11

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‌CHAPTER 11

15 May 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Hafiz is a sufi name for God. It means the one who preserves all – the preserver, the sustainer, the nourisher.]

It is not only that God created existence in the beginning. He continuously creates it, the creativity is a continuum. It has never stopped. In fact there was no beginning and there will be no end. God is more creativity than a creator. Each moment He is at work. There has never been a holiday, and the christian myth – that for six days He created and on the seventh day He rested – is just a myth. His creation is His play. He is not tired. The very idea of six days work makes sense only because we think of it as work. Then on the seventh day one needs rest.

God’s creativity is continuous; there is no rest. If He rests for a single moment life will stop. He is our breath. If your breath goes on a holiday, you are gone. Even if for a few minutes your heart does not beat, you are gone. God is the heartbeat of the universe. There has never been a holiday and there will never be. And He is constantly nursing you. The very idea that somewhere in the past He created the world, creates a distance. He becomes almost invisible, inconceivable. When you think that millions of years ago He created the world, it doesn’t seem relevant to you, you don’t seem to be related to Him. He may have created Adam but He has not created you. You don’t feel connected.

No, God has not only created Adam – He is continuously creating: He has created you. And not that He stopped one day when you were born; He has been continuously creating you. He has been your childhood, He has been your youth, He will be your old age. He is your life and He will be your death. He is all! He is the breath going in and He is the breath going out. He is within and He is without and He is continuously nursing you.

Once this idea takes form in your being, God becomes very close. It is a continuous contact. Even when you are asleep, He is breathing in you. Even when you never think of Him, He thinks of you.

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There is a sufi saying, that if God stops thinking about you for a single moment you will disappear. Because you are a thought in His cosmic mind, you are His dream. He maintains you.

Let this idea sink deep in your heart, and suddenly you will see that God is not far away, He is very close by. And when you are eating, you are eating Him; when you are drinking, you are drinking Him. When you are in love, you are in love with Him, He is in love with you. Then there arises a kind of intimacy, a dialogue. That dialogue, that intimacy is prayer.

[A sannyasin says: I feel myself closing down as I’m getting ready to leave... my energy’s all going back in.

Osho checks her energy.]

I can see, mm? – it is closing. You are afraid of going back. You have a very paradoxical mind: you want to go back and yet you don’t want to go back. You want to be here and yet you want to go. Because of that paradox you are pulled apart. And whenever energy is divided it starts closing. Energy remains open only when it is non-contradictory.

That is one of the fundamentals to understand about energy: energy flows when there is no contradiction, when whatsoever you are doing, you are totally in it. What it is does not matter – if you are totally in it, your energy will be open. You will feel like a lotus opening to the sun. Once your energy is divided, split – one part wants to do this, another part wants to do something else – you close immediately. All contradictions inside are destructive to openness.

It is true – you have felt it rightly: it is closing. One thing that can be of immense help is to go totally. Enjoy going. Feel that I am sending you, not that you are going. And that’s true, that I am sending you. Whenever I want somebody to stay, whenever I feel that staying will be helpful, I manage it so it happens. I manage it from your inside, so you never come to know, mm? – you always think you have decided to stay. When I feel that going will be helpful, I again manage from within you, and you think you are deciding it. Just drop the idea that this is your decision and immediately you will feel opening again and the energy will start flowing. Go totally happy. I am sending you. It is going to help your growth, and next time when you are back you will be deeper in me.

This going away will bring you closer to me.

To take a long jump, first one has to go back a little and then one has to run and create the momentum. That’s what is meant by your going. Just go and go happily.

[a sannyasin had previously written to say she was very afraid of Osho and the ashram, after meeting a christian missionary who said Osho was satan and people visiting the ashram went crazy.]

The mind creates many problems, and one of the problems and the greatest problem that the mind creates is: it asks for the impossible. Naturally, you cannot manage it – you become miserable. For example, all love contains the opposite in it; that is natural. But the mind says ‘Let love be absolutely pure.’ Now this is impossible, and because it is impossible you cannot manage it and so you become miserable.

Love contains the element of the opposite in it as does everything else. There is no life without death and there is no love without hate. Once you see the point then you are not worried about the hate, you accept it. But you don’t feed it, you don’t nourish it. It is accepted. It is a necessary evil that goes with love. You nourish love, you pay attention to love, you live love, and you accept the hate part of it. It is its shadow.

Once you see that it is its shadow there is no need to be worried about it, because the shadow is impotent. The shadow becomes very very potent if you pay too much attention to it, because attention is food. And if you pay too much attention to the shadow, the real looks like a shadow and the shadow starts looking like the real. Then hate becomes more important because it is in the focus and love becomes secondary because it is no more in the focus. All that is needed is to focus yourself on love and accept the hate part.

Whenever love happens, hate always happens. Yes, one day there is a kind of love where all duality disappears, but you cannot even call that love. Love can only be called love if it is surrounded by hate – that is its definition. That love which is not surrounded by hate is a totally different phenomenon. Even to call it love is to misuse language. That kind of love will also happen, but right now just pay attention to, care about, the love that is growing in you, the trust that is growing in you. Doubt is contained in it.

Trust is significant only because there is doubt. If there is no doubt left, trust will be useless. For what will it be needed? Trust is so valuable because of doubt. Doubt is destructive, trust is creative. When a person loses all doubt, trust also disappears, remember – because there is no need for the medicine when the illness is gone. So don’t ask for total trust, mm? because in total trust there will be no place for doubt, and again you have asked for the impossible and you will fall short and will be in pain, in agony.

And remember that the question does not arise from the outside; the question is always inside. It is not a question of there being something in me that creates doubt or that creates trust. In both the cases – trust or doubt – it is something in you; it is always an inner phenomenon. I am just an excuse. So somebody can choose me as an excuse to doubt and somebody can choose me as an excuse to trust. And both can find arguments for their choice: the person who wants to doubt me will find a thousand and one things to doubt, and the person who wants to trust in me will find a thousand and one things to trust.

Life is so vast – you can always choose. If you are against God, you can find arguments against God all over. If you are for God, you can find arguments for god everywhere.Whether god exists or not is irrelevant – the real thing is whether you want Him to exist or not.

So the question is whether trust or doubt is going to help your growth. Trusting me is not the point – that is putting the whole question in a wrong context – but whether doubt or trust is going to help your growth. Whom you trust is not such a big problem – you can trust Christ, you can trust Buddha, you can trust me, you can trust anybody. Trust will help. Whether it is x, y or z, is not the point.

People always choose a dead person to trust in because there is less fear. Christ cannot do much, he cannot disturb you. Christ is all your imagination but once he was not. When he was alive and walking it was a totally different phenomenon. He created much nuisance, much trouble... for others,

for himself. The people who crucified him had not crucified him for no reason at all. He was being a nuisance. He was disturbing people’s sleep, he was disturbing their dreams. He was a constant reminder that they were wrong!

How long can you tolerate such a person? The crowd takes revenge with a vengeance. They killed him and now they believe in him because now he cannot create any problems; now he is just a symbol in the church. People were against Buddha; now they worship him – the same people!

When Jesus was there, the rabbis were telling people ‘This man is wrong, this man is evil.’ Now the christian priest will say the same thing about me: ‘This man is Satan.’

Who told you that I am Satan? – some bishop? [She answers: A lady missionary.]

A lady missionary? Good! They have to say that, because either I am right or they are right. Their whole existence will be in trouble if I go on succeeding. If I go on creating more and more orange people, they will become more and more angry.

And there are the same people who were against Christ! They are not different people – this is something to be understood: they are the same people. And these are the same people who, when I am gone, will be for me. This is the stupidity of humanity: the intelligent person is one who walks with Jesus when he is alive and the unintelligent person is one who worships Jesus when he is dead. They were saying the same things about Jesus – that he was possessed by the devil, that all the miracles he was doing were not God’s miracles but that the devil was doing things through him. They can always find arguments. You can always find arguments: if you are looking for them you will find. Whatsoever you look for, you will find.

Be intelligent. This is your life – don’t be guided by stupid people; be guided by your own intelligence. Just look into me, just feel me, and you will find the same person that you have been seeing in Christ. The only difference will be of the form, of the body, of the words; otherwise there is no difference.

I am not a missionary! I don’t represent anybody – I simply represent myself. Jesus never represented anybody; he simply represented himself. A missionary represents somebody else. His knowing is not his own it depends on the scriptures. I am my own authority. I am my own scriptures – read me! And while I am available, don’t be distracted by such foolish people. They are simply foolish.

And remember only one thing: it is not a question of whether you trust in me or not – I am not saying to trust in me, I am only saying trust. If you cannot trust in me, trust in somebody else, but trust. If you cannot trust in an alive person, then trust in a dead person, but trust. Trust will help, it will help your Christ-consciousness. It will make you luminous, capable of seeing, capable of understanding that which is.

And don’t listen to people who have some investment – christian missionaries, others. They are all politicians in the garb of religion.

Pour your energy into trust and don’t pour your energy into doubt; pour your energy into love and don’t pour your energy into hate. Soon you will be able to understand. And only your understanding will help. Don’t try to find substitutes for it.

Mm? you opened the bible and you found the sentence that there will come a very wise and strong man who will take people astray. Now you became afraid that the bible might be talking about me. Open the bible tonight and you will find something else. Go on opening it every night and then you will see it is just coincidence.

It is just like you go to the railway station and you stand on the weighing machine: the ticket comes showing your weight and also something about your character. Then weigh yourself again: another ticket comes and it also shows something about your character which may be even contradictory to the first. Weigh yourself again, just go on weighing yourself, and you will be surprised – after reading ten tickets you seem to be the whole world! All kinds of characters are yours. This is how people go on consulting the l-Ching. It is just your imagination, nothing else. But these are unintelligent ways. The intelligent way is only one and that is experiential, existential.

I am here, available, with open hands – look into me! I am just a window. Jesus is a window, Buddha is a window. And about windows one thing has to be remembered: when they are gone – when Jesus is gone – people think the window is very valuable, so they frame it with gold, stud it with diamonds and pearls and emeralds. By and by they completely forget that this is a window – you have to look through it. It is a medium, not an object of worship. And then there are so many diamonds and so much gold and so much silver that accumulate on the window that you cannot see beyond it. It becomes an altar, it becomes an object of worship; but it was just a passage to see through, it was a medium.

Jesus is a medium, I am a medium. Those who are intelligent will see through me and will find God. Those who are unintelligent will wait. When I am gone and when the window is framed in gold, studded with diamonds and is no more a window, they will worship me.

Be totally with me, as totally as possible. And when I say ‘total’ I don’t mean that there will be no doubt. In spite of the doubt, be with me.

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