Chapter title: Obedience needs no art

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‌Chapter title: Obedience needs no art‌

18 April 1986 am in

Archive code:

8604180

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO12

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

90

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I HEAR YOU SPEAKING OF YOUR VISION, I CAN'T HELP BUT FEEL

THAT THOSE FEW DARING PEOPLE AROUND YOU WILL LIVE TO

EXPERIENCE THE NEW MAN. BUT IT FEELS MORE LIKE A HUNDRED YEARS

AWAY BEFORE MAN AT LARGE WILL COME TO SEE AND LIVE THE GENIUS

OF YOUR WAYS. IS THIS TRUE?

It is true.

Even if it happens in a hundred years time it will be soon.

But the question is significant in a totally different way. It is not the realization of the vision, the coming of the new man, a new humanity... that will come in its own time. The more important thing is to be able to visualize it.

Everything great that has happened in the world has been an idea first. Sometimes it took hundreds of years for it to become a reality, but the joy of having a vision, an insight into the future, is immense. The people who are with me should rejoice that they can see a possibility of the old rotten world disappearing and a new fresh human being taking its place.

Just the vision will change you at least, will shift your being from the past to the future.

In a certain way you will start living the new man, who has not yet come. You will start living the new man in small ways, and each moment of that living will be a blessing. And as you become acquainted, within yourself, with the explosion of the new and the destruction of the old, you are changing, you are going through a revolution.

I am interested in you. Who cares about what is going to happen after a hundred years?

Something must be going to happen, but it is not our business. And when I talk about the new man I am really talking about you, for you to become aware of the possibility, because that very awareness will change you. I am not interested in the future; I am simply interested in the immediate present.

The future will go on for eternity, but if your mind can be cleaned of the past rubbish, and if you can see the faraway rising sun... I am not interested in the sun, I am interested in your vision, in your capacity to see, in your understanding, in your hope that it is possible. That very hope will become a

seed in you.

The new man will come whenever it has to come. But the new vision can come right now.

And with the new vision you participate in a subtle way with the man who has not come yet, with the humanity who is still in the womb. You start having a synchronicity, a certain relationship. Your roots from the past start dropping, and you start growing your roots into the future.

But my interest, I repeat, is basically in you. Neither am I interested in the past, nor in the future. I talk about the past so you can get rid of it; I talk about the future so you can remain open to it. But you are the point of my emphasis.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

NOTHING THRILLS ME MORE THAN WHEN YOU SPEAK ABOUT NIRVANA.

HOW MYSTERIOUS IT IS THAT I CAN LONG FOR SOMETHING SO MUCH

THAT I DON'T KNOW AND YOU CAN'T SAY. THE WORD ITSELF IS STILL

UNPOLLUTED AND SO WONDROUS. ON THE OTHER HAND, I NOTICED THE

OTHER WEEK THAT WE NOW HAVE "ENLIGHTENED" INSURANCE POLICIES!

WOULD YOU PLEASE THRILL MY HEART ONCE MORE?

This must be Kaveesha, because the question can come only from California. In California you can have enlightened insurance policies. In California everything is possible! But there is no insurance, no guarantee for enlightenment. You have to earn it, you have to deserve it. Nobody can give it to you; it is not a

commodity.

And I can see why the word nirvana thrills you into ecstasies. It is certainly one of the words which is unpolluted. There is a reason why it remained unpolluted. The first reason that it remained unpolluted was its meaning. Unless you have come to a deep understanding of yourself and existence, the word nirvana will create fear in you. It is a negative word. Literally it means "blowing out the candle."

Gautam Buddha used the word for the ultimate state of consciousness. He could have chosen some positive word, and in India there were many positive words for it: moksha, freedom, liberation; kaivalya, aloneness, absolute aloneness; brahmanubava, the experience of the ultimate. But he chose a strange word, which has never been used in spiritual contexts: "blowing out the candle." How can you relate it with a spiritual experience?

Buddha says your so-called self is nothing but a flame, and it is being kept burning through your desires. When all desires disappear the candle has disappeared. Now the flame cannot exist anymore. The flame also disappears -- disappears into the vast universe, leaving no trace behind it; you cannot find it again. It is there but it has gone forever from any identity, from any limitation.

Hence Buddha chose the word nirvana rather than realization, because realization still can give you some egoistic superiority -- that you are a realized person, that you are a liberated being, that you are enlightened, that you are illuminated, that you have found it.

But you remain. And Buddha is saying you are lost -- who is going to find it? You disperse, you were only a combination. Now each element goes to its original source. The identity of the individual is no more. Yes, you will exist as the universe...

So Buddha avoided any positive word, knowing the human tendency, because each positive word can give you a feeling of ego. No negative word can do that; that's why it remains unpolluted. You cannot pollute something which is not. And people were very much afraid to use the word -- with a deep inner trembling -- nirvana.

Thousands of times Buddha was asked, "Your word nirvana does not create in us an excitement, does not create in us a desire to achieve it. The ultimate truth,

self-realization, the realization of God -- all those create a desire, a great desire. Your word creates no desire."

And Buddha said again and again, "That is the beauty of the word. All those words which create desire in you are not going to help you, because desire itself is the root cause of your misery. Longing for something is your tension. Nirvana makes you absolutely free from tension: there is nothing to desire. On the contrary, you have to prepare yourself to accept a dissolution. In dissolution you cannot claim the ego, hence the word remains unpolluted."

No other word has remained unpolluted. Its negativity is the reason -- and only a great master can contribute to humanity something which, even if you want, you cannot pollute. Twenty-five centuries... but there is no way. Nirvana is going to dissolve you; you cannot do anything to nirvana.

It is certainly the purest word. Even its sound, whether you understand the meaning or not, is soothing, gives a deep serenity and silence, which no other word -- god-realization, the absolute, the ultimate... no other word gives that feeling of silence. The moment you hear the word nirvana it seems as if time has stopped, as if there is nowhere to go.

In this very moment you can melt, dissolve, disappear, without leaving any trace behind.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THE ANECDOTE YOU TOLD ABOUT MULLA NASRUDDIN AND THE SACK OF

SUGAR PINPOINTED THE REASON FOR MY OCCASIONAL RESISTANCE TO

BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO. WHEN NASRUDDIN'S FATHER SAW WHAT WAS

HAPPENING TO THE SUGAR, HE NEED ONLY HAVE MADE HIS SON AWARE

OF IT, WITHOUT PROVIDING A SOLUTION. HAVING HAD THE SITUATION

POINTED OUT TO HIM, THE MULLA, IF HE HAD ANY INTELLIGENCE -

- AND

IT SEEMS HE HAD HIS FAIR SHARE -- COULD HAVE IMMEDIATELY SEEN

WHAT WAS NEEDED TO BE DONE AND ACTED ACCORDINGLY. BUT HIS

FATHER DID NOT ALLOW HIM THE CHANCE TO THINK IT OUT FOR HIMSELF.

TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO USE THEIR INTELLIGENCE AND INITIATIVE

SEEMS TO BE A CREATIVE WAY OF PUTTING ONE'S AUTHORITY INTO ACTION.

I WOULD BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR COMMENT.

The story is simply a way of saying very complex and complicated things. As far as the story is concerned, you are right; the father could have explained. There was no need for any order, and no need for obedience or disobedience. But it is a story.

In actual life there are things -- particularly for example God, or the soul, or paradise, the temple, worship, the prayer to an unknown God... there is no way to explain. The father cannot explain God -- he himself does not know. He has been told, he accepted it, and he has believed it. Now it is time for him to tell the son -- how can he explain? And that's where I come into the story.

Your whole society and the mind of your society is based on things which can be only believed but cannot be explained; hence the necessity of obedience; hence the angry reaction of your elders if you disobey.

It was a problem for me also in my childhood. My whole family was going to the temple and I was resistant. I was willing -- if they could explain what this whole thing was all about. They had no explanation except, "It has been done always, and it is good to follow your elders, to follow your old generations, to follow the ancient heritage... it is good."

This is not an explanation.

I told them, "I am not asking whether it is good or bad; I am asking what it is. I don't see any God, I see only a stone statue. And you know perfectly well that it is a stone statue --

you know better than me, because you have purchased it from the market. So God is being sold in the market? You have installed it with your own hands in the temple; at what point did it become God? -- because in the shop of the sculptor it is not worshipped.

People are haggling for its price; nobody is praying to it! Nobody thinks that these are gods, because there are so many statues. And you can choose according to your liking.

"You haggled for the price, you purchased the statue, and I have been an observer all the time, waiting to see at what moment the stone statue becomes God, at what moment it is not a commodity to be purchased and sold, but a divinity to be worshipped."

They had no explanation. There is no explanation, because in fact it never became God; it is still a statue. It is just no longer in the shop, it is in the temple. And what is the temple?

-- another house.

I was asking them, "I want to participate with you in your prayers, in your worship; I don't want to remain an outsider. But I cannot do it against myself. First I have to be satisfied, and you don't give any answer that is satisfying. And what are you saying in your prayers?

"`Give us this,' `Give us that' -- and do you see the whole hilarious scene? You have purchased a stone statue, installed it in a house, and now you are begging from the statue, which is purchased by you, `Give us this,' `Give us that...

prosperity to our family, health to our family.' You are behaving very strangely, in a weird way, and I cannot participate in it.

"I don't want to disobey for disobedience's sake. And this is not disobedience; I am ready to follow your order, but you are not prepared to give it to me. You never asked your own parents. They lived in ignorance, you are living in ignorance, and you want me also to live in ignorance."

They thought that I would cool down by and by. They used to take me to the temple.

They would all bow down, and I would stand by the side. And my father would say to me, "Just for our sake... it doesn't look good. It looks odd that you stand by the side when everybody is bowing down with so much religiousness."

I said, "I don't see any religiousness; I simply see a certain kind of exercise. And if these people are so much interested in exercise, they can go to a gymnasium, which will really give them health.

"Here they are asking, `Give us health,' and `Give us wealth.' Go to the gymnasium and there you will get health, and you will have real exercises. This is not much! And you are right that it looks odd -- not my standing here but you all doing all kinds of stupid rituals.

You are odd. I may be in the minority, but I am not odd.

"And you say for your sake I should participate. Why are you not participating with me for my sake? You all should stand in a line in the corner -- That will show that you really want to participate."

Finally he told me, "It is better you don't come to the temple, because other people come and they see you, and you are always doing something nasty."

I said, "What?"... because I was always sitting with my back towards God, which is not allowed -- that is "nasty."

I said, "If God is omnipotent, he can change his position. Why should I be bothered about it? But he goes on sitting in the same position. If he does not want to see my back, he can move; he can start looking at the other side. I am more alive than your God, that's why you tell me to change my position; you

don't tell your God. You know that he is dead." And they said, "Don't say such things!"

I said, "What can I do? He does not breathe, he does not speak, and I don't think he hears, because a man who is not breathing, who is not seeing, who cannot move, cannot hear --

all these things happen in an organic unity, and the organism has to be alive. So to whom are you praying?"

And slowly, slowly I persuaded my family to get rid of the temple. It was made by my family, but then they gave it to the community; they stopped going there. I told them,

"Unless you explain it to me, your going shows that you are not behaving intelligently."

So the question is not the story. The story is a simplification of the complicated life situations where explanations have never been given. For thousands of years man has lived without explanations, has lived in obedience, has not questioned, has not doubted, has not been skeptical; has been afraid to, because these are all sins -- obedience is virtue.

To me obedience is not virtue: intelligence is virtue. If you follow something because it appeals to your intelligence, it becomes virtuous. And if you don't follow something because your intelligence is against it, it has not to be condemned as sin.

The mind of man, for centuries, has been conditioned to obey.

I want a society where we will drop all those things which cannot be explained. Then only, obedience can be dropped.

I have not removed God without any reason; it is all a connected whole.

If God is not removed, obedience remains in religion. Then religion never becomes a scientific approach towards your own interiority.

So anything that cannot be explained should not be ordered. Those things should

be taken out of the human mind. But then, what remains of your religion? God disappears, hell and heaven disappear.

Mahavira believed in three hells, because people are committing sins in different categories. Naturally, to put all of them in one hell and punish them in the same way is illogical. He was a man of logic; he was very mathematical. You will be surprised to know that twenty-five centuries ago he said everything about the theory of relativity that Einstein discovered in this century. Of course not in such minute detail, because he had no way to experiment; it was just his vision.…

So he has three hells. Christianity has only one, Mohammedanism has only one, Judaism has only one -- why does Mahavira insist on three? Because he can see that it is unjustified: somebody has committed a small sin, has simply stolen a little money from somebody else, and somebody has killed many people, murdered, raped. Now putting them together with the same punishment is illogical. So he has three categories.

In the first will be the light sinners: the people who have been smoking, and drinking tea and coffee, and eating ice cream etc. They are not doing very great sins, so just the first hell will be for them, just to give them a little torture. Not to give them their ice cream will be enough; to put them in hellfire seems too much! In the second will be the heavier sinners. And in the third will be the most heavy ones, the greatest sinners.

But it is not so easy to categorize into three. Buddha has seven hells, because he sees that with three you still cannot be fair, because there are so many kinds of people and so many kinds of sins that a little more scope is needed to be fair. He has seven hells. But nobody has any explanation; nobody can prove their existence. It is just hypothetical.

There was a man, Sanjay Belattiputta who was also a great teacher, contemporary to Buddha and Mahavira. He has seven hundred hells because, he says, "These people don't understand the complexity." And I think he is right. As far as complexity is concerned, even seven hundred hells may not be enough. You may have to find a hell for everyone, for every single sinner, because two sinners cannot be put together: it will be unfair to this person, or to that person. There is no criterion, no weighing machine so that you can decide how much sin you have done, how many kilos.

But it is all hypothetical. And whom to listen to? -- all the three persons are great teachers, great masters. But what they are saying, although it seems to be reasonable, is still hypothetical. Somebody may come and may talk about seven thousand, and you cannot refute them and you cannot prove them.

Once you ask for an explanation for everything, your religions will start withering away.

Your political ideologies will be found to be based on nonsense.

For example, communism is based on the equality of man -- and there are not two men who are equal, or have ever been equal. It is psychological nonsense to talk of the equality of man. Each individual is unique; there is no question of comparison. All that your mind is filled with -- if you take it item by item and try to find out evidence, proof, explanation, you will be surprised: you are carrying an unnecessary load.

Yes, there are things which cannot be explained but still they are true. But they are not to be ordered either; they have to be learned in a deep, loving atmosphere.

If you trust a master, if you love a master, if you can feel his authenticity, sincerity, his humanness, then perhaps he can talk about things which are but can only be experienced, which cannot be explained. But such a man will not order you to believe in them.

For example, I cannot tell you to believe in reincarnation, although I know it is a truth.

But because I cannot prove it, I cannot ask you to believe in it. I can only ask you to explore, to go deeper into your meditation, to go deeper into your own being, so that you can reach to when you were born; and still a little deeper, so that you can feel that you are in your mother's womb.

You have been in your mother's womb, and the memory of it is carried by you. Go further back, and you can see the moment in which you were conceived, the moment when your father and mother provided the opportunity for your soul to enter into a body.

Go back a little more, and you can see yourself dying -- your past life's end. You

can move backwards into a few lives but that will be your experience; still you cannot explain to anybody else, and you cannot insist that they should believe your experience. You may be hallucinating, it may be an illusion, it may be a dream. It is not -- because dreams have different definitions.

You cannot repeat a dream. Have you thought about it? You see a dream, and tomorrow you want to repeat it -- can you repeat it? It is beyond you. It may come sometime, but you cannot repeat it.

But by going into your past life, you can repeat; it is within your hands, it is not a dream.

A hallucination needs unconsciousness, a drugged state. In meditation you are not unconscious, you are conscious -- more conscious than ever; hence your experience of past lives cannot be a hallucination. But these are your inner experiences, and they remain individual.

There are things which cannot be explained; they are there, but they need not be ordered.

They have also been ordered -- to be a Hindu you have to believe in reincarnation. But the person who believes in reincarnation knows nothing about it. And every belief dulls your intelligence.

So it is right that Mulla Nasruddin's father could have explained to his son rather than ordering him, but he is ordering because otherwise the story would have lost all meaning.

The story is a Sufi story; it has a certain purpose. If the father had explained, and Mulla Nasruddin had followed the explanation, what story would there be?

The story is there to indicate something about human beliefs, which can only be ordered, which can only be obeyed, which cannot be explained. And if the younger generation wants to get rid of them, the only way is to disobey everything that does not convince them.

Disobedience is an art.

It is not against anybody, and it is not something hard. You can be very polite, you can be really nice, and yet disobedient. It looks difficult because we have

become accustomed to the association that the disobedient person is a hard person, that he is not gentle, that he is not nice. That is a wrong association.

I have disobeyed my whole life -- my parents, my teachers, my elders -- but I have never let them feel that I am in any way disrespectful to them, or that I am being nasty to them.

Disobedience is a greater art than obedience. Obedience needs no art.

One of my professors, Professor S.S. Roy, was in deep love with me -- so much so that at times he would say, "Okay, so you come here, near the board, and you explain to the class if you feel my explanation is not enough, or is not adequate." And he would go and sit in my place, and I would stand in his place and teach the class.

I asked him again and again, "Do you feel that I am disrespectful to you?"

He said, "Never. Don't be worried about it." He was very much concerned that I go to the examination hall, because he knew perfectly well that I was not interested in examinations or in getting degrees or anything. I was in the university to sharpen my intelligence, not to get a certificate. So he would come to my room, take me in his car to the examination hall, see with his own eyes that I had entered into the hall -- and then he would leave.

I told him the first day, "I have not prepared at all about this subject. And I am going to be absolutely original, because any answer that I am going to give will not be found in any book!"

He said, "My God, why did you not tell me? -- because I have set this paper. Don't be worried, there is still time." He took out his notebook and gave me five questions, and told me, sitting in the car, answers to each, in short. He said, "I am giving you just the essential answers, then you can elaborate."

When he was finished, I told him, "Don't feel hurt -- I will not use a single sentence of what you have told me, because it is unfair. You have set the paper; you should not let me know. You have created more difficulty for me. Now I will have to avoid everything that you have said."

He said, "You are strange!"

I said, "I am not strange, I am simply saying that you have done wrong; now please don't force me to do wrong." And it was a difficult paper because he had given me the questions, he had given me the answers, and I had to avoid his answers. But it was a great exercise to find my own answers -- absolutely clean, unpolluted. And he was also the examiner of that paper, so as my paper reached to him and he saw it, he could not believe his eyes: I had really avoided everything that he had said; I had not even used one word.

He called me, and said, "I am sorry that I gave you such trouble. I can see how difficult it must have been for you to avoid all the right answers, and yet remain right. But you did well, and I am giving you ninety-nine percent marks. I wanted to give you one hundred percent, but that would look a little too much, so I have cut one mark.

"But to you I can say that that was my desire -- to give you one hundred percent marks, for the simple reason that you have been able to avoid all the real answers and yet you have managed to answer my questions relevantly. And these answers cannot be found in any textbook; it must have been a strain on you."

I said, "No, it has not been. It has been just a play, just an exercise."

"Still," he asked, "why did you not listen to me? That would have been the easiest thing."

I said, "You know that I cannot do anything which is unfair; no other student knew it.

Now these ninety-nine percent are my own earning. If I had repeated your answers I would have always felt guilty that I was part of some unfair process. But don't feel hurt; I have not rejected your answers for any other reason."

You can be disobedient with great artfulness; in fact you will have to learn much artfulness to be disobedient. So to anything that has no explanation, and is being forced on you, it is good to say no.

But there will come a moment in your life when you are close to a mystic -- then don't ask for explanations, because he is not ordering you to believe anything or disbelieve anything. He is simply opening his heart to you. He is not asking for

any response from you, so the question of obedience and disobedience does not arise.

Don't ask explanations from him.

Ask how to experience what he is saying.

So there is a world of explanations, which is mundane.

And there is a world of experience, which is really the very truth, the very essence of life, the very foundation of existence.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

ARE WE REALLY LOOKING FOR THE ANSWER TO OUR NUMEROUS

QUESTIONS? IT OCCURS TO ME THERE MUST BE, FOR EACH OF US PRESENT

HERE, ONE QUESTION THAT CHARACTERIZES US, AND WHICH, IF WE

COULD JUST PINPOINT IT, WOULD ACT LIKE A BEACON. THEN THAT

QUESTION WOULD BE ENOUGH IN ITSELF AND WITHOUT THE NEED FOR

AN ANSWER.

In fact there is no question which will be an answer to you. The reality is unquestionably here. All your questions are not really in search of answers -- but they can put you in great trouble.

If the man you are asking the question to is a scholar, a pedagogue, then he can give you an answer which will create thousands of questions. You had come only with one question; he has given one answer. Now that answer creates thousands of questions -- and that's how it has been going on in philosophy, in theology. Each question leads to an answer, and that answer leads to many questions. And

this goes on growing.

In fact, if the man you are asking knows, then he is not answering your question; he is destroying it. He is trying that you get rid of it. He is not putting an answer in its place, because then that will torture you.

This is the real work of a master, a mystic, that sooner or later the people who are with him start feeling questionless.

To be questionless is the answer.

There is no answer... it is not that when you are questionless all your questions have been demolished. It is not that you come upon a hidden answer.

No, there is nothing hidden.

All the rubbish has been removed. You feel just a clean and clear consciousness. This is the answer... Not the answer to any question, but the state of no question is the answer that we are seeking and searching. Every question is a burden, every question is a wound, every question is a tension. And to be questionless, to be completely free of all questions...

There is a story in the life of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. He was working with his disciples in the desert, in a small monastery. A few travelers passing by, just out of curiosity stopped and went in. They saw that in the courtyard the students were sitting, the disciples were sitting, and Mevlana -- Mevlana means the beloved master -- Mevlana Rumi was answering them.

They got fed up, because strange questions and strange answers... they went on their way.

After years of traveling, they came back, and stopped again to see what was happening.

Only Mevlana Rumi was sitting there, and there were no disciples. They were really shocked -- what had happened? They went to Mevlana and they said, "What happened?"

Mevlana laughed. He said, "This is my whole work. I crushed all their questions, and now they have no questions so I have told them, `Go and do the same to

others: crush their questions. And if you find somebody you cannot manage, send him here!'"

When all questions are removed, you are again a child, utterly innocent. Then your mind is bound to be silent, and there is no possibility of it getting disturbed. And a great serenity...

This is the answer. There are no words in it, and it is not relevant to any question in particular; it is only a state of silence.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #13

Chapter title: Christianity is an empty box 18 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604185

ShortTitle: PSYCHO13

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 99

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

MODERN CHRISTIANS ARE MAKING DESPERATE ATTEMPTS TO SAVE

THEIR RELIGION FROM ITS PRIMITIVE, SUPERSTITIOUS PAST -- AND FROM

THE FUNDAMENTALISTS!

FOR EXAMPLE, A MODERNIST IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND BELIEVES, IT

IS SAID, IN A GOD WHO WORKS THROUGH EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES

ONLY, DOES NOT DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS CHRIST, BUT WOULD

NOT LOSE HIS FAITH IF IT WERE TO BE PROVED THAT JESUS NEVER

EXISTED, AND CLAIMS TO BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL, BUT NOT IN

THE MIRACULOUS. HIS JESUS DID NOT PERFORM MIRACLES AND WAS NOT

BORN OF A VIRGIN. THE TOMB WAS NOT EMPTY. ETHICS ARE MORE IMPORTANT TO THE MODERNIST THAN DOCTRINE.

DOWN THE SAME PATH IS TRAVELING OUR OLD FRIEND, THE BISHOP OF

DURHAM, WHO GOT INTO TROUBLE FOR HIS COMMENTS LAST YEAR

ABOUT THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND RESURRECTION. HE WAS RECENTLY QUOTED AS SAYING, "EITHER GOD DOES NOT EXIST OR ELSE HE

MUST

ESTABLISH HIS OWN EXISTENCE."

IS THE RESURRECTION OF CHRISTIANITY ANY MORE LIKELY THAN THAT

OF A JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF?

The resurrection of Jesus Christ may be possible, but not the resurrection of Christianity.

In fact Jesus never died on the cross. It takes at least forty-eight hours for a person to die on the Jewish cross; and there have been known cases where people have existed almost six days on the cross without dying. Because Jesus was taken down from the cross after only six hours, there is no possibility of his dying on the cross. It was a conspiracy between a rich sympathizer of Jesus and Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus as late as possible on Friday -- because on Saturday, Jews stop everything; their Sabbath does not allow any act. By the evening of Friday everything stops.

The arrangement was that Jesus would be crucified late in the afternoon, so before sunset he would be brought down. He might have been unconscious because so much blood had flowed out of the body, but he was not dead. Then he would be kept in a cave, and before the Sabbath ended and the Jews hung him again, his body would be stolen by his followers. The tomb was found empty, and Jesus was removed from Judea as quickly as possible. As he again became healthy and healed, he moved to India and he lived a long life -- one hundred and twelve years -- in Kashmir.

It is a coincidence, but a beautiful coincidence, that Moses died in Kashmir and Jesus also died in Kashmir. I have been to the graves of both. The graves are ample proof, because those are the only two graves that are not pointing towards Mecca.

Mohammedans make their graves with the head pointing towards Mecca, so in the whole world all the graves of Mohammedans point towards Mecca, and Kashmir is Mohammedan.

These two graves don't point towards Mecca, and the writing on the graves is in

Hebrew, which is impossible on a Mohammedan grave -- Hebrew is not their language. The name of Jesus is written exactly as it was pronounced by the Jews, "Joshua." "Jesus" is a Christian conversion of the Jewish name. The grave is certainly of Jesus.

A family has been taking care of both the graves -- they are very close together in one place, Pahalgam -- and only one family has been taking care of them down the centuries.

They are Jews -- they are still Jews -- and I had to take their help to read to me what is written on the graves.

Moses had come to Kashmir to find a tribe of Jews who were lost on the way from Egypt to Jerusalem. When he reached Jerusalem his deep concern was the whole tribe that had got lost somewhere in the desert. When his people were established in Jerusalem, he went in search of the lost tribe, and he found the lost tribe established in Kashmir. Kashmiris are basically Jewish -- later on Mohammedans forcibly converted them -- and Moses lived with them and died there.

Jesus also went to Kashmir, because then it was known that Moses had found the lost tribe there. The doors of Judea were closed -- he would be hanged again -- and the only place where he would find the people who speak the same language, the people who have a same kind of mind, where he would not be a foreigner, was Kashmir. So it was natural for him to go to Kashmir.

But he had learned his lesson. He had dropped the idea of being the only begotten son of God; otherwise these Jews would crucify him too. He dropped the idea of being a messiah. He lived with his few intimate friends and followers in Pahalgam.

Pahalgam is named after Jesus, because he used to call himself "the shepherd" --

Pahalgam means "the town of the shepherd." So it was a small colony of Jesus and his friends, surrounding the grave of their forefather and the founder of Judaic tradition.

Jesus remained a Jew to the very end; he never heard about Christianity.

But the followers who were left in Judea managed to create the story of

resurrection. And there was no way to prove it this way or that. Neither could they produce Jesus -- if he was resurrected then where was he? Nor could the other party prove what had happened.

They had put such a big rock on the mouth of the cave that it was impossible for Jesus to have removed it, and there was a Roman soldier on duty twenty-four hours, so there was no possibility of anybody else removing the rock and taking the body.

But because Pontius Pilate was from the very beginning against crucifying Jesus He could see the man was absolutely innocent. He has some crazy ideas,

but they are not criminal. And what harm does it do to somebody? If someone thinks he is the only begotten son of God, let him enjoy it. Why disturb him, and why get disturbed? If somebody thinks he is the messiah and he has brought the message of God... if you want to listen, listen; if you don't want to listen, don't listen. But there is no need to crucify the man.

But Jesus learned his lesson -- learned the hard way. In Kashmir he lived very silently with his group, praying, living peacefully, no longer trying to change the world. And Kashmir was so far away from Judea that in Judea the story of resurrection, amongst the followers of Jesus, became significant.

So I say a kind of resurrection certainly happened -- it was a conspiracy more than a resurrection. But certainly Jesus did not die on the cross, he did not die in the cave where he was put; he lived long enough.

But Christianity cannot even conspire to revive itself, to resurrect itself. There is a great movement among Christian theologians, and they are making desperate efforts. Their very efforts show that they are going to fail. In fact their efforts are ridiculous.

There is one theologian who says, "There is no God, and we have to accept godless Christianity." He knows that it is impossible to prove God to the coming generation; to the young and the fresh mind it is impossible to prove God. And the days of belief are over. It is a scientific age: you must prove, give the evidence; nobody is going to accept something just by your saying it. So he is ready to sacrifice God to save Christianity.

What will Christianity be without God?

There is another theologian who is ready to believe that perhaps Jesus is only a myth, he never existed. It is as difficult to prove Jesus' existence as the existence of God, because no contemporary literature even mentions his name. There is no proof other than those four gospels of his own disciples -- they cannot be called proof. This theologian is willing to drop Jesus to save Christianity, but what will Christianity be without God, without Jesus? But they are so desperate to save Christianity that they don't see the implications of what they are doing.

Another theologian says there have been no miracles; all miracles are just inventions of the followers. Up to now, for two thousand years, Christianity has depended on the miracles. Those were its basic foundations to prove it a superior religion to any other religion -- because Gautam Buddha does not walk on water, Mahavira cannot revive a dead man, Krishna cannot heal the sick just by touching them, Mohammed cannot make wine out of water.

These miracles have been, for two thousand years, the superiority of Christianity over all religions; otherwise what has Christianity got? But he is ready to drop the miracles because now they are continuously hammered. Nobody is ready to believe in them -- they go against the very way things are. And nature does not change its rules, its laws, for anybody; it does not take anybody as an exception. So the new theologian feels embarrassed. He knows himself that it is impossible to prove the miracles.

I asked the archbishop in Bombay, "You represent Jesus, the pope represents Jesus. You should do at least some little miracles as evidence that you are really representatives; otherwise what have you got to prove that you are the representative? Walk on water, and the whole world will become Christian. And you say faith in Jesus can do miracles --

then try it! You must have faith."

But no theologian, nor any pope, is ready to walk on water. They all know that nature does not change its laws for anybody.

So it is a bold step, but very dangerous. If you take away all the miracles of Jesus then a very poor man, just a carpenter's son, is left behind, with nothing to be compared with Gautam Buddha or Mahavira or Zarathustra. Really you take away all his glory which depends on miracles. But you cannot prove miracles, and because you cannot prove miracles you create suspicion about Jesus. So it is

better to drop miracles; at least the suspicion about Jesus will be dropped. But you don't understand the implication: without miracles Jesus means nothing.

Without miracles Buddha remains the same, because he never did any miracles. People loved him not for his miracles. People loved him for his clarity of perception, of seeing into the very root of things, of giving insights to people to transform life. Walking on water is simply stupid. Even if you can do it, then too it is not a miracle, it is simply stupidity, because you will remain the same. You will not come out of the water a transformed human being.

Just to give you an idea of how Gautam Buddha and Jesus will behave in a similar situation Lazarus is dead. His sisters are great devotees -- Lazarus was

a great friend of Jesus. They send a message to him, "Come, Lazarus is dead!" And they keep his body inside a cave. Jesus comes and he calls Lazarus, standing outside the cave, "Lazarus, come out!"

Lazarus says, "Have you come? Great, I am coming!" And he comes out. It seems to be dramatic, it seems to be all planned. It seems the man was not dead. He was a friend, his two sisters were devotees -- it was as if he was simply sitting there, waiting.

But it is not a miracle. And even if it is a miracle, even if Lazarus comes back to life, he is not transformed. We don't hear anything else again of Lazarus. A man who has died, a man who has gone through the process of death to the beyond, who comes back, cannot be the same. Lazarus would have become a great master, but he remained the same person -- no change at all.

In a similar situation Gautam Buddha behaves differently, and I think that is the way any wise man will behave. A woman, Krishagautami, had only one son. Her husband had died, her other children had died; she had seen death in its brutal ugliness. Only one son remained, and she was living only for him; otherwise there was nothing for her to live for. She wanted to kill herself; she had lost everything -- all those people she had loved and lived for. But her neighbors suggested, "One son is alive -- without you he will also be dead. Take care of him. We understand your sorrow "

But one day that boy also died, and Krishagautami went completely mad. It was a coincidence that Buddha was staying in the same city of Shravasti. Somebody suggested to Krishagautami, "A great mystic is here. Why don't you take your

son to him? He can do anything; he is a man of tremendous power. Seeing your situation, and knowing his compassion, something is possible. Perhaps your son may come back to life."

Krishagautami went with the dead body. She put the body at the feet of Gautam Buddha and said, "I have lost everything -- all my children, my husband. I was living only for this son; now he is also dead. I have heard much about your compassion. Now is the time to show it. Let my son get up again, resurrect him."

Buddha said, "On one condition: you go into the town... to resurrect your child I need a few mustard seeds, but they should be from a family where nobody has ever died."

Krishagautami was not in a state of mind to realize that this was impossible, that the condition could not be fulfilled. She went from one house to another and people said,

"We can give you as many mustard seeds as you want. We can fill our bullock carts with mustard seeds and bring them to Gautam Buddha if your son can be revived. But our mustard seeds won't help, because not only one but thousands must have died in our family. For generations after generations, people have been dying. These mustard seeds are not going to fulfill the condition.

She went on, and the same was the answer everywhere. She went to the king of Shravasti and told him, "Can't you do just a small thing for me? A few mustard seeds and my son can be back, alive."

The king said, "You can have as many mustard seeds as you want."

But the woman said, "There is a condition, and the condition is that in your family no one should have died. And your family is royal -- certainly you will fulfill my condition."

The king said, with tears in his eyes, "Royal or not royal, death makes no difference. My father has died, my son has died, and an unaccountable number of people must have died in my family before I was born. You have to forgive me; I can give you anything you want, but that condition cannot be fulfilled."

The whole day going round the city, the woman became alert of a fact... death is inevitable, today or tomorrow.

After seeing the king she came back to Buddha, touched his feet and said, "Please forgive me. I was asking you to do something against nature, and you were wise enough not to say no to me. Instead you gave me an opportunity to understand that my asking was wrong. Please initiate me. I don't have anything to live for, but I would like to know what it is that lives and what it is that dies." Buddha initiated her, and she became one of the great meditators among his followers.

Now, which one do you think is a miracle, Lazarus or Krishagautami? Which one do you think is doing the miracle? -- Jesus or Gautam Buddha?

Gautam Buddha is not doing a miracle at all, but if you understand it rightly, he is doing the miracle, because he is changing the woman from a mad state into a meditative state.

Even if Lazarus becomes alive he remains Lazarus, and one day he will die again, so what is the point?

But Christianity has depended on these miracles in proving its superiority over other religions; in fact those religions are far superior, because they don't depend on such stupid, childish ideas. So there are theologians who are ready to drop all miracles. But if you drop all miracles then Jesus is left naked; you have taken all his clothes, he has nothing to give to the world.

One theologian takes God away, another theologian makes Jesus himself a myth, another theologian takes miracles away, and the fourth theologian takes religion itself away -- he wants a religionless Christianity, but Christianity has to remain! I don't understand: when you have taken all the contents, why cling to the box? Now even religion has to be taken away because half of humanity is already religionless.

The communists don't believe in religion, and the communists are not only in the communist countries, which is half of humanity; communists are in other countries also.

In fact, three-fourths of humanity has already dropped religion. The remaining ones are only formally religious. They are not much disturbed by the idea of taking religion out.

But then what remains?

It seems you are clinging just to the label, to the name "Christianity." It is a desperate effort, and stupid too. Why not accept that Christianity is dead? God is dead, miracles are dead, religion is dead, Jesus is no longer born out of a virgin Mary -- so what are you saving?

I have been looking into all these theologians who are prominent people in the Christian world. They have taken all the contents;only an empty box... But why carry on this empty box? For what reason? Just an old habit, an old attachment.

And then there is another effort... because you cannot carry an empty box for long; you will also feel that you are doing something foolish. And others will start feeling, when they look into your box, that you have a great Christianity! -- Jesus is missing, God is missing, miracles are not there, the Virgin Mary is not there. All that was Christianity is not there; then why are you carrying this empty box? So there is another effort going on, side by side, to fill the box with something.

So Christian theologians are studying other religions, so as to have something similar. It is going to be imitation, unauthentic, because it is not their experience.

They call it

"comparative religion"; in all Christian colleges they study comparative religion.

I asked the professors and the principals of those colleges, "Why should you be worried about other religions? -- you have Christianity." But the problem is that they have to fill the box with something, so from other religions they are collecting ideas.

They are studying psychoanalysis. Now every Christian preacher has compulsorily to study psychoanalysis. Now, what does psychoanalysis have to do with religion? But the problem is, what religion used to do was to console people in their misery. Now they don't have that religion at all, so they have to find some contemporary way to console people. And psychoanalysis is a very thriving business all around the world; the most highly-paid professionals are psychoanalysts. So Christians think, "They must be doing something for people. Let us learn their art and use it to save Christianity." But they don't understand that Freud was against religion, the whole of psychoanalysis is against religion. They cannot use it.

They are studying Karl Marx because the man has converted three-fourths of

humanity; he must have something -- the idea of equality of human beings. Although he is against religion and against God, he has certain values; those values can be taken.

They are collecting all kinds of things in the box where Christianity used to be. It is so eclectic that it does not make one organic whole. If you look into the box you will get into a madness, because the things they are taking belong to different systems. Within those systems they have a living quality; out of those systems they are dead. Somebody's eyes, somebody's hand, somebody's legs, somebody's heart.…

And do you think in your box there will come a man, because you have arranged everything that is needed for a man? -- hands, head, eyes, heart. Everything is there, but it is just nonsense. Those eyes were able to see in an organic unity in a body; now they cannot see. There is no organic unity, and you cannot bring an organic unity.

Christianity is dead.

Their desperate effort to save it simply confirms that it is dead. But it needs guts to accept it.

You will be surprised to know that when Joseph Stalin died it was not declared to the world. It took a few days for the communist high command... because they had believed that this man is immortal. Stalin, man of steel, he cannot die! But men of steel, whatever your conception may be, have to follow nature: he died. For a few days they delayed informing the world. In fact they could not believe it, but finally they had to accept that Stalin was dead.

The same happened with Mao Tse-tung. His death was not immediately reported to the world because he had become a God.

I know about Sri Aurobindo, because he himself was teaching his whole life that his special work was to give methods to people to attain physical immortality. All old teachers have taught you spiritual immortality; that's not a big problem, because the spiritual element in you is already immortal.

He used to say, "I am doing the real thing. The physical body, which is not immortal, I am going to make it immortal." And one day he died.

One of my friends was there in Pondicherry, in his ashram. He told me, "For seven days we were hiding the fact that Aurobindo had died. We could not believe it ourselves, because if he himself is not immortal, then what about us who have gathered here just to become physically immortal? And the man who was going to make us physically immortal is dead! Now we cannot even ask him, `You deceived us. What happened?' To declare it to the world looks so embarrassing.'"

The chief disciple, "the Mother" of the Sri Aurobindo ashram, finally found a solution to it. She said, "He is not dead, he has gone into deep samadhi, the deepest that anyone has ever gone. He will wake up again -- he is simply asleep."

So they made a marble grave for him, with all the comforts, because he was just sleeping and one day he was going to wake up; this was his last experiment in physical immortality. Then years passed, but he did not knock from the grave. People started suspecting, but the mother was over ninety, and she was still preaching physical immortality.

Then one day she died. And it was very difficult for the believers, because the believers had some investment; their investment was their own immortality. If both the leaders were dead, then there was no hope for them. And they had not yet told them the real secret; they had been telling them that they were working on it.

Sri Aurobindo used to give an audience only once a year to his disciples. The rest of the year he was working constantly -- that was the idea in the ashram for physical immortality. Now both are lying in their graves, and there are still idiots living in the ashram, believing that they will awake one day.

Idiots are also miracles -- they still believe. My friend who has been there, and still is there, is a doctor of philosophy, but he still believes. He had been coming to see me, but there is no way to convince him. I tried every possible way, but he said, "Patanjali himself says in the YOGA SUTRAS that samadhi and susupti -- samadhi and deep sleep

-- are exactly alike. They have gone into deep sleep to find out the secret of physical immortality."

I said, "But how long will it take? By that time you will all be dead! Even if they

come...

You just go and open the grave, and you will know that it is no longer sleep. There are only skeletons, stinking of death, not the fragrance of immortality.

But the believer is such that he goes on believing, because his belief is basically for a reason: he is afraid that perhaps they are dead, and then what about him? And that stops him -- the idea that they are dead. Do you see the point? He cannot accept that Sri Aurobindo and the mother are dead because that means he will have to die -- and he does not want to die. That's why he has come and lived there for years, waiting for the secret to be revealed. He will wait: "They are asleep and working."

Desperate efforts... and they happen only when something is really gone and you don't have it. Then you get into a frenzy of creating some way that you can continue to believe in it. For example, THE BIBLE believes that God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, which is only six thousand years before now. Now, that is disproved so abundantly that it is absolutely wrong.

In India we have found cities which were lying hidden underneath the earth, seven thousand years old -- and not ordinary cities. I have been to Harapur, Mohanjodro -- both are in Pakistan now -- and it is something to see. Seven thousand is a very orthodox idea; there are scholars who say they must be more than fifteen thousand years old. But even if they are only seven thousand years old, there must have been a long past to those cities, because that kind of city cannot be created instantly.

They have bigger roads than New York. Now, a city seven thousand years old, having a wider road than New York... it means they must have had vehicles, traffic, otherwise why create such a road? They had beautiful bathrooms, they had a system of running water.

Even if they were seven thousand years old, they must have been developed for thousands of years to come to such technology, to such plumbing, that they can have running water in their bathrooms, in their houses. They had swimming pools...

In China we have found human bodies, frozen in ice, ninety thousand years old. Now, when all these facts came to the Christian theologians, there was great

turmoil: What to do? -- because God created the world six thousand years ago. I am giving you this example of how a desperate believer functions.

One theologian came up with the idea, which became accepted by the whole Christianity, that God created the world exactly as it is said in THE BIBLE, six thousand years ago, with cities under the earth, with bathrooms, with plumbing, with wide roads, with ninety-thousand-year-old bodies... just to test your faith! "God can do anything. If he can create the world, do you think he cannot create something that looks ninety thousand years old to all scientific investigation? But the world was created six thousand years ago." A desperate effort to cling to superstitions! But there comes a point where all your superstitions are proved to be superstitions. Then this situation arises that you start saying, "They are all superstitions, and we can drop them and still we can save Christianity."

You cannot. Those superstitions have been the very backbone of your Christianity.

Without those superstitions your Christianity will lose all its life. And it will be more absurd to believe in a Christianity devoid of all superstitions, miracles, God -- even of religion.

Now they are saying it is only ethics, not doctrine. But ethics need not be Christian --

ethics has nothing to do with Christianity. Ethics is a science in itself. I have been a teacher of ethics, and I had never thought that ethics can be Christian. Ethics asks what is truth? what is good? what is bad? It has nothing to do with religion; it has something to do with your actions. And it is the same for everybody. Whether you are in Tibet or China or in America, it does not make any difference, the ethical standard will be the same. Ethics is a science completely in itself.

Now, finding nothing in their doctrines, they are falling back on ethics, saying that the essential thing is not doctrine -- because all their doctrines have been proved wrong. Up to now it was doctrine; now because all doctrines are proved wrong, or at least questionable, and they have not been able substantially to support their doctrines and their truth...

This is the last effort of a dying religion. You drop those doctrines -- they are dangerous, they are killing you -- so you jump upon something else that can give

you a resurrection.

But ethics is purely a science in itself. It thinks about values -- which have nothing to do with Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian. Ethics is not going to save Christianity; it is not going to give a resurrection.

There is no possibility for Christianity, and it will be good that they accept it and drop the dead body. It is a great load, and by carrying it unnecessarily, you are missing your life.

And living with a dead religion you are bound to become dead. Your churches are graveyards. There is no song of life, there is no dance of existence.

It is better to simply get out of the old habit. These are just old habits. I don't know why Christian priests', nuns', bishops' old clothes are called habits -- I don't know. But one thing I know: just drop the habit! -- whatever it means. Just be natural and human.

And it is not only a question of Christianity. Your question was concerned with Christianity; otherwise the same is the situation with other religions.

Man has come of age, and he does not need those old, superstitious religions; he needs a more scientific approach to explore his being. And that will be possible only if he gets rid of the old habits. And they are very dirty, because for thousands of years the same habits have been used by so many people. They are stinking!

Get out of those habits as quickly as possible. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THIS MORNING, AS YOU SPOKE OF THE "QUESTIONLESS ANSWER," I WATCHED MY QUESTIONS DISSOLVING INTO SILENCE, WHICH I SHARED

FOR A MOMENT WITH YOU. BUT ONE QUESTION SURVIVED, AND THAT IS: IF WE DON'T ASK YOU QUESTIONS, HOW ARE WE GOING TO PLAY WITH

YOU?

That's really a question!

It will be difficult, so whether you have the questions or not, still you can go on asking just the same. Your question need not be yours, but it must be somebody else's, somewhere. And my answer may help somebody somewhere, sometime. So let us continue the game.

I cannot say anything on my own. Unless there is a question, I am silent. Because of the question it is possible for me to respond. So it does not matter whether the question is yours; what matters is that the question is bound to be somebody's somewhere.

And I am not only answering you. I am answering, through you, the whole of humanity...

not only the contemporary humanity, but also the humanity that will be coming when I will not be here to answer.

So find out all the possible angles and questions, so that anybody, even in the future when I am not here, who has a question can find an answer in my words.

To us it is a play. To somebody it may become really a question of life and death. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

QUESTIONS SEEM TO BE THE OFFSPRING OF THE CAPACITY TO DOUBT; AND DOUBT, THE SPARK OF AN ALIVE AND ACTIVE INTELLIGENCE.

WITHOUT QUESTIONS -- AND THUS, WITHOUT DOUBT -- HOW CAN INTELLIGENCE CONTINUE TO FLOURISH?

AND YET WITHIN YOU IS THE ULTIMATE IN SILENCE AND THE ULTIMATE

IN INTELLIGENCE.

It is true in the beginning. Doubt helps your intelligence, sharpens it. Questioning makes you aware of many possibilities of which you may not have been aware before.

But this is only the beginning of the journey. At the end, when all your questions have disappeared... and the real master never gives you the answer. Let me repeat it: the real master never gives you the answer, so you cannot doubt it. He brings you to a point where all your questions disappear. His answers are murderous, killing your questions, destroying them mercilessly, to bring you to a point where there is no question in your consciousness.

The master does not give you any answer that you can doubt. This non- questioning consciousness is the answer. And it is your experience; you cannot doubt it, it is there.

From this point, silence and intelligence are just two aspects of the same thing. From this point, not knowing, innocence and knowing are two aspects of the same thing. This is the mysterious world which is available to you if you can pass the jungle of questions and doubts and reach into the clear, where there are no questions and doubts, and no answers either. Just you are in utter silence, with immense clarity, with tremendous sharpness.

That's why I am against belief, because it will never allow you to reach to this stage. It will stop you in the very beginning of the journey. It will not help to make you more intelligent; it will make you more unintelligent. It will make you more fanatic, superstitious, but it will not allow you to come into the clarity which can be called the very goal of what transpires between master and disciple: the moment of total silence, the moment where everything is crystal clear.

But it has to be earned. Belief is cheap. This will bring you something totally different, what I call trust in existence. In the dictionaries, trust and belief and faith are all synonymous -- but not in reality.

Belief is opposite to trust. You believe because you have doubt; the belief is an antidote to doubt, it is a need to cover up the doubt. Trust is when you don't have any doubt, so trust is not a belief. Belief is always in something -- in some doctrine, in some principle, in some philosophy.

Trust is in the totality of the cosmos. It has nothing to do with books -- HOLY BIBLES, GITAS, KORANS -- no. Then there is only one scripture which is spread all around you -

- in the trees, in the rivers, in the ocean, in the stars. And you don't have to read it; you have to be just silent, and it starts showering on you all its wisdom, which is eternal.

I am against belief because I want you to come to the point of trust. Beyond Psychology

Chapter #14

Chapter title: Let it soak within your heart 19 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604190

ShortTitle: PSYCHO14

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 82

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

RECENTLY I HEARD YOU SAY THAT TRANSCENDENCE OF LIFE'S MISERY

AND CONFUSION CAN OCCUR BY EITHER A LET-GO OF LIFE OR BY FIGHT --

AS LONG AS EITHER IS DONE WITH TOTALITY. MAHAVIRA'S WAY WAS

FIGHT, AND YOURS IS LET-GO. COULD YOU SAY MORE ABOUT LET- GO AND

ITS RELATIONSHIP TO INTELLIGENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY? I DON'T HAVE

THIS UNDERSTANDING, AND MY LIFE SEEMS TO BE AN ODD MIXTURE OF

LET-GO AND FIGHT. LET-GO SEEMS MORE NATURAL, AND FIGHT SEEMS

MORE RESPONSIBLE.

It is not only your question, it is everybody's question -- a mixture of let-go and fight. But your let-go is not my let-go; your let-go is simply a defeatist attitude. Basically you want to fight, but there are situations where you cannot fight, or perhaps you have come to the very end of your energy for fighting. Then, to cover up your defeat, you start thinking of let-go. Your let-go is not true, it is phony.

Real let-go is not against fight. Real let-go is absence of fighting.

And you cannot mix real let-go with fighting attitudes, for the simple reason that the presence of let-go means the absence of a fighting attitude. How can you mix

something which is present with something which is absent? Just as you cannot mix light and darkness, however great an artist you may be -- you cannot mix light and darkness for the simple reason that darkness is only an absence of light. You cannot bring them together; only one can be present.

So the first thing to remember is that the basic attitude of every human being is to fight.

So don't think of it particularly as your problem. It will help you immensely to understand that it is a human problem. Then you can stand aloof and watch it, observe it, understand it.

Fighting is a basic attitude because it feeds the ego. The more you fight, the more your ego becomes stronger. If you become victorious the ego has great joy. You are giving life to ego by your victories. But on the other hand, as the ego becomes stronger, your being is receding farther and farther away from you.

As your ego becomes stronger you are losing yourself. You may be fighting and being victorious, not knowing at all that it is not a gain but a loss. Each child is taught to fight in different ways. Competition is a fight, to come first in your class is a fight, to win a trophy in a game is a fight. These are preparations for your life. Then fight in the elections, fight for money, fight for prestige. This whole society is based on fighting, competition, struggle, putting each individual against the whole.

So it is almost everybody's situation. And then you listen to me about let-go.

Let-go means no competition, no struggle, no fight... just relaxing with existence, wherever it leads. Not trying to control your future, not trying to control consequences, but allowing them to happen... not even thinking about them. Let-go is in the present; consequences are tomorrow. And let-go is such a delightful experience, a total relaxation, a deep synchronicity with existence.

I am reminded of a parable. I call it a parable because it is so good it cannot be true. In the East, the name of Majnu is very famous. It is a Sufi story -- perhaps nobody of that name existed, but it is irrelevant whether he existed or not. He has become the symbolic lover.

Majnu was a poor young man, with tremendous love and a great heart, and he fell in love with the richest man's daughter. The marriage was not possible; even

meetings were not possible. He could only see once in a while, from far away, his beloved, Laila. But the rumor about his love started spreading, and the rich man, the father of Laila, was afraid that it will contaminate the family's name and he will not be able to find the right man for his daughter. So he left the village to go to a faraway country, where nobody will know anything about Majnu.

The day they were going, a great caravan... because he had so much money and so many things to take, hundreds of camels carrying things. Majnu was standing by the road, by the side of a tree, hiding himself in the foliage of the tree -- because the father was so mad he even could shoot him, although he had not done anything. He had not even spoken to Laila.

He was standing there just to see her for the last time. It was enough for him that she was happy and healthy -- and he would wait. If his love has any power, she will come back.

There was tremendous trust in him. He had seen the love, the same flame that was burning in his heart, in the eyes of Laila too. Laila was also searching and looking all around from the camel she was riding. She knew Majnu must be waiting somewhere on the way, and then she saw him hiding under a tree in its thick foliage. For a moment, without a single word or gesture, they were one; and then the caravan passed.

But for Majnu time stopped then and there. He remained standing by the side of the tree waiting and waiting. It is said years passed. Laila came, but came a little late. She enquired; people said, "We have never heard about him. Since you left he has not come to the town again."

She rushed to the tree where she had left him. He was still there, but a strange thing had happened -- he had become one with the tree. That's why I say it is a parable: it is too good to be true. He relaxed so utterly because there was nothing else to do but to wait. He relaxed with the tree, and slowly, slowly they started merging with each other. The tree became his nourishment; they were no longer separate, they became one. Branches grew out of his body. He was no longer hiding under the foliage; the foliage was on his body --

beautiful leaves and beautiful, fragrant flowers.

Laila could not recognize him. But the whole tree was saying only one thing,

"Laila...

Laila!" She was getting mad, and asking, "Where are you hiding?" And the tree said, "I am not hiding. Waiting so long, doing nothing, and just being relaxed, I have become one with the tree. You came a little late.

"What was going to happen between us has happened between me and the tree. We were going to become one -- that was not acceptable to destiny perhaps. But I was ready to relax in the moment, without thinking of any consequences. And I am happy that you are alive, still young, and more beautiful. But I am gone, far away. I am immensely happy...

alone, relaxed, in a let-go."

To me, let-go means you are not fighting for anything in life, but giving everything to life to take care of. You say "let-go seems to be natural." It only

`seems'... because your whole conditioning is against it. You have been brought up for millions of years to fight.

Fighting, either you can be defeated -- which will create a wound, which will create revenge -- or you can be victorious; which will again create another kind of wound. That is the ego. In either case you are a loser. Defeated you lose, victorious you lose. In either case you are going farther away from yourself.

Let-go has not been taught to people because it will go against the whole structure of the society -- which is based on competition and fighting, where everybody is your enemy.

Even your friend is your enemy, even your wife is your enemy, even your children are your enemies, because everybody is trying to snatch as much from you as possible.

And the same thing you are trying to do. The world of misery is created because everybody is snatching things from everybody else. It is not a peaceful, silent, loving existence; we are still barbarous and animalistic.

Let-go is totally a different approach. Its first step is dropping the ego, remembering that you are not separate from existence: with whom are you fighting? You are not separate from people: with whom are you fighting? With yourself... and that's the root cause of misery. With whomsoever you are

fighting, you are fighting with yourself -- because there is nobody else.

Let-go is a deep understanding of the phenomenon that we are part of one existence. We cannot afford to have separate egos; we are one with all. And the all is vast, immense.

Your understanding will help you to go with the whole, wherever it is going. You don't have a goal separate from the whole, and the whole has no goal. It is not going anywhere.

It is being simply here.

The understanding of let-go helps you to be simply here, without any goals, without any idea of achievement, without any conflict, struggle, fight, knowing that it is fighting with yourself -- which is simply foolish.

Let-go is a deep understanding.

It is not an act that you have to do.

Every act is part of the world of fight. That which you have to do is going to be a fight.

Let-go is simply understanding.

And then a silent relaxation, flowing with the river, unconcerned where it is going, unworried that you can get lost... no anxiety, no anguish, because you are not separate from the totality, so whatever is going to happen is going to be good.

With this understanding you will find there is no mixing: understanding cannot mix with ignorance; insight into existence cannot mix with blindness; consciousness cannot mix with unconsciousness.

And let-go cannot mix with different kinds of struggles -- that is an impossibility.

Just let it sink within your heart, and you will find a new dimension opening up, in which each moment is a joy, in which each moment is an eternity unto itself.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY, IN CONNECTION WITH MARTIN HEIDEGGER, THAT THE WORK OF A PHILOSOPHER IS TO GUIDE THE LEADERS OF THE

NATIONS, NOT TO FOLLOW THEM. YOUR WORK AT THIS TIME SEEMS TO BE

MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION. YOUR WORK IS MORE GLOBAL, INVOLVING

WHOLE NATIONS AND THEIR PEOPLE, AND EVEN TRANSCENDING NATIONS. DIOGENES STOOD NAKED -- AND LARGELY UNKNOWN --

HOLDING A LAMP IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, AND REPEATED THE STATEMENT,

"I AM LOOKING FOR A MAN." IS YOUR WORK REALLY DIFFERENT FROM

DIOGENES' OR DOES IT ONLY APPEAR SO? ARE YOU ALSO LOOKING FOR A MAN?

Diogenes is one of the most loved human beings, as far as I am concerned. As far as the world is concerned, he is one of those who are destined to be condemned for their behavior, for their ideas. And Diogenes particularly, because he is so unique.

His ways would have been understood in the far East, in Japan; he would have become a great Zen master. In Greece he was simply condemned. He was not in the right place.

First, he was naked -- for a certain reason: naked we have come into the world, and all the animals are naked, why should man hide his wild body behind clothes?

And the strange insight was that it is not weather, cold or heat, that has prompted man to use clothes -- because if all the animals can exist without clothes, there is no reason. And your face is naked, but it becomes immune. That's how the whole animal world lives.

Small birds are more powerful than you: they are immune to cold and to heat. They don't need any clothes. Why did man need clothes? Not to protect his body but to hide it, because he is the only animal who has not been natural, and his body has become ugly.

Now, Diogenes has a strange insight.

I agree with him, that clothes help you immensely to hide your body. Man has lost his natural beauty, agility, and that's why he had to discover clothes. It is very strange: if your naked body is brought before you, or just a photograph of your naked body is brought before you, you will not be able to recognize that it is your body. People are recognizable only by their faces; the whole body is ignored. And through clothes you can create the illusion of beauty. You can hide the ugly parts and you can expose the beautiful parts; you can emphasize the beautiful parts.

Diogenes was disgusted with the whole idea. This is exhibitionism, not what Sigmund Freud thinks is exhibitionism. I agree with Diogenes and not with Sigmund Freud.

Sigmund Freud calls a man exhibitionist if he tries to show his naked body to somebody.

Diogenes calls all people who have been forced by your so-called civilization to wear clothes, exhibitionists. This is a beginning of deception, hypocrisy. And my feeling is that one day man will return back to being naked, because only then he will regain his health again -- for the simple reason that then he will have to be healthy, otherwise he will feel embarrassed. Then he will have to exercise, then he will have to go to some gymnasium and maintain his body and his beauty, because now it is not only his face that is his identity; now his whole body is his identity. And he will not be ashamed of it; it is his body and nature has given it to him. He will be proud of it.

Diogenes was as beautiful a man as Mahavira -- both lived naked -- so proportionate, so beautiful. In India Mahavira's nakedness became spiritual; in

Greece Diogenes became a madman. He used to carry a lamp with him, and whomsoever he met -- even in the full daylight -- he would raise his lamp and look at the man. And people would ask, "What are you doing? It is full daylight, the sun is shining; why are you carrying a lamp? And why do you go on looking in people's faces?"

He used to say, "I am looking for a real, authentic man."

My search is, in a way, similar: I am also looking for a real, authentic man. But the real, authentic man cannot be searched for with a lamp.

Diogenes' lamp is only symbolic. It simply says that he is putting his whole lighted being as a beam on the person, as an X-ray, to see whether there is anything left or everything is hypocrisy. The day he died he had his lamp by his side, still in his hand. One man, just to joke, asked Diogenes, "Now you are dying. Before you die, please answer one question.

Your whole life you have been searching for the authentic, real man, with your lamp.

Have you found him or not?"

Diogenes was really a beautiful man. He laughed and said, "I have not found him, but I am grateful to the whole of humanity that nobody stole my lamp, because I found all kinds of thieves all around. An authentic man I have not been able to come across, but even this is enough, that they have left my lamp with me; otherwise when I looked at these people they were criminals, murderers, thieves, and I was worried about my lamp --

that's the only thing I possess. So one thing I can say before I die -- one good thing about humanity -- is that my lamp was not stolen."

At the moment of death also he could laugh and joke. In Greece he was not understood at all. He belongs to the category of people like Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu, Hotei. That was his category, but he was with the wrong people. Aristotle had defined man -- Diogenes was a contemporary of Aristotle -- as "a two-legged animal without feathers." That shows the depth of logic, and the insight of Aristotle. When Diogenes heard it, he caught hold of an animal with two legs, took away all the feathers, and sent it as a present to Aristotle, saying, "This is your man: a two-legged animal without feathers."

Aristotle was very angry: "It is not a joke, and this Diogenes is never serious!" But I say to you, he was serious. He was saying to Aristotle, "This is not the way to define man --

two-legged, without feathers. You are degrading man to animals, just a little different variety -- without feathers. That's the only difference: there are many animals with two legs."

He was not just joking -- he was serious. And he was serious in his search for the authentic man. It is not a question of defining it; it is a question of finding it. You can define it only after you have found it.

The man that exists is not authentic.

Yes, my work is similar in a way: I am also searching for the authentic man, destroying all that is not authentic in you, at the risk of being condemned all over the world. But I am not carrying a lamp in my hand because I know that was only a gesture.

I am really working with each individual who has come in contact with me to help him to drop all unnecessary conditionings and to have a communion with nature.

To be natural you will be authentic. To be natural you will be human.

And to be natural you will be a being full of rejoicings.

It is your unnaturalness that is creating the whole misery, and just as money brings more money, misery brings more misery. Whatever you have attracts its own kind. If you have a little joy, you will attract much joy; if you have a little silence, then even from the faraway stars you will be attracting silence, then even in a crowd, in the marketplace you will be attracting silence.

It depends what you have within you; that becomes the gravitation, and it attracts its own kind. Just a little experience and then there is no need to push you; you will go in that direction on your own.

My whole effort is to give you just a glimpse, just to open a window so you can

see the sky with all its colors and sunset. And I know you will come out of the hole to see the whole sky, to see the birds returning home, to see the trees going to sleep, preparing their beds. But right now you have only misery, and that misery goes on attracting more misery.

My work is somehow to create a small gap in your miserable existence... just a little window.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

DOES A NATURAL DEATH ALSO TRANSCEND NATURE?

Nothing transcends nature.

Everything goes on becoming more and more natural -- deeper and deeper nature, higher and higher nature -- but nothing transcends nature, because there is nothing else but nature.

You have to drop the old categories -- that there is nature and then there is supernature.

What has been called supernature is nothing but the highest peak of being natural. Why create categories -- when nature alone is capable of containing all?

The lowest and the highest point of life are both natural. The murderer and the enlightened man, both are natural. The murderer is at the lowest point, the enlightened man is at the highest point. But as man they are part of the same nature, and being natural, they are similar. And this opens a new possibility: the murderer can become enlightened. We are not preventing him, we are not putting him in a separate category.

He can become enlightened, because he is part of nature. Perhaps he was upside down, he just has to change his posture.

But nature is profound. It contains everything -- the good, the bad, the evil, the divine --

and I want them all to be part of nature, so transformation is not impossible. Old

religions have created categories, and created such gaps that it is impossible...

For example, Christianity believes in eternal hell -- which is absolutely absurd. You cannot commit so many sins in a small life of seventy years. One third of it is lost in sleep; much of it is lost in childhood, in sickness, in earning the bread, in quarreling with your husbands, with your wives, with your neighbors. You don't have much time to commit sin. And even if you continuously commit sin, from your very birth to the last breath, without any coffee break -- just sinning and sinning -- then too eternal hell is not justified. Then at least seventy years in hell will do. But eternal hell, unending, forever and forever... Christianity does not leave any possibility for the sinner to change. It cuts all his future.

My approach is simple: the worst and the best are both part of the same nature. One may be at the lowest, one may be at the highest, but they belong to the same nature, and hence have the possibility of transformation. The lowest person can start climbing to the highest peak -- and it has happened many times.

There is a Hindu story in India... The oldest book on the life of Rama is written by Balmik. Balmik was a robber, thief, murderer -- everything that you can conceive of he had done. That was his only profession. Uneducated but a tremendously powerful man, just on the highway he would be waiting for people, and anybody who was caught had to give everything; otherwise he was finished. Balmik's family was living in luxury -- he was bringing so much every day.

One day it happened that one beautiful saint, Nardar, who was always carrying his ektara

-- a simple musical instrument, with only one string, that had become his symbol

--

singing and playing on his ektara he was passing, and Balmik caught hold of him. But he was still singing and playing on his ektara.

Balmik said, "Are you mad or something? Can't you see me, can't you see my sword?

Give me everything that you have!"

Nardar said, "You have caught a beggar; I have only this ektara. And that too I

am not going to give easily, because what will you do with this? But if you want it, I can give it to you. If you want my life I can give that too. But before I give you anything, I want to ask one question to you."

Balmik said, "Question? What question?"

Nardar said, "You go home, ask your wife: you have been killing people, robbing people

-- is she ready to share the responsibility of it. Ask your father, your mother, your son, your daughter. Are they willing to share the responsibility of what you are doing?"

Balmik had never thought about such a thing; he was an uneducated man. He said, "I have never thought about it. They must share the responsibility. I am doing it for them."

Narda said, "I will be here. Don't be worried, you can just tie me to the tree so I cannot escape." He was tied to the tree and Balmik rushed to his home and asked his wife. His wife said, "I have nothing to do with your responsibilities. It is your responsibility to feed your wife; how you do it I have no concern for." And the same was the response of everybody.

Even the mother said, "It is your responsibility to take care of your old father and mother.

Now how you are doing it -- that you have to work out. We have not told you to kill people and rob people; you are doing it on your own. We are simply not responsible for any of your acts."

Not a single man in his house was ready to share responsibility. He was shocked! He went back, untied Nardar, touched his feet and said, "I have been my whole life a wrong person. Is there any possibility for me to get rid of all that I have done?"

Nardar said, "There is no problem. You stop doing it, because the people you are doing it for are not even ready to take responsibility for it! And I will teach you my song. My song is very simple; I simply repeat the name of Rama. It is so simple, no education is needed. You sit under the tree and repeat, `Rama, Rama...' as long as you can, and you will be transformed -- because intrinsically

your innermost core always remains pure. It is only the layers on it which can be dropped."

After a few months Nardar came back and he was surprised: Balmik was sitting there under the tree. Nardar had been his whole life repeating the name of Rama, the Hindu God, but nothing like this had happened to him. Balmik was surrounded by an aura of light. Just going close to him you felt a tremendous silence, a great rejoicing.

He said, "My god, I have been repeating the name of God my whole life. And this man is a murderer, a robber, he has done every sin possible, and he is my student -- I have taught him to repeat the name of Rama -- and he seems to be transformed, transmuted!"

Nardar had to wait. He did not dare to touch him or to disturb him; his presence was so sacred. When Balmik opened his eyes, he touched the feet of Nardar. Nardar said, "You need not touch my feet -- I have to touch your feet. What has happened? Within a few months you are a new man! Have you found something more than I have given to you?

because I have been using that mantra, `Rama, Rama...' my whole life. And now I feel like a fool; within a few months... You must have got something else!"

He said, "My god, is it Ram? I forgot." Because repeating it continuously... if you repeat,

"Rama, Rama Rama.…" And he was uneducated, a robber, murderer; he had never done any such thing. "Rama" repeated continuously without any gaps... he forgot, and started repeating, "Mara, Mara..." Instead of "Rama," two "Ramas" became joined and he forgot what it was, so he started, "Mara, Mara..." mara means dead.

Balmik says, "This is another miracle!" You have been repeating, `Mara' which means

`dead'; it is not the name of God. But your sincerity, your innocence, your totality has changed it. You are far away from me. Never touch my feet again!"

The lowest can change to the highest.

There is no barrier, there is no wall. And nature is all that is there.

So even a natural death does not transcend nature; it simply fulfills nature in its totality.

Question 4

OSHO, WE'VE RUN OUT OF QUESTIONS.

You don't have any more?

Anando, some question about poor Avesh? No? Okay! Beyond Psychology

Chapter #15

Chapter title: I have kept my wondering eyes alive 19 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604195

ShortTitle: PSYCHO15

Audio: Yes Video: Yes

Length:

96

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SOON I WILL BE SPENDING A FEW DAYS WITH MY TWO TEENAGE

DAUGHTERS. THEY WANT A FULL-TIME MOTHER AND ARE ANGRY THAT I HAVE CHOSEN TO BE WITH YOU INSTEAD OF THEM. I AM TORN, BECAUSE

ALTHOUGH I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT MY GREATEST GIFT TO THEM IS

GETTING FREE, IT IS ONLY AN IDEA. ON THE OTHER HAND, MY DESIRE FOR

APPROVAL FOR BEING A GOOD MOTHER IS VERY STRONG AND I FEEL

GUILTY BEING WITH YOU WHILE THEY CONTINUE TO SUFFER ALONE.

WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT HOW TO BREAK FREE OF SOCIETY'S

CONDITIONING ABOUT MOTHERHOOD?

Everything depends on a very simple understanding. The whole idea that children are your possession is wrong. They are born through you but they do not belong to you. You have a past; they have only future. They are not going to live according to you. To live according to you will be almost equivalent to not living at all. They have to live according to themselves -- in freedom, in responsibility, in danger, in challenge. That's how one becomes strong.

Parents down the ages have carried the idea that children belong to them, and that they have to be just carbon copies of them. A carbon copy is not a beautiful thing, and existence does not believe in carbon copies; it rejoices in originality.

Once you understand that your children do not belong to you -- that they belong to existence, you have been just a passage -- you have to be grateful to existence that it has chosen you to be a passage for a few beautiful children. But you are not to interfere in their growth, in their potential. You are not to impose yourself upon them. They are not going to live in the same times, they are not going to face the same problems; they will be part of another world. Don't prepare them for this world, this society, this time, because then you will be creating troubles for them. They will find themselves unfit, unqualified.

You have to help them to grow beyond you; you have to help them not to imitate you.

That is really the duty of the parents -- to help the children not to fall into imitation.

Children are imitative, and naturally, who are they going to imitate? The parents are the closest people. And up to now parents have enjoyed it very much that their children are just like them. The father feels proud because his son is just like him; he should be ashamed that his son is just like him. Then one life is wasted; then his son is not needed --

he was enough. Because of this wrong conception of pride in children imitating you, we have created a society of imitators.

One of the most famous Christian books was written by Kempis: IMITATION OF

CHRIST. It is almost second to THE HOLY BIBLE. One great Christian theologian and a world-famous author of many, many treatises, Stanley Jones, used to stay with me whenever he used to come to my city. He was continuously going around the world, and he always kept the book, IMITATION OF CHRIST. Once I told him, "If you really understand, then this book should be burned."

To teach anybody to imitate Christ is to destroy that person. One Christ is enough, more than enough. Many, many Christs carrying their crosses on their shoulders would make a very hilarious scene... and everybody proclaiming

himself to be the only begotten son of God!

The word ìmitation' has never been condemned, but it should be condemned. The religious founders have been wanting people to imitate them, the parents have been wanting their children to imitate them; the teachers, the professors, the priests --

everybody is wanting children to imitate them. The children become a mass phenomenon; carbon copies of many people... much ado about nothing!

I remember, I must have been seven years old and a friend of my father's who had not seen me, who had not come for seven years... he had gone for a long pilgrimage around the Ganges. Hindus do that -- go around the whole Ganges, both sides. That is thousands of miles, deep in the Himalayas, dangerous valleys, mountains. After seven years he came and he wanted to see me. And he said to my father, "His eyes look like yours," and to my grandfather, "His nose looks like yours," and to my uncle, "His face looks like yours."

I said, "Wait! Does anything look like me? Am I here or not? You are being utterly disrespectful to me." He was shocked. He could not conceive that it would be a disrespect, because this is commonly done, every day, in every home: the child's eyes look like the mother's, his face looks like the father's. And they all feel proud; and nobody bothers about the child, whether anything looks like him or not.

But I made it clear to him, "Just take your words back, because I can say to you that my eyes don't look like my father's. You have another look. And my face does not look like my uncle's -- how can it look...? I have my own eyes and I have my own face, and I am going into the world with my face and with my eyes."

He asked to be forgiven. Later on he told my father, "Your son seems to be dangerous. I have never seen anybody so assertive -- and at this age!"

My father said, "At first we used to feel very embarrassed by the things he did or said, but now we have started feeling proud, because he seems to be right. You are not the first man who has compared my eyes with his -- many others have done that. And he has taken me to the mirror and told me, `Look, they are not the same.' And I have to say to you that they are not the same; he is right."

The whole of humanity has lived in such a wrong way, and for so long, that we have completely forgotten that there can be some other way, that there can be an alternative.

You are here with me. In fact, you should make your children understand that this is a great opportunity for you, to be yourself: "If I was with you there is every possibility that, knowingly unknowingly, I may treat you habitually -- just the old things, behaving the way my parents have behaved with me -- and that would be ugly."

And tell them not to feel angry at me; rather, bring them to me sometimes. Once in a while, when they have holidays, let them come to me. They will understand me more clearly than you, because they are fresher, younger, closer to nature, yet unspoiled. They are not going to be angry at me.

Once they start understanding me, they will be proud of you -- not feeling that they have been abandoned by you, but feeling that they have been given freedom, which is the greatest gift possible in the world. And your children start feeling proud of you, because you are one of the rarest mothers who can give them freedom, and bring them to a man who can help them see how to be free and how to be responsible... how to be oneself.

In this world of imitators, how to be original and authentic? -- because only those few individuals who are themselves feel fulfilled. Others simply live miserably, hoping that tomorrow things will be better; but that tomorrow never comes.

Once your children start understanding something of what I am doing here and why you are here, they will be proud of you. And their being proud of you will immediately erase the feeling of guilt in you.

You are feeling guilty that you have left children alone -- that perhaps this is not right.

According to the old mind, it is not right. According to the old mind everything has to be taught: they are not to be allowed to be themselves; they have to be molded into a certain ideal. This very process of molding is going to kill them. And there are corpses all around the world -- moving, doing things -- but I say that they are corpses because they are not themselves. If they had been given freedom, if they had been given a chance to grow naturally, to be themselves,

they would never have been the person they are. And only then would they have been able to find a certain contentment and satisfaction.

You need not feel guilty. Those who are destroying their children, they should feel guilty.

Giving children freedom.… And once in a while you will be going, once in a while you will be with your children and that is a pure gift, to be with them once in a while, because then you can be loving. You have gathered so much love; for so many days you have been far away. There has been so much longing. You will shower upon them your whole love. They will see only your loving being.

Twenty-four hours being with them, every day, year in year out -- you cannot remain loving. You are bound to be angry, you are bound to be jealous; you are bound to be everything that you should not be before your children, and they will learn those things from you.

My whole idea is that parents should meet their children only occasionally, so they can pour out their whole heart, and the children know their mothers and their fathers only as pure love. They don't know that both these persons fight continuously, that they nag, they throw things at each other.

I used to live in a place where everybody was surprised. It was a big apartment house with thin, modern walls. You could hear everything that was going on, on the other side.

You need not go to the movies or any other entertainment, it was available free, and just without any effort -- just lying on your bed and all around things were happening.

The most amazing part was that from every apartment was always coming screams, shouting, fighting, beating, things being thrown, plates being broken. Just from one house there was always heard great laughter. The whole neighborhood was surprised; they seemed to be the ideal couple -- never anything except great laughter was heard from that apartment.

One day, going for a morning walk, I met the man and I asked him, "You are the ideal couple -- not only in this building, but perhaps in the whole world. Nothing else is ever heard except laughter. Can you tell me the secret?"

He said, "Don't ask me. It is better not to ask, not to say anything about it, because I feel like crying."

I said, "I am praising you and you feel like crying?"

He said, "You don't understand at all. The reality is, she throws things at me. When she hits me, she laughs; when she misses, I laugh. But don't tell it to anybody. This arrangement is going well." But the same man, after five years, went to the court -- he wanted a divorce.

The whole neighborhood was surprised. I had never told anybody, because it was such a private thing. Everybody was just amazed, "What happened that they have gone to the court? And, we hear, for divorce!" I was going to the university. I thought that first I should visit them -- the court was just on the way -- so I stopped at the court and went into the court.

The judge was asking, "How long have you been married?" They said, "For six years."

"So why do you want now to divorce? What has happened?" He said, "What has happened? She throws things at me."

The judge said, "Recently she has started throwing things at you?" He said, "No, she has been throwing things from the very first night."

The judge said, "You amaze me. If she has been throwing things from the very first night, then for six years what have you been doing? Why did you not come earlier for a divorce?"

He said, "You don't understand. Now she has become so practiced that she never misses.

It is always she who is laughing. For months I have not laughed; now I cannot tolerate it.

At first it used to be almost fifty-fifty: one time she will laugh, one time I will laugh. It was okay, we were equal. Now it is intolerable -- only she laughs, and I

am just standing there like an idiot, with never a chance to laugh."

It is better that the children don't see your ugly faces. If no child comes to know about these ugly faces, his life will be totally different. It will be a life of love, without jealousies, without nagging, without throwing things, because he had no chance to learn these things.

You need not feel guilty; those parents should feel guilty who never leave their children alone. Once in a while go and be with them, and then you can be as totally with them as possible. And once in a while bring them here.

You have to share me with your children.

If you love me, you would like your children also to love me. Don't leave them in anger at me; that is not right. And their love towards me will help you immensely not to feel guilty. It will help the children also to feel that it is good that you are here. They would also like to be here someday -- when their educations are complete, when they are grown up and they are ready to move into life. They would like to learn more about the complexities of existence, the intricacies of life, its delights, and the art of how to achieve it.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I REALIZED THIS MORNING WHEN YOU WERE TALKING THAT I AM A FIGHTER, BUT I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING EXCEPT FIGHTING, THAT

UNFORTUNATELY I AM A PROUD FIGHTER -- AND EVEN WORSE, THAT I LOVE FIGHTING. I LOVE TO STAND IN THE FACE OF THE STRONGEST

STORM AND LAUGH. IT IS GREAT JOY. I DON'T LIKE TO LIE IN THE SUN AND

MELT. AND YET BEHIND MY MIND, MY HEART LONGS TO MELT. IT

YEARNS, BUT IT NEVER SEEMS TO HAVE EVEN A FIGHTING CHANCE. HOW

CAN I SALVAGE MY BEING?

There is no problem in it.

If you feel you are a fighter, if you enjoy fighting, not only that, if you are proud of being a fighter -- then relax. Fight totally! Then don't fight your fighting nature. That will be let-go for you.

It is perfectly beautiful to stand before the strongest storm and laugh. Don't feel guilty.

Just try to understand one thing: when I say let-go, I don't mean you have to change anything. I simply mean, whatever you feel you are, just allow it its totality.

Be a fighter with your whole being, and in this totality you will find the melting of the heart. That will be the reward of your being total. You do not need to do anything for it; rewards come on their own. Just be total in anything that you feel you love, that you feel proud of -- just be total in it. Don't create a split. Don't be half and half; don't be partial.

If you are total, one day -- standing against the strongest storm, laughing -- you will suddenly feel your heart melting in the sun. That will come to you as a reward.

Man unnecessarily creates problems. I want you to understand that there are no problems in life except those you create. Just try to see: whatsoever feels good for you is good.

Then go the whole way. Even if the whole world is against it, it doesn't matter. And whether you have gone total and whole will be decided by the reward.

If you start feeling at one point a sudden melting then you know that you have not cheated yourself, that you have been sincere, true. That now is really the point where you can be proud.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT DO YOU FEEL THE NEXT PHASE OF YOUR WORK WILL BE, ONCE

YOU HAVE FOUND A STABLE RESIDENCE, AND WHAT DO YOU SEE YOUR

SANNYASINS DOING?

That's really a problem -- an unanswerable one too, because I never think of tomorrow, and I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. I leave it up to tomorrow! I don't burden myself too much. Today is enough unto itself.

Tomorrow I will be there, the problems will be there, the challenges will be there; and I will be available to those challenges, to those problems.

My whole life I have lived this way -- without any predecision, without any commitment for the future, without any promise to myself or to anybody else for the next moment.

And that has given me the most precious gift of life. I have become attuned with existence; knowing not where I am going, I am going joyously.

One thing I know: existence has no goal, and as part of existence I cannot have any goal.

The moment you have a goal, you cut yourself away from existence. Then a small dewdrop is trying to fight against the ocean. Unnecessary is the trouble, meaningless is the struggle.

I never think of the yesterdays.

And I never think of the tomorrows.

That leaves me just a small moment, the present moment -- unburdened, uncluttered, clean, free.

So I don't know the answer to your question. All that has happened in my life... if you try to recapitulate it, you will find certainly a tremendously systematic program -- as if I had planned everything from the very beginning in minute detail. But this is an absolutely wrong idea.

As far as I am concerned, I have never planned anything; I have simply lived, wondering what is going to happen next. I have kept my wondering eyes alive, just like a small child.

Hasya has to plan, Jayesh has to plan, John has to plan -- so they are all suffering from fever, tired. Just look at Jayesh!

But I am simply wondering what is going to happen. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ARE GIVING YOUR LIFE TO HELP PEOPLE FIND INNER FREEDOM, AND

THE WHOLE WORLD IS TRYING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR FREEDOM -- THAT

IS, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, OF MOVEMENT, AND SO ON. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE

THAT YOU DO NOT GIVE UP? WHAT IS COMPASSION? DOES COMPASSION

POSSESS YOU LIKE LOVE, OR CAN YOU CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT TO BE

COMPASSIONATE?

The question has many questions in it.

Firstly, I am not making any effort to give to people freedom from the bondage of their rotten past. It is not my effort, it is simply my joy. I enjoy doing it; hence there is no tension about it, whether I succeed or not. I am not serious -- it is just playfulness. I am free, I have enjoyed it, and out of that joy arises an overflow of energy, spreading on its own accord.

I am just a watcher, not a doer.

Secondly, the world cannot take my freedom. It can try, but its failure is absolutely certain -- for the simple reason that to me freedom is more valuable than my life. I would rather risk my life than choose to lose my freedom; hence nobody can take it. They can kill me, but they cannot kill my spirit, they cannot kill my freedom. They are doing everything in their hands -- they seem to be desperate. And I am joyfully trying to find new ways to reach people. At the most they can take my life, but they cannot take my freedom.

They can take your freedom only when you value your life more than freedom; then your freedom can be taken very easily. Just a threat to your life and your freedom can be taken. But they cannot take my freedom because to me life has no value, and freedom has all value.

To me, freedom is life.

They can destroy my body but they cannot destroy my consciousness.

So there is no question of their taking my freedom. They may be powerful -- they are powerful. All the governments of the world are together against a single individual, and still they cannot take his freedom. And I can say it with absolute certainty that they cannot take my freedom, because I am ready to offer my life at any moment.

Thirdly, you ask, is your compassion as possessive of you as love? No, compassion is not possessive. In love you fall; hence the phrase "falling in love." Have you ever heard of somebody "falling in compassion?" That kind of phrase does not exist in any language.

You rise in compassion.

Compassion does not possess you; neither do you possess compassion.

That is something subtle to be understood. It is easy to understand whether it possesses you or not, but my answer is: compassion does not possess me, neither do I possess it.

Compassion has become my nature. There is no duality of the possessor and the possessed. So it is a very different situation from love.

It is not in my hands to stop being compassionate, because I am not separate

from it. In either case, whether you possess something or something possesses you, the duality remains.

But in compassion the duality disappears.

You are it, there is nobody else; so you can simply be it. There is no other way of being.

Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,

TO HAVE SUCH AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY TO ASK YOU A QUESTION, AND TO BE SO FEARFUL OF DOING SO, SHOWS ME HOW LITTLE TRUST I HAVE. CAN I STILL BE YOUR SANNYASIN?

The question is not of being my sannyasin, the question is of being A sannyasin.

To be my sannyasin certainly needs a certain commitment, a certain surrender. And I do not want you to be surrendered to me, or to be committed to me. I want you to be surrendered to nature, committed to existence. You need not be my sannyasin, you have just to be A sannyasin -- and that's the only way of being my sannyasin.

It is not a direct phenomenon -- that directly you commit yourself and surrender to existence. But the deeper you surrender to existence, life, nature, the more loving, the more understanding, the more insightful you become; and that insight will bring you closer to me. You will find in me, indirectly, the state of total surrender, total trust.

Don't be worried that you don't have that total trust now. Even if you have a little bit of trust, that is enough to begin with. Just open the bank account; you need not have millions to open the bank account with. With the smallest trust you can start the journey, and as the journey grows deeper, the trust grows deeper. Soon you will find yourself surrounded with only trust.

That moment you will feel you are my sannyasin.

Those who have come directly to me can betray. Those who have come

indirectly to me cannot betray, because even before coming to me they had already tasted something of the beyond, and to betray is impossible. But there have been many sannyasins who have come directly to me. They started their commitment, their trust, towards me as a beginning. That is not a right beginning, because that means there is a certain belief. They don't know me, they can't know me -- and still they have believed.

There is danger because the doubt is there; the doubt can any day take over their belief.

But the authentic sannyasins, the real ones, have come to me in a very indirect way. It is very difficult for you to find out who has come in what way, because it is something inner that you cannot see. But the people who have come slowly, trying to understand me, step by step, moving towards being natural, authentic, sincere... suddenly one day they find they are related to me. Strange -- they had never tried for it, they had not made any effort. It is a discovery.

So sannyas to me has to be a discovery.

Then you cannot lose it; it is your own discovery.

Don't be worried that your trust is partial -- that's enough, that much will do. You want to learn swimming... you need not jump into the deep water immediately; otherwise there is a danger you will get scared for your whole life. You will never come close to water again.

There is a Sufi story that Mulla Nasruddin wanted to learn swimming. But as he went close to the river with the teacher who was going to teach him, he slipped and fell into the river -- and it was a deep river. He was saved by the teacher, but he went a few times under the water; and as he was taken out, he took his shoes and ran away.

The teacher said, "Where are you going? You have come to learn swimming."

He said, "Now, first I will learn swimming and then I will come near the water; otherwise I am not going to come near the water -- it is too dangerous. First I will learn swimming."

But where is he going to learn swimming? You cannot learn swimming in your bedroom.

There is no other way... but unfortunately he entered the river from the wrong end. The teacher would have taken him to where the water was shallow, and slowly would have encouraged him to go towards deeper waters. As he would have become more proficient, the teacher would have encouraged him to go farther and farther.

Just a little trust is enough.

In the beginning you cannot hope to have total trust. That's how we start making impossible demands upon ourselves, and then we cannot fulfill them. Guilt arises, a condemnation of oneself arises, a rejection: "I am not worthy " But all

these things are unnecessary.

And this has happened all over the world. Everybody is feeling unworthy because he aspired in the very beginning to find the end. Naturally it was impossible -- he could not reach it -- and that stopped him even starting the journey again.

I used to live with one of my professors, in the same house. I was living alone and he felt that, looking at the condition of my cottage... he said, "It will be better you come and start living with me" -- because I had my bed just near the door, so that I could simply jump into bed, jump out of it... I never used to enter the house, because who is going to clean it?

When he saw this situation he said, "I have never seen such a way of living." Just in front of me was my bathroom; that much space was all that I used to move in -- from the bed to the bathroom. All my books were around the bed so I could pick up any book that I needed, and whenever the bed became too dirty I simply used to put the light off -- then everything looks the same!

He said, "This is not good. My wife will take take care of you; you come with me. And we don't have any children." He was an old man -- he was just like my father. He said, "I won't let you live here. I had never thought that you are living in this way. You have invented an absolutely new way of life -- that you put the light off if you see that it is too dirty".

So I went to live in his house. He was an atheist; he did not believe in God. And he was interested in me because he thought I was also an atheist -- because he had heard me speaking in the university and other places, declaring that there is no God. So he thought we were both atheists.

But on the way I made it plain to him, "You may be under a wrong impression. I am not an atheist."

He said, "What! And you declare everywhere that there is no God."

I said, "Yes, I declare there is no God. That's why I cannot be a theist; a God is needed to be a theist -- to believe in it. But a God is needed also to be an atheist -

- not to believe in it. And there is no God, so I don't fall into any category." He said, "My God! So you don't fall into any category?" I said, "No."

I lived with him for a few months, and the more I tried to understand him, the more I came to the conclusion -- a very strange conclusion, which proved right about many other atheists I had met during my life -- that this man had been a great theist in his past life, and because he failed to find God he reversed his position to the other extreme.

Otherwise it is unexplainable that atheists should waste so much time in denying God.

When there is no God, why bother about it? And they write books and pamphlets, and they make associations. They have their own philosophy, and they are more argumentative than theists. Almost all the time, the whole time, whoever they meet, sooner or later the conversation turns to atheism, that there is no God.

This insistence, this wastage on something negative simply means they are taking revenge with themselves. They have been theists.

I came to the conclusion because I started hypnotizing this old man. I told him, "This is my logical conclusion, but I want to know exactly where you were in your past life -- in what belief, in what religion." He was excited to know about it, so he was willing.

Unless someone is willing you cannot hypnotize him. The art of hypnosis needs a very intelligent man and a very willing man. You cannot hypnotize an idiot -- that is an impossibility. You can hypnotize only very few people who are very intelligent, sharply intelligent, and yet ready to go on an inner journey, willingly. You cannot force... they have simply to go with you.

Living with him, slowly, slowly I persuaded him. And he became a good medium for hypnosis. His wife was the judge -- I used to tell her to sit there and to see the situation, because this man would not remember when he woke up, and he would deny what I said.

She had to be my witness. That man was a very great theist, lived his whole life worshipping God, renounced his family, did all kinds of ascetic disciplines. And he failed, as he was bound to, because there is no God to achieve. That failure turned the whole pendulum of his consciousness to the other extreme and now he was revengeful --

unknowingly, unconsciously. And when I woke him up and told him, he would deny it:

"No, I have never been a theist and I don't believe in a past life."

I said, "I have a witness -- your wife -- that you can regress, under hypnosis, back into your past life." And I did it dozens of times, and it was always the same result: without any exception he was a great theist. He had turned against himself because he had wasted one life.

I said to him, "Now you are wasting another life. That's why I say I don't belong to any category. I don't want to waste my life for God -- this way or that."

To me, man has in him the highest potential of existence and consciousness. If he explores it he will reach to a state of godliness -- not of God, but only of godliness.

But don't be worried that you are starting with a small amount of trust; that much is enough. To begin with, anything is enough, Just the desire to go on a pilgrimage is enough. And don't be bothered that you have to be my sannyasin; just be a sannyasin.

Just be a seeker of truth. And perhaps somewhere on the way I will be meeting you.

I will tell you one Sufi story: A man is going in search of truth. As he comes out of his city, he finds an old man sitting under a tree. The young man does not know where to go in search of truth. He has heard that one has to go somewhere in search of truth, one has to go on a pilgrimage -- but where? Roads go to all

sides. Which road is the road?

Seeing the old man sitting under the tree, he thought: perhaps this man is old enough; he must know which road leads to truth. And he asked the man. He said, "Yes I know the road. Follow the right and go on until you come to a certain tree" -- he described the tree in detail, its leaves, its fruit -- "and you will find under it a very old man... just to give you an example, something like me but thirty years older. This is the man who is going to be your guide."

The man was very happy. He thanked the old man and rushed towards the way he had shown him. For thirty years he was wandering and wandering, and the tree never came and the old man never came. He was getting tired, and he himself was getting old, and he said, "What nonsense!"

Finally he decided, "It is better to go back home... enough is enough! Thirty years I have wasted in searching truth, and I have not even met the old man who is going to be my guide. And God knows, when the guide meets me, what kind of guidance it will be and how long it will take. It seems to be too complicated; it is better to go home. I was running a good business. I destroyed the business and unnecessarily got into trouble hearing this word `truth' again and again."

He came back. Again he passed the tree -- and he was shocked! This was the tree the old man had described. And he looked under the tree and the old man was there -- the same old man, thirty years older and exactly the same as the description in every way. He said,

"My God! Then why did you waste my thirty years?"

He said, "I wasted your thirty years -- or you wasted my thirty years? At that time you were not ripe enough to be guided, because I gave all the guidance and you didn't even look at the tree -- and I was describing it in minute detail. I was describing your guide in minute detail, and you did not look at me, to see that I am describing myself. You were in such a hurry; you were too young. But nothing is wasted. I was, waiting, knowing that one day you will come back, one day you will recognize this tree, one day you will recognize this old man, that I am your guide!"

The young man said, "This seems to be a strange business."

The story is immensely significant. You have a little trust. Don't be worried, go

to the right... This time not under a tree, this time on a beautiful chair, you will find an old man

-- someone looking similar to me.

But that will be the right time for you to become my sannyasin. Right now just be a sannyasin; don't be greedy!

Beyond Psychology Chapter #16

Chapter title: Emptiness has its own fullness 20 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604200

ShortTitle: PSYCHO16

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 79

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR YEARS I HAVE CONTEMPLATED WHAT SEEMS TO ME TO BE THE BASIC

MESSAGE FOR WELL-BEING: LOVE YOURSELF. WHEN I WAS A THERAPIST, ALL DAY HEARING, "I HATE MYSELF; I FEEL SORRY FOR MYSELF; I AM

PROUD OF MYSELF; I WANT TO DESTROY MYSELF," I STARTED WONDERING -- WHO IS THIS SELF?

I LOVE WHEN YOU SAY THERE IS NO SELF. THAT SEEMS SO FREEING.

COULD YOU PLEASE SAY MORE?

The whole therapeutic movement has gone wrong on that point: Love thyself.

Socrates used to say, "Know thyself." And there have been masters, particularly Sufis, who say, "Be thyself." But there is only one person in the whole history of man, Gautam Buddha, who said, "There is no self. You are an emptiness, utter silence, a non-being."

His message was much opposed by all the traditions, because they all depended in some way or other on the idea of the self. There may have been differences on other points, but on one point they were all totally in agreement -- and that was the existence of the self.

Even people like George Gurdjieff, who used to talk about a very novel idea -- that you are not born with a self, you have to earn it: "Deserve thyself" -- finally, he also ends up with the self.

Gautam Buddha does not make any distinction between the self and the ego -- and there is none. It is just sophistry, linguistic gymnastics, to make such distinctions; then you can discard the ego and save the self. But the self is simply another name of the ego. You are only changing names, and no transformation of being is happening.

Buddha's message is tremendously significant: you are an emptiness; there is no point in you which can say "I."

Looked at from my vision, when I say to you, "Melt, dissolve into existence," I am simply saying the same thing in more positive terms.

Buddha's way of saying it was so negative that many people were stopped, because the question arose, naturally, that if there is no self, why bother? what is there to achieve?

Just to know that you are not?

A whole life of discipline, great effort for meditation, and the result is to know that you are not? The result does not seem to be worth it! At least without the meditation, without the discipline you have some sense of being. It may be wrong, but at least you are not feeling hollow and empty. Knowing that you are not, how will you live? Out of nothingness there is no possibility of any love, of any compassion -- no possibility of anything. Out of nothing comes only nothing.

So the opponents of Buddha described his method as a subtle way of spiritual suicide --

far more dangerous than ordinary suicide, because with ordinary suicide you will survive, you will take a new form, a new birth. But with Buddha you will be committing total suicide, annihilation. There will be no longer anything left of you, and you will be never heard from again, never found again.

You never were in the first place.

Buddhism died in India, and one of the basic reasons was Buddha's way of putting his philosophy. I can understand why he was so insistent on negatives, because all other philosophies were so positivistic, and all their positivism was turning into stronger and stronger egos. He moved to the other extreme, seeing that positivism is going to give you egoistic ideas -- and that is a hindrance between you and existence.

To stop this idea he became totally negative.

You cannot complain about it, because the positivistic ideologies were in a

strange situation: you have to drop the ego to find yourself, you have to drop the ego to find God, you have to drop the ego to become God, you have to drop the ego to find ultimate liberation -- liberation of whom? Liberation of your self.

So there was achievement, and achievement is always of the ego. There is a goal, and the goal is always of the ego.

Seeing all this, Buddha said, "There is no self. There is nothing to be achieved, and there is no goal to be found. You have never existed, you do not exist, you will not exist. You can only imagine, you can only dream that you are."

Chuang Tzu's story is famous. I never get tired of Chuang Tzu because his small absurd stories have so many aspects to explore, each time I can bring it in with a new light, with a new meaning, with a new perspective.

One morning he wakes up, calls all his disciples and says, "I am in great trouble, and you have to help me."

The disciples said, "We have come to be helped by you, and you want our help?" Chuang Tzu said, "It was okay, but this night everything got disturbed: I dreamt that I had become a butterfly."

They all laughed. They said, "All nonsense! Dreaming does not create any mess."

Chuang Tzu said, "It has created, because now I am thinking that perhaps I am a butterfly, thinking, dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu. Now, who am I? And I have to be certain, in order to live, whether I am Chuang Tzu or I am a butterfly."

He looks absurd, but he is really bringing the absurdity of logic of being the surface. If a butterfly cannot dream of being a Chuang Tzu, then how can Chuang Tzu dream of being a butterfly? And if Chuang Tzu can dream of being a butterfly, then there is no logical objection to a butterfly falling asleep under the morning sun on a beautiful flower, and dreaming of herself being Chuang Tzu.

None of his disciples could help him. For centuries Taoists have been using that as a koan, because it is insoluble -- but to Buddha it is not so.

Chuang Tzu and Gautam Buddha were contemporaries, but far away; one was in China, one in India. They were divided by the great Himalayas, so no communication; otherwise Buddha would have solved Chuang Tzu's problem, because he says, "Both are dreams. It does not matter whether Chuang Tzu dreams of being a butterfly, or the butterfly dreams of being a Chuang Tzu -- both are dreams. You simply don't exist."

Many came to Buddha and turned away, because nobody can make nothingness be his life's achievement -- for what? So much discipline and so much great trouble in getting into meditation just to find out that you are not... strange kind of man this Gautam Buddha. We are good as we are, what is the need of digging so deep that you find there is nothing? Even if we are dreaming, at least there is something.

My own approach is just the same, but from a very different angle. I say to you that you don't have a self, because you are part of the universe; you are not nothing. Only the universe can have a self, only the universe can have a center, only the whole can have a soul. My hand cannot have a soul, my fingers cannot have a soul; only the organic unity can have a soul. And we are only parts. We are, but we are only parts; hence we cannot claim that we have a self.

So Buddha is right -- there is no self -- but he is not helping people, poor people, because they cannot figure out all the implications of the statement.

I say to you: You DON'T have a self because you are part of a great self, the whole. You cannot have any separate, private, self of your own. This takes away the negativity, and this does not give you the positive desire for becoming more and more egoistic. It avoids both the extremes and finds a new approach: The universe is, I am not. And whatever happens and appears to be in me, as me, is simply universal.

To call it "I" is to make it too small. That is what makes it untrue; it does not correspond to reality. To call it "self" makes it unreal, because the self is possible only if you are totally independent -- and you are not. Even for a single breath you are not independent.

Even for a single moment you are not independent of the sun, of the moon, of the stars.

The whole is contributing all the time. That's why you are.

To recognize it is not a loss, it is a gain; and yet it is not an egoistic gain. If you can see the subtlety of it... it is a tremendous achievement to understand that you are part of the whole, that the whole belongs to you, that you belong to the whole. And yet with such a great achievement, there is no shadow of the self.

It is one of the most beautiful understandings, that we are not separate -- not separate from the mountains, not separate from the trees, not separate from the ocean, not separate from anybody. We are all connected, interwoven into oneness. The gain is immense, but there is no sense of I, of me, of my, of mine. As far as these things are concerned, there is utter silence and emptiness. But this emptiness is not just empty.

We can empty this room -- we can take all the furniture, everything in the room out -- and anybody coming in will say, "The room is empty." That is one way of looking at it -- but not the right way.

The right way is that now the room is full of emptiness. Before, the emptiness was hindered, cut into parts, because so much furniture, and so many things were not allowing it to be one: now it is one.

Emptiness too is. It is existential; it does not mean that it is not. Somebody empty of jealousy will become full of love, somebody empty of stupidness will become full of intelligence. Each emptiness has its own fullness. And if you miss seeing the fullness that comes with emptiness, absolutely and certainly, then you are blind.

There is no self.

And that's a great relief.

You don't have to love it, you don't have to hate it, you don't have to accept it, you don't have to reject it; you don't have to do anything: it simply is not there. You can relax, and in this relaxation is the melting into the universe.

Then nothingness becomes wholeness.

Buddha was very miserly; he would never say that nothingness is wholeness. He knew it; it is impossible that a man who knows nothingness to such depths will not know the other side of the coin -- wholeness. But he was very miserly -- and for a reason, because the moment you utter "wholeness," immediately the ego

feels at ease.

The ego says, "So there is no fear. You have to attain to wholeness. Nothing was a danger; wholeness gives hope." That's why he was so persistently denying something which is ultimately real. He was leading people towards it, but denying it because the moment you assert it those people start going astray.

But I would like tell you the whole thing.

One day Buddha is passing through a forest. It is fall, and the whole forest is full of dry and dead leaves, and the wind is taking those dry and dead leaves from here and there and making beautiful music; and just to walk on those leaves is a joy.

Ananda asked Buddha, "Can I ask you... there is nobody around, and I rarely get a chance to be alone with you. Although I am twenty-four hours a day with you, somebody is always there, and of course he has preference to ask, to talk, because it is an opportunity for him; I am always with you. But today there is nobody. Can I ask you one thing: Have you said everything that you know? Or have you been keeping a few things back and not revealing them to people?"

Buddha stooped down and filled one of his fists with dead leaves. Ananda said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I am trying to answer your question. What do you see in my hand?" And Anand said, "I see a few leaves."

Buddha said, "What do you see all over the forest?" He said, "Millions and millions of dead leaves."

Buddha said, "What I have said is just this much, and what I have not said is equal to the leaves that are in the whole forest. But my whole desire is to take you to the forest, to leave you to listen to the music of the whole, to walk and run on dry leaves, just like children. I don't want to give you a few leaves in my fist. No, I want to give you the whole.

"And this is my understanding: you may trust me or not, but I trust you. You may change, you may even become an enemy to me, but my trust will remain

the same in you.

Because my trust is not something conditional upon you, it does not depend on you. My trust is my joy, and I want to give the whole."

Nothingness is half of the truth -- immensely relieving, but yet it leaves something like a wound, something unfulfilled. You will be relieved, relaxed, but you will be still looking for something, because emptiness cannot become the end.

The other side, wholeness, has to be made available to you. Then your emptiness is full -- full of wholeness.

Then your nothingness is all. It is not just nothing, but all. These are the moments when contradictory terms are transcended, and whenever you transcend any contradictory terms you become enlightened. Whatever the contradiction may be, all contradictions transcended bring enlightenment to you. And this is one of the fundamental contradictions: emptiness and wholeness.

The transcendence needs nothing but just a silent understanding. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE BEING WITH YOU, I HAVE NOTICED THAT WHEN A PERSON

BECOMES CLOSELY RELATED TO YOU THEY SOMETIMES GET A FIXED

IDEA ABOUT WHO YOU ARE. IT SEEMS LIKE THEY FORGET WHO YOU

REALLY ARE AND EVEN WHY THEY HAVE COME TO YOU.

THIS SITUATION PUZZLES ME, EVEN SCARES ME A LITTLE. WOULD YOU

PLEASE COMMENT?

The mind has a natural tendency to quickly get fixed ideas. It is very much afraid of change, because change means rearrangement. Each time you change something, you have to rearrange your whole inner being.

Mind wants to live with fixed ideas, so when a person comes to me -- and it has been happening for thirty-five years continuously -- he starts loving me. He comes closer, becomes intimate, and then gets a fixed idea. And that's where he misses, because now his fixed idea is going to create trouble.

I am not an idea and I am not fixed. I am changing. I am in absolute agreement with Heraclitus that you cannot step twice in the same river. Translated, it means you cannot meet the same person again. I not only agree with him, I go a little further: I say you cannot step in the same river even once. Again translated to the human world, it means you cannot meet the same person even once, because even while you are meeting him he is changing, you are changing, the whole world is changing.

But once you get a fixed idea you cling to it, and I am constantly going to change.

Tomorrow you will find yourself in a conflict.

So many have come, so many have gone, and this has been one of the basic reasons: they became so much fascinated with their own idea of me that I became secondary. Their idea of me became primary -- and that too, old, dated. I am with them, fresh and young, but I became secondary. And if there was any conflict between their idea and my reality, they went with their idea -- even to the point of becoming enemies to me, telling people that I am no longer the same, I am no longer the person I used to be; they have worshipped a great saint, but I am no longer the same person. They will keep their memory of me deep in their heart, but it is simply a photograph. Photographs don't change.

Once it happened... one of my friends was collecting photographs of me from my childhood -- from wherever he could get them. He had made a big album, and he was showing me. He had done a great deal of work; he had gone to many places, to many people. Wherever he heard that somebody had a picture of me he went there, either to get the original or a copy of it. But while he was showing them to me he felt I was not interested. He stopped and said to me, "You don't seem to be interested."

I said, "I don't seem to be interested because none of these photographs represent me; they only represent that which is dead. The photograph can only represent that which is dead. A photograph is always of the dead; you cannot find a photograph which is of the living."

In Picasso's home there used to be a portrait, a self-portrait of Picasso. He never sold it, at any price, that was the only picture he insisted on not selling. And the more he insisted on not selling, the more and more people were coming, with bigger and bigger offers for the picture. It became a challenge for art collectors.

One beautiful woman had come with the same idea, to purchase the picture. Whatever the price she was ready to pay; she was rich enough. She said to Picasso, "I am willing to pay you as much as you want for your portrait."

Picasso said, "People are mad. For a dead thing they go on harassing me. You can have it without any price, but remember, it is not me."

The woman looked puzzled. She said, "It is not you? What do you mean?"

He said, "If it were me it would have kissed you by now! It does not speak, it does not love, it does not sing, it does not dance. Such a beautiful woman is standing before it and the idiot is not even kissing. You just can take it. It is dead. Remove it from here -- it is not me!"

People get fixed ideas -- and very soon. Ordinarily it goes perfectly well, because you meet only dead people who are not changing, who go on saying the same thing their whole life just like a parrot. They are consistent people; they have all your respect.

I seem to you self-contradictory, inconsistent, for the simple reason that I have decided not to die before I die. I am going to live to the very last breath, so you cannot be certain about me till my last breath. After that you can make any image of me and be satisfied with it. But remember, it will not be me.

To be with me needs courage, and the greatest courage is being capable of seeing the change and moving with it. It may be difficult; it is easy to have one idea once and then be finished.

A Sufi story... Mulla Nasruddin is appointed as the prime minister of a king because he was known to be very wise; somewhat weird was his wisdom, but

still, wisdom is wisdom. The first day when they went to have their dinner together, a certain vegetable called bindhi was made by the cook, stuffed with Eastern spices. It is a delicacy.

The king appreciated the cook, and after that Mulla said, in appreciation of the bindhi,

"This is the most precious vegetable in the world. It gives you long life, it keeps you healthy, it gives you resistance against diseases," and so on and so forth.

The king said, "I never knew that you know so much about vegetables."

The cook heard about it, so he thought if bindhi is such a thing that our king can live long and healthy and young... Next day again bindhi was made, and again Mulla praised it, going even higher than the first day. The third day bindhi was made and Mulla went still higher. The fourth day bindhi was made and Mulla was going higher and higher. The fifth day Mulla even said that bindhi is a divine food -- God eats only bindhi.

But the king was bored. He threw the plate of bindhi and told Mulla Nasruddin, "You are an idiot. Bindhi... and God eats bindhi every day? You will drive me mad!"

Mulla said, "Lord, you are getting unnecessarily hot. I am your servant; you said bindhi was good, I simply followed you, and when I do something I do it perfectly. I am not a servant to bindhi, I am your servant. The truth is that bindhi is the worst thing in the world -- even devils don't eat it. You did well that you threw it."

He threw his plate farther away than the king. He said, "You should always remember that I am your servant, and you are always right. And I am a consistent man; I will remain consistently your servant, whatever happens."

There are people -- almost the whole world -- who live in a certain consistency. It is easier. But when you come close to a man like me, you are going to be in difficulty; either you will have to drop your idea of consistency or you will have to drop me. And people are so infatuated with their own ideas that they can drop me, but they cannot drop their ideas.

My first book was published in 1960. I was staying in someone's home, and the

housewife of the home told me, "My father is a monk, a Jaina monk; he is old, ninety years old. He has been told by the Jaina order that he need not go begging, he is too old, so he remains outside the town in a hut, and we take his food there. But he wants to come to see you -- he insists. We've told him, `We can bring the person you want to see...'" In fact I used to go on that road every morning. She said, "It is very easy for you to go to meet the old man, but he insists, `No, that will not be respectful.' He reads your books; he has stopped reading all other books. And he says, Ìf it was in my power I would declare this man as our twenty-fifth TIRTHANKARA.'"

They have twenty-four tirthankaras in one cycle of existence; in Jainism there are cycles of existence. It is a very mathematical philosophy. Everything moves in the world in cycles -- existence also has a cycle: it begins, it ends, it begins again, it ends again... it is a long, long way. In fact, India has the biggest terms for counting; no other language has such big terms for counting. And it has to use its biggest terms to count how long it takes one cycle to complete.

In one cycle there are twenty-four tirthankaras, just as in one day there are twenty-four hours. For each hour in the cycle of existence there is one master. This old Jaina monk had said something almost sacrilegious: that if it was in his power he would declare me the twenty-fifth tirthankara. He was so infatuated with the book that he said that he had never understood things which the book had made him understand, and he was happy that he had found it before his death.

He came to see me; it must have been nearabout six in the evening when he came. The daughter of the woman I was staying with came and told me, "You should take your bath because your supper is ready."

I said, "Wait, this old man has come from so far." And the old man had already said --

just within the few minutes he had been there -- "You are the twenty-fifth tirthankara.

Perhaps if it is not possible according to existence, then you will be the first tirthankara in the new cycle. Your book has given me so much; all the books that I have read in my whole life -- all the scriptures -- have proved useless."

He had touched my feet. I told him, "It is not good. You are ninety years old, and

a Jaina monk is not supposed to touch anybody's feet."

He said, "I don't care. I consider you as my master." But when he heard the girl asking me to get ready, he was shocked -- because the sun had set, and Jainas don't eat after the sun has set. Immediately everything changed.

He said, "Do you eat after the sunset?"

I said, "Ordinarily, no. But you have come from so far, an old man, and I wanted to be with you. It doesn't matter if it is a little late. I can take my supper a little late."

He said, "Then forgive me. Whatever I have said to you, I want to take it back. You are not even a Jaina, how can you become a Jaina tirthankara? First you should learn how to discipline your life."

He started teaching me. Just a moment before I was the master, and I was going to be the first tirthankara of the new cycle; now I was not even a disciple! And there was absolute condemnation in his mind. The book that he had brought with him -- my book -- he simply left there. He didn't take it with him.

I asked him, "What happened? That book... I may have fallen from your mind, but that book does not eat supper. You can take the book."

He said, "I cannot even touch it. You have written it and you don't know even simple things, that after sunset one cannot eat. If one eats after sunset, one can never know what reality is."

It was really hilarious to see the whole thing; the whole family gathered to see. The husband of the woman was a rare man. He said to me, "Except me, everybody in my family is going to betray you. Only I will remain in the end with you, because I am not a religious person; they all are against me. I don't go to the temple, I don't read their scriptures, I don't follow the discipline of a Jaina

-- not eating in the night, not eating before sunrise, and other things. I will be the last one to still be with you, because whatever you do will not hurt me; I don't make any image, I simply see it.

"Each time you come to my home you are different, and all these people get into difficulty. They are puzzled -- last time you said something and this time you have been saying something which goes against it. Only to me it does not seem

puzzling simply because last time was last time! The water in the Ganges has gone down so much. This time is this time, and to me you are each time beautiful."

And he was right. By and by all the people in his family started getting stuck with some image of me. Only he remained to the very last. He is dead now. Just before dying he said, "Convey to Osho, Ònly you are in my mind right now, when I am leaving my body.'" He was a man who really had guts to go along with me through all the seasons of the year, all the changes of life.

If you really want to be with me you have to stop making images. What is the need to make an image? The need is to cling.

Remain without an image so that your eyes are not cluttered with old images and you are available to me directly, each moment.

This direct immediacy is the true relationship between me and you. Anything less than that is worthless.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY I HEARD YOU SAYING, "JUST LISTENING TO ME CAN BE

ENOUGH TO BE TRANSFORMED." I FELT SO GRATEFUL TO YOU AND

RELAXED FOR A MOMENT. BUT A PART OF ME WAS DOUBTFULLY ASKING,

"IS IT REALLY THAT EASY? CAN I REALLY RELAX AND LET EXISTENCE

TAKE OVER?" MY CHATTERING MIND WANTS TO DO SOMETHING. HOW

CAN I BE MORE PATIENT AND REALLY TRUST?

Just for a moment you had the glimpse.

Now make yourself available more and more... that glimpse comes again and again, becomes deepened. And don't be bothered by your chattering mind.

Use that chattering mind to make new questions. Beyond Psychology

Chapter #17

Chapter title: The world is where the work is 20 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604205

ShortTitle: PSYCHO17

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 76

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE LAND OF MONEY, POWER, DESIGNER DRUGS LIKE "ECSTASY" AND

ENLIGHTENED INSURANCE, MANY OF YOUR SANNYASINS ARE NOW

WORKING, WITH A JOB, AND EARNING THEIR LIVELIHOOD. LAUGHTER, A SENSE OF HUMOR, AND A DEEP LOVE AND GRATITUDE TOWARDS YOU, KEEP US ALL CONNECTED WITH EACH OTHER SOMEHOW. WITH YOUR

PEOPLE IN THE WORLD NOW AND PHYSICALLY SO FAR AWAY, HAS YOUR

WORK WITH US TAKEN ON A NEW SIGNIFICANCE?

It has certainly taken on a new significance, a new turn.

I always wanted my people to be in the world, occasionally coming to me, being with me, refreshing themselves, then going back again to the world -- because the world has to be changed. We are not the ones who renounce the world.

All the religions have been teaching, "Renounce the world." I teach you, transform the world.

Renouncing it is sheer cowardice, and by renouncing it, nothing significant happens -- the world goes on living, producing new generations in the old pattern. And the persons who have renounced the world -- they also don't go through a transformation, for a simple reason that they lose all opportunities where they can test whether they are growing or not. You can sit in the Himalayas for a half a century and you will feel silent, but that silence is not yours; it belongs to the Himalayas. Everything is silent, eternally silent, and there is nobody to disturb you.

Just to get out of the situations where you get disturbed does not mean that you are attaining peacefulness; it simply means you are running away from situations where you are certain that your peace will be disturbed. Renouncing the world has never been my idea; it was always to change it.

Millions of people are suffering, and suffering for stupid reasons. It is absolutely inhuman to turn your back on it and move to the mountains or to the deserts to live peacefully there. That peace is very cheap, very superficial; it has almost no meaning.

Just come back to the world and it will be disturbed, it will be shattered into pieces. And that will be immensely significant to awaken you, that what you have been thinking of as peace, silence, has been just a dream which is shattered by the reality, just as a mirror is shattered when hit by a rock... and it is shattered forever. That mirror you cannot put together again, and all those years that you were enjoying the idea that you have attained peace have gone down the drain.

So my idea has always been: come to me to rejoice, come to me for a holiday. Come to me for pure joy. Be filled with the fragrance, be filled with my presence, then take it back into the world. There is the real test: whether it remains with you or not. If you want to keep it, spread it, share it, and it will grow within you. But whenever you feel somewhere stuck, not growing, I am available -- come back to me, be with me. When you feel the clarity again, go back to the world.

If you start living with me you will be a loser on two counts. One: you will by and by start taking me for granted -- which is a great loss, because I will be available to you. It is dangerous, because the more I am available to you, the less you will become available to me.

I have lived for almost twenty years in Jabalpur in India; it has one of the most beautiful spots in the world. For two to three miles continuously a beautiful river, Narmada, flows between two mountains of marble... just three miles of pure white marble on both sides, high mountains. And the river is deep. On a full-moon night, when the moon comes in the middle and you can see those rocks also reflected into the waters, it creates almost a magical world. I don't think there is anything in the world which can be compared to that magic. It is simply unimaginable.

I insisted again and again to my professor, Doctor S.K. Saxena... I had loved him very much because he was the only teacher I came across who never treated me as a student.

We argued, we fought on small points, and if he was wrong he was always ready

to accept it, and he was grateful.

He had a Ph.D. from America -- he lived his whole life in America, and taught as a professor of Indian philosophy there. Just at the end, he wanted to go back to his own country. He had been searching for someone who could translate his doctoral thesis into Hindi, but he never came across a man who could. And his thesis was really of great significance; just a literal translation would not have done. It needed someone with a deep understanding. The subject matter of the thesis was, "The evolution of consciousness in the East." It was one of the most difficult subjects, very elusive, but he had managed, worked hard, and had come to certain very significant conclusions.

He asked me -- I was only a student -- to translate it. I said, "You should ask some professor, at least someone qualified."

He said, "I have seen many professors, many qualified people; they can translate only literally. And I trust you. Arguing with you I have come to the conclusion that this is the man who can translate it."

It took me two months continuously -- my whole holiday one summer. It was hard work.

And it was harder because there were faults, there were mistakes, and I could not tolerate them. So I pointed out to him, "These are mistakes; out of your seven conclusions, three are wrong, and if it was in my hands I would take your doctorate back. The people who have given you a doctorate know nothing about consciousness."

He said, "I was afraid of this!"

But I said to him, "I have translated it; just in the footnotes I have made my comments where you have gone wrong, why you have gone wrong. Perhaps anybody would have gone wrong. Just as a scholar it was bound to happen, this mistake. I am not a scholar."

I gave the thesis to him and I said, "You look at it, and you tell me how you feel."

He hugged me and told me, "You have done such a tremendous job that I feel ashamed. It looks like my book is a translation and your book is the original!

And I am not going to publish it because that would destroy my whole reputation. You have also made comments which I agree with -- you are right and my examiners were wrong. I was wrong, my examiners were wrong."

So he kept the translated thesis with him and never allowed anyone to see it, never allowed anyone to publish it.

I said, "You wasted my two months unnecessarily!" I said, "Just to compensate, now you have to come with me to Jabalpur." It was one hundred miles from the university where he was professor, to the marble rocks. "I would not let you die without seeing it."

But he said, "Howsoever beautiful it is, I have seen the whole world" -- he had been a world traveler -- "I have seen everything that is worth seeing. What can be there?"

I said, "I cannot describe... you just come with me." And I took him there. He was asking again and again, when we were moving in the boat, "Do you call this the most beautiful place?"

I said, "You just wait. We have not entered into it yet." And then suddenly the boat entered into the world of marble, the mountains of marble. And in the full- moon night they were just so pure, so virgin-pure, and their reflections... The old man had tears in his eyes. He said, "If you had not insisted, I would have missed something in my life. Just take the boat close to the mountains, because I would like to touch then. It looks so illusory! Without touching I cannot believe that what I am seeing is real."

I told the boatman to come close to the mountains. He touched the mountains, and he said, "Now I can leave -- they are real! But for three miles continuously...!"

This man wrote beautifully, spoke beautifully, but still was miserable. And I said,

"Neither your writings mean anything, nor your speeches mean anything. To me what is significant is whether you have been able to drop all the causes of misery. You are so miserable that you drink, just to forget. You are so miserable that you smoke, just to forget. You gamble, just to forget."

Now, this world is not to be renounced. There are beautiful people, there are immensely capable people; they just have never come across a person who could have triggered a process of mutation in their life. So my idea has always been: come to me whenever you start feeling, "Perhaps I am living in an illusion." Then come and just touch me. Let yourself be showered by my presence, my love, so that you can regain confidence, courage, and you can go back to the world.

But the world is where the work is. This is a mystery school.

We prepare people to send them to change the world.

That was from the very beginning my idea of a commune, but because I was silent and in isolation, things went not according to my idea. The commune, rather than becoming a refreshing place, a place for holiday, became just another world of work, of hierarchy, of bureaucracy. All those things that we wanted to change evolved in the commune itself.

So my new phase of work will be that there will be a mystery school. It will live like a commune, but the people will be changing. People will be coming whenever they can manage, whenever they need. There will be a certain number of people who will be permanent, to take care of all the visitors. But the commune will be a continuous pilgrimage place -- where you learn something, where you drink something, and go back to the world.

We are not the renouncers -- we are the revolutionaries. We want to change the whole world.

And in changing the world, you will change yourself. You cannot change anything else unless you go through the change simultaneously.

So on one count it was a loss that if you were staying with me continuously... you are human, and it is a human mistake that one starts taking things for granted. I am available.

I told you about this beautiful spot because in Jabalpur there are thousands of people who have not seen it. It is only thirteen miles away, and I have asked

those people --

professors, doctors, engineers -- "Just go and see!"

And they say, "We can see it anytime. It is there; it is not going to go away."

In the second world war it happened that suddenly, when Adolf Hitler declared that he was going to bomb the Tower of London, thousands of people rushed to see it. They had been living in London their whole life; they were born there. They were passing the Tower every day on the way to their job -- going to the office, coming back home, it was there. People were coming from faraway places to see it, but they were taking it for granted: it is there, so what is the hurry?

It is absolutely certain that thousands of people have been born in London and died in London without seeing the tower. I know about Jabalpur; thousands of people must have died... It is always there, but you are not always there.

As far as the relationship with me is concerned, neither you are forever nor am I forever.

But you can take it for granted, and by and by a fog surrounds your mind. Rather than my presence there is a fog -- which separates you, not connects you.

This was the most disastrous thing that was happening in the commune. People were with me, but they had created a fog around themselves. Seen from the outside, physically they were close, but spiritually they had gone far away.

Secondly, when five thousand or ten thousand people start living in a commune, their whole orientation, why they have come there, changes without their knowledge. They had come there to meditate, to be with me, to be as much as possible open and available to my experience... to enjoy, to relax, to sing, to dance, to be ecstatic. They had all come for that.

But when ten thousand people have to live together, you have to make houses, you have to make roads, you have to prepare food, you have to prepare clothes; a thousand and one things are needed, they go on taking all your time. Slowly, slowly you completely forget the real reason you had come. You go on getting into other things, and the original intention is completely forgotten.

This time I am working in a totally different way, so these two things can be avoided.

To me, I always want to be just a holiday.

To me, I always want to mean nothing but ecstasy, music, dance.

It is good to be only for a few days with me and then go into the world. Take the music, take the ecstasy with you, spread it, and whenever you feel thirsty, come back again.

So it will be a world school of mysticism where people will be coming and going, taking the message to all the nooks and corners of the world. And I don't want you to be in any way associated with anything... road-making, making houses, and creating a dam -- all that is just damned foolery!

I simply want you to remember me as a flower, a fragrance, a flame, a light; associate me with these things. That is going to be the purpose of the new mystery school. I would like to call it the mystery school rather than a commune, because that name has become associated with the commune we had.

I am not in any way thinking that the disappearance of that commune has been a loss. Not at all -- because the way it was functioning, it was a non-ending rut. You would have needed new roads, because new houses were to be built, then new roads would have had to be connected. You would have needed more restaurants, bigger restaurants; you would have needed more clothes... and finally, you were going to have to produce. You would have had to make factories and other productive directions -- because how long can five thousand people live only on donations? Friends can support for a time being, but not forever.

So soon you would have completely forgotten that you are separate from the world. In fact you would have been in more difficulty, because in the other world somebody else takes care of the roads, somebody else takes care of the post office, and somebody else takes care of other things. You have just to work five hours, six hours. In the commune you were working for twelve hours, sometimes fourteen hours; even then the work was unending.

So the resources that were helping the commune were going to be soon exhausted; the commune was going to collapse. I was telling the people who

were in power in the commune, "The commune will collapse, because how long can you live on other people's support? And if you become productive -- you open factories and you start making things

-- then why bother? All these things are being done everywhere else."

This time, from the very beginning, only a small nucleus of people who are absolutely necessary to run the mystery school will be living with me. Everybody else will be a guest for a few days, a few weeks, a few months... as much as he can manage. But his being here with me will be all relaxation, meditation, so he can be rejuvenated. And then he can go back. The whole world is there to work on.

This way we will avoid the most basic thing -- that he does not take me for granted. And the second thing -- that he does not forget his basic intention in coming to me.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

ONCE, WHEN I WAS SITTING WITH A DYING PATIENT -- IT WAS ANNA FREUD, SIGMUND FREUD'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER -- I WAS IN

CONVERSATION WITH HER COMPANION, AND IT HAPPENED I WAS

SPEAKING OF YOU. WHEN, AN HOUR OR SO LATER, MY PATIENT DIED, I RECALLED I HAD MENTIONED YOUR NAME, AND IN RETROSPECT IT FELT

AS IF BECAUSE OF THAT, ROSEWATER HAD BEEN SPRINKLED INTO THE

ATMOSPHERE. IS IT JUST BEING FANCIFUL TO FEEL THAT SIMPLY THE

MENTION OF YOUR NAME, OR EVEN A BRIEF GLIMPSE OF YOUR FACE ON

OUR LOCKETS, CAN IN SOME WAY HAVE AN EFFECT ON PEOPLE?

It all depends on you -- not on my name, not on my face on your locket, but on your heart.

If you are talking about me with deep love, with trust, with reverence, your heart creates a certain milieu. If you are talking not just from the mind but from the very innermost core of your being, it can happen: you can feel as if rosewater has been sprinkled... a great cleanliness, a great freshness, a fragrance. But they are not contained in my name or in my photograph; those are just instrumental. The reality that is created is by your heart.

There are people who are against me, who are saying my name continually, and they will never feel that rosewater has been sprinkled.

The archbishop in Greece has some source of information! As I was arrested, and the whole population of Saint Nicholas was at the airport to show their support to me, alone, with his half a dozen old, almost dead women, he was ringing the bell of victory -- that God had won over the devil, that I was sent specially from hell to destroy God's land, His church, His morality. It depends! To him it may be that my name may give him such electric shocks that he will think that this man must be evil.

Just a few days before, when I was here in the ministry of interior, there were many people -- a great crowd. Nobody recognized me because they were all people either from this country or from Argentina or Brazil where I have never been. But as I was being taken in, one woman immediately pulled back her three children and whispered to them,

"Don't touch him!" She must have been either English or American, afraid that if you touch him, and if he is really the devil or comes from hell, it is going to be disastrous.

So it all depends on you.

But it was good that you were mentioning me when Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter, was dying, and she heard about me with deep love and reverence from you. And she was not an orthodox woman. She was really representative of Sigmund Freud -- the same quality of mind, the same sharpness, the same fearless intelligence to cut through all nonsense, superstitions. She was one of the most significant women of this century -- and sensitive, alert.

I hope that what you felt, she also may have felt a little bit. At the moment of death, nothing could have been a greater gift to her -- and she deserved it.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

AN OLD TIBETAN IS QUOTED AS SAYING:

"LIKE A LION, I HAVE NO FEAR.

LIKE AN ELEPHANT, I HAVE NO ANXIETY. LIKE A MADMAN, I HAVE NO HOPE.

I TELL YOU THE HONEST TRUTH."

OSHO, WHAT IS SO WONDROUS AND PRECIOUS ABOUT THE HONEST TRUTH?

In fact, to use these two words together shows a deep misunderstanding. "Honest truth" implies that there can be dishonest truth.

Truth is enough.

Honesty is a very ordinary quality that comes as a shadow of truth, with many other qualities. There is something immensely important about truth. But remember, never use the words honest truth. That means you have a suspicion: deep down you yourself are not convinced of the truthfulness of truth. To substitute, to compensate, you add honesty to it.

Nothing can be added to truth. Truth is always pure, nude, alone.

And there is great beauty, because truth is the very essence of life, existence, nature.

Except for man, nobody lies. A rosebush cannot lie. It has to produce roses; it

cannot produce marigolds -- it cannot deceive. It is not possible for it to be other than it is.

Except for man, the whole existence lives in truth.

Truth is the religion of the whole of existence -- except man.

And the moment a man also decides to become part of existence, truth becomes his religion. It is the glorious moment.

When I say that except for man everything is living truth -- the ocean, the clouds, the stars, the stones, the flowers -- that everything is nothing but truthfulness, nothing but just itself, with no mask, and only man is capable of deceiving others, of deceiving himself --

it has to be remembered that this is a great opportunity. It has not to be condemned, it has to be praised, because even if a rosebush or a lotus wants to lie, it cannot. Its truth is not freedom; its truth is a bondage. It cannot go beyond the boundaries.

Man has the prerogative, the privilege of being untrue. That means man has the freedom to choose. If he chooses to be truthful, he is not choosing bondage, he is choosing truth and freedom. Freedom is his privilege. In the whole of existence, nobody else has freedom.

But there are dangers when you have opportunities. When you have freedom, you can go wrong. No rose can go wrong, no rock can go wrong. You can go wrong; hence a deep awareness of each act, of each thought, of each feeling, has to penetrate you.

To me that is what is the meaning of a seeker of truth.

Only man needs to seek it; everybody has already got it, but the glory of freedom is not there. You have to seek it, and find it. And in that very seeking and finding you are glorious, you are the very crown of existence.

But truth is enough.

Don't burden it with honesty or anything else.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN I THANK YOU?

There is no need: just be what you can be. Allow yourself to blossom.

Enjoy in glory -- and that will be thankfulness enough.

Anybody who blossoms close to me has already shown his gratitude. Saying it would be profane. Saying it would destroy the beauty of the unsaid, the silent.

If you have really come to a point when you want to say thank you to me, then don't say it; I will understand it. By saying it, you will be bringing down something from a very high level.

You will be surprised to know that in India, one of the oldest civilizations in the world, perhaps the oldest, you rarely hear anybody thanking somebody else. No child will thank his parents; no parents will thank their child. In the West that is part of your formal training: on each occasion say, "Thank you."

I was thinking about the difference, why it has not developed in this old civilization. And I understand... what I said, that is the reason. If you are really thankful, then saying it is useless, because you cannot put your heart into it. And if you are not thankful, then why unnecessarily destroy a beautiful word?

And to make it a formality means you are making it an unconscious part of your behavior. So just as somebody presents you with a cup of coffee and you say thank you, if somebody brings enlightenment to your consciousness, are you going to use the same words? It is absolutely impossible to use those same words; they have become so formal.

You say them without even thinking about it. You simply say them like a robot.

It is a good question, to ask me how to say thank you to me, because there must be a great feeling of gratitude, but all words seem to be meaningless. Thankfulness, gratefulness --

they all seem to be too small. What has happened to you is so vast.

My suggestion is: you need not give me any thank you. I will take it myself.

It will be so apparent through your eyes and through your face, but there will be no need to say it. I will simply understand it from there.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #18

Chapter title: Terrorism is in your unconscious 21 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604210

ShortTitle: PSYCHO18

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 94

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I'VE HEARD THAT IN EUROPE THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IS STRIKING

FEAR IN EVERYONE. AIRPLANES ARE DELAYED BY EXTRAORDINARY

SECURITY MEASURES, MANY OF THE SEATS ARE EMPTY, AND SOME

AIRPORTS ARE CLOSING. PEOPLE ARE EVEN THINKING TWICE ABOUT

GOING OUT IN THE EVENING. AND ALL THIS IS MORE PREVALENT SINCE

THE RECENT BOMBING OF LIBYA. IS THE RISE OF TERRORISM OVER THE

LAST DECADE IN SOME WAY SYMBOLIC OF WHAT IS HAPPENING TO SOCIETY IN GENERAL?

Everything is deeply related with everything else that happens.

The event of terrorism is certainly related with what is happening in the society. The society is falling apart. Its old order, discipline, morality, religion, everything has been found to be wrongly based. It has lost its power over people's conscience.

Terrorism simply symbolizes that to destroy human beings does not matter, that there is nothing in human beings which is indestructible, that it is all matter -- and you cannot kill matter, you can only change its form. Once man is taken to be only a combination of matter, and no place is given for a spiritual being inside him, then to kill becomes just play.

The nations are irrelevant because of nuclear weapons. If the whole world can be destroyed together within minutes the alternative can only be that the whole world should be together. Now it cannot remain divided; its division is dangerous, because division can become war any moment. The division cannot be tolerated. Only one war is enough to destroy everything, and there is not much time left for man to understand that we should create a world where the very possibility of war does not exist.

Terrorism has many undercurrents. One is that because of nuclear weapons, the nations are pouring their energy into that field, thinking that the old weapons are out of date.

They are out of date, but individuals can start using them. And you cannot use nuclear weapons against individuals -- that would be simply stupid. One individual terrorist throws a bomb -- it does not justify that a nuclear missile should be sent.

What I want to emphasize is that the nuclear weapon has given individual people a certain freedom to use old weapons, a freedom which was not possible in the old days because the governments were also using the same weapons.

Now the governments are concentrated on destroying the old weapons, throwing them in the ocean, selling them to countries which are poor and cannot afford nuclear weapons.

And all those terrorists are coming from these poor countries, with the same weapons that have been sold to their countries. And they have a strange protection: you cannot use nuclear weapons against them, you cannot throw atom bombs at them.

They can throw bombs at you and you are suddenly impotent. You have a vast amount of atomic bombs, nuclear bombs in your hands -- but sometimes where a needle is useful, a sword may not be of any use. You may have the sword; that does not mean that you are necessarily in a superior position to the man who has a needle, because there are purposes in which only the needle will work -- the sword will not be of any use.

Those small weapons from the old times were piling up, and the big powers had to dispose of them -- either drown them in the ocean.… That meant so much money, so much manpower, so much energy had gone to waste; economically it was disastrous. But just to go on piling them up was also economically impossible. How many weapons can you gather? There is a limit. And when you get a new way of killing people more efficiently, then the old simply has to be got rid of.

It was thought that it would be better to sell them to poor countries. Poor countries cannot create nuclear weapons -- it costs too much. And these weapons were coming cheap -- as help; they accepted it, but these weapons cannot be used in a war. In a war these weapons are already useless. But nobody has seen the possibility that these weapons can be used individually, and a new phenomenon -- terrorism -- can come out of it.

Now, a terrorist has a strange power, even over the greatest powers. He can throw bombs at the White House without any fear, because what you have is too big and you cannot throw it at him. And these are the weapons sold by you! But the phenomenon was not conceived of, because human psychology is not understood.

My understanding is that the way he has lived, man needs every ten to twelve years -- a war. He accumulates so much anger, so much rage, so much violence, that nothing short of a war will give him release. So, war after war, there is a gap of only ten to fifteen years. That gap is a kind of relaxation. But again you start accumulating, because the same psychology is working -- the same jealousy, the same violence.

And man is basically a hunter; he is not by nature vegetarian. First he became a hunter, and for thousands of years he was just a meat-eater, and cannibalism was prevalent everywhere. To eat human beings caught from the opposing tribe you were fighting with was perfectly ethical. All that is carried in the unconscious of humanity.

Religions have imposed things on man very superficially; his unconscious is not in agreement. Every man is living in a disagreement with himself. So whenever he can find a chance -- for a beautiful cause; freedom, democracy, socialism -- any beautiful word can become an umbrella to hide his ugly unconscious, which simply wants to destroy and enjoys destruction.

Now the world war has become almost impossible; otherwise there would have been no terrorism. Enough time has passed since the second world war; the third world war should have happened nearabout 1960. It has not happened. This has been the routine for the whole of history, and man is programmed for it.

It has been observed by psychologists that in wartime people are more happy than in peacetime. In wartime their life has a thrill; in peacetime they look bored. In wartime, early in the morning they are searching for the newspaper, listening to the radio. Things may be happening far away, but they are excited. Something in them feels an affinity.

A war that should have happened somewhere between 1955 and 1960 has not happened, and man is burdened with the desire to kill, with the desire to destroy. It is just that he wants good names for it.

Terrorism is going to become bigger and bigger, because the third world war is almost impossible. And the stupid politicians have no other alternative. Terrorism simply means that what was being done on a social scale now has to be done individually. It will grow.

It can only be prevented if we change the very base of human understanding -- which is a Himalayan task; more so because these same people whom you want to change will fight you; they won't allow you to change them easily.

In fact they love bloodshed; they don't have the courage to say so. In one of the existentialist's novels, there is a beautiful incident which can almost be said to be true. A man is presented before the court because he has killed a stranger who was sitting on the beach. He had never seen the stranger. He did not kill him for money. He does not yet know how that man looked, because he killed him from the back, just with a big knife.

They had never met -- there was no question of enmity. They were not even familiar; they had not even seen each other's faces.

The magistrate could not figure it out, and he asked the murderer, "Why did you do it?"

He said, "When I stabbed that man with a knife, and a fountain of blood came out of his back, that was one of the most beautiful moments I have ever known. I know that the price will be my death, but I am ready to pay for it; it was worth it. My whole life I have lived in boredom -- no excitement, no adventure. Finally I had to decide to do something.

And this act has made me world famous; my picture is in every newspaper. And I am perfectly happy that I did it."

There was no need for any evidence. The man was not denying -- on the contrary, he was glorifying it. But the court has its own routine way -- witnesses still have to be produced; just his word cannot be accepted. He may have be lying, he may not have killed the man.

Nobody saw him -- there was not a single eyewitness -- so circumstantial evidences had to be presented by the police.

One of them was that possibly this man has killed according to his past life and

his background. When he was young, his mother died. And when he heard that his mother had died, he said, "Shit! That woman will not leave me even while dying! It is Sunday, and I have booked tickets for the theater with my girlfriend. But I knew she would do something to destroy my whole day -- and she has destroyed it."

His mother has died and he is saying that she has destroyed his Sunday! He was going to the theater with his girlfriend, and now he has to go to the funeral. And the people who heard his reaction were shocked. They said, "This is not right, what are you saying?"

He said, "What? What is right and what is wrong? Couldn't she die on any other day?

There are seven days in the week -- from Monday to Saturday, she could have died any day. But you don't know my mother -- I know her. She is a bitch! She did it on purpose."

The second evidence was that he attended the funeral, and in the evening he was found dancing with his girlfriend in a disco. And somebody asked, "What! What are you doing?

Your mother has just died."

He said, "So what? Do you mean now I can never dance again? My mother is never going to be alive, she will remain dead; so what does it matter whether I dance after six hours, eight hours, eight months, eight years? What does it matter? -- she is dead. And I have to dance and I have to live and I have to love, in spite of her death. If everybody stopped living with the death of their mother, with the death of their father, then there would be no dance in the world, no song in the world."

His logic is very right. He is saying, "Where do you draw the demarcation line? After how many hours can I dance? -- twelve hours, fourteen hours, six weeks? Where will you draw the line? on what grounds? What is the criterion? So it doesn't matter. One thing is certain: whenever I dance I will be dancing after the death of my mother, so I decided to dance today. Why wait for tomorrow?"

Such circumstantial evidences are presented to the court -- that this man is strange, he can do such an act. But if you look closely at this poor man, you will

not feel angry at him; you will feel very compassionate. Now, it is not his fault that his mother has died; and anyway, he has to dance some day, so it makes no difference. You cannot blame this man for saying ugly things: "She deliberately died on Sunday to spoil my joy," because his whole experience of life must have been that she was again and again spoiling any possibility of joy. This was the last conclusion: "Even in death she will not leave me."

And you cannot condemn the man for killing a stranger... because he is not a thief; he did not take anything from him. He is not an enemy; he did not even see who was the man he was killing. He was simply bored with life and he wanted to do something that made him feel significant, important. He is happy that all the newspapers have his photo. If they had published his photo before, he would not have killed; but they waited -- until he kills they will not publish his photo. And he wanted to be a celebrity... just ordinary human desires.

And he was ready to pay with his life to become, at least for one day, known to the whole world, recognized by everybody. Until we change the basic grounds of humanity, terrorism is going to become more and more a normal, everyday affair. It will happen in the airplanes, it will happen in the buses. It will start happening in the cars. It will start happening to strangers. Somebody will suddenly come and shoot you -- not that you have done anything to him, but just, the hunter is back.

The hunter was satisfied in the war. Now the war has stopped and perhaps there is no possibility for it.

The hunter is back; now we cannot fight collectively. Each individual has to do something to release his own steam.

Things are interconnected. The first thing that has to be changed is that man should be made more rejoicing -- which all the religions have killed. The real criminals are not caught. These are the victims, the terrorists and other criminals.

It is all the religions who are the real criminals, because they have destroyed all possibilities of rejoicing. They have destroyed the possibility of enjoying small things of life; they have condemned everything that nature provides you to make you happy, to make you feel excited, feel pleasant.

They have taken everything away; and if they have not been able to take a few things away because they are so ingrained in your biology -- like sex -- they

have at least been able to poison them.

Friedrich Nietzsche, according to me, is one of the greatest seers of the Western world; his eyes really go penetrating to the very root of a problem. But because others could not see it -- their eyes were not so penetrating, nor was their intelligence so sharp -- the man lived alone, abandoned, isolated, unloved, unrespected.

He says in one of his statements that man has been taught by religions to condemn sex, to renounce sex. Religion has not been able to manage it; and man has tried hard but has failed, because it is so deeply rooted in his biology -- it constitutes his whole body. He is born out of sex -- how can he get rid of it except by committing suicide?

So man has tried, and religions have helped him to get rid of it -- thousands of disciplines and strategies have been used. The total result is that sex is there, but poisoned. That word poisoned is a tremendous insight. Religions have not been able to take it away, but they have been certainly successful in poisoning it.

And the same is the situation about other things: religions are condemning your living in comfort. Now, a man who is living in comfort and luxury cannot become a terrorist.

Religions have condemned riches, praised poverty; now, a man who is rich cannot be a terrorist. Only the "blessed ones" who are poor can be terrorists -- because they have nothing to lose, and they are boiling up against the whole of society because others have things they don't have.

Religions have been trying to console them. But then came communism -- a materialist religion -- which provoked people and said to them, "Your old religions are all opium to the people, and it is not because of your evil actions in this life or in past lives that you are suffering poverty. It is because of the evil exploitation of the bourgeois, the super-rich that you are suffering."

The last sentence in Karl Marx's COMMUNIST MANIFESTO is: Proletariats of the whole world unite; you have nothing to lose and you have the whole world to gain.

"You are already poor, hungry, naked -- so what can you lose? Your death will not make you more miserable than your life is making you. So why not take a

chance and destroy those people who have taken everything away from you. And take those things back, distribute them."

What religions have somehow been consoling people with -- although it was wrong and it was cunning and it was a lie, but it kept people in a state of being half asleep --

communism suddenly made them aware of. That means this world is now never going to be peaceful if we don't withdraw all the rotten ideas that have been implanted in man.

The first are the religions -- their values should be removed so that man can smile again, can laugh again, can rejoice again, can be natural again.

Second, what communism is saying has to be put clearly before the people -- that it is psychologically wrong. You are falling from one trap into another. No two men are equal; hence the idea of equality is nonsense. And if you decide to be equal then you have to accept a dictatorship of the proletariat. That means you have to lose your freedom.

First the church took away your freedom, the God took away your freedom. Now communism replaces your church, and it will take away your freedom.

And without freedom you cannot rejoice.

You live in fear, not in joy. If we can clean the basement of the human mind's unconscious... and that's what my work is. It can be cleaned away.

The terrorism is not in the bombs, in your hands; the terrorism is in your unconscious.

Otherwise, this state of affairs is going to grow more bitter. And it seems all kinds of blind people have bombs in their hands and are throwing them at random.

The third world war would have released people for ten or, fifteen years. But the third world war cannot happen because if it happens it won't relieve people, it will only destroy people.

So individual violence will increase -- it is increasing. And all your governments

and all your religions will go on perpetuating the old strategies without understanding the new situation.

The new situation is that every human being needs to go through therapies, needs to understand his unconscious intentions, needs to go through meditations so that he can calm down, become cool -- and look towards the world with a new perspective, of silence.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

WHENEVER IN LIFE I'VE HAD A BOUT OF FEELING MISERABLE, A POINT

ALWAYS COMES WHEN I JUST LAUGH AT MYSELF, FEEL FREEDOM

RETURN, AND SEE THAT ALL I HAD DONE WAS TO STOP LOVING MYSELF.

THIS INSIGHT IN ITSELF IS PERHAPS NOT PARTICULARLY PROFOUND BUT

AT THE MOMENT OF ITS REALIZATION, I AM ALWAYS AMAZED TO SEE

HOW EASILY, FOR WHAT, AND FOR HOW LONG I AM WILLING TO FORSAKE

MY OWN SELF-LOVE. IS THIS AT THE ROOTS OF MOST PEOPLE'S SUFFERING, OR IS IT JUST MY TRIP?

It is not just your trip. It is at the root of most people's suffering -- but not with the meaning you are giving to it.

It is not because you have stopped loving yourself that you fall in misery.

It is that you have created a self which does not exist at all, so sometimes this unreal self suffers misery in loving others, because out of unreality, love is not

possible. And it is not on one side: two unrealities trying to love each other... sooner or later this arrangement is going to fail. When this arrangement fails, you fall upon yourself -- there is nowhere else to go. So you think, "I had forgotten to love myself."

In a way it is a small relief, at least instead of two unrealities now you have only one. But what will you do by loving yourself? And how long you can manage to remain loving yourself? It is unreal; it won't allow you to see it for a long time because that is dangerous: if you see it for a long time, this so-called self will disappear, and that will be a real freedom from misery.

Love will remain, unaddressed, to someone else or to yourself.

Love will remain unaddressed, because there is nobody to address, and when love is there unaddressed, there is great bliss.

But this unreal self won't allow you much time. Soon you will be falling in love with someone else again, because the unreal self needs the support of other unrealities. So people fall in love and fall out of love and fall in love and fall out of love -- and strange is the phenomenon, that dozens of times they do it and still they don't see the point. They are miserable when they are in love with someone else; they are miserable when they are alone and not in love, a bit relieved -- for the moment.

In India, when a person dies, people carry him on a stretcher-like construction on their shoulders. But they go on changing it on the way, on their shoulders -- from this shoulder they will put it on the right, and after a few minutes they will again change and put it on the left. It feels a relief when you put it from the left shoulder onto the right. Nothing is being changed -- the weight is there, and on you, but this left shoulder feels a kind of relief. It is momentary, because soon the right shoulder will start hurting so you will have to change it again.

And this is what your life is. You go on changing the other, thinking that perhaps this woman, this man, will bring you the paradise you have always been longing for. But everybody brings hell -- without fail! And nobody is to be condemned for it, because they are doing exactly the same as you are doing: they are carrying an unreal self out of which nothing can grow. It cannot blossom. It is empty -- decorated, but inside empty and hollow.

So when you see somebody from far away he or she is appealing. As you come

closer the appeal becomes less. When you meet, it is not a meeting but a clash. And suddenly you see the other person is empty, and you have been deceived, cheated, because the other person has nothing which had been promised.

The same is the situation of the other person about you. All promises fail, and you become a burden to each other, a misery to each other, a sadness to each other, destructive to each other. You separate. For a little while there is relief, but your inner unreality cannot leave you in this state for long; soon you will be searching for another woman, another man, and you will get into the same trap. Only the faces are different; the inner reality is the same -- empty.

If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand --

you don't have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief. And if you don't have a self, the need for the other disappears. It was the need of the unreal self to go on being nourished by the other. You don't need the other.

And listen carefully: when you don't need the other, you can love. And that love will not bring misery.

Going beyond needs, demands, desires, love becomes a very soft sharing, a great understanding. When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable. You know that they are suffering from an unreal self, and they are throwing their misery on anybody who is close by.

Your love will make you capable of helping the person you love to get rid of the self.

I know only of one present.…

Love can present you only with one thing: That you are not, that your self is just imaginary. This realization between two persons suddenly makes them one, because two nothings cannot be two. Two somethings will be two, but two nothings cannot be two: Two nothings start melting and merging. They are bound to become one.

For example, if we are sitting here.… If everybody is an ego then there are so many people; they can be counted. But there are moments I can see -- perhaps many times you see them too -- when there is utter silence. Then you cannot count how many people are here. There is only one consciousness, one silence, one nothingness, one selflessness.

And only in that state can two persons live in eternal joy, can any group live in tremendous beauty; the whole of humanity can live in great benediction.

But try to see the self, and you will not find it.

Not finding it is of great importance. I have told many times the story of Bodhidharma and his meeting with the Chinese emperor Wu -- a very strange meeting, very fruitful.

Emperor Wu perhaps was at that time the greatest emperor in the world; he ruled all over China, Mongolia, Korea, the whole of Asia, except India.

He became convinced of the truth of Gautam Buddha's teachings, but the people who had brought the message of Buddha were scholars. None of them were mystics. And then the news came that Bodhidharma was coming, and there was a great thrill all over the land.

Because Emperor Wu had become influenced by Gautam Buddha, that had made his whole empire influenced by the same teaching. And now a real mystic, a buddha, was coming. It was such a great joy!

Emperor Wu had never before come to the boundaries where India and China meet to receive anyone. With great respect he welcomed Bodhidharma, and he asked , "I have been asking all the monks and the scholars who have been coming, but nobody has been of any help -- I have tried everything. But how to get rid of this self? And Buddha says, Ùnless you become a no-self, your misery cannot end.'"

He was sincere. Bodhidharma looked into his eyes, and he said, "I will be staying by the side of the river near the mountain in the temple. Tomorrow morning, at four o'clock exactly, you come and I will finish this self forever. But remember, you are not to bring any arms with you, any guards with you; you have to come alone."

Wu was a little worried -- the man was strange! "How can he just destroy my self so quickly? It takes -- it has been told by the scholars -- lives and lives of meditation; then the self disappears. This man is weird! And he is wanting me in the darkness, early in the morning at four o'clock, alone, even without a sword, no guards, no other companion.

This man seems to be strange -- he could do anything.

And what does he mean that he will kill the self forever? He can kill me, but how will he kill the self?"

The whole night he could not sleep. He changed his mind again and again -- to go or not to go? But there was something in the man's eyes, and there was something in his voice, and there was some aura of authority when he said, "Just come at four o'clock sharp, and I will finish this self forever! You need not be worried about it."

What he said looked absurd, but the way he said it, and the way he looked were so authoritative: he knows what he is saying. Finally Wu had to decide to go. He decided to risk, "At the most he can kill me -- what else? And I have tried everything. I cannot attain this no-self, and without attaining this no-self there is no end to misery."

He knocked on the temple door, and Bodhidharma said, "I knew you would come; I knew also that the whole night you would be changing your mind. But that does not matter --

you have come. Now sit down in the lotus posture, close your eyes, and I am going to sit in front of you.

"The moment you find, inside, your self, catch hold of it so I can kill it. Just catch hold of it tightly and tell me that you have caught it, and I will kill it and it will be finished. It is a question of minutes."

Wu was a little afraid. Bodhidharma looked like a madman; he is painted like a madman -

- he was not like that, but the paintings are symbolic. That's the impression he must have left on people. It was not his real face, but that must be the face that people were remembering.

He was sitting with his big staff in front of Wu, and he said to him, "Don't miss a second.

Just the moment you catch hold of it -- search inside every nook and corner -- open your eyes and then tell me that you have caught it, and I will finish it."

Then there was silence. One hour passed, two hours passed and the sun was rising, and Wu was a different man. In those two hours he looked inside himself, in every nook and corner. He had to look -- that man was sitting there; he could have hit him on his head with his staff.

You could expect anything; whatever.… He was not a man of etiquette, manner; he was not part of Wu's court, so he had to look intently, intensively. And as he looked, he became relaxed, because it was nowhere. And in looking for it, all thoughts disappeared.

The search was so intense that his whole energy was involved in it; there was nothing left to think and desire, and this and that.

As the sun was rising Bodhidharma saw Wu's face; he was not the same man -- such silence, such depth. He had disappeared. Bodhidharma shook him and told him, "Open your eyes -- it is not there. I don't have to kill it. I am a nonviolent man, I don't kill anything! But this self does not exist. Because you never look at it, it goes on existing. It is in your not looking for it, in your unawareness, that it exists. Now it is gone."

Two hours had passed, and Wu was immensely glad. He had never tasted such sweetness, such freshness, such newness, such beauty. And he was not.

Bodhidharma had fulfilled his promise. Emperor Wu bowed down, touched his feet and said, "Please forgive me thinking that you are mad, thinking that you don't know manners, thinking that you you are weird, thinking that you you can be dangerous. I have never seen a more compassionate man than you... I am totally fulfilled. Now there is no question in me."

Emperor Wu said that when he died, on his grave, the memorial, Bodhidharma's statement should be engraved in gold, for the people in centuries to come to know..."There was a man who looked mad, but who was capable of doing miracles.

Without doing anything he helped me to be a non-self. And since then everything has changed. Everything is the same but I am not the same, and life has become just a pure song of silence."

Beyond Psychology Chapter #19

Chapter title: Step aside, let the mind pass 21 April 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8604215

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO19

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

81

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SOMETIMES, WHEN DARK SIDES OF MY MIND COME UP, IT REALLY

SCARES ME. IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS JUST

THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF THE BRIGHT ONES. I FEEL DIRTY AND GUILTY

AND NOT WORTHY OF SITTING WITH YOU IN YOUR IMMACULATE PRESENCE.

I WANT TO FACE ALL FACETS OF MY MIND AND ACCEPT THEM BECAUSE I HEAR YOU OFTEN SAY THAT ACCEPTANCE IS THE CONDITION TO

TRANSCEND THE MIND.

CAN YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT ACCEPTANCE?

The basic thing to be understood is that you are not the mind -- neither the bright one nor the dark one. If you get identified with the beautiful part, then it is impossible to disidentify yourself from the ugly part; they are two sides of the same coin. You can have it whole, or you can throw it away whole, but you cannot divide it.

And the whole anxiety of man is that he wants to choose that which looks beautiful, bright; he wants to choose all the silver linings, leaving the dark cloud behind. But he does not know that silver linings cannot exist without the dark cloud. The dark cloud is the background, absolutely necessary for silver linings to show.

Choosing is anxiety.

Choosing is creating trouble for yourself.

Being choiceless means: the mind is there and it has a dark side and it has a bright side --

so what? What has it to do with you? Why should you be worried about it?

The moment you are not choosing, all worry disappears. A great acceptance

arises, that this is how the mind has to be, this is the nature of the mind -- and it is not your problem, because you are not the mind. If you were the mind, there would have been no problem at all. Then who would choose and who would think of transcending? And who would try to accept and understand acceptance?

You are separate, totally separate.

You are only a witness and nothing else.

But you are being an observer who gets identified with anything that he finds pleasant --

and forgets that the unpleasant is coming just behind it as a shadow. You are not troubled by the pleasant side -- you rejoice in it. The trouble comes when the polar opposite asserts -- then you are torn apart.

But you started the whole trouble. Falling from being just a witness, you became identified. The biblical story of the fall is just a fiction. But this is the real fall -- the fall from being a witness into getting identified with something and losing your witnessing.

Just try once in a while: Let the mind be whatever it is. Remember, you are not it. And you are going to have a great surprise. As you are less identified, the mind starts becoming less powerful, because its power comes from your identification; it sucks your blood. But when you start standing aloof and away, the mind starts shrinking.

The day you are completely unidentified with the mind, even for a single moment, there is the revelation: mind simply dies; it is no longer there. Where it was so full, where it was so continuous -- day in, day out, waking, sleeping, it was there -- suddenly it is not there. You look all around and it is emptiness, it is nothingness.

And with the mind disappears the self. Then there is only a certain quality of awareness, with no "I" in it. At the most you can call it something similar to "am-ness," but not "Iness." To be even more exact, it is "is-ness" because even in am-ness some shadow of the

"I" is still there. The moment you know its is-ness, it has become universal.

With the disappearance of the mind disappears the self. And so many things disappear which were so important to you, so troublesome to you. You were trying to solve them and they were becoming more and more complicated; everything was a problem, an anxiety, and there seemed to be no way out.

I remind you of the story The Goose is Out. It is concerned with the mind and your isness.

The master tells the disciple to meditate on a koan: A small goose is put into a bottle, fed and nourished. The goose goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger, and fills the whole bottle. Now it is too big; it cannot come out of the bottle's mouth -- the mouth is too small. And the koan is that you have to bring the goose out without destroying the bottle, without killing the goose.

Now it is mind-boggling.

What can you do? The goose is too big; you cannot take it out unless you break the bottle, but that is not allowed. Or you can bring it out by killing it; then you don't care whether it comes out alive or dead. That is not allowed either.

Day in, day out, the disciple meditates, finds no way, thinks this way and that way -- but in fact there is no way. Tired, utterly exhausted, a sudden revelation... suddenly he understands that the master cannot be interested in the bottle and the goose; they must represent something else. The bottle is the mind, you are the goose... and with witnessing, it is possible. Without being in the mind, you can become identified with it so much that you start feeling you are in it!

He runs to the master to say that the goose is out. And the master says, "You have understood it. Now keep it out. It has never been in."

If you go on struggling with the goose and the bottle, there is no way for you to solve it.

It is the realization that, "It must represent something else; otherwise the master cannot give it to me. And what can it be?" -- because the whole function between the master and the disciple, the whole business is about the mind and awareness.

Awareness is the goose which is not in the bottle of the mind. But you are believing that it is in it and asking everyone how to get it out. And there are idiots who will help you, with techniques, to get out of it. I call them idiots

because they have not understood the thing at all.

The goose is out, has never been in, so the question of bringing it out does not arise.

Mind is just a procession of thoughts passing in front of you on the screen of the brain.

You are an observer. But you start getting identified with beautiful things -- those are bribes. And once you get caught in the beautiful things you are also caught in the ugly things, because mind cannot exist without duality.

Awareness cannot exist with duality, and mind cannot exist without duality. Awareness is non-dual, and mind is dual.

So just watch. I don't teach you any solutions. I teach you the solution: Just get back a little and watch.

Create a distance between you and your mind.

Whether it is good, beautiful, delicious, something that you would like to enjoy closely, or it is ugly -- remain as far away as possible. Look at it just the way you look at a film.

But people get identified even with films.

I have seen, when I was young... I have not seen any movie for a long time. But I have seen people weeping, tears coming down -- and nothing is happening! It is good that in a movie house it is dark; it saves them from feeling embarrassed. I used to ask my father,

"Did you see? The fellow by your side was crying!"

He said, "The whole hall was crying. The scene was such..."

"But," I said, "there is only a screen and nothing else. Nobody is killed, there is no tragedy happening -- just a projection of a film, just pictures moving on the screen. And people laugh, and people weep, and for three hours they are almost lost. They become part of the movie, they become identified with some

character..."

My father said to me, "If you are raising questions about people's reactions then you cannot enjoy the film."

I said, "I can enjoy the film, but I don't want to cry; I don't see any enjoyment in it. I can see it as a film, but I don't want to become a part of it. These people are all becoming a part of it."

My grandfather had an old barber who was an opium addict. For something which was possible to do in five minutes he would take two hours, and he would talk continuously.

But they were old friends from their childhood. I can still see my grandfather sitting in the chair of the old barber... And he was a lovely talker. These opium addicts have a certain quality, a beauty of talking, telling stories about themselves, what is happening day-to-day; it is true.

My grandfather would simply be saying, "Yes, right, that's great..."

I said to him one day, "About everything you go on saying, `Yes, right, it is great.'

Sometimes he is talking nonsense, simply irrelevant."

He said, "What do you want? That man is an opium addict..."

In India razor blades are not used; things almost like six-inch long knives are used as razor blades. "Now what do you want me to say? -- with that man who has a knife, a sharp knife in his hand, just on my throat. To say no to him... he will kill me! And he knows it. He sometimes tells me, `You never say no. You always say yes, you always say great.' And I have told him, `You should understand that you are always under the influence of opium. It is impossible to talk with you, to discuss with you or to disagree with you. You have a knife on my throat, and you want me to say no to something?'"

I said, "Then why don't you change from this man? There are so many other barbers, and this man takes two hours for a five-minute job. Sometimes he takes half your beard and then he says, Ì am coming back, you sit.' And he is gone for an hour, because he gets involved in a discussion with somebody and forgets

completely that a customer is sitting in his chair. Then he comes and says, `My God, so you are still sitting here?'"

And my grandfather would say, "What can I do? I cannot go home with half the beard shaved. You just complete it. Where have you been?"

The barber would say, "I got in such a good argument with somebody that I completely forgot about you. It is good that that man had to go; otherwise you would have been sitting here the whole day. And sometimes I don't even close the shop at night. I simply go home, just forget to close, and once in a while a customer is still sitting in the chair and I am sleeping. Somebody has to say to him, `Now you can go; that man will not be seen again before tomorrow morning. He is fast asleep in his home. He has forgotten to close his shop and he has forgotten about you.'"

And if you were angry... Sometimes new people got into his shop, and became angry. He would say, "Calm down. At the most you need not pay me. I have cut only half of the beard; you can just go. I don't want to argue. You need not pay me; I don't ask even half payment."

But nobody can leave his chair with half the beard shaved -- or half the head shaved! You ask him just to shave the beard and he starts shaving your head, and by the time you notice, he has already done the job. So he asks you, "Now what do you want? -- because almost one-fourth of the work is done. If you want to keep it this way I can leave it; otherwise I can finish it. But I will not charge for it because if you say that you never wanted it to be cut, then it is my fault and I should take the punishment. I will not charge you."

This man was dangerous! But my grandfather used to say, "He is dangerous but he is lovely and I have become so much identified with him that I cannot conceive that if he dies before me I will be able to go to another barber's shop. I cannot conceive... for my whole life he has been my barber. The identity has become so deep that I may stop shaving my beard, but I cannot change my barber."

But fortunately my grandfather died before the opium-addict barber.

You get identified with anything. People get identified with persons and then they create misery for themselves. They get identified with things, then they get miserable if that thing is missing.

Identification is the root cause of your misery. And every identification is identification with the mind.

Just step aside, let the mind pass.

And soon you will be able to see that there is no problem at all -- the goose is out. You don't have to break the bottle, you don't have to kill the goose either.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

HOW BEST TO DEAL WITH FEAR? IT AFFECTS ME VARIOUSLY... FROM A VAGUE UNEASINESS OR KNOTTED STOMACH TO A DIZZYING PANIC, AS IF

THE WORLD IS ENDING. WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHERE DOES IT GO?

It is the same question that I was just answering. All your fears are by-products of identification.

You love a woman and with the love, in the same parcel comes fear: she may leave you --

she has already left somebody and come with you. There is a precedent; perhaps she will do the same to you. There is fear, you feel knots in the stomach. You are too much attached.

You cannot get a simple fact: you have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any knots in the stomach.

And tomorrow if this woman goes... what is the need of the knots? You know how to be without her, and you will be able to be without her.

The fear that things may change tomorrow... Somebody may die, you may go

bankrupt, your job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things which may change.

You are burdened with fears and fears, and none of them are valid -- because yesterday also you were full of all these fears, unnecessarily. Things may have changed, but you are still alive. And man has an immense capacity to adjust himself in any situation.

They say that only man and cockroaches have this immense capacity of adjustment.

That's why wherever you find man you will find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you will find man. They go together, they have a similarity. Even in faraway places like the North Pole or the South Pole... When man traveled to those places he suddenly found that he had brought cockroaches with him, and they were perfectly healthy and living and reproducing.

If you just look around the earth you can see -- man lives in thousands of different climates, geographical situations, political situations, sociological situations, religious situations, but he manages to live. And he has lived for centuries... things go on changing, he goes on adjusting himself.

There is nothing to fear. Even if the world ends, so what? You will be ending with it. Do you think you will be standing on an island and the whole world will end, leaving you alone? Don't be worried. At least you will have a few cockroaches with you!

What is the problem if the world ends? It has been asked to me many times. But what is the problem? -- if it ends, it ends. It does not create any problem because we will not be here; we will be ending with it, and there will be no one to worry about. It will be really the greatest freedom from fear.

The world ending means every problem ending, every disturbance ending, every knot in your stomach ending. I don't see the problem. But I know that everybody is full of fear.

But the question is the same: the fear is part of the mind. The mind is a coward, and has to be a coward because it doesn't have any substance -- it is empty and hollow, and it is afraid of everything. And basically it is afraid that one day you may become aware. That will be really the end of the world!

Not the end of the world but your becoming aware, your coming to a state of meditation where mind has to disappear -- that is its basic fear. Because of that fear it keeps people away from meditation, makes them enemies of people like me who are trying to spread something of meditation, some way of awareness and witnessing. They become antagonistic to me -- not without any reason; their fear is well-founded.

They may not be aware of it, but their mind is really afraid to come close to anything that can create more awareness. That will be the beginning of the end of the mind. That will be the death of the mind.

But for you there is no fear. The death of the mind will be your rebirth, your beginning to really live. You should be happy, you should rejoice in the death of the mind, because nothing can be a greater freedom. Nothing else can give you wings to fly into the sky; nothing else can make the whole sky yours.

Mind is a prison.

Awareness is getting out of the prison -- or realizing it has never been in the prison; it was just thinking that it was in the prison. All fears disappear.

I am also living in the same world, but I have never felt for a single moment any fear because nothing can be taken away from me. I can be killed -- but I will be seeing it happening, so what is being killed is not me, is not my awareness.

The greatest discovery in life, the most precious treasure, is of awareness. Without it you are bound to be in darkness, full of fears. And you will go on creating new fears -- there is no end to it. You will live in fear, you will die in fear, and you will never be able to taste something of freedom. And it was all the time your potential; any moment you could have claimed it, but you never claimed it.

It is your responsibility. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU CAME TO SAY FAREWELL TO DADAJI ON THE PODIUM IN

BUDDHA HALL, SUDDENLY THE AREA WHERE YOU AND DADAJI'S BODY

WERE BECAME LIKE A FILM. YOU BOTH SEEMED TO BE WITHOUT

SUBSTANCE. THE OTHER HALF OF THE PODIUM WHERE MATAJI SAT, AND

THE REST OF BUDDHA HALL WHERE WE WERE ALL SITTING, SEEMED

NORMAL. JUST THE PART WHERE YOU WERE SEEMED DIFFERENT. WHAT

HAPPENED?

Death, if it happens with enlightenment, is a tremendous experience. On the one hand the man dies; on the other hand he achieves the totality of life.

When I touched my father's seventh chakra, just on the top of the head, those who were perceptive, silent, meditative, may have experienced something strange happening.

According to the centuries-old science of inner reality, a man's life energy is released from the center, the chakra, at which he was living.

Most people die from the lowest chakra, the sex center. There are seven chakras in the body from where life can go out of the body. The last is on top of the head, and unless you are enlightened life cannot go out from that chakra.

When I touched my father's seventh chakra, it was still warm. Life had left it, but it was as if the physical part of the chakra was still throbbing with the tremendous happening.

It is a rare happening. And in that moment it may have appeared to many that the small section on the podium where I was with my father's body was in a different world. It was, in a sense, because it was on a different level. Just by his feet was my mother... and ten thousand sannyasins in Buddha Hall -- that was the normal world.

But something abnormal had happened. The chakra was still warm, the body was as if it was still rejoicing in the phenomenon. If you had eyes to see, then this distinction was bound to be seen.

It is good that it came to your vision, the difference. It is a difference of levels. The lowest is where most people are living, and the effort here is, in this mystery school, to bring everybody to the highest.

Slowly, slowly, moving from one center into another, you will also feel within your body a few things. For example, if you are existing at the sex center, you will find a subtle division -- below the lower center and above the lower center. You can feel it, that in the body below it and the body above it there seems to be a division, because the lower body has no centers, no chakras. It is the same for anybody. Wherever he is, the body below the sex center remains the same; it is our roots in the earth.

But if your center changes, comes to a higher level -- for example if your heart becomes your very life -- you will see again that below your heart the whole body is separate, and above the heart the whole body is separate. Wherever your energy is there will be a separation line.

When you reach to the seventh chakra, then the whole body is below it and there is no division. The seventh chakra is only in a sense in the body; otherwise it is above the body, as if a line touching your head is pulsing. Your whole body will become one, and for the first time you will see there are no divisions -- and this you can watch.

With each chakra coming into function, your actions will change, your responses will change, your dreams will change, your aspirations will change, your whole personality will go through a change. As you move higher, newer dimensions start happening which were not available to you before.

For example, the heart center is almost in the middle; three centers are above it and three centers are below it. The man of the heart will be the most balanced man. In his actions, in his feelings, in everything he does he will find a subtle balance, an equilibrium. He will never be hectic; there will be a grace.

In other words, he has found the center of his life, exactly the middle path. You will not see any extremes in him, and because all extremes have disappeared from his life he will have a balanced view of everything. He will not be rightist,

he will not be leftist; he will always be fair and just.

If the world was run according to me, then I would choose as magistrates and judges only people who are at their heart center, because only they can be just and fair. It is not a question of intellectual qualifications or seniority; it is a question of your inner balance.

The Sufi story is.… Mulla Nasruddin is chosen an honorary magistrate. The first case appears. He hears one side and declares to the court, "Within five minutes I will be back with the judgment."

The court clerk could not believe it -- he has not heard the other side! The clerk whispered in his ear, "What are you doing? Don't you see a simple thing? You have heard only one party, one side. The other side is waiting, and without hearing them you cannot give any judgment."

Mulla Nasruddin said, "Don't try to confuse me. Just now I am absolutely clear. If I hear the other side too, then there is bound to be confusion."

These Sufi stories are not just ordinary stories, they are extraordinary. It is saying that every judge is listening only to one side because he already has a prejudiced mind; he is not capable of listening to both sides. For that a totally different kind of man is needed --

which no educationalist concerning law and jurisprudence has even thought about.

No one thinks -- you ask the judge to be fair, but his mind is prejudiced. He cannot even hear both stories, both sides, with the same clarity -- impossible. He only pretends. In all the courts of the world there are pretensions.

And now that I have been in the courts I can see, and say with absolute authority that they don't listen to both sides. They can't! I am not complaining: I am simply stating a fact.

Their education is wrong.

As you go above the heart center, new things that may not have ever been a part of your life start happening. The second chakra above the heart is the throat. If that chakra has your life energy, then whatever you say has a deep authority in it.

Without any effort to convert anybody, it converts, because it convinces.

The chakra above that is the most famous and well-known -- the one on the forehead between the two eyes. That kind of energy moving through the agnya chakra, the sixth, has a deep hypnotic influence. It is managed... the person is not doing anything; it simply happens, his eyes become so full of some unknown magnetism.

The man with the seventh chakra open has the capacity, the intrinsic flowering, so that his presence becomes infectious. Below the seventh, the presence is not infectious; with the seventh chakra opening, it is as if the consciousness has blossomed and there is a fragrance, an aura.

Whoever is available to this presence, to this aura, will feel the freshness of a breeze, the freshness after a shower. And many rotten things -- rubbish that you have been entangled in, fighting -- will simply disappear from your life. Just a touch from this kind of man will be a transformation.

But that evening something was transpiring, and what you noted was an energy phenomenon; many others must have noted the same.

I answer such questions in order for you to become aware of your own situation and start moving upwards.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

DO YOU EVER SURPRISE YOURSELF? -- AND IF YOU DO, WHO IS SURPRISING WHOM?

There is no one to surprise or to be surprised.

I am as absent as I will be when I will be dead, with only one difference... that right now my absence has a body, and then, my absence will not have a body.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #20

Chapter title: It is all happening silently 22 April 1986 am in

Archive code:

8604220

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO20

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

83

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR ME, BEING HERE WITH YOU IS AS IF I HAVE ARRIVED AT THE END OF

A LONG JOURNEY, NO DESIRE TO BE ANYWHERE ELSE. MY HEART SHOULD

JUMP HIGH AND I SHOULD BLISS OUT, BUT LOOKING AT MYSELF, CARRYING THIS GREAT GIFT OF BEING WITH YOU, THERE SEEMS TO BE

ONLY A GREAT SENSE OF CALM. HAPPINESS AND SADNESS ARE ALWAYS

SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ME AND IT IS AS IF THEY CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT.

IT SEEMS AS IF MY LIFE FLAME BURNS CONSTANTLY BUT LOW, AND THIS

WORRIES ME.

THIS QUESTION OF WHETHER I AM LIVING INTENSELY ENOUGH OR NOT IS

WITH ME ALWAYS AND PULLS MY ENERGY DOWN EVEN MORE. PLEASE

DESTROY IT.

It is good that you feel calm and quiet, rather than ecstatic, excited, because every ecstasy, every excitement is bound to come down; it cannot remain high forever. It burns your energy and burns it intensely. But you don't have an inexhaustible source; as an individual, in the body, all you have is limited.

To be with me, silently and calmly, peacefully is the right way; you can afford it. Even with limited sources of individual beings, a calm state of mind can remain forever.

I have seen both types of people coming to me. Those who come and become too much excited are soon exhausted, and when they are exhausted they are angry at me; when they are exhausted they turn into enemies rather than into friends. Obviously to them I am the cause for their breakdown, and they cannot forgive me. Deep down in their mind they carry an idea that ecstasy was given to them and now it has been taken away.

I don't give you anything and I don't take anything away. Whatever happens in you simply happens in you; I am not more than a catalytic agent. So the best that can happen to you is a deep calmness. It is more reliable because it is going to last your whole life --

maybe even beyond life.

And you are getting mixed up in your question between this happening in my presence, with me, and your intensive living. Intensive living I teach to people just so that they can transcend their desires, their turmoil, quickly. If they live very miserly, as many live, then in this life there is no hope for them to experience transcendence.

Don't mix that with your state, because your calmness is the beginning of transcendence.

That's why you are feeling that your happiness and sadness are happening together. It cannot happen -- either you can be happy, or you can be sad. You cannot be sadly happy, neither can you be happily sad. That would be a very strange situation!

What is happening is that your calmness is giving you this impression, because in your calmness you are feeling something that belongs to happiness and something that belongs to sadness. Sadness is not all wrong; happiness is not all right.

The essential part of happiness is a feeling of well-being; that you are feeling in your calmness, so you think you are happy. And the essential part of sadness is silence; that you are feeling in your calmness. These both can exist together, in fact they can only exist together.

A silent feeling of well-being... whatever is happening is perfectly right. Don't ask me to destroy it, ask me to enhance it. Don't make it a problem! It is not. It is a tremendous gift that the master never gives and the disciple always receives.

There are things the master never says and the disciple always hears. It is one of those mysterious phenomena that are not handed over by the master to you -- but you receive it, it arises within you.

It is just like the sunrise when millions of birds start singing. They are not even aware of the sunrise, but something in their heart is triggered by the presence of the sun; the sun is not aware of so many birds. Millions of flowers suddenly open their petals. The sun is not going to each single flower saying, "Wake up! It is time, and I have come." Neither are the flowers aware why they are opening their petals, why they are releasing their perfume. It all is happening silently. The

presence of the sun is needed, but that presence does not do anything. Just its being there is enough.

Gurdjieff used to say that the situation of the human mind is like that of a small school class. The master is out, and all children are shouting and screaming and jumping and every kind of thing is going on, books are being thrown at each other.… And then suddenly the master appears and there is absolute silence. All screaming, all jumping, all throwing books stops. They are all leaning on their books -- although they are not reading, but pretending that they are reading.

One thing is certain, that the very presence of the master makes a difference. He does not do anything, he does not say anything. If he needs to say anything, if he needs to do anything, he is not a master; he is not respected, he is not loved. The children don't feel that he is worthy enough that they should be behaving differently in his presence than they behave in his absence.

In ancient Eastern scriptures it is again and again discussed, because it has been one of the eternal questions: should the disciple respect the master, or not? All the organized religions have decided that he should respect.

I have been talking to different religious leaders and I have said to them, "That is just wrong. The disciple should not respect. The master should be respectable." That is a totally different thing. The master should have the weight; he should be lovable, he should be respectable. Don't put the responsibility on the disciple, who is after all a disciple, a learner. It is easy for him to err.

One of my vice-chancellors said, in his convocation address, that the respect for the teacher is disappearing from the world of students, and this is dangerous. Ordinarily nobody stands up in a convocation address, because that is not a place to discuss. But I stood up and I said, "Before you say anything more, let me correct you. You are right in your observation that respect is disappearing from the student community, but you are wrong in your conclusion. The responsibility is not of the students but of the teachers.

Can you say with authority that the teachers are worthy of respect? And if you cannot say it with authority that the teachers are worthy of respect then why make a student responsible for this whole situation? If the teacher is worthy of respect, the question of respect from the students does not arise at all."

I said to him, "This I am saying to you with my own experience." For five years

at that time I had been a teacher in the university and I had not come across a single student who was not respectful. "And if you come across students who are disrespectful to you, you should go home and think over it. Something must be wrong in you. Somewhere you have lost the worth."

There was immense silence in the whole auditorium. The professors were shocked, the students were shocked, the chancellor was suddenly frozen like a statue, and the vice-chancellor could not think what to say. I said, "You can see this silence -- I have not told anybody to be silent, but most of them are my students or have been my students and they know what I mean."

And the vice-chancellor had to take his words back. He said, "I can understand it. The responsibility should always be on the stronger person, not on the weaker person. The student is weak, a learner, has no power; the teacher has all the powers, all the learning, all the authority... and if he cannot manage respect, then he is responsible. You are right."

But he used the word manage. I didn't say anything, but that was a wrong word. To manage means you are thinking about it, you are using certain tactics, strategies for it. A real master simply comes amongst his disciples and there is silence, and there is calm.

And the same happens within you. You need not be worried about intensive living. If you can live this calmness, if this calmness can become your very life, where happiness and sadness contribute their essential beauty, then there is no need to think of people who talk of ecstasy. Their ecstasy will be gone in two days; your calmness will go with you beyond the grave.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

ONLY IN MOMENTS OF LOVE DO I FEEL MY BODY DANCING WITH JOYFUL

SWEETNESS, AND ONLY IN MOMENTS OF LOVE DO MUSICIANS CREATE

MUSIC WHICH TOUCHES MY HEART. TO FEEL THE MUSIC MOVING MY

BODY AND THE DANCE MOVING THE FINGERS OF THE MUSICIANS IS FOR

ME THE MOST BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCE.

CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

It is a beautiful moment and a beautiful experience -- but there is much more in life.

There is much more than music, because music is after all sound, and there is silence too.

Music is beautiful but you should not forget silence. Dance is beautiful, but there is something beyond it: an absolute unmoving state of consciousness... no dance.

There are beauties and beauties... and there are categories. Music and dance are very physical. As far as they go they are beautiful, but one should not get stuck with them, one should not be stopped by them. They should open the door for the higher realm. For example, if you are really a lover of music, soon music will be forgotten and you will be entering into silence. If you are really in deep attachment with dance, soon the dance has to disappear, so that you can be in an unmoving state of being.

In China there is an ancient story. A man declared himself to be the greatest archer, and he went to the king and said, "I am ready to accept anybody's challenge. I have practiced archery for thirty years, and I know that there is nobody in the whole empire who can be a competitor to me. It should be declared... a time should be given and within this time, if there is somebody who wants to compete with me, I am ready; otherwise you have to declare me the champion of the whole empire, the master archer."

The king knew that he was the greatest archer he had seen and what he was saying was not boasting, it was really true. There was nobody in the whole empire even close to him; he had gone into the art so deeply. But an old man who was the constant companion of the king... he was a servant, but he was very respected by the king because the king's father had died early and this servant had been almost a father to him; he had protected him, he had disciplined him, he had trained him to be a king, and he managed to put him on the throne, to make him the emperor. He was sitting by his side on the ground, and he laughed.

The king said, "Why are you laughing? What he is saying is true. I know this man, I know his archery. Even with closed eyes he never misses his target; with closed eyes he can kill a flying bird. There is nobody who is in any way comparable to him."

The old man said, "You are too young. I know a man before whom this man is just an amateur. He is very ancient, very old -- older than me. He lives deep in the mountains.

Before you declare this man the champion, he has to meet that old man. Just meeting him will be enough -- competition is out of the question."

This was a great challenge... just meeting him will be enough, competition is out of the question. You cannot compete with that man. He is a master. And he showed him the way to the place where he could be found, the cave where he lived. The archer went miles into the mountains, finally found the cave and laughed, because there was the old man sitting, not even with a bow in the cave anywhere, no arrows -- what kind of master archer is he? And he was so old, maybe ninety, ninety-five or more. He could not hit the target, his hands would tremble; he was so old! But the man said, "I have been sent by the king to meet you."

The old man said, "I have received the message of the king, but before I meet you I will give a little test. I don't meet each and everybody! At least you must be capable of being an archer; you will have to do for me a little test." To be a master archer is out of question... he wanted to check whether he had any capacity for archery, any talent, any genius.

The old man came out of his cave, took the young man with him and he said, "The moment I saw you coming with your bow and with your arrows, I knew that you were an amateur, because the real master does not need these things. Have you not heard the ancient saying: when a master reaches to his ultimate genius, if he is an archer he throws away his bow and his arrows; if he is a musician he throws away his musical instruments; if he is a painter he throws away his brushes, his canvases."

He said, "I have heard it but I have never understood it."

The old man said, "Now you have come to the place where you will understand it. Come with me." There was a rock protruding into the valley, and the valley

was thousands of feet deep. If you fell from the rock there was no possibility of your being alive; in fact you could not even be found as a whole body, you would be scattered. It was a dangerous valley.

The old man went onto the protruding rock; the young man was standing there trembling

-- he was not going onto the rock. The old man was going and the young man was trembling. The old man said, "Stop that trembling. That is not the sign of a master archer." And the old man went to the very end of the rock, standing with half of his feet off the edge of the rock. He was standing there and he said to the young man, "Now you come and stand by my side."

The young man took one step, two steps -- and then fell flat, trembling, everything whirling. He said, "You have to forgive me. I cannot come where you are standing. Just a little mistake, a little breeze of wind, a little forgetfulness and you are gone forever! I have come here to meet you, not to commit suicide. I cannot believe how you are standing there."

The old man said, "That's what archery brings to a man -- an untrembling heart, a non-moving mind. Now I do not need the bow and the arrows. I know that you have looked around in my cave and I have seen your subtle smile, `How can this man be an archer?'

Now I will show you my archery."

He looked up and there were nine birds flying -- and as he looked up all the nine birds fell down on the earth. He said, "If you are absolutely immobile inside, even your eyes are enough; arrows are not needed. So go back, practice archery. Championship is far away. While I am alive, never think again of championship

-- although I am not a competitor. Even if you were declared champion I would not have bothered to object --

who cares? Your championships, your titles are children's games.

"But the old man in the palace knows me. Now as long as I am living you cannot be a champion; you can be a champion if you really go deeper into archery, practice. And only I can make you a champion, not the king. What does he know about archery? So tell him,

`You don't have any authority.' I will come in the right time if I am alive. Or I will send somebody, or I will make some arrangement, even if I am dead."

Ten years passed and the old man was dying. He called his son from the village down in the plains and told him -- he was also very old -- "Go to this certain archer and just report to me the situation."

He went there. The archer was very loving, very happy that the old man still remembered him and had sent his son. The son saw the big bow hanging on the wall. He asked, "What is it?"

And the archer said, "I used to know what it is... Now I don't know. I will have to ask; somebody must know."

But the son said, "I have heard you are an archer."

He said, "I used to be in my youth, and in youth everybody is foolish. I used to be, but your father brought me to my senses."

This was reported to the old man, that he had forgotten the name of the bow. The old man said, "That means he has proved his mettle. I will have to go down before I die to declare him the champion, the master archer."

Now he was also capable -- just looking at a bird was enough to kill it. Just those two rays going from the eyes were enough, because his inner being was so solidly immobile that those two rays became like arrows. He said, "Now I understand the meaning of the old saying: The musician breaks down his musical instruments when he really becomes a master. Then what is the use of those instruments? because they are still part of the world of sound and the real music is silence."

Even when you are listening to music, what really touches your heart is not the sound but the gap between two sounds. How to bring that gap to your heart is the whole art of music. But if a man can bring that gap just by his presence, and you fall into deep silence, you will know the real music. Then you will know that what you used to think of as music was only a preliminary training. And the same is true about dancing, the same is true about every creative art. What it appears to be is not the reality; it is just a device so that you can become aware of something intangible, hidden, beyond.

But to love music is good, to love dance is good, to play music is good, to dance is good -

- but remember, that is not the end. You have to go far -- away from music, away from dance -- to understand the real beauty of any creative art. Every creative art brings you to your innermost being where there is just calmness, utter quietness, absolute silence.

Then you can say, "I have heard that which cannot be heard. And I have seen that which cannot be seen."

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

UNTIL NOW I HAVE NOT HAD MANY SEXUAL EXPERIENCES, BUT LATELY I HAVE FELT TO BECOME MORE SEXUALLY ACTIVE. I SEEM TO AVOID

HETEROSEXUAL MEN, AND DESIRE THOSE WHO ARE HOMOSEXUAL.

I AM NOT CLEAR IF I AM RUNNING AWAY FROM SEX OUT OF FEAR, OR

TOWARDS PEOPLE I REALLY LIKE AND NEED. WOULD YOU PLEASE SHED

SOME LIGHT ON THIS?

It is possible that avoiding sex for a long time and now getting interested in it you will have to go slowly towards it.

To be attracted to homosexuals is a step. Finally you will be attracted to the heterosexuals. The homosexual is half way. Nothing is wrong in it. It is good to go gradually, mature gradually. And it is also possible the homosexual person may be a person that you like, you love, that he deserves your love. His homosexuality may be a secondary thing. If it is a secondary thing, then perhaps you can stay with the homosexual person long enough, but if it is only a passing phase then moving from no sexuality or very little sexuality towards a

heterosexual man, a direct jump, will be too much and can be dangerous. It may throw you back into your avoidance.

It is perfectly good that you are loving a homosexual. If he is a worthy person to be loved, that is even better; otherwise even his homosexuality is going to help you tremendously to reach to the heterosexual person.

These are the four stages: the auto-sexual person avoids sexuality. He wants to contain his sexuality within himself, he is a kind of miser, and such people suffer from constipation. It is now a well-established psychological fact. There is not a medical way to help them get rid of constipation, as their constipation has no cause in the body; their constipation has cause in their mind.

You should be reminded that the sexual center is in the mind, not in the genitals. And strangely enough, by the way, the sexual center and the food center are very close -- too close. So a person who stops his sexuality starts eating too much. The energy of the sexual center starts overflowing onto the next center, that is food. He becomes a food addict; he looks at food the way a lover looks at a beloved.

The second stage is homosexuality. It is a little better than being auto-sexual, confined to yourself -- now at least you are connecting with your same sex. But there is a confinement still -- although it is a bigger confinement -- man to man, woman to woman.

The third stage is heterosexual, which is the maturity of sex -- when you go beyond your femaleness or your maleness, where you transcend your class and move to the opposite.

And because the tension between the opposite is great, love blossoms on a grander scale.

Between two homosexuals, love is -- but there is no tension in it. It is not without any reason that homosexuals are called gay people, because there is no tension, there is no fight; they are always smiling, always looking happy. The happiness is shallow.

The heterosexuals are in a conflict, and in love. They laugh deeply, they weep deeply, they fight deeply, they feel for each other deeply; everything is deep because of the tension. They are known as intimate enemies. The intimacy is

deep, the enmity is also deep.

The fourth state is asexual, when you are fed up and you have seen all that sex can provide -- its misery, its pleasure, its fights, its friendship -- and slowly, slowly you see the routine, the same wheel moving. To change that boredom of the same wheel moving you may change partners; that gives you a little energy for a few days more, but again the boredom comes back.

Once you are utterly bored with sex then the fourth stage is asexual. For the first time you are completely free. The first stage was very much confined to yourself; the second stage was confined to your class -- man to man, woman to woman. The third was better, but still it was confined -- man to woman, the same species. The fourth stage is completely free from sex: you have known it, you have understood it. Its work is finished. It is no longer a burden on you, no longer a desire on you, no more a tension. You feel light, and for the first time you can enjoy being alone.

To me this is true celibacy, not a practiced celibacy. It is through the experience of all the stages that you come to true celibacy, and the true celibacy has to be understood: it is not anti-sexual, it is only asexual. It has no antagonism, no anti- attitudes. In the fourth stage you can have sex as fun, just a biological game.

So it is not that you have to drop sex; you can drop... you can either drop it or you can keep it. But it has lost all the old meaning and all the old implications, all the old bondage, all old fights, jealousies -- all that is lost. If it drops, it drops; if it continues, then it is just casual friendship, with no strings attached to it, with no conditions attached to it.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

THERE HAVE BEEN VERY FEW ENLIGHTENED WOMEN IN THE WORLD, AND

NONE THAT I KNOW OF IN THIS CENTURY. IS THERE HOPE FOR US WOMEN?

It is not hard -- but man has not allowed it.

Man suffers from a deep inferiority complex, and to keep it repressed he keeps the woman in every possible way inferior to himself; otherwise if she is allowed freedom, allowed all her talents, her genius, the great fear of man is that she can prove superior in many dimensions. And she has many things which man is missing.

Naturally the only simple way was to cut all possible ways in which the woman could grow. So all women have been left retarded. Their roots have been cut: don't give education to them, don't let them have the freedom of movement in society, don't let them have friends from the other sex.

And for thousands of years it has been going on. Naturally if a woman cannot become a scientist, if a woman cannot become a poet, if a woman cannot become a great architect, a great sculptor, then the question of a woman becoming enlightened becomes very difficult. So many steps in between have been completely removed. My whole vision is to put those steps back.

And I am trying my best to put those steps back, so any woman of any quality has the full possibility, freedom and support to grow. Some of the women will grow to become enlightened, but no such possibility has ever before existed.

So it is true you have not heard of enlightened women, particularly in this century --

although there have been a few women who, in spite of all this imprisonment of their being, became enlightened. But they are not the rule, they are the exceptions. They simply prove one thing: that just to be a woman does not mean that the doors of enlightenment are closed to you.

One woman was Rabiya al-Adabiya, in Arabia, one woman was Meera in India. One woman was in the very ancient times, in the days of the RIG VEDA -- that may be five thousand years old, or ninety thousand years old; it is undecided by the scholars... but these women can be counted on less than ten fingers.

But it is enough proof that to be a woman does not mean that enlightenment is not for you. As far as I am concerned, I feel that because you have been prevented from being enlightened, or even from moving in that direction, you have more possibility now than man, for the simple reason that just as land that has not been used for many years is more fertile, just it needs seeds... That means "Okay, Maneesha!"

Beyond Psychology Chapter #21

Chapter title: The most blissful moment -- when you cannot find yourself 22 April 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8604225

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO21

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

79

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I SIT IN FRONT OF YOU AND LISTEN TO YOU SPEAK, I FEEL AS IF A PROCESS OF OSMOSIS IS HAPPENING. I FIND I DON'T INTELLECTUALLY

LISTEN. IS THIS THE RIGHT WAY OR AM I MISSING SOMETHING?

This is the right way.

If you listen to me intellectually you miss, not something, but all. Intellectual listening is a kind of deafness. When I say something, you can listen to the word. You have a mind, a library in the mind of all your prejudices, philosophies, ideologies. The word has to go through all those preconceived patterns, and by the time it reaches to you it is no longer the same.

It has changed so many times, passing through the whole process of intellectual listening, that when it comes out it is absolutely something else. And yet it appears to be rationally the right thing; it fits with your mind. The process of listening has managed to cut it here and there, change it here and there; to color it here and there, to make it what you want it to be, not what it is. And you will agree with it; it is your own idea, it has nothing to do with me.

Listening intellectually is not listening at all. It is a way of avoiding. The right way is that you don't bring your mind in and you let me go into your innermost being without being hindered. Then there will be an understanding. Then there will be a communion, a real listening, because in the very process of listening, you have changed.

Now the agreement that arises in your being is not agreeing with your mind, it is agreeing with something new, which your mind knows nothing of. The mind is always old, and the truth is always new; they never meet, they never coexist.

You are fortunate that you can listen the right way -- putting the mind aside, just allowing me to sink deeper and deeper within you. Then even though words have been used, silence has been conveyed. Even though words have been used, that which cannot be said has been said -- at least has been heard. And saying is not important, hearing is important.

Right listening means you will never ask how to do it. For example, if I am talking about silence and you are listening the right way, you will never ask how to be silent, because in the very listening you would have tasted it. In the very listening you will have experienced it -- the window has opened.

The people who listen intellectually are bound to ask later on how to do it. Their question about how to do it signifies that they have missed what was conveyed to them.

It is not only words that I am saying to you -- I am conveying my very heart. The words are only vehicles. Through the intellect the vehicles will reach, but I will be left behind.

When you are listening without the mind, the vehicle becomes unimportant; its only use is that it helps me to reach to you. It is my outstretched hand, so that I can touch your heart.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I REMEMBER YOU TALKING ABOUT EYES AND LOOKING INTO PEOPLE'S

EYES AND HIDING THROUGH NOT LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO SOMEONE'S

EYES. AFTER THIS DISCOURSE I DROPPED MY GLASSES, WHICH I HAVE

HAD SINCE I WAS ONE YEAR OLD. NOT WEARING THEM, I FOUND MYSELF

BEING MORE OPEN IN LOOKING IN SOMEONE'S EYES, AND I FELT GREAT

POWER IN MY EYES. WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NEED TO WEAR GLASSES?

It is something truly significant to understand.

No animal needs glasses. It is very strange why man needs glasses. The reasons are two: the first is the physiological reason; and the second is the psychological.

The physiological reason is that our process of helping a mother to give birth to a child is basically wrong. For example, the child has been for nine months in deep darkness; his eyes are very delicate, fragile. And in any hospital where he is going to be born, he is going to face, immediately after the birth, glaring lights

all around. That is the first shock to the whole delicate system of his eyes. And eyes are the most delicate part of your body

-- softer than a rose petal, very fragile and very important, because eighty percent of your life's experience depends on them. Only twenty percent is contributed by your other senses.

That is one of the reasons why a blind man suddenly creates a deep compassion in you.

The deaf man does not create the same compassion. He is also missing something -- he cannot hear. The dumb cannot speak.… In any other way the body may be crippled, but nothing can create more compassion in you than a blind man. Unknowingly, unconsciously, there is an understanding that the blind man is the poorest.

Eighty percent of his life experience is cut off; he is living only on twenty percent. His life has no color, his life has no experience of beauty, his life has no experience of proportion. His life has missed the beautiful sunsets and the starry night. His eyes have missed millions of other eyes which are loaded with experience; and to be in contact with them is to be in contact with different worlds.

But the way the hospitals have decided to give birth to a new child is dangerous. First they spoil the eyes. Second, they destroy the trust of the child. The child has lived for nine months in the mother's womb with immense trust -- the question of doubt does not arise. Everything that he wants he gets; in fact before he wants, he gets it. No responsibility, no worry, no question of time. He does not think of tomorrow, and he has no memories of yesterdays. He lives moment to moment, utterly joyous. There is nothing to make him sad, nothing to make him miserable.

But the moment he is born, his whole life goes through a great tragic change. The doctors are in a hurry; they cannot even wait for two minutes. They want to cut the cord that joins the child with the mother, immediately -- and they cut it immediately, without bothering that the child has not yet breathed on his own, that his own system has not started functioning. They have cut the connection with the life source of the mother. This is one of the deep wounds that will be carried all along through his life.

And then to make the child breathe, they will hang it upside down and hit on his buttocks

-- a great reception! And because of the hit the child starts breathing. But this breathing is not natural and spontaneous. If they had just waited two or three minutes and left the child on his mother's belly.… He was inside nine months; with just three minutes outside on the belly -- the same warmth, the same woman, the same energy -- he would have started breathing on his own. And then to cut the cord would have been absolutely logical, rational, scientific.

And everything else that is being done takes no account of the implications. The child has been in the mother's womb in a certain warmth. He has been floating. The best way will be, once he starts breathing on his own, just to put him in a small bathtub of warm water consisting of the same chemicals as the mother's womb -- it is exactly the same as ocean water. And that's what makes the evolutionists certain that man was born in the ocean.

You will be surprised to know, the first incarnation of God in Hinduism is a fish. It is very strange -- just the idea... but to them God was life. And just a little translation is needed: instead of saying the reincarnation of God was as a fish, all that is needed is to say that life's beginning was as a fish.

Allow the child the same atmosphere so he does not feel, from the very first moment, in a stranger's world, afraid. But we make him afraid. We destroy his delicate eyes, we destroy his spontaneity, we even force his breathing. We don't give him a natural environment, one to which he is accustomed.

All these small things are going to affect his whole life. For example, whenever he is in anxiety, his breathing will become erratic. Whenever he is afraid, his breathing will be immediately affected. And sooner or later -- because only man uses his eyes for reading, and his eyes are no longer as powerful as nature had made them -- the child finds his eyes are weakening. He cannot see small letters, small figures, or he cannot see faraway things, and then the glasses become necessary. If glasses are avoided then his eyes will go on deteriorating. The glasses are simply to help him, just to compensate for the damage that has been done.

But glasses have their own psychology. With the glasses you are always behind a curtain, in some way hiding -- not facing life as it is, trying to avoid this way or

that, never being straight, sincere. Glasses are helping you to protect your eyes, but they bring their own problems with them. And these are the problems. They stand between you and the world, between you and the person you love, between you and the person you are communicating with.

Because of the glasses you never come in direct contact with the eyes of other people.

And that is missing a great experience, because people are basically their eyes. If you can see into a person's eyes, its depth will be that person's depth. A cunning person will not allow you to see directly into his eyes, because a cunning person's eyes reveal his cunningness.

The eyes are just an opening -- the cunning person is afraid; he will always look sideways. He will be talking to you but looking at something else; his talking and his seeing will not be in the same direction. He will be listening to you but his eyes will not be concentrated on you. The man who wants to deceive you cannot confront you eye to eye. Only a simple, sincere person, a person with a loving heart and with no cunning desire will allow you to look into his eyes because he knows you will find his truth. He has nothing to hide.

So if you are using glasses, then use them only for particular purposes. If you need them for reading, use them for reading. If you use them continuously it is dangerous -- not to your eyes, but to your whole being. If you need them to look far away, you can use them; but don't make it part of your being.

Your glasses should never become part of your being. Only when necessary use them.

When you feel they are not necessary, put them away, so at least for long periods you are available to the world in your authenticity, and the world is available to you; there is no barrier.

You cannot do anything about the basic harm, but if you give birth to a child, it is better to give birth amongst your loving friends, with candlelights, with incense burning, with flowers all around. Give the child at least a good welcome to the world.

And don't be technical -- man is not a machine -- be human. Let him first breathe; then cut the connection with the mother. There is no hurry. He should be

given the chance to be spontaneous; otherwise he will suffer his whole life troubles and problems concerned with breathing.

And there is no need for glaring lights; otherwise you have started already destroying his eyes. Soon he will need glasses. If you have been using them since you were one year old, that shows what we have been doing with children. And nobody tells you to use glasses only when you need them; otherwise don't let them become an essential habit.

It is known about Mulla Nasruddin that one night he woke up and asked his wife, "Where are my glasses?"

She said, "What is the need in the middle of the night for glasses?"

He said, "I don't want to fight -- I am not in a position right now -- I will explain everything later on. First, my glasses!" With his glasses on he tried for a few minutes, then he said, "You destroyed it. If you had given them to me immediately, perhaps I may not have missed. I was having such a beautiful dream; just then I remembered, Ì cannot see without glasses.' Such a beautiful dream -- I must be missing much. And you are so stupid that you started arguing with me.

"When I was asking for my glasses, you should have understood there must be some need, and later on you could have discussed it. But at that very time... and the gap became so big that I tried again and again with the glasses, but the dream was broken. And with it broken I could not manage to catch up with it again.

"And it was not only just a beautiful dream, it had something to do with finances too. A man was promising to give me money, and we were haggling. He wanted to purchase something, and I had brought him up to ninety-nine rupees. But I was stubborn -- I was trying to bring him to one hundred rupees; and it was only a question of one rupee. And the thing I was selling was not worth twenty rupees. I would have given it to him for ninety-nine, but I wanted to see the man accurately, and I wanted to count the money accurately. The glasses were needed.

"After I put on the glasses, I was saying to the man, `Wherever you are, come back! Okay

-- ninety-nine I will accept, ninety-eight I will accept. I am willing to give it

even for ninety.' But nobody responded. Just because of these glasses the whole profit was lost.

And I don't know if I can ever meet this man again, because in the first place I cannot recognize him without my glasses. Even if I meet him tomorrow on the street, I will not be able to recognize him, because what I was seeing I don't know whether it was true or not true."

People are so accustomed to their glasses that they become almost their substitute eyes.

Then it is dangerous. Your eyes need a little freedom: once in a while take the glasses off.

And there are a few exercises available. Do those exercises which will make your eyes stronger, healthier, and perhaps you may not need the glasses at all.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

MY WHOLE LIFE I HAVE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH TWO HUGE DESIRES: A DESIRE TO LOVE AND BE LOVED, AND THE DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND AND

BE UNDERSTOOD. TO SEE HOW MISUNDERSTOOD YOU ARE BY THE

WORLD AND BY YOUR FRIENDS ASTOUNDS ME, AND YOUR NOT BEING

AFFECTED BY IT ASTOUNDS ME EVEN MORE. FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS I HAVE BEEN CONSUMED WITH DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND YOU EVERY

MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. TODAY I FEEL I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING, AND YET MY DESIRE TO BE UNDERSTOOD HAS DIMINISHED. WHEN YOU

SPEAK, THE JOY OF BEING BEYOND THESE TWO DUALITIES IS HEAVEN.

The desire to love and to be loved, the desire to understand and to be understood are very instinctive, very natural -- but very binding, imprisoning. That's why, even if for a few moments listening to me -- if you can forget these two desires, in that transcendence you will find the ultimate in joy.

I have been misunderstood perhaps more than anyone else ever, but it has not affected me, for the simple reason that there is no desire to be understood. It is their problem if they don't understand, it is not my problem. If they misunderstand, it is their problem and their misery. I am not going to waste my sleep because millions of people are misunderstanding me. If I was concerned about being understood they would have driven me mad. But they have not been able to even scratch a little bit.

All their misunderstanding is their problem. They are suffering from it, they are paying for it. Why should I be bothered by it? I have said what I felt is true. I have said it, not to be understood -- I have said it because I wanted to share. If they are not willing, it is up to them; I cannot force them.

But both these desires -- to understand and to be understood -- are together. Unless you understand, you cannot drop the desire to be understood. Once you understand just the simple existence of your being, both disappear. There is nothing more to understand, and there is no question that anybody should understand you.

And the same is true about love.

The moment you understand what love is, you experience what love is, you become love.

Then there is no need in you to be loved, and there is no need in you to love. Loving will be your simple, spontaneous existence, your very breathing. You cannot do anything else; you will be simply loving.

Now if in return, love does not come to you, you will not feel hurt, for the simple reason that only the person who has become love can love. You can give only that which you have. Asking people to love you -- people who don't have love in their life, who have not come to the source of their being where love has its shrine -- how can they love you?

They can pretend. They can say, they can even believe, but sooner or later these

things are going to... it is going to be known that it is only a pretension, that it is only acting, that it is hypocrisy.

There may not be an intention to deceive you, but what can the person do? You ask for love, and the other person also wants love. Both understand that you are expected to love, that only then can you get love -- so you both try in every possible way to take the posture of love. But the posture is empty. And both are going to discover it, and both are going to complain about it against the other, that it is not right. From the very beginning it has been two beggars begging from each other, and both have only empty begging bowls.

Both are pretending that they can give, but their basic desire is to get. If you don't have it, you cannot give it. And those who have it -- this is to be understood very clearly -- those who have found the source of love within themselves are no longer in need of being loved. And they will be loved.

They will love for no other reason but simply because they have too much of it -- just as a rain cloud wants to rain, just as a flower wants to release its fragrance, with no desire to get anything. The reward of love is in loving, not in getting love.

And these are the mysteries of life, that if a person is rewarded just in loving people, many will love him. Because by being in contact with him, they will slowly start finding the source within themselves. Now they know one person at least who showers love and whose love is not out of any need. And the more he shares and showers his love, the more it grows.

The same is true about understanding. If you are close to a person of understanding you will see that he shares; sharing is his joy, it is not his business. He gives wholeheartedly, knowing perfectly well that he will find many doors closed in his face, but his understanding is deep enough to understand these people who misunderstand him.

They are miserable. They are afraid to let his understanding reach them, they are afraid of his light. They start closing their windows and their doors. They are afraid of his presence. They will condemn, they will create confusion, they will create rumors, they will create lies; they will do everything to prevent this man's light, his understanding, his insight from spreading. And the reason is that they are afraid.

This man's presence is a great fear to them. In his presence they become suddenly naked -

- with all their jealousies, with all their miseries, with all their pain, with all their wounds.

In his presence they cannot hide. Before his eyes they are as if before x-rays which will penetrate to their deepest core and reveal all they have been somehow hiding from the society, and creating a certain good image. They are just the opposite within.

I have never been hurt by any misunderstanding. It was part of my understanding that it is going to be so, and once you are free of the desire to love and to be loved, you will love; but it will not be a desire, it will be an overflowing energy. And you will be loved, but it will not be an expectation, it will be a surprise.

Once you understand just yourself and you have gone beyond all kinds of misunderstandings, your light is so clear and bright, your certainty is so absolute, that the whole world can condemn you but it will not in any way hurt you. It will simply create more compassion and more effort to make these people somehow come out of their darkness and see the light.

And one thing is certain that you mention -- that once both these desires are calmed down, one feels in heaven. One really is in heaven.

One has always been; it was just that one was getting disturbed by small things and forgetting the immense beauty and joy the whole existence is ready to give to you -- and without any price. It is just yours for the asking.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE TOO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT YOU BECAUSE IN YOU I SEE A PART

OF MYSELF, AND IN THAT PART I SEE EVERYONE. PLEASE NUDGE ME IF I AM IN THE WRONG LANE.

You are in the wrong space.

You see a part of you in me. That is going to create many problems, because I don't have any part of you in me. And that is the beginning of a long journey; then in that part you see everybody else and all their problems. Then the small part you had seen in me becomes so big -- because in that small part you are seeing everybody -- that you are going to forget me completely. I will be covered all over with other people's parts --

thick, not a thin layer, because everybody's parts.…

Just try the other way: see me just as a small corner in you. Give it to me, see me there, and in it see Chuang Tzu, see Gautam Buddha, see Socrates. See all the flowers that humanity has produced, and you will become a totally new person. Just seeing me, and in me bringing all those who can somehow be connected with me, you will be surrounded by the very salt of the earth, by all that is glorious. And you will disappear in it: you will not be able to find yourself, find where you have gone.

You will meet Socrates, you will meet Pythagoras, you will meet Heraclitus, you will meet strange but beautiful beings -- Bodhidharma or Diogenes or Dionysius

-- but you will not find yourself. In fact, yourself does not exist. And the meeting of all these people within you will make you a paradise.

So please just give it a little turn: rather than seeing yourself in me -- if you can do that, why can't you do this? it is the same -- see me in you. And I am not asking for your whole being because I want you to leave it for other guests. Just give me a little corner, just a contact center from where buddhas can enter in you.

But we are so accustomed to misery that we can do anything to be miserable. And we have forgotten the language of blissfulness, so to make even a small effort seems to be very arduous. But I am asking you to do the same -- just give it a little turn. It will be far easier, and the reward is going to be enormous. You will be lost, and you will never be found.

And that is the most blissful moment -- when you cannot find yourself, and there is just utter silence.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #22

Chapter title: Freedom doesn't choose, it discovers 23 April 1986 am in

Archive code:

8604230

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO22

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

99

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN YOU SAY, "JUST BE YOURSELF"? HOW CAN I BE MYSELF WHEN I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM? I KNOW MANY OF MY

PREFERENCES, LIKINGS, DISLIKINGS AND TENDENCIES, WHICH SEEM TO

BE THE OUTCOME OF A PROGRAMMED BIOCOMPUTER CALLED THE MIND.

DOES JUST BEING ONESELF MEAN THAT ONE TOTALLY LIVES OUT THE

WHOLE CONTENT OF THE MIND AS WATCHFULLY AS POSSIBLE?

Yes, it exactly means that -- to live as an awareness: awareness of all the programs the mind has been conditioned for, awareness of all the impulses, desires, memories, imaginations... all that the mind can do. One has to be not part of it, but separate -- seeing it but not being it -- watching it.

And this is one of the most essential things to remember, that you cannot watch your watchfulness. If you watch your watchfulness, then the watcher is you, not the watched.

So you cannot go beyond watchfulness. The point that you cannot transcend is your being. The point that you cannot go beyond is you. You can watch very easily any thought, any emotion, any sentiment. Just one thing you cannot watch

-- and that is your watchfulness. And if you manage to watch it, that means you have shifted: the first watchfulness has become just a thought; now you are the second watcher.

You can go on shifting back, but you cannot get out of watchfulness because it is you: you cannot be otherwise.

So when I say, "Just be yourself," I am saying to you, "Just be unprogrammed, unconditioned awareness." That's how you had come into the world, and that's how the enlightened person leaves the world. He lives in the world but remains totally separate.

One of the great mystics, Kabir, has a beautiful poem about it. All his poems are just perfect -- nothing can be better. One of his poems says, "I will give back the soul that was given to me at the time of my birth as pure, as clean, as it was given to me. I will give it back that way when I die." He is talking about awareness, that it has remained unpolluted. The whole world was there to pollute it, but he has remained watchful.

All that you need is just to be watchful, and nothing will affect you. This unaffectedness will keep your purity, and this purity has certainly the freshness of life, the joy of existence -- all the treasures that you have been endowed with.

But you become attached to the small things surrounding you and forget the one that you are. It is the greatest discovery in life and the most ecstatic pilgrimage to truth. And you need not be an ascetic, you need not be anti-life; you need not renounce the world and go to the mountains. You can be where you are, you can continue to do what you are doing.

Just a new thing has to be evolved: whatever you do, you do with awareness -- even the smallest act of the body or the mind -- and with each act of awareness you will become aware of the beauty and the treasure and the glory and the eternity of your being.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SAY FREEDOM IS THE GREATEST VALUE FOR YOU. YOU ALSO SAY

YOUR ATTITUDE TO LIFE IS THAT OF LET-GO. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU

HAVE USED YOUR FREEDOM TO CHOOSE TO GIVE UP THE FREEDOM TO

DECIDE ANYTHING, IN FAVOR OF LETTING EXISTENCE TAKE CARE OF

YOU. IS THE ULTIMATE IN FREEDOM ACTUALLY TOTAL ENSLAVEMENT?

No, I have not chosen anything.

I have not chosen, out of my freedom, to allow the existence to take care of me. Freedom is choiceless. In freedom I have discovered, not chosen.

With the eyes free, with the consciousness free, I have discovered that let-go is the way existence functions. There was no question of choice -- whether to be with existence or not. It was not either/or, but just the realization that this is the only way existence works.

I relaxed with it.

The people who are not living a life of let-go are choosers, because they are going against nature, against existence; they have to choose. The ego is a chooser. When you are completely free of ego, of self, when you are simply freedom, you see it happening that the fight is disappearing and let-go is taking its place. You are nothing more than a watcher. If you choose it, then it is not let- go. How can it be let-go if you choose it?

It happened that one man came to Gautam Buddha, and he wanted to surrender himself unto Buddha's feet. Buddha looked at him and said, "You cannot surrender."

He said, "Why? Everybody else is allowed, and I am not allowed -- what is my disqualification?"

Buddha laughed and he said, "There is no question of disqualification. Just the nature of surrender is such that you cannot do it -- it happens. If you do it, it is your doing; it is not surrender. And if you do it, you can take it back. It is never total; you are outside of it. It was your action, so you can decide any moment: no more surrender! But if it happens then it takes all of you, the whole of you, leaving nothing behind which can ever do anything against it."

Simple things... but they become complicated because our mind is accustomed only to doing. And these are not mind things. Surrender, let-go -- these are not mind things. For the mind it is impossible to think of them. It can agree to surrender, it can agree to let-go, but it has to be the master, doing it, and it has to be an act -- and that's where everything goes wrong.

Surrender is once and forever; let-go is once and forever -- just as death is once and forever, because nothing is left that can change the course of things. All has been taken in. You are no longer there to have a second thought.

Just the other day I was shown a statement of Rajen, one of our therapists, who is doing as much damaging work as possible. His statement was, "Up to now I was helping Osho's work through surrender; now he has given me freedom. I will still continue to do his work but my work will be different. My work will be to help people to be free of Osho."

Now, in the first place if he was really surrendered, then there is no going back:

you cannot do anything about it anymore. It has happened, and you are dissolved in it.

Secondly, I cannot give you freedom, because if I give you freedom I can take it back.

Freedom has to be your realization -- and that would have come through surrender, on its own. Surrender flowers into freedom, because in surrender the self is gone, and all the hell that the self creates is gone. Your whole energy is now available to blossom.

I cannot give freedom to anyone.

Freedom is not a commodity that I can hand over to you; it has to happen at the innermost core of your being. Surrender only removes the hindrances. You surrender only that which is blocking the way for freedom to come to you.

So on the second point also he is wrong. And then on the third he goes really stupid, saying that now his work will be to help people to be free of Osho. The whole world is free of me -- that is not helping them! But what he means... He is now persuading sannyasins not to be sannyasins. And he thinks he is helping people to be in a state of freedom.

There are things which only happen.

Let-go is not an action on your part, but just an understanding of the fact that this is the only way the universe functions, and if you are not functioning in this way, you are going to remain in misery. You are not being punished, you are simply being foolish. The old religions have given the idea to people that if you do wrong, you will be punished; if you do right, you will be rewarded -- because they were all dependent on doing, and that's their basic fallacy.

Religion begins when you cross the boundary of doing and enter into the world of happening. Then let-go happens, because you see that this is the only way things work. If you go against it, you are miserable.

Nobody is punishing you; you are simply being stupid. If you try to get out through the wall and hit your head, do you think it has been a punishment? And there is the door, always available for you to get out. Knowing about the door, you try to get out through the wall and smash your face. Old religions call it

punishment. It is not punishment, it is simple foolishness. And the person who goes out of the door into the garden, in the sun, in the air, is not being rewarded; he is just being intelligent.

So if you ask me, I will say intelligence is the reward; unintelligence is the punishment.

In its ultimate form: unintelligence is hell, intelligence is heaven. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

LIVING DECISIVELY, KNOWING WHAT ONE WANTS, SEEMS EASY.

HOWEVER, MY REALITY IS THAT I CAN NEVER MAKE UP MY MIND ABOUT

ANYTHING. I CAN ALWAYS SEE BOTH SIDES OF AN ARGUMENT AND CAN

NEVER DECIDE WHICH IS RIGHT. SO I AM LEFT HANGING BETWEEN THE

TWO. ONE PART OF ME, LISTENING TO YOU, FEELS THIS IS OKAY, BUT IT

MAKES ME FEEL STATIC, AS IF I AM ONLY PARTIALLY ALIVE. PLEASE

COMMENT.

Mind is never decisive. It is not a question of your mind or somebody else's mind; mind is indecisiveness. The functioning of the mind is wavering between two polar opposites and trying to find which is the right way.

Mind is the wrong thing, and through the wrong thing you are trying to find the right way. It is as if by closing your eyes you are trying to find the door. Certainly you will feel yourself hanging between the two -- to go this way or that; you will be always in a condition of either/or. That's the nature of mind.

One great Danish philosopher was Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote a book, EITHER/OR. It was his own life's experience -- he could never decide about anything. Everything was always such that if he was deciding this way, then that way seemed to be right. If he was deciding that way, then this way seemed to be right. He remained indecisive.

He remained unmarried, although a woman was very much in love with him and had asked him. But he said, "I will have to think about it -- marriage is a big thing, and I cannot say yes or no immediately." And he died with the question, without getting married. He lived long -- perhaps seventy years -- and he was continually arguing, discussing. But he found no answer which could be said to be the ultimate answer, which had not its equal opposite.

He never could become a professor. He had filled out the form, he had all the qualifications -- the best qualifications possible -- he had many books to his credit, of such immense importance that even after a century they are still contemporary, not old, not out of date. He filled out the form but could not sign it -- because "either/or"...

whether to join the service or not? The form was found when he died, in the small room where he used to live.

His father, seeing the situation -- and he was his only son -- seeing that even going somewhere he would stop at the crossroads to decide to go this way or to go that way, for hours...! The whole of Copenhagen became aware of this man's strangeness, and children nicknamed him "Either/Or," so urchins would be following him, shouting, "Either/Or!"

wherever he would go.

Before he died his father liquidated all his businesses, collected all the money, deposited it into an account, and arranged that every month on the first day of the month, Kierkegaard should receive so much money, so for his whole life he at least could survive. And you will be surprised: the day he was coming home, on the first day of the month, after taking out the last installment of the money -- the money was finished -- he fell on the street and died. With the last installment! That was the right thing to do. What else to do? -- because after this month, what will he do?

And because of the urchins and other people harassing him and calling him

Either/Or he used to come out only once a month, just on the first day, to go to the post office. But now there was nothing left -- next month he had nowhere to go.

He was writing books but was not decisive about whether to publish them or not; he left all his books unpublished. They are of tremendous value. Each book has a great penetration into things. On each subject he has written, he has gone to the very roots, to every minute detail... a genius, but a genius of the mind.

With the mind, that is the problem -- it is not your problem -- and the better mind you have, the more will be the problem. Lesser minds don't come across that problem so much. It is the genius mind that is opposed, with two polarities, and cannot choose. And then he feels in a limbo.

What I have been telling you is that it is the nature of the mind to be in a limbo. It is the nature of the mind to be in the middle of polar opposites. Unless you move away from the mind and become a witness to all the games of the mind, you will never be decisive.

Even if you sometimes decide -- in spite of the mind -- you will repent, because the other half that you have not decided for is going to haunt you: perhaps that was right and what you have chosen is wrong. And now there is no way to know. Perhaps the choice was better that you had left aside was better. But even if you had chosen it, the situation would not have been different; then this which would have been left aside would haunt you.

Mind is basically the beginning of madness.

And if you are too much in it, it will drive you mad.

I have told you that in my village I used to live opposite a goldsmith. I became aware at first, and then the whole town became slowly aware... and his life became hell. I used to sit just in front of his house, and I became aware that he had a curious habit: he would lock his shop, then pull the lock two, three times to see whether it was really locked or not.

One day I was coming from the river and he had just locked his shop and was going home. I said, "But you have not checked!"

He said, "What?"

I said, "You have not checked the lock!" He had checked it -- I had seen him three times pulling it, but now I had created a suspicion, and mind is always ready...

So he said to me, "Perhaps I forgot -- I must go back." He went back, and checked the lock again. That became my joy: wherever he would go...

In the market he would be purchasing vegetables and I would reach there saying, "What are you doing here? You have left the lock unchecked!"

He would drop the vegetables and he would say, "I will be coming back; first I have to go and check the lock."

Even from the railway station... He was purchasing a ticket to go somewhere, and I went and told him, "What are you doing? The lock!"

He said, "My God, have I not checked it?" I said, "No!"

He said, "Now it is impossible to go to the marriage I was going to." He returned the ticket, went home, and checked the lock. But then it was too late to go back to the station

-- the train had already gone. And he trusted me because I was always sitting in front of his house.

Slowly it became known to everybody, so wherever he would go, people would say,

"Where are you going? Have you checked the lock?"

Finally he became angry with me. He said, "You must be spreading it, because wherever I go everybody is talking about the lock, and I have to come back home -- sometimes so many times that I forget completely for what purpose I had gone in the first place to the market! The whole day I have been checking the lock!"

I said, "You don't listen to them. Let them..."

He said, "What do you mean, `Don't listen to them'? If they are right then I am lost forever. I cannot take that chance. So knowing perfectly well that the man may be lying, I have to come back compulsively to check the lock. I know somewhere that I have checked it, but who knows for certain?"

Mind has no certainty about anything.

If you are between the two polarities of the mind, in a limbo -- always to do or not to do, you will go crazy. You are crazy! Before it happens, jump out and have a look from the outside at the mind... and that's what I am telling you continuously.

Be aware of the mind -- its bright side, its dark side, its right, its wrong. Whatever polarity it is, you just be aware of it. Two things will come out of that awareness: one, that you are not the mind, and second, that awareness has a decisiveness which mind never has.

Mind is basically indecisive, and awareness is basically decisive. So any act out of awareness is total, full, without repentance.

I have never in my life thought again about anything -- whether something else would have been better. I have never repented. I have never thought that I have committed any mistake, because there is nobody else who has been left to say these things. I have been acting out of my awareness -- that is my whole being. Now whatever happens is all that is possible.

The world may call it right or wrong -- that is their business, but it is not my problem.

So awareness will take you out of the limbo. Rather than hanging between these two polarities of the mind, you will jump beyond both, and you will be able to see that those two polarities are two polarities only if you are in the mind. If you are outside it, you will be surprised that they are two sides of the same coin -- there was no question of decision.

With awareness you have the clarity, totality, let-go -- existence decides within you. You don't have to think about what is right and wrong; existence takes your hand in its hand, and you are moving relaxedly. That's the only way, the right way. And that is the only way you can be sane; otherwise you will remain muddled.

Now, Soren Kierkegaard is a great mind, but being a Christian he has no idea of awareness. He can think, and think very deeply, but he cannot just be silent and watch.

That poor fellow had never heard about anything like watching, witnessing, awareness.

Thinking was all that he had heard about, and he had put his whole genius into thinking.

He had produced great books, but he could not produce a great life for himself. He lived in utter misery.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SPOKE THE OTHER NIGHT ABOUT HONEST TRUTH. MYSTICS HAVE

OFTEN SPOKEN OF THE "ULTIMATE TRUTH." CAN THE TRUTH BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN ULTIMATE?

Truth cannot be anything other than the ultimate.

But the mystics had to speak about "ultimate truth" for a certain reason. The reason was that philosophers have been speaking of "relative truth," and they have been emphasizing the fact that every truth is relative. Albert Einstein in this century brought the conception of relativity to scientific truths; otherwise they used to be ultimate -- they became relative. And he was right. Mahavira, Gautam Buddha -- they all have talked about relativity.

One thing that is missing is that nobody makes a distinction between truth and fact. Facts are relative, and truth is ultimate, but if you get mixed up and you start thinking of facts as truth, then they will be relative.

Two things first: Facts are relative, and you have to understand exactly what is meant by relative. It means that something can be true in a certain situation, and the same thing can be untrue in some other situation.

It was said that while Albert Einstein was alive there were only twelve people in the whole world who understood what he meant by relativity. It is a very delicate and subtle explanation about the universe. And Einstein was continually asked -- wherever he would go, in a club, in a restaurant -- wherever he would go people would ask, "Just say something about what this relativity is and say it so that a layman can understand it."

Finally he found a way: he said that if you are sitting on a hot stove, time will appear to you to be going very slowly; a single minute will look like hours because you are sitting on a hot stove. Your state is changing your conception of time.

But if you are sitting with your girlfriend, hours go by and it seems only seconds have passed.

He would say, "This is what I mean by relativity: time is relative to a particular situation.

There is nothing like ultimate time so that whatever you do it is the same. It has always been known that when you are happy time passes fast, and when you are miserable, time passes very slowly."

He has established relativity so deeply that it has become almost interwoven with all scientific findings. But only one thing I want you to remember: he is talking about facts and calling them truth. And because of that the mystics had to use the word ùltimate'.

They want to tell you that there is an experience which is beyond relativity. That's all their meaning is: truth is ultimate.

For example, what I have experienced in these thirty-five years in different situations -- it has remained the same, and I know even in my death it will not be different. This is truth: that which remains the same, whatever happens around it... the center of the cyclone.

But the whole world is full of facts. Facts are relative. Now, it has to be made very clear to the scientists that what Einstein was talking about was not truth but fact. But for science there is no truth other than what they discover. The mystic's truth they don't accept, because the mystic cannot put it in front of the scientist so that they can dissect it and find out what constitutes it -- its measurement,

weight, and things like that.

It is an experience, and totally subjective. It cannot be made objective.

So let us say it in this way, if they insist on calling it truth: objective truths are all relative, and subjective truth is always ultimate. But just not to get it mixed up, the mystics have been calling it the ultimate truth.

All truth is ultimate. But there are scientific truths which are really only facts. For example, if you are sitting on a hot stove the experience of time going very slowly is just a fact of your psychology; it has nothing to do with time. But nobody has pointed that out to Albert Einstein. When you are sitting with your girlfriend and time passes fast, it has nothing to do with time; it has something to do with your mind.

Time goes with its own speed. It does not change; otherwise there would be such a difficulty. Somebody is sitting on the hot stove, and somebody is sitting with his girlfriend -- what will poor time do? Go slow or go fast? Time remains the same; it is your mind, your concept of time which is relative.

All objective truths are relative. You cannot say that somebody is tall; that statement will not be correct, because the tallness of the person has to be relative. Tall in comparison to whom? You have to make it complete. Somebody is fat, but just that much is not right and not complete. You have to make it clear that he is fatter than Avirbhava, or thinner than Anando. Unless you make the comparison, you cannot use relative terms.

But we are using them. Because people are using relative words, the mystics have been compelled to say the "ultimate" truth; otherwise just saying "the truth" would be sufficient, because ultimateness is its intrinsic nature. But it has to be repeated; otherwise there are people who will get misguided, confused, because they have heard about relative truths and they will make your truth also into a relative truth. So a distinction has to be made. To draw that distinction, the word ùltimate' is used -- unwillingly.

I would not like to use it because it is a repetition, a tautology. "The ultimate" and "the truth" mean the same. You can use either, but to use both is an unnecessary repetition.

My father was very insistent that every Monday he had to receive a letter from

me, while I was in the university. I told him, "If there is something wrong, if there is some problem, if I am sick, I will inform you. But unnecessarily writing the same thing again and again has no justification."

He said, "Justification or not, it is not a question of your arguments. I wait for seven days and I become worried about you. It is not your sickness that I am worried about; I am worried about what you are doing, what is happening to you. You may get into trouble any moment. So every Saturday you have to post a letter so that on Monday I receive it.

If I don't receive it on Monday, then I will unnecessarily have to come two hundred miles to the university."

So what I had done... I had written one letter, "Everything is all right here. I am not in any trouble. You need not be worried." And on other letters I had just made the sign

`ditto.' He was very angry. When he saw me he said, "I feel like beating you! You writèditto' on the letters!"

I said, "That's exactly the situation, because I have to write the same thing again. And do you think I write every Saturday? I have just asked one typist to type the first letter, and a hundred letters with thèditto.' I have given them to one very particular man -- because I may forget and unnecessarily you may have to come

-- and I have told him, `You have to post one of these "ditto" letters every Saturday.' He is so particular in everything that once you ask him, he will do it." He was a student, living in the same hostel.

But my father was very angry, "Have you ever heard of anybody writing in the letter just

`ditto'? I wait for eight days and then I get a card on which the only message is

`ditto'!

Not even your signature, because in `ditto' everything is implied from the first letter: Refer to the last letter. You can read the first letter again when you get the ditto letter."

Life is not mathematics; it is not logic, it is not science. It is something more, and that something more is the most valuable.

The mystics have called that something more "the ultimate truth." They can be forgiven for calling it ultimate. But you have to understand that the reason they are calling it ultimate is because there are people who are calling every truth relative -- not only scientists, not only people who are working with matter.

Mahavira says that truth itself is relative: he has no ultimate truth. Buddha has no ultimate truth. Again the difficulty is that Mahavira and Buddha can be misunderstood when they say that there is no ultimate truth but that every truth is relative: it can be one thing in one situation, it can be another thing in another situation, and because it is related to situations it cannot have any ultimacy. This goes against all the great mystics.

Only Mahavira and Buddha, two people... But I know both, and I understand both better than their own followers, because none of their followers have been able to make any sense out of it: either all the mystics are wrong, or Buddha and Mahavira are wrong!

I say nobody is wrong. What Mahavira says is that truth has seven aspects, and Buddha says that truth has four aspects. They are really referring to the expression of truth. Truth can be said in seven ways according to Mahavira. He is really a logician. But what he is saying is not about truth -- there is a misunderstanding. What he is saying is about truth expressed, not experienced. When you experience it, it is always ultimate, but the moment you say it, it becomes relative.The moment you bring it into language it becomes relative, because in language nothing can be ultimate. The whole construction of language is relative. Buddha is not a great logician, so he stops at four, but the situation is the same.

They are not speaking of the truth which you experience in silence, beyond mind.

Nothing can be said about it. The moment you say something about it, you drag it into the world of relativity, and then all the laws of relativity will be applicable to it.

Perhaps Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the best logicians of this age, was right when he said, "That which cannot be said should not be said." This is a strange statement. It stands out in the whole history of thought, unique and original: "That which cannot be said, should not be said" -- because if you say it, you are

contradicting yourself. First you say it cannot be said, and then you say it. You may make all kinds of conditions: "When I say it, it is no longer the same; when I say it, it even becomes untrue." But then, why say it?

Wittgenstein's statement will make it clear that Mahavira and Buddha both were talking about the truth said: then it is relative. And the mystics who are talking about "the ultimate truth" are talking about the truth experienced yet not brought into the world of language and objects. So I think it is better to allow them to use the word ùltimate', although it is a repetition, because it keeps it separate.

Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT NOT TRUE TO SAY THAT BECAUSE WE CAN EVEN FORMULATE A QUESTION THAT WE HAVE AN INKLING SOMEWHERE OF THE ANSWER --

EVEN THOUGH WE ARE NOT AWARE OF IT?

IT SEEMS TO ME LIKE A DOCTOR LOOKING AT A PATIENT: THE FACT THAT

HE ASKS THE PATIENT CERTAIN QUESTIONS AND NOT OTHERS INDICATES

HE HAS SOME IDEA OF WHAT THE DIAGNOSIS -- AND HENCE THE ANSWER

-- IS.

It is true. Whenever you ask a question, somewhere deep down you have some inkling of the answer, but it is in the darker parts of your consciousness. You yourself cannot pull it out and bring it to your consciousness.

The question is in the consciousness; the answer is in the unconscious -- vague, a shadow, with no certainty, but the inkling is certainly there.

The function of the master is exactly what Socrates has defined it as -- the master is only a midwife. He helps to bring everything that is hidden in you to

consciousness. When your question disappears, that means your answer from the unconscious has been brought to the conscious.

It has to be remembered that this is the distinction between a master and a teacher: a teacher will give you an answer, which will not bring your own answer from the unconscious. He will force an answer into your conscious, repressing your question. He will make the situation more complicated. First you had only a question, and if you had silently waited, meditated, perhaps the unconscious answer may have surfaced and the question would have disappeared. And once the question disappears, the answer has no relevance in being there; it disappears also, and a pure emptiness is left.

But the teacher forces an answer on your mind, and makes the situation more complicated. Now you have a question and you have an answer which has not been able to dissolve the question, which has only repressed it. And your unconscious answer is still lying down there, to be released so you can be unburdened. The teacher burdens you, complicates you.

The master never gives you any answer that is going to burden you.

His every answer is an unburdening. He brings your own unconscious answer to the surface, where first the question disappears, then the answer disappears -- and not a trace of either remains behind.

This is real communion.

This is a clear-cut way, a criterion, to make the distinction between a teacher and a master.

In the West there seems to be no distinction. In the East the teacher is simply repeating inherited knowledge; he is not concerned with you, he is concerned with his own knowledge.

The master has nothing to impose upon you; he is empty and silent.

Your question does not give him a chance to impose something on you, but only gives him a chance to bring your unconscious answer to the surface. So if you go on simply listening to the master, slowly, slowly you will find your questions have disappeared...

and strangely, you don't have any answer.

People ordinarily think that when the question disappears you will have the answer in its place. No, when the question really disappears the answer has no relevance. It also disappears. And left without questions and without answers, you have immense freedom... unburdened... open sky.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #23

Chapter title: Trees grow without being taught 23 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604235

ShortTitle: PSYCHO23

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 92

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HAVING HEARD YOU TALK ABOUT COMPETITION AND OUR CHILDHOOD

THE OTHER MORNING, IT SET ME THINKING OF MY OWN EDUCATION. I REALIZED THAT FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS SOLIDLY, EVERY SINGLE

EVENT AT SCHOOL -- FROM PLAYING IN THE GARDEN, THROUGH OFFICIAL

SPORTS, TO LATIN GRAMMAR -- WAS BASICALLY AN EXERCISE IN HOW TO

BEAT THE NEXT PERSON. IT SEEMS AS IF IT WAS THE SINGLE MOST

DAMAGING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I CAN'T THINK OF A MORE PERFECT

SYSTEM TO DESTROY CHILDREN AND MAKE US COMPLETELY

INHARMONIOUS WITH THE WORLD AROUND US. HOW CAN WE HELP

CHILDREN TO GROW TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL, WITHOUT ENCOURAGING

THIS COMPETITIVE SPIRIT?

The moment you start thinking how to help children to grow without any competitive spirit you are already on the wrong track, because whatever you are going to do is going to give the children a certain program. It may be different from the one that you received, but you are conditioning the children -- with all the best intentions in the world.

The trees go on growing without anybody teaching them how to grow. The animals, the birds, the whole existence, needs no programming. The very idea of programming is basically creating slavery -- and man has been creating slaves for thousands of years in different names. When people become fed up with one

name, another name immediately replaces it. A few modified programs, a few changes here and there in the conditioning, but the fundamental thing remains the same -- that the parents, the older generation, want their children to be in a certain way. That's why you are asking "How?".

According to me, the function of the parents is not how to help the children grow

-- they will grow without you. Your function is to support, to nourish, to help what is already growing. Don't give directions and don't give ideals. Don't tell them what is right and what is wrong: let them find it by their own experience.

Only one thing you can do, and that is share your own life. Tell them that you have been conditioned by your parents, that you have lived within certain limits, according to certain ideals, and because of these limits and ideals you have missed life completely, and you don't want to destroy your children's life. You want them to be totally free -- free of you, because to them you represent the whole past.

It needs guts and it needs immense love in a father, in a mother, to tell the children, "You need to be free of us. Don't obey us -- depend on your own intelligence. Even if you go astray it is far better than to remain a slave and always remain right. It is better to commit mistakes on your own and learn from them, rather than follow somebody else and not commit mistakes. But then you are never going to learn anything except following -- and that is poison, pure poison."

It is very easy if you love. Don't ask "how", because "how" means you are asking for a method, a methodology, a technique -- and love is not a technique.

Love your children, enjoy their freedom. Let them commit mistakes, help them to see where they have committed a mistake. Tell them, "To commit mistakes is not wrong --

commit as many mistakes as possible, because that is the way you will be learning more.

But don't commit the same mistake again and again, because that makes you stupid."

So it is not going to be a simple answer from me. You will have to figure it out living with your children moment to moment, allowing them every possible

freedom in small things.

For example, in my childhood... and it has been the same for centuries, the children are being taught, "Go to bed early, and get up early in the morning. That makes you wise."

I told my father, "It seems to be strange: when I am not feeling sleepy, you force me to sleep early in the evening." And in Jaina houses early in the evening is really early, because supper is at five o'clock, at the most six. And then there is nothing else to do --

the children should go to sleep.

I said to him, "When my energy is not ready to go to sleep, you force me to go to sleep.

And when, in the morning, I am feeling sleepy, you drag me out of the bed. This seems to be a strange way of making me wise! And I don't see the connection -- how am I going to become wise by being forced to sleep when I am not feeling sleepy? And for hours I lie down in the bed, in the darkness... time which would have in some way been used, would have been creative, and you force me to sleep. But sleep is not something in your hands.

You cannot just close your eyes and go to sleep. Sleep comes when it comes; it does not follow your order or my order, so for hours I am wasting my time.

"And then in the morning when I am really feeling sleepy, you force me to wake up --

five o'clock, early in the morning -- and you drag me out for a morning walk towards the forest. I am feeling sleepy and you are dragging me. And I don't see how all this is going to make me wise. You please explain it to me!

"And how many people have become wise through this process? You just show me a few wise people -- I don't see anybody around. And I have been talking to my grandfather, and he said that it is all nonsense. Of the whole household, that old man is the only sincere man. He does not care what others will say, but he has told me that it is all nonsense: `Wisdom does not come by going early to bed. I have been going early to bed my whole life -- seventy years -- and wisdom has not come yet, and I don't think it is going to come! Now it is time for death to

come, not for wisdom. So don't be befooled by these proverbs.'"

I told my father, "You think it over, and please be authentic and true. Give me this much freedom -- that I can go to sleep when I feel sleep is coming, and I can get up when I feel that it is time, and sleep is no longer there."

He thought for one day, and the next day he said, "Okay, perhaps you are right. You do it according to yourself. Listen to your body rather than listening to me."

This should be the principle: children should be helped to listen to their bodies, to listen to their own needs. The basic thing for parents is to guard the children from falling into a ditch. The function of their discipline is negative.

Remember the word "negative"... no positive programming but only a negative guarding

-- because children are children, and they can get into something which will harm them, cripple them. Then too don't order them not to go, but explain to them. Don't make it a point of obedience; still let them choose. You simply explain the whole situation.

Children are very receptive, and if you are respectful towards them they are ready to listen, ready to understand; then leave them with their understanding. And it is a question only of a few years in the beginning; soon they will be getting settled in their intelligence, and your guarding will not be needed at all. Soon they will be able to move on their own.

I can understand the fear of the parents that the children may go in a direction which they don't like -- but that is your problem. Your children are not born for your likings and your dislikings. They have to live their life, and you should rejoice that they are living their life -- whatever it is. They may become a poor musician.…

I used to know a very rich man in the town who wanted his son, after matriculation, to become a doctor. But the son was interested only in music. He was already no longer an amateur; he was well known in the area, and wherever there was any function, he was playing the sitar and was becoming more and more famous.

He wanted to go to a university which is basically devoted to music. Perhaps it is

the only university in the world which is devoted completely to music, and has all the different departments -- dance, different instruments -- but the whole world of the university is musical.

The father was absolutely against it. He called me -- because I was very close to his son -

- and he said, "He will be a beggar all his life," because musicians in India cannot earn much. "At the most he can become a music teacher in a school. What will he be earning?

That much we pay to many servants in our house. And he will be associating with the wrong people," because in India, music has remained very deeply connected with the prostitutes.

The Indian prostitute is different from any prostitute in the rest of the world. The word

"prostitute" does not do justice to the Indian counterpart, because the Indian prostitute is really well versed in music, in dance -- and India has so much variety. If you really want to learn the deeper layers of music, of singing, of dancing, you have to be with some famous prostitute.

There are famous families -- they are called gharanas. Gharana means family. It is nothing to do with the ordinary family; it is the family of the master-disciple. So there are famous gharanas which have a certain way of their own. Presenting the same instrument, the same dance, different gharanas will produce it in different ways, with subtle nuances.

So, if someone really wants to get into the world of music, he has to become part of some gharana -- and that is not good company. According to a rich man it is certainly not a good company.

But the son was not interested in the company. Not following his father, he went to the music university. And his father disowned him -- he was so angry. And because his father disowned him, and because he had no other ways -- because the university was in a very remote mountaineous area where you cannot find any job or anything -- he came back and had to become exactly what his father was predicting, just a school teacher.

His father called me and told me, "Look, it is just as I have said. My other sons -

-

somebody is an engineer, somebody is a professor, but this idiot did not listen to me. I have disowned him; he will not inherit a single cent from me. And now he will remain in just the poorest profession -- a school master."

But my friend himself was immensely happy... not worried that he had been abandoned by his family, that he was going to live a poor man's life, that he would not be receiving any inheritance. These things did not bother him; he was happy, "It is good they have done all this -- now I can become part of some gharana. I was worried about them, that they would feel humiliated. But now they have abandoned me, and I am no longer part of them, I can become part of some gharana."

Teaching in a school, he became part of a gharana, and is now one of the best musicians in India. It is not a question of his being one of the best musicians; what is important is that he became what he felt was his potential. And whenever you follow your potential, you always become the best. Whenever you go astray from the potential, you remain mediocre.

The whole society consists of mediocre people for the simple reason that nobody is what he was destined to be -- he is something else. And whatever he will do, he cannot be the best, and he cannot feel a fulfillment; he cannot rejoice.

So the work of the parents is very delicate, and it is precious, because the whole life of the child depends on it. Don't give any positive program -- help him in every possible way that he wants.

For example, I used to climb trees. Now, there are a few trees which are safe to climb; their branches are strong, their trunk is strong. You can go even to the very top, and still there is no need to be afraid that a branch will break. But there are a few trees which are very soft. Because I used to climb on the trees to get mangoes, jamuns -- another beautiful fruit -- my family was very much worried, and they would always send somebody to prevent me.

I told my father, "Rather than preventing me, please explain to me which trees are dangerous -- so that I can avoid them -- and which trees are not dangerous, so that I can climb them.

"But if you try to prevent me from climbing, there is a danger: I may climb a wrong tree, and the responsibility will be yours. Climbing I am not going to stop, I love it." It is really one of the most beautiful experiences to be on the top of the tree in the sun with the high wind, and the whole tree is dancing -- a very nourishing experience.

I said, "I am not going to stop it. Your work is to tell me exactly which trees I should not climb -- because I can fall from them, can have fractures, can damage my body. But don't give me a blank order: `Stop climbing.' That I am not going to do." And he had to come with me and go around the town to show me which trees are dangerous. Then I asked him the second question, "Do you know any good climber in the city who can teach me even to climb the dangerous trees?"

He said, "You are too much! Now this is going too far. You had told me, I understood it..."

I said, "I will follow it, because I have myself proposed it. But the trees that you are saying are dangerous are irresistible, because JAMUN" -- an Indian fruit -- "grows on them. It is really delicious, and when it is ripe I may not be able to resist the temptation.

You are my father, it is your duty... you must know somebody who can help me."

He said, "If I had known that to be a father was going to be so difficult, I would have never been a father -- at least of you! Yes, I know one man" -- and he introduced me to an old man who was a rare climber, the best.

He was a woodcutter, and he was so old that you could not believe that he could do woodcutting. He did only rare jobs, which nobody else was ready to do... big trees which were spreading on the houses -- he would cut off the branches. He was just an expert, and he did it without damaging their roots or the houses. First he would tie the branches to other branches with ropes. Then he would cut these branches and then with the ropes pull the other branches away from the house and let them fall on the ground.

And he was so old! But whenever there was some situation like that, when no other woodcutter was ready, he was ready. So my father told him, "Teach him something, particularly about trees which are dangerous, which can break." Branches can break... and I had fallen already two, three times -- I still carry the marks on my legs.

That old man looked at me and he said, "Nobody has ever come, particularly a father bringing a boy...! It is a dangerous thing, but if he loves it, I would love to teach him."

And he was teaching me how to manage to climb trees which were dangerous. He showed me all kinds of strategies of how to protect yourself: If you want to go high up the tree and you don't want to fall onto the ground, then first tie yourself with a rope to a point where you feel the tree is strong enough, and then go up. If you fall, you will be hanging from the rope, but you will not fall to the ground. And that really helped me; since then I have not fallen!

The function of a father or a mother is great, because they are bringing a new guest into the world -- who knows nothing, but who brings some potential in him. And unless his potential grows, he will remain unhappy.

No parents like to think of their children remaining unhappy; they want them to be happy.

It is just that their thinking is wrong. They think if they become doctors, if they become professors, engineers, scientists, then they will be happy. They don't know! They can only be happy if they become what they have come to become. They can only become the seed that they are carrying within themselves.

So help in every possible way to give freedom, to give opportunities. Ordinarily, if a child asks a mother anything, without even listening to the child, to what he is asking, the mother simply says no. "No" is an authoritative word; "yes" is not. So neither father nor mother or anybody else who is in authority wants to say yes

-- to any ordinary thing.

The child wants to play outside the house: "No!" The child wants to go out while it is raining and wants to dance in the rain: "No! You will get a cold." A cold is not a cancer, but a child who has been prevented from dancing in the rain, and has never been able again to dance, has missed something great, something really beautiful. A cold would have been worthwhile -- and it is not that he will necessarily have a cold. In fact the more you protect him, the more he becomes vulnerable. The more you allow him, the more he becomes immune.

Parents have to learn to say yes. In ninety-nine times when they ordinarily say no, it is for no other reason than simply to show authority. Everybody cannot become the president of the country, cannot have authority over millions of

people. But everybody can become a husband, can have authority over his wife; every wife can become a mother, can have authority over the child; every child can have a teddy bear, and have authority over the teddy bear... kick him from this corner to the other corner, give him good slaps, slaps that he really wanted to give to the mother or to father. And the poor teddy bear has nobody below him.

This is an authoritarian society.

What I am saying is in creating children who have freedom, who have heard "yes" and have rarely heard "no", the authoritarian society will disappear. We will have a more human society.

So it is not only a question of the children. Those children are going to become tomorrow's society: the child is the father of man.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

INDIA, YOUR HOMELAND, HAS TREATED YOU BADLY AND WITHOUT DUE

RESPECT. YET SOMETIMES WHEN I HEAR YOU SPEAK, DO I NOT DETECT A SUBTLE FONDNESS IN YOU FOR INDIA AND HER PEOPLE? OSHO, WHAT DO

YOU LOVE ABOUT INDIA?

India, to me, is not only a country, but a concept... not just a land, but a way of life, a tremendously significant philosophy.

So when I talk about India, it does not matter at all that they have treated me badly, that they would like me to be killed. They have made efforts -- unfortunately they failed.

These are small things, and I don't take them into consideration. My consideration is for the India as a concept.

It is the only part of the world which has gone deep into the interiority of man,

which has discovered for the first time the ultimate in consciousness, the universality of individual beings.

Science has discovered much, but no discovery of science can be compared to the discovery that India has made in the past. For ten thousand years continuously it has devoted its whole energy to finding out the meaning of life, the very essence of existence

-- and it has found it.

So when I talk about India, I do not talk about the India that you see on the map, I do not talk about the India that exists today. I am talking about a concept that has come out of centuries' work of discovery. Nowhere has religion ever reached such heights. No community has ever given all her geniuses to the discovery of man's inner world. And that is the most precious thing in life.

You can have everything, all, but if you don't have yourself... you can know everything around you, but if you don't know what is within you, all your knowledge, all your wealth, all your power is futile -- and sooner or later you will be drowned in your own wealth, in your own power. It will destroy you because it will go on increasing, becoming bigger and bigger, and you will be shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller.

The scientist is denying that he is, and asserting truths about things and objects. It is a very strange phenomenon. Then who is discovering all these things and objects? Every genuine scientific genius feels embarrassed -- anybody like Albert Einstein -- because he cannot say anything about himself... and he knows about the farthest star in the world, its whole history millions of years before it was created, and he knows how many more million years it will remain, and then it will dissolve. His knowledge is vast, but he knows nothing about the knower.

And what use is this knowledge? Not only is it useless, it is going to be harmful. And we know now that the whole of science is in the service of the war machine: that is, in the service of death. The objective experimentation, the enquiry into the outside world, has reached a stage which can only be called a global suicide; while in India the search was inner, and it culminated in the universal experience of life, of joy, of blissfulness, of nirvana.

I am not concerned with India as a geographical unit, but as a spiritual search. I can condemn the present-day situation. It is ugly; it is against all human values.

The country is becoming poorer every day, and the politicians cannot prevent it, for the simple reason that if they try to prevent it... And the only way to prevent it is to spread birth-control methods. That goes against the orthodox Indian mind, and to annoy the orthodox Indian mind means you lose your power; next election you will be gone. So you know that if you do something to prevent it, you are finished; if you want to keep yourself in power, then you know the country is going to die and starve.

Already India has nine-hundred million people. When I started speaking there were only four hundred million people. If they had listened to me, it would never have got into such a bad situation. But they threw stones at me.

Now countries are trying to prevent me even from landing at their airports; the question of entry into the country does not arise. Even countries about which I have never thought...

Just today Anando informed me that Venezuela -- I have never thought about it!

-- has passed a resolution that I am banned, I cannot enter into the country. Even in Ireland, where we were for two weeks, the government is now denying it. They are not even courageous enough to say, "Yes, they were here and they are gone." They are denying, saying, "They have not been here. How could they enter into the country? -- because they are banned." Just as we left they must have passed some resolution in the parliament to ban us.

The European parliament has a resolution now to ban me collectively, rather than separately, so all European countries who are members of the parliament automatically become closed.

The same situation was happening in India. At the stations my train would be delayed for two hours because there were people who did not want me to get down at their city, and were forcing the train to take me back.

I would be speaking in an Indian city, and the electricity would be cut off. And this was happening so often, again and again, that it could not be just accidental. The fifty thousand people would be sitting in darkness for half an hour, one hour, and the electricity wouldn't come on. And finally I would have to inform them, "Now it is pointless -- you please go home. I will stay a little longer in the city so you will not miss any lecture of the series." And as the people were leaving, as I was leaving, the electricity would come on.

Just now the Indian government wanted me to stay in India, but with conditions. One: no foreign disciple should be allowed to come to see me. Two: no news media should be allowed to interview me. Three: I will not go out of the country. If I fulfilled these three conditions then I could stay in the country.

I said, "Why don't you simply shoot me? These conditions are just to kill me!" And I had to leave the country because... there are many sannyasins in high posts in the government who informed me that I should leave immediately because they were going to confiscate my passport so I could not get out of the country.

I had not enough time, they said, to get a visa, to go to another country. Moreover they had informed all the embassies in Delhi that nobody should give me a visa to their country. So the only country that was available was Nepal, because no visa is needed --

that is a treaty between India and Nepal.

But then the American government was pressurizing Nepal, the German government was pressurizing Nepal, the Indian government was pressurizing Nepal that I should not be allowed there. And when it became absolutely certain that they were going to take some steps -- they could have arrested me there, they could have sent me back to India -- as I was informed, I had immediately to leave.

Whenever I am saying something about India, I am not talking about this India -- this India, which is absolutely corrupted, and politically in the worst shape.

Every day hundreds of people are being killed -- and it goes on declaring that it is a democracy. But newspapers are not allowed to publish how many people are killed; it seems to the outside world that everything is peaceful. But the reality is that India has never been one country; it was always many countries.

In Gautam Buddha's time there were two thousand kingdoms in India. Mohammedans tried to make it one whole; they could not succeed fully, but still they managed that half of India become one nation. Britain, with more brutality, managed to force the whole of India into one nation; otherwise "nation" and "nationality" are not Indian concepts. This unity of India was forced.

Winston Churchill, before he retired, said, "The day India becomes free, it will fall apart, into pieces." And he was right. Politically he had the insight, because

he knew that they had somehow put all the pieces together, and it needs immense power to keep them together. If that power is removed, those pieces will start falling apart -- and that's what is happening now.

First Pakistan and Bangladesh became separated from India, now Punjab wants to be separate from India. Assam has been fighting for forty years to be separate from India, Bengal wants to be separate from India, Tamil Nadu wants to separate from India.

There are thirty languages in India. For forty years they have been trying to make one language -- Hindi -- the national language, but they have not been able. If you cannot even make a national language, how can you manage to have a nation? And all these entities are not small. India is almost a continent. All these states -- Punjab or Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu -- are as big as France or England or Germany, and each has its own culture, its own language, its own dress, its own way of doing everything.

Now, to prevent separation they have made a law that nobody can speak in favor of dividing any part. Anybody who speaks of dividing any part from India will be immediately arrested, and there will be no legal way, no court trial for it. And this is democracy!

In Punjab they have killed thousands of Sikhs, Sikhs have killed thousands of Hindus; and it continues every day. And it is going to happen all over India. And it can be solved very easily.

India is facing today the question of separation. There is no need to kill people. India should remain one. My solution is simple -- one just needs a little understanding.

Freedom is everybody's birthright.

So I am not in favor of this India, which is absolutely corrupted. But to me, in my vision, there is a totally different, glorious India, which consists of men like Gautam Buddha, Nagarjuna, Vasubundhu, Shankara... a whole line of thousands of enlightened people.

That's my India. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN I ASSERT MYSELF IF I DISSOLVE AND ACCEPT WHATSOEVER IS

HAPPENING?

The moment you start thinking about these things, problems arise. You just do it and see what happens.

You dissolve yourself into the whole, and if the situation needs assertion, you will not be asserting; the whole will be asserting. You will not be less, you will be more. You will not be alone, you will be supported by the whole.

Experience dissolves problems. But we go on simply thinking, and if you think, then naturally the problem seems to be very relevant: "If I dissolve, then how am I going to assert myself?" Naturally it seems contradictory. Logically it is contradictory, but existentially it is not.

You dissolve, and see what happens.

If the situation needs assertion, there will be assertion... not yours, because now you are part of the whole. Now the whole will assert with you. You never lose anything. With the whole dissolving, you are always a gainer.

But before thinking about it, do it.

Only doing will solve the contradiction. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

BEFORE I SEE YOU EACH DAY, I AM SO EXCITED AT THE THOUGHT OF

SEEING YOU. BUT WHEN I DO I BECOME BLANK, AS IF I HAVE NO FACE, NO

SMILE. I EVEN FIND IT DIFFICULT TO NAMASTE YOU, AS IF I HAVE

BECOME

INVISIBLE IN FRONT OF YOU. WHATEVER MY HEART DOES LOOKS

CHILDISH, AND IT FEELS AS IF ANY ACT I DID WOULD BE JUST DUMPING

MY RUBBISH ON YOU.OSHO, I HAVE NEVER EXPRESSED HOW MUCH GRATITUDE I FEEL, ALTHOUGH MY HEART IS FULL OF IT.

I know it. And what is happening is absolutely right, what you are feeling is perfectly in tune with my teaching.

You cannot express your gratitude. You can be full of it, but any act... it will look too small. And it can happen, it is very natural, that you are excited when I am coming, but when I come, you are almost absent. This is good, this is how it should be.

When I am here, you should not be here, because in this room only one can survive: either you or I.

So it is not a question... But you have expressed very accurately your feeling. You should be happy that it is happening to you.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #24

Chapter title: Whenever the ego gains, you are the loser 24 April 1986 am in Archive

code: 8604240

ShortTitle: PSYCHO24

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

87

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR SOME TIME NOW YOU HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT YOU ARE OUR FRIEND AND WE ARE FRIENDS. I'M HAVING DIFFICULTY IN TRULY GETTING IT.

OSHO, TO ME YOU ARE MY MOST BELOVED MASTER. PLEASE SHOW ME

WHERE I AM MISSING.

The question is from Vivek.

I can understand her difficulty.

The same will be the difficulty of all those who have come close to me, loved me, received me in their hearts as a master.

I have been saying that I am your friend, and you are my friend for a very strange reason that may not be obvious to you. There was another question from Milarepa -- why are a few sannyasins feeling very resentful towards you, angry with you?

This has been an historical thing, that amongst disciples there are always a few who are accidental. The wind was blowing this way and they arrived. They saw a tremendous energy in the disciples, and they became greedy. But it was not a search for truth, it was not a search for love; it was simple greed. They also wanted to be spiritually powerful.

They became sannyasins, they became disciples, but the distance between me and them remained the same. They could never become my intimate people. They could never become my people. Even though they were with me, deep down they were resentful, angry. I wanted them to drop their resentfulness, to drop their anger. It was not my problem, it was their problem, and I wanted to help them in every possible way.

It was for this simple reason that I had said, "I am your friend, you are my friend." Those who were not really with me were immensely happy that now their status and my status was the same. And amongst these were people that you would never have imagined... Just the other day I had the message from a sannyasin that Teertha is saying to people that my state and his state are now the same -- we are friends. For this he was hanging around for fifteen years. Rajen is saying to people, "Now I am no longer a disciple but a friend, and I have the same status."

These were the people that I wanted to get rid of as peacefully, as lovingly as possible.

But those who had loved me felt hurt -- because they have loved me as a disciple, and to be a disciple is something so valuable that who cares to be a friend?

There is a story in Gautam Buddha's life.… One of his closest disciples, Sariputta, was found to be not meditating enough. Even people who had come after Sariputta had gone deeper into meditation, people of lesser genius and lesser intelligence. Buddha called Sariputta one morning and said, "What is the matter?"

He said, "You know it. I never want to be enlightened while you are alive. I simply want to sit at your feet the way I have always been sitting. To be your disciple, to be showered with your love... who cares about enlightenment? This is my enlightenment!"

So I can understand Vivek's difficulty. She has been for sixteen years with me. When she came she was only twenty years old; now she is thirty-six, almost twice the age. And all these sixteen years, day in, day out, she has been taking care of me with as much love as possible, with a deep devotion. It is difficult for her to think of herself as being a friend. It would not be a gain to her, it would be a loss. Those who have understood the joy and the celebration of being a disciple, of being in love with a master, will all feel the same: that to be a friend is nothing compared to it; everything is lost. To be a friend becomes formal.

So those who were really with me have been shaken, hurt, and those who were not really with me have been tremendously happy. Just by me calling you my friend, you do not achieve the state in which I am. If it was so easy I would have called the whole world my friend, and they all would have come to the same state.

Milarepa's question is concerned with it. After the American government destroyed the commune, illegally but systematically -- it was a criminal act against human consciousness and its evolution -- people had to leave the commune. Now, a few of these people are feeling resentful; that simply means they were around me for a certain reason.

There was some greed -- although I have been insistently destroying all greed, all ego, all jealousy, all competition, all ambition. But they are so deeply rooted that although intellectually you may feel they have left you, they are there.

These people are now feeling resentful because deep down they had the greed that if they die in the buddhafield they will become enlightened, and now the buddhafield has disappeared. They are angry, and they are angry at me, because in spite of me telling them continually that I do not believe in miracles, they continued to believe, so it was a shock to them that I was arrested. They would have loved it if I could have gone through the walls of the jail, and then a miracle... Those were their desires... the commune had been destroyed and I should have done something to prevent it from being destroyed.

Naturally, they are angry.

But this is their misunderstanding. They can't see real miracles; they can't see how I lived for those twelve days in jail, how the people in the jail -- the authorities and the inmates -

- almost became sannyasins. All these people in the jail were saying that it was absolutely unjust, unfair, against the constitution, and when I left their jail, there were tears in their eyes.

One of the jailers said, "This is the first time that I have tears in my eyes when I am releasing a prisoner; otherwise I am always happy to make somebody free. But if you ask me, I really want you to be here always! You have changed the whole atmosphere. How you have done it, I don't know; perhaps it was just your presence."

I was in the hospital section, and the head nurse told me, "This is the first time that the jailers, the assistant jailer, and other officers continually come to this department; otherwise nobody comes here. They come here, they sit with you, they talk with you.

They are hurt that you have been harassed, and they are ashamed that they are all instrumental in the harassment."

They made every arrangement for me -- they have never done that for anybody else. I call this a miracle, not coming out of the walls or breaking the chains; those are not miracles.

But this impact on human consciousness... All the six nurses and the doctor -- who was also a woman -- were crying when I left. They said, "We know you have to go... we know that you have been only three days with us, and we have become so attached to you; what must be happening to your people, who have been living for years with you? You have to go, but our personal feelings do not listen to logic -- we want you to be here. You have changed the whole atmosphere."

Even the inmates were not smoking so that I was not affected. They were trying in every possible way so that the government might think they are harassing me but I was not harassed. I was not taking showers -- the prisoners' shower booth was so dirty that it felt cleaner not to have a shower -- the nurses found out, and they made available to me their own shower.

They made available to me their own place -- the office of the nurses, the office of the doctor -- so that wherever I wanted to sit, I could sit; wherever I wanted to lie down, I could lie down; I did not need to go to the cell. And whenever I wanted I had simply to knock and they would open the cell and bring me out. I

said, "You need not be worried -- I am perfectly good in my cell."

They said, "It is not a question of your being perfectly good in your cell; we love you to be in the office. We will remember forever that this is the place you used to sit."

The same happened in Crete: the chair I was sitting in for almost seven hours... By and by the chief superintendent relaxed, started talking to me, and finally he said, "I am feeling proud that you are sitting in my office. So many of your people come, and I have seen you only in the picture of their locket. Now I will be able to say to them, `This is the chair your master has been sitting in for seven hours with me.'"

He phoned his wife, saying, "I will not come until Osho is safely sent to Athens." He became so concerned that he allowed Devaraj to drive me to the airport. The police officers were sitting at the back, I was sitting in the front and Devaraj was driving! This would have never happened...

These people who feel resentment may have other causes also.

Just the other day Anando was showing me one book published against me in Australia by a couple who have been sannyasins for three years and have been in the commune.

But just looking at their ideas, it seems they have never seen me. They are saying that they were working, working hard, and with their work I was purchasing Rolls Royces.

You can see the absurdity: their work was not bringing any money. Their work was making their own houses to live in, the roads -- which were needing money, not producing money. But in their mind -- and for all those three years also -- they must have been resentful.

Those Rolls Royces were not produced by the commune. They were presents from outside, from all over the world. And I was not their owner -- I had given them to the commune. They were commune property, and I have not brought any of them with me; I have left them with the commune. Everything that I had has been left with the commune.

I never owned anything. But there must have been the idea that they are earning money, and I am wasting money. That is their resentment.

What money were you earning? In fact you needed money to make houses, to make roads, to make a dam -- a dam needed two and a half million dollars to make. You were contributing your labor, but we were not creating money out of it so that I could purchase Rolls Royces, so that I could purchase anything. I have not purchased anything from the money produced by the commune because the commune never produced any money. The commune was absorbing money. In fact all my royalties, all my books, all their profits were going to the commune. The situation is just the opposite -- that I had given everything to the commune. Now, four hundred books in different languages were bringing millions of dollars in royalties, and those royalties were going to the commune.

If I had wanted to purchase Roll Royces, I could have purchased my own Rolls Royces, as many as I wanted, just out of my royalties.

But the resentment, the anger, is blind. In the commune we invested two hundred million dollars. Those sannyasins perhaps think they had brought two hundred million dollars there! Without me and the people who love me around the world, those two hundred million dollars would not have been possible. And now you can see: Sheela is trying hard but is not getting even enough money to pay the attorneys. No sannyasin is going to see her.

Shanti B and Puja have been given bail by the magistrate -- ten million dollars each. But they cannot collect even ten dollars, what to say of ten million dollars! Who is going to put up ten million dollars for Puja, ten million dollars for Shanti B? These people played with two hundred million dollars, and they remained in the illusion that this money was coming to them! The money was given to me, but because I don't receive anything, I had given the whole money to the commune. And still they feel resentful towards me. They are angry at me.

Just to pacify these people, before I left I did everything: I dissolved the religion, because that gives hope to people -- and they start believing that the responsibility is mine, that they should be raised in consciousness, awareness, and finally made enlightened.

I made them free -- saying that you need not wear red clothes, you need not wear a mala, it is not compulsory anymore -- simply to drop all the load of

responsibility that they were unknowingly putting on me. They were hoping that just by wearing red clothes and putting the mala on, their work was finished, that now it is my responsibility to make them enlightened. I dropped that. They think that I was giving freedom to them; in fact I was simply making my own life as light as possible. I was simply dropping unnecessarily imposed responsibilities. And finally, not to let them feel that they were inferior to me in any way, I told them, "I am your friend and you are my friend."

And the people who wanted it, who had been waiting for it, rejoiced. But the people who understood cried and wept.

Now in Rajen's groups even my name is not mentioned. What is the need of mentioning the name of a friend? You have many friends -- you don't mention their names.

Teertha has made an academy. Devageet was there; he worked hard to find the place, to arrange it, hoping that it was going to be Osho's meditation academy. But when he saw the board being put up it said simply "Meditation Academy."

He asked, "But no mention of Osho?"

And Teertha and Vedana and others who were involved in it simply said, "We are all friends -- why put Osho's name there?"

They printed a brochure, and Devageet was saying to me, "I cried, and I had to fight almost physically because Your name was not even mentioned in the brochure. It was not even mentioned that the meditations they will be teaching have something to do with You. They have all their pictures in the brochure, but Your picture is not there." Because he fought so much, finally they agreed to put in a picture of me, a strange picture, an old picture that nobody would recognize

-- it must be a picture taken by someone in '74 --

and that too a small picture, and without mentioning my name or saying anything about who the person is.

Devageet, simply out of disgust, left the place. And now these same people are trying to have a world festival -- in which my name is not mentioned. There is no need, naturally, to mention the name of a man who is your friend; you have many friends! But they will be exploiting the sannyasins.

The strategy is very clear, because I have been seeing: when they advertise their groups in our newspapers, newsletters, magazines, then they are in orange clothes with the mala.

None of them is using red clothes or mala, and in the group not even my name is mentioned. But in advertisements, to attract sannyasins to participate in the groups, all of them are publishing their pictures with malas, with orange dress -- as if they are old sannyasins. Just to make these people feel at ease, I withdrew myself from their lives.

But, Vivek, you need not be worried about it. Those who love me, those who know me, know perfectly well that I am their master, and they have traveled a long way with me, in devotion and love. And of course, it is impossible for them at any moment -- even if they become enlightened -- to call me a friend. That will be simply ungratefulness.

Again, I remember Sariputta. One day finally he became enlightened, and Buddha said,

"You have to go to preach. Now you are enlightened there is no need for you to sit here by my feet."

He said, "This was the trouble! I was ready to drop the idea of enlightenment. You forced me to go on deeper into meditation, and now I am in a fix. I knew that this was going to happen -- once I become enlightened you will tell me to go to spread the word. I don't want to go anywhere. While you are alive, I want to be just your shadow."

But Buddha persuaded him. Finally he agreed, when Buddha was so insistent, but he said,

"One freedom I want..." Just see the use of the word `freedom', and you can see the freedom that your so-called resentful and angry sannyasins have: "One freedom I want, that wherever you are I should be allowed to bow down and touch your feet, from a faraway distance, in your direction."

But Buddha said, "You are already enlightened -- you need not touch my feet!" He said, "You have to give me that freedom."

Love asks for a freedom which logic cannot understand.

Sariputta was asked again and again in his journeys... Every morning he would get up, take his bath, and the first thing he would do was to bow down on the ground with folded hands towards the direction where he knew Buddha was dwelling.

They would say, "To whom are you praying this way?" -- because there is no God in Buddhism.

And he would say, "I am not praying to any God, but Buddha is God to me; he is my master."

And they would say, "But you are enlightened!"

He said, "That does not matter. I am enlightened because of him. Without him I don't think it would have happened in many lives' time, I cannot conceive how it could have happened. So he may say he is not responsible for the happening, but I cannot accept the idea. This freedom I have asked from him, and this is a special privilege."

I am feeling very relieved -- relieved of all those who were not my people but somehow were hanging around. Now I want only those who are really with me.

Yesterday while Vivek was reading the questions to me, when she read her own question she started crying. I said, "What is the matter? Whose question is this?"

She said, "It is my question."

And I know that is the situation of many hearts -- but only those hearts who have learned to love a master.

All those egoist people were pretending to be disciples. I did not want to hurt them, so the best, the graceful way was that I declared: you are my friends, and I give you total freedom. And they accepted immediately, joyously, not knowing what they were accepting. They were free... they met me; now they are again free, in the same position.

They have lost something, but they think their egos have gained something. Whenever the ego gains, you are the loser.

It is one of the reasons that I don't want to have another commune. I want only a mystery school, so those who really are interested can come, learn, go back. It has been a tremendously meaningful experience, but it was not new. At every turn of my life I have had to drop a few people. And I don't want to say to somebody, "I am dropping you." I can't be that unkind, ungraceful. I have managed things so that they drop themselves.

It has happened many times -- this was not the first time. And it is natural that as you go along, you start gathering some junk, some unnecessary luggage, and there comes a point where it has to be dropped. But these are living people. Although they are junk, they are just luggage, useless, I am still respectful towards them. So I have to find a certain device so they can go happily, not feeling that they have been dropped, but on the contrary, that they have gained what they wanted.

It was simply hilarious when I read Teertha's letter. In the end he writes, "I am doing the same work as you are doing; the only difference is that you are doing it on a bigger scale and I am doing it on a personal scale, individual to individual. But the work is the same."

And then came this second news that he told somebody on the phone, who informed me,

"I am of the same state."

It is good that they are feeling good.

As far as reality is concerned, those who were real disciples are still disciples -- even if they become enlightened, they will not lose their disciplehood. In fact, they have attained to the ultimate of disciplehood. Their gratitude and their love towards the master is not less but more than ever.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

LISTENING TO YOU SPEAK RECENTLY, I HAVE HAD MANY MOMENTS

WHEN YOUR WORDS GO IN AND STRIKE A DEEP CHORD. WHEN THIS

HAPPENS IT SEEMS LIKE TWO OPPOSITE PHENOMENA OCCUR

SIMULTANEOUSLY: ON THE ONE HAND IT'S LIKE HEARING SOMETHING

FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND ON THE OTHER, LIKE REMEMBERING SOMETHING JUST RECENTLY FORGOTTEN.

COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

They are not opposite phenomenon. My whole work is not to make something of you, but to help you to remember something. Your innermost reality, your truth, has not to be brought to you; it is already there. It just has to be remembered.

The word `remember' is very beautiful. Ordinarily you don't think about words.

`Remember' means to "make it a member again." Its root meaning is that you have forgotten some member of your being. `Remember' means you suddenly become aware that it is there.

And my talking to you is not the talking of a teacher, because I am not teaching any theology, any doctrine, any cult, any creed. I am speaking to you in a totally different context. I am speaking to you in such a way that it creates inside you a synchronicity, it hits a deep chord in you. And in that, simultaneously something is remembered... You feel that you have heard it for the first time and you also feel that it is a truth that has always been with you, just you had forgotten it. Both are true. From the outside you have heard it for the first time. From the inside it is part of your being; you had forgotten it.

I know so many people in the world, and so intimately, but still I forget their names sometimes -- but I never forget their faces, I never forget their eyes. Even in a crowd of millions of people I can find them. But as far as names are concerned... because deep down I know names are just given to you, they are not part of your reality. So I forget.

Then I have a simple technique for how to remember... It is strange that there are a few names which I go on forgetting. I will remember and will forget again... there must be something in those names.

So what I do is I simply close my eyes and start repeating the alphabet -- from A to Z, slowly -- and it helps. I say to myself "A" and wait for a moment to see if something is remembered, if the "A" hits something... then "B", then "C." And it never fails.

For example, Geeta is sitting here. Now Geeta is one of the names that I should not forget; it is the bible of the Hindus -- in India the most respected book, the holiest book.

But perhaps that is the reason I go on forgetting it! So this poor Geeta suffers.

Yesterday I was answering her question, but I could not remember her name, and there was not time while answering to go through the alphabet. Later on, walking up the steps, I went through the alphabet and caught her immediately as "G" came; I immediately remembered -- it is Geeta. And then I was surprised because this is such a common name; it is not uncommon. But perhaps it is the Hindus and their holy book -- that seems to be the only reason. I have spoken on it... not in English, so you don't know; otherwise twelve big volumes I have spoken on it, twelve thousand pages, although it is a small book.

But I had to go always... it was not only once. Once I can understand -- one can forget.

Then the next day I saw her coming to clean my bathroom and I thought, "My God! I have to go through the alphabet again!" And I caught her at "G" immediately, that "G"

hits some chord, and I remembered "Geeta." And there are many names like that, that I go on forgetting. But they are there, just waiting to be struck rightly, then they become alive.

Different people use different techniques for forgotten names; they make associations.

For example, if I don't want to forget Geeta's name I can simply make it associated with Krishna. That name I never forget, and it is his message -- Geeta. So I can simply connect these two, so that whenever I see Geeta I don't have to bother about her name; I have to think of Krishna, then immediately I will remember Geeta. That too I have tried just this morning. Coming in, I said, "Hey Krishna!" I remembered that she is Geeta and no one else.

So if it happens when I am speaking that something hits a deep cord in you, you feel it is something new that you have heard. But suddenly, in an even deeper and darker part of your being, something else is remembered. And suddenly you are in a puzzle: have you heard it new or you had just forgotten, and hearing this you have remembered?

Both are true -- there is no need for any puzzle. It is new as far as you are concerned; it is as ancient as existence as far as your being is concerned. For your ego it is new, but for your being it is just a forgotten message.

Sometimes you feel you know something, you remember something. You are absolutely certain. In all the languages this kind of phrase is available, "It is almost on the tip of my tongue." It is, but still you cannot say it. And it feels very, very strange, a little awkward inside, with both the things together: you know, you are perfectly certain that it is on the tip of the tongue, but you cannot verbalize it, you cannot simply say it. The more you try, the more you become tense... tense because it is so close. And it is close, but something is hindering the path, something is coming in between -- a very thin layer of something, some other word. But because you are becoming tense, it is not possible to remember it.

Then different people have different methods. you start smoking a cigarette -- you forget all about it. Just smoking a cigarette you relax, and suddenly it is there. Or you go into the garden and start watering the plants -- you forget all about it. You are no longer tense, you are no longer worried even about remembering it, and that is the moment you remember it. It seems relaxation plays a great part in letting it come to the surface.

Perhaps when I say something it relaxes you deep down, and that helps. Just sitting with me, listening to me, is not a tense affair. It is not the lecture of a professor, where you are taking notes.

In India I had continuously to tell people, "Please stop taking notes because you are destroying the whole atmosphere. I am not a professor and this is not a class, and when I am speaking and you are taking notes, you can't hear me. You are concentrated on taking notes; you will miss many significant things."

Listening to me, sitting relaxed, suddenly a deep relaxation happens inside, and something that you have forgotten.…

Now I would like again to remind you of the meaning of the word `sin.' The religions have destroyed the beauty of the word -- so much so that it has become almost impossible to use it, because all the connotations that they have given to it are in everybody's mind.

But in reality the word `sin' simply means `forgotten.' In that sense I accept it.

Our only sin is that we have forgotten ourselves, and our only enlightenment will be that we remember again.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #25

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