Come, Come, Yet Again Come

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Come, Come, Yet Again Come Responses to Disciples Questions

Talks given from 27/10/80 am to 10/11/80 am English Discourse series

15 Chapters

Year published: 1980

Come, Come, Yet Again Come Chapter #1

Chapter title: Whoever Knocks is a Welcome Guest 27 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall

Archive code: 8010270

ShortTitle: COME01

Audio: Yes Video: No Length:

0

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The first question:

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

I AM A SINNER. CAN I ALSO BECOME YOUR SANNYASIN?

Govind, yes, absolutely yes! In fact, only a sinner can become a sannyasin. Those who think themselves saints, holier-than-thou, they are the closed people, they are the dead people. They have become incapable of living, incapable of celebrating.

Sannyas is celebration of life, and sin is natural: natural in the sense that you are unconscious -- what else can you do? In unconsciousness, sin is bound to happen. Sin simply means that you don't know what you are doing, you are unaware, so whatsoever you do goes wrong. But to recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of a great pilgrimage. To recognize that "I am a sinner" is the beginning of real virtue. To see that

"I am ignorant" is the first glimpse of wisdom.

The real problem arises with people who are full of knowledge. All that knowledge is borrowed; hence, rubbish. The people who think they are virtuous because they have created a certain character around themselves are the people lost to God. Your so-called saints are the farthest away, because God is life, and your saints have renounced life. In renouncing life they have renounced God too.

God is the hidden core of THIS life. This life is just the outermost part, the circumference; God is the center of it all. To renounce the circumference, to escape from it, is to renounce the center automatically. You will not find God anywhere. The farther away you go from life, the farther away you will be from God. One has to dive into life, and of course when you are unconscious you will miss the target many times.

The original Hebrew word for sin is very beautiful. By translating it as "sin," Christians have missed the very message of Jesus. The original Hebrew word for sin is so totally different from your idea of sin that it will be a surprise to you. The root word means forgetfulness; it has nothing to do with what you are doing. The whole thing is whether you are doing it with conscious being or out of

unconsciousness. Are you doing it with a self-remembering or have you completely forgotten yourself?

Any action coming out of unconsciousness is sin. The action may look virtuous, but it cannot be. You may create a beautiful facade, a character, a certain virtuousness; you may speak the truth, you may avoid lies; you may try to be moral, and so on and so forth.

But if all this is coming from unconsciousness, it is all sin.

It is because of this that Jesus has a tremendously significant saying. He says, "If your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away. It is much better for you to lose a part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell."

Now, if you don't understand the real meaning of sin, you are bound to misinterpret the whole statement and Jesus will look too harsh, too hard, too violent. Saying, "If your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away," does not look like a statement of Jesus. A man of profound love and compassion -- he cannot say it, he cannot be so violent. But this is how Christians have interpreted him.

What he means is: whatsoever causes you to forget yourself, even if it is your right eye.…

That is just to emphasize the fact. It is simply a way of talking, an emphasis: "If your right eye causes you to forget yourself, then take it out and throw it away." He is not saying anything which has to be taken literally; it is a metaphor. He is saying that it is better to be blind than to be forgetful of yourself, because the blind man who remembers himself is not blind, he has the real eye. And the man who has eyes, if he has forgotten himself, what is the use of having eyes? He cannot see himself -- what ELSE can he see?

Govind, your question is beautiful. You say, "I am a sinner.…" Everybody is! To be born in this world means to be a sinner. But remember my emphasis: it means to forget oneself.

That's the whole purpose of the world: to give you an opportunity to forget yourself.

Why? -- so that you can remember. But you will ask -- and your question will look logical -- "If we already remembered before, then why this unnecessary torture that we have to forget ourselves and THEN remember again? What is the point of this whole exercise? It seems to be an exercise of utter futility!" It is not; there is great significance in it.

The fish in the ocean is born in the ocean, lives in the ocean, but knows nothing about the ocean -- unless you take the fish out of the ocean. Then, suddenly, a recognition arises in the fish. Only when you lose something do you remember. Only in that contrast does remembering happen. Then let the fish go back to the ocean. It is the same fish, it is the same ocean, the same situation -- yet everything is different. Now the fish knows that the ocean is her life, her very being. Before, she was in the ocean but unaware; now, she is in the ocean but aware. And that's the great difference, the difference that makes the difference.

We have lived in God, we all come from the original source of existence, but we have to be thrown out into the world so that we can start searching for God again, searching for the ocean -- thirsty, hungry, starving, longing. And the day we find it again there is great rejoicing. And it is not anything new.

The day Buddha became enlightened he laughed and he said to himself, "This is very strange! What I have gained is not an achievement at all, it is only a recognition. I had it always, but I was unaware of it."

The only difference between a sinner and a sage is that the sinner is full of forgetfulness, and the sage is full of remembering. And between these two is that hocus-pocus being called the saint. He does not know anything, he does not remember anything. He has heard other sages or may have read the scriptures, and he repeats those scriptures like a parrot -- not only repeats but practices also. He tries to behave like a sage. But any effort to behave like a sage shows only one thing: that you are not a sage yet.

The sage lives simply, spontaneously; there is no question of effort at all. He lives life just as you breathe. He is very ordinary; there is nothing special about a sage. But the saint is very special, because the saint is trying to DO something. And of course he is making a great effort, because it is not his own understanding. So he is continuously torturing himself to behave rightly, violently forcing himself to behave rightly. Naturally, he expects much respect from you. He can go on doing all this masochism, this self-torture, if you give

him respect. Just think: if the so-called respect given to the saints disappears, out of one hundred of your saints, ninety-nine point nine percent will immediately disappear. They are living only for the ego.

It is good, Govind, that you realize that you are a sinner. This is the beginning of something tremendously significant. You can be a sage; all that you have to avoid is being a saint! That is the trouble: the saint is the false coin which looks exactly like the real coin; in fact, it looks more real than the real one. It has to, because it has to deceive people. Avoid being a saint.

That's what my sannyas is: living your ordinary life with only one addition, that of awareness -- and the sinner will become a sage. The sinner becomes a sage through awareness; the sinner becomes a saint through cultivating a character.

I don't teach you character, I teach you consciousness. Hence, I am not at all interested that you are a sinner and that you have been doing all kinds of sins -- that is irrelevant. It is accepted that in your unconsciousness what else can you do?

I accept you with total love, respect.

Many times I have been told, particularly by the so-called saints, "You go on giving sannyas to everybody -- this is not right. Sannyas should be given only to people of character!"

It is as if you go to a physician and he says, "My condition for giving you medicine is that I give it to you only when you are healthy. Come to me when you are healthy. I never give medicines to people who are ill, I never waste my medicines on ill people!

First become healthy and then come to me." You can understand the absurdity of that.

If I say to somebody, "First go and become WORTHY of sannyas, then come to me," that means that if he can become worthy of sannyas by his own effort, then why cannot he become a sannyasin by himself? What is the need for him to come to ME? He needs help, and anybody who ASKS for help should be given help, and it should be given unconditionally.

There is a beautiful statement of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the greatest

Sufi masters ever. Govind, take it to your heart. COME, COME, WHOEVER YOU ARE;

WANDERER, WORSHIPPER, LOVER OF LEARNING... IT DOES NOT MATTER.

OURS IS NOT A CARAVAN OF DESPAIR.

COME, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BROKEN YOUR VOW A THOUSAND TIMES.

COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME.

COME, COME, WHOEVER YOU ARE...sinner, unconscious, living a life which is not glorious, divine, meaningful; living a life which has no poetry, no joy, a life of hell.…

Whosoever you are, Mevlana says, "Come, I am ready to receive you. Be my guest!"

The master is a host; he refuses nobody. True masters never refuse anybody. They cannot. If THEY start refusing people, then there is no hope. If you go under a tree, a shady tree -- tired of your journey and the burning sun on your head -- and the tree refuses you, it does not give you refuge, it does not shelter you...? It does not happen at all. The tree is always ready to give you shelter, its shadow, its fruits, its flowers, its fragrance.

A great Tibetan story is.…

Once there lived a master who never initiated anybody. His fame slowly became very well known all over the country, even beyond the boundaries of the country. And people would come and fall at his feet and ask to be initiated. But his conditions were such that nobody was able to fulfill them, so nobody was ever thought worthy -- nobody deserved initiation.

He had only a servant, not even a disciple. One day when he was ill and on his deathbed, he called his servant and told him, "Go to the marketplace, and

whosoever wants to be initiated, bring them all. I am going to initiate!"

The servant was shocked. He said, "Are you talking in a delirium or something? Your whole life you insisted on certain qualities -- unless those were fulfilled you would not initiate -- and nobody has ever been able to fulfill your conditions. Now you are telling me to go to the marketplace and tell people that anybody who wants to be initiated should come? What about the conditions? What about the prerequisites? What about the essential readiness? What about the groundwork?"

The master said, "Don't waste my time anymore, because this is my last day on the earth.

Simply go! Do what I am saying, don't argue. You are my servant -- simply follow the order. Go and find anybody who wants to come!"

The servant went, puzzled. He could not believe his own ears, could not believe his own eyes. But because the master had ordered, and he was just a servant, he had to follow. He went into the marketplace very unwillingly. He shouted in the marketplace. Nobody believed him; they thought he had gone mad. He said, "I am not saying it, he himself has told me! I also think that he has gone mad, now you are thinking that I have gone mad. I am simply a servant. He must have gone mad! He is dying, he has lost all his senses. But give it a try -- you are not going to lose anything."

A few people, just out of curiosity, a few people who had nothing to do It was

a holiday, so they said, "Okay, we are coming. Let us see what happens!" Somebody had quarreled with his wife and had nowhere to go, so he said, "I am coming." A gambler and a drunkard who were just on the road, simply followed seeing this whole bunch of people, not knowing where they were going.

So this strange crowd reached the master's place, and he started initiating them one by one. The first man he initiated was the drunkard. Of course he was so drunk that he could not even think that the master was mad -- he did not even realize that he was being initiated! He was not aware at all what was happening. When the master said, "Do you want to be initiated?" he simply nodded his head.

The servant could not believe it. He said, "What are you doing? This man is completely drunk, he is an alcoholic, and you are giving him initiation! And there is a thief in the crowd, and one man has come because he is unemployed

and he thought at least this way he would find some employment -- at least he could become a saint and people would feed him. And there are a few people who have come because it is a holiday. A few others have come just out of curiosity: `Let us see what is happening.' The man next to the drunkard has come here only because his wife has thrown him out and closed the doors. He was standing outside, and he said, Òkay, so I am coming also!' These are not seekers and searchers -- they are not religious at all! What are you doing? Your whole life you were waiting for worthy people, people who are deserving!"

The master said, "Listen, the truth is -- now I can tell you -- I was not a master at all! Just this morning I have realized myself, but I could not tell anybody that I was not a master.

So rather than telling the truth, I always tried to make some impossible demands which could not be fulfilled. In that way I saved my ego. But today I have come to know who I am, and now I know that everybody is capable of knowing because everybody is basically the same. Even this drunkard is no more unconscious than anybody else.

Everybody is unconscious, and unconscious people need initiation; they need the help of those who have become conscious. The conscious person can function as a catalytic agent."

Mevlana is right: COME, COME, WHOEVER YOU ARE; WANDERER, WORSHIPPER, LOVER OF LEARNING...IT DOES NOT MATTER. The

master is ready; it does not matter who comes to him. Whoever knocks on his door is a welcome guest.

OURS IS NOT A CARAVAN OF DESPAIR. Remember this beautiful statement: "Ours is not a caravan of despair." I can also say this. Ours is not a caravan of despair, it is a celebration -- it is the celebration of life.

People become religious out of misery, and the person who becomes religious out of misery becomes religious for the wrong reasons. And if the very beginning is wrong, the end cannot be right.

Become religious out of joy, out of the experience of beauty that surrounds you, out of the immense gift of life that God has given to you. Become religious out of gratitude, thankfulness. Your temples, your churches, your mosques and GURUDWARAS are full of miserable people. They have turned your temples

also into hells. They are there because they are in agony. They don't know God, they have no interest in God; they are not concerned with truth; there is no inquiry. They are just there to be consoled, comforted. Hence they seek anybody who can give them cheap beliefs to patch up their lives, to hide their wounds, to cover up their misery. They are there in search of some false satisfaction.

Ours is not a caravan of despair. It is a temple of joy, of song, of dance, of music, of creativity, of love and life.

You are welcome, Govind -- join the caravan.

COME, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BROKEN YOUR VOW A THOUSAND TIMES.

It does not matter. You may have broken all the rules -- the rules of conduct, the rules of morality. In fact, anybody who has any guts is bound to break those rules. Only people who are without guts, who have no spine to their being can follow the priests and the politicians, the demagogues, the people who have vested interests in the establishment.

But if you have any intelligence then you will be a rebel. And the rebel will be called a sinner, and the obedient fool will be called a saint.

This starts happening from the very childhood. The obedient child is praised by the parents, obviously -- for the simple reason that he is not a pain in their necks. He is so dull, so dead that whatsoever they say he does. He is an imitator, he is a carbon copy, and the parents' egos feel very nourished by the child. He follows them, he believes in them, he adores them.

But the intelligent child will not be respected by the parents. They will always feel some trouble with the intelligent child, because he will ask questions which they can't answer because they don't know themselves. He will ask such things as will be embarrassing to them. He will create situations in which they will see their impotence. They will not be able to control him -- and everybody is interested in controlling everybody else; nobody wants to give freedom. They will not be able to enslave the child; he will resist all efforts to enslave him, he will give them a good fight. In fact, he is the child to be loved, to be respected, because he has some life, he has some soul. But he will be condemned.

Intelligence is condemned, imitativeness is respected. Original faces are

distorted and masks are painted, beautifully decorated. The true, the authentic, is denied, and the false, the unauthentic, is raised as high as possible. And the same thing goes on happening in the schools, colleges, universities. The whole of society is a repetition of the same thing on a larger scale.

Only very stupid people become your presidents, your prime ministers. You will not tolerate intelligent people, you will not give power to intelligent people, because you will be afraid of them. You will always want some stupid people to dominate you, because there will always be a certain affinity between you and the stupid. There will be a certain understanding, a communication.

Jesus is bound to be crucified, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta is going to win the Nobel Prize. Socrates is going to be poisoned and killed, but not the so-called professors of philosophy in the universities; they are very respectable people. Socrates was not respectable. If he had been respectable, then Athens would not have behaved in such an ugly way. He was condemned like a criminal, but the professors of philosophy who are teaching Socrates are very respected people; they all have respectability. They write great treatises on Socrates, and nobody poisons them.

One of my professors wrote his thesis on the philosophy of Socrates, and he got a D.Litt.

in it. He was very happy, and all his students gave him a party. I was also present. I asked him one thing: "Socrates was given poison and you are given a D.Litt. There must be something wrong with your treatise! It cannot be Socratic, that much is certain. I have not looked into your treatise, and I am not going to look into it at all -- I am not going to waste my time! One thing is certain: something is absolutely un-Socratic about it; otherwise, why should the society, the university, give you recognition?"

He could not answer me, but he became an enemy. He started avoiding me, and I started haunting him! Wherever we would meet alone -- sometimes walking on the road to the university, or going for a morning walk, or in the night -- I would always look out for him and say, "Hello, Socrates!" He would become so angry!

One day he told me, "Why are you after me? What wrong have I done to you?"

I said, "You have not done anything wrong to me, I am simply trying to make the point clear to you that writing a treatise on Socrates is one thing, and to BE a

Socrates is totally another. If you were a Socrates you would have been crucified, you would have been stoned to death. The same university would have condemned you; you would have been expelled from this university."

And finally, HE was not expelled from the university, I was expelled. And when I was expelled, I went to him and told him, "Look! I am not even a professor, I have not written a treatise on Socrates, and they have expelled me!"

And the reasons they gave me were: "You ask embarrassing questions of the professors.

You disturb their classes. You don't allow them to finish their syllabus and you go on persisting with one question for months at a time."

And I said, "How can I drop the question unless it is answered? If it is not answered, then what are months? -- even a whole life has to be devoted to it!"

And they said, "You may be right, but people have come here to get their degrees. They are not interested in truth, nor are the professors interested in truth. Go and find some other place."

And then no other university was ready to accept me, because I had become notorious!

One university accepted me on the condition that I would never ask any question. Now, what kind of universities are these? So when the vice-chancellor said to me, "You have to put it in writing for me that you will not ask the professors any questions," I said, "I can do that, but then you have to understand one thing: that I will not attend the classes. But you have to give me permission to appear in the examination, because I will not be fulfilling the percentage of attendance required -- seventy-five percent. It is impossible."

He said, "Why? Why can't you attend the classes?"

I said, "If I attend the classes, then I will not be able to resist the temptation to ask questions! Then I will ask questions. Either allow me to ask questions or give me the attendance mark; otherwise, what will be the point of my being there?"

He said, "Okay, we will give you the attendance mark."

So I never attended the classes -- it was against the rules, but they gave me a ninety percent attendance mark. I never went to any class, because one thing was certain, that once I saw a professor then I didn't care what I had given in writing

-- I HAD to ask the questions!

My father used to tell me wherever he would take me with him, "Keep silent, don't ask any question; otherwise, please don't come with me."

I would promise him that I would not ask the question, and I would ask the question. And he would come home very heated -- "You promised...!"

I said, "What can I do? I completely forget! When I see stupid people talking about great things, I cannot resist -- I simply forget. It is not that I want to hurt you or anything, but what can I do? That man was talking about the soul being immortal, and he knows nothing. I simply asked him, Ìf I kill you, will you be angry or not? If the soul is immortal, allow me to kill you! At least allow me to slap you -- what to say about killing!

The soul is immortal!' And he was saying, Ì am not the body.' `So perfectly okay

-- I slap the body, and you are not the body!' And he became angry, and you are also becoming angry. I was not asking anything wrong, I was simply asking a question that HE had raised!"

People go on talking nonsense, but this whole society exists for the lowest, for the mediocre.

I agree with Mevlana -- MEVLANA means the master. Jalaluddin Rumi was called Mevlana by his disciples out of great love. Mevlana says: COME, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BROKEN YOUR VOW A THOUSAND TIMES.

Intelligent people are bound to break all their vows many times, because life goes on changing, situations go on changing. And the vow is taken under pressure -- maybe the fear of hell, the greed for heaven, respectability in society.… It is not coming from your innermost core. When something comes from your own inner being, it is never broken.

But then it is never a vow, it is a simple phenomenon like breathing. COME, COME, YET AGAIN COME!

Govind, if you want to be a sannyasin, you are welcome. Everybody is welcome, without any conditions. You do not have to fulfill any requirements. Just the longing to be in deep contact with me is enough, more than enough. Just the desire to be close to me, to be intimate with me is enough. That's what sannyas is all about.

And drop this idea of being a sinner, because that must be creating some guilt in you.

That guilt is one of the oldest tricks of the priests for dominating people. They create guilt in you. They give you such stupid ideas that you cannot fulfill them. Then guilt arises, and once the guilt has arisen, you are trapped.

Guilt is the trade secret of all the so-called, established religions. Create guilt in people, make them feel bad about themselves. Don't let them be respectful of their own lives; let them feel condemned. Let them feel, deep down, that they are ugly, that they are not of any worth, that they are dust, and then of course they will be ready to be guided by any fool. They will be more than ready to become dependent, in the hope that "somebody will lead us to the ultimate light." These are the people who have been exploiting you for centuries.

The time has come when a great rebellion is needed against all established religions.

Religiousness is needed in the world but no more religions -- no more Hindus, no more Christians, no more Mohammedans -- just pure religious people, people who have great respect for themselves.

And remember, only a person who has respect for himself can respect others, because life is the same. If you are too hard upon yourself you will be more hard on others, obviously.

You will magnify their sins; you have to, just to give yourself consolation that you are not the only sinner, there are greater sinners than you. That will be your only consolation in life: that you need not worry, you are just a small sinner, there are great sinners.

That's why people go on creating rumors about everybody else. And people believe rumors very easily. If somebody says something ugly, derogatory about a person, you immediately believe it. But if somebody praises him, you don't

believe it, you ask for proofs. You never ask for proofs about derogatory remarks and rumors. You are very willing to believe them for the simple reason that you WANT to believe that "everybody is far worse than I am." That's the only way to feel good, a little bit good, about yourself.

The priests have given you only two alternatives. Either you follow the impossible rules that they impose; then you feel paralyzed, crippled, imprisoned. Or, if you want to live a life of freedom and you want to be natural, guilt arises. In both ways you are being exploited.

I am here to free you from all exploitation.

Freedom is the taste of sannyas, the fragrance of sannyas. My sannyasins are not trying to cultivate any character, they are trying a totally different phenomenon: they are raising their consciousness. And then I leave everybody free to live according to his own light.

The second question:

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE COME TO A DEAD END. I SEE THE IMPOTENCE OF THE MIND AND

FEEL ALL ACTION USELESS. DOES THE MIND TOTALLY DIE ONLY IN

samadhi?

PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT MIND AND ACTION IN WITNESSING.

Vinod Bharti, you say, "I have come to a dead end" -- but I don't feel it so. Not yet, because when you really come to a dead end, a transformation immediately happens. You are coming closer to it, of that much I am certain. The dead end is not far away, but you have not come to it yet. Your whole question proves it.

You are coming closer, you are feeling intuitively that it is not far away -- but it has not been reached yet. Still, there is hope. Still, deep down, you are dreaming

that this is not going to be the dead end; hence the question arises.

You say, "I see the impotence of the mind.…" You have not seen it yet, you only think you have. Seeing and thinking are totally different, but one can get mixed up very easily.

Thinking can pretend to be seeing. You are not seeing the impotence of the mind; otherwise even this question would not arise. If the mind is really impotent, what can it ask? What can it think about? It simply falls from you, it withers away.

But the shadow is on you, and that's a good sign. The day is not far away when you WILL see the impotence of the mind -- and then immediately the transformation. Then, immediately, a sudden enlightening experience. All questions disappear, all answers disappear, because when the mind is seen, REALLY seen as impotent, what is there to ask and what is there to find? The mind simply evaporates. Then life is left, pure life, unhindered, undistorted by the mind.

Then you will not say that you feel all action useless. If you see the impotence of the mind, the mind disappears but action becomes for the first time tremendously beautiful.

There is no question of utility at all. Life has no utility in itself. What is the use of a roseflower? -- but still it goes on growing, still it goes on opening, still it goes on releasing its fragrance. What is the use of it? What is the use of the sun rising every day?

Is there any use for the sun itself? What is the use of the starry night?

The word "use" is part of the paraphernalia of the mind. Mind always thinks in terms of utility. The mind is a Jew; it always thinks in terms of purpose, profit, utility. When the mind disappears, action does not disappear, activity disappears

-- and there is a great difference between the two. Activity has utility; action is pure joy, pure beauty. You act not because something has to be achieved, you act because action is a dance, is a song.

You act because you are so full of energy.

Have you watched a child running on the seabeach? You ask him, "Why are you

running? What is the purpose of your running? What are you going to gain out of it?"

Have you watched the child collecting seashells on the beach? You ask him, "What is the utility of it all? You can use your time in a more utilitarian way. Why waste your time?"

The child is not concerned about utility at all, he is enjoying his energy. He is so full of energy, so bubbling with energy that it is a sheer dance -- any excuse will do. These are just excuses -- seashells, pebbles, colored stones. These are just excuses -- the sun, the beautiful beach...just excuses to run and to jump and to shout with joy. There is no utility at all.

"Energy is delight" -- that is a statement made by William Blake, one of the most mystical poets of the West. Energy IS delight. When there is great energy, what are you going to do with it? It is bound to explode.

Action comes out of energy, out of delight. Activity is businesslike. Action is poetry.

Activity creates a bondage because it is result oriented: you are doing it not for its own sake, you are doing it for some goal. There is a motive, and then there is frustration. Out of a hundred cases, ninety-nine times you will not achieve the goal, so ninety-nine times you will be in misery, frustration. You did not enjoy the activity itself, you were waiting for the result. Now the result has come, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred there is frustration. And don't hope for the remaining one percent, because when you achieve the goal, there is frustration also. The goal is achieved, but suddenly you realize that all the dreams you have been dreaming about the goal are not fulfilled.

You have achieved the money, but where is the joy that you have always been hoping for when the money was there? You have that great marble palace, but you are the same poor man -- the same emptiness inside, the same hollowness. You used to live in a hut, now you start living in a palace -- but the SAME person. You were miserable in the hut, and you will be even more miserable in the palace, because the palace has more space and of course when there is more space you will be more miserable. What else can you do with that space? All that you know is how to be miserable.

So you see poor people and you see rich people. The only difference is that the

poor people are still hoping. There is hope, hence poor people are not so frustrated. Rich people have lost all their hopes; they are more frustrated. The poor person can still dream

-- he can still go on counting in his mind how great a bank balance he will have next year and the year after. Soon the day will come when he will be rich and he will have a car and a good house and a good wife, and the children will be going to good schools. But what can the rich man dream? All that he can dream about he has already, and nothing is happening out of it. The money is there, but he is as empty as ever.

There are two kinds of poor people: the poor poor and the rich poor. And remember, the second category is far worse.

Activity means there is a goal; activity is only a means to that end. Action means that the means and the end are together in it. That's the difference between action and activity.

Vinod Bharti, activity will become useless, but then action arises and action has a totally different dimension. You act for the sheer joy of acting. For example, I am speaking to you -- it is not activity, hence I am not concerned with the result at all. It is a pure act. I enjoy communicating with you, I enjoy communing with you. I am grateful to you that you allow me. If you don't allow me, I will have to talk to the trees or to the rocks, or I will have to talk to myself! I am obliged to you; you need not be obliged to me. It is a pure act. There is something in me that wants to relate. There is no goal orientation -- I am not expecting anything from you. If something happens, good; if nothing happens, even better! If you become enlightened, good; if you don't become enlightened, far out! --

for the simple reason that if you all become enlightened, who am I going to talk to? So please, delay your enlightenment as long as you can -- this much of a favor you have to do for me! It is a simple act. No motive, no future in it -- just the present.

Hence I am not trying to create a system of thought -- I cannot, because to create a system of thought you have to be motivated. Then you have to link everything in a certain logical order. I can enjoy fragments.

When P. D. Ouspensky wrote his first book on Gurdjieff, he gave it the title IN SEARCH

OF THE MIRACULOUS. He was a man of a philosophic bent, a great mathematician, logician and philosopher. When he showed the book to George Gurdjieff, his master, Gurdjieff just looked here and there for a few minutes and then he said, "Give it a subtitle too: FRAGMENTS OF A TEACHING."

He was a little puzzled, because he had tried to make a whole system and Gurdjieff was suggesting an extra title. "The main title, IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS,"

Gurdjieff said, "is okay, but it needs the subtitle, FRAGMENTS OF A TEACHING -- in fact, FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING."

Ouspensky asked, "Why?"

Gurdjieff said, "Because I cannot create a system of thought -- these are all fragments."

And you can see it happening here. You can collect all my thoughts, but they will be only fragments -- fragments but not a system. To create a system, you need to be goal oriented. You have to follow a certain structure, and you have to go on like an arrow towards a target.

That is not possible either for a man like me or Gurdjieff. We cannot follow any goal.

Our every act is complete in itself, entire in itself. It has no relationship with the past and no relationship with the future. It is total. If I die this very moment, there will be no desire in me even to have completed the sentence.

Action is an end unto itself; it has no utility. When the mind is seen to be impotent, the mind disappears. In that very seeing, the mind disappears. And, of course, with it all utilitarian activities will also disappear, because mind is the cause of goal orientation. It contains all your motives. It contains your past and the future; it does not contain the present at all. And when there is no mind, all that is left is pure present. You act moment to moment, and each moment is enough unto itself. Hence the beauty of the statements of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, because each statement is in itself perfect, it needs nothing. You can take any statement from anywhere, and you can meditate over it and it will give you the taste of TAO, DHAMMA -- truth.

Buddha used to say again and again that the taste of the sea is the same. You can taste it from anywhere, from any shore -- the taste is the same. This shore or that makes no difference. Each statement of a buddha has the taste of truth. But it is not concerned with utility.…

Vinod Bharti, you are feeling in an intuitive way that something is coming closer of which you are afraid: "the dead end." Everybody becomes afraid, and out of fear the question has arisen. You ask, "I have come to a dead end. I see the impotence of the mind and feel all action useless. Does the mind totally die only in SAMADHI?"

Just the reverse is the case: when the mind dies totally, what is left is samadhi. So I cannot say that the mind dies totally only in samadhi; that will be putting things upside down. The mind dies first, and then what is left is called samadhi. That state of no-mind is called samadhi.

But the death of the mind frightens, scares one. That's what you are feeling: the shadow of death. It is not YOUR death, it is the death of the mind which is not you. But for many lives we have lived identified with the mind, so when the death of the mind comes closer it feels as if WE are going to die. It is not a dead end for YOU, it is certainly a dead end for the mind. That too has not come yet, but the mind is freaking out, because once it has come, then there is no way out for the mind. If it can escape just before the dead end, then there is a possibility of surviving...hence the question.

You say: "Please say something about mind and action in witnessing." In witnessing, mind remains only as a biocomputer, a mechanism, but separate from you; you are no longer identified with it. When you want any memory you can use the mind just as you can put on your tape recorder. Mind is REALLY a tape recorder. But it is not continuously on, not twenty-four hours on. When needed, the witness, the man of meditation, the man of awareness, is capable of putting the mind on or off. He puts it on when there is some need.

If I am talking to you, I have to put the mind on; otherwise language will not be possible.

No-mind is silent, there is no language; only mind can supply the language. I have to use the mind to relate with your mind; that's the only way to relate with your mind, so I put it on.

When I go back and sit in the car, I put it off. Before Heeren turns the ignition on, I turn MY ignition off! In my room I don't need my mind. When my secretary comes with the letters, or with some work, I say to her, "Hello!" And inside I say, "Hello, mind. My secretary has come!" Otherwise there is no need for the mind.

When you are witnessing, the mind remains, but not constantly working. Your identity is broken. You are the watcher; the mind is the watched. It is a beautiful mechanism, one of the most beautiful mechanisms that nature has given to you. So you can use it when needed for factual memory -- for phone numbers, for addresses, for names, for faces.… It is a good tool, but that's all it is. It need not sit upon you continuously twenty-four hours a day. Even while you are sleeping, it is sitting on your chest torturing you, giving you nightmares. All kinds of relevant and irrelevant thoughts go on and on.

It does two harms. One: you lose your purity of witnessing, you don't remain a mirror.

Your mirror becomes so covered with the dust of thoughts that you start becoming closed to existence, you cannot reflect existence. The full moon is there, but your mirror does not reflect it. How many people are there who see the full moon? Even if they see it, they don't SEE -- their seeing is not of any value. They don't rejoice, they don't dance. How many people are there who see the flowers? Just now the birds are singing, but how many people are there who are aware of the birds and the wind passing through the trees?

When the mind is no longer hovering over you continuously, you become aware of infinite beauty, of truth, of the celebration that goes on and on in existence. But the mind is there, put aside -- you can put it on when needed.

And when activity ceases, action is born. Action means response; activity means reaction.

When you are in action, it means the mind is put aside and your consciousness is in a direct contact with existence; hence the response is immediate. Then whatsoever you do is not ready-made. It is not a ready-made answer given by the mind; you are responding to the reality as it is. Then there is beauty, because your action is true to the situation.

But millions of people in the world are simply living through ready-made

answers. They are already carrying the answer; they don't listen, they don't see the situation confronting them. They are more interested in the answer that they are carrying within themselves than in the question itself, and they go on living their answer again and again. That's why their life becomes a boredom, a repetitive boredom, a drag. It is no longer a dance, it cannot be a dance.

Action is a dance; activity is a drag. Activity is always untrue to the situation; action is always true to the situation. And activity is always inadequate because it carries an answer from the past, and life goes on changing every moment, so whatsoever you bring from the past is never adequate, it always falls short. So whatsoever you do, there is frustration; you feel that you have not been able to cope with reality. You always feel something is missing, you always feel your reaction was not exactly as it should have been. And the reason is that you have simply repeated, parrot-like, a ready-made answer, cheap but untrue -- untrue because the situation is new.

Vinod Bharti, the mind will be there but with a new status, with a new functioning. It will be under your control: you will be the master, not the mind. You will use it when it is needed; you will not use it when it is not needed. It cannot insist that you have to listen to it, that you have to go on listening to it. Even if you are sleeping, it goes on knocking on your doors; it does not allow you even to have a beautiful sleep.

The second loss is that because the mind is working twenty-four hours a day, from the cradle to the grave, it becomes mediocre, it becomes stupid. It never has enough energy, it becomes very weak; hence the impotence. If the mind has time to rest, it will again become rejuvenated, it will again be fresh.

The mind of a buddha is always fresh, it is always young. It is always responding with such freshness, with such newness that it seems unbelievable. Your questions may be the same, but the answers of a buddha always have a new nuance to them, a new flavor, a new fragrance. You can go on listening to the buddha for years, and still you will remain enchanted. Even if he repeats something it is never the same -- the context is different, the color is different, the meaning is different.

The mind will be there, more alive, more potent, more restful, younger, fresher -- not your master but a good servant, an obedient servant. Activity will disappear totally; there will arise action.

Action means there is no goal to it. Just as the poets say "poetry for poetry's sake" or "art for art's sake," the same is the situation with the mystic. His action is for action's sake; there is no other goal to it. He enjoys it just like a small child, innocently he enjoys it.

Vinod Bharti, witnessing is the miracle that changes everything in your life. Then the dead end is only a new beginning, a death and a birth -- the death of the old, a total death; a discontinuity with the old, and the arrival of something absolutely unknown, the arrival of the new. It is a resurrection -- a crucifixion and a resurrection. But the resurrection is possible only after crucifixion.

The dead end is going to come, but it is the beginning also. And you will see the beginning immediately, when the dead end has come. If you are just thinking about it, that it is coming, it is coming...the mind can even say, "It has come -- beware, escape!

While there is time, run away!" Then you will miss the other side of it. You will see only the cross, you will miss the resurrection.

You are thinking the mind is impotent. Your thinking is on the right track, but thinking will not help, SEEING is needed. Become a witness so that you can see that the mind is impotent. FEEL that activities are useless, but not action. Action continues. Buddha lived for forty-two years after his enlightenment. Action continued, activities disappeared.

The last question:

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

PLEASE, A FEW JOKES TO TAKE BACK TO ENGLAND.

Veetam, I am perfectly willing, but you'd better go to France or to Italy or to America.

Taking jokes to England is absolutely futile! They will think you are mad. Take something serious for those people, something gloomy like their climate, with no sun shining, all clouds. Take an umbrella with you! And if you don't know how to be really English, meet Proper Sagar -- take a few lessons from him. He is so

proper that even though he has been living here for seven years, I have not been able to destroy his Englishman.

Ordinarily I never feel hopeless, but when I look at Proper Sagar sometimes I suspect that maybe with Sagar I have to feel hopeless. He is such a perfect English gentleman!

Veetam, first look at him...! As for the jokes, a story about Jesus' birth.… After Jesus was born, Joseph went with Mary to visit the in-laws.

"We live in Nazareth now," said Mary. "The baby was born in Bethlehem just a few days ago, in a farmer's barn because we couldn't find a room!"

"You mean with all the livestock?" exclaimed Mary's mother.

"That's right," replied Mary, "and just as he was born, three old men appeared." "Three drunks," explained Joseph.

"And three shepherds," continued Mary. "And they got drunk, too!" explained Joseph.

"You mean, you all got drunk?" said Mary's father, shocked. "That's right!" said Joseph.

Joseph must have been a drunkard. Jesus himself remained a drunkard his whole life.

Those three wise men from the East...and Joseph says, "There were three drunkards, three drunks."

An American and a Frenchman are discussing how many love-making positions there are. After much talk, they decide to enumerate them.

The American begins by saying that there are one hundred positions. In the first one, the woman lies on her back and the man rests on top of her.

"Voila!" cries the Frenchman. "That makes one hundred and one!"

One can always miss the obvious! And the last.…

The Vatican announced that the pope was to visit one of the few Catholic churches in Poland. The local priest arranged for all the strong believers from his community to clean and make the place tidy. The church was blessed to have a special relic from the time of Christ: a bunch of St. Peter's pubic hairs. One of the helpers, thinking it was rubbish, threw it away.

When the priest did a last minute check of the precious relic before the pope's arrival, he was shocked to find that the "holy remembrance" had disappeared. Desperate, he reached beneath his robe and grabbed a few of his own to place in the box.

The priest was guiding the pope through the church. When they arrived at the box containing the relic, he said, "And this, Your Holiness, is our most holy gift from God!"

"Ugh!" groaned the pope when he smelt it. "You can still tell our Peter was a fisherman!"

Enough for today.

Come, Come, Yet Again Come Chapter #2

Chapter title: From the Body to the Soul 28 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code: 8010280

ShortTitle: COME02

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

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Q2 and Q4 on video The first question:

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

JESUS SAYS, "SEEK AND YOU WILL FIND." DOES A DESIRELESS SEARCH

EXIST?

Bernd, Jesus was in a very unfortunate situation: he had learned all the secrets in the East and he was introducing something that had never existed in the Jewish tradition before --

that was his crime. The orthodox, the traditional, the conventional mind could not understand him.

Lao Tzu was far more fortunate -- he had the right people to talk to. Buddha was blessed

-- he could say things in as subtle a way as possible. In that sense Jesus was hoping against hope. It was a great challenge and he took the risk -- he sacrificed his life. But he was misunderstood: it was bound to happen, it was inevitable. Whenever you introduce a new truth, you have to suffer for it, but it is a joy to

suffer in the service of truth.

Jesus could not even say the whole truth -- that would have been too much. So whatsoever statements have come down in the name of Jesus are only half the story; the other half has never been told. Jesus could not say it because of the Jews he was surrounded with, and Christians have been clinging to those half- truths for two thousand years.

For example, this statement is only a half-truth: "Seek and ye shall find." The other half, which has been said by Lao Tzu, is far more important; without it the first half becomes not only meaningless but dangerous. Lao Tzu says, "Do not seek and you will find. Do not seek and you have found it already." Both statements will look contradictory to each other; they are not.

The beginning of the pilgrimage starts with searching, seeking, inquiring; there is no other way to begin. Unless you inquire what is the meaning of life, unless you go in search of the essential core of existence, you will never move, you will not even take the first step. Hence, the search has to begin. But if you continue searching forever and ever, if your search never comes to an end, you will remain in the mind. It is the mind which searches.

Search is also a subtle desire. Even the inquiry into knowing is ambitious. The very desire to achieve something -- money, power, prestige, meditation, God, whatsoever it is, any desire, any ambition -- leads you into the future; it distracts you from the present.

And the present is the only reality, the only truth there is.

The person who never begins the search will remain unconscious; the person who always remains in the search will go crazy. The search has to begin so that you become a little more alert, a little more observant, vigilant, aware. And then the search has to be dropped so that you become silent, so that the mind disappears, so that the future evaporates and you are simply herenow, neither seeking nor searching. In that stillness of no-search, truth is found.

And Lao Tzu is right when he says, "Seek and ye shall miss. Seek not and find immediately." But his statement is the second part of the journey. Jesus was speaking to the beginners; he is like a primary school teacher. Lao Tzu is talking to the adepts, to those who have come a long way; he is talking to the initiates. He is talking to people who can understand the joy of not searching, the stillness,

the tranquility, the calmness of simply being -- no ambition, no desire, no future, no time, no mind.

Bernd, Jesus' statement is only half of the truth, and the beginning half. It is good for those who have not started the journey. It is meaningless, and not only that but harmful, for those who have started the journey and who are coming to realize the utter futility of all search.

The truth is within you, and every search means going out, going somewhere else, leaving your home. When you drop searching you will come back home naturally, spontaneously; you will settle at the very core of your being.

You also ask, "Does a desireless search exist?"

No. All search is a manifestation of desire. But there is something like a state of consciousness which can be called non-searching, non-seeking, a state of total rest. In that total rest is samadhi. In that absolute tranquility is realization.

Sylvia Moses has asked a similar question.… She says, "For many years I have been wondering what the difference is between spirituality and religiousness. Until now I have been unsuccessful in obtaining an answer. Can you tell me?"

Sylvia, the statement of Jesus, "Seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given to you, knock and the doors shall be opened unto you," contains religiousness. Lao Tzu's statement: "Seek not and find immediately," or Rabiya al-Adabiya's statement to Hassan.…

Hassan was a Sufi seeker; Rabiya was a Sufi master. Every day Rabiya used to pass through the marketplace, and she would see Hassan kneeling down in front of the mosque and praying to God with raised hands: "My Lord, how long have I to ask you? Open thy doors so that I can enter!"

Rabiya had heard this prayer thousands of times. One day she came up to Hassan, shook him out of his prayer and shouted at him, "Stop all this nonsense. The doors are always open! Why don't you enter?"

And it was a great revelation to Hassan. Suddenly he realized what he had been asking:

"Lord, open thy doors so that I can enter!" And Rabiya was saying, "The doors

are always open, God has never closed them. If you want to enter, enter, but don't go on playing with this stupid prayer again and again. Don't waste your time and don't waste his time! If you want to enter, enter; otherwise go home! I don't want to see you sitting here in front of the mosque again!"

Hassan was shocked, bewildered. But it was the right moment, because when a person like Rabiya says something to somebody it is always at the right moment

-- when the person is ready to understand. He understood, he followed Rabiya. He touched her feet and thanked her, and told her, "You are right. I was just being a fool! I wasted my life!"

Rabiya said, "Stop! Don't talk nonsense again! It has not been a wastage. If you had not prayed all these years here you would not have understood me. It has helped. It has not helped God to open the doors because the doors are open, but it has helped you to understand my statement that the doors are open for you to enter. I cannot say this thing to anybody else in this town; only you were ripe. The spring has come only to you, that's why the flower has blossomed."

Sylvia, religiousness means the circumference, and spirituality means the center.

Religiousness has something of spirituality, but only something -- a vague radiation, something like a reflection in the lake of the starry night, of the full moon. Spirituality is the real thing; religiousness is just a by-product.

And one of the greatest misfortunes that has happened to humanity is that people are being told to be religious not spiritual. Hence they start decorating their circumference, they cultivate character. Character is your circumference. By painting your circumference, the center is not changed. But if you change the center, the circumference automatically goes through a transformation.

Change the center -- that is spirituality. Spirituality is an inner revolution. It certainly affects your behavior, but only as a by-product. Because you are more alert, more aware, so naturally your action is different, your behavior has a different quality, a different flavor, a different beauty. But vice versa does not.… If your body is healthy then your lips are red, but you can paint them with lipstick and they will look red -- and ugly. A woman with lipstick is the ugliest woman possible. I sometimes wonder who she is trying to deceive! Her whole face is saying something else, her whole body is saying something else, and her lips are so red Such redness does not happen naturally; they are painted.

But there are fools in the world -- she will find some fool to kiss those painted lips too!

I cannot believe it! -- just try tasting lipstick and you will understand what I mean when I say I cannot believe it! And layers and layers of lipstick, old, rotten!

People are living with painted faces, wearing masks. These people are called religious.

Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas -- these are religious people. Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Krishna, Lao Tzu -- these people are spiritual.

Spirituality belongs to your essential being, and religiousness only to the outermost: actions, behavior, morality. Religiousness is formal; going to the church every Sunday is a social affair. The church is nothing but a kind of club, a Rotary Club, a Lions Club --

and there are many clubs. The church is also a club, but with religious pretensions.

The spiritual person belongs to no creed, to no dogma. He cannot belong to any church, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan...it is impossible for him to belong to any.

Spirituality is one; religions are many.

My insistence here is on inner transformation.

I don't teach you religion, I teach you spirituality.

I can understand, Sylvia, why you were unable to find any answer. You must have been asking the religious people -- the Christians, the bishops, the popes, the priests, or the rabbis. They will give you answers because they are supposed to know. They know nothing; they are just supposed to know.

"Rabbi," asked Little Saul one day, "why do coachmen have brown, white, red or black beards, but never green ones?"

"I have to ponder on this," replied the rabbi.

"Rabbi," asked Little Saul again, "why do you always chain the horse with its tail towards the carriage instead of its head?"

"I have to think about this," replied the rabbi.

Next day the rabbi saw Little Saul and told him, "I have found the solution to both your questions: if the beard of a coachman were green and you put the horse with its head towards the carriage, the horse might think the beard was grass and eat it!"

The rabbis, the priests, the bishops -- they are supposed to know everything. You can ask any question, sensible or not so sensible, making some sense or making no sense at all, but they will answer. It is their business to answer all kinds of stupid questions.

You must have been asking these people, Sylvia, that's why you have not been successful in obtaining an answer. They don't have the answer. Only a Jesus can answer your question, or a Buddha or a Kabir or a Nanak -- somebody who knows life from his innermost being, who has come to know the eternal in himself.

Spirituality belongs to the eternal, and religion belongs to the temporal. Religion belongs to people's behavior. It is really what Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others call a conditioning of the behavior. The child is brought up by Christians -

- then he is conditioned in one way, he becomes a Christian. Or he is brought up by Hindus -- he is conditioned in another way, he becomes a Hindu. His conditioning is an imprisonment; he will remain a Hindu. He will think like a Hindu or a Christian his whole life. And those thoughts are not his own, they have been put into his head by others -- by the vested interests, by the establishment, by the state, by the church. They have their own interests: they want to dominate you. And the best way to dominate you is to condition you from the very beginning so deeply that you start thinking that this conditioning is what you are.

You are not a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. You are born as a spiritual being and then you become a victim of your parents, teachers and priests. And of course these parents, these teachers and these priests go on telling you, "Respect your parents, respect your teachers, respect your priests." If you don't respect them you will fall into hell; if you respect them, then all the

pleasures of heaven are yours. This is a simple psychological strategy to make you afraid and to make you greedy. These are the two things people are ruled by: fear and greed. And the spiritual person is one who is free of both.

Just a few days ago I talked about one friend, Ajai Krishna Lakanpal. He wanted to take sannyas one month ago, but he wrote to me saying, "I am ready to take sannyas today if you say so; otherwise, I will feel happier taking sannyas on the twenty-fifth of October, on my birthday. I want to ask my mother. I know she will allow it, she will not prevent me."

So I said, "Okay, ask your mother." And his mother has not prevented him, she has permitted him to take sannyas. Of course she said, "I will not feel very happy, but if you are feeling good about it you can take sannyas."

Now he has written to me: "My mother will not feel happy, that's why I cannot take sannyas." First it was the permission of the mother; now the permission is there but the mother will not feel happy.

Just a few days ago I discussed it, and he became very angry. He wrote an angry letter to me. A few points which he has written are worth considering -- it shows how people are being conditioned. The first thing he was angry about was that I told you he is forty-five years old. He was angry because he is only thirty-six. It does not matter -- forty-five or thirty-six, how does it matter? But the anger is caused by something else; this is just an excuse to find some fault.

I was informed wrongly, so now I am putting it right. Ajai Krishna, you are not forty-five, you are twenty-seven...forty-five plus twenty-seven divided by two, and you will be thirty-six -- exactly thirty-six!

And again he goes on rationalizing. He says, "My old master, Kamu Baba, has said,

`Never hurt the feelings of your parents. If you hurt the feelings of your parents, then no master can ever help you.'"

True. But are you sure, Ajai Krishna, that you are not hurting the feelings of your parents?

He himself writes in his letter: "My father died and I feel guilty because I am an alcoholic and I did not listen to him. I continued to drink too much, and he died.

And now I feel guilty that I was not up to his standards."

Did you not remember your Kamu Baba's statement? Now, do you think, Ajai Krishna, your mother is happy with your alcoholism? Are you not hurting your mother by drinking too much? But that problem does not arise. The father has died, the son feels guilty and still he continues to drink -- maybe a little more so that he does not feel guilty. The mother is old, sixty-eight, or maybe seventy- eight -- because again it is my secretary who has informed me! Is your mother very happy with your alcoholism? Are you not hurting her? Do you think alcohol can help when you hurt your mother? A master cannot help, that is true -

- Kamu Baba must be right. But can alcohol help?

And not only that, he quotes the KORAN. He says, "In the KORAN it is said,

`Don't hurt your parents. To be surrendered to your parents, to sit at their feet, is to be in paradise.'"

And do you think, Ajai Krishna, that the KORAN says to go on drinking as much as you want? The KORAN also says that if you drink you will fall into hell! So you choose only that part of the Koran which helps you to do what you want to do.

He also quotes Jewish scriptures, that they too say to respect your parents. But they are all against alcohol. If you really respect your mother, then give one proof: stop drinking.

If you really want to make her happy, stop drinking. That will be proof; otherwise this is sheer playing with words, rationalization. Neither are you interested in Kamu Baba, nor are you interested in your father, nor are you interested in your mother. Your whole interest is: you are afraid of sannyas.

And the last thing which he says in his letter is: "It is not true that I am afraid of sannyas.

It is because of compassion for my mother." And by being an alcoholic you are being very compassionate to your mother...?

But all the religions down the ages have been teaching you to respect your parents. Why?

Why do the religions teach that? It is a subtle strategy of exploitation. Your

religion has been given to you by your parents, and if you go against your religion, they will be hurt.

If a Hindu declares, "I am simply a human being, no longer a Hindu," the parents will be hurt. So the parents have also taught him to respect them and believe in whatsoever they have said -- they cannot be wrong. As if your parents are enlightened people! As if your parents know what they are doing! Their parents did the same thing to them, they have done it to you, and you will do it to your children. This is how diseases go on being transferred from one generation to another generation.

Of course the priests will say, "Respect your parents," because there is a conspiracy. The conspiracy is that all their interests are involved together in keeping hold of you.

To be my sannyasin means to be a rebel. I am not saying to hurt the feelings of your parents, I am saying to be yourself. Be lovingly yourself, be respectfully yourself. There is no need to go out of your way to hurt your parents, but if they don't allow you to be yourself then it is their responsibility. If they feel hurt, that is their responsibility, not yours. Don't harm them, but don't harm yourself either, because your first responsibility is towards your own self; everything else is secondary.

But man's mind is very cunning: he will hide his cowardice in the beautiful word "compassion"; he will rationalize everything.

Sylvia, your religions are nothing but the rationalizations of fear, of greed. They are conspiracies against you by the establishment, by the people who are ruling you politically, religiously, philosophically, in every way -- by the people who have reduced humanity to a great concentration camp.

And you must have asked these people, "What is the difference between spirituality and religiousness?" They cannot say -- they don't know themselves.

Spirituality is rebellion; religiousness is orthodoxy. Spirituality is individuality; religiousness is just remaining part of the crowd psychology. Religiousness keeps you a sheep, and spirituality is a lion's roar.

The second question:

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD THAT YOUR SANNYASINS CELEBRATE DEATH.

Paul, you have heard rightly! My sannyasins celebrate everything. Celebration is the foundation of my sannyas -- not renunciation but rejoicing; rejoicing in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.

The old religions have taught you to renounce life. They are all life negative; their whole approach is pessimistic. They are all against life and its joys. To me, life and God are synonymous. In fact, life is a far better word than God itself, because God is only a philosophical term, while life is real, existential. The word "God" exists only in scriptures; it is a word, a mere word. Life is within you and without you -- in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. This whole existence is a dance of life.

I teach love for life.

I teach the art of living your life totally, of being drunk with the divine THROUGH life. I am not an escapist. All your old religions have been teaching you escapism -- they were all in a certain sense hip. The word "hippie" has to be understood. It simply means one who escapes from the battle of life, who shows his hips...! All your old religions are hippie! They have shown their hips. They could not accept the challenge of life, they could not confront and encounter life. They were cowards; they escaped to the mountains, to the monasteries.

But even if you escape to the mountains and to the monasteries, how can you leave yourself behind? You are part of life. Life pulsates in your blood, life breathes in you, life is your very being! Where can you escape? And all those efforts to escape, considered correctly, are suicidal. Your monks, your nuns, your mahatmas, your so-called saints, were all suicidal people; they were trying gradual suicide. Not only were they suicidal, they were cowards too -- cowards because they could not even commit suicide in a single blow. They were committing suicide gradually, in installments; by and by, slowly they were dying. And we have respected these unhealthy people, these unwholesome people, these insane people. They were against God because they were against life.

I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated, everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. To me all is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to SAMADHI -- everything is divine!

An old neo-sannyasin told an actor playing Hamlet that he himself had once played the part.

"What was your interpretation of the role?" asked the actor. "Did Hamlet really make love to Ophelia?"

"I don't know if Hamlet did," replied the sannyasin, "but I certainly did!"

Celebration has to be total, only then can you be multidimensionally rich. And to be multidimensionally rich is the only thing we can offer to God.

If there is a God, and someday you have to face him, he will ask you only one question:

"Have you lived your life totally or not?" -- because this opportunity is given to you to live, not to renounce.

Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death too, because to me death is not the end of life but the very crescendo of life, the very climax. It is the ultimate of life. If you have lived rightly, if you have lived moment to moment totally, if you have squeezed out the whole juice of life, your death will be the ultimate orgasm.

The sexual orgasm is nothing compared to the orgasm that death brings, but it brings it only to the person who knows the art of being total. The sexual orgasm is a very faint thing compared to the orgasm that death brings. What happens in sexual orgasm? For a moment you forget that you are a body, for a moment two lovers become merged into one unity, into one organic union. For a moment they are not separate entities; they have melted into each other like two clouds which have become one.

But it is only for a single moment, then they are again separate. Hence all sexual orgasms bring in their wake a kind of depression, because you fall from the height. You reached a crescendo, and for only a fragment of a moment you remained on the peak and then the peak disappeared. And when you fall from

that height, you fall into the depth of depression.

This is one of the contradictions of sex: it gives you the greatest pleasure and also the greatest agony. It gives you ecstasy and agony -- both. And each time you reach an orgasmic state, you know that soon it will disappear. Then there is disillusionment, disappointment.

Death gives you the ultimate in orgasmic joy: the body is left behind forever and your being becomes one with the whole. It is immeasurable. If to become one with a single person gives you so much joy, just think how much joy will happen in becoming one with the infinite! But it does not happen to everybody who dies, because the people who have not lived rightly cannot die rightly either. The people who have lived in deep unconsciousness will die in deep unconsciousness. Death will give you only that which you have lived all your life; it is the essence of your whole life.

If your life was of meditativeness, awareness, witnessing, then you will be able to witness death too. If your whole life you remained cool, centered in different situations, death will give you the ultimate challenge, the ultimate test. And if you can remain centered, calm and cool and watching, then you will not die an unconscious death, your death will bring you to the ultimate peak of consciousness. And then, certainly, it HAS to be celebrated.

So whenever one of my sannyasins dies, we celebrate, we dance, we sing. We give him a good farewell.

A midget had died and left a widow. Friends came to pay their condolences and look at the body lying in an upstairs room of the house. After one friend came down he was asked by the widow whether he had shut the door of the room where the body lay.

"No," said the visitor, "I didn't think it was necessary."

"Then I'd better go upstairs and shut it," replied the widow. "The cat has had him downstairs twice already. You know, my cat is a neo-sannyasin and he wants to celebrate the occasion!"

Little Pierino goes camping with his parents. A little while after, at the end of a day doing many things, they bed down for the evening. Pierino cries, "Mummy, I can't sleep. There is a dead ant on my belly!"

"Shhh, Pierino," says his mother, "be a good boy, just go to sleep -- it is nothing to worry about."

After a few minutes Pierino's voice is heard again, "Mummy, Mummy, I can't go to sleep

-- I've got a dead ant on my belly!"

"Pierino," scolds his mother, "come on now, don't tell me that a small dead ant stops you from sleeping!"

"Well," replies Pierino, "it is not the dead ant really, it is all his orange sannyasin friends that have come to celebrate his death!"

Yes, Paul, my sannyasins celebrate death because they celebrate life. And death is not against life; it does not end life, it only brings life to a beautiful peak. Life continues even after death. It was there before birth, it is going to continue after death. Life is not confined to the small space that exists between birth and death; on the contrary, births and deaths are small episodes in the eternity of life.

We celebrate everything. Celebration is our way to receive all the gifts from God. Life is his gift, death is his gift; the body is his gift, the soul is his gift. We celebrate everything.

We love the body, we love the soul. We are materialist spiritualists. Nothing like this has ever happened in the world. This is a new experiment, a new beginning, and it has a great future.

In the past there have been materialists who denied the soul, and there have been spiritualists who denied the body. Both were agreed on one point: that only one can be accepted, either the body or the soul. They were either/or people. They were not ready to accept the whole as it is; they were choosers.

My sannyasins live in choiceless awareness. We are not choosers; we simply accept whatsoever is the case. The materialists -- the Charvakas in India and the Epicureans in Greece -- denied the soul. They said, "There is no soul. The soul is just imagination. The soul is illusion." And the spiritualists -- Shankaracharya in India and Berkeley in Europe -

- these people said that matter is illusory, maya. The body does not exist really, it

is only your imagination. It is a dream, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of; you are a soul. But both are agreeing on one point: that they cannot accept reality as it is, they have to choose.

It is as if one electrician chooses the positive pole and another electrician chooses the negative pole, and each denies the other pole. There will be no electricity, no light in the world.

That's what has happened: the spiritualist has not been able to transform the world, the materialist has failed also -- because the world exists with polar opposites. Without polarity there is no world at all. The day is needed as much as the night; the body is needed as much as the soul; the world is needed as much as God. There can be no circumference without a center and there can be no center without a circumference. This is a simple fact.

My sannyas is the acceptance of that which is. We are not choosers. Who are we to choose? And what difference is our choice going to make? You can choose whatsoever you like, but whatsoever you don't like is going to remain there. Just by not choosing it, it is not going to disappear. And because you have not chosen it, you will remain half, lopsided.

The East has remained lopsided because of so-called spirituality. It has remained poor, unscientific -- without any technology, without industry. It has become lousy, lazy, lethargic; it has lost all joy in existence because "this is all a dream, why bother about it?"

It is hungry, ill, poor, but "this is all illusion. You are simply dreaming that you are poor, you are not really poor. You are simply dreaming that you are starving, you are not starving."

And the West has chosen materialism, so there is great technology, beautiful houses, better roads, better cars, better airplanes, but man is very empty and meaningless.

Without spirituality there is no center; man falls apart. The Western man is half; the Eastern man is half.

My effort here is to create the whole man. To me the whole man is the only holy man.

The East and the West have to meet; they have to become complementaries, not antagonists. But this is possible only if we change the whole philosophical background.

Hence I teach a very contradictory philosophy. Spiritual materialism is the name that I give to my philosophy.

I want you to be materialists and spiritualists simultaneously, in a balanced way. I would love society to have all the facilities, all the comforts and conveniences that science and technology can provide, and I would also love people to have a great awareness inside them so that they can enjoy whatsoever science provides. I would like everybody to be a buddha, but at the same time I would also like the world to become more and more comfortable, more and more loving, more and more beautiful.

We can transform this world into a paradise, but then we have to stop choosing. We have simply to accept the whole as it is, with all its contradictions. Those contradictions are contradictions only because of our logical obsession; otherwise they are complementaries. Life and death -- both are beautiful.

The last question:

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN A WOMAN SAYS SHE IS AFRAID OF A MAN?

Anand Prageet, if you had asked me what it means when a man says that he is afraid of a woman, I would have answered you very accurately. But your question is such that it is almost unanswerable. It is very difficult to say what it means when a woman says she is afraid of a man -- the woman says one thing and means another thing! She may simply be making you feel at ease, Prageet -- "Don't be afraid, I myself am afraid of you!" She must see that you are trembling! She must be aware of your fear.

Every man is afraid of the woman -- he has to be. From the very beginning he is in the hands of a woman, the mother, and the fear is created from those very early days. Your first impression of a woman is that of a mother, and the mother

has made you immensely afraid. And you have seen that not only were you afraid, but your father was also afraid of your mother. Outside the house he was like a lion, and whenever he came home he started wagging his tail!

You have seen this. Children are very perceptive; they go on looking at what is happening. They understand perfectly well who is really the master of the house. They are afraid of the mother, the father is afraid of the mother, everybody seems to be afraid of the mother, and naturally they become accustomed to the fear.

And then man is capable of tackling any problem intellectually. He is afraid of the woman because her ways of tackling a problem are very intuitive, instinctive. No woman is intellectual -- intelligent of course, but not intellectual. Man's intelligence is of one kind, and hers, the woman's intelligence, is of a totally different kind. Man's intelligence is the essence of his intellect, and woman's intelligence arises out of her intuitiveness.

There is no meeting ground -- there is no possibility of it. They are polar opposites, that's why they are attracted to each other. Because they cannot understand each other there is mystery between them; that mystery is of great appeal.

A frustrated man was staring hopelessly down the platform at the departing train. "If you hadn't taken so long getting ready," he accused his wife, "we would have caught it."

"Yes," she replied, "and if you hadn't hurried me we wouldn't have so long to wait for the next one!"

"Is this supposed to be art? Why on earth did they hang this picture here?" one woman asked another in an art gallery.

"Maybe they couldn't find the painter," the other replied. A beautiful blonde filled in the job application.

The personnel director looked it over, then said, "Miss Johnson, under Èxperience' could you be a little more specific than just Òh, boy!'?"

A girl in a whorehouse of a red-light district told the madam one day that she

was quitting.

"You can't do that," protested the madam, "you're the best girl I've got. Why, I've seen you go upstairs thirty and more times a night."

"That's right," the girl agreed. "That's why I'm quitting. My feet are killing me, and it's on account of those damn stairs!"

It is very difficult for me, Prageet, to answer your question. You will have to ask your woman yourself.

Schumann, the postman, was retiring. On his last day, as usual, he delivered to Mrs. Katz, who invited him in for a fine breakfast.

When he finished and was about to leave, she beckoned him into the bedroom where they made love for an hour. When he was getting ready to leave, she handed him an envelope with a dollar bill in it.

Schumann was overwhelmed. "Look, Mrs. Katz," he said finally, "I've been delivering your mail for the past twenty years and you have never so much as offered me a cup of coffee. So why today did all this happen?"

"Well," she said, "I told my husband Sol that you were retiring today and he said,

`Fuck him! Give him a buck!' -- the breakfast was my idea!" Enough for today.

Come, Come, Yet Again Come Chapter #3

Chapter title: A Flute on the Lips of God 29 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall Archive

code: 8010290

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COME03

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mins

The first question:

BELOVED OSHO,

THIS POEM IS BY ROBERT GRAVES: THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING;

DEAR HEART, YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING, WHICH LEAVES YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING -- THOUGH THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING MIGHT JUDGE IT LEFT YOU NOTHING.

GIVING YOU EVERYTHING,

I TOO, WHO ONCE HAD NOTHING,

AM LEFT WITH MORE THAN EVERYTHING AS GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH NOTHING

WHO NEED, IF NOT OUR EVERYTHING, AT LEAST A LOVING SOMETHING.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF YOUR INFINITE SPRING OF

GIVING?

Chandrikanta Bharti, the source is always the same. We are just like rays of the same sun.

The source of existence is what we call God; it is better to call it the ultimate source.

From there everything comes, and to there everything returns.

But the man who starts thinking himself separate from the source is bound to become miserly. Not knowing that he is part of the source, he becomes very small, afraid to give.

Then his mathematics is: if you give you will have less; if you go on giving, one day you will be a beggar.

Not knowing about the infinite source is the cause of our miserliness. And to be a miser is to be in misery, because the person who cannot give becomes incapable of receiving. The person who cannot give becomes closed -- he is afraid to give. He has to be very cautious to keep his windows and doors closed, tightly closed, so nothing escapes from him. But these are the same doors from where things come. If you keep your doors closed, the sunrays will not reach you, the wind will not come to you; you will not be able to see the stars and the flowers, and the fragrance will not float into your being. The miserly person is bound to be in misery -- he is cut off. He lives as if he were a tree without roots, ungrounded, uprooted. His life is nothing but a process of slow dying; he does not know anything of abundant life.

Jesus says to his disciples, "Come, follow me and I will give you abundant life." What does he mean by abundant life? He simply means that if your ego can be

surrendered, if you can drop the idea of being separate from existence, in that very dropping you become open -- open to give, open to receive. And the ultimate miracle is: the more you give, the more you receive; the more you give, the more you become worthy of receiving.

It is like a well. You can lock up the well, you can cover it up in fear -- maybe in the coming year there are not going to be any rains. It is better, advisable, to preserve the water in your well, to prevent your neighbors, to prevent everybody from drinking or taking water from your well. You can keep the well closed, but when the time of need arises you will be surprised: the well water will no longer be worth drinking, it will have become poisoned. And, moreover, the well will have lost its springs.

If you go on drawing water from the well, the springs go on feeding it. The more you draw the water, the bigger the springs which go on opening up. Your well is just a small window in the ocean, a faraway window; it is connected with the ocean. If you create a vacuum in the well, if you go on emptying it, then the waters will be rushing in from all sides to fill it up. Nature abhors a vacuum -- physically, spiritually, on every dimension and plane.

Be empty, and you will be surprised: the emptier you are, the more full you will be.

Hence, by giving you don't have less; by giving you have more. By giving you don't become a beggar; by giving you become an emperor.

Gautam the Buddha came to visit Vaishali, one of the big, beautiful capitals of those days. The king of Vaishali was very egoistic: he was not willing to go to receive Buddha in his capital.

His chief minister was an old man his father's age. He had looked after the king's affairs for his whole life since he was just a child, because when the king was a child his father had died. He was almost like a father to him, and the king had great respect for the old man. The old man said, "If you don't go to receive Buddha, then take my resignation!"

The king was puzzled, he could not believe it. Why this insistence? He said, "Why should a king go to receive a beggar?"

The old man laughed and he said, "It is just the opposite! You are the beggar and

he is the king, and the beggar has to go to receive the king. He is the king because he has given; he is the king because he goes on giving. The more he has given the more he has. Either see the point or here is my resignation, because I cannot serve a fool!"

The king understood the point. He went, he fell at the feet of Buddha and he said,

"Excuse me, forgive me! I had always thought that you were just a beggar; now I can see that I am a beggar because I go on clinging to whatsoever small things I have got. By not clinging you have declared your real power, your mastery."

Clinging shows that you are not really the master but a slave.

The king asked Buddha, "Bless me, so that one day I can also become an emperor like you."

This poem by Robert Graves is beautiful. Poets come far closer to the truth than the philosophers, the theologians, the priests, the scholars, the so-called learned people. Poets are a little bit crazy; that's why they can have a few glimpses of the beyond. They are not logical; hence they can comprehend something which is bigger than logic. Theologians, philosophers, scholars -- they are just fools hiding their foolishness. And it is because of these so-called learned people that the world has become so poor physically, spiritually, in every way.

Just the other day I was reading a news item from Pakistan. It says that great scholars of morality are nowadays busy banishing the word ISHQ, love, from prose and poetry prescribed for university students in Pakistan.

Ishq is far more significant than the word "love." Love is only one of the dimensions of ishq. "Love" means of the world. "Ishq" has two aspects: either it can be an ordinary love, the love between a man and a woman, or it can be a love between man and existence.

Banishing the word, the very word "ishq," from all prose and poetry prescribed for the university courses is such a foolish idea. And these are the great scholars of morality! I was puzzled because if you banish the word "ishq," then particularly in the language that is spoken in Pakistan -- that is the official language of Pakistan, Urdu -- there will not be anything left at all, because the whole of Urdu poetry and prose is centered on the word

"ishq." All the great poets, from Mir and Ghalib to Iqbal, will have to be banished. In fact, no other language of the world has such beautiful poetry as Urdu. Urdu is tremendously expressive. In just two small lines, Urdu can say more than any other language can manage to say in a whole page. It is very telegraphic, and it is full of love.

Banish the word "love" and you banish all the great poets, all the great mystics. You will have to banish all the Sufis because they talk about love. And they are not only banishing poetry and prose devoted to love, even the word love, "ishq," has to be removed -- even the mention of the word!

These are the fools who have been dominating humanity for centuries. They would like to destroy even the possibility of love. There is a certain logic in it, because humanity up to now has existed in a very insane way. It has continuously been preparing for war.

There are only two periods in history: either people are fighting -- that is war time, hot war -- or people are preparing for the war that is going to happen sooner or later. You can call it peace time, but it is not peace time at all; it is only a gap between two wars. It is needed because unless you prepare, how are you going to fight? It is cold war.

The whole of human history up to now can be divided into two periods: hot war and cold war. And because man has been continuously fighting, destroying, murdering, there is no possibility of growing roses of love. We have to make factories for war; we have to create soldiers, not lovers.

My sannyasins are lovers, not soldiers. They herald a new beginning.

To me, love is synonymous with God.

These words of Graves are tremendously significant:

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING

ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING.…

They look a little crazy because they are illogical, they are unmathematical -- but

they are absolutely true. They transcend ordinary economics and its laws; they indicate a meta-economics.

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING

ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING.…

Beware! While the time is there, give, give as much as you can, give whatsoever you can.

Sing a song, share a joke, dance! Give whatsoever you can give. It costs you nothing, but it will bring you more and more joys.

Existence goes on repaying you tremendously. Whatsoever you give to existence, it returns a thousandfold; it comes back to you. You give one flower, and a thousand flowers shower on you. Don't be clingers. If you really want to be rich, if you want to have an enriched inner world, then learn the art of giving.

THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING ARE LEFT WITH LESS THAN NOTHING;

DEAR HEART, YOU GIVE ME EVERYTHING, WHICH LEAVES YOU MORE THAN EVERYTHING -- THOUGH THOSE WHO DARE GIVE NOTHING MIGHT JUDGE IT LEFT YOU NOTHING.

GIVING YOU EVERYTHING,

I TOO, WHO ONCE HAD NOTHING,

AM LEFT WITH MORE THAN EVERYTHING AS GIFTS FOR THOSE WITH NOTHING WHO NEED, IF NOT OUR EVERYTHING,

AT LEAST A LOVING SOMETHING.

I don't have any other source than you have, but you are not ready to accept that source; it goes against your ego. You want to be an island unto yourself, and that is your misery, that is your poverty. Your soul will remain undernourished. You will not know how beautiful existence is, how blissful every moment can be, what an ecstasy it is just to breathe and to be.

Give, give for giving's sake. Share for sharing's sake.

Don't ask anything in return, because then it becomes a business -- and love is not a business. In fact, there is no need to be worried whether anything returns or not, because the very giving is such an ecstasy that who cares whether anything returns or not? Be obliged to the person who receives anything from you. Don't think that he has to be obliged to you. That is wrong, that is absolutely wrong. That is still clinging to the miser's mind.

You can be as vast as God himself, but your vastness is possible only if you start giving.

And it is not a question of what you give; just a smile or just a gesture of love is enough.

It costs nothing to be loving, to be kind, and still it brings you a great harvest -- thousands of flowers start blossoming in your being.

Chandrikanta Bharti, you ask me, "What is the source of your infinite spring of giving?"

I am not the source, I am not at all, because the more you are, the less is the flow from the source; the less you are, the more the flow from the source.

When YOU are not at all, then you are just a hollow bamboo which becomes a flute on the lips of God. Then the song starts flowing. And to sing the song of God, to allow God to sing a song through you, is the greatest joy of life.

The second question: Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU OFTEN TELL US THAT WE LOST OUR AWARENESS OF OUR BUDDHA NATURE BECAUSE OF CONDITIONING PROCESSES OF EVERY KIND. THIS

FAR, I CAN IMAGINE, BUT IF MANKIND ORIGINALLY HAD THIS AWARENESS, HOW DID WE LOSE IT IN THE BEGINNING? HOW DID

CONDITIONING START ORIGINALLY? AND IF EXISTENCE IS JUST A FLOWING, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT THAT MANY PEOPLE BECOME

ENLIGHTENED? WHY DO YOU MAKE THE EFFORT, OR DON'T YOU MAKE

ANY? AND IS YOUR BEING HERE, AND EVERYTHING, ALSO JUST A FLOWING?

Corry, to know is one thing and to imagine is totally different. Imagination can deceive you, it can go on giving you false coins. But remember: All that glitters is not gold.

Imagination can give you very glittering coins, but they will not be real gold. You will have to know, and my knowing cannot be of any help to you. The moment I share my knowing with you, only imagination will be triggered in you; you will start imagining.

There is no need to ask me why it happened originally; you can go to the origin within yourself and see why it happens. It is not a question of going into the past, going back to Adam and Eve; you have to go within yourself, because it is happening every moment.

You are at the source, at the very origin of things, and still you are conditioned. And if you can watch the process within yourself, you will have known the whole of history.

Then you will be able to understand the story, the biblical story, which is really beautiful and significant, of how Adam and Eve became conditioned.

It was God the Father who started the whole nonsense.…

In the Garden of Eden there were millions of trees, and he pointed out two trees in particular -- the fruits from these trees were not to be eaten. One was the Tree of Knowledge, and the other was the Tree of Immortal Life. My feeling is that if God had not prohibited it, Adam and Eve would never have been able to find those two trees in that tremendously vast garden. But because he pointedly said to them, "Don't eat the fruit from these two trees," naturally they became obsessed. It must have started their fantasies. They must have started dreaming about those two trees. They must have started thinking, "Why has God prohibited us? There must be something in it."

I was a small child and my father told me, "Listen, you are mixing with a few people who smoke cigarettes -- don't ever start smoking!"

I said, "You have started me on it! I have never thought about it; in fact I have always thought how foolish these people are. Rather than breathing the pure air, they waste money and breathe smoke! Taking the smoke in and out looks very stupid!"

Things like that have always looked stupid to me. From my very childhood I have never taken part in any game -- volleyball, football...because I cannot imagine what the point is!

You throw the ball from here to the other side; they throw the ball back to this side. You can have two balls and both go home! What is the point of it? And people are perspiring -

- and not only the players, but the others who have gathered to watch...!

So I told my father, "I was never interested, but now, because you tell me not to smoke I am going to! Why are you preventing me? If there is nothing in it, can't you trust my intelligence? And if YOU can't trust my intelligence, why should I trust your intelligence? It has to be a mutual understanding. You are not trusting my intelligence --

you are telling me not to smoke. If it is foolish I am not going to do it myself; if it is not foolish then nobody can prevent me. And how long can you prevent me? In what ways can you prevent me?"

And he understood the point. He was a rare man in many ways. He brought home a packet of cigarettes, handed it over to me and he said, "You experiment, you be finished with it! I have understood your point."

And I tried and I was finished. Tears started coming to my eyes, I started coughing, and I could not understand why people should do such stupid things and torture themselves.

Since then, whenever I see anybody smoking, I think he must be an ascetic, a great saint doing some penance!

But Adam and Eve were treated by God the Father as every father treats every child. No father trusts the intelligence of the child. And in fact, the child has more intelligence than the father because the father has lived, experienced many things. His mirror has become covered with many experiences, with much knowledge. His clarity is no longer the same as that of the child. The child is utterly perceptive, he can see immediately; there is nothing to hinder him. The father's intelligence is covered with much dust.

But the father on his side feels afraid. He thinks the child is still a child who does not know what to do, what not to do. He may go astray. Out of his concern, he prevents --

and that's how conditioning begins.

The biblical story is significant. It is not an historical story because the world never began in that sense, it has always been there. There is no beginning and no end. The whole idea of beginning and end is absurd; the world is eternal. But the story is significant, and it is repeated in each child's life. It is a psychological story, not historical, of tremendous importance. Every father, every mother is doing the same.

I have come across thousands of parables, but there is no parable comparable to this story. The Father was anxious that Adam and Eve should not become interested in two things: one was the Tree of Knowledge...because the moment you become knowledgeable you lose your intelligence.

That's my whole teaching: unburden yourself of knowledge so that you can again discover the purity of your intelligence. Wisdom is freedom from knowledge. And God wanted Adam to be wise, not knowledgeable. He wanted him to be

intelligent, not an intellectual. Hence he prohibited him: "Don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge."

This is significant; it shows the father's concern, his love, but it also shows that he does not trust the child's own perceptiveness. No father ever trusts, no mother ever trusts, howsoever old the son may be.

Makima's mother, Shunyo, is old. She must be over sixty-five, and HER mother who is ninety goes on writing letters to her: "You are still a fool! What are you doing there?

Come home! Have you gone crazy or something? I have always known that you would do something like this!"

Now, the ninety-year-old mother giving messages to the seventy-year-old daughter...! But one can see the point because the distance is the same -- twenty years' distance. When Shunyo was one year old, the mother must have been twenty-one years old; now she is seventy, and the mother is ninety. When she will be ninety, if the mother is still alive she will be one hundred and ten -- the difference will remain the same! And the mother will always go on thinking in those terms -- that she is a fool, she does not know anything.

Now what is she doing with these orange people and meditating and wearing orange clothes? She has gone crazy! The mother wants to protect her.

The Father was concerned for Adam and Eve, and his concern is significant: "Don't become knowledgeable." It is a tremendously meaningful story, because if you become knowledgeable you will lose your intelligence. Intellectuals have no intelligence at all.

I have come across thousands of intellectuals, the so-called intelligentsia, and they are the most stupid people you can ever come across. You will find farmers, gardeners, carpenters, who are far more intelligent than professors, theologians, scholars. They are full of rubbish! Of course, they have read much and they can repeat all that they have read; they have great information, but information is not wisdom. Information can be collected by a computer, and far more efficiently, but a computer is never wise. I don't think there will come a time when you will come across a computer who has become a buddha! It is not going to happen ever. Yes, a computer can become an Albert Einstein, certainly, there is no doubt about it. And he will function far better than Albert Einstein, because it will be

just a mechanical thing.

Mathematics is mechanical, but love is not mechanical. No computer is going to fall in love, no computer is going to experience beauty, no computer is going to understand truth. Yes, facts it can accumulate.…

God wanted Adam and Eve not to become computers; hence he told them, "Beware of this tree." But his telling them not to eat from this Tree of Knowledge became a temptation.

That's how conditioning begins: with should nots, with all good intentions -- but the ultimate result is harmful. Even God committed the same mistake; he had to commit it if he was to be a father. And he is the supreme father, hence he committed the supreme mistake!

And the poor serpent is unnecessarily dragged into the story. It has nothing to do with the serpent. How can the serpent seduce Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge? God had already done the basic work; he had already triggered their desires for knowledge. The serpent only convinced them about their own suspicions.

The serpent told them something very significant. He told them, "God has prohibited you from eating of this tree because he is afraid if you become knowledgeable you will be just as great as he is. So he wants to eat the fruit of this tree himself and he does not want you to eat from the same tree, so you will remain always inferior and lower."

Now the ego is set on fire! And the logic seems to be very relevant. Adam and Eve are convinced that this must be the cause. Knowledge cannot be a bad thing

-- how can knowledge be bad? God must have been afraid; that's why he has prohibited it.

And the serpent told them, "He has also prohibited you from eating from a second tree, because if you eat from it you will also become immortal just like God. Then there will be no difference between you and God; you will be equal."

Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. They were not given the chance to eat from the other tree. But why had God prohibited them from eating from the other tree? There is also some significance on his side. God wanted them to live in the immediate,

because that is true life -- to live now and here. The moment you start thinking of immortality, you enter into the world of the future, you enter into the world of time. You lose contact with the real moment, you lose your grounding in the now; that's how mind is created.

These are the two ways in which the mind is created. These are the two parents -

- father and mother. They give birth to the mind. One is the desire for the future -

- the desire, the ultimate desire, to become deathless so that the future is absolutely certain. And the other is the desire to accumulate knowledge. These two desires function as father and mother for the mind. The mind is the child of these two desires meeting; the mind is a by-product.

God was basically right. He wanted Adam and Eve to live in the present, because reality is always present. But he was wrong psychologically. To tell them not to eat from the Tree of Immortality made them suspicious, and the suspicion was exploited by the serpent. Of course, they were thrown out before they could eat from the second tree, but since then man has been searching for immortality. And the search still goes on.

Science is still working continuously to find a way to prolong life -- to make it longer and longer and longer, and then ultimately to make life immortal. And now science says that the body has no need to die; maybe they have come very close to the Tree of Knowledge and to the Tree of Immortality. Science says the body can go on renewing itself. If it can renew itself for seventy years, why not seven hundred years? Or if some parts become useless, then they can be replaced.

Sooner or later science is going to replace many of your parts. Then it will be very simple. If something goes wrong, you go to the workshop and your parts can be replaced.

Your heart is not functioning well -- you go to the garage and a plastic heart can be implanted in you. Slowly slowly, all the parts will become plastic, because plastic is the most immortal thing in existence. It goes on living and living. You cannot destroy plastic.

There is no natural process for plastic to dissolve into the earth. That is creating a problem for ecologists, because so many plastic bottles and jugs and toys are gathering under the earth, in the riverbeds, in the ocean. There is a danger that

because plastic is never reabsorbed by the earth like everything else, it creates a hindrance to the natural rhythm and cycle of nature. Sooner or later there will be so much plastic that it will hinder all natural processes. Plastic is very immortal!

But just think of a man who slowly slowly becomes plastic: his head goes cuckoo, it is changed; his heart is not functioning well, it is changed; his hands, his legs...slowly slowly all is changed. Nothing is left of the old man, just the name, the label.

Once I saw Mulla Nasruddin with a very beautiful umbrella, and I asked him, "Nasruddin, when did you purchase it?"

He said, "I have not purchased it, it is very old, twenty years old."

So I said, "It is a miracle -- twenty years old! It looks so fresh and so new! How did you manage that for twenty years?"

He said, "I am absolutely certain it is twenty years old. Of course, it got changed at least two hundred times. Just the other day, when I was coming out of the mosque, it got changed again -- but it is twenty years old."

Man can be changed, and still the label will remain the same. Man is coming closer and closer to discovering the secret of immortality. Scientists say that if we can reprogram the basic cell out of which man grows, then everything is possible. When your mother's and your father's basic cells meet and you are created, many things are determined at that moment. For example, what kind of body you will have, what kind of hair you will have, how long you will live. Those two cells meeting and merging decide it; they are programmed. Their meeting becomes a new program: you will live seventy years, eighty years If

that program can be changed -- for example if they can be told that you will live seven hundred years -- just a little change, in some hormones, in some chemicals, that will do the miracle. And it is very close. My feeling is that within this century we will be able to discover the secret.

Since Adam was thrown out of the garden he has been working, looking, searching, for some way to find the secret of immortality. In the past, alchemists were doing the same --

trying to find the way, some alchemical way, for man to be immortal. And now

science is trying to do the same. The obsession is still there.

You ask me, Corry, "How did conditioning start originally?" It starts with every child, because the parents would like the child to be just a carbon copy of them. Their ego would like the child to represent them -- their philosophy, their religion, their ideology, their politics, their nationality, their race, everything. The child has to be the carrier, the vehicle, the medium of all their ambitions and desires, of all their frustrations, failures.

They are hoping, "We will die but part of us will live in the child" -- so program the child in such a way that "what we have not been able to achieve, he will achieve."

They are trying to enforce their ambitions on the child; that's how conditioning begins.

They are not allowing the child to be himself. No parent ever allows the child to be himself; it has not happened up to now. That's why humanity is living in such misery: because no child is allowed to be himself. How can he be happy? Happiness happens only when you are authentically yourself.

And don't ask me how it happened in the very beginning, because there has been no beginning. Whenever a child is born there is a beginning; otherwise existence has continued forever and forever.

And you also ask, "And if existence is just a flowing, why is it important that many people become enlightened?" That's why: existence is just a flowing, and many people are not flowing.

Only the buddhas know how to flow. The enlightened person knows how to flow, how to be in tune with existence, how to relax, how to let go. The others are fighting, not flowing; they are pushing the river. And you are taught to fight, to compete, to struggle, to achieve, to be ambitious; to be this, to be that, to become a president or a prime minister. You are told from the very beginning until you come back from the university that you have to become this -- and others are deciding it. Nobody is bothered about your intrinsic nature.

It is as if marigolds are being educated in the university and told, "Become roses." They will go berserk! They cannot become roses; that is not possible. At the most they can pretend -- they can pretend that they are roses, they can put up

masks. They will become deceivers, hypocrites, but deep down they will know, "We are marigolds" -- and they will hate that they are marigolds. But that's what they are. They cannot become roses because that is not in their nature, and they cannot allow their marigolds to dance in the sun because that is against their education.

You have created a real problem; now the person will always remain schizophrenic. If he tries to be a rose he will know that he is just a hypocrite. If he tries to be a marigold he will know that he is falling short of the ambitions of his parents, teachers, professors, priests, politicians. He will feel guilty. You will not allow him to rest in any way; either he will feel guilty or he will feel unnatural. In both ways he will remain tense, anxiety ridden, full of anguish. The same energy that might have become a dance, a song, an ecstasy, has become poisoned. It is now only anguish and nothing else, an agony and nothing else.

Enlightenment does not mean any ambition. If it is an ambition, then again you will start fighting for it. Enlightenment simply means being in a state of let-go. Enlightenment simply means undoing what the society has done to you. What your parents have imposed upon you, throw it away; what the society has conditioned you to be, put it aside. Reassert your being. Love yourself and respect yourself, and try to be just yourself.

Socrates says, "Know thyself." That is not possible. First BE thyself; otherwise how will you know? If you try right now to know yourself you will not be able to; you will know somebody else who you are not but you are supposed to be. You will know only that which you are supposed to be; you will not know yourself.

Hence I say to you, first BE thyself. And the miracle is, if you ARE just yourself, knowing is not difficult at all; that is very simple. Being oneself, one knows automatically who one is.

Enlightenment is not a desire, is not a goal, is not an ambition. It is a dropping of all goals, a dropping of all desires, a dropping of all ambitions. It is just being natural. That's what is meant by flowing.

You ask, "And if existence is just a flowing" -- yes it is -- "why is it important that many people become enlightened?"

It is important because people are not natural -- they have not been allowed to be

natural.

Your parents are sitting on your shoulders, they are guiding you. Maybe they are dead, but still their voices are alive in you. Try to do something against your father, and you will immediately hear his voice saying: "Don't do this, you are offending me!" Try to do something which your mother has put inside you, and immediately you will hear your mama's voice -- immediately! Whether she is alive or not, that's not the question; it's now inbuilt in you. It is there like a gramophone record; it will immediately start playing. It will immediately say, "Stop! Think of your dead mother! She never wanted you to do this. Be respectful at least to your dead mother! You were never respectful while she was alive, but at least now one should be respectful towards the dead."

This is bondage. But everybody is living in bondage, because everybody who brought you up wanted to have power over you, to enjoy the mastery over you. And children are the most helpless people in the world, the most exploited class. It is not the proletariat who are the most exploited class, it is not women who are the most exploited class. It is the children who are the most exploited class -- and so helpless. The proletariat can revolt

-- they have revolted in Russia, in China and in other communist countries. The women all over the world are making efforts to revolt, but it is impossible to imagine how children will revolt. They are so helplessly dependent on their parents, they cannot think of any revolt. And unless revolution happens in them all other revolutions are going to be superficial. The basic conditioning, the basic imprisonment is created in childhood when the child is so helpless that he has to accept whatsoever conditions you put upon him just to survive.

Corry, enlightenment simply means putting aside all that has been imposed upon you forcibly. It is coming back to your nature; it is a second birth. Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of God." That's what he means.

In the East, particularly in India, the person who comes to know existence is called DWIJ. Dwij means twice born, one who has attained the second birth. The first birth is destroyed by others; now you can have a second birth and it will not be destroyed by others because now you are on your feet, strong enough to survive.

You ask me, "Why do you make the effort, or don't you make any? And is your being here, and everything, also just flowing?"

I am not making any effort at all. It is not an effort, it is not work, it is just play. I am enjoying it -- it is a beautiful drama. These orange people, this Buddha Hall...this is just a stage and all my sannyasins are just actors. It is just a play. It is rooted in playfulness. I am not doing anything. I am the laziest person you can find in the world. That's why I say I am the lazy man's guide to enlightenment!

The third question:

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SAY THAT ONE NEEDS A MASTER IN ORDER TO BECOME

ENLIGHTENED, YET YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED AND YOU HAVE HAD NO

MASTER. HOW CAN THIS BE?

Sharon, I am just crazy! I was just fooling around with the idea of enlightenment and went a little too far!

An unhappy elderly woman was pushing a baby in a pram down the street when she encountered an acquaintance.

"Whose baby is it, Mrs. Johnson?" asked the other. "I know it is not yours."

"It is, my dear," said Mrs. Johnson; "it is my husband. He was fooling around with a rejuvenation remedy and he went too far!"

The last question:

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY JEWS HERE?

Gandharva, why not? The last time they missed Jesus; this time they don't want to miss!

It is so simple. And they are very intelligent people: once they missed -- and they really missed! -- and now they feel very sorry because if they had been with Jesus they would have been doing the greatest business in the world! They feel very jealous of the Vatican.

They cannot believe how these dumb Italians defeated them! It was basically their right.

This time they don't want to miss. They have arrived.

A Jewish father and his son are standing in front of a cathedral. "Father, what is this house with the high steeple?"

"Son, you should know this. It is a church." "What is a church?"

"Well, the Christians say that God lives there." "But, Father, isn't God living in Heaven?"

"Yes, son, you're right. But this is where he does his business."

Gandharva, they are really some of the most intelligent people on the earth; hence they can see what is going to happen.

During the second world war, a German officer went into Moishe Finkelstein's grocery shop to buy some matches.

"Matches!" he ordered.

Finkelstein passed him some matches.

"I want the tips on the left side instead of the right!" the officer demanded.

Finkelstein acted as though he was finding another box of matches, but instead he gave the officer back the same box of matches, reversed.

Satisfied, the officer left the shop. Once outside, he said to his friend, "Fucking Jews --

always trying to fool you!" Enough for today.

Come, Come, Yet Again Come Chapter #4

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