Chapter title: Come a little closer

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‌Chapter title: Come a little closer‌

26 April 1986 pm in

Archive code:

8604265

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO29

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

104

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN A SPEECH PREPARED FOR HIS FOLLOWERS AFTER HIS CAR ACCIDENT, GURDJIEFF SAID, "AGAIN I REPEAT THAT THE INSTITUTE IS CLOSED. I DIED. THE REASON IS THAT I WAS DISENCHANTED WITH PEOPLE AFTER

ALL THAT I HAVE DONE FOR THEM; I HAVE SEEN HOW WELL THEY HAVE

PAID ME FOR IT. NOW INSIDE ME EVERYTHING IS EMPTY."

RECENTLY, WHEN KRISHNAMURTI DIED, I FELT THAT SOMEHOW HE TOO

DIED DISENCHANTED.

OSHO, OVER THE YEARS WITH YOU, WE HAVE BUILT GREAT CASTLES IN

THE SAND AND HAVE SEEN THEM DESTROYED; YET WHEN I SEE YOU

THESE PRECIOUS MORNINGS AND EVENINGS, YOU SEEM SO GENUINELY

HAPPY TO SEE US. DO YOU EVER GET DISENCHANTED WITH US?

It is not only for George Gurdjieff or J. Krishnamurti, it is true for hundreds of masters down the ages, and there are reasons. They all died disenchanted, disappointed, disillusioned.

Let us go deeper, first into George Gurdjieff's last statement. The last statement of anybody is the most significant statement of his whole life; in a certain way his whole life is condensed in his last statement.

He was disenchanted because the disciples failed him, betrayed him, went against him, did everything to harm him -- and these were the people for whom he had devoted his whole life, each single moment of it. But still in his place I would not be disenchanted.

He thought that he was doing a very serious work. That's where the seed of his disenchantment was.

I am not doing any serious work. I am not doing work at all; it is my joy to share with you. Now what you do with it is your problem, not mine.

You cannot disappoint me.

You can betray me; there are people who have done that. You can do any kind of

harm imaginable -- and people have done that. You can go against me, you can tell lies about me; still I will not be disenchanted, because in the first place I have never expected anything from you.

The disappointment comes from expectation.

The disenchantment comes from a deep hope that these people are going to fulfill my work. I don't have any expectation, any hope -- I am just so blissful that I cannot contain it; I want to share it unconditionally. It is the conditions which create disappointment.

Gurdjieff had worked hard with great expectations. And even people like P.D.

Ouspensky, who had learned everything from the master, denied him. Ouspensky himself became a master; he even stopped using Gurdjieff's full name. When he had to mention him at certain points, he would use only G. He would not allow his own disciples to go to Gurdjieff, even to see him, and Gurdjieff had worked on this man for years, for decades.

And whatever Ouspensky said after separating himself from Gurdjieff -- each single word, each single insight -- was borrowed, it was not his own. Certainly he had a great talent; he was one of the best writers I have come across. Gurdjieff was not a writer.

Ouspensky was a great logician, a world famous mathematician, a great writer. Gurdjieff was none of these things, he was purely a mystic.

Gathering everything from the system of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky was in a position to write beautiful treatises, as if they were his own experience. Gurdjieff could not compete with him in writing, nor in speaking. Ouspensky was a very talented genius, well educated.

Gurdjieff was uneducated, coming from a very undeveloped tribe in the Caucasus, in Soviet Russia. But he had the whole mine of diamonds -- it is just that they were all uncut, unpolished. Only a man who had the eyes of a jeweler would be able to recognize them; otherwise they were just stones.

Ouspensky had the eyes of a jeweler; he recognized that this man had a treasure, but had not the talent to spread it... a great chance for exploitation. He learned everything from Gurdjieff, and the day he felt that now it was enough -- he could

make a system out of it all -- he betrayed him. And he had to prevent his disciples from going to Gurdjieff, because personality-wise Ouspensky was just a schoolteacher -- he looked like a schoolteacher. Even while teaching mysticism there was a blackboard -- he was a mathematician. He would be teaching mysticism and writing on the blackboard; it was like a class, a university class. His students were taking notes.…

Gurdjieff had a tremendously charismatic personality. Anybody who had seen him once could not forget the man; in a crowd of millions he would still stand out. If you had looked into his eyes once, those eyes would follow you your whole life. He was not a man of words, but a man of a tremendously powerful being.

And that was the fear of Ouspensky -- that if his disciples went to Gurdjieff, then whatever he had been saying against Gurdjieff would be exposed. And if they listened to that man... although he was not articulate, in a way he was the most articulate master ever. To say a simple thing he would take hundreds of pages. You have to find out where it is -- what he really wants to say. He will make up his own words, big long words spreading out over the whole line, a single word that you have never heard before -- it is his invention. He knew nothing about how to write; one paragraph will go running on for pages. No publisher was ready to publish his books; he had to publish them himself.

When his first book was published it was one thousand pages. It is one of the strangest books in the world, ALL AND EVERYTHING. He kept nine hundred pages uncut, and only one hundred pages -- that is the preface -- were cut, with a note to every customer who purchases it: "You read the preface and if you feel that it is worth reading on, then you can cut the remaining nine hundred pages. But if you feel it is not worth it you can take your money back -- return the book

-- but don't cut the uncut pages. Those one hundred pages are enough example."

Even to understand those one hundred pages is a strange experience, particularly for those who don't know anything about mystics and their strange ways. Now he was not in any way able to compete with his own disciple Ouspensky. His books are so lucid, so beautifully written, so poetic, that I have not seen any other man who comes close to him, even close to him. Kahlil Gibran writes well, Mikhail Naimy writes well, but they don't even come close to Ouspensky.

Gurdjieff had much hope that Ouspensky would carry on his work. Rather than

carrying on, he simply opened his own school against Gurdjieff -- teaching everything, because it is impossible to add to it; the system is complete and perfect. You cannot take anything out, you cannot put anything in. He was a great teacher, Ouspensky, but he was not a master. He influenced many people around the world; millions of people came to know of Gurdjieff only through Ouspensky. What a strange fate! And he was consistently trying to oppose him.

It was very difficult, because his whole teaching was borrowed from the man, but it was a logical necessity. He had to oppose Gurdjieff so nobody would think that he had borrowed all this teaching from Gurdjieff. It is an existential necessity that any disciple who betrays and wants to use the master's teaching to become himself a master, is bound to oppose the master, to create lies about the master. And naturally it was hurting Gurdjieff -- and it was not only Ouspensky, there were many others who were doing the same. For years Gurdjieff would work on them, and then one day they turned into his enemies. And to justify why they have left Gurdjieff they had to invent lies, they had to create a false image of Gurdjieff.

Ouspensky had a strategy. He said, "While I was with Gurdjieff he was right, and when I saw that he was going astray, I left him" -- Gurdjieff had gone astray, that's why the disciple had left. Up to that point Gurdjieff was right, and he could use his teachings without any difficulty. But beyond that point, for him Gurdjieff did not exist at all.

This was being done by many disciples, and if Gurdjieff was working with great expectations, naturally he was getting wounded, hurt. He could not believe that these were the people for whom he had lived and he had died; his whole life he had sacrificed, and these were the people.… That's why he said, "The institution is closed, is dead."

He was afraid that after his death his institution will also be used in the same way. "The institution is dead because I am dead." And these were all the wounds of his life saying it together. This statement is the statement of his whole life: "Man is cunning, cowardly, deceptive, hypocritical -- you cannot trust anybody."

This was his whole life's experience: You cannot trust anybody. He trusted many and he gave everything that he had, and still what had they returned? -- not even gratitude. And he was not asking for anything else. But his people had given him no reverence, no gratitude, no respect -- on the contrary, great antagonism,

opposition, all kinds of fictions condemning him... Naturally he was disappointed.

But my approach is totally different. I trust you, not because of your trustworthiness; otherwise the same will be my experience. I do not have to wait for my death to come; already I have worked with people for years and they have repaid me very well. I trust you because I cannot distrust; so there is no burden on you -- you can betray me, but you cannot hurt me. I have trusted you, not because of you, but because of me. And I am still there, the same.

See the difference. To trust a person is possible in two ways: either because of his trustworthiness -- then there is danger, there is risk -- or because you enjoy trusting. The trustworthiness or unworthiness have no relevance.

Secondly Gurdjieff and all these people took their work very seriously -- the transformation of man, the transformation of human society... they took it too seriously.

And when people did not live up to their seriousness they felt that something is basically wrong with man, that nothing can be done about him. Then a great hopelessness arose in them.

It cannot happen to me, because I am not serious at all. I do not think that existence has given me a certain responsibility, to transform man or human society. Who am I to bother about all this? One day I was not here -- the society was there, man was there, existence was there.… One day I will not be here, so just for a few days in between.… And existence has not given me any job that has to be done. Why should I be serious? I am simply playful.

If everybody betrays me I will have the last laugh; I will enjoy that moment too. I will say to myself, "Great! I love to play; I played well. And these people were good; as long as they could continue to be with me, they managed and continued

-- in difficulties, in troubles. When they found it was too much, they went on their own."

Even if I am left alone I will not be disappointed. I will simply enjoy the moment, that this has been a great life -- so many seasons, so many changes, so many people, so much love, so much trust. And I am going out of life without leaving any footprints behind. I will not feel that I have wasted my life. I don't think that there could have been any better way to live, and to love, and to laugh.

J. Krishnamurti was very serious -- I don't think he ever smiled. A long life: ninety years.

His fame started very early, at thirteen years old; so really he had a very long life of work and disappointments. Even the closest ones betrayed him. His whole life seems to be just a series of betrayals, and those who remained never managed to understand what he was saying. They listened to him for half a century, but still he could not cross their thick minds and reach to their being. And every day... if you look at his life, in the beginning he was very hopeful, very excited that man can be changed, that a new man can arrive.

But slowly, slowly that hope disappeared, that excitement was no more there. And as he grew older, he became sadder.

For twenty years, just because of his seriousness, he suffered from migraine continuously. No medicine could help, no physician... and every physician told him,

"You are straining your whole brain system too much. You are too serious, you should relax; you have taken too much of a burden on yourself." Sometimes his migraine was so much that he would like to have hit his head against the wall.

While speaking he was almost screaming, shouting, hitting his own head, because he could not understand that you are unable to understand such a simple thing. For example, he was explaining the same thing his whole life: that meditation cannot be done, it is a happening. And he would talk for one hour about the difference between doing and happening, and then somebody who was just sitting in front of him listening attentively, would stand up and ask, "How can we do meditation?"

I would have laughed at the whole thing, but he would hit his head... too serious. And as death was coming closer he was becoming more and more serious, knowing now that his life had been a failure. He worked hard, immensely hard. His approach was very clean and very clear. His way of working was very logical, very intellectual, absolutely contemporary: an impeccable life of worth -

- he was a perfectionist.

But in the end the hands are empty. As far as results are concerned, nothing has happened, as if he had not been here. The world goes on... the old routine, the old rut. Do you see anything that has changed because J. Krishnamurti was born,

and lived for ninety years? Has it made even a scratch? Naturally he died in the same state.

And this has been the case with thousands of masters; humanity remains unevolving because they are so serious in wanting man to evolve. And naturally they fail.

But I cannot fail, because I am not concerned at all whether humanity evolves or not, whether the new man is born or not. I enjoy these ideas and I enjoy communicating them to people, and there I am perfectly victorious. I don't need to wait to be victorious until you have changed; that will be your victory. My victory is that I have been able to communicate what I wanted to communicate. Now what you do with it is your freedom.

I will not call it betrayal, and I will not call it opposition, and I will not call your things lies. If you are enjoying doing these things it is perfectly good -- enjoyment is good. If somebody is creating lies about me and is feeling perfectly happy about it, why should he be stopped? He has all my blessings.

In India it happened, one man wrote a book against me and he sent me the proof copy. I looked into it -- it was all rubbish, lies, fictitious stories with no evidence. Still, I sent him my blessings and told him to print it on the first page of the book. He could not believe it; he was so disturbed: what kind of man is this?

He lived in Baroda, a thousand miles away from me, but he came to see me -- he had never seen me. He was just collecting third-rate yellow newspapers and cuttings and gossips, rumors... and he managed to make a book. And he asked me "Have you seen inside or have you simply sent blessings?"

I said, "I have gone through it word for word; it is all bullshit, but you have done so much work collecting bullshit, you need blessings."

He said, "But this looks strange -- with your blessings. I know this book: even while I was collecting and writing My purpose is to earn money -- this book is

going to become a bestseller -- but now seeing you and your response, I feel perhaps I should not have done this."

I said, "No, you continue. Let this book go into the market. Collect more, because while I am alive more and more lies will be there, more and more gossips, rumors -- you can always earn money; this is a good way. It is not doing

any harm to me. And the picture you have chosen for the cover is really beautiful."

He said, "My God! I was thinking you would be angry, ferocious."

I said, "Why should I be angry, why should I be ferocious? Life is too short to be angry, to be ferocious. Even if we can manage to be blissful, that's enough; if we can manage to bless, that's enough. What you do is your business, but you have done it well. Your writing is good; what you have written is nonsense, but the way you have put it and presented it is really good. And you devoted almost one year to my service. I cannot pay you, but I can give you my blessing."

And the book was published with my blessings and every criticism that appeared in newspapers about the book mentioned it: "It is strange that Osho blesses it." And just that simple blessing cancels the whole book.

My whole approach is different, so totally different that it has never been used before. I am enjoying everything that has happened, is happening -- perhaps tomorrow I will be arrested, deported, but I have been enjoying it. Then Hasya has to find a new place, so I can be deported again! We are not going to leave a single country unblessed.

In fact I cannot conceive a situation that will be a disappointment to me. You have to forgive me -- I am simply so fulfilled and so happy, so centered that nothing can affect me. Any new kind of situation is really a great excitement. And to live without any conditions, to live with people who have total freedom to be the way they want to be, is already a transformation. All old approaches have failed. Now let us see what happens to my approach. As far as I am concerned I cannot fail, because I am squeezing the juice of life every moment; I don't leave it for another moment.

What has to be seen is how many people can become as successful, as victorious as I am.

I am giving them all the cues, now it is their problem. If they fail they should be disappointed; why should I be disappointed? If they succeed, they should rejoice. I can participate in their rejoicing, but there is no way to disappoint me.

Just include me out of the category of Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti and others.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE TRIED FOR SO LONG TO WRITE A QUESTION TO YOU ABOUT

MONEY. THE QUESTION IS SO COMPLEX, I CAN'T EVEN GET IT ON PAPER. IT

INVOLVES FRIENDSHIPS, SELF-IMAGE, INTEGRITY, TRUST, INTELLIGENCE, IDENTIFICATION, LETTING-GO, HOLDING-ON, GUILT, RELATIONSHIPS, AND

MOST IMPORTANTLY, MY DISCIPLESHIP.

PLEASE HELP ME WITH THE QUESTION AND THE ANSWER.

Money is a strange thing.

If you do not have it, it is a simple matter -- you don't have it. There is no complexity.

But if you have it, then it certainly creates complexities.

One of the greatest problems that money creates is that you never know whether you are loved or your money is loved, whether you are desirable or your money is desirable. And it is so difficult to figure out, that one would have preferred not to have had money; at least life would have been simple.

Just a few days before, Hasya was telling me about Aristotle Onassis' daughter. I remember seeing her picture when Onassis was alive, perhaps ten years ago. She was a beautiful, well-proportioned, charming young girl. But Onassis died and left her with a lot of money, and that created hell for her. Since then she has married three times, and each marriage fails because she thinks the person loves her money, not her.

And this starts from the very beginning; the day of marriage is really the day of divorce.

On the day of marriage she takes a guarantee from the person -- a legal

document before the court -- that he will not take her money. In case divorce happens, he will not ask for money. Now can you conceive a marriage to be worthwhile, when on the first day the woman is asking you to give in writing before the court that you are interested in her, and not in her money; and that in case a divorce happens you will not ask for money? The divorce has already happened.

In the fourth marriage she got into more troubled waters. Before I describe the fourth marriage, something else has to be said which was happening on the side. She was becoming fatter, uglier, as if deep down in her psychology she wanted to prove, "You love me whether I am beautiful or ugly, shapely or fat -- you don't love my money."

And she has become so ugly now that she avoids photographers, news media: she hides and does not want her pictures to be taken. Perhaps it is because she was uncertain whether she is loved, or her money. And most probably the people who have been with her were for the money, not for her. She did not receive love. The proof is that she started eating too much. If you are loved, you are so full of love, so filled with love that you don't eat too much.

I have been traveling in India, staying with different families, and I have come across at least three women who told me the same thing, that while I am staying in their homes they cannot eat. When I was told this for the first time I said, "This is strange. Why can't you eat?"

They said, "We don't know, but we don't feel hungry either. We feel perfectly good, with more well-being than we have ever felt. You stay three days and we can't eat. And we wait the whole year again when you will be back in the city for three days; those three days become a beautiful memory."

When I was told by another woman, and then by another woman... I had to look into the fact -- what is the matter? They felt so loved, and they loved me so much that there was no need for any food, as if love was enough nourishment. And after three days they did not look hungry, they did not look starved. One of these three was a Jaina woman, and she said, "Now I know what a real fast should be." She had been fasting for almost ten years, long fasts of ten days.

In the Jaina tradition, those Jainas who are very orthodox, fast for ten days every year in the rainy season. This woman has been fasting for ten days for almost ten

years, and she said to me, "Now I know that was not fasting, that was simply starving because I was continuously thinking of food, food and food. I could not sleep in the night because of hunger; even if I fell asleep for a few moments or a few hours I was dreaming of food. I was thinking of food, I was dreaming of food; except food there was nothing in me. For these three days while you stay in my house I know what fasting is. I never think about food at all. It just comes naturally that I don't feel any hunger; I feel so fulfilled."

Onassis' immense riches have created a hell for the poor girl, a feeling that she is not loved. And not coming in contact with a man like me who could have told her.… The question is not that you should be loved, the question is that you should love. Why bother about why the other loves you? Have you ever thought about why you love the other? For what? And then you will understand the situation. Perhaps it is because of his hair? Then you don't love the man. Perhaps because of his eyes? Then you don't love the man.

Perhaps because of his nose? Then you don't love the man. If you have any reason to love, then you don't love the man. So why are you making so much fuss about money?

You should love and you should be loved, and you should be loved more because of your money. There is nothing wrong in it; you have something more than any other woman has. Otherwise, each thing will start creating problems: you have a beautiful face, that's why this man loves -- he does not love you. If you had a face with pockmarks this man would not love you. Because you have eyes, this man loves you; if you were blind, this man would not love you. Then you are creating unnecessary problems for yourself. This man certainly loves you, in your totality, and your money is part of you. Why make it separate? You are rich, just as somebody is beautiful; you are rich just as somebody is a dancer. But the dancer will not ask the question, "Do you love me or my dance?" If she asks the question she will be in trouble.

In the fourth marriage Onassis' daughter found a rich man, just to be certain that "He is himself so rich that he will love me, he will not love my riches -- he himself is a big industrialist." And because of this she did not repeat the ritual of going to the court after marriage, and taking a certificate from the man, that in case of divorce he will not ask for money. Seeing that the man is so rich, it looked absurd to ask. But this man proved really cunning, and because there was no certificate he divorced her and took almost half of her fortune.

Now, something like money, that could have been a great pleasure, has turned out to be immense anguish. But it is not money, it is your mind. Money is useful. There is no sin in having money, there is no need to feel guilt; otherwise everybody should feel guilty. I should start feeling guilty -- "Why am I enlightened, when there are so many millions of people who are not enlightened? I must commit suicide, because the world is full of unenlightened people, and I must be immensely selfish to be enlightened."

I don't ask you, "Why do you love me? Do you love me or do you love my enlightenment? If you love my enlightenment then -- finished! Then you don't love me."

But why make these divisions? This is how mind creates misery. You have money, enjoy it! And if somebody loves you, do not pose this question because you are putting the person in a really bad situation. If he says he loves you, you are not going to believe it, and if he says he loves your money you are going to believe it. But if he loves your money, then the whole affair is finished. Deep down you will go on suspecting that he loves your money, not you. But there is nothing wrong: the money is yours, just as the nose is yours, and the eyes are yours, and the hair is yours, and this man loves you in your totality. The money is also part of you -- don't separate it, then there is no problem.

Try to live a life with as little complexities and as few problems as possible. And it is in your hands; we go on creating unnecessary problems. At least being with me, you should learn that all problems are created; there is no real problem.

This question is from Avirbhava. She has suffered from this question her whole life, and absolutely unnecessarily. Your money should make your life richer, more lovable, and it is making it difficult.

Whenever anybody starts loving you, you are constantly thinking about the money --

"this man is interested in the money, not in me." Even if he is interested in the money...

who is not interested in money? He is simply being human. He is not a Buddhist monk, he is interested in money. But this does not mean that he is not interested in you. He is interested in you more because you are not only a woman, but a rich woman. Enjoy the idea, and drop this problem forever.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

HOW TO CATCH THE LIGHT FROM YOUR CANDLE?

Just come a little closer. People are afraid of coming closer, particularly to a person like me.

The fear is that coming closer to me they may be dissolved. Coming closer to me they may disappear.

So they keep a certain distance, they come only so far, so they can remain themselves; if the time comes and their mind decides to move away, they can.

But if you come really close, that means you have taken a total jump, a quantum leap; now there is no going away, now there is no possibility of going away. Now you are melting and dissolving into the unknown. People come close but only so far, so they can escape if they want to, they can turn their back if they want.

Do you know the meaning of the word "hippie"? It simply means showing your hips --

turning your back. The hippie is one who is turning his back towards the world, its problems, its challenges; he is running, escaping.

Coming close to me... don't stop as long as you are, only then your candle will be lighted.

And this is the beauty of candles: you can light one candle in this room, or one thousand candles in this room. The candles may be one thousand, but the light will be one. So when a disciple comes too close to the master, the candles remain two, but the light becomes one. The flames remain two. That's why I have to make a seemingly contradictory statement: that when you dissolve into the master, for the first time you are not, and for the first time you are. You are not your old self, but now you have a new individuality. What you have lost was never yours; what you have gained was always yours, but was covered with the false.

Two lighted candles will create only one light in the room. There can be two thousand, there can be two million -- it will not make any difference, the light will be one. So in a certain way they will all be individuals, and in a certain way they will all be part of an oceanic existence.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #30

Chapter title: New bottles for the old wine 27 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604270

ShortTitle: PSYCHO30

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

85

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SPOKE OF THE MYSTERY SCHOOL. AT THAT

MOMENT I THOUGHT OF PYTHAGORAS. SINCE YOU STARTED SPEAKING

AGAIN, I'VE WANTED TO ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT HIM -- HIS NAME COMES

TO ME OFTEN. THE MAIN PART OF HIS TEACHINGS I LOVE ARE THE THREE

P'S: PREPARATION, PURIFICATION, PERFECTION. WOULD YOU SPEAK ON THEM AGAIN?

Pythagoras is a link between East and West, between a civilization that disappeared in the Atlantic and a civilization that we are living in; hence he has a significance of his own.

He traveled almost all his life in search of fragments of truth. Most of his time he was in Egypt, in Alexandria. In those days Alexandria had the biggest library in the whole world, particularly scriptures containing all the discoveries of consciousness made in the lost civilization of Atlantis -- a whole civilization drowned with the whole continent in the Atlantic ocean. The name Atlantic comes from the continent Atlantis, that went down into it. The only fragmentary knowledge available about it was in Alexandria -- and perhaps Pythagoras was the first and the last man of such integrity, intelligence, ingenuity, to look into those scriptures.

That library exists no more, so whatever we know about Atlantis we know through Pythagoras. That library was destroyed by Mohammedans. The man who destroyed it, Mahmud Gaznavi, destroyed many beautiful things in India, in Afghanistan, in Egypt.

But the most precious was the vast library that contained everything about that whole civilization, which had reached to the peaks of consciousness. The day this man destroyed the library, he took Koran Sharif in one of his hands and a burning torch in another, entered the library and asked the learned librarian, "Listen carefully -- the existence of your library depends on your answers. My first question is: Is there anything in your whole library which goes against the

holy KORAN? And my second question is: If there is nothing which goes against the holy KORAN, then the holy KORAN is enough; why bother about this big library?"

The librarian must have been in a dilemma -- whatever he says will be dangerous. If he says there are many things in the library which are not in the KORAN, Mahmud is going to burn the library, because that which is not in the KORAN is untrue -- the KORAN

contains all and ultimate truth. And if he says that everything that is in the library is substantially and essentially contained in the KORAN, then too he is going to burn the library, saying, "Then it is useless; the KORAN has it all." And the library was so huge and so immense that you can only conceive... He burned it, and the fire continued for six months. For six months continuously books were burning; perhaps the greatest treasure of humanity was destroyed.

Pythagoras studied in that library for many years. He was a Greek, but he found in Greece itself only sophistry. Sophistry is something ugly. It comes from a very beautiful word `sophia', which means wisdom, but sophistry is only a pretension of wisdom. And the whole of Greece was so interested in sophistry. There were sophist teachers moving all over the country teaching people, and the basic teaching of sophistry was: There is no truth. It is all a question of better argument. Truth as such does not exist, it is a fallacy.

When two persons argue, whoever is better in argument seems to have the truth, but it is really the better argument and nothing else.

Their teaching was to give you all possible ways of arguing and to make you a great arguer, and then you can argue from any side -- it doesn't matter. When truth does not exist, what side you take and argue for does not matter. It is a question of convenience: which side is going to declare you victorious? Which side do you have more arguments for?

I have been interested in sophistry, although the name sophistry has disappeared. Socrates was the cause of destroying it. He emphasized that truth is, and arguments do not prove it, they only discover it. They do not disprove it either; they can only prevent its discovery. One single man, Socrates, destroyed the whole tradition, hundreds of years old, of sophistry. But it has remained running underground. I see it in theologians, in religious philosophies, in political

ideologies... no concern for truth, the only concern is to present a very solid argument.

There is a story: one very famous sophist teacher, Zeno... and he was not just a sophist, he was a genius. It is unfortunate that his genius became associated with sophistry because that was prevalent. You pay him money and he can prove anything -- anything in the world. You just say it, he has a price for it. He proved strange things which logicians have not been able to disprove even now, after two thousand years, and whatever he has proved goes against all common sense. But logic listens to the argument, and his arguments are so fine, so refined.

For example, he says that when you kill a bird with an arrow, the arrow does not move at all. This is absurd, because if the arrow does not move at all, then how does it reach the bird? From your bow to the bird there is a distance. The arrow reaches there, the bird is killed -- there is proof. This question was asked by one king, thinking that Zeno would not be able to prove this -- and he was ready to give any amount of money if Zeno should prove that the arrow does not move.

Zeno proved that the arrow does not move, and even up to now there is no way to disprove him. His argument is that for movement, the arrow has to go from point 1 to point 2 to point 3 to point 4; obviously it has to move from one place to another place, then only will it reach the bird.

Moving from A to B or from 1 to 2, it has to pass a passage between A and B; it cannot simply reach from A to B, so you have to make another point between the two. So where there were two points, now there are three points -- and you have got into difficulty. Now he has to reach not only three points but five, because these two gaps are there, and this goes on growing. If you fill these two gaps, then there are five points and there are gaps.

And you go on filling ad infinitum... the arrow will never reach the bird.

The argument is very solid. What he is saying makes sense -- but it is absolute nonsense: the arrow goes and kills the bird.

Zeno is not interested in the arrow or the bird. He says, "My argument proves that nothing moves, nothing can move; there is no movement in the world."

These kinds of people were all over Greece. They dominated the mind; they were constantly debating. Pythagoras was not interested at all in this kind of

stupid game. It sharpens your intellect, but it does not lead you to any truth, to any discovery, to any realization. And even the greatest sophists were getting into trouble, because Zeno himself -- who had many arguments which go against reality but could not be disproved -

- was defeated by his own student.

This was the routine: he was so confident, and he had the genius to be confident, that he used to take half the fees in the beginning, and half when the student won his first argument. This student was strange: he gave half the fee but he told him that he would never give him the other half. Zeno said, "How?" He said, "I am never going to argue! I will accept defeat without arguing. I may lose everything that I have but I am not going to give you the other half of your fee."

Zeno waited, but the man would not even talk about the weather, because some argument may start and there may be trouble. And he was determined not to pay the fees so as to teach Zeno: "You may be a great logician, but there is a possibility of going higher than you."

But Zeno was not going to sit silently. He put a case in the court against the student: "He has not paid me half the fee." His idea was that if he wins the case, then he will tell the court, "Force that student to pay the fee." If he loses the case, no harm -- outside the court he will catch the student and will say, "You have won your first argument -- my fee!" So whether he wins or whether he loses, he is going to get half the fee.

But he forgot that it was his own student who knew all his techniques and arguments.

From the opposite side the student was thinking, "That's good: if I win in the court, I will appeal to the court that this man should not bother me outside the court, because that will be a contempt of court. And if I lose the case, then there is no problem. Outside I will catch hold of Zeno and say, "Master, I have lost my first argument -- you cannot get the fee."

The whole genius of Greece was involved in that, in that atmosphere. Pythagoras is very unique. He got out of Greece -- it was not the right place. People were simply arguing and arguing, but nobody was concerned in evolving consciousness. He was coming to India. On the way he remained a few years in the library of Alexandria, where he picked up knowledge about the lost continent

of Atlantis.

We have only that proof; no other proof exists -- although recently scientists have started looking into the matter. What they have been finding in the Atlantic ocean suggests that there must have been a great civilization; whole cities are drowned there. The whole continent simply went down into the ocean. Such changes happen on the earth: new islands come up, new mountains come up.

The Himalayas are a new mountain range -- the newest. It was not there when RIG

VEDA was written, because it is impossible that RIG VEDA should not mention such beautiful mountains -- the highest and the most glorious. But there is no mention about them. And the people who wrote RIG VEDA had come from Mongolia. Certainly there was no mountain on the way; otherwise to cross the Himalayas and to come to India would have been impossible. Even today, there are only two places from where you can cross the Himalayas; otherwise it is uncrossable. Changes go on happening on the earth.

Pythagoras reached India, but he got caught again -- in the Buddhist atmosphere. It was so real; although Buddha was dead, the whole country was throbbing. His impression, his impact, had been very deep. When Pythagoras reached India, whatever he learned was learned in Buddhist universities. You will be surprised to know that Buddhist universities are the oldest universities in the world. Oxford is only one thousand years old. Nalanda, a Buddhist university, and Takshila, a Buddhist university, existed twenty-three hundred years ago. They were destroyed by Hindus and Mohammedans both.

But they were rare universities -- they fulfilled the real meaning of the word. Not everybody was allowed to be in the university. Outside the university campus there were places where people could live for preparation. At the gate the gatekeepers were no ordinary people but very qualified Buddhist bhikkhus, and they had to give people an examination at the gate. When you had passed those examinations, you could enter into the university campus; otherwise it was not even possible to enter it. Even just to see it was not possible; it was so sacred. Wisdom was thought so sacred -- it was not everybody's thing, only those who could put their whole life into the search.

These three P's -- Purification, Preparation, Perfection -- come from the Buddhist

sources of wisdom. Of course, Pythagoras made them more logical -- he had a Greek mind --

made them more systematic. But those words are really significant.

Preparation does not mean preparing for a verbal examination or a written examination.

Preparation means preparing for an existential examination; it means going deeper into meditation. Unless you were meditative you could not enter those universities. And they had big campuses: Takshila had ten thousand scholars in it, Nalanda had twelve thousand scholars in it. Even today the greatest universities don't have more than that number, but their quality is very ordinary; students have simply passed the school examinations and they are ready to enter. No existential preparation is needed.

Preparation means that you drop all your conditionings, you drop your prejudices, you drop what you think you know and you do not know: you get as innocent as possible.

Your innocence will be the preparation -- that will allow you to enter into the university campus.

Then purification... In preparation you drop the conditionings which were given by the society, prejudices which were given to you or caught by you from the surroundings; it was borrowed knowledge in some way or other. You go like a child -- but even the child is not pure. That is something very significant to understand, because people take it for granted that the child is pure.

He is certainly innocent, but his innocence is equivalent to ignorance, and behind his innocence are all his feelings: anger, hatred, greed, jealousy. You can see, children are very jealous. If one child has a doll, the other becomes so jealous that they will start fighting. If some child has something, then the other child also wants to have it. They are very competitive. Even in the family children have a hierarchy, and they are constantly fighting to be higher than others. Whatever is needed to be done... if obedience makes them the most loved in the family, they will follow obedience. But they are not following obedience; they are really trying a power strategy.

So preparation simply takes away the layers that society has put on your mind.

But you have brought with nature, with your birth, so many ugly instincts, that a purification is needed.

You have to understand that competition is meaningless. You have to meditate deeply and recognize that you are not like anybody else. And competition can be only among similar people -- and everybody is dissimilar, unique.

Once the competitive mind disappears, many things change in you; then you are not jealous. If somebody has a beautiful face and somebody has more money, and somebody has a more powerful body, you simply accept the fact that a few trees are tall and a few trees are small. But existence accepts them all.

The disappearance of competitiveness will also help you to get rid of greed. People go on accumulating -- they want to be in a better position than you, with more money than you, with everything better than you. And their whole life is wasted in that.

Purification is almost going through a fire of understanding in which all that is instinctive and ugly burns down. And it is a great experience that only the ugly burns. That which is beautiful blossoms. In purification you lose all trace of hate, and instead, suddenly a spring of love bursts forth -- as if the rock of hate was preventing the spring.

Once the cruelty... and children are very cruel. The idea that they are angels is just stupid.

They are very cruel; they will beat dogs, they will beat cats. A small insect passing by --

and a child will simply kill it for no reason, he just enjoys destruction. There is a destructiveness in him. Once that is gone, creativity arises.

So purification is a deeper meditation than preparation. Preparation was very simple, but purification is going deeper into meditation -- the deepest possible -- so everything that is not worthy of human beings is transformed. Everything has energy in it -- hate, jealousy, greed -- and when these things change, their energy becomes available to you in its purified form. And they can turn: greed can turn into compassion, sharing; hate can turn into love. Everything will turn into something which makes your heart a garden.

And when the purification is complete, utterly complete, not a corner of your being remains in the dark, everything is light and fragrant, fresh... What we have called the awakened man, the enlightened man, Pythagoras calls perfection. It is simply a different name: the perfect man.

The first two you have to do; the third is the ultimate outcome of it. In these three simple words he has condensed the whole alchemy of human transformation.

Pythagoras is one of the most important people that Greece has given to the world. But strangely enough, nothing much is talked about all the best geniuses that Greece has given to the world. Pythagoras, Socrates, Heraclitus, Epicurus -- these are the ones who should be talked about. But instead of them, in the universities Plato is studied, Aristotle is studied.

Plato is simply a record-keeper -- he has not a single idea of his own! He is a devoted lover of Socrates, and whatever Socrates says, he goes on recording it, writing it. Socrates has not written anything -- just as no great master has ever written anything. And Plato is certainly a great writer; perhaps Socrates may not have been able to write so beautifully.

Plato has made Socrates' teachings as beautiful as possible, but he himself is no one. Now the same work can be done by a tape recorder. And Aristotle is merely an intellectual, with no understanding of being, or even a desire to search for it. These people are taught in the universities.

I was constantly in a fight with my professors. When they started teaching Plato, I said,

"This is absolute nonsense, because Plato has nothing to say of his own. It is better to teach about Socrates. Plato can be referred to -- he has compiled it all. But Socrates' name has become almost a fiction, and Plato has become the reality -- just the way I was saying to you last night that Ouspensky has become the master, because he has written the books, beautiful books. One day Gurdjieff will be forgotten -- he is already forgotten --

and Ouspensky will be remembered for centuries. And sooner or later what he has written will be thought to be his own ideas. None of it is his own ideas.

Pythagoras is not at all bothered about any university in the world, for the simple

reason that he is not a routine scholar; he is an original seeker, and he is ready to go anywhere.

He traveled all his life to find people who may have had a little glimpse and may be able to impart something to him. He was collecting pieces, and he managed beautifully.

But Greeks don't talk about him because he is not talking about Greek philosophy; he is bringing foreign ideas, strange ideas from Alexandria, from Nalanda, from Takshila -- he is almost not a Greek. They are not interested in what he is bringing, although what he is bringing has nothing to do with Greeks or Indians or Egyptians. But he is ignored -- one of the most significant men, utterly ignored.

The same has happened to Diogenes. He is ignored because he looks embarrassing to the Greeks. And he is very original -- not only in thoughts but in life. In everything that he does he is original and very sincere -- a man of tremendous courage, who could say to Alexander the Great, "You are behaving like a fool. The very idea of conquering the world is nonsense. For what do you want to conquer the world? What will you do after it?"

He said, "After it? I am going to relax and enjoy." And Diogenes looked at his dog -- they were friends, they used to live together -- and he told the dog, "Did you hear? He is planning to relax and enjoy after conquering the world, and we are enjoying right now, without conquering anything! Why take so much trouble?" A naked man who can say to Alexander, "You are behaving like a fool," must have guts -- and Alexander had to recognize it. And he was a man of tremendous power himself, of great intelligence. He had to recognize it -- that he has never met a man of the quality of Diogenes.

But Greeks go on avoiding, the same way they have done with Epicurus. It is very strange, but perhaps this is the way of humanity to behave with its own greatest sons -- to ignore them, not to take any note of them.

But amongst all these, Pythagoras has created a complete system to create a Buddha. He himself became an enlightened man -- it was not only theoretical. When he came back to Greece, he was not the same Pythagoras who had left; he was a new man. And that was one of the greatest difficulties -- his own country could not recognize him. In fact they had no category of enlightenment,

awakening, buddhahood, so where to put Pythagoras?

The category just does not exist in their mind, so he remains uncategorized, and for two thousand years nobody has commented upon him.

I am the first man to have commented on the great genius and realization of this unique individual. He has a more perfect way of presentation than you will find in Indian scriptures, because Indian scriptures are more poetic, and he is, after all, a Greek! He is very logical and very scientific.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ARE FAMOUS FOR YOUR CONTRADICTIONS. BUT IT SEEMS THAT ONE

OF THE MOST POWERFUL CONFIRMATIONS THAT YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE

-- FOR THE WORLD IN GENERAL AND POSTERITY -- IS THAT, IN ALL THOSE

MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF WORDS, SPOKEN SPONTANEOUSLY OVER

SEVERAL DECADES, YOU REALLY NEVER EVER CONTRADICTED YOURSELF AT ALL.

That's true!

I have never contradicted myself. I cannot do it. In the first place I don't remember anything that I have said before -- how to contradict it?

Secondly, it is not my thinking, it is my experience. Contradictions happen in thinking, but not in experience. I have said things which may appear to people contradictory, but they are really evolutionary. My experience I have expressed in different ways; that may create the idea that I am contradictory. I was expressing it in different ways so if you have missed one way, perhaps the other

way you may get it.

I have tried to describe it from all aspects possible, just to help people, because sometimes it happens that one aspect does not reach you but the other aspect is more in tune with you. I have used all possible, multi-dimensional expressions, but there is no way for me to contradict. It is my experience. I am not taking about others' experience.

Even if I am talking about others, it is always according to my experience. They may agree with it, they may not agree with it -- but I cannot go against my experience.

During the years, talking to you, I have been sharpening my arrows, my words, so that they can penetrate directly to your heart. But contradiction is not there at all. And you are right: the day all of my words will be understood, there will be found an undercurrent running through all of them and joining them. They are like flowers of a garland -- a thin thread, invisible, is running through all the flowers -- and that is my consistency, that is my experience.

It is true, I don't think anybody else has spoken so much. Much of it is lost because it was not recorded; almost half of it is lost, but whatever remains is still more than anyone else has ever tried to convey.

The reason is simple: I enjoy it, I love it. When I see a word settling in your heart, my joy knows no bounds. When I see a glimpse in your eyes that you have caught the meaning, I am immensely happy.

And I had to speak so much because nobody before me has addressed the whole world.

They were addressing small fragments of humanity. Jesus remained confined to Judea, Buddha remained confined to Bihar, Socrates remained confined to Athens. Fortunately they don't let me remain in one place, so I have to be all over the world. And I have to speak again and again through different angles about the same experience, because in that also my life has been unique: people have been coming to me and leaving me -- new people coming, old people going. It has been beautiful. It has not been like a dead pond where the water only evaporates, and soon there is left nothing but muddy mess.

It is almost as if I have been speaking by the side of a river, which is running so

fast that each time I look at it there are new faces to whom I have to speak again. In thirty years so many people have changed. It was not true about Socrates or Buddha or Lao Tzu, they worked with a group their whole life. I have been working with so many new people, and I have always to find out a new mode, a new phase, new expressions, new bottles for the old wine... but the wine is old, and it is the same wine that I have been offering to all.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #31

Chapter title: The courage to be ignorant 27 April 1986 pm in

Archive code: 8604275

ShortTitle: PSYCHO31

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 86

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF THE SEEKER OF TRUTH?

Every child is born with an innate search for truth. It is not something learned or adopted later on in life. Truth simply means, "I am, but I do not know who I am." And the question is natural -- "I must know the reality of my being." It is not a curiosity.

These are the three differences, or three categories the world can be divided into: there are things which are, but they do not know that they are; hence there is no opening for any enquiry. They are closed, their existence is windowless. Then there are animals who know that they are, but they don't have the intelligence to enquire what it is that they are.

Their windows are open, but their intelligence is not enough to look out and see the stars and the sky and the birds and the trees. Their windows -- whether opened or closed --

don't make much difference.

Perhaps once in a while a rare animal uses the window. In Shri Raman Maharshi's ashram... and he was one of the most significant people of this century. He was not a master; that's why people don't know him as they know George Gurdjieff or J.

Krishnamurti. They don't know him even as they know Sri Aurobindo or P.D. Ouspensky who were only teachers -- profound teachers, but not mystics.

Raman Maharshi was a silent pool of energy. Every morning he used to sit for a silent satsang, communion. He never talked much, unless asked something. Then too his answer was very short -- having profundity, but you had to look for it. There was no explanation in it. His literature is confined to two, three small booklets.

His teaching was mostly to be in silent communion with the disciples. Naturally, very few people were benefited by him. But every morning he was sitting, people were sitting, and a cow would come and stand outside, putting her neck through the window, and she would remain standing there while the satsang lasted. It must have continued for years.

People came and went, new people came, but the cow remained constant... and at the exact time, never late. And as the satsang would disperse she would move away.

One day she did not appear, and Shri Raman said, "Today satsang cannot be held, because my real audience is absent. I am afraid either the cow is very sick or she has died, and I have to go and look for her." He lived on a mountain in the south of India, Arunachal. The cow belonged to a poor woodcutter who lived near the ashram. Raman left the temple where they used to meet, went to the woodcutter and asked, "What happened? The cow has not come today for satsang."

The woodcutter said, "She is very sick and I am afraid she is dying, but she goes on looking out of the door, as if she is waiting for someone. Perhaps she is waiting for you, to see you for the last time. Perhaps that is why she is hanging around a little longer."

Raman went in and there were tears in the eyes of the cow. And she died happily, putting her head in the lap of Raman Maharshi. This happened just in this century, and Raman declared her enlightened, and told his people that a beautiful memorial should be made for her.

It is very rare for human beings to be enlightened; it is almost impossibly rare for animals to become enlightened, but the cow attained. She will not be born again. From the body of a cow she has bypassed the whole world of humanity, and she has jumped ahead and joined with the buddhas. So once in a while -- there are a few instances only -- it has happened. But that cannot be called the rule; it is just the exception.

Things are, but they do not know that they are. Animals are, they know that they are, but they don't have the intelligence to ask who they are. And it is not something to be wondered about. Millions of human beings never ask the question -- that is the third category.

Man is, is aware that he is, and is capable by birth to enquire who he is. So it is not a question of learning, cultivation, education; you bring the quest with yourself. You are the quest.

Your society destroys you. It has very sophisticated ways and means to destroy your quest, to remove the question from your being, or at least cover it up. And

the method it uses is this: before the child has even asked who he is, the answer is given. And any answer that has been given before the question has been asked is futile; it is going to be just a burden.

He is told that he is a soul, that he is a spirit, that he is not a body, that he is not material.

Or, in communist countries he is told that he is a body, just material, and that only in the old days, out of fear and ignorance, did people believe that they have souls -- that that is just a superstition. But in both cases, the child is being given an answer for which he has not asked. And his mind is delicate, pure... and he trusts his mother, his father -- there is no reason for him not to trust.

He starts a journey of belief, and belief kills the quest. He becomes more and more knowledgeable. Then education is there, religious education is there, and there is no end to collecting knowledge. But all this knowledge is futile -- not only futile, but poisonous, because the first step has gone wrong. The question was not asked, and the answer has been implanted in his mind, and since then he has been collecting more and more answers. He has completely forgotten that any answer that is not the finding of a question is meaningless.

So the only quality of a seeker of truth is that he does not believe, that he is not a believer, that he is ready to be ignorant rather than to be knowledgeable, because ignorance is at least natural, simple, innocent. And out of ignorance there is a possibility, almost a certainty, that the question will arise, that the journey will begin. But through knowledge you are lost in a jungle of words, theories, doctrines, dogmas. And there are so many, and they are so contradictory to each other, that soon you will find yourself more and more confused... more and more knowledgeable and more and more confused.

As far as I am concerned the basic quality of a seeker of truth is to cut himself away from all belief systems, from all borrowed knowledge -- in other words, to have the courage to be ignorant rather than to have borrowed knowledge. Ignorance has a beauty; it is at least yours, authentic, sincere. It has come with you. It is your blood, it is your bones, it is your marrow.

Knowledgeability is ugly, absolute rubbish. It has been poured upon you by others, and you are carrying the load of it. And the load is such that it will not give you any opportunity to enquire on your own what truth is. Your collection

of knowledge will answer immediately that this is truth. If you are filled with THE HOLY BIBLE, then the question will be answered by THE HOLY BIBLE. If you are filled with the VEDAS, then the question will come out of the VEDAS. But it will come from some source outside yourself; it will not be your discovery. And that which is not your discovery is not yours.

Truth brings freedom because it is your discovery. It makes you fully into man; otherwise you remain on the level of the animals: you are but you don't know who you are.

The search for truth is really the search for the reality of your being.

Once you have entered your being, you have entered into the being of the whole, because we are different on the periphery but at the center we meet -- we are one. You can draw many lines from the periphery of a circle towards the center; those lines on the periphery have a certain distance from each other. But as they come closer to the center the distance goes on becoming less. And when they reach to the center the distance disappears.

At the center we are one.

At the periphery of existence we appear to be separate.

And to know the truth of your being is to know the truth of the whole.

There is just one quality, one courage: not to be afraid of being ignorant. On that point there can be no compromise, no cheap borrowed knowledge to decorate yourself with as a wise man. That's enough! Just be pure and natural, and out of that purity, naturalness, ignorance, innocence, the quest is bound to be born.

Every human being would be a seeker of truth if the society were not interfering with children.

The class of children is the most harmed, oppressed, exploited, distorted class of all classes -- and the most helpless. And you are taking advantage of the helplessness of small children. But you are also not responsible. The same has been done to you. It is difficult to find out who was responsible in the beginning. But as long as we can look back, this has been the situation: every generation corrupts the new generation, and anybody who wants to prevent this corruption is condemned as corrupting the youth.

Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth, and all that he was doing was the simple process of removing borrowed knowledge and helping his disciples to be themselves and then "to know thyself." If anybody has served truth the most sincerely it was Socrates. But he was condemned by the court, by the law, by the people who were in power, for corruption, for corrupting young minds.

Strangely, in the land of Socrates I was also condemned as corrupting people's minds. It seems the technology of corrupting the youth has evolved immensely in two thousand years, because it took Socrates his whole life to corrupt, and I was only there for two weeks! And the archbishop was already threatening to burn my house, to stone me to death.

Why are they afraid? They know perfectly well that they have no foundations. So if anybody shows the young people that their knowledge is unfounded, that all their answers are bogus because they don't even have questions, that they are only repeating things parrot-like but they don't have any understanding of what they are saying... then anybody who has a little intelligence will be able to understand it immediately.

Is this corruption of the youth?

To bring people to the quest of the truth -- is this corruption?

It seems it is the greatest crime in the world in which -- unfortunately -- we are living.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

PROBABLY NO ENLIGHTENED MASTER HAS SPOKEN SO MANY MILLIONS

OF WORDS ABOUT THE TRUTH AS YOU HAVE. LAO TZU SAYS, "THE TRUTH

THAT CAN BE SPOKEN IS NOT THE TRUTH." BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Lao Tzu is right. The truth that can be spoken is no longer true, because the mechanism of language distorts the experience -- which happens beyond mind, beyond words. To pull it down to the darker valleys of language is certainly distorting it.

On the one hand it is true that the truth cannot be spoken; on the other hand, because the truth cannot be spoken it has to be spoken in thousands of ways. The problem is not that the truth will reach to you through thousands of ways, but you may become infected with the search. If a man speaks about the truth he may not be able to say it... but you can get a glimpse from his eyes, you can get something from his gestures -- something not from the words but the way the words are spoken, the emphasis, the gaps. The presence of such a man speaking may be just an excuse to allow you to be showered by his presence.

Lao Tzu cannot speak truth, but to be with Lao Tzu you may get the right direction. His presence may prove to you that there exists something that you know nothing about, and that it is so precious that all that you know and all that you have is worth sacrificing...

that what you see in the presence of the master, of a realized man, is so precious that it has to be discovered; it has to become your experience too.

I have spoken millions of words just in order to give you a taste, a feel. Truth I cannot give to you -- nobody can give it to you -- but I can open my heart to you, which has known the truth, lived the truth. And that opening may help you in a very indirect way to go on your own pilgrimage. It may give you confidence that all this talk about truth is not just talk, that it changes people, that it changes their very presence, that it gives them a certain fragrance, a certain power, a certain authority. They don't speak like anybody else.

They are not orators, they are not speakers; they simply open their heart. Perhaps the rhythm of their heart will change the rhythm of your heart.

Listening to them you may not get the truth, but you may be transported into another world: a world of silence, a world of immense peace, a world of benediction. And all those are immensely helpful for the search.

So Lao Tzu is both right and wrong: right because what he is saying is exactly so

-- the spoken truth is no longer true. But that is not all. If the truth is spoken by someone, and if it is out of experience -- and it can only be out of experience --

then that very person, his every act radiates something. It is contagious. Hence, whether truth is conveyed to you or not is not important. What is important is that if you become convinced that there is something like truth, there is a certain transformation that brings the full flowering of the being, then the word, the language, has done more than can be expected!

So I say again, Lao Tzu is right and not right. And my emphasis on not right is more than on his being right; otherwise I would not have spoken millions of words, I would have remained silent.

But I saw that it is not only a question of speaking; much more is involved. It shows why no mystic in the whole history of man has ever written anything. The reason is that the written word will miss all that the spoken word has. It will be the same word -- spoken or written makes no difference. It will be the same statement written or spoken, but why has no mystic agreed to write? The reason is that they were all aware that the spoken word has a living quality, because experience is behind it, a heart is beating behind it, a consciousness is making arduous effort to reach to you.

The written word is dead, just a corpse. You can worship it but it cannot give you anything. All scriptures are dead. Perhaps when they were spoken it was a different phenomenon. If the man who had spoken them was speaking out of his own realization, then something -- the very vibe -- is carried away by the word.

Truth may not be expressed, but truth becomes a reality. Seeing the master, seeing one who is a realized one, you become certain: if you are groping in the dark, don't be worried, and don't feel hopeless. Go on groping! Every night has a morning to it, and sooner or later you will find the door, you will reach to the point. If one man has reached, the whole humanity can reach. He is enough proof.

So the question is not whether truth can be spoken or not, the question is whether a presence can create a conviction that there is something that you are missing -- and unless you find it your life will not be complete, will not be perfect.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

FOR ME YOU SEEM TO BE POINTING THE WAY SO STRONGLY THESE

DAYS

AND I'VE ALMOST BECOME UNATTACHED TO THE FINGER... BUT THEN

THERE IS THE ARM, AND THE TWINKLING EYES, THE SOUND OF YOUR

VOICE, AND THE BEAUTIFUL GRACEFUL ATMOSPHERE THAT SURROUNDS

YOU. WITH YOU IT IS SO EASY TO SAY MA NANA TO THE MOON. WHAT TO

DO?

There is nothing to do. Say ma nana to the moon!

Just live the moment with intensity and totality. Live it with as much joy as possible, with as much love as possible, with no fear, no guilt. This existence is yours and this moment is a gift -- don't let it go to waste. And don't be worried about enlightenment, the moon.

This moment, living totally, is enlightenment.

Just the other day I was telling you the Buddhist sutra.… Gautam Buddha is really a miracle, because he even puts himself down. He creates a category beyond himself: a man who has gone beyond knowledge, beyond discipline, beyond enlightenment. Then billions of buddhas are not equal to him. That last part of the sutra is so valuable, particularly for you, because here is a man in front of you who has no knowledge, who has no discipline...

Just when we came here I was sleeping twenty hours a day. Nobody has done it before, and no religious person will forgive me -- twenty hours a day! I was getting up in the morning for two hours to take a bath and take my food and go to sleep again, and two hours in the evening to take my bath, eat my food and go to bed again. And I loved it.

I don't have a discipline; that's why I don't impose any discipline on you. When it has to be transcended, why bother in the first place to impose it? I am not telling you to read this holy book or that because finally it has to be transcended

-- transcend it right now!

Even enlightenment has to be transcended.

I have never said it to anybody, but I have left enlightenment far behind. I have not said it because you will not understand it. It is difficult to understand enlightenment, and if I start saying that there is something even beyond it, you may lose all hope. You will say,

"This is too much! First enlightenment was too much, and we were trying hard and nothing was happening. And now, beyond enlightenment... it is better to be ordinary and not bother about these things."

That's why I have not said it. But yesterday, the sutra, suddenly... I had no desire, but I could not deny the truth of what Buddha is saying. Experience, even the highest experience of enlightenment is still a duality: the experiencer and the experienced. And that duality has also to be dropped. But the moment you drop the experience, the experiencer also disappears -- they can exist only together.

And that is the state of nirvana.

All has disappeared, the whole drama -- the actors, the audience, everything has disappeared. Just an absolute silence prevails.

So don't be worried. Just try to live this moment as sincerely, as totally as possible, without being disturbed by the past or by the future. Undistracted, go deep into it, and that's enough. It is enlightenment.

One day it will explode. You need not wait for it; even your waiting will be a distraction.

You forget all about it. That's why in my presence you feel so good -- because there is no yesterday, no tomorrow. Just here... this is our whole world for the moment. One day that atomic explosion within you happens. And finally, one day you go even beyond it -- then everything disappears.

That's why I say again and again that what has happened in the East as far as

spiritual growth is concerned is incomparable. All other religions are far behind. Now, no religion can say that knowledge disappears, discipline disappears, enlightenment disappears --

only then you are at home.

Buddha is saying billions of buddhas are not worth it: it is so valuable, the ultimate value.

And it is available to all, every moment of your life. It is so mysterious how you go on missing it; it is the one thing that should not be missed. But a centuries old wrong upbringing is destroying your small precious moment.

It is up to you to throw away all that upbringing and let this small moment be all

-- and you have attained everything. Then you need not worry. Existence takes care. Existence is very compassionate.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

WHERE IS MY QUESTION DISAPPEARING TO? IT IS THERE ONE MINUTE, AND WHEN I WANT TO WRITE IT DOWN IT IS GONE, BLANK. IS IT GOING

INTO HIDING IN MY SUBCONSCIOUS? AND WHY?

It is not going into your unconscious. It is coming from your unconscious, but when you start writing it, it becomes conscious. And this is a simple process: anything unconscious becoming conscious starts disappearing; it loses meaning.

On this simple principle the whole of psychoanalysis stands. Your dreams are unconscious. Tell them to the psychoanalyst -- by telling them you will be making them conscious. And once they are conscious, they disappear.

Unconsciousness is a kind of basement where you go on throwing things, repressing things. Things that you don't want to see, things that you don't want to hear, things that you don't want to accept, you go on throwing into the unconscious. It is your rejected parts -- allow them to surface. And that is what is happening while you are asking the question, and why I am insisting that you go

on asking.

My answer may help you or not, but your asking is going to help you certainly. If it is something unconscious that wants to come into light, and you start writing it, you find it is losing meaning. Its whole meaning is in repression. Unrepressed it bursts like a soap bubble.

So it is tremendously good. Go on doing it. Only intellectual questions will not disappear; intellectual questions will remain. But if a question is coming from the unconscious and is significant... Intellectual questions are rubbish; they don't have anything to do with your being and your change. Let your unconscious reveal, and you will start seeing changes -- not that the questions are disappearing, but your attitudes, your approaches, your behavior, even your dreams are changing.

It is a beautiful exercise to write down whatever you feel is somewhere lurking in the darkness of your mind. It is not very clear; there it is dark -- bring it into the light. And if you can bring all the contents of the unconscious into the conscious mind, your unconscious mind and your conscious mind will become one; they will be both conscious.

And it is such a gift -- because right now one-tenth of the mind is conscious, and nine-tenths is unconscious -- naturally it is nine times more powerful. So you decide something by the conscious mind, but the unconscious mind can cancel it

-- it will cancel it! You decide that tomorrow morning you are going to get up at five o'clock -- the morning is so beautiful, so healthy, so fresh. Exactly at five the alarm wakes you, and something happens. You don't want to get up. You say, "We will see tomorrow. It is so beautiful right now under the blankets, so cozy." And you take a turn and go to sleep.

When you do wake up, you will condemn yourself, you will feel guilty. But you don't understand what has been happening. Your conscious mind had decided to wake up at five. The unconscious was never in agreement with it. You had never asked for the agreement -- there is no way to ask for agreement.

If you are hypnotized and your unconscious mind is told, "Wake up at five," then there will be no change; you will wake up at five, alarm or no alarm. But right now you take the decision with the conscious mind, and when you are asleep the conscious mind is no longer functioning.

It is the unconscious mind which is in power and functioning in your deep sleep. So when at five o'clock the alarm goes off, you pick up the alarm clock and throw it away --

because the unconscious mind has no idea what the conscious mind has decided, and it looks so foolish to the unconscious mind, an unnecessary disturbance. You simply go back to sleep. But when you wake up, the unconscious mind has gone back; the conscious mind has come into function. It remembers, "I had decided to wake up at five o'clock, and I cheated myself." It feels guilty, but it has not done anything; it is not responsible for it.

You decide not to be angry, you decide not to be tense, you decide a thousand things and the unconscious mind goes on cancelling them. It goes on doing the way it has always been doing. But if all the contents of the unconscious mind evaporate, then you have only one mind, conscious mind, day in, day out. Every decision will be followed, no decision will ever be cancelled. Your life will have integrity.

That's what I mean when I use the word ìntegrity.' You will have a kind of oneness. You can promise, and you can rely on your promise, because there is nobody in you who can cancel it. It is a decision of your total mind. And a decision of a total mind is immensely powerful.

It is good -- go on doing it. If questions are not enough, then you can make a notebook.

Just write anything unconscious, and don't be worried that anybody will see it, because there will be many things which you don't want anybody to see -- that's why you are keeping them in the dark. Don't be worried, just bring them into the open. Nothing is wrong.

Keeping it in the dark is wrong. Bringing it into the light changes the whole quality... it disappears.

Question 5 BELOVED OSHO,

THE SILENCE THAT HAPPENED THE OTHER DAY -- WAS THAT A TASTE OF

WHERE YOU ARE POINTING YOUR FINGER?

Right!

Beyond Psychology Chapter #32

Chapter title: Life consists of small things 28 April 1986 am in

Archive code:

8604280

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO32

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

87

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY IS IT THAT I FEEL I NEED TO HAVE APPROVAL AND BE

RECOGNIZED, IN MY WORK ESPECIALLY? IT PUTS ME IN A TRAP -- I CANNOT DO

WITHOUT IT. I KNOW I AM IN THIS TRAP BUT I AM CAUGHT IN IT AND I CANNOT SEEM TO GET OUT OF IT.

CAN YOU HELP ME BE ABLE TO FIND THE DOOR?

The question is from Kendra.

It has to be remembered that the need to have approval and be recognized is everybody's question. Our whole life's structure is such that we are taught that unless there is a recognition we are nobody, we are worthless. The work is not important, but the recognition. And this is putting things upside down. The work should be important -- a joy in itself. You should work, not to be recognized but because you enjoy being creative; you love the work for its own sake.

There have been very few people who have been able to escape from the trap the society puts you in, like Vincent Van Gogh. He went on painting -- hungry, without house, without clothes, without medicine, sick -- but he went on painting. Not a single painting was being sold, there was no recognition from anywhere, but the strange thing was that in these conditions he was still happy -- happy because what he wanted to paint he has been able to paint. Recognition or no recognition, his work is valuable intrinsically.

By the age of thirty-three he had committed suicide -- not because of any misery, anguish, no, but simply because he had painted his last painting, on which he had been working for almost one year, a sunset. He tried dozens of times, but it was not up to his standard and he destroyed it. Finally he managed to paint the sunset the way he had longed to.

He committed suicide, writing a letter to his brother, "I am not committing suicide out of despair. I am committing suicide because now there is no point in living -- my work is done. Moreover, it has been difficult to find ways of livelihood. But it was okay because I had some work to do, some potential in me needed to become actual. It has blossomed, so now it is pointless to live like a beggar.

"Up to now I had not even thought about it, I had not even looked at it. But now that is the only thing. I have blossomed to my utmost; I am fulfilled, and now to

drag on, finding ways of livelihood, seems to be just stupid. For what? So it is not a suicide according to me, but just that I have come to a fulfillment, a full stop, and joyously I am leaving the world. Joyously I lived, joyously I am leaving the world."

Now, almost a century afterwards, each of his paintings is worth millions of dollars.

There are only two hundred paintings available. He must have painted thousands, but they have been destroyed; nobody took any note of them.

Now to have a Van Gogh painting means you have an aesthetic sense. His painting gives you a recognition. The world never gave any recognition to his work, but he never cared.

And this should be the way to look at things.

You work if you love it. Don't ask for recognition. If it comes, take it easily; if it does not come, do not think about it. Your fulfillment should be in the work itself. And if everybody learns this simple art of loving his work, whatever it is, enjoying it without asking for any recognition, we would have a more beautiful and celebrating world. As it is, the world has trapped you in a miserable pattern: What you are doing is not good because you love it, because you do it perfectly, but because the world recognizes it, rewards it, gives you gold medals, Nobel prizes.

They have taken away the whole intrinsic value of creativity and destroyed millions of people -- because you cannot give millions of people Nobel prizes. And you have created the desire for recognition in everybody, so nobody can work peacefully, silently, enjoying whatever he is doing. And life consists of small things. For those small things there are not rewards, not titles given by the governments, not honorary degrees given by the universities.

One of the great poets of this century, Rabindranath Tagore, lived in Bengal, India. He had published his poetry, his novels, in Bengali -- but no recognition came to him. Then he translated a small book, GITANJALI, Offering of Songs, into English. And he was aware that the original has a beauty which the translation does not have and cannot have -

- because these two languages, Bengali and English, have different structures,

different ways of expression.

Bengali is very sweet. Even if you fight, it seems you are engaged in a nice conversation.

It is very musical; each word is musical. That quality is not in English, and cannot be brought to it; it has different qualities. But somehow he managed to translate it, and the translation -- which is a poor thing compared to the original -

- received the Nobel prize.

Then suddenly the whole of India became aware... The book had been available in Bengali, in other Indian languages, for years and nobody had taken any note of it.

Every university wanted to give him a D.Litt. Calcutta, where he lived, was the first university, obviously, to offer him an honorary degree. He refused. He said, "You are not giving a degree to me; you are not giving a recognition to my work, you are giving recognition to the Nobel prize, because the book has been here in a far more beautiful way, and nobody has bothered even to write an appraisal."

He refused to take any D.Litts. He said, "It is insulting to me."

Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the great novelists, and a man of tremendous insight into human psychology, refused the Nobel prize. He said, "I have received enough reward while I was creating my work. A Nobel prize cannot add anything to it -- on the contrary, it pulls me down. It is good for amateurs who are in search of recognition; I am old enough, and I have enjoyed enough. I have loved whatever I have done. It was its own reward, and I don't want any other reward, because nothing can be better than that which I have already received." And he was right. But the right people are so few in the world, and the world is full of wrong people living in traps.

Why should you bother about recognition? Bothering about recognition has meaning only if you don't love your work; then it is meaningful, then it seems to substitute. You hate the work, you don't like it, but you are doing it because there will be recognition; you will be appreciated, accepted. Rather than thinking about recognition, reconsider your work.

Do you love it? -- then that is the end. If you do not love it -- then change it!

The parents, the teachers are always reinforcing that you should be recognized, you should be accepted. This is a very cunning strategy to keep people under control.

I was told again and again in my university, "You should stop doing these things... you go on asking questions which you know perfectly well cannot be answered, and which put the professor in an embarrassing situation. You have to stop it; otherwise these people will take revenge. They have power -- they can fail you."

I said, "I don't bother about it. I am enjoying right now asking questions and making them feel ignorant. They are not courageous enough simply to say, Ì do not know.' Then there would be no embarrassment. But they want to pretend that they know everything. I am enjoying it; my intelligence is being sharpened. Who cares about examinations? They can fail me only when I appear in the examinations -- who is going to appear? If they have that idea that they can fail me, I will not enter the examinations, and I will remain in the same class. They will have to pass me just out of fear that again for one year they will have to face me!"

And they all passed me, and helped me to pass, because they wanted to get rid of me. In their eyes I was also destroying other students, because other students started questioning things which have been accepted for centuries without any question.

While I was teaching in the university, the same thing came about from a different angle.

Now I was asking the students questions to bring to their attention that all the knowledge that they have gathered is borrowed, and they know nothing. I told them that I don't care about their degrees, I care about their authentic experience

-- and they don't have any.

They are simply repeating books which are out of date; long ago they have been proved wrong. Now the authorities of the university were threatening me, "If you continue in this way, harassing students, you will be thrown out of the university."

I said, "This is strange -- I was a student and I could not ask questions to the professors; now I am a professor and I cannot ask questions to the students! So

what function is this university fulfilling? It should be a place where questions are asked, quests begin.

Answers have to be found not in the books but in life and in existence."

I said, "You can throw me out of the university, but remember, these same students, because of whom you are throwing me out of the university, will burn down the whole university." I told the vice-chancellor, "You should come and see my class."

He could not believe it -- in my class there were at least two hundred students... and there were no spaces, so they were sitting anywhere they could find -- on the windows, on the floor. He said, "What is happening, because you have only ten students?"

I said, "These people come to listen. They dropped their classes; they love to be here.

This class is a dialogue. I am not superior to them, and I cannot refuse anybody who comes to my class. Whether he is my student or not, it does not matter; if he comes to listen to me, he is my student. In fact you should allow me to have the auditorium. These classrooms are too small for me."

He said, "Auditorium? You mean the whole university to gather in the auditorium? Then what will the other professors be doing?"

I said, "That is for them to think out. They can go and hang themselves! They should have done it long before. Seeing that their students are not going to listen to them was enough indication."

The professors were angry, the authorities were angry. Finally they had to give me the auditorium -- but very reluctantly, because the students were forcing them. But they said,

"This is strange, students who have nothing to do with philosophy, religion or psychology, why should they go there?"

Many students told the vice-chancellor, "We love it. We never knew that philosophy, religion, psychology can be so interesting, so intriguing; otherwise we would have joined them. We thought that these are dry subjects; only very

bookish kind of people join these subjects. We have never seen any juicy people joining the subjects. But this man has made the subjects so significant that it seems that even if we fail in our own subjects, it does not matter. What we are doing is so right in itself, and we are so clear about it, that there is no question of changing it."

Against recognition, against acceptance, against degrees... but finally I had to leave the university, not because of their threats but because I recognized that if thousands of students can be helped by me, it is a wastage. I can help millions of people outside in the world. Why should I go on remaining attached to a small university? The whole world can be my university.

And you can see: I have been condemned. That is the only recognition I have received.

I have been in every way misrepresented. Everything that can be said against a man has been said against me; everything that can be done against a man has been done against me. Do you think this is recognition? But I love my work. I love it so much that I don't call it work even; I simply call it my joy.

And everybody who was in some way elder to me, well-recognized, has told me, "What you are doing is not going to give you any respectability in the world."

But I said, "I have never asked for it, and I don't see what I will do with respectability. I cannot eat it, I cannot drink it."

Learn one basic thing: Do whatever you want to do, love to do, and never ask for recognition. That is begging. Why should one ask for recognition? Why should one hanker for acceptance?

Deep down in yourself, look. Perhaps you don't like what you are doing, perhaps you are afraid that you are on the wrong track. Acceptance will help you feel that you are right.

Recognition will make you feel that you are going towards the right goal.

The question is of your own inner feelings; it has nothing to do with the outside world.

And why depend on others? All these things depend on others -- you yourself are becoming dependent.

I will not accept any Nobel prize. All this condemnation from all the nations around the world, from all the religions, is more valuable to me. Accepting the Nobel prize means I am becoming dependent -- now I will not be proud of myself but proud of the Nobel prize. Right now I can only be proud of myself; there is nothing else I can be proud of.

This way you become an individual. And to be an individual living in total freedom, on your own feet, drinking from your own sources, is what makes a man really centered, rooted. That is the beginning of his ultimate flowering.

These so-called recognized people, honored people, are full of rubbish and nothing else.

But they are full of the rubbish which the society wants them to be filled with -- and the society compensates them by giving them rewards.

Any man who has any sense of his own individuality lives by his own love, by his own work, without caring at all what others think of it. The more valuable your work is, the less is the possibility of getting any respectability for it. And if your work is the work of a genius then you are not going to see any respect in your life. You will be condemned in your life... then, after two or three centuries, statues of you will be made, your books will be respected -- because it takes almost two or three centuries for humanity to pick up that much intelligence that a genius has today. The gap is vast.

Being respected by idiots you have to behave according to their manners, their expectations. To be respected by this sick humanity you have to be more sick than they are. Then they will respect you. But what will you gain? You will lose your soul and you will gain nothing.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

WOULD YOU TALK TO US ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND

TRUST? IT SEEMS TO ME THAT TRUST IS OF GREATER SIGNIFICANCE IN

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOU THAN LOVE. WHEN I SAY, "OSHO, I LOVE

YOU," I'M SPEAKING OF A FEELING THAT IS COLORED AND DEFINED BY

OTHER LOVE RELATIONSHIPS, A FEELING THAT IS LIMITED BY MY STATE

OF UNENLIGHTENMENT. I SPEAK AS IF I HAVE SOME COMPREHENSION OF

WHAT MY LOVE TOWARDS YOU IMPLIES.

WHEN I SAY, "OSHO, I TRUST YOU," I AM SAYING, "DO WITH ME WHATEVER NEEDS TO BE DONE. LEAD ME INTO UNIMAGINED AND UNIMAGINABLE PLACES: I AM YOURS."

TRUST SEEMS TO EMBRACE THE UNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS AVAILABLE

EVEN TO THINGS BEYOND ITS COMPREHENSION. LOVE, UNENLIGHTENED

LOVE, ALSO SEEMS OUTGOING, SOMEWHAT AGGRESSIVE; THE "I" VERY

CONSCIOUS OF ITSELF AS AN ENTITY. WHILE TRUST -- EVEN IN ITS

UNENLIGHTENED FORM -- SEEMS TO HAVE A QUALITY OF UTTER LET-GO

IN IT. THE "I" IS ONLY ATTACHED TO IT FOR LINGUISTICS, BECAUSE THE

TRUSTING PERSON ACKNOWLEDGES THAT HE HIMSELF MAY

DISAPPEAR.

It is Maneesha's question.

It is not a question at all. She has answered it herself, and beautifully. She has said exactly what I would have said. And that's what I would like for each of you, by and by: to come to an understanding that when you ask a question, you can answer it exactly the way I will be answering it.

Trust is certainly a higher value than love. In trust, love is implied; but in love, trust is not implied. When you say, "I trust in you, Osho" it is understood that you love. But when you say you love, trust has nothing to do with it. In fact your love is very suspicious, very untrusting, very much afraid, always on guard, watching the person you love.

Lovers become almost detectives. They are spying on each other. Love is beautiful if it comes as a part of trust. And it always comes as a part of trust, because trust cannot be without love. But love cannot be without trust, and a love without trust is ugly; deep down it has all kinds of jealousies, suspicions, distrust.

It is also true that when you say, "I love you," it is not a surrender, it is not a readiness to be dissolved. It is not a readiness to be taken to unknown and unknowable spaces. When you say, "I love you," you stand equal, and there is a certain aggressive quality in it.

That's why from the very beginnings of humanity everywhere, and in every time, the woman has not taken the initiative to say "I love you." She has waited for the man to say,

"I love you" -- because the heart of the woman feels that aggressiveness. But man has a harder heart; he does not feel that aggressiveness -- in fact he enjoys it.

But when you say, "I trust you," it is a deep surrender, an openness, a receptivity, a declaration to yourself and to the universe that, "Now if this man takes me even to the hell, it is okay with me: I trust him. If it looks like hell to me, it must be a fault of my vision. He cannot take me to hell."

In trust you will always find faults with yourself; in love you will always find

faults with the one you are in love with. In trust you are always, without saying it, in a state of apology: "I am ignorant. I am sleepy, unconscious. There is a possibility of saying something wrong, doing something wrong, so be merciful towards me, have compassion on me." Trust implies so much. It is such a treasure.

When you say, "I love you," there is a subtle current of possessiveness. Without being said, it is understood, "Now you are my possession, nobody else should love you."

In trust there is no question of possessing the person you trust. On the contrary, you are saying, "Please possess me. Destroy me as an ego. Help me to disappear and melt in you, so there is no resistance in going with you."

Love is a constant struggle, a fight; it demands.

"I love you," means, "You have to love me too. In fact, I love you only because I want you to love me." It is a simple bargain; hence the fear: "You should not love anybody else. Nobody should love you, because I don't want anybody to be partners in my love, to be sharers in my love."

The unconscious mind of man goes on thinking as if love is a quantity, that there is a certain quantity of love. If I love you, then you should possess the whole quantity. If I love a few other people, then the quantity will be distributed, you will not get the whole of it; hence the jealousy, the spying, the fighting, the nagging. And all that is ugly goes on behind a beautiful word, love.

In trust there is no question of any fighting. It is really a surrender. When you say, "Osho, I trust in you," it means, "From this moment my fight with you stops. Now I am yours; you can do whatever you want. You can kill me, but I will not resist because I am no longer there -- I have given myself to you. Now it is up to you: whatsoever you feel right, do it."

And trust is not competitive; hence there is no jealousy. You can trust me, millions of people can trust me. In fact, the more people will trust me, the more you will be happy.

You will be rejoicing that so many people are trusting... not so with love. But in trust, all that is beautiful in love is implied.

The moment you say, "I trust in you, Osho," you have also said, "I love you." But now, because of the trust, the "I" is no longer existent, only love. And love without the ego creates no problems: "Many people can love you, and the more people love you, the more I will be happy." But this is because of trust.

Trust is perhaps the most beautiful word in the human language. And trust is so close to truth that if it is total, then this very moment your trust becomes a revelation, a revolution.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THIS WEEKEND THERE IS A BIG SANNYASIN FESTIVAL IN FLORENCE WITH

DANCE AND MEDITATION AND MUSIC. IS YOUR HEART WITH ALL THESE

THOUSANDS OF SANNYASINS?

In the first place, there are not going to be thousands of sannyasins there, for the simple reason that the people who are organizing it are no longer with me. They are trying to cheat the sannyasins. Only three hundred sannyasins have booked for it, and the organizers are declaring it to be the first world festival since the last one in the commune in Oregon, America.

But my name is not mentioned in it. It is not my festival. It is those few people, those few therapists, who want to exploit the sannyasins. But they are in trouble, because three hundred sannyasins coming will only cover the expenses -- they were hoping thousands would come. And also, the three hundred are coming because they are not aware that these people have started working against me.

My heart will be with my people wherever they are. I will be with my sannyasins

-- and I have to be, particularly to show to them that this is not my festival, that they have been deceived, that the people on the stage have ugly ideas. They are all pretending to be masters, that they have become enlightened.

But the festival is going to be a fiasco, because on the stage there is not going to be my presence but my utter absence. I will be present in the audience These

three hundred people who are coming are going to ask, "By what right have you called the sannyasins for a world festival when you yourself are no longer a sannyasin? On whose authority?"

But it is a good chance for sannyasins to see who are the people in the role of Judas, selling their own master for thirty pieces of silver.

As far as sannyasins are concerned, I am always with them. In this so-called world festival I will be more strongly there in the audience, to make them feel that the stage is empty, that the stage is dark and there is no light. The people who are pretending are going to be exposed, and they will never try anything like this again.

So inform all your friends: Go there and ask the people on the stage, "On what authority have you called the sannyasins? You are not a sannyasin. You are not a master, you are not enlightened, and you had no guts ever to say this in the commune. But now, because Osho is not present, you are trying to play the role of an enlightened master."

In fact, I would have loved to go there and suddenly walk onto the stage and see what happens to those therapists, but I cannot enter Italy. The government is stubborn, although sixty-five very eminent people from different professions, known worldwide, have protested that there is no reason why I should be prevented.

But the government is simply silent, because the pope is heavy and the politicians are beggars. They are not afraid of intellectuals, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, writers -- they are not afraid of these people. They are afraid of the pope, because he holds the votes. But more protests are going to be presented to the government, and really eminent people are showing a tremendous interest in why a single individual who has done no harm to the country, who has never been in the country, should be prevented.

So I will not be able to go there. But my presence will be with my sannyasins, wherever they are. And you have to write to all your friends in Italy: "Make it clear to these people that you cannot exploit sannyasins. If you are no longer sannyasins, then simply get out from here. This is a festival of sannyasins -- we will manage it. Leave the stage! The empty stage is far better than a stage full of those who have betrayed."

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

THE MOST PAINFUL EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD IS TO BE ANGRY WITH

YOU. THIS IS NOT A QUESTION -- ONLY AN EXPRESSION OF SHEER JOY AT

FEELING FREE AGAIN TO LOVE YOU.

That's right! It must be from Chetana! It is one of the most difficult things, to be angry with me.

You can ask Vivek, because she suffers many times for my sake, for my safety. And I can understand that if she becomes angry it is not against me. But then she suffers so much because of anger.

You love me so much -- you cannot conceive of being angry with me. But once in a while, just a taste is good. That will prevent you for the future from going into such spaces.

Of course for Vivek it is difficult. Now she has been continuously sad and worried because I have been continuously mistreated by the police, jail authorities, governments, deported from one place to another. And she knows that she cannot do anything to prevent it. This whole sadness sometimes turns into anger. Now she cannot even be angry with those governments; she can only be angry with me. But then to be angry with me is really difficult. It is almost an impossible task! And those who have to pass through it know its hell.

But one thing is good about it -- there is always something good, even in the worst situation -- that nothing remains forever. You come out of it, and then you feel a tremendous freedom and joy and understanding.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #33

Chapter title: Prayer -- your psychological armor

28 April 1986 pm in Archive

code:

8604285

ShortTitle:

PSYCHO33

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

117

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY WHEN YOU WERE SPEAKING ABOUT COMING CLOSER TO

YOU, I WAS AWARE THAT I STILL FEEL A THIN ARMOR AROUND ME THAT

KEEPS ME FROM COMING CLOSER. THIS ARMOR IS INCONGRUOUS WITH

MY OPENNESS TO YOU. I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS COMING FROM.

PLEASE HELP ME TO MELT IT AWAY.

Everybody has that kind of armor.

There are reasons for it. First, the child is born so utterly helpless into a world he knows nothing of. Naturally he is afraid of the unknown that faces him. He has not yet forgotten those nine months of absolute security, safety, when there was no problem, no responsibility, no worry for tomorrow.

To us, those are nine months, but to the child it is eternity. He knows nothing of the calendar, he knows nothing of minutes, hours, days, months. He has lived an eternity in absolute safety and security, without any responsibility, and then suddenly he is thrown into a world unknown, where he is dependent for everything on others. It is natural that he will feel afraid. Everybody is bigger and more powerful, and he cannot live without the help of others. He knows he is dependent; he has lost his independence, his freedom.

And small incidents may give him some taste of the reality he is going to face in the future.

Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by Nelson, but in fact the credit should not go to Nelson. Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by a small incident in his childhood. Now history does not look at things in this way, but to me it is absolutely clear.

When he was just six months old, a wild cat jumped on him. The maidservant who was looking after him had gone for something in the house; he was in the garden in the early morning sun and the fresh air, lying down, and the wild cat jumped on him. It didn't harm him -- perhaps it was just being playful -- but to the child's mind it was almost death.

Since then, he was not afraid of tigers or lions; he could have fought a lion without any arms, with no fear. But a cat? -- that was a different affair. He was absolutely helpless.

Seeing a cat he was almost frozen; he became again a six-month-old small child, with no defense, with no capacities to fight. In those small child's eyes that cat must have looked very big -- it was a wild cat. The cat may have looked into the eyes of the child.

Something in his psyche became so much impressed by the incident that Nelson exploited it. Nelson was no comparison to Napoleon, and Napoleon was never defeated in his life; this was his first and last defeat. And he would not have been defeated, but Nelson had brought seventy cats at the front of the army.

The moment Napoleon saw those seventy wild cats his mind stopped functioning. His generals could not understand what had happened. He was no longer the same great warrior; he was almost frozen with fear, trembling. He had never allowed any of his generals to arrange the army, but today he said, with tears in his eyes, "I am incapable of thinking -- you arrange the army. I will be here, but I am incapable of fighting.

Something has gone wrong for me."

He was removed, but without Napoleon his army was not capable of fighting Nelson, and seeing the situation of Napoleon, everybody in his army became a little afraid: something very strange was happening.

A child is weak, vulnerable, insecure. Autonomously he starts creating an armor, a protection, in different ways. For example, he has to sleep alone. It is dark and he is afraid, but he has his teddy bear, and he believes that he is not alone -- his friend is with him. You will see children dragging their teddy bears at airports, at railway stations. Do you think it is just a toy? To you it is, but to the child it is a friend. And a friend when nobody else is helpful -- in the darkness of the night, alone in the bed, still he is with him.

He will create psychological teddy bears. And it is to be reminded to you that although a grown-up man may think that he has no teddy bears, he is wrong. What is his God? Just a teddy bear. Out of his childhood fear, man has created a father figure who knows all, who is all-powerful, who is everywhere present; if you have enough faith in him he will protect you. But the very idea of protection, the very idea that a protector is needed, is childish. Then you learn prayer -- these are just parts of your psychological armor. Prayer is to remind God that you are here, alone in the night.

In my childhood I was always wondering... I loved the river, which was just close by, just two minutes walk from my house. Hundreds of people used to take a bath there and I was always wondering... In summer when they take a dip in the river they don't repeat the name of God -- "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" -- no.

But in cold winter they repeat, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama." They take a quick dip, repeating, "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama."

I was wondering, does the season make a difference? I used to ask my parents, "If these are devotees of `Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,' then summer is as good as winter."

But I don't think that it is God or prayer or religion; it is simply the cold! They are creating an armor with "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama." They are diverting their minds. It is too cold, and a diversion is needed -- and it helps. In summer there is no need; they simply forget all about what they have been doing the whole winter.

Our prayers, our chantings, our mantras, our scriptures, our gods, our priests, are all part of our psychological armor. It is very subtle. A Christian believes that he will be saved --

nobody else. Now that is his defense arrangement. Everybody is going to fall into hell except him, because he is a Christian. But every religion believes in the same way that only they will be saved.

It is not a question of religion. It is a question of fear and being saved from fear, so it is natural in a way. But at a certain point of your maturity, intelligence demands that it should be dropped. It was good when you were a child, but one day you have to leave your teddy bear, just the same as one day you have to leave your God, just the same as one day you have to leave your Christianity, your Hinduism. Finally, the day you drop all your armor means you have dropped living out of fear.

And what kind of living can be out of fear? Once the armor is dropped you can live out of love, you can live in a mature way. The fully matured man has no fear, no defense; he is psychologically completely open and vulnerable.

At one point the armor may be a necessity -- perhaps it is. But as you grow, if you are not only growing old but also growing up, growing in maturity, then you will start seeing what you are carrying with you. Why do you believe in God? One day you have to see for yourself that you have not seen God, you haven't had any contact with God, and to believe in God is to live a lie: you are not being sincere.

What kind of religion can there be when there is no sincerity, no authenticity? You cannot even give reasons for your beliefs, and still you go on clinging to them.

Look closely and you will find fear behind.

A mature person should disconnect himself from anything that is connected with fear.

That's how maturity comes.

Just watch all your acts, all your beliefs, and find out whether they are based in reality, in experience, or based in fear. And anything based in fear has to be dropped immediately, without a second thought. It is your armor. I cannot melt it. I can simply show you how you can drop it.

It is not a simple thing; there are many things around it.… In India there are so many temples. Many people don't have houses, but there are so many gods -- thirty-three million gods -- and they all need their temples. In some places, like Varanasi, you will find two houses then one temple, three houses then another temple... the whole city is a city of temples. In Khajuraho, which is a ruined city, still there are one hundred temples, and hundreds of other temples are in ruins. Once it must have been a big city, but looking at the temples, I could not figure out where men were living, because the whole city seems to be composed of temples and temples. There seems to be no space.

I used to go for a morning walk in Jabalpur, in a silent street, and one man used to follow me -- because we were the only two who used to go for a walk in the morning. His habit was to pay respect to every god on the road, so this temple will come and he will pay respect, and that temple will come and he will pay his respect.

I told him, "Just listen, if you have to come with me then you cannot continue this stupidity; otherwise you are free -- you can do it, but I cannot wait at every temple. It looks embarrassing: you are doing this idiotic act and I am standing by your side!"

But he loved me. He said, "I also think that it is useless. Nobody else does it, but my father used to do it, and because of him it has become almost a heritage: I am doing it, my children are doing it. And now there is great fear... my father has

left it with me, perhaps his father had left it with him. The fear is that if you pass the temple of any god without paying respect, he may be angry at you. And gods are very revengeful; they are not going to leave you alone. You will suffer. So the fear is, why unnecessarily make enemies, powerful enemies against whom there is no other defense? It is better to pay respect -- it costs nothing."

I said, "Then you can do it, but you cannot come with me."

And he loved to come with me, so he said, "Tomorrow I will try -- just give me one chance, because I can see that you don't pay any respect, and nobody takes any revenge.

Nobody else is paying respect -- thousands of people are passing and only I am... It seems all the gods are waiting for me to pay respect, otherwise I will suffer revenge. They are not concerned with anybody else."

I said, "That's what I am saying -- they are not there. There is nobody in the temple; all temples are empty. There are no gods and there is no need to be afraid. You come with me, but tomorrow this habit has to be stopped; otherwise our friendship for this morning walk is at an end."

He said, "Just one day..." He tried hard, and I could see how psychological chains exist.

He had promised me, and I was with him so he could not deceive me. On one side was the god... and he was caught between the two sides. I could see his feet stopping; I could see his hands getting ready to pay respect, but seeing me he would drop his hands.

It took almost double time that day, because he was stopping... almost an automatic break. And I had to stop and look at him severely, so he would say, "Okay, I will not do it. But are you certain there is no god?"

I said, "You just forget all about gods. We have come for a morning walk, and this continuous stopping... And there are so many temples; I am fed up!"

But you will be surprised. In the evening he came to see me. He was looking very happy.

He said, "Do you know what? I had to go another time. When I left you I went

again to pay respect because I was so disturbed that so many gods would be angry. And I am a poor man, how I am going...? But now I am feeling at ease." So he said, "That's perfectly good: with you I will come and will not pay respect, but I can go twice -- the second time just to pay respect to the gods."

I said, "It seems you are incurable. You see me every day with you -- nobody is being angry, nobody is taking any revenge. You see thousands of people passing by."

He said, "I see everything, but what am I to do with my own mind?"

I said, "Then it is better you go one time and pay respect, and I will stop going on that street. I will go on another street, because I will not force you to go twice, wasting your time."

When people are psychologically in such a bondage they always find reasons. One day he came to me and told me, "Now I go walking alone, without you, the whole joy of the morning walk is gone. And I know you will not come with me unless I leave these gods; I have to choose. So today I tried it -- perhaps you are right! So I tried it on my own: I didn't pay any respect. And when I came home my mother was dead. Now it is absolutely certain that I angered so many gods."

But I said, "Everybody's mother is going to die. Do you think it is because the gods are angry that mothers die? and that only your mother is special? Everybody's father is going to die, everybody is going to fall sick, everybody is going to have accidents!"

But he said, "I cannot think of anything... when I had gone for the walk she was perfectly okay and when I came back she was dead. The doctors say she had a heart attack, but I know that really I have killed her by not paying respects."

I said, "If you had not paid respect, you should have died from a heart attack, not your mother. Can't you see a simple thing -- that your mother has nothing to do with it."

But the psychological conditioning makes you almost blind. He said to me, "This is a warning to me, `Look, this time we are taking your mother, next time you are gone!' They have given me an opportunity, a chance -- a chance because I have always been respectful. They are being kind towards me, but now I am not going to listen to you."

Your psychological armor cannot be taken away from you. You will fight for it. Only you can do something to drop it, and that is to look at each and every part of it. If it is based in fear, then drop it. If it is based in reason, in experience, in understanding, then it is not something to be dropped, but something to be made part of your being. But you will not find a single thing in your armor which is based on experience. It is all fear, from A to Z.

We go on living out of fear -- that's why we go on poisoning every other experience. We love somebody, but out of fear: it spoils, it poisons. We seek truth, but if the search is out of fear then you are not going to find it.

Whatever you do, remember one thing:

Out of fear you are not going to grow. You will only shrink and die. Fear is in the service of death.

Mahavira is right: he makes fearlessness a fundamental of a fearless person. And I can understand what he means by fearlessness. He means dropping all armor. A fearless person has everything that life wants to give to you as a gift. Now there is no barrier. You will be showered with gifts, and whatever you do you will have a strength, a power, a certainty, a tremendous feeling of authority.

A man living out of fear is always trembling inside. He is continuously on the point of going insane, because life is big, and if you are continuously in fear... And there is every kind of fear. You can make a big list, and you will be surprised how many fears are there

-- and still you are alive! There are infections all around, diseases, dangers, kidnaping, terrorists... and such a small life. And finally there is death, which you cannot avoid.

Your whole life will become dark.

Drop the fear! The fear was taken up by you in your childhood unconsciously; now consciously drop it and be mature. And then life can be a light which goes on deepening as you go on growing.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN DISCOURSE WHEN YOU SAY THINGS LIKE, "LIVE TOTALLY IN THE

MOMENT," I ALWAYS THINK, "OF COURSE!... THAT'S IT! FROM NOW ON I AM ALWAYS GOING TO DO THAT." AND OF COURSE, A MOMENT LATER I HAVE FORGOTTEN ALREADY. IN EVERY DISCOURSE I DECIDE THE TIME

HAS COME TO BE MORE MEDITATIVE, MORE RELIGIOUS, MORE LOVING, MORE AWARE -- AND I IMMEDIATELY FORGET.

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT JUST BY SITTING WITH YOU, ONE OF THESE DAYS I WILL REALLY GET IT IN SPITE OF MYSELF?

It is possible you may get it in spite of yourself. But your question is very significant. If you look at it, you can see what is going wrong. You listen to me talking about living totally, intensively... moment to moment, living now, living here and you say to yourself,

"Of course, that is it! I am going to do it." It is not that later on you forget it; you have already forgotten it. By saying, "Of course! this is it," by deciding that you are going to do it, you have already postponed it for tomorrow; by deciding that you are going to live this way, you have already missed the point.

You have missed the point now.

You think that later on you find you have forgotten it just a moment afterwards. You are not forgetting it just a moment afterwards; you have not listened to it at all! Otherwise you would not say, "Of course! This is it!" You would simply understand it non-verbally.

You would not verbalize it, because in verbalizing it you are missing the moment... the moment is a very small thing.

Your mind is really deceiving you. Your mind is saying, "I have understood it, don't be worried. Of course, this is it! We are going to live this way." But when? The question was now, and your mind has already postponed it. The question was here, and the mind has already brought the future in. It is not that you forget later on; later on you only recognize that you have forgotten. But the truth is that

you have not even understood, because if you understand it there is no possibility of forgetting it.

A truth has a quality: understood, it is impossible to forget it. That's why if you are a man of truth you need not remember it, but if you are accustomed to lying then you need a very good memory, because then you have to remember continually what lie you had told this man yesterday, and you have to repeat the same lie -- because meanwhile you may have been lying to other people, about other things. A liar has to be very very alert, and if he is caught, then he has to be very logical, almost a sophist, so he can manage.

One Sufi story is that Mulla Nasruddin was chosen by the Shah of Iran to go to the king of India as his messenger, to make a friendship between two great countries. All the other important people in the court of the Shah of Iran were very jealous. They were trying in every way to spoil Nasruddin's journey, to create in the mind of the king antagonism against Nasruddin, and they were spying on Nasruddin to find out what he was doing.

What Nasruddin did was this: he went to the emperor of India, and before the whole court of the emperor he said, "Seeing you is a great privilege to me. My king, the Shah of Iran is just a young moon -- just two days old. You are a full moon."

The emperor was certainly very much impressed -- that the ambassador of Iran is comparing him not with a two-day old moon, which is rarely visible for a few minutes, but with the full moon! He gave him many presents to give to his king and said, "Let him know that I am very much pleased with his messenger."

But the spies of the Shah's court, the conspirators against Nasruddin, had reached the Shah's court before him. They told everyone that Nasruddin had insulted the Shah of Iran, calling him just a young moon, two days old, and had compared him with the emperor of India by saying that the emperor of India is a full moon, perfect in its glory!

Naturally the Shah of Iran was very much offended. He said, "Let that Nasruddin come! I used to think that he is a wise man, but he seems to be very cunning." Nasruddin came with big, valuable presents, but the Shah was angry. He said, "I don't want any presents.

First you have to give the explanation to me: is it right that you compared me

with the emperor, saying that I am just a two-day old moon, and he is as the perfect full moon?"

Nasruddin said, "Yes, and the emperor is a fool! He did not understand my meaning."

The Shah said, "What is your meaning?"

He said, "My meaning is that the full moon is on its deathbed, from tomorrow it will start declining. The two-day old moon is on the increase: tomorrow it will be bigger, the day after tomorrow it will be even bigger! So my Shah of Iran is expanding, becoming bigger and bigger. The emperor does not have any future -- my Shah has a future; he has only past, and his future is death."

The Shah of Iran was very impressed. He gave all the presents that were given by the emperor of India for him to Nasruddin, and he gave many more presents to Nasruddin, and told him, "You are really a wise man." And the whole court was silent, seeing that the whole thing had changed completely: "This Nasruddin is really a strange fellow; we had never thought that he would interpret it in such a way."

That night they went to see him, because now he had become the most important man in the court, second only to the Shah, and they all praised him. He said, "Don't be bothered -

- I am just an incurable liar! Whatever the situation is, I manage somehow to interpret it in such a way that it appeals to the party concerned: both the India emperor and the Shah of Iran are idiots! And I am just an incurable liar. I don't mean anything!"

Truth has a quality, it has a validity which is intrinsic. You need not prove it; its experience is its proof. No other logic is needed.

So just look into your acts, into your thoughts, into your feelings: you will find the armor everywhere. Wherever you see fear, you have created it. It was needed at one time -- now it is no longer needed. A simple understanding that it is no longer needed... now it is a barrier, a hindrance, a burden. If you find something truthful, it will have its own validity.

But in the armor you will not find anything that has any connection with truth.

The whole armor is made of fear -- layers and layers of fear.

The woodcutters and the scientists who work with wood count the age of the tree from the layers of the bark. When you cut a tree you will see layers of the bark on the trunk.

Each year the tree gathers one layer -- that's how they manage to know how old the tree is. There are trees which are four thousand years old; they have four thousand layers.

Your armor has also as many layers as you have lived. Not one every year; perhaps one, two, three -- it depends on conditions: what kind of upbringing, what kind of education, what kind of people you have lived with. But each year you are collecting layers, and the armor goes on becoming thicker and does not allow you to touch life. There is such a gap between you and life.

You are carrying an imprisonment around yourself. But because you yourself have created it, you are capable of dropping it any moment... this very moment. But don't postpone, don't say, "I will do it tomorrow." Tomorrow never comes. And when I am saying, "Do it..."in fact doing it is not needed; just seeing is enough. If you have seen it, don't verbalize it: "This is it," because in verbalizing it you will miss -- the moment is gone. Without verbalization, just see it and it will evaporate. It has no substantiality. It is not something real. It is something unreal that you have created, and this goes on happening every day.

I tell you to live intensely herenow, but the barrier which is there immediately shifts it into the future. You feel that you have understood it; right now it will shift it towards the future and give you the feeling of understanding. But next moment you will have forgotten it, because in the first place you had not understood it at all. Understood, it is never forgotten.

My professors in the university were very angry with me because I would never take any notes, and every other student was taking notes. They would see me just sitting, and they would ask me, "Don't you want to take notes?"

I said, "There is no need. I am trying to understand, and if I understand it, there is no need of any notes; the understanding will remain with me. Understanding becomes part of your blood, part of your bones, part of your marrow. These people who are taking notes are the ones who are not understanding. They are thinking that by taking notes they will be able to remember -- but what will they

remember? They have not understood in the first place.

These notes will be dead. Perhaps they will be able to repeat these notes in the examination papers.

"You are responsible -- because these people will take these notes into the examination, and then they will be caught. In fact you are responsible; you should have stopped them from taking notes. It is a simple logic: they are not understanding and they are trying to take notes. They can't do two things together. In the end, only the notes are in their hands and no understanding, and in the examination, what will they do? They will try to bring in the notes in a thousand different ways."

People will write small notes on their hand, people will write on their clothes... and in India you wear a kurta, a very long robe, on the underside you can write big notes.

Nobody can see it; only when you want to see it you can just turn it up and look at the note, and you are not carrying any notes or anything. And the people who are a dangerous type, and are known to be dangerous, will bring their copies with them, with a knife.

They will put the knife on the table with the copy, and they will be copying from the copy before the teacher who is standing there. He knows that the man is dangerous and that the knife is symbolic, "If you prevent me or do anything wrong to me, I can do anything -- I can kill you." But who is responsible?

"And you," I used to tell them, "you are angry at me, who is trying to understand?"

In my own class, when I became a professor in my own turn, I prevented it completely...

nobody could take notes. I said, "The mind can do only one thing at a time, so try to understand so that you need not sneak notes into the examination."

First my students were very much puzzled. They said, "Every professor says,

`Take notes, so you don't forget.'"

I said, "The question of forgetting arises only when you have not understood. I

am saying, Ùnderstand, and don't worry about forgetting.' Anything understood is never forgotten, and anything not understood is bound to be forgotten."

So that's what is happening.… I say, "Live now." You say, "This is it! Enough is enough, now I am going to live moment to moment." But why the decision?

Just start! Whatever you are doing here... you are listening here, just listen. There is no need to verbalize it. The mind is a commentator -- it goes on commenting -- but if you try intensely to hear, the commentating mind will stop because it is a question of energy.

You have a certain energy. If you stake the whole energy in listening, then this continuous commentary in the mind automatically stops. It has no more energy; you are not nourishing it.

And yes, it is true: it is going to happen in spite of you. How long are you going to not listen to me? Just tired, one day you will say, "Let us listen!"

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

GEORGE GURDJIEFF SAID, "BRAVO, AMERICA!" AFTER SEEING HOW

INHUMANELY THE UNITED STATES TREATED YOU, I SAY, "TO HELL WITH

AMERICA!"

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT DO YOU SAY?

I cannot say anything against Gurdjieff. I will still say, "Bravo, America!" for the simple reason that America has not mistreated me. The small group of bureaucrats who mistreated me are not America; they are mistreating America too. Don't say, "To hell with America!" say, "To hell with the American government!" Make it a clear distinction.

America has not much knowledge about me. It was the American government's behavior, mistreatment, that made me known to every American. And wherever I went in those twelve days -- I passed almost all over America -- I was greeted

with love and respect by strangers. Everybody could see that the American government was behaving like a fascist government; everybody could see that this was religious persecution, that this was not democracy. Even amongst the bureaucrats who came in contact with me -- the jailers, the doctors, the nurses, the other attendants in the jail, the inmates -- there was not even a single exception.

I was surprised, because those inmates had no way of knowing me. They had just known what was happening with me from the television -- small bits and pieces. But they were certain that I was being persecuted by the Christian fanatics and by the bureaucracy; that the government was afraid for some reasons and the church was afraid for some reasons.

They simply wanted some excuse so I could not enter America, because they knew that if I was out of America my people, naturally, would disperse.

But from the American people I experienced great love. The first jail I was in, so many telegrams and so many telephone calls... in the thousands. I asked the jailer, "You must be getting tired?"

He said, "No, we have had to appoint three, four more people to receive phone calls, open telegrams."

The first day somebody from Germany phoned and asked the jailer, "Perhaps Osho must be the first in your jail who is a man of international standing?"

And the jailer said, "No, we have had cabinet ministers, leaders of political parties, and many celebrities."

I had no idea what had happened, but as the second day came and flowers started coming... There were so many that in that jail, a big jail -- they had six hundred inmates or more -- they had no place to keep them. They had only one room empty, a big room, bigger than this room, and it was full of flowers.

The jailer came to me, saying, "What to do with the flowers?"

I said, "Send them to schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, sick people in the city --

wherever you feel, just send them, from me."

He said, "One thing more, I am sorry and I want to apologize. I don't know the number of the man who called from Germany... you had come recently and I had no awareness of what kind of man you are. Now, in two days, I have seen that the whole world is interested in you. There is not a single country in the world from where we are not receiving calls and telegrams, and flowers. And from America everywhere people simply want to know why you have been arrested.

"So I cannot phone that man and apologize to him, but I can say to you what I want to say to him: please forgive me. Those cabinet ministers and political leaders -- you don't belong to their category. Perhaps we will never have another man like you in this jail.

These two days have been my life's most precious days."

The jailer used to take me to the court everyday, and returning he would say, "It is sheer injustice. I have never seen such injustice. They can't prove a thing against you, and still they are not ready to give bail. This is unprecedented," he said, "in my whole life -- and I have been here for twenty years."

On the street people were standing on both sides whenever I was coming to the court, going back from the court -- perhaps for hours, because they did not have any idea at what time I would be taken out -- shouting, showing two fingers for victory, throwing flowers on the police cars.

No, America has not mistreated me. The government -- and that is a totally different thing.…

The politicians and the church conspired; both were in danger. And now they are trying to create the fear in all the other countries where they can have some pressure. Because they help the poor countries with money, the poor countries are under obligation, so whatever America says to them they have to follow. Their whole effort is not to let me settle again and create a commune, because that commune will be an answer that proves that all their accusations, allegations, are absolutely wrong.

But as far as the people of that land are concerned, they are beautiful. And Gurdjieff was right.

This government is not going to last long. They have already started doing suicidal acts.

With the attack on Libya they have shown their real face. A small country like Libya, and a nuclear power like America -- there is no comparison... The only reason for attacking Libya is that the man who leads Libya, Kaddafi, is really a brave man, outspoken, and he says whatever is the truth. He is not a politician.

And he said that Ronald Reagan is Adolf Hitler Number Two. This statement was the root cause for attacking Libya; all other things were not of any consideration. But he does not know that before attacking Libya he should attack me -- fortunately I don't have any land -- because I have immediately corrected Kaddafi: "You are wrong. Ronald Reagan is not Adolf Hitler Number Two; he is Adolf Hitler Number One."

The poor Adolf Hitler of the second world war cannot be number one. He is now second, for the simple reason that Ronald Reagan has a million times more power than Adolf Hitler had. Now he is calling Kaddafi "the mad dog of the Middle East," calling him "the bad smell."

Ronald Reagan and his government started dying the day they arrested me. It takes a little time. Let them do a few more stupid things and let the American people understand what kind of a government they have got. It is not a democracy: it is not for the people, it is not of the people, it is not by the people.

It is a fascist gang that is ruling America, and it will be good that the American people get rid of it; otherwise.… People naturally think the government and the so-called political leaders are the leaders of the people. That is not so.

Just recently I have received news from Crete about a few incidents that happened after they arrested me. Eleven old people -- fifty to sixty years old -- just as I left the house with the police, reached the house and said, "This should not have happened without us.

Why did you not inform us? We have our hunting guns, we would have come and shown those police people what it means to misbehave."

One journalist had asked me, "Any message for the people who live here?"

I said, "Just tell them to reach the airport in the night to show that they are with me -- not with the church and not with the government." There were three thousand people at the airport They had waited for hours to support me, and to say that what the police had done and what the government had done was not

right. Fifty people met one sannyasin; they were immensely angry about what had happened and were asking, "What can we do?"

Just poor people, simple people.… Another group of forty people met another sannyasin, and they were asking, "Show us... we want to do something. This thing should not be allowed to happen. And everything that Osho was saying was right, about the church; there was nothing wrong in it."

These simple villagers understood that what I was saying about the church is true; nothing was wrong in it. And even when I had left Greece, people from Crete sent a delegation to the president saying, "This behavior of the police and the government has disgraced us."

So always remember to make a differentiation between the government and the people.

The government is not necessarily the representative of the people. In most cases it has cheated people, exploited people. It is not for them.

I know... the question is from Milarepa. I can understand your anger. Every sannyasin would like to say, "To hell with America!" But just say, "To hell with the American government!"

America is far bigger, far more important, and I still hope that the new man will be born in America.

These governments come and go; the people remain. The people are the very soul. A country is not made of land, it is made of the people. In those twelve days in jail, moving from one jail to another, I came in contact with the common people and with the lowest of the low -- the criminals -- and I have seen so much love in their hearts. Whenever I entered into a new jail I was received... I did not feel that it was a jail because the reception was so warm.

Of course those people were behind bars, but they were shouting, "Osho, we know you, and you are right!" in the face of the jailer, the doctor and the other officials. They would line up, and whenever I reached my cell, soon inmates would start coming with fruits...

somebody with milk, somebody with soap, somebody with a toothbrush, somebody with toothpaste. They would say, "These people will not give you

anything. They want to torture you. But as we had heard just the day before that you will be brought here, we have been saving; all these things are fresh."

These people are criminals, and Ronald Reagan is not a criminal?

And he killed unnecessarily Kaddafi's daughter, bombed his three houses which are in the civilian area. He himself is a mad dog -- and he is calling Kaddafi a mad dog!

I can understand your anger, but remember always to be careful to draw fine lines so that only the criminal is hit, not the simple, poor, innocent people.

Beyond Psychology Chapter #34

Chapter title: Rocks, the earth... they are all alive 29 April 1986 am in

Archive code: 8604290

ShortTitle: PSYCHO34

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 101

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HEARD YOU SAY THAT IF A PERSON CAN REMEMBER HIS BIRTH AND

BEING IN THE WOMB, THEN THE MEMORY OF HIS LAST DEATH MAY

COME.I HAVE TRIED TO REMEMBER, BUT ONLY IMAGINATION IS THERE. I ALSO HEARD YOU SAY THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO REMEMBER BEYOND

THREE TO FOUR YEARS OLD BECAUSE THE BABY HAS NO MIND. IS THERE A REMEMBRANCE THAT IS NOT OF THE MIND?

There is no remembrance that is not of the mind, but you don't know the whole mind.

When you are trying to remember, you are using only the conscious mind, and the conscious mind can go only up to the age of four. But below the conscious is the unconscious mind.

Sometimes in your dreams you go deeper than the conscious mind can ever lead you.

Many of your dreams are memories of your past lives, but you have no way to recognize that they are of a past life. So there is a special method which is something like hypnosis.

It can be done by somebody else to you -- which is simpler because you can relax completely, and he can lead you deeper into the past life.

In hypnosis or in Buddhist or Jaina terminology -- because they discovered the method first -- it is called jati-smaran: remembering the past lives. In hypnosis you don't hear anybody else except the person who has hypnotized you. He can talk to you, you can answer him, yet you will remain fast asleep, you will not

come to the conscious mind. So only in hypnosis can your unconscious be communicated with, asked questions.

This can be repeated again and again, and if the same fact comes up without exception, the same memory comes up, the same story comes up, then certainly it is not imagination.

Another thing... Through hypnosis the other person can reach you, but not through your conscious mind -- because in whatever the conscious mind does there is an effort and tension, and that prevents the unconscious mind from surfacing. The conscious mind has to be completely relaxed so the unconscious can surface. In hypnosis it is better to begin with someone else. And it is such a simple method that anyone can do it -- it does not need any expertise. I will tell you about the method, how you can help each other.

When you have become a good medium, so that you can slip very easily into the unconscious, then finally the unconscious can be told that you are able to reach your past lives. It can be given a certain symbol to avoid the conscious mind completely. For example, it can be told that if you repeat, "Om, om, om," three times, you will fall into hypnosis. Before using this mantra -- anything can be used, "One, two, three," it doesn't matter, the words are not significant -- before doing it, you have to tell your conscious mind, "Wake me up after ten minutes." The other person can also do the same, but it is easier for you because you are not doing anything. But once you have been able to go into deeper layers of your past life or past lives, the other person can tell the unconscious,

"This is your mantra: one, two, three. And whenever I say it, you will fall into an unconscious state." But remember to tell the conscious to wake you; otherwise, who will wake you out of unconsciousness? It can become a coma.

The unconscious mind is nine times bigger than the conscious; it has tremendous treasures, all the memories of your past. And below the unconscious there is the collective unconscious. One can descend into the collective unconscious also -- at first with somebody's help. That used to be the work of a mystery school -- that the master will take you slowly towards the unconscious and the collective unconscious. In your collective unconscious you have memories of your past lives as animals, as birds.

Below the collective unconscious is the cosmic unconscious. Slowly, slowly one

can go deeper and deeper, and the cosmic unconscious has memories of your being trees, rosebushes, stones.

So mind is not only that which you know; there is much to be discovered in your own mind. It is yours, it is there -- but not easily available. There are reasons why it is not easily available. Nature makes barriers, because it would confuse you if there were no barriers between the conscious, and the unconscious, and the collective unconscious, and the cosmic unconscious. Even this small mind -- the conscious mind -- is so confusing, so disturbing. If you knew all that you have lived for millennia, from the very beginning, naturally you would get in such a mess, in such a madness.

For example, you love a woman. She may have been your mother in a past life, and if you remember it then you will be in trouble. But she may have been, in your collective unconscious, your murderer; then things become even more complicated. And those realities are as authentic as the realities of your life. You will get mixed up: how are you going to behave with this woman who is your wife, who was your mother, who was your murderer? Whatever you do with this woman will create guilt in you. You will not be at ease. That's the reason why nature goes on putting barriers between your past existences and allows you only this life's memories.

The science of hypnosis has been condemned by all religions, and the reason is that if hypnotism becomes accepted as a scientific enquiry -- and once it is explored it has to be accepted, because it fulfills all the criteria of being a science

-- then there will be trouble: Christians cannot say there is only one life, Mohammedans can't say there is only one life, Darwin can't say that man has evolved from the apes. It will depend on the research done through thousands of peoples' total minds, and what they say.

Hindus believe that man's consciousness has evolved from the consciousness of cows --

that's why they call them "mother." And I think a cow being a mother looks more relevant than a monkey being a father. The Hindus are saying this through a certain research into the mind, which has been available for centuries in the East: how to go into past lives. And there has not been a single exception -- whenever you cross the border of the collective unconscious mind, you pass from the body of a cow, not from the body of a monkey.

It is not a question of hypotheses. With Darwin it is only hypothetical, just a conjecture, and now he is being refuted, even by scientists. Now there are not many Darwinians; they are out of date.

The latest research into evolution does not help Darwin and his theory. They say that for thousands of years we have not seen any monkey evolving into a man, and neither have we seen the reverse -- that a man reverses into a monkey. And Darwin could not provide the missing link -- which he was asked for again and again his whole life; it was a nightmare for him! It cannot be just a jump from a monkey to a man: this moment you are a monkey and next moment you decide to be a man, and you become a man. There must be a missing link... not only a link, perhaps many links, many steps slowly, slowly, but they should be available.

Darwin could not even find dead bodies that would have been a proof of a link. We have been searching for dead bodies and we have found one ninety thousand years old -- a human body in China. But it is still human; it is not a monkey. It was preserved by the snow. It is still human, as human as you are.

But Hindus have a totally different approach. It is to be remembered that this is the only point on which all the three religions that were born in India agree: about everything else they have their own philosophy, but about reincarnation they all agree. And that is not just an accident, because all three religions were working on the same lines -- looking into the unconscious of man -- and they all found the same results. To call the cow mother... the whole world laughs at it, but I don't think anybody understands why Hindus call the cow mother. If they are right -- the cow has the qualities of a mother, and it is far better to be connected with the cows than with the monkeys.

So don't try to remember. It is not a question of remembering. You cannot cross the barrier with the conscious mind; you can only imagine, and you will know that it is only imagination because it changes every time, so you know perfectly well that you are imagining. Go through a hypnotic process. And the hypnotic process is very simple -- the simplest.

The mind, the conscious mind, has to be focused on something just for a few seconds --

for example, an electric light bulb. Don't have anything in the room so that the

mind can wander here and there; just have a bare room with only one thing: an electric light which is on in the darkness. Lie down, be relaxed, and take the help of a person whom you trust.

That is the most important thing, because the conscious mind will not relax unless there is trust. It will keep itself alert, because the man may do something, take you someplace, and you will not be aware of it. That's why I said hypnosis was part of a mystery school where there were masters whom people trusted, or there was one great master who helped you. You trusted him, and he said to you, "This man is going to take you into hypnosis.

Your trust in me should be your trust in him too; I am choosing him." Or if it was possible for the master himself, if the school was small, then he would do it once in a while, just to show others what happens.

The process is very simple. You have to lie down relaxed, the whole body relaxed.

Looking inside the body starting from the toe, see if there is any tension. If there is any tension near the knee or near the stomach or anywhere, then relax it there. Bring that relaxation up to your head -- and keep your eyes focused on the light.

And it is easy to recognize when you have come to the point where you are on the border of conscious and unconscious: your face changes; it starts looking sleepy, it loses the quality of awakening, and at that moment the master says, "Sleep is coming... deep sleep is coming... you are falling into a sleep which you have never fallen into before." And a moment comes when even if you try to keep your eyes open... You have been told that until your eyes close by themselves, in spite of yourself, go on keeping them open. That keeps the conscious mind engaged.

Soon -- it takes two minutes, three minutes, at the most five minutes -- your eyes start drooping. That means you are just crossing the border. The master says, "You are falling, and I will count up to seven. With each number you will be going deeper." And he starts counting, "One..." and goes on repeating, "the sleep is becoming deeper. Two... the sleep is becoming deeper. Three..." And at seven he stops it. At seven he says, "You have fallen into deep unconsciousness. Now you will be available only to me; you will not hear anything else, anybody else. Now the only communication with the world is through me; you will be able to

hear me, you will be able to answer me..."

And the beauty of the unconscious is that it never lies, because it has never been part of civilization. It has never been educated, it has never been turned into a hypocrite; it is very simple, very innocent. It simply says whatsoever is the case. Then for a few seconds the master leaves you, so that you can settle into that state. And then he starts asking you where you are. Perhaps you are in the womb of your mother, perhaps you have been conceived, perhaps you are dying in a past life somewhere. And you will answer where you are. He asks, "Describe it in detail," and you will describe it in detail. This can be taped, recorded, so that when you come back you can listen to it.

The process has to be repeated many times, because this is the proof: if it is imagination or dream it will go on changing every time you do it, but if it is a reality then nothing can be done about it. Each time you come to that place you will describe exactly what it is.

And all that you say can be recorded, so that it can be compared later on when you are conscious. If you are saying the same thing again and again it is not a dream, it is not imagination; you are coming across a real memory. You are reliving it; it is not only remembered, but relived.

Once you have succeeded in getting one life back, then with the same process you can go on deeper, into other lives. There will come a barrier where human lives stop and animal lives start: that means you have come to the collective unconscious.

Now the master needs to put you in an even deeper unconsciousness, and that can be done in your unconscious state. The first thing was done when you were conscious; it brought you to the unconscious. The second step has to be done in the same way: "I will repeat seven times that you are falling deeper into the collective unconscious, and you will start falling." Giving a little rest, he can again ask where you are, and you may say,

"I am a rosebush," or anything else that you have been. You relive it; you can make every detailed description. Again the barrier will come when you pass from animals, from plants, to what you call matter -- because matter is also consciousness, fast asleep.

And that's the end of the journey in the lower depths of your mind. If this is

completed, your consciousness will go on changing. With each new revelation your consciousness will become richer. And then a point comes -- when you have traveled all the way down backwards, downwards -- that you can move upwards from consciousness to superconsciousness until you reach to the cosmic consciousness. We are exactly in the middle. On both sides of the conscious there are three stages: below it is unconscious, collective unconscious and cosmic unconscious; above it is superconscious, super-superconscious, and cosmic conscious.

Our mind has seven worlds. To know the past, to know our background, is to know the whole history of consciousness and its evolution until this moment. But that makes it clear that this is not the last stage -- it cannot be. If there is so much behind you, there must be something ahead of you. So what Western psychology goes on doing is only working with one thing: unconsciousness, the first lower rung of the ladder. Eastern psychology has worked on all the seven.

As you move from the conscious mind, hypnosis is the method. And hypnosis is not yet recognized by the scientists because they have not even tried it. It is very strange. Perhaps the reason is that science is a development of the West, and because the West has a Christian conditioning it simply denies that there is anything other than this life, so from the very beginning one is prejudiced -- why bother about hypnosis?

A few people have dared and tried, but they were all condemned by the society -- badly.

Mesmer tried it, but was condemned, and there was a tradition of women who Christianity condemned as witches. They were trying hypnosis, and they were closer to the truth than Christianity has ever been. But thousands and thousands of witches were burned alive; their whole tradition was completely erased, all their literature was burned.

Only one copy of each book has been preserved in the Vatican.

It is the duty of the U.N. to take over the library of the Vatican. It is underground; it has tremendous treasures that Christianity has destroyed. They are still afraid to bring those books out in the light because then the condemnation for Christianity will be immense, even from Christians, "What you were saying was not true, and those who said the truth were killed, burned."

But they are keeping at least one copy in their vast library. Nobody is allowed to enter into that vast library; only when you become a cardinal are you allowed in the library, but by that time you are so much conditioned. Those books are written in a different way, particularly to avoid the attention of Christians. They have used parables, diagrams, and other things, as if they are not about religion, as if they are about something else.

It is the duty of all the intelligentsia of the world to insist to the Vatican: "That library does not belong to you. You have done enough harm; now at least give that library to the U.N. and let scholars find out what beautiful literature you have destroyed. And it should be published, and made available to anybody who wants it."

One of the things that got destroyed in this way was hypnosis -- the method, the science and the results. It is now simply a condemnatory word. If you love me, if you trust me, anybody can say you are just hypnotized. He does not know even the meaning of the word; he does not know its implications, but he is using it to condemn you. But really, to be hypnotized and to go into the darker realms of your being is the first step ingoing into the lighter realms of your being.

You contain the whole evolution -- past, present, future. You have such an enormous being, and only a small window of the conscious mind is allowed... this is you.

Your vastness is denied. Your universality is denied.

So if you really want to remember, not only to remember but to relive, then you will have to use the method of hypnosis. I am going, as we settle somewhere, to start a section which will be totally devoted to hypnosis and its implications, and I want every sannyasin to go through it.

I am reminded of two incidents... One is in Gautam Buddha's life, and one is in Vardhaman Mahavira's life. A man takes sannyas, becomes part of the community of Buddha, but finds it hard, difficult, arduous. He is sad, depressed, and thinks many times to leave it. One day Buddha called him and told him to sit in front of him and go into the method of jati-smaran -- that is, hypnosis.

He had not yet tried it, so somebody gave him the instructions to go into past

lives. And it was an amazing revelation: for almost five lives in the past he had taken sannyas and dropped it. That had become a routine of his consciousness. So Buddha said, "Now you are doing it again. It is up to you, but you have done it five times before. It is simply repetitive; you are wasting time. Either stop taking sannyas and do whatsoever you want, or be courageous; if you have taken it, then go into it this time. This should not be repeated. Five lives have been a waste."

Looking at his own five lives... the same pattern, almost mechanical, the same wheel moving: first getting attracted to a great master, getting initiated with great enthusiasm, and then seeing the arduousness, the difficulties of transforming himself and escaping, renouncing sannyas itself. And he comes back to it again and again.

Buddha said, "You can do it as long as you want. In your next life you will do it again.

And for five lives nobody reminded you, because the masters you were working with were not masters of jati-smaran."

The man remained. It changed his whole attitude: "This is stupid. If it is hard then it has to be faced. If it is a challenge then it has to be taken." And he became one of the enlightened disciples of Buddha.

There is a similar story in Mahavira's life. A prince becomes enchanted with Mahavira's individuality, but he does not know that Mahavira's life is really arduous. Nobody has lived the way Mahavira has lived -- naked in the winter, in the hot sun, hungry for months, fasting, eating once in a while, barefooted, walking on the burning earth in the hot sun.

He did not use shoes because shoes were made only of leather in those days, and to use shoes meant you were indirectly supporting the industry of violence, because the best leather comes when you kill young calves. If you want really perfect leather, then you have to take the leather from the calf while it is alive; you don't kill him first. First you take the leather, and in taking the leather of course he dies. That leather is the most soft and the best. Mahavira was absolutely against in any way supporting anything which is based on violence.

This prince became -- and naturally, you can understand it -- the prince became impressed by the man, his integrity, his authority, his teaching. He was not aware

that life with him is going to be tremendously hard -- and he had lived very luxuriously. But in a moment of enthusiasm he took sannyas and entered into Mahavira's commune.

Now, ten thousand sannyasins used to move with Mahavira, and they were staying in a big caravanserai, and it was the routine that the elder ones -- that means those who had been longer in sannyas -- should have better places, and the others accordingly. This prince was just a one-day-old sannyasin, so in the night he got a place just near the door, the main door, where people left their shoes, umbrellas and other things. He was the son of a king, and by that door sleeping was impossible; people were continuously coming and going. When there are ten thousand sannyasins... He had never slept in such a situation, and he immediately thought, "This is not the life I would like. Next morning I will give my apology, and I will say, `This is not the life for me.'"

But before he reached Mahavir, Mahavir reached him, and asked him to let himself be taken into jati-smaran -- and it was the same process. For three lives he had been doing the same thing: getting impressed by magnetic people, charismatic people, and then finding it difficult over small matters and leaving them. In all those three lives he could have become enlightened, because those three people were capable of triggering the process of enlightenment.

Mahavira said, "You have missed three lives, and you are missing the fourth. You can decide. But you are a warrior, not only a prince. Don't emphasize that you are a prince and you have lived only in luxury; remember that you are a warrior and you have been fighting in wars. And there is nobody in this area who is a better swordsman, a better archer. Don't insult yourself, don't humiliate yourself. This is escape."

And the man remained. But the factor that helped these two men to remain was their reliving their past experiences. It is of tremendous use, but in the West it is so much condemned that the condemnation has reached to the East too -- because now the East is just a parrot. Now the East is not the East it used to be; it is just a shadow of the West. All the Eastern scholars are produced by the West. They learn in Western seats of education -

- in Paris, in London, in Oxford, in Cambridge, in Harvard.

I have been continuously fighting, in many universities in India, that these

scholars should not be called Eastern scholars because whatsoever they have learned is Western; even though it is about Indian philosophy, they have learned it in Oxford. This is ridiculous -- that to understand Indian philosophy you have to go to Oxford. These scholars are not Eastern in any way; their whole approach is Western. So there is no more East really, now it is all West. The East has become so interested in Western success, in materialism, in technology, that it has forgotten that it has also become successful in a different world -- the world of the inner -- and has reached the highest peaks of illumination.

So don't try to remember, but take the help of someone whom you trust, who can hypnotize you.

Soon, as existence allows me to settle somewhere, I will create people who can help everybody to go into the past, and experience and relive those moments. They will change your every attitude. They will make you aware that you are moving in a circle, and it is time to get out of it, because this is nonsense: each life you are doing the same thing, moving in the same circle. And you can go on doing it eternally -- nobody is going to prevent you -- unless you decide to jump out of this viciousness.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

WHILE TRAVELING IN GREECE WITH A GROUP OF SANNYASINS WE

VISITED DELPHI, THE PLACE OF THE ANCIENT ORACLE, AND WHERE IT IS

SAID PYTHAGORAS ONCE LIVED. WE ALL FELT A PEACEFUL HAPPINESS

WHILE WALKING AROUND THE RUINS, AND IN THE END WE ALL

GATHERED ON THE TOP OF THE STADIUM AND SAT SILENTLY WITH EACH

OTHER. WHAT HAPPENED TO US? WHY DOES ONE HAVE SUCH DIFFERENT

FEELINGS ABOUT DIFFERENT PLACES?

People like Pythagoras, Socrates, Plotinus, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu... the people of such state are continuously radiating -- not with any effort, but effortlessly and spontaneously. Their experience, just like a candle, radiates light; their consciousness has become a light. Their being has attained to a fragrance, to a flowering, and everything around them is going to catch it. For centuries it will continue to vibrate.

I have not been to Delphi. I was thinking to go, but before being at Delphi I was arrested and thrown out of Greece. But Delphi was one of the places I would have liked to visit.

In India I have visited a few places... The place where Gautam Buddha became enlightened is called Bodh Gaya. It is a small temple -- some follower made the temple as a memorial, by the side of the tree under which Buddha became enlightened. That tree still remembers something, and I came to know later on that the bodhi tree has a certain substance which no other tree has, and that is the substance which makes a man a genius.

Only geniuses have that substance in their mind, and in the world of trees only the bodhi tree has that substance. Perhaps it is more perceptive, more receptive; it has a certain genius.

Buddha remained under that tree for many years. The whole area is still fragrant, and just by the side of the tree is the place where he used to walk. When he used to get tired of sitting and meditating then he would walk and meditate, so that place is marked by marble stones. But sitting under the tree or walking on those marble stones, you can feel you are not in this world, that this place has something which no other place has. Perhaps the moment Buddha became enlightened something exploded in him and was caught by everything that could catch it. We used to think before... but it is not the case. Now it is well proved that trees are very sensitive, more sensitive than man -- their sensitivity just has a different level.

One scientist was working on trees. He had put on the tree a certain mechanism, just like a cardiogram, that takes the graph of the feelings of the tree, and he was surprised that when the gardener came... He had told the gardener, "You go and cut one of the branches of the tree. I want to see the effect." But there was no

need to cut the branch. As the gardener came with his axe, the graph was already going mad!

The scientist said, "Don't do that -- the tree has already caught the idea that you are going to cut and hurt her." Later on he became more amazed, because when you cut one tree, all the other trees in the surrounding area, their graphs go mad. When the same gardener comes to water the tree, the graph remains perfectly balanced -- it becomes even more harmonious. It seems the tree is able to catch your thoughts, your ideas.

Perhaps the same may be found about rocks, the earth, because they are all alive. Their life may be on a different level, but they are all alive -- and certainly they are more simple and more innocent. People have been keeping... In Tibet they have been keeping the bodies of enlightened people, because if the trees and the stones and the earth are impressed by the great experience, then certainly the body of the man, his bones, must be impressed -- they are closer.

Perhaps Tibetans were the first to understand it: they have covered ninety-nine great masters' bodies with gold. That used to be the most sacred place in Tibet. It is just... If you have seen the picture of Potala, the palace of the Dalai Lama, it is just underneath it.

Potala is high in the mountains, and underneath there are many caves. One cave is devoted only to those ninety-nine bodies.

Why did they stop at ninety-nine? A strange figure! A hundred would have been more appropriate. They had to stop because the lineage of Dalai Lamas dropped from the height it used to be, and the country could not produce anybody worthy of taking the hundredth seat in the sacred, secret temple. It was opened once a year for the people, and just to pass through it was to pass through another world.

Now it is completely closed so that the communists cannot find it -- because they will not be interested in the bodies; they will be interested in the gold. They will destroy those bodies and take the gold -- and it is a great quantity of gold. So before the Dalai Lama left Lhasa because of the communist invasion of the country, he sealed it in every possible way so that they cannot discover it. And they have not been able yet to discover it.

Slowly, slowly in all the countries where spirituality has flowered, people

became aware that something happens... So people have preserved things that were used by these people, or just have made memorials of their bodies. In India bodies are burned, but you will be surprised to know that the remains left after burning a body are called "flowers".

Ordinary people's ashes are thrown into holy rivers, but enlightened people's "flowers"

are preserved in samadhis -- in beautiful marble memorials. Just to go and sit there is in itself a meditation. But the trouble is that the world is ruled by those who know nothing of this.

For example, Delphi should not be open for everybody, because they will destroy its subtle vibration. But the government is interested in tourism!

Delphi should be open only to a few people who are chosen -- chosen by a mystery school that should exist there. Delphi was a mystery school. In the days of Pythagoras and Socrates, Delphi was the temple -- the most famous temple -- of wisdom. And the priestess used to go into a trance. While praying and dancing and singing in the temple, she would go into a trace, and in her trance she would say things which always proved to be true. She herself could not remember anything when she came back from the trance; perhaps the trance was taking her higher into the mind, perhaps to the cosmic mind.

In such a trance she declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world. And a few people visiting her from Athens were very happy, because Socrates was an Athenian.

They reached Socrates -- he was old -- before his death, before his murder, and said,

"You should be happy; the oracle of Delphi has declared you the wisest man in the world."

Socrates said, "It is too late. When I was very young I used to think that I was very knowledgeable, very wise. The more I came to know, the more I became ignorant --

aware that what I know is nothing, and what I do not know is so much. Now, in my old age, I can say without any hesitation that I do not know anything. The

oracle, for the first time it seems, has missed."

The people were very much surprised, because Socrates should have been happy hearing it. They went back and the priestess again danced, fell into a trance. They asked her in the trance, "You said Socrates is the wisest man in the world, but he denies it. He says, Ì do not know anything...'"

And the priestess in her trance said, "That's why he is the wisest man in the world. Only idiots say that they know. Those who are wise cannot say that."

Places like these, or Bodh Gaya, should not be available to tourists -- which is an ugly race with all their cameras, binoculars, and stupid things. And they are not interested in the place at all; they are taking photographs and rushing from here to there. Later on, sitting at home, they will look at the photographs and say, "Great! Our tour has been great. We visited beautiful places -- you can see."

But they were never there; they were with their cameras. They should sit there, they should allow themselves to absorb the subtle vibe of the place... Something of Gautam Buddha must be there; it has to be there!

Beyond Psychology Chapter #35

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