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Chapter title: But Man Is
11 April 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
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7904110
ShortTitle:
FISH01
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106
mins
I LAUGH WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.
YOU DON'T GRASP THE FACT THAT WHAT IS MOST ALIVE OF ALL IS INSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE;
AND SO YOU WALK FROM ONE HOLY CITY TO THE NEXT WITH A CONFUSED LOOK!
KABIR WILL TELL YOU THE TRUTH: GO WHEREVER YOU
LIKE, TO CALCUTTA OR TIBET;
IF YOU CAN'T FIND WHERE YOUR SOUL IS HIDDEN, FOR YOU THE WORLD WILL NEVER BE REAL!
I DON'T KNOW WHAT SORT OF A GOD WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT.
THE CALLER CALLS IN A LOUD VOICE TO THE HOLY ONE AT DUSK.
WHY? SURELY THE HOLY ONE IS NOT DEAF.
HE HEARS THE DELICATE ANKLETS THAT RING ON THE FEET OF AN INSECT AS IT WALKS.
GO OVER AND OVER YOUR BEADS, PAINT WEIRD DESIGNS ON YOUR FOREHEAD,
WEAR YOUR HAIR MATTED, LONG, AND OSTENTATIOUS, BUT WHEN DEEP INSIDE YOU THERE IS A LOADED GUN, HOW CAN YOU HAVE GOD?
The fish in the sea is not thirsty -- but man is. Man lives in God, and is absolutely unaware of it. Man is born in God, breathes in God, and one day will dissolve in God.
MAN IS GOD, made of the stuff called God, and yet completely oblivious of the fact.
The fish is not thirsty in the sea, but man is. God is the sea -- God surrounds you, within and without. All that is is divine. God is not a person: God is the presence that is overflowing everywhere in all directions. The radiance, the beauty of existence, the splendour, the majestic, the miraculous, the mysterious -- the
whole magic of life is God.
God has not to be worshipped: God has to be lived. And to live God you need not go anywhere -- you are already in him. To live God you need not cultivate any character.
God is already the case. He is your consciousness.
To live God you need not become a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian -- you are already in it, he is already in you. It is not a question of the future. THIS very moment God is showering on you. But you are closed. He comes, but you don't receive him. He knocks on your doors, but you don't listen to him. And he has been knocking for ages.
The old biblical story is: when Adam disobeyed God, he was frightened, obviously. God came in search of him. Afraid, he went behind a bush just to hide from God. he was not courageous enough to face him, to encounter him. And the story says God called in the Garden of Eden, "Adam, where are you?"
Adam heard it, yet did not respond.
This is not just a story, this is not something that happened in the past: this is what is happening with EACH of you. God calls you -- either you don't hear, or, even if sometimes you hear, you don't respond. You are hiding! You are hiding from the truth of your own being; you are hiding from yourself. You don't want to see your original face: God IS your original face. and unless you see your original face, you will live in misery.
Misery is nothing but remaining ignorant of one's own being. To be alert, to be conscious, of all that has been given to you, to be conscious of all that has been bestowed upon you, to be conscious of the treasures that are hidden in your being, is to be blissful.
Man is very strange, the strangest animal on the earth. no other animal lives in such anguish -- even trees are far more blissful, even rocks have more of the heart than man.
They are in tune with God, or in tune with totality. man has lost the connection. Man has broken the bridge.
Why has it happened? It has to be understood. And it has happened to almost all. Only once in a while does there happen a person who reconnects himself with God -- a Jesus, a Buddha, a Kabir -- but only once in a while. and these people are so few that they cannot be believed.
People go on talking about Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed, but deep down they doubt their very existence. They HAVE to doubt! Nothing like that has happened to you. You have not tasted any of the nectar that they talk about. your life is just bitter, your life is nauseous, your life is sick -- and they talk of wholeness and of health, and of great bliss and of eternal peace... and you know nothing of these things!
Your only experience is that of a very poisoned life, a very poisoned spirit. Your experience is so much opposed to what these few people say -- how can you believe in them? And you are the majority. Millions and millions will support your experience that life is hell.
And Krishna sings songs celestial on his flute, songs of the beyond. And Kabir sings songs unbelievable! You may listen out of courtesy; you may not say anything out of formality; or maybe just the presence of a Jesus, of a Kabir, of a Bayazid, is so enchanting, so charming, it has such a charisma that it overpowers you, that you become dumb, that you cannot say no. But your not saying no does not mean that you are saying yes. They are two totally different things.
Not to say no is one thing, and to say yes is a totally different phenomenon. Not to say no is not going to change you. The no will remain in you -- silent, unspoken. The no will surround your being like a transparent capsule. You may not be able to see it, you may be able to see through it, but it will not allow you to meet and merge with existence -- unless your are capable of saying YES! That single word, 'yes', contains all the religions; all the Vedas and the Bibles and the Korans are contained in the single word 'yes'.
That is the meaning of the word Christians, Jews and Mohammedans have been using to complete their prayers -- AMEN. AMEN means, "yes, God, yes -- I say to total yes to you."
You may not argue with Kabir -- it is difficult to argue with a man like Kabir. His presence has such weight; his eyes, his fragrance, are hypnotic. Even in you want to argue you would not like to argue. But the argument remains. And once
Kabir is gone, Jesus is gone, the argument surfaces, the no comes to the surface, and the formal silence is found to be impotent.
People go to the churches and to the temples and to the mosques, and it is all formality. It is nothing but Sunday religion. It is a social phenomenon; they are not individually committed, they are not involved. They are not going to the church or the temple to be transformed. It has a social utility; it is a kind of club
-- you can call it a religious club, where people can meet and gossip and talk. It is a meeting-place, but not a meeting-place between you and God. That's what it is supposed to be, but it is not.
You go to the temple empty-handed, you come back from the temple empty- handed.
Nothing has been happening there. It cannot happen this way. God needs commitment, involvement; God asks for your totality, your surrender, your yes.
And when you say yes, with no strings attached to it, with no conditions, when the yes is unconditional, and has not been said out of coercion but has welled up spontaneously within you, it has a tremendous beauty to it, and tremendous power too. Its very fire transforms you from the base metal into gold, from an ordinary human being into an extraordinary divine existence.
But, remember, your yes should not come out of any sort of coercion, physical or psychological. Somebody is a Christian because he has been coerced from his very childhood to be a Christian, and somebody is a Jew because he has been coerced from the very beginning to be a Jew. A great psychological conditioning is going on. Children are being exploited; children are being forced to be Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists. The parents are not even aware of what they are doing to their children: they are preventing their children from ever becoming religious. Yes, that's what they are doing to their children.
In the name of religion they are poisoning their innocent souls. They think, they may even believe, that they are helping their children towards God. The truth is just the contrary: they are creating great barriers.
Once a man has said yes under coercion, once a man has yielded because he was forced to yield, you have destroyed his capacity to say yes spontaneously for ever. He will say yes only when he is coerced.
Children are helpless. They depend on you, they cannot survive without you -- you can exploit their vulnerability, you can exploit their helplessness. And that's what has been done on the earth for centuries and centuries. Hence, so much talk of God, and you cannot see God anywhere; so much talk of religion, so much of theology, but nothing of the existential.
Everybody is religious in a way -- somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is Christian -- and nobody is religious in reality. We have created a fiction of being religious, and the fiction is so cheap, is so easily available, who is going then on the adventure to seek and search for God? That is arduous. One has to risk -- one has to risk one's ego, and that is the MOST arduous thing in life.
UNLESS ONE IS READY TO DISSOLVE ONE'S EGO, the fish is going to remain thirsty. Dissolve the ego and all thirst disappears, because the moment you dissolve the ego, the wall between you and the ocean disappears; then you are part of the ocean. How can you be thirsty then?
And man is certainly thirsty! hungry, in deep anguish. Man lives a very phony life, inauthentic. He only pretends to live; he does not really live. He goes through all the empty gestures of living, but look at people, look at yourself, look at others -- you will not see the dance. People are dragging; life seems to be a burden, a great burden, somehow to be tolerated. Life is not a celebration, and that's what it should be.
Your steps don't have the quality of dance. Your heart is not throbbing with ecstasy. You are not pulsating and vibrating with joy, with love. You are not overflowing with energy.What kind of life is this? Just going round and round in circles, dead, dull, stupid routines. Just hoping that tomorrow something will happen... and the tomorrow never comes, and nothing ever happens. Waiting for Godot, and Godot never comes. You go on waiting and waiting and waiting and all that ever comes is death.
But life is so miserable that even death feels like a relief. Life is so empty that it is very rare to find a human being who has not contemplated, some time or other, committing suicide. Life is so empty that we go on keeping ourselves occupied -
- with any rubbish, just to remain occupied so that we don't see the emptiness, so we don't see the inner vacuum, the inner darkness.
Just watch and you will see that man is living in great anguish, anxiety. Man is already in hell. When somebody asks me, "Osho, do you believe there is a hell?" I always say,
"There is no question of believing -- you are living in it." Hell cannot be doubted; heaven can be doubted but not hell. Hell is such a day-to-day reality! But why? -- why should it be so? Why did it happen in the first place? We will have to understand something special about human beings.
Man is the only animal on the earth, in fact in the whole of existence, who is dual. Other animals are not dual: they are what they are, hence there is no problem. A tiger is a tiger, and a peacock is a peacock, and a dog is a dog. With man there is something special. That is the glory of man, if we understand it. If we don't understand it, this becomes the agony.
Man is not what he is: he can be more. Man is not finished: man is a growth. Man is the only growing being in existence, the only evolving being in existence. Man is a potential and much has to become actual in him. And unless you start transforming your potential into the actual, your life will remain empty. The seed is empty. If the seed remains a seed it will remain in anguish; it will not feel the joy of fulfillment, the contentment that comes when the seed has become the tree and the tree has bloomed.
Man is a seed -- the seed of God. When man blooms, God becomes manifest. That's why we have called Buddha 'Bhagwan'; Mahavira, Krishna, 'Bhagwan'. It simply means that their seed is no more a seed; the seed has disappeared in the soil of existence, and they have come to their ultimate blossoming. Godliness has bloomed in them. The fragrance of divineness has been released. They are fulfilled, utterly fulfilled. Joyous they are because they have come home. Now there is nowhere to go.
Man is the only animal who is an unfinished product. Nature HAS brought man to a certain point, and from that point man has been made responsible. Now you are responsible for your growth. Nature cannot do any more; whatsoever was possible through nature has already happened -- it has brought you to the threshold. You have to take the further journey now; you have to become a pilgrim.
If you don't become a pilgrim, if your life does not take the quality of adventure,
of search, of enquiry, you will remain empty -- and you will remain thirsty, and you will remain hungry. You will remain spiritually starved. Don't take yourself for granted -- that is the problem, exactly that is the very crux of the problem: we take ourselves for granted, we think as if we are what we are supposed to be.
Man is a paradox. Man is not what he thinks he is -- man is far more. Man's capacities are immense. In fact, there are no limits to man's growth. One can go on and on and on... It is an infinite journey. There is no goal! There is a beginning of the pilgrimage but no end.
To know God is to know that life is an eternal pilgrimage. What is the meaning when we say God is infinite. You can go ON attaining, but you can never say that now the dead end has come.
This is the beauty of existence -- it goes on giving you more and more opportunities.
When you have climbed one peak, another peak starts giving you challenges.
The misery of man is that he thinks he is what he is supposed to be. He thinks that he is already that which he can be. Man remains satisfied with the superficial; then there will remain a deep discontent in your soul. That's what Kabir is trying to say Kabir is one of the greatest revolutionaries who has ever walked on the earth. His insight is of tremendous value. If you can fall en rapport with his vision you will be enriched --
you will be enriched beyond all your expectations.
I LAUGH, says Kabir, WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.
HE IS TALKING ABOUT YOU, not about the fish -- you are the fish. Kabir says "I laugh..." The Buddhas have always been laughing.
It is said of Hotei, a Japanese Buddha -- he is known as the laughing Buddha -- that the day he became enlightened he started laughing and then he never stopped laughing. Many years he lived; he would move from one town to another, laughing, from one marketplace to another, laughing. He would stand in the marketplace and his laughter was catching, infectious, and people would
gather and people would start laughing. And the laughter would go on spreading... and soon the whole village would be involved in it.
People used to ask Hotei, "What is your message?" He said, "Laughter is my message."
People used to ask him, "Why do you laugh so much?"
He said, "What else can I do? Man is so ridiculous, man is so absurd!" That's exactly what Kabir is saying:
I LAUGH WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.
Life surrounds you with all its joys, with immense possibilities, opportunities. And you go on crying and weeping! Your anguish goes on deepening as you grow older. Children can laugh, but the older you become, the more the laughter disappears. And whenever you laugh, it is phony; it is just a painted laughter. It has no roots in your heart.
Why have people become so serious? They know they are missing something. They know that life is slipping out of their hands. They know that this should not be so, but it is so -- they are miserable. And when someone attains, like Kabir, he is bound to laugh.
If a fish comes to you and says, "I am thirsty," what will you do? Will you feel any sympathy for the fish? Will you feel any kind of empathy for the fish? You will simply laugh, and you will say, "If you are thirsty then you are simply stupid. There is no need to be thirsty! You are in the sea already. Why should you be thirsty?"
Man is in anguish, great anguish. We go on hiding it, because what is the point of bringing it to others? Nobody can help. We go on carrying dark nights in our beings, great turmoil, great pain, great wounds. We go on hiding! It is pointless to tell anybody; nobody can help. It is better not to talk about the wounds that you are carrying in your soul; it is better to forget about all those wounds.
That's why intoxicants have been so important down the ages. There has never been a time when something or other was not used by man to forget the inner wounds, to forget this whole nonsense that we have made out of life. People go
on talking against alcohol, against drugs, but they don't understand the psychology behind it.Just talking against them is not going to prevent people. You can legalize, you can prohibit, but still intoxicants will be used.
Unless man becomes blissful, they cannot be prevented. If man lives in misery, he will need something or other to forget the misery. Otherwise, it will be too much! In fact, my own insight is this: if all the drugs and all the intoxicants could be simply removed from the world, man would immediately go mad. The whole world would be a madhouse.
People are somehow keeping themselves together. They can drink alcohol, and for a few hours they can forget the world and the misery that the world brings to them; they can forget their own selves. They can be lost into oblivion. They know perfectly well it is not going to change anything. But then nothing seems to change anything. At least for a few hours one can forget all about it.
Intoxicants will disappear from the world only when meditation has become a world-wide phenomenon, when each single individual has created some meditativeness in his being; when each single individual has become aware, "There is no need to be miserable.
Misery is created by me. Life is not misery: life's nature is bliss. It is my stupidity that I am creating misery out of it."
Misery needs great efforts, bliss is natural -- you cannot create bliss, you can only create misery. And if you don't create misery, bliss comes of its own accord. Bliss comes effortlessly -- you cannot practise it. But for misery you have to make great efforts -- and you ARE making great efforts to remain miserable. You have invested much in your misery.
Kabir is right; he says, "I laugh..." It looks a little hard, looks a little cruel, that a man like Kabir should say:
I LAUGH WHEN I HEAR THAT THE.FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.
It is not cruel, it is not hard. It's simply how it should be. All the Buddhas have been laughing; they may have said so, they may not have said so. Hotei laughed publicly; Gautam Buddha must have laughed privately, but laughter is bound to be there.
I am saying it because this is my own experience too. When you come with all your miseries to me, I listen very sympathetically -- I don't laugh. But deep down there is laughter. I listen, very patiently and very attentively... I don't want to hurt you, I don't want to be impolite to you. But if you want to know the truth, then the reality is that you are simply showing how ridiculous you are, how stupid you are.
And God is not responsible for your stupidity. It is your own work. God creates every human being with great intelligence. You can see in children's eyes: all children are intelligent. It is very difficult to find a stupid child. If you can find a stupid child, that simply means he is already old.
Children are so overflowing with intelligence. Where does all this intelligence disappear to? What happens to this intelligence? The society is against intelligence; the society does not want intelligent people to be around. Intelligent people seem to he dangerous to the society.
The society wants stupid people because stupid people are easy to manage, easy to dominate, easy to manipulate, easy to order. Stupid people are obedient -- even where obedience is sin they are obedient. Stupid people can be forced to become machines, and the society needs machines, not men. The society is not interested in you; it is interested in your efficiency. And machines certainly are more efficient than men. The machine is the model, and man has to follow the model. Make man more and more stupid and he will come closer and closer to the machine. He will be a good clerk, a good station master, a good teacher in a school, a good collector... but unintelligent.
If he is intelligent, he may not be a clerk at all; he may not waste his life in writing stupid documents, collecting garbage in files. He may be more respectful towards his own being. He may choose some other way to live. He will not be just a deputy collector. How can you ask an intelligent man to be just a policeman? Impossible! And where will you find the thousands and thousands for your armies? Intelligent people are not cattle; intelligent people cannot be told to do stupid things. They will say, "No!"
Just think: the man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, if he had been intelligent he would have simply said "No!" Even at the risk of his own life he would have said no.
He would have said, "If you want to kill me, kill me, but I am not going to kill one hundred thousand people. They have not committed any sin. They are innocent civilians -
- small children, old people.… They have no responsibility for the war! They have not caused it. Why should I drop the atom bomb? It is better to die than to kill one hundred thousand people."
If the man had been intelligent, he would have immediately said no. But he must have been utterly stupid: he dropped the atom bomb, and had a good night's sleep. His sleep was not disturbed.
In the morning when he was asked, "Could you sleep in the night?" he said, "Certainly, I slept well! I did my duty, I finished my job, and then I had a good night's sleep.
Whenever I do my duty perfectly well, I always sleep well."
One hundred thousand people burnt within five seconds, and not even a nightmare came to this man? Just think: we must have destroyed his intelligence totally; we must have reduced him to a machine. Machines don't have any conscience, machines don't have any consciousness, machines don't have any heart. And the society needs machines, more and more efficient machines. Hence the universities go on reducing people to stupid people.
If you are a BA it means you have a certificate that you have lost much of your intelligence. If you are an MA, even more; if you are a PhD, finished! No hope for you.
It is said that when Henry Thoreau came back from the university, an old man of his village came to see him and was very much surprised. Seeing the old man very much puzzled and surprised, Thoreau asked him, "Why do you look so puzzled? Why are you so much surprised?"
He said, "I am surprised because you have really done a great job: you have saved your intelligence, although you have been to the university. You still look intelligent! This very rarely happens: to escape from the university and still remain intelligent -- because the whole machinery of education is to make you mechanical."
A new education is needed in the world, which will make you more conscious, not more knowledgeable, which will make you more loving, not more logical. Logic is good -- if love remains the master, then logic is a good servant; but logic should not be the master, and love should not be the servant.
Knowledge is good if consciousness remains in control. But if knowledge is in control, if the head is in control, then the heart is killed, destroyed.
The society does not need intelligent people, hence it has created conditionings -
- social, religious, political, educational -- great psychological strategies have been invented down the ages to reduce you to a thing, to reduce you to something pseudo, to reduce you so that you can become a commodity in the marketplace.
You have to be aware, because you exist in a society which is against your intelligence.
My sannyasins are trying to do... what the society has destroyed in them, they are trying to revive. What the society has done, they are trying to undo it. That's the whole work of sannyas -- and that has ALWAYS been the work of a real true religion.
I LAUGH, says Kabir, WHEN I HEAR THAT THE FISH IN THE WATER IS THIRSTY.
YOU DON'T GRASP THE FACT THAT WHAT IS MOST ALIVE OF ALL IS INSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE;
AND SO YOU WALK FROM ONE HOLY CITY TO THE NEXT WITH A CONFUSED LOOK!
YOU DON'T GRASP THE FACT THAT WHAT IS MOST ALIVE OF ALL IS INSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE...
YOU HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD. The secret has been hidden from you. Nobody has told you to go in; nobody has given you any chance to be in. Parents are not
telling their children, "Sometimes just be. Don't do anything. Just sit silently under a tree, search in, ask 'Who am I?"' No school, no college, no university, is telling you to meditate. In fact, they think meditation has nothing to do with education.
The government of India has written a letter. They don't recognize this commune as educational. Why? "Because what does meditation have to do with education?" And I say to them, "If meditation has nothing to do with education, then what else can become the foundation of a true education? What else?"
But I know: some stupid fool in some office must have written that. He is not aware of what meditation is. Meditation simply means to be with yourself in your absolute aloneness, so that you can have a taste of your own being. To be with yourself is meditation.
In my philosophy of life, only two things are valuable: one is meditation, the other is love. And both are complementary. Meditation means the joy of being alone, and love means the joy of being together with somebody. These are the two wings of a true education. Meditation means independence, freedom -- freedom from all, even from the beloved, because even the presence of the beloved encroaches on your space. It is good for the time being, it is good to overlap your space with somebody, it is good to meet and merge, but ultimately, AND fundamentally, you are alone. And you have to learn how to be alone, and not only how to be alone, but joyously alone, ecstatically alone.
Meditation means sitting silently, doing nothing... just being! The world is too full of doing. The society teaches you to do this, to do that -- why? Because if you do this, you will have that; if you don't do this, you will not have that. Doing is a way of having more, and we are conditioned to have more and more and more -- as if by having more we will really be satisfied, contented; as if by having more we will really become rich.
The truth is just the opposite: the more you have, the more you feel your inner poverty --
in contrast. The richer you become in the outside world, the emptier you feel inside, and no outer richness can fill the inner gap. Nothing from the outside can be taken in. You can have as much wealth as possible, but it will go on piling up outside you; and the bigger the heap, the more you will see your inner emptiness,
nothingness, hollowness --
the more miserable you will become.
Hence, the richer a society gets, the more and more it becomes interested in religion. Poor societies cannot be religious; it is almost impossible. I am not saying a poor person cannot be religious -- a poor person CAN be -- but a poor society cannot be. A poor person may be an exception: Kabir was a poor man -- and attained to the highest peak possible, became a Buddha. But the poor society as such cannot be religious.
The poor society remains interested in having more and more, and if you want to have more you will have to do more. You will have to put your whole energy into doing -- and meditation is just the opposite of doing. Meditation is a state of non-doing, it is a state of utter passiveness. It is a state of being: one simply IS... and ENJOYING that simple isness. And then something starts happening inside
-- without any doing on your part. SITTING SILENTLY,
DOING NOTHING, THE SPRING COMES,
AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.…
Something starts growing in you.
One thing, the most important thing in life, is meditation. No education can be called real education. Even the word 'education' simply means to draw out that which is within you.
This commune is educational, because our effort is to draw out whatsoever is in you. And your so-called universities are NOT educational; they don't fulfill the requirement of being educational. They stuff people from the outside; they don't draw out, they force in.
Even literally they are not educational.
The whole effort in the so-called educational institutions is to stuff people with
more and more knowledge, because knowledge will help them to do more and do more efficiently, and if they can do things more efficiently, they will have more things. This is what you call education? This is not real education.
Real education will teach a person the most fundamental truth: "I am alone. I come alone, I will go alone. And between coming and going, I can deceive myself that I am not alone, but that is only a deception. Intrinsically I remain alone. Aloneness is my intrinsic nature, so I have to fall in tune with it, I have to dive deep into it. I have to know exactly what it is -- what is this aloneness?"
And it is tremendously beautiful, it is incredibly beautiful, unbelievably beautiful. When you enter into your aloneness, you start becoming aware of God, you start becoming aware of your treasures hidden within you. You start becoming aware of the kingdom of God that is within you.
Kabir says:
YOU DON'T GRASP THE FACT THAT WHAT IS MOST ALIVE OF ALL IS INSIDE YOUR OWN HOUSE...
But nobody teaches you. The whole teaching is: "Go out! Search for money, for power, for prestige" -- and they are not found within. Peace is found within, silence is found within, stillness is found within, godliness is found within. But those are not the goals that you have been taught to fulfill; those are not your targets.
It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid:
One day, some people came to Sheikh Bayazid's door and knocked. He opened his upstairs window and looked out saying, "What do you want?"
"Oh," they said, "we are looking for Bayazid."
He said, "Well, I have been looking for Bayazid for ten years now, and I have not found him yet!" and closed the window.
This is what meditation is all about: trying to find oneself.
And the other most important thing is love. Love means trying to find oneself
reflected in the other. Love is a mirror. Meditation is a search without a mirror; love is nothing but seeing yourself in the eyes of the other you love, reflected in his being, and a way of enjoying the togetherness.
We ARE alone, but we are not alone in the sense that we exist alone. We are alone, but there are other people around us -- who are ALSO alone! We exist with many people who are alone. Bridges have to be made. Love is the meeting of two alonenesses. One aloneness is immensely beautiful -- what to say about when two alonenesses meet and merge? A great flowering happens, life becomes more mysterious, more joyous.
And then one learns the rhythm: sometimes be alone, enjoy yourself; sometimes be together, enjoy love, friendship. When tired of togetherness, escape into yom innermost being; when tired of your aloneness, escape into the being of the other.
It is like walking on a tightrope: sometimes you lean towards the left, and then you know that if you lean any more you will fall, so you start leaning towards the right. Then again a point comes when you know that if you lean more towards the right you will fall, and you start leaning towards the left. That balance, the balance of the tightrope-walker, is the balance that gives richness to man. Walk between love and meditation, balancing each other. Become rich with meditation and love.
But, remember, the first thing is meditation. If you don't know who you are, you will not be able to love either. If you don't know inner blissfulness you will not be able to share it with anybody else either.
But people don't go in; they are running hither and thither -- they are running everywhere except inwards. And all this running is nothing but dreaming, desiring. Just watch your mind! What does your mind go on doing? In the night it dreams, in the day it dreams... it goes on running and running. It moves in circles, but those circles are all dreams.
The truth is yom consciousness, not your mind. Your mind is created by the society: your consciousness comes from God. Move to the consciousness; change the gestalt. Your emphasis has to be changed -- that's what it means to be religious. That's what conversion is: changing your attention from the mind to consciousness.
Mind is a social by-product -- the Hindu mind, the Christian mind, the communist mind, the Catholic mind -- these are social by-products. The society has put ideas in yom head: that is your mind. Shift your consciousness, your attention, to that which is God-created; otherwise you will live in dreams. And dreams cannot fulfill. Dreams are dreams -- they are not really there.…
Two friends meet on the street after several years of not seeing each other. The usual salutation of "How are you?" provokes the answer from Saul that he feels awful -- is suffering terribly from a strong dream. It seems that every night, the moment he goes to sleep, he dreams he is getting on the train from Tel Aviv to Haifa. The train reaches Haifa, but he does not get off. He returns to Tel Aviv, and upon arriving, he wakes up to find the new day and he is hot and tired from the trip.
Morris exclaims that he too is in a similar shape for basically the same reason. It seems that every night he dreams that the door on the left side of his bedroom opens and in walks Sophia Loren. She strips stark naked and walks into the room and climbs into his bed. At the moment he turns on his left side, the door on the right side of the bedroom opens, and in comes Raquel Welch -- equally as naked
-- she climbs into the other side of the bed. He turns to be with Raquel and Sophia taps his shoulder. He turns to her and there is Raquel touching him. All night long he is turning from one side to the other. He is a wreck when he wakes up.
Saul immediately says, "For Christ's sake, why didn't you phone me? That's what friends are for. I would gladly come over and help you any night."
Morris answers, "I did phone you several times -- but each time I called I was told you had just caught the train for Haifa."
The mind goes on dreaming The mind keeps you un-aware of who you are, so
many dreams that the truth is lost. In the rubbish of your dreams the diamond of your being is covered.
Kabir says:
YOU DON'T GRASP THE FACT THAT WHAT IS MOST ALIVE OF ALL IS INSIDE
YOUR OWN HOUSE; AND SO YOU WALK FROM ONE HOLY CITY TO
THE
NEXT WITH A CONFUSED LOOK!
YOU CAN SEE -- all faces look confused. It is very rare to find a face which does not look confused, which has a transparency to it, a clarity. And whenever a face has clarity, transparency, the face has beauty -- a beauty that is not of the physical body only, a beauty that is something from the beyond, a beauty that wells up from within.
But look at people's faces -- just confused, split, schizophrenic. That's what their being is: their faces are only reflecting their being. Faces are mirrors. One part of yom being wants to go to the north, another part wants to go to the south, and another part to the east and another still to the west... and you are torn apart. Your faces show that -- a confused look.
You don't know who you are, where you are, why you are. Everything seems to be just accidental. You feel like a driftwood with no direction, with no sense of direction even.
Where are you going? Why are you? For what? The question mark is there on every face, and the reason? Kabir is right -- the reason is you have not looked at the deepest core of your being, where there is a space, a center of the cyclone, a space which is indivisible. In fact, that space known makes you an individual. 'Individual' means indivisible -- one who is not falling in parts, one who is one piece.
And that center is there in everybody's being, but you never go there. And even if sometimes the desire to search within arises, you again start searching outside. Somebody goes to Kaaba, because a great desire has arisen in him to know who he is. Why are you going to Kaaba? Somebody goes to Kashi, somebody to Mathura, somebody to Tibet...
and people go on. But still the search remains somewhere outside.
Even if the right question arises, you move in wrong directions. If you really want to know who you are, you need not ask anybody else. Nobody can answer it.
And even if somebody answers, that answer will not become your answer. That
will become at the most information, but not knowing; and information is futile because you will interpret the information according to your own mind. You will read the Gita, you will read the Koran, you will listen to great teachers, but you will understand according to your own mind. You will translate everything according to yourself, according to your level of being. And then all gets lost.
Not only will the information be of no help to you, it will create more confusion in you.
The more learned a person is, the more confused he is. If you read the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible and the Dhammapada, you will become more and more confused, because each Buddha says, in his own way, the same truth, but it is said in millions of ways. But you will not be able to understand the truth, because you don't know what the truth is.
The real process is first to know within and then go into the Vedas and the Gita and the Koran, and they will all become witnesses to your experience, they will authenticate your experience. They will witness that you are right, and you will witness that they are right.
Otherwise, all reading, studying, is going to create more and more confusion, because who is going to interpret it?
"Listen," the man said to his friend Albert, "I have got this female gorilla that I bought a while back. It cost me a lot of money. The problem is that I can't find any male gorilla to mate with it. I was wondering if you would mate with my gorilla for a hundred dollars."
"Hmmm, let me think this over," replied Albert.
The next day Albert went over to his friend's house and said, "I will do it, only under three conditions."
"What are the conditions?" asked the friend.
"One is that there is no hugging and kissing, and no foreplay. Two is that all the children are to be raised Catholic. Three is that you give me at least two weeks to come up with the hundred dollars."
Who is going to interpret? You cannot understand more than you know; you can
understand only that much which you know on your own. Hence, the real Master does not impart information: he imparts being. He does not make you more knowledgeable: he makes you more meditative, he makes you more silent. He does not give you theories, hypo-theses, philosophies: he throws you upon yourself again and again and again. And he has to do it in spite of you, even against you, because you want clearcut answers, you want some philosophy to cling to, some idea to believe in. And the real Master will never give you any idea, any theology. In fact he will take all ideas away from you, and all theologies -- Catholic and Protestant and Hindu and Mohammedan. And slowly slowly he will leave you utterly naked, so that you can see yourself as you are -- not according to some idea, but actually as you are. That is revelation.
That can happen within you. You need not go anywhere.
KABIR WILL TELL YOU THE TRUTH: GO WHEREVER YOU LIKE, TO CALCUTTA OR TIBET;
IF YOU CAN'T FIND WHERE YOUR SOUL IS HIDDEN, FOR YOU THE WORLD WILL NEVER BE REAL!
If you live in dreams, your world will remain nothing but dreams, your world will remain unreal.
In the East, the Buddhas have always called the world MAYA -- illusion, a magic show; nothing real, nothing substantial in it. They don't mean that these trees around the Buddha Hall are unreal; they don't mean that you can pass through the wall because the wall is unreal; they don't mean that whether you eat stones or bread, it doesn't matter because both are unreal.
What they mean is totally different. They don't mean that this world is unreal -- they simply mean that unless you drop all your dreams you will be creating a world of your own, you will be projecting a world of your own. The real world will function only as a screen and you will project your dreams on it. You will never see the real world. The real world is God, but you will go on projecting your own dreams, and you will live in maya, in illusion.
Mind is illusion, not the world. Let me emphasize it, because it has become a great misunderstanding around the world that the East teaches that the world is
illusory -- that is a misunderstanding. The East teaches that the MIND IS illusory, and the world created by the mind is bound to be illusory -- because only an illusion can come out of another illusion.
The true world -- that which is -- is not illusory. But you have not known it yet; you have no inkling of it. You can know it only when you drop all dreaming.
It is said that when Rabbi Kotzker drove out of town with Rabbi Hirsh of Tomashov, they came to a bridge where several women began to throw stones at them.
"Have no fear," said Kotzker. "They are not real women, nor are their stones real. They are mere phantoms."
Rabbi Hirsh was silent for a moment, then asked, "Might we not be phantoms too?"
"No," came Kotzker's answer, "as long as we have at some time had a genuine urge to repent."
The word 'repent' has to be understood; it has been mis-understood down the ages.
'Repent' is repeated again and again by Jesus; he says again and again, "Repent! Repent!
because the end of the world is close by." From the Greek, when Jesus statements were translated into English, a great misfortune happened -- to many words. This word 'repent'
is one that has suffered the most. It is a translation of a Greek word 'metanoia'; 'metanoia'
means turning in, 'metanoia' means meditation. 'Repent' also means return -- return to the source. It has nothing to do with the idea of repentance that you have been taught in your churches, that your priests have been telling you. 'Repent' has nothing to do with repentance. 'Repent' means: Turn in! Return back! Come to the source of your being!
Come to the very core of your being!
And Rabbi Kotzker's answer is immensely beautiful, of great value. He says, "No -- as long as we have at some time had a genuine urge to repent." If we have even a genuine urge to meditate, for metanoia, for turning back in, then we are real. But we are real only IN meditation; otherwise we are also unreal. Because in meditation dreaming stops --
that's what meditation is all about: stopping of the dreaming mind. No dreams, no thoughts -- a total silence. Nothing stirs. Absolute stillness. Not even a ripple. No content.
Pure consciousness. Just the mirror... in that mirroring, you are real and whatso- ever you see is real. In fact, the seer and the seen are no more two: in that tremendous moment, the observer is the observed, the seer is the seen, the knower is the known. The distinction between the subject and the object disappears. That's what is called 'God-realization'.
KABIR WILL TELL YOU THE TRUTH: GO WHEREVER YOU LIKE, TO CALCUTTA OR TIBET;
IF YOU CAN'T FIND WHERE YOUR SOUL IS HIDDEN, FOR YOU THE WORLD WILL NEVER BE REAL!
Go in! Turn in! Find out who you are! And you have started moving towards God.
Moving towards one's own being moving towards God.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT SORT OF A GOD WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT.
KABIR SAYS: "People go on talking about God, but I DON'T KNOW WHAT SORT
OF A GOD WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT" -- because if you have not known yourself, all talk about God is just rot, meaningless. It is nonsense.
THE CALLER CALLS IN A LOUD VOICE TO THE HOLY ONE AT DUSK.
In the Mohammedan mosque:
THE CALLER CALLS IN A LOUD VOICE TO THE HOLY ONE AT DUSK. WHY?
SURELY THE HOLY ONE IS NOT DEAD.
We have created our own gods -- rather than looking at the reality we have imagined our own gods, we have dreamed our own gods. And we have made our own rituals. Now, calling loudly to the God simply means your God is deaf. In fact, no word is needed between you and your God -- loud or not loud -- no word is needed between you and your God, because God understands only one language. It is not German, it is not English, it is not Hindi, it is not Sanskrit, it is not Arabic, it is not Greek. God understands only one language: the language of silence.
WHY? SURELY THE HOLY ONE IS NOT DEAF.
HE HEARS THE DELICATE ANKLETS THAT RING ON THE FEET OF AN INSECT AS IT WALKS.
There is no need to shout. In fact, real prayer is not saying something to God, but, on the contrary, listening to God, listening silently..."Does he have something to say to me?" All the prayers that you go on doing are pointless. Learn to listen whether God has something to say to you, learn to listen to the still small voice within you. Stop talking. Stop the inner talk, the inner chattering. In that silence, prayer arises on its own.
Prayer is a silent heart full of gratitude.
GO OVER AND OVER YOUR BEADS, PAINT WEIRD DESIGNS ON YOUR FOREHEAD,
WEAR YOUR HAIR MATTED, LONG, AND OSTENTATIOUS, BUT WHEN DEEP INSIDE YOU THERE IS A LOADED GUN, HOW CAN YOU HAVE GOD?
You can go on doing rituals, but if your heart is full of violence. if you have a loaded gun in the heart... and that's what the case is. Mohammedans have been fighting with Hindus.
Hindus have been fighting with Mohammedans; Christians have been killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans have been killing Christians. Religions have been a calamity to the world, not a blessing, a curse, not a benediction. More people have been killed, butchered, murdered, raped, in the name of religion than in any other name.
This is very strange! Prayer is on the lips, and a loaded gun in the heart. Unless your inner violence disappears, you cannot be prayerful.
And why is there inner violence? Because there is competition: everybody is trying to outdo others; everybody is trying to go ahead of others. That's what you have been taught: to be ambitious. Ambition is the root cause of all violence, and ALL your education is that of ambition: "Be the first! Attain to the gold medal!" And then your whole life you are trying to be the first, to become the prime minister or the president.
We teach people ambition, competition. And when you are ambitious, how can you be prayerful? And when you are ambitious, how can you turn in? Ambition has to be fulfilled there, outside -- in New Delhi, in Washington, in Moscow -- somewhere there.…
These are the new holy places.
The ambitious person cannot turn in; it is impossible. The competitive person cannot turn in; he is always looking at the other, he is always at war. How can he be loving? How can he be meditative?
Kabir is right. He says, "You go on talking about God, great theology is created, great philosophical argument continues -- and in the heart a loaded gun?" The real question is a transformation in the heart. But up to now that has not happened.
A very proper old lady bought a parakeet which was guaranteed to be able to speak, but all she could say was, "I am a whore, I am a whore!" very enthusiastically, while flapping her wings. The very proper woman complained to her minister, who told her of a couple in his congregation who owned two
male parakeets who behaved very properly and could perhaps influence the woman's parakeet.
The minister borrowed the couple's male parakeets and lent them to the woman. She put them in the cage and they settled together on a perch opposite that of the woman's parakeet. Very soon they lowered their heads and engaged in a beautiful, low-voiced prayer. The female parakeet flapped her wings and sang, "I am a whore, I am a whore!"
Whereupon one male parakeet nudged the other with his wing and said, "Our prayers have been heard!"
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty Chapter #2
Chapter title: Feel, Love and Feel Alone 12 April 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code: 7904120
ShortTitle: FISH02
Audio: Yes Video: No Length: 104
mins
The first question Question 1
OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK A LITTLE ON WITNESSING AND THE
HEART. CAN THEY BE EXPERIENCED SIMULTANEOUSLY?
Deva Darshan,
WITNESSING AND THE HEART ARE ONE AND THE same thing.
Witnessing is not of the mind; mind can never be a witness. When you start witnessing, mind becomes the witnessed not the witness, it is the observed not the observer. You see your thoughts moving, your desires, your fantasies, your memories, your dreams -- just as you see things moving on the screen of a film. But you are not identified with them.
That non-identification is what is meant by witnessing. Then who is the witness? Mind is being seen, then who is the seer? It is the heart.
So the heart and witnessing are not two things. If you witness, you will be centered in the heart; or if you are centered in the heart, you will become a witness. These are two processes to reach the same goal. The lover, the devotee, never thinks of witnessing; he simply tries to reach the heart, the source of his being. Once he has reached the heart, witnessing comes of its own accord.
The meditator never thinks of love and the heart; he starts by witnessing. But once witnessing is there, the heart opens, because there is no other place from where to witness: The path of the meditator and the path of the devotee are different, but they culminate in one experience. At the ultimate point they reach the same peak.
You can choose the path, but you cannot choose the goal -- because there are not two goals, there is only one goal. Of course, if you have followed the path of a devotee, you will not talk of witnessing when you have arrived -- you will talk of love. If you have followed the path of meditation you will not talk of love when you have arrived -- you will talk of witnessing. The difference is only of words, language, expression -- but that which is expressed is one and the same reality.
The second question:
Question 2
OSHO, HOW TO SEE WHAT IS?
Akam,
THERE IS NO HOW TO SEE WHAT IS, because if you are carrying a how you will distort it. That which is needs no method, technique, to see it -- just silence, a transparent stillness, no thought in the mind, not even the thought of a certain method. No strategy, because all strategies are bound to distort.
In fact, no mind is needed to see that which is. Mind means thoughts. And if there is a traffic of thoughts, you will never be able to see what is, you will see something else.
You will see what your thoughts allow you to see. Your thoughts prevent much reaching you.
You will be surprised to know what modern psychological researchers have come to know: ninety-eight percent of the reality is not allowed to enter in your being; the mind only allows two percent. So whatsoever you see is only two percent of the reality. And because the mind allows only two percent of the reality in and then gives you the feeling that this is the whole, you live in a false world. You think the part is the whole. And you live accordingly -- your whole life becomes a falsification.
The mind is a judge; it allows only that which suits it, which fits with it, which nourishes it, strengthens it. It does not allow anything that goes against it. For example, you are listening to me: your mind will allow only that which helps to strengthen your opinions, your ideologies. If you are a Christian, you will hear one thing; and if you are a Buddhist, you will hear something totally different. If you have come here with a prejudice, for or against, you will hear different things. I am saying the same thing, but a Christian will interpret it in his own way and the Buddhist in his own way and the communist in his own way.
One who has come with a determined idea that I am wrong will find all the arguments that help his prejudice. Each prejudice tries to get support for itself So if you think any methodology is needed to see that which is, then you are starting
from the very beginning in a wrong way.
That which is is already there -- you be silent, without any prejudice, without any ideology, atheist, theist, without any concept, without any a priori. You simply remain available, open, like a child who knows nothing. Function from the state of not knowing and you will be able to see what is.
Let me repeat: function from the state of not knowing. If you know you will distort --
knowledge is mind. The state of not knowing means you have put the mind aside; now your eyes are without dust, your mirror is clean. It will reflect! It will reflect that which is.
This is the way one comes to encounter reality -- and the encounter is going to be shattering. It is not going to help your ideas about it. It will destroy all that you have been always thinking is right. It is going to surprise you. It is going to show you that you have lived up to now in a dream, that you have lived up to now in your own projections, that you have not allowed reality to penetrate you -
- on the contrary, you have created a world of your own ideas around yourself You have lived in a capsule, without any windows.
That's how people are living.
A Christian cannot know reality, a Hindu cannot know reality, a Mohammedan cannot know reality. Only a man who is courageous enough to drop all this garbage, who can simply be, who can simply be innocent.… Jesus says to his disciples, "Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God." He is saying: Function from the state of not knowing.
The Upanishads say: Those who claim to know, beware -- they know nothing. Those who say they know not, surrender to them -- because there is a possibility of some transformation happening around them, with them, in communion with them.
Socrates at his ultimate peak of wisdom said, "I know only one thing, that I know nothing."
Function from the state of not knowing, and it will bring you immense, ecstatic experiences, because the person who is without knowledge is capable of
wondering. The person who is without knowledge is capable of awe. He can dance seeing a rose flower, he can sing because the sky is full of stars. He can be in tune with existence. Seeing a sunset, he can go into wild ecstasy -- because he knows nothing. Life is a mystery to him.
Knowledge demystifies life. Because he knows nothing, everything, the most ordinary too, becomes absolutely extraordinary, luminous, because everything is mysterious.
Everything Is mysterious! Your knowledge simply hides your ignorance and destroys your capacity to be mystified. Knowledge is destructive of mysticism. Hence all the mystics of all the ages have been saying one single thing: Drop knowledge -- all knowledge is rubbish. Be in a state of not knowing; function from that state. Look at trees like a child, look at the moon like a poet, look at the sky like a madman!
Akam, don't ask HOW to see what is, because that question 'how?' simply means you want some methodology, some knowledge, some information, so that you can interpret reality. But reality is uninterpretable. You want something so that you can explain to yourself what it is all about -- but reality is unexplainable. You would like to define reality, but it is indefinable.
Be ready to be surprised. I have heard:
Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He was getting tired of lying on his back and in rolling over noticed that an Italian woman was praying down in the chapel. The great artist decided to play a little prank.
He sat at the edge of the scaffold and shouted, "I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ!
Listen to me and I will perform miracles!"
The Italian lady looked up, clasping her rosary and answered back, "Shut upa your mouth! I'ma talka to your mother!"
Just think of Michelangelo.… Life is like that. It brings surprises each moment. You go on missing -- you go on missing because you can't see those surprises. You are so full of expectations, you are so full of ready-made answers, you go on interpreting it according to your own mind. You pass through a miraculous
world, dull, dead, dragging. This world is nothing but miracles and miracles, and each moment they are happening. And not in a miserly way is the existence miraculous -- it is overflowing with miracles! But you have to be again a little child, you have to be again innocent.
It is not a question of method, not a question of how. It is more a question of understanding the very process of how the mind functions. And when you have understood how the mind functions, you will put it aside. Then there is no barrier between you and reality. And when there is no barrier, there is no separation either --
because it is the barrier that separates. When there is no barrier, you are one with reality.
In that oneness, the reality reveals its secrets to you. The third question:
Question 3
OSHO, DO I HAVE TO FORGET MYSELF TO LOSE MY EGO?
Eva,
IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF FORGETTING YOURSELF -- on the contrary, it
is a question of remembering yourself.What is the ego? Ego exists because you have forgotten yourself, because you don't remember who you are. And it is very difficult to live without SOME idea of who you are. Not knowing the reality of your being, you have to create a false substitute.
What is the ego? Ego is the false substitute that you have created for the self. It is not your self, but it is very difficult to live without a self -- it will be almost impossible to live without a self some kind of self is needed, is a must; otherwise, how will you keep yourself together? You will start falling apart.
Even if the center is false, it helps you. Even a false center keeps you at least somehow together. You have forgotten yourself -- hence you need the ego.
If you remember yourself, there will be no need for the ego.
You ask, Eva: DO I HAVE TO FORGET MYSELF TO LOSE MY EGO?
Ego is not anything real that you have to lose or you can lose -- you don't have it in the first place. It is just an idea, a shadow; it is non-existential. It is like your name: when you were born, you did not come with a name. Then somebody -- your mother, your father, your family -- started calling you 'Eva'. Some name is needed to call you by; it is utilitarian.
Your name is the first name that was ever given.When Haavva was created because man was alone, Adam was alone, and was very much depressed because of the loneliness...
the whole existence and Adam was lonely. He asked God to give him a companion, and God created a woman. God asked Adam,' What are you going to call her?What name would you like to give her?" And he was so ecstatic that now at least there was somebody with whom he could be friendly, with whom he could be loving, with whom he could talk, communicate, with whom there was a possibility of relating. He was no more alone!
-- he was so ecstatic that he said he would call this creature 'Eve', 'Eva', 'Haavva'. "Why?" God asked.
And Adam said, "Because Eve, Eva or Haavva means life -- she is my life. Without her I was almost dead."
But when Eve was created, there was no name. A name was given to her because Adam would need it. Sometimes he would have to call her: "Where are you?" Sometimes the name would be needed -- but a name is a false thing, it is just a label. We give names to people just to make it helpful to commune, to relate, to call, to address. But names are not real! You need not drop them, and even if you drop them nothing will be dropped.
You can drop this name 'Eva' -- nothing will be dropped. Simply an idea! And you are no more attached to it. In exactly the same way: the name is for others to call you by, but you need something to call yourself by too -- that's what the ego is: I.
If you want to say something about yourself, you need some word -- that word is 'I'.
Names are for others to call you by; the ego is for you to call yourself by, to address yourself. It is also false, it does not exist. You need not lose it. All that is needed is to understand it -- why this 'I' has become so important, why it has become so significant, so central, so substantial. A shadow has become so substantial -- why? Because you don't know yom real self
When Jesus says 'I', he does not mean the same 'I'.When he says, "I am the gate, I am the truth, I am the way," his 'I' does not connote any ego. When Krishna says to Arjuna,
"Come to my feet, surrender to me," his 'me' is not the same as your 'me'.
Buddha used to say to his disciples, "Be a light unto yoursel." A great King, Prasenjit, had come to see him. And he saw many sannyasins coming and bowing to Bud&a, and saying: "BUDDHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the Buddha.
SANGHAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the community of the Buddhas. DHAMMAM SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the ultimate law, the ultimate law that supports existence, that runs like a thread and makes the existence a garland."
Prasenjit was a man of logic, well-educated, sophisticated. He was a little bit puzzled. He asked Bud&a, "Excuse me, Sir, but you say to people, 'Be a light unto yourself,' and then they surrender to you, and they touch your feet -- you don't prevent them. This is illogical, this is contradictory. If you say 'Be a light unto yourself,' then there is no need to surrender to anybody else. Then why should they touch your feet?"
And Buddha laughed and he said, "They are not my feet, and they are not surrendering to ME -- because there is nobody inside me as the ego who can claim. I am just an excuse --
they are surrendering. It is not a surrender to me; it is simply a surrender -- I am just an excuse. Because they are not yet capable of surrendering without any excuse, I allow them to use me as an excuse. But there is nobody to whom they are surrendering."
That's exactly the meaning of a Buddha: one who is not; in the sense of an ego, one who is not. But as hr as the supreme self is concerned, the ultimate self is
concerned, he is and you are not. The ego is a false idea, and it is needed because the real self is unknown.
Eva, you need not forget yourself to lose the ego -- in fact, that's how you have gained it.
You need to remember yourself, not to forget but to remember. You have to become more aware and alert, you have to wake up. You have to see who you are, not what has been told to you -- that you are a woman, that you are a man, that you are a Hindu, a Christian, a white or a black -- not what has been told to you.
You will have to go inside your being to the very innermost core and see who you are. In that very seeing, in that very remembering, the ego disappears.When the light comes, the darkness disappears; when the real self is remembered, the unreal is no more needed. And it is not that you have to drop it: it is simply not found.
But we live in the ego, and in every possible way we go on finding new props for it. In every act we go on nourishing it -- even in those actions of which you are not the doer you go on claiming that you are doing it. People say, "I am breathing." Just look at the absurdity of it. If you are breathing then you will never die; death will come and stand in front of you and you will go on breathing. You may not oblige death; you may say, "I am not going to stop breathing."
You are not breathing; breathing is not your activity, it is not your doing -- it IS
happening. You cannot breathe. If it stops, it stops. If the next breath is not going to come back, you will not be able to do anything. Breathing is a happening, but man has made it, or at least believes it to be, a doing.
You say, "I love." Even the expression 'love-making' is utter nonsense. You cannot love; you cannot not love. Love is a happening, not a doing.What can you do about love?
Either it happens or it doesn't happen. If you try, then it will be something false, then it will not be love at all -- then it will only be acting.
If you are ordered to love a woman or a man, what are you going to do? You will
go through empty gestures: you will hug and you will kiss and you will go through all the movements, and with no love at all. The whole thing will be mechanical! And that's what is going on, what goes on around the world. The wife has to love the husband, the husband has to love the wife -- it is a kind of duty to be fulfilled. It becomes a performance, acting. It is not real, hence it is not satisfying, it brings no contentment, no fulfillment.
The ego is very cunning in that way: it goes on finding supports, props, new pastures to feed itself on. If you fail, you blame circumstances. If you succeed, it is you who have succeeded. If you fail it is fate, kismet; if you fail it is the society, the ugly society. If you fail, it is the cunning people, the cunning competitors. But if you succeed, you succeed.
A great Sufi story:
Mulla Nasruddin took his disciples to an exhibition. Many things were going on at the exhibition. At one place people were staking much money and trying to shoot arrows to reach a certain target. Mulla gathered his disciples and he said, "Come, and I will show you something." That is the Sufi way of teaching the disciples. He took the bow and the arrow -- a great crowd gathered: "A Sufi Master with his disciples -- something is going on!" People were very silently watching. With great show, Mulla shot the arrow... it fell very short, it never reached the target. The crowd started laughing. Mulla said, "Stop!
Don't be foolish." He turned to his disciples and said, "Look, this is what happens when you live with an inferiority complex. This is how the person who suffers from an inferiority complex will act -- he will never reach the target; he will fall short. His whole heart is not in it."
The crowd became silent: "Yes, there is a lesson in it."
Next arrow... and it simply went far ahead, it left the target behind. That was also a failure; the crowd started laughing again. And Mulla said, "Be silent! You don't understand these secrets." He turned to his disciples and said, "Look, this is how a man who thinks himself very superior behaves. He will never reach the target. He runs so fast that he will bypass the goal, and he will not stop at the goal. He is too confident. He is also unbalanced."
The crowd again became silent: "Yes, there is a lesson."
And Mulla tried the third time... and the arrow went directly into the target. Now the crowd was silent and waiting for what Mulla was going to teach to his disciples.
He went to the owner and demanded the money. The owner said, "Why?"
He said, "This is me! The first was the arrow of a man who suffers from an inferiority complex; the second the arrow of the man who suffers from a superiority complex -- and this is Mulla Nasruddin's arrow. Where is the money?"
This is what we go on doing. In each situation, watch.When you fail, it is God, it is fate, it is society, circumstances... a thousand and one names. But the simple phenomenon is that you don't want to take the responsibility because it hurts the ego. But when you succeed, it is always you -- it is never God, never fate, never circumstances, never your cunning strategies, no. It is simply you, your talents, your genius, your intelligence. It is always you when you succeed.
Watch the ego, and don't feed it. It dies if you don't feed it. If you stop feeding it, it starves to death.
Mrs. Cochrane was standing beside the coffin of her dead husband. Their son stood at her elbow. The mourners, one by one, passed in review.
"He is feeling no pain now," said Mrs. Croy. "What did he die of?" "Poor fella," said Mrs. Cochrane. "He died of the gonorrhoea."
Another woman gazed at the corpse. "He is well out of it now," she said. "He has got a smile of serenity on his face. What did he die from?"
"He died of the gonorrhoea!" said the widow.
Suddenly, the son pulled his mother aside. "Mom," he said, "that's a terrible thing to say about Pop. He did not die of gonorrhoea -- he died of diarrhoea!"
"I know that," said Mrs. Cochrane, "but I would rather have them thinking he died like a sport -- instead of the shit that he was!"
The ego is constantly there, in every situation -- it will not miss any situation to
feed itself, to strengthen itself. Stop feeding the ego -- that is the first thing to do.
And the second thing is: become more aware. Walking, walk with awareness; listening, listen with total awareness -- not in a kind of sleep, not so-so, not lukewarm. Talking, talk with awareness.Whatsoever you are doing, let your whole life be coloured by awareness.
And slowly slowly that awareness will bring you a vision of your real self.
So this is a double attack on the ego. First, don't feed it; second, become more aware -- so the ego disappears by starvation and the self appears by being aware. And once the clouds of ego are no more there, the self rises like a sun. And that self has nothing to do with your 'I'. Still the word will be used. I use it, Jesus uses it, Buddha uses it -- it has to be used, but now it has a totally different meaning. On the lips of a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ it has a totally different connotation.
When the being is transformed, everything is transformed -- even the language that is uttered by a Buddha has a totally different meaning. His words can't have the same meaning. It is impossible! because now a new light has happened, and in that new light everything becomes new.
You live in darkness, you stumble in darkness, you grope in darkness. The man of awareness lives in light. He never stumbles, he never gropes. He moves with grace, he has a totally different quality of being, life, love.
Do two things, Eva: first, don't feed the ego any more -- enough is enough -- and second, become more aware. This is a double attack, from two sides. It always succeeds; it has never failed.
The fourth question Question 4
OSHO, NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND NEVER BEFORE
SO ALONE. THANK YOU, OSHO...
Prem Turiya,
IT IS SOMETHING VERY DEEP TO BE UNDERSTOOD, something of great significance. Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love. They are never separate.
People think just the opposite. People think, "When you are in love, how can you be alone?" They don't make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness.
Hence the confusion.
When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone -- that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other. Loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair.
Loneliness means you are frightened. Loneliness means you are feeling left behind.
Loneliness means nobody needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.
Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries will say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms -- they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people, and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity.
The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD --
because he wants to forget himself The loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it. The lonely person sits before his TV glued to the chair for four, five, even six hours. The average American sits for six hours before the TV -- just burning his eyes. But what else to do? Where to go? With whom to commune?
Communication has stopped. People are not talking to each other; at the most they talk at the other, but not to the other. People have forgotten how to reach the other; people have become parallel lines, running very close but meeting
nowhere. Even husbands and wives, even friends, even so-called lovers, are parallel lines never meeting anywhere.
Running very close, hoping that tomorrow the meeting will happen, but that is just a hope, that is just an illusion. That keeps people somehow going on.
It is like if you go to the rail-track and you see the rails running parallel -- far away in the distance they appear to be meeting, but they never meet. You can go to that place and you will not find them meeting. As you move closer, the meeting-point will move farther away. The distance between you and the so- called meeting-point will remain the same.
The world is very lonely; hence people go into drugs or into sex, or into any kind of entertainment that keeps them, at least for the time being, forgetful of the loneliness. The wound is oozing with pus. We hide it in many ways -- with great possessions, with a big palace, with much money, with new gadgets -- but the wound continues, gadgets won't hide it. You can have the biggest house in the world and still you will be as lonely in it as you were in your small cottage. It is not going to make any difference -- possessions cannot change your inner loneliness.
And then people go on relating with others, but because they are both lonely relationship is not possible; relationship cannot grow out of need. Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of needs. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity --
very bitter, but sugar-coated. And sooner or later, the sugar wears out; by the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together -- which hurts even more. Just see a husband and a wife sitting in the room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness.
The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple, and both lonely -- the saddest thing in the world!
Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart.
Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.
Yes, when you are in love, Turiya, you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it, because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no more in need of the other -- you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast: love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.
And it is good to understand it, because sometimes it happens that lovers don't allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don't allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed, because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.
That overflowing becomes love -- then you can go and share with your friend, with your woman, with anybody you love. You have enough to share now; in fact, too much -- you have to share. And it is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain, and it is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it.
When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance. It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions.
When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life and energy is delight, and energy is love and energy is dance and energy is celebration. Then everything is possible if energy is there. Then it will become a song, then it will become a dance, then it will become love.
And when energy is too much there, only then can it become orgasmic.
Many people make love but have no idea of what orgasm is, because they are already dissipated. When they are making love, they are empty; when they are making love there is no energy to be shared. When they are making love, they cannot overflow. Their orgasm is at the most genital. Their orgasm is a very small, mediocre thing; nothing of any spiritual value. It is like a sneeze. Yes, after a sneeze you feel a little better. Or like scratching your back -- it feels good. You are relieved.
Orgasm is not a relief: orgasm is a celebration. And orgasm is a meeting of you, through the other, with the whole. Orgasm is always divine -- the other becomes the door and you enter into the divine. Orgasm is always spiritual, it is never sexual. Those who think that orgasm is sexual have not understood anything at all; they don't know anything about sex and they don't know anything about orgasmic experiences. Orgasm is always samadhi, ecstasy. But people don't know because they meet out of need, not out of overflowing energies.
So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone -- ONLY IN love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. And real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. They will be full of energy soon and they will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love.
Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away -- there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love; going away is just getting your aloneness again, and the beauty of it and the joy of it. But whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. Nobody can contain joy -- and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood! You cannot contain it; you have to seek and search for people to share it with.
What happens in your love affairs happens on a higher plane to all the Buddhas. When Buddha became enlightened, he became so full of energy, so full of joy, that he had to share it. For forty-two years he went from one village to another, constantly sharing his joy.
That's what I am doing with you. I am not a teacher. I have nothing to teach, no teaching to impart, no information ... but I am here to share my being. I am too full, the cloud is too heavy. And if you can receive me, I will be grateful to you.
It is out of too much that sharing arises. And enlightenment, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, bridge you with the God. Infinite sources of energy become available to you. Inexhaustible sources are yours. You can go on sharing, and the more you share, the more goes on coming to you.
Aloneness has reached its ultimate peak. The Master is the most alone person in the world, and hence the Master is the greatest lover in the world. You cannot
find a greater lover than a Buddha or a Christ. But now the love is so qualitatively different that it has the quality of friendship, compassion, empathy. The passion has disappeared.
Passion is tiny, small; compassion is immense, huge, enormous, infinite. When passion becomes infinite it is compassion.
Turiya, your experience is beautiful, and you have understood its beauty; hence, you have felt like thanking me.
You say: NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND NEVER BEFORE
SO ALONE.
Those are two aspects of the same coin. And you say: THANK YOU, OSHO.
YOU HAVE UNDERSTOOD IT. I am happy that you have been able to see the connection between love and aloneness. Enjoy both. Never choose one out of the two, because if you choose one both will die. Allow both to happen. When aloneness happens, move into it; when love happens, move into it. Aloneness means moving in, love means moving out.
Aloneness is the breath going in, love is the breath going out. And if you stop one, you will die. You cannot hold the breath in; you cannot hold the breath out. Breathing is a total process, and in the total process the in-coming breath is as much essential as the out-going breath. Love is the out-going breath, aloneness is the in-coming breath. And that's how your soul lives; that's how you become soulful. .
Allow both. Never choose! Choicelessly allow both. And go with wherever the breath is going. Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.
Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeon-holed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert -- he will die immediately, because he will have only the in-breath. I have never come across a
person who is just extrovert -- he will die too. People are both.
It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert, and vice versa. And that's what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced.
My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts -- both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood, because in the past the monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called the other- worldly people, the people who renounce the world and move into the monasteries and the mountains and the deserts.
They decided that only to be an introvert is the right way to connect with God -- as if God is not without, but only within.
And the other, the worldly person, has remained extrovert. He thinks he has nothing to do with introversion, meditation, prayer. His interest is in money, power, prestige, people, crowds -- the world. He never looks in. This is a very schizophrenic arrangement.
I would like my sannyasins not to be schizophrenic but whole. Be in the world and yet be not of it. Move between the outside and the inside, and let the movement become as smooth as possible, as simple as possible. Just as you come out of your house into the garden: it is too cold inside, you come out. It is too sunny outside; soon you start feeling hot, soon you start perspiring, and you move in -- into the house, into the coolness and the shade of the house. Just as you move inside the house and outside the house, go on moving in and out -- both are yours.
The old sannyasins, the old monks, claimed only the inner, they denied the outer. My message is: Nothing has to be denied -- the whole belongs to you. I give you the whole universe, the inner and the outer both. And I would not like you to become introverts, because those who are introverts against extroversion become ill, pathological, dormant, stagnant, closed, disconnected, uprooted. They start living a windowless existence. They start living in unnecessary misery. They never come to know what aloneness is, because aloneness cannot be known without love -- they only know loneliness. And loneliness is not health; loneliness is illness.
And the people who live only in the outside world and never think of the inner,
they are on the other extreme. They know something of love, but their love is never more than lust
-- because love cannot happen unless aloneness has also happened in you. Their love is a beautiful name for lust. They need the other, they exploit the other, they possess the other. And when you possess the other, the other possesses you. People become slaves, and people are reduced to things. People are no more people.
The person who lives only on the outside, without knowing his inside, is poor, very poor
-- unaware of his inner treasures. And the person who lives only in the inside is also poor, because he never becomes aware of the beauty of existence, of the stars, of the sands and the sun, of the trees and the birds.
The inner and the outer are not two. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. My sannyasin has to be both together. I would like to create a new man whom Carl Gustav Jung cannot categorize, whom he cannot call extrovert or introvert, for whom he will have to find a new word -- because he will be whole, he will be both. He will be as much in his body as in his soul; he will be a materialist as much as a spiritualist. He will be of this world as much as of that, and he will have no division in his mind, and no choice.
Turiya, something beautiful has happened to you go on moving in the same direction.
Don't go astray, because it is very easy to go astray. Our old habits, our old concepts, go on dragging us back to the old patterns. Your mind will say, "This is not aloneness, this is loneliness." Your mind will try to destroy it by calling it loneliness. Beware! Beware of your own mind! because there is no greater enemy than your own mind.
And by 'mind' I mean your past. Go on dying to the past and go on learning new things.
You have stumbled upon something tremendously valuable, utterly new and fresh. Love brings aloneness: aloneness brings love. That too will happen.
Now you have said: NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND
NEVER
BEFORE SO ALONE.
I would like each of my sannyasins to feel like Turiya -- feel alone and feel love. And never create any conflict between the two. Create a symphony out of the two, and you will have a richness which is very rare.
The fifth question Question 5
OSHO, IF I EVER GET ENLIGHTENED, AM I GOING TO BE AS CRAZY AS YOU
ARE?
Govind,
CRAZY YOU WILL BE, but you will be crazy in your own way. You cannot be crazy as I am. Your craziness will have an individuality of its own.
Krishna is crazy in his own way, but it happened only once; it was never repeated. Just think of Krishna playing on his flute -- you cannot conceive Christ playing on the flute.
He is crazy in his own way: he carries his cross. Now what connection can you find between the flute and the cross? Just put a flute by the side of the cross and it will look like a very absurd arrangement -- a surrealist arrangement. Absurd, utterly absurd.
Meera became enlightened, and danced and danced. Her whole life she danced from one village to another, singing songs of God, of love. And Buddha became enlightened and became utterly silent, quiet, still. It is not an accident that the first marble statues made were of Buddha -- he looked like a marble statue, he sat like a marble statue. Now, you cannot make a marble statue of Meera; it is impossible. She is so volatile. She is more like a river than like a marble rock. You cannot make a statue of Meera -- it will be a falsification because the statue will not be able to dance. And without dance, there is no Meera. Meera's statues can only be made by fountains, not by marble rocks. Yes, in a fountain it is
possible to make a statue of Meera, but it has to be dynamic, it has to be a dance.
Meera is crazy in her own way. And these people are never repeated. Alt enlightened people are simply unique. Just the other day I was telling you about the laughing Buddha of Japan -- he laughed his whole life. Laughter became his message.
Govind, God never repeats. He always comes in new forms, new expressions, new revelations. And never use the word 'if' -- you ARE going to become enlightened! Don't be so afraid. Why 'if'? This is not a question of ifs and buts: you are going to become enlightened -- because enlightenment is not something like an achievement, it is your very nature. Any day, turn in, and you are enlightened -- any day. Monday will do, Tuesday will do, any day! And there are only seven days.…
Any moment you turn in!
Enlightenment is not something like a faraway goal; it is very close by, the closest. Even to say that it is close is not right -- it is YOU! There is no distinction, no distance between you and enlightenment. Know yourself and you are enlightened -- and you are already there! Nothing has to be added to your being. All that is needed is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn... and you will be crazy.
Yes, it is better to call enlightened people crazy, because the so-called sane in the world are really insane. If the so-called sane are sane, then Buddha is crazy, Christ is crazy, I am crazy, and sooner or later, Govind, you are going to be crazy! And I hope it will be sooner.
But one thing is certain: you will not be like me -- and you need not be. And it is good that you cannot be like me, otherwise there will be imitations, otherwise there will be actors, otherwise there will be pseudo people. And many have tried; that's how religions are born. Millions have tried to be like Christ; not a single one has become a Christ.
Millions have tried and instead of becoming Christs they have become Christians -- and to be a Christian is ugly, is stupid, unintelligent.
To be a Christ is really something, but when you want to be a Christ you cannot imitate Christ. Learn from him, imbibe his being, but remember: God will
manifest in you in a totally different way. And it is unpredictable; no prophecy can be made. I cannot say how he will manifest in you, because God is the craziest person in the world -- unpredictable, absolutely unpredictable. He will find a way, he will find something new. And it is good that he always finds something new, because through that new the world becomes more and more enriched. Just think: Buddha is like Christ, Krishna is also like Christ; Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, all are like Christ... the world would look very sad, boring. Wherever you go, you meet Christ. You will get tired. It is good that once in a while the cross disappears and the flute appears, and it is good that once in a while God comes dancing, and it is good that once in a while he is silent, AND it is also good that once in a while he comes with a cross. All shades, all nuances, all dimensions.…
And, Govind, you are a unique person, as everybody else is. No two persons are alike.
How can two Buddhas be alike? Not even two persons are alike, not even two pebbles on the seashore are alike. Your fingerprints are your fingerprints -- what to say about the prints of your inner being? They are going to be separate, unique, incomparable.
The last question Question 6
OSHO, MY CHRISTIAN PARENTS USED TO TALK ABOUT GOD'S PROMISE TO
MAN AND THAT WHEN JESUS LEFT THIS EARTH HE PROMISED HIS
DISCIPLES HE WOULD RETURN TO TAKE THEM TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
ARE YOU THIS PROMISE COME TRUE? ARE YOU JESUS CHRIST?
Svarga,
WHY SHOULD I BE JESUS CHRIST? One is enough! I am myself. I am just my being.
I am neither Jesus Christ, nor Gautam Buddha, nor Vardhaman Mahavira. Why should I be? How can I be? I am not a carbon copy of anybody else; have my original face.
But such questions arise. You love Jesus Christ and now you have fallen in love with me
-- it is YOUR PROBLEM! Now you would like to bridge your two loves somehow; there must be a conflict inside: what to do now? Now you are in love with me and you have loved Jesus Christ; deep down the mind will say, "Are you betraying Jesus? Falling in love with this man?" And you don't want to betray Jesus -- and now you cannot betray me either! So the conflict. You would like an assurance that I am Jesus Christ so your problem is solved.
I am the same truth, but not the same expression. I am the same experience, but not the same expression. What Jesus knew, I know; what he experienced, I have experienced.
But Jesus is Jesus, I am me, and that's how it should be.
A section of Manhattan called the Bowery, home to winos and derelicts, has become the most famous Skid Row in the world. Here's one of the reasons why: At four o'clock in the morning a drunk staggered into a Bowery flophouse shouting, "I am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ!"
The sleeping men were all awakened. "l am Jesus Christ! I am Jesus Christ!" blurted the wino.
"Ah, shut up!" howled the hotel inhabitants. "Be quiet!" "I am Jesus Christ!" slobbered the inebriate. "I am Jesus Christ!"
"Will you let us get some sleep!"
"If you don't believe me, come on downstairs and I will prove it to you!"
A few of the men got up and followed him outside where he walked up to a darkened saloon and began bellowing and banging on the door.
The proprietor who lived upstairs heard the noise, came down, and opened the front door.
He looked at the drunk and shouted, "Jesus Christ, are you here again?" "You see, I told you!" said the drunk turning to his followers.
Jesus is beautiful, but there is no need for him to come again -- and I don't think he will dare. Just think of what you did with him! He may have promised, "I will come again,"
but I promise you he will never come -- because what you did with him you will do again. It is only new persons who become enlightened, not knowing what is going to happen to them...!
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty Chapter #3
Chapter title: The Prints of Your Inner Being 13 April 1979 am in Buddha Hall
Archive code: 7904130
ShortTitle: FISH03
Audio: Yes Video: No Length: 97
mins
The first question Question 1
OSHO, I HAVE HEARD THAT ENLIGHTENMENT, OR THE NATURAL STATE OF
MAN, IS SOMETHING ACAUSAL -- IT JUST HAPPENS. AND ALL OUR ENDEAVOURS TO BRING ABOUT AWARENESS, TO BE AWARE, ARE
ACTUALLY TAKING US AWAY FROM THIS STATE SINCE THEY ARE ALL
MIND GAMES, AND THESE ACTIVITIES FOR SELF-AWARENESS ARE JUST A
"HOLY BUSINESS". I CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT MY LIFE WOULD BE IF I GAVE UP THE SEARCH SINCE IT HAS PERMEATED MY LIFE AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. IF THERE IS NO WAY TO INTEGRATE, NOTHING ONE CAN
DO, WHY ALL THIS ACTIVITY? WHY BOTHER? YET WHAT ELSE IS THERE
TO DO? PLEASE COMMENT.
Deva Samadhi,
IT IS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT QUESTIONS TO BE asked. We
will have to go deep into it. It is true, absolutely true, that enlightenment is acausal: it cannot be caused by our efforts. But that does not mean that you have to cease making efforts, because then too it will not happen.
This mystery, this paradox, has to be understood deeply. The tendency of the logical mind is either to decide that enlightenment is causal so that one can make efforts to achieve it, or it is acausal, it happens only when it happens of its own accord, then there is no need to make any efforts.
In both ways you will miss. If you think it is causal, and make efforts, you will
miss, because it is not causal. If you think it is not causal, that hence there is no need to make any efforts -- why bother? -- you will miss again.
The reality is: you have to make all possible efforts, yet it is not going to happen through your efforts, but you will be prepared through your efforts to receive it when it happens.
It IS acausal. It will happen. It is not a doing on your part. But when it happens, will you be ready to see it? That is the point, the very crux of the matter. When it happens, will you be ready to recognize it? When it happens, will you be ready to welcome it, to open your heart to it, to receive it into your being? Will you be ready to become a host to the guest when it knocks on your doors?
Your efforts are NOT going to create enlightenment: your efforts are simply going to make you more and more available to it, open to it, vulnerable to it. Your efforts are going to make a womb out of your being so you can be pregnant with it. It is going to happen from the beyond. And it is not that it is going to happen somewhere in the future -
- it is ALREADY happening. You are just not ready.
When it happened to Buddha, it could have happened to the whole earth, to the whole of humanity. But Buddha was ready to receive it and others were not ready to receive it. The sun rises: it will rise only for those who have eyes, it will not rise for those who are blind.
If you go to the physician, he can help -- he can help you to get rid of your blindness. His medicines are not going to create the sunrise; his medicines are of no use as far as the sunrise is concerned. It happens on its own -- it is already happening, happening every day -- but it never happens to the blind person or to the person who is not blind yet keeps his eyes closed.
Samadhi, your efforts will only open your eyes. And this is part of the opening of your eyes -- to understand that enlightenment is acausal. But this is not yet your understanding, remember.
You say: I HAVE HEARD THAT ENLIGHTENMENT OR THE NATURAL STATE
OF MAN IS SOMETHING ACAUSAL...
You have heard it. It is not going to help you -- unless you start feeling that it is acausal.
And how are you going to feel that it is acausal? By making all possible efforts and failing again and again and again, one day suddenly the realization happens that efforts can't make it. In that realization you don't start thinking, "Why bother?" You don't start thinking of stopping efforts. Efforts simply STOP in that understanding. In that understanding efforts evaporate.
That's how it happened to Gautam the Buddha. For six years he made all possible human efforts to achieve it, but because it is not an achievement he could not achieve it. And the more efforts he made, the more frustrated he became -- obviously. If you don't make any efforts for it you will not be frustrated, and when you make efforts with your total heart, it hurts to fail each time. He staked his whole life for it, and yet it was not happening. He was not holding anything back. If he had been holding anything back, then this understanding that happened to him would not have been possible -- that all efforts are futile.
It happens only to those who are not holding anything back, when you have put all that you have at stake, when nothing is left behind, when you are utterly empty, you have emptied yourself totally, and it is not happening, then the understanding arises, "My efforts are futile. My efforts are ego efforts -- the ego is futile. My efforts are my own mind games. The mind itself is the barrier."
But this has to become your own experience, Samadhi. It is not going to help if you have heard it. You can hear great truths, but unless they arise in your own being they are not true. A heard truth is a lie: only an experienced truth is a truth. And only the experienced truth liberates. How will you experience it? You would like to have it without any efforts.
You would like it to happen as it happened to Buddha -- minus those six years that preceded it.
Those six years of tremendous effort are a must. Then one day suddenly, one evening when the sun was setting, the revelation happened to him: "My efforts cannot take me beyond myself." This is so natural! It is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings
-- it is utterly futile. But how is one going to know it?
Those six long years... and they must have looked like sixty years to him, because they were really painful. All kinds of ascetic practices, long fasts, torturing the body, doing all kinds of yoga exercises, many of which are just stupid: standing on your head, distorting your body, utterly ridiculous postures -- he did all! Whatsoever was said to him, he followed it literally, word for word. He went to all kinds of teachers; they must have all been pseudo. Not even a single one of them was a Buddha, was yet enlightened. They gave him many strategies to work out.
If he had not been doing them perfectly well, they would have been safe. They would have told him, "Because you are not doing totally, hence you are missing." But this was impossible: the man was so authentic, so sincere, so innocently total, that even those pseudo teachers had to tell him, "Excuse us, forgive us -- this is all we know. And you have done it all, and we cannot expect more from you. Now you have to go somewhere else. This is all we know, and now you know that this is not going to give you enlightenment -- it has not given enlightenment to us either. But it is very rare to find a person like you. People come and they do it very partially. With them we can always say,
'Because you are not total, hence you are missing,' but we cannot say this to you! Your innocence forbids it. Your totality... we are ashamed. In fact, we ourselves have not done these practices so totally. Forgive us, and find another teacher. And if you ever find enlightenment, don't forget us. If you ever find truth, please remember us -- we are also seeking and searching. We are also blind," those teachers confessed to Buddha.
After six years of wandering, one evening, sitting silently underneath a tree, by the side of the River Niranjana, this revelation welled up within his being: that human effort cannot help you to transcend humanity. It can only happen: it cannot be caused. But now these six years of austerity had purified him; this fire had made him gold. These six years had helped him to see the utter uselessness of the mind. Now he was ready to be silent, effortless, passive.
That night he slept with no search, not even for truth, because search creates desires, desires can be fulfilled only through effort -- the search disappeared! The desires disappeared. The efforts disappeared. For the first time he slept totally relaxed -- neither worldly desires tortured him nor other-worldly desires. He had no dreams that night, that was the first night without dreams, because dreams are a by-product of your desires. The worldly people dream of worldly
things, the other-worldly people dream of other-worldly things. And the worldly people are not so much deceived, because if in the night you see a dream that you have come upon a great treasure of diamonds -- in the morning you know that it was only a dream. But the other-worldly people are very much deceived by their dreams.
Somebody sees Krishna playing on his flute; somebody sees Jesus Christ, somebody sees Rama, and so on and so forth. And they cannot say that these are dreams, they are so valuable to them. They start thinking that these are experiences. These are dreams! as much as other dreams.
And the other-worldly person starts hallucinating in the day too, even with open eyes --
because the worldly man is in the world, and in the world you cannot hallucinate because others will think you are mad. In the world you live with objects, and you have to prove to others that what you are seeing is a reality. The treasures of your dreams, nobody is going to believe in them. There are so many non- believers around you; they will ask for proofs and proofs you cannot supply. So you can dream only in the night. But the other-worldly, those who have escaped from the world, a person who lives in isolation in a Himalayan cave, has no need to prove; there is nobody to prove to and nobody asks him.
He has dropped the objective world; now he lives in his subjectivity -- he can dream in the day, he can dream with open eyes.
It is now a well-known, well-established psychological fact that if people go on a long fast in isolation, after the first week they start hallucinating, and after the third week they lose ALL distinction between what is real and what is unreal. After the third week of fasting, the reality and the dream start getting mixed up.
It is like small children: small children don't know what is real and what is unreal. So sometimes a child who was dreaming about a beautiful toy wakes up and starts crying for it. And the mother goes on trying to convince him that it was only a dream, but he says,
"It was here -- how can it be a dream? I had it! Where has my toy gone? Bring it back to me!"
The same thing happens in deep isolation. If it is a prolonged thing, a three
weeks' fast in an isolated cave in the Himalayas, slowly slowly you will start hallucinating. Then you see Krishna playing on the flute -- not only that: he starts talking to you. Not only that --
he starts playing with you And because it is thought to be spiritual It is simple
madness! But because it is thought to be spiritual you feel very very gratified, your ego feels very fulfilled. You brag about it, that Krishna has appeared, that you have talked with Krishna, that you have played with him, that he was playing on the flute and you danced around him.
And there are other fools also who will believe it. The whole world is full of superstitious people.
Buddha lived those six long years through all kinds of things like this. It is only by experiencing these things that one day one can conclude that this is all nonsense. And when it is your own realization that it is all nonsense, you need not drop it: it simply disappears.
That night he slept without dreams. And in the early morning when he opened his eyes and the last star was disappearing, something in him disappeared -- the ego. He became enlightened .
THIS enlightenment is not something that has come from the outside -- it is your intrinsic nature. It has come from within. But the within and the beyond are synonymous: the within is the beyond. It is through the within that the beyond penetrates.
Then Buddha said, "Enlightenment is not an achievement -- it is a gift from existence."
But those six years had prepared him to receive it.
Samadhi, prepare yourself to receive it. It is acausal, but that does not mean that you have to stop all efforts. If you stop, you will miss. If they stop on their own, because your understanding has penetrated so deeply that it is impossible to make any effort any more, even if you want to you cannot, in that state of effortless passivity you become the host and God becomes the guest.
The second question
Question 2
OSHO, I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF: HOW DO YOU SEE ME?
Swami Prem Asutosh,
IT IS NOT ONLY YOUR PROBLEM -- it is the problem of almost everybody. All the cultures and all the religions have been conditioning you to feel negative about yourself.
Nobody is loved, appreciated, for just being himself or herself. You are asked to prove whether you are of any worth: "Bring gold medals from the university! Achieve success, money, power, prestige, respectability! Prove!" Your worth is not intrinsic; that's what has been taught to you. Your worth has to be proved.
Hence a deep antagonism towards oneself arises, a deep feeling that I am worthless as I am -- unless proved otherwise." And very few people can succeed in this competitive world. Millions and millions of people are competing. How many people can succeed?
How many people can become presidents and prime ministers? In a country of millions, only one person will become the president; and deep down everybody is hankering for it.
Millions will feel that they are unworthy.
How many people can become great poets? A Shakespeare. a Milton, a Shelley, a Rabindranath -- how many people can become great poets? And everybody has something of the poetic in his being; everybody has some poetry to give to the world. But when it becomes an ambition... ambition in itself is anti-poetic. How many people can become great painters like Picasso or Dali? And everybody has something to create.
The idea of success is torturing you. It is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity, the idea of success, that you have to succeed. And success means you have to compete, you have to fight, by fair or foul means -- it doesn't matter. Once you succeed everything is okay. The question is of success. even if by foul means you succeed, once you are successful whatsoever you have done is okay. Success changes the quality of all your acts. Success changes evil means into good means. So the only question is: How to succeed? How to reach to the top?
And naturally, very few people can reach to the top. If everybody is trying to reach Everest. how many people can stand there? There is not much space there; only one person can stand there at ease. Then the millions who were also striving will feel failure, a great despair will settle in their souls. They will start feeling negative.
This is a wrong kind of education. It is utterly poisonous, this so-called education that has been given to you. Your schools, colleges, your universities, are poisoning you. They are creating misery for you; they are the factories where hells are manufactured -- but in such a beautiful way that you never become aware of what is going on. The whole world has become a hell because of a wrong education. Any education that is based on the idea of ambition is going to create hell on the earth -- it has succeeded.
Everybody is suffering and feeling inferior. This is really a strange situation. NOBODY
IS inferior, and nobody is superior, because each individual is unique -- no comparison is possible. You are you, and you are SIMPLY YOU, and you cannot be anybody else, and there is no need either. And you need not become famous, you need not be a success in the eyes of the world. Those are all foolish ideas.
All that you need is to be creative, loving, aware, meditative... if you feel poetry arising in you, write it for yourself, for your woman, for your children, for your friends -- and forget all about it! Sing it, and if nobody listens, sing it alone and enjoy it! Go to the trees and they will applaud and appreciate it. Or talk to the birds and the animals, and they will understand far more than the stupid human beings who have been poisoned for centuries and centuries with wrong concepts of life.
The ambitious person is pathological.
You say: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF.
Everybody is feeling negative about himself, because that's how he has been made to feel. Your parents have done it to you -- this is a heritage, a great heritage. Your teachers have done it to you, your priests have done it to you, your political leaders have done it to you -- and so many people are doing it that, naturally, you have become impressed by the very idea that you are worthless, that you don't have any intrinsic meaning or value, that you don't have any
significance of your own.
Each parent is saying to the child, to each child, "Prove that you have some worth!"
Being, just being, is not enough -- some doing is needed.
My whole approach is that being is intrinsically valuable. Just that you are is such a gift from God, what more can you ask for? Just to breathe in this beautiful existence is certificate enough that God loves you, that existence needs you; otherwise you would not be here. YOU ARE! Existence has given birth to you. There must have been an immense need -- you have filled a gap. Without you existence would be less. And when I say this, I am saying it not only to you: I am saying it to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to the pebbles on the shore. A single pebble less on the immense seashore and the seashore would not be the same. A single flower less and the universe would miss it.
You have to learn that you are valuable as you are. And I am not teaching you any ego --
just the contrary. In the feeling that you are valuable as you are you will also feel others are valuable as they are. Accept people as they are; drop shoulds, oughts -
- those are the enemies.
And you are carrying so many shoulds: "Do this and don't do that!" You are carrying so many dos and don'ts that you cannot dance; the burden is too heavy. And you have been given so many ideals and goals -- ideals of perfection -- that you always feel you are falling short. And the ideals are utterly impossible. You cannot fulfill them; there is no possibility of fulfilling them. So you will ALWAYS fall short.
To be a perfectionist is to be ready for the psychiatrist's couch; to be a perfectionist is to be a neurotic. And you have all been told to be perfect.
Life is beautiful in all its imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Let me say to you: even God is not perfect -- because if God is perfect then Friedrich Nietzsche is right that God is dead. Perfection means death! Perfection means now there is no possibility of growth.
Perfection means now everything is finished. Imperfection means there is a
possibility to grow. Imperfection means the excitement of new pastures, ecstasy, adventure.
Imperfection means that you are alive, that life is going to be there.
And life is eternal, hence I say life is eternally imperfect. And there is nothing wrong in being imperfect. Accept your imperfection. And then the idea of being negative towards yourself will disappear. Accept your present state and don't compare it with some future perfection, future ideal. Don't think in terms of how you should be! That is the root of all pathology -- drop that. You are as you are today, and tomorrow you may be different, but you cannot predict it today, and there is no need to plan for it either.
Live this day in all its beauty, in all its joy, in all its pain, agony, ecstasy. Live it in its totality -- in its darkness, in its light. Live the hate and live the love. Live the anger and live the compassion. Live whatsoever is available in this moment. My approach is not that of perfection but that of totality. Live the moment that is available to you totally, and the next moment will be born out of it. If this moment has been lived totally, the next is going to reach a higher pitch of totality. a higher peak of totality -- because from where is the next moment going to come? It is going to be born out of this moment. Forget all about the future -- the present is enough.
Jesus says: "Think not of the morrow, and look at the lilies in the field! how beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur."
And what is the secret of the beautiful lilies, the poor lilies? The secret is simple: they think not of the morrow, they don't know anything of the future. Tomorrow exists not.
This day is enough unto itself, this moment is enough unto itself.
And, Asutosh, your feeling of negativity about yourself will disappear. Remember, if you feel negative about yourself, you will automatically feel negative about others. That is a necessary corollary. It has to be understood.
THE PERSON WHO IS NEGATIVE ABOUT HIMSELF cannot be positive about anybody else either, because the faults that he finds in himself he will find in others -- in fact he will magnify them in others. He will take revenge. Your
parents have made you negative about yourself, you will take revenge on your children you will make them even more negative.
Hence, negativity goes on growing with each generation. Each generation becomes more and more pathological. If the modern man is suffering psychologically so much it has nothing to do with the modern man himself: it simply shows that the whole past has been wrong. It is all accumulation of the whole past. The modern man is suffering from the past; the modern man is not suffering from his own sins as the so-called religious preachers go on saying to you. You are suffering from the sins of centuries... but now things have come to a peak. Man is falling apart. Up to now somehow we have managed to keep ourselves together, but now things have come to such a point that either man has to change totally and has to change his vision of life, or man has to commit suicide.
If you follow the past, then you are on the verge of committing a global suicide. And that's what your political leaders are trying to do: preparing atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, super hydrogen bombs -- piling up bombs upon bombs. They already have too many! In fact, just ten years ago they were already capable of killing each person seven times. Ten years ago they were ready to destroy this earth seven times, although a person dies only once -- you need not kill him twice, that will be unnecessary. But in case somebody survives, politicians have to take care -- they plan perfectly. But that is how things were ten years ago.
Now, you will be surprised: they can destroy this earth seven hundred times -- each single person can be killed seven hundred times! Now this is too much, and absolutely unnecessary. Seven is okay -- there are a few cunning people who may not die. But seven hundred times!? And still the race continues. Even poor countries are joining the race hankering to join it -- starving, but they want atom bombs. Starving! but they want more power to kill and destroy.
Just a bird's eye view and you can see the earth is preparing for a global suicide, a total destruction, a total war. And remember again, this has nothing to do with the modern man as such. The modern man is only a victim of the whole past. And the priests go on saying that something is wrong with the modern man, and they go on praising the past.
The modern man is a by-product of the whole past! Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist -- all kinds of cultures have contributed to this situation. They
are responsible.
Unless they all disappear, unless we drop this whole pathological past and start anew, living in the present, with no idea of perfection, with no ideals, with no shoulds, with no commandments, man is doomed.
Everybody is feeling negative. One may say it, one may not say it. And when one feels negative about oneself, one feels negative about everything else. One's attitude becomes negative, that of a NO. And if the negative person is taken to the rosebush he will count the thorns, he will not look at the rose flower -- he cannot. He is not capable of that. He will simply ignore the roseflower, he will count the thorns.
A woman was very unhappy. Her husband was seriously ill in hospital, and her son had just been arrested on a drug charge. So she went to the park to sit in the sun and refresh herself. She sat on a bench. As she watched, a little bird flew from a tree on one side of the bench towards a tree on the other side. When it passed over the woman, it let loose a little birdshit which hit her on the forehead. The woman's eyes lifted towards heaven, her hands came up, and she said, "You see how it is, God -- for other people they sing!"
If you are feeling negative, then the whole life becomes a dark night. Then there are no more dawns, then the mornings are never there. Then the sun only sets and never rises.
Then your dark nights are not even full of stars. What to say about stars? You don't even have a small candle.
The negative person lives in darkness, lives a kind of death. He slowly dies. That's what he thinks life is. He goes on poisoning himself in many ways; he is self-destructive. And, naturally, whosoever comes in contact with him, he destroys him too. A negative mother will destroy the child. The negative husband will destroy the wife; the negative wife will destroy the husband. The negative parents will destroy their children; the negative teacher will destroy his students. The negative priest... and all priests are negative. It is very rarely that you come across a man like Buddha or Christ or Mohammed, who is not negative -- but they are not priests: they are prophets. They bring new visions to life.
Priests exploit the prophets' vision; they distort it. They interpret it in such ways
that it becomes a strategy to dominate people. Christ is not a Christian, remember; Christ was never a Christian. Christianity is created by the priests; Christianity is the creation of Saint Paul. He is the real founder of Christianity -- not Jesus Christ.
It is not Buddha who is the founder of Buddhism, but the priests who followed.… And it is so with every religion. Whenever a truth has entered into somebody's being, whenever somebody has received God, priests gather together around him. They never miss the opportunity -- they are the most cunning people. They start exploiting the situation. And once the enlightened person is gone, then the priests become the masters, the owners.
The past has been created by the priests. It is a negative past -- life-denying, anti- life, anti-love, anti-joy, anti-celebration. It has created only two kinds of people in the world those who are sincere -- just like you, Asutosh -- those who are sincere, they are suffering from negativity, anguish, despair; and those who are not sincere, they have become hypocrites. They go on talking about the anti-life religious teachings, and from the backdoor they live a totally different life. On the surface they are spiritualists, deep down they are materialists.
And, remember, I am not against materialism: I am against hypocrisy. I would like everybody to be a materialist and a spiritualist, because you are both body and soul, because God is both God and the universe. The universe is his manifestation. Your body is the manifestation of your soul.
In the past, because the religions talked in terms of anti-materialism they created two kinds of people: sincere people who had to declare that they were materialists -- and that is not good; because of that declaration they became closed to the spiritual dimension --
and then there were insincere, cunning people who talked about spiritualism and remained materialists.
You can see it in this country. My own experience is -- and I have known all kinds of people; here with me there are all kinds of people from almost every country of the world
-- my own experience is that Indians are the most materialistic. They talk about spiritualism, they brag about spiritualism, but all that bragging and all that talking is just to hide, to cover their reality. They are hypocrites.
The more religious a country pretends to be, the more hypocritical it is. And then man is split. Either the spiritual dimension becomes closed, or you become a split person. And both alternatives are wrong.
A new man is needed who will affirm life, who will love life, who will love love, who will love this existence AS it is, who will not make demands that first it has to be perfect, who will celebrate life with all its limitations. And that new man is my sannyasin.
My sannyasin heralds the new man, a new beginning, a disconnection from the past, a discontinuity from the past. I don't want you to be hypocrites: I want you to be real, authentic human beings. Love your body, live your body to its totality. Love your instincts, your desires, and live them in their totality.
And you will be surprised: if you love your life, life starts opening its doors to you. If you love, mysteries are revealed to you, secrets are handed over to you. If you love your body, sooner or later you will become aware of the soul that resides in it. If you love the trees and the mountains and the rivers, sooner or later you will see the invisible hands of God behind everything. His signature is on every leaf. You just need eyes to see -- and only positive eyes can see; negative eyes cannot see. Negative eyes are blind! Negative eyes only see the wrong.
You ask me, Asutosh: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF: HOW DO YOU SEE
ME?
I SEE YOU AS A BEING A BEAUTIFUL PERSON. I see you as of great worth, significance. If God has given birth to you, that is proof enough! -- no other proof is needed -- that you are fulfilling some immense need of the universe. Start loving yourself, because that is the only way to love others, that is the only way to love God. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love your creator? If you hate yourself, you will hate your creator too -- because finally HE is responsible. He has created an unworthy person like you. He has made you ugly. He has given you wrong, evil desires. He is the culprit! Condemning your own instincts, your own desires, yom own life, you are condemning, vicariously, God himself
Accept yourself, otherwise you will become a hypocrite. Don't repress -- nothing
is negative in you. Existence is utterly positive. Express... manifest your hiddenmost core.
Sing your song, and don't be worried what it is. Don't expect anybody to applaud it --
there is no need. Singing in itself should be the reward.
I would not like you to become a hypocrite. And who is a hypocrite? The person who says something, believes something, and lives just the contrary.
Father Flanagan is walking through the village when he is hailed by Mrs. O'Rourke.
"Would ye be joining us, father?" she calls out. "It is a bit of a party we are having."
"I wish I could," replies the good father, "but I have to go and say mass."
"What a pity," says the woman, "a fine party it is, and we are playing some lovely games.
We blindfolded the women, the men took off their trousers, and the women have been guessing who is who. And would you believe it, father, your name has been called out five times already!"
Beware! One cannot live in the negative. One can think negatively but one has to live positively. You cannot live in the no, because the no has no nourishment in it, and the no has no space in it. No is a death! One can die in a no, but one cannot live in a no.
If you want to really live, you will need a deep yes in your heart. It is only yes that allows you to live. It gives you nourishment, it gives you space to move. Just watch the word!
Even repeating the word 'yes'... and something starts opening up in you. Say no and something shrinks. Say no, repeat no, and you are killing yourself Say yes and you will feel overflowing. Say yes and you are ready to love, to live, to be.
Asutosh, to me, each individual is superb, is unique. I don't compare any
individual; comparison is not my way, because comparison is always ugly and violent. I will not say you are superior to others, I will not say you are inferior to anybody -- you are just yourself And you are needed as you are. And you are incomparable -- as everybody else is.
The third question Question 3
OSHO, YOU SAY, "DO NOT IMITATE CHRIST, BUDDHA OR YOU," BUT CANNOT ONE LEARN BY IMITATION? CANNOT ONE LEARN BY
FOLLOWING? CANNOT ONE BECOME ONE'S TRUE SELF BY THE LIGHT OF
CHRIST, BUDDHA OR YOU?
Anand,
TO IMITATE IS TO GO AGAINST YOURSELF. To imitate simply means you are denying yourself and you are imposing somebody else upon you. Love Christ if you can find him, but don't imitate him. Understand the Buddha if by chance you meet him, but don't follow him. You are here with me: BE with me in deep love, in deep trust; allow me to have a communion with your heart -- let our hearts meet, merge, mingle with each other. But please don't imitate me, don't follow me.
You have to go on your own. You have to be a light unto yourself. You have to BE
YOURSELF! If you imitate Christ you will be a Christian but never a Christ -- and to be a Christian is ugly, and to be a Christ is one of the most beautiful happenings. The most precious happening in the world is to be a Christ.
To be a Buddha means to be awakened to your inner light. How can you be awakened by following somebody? My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends, they are my lovers. They are not my followers! I am not giving you any instructions about how to live; I am not giving you any commandments about how to behave. I am not giving you any character to cultivate. I am simply
sharing my insight -- I am simply sharing with you what has happened to me. I am simply telling my story to you. And I am grateful that you are listening to it.
Just listen to it as totally as possible, and then something will start happening in you. It will not be a following, it will not be an imitation. It will not be caused by me: it will be a synchronicity. It will be acausal.
The law of synchronicity has to be understood. This is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to modern humanity: the law of synchronicity.
Science is based on the law of causality. The law of causality is mechanical. You heat water to a hundred degrees -- it evaporates. Where you heat it is irrelevant -- in the temple, in the church, in the mosque, it doesn't matter; in India, in Tibet, it doesn't matter.
If you heat water to a hundred degrees, it evaporates; the water has no say in it. The water cannot say, "Today I am not feeling like it." Or, "Today is Sunday and I am on a holiday, and I am not interested in becoming vapour." Or, "Today I am not in the mood, and you can go on heating and heating and I will not evaporate." Or, "Today I am suddenly feeling very generous towards you so I will evaporate at fifty degrees. I will favour you."
No, the water has no choice. The law is mechanical, it is causal. If you create the cause, the effect HAS to follow. And it is without any exception.
Because of this law of causality, science cannot believe in the existence of soul, in the existence of consciousness, in the existence of God -- because they are non-mechanical phenomena. The very methodology of science prevents it from accepting them; they cannot be absorbed in the scientific world. They will disturb it, they will destroy its whole edifice. They have to be kept out -- God, soul, consciousness, love -- they have all to be kept outside the temple of science. They cannot be allowed in. They are dangerous: they will sabotage its whole structure. They are acausal. But they must be following some other law.
The credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung. The law has been known down the ages, but nobody had named it exactly. He called it 'the law of synchronicity'. It suddenly happened to a scientist. A scientist a hundred years ago was staying in an old house. In that old house there were two old clocks on the same wall. He was surprised to see that they always kept exactly the same time, second to second: "Old clocks, and so perfect? Not even a single second's difference?"
Being a scientist he became curious. He put one clock five minutes back, and after twenty-four hours in the morning when he looked again, they were again keeping the same time. Now it was a great puzzle. He enquired... nobody had changed, nobody had touched anything. He tried again and again, and again and again they would come to the same rhythm. Then he tried to find out: "What is happening? -- something strange. They are disconnected!"
Then he observed more minutely and he came to conclude: "The vibration of the one clock, which is more powerful, the bigger clock, goes through the wall -- just the vibration -- and keeps the other clock in tune. It is a subtle rhythm. Nothing is visible."
That was the beginning of a new phenomenon... then many many more things happened.
And by the time Carl Gustav Jung started working on how things happen in consciousness, he came to conclude that the vibe of one heart, if it is powerful enough, can change the rhythm of another heart -- just like the bigger clock was changing the smaller clock.
The vibe is invisible. There is not yet any way to measure it, but it is there. It is not tangible, but it functions. It is not causal.
That's what happens in SATSANG -- in communion with a Master. If you are with a Christ, he is a tremendous power -- he is God! He is a window to God. God is flowing through him. If you come close to him -- and that's what disciplehood is all about: to come close to a Master, to come close to a window from whom God is flowing -- his power, his vibe, will set the rhythm of your heart. It is acausal, one of those mysterious intangibles, but it has been happening down the ages.
Have you watched it? Two lovers, if they are really lovers, and deep in intimacy, slowly slowly start looking alike -- that is synchronicity. You can see it: real lovers, slowly slowly start looking like brother and sister. Something in them starts becoming synchronized, they start having the same rhythm.
The mother and the child have the same rhythm; hence, now it is a known fact, and even scientifically proved, that if a child is killed thousands of miles away from the mother, something in the heart of the mother feels the pain. She may not be able to understand it, what is happening; she may not be able to explain it.
She may not know anything about what is happening to her child, but if something is happening to the child and the child is thousands of miles away -- that doesn't make any difference -- the mother's heart immediately starts feeling it. Something is broken in her heart too.
Just the other day a sannyasin wrote to me that his mother died a few days ago -- just now he has received the telegram. And he is puzzled, because the day she died he was in such agony, with no physical problem, with no psychological problem, with no visible came, but in such agony, such terrible agony, as he has never been before.
This is synchronicity. The mother and the child have lived together for nine months, the child lives in the mother's womb; his heart beats in rhythm with the mother's heart, his blood pulsates in rhythm with the mother's blood -- he is not separate at all! He is one with the mother. And that oneness persists.
When two lovers become really intimate, when they don't have any secrets from each other, when they are really open to each other, when they are not afraid of each other and not hiding anything from each other... that is intimacy. When they can say each and everything without any fear that the other will be offended or hurt.… If the lover thinks the other will be offended, then the intimacy is not yet enough. Then it is a kind of arrangement which can be broken by anything. But when two lovers start feeling that there is nothing to hide and everything can be said, and the trust has come to such a depth, where even if you don't say it the other is going to know, then they start becoming one. Then they start becoming more like brother and sister.
Many people become puzzled... just a few nights ago, a couple came to me and the husband was very much puzzled. He said, "What is happening to us? We are no more husband and wife -- all sex has disappeared, but still we feel a deep intimacy." And I told them, "Something immensely valuable is happening. You are becoming brother and sister. Your love is taking on a new dimension, a higher one -- that of non-sexuality. It is becoming purer."
Hearing it, immediately everything became clear to them. They hugged each other, tears started flowing from their eyes. It was a beautiful scene to see -- they understood it. Yes, it clicked. Yes, that's what is happening. They were worried because they came from the West -- the East has always known it: that if love deepens it transforms the relationship; husbands and wives become brothers and
sisters. And ultimately a moment comes when not even brothers and sisters... a kind of oneness arises, they become one.
THIS IS SYNCHRONICITY! And this is what happens between the Master and the disciple -- on a far deeper level than any other love, on a far higher plane than any other intimacy. You need not imitate Buddha, you need not imitate me, you need not follow Christ or Krishna or Mohammed. If you are fortunate enough to be with an alive Master, just become vulnerable to him. Let intimacy happen, come closer and closer. Drop your defences and armours. And the powerful dynamo of the Master, his magnetic field, his Buddhafield, will transform you. And he will not even give you any commandment. And his transformation will not be something imposed on you but something stirred within you that will bring your own being alive.
Real life is not acting. Imitation is acting. Imitation is superficial. Real life is not a game, and if you are playing games you will never be real and you will not know what real life is.
An actor who had not worked for some time was offered a one line replacement in a show. He practised the line all the way to the theater: "Hark, I hear the cannon's roar.
Hark, I hear the cannon's roar."
Having gone through all the possibilities, he decided on the best one. When he arrived at the theater they told him his line was just about to come up and asked him if he was ready. He said he was. They pushed him out on to the stage to an enormous sound of cannons roaring. The actor jumped with fright and said, "Christ, what the hell was that?"
Life is a constant surprise. If you are a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan you are going to miss it. You cannot depend on rehearsals, and you cannot depend on playing superficial games. And that's what is happening: people in the churches are just playing the game of being Christians. In their real life they have nothing to do with Christ. Has any Christian anything to do with Christ?
Just watch. Christ says: "Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God." But look at Christians: they have become the most powerful religion in the world. The Pope is not meek; he has the greatest empire in the world -- all the Rockefellers and all the Morgans and all the Fords have nothing.… In fact, I am
always puzzled how the Jews missed such a big opportunity, and the poor Italians befooled them! Such a business!
And you will become ugly if you imitate, you will become distorted -- because trying to become like Christ you will have to cut many things here and there.
Do you know that in the ancient scriptures Christ is described as a hunchback? And do you know his height? -- four feet five inches. And the ancient scriptures say he was one of the most ugly of men. Now, try to be Jesus Christ -- become a hunchback, cut your legs or your head, and distort your face and become the ugliest of men.
A man went into a tailor's shop. He tried on a sports jacket; the tailor took a tuck. The man's shoulder went up three inches. The tailor said, "That's fine -- I will fix it." He made another adjustment; the man's arm twisted into an awkward position. And an hour later he walked out in his newly fitted jacket.
Two elderly women noticed him. The first one watching him from across the street said,
"Isn't that a shame -- such a handsome young man and so hopelessly crippled!" Her friend nodded, "Yes, but doesn't that jacket fit him beautifully?"
Avoid such jackets and avoid all rehearsals.
Giant Polish dockworker, Kraczewski, was considered by most of the longshoremen to be a great lover. They claimed he could make love to twenty girls in an hour. When some disbelieving seamen showed up, bets were made and the next night twenty girls were lined up in one of the warehouses.
The big Polack went to work. He had made love to the first dozen when suddenly he fell to the floor in a state of exhaustion. His pals rushed up to him screaming, "What happened?"
"I dunno," answered Kraczewaski. "I did okay this afternoon at the rehearsal!" The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
Chapter #4
Chapter title: Wake Up! Wake Up! 14 April 1979 am in Buddha Hall Archive
code:
7904140
ShortTitle:
FISH04
Audio:
Yes Video: No Length:
104
mins
FRIEND, WAKE UP! WHY DO YOU GO ON SLEEPING? THE NIGHT IS OVER --
DO YOU WANT TO LOSE THE DAY THE SAME WAY? OTHER WOMEN WHO
MANAGED TO GET UP EARLY HAVE ALREADY FOUND AN ELEPHANT OR A JEWEL.… SO MUCH WAS LOST ALREADY WHILE YOU SLEPT... AND THAT
WAS SO UNNECESSARY!
THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU UNDERSTOOD BUT YOU DID NOT. YOU FORGOT
TO MAKE A PLACE IN YOUR BED NEXT TO YOU. INSTEAD YOU SPENT
YOUR LIFE PLAYING. IN YOUR TWENTIES YOU DID NOT GROW BECAUSE
YOU DID NOT KNOW WHO YOUR LORD WAS. WAKE UP! WAKE UP! THERE'S
NO ONE IN YOUR BED -- HE LEFT YOU DURING THE LONG NIGHT.
Kabir says: THE ONLY WOMAN AWAKE IS THE WOMAN WHO HAS HEARD
THE FLUTE!
I PLAYED FOR TEN YEARS WITH THE GIRLS MY OWN AGE BUT NOW I AM
SUDDENLY IN FEAR. I AM ON THE WAY UP SOME STAIRS -- THEY ARE
HIGH. YET I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY FEARS IF I WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS
LOVE.
I HAVE TO LET GO THE PROTECTIVE CLOTHES AND MEET HIM WITH THE
WHOLE LENGTH OF MY BODY. MY EYES WILL HAVE TO BE THE LOVE-CANDLES THIS TIME.
Kabir says: MEN AND WOMEN IN LOVE WILL UNDERSTAND THIS POEM. IF
WHAT YOU FEEL FOR THE HOLY ONE IS NOT DESIRE THEN WHAT'S THE
USE OF DRESSING WITH SUCH CARE AND SPENDING SO MUCH TIME
MAKING YOUR EYELIDS DARK? FRIEND WAKE UP! WAKE UP!
THIS HAS BEEN THE CALL OF ALL THE BUDDHAS down the centuries. They have been shouting from the housetops. Everybody hears it, but nobody listens. Everybody knows it, but nobody understands. And knowledge is futile -- it is only understanding that liberates. And hearing is of no use -- unless you listen.
Anybody who is not deaf is capable of hearing, but listening is a totally different matter, qualitatively different. It has nothing to do with your ears: it has something to do with your heart. When your ears and your heart are joined together, listening happens. If the heart is not in the ears, you hear, but hearing is not going to help. It will make you more knowledgeable. But to become more knowledgeable is to create more hindrances between you and the Beloved.
Knowledge can never become a bridge, it is always a wall. It divides you from the ultimate, from the immediate, from the whole. It cannot connect you -- only love connects. But love is of the heart; it has nothing to do with the head. Knowledge gathers in the head; memory accumulates it. The ego enjoys it.
Love wells up in the heart. And love is another name for understanding. It is only the eyes of love which can see, and the ears of love which can hear.
Existence is not a problem that can be solved by the head. It is not a riddle to be figured out: it is a poem to be sung, it is a dance to be danced. It is a love affair! Existence is a mystery -- with no solution, because it is not a problem in the first place. It cannot be solved: it has to be lived.
And when the Buddhas call "Wake up! Wake up!" what do they mean? They mean that your heart is asleep. Your head is very awake, but the awakening of the head is in reality a metaphysical sleep. Unless the heart wakes up, you are only dreaming -- dreams and dreams, even dreams that you are awake, dreams of wakefulness, dreams of becoming religious, dreams of becoming saints, holy, but they are all dreams.
People even think about God! It is such an absurdity. People even try to prove God through arguments. God cannot be proved, because anything that can be proved can also be disproved. If God depends on logic, then logic is God, then
logic is higher than God.
No, God does not depend on logic. In fact, if you are too logical, you will not be able at all to sense the presence of God in existence. And the loss is going to be yours, because not to feel the presence of God in existence is to miss the whole point of life.
And man lives in thoughts, arguments, theories, philosophies. And the danger is that if you talk too much about God and you read too much about God and you discuss too much about God, you may be able to deceive yourself Millions have deceived themselves in this way.
A seminarian, ordained during his last semester, dressed in his black suit, his gleaming white collar, his well-polished shoes, contemplated himself in the mirror. Pleased with what he saw, he decided to deprive the world of his services no longer and went forth to do God's bidding on Ninth Avenue in New York City.
As he stood on the kerb, hands in pockets, wondering what TO do, he was observed by a drunk who seemed unimpressed. Their eyes met and the drunk said, "Sonny, what the hell do you know about God?"
The young man made no reply, went to his room, removed his clerical garb, and wondered what the hell he did know about God.
You can study, you can go to the universities, to theological colleges; you can have degrees in religious philosophy -- and yet you will never know God. That is not the way -
- that is the barrier.
God is known through the heart! Let it sink deep into your being: God is only known through the heart. So when the Buddhas say "Wake up!" they mean let your heart be awake. And what is the meaning of the heart being awake? When the head is awake, it thinks, it spins, weaves, beautiful systems of thought. And when the heart is awake, it sings songs of love. It celebrates -- just the sheer joy of being is enough to celebrate. It loves -- the love is unaddressed; the love is not flowing towards a particular object. When the heart is awake, it starts flowing in all directions. It loves the whole, it simply loves --
it is love.
That's what Kabir is going to say to you today. HIS sutras are of immense beauty. Each single word has to be meditated upon. Remember I am not saying 'think upon', I am saying 'meditate'. I am saying: Be silent and still and let his song sink in your heart. Let it stir your heart, let it awaken your sleeping energies of love, joy, bliss.
Religion is a celebration. You cannot be indoctrinated in religion, because religion is not a doctrine at all. It is a very mad love affair.
FRIEND WAKE UP! WHY DO YOU GO ON SLEEPING?
Man is deep asleep. What does his sleep consist of? He is asleep because he has forgotten the route to his heart. He is alert as far as mathematics is concerned; he is fully alert as far as calculation is concerned, he is awake as far as the world is concerned and worldly concerns are concerned -- for money, for power, for prestige, respectability, he is fully awake! He is awake only for the mundane. He is awake only for the meaningless. He collects garbage with great alertness. But he is asleep for the precious, for the sacred. He sees the trees, but he cannot see the green life flowing in them. He sees the mountains, but he cannot feel the beauty and the virgin silence. He sees people, but people look like machines. He cannot feel their souls -- he has not even felt his own soul, how can he feel anybody else's soul? He has not even become aware of who he is.
FRIEND WAKE UP! WHY DO YOU GO ON SLEEPING?
And in this sleep, when the heart is in darkness and the whole light has become focussed on the head, even if you are told the ultimate truths you will misunderstand them. Even if a Buddha tries to wake you up, you will be angry at him. Naturally, obviously! because you will think he is disturbing you. He is disturbing your dreams, not you, but you have invested too much in your dreams. He will say one thing, you will understand another.
Either you will go on listening according to your prejudices, choosing -- choosing only those things which can support you -- or you will become very angry, you will crucify, you will poison, you will destroy such a person who comes and unnecessarily disturbs your sleep.
Your sleep is deep. It has been long, long there. You have become accustomed to
it -- so much so that the heart goes on sleeping and still you can manage your life. YOU are a sleep-walker, a somnambulist. There are people who walk in their sleep; they can go to the fridge, they can eat something, they can come back to their beds -- and they will not stumble anywhere. And if you wake them up in the middle, they will be very much surprised; they will not be able to figure it out, where they are and what they are doing.
They will be shocked.
They move with open eyes, remember; somnambulists move with open eyes. But those open eyes are not really open; they simply manage a few steps. And because they have become accustomed to those few steps, they can be done mechanically; no consciousness is needed. Just watch your life: you are doing a thousand and one things, but all those things are mechanical. You go on doing them like a robot.
And when you talk to robots, it is really very difficult to reach them. They misunderstand.
It seems there were two brothers by the name of Jones. John Jones was married and Jim was the owner of an old dilapidated rowboat. It just so happened that John's wife died on the same day that Jim's boat filled with water and sank. A few days later, a kindly old lady saw Jim on the street, and mistaking him for John said, "Oh, Mr. Jones. I heard about your terrible catastrophe. You must feel heartbroken."
Replied Jim, "Why, I am not a bit sorry. She was a rotten old thing from the start. Her bottom was all chewed up and she smelled like old dead fish. She had a bad crack in back and a pretty bad hole in the front and every time I used her she started leaking all over the place. Oh, I could handle her all right, but when anybody else used her, she would go to pieces. Well, here is what finished her. Four guys came across town looking for a good time and asked me to rent out. I warned them she was not so hot, but they said they wanted to take a crack anyway. Well, the damn fools, all four of them tried to get inside at once and she split right up the middle."
The old woman fainted before he could finish.
That's how it goes on: one thing is said, something else is understood. Communication is very very difficult. Even ordinary communication is difficult,
and when a man like Kabir talks it becomes almost impossible -- because he is talking from the sunlit Himalayan tops and you are listening from your dark holes in the valley. By the time it reaches you its colour has changed, its flavour has changed, its meaning is no more the same.
And, obviously, you interpret it according to your own conditionings, your own past.
Hence, you hear but you don't listen. You will have to learn how to listen. Listening means being utterly silent, not interpreting, not judging, not evaluating
-- neither for nor against -- just being present.
Listen to these words of Kabir, just as a silent presence. Don't be in a hurry to decide whether he is right or wrong. The beauty of listening is that if he is right, you will simply know that he is right. If he is true, truth is self-evident; you will know it as sure as you know when you have a headache -- nobody needs to prove it to you.
All the elephants in Greece were ordered to evacuate the country. Behind the last one was a small mouse. The elephant turned, "Why are you running, my friend?"
"Haven't you heard the decree?" replied the mouse. "Yes, but you are a mouse," the elephant said.
"Ah yes," the mouse sighed, "but if they say I am an elephant, then how will I prove that I am not?"
It is difficult to prove, but there are things which need not be proved -- a mouse knows that he is a mouse. Proof may be difficult. When you listen to the truth, it may be difficult for you to prove that it is true, but YOU WILL KNOW. It will be an inner feeling that it is true, and that feeling is enough, because that feeling simply transports you into another world. It is not a question of your deciding whether it is true or untrue. If you decide, you will miss the whole point, because how are you going to decide? You will decide by your past. And you don't know what truth is! If you had known there would have been no need to listen to the Buddhas -- you would be a Buddha yourself You don't know, so your past has no idea of what truth is. How can your past decide what is what? Put the past aside.
Just listen.
And I am not saying believe -- just listening is not synonymous with believing. It has nothing to do with belief or disbelief -- just listening is just listening. You are neither in favour nor disfavour; you are simply open. You allow it inside you.
And let me repeat: the beauty of truth is that when it reaches you, your heart simply jumps in joy. It knows! Truth synchronizes with your heart. It has the same rhythm.
Suddenly the heart starts dancing, and that dance is the proof. And if it is not true, the heart will not dance, and then you will know that it is not true. But it is not a question of logical decision, of logical evaluation.
Listen to these words very meditatively:
FRIEND, WAKE UP!
Kabir calls you 'friend' -- that's how all the Buddhas have always felt. The disciple thinks,
"Buddha, Krishna, Christ or Kabir, they are Masters and we are disciples." From the disciples' side this is so, but how is it from the Master's side?
The Master knows there is no Master and no disciple. The Master knows that it is a company of friends. The Master is not holier-than-thou; the Master has no superiority complex. The Master is a nobody; the Master is just ordinary, but his ordinariness is luminous. The whole existence is either ordinary or extraordinary
-- but the whole. It is not that a few things are ordinary and a few things are extraordinary. For the Master, everything is unique. His reverence for life is infinite.
When a disciple comes and bows down to the Master, deep down the Master is also bowing down to the disciple. His bowing down may not be visible, because he is not visible; his gestures are invisible. The disciple slowly slowly becomes capable of deciphering, slowly slowly capable of decoding -- slowly slowly he understands that the Master loves him, that the Master thinks of him as a friend, as a beloved.
FRIEND WAKE UP! WHY DO YOU GO ON SLEEPING? THE NIGHT IS OVER --
DO YOU WANT TO LOSE THE DAY THE SAME WAY?
THIS IS A VERY STRANGE STATEMENT. To those who know, life is night and death is the day. In life people remain asleep; it is death that wakes them up. In ordinary thinking, life is life and death is the end of life. To the Buddhas, to the awakened ones, death is far more valuable than life, far superior, far more precious, far more significant.Why? Because it is the crescendo of life, the ultimate flowering. If life is the night, then death is the morn.
Kabir says: THE NIGHT IS OVER... you are getting old, time is slipping by. Death is coming closer and closer every moment.
THE NIGHT IS OVER -- DO YOU WANT TO LOSE THE DAY THE SAME WAY?
You have lost the night; you could not wake up in the night. But it can be forgiven: it was night and you slept. But you cannot be forgiven when death is coming closer -- now it is time to wake up! And if even death cannot wake you up, then what is going to wake you up? And if a person wakes up in death, then for him there is no more any birth, no more any death.
But a person can wake up in death only if he has tried hard to wake up in life, if his whole life has been a consistent effort to find a center in his being, a persistent effort to know
"Who am I? Only then is it possible that when death comes... and death is a great shock!
It shatters all that you have made. It takes away all that you have been clinging to; it dispossesses you of all your possessions. It simply leaves you utterly naked and alone. If death cannot wake you up, then you are not simply asleep -- you are in a coma. And that's how people are.
Every day millions of people die. They lived in darkness. they die in darkness. They lived dreaming, they die dreaming. They lived in a stupid way, they die in a stupid way. They miss all opportunities.
And three are the great opportunities in life. The first is birth. Only once in a while is a man so intelligent that he uses that opportunity -- only very rarely.
Maybe a Lao Tzu -- hence the story.
It is said Lao Tzu lived in his mother's womb for eighty-two years. Now this is nonsense, but it has some truth in it. It is not factual, but it has some truth in it. And that is the difference between the Western way of thinking and the Eastern. If you tell such a story to the Western mind, he simply says, "This cannot be. How can a person live for eighty-two years in the mother's womb? And what will happen to the mother? Eighty-two years?
This is not believable; this cannot be historical."
The Western mind immediately asks about the facticity of the phenomenon -- but it is a parable! It has nothing to do with facts; it certainly has something to do with truth. And truth can only be expressed through parables; there is no other way to express truth. Truth can only be expressed through metaphors, through poetry, not through history. It is poetry, pure poetry, and of tremendous power.
It means that when Lao Tm was born he was already so mature, so ripe, that he used his first opportunity to wake up. Ordinarily it takes eighty-two years for a person to wake up, and even then, how many people wake up? People wake up at the time of death, but how many? -- that too is very rare.
Lao Tzu must have been of immense intelligence, must have carried the intelligence from his past lives -- maybe just a little bit was missing, just the last straw on the camel. He used the opportunity. The first opportunity is birth. It is as important as death. It is a death in a way, because the child in the mother's womb lives in one way, one kind of life, and then is simply thrown out, expelled. He wants to cling to his home where he has lived for nine months, and so peacefully, so silently, without any worry, without any responsibility, in such warmth.… He clings to the womb, he does not want to go out. He feels it as a death, and it is natural -- because what does he know about what is going to happen? One thing is certain: his home is being shattered; he is being thrown out of all his comfort and security. He knows he is dying! Hence the birth trauma -- because the birth enters into the child's consciousness as death. He dies and is reborn.
Lao Tzu used his first opportunity. And the same is the case with Zarathustra, another beautiful story.
It is said that Zarathustra is the only child in the whole history of man who laughed when he was born. Children cry, they don't laugh -- and Zarathustra laughed -- must have shocked his mother and... a real belly-laughter. He must have used the first opportunity.
These two names are known TO have used the first opportunity. The first shock, and they became awakened.
The second opportunity in life is love. A few people have become awakened through love. And the second opportunity is available to more people than the first or the third --
because birth is almost unconscious and so is death, but love can bring a little consciousness to your heart.
Hence my insistence on love -- and Kabir's insistence is also on love, because this is the opportunity many many people can use and become awake. If you love, you will have to drop your ego -- and that will be the death, the death of the ego. If you love you will have to learn how to melt, merge, disappear. If you love you will have to know that there is much more to life than logic, calculation... there is much more to life than having money, more possessions, power.
If you love, you will have a glimpse of the divine. And if you go deep in love, you will start entering into the temple of God -- that is the second opportunity. The society has destroyed it.
The first opportunity is very rare, but the second opportunity could have been available to almost everybody -- that has been destroyed by the society. Your love has been contaminated. You have been brought up in fear, not in love. You have been brought up to fight, not to love. You have been brought up as if the whole existence is your enemy, not your friend -- how can you love? Love has been made impossible by the society.
The only possibility of people turning to religion, the only possibility of revolution in people's lives, has been destroyed by the society. Society is so much afraid of love that it is not afraid of anything else like it is of love. Love is the most potential and dangerous thing for your so-called society, because love will wake up people, love will stir people's hearts. And they will start living through the heart, and they won't listen to the head. And if they don't listen to the head then the society will be at a loss; it will be impossible to dominate people
who live through the heart. Only the head can be dominated only heads can be reduced to slaves. The heart is always the king, the master.
And the third opportunity is death -- the last. If you have missed birth, if you have missed love, don't miss death. At least the last chance should not be missed. Kabir says: THE NIGHT IS OVER -- DO YOU WANT TO LOSE THE DAY THE SAME WAY?
OTHER WOMEN WHO MANAGED TO GET UP EARLY HAVE ALREADY FIND
AN ELEPHANT OR A JEWEL.… SO MUCH WAS LOST ALREADY WHILE YOU
SLEPT... AND THAT WAS SO UNNECESSARY!
ONE THING OF TREMENDOUS IMPORTANCE TO BE remembered,
because Kabir will repeat it again and again: he calls the seeker 'the woman' -- and that has been my effort too. I go on telling my sannyasins "Be feminine!" because to be feminine means to be receptive, to be open, to be loving. To be feminine means to be non-aggressive -- and you cannot conquer God! Aggression won't help. You cannot attack the citadel of God.
All that can be done is that you can be a feminine welcome. You can invite, you cannot attack. You can absorb: you cannot possess. You can allow God to enter in you. YOU
can be pregnant with God -- that's the only way.
Kabir says: OTHER WOMEN... You will be surprised -- why is he talking about women?
OTHER WOMEN WHO MANAGED TO GET UP EARLY HAVE ALREADY
FOUND AN ELEPHANT OR A JEWEL.… He says: The impossible has happened --
they have found something which makes life meaningful, something which gives life the colour of a rainbow and the dance of a peacock and the song of a cuckoo. OTHER
WOMEN WHO HAVE MANAGED TO GET UP EARLY... Gautam Buddha,
Jesus Christ, Mohammed. Mahavira -- these are the other women. Don't be offended by it!
Friedrich Nietzsche condemned Buddha and Christ as feminine. His insight was right, but he was using it as a condemnation, as a criticism, because his idea of beauty was that of masculine power, muscular power. His idea of beauty was not that of feminine roundness, softness. His idea of the right person was that of a brave soldier, ready to attack.
He said, "The most beautiful experience of my life was when I saw an army moving and the sun shining and the sound of their boots, the music, the melody of their boots, and their guns shining in the sun. That was the most beautiful experienCe of my life.
He did not talk about a sunrise or a sunset, or the starry night, or a roseflower, or a beautiful woman -- no. Soldiers walking in step, and the sound of their boots and their guns shining in the sun. Of course, he created the philosophic background for Adolf Hitler to follow. Just as Karl Marx created communism, Friedrich Nietzsche, knowingly or unknowingly, created fascism; he was the father of the fascist mind. Of course he was against Buddha, against Christ, because Christ says: Love is God. And Christ says: If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too. And Christ says: Love your enemies as yourself And Buddha says continuously: Be rooted in the heart, forget the head. Move to the center of your being; the head is just the periphery. And if you see a statue of Buddha, it looks feminine, it has a feminine beauty.
I tell each of my sannyasins -- man or woman, it doesn't matter -- one has to be spiritually feminine, only then can God be received. You have to be a host, only then can the guest come to you.
But the problem is that down the ages the crowd has been telling you just the opposite. It makes you aggressive, violent, competitive. It takes away all that is soft in you. And now the women's liberation movement is there, which is even destroying the softness of women too. The women's liberation movement is not really a liberation movement. It is in fact just the opposite: it is trying to imitate man, to become as hard as men are, to do whatsoever men are doing.
And remember one thing: if women try to imitate men they will always be
carbon copies; they will not attain to their fulfillment, they will not attain the full potential. And they will always remain lagging behind. And they will become ugly too! The real liberation movement has not started yet. The real liberation movement will insist that the woman has to be more and more feminine, that she has to be rooted in HER nature, that she is not to follow men in retaliation, in reaction, in rebellion -- that is stupid. No reaction ever helps.
The woman has to be herself. And not only that: the woman has to be herself and she has to help man to become a little more feminine. Not only does the woman have to be liberated from men, the man has also to be liberated from men. There is a great need for a men's liberation movement -- not liberation from women, but liberation from all the nonsense that has been taught to him down the ages: Be hard! Be steel! Don't bend!
Break but don't bend! Man has been taught to be hard like a rock -- man has missed much.
And now women are following in the same tracks. It is a dangerous situation. If the woman also follows the man, she will be a second-rate citizen, she will never be equal to man.
And not only that: if she follows man and becomes hard, as lib women ARE becoming --
their faces are becoming hard, their bodies are losing roundness, softness, vulnerability, they are becoming more and more angry and less and less loving -- the danger is that that will be the end of the whole of humanity, if it happens.
The only hope for humanity is in the quality of feminineness -- the only hope. The hope is not with Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini: the hope is with Buddha, Chaitanya, Meera -- with a totally different kind of people. And we have to turn men and women BOTH into a kind of feminine lovingness.
That's what Kabir means, but you have been taught something else -- and we have learnt the lesson. And when it is told by everybody, the whole crowd goes on teaching you the same thing again and again, the whole crowd goes on singing a chorus... and down the ages. And you want to satisfy everybody -- your father, your friends, your priests, your politicians -- you are trying to satisfy everybody, and in satisfying everybody you are destroying your own soul.
I have heard:
Even in biblical times they knew that too much good advice can produce bad results.
Remember the ancient story of the old, old man in the Holy Land trudging barefoot down a dusty, rocky path? The rocks were sharp and they made his feet bleed, and by his side trudged a small boy with torn sandals, and the sharp rocks cut into his feet too and made them bleed. And behind them ambled a strong, healthy donkey.
They came to a group of travellers resting beside the road. "Look at that," said the travellers, "that poor old man with his bleeding feet while that fat, indolent donkey carries no one on his back."
So the old man shrugged and climbed up on the donkey to continue his journey. In a mile or so, another group of travellers resting by the roadside looked up and said, "For shame, that grown man riding on the donkey while the poor little boy has his feet cut and bleeding by the sharp stones of the road."
Once again, the old man shrugged, got off the donkey and put the young boy up in his place.
A third group of travellers had still more advice to give. "Look at that fat healthy donkey with that small boy his only burden. He should carry both the boy and the man."
Again the old man followed advice and climbed on the donkey behind the boy. Within a few miles they came to a rickety bridge over a fast-flowing river, and with both man and boy on the donkey's tired back, they started over the bridge.
In the very middle, the bridge gave way to the combined weight -- and man and boy and donkey plunged into the raging current.
Thanks to their ride, the man and the boy were rested and managed to swim to shore. But the tired, weary, overburdened donkey was drowned. And it only proves one thing: if you take advice from everyone... you will only end up losing your ass.
If you object to any of the language in that story, don't blame me... that is the
way they talked in biblical times.
You have been listening to good advice from every nook and corner. Everybody is giving you ROTTEN traditional ideas. Everybody is conditioning you, hypnotizing you. And because the crowd is big and you are alone, unless you bring your energies together you will not be able to get rid of this prison -- the prison of the crowd. Unless you sharpen your intelligence a little more, unless you start meditating a little more, you will not be able to break the chains that the society goes on putting on you.
And they go on telling you it is just for your welfare. They are destroying you, but they go on saying, "We are serving you." And the strangest thing is that you also think that they are well-wishers -- they think they are well-wishers, you think they are well-wishers, and just look at humanity! So dull, so dead, so ugly... something has to be done urgently, something has to be done very urgently.
And the most important thing will be to bring a little more femininity, a more soft heart to human beings -- men and women both. A little more liquidity. You need not be like rocks: please be like water. Lao Tzu says that his path is that of the watercourse way --
liquid, fragile, feminine, non-resisting, flowing, dynamic OTHER WOMEN WHO MANAGED TO GET UP EARLY HAVE ALREADY
FOUND AN ELEPHANT OR A JEWEL SO MUCH WAS LOST ALREADY
WHILE YOU SLEPT AND THAT WAS SO UNNECESSARY!
THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU UNDERSTOOD, BUT YOU DID NOT.
EXISTENCE IS ALWAYS COMPASSIONATE towards you -- it is bound to be so. It has created you. The painter loves his painting, the poet loves his poetry -- existence loves you. Existence goes on creating people. Unless there is great love in the very center of existence, life will disappear. Who will sustain you? Who goes on breathing in you? It is a mystery! Who goes on circulating in your blood? -- it is a mystery. Who beats in your heart? -- it is a mystery. Who is alert and aware in you? -- it is a mystery.
But one thing is certain, absolutely certain, call it God or call it existence -- the
whole loves you. And the whole goes on showering with grace and gifts, and each moment it is pouring on you. If you remain a beggar, only you are responsible, nobody else. Existence would like you to be an emperor.
THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU UNDERSTOOD, BUT YOU DID NOT.
Existence understands you, but you don't understand existence. And sometimes when you come to a man who has understood existence -- that's what enlightenment is all about --
he also loves you, but you will not understand him either. You have lost the capacity to trust, because trust comes only as a shadow of love. If love is missing, trust will be missed.
You live in thoughts, and thoughts create doubt. Thoughts are based in doubt -- the greater the thinker, the more and more he has to enter into doubt.
Here, being with mc, you are not to be great thinkers, because the thinkers miss all. They only live in their thoughts, and thoughts are castles in the air. Nothing about those thoughts is existential; they can spin and weave beautiful systems, but they are all useless
-- you cannot live in them. And they dissipate your energy.
Be lovers, not thinkers! If you truly want to be religious, be lovers not thinkers. And the heart has its own reasons that reason knows not. Once you have started moving into the world of love, you will be surprised that a new phenomenon starts arising in you: the phenomenon of trust -- SHRADDHA. And that is the greatest experience in life: to trust -
- because the man who trusts transforms not himself, but transforms his whole world. He starts living in a totally different world.
Doubt, and you are expelled from the Garden of Eden. Trust, and you are received back, welcomed back -- you are home again.
The man fell over a cliff and in the last moment was able to get hold of a branch that was sticking out of the wall. He heard voices above and shouted for help, "God, help me! Is there anyone up there?"
The answer came, in a deep voice, "My son, relax, let go of the branch."
The man could hardly believe what he had heard and yelled, Is there anyone else up there?"
Even if God responds to you, you will not understand. You cannot relax because you cannot trust. The modern man suffers from great anxiety; it has never been so -- man has never suffered so much from anxiety. Why is there so much anxiety? Amidst so much scientific, technological growth, amidst so much affluence, why does man suffer, why is man in so much anxiety? One thing has disappeared from his heart: trust is no more there, only doubt... doubt and doubt. You are surrounded by doubts, a thousand and one doubts.
They are like ghosts torturing you. Your life has become a nightmare.
But remember again: nobody is responsible except you. You can be surrounded by trust, by the milieu of trust, by a climate of trust. And when the climate of trust is there, the spring has come -- you start blossoming, for the first time you start releasing your fragrance. Flowers burst forth, life becomes a celebration.
THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU UNDERSTOOD, BUT YOU DID NOT. YOU FORGOT
TO MAKE A PLACE IN YOUR BED NEXT TO YOU. Listen to the words of Kabir: he is talking in the language of love. God has not to be worshipped but loved -- prepare a place for him in your bed.
YOU FORGOT TO MAKE A PLACE IN YOUR BED NEXT TO YOU. INSTEAD
YOU SPENT YOUR LIFE PLAYING.
Playing with toys -- money, power, prestige -- ALL toys. And all is vain, because death will take everything away. And you KNOW it! And still you go on clinging, because the idea in your head is: anything is better than nothing. You will have to change it -- you will have to change it diametrically. You will have to learn: nothing is better than anything -- because it is in nothing, in nothingness, in emptiness, in silence, that you become a womb so that God can descend in you.
IN YOUR TWENTIES YOU DID NOT GROW BECAUSE YOU DID NOT KNOW
WHO YOUR LORD WAS.
YOU HAVE LOST YOUR YOUTH, which was the MOST precious time. Birth is missed, but it can be forgiven; love missed cannot be forgiven. You wasted your youth on playthings -- you did not really love. Your love never became prayer; your love never attained the glories that it contains in it -- your love remained lust, your love remained a very mundane passion. Your love remained sexual: it never became spiritual.
And love has two aspects: one is sexual, the other is spiritual. And unless love becomes spiritual, it keeps you in the mud; you cannot fly in the sky, you cannot have wings.
And remember: sexual love does not contain spiritual love, but spiritual love CAN
contain sexual love -- but then it changes the quality of the sexual love too. This is one of the fundamental laws: the higher contains the lower, but the lower does not contain the higher. So don't be worried and afraid that if you rise higher in your love the joys of your sex will disappear -- no -- they will become intenser, more orgasmic. They will become more deep, more satisfying, more penetrating, and they will have a quality which is not of this world. Your orgasms will not be simply sexual -- they will have the quality of meditativeness in them. Time will disappear and ego will disappear, and for a few moments you will be in God. Your beloved will disappear, you will disappear... the twoness will disappear and there will be oneness, and you will feel an orgasmic oneness with the whole.
Kabir says:
IN YOUR TWENTIES YOU DID NOT GROW...
Very few people grow up. People simply grow old, but they never grow up. And growing old is not growing up.
... BECAUSE YOU DID NOT KNOW WHO YOUR LORD WAS.
When you fall in love with a woman do you think you are falling in love with a
woman?
If you ask Kabir or if you ask me I will tell you you are not falling in love with a woman
-- nobody has ever fallen in love with a woman or with a man: you have had a glimpse of the God in the woman... you have fallen in love with that glimpse.
One ALWAYS falls in love with God. When the rose flower opens up its petals in the morning, fresh with the morning dew, dancing in the morning wind, just joyous with the sun, and you fall in love, do you think you are falling in love with the chemistry of the rose? -- no -- but with the soul. You don't fall in love with the chemistry of a man or a woman, you don't fall in love with the biology -
- you fall in love with something invisible, intangible. You may not know it! -- and that is your misery. If you knew it then each love would be prayer, then each love would bring you closer and closer to God, then your gestalt would be different, then your love would not be so much rooted in the earth -
- it would have wings, it would have the capacity to fly. Kabir says, You missed, you could not grow:
... BECAUSE YOU DID NOT KNOW WHO YOUR LORD WAS. WAKE UP! WAKE UP! THERE IS NO ONE IN YOUR BED -- HE LEFT YOU DURING THE LONG NIGHT.
And this happens again and again: you fall in love with a man or a woman and soon everything disappears, the Lord is gone -- because you never paid any attention to the Lord. You became too much focussed on the physical, hence the spiritual disappears.
Almost always by the time the honeymoon is over, love is finished -- by that time the Lord is gone. Then only two physical bodies...
Two physical bodies can have a few sexual contacts, but no sexual contact can ever be satisfying, fulfilling. It brings more and more frustration. All sexual experiences end in frustration; in the wake comes great frustration, a kind of hopelessness. And the reason is that you paid attention to the wrong side, you
became too much interested in the physical and you did not pay enough respect to the spiritual.
If you focus on the spiritual, by and by the physical becomes secondary. And then the honeymoon is the beginning of a great love affair. It doesn't end with the honeymoon; in fact, it only starts after the honeymoon is over. Then it is a totally different phenomenon.
Intimacy goes on growing and growing. Sexuality becomes less and less; intimacy becomes more and more, deeper and deeper.
And soon you find the beloved is not just the woman: the beloved is the ultimate Beloved. And then there is great reverence for the other. And then love gives freedom, and then love does not possess; then love has no violence in it. Then love is sacred, holy.
WAKE UP! WAKE UP! THERE IS NO ONE IN YOUR BED -- HE LEFT YOU
DURING THE LONG NIGHT.
But you go on making love, and the lover is gone! You are making love to a corpse when the love is gone. When the Lord has disappeared, when you no longer see in the eyes of your woman or man the presence of God, you are making love to a corpse. How can it give you contentment? And how can it help you to soar high.
Yes, in some moments you imagine, in some moments the nostalgia of the past... those beautiful days which are just like dreams now; in fact it is unbelievable that they ever happened. But people are living in imagination, not in reality. If you live in reality, God is everywhere. If you live in imagination, then you are living in a loneliness, there is no God -- the world is empty, then the world has no meaning, then the world is just a nightmare.
The priest, the parson and the rabbi were walking down the street together in New York when they came upon a grubby urchin sitting on the kerb, playing with himself.
The priest was outraged and went over to the kid and asked, "How can a child of decent Catholic parents behave in such an unspeakable fashion?"
Without missing a stroke, the youngster retorted, "Push off! I am not Catholic, and anyway I am not doing what YOU think I am doing."
Speechless, the priest retreated to his companions. The parson took it upon himself to remonstrate with the boy. How can you behave so sinfully after everything you have been taught in chapel?"
"Push off!" said the kid. "I am not Protestant, and anyway I am not doing what you think I am doing." With his tail between his legs, the parson rejoined the other two clergymen.
"This is outrageous," said the rabbi. Striding over to the urchin, he thundered, "Little boy, little boy, you have been raised in accordance with the law of your forefathers and of their forefathers before them. How dare you behave in such an unspeakably vile manner?"
"Aw, push off and leave me alone," the boy responded. "I am not Jewish and anyway I am not doing what you think I am doing."
"In that case," demanded the rabbi, WHO do you think you are and what do you think you are doing?"
"Well, if you must know," said the child, "I am a Christian Scientist and I am making love with my girlfriend in Poona."
From New York... Christian Scientists can do such things, because they think the whole world is nothing but thought. The world is not thought, and if you live in thoughts you will miss the reality of the world. Come out of your thoughts -- that's what Kabir means when he says: Wake up! Wake up!
Move from the head to the heart. A heart wakefulness is needed. Don't live in imagination. Don't live in thoughts! Live in silence -- and only the heart knows how to be still, because in the heart there are no thoughts. Thoughts cannot penetrate into that innermost shrine. No noise ever penetrates there; it is absolute silence, it is virgin silence.
Move into the heart, and suddenly you will see yourself waking up in a totally different kind of waking that you have not known ever before. Your whole life will become full of light and full of life and full of love, and full of energy. And wherever energy is there is delight. Overflowing energy is delight.
Kabir says: THE ONLY WOMAN AWAKE IS THE WOMAN WHO HAS HEARD
THE FLUTE!
AND ONLY IN THE HEART, in the deepest recesses of your heart, will you hear the flute of Krishna. This is just a metaphor: you will hear the music, the celestial music of existence, what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping, what other mystics have called the soundless sound, what in India the Upanishadic seers have called Omkar -- the sound of Aum. Kabir calls it 'the flute' -- the flute of Krishna.
THE ONLY WOMAN... Remember, again he uses the word 'woman'.
THE ONLY WOMAN AWAKE IS THE WOMAN WHO HAS HEARD THE FLUTE!
And unless you have heard the flute, don't rest. Go on searching and seeking inwards. A moment comes when you hear the flute, when suddenly a celestial music bursts forth in you. You will be bathed in a totally new experience -- the experience of deathlessness, the experience of timelessness; not the experience that God is present, but the experience that "I am part of God, God is part of me -
- I am God -- AHAM BRAHMASMI! ANA'L
HAQ! -- I am truth!"
Jesus says: "I am truth! I am the door, I am the way." About whom is he talking? Is he talking about the son of Joseph the carpenter? No. He is talking about the innermost core of your being which is immortal -- he is talking about the flute that he has heard, he is talking about the one hand clapping, creating sound. He is talking about the cosmic sound, the cosmic melody.
THE ONLY WOMAN AWAKE IS THE WOMAN WHO HAS HEARD THE FLUTE!
Remember, till you have heard the flute you are asleep, till you have started feeling God everywhere you are asleep. The only criterion to judge whether you are awake or asleep is this: Do you see the world as matter? -- then you are asleep. Do you see the world as divine? I am not saying: Do you believe? I am saying: Do you see, experience the world as divine? -- then you are awake.
I PLAYED TOR TEN YEARS WITH THE GIRLS MY OWN AGE BUT NOW I AM
SUDDENLY IN FEAR.
Kabir says: I have been playing with the same kind of seekers.
I PLAYED TOR TEN YEARS WITH THE GIRLS MY OWN AGE...
Remember, again he use the word 'girls'. He was moving with seekers, searchers, he was sitting in satsang, singing songs of God, dancing, meditating.
I PLAYED FOR TEN YEARS WITH THE GIRLS MY OWN AGE BUT NOW I AM
SUDDENLY IN FEAR.
But when you really start approaching closer to the heart, a great fear grips you. Hence, whenever a sannyasin comes to me and says, "I am very much afraid of you," I always say this is a good sign. It simply means the head is losing its grip on you and the heart is coming closer. The fear arises because the head says, "Now, you are falling in danger.
Who will protect you? I was protecting you. Who will guard you? I was guarding you.
Who will keep you on the right track? Now you are moving into the madness of the heart, you are going beyond me -- I will not be of any help. And you have depended on me up to now. I have been your security, your safety."
Hence, the fear arises.
I AM ON THE WAY UP SOME STAIRS...
Kabir says: Now, some doors are opening -- some stairs I can see going upwards.
... THEY ARE HIGH.
And they are high -- higher than me. I will have to surpass myself, hence the fear. I will have to transcend myself, I will have to drop the ego and go without
the ego, and I will have to drop the whole baggage of the mind and go unburdened -- hence the fear.
YET I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY FEARS IF I WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS LOVE.
One has to give up one's fears if one wants to live in love, because it is the SAME energy that becomes fear and that becomes love. If you live in fear, your energy will remain involved, occupied, vested in fear. Drop the fears. Risk... and suddenly the same energy that was contained in the fear is released and becomes a flower of love.
YET I HAVE TO GIVE UP MY F EARS IF I WANT TO TAKE PART IN THIS LOVE.
I HAVE TO LET GO THE PROTECTIVE CLOTHES...
... all the defence measures, all the armours that you are carrying around yourself. One has to be in utter trust. One has to be ready to die -- even if existence kills, it is okay.
Only then will you be able to drop your armour. And everybody is carrying a great armour around himself. We are carrying our prisons around ourselves; they are transparent prisons, but you know they are there.
If you want to reach somebody, suddenly there is a glass wall and you cannot reach.
People come close, but not really close, because those two walls won't allow. Only walls clash. Hence, all lovers are in conflict -- it should not be so. Lovers should be in deep harmony, but they are in conflict because those walls don't allow you to be in harmony.
Each is living in his fear and pretending to be loving -- that love is false, it is a mask.
I HAVE TO LET GO THE PROTECTIVE CLOTHES AND MEET HIM WITH THE
WHOLE LENGTH OF MY BODY.
You have to face love utterly naked, absolutely vulnerable.
MY EYES WILL HAVE TO BE THE LOVE-CANDLES THIS TIME.
Enough time is wasted, so many lives wasted. Let your eyes be love-candles this time.
Kabir says: MEN AND WOMEN IN LOVE WILL UNDERSTAND THIS POEM.
This poem will not be understood by the scholars, by the pundits, by the so- called learned people. This poem can be understood only by a loving heart. This poem will be understood by you, my people, because my basic message is love. Love and love and nothing else... because love is enough unto itself.
Kabir says: MEN AND WOMEN IN LOVE WILL UNDERSTAND THIS POEM.
Nobody else will understand it.
IF WHAT YOU FEEL FOR THE HOLY ONE IS NOT DESIRE THEN WHAT IS THE
USE OF DRESSING WITH SUCH CARE AND SPENDING SO MUCH TIME MAKING YOUR EYELIDS DARK?
PEOPLE GO TO THE TEMPLES, and the mosques, and the Churches and the gurudwaras -- for what? And you are not in love with God! It is so stupid. You need not waste your time in the temples and the churches if you are not in love. Then why go on...
... DRESSING WITH SUCH CARE AND SPENDING SO MUCH TIME MAKING
YOUR EYELIDS DARK?
If you are NOT in love, then why go on doing these empty rituals? Do something else!
Do something else that you love. Don't waste your time in the name of religion, because religion is possible only if you are in love. In a deep, intense love, only then is your prayer true. And then whatsoever you say has a sacred quality to it. You need not go to the temples then -- wherever you sit will be the temple. You need not do rituals: worshipping God with flowers and candles and this and that
-- whatsoever you do will be your prayer.
Kabir says in another poem: I don't go to the temple, because wherever I sit I find him present all around me. He cannot be in the temples more -- he is not more and less and where: he is exactly the same everywhere.
Kabir says: I don't go with special food to offer to God -- when I eat, that is my offering to God. See the beauty of his statement. He says: When I eat, that is my offering to him --
because HE is inside me. Why should I go to a stone statue which cannot eat at all. If I have more food, I invite friends And when they eat, I know he has accepted my offerings.
Religion is not ritual, religion has nothing to do with formalities -- with Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. Religion is an individual love affair. Be in love with people, be in love with the world, be in love with trees and birds and animals and stars -- BE IN LOVE!
And slowly slowly, your love will bun candles in your eyes and you will be able to see him.
He is present, but you are blind. He is playing on his flute, but you are deaf. FRIEND, WAKE UP!
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty Chapter #5
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