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Chapter title: Buffaloes are never bored
29 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8705290
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN35
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
115
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
PRINCE CHARLES, THE HEIR TO THE ENGLISH THRONE, RECENTLY SPENT
THREE DAYS ON A SMALL SCOTTISH ISLAND WITH A LOCAL FAMILY, HELPING ON A CROFT. EARLIER THIS YEAR, HE SPENT SOME TIME IN THE
KALAHARI DESERT WITH LAWRENCE VAN DER POST. HE SAID ON
TELEVISION THAT HE TALKS TO HIS PLANTS TO HELP THEM GROW. THE
FUTURE KING OF ENGLAND SEEMS TO BE INTERESTED IN SPIRITUAL
MATTERS. HAVE YOU ANY COMMENT TO MAKE ON THIS?
Prem Yatro, Prince Charles is deeply interested in meditation. He is also interested in exploring the inner world. But in the West, unfortunately, such people are thought to be a little crazy -- a little loony.
His statements -- that he talks to his plants to help them grow -- have created almost a scandal all over England. They don't think that their future king should talk such nonsense -- although it is not nonsense. But from a man from the royal family, and particularly the man who is going to be the king, England must be feeling very insecure.
His going alone in the desert or to small villages to find peace of mind is very disturbing to the British traditional, orthodox Christian; it is disturbing to his family, to the queen and to his father, Prince Philip.
When he was in India, he had specially called Vimalkirti and his wife, Turiya -- they both were my sannyasins. Vimalkirti was one of his cousins. Vimalkirti was the great-grandson of the German emperor, and he was directly connected to Prince Philip; Prince Philip was his mother's brother.
He talked for hours about me, about meditation, about what is happening here. Vimalkirti and Turiya both invited him to come; he was very interested, but very afraid of the royal family. He was specially told by Queen Elizabeth not to go to Poona. He went to see the shankaracharya, he went to see Mother Teresa, but Queen Elizabeth was more afraid of Poona than anything.
In the East, kings were sent -- particularly future kings -- to the great seers and mystics to learn the ways of inner life, because a king is not of any worth if he has no contact with himself. If he is just an extrovert, he cannot be a blessing to his people. For years in the East the princes used to sit at the feet of the masters to learn silence, to learn compassion, to learn meditation, to become aware of the
mysteries of existence. The king should not only be aware of the mundane world, he should also have his roots in the sacred -- only then is he a complete man. And only then can he look after his people in all aspects of life. But in the West, it is totally a different thing.
Prince Charles is being thought of as if he is a little crazy, and England is worried because he is going to be the king. He has already started throwing his weight; he insists on his way of life.
It is a well-known scientific fact that you can talk to the trees, and you can help them to grow faster, you can help them to bring bigger flowers, juicier fruits; you just have to be in a friendly, loving relationship with them. They are very sensitive people, more sensitive than man himself.
The latest research about trees and their sensitivity scientifically proves strange phenomena. Scientists have developed some instruments, something like cardiograms, which can graphically depict the exact emotions of a tree.
On a silent and beautiful morning, with the sun rising and the birds singing the graph is very harmonious. Then suddenly, the scientists bring a woodcutter with the intention to cut a tree. And immediately -- the man has not started cutting it, he has not expressed his thought even that he is going to cut it -- the graph starts wavering, loses harmony, shows fear, anxiety, tension; the tree has lost its joyous ecstatic interiority.
It seems that the tree is capable of reading the mind of the man, because he has not said anything. And if the same woodcutter is brought to the side of the tree without any intention to cut it, the graph goes on harmoniously, there is no change. The tree is not worried; the man is not dangerous, he is not going to harm it.
Not only that, but when a woodcutter comes with the intention of cutting a tree, a certain tree, other trees surrounding it all start showing anxiety, fear, anguish; their graphs start losing the harmonious beauty. They are not going to be cut, but one of their friends, one of their neighbors, a colleague for years, is going to be unnecessarily killed.
It was in the East with Mahavira, that the first insight came into the world that trees are living beings, and they should be treated in the same way. Vegetarianism is just a by-product of that intuition. But it remained a
philosophical hypothesis.
Then another Indian man, Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, scientifically proved that trees are living beings. He was given a Nobel prize for his great exploration and opened a new door for future explorers. But since then fifty years, or more than fifty years have passed; nobody has gone beyond Jagdish Chandra Bose.
But recently, many scientists around the world -- in the Soviet Union, outside the Soviet Union -- have gone far beyond Jagdish Chandra Bose and his discoveries. The trees are not only alive; they are also conscious in their own way.
Man should not think that he is the only conscious and intelligent animal in the world, and he should not think that his is the only type of consciousness that exists. The researchers show that animals have a different kind of consciousness and a different kind of sensitivity.
A few birds... particularly bees have been found to have a certain language, and trees have been found immensely sensitive. When the gardener comes to water and to nourish them, the graph on the cardiogram attached to them starts dancing in joy, shows some ecstatic welcome. Perhaps soon we may be able to discover that they have their own kind of language that we don't understand.
But Prince Charles talking to the trees in England will not be acceptable. He is being condemned as a little crazy. Actually, according to me, and according to all the scientific research too, what he is doing is absolutely sane -- more sane than your ordinary people are.
I had an old gardener who won every year a competition in the city because he used to bring roses so big that people could not believe it. He was a poor man and his secret was that he treated trees not as trees, but as his own children. He would talk to them, he would inform them before-hand, "I am going for a competition; don't let me down. You have to produce the biggest flower possible."
For almost the twenty years that he was with me, he was winning every year. But his secret was not better gardening; his secret was a deep respect for the plants, bestowing on them a dignity, communing with them as if they also were human beings. He was offered many other jobs by richer people because they wanted to win the prizes.
I told him, "You can accept if somebody is giving you more money -- don't be worried."
He said, "That is not the question. The question is that everywhere I will be thought mad.
It is only you who has never said to me that what I am doing is nonsense. You have supported me, and in my whole life you are the only person who has."
When I came to Poona, the gardener had become very old, but he was sending messages through sannyasins that he would like to come and take care of my garden. He was worried that nobody else could take care of my garden the way it should be taken care of.
What Prince Charles is doing is perfectly right. He should be supported, but he is being condemned all over England. We are so blind towards existence that it is not surprising.
Have you ever said, "Hello," to a tree? You yourself would think that you are going out of your mind. Have you ever touched a tree with love, the same way you would touch your beloved? Have you ever hugged a tree? You are missing a whole world of sensitivity that surrounds you, that is available.
Slowly, slowly, you will start feeling that when you say hello to a tree... of course, it cannot respond in language, but it will respond in some way. It may start swaying even though there may be no wind. When you touch it lovingly, just a little acquaintance is needed, and you can feel that on the other side there is not something insensitive, but something which is far more sensitive than people are. The tree will be sending its energy, its warmth to your hand.
If you hug a tree, the world is going to think you mad. But all the trees will know that there is still hope for man; there are still sensitive people. And hugging a tree, you will find more sensitiveness, more lovingness, than you can find even hugging your friend or your beloved, because your friend, or your beloved are full of tensions, anxieties, agonies. Trees are absolutely innocent; their consciousness is as pure as the purest sky, unclouded. We are not living in a dead world.
Although it has not been discovered yet by science, it is predictable that even in rocks you will find a consciousness deep asleep. Nothing is dead anywhere; it is
whole, alive, sensitive. We are unnecessarily confining ourselves to human beings. We should spread our hands in all directions -- to the animals, the trees, the birds, the rocks, the oceans.…
By this expansion of your experiences, your own consciousness will be evolving more and more. This universe is not a graveyard, it is full of rejoicings; you are just deaf. It is full of beauties, but you are blind. All the birds are living in a different dimension of consciousness; you can have a communication with them.
Man's future evolution is to expand his own consciousness in all dimensions, so that he can find the oceanic life and sensitivity that constitutes the universe. To me, this sensitivity and consciousness that makes up the whole existence is the only God, not to be worshiped, but to be loved.
Create more friends, and as your friendship goes deeper into different dimensions, you will find yourself becoming richer and richer; your own heights will start reaching Everest, your own depths will start reaching the Pacific.
The new man, of which I consistently dream, is going to deny God and to accept the world. But his world will be full of godliness. The old man has been a worshiper of dead gods in the temples and mosques and synagogues. The new man will find his living god in the trees, in the birds, in the rivers, in the ocean, in the mountains, in the stars. He will transform the whole universe into his temple.
Prince Charles is moving on absolutely the right lines. He needs encouragement from every nook and corner because England will not support him; it is one of the most dull countries in the world, the most serious, long-faced, dead in the soul. But he should continue his meditations in deserts, in deep forests, in mountains. Let the whole world call him mad, but the new man will accept him as a pioneer.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I AM WITH SARJANO FOR A WHILE. CAN I SURVIVE THAT?
Prem Sandha, it is a difficult job you have taken in your hands. It is almost impossible to survive with Sarjano. But it is not a curse, it is a blessing.
You should not make any effort to survive either -- merge with him. He is mad, but with a method; he is full of energy and love. Just don't fight with him -- become one with him.
The way to survive with Sarjano is to become one with him. But that is the way for everyone who wants to love. Love is basically committing suicide. Two egos have to commit suicide to place them in a position for merging and melting, to create the space in which love can grow.
Sarjano is full of energy -- sometimes too much! But an understanding woman can help him to be more centered if she can love unconditionally and without asking anything. If she can enjoy his abundance of energy, then there is no problem. But if you want to dominate him, you cannot survive; if you want in some way to be bitchy, you cannot survive.
He is not a man who will accept any handcuffs, any curtailment of his freedom. Neither do you have to curtail your freedom; enjoy your freedom and let him enjoy his freedom.
Two freedoms can exist together beautifully, but two slave-makers cannot exist together; they are after each other's necks. Unfortunately, that is the situation in the whole world: people are killing each other in the name of love, destroying each other in the name of love.
Love is a creative act. It enhances both. It gives freedom, it gives joy, it gives courage, and nourishment, but that seems to be only theoretical. In actuality, millions of people are suffering because of love. It is very rare to find someone who is growing because of love, who is becoming spiritually strong and integrated because of love.
But at least my people should understand it, because I don't want you to be just like the unconscious crowds that fill the whole earth. I want you to experiment with new ways of living, new styles of living. And one of the most important things for new styles of living is that love should never be used as politics, as an effort to dominate the other.
Love should make you humble and simple, innocent, available and open -- childlike, with no expectations. Then you can survive even Sarjano, or even nuclear weapons. He is a nuclear person!
I love people like Sarjano; they are so full of energy, they don't know what to do with it.
They are running hither and thither for no purpose, just to exhaust their abundance of energy. A right woman can help him to be centered, can help him to transform his abundance of energy into something creative.
A man walks into a bar looking for his friend. After finding him, he proceeds to tell the friend how much he hates his own wife.
"Why don't you have her murdered?" asked the friend. "I know a guy called Artie who will do it for you really cheap." This sounds great to the man. So he goes off to meet Artie who agrees to do the job for a dollar.
He asks the man where his wife goes shopping -- he plans to do the murder there. So Artie waits outside the supermarket until he sees the woman go in. Then he creeps up behind her and, in a deserted corner, strangles her.
When he has finished, he notices two old ladies staring at him, so he has to strangle them too. On his way out of the market, he is caught by the store detective and handed over to the police.
The headlines in the newspapers read, "Artie Chokes Three For A Dollar In Supermarket."
But it is not a rare case that husbands hate their wives and wives hate their husbands, although they go on saying, "Darling, I love you." The more they hate, the more they repeat, "I love you." They have to repeat it to create a facade to hide their hate.
I have heard about a very great surgeon. His friends had arranged a beautiful party and celebration as a golden jubilee of the surgeon's married life. They all were drinking and dancing and enjoying. Suddenly, somebody looked around; the surgeon was not there, so his most intimate friend and advocate went out in the garden to see where he could have gone. He was sitting under a tree very sad.
The advocate said, "What is the matter? Everybody is enjoying, and it is a moment of celebration, and you are sitting here sad." The surgeon said, "Don't come near me! I may strangle you. You are the person who destroyed my whole life."
The advocate could not believe this outburst. He said, "What do you mean?" The surgeon said, "You may have forgotten, but remember: twenty-five years ago, I had come to you to ask that if I murder my wife, what will happen? And you said, `Never do it because you will get at least twenty-five years in jail.' I am feeling sad that if I had not listened to your advice, today I would have been a free man."
In the name of love, people have been torturing each other for centuries... men in their own way, women in their own way.
Love has not yet entered into the world. It is still in the poems of the poet, in the songs of the musicians, but it has not become part of humanity. I hope that when we get rid of the old man and his whole so-called barbarous attitudes and approaches to life, love will become the very foundation of a new humanity. This love will not be a bondage, an imprisonment, but a tremendous freedom.
Unless love becomes freedom, you don't know what it is. Freedom without love is dry, is a desert. Love without freedom is fake, just a hypocrisy; it does not exist.
Love and freedom are two sides of the same coin.
It is one flower, and it can blossom only when both are allowed dignity and respect.
You can survive Sarjano. He is not a dangerous man. He has a very loving heart. If you can love him, you will find hidden in him one of the most beautiful hearts. There is no question of "surviving" him. You can dancingly live together, helping each other in creativity, in meditation, transforming each other into higher peaks of consciousness --
which are our birthright. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
AT THE RISK OF PUTTING MY HEAD INSIDE THE LION'S MOUTH, I HAVE A QUESTION. YOU SEEM TO BE HAVING AT LEAST FOUR EGOS ON TOAST FOR
YOUR BREAKFAST LATELY -- AND HERE COMES MINE. WHEN I HEAR YOU
SPEAK OF BOREDOM I LOOK INSIDE, BUT I CAN'T FIND IT ANYMORE. I REMEMBER HAVING IT BEFORE I MET YOU, BUT IT HAS LONG GONE. EVEN
IN MY LIFE WITH NITYAMO, "BOREDOM" IS THE LAST WORD THAT I WOULD USE. WE FIGHT, WE LOVE, WE JOKE AND GIGGLE, WE CRY, WE
DECIDE TO PART AT LEAST TWICE EVERY MONTH -- ONCE DURING MY
PERIOD, AND ONCE DURING HERS. SOMETIMES WE HAVE LONG FACES, SOMETIMES WE BEAM WITH BLISS, BUT BOREDOM? NEVER! I WONDER IF I AM HIDING SOMETHING? IN FACT, I AM FEELING GUILTY THAT NO
BOREDOM IS HAPPENING. PERHAPS I AM SO BORING THAT I DON'T
REALIZE HOW BORING I AM. MY LIFE IS RICH AND JUICY, MY HEART IS
OVERFLOWING. I LOVE HER TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY. MY GOD!
WHY CAN'T I HAVE A BORING LIFE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE? I MUST BE A FREAK.
Devageet, first I have to remind you: I don't take any breakfast. Breakfast is a very religious word. It means breaking the fast. I hate all religious words, I hate fasting. That's why I had to stop taking breakfast too; so you need not be worried about that.
You say, "I hear you speak of boredom, I look inside but I can't find it anymore. I remember having it before I met you, but it has long gone."
That's how it should be; otherwise, what is the purpose of being with me? Boredom is a virtue for saints, and this is a communion of sinners of all kinds
and varieties.
If you want to see boredom, you will have to visit heaven. There you will see ancient saints covered with dust, skeletons playing on their harps, "Alleluia"... although you cannot hear anything because when you for centuries go on repeating "Alleluia," you become bored with "Alleluia," you become bored with your harp. Heaven is the greatest accumulation of all kinds of antique, bored people. Unless you practice boredom here you cannot enter heaven.
Jesus has forgotten the real beautitude: Blessed are the bored for they shall inherit the Kingdom of God. All the nice people you will find in hell -- juicy people, poets, singers, dancers, actors, sculptors, mystics. Hell is colorful; heaven is almost like a white-washed graveyard.
Here there is no question of being bored. I am making every effort to destroy the very roots of boredom in you. But there is something very complex to be understood: boredom can be destroyed by making you blissful; boredom can also be destroyed by making you utterly retarded. Retarded people don't feel boredom. Certainly, no retarded people ever approach me. I am not a magnet for them; my charisma is only for the very intelligent, for the very few.
Harry and Abe had been friends almost all their lives. Now as their time on earth drew to a close, Abe asked Harry, "Do you believe in life after death?"
"I don't know," Harry said, "but we should make a pact: whoever goes first will give the other a sign." Not too long after, Abe died, and Harry waited for a sign. One day the telephone rang.
"Hello, Harry," came the voice. "Abe," Harry said. "Where are you?"
"Well, where I am the grass is green, the air is sweet and pure, there are beautiful mountains. I get up in the morning, have a little grass, make a little love, take a little nap.
In the evening, I have a little grass, make a little love, and go to sleep." "You mean you are in heaven?"
"Heaven? What heaven? I am a buffalo in Montana."
Buffaloes are never bored! So there are two kinds of people who are never bored
-- one is the meditator, and the other is the buffalo type. You will not find more contented, more satisfied saints than buffaloes. They go on eating the same grass; they don't even change the variety of grass their whole life. And you will never see even a sign of boredom. For boredom, a certain intelligence is needed, and to go beyond boredom, tremendous intelligence is needed.
Devageet, you are not a freak, but the reason why you are not feeling bored even in your life with Nityamo is very simple. You say, "We fight, we love, we joke and giggle, we cry, we decide to part at least twice every month -- once during my period, and once during hers. Sometimes we have long faces, sometimes we beam with bliss, but boredom? Never!" You don't have any time for boredom. You are so engaged in tremendous revolutionary activities.
That reminds me of the case with Neelam. Her boyfriend says he is utterly satisfied with her. That is the beginning of boredom. She is a silent, peaceful, non-fighting, loving woman. If she also starts throwing things, every night a pillow fight... if she follows your lifestyle then her boyfriend will not be utterly satisfied, and he will not have any time to feel bored or any time to look for another woman. In fact, he will come to the conclusion that one is enough; two will be too much. It is a question of survival.
You are not hiding anything, and you need not feel guilty that no boredom is happening.
You have got the right woman for you; she will not leave you alone to feel boredom. And it is not true that you are so boring that you don't realize how boring you are. If you were boring, Nityamo would have escaped. But she's also not feeling bored -- that shows certainly that you both are engaged in a great adventure.
I have heard about a neighborhood where every couple was fighting and shouting at each other, but they were very much intrigued by the fact that one sardarji lived in their apartment building. From the sardarji's flat, they never heard any shouting, any fight; on the contrary, every night they heard laughter. They could not believe it -- what secret has this sardar got? He's enjoying life so much, laughter every night.
Finally, the temptation was so much that one day they gathered when the sardarji was coming out from his office. They surrounded him and said, "Now you have to tell us the secret. You know we all fight, you know we throw things and our women break the pottery, but from your flat always comes a soothing laughter"
The sardarji said, "It would have been better if you had not asked, because the reality is very heavy. The reality is we have decided that she can throw things at me. If she hits, she can laugh, and if I can save myself and she misses the target, then I laugh. So fifty-fifty it goes. Sometimes she hits me, then she laughs; sometimes she misses the target, then I laugh. But as far as you are concerned, you hear laughter every day."
But the same sardarji was found after ten years standing in the court asking for a divorce.
The magistrate said, "How long have you been married?" He said, "Almost fifty years."
The magistrate said, "If you have been married for fifty years, what emergency has arisen so suddenly that you want the divorce?"
He said, "The fact is, we used to laugh fifty-fifty," and he explained their arrangement.
"But now she laughs one hundred percent, because during the fifty years, she has become such an expert in hitting me that there is no way to escape. For years I have not laughed.
So now it is too much... I want the divorce."
Devageet, life is a very strange thing. Because you are continuously fighting, then making friends, then making love, then deciding to separate, then coming together again... this whole panorama, this whole drama, keeps you so engaged that you don't feel bored. But if you were totally satisfied, if she was a woman like Neelam -- silent, available, not fighting, not creating any trouble for you, not nagging you -- you would have become bored.
Boredom is a flat life, but when there are so many ups and downs, there is no boredom.
Moreover, being with me, I am taking away all your inhibitions, all your conditionings, all your saintliness; I am making you raw and wild. When you are raw and wild, and you don't live a life of a polished hypocrisy, boredom does not enter in.
Primitive people don't know anything about boredom. It is only the latest trends in philosophy, particularly existentialism, which has made boredom the central theme of thinking. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Buber -
- all these people are engaged in a great intellectual exploration of what boredom is.
Once I came home from the university in the holidays, and I had a book on existentialism. My grandfather looked at the contents, and he said, "My God! What kind of philosophy are you learning in the university? There is not even a mention of God, soul, heaven, hell, reincarnation; the contents are anguish, boredom, meaninglessness, futility, suicide. What kind of philosophy are you reading about in the university?"
I said, "This is the latest philosophy because man has come to a point where everything has become flat. Nothing is wild anymore, nothing is raw anymore. Everything has become cultured; everybody is a gentleman, every woman has become a lady. It is very difficult to find an authentic woman; they are all ladies. It is difficult to find an authentic man; they are all gentlemen. These gentlemen and these ladies are creating an atmosphere of meaninglessness, of anguish, of boredom."
I am taking away from you all that can create boredom in you. My whole effort is to give you again a natural life -- wild, adventurous, dangerous; then boredom cannot exist.
The new man will live dangerously.
He will live like wild animals, not like tamed animals in a zoo. He will live like trees in a forest, not as trees in a British garden. Even the garden in Britain is boring.
My people have to learn to live like a Zen garden, where nothing is symmetrical, where trees are allowed to grow the way they like. The gardeners are not
continually after them, pruning them, giving them a shape.
One beautiful Zen story is that a king sent his prince, who was going to be the next king, to learn gardening with a Zen master. It took three years, and whatever the prince learned... in the garden of the palace, he had one thousand gardeners; he told them how to do all that he had learned to create a garden. After three years the master would come, and if he was satisfied the prince would pass the examination; otherwise, again another three years.
The master came. It was a beautiful garden -- one thousand gardeners were working in it.
But the prince was becoming afraid because there was no smile on the master's face, and finally the master said, "Everything is right, but you will have to come back for three more years."
The prince said, "What is wrong? You say, Èverything is right,' then why have I to come back?"
The master went out of the garden, brought thousands of dead leaves which the gardeners had thrown out... the whole night they had been cleaning the garden of all the old dead leaves, so when the master came there would be nothing to object to. And the master brought the leaves and threw them on the garden path. The wind started playing with those dead leaves, and there was a certain music of the wind playing with the dead leaves, and the dead leaves moving all over the path.
The master said, "Now everything is okay. Without the leaves the garden was looking too man-made; now it looks natural. But as far as you are concerned, you will need three more years, because you have not learned the basic lesson that the garden should not be man-made. Man should help the trees to grow in their own way, in their own individuality."
A Zen garden is a beauty which no other garden in the world can be compared with...
suddenly a pond, suddenly old rocks, trees growing in their own way; it is more a forest than a garden. The forest has something of godliness, the garden is too sophisticated. You cannot be bored in a Zen garden; you can be bored in the garden which Europe has invented, that is man-manufactured.
A man also should be a little raw, a little wild, ready to live in insecurity, ready to risk, ready to go on the untrodden paths, always ready to take the challenge of the dangerous.
Then life is every moment an ecstasy, and boredom disappears.
Devageet, you are not a freak. You have relaxed and become wild, unsophisticated, not a hypocrite, authentic, sincere. And to be with me is to live in constant danger.
Jayesh is asleep; he came late in the night. He had been thinking for years to come to me, to sit silently, to relax, and to meditate. And the day he reached the commune I was arrested -- and he was arrested with me. Since then, for eighteen months he has not been able to sit silently for a single moment. We have been moving around the world, being thrown out from one country to another country, and he says, "My God! Before I came to you, I had time at least to sit silently, and I had come to meditate." He had to live with me in the jail... but he's not bored; he's enjoying the whole trip.
A Pole was working at a construction site where the boss left each day at eleven
a.m. and was gone for two hours. This became such a regular occurrence that the rest of the workers decided to spend those two hours in the bar across the street, but the Polack decided to head home for some extra nookie with his wife. When he arrived home, he found his boss busy banging his wife in the bedroom. Well he walked right out and headed back to the job. The following day, the Polack was working his ass off when everyone headed across to the bar.
"Hey, Ski, aren't you coming?" asked one of them.
"Hell, no!" said the Polack. "I almost got caught yesterday." Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #36
Chapter title: Science has to become religious
29 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8705295
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN36
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
94
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
FROM MY EARLY BOYHOOD I WAS STRONGLY ATTRACTED TO
ASTRONOMY AND NUCLEAR SCIENCES; IT WAS A SEARCH FOR TRUTH. AS
A RESULT, I VERY SOON REJECTED THE IDEA OF CHRISTIANITY. TODAY I UNDERSTAND THAT THE DEEPER SCIENTISTS GO INTO THE MATTER, THE
MORE THEY REALIZE THAT THEY ARE THROWN BACK ON THEMSELVES, ACKNOWLEDGING THAT IT IS MAN WHO
DETERMINES THE COSMOS TO
APPEAR ACCORDING TO HIS OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. THAT REMINDS ME OF
WHAT I UNDERSTAND YOU TO BE CONSTANTLY SAYING. ALTHOUGH THESE SCIENTISTS REALIZE THAT THE EARTH CLOCK SHOWS TWO
MINUTES TO TWELVE, AND ALTHOUGH, AS SCIENTISTS, THEY SHOULD
NOT HAVE PREJUDICES, YOUR VISION OF THE NEW MAN DOES NOT SEEM
TO APPEAL TO THEM. DO THEY BELONG TO THE SAME CATEGORY AS
POLITICIANS? SCIENCE IS SO EXCITINGLY INTERESTING, BUT ON THE
OTHER HAND I FOUND THAT IT DOES NOT TRANSFORM AT ALL. WHAT IS IT
GOOD FOR? BELOVED MASTER, AM I WASTING MY TIME WITH IT? WHEN I SEE YOU LAUGHING I MELT WITH JOY.
Satyam Bhairava, the question you have asked implies many questions. First, are the scientists also of the same category as politicians? In a way, yes. The politician is one whose whole desire is to have power; hence anybody whose desire is to have power, particularly over others -- they may be human beings or material objects, it makes no difference.… The politician is struggling to have power over people, the scientist is struggling to have power over matter; but the desire is the same, and the mind is the same. So, in one way, they both are in the same boat. But there are many other aspects in which science is totally different from politics.
Politics enslaves living people; hence it is more violent. Science tries to conquer matter; hence it is not a violent search. But science has grown to such complexity that now it is not possible for individual scientists to work on their
own; they need immense support from politicians. Their research projects are so expensive that only governments of very rich nations can afford them. So the scientist unknowingly has fallen a victim to the hands of the politicians.
Now the scientist works as a servant to nationalism, to communism, to fascism, to capitalism. He is no more an independent seeker; he is part of a certain political ideology.
He works and discovers but he has no control over his own discoveries; the control is in the hands of the politicians. They decide in which direction he should work; otherwise they will not financially support any other kind of project -- and their only project is war.
So thousands of scientists of immense intelligence, talent and genius have become just slaves of a political mechanism which exploits their intelligence in the service of war and death.
Science can be of great importance if two things are added to it: one is that it should not only be an objective search, it should also open the subjective doors of consciousness.
The scientist should not go on working only on objects. He has to work upon the scientist himself.
Up to now the scientist has been denying his own consciousness. It is such an absurd attitude, so illogical and so unscientific, that it brings scientists closer to the so-called, superstitious religions: they believe blindly in a God they know nothing about, and the scientist goes on disbelieving in himself.
The superstition is enormous, unbelievable. If there is nobody inside you, if there is no consciousness in you, then who is going to discover the mysteries and secrets of matter, nature, and life? At this point, science has been behaving in an old superstitious way; it has been imitating religions.
I have been in contact with many professors of science and not a single one of them was able to give any argument in support of this superstition. They simply go on repeating that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. And whenever I have asked them, "On what grounds are you saying it? Who is the scientist who has proved it? Which are the discoveries which have been made which support the idea?..." It is just because a man who was not a scientist at all, who was an
economist, Karl Marx, created this idea that consciousness is only a by-product of matter. He wanted to deny God and he wanted to deny soul; his approach was philosophical.
Communism goes on believing in Karl Marx. It can be understood if in the Soviet Union the scientist has been repeating the same as Karl Marx, because to say anything against Karl Marx there is to go against the holy scripture of communism. It is the same as in a fanatic Christian society, you cannot say anything against THE BIBLE. You may be right, that does not matter; it is not a question of being right or wrong. THE HOLY
BIBLE cannot be contradicted; that is unforgivable sin. But the same is the situation in the Soviet Union as far as Karl Marx and his book DAS KAPITAL is concerned.
But in the free world, where people are pretending to have the right of freedom of expression, there too the scientists go on repeating this superstition that consciousness is only a by-product of matter, without any understanding that Karl Marx was not a scientist and his statement is not based on any experiments.
Karl Marx was an atheist. Just as there are people who believe in God without knowing anything about God, there are people who do not believe in God without knowing anything about God. They don't differ basically; their quality is the same.
So in one aspect the scientist behaves like a fanatic fundamentalist Christian.… He goes on denying consciousness. And unless science opens up the dimension of one's own interiority, it will not become a total subject, a whole subject. It will remain partial; its viewpoint will remain only half of the truth.
And you should remember that a whole lie is better than half a truth. The whole lie will be detected soon; the half-truth is very dangerous because it has something of truth in it.
It can keep people in darkness for centuries.
And three centuries have already passed for scientists. They have been working but they have not dared to enquire into the innermost being of man -- that is one thing that has to be added to science; then it can become of tremendous importance.
To add subjectivity to objective science means adding the methods of meditation to the methods of concentration. The methods of concentration take you out, they are extrovert.
Science requires a mind which has the capacity to concentrate. Meditation requires the capacity to go beyond mind, to go into silence, to be absolutely a pure nothingness.
Unless science accepts meditation as a valid method of enquiry it will remain a halfhearted search -- and because of its halfheartedness, it is dangerous. It can easily serve the purposes of death because it does not believe in consciousness, it believes in dead matter -- so it does not matter whether Nagasaki happens or Hiroshima happens, or even if the whole globe commits suicide. It doesn't matter, because all is matter. There is no consciousness; nothing is lost.
The scientist will revolt against the politicians only when the dimension of meditation is added in his research, in his work. Secondly, the scientist has to remember now that he is providing the politicians with self-destructive nuclear weapons. He is behaving against humanity, he is behaving against the new man, the new humanity; he is behaving against his own children. He is sowing seeds of death for all.
It is time that scientists should learn to discriminate: what helps life and what destroys life? Just because of their salaries and comforts... they should not go on like slaves and robots working for war and a destruction which is unprecedented.
The scientist has to be a revolutionary too. He has to be a spiritual seeker first, and second he has to be a revolutionary. And he has to remember not to serve death, whatsoever the cost. He has not to follow the directions of politicians. He has to decide himself what is helpful to the whole cosmos, what is helpful to the ecology, what is helpful to a better life, to a more beautiful existence. And he has to condemn the politicians if they force him to work in the service of death. He has to refuse totally, everywhere -- in the Soviet Union, in America, in China, in every country all over the world.
Scientists need a global association of their own which can decide what research should be taken in hand and what research should be dropped.
Up to now science has been accidental. People have been just groping in the dark, finding something, becoming great discoverers. Now that time is over.
Groping in the dark they have found atom bombs, nuclear weapons; they have done great service!
Now it is their responsibility to destroy all the nuclear weapons, all atomic weapons, even though it goes against your so-called nationalism, your so-called communism, your so-called democracy. Nothing matters, because now even the very existence of man is at stake. Just as one day scientists revolted against religion and its dictates, now they have to revolt again against the politicians and their dictates.
The scientist has to stand on his own and be absolutely clear that he is not being exploited. He is being exploited everywhere. Just because he is being paid great salaries, given Nobel prizes, great honor, he is ready to sacrifice the whole of humanity -- for his Nobel prizes, for all those stupid awards. Scientists should no longer behave like children. These awards and these prizes and these respectable posts are all toys to befool, and even your great scientists are behaving like fools.
I would like my people to create an uproar all over the world against scientists who are serving governments and politicians in creating war mechanisms. The masses have to be awakened against these scientists; they have become now the greatest danger, and their association with politicians has to be broken.
Science in itself can become both: accepting meditation it can become religion; being rebellious it can create a better life, more affluent, more abundant. It can be the greatest blessing to mankind -- outwardly and inwardly. But right now it is one of the greatest dangers.
Satyam Bhairava, you are worried and concerned that the scientists are not at all aware of the new man. They cannot be; they are in the service of the old man and the old humanity, the old politicians, the old ideologies. In fact they are preparing a funeral for the new man. They should prepare a funeral for the old man which is already dead! And we are carrying its corpse -- it stinks, but we have become immune, because we have been born in a society which has been carrying corpses. We have grown up in a society, in educational institutions... everywhere corpses are worshiped.
If there is life anywhere on another planet -- and scientists suspect that there is life on at least fifty thousand planets in the whole universe, and there may be planets where science has grown to far higher reaches -- they may be able to
observe our behavior. And they will be simply surprised: what are our geniuses doing? It would have been better if there were more idiots and fewer geniuses -- at least life would have continued. These geniuses are going to destroy the whole of life.
The new man can be accepted only if scientists understand that the world does not consist only of dead objects, it also consists of living beings -- and not only of living beings but beings who are conscious too. And there is a possibility of growing this consciousness to great peaks.
A Gautam Buddha and a Zarathustra are like Everest, Himalayan peaks. They show, they indicate the potential of every human being; just a little effort and you can also reach their heights. You can also reach the sunlit peaks; you need not live always in the dark caves, in the valleys of misery.
The dark night need not remain forever.
There is a possibility to come out of the dark night into a beautiful morning with birds singing and flowers blossoming.
The scientists need a great incentive for meditation. Only then will they be able to see that what they have been doing is against the future of mankind. They are destroying the very hope... while with the same intelligence they could have created a paradise on earth for the new man, for their children and their children's children to live in a better world, with more health, with more love, with more consciousness.
Satyam Bhairava, you are right that science is "so excitingly interesting," but it can be even more interesting. It has to become religious, it has to become spiritual. It has not to exhaust all its energies on the outer world but has to penetrate into the treasures of our inner being. And you are also right that, "I found that it does not transform anything at all. What is it good for?"
It has great potential, but that potential is not yet used. Just as it has been successful in penetrating into the very secret of matter, it has the capacity to penetrate into the very secret of consciousness too. Then it will be a great blessing, a great benediction.
As far as I am concerned and my vision for a new humanity is concerned, I see science as having two dimensions: one, the lower dimension, working on
objects; and two, the higher dimension, working on consciousness. And the lower dimension has to work as a servant for the higher dimension. Then there is no need of any other religion; then science fulfills totally all the needs of man.
But right now you are right that science transforms nothing. It cannot. Unless it approaches consciousness and works out how to develop more consciousness in man --
how to make his unconscious conscious, how to transform his darkness into a noontide --
it will not be of any great use. On the contrary, it is proving to be one of the greatest dangers.
It was Albert Einstein who wrote a letter before the second world war to President Roosevelt of America saying, "I can create atomic energy and atom bombs, and if you don't have atom bombs I can predict that it is impossible to win against Germany in the war."
Albert Einstein was a German Jew. He was working in Germany, researching under the German government, which was under Adolf Hitler, to create an atom bomb. Just the very idea... if he was not a Jew, the whole history of the world would have been totally different. If Germany could have produced atom bombs, then there would have been no power -- neither of America nor of the Soviet Union nor of England -- to stand in front of Adolf Hitler; he would have conquered the whole world.
But because Albert Einstein was a Jew... he was so important that he was not harassed by Adolf Hitler and his people, but he was seeing that millions of Jews were disappearing, actually evaporating as smoke in the gas chambers of the Nazi government. He would not have been killed because he was so much needed and there was nobody else to replace him, but he became afraid that if Adolf Hitler wins, then all over the world there will not be a single Jew left alive. He was not afraid about his own life; it was safe, because Adolf Hitler needed him.
Albert Einstein escaped from Germany, leaving the experiment incomplete. The German scientists did everything, but there was no other Albert Einstein to complete the experiment. And Einstein wrote a letter to the enemy of Germany, to America, saying "I have escaped from Germany and I am ready to make atom
bombs for America. Without atom bombs you cannot defeat Germany. And there is also a fear that somebody may be able to complete the experiment that I have left incomplete, because there were many scientists working with me, under me." Roosevelt immediately invited him and gave him all the facilities possible.
Truman was president at the time when the atom bombs were produced by Albert Einstein, and Einstein told Truman, "Now there is no need to use them, because Germany has committed a historical mistake."
This historical mistake has been committed many times. Anybody who wants to fight with Russia and has committed this historical mistake is doomed, because for nine months the whole country is covered with snow. Russia is so vast -- it covers two continents, from one corner of Europe to the other corner of Asia. And there are only three months when the weather is clear enough to fight. And Russia has a great enough army to prevent the enemy for three months and wait for the winter.
Winter lasts for nine months. Then Russia need not fight; that winter finishes the enemies without any trouble. Nobody can survive the Russian winter, except Russians -- it needs a lifelong training. Napoleon got lost, in the first world war Germany got lost, and Adolf Hitler again committed the same mistake.
But this time Truman did not even answer the letter of Albert Einstein. The first letter was received with such great joy and he was invited with great welcome, was given all the facilities that he needed, but now the bombs were already in the hands of the politicians. Who cares about Albert Einstein? And he was saying simply, "Now there is no need. Germany is finished, and within two weeks at the most, Japan will be finished, because Japan cannot stand on its own. It was the German support There is no need to use these bombs."
But Truman was in a hurry to use the atom bomb, because Germany has surrendered and if Japan also surrenders then there is no opportunity to see what great power America has and no opportunity to show the whole world.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were destroyed unnecessarily. Japan was ready to surrender.
Preparations were being done on how the surrender should happen; negotiations were going on between the generals. And Truman ordered, "Before the surrender at least we should try out how much power we have. Once the war ends we
won't have any opportunity."
Two hundred thousand people in two great cities died within ten minutes -- and not only people but trees, animals, birds, everything alive suddenly became dead.
Albert Einstein was so much shocked that before his death when somebody asked him,
"If you are born again, wouldn't you like to be a physicist in your new life?" he said,
"Never! If I am born again, I would rather be a plumber than a physicist. Enough is enough. I have seen how I worked day in, day out to create the atomic weapons. They were for an emergency, but once they were created I had no power over them. I had created them, but once they were created, the politicians had the keys in their hands. And my letter was not even answered! I am dying one of the most frustrated men on the earth."
He was one of the most successful men, perhaps the greatest scientist that we have ever known, but his own feeling was far more true. He was a man of conscience; he died almost like a wounded lion, utterly frustrated with politicians and their ugliness, their murderous and criminal minds.
Up to now, science certainly has not brought much of a transformation as far as human consciousness is concerned, but it has the potential -- just a great awakening is needed.
The scientist has to realize his responsibility. He has almost become a god; either he can create or he can destroy. He has to be reminded that he is no longer the old scientist of the times of Galileo, just working in his own house, with a few tubes and a few bottles, just mixing chemicals and experimenting. Those days are gone. Now he has the power to destroy the whole life of this planet or to create a life so beautiful and so blissful that man has imagined it only in heaven; it can be possible here. A few small groups of scientists have started working on those lines. Nobody believes them.
In Manali, in one of the press interviews, I was talking about the possibilities, the creative and absolutely new possibilities of doors that science can open. Neelam was there, and she reported to Nirvano in Kathmandu that I was talking
"off the wall." And I can understand that anybody will think what I was saying was "off the wall." It will appear like that.
But just the other day Japan created an artificial island, because in Japan there is so much a shortage of land that it is becoming impossible to expand industries. Japan has become the richest country in the world. It needs more and more land. The old way is to conquer some other country; that is not possible anymore. The fear of a third world war hangs over everybody.
Japan has created an artificial island which will be used for industrial development. It will be floating in the ocean. Once it becomes a success, many more artificial islands...
and Japan will be creating more earth than God created in those six days.
There are tremendous possibilities for science. Once it no longer serves death, it can float cities in the ocean. Japan has also successfully tried to make underground cities, because why go on with the old conception that you have to live overground? You can live underground; it is more peaceful there, and you can get the right kind of light, the right kind of oxygen, because everything will be in the hands of the scientist.
I was talking about such things in that press interview, and poor Neelam thought that I am talking "off the wall." Just as underground cities are possible, floating cities in the ocean are possible, under the ocean cities are possible, flying cities are possible.…
Once science changes its attitude and stops being supportive to politicians for war, so much energy will be released that scientists can do all these things which may appear off the wall to you, but they don't appear off the wall to me.
To me, all that seems to be almost predictable. It is going to happen, because the earth is going to be overburdened with population. It has already reached five billion, and by the year two thousand and ten it will have almost doubled. Ten billion population? -- this poor earth, which has been exploited for centuries, will not be able to support it. You will have to create artificial food, perhaps new vegetables, new food.
In the Soviet Union they already have new fruits which God had not created in those six days. Just as animals can be created by crossbreeding, they are
crossbreeding trees and creating new fruits, giving them the right taste, right juice -- fruits which man has never eaten, for which there is no name in the dictionaries. They are being given new names.
And man may have to live more and more on chemical food. Perhaps it may be more healthy, because right now ninety-five percent of whatever you eat is roughage; it has to be thrown out of the body. Hardly five percent is used. This is sheer nonsense! This is burdening your digestive system unnecessarily. Why not only give exactly that five percent that your body needs? If your digestive system is not tired, your life's length will become longer.
It is the digestive system that kills you. All the experiments about the digestive system show.… It has been tried on many animals. Animals which were given enough food, as much as they wanted, had only half the life span of animals who were given half the food they asked for. The first group lived ten years, the second group lived twenty years, because the digestive system remained more fresh, younger, untired.
And if man's food becomes more and more chemical, more and more scientific, it will not be digested, it can be directly injected. There is no need to tire your digestive system, and if your digestive system remains stronger, younger, your life will become longer.
Scientists say man can very easily live three hundred years, without becoming old.
Science has great possibilities, Satyam Bhairava, just we have not yet been able to use those possibilities. And all the scientists are in the service of politicians, of governments -
- that means in the service of death and war. A great revolution is needed.
Just as scientists revolted once against religion, fought against religion, now they have to fight against politics, against nationalism. Their responsibility is great. The new man will need them and their revolution. They are the most important people for the survival of humanity.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I NEVER HAVE SEX AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE HAVING SEX. I DON'T THINK
THAT I AM BEYOND SEX, BUT I LOVE MEDITATION AND DANCING MUCH
MORE, ALTHOUGH IT IS DIFFICULT TO ACCEPT THIS. SEX IS NOT
HAPPENING, AND I LIKE THAT IT IS NOT HAPPENING. OSHO, DOES IT MEAN
THAT IN ORDER TO BE A SANNYASIN, I MUST HAVE SEX? I DON'T LIKE IT IF
IT IS NOT A NATURAL HAPPENING, IF IT IS ONLY A SEX AND MIND
MEETING, AND NOT MEDITATION. I ENJOY BEING ALONE. I SEE MYSELF IN
CONFLICT A LOT WITH THIS, BUT I CAN ALSO ACCEPT THE WAY I AM.
THEN IT ALL DISAPPEARS FROM THE MIND, AND MY HEART OPENS AGAIN.
OSHO, IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME?
Anand Dolano, nothing is wrong with you. Repression of sex is evil, but if sex is not a natural desire in you, to force it will be a repression.
There are people who are forcing their natural desire for sex in trying to be celibate; they are going against their nature. And if you don't have any inclination towards sex, forcing it will be going against your nature; it will be the same kind of crime.
A sannyasin needs to be natural.
You have to listen to your own body, your own instincts, your own intuition, and follow it. You are not to do anything against your nature. If you like to be alone, and enjoy meditating... that's what everybody else is trying, but first they are
trying to get finished with sex so that they can enjoy being alone. You are in a better position, you don't have to pass through the hell. You have already passed through it somehow; perhaps in your past life. You are out of the hell; now don't try to get into the dark tunnel again.
Even the people to whom I say, "Don't repress sex," are not being told to remain always sexual. In fact repression of sex keeps you always sexual. Once you have lived it totally, you are finished with it. And the sooner you are finished the better, because then you can sit silently without being bothered by the need of anybody else as a companion. You are enough unto yourself, and that is the most important thing for a meditator -- the enoughness of aloneness.
But I can understand your problem. Here you must be seeing everybody bringing problems about sex, about their fights. Somebody is completely satisfied; that is his boredom. Somebody is not satisfied, he wants more satisfaction; that is his problem.
Somebody is not feeling boredom; that is his problem. Listening to all these problems, naturally anybody will get worried: what is my problem? If you don't have any problem, it certainly means something is wrong with you!
Nothing is wrong with you. Just enjoy being yourself, your meditation, your silence, and let these people pass through their darkness. One day they will all come out of the tunnel; then you can greet them. But just seeing that everybody is in the tunnel, fighting, shouting.… Sitting outside the tunnel in the light, in silence, don't be worried that
"Something seems to be wrong with me. Everybody is in the tunnel; what am I doing here? All the meditators are in the tunnel. Nobody is meditating... but they have all come here to meditate; only I am meditating."
"My wife is a typical Jew," complained the man to his companion. "She only makes love doggy-style."
"Doggy-style?" said his companion, "I don't believe it!"
"It is true. I sit up and beg, and she rolls over and plays dead."
Let them play whatever style they want; you simply don't get distracted from your meditation. You are perfectly right. And all these people are trying to reach
to your position. You don't have to descend into their troubles, into their problems.
You are blessed. It rarely happens, what is happening to you. It happens only because of your past life; there is no other explanation. In your past life you must have been meditating; you must have been with a master; you must have come to a point where sex became meaningless, where the need of the other dropped, when you became enough unto yourself and your loneliness changed into aloneness; hence in this life you are carrying all that you have achieved in your past life.
It is because of such experiences that all three Eastern religions accepted the idea of reincarnation. The three other religions, which were born outside of India, have no explanation for such an experience. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism -- all three religions cannot explain your situation. But Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, have a very logical scientific explanation: that you are carrying a quality that you achieved in your past life.
Nothing is lost. Once you have achieved it, it goes on with your consciousness into new lives, into new bodies.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #37
Chapter title: Behind the drama a witness
30 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8705300
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN37
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
94
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THE OTHER MORNING YOU WERE TALKING SO BEAUTIFULLY ABOUT TWO
MEDITATORS BEING TOGETHER IN LOVE. FOR ME, SITTING WITH YOU
EVERY DAY IS SO FULFILLING THAT MY DESIRE TO BE WITH SOMEONE
HAS ALMOST DISAPPEARED. THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME EVERY TIME I AM
AROUND YOU. TODAY THOUGH, THE FEAR AROSE THAT I AM TOO
MISERLY WITH MY LOVE AND THEREFORE AVOIDING A RELATIONSHIP.
BELOVED OSHO, IS THIS POSSIBLE?
Prem Nishavda, one has to be very much aware of the mind creating problems which do not exist in reality. Mind is almost a problem-creating factory;
whatever you do, whatever happens to you, mind is going to raise problems about it. That's its old strategy to disturb you.
If you are feeling perfectly okay, then listen to the heart, not to the mind. One has to learn the knack of not paying too much attention to the mind, trying in every possible way to listen to the heart.
Your question is that for you, sitting with me every day is so fulfilling that your desire to be with someone else has almost disappeared.
It is how it should be. The desire for the other is not something great. It is poverty of the soul. You cannot be alone; hence, the desire for the other arises. Because you cannot feel peaceful, silent, centered, fulfilled, contented, just by being yourself, the desire arises to be with someone; perhaps someone can give you what you are missing.
Nobody can give you what you are missing. Most probably you will meet another beggar, just like you, who has been in search of someone who can give him fulfillment, contentment, blissfulness. And when two beggars start begging from each other it is really a pitiable scene, but it is being repeated by millions of people around the earth every day. Because you are brought up by these beggars, amongst these beggars, when for the first time you start getting out of this begging, the mind wants to pull you back. It raises questions, doubts; it persuades you with beautiful names.
For example, now your mind is saying, "Today though, the fear arose that I am too miserly with my love and therefore avoiding a relationship." If you have love enough it will start showering on others by itself. You cannot contain it; it becomes an overflowing, so there is no need to worry about it.
Nobody can be miserly with love.
Let me repeat it: nobody can be miserly with their love. Either one has love -- then it starts overflowing in its own time; you don't have to push it, you don't have to force it --
or one has not. When one has not, one can only pretend. Millions of people are doing that. Everybody is pretending to love and they have not known what love is.
Love can be known only as a fragrance of meditation, not before it. You have not known even the flower. You are not acquainted with the fragrance. Once the flower opens up, it is beyond the capacity of the flower to be miserly about fragrance -- what can it do? The fragrance will go with the winds, it will spread all over.
The flower cannot be miserly, neither can love be, because love also is a flower that grows in your meditation.… So you just enjoy being alone; this is your meditation. And the spring will come, it always comes. Trust existence. The flower will blossom, and love will flow from you.
Nobody can be miserly about love; that is an impossibility, for the simple reason that love follows a totally different economics. In the ordinary economics, if you go on giving you go on becoming poorer; one has to be a hoarder to remain rich. Love is not part of these mundane economics. The more you give, the more you have; if you don't give it you will not have it. In giving it grows, in sharing it becomes more and more purified, more and more beautiful, more and more a blessing.
But mind will go on creating a thousand and one questions. Don't listen to your own mind! That is part of the disciplehood. When I am here, listen to me. If you are going to listen to your own mind, then there is no need for you to be here. You already have a master within you who will guide you to hell.…
While on vacation, Ronald Reagan asks for a girl for the night. Three gorgeous girls are sent up to his room -- a blonde, a brunette and a redhead.
He says to the blonde, "I'm the president of the United States. How much to spend a night with you?"
"Four hundred dollars," she replies. "Too much," says Reagan.
He asks the brunette the same question, but just then the redhead runs in and says, "Mr.
President, if you can raise my skirt as high as your taxes and screw me the way you are screwing the people of America, you can have me for nothing."
Prem Nishavda, you are in a very harmonious state. The mind will try to disturb it, and your harmony is so new and the mind so old and so strong that if you don't stop it from disturbing your harmony, it is going to be disturbed. All that mind wants is to disturb your meditation because they are enemies. Mind knows perfectly well that if meditation grows, mind has no place in your life; it will be reduced from being a master to a servant.
Just try to feel... if you are feeling good, if you are feeling at ease, at home, then tell the mind to shut up! Take the reins into your own hands.
Becoming a meditator means an effort to get out of the slavery of the mind and to become the master, which you would naturally have been if the society had not turned things upside down. You were born with your meditativeness as the master, and the mind just as a servant, but that is not convenient for an insane society. To make you also insane, the easiest way is to make the master the servant and the servant the master; then everything in you is messed up.
The new man I have been talking about will be a master of his own self. And the strangest phenomenon is that when you are the master, the mind functions far more efficiently than it functions when it is a master, because naturally it is destined to be a servant. As a servant it is perfect, but when it pretends to be the master, it cripples you. It does not know how to be the master -- that's one thing -
- and it does not allow the master hidden deep inside you to have any say in your life. This is one of the psychological sicknesses of mankind.
The new man will be healthy, and his health will consist of everything being in its own place. Then only can we create an orchestra, not a crowd of noises.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN YOU SPOKE ABOUT SHARDA, THE WIFE OF RAMAKRISHNA AND HER
IMMENSE LOVE TOWARDS HIM, I NOTICED THAT I FELT GUILTY AND SAD.
IT SEEMS THAT I CANNOT LOVE A MAN AT ALL. OUT IN THE WORLD THE
RELATIONSHIP WITH MY BOYFRIEND WAS SO JUICY, AND SEEMED TO BE
THE ONLY WAY TO STAY ALIVE, WHEREAS HERE THERE IS A NEVERENDING CONFLICT. THE CONFLICT I FEEL IS OF LONGING TO BE ALONE, FEELING TOTALLY CONTENTED WITHIN MYSELF -- YET I DO NOT WANT TO
LOSE MY BOYFRIEND, OUT OF THE FEAR OF BEING LONELY AND VULNERABLE. I AM SO PUZZLED. PLEASE, WOULD YOU COMMENT?
Shantidevi, man is asleep. It has to be repeated again and again, to remind you that you are still in the middle -- neither asleep nor awake. You can go either way: you can take a turn and pull the blanket over yourself and go to sleep, or you can jump out of the bed and take a cold shower and be alert and awake. But you have to understand what is meant by spiritual sleep.
You say, "When you spoke about Sharda, the wife of Ramakrishna and her immense love towards him, I noticed that I felt guilty and sad." Why should you feel guilty and sad?
You can have immense love, just like Sharda, but you have to know much more about Sharda.
She was a meditator, and after Ramakrishna died she became, without any declaration, without any announcement, naturally the head of the order that Ramakrishna had created.
The disciples of Ramakrishna became disciples of Sharda. She was no ordinary woman in love with a man. Ramakrishna was not a man for her; Ramakrishna to her represented life, consciousness, and its highest flight.
Rather than feeling guilty and sad and wasting your time and energy, use the same energy for being a meditator, so love can grow out of your meditation. I teach you the real love, not the phony love that you find all over the world.
Everybody is saying to everybody else, "I love you," but on the whole there seems to be no love in the world. People are simply like parrots, repeating the words "I love you."
They don't know even the meaning of what they are saying.
Do you have the quality of love? Do you have that richness? Do you have that fulfillment out of which love arises?
Love does not arise in a desert. It is a flower, it needs a garden.
Have you planted a garden in your being?
We are gathered here to become gardens. You come here as deserts, but the most unbelievable phenomenon is that even a desert can hallucinate that it is a garden, that it is an oasis.
You say, "It seems that I cannot love a man at all." Who is asking you to love a man?
You can love trees and they are far better people. They don't feel jealous, they will not create trouble for you, they will not become an anxiety. You can love the clouds, you can love the stars.…
Man is such a tiny part in this whole universe. Why are you after this tiny part? Leave it alone, let the poor fellow live! You can love the whole universe; just exclude man -- for the time being, at least. When you become so capable of loving that you can love even man, then it will happen on its own accord.
And Ramakrishna was no ordinary man. Through his eyes the whole universe looked into you; through his hands the whole existence made gestures significant and meaningful to you; through his words the whole spoke. He was so simple, so egoless, just a hollow bamboo -- which can be made into a flute without any difficulty. And you can sing a song; the song will be yours, he will be only the vehicle.… And he allowed the whole universe to sing as many songs as possible through him.
You can also find a man... but for that you will need a sensitive heart, open and available, and you will have to drop all this garbage of being guilty and sad.
People think that they already know how to love. They have taken it for granted that they know how to live. This is one of the greatest fallacies. Neither do you
know how to love, nor do you know how to live. All that you know is how to go on towards the graveyard.
From the cradle to the graveyard you are a perfect pilgrim; otherwise you know nothing.
You will have to learn. You have the possibility to learn, but the possibility becomes dormant because of your idea that you already know.
You say, "Out in the world the relationship with my boyfriend was so juicy." You cannot deceive me. I have known thousands of boyfriends and thousands of girlfriends, and how juicy their relationship is... unless you decide to call poison, juice -- then it is a different matter. And if it was juicy outside in the world, what is the trouble? Here are juicier people!
Outside in the world there are Christians and there are Hindus and there are Mohammedans, there are Jews and there are Buddhists, and they are all against what you call "being juicy." They want you to be dry bones.
But illusions can be created very easily. One strategy of the mind is that it always looks at the past and chooses a few beautiful moments out of thousands of ugly situations, and then magnifies them and starts believing in them; that's why everybody thinks his childhood was great. Ask any child, and he is in a hurry to grow up, because he can see the grown-up people are living juicy lives.
I used to live by the side of a post office and every morning very early, when it was almost dark, I used to go for a walk. One day I saw a small boy with a mustache -- I could not believe it.
I said, "This is something impossible!" The boy started hiding behind trees, but I followed him and got hold of him. He said, "Don't tell anybody."
I asked, "But why are you having this false mustache.?"
He said, "I would love to grow up. I have got a cigarette also. When I see people with a mustache and a beard and having cigarettes, I feel so sad. How long is it going to take, this miserable boyhood? Nobody takes any notice of me, but if I start doing anything, everybody stops me saying, `you are still a child; don't do that!' I cannot even ask questions because I am a child -- `When you will grow up you will know.'"
Then I realized that he was the postmaster's son. He said, "Don't tell my father; otherwise I am going to be given a good lesson. He beats me."
I have known thousands of children and I have enquired of them, "Are you feeling great that you are a child?" They were all feeling miserable about being still a child; yet these same children in their old age will remember their childhood as really golden. They will make it golden.
You are saying that outside your boyfriend was so juicy. If he was so juicy, why have you come here? People start thinking of meditation if their life is not juicy. If their life is already juicy, who bothers about meditation and God and truth?
I don't think that you have ever known anything juicy; it is an ego fulfillment to exaggerate your past. And if you know how to make a relationship juicy Here
there are many people from the same outside world. They have not come from other planets; they have also lived very juicy lives outside. But it seems strange: the moment they come here all their juiciness disappears; because here my insistence is to be sincere with yourself --
don't deceive. Outside they were deceiving.
You are saying "... and seemed to be the only way to stay alive." Then have you come here to commit suicide? If that was the only way to be alive and you think it was so juicy, what accident happened? Did your ship get wrecked, and you landed in this desert? Just stop exaggerating -- that is a childish approach towards life.
Look at things straight, as they are. Nobody leaves juicy places. One gets so caught because juicy places are sticky too; there is not much juice but there is much glue. So whenever you have a juicy relationship, in fact it is nothing but a very glued relationship.
You can call glue "juice," that is another thing. Only the words differ, but the reality will be the same.
Meditation and the search for truth, or the search for oneself, starts only because you find life is not juicy. It is a vast desert. Only once in a while do you see an oasis somewhere, but by the time you reach there, there is no oasis. All oases prove mirages. Frustrated, you start searching for something deeper than life makes available to you.
You are saying, Shantidevi, "... whereas here there is a never-ending conflict."
Conflict with whom? Have you forgotten to create juice? Or have you become aware it is not juice, it is glue? The first thing is to be clearly aware about your situation, howsoever bad it may be. Don't exaggerate and don't hide it; if you hide yourself then it is impossible to transform you. You will have to put away all your masks, because masks cannot grow. Only your original face can grow.
"The conflict I feel is one of longing to be alone, feeling totally contented within myself -
- yet I do not want to lose my boyfriend out of the fear of being lonely and vulnerable. I am so puzzled."
I can see you are puzzled, but your puzzle is your own creation. First, you want to be alone -- why? Life is so juicy with the boyfriend, so live it! Why do you have a longing to be alone? Life with the boyfriend cannot be juicy, that's why.
"... feeling totally contented within myself" -- so you don't like juice. You want to feel totally contented within yourself -- what about the juice of the boyfriend? Just be real, authentic; say that you have been living in a hell. But even people who live in hell pretend that they are living in heaven.
I have heard that the people who live in hell have changed the board on which it was written, "This is hell." They have written, "This is heaven." At least that much gives great consolation. And the people who are living in heaven, I have heard, are continually asking for a holiday from this continuous repetition of hallelujiah, playing on their harps before a dodo God. He must be a dodo, always listening to hallelujiah, for eternity.
Perhaps this hallelujiah has killed him and he is just a corpse sitting there.
Your so-called saints want holidays; where will they go for holidays? There is only one place where they can go, and that is to hell -- and that's where they go, because there they find restaurants and discos and juicy people! Hell is full of juice -- people are almost swimming in it. You just have to be clear why you want to be contented. What was wrong in your love relationship? Was there not contentment?
And then comes the fear, "Yet I do not want to lose my boyfriend." You want
your boyfriend also in your pocket while you are meditating, so that he cannot escape. While you are totally contented, the boyfriend has to remain in your pocket. What kind of boyfriend do you have? Is it a teddy bear?
Your whole puzzle is very simple to solve. The first thing: you have to forget and drop the idea that you know what love is, that you know what a juicy relationship is. Be alone, be meditative, be contented, and out of this contentment will flow the juice. Then there is a possibility of having a love which will be a joy, a constant joy.
Non-meditators cannot love, they can only pretend. But because man is so asleep, he goes on believing in his own pretensions, he goes on believing in his own dreams.
A racing car driver picked up a girl after the race and took her home. Later that night, after a passionate bout of lovemaking, the man drifted off into sleep. He awoke suddenly, with a very angry woman astride him, smacking his face.
"What is the matter?" he asked.
"You were talking in your sleep," she shouted. "You were feeling my tits and saying,
`What perfect headlights,' and you felt my legs and said, `What a smooth finish.' "Well what's wrong with that?" the driver asked.
"Nothing," cried the woman, "but when you felt my pussy and yelled, `Who left the garage door open...?'"
People are asleep, talking in their sleep -- "I love you". Meditation is an effort to be awake, to be alert, to be conscious. Anything else should follow, but cannot precede it: love can follow it, friendship can follow it, worship can follow it, prayer can follow it, gratitude can follow it. But everything has to follow only when you have attained an integrated consciousness; otherwise you are having only dreams, nightmares, and you are believing in them as if they are real.
Shantidevi, as you are already here, have a taste of meditation and aloneness. Don't be afraid that you will lose the boyfriend. There are so many boys; if you lose one you get one dozen -- they are queuing! And if you are meditative,
contented, silent, you are bound to find a man of the same qualities, because we can relate only with people with the same qualities, who speak the same language. And a love affair after meditation can become a tremendous help to both, for their spiritual growth.
Drop the fear about losing the boyfriend. These boyfriends are so stupid that even if you want to lose them it is very difficult. You can ask my people here. It is so difficult to lose a boyfriend or a girlfriend; they cling. I have told you the reason: what they think is juice is not juice, it is glue. And here in this place, everything is German; if it is Indian glue you can escape, but the German glue... you are finished!
There is an ancient story... man asked God, "God, why did you make women so pretty?"
"So you will like them," God answered.
And man asked God, "Why did you make women so soft? "So you will like them," God answered again.
"And why," asked man again, "did you make them so stupid?" And God answered, "So they will like you."
There is no worry at all! Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
THE OTHER NIGHT WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT YOUR VISION OF A MODERN COMMUNE, AND YOUR OFFER TO GORBACHEV TO ESTABLISH A MODEL COMMUNE IN RUSSIA, I WAS DEEPLY TOUCHED. AFTER YOUR
COMMUNE DISSOLVED ONE AND A HALF YEARS AGO, I WENT BACK INTO
THE WORLD AND GOT QUITE A BITTER TASTE OF LIFE IN WESTERN
SOCIETY: POWER, MONEY, FRUSTRATION, COMPENSATION. YOUR VISION
OF A COMMUNE SEEMS TO BE THE ANSWER FOR MANKIND -- TO FIND A FULFILLING WAY TO LIVE; YOUR VIEW IS SO VAST, SO CLEAR. BUT
LOOKING AT MY OWN REALITY, I STILL DISCOVER POSSESSIVENESS, NARROW-MINDEDNESS, UNLOVINGNESS, GREED, LACK OF HUMBLENESS, DESIRES, JEALOUSY. I FELT ASHAMED LISTENING TO YOUR WORDS
BECAUSE THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR VISION AND MY REALITY IS SO HUGE.
BELOVED MASTER, SOMETIMES I THINK THAT YOU HAVE TOO POSITIVE A PICTURE OF US. OR ARE YOU SIMPLY SUPPORTING THE GOOD SEED? DO
YOU REALLY SEE A CHANCE THAT, ONE DAY, WE WILL LIVE ACCORDING
TO YOUR VISION?
Deva Nutan, your question is significant because you say, "Looking at my own reality, I still discover possessiveness, narrow-mindedness, unlovingness, greed, lack of humbleness, desires, jealousy." Just one thing you have forgotten -- that none of these things is you.
You are the awareness of all these things: possessiveness, jealousy, greed. Who is being alert? Certainly jealousy cannot be alert about itself, neither can possessiveness be alert about itself.
There is, behind this whole drama, a witness. That is my hope and that is your hope --
and it is the hope for the new man and for the new humanity. If you can be aware of these realities it is not a difficult thing to drop them, because you are not them; they are separate from you. You have learned them in a society which is greedy, in which if you are not greedy you cannot survive.
In a commune where there will be no possibility for greed -- because with no money to accumulate, nobody poor, nobody rich, you will easily forget all about greed. Why are you possessive? -- because you are in a society where everybody else is possessive. You cannot protect yourself if you are not possessive; you will be destroyed by the other possessive people.
All these things: possessiveness, unlovingness, greed, lack of humbleness, desires, jealousy are a by-product of living in a world which is full of these things, which requires everybody to have all these poisonous attitudes.
In a commune you cannot be greedy, because there will be no support for greed. There will be no question of imitating anybody. There will be no question of ambition because people will be respected as they are. There will be no requirement that they should be presidents and vice presidents, prime ministers, and then they should be respected; they will be respected as they are. Whatever they are doing, if it is creative and is needed by the society, they will be honored. Narrow-mindedness is created by your religions, by your political ideologies. These are all learned things nurtured in you. They are not part of your consciousness, they are not part of your being.
So I am not being too optimistic and I am not taking a too positive view of you. I am simply realistic. I know why you are what you are -- because you are living in a wrong world, and to exist you have to be wrong.
If you are allowed to live in a sane commune where people are naturally humble because humbleness is respected, where the egoist will be sent to a psychiatric hospital, where people are non-possessive because all their needs are fulfilled, and all the opportunities they need are given to them... why should they worry about hoarding for tomorrow?
They know that they need not be worried; they are not alone. Five thousand people are taking care of them, and if they can create today a beautiful life, they will be able to create an even a better life tomorrow. The fear of the future will disappear.
Possessiveness is out of fear for the future, because if you don't possess, what are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do in your old age?
In a commune the older people will be loved and respected for their experiences. The older people will become the teachers, the guides. Old age will not be
thought of as something ugly, but as something immensely graceful. One has gone beyond all childish and all youthful foolishnesses; one has come to be very centered and silent, and a lifelong meditation.…
Every commune will have its own old people who will be almost Gautam Buddhas, sources of wisdom who can teach you life, who can teach you love, who can teach you how to grow old beautifully and gracefully, and who can teach you how to die -- because when they die they will die with such a grace and such joy. That will be their last gift to the commune.
I am not taking a positive side only. You are corrupted by the society because the society is corrupt, and it is simply a survival measure to be corrupted in such a society. All that you need is a better atmosphere -- more loving, more healthy, more sane, more in tune with nature. All these things, which religious founders have been trying to get people to drop, people cannot drop, because if they drop them, the whole corrupted mass around them will destroy them. So they listen to Gautam Buddhas, to Jesus Christs, and they know what happens to a Jesus Christ: if you follow his teachings, soon you will be on the cross. You can understand that his teachings are beautiful, but the society is so ugly, you cannot live those beautiful teachings.
All religions have failed, because they have not been able to create a culture which is supportive of the great teachings. It is not only not supportive, it is against.
The commune is a totally new concept. It is an effort to change the whole atmosphere in which these poisonous mushrooms grow. And once your whole atmosphere is different, you will find different people arising, totally different people arising -- because then love will be needed to survive, meditation will be needed to survive, compassion will be needed to survive.
A commune is a transformation, a total transformation. The old society was very schizophrenic. On the one hand it worshiped people who were teaching things which were not possible for ordinary human beings to follow -- because the whole society was against them. So man was living in a schizophrenia: he knew what was right and he was doing what was wrong, so he was feeling continuously guilty, ashamed of himself.
I want a totally new order in which man's dignity is not hurt, and all these things
that have been taught by great teachers need not be taught at all.
We should create real values. Rather than telling people not to be possessive, we should create a commune where possessiveness is useless. Anybody who possesses will be thought stupid, idiotic; he will lose his respect and his dignity. And what would he possess? Once money is removed, you cannot possess. You cannot possess milk, you cannot possess fruits. If you have too much milk you will have to share; if your trees are giving too many fruits, you will have to share. You will really enjoy children coming to your garden and stealing fruits. You will give them chocolates also, as a reward -- "come again, because the trees are too heavy with fruits." And what are you going to do with so many fruits? You cannot sell them.
What has been taught by the founders of religion was illogical. What I am trying to do is a double process -- changing the individual through meditation, and changing the society through the commune.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #38
Chapter title: Don't dig valleys -- climb mountains 30 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8705305
ShortTitle: GOLDEN38
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
98
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THERE ARISES GREAT DARKNESS IN ME AND I WISH TO TRADE IN THIS
INTOLERABLE AGAMA AND START AFRESH SO THAT SOMEHOW I
WOULDN'T GROW WITH MY PERSONALITY SO INSEPARABLY GLUED TO
MYSELF. I REMEMBER THERE WAS ONCE INNOCENCE AND I HAD A SENSE
OF MYSELF. TRY AS I MIGHT, I CAN'T RECOVER IT, CAN'T SEPARATE OFF
THE WITNESS, CAN'T TRUST IN MY SEEING. SO LONG AGO I TOOK A SHORTCUT AND NOW I CAN'T REMEMBER WHERE I LEFT THE HONESTY
AND THE INNOCENCE AND THE LOVE, FOR THE FALSE, THE TRYING, THE
STUPID. HOW CAN I FIND MY WAY BACK?
Prem Agama, your story is everyone's story. Everyone has gone astray. Everyone has lost himself. Perhaps it is part of human growth to be lost, to forget the way
back home, to search for it, because unless you go astray, there is no need for search. Unless you lose the way, there is no question of finding it. Unless you forget yourself, you will never realize yourself; hence it is not against your spiritual growth.
It is part, an absolutely intrinsic part, that you should be lost in darkness, in agony, in suffering. But there is no need to remain in the dark night of the soul. One need not make a house in suffering and misery, in ignorance, in dishonesty, in a false and phony life.
One has to use this opportunity. Yes, I call it a golden opportunity, knowing perfectly well that it is painful. But all birth is painful, and a spiritual birth more so.
You should not settle in suffering, in misery, in pain. You should continue to search. The question is not of finding the right way. Every way is right if your search is deep, your hope enormous, your trust infinite. Then wherever you are and whatever path you follow, you will reach the ocean -- just as every river reaches the ocean, passing through the mountains, through the valleys, through strange lands, strange people, without any guide, without any map, without anybody to indicate the right direction.
Every river, small or big, reaches to the ocean. It seems a deep thirst, an intense longing, makes every way the right way.
All ways are going towards the ocean.
You just have to be patient enough, trustful of existence.
And your remembrance will be of enormous value: one day you knew yourself, you were not yet gone astray, you had not moved on the paths of desire and ambition. You were still within yourself, sincere, honest and innocent. You know that the space you are searching for again is not imaginary. You have known it, you have been it; it is only a question of how to enter that space again.
The logical way is to find the right path. And there comes one of the greatest problems for every spiritual seeker, because every path leads you away from yourself. Every path indicates towards some goal, somewhere else.
Hence the question is not of finding the right path; the question is of finding the
right consciousness, awareness. And strangely, immediately the whole problem changes.
It is a dream you can go far away, you can visit some faraway star. But when you wake up you will wake up in your own room, in your own home. The question is not to find a right path from the faraway star to come back home.
You are already there, you have just forgotten it.
That is the meaning of one of the most beautiful words -- which has been contaminated by religions. That word is sin; its root meaning is forgetfulness. If forgetfulness is the sin, then awareness is the only virtue.
You are asking, "There arises great darkness in me and I wish to trade in this intolerable Agama and start afresh, so that somehow I would not grow with my personality so inseparably glued to myself. I remember there was once innocence and I had a sense of myself. Try as I might, I can't recover it, can't separate off the witness, can't trust in my seeing. So long ago I took a shortcut and now I can't remember where I left the honesty and the innocence and the love, for the false, the trying, the stupid. How can I find my way back?"
Just by being awake! Shake yourself, slap yourself -- but wake up. Jump out of the bed --
but wake up.
Your suffering is a dream, your darkness is a dream, your going astray is a dream. That's the meaning of the word maya. Man lives in illusion. The way out of illusion does not exist, because the way out of illusion will be another illusion.
You have simply to wake up. There is no way, no bridge.
One state is of unawareness, another is of awareness. And from unawareness to awareness the distance is nil... just a little effort, a little jogging.
A man walks into a bar and orders a glass of beer, which he swallows down in one gulp.
Immediately he orders another, and again swallows it down in one gulp. Still thirsty, he orders a third and a fourth. By this time he needs the bathroom. The bartender tells him,
"down the corridor and first on your right." The man stumbles down the corridor, misses the turn, goes through another door and falls straight into the swimming pool. When he finally comes to the surface, he yells out to the surprised attendant, "Wait, for God's sake don't flush!"
Agama, you are where you have always been; you have not moved even an inch away from your innocence, or your being, or your sincerity. It is not possible in the very nature of things to go away from oneself, just as you cannot run away from your shadow. The faster you run, the shadow runs faster; the slower you go the shadow goes slower. But you cannot run away from it.
If this is the case with your shadow, what about your innermost being? How can you go away from it? Wherever you are, it will be in the innermost shrine of your consciousness
-- always intact, uncorrupted.
So all that is needed is to sit silently, to close your eyes and to look into yourself. You will find again the same space, that you remembered with such great passion, with such great love. It is still there. And the same is the case with everybody else.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I BELIEVE IT WAS SARTRE WHO COINED THE TERM "EXISTENTIAL
NAUSEA" TO DESCRIBE SEVERE ALIENATION. I LIKE TO THINK THAT WHAT
I AM FEELING IS MORNING SICKNESS -- IN ANTICIPATION OF THE BIRTH OF
MY SELF-REALIZED BEING. IT SEEMS IRONIC TO ME THAT, ALTHOUGH I HAVE EXPERIENCED EXQUISITE MYSTICAL INSIGHTS, I
STILL FALL INTO
PITS OF DEPRESSION AND ALIENATION WHERE WORDS AND ACTIONS
SEEM ONLY TO EMPHASIZE A FUTILITY IN HUMAN ENDEAVORS. WORSE
STILL IS A DEEP SHAME THAT I AM FULL OF DOUBTS WHEN SO MANY
LOVELY FLOWERS HAVE BEEN PRESENTED TO ME FROM THE HANDS OF
EXISTENCE. WORDS REALLY DON'T COMPENSATE FOR THE ALIEN GAP, BUT JUST HEARING THE TENDERNESS OF YOUR VOICE SOOTHES THE
BLOWN-OUT CRATERS ON THE DARK SIDE OF MY MOON. WOULD YOU
SPEAK ON ALIENATION?
The philosophy of existentialism has given a few new words tremendous emphasis. One of those words is alienation -- to feel alien to oneself.
Man has always felt that he does not know himself. It is not something new; just the name is new and the emphasis is new. Twenty-five centuries ago Socrates was telling people, "Know thyself." He was saying, "You are a stranger to yourself. You don't know your being; you don't know all the dimensions of your being. You don't know, why you are here. You don't know from where you have come, you don't know where you are going. And most important, you don't know whether you are or not."
It happened... George Bernard Shaw was traveling from London to a small town in England. The ticket checker came into his compartment. He looked in all his pockets, in the suitcases, but he could not find the ticket. The ticket checker told him many times,
"Don't get so worried. You are a world-famous figure, I know you. You must
have forgotten the ticket somewhere. When I come on the next run, I can see it. There is no hurry."
He was trying to console the agitated George Bernard Shaw, but George Bernard Shaw was perspiring. Listening to his words he became very angry and shouted, "Shut up! I am not looking for the ticket for you. Now the problem arises, where am I going? Can you tell me?"
The man said, "How can I tell you?" George Bernard Shaw said, "Then don't talk nonsense. I am not worried about you; I am worried about where I am going. Now what will happen to me?"
Everybody is going somewhere, certainly. And nobody is going to ask for your ticket, but still... those who are intelligent are themselves bound to inquire "Where are we going?"
But all these questions are secondary. The basic question is "Who am I?"
This strangeness about oneself, this ignorance about oneself, if felt deeply creates in existentialist terms a nausea. One starts feeling nauseous. One is here, one is going somewhere, one is coming from somewhere... there seems to be no meaning in all this.
And there are so many worries, so much suffering, so much anguish to go through for what?
Existentialism is a negative philosophy. But the modern man needs it, just as a shock.
Existentialist ideas cannot be fulfilling; they cannot remove the nausea, they can only deepen it. They cannot destroy your alienation, they can only make it sharper. They cannot take away meaninglessness from your life, they can only write it in bold letters.
They can surround you with a feeling of sickness. If death is the end, then life is nothing but sickness -- sickness unto death. But existentialism can help intelligent people not to be satisfied with nausea, but to inquire.
There have been people who have found themselves. Their serenity is a proof of it, their fragrance is evidence of it, their rejoicing is an argument which cannot
be refuted. A Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Chuang Tzu, a Bodhidharma -- nobody can deny their grace. Nobody can deny that these people have gone beyond worries, beyond anxiety.
These people have found something which fills their life with songs of joy. They have found some treasure which is inexhaustible and makes them dance in utter gratitude.
Their very presence has convinced millions of people that life need not be a sickness unto death; on the contrary life can become such a dance that death becomes the ultimate culmination of the dance. Life can be transformed so deeply that even death disappears as darkness and becomes a dawn, that even death is no more an end but a new beginning.
Existentialism has paralyzed immensely, terribly, the intelligentsia of the Western world.
The impact of the existentialists has been great. And the conclusion of their philosophy is nothing but suicide, which can relieve you from all nausea, all alienation, all meaninglessness, all anguish, all suffering.
There has never been such a negative philosophy in the whole history of man. There have been atheists, who denied God, but they denied God to support life. They denied God so man can be absolutely free, without anybody dominating him and dictating to him and giving him commandments. Atheists were humanitarians; they raised man as the highest value. To the theists they looked negative because they were negating God, but nobody has seen that they were affirming life.
In fact, compared to atheists the theists are negative, because they deny life, they negate life, they teach people to renounce life for a fictitious god, for a hypothetical god for which they don't have any proof, any argument. But theists have been thought of as positive thinkers, and atheists as negative thinkers. This evaluation is totally wrong, according to me. Atheists are very positive; theists are absolutely negative.
But the existentialists have far transcended the theists and their negativity; they were at least affirming a fictitious god. Atheism was denying only a fiction. Existentialists are denying the fiction of god and they are also denying the reality of life; not only denying, but giving it such condemnatory colors that it seems it
is a calamity to be born, it is a punishment to be born... that life is not a joy, but simply another name of hell.
Existentialism has to be understood very deeply, because philosophically it may become the cause of the third world war. It has destroyed all that was beautiful in life. It has negated everything that was valuable -- love, silence, meditation, joy. It has erased them all. Life is only a sickness, and we are clinging to life because we are afraid to die. It is not that we love life; we hate it -- but at least it is known. Who knows, death may be far worse. It is better to remain with the known, although it is miserable.
They have created the philosophical background for people like Ronald Reagan to destroy the whole humanity. If existentialism is true, then there is no harm in destroying the whole humanity; in fact it should be taken as a blessing that all sickness disappears, all that is ugly disappears.
And all is ugly according to the existentialists. There is not even a single thing which can be appreciated.
Unless the West becomes aware of meditation, unless meditation penetrates the Western intelligence, there is a danger. The politicians are creating weapons to destroy, and the philosophers are creating readiness to be destroyed, willingness to be destroyed. It is the greatest conspiracy against life between politicians and philosophers.
And these existentialists.… One wonders! I have written letters to Jaspers, to Jean-Paul Sartre and they didn't even have the courage to answer. I asked them, "If your philosophy is right, you should commit suicide. Why are you living? For what? Waiting for death?"
According to them, life is nothing but a waiting room and the train that will come, its name is death.
Neither Jaspers nor Jean-Paul Sartre ever replied. All these philosophers, from Soren Kierkegaard to Marcel, were living perfectly happily, enjoying Nobel prizes and preaching a philosophy which is itself really sick.
Life is not sick. It is the wrong glasses they have on their eyes. Just today I heard some news. A man shot his wife in New York. The police came, and the man was absolutely unafraid. He said, "Yes, I have killed my wife." But his son said,
"Father, she's not my mother and she's not your wife." He said, "My God, I forgot to put on my glasses!" He killed some other woman, thinking that she was his wife.
Existentialism is giving wrong glasses to people. It is the most anti-human, anti- life ideology ever preached.
Prem Padmini, you need not be caught into these sick ideologies. I am here to open new windows for you, and you can see with your own eyes the immense beauty of life, the great blissfulness of life... the tremendous silence which is a song without sounds, and a dance that goes on eternally in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains, in the stars.
The whole existence is full of rejoicing; you just need to open your windows. Your darkness is your own creation, your alienation is your own creation; otherwise you are not a stranger to yourself. You are not a stranger to the trees, to the rivers, to the mountains.
It is our existence; we are part of it.
Our heartbeat is part of the universal heartbeat.
And it is not a dead universe; it is immensely intelligent, conscious, sensitive. It is divine in its every dimension. But you have to learn to participate in the dance.
You are sitting like a cripple, and because of your crippledness -- which is just your idea; you are not crippled, you have just been told that you are crippled, you cannot dance, you will fall, so sit silently -- you are not participating in the dance that is going all over the place.
The cripple automatically becomes a critic. He starts hating that which he cannot do. He starts calling the dancers stupid, mad, insane -- "What is the point of all this dance? what is the meaning of all these songs and music? It is just noise and nothing else.
So as not to see one's crippledness, one starts condemning those who are not influenced by crippled philosophies and religions.
Be a participant! In the beginning it may be a little difficult, but step by step start moving a little.
A husband asks his wife which she likes most, Christmas or sex. "Christmas," she says.
"Why is that?" asks her husband. "Is it more romantic?" "No," she answers, "but it happens more often."
Now, if Christmas happens more often, then life will look like a nausea, a sickness.
Participate in the small joys of life, and it will open its great treasures. It contains immense riches, but it needs you to explore them. It gives you challenges, because it is one of the parts of understanding that what you find with great difficulty you enjoy more.
That which is very arduous brings great rejoicing; that which is obvious, freely available, will not give you joy.
Life follows that principle, it keeps its treasures hidden. But it goes on challenging you, calling you. You have to become pilgrims, seekers, searchers. And all the doors are inside, so you don't have to go to the Himalayas. You have just to go inwards. The deeper you go in, the more you know that life is not alien; it is your very heart. You are not separate from it. You have always been part of it, in some form or other, and you will remain always part of it.
You belong to this eternal celebration.
Existentialism is one of the most dangerous approaches to life -- far more dangerous than your religions, because your religions are very poor in arguments. Existentialism is very rich in arguments, so convincing that once you are caught in its trap, you cannot escape.
Just remember one thing: not a single existentialist philosopher has committed suicide.
That destroys their whole philosophical approach.
Only once before in the past in Greece there was a great philosopher, Zeno. He was not teaching so many ugly things, and making man really feel nauseous, but he was certainly teaching that life has no meaning and only cowards go on living because they don't have the guts to commit suicide. He himself lived a long life
of ninety years, and thousands of people committed suicide under his influence. When he was dying, one young man asked, "Just one question more: how come you managed to live ninety years while your followers, particularly young people, have committed suicide according to your philosophy?"
He said, "I had to live to teach the philosophy. It was such a suffering to live, but I had to suffer for the sake of humanity."
Philosophers can be very cunning. Now this is cunningness, pure and simple. But at least he accepted one thing -- that he lived to teach his philosophy. Jaspers and Jean-Paul Sartre and Marcel did not even answer my question. They could have at least said, "We are suffering greatly, but because we want to awaken humanity to the reality, which is nauseous, we are somehow managing to remain alive." Even that much they were not courageous enough to accept. And strangely enough, when Marcel was given a Nobel prize, he accepted it. Life is a nausea. What is a Nobel prize? A cancer? Happily, he accepted.
These are just intellectuals playing games with words, mind games; but they don't know anything of meditation. If they had known just a little bit of meditation not only would their life have been richer, they would have changed the whole West, particularly the Western youth, into a happier, a more radiant, alive generation.
But all that they have created is a subtle willingness for suicide, a deep acceptance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If life is such, then to destroy it is not evil; then Adolf Hitler is a great prophet and he helped six million people to be relieved from a life which was nausea. He was the greatest servant of the Jews: without him, six million Jews would still be suffering from nausea, anguish, anxiety, meaninglessness. Adolf Hitler is a great savior. And now he has come in a far greater form as Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Ronald Reagan will prove the greatest savior of humanity by destroying all life.
Existentialism has to be fought, it has to be destroyed by the roots, because it is in favor of death and against life -- and without knowing life. And to know life there is only one way, the way of meditation.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
WHY IS IT THAT MY VALLEYS ARE DEEPER THAN MY MOUNTAINS ARE
HIGH?
Ramaprem, it is unfortunate that your valleys are deeper than your mountains are high, but the responsibility is yours. You are digging your valleys every day deeper and you have not made any effort even to climb the mountains. To make them bigger is a totally different thing; you have not even climbed them. You are going deeper into your valleys, and digging them more and more. Most of the men in the world are gravediggers; they go on digging their own graves.
An old man was dying, a very rich old man. His four sons, who were all rich in their own right, had gathered to say goodbye to their father. They were sitting around him. The youngest son said "We should arrange a Rolls Royce to take him to the graveyard. That was his lifelong desire, to ride in a Rolls Royce, but he was so miserly, he could not manage it. At least we should give him a chance. He will be dead, but his spirit, his ghost, may enjoy the trip. And it is not very costly because it is one way."
But the second son, elder than the first, said; "You are forgetting our family heritage.
What difference does it make to a dead man whether you take him in a Rolls Royce or in a four wheel Ford truck? It makes no difference to him but to us it will make a difference.
At least I am not going to contribute if a Rolls Royce is brought; I will contribute at the most for a Ford truck. A dead man is a dead man. He knows nothing about where he is sitting. It will do, and we will take him in the nighttime, so nobody knows and nobody sees."
The third brother said, "You are all being too extravagant. What is the need of a Ford truck? Just a bullock cart... and one of my servants has a bullock cart, so we need not even pay anything. A dead body will enjoy the bullock cart and the open air more than any Rolls Royce."
The eldest brother said, "You all seem to have gone wrong, you have all gone insane; it is sheer wastage. We should put him, in the deep darkness in the middle of night, by the side of the road where people throw all their garbage, so
in the morning the corporation truck will take him away. They do the same with all the beggars, and a dead man, whether he was rich or a beggar does not make any distinction. There is no problem; a dead man is a dead man, it is just a corpse."
Just then the old man tried to sit up. He was still alive and listening. He said: "My sons, just help me to find my shoes." They said, "What are you going to do with your shoes?
Are you going to die with your shoes on?" He said, "I have still a little life left. I can walk to the graveyard. In the night, who is going to see? And you are four; you can dig the grave and I will help as much as I can in my old age. Then you can take my shoes back, because they are almost new. I have used them only for ten years; they are good enough for you and your children."
You ask, why your valleys are deeper. Instead of digging your valleys, learn the art of climbing the mountains. Reach to the sunlit peaks of the mountains. Certainly valleys are more secure, more cozy, more comfortable, less risky. Climbing a mountain... if you really want to climb a high mountain like Everest it is dangerous. But the more dangerous it is, the more alive it makes you.
Friedrich Nietzsche used to keep a small card on his table. He had written on it himself,
"Live dangerously!" Any visitor was bound to see it and ask him "What does it mean?"
He said, "That is my whole philosophy, because I have found that the more dangerously you live, the more deeply you live."
As you live more dangerously, you really live. A few moments of dangerous living, as if you are walking on a razor's edge, are more precious than a long life without any danger, without any risk, comfortable and cozy, everything insured, everything secure.
The way of the sannyasin is really the way to live life dangerously.
A young man asked his friend, "How come that old maid keeps getting the best- looking boys for each dance ?" "That is easy," his friend replied. "When she was young she gave it away, later she sold it, and now that she is rich, she is buying it
back!"
She really lived, in every possible way. Most people are avoiding living.
George was a sprightly eighty-eight year old when he married Ruby, a lusciously ripe eighteen year old. As they prepared for bed on their wedding night he asked her, "Tell me, sweet child, did your mother tell you the facts of life?" Blushingly she murmured,
"No."
"That's too bad," George said, "because I'm afraid I have forgotten them."
Now it is too long... eighty-eight years old, but still trying his best -- not accepting old age, not being worried about death, and although he had gone senile, still ready to live.
But most people, even when they are young, are living reluctantly, resisting life, afraid of life, feeling guilty to live because that's what they have been told, that's how they have been prepared. Their whole conditioning is so life-negative that even if they want to live, their guilt does not allow them to live.
As far as my people are concerned, my single-pointed, unconditional advice is to live as intensely as possible, as totally as possible, because that is the only way to know the godliness of life, to know its divine fragrance, its divine taste. And the most strange fact is, the people who live totally, fully, transcend the very desire to live a mundane kind of life. They move beyond the mundane to another dimension, another sphere: the sacred.
Live as a Zorba; then it will be possible for you to live as a Gautam Buddha. Zorba has to be the foundation of your life, and Gautam Buddha your highest peak. Live without any fear, because there is no god you have to be afraid of. And there is no heaven where your tortures will be rewarded, and there is no hell where your joys will be punished. This moment is all. Always remember in whatever moment you are that it is all.
Ramaprem, one day one of Mulla Nasruddin's friends asked him if he could borrow his donkey to carry some vegetables to the market. "No," said Mulla Nasruddin, "that's not possible, because my donkey is not here, and what's more, he is sick." At that moment, his donkey appeared from around the corner calling,
"Heehaw, heehaw."
"You said your donkey is not here, and that he is sick," accused Mulla Nasruddin's friend,
"and here he is and yelling `heehaw, heehaw,' as well as can be." "Who do you believe, "asked Mulla Nasruddin, "my donkey or me?"
Ramaprem, if you believe me, then there is no problem; then the sunlit peaks are very close by. But if you believe religious donkeys of all kinds and all sorts -- hindu shankaracharyas and Ayatollah Khomeiniac and pope the Polack -- then I am helpless.
Then you have to go on digging your valleys deeper.
Just trust what I am saying, because I am not saying anything based on any scripture. I am saying only things based on my own experience; hence what I am saying has an authority -- which these shankaracharyas cannot have; they are only representatives, they don't have their own experience... these popes cannot have; they are only elected people.
It is a very strange world, where religious leaders are also elected, elected by all kinds of idiots, elected by the followers.
I am not elected by anybody; neither am I representing anybody. I am simply telling you what my experience is; hence I have an authority that these people cannot have. I don't want you to believe it; I want you to trust it. And I make the difference, because by believing you will remain just a follower; by trusting you will come to the same status and the same space in which I am living.
Believing is cheap.
To trust means you are accepting a challenge to climb the sunlit peaks of mountains.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #39
Chapter title: Growing up comes by itself
31 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8705310
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN39
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
78
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THE OTHER DAY, I FOUND MYSELF UPSET, IMPATIENT, AND IRRITABLE.
WHEN WILL I GROW UP? WHEN WILL WE ALL COME TO THE
RESPONSIBILITY OF JUST BEING THE YOU IN US: THAT GRACEFULNESS
THAT WE ALL KNOW OURSELVES TO BE? I FEEL THAT THE TIME IS RIPE TO
STOP WHINING ABOUT MISERY, AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS, PAIN, AND
DISCOMFORTS. COULD IT BE THAT AS A DISCIPLE, I SIMPLY TAKE YOU, YOUR PRESENCE, YOUR ANSWERS, YOUR INSIGHTS, AND YOUR GRACE
FOR GRANTED, AS A WAY TO AVOID JUST STEPPING INTO MYSELF, INTO
THE DEVOTEE?
Satyadharma, it is natural to be impatient. And a great understanding and awareness is needed not to be impatient, because impatience is not going to help; on the contrary, it is one of the great hindrances. You have to understand impatience as your enemy. You want the vast and the mysterious to open its doors, without much effort on your part. It is not possible. There are a thousand and one doors, and only one is right; you will have to knock on all the wrong doors to find the right one. Either in scientific research, or in a spiritual seeking, patience is absolutely necessary.
I am reminded of Edison who invented the first electric bulb. He worked on it for three years. All his colleagues and his disciples slowly, slowly left. They were impatient, they wanted it to happen immediately, and they could not believe the patience of Edison.
Every day, Edison would come fresh, young, excited, and they would say to him, "We have experimented in so many ways, and we have failed in every experiment. Why not change the subject? We should work on something else."
Edison would say, "Who told you that we have been failures? Each failure brings us nearer to success because there must be only a limited number of doors. We knock on one door, and it is not the right door -- but it is not a failure. One door, a wrong door, is eliminated; success is closer. We knock on another door; it is
not the right door. But we are even closer to success -- two doors are eliminated. Soon we will be knocking on the right door.
But the patience that he had is part of a very intelligent and very genuine seeker. After three years, in the middle of the night, he knocked on the right door. For the first time, the human eyes.…
He was alone, all his colleagues had left; he was tired, utterly exhausted, and thinking himself almost mad. He was alone when he discovered the electric bulb. It had taken three years. Day and night he had been thinking only of one thing -- from where to approach this? And when the room was lighted up with electricity, he was sitting there in utter wonder. He was the first man to see something which had never existed before. He could not take his eyes off the electric bulb.
It was getting late, and finally his wife shouted from the other room, "Put that stupid light off!" She was not aware that it was electricity. She said "Come back, and go to sleep."
He said, "It is not the stupid light that you are acquainted with; it is what my three years of patience has created. You should come here and see!"
Because of his patience -- he has a uniqueness in the whole history of man -- he discovered one thousand inventions. Anybody else could have done it, but nobody had that quality of patience. There were many intelligent researchers, but they would go a little way and have a few failures... and start moving into another direction.
Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the most important Sufi mystics, one day took his disciples to a nearby farm where the farmers were trying to dig a well. They had made eight holes, and now they were working on the ninth; on each one they had gone only so far, and then seeing that there was no water, they dropped that project and started in another place.
They had destroyed the whole farm.
Jalaluddin Rumi had taken his disciples for a specific purpose -- to see how impatience is idiotic. If these people had put all the energy that they had used in destroying the whole field with several holes into digging a single hole, they would be bound to find water. But these are not the kind of people who are going to find water.
He was telling his disciples, "You should not be impatient. Put your total energy, your total trust, one pointedly, arrowed towards one goal. When the master is with you -- who has traveled the path, up and down many times, and who knows that the path is going to lead you to your cherished dream -- don't feel dejected, don't feel impatient, don't start new projects again and again. That way nobody has ever been able to find anything."
You say, "The other day I found myself upset, impatient, and irritable!"
Satyadharma, you cannot suddenly find yourself upset, impatient, and irritable. You must have been always impatient, upset, and irritable. Perhaps the other day you came to a peak of realization; you realized that these great qualities are in you. But they must have always been there; they cannot come suddenly. You must have become accustomed to them.
"When will I grow up?" What is the hurry? And what are you doing by growing up?
Even if you grow up today, what will you do? You will get even more upset and impatient and irritable, thinking, "My God, there was a goal, now even that is finished.
Now my life is absolutely meaningless."
Growing up comes by itself. You have to work, but not directly on how to grow up soon; you have to work more on meditation, more on silence, more on love. And the total result is growth. The growth itself is not something separate; it is the whole synthesis of all great qualities. You have to work on those qualities.
In my childhood -- and perhaps in India in everybody's childhood -- it must have happened... I used to plant mango seeds. My impatience was so much that I could not even sleep the whole night -- I wanted to see what had happened in the night. In the morning, I would dig them up again, and see whether anything had happened or not.
Nothing had happened!
The mango seed, when two leaves start growing in it, can be taken out, and it makes a very good whistle. My interest was not in the mangoes, my interest was in getting more whistles. But even that needs patience -- just those two leaves.
But impatience was such that it was even impossible to get those two leaves to grow. Every morning I would dig up the seed to see what was happening, and that would destroy the whole thing.
Growth is something that happens by the side. You meditate, you sing, you dance, you rejoice, and suddenly, one day you will find those two leaves of the mango are growing above the ground -- so fresh, so beautiful. Growth is a finding on the margin; you cannot make it a goal. That's what is making you so upset, impatient, and irritable! You have made growing up your goal. Now what can you do? Get stretched on a traction machine?
"When will we all come to the responsibility of just being the You in us: that gracefulness that we all know ourselves to be?" Any question about when shows that you have not understood my emphasis on the present moment; you have not understood my approach of here and now. Enjoy this moment, and forget the lot! And growth will come suddenly one day, not as a reward, but as a shadow of your living moment-to-moment, joyously.
"When" always takes you into the future, it always thinks of tomorrows. And the basic spiritual insight of thousands of years is that tomorrow never comes. This very moment will become another moment, your today will continue to remain today, the tomorrow will come in the form of today. But our whole system of thought is goal-oriented. We are always living in the future, and nobody can live in the future; or we are living in the past, and nobody can live in the past either.
The only way to live is to enjoy this moment, to cherish this moment, to make it as beautiful as possible. And out of this moment will come the next moment, out of this moment will come your whole future. This moment contains the whole eternity -- past and future.
You are saying, "I feel that the time is ripe to stop whining about misery, and misunderstandings, pain, and discomforts. Could it be that as a disciple, I simply take You, Your presence, Your answers, Your insights, and Your grace for granted?"
Do you really feel, Satyadharma, that "the time is ripe to stop whining about misery, and misunderstandings"? And what are you doing in your question?
What is this about being
"upset, impatient, and irritable," and "when will I grow up"? If it is not whining
about misery, and pain, and discomforts, then what is it? You have not felt that the time is ripe -
- you have only thought. Thinking is of no help. Thinking is a cheat. It talks great things, it gives you big promises, but the goods are never delivered.
Remember a clear-cut distinction between thinking and feeling: those who are feeling
"the time is ripe" are not whining about any misery. They are enjoying the ripe time, and by enjoying, they are making it riper.
Of course, it is true -- at least about you -- that you have started taking my presence for granted. That is the natural habit of the mind. It starts taking for granted things which it will repent only when it has lost them.
There is a beautiful Sufi story A very rich man, super-rich, became bored with
life because he had known all the pleasures, all the joys that money can purchase, but they were not truly satisfying. He was still thirsty, he was still hungry for something authentic.
He was enquiring from sages and saints, and all that they could say he had tried
their rituals, worship, prayer and nothing worked.
One saint out of desperation... because this man was torturing him continually again and again about his misery -- "Time is passing, life is limited, and what kind of saint are you?
You cannot show me the right path. And I have twenty-four hours to devote to it; I don't have to work to earn money or anything, I don't have children, and I have earned so much money that it is enough for ten lives at least." The saint sent him to a Sufi master who was thought to be a little bit insane, and to whom many sages were sending their disciples when they wanted to get rid of them. But that insane Sufi master only looked insane; he had a super-sanity.
The rich man took a big bag, filled it with diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires; and went to the Sufi who was sitting under a tree. He told the Sufi his whole story... that he was very miserable, he had everything that the world can afford. "I have brought, just to give you a proof, this whole bag worth millions. All I need is peace of mind." The Sufi said, "I will give it to you. Get ready!"
The rich man thought, "This man seems to be strange. I have been to so many saints --
nobody was so quick, and nobody promised to give it to me. They all said, `Go through this ritual, this worship, this prayer, this meditation. Work it out yourself.' This is the only man... perhaps, they are right that he is insane. He is saying, `Get ready. Don't waste my time!' "So hesitatingly he said, "Okay, I'm ready." But he was very afraid -- although he had come to get peace of mind. And when the man said he was ready, the Sufi master took hold of his bag, and ran.
It was a small village with small streets with which the Sufi was perfectly acquainted.
And the rich man had never run. He ran behind the Sufi master shouting, "I have been cheated! This man is not a sage. He's not insane, he's very cunning." But he could not get hold of the Sufi because he was going so fast and taking so many turns in the village. The old man was fat -- huffing, puffing, perspiring, crying -- and the whole crowd was laughing. He could not understand why these people were laughing, and nobody was helping! But the village knew that that man was not insane -- he was super-sane. He had his own methods.
Finally, the rich man reached to the same tree. The Sufi had reached far ahead; he was sitting with the bag there. And the rich man was shouting, abusing.
The Sufi said, "Stop all this nonsense! Take this bag." The man took the bag immediately, and the Sufi asked, "How are you feeling?"
He said, "I'm feeling great peace."
The Sufi said, "That's what I was telling you. If you are ready, I can give you peace immediately. Have you got it?"
He said, "I have got it!"
"Never again ask anybody about it!" You have started taking for granted all your riches. I gave you a chance to lose them, and suddenly you became what you really are -- a beggar. And these very precious stones which have lost their value to you are again precious." But it happens. The people who live in palaces start taking those palaces for granted; the people who are rich never think about the
miseries of poverty. The people who have got a master start taking him for granted -- that there is nothing to be done; you only have to ask the question and your master is there to answer it.
But my answers cannot be of any help.
My answers are only a provocation and an invitation, a challenge to work through the misery and the darkness towards the dawn, towards light.
I can show you the way, but I cannot walk for you.
And if you start taking me for granted, then don't be miserable; take your misery also for granted. Accept that you are a miserable person, that it is your destiny. You don't take your misery for granted, but you can take your master for granted. You don't take your problems for granted, but you take my answers for granted.
So you have to be clear, very clear, Satyadharma. In your whole question, only your last line is true, and authentic: "As a way to avoid stepping into myself, I have started taking you for granted."
It is a very easy way to ask a question, to get an answer, and out of the answer, make a few more questions for tomorrow... and you remain the same. My answers are remedies; they are medicinal. You have not just to create more questions out of them; you have to make an effort to live those answers. Out of living those answers, your questions will disappear.
And my answers are simple. I am not requiring you to grow into some self- torturing saint; I am not asking you for any ascetic disciplines. I am simply asking you to relax, to trust existence, to find a few moments of silence and peace which are absolutely available to everybody -- whoever closes his eyes, relaxes his body, sits silently.
The silence I'm talking about is not some acquirement or achievement. It is a discovery. It is already within you -- just the mind has to be quiet so that you can hear the music of silence that surrounds your whole being, so that you can smell the fragrance of your being itself. And once you have known it, then you can repeat it as many times in the day as you like, whenever you have time. Even sitting in a train or in a bus, you can just close your eyes and move inwards. It is only a question of taking the first step, then everything else becomes easy. But remember to be patient.
A Polack air cadet is taking his first sky diving jump. "What happens if the parachute does not open?" he asked his instructor. "Don't worry," replies the instructor. "There is only one chance in a thousand that it will happen, and you have a spare parachute too."
"But," replies the anxious student, "what if that one does not open either?"
"There is only one chance in a million that that will happen," the instructor assures him and adds, "and then the ambulance is there on the field to pick up the pieces."
The nervous cadet boards the plane which takes off. At ten thousand feet he jumps out of the plane, and pulls the cord of his main parachute. It does not open.
"Shit!" he says, and then pulls the cord of his reserve chute which also refuses to open. "I knew it," he says to himself. "And I bet with my luck, the ambulance won't be there to pick up the pieces either."
Just don't be so miserable! Most probably, the first parachute will do. If everything goes wrong, then even with your luck, you will find the ambulance to collect the pieces.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
MICHAEL WAS HELPING PATRICK CHECK TO SEE THAT HIS CAR
INDICATORS WERE WORKING. HE PUT HIS HEAD OUT OF THE WINDOW, AND YELLED, "YES, PATRICK, THEY ARE... NO, THEY'RE NOT... YES, THEY
ARE... NO, THEY'RE NOT. " OSHO, NO I'M NOT... YES I AM... NO I'M NOT... YES
I AM. RECENTLY I'VE NOTICED THOSE SPACES IN BETWEEN, AND NOW
THEY SEEM TO BE COMING MORE AND MORE IN EVERY WAY.
ONE ADVERTISEMENT FOR BEER CLAIMS TO "REACH THE PARTS THAT
OTHER BEERS CAN'T. "PARTS OF ME THAT JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO I DIDN'T KNOW EXISTED ARE BEGINNING TO FEEL SPACIOUS, LIGHT, AND
GRATEFUL. I AM BEGINNING TO FEEL THE FLOW AND THE PACE OF
EXISTENCE, TO RELAX INTO IT, AND TO TRUST IT. WILL YOU PLEASE
COMMENT?
Dhyan Sagar, the workings of the mind are just like that -- split between yes and no, between to be or not to be. The mind cannot have one voice; it is always balanced by its
"against" voice. That is simply the nature of the mind: it is split, it is schizophrenic. In a more philosophical way, they call it dialectical.
But my whole teaching is to go beyond the mind, not to be bothered with it.
Neither its
"no" is of any meaning, nor even its "yes." The only use of the mind is to use it as a stepping-stone, to go beyond it. Don't try to solve problems of the mind, they are insoluble. You will get into a thick forest, and find it almost impossible to find the way back home.
The mind is a Polack.
How do you make a one armed Polack fall off a flagpole? Answer: You wave to him.
Why did the Polish Government import five hundred million tons of sand from Saudi Arabia?
Answer: They wanted to drill for their own oil.
Did you hear about the Polish lesbian? Answer: She likes men.
The mind is certainly part of Poland.
One contemporary logician has invented a word, "po." And my suspicions are that he has taken that word "po" from Poland; otherwise, there is no way he could manage this word
"po." He has invented it because his philosophy needed it. He says that Aristotle has given us a philosophy of yes and no; either something is right or something is wrong, either something is black or white -- a very simple duality. Either you believe in God or you don't.
But what about things when the real answer is neither yes nor no? For example, God. To say "yes" is wrong because you have not experienced it; to say "no" is wrong because you have not explored it. So neither yes is applicable, nor no.
According to this man's logic, when somebody asks you, "What about God?" you have to say "po." Po is noncommittal; it does not mean yes, it does not mean no. It simply means,
"I don't know." But rather than accepting the ignorance, it gives you a good feeling to say
"po." You put, in fact, the other person in a state of ignorance because he cannot understand -- "What is po?" He has never heard the word.
My suspicion is that he has got this "po" from Poland. There is no other way to get it. But even with "po", mind will not be the solution. You can go on repeating "po" but you will remain as poor, as ignorant, as miserable as before. This "po" is not going to transform anything in you.
Only one thing can transform, and that is going beyond the mind, going beyond thinking, and coming to a space where the sky is absolutely without clouds. And then no question arises, and no answer is needed.
People think that Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra, or Lao Tzu have found the answer. They are wrong. They have lost both -- the question and the
answer. They have found a silence, undisturbed either by questions or by answers.
When I said this to Tibetan Buddhist lamas, they were shocked because they were thinking Gautam Buddha had found the answer. I said, "If you find the answer, you are still inside the mind, you are still very close to the question." Gautam Buddha has gone beyond the question and the answer. He has found silence -- indestructible.
Philosophy finds answers, religion finds a state which is far beyond questions and answers. Questions and answers look childish, look like toys to play with.
Ten years ago an anthropology student spent some time studying rural regions of Kashmir. One day he was driving down the road when he saw a man on a donkey, while his wife walked ten yards behind him. "Why do you do that?" he asked. "It is our age-old tradition," the man replied.
Recently, the student, now a reporter, was sent back to Kashmir by his newspaper. By a strange coincidence he found himself on the same road, with the same man he had seen ten years before. But this time the man's wife was walking ten yards ahead of him. The man on the donkey was exactly ten yards behind the wife.
"What happened to the traditional custom?" asked the reporter. "Has the tradition changed?"
"No, " said the man. "The tradition has not changed, but now, you see, there are land mines."
Mind is very cunning. It will use traditions, it will use religions, it will use philosophies --
just to survive. It will give you all kinds of questions, and all kinds of answers -- just to survive. But any question raised by the mind is as futile as any answer found by the mind.
Mind is an exercise in utter futility.
Only very few people in the world have been able to find the truth that the mind is our only problem.
If we can go beyond mind into silence, into utter and profound silence -- undisturbed by anything, not even a ripple of thought -- then we have found it... not the answer, but something existential, a transformation, a mutation, a revolution in ourselves which destroys all questions and all answers, and leaves us in utter serenity, in a tremendous beatitude.
Meditation is nothing but annihilation of the mind.
Meditation is not the training of the mind: Meditation is simply cessation of the mind.
Just cease to be a mind, and you will find a pure being, unpolluted and pure from eternity to eternity.
Little Ernie was always saying things that got him into trouble. One day his mother was having a friend to lunch who was bringing her new baby who had no ears.
Ernie's mother called him and said, "Ernie, don't you say anything about the baby. In fact, don't even speak at all."
"Okay," said Ernie.
The friend arrived with her baby. Ernie looked at him, took his hand, and said, "What beautiful little hands he has."
"Ernie," warned his mother.
"And what beautiful brown hair he has." "Yes," said the proud friend.
"Has he got good eyesight?" asked Ernie. "Ernie!" yells his mother.
"Why?" asked the baby's mother.
"Because," says Ernie, "he will never be able to wear glasses."
The mind is so cunning; it goes on round about, but comes finally to some
trouble, to some problem. You can repress its one question by one answer, but it will create new questions which will be nothing but echoes of the repressed question.
A seeker of truth is a seeker of the beyond. The beyond is our home.
The mind can be Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan; the beyond is just pure, without any objective. To me, the future man, the new man will live in the beyond.
Living in the beyond does not mean that you cannot use your mind; in fact, on the contrary, only those who live in the beyond are capable of using their mind as an instrument. Mind goes on torturing those who have not moved into the beyond; it is a nightmare. And they cannot use the mind because they are not above it.
Be a witness to the mind.
In your witnessing, the beyond will open its doors. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #40
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