Chapter title: The illogical Electron
8 March 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7903080
ShortTitle:
WISDOM26
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
101
mins
The first question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 1
FREEDOM CAN BE WILLED, LOVE NOT. PLEASE COMMENT.
Anand Akam, freedom can be willed because it is your own decision to remain in a prison. It is your own responsibility. You have willed your slavery, you have decided to remain a slave, hence you are a slave. Change the decision, and the slavery disappears.
You have invested in your unfreedom. Any moment you see the point, you can drop it; instantly it can be dropped. Nobody has forced unfreedom on you, it is your choice. You can choose to be free, you can choose to be unfree; you are so free that you can choose either. This is part of your inner freedom -- not to choose it is part of your freedom.
Hence it can be willed.
But love cannot be willed. Love is a by-product of freedom; it is the overflowing joy of freedom, it is the fragrance of freedom. First the freedom has to be there, then love follows. If you try to will love, you will create only something artificial, arbitrary. A willed love will not be true love, it will be phony.
And that's what people are doing. Love cannot be willed, and they go on willing it. What can be willed, freedom, they go on ignoring. They go on thinking that somebody else is responsible for their slavery and their life of slavery. This is a very topsy-turvy conception of your own life. You are upside-down.
Change the vision: will freedom, and love will come of its own accord. When love comes on its own accord only then it is beautiful, because only then it is natural, spontaneous.
Willed love will be a kind of acting. You will be pretending -- what else can you do? You will be moving through empty gestures -- what else is possible? You cannot be ordered to love somebody, you cannot order yourself to love somebody. If it is not there, it is not there; if it is there, it is there. It is something beyond your will. In fact it is just the opposite of will: it is surrender.
When one is totally dissolved into freedom and when one is really free, the ego disappears. The ego is your bondage, the ego is your prison. In total freedom there is no ego found. Surrender happens, you start feeling one with existence -- and that oneness brings love.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
MANY SEE THE WORK THAT GOES ON AROUND YOU AS A MODEL
FOR THE
HOLISTIC APPROACH TO LIFE. PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS.
Krishna Prem, the old man is dying. And it is good news that the old man is on his deathbed, because the new can be born only when the old is gone, utterly gone. The old has to cease. The old has existed long, and the old man has been a curse, because he was rooted in very stupid conceptions of life.
The old man was based on superstitions. The most basic flaw in the concept of the old man was perfectionism: he wanted to be perfect, and the very idea of perfectionism drives people crazy. The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life till he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things.
Totality is possible, perfection is not possible.
That is the fundamental of the holistic approach. And there is a tremendous difference between perfection and totality. Perfection is a goal somewhere in the future, totality is an experience herenow. Totality is not a goal, it is a style of life. If you can get into any act with your whole heart, you are total. Totality brings wholeness and totality brings health and totality brings sanity.
The perfectionist completely forgets about totality. He has some idea how he should be, and obviously time will be needed to reach that idea. It can't happen now -- tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this life, maybe next life... so life has to be postponed.
That's what the old man has been doing hitherto, postponing, postponing. The man in the past has not really lived; his life was nothing but a sequence of postponements.
I teach you to live herenow with no idea of the future at all. The future will be born out of your lived present. If the present has been lived totally, the future will have even more totality to it. Out of totality more totality is born.
But if you have an idea what you want to be in the future, today you will live very partially because your main concern becomes the future. Your eyes become focused on the future, you lose contact with the real and the present -- and the tomorrow will be born out of the real with which you are not in contact. The
tomorrow will come out of today, and today was unlived.
The English word devil is very beautiful. If you read it backwards it becomes lived. That which is lived becomes divine, and that which is not lived becomes devil. Only the lived is transformed into godliness; the unlived turns poisonous. Today you postpone, and whatsoever remains unlived in you will hang around you like a weight. If you had lived it you would have been free of it. It would not have haunted you, it would not have tortured you.
But man up to now has been taught not to live but to hope -- hope that tomorrow things will be such that you will be able to live, hope that tomorrow you will be worthy to live, hope that tomorrow you will be Jesus Christ or Gautama the Buddha.
You are never going to be Jesus the Christ or Gautama the Buddha, you are simply going to be yourself. You are not a carbon copy of anybody else. It would have been ugly to be another Christ or another Buddha; that would have been a great insult to your humanity.
Man has dignity because man has originality.
The old concept was to live according to a certain pattern -- the Buddhist pattern, the Christian pattern, the Hindu pattern. The old was not in favor of the individual, it was in favor of a certain pattern. That pattern creates slavery.
I teach the individual, I teach the unique individual. Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been a person like you and there never will be again. God never repeats. You are utterly unique, incomparably unique. You need not be like somebody else, you need not be an imitator, you have to be authentically yourself, your own being.
You have to do your own thing.
The moment you start accepting and respecting yourself you start becoming whole. Then there is nothing to divide you, then there is nothing to create the split. Hitherto, man has been schizophrenic. And I am not saying that a few people have been schizophrenic: the whole humanity has been schizophrenic. Leave a few exceptions -- a Krishna, a Lao Tzu here and there -- you can count them on your fingers. They don't constitute humanity, they are exceptions, and the exceptions only prove the rule. But the greater part of humanity has lived a
schizophrenic life, a divided life, fragmentary.
And how did man become so split? First thing: you are not acceptable as you are, so reject yourself. Rather than respecting yourself, reject yourself; rather than respecting yourself, respect some idea, some imaginary idea, of how you should be. Don't live the real, try to live the "should" -- and then you are split, you have become two. You are that which you are, but that you reject, repress. And you want to be that which you are not, and that which you are not you love and you respect and you worship. You have become two.
Not only that you have been split in two, you have been made many -- because you were taught that the body is your enemy, that you have to get rid of the body. You were taught that many things in you have to be cut off, that you are not as you should be, that great changes have to be done.
Naturally you started rejecting your sex, you started rejecting your desires, you started rejecting your anger. And all these rejected parts are energies to be transformed. They are not your enemies, they are friends in disguise.
Anger transformed becomes compassion, sex transformed becomes prayer, greed transformed becomes sharing. But in the past it was told again and again, repeated down the ages, that you had to reject this, reject that. If you listen to the old teachings you will be surprised -- you are rejected almost ninety-nine percent. Only one percent, some imaginary soul of which you are not aware at all, is accepted in you. And all that you are aware of is rejected.
These fragments do not allow you to become one piece, and unless you become one piece there is no peace possible. Unless you are a togetherness, integrated, crystallized, you will not know what God is -- because God speaks only to those who are real, God speaks only to those who are not a crowd, not noisy.
When there are many in you, you are a crowd, and the crowd is noisy. When you become one, there is silence. Only by becoming one will you attain to silence, and in that silence you can hear the voice of God, in that silence you can start feeling the presence of the divine. And when you are one, you will be able to have a communion with the whole. By being a whole yourself, you become capable of having a communion with the whole.
Man has lived very partially -- in fragments, in guilt, in fear. A new man is needed, urgently needed. Enough is enough: say goodbye to the old man. The
old has created only wars, violence; it has created sadists, masochists, it has created a very ugly human being. It has made people pathological, it has not allowed a natural, healthy, sane humanity to be born.
Just the other day, somebody asked, "Who is a masochist and who is a sadist?"
A masochist is a person who loves to have a cold shower every morning, but takes instead a warm one. And the sadist is a person who, if asked by a masochist, "Please, please, hit my head hard," says "No!"
People are torturing themselves and torturing others in every possible way. In the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of nationality, people are torturing each other, killing each other. Beautiful names have been found for very pathological, insane things. Insanities are called "nationalities," insanities are called "moralities" -- beautiful labels on very ugly things.
But it is time that we get rid of it all. And if we don't get rid of it all soon enough, then the cup will be full. Man is going to die if the new does not arrive; the old cannot survive.
There is no possibility for the old to survive, it has come to its tether's end. It has lived more than expected.
I teach you a new man, a new humanity, which will not think of the future and which will not live with shoulds and oughts, which will not deny any natural instinct, which will accept its body, which will accept all that is given by God with deep gratitude.
Your body is your temple, it is sacred. Your body is not your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to take care of your body -- it is religious. It is irreligious to torture your body and to destroy it. The religious person will love his body because it is the temple where God lives.
You and your body are not really two, but the manifestation of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body is your visible soul. I teach this unity, and with this unity, man becomes whole. I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness.
I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.
Yes, Krishna Prem, my approach to life is holistic, because to me, to be whole is to be holy.
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
DO I RIGHTLY UNDERSTAND YOU THAT IF YOU AND YOUR BELOVED CAN
TRANSMUTE YOUR SEXUAL ENERGY INTO SPIRITUALITY, THAT THIS
RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT BE SATISFYING EITHER? YOUR SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS ON LOVE CONFUSE ME.
Nellie, confusion is my way of working on you. I confuse you so that clarity becomes possible. People are very much certain, they already think they know. And because of their certainty they are closed. If you already know, then there is no need to seek and search. For what? If you already know, then you can keep your doors and windows closed.
People are much too certain, and that is a great problem. They have to be made uncertain again, they have to be shaken in their certainties; their dogmas and creeds have to be taken away. Hence confusion arises. What is confusion? -- when you start losing grip on your old certainty. You were feeling that you know, and suddenly you start feeling that you don't know. You were thinking you have the answer, and suddenly you become aware that the question is there and the answer was just imposed.
It happens to every new disciple here -- and Nellie is a new sannyasin; just the other day she has become a sannyasin. For a few days you will become more and more confused. It is a good sign, it means you are listening to me.
There are a few people who go on listening to me and are never confused. That simply means they have not heard; their ears are full of wax, they are deaf. There are people who not only don't become confused, but listening to me they become even more certain. That means they have heard something else that was not said.
Two moving-men were struggling with a big crate in a doorway. They pushed and tugged until they were exhausted but it would not move.
Finally, the man on the outside said, "We had better give up, we will never get it in."
The fellow on the inside said "What do you mean, get it in? I thought you were trying to get it out!"
If you become confused by listening to me, that means you have heard me. The more intelligent you are, the more confused you will become. And I use contradiction as a technique, I go on contradicting myself.
Why do I contradict myself? I am not teaching a philosophy here. The philosopher has to be very consistent -- flawless, logical, rational, always ready to argue and prove his statements. I am not a philosopher. I am not here giving you a consistent dogma to which you can cling. My whole effort is to give you a no-mind.
Be perfectly clear about it. My effort is not to strengthen a certain mind, my effort is just the opposite of it: to give you a state of no-mind -- a state which has no knowledge, a state which functions from not knowing, a state of innocence.
I use contradiction as a device. I say one thing, out of your old habit you cling to it; the next day I have to contradict it. When I contradict it you have to drop it. But you may start clinging to the new thing that I have said; I will have to contradict it again.
This will go on, you will go on clinging to this, to that. One day suddenly you will become aware what is happening. I don't allow you any certainty, nothing to cling to.
And if I contradict, what is the point of clinging at all? Then why not wait? I will contradict, and then you will have to leave it, and it is painful. Once you cling to a thing and then you have to leave it, it is painful, it creates anxiety.
So those who have listened to me for a long time, listen simply. They simply listen, they don't cling. They know perfectly well, now that they are aware of the game, that tomorrow I will contradict. So why carry it for twenty-four hours? The pain of carrying the weight, and then the pain of dropping it... slowly slowly it dawns in your awareness that there is no need to cling; this man contradicts. This man is consistently inconsistent.
Once you have understood that, you listen to me as one listens to music. You listen to me as one listens to the wind passing through the pine trees, you listen to me as one listens to the birds singing in the morning. You don't say to the cuckoo, "Yesterday your song was different," and you don't go to the roseflower and say, "Last season the flowers were bigger" -- or smaller -- "why are you contradicting yourself?"
You don't say to the poet, "In one of your poems you said this, and in another poem you have said something else." You don't expect a poet to be consistent, so you don't ask.
Poetry is not a theory, it is not a syllogism, it is a song.
I am not a philosopher. Always remember that I am a poet, not a philosopher. Remember always that I am not a missionary, but a musician playing on the harp of your heart.
Songs will go on changing... you need not cling to anything, then there will be no confusion at all.
The people who are always hankering for consistency can never enter into the mystery of life. Consistency is something manmade, it is arbitrary. Existence is not consistent. And now even physicists agree with the poets and the mystics.
You must be aware that modern physics believes in the theory of uncertainty; modern physics believes in the illogical behavior of atoms, of the unpredictability of the behavior of electrons. It was such a shock to the modern physicists, because they had always believed that matter behaves consistently. The whole foundation of science has been shaken; these twenty years, it has been such a shock. People have not yet become aware of it, because the theories are so complicated and so subtle that they will never become part of common knowledge. And they are so against common sense -- they look more like fairy tales, stories written for children.
The electrons jump from one spot to another, and between the two they don't exist. Now, can it be believed? An electron jumping from spot a to spot b, and between the two he is not? And I am using "he" knowingly, deliberately, because you cannot use "it" any more.
A great mystery... they call it a quantum leap. A special word has been coined -- quantum, because in the middle it is not found.
It is as if from New York you come to Poona, but in the space between the two you are not. You simply disappear from New York and you appear in Poona. Now there is a possibility some day.… Right now it is science fiction, but the possibility is there that one day it may happen that there will be no need to take long journeys, wasting time. Time has limitations.
For example, if you want to go to the nearest star it will take four years -- the nearest star!
And that too only if you go with the speed of light. And it is immense, the speed of light: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. If you go at this speed, which seems almost impossible, then it will take four years to reach the closest star.
And then there are stars which are a hundred years, two hundred, one thousand, two thousand, one million, two million years away. There are stars so far away that we have not been able to detect them yet.
How can journeys be made to faraway stars? The only possibility is if one day we manage to do what the electron is already managing to do... a machine in which you enter here and you disappear, and another machine on the star, one million years away, and you appear there. Between the two, no traveling time is lost: you simply dematerialize here and you materialize somewhere else. It is a possibility. If the electron can do it, why not man? Man is nothing but millions and millions of electrons, so the possibility is there.
Even to think of it seems to be mind-blowing. But modem physics says electrons are behaving in a very mysterious way -- illogical, unpredictable, confusing.
I am not a philosopher who is trying to make a system of thought. I am a mystic who is trying to convey the mysteries that have become available to me. I will
confuse you.
It is like a friend of mine who is a jigsaw puzzle fiend. One day his kids were playing with his puzzles and they put his Marilyn Monroe puzzle back in the same box with his Revolutionary War puzzle.
I asked him how he made out with things all mixed up.
"Oh," he said, "I did all right. But I never realized that George Washington had such sexy legs."
Life is a very mixed puzzle. Whatsoever you make out of it is going to be arbitrary, you cannot figure it out in reality. My suggestion to my sannyasins is to forget all about figuring out what it is. Rather, live it; rather, enjoy it! Don't analyze it, celebrate it.
So, Nellie, you will have to put up with me, you will have to tolerate my contradictions.
They appear as contradictions only to you. From my side I am simply talking mysteries, and mysteries are bound to be illogical. But your question is relevant and significant.
You ask: "Do I rightly understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?"
Yes, it will not be satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep down in darkness.
But it will make you aware of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is nontemporal, then there will be eternal contentment.
How to manage it? Out of this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It cannot be done with the beloved outside -- it
cannot be done without the beloved outside, remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both the energies present -- male and female.
Man is bisexual -- every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you have become aware of this, then a new work starts: your inner woman and inner man can have a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.
Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow your inner woman and man to meet.
In India we have had that concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody's being, inner being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male.
But shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.
With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery... and the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen inwardly.
First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.
Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be always from the without; it is
because we are there, so we have to start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one -- integrated, crystallized, one
-- you have attained. This is enlightenment.
But right now everything is upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very very difficult, almost impossible.
And that is what is happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored, forgotten.
The real treasure is within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without, only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones. But don't cling to a milestone, and don't think that this is the goal and you have arrived.
Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.
Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry's lap.
Was Larry angry? Was he even slightly ruffled?
He simply looked up with great dignity and disdain and said, "Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my fly."
Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the fly. And that's why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with
the crowd.
Let this sink deep in your heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.
The love affair that you have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a great opportunity.
I am not against the outer love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner. But remember, don't get stuck in the outer.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
WHY IS THERE SUCH AN EXPRESSION AS "THE DIRTY OLD MAN"? I AM
GETTING ON AND I SUSPECT PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO THINK ABOUT ME
IN EXACTLY THOSE WORDS.
It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists.
If people are allowed to live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty-two -- remember, I am saying forty-two, not eighty-four -- just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty-two it starts disappearing. It is a natural course. And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy.
Sex gives you pleasure. And sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result. If sex has become irrelevant -- not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply that it is no more of any value.… You have known it, and knowledge always brings freedom. You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world.
There is no expression in any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty old man, exists in almost all languages. The reason is that the body becomes old, the body becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality --
but the mind, because of repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull.
And his mind goes on goading him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.
It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around.
"Me worry?" said the wife. "Why, he'd never cheat on me. He's too loyal, too decent...
too old."
The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the innocence of a child -- he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.
A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman. Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape to assault with a dead weapon.
If you are becoming old, remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most beautiful experience -- because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the future, he has great desires to do this, to do that. Every child thinks that he is going to be somebody special -- Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong -- he lives in desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts between husbands and wives.
Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry.
The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone. The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem.
Grow up, become more mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.
If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires.
When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires.
Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination --
just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is. Atisha calls it bodhichitta, buddha consciousness.
The fifth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
WHY IS INDIA SO POOR?
The so-called saints are responsible. Down the ages, India has lived with a wrong philosophy -- a philosophy that teaches other-worldliness, a philosophy that teaches that the world is illusion and only the other world is true. You have not seen the other world, the true world; you have to believe. And the world that you have seen, and see every day and experience every day, is illusory, is maya.
This foolish philosophy is the root cause of India's poverty. If the world is illusory then why care about science, why care about technology? What is the point? If the world is illusory, poverty is also an illusion, the beggar on the street is also an illusion, the starving person is also an illusion.
The West has lived with the idea that only this world is real. Hence it has become rich, at least outwardly rich. The West has denied the other world: God is dead. And the West started becoming rich only when it started dropping the idea of the other world; then its whole energy was focused on this world. It became rich materially, but it became poor spiritually.
The other world is also real, and real on a higher plane. The East became poor materially.
The other world is real, but the other world can only be based on the reality of this world.
This world functions as a foundation. So maybe, once in a while, a person in India was able to become inwardly rich. But the millions, the masses, remain
outwardly poor. And because there is no foundation, they have remained inwardly poor too.
These attitudes have been two halves of one whole. The new man I talk about, and the new humanity, will not be Eastern or Western. It will not believe in this world only or in that world only, it will believe in the totality of man. It will believe in the body of man, it will believe in the soul of man; it will believe in the material, it will believe in the spiritual. In fact the new humanity will think of spirituality and materiality as two aspects of one phenomenon. Then the world will be rich in both ways, within and without.
India has to get rid of its otherworldly obsession. It has to learn to love this world too, it has to learn that this world is also real. The very moment that happens will be a great change in India's life. But the saints, the so-called saints, still go on teaching that this world is unreal. And the poor people are consoled by it, so they go on clinging to the philosophy. If the world is unreal, this consoles: there is nothing to be worried about, it is only a question of a few years, then you will enter into the real world. So why bother?
The Eastern mind remains unscientific because of this basically wrong philosophy; science can be created only if the world is accepted as real. And if science is there, then technology is there, and technology is the only way to create riches. The so-called saints are responsible, and the so-called leaders, the politicians, are responsible, because the politicians go on teaching anti-scientific attitudes to the country. Gandhi's philosophy is anti-scientific. You will be surprised to know that he was against railway trains, the post office, the telegraph, modern medicine. He was against the basic technologies which can help the country. And he still remains the father figure, he still dominates the Indian mind, particularly the Indian politician's mind.
India has to get rid of Gandhi, otherwise it cannot become rich. But Gandhi also consoles, because he praises the poor man. He calls the poor man daridra narayan: he says that God is in the poor man, the poor man is divine. His teaching is that the rich man is something wrong and the poor man is something right. Poverty has some spirituality in it, according to him.
If you praise poverty as spirituality, naturally the poor person's ego is gratified. Hence the poor people in India go on worshipping Gandhi; every town has his statue. The poor man has nothing else to feel gratified about. This idea gives him
great contentment, that he has something spiritual in him, his poverty is spiritual.
There is nothing spiritual in poverty. Poverty is ugly, unspiritual, irreligious. The poor man is the cause of all that is wrong in the world, because out of poverty all kinds of sins and crimes arise. The poor man has not to be gratified, he has to be made aware, "Do something and get out of your poverty." If you go on praising the poor man he will become more and more poor to become more and more spiritual. The poorer he is, the more divine.
A farm laborer got a wire from home; it announced that his wife had just given birth to quintuplets. He decided it was time to look for a better-paying job.
"Tell me," said the employment agent at the firm where he applied, "Do you have any sales ability? Can you type, run a computer or drive a truck?"
Sadly he answered, "No."
The interviewer asked, "Then what can you do?"
He reached into his pocket, brought out the telegram and said, "Here, read this."
India's whole creativity consists in bringing more and more children into the world. There is no reason to be surprised by India's poverty. Every day thousands are born. Medicine has helped people to live long, medicine has helped people to die later and later. The deathrate has tremendously changed: just thirty years ago, out of ten children born in India nine were going to die before the age of one. Now nine live, only one dies. The deathrate has been changed but the birthrate remains the same.
Now there are only two possibilities: either drop the birthrate or raise the deathrate. There are only two possibilities: either kill people in some way or other.… And that's what happens again and again -- natural calamities kill people, great diseases spread and kill people, wars come and kill people. But they are all lagging behind; they are not able to cope with modern medicine. Unless the birthrate declines there is no possibility for India to see good days. But the Indians are accustomed to having many children. It is very manly, it is thought to be a great blessing from God: the more children you have, the more blessed you are.
These foolish ideas have to be changed, but it is very difficult to change them.
Because I am against all these ideas, the Indian masses are against me. They want to be supported...
their saints go on saying to them that a child is a gift of God, their saints go on blessing them. Now each child brings a new curse; it is no longer a blessing.
The politicians are afraid that if they force birth control on the country then the people won't vote for them, so they cannot enforce birth control. So they deliver sermons on brahmacharya, celibacy; they themselves are not celibate, and they go on teaching people celibacy. And people love these ideas, these are the ideas they have loved for centuries so they feel very good: this is their culture, their culture is being praised. This is the right way to control population -- celibacy.
And how many people are going to do it? That is not the point at all. A cultural idea, praised for centuries, feels very ego-satisfying.
Celibacy is not going to work. Birth control will have to be brought in. If people willingly accept it, good. If they don't accept it willingly, then it has to be forced on them. People cannot be left to destroy the whole country. But if you talk about enforcing birth control they say then you are not a democrat.
You stop people by force in many things: thieves are not allowed to steal -- is it non-democratic? Thieves should be allowed, given freedom -- democracy means freedom!
Murders are not allowed. Now giving birth to so many children is far more of a crime than stealing; in fact it is a far bigger crime than murder.
Things have changed, situations have changed. Now to bring an unnecessary child into the world is far more a crime than killing a person. It is not a question of democracy, it is a question of survival. Democracy is good, but democracy can exist only if the country can survive. The country is dying, starving. Unless birth control is enforced totally, this country cannot be rich.
My attitude is very clear, my approach is absolutely clear, but the country's old mind is not ready to listen. People come to me and they say, "What you are doing for India's poverty? Why don't you run hospitals, and why don't you distribute free food from the ashram?"
This has been done for at least ten thousand years. Ashrams have been
distributing free food for ten thousand years: it has not helped. How it is going to help if one more ashram goes on distributing free food? There are so many hospitals -- it has not helped; how it is going to help if we run a few more hospitals?
That is not my approach. I want to cut the very root of the problem, I am not interested in pruning the leaves. But people are duped and dulled by the saints, by the leaders, by the moralists.
Karl Marx seems to be right, at least in a certain sense, that religion has been used as an opium to dupe people and dull their intelligence. Real religion is not opium, but real religion is rare. It exists only when there is a living master -- otherwise priests go on pretending that they have the keys of religion. They don't have any keys; all that they do is serve the politicians.
There is a conspiracy between organized religion and the state -- between church and state. Together they dominate people, together they reduce people into slavery. If the people are poor it is easier to force them into slavery; if people are poor it is easier to give them beliefs, superstitions. If people are poor they are always afraid of hell and always greedy for heaven. The priest can dominate them and the politician can also dominate them because they are so poor.
In poverty, people lose intelligence. Intelligence needs a certain nourishment. It is a well known scientific fact that if certain vitamins are missing in your food you will not be intelligent. And I am really worried, because those are the vitamins which are missing in Indian food. Indian food is very deficient -- hence you see the intelligence is on a very low level. Even the so-called intelligentsia of India doesn't seem to be very intelligent.
Intelligence is needed to transform this country, its poverty.
And that's what my work is here: to create more intelligence through meditation; to create more intelligent people by destroying their superstitions, beliefs; to create more alert people, so they can be more responsive to the real situation that exists in the country and in the world.
Only in this way can we cut the very root of the problem. The last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 6
WHY AM I HERE?
This is a very philosophical question, Kirtan.
There is a story about two big beefy American football players in philosophy class, sitting at their final examination. The exam question was just one word: "Why?"
All the students began writing madly, filling exam book after book. The two football players looked at each other and shrugged. The first wrote two words on his exam paper:
"Why not?" and left the room. The second fellow wrote one word: "Because" and left with his friend.
Not knowing what to do, the professor gave the first fellow the grade of A, and the second fellow the grade of A minus.
This is really a philosophical question: "Why am I here?" I don't know. Why not? Or -- because.
Three newly deceased candidates for heaven sit in the waiting room of Saint Peter's office. Finally Saint Peter returns from lunch and asks the receptionist to send in the first candidate.
"How did you die, and why do you think you are eligible for heaven?" Saint Peter asked.
"Well," said the man, "for some time I suspected my wife was cheating on me. This morning a neighbor called and confirmed the awful truth. He told me a guy had entered our apartment a half hour ago and had not come out. Furiously I rushed home, burst into the apartment, and found my wife lying naked on the bed. I started to search the apartment in a jealous rage. I looked through the whole flat -- under the bed, in the closets, behind curtains, everywhere.
I found no one. Finally, out of sheer frustration and blind rage, I picked up the refrigerator, carried it out onto the back porch and threw it down into the back yard, three stories below. The exertion and excitement must have been too much for me, I must have died right then and there of a heart attack."
"Well," said Saint Peter, "that's a very unusual way to die, but entirely moral. Admitted.
Send in the next candidate."
The second candidate told an even more surprising story. "Saint Peter," he said, "if you will excuse the expression, I swear to God I was minding my own business taking a nap in the hammock out in the back yard. I heard a noise and looked up just in time to see a fullsize refrigerator falling on me from the third floor."
"Hmmm," said Saint Peter. "Most tragic and most circumstantial. But, again, entirely proper and moral. Admit this man and send in the next candidate."
"Saint Peter," said the third candidate, "I know you are not going to believe a word I say, I just know it. I got called to this lady's apartment to fix her refrigerator. I was working on it when all of a sudden she screamed, 'Here comes my husband! For God's sake, hide!'
So help me, Saint Peter, the last thing I remember was climbing into the refrigerator and closing the door."
Kirtan, I don't know why you are here. Why not? Because! Enough for today.
The Book of Wisdom Chapter #27
Chapter title: The Soul is a Question 9 March 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7903090
ShortTitle:
WISDOM27
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
96
mins
The first question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 1
WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO RELATE?
Deva Shanta, because you are not yet. There is an inner emptiness and the fear that if you relate with somebody, sooner or later you will be exposed as empty. Hence it seems safer to keep a distance with people; at least you can pretend you are.
You are not. You are not yet born, you are only an opportunity. You are not yet a fulfillment -- and only two fulfilled persons can relate. To relate is one of the greatest things of life: to relate means to love, to relate means to share. But before you can share, you must have. And before you can love you must be full of love, overflowing with love.
Two seeds cannot relate, they are closed. Two flowers can relate; they are open, they can send their fragrances to each other, they can dance in the same sun and
in the same wind, they can have a dialogue, they can whisper. But that is not possible for two seeds. Seeds are utterly closed, windowless -- how to relate?
And that is the situation. Man is born as a seed; he can become a flower, he may not. It all depends on you, what you do with yourself; it all depends on you whether you grow or you don't. It is your choice -- and each moment the choice has to be faced; each moment you are on the crossroads.
Millions of people decide not to grow. They remain seeds; they remain potentialities, they never become actualities. They don't know what self- realization is, they don't know what self-actualization is, they don't know anything of being. Utterly empty they live, utterly empty they die. How can they relate?
It will be exposing yourself -- your nudity, your ugliness, your emptiness -- safer, it seems, to keep a distance. Even lovers keep distance; they come only so far, and they remain alert to when to turn back. They have boundaries; they never cross the boundaries, they remain confined to their boundaries.
Yes, there is a kind of relationship, but it is not that of relating, it is that of possession: the husband possesses the wife, the wife possesses the husband, the parents possess the children, and so on and so forth. But to possess is not to relate. In fact to possess is to destroy all possibilities of relating. If you relate, you respect; you cannot possess. If you relate, there is great reverence. If you relate, you come very close, very very close, in deep intimacy, overlapping. Still the other's freedom is not interfered with, still the other remains an independent individual. The relationship is that of I-thou, not that of I-it --
overlapping, interpenetrating, yet in a sense independent.
Khalil Gibran says: "Be like two pillars that support the same roof, but don't start possessing the other, leave the other independent. Support the same roof -- that roof is love."
Two lovers support something invisible and something immensely valuable: some poetry of being, some music heard in the deepest recesses of their existence. They support both, they support some harmony, but still they remain independent. They can expose themselves to the other, because there is no fear. They know they ARE. They know their inner beauty, they know their inner perfume; there is no fear.
But ordinarily the fear exists, because you don't have any perfume. If you expose yourself you will simply stink. You will stink of jealousies, hatreds, angers, lust. You will not have the perfume of love, prayer, compassion.
Millions of people have decided to remain seeds. Why? When they can become flowers and they can also have a dance in the wind and the sun and the moon, why have they decided to remain seeds? There is something in their decision: the seed is more secure than the flower. The flower is fragile; the seed is not fragile, the seed looks stronger. The flower can be destroyed very easily; just a strong wind and the petals will blow away.
The seed cannot be destroyed so easily by the wind, the seed is very protected, secure.
The flower is exposed -- such a delicate thing, and exposed to so many hazards: a strong wind may come, it may rain cats and dogs, the sun may be too hot, some foolish man may pluck the flower. Anything can happen to the flower, everything can happen to the flower, the flower is constantly in danger. But the seed is safe; hence millions of people decide to remain seeds. But to remain a seed is to remain dead, to remain a seed is not to live at all. It is secure, certainly, but it has no life. Death is secure, life is insecurity. One who really wants to live has to live in danger, in constant danger. One who wants to reach to the peaks has to take the risk of getting lost. One who wants to climb the highest peaks has to take the risk of falling from somewhere, slipping down.
The greater is the longing to grow, the more and more danger has to be accepted. The real man accepts danger as his very style of life, as his very climate of growth.
You ask me, Shanta: "Why is it so difficult to relate?"
It is difficult because you are not yet. First be. Everything else is possible only afterwards: first be.
Jesus says it in his own way: "First seek ye the kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you." This is just an old expression for the same thing that I am saying: First be, then all else shall be added unto you.
But being is the basic requirement. If you are, courage comes as a consequence. If you are, great desire for adventure, to explore, arises -- and when you are
ready to explore, you can relate. Relating is exploring -- exploring the other's consciousness, exploring the other's territory. But when you explore the other's territory, you have to allow and welcome the other to explore you; it cannot be one-way traffic. And you can allow the other to explore you only when you have something, some treasure within you. Then there is no fear. In fact you invite the guest, you embrace the guest, you call him in, you want him in. You want him to see what you have discovered in yourself, you want to share it.
First be, then you can relate -- and remember, to relate is beautiful. Relationship is a totally different phenomenon; relationship is something dead, fixed, a full point has arrived. You get married to a woman; a full point has arrived. Now things will only decline. You have reached the limit, nothing is growing any more. The river has stopped and it is becoming a reservoir. Relationship is already a thing, complete; relating is a process. Avoid relationships, and go deeper and deeper into relating.
My emphasis is on verbs, not on nouns; avoid nouns as much as possible. In language you cannot avoid, that I know; but in life, avoid -- because life is a verb. Life is not a noun, it is really "living" not "life." It is not love, it is loving. It is not relationship, it is relating. It is not a song, it is singing. It is not a dance, it is dancing.
See the difference, savor the difference. A dance is something complete; the last touches have been made, now there is nothing else to do. Something complete is something dead.
Life knows no full point; commas are okay, but no full points. Resting places are okay, but no destination.
Shanta, instead of thinking how to relate, fulfill the first requirement: meditate, be, and then relating will arise out of it on its own accord. One who becomes silent, blissful, one who starts having overflowing energies, becomes a flower, has to relate. It is not something that he has to learn how to do, it starts happening. He relates with people, he relates with animals, he relates with trees, he relates even with rocks.
In fact, twenty-four hours a day he relates. If he is walking on the earth, he is relating with the earth... his feet touching the earth, he is relating. If he is swimming in the river he is relating with the river, and if he is looking at the
stars he is relating with the stars.
It is not a question of a relationship with somebody in particular. The basic fact is, if you are, your whole life becomes a relating. It is a constant song, a constant dance, it is a continuum, a riverlike flow.
Meditate, find out your own center first. Before you can relate with somebody else, relate with yourself: that is the basic requirement to be fulfilled. Without it, nothing is possible.
With it, nothing is impossible. The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
AS YOU DROVE AWAY TODAY I FELT I AM AFRAID OF FORGETTING IS
THERE ANYTHING I NEED TO REMEMBER?
Ananda Vandana, yes, there is a great need to remember yourself. Your question is really significant. I call a question significant when it is existential, when it is not intellectual, when it is not bookish, when it does not come out of your knowledge but comes out of your existential experience. It has a totally different quality to it.
Yes, there is something to be remembered. But that something is not outside you, that's why you cannot figure it out. You simply felt a fear, as if you are forgetting something, a very vague kind of fear -- something felt, but not yet clearly felt. Something is there, lurking in the unconscious, in the darkness of your soul: you felt afraid of forgetting.
And really then it becomes a great question: What am I afraid of forgetting? Is there anything I need to remember?
A Zen master was dying. At the last moment, when all his disciples had gathered, he opened his eyes and said, "What is the answer?"
The disciples were dumbfounded, they could not figure it out: "What is the answer?"
So the master started laughing, and he said, "So okay, what is the question?"
He was posing a very very existential thing: What is the answer? Even before the question is asked, he is asking what is the answer. The question is not asked, because it cannot be asked. But the question is there, it is there in everybody's soul. One may be alert about it, one may not be alert about it, one may be completely oblivious of it; but the question is there in everybody's soul.
The soul is a question, it is a quest. Hence the master is asking, "What is the answer?"
The disciples could not figure it out, because this is not the way; people ask first about the question, then they ask about the answer.
And something exactly like that has happened to you, Vandana. Afraid of forgetting --
forgetting what, that is not clear. Just a feeling, a cloud passed by... and the feeling must have been intense.
"Is there anything I need to remember?" you ask.
It is you yourself. Self-remembering is needed. Buddha used to call it right- mindfulness, sammasati; Mahavira used to call it vivek, awareness; George Gurdjieff used to call it self-remembering, Kabir used to call it SURATI. But they all mean the same thing.
You don't know who you are. You are -- that much is certain. In fact only that is certain, and nothing else. The existence of others is not certain.
The English philosopher, Berkeley, had gone for a morning walk with Dr.Johnson.
Dr.Johnson was very critical of Berkeley's ideas, because Berkeley used to say that the whole world is an idea; it is not a reality, but just an idea, an idea in the mind of God. We are ideas in the mind of God -- just ideas, pure ideas, not real entities.
Again and again he was hammering Dr.Johnson's head with the same philosophy
-- that morning it was too much. He was saying, "All these trees and this sun and this sky, all these are ideas." Enough is enough! Dr.Johnson was a realist, a down-to-earth man. He took a rock from the road and hit hard on the feet of Berkeley. Berkeley screamed in deep pain, blood started oozing out of his feet, and he said, "What are you doing? Have you suddenly gone mad?"
And Dr.Johnson said, "But it is just an idea, this rock. Why are you screaming? Why do you look so angry?"
It is not reported what Berkeley said, but there is a parallel story in Indian history, which takes a beautiful turn.
A Buddhist came to the court of a king. He was a great mystic, and belonged to a certain school of Buddhists who preceded Berkeley by at least two thousand years. His was the same idea: it is called vigyanvad -- the whole existence is nothing but ideas.
The king must have been a man like Dr. Johnson -- very earthbound, very realistic, pragmatic. The philosopher was very argumentative; he defeated the king's court, all the learned men that the king had gathered around himself. The king was feeling humiliated, so he said, "Now the last argument, the real argument."
They had a mad elephant which was brought into the courtyard of the palace. The poor mystic, the philosopher, was left alone in the courtyard, and he was trembling... and then the mad elephant was left. The mad elephant rushed towards the philosopher -- and you can imagine, what happened to Berkeley was nothing compared to it: he jumped and shouted and cried and begged for his life.
The king was standing on the balcony with the whole court, and they were laughing. So now it was proved that the elephant is not just an idea, it is not just a dream.
The philosopher was crying with folded hands and asking, "Save me, please!" At the last moment he was saved -- just at the last moment. Even after he was saved he was trembling for hours, the elephant was so ferocious.
The king said to him, "So now what do you think? Is the elephant real or not?"
He said, "No, sir. It is just an idea."
The king said, "Then why were you screaming and why were you begging for your life?"
The philosopher said, "That was an idea too. My crying, my effort to be saved, your kindness to save me -- all are ideas; they don't really exist, just figments of the mind."
This is going to the very logical conclusion of it! He said, "Don't be so happy -- because I myself am an idea and nothing else."
The king said, "Then we will put you back, and we will bring the mad elephant!"
And the philosopher said, "I will beg for my life again! But that doesn't matter; that doesn't change my argument and my position. The philosophy remains intact."
In fact there is no way to prove that others exist, because you have never touched anybody and you have never seen anybody. When you see somebody, you don't see him really; all that happens is that a picture is seen inside your brain. It may correspond to some reality, it may not correspond. There is no way to know, because we cannot know reality directly.
Always it is through the senses that we know reality. Senses may be deceiving -- and you know perfectly well that under the impact of alcohol they deceive, under the impact of psychedelics they deceive very much. One can act in a stupid way, in a suicidal way, under the impact of some psychedelic.
One woman in New York took lsd and thought that she could fly. And when you are under the impact of lsd you simply believe it, it is so. It is not a question of a dream or a desire or a fantasy; it is so real, it is more real than the world outside, than the objective world. She simply flew out of the window from the ninth floor, dashed on the ground, died. This type of accident has been happening all over the world.
The existence of others, the existence of the outside world, is not absolutely certain.
Berkeley still remains unrefuted, there is no way to refute him. The only thing
that is absolutely certain is your own existence. The dream may be false, but the dreamer cannot be. Even for the false dream to exist there is a need of a real dreamer; to be deceived, at least somebody is needed to be deceived.
The world may be illusion, but who is an illusion? At least some consciousness is needed, absolutely needed, categorically needed; without some consciousness the illusion cannot exist. The rope may not be the snake, the snake may be the illusion. But the person who has the illusion is not an illusion himself.
This has to be remembered, that "I am real." This has to be remembered, that "I am the only certain reality -- everything else may be, or may not be."
We never look inwards for this absolute reality; and we go on living a life without basing it on this rock of certainty. Hence our lives are just castles in the air, or at the most, sandcastles; signatures made on water -- you have not even completed it, and the signature is gone. Our lives are like that -- one moment we are here, another moment we are gone, and that moment could have been used for self-remembering.
Only people who use their life for self-remembering are using this great opportunity.
A man runs into an old friend who has become a drunkard. "But why do you drink so much?" he asks him.
"To forget," the drunkard replies. "To forget what?" asks his friend.
"Oh," says the drunkard, scratching his head, "I forgot."
A man goes to the psychoanalyst. "Doctor," he says, "you have to help me. I have a terrible problem: I forget everything, absolutely everything."
"So tell me about this problem," replies the therapist, preparing his notepad. "What problem?" asks the man, puzzled.
We are in this forgetfulness, we are this forgetfulness.
I loved your question, Vandana. You say: "As you drove away today I felt I am afraid of forgetting. Is there anything I need to remember?"
You need to remember yourself. You need to become a flame of inner awareness
-- an awareness so deep that even in dreams it will be present; an awareness so crystallized that even in deep sleep, dreamless sleep, it will be there burning like a light.
Even in deep sleep the man of awareness knows that he is fast asleep; that is part of his awareness. You don't know, even while you are awake, that you are. The man of awareness knows, even while asleep, that he is.
Buddha's chief disciple, Ananda, asked him once, "Bhante, a few things puzzle me very much, and one of the most puzzling things is this, that in the night I have watched you many times -- it is so beautiful to watch you while you are asleep -- but you always sleep in the same posture and you maintain the same posture from the beginning to the end.
When you go to sleep you are in this posture; in the night, many times I wake up and look at you, and you are in the same posture: the hand is resting in the same place, and the feet and the head. And in the morning also when I see you, you are in the same posture. How is this possible?"
Buddha said, "Because I remain awake. The body sleeps, but my own sleep is gone for ever. The body rests, but I am alert."
This alertness is needed, Vandana. This alertness will make available to you all the mysteries of existence. First become acquainted with the mystery that you are, then you have the master key: it can open all the locks of existence.
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE AND SUFFERED MUCH. AFTER LISTENING TO YOU
I FELT UNWILLING TO LET GO OF THE DREAM THAT THE DEEP RICH
EXPERIENCE MY LOVE AFFAIR BRINGS WILL NOT ULTIMATELY LEAD TO
SATISFACTION. HOW CAN I GO BEYOND THIS ATTACHMENT THAT IS SO
RICH, YET SO PAINFUL?
Donna, love is both. It is rich and it is painful, it is agony and it is ecstasy -- because love is the meeting of the earth and the sky, of the known and the unknown, of the visible and the invisible.
Love is the boundary that divides matter and consciousness, the boundary of the lower and the higher. Love has roots in the earth; that is its pain, its agony. And love has its branches in the sky; that is its ecstasy.
Love is not a single phenomenon, it is dual. It is a rope stretched between two polarities.
You will have to understand these two polarities: one is sex, another is prayer. Love is the rope stretched between sex and prayer; part of it is sex, part of it is prayer.
The sexual part is bound to bring many miseries, the part that belongs to prayer will bring many joys. Hence it is difficult to renounce love, because in renouncing one is afraid the joys that come will also be renounced. One is not able either to be totally in it, because all those pains again and again remind you to renounce it. This is the misery of the lover: the lover lives in a tension, pulled apart.
Donna, I can understand your problem. This is the basic problem of all lovers, because love brings both, many thorns and many flowers, and they both come together. Love is a rosebush. One does not want those thorns, one would like the rosebush to be all flowers and no thorns; but they come together, they are aspects of one energy.
But I am not saying to you to renounce love, I am not saying to you to become detached.
What I am saying to you is: make it more and more prayerful. My whole
approach is that of transformation, not of renunciation. You must have misunderstood me. I am not against sex, but I am all for making sex a prayer. The lowest can be possessed by the highest, then the pain of it disappears.
What pain is there in sexuality? Because it reminds you of your animality -- that is the pain. It reminds you of the past, it reminds you of your biological bondage, it reminds you that you are not free, you are under the slavery of the instincts given by nature; that you are not independent from nature, that your strings are pulled by nature, that you are just a puppet in the hands of unknown unconscious forces.
Sex is felt like a humiliation. In sex you start feeling you are losing your dignity, hence the pain. And then the fulfillment is so momentary; sooner or later any intelligent person will become aware that the satisfaction is momentary and followed by long nights of pain.
The ecstasy is just like a breeze, it comes and goes and leaves you in a desertlike state, utterly frustrated, disappointed. You had hoped much; many things were promised by the instinctual part of you, and nothing has been delivered.
In fact sex is a strategy of nature to perpetuate itself. It is a mechanism that keeps you reproducing, otherwise people will disappear. Just think of a humanity where sex is no longer an instinct and you are free, at your own will, to go into sex or not. Then the whole thing will look so absurd, the whole thing will look ridiculous. Just think -- if there is no instinctive force pulling you, I don't think anybody will be ready to go into sex. Nobody goes by consent; reluctantly, resisting, one goes into it.
If you read about and study the sexual patterns of different species of animals and insects you will be very much puzzled: how could this be done if it was left to the species themselves? For example, there are spiders which, while the male makes love to her, the female starts eating him. By the time the love is finished, the male is finished! Now think of these spiders if they are free to choose: the moment they see the female they will escape as far as they can. Why should they commit suicide, knowing it perfectly well?
They have seen other males disappearing the same way -- every day it is happening -- but when the instinct possesses them they are just a slave to it. Trembling, afraid, still they make love, knowing perfectly well this is the end.
When the male is having the orgasm, the female starts eating him.
The female bedbug has no opening, so it is very difficult to make love to her. The male bug first has to make a hole in her. You can easily see whether the female bedbug is a virgin or not, because each time love is made, a scar is left -- it is really screwing! -- but willingly she allows it. It is painful, and there is danger to her life, because if the male makes the hole in some wrong place she will be dead -- and there are stupid males too!
But still the risk has to be taken; there is some such unconscious force that it has to be accepted.
If sex were left to your decision I don't think people would go into it. There are reasons why people make love hiding from the public, from people -- because it looks so ridiculous. Just making love in public, you know that others will see the ridiculousness of it; you yourself know it is ridiculous. One feels one is falling below humanity; the great pain is there, that you are dragged backwards.
But it brings a few moments of utter purity and joy and innocence too. It brings a few moments of timelessness, when suddenly there is no time left. It brings a few moments of egolessness too, when in deep orgasmic spasm the ego is forgotten. It gives you a few glimpses of God, hence it cannot be renounced either.
People have tried to renounce it. Down the ages monks have been renouncing it, for the simple reason that it is so humiliating, so against the dignity of human beings. To be under the impact of some unconscious instinct is dehumanizing, demoralizing. The monks have renounced it, they have left the world, but with it all the joy in their life has also disappeared. They become very serious and sad, they turn suicidal. Now they don't see any meaning in life, all life becomes meaningless. Then they simply wait for death to come and deliver them.
It is a delicate problem; how to solve it? Monks have not been able to solve it. On the contrary, they created many perversions in the world. All the perversions that are condemned by your so-called saints are created by those same people. The first idea of homosexuality arose in the monasteries, because men were kept together, away and aloof from women, and women were kept together, aloof and away from men.
There are Catholic monasteries where no woman has entered for one thousand
years. Not even a small baby of six months old is allowed. Just the very idea seems to be very horrible; these monks seem to be really dangerous -- even a six-month-old girl is not allowed in the monastery. What does it show? What fear! What paranoia!
Naturally the monks huddle together, then their instincts start creating new ways, start inventing perversions; they turn homosexual. Homosexuality is really very religious, it is a by-product of religion. Religion has given many things to the world; homosexuality is one of them.
All kinds of perversions Now you don't hear of any woman making love to the
devil; the devil seems to have lost all interest in women suddenly! There is no devil. But if you keep women away from all possibilities of falling in love, of being in love, then the mind will start creating its own projections, and of course those projections will be very, very colorful. And those projections are bound to happen, you cannot avoid them.
So monks and nuns have not been able to solve the problem, they have even messed up the whole thing more. And the worldly person, the sensuous, the indulgent person, has not been able to solve it either. He suffers miserably; his whole life is a suffering. He goes on hoping, from one hope to another hope, and goes on failing in every hope, and slowly slowly a great hopelessness settles in his being.
My approach is neither worldly nor otherworldly.
My approach is not of rejecting something but using it.
My understanding is that whatsoever is given to you is precious. You may know its value, you may not know its value, but it is precious; if it was not so, existence would not have given it to you. So you have to find ways to transform it. You have to make your love more prayerful, you have to make your sex more loving. Slowly slowly, sex has to be transformed into a sacred activity, it has to be raised. Rather than sex pulling you down into the mire of animality, you can pull sex upwards.
The same energy that pulls you down can pull you upwards, and the same energy can give you wings. It has tremendous power; certainly it is the most powerful thing in the world, because all life arises out of it. If it can give birth to a child, to a new life, if it can bring a new life into existence, you can imagine its
potential: it can bring a new life to you too. Just as it can bring a new child into the world, it can give a new birth to you.
And that's what Jesus means when he says to Nicodemus, "Unless you are born again, you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God" -- unless you are born again, unless you are capable of giving birth to yourself -- a new vision, a new quality to your energies, a new tuning to your instrument. Your instrument contains great music, but you have to learn how to play on it.
Sex has to become a great meditative art. That's the contribution of Tantra to the world.
Tantra's contribution is the greatest, because it give you keys to transform the lowest into the highest. It gives you keys to transform mud into lotuses. It is one of the greatest sciences that have happened -- but because of the moralists and the puritans and the so-called religious people, Tantra has not been allowed to help people. Its scriptures have been burned, thousands of Tantra masters have been killed, burned alive. The whole tradition has been almost destroyed, people have been forced to go underground.
Just the other day I received a letter from my sannyasins from America saying that Gurdjieff's people are so persecuted by the government that they have decided to go underground. They have written, "We are afraid that sooner or later this is going to happen to us. Should we start preparing, so that if this happens to us we can also start working in a hidden way?"
It is possible, because it has been always so. Gurdjieff's work also consists in transforming the sexual energy into an inner integration -- the organized church is always against any effort of this kind.
My work is hindered in every way, my people are harassed in every way. Just a few days ago, the Indian parliament discussed for one hour what should be done with me -- as if this country has no other problem to discuss. So much fear! And I am not doing any harm to anybody; I don't even go outside the gate. And at least this much freedom is everybody's birthright -- if someone wants to come to me and wants to be transformed, it is nobody's business to interfere. I don't go to anybody. If people come to me and they want to be transformed... then what kind of democracy is this?
But the stupid politicians and the priests have always been in a conspiracy. They
don't want people to be transformed, because transformed people are no longer under their domination. Transformed people become independent, free; transformed people become so aware and so intelligent that they can see through all the games of the politicians and the priests. Then they are nobody's followers; then they start living a totally new kind of life -- not the life of the crowd, but the life of the individual. They become lions, they are no more sheep.
And the politicians and the priests are interested that every human being should remain a sheep. Only then can they be the shepherds, leaders, great leaders. Mediocre and stupid people pretending to be great leaders -- but that is possible only if the whole humanity remains very low in intelligence, is kept repressed.
Up to now, only two experiments have been done. One was of indulgence, which has failed -- which is being tried again by the West and is going to fail, utterly fail. And the other was that of renunciation -- which has been tried by the East, and also in the West by Christianity. That too has failed, utterly failed.
A new experiment is needed, urgently needed. Man is in a great turmoil, in a great confusion. Where to go? What to do with oneself?
Donna, I am not saying renounce sex, I am saying transform it. It need not remain just biological: bring some spirituality to it. While making love, meditate too. While making love, be prayerful. Love should not be just a physical act; pour your soul into it.
Then slowly slowly the pain starts disappearing and the energy contained in the pain is released and becomes more and more a benediction. Then agony is transformed into ecstasy.
You say, "I have fallen in love and suffered much."
You are blessed. The really poor people are those who have never fallen in love and never suffered. They have not lived at all. To fall in love and to suffer in love is good. It is passing through fire; it purifies, it gives you insight, it makes you more alert. This is the challenge to be accepted. Those who don't accept this challenge remain spineless.
You say, "I have fallen in love and suffered much. After listening to you I felt unwilling to let go of the dream that the deep rich experience my love affair brings will not ultimately lead to satisfaction."
I am not telling you to drop your love, I am simply telling you a fact -- that it will not bring you to ultimate contentment. It is not in my hands to change the nature of things. I am simply stating a fact. If it was in my hands I would have liked you to have ultimate contentment in love. But it doesn't happen. What can we do? Two plus two are four.
It is a fundamental law of life that love brings you to deeper and deeper dissatisfactions.
Ultimately love brings you to such a discontent that you start longing for the ultimate beloved, God, you start searching for the ultimate love affair.
Sannyas is an ultimate love affair: the search for God, the search for truth. It is possible only when you have failed many times, loved and suffered, and each suffering has brought you more and more consciousness, more and more understanding. One day the recognition arrives that love can give you a few glimpses -- and those glimpses are good, and those glimpses are glimpses of God
-- but it can only give you glimpses; more than that is not possible. But that too is too much; but without those glimpses you will never seek and search God.
Those who have not loved and suffered never become seekers of God -- they cannot; they have not earned that worth, they have not become worthy. It is the sole right of the lover one day to start searching for the ultimate beloved.
Love, and love more deeply. Suffer, and suffer more deeply. Love totally and suffer totally, because this is how the impure gold passes through fire and becomes pure gold.
I am not saying to you, escape from your love affairs: go deeper into them. I help my sannyasins to go into love, because I know love ultimately fails. And unless they know by their own experience that love ultimately fails, their search for God will remain phony.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
WHAT IS JEALOUSY AND WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH?
Prem Garbha, jealousy is comparison. And we have been taught to compare, we have been conditioned to compare, always compare. Somebody else has a better house, somebody else has a more beautiful body, somebody else has more money, somebody else has a more charismatic personality. Compare, go on comparing yourself with everybody else you pass by, and great jealousy will be the outcome; it is the by-product of the conditioning for comparison.
Otherwise, if you drop comparing, jealousy disappears. Then you simply know you are you, and you are nobody else, and there is no need. It is good that you don't compare yourself with trees, otherwise you will start feeling very jealous: why are you not green?
And why has God been so hard on you -- and no flowers? It is better that you don't compare with birds, with rivers, with mountains; otherwise you will suffer. You only compare with human beings, because you have been conditioned to compare only with human beings; you don't compare with peacocks and with parrots. Otherwise, your jealousy would be more and more: you would be so burdened by jealousy that you would not be able to live at all.
Comparison is a very foolish attitude, because each person is unique and incomparable.
Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears. Each is unique and incomparable. You are just yourself: nobody has ever been like you, and nobody will ever be like you. And you need not be like anybody else, either.
God creates only originals; he does not believe in carbon copies.
A bunch of chickens were in the yard when a football flew over the fence and landed in their midst. A rooster waddled over, studied it, then said, "I'm not complaining, girls, but look at the work they are turning out next door."
Next door great things are happening: the grass is greener, the roses are rosier. Everybody seems to be so happy -- except yourself. You are continuously comparing. And the same is the case with the others, they are comparing too. Maybe they think the grass in your lawn is greener -- it always looks greener from the distance -- that you have a more beautiful wife.… You are tired, you cannot believe why you allowed yourself to be trapped by this woman, you don't know how to get rid of her -- and the neighbor may be jealous of you, that you have such a beautiful wife! And you may be jealous of him.…
Everybody is jealous of everybody else. And out of jealousy we create such hell, and out of jealousy we become very mean.
An elderly farmer was moodily regarding the ravages of the flood. "Hiram!" yelled a neighbor, "your pigs were all washed down the creek."
"How about Thompson's pigs?" asked the farmer. "They're gone too."
"And Larsen's?" "Yes."
"Humphf!" ejaculated the farmer, cheering up. "It ain't as bad as I thought."
If everybody is in misery, it feels good; if everybody is losing, it feels good. If everybody is happy and succeeding, it tastes very bitter.
But why does the idea of the other enter in your head in the first place? Again let me remind you: because you have not allowed your own juices to flow; you have not allowed your own blissfulness to grow, you have not allowed your own being to bloom. Hence you feel empty inside, and you look at each and everybody's outside because only the outside can be seen.
You know your inside, and you know the others' outside: that creates jealousy. They know your outside, and they know their inside: that creates jealousy. Nobody else knows your inside. There you know you are nothing, worthless. And the others on the outside look so smiling. Their smiles may be phony, but how can you know that they are phony?
Maybe their hearts are also smiling. You know your smile is phony, because your heart is not smiling at all, it may be crying and weeping.
You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody's exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive.
There is an ancient Sufi story:
A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every day to God,
"Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in such suffering?" One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God, "You can give me anybody else's suffering and I am ready to accept it. But take mine, I cannot bear it any more."
That night he had a beautiful dream -- beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering -- in fact everybody has prayed some time or other, "I am ready to accept anybody else's suffering, but take mine away; this is too much, it is unbearable."
So everybody gathered his own sufferings into bags, and they reached the temple, and they were looking very happy; the day has come, their prayer has been heard. And this man also rushed to the temple.
And then God said, "Put your bags by the walls." All the bags were put by the walls, and then God declared: "Now you can choose. Anybody can take any bag."
And the most surprising thing was this: that this man who had been praying always, rushed towards his bag before anybody else could choose it! But he was in for a surprise, because everybody rushed to his own bag, and everybody was happy to choose it again.
What was the matter? For the first time, everybody had seen others' miseries, others'
sufferings -- their bags were as big, or even bigger!
And the second problem was, one had become accustomed to one's own sufferings. Now to choose somebody else's -- who knows what kind of sufferings will be inside the bag?
Why bother? At least you are familiar with your own sufferings, and you have become accustomed to them, and they are tolerable. For so many years you have tolerated them --
why choose the unknown?
And everybody went home happy. Nothing had changed, they were bringing the same suffering back, but everybody was happy and smiling and joyous that he could get his own bag back.
In the morning he prayed to God and he said, "Thank you for the dream; I will never ask again. Whatsoever you have given me is good for me, must be good for me; that's why you have given it to me."
Because of jealousy you are in constant suffering; you become mean to others. And because of jealousy you start becoming phony, because you start pretending. You start pretending things that you don't have, you start pretending things which you CAN'T have, which are not natural to you. You become more and more artificial. Imitating others, competing with others, what else can you do? If somebody has something and you don't have it, and you don't have a natural possibility of having it, the only way is to have some cheap substitute for it.
I hear that Jim and Nancy Smith had a great time in Europe this summer. It's so great when a couple finally gets a chance to really live it up. They went everywhere and did everything. Paris, Rome... you name it, they saw it and they did it.
But it was so embarrassing coming back home and going through customs. You know how custom officers pry into all your personal belongings. They opened up a bag and took out three wigs, silk underwear, perfume, hair coloring... really embarrassing. And that was just Jim's bag!
Just look inside your bag and you will find so many artificial, phony, pseudo things -- for what? Why can't you be natural and spontaneous? -- because of jealousy.
The jealous man lives in hell. Drop comparing and jealousy disappears, meanness disappears, phoniness disappears. But you can drop it only if you start growing your inner treasures; there is no other way.
Grow up, become a more and more authentic individual. Love yourself and respect yourself the way God has made you, and then immediately the doors of heaven open for you. They were always open, you had simply not looked at
them.
The last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO COUNT? ONE DAY AFTER THE FOURTH QUESTION YOU SAID, "NOW THE SEVENTH QUESTION."
It is really difficult for me. You should be happy that I don't say after the seventh, "The first question."
Little Johnny is in the classroom, learning how to add. "How much is two plus two, Johnny?" asks the teacher.
Johnny hesitates, looks at his hand, and starts counting with his fingers: "One, two, three, four!" he exclaims.
"No, no. Johnny," says the teacher. "You can't use your hands. You have to count in your head. So, how much is four plus four, Johnny?" she asks again.
Johnny hides his hands behind his back and whispering to himself, counts, "One, two, three, four... eight!" he shouts triumphantly.
"No, no, no, Johnny!" replies the teacher angrily. "Now put your hands in your pockets and tell me how much is five plus five?"
Johnny puts his hands in his pockets, concentrates, takes a few minutes and then cries out, "Eleven, ma'am!"
It is really difficult for me to count. I cannot count on my fingers. To keep my fingers at the back will be very difficult, and I don't have pockets!
Enough for today. The Book of Wisdom Chapter #28
Chapter title: Be a Joke unto Yourself 10 March 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7903100
ShortTitle:
WISDOM28
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
89
mins
The first question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 1
PLEASE EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SANNYASIN AND ONE
WHO IS NOT, YET LIVES WITH A DEEP COMMITMENT TO TRUTH.
Lynne Stevens, do you know what truth is? Otherwise, how can there be a commitment?
Commitment is possible only if you know. The sannyasin is one who knows that
he knows not, the sannyasin is one whose commitment is not to truth but to the inquiry into truth. And the inquiry is possible only with someone who knows, who has arrived. The sannyasin is one who is committed to the person, or to the no-person, around whom he feels the vibe of truth, the vibe of authenticity.
Lynne Stevens, your commitment to truth is just an idea. Your truth is just a word, a mind trip. If you want to make it a real pilgrimage you will have to be a disciple -- and to be a disciple is to be a sannyasin.
To be a disciple means to be ready to learn, ready to go into the unknown with someone who has been in it. Alone, very rarely one has attained to truth. Not that it has not happened -- alone, also, it has happened, but very rarely, just an exception; otherwise one has to learn in communion with a master.
Then too, it does not happen easily. It is an arduous journey. Dropping the clinging to the known is not easy. That is our whole investment, that is our whole identity. Dropping the clinging to the known is dropping the ego, is committing a kind of spiritual suicide; alone, you will not be able to do it. Unless you see somebody who has committed that suicide and still is -- in fact for the first time is You will have to look into those eyes which have seen truth, and a
glimpse of the truth will be caught through those eyes. You will have to hold hands with someone who has known, receive the warmth and the love...
and the unknown will start flowing into you.
That's what it means to be with a master, to be a disciple. If you are really committed to truth you are bound to become a sannyasin. If your commitment to truth is an inquiry then you will have to learn the ways of learning. And the first thing to learn is to surrender, to trust, to love.
The sannyasin is one who has fallen in love with a person, or a no-person, where he feels a gut feeling: "Yes, it has happened here." To be with someone who has known is contagious -- and truth is not taught, it is caught.
Your truth is nothing but an idea in your mind -- maybe a philosophical inquiry, but a philosophical inquiry is not going to help. It has to become existential, you have to give proofs in your life that you are really committed. Otherwise you can go on playing the game of words, beautiful games of theories, systems of thought -- and there are thousands. You can also make a private system of thought of your own, and you will think this is truth.
Truth is not of your making, truth has nothing to do with your mind. Truth happens, and it happens only when you have become a no-mind. But how are you going to become a no-mind? On your own you will remain the mind. You may think about the no-mind, you may philosophize about the no-mind, you may read the scriptures about no-mind, but you will remain a mind. On your own, seeking and searching, your ego will feel very good --
but that is the barrier. It is like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.
If somewhere you find help is available, don't miss it -- because the opportunity is rare, the buddhafield is rare. Only once in a while, somewhere, a buddha arises, a bodhichitta happens. Then don't miss the opportunity. If your commitment is really towards truth, you cannot avoid becoming a sannyasin. It is inevitable, because no-mind is learned only by sitting by the side of a no- mind.
If you sit by my side, slowly slowly your mind will start dispersing like the morning mist.
Slowly slowly a silence will start penetrating you -- not of your doing, but coming on its own. A stillness will pervade you.
And the moment you are utterly still, not even a thought moving inside you, that is the moment of illumination. For the first time you have a glimpse of truth -- not the idea of truth, but truth itself.
The second question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 2
MY FEELINGS TELL ME THAT UNTIL I KNOW YOU, I CAN'T TRUST. AND YET
YOU SAY UNTIL I TRUST YOU, I CANNOT KNOW YOU. WHAT TO DO?
William, there are two kinds of knowing. One is from a distance: you remain aloof, you remain an observer, a spectator. That's what scientific knowing is; you need not get involved in it, in fact you should not get involved. You should be
very objective, you should not allow your subjectivity to interfere with your observation. You should simply be there like a mechanical watcher. You should not be a human being, you should be just a computer.
And this is certain, that sooner or later science is going to be taken over by computers, robots, because they will be more scientific. There will be no subjectivity in them, they will simply see the fact. The fact will not be interfered with in any way, it will remain utterly objective.
That is the way of science -- knowing from a distance, keeping aloof, detached. That's how the scientist will know a rose flower, that's how the scientist will know the sunset, that's how the scientist will know the beauty of a woman or a man.
But the problem is, something essential is bound to be missed, something very fundamental, something which is the core of the whole thing. The scientist can know the roseflower -- he can know of what it is constituted, he can know all the chemicals, etcetera, but he will never know the beauty of it. He will remain blind to the beauty; his very approach, his methodology, prohibits him.
If you are detached you cannot know beauty. Beauty is known only when you fall en rapport, when the observer becomes the observed, when there is no wall between, when every wall has been transformed into a bridge. When there is a kind of melting, when you become the flower and the flower becomes you, then there is a totally different kind of knowing -- the way a poet knows. He will know beauty, he will not know the chemicals.
He will not know the objective flower, he will know something far deeper. He will know the spirituality of the flower, the spirit of the flower.
And the mystic, his knowing is the highest form of poetic knowing, the ultimate form of poetic knowing. The poet is there only for moments. Sometimes he is a poet, he meets, he mingles, merges into the flower; sometimes he becomes a detached observer. Hence poetry is a kind of mixture of both the knowledges.
Scientific knowledge is purely objective, mystic knowing is purely subjective, poetic knowing is between the two, a mixture of both -- a little bit of science, a little bit of religion. But basic knowing can be divided in two, the scientific and the mystic.
Now it depends on you, in what way you want to know me.
You say: "My feelings tell me that until I know you I can't trust you."
These are not feelings -- there you are misunderstanding yourself. These are thoughts, these cannot be feelings; that's a sheer misunderstanding. This is the way thoughts speak.
Thoughts always say, "Be careful, cautious, move logically" -- and of course this is very logical: how can you trust me if you don't know me? It is a logical statement. It is not a statement from your gut level; it cannot be, because gut feelings are very illogical. Gut feelings will say to you the same as I am saying: trust and you will know.
So the first thing to be said is: these are not your feelings, these are your thoughts. You watch again, you go into these so-called feelings again, and you will find they are not coming from the heart, they are coming from the head. The head says, "First know, then trust."
And this is a great strategy, if you believe in the head and its dictation -- "First know, then you can trust." Then you will never trust, because knowing cannot happen without trust, mystic knowing cannot happen without trust. Scientific knowing is possible, but scientific knowing is not applicable here.
You can know me scientifically. My doctor comes to examine my body; he knows me in a way. You don't know me in that way, you know me in a totally different way. My doctor is afraid to come to listen to me, because he does not want to lose a patient. If he listens to me, then I will be the doctor and he will be the patient! He comes and he is in a hurry to escape.
Once it happened that he was holding my hand -- I had some trouble with my thumb --
and something happened to him which was not scientific. Outside the room, he told Vivek, "He is God, he IS God!" -- but since then I have not seen him, he has simply disappeared. Something nonscientific, something which was not of the head He felt me for a moment but became frightened.
Watch. If your head is saying these things, these are not feelings. Feelings cannot say these things, because this is not the language of feelings. Feelings say: "Fall
in love, and then you will know." Thoughts say: "Doubt, inquire, make certain. When everything is absolutely proved and you are convinced, rationally convinced, then you can trust." And the logic appears very, very clean, there seems to be no trick in it. There is! The trick is that through scientific knowing you cannot know the mystery that is confronting you, you cannot know the poetry that is showering on you, you cannot see the beauty and the grace that is available to you.
You will see my body, you will listen to my words, but you will miss my silences. And they are my real messages. You will be able to see me as I appear on the surface, but you will not be able to penetrate into me as I am at the center.
Knowing the circumference is possible scientifically, but by knowing the circumference of a person love does not arise. And the relationship between the disciple and the master is the crescendo of love, the highest peak of love. Love cannot go higher than that; that is the ultimate in love.
These are your thoughts, not feelings. And if you listen to thoughts you cannot have any communion with me. You will listen to my words, you will listen to my arguments, you will become more knowledgeable, you will go perfectly satisfied that you have something with you. And all that is nonsense. Those words that you have accumulated, the knowledge that you have gathered, are of no use at all.
It is not a question of gathering information here, it is a question of imbibing the spirit; the only way is to trust. It is only through trust that knowing happens.
Science uses doubt as its method, religion uses trust as its method. That is their fundamental difference. Doubt is irrelevant in the world of love, just as trust is irrelevant in the world of things. In the world of I-it, only doubt is significant: you cannot trust things, the scientist cannot just sit there in trust waiting for something to happen. Nothing will happen. He has to doubt, inquire, investigate, dissect. He has to use his mind, his logic, then only some conclusions can be arrived at.
And those conclusions will always remain approximate, they will always remain conditional, because in the future more facts may be known and the whole thing would have to be changed again. They cannot be categorical.
So trust is not the point, it never arises in the world of science; doubt remains the
base. If sometimes you come to a conclusion, the conclusion does not become your trust, does not become your faith. It remains an hypothesis.
An hypothesis means that up to now whatsoever has been known supports this theory. It is only up to now; we can't say anything about tomorrow. Tomorrow more facts may be known, and certainly when more facts will be known the hypothesis will have to be adjusted, and the theory would have to be changed.
Science goes on changing every day; it is temporal, it lives in the world of time, because mind is time. Mind cannot live without time; mind is momentary, temporal.
The world of religion functions in a totally different dimension, on a different level. It begins in trust, in love, then a totally different kind of knowing happens.
When you love a woman, you know her. You know her not as the gynecologist knows her, you know her in a totally different way. You don't know her physiology, you don't know her material existence, but you know her spiritual presence. Love, only love, is capable of knowing the spiritual presence. You fall in love not with the physical body, you fall in love with the spiritual presence of a person. But that is available only in trust.
In science, trust is utterly useless. In religion, doubt is utterly useless.
So, William, it is up to you. If you have come here to study what is happening here scientifically, then you are welcome. You can go according to your own thoughts -- don't call them feelings, please. You can go on according to your head -- don't call it your heart, it is not. You are welcome: be here, study, observe, come to certain conclusions --
but they will remain hypotheses.
But if you have come to be transformed, not to be informed only, then you will have to understand that there is a different door. And that door is trust. Trust is an absurd phenomenon, logically absurd. That's why logic always says love is blind, although love has its own eyes, far more deep-going... still, to logic it is blind.
Logic ridicules love, and love smiles knowingly at the whole foolishness of logic.
If you have come here with a logical approach... study, observe, come to some conclusions, but they are not going to transform you; that much you must be aware of. If you have come to be transformed, then fall in love. Then forget the head, then let there be a contact heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit. Then there is no need to be too much concerned with what you see, your whole concern should be with what you feel. Then you should not be too much concerned in collecting information, but being in celebration with me.
Then don't take much note of what I say, take note of what I am. Listen to my silences, the pauses, the gaps, the intervals -- I am more there. Then you will become aware of a totally different world existing here, the buddhafield. It is an energy field; you have to be open and vulnerable to it, only then it can permeate you, pervade you, overwhelm you.
The third question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 3
YOU SAID THE OTHER DAY THAT NO ONE IS INTERESTED ANY MORE IN
QUESTIONS LIKE "WHO CREATED THE UNIVERSE?" BUT A RECENT EDITION
OF TIME MAGAZINE DEVOTED CONSIDERABLE SPACE TO AN ARTICLE
ENTITLED "IN THE BEGINNING: GOD AND SCIENCE."
THE BASIC THEME OF THE ARTICLE WAS THAT SCIENCE AND RELIGION
HAVE BEEN BROUGHT CLOSE TOGETHER BY THE "BIG BANG" THEORY OF
CREATION IN WHICH THE UNIVERSE IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE COME INTO
BEING THROUGH A VAST FIREBALL EXPLOSION, FIFTEEN OR TWENTY
MILLION YEARS AGO.
TIME SAYS THAT THIS SOUNDS VERY MUCH LIKE THE STORY WHICH THE
OLD TESTAMENT HAS BEEN TELLING ALL ALONG, NAMELY THAT THE
UNIVERSE BEGAN IN A SINGLE FLASHING ACT OF CREATION. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE UNIVERSE WAS
CREATED, THAT IT HAD A BEGINNING? AND WHY DO YOU ASSERT THAT IT
DID NOT? IS IT NOT A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION WHEN SCIENCE AND
RELIGION AGREE?
Subhuti, the first thing to remember is, for three hundred years religion has been losing its territory continuously. First, religion tried to destroy science. It was unable to do it --
because you cannot destroy truth, and science was truer, as far as the objective world is concerned, than religion. In fact religion has no authority to say anything about the objective world.
When you are ill you go to the physician, you don't go to the poet. The poet has no authority; he may be a great poet but that is irrelevant when you are ill. He may be a great poet, but when something goes wrong in your bathroom you don't call him, you call a plumber. The plumber may not be a poet at all, but the plumber is relevant there. You don't call Albert Einstein -- he may be a great physicist, but what does he know about plumbing?
Religion was proving to be utterly wrong. It was wrong about the objective world. Once science started investigating the objective, organized religion was
very much afraid. If there had been a Jesus he would not have been afraid, he would simply have said, "About the objective, listen to science." If a Buddha was there he would have said, "Listen to science."
But there was no buddha in the West where science was growing. And people like Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler were tortured in every possible way because organized religion, the church, became very much afraid: what they were saying was going against their scriptures.
The scientists were saying that the sun does not go around the earth -- and The Bible says it does. The scientists were saying the earth goes around the sun... now, if The Bible can be wrong in one thing, then why not in others? That was the problem, that was the fear.
The person who said that the earth goes around the sun was called to the court by the Vatican. Galileo had to appear, in his old age -- he was more than seventy, ill, on his deathbed, but he was forced to come to the court to declare there that whatsoever he had said is wrong.
He must have been a man of great humor. He said, "Yes, if it offends you, I declare that whatsoever I have said is wrong -- that the earth does not go around the sun, but the sun goes around the earth."
Everybody looked happy, and then Galileo said, "But sir, nothing will change by my statement. The earth will still go round and round the sun -- my statement makes no difference! If you are offended by my statement I can take it back, I can refute it. If you want me to write another treatise, I can write that too. But nothing will change by that.
Who cares about my statement? Neither the sun nor the earth."
Organized religion tried to kill science -- they could not, because truth cannot be killed.
Slowly slowly science has possessed the whole territory of the objective world. Then the natural tendency of mind... science started claiming that which could not be claimed by it.
Science created the same fallacy as organized religion, which was saying, "About the objective world also, we are right." They were not. They are right
about the subjective world; about the interiormost being of existence they are right. But they are not right about the circumference of it, that is not their dimension. But they were claiming that they are right about both.
The same started happening with physicists, chemists and other scientists. In the beginning of this century, science became very arrogant -- the same type of arrogance, just the authority shifted from the priests to the scientists. The scientists started saying,
"There is no God and there is no soul and there is no consciousness, and all that is rubbish."
This type of arrogance has always remained with man. We have not yet learned anything.
This is again the same game being played. When science became very arrogant, naturally religion became defensive. It was losing, it became defensive. So anything that is discovered by science religion tries to appropriate. It tries somehow to make it fit with itself, because the only possibility for it to survive now is if it proves itself to be scientific.
In the beginning it was just the opposite. If a scientist was to survive, the only way was to prove that whatsoever he has found is according to the scriptures, that it proves the scriptures, that it is not against.
Now the whole thing is just vice versa. Now if religion wants to exist in the world, it has continuously to look up to science. Whatsoever science discovers, religion immediately jumps upon and tries to prove, "This is what we have been saying all along."
This "Big Bang" theory has nothing to do with the religious attitude and the religious theory of creation. In the big bang theory there is no God, it is all an accident; it is not creation, remember, because there is no creator in it.
But religion is very defensive, continuously searching for anything to cling to. The big bang theory says that in a sudden explosion, in a great flash of light, the world was created. Jump on it; you can always find some way, some logical way. You can say,
"Yes, this is right, this is what we have been saying all along. God in the
beginning said,
'Let there be light' -- and now the theory says there was a great explosion, the world was suddenly created."
But the basic thing is missing -- don't be deceived. Religion has been saying that God said, "Let there be light." The base is not the light, the base is God saying, "Let there be light." That God is missing in the big bang theory: there is no God, it was a sudden accident, not creation.
And one more thing: this big bang theory is not totally accepted, there are many other theories. These are all guesses; they are not proved yet, nothing is proved. In fact I don't think that it can ever be proved how the world came into existence. It is impossible, because nobody was there to witness it, you cannot find an eyewitness, so all that they can do will be just guesswork.
And it happened fifteen or twenty billion years ago. You cannot even be certain whether Krishna ever existed or not, just five thousand years ago. You cannot be certain even about Jesus, whether he was really an historical person or is just a myth -- and he was only two thousand years ago. Do you think you can be certain about something that happened twenty billion years ago? All guesses.
And still I say the world was never created, there was no beginning.
Why do I say that there was no beginning? Subhuti, it is so simple. Even if you believe in the big bang theory, there must have been something that exploded. Do you think nothing exploded? If there was something, x, y, z, -- any name, I am not much interested in such nonsense things, x, y, z, whatsoever it was that exploded -- if something was there before the explosion then the explosion is not the beginning. It may be A beginning but it is not the beginning.
And when I say there has never been any beginning, I mean the beginning. Something was always there -- whether it exploded or whether it grew slowly, in one day or in six days or in one single moment, doesn't matter. There must have been something before it, because only something can come out of something. Even if you say there was nothing, and it came out of nothing, then your nothing is full of something, it is not really nothing.
Hence I say there has never been any beginning and there will never be any end. Maybe a beginning, maybe many beginnings and maybe many ends, but never
the first and never the last. We are always in the middle. Existence is not a creation but a creativity. It is not that it begins one day and ends one day. It goes on and on; it is an ongoing process.
That's why, Subhuti, I say that all these guesses are useless and there is no need for them and they serve no purpose. This was Buddha's approach too. Whenever somebody would ask a question like, "Who created the world?" -- whether the world was ever created or is uncreated -- Buddha would answer by other questions. He would ask, "If who created the world is decided, is it going to help your enlightenment? Is it going to help you become more silent, more meditative, more aware?"
Certainly the person would answer, "It is not going to help. Who created the world doesn't matter. It will not help my enlightenment and it will not make me more meditative."
Then Buddha said, "Then why bother about all this? Think of things which can help you to become more meditative, think of things which can help you become free of all the ego-clinging, think of things which can ultimately lead you into the state of samadhi."
My approach is also the same: these are all irrelevant questions. And because of these irrelevant questions there has been so much controversy down the ages and thousands of people have wasted their lives discussing who created the world, when exactly, what was the date -- and so on, and so forth.
I think these people were neurotics. I don't think them healthy, normal, sane people. Who cares? For what? It does not matter at all, it is immaterial.
The fourth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 4
WHAT IS THE SECRET OF A JOKE?
The sudden unexpected turn, that is the secret of a joke -- the revelation. You are expecting something and it doesn't happen; what happens is so totally absurd and yet has a logic of its own... it is ridiculous and yet not illogical. That's what
suddenly becomes a laughter in you. You see the ridiculousness of it, and also the logic of it. It is unexpected -
- if it is expected, then it doesn't bring laughter to you. If you know the joke then it doesn't bring laughter to you, because now you know, everything is expected.
Two insects were living in a cemetery. One said to the other: "Want to make love in dead Ernest tonight?"
Now, poor dead Ernest...!
An Englishman on his first trip to America went to one of those stand-up comic nightclubs for the first time. After he had had a couple of drinks, the lights dimmed and Henny Youngman stepped into the spotlight and greeted the crowd with his famous trademark gag: "Take my wife... please."
The crowd belly-laughed. The Englishman was impressed. "By Jove," he said to himself,
"I must remember that and try it on the chaps back home."
Now, when somebody says, "Take my wife," you are expecting he will say, "for example." "Take my wife, for example." But he is saying "Take my wife," and then the silence, the little pause..."please." That is unexpected.
Some weeks later, back in London, he stepped to the microphone at a meeting of his club and, with great confidence, snapped out: "Consider my wife. Please."
Now the whole thing is lost. Just a single word makes it a beauty.
The secret of the joke is that it brings you to a point where you are expecting, expecting, expecting that this is going to happen; then it never happens. And what happens is so sudden... and because you were expecting something you were coming to a tension, and then suddenly something else happens, and the tension has come to such a climax that it explodes. You are all laughter. It is a tremendous release, it is great meditation. If you can laugh totally, it will give you a moment of no-time, no-mind. Mind lives logically with expectations, laughter is something that comes from the beyond. Mind is always guessing what is going to happen, groping. And something happens which is absolutely contrary to its expectations: it simply stops for a moment.
And that is the moment when the mind stops, when laughter comes from your belly, a belly laugh. Your whole body goes into a spasm, it is orgasmic.
A good laugh is tremendously meditative.
An English gentleman went to his surgeon saying, "Old chap, I have this damned desire to be an Irishman. Can you perform some operation to make me one?"
"Well," replied the surgeon, "it is a fairly risky business, you know. We have to remove ninety percent of your brain."
"Do it," replied the Englishman.
When he awoke from the operation he found his bed surrounded by long-faced doctors.
His surgeon stepped forward, saying, "Terribly sorry, old chap, but during the operation the old scalpel slipped and we accidentally removed one hundred percent of your brain!"
"Ah, na fuckin' worries mate!" The fifth question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 5
WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE IN SHORT?
Parinirvana -- better known in the commune as Paribanana -- Buddha's message in short is: Be a light unto yourself. And mine? Be a joke unto yourself!
The sixth question:
OSHO,
Question 6
WHY AM I ALWAYS THINKING OF MONEY?
What else is there to think about? Money is power. Everybody else is thinking of money, don't be worried. Even those who are thinking of the other world... they have different coins but they are also thinking of money. Money represents power, with money you can purchase power.
Your saints are also thinking of money -- they call it virtue. By virtue you can purchase a better house in heaven, a better car, a better woman. A few people are not that greedy, they are thinking only of the money that is current in this world. A few people are more greedy, they think of the other world. And if you are thinking of virtue to attain to paradise, what is it except money?
A man stops thinking about money only when he starts living in the present. Money is the future; money is security for the future, a guarantee for the future. If you have a good bank balance your future is safe. If you have a good character, even life after death is safe.
The whole world is thinking in terms of money. Those who think in terms of power politics are thinking in terms of money, because money is nothing but a symbol for power. That's why you can go on accumulating more and more money, but the desire never leaves you to have still more -- because the thirst for power is unlimited, it knows no end.
And people are thirsty for power because deep down they are empty. Somehow they want to stuff that emptiness with something -- it may be money, power, prestige, respectability, character, virtue. Anything will do; they want to stuff their inner emptiness.
There are only two types of people in the world: those who try to stuff their inner emptiness, and those very rare precious beings who try to see the inner emptiness. Those who try to stuff it remain empty, frustrated. They go on collecting garbage, their whole life is futile and fruitless. Only the other kind, the very precious people who try to look into their inner emptiness without any desire to stuff it, become meditators.
Meditation is looking into your emptiness, welcoming it, enjoying it, being one with it, with no desire to fill it -- there is no need, because it is already full. It looks empty because you don't have the right way of seeing it. You see it through the mind; that is the wrong way. If you put the mind aside and look into your emptiness, it has tremendous beauty, it is divine, it is overflowing with joy.
Nothing else is needed.
Only then a person stops thinking about money, stops thinking about power, stops thinking about paradise -- because he is already in paradise, because he is already rich, because he is already powerful.
But ordinarily, Ramdas, it is not just to do with you; everybody thinks in some way or other about money.
Two mothers were talking. One said to the other, "I haven't seen you in a long time. How is your son and what is he doing?"
She replied, "My son is a famous actor in Hollywood and he's making a fortune. He just built a new home that cost three hundred thousand dollars. What is your son doing?"
Said the other mother, "My son is doing even better. He is gay and lives in Hollywood; he just moved in with an actor who has a three-hundred-thousand- dollar home."
A young woman has decided to put aside some money for a rainy day and informs her husband that each time they make love she will expect him to put five dollars in the piggy bank.
That night, as he begins to make advances, she reminds him of her requirement. He finds that he has only four dollars in his wallet and so the wife agrees to only four-fifths of a love affair. However, as her passion mounts, she offers to lend him a dollar until the next day.
Rachel is pregnant and Sammy, her husband, a very temperamental man, suffers from the pains of celibacy.
Rachel, who manages the household, takes pity on him and gives him a hundred liras to visit the red-light district.
When Sarah, the neighbor, sees Sammy running out of the house, she calls him, "Where are you running to like that? You look so very happy!"
Sammy shows her the money and tells her that he is going to spend it on a beautiful young girl.
"Give me the money!" proposes pretty Sarah. "You won't regret it, you will see!"
Rachel soon comes to know about it. Very indignant, she explodes, "The bitch! When she was pregnant last year, I did the same for Isaac, her husband, for nothing!"
People are continuously thinking of money and money and money. It is nothing special to you, Ramdas, you are a normally abnormal person, as neurotic as everybody else.
But please come out of this neurosis. Live the moment, drop the future, and money loses its glamor. Live the moment with such totality and abandon, as if there is no other moment to come to you again, as if this is the last moment. Then all desire for money and power simply leaves you.
If suddenly you come to know that today you are going to die, what will happen? Will you still be interested in money? Suddenly all desire for money will leave you. If this is the last day, you can't waste it thinking about tomorrow, having more money in the world; there is going to be no tomorrow.
Because we live in the tomorrows, money has become very important. And because we don't live, we only imitate others, money has become very important. Somebody makes a house, and now you are feeling very inferior. You were not at all dissatisfied with your own house just a few days before, but now this man has made a bigger house: now comparison arises, and it hurts, it hurts your ego. You would like to have more money.
Somebody has done something else, and your ego is disturbed.
Drop comparing and life is really beautiful. Drop comparing and you can enjoy life to the full. And the person who enjoys his life has no desire to possess, because he knows the real things of life which are worth enjoying cannot be purchased.
Love cannot be purchased. Yes, sex can be purchased. So one who knows what love is will not be interested in money. But one who does not know what love is, is bound to remain interested in money, because money can purchase sex, and sex is all that he knows.
You cannot purchase the starry night. One who knows how to enjoy the night
full of stars won't bother much about money. You cannot purchase a sunset. Yes, you can purchase a Picasso -- but one who knows how to enjoy a sunset will not be interested at all in purchasing a painting. Life is such a painting, such a moving, alive painting.
But people who don't know how to see a sunset are ready to purchase a Picasso for millions of dollars. They will not even know how to hang it, whether it is upside down or right side up, but they want to show to others that they have a Picasso painting.
I have heard that once a rich man came to Picasso; he wanted two paintings, immediately, and he was ready to pay as much as was demanded. Picasso demanded a fabulous price --
thinking that he would not be able to pay it -- because only one painting was ready. But the rich man was ready to pay. So Picasso went in, cut the canvas in two, and the rich man thought they were two paintings.
I have heard another story: in an exhibition, a Picasso exhibition, people are appreciating his paintings. All the critics have gathered around a certain painting which looks the most absurd, hence the most appealing -- because when something is absurd it is a challenge to your intellect, and every critic is trying to prove that he understands what it is.
And then came Picasso, and he said, "Wait. Some fool has hung it upside down. Let me put it right first." And they were expressing great appreciation for the painting!
If you know how to enjoy a roseflower, a green tree in your courtyard, the mountains, the river, the stars, the moon, if you know how to enjoy people, you will not be so much obsessed with money. The obsession is arising because we have forgotten the language of celebration. Hence money has become the only thing to brag about -- your life is so empty.
I will not tell you to renounce money. That has been told to you down the ages; it has not changed you. I am going to tell you something else: celebrate life, and the obsession with money disappears automatically. And when it goes on its own accord, it leaves no scratches, it leaves no wounds behind, it leaves no trace behind.
The seventh question:
Question 7
OSHO, WHAT IS WISDOM?
Stephen Crane writes: I met a seer, he held in his hands the book of wisdom. "Sir," I addressed him, "let me read.""Child..." he began.
"Sir," I said, "think not that I am a child, for already I know much of that which you hold."
"Ah, much!" he smiled. Then he opened the book and held it before me. Strange, that I should have gone so suddenly blind.
Wisdom is not knowledge. The knowledgeable person cannot see it, he is blind. Only the innocent person can see it, only a child, one who knows nothing, one who functions from the state of not knowing, can know what wisdom is. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge, not at all; it has something to do with innocence. Something of the purity of the heart is a must, something of the emptiness of being is needed for wisdom to grow.
"Only those who are like small children will be able to enter into my kingdom of God."
Yes, Jesus is right.
Knowledge comes from without, wisdom wells up within. Knowledge is borrowed, wisdom is original. Wisdom is your insight into existence -- not Buddha's insight, not Atisha's insight, not my insight, but your insight, absolutely your insight into existence.
When you are able to see with no dust of knowledge on the mirror of your soul, when your soul is without any dust of knowledge, when it is just a mirror, it reflects that which is. That is wisdom. That reflecting of that which is, is wisdom.
Knowledge gratifies the ego, wisdom happens only when the ego is gone, forgotten.
Knowledge can be taught; universities exist to teach you. Wisdom cannot be taught, it is like an infection: you have to be with the wise, you have to move with the wise, and only then will something start moving inside you.
The movement in the disciple is not caused by the master, it is not under the law of cause and effect. It is what Carl Gustav Jung calls "synchronicity." The master is so full of silence, so overflowing with innocence, that his presence triggers a process in you, simply triggers a process in you. Nothing is transferred; your inner being starts remembering that "I also have the same treasure as my master, I had simply forgotten about it. I had moved into the without, keeping the within at the back. The treasure was not lost but only forgotten; I had fallen asleep."
And the asleep person at the most can dream that he is awake. But that too is a dream.
That dream is knowledge. The person who is asleep and thinks that he knows... that is knowledge. But the person who really awakes is wise. Knowledge is a false, plastic substitute for wisdom.
Wisdom is true knowledge -- rather knowing than knowledge, because it has no full point to it. It goes on growing, it goes on flowing. The man of wisdom goes on learning; there never comes a stop.
Don't be knowledgeable, be wise. And the last question:
BELOVED OSHO,
Question 8
WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Krishna Prem, I am not, and I am not doing anything at all. But something is happening, something tremendous is happening -- that is another matter, it has nothing to do with my doing it.
"I am not." When I say this, I mean that there is no personality, no person, but just a presence. And the presence without the person looks almost like an absence. It is. The person is absent.
I am only a hollow bamboo, and if you hear some music then it must be from God, it is not from me; it has nothing to do with me. I am not there, I have utterly disappeared.
That's what enlightenment is all about. That's what Atisha calls bodhichitta.
But things are happening, they always happen. Whenever a person disappears and becomes a presence, immensely valuable things happen around him. A great synchronicity starts functioning. Those who are courageous enough to come close to such a presence start changing, with no effort, just sheer grace, start becoming totally different beings by just being in the buddhafield, in the energy field of a master.
I am not doing anything, Krishna Prem, and I am not. But still you see me coming, going, talking to you, doing this and that. For that, I will tell you a story.
A Hollywood director once sent out word that he was looking for an actor to play the role of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The actor was to be over six feet tall, young and vigorous and have an excellent command of the language.
On the day of the casting call, many fine tall young men showed up, but among them was a little old Jewish man with a heavy Yiddish accent. The director picked him out immediately and asked, "What do you want?"
The man answered "I vant to be an hector. I vant to play Hemlet!"
"Are you kidding or just crazy?" the director asked. "You are only five feet tall and you have an accent so thick I could cut it with a knife. What can you possibly do?"
The little man said, "I vant to hect. Giff me a chance." Finally the director gave in. "Get up on stage and try it."
The little man stepped out onto the stage. Somehow he looked much taller and full of energy. He began to speak with a booming voice and the perfect king's English: "To be or not to be "
When he was finished, there was a hush. Everyone was amazed. The director said,
"That's unbelievable."
The other actors said, "That's wonderful."
The little Jew just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Dat's HECTING!" Enough for today.
Table of Contents
Chapter title: Atisha the Thrice [Great]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Sowing White [Seeds]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Sannyas is for [Lions]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Learning the [Knack]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Krishnamurtis Solo [Flute]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Watching the [Watcher]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Miracles are your [Birthright]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Expelled from the [World]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: Buddha in the Supermarket
Chapter title: Other Gurus and [Etceteranandas]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter title: The Smokeless Flame