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‌Chapter title: The alchemy of enlightenment‌

29 October 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8610295

ShortTitle:

ENLIGH26

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

108

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE MY CHILDHOOD, I HAVE SEEN YOU AS A BUDDHA, EVEN BEFORE

YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT I SAW YOU AS A BUDDHA -- THE SAME SERENITY, THE SAME NATURAL GLOW, THE SAME SPONTANEITY, THE SAME LOVE, THE SAME COMPASSION, THE SAME CAREFREENESS, THE SAME

BLISSFULNESS AS IT IS TODAY.

I HAVE SEEN MANY OF YOUR PHASES, AND I SAY AGAIN AND AGAIN THAT

YOU WERE A BUDDHA BEFORE YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT.

THE STORY OF YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT IS A DEVICE FOR US, IS A BEAUTIFUL ASSURANCE FOR US.

I AM IMMENSELY GRATEFUL. I FEEL FORTUNATE THAT YOU SHOWERED

YOUR LOVE AND COMPASSION ON ME FROM THE BEGINNING. YOU HAVE

HELPED ME AT EACH STEP, AT EACH TURNING POINT OF MY LIFE. YOU

CHANGED MY LIFE, YOU FILLED MY LIFE WITH LOVE AND JOY, YOU GAVE

ME IMMENSE CLARITY, YOU MADE ME FREE.

I BOW DOWN TO YOU. BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, BUDDHAM

SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI.

Narendra, you are almost right. But remember my emphasis on the word almost.

And this is true not only about me, this is true about everybody else too: Everybody is by nature a divine being, an awakened soul, a Gautam Buddha, who has just fallen asleep for a while, has just forgotten himself for a moment and is lost in dreams, beautiful dreams of ambition, desire, success... to be someone special in the world, to leave footprints behind.

The moment your dream is broken, your sleep is gone, suddenly you are in for a great surprise, perhaps the greatest surprise: that the treasure you have been looking for is within you, that the paradise you have been searching for is within

you, that there is no God who can drive you out of the Garden of Eden because the Garden of Eden is your very being. At the most you can forget it but you cannot lose it. And once you recognize it, then life becomes really hilarious; you can laugh at your own efforts and endeavors, at your whole past that you have spent in searching for it.

And the goal of your search was not away from you, not even close to you. You were the goal, the seeker was the sought.

And everything that you have done before you became enlightened, everything that you have been before you became aware of your tremendous beauty, of your eternal life, will take a different meaning after your enlightenment. To you and to those who are close to you, the enlightenment will make such a great difference.

Narendra has known me since he was a child. But if I had not become enlightened he would not have asked me this question or raised this question to himself. Even the very idea of buddhahood might not have happened to him; he would have known me as a friend, he would have known me as a loving companion.

It is the enlightenment that changes the meaning of all his experiences, gives them a new color, a new light, a new luminosity. The same incidents start having a totally new meaning.

I can understand your question, Narendra. Now you look backwards, but because now you know my enlightenment you can easily conclude that I was always enlightened, that I was born enlightened; otherwise those incidents of love, care, understanding would not have taken such a colorful and meaningful significance. That's why I say you are almost right.

I myself can look retrospectively... then everything starts taking on a new meaning. It would not have had the same meaning. It is the alchemy of enlightenment that everything has become pure gold, that small and meaningless things have taken wings and have become great.

I will give you a few examples which could not have been understood in the same way they have been understood; there was no possibility, no hope.

One of my teachers was very perfectionistic, a great disciplinarian, a very beautiful man.

Every year he started his class with the same introduction, because the students were new; he introduced himself by saying that, "It is better that I should make clear to you what kind of man I am, so you are not in the dark and you don't do anything without understanding the nature of the teacher. First: I don't believe in headaches, stomachaches, no. Anything that you cannot prove and anything that I cannot check by myself will not be an excuse to take a holiday or to go home. You can have a fever, I can feel your fever.

So remember it -- I simply don't believe in headaches and stomachaches because there is no proof. Even a physician has to rely upon the patient, that he has a headache -- he may be lying, or he may be in illusion. What is the guarantee? How do you know that you are right?"

I said, "This is strange; this is going to be difficult" -- because those were simple excuses to escape from any class, to say that "I have a strong headache and I want to go home."

He used to go every evening for a walk. Just by the side of the school there was a beautiful road, covered from both sides with big trees, mango trees.

I said, "Things have to be settled from the very beginning."

So I climbed up into a tree, high up, and waited for this teacher -- he was a Mohammedan, his name was Rahimuddin. He came exactly on time... He was very precise in everything; at exactly the same time each day he used to pass by that tree.

I dropped a big mango on his head. He said, "Ahhhh!" and looked up. And he saw me there.

I said, "What is the matter? What has happened?"

For a moment there was silence. He said, "Come down." I came down.

He said, "You have proved that there is something like a headache, but don't tell anybody. If you have a headache, you just raise one finger and I will give you a holiday.

If you have a stomachache, you need not prove it to me -- you just raise two fingers, because you seem to be dangerous!"

He was a bachelor, an old man; he had never married. He lived a very beautiful life, had a small cottage, a garden.

And he was very famous for one strange thing -- because he had enough money, unmarried, no children, no wife.… He had three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes, one for each day; then for the whole year that suit of clothes would not be used again.

Naturally every husband was jealous.

He said, "I live alone. I sleep outside in the garden, and I don't want any proof for stomachache! -- so one is enough. You have given me the proof that you are capable, so when you have a stomachache raise two fingers and I will understand. But this is an agreement between us: that you will not tell anybody else that headaches or stomachaches exist."

I said, "I am not worried about anybody else. My problem is solved because I want things from the very beginning to be clear, just like you do."

He said, "You have made it very clear -- it is still hurting! I have been a teacher thirty years and nobody ever thought of this idea. I will remember you for my whole life."

It was a small incident, and would have been forgotten -- but when people started coming to me many years after this incident he started telling people, "I knew beforehand that this boy was going to be someone extraordinary."

People asked, "How did you come to know? -- and you never mentioned it before."

He said, "I had almost forgotten it; just now, as his name is becoming known around the world and people are coming to him from all over the world, I remembered. And now that incident has a totally different meaning. Because for my whole life I was introducing every class in the same way and nobody ever tried anything. And this was the only one --

a singular instance -- who proved to me that a headache had to be accepted. I

knew it that very day."

In 1970 I went to that village for the last time. He had become very old. Hearing that I was there, he came to see me. I said, "I was going to come to you. You are too old, you should not have bothered to walk almost two miles."

He said, "I am feeling so happy. Seeing you it still hurts, but now I feel a certain pride that you were my student."

Now the whole thing takes a different color, it becomes a pride. Otherwise, if I had turned out to be a thief or a criminal, then the same incident would have been a proof: "I knew from the very beginning that this boy was going to be a criminal, that sooner or later he would murder somebody."

Retrospectively you always look at things in a way you would not have looked at them if life had moved in a different direction -- the same things. The same things would not have given you the same indications.

By the way, I would like to remind you that all autobiographies are false because they are all written retrospectively. A man becomes a Mahatma Gandhi and then he writes his autobiography in the light what he has become. He starts looking at things in the past when he was not Mahatma Gandhi, and everything now has to fit with Mahatma Gandhi.

There has to be a logical connection, a coherence. So it is as if you are reading a novel backwards -- things will be totally different.

All autobiographies are fictions. They should not be categorized separately in any library.

The science of librarianship should understand a simple fact: that every autobiography is a fiction.

For example the day Mahatma Gandhi's father died he was with his father massaging his feet, and the doctors had said that this was going to be the last night; there was no hope that this man would ever see the sunrise, before sunrise he would be gone. In the middle of the night, Mahatma Gandhi was massaging his father's feet, but he was thinking of his wife.

The father was dying. It was an absolute certainty that this was his last night, and

he had fallen asleep. Seeing that he was asleep, Mahatma Gandhi slipped silently into his wife's room, and while he was making love to his wife, his father died. And suddenly the whole house was awake. He heard the noise -- "What is the matter?" And he could not forgive himself, that even for one night he could not remain away from his wife when the death of his father was absolutely certain.

If he had not become a famous man, a world-famous man, this incident would not have carried any importance; perhaps he himself would have forgiven it, forgotten it -- just an ordinary incident.

But writing his autobiography, he connects it with the great mahatma that he became.

And this is all fiction -- he says that he became concerned about celibacy because of this incident. He started thinking of brahmacharya, celibacy, because of this incident. This is not true, but he has to fit the incident into the life of a mahatma. And it fits perfectly well; anybody reading it will feel that there seems to be a certain connection. But it is not true, because all his four sons were born after this incident. So he cannot deceive me. He is deceiving himself, he is deceiving his followers, he is deceiving the historians. But if this was the cause of his becoming a celibate, then he would have remained without any children. All four sons were born after this incident, so this incident has nothing to do with celibacy.

But in his mind -- and in anybody's mind who is reading Mahatma Gandhi -- it seems relevant, that perhaps the shock was too much, as if "I am guilty of the death of my father. I could have stayed a few more minutes, but my lust, my sexuality proved to be more powerful than my love and respect for my father. And my wife was going to remain with me for my whole life, but my father was going to disappear that very night into darkness and into the unknown and there would not be another meeting again."

I have read many autobiographies, and I have seen how people when they look backwards look with the eyes that they have now, and with all the experience they have accumulated meanwhile. With all this experience, with these new eyes, the meaning of the incidents starts changing.

Narendra, you have been with me from your very childhood.

If I had not become what I have become, you would have remembered me as

loving, as friendly, but you would have never thought I was born as a buddha -- that idea arises now. It is my enlightenment that gives you the feeling that, "My God, he was always loving." But it was not the same love.

In a sense, the dewdrop and the ocean are both water. But a dewdrop is a dewdrop, and an ocean is an ocean.

What you had seen in me was only a dewdrop. Now that dewdrop looks like an ocean because now you are seeing the ocean. It is exactly as if you see the Ganges in the Himalayas at Gangotri -- it is just a small stream. You could not even hope that it would ever reach the ocean, it is so small. Hindus have placed a marble face of a cow there, and the Ganges falls from the mouth of the cow, it is such a small stream. You will find millions of streams in the Himalayas which are far bigger.

But if you see the same Ganges near Calcutta, in Gangasagar -- Gangasagar means the òcean of Ganges' -- it has become so big, so vast, so immense that it is difficult to think of it as a river; it looks oceanic. To connect the two is very difficult. The Ganges in Gangotri could have been one of those millions of streams which disappear in the forest, in the desert, and nobody would have remembered it. But because this stream became Gangasagar... retrospectively, looking backwards, even standing at the source where the stream is so small, you have the feeling of vastness, of potentiality, of all the possibilities that it is going to become. You cannot see it just like a small stream; it is the stream that is going to become Gangasagar.

Each autobiography is fictitious; small incidents with no meaning in themselves suddenly start having meaning in the context of the person that has come to be.

Essentially it is true: everybody is a buddha, and naturally I am not an exception. Please don't exclude me out. But this buddhahood is only a seed, and out of millions of seeds perhaps one seed comes to blossom. It indicates that every seed can come to blossom. It is a tremendous encouragement to every human being.

In this sense your seeing me as a born buddha is right, but don't forget your responsibility. It means you have to prove it too -- that you are also a born buddha.

Maybe you started growing a little late.

And in the eternity of time, what is "late"?

There are only seven days. Choose any day, but start.

I am not interested at all to convert anybody to my ideology -- I don't have any. Secondly, I believe that the very effort to convert anybody is violence, it is interfering in his individuality, in his uniqueness, into his freedom.

So my function is not that of a teacher, not that of a prophet, not that of a savior, not that of a messenger. My function simply is that of a reminder. I want just to be a mirror to you so that you can see your original face.

And if you can see a buddha in me, there is no difficulty in seeing the buddha in you too -

- maybe a little lazy, a little sleepy, a little gone off the track.

But a buddha is a buddha. It does not matter whether his nuts and bolts are a little loose, we will fix them.

One's buddhahood is one's essential nature.

I don't want you to worship buddhas, I want you to become buddhas. That is the only right worship.

If you love, become it. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

GAUTAM BUDDHA, MAHAVIRA, J. KRISHNAMURTI WERE TRAVELING

FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER FOR THEIR WHOLE LIVES. IT WAS

REPORTED ABOUT J. KRISHNAMURTI THAT BEFORE HE LEFT INDIA FOR

CALIFORNIA FOR THE LAST TIME HE TOLD SOMEONE THAT IF THE

DOCTOR IN CALIFORNIA SAID, "NO MORE TRAVEL, NO MORE TALK," THEN

ALL WOULD BE FINISHED; HE WOULD BE GONE IN FOUR WEEKS -- AND

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

OSHO, WHAT IS THE INSIGHT OF ALL THE MASTERS WHO WERE

TRAVELING ALL THE TIME AND DIDN'T STAY IN ONE PLACE LIKE RAMAN

MAHARSHI?

Raman Maharshi is a mystic, but not a master.

The mystics have never traveled because the mystics are not making any effort of any kind to transfer their experience to others. They have decided that what they have experienced is untransferable, that it cannot be communicated.

So the mystics all through the ages have remained in one place. What is the point of moving around, going from village to village or country to country -- for what?

The mystic's experience is expressed in the ancient saying that "The well remains in its own place; it is the thirsty who should go to the well, the well cannot go to the thirsty."

Buddha, Mahavira, Bodhidharma, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Mohammed, Jesus, J. Krishnamurti, they were all traveling, going continuously.…

Mohammed has countered the proverb about the well and the thirsty, and countered it in such a beautiful way. He says, "If the mountain cannot come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the mountain."

These are masters.…

Not that they are against the mystics; basically they agree that it is difficult,

almost impossible to communicate, to say anything about the truth, about self- realization. It is beyond words, beyond language; they agree on that point.

But still the masters say that some indirect ways can be always tried, and there is no harm.

There is no direct way of translating the inner experience into the outer languages, but ways can be found, devices can be created in which something may be said, may not be said, but may be heard.

The emphasis is not that the truth can be said. On that, the mystics and the masters agree: it cannot be said.

But the masters disagree with the mystics on one point: that it may not be said but it can be heard -- through the eyes of the master, through the presence of the master, through his love, through his compassion, through his silence, just being with him. Nothing is said, but somebody's heart may start dancing, a song may arise.

In the presence of the master, the disciple may become aware that the ordinary human life is not all there is; there is something more. Even to make them aware that there is something more -- greater peace, deeper silence, overflowing ecstasy -- perhaps they may start searching for it, perhaps they may become seekers. And what is the harm? If nobody listens, then too the effort is worth making.

The mystic and the master both have the same experience, but they have different views about its transfer -- and both seem to be right.

My own understanding is this: that the mystics are of a more ordinary variety. They come from the categories of human beings who are not articulate, who are not poets, who are not painters, who are not musicians, who are not dancers. They come from the common masses.

And the master is more articulate, more talented. If he cannot say, he will paint; if he cannot say, he will sculpt; if he cannot say, he will dance; if he cannot say, he will sing --

and singing, dancing, painting or any other creative art may become a vehicle for that which language is not capable of.

And there are people who are articulate with language too; they can speak in such a way that through the words they can send the wordless message to you. The words will be only the packages; the content will be the wordless. The words will be only the containers. But for that, a very articulate person is needed, who can use language in such a way that it becomes music, that it becomes poetry, that it becomes silence... that it becomes not only that which it says but also that which remains unsaid.

Language can become a vehicle -- now the emphasis will be on those who are listening.

Much will depend on those who are listening.

So the basic function of the master is first, to create disciples who can understand the wordless through the words... who can sit in silence but can become filled with immense serenity. Just in the presence of the master, something can start opening up in them -- as if the sun has risen and the birds start singing; nobody informs the birds that it is sunrise.

There are no alarm clocks for poor birds, but just the light... the darkness is gone, the night is over, and there is a celebration all over nature. Flowers suddenly start opening, there is fragrance all over.

The mystic has achieved, is fulfilled, has completed his journey. But he is not a very talented genius.

The master is doing overtime. His work is finished, but his genius, his talents demand expression.

J. Krishnamurti said, "If I have to follow the doctor's advice and not speak and not travel then I cannot live more than four weeks." And within exactly four weeks he died. His work was complete; now he was living only for others. And if even that cannot be done then what is the point of being here unnecessarily? His boat had arrived long ago. He had been delaying his departure -- somebody may listen, somebody may hear, somebody may be touched. But if he cannot speak and cannot travel, then there is no reason at all for him to go on breathing. He is not an idiot.

Why did he say four weeks? -- because it is just the old momentum. For breathing and heartbeats to slow down and disappear, it takes nearabout three to

four weeks. And the older the man, the longer time it takes. If he had been younger, it may have been just one week.

It is a very strange phenomenon -- it is because the younger person's heart runs fast, it can exhaust the momentum quickly. The older man is already slow; his heart has become accustomed to a slow pace so it will take three to four weeks.

To be a mystic is rare, but to be a master is very rare.

And to be a successful master... you will have to come to me! Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHENEVER I AM IN A SILENT SPACE I HEAR A SOUND -- SOMETHING LIKE

ÀUM' OR HUMMING. I LOVE THIS RHYTHMIC, SWEET, UNENDING SOUND.

IN CERTAIN ACTIVITIES TOO, WHEN I AM TOTAL AND SILENT, THIS LISTENING HAPPENS.

IS IT OKAY TO LISTEN AND ENJOY THIS SOUND, OR IS IT A PROJECTION OR

DAYDREAMING? PLEASE GUIDE ME.

First thing to remember: you should not repeat any sound as a mantra, as a chanting, because when you repeat you create -- then it is your mental projection.

If you are simply silent and you hear a certain humming, then it is the sound of existence.

That humming has been heard for centuries by meditators. That humming has been given a special name in the East, OM. It is not exactly OM but it is

something similar.

It has to be remembered that in Sanskrit -- which is the oldest language in the world, the mother language of all civilized languages in existence -- they don't write OM in letters.

They have made a special symbol for it just to create a distinction, to indicate that it is not something to do with language, it is beyond language, and it is not part of the Sanskrit alphabet.

The way it is written is only with a symbol, and that symbol can be used by any language.

Sanskrit has no monopoly over it because it is not part of the alphabet of Sanskrit. It has been heard.…

Jainas, Buddhists, Hindus -- they differ in their theology on every single point, but they all have heard the sound OM. There is no question of differing; it is not a hypothesis and it is not a theory propounded by somebody.

Anybody who becomes utterly silent... it is the silence itself singing, it is the song of silence.

Hence about OM Hindus, Jainas and Buddhists all agree. They begin their scriptures with

"om," they end their scriptures with "om" because that is the universal sound.

This has created a problem -- and there are many problems of a similar type -- because all the mystics in this country and in the far East have heard the sound OM. The people who read the scriptures start thinking that, "If OM is the sound of the nature of existence itself, then if we repeat òm' we will be able to hear it soon." It is logical, but it is not realistic.

If you repeat it, you will never hear the real thing; you will go on repeating, and you may start hearing your own repetition.

In Tibet, where the greatest work has been done on this "soundless sound," as they call it, they have made a special instrument. It is a certain kind of metal pot made with special proportions of different metals, and a small rod -- again made

of different proportions of different metals. You put the rod against the rim of the pot, and you move it fast and it creates a certain humming. That is something closer to the existential sound than OM.

In every lamasery in Tibet you will hear that sound -- somebody, some lama is continuously making it. When he leaves, then somebody else... twenty-four hours a day that sound is created, but that is a man-made sound. It is similar, but it is not the same.

Hindus in India have fallen into the same fallacy. They have made òm' their most significant mantra; just repeat it continuously inside so your whole being is filled with the sound of "om, om, om." You are deceiving yourself; this is your sound.

So if you are not creating it, then there is no need for any anxiety.

If the moment you become silent you hear it, then it is a tremendous blessing. It means you have gone very deep into the existential world of serenity.

But don't try to deceive existence. You can go on chanting "om" your whole life; it is meaningless, it has nothing to do with existence. With existence you have to be a listener, absolutely passive, relaxed, in a let-go. Don't impose yourself. You are the only barrier, your impositions are your only sins. Just remain utterly passive in a non-doing witnessing, listening to whatever is happening, allowing it to happen.

It is perfectly good, and of great significance. On the path, if you start hearing OM, you are accepted, you are welcomed. You need not seek anywhere, you have found the door.

Just relax more, and leave everything in the hands of existence... a total trust and a complete passivity.

Your absence is the presence of godliness.

The moment you are not, the miracle has happened. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU POINTED OUT THAT JESUS, MARX AND FREUD

WERE PERHAPS THE WORLD'S GREATEST BUSINESSMEN.

ON OCCASION I HAVE HEARD YOU CALL YOURSELF AN OLD JEW. OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS?

Milarepa, I am a silent partner. Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE SANNYAS IN 1981 PEOPLE HAVE CONTINUALLY BEEN SEEING JESUS

CHRIST IN ME! WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THIS GUY?

Satsanga, it is dangerous. You cut off your beard! Otherwise, they will cut off your head!

Jesus! -- they see Jesus Christ in you? Then crucifixion is not far away. The first thing out of this hall you cut your beard, and if they recognize you even then, keep a small board hanging on your neck that says, "I am not Jesus Christ."

You have to make it clear; otherwise your life is in danger. Beyond Enlightenment

Chapter #27

Chapter title: Whatsoever happens in silence is your friend 30 October 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8610305

ShortTitle:

ENLIGH27

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

105

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO I LEFT THE WORLD, DEADLY WOUNDED, AND CAME

TO YOU. YOU HEALED ME AND GAVE ME BACK EVEN MORE THAN LIFE.

THEN ONE YEAR AGO I WENT BACK TO THAT SAME WORLD I HAD

ESCAPED FROM, FEELING LIKE A CHILD JUST OUT OF KINDERGARTEN, WHO BARELY KNOWS THE ABC. NATURALLY THERE WERE DARK

MOMENTS. DURING THOSE MOMENTS AN INNER VOICE -- WAS IT YOUR

VOICE, OSHO? -- KEPT HAMMERING AT ME, "DON'T GET LOST IN YOUR

EMOTIONS -- WATCH!" FOR MONTHS THIS VOICE BECAME MY

CONSTANT

COMPANION UNTIL SUDDENLY A REALIZATION HAPPENED TO ME: THAT

THE DARKNESS AND THE CONFLICT WERE CREATED BY MY OWN FEARS, DESIRES, JUDGEMENTS. THIS GLIMPSE WAS SURROUNDED BY A CALM, RELAXED FEELING OF FREEDOM AND ACCEPTANCE.

NOW, EXPERIENCING AGAIN THE OVERWHELMING BEAUTY OF SITTING AT

YOUR FEET, I CAN SEE THAT NO MATTER HOW LONG I WATCH, THIS DESIRE TO BE IN YOUR PRESENCE WILL REMAIN WITH ME.

BELOVED OSHO, IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE NOT TO LONG FOR SOMETHING

SO UNIQUE AND BEAUTIFUL?

Lalita, the spiritual path has many crossroads.

On each crossroad, one feels as if one has arrived. In a certain way it is true, too. It is a certain blessing which was never known before, a peace that is absolutely new, a silence undreamt of, and a love, the fragrance of which one has desired, longed for for lives and has never found. Naturally one feels the home has come.

This is one of the most difficult tasks for the master -- to push you on, to say to you,

"This is only the beginning; there is much more waiting for you." And although it is inconceivable to you that there can be anything more than this, the trust, the love, the devotion towards the master helps you to move.

These moments come again and again. Each time it becomes in a way more difficult, in a way easier. It is difficult in the sense that each new realization, new achievement, new revelation is so vast, so absorbing, that everything you have known before simply fades away -- so it becomes more difficult to move on. But on the other hand, it becomes easier to move on because each time the master

has said to you, "Move on" you have always gained more; it has never been a loss, it has always been a new door to a new mystery, a new sky beyond the old one.

So the trust also has increased. It is easier now to listen to the master and move on.

An ancient story... I have always loved it. An old woodcutter, poor, alone, had only one way to earn his everyday bread and that was by cutting wood and selling it. As he came into the forest, just near the entrance under a beautiful bodhi tree -- the same tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened; hence the name of the tree has becomèbodhi tree'. Bodhi means enlightenment.

By the way, you will be surprised to know, scientists have found that the bodhi tree has a certain chemical which no other tree has, and that chemical is absolutely necessary for the growth of intelligence. Perhaps it is a very intelligent, sensitive tree. It may not have been just a coincidence.…

The woodcutter would see this old man sitting silently, always there -- summer, winter, rain. He would touch his feet before entering the forest, and every time he would do that the old man would smile and say, "You are such an idiot."

The woodcutter would be shocked: "Why? -- I touch his feet, but rather than giving me a blessing, he simply smiles and says, `You are such an idiot.'"

One day he gathered courage and asked, "What do you mean?"

The old man said, "I mean that you have been cutting trees in this forest for your whole life, and if you go just a little deeper into it you will find a copper mine. Only an idiot could miss it! Your whole life you have been in this forest... you can collect the copper and that will be enough for seven days' comfortable living, no need to cut wood every day in your old age."

The man could not believe it because he knew the whole forest -- "He must be joking!"

But perhaps he was right... and there was no harm in going a little further and being alert and watching to see whether there was some copper mine.

And he went in, and he found a copper mine. He said, "Now I know why he was

continually saying, `You are such an idiot, working every day in your old age.'"

Now he was going only once every week. But the old tradition continued: he would touch his feet, and the old man would smile and say, `You are such an idiot!'"

"But," he said, "now this is not right! Because I have found the copper mine."

The old man said, "You don't know. If you go a little further, you will find a silver mine."

He said, "My God, why didn't you tell me before?"

The old man said, "You didn't believe me even about the copper mine -- how could you have believed about the silver mine? Just go a little further."

This time there was suspicion but not so much; there was a certain trust arising. And he found the silver mine.

He came back and he said, "Now I have found silver enough that I will be coming only once in a month. I will miss you very much. I will miss your blessing very much. I have started loving to hear from you, `What an idiot you are.'"

But the old man said, "You are still an idiot, it makes no difference." The woodcutter said, "Even though I have found the silver mine?"

He said, "Yes, even then. You are just an idiot and nothing more -- because if you go just a little deeper there is gold. So don't wait for a month, come tomorrow."

Now he thought he must be joking. If there is gold, why should he be sitting here under this tree in old rags, with no shelter from the rain, no shelter from the sun, depending on people who bring food to him... sometimes they bring it, sometimes they don't..." And if he knows where the gold is, I don't think... this time he is certainly joking! But there is no harm. He has always been right. Who knows? This old guy is a little mysterious."

He went further and found a big gold mine. He could not believe his own eyes --

this is the forest he has been working in for his whole life, and this is the forest where that old man is sitting.…

He brought much gold, and he said, "I think you will not say anymore that I am an idiot."

He said, "I will continue. Come tomorrow because this is not the end; this is only the beginning."

He said, "What? Gold is just a beginning?"

He said, "Come tomorrow. Just a little deeper in the forest you will find diamonds -- but that too is not the end. But I will not tell you too much; otherwise you will not be able to sleep tonight. Just go home. Tomorrow morning, first you find the diamonds, and then come to me."

He really could not sleep the whole night. A poor woodcutter... he could not imagine that he was going to become the owner of all these mines -- gold and silver and copper, and now diamonds! And the old man was saying this was only the beginning. He thought and thought... what can be more than diamonds?

In the morning he went very early -- the old man was asleep. He touched his feet. The old man opened his eyes and said, "Have you come? I knew you would come, you couldn't sleep. First go and see the diamonds."

The woodcutter said, "Can you tell me what can be more?"

He said, "First find the diamonds -- step by step; otherwise, you will go crazy."

He found the diamonds and he came dancing to the old man. He said, "Now you cannot say that Ì am an idiot. I have found the diamonds!"

But the old man said, "Still, you are an idiot."

He said, "Now I will not leave you unless you explain it to me."

The old man said, "You can see that I know all about these mines -- silver, gold, diamonds -- and I don't care about them. Because there is something more which is not in the forest but within you, just a little deeper -- not outside but inside. And because I have found that, I don't care about all these diamonds. Now it is

up to you: you can stop your journey at the diamonds but remember, you will remain an idiot. And I am a proof --

because I know about all these mines and I have not bothered with them. This can make you understand that there is something more which is never found outside however far you go; it is found inside you."

The man dropped the diamonds. He said, "I am going to sit by your side. Unless you drop this idea that I am an idiot, I am not going to move from here!"

He was a simple, innocent woodcutter.

It is difficult for knowledgeable people to go in.

It was not difficult for the woodcutter. Soon he was entering into a deep silence -

- a joy, a blissfulness, a benediction.

And the old man shook him and said, "This is the place. Now you need not go into the forest. And I withdraw my word ìdiotàbout you, you have become a wise man. You can open your eyes. You will see the same world but not in the same light; the same colors, but now they have become psychedelic; the same people, but they are no longer just skeletons covered with skin, they are luminous spiritual beings... the same cosmos, but for the first time it is an ocean of consciousness."

The woodcutter opened his eyes.

He said, "You are a strange fellow. Why did you wait so long? I have been coming here almost my whole life and I have seen you sitting under this tree. You could have said this any day."

The old man said, "I was waiting for the right moment... for the ripe moment, for the time when you would be able not only to hear but to understand it. The journey is short, but you should not stop at every achievement. Because every achievement is so fulfilling that your imagination cannot think there can be more than this."

Lalita, you are asking me what can be more beautiful than to be in the presence of the master. Why not dissolve in the presence? To be in the presence of the master, there is still separation. Why be in the presence? Why not become the

presence itself? And only then you will know that to be in the presence was only the beginning of a journey that ends in becoming the presence.

I know you, and I know your heart. I have not told the story of the woodcutter without remembering the fact that you have such an innocent heart yourself.

Just don't stop anywhere.

It is possible... make it your realization. Become the light yourself, and then whatever is experienced is inexpressible.

In your dark moments, while you have been away for one year, you have heard the word

`watch'. With your innocent mind, it is very simple for me to speak to you from any distance, a heart-to-heart communion. Those words were mine, and you have recognized them. Because there are things you need not bother about, you simply have to watch and they pass on -- anger, greed, jealousy. All the components of darkness have one quality in common: that if you can watch them they start dispersing. Watching is enough; you are not supposed to do anything with them.

In the life of one of the great mystics, Baal Shem, there is an incident. He used to go towards the river in the middle of the night just to be in absolute silence, alone, to enjoy the peace and the beauty of the night. Just on the bank of the river was a rich man's mansion, and a watchman was there who was puzzled about this man, Baal Shem. Every night, exactly as the tower bell was tolling twelve, Baal Shem would appear out of the darkness.

The poor watchman could not contain the temptation to inquire, "Why do you come here every night and sit next to the river in the darkness? What is the purpose of it?"

Rather than answering him, Baal Shem asked, "What is your work?" He said, "I am a watchman."

Baal Shem said, "Exactly -- that is my work. I am a watchman."

The watchman said, "That is strange. If you are a watchman, then what are you

doing here? You should be watching the house where you are the watchman."

Baal Shem said, "There is something to be explained to you: You watch somebody else's house; I watch my own house. This is my house. Wherever I go, I go with my house --

but I am continuously the watchman." I love the story.

Be continuously a watchman of all dark moments. They will pass away. In fact, that is the definition: anything you watch, if it disappears by watching that means it was something wrong. If by watching it becomes more clear, closer, that means it was something to be absorbed.

There is no other definition of good and bad.

It is watching that decides -- the only criterion. What is sin and what is virtue? That which disappears is sin, and that which comes closer, becomes clearer, wants to become part of you, is virtue.

Watching is certainly the golden key of spiritual life. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY YOU TALKED SO BEAUTIFULLY ABOUT THE SADNESS

WHICH FOLLOWS THE FIRST EXPERIENCE OF OUR INNERMOST SILENCE.

IS IT NECESSARILY SO, THAT WHEN I FIRST EXPERIENCE THIS SILENCE, I ALSO FEEL WITH MY WHOLE BEING THAT I AM ABSOLUTELY ALONE ON

MY JOURNEY?

Aloneness is also one of the fundamental experiences as you enter silence.

In silence there is nobody else, you are simply alone.

The deeper your silence will be, thoughts will be gone, emotions will be gone, sentiments will be gone -- just pure being, a flame of light, burning alone.

One can get scared because we are so much accustomed to living with people -- in the crowd, in the marketplace, in all kinds of relationships.

You may not be aware that in all these relationships -- with friends, with your husbands, with your wives, with your children, with your parents -- you are basically trying to avoid the experience of aloneness. These are strategies so that you are always with somebody.

It is a well-known fact, psychologically established, that if a person is left alone in isolation, after seven days he starts talking... a little like whispering. For seven days he keeps talking inside, keeps himself engaged in the mind, but then it becomes too much --

things start coming out of his mind through his mouth and he starts whispering.

After fourteen days you can hear him clearly, what he is saying. After twenty- one days he does not bother about anybody, he has gone insane; now he is talking to walls, to pillars,

"Hello friend, how are you?" -- to a pillar, hugging a pillar! And this is true not about somebody special, it is true about everybody. He is trying to find some relationship. If he cannot find it in reality, he will create a hallucination.

You will see: just stand by the side of the road and watch people going from the office to the house, and you will be surprised. They are alone -- although there is a crowd all around -- but they are talking to themselves. They are making gestures, they are telling somebody something... because the crowd around them is not related to them. They are alone in the crowd, so they are trying to create their own illusion. Maybe they are talking to their wife, to their boss -- there are many things which cannot be said but right now they can say them. In front of the wife they cannot say it, but in this crowd, where everybody is engaged in his own thing, everybody is doing his own thing, they can say things to the wife. Nobody is listening, and at least one thing is certain -- the wife is not there! But they need the wife, they need someone to talk to.

And after thirty days of isolation, a dramatic change happens: it is not only one- sided; it is not only that they are talking to the pillar, the pillar also starts talking to them! They do both things: first, "Hello, how are you?" and then, "I am good. I am fine, doing well."

They answer from the side of the pillar too -- in a different voice. Now they have created a world of their own, they are no longer alone. No madman is alone.

Either you are mad or not. If you don't know aloneness, there is something of madness in you.

Only pure aloneness gives you a clean sanity. You don't need the other; the dependence on the other is no more there, you are enough unto yourself. Language is meaningless because language is a medium to relate with the other. The moment you are no longer dependent on the other, language is meaningless, words are meaningless.

In your silence -- when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present -

- you are getting in tune with existence. This serenity, this silence, this aloneness will bring you immense rewards.

It will allow you to grow to your full potential. For the first time you will be an individual, for the first time you will have the touch and the taste of freedom, and for the first time the immensity, the unboundedness of existence will be yours with all its blissfulness.

So whatever happens in silence -- either sadness or aloneness -- remember, in silence nothing wrong can ever happen. Whatever happens is going to enhance the beauty of it, deepen the charm of it; anything that happens will bring more and more flowers, more and more fragrance to it.

Rejoice! Whatever happens in silence is your friend, it is really your bosom friend. It is going to take you to the ultimate peak of ecstasies.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

I DON'T REALLY HAVE A QUESTION TO ASK YOU -- EVERYTHING IS VERY

GOOD. ONLY ONE THING IS CONFUSING ME A LITTLE. YOU HAVE OFTEN

SPOKEN ABOUT THE "CHOSEN FEW." PLEASE, WHO IS DOING THE CHOOSING?

It is a very difficult question.

In the beginning, God used to do it! But there are many hypotheses about what happened to God: some say he died a natural death, some say he committed suicide, some say he got into an accident. Some say he was murdered by man -- because without murdering him, man could not really be free.

I will not go into what happened to God. One thing is certain: he is missing.

In the beginning, he had chosen the Jews to be the chosen few -- "God's own people." But since then, he has had no opportunity. Although Jews have been praying continuously in every synagogue all over the world, "Now it is time for you to choose somebody else; we have suffered enough!"

And it is true. If God had not chosen them they would have lived just like everybody else.

But because he chose them, he made everybody else their enemies -- great jealousy and competition.

I remember that once, India's first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was asked,

"Who are you going to choose as your successor?"

He said, "I am not going to choose anyone, because whoever I choose would have to face immense difficulties. Everybody else who is ambitious and wants to become the prime minister would all be together against one single person, and there would be no possibility for that person I have chosen to succeed me. So I will keep my mouth shut."

And you are asking who is choosing here?

Here, it is a very different process. Here, the moment you become a sannyasin you have chosen yourself.

Every sannyasin belongs to the chosen few, and nobody is doing the choosing -- it is you who are doing it; hence there is a freedom. If you feel difficulties, you can drop out of it.

Nobody prevents you from becoming a sannyasin, nobody prevents you from dropping sannyas. Your freedom is intact.

So remember: here, nobody is choosing. Everybody is choosing by becoming a sannyasin. So no need to kill me; I have learned from the lesson of God -- I will never choose anybody, because it is dangerous! And to choose anybody is to put him in difficulty.

Now Jews have suffered so much in four thousand years for the single reason that they were the chosen few. All over the earth, nobody else has suffered so much. It gave them a superiority complex, a feeling that they are holier than thou

-- and naturally nobody likes people who think themselves holier than thou.

So in every country, in every place, they have been put down and given evidence that they are not holier or higher.

Just in Germany alone Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews. The responsibility lies with God, because the reason these Jews were coming into conflict with Adolf Hitler was that he was saying that the nordic Germans were the highest race. Jews have to be completely eradicated from the earth because as long as the Jews remain, you cannot proclaim that nordic Germans are the highest. Jews are an old race, with a four-thousand-year history, and they have proved in every way that they are more intelligent. No Jew is a beggar; they are all rich, they know how to produce wealth. They are all cultured and well educated. Forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews, and the other sixty percent to the rest of the world -- it is simply unimaginable.

It was difficult for Adolf Hitler in the presence of Jews, because they had all the intelligence, all the riches, everything that proved that they were somehow more intelligent than others.

To make the nordic Germans a superior race, Jews had to be completely eradicated from the earth.

The fault lies with God; he should not have chosen the poor Jews. And even if he had chosen them, he should have whispered in the ear of Moses and told him, "Please don't tell anybody. Just keep it in your mind that you are the chosen few

-- but it should not leak out, it is a secret."

But there is no joy if it is a secret. The joy is when you proclaim it.

Here I am not proclaiming anybody as chosen, but I am giving you an opportunity. If you want to be chosen, there will be difficulties. My sannyasins everywhere are going through all the difficulties.

One has to pay for everything. You want to be the chosen few for free? -- it is not possible. You will have to pay for it.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

OFTEN, IN THE PAST, YOU HAVE SPOKEN ON DOUBT AND THE VALUE OF

DOUBTING EVERYTHING.

ON THE LEVEL WHERE YOU ARE MY MASTER AND I, THROUGH YOUR

GRACE, HAVE BECOME YOUR DISCIPLE, THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY

DOUBT. FORGETFULNESS ON MY PART, YES; UNAWARENESS ON MY PART, YES -- BUT NEVER THE TORMENT OF DOUBT.

BELOVED MASTER, COULD YOU SPEAK ON DOUBT IN THE RELATIONSHIP

OF THE DISCIPLE WITH THE MASTER?

There is no possibility.

A disciple becomes a disciple only when he drops all doubts. So in the very nature of things, a disciple cannot doubt.

If he doubts, he is not a disciple.

As a student he can doubt as much as he wants. When all his doubts are finished and a trust beyond doubt has arisen, he enters into the world of disciplehood; now there is no possibility of doubt arising. If it arises, the disciple immediately falls back into the category of student.

So as far as the master and discipleship is concerned, doubt is an impossibility. Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY DO YOU ALWAYS LOOK IN YOUR HAND BEFORE YOU START

ANSWERING THE FIRST QUESTION? DO I SEE IT WRONGLY, OR DO YOU

FIND THE ANSWER THERE?

My hands are empty.

I don't have any answer.

You have questions; I don't answer you, I simply destroy your questions. And before destroying your questions I have to look at my hand because it is not only with my language that I destroy your questions, it is also with my hands.

So I have to prepare them, to ask "Are you ready?" When they say, "Yes, master, go ahead" I start!

Without my hands, I cannot answer you. They do almost most of the work. My words keep you engaged, and they go on doing the real work.

So you are not seeing wrongly; you are seeing absolutely right.

I look at them -- not for answers, but just to see whether they are ready or not. Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

IT IS FOR THE FIRST TIME I HAVE BEEN SO CLOSE TO YOU. WHEN I AM

SITTING HERE WITH YOU I FEEL MY HEART IN TUNE WITH YOUR HEART, I FEEL A DEEP LOVE FOR YOU. BUT I ALSO FEEL MY OUTER SERIOUSNESS.

WHY IS LAUGHTER SO DIFFICULT FOR ME?

Laughter is one of the things most repressed by society all over the world, in all the ages.

Society wants you to be serious. Parents want their children to be serious, teachers want their students to be serious, the bosses want their servants to be serious, the commanders want their armies to be serious. Seriousness is required of everybody.

Laughter is dangerous and rebellious.

When the teacher is teaching you and you start laughing, it will be taken as an insult.

Your parents are saying something to you and you start laughing -- it will be taken as an insult.

Seriousness is thought to be honor, respect.

Naturally laughter has been repressed so much that even though life all around is hilarious, nobody is laughing. If your laughter is freed from its chains, from its bondage, you will be surprised -- on each step there is something hilarious happening.

Life is not serious.

Only graveyards are serious, death is serious. Life is love, life is laughter, life is dance, song.

But we will have to give life a new orientation. The past has crippled life very badly, it has made you almost laughter blind, just like there are people who are colorblind.

There are ten percent of people who are colorblind -- it is a big percentage, but they are not aware that they are colorblind.

George Bernard Shaw was colorblind, and he came to know it when he was sixty years old. On his birthday somebody sent a present, a beautiful suit, a coat, but the person forgot to send a tie. So Bernard Shaw went with his secretary to find a matching tie. He liked the suit very much. He looked at ties and he chose one, and the secretary was surprised; she could not believe it -- because the suit was yellow and the tie was green.

She said, "What are you doing? This will look very strange." He said, "Why will it look strange? It is the same color."

The manager, the salesman... they all gathered, and they tried in many ways to find out.…

He could not distinguish between yellow and green; they both appeared the same to him.

He was colorblind.

But for sixty years he was not aware of it.

And there are ten percent of people in the world who are colorblind. Some color they are missing, or maybe they are mixing it up with some other color.

The constant repression of laughter has made you laughter blind.

Situations are happening everywhere, but you cannot see that there is any reason to laugh.

If your laughter is freed from its bondage, the whole world will be full of laughter. It needs to be full of laughter; it will change almost everything in human life.

You will not be as miserable as you are. In fact, you are not as miserable as you look -- it is misery plus seriousness that makes you look so miserable. Just misery plus laughter, and you will not look so miserable!

In one apartment house... And modern apartments have such thin walls that whether you want to or not, you have to hear what is going on on the other side of the wall. In a way, it is very human.

The whole apartment house was puzzled about one thing.… Every couple was fighting, throwing pillows, throwing things, breaking cups and saucers, shouting at each other, husbands beating wives, wives screaming -- and they don't need any loudspeaker systems or anything, and the whole apartment house enjoyed.

The only problem was with one sardarji. From his flat they never heard any fight; on the contrary, they always heard laughter. The whole crowd was puzzled: "What is the matter?

These people never fight. There is always laughter -- and both are laughing so loudly that the whole building can hear it!"

One day they decided that it had to be looked into: "We are missing so much, and they are enjoying so much. What is their secret?"

So they caught hold of the sardarji as he was coming from the market, carrying vegetables and other things. They all caught hold of him and they said, "First you have to tell us that what the secret is -- why do you laugh when everybody fights?"

The sardar said, "Don't force me, because the secret is very embarrassing."

They said, "Embarrassing? But we thought you are doing great. We always hear laughter

-- either you laugh or your wife laughs... no fight."

The sardar said, "What happens is, she throws things at me. If she misses, then I

laugh; if she hits me then she laughs. The same things are going on, but it is just that we have made a different arrangement -- what is the point? So I have learned how to dodge her, and she is learning how to "

After twenty years the same sardar wanted to divorce his wife. The magistrate had heard about them, that this was the only couple in the whole city who had never been known to fight. They simply laugh -- the whole city knows them as the laughing couple.

The magistrate said, "What has gone wrong? You are so famous."

The sardar said, "Forget all about that -- just give us permission to divorce." But the magistrate said, "I have to know the reason."

He said, "The reason is very clear -- she hits me. And it is too much; I have been getting those hits for years."

The magistrate asked, "How long have you been married?" He said, "Almost thirty years."

The magistrate said, "If you have been able to cope with the woman for thirty years, then just ten, twenty years more "

He said, "That is not the point. At first I used to dodge, but now she has become such a good... there is no way that I can dodge! So only she laughs, I have not laughed for ten years. This is unbearable. In the beginning it was perfect; it was almost fifty-fifty, there was no problem. I was laughing, she was also laughing. But now a hundred percent of the time she laughs, and a hundred percent I am just standing there, looking like a fool. No, I cannot tolerate it any more."

Just look around at life and try to see the humorous side of things.

Every event that is happening has its own humorous side, you just need a sense of humor.

No religion has accepted the sense of humor as a quality.

I want a sense of humor to be a fundamental quality of a good man, of a moral

man, of a religious man. And it does not need much looking; you just try to see it, and everywhere.…

Once I was traveling in a bus when I was a student. The bus conductor was in trouble because there were thirty-one passengers and he had money only for thirty tickets. So he was asking, "Who is the fellow who has not given his money?"

Nobody would speak.

He said, "This is strange; now how am I going to find out?"

I said to him, "Do one thing: tell the driver to stop the bus, and tell the people that unless the person who has not given the money confesses, the bus will not move."

He said, "That's right."

The bus was stopped. Everybody looked at each other, now what to do? Nobody knew who the person was.…

Finally one man stood up and said, "Forgive me, I am the person who has not given the money. Here it is."

The bus conductor asked, "What is your name?"

He said, "My name is Achchelal." Achchelal means "a good man."

And I was surprised that out of thirty people, nobody laughed! When he said "Achchelal"

I could not believe it -- a "good man" doing such a thing... and nobody seemed to see the humor in it.

Seriousness has become almost part of our bones and blood. You will have to make some effort to get rid of seriousness, and you will have to be on the lookout -- wherever you can find something humorous happening, don't miss the opportunity.

Everywhere there are people who are slipping on banana peels -- just nobody is

looking at them. In fact, it is thought to be ungentlemanly. It is not, because only bananas slip on banana peels.

Laughter needs a great learning, and laughter is a great medicine. It can cure many of your tensions, anxieties, worries; the whole energy can flow into laughter. And there is no need that there should be some occasion, some cause.

In my meditation camps I used to have a laughing meditation: for no reason, people would sit and just start laughing. At first they would feel a little awkward that there was no reason -- but when everybody is doing it... they would also start. Soon, everybody was in such a great laughter, people were rolling on the ground. They were laughing at the very fact that so many people were laughing for no reason at all; there was nothing, not even a joke had been told. And it went on like waves.

So there is no harm... even just sitting in your room, close the doors and have one hour of simple laughter. Laugh at yourself.

But learn to laugh.

Seriousness is a sin, and it is a disease.

Laughter has tremendous beauty, a lightness. It will bring lightness to you, and it will give you wings to fly.

And life is so full of opportunities. You just need the sensitivity. And create chances for other people to laugh. Laughter should be one of the most valued, cherished qualities of human beings -- because only man can laugh, no animals are capable of it.

Because it is human, it must be of the highest order. To repress it is to destroy a human quality.

Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #28

Chapter title: Unless the whole existence... 31 October 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8610315

ShortTitle:

ENLIGH28

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

119

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU HAVE RECENTLY SAID THAT MOST OF HUMANITY IS VEGETATING, NOT LIVING. PLEASE EXPLAIN TO US THE ART OF LIVING SO THAT DEATH

MAY BECOME ALSO A CELEBRATION.

Suraj Prakash, man is born to achieve life, but it all depends on him.

He can miss it. He can go on breathing, he can go on eating, he can go on growing old, he can go on moving towards the grave -- but this is not life. This is gradual death from the cradle to the grave, a seventy-year-long gradual death.

And because millions of people around you are dying in this gradual, slow death,

you also start imitating them. Children learn everything from those who are around them, and we are surrounded by the dead.

So first we have to understand what I mean by `life'. It must not be simply growing old.

It must be growing up.

And these are two different things.

Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings.

Only a few claim the right.

Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life; it means going farther away from death -- not towards death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms -- nothing dies, nothing can die.

Death is the greatest illusion there is.

For growing up, just watch a tree. As the tree grows up, its roots are growing down, deeper. There is a balance: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots will go. You cannot have a tree one hundred and fifty feet high with small roots; they could not support such a huge tree.

In life, growing up means growing deep within yourself -- that's where your roots are.

To me, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. As you grow older, it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation.

Meditation means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness.

And the child is the most qualified person because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish.

He is innocent.

But unfortunately his innocence is being condemned as ignorance. Ignorance and innocence have a similarity, but they are not the same. Ignorance is also a state of not knowing, just as innocence is. But there is a great difference too, which has been overlooked by the whole of humanity up to now. Innocence is not knowledgeable -- but it is not desirous of being knowledgeable either. It is utterly content, fulfilled.

A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment -- a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky... and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars.…

Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.

Ignorance is poor, it is a beggar -- it wants this, it wants that, it wants to be knowledgeable, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be wealthy, it wants to be powerful.

Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is a state of desirelessness.

But because they both are without knowledge, we have remained confused about their natures. We have taken it for granted that they are both the same.

The first step in the art of living will be to create a demarcation line between ignorance and innocence. Innocence has to be supported, protected -- because the child has brought with him the greatest treasure, the treasure that sages find after arduous effort. Sages have said that they become children again, that they are reborn.

In India the real brahmin, the real knower, has called himself dwij, twice born. Why twice born? What happened to the first birth? What is the need of the

second birth? And what is he going to gain in the second birth? In the second birth he is going to gain what was available in the first birth but the society, the parents, the people surrounding him crushed it, destroyed it.

Every child is being stuffed with knowledge. His simplicity has to be somehow removed, because simplicity is not going to help him in this competitive world. His simplicity will look to the world as if he is a simpleton; his innocence will be exploited in every possible way. Afraid of the society, afraid of the world we have created ourselves, we try to make every child be clever, cunning, knowledgeable -- to be in the category of the powerful, not in the category of the oppressed and the powerless.

And once the child starts growing in the wrong direction, he goes on moving that way --

his whole life moves in that direction.

Whenever you understand that you have missed life, the first principle to be brought back is innocence. Drop your knowledge, forget your scriptures, forget your religions, your theologies, your philosophies. Be born again, become innocent -- and it is in your hands.

Clean your mind of all that is not known by you, of all that is borrowed, all that has come from tradition, convention, all that has been given to you by others -- parents, teachers, universities. Just get rid of it.

Once again be simple, once again be a child. And this miracle is possible by meditation.

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth -- who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

The second principle is the pilgrimage.

Life must be a seeking -- not a desire, but a search; not an ambition to become

this, to become that, a president of a country or a prime minister of a country, but a search to find out "Who am I?"

It is very strange that people who don't know who they are, are trying to become somebody. They don't even know who they are right now! They are unacquainted with their being -- but they have a goal of becoming.

Becoming is the disease of the soul. Being is you.

And to discover your being is the beginning of life. Then each moment is a new discovery, each moment brings a new joy; a new mystery opens its doors, a new love starts growing in you, a new compassion that you have never felt before, a new sensitivity about beauty, about goodness.

You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass takes on an immense importance for you. Your sensitivity makes it clear to you that this small blade of grass is as important to existence as the biggest star; without this blade of grass, existence would be less than it is. And this small blade of grass is unique, it is irreplaceable, it has its own individuality.

And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you -- friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows, as friendliness grows.

In the life of St. Francis, there is a beautiful incident. He is dying, and he has always traveled on a donkey from place to place sharing his experiences. All his disciples are gathered to listen to his last words.

The last words of a man are always the most significant that he has ever uttered because they contain the whole experience of his life.

But what the disciples heard, they could not believe.…

St. Francis did not address the disciples; he addressed the donkey. He said, "Brother, I am immensely indebted to you. You have been carrying me from one place to another place with never a complaint, never grumbling. Before I leave this world, all that I want is forgiveness from you; I have not been humane to you."

These were the last words of St. Francis. A tremendous sensitivity to say to the donkey,

"Brother donkey" and ask to be forgiven.

As you become more sensitive, life becomes bigger. It is not a small pond, it becomes oceanic. It is not confined to you and your wife and your children -- it is not confined at all. This whole existence becomes your family, and unless the whole existence is your family you have not known what life is -- because no man is an island, we are all connected.

We are a vast continent, joined in millions of ways.

And if our hearts are not full of love for the whole, in the same proportion our life is cut short.

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world -- the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are heart of it.

Secondly, meditation will bring you a great silence -- because all rubbish knowledge is gone. Thoughts that are part of the knowledge are gone too... an immense silence, and you are surprised:

This silence is the only music there is.

All music is an effort to bring this silence somehow into manifestation.

The seers of the ancient East have been very emphatic about the point that all the great arts -- music, poetry, dance, painting, sculpture -- are all born out of meditation. They are an effort to in some way bring the unknowable into the world of the known for those who are not ready for the pilgrimage -- just gifts for those who are not ready to go on the pilgrimage. Perhaps a song may trigger a desire to go in search of the source, perhaps a statue.

The next time you enter a temple of Gautam Buddha or Mahavira just sit silently, watch the statue. Because the statue has been made in such a way, in such proportions that if you watch it you will fall silent. It is a statue of meditation; it is not concerned with Gautam Buddha or Mahavira.

That's why all those statues look alike -- Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, Neminatha, Adinatha.… Twenty-four tirthankaras of Jainas... in the same temple you will find twenty-four statues all alike, exactly alike.

In my childhood I used to ask my father, "Can you explain to me how it is possible that twenty-four persons are exactly alike? -- the same size, the same nose, the same face, the same body "

And he used to say, "I don't know. I am always puzzled myself that there is not a bit of difference. And it is almost unheard of -- there are not even two persons in the whole world who are alike, what to say about twenty-four?"

But as my meditation blossomed I found the answer -- not from anybody else, I found the answer: that these statues have nothing to do with the people. These statues have something to do with what was happening inside those twenty-four people, and that was exactly the same.

And we have not bothered about the outside; we have insisted that only the inner should be paid attention to. The outer is unimportant. Somebody is young, somebody is old, somebody is black, somebody is white, somebody is man, somebody is woman -- it does not matter; what matters is that inside there is an ocean of silence. In that oceanic state, the body takes a certain posture.

You have observed it yourself, but you have not been alert. When you are angry, have you observed? -- your body takes a certain posture. In anger you cannot keep your hands open; in anger -- the fist. In anger you cannot smile -- or can you?

With a certain emotion, the body has to follow a certain posture. Just small things are deeply related inside.

So those statues are made in such a way that if you simply sit silently and watch, and then close your eyes, a negative shadow image enters into your body and you start feeling something you have not felt before.

Those statues and temples were not built for worshipping; they were built for experiencing. They are scientific laboratories. They have nothing to do with religion. A certain secret science has been used for centuries so the coming generations could come in contact with the experiences of the older generations -

- not through books, not through words, but through something which goes deeper -- through silence, through meditation, through peace.

As your silence grows; your friendliness, your love grows; your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration.

Do you hear the firecrackers outside? Have you ever thought about why, all over the world, in every culture, in every society, there are a few days in the year for celebration?

These few days for celebration are just a compensation -- because these societies have taken away all celebration of your life, and if nothing is given to you in compensation your life can become a danger to the culture.

Every culture has to give some compensation to you so that you don't feel completely lost in misery, in sadness. But these compensations are false.

These firecrackers outside and these lights outside cannot make you rejoice. They are only for children; for you they are just a nuisance. But in your inner world there can be a continuity of lights, songs, joys.

Always remember that society compensates you when it feels that the repressed may explode into a dangerous situation if it is not compensated. The society finds some way of allowing you to let out the repressed. But this is not true celebration, and it cannot be true.

True celebration should come from your life, in your life.

And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing. Either the misery was false or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November is gone, you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.

Life should be a continuous celebration, a festival of lights the whole year round. Only then you can grow up, you can blossom.

Transform small things into celebration.

For example, in Japan they have the tea ceremony. In every Zen monastery and in every person's house who can afford it, they have a small temple for drinking tea. Now, tea is no longer an ordinary, profane thing; they have transformed it into a celebration. The temple for drinking tea is made in a certain way -- in a beautiful garden, with a beautiful pond; swans in the pond, flowers all around... guests come and they have to leave their shoes outside. It is a temple.

And as you enter the temple, you cannot speak; you have to leave your thinking and thoughts and speech outside with your shoes. You sit down in a meditative posture. And the host, the lady who prepares tea for you -- her movements are so graceful, as if she is dancing, moving around preparing tea, putting cups and saucers before you as if you are gods. With such respect... she will bow down, and you will receive it with the same respect.

The tea is prepared in a special samovar which makes beautiful sounds, a music of its own. And it is part of the tea ceremony that everybody should listen first to the music of the tea. So everybody is silent, listening... birds chirping outside in the garden, and the samovar... the tea is creating its own song. A peace surrounds.…

When the tea is ready and it is poured into everybody's cup, you are not just to drink it the way people are doing everywhere. First you will smell the aroma of the tea. You will sip the tea as if it has come from the beyond, you will take time

-- there is no hurry.

Somebody may start playing on the flute or on the sitar.

An ordinary thing -- just tea -- and they have made it a beautiful religious festival, and everybody comes out of it nourished, fresh, feeling younger, feeling juicier.

And what can be done with tea can be done with everything -- with your clothes, with your food.

People are living almost in sleep; otherwise, every fabric, every cloth has its own beauty, its own feel. If you are sensitive, then the clothing is not just to cover your body; then it is something expressing your individuality, something expressing your taste, your culture, your being.

Everything that you do should be expressive of you; it should have your

signature on it.

Then life becomes a continuous celebration.

Even if you fall sick and you are lying in bed, you will make those moments of lying in bed moments of beauty and joy, moments of relaxation and rest, moments of meditation, moments of listening to music or to poetry. There is no need to be sad that you are sick.

You should be happy that everybody is in the office and you are in your bed like a king, relaxing -- somebody is preparing tea for you, the samovar is singing a song, a friend has offered to come and play flute for you.… These things are more important than any medicine. When you are sick, call a doctor. But more important, call those who love you because there is no medicine more important than love. Call those who can create beauty, music, poetry around you because there is nothing that heals like a mood of celebration.

Medicine is the lowest kind of treatment.

But it seems we have forgotten everything, so we have to depend on medicine and be grumpy and sad -- as if you are missing some great joy that you were having in the office! In the office you were miserable -- just one day off, and you cling to misery too; you won't let it go.

Make everything creative, make the best out of the worst -- that's what I call `the art'. And if a man has lived his whole life making every moment and every phase of it a beauty, a love, a joy, naturally his death is going to be the ultimate peak of his whole life's endeavor. The last touches... his death is not going to be ugly as it ordinarily happens every day to everyone.

If death is ugly, that means your whole life has been a wastage.

Death should be a peaceful acceptance, a loving entry into the unknown, a joyful goodbye to old friends, to the old world. There should not be any tragedy in it.

One Zen master, Lin Chi, was dying. Thousands of his disciples had gathered to listen to the last sermon, but Lin Chi was simply lying down -- joyous, smiling, but not saying a single word.

Seeing that he was going to die and he was not saying a single word, somebody

reminded Lin Chi -- an old friend, a master in his own right.… He was not a disciple of Lin Chi.

That's why he could say to him, "Lin Chi, have you forgotten that you have to say your last words? I have always said your memory isn't right. You are dying... have you forgotten?"

Lin Chi said, "Just listen." And on the roof two squirrels were running, screeching. And he said, "How beautiful" and he died.

For a moment, when he said "Just listen," there was absolute silence. Everybody thought he is going to say something great, but only two squirrels fighting, screeching, running on the roof And he smiled and he died.

But he has given his last message: don't make things small and big, trivial and important.

Everything is important. At this moment, Lin Chi's death is as important as the two squirrels running on the roof, there is no difference. In existence it is all the same. That was his whole philosophy, his whole life's teaching -- that there is nothing which is great and there is nothing which is small; it all depends on you, what you make out of it.

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you -- silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life.

Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness -- maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness.

But you have to begin from being innocent.

So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. And everybody is carrying so much crap

-- and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles...

You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.

Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. And the whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? -- that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you DON'T enjoy.

It will be against existence if you don't beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

AS A DISCIPLE OF YOUR MYSTERY SCHOOL, I WANT TO ASK YOU THE

FOLLOWING QUESTION: WHEN I HEARD YOU SAY THAT YOU WERE

BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT NOW, IT FELT LIKE A RELAXATION IN MY

HEART. THAT VERY MOMENT A PICTURE AROSE IN ME SHOWING ME THAT

YOU ARE EVEN CLOSER TO US NOW, AND IT FEELS TO ME AS IF I CAN

SOMEHOW UNDERSTAND "BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT" BETTER THAN

ENLIGHTENMENT ITSELF.

CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Adima, it raises a few fundamental questions.

First, if you cannot understand enlightenment, how can you understand that which is beyond it?

You are MISunderstanding.

Your misunderstanding is that perhaps beyond enlightenment means below enlightenment.

And you are feeling happy, but I cannot feel happy with your happiness. I feel sorry for it. You are feeling happy that I have come close to you. You should feel happy when you come close to me.

Just think: if I say that I have dropped even "beyond enlightenment," that it was all fiction -- enlightenment, beyond enlightenment... I am just one of you who had a few imaginative, fictitious ideas -- you will feel even happier. Now there is nothing for you to worry about, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve, you are perfectly okay.

Your question makes me understand why Gautam Buddha remained with enlightenment -

- although he was seeing it, the stars beyond were calling him. He was the first man to see beyond enlightenment, but he didn't go beyond; he remained at the stage of enlightenment.

Perhaps it was for people like you. Because you will not be able to understand the person who goes beyond enlightenment; in a way he will become almost ordinary -- and there is the danger. Your ordinariness and his ordinariness are poles apart -- but both are ordinariness, and the danger is that you will misunderstand. He has come back home.

You have not even started the journey.

It is almost like meeting someone on a staircase -- you are both standing on the same step; one is going, one is coming. Both are on the same step -- in a way equal -- but one is going up, one is going down. Hence, they are not equal, their equality is illusory.

I thought perhaps that in the twenty-five centuries after Gautam Buddha man might have become a little more intelligent -- and someone some day has to try going beyond and see what happens, how people take it.

The way you have understood it is absolutely wrong.

I have not come closer to you, I have gone farther away.

And you cannot avoid enlightenment; if you avoid it, you cannot reach beyond it. It is simple arithmetic. That's what is making you happy, that perhaps enlightenment can be avoided -- when one has to go beyond it, what is the need to first go to enlightenment and then go beyond it? We are already beyond it!

You are not beyond it. You are behind it.

And in any case enlightenment cannot be avoided. One has to pass through that fire, through that great experience.

So drop that idea that I have come closer to you.

My being closer to you is not significant. What is significant is your being closer to me.

You say, "Now you are a friend to us."

I have always been a friend to you. The question is from your side: are you a friend to me? And my friendship will enhance and enrich my life, not your life. It is your friendship that is going to enhance and enrich your life. And if you can be a friend to one who is enlightened you have taken a long jump, you have extended your hands for a faraway star, you have stretched your being to its fullest. This will give you an evolution.

And only after you have reached the point of enlightenment can you see that there are skies beyond skies, that enlightenment is not the end. Existence is not exhausted yet; there is still much more ahead, the journey continues.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

NOW THAT I AM SLOWLY, SLOWLY TURNING INWARD, I FIND THIS

LONGING MIXED WITH SADNESS WELLING UP FREQUENTLY. IT SEEMS

CONNECTED WITH THE FEELINGS THAT ARISE WHEN I SEE YOU OR DREAM

ABOUT YOU.

IS IT THE REALIZATION THAT I REALLY DON'T KNOW MUCH LOVE AND

BLISS IN MY LIFE, OR IS IT THE LONGING FOR HOME? WOULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK TO ME ABOUT THIS?

It is good and fortunate that nothing satisfies you completely and entirely. That means you don't become stagnant, that means you have to keep moving.

Slowly slowly, you will understand that there is no home, that movement itself is the home; that there is no end to the pilgrimage but the pilgrimage itself is the end.

It is very difficult to understand because we are accustomed to a certain logic: if we want to go somewhere, going is always just a means, reaching somewhere is the end.

But as far as the universal life is concerned, there cannot be a place where you can say "I have come and now there is nothing further."

It is inconceivable that you will find a place which will be the end and there will be a fence and a board saying, "Here ends the world." And even if you can find such a place, I would like you to jump the fence -- because there must be something beyond the fence. If the fence cannot just stand by itself, there must be something beyond it. Somebody is playing a joke by putting up a board -- "Here ends the world" -- and fixing a fence there.

Don't be deceived.

You will come to many places where you would like to make your home -- because it is so blissful, so peaceful, you feel so fulfilled; you don't see the point... why should you continue?

But I say unless you continue, you will never know that there is much more. But if you stop, nobody is going to prevent you.

You need a master to go on goading you, to go on destroying every home you make, so finally you decide not to make any home -- it is better to be homeless under the sky and continue the journey.

In the life of al-Hillaj Mansoor, a beautiful incident is related. He was a poor man. He collected money from people because he wanted to go to Kaaba, the sacred place of pilgrimage for the Mohammedans. And everybody contributed because he was going to Kaaba, and whoever contributes also gets a share in the virtue that he will get by reaching there. It is according to how much you give. So people gave him money -- those who could give more, gave more. People even gave beyond their capacity; they borrowed and gave him money.

The next day he was back. And they said, "So soon?" -- because in those days the journey from his place to Kaaba and back used to take three to six months. "What happened? And where is the money?"

He said, "A strange man met me on the way just as I was going out of town. He said,

`Listen, where are you going?' I said, Ì am going to Kaaba.' He said, `There is no need.' I said, `But every scripture says there is a need.' He said, Ì am a living master, and I am saying there is no need. You just go around me seven times and put all the money in front of me. I am Junnaid, the great master. Give the money first.' So I said, Ìf you are Junnaid, then...'"

Junnaid's name was known all over the country. So al-Hillaj said, "If Junnaid says something he cannot be wrong. I gave given the money to Junnaid, went around him seven times, and he told me to go back home."

Those people said, "You idiot. First, have you inquired whether he is Junnaid or not? It seems some cheat has deceived you. Let us go and find out. If he was

really Junnaid, he will be sitting there."

They reached, and Junnaid was sitting there. Junnaid said, "So you all have come. Put your money here, whatever money you have. Take seven rounds -- I am a living Kaaba --

and then go home. And whenever you have money you can come again."

So the poor fellows had to put their money there and took seven rounds, sadly. "This is strange, we never thought that Kaaba would come just outside our village."

But the news spread. People started coming from other villages. They said, "If Junnaid says so, it must be right. That is a dead stone in Kaaba, and this is a living master."

Somebody asked him, "We have come. We heard that you were here, so we have come for the pilgrimage."

He said, "Just give the money and do the pilgrimage."

But the man said, "I have a question: After taking seven rounds around you, is the journey finished? Is the pilgrimage over?"

He said, "No, whenever you have money again, you can come. This pilgrimage is never going to end. And if you don't find me here, you will find somebody else. You can do this pilgrimage around anybody -- you just have to be sensitive to see the real, the living god within. It is not only within me, it is within you also. If you are alert, you can take seven rounds around yourself -- no need to waste the money and no need to go anywhere.

Remember, there is no home. Or, the home is everywhere -- both are true." I will not say to you that the home is everywhere -- although it is true.

I will say there is no home.

If you can continue your pilgrimage with this sincerity -- that there is no home and there is no place you are going to, that just the going is in itself the beauty, the joy, the blissfulness, everything... the going itself -- then the second will also

be true: that wherever you are, it is home. But the second can be deceptive -- because people are very cunning, even cunning with themselves. They have misused all truths, they have managed to give them meanings which support their own ideas. If I say "Everywhere is home" then they will relax wherever they are, then there is no need.

So I say: There is no home, and the journey has to be continued. It has to be a dance.

Take your guitars and go on, and never stop anywhere.

That does not mean that you cannot rest for a while. There are caravanserais but no homes -- stay over for the night, but in the morning we have to go.

This ongoing process is what life is.

The moment it stops, it is death -- and there is no death.

And why do people hanker for the home? -- security, safety. But in the name of security and safety, they don't make homes, they make prisons -- and they are the jailed and they are the jailers, but because they have the keys in their own hands, they think they are free.

They are not free. Only a constantly moving river... sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes falling from the mountains, sometimes moving very slowly on the plains... but moving all the time.…

Movement is life, change is life.

Stay for a while if you feel tired, but stay only to regain enough energy so that tomorrow morning you can move again.

The home is everywhere -- but that home is just a caravanserai.

Never make anything in life stable. That's how things die, that's how things start stinking.

Allow movement -- it keeps things fresh, it keeps things alive. It keeps the adventure alive, the excitement, the ecstasy of the discovery of the unknown and finally the unknowable.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

EVER SINCE I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU LISTENING, LISTENING, I WAS NEVER

ABLE TO REMEMBER ANYTHING YOU SAID. AS SO OFTEN BEFORE, YOU

ARE SPEAKING FROM MY OWN HEART, BUT THE MOMENT THE WORDS

ARE HEARD, THEY ARE FORGOTTEN TOO.

CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING? AM I NOT REALLY LISTENING?

It is perfectly good. It is as it should be, because this is not a kindergarten school where you have to remember every word spoken by me.

Here the emphasis is not on remembering; the emphasis is on listening. If you have listened in silence, then whatever is significant will be absorbed by the heart. You may forget the words.…

Words are only containers, not the content. The content will be absorbed in the heart, and the containers have to be thrown away. You cannot carry all the containers always.

Listen perfectly. Never bother about remembering -- because that is a disturbance. Doing the two things together, then one starts taking notes -- if not visibly, then inside in the mind. No, don't create disturbance; just listen. If something is true, your heart will simply absorb it.

And the heart has no memory system. The memory system is in the head.

But whatever the heart absorbs will be changing your actions, will be changing your behavior, will be changing you. It will bring a transformation.

It will not bring you knowledge, it will bring you transformation. It will make you a new man.

So don't be worried about memory at all. Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

IS THERE ANY WAY TO TRANSCEND BEING A GERMAN?

Latifa, there is only one way. And you have done it -- you have become a sannyasin.

A sannyasin is neither German nor Indian, neither Chinese nor Japanese. A sannyasin declares that he is simply a human being. He drops all boundaries, all limitations of nations, of religions, of ideologies. And that you have done; now don't be worried.

Now the whole of Germany is afraid of sannyasins.

You need not be worried about being a German. You just be a sannyasin and make more and more sannyasins, and Germany will disappear!

We are going to make Germany the first sannyas land. Beyond Enlightenment

Chapter #29

Chapter title: I am crazy but you are crazier! 1 November 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8611015

ShortTitle:

ENLIGH29

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

122

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

RESEARCH OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS HAS SUGGESTED THAT CERTAIN

STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS BROUGHT ABOUT BY MEDITATION

TECHNIQUES APPEAR TO EVOKE SPECIFIC BRAINWAVE PATTERNS. THESE

STATES ARE NOW BEING CREATED BY ELECTRONIC AND AUDITORY

STIMULATION OF THE BRAIN, AND THEY CAN BE LEARNED THROUGH

BIOFEEDBACK.

THE TRADITIONAL `MEDITATIVE STATE' -- SITTING SILENTLY (OR AT

LEAST QUIETLY ALERT) IS COMPOSED OF BILATERAL, SYNCHRONOUS

ALPHA WAVES. DEEPER MEDITATION ALSO HAS BILATERAL THETA

WAVES. A STATE CALLED `LUCID AWARENESS' HAS THE BILATERAL

SYNCHRONOUS ALPHA AND THETA WAVES OF DEEP MEDITATION, PLUS

THE BETA WAVES OF NORMAL THOUGHT PROCESSES. `LUCID AWARENESS'

CAN BE LEARNED THROUGH BIOFEEDBACK, USING THE MOST MODERN

EQUIPMENT.

ARE THESE KINDS OF STIMULATION AND BIOFEEDBACK USEFUL TOOLS

FOR THE MEDITATOR? WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP OF THESE TECHNOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES TO THE MEDITATION BEYOND

TECHNIQUE? IS THIS AN EXAMPLE OF BRINGING SCIENCE TOGETHER WITH

MEDITATION?

I WOULD LIKE TO EXPERIMENT WITH THESE NEW TECHNOLOGIES -- BOTH

PERSONALLY IN MY OWN MEDITATION, AND PROFESSIONALLY IN MY

WORK AS A PHYSICIAN. DO I HAVE YOUR BLESSINGS?

It is a very complex question.

You will have to understand one of the most fundamental things about meditation -- that no technique leads to meditation.

The old so-called techniques and the new scientific biofeedback techniques are the same as far as meditation is concerned.

Meditation is not a byproduct of any technique.

Meditation happens beyond mind. No technique can go beyond mind.

But there is going to be a great misunderstanding in scientific circles, and it has a certain basis. The basis of all misunderstanding is: When the being of a person is in a state of meditation, it creates certain waves in the mind. These waves can be created from the outside by technical means. But those waves will not create meditation -- this is the misunderstanding.

Meditation creates those waves; it is the mind reflecting the inner world.

You cannot see what is happening inside. But you can see what is happening in the mind.

Now there are sensitive instruments... we can judge what kind of waves are there when a person is asleep, what kinds of waves are there when a person is dreaming, what kinds of waves are there when a person is in meditation.

But by creating the waves, you cannot create the situation -- because those waves are only symptoms, indicators.

It is perfectly good, you can study them. But remember that there is no shortcut to meditation, and no mechanical device can be of any help. In fact, meditation needs no technique -- scientific or otherwise.

Meditation is simply an understanding.

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Mind is only a mechanism, but when that awareness arises it is bound to create a certain energy pattern around it. That energy pattern is noted by the mind. Mind is a very subtle mechanism.

And you are studying from the outside, so at the most you can study the mind. Seeing that whenever a person is silent, serene, peaceful, a certain wave pattern

always, inevitably appears in the mind, the scientific thinking will say: if we can create this wave pattern in the mind, through some biofeedback technology, then the being inside will reach the heights of awareness.

This is not going to happen.

It is not a question of cause and effect.

These waves in the mind are not the cause of meditation; they are, on the contrary, the effect. But from the effect you cannot move towards the cause. It is possible that by biofeedback you can create certain patterns in the mind and they will give a feeling of peace, silence and serenity to the person. Because the person himself does not know what meditation is and has no way of comparing, he may be misled into believing that this is meditation -- but it is not. Because the moment the biofeedback mechanism stops, the waves disappear, and the silence and the peace and the serenity also disappear.

And you may go on practicing with those scientific instruments for years; it will not change your character, it will not change your morality, it will not change your individuality. You will remain the same.

Meditation transforms. It takes you to higher levels of consciousness and changes your whole lifestyle. It changes your reactions into responses to such an extent that it is unbelievable that the person who would have reacted in the same situation in anger is now acting in deep compassion, with love -- in the same situation.

Meditation is a state of being, arrived at through understanding. It needs intelligence, it does not need techniques.

There is no technique that can give you intelligence. Otherwise, we would have changed all the idiots into geniuses; all the mediocre people would have become Albert Einsteins, Bertrand Russells, Jean-Paul Sartres. There is no way to change your intelligence from the outside, to sharpen it, to make it more penetrating, to give it more insight. It is simply a question of understanding, and nobody else can do it for you -- no machine, no man.

For centuries the so-called gurus have been cheating humanity. Now, in the future instead of gurus, these guru machines will cheat humanity.

The gurus were cheating people, saying that "We will give you a mantra. You repeat the mantra." Certainly by repeating a mantra continuously, you create the energy field of a certain wave length; but the man remains the same, because it is only on the surface.

Just as if you have throw a pebble into the silent lake and ripples arise and move all over the lake from one corner to the other corner -- but it does not touch the depths of the lake at all. The depths are completely unaware of what is happening on the surface.

And what you see on the surface is also illusory. You think that ripples are moving --

that's not true. Nothing is moving.

When you throw a pebble into the lake, it is not that ripples start moving. You can check it by putting a small flower on the water. You will be surprised: the flower remains in the same place. If the waves were moving and going towards the shore, they would have taken the flower with them. The flower remains there. The waves are not moving, it is just the water going up and down in the same place, creating the illusion of movement.

The depths of the lake will not know anything about it. And there is going to be no change in the character, in the beauty of the lake by creating those waves.

Mind is between the world and you.

Whatever happens in the world, the mind is affected by it; and you can understand through the mind what is happening outside.

For example, you are seeing me -- you cannot see me; it is your mind that is affected by certain rays and creates a picture in the mind. You are inside, and from inside you see the picture. You don't see me; you can't see me.

The mind is the mediator. Just as when it is affected by the outside, the inner consciousness can read it -- what is happening outside -- what the scientists are trying to do is just the same: they are studying meditators and reading their wave lengths, the energy fields created by meditation. And naturally, the scientific approach is that if these certain patterns appear without any exception when a person is in meditation, then we have got the key; if we can create these patterns

in the mind, then meditation is bound to appear inside. That's where the fallacy is.

You can create the pattern in the mind.…

And if the person does not know about meditation, he may feel a silence, a serenity -- for the moment, as long as those waves remain.

But you cannot deceive a meditator because the meditator will see that those patterns are appearing in the mind.…

Mind is a lower reality, and the lower reality cannot change the higher reality. The mind is the servant; it cannot change the master.

But you can experiment.

Just remain aware that whether it is a biofeedback machine or a chanting of OM, it does not matter; it only creates a mental peace, and a mental peace is not meditation.

Meditation is the flight beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with mental peace.

One of America's great thinkers, Joshua Liebman, has written a very famous book, PEACE OF MIND. I wrote him a letter many years ago when I came across the book, saying that "If you are sincere and honest, you should withdraw the book from the market because there is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind is the problem. When there is no mind then there is peace, so how there can be peace of mind? And any peace of mind is only fallacious; it simply means the noise has slowed down to such a point that you think it is silence. And you don't have anything to compare it with."

A man who knows what meditation is cannot be deceived by any techniques, because no technique can give you understanding of the workings of the mind.

For example, you feel anger, you feel jealousy, you feel hatred, you feel lust. Is there any technique that can help you to get rid of anger? of jealousy? of hatred? of sexual lust?

And if these things continue to remain, your lifestyle is going to remain the same as before.

There is only one way -- there has never been a second. There is one and only one way to understand that to be angry is to be stupid: watch anger in all its phases, be alert to it so it does not catch you unawares; remain watchful, seeing every step of the anger. And you will be surprised: that as awareness about the ways of anger grows, the anger starts evaporating.

And when the anger disappears, then there is a peace. Peace is not a positive achievement.

When the hatred disappears, there is love. Love is not a positive achievement. When jealousy disappears, there is a deep friendliness towards all.

Try to understand.…

But all the religions have corrupted your minds because they have not taught you how to watch, how to understand; instead they have given you conclusions -- that anger is bad.

And the moment you condemn something, you have already taken a certain position of judgment. You have judged. Now you cannot be aware.

Awareness needs a state of no-judgment.

And all the religions have been teaching people judgments: this is good, this is bad, this is sin, this is virtue -- this is the whole crap that for centuries man's mind has been loaded with. So, with everything -- the moment you see it -- there is immediately a judgment about it within you. You cannot simply see it, you cannot be just a mirror without saying anything.

Understanding arises by becoming a mirror, a mirror of all that goes on in the mind.

There is a beautiful story -- not just a story, but an actual historical fact.

One disciple of Gautam Buddha is going on a journey to spread his message. He has come to see Gautam Buddha and to get his blessings, and to ask if there is

any last message, any last words to be said to him.

And Gautam Buddha said, "Just remember one thing: While walking, keep your gaze just four feet ahead, looking four feet ahead of you."

Since that day, for twenty-five centuries, Buddhist monks have walked in the same way.

That was a strategy to keep you from seeing women in particular. Those disciples were monks. They had taken the vow of celibacy.

Ananda, another of Gautam Buddha's disciples, could not understand what the matter was, why the monk should keep his eyes always focused four feet ahead. He inquired: "I want to know, what is the matter?"

Buddha said, "That's how he will avoid looking at a woman, at least a woman's face -- at the most he will see her feet."

But Ananda said, "There may be situations when a woman is in a danger. For example, she has fallen into a well and is shouting for help. What is your disciple supposed to do?

He will have to see her face, her body."

Buddha said, "In special situations he is allowed to see her, but it is not the rule, it is only the exception."

Ananda said, "What about touching? -- because there may be situations when a woman has fallen on the road. What is your disciple supposed to do? Should he help her to get up or not? Or an old woman wants to cross the road -- what is your disciple supposed to do?"

Buddha said, "As an exception -- but remember it is not a rule -- he can touch the woman with one condition, and if he cannot fulfill the condition he is not allowed the exceptions.

The condition is that he should remain just a mirror, he should not take any judgment, any attitude. `The woman is beautiful' -- that is a judgment. `The woman is fair' -- that is a judgment. He should remain a mirror, then he is allowed the exceptions. Otherwise, let the woman drown in the well -- somebody

else will save her. You save yourself!"

What he is saying is this: in every situation where mind starts any kind of desire, greed, lust, ambition, possessiveness, the meditator has to be just a mirror. And what is that going to do? To be just a mirror means you are simply aware.

In pure awareness the mind cannot drag you down into the mud, into the gutter. In anger, in hatred, in jealousy, the mind is absolutely impotent in the face of awareness. And because the mind is absolutely impotent, your whole being is in a profound silence -- the peace that passeth understanding.

Naturally that peace, that silence, that joy, that blissfulness will affect the mind. It will create ripples in the mind, it will change the wave lengths in the mind, and the scientist will be reading those waves, those wave patterns and he will be thinking, "If these wave patterns can be created in someone by mechanical devices, then we will be able to create the profoundness of a Gautam Buddha."

Don't be stupid.

All your technical devices can be good, can be helpful. They are not going to do any harm; they will be giving some taste of peace, of silence -- although very superficial, still it is something for those who have never known anything of peace.

For the thirsty, even dirty water does not look dirty. For the thirsty, even dirty water is a great blessing.

So you can start your experiments with all my blessings, but remember it is not meditation that you are giving to people -- you don't know meditation yourself. You may be giving them a little rest, a little relaxation -- and there is nothing wrong in it.

But if you give them the idea that this is meditation then you are certainly being harmful -

- because these people will stop at the technical things, with the superficial silence, thinking that this is all and they have gained it.

You can be helpful to people. Tell them that "This is just a mechanical way of

putting your mind at peace, and mind at peace is not the real peace -- real peace is when mind is absent. And that is not possible from the outside, but only from the inside. And inside you have the intelligence, the understanding to do the miracle."

It is good for people who cannot relax, who cannot find a few moments of peace, whose minds are continuously chattering -- your technical devices are good, your biofeedback mechanisms are good. But make it clear to them that this is not meditation, this is just a mechanical device to help you relax, to give you a superficial feeling of silence. If this silence creates an urge in you to find the real, the inner, the authentic source of peace, then those technical devices have been friends, and the technicians who have been using them have not been barriers but have been bridges. Become a bridge.

Give people the little taste that is possible through machines, but don't give them the false idea that this is what meditation is. Tell them that this is only a faraway echo of the real; if you want the real, you will have to go through a deep inner search, a profound understanding of your mind, an awareness of all the cunning ways of the mind so that the mind can be put aside. Then the mind is no longer between you and existence, and the doors are open.

Meditation is the ultimate experience of blissfulness.

It cannot be produced by drugs, it cannot be produced by machines, it cannot be produced from the outside.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

THE COMMUNES OF MAHAVIRA AND BUDDHA SURVIVED EVEN AFTER

THEIR LIFETIMES, BUT YOUR COMMUNES ARE NOT SURVIVING IN YOUR

LIFETIME ALTHOUGH THEY ARE SELF-SUFFICIENT.

DOES SURVIVAL OF COMMUNES DEPEND ON SOCIAL STRUCTURE,

AFFLUENCE OF THE SOCIETY, PREVALENT RELIGIONS, OR NATIONAL AND

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS? PLEASE COMMENT.

The first thing to understand: Gautam Buddha and Mahavira had no communes.

Their disciples were wandering monks; they were not living a commune life in one place, they were always on the move -- except for the rainy season. And even in the rainy season they used to stay in different places.

My commune was an alternative society.

Gautam Buddha and Mahavira did not provide an alternative society; hence they were not in conflict with the society. On the contrary, they were dependent on the society for food, for clothes, for shelter -- their disciples were dependent on the society for everything.

They could not be rebellious. How can you be rebellious against a society which gives you food, which gives you clothes, which gives you shelter, which gives you everything that you need? You cannot go against its morality -- it may be rotten, but you have to support it. You cannot go against its traditions.

My commune was a totally new experiment. It has never happened before. There is no comparison in the past because my people were not dependent on anybody, and they were against the society, the culture, the civilization, the religion, the politics, the education -- everything that constitutes the world.

We were fighting an impossible fight -- a small group trying to live in a totally different way from the whole of humanity.

Mahavira was not against marriage; I am. Mahavira was not respectful towards women; I am.

Buddha was as much a male chauvinist as anybody else. For twenty years continuously, he refused to initiate any women into Buddhism. He never accepted the idea that they are equal to men. I say they are not only equal but in some respects superior.

My commune was a revolt.

Their religions -- Gautam Buddha's and Mahavira's religions -- were simply offshoots of the same civilization, the same society, the same morality, the same superstitions.

Yes, they were arguing about invisible things which nobody bothers about -- whether God is seven feet high or six feet high is nobody's business. Whether God has three faces or only one face, it is God's problem, it is nobody else's problem. Maybe if he has three faces then God's tailor might have a problem!

They were disagreeing on many points, but all those points were immaterial, not substantial, not concerned with the life that man is living here and now -- about that they were all in absolute agreement.

Hence it was absolutely to be expected that my commune would be destroyed.

It was against the church, it was against the state, it was against all that your so- called civilization stands for -- because I don't believe man has yet become civilized.

If man has become civilized, then there is no need for wars; if man has become civilized, then there is no need for discrimination between blacks and whites, men and women; if man has become civilized then there is no need for people to die because they have nothing to eat -- and there are people who are dying because they have too much to eat.

In America, thirty million people are dying from overeating, and thirty million people are dying because they have nothing to eat.

And you call this world a civilized world? It is not even sane. And it cannot be just coincidence: exactly thirty million people overeating, knowing perfectly well that they are eating themselves to death, knowing perfectly well that thirty million people are on the streets dying without food. Strange... sixty million people can be saved within a second, but these sixty million people will die.

I have heard.… A man was very much worried because his wife was getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

And women have greater capacity for becoming fat than men -- it is a biological

privilege, because the woman has to be able to become pregnant, to become a mother; then for nine months she cannot eat well, she throws up, she is carrying such a load in her belly. And every day the child needs more and more food. It is a very strange situation: the woman cannot eat, and the child wants more food because he is growing. Hence nature has made woman's body capable of collecting more fat for emergency measures.

So even if she does not eat, the child can get as much as he needs from the reserve fat the woman has; and the woman can also go on eating her own fat -- and nine months is a long time. So the woman has immense capacity. If she uses her full capacity, then man is no competitor.

And women are thinner while they are not married. Once they are married they start becoming fat -- because now there is no problem. They have got hold of a man who cannot escape so it does not matter what happens to their body proportions; they are no more interested in any beauty competition.

The man asked his doctor, "What has to be done?"

The doctor said, "You do one thing: take a beautiful picture of a naked woman and paste it inside the fridge, so whenever your wife opens the fridge for more ice cream she will think, `What a beautiful body!' And she may start thinking about herself, that this is not good."

The man said, "That idea is very good."

After two months the doctor met the man, and he could not believe it. He said, "What happened? I have not seen you for two months, and you have become so fat!"

He said, "Everything went wrong because of your suggestion, you idiot! Are you my doctor or my enemy? I pasted a beautiful woman, naked, inside the fridge. Since then my wife does not open the fridge, but I cannot remain more than fifteen minutes away before a desire arises to see the photo. But when one opens the fridge, it is not just the photo one sees -- the ice cream, the cake... You have destroyed my life. So my wife has become slimmer, beautiful, and I have become ugly. And the whole credit goes to you!"

This society, this world is based on insane superstitions.

My commune was a revolt. It survived five years -- it was a miracle, because the whole fascist and imperialist government of America tried everything to destroy it. Legally they could not do it because we had four hundred legal experts in the commune -- the commune had the biggest legal firm in the whole world. Four hundred sannyasins, a few of them very well-known legal experts; others, new graduates from the universities --

four hundred legal experts continuously fighting the American government on every legal point. Finally the government decided that legally it was impossible to destroy us, and then they started doing illegal things.

And when a world power -- the world's greatest power -- starts being criminal and illegal, what can four hundred people do?

We were ready to fight legally, rationally, logically, in every possible way. But illegally it was impossible to fight.

I was arrested illegally, without any arrest warrant -- because they could not find a reason to arrest me, so how to issue an arrest warrant?

In the middle of the night at the point of twelve loaded guns, I was arrested. And I asked them, "Where is the arrest warrant?"

They said, "There is no arrest warrant."

I said, "You can at least tell me verbally what the reason is, why I am being arrested."

They said, "We don't know."

I asked them, "Then give me the opportunity to inform my attorney." And they refused.

That is every citizen's right everywhere in the world -- to inform his attorney if the government is doing such an illegal act. But they were worried that if the attorney comes, the first thing he is going to ask is, "Where is the arrest warrant?"

They destroyed the commune in such a way that the world would think nothing

criminal had been done, but everything criminal.…

In court they produced one hundred and thirty-six crimes against me.

I was silent for three and a half years, never going out of my room. And if a man remaining silent -- not meeting anybody, not talking to anybody, not going out of his room -- can manage to commit one hundred and thirty-six crimes, then I thought there must be miracles, I must be doing miracles! And they had no proof of anything.

They asked for negotiations. The government attorney made it clear to my attorneys that the government could not accept defeat. They themselves had foolishly called the case

"The United States of America versus Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh," they themselves had called the case that; there was no need to give it such a name. Now they were in trouble: if I had won the case that would mean the United States of America would have been defeated in their own courts under their own law, by their own constitution.

So they said, "We cannot -- the government cannot accept defeat. And you know and we know that we don't have any proof. So the best way will be not to go to trial. We are ready for negotiations. And the negotiating agreement is that Bhagwan should accept any two charges, should admit that he has committed two crimes -- just to show the world that we have not done anything wrong by arresting him -- and pay a nominal fine. Then on the surface everything looks legal."

But my attorney said, "It will be very difficult to convince him to accept."

They said, "We should make you aware of the fact that if he does not accept -- and if the case goes to trial -- then the trial can be prolonged for ten years, twenty years. It is a case against the government, and you should be aware that government is not ready to lose the case. So we will go on postponing it, and bail will be cancelled and Bhagwan will have to remain in jail. His whole movement will be destroyed, and all his sannyasins all over the world will be in immense torture."

And he suggested -- whispered into my chief attorney's ear: "You should be aware that he can be killed too. If we see that the case is going to be lost, he can be killed too."

My attorneys came to me crying -- and they were the topmost attorneys of America. I asked them, "Why you are crying? What is the matter? -- because there is nothing in those hundred thirty-six charges. We are going to win."

They said, "We are going to win, but your life is at risk and we don't want your life to be at risk."

And they were right.

Because they had already planted a bomb under my seat, so if something went wrong then they could finish me on that very day. It was just a coincidence that I reached the jail earlier than they expected -- and the bomb was a time bomb, so it did not explode.

After I left America, the attorney general told the press, "Our first priority was to destroy the commune."

Why? -- because the commune had done no harm to America in any way. But deep down it has hurt America's ego, its pride -- because we have shown them that a dream can be realized, that five thousand people can live without any law enforcement authority, without any court, without any fight, without any drugs, without any murder, without any suicide, nobody going mad. And people were living so joyously and so beautifully that the whole of America was starting to feel jealous.

The very existence of the commune was dangerous to the American politicians because it showed that they don't have any intelligence; otherwise they could have done what we had done very easily -- they had all the power, all the money.

This small commune of five thousand people had everything that man needs, and all the freedom, all the love. And everybody was working seven days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day, and still were not tired -- because it was not something forced, it was something they wanted to do, they wanted to create. It was such a creative act that after working fourteen hours they were still dancing in the streets; late in the night they were playing on their guitars, singing, dancing.

The commune was destined to be destroyed. It was too good not to be destroyed. It was the alternative society.

Mahavira and Buddha did not create any alternative society. They were part of this society, they remained dependent on this society.

Their revolution was intellectual, verbal. My revolt was actual and existential.

And the destruction of the commune in America does not mean that the idea of the commune will disappear. There are still communes around the world flourishing in many countries. More and more communes will be coming up.

America is going to repent; it has missed an opportunity. It could have supported the commune and made it clear to the world that it stands for freedom, that it stands for a new man, that it stands for a future humanity.

It missed a great opportunity.

By destroying the commune, it has destroyed its own credibility, its own democracy. It has proved itself simply nothing but a hypocritical society.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THE MOST POWERFUL EXPERIENCE IN MY LIFE IS THE LOVE THAT I

FEEL

FOR YOU. IT'S LIKE A SHOWER THAT CLEANSES MY SOUL AND FILLS MY

HEART WITH GRATITUDE.

BUT STILL I KEEP SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING ELSE, AS IF THERE IS A SECRET YOU HAVEN'T SHARED WITH ME YET. IS THIS CRAZY LOVE AFFAIR

BETWEEN US REALLY AND TRULY ALL THAT IS NEEDED? WHY AM I NOT

SATISFIED WITH THIS EXPERIENCE?

Love can never be satisfied.

If it is satisfied, it is not much of a love. The greater and deeper it is, the more dissatisfaction there will be. That is not against love; it simply shows the vastness, that your heart wants to love in a way which is infinite, that it will never be satisfied.

And it is good that it is not satisfied. The moment it is satisfied, it is dead.

The love between the master and the disciple can never be satisfied. It will always remain a thrill, a new excitement, a new ecstasy. It will always go on opening doors upon doors -

- disciplehood will become devotion; one day devotion will become a merger, just as the river merges in the ocean. But that too is not going to satisfy.

Satisfaction is not a great quality. It belongs to the little minds, to the little hearts which are satisfied with small things.

There are people who are satisfied with a little money, there are people who are satisfied with a house, there are people who are satisfied with a little name, a little fame -- these are pygmies.

Giants are never satisfied. On every new step they find the journey is becoming

deeper, more miraculous, more mysterious -- and the longing is growing and the heart is full of a sweet ache.

To be in a love affair with a master is to be in a love affair with existence itself; the master is only an arrow pointing towards the unknowable, the miraculous, the mysterious.

The master is not the end, the master is only the beginning.

The whole function of the master is to push you the same way a mother bird pushes a small bird, a new bird who has never opened his wings into the sky. Naturally he is afraid

-- a vast sky. He has lived in a small cozy nest, safe and secure, the mother has been taking care -- and now she wants him to take a jump and fly. And one day she pushes him. And the moment he is pushed out of the nest -- for a moment it feels as if he is going to fall down on the earth, but before he falls on the earth his wings open and the whole sky is his.

And there are skies beyond skies.

The function of the master is nothing but to push you into a more divine discontentment, into a discontentment that knows no satisfaction.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ARE REALLY SOMETHING -- TALKING ABOUT "BEYOND

ENLIGHTENMENT" WHEN MOST OF US ARE NOT BEYOND PETTINESS, FUTILITY AND POSTPONEMENT!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES OR SOMETHING? (PERHAPS LOVE?)

It is true, I am something!

I know you are not beyond pettiness, beyond jealousy, beyond greed, beyond anger. But I don't talk about going beyond them for the simple reason that if you start struggling with your pettiness, you will remain petty; if you start struggling against your jealousy, you will remain jealous.

An ancient proverb is: "Always choose the enemy very carefully."

A friend can be chosen without much care, but an enemy has to be chosen very carefully because you will be fighting with him -- and in fighting you will become just like the enemy because you will have to use the same methods, the same means.

Enemies are very precious.

I don't want you to fight with small things. Rather than looking down at the earth, and all around is your pettiness and jealousy and anger, my effort is to show you the stars and help you to know that you have wings. And once you start moving towards the stars, those small things will disappear on their own accord.

It is better to look at a star and to strive to get to it because the journey is beautiful, the heart is throbbing with excitement.

Rather than fighting with small things...

You will remain small, fighting with small things.

All your religions teach you to fight with small things, and that's why the whole of humanity has remained small -- fight with small things.

I insist: Don't fight with small things.

Fight for something great, and as you move towards the great the small ones will disappear.

I am crazy, but you are crazier!

And that is the only bond between us -- I am crazy, you are crazier. That is the only commitment. We will reach to the stars -- we will not bother about small things. Leave them here for other people, they will fight with them.

Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS NEEDED TO NOT MISS YOU?

Prasad, only one thing is needed not to miss me, and that is: You have to remember constantly that in every mind, in every person who comes in search of truth, the ego plays a very cunning game.

I will tell you one story.

It is said that one of the great Zen masters Bokoju used to ask every newcomer: "Have you realized that the path of disciplehood is very difficult? Before you enter on the path, it is my duty to make you alert to all the difficulties, arduousness, hostilities; it is an uphill task. Are you ready, or you have come here just out of curiosity?"

The man said, "No, I have come here to find the truth, but if it is too difficult to be a disciple then what about making me a master?"

It is a very strange story.

But that is the only thing that can prevent you coming closer to me -- the desire in the ego somewhere to become a master. You have to become something bigger, something greater.

The master is just a finger pointing to the moon. Don't be bothered to become a master; while you can become the moon, why become the finger?

You are asking what can keep you missing me. Only one thing: the desire to be a master.

It is one of the mysteries of life that only those who don't have any desire to be a master become masters, and those who have the desire even fall from the status of being a disciple -- because the desire to be a master is nothing but a subtle ego.

So just watch your mind.

From disciple become a devotee; from devotee take a quantum leap, a merger with existence.

Never think for a moment of becoming a master. Leave it to existence: if existence wants you to become a master -- that means if existence wants to use you as a master, you will be used. If existence thinks you have done enough and wants you to relax, disperse into eternity -- leave it to existence. You should not be desirous of anything.

The moment you come to the state of desirelessness, then existence uses you in whatever way is needed: as a mystic, as a master, as a singer, as a dancer, as a flute player -- or just as nobody; but everything is a benediction.

That which comes to you from existence without your desiring it is always the greatest ecstasy there is.

Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #30

Chapter title: You are the watcher not the actor 2 November 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8611025

ShortTitle: ENLIGH30

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length:

131

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SPEAK FOR THE PAST MONTH ON "BEYOND ENLIGHTENMENT" -- AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT.

I HAVE HEARD YOU SPEAK FOR THE PAST TWELVE YEARS ON ENLIGHTENMENT -- AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT.

ALL I KNOW IS THE MOMENT WHEN I SIT BEFORE YOU: YOU FEEL LIKE

BLOOD TO MY BODY; YOUR VOICE, MORE FAMILIAR THAN MY OWN HEARTBEAT.

OSHO, HAVE I LET YOU DOWN?

Maneesha, there are things which are beyond understanding.

Enlightenment is beyond understanding, and of course beyond enlightenment is going to be more miraculous, more mysterious.

Understanding itself is not the heart of human beings, it is not their very being. It is useful only as far as the outside world is concerned. The moment you start moving inwards, you have to learn new ways of feeling, of loving, of knowing, and finally of being.

Understanding is perfectly right for the mind, for intelligence, for the objective world; but life does not consist only of those things which you can understand. In fact, the things that you can understand don't make life a celebration, they don't give life a meaning, a significance, they don't allow life to become love.

Understanding is the demarcation line between the mundane and the sacred.

The mundane can be understood and should be understood. And the sacred cannot be understood and should not be understood. Its sacredness is basically a secret that you experience, just the way you feel the heartbeat, the way you feel your breathing.

The sacred gives color to existence, gives music to that which is mundane. It transforms all prose into poetry and makes everything a mystery unto itself so that the whole existence becomes a constant challenge to discover. You go on discovering, but the discovery is never finished; hence you can never say you have understood. On the contrary, the deeper you enter into the sacred dimension of life the more you feel you don't understand, you don't know.

Socrates had become very old, and before he was given poison the oracle of the temple of Delphi declared him to be the wisest man in the whole world. A few people who knew Socrates were immensely glad, they rushed to Athens to inform Socrates: "It has never happened before, it is unprecedented that the oracle of Delphi should declare anybody as the wisest man in the world. You are the first."

Socrates said, "You will have to go back to the temple of Delphi and tell the oracle that although it has always been right, this time it has missed -- because I know nothing."

The people who brought the news were shocked.

They went back and told to the oracle: "Socrates refuses. Not only does he refuse to be the wisest man in the world, he says, Ì know NOTHING.'"

And here is the beauty of the incident: The oracle said, "That's why he is the wisest man in the world, there is no contradiction."

Maneesha, if you had understood what I was saying for twelve years about enlightenment, you would have missed. If you had understood what I have been saying for one month continuously about beyond enlightenment, you would have missed.

Because you are aware that you have not been able to understand anything, you have not missed.

And your feeling that sitting close to me you feel as if I have become your

heartbeat, your breathing, your circulation of blood -- this is true understanding. This is not knowledge; this is the same understanding as when Socrates says, "I know nothing." This is closer to love, this is closer to music, this is closer to feeling beauty.

You don't understand beauty, you don't understand music, you don't understand dance --

you enjoy, you rejoice, you feel. It enters into your being. It becomes part of you, but you cannot say it is knowledge.

Listening to the music of the winds as they pass through the pine trees, what can you understand? Or listening to the sound of running water, what can you understand? Or looking at a beautiful sunset and all the colors spread over the horizon, what can you understand? What do you understand?

But something happens which is far more precious than understanding. You fall in love, you feel it, you become it.

This is how it should be -- aes dhammo sanantano. This is how religion has always been, this is the eternal mystery I call `religion' -- not the religion of the mind, but the religion of the heart, of the being; not the religion of knowing, but the religion of innocence.

Whatever is happening to you is exactly what should happen to everybody.

Those who go from here understanding things, knowing things, becoming more knowledgeable, it would have been better that they had not come -- because I have not been a help to them, I have burdened them; I have not been able to unburden them. And my whole effort is to take all weight of knowing, knowledge, wisdom from you and to make you innocent children again -- again collecting flowers in the garden, running after butterflies, collecting seashells, making houses of sand on the beach... utterly absorbed in whatsoever you are doing, utterly blissful -- so the whole existence around you is a fairyland because everything is mysterious.

If I can take away your knowledge and give you back the sense of mystery, then I have done my job, I have fulfilled my function.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

READING A SCIENTIFIC REPORT ABOUT BRAIN MANIPULATION, QUESTIONS AROSE IN ME.

FOR INSTANCE, IF EVERY FEELING -- LIKE HAPPINESS, SADNESS, SEXUALITY, AGGRESSION, AND SO ON -- CAN BE STIMULATED BY

ELECTRODES, OR INDIRECTLY BY CHEMISTRY, CAN BE MANIPULATED

FROM THE OUTSIDE, THEN THESE FEELINGS ARE NOT MY OWN; THEY ARE

JUST PUPPETS IN SOMEONE'S HANDS. THEY ARE EITHER MANIPULATED

FROM THE OUTSIDE OR FROM THE INSIDE AS AUTOMATIC REACTIONS TO

SITUATIONS -- THEY ARE NOT ME. THIS IS ABOUT FEELINGS.

MAYBE SOME DAY THOUGHTS CAN BE MANIPULATED EQUALLY EASILY.

THEN WHAT IS REALLY MINE? THEN WHAT IS LEFT? THEN WHO AM I?

QUESTIONING AND THINKING IN THESE DIRECTIONS, I CAME TO

RECOGNIZE THAT I OFTEN THINK ABOUT MYSELF, ABOUT LIFE, ABOUT

TRUTH IN THESE WAYS. AND THEN THE QUESTION AROSE: IS THIS WAY OF

QUESTIONING AND THINKING THE WAY THE MIND TRIES TO KNOW

SOMETHING? IS IT ABLE TO REACH ANY TRUTH AT ALL? IF NOT, IS THIS

THINKING OR QUESTIONING JUST A FUTILE EFFORT, JUST A WASTE OF

TIME? OR IS IT NOT THE MIND, NOT THE INTELLECT, BUT A DEEPER

INTELLIGENCE, A DEEPER INSTRUMENT THAT IS ABLE TO COME TO SOME

TRUTH?

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

It is absolutely true: your emotions, your sentiments, your thoughts -- the whole paraphernalia of the mind -- is from the outside, is manipulated by the outside.

Scientifically it has become more clear. But even without scientific investigation, the mystics, for thousands of years, have been saying exactly the same thing -- that all these things that your mind is filled with are not yours, you are beyond them. You get identified with them, and that's the only sin.

For example, somebody insults you and you become angry. You think you are becoming angry -- but seen scientifically, his insult is only a remote controller. The man who has insulted you is managing your behavior. Your anger is in his hands, you are behaving like a puppet.

Now scientists are able to put electrodes in the brain at certain centers -- there are seven hundred centers. And it is almost unbelievable: the mystics have been talking about these seven hundred centers in the brain for almost seven, eight thousand years. Science has just now discovered that there are exactly seven hundred centers controlling all your behavior.

An electrode can be put at a particular center -- for example, anger -- with a remote control so you cannot see that anybody is doing anything to you. Nobody insults you, nobody humiliates you, nobody says anything to you; you are sitting silently, happily, and somebody pushes the button of the remote control and you become angry. It is a very strange feeling because you cannot see the reason anywhere, why you are becoming angry. Perhaps you will rationalize somehow:

you see a man passing down the street and you remember that he insulted you -- you will find some rationalization just to console yourself that you are not going mad. Sitting silently... and suddenly feeling so angry without any provocation?

And the same remote controller can work to make you happy: sitting in your chair you start giggling, and you look all around in case somebody sees you -- he will think you are going crazy! Nobody has said anything, nothing has happened, nobody has slipped on a banana peel, so why are you giggling? But you will rationalize it, you will give some apparently rational grounds for giggling.

And the strangest thing is that when the next time the same button is pushed and you giggle, you will again have the same rationale, the same consolation, the same explanation -- that too is not yours. It is almost like a gramophone record.

And the scientists have come to discover a tremendously meaningful thing: the moment the remote controller releases the center, it rewinds itself immediately. For example, your speech center: the remote control can force you to speak. There is no audience, you will feel awkward -- but you cannot do anything, you have to speak. It is just like a recording.

When the remote controller releases the button, the pressure on the electrode, you become silent. Press the button again... and the strange thing is, you start your speech again from the very beginning!

When I was reading about the scientific investigations into these centers, I was reminded of my student days. I was a competitor in an inter-university debate; all the universities of the country were participating. The Sanskrit University of Varanasi was also participating, but naturally the students from the Sanskrit University were feeling a little inferior compared with competitors from other universities. They knew ancient scriptures, they knew Sanskrit poetry, drama, but they were not familiar with the contemporary world of art, literature, philosophy or logic.

And the inferiority complex works in very strange ways.

Just after I had spoken, the next person was the representative from the Sanskrit University. And just to impress the audience and to hide his inferiority complex he started his speech with a quotation from Bertrand Russell -- he had crammed it, and Sanskrit students are more capable of cramming things than anybody else. But his stage fright.…

He knew nothing about Bertrand Russell, he knew nothing about what he was quoting. It would have been better to have quoted something from Sanskrit because he would have been more at ease.

In the middle he stopped -- just in the middle of a sentence. And I was sitting by his side, because I had just finished. There was silence, and he was perspiring. And just to help him, I said, "Start again" -- because what else to do? he was simply stuck. "And if you cannot go ahead, you start again; perhaps it may come back to you."

So he started again: "Brothers and sisters..." and at exactly the same point he got stuck again. Now it became a joke. The whole hall was shouting, "Again!" and he was in such a difficult situation. Neither could he go ahead nor could he keep standing there silent -- it looked very idiotic. So he had to start again. But he would start again, "Brothers and sisters..."

For a whole fifteen minutes we heard only that portion: "Brothers and sisters..." up to the point where he got stuck, again and again.

When his time was finished he came and sat next to me. He said, "You destroyed my whole thing!"

I said, "I was trying to help you." He said, "This is help?"

I said, "You were going to be in difficulty anyway. This way at least everybody enjoyed it except you -- that I can understand, but you should rejoice that you made so many people happy. And why did you choose that quotation? When I was saying to you, `Start again' there was no need to start over -- you could have dropped that quotation, there was no need to begin again from the very beginning."

But I came to know through reading the scientific research that the speech center is exactly like a gramophone record, but with one thing very strange and special: the moment the needle is taken away from the record you cannot put the needle back where you took it from. Once it is taken away, it will have to begin again exactly at the beginning. The center instantly goes back to the beginning.

And if this happens, can you say you are the master of what you are saying? Are

you the master of what you are feeling? Certainly there are no electrodes scientifically put into you, but biologically exactly the same work is going on.

You see a certain woman, and immediately your mind reacts: "How beautiful!" This is nothing but remote control. That woman functioned like a remote control and your speech center simply went into a recorded speech: "How beautiful!"

Mind is a mechanism. It is not you.

It records things from outside, and then reacts to outside situations according to the recordings. That's the only difference between a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Jew -- they have just got different gramophone records. Inside it is one humanity. And do you think when you play a gramophone record... it may be in Hebrew, it may be in Sanskrit, it may be in Persian, it may be in Arabic, but it is the same machine that plays the record. To the machine it does not matter whether it plays Hebrew or Sanskrit.

All your religions, all your political ideas, all your cultural attitudes are nothing but recordings. And in certain situations certain recordings are provoked.

There is a beautiful incident in the life of one of the very wisest kings of India, Raja Dhoj. He was very much interested in wise people. His whole treasury was open only for one purpose -- to collect all the wise people of the country, whatsoever the cost. His capital was Ujjain, and he had thirty of the country's most famous people in his court. It was the most precious court in the whole country.

One of the greatest poets of the world, Kalidas, was one of the members of the court of Raja Dhoj.

One day a man appeared at the court saying that he spoke thirty languages with the same fluency, the same accuracy and accent as any native person could, and he had come to make a challenge: "Hearing that you have in your court the wisest people of the country, here are one thousand gold pieces..."

The rupee used to be golden. We should stop calling it the rupee now, because the word

`rupee' comes from the word rupya. `Rupya' means gold. It went on falling from gold to silver, from silver to something else. Now it is just paper and you go on

calling it `rupee'.

The very word means gold.

And he said, "Anybody who can recognize my mother tongue, these one thousand gold pieces are his. And if he cannot recognize it, then he will have to give me one thousand gold pieces."

There were great scholars there, and everybody knows that whatever you do, you can never speak any language the way you can speak your own mother tongue because every other language has to be learned by effort. Only the mother tongue is spontaneous -- you don't even learn it, just... the very situation and you start speaking it. It has a spontaneity.

That's why even Germans who call their country `fatherland'.… That is the only country which calls itself `fatherland'. All other countries call their land

`motherland'. But even the Germans don't call their languagèfather tongue'. Every language is called a mother tongue because the child starts learning from the mother, and anyway the father never has the chance to speak in the house. It is always the mother who is speaking -- father is listening.

Many took the challenge. He spoke in thirty languages -- a few pieces in one language, a few pieces in another language -- and it was really hard; he was certainly a master artist.

He was speaking each language the way only a native can speak his own mother language. All of the thirty great scholars lost. The competition continued for thirty days, and every day one person took the challenge and lost it. The man would say, "This is not my mother tongue."

On the thirty-first day.… King Dhoj had been continually saying to Kalidas, "Why don't you accept the challenge? -- because a poet knows language in a more delicate way, with all its nuances, more than anybody else."

But Kalidas remained silent. He had been watching for thirty days, trying to find out which language the man spoke with more ease, with more spontaneity, with more joy.

But he could not manage to find any difference, he spoke all the languages in exactly the same way.

On the thirty-first day, Kalidas asked King Dhoj and all the wise people to stand outside in front of the court. There was a long row of steps and the man was coming up; as he came up to the last step, Kalidas pushed him down. And as he fell rolling down the steps, anger came up -- he shouted.

And Kalidas said, "This is your mother tongue!" Because in anger you cannot remember, and the man had not been expecting this to be a challenge.

And that actually was his mother tongue.

Deepest in his mind, the recording was of the mother tongue.

One of my professors used to say -- he lived all over the world, teaching in different universities -- that "Only in two situations in life have I been in difficulty in different countries -- fighting or falling in love. In those times one remembers one's mother tongue. However beautifully you express your love, it is not the same, it seems superficial. And when you are angry and fighting in somebody else's language, you cannot have that joy "

He said, "Those are two very significant situations -- fighting and loving -- and mostly they are together with the same person. With the same person you are in love, with that same person you have to fight."

And he was right, that everything remains superficial -- you can neither sing a beautiful song nor can you use real four-letter words of your language. In both cases, it remains lukewarm.

Mind certainly is a mechanism for recording experiences from the outside, and reacting and responding accordingly. It is not you.

But unfortunately the psychologists think mind is all, beyond mind there is nothing. That means you are nothing but impressions from the outside. You don't have any soul of your own. The very idea of the soul is also given by the outside.

This is where the mystics are different: they will agree absolutely that about the mind, the contemporary scientific research is right. But it is not right about man's total personality.

Beyond mind, there is an awareness which is not given by the outside and which is not an idea -- and there is no experiment up to now which has found any

center in the brain which corresponds to awareness.

The whole work of religion, of meditation is to make you aware of all that is mind and disidentify yourself with it. When the mind is angry, you should think, "It is simply a gramophone record." When the mind is sad, you should simply remember: it is only a gramophone record.

A certain situation is pressing the remote controller, and you feel sad, you feel angry, you feel frustrated, you feel worried, you feel tense -- all these things are coming from the outside, and the mind is responding to them.

But you are the watcher.

You are not the actor. It is not your reaction.

Hence the whole art of meditation is to learn awareness, alertness, consciousness.

While you are feeling angry, don't repress it; let it be there. Just become aware. See it as if it is some object outside you.

Slowly slowly, go on cutting your identifications with the mind. Then you have found your real individuality, your being, your soul.

Finding this awareness is enlightenment -- you have become luminous.

You are no more in darkness, and you are no more just a puppet in the hands of the mind.

You are a master, not a servant. Now the mind cannot react automatically, autonomously

-- the way it used to do before. It needs your permission. Somebody insults you, and you don't want to be angry.…

Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples that, "To be angry is so stupid that it is inconceivable that intelligent human beings go on doing it. Somebody else is doing something and you are getting angry. He may be doing something wrong, he may be saying something wrong, he may be making some effort to humiliate

you, to insult you --

but that is his freedom. If you react, you are a slave."

And if you say to the person, "It is your joy to insult me, it is my joy not to be angry,"

you are behaving like a master.

And unless this master becomes crystal clear in you, crystallized, you don't have any soul. You are just a phonograph record.

As you grow older, your recording goes on becoming more and more. You become more knowledgeable. People think you are becoming wiser -- you are simply becoming a donkey loaded with scriptures.

Wisdom consists only of one thing, not of knowing many things but of knowing only one thing: that is your awareness and its separation from the mind.

Just try watching in small things, and you will be surprised. People go on doing the same things every day. They go on deciding to do something, and they go on repenting because they have not done it; it becomes a routine.

Everything you do is not new. The things which have been giving you misery, sadness, worries, wounds, and you don't want -- somehow mechanically you go on doing these things again and again as if you are helpless. And you will remain helpless unless you create a separation between mind and awareness.

That very separation is the greatest revolution that can happen to man. And from that very moment your life is a life of continuous celebration -- because you need not do anything that harms you, you need not do anything that makes you miserable. Now you can do and act on only that which makes you more joyous, fulfills you, gives you contentment, makes your life a piece of art, a beauty.

But this is possible only if the master in you is awake. Right now the master is fast asleep, and the servant is playing the role of master.

And the servant is not your servant; the servant is created by the outside world, it belongs to the outside world, it follows the outside world and its laws.

This is the whole tragedy of human life: you are asleep, and the outside world is dominating you, creating your mind according to its own needs -- and the mind is a puppet.

Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.

And there is no blissfulness more precious than freedom, than being a master of your own destiny.

Mind is not your friend. Either the mind is pretending to be the master or it has to be put into its right place as a servant -- but mind is not your friend.

And the struggle for freedom, for bliss, for truth is not with the world; it is a fight with this puppet mind. It is very simple.

Kahlil Gibran has a beautiful story.

The farmers in the villages, to protect their cultivated farms, create a false man: just a stick, another stick... it looks almost like a cross. And then they put a kurta on it, and a mud pot in place of the head. That's enough to make poor animals afraid that somebody may be standing there. The white kurta and two hands, in the night... somebody is watching. For the animals it is enough, they keep away from the farm.

Gibran says, "Once I asked such a false man, Ì can understand the farmer who made you, he needs you. I can understand the poor animals, they don't have great intelligence to see that you are bogus. But in rain, in sun, in hot summer, in cold winter you remain standing here -- for what?'

"And the false, bogus man said, `You don't know my joy. Just to make those animals afraid is such a joy that it is worth suffering rain, suffering sun, suffering heat, winter --

everything. I am making thousands of animals afraid! I know I am bogus, there is nothing inside me -- but I don't care about that. My joy is in making others afraid.'"

I want to ask you: would you like to be just like this bogus man -- nothing inside, making somebody afraid, making somebody happy, making somebody

humiliated, making somebody respectful? Is your life only for others?

Will you ever look inside?

Is there anybody in the house or not?

The people who are with me, their search is to find the master of the house.

I say to you the master is there -- perhaps asleep, but he can be awakened. And once the master is awakened within you, your whole life takes new colors, new rainbows, new flowers, new music, new dances.

For the first time you become alive. Before, you were only vegetating. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

I LOVE BEING HERE. I WANTED AND FELT TO BE WITH YOU EVEN IF IT

WERE JUST FOR TWO DAYS.

AT YOUR BIRTHDAY IN 1981 WE MET FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE REASON

WAS THAT I HAD JUST READ A BOOK ABOUT GURDJIEFF AND THE

PHENOMENON OF baraka. THIS GAVE ME SUCH A HIT THAT I MADE IT TO

COME TO THE RANCH.

THESE DAYS I AM WORKING WITH MANAGERS AND TEACHING THEM

MEDITATION TECHNIQUES. I'M ALSO PREPARING A WORLDWIDE MEDITATION PROJECT. AGAIN I FEEL I NEED `BARAKA'!

PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT BARAKA?

Baraka is a Sufi word meaning grace.

George Gurdjieff was trained in Sufi schools. He has carried many ideas of the Sufis into the West.

The Sufi master -- just like any other master in the world -- is full of grace. If you are receptive, if you are open, just coming close to the master something invisible, some vibe of the divine, some rays of the unknowable start penetrating you.

It also has the meaning of blessing.

People come to the masters and ask for blessing.

In English there is no exact word to translatèbaraka', but in Sanskrit, in Hindi, we have the word prasad. Blessings carry a faraway echo of it. If you are receptive... And unless one is receptive one never goes to a master.

That has been the Eastern tradition. Why waste your time and why waste the master's time? You go only when you see that your heart is opening, it needs a ray of light, as if your being is just like thirsty earth which needs a raincloud to shower on you. Only in such moments people go to a master, they touch the feet of the master, they sit with the master.

Nothing is said and everything is heard; nothing is asked and everything is given.

Baraka is a mystical principle that happens between the receiving disciple and the overflowing master.

It is possible to pass a master without even noticing him -- if you are not open.

Sufis are very careful. It is not easy to find a Sufi master; he may take months or sometimes years to find -- and perhaps the master is just living in front of your house.

The Sufis wait for the right moment.

They have their disciples who come to know that a certain man is asking if this village has a Sufi master. And the disciples go on telling him, "Yes, the Sufi master is here, and you will be called only when you are ready -- because the real thing is your openness.

The master is ready, but what will you be doing? Even if we take you to the master, you will not be able to recognize him."

So the disciples will keep the person hanging around, giving him hope, giving him time --

"Next month we will try" -- making him more and more thirsty. And when they see that he has become a longing, that now it is no longer an ordinary inquiry, it is not just a curiosity to see a Sufi master, but a deep longing, a question of life and death; that if this man does not get in contact with a master he may die, only then will he be introduced into the company of the master. And he will be surprised: the master is a man he has passed in the village many times, he sells vegetables -- because Sufis keep themselves hiding in very ordinary life. Somebody is a shoemaker, somebody is a weaver, somebody sells vegetables -- ordinary things, nothing special about it. And they meet in the middle of the night.

Then the same man sits with the dignity of an emperor. It is called `the court of the master'. The same man who was selling vegetables the whole day long in the marketplace

-- now even the emperor comes to touch his feet.

But nobody can come to the Sufi master unless somebody from his company introduces him, unless somebody takes the responsibility that the person is ready, somebody brings him, introduces him: "He is ready. He needs your grace."

When Gurdjieff entered into a Sufi circle for the first time -- it took him three years to enter the circle.… When he entered, almost a dozen people were sitting there silently with their eyes closed. He was brought close to the master.

The friend who brought him told him, "Just sit down. Nothing is needed on your part except a silent opening, and the rain will come. And then don't close yourself. Drink of the master as much as you can -- this is his blessing; this will

keep you on the path, on the right track. It will keep you courageous enough to pass all the dark nights, it will keep you trusting that the morning is going to happen. The face of the master, the eyes of the master, the gestures of the master, the silence of the master -- everything has to be soaked up so it becomes part of you."

When the master is no longer outside you only, but inside you too -- that is real blessing.

Then the disciple is pregnant, the master has come into his womb, and it will help him in times of danger, in times of discouragement, in times of darkness.

It will always keep him together, remembering that if truth can happen to one man, if God can happen to one man, then it is everybody's birthright.

Remembering..."It may take a little time for me, I have joined the path a little late. But the dawn is not far away."

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

RAJNEESHPURAM WAS A RARE EXPERIMENT IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN

CONSCIOUSNESS WHERE FOR THE FIRST TIME SEEKERS OF TRUTH FROM

THE WHOLE WORLD GATHERED AROUND A MASTER. IT WAS AN

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNE FOR THE MOST INTENSE AND THE FASTEST

GROWTH OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE RAJNEESHPURAM COMMUNE COULD NOT SURVIVE BECAUSE OF

ORTHODOX RELIGIONS AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.

IS THERE ANY HOPE OF SUCH A RARE EXPERIMENT HAPPENING AGAIN

AROUND YOU? OR IS THERE ANY ALTERNATIVE EXPERIMENT POSSIBLE

ON AN INDIVIDUAL SCALE IN THE PRESENT SITUATION? OR IS IT DESTINED

THAT SUCH A RARE OPPORTUNITY FOR HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS TO

FLOWER TO ITS OPTIMUM SHOULD BE MISSED? PLEASE COMMENT.

The commune in America was only a beginning; a beginning of many communes around the world.

They will go on spreading -- because it is not only a question of orthodox religions and dirty politics, it is also a question of the future of humanity. And the future is always more important than the past.

The past is heavy and long. The future is light, unknown. But the past is dead, and life belongs to the future -- and death cannot win over life.

One commune can be destroyed. Thousands of other communes will arise.

Of course my way of functioning will be different because the experiment in Rajneeshpuram needed me to be there, it was the first commune.… Every step had to be taken carefully. And within five years, so much was done that is not possible to do even in fifty years. But now the basic rules are clear.

And my being in any commune is going to be dangerous for the commune.

It was absolutely necessary for the first commune that I should be present. I took the risk, and the commune has succeeded. Now there are communes all around the world. More communes will be arising. I am just waiting for the right moment to trigger a new kind of process.

I will not be part of any commune because my presence will be dangerous for the commune. So now I will be just wandering from one commune to another. Before my presence becomes dangerous in one commune, I will move to another

-- so the commune is saved, and whatever I can give and my presence can give, can be given on a much bigger scale around the globe.

There is no need for people to come to me. I can move from commune to commune. This way, many more communes can flourish.

I am just waiting for the right moment. Preparations are being made, and soon I will start working on a series of communes -- because the movement has to become worldwide, it is already worldwide.

The commune is the lifestyle of the future.

The family is gone and the commune is going to take its place. Much depends on the success of commune life, and we have to make the commune life such a celebration that it starts spreading like wildfire, that others start communes of their own.

Each village can become a commune, there is no need to establish different villages. We just have to prove that life in a commune is much richer, much more lovely, much more meditative, that there is a possibility of living in a different way, different from the way humanity has lived up to now.

We have proved it in Rajneeshpuram.

It was our success that forced America to destroy the commune. If we were not successful, nobody would have bothered about us. Remember this: it was not a failure that we were destroyed; it was our success which could not be tolerated.

And if we have been successful in one place We are successful in Germany, in

Italy, in Holland, in Japan, in Australia, in different other countries. Because I am not there, the politicians are not worried, the theologians are not afraid.

So I want the communes to become more consolidated before I start my world tours, because now it will not be A world tour, it will be just the beginning of world tours. I will be continuously rotating like a satellite around the earth, creating as much trouble as possible. Only then these traditional vested interests can be destroyed.

But if the truth is with us, the victory is also with us. Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

DO THOSE CELLS NEEDED FOR A LIVELY AND GROWING INTELLIGENCE

HAVE ONLY ÀLIMITED' LIFE SPAN, SO THAT THERE IS A POINT BEYOND

WHICH ONE EITHER BECOMES SENILE OR SIMPLY STAGNATES?

OR, GIVEN THE NECESSARY STIMULUS, IS IT POSSIBLE FOR INTELLIGENCE

TO CONTINUE TO GROW RIGHT UP TO THE MOMENT OF ONE'S DEATH?

The ordinary human being stops his growth of intelligence at the age fourteen because the biological purpose is complete.

At the age of fourteen, the person is mature enough to give birth, to reproduce. Biology is no longer interested beyond this point.

This is the reason why the average human being is stuck at the age of fourteen as far as his mental age is concerned. People go on growing physically up to seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred years -- in some places like Caucasia, up to one hundred and fifty, even one hundred and eighty. But their mental age remains stuck at fourteen. This has been the routine up to now.

This can be changed. And this should be changed because there is infinite potential for growth, but the change will come only if you have some goals beyond biology. If your life remains concerned only with sex, children, family, food, house, then there is no need; that much intelligence is enough. But if your interest is that of an Albert Einstein then your intelligence starts moving sometimes even ahead of your physical body.

Emerson is reported to have said -- and rightly so -- when asked how old he was:

"Three hundred and sixty years."

The journalist who was asking said, "Three hundred and sixty? You don't look more than sixty."

Emerson said, "That's right. From one point of view, I am sixty years old. But I have done so much work as far as my intelligence is concerned that either six people would be needed to do it or I would need three hundred and sixty years. My intelligence is so far ahead of my physical body."

Intelligence depends what you are doing with it.

The person who is meditating has the greatest possibility of reaching the highest peaks of intelligence because in meditation he is doing the greatest possible work that a man is capable of -- and that is realizing oneself, knowing "Who am I." Entering into the deepest interiority of one's subjectivity is the greatest work for intelligence. Then you cannot even count -- you cannot count Gautam Buddha's intelligence, it is beyond calculations, beyond measurements.

And if you are a meditator, as your meditation goes on becoming more and more luminous, your intelligence will be growing to the last breath of your life. Not only that, even after the last breath your intelligence will continue to grow -- because you are not going to die, only your body will be dying. And the body has nothing to do with intelligence, mind has nothing to do with intelligence.

Intelligence is the quality of your awareness -- more aware, more intelligent. And if you are totally aware, you are as intelligent as this whole existence is. Beyond Enlightenment

Chapter #31

Chapter title: Discarding the container, discovering the content 3 November 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8611035

ShortTitle:

ENLIGH31

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

130

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM AFRAID TO JUMP FROM A THREE-METER TOWER INTO A SWIMMING

POOL.

WILL I STILL BE ABLE TO JUMP INTO ENLIGHTENMENT?

The first basic thing to understand is that you are not expected to jump into enlightenment. You have to climb for it -- it is higher than you, not lower than you.

So at least one fear you can drop!

And climbing to enlightenment is a simple process. It is not something tortuous, arduous.

It is something like peeling an onion; after one layer there is another layer --

fresher, younger, juicier, after that layer there are still more, juicier layers. And if you go on peeling, finally nothing is left in your hands -- because the onion was nothing but layers upon layers.

Enlightenment is a kind of peeling of the ego.

It is parallel to the onion because it has no inner substance, only layers. And those layers sometimes slip by themselves -- they become old sometimes by accident. If you watch your life, you can see it happening. It is not a theorization.

Sometimes you can see that you are not wearing the right mask for the right occasion.

When you are expected to smile, you are not smiling; when you are expected to weep, you are not weeping.

I used to live with a distant uncle's family. His wife died. In fact it is very difficult to find a husband who never thinks that if his wife died it would be good, a good riddance. And my uncle's wife was certainly a nightmare. In fact everybody was happy that she died, and everybody knew that the husband was happy that she had died, but still the convention, the tradition.…

I used to sit in the garden. He told me, "I cannot remain in a miserable posture the whole day long because really I am not miserable. You know it. I cannot hide it from you --

twenty-four hours a day you are in the house -- but when relatives come, I have to show that I am very miserable." Not to be caught being happy and at ease, he told me, "You mostly sit in the garden reading, so you can just give me a signal from there that somebody is coming." So I had to give him signals.

And the miracle was that the moment I would give him the signal, immediately he would become miserable. Sometimes I would play a joke: I would give the signal and nobody would turn up. And he would be very angry: "This you should not do, because this is a dangerous joke. Sometimes I may think you are joking and somebody may turn up. You have to understand that I should not be caught enjoying myself. In fact I have never enjoyed myself -- because of this woman! She was such a pain in the neck. And even today, although she is dead, she is torturing me through these relatives -- relatives I have not seen for years, relatives I don't even recognize as relatives. They come and I have to be

miserable -- whether the relative is real or false, I have to bring tears to my eyes.

"I am surprised myself that I am capable of it -- being miserable, tears flowing. And I pray to you that when I am acting this way, please don't stand so close. You just be out in the garden; you don't have to be present to watch the whole scene, because then it becomes more difficult for me to do the performance."

One day a man came. He was known to me, he was a bookseller. And I told him, "Can you pretend just for two minutes to be a far-off relative of a dead wife?"

He said, "What?"

I said, "I will explain it to you later on when I come to your shop. But remember, it has to be done in a certain way: First, I will introduce you as the best shopkeeper in town, who is not only a shopkeeper but who loves books and has a collection of rare books. Ìt is not just a business for him, it is his love affair.' I will introduce you first in this way. And then in the middle I will tell him, `He's also a relative of your dead wife.' I just want to see how he changes his mask."

I introduced the man. My uncle was perfectly happy. He said, "Very good, I will come some time. I don't have much time to read, but if you can suggest some rare books I will try to find the time."

And then I said, "But I forgot one thing. He has not come here to sell books; he is a relative of your dead wife." And immediately my uncle started crying, tears came to his eyes and he was so miserable.…

The bookseller was also amazed at how quickly he changed. He had just been laughing and there had been no question of misery or anything.

And then I said, "Just don't harass yourself. He is not related to your wife, it is just a misunderstanding."

He said, "What kind of misunderstanding?"

I said, "Another woman in the neighborhood has also died; he is related to that woman."

And immediately all the tears were gone and he started laughing. He said, "This is a great joke! Why didn't you tell me?"

The bookseller said, "I am very new to this locality, I have never been here, and he misled me. He told me that my relative used to live here, and she has died. I came because of my relative who has died -- but I am not acquainted with this locality and I have never seen the husband of my relative, so just forgive me. But it has been a great experience! You could have been a great actor -- within minutes, from laughter to misery, from misery back to laughter."

I said, "This is nothing. If I tell him the reality, he will be back again to tears and misery."

He said, "What reality?"

I said, "No other woman has died. He is a relative of your wife."

He said, "Listen, I have told you this is a serious affair." And again misery and tears.

And that man felt so sad for this miserable creature... he told me, "Don't torture him this way."

I said, "I am not torturing him. He is torturing himself! What is the need? The wife is dead, she cannot come back. He need not be afraid of her, at least not now. While she was alive, it was difficult to say. I knew his wife, and he was perfectly right to be afraid of her. But now he need not be afraid, she cannot come."

I said to my uncle, "You just be your natural self. If you are feeling pleasant, why change personalities? Why make your life a drama instead of a reality?"

But we are all doing that in different measures.

Your personality consists only of cultivated layers. Many masks are hanging around you -

- whichever you need, you put it on. In fact, humanity has developed, by and by, almost an automatic system -- you need not do anything, it happens by itself.

The moment you see your boss, your face changes -- not that you change it. It is so unconscious that you start smiling, just like a dog wagging his tail.

Even dogs are very clever. If they are not certain about a stranger who is coming towards their house -- he may be a friend, he may not be a friend -- they do both things: they go on barking, and they go on wagging their tail also. They are just waiting to see which direction the camel turns; if the man is received by the family as a friend, the barking stops and the tail continues. And if the family rejects the man, then the tail stops and barking continues.

Poor dogs are being corrupted because of the company they keep with human beings; they have learned your tricks.

A person meeting the boss has one face. The same person meeting his servant has a different face. He behaves with the servant as if he does not matter at all, he is not human. You can pass him without taking any note of him, he is only a servant.

But as far as the boss is concerned, you have to take a joyous attitude, an ear-to- ear smile

-- a Jimmy Carter smile. And you are not doing it deliberately; now it is your autonomous, unconscious functioning.

Enlightenment is simply the process of becoming aware of your unconscious layers of personality and dropping those layers. They are not you; they are false faces. And because of those false faces, you cannot discover your original face.

Enlightenment is nothing but the discovery of the original face -- the essential reality you brought with you, and the essential reality you will have to take with you when you die.

All these layers gathered between birth and death will be left here behind you.

The man of enlightenment does exactly what death does to everybody, but he does it himself. He dies in a way and is reborn, dies in a way and is resurrected. And his originality is luminous because it is part of eternal life.

It is a simple process of discovering yourself. You are not the container but the content.

Discarding the container and discovering the content is the whole process of

enlightenment. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL YOUR PRESENCE ALL AROUND ME, YOUR LOVE AND YOUR

COMPASSION, BUT I MYSELF FEEL UNWORTHY OF IT. WHO AM I THAT I SHOULD DESERVE YOU? JUST BECAUSE OF THIS, I HAVE CLOSED A DOOR

IN FRONT OF YOU. MY HEART IS SUFFERING, BUT I HAVE FORGOTTEN

WHERE THE DOOR IS. PLEASE COMMENT.

It is one of the crimes that has been committed against everybody everywhere in human society: you have been continuously conditioned and told that you are unworthy.

Because of this conditioning, the major part of humanity has given up even desiring any adventure, any pilgimage to the stars -- they are so convinced of their unworthiness. Their parents were telling them, "You are unworthy." Their teachers were telling them, "You are unworthy." Their priests were telling them, "You are unworthy." Everybody was forcing the idea on them that they were unworthy. Naturally they accepted the idea.

And once you accept the idea of unworthiness, you naturally close. You cannot believe that you have wings, that the whole sky is yours, that you have just to open your wings and the sky is going to be yours, with all its stars.

And it is not a question that somewhere you have forgotten to open one door. You don't have any doors, you don't have any walls.

This unworthiness is simply a concept, an idea. You have become hypnotized by the idea.

Since the very beginning, all cultures, all societies have been using hypnotism to destroy individuals -- their freedom, their uniqueness, their genius -- because the vested interests are not in need of geniuses, not in need of unique individuals, not in need of people who love freedom. They are in need of slaves. And the only psychological way to create slaves is to condition your mind that you are unworthy, that you don't deserve; that you don't even deserve whatever you have, you should not go for anything more. Already you owe too much for things which you are not worthy of.

And hypnotism is a simple process of continuous repetition. Just go on repeating a certain idea and it starts settling inside you, and it becomes a thick wall, invisible -- there are no doors, no windows. There is no wall either.

George Gurdjieff has remembered his childhood He was born in the Caucasus,

one of the most primitive parts of the world. It is still at the stage where humanity was when it lived by hunting; even cultivation has not started. The people of the Caucasus are great hunters.

And any society that lives by hunting is bound to be a nomadic society. It cannot make houses, it cannot make cities, because you cannot depend on animals -- today they are available here, tomorrow they are not available here. And certainly you will kill them, and because of your presence they will escape -- either they will be killed or they will escape.

Cities are possible only with cultivation because trees cannot escape, and you have to be there to protect them, to water them, to take care of them -- so you have to live in villages near your fields.

The Caucasus is still nomadic. They are on their horses, moving from one place to another place, hunting.

Gurdjieff was brought up by a nomadic society, so he was coming from almost another planet. He knew a few things which we have forgotten. He remembers that in his childhood the nomads hypnotized their children -- because they cannot carry them continuously while they are hunting; they have to leave them somewhere under a tree, in a safe place. But what is the guarantee that those children will remain there? They have to be hypnotized. So they used a small strategy -- and they have used it for centuries.

From the very beginning when the child is very small, they will make him sit

under a tree. They will draw a circle around the child with a stick and tell him, "You cannot go out of this circle; if you go out of it, you will be dead."

Now those small children believe, just like you. Why are you Christian? -- because your parents told you. Why are you Hindus? Why are you Jainas? Why are you Mohammedans? -- because your parents told you.

Those children believe that if they go out of the circle they will die. They grow up with this conditioning.

And you may try to persuade them: "Come out, I will give you a sweet." They cannot, because death.… Even sometimes if they try, they feel as if an invisible wall prevents them, pushes them back into the circle. And that wall exists only in their minds -- there is no wall, there is nothing. Unless the person who has put them in the circle comes and withdraws the circle, takes the child out, the child remains inside.

And the child goes on growing, but the idea remains in the unconscious. So even an old man, if his father draws a circle around him, cannot get out of it.

So it is not only a question of the child; the old man also still carries his childhood in his unconscious.

And it is not a question of one child. The whole group of nomads have put their children under trees nearby, and all the children are sitting there the whole day long. By the time their parents come back, it has become such a conditioning that no matter what happens, the child will not leave the circle.

Exactly the same kind of circles are drawn around you by your society. Of course they are more sophisticated. Your religion is nothing but a circle, but very sophisticated; your church, your temple, your holy book is nothing but a hypnotic circle.

One has to understand that one is living surrounded by many circles which are only in your mind. They don't have a real existence, but they function almost as if they are real.

One night it happened, it must have been nearabout twelve, a young man knocked on my door. I was still awake, writing a few letters. He fell on the ground, took hold of my feet, and said, "Just give me one glass of water with

your hand."

I said, "What is the purpose?"

He said, "I have been sent by a Dr. S.C. Barat. I am his patient. I have been suffering from a stomachache for years. He has tried all kinds of medicines, nothing helps. And today he said, `Now medical science cannot help you; only a miracle can help you.' So I asked where I had to go for the miracle and he sent me to you. And he said, `Whatever happens, you go on holding his feet unless he gives you a glass of water -- just that water will be the cure."

Dr. Barat was my friend. He had told me that he was going to send this young man. He said, "He is a hypochondriac. He has no stomachache, nothing -- just he is rich, too much money and nothing to do. So he is doing stomachache, headache... he gets any kind of disease. I have not found any disease in him, he is perfectly healthy. But every day he tortures me for hours. I know that no medicine is going to help because he is not sick. In fact, to give him any medicine is dangerous.

"So I have been giving him just colored water, especially prepared for him. I have a whole cabinet full of colored water in bottles; I make a mixture from these bottles and give it to him. He says, `Yes, a little relief but the pain remains.' And if it disappears from one place, it starts appearing in another place. I am tired. And because of him, I am losing many patients. So you have to save me from this rich young man. His father has died and he has a big inheritance, enough money to throw away on anything. But he is destroying my business."

I said, "I don't understand -- how is he destroying your business?"

He said, "It is very simple -- because my other patients see him, and see that he has been coming for ten years and I have not been able to cure him. It creates a bad impression. So I am sending him to you, and you have to do the miracle."

I said, "I don't do miracles, and miracles don't happen. But if you want, I will try."

So when the young man came, I went on denying him: "Just water touched by me is not going to help. You should go to another doctor -- why are you after this Dr. Barat? If one doctor has failed, go to another doctor. If onèpathy' fails... change from allopathy: try ayurveda; if ayurveda fails, try homeopathy; if

homeopathy fails, try naturopathy. And by that time you will be dead, don't be worried. Whether the disease goes or not, you will be gone!"

He said, "But I want to live! I am too young to die right now." And he was not more than twenty-six. He said, "I am not even married. Because my father died, I have enough money -- many people are after me. They want me to marry their daughters, and I don't want to be encaged. And first I want to take care of my health. Getting married means bringing more sicknesses, more diseases into the house. You have to give me a glass of water!"

I said, "It is very difficult, because miracles don't happen."

I was staying in a friend's house. His wife was listening as this whole conversation was going on and on, and he was crying Finally the woman came

out and said, "I never thought that you are so hard. Whether it helps or not, just give him a glass of water. Half of the night has passed; neither are you going to sleep, nor are you allowing anybody else in the house to sleep -- because we are all excited, waiting to see what happens, whether the miracle happens or not."

I said, "Because you say so, and because I don't want to torture your family... Bring a glass of water."

And I told the young man, "Remember, you are not to talk about it to anybody -- because I don't want it to happen that from tomorrow the whole day long a queue of patients is there. I don't have time for all this. So promise me that you will not talk."

He said, "I promise that I will not talk, but you also have to promise me one thing."

I said, "What is it?"

He said, "You will have to promise me that once in a while I can come with a bottle of water and you will touch it."

I said, "What you are going to do with it?"

He said, "I will not say anything to anybody about you. But if the miracle happens and my stomachache disappears, there are many people who are suffering. I can distribute the water. But I promise I will not talk."

So I said, "Okay, it is a promise. But don't bring anybody here!"

I gave him a glass of water, and as he drank the water -- just drinking it, you could see his face changing. And he said, "My God, the pain is gone!"

My friend's wife was standing behind me. She said, "You did it!"

I said, "I have not done it -- and remember that you are not to talk about it to anybody."

She said, "I may not talk, but everybody in the house knows -- everybody is hiding, all the children are there. Now " She said, "If this was going to happen,

why did you waste one hour?"

I said, "Without wasting that hour, the water wouldn't have helped. It was not the water; it was my insistence that I wouldn't give it to him. He became more and more convinced that the water was going to work. And when I told him that he had to promise not to talk to anybody, he was absolutely convinced that the miracle was going to happen."

He started distributing the water.

And people told me -- even Dr. Barat told me, "It is strange. You cured my patient and now he is curing my patients. I was thinking I was finished with him

-- now he comes with a bottle into my dispensary. He sits there and says, `Don't bother about this medicine, it won't help. Take the miraculous water.' That young man seems to be my enemy from a past life! And he has cured a few of my patients!"

Seventy percent of sick people are only sick in their minds, they don't have a real sickness.

Hence it has been found that all the pathies -- allopathy, ayurveda, yunani, naturopathy, homeopathy -- they all succeed in seventy percent of cases. In seventy percent of cases anybody can do miracles, one just has to make the right arrangement so the mind is convinced that the miracle is going to happen.

It is simply a conditioning that you are unworthy. Nobody is unworthy.

Existence does not produce people who are unworthy.

Existence is not unintelligent. If existence produces so many unworthy people, then the whole responsibility goes to existence. Then it can be definitely concluded that existence is not intelligent, that there is no intelligence behind it, that it is an unintelligent, accidental materialist phenomenon and there is no consciousness in it.

And this is our whole fight, our whole struggle: to prove that existence is intelligent, that existence is immensely conscious.

It is the same existence which creates Gautam Buddhas. It cannot create unworthy people.

You are not unworthy.

So there is no question of finding a door; there is only an understanding that unworthiness is a false idea imposed on you by those who want you to be a slave for your whole life.

You can drop it just right now.

Existence gives the same sun to you as to Gautam Buddha, the same moon as to Zarathustra, the same wind as to Mahavira, the same rain as to Jesus -- it makes no difference, it has no idea of discrimination. For existence, Gautam Buddha, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma, Kabir, Nanak or you are just the same.

The only difference is that Gautam Buddha did not accept the idea of being unworthy, he rejected the idea. It was easy for him to reject it -- he was the prince of a great kingdom, the only son of the king, and the king was thought to be almost a god. So he had no idea of unworthiness.

But what about Kabir? What about Raidas the shoemaker? What about Gora the potter?

These poor people were burdened by the society with the idea that they were unworthy, but they rejected it.

In Kabir's life there were clearcut examples. Kabir lived his whole life in Kashi.

For centuries Hindus have believed that to die in Kashi is the greatest thing you can do in life, because for one who dies in Kashi, his paradise is guaranteed. It does not matter what kind of man he was, whether he was a murderer, a thief, a saint or a sinner -- these things are all irrelevant. His dying in Kashi erases everything and he becomes qualified for paradise.

So in Kashi you will find old people, old women who have come there just to die. They have not done anything in their life, but they don't want to miss paradise.

And Kabir lived his whole life in Kashi, and when he was going to die he said, "Take me out of Kashi to the other side, to the small village." Just on the other side of the Ganges was a small village.

His disciples said, "Are you mad or something? People come to Kashi, the whole of Kashi is full of people who have come here to die. You have lived your whole life in Kashi, what kind of nonsense is this? And the village you are pointing to is a condemned village; people say whoever dies there is born again as a donkey."

But Kabir said, "I will go to that village, and I will die in that village. I want to enter paradise on my own worth, not because of Kashi. And I know my worth."

They had to take him. Against their will they had to take him to the other side, and he died there.

This man is so certain of his worth.

He was a weaver. It is not certain whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan because his name, Kabir, is Mohammedan; it is one of the names of God. He was found on the Ganges -- a small child, just a few days old, abandoned by his parents.

One great Hindu scholar, Ramananda, had gone for his early bath and he found the child.

And he could not be so hard as to leave him there, so he brought him into his ashram --

he had an ashram and hundreds of disciples. So the child was brought up by a

brahmin.

But on his hand was written the namèKabir'. He didn't change his name.

It is still uncertain whether he was Mohammedan or Hindu. He never cared.

Once there was a great conference in Kashi. It used to convene only after each twelve years to decide about certain spiritual matters, problems which may have arisen about scriptures. Naturally Kabir was not invited because it was not even certain that he was a Hindu, and only brahmins could be allowed.

But about a certain point in the scriptures they could not come to a conclusion. One man said, "You have to forget about whether Kabir is Hindu or Mohammedan, it doesn't matter. He is the only man alive in Kashi who can immediately decide the meaning, the insight of this scriptural passage."

I am telling you about this incident for a particular reason.

At that very time Meera was also in Kashi, she had just come. She was traveling around India.

Reluctantly, the scholars asked Kabir: "You are invited to the conference because we are stuck at a certain point, and nobody has the experience. And there are many people in the conference who say, `Kabir has the experience.' This passage needs to be interpreted only by one who has known himself; so although we are not certain whether you are Hindu or Mohammedan or brahmin, still we are inviting you, against all precedents."

Kabir said, "There is a condition: I will come only if Meera is also invited."

Now that was even more difficult for the male chauvinist mind -- a woman! What does a woman have to do with it? When wise scholars are deciding things, a woman's function is in the house.

Kabir said, "Then Kabir is not coming. Kabir can come only if Meera is allowed to come.

When you are ready to allow Kabir -- whose caste is not certain, whose religion is not certain -- what is the problem about Meera? -- because she can also decide. Even if I don't come, she also has the same experience as I have."

And the scholars had to agree.

This has happened only once, that a woman and a non-brahmin joined with the highest hierarchy of Hinduism to interpret their scriptures. And their interpretation was accepted.

Kabir's disciples asked, "From where did you get such authority?"

He said, "If existence accepts me, if existence gives me life, that is enough to prove that I am needed, that existence cannot do without me."

So drop the idea of unworthiness, it is simply an idea. And with the dropping of it, you are under the sky -- there is no question of doors, everything is open, all directions are open. That you are is enough to prove that existence needs you, loves you, nourishes you, respects you.

The idea of unworthiness is created by the social parasites. Drop that idea.

And be grateful to existence -- because it only creates people who are worthy, it never creates anything which is worthless.

It only creates people who are needed.

My emphasis is that every sannyasin should respect himself and feel grateful to existence that he has been required to be here at this juncture of time and space.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS A SUFI SAYING THAT "NO HUMAN BEING CAN AVOID HIS FATE.

THIS IS A WORLD OF LIMITATIONS -- BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO GAIN A TASTE OF THE LIMITLESS, DESPITE THIS FACT."

A FAMOUS ASTROLOGER AND COMPOSER, DANE RUDHYAR, WHO WAS A FRIEND OF GEORGE GURDJIEFF, SAID, "THE OLD IDEA OF

ASTROLOGY --

THAT EXPERIENCE HAPPENS TO HUMAN BEINGS -- IS NOT TRUE. ON THE

CONTRARY, HUMAN BEINGS HAPPEN TO THEIR EXPERIENCE."

MY OBSERVATION IS THAT EVERY ASTROLOGER WHO IS COURAGEOUS

ENOUGH WILL FIND OUT THAT GURDJIEFF IS TRUE WHEN HE SAYS, "MAN

IS A MACHINE."

ON THE OTHER HAND, MY EXPERIENCE WITH YOU, CHRIST, AND

BUDDHIST TEACHERS HAS REVEALED THE EXISTENCE OF THE LIMITLESS

IN THE MIDST OF LIMITATIONS. WHILE RELIGIOUSNESS OPENS THE DOORS

TO THE LIMITLESS, ASTROLOGY STUDIES THE WORLD OF FORMS AND

LIMITATIONS. AND WITHOUT THE FIRST, THE SECOND COULD HAVE

BECOME INTOLERABLE TO ME. NOW, SLOWLY SLOWLY, THE FORMLESS

AND THE FORM SEEM TO MEET AND MARRY INSIDE OF ME. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

George Gurdjieff is right when he says that man is a machine, but by `man' he means all those who are living unconsciously, who are not aware, who are not awake, who do not respond to reality but only react.

Ninety-nine point nine percent of human beings come in the category of machines. With these machines, astrology is possible.

In fact, predictions can be made, guarantees can be issued only about machines. A watch can be guaranteed for five years, a car can be guaranteed for a certain time -- because we know the capacity of the machine, how much it can work, how long it can go. Its scope is limited. And it cannot do anything on its own accord, it can only react to situations --

which are almost predictable.

For example, at a certain stage a boy and a girl will become sexually mature, and their hormones and their biology will start forcing them towards each other. They will call it love because nobody wants to be categorized as a machine. But two machines cannot love, two machines can only be together, can struggle, can stumble against each other.

And it is not coincidence that in every language, love is called `falling in love'. It is an unconscious process, it is a fall. You cannot answer why you love a certain person.

And now the science of human biology, genetics, has grown much more mature. It is possible to inject hormones into you which can make all your love disappear, or which can make you a great lover. But these are hormones; it is chemical. You are not consciously involved in it.

It happened in Bombay nearabout twenty years ago -- an astrologer came to see me. I told him, "You will be disappointed. Astrology won't work with me."

He said, "It is not a question of you or anybody else, there are no exceptions in astrology."

I said, "Then do one thing: Write down twelve things that I am going to do in one year.

You keep one copy and I will keep one copy, I will write on both copies that these are the twelve things that I will not do. That's the only way to decide whether your astrology works or not."

He got a little afraid because he had not thought of this possibility.

I said, "Even to the extent... if you say that I will live, I will die -- just to make the point clear that astrology won't work with me."

He said, "Now I now have to study more in depth. And after three days I will be coming back."

Twenty years have passed; he has not come.

And whenever I have been in Bombay, I have inquired, "Phone the astrologer and ask when that in-depth study is going to be complete -- because twenty years have passed.

Has he dropped the idea?"

If you are enlightened, then astrology cannot function for you. Then you can love, then you can do, then you can act, then you have a certain mastery over your own being.

But unconscious, you are just moving hither and thither as the wind blows.

And anybody who has studied human nature deeply.… There are many astrological schools which have studied for centuries how the mechanical man works. They have come to certain conclusions, and their conclusions are almost always correct. If they are incorrect, that means the astrologer is not well prepared, his studies in human nature and unconscious behavior are not complete.

But the moment you start becoming conscious, you start becoming really a man -

- not a machine.

When Gurdjieff said for the first time that man is a machine, it shocked many people. But he was saying the truth. Only the truth is applicable just to 99.9 percent of people -- 0.1

percent of people have to be left out of it. Gautam Buddha was born.…

And in the East those were the days of the highest possibilities for human genius. In all directions in which the East was working, it reached the very peak, the climax... to such an extent that you cannot find a new Yoga posture; Patanjali exhausted all the possibilities of postures, the science is complete. Five thousand years have passed, and in five thousand years thousands of people have tried but

there is no way to find a new posture.

You cannot find a new sex posture; Vatsyayana has completed all the postures possible --

and a few which may even look impossible!

Shiva completed all the techniques -- one hundred and twelve. You can play with new combinations, but nothing new is possible.

Astrology was at its peak.

And as Gautam Buddha was born, the son of a great king, the king immediately called the best astrologers. They all studied the birth chart and they all remained silent.

Only one -- a young astrologer -- said to the king, "These people are silent because this is a strange boy, and we cannot be decisive about him. There are two possibilities" -- and astrology never speaks in that way. Astrology means you have to predict what is going to be; you are not there to predict all the possibilities -- that will not be prediction.

But the young astrologer said, "These are old wise people, they will not even say this. I am young and I can stick my neck out, I can risk, because I don't have any reputation.

There are two possibilities: either this boy will become an emperor of the world, a chakravartin, or he will become an enlightened, awakened liberated soul -- but then he will be a beggar. Either he will be the emperor of the whole world or he will be just a beggar with a begging bowl in his hands. And it is not in our power to say what the outcome will be."

And all the old astrologers agreed. "The young man is right. We were silent because this is not the way astrology functions -- we say, `this is definitely going to happen.' But about this boy we cannot say. And the possibilities are so diametrically opposite -- either the emperor or the beggar."

And that's what happened.

The king asked all those wise astrologers, "Then tell me how to protect him so

that he does not move towards becoming a beggar but becomes the world emperor. That has been my lifelong desire. I could not achieve it -- but he has the possibility. So just tell me how to prevent him from becoming a beggar."

They gave all their advice, and their advice turned out to create just the opposite to what they intended. They had suggested, "Give him all the luxuries. Don't let him know about death, old age. Don't let him know about sannyas. He should not be given time to think,

`What is the meaning of life?' Keep him engaged continuously in singing, in dancing, wine and women, drown him completely."

And that's what created the trouble -- because for twenty-nine years he was kept so isolated from the world, so ignorant about the ordinary reality of the world where people become sick, people become old, people die, there are sannyasins, there are seekers of truth... If he had been allowed from the very beginning, he would have become immune -

- from the very beginning he would have seen that people become old, people become sick, a few people become sannyasins. But for twenty-nine years he was kept completely aloof.

And after twenty-nine years when he came into contact with the world -- one day, one has to come into contact with the world -- then it was a great shock. He could not believe his eyes that people become old; he could not believe that life is going to end in death. He could not believe that he had been kept in darkness while there were people searching to find the meaning of life, trying to find out whether there was something immortal in man or not.

The shock would not have been so much. It is not such a shock for anybody else

-- from the very childhood, everything... one becomes, slowly slowly, accustomed. But for him the shock was tremendous.

That very night he left the palace as a sannyasin in search of truth.

The father was trying to save him from the begging bowl, and that's what he adopted that night.

It was possible he might have become Alexander the Great if he had not been kept in darkness. But in a way it was good, because Alexander the Great and his

kind have not helped human consciousness.

This man alone, with his begging bowl, raised humanity more than anybody else towards the stars, towards immortality, towards truth.

About such a man, astrology is not possible.

It is good to accept that you are functioning like a machine. Don't feel offended -

-

because if you feel offended, you will defend yourself and you will remain what you are.

Try to understand your behavior -- is it mechanical or not?

Somebody insults you -- how do you react? Is that reaction mechanical or conscious? Do you think before you become angry? Do you meditate for a moment before you respond?

Perhaps what the man has said is right, and if you had not got angry immediately, instantly, without giving a small gap for meditation, you might have been grateful to the man rather than being angry -- "You are right."

In fact, things which are right hurt you much more. Lies don't hurt you at all.

Just the other day, Nirvano brought a newspaper cutting. A Western traveler coming from Tibet gave his first press conference, and in the press conference he said, "My greatest experience was meeting with Bhagwan in Tibet."

Now people can lie like anything, and whoever reads it will believe it. The printed word has a certain impact on people.

Just a few days before, there was another news item -- no ifs and no buts, a certainty --

that "Bhagwan is going to appear in Israel very soon. He has decided to become converted to Judaism, and after converting to Judaism, he will declare himself to be the reincarnation of Moses."

Now what can you do with these people? You can laugh, but you cannot be angry. You can enjoy, you can thank them for their imagination. These are the people who keep the world going!

Just watch your actions, and try not to be mechanical. Try to do something that you have never done before in the same situation.

That's what the meaning is when Jesus says, "When somebody slaps your face, give him the other cheek too." The real meaning is, simply act non-mechanically

-- because the mechanical thing would be when somebody slaps you, you slap him. Or if you are not capable of slapping him right now, then wait for the right moment. But to give him the other cheek is behaving non-mechanically, is behaving very consciously.

But people can make anything mechanical.

I have heard about a Christian saint who was continuously quoting the same thing: "Love your enemy, and if somebody slaps you on one cheek give him the other too."

One day a man who was against Christianity found the saint alone, hit him hard on one of his cheeks, looked into the eyes of the saint.… For a moment the saint wanted to hit him back -- but being a saint, remembering all his teachings and remembering that this man sits in his congregation in the front, he gave him the other cheek, thinking that he would not hit it. The man hit him harder on the other cheek! -- and that very moment the saint jumped on the man, hitting him hard on the nose. The man said, "What are you doing?

You are a Christian, you have to love your enemy."

He said, "Forget all about it. Jesus only talked about two cheeks -- about the third, I am free. Now there is no third cheek to give you. And he has not said that when he hits you on the second, give him your nose too!"

Because Jesus has not said why.…

Gautam Buddha in one of his sermons said, "Try to be non-mechanical as much as possible. If somebody hits you, insults you, humiliates you, forgive him seven times. Be conscious."

Jesus was saying only one time -- because you have only two cheeks, and one he has hit already. Only one is left, so there is not much.… Buddha is saying seven times.

One of the disciples stood up and said, "What about the eighth? Seven times we will keep patience, but what about the eighth?"

Even Buddha was silent for a moment. So deep is man's mechanicalness He

said,

"Then change it, make it seventy-seven times."

The man said, "You can make it any number, but the question will remain the same --

what about the seventy-eighth time? We can wait seventy-seven times "

You can behave in a saintly way, but if it is mechanical it doesn't change anything.

Be alert and see that yesterday you have done the same thing. Today make a little difference -- you are not a machine.

You said the same thing to your wife, make a little difference -- you are not a machine.

And if in twenty-four hours time you continually go on changing, slowly slowly you will slip out of the mechanical behavior and a consciousness will arise in you.

That consciousness makes you really human. Before, you only appear human; in reality you are not.

Beyond Enlightenment Chapter #32

Chapter title: Truth has to wait but not to wait forever 4 November 1986 pm in

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mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED IN YOUR WORLD DURING THE PAST

FOURTEEN MONTHS THAT WERE VERY CONTROVERSIAL AND LOOKED

STRANGE FOR A SPIRITUAL GROUP.

JUST READING THE FACTS AND FIGURES SET FORTH IN THE 156- PAGE, TWO-SERIES ARTICLE IN RECENT ISSUES OF THE NEW YORKER COULD

MAKE MOST PEOPLE ANGRY.

THOUGH SOME SANNYASINS LEFT, I NOTICE THAT MANY OF US,

INCLUDING MYSELF, WERE UNDISTURBED IN OUR INNER BEINGS. WITH

NO REGRETS, MANY OF US JUMPED INTO THE NEW WAY, THE NEW ADVENTURE.

FAMILY, FRIENDS, STRANGERS, ARE EITHER CURIOUS ABOUT THIS OR

SUSPECT WE'RE BRAINWASHED DUMMIES, OR IRRESPONSIBLE. IS THERE

ANY WAY TO EXPLAIN THIS INNER TRUST THAT HAPPENS TO A DISCIPLE

WITH A MASTER? IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ANY OF US TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING

BEYOND THESE FACTS AND FIGURES? -- THE LOVE, THE FUN, THE

MYSTERY OF SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WE ARE SO FORTUNATE

TO PARTICIPATE IN WITH YOU? SHOULD I EVEN BOTHER, OR JUST

CONCENTRATE ON YOU AND THE INNER JOURNEY AND IGNORE THE

CURIOUS AND THE SKEPTICS?

It would have been very easy if life were only facts and figures -- easy but boring; easy but flat; easy but not worth living.

And mind is concerned only with facts and figures.

It is a great blessing of existence that mind is not all, that there is much more to life which cannot be confined to facts, explanations, theories. Something mysterious remains always unexplained, and that is the most valuable, the most significant part of life.

It is impossible to explain love, trust, beauty, grace, gratitude, silence. All that is meaningful seems to be beyond mind, and all that is meaningless seems to be the boundary of the mind.

I am reminded of a great Sufi master, Junnaid. One day one of his disciples -- who had managed somehow to trust in Junnaid, who had with effort remained unskeptical -- had gone hunting in the forest. And he saw Junnaid sitting by the side of a beautiful lake with a beautiful woman. From far away he saw, and from far away everything is beautiful --

and particularly a Mohammedan woman.

No Mohammedan woman is ugly -- her face is veiled. It is a great strategy of ugly women against the beautiful; in this way the beautiful are lost.

All his repressed suspicions and doubts arose, surfaced -- and it was not only that Junnaid was sitting with the woman; the woman was pouring wine from a flask into a cup for Junnaid.

All his trust was shattered, all his love was finished: "There is a limit to everything. This is going too far. This man is a fraud!"

And if he had returned without going to Junnaid to say something, he would have remained with the idea that the man was a fraud. He had all the facts, he had seen with his own eyes, he was a witness. He needed no other evidence, no other proof. No argument would have convinced him that he could have been wrong.

But Junnaid shouted loudly, "Don't go back! Come close, because when you come close many facts prove to be fictions. The closer you come, the more fictitious they are. Just come close."

A little bit afraid, but he came.

Junnaid lifted the veil from the woman's face. She was Junnaid's mother, an old woman.

And he said, "What about the beautiful woman you had seen? -- and you had seen her with your own eyes. Could you have imagined an old woman, my own mother? It was beyond your imagination.

"And take this flask and look closely, taste it; it is pure water, not wine. Just the flask is of the wine.

"But you were going with absolute certainty: that this man is a fraud -- women and wine in privacy, in the forest -- and in public he has another face, of a great master."

The disciple fell at his feet and said, "Please forgive me."

Junnaid said, "It is not a question of forgiveness; it is a question of understanding. You have a trust which is forced, and a forced trust is bound to sooner or later go through a breakdown. Your love is an effort, and love cannot be an effort -- either you love or you don't, the question of effort does not arise. You were trying to imitate other disciples, and the path of the truth is not for imitators.

"I had come to this place only for you, knowing that you were going hunting and you were bound to come to this lake. You have to start from the beginning, and this time your love has not to be an effort and your trust has not to be something forced. These things are beautiful when they grow naturally -- and when they grow naturally then no facts, no figures can destroy them. They have such tremendous energy of their own that all facts and figures simply evaporate."

Facts are not truths, but just like soap bubbles. Yes, a soap bubble is -- but its existence or non-existence is almost equal.

Truth has an eternity: it was true, it is true, it will remain true. There is no way for the truth to be otherwise.

Facts go on changing. Facts depend on interpretations. The same fact can be interpreted in a thousand and one ways. And that's what we are all doing; otherwise, there would be no need of so many religions, so many philosophies, so many ideologies.

Truth is one.

The mystic has no philosophy, the mystic has no ideology -- because he has the truth itself.

Just look at a few facts and how they can be interpreted not only differently but

in a diametrically opposite way.

The most important Jaina master, Mahavira, lived naked all his life. He renounced the world, his kingdom, he renounced everything -- clothes, shoes. He lived just as a child is born, naked, with nothing in his hands. He did not even carry a begging bowl. He used to make a begging bowl with his own hands. He would not use anything on which one becomes dependent.

His ultimate goal was total freedom.

And he was so logically consistent that even to use a small blade -- a razor blade to cut his hair or to shave his beard -- he was not ready. To use scissors or a blade would be a dependency, so he used to pull his hair out with his own hand. It was painful, but he managed.

He lived eighty-two years... and he had to pull out the hairs because he was not taking baths. According to his approach, to take a bath is to decorate the body, is to believe in the body -- and the body is nothing but bones, blood, flesh, everything rotten, just covered with skin. What is the point of taking a bath? -- you are not the body. And consciousness needs no cleanliness because it cannot become unclean.

In India he has been worshipped by the Jainas for twenty-five centuries as one of the most important mystics of the whole world. And even those who are not of his fold have immense respect for the man.

But I bring Sigmund Freud to analyze Mahavira's attitude and character -- the same facts.

It is strange that there are thousands of madmen in the insane asylums around the world, and there is a certain kind of madness in which nakedness and pulling out the hair happens together. Those mad people live naked and they pull out their hair -- they don't allow anybody to cut their hair or shave their beards. And the same mad people don't allow themselves to be given showers or baths. Strange.…

Is Mahavira a madman of the same category?

Or are these mad people Mahaviras, great masters misunderstood by an insane world?

Somewhere something has to be decided.

Strangely enough, these mad people who live naked, pull out their hair, don't take any baths, are absolutely non-violent. They are not dangerous; they never hurt anybody, they never kill anybody. They are very harmless people. And that is the whole philosophy of Mahavira -- non-violence.

Perhaps he was a madman with a genius, with such a talented intelligence that he made a philosophical standpoint out of his madness.

Now, who is going to decide?

The fact in itself is without any judgment; in itself it says nothing, it is simply a fact.

At the moment you start thinking about it, you start creating interpretations, and those interpretations will depend on your attitude. They have nothing to do with the fact.

Because I have brought Sigmund Freud in, I cannot allow him to go out so easily. He was the founder of psychoanalysis, and yet he remained a practicing Jew for his whole life, subscribing to all the superstitions of the Jews.

For example, circumcision: Every Jewish child... as he is born, the male child is immediately circumcised. Mohammedans are also circumcised but after two or three years, not immediately.

And Jews believe that they are the most intelligent people in the world because of circumcision. It is true that they are perhaps the most intelligent group of people in the world. The whole contemporary world is dominated by Jews: Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein -- these three figures stand out amongst billions of people. Their contribution to human well-being is immense.

I have told you that forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews. That is simply out of all proportion -- forty percent to the small group of Jews, and sixty percent to the rest of the world. Naturally they have more intelligence, you cannot suspect it; it is a fact. And they have this idea that they are so intelligent because of circumcision, and they provide philosophical, logical, scientific proofs for it.

And one never knows, they may be right -- because now many governments of

the world are getting ready to pass resolutions that every child born in hospitals should be circumcised. It doesn't matter whether he is Jew or Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan, that is not a question; it is a question of hygiene.

It is certainly hygienic. But Jews have a very far-fetched philosophical idea behind it: they say when the child is born... and the genitals are the most sensitive parts. This is recognized by science, by physiology, that the genitals are connected with a certain center in the mind. Strangely enough, the center in the mind that is connected with the genitals is absolutely close to the center for intelligence, they are neighbors. And they have to be very close because there are seven hundred centers in your brain, so they are very close knit.

Jews say that when you cut the skin of the small child, the shock goes to the sex center.

But the shock is so much and the child is so delicate that the shock does not remain confined to the sex center -- the shock goes to the nearby center, which is the center of intelligence. And intelligence gets a great impetus which other children are missing, so they are far ahead of anybody else.

Now the rest of the world has looked upon circumcision as a superstition.

The fact is the same, but now they are providing scientific fragments to support it. They also are not absolute proofs, that is why I say far-fetched. But Sigmund Freud also believed in them, and he had not all these facts that I have, because at that time it was not known that the centers of sex and intelligence are very close. Neither was it known that sex is really in the mind and the genitals are only extensions, they are not really the sex organs. They can be bypassed, and you can enjoy a sexual experience without your genitals even knowing about it.

Sigmund Freud never inquired, never raised a question about the Jewish idea of circumcision -- which he should have, because he was a Jew, and his whole work was with sexuality. His whole life was devoted to finding out everything about sexuality, but he bypassed circumcision, he did not talk about it. Others have laughed for centuries.

I have heard that one bishop and one rabbi lived opposite each other, and naturally there was great competition in everything. One day the bishop purchased a beautiful Chevrolet.

The rabbi came out and he said, "A beautiful car... whose car is this?"

And the bishop came out with a bucket of water and poured the water on the car. He said,

"I have purchased it."

The rabbi said, "But what are you doing?"

He said, "Baptism." He was a Christian Baptist. "Now the car is a Christian Baptist car --

baptized."

This was too much for the rabbi.

Next day, as the bishop woke up, he saw a beautiful Cadillac sitting in the garage of the rabbi. He was shocked -- because the Chevrolet is a poor man's car in America. The poor peoples' neighborhoods are called "Chevrolet neighborhoods." It is a rich man's car in other countries, but in America the Chevrolet is a poor man's car. But the Cadillac is especially Jewish.

The bishop came out and he said, "How could you manage it?"

The rabbi said, "God looks after his chosen few." And he said, "Come on -- because there is going to be a ceremony."

The bishop said, "What kind of ceremony?" He said, "You come inside."

The bishop came into the garage, and the rabbi went into his house and brought out a big pair of garden scissors. The bishop could not believe -- what is happening? What kind of ceremony...? The rabbi started chanting some mantras in Hebrew, and then finally he cut the exhaust pipe.

The bishop asked, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Circumcision -- now the car is absolutely Jewish. If you can baptize, what do you think? -- can't we do something to make the car a Jew?"

Everybody has been laughing about circumcision.

But Sigmund Freud never even raised a question about it. He never raised a single question that goes against Jewish tradition. All his logic, all his reason was used to criticize everybody else.

I have asked a Jaina saint: "Sigmund Freud would say these things about Mahavira, although he has not said them, because he knew nothing about Mahavira. But I am absolutely certain he would say these things. Have you something to say about Sigmund Freud, about Jews?"

And the first thing he said was: "If the skin on the male genitals was not needed, then existence would not have given it to the child. Existence gives only that which is needed.

To remove that skin is egoistic, it is an effort to prove that you are wiser than existence itself. And the very idea that man is wiser than existence is stupid."

I asked him about Jesus -- because I had taken with me a Christian missionary, Stanley Jones, to meet the Jaina saint. And I said, "Stanley Jones is here, and his criticism against Jaina saints, Buddhist saints, Hindu saints, is that they don't do any service to humanity.

On the contrary, they demand that they should be served, worshipped -- that it is their birthright.

"People may be dying from starvation -- that is not their concern. Mahavira and Buddha have not opened a single hospital, not a single school for poor children, not a single orphanage, like Mother Teresa. But these people are thought to be great compassionate people. What compassion is there? What do you think about Jesus?"

He said, "About Jesus? According to us, everything in life is a connected link of cause and effect, the theory of action."

There are stories that if Mahavira is passing on the road and a thorn is there, the thorn will jump out of the road -- because Mahavira has finished all evil actions. Now no pain can be given to him by existence. It looks logical: if existence is deciding rewards and punishments, certainly the thorn must jump out of the road.

Mohammedans say -- because Mohammed was in Arabia... hot sun, no clouds, no shade, no trees. But a beautiful cloud always moved over Mohammed, wherever he went --

because he was finished with all evil acts. That's why he was chosen by God as his best messenger; he had become so pure that he could be a vehicle. Now it is God's duty to protect him. In the hot burning sun, a cool breeze surrounds him, and a big cloud goes on keeping him in shadow.

The Jaina saint said, "Jesus being crucified proves that he must have done some very evil acts in his past life. Crucifixion was the punishment."

It has nothing to do with Jews crucifying him or the Romans crucifying him. Those are the visible facts, but the invisible truth is that he must have committed something really heinous -- murder, rape -- and the result is crucifixion. So crucifixion is not something to be worshipped; it is a condemnation.

Now for the Christian the same fact, the crucifixion of Jesus, makes him the greatest man on the earth because he suffered for humanity, he was crucified for you; to save you he gave his own life. That is their interpretation.

But the Jainas, Hindus and Buddhists will all explain that "He is suffering from many past lives of crimes. He is not giving his life to save anybody -- because we don't see anybody saved. Who is saved? He could not even save himself."

One thing should always be remembered: don't be bothered about facts. They can be interpreted this way or that way very convincingly, but facts belong to the mundane world.

Truth is the thing you should concentrate on.

You have mentioned the New Yorker article about me and the commune. Perhaps they may not have ever written such a big article before -- one hundred and fifty-six pages.

And what they call facts are only the facts that the government has supplied to them.

They have not asked me; otherwise for every fact there is a counter-fact. But it is easy not to ask both parties.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin in his old age became an honorary magistrate. His first case came up. He heard one side, and started writing the judgment.

The court clerk could not believe what was happening. He whispered in his ear,

"Honorable magistrate, what are you doing? You have not heard the other side yet. They are waiting."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "I am not going to hear anybody, because right now I am absolutely clear what the situation is, and if I hear the other side also I will become confused. And out of confusion, judgment will be very difficult."

The New Yorker is simply presenting one side.

I will give you a few facts on the other side so you can see how facts should not be decisive.

The land that we purchased for the commune had been for sale for almost half a century, and nobody had purchased it -- because it was a desert. Not a single flower ever blossomed there, no cultivation was ever done; it was just a useless wasteland. And it was big -- one hundred and twenty-six square miles, eighty- four thousand acres.

We purchased the land. The man was very happy, because he had lost hope that the land could ever be sold.

And the government was asking him to give it to them for three million dollars. It was almost a small country -- one hundred and twenty-six square miles, three times bigger than Manhattan. And the man was just going to say yes to the government as we entered the scene.

We immediately offered him six million dollars. He could not believe it -- from three million to six million! Immediately everything was settled.

And this was the beginning of conflict with the government.

But if the government had really been interested, they could have offered more. They should not have felt offended, it was a simple business matter. And it is not their land either.

The whole world has forgotten completely that the real Americans are the red Americans who are living in reservations in the forests. They have been forced to live almost in concentration camps, an American version of the German concentration camps -- far better, because the German concentration camp was barbed wire, guns all around, very crude.

The American concentration camp is very sophisticated -- no barbed wire, no guards, you cannot say that this is a concentration camp. But this is a concentration camp -- of a higher order, of a more subtle and delicate quality.

What they have done is to give every red Indian a pension -- because America belongs to them, it is their country. They don't have any work, but they get enough pension. All they do is to go on producing more children, because the more children they have, the more pension they will get. Each individual gets a pension.

But you should understand that when you have no work and enough money, what are you going to do? They gamble, they are all drunkards, all kinds of drugs, prostitution, and no worries about anything -- every month the salary is there. Salary for nothing, salary for remaining silent about the fact that America belongs to them, that the people who are known as Americans are not Americans. Somebody is from England, somebody is from Italy, somebody is from France, somebody is from Holland, somebody is from Germany, somebody is from Switzerland -- from all the European countries, but nobody is an American. They are all foreigners.

And my first conflict with the government was that I told it exactly the same way I am telling you: that the American president is as much a foreigner as I am a foreigner. The only difference is that he has been here perhaps for two generations, three generations --

he is a two hundred year-old foreigner. I am fresh. And the fresh is always better than the old and rotten.

I told them: Neither does the land belong to you nor does the land belong to us.

And we purchased the land, we paid money; you invaded the land, you killed people, innocent people. You are criminals.

If anybody needs permission to live in America, it is you -- from the American president to the last American beggar. And if you really mean what you say in your constitution --

that you are for democracy, for freedom -- if you are sincere and honest, then give the country back to the red Indians. It belongs to them. And apply for your green cards. If they want you here, you can be here; otherwise go home.

And you have killed, you have invaded, you are criminals. We have simply purchased.

Sometimes you have also purchased, but your purchase was simply a facade. For example, New York -- the whole New York area was purchased for thirty silver pieces. Is this business? Do you think it was done by people willingly, or was it just because at the point of the bayonet, at gunpoint they had to sign: "We sell the land for thirty silver pieces."

The conflict started because I said: "Not one of you is any different from the people in my commune. We are newcomers; you came a little earlier. And you have committed all kinds of crimes; we have simply purchased the land. And you were there, you could have purchased it by offering more money -- it was a simple business matter."

But the American government will not say this.

And America must remain the only country in the world where people like the poor red Americans cannot revolt. It is such a cunning strategy that you are giving them money.

They think, "Revolt? for what? We are getting money, enough money, no work... enjoy, dance, sing, take all kinds of drugs. No problems of worrying about poverty or anything -

- why bother about revolution?" The very idea is not possible.

And they are all drunkards, opium addicted, lotus eaters. They are not in a position to fight a revolution. Their revolution has been killed, their spirit has been killed by money.

Because I said it clearly.…

And because the land we purchased had belonged to an ancient red Indian tribe which lived just nearby in a forest And they had a prophecy from the old days:

that a man from the East, with his followers wearing red clothes, would come to this land and free them from the slavery imposed on them by the invaders.

By coincidence, my people were wearing red clothes; by coincidence, I was coming from the East.

And red Indians started coming, saying that "We have been waiting -- because this prophecy we have heard for generations."

These were the fears the government would never talk about.

I could have provoked the red Indians against the whole American government, I could have created a revolution -- this was their fear. They wanted to destroy me and the commune as quickly as possible.

The land had never produced anything, but they said that it was farmland; hence, we could not make more than twenty houses, twenty farmhouses. And we fought and we said, "You have to come and prove -- in fifty years what has been produced? If it is farmland, then something must have been cultivated. Just because you have written in your papers... and we don't know when you have written it. You may have written it just now, just to harass us. You have to prove what kind of cultivation has been happening here. If this is farmland, we will cultivate it; but such a big land area cannot be cultivated by a small group living in twenty houses. This much land needs at least five thousand people to make it lush green, to make lakes, reservoirs -- because everything has to depend on the rainwater. And tremendous effort is needed to make roads, houses."

But they would not change the zoning -- which was simply stupid, because we were not going to destroy their farmland. We were creating farmland from a desert, we were changing the desert into an oasis.

So they went on creating legal problems, and for five years we went on fighting -

- and we were winning in every court, because the facts were so clear.

When they saw that they could not win legally, then they started behaving illegally.

And when a government itself starts behaving illegally, then it becomes very difficult to fight -- a small minority of five thousand people. The government was fighting, the Christian church was fighting, and nobody could say what harm we were doing to them, what harm we had done.

The nearest American town was twenty miles away from us. We were living and doing our own thing. But they became so much afraid.…

The fear had unconscious reasons.

America does not belong to them, and they are talking about democracy, they are talking about liberty, they are talking about freedom, they are talking about the rights of man.

And they have taken all of the land from the poor natives, and they have destroyed them in such a sophisticated way as has not been done anywhere else.

There is no hope for the red Indians for two reasons: one, they are not in their senses, they are continuously drunk, continuously unconscious -- fighting, murdering each other.

Secondly, slavery is paying well -- without working you are getting a salary. To fight against this government means you will lose your salary and you will have all kinds of problems -- so why bother?

And because I said things exactly... and I invited the president, the governor, the attorney general of America to come and see, to show us what cultivation they had done on this land. And we had transformed the whole land.

Rather than praising us, they wanted us to destroy the commune and leave America.

It seems they loved the desert so much that now they have made it desert again.

Perhaps they need a third world war to make the whole of America a desert. If they love the desert so much, their wishes should be fulfilled.

But these facts that they have produced after one year... Where was this New Yorker when I was there to reply? Now they are writing facts and figures.

And they have not consulted the other party at all, to ask, "What are your facts and what are your figures? How has the government misbehaved with you? How has the government proved to be fascist, violent, crude, primitive, undemocratic...?"

They should have asked us -- because we have suffered.

But the press is either in the hands of the church or in the hands of a political party, or in the hands of the government, or in the hands of rich people.

The man who came first into the conflict was the ex-vice-president Rockefeller -

-

because he was planning that the whole of Oregon should become a federal state. The federal government owns half of the land of Oregon, and their desire was to have all of the land in Oregon to create shelters in case of a nuclear war. And Oregon is perfectly the right place -- not very populated, could easily be converted into a vast shelter in case of nuclear war.

When we entered the state, the first person who became annoyed was Rockefeller --

because now that one hundred and twenty-six square miles could in no way become federal land.

It was he who said in a press conference that, "This commune is an independent country within a country, and this cannot be tolerated."

If they had asked us... It was a simple thing. They could have given us land somewhere else, we would have moved the commune. Or from the very beginning they could have told us, "We are ready to give you another piece of land." There was no problem; to us it was the same.

But these people have faces of one kind, they say one thing, and they do something else.

And they are thinking still something else -- you never know exactly what is in their minds, what they are doing, what their purpose is.

They accepted our right to be a city -- and it was accepted by the court, three

judges.

One judge was against us, was a fanatic Christian. But seeing that two of the judges were ready -- and his being against us would be useless, he also signed, and we became a city.

Now that was the most difficult thing for them to swallow: that against the president, against the whole government, we won the case and we became a city.

You will be surprised, in the twentieth century.… The one judge who was in our favor was a Mormon. They are very good people, a sect of Christians, but very honest and sincere. And they have suffered very much in America at the hands of other Christians because of certain of their ideologies.…

One idea they have is that the head of the Mormons is in direct contact with God, with no pope, no mediator in between. The Mormon head has a direct communication line with God. This is not acceptable to Christians -- you are bypassing the pope.

They killed the first Mormon founder, and because they killed him they consolidated the Mormons, and they had to give them a city. The same story was being repeated again, so they became afraid. Now Mormons have a city -- one of the most beautiful in America --

Salt Lake City.

This one judge was a Mormon. And a trick was played: the head of the Mormons informed him that he had been chosen by God to resign from his post and go to Nigeria to serve humanity.

I informed that judge that, "This is simple politics. They want to remove you from the post because when you are removed... One person is against us, one person is half-half --

he will be on the side of whoever is in power. It was because of you and your sincerity, your fairness that we got the city. Now you are leaving us in the dumps!"

And what a stupid idea. Billions of people in the world, and God has chosen this poor man to resign from his post and go to Nigeria for one year. But they are

such simple people that they believed that it was God's order and they could not go against it.

So he resigned, and immediately they appointed a fanatic Christian.

The same court that had given us the sanction to be a city, after six months denied that we were a city.

And the simple trick was that they removed the man who would not do anything wrong, and replaced him with a man who was an absolutely fanatical Christian. They completely forgot their own laws, their own constitution, and they did everything against their constitution.

For two years continuously there was a rumor that they were going to arrest me, but they would not dare to enter the campus of the commune for the simple reason that they knew that unless they killed five thousand sannyasins they would not be able to arrest me. And they were not ready to take that risk -- killing five thousand people, most of them Americans, would condemn their democracy forever.

They wanted me in some way to be out of the commune so they could find me alone.

That's why they waited for two years.

And we were hearing the rumor continuously, so by and by it became accepted that this was just a rumor, they didn't have the courage.

They had their National Guard just twenty miles away in the American town, every day collecting more and more army forces, so that if there was a need they could be ready to kill five thousand people.

But once they could get me out of the commune, things became easy for them.

Without any arrest warrant, they arrested me and five sannyasins who were with me. That is absolutely illegal. They could not even show the cause; not even for three days in court could they prove anything to show why they had arrested me.

Still they would not set bail.

These are the facts and figures. The government was pressuring the magistrate: "If you want to be promoted to federal judge, don't give this man bail." So all five sannyasins were given bail; only I was retained.

And the government attorney said in the court, "We have not been able to prove any charge; still, the government asks that bail should not be granted for this man because he is very intelligent" -- I heard for the first time that to be intelligent is criminal -- "and he has thousands of friends."

I had never thought that these things were enough to be a criminal; if that is enough to be a criminal, then Jesus Christ must be the greatest criminal in the world -- because half of the world is Christian. And thirdly, that I had resources enough that I could jump bail --

even if it were ten million dollars' bail, I could jump it.

And this shows the poverty and the weakness The greatest power of the world

-- you have all your armies and all your nuclear weapons and all your police forces, and you cannot manage to prevent a man from crossing the country.… Then all your power is impotent.

But the reality was that the woman magistrate was not interested in anything else, she was interested in becoming a federal judge.

Even the jailer did not think that I would go back to jail, he thought that there would be no reason -- "They don't have an arrest warrant, they don't have any cause, so you will be released." So he brought my clothes and everything in his car so that "I can free you direct from court; there is no need to come back to the jail."

When he had to take me back, he was annoyed. He said, "In my whole life I have not seen such unfairness. The attorney could not prove -- and he accepts that he has not been able to prove in three days of continuous arguing -- anything against this man. Still the government wants "

Who is the government? The government was only a part in the case.

And against an individual, the government forces the magistrate -- bribes, blackmails.…

The jailer told me, "The reality is that that woman has been told that if she gives you bail

-- which is your right -- she will not be promoted to federal judge. And she wants to become a federal judge."

And within just three days she was a federal judge.

These journalists should think not only of those who have power, but also of those who don't have power, and they should be guards against injustice.

They had formed one hundred and thirty-six crimes against me -- a man who never leaves the house. I have not gone out of this house for three months, not even into the garden; how can I manage one hundred and thirty-six crimes?

But the government attorneys told my attorneys, "If you don't accept at least two crimes, then Bhagwan's life will be in danger." That was the last blackmail. "If you want to put his life in danger, you can go for trial" -- this is just when the court case was going to start, five minutes before. "It is better you accept and convince Bhagwan to accept any two counts" -- just to save the government's face, so that they can be right: I must have committed a crime, because I have accepted. And the threat was, "If you don't accept, then bail will be cancelled and the case can go on for ten to twenty years -- it is in the hands of the government. And there is every risk for the life of Bhagwan. So if you want to save him, you try some way to convince him to accept."

My attorneys came with tears in their eyes, and they said, "We have never seen such blackmail -- and the blackmail is being done by the government -- a clearcut threat. So you accept two counts. And they don't want you to be in America more than fifteen minutes longer. Accept two of the charges and your plane is ready at the airport, you immediately move out of America, and for five years you cannot re-enter." My whole idea was to refuse.

But I looked at my attorneys and I looked at my sannyasins all over the world...

And I had heard that a few sannyasins were not even eating. For the twelve days I had been in jail, a few sannyasins had not been eating at all, they were fasting.

And I am not a rigid man. And I am not a serious man either.

So I said, "There is no problem. Don't be worried -- I accept. And outside the court, just in front of the courthouse, I will announce to the world press that this is blackmail."

And it was true that they were ready to kill me, because as I reached the jail to pick up my things, they had planted a bomb under my chair. It did not explode because it was a time bomb.

And I reached there early -- because I had accepted immediately. I said, "There is no point." I said, "Whatever crimes they want, I have committed. I don't even need to know what those crimes are." So within five minutes the case was over.

They were thinking I would reach there nearabout five, and I reached there just nearabout one o'clock. So the timing was not right. And as I left the jail, they had to remove the bomb. And they have to accept it -- now, in jail nobody can put a bomb except for the government, nobody else can reach there.

The American jail... first you have to pass three big gates, which are all automatic, electric gates. You cannot open them, they open only with remote control buttons. When one gate opens, the other two remain closed. And the second opens only when the first is closed. After three gates, then there are offices.

And the room where my clothes were to be given to me was in the most interior part of the building. It would be impossible for anybody from the outside to reach there and plant a bomb.

The bomb was planted by the government. They must have thought that if I refused to accept the crimes, then it would be better to finish me rather than carry on for years with a case which they were going to lose -- because they don't have any evidence, they don't have any proof.

All those one hundred and thirty-six crimes are their imagination, and nothing else -- and this has been accepted by the attorney general just now, a few days ago.

In a press conference, he was asked, "Why has Bhagwan not been put into jail?"

And he said, "Because he has not committed any crime, and we don't have any proof of any crime."

This same man was standing in court with the list of one hundred and thirty-six crimes.

And this man is the right-hand man of president Ronald Reagan; they are boyhood friends, they were both actors in Hollywood. And when Reagan became president he called him and made him the attorney general of America; now he is the highest legal authority in America. So it is not possible that whatever he is doing is not known to Ronald Reagan.

It is a conspiracy in the White House.

Journalists should gather a little courage, and when they start writing stories about facts and figures they should look at the other side also. Just put both sides; don't give your judgment. Let the people decide.

And truth has a quality of its own: if both sides are placed before you without any prejudice, you will be able to figure out what is true and what is false.

And it has helped the whole movement around the world. Those whose trust was forced, whose love was managed, naturally have to fall out of my world, from my people.

But it has been a fire test for those who really love and trust me. Their trust has become stronger, their love has become deeper. And thousands of new people have come into the movement. Seeing that against a single man... the whole world and the whole worlds'

governments are against him -- it is not possible that the man can be wrong.

Otherwise, there is no need for so many governments to be against me. They can simply refute me, their theologians can refute me, their legal systems can prove me wrong.

Because they cannot do anything, now they have come down to the lowest. Ronald Reagan and the people who are cooperating with him have sunk to the status of terrorists.

Now, putting a bomb against a man who is under your protection in the jail -- this is pure inhumanity.

And existence will not tolerate it, existence will not forgive it, existence will not forget it.

And you will see every day these people disappearing from the scene.

Truth has to wait, but not to wait forever. It is patient, it is patient because it knows its victory is certain.

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