Chapter title: We cannot be otherwise

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‌Chapter title: We cannot be otherwise‌

24 April 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8604245

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO25

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

87

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

TODAY IS MY EIGHTH SANNYAS BIRTHDAY. ISN'T EIGHT YEARS A VERY

LONG TIME TO MISS THE OBVIOUS?

The obvious has been missed for hundreds of lives, so no time is long enough to miss it.

On the other hand, even a single minute is enough to recognize it.

In fact, it is a nontemporal phenomenon; time has no concern with it. If you think in terms of years, if you have missed it in the moment when it was possible to get it, you will go on missing. Time cannot help; on the contrary, the longer you have missed it the more is the possibility to miss it again when the moment comes to recognize it.

The question is from Devaraj. He should not be worried, because he has not missed it.

And it is not the time of eight years that has helped him not to miss. It is his love

-- not the length of time but the depth of love that he did not miss it.

He has loved me immensely and in a very difficult situation. He is my personal physician, and anybody in that situation will be in a very difficult situation.

I am a difficult patient. I don't listen to him or to anybody; I simply tell him to do what he should tell me to do. And he has to manage somehow to do it -- and to do it rightly, because he has to take care of medical science and he has to take care of a madman.

I won't listen, because I understand my body and its ways. Whatever he, or any doctor in the world has learned about bodies and ways... They have learned about corpses, not real bodies; they have been dissecting dead bodies.

Sooner or later medical science will have to accept the fact that their understanding is basically wrong, because a living body functions totally differently; the dead body does not function at all. You study the dead body and you apply your conclusions to the living body. That is one of the greatest flaws in modern medical science.

But with me the difficulty is even more; it is not only a question of a living body. Modern medical science has no understanding of a body in which enlightenment has happened, which changes its functioning absolutely, totally.

But Devaraj has been able to understand for the simple reason that he has been able to love. His science, his experience, and my body's different functioning may have created a great problem for him to understand -- but love solves everything. He has followed my understanding of my body and its wisdom, still

keeping in tune with his scientific medical knowledge. He has done something which has never been done before, and he has done it successfully.

He need not worry: eight years or eighty years make no difference. The first moment he saw me the obvious became a reality to him, and not for a single moment has he lost sight of it; otherwise you can live with an awakened person for your whole life and still not see what awakening is, what illumination is.

So remember, it is not the length of time but the depth of love that makes the obvious understood. And in that very understanding a tremendous transformation takes place.

Only such people know intimacy with a master. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THIS CHATTERBOX MIND OF MINE? IT HAS BEEN

GOING ON AND ON NOW FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. WHAT ARE

ITS ORIGINS? IS ITS SOURCE SOMEWHERE IN THE VAST SILENCE IT DISSOLVES INTO WHEN I AM IN YOUR PRESENCE?

The mind is simply a biocomputer. When the child is born he has no mind; there is no chattering going on in him. It takes almost three to four years for his mechanism to start functioning. And you will see that girls start talking earlier than boys. They are bigger chatterboxes. They have a better quality biocomputer.

It needs information to be fed into it; that's why if you try to remember your life backwards, you will get stuck somewhere at the age of four if you are a man, or at the age of three if you are a woman. Beyond that is a blank. You were there; many things must have happened, many incidents must have occurred, but there seems to be no memory being recorded, so you cannot remember. But you can remember back to the age of four or three very clearly.

Mind collects its data from the parents, from the school, from other children, neighbors, relatives, society, churches... all around there are sources. And you must have seen little children, when for the first time they start speaking, they will repeat the same word many times. The joy! -- a new mechanism has started functioning in them.

When they can make sentences they will make sentences so joyously, again and again.

When they can start asking questions, then they will ask about each and everything. They are not interested in your answers, remember! Watch a child when he asks a question; he is not interested in your answer, so please don't give him a long answer from the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. The child is not interested in your answer; the child is simply enjoying that he can question. A new faculty has come into being in him.

And this is how he goes on collecting; then he will start reading... and more words. And in this society, silence does not pay; words pay, and the more articulate you are, the more you will be paid.

What are your leaders? What are your politicians? What are your professors? What are your priests, theologians, philosophers, condensed to one thing? They are very articulate.

They know how to use words meaningfully, significantly, consistently, so that they can impress people.

It is rarely taken note of that our whole society is dominated by verbally articulate people.

They may not know anything; they may not be wise, they may not even be intelligent.

But one thing is certain: they know how to play with words. It is a game, and they have learned it. And it pays in respectability, in money, in power -- in every way. So everybody tries, and the mind becomes filled with many words, many thoughts.

And you can turn any computer on or off -- but you cannot turn the mind off. The switch does not exist.

There is no reference about it, that when God made the world, when he made man, he made a switch for the mind so that you could turn it on or turn it off. There is no switch, so from birth to death it continues.

You will be surprised that the people who understand computers and who understand the human brain have a very strange idea. If we take out the brain from the skull of a human being and keep it alive mechanically, it goes on chattering in the same way. It does not matter to it that it is now no longer connected to the poor person who was suffering from it; it still dreams. Now that it is connected to machines, it still dreams, it still imagines, it still fears, it still projects, hopes, tries to be this or that. And it is completely unaware that now it can do nothing; the person it used to be attached to is no longer there.

You can keep this brain alive for thousands of years attached to mechanical devices, and it will go on chattering, round and round, the same things, because we have not yet been able to teach it new things. Once we can teach it new things, it will repeat new things.

There is an idea prevalent in scientific circles: It is a great wastage that a man like Albert Einstein dies and his brain also dies with him. If we could save the brain, implant the brain into somebody else's body, then the brain would go on functioning. It doesn't matter whether Albert Einstein is alive or not; that brain will continue to think about the theory of relativity, about stars and about theories. The idea is that just as people donate blood and people donate eyes before they die, people should start donating their brains too so that their brains can be kept. If we feel that they are special brains, very qualified -- and it is sheer wastage to let them die -- then we can transplant them.

Some idiot can be made an Albert Einstein, and the idiot will never know -- because inside the skull of man there is no sensitivity; you can change anything and the person will never know. Just make the person unconscious and change anything you want to change in his brain -- the whole brain you can change -- and he will wake up with the new brain, with the new chattering, and he will not even suspect what has happened.

This chattering is our education, and it is basically wrong because it teaches you only half of the process -- how to use the mind. It does not teach you how to stop it so that it can relax -- because even when you are asleep it goes on continuing. It knows no sleep.

Seventy years, eighty years, it has worked continuously.

If we can educate... and that's what I am trying to impress on you -- that it is possible. We call it meditation.

It is possible to put a switch on the mind and turn it off when it is not needed. It is helpful in two ways: it will give you a peace, a silence, which you have never known before, and it will give you an acquaintance of yourself which, because of the chattering mind, is not possible. It has always kept you engaged.

Secondly, it will give the mind rest also. And if we can give the mind rest it will be more capable of doing things more efficiently, more intelligently.

So on both sides -- on the side of mind and on the side of being -- you will be benefited; you just have to learn how to stop the mind from functioning, how to say to it, "It is enough; now go to sleep. I am awake, don't be worried."

Use the mind when it is needed, and then it is fresh, young, full of energy and juice. Then whatever you say is not just dry bones; it is full of life, full of authority, full of truth, sincerity, and has tremendous meaning. You may be using the same words, but now the mind has collected so much power by resting, that each word it uses becomes afire, becomes power.

What is known in the world as charisma is nothing... it is simply a mind which knows how to relax and let energy collect, so when it speaks it is poetry, when it speaks it is gospel, when it speaks, it need not give any evidence or any logic -- just its own energy is enough to influence people. And people have always known that there is something...

although they have never been able to exactly pinpoint what it is that they have called charisma.

Perhaps for the first time I am telling you what charisma is, because I know it by my own experience. A mind that is working day and night is bound to become weak, dull, unimpressive, somehow dragging. At the most it is utilitarian; you go to purchase vegetables -- it is helpful. But more than that it has no power. So millions of people who could have been charismatic remain poor, unimpressive, without any authority and without any power.

If this is possible -- and this is possible -- to put the mind to silence and only use

it when it is needed, then it comes with a rushing force. It has gathered so much energy that each word uttered goes directly to your heart. People think that these minds of charismatic personalities are hypnotic; they are not hypnotic. They are really so powerful, so fresh...

it is always spring. This is for the mind.

For the being, the silence opens up a new universe of eternity, of deathlessness, of all that you can think of as blessing, as benediction; hence my insistence that meditation is the essential religion, the only religion. Nothing else is needed. Everything else is nonessential ritual.

Meditation is just the essence, the very essence. You cannot cut anything out of it.

And it gives you both worlds. It gives you the other world -- the divine, the world of godliness -- and it gives you this world too. Then you are not poor. You have a richness but not of money.

There are many kinds of richness, and the man who is rich because of money is the lowest as far as the categories of richness are concerned. Let me say it in this way: the man of wealth is the poorest rich man. Looked at from the side of the poor, he is the richest poor man. Looked at from the side of a creative artist, of a dancer, of a musician, of a scientist, he is the poorest rich man. And as far as the world of ultimate awakening is concerned he cannot even be called rich.

Meditation will make you ultimately rich by giving you the world of your innermost being and also relatively rich, because it will release your powers of mind into certain talents that you have. My own experience is that everybody is born with a certain talent, and unless he lives that talent to its fullest, something in him will remain missing. He will go on feeling that somehow something is not there that should be.

Give mind a rest -- it needs it! And it is so simple: just become a witness to it. And it will give you both things.

Slowly, slowly mind starts learning to be silent. And once it knows that by being silent it becomes powerful, then its words are not just words; they have a validity and a richness and a quality that they never had before -- so much so that they go directly, like arrows.

They bypass the logical barriers and reach to the very heart.

Then mind is a good servant of immense power in the hands of silence.

Then the being is the master, and the master can use the mind whenever it is needed and can switch it off whenever it is not needed.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

I REMEMBER YOU ONCE EXPLAINING THAT TANTRA MEANS EXPANSION.

MY MOMENTS OF GREATEST JOY AND MY MOMENTS OF GREATEST

SILENCE ARE INVARIABLY ACCOMPANIED BY AN EXQUISITE FEELING OF

EXPANDING. THIS FEELING IS ALSO PRESENT IN THE URGE TO MELT INTO

SOMEONE OR SOMETHING -- LIKE A TREE OR A SUNSET -- THAT I LOVE.

WHERE DOES THIS DESIRE COME FROM? IS IT AN INNATE LONGING TO BE

REUNITED WITH SOMETHING OF WHICH WE WERE ONCE PART?

Yes, it is not something coming from outside. It is your innate feeling to be one with something with which you were once one -- and with which you are still one, but without being aware. So it is only a question of awareness, of remembrance.

You have never gone anywhere. You are still here; it is just your mind that goes on moving to faraway spaces. If the mind is silent, suddenly you discover this crystal clear moment, now and here, and the feeling of oneness with all.

We are one.

We cannot be otherwise. There is no other way.

Life is one phenomenon, existence is undivided -- but mind has the capacity to forget it.

The mind has the capacity to dream of faraway things. You sleep in the night in your bedroom and you can dream of being on the moon. Do you think if you are suddenly awakened you will ask, "How to get home? -- because I am on the moon." If you are suddenly awakened you will not be on the moon, you will be in your bed. You have never been on the moon. Even when you were dreaming that you were on the moon, you were not on the moon. The moon was a dream, your being on it was a dream; you were on your bed, in your bedroom.

The mind has the capacity to go far away. So once in a while when it is not far away, when something very striking brings it back to herenow -- a beautiful sunset, a beautiful painting, a great dance... anything can pull it back. If something so enchanting is happening here, it cannot wander out, here and there; it has to rush home. That's why, at the moment of seeing a sunset or listening to music, you feel a certain oneness. And it is so fulfilling, so satisfying that you would like it to persist every moment, forever.

And the joke is that it persists every moment, eternally. You just go on, here and there, again and again forgetting about it.

You have to be brought back.

Once you have understood the basic situation, then there is no need for anything. Just close your eyes and feel now and here, and suddenly existence opens its doors.

You have always been part of it. You are part of it.

You cannot be otherwise. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

ALL MY LIFE, INCLUDING MY YEARS OF BEING A SANNYASIN, I HAVE

NEVER HAD A QUESTIONING ATTITUDE. THIS HAS NOT WORRIED ME UP TO

DATE, BUT NOW SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN INVITING US TO ASK YOU QUESTIONS, I WONDER IF IT IS OKAY THAT I AM QUITE EMPTY?

It is absolutely okay. Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,

MY LOVE FOR FREEDOM MAKES ME ALWAYS GIVE TO MY BELOVEDS ALL

THE FREEDOM I POSSIBLY CAN. SO OFTEN, I PUT MYSELF INTO AN

UNCOMFORTABLE SITUATION WHERE I GET HURT. DOES THIS MEAN I DON'T LOVE MYSELF SO MUCH, AND THAT'S WHY I PUT MYSELF SECOND?

It may be much more complicated than you think.

First, the very idea that you give freedom to your beloved is wrong. Who are you to give freedom to your beloved? You can love, and your love implies freedom. It is not something that has to be given. If it has to be given, then there will be the problems that you are facing.

So in the first place you are doing something wrong. You really don't want to give freedom; you would love that no such situation arises in which you have to give freedom.

But you have heard me saying again and again that love gives freedom, so you force yourself unconsciously to give freedom, because otherwise your love is not

love.

You are in a troubled situation: if you don't give freedom, you start suspecting your love; if you give freedom, which you cannot give...

The ego is very jealous. It will raise a thousand and one questions: "Are you not enough for your lover or beloved, that she needs freedom -- freedom from you to be with someone else?" It hurts, and that's why you start feeling, "I am putting myself second."

Giving freedom to her you have put somebody else first, and you have put yourself second. That is against the ego, and it is not going to help in any way, because you will take revenge for the freedom that you have given. You would like the same freedom to be given to you -- whether you need it or not, that is not the point -- just to prove that you are not being cheated.

Secondly, because your beloved has been with someone else you will feel a little strange being with her. That will stand between you and her. She has chosen someone else and dropped you; she has insulted you. And you have been doing so much; you have been so generous that you gave her freedom. Because you are feeling hurt, you are going to hurt her in some way or other.

But the whole thing arises from a misunderstanding. I have not said that if you love, then you have to give freedom. No, I have said that love is freedom.

It is not a question of giving. If you have to give it, then it is better not to give it. Remain the way everybody is. Why create unnecessary complications? -- ordinarily, there are enough.

If your love itself has come to that quality that freedom is part of it, that your beloved need not even ask your permission... In fact, if I was in your place and the beloved was asking my permission, I would be hurt. That means she does not trust my love. My love is freedom. I have loved her; that does not mean that I should close all doors and windows so she cannot laugh with somebody else, dance with somebody else, love somebody else -- because who are we?

That is the basic question that everyone has to ask: Who are we? We are all strangers, and on what grounds do we become so authoritative that we can say, "I will give you freedom," or "I will not give you freedom," or "If you love me, then you cannot love anybody else"? These are stupid assumptions, but they

have dominated humankind since its very beginnings.

And we are still barbarous; we still don't know what love is.

If I love someone, I am grateful that that person allowed me, my love, and did not reject me. This is enough. But I don't become an imprisonment to her: She loved me, and as a reward I am creating a prison around her; I loved her, and she, as a result, is creating a prison around me. Great rewards we are giving to each other!

If I love someone I am grateful and her freedom remains intact. It is not given by me. It is her birthright, and my love cannot take it away. How can love take somebody's freedom away, particularly the person you love? It is her birthright. You cannot even say, "I give freedom to her." Who are you in the first place? -- just a stranger. You both have met on the road, by the way, accidentally, and she was gracious to accept your love. Just be thankful, and let her live the way she wants to live, and live the way you yourself want to live. Your life-style should not be interfered with.

This is what freedom is. Then love will help you to be less tense, less full of anxieties, less in anguish, and more in joy.

But what goes on happening in the world is just the opposite. Love creates so much misery, so much pain, that there are people who decide finally that it is better not to love anyone. They close the doors of their heart because it is simply hell and nothing else.

But closing the door to love is also closing the door to reality, to existence; hence I will not support it. I will say: Change the whole pattern of love! You have forced love into an ugly situation -- change the situation.

Let love become a help for your spiritual growth. Let love become a nourishment to your heart and a courage so that you can open your heart, not only to one individual but to the whole universe.

Question 6 BELOVED OSHO,

DO WE HAVE TO TRANSCEND SEX BEFORE GETTING ENLIGHTENED?

You don't have to transcend anything. You have to live everything that is natural to you, and live it fully, without any inhibition -- joyously, aesthetically. Just by living it deeply, a transcendence will come.

You are not to transcend anything. Remember my words. A transcendence will come by itself, and when it comes by itself it is such a release and such a freedom.

If you try to transcend, you are going to repress, and repression is the sole reason why people cannot transcend; so you are getting into a vicious circle. You want to transcend, so you repress, and because you repress you cannot transcend, so you repress more. As you repress more, you become more incapable of transcendence.

Live it out fully, without any condemnation, without any religion interfering with your life. Live it out naturally, intensely, totally -- and a transcendence comes. It is not your doing, it is a happening. And when it comes by itself, there is no repression, there is no antagonism.

You are above all those things that you wanted to transcend -- for example, sex. But a real transcendence does not mean that you cannot make love. Of course your love will have a totally different quality. It will not be sexual, it will not be a biological urge, it will not be animalistic; it will be simply a play between two human energies.

If transcendence comes by itself, then many things, more or less, disappear. But anything that disappears -- you are not against it. You can still enjoy it. For example, in a state of transcendence you are not a food addict, but that does not mean that you cannot enjoy, once in a while, going to a Chinese restaurant.

Transcendence makes you free; it does not give you a new bondage: first you were so addicted that you had to go, now you are so addicted that you cannot go. Transcendence means that now all this addiction is gone -- you can go, you may not go. You are neither against nor for.

You may be smoking. Transcendence does not mean that once in a while with friends you cannot smoke a cigarette. I don't think that a cigarette, once in a while, will destroy your spirituality. And if it destroys it, then that spirituality is not worthwhile.

I cannot smoke -- not because of transcendence but because of my breathing trouble. I have no antagonism against poor cigarettes; it is just the smell of tobacco I cannot tolerate, the smoke I cannot inhale. But that is a problem with my body; it is my allergy.

But when I see somebody smoking I don't feel that this man is condemned forever, is going to fall into hellfire.

No condemnation arises in me, because what he is doing is simply playing a game. Being alone, finding nothing else to do and being told continually by the parents and the society that it is better to do something rather than nothing... so the poor man is doing something rather than nothing. He is at least smoking.

Transcendence is a very childlike state.

My grandfather used to smoke cigars and cheroots, and he would send me to get his cigar and lighter. And rather than bringing both, I would take the cigar in my mouth and light it and bring it to him. He said, "This is not right. I had asked you to bring the cigar and the lighter."

I said, "When I can bring one, which does the work for both... I am not stupid." He said, "That I know. But remember, don't learn this habit."

I said, "Don't be worried. Seeing you cough continually the whole night, it is enough. I don't have to go through the experience to learn it. I learn from others' experience too."

His doctors were saying to him, "Drop these cigars." But it was impossible for him... a whole life's addiction. He was ready to suffer -- to cough and not to sleep well.

I said, "Seeing you is enough prevention for me, and just that one puff that I take when I light your cigar brings tears to my eyes. It is enough just to experience what kind of enjoyment you must be having."

The people you know as saints are not childlike. They are addicted as much as others; their addictions have just become reversed. Somebody is addicted to sex

-- they are addicted to no-sex. Somebody is addicted to smoking -- they are addicted to no-smoking.

Transcendence is a state of no-addiction... just a childlike playfulness. There is no sin in sex. Just living it intensely, by and by you transcend, just the way you transcend playing tennis. One day you throw away the whole thing, "Enough is enough!" You transcend football, you transcend all kinds of things, and nobody calls you a saint.

To me transcendence comes out of your experience. You see the futility of something and the addiction drops. Then once in a while, just for a change, if you want to smoke I don't see any harm; if you want to make love I don't see any harm. The harm is in the addiction

-- the harm is not in the act. And transcendence is not concerned with the act; transcendence is concerned with the addiction.

And to be completely unaddicted gives an immense freedom. Beyond Psychology

Chapter #26

Chapter title: The circle can be broken 25 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604250

ShortTitle: PSYCHO26

Audio: Yes Video: Yes

Length:

92

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HEAR YOU OFTEN SAY THAT THE POLITICIANS AND THE PRIESTS ARE

EXPLOITING AND CHEATING PEOPLE, AS IF THEY ARE A DIFFERENT RACE

FROM OUTER SPACE, FORCED UPON US.

MY UNDERSTANDING IS, RATHER, THAT THESE POLITICIANS AND PRIESTS

JUST COME OUT FROM AMONGST US, SO WE ARE TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE

FOR THEIR DOINGS, AND COMPLAINING ABOUT THEM SEEMS LIKE

COMPLAINING ABOUT OURSELVES. IS NOT A POLITICIAN AND A PRIEST

HIDDEN IN EVERY ONE OF US? WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

The politicians and the priests are certainly not coming from outer space; they are growing amongst us. We also have the same lust for power, the same ambition to be holier than others. They are the most successful people as far as these ambitions and desires are concerned.

Certainly we are responsible, but it is a vicious circle; we are not the only ones who are responsible. The successful politicians and priests go on conditioning the new generations for the same ambitions; they make the society, they cultivate its mind and conditioning.

They are also responsible -- and they are more responsible than the common people, because the common people are victims of all kinds of programs that are being imposed upon them.

The child comes into the world without any ambition, without any lust for power, without any idea that he is higher, holier, superior. Certainly he cannot be responsible. Those who bring him up -- the parents, the society, the educational system, the politicians, the priests

-- the same gang goes on spoiling every child. Of course in his own turn, he will spoil...

but it is a vicious circle. From where to break it?

I insist on condemning the priests and the politicians, because that is the place from where it can be broken. Condemning the small children coming into the world is not going to help. Condemning the common masses is also not going to help, because they have been already conditioned -- they are being exploited. They are suffering, they are miserable. But nothing wakes them up -- they are fast asleep. The only point where our condemnations should be concentrated is on those who have the power, because they have the power to contaminate the future generations. If they can be stopped we can have a new man.

I know that everybody is responsible. Whatever happens, in some way or other, everybody has his own part in it. But to me what is important is whom to hit, so that for the new generation of children the vicious circle can be avoided. Humanity has been revolving in it for centuries. That's why I don't condemn the common masses, I don't condemn you. I condemn those who are now in a position that if they just relax a little bit as far as their vested interests are concerned, and look at the miserable mass of humanity, a transformation is possible -- the circle can be broken.

I purposely choose the politicians and the priests. There are many other things to be remembered. The priest knows perfectly well that there is no God. In this world the priest is the only person who knows there is no God, but his whole profession depends on this non-existential God. He cannot say the truth because all his vested interests will be lost --

not only his, but for generations to come he will be spoiling the whole game. He knows the rituals are just hocus-pocus, that the mantras carry no power, that his

theology is just a cover-up. Nobody else knows it better; he has studied the scriptures and he knows there is no evidence of God anywhere. He interprets the scriptures in such a way that they help his profession. He goes on making commentaries on the ancient scriptures, adding more and more things that are helpful for his profession.

As times change he has to make new additions. For example, Manu, a five thousand year old thinker, priest, the father of priesthood, in his manusmriti -- the memoirs of Manu which Hindus follow word by word -- he created the caste system, one of the ugliest things in existence.

Because of it one fourth of Hindus have suffered a long slavery, exploitation and humiliation. They have been turned almost into subhuman beings -- they are called achhoot, untouchables. They have fallen so much that you cannot touch them; otherwise you have to take a bath immediately. Even their shadow touching you is enough to make you impure. Manu reduced one-fourth of the Hindus to eternal slavery it seems.

He managed the highest position in the society for the priesthood, but he was really cunning and clever: he has given all the superiority to brahmins, but he has not given them riches, nor material, temporal power. He has divided the castes so there is no conflict. Temporal power he has given to the second highest caste: the warriors, kshatriyas. They are going to be the kings, they are going to be the generals, the soldiers, the fighters, and they will be the second highest class. And money he has given to the third: the businessmen, the vaishyas. To the fourth he has given nothing -- except slavery.

You can see the cunningness... he divides. He does not give money to brahmins, or temporal power, because then three-fourths of the society will be against them, and it will not be possible to control. And if they have also spiritual power, material power, money, then there will be resentment, anger, violence -- there will be riots. So to brahmins he gives the holy power -- they are the highest, the holiest -- but he does not give anything temporal to them.

He gives the temporal power to the warriors. It is satisfying, because they are going to be the kings; brahmins cannot be the kings. And who cares about spiritual power? So let them have spiritual power; it is almost like having nothing, just a nominal quality of being superior, so the warriors are not angry about it. On the contrary, they are happy that one-fourth of the society will never

be in conflict with them -- they are already higher, they have nothing more to gain. And the warriors are the most powerful people.

To the third he gives money and all other worldly things. These are the people who cannot fight, who are not warriors -- but they can earn money, they can produce wealth.

You will be surprised to know that in India all the kings, before India became a slave country, were indebted to the rich people. From where are they going to get money? --

just by borrowing. They can pay when they invade some other country; otherwise they have to borrow from the business people. And the business people are happy; they have all the material things, money... Not only that, kings are borrowing from them, brahmins have to depend on them for everything -- so let them believe that they are higher... but basically the business people hold the power, they have the money.

And against these three classes the poor fourth has no power to fight. They are deprived of all education, deprived even of living in the city; they have to live outside the town.

They cannot take water from the city well -- they have to make their own wells or carry water from the river. They are completely cut off from the society. They have just to come and serve, and do all the ugliest things that nobody else wants to do. And three powerful sections are there to go on repressing them; they have money, they have power, they have spiritual heights -- they are the representatives of God.

For five thousand years they have maintained this -- and they have made the fourth, the slaves, believe that you are born slaves because of your evil acts in the past life -- this is the punishment. The brahmin is enjoying his position because of good acts in his past life. And there is no mobility; one cannot move from one caste to another caste.

Since Manu, the priests in India have remained the most anti-revolutionary element --

naturally, because they will lose their superiority. Kings come to touch their feet, the superrich come to touch their feet -- their ego is fulfilled. And the same is the

story around the world -- everywhere the priesthood has maintained its superiority. It is not so clear-cut as in India, but a subtle division is there. The priest is everywhere superior, the warrior is everywhere number two, and the rich man is everywhere number three. The fourth, the slave, the servant, is everywhere the same.

These priests go on preaching to every child a certain kind of mind that keeps the society running -- or stuck. The politicians are in a deep conspiracy with the priests. The politicians are full of lust for power, and if they want power, they want blessings from the priests, because the priests have a spiritual hold over humanity. And if a politician goes and touches the feet of a priest, the followers of the priest are going to vote for the politician. There is a conspiracy: the politician goes on praising the priest, his religion, his ideology, and the priests go on blessing the politician and his ideology. And between these two powerful groups the whole society is crushed, sucked.

I know everybody is responsible, but not everybody is powerful enough to break the circle; hence I am hitting constantly on the priests and the politicians. And now they have become afraid of me -- perhaps they have never been afraid of a single man before. All over the world they don't want me to enter into their countries. The priests are behind the politicians who are making rules and laws that I should be prohibited.

The commune in America was destroyed by the politicians, but behind the politicians were the fundamentalist Christians, the most orthodox group of Christian priests. Ronald Reagan himself is a fundamentalist Christian. And to be a fundamentalist Christian means to be absolutely orthodox. He believes that every single word in THE BIBLE is holy, is from God's own mouth. They were in conspiracy together to destroy the commune.

Just the other day I received the news that now they are making a memorial in The Dalles; bishops and politicians and all kinds of leading, prominent citizens are contributing money -- a big memorial, a memorial that they have become victorious, that they have thrown away the evil forces who had created the commune. They have thrown me out, destroyed my work, and they are not satisfied with that; they want to create a memorial so that the future generations will know.

And both the priests and the politicians are very vulnerable; they have no ground

beneath their feet. Just a good hit is needed and they will be finished. And once they are finished, society will have a taste of freedom.

We can bring up children in a more human way, unconditioned, intelligent, looking at the whole earth as one -- not Christians, not Hindus, not Mohammedans, not Indians, not Chinese, not Americans. Nations and religions are creations of the priests and the politicians. Once they are finished, religions and nations are also finished.

And a world free of religions, free of nations, will be a human world -- without wars, without unnecessarily fighting for things which nobody has seen.…

It is so stupid that for thousands of years people have been killing each other in the name of God. None of them has seen, none of them has any proof, none of them has any evidence. And they don't even feel embarrassed, because nobody has, looking directly into their eyes, asked the question And they are going on

crusades, jihads, religious wars, destroying all those who do not believe in their dogma, because their dogma is divine and every other dogma is the devil's creation.

They are trying to serve humanity by killing people. Their intention is to free those people from the clutches of the devil. But the strangest thing is that every religion thinks that the other religion is created by the devil. So the fight continues. Politicians are fighting war after war -- for what? I don't see the point. The earth has no lines; then why make these maps and draw lines?

One of my teachers was a very intelligent man. One day he brought a few pieces of cardboard; he had cut the whole world map into small pieces, put them on the desk and asked, "Can anybody come and arrange them in the right order?" Many tried and failed.

Just one boy, seeing that everybody was failing and they were not making the world map by putting the pieces together, he looked at one piece on the reverse side. Then he turned all the pieces over and he found the picture of a man. He arranged the picture of the man, which was very easy, and that was the key. On one side the man was arranged, and on the other side, the world map was arranged.

Perhaps the same is true about the real world if we can arrange man, the world

will be arranged. If we can make man silent, peaceful, loving, nations will

disappear, wars will disappear, all dirty politics will disappear. And remember, all politics is dirty; there is no other kind.

But we have to hit on those who have the power. Hitting the poor common man will not help, because he has no power, he is a victim. Even if we can change him, it won't be a great change. But if we can abolish the conspiracy between religion and politics, priests and the politicians, it will be really a great change, a revolution -- the only revolution that is needed and that has not happened yet.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU SPOKE OF GREED, I WAS TOTALLY HORRIFIED. I HAVE

FINALLY REACHED A POINT WHERE I AM WILLING TO SEE HOW BIG A PART IT PLAYS IN MY LIFE, AND THE MISERY IT BRINGS WITH IT. COULD

YOU PLEASE SHED MORE LIGHT ON WHAT THIS THING CALLED GREED IS, WHERE IT COMES FROM? -- AND PERHAPS OFFER SOME TOOLS TO HELP

ME?

Just to understand the nature of greed is enough. You need not do anything else to get rid of it; the very understanding will clarify the whole mess.

Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if he is not in tune with the universe then he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, by houses, by furniture, by friends, by lovers -- by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.

To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe... Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfillment. But if you don't do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.

I used to live with a man. He was a rich man and he had a beautiful house. And somehow he became interested in my ideas; he listened to a few of my lectures, and he invited me, saying, "Why live far away, out of the city? I have a beautiful house in the city and it is so big; you can have half of the house. And I am not going to charge you, I simply want your presence to be there in my house."

I was living outside, in the mountains, but it was difficult to come from there to the university. From his house the university was very close. His house had a beautiful garden and was in the best locality of the city, so I accepted his invitation.

But when I went into his house I could not believe it; he had so much junk collected that there was no place to live. The house was big, but his collection was bigger -- and a collection which was absolutely stupid. Anything that he could find in the market he would purchase. I asked him, "What are you going to do with all these things?"

And he said, "One never knows, some day one may need it."

"But," I said, "where is one going to live in this house?" So much furniture of all ages...

because the Europeans had left the country so they had to sell all their things. He could not have enough; he managed to purchase anything, things which he did not need. A car was standing in the porch which always remained standing because it was too old, broken. And I asked him, "Why don't you throw it away? At least to clean up the place..."

And he said, "It looks good in the porch."

All the tires were punctured -- it was of no use. Whenever you had to move it from here and there, you had to push it, pull it back. And it was there, rotting. He said, "I got it at a very reasonable price. It belonged to an old woman who used to be a nurse here and who has gone back to England."

But I said, "If you were interested in purchasing a car then at least you should have purchased a car which moves."

He said, "I am not interested in movement. My bicycle is perfectly good." And his bicycle was also a marvel. You would know that he was coming from one

mile away, the bicycle made so much noise; it had no mudguards, no chain cover

-- it must have been the oldest bicycle made. It had no horn.

He said, "There is no need for a horn. It makes so much noise that at least for one mile ahead people are already giving way. And it is a good thing, because it cannot be stolen."

I said, "That is strange. Why can't it be stolen?"

He said, "Nobody else can ride on it. It has been stolen twice, and the thief was caught immediately -- because it makes so much noise, and everybody knows that it is my bicycle, so people caught the thief and asked him, `Where are you taking the bicycle?'

"I can leave it anywhere. I go to see a movie -- I don't put it on a bicycle stand, because then you have to pay money. I put it anywhere, and it is always there -- when I come back it is always there. Everybody knows that it is a trouble. And even if you can get it to your home you cannot ride on it in the city -- you will be caught. So it is better not to bother with it."

He said, "It is a rare specimen."

I said, "The way you describe it, it looks like it."

And he had all kinds of things in his house... broken radios, because he could get them cheap. He was a Jaina and he had a broken statue of Jesus Christ on the cross.

I said, "What have you purchased it for?"

He said, "The woman gave it to me free when I purchased the car -- she offered it to me as a present. I don't believe in Jesus Christ or anything, but I could not refuse a piece of art."

I said to him, "Half of the house from today you take to the other half -- my part has to be empty."

And he was very happy to take everything. Already his house was so full you could not walk -- you could not find your way. He took everything. He had so many kinds of furniture that he had piled up on the sofa; it was not used, because

you cannot sit on a sofa that is touching the roof. And I asked, "Why?"

"He said, "you don't understand -- the price! And someday I may get married" -- he was not married -- "and I may have children and they may need all these things. You don't be worried, everything will be of some use sometime."

Even on the road, if he could find anything lying there which had been thrown by somebody, he would pick it up. One day he was walking with me from the garden to the house and he found a bicycle handle, and he picked it up. But I said, "What will you do with a bicycle handle?"

He said, "You don't understand. I will show you." I went with him. In his bathroom he had almost a bicycle -- just a few things were missing. And he said, "All these things I have picked up from the road. And I go on joining them and putting them together. Now a few things are missing. The chain is not there, the seat is not there, but I will get them.

Somebody is going to throw them away someday. Life is long, and what is the harm? It looks perfectly good in the bathroom."

Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible -- it doesn't matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.

But there are mad people all over the world, and they are collecting... Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it. That is strange. In the commune, we had made a sticker for cars: "Moses earns, Jesus saves, Osho spends."

A thing has to be a utility; if it is not a utility then there is no need for it.

But this thing can take any direction: people are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that this is going to create suffering, they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a filling-up process.

So there can be many directions and many ways to fill emptiness, although it is

never full

-- it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. More is needed, and the more and the demand for more is unending.

I don't take greed as a desire -- it is some existential sickness. You are not in tune with the whole, and only that tuning with the whole can make you healthy. That tuning with the whole can make you holy.

It is strange that the word health, and the word holy both come from `wholeness'. When you are feeling one with wholeness all greed disappears. Otherwise... what have religions been doing? They have misunderstood greed as a desire, so they try to repress it: "Don't be greedy." Then one moves to the other extreme, to renounce. One collects -- the greedy person; and the person who wants to get rid of greed starts renouncing. There too there is no end.

Mahavira could never recognize Gautam Buddha as enlightened for the simple reason that he still carries three sets of clothes -- just three sets of clothes, which are absolutely necessary. One you are using, one has to be washed, and one for emergency reasons...

someday the clothes may not come from being washed or they are not dry, or it is raining the whole day. So three seems to be very essential -- one emergency...

Mahavira is absolutely against greed. Now, that has taken to an extreme form -- he is naked. Buddha carries a begging bowl. Mahavira cannot accept it because even a begging bowl is a possession, and an enlightened man, according to him, should not possess anything. A begging bowl... it is made of coconut. You cut the coconut in the middle...

and there are special coconuts which are very big. You cut from the middle, you take all of the fruit out, and then two bowls are left, hard shells. That is the cheapest thing, because they are thrown away; you cannot eat them. To have a begging bowl and to call it being possessive is not right.

But when you take greed as a desire and you become stubborn, going against it, then everything is a possession. Mahavira lived naked, and instead of a begging bowl he used to make a bowl of his two hands. Now it was a very difficult thing: his two hands are full of the food and he has to eat just like the animals, because he cannot use his hands -- so he has to use his mouth directly to take the food

from the hands.

Everybody in the world eats sitting. But Mahavira's idea is that when you eat sitting, you eat more. Now this is going to the opposite extreme. So he was teaching to eat food standing -- standing, with the food in your hands; it is such a strenuous thing. You can take food only one time, so whatever can fit in your two hands at one time is one meal.

You have to eat it standing, and everything has to be taken together, sweet, salty, and they all get mixed. That is Mahavira's idea of making it tasteless, because to enjoy taste is to enjoy the body, is to enjoy matter.

To me, greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, "Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track -- I am no longer moving in the same direction, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness."

So be existential.

Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation.

And one day you will see you are so full -- overfull, overflowing -- of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted.

That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed -- for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

MANY TIMES I HAVE HEARD YOU TELL THE ZEN STORY THAT, "IF YOU

MEET THE MASTER ON THE WAY, KILL HIM."

OSHO, DOES IT REALLY HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT? IF WE MEET ON THE

PATH, CAN WE NOT JUST LAUGH, AND CHAT A LITTLE WHILE, AND THEN

IF WE MUST PART, DO SO GRACEFULLY, WITH A NAMASTE AND A SMILE?

The story is not about any actual path, and not about any actual meeting with the master.

The story is about when you are meditating and things are disappearing from the mind --

it is becoming silent. The last to go will be the one you have loved most. That is, the last will be the master. It is in your meditation, when everything else is gone, that still you will be seeing the master. Now, chit-chatting will disturb your meditation, and preparing a cup of coffee will not help.

The saying looks hard, but it is true: Cut the head of the master! It is in your imagination that you are cutting. By chit-chatting or laughing or talking, you will not get rid of the master. You have to be very simple and straight; you need a sword, and cut the head of the master and pass on. Don't look back!

The master is saying this so that you can enter into suneeta-shunyata, into nothingness, into nirvana. The master is making you aware that even he should not be a hindrance to you.

And I will be a hindrance. You have loved me so much that you may be able to drop everything from the mind, but then I will be there -- and you have to drop me too. It is not an actual thing, it is just about your imagination, about the last trick of your mind.

Your mind will bring in the master because the mind knows you cannot throw away the master. You have thrown away everything else, and that is the last resort of the mind to prevent you from going into meditation. And if you are afraid -- if you feel this is being ungrateful, if you feel this is not the right thing to do -- to cut the head of the master, then you are playing into the hands of the mind. It has nothing to do with the master, because there is no master -- it is just

your mind projecting.

And don't ask, "From where am I to get a sword?" It has been asked, down the centuries.

Whenever masters have said to their disciples, "If you meet me on the way, cut my head,"

the disciples have asked, "But from where have I to get a sword?"

I will tell you a Sufi story. Mulla Nasruddin has applied for a job on a ship. He is being interviewed, and the captain and the high officials of the company are asking questions.

The captain asks, "If the waters are in a turmoil, and the wind is blowing very strong and there is a danger of the ship being upturned or swayed into a direction it does not want to go, what are you going to do?"

He said, "Simple, I will throw out an anchor."

The captain said, "That's right. But suppose another storm comes up; what are you going to do?

He said, "Nothing else; I will throw out another anchor."

The captain said, "It is right, but suppose a third storm comes up. What are you going to do?"

He said, "The same! I will throw out an anchor."

And the captain said, "But from where are you getting these anchors?"

And Mulla Nasruddin said, "From where are you getting these storms? From the same place!"

Just as the master is imagination, your sword is also an imagination. If the mind can provide you with one imagination, it is capable of providing you with the other thing --

and perhaps happily, because you are going to kill the master. The mind is very

happy when you are against the master -- angry, resentful -- and now he will be bursting with joy that you are going to kill the master. He will present you a beautiful sword immediately -- just ask.

Both are imaginary, the master and the sword. And you have to go beyond imagination.

So this must be the last barrier, and once there is nobody, nothingness opens up -

- you are connected with existence, you are connected with your reality. Beyond Psychology

Chapter #27

Chapter title: So which way are you moving 25 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604255

ShortTitle: PSYCHO27

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 116

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

OFTEN JOYOUSLY I HEAR YOU SAYING CONTRADICTORY THINGS, AND

EMPHASIZING THAT EVERYTHING JUST HAS ITS POLAR OPPOSITE TO BE

COMPLETE.

BUT THE OTHER MORNING I GOT INTO TROUBLE WHEN YOU WERE

TALKING ABOUT OFFERING YOUR FRIENDSHIP TO YOUR SANNYASINS.

I UNDERSTOOD THAT SOME OF THEM HAVE TAKEN THIS LONG- WANTED

OPPORTUNITY FOR THEIR SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT, AND HAVEN'T BEEN

AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THEY WERE BASICALLY RESENTFUL AND

ANGRY TOWARDS YOU AT BEING MERE DISCIPLES..

MY UNDERSTANDING WAS TOTALLY DIFFERENT, WHEN YOU WERE

TELLING US IN KULU AND KATHMANDU THAT AS FAR AS YOU WERE

CONCERNED, YOU DIDN'T HAVE ANY DISCIPLES ANYMORE, AND NOW IT

WAS UP TO US TO DROP DISCIPLESHIP.

TO ME YOUR OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP WAS JUST OVERWHELMING, AND I FELT MORE REVERENCE AND LOVE TOWARDS YOU THAN EVER BEFORE, AND VERY VERY GRATEFUL. I FELT A VERY

DELICATE, SENSITIVE AND

PRECIOUS KIND OF INTIMACY STARTING TO GROW BETWEEN ME AND

YOU, AS MY MASTER.

NOW YOU SAY THAT ALL THIS WAS JUST A DEVICE TO GET RID OF EGOISTS, AND THAT THEY ENJOYED THIS OFFER OF YOURS. I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYMORE. DID I GET IT ALL WRONG? WHERE AM I HOOKED?

The question is from Premda.

His situation is different from those who were waiting for such an opportunity for their own ego-fulfillment. He is new. He has not known the phase of discipleship at all, so when friendship was offered it was not a nourishment to his ego; it went directly to his heart because he has no resentment, no anger at being a disciple.

This became a joyous intimacy and a loving growth for him. Now he is feeling more reverence, more love, more respect. This will bring in him the wonderful experience of discipleship. So the situation is so different that there is no question of contradiction.

The people who have been with me for ten years, twelve years, and were hankering deep down to become masters themselves were certainly feeling resentful towards me. And when I offered friendship, it was not a gratitude or reverence that grew in their heart but a deep and long-awaiting ego was fulfilled.

Now they could declare that they have the same status as I have, that their experience is the same as my experience. So my declaration of friendship was to them the end of their discipleship -- and not the beginning of friendship either; it was simply the end of the road.

But to Premda the situation is different. He has not been around me for many years, and he has not for a single moment thought of being a master. His whole

desire has been to be closer to me, to be intimate with me. So when I declared that I am your friend, this desire was fulfilled, and it has created a loving intimacy and reverence. And you can see it from the question. I call myself your friend, but he says he started feeling a reverence towards the master.

To those who have been calling me "Master," the declaration of friendship ended their discipleship, and to one who was simply longing for intimacy the same declaration made him a disciple. And the people who were longing to be masters were not many; they belonged only in the category of therapists -- just a few therapists, not all. And those therapists got this longing because I was sending people to their therapies and they started thinking that they are some kind of masters, and they are helping people to grow.

The reality was, I was sending these people to their therapies because these people were so full of rubbish that they needed some dry cleaning, and those therapists were nothing but dry cleaners. But thousands of people passing through their therapies... it is very human and very natural to get the idea that, "We can be masters on our own." They were just waiting for the opportunity.

It is not true about all sannyasins; it is only true about a special small group of therapists.

Their work destroyed them. They may have helped many people come closer to me, but they themselves went on going farther and farther away.

Premda has no desire to be a master, and nobody who has a desire to be a master can ever be a master. Only those who are desireless happen to be masters. It is not something like a goal that you can achieve: it is something that happens by the way, unintentionally, without being sought for. You are doing something else, you are feeling more love, more intimacy, more reverence, and slowly, slowly, in this reverence and love and intimacy, your ego is disappearing. One day, when the ego is not there, you have become a master.

You were not seeking it -- it is just a by-product. And those poor therapists missed --

although they were with me for years -- because they remained achievers, climbers. In their mind they were always thinking how to become a master.

It is good, Premda, that my offering of friendship created discipleship in you.

That's how it should have been to everyone who is sincerely here for the search of truth, for the search of oneself.

You are blessed. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

HEARING ABOUT THE SANNYASIN THERAPISTS WHO ARE CHOOSING TO

DO THEIR OWN THING, REMINDS ME THAT ONCE I ALSO DECIDED TO DO

MY OWN THING RATHER THAN BE WITH YOU.

WHEN I DID COME BACK, I JUDGED MYSELF, AND FELT JUDGED BY

OTHERS -- IRONICALLY, SOME OF WHOM ARE AMONG THOSE OF WHOM

YOU HAVE RECENTLY SPOKEN.

BECAUSE I CAN ALTERNATELY VIEW MY EXPERIENCE AS A GOING ASTRAY OR AS A CONSTRUCTIVE LEARNING, I AM VERY CAUTIOUS ABOUT JUDGING OTHERS WHO WOULD APPEAR TO HAVE GONE OFF TRACK. SURELY ONLY AN ENLIGHTENED SEER IS IN A POSITION TO INDICATE WHERE WE ARE.

MY QUESTION IS: WHAT IS IT TO MISS? IS IT SOMETHING OTHER THAN, THROUGH OUR SLEEPINESS, CHOOSING TO TAKE A LONGER, MORE

DEVIOUS ROUTE TO THAT PLACE WHICH WE MUST SOME DAY REACH...

THAT PLACE WHICH, IN FACT, YOU SAY WE HAVE NEVER LEFT?

ARE WE ALL MISSING EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY UNTIL WE ARE

ENLIGHTENED?

Yes, everybody is missing every moment until they are enlightened.

Whatever you are doing can either bring you close to the point of explosion, or can take you away from the point and make you more closed. These are the two possibilities within you: exploding into a lightning experience, or being closed in a dark night of the soul.

So which way are you moving?

If you are moving towards the dark night of the soul you are missing -- and missing more every moment because you are going farther and farther away. And there is no end of going farther away. You can go away eternally; there is no time limit.

One can remain unenlightened forever -- that's the danger. And one can become enlightened this very moment. The question is, towards what are you moving? If you are coming closer to your center of explosion, then every moment you are nearer and nearer to enlightenment. It depends on your speed. If your understanding is intense enough, it can happen this very moment; you have not to wait even for a single moment more.

So you see these are the two possibilities: either now or never. Both are possible, and man's prerogative is that he has the freedom to go either way.

There is no harm in doing your own thing -- but you don't know who you are, how can you do your own thing? It is a dilemma. Those who know cannot do their own thing, because they know there is nobody inside as a self, as a separate entity from existence.

Those who do not know themselves cannot do their own thing because they don't know even their own self.

So either you are accidental... one possibility; that's what you call "doing your

own thing." You are accidental, or you are existential: that's what I call "doing the thing existence wants you to do." It is not your own thing. I am not doing my own thing -- there is nobody to do such a thing. I am simply available to existence. So whatever and wherever it wants to lead me, I am available, because I am not.

Remember, these are the difficulties with language. I say I am available because I am not.

Only when I am not, there is availability. If I am, then there is always choice, not availability. Then I will judge whether to go that way or not, whether to go this way or not, whether to do this or not. So whenever you are doing your own thing, one thing is certain: you are not in tune with existence. So what can it be? It can only be accidental.

I know people who had come accidentally to me. They had come to meet one of their friends who was a sannyasin; they had not come to meet me or to see me. They were not even remotely interested in me, but then listening to me they became interested, they became curious, they became involved. This is accidental. If I send them away to do something I can be certain some accident is going to happen.

I have tried -- seeing some accidental people I have told them, "Go and open a center in your place," and they were very happy and they went there and fell in love with a woman, and forgot all about the center -- got married and got into the whole mess of marriage.

You cannot depend on these people; they are not reliable. It is not their fault. They are just driftwood -- any accident and they start doing things they have never thought about, doing things without ever thinking whether they really want to do them. Perhaps others are doing, so they start doing.

What you call "doing your own thing" is accidental, because you don't know yourself yet; you cannot do your own thing. And to be accidental is to remain in darkness -- being thrown by winds here and there like a dead leaf... having no roots, having no integrity, having no individuality, having no sense of being connected with existence.

Doing your own thing, you were wrong -- not that the things that you were doing were wrong, but that you were thinking that they were your own. They were

only accidental.

The people, the therapists, who criticized you were thinking they were doing my things, not their own. And that was creating deep resentment in them, that they have to do my thing. They really wanted to do their thing.

They criticized you just to strengthen in themselves that the very idea of "doing your own thing" is wrong. To repress their own idea they judged you wrong; they were really judging themselves.

And once they got the opportunity... now they are all doing their own things, and thinking that this is freedom. They are telling people, "Osho has given freedom to us." Now, this is such a foolish idea. Nobody can give you freedom, and if somebody can give you freedom, he can take it back any moment. Freedom cannot be a gift. You have to grow and be free; freedom has to be something that happens to you -- it is not given.

Now they are saying, "Osho has given freedom to us, and now we are doing our own thing." And they are doing the same thing they were doing here... perhaps less efficiently, more superficially, because the people they will be getting will not be meditators.

I used to choose people for their groups; seeing the need of the person, I used to choose which group he should go to. Now they will be doing things to people who don't need them; or these things may even harm them. There is every possibility that the people, through their therapies, will be harmed -- because therapy is not anything spiritual.

Therapy is only preparing the ground. And if you don't have the seeds, the ground that you have prepared will simply grow weeds, wild grass. It cannot grow roses.

Here I was using their therapy to clean the ground so that seeds of meditation can be sown, and people can blossom.

But soon they will understand. Seeing the results, people will start disappearing from their therapy groups. I know perfectly well that people never wanted to do therapy groups; I had to persuade them to go to do therapy groups. They had come to listen to me and to meditate.

Therapy groups are already out of fashion. Esalen -- the original pioneer institution for therapy groups -- is dying. Nobody comes anymore. Only on weekends a few old people turn up. And when they saw that thousands of people are coming to me and going through me to the therapies, they could not believe it, because they were the original people who had started the movement of therapies. It was unbelievable for them why people were not coming there.

The reason was that people had been there and had seen their therapies and found that they were only games you can play with. It feels good while you are playing them, but after two days all is gone; you are the same person, nothing has changed. And what is the point of going again and again, giving money and playing the same kind of games?

These therapists who had been working here in the world of the sannyasins will soon feel frustrated, tremendously frustrated. One thing, sannyasins will stop going to them, knowing that it is no longer part of a spiritual movement. Secondly, those who go will see that it is pointless. Just again and again clearing the ground and letting the weeds grow makes no sense.

I was using therapy simply as a preparation -- it was not the end. And these therapists know nothing of meditation, because they felt that it was below them to go and meditate with the same people who are doing therapies with them; they are great therapists. So they never meditated; they missed meditation. They were so knowledgeable that they thought they knew everything. I don't think they have listened to me; otherwise the way they have betrayed me would not have been possible.

But they will have to come back; they cannot go on existing for long. Soon you will see those faces again, and this time they are not going to be therapists. This time I am going to work in a totally different way. Therapy will not be part of it; perhaps personal counseling may be there, but not therapy.

There is nothing wrong in doing your own thing -- just remember that it is accidental.

First know thyself, and then do anything that happens, that comes up out of your nothingness.

And out of nothingness always comes the lotus of nirvana.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE HINDI INCARNATIONS OF GOD THERE ARE A WOMAN AND A MAN

TOGETHER -- LIKE VISHNU AND LAXMI, SHANKAR AND PARVATI, KRISHNA AND RADHA, RAMA AND SITA, ETC. ON THE OTHER HAND, THERE ARE

OTHER RELIGIONS LIKE JAINISM, BUDDHISM, TAOISM, MOHAMMEDANISM, CHRISTIANITY, ET CETERA, WHICH HAVE NO PLACE FOR WOMEN.

PLEASE COMMENT.

Compared to Hinduism, all these religions -- Taoism, Jainism, Buddhism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism -- are very new. Hinduism is very old; hence it has some unique characteristics. Because it is the oldest religion in the world, a few things are in it which you will not find in other religions.

For example, you are asking that Hindu incarnations of God are always with a woman consort: Shiva is with Parvati, Krishna is with Radha. In India, Jainism and Buddhism flowered twenty-five centuries ago. They had to fight against Hinduism. Hinduism was the only religion.

You will be surprised: it was so alone that it had no name. A name is needed when there is more than one thing; if there is only one thing, what is the use of a name? Hinduism was the only religion, so it was simply called dharma -- religion. There was no need to put an adjective to it. Jainism and Buddhism were born out of Hinduism, offshoots of the old religion, but then they had to make some specialities to stand aloof; otherwise the oceanic Hinduism would have drowned them.

Hinduism was very natural, that's why the reincarnations are not celibate. The idea of celibacy had not entered in the mind of the Hindus because it is unnatural, so even their incarnations of God have their wives. They are just as natural as you are.

Jainism and Buddhism both made it a point that man has to go above nature, beyond nature, only then he is religious -- Hinduism is not religion. What kind of a religion is it if just to be natural is to be religious? Then there is no difference between you and animals, because all animals are natural. They had a point there, and they created great logical systems against Hinduism. One of the basic points was that you have to go beyond nature

-- and that starts from celibacy, because that is the basic nature, sexuality.

So Buddha is alone, Mahavir is alone, and for these twenty-five centuries, all their monks and masters have been alone, celibate. You will be surprised to know that their celibacy was such a thing that the common masses became very impressed. Their ascetic attitude towards life... because Hindus were not ascetic

-- I mean Hindus before Buddha and Mahavir -- were not ascetic. Even their seers lived in comfort and luxury. They had their communes in the mountains, in the forests, which their followers went on donating to.

The Kings, their sons, their daughters -- all had to go to be there in their monasteries to learn.

So they had immense power. One great Hindu wise man had many kings as his followers, and lived in luxury, comfort. His whole commune of disciples and teachers, they all lived beautifully. They were not other-worldly people.

Jainism and Buddhism are ascetic; they went on point by point against Hinduism, to make a distinct identity. Comfort is not even heard of; discomfort is the way. The more you can keep yourself in discomfort, the more spiritual you are -- because the body is the enemy of your soul, so torture the body so you can find your soul. This world is the hindrance for the other world, so renounce it.

Jainism and Buddhism did so many strange things that even the Hindu masses became impressed; even Hindu wisemen, brahmins, started thinking how to fight against the rebellious Jainas and Buddhists. The only way was that they also had to be ascetic --

more than they were. So after Gautam Buddha you will not find any Hindu master with a woman. Shankaracharya, Ramanujacharya, Nimbarkha, Vallabha -

- great masters, but you will not find them with a woman. What happened?

They all had to be celibate. They had to be to fight with the Buddhists and the

Jainas; otherwise they were ordinary people, they were not spiritual. And they were all ascetic, just like Jainas and Buddhists were; they were ascetic in their own way. They renounced the world, they renounced all comforts -- just to counter-attack.

Hinduism got spoiled by Hindus themselves; otherwise it was a beautiful religion, very natural, very simple, very innocent. But it became more and more complicated. These three religions have been fighting for twenty-five centuries, arguing, writing treatises against each other. And those treatises have become more and more complicated -- to such a point that even to understand them has become a difficult expertise.

And there are treatises which scholars have been trying for years to translate into English but have not been able to. Because of the complexities of ideas, language, its nuances, it is difficult to be authentic to the original and to translate it; the translation looks very poor.

Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Sikhism, all are later additions to human consciousness -- after Buddha. In fact Buddha should be the demarcation line, not Jesus.

We say, "Before Jesus Christ, after Jesus Christ." Jesus has become the demarcation line dividing history, but that credit should go to Gautam Buddha, who came five centuries before Jesus and really divided human consciousness and its growth.

Jesus himself had traveled to India while he was young. THE BIBLE has no account of him between the age of thirteen to thirty; THE BIBLE has no account of where Jesus had been. This looks strange -- a small life -- he lived only thirty- three years -- and in those thirty-three years THE BIBLE has accounts of only three years, the last three years.

About his earlier life are only two incidents -- minor, meaningless. One was of his birth and the coming of the three wisemen from the East to pay tribute; and second, his getting lost in the temple of Jerusalem, arguing with rabbis. These are the only two incidents.

And then from the age of thirteen to thirty, seventeen years, nothing is mentioned

-- what happened to this man, where he was.

These seventeen years he traveled to Egypt, to India, to Ladakh, to Tibet, and all these places were Buddhist at that time. Buddha had died only five centuries before, and his impact was still very alive. Jesus visited Buddhist monasteries. I have been to a Ladakh monastery which Jesus had visited, and I looked in their records of visitors, which they have kept for two thousand years. And I asked them if they had a record of all the visitors and their impressions about the monastery.

It is one of the most beautiful monasteries, and Jesus stayed there for almost six months, studying Buddhism from the monks. There are, in their official record, the impressions of Jesus, his signature, the date. He became immensely influenced by Buddhism, so his celibacy, his ascetic attitude, his praise for poverty, his condemnation for riches, were all borrowed ideas from Gautam Buddha.

Naturally these people followed a certain pattern that Buddha left behind him. They don't have a woman companion, which would be natural. Hinduism seems to be very natural --

even its gods are very natural. There is no desire to be beyond nature; there is only one desire:to be totally natural. But in a way all other religions are reactions, rebellions against Hinduism.

It had no name. It was known as the eternal religion because it had always been there.

Nobody can say when it was born, who was the founder of the Hindu religion. You can find founders of all other religions except Hinduism. Who was the original man? There seems to be no one. Hindus themselves used to call it sanatan dharma: the eternal religion. How did they become Hindus? Who started calling them Hindus? It was in a very strange way that they got the name, Hindus.

It was by the foreigners who were constantly invading India that the name was given, because every invader had to pass one of the greatest rivers of India, Sindhu. The first invaders, were the Hunas, who have disappeared from the world now -- a wild tribe. In their alphabet they had no sound for `sa', for `s'. The closest sound tòs' was `h', -- `ha'.

`Sa -- ha' -- that was the closest. They could not pronounce the river Sindhu; they

pronounced it, the river Hindu, and because of their language, and because of their pronunciation, the people who lived beyond this river, they started calling Hindus, the people who live beyond the river Hindu.

It is beautiful sometimes to look at the history of how a word evolves, in what phases it moves, what turns it takes, what colors it takes.

Because of the word `Hindu' the land of the Hindus became Hindustan, and the religion became Hindudharma, Hindu religion. And from the Hunas, invaders used to be continually coming. The country was so rich that another group of invaders, Mongols from Mongolia... who were the most terrible invaders, who produced the Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan, the most terrible of men. In their language -- now it had become established because of the Hunas -- the name of the Sindhu became Hindu, the land became Hindustan, the people became Hindus. They did not have any sound in their alphabet for `h', for `ha' -- the closest for `h' was ì'. They could not pronounce Hindu, they could only pronounce, Indu.

It looks close: Hindu-Indu. And because of the Mongols, the river became Indu and the country became India -- from Indu -- and the people became Indians. But it all happened because of that river which has a name, accidentally. But Hindus themselves don't have a name, neither do they have a name for their country. They have been always there, their religion has been always there. They don't know any beginning of their religion.

So it seems it has grown very naturally with the natural man. Buddhism was the first effort on man's own part to create a religion. That's why I say Buddha should be the demarcating line; because what was natural up to then became something man-made, manufactured. And now religion is manufactured, so many religions are manufactured.

Nature is one, but once you start manufacturing then you can manufacture, as you like, different religions, different creeds, different cults, different philosophies. Buddha certainly stands just in the middle of this change.

If you understand me, my whole effort is to reverse the whole process. Man does not need man-made religions; man simply needs to be natural. Nature should be the only religion, and then there will not be divisions of Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Buddhists.

Nature does not make any divisions; it is undivided and it is one. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

DURING THE TIME WITH YOU IN OREGON, I SOMETIMES FELT THAT

LEAVING WAS AN ESCAPE, A MISTAKE -- LIKE REMOVING THE KETTLE

FROM THE FIRE JUST BEFORE THE WATER BOILED. NOW LOOK AT US: WE'VE ALL HAD TO LEAVE, AND YOU ARE CONTINENTS AWAY. YET THIS

TIME SEEMS EVEN RICHER -- A TIME WHEN YOU ARE OFFERING

SOMETHING VITAL, NOT TO BE MISSED... PERHAPS THE CHANCE TO BE "AT

HOME" EVERYWHERE. HOW TO SUMMON YOU, AND HOW TO SLIP QUIETLY

INTO OUR HEARTS AS WE DRIVE CABS AND BULLDOZERS IN THE "OUTSIDE

WORLD?"

Love knows no distances in time or in space.

So wherever my people are, whatever they are doing, if their heart beats in tune with me, they are with me. Then all distances of time and space disappear.

The question is of the hearts beating in the same rhythm. That is the only closeness.

It was easy to miss in the commune because I was so close to you. It was easy to forget me. I was too obvious. It was easy to take me for granted. But now that you are scattered all over the world, by the courtesy of the American government, we have made the whole world our commune.

There are great distances in space, but this will help you; it will not be a loss. This will make you remember me more. This will remind you of me more. In your silent moments, in your loving moments, just playing on your guitar, you will find me sitting by your side. Just in moments when you are silent, peaceful, you will start hearing my heartbeat too.

Everything that happens is good, is for the better, because existence goes on evolving. If we remember that existence is continuously in evolution, then whatever is happening... at the time it may seem disastrous, but finally you will find that it was not so; it has brought new flowers, it has created new experiences.

I know there are continents between me and you, but those continents cannot separate; they only join. They are not walls, they are bridges. And a bridge, however long, is a bridge; and a wall, however short, is a wall.

My own experience has always been that everything that has happened has always proved to be good. If we can trust, then even at the time of its happening we will not be sad, we will be celebrating. And our sannyasins did well, even though the most powerful government was destroying a small commune of five thousand people -- which proves that they were afraid. Out of fear they were acting, but our people danced and sang and celebrated, knowing that out of this chaos some beautiful stars will be born.

The American government's fear has now become world a phobia. Now every government is afraid... not of a commune; the question of a commune does not arise.

They are afraid even of me landing at their airport... not a question of entering in their country! Fear seems to be unlimited. What can I do if I just land at their airport?

England would not allow me to rest overnight in the airport, and in the parliament they had to discuss it, my being in the country. And that was a lie because I was only asking to stay overnight in the lounge of the airport -- which it is meant for. I had my jet plane standing at the airport so that in the morning we could leave, thinking that they may say,

"The lounge is only for first class passengers; now how can we decide about your jet, which class is it?" So we purchased tickets for first class traveling too,

not giving them any chance. And that's actually what happened.

They said, "The jet is okay, that it is ready, but how can we be certain...? The lounge is only for first class passengers." So we produced our first class passenger tickets, saying that, "For your satisfaction we have tickets also."

Then they disappeared and came back about half an hour later and said, "There is some bylaw of the airport that we cannot allow you to stay the whole night -- a few hours is okay."

I asked the man, "What do you mean by a few hours? And how do you decide that three hours is enough, or four hours is enough, or twelve hours is enough? And where is that bylaw of your airport?" The man disappeared and never came back.

Another man came back, and he said, "You have to understand it, that if you want to wait the whole night you have to wait in the jail. We cannot take the risk of leaving you free in the airport lounge." And I had to stay in the jail. And in the parliament, the prime minister answered the questions and said that my being there was dangerous for the country, for the country's safety.

An American establishment for nuclear weapons in England to bomb Libya is not dangerous; my just staying overnight in the airport lounge, from where I cannot go into the country by any way, is dangerous. You can see these politicians are made of straw.

And the thing has gone around the world: now the whole European parliament, all the countries of Europe, are deciding together that I cannot land my jet at any airport; they will not refuel it. And then small countries are bound to follow.

Now the Bahamas have decided that I cannot enter; other countries -- Panama and two or three other countries near Panama -- afraid that I may come there, have decided. Strange, that they are afraid of a single man so much. Soon I think they will be deciding in the U.N. that this man should not be allowed to stand on earth anywhere.

But I take it as a good sign. It means they have recognized one fact; that what I am saying they cannot refute, that what I am saying is dangerous to their very roots. And if their roots are so weak, do you think they are going to survive? Even without me they will die; even without me they have to die.

Their fear shows death.

And all these governments are lying without any evidence of anything! Now they are spreading the rumor around the world that they have nothing against me, but the people who are with me, three of them, are criminals. They don't give the names, of the three people who are criminals and what crime they have committed. Some evidence should be proved. And even if they are criminals, I cannot be punished for their crimes. But just because they have traveled with me, I cannot be allowed to remain in a country.

In Spain, the government took one month to decide: the parliament discussed, the cabinet meetings went on for seven days, and finally they decided -- the president and the prime minister, all were involved in it -- that I should be allowed in. And then came a letter from the German government that three criminals are traveling with me. They called my secretary, Hasya, and told her,"We don't have anything against Osho, but from the German government there is tremendous pressure that three criminals are with you."

She asked, "Who are the three criminals, and what crimes have they committed?" By insistently asking, we have come to know only that one is German, one is Canadian, one is American. Strangely enough, there is no German in the group, so one third of the information is absolutely wrong. There are a few Americans, but none of them are criminals, and none of them remembers that he has committed any crime! One is a Canadian: he is shocked by hearing it -- that he is a criminal. There are no charges against him.

Just today I have received a letter from the U.S. Supreme Court in Oregon. They could not prove the case for which they were harassing me for twelve days in jail; they failed to prove the case in North Carolina. The U.S. attorney has had to accept in the court that,

"We have not been able to prove anything; still, we want everybody else to be released on bail but Osho should not be released on bail."

This must be something unprecedented! They have not proved anything against me. Why should I not be granted bail? The reasoning was that I was capable of jumping the bail, whatever the bail would be -- ten million dollars or twenty million dollars. Does it mean nobody in America who has money will ever be allowed bail?

Strange! The people who don't have money cannot be allowed bail because from where will they get money for bail? And the people who have money cannot be allowed bail because they can jump. So bail is simply out of the question in America.

Simple logic can show the stupidities. Then finally they had to drop the case, but they had taken three persons on bail -- Jayesh, Devaraj, Vivek -- at twenty-five thousand dollars each. But you can see the cunningness! If governments are so cunning then I don't think criminals are doing anything bad. Governments are criminals.

The letter that I have received today says that because these three people have refused to appear as witnesses, we are dropping the case. These three people have never received any summons to appear. Now, this is simply strange! We were waiting that these people should be sent for any day; our attorneys were waiting there. They said, "You give us the time and the date, and we can call our people and they will be here." But because they had dropped the case, now they were afraid that they would have to return the seventy-five thousand dollars.

To keep that money, this letter has been sent: Because these three people have not appeared, their bail money is to be taken up by the U.S. government.

And they have confiscated my things, which they had said would be released when I am released -- they were not given back. Then they told my attorneys, "After three days we will be releasing them." They were not released; then seven days... months have passed and they go on postponing.

Now the case is dropped. Even the bail money has been transferred to the government account. What about my personal things? My attorneys are continually going to them, saying, "Decide something about his personal things." They want to divide them half and half -- half will taken by the government, and half will be given to me. Strange! For what should the government get half? And we were ready even for that.

I told the attorneys, "Let them have half. Half you take, and then we will fight for the other half." But they simply say -- they don't do anything. Perhaps some other day I may receive a letter in which all those things are confiscated and taken by the government --

for some reason they can find or invent, because my people did not appear in the

court on the hearing day.

And there has never been a hearing, there has never been a hearing day; the case was dropped a few weeks ago. We have been informed by the attorneys that the case has been dropped, knowing that they have nothing to prove in it.

It seems on the surface, with all these things, that they are destroying my work, destroying my message. But they are wrong. This is the way -- not of destroying any truth

-- this is the way the truth enters into people's minds, gets their sympathy, their heart.

So wherever you are, it does not matter. Just your heart has to beat with me. If it stops beating with me, then there is distance.

Now look at Chetana, sitting there in the corner: now she is almost sitting on the moon.

The reason is that she had asked a question. She herself had asked, "If I am wrong, please nudge me a little." I nudged her a little and said, "You are wrong," and that has hurt her so much that since that day she has become a miserable person. I have never seen her in any misery before. She has always been light, joyful. But since that day, because I said,

"You are in a wrong space..." And she herself had asked, "Nudge me a little." And I really nudged her a little... just a little, and she has gone so far away; she is sitting on the moon.

Remember one thing, when you ask a question be ready for any answer. Don't expect a certain answer that you would like; otherwise there is not going to be any learning, there is not going to be any growth. If I say you are not right at a certain point, try to look at it.

I will not be saying it just to hurt you. If I am saying it, I mean it.

And if you start feeling hurt by small things, then it will become impossible for me to work. Then I have to see what you would like. Then I will not be a help, then I will not be a master to you.

So you can be here, but if your heart is not beating with me, you are far away. And vice versa.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #28

Chapter title: Going just with his flute and a bottle of wine 26 April 1986 am in Archive

code:

8604260

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO28

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

88

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE CARRIED THIS SUTRA YOU SPOKE ON IN POONA WITH ME FOR MANY YEARS. IT READS:

THE BUDDHA SAID,

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE GOOD MAN THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED BAD MEN. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO OBSERVES THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA

THAN TO FEED ONE THOUSAND GOOD MEN. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE SROTAPANNA THAN TO FEED TEN THOUSAND OF THOSE

WHO OBSERVE THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE SKRIDAGAMIN

THAN TO FEED ONE MILLION OF SROTAPANNAS. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE ANAGAMIN

THAN TO FEED TEN MILLIONS OF SKRIDAGAMINS. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE ARHAT

THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS OF ANAGAMINS. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE PRATYAK BUDDHA

THAN TO FEED ONE BILLION OF ARHATS.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE OF THE BUDDHAS

EITHER OF THE PRESENT OR OF THE PAST OR OF THE FUTURE THAN TO FEED TEN BILLIONS OF PRATYAK BUDDHAS.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO IS ABOVE

KNOWLEDGE, ONE-SIDEDNESS, DISCIPLINE, AND ENLIGHTENMENT THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED BILLIONS OF BUDDHAS OF PAST, PRESENT, OR FUTURE.

IT SAYS SO MUCH ABOUT YOUR HEIGHT AND OUR DARKNESS, AND HAS

PRODUCED TWO FEELINGS IN ME: THE BLESSING AND JOY OF BEING IN

YOUR MAGNIFICENCE, AND THE ARDUOUSNESS OF HOW FAR WE HAVE TO

TRAVEL JUST TO HAVE A TASTE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. WOULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK ON THIS AGAIN?

One of the most fundamental things to be understood is that the distances are only dream phenomenon, they do not exist in reality. One may be asleep very lightly, one may be asleep very deeply, one may be almost in a coma.

There are distances... If you want to wake them up, then the first, who is in a very light sleep, half awake, half asleep, can be awakened soon; but every one of them can be awakened. It is only a question of the intensity of the effort needed to awaken from the outside, and the intensity needed to be awake from the inside.

You all must have felt moments of nightmare when you want to wake up but you cannot move. And then, in a minute, you wake up. It looks so strange that just a moment before it looked impossible even to open your eyes or move your hands, and after just one minute you are fully awake.

The distance between me and you is only a dream distance, so there is no need to feel any sadness, no need to feel that it is going to be a very arduous and long journey. It is a very simple and very natural phenomenon. If you can relax -- and nothing can be easier than relaxation -- things will start happening on their own.

About the sutra of Gautam Buddha... it is symbolic. Feeding somebody means

nursing somebody, respecting somebody, loving somebody, doing something for somebody -- out of compassion, kindness, or love, or respect. So food has not to be taken literally.

The sutra says: IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE GOOD MAN THAN TO FEED ONE

HUNDRED BAD MEN. Who is the good man? The good man is one who spontaneously acts in the right way. Remember the word `spontaneously'. The good man is not one who makes efforts to act in a certain way that is accepted by the society in which he is born as good... it may not be good. There are hundreds of societies in the world, hundreds of civilizations have existed, and there is not a single thing that has not been either praised as good by someone or condemned as bad by somebody else.

Now, to be naked the Jainas will say is a good act -- it shows that the man has renounced the world completely. But to be naked according to any other society will be considered bad, even sick. According to Sigmund Freud, the naked man simply wants to show his naked body to others; it is a very perverted, precarious, satisfying sexuality -- it is perversion. And he has given a certain name to this sickness: exhibitionism.

So it is not a question to be decided by the outside morality. The decision has to be according to your spontaneity. Whatever you do out of your heart -- so it is not a reaction but a response -- that act is good.

Buddha says, IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE GOOD MAN -- because it is very difficult even to find a good man, a man of spontaneity, a man whose actions arise out of his heart

-- THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED BAD MEN. As far as the bad man is concerned, everybody who is acting in sleep, unconsciously, is bad. The bad and good are not concerned with the act; they are concerned with the consciousness through which they have been done. Spontaneous consciousness, a little alertness, or unconsciousness... the act may be perhaps the same, but its quality changes by the touch of the man who is doing it.

Buddha is saying that taking care of one hundred sleepy men, unconscious, not knowing who they are, not knowing why they are, not knowing where they are going, for what they are going, they are just part of the crowd, they are not yet

men, they are sheep...

Buddha says it is better to be respectful to the spontaneous, alert man.

I have to emphasize the word `respect', because ordinarily it simply means honor. But the root meaning of the word `respect' is `re-spect' -- a man whom you would like to see again and again; a man who somehow touches your heart, has a magnetic impact on you, so that you want to look at him again and again.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO OBSERVES THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE THOUSAND GOOD MEN. Buddha is

simply giving you the vast expanse of consciousness, its responses, and how you

have to behave --

because your behavior is going to be a transformation to you. The five precepts of Buddha are in a way very simple, if they are done exactly according to Buddha's teaching; otherwise they become self-torture. And he says, IT IS BETTER TO RESPECT

ONE WHO OBSERVES THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE

THOUSAND GOOD MEN.

The good man acts spontaneously, but the man with five precepts has a certain responsibility with his spontaneity, has a certain goal with his spontaneity, has a certain very clear-cut vision with his spontaneity. He knows what he is doing, why he is doing it and he knows what is going to be the result of it. He is acting very consciously. The five precepts are simple, but awareness has to be the base of it... and it has to be, because Buddha is saying, IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO OBSERVES THE FIVE

PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE THOUSAND GOOD MEN.

One thousand good men, with all their spontaneity, he is comparing with one man.

The five precepts: The first is nonviolence; whatever the situation, he should not act in a violent way. His response should always be nonviolent, because we are part of one existence. Whomsoever you are hurting, you are hurting yourself in

the long run. Today you may not realize it, but one day when you will become more aware, then you will say,

"My God! This wound was inflicted by me -- upon myself." You had hurt somebody else thinking that people are different. Nobody is different.

This whole existence is one cosmic unity.

Out of this understanding comes nonviolence.

The second is non-possessiveness. If the whole existence is one, and if the existence goes on taking care of trees, of animals, of mountains, of oceans -- from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star -- then it will take care of you too. Why be possessive?

Possessiveness shows simply one thing: that you can't trust existence; you have to arrange separate security for yourself, safety for yourself. You cannot trust existence.

Non-possessiveness is basically trust in existence.

There is no need to possess, because the whole is already ours.

The third is non-stealing. If it is one cosmos, to steal is simply as foolish as... I have heard that one pick-pocket sometimes used to have difficulty in finding people, to pick their pockets. But he was so habituated, and it was so difficult for him to accept the fact that he had not been able to do anything today, that he would pick his own pocket! People can deceive themselves that way.

I have heard about one man who went in the evening to the fisherman's shop and said, "I want that fish. You throw it, and I will catch it."

The man said, "What is the need of throwing it? I can give it to you."

He said, "No, you have to throw it and I will catch it -- because I never want to lie. And when I go home my wife is going to ask, `Where have you been?'" I have been catching fish, but I could not catch any. And this one I will have certainly caught. I have not purchased it; you have thrown it and I have caught it. So I can say with a straight face,

`This is my catch -- a beautiful fish.' But I cannot lie. That's why you have to throw it, and I have to catch it."

In fact that is what we are doing. It is all ours and we are in subtle ways stealing. It does not mean that you have to steal money or you have to steal things; you can steal thoughts, you can steal words. And all your knowledge is stolen. It is not something that you have discovered, it is something you have picked up -- from here, from there. And then, without thinking twice, with a straight face, you say to the world, "This is my opinion." It is not your opinion! You are not even aware of yourself -- what opinion can you have? So all this is part of stealing.

The fourth is no-taste. It became a torture, but it was not meant so. A man of the sensibilities of Gautam Buddha cannot make it a self-torture. His idea of no-taste was simply not to hanker after taste. Food is for nourishment of the body; taste is secondary --

don't make it primary. And secondly, his disciples were all monks; they had to beg. And he was a very careful man. He never wanted his people to become a burden on the society. If they start asking, "We want this, we want that... please prepare this dish for tomorrow when I come to beg," then they will be heavy and burdensome.

He made it a rule: don't ask from just one house. Your one meal -- and the Buddhist monk was to eat only one meal -- your one meal has to come from five houses. He was simply trying to spread the burden, otherwise... he was moving with ten thousand bhikkhus, his disciples, wherever he was going, and it would have been really troublesome if the thousand bhikkhus had come into a small town -- which may not have had the population of ten thousand -- and they started asking for their preferences. The poor people of the town would be in a difficulty.

Buddha's whole effort about no-taste was that you should never be unwelcome wherever you go. People should know that out of compassion you go to five houses -- just for a single meal. He denied more than one meal. It looks to us that it is asceticism, that it is self-torture. Even in the poorest countries, people need at least two meals. In richer countries like America people are eating five times, or as many times as they go and visit the fridge... the whole day. It is not a question of times.

There are thirty million people in America today who are dying because of over- eating.

They know that this over-eating is killing them, but they cannot stop it. It is just like being an alcoholic; they have become so addicted, that they need something. If they have nothing then at least they chew gum, so their mouth goes on and on. In a way it is good; otherwise they would talk -- yakkety yak, yakkety yak -- because somehow they have to go on using their mouth. Their talking is just a substitute. Chewing gum keeps them silent at least!

Buddha's insight is really deep, because modern experiments, particularly by the psychologist Delgado, have proved it beyond doubt that with one meal per day man's life can be doubled. The more you eat the less you will live; the less you eat the longer you will live. He was trying one experiment... for thousands of times he tried, then he gave his conclusion.

He had two rows of white rats. One row was given as much food as they wanted

--

American way. The food was always available; they could eat as much as they want. And the second row, the way of the bhikku, had just one meal -- nourishing, complete for the body. And thousands of times the experiment was tried and always the American style rats died half way. The Buddhist bhikkhus lived double the time of the Americans.

So there Buddha had a deep insight: eat one time and don't hanker for taste; otherwise you would like to eat many times.

It is known about Nero that he used to eat so many times that he had to keep four doctors with him; so when he eats they will help him vomit everything, so he can eat again. Just madness... but he was simply hankering for taste. And that was the only way; otherwise you cannot go on eating the whole day. He was eating from the morning till night when he went to bed -- he was either eating or vomiting. And the doctors' only purpose was to help him vomit easily so he could eat again.

Buddha's insight is right. It is not self-torture. It is simply a profound insight into health, longevity -- and perhaps sooner or later science will like everybody to eat only once. Of course the food should be sufficient, should have all that is needed by the body, but only once. It looks to us a little difficult, but it is only a question

of habit. In Africa there are many tribes who have never eaten -- for thousands of years -- more than once a day. They were simply surprised when Christian missionaries reached Africa. They could not believe it: they start with tea in bed, then breakfast, then lunch, then coffee break, then supper, then dinner... and snacks here and there. They could not believe it, "What are these people doing? Are they living or simply eating?" -- because they had eaten only once, and they were far more healthy and they lived longer.

They are still eating once. Their bodies are more proportionate, they live longer, they run faster -- just like animals, like deer they can run. And their bodies have just the proportion that people are trying to get in thousands of gymnasiums around the world.

They have it without any effort, just by a single meal.

Non-violence, non-possessiveness, non-stealing, no-taste... and the fifth precept is compassion.

We live in passion -- our lives are passionate. Passion is always a turmoil: ups and downs, one day good, another day bad, day follows night... In the same way the life of passion is continuously going into pleasure, into pain -- and they are balancing each other.

Compassion is not to live passionately, but to live calmly, quietly, silently. Compassion can be without ups and downs -- a deep serenity. Whatever happens on the outside does not matter, but the center of your being remains still, undisturbed.

So Buddha says, IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO OBSERVES THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE THOUSAND GOOD MEN.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE SROTAPANNA THAN TO FEED TEN THOUSAND

OF THOSE WHO OBSERVE THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA.

Srotapanna is a very beautiful word. It means "who has stepped into the stream." Literally, srot means "the source"; Srotapanna means "who has stepped into the

stream which leads to the source." He is no longer standing on the bank. The man who follows the five precepts may be still standing on the bank.

Before a srotapanna, Buddha says, TEN THOUSAND OF THOSE WHO FOLLOW

THE FIVE PRECEPTS OF BUDDHA... One srotapanna is weightier, more valuable. He has risked the journey. He has moved from the bank into the river; he is ready to go to the source. He has taken the most courageous step a man has to take, ever in his life.

The bank seems to be so safe, and you can make it so cozy. And stepping into an unknown stream -- no one knows where it is going; it is certainly going into the unknown, and perhaps ultimately into the unknowable... The man who has the courage to step in, that srotapanna is better to feed -- just one srotapanna -- than to feed ten thousand of those who observe the five precepts of Buddha.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE SKRIDAGAMIN THAN TO FEED ONE MILLION OF

SROTAPANNAS. One million of srotapannas are nothing in comparison with one skridagamin: one who has reached the source. One million srotapannas may have stepped

-- but they may remain stuck there. Their first step may be their last step, because the journey is going to become more and more mysterious, more and more unknowable, more and more beyond their minds and beyond their control.

So many will step, but only a few will go to the very end. One who reaches to the end, the skridagamin, he is equal to one million of srotapannas.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE ANAGAMIN THAN TO FEED TEN MILLIONS OF

SKRIDAGAMINS. Those who have reached the source are not necessarily going to stay there. They may come back. Anagamin means "who is not going to look back" -- coming back is out of question.

The skridagamin may have gone for strange reasons -- maybe his ego: he is a strong person; when the weaker ones are stepping down or stopping, he will go

to the very end, but he has all the desires in him -- which can be fulfilled, or at least you can hope for them to be fulfilled, only on the bank. He will come back. He cannot remain there at the source.

Only one who remains at the source and does not come back, anagamin... These words are from the same root. Gamin means "going." The English word go comes from the same root as the Pali word gamin. Anagamin means "one who is not going back." IT IS

BETTER TO FEED ONE ANAGAMIN THAN TO FEED TEN MILLIONS OF SKRIDAGAMINS.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE ARHAT THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED

MILLIONS OF ANAGAMINS. Now things are a little more subtle. Arhat means "the victorious." Now there is nothing for him to achieve; he has come home. The anagamin has come to the source. He is not going back, but there are weaknesses in him which do not allow him to be totally victorious. He has reached the place from where victory is possible. He is not going back -- but he is not going ahead either.

An arhat is one who goes ahead of the anagamin. The anagamin becomes so happy with the source that he has reached that he feels that this is all there is; he has arrived -- and that's an illusion. There is much more. The arhat is not satisfied -- although it is very pleasant, nice. But he has not come on this journey, on this pilgrimage to reach a pleasant state. He wants truth, and he is ready to lose all pleasures -- even this spiritual pleasure of being at the source. His search is for truth, not for pleasure. IT IS BETTER TO FEED

ONE ARHAT THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS OF ANAGAMINS.

IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE PRATYAK BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE BILLION OF ARHATS.

Pratyak buddha means "a man who has attained enlightenment." The arhat is victorious but he is not illuminated. There is still darkness at the very center of his being. A pratyak buddha is one whose whole darkness has disappeared; he is

simply light. The arhat has discovered the truth; the pratyak buddha has become it.

You have to understand the difference. One has discovered it, but it is still there and he is separate from it. The pratyak buddha has become it. There is no question of victory, because there are not two; hence the difference. You can see: IT IS BETTER TO FEED

ONE PRATYAK BUDDHA THAN TO FEED ONE BILLION OF ARHATAS.

The distance goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE

OF THE BUDDHAS, EITHER OF THE PRESENT OR OF THE PAST OR OF THE

FUTURE THAN TO FEED TEN BILLIONS OF PRATYAK BUDDHAS.

What is the difference between pratyak buddhas and buddhas? The pratyak buddha is one who has become enlightened, but he never becomes a master. He has experienced it, but he cannot explain it. Neither is he interested in anybody else, or in sharing his experience with anybody else. He has the same status as a buddha, but the difference is that the buddha wants to share it, and the pratyak buddha simply keeps it within himself. He has become the truth, but his great achievement is confined only to himself. A buddha works hard, against all kinds of oppositions, difficulties, to reach people, to reach those who are on the path but are in darkness.

The story about Gautam Buddha is that when he reached the gates of nirvana he stood there, his back towards the gates. The gates were opened, and the guards wanted him to enter. They were ready to welcome him -- because centuries pass and then once in a while those gates open. And they were immensely happy that someone has again become a buddha.

But Buddha refused. The story is symbolic. He says, "Unless every living being passes by me into nirvana, I am going to stay here. I will be the last. I cannot go alone, I have to take everybody with me. "They are struggling in pain and misery, and do you think I should enjoy nirvana and its tremendous blissfulness? It is not possible. I will wait. You can wait; but waiting here I will try to help those struggling souls, stumbling in darkness, groping in darkness. Unless I am satisfied that everybody has passed in, I will not come in and close the doors."

Buddha is certainly one of the most insightful men. He does not stop at himself. Anybody would have stopped there -- it is a natural tendency to put oneself at the highest point and then stop.

He says, IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE WHO IS ABOVE KNOWLEDGE, ONE-SIDEDNESS, DISCIPLINE, AND ENLIGHTENMENT THAN TO FEED ONE

HUNDRED BILLIONS OF BUDDHAS, OF PAST, PRESENT OR FUTURE.

The last category is tremendously significant, because it will be the category which will be misunderstood the most. One who is above knowledge -- he will not be consistent, he will be self-contradictory. One who is above one-sidedness, who cannot favor one side of the truth, one aspect of the truth -- at the risk of being contradictory he will support all the aspects of truth. He will support the opposites, and naturally he will look illogical, he will look absurd. One who is above discipline -- who has no discipline, who lives moment to moment, who has no certain order to follow -- he does not follow anything. Each moment decides what he is going to do.

You cannot categorize such a man. You cannot call him good, you cannot call him bad; you cannot call him religious, you cannot call him irreligious, because he follows no discipline. And not only discipline, but he transcends enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the ultimate experience, but still it is an experience... the highest, but still part and parcel of all other experiences: they may be lower, this may be the highest.

Finally one transcends it too. One simply forgets about it. It becomes one's nature.

In the beginning, when you reach from your ignorance into enlightenment, it is such a difference that you are immensely gratified. But now ignorance is gone. Enlightenment slowly, slowly loses the excitement it had in the beginning. It is no longer ecstasy, it is simply your nature. And nobody remembers one's nature.

This is the ultimate category Buddha manages to talk about: beyond knowledge, beyond discipline, beyond enlightenment. This kind of man will be opposed by all, this kind of man will be condemned by all. This kind of man is bound to

stand alone against the whole world, for the simple reason that all that they value, he has transcended.

In Japan there is a beautiful series of pictures depicting the whole range of the pilgrimage to the truth. In the beginning -- the name of the Zen painter who made it is not known -- it had ten pictures. But even the Zen masters suppressed the tenth picture, and for centuries it was known only as having nine pictures. It was only later on that it was discovered in some old scripts that the original had ten pictures, and the description of the tenth is the description Buddha is giving of the last.

It is a series of pictures: A man loses his bull. In one picture, he looks all around and he cannot see it. There are mountains, there are trees, there is a lake and the man is standing there looking all around -- and the bull is not anywhere to be seen. In the second picture he finds the footmarks of the bull. He cannot see the bull yet, but footmarks are there and he follows the footmarks.

In the third he sees just the back of the bull, who is standing under a tree. In the fourth he finds the bull. In the fifth he tries hard to catch hold of it; it is a bull -- it is difficult, he is really powerful. But in the seventh he manages. In the eighth he rides on the bull. The bull won't allow it, and tries this way and that to throw him off. In the ninth he reaches home with the bull.

The tenth was repressed even by the people who can be said to be the most meditative, to be the most alert in the whole world. Perhaps they were afraid that the tenth picture may confuse people or may help them to go astray, because in the tenth -- he has got the bull, and the bull is in the shed, tied up -- in the tenth he takes a bottle of wine and a flute and goes back near the lake. He is going just with his flute and a bottle of wine. Now this picture was repressed, destroyed; it has been recovered now. But this is the picture of the last state. Now there is no discipline: he can drink wine, he can play the flute.

The bull is the self, your inner reality. Finding it represents nirvana. At the ninth, logically it should stop. But existence is not logical, and who will know better then Gautam Buddha that it is not logical? The tenth goes beyond all logic, all comprehension.

Even enlightenment is dropped. The man becomes absolutely ordinary, without any discipline -- a hobo with a bottle of wine to enjoy under a tree, and playing

the flute -- utterly ordinary.

But his ordinariness is not the ordinariness we are aware of; his ordinariness is something most extraordinary. But he is going to be misunderstood, he is going to be condemned.

Now, who is going to accept him as a master? Who going to accept him as a buddha?

But Gautam Buddha has put him above himself. He says, IT IS BETTER TO FEED ONE

WHO IS ABOVE KNOWLEDGE, ONE-SIDEDNESS, DISCIPLINE, AND

ENLIGHTENMENT, THAN TO FEED ONE HUNDRED BILLIONS OF BUDDHAS

OF PAST, PRESENT, OR FUTURE.

This sutra shows the beauty of the man, his grandeur, his greatness. Beyond Psychology

Chapter #29

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