam and Eve would be chewing grass, still. In the Garden of Eden what else will you do? God has said not to eat from the tree of knowledge, not to eat from the tree of eternal life -- what is left? Knowing is prohibited, living is prohibited -- just sit silently like buffaloes and chew grass.
It is by the mercy of the devil that you see this whole world.
God has not created it. God created a world which consisted of Adam and Eve just like animals. This whole humanity, these great people -- Gautam the Buddha, Jesus Christ and Moses, Mohammed and Mahavira -- you would never have heard of them; they're all because of the devil.
It is significant to remember: `devil' comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. It comes from dev -- from the same root comes `divine,' from the same root comes `devil.'
The devil has done such a divine work. This whole creation is a deep partnership between God and the devil. Neither can God do it alone -- because he can only create flat things --
nor can the devil do it alone, because he can only revolt, he is a revolutionary. First something has to be there to be revolutionary against. God is needed for the
devil to revolt against, and then the dynamics start turning, and the wheel of life and death, day and night, good and bad.
But life consists of opposites, remember.
And don't try to judge; just live the whole, whatever it is.
I teach you wholeness, and you go on judging parts. Parts are not of any use. It is the whole, where parts lose their personalities and function in the way an orchestra functions.
I myself have never thought that anything is good or anything is bad. Not for a single moment have I thought that anything is bad or good; they are both together and they can exist only together. If you want to live, live them in their togetherness.
The people who are afraid of their togetherness started teaching, "Renounce life, escape from life, because here you cannot avoid the bad. Whatever you do, even if you do good, you cannot avoid the bad."
You will be surprised to know that in India, Jainism has a sect called terapanth. Bombay has many followers of the Terapanth. It is a very logical but very strange ideology.
It says that if somebody falls into a well you should not take him out. He may be shouting and you are by the side of the well and there is nobody else there -- you simply go on as you are, unconcerned. It seems strange. A philosophy of non- violence... and a man is dying and they are saying that you go on, unconcerned. But their reasoning is worth noting: they say you can save the man but if tomorrow he murders somebody, then you will be responsible too. And what is the guarantee about his tomorrow? -- it is better not to get involved.
In the first place he has fallen in the well. It must be because of some evil act in his past life; otherwise why should he fall into the well? Now, he is receiving the punishment for his action, and you interfere in it; you interfere in the great law of action. Secondly, if he murders somebody tomorrow, then you will share the evil act. It is better to move on silently, not to bother about what is happening to him.
These are the people who have been judging. Now, judgment has gone to the
extreme.
Somebody is thirsty; don't give him water. Somebody is hungry; don't give him food --
because you don't know what he is going to do. You get involved in his life by giving him water; otherwise he may have died. By giving him water you keep him alive. Now whatever he does, you are going to share in it. You have not done a bad act, but life is not so simple -- it may turn into a bad act.
It looks very logical, but very inhuman; it looks very rational but very uncompassionate, without any love. But this is the logical end of judging things.
I want you to drop judgment and live a life without judgment, in its wholeness. And you will be surprised that wholeness is neither good nor bad.
Wholeness is transcendental; it is beyond good and evil.
There is only one man in the whole history of humanity, Friedrich Nietzsche, who has written a book, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. And my insight and understanding is that he is the only man who has seen judgment to its logical end.
An authentic person should live beyond good and evil. He does not care what is good, what is bad.
He lives with intensity and totality, and whatever the moment allows him and he feels to do, he does it.
But all the religions and all the theologians and all the saints are sitting and thinking about whether this is right or wrong. And if you listen to them, you will find it impossible to live; everything seems to be wrong.
I have looked into all the scriptures of the world just trying to find out -- perhaps there may be one thing which is not condemed by somebody. But there is not, somebody or other is against everything. And there are things that somebody or other is for. There is no ultimate criterion to decide what is right and what is wrong.
As far as I am concerned and my people are concerned, they should live wholeheartedly -
- live the day and live the night too. Don't miss anything.
Make your life such a complementary whole that everything fits together and makes it a piece of art, a beautiful phenomenon.
Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #13
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